Missing Out On a Whole Month

So, this is my first blog post I am putting on here for January 2009, and it will probably be my only one. Well, first off, Happy Late New Year to everyone I’ve made my New Year’s Resolution, and I hope you did too and have started this year off great.

 

To get things moving quickly, I’ll start off by talking about the biggest things that have happened during this month from January 1^st.

 

My year started off pretty exciting with me getting Spore and Sparkcash for Christmas. The game Spore is a computer game where you create your own creature and go on a vast adventure through time as your creature evolves through the 5 essential stages to become a futuristic intelligent society. I found the game to be very fun and have reached the Space Stage (Like most people). I’m sure if you had read other Spore reviews then you already do know this and do not need a whole new review, so I will not go into any details but I just wanted to mention that it is very fun.

 

Sparkcash is the currency used in the game Fiesta when you pay real life money to get Sparkcash. Now, you may find that it is very dumb to spend real money on an online game (I know the feeling, and I’ve been waiting forever for this) and you know, you’re right, it is a dumb game to be wasting real life money on but I guess if I’m happy then I do not mind (Of course everyone says that). I’m pretty sure if you played Fiesta for almost half a year now, you may be interested in getting Sparkcash. Sparkcash is now found at Target stores conveniently in Sparkcash cards of $10 and $25 values. You get a little more than 17,000 Sparkcash with a $25 card.

 

So, those cover the things that happened since Christmas. Now then, recently I have been reading more science fiction books. I did finish the Rama series and must say I really liked the series. Here I quickly rate each book from the series with a short summary of why I rated it that.

 

Rendezvous with Rama: 6/10 – So, this book was all about exploring a ship, with some life that doesn’t interact with the crew very much. Basically sets the stage for the rest of the books.

 

Rama II: 8/10 – This is where the real action starts. The crew that is talked about through the rest of the Rama series is revealed. About a quarter of the book is spent on Earth, then the rest of the book is mainly most of the crew escaping Rama, and then leaving Nicole, Richard, and O’Toole stranded in Rama.

 

Garden of Rama: 9/10 – This book is when all of the kids that Nicole has with Richard and O’Toole are born. I love how the book starts off with Nicole writing about the events that happened in the spaceship. This is where they meet The Eagle and finally start understanding what is happening. They set up what the City of Rama will look like, and now I see where the places from the final book come into play.

 

Rama Revealed: 10/10 – The final book in the series is full of action, romance, and stories all wrapped up in this book to make it probably the biggest and best book in the whole series. Everything gets wrapped up very logically and it’s very hard to get a story to close that’s this complicated so well. All the events that have happened in the previous books now have a large role in the whole story.

 

So there are my personal ratings for that series.

 

Upon Liberalphie’s (Name of friend from Fiesta) / Warinthestar’s (Name of friend from BZFlag) recommendation, he suggested I read The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. So I picked up the book and read the first chapter, then I stored it away for maybe half the week. I didn’t like the first chapter but then I thought, heck might as well see if I can figure out what’s so great about this book and I continued to read it. I soon figured out the whole story and was reading it through. Within the week I have finished the book and I love it.

 

The Andromeda Strain: 8/10 – The book was a cool experience. The concept of a virus from space was interesting and how it created the mysteries of the two survivors kept the plot going through most of the book. I loved how the laboratory was set up with 5 floors, each floor a more secured area. The only bad thing about this book was the ending which I did not like. It made logical sense, but it sure seemed boring. If you didn’t understand science and how strains worked, you may have thought that there would be a sequel or something like that. I just felt kind of disappointed by the ending.

 

As you know, I’ve read most of the books of Arthur C. Clarke after I got recommended to read those, so I did. Well, since I got recommended to read one of Michael Crichton’s books, I decided to start getting involved in more of his books. I just finished The Sphere, another great book by him. Fantastic, I loved it completely.

