School’s Out!

I am so happy. School is finally out and summer starts once again! And to think I started this blog only a year and a month ago, I never thought it’s been so long and I’ve gotten so far! But yeah, another 3 months to chill out and work on stuff I’ve been dying to work on!

Summer 2009 Goals:
Finish Fighter’s Field 3D Version 1.0 (An official release!)
Finish Z-Tower Defense
Become more adept at Alto Sax.
Get to Lv80 at least on Drift City
Play through World of Warcraft
Beat Spore on Hard Mode

Well, there might be some more, but I cannot think of anything else. Anyways, so we got out on March 20th, so it’s been a week. Things have been going pretty smoothly. Each day I got to relax and have fun with my brothers and sister. Our family has gone out swimming, we’ve talked about plans to go to places with our Church, and I have been working on games and playing some Final Fantasy 7. So it’s been a pretty good summer so far. Last year, I remembered being into BZFlag and starting Fiesta, but this year, it seems I almost have no game I’m caught on. I mean, I have been playing some Drift City, but…It’s been getting hard to level now but it’s still fun. I’m waiting for more G-Coins to get my Nova V6 to Nova V9, or waiting for a Duel. Either one.

Recently, I’ve had a flash drive go dead. It was because of bad sectors which probably happened while I was transferring files and after pulling it out and plugging it in, I lost all my flash drive data. It wasn’t too major, but it was definitely a disappointment. The biggest file I lost, was my Fighter’s Field 3D file. So, what was I to do? Well, me and my 5-year-old bro Jonathan are always playing/working on the game, and I remembered that I gave him an “alpha” testing executable just 2 days ago. And I thought, I needed it. Using my backup flash drive (with only 128 MB instead of my original 2GB), I got it on my computer and downloaded the Game Maker EXE Decompiler. Now, I know what you may be thinking if you know what I mean. I’m a bad person now. No, not really. Because I am using it for first off, a very legitimate purpose. I needed to decompile my Fighter’s Field 3D exe file so I could get all my months of typed codes and all my objects and sprites back! And I promise you. Once I have decompiled the game, I have permanantly removed the decompiler from my computer. If some legal dude or anybody wanted to inspect my hard drive for any signs of the decompiler (or my flash drives/CDs/any media storage device) I assure you there is no trace of it anymore! Therefore, I have no possibility of decompiling any of your games, got it? So don’t go commenting on here “You suck, you loser decompiling others’ games.” or anything of that sort. Also, it is my game, and if you don’t believe me, you can read previous posts that go months back about the development of it, you can read about it at http://z-gamers.net, find it on GMC, and you can ask one of the members on Z-Gamers about it, they’ll tell you, so there’s plenty of proof it’s mine along with my full name being in the executables of the Fighter’s Field 3D games.

Sorry about going on and on about that, it’s just I don’t want anybody thinking I’m doing anything bad in particular, and I have plenty of proof to make sure nothing bad can be thought of me. (Sorry, keeping rep is a thing for me xD.)

Fighter’s Field 3D development if going well. Mining system is complete, PvE system is completed, and I’m now working on the new skills. There are 8 skills per class, making it 32 skills, but you can only get a new skill once every 10 levels. You get your first one after the Class Upgrade 3 at lv60, and you get one every 10 levels. This patch goes up to lv100, so you get 5 total. So you can get 5/8 skills from the skill shop for your new class, and each one does different things. If you are interested in seeing what they are, I will be posting up a Word file with a list of them in a later post.

That’s all I got for now. Stay tuned.

Icosikaiterahedron! (Or 24-gon)

So on the 11th of May, Monday, I got 12 pieces of posterboard that were of 4 different colors and I started creating what is called an Icosikaiterahedron, also known as a 24-sided tessalated figure. (At least I’m pretty sure, I could use some clarity on it.)

But yeah, it took about 3 hours to build, and now that it is complete and I’ve turned it in for extra credit, I brought it home to take pics. So you can click the images below to view them!

Yeah, it’s really large. I could’ve used regular white paper and made it normal sized, but I decided to go large. It is about 16″x16″ from end to end so it is very large, about up to your knees if you stand. It is also heavier than it looks too. About 3~5 pounds which is quite alot for paper.

