Long Silence? part 2

So i’ve decided to watch the show that rumors turned me off. I hate people tell me not to watch shows only when they got a horrible first impression of it, and later say that ‘it gets really AWESOME at the later part zOMg!’. The anime is called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I am not gonna describe what kind of impact it has on me YET, it’s going to take another couple of posts and a looooooong time to write. I loved this show a lot. More than any other anime OR Manga OR show at I’ve ever watched.

*thinks*

Okay I don’t watch much shows as compared to other people I guess but seriously, this is by far the bestest anime ever. I am totally infatuated about it. I’m worshipping the show more than I worship the ingeniousness of Full Metal Alchemist and the first time I watched Haku fight and Gaara vs Rock Lee in Naruto. Serious. Ask anyone if they remember me wearing Naruto headbands (I’m sure they don’t wanna remember :p) and Kakashi gloves. That kind of fanboyism (Narutard as they call it), doubled. HARUHIISM as they call it. I even went to read the novel it’s based on. And look for games. And stuff. It’s that crazy I am about that anime. Goddamn. This anime probably will have the longest lasting effect it have on me. We’ll wait and see.

I downloaded the character set albums for MoHS. I don’t care what people say about ‘Mikuru’s songs and voice being kute i lub dem all <3<3<3′. Each to his/her opinion, I can’t stand 5 seconds of ANY songs I downloaded that sounds like that. Aya Hirano (voice actress for Haruhi) is pretty awesome. God Knows and Lost My Music were probably two of the best J-pop songs I’ve heard. Chihara Midori’s character album (Yuki) have a song I really really like: Yuki, Muon, Madobe. Awesome song, fits Yuki extremely well. Probably on par with God Knows to me.

I dunno how others listen to music…perhaps some comments here would enlighten me. The first time I listen would be to hear the overall song, and then I’ll pick out the instruments like some of those sound modifying programs and listen to them carefully one by one and finally appreciate the music as a whole. So it probably takes me like 2 to 3 times to listen to fully grasp what the song is about/like.

I’ve downloaded a few Jpop songs…arg…need more… :p

Long silence? part 1

It’s been awhile since my last entry, not that anyone cares. Been pretty busy to the brim with work and now finally, the whole project is done. I do not ever want to be reminded of it. I do not ever want to remember this particular project OR semester. This semester has been pretty screwed up, fucked up and totally unorganized and useless compared to the last two.

Actually it’s been like more than 7 days ago since my project is completed, packaged, and finished. Good thing that comments are good so far (though I ran into a bug at the winning screen). This few days have been pretty eventful. I wanted to grab all the fun I can get before returning to the dreaded place. That’s why I’m not going to the SGCC mentor program I volunteered for. It may be irresponsible of me to do that but hey, everyone should know now that I don’t carry responsibility with me, only interest and mood…largely interest. Right now, my interest is taking a break and get away temporary from programming and do other stuff like collecting WH40k models.

I went to Ivan’s house recently with Bren, John, Sam and Eric, and we played Settlers of Catan. I don’t care what Ivan said about ‘this game is not luck based’. The sentence he said, “Catan is a probability based game and there is no luck involved” never stands to me. Of course, strategy is still important in the game, but luck ALWAYS kills probability. For 2 dices, rolling a number is 4 like 5 times in a row is just plain luck, and so is NOT rolling numbers like 7 (I was desperate to move the robber people keep putting on my turfs). I’m not gonna explain about the game here; it will take way too long.

On the arcade side, Evo2k6 is done. Daigo got kicked early in 3s, BAS never made top 10 of CVS2, $50000 money match? or was it $70000. Or was there another zero? Anyway, probably the biggest money match in gaming history was hosted by Sanford and Duc for MVC2. Daigo/Kindebu/ RF only managed to get a 2nd in GGXX. JWong kicked in 3s, but made it in CVS2, Daigo kicked JWong out in CVS2. Tons of bullshit happening over there.

Locally, Anthony is BACK. K-groove is too damn popular now. It don’t believe it’s because of people winning in A-groove too easily that they wanted to switch to grooves like K as opposed to what airconman says. It think it’s just airconman and perhaps a few others, but as far as I know, all the new guys are mostly playing K. Those using A-groove is still using A. Those using C-groove is still using C. The only guy that uses A-groove and switch to other grooves as a MAIN groove is airconman. I can’t think of anyone else really. Finn…? He plays for fun like alvin and leo, but I remember Finn saying that he is planning to have his main groove as N or something. N-Akuma/Iori and one more I can’t remember.

