Hold on to your future and let the past go. If not, the past will surely pull you down with it.

Yeah, so I have like sort of restarted my life. Well, not literally lah. I'm getting ideas for Mr Ball again, but I won't be making 3D anymore. 2D is so much easier.

Before I can start making Mr Ball, I need a better Video Card. My current video card is failing already, along with my hard disk. I haven't really check my motherboard yet. The fan is working so I don't think my motherboard's the one heating up the past few weeks.

I must ask my sis to back up her stuff from this comp soon already. I have one extra had disk, which I can plug in and use and throw away the old one. Then I must save money for a better video card. You know what, why not I just get a new motherboard. Change everything in my CPU except my CPU casing. God, that's gonna be expensive. Must start saving MONEY!!!


=============
By the way, wanna know a fact? Some of you readers might already know this.

Most of the time, when people say CPU, for most people it refers to the huge CPU casing. But in real terms, a CPU is just a microchip, measuring around 2 inches * 2 inches.

Mr Ball 2 Gone

A very tragic thing happened yesterday. A thief came in to the house when no one was noticing and took the laptop with him. To add insult to injury, he took my phone as well! TO HELL WITH THAT THIEF!!!

What more? My Mr Ball 2 and Mr Ball 1 data was in there, all gone! That's total of 5 months work (3 + 2 months).

If I ever know that thief, I will not hesitate to punch him in the face. No one takes away my Mr Ball and gets away with it. I love my Mr Ball, it's one of my best creations, and this idiot stole all of that away. Some how, I curse him to go to hell. I don't care how it will happen. Hopefully a tree falls on him. Or maybe he kena struck by lightning. Whatever it is, I won't say "touchwood". Who cares if he is wiped out from the face of the Earth.

You take away something I love dearly, GO AND DIE!

Oh oh, and this idiot also stole my handphone. I just only came back from retrieving back my phone number from DiGi. Thank goodness. Dang, I just can't resist saying this, but, MR THIEF, GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Sorry for my foul language. I'm just expressing how angry I am at that bitch! Oh, bitch is for females right? Well, I don't care. Female or not, he has made me very angry.

God, I beg of you, show that thief no mercy. Go nuts on him.

Second video

Yeah, I'm so proud of what I have added into the 3rd battle, I decided to record it again!




What I was trying to do is make a mock version of Tales of the Abyss' Prism Sword attack. But then it didn't turn out too well. Still, it looks ok and I like it. It's one hard attack to create because there are a lot of things to create. The magical glyphs, the light beams and the cacat-looking diamonds. Haha

Anyway, I checked the scouts' den punya computer today, and it was terrible! The virus is incredibly annoying. It won't allow me to go to Task Manager or use the command prompt. And also, it disabled the Registry Editor!! How utterly annoying! Without those weapons, I can't do anything.

Well, I just printed the details of the worm and how to kill it. Hopefully it'll work. The worm's name is Brontok.C, and Indonesian worm.

Ooh? Level 3!!

Ok, I'm halfway through with Level 3, where Mr Ball will battle the Laser-loving thingies.



Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of jumping. So, what do you think of the laser? Does it look good? Ok, I don't wanna brag or anything, but I just find my graphics here are much better compared to the first Mr Ball. All thanks to the free program, Paint.NET! I made the laser beams glow a little by blurring the laser beam. Ahh....

Ok, here's a secret that only game developers know... Ok fine, it's not really a secret already because well,... you can search about it around the internet.

If you observe carefully, the laser beams aren't exactly 3D, it is actually a flat plane, ie, it is 2 dimensional. Ooh? Interesting...

See that laser that crosses Mr Ball? From there, it is clear that the laser is just a 2D plane.

Now, a lot of game developers know, very cool special effects are very hard to model out, and can take up a significant amount of time, and you know, time is of the essence. So, why not draw out the object as an image, use that image on a 2D plane and place that plane into the 3D world? That is exactly what I did for the laser.

But then, since it is a 2D plane, and not 3D, at some camera angles, you would not be able to see the laser, right? I mean, if the laser faces you, you could see it clearly. but when the side of the laser faces you, you can't see anything at all.

In the wonderful world of 3D, there's something called Billboarding. A billboard is just a 2D plane that always faces the camera. This can create great effects, and most of the time, if the billboarding is done really well, the player won't be able to sense that it is actually a 2D image, but rather a 3D image.

However, if the camera moves too close to the billboard, all the secrets will be out. That's the downside.

But then, billboards are actually wonderful things. Imagine that you would model the laser in Mr Ball 2. Apart from the time-consuming task of getting the model right, you would also introduce more primitives for the game engine to draw. A billboard is just a quadrilateral, usually a rectangle. Which contains just 2 triangles to draw. So, billboards save memory as well.