 

The Sphere: 9.5/10 – Fantastic book. I loved the characters in the book, they talked about how exciting or unexciting the adventure underwater will be, and I never thought the underwater environment would be so harsh. The Sphere that was introduced was so interesting too, the secret messages from what eventually became known as Jerry. This book was interesting from page 1 to page whatever the end was, but it was a great book. All the characters were so realistic with different developed attitudes. And because of this, the whole book was kept very interesting. Why didn’t it get a 10? Because, again, I thought the ending of this book kind of was bad. They just completely forgot about their power, never to use it again. I think I’m starting to see a pattern with Michael Crichton’s books. The endings resolve everything.

 

So what am I reading now? I am reading The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton. I’m almost halfway into it, very interesting so far. In my next post I’ll review the book too.

 

Enough about the book stuff. My birthday party is in 2 days and I cannot wait. (And my birthday’s on a Saturday this year )

 

Fighter’s Field 3D – Yes yes, the long awaited wait is almost over. When I release this, fighter’s field will be so much different. (Ok, maybe not completely but it’ll be funner [Yes, that is not a work{At least I don't think so}])

 

Here’s some of the features of this new version.

 

Class Split at Class Upgrade Lv40. You will be able to choose from two class splits once you reach level 40 and have completed Class Upgrade II. By doing this, you get split through class and your skills and stats will differ when you reach higher levels. This allows you to slightly customize your build some more once you reach this point in the game.

 

New Areas! Yes, lots of new areas. New places to explore, new challenges to face. The abyss, snowy areas, and more await you in this new release!

 

New Bosses! Each area will now contain a boss room, where you can challenge your strength and try to conquer the strongest there is in Fighter’s Field land. These bosses require endurance and lots of time to defeat and they will cast skills too.

 

Status Effects! Enemies now can poison, stun, and fear you, making your adventures more harder than before.

 

CPU PVP! Ever wanted to challenge another player playing Fighter’s Field, but I haven’t decided to make it online yet? Well, this will simulate this in that you can vs. a player of your choice to try and defeat! The higher level the player is, the more gold you could win if you defeat it. Even though it is a CPU, it’ll be able to use all the class’s skills that it has, and any HP and MP potions it contains. If you defeat the player, you get 50x(diflevel+5) gold, where diflevel is the difference between their level and yours. (You can do “fun matches”) if the player you vs. is 6 or more levels lower than you.

 

New Armor, Weapons, and Inventory! There will now be an official inventory for Fighter’s Field 3D. You will be able to view all your items from a simple interface, and use, equip, get rid of, or just see your items in general.

 

Everything’s 3D!!! Just the big change from 2D to 3D required lots of changes to the game engine, and now that it is almost complete, there will be drastic changes in the game play and game style you were used to in the 2D version!

 

And finally, New GUI! The login screen, class selection screen, stats view areas, and other things have been modified so that everything can be seen more clearly and better!

 

With all these great features to look forward to, make sure you look out for this version coming soon to computers near you!!!

 

Ok, I’m almost done here, now as you know, I use messengers so I talk to my friends a lot. Well, here’s two conversations that I thought were really fun and I had to show online. You decide whether they’re cool of not, but otherwise, here they are.

 

Joshua and Robert Talking:

 