People ask me why I always like to make things hard for myself.

I learn more things and my life is more interesting that way.
It’s like playing CVS2 you know.
No Capcom characters prz.

Wow, what a Saturday night!

I had a really really great Saturday. Finally after like 2 years in Bugis I got to know people and actually associating with them instead of just games. Yeah I’m really happy about how this Saturday went…might be my best trip to Bugis.

The first thing that happened prior to the Saturday was airconman (shit can’t remember his real name again lol) introducing me to ArcadeScrubs.com on Thursday after john yz and I had our…*cough*meal*cough*. I was like “wtf got such a website?” and stuff. To be honest, I was pretty excited about this ArcadeScrubs.com when I first heard of it, so the first thing I did when I went home was to register and spam.

And I didn’t know that people actually know me lol. Then again, I think people are pretty freaked out when I say I know them and describing them thereafter. Roland (aka RokiSeph) was already in that website…god he’s like in every cvs2 forum I visit, I wonder what he works as. I posted like…a hell lot…not that I want to get attention or anything lol.

Then Saturday came, and I nearly got scared when this guy with a pink Jam display pic msged me. He is under my MSN’s…er…”unregistered” section and the only people that gets in there nowdays are my designers. You know what I think about designers. Them msg me gets me really scared.

The first question he typed kinda surprised me and erased all my worries: “Hi, you going today?”. Of course I asked who the hell he is…and *BING!* he happens to be an arcadescrub.com member (GGXX Jam player)! Wtf this is the FIRST time people actually click on my forum profile, grab my MSN and IM’ed me. Coooooooooooooooool ^_^

The person was ‘Rere’, friend with this…er…spammer with 200+ post called’HmR.kS’. We IM’ed like…er…nevermind…er…for like 1 hour? 2 hours? cannot remember.

So I went there and met him and axel. I didn’t really introduce myself to the rest, cuz I shy. I dunno why axel says he’s a very unapprochable person irl lol, he’s probably the only person I regconize distinctly actually because his Axl is so godly. aeNon (is he the johnny user?) seems…more unapproachable to me LOL :p. The way he uses johnny (esp the part where he FRC the air thingy) isn’t helping much.

Now to MB. I’ve met Remus and hokuto. Actually I’ve known them since MBAC first came out when we keep exchanging slaughters with each other. There was sooooo feeeew people playing MBAC last time, I think I only recognize 4 or 5. This Saturday, MBAC was HOT, well, hotter than it used to be. I’ve not inserted so many 50c in MBAC for quite a long time. For some reason, playing with remus’ shiki made me remember all my shiki stuff -.-. A few shoutouts:

Remus: arg…chaos is a zoo. That was the funniest match. And my shiki vs your shiki is just speed speed speed. And mindlessness.

hokuto: I hate your hisui then. I still hate your hisui now. I also hate your aruceid for flashing memories of her raping my shiki last time lol.

Rere: Wah…Miyako player! I play Miyako on my PC or PS2…play for 2 minutes buay tahan already, but she got great potential imo. Show us what Miyako can do in Bugis, I want to see :p

axel: I can’t remember if I played with you but I remember eating a Mhisui’s shield super…or was that me? Anyway, keep playing and keep the MBAC machine HOT!!!11. MHisui to me is also one of those ‘play for 2 minutes buay tahan’ characters :p.

On the CVS2 side, it’s BURNING. There like…what…about 10 players and dunno how many spectators. Holy shit man it’s as if there is some tournament going on lol. I met this A-Maki/Athena/Hibiki guy that I’ve never seen before (heard he used to play here long long ago). His Maki CC…jesus…so beautiful. I tried to pull it off in my PS2, no luck after 3rd hit so far lol. It’s actually HARDER than it looks, as if it does not look hard enough. My Rock is back. whee~ no more gay ass top tier Sagat in my team.

anthony was there. He has that omg godly aura around him you know. He’s that A-Sak/Bison/Blanka guy I sweared (twice) not to insert any more coins to play him. I went home with Leo today and that’s how I get to FINALLY match characters to REAL NAMES instead of calling them random (possible rude) nicknames. Time to edit my posts whooo~.

