And there it is! Divine Judgment! That took me 5 hours to finish. Gah!! Well, I really like the spiraling glyph of doom. This is seriously one powerful attack. 20000+ damage man! Hahahaha!

Hmm... got to work on the incantation though. I sound so fake! Must put more "emotion" into it!

Oh oh, my Mr Ball game is about 5.25MB now, if I were to turn it into an executable. It was about 3 to 4 MB a month ago. It's actually kinda big, and there's only like what, 4 levels only?? Hmm... all those code and sprites. Oh, 5.25 MB does not include the external resources, btw. Awh... I'm so proud seeing my Mr Ball growing up so fast!! Hahahaha!

Half way through!

I'm about 50% finished with Mr Ball's most powerful attack, and I mean REALLY powerful. But power isn't something easy to get.

Anyway, here's a screenshot of the half-done Divine Judgment attack, one of the sealed artes (along with Indignation and Divine Laser), which I prefer to call. "Sealed" as in, you can't get it through the Upgrade Menu.


It is one hard thing to program and calibrate, considering how LARGE the thing is!

Divine Laser!

"Oh shining light, here my call! Bring my enemies to their destined annihilation! Divine Laser!" -Mr Ball

Anyway, I finally finished Mr Ball's third Special Attack, Divine Laser! Yup, you've guessed it! It's a laser beam! A big one, to be precise!




Finally, after about 4 hours of drawing and programming, it's working like a charm. The damage inflicted by this attack isn't as high as the Indignation attack, but it still packs quite a punch! So, what do you think? Gosh, it was quite difficult to draw those glyphs, but I guess all my efforts paid off in the end. I shall start recording the incantation!

Anyway, here's a demo:


At the end of the video, you can see the half-done Upgrade Menu. Yeah, it's not really finished yet.

Talk about abuse of power...

Some people... have no control over their power. Blah!

Well anyway, I have to say, some prefects in my school just don't know when and how to respect others. I mean, come on, if you don't show respect to the other students when you are tegur-ing, how do you expect them to respect you. I'm not gonna say the name(s), but anyway, you know who you are.

Prefects are supposed to be role models to the other students. But it seems that quite a number of prefects just don't know how to be polite. Come on, it's not very difficult to say the 6 letter word "Please". Some more, a lot of them like to raise their voices. Because of their "attitude", no one dares to tell them about their rude behaviour.

Prefects, that's why I hate some of you. You rude pieces of shit! Learn to use "please" and be more polite.

Yuriko Omega....

Thanks to my pal Jeffrey, I finally got to play RA3 Uprising. It was fun. Too bad though, Yuriko's campaign only has 3 maps, but it really revealed a lot about her past. Kinda pity her leh.

According to what I know, she has this amazing psychic power, and you know lah, where there is something cool and powerful, people will try to exploit it right? That is exactly what's happening to her. Her powers are being researched and studied by Dr Shinji. But during this time, the research kind of like "dehumanised" her.

Well, in the end, Yuriko killed the doctor, freeing her "sister" Izumi. Damn it, all that effort of traversing through the complex was for nothing, when Izumi wages a battle with Yuriko because she felt threatened by Yuriko's power. She wants to be the most powerful psychic.

Ok, I think I have spoiled enough. My idea of what happened to Yuriko may be wrong, but hey, different people have different opinions.

Anyway, I've decided to give Maple Story a try. Yes yes, I know, I've been saying a lot about how I hate that game, but after seeing my cousin play it, the cute-ness of the mushrooms really erm... "seduced" me. LOLOLOL.

There goes my logo!

OMG! I changed my logo!! Isn't that great?? Ok ok, it's a bit lame, but I've got to say, it's way better than the one before. Not trying to brag or anything, but then I'm just so proud of it. Computer graphic isn't really what I'm very pro at, but with the help of my trusty ol' pal, Paint.NET, it really makes the job of painting that logo so much easier. It's actually quite powerful, well, maybe not as powerful as Photoshop, but for an amateur like me, it's enough. Somemore, it's free of charge!

There goes milky way

Ahh, if only our galaxy was really filled with milk, as the name suggests. Milk everywhere!

Well anyway, I read from internet that our galaxy is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy! OMG! But that'll be like billions of years later. Human would have probably been wiped out long before that happens.

If any human were to be lucky enough to witness this cosmic collision, he would be able to see one of the most spectacular light shows in the universe, though he will be cooked like no one's business because of all the radiation. It'll be painful, but awesome.


That's a youtube video about the collision.

Yea!

Yesh! Boss no. 4 is done!


As you can see, it uses water jets that shoots out from the floor to kill the player. I know, those things look nothing like water, but that's the best I can think of. To compensate for it's lame appearance, I have implemented a very sophisticated motion planning algorithm for those water jets.

