Delay in Mr Ball Arena 2

Okay, I'm kind of frustrated. I'm kinda lazy to start writing the game from scratch again, so there'll be a delay before the beta version of Mr Ball 2 can be released. I'm not sure when I'll start making the game again. Sometimes, I wish I could make the game in XNA. Sigh...

Hmm... Since I got so much time in my hands now, I think I should make a trailer for Mr Ball 1. Hopefully I got the patience to do so. The problem that I face now is that I give up very easily. That's why I have scrapped so damn many projects already after leaving them untouched for about 3 days. Nah, maybe next time. Right now, I've got to focus on getting my Mr Ball 2 up and running by the end of July if possible.

What happened from Wednesday till today??

Okay, here's a post of things that happened chronologically.

Wednesday, 28 May 2008

• Took the bus with all the other Interactors to Genting Highlands.
  
• We've reached the place that houses the bottom-end of the Skyway. I'm not sure what that place is called.
• We went to Animal Kingdom (I think that's the name) and saw many cute animals. The one I like is the parrot. Too bad though, he doesn't understand what's a cracker.
• We boarded the cable car towards the terminal at erm... what's that place called again??
• Then we went all the way down to First World Plaza through a series of escalators. Next, we walked all the way to the lobby to place our bags there.
• Everyone split up and went their own ways. Angelica, Audrey, William, Enrico, Pei Jiun, Shan Min and I went out to the outdoor theme park. The first ride was the twirly thing which I haven't a single clue on what's the name of the ride. Angelica and I were excluded just because of the fear of getting headache.
• Next, we went all the way to the other side to the swinging pirate ship. But once we've reached there, those theme park staffs were doing maintenance. Sad case.
  
• So, we went all the way back to the lobby to meet up with Pn Teh to have lunch in the First World Cafe. The only thing we ate was a packet of Chicken Rice. It was quite nice though.

Okay, I can't remember what happened after that. So later...

• Gavin, Jeffrey, William, Pei Jiun, Shan Min, Audrey, Angelica and I went to ride the indoor roller coaster (twice) and the bumper car. I'm not sure what happened then, but we rode the bumper car again later.
• Something happened (which I can't remember) and the whole gang only have Audrey, Angelica and I left in it (Yeah, suddenly everyone splits up), We went back and forth to the outdoor theme park because it was raining and misty. We had a little snack time in a Chinese food store to wait for the rain to stop. Then we walked around the plaza.
• Soon, the mist clears and we went go-karting. At first I was quite nervous because I have never drove a go-kart before. But it was incredibly fun. I'm glad I followed Audrey and Angelica. The last ride was the space shot. I dragged Angelica in. We waited for like 1/2 hour but in the end, I was the only one screaming like a girl (you know, high pitch scream like what girls do?? Didn't know I had it in me, LOL!!). I needed two breaths to scream all the way down.
  
• We rushed all the way back to the lobby to get our room keys. Sadly, Audrey and Angelica was erm... told off by Pn Teh because we were late by a few minutes. I guess I can't always trust my phone's time. I'm not sure what happened to me.
• All the Interactors went to their rooms. I was sharing the same room with William.
  
• Later at night, Audrey, Angelica and I went to Marrybrown to eat dinner. The food was delicious but not so good for your wallet. So, we walked around the plaza to let time fly. It was just 45 minutes away from the Dreamz show, so we rode the Ferris Wheel. We were right on time. When we came down from the wheel, Pn Teh was right in front of Pavilion giving out tickets for the show.
  