PS: airconman, I hate your P-groove. Why you always never fail to link up into supers when you fight me and always fail when you fight other people like Ken -.-

First impressions of DoW after years of absence

DoW has changed so much during the time I was missing, not to mention having a new race from an expansion I’ve always told myself to get but couldn’t bring myself to. I’m into TT Warhammer 40k recently, so to refamilize myself, I made myself ‘obtain’ Dawn of War and Winter Assault.

So here are the many things I’ve noticed about each race so far. I’ve only excessively played Eldar, more Chaos and Imperials and only a bit of Orks and SM.

Eldar
Well the first thing I noticed was that the uber leet Warp Spiders are now shifted to tier 3. Okay first, I’ll list down how Eldar (or at least ‘me’) count tiers for Eldar:

Tier 0: Guardians
Tier 1: Aspect Portal (barracks)
Tier 2: Soul Shrine (research)
Tier 3: Support Portal (vehicles)
Tier 4: Mobilize for War research
Tier 5: Annihaliate the Enemy research

I can’t remember if Annihaliate the Enemy research was once there or not. I don’t remember it being there =/

Anyway, Warp Spiders are now tier 3 (must have aspect, soul shrine and support) before you create them, so for Tier 1 and 2, I have to settle for Dark Reapers, that’s where I noticed the 2nd change -> Dark Reapers do not need to have a 1 round setup time and can now shoot on the run! That is pretty overpowered for a Tier 1 unit that own every single other unit and you can’t catch them due to Fleet of Foot.

The third thing i noticed was that the soul shrine research seemed unusually empty. Apparently, all warlock research (there were 4 or 5 of them I believe) are now under a research called “Mysticism” and can be researched at Tier 0. Oh and now eldar can call Exarch reinforcements at Tier 0. Speaking of research, the banshee’s Call of War research is buffed and shifted to Tier 2 instead of it being in the aspect portal. Also, the Dark Reaper research is now gone.

4th thing, Prism Tanks are shifted from Tier 3 all the fucking way to Tier 5. They are like unreachable now lol. Apparently there were too many complaints about them

And finally, their new units: Fire Dragons. These guys fucking owns all vehicles and buildings. They eat listening posts like crazy and they are hard to kill. 2 squads of them can burn down they enemy base and destroy predators/dreadnoughts like mad. Then again, they totally suck at everything else, just the way all eldars are: Best and one thing, total suck at the other.

And for the 1.5 patch: You can only have one squad of ranger at one time. Apparently, rangers are buffed in their morale damage is crazy from 40 per ranger to 60 per ranger. That’s like 2 rounds and Terminator squad = morale broken. hmm…maybe that’s what I should use to beat those pesky chaos zerkers.

Chaos
First change I’ve noticed, Chaos marines can no longer equip flamethrows and rocket launcher, killing their ability to rush and destroy enemy base fast and also destroying what seemed to be a damn good anti-vehicle ability. Their current Anti-Vehicles are now those little fragile daemons called ‘Horrors’. for some reason, horrors now eat my wraithlords almost as bad as my fire dragons. They just don’t last as long. I think they changed it because no one used horrors for anything last time other than surprise attacks.

Second, Krome Berzerkers. These guys are probably the last guys I want to see (other than fully buffed possessed space marines) in the chaos side. They are thick, extremely resilient, goddamn fast and melee gods (second only to banshees). Eldar’s dark reapers have problems dealing with them to my experience. I would bring banshees to fight them but heavy bolters eat my banshees. Oh before you ask, if fully buffed banshee squad vs fully buffed zerker squad, banshees will definately win. It’s only what’s coming from behind the zerkers that eat my banshees.

Possessed are still as powerful as ever, so I got no comments on them. Predators do not come with all kinds of shit they used to have (SM predators still do). So Predators basically only have one big gun now instead of their ridiculous lascannons and shit. No more =(.

Oh yes, chaos now have Obliterators. All TT Chaos players know what they can do lol. Slow, heavy, tough and carry 1000 weapons on them. Seeing one squad in your base could mean big big trouble. And they are fearless I think.

Orks
Orks seemed to be the same to me. I don’t see any differences other than their new unit: the Mega Armored Nobz (I think it’s new). I don’t like playing orks so I didn’t notice much difference about them but I do hear complains of them sucking at Tier 3. Oh, like Chaos, they can’t carry rocket launchers on their shootas anymore and their stormboyz can equip flamethrowers now.