Well, actually, all it does is move around in a way so that it's very hard to predict where it's going. It changes direction once in a while, but ultimately, it'll aim for poor Mr Ball. This adds to the challenge.

But, but, it's kinda easy to avoid those water jets too, if you know where to go at the right moment.

This boss ah, took me 5 hours to finish up. Gosh. I feel like I'm wasting too much of my life... Nah, it's fun messing around with Mr Ball.

Oh, if you're a Kingdom Hearts fan, you should be able to recognise that BGM. It's the remix of 13th Struggle from KH 2. I kinda got it from Youtube, I can't remember who's the remix-er again, but what he (or is it a she? I can't really remember) does is damn cool.

Ideas...

Well, I'm currently developing the 4th boss fight now. I really can't wait to start programming the last few boss fights which are going to be so epic! And also the secret boss fight, which will not be easy I guarantee. But before I can get there, I have to finish up as many "mini" bosses as possible.

I'm seriously fresh out of ideas for all those normal diamonds. So far I have Ice, Spears, Lightning, Water. I'm not considering to use rocks like in the first game because of the limitations I have with Game Maker. So no rocks. I'll probably recreate the hexagonal prisms that uses lasers and light attacks as can be seen in this post: Second video

That was the version of Mr Ball 2 before the stupid thief stole the laptop.

Spheres!

Gutentag!

Ahh! Spheres are so beautiful. Even their equation is beautiful! x²+y²+z²-r²=0. It's that simple. Well anyway, I won't talk about maths here right now.

Whoa, the last few days of examination were OMG! I have to say, History test was the simplest among all of the subjects I have sat for so far. And in History, Zaman Arab Jahiliah was the simplest chapter among the 4 chapters I have learn't. Not that I like it very much though.

Add maths was very challenging. A lot of the questions were tough, but quite do-able. Then Chemistry test, which I have done this morning. It was ok. I guess all that cramming paid off. I'm actually quite confident with all my subjects right now.

Hopefully, I'll get an A for Malay. I don't care whether it's A1 or A2. Seeing an A is satisfying enough. I'm not pressurizing myself to get the highest. Hmm... tomorrow is BM paper 1, but now, paper 1 is no longer objective, at least for Malay and English. Hopefully, I'll get a nice question for the directed writing section of the paper.

Ok ok, 2 days ago, I played around with Blender3D and whipped out a very weird animation.


Too bad it's only 6 seconds, but I'm still quite proud of it.

It's time for me to head to bed for a little nap. Ciao!

Skewers of Death

Well, I know I should be studying, but I just can't resist putting my ideas into my game. Strangely, a lot of my ideas come from mt bathroom, when I'm bathing. Odd...

Well, anyway, I thought, horizontal and vertical spears are cool, but how about multi-directional spears? Here's are some screencaps of this successful multi-direction spears, or what I would prefer to call, Spears v2.0. Lol!
Oooh, dang it, he barely miss getting impaled.

Oh dang it, stupid MSN blocking the way, but anyway, the spotlight's on Mr Ball.
And here, the diamond is trying to erm... poke Mr Ball.

Gosh, I'm seriously thanking trigonometry man. Without it, I'll have to stick with boring old Vertical/Horizontal Spears.

Fortunately though, all the spears can be easily avoided.

Now here's a demo:



I guess that's enough for the black diamond. If I add too many attacks for this diamond now, it'll be too hard for first-timers.

Mid terms in 2 days

And so, the next boss fight in the game of life is arriving very soon. It's gonna be a toughie to get used to the method of answering. Because now it's more on subjective than objective. Say goodbye to objective questions. Anyway, objective and subjective questions have their own pros and cons, here are some of them:

Objective Questions:
Pros-

• The answer is given, along with fake ones, all you need to do is pick one
• It is very easy to "hentam", just close one eye, and eeni meeni minii mo
• It is not very uncommon (but it's not very often either) to see that the answer is already given somewhere. Sometimes, if you don't know how to answer a question, go on to the next one. If you're lucky, you might come across a question that tells you the answer to that previous question.
  
  Ok, here's an example:
  Q12: Event A happened on which year?
  A 1992
  B 1993
  C 1994
  D 1995
  
  ...
  Q25: Person A died during Event A in 1995. Why?
  A Jumped down a building
  B LOL
  C ROFDL (rolled on floor died laughing)
  D Because he died????
  
  From there, you can see that the answer for Q12 is D. Most of the time, it's not that obvious. So you've got to be observant.
  

Cons-

• Sometimes the answers are very close (sometimes, too close!). This can confuse the person who is answering the question.
• Choices are very limited.
• If you don't understand the words in the answer choices, oh, too bad.
  
• Pick the wrong one, go dig your own grave. Ahahaha, just kidding.