…
(10:56:38 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I do not know
(10:56:55 PM) Robert Irwin: why not just say i don’t know
(10:57:03 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I don’t know
(10:57:14 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Can’t focus much at night
(10:57:25 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I am brain dead
(10:57:32 PM) Robert Irwin: so i noticed
(10:58:04 PM) Robert Irwin: wait if your brain dead…
(10:58:13 PM) Robert Irwin: and your still typing…
(10:58:28 PM) Robert Irwin: then that would mean you would have to be…
(10:58:29 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I must have some brain working, yes
(10:58:49 PM) Robert Irwin: A ZOMBIEEEEE!!!!!!!!
(10:58:57 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I am not dead
(10:59:03 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I am only brain dead
(10:59:17 PM) Robert Irwin: but part of you is still dead
(10:59:27 PM) Robert Irwin: you are the living dead
(10:59:35 PM) Robert Irwin: therefore you are a zombie
(10:59:39 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: okay.
(11:00:02 PM) Robert Irwin: you stay away from my brains!!!!
(11:00:10 PM) Robert Irwin: you zombie you!
(11:00:25 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Maybe so, according to dictionary.com, zombie could be
a person whose behavior or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton.
(11:01:42 PM) Robert Irwin: according to mythology a zombie is a person who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket
(11:02:01 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Okay Robert.
(11:02:01 PM) Robert Irwin: and they’re dead too
(11:02:10 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I can sound like a computer Robert.
(11:02:21 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: An auto-response mechanism that responds to text commands
(11:02:44 PM) Robert Irwin: so now you are a computer zombie who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket
(11:03:04 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Sure Robert. I am a computer zombie who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket.
(11:03:15 PM) Robert Irwin: k
(11:04:02 PM) Robert Irwin: this is starting to sound like something you would read on bash huh
(11:04:15 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: no Robert, it is not
(11:04:25 PM) Robert Irwin: k
(11:04:35 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: bash is a computer programming code created for the unix command line
(11:04:47 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: you may however Robert, be referring to a humor website called http://bash.org
(11:04:54 PM) Robert Irwin: yes
(11:05:13 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: If this http://bash.org is what you speak of Robert, then yes Robert, this may be something you read on http://bash.org
(11:05:30 PM) Robert Irwin: @$$#*!&
(11:05:43 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Invalid Syntax : Please try again
(11:06:20 PM) Robert Irwin: 692251 x 8 =
(11:06:35 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: 5538008
…

(11:09:19 PM) Robert Irwin: wait so you have to go in ten minutes
…
(11:10:41 PM) Robert Irwin: ZOMBIE auto-response unit
…
(11:11:32 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: According to previous definition, a zombie, a person who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket, would not be me, as I do not fit these characteristics Robert, therefore I am not a
ZOMBIE auto-response unit
(11:12:41 PM) Robert Irwin: hello
(11:12:45 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Hello Robert.
(11:13:18 PM) Robert Irwin: why is this zombie auto-response unit not zombie auto-responding
(11:14:30 PM) Robert Irwin: hey what is your news article on for world history
(11:14:34 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: It may be due to the factoid that I am not a ZOMBIE auto-response unit which was stated using the definition zombie earlier, which was, a person who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket according to you, which meant that I was not a zombie auto-response unit. Therefore with this inference, I cannot be a zombie auto-responding unit auto-responding
(11:15:34 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: World History is a topic in itself, usually due to educational purposes. However you may be referring to the recipient Joshua Sigona which you can address if you need to ask something specific to this client.
(11:16:33 PM) Robert Irwin: you could be a rusty cyborg with a human brain for cannibalism of the brain and then you would be a zombie and a person and an auto-response unit at the same time
(11:17:13 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: You speak of these things without commen logical sense Robert. Please elaborate or evaluate your response.
(11:19:24 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Joshua Sigona, a client is trying to contact you directly, the recipient, Robert. Would you like to accept contact with this client?

(11:19:50 PM) Robert Irwin: if you were a cyborg you would be a robot and a person at the same time which would mean that you could be an auto-response unit and a human and still terrorize the local village at the same time but you would have to be decomposing slightly at least to be considered the living dead so the rust would be the decomposition on this part and yes i would accept
(11:20:24 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Error : Cannot process two commands at once. Please re-evaluate your previous command.
(11:21:02 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Joshua Sigona, a client is trying to contact you directly, the recipient, Robert. Would you like to accept contact with this client?
(11:21:21 PM) Robert Irwin: yes
(11:21:36 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Output Accepted. Transmitting Input.
(11:21:40 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Hey Robert…lol

 

Joshua and Michael Talking:

 

