OMG! Home made touch screen!

I saw a video on youtube, which teaches you how to make a cheap DIY Multi touch screen. I can't remember the link, but you can try searching for MTmini on google/youtube.

It basically consists of a cardboard box, an acrylic/plastic sheet/glass, a webcam, some tape, computer, and good lighting (which sadly I do not have).

Yeah, so I tried building it. It's freaking simple, except for the part where I have to cut some acrylic sheet. I've never done it before, and neither did I ever use a scoring tool.

The small notepad is there just to prop up the cam a little. My webcam is just a little too stubborn. It just won't sit still!
Here you can see the acrylic sheet and the A4 paper. Yea, you need A4 paper.

Believe it or not, that is basically it. The surface that you're gonna touch is the paper.

Plug in the webcam, download the appropriate software that is written in the sidebar of the youtube video.

Here's a short demo:



Still, it's a little glitchy because of the lighting. You need a seriously even lighting here because having shadows of your entire hand on the surface can screw up the software because it works by looking at the shadows of your fingertips that are casted onto the paper. Yea, it'll just pick up any shadow and interpret that as your finger.

Damage invalid!

Mr Ball 2D has a Shield! Another new feature in the Mr Ball series. Because it's so impossible to avoid all the enemy's attacks (making death so damn inevitable) in Mr Ball 2D, I made a shield for Mr Ball, and increased his max MP to 300. The shield should only be used at the right time. Spamming the shield by holding down the X-key just drains your MP. But when used at the right moment, ie, when being attacked, the shield can absorb the damage and turn it into extra MP! Yay!



Anyway, I just came back from Shan Min's house. We were having a sort of a game party. Haha, Heart Attack was really fun, though I had to sacrifice half of my deck of cards. :(

Progress...

Mr Ball 2D is seriously growing fast. In just a month of development, it has grown to 2MB in size. I think one of the big contributors to the size is the sprites. And the AI code for the boss is incredible! If you copy and pasted it into Microsoft Word, it would stretch for 14 pages! OMG! I've never typed so much for a boss before (780+ lines of code, fuyoh!). The AI code is capable of executing 21 types of attacks currently. Don't worry, more attacks are coming up. Just got to be a little imaginative. Hehehehe!

Sad thing is, the game is a little glitchy. The game shuts down randomly while running, so it'll be a bummer when you successfully kicked so much of the boss' HP. I'm gonna keep testing the game to see if it's caused by a memory leak, since I'm loading quite a number of external resources.

Gutentag!

Gosh! Exams are getting closer and closer. Seriously hate exams. Gah!! Anyway, here's a random screencap of Mr Ball 2D:


It's a bit dark right? It's the screen-darkening effect that I've always used in my Mr Ball to make things a little more dramatic. And and, things look smoother than before, in terms of graphics la, after I switched on the so-called Linear Interpolation thingie.

Anyway, Mr Ball 2D will be done by the end of October. In the meantime, I have to pick up a book and start studying! Why is it so hard to do so???

Okami

I started playing a PS2 game, which I've never seen before! It's called Okami and the graphics are very unique. It has this watercolour feel. It kinda suits the main theme of the game which talks about Japanese folklore and things like that. You basically control a wolf, which is a god named Amaterasu. Like most of the games I've played, this is one of those save-the-world type of game.

Yea, the evil 8-headed demon thing called Orochi was released from its seal somehow when someone pulled the sacred sword, of which I have forgotten the name. Gah! And so, you know what comes next.

There are also battles, and you battle with your weapons that you've equipped and also, get ready for this, a paintbrush and a rice paper!

YEAP! That's right, you fight by drawing! Isn't that cool! Ok, the brush and paper are not only weapons of destruction, they can help you to traverse through dungeons and explore hidden places. This cool brush, called the Celestial Brush, has a total of 13 powers apparently, and each must be unlocked by completing the constellations in the sky when they appear (just put a dot on the sky using the paintbrush to form a star).

The powers are damn cool, you can make a sun/moon appear, thus changing the time of day. Then you have the Bloom power, where you can make withered plants look lively again. Somemore, there's my favourite, the Cherry Bomb, which can blow stuff apart, especially enemies! And the one of the most basic of all power, the Power Slash, which can slash almost anything (except really solid stuff!)