Subjective Questions
Pros-

• Usually, the questions does not limit your response. Therefore, you can actually write anything that's relevant enough to score (well, sometimes). As long as your answer looks good, meaningful and "professional", it should be okay.
• Your hentam-ing skills can be utilised fully here as your choices aren't limited, unlike the objective questions. If you think you can't answer a question, just write something stupid, but relevant.

Cons-

• Most of the time, these are open-ended questions, which are basically questions that require you to waste a few millilitres of ink. I classify this as one of the cons because, come on, you'll waste ink, and paper!
• There are no choices for you unlike the objective questions, so you rely solely on your creative and logical thinking.
  
• Some questions or marking schemes require you to follow a specific format, which is one of the leading causes for marks deduction.
• This should be one of the "Super-Cons" of Subjective Questions: The 3 cursed words - "Pada pendapat anda" (In your opinion)
  

==================================
Now, here are some tips on how to HENTAM or TEMBAK like a professional marksman.

1. It's obvious that you should go for something logical. Use your common sense.
2. If you're answering an objective questions, look out for signs that enable you to cross out wrong choices:
   
   • Read the answers. If 3 of the answers look strangely similar, cross all of them out and pick the odd one out. Usually, this works. (I said usually, not always)
   • Look for clues from other questions that ask on the similar subject. It may help you to cross out irrelevant information.
3. If all else fail, go for either answer B or C (the middle choices). If I'm not mistaken, there some statistics that show that the either one of the middle answers happens to be the correct answer quite frequently. (Quite frequently doesn't necessarily mean always)
4. If the question you are answering is a subjective question, you still can look for clues from other similar questions.
   
5. Write something that sounds cool, professional and logical and not lame and horribly stupid. The main purpose of the subjective question is to test whether you understand what you have learnt. If you answer "professionally", the examiner will think that "Ahh, this kid here knows what he is trying to do" and blah blah blah. Sometimes, he may give you a tick. If not, just accept it.
   
   

Above all, take exams as normal lessons. If you get mistakes, just learn from them and don't repeat them. Somemore, common sense is actually a very powerful weapon. Use it wisely.

Good luck!

OMG!!

Wow! C++ lessons are really paying off! I tried using the darkGDK thing, and this is what I got:


Ok ok, that weird monster thingie is provided along with the development kit. I didn't actually model it. Oh, it moves too. Just that the screen cap can't capture its movement. Unbelievable. I just type 4 lines of code and I got that wonderful thing moving. AHHHH!!

I'll probably use darkGDK and C++ as the base for my Mr Ball 3 next time. Yeah babeh!

A new language??

Ok, it's not really a new programming language. I'm relearning C++, and I think I kinda get it now. Last time, I have tried learning, but it's just too complicated for me, but then yesterday, I downloaded Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition 2008 (oh god, that's a mouthful), just to "rekindle" my dream to master C++, if that's possible. I will not let it defeat me again!

Ok ok, to tell you the truth, my eyes got attracted to this "DarkGDK" which is a game development kit, to make, well, you know, GAMES! And unfortunately, it's language is C++, so I'm trying my best to learn it, and I think my patience is paying off. Whee!

Anyway, it's time for bed already. It's like 12.00 am, waaaay passed my bedtime. I'm going to regret this....

Hmm... where should I go?

Well, 2 days ago was sort of like "Look for your future" type of day in school. Representatives from many universities and colleges came over to school for some sort of an exhibition. Erm... I think it's safe to say they are promoting their university/college right?

Anyway, I found the one place I'm looking for, well, actually 2. I'm considering UCTI or The One Academy. But then, I checked out The One Academy, I didn't find anything related to game programming. Maybe I didn't search deep enough. And somemore, their brochure did say "Graphic Design (for game development)" or something. The One Academy is probably mostly for graphic design and the related subjects and not game development.

So, I'm sticking with UCTI, but I'm not 100% certain that I'll go there. Maybe there are cheaper universities or colleges? Well, anyway, I've got to work hard for it. BEE LEE! STOP PLAYING AROUND AND START STUDYING! But then it's just so hard.

Is it too early for me to plan my future now?

Nah, I don't think so. Well, I've finally decided. I'm gonna go for game development next time. Yea, that's right!

Revenge of the black diamond!

Well, in the first Mr Ball, the Black diamond fought with Mr Ball twice. This Black diamond is seriously a persistent fellow. He will never give up until he destroys Mr Ball.

I'm too lazy to model and program the movements for the spears, so I'm giving the Black diamond the power of darkness! Well, sort of.

And and, I'm half way done with the Upgrade Menu. It's where the player can upgrade all the stats for Mr Ball using the accumulated Skill Points gained from battles. Hard battles give you more skill points than normal battles.

Well, here's a screencap:


This took me like an hour to draw, and another hour to program it. Still, the result is wonderful. Sadly, that whirly thingie you see there is not Mr Ball's.