(8:29:29 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: so how many days are you behind?
(8:29:35 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: 12
(8:30:03 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: …
(8:30:10 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: procrastination to the max
(8:30:34 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: if procrastination was a class, you would pass with flying colors
(8:30:52 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Great, where do I sign up
(8:31:27 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: Well…. I would have the forms for you to sign up but I have been putting off on making them
(8:31:43 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: XDXD
(8:32:37 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: ahah, that’s something for my blogDid you know that I am posting this using Microsoft Word 2007? I recently got Microsoft Office 2007 recently and I love it. It has all the great features from previous versions of Office, but now you get them in neat little ribbons with all the functions and even extra features. Some may argue that compared to previous versions of office that using a ribbon is hard and that they were used to normal submenus. Well, once you get used to the interface you will love it too. I give the program a rating of 10/10, good job Microsoft!

 

Ok, that is pretty much it for now. I will start posting more regularly in February. So, hope to see you all then!

Rama II, the next great book in the series

As the title above states, I have recently finished Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke, and am now on the third book of the Rama series. Although there is a fourth book, I have read it as my first book in the series and so after this book, I should have the whole story in place.

So, what’s so great about the second book? Well, I’d say it’s slightly better than the first book, as the beginning of the book immediately starts off with action (Just like most of Arthur C. Clarke’s books) in a simulation to capture a “biot” which is first named in the first book, Rendezvous with Rama which came from “biological robot” combined. The biots are basically robots which perform specific tasks, but in a much more higher technological aspect than what we would think. I was glad after reading parts of the book when I recognized Richard and Nicole, who would eventually become couples as I read the fourth book first and remembered their names, I knew immediately somehow they were gonna eventually know each other for good.

I think one of the things I love about Arthur C. Clarke’s books is the fact that he write them so well. Of course, this is kind of obvious as everyone usually says that about his/her favorite author. I love the science-fiction aspect of space involved, the action of the chase, hide, run scenes, and even the romance scenes. In most of his books, he has some romance involved to prevent the book from getting boring and making the story seem more realistic while you’re reading about fictional events.

So now I am reading Garden of Rama, the third book, and I think the “Garden” part of the title symbolizes romance, love, and mystery, since this book has had the most amount of love scenes and other interesting concepts involved in that. I think the interesting amount of Biology and Physics involved in the book have also encouraged me to keep reading, as it is something that I haven’t really been very fond of until this book with all the fun and excitement introduced some detailed concepts to it. I am about halfway through the book and will probably be done with it in a week or two. After that, I will give another detailed review with all four books, just like the Space Odyssey series.

Speaking of Biology and genetics, I have recently stumbled upon (with http://www.stumbleupon.com) something called “Gene Pool”. It is less a game and more of an experimental tool for playing with Mendellian Genetics. Of course, I wouldn’t be talking about it if it weren’t interesting, so I’ll explain it in more detail. “Gene Pool” can be downloaded at http://www.swimbots.com/ and consists of a group of “swimbots”, which are living organisms that move around based on their genetic makeup. So basically you have tons of swimbots “swimming” around looking for something to do. They are in two states, either Looking for a mate, or looking for food.

First off, they all have energy. In order to reproduce, they first need to find food, which are green pellets in this simulation. Once they have enough energy, they look for a mate. An “attractive” mate is one of similar color, although later, discussed below, you can change what makes something look attractive. So once they find a mate, they create an egg, which grows and becomes the genetic makeup of both their parents, some from mommy and some from daddy. Althought the swimbots don’t have gender, the idea is clearly visible. Sometimes both parent’s genes are expressed, sometimes there are mutations and there’s no resemblence to their parents. The showing of different genes being expressed by different creatures makes this program not only fun to play with, but also interesting.