Space Marines
I’ve only noticed a few things. Space Marines can’t have heavy bolters until tier 2 but they can have flamethrowers and rocket launchers at tier 1. From the way I see it, Space Marines are still as weak early game as ever.

Imperial Guard
God these guys are interesting to play. There’s too many things to say about IG right now. Their Psykers are extremely powerful though.

Coding Reminder for Gerald

I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.
I must remember to initialize every variable.

Note: Just a reminder to myself so that I won’t waste 3 hours of my life every time wondering why things don’t work when I simply forget to initialize the variable.

Work, Fun, and Finally…Deadline is Nigh!

I don’t know whether I should feel happy or not about deadlines now. Usually I would feel really worried and stuff but this time I’m looking into the huge break we’ll be having. I’m actually feeling happy about finishing the work instead of submitting it…hmm or was I always like that? I can’t remember…

Oh yes, Bugis is being renovated (a part of it anyway) so they shifted every machine. Everything seemed soooooo much more organized now; Street fighter in one row, KoF in another, Sports game in the other. GGXX is right smack into the middle of KOF…not that I care much anyway, GGXX standard in sg is waaaaay above mine. Anyway, the best thing is that the CVS2 machine is shifted to a much much much cooler spot. Last Saturday was really really fun, so fun that if I were to type what happened and what I felt there, it would take like my entire blog space for a month and I’m too lazy to do that anyways.

Back to the present, I’ve been playing around with Warhammer 40k (the tabletop) . It seemed really really fun to play, but it’s gonna take a lot of investing. I’m currently tihnking about it though

sidenote: I’m supposed to flame and rant about designers but since they made me happy for now, I’ll let it pass.

I managed to find the willpower to rip my soul off Everquest to update my blog. As EQ is back to my life, I’m probably going out less and updating less, but of course, if my willpower is as good as now, I’ll do them. I’m now settled in The Sleeper with my new Cleric whore known as “Ellune”. I swear to god this name have NOTHING to do with the Night Elf goddess Elune. I thought of the name in my friggin bed a day before Progession servers were released.

IT HAS NO LINK WITH THE FUCKING BITCH GODDESS ELUNE.
IT HAS NO LINK WITH THE FUCKING BITCH GODDESS ELUNE.
IT HAS NO LINK WITH THE FUCKING BITCH GODDESS ELUNE.
IT HAS NO LINK WITH THE FUCKING BITCH GODDESS ELUNE.
IT HAS NO LINK WITH THE FUCKING BITCH GODDESS ELUNE.

Get that in your head and hopefully by reading this blog, I would get less /t Ellune “Do you play WoW? Your character is named after the goddess Elune”. This is a name I proudly thought out of myself. Damn you blizzard.

I’ve been playing a LOT less games other than EQ ever since EQ came back. There was a point of time I feel really tired and bored and I got afraid that I AM bored of EQ. Happens that my bodily system could not handle starring at computers at a certain posture. That’s what’s making me tired. Otherwise I’m still burning. Level 9 now!

Progression server is insane. Greater Faydark 5 hours after release has 500+ people in the SAME zone. Fucking incredible. The players practically outnumber the mob spawns. I’ve NEVER seen that happen before. I’ve never seen 6 people ganging on a level 1 wasp drone.
For those not playing or not in Greater Faydark, here’s a screenshot of what it’s like in Greater Faydark in a less populated server called “The Sleeper”. It has 100 people at the time this screenie was taken:

This place was one called orc hill because it is probably the wonderful point where 80% of the orcs walk through, has good open space, and clear sight to many mobs. Due to the ridiculous amount of training, and given the fact that some of us are not used to not being twinked, we Elves of Faydark temporarily renamed this camp spot as ‘Corpse Hill’ :

Welcome to Everquest!
You are in OUR world now!

school time

bah I just lost the long droningly boring post I had because blogger is so damn buggy. Anyway to summarize what I typed:

If anyone knows a place where I can host 1-10GB worth of txt and music, place comment or something. I really need it one day. I need to do…stuff. Now with all the boring work out of the way, I can finally get myself some fun…a bit too late don’t you think =/

It’s 4am now, and school starts at 9am…time to sleep I guess…

BWAHAHA 3rd post of the day

Wow third post of the day. I must be really free now lol.

Everyone have been asking good ole Gerald.