• We watched the Dreamz show, which is a singing/dancing/magic/acrobatic show (just to name a few). The dirt bikers looked quite young. They like rode their bikes around a sphere and I'm like OMG BE CAREFUL because they were so close to crashing with each other!!! They were awesome. Oh actually, a lot of the acrobats looked quite young as well, I'm not sure whether it's because I'm sitting so far away from the stage and they looked tiny or was it my instinct. The magic shows were cool. I was thinking how in the world they do that. But I got to say, I'm actually a very big skeptic when it comes to magic and supposed-to-be-supernatural phenomena (however, I do believe in ghosts and some things related to the existence of gods), but it was nice. The lighting was OMG!! The laser show is so cool, it always distracts me from the main performance.
• Okay, enough of the show. After the show, I went all the way back to the room to sleep.

Thursday, 29 May 2008

• Had breakfast buffet in First World Cafe.
  
• I'm not sure what I did with Audrey and Angelica after that.
  
• Went back to room to pack things up.
  
• At 11.30, Audrey, Angelica and I were the first ones to bring our bags down.
  
• Later, I went to buy my souvenirs. They were cute little stuffed dogs!! Yay!!
• Everyone went to Snow World. It was damn cold. About -3 degrees Celsius. The jacket and gloves were not enough to keep me warm because a lot of people were throwing snowballs at me. I got a mild frost bite. (It hurts a lot, especially at your ears!!)
• Next, we went to a Gemstone museum. There were a lot of ...yes... gems. I prefer saying rocks because they were all just lumps of rocks, which will set you back a few thousand bucks!! Wow, to think that rocks could actually cost that much!!
• So, we were free after that. (I'm sick of listing out the names of my gang members. So let's just assume I've typed all the names) We (the gang) went walking around the plaza. We bought present for Bryan (a guitar cello filled with chocolates). Shh!! Don't tell him!!
• Later at 4.30pm, everyone went back to the lobby to prepare themselves to go back home.
  
• So, we went back home.

Today, 30 May 2008

• Went to Sunway to go ice-skating with Seck Wei, David Mosiun and Hon-Son. It was nice. But I've got to re-learn how to skate. I had a lot of close calls but in the end didn't fall a single time. (I'm not trying to brag or anything okay)
• Then later we went to bowl. The first game was very bad. Everyone didn't really do well. Before this, I was taunting Seck Wei. Lol!! (Sorry Seck Wei).
• During the second game, the bowling machinery gone nuts on us. I have no idea what happened but one-by-one, the pins go missing. Then later I hear some strange banging noises behind the bowling alley. Suddenly all the pins fall down on to the stage. It was so amusing.
  
• In the end, Seck Wei wins the game. Hon-Son was quite good as well. After that, we went to the arcade just to realize that I suck at shooting games!! I game over quite fast. Lol. Maybe I'm not meant to play games??
• We played a word game while waiting for our parents to fetch us. I was sipping on latte from Starbucks.

Okay, so that's it.

To Genting!!

Tomorrow's the Interact Club genting trip!! Whoa! Can't wait to go there!! I'm just worried about my phone though. I don't feel like taking my phone there because it's so expensive. But if I don't take my phone, how am I suppose to call my mummy and daddy?? I thought of exchanging my phone with my dad's phone for this trip (actually, my dad's phone is my old phone). But then, I won't have MP3's to listen to. ARGH!! Fine lah, use old phone lah!! Sigh...

Oh GOD!!!

Okay, I'm gonna have to start from square one AGAIN for Mr Ball 2. Why?? WHY?? Hmm... let's review what I've posted a week ago. Hmm... something to do with lack of planning. Sigh... I need to make a spell system and also a party system. Kinda hard actually. Dang. The stuff I just made in Game Maker wasn't well organized, so it's very hard to program. I just finished coding the movements but it's just the spell system that kills me. AARRGHHHH!!!

OMG!!! Am I dreaming??

Okay, I know this sounds too braggy, but I'm just too happy. I've no idea what-so-damn-ever that I'll get an A for Malay!! Above 80 even. I'm always paranoid of getting low marks in my BM. But because the Penulisan this time asked us to write essays that I just only studied, I had an advantage there. The Pemahaman? Well, I have no comment. It was too HARD!! Emphasis on the HARD!! I just love to say "emphasis on the ...". Ahem... Surprisingly, it wasn't as I expected. My marks were above my expectations. Before the day of the Paper 1 for BM, I did like, how many..., 4 Model PMR papers in my Revision book and I got like 20-25 marks, on average, only. You'll never know how scared I was before the BM Paper 1. Ahh... as long as I get an A, I'll be happy.