The game shows how populations grow, evolve, and prosper. And sometimes, the least “fit” organisms will die off and leave the planet. The game has lots of aspects and variables to look at (Over 30 it looks like) and some are more efficient and physically fit to live than others. For example, some mutations where legs on both sides of the organism grow and move quickly back and forth will not cause the organism to move much. This is because the reverse motion of the current motion will cause it to move back to its previous position. If it cannot move, it is obviously a bad mutation and usually dies off. Also, groups try to fight for control of territory and food, and although they do not kill each other, them eating other’s food will cause organisms from the other tribe to die. Over time, you can see which populations survive for the longest time.

Enough talk, if you want to play it, head to http://www.swimbots.com and download it and play around with it. The interface is kind of clunky, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll try different things. I have included some screenshots of my current “Pool” and my population and food count chart. I usually just let this run while doing other things and see how life has progressed for them. You can watch as I regularly post what’s going on with my population! The graph is very useful too! It lets you see what happens when populations get overcrowded, and what happens once things settle down. It’s like a never ending pattern towards equilibrium. I just love how this game implements the very basic biological factors of life into this game! Anyways, enough chitter chatter, here’s some screenshots.
This first screenshot show my current pond as a whole, and you can barely see all the little critters. The green dots everywhere are the food pellets, and they just appear randomly. You can see there’s about 3 or 4 active tribes right now trying to fight for domination, although it looks like the red organisms are the best fit.

In the second screenshot, you can see our chart of how many creatures there are compared to food. Notice the trends of how both of them react when one or the other get really high.

So that about does it. Also, Fighter’s Field 3D is really coming through for me! The update is so big that I’m making it version 0.4, where the level cap is raised to lv49, 3 new skills per class, new quests, and areas, and a bunch more! I will be making posts on the Z-Gamers website in the near future! That is all for now, see you!

Fun with bash History

So today I found a nifty script that shows your top 10 commands used in bash. This is a very cool script to let you know what you have been doing and tells people about you.

So, this is on the unstable server, where I do most of my experimenting on. It returned these results:

57 cd
56 bzfs
43 screen
27 ./obstacle_course.sh
24 ./super_maze.sh
20 killall
16 mysql
13 history
13 g++
13 crontab 

So according to these results, I experiment with script running alot, do a lot of file browsing, run BZFS (BZFlag Server) which means I do a lot of testing in BZFlag maps. Screen is up in third also, which means I do a lot of programs that I stay running. I got killall, which I used to kill all my scripts and BZFlag servers. MySQL was strictly for my website. History is just this script XD. g++ is used to convert plugins to .so from .cpp so that they can be used in BZFlag, so I do lots of plugin conversions. Crontab shows up, which I use to modify how often my random map generating scripts run.

So, unstable isn’t the only server I have available, so I took a look at twilight, my strictly BZFlag server:    121 /bzflag/builds/2.0.x/bin/bzfs
     84 screen
     61 killall
     35 cd
     32 nano
     20 ./keepalive.sh
     17 ps
     17 ls
     14 kill
     12 bzfs

According to this list, I have bzfs up at the top with 121 uses. So obviously bzflag strictly. Again, we have screen and killall up there, both used for bzfs related stuff. cd and nano (Command Line Editor) are up there too, as I did minor modifications right in the terminal. We have keepalive which is basically a script that runs the whole server (Including bzfs, so bzfs could really be 141). Down near the bottom, ps (While I was experimenting with processes), ls for file browsing, and kill which I used in correspondence with ps. bzfs is at the bottom, these are just failed attempts to execute the top bzfs because I remembered that this wasn’t unstable, so bzfs wasn’t included as a normal function, so you have to go to the actual directory where it’s installed.

Ok, so that was a little interesting with the command line. By the way, that code is:
history | awk '{print $2}' | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"} {print $1}'|sort|uniq -c | sort -n | tail | sort -nr
Placed it in that textarea because wordpress does not show ' and " correctly in a terminal.

Alrighty, next up on the list of stuff to talk about, is Game Maker.

First off, my new game release, Multi-Breakout 2.