“Gerald, where have you been?”
“Gerald, what do you do at home?”
“Gerald, are you working?”
“Gerald, where are you?”
“Gerald, where are you for the whole holiday?”
“Gerald, you are busy? Busy with what? Work?”
“Gerald, Gerlad, Gerrad, Grld, grld”

And if these thoughts are in your mind for this term break, my friends , the following reasons are probably the case:
1) I rarely, if not, NEVER log on to MSN
2) Even though I log on, I never reply to message…if any, rarely
3) I am always on skype…but I never reply to messages anyway
4) I never replied to almost every handphone messages
5) Hell, the only way you can reach me is through phone
6) So…gerald, are you a Yawa?

technically speaking I am not a yawa because I never ever set myself to ‘away’ mode (the no entry sign is better than the clock sign for msn). I would have set myself to ‘busy’ mode but I’m too lazy so I chose to ignore those messages. Okay okay, fine I will try to set myself to busy mode more often…besides, I don’t go on MSN much anyway do I?

“So Gerald, what have you been doing?”
As you have read my previous posts, I was a bit sick during the middle of this week. I still go to Bugis runs every Saturday, maybe more if I have nothing to do on that day. No I haven’t been training on DOA4 so far. Mostly I’m playing games, sleeping or work. Well, what work have I done…hmm…since I’m so free I think I can afford some screenshot so FEAST YOUR EYES ON THE GREAT ASSIGNMENTS TEH DREADED DET HAS GIVEN ME::::::

Here a very very quick run through of our game dev. project. As some may already know, my team is working on some wrapped 3D pong project with special abilities and stuff liek that.

>>> Here’s the main menu. Beautiful isn’t it? I drew it myself. Our game has no mouse input, so everything is by keyboard. If your eyes are sharp, you’ll notice that the first box is bigger than the other. That’s the selected box. Well anyway, as you can very well see there is this big “BG HERE” at the background which means “background here”. Ugly? You bet. This is basically what you see in all your computer games if they all do not have any graphic designers. I call this the ’skeleton’ of the game. Too bad…most gamers only appreciate what designers do more than us programmers. Wait, we’re not gonna be programmers. We are gonna be DEVELOPERS. Muahahaha!
Here’s the main game. cool huh. The smiling faces are the hp bar of some sort. Apparently Heber wanted some ‘DOOM’ style kind of HP but I think I have to raise the fact that even DOOM has number representations for HP. Every other stat is not drawn yet, but already implemented at the background. Btw I drew the faces. Cool right?

So yeah…I guess that’s all I can show for my GDT assignment. It’s based on OpenGL, aka you know Playstation, Nvidia and stuff.

So on to my ACG (advanced com graphics) assignment! I have to make a DirectX .obj loader! Okay lemme summarize: basically I have to turn this babies (note the scrollbar lolol):

Into this:
Yeah it’s suppose to be a street lamp, but my cleverly designed pink-blue texture has masked it perfectly. Why pink? Because pink is ghey and ghey = Gerald, true story. It’s suppose to have words saying “Gerald is God” though…it didn’t map as I liked it to be, but meh whatever.

On the serious note, some may ask what is the difference between DX and OpenGL?

1) DX is by Microsoft, I can’t remember where OGL is from.
2) DX’s structure is more…well…’professional’. OGL’s is dependent on the person
3) DX do not have godly transformation tools unlike OGL. Instead you make your own ‘higher-than-godly’ transformation tools.
4) I THINK OGL is free to distribute and work on, DX isn’t. Microsoft wants money you see
5) DX has this…holy…godly tool for rendering graphics. Bascially you just throw all the points and coordinates and *poof* it became koko…I think you get my meaning. OGL? You have to poke the points manually
6) As far as what I am concerned, I think DX is much more efficient and godly than OGL.
7) DX has all these…godly functions…like java…just so godly are these functions.
Microsoft is taking over the world…in other words, DX is taking over the world.
9) Sony is going to die, that means…OpenGL is going to die…unless Nintendo is using OpenGL…but then again…Nintendo uses ATI cards, does that means they use DX too? Ahh…so this is what comment boxes are for. For those who know please tell me.
10) DX functions are so damn irritating to type I mean compare DX’s “LPDIRECT3DDEVICE9″ to OGL’s “glTranslatef();”

Yep, these are 10 differences between them. Of course not all may be true =p