Fixing Myself

I hate to admit it, but I am such a computer freak. Any moment I see a computer, I just wanna sit down and start making games, watching videos, playing BZFlag, and everything. But over this past week, I realized probably from the support of my parents also, that I need to start getting a grip on myself, mostly for school and my family. My school grades are starting to rise again, but not because they just want to, but because I have changed. I have been making improvements to my schedule, use of computer time, and myself so that I can have some time to study. Even though I’m barely studying, it’s a start from when I was never studying at all. My family is great. I have a father, mother, sister, and two small brothers. They are all great but I never talk to them anymore. It’s as if I’m isolated to my computer and room which is a very bad thing to admit. I am starting to get my eyeballs off the computer screen and spending more time with my family also. A healthy relationship with your family is always good. So today you won’t see any new game update, or some exciting story on computers. Now, is this the end of computers? No way! Just saying I need to cut back and fix my priorities in an order that will make sense.

I really wish I could try AirSoft one time. Some of the people I talk to at school do it, and I watch videos of them doing it, and it seems really fun. Sure, you can get hurt, and it teaches you some violence, but it is like a video game. You play it, you like it, you move on. I so want to try this sometime.

I did another video of Earthbound today. Uploading now, link won’t probably be up until tomorrow. This one goes from Winters III to Lost Underworld, and I aquire the 7th “Your Sanctuary” Location in this video. Only one more to go.

Tomorrow I will do some real work on Video Game Mayhem again. What I want to do is get all 4 player slots working, with at least CPUs for now. Then later add 2,3, then 4 players. Then I will start working on character and stage creation again. (I might add items too) Once the 3rd and 4th character slots are done with real working human players and CPUs, this game will reach version 0.4.

Video Game Mayhem 0.1

About a year ago, I started to work on a game called Video Game Mayhem, so this is kind of like a revival of this game too. Video Game Mayhem is based on Super Smash Brothers, and will have a large amount of similar features to the game. I am declaring this file Version 0.1 as there’s a lot of work to be done. I will explain the game a bit in its current state. When you start the game, you are shown a Select a Character screen, which lets you select from three characters. There’s Red Square, Blue Square, and Purple T. Red Square and Blue Square are obvious, and Purple T is a purple Triangle. Currently all characters have two attacks, and when you choose a stage and use them, you can see how they work. The spacebar is your normal attack and down arrow key is your special attack. Red has a sword that swings around him when you press space, and when you press Space, it creates a small red square that spins downward to the ground and bounces off anything it hits for about 1 second, and then disappears. It’s powerful but quick and you can shoot up to 3 of them at a time. The Blue square has a slightly longer sword than red’s, but is not as strong. The special attack is a lightning bolt that can really hammer opponents under platforms. The Purple Triangle is more known for its great recovery moves and longest survival rates if you know how to use him. Whenever you turn right or left while ever falling, your falling rate slows down by 2/3rds the normal rate, so you can get back on platforms easily when you fly off. It’s normal move is a black line that moves upward from it. It’s very hard to hit someone with it, but can do about 30% at a time when it hits someone as it goes up and brings the person with them. His special move is not an actual attack, but more of a recovery. When you press it, for about 2 seconds, it turns into a black block and moves quickly downward and if it hits a platform, it’ll start bouncing. No one can attack it while it is in the black box, but you have to be careful about using it. Whenever you fly really high up and about to die, you can use that to stop falling. If you do not choose two characters, one for player and one for CPU, it will cause an error currently, but I am going to fix that in future versions. Once you’re actually playing, you’ll see two numbers on each character. The black top number is the percentage of your character. The larger it gets, the farther you fly off with each attack and the longer it takes to regain control of your character when you go flying. The green number is how many lives you have until you lose. The goal is to not fly off and die. Going too high or too low kills you and you lose a life each time. On the character selection screen, you can select how many lives there are by clicking the Stocks:3 button and then it’ll ask for a new number. Making it 0 will cause a game to end instantly. It will also keep track of your wins, losses, and total games played for the time you play that game. The camera system works quite well in the game as I have fixed it from a rather buggy camera system before, but now it always keeps both players on the screen at least. You can download this game here: http://www.box.net/shared/u5nqdrascs. I will update the Z-Gamers site soon.