(Taken from http://sigonasr2.servegame.org/zgamers/v2/index.php?Multi-Breakout2)

Main Goal Although this may sound like a basic Breakout game, it is not. The concept itself is completely original. Instead of just hitting blocks, you have to hit blocks with 2 other players! You have health, and every time you hit a block, you gain 3 health and your opponents lose 5 health. Over time, this health adds up! There are also powerups you can get, and as you see the effects of each and their icons, you can try to memorize which ones do what. Finally, when you do hit a block, it gets sent to your opponent’s fields after a short amount of time. This means that the more blocks you hit, the more blocks you create on your opponent’s side to block out the stage and possibly make it harder for them to survive!

Some screenies (Click to view enlarged):

Download: multi_breakout2.exe

 

 

Alrighty, that’s that. Next up, I have made a Steady Healthbar example.

(Taken from http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=400958)

Title: Steady Healthbar Example

Description:The goal of this example is to accomplish a smoothly decreasing healthbar.Most of the time when you play a game, and you lose a health, you see the healthbar
go from a certain point directly to another point.This example makes smoothly decreasing healthbars instead, which can be useful in
lots of ways to make your game graphically enhanced.

GM Version: GM 7

Registered: no

File Type: .gmk

File Size: ~38 kb

File Link: steady_healthbar.gmk

This is an example that I am pretty proud of. It shows a ball getting hit by a continuous bullet slowly losing health, and then there’s a DDR-style healthbar that you can press the up and down arrow keys on to make it gain or lose health, smoothly, of course

 

So that takes care of the topic of Game Maker. What else have I got…

Oh yeah, I finished reading the Space Odyssey series. Great books, probably the first ever I’ve seen with so much science fiction and action in it. If I were to rate these books in the series on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give them:
2001: A Space Odyssey 

8

(Great Book, but I read this one second, so I kinda knew how everything was gonna turn out. Kind of interesting to connect it to 2010 after reading it.)
2010: Odyssey Two 

9

(The book that got me started on this series. Just loved it.)
2061: Odyssey Three 

6

(Why such a low rating? Well, truthfully, half of the book was retelling of 2001 and 2010, which I sort of hated, but it was still pretty cool that they went out to Haley’s Comet, then to Europa. And Heywood Floyd’s son.)
3001: The Final Odyssey 

10

 (The best of the series in my opinion. I loved all the future concepts and how communication and exploration of the various planets worked. I just liked the fact that we got to see so much detail from Frank Poole’s mind and that he was living a literal luxurious life.)

---

So, what am I reading now. Well, guess what? I went to our library, and looked at more of Arthur C. Clarke’s books, and I found a book called “Rama Revealed”, so I picked it and started reading it. Truthfully, another great book so far, I loved the first chapter, already intense with Nicole scattering to a hideout she’d have to live in for a few weeks until phase two of the escape plan can start. Just great. One strange thing though, is that I picked the last book in the series (hmm), see a patten yet? I always seem to pick a book that is not the beginning of a series. But I think it’s kinda cool, because later you can link it to previous reading and put it all into the big picture!

 

So, now I want to talk to you about a neat little program called CExe.

Cexe’s goal is to produce smaller exe files using the smallest possible exe compression method. It uses the framework of zlib and lzw. It worked quite well with the Game Maker Executables, dropping fightersfield from 6.3 MB to 5.3 MB and dropping simple_race (another one of my unreleased games) from 2.6 to 1.5 MB. Basically, it drops them 1 MB, which could make some difference for some people, so it works. If you really wanted to, you can then put it in a zip file dropping fighter’s field to 4.8 MB and simple_race to 1.2 MB.
This was produced by a person named Scott Ludwig, and that’s the post about CExe, and the download by it. Very nice job Scott, you did well.
http://www.scottlu.com/Content/CExe.html

 

That’s about all for tonight. Yes, another long post, I think this’ll happen often now since I’ll be posting once every week or so, so I get a lot of stories then post. Anyways, see you later!