Windows XP is Back!

So I’m finally back to good old Windows XP. I know you might be thinking that Windows XP is outdated with Windows 7 coming in and Vista being sold in stores everywhere, but I plan to stick with XP for a few more years. I couldn’t believe that I went from 800 MB of free RAM from boot up on Vista, to 1.5~1.6 GB of free RAM everytime I started up on Windows XP. Pretty neat.

I noticed the big difference in speed and I am quite happy with the results. I ran into one little snag earlier which is explained below.

So I first tried to install XP next to Vista, but I couldn’t because the drive was protected with SATA ACPI I think it was? (Not sure since my memory isn’t serving me well right now so, sorry if I’m wrong) So of course, my first source of reference was the internet. I read a few articles and found one where I have to switch the SATA/RAID setting (I forgot which one it was so I list both) to ATA. Then I was able to visibly see my drive, but by that time I forgot about the putting XP with Vista and just moving stuff from Vista and decided to wipe about 110 GB of my 140 GB hard drive. Took awhile for it to go through the NTFS file system setup process, but after that it was pretty simple.

Watched the Windows XP install screens, let it run through for about half an hour, then we go into the Windows XP screen with surprise surprise no drivers (as usual). So I pull out my Dell drivers disk I got and put it in. Used Inspiron 1525 model drivers with Windows XP drivers (Kind of glad they had those) and got my wireless card, graphics enhancement, webcam, touchpad, and a few other drivers placed on. It wouldn’t install my Sigmatel sound card driver for some reason which is where I got kind of frustrated. Everytime I ran the installer, it’d start up, scan my audio hardware configuration, then just mysteriously disappear.

So I reboot my computer, then when I start up, Sigmatel installation window pops up. I’m like, interesting…When it finishes I’m happy because it successfully installs my sound card in and I am done. I immediately get the SP3 update from XP (By now they have fixed all the bugs compared to my last test if you read about 4 or 5 months back with me testing SP3 in its early stages. I get avast! antivirus again, and start reinstalling items. SCWebcam3, Pidgin, WinSCP, Spore, Drift City, Diablo 2, Microsoft Office 2007, Firefox, and a few other programs that I often used. So I’m happy now, my computer’s officially Windows XP. I save RAM, I still have all my programs, and I get to do stuff super fast now.

That’s about it for today, we’ll see what happens later.

Back To Activity

So it’s been about a month since I have made another new post on here, but now I am making one. What I have been up to I’ll explain in a second. I named today’s post “Back to Activity” because I have been doing lots of things lately and I plan to share them below.

First off, I am planning to go back to Windows XP pretty soon. Why? Mostly because I want a fast computer. I admit that Vista is great, and has things we all love, but I think Vista is getting a little annoying as I boot up each day, wait 30 seconds, type in a password, then wait 30 more seconds before I can finally begin working. It adds up and I just want it to be more responsive and active. So, today I officially make the switch. I have backed up Documents and Pictures, and am starting it as soon as I finish this blog post. I know it’ll take a few hours, but it’ll be worth it. So how am I doing it? I’m using PC Magazine’s May 2008 “Return to Windows XP” as a guide, and am using the first tip they provide which is installing XP over Vista without wiping the hard drive. Then from there, I just transfer my old files, reinstall applications, and delete the Vista junk left behind. I was thinking about a reformat, but it’s not really much of something in my head to do right now. Actually, now that I think about it, it may just be easier to reformat…Hmm, either way I want to get it done. I have burned a few disks containing all of my document files in .rar format and have them separated by 700 MB archives.

So, now my second topic is basically about my gaming life. First off, I want to say that I am Lv49 on Drift City. Pretty neat. I’ve quit Fiesta so I won’t be talking about that anymore by the way. I have chosen some nice cars now, sold off my older version cars. I have pics of each one on the next page. Just click More to go through them. The post continues on the More link after the images and I included some older images while driving so you can see what cars I used earlier along with some nice scenery and such. (I chose to stick with OMD.)