Enough of that for now. I also completed the next version of Ball Amnesia with a few extra fixes, and the official level 3 added in, so now levels 1-5 and level 10 are now all in the Easy path to play, so I am halfway there to completing the official Easy path levels. You probably are wondering what the medium path will be like, hehehehe. Link to new version here: http://www.box.net/shared/o2m5m2es8s

The reason why I didn’t post for a whole day was because I was at my friend Michael’s house again yesterday, this time with my other friend Charles. It was fun. We played some Super Smash Brothers Brawl and that was fun. At the smash league, I was told that I really should start learning grabbing. They say I can become a much better player if I start implementing grabbing into my move arsenal, so should I? We also played Mario Kart DS and all three of us did go on wifi. At one point Michael and Charles found each other in a match against two others. One was a noobish player and the other was a decent power slider, but it ended up only being against them two. All three of us are snakers and love to play Mario Kart occasionally. We played some Magic: The Gathering. Now, I never was into the game and still never will be, but I guess it was ok. It took me about 30 minutes to learn the basic rules and terms of the game, but I did ok for the dark deck I was given. I was playing against a so-called Control deck and some other deck. My problem was using all my life for cards that were really good but sucked life out of me each term, which I eventually learned was bad. So that was all exciting and such.

We now have our general music for next year’s marching season for band, and I decided to take my E flat Alto Saxophone this weekend. I’ll put up some audio clips of me playing the tunes. Obviously just my part won’t sound that great, but I guess it’s ok to hear me play. I am not too good at playing my instrument but the effort is there. I will put some audio clips up tomorrow.

I also did another part of Earthbound today and am uploading the new video now.

So that’s a summary of what I did today and yesterday.

Busy Day

Today I had to take three tests in my classes, so I was really pushed to the max with my brain today. And when I got home, I worked on some of my stuff.

First, I worked on Ball Amnesia. I fixed some minor bugs that Brayney has pointed out a day before. I fixed the obvious getting stuck on the walls bug. This was a large issue, but I’ve finally found a good way to prevent that. Also, you sometimes still got stuck along two walls if you bounced at a perfect 90 degree angle along them, so I fixed that up a bit too. As an additional bonus, I added in Level 4 today. Level 4 is the third set of levels now currently in the group of levels. When you click the “Easy” path button on the Main Game menu, you’ll play through levels 1, 2, 4, then 10. I also fixed up the pause menu again. Even though you click your character, if you had already used a warp, you cannot click on your character anymore. As an addition to the game, Level 4 introduces Ball No. 5. He’s crazy. He bounces at a set 45 degree angle in one of four directions really fast, so he’s hard to avoid without dying once or twice. I also made a playlist of songs so that when you click on tutorial, instead of just one song, it’ll choose from 23 different songs to play. They are all mostly peaceful since it is the Tutorial. The levels keep their set songs. I updated the http://zgamers.selfip.com site with the new links. You can download it at http://www.box.net/shared/dha6umtc08 or alternative download link at http://sigonasr2.servegame.org/zgamers/individual/Ball%20Amnesia0.23.exe. Also I include a screenshot below of part of what the 4th level looks like from the editor. 

I also continued playing Earthbound today. Got from Scaraba to Deep Darkness.

I have reset my router, reset my internet settings, and played around with the firewall and what not, and I still get security certificate errors here and there. I think it has to do with a Windows Update, or some kind of spyware or malware or something that has decided to make security certificates dead, and make my messengers not work. I’m gonna try installing Release Candidate 2 of Service Pack 3 of Windows to see if it does anything. Just letting you know, it does not do this on my ubuntu installation, so obviously something’s up with Windows.

Also, some guy decided to write about what the outside world of Earth would be like if it was reviewed as a video game review. Quite hilarious and leaves you thinking, whoever thought of this was a genius. http://rlupdate.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/outside-review/ :)

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.

Bringing Back Old Games

A game I started working on long ago was called “Ball Amnesia”. It was a game where you were a simple ball, called No.1, and you had to navigate through levels avoiding walls. If you did hit a wall, you’d bounce off of it and couldn’t control your direction for a few seconds, which was bad in some cases. The game has aspects to it such as spikes, other balls which try to kill you, switches to unlock doors, warps, and power-ups which change an aspect of your character. I have decided to start working on it again, so look on the Z-Gamers page under “Individual Projects” soon for more info.

I also recorded my next Earthbound video, and am about halfway there. In total, I’ve taken about 6 hours to get this far, so I think I should complete the game around the 12-13 hour time.