Give up on XNA already!!

Okay, maybe my knowledge of XNA isn't that err... good yet. In the middle of a successful coding of the foundation of my new game, a problem came up, which has finally defeated me. I have no idea why. I'm doing everything I can to pin-point that stupid fault. The stupid IDE never say anything except "InvalidOperationException was unhandled: An unexpected error has occured". It could have at least given me a more detailed report of what's causing it to freakingly annoy me. Then, I try running it again despite having that stupid error thing bugging me. And you know what, another error comes up, at the same location. But it's just the same ol' InvalidOperationException.

So, I've finally decided to use Game Maker 6 to build up the game. I still wanna create the game through XNA because I want to challenge myself. Hmm... maybe the next game leh??? I've got to do more research on this XNA thing before I start making a game. I've wasted more/less 481MB just to get the PIX For Windows thing which I don't even know how to use, but even so, I got a report on how my game works, and it showed that there was an Invalid Call thing at the DrawIndexedPrimitives thing which I think was called when I asked the XNA to draw my sphere mesh for me on the screen. I just don't know how to rectify that problem. Cries!!! Besides that, I've also tried using DebugView. I just use it to see what's going on in the background when my game is running before it crashed due to that error I have repeated so damn many times in this post.

Well, there's no hoope for me to make a nice game in XNA, for now. Sigh... back to Game Maker then. Sigh even more...

Always plan before you start a project

A lesson I learned today is what I typed for the title for this post. Why the hell do I want to talk about that? Well, first of all, it's just to add more post to my blog. And second, I find it kinda important. Whatever the project is, always plan first. If it's a very big project, you won't regret it. I started writing the foundation for my Mr Ball Arena 2 game, but lack of planning caused the project to be scrapped off. I'm just too lazy to plan it out so in the middle of typing, I suddenly lost track of where I am in the code and what the code that I'm typing does. So now, I got to plan it out. Sigh... I've lost a lot of projects due to bad planning. About 10+ projects. Very mafan. Now, I'm back to square 1 again. I so do not want anymore "project scrapping" later. The game may take about 1 month to finish. So, guys, if you're planning to do a big project, plan your project beforehand. You'll thank me later.

Okay, enough about that. I'm having a very bad flu. Too much mucus lah. I don't know how many tissues I'm going to use. Sigh... STOOOOPID FLU!!!!

Are there anymore C# programmers, besides me, who knows XNA Framework from school??? Come on, please tell me that I'm not alone. I might need a little assistance. Coding a game from scratch is a very tough work.

Ahh... love baby lotion!

I used moisturizer last night and it worked like a charm. My skin's smoother now, but I still can feel the skin that is peeling. Sigh... I am soooo tired now and I wanna sleep. But, I got to go do revision for Malay and Geo!! Got to finish up Geo by this Friday!!! Argh!!! Stress!!! But after Friday, it will be Merdeka!! Yahoo!!

oh no!! my skin is peeling!!

Stragely, my right hand is rough. My left hand, fortunately, is still as smooth as a .... I have no idea why. Hopefully it's not something serious. My brain can suddenly jump to conclusions if I know any diseases that are related to skin peeling! So, I should not go Wikipedia to search it up. One time I did that, my whole body got into panic mode, then depression, in the end, had to talk to my mother to calm myself down. Talking to mummies are the best, no? Oh man, I hope it's not contagious. I'm touching the keyboard, which is also going to be touched by my sister. If she gets it, I'm in hot soup. Nah, she will understand wan lah. Okay, tomorrow got Seni practical exam!!! Eeesh!! I hate seni practical!!! Patience is never my thing. I might look very patient, but don't let my look fool you. I'm actually hiding my impatientness. You give me something that tests my patience, I don't know what I gonna do.