My laser was a special kind of billboard. It is an Axis-aligned billboard. It means that it can only rotate around an arbitrary axis so that it always faces the camera. It's basically the same thing except that it is sort of like, locked onto some pesky axis. Hahaha.

Here's a challenge for you: Let's see if you can find the billboards in the 3D games that you play. Usually, when there are billboards, the camera is quite far away from them to hide the 2D-ness.

Let's talk math again

Right, today we (the whole class, and the whole form) went to the hall to listen to some talks about our personality, co-curriculum and discipline. Well, I got bored, so I started counting on my note book, which was supposed to take down notes from the talks. Lol!

Ok, first off, this post is just for fun, no bragging or boasting intended. If you really hate math, to the extend that you would bang your head against the wall whenever you see math, I suggest you look away.

And, I don't guarantee that my equations are 100% accurate, so, I don't recommend you to use my equations in your daily life. Use the ones you see in your Maths book.

Let's start. I'm not sure how this formula will benefit us. Maybe, it is beneficial in the game development world, but really, I don't know why I even bother with what I'm about to post up.

Anyway, I dunno how to say this, but it's something like How the circle is defined post. But instead of a circle, we are doing a square.

Imagine you have a square and a circle. That square fits perfectly into the circle forming a cyclic quad (the 4 vertices of the square touching the circle)

The width of the square, we will call it w.

w/2 is the distance between the centre of the square (which is also the centre of the circle) to one of the sides of the square, perpendicularly.

x will be the angle, which will be used to calculate all the other variables.

Note that the radius of the circle is the same as the distance between the centre of the square to one of its vertices, which can be easily determine by the Pythagaros' Theorem. When you do that, you should get w/sqrt(2)

Now, L is a little harder to explain.
Imagine you draw a line from the centre to one point on the circumference such that it is at x angle from the red horizontal line shown in the picture. Then, the distance from where that line intersects the edge of the square to the centre is L. And it is this distance that we are interested in.

Right, let's get started. Firstly, we want to find the value of a. To do that, we will take the radius of the circle and subtract it with w/2:

a=w/sqrt(2) - w/2

You should know how to add and subtract fractions with different denominators right?
Anyway, after subtracting the stuff, you should get

a=[w(2-sqrt(2)] / (2 sqrt(2))

Ok, another thing to remember:

L+b=w/2 + a

L+b=radius

Now, we need to experiment a little. Draw a few lines from the centre to the circumference.
Then, (referring to the picture on the right), see the green lines and the pinkish-purplish lines? First, just so you'd know, the red line is for reference. You measure the angle (x) from that red line to one line.

For the green lines, which start from the centre to the edge of the square, we will abbreviate the length of those lines L. And for the pale-purplish lines, their length will be called b.

Through observation, when x=0, 90, 180, 270...,
b is at maximum length. So,
b = a
b = [w(2-sqrt(2)] / (2 sqrt(2))

or

b = [w(2-sqrt(2)] / (2 sqrt(2)) * 1

And when x=45, 135, 225, 315,...
b = 0

or

b = [w(2-sqrt(2)] / (2 sqrt(2)) * 0

Let's experiment more. We know that, cos 0=1 and cos 90=0. So, how are we going to incorporate it into the above equation?

Anyway, it's very hard to explain. But after testing and testing, it's not that hard to come up with this:

b = [w(2-sqrt(2)] / (2 sqrt(2)) * cos 2x

So, when
x=0, cos 2x=1
x=45, cos 2x=0

But then, when x=90, x=-1. We cannot accept negative numbers. So, we take the absolute value of cos 2x.

And, we will get:

b = [w(2-sqrt(2)] / (2 sqrt(2)) * |cos 2x|

So, now, we have the value of b. To get L, we subtract b from the radius, w/sqrt(2).

L = w/sqrt(2) - b
L = w/sqrt(2) - ( [w(2-sqrt(2)] / (2 sqrt(2)) * |cos 2x| )

Simplify it, and you will get:

L = ( w ( 2 - [2-sqrt(2)] * |cos 2x|) ) / ( 2 sqrt(2) )

I'm gonna keep testing this equation. And if it is flawless, then I should be able to derive the equations that define a square. In the Maths world, there should already be an equation which defines a square, but I prefer to discover it myself.

I have to say though, my equations may not be the best. There may be simpler equations out there. What I have just posted is just the product of my hobby, to discover new equations.

If you have read all the way until here, I admire your patience. Lol!

I shall change my name!!

From today onwards, I shall no longer be Junibalakia Shihodani Mason, instead, I shall be......