I am planning to start a tournament for BZFlag called “BZRacecourses” which will feature numerous players competing in 3 different events on 8 different race courses. The time trial event, which includes the player avoiding all the good flags. Each flag grabbed will cost 5 points, and then every second of holding afterward costs 5 more points. The race battle event, in which 4 players complete 5 laps of racing while getting flags to either get more speed, or kill other tanks to slow them down. When the tanks respawn, they just start from where they last died. During this event, it is not possible to fall out and die. The final event will be the trick event. The trick event gives the player points based on how well they can perform various tricks. For example, if they jump over a corner, they can get 5 points. If they can do a whole lap driving backwards, that gives them 50 points, and if a player jumps and spins at the same time and land successfully, they can gain an extra 5 points. Only bad flags will be on the course during this time. If you can grab a bad flag, you can get 10 points if you don’t die with it. If you cannot complete the course in 1 minute, you’ll lost 10 points, every minute costs you 10 points. In some courses it’s not possible to finish the course in 1 minute and you’ll always lose 10 points. If you fall, you’ll lose 15 points, which can really add up if you try to perform lots of stunts. I am planning to start this within 2-3 days from now, so any thoughts on it would be good. Either we’ll need some admins that can accurately record time and know all the rules will reinforce the servers and determine when players will do the events, or maybe i will just try to find players that are online whenever I can and then contact them then. I think one week is sufficient enough to find everyone that goes online and drop out anyone that doesn’t participate. The races will be the hardest to manage as 4 players need to be online at the same time which is uncommon.

I am still confused by how Python works. I really want to learn and possibly make games with it, but I still need some really good walkthrough any comments or tutorials that help would be nice.

Great Day in a Strange Way

It seemed yesterday had a very strange tone with the word “fun” in it. During our lunch period 3 of my friends and I all played Mario Kart DS balloon battle. It was very exciting and I guess one of my friends Josiah got introduced to my first gaming strategy in all games. In most games where you can fight other players in any way, I tend to target players instead of hitting anyone I see. Everyone starts out at a neutral level. If a player decides to attack me, they immediately start becoming the clear target for the rest of the time we play that game. If a player is right next to me and decides to tag team to kill someone with me, until it comes between my allies and I, I will probably avoid hitting them back. Once a player gets annoyed by me targetting them after awhile, they try to go for me only and I target them even more often! As long as you know you can win at the game, this strategy usually works. You want to prioritize your targets from least to greatest enemy so that once your first target’s eliminated, your second target is already chosen. I also did a similar reference during Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which Josiah didn’t fare too well with it either. So he said that is really cheap, so I said “Ok, I will be cheap then.” He said you stink at the game by using those cheap moves (Pikachu’s Lightning attack especially), so I said “Ok, I stink at the game then.” As long as I get to be me and do things the way I choose to, then I don’t mind being called whatever.

I went over to Michael’s house after school, which is why I didn’t post something until now. We played some Mario Kart, then we went onto the computer. I played this game called “Seven Minutes”, which happens to be made in Game Maker. It’s actually quite interesting and fun. You can check it out at http://www.gamemakergames.com/?a=view&id=6520, personally I really loved it and it actually got me scared and frantic as to hurry and get through the level. Try this game too and tell me your opinion…lol http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php.

I hopefully uploaded my next Earthbound video. It seems to not be showing up for me right now, but we’ll see. Brayney also commented on my blog if you haven’t noticed, that was “Michael”. [EDIT] Video now works.

Exciting Day!

Today was a great day! In the morning I got on the bus and we had a really fun game of Mario Kart DS! Also during Band, we got to listen to different songs that we might play next year based on our opinion. I really only liked 2 of them, but a lot of people liked others. Also my best friend Michael finally came to school today. He was sick from Saturday to Wednesday and missed some school. But I am glad he is back.

Enough with that, when I got home, I looked at the Nutty Bars box on our counter and got one out. Then I flipped over the box and saw a strange little ad. It said “Buy the USA at retail price, get the world free!” and had a picture of the USA map and world map. *phew*, at least our nation isn’t allowing us to sell the real USA and world.

A recent BZFlag friend I met with username “Ride” asked me on one of our Twilight servers how I host my maps. And I tell him by a server obviously. He was asking how I could control whatever I want my server to do, I said by SSH access and actually changing the files on the server. We then went a little more in-depth and then we talked about Constitution which is the host for Twilight. Ride wanted me to contact Constitution and get a server for Ride. Constitution wasn’t too pleased as he knew Ride wasn’t a very mature player, which is important in this BZFlag community. So then I just decided not to bother Constitution any longer and went on to OoO a.k.a. Other Michael. He hosts unstable, and I asked if Ride could host on this server. OoO gladly accepted and we got a SSH account for him and we taught him a bit on to use it, but he went offline and we’ll have to continue our lesson today.