XNA Framework is driving me nuts,,,

I'm still learning how to program in the XNA environment. Unless I can find out what's going on in my code, I can't continue!!! Sigh... My Mr Ball Arena 2 got to wait. I don't know what happened but it just says InvalidOperationException - An unexpected error has occurred. Argh... like that will help, NOT! If only it can give me a more detailed explanation about what I did wrong. So now, I'm forced to wait 1 hour for the DirectX SDK to be downloaded (447MB I think). This thing is really testing my patience. Hate it so much. I still love Game Maker. But the problem with Game Maker is that I doesn't really support 3D games, but you still can make them.
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1/2 hour later
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OMG!!! The hell??!!! What kind of error is that??? It seems that I have to alter some stuff on my effect file that I downloaded. Something to do with having an Intel chipset on my GPU according to a forum. Hmm... strange. Well, at least it worked and I drew a bunch of triangles on my comp!!! Doesn't look like much but hey, all beginners got to start at something right?
Yeah, so, I'm planning to make a terrain thingie.

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1 hour later,... make that 2 hours...
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Hmm... with the help of tutorials, I made this kinda okay-looking terrain:
Cool right??? Let's see what else can I do...

What I did last Sunday...

Okay, last Sunday, my family had an outing to KL, or more specifically to Imbi Road, where a Bak Kut Teh shop lies. We rarely go there, so that's why my father suggested to go there. Unfortunately we came at the wrong time and the shop has ran out of lean/fat pork meat. We only had a bowl of those meat and we finished it. We also ate erm... yao char kwai (keropok), or whatever you pronounce it, dipped in Bak Kut Teh soup. Love it!!

We had to wait for about 10 minutes for some freshly cooked meat to served. It took quite a while for it to cook. But the meat was all lean meat, my favourite. I just hate those fatty bits. They taste horrible to me. However, it wasn't that easy to bite. Well, who cares, I love the soup. Bak Kut Teh soup is always the best!!! I've got pictures:


Yeah, I know. I should have taken picture before we finished up everything.






We brought our own tea leaves to save money.










Oh, on the way back, I took this weird
looking photo. Where did the hand come from?








Ok, enough of last Sunday's stuff. Now, I introduce you to my family of stuff animals (yeah, I love them). I know, for a guy to love stuff animals is a little weird, but hey, everyone got their own likes and dislikes right? Ok anyway, this is Bobby (I'm not good at giving names, but Bobby sounds cute to me). He's camera shy by the way.






These are my 3 favourite dogs. From left to right: Chucky, Doggy and Bobby. Doggy's the first dog to be adopted by me (around 6-7 years ago). Then comes Bobby. The gf of the mayor of Jalan Loke Yew gave it to me as birthday present. Hmm... I'm kind of guilty for not giving her something nice on her birthday. Anyway, Chucky joined the family on my birthday this year. Thanks to Janie and Nicole, I got 2 new dogs to accompany my used-to-be-lonely dog.

This is the whole family. I'm planning to get more. I saw a very cute one in 1 Utama last Sunday, giving me that puppy dog pout. Awh man, I just wished I could have bought that dog that day. Sigh...

Influenza is driving me crazy!

I got flu today. How nice is that??? NOT!! What's worse? I got a sore throat as well. My flu is soo argh!!! Annoying is the right word here. My nose is blocked, and I can't blow my nose to clear the mucus. Despite having a blocked nose, the clear fluid always flow out gently from the nostrils. Disgusting. I'm gonna waste quite a lot of tissues today. I'm so sorry trees!!

Oh, right, the exam is just 4 more days from today!!! Die loh!! OMG!!! Where's that panic button when you need one?? Might as well make one first. LOL!!