Lost & Found!

Today was a very strange day and indeed different. I started off my morning as usual and couldn’t find my white Nintendo DS, so I just brought my black one. Then after we got off the bus, I realized I didn’t have my DS case with all my games and the black DS inside the case in my backpack. Oh my gosh…I started to worry, as for anything that’s worth money I would start worrying over. So I decided “Ok, relax, maybe the bus driver will find it and save it for later.”, but then I also realized a kid could just plain steal it too, as the bus goes through a middle school and elementary school route too, so I was definitely scared. Later on during the day while we were using the computers in our band room, I found a flash drive. Just a blank one plugged into a computer. I didn’t take it, but I knew that someone definitely forgot it. I then found my jacket I lost about two weeks ago during my 5th period class, and then finished up the day by realizing that my science lab notebook was in my backpack the whole time! When I asked my bus driver if she saw a gray case, she said “Maybe I have” and pulled it out. I was so relieved. Now I’d better start keeping a closer eye on my valuables, as there was still the possibility of me losing my DS and all my games.

Once I got onto the computer, I started working on a bit of my Ball Amnesia game, the one I was talking about yesterday. So I decided to release it to you all to try it. Leave a comment if you like the game, and yes, it’s supposed to be that hard. If you play the Main Game, you’ll notice there’s only three levels. Levels 1, 2, and 10 are the levels you’ll be able to play currently. Level 10 is the final level of the Easy path, so expect it to not be too hard yet . Actually, this game is really challenging, but I did add checkpoints so the game is a bit easier now. I will be adding a puzzle mode where you have to aim your character to bounce from one side to the other through a path and reach the finish line. I guess a little bit of angle preciseness will be needed. Screenshot and download link below. [EDIT] Released Version 0.21 Clicking on your character did not bring up the pause menu. Also updated http://zgamers.selfip.com with the new game.

Ball Amnesia 0.21: http://www.box.net/shared/4kd0bthc0k

Ball Amnesia 0.2: http://www.box.net/shared/i6×1w1xgk8

New Earthbound Video, as always, my continuation through the game. This one is only 35 minutes and does some dramatic things in the game. I did screw up when someone IM’d me, so I put “Uh…Short Intermission” in the middle of that video.

CamStudio as I said before is pretty good, but on my computer, I don’t like the Record from Speakers feature that much. It’s kind of torture, I mean the sound is ok and everything obviously the videos are fine, but I have to shift the whole sound every 30 seconds by about 0.2 seconds to keep it synced through out the whole video. It’s a good recorder and I love it, but I wish it would just keep the audio in sync and then I’ll be happy. That’s why you hear tiny sound lapses every 30 seconds if you listen closely.

I also made my name using Notepad. You know, when you take a bunch of symbols and turn it into a title or a fancy name or something. I decided to do that since I was bored.

It could be a nice little signature if I wanted it to be.

Open Source can be Great

So I was looking for a video editor in which I could create quality videos like on Ubuntu with Istanbul Screen Recorder, and then I came across CamStudio just now.

CamStudio is a very good desktop screen recorder if you need something for Windows XP/Vista and even Ubuntu since CamStudio is open source. I was really surprised at the amount of features it had! I used to use Frontcam, which didn’t even produce quality videos, and you had to pay to remove the ugly banner in the upper-left hand corner, but CamStudio has no banner on it, and produces videos at the fullest quality. It also comes with features that most desktop screen recorders didn’t have! The video options are easy to understand and are easily changeable. In Cursor Options, you have the ability to choose what the cursor will look like in the video, including either your own image or one from the program. Highlighting the cursor is also a nice feature since sometimes users cannot see the cursor once compression is used in uploading videos. Another great feature is you can record sound from speakers, not just a microphone. So any sounds you hear from your speaker, can be used for the sound of the video which is a nice feature. There’s also AutoPan which follows your mouse cursor if you don’t record the full desktop, but there’s something that isn’t usually there. It’s called AutoPan Speed. What this does is when you move your mouse quickly, usually the video instantly follows it and you jump around a lot. With the Autopan speed, you can make it slowly move toward the mouse and it looks much nicer. Another great feature is the ability to save videos as .swf files, which are flash files. Basically, this allows for easier embedding in sites and can be useful sometimes. One more thing I wanna mention is screen annotations. You can put up specific callouts or signs to say a message you type in with your video. You have shortcut keys that can bring up and hide different messages, and then they will always be on the video wherever you have placed them. Something neat if you’re too lazy to add subtitles and re-edit your videos.

This program is just really great for being free, and I’d recommend it to everyone. Thank you developers out there who take all their time and effort into making these kinds of alternative programs.

In Kaizo Mario World, I got about halfway through the first level. Whoo…I suppose. It was only through save states also so it is kinda cheap, but that’s the only way I can do it.

I played an interesting flash game called Grid 16. It’s where you have multiple minigames (16 actually) and you have to play them at random. You play at 5 different “grids”, then the speed of the game increases by x0.2 So you start off at x1.0, and then x1.2, x1.4, etc. My best I ever gotten was x6.4 and that was when I just kept playing on the jumping platform city one over and over. Give it a try at http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/grid-16/.