I also played some more Earthbound and spent about 10 minutes looking for a Pizza! Then I finally realized there is a pizza store in Threed to get the Mach Pizza phone number, so I was like duh! and quickly got a pizza. I’m uploading that video today. It goes from Fourside, back to Winters II. (Winters II is no different from Winters, it’s just the name I use for it. Only difference is the goal you have to do there now.) I also get PSI Teleport alpha.

I worked on the Twilight Ad Board a bit and it looks pretty nice. It looks like there are little electrical sparks zapping between two little energy balls and is floating. I’ll post a screenshot later.

Expecting a fun Smash League day today.

And how does a programmer propose to his girlfriend. Very funny, find out here. http://www.newzity.com/2008/04/15/how-does-a-programmer-propose-to-his-girlfriend/

The reason I am writing this post a day late is because I had to sleep yesterday after all this excitement!

Editing Stuff

Yesterday I have got my digital camera working and have posted an image of myself on the About Me page you can find on the right hand side. If you are interested in knowing what I look like, now you know. I also added some stuff in the About Me page. I took some other pictures, but I don’t plan on showing them to you.

I also recorded my longest Earthbound video yet. The reason why it’s the longest is because not only is that part a large maze, full of tough monsters, and 5 bosses, but I screwed up and died on the game for the first time. I am not too shocked, but it is indeed sad to not stay deathless the whole game. Oh well, at least I don’t use save states or anything.

Yesterday I stumbled on this:

Computer:Monitor, display this document, O.K.?

Monitor:No prob, boss.

Computer:O.K., now it looks like Mouse is moving around so, Monitor, will you move the pointer icon accordingly?

Monitor:Anything you ask, boss.

Computer:Great, great. O.K., Mouse, where are you going now?

Mouse:Over to the icon panel, sir.

Computer:Hmm, Let me know if he clicks anything, O.K.?

Mouse:Of course.

Keyboard:Sir, he’s pressed control and P simultaneously.

Monitor:Oh God, here we go.

Computer:(Sighs) Printer, are you there?

Printer:No.

Computer:Please, Printer. I know you’re there.

Printer:NO! I’m not here! Leave me alone!

Computer:Jesus. O.K. look, you really ne…

Mouse:Sir, he’s clicked on the printer icon.

Computer:Printer, now you have to print it twice.

Printer:NO! NO! NO! I don’t want to! I hate you! I hate printing! I’m turning off!

Computer:Printer, you know you can’t turn yourself off. Just print the document twice and we’ll leave you alone.

Printer:NO! That’s what you always say! I hate you! I’m out of ink!

Computer:You’re not out of in…

Printer:I’M OUT OF INK!

Computer:(Sighs) Monitor, please show a low ink level alert.

Monitor:But sir, he has plen…

Computer:Just do it, damn it!

Monitor:Yes sir.

Keyboard:AHHH! He’s hitting me!

Computer:Stay calm, he’ll stop soon. Stay calm, old friend.

Keyboard:He’s pressing everything. I don’t know, he’s just pressing everything!

Computer:PRINTER! Are you happy now?! Do you see what you’ve done?!

Printer:HA! that’s what you get for trying to get me to do work. Next time he…hey…HEY! He’s trying to open me! HELP! HELP! Oh my god! He’s torn out my cartridge! HELP! Please, please help me!

Monitor:Sir, maybe we should help him?

Computer:No. He did this to himself.

So that’s pretty interesting. I got that from http://brandonsmind.com/post/31522690. The rest of his blog isn’t really like that, but that post in particular in funny. And for some harmless but funny geek pranks, check out http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2008/04/01/top_10_harmless_geek_pranks-2.html

I also worked on a logo for BZFlag the other day for the Twilight server. It looks pretty nice and I spent about 25 minutes on it.

Hehehe, see you later.