Bilsashikelbicqelgoogelmeiger
bindenbaundhenschlauserbauserstrefen

Got that? I know, it's a little hard to pronounce at first. That's exactly the reason why I like it! Muahahaha! Remember, I am now,

Bilsashikelbicqelgoogelmeiger
bindenbaundhenschlauserbauserstrefen

*Note: I am forced to break my name into 2 words because it's too long to fit into 1 line. The whole name consists of only 1 world*

Anyway, I shall continue on with some meaningless stuff.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I wondered if I need to go for BM tuition. Eventhough I scored an A for BM for PMR, I'm having doubts that I will get an A for BM in SPM. There will no longer be multi-choice questions for the literature part of the exam, which kinda worries me. All these times I've been relying on the age old technique called
"The Super Duper One-Hit-Might-Go-KO Tembaking Skill".
*cue the lightning and thunder effect"

By the way, it doesn't always work, hence the word "Might" in the middle of the weird technique name. Yeah, so, I was thinking of going for BM tuition in Edusmart with Jun Ray.

But then, I have decided not to, because I'm just too lazy to go for tuition. I've never been to any tuition before, I will try not to, if possible. I'll see my mid terms result first lah. If it is satisfactory, then I won't go.

I'm currently dedicating 1 hour everyday to study, which is actually a very hard thing to do because I don't really put "studying" in my everyday schedule. I know, it's very surprising. I usually cram my studies before the exams, maybe like 2 weeks before the exams.

Cutscenes, haihz

Gosh, now comes the boring part of the game making process. Creating a cutscene. I guess it's boring because I don't have the tool to do it. I'm lazy to write the tool. It's freakishly troublesome. The hard part of making a cutscene using my cutscene is, you have to imagine the cutscene in the head, then turn that into a Cutscene script. Sounds easy? Wait until you try it. Ok, so maybe my cutscene system isn't the best, but that's the best I could do.

Right, before I start with my game, I should do my homework first. Haha.

Oh, before I end this, I shall post up something cool! In 2007, that's like 2 years ago (I was in Form 2), I recorded my daily allowance and how much I spent. These are the graphs that show that:

This is my daily income and expenses. Well, my income is my allowance and my expenses, well, erm... I spent most of my money on canteen food. Yeah, so, the following graph just shows 365 days of income and expenses.

And the two following graphs display monthly estimate of how much I earned and how much I spent. The second graph just shows the average amount, ie: Amount Earned/Number of days or Amount spent/Number of daysNet income is just the amount I earn after deducting the expenses from the total income. Lol!!

Add with my ang pow money for that year, I have earned a total of RM600+.

This year, I have spent half of that amount in 2 months. Whoa!! The expenses chart will go off the scale, if I ever make one for this year. I'm too lazy to record down already.

Finished level 2

Yes, that's right! Level 2 is finally finished!


Well, as you can see, I've gone quite mad with the boss' attacks. It looks hard, but it's actually very easy. That's because the ice spikes are very easy to avoid. The number of ice spikes doesn't really matter much as long as you run away when you see the spikes chasing after you.

By comparison, don't you think the ice spikes here are better than in the first game? Ok, I'll post up a picture of the old Ice spikes and the new Ice spikes.

These are the Mr Ball 2 spikes:
And these are Mr Ball 1 punya:
Another difference is the height of the spikes. You can clearly see Mr Ball 1's spikes are much taller. I'm gonna thank Blender Foundations for providing such a good tool for modeling 3D stuff for free. I used it to model those ice spikes for Mr Ball 2. It's called Blender3D. It's just the free-of-charge-equivalent of commercial 3D modelers like Maya.

EDIT:
Right after I posted this erm... post, I have added 2 more attacks for the boss, and both of them involve spikes chasing the player. I know, I know, I just love to torture the player. In addition to that, I have tweaked the AI a little, by adding a distance check, so that when the player is too far away, he will choose a better attack to obliterate the player.

Well, anyway, I should get on to making the cutscene for Level 2.

And the nightmare starts again...

Not that I hate it, but then, it's not that I like it either. It marks the end of all joy and the beginning of all horror and more joy?? Ok ok, I'll cut to the chase. I'm talking about school! It's starting again!

I'm relieved that the school is starting again, just because I can finally DO SOMETHING! Holidays were boring actually, except the moments when I hung out with friends and family. I'm also sad that the holidays are ending. I guess I just don't wanna continue studying so quickly.

NEXT BOSS BATTLE: SPM
RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 60

Ok, that was just random. Lol!

I hope my first day of Form 4 will not be bad. Last year was one of my most embarrassing years. I can never forget the moment I accidentally called Pn Shirley as Pn Cheryl. Ok, how did I ever relate Shirley and Cheryl? Something must be wrong with me. Hahaha!

Wow! The Ice is cool!! No, i really mean it!

I downloaded a DLL file to be used by my game (thx to the guy who made it) to load PNG files. PNG files are image files that support Alpha transparency. It means that I can make better looking images with smooth edges and also better "special effects". I realy love it and it made my ice spike looks so much better.

Haha, can't wait to start the second boss already. I have finished all the attacks for the boss. Hohoho, Mr Ball, prepare to die!!! *ahem ahem*