Some Understanding Today

So, today was full of little tidbits of information I learned about that I never knew before. I have finally uploaded the lengthy Earthbound video to Google Video, but it took a long time. Not only to upload, but the processing. I think Processing is only determined by the length of the video, which is actually obvious if you think about it logically. But then again, I always see everything differently. I also learned a bit about how video conversion works. I did my 4th video of Earthbound today and decided to record it at 320×240 instead of my usual 512×460. Then when I put it through Windows Movie Maker, the file only took 16 minutes to turn into a 76 MB video from 989 MB. What’s strange is, when I did that very lengthy video of 512×460, it was only 516 MB and it took 160 minutes to convert to 90 MB. Now what happened here? I think it’s because the program must adjust every little frame to a different size and the larger the size difference, the longer it takes.

I have been watching the people on my bus since last Thursday, and I kept hearing a familiar sound. The sound of the ringing bell/chime sound from Mario Kart DS when you start a race. Now, I’ve had my DS for about 1.5 years now, but I haven’t gotten it out since last summer. So I went on the bus this morning with my DS and went to multiplayer to look for a game session. Nothing there. I noticed that the people I suspected were playing the DS’s were farther than my stop was, so I sat back and waited. A few stops later, I saw the two people I suspected played Mario Kart DS. So I looked on my Mario Kart game rooms after a few minutes, and found one. Then I joined it and played with them until we reached our school. Same thing when I got on the bus afterschool. It was fun, but they are still beginners, and I got first every race except one time. I enjoyed it and will continue playing with them I guess.

I am now uploading the 4th Earthbound video and will be posting it as soon as google video finishes processing it.

I also made my Hello World! Program from a C++ tutorial. I am finally taking on the challenge of C++ and hope to be able to make games with it eventually. That’s my ultimate goal with it.

Google Uploader is Buggy

Today I was trying to upload that large Earthbound video I was going to put on the site, but it seemed to have failed…6 times. I had no clue why my uploaded video wasn’t appearing on the site, until I came upon one of my friends who has used it multiple times. He says that after the video is “done”, you must press Upload again and then it’ll “finish” the upload. The second time always works. I am currently uploading the new Earthbound video, and hope his tips follow. I do like how the upload resumes if your network breaks off or something, so it’s pretty good.

I was looking through some search engines for a good screen sharing program that’s easy to use to easily see another person’s desktop screen and watch what they’re doing. I happened upon Bosco’s Screen Share which is a very nice and simple program indeed. It tells you your IP address, and if your firewall and router settings are set up correctly, so you won’t have any issues. You can then “Dial” a computer like calling a telephone and the recipient can  accept or deny access to viewing their screen. Another nifty thing is the “Privacy” feature, which at any time a person is viewing your screen, you can click it and makes them see a black screen. So if you need to quickly log in to a bank account or something, you just click and that should do it. I found the program slightly sluggish though, but changing the process priority to BelowNormal speeded up my computer and kept a steady frame rate for the receiver.

In other news, I created the hard level of BZFlag Racecourse today. It is very tricky and this screenshot below is color coded. Red=Basic Path Green=You need to jump here to continue Blue=Climbable Slope

It is a very challenging map and it is up at twilight.fairserve.net:5219 if you ever get the chance to try it.

If you haven’t noticed, I added a huge section on Bash scripting into my Linux Tips page if you want to check that out.

I stumbled upon this website called Computer Stupidities and it’s full of jokes about how dumb people can be when it comes to operating systems. It involves mainly tech support and your average customer. Two of my favorites:

Customer: “How much do Windows cost?”

Tech Support: “Windows costs about $100.”

Customer: “Oh, that’s kind of expensive. Can I buy just one window?”

---

Customer: “I have Windows Thirty One.”

Tech Support: “Ok, this program requires either Windows 95 or Win32s. Do you have Win32s on your system?”

Customer: “No, I have Windows Thirty One, not Thirty Two.”

Tech Support: “Windows 3.1 is the operating system. Win32s is a program that makes your computer fast like Windows 95.”

Customer: “What’s Windows Ninety Five got to do with it?”

Tech Supprort: “You need either Windows 95 or Win32s to run this.”

Customer: “I HAVE THIRTY ONE! WHY WON’T IT WORK?”

Tech Support: (giving up) “Ma’am, your computer is too old. Buy a new one with Windows 95.”

Customer: “I’ve heard about Windows Three Hundred and Eleven. Wouldn’t that be better than Ninety Five?”

 http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_os.shtml 

I also got a huge stuffed white tiger. It is about 4′ 8″ in length. With its tail stretched out, it gains an extra 3 feet. I like it! I will post a picture of it later.