Things Left Unseen

Well, I have silence around me right now and thank GOD. It's not that they were bad kids, they were just obnoxious. Very well behaved but didn't know how to just leave me alone. I resent babysitting, especially when it's thrust upon me without prior knowledge or consent. You'd think nobody has to work tomorrow. With my bad luck, nobody DOES and I'll have another day of hell tomorrow.

And I discovered my brother isn't paying for his auto insurance. He has an old truck he drives and a motorcycle. No insurance on the bike, but insurance on the truck is covered by our loving parents. Meanwhile, when I was still in school and working part time I still had to cover my insurance every month. That's about $3000 I'll never ever see again: nice to know he doesn't have to pay it. Fucker.

New Year is coming up. Not sure what I'm gonna do. I'd like to go into 2007 with a bang, if you know what I mean. Luckily for you, I do kiss and tell. But I don't know, I'm up for anything, really.

I got Final Fantasy III for Christmas. My ears pretty much hurt from using my headphones on it most of the day. It's ok... just ok. If it were an RPG by any other name I don't think it would get as noticed. Final Fantasy, and, well, games in general in those days (1989, I believe) didn't have much in way of in-game tutorials. Since it was remade I figured they would work that stuff in but, nah.

Square, um, shouldn't let third parties develop for them. It feels like a rush job with an inexperienced team. Matrix Software... what else have they done? The graphics are pretty (and I love the noseless Final Fantasy Tactics look), but slow. The game slows down on the world map quite a bit, and the models are pretty low on the polycount. Towns have items like barrels and crates but they're all sprites and they scale pretty poorly.

Also, a lot of the time the top screen is wasted. In the world you get a world map, but as your universe of discourse gets bigger the zoom is so far out that it barely helps when it doesn't show that mountain range between towns. When in town you look at the same world map. Lot of use that does. If you're in a battle or a dungeon you get NOTHING. Bupkis. Sometimes there's a nice effect when there's a voice over and you read what they're saying up there, but that's minimal at best. I put 5 hours into it and it's use as voice-over was maybe 20 seconds worth... and it's nothing that other games have never done. Videos usually split up between the top and bottom screen but there's not a whole lot of dual-screen video action. (Hint: I don't want video cutscenes in my games that look so DRAMATICALLY better than the real-time gameplay that it makes me feel cheated when the video is over and I'm back to the game engine.)

The play engine itself is kind of odd. The stylus control is optional and when used it's considerably slower than using memory cursor menus so it's better off just not using it. Being able to pinpoint the exact enemy to hit with the stylus is neat in design, but in practice it's never done simply because it's inefficient. Just imagine using 100% mouse cursor in an MMORPG or anything like that. The zoom feature is nice except it's slow. The idea is that you can zoom in and see sparkles over things that you should inspect for some treasure. It's nice except you don't see the sparkles until you're zoomed in to the maximum and it takes a few seconds to get to that point. I guess it simulates realism by taking time to inspect your surroundings. Which is FINE, except you can still find the items by just pressing A at every object in the room. Considering that zooming in too close making exploring impossible since you can't see very much around you there's a feeling that washes over you while exploring a dungeon that makes you think you're missing a whole bunch of secrets. In the end you zoom in for a while and make multiple passes to cover an entire area and until you figure out it's all just a trick to wear you out faster than normal you'll keep doing it.

Battle sequences are kind of plain. You have a lot of options in a menu and the menu's got a scroll. Which is fine, except there's one option for "Item" and one for "Equip". There's an option on the menu to change which row you are in, which is nice except classically you do it by pressing left or right while in the menu. Thanks to stylus control you have to put it in the menu. It makes some menu selection clumsy. Enemies (so far) are always in one row and I haven't seen more than three at a time and only once where there were three different races. Enemies have been reused way too soon. I've seen Goblin reused a bunch of times already... and while it may be par for a game nearly 17 years ago today why not have separate models instead of just a palette swap? It's not even a texture swap. During battle there's pauses while the game loads an animation which is nice for a cartridge game but just because DS games come on a cartridge doesn't mean you can program them like that. They're sort of distracting. I mean, CD games don't freeze up for that long. I'm disappointed in that.

WiFi is a joke. Send letters to your friends in game! Um, wow. The only point of this is to unlock extra quests and bosses. Meaning if you don't do it, you just get the straight game without any new levels. Blah.

Maps are pretty close to the original, if not modified to look more organic. I was surprised how faithfully the original maps are followed AND they still looked "modern". It's probably a testament to the excellent dungeon designs of the original Square team.

Magic is using the classic leveled magic of FFI and int casters of D&D. It's a little different, though. You can "equip" magic on a character and remove it later or even move it to another character. So, it's a loose and swingin' version of the original magic design. You can't learn spells at levels other than their intended level, which is just like the original Final Fantasy but I would have liked to see that enhancement. (Actually, I'd like to see that system in ANY console RPG.) Personally I prefer the flat MP system since I feel tiered magic hits you twice for powerful magic. Higher levels are not accessable to lower characters AND you have limits on castings of magic at a particular level. Flat MP systems base accessibility and limits on one unified system where the more points required the bigger a draw it is. Not to say Flat MP systems are that great, either. They end up trivializing magic since you can wind up casting low magic a nearly infinite amount of times. Except as I level up in FFIII my caster is able to cast level 1 spells 14 times without rest so, it looks like it'll go up to a huge number if I level them high enough.

The downside to this system is that leaning a new level tier of spells usually require a lot more leveling than otherwise might be required. FFIII feels limited in the number of spells per tier also. Fire and Blizzard, for example, are level 1 spells while Thunder is level 2. That seems to be only because there's 3 spells per level a particular character can equip. There was a part where NPCs were handing me multiple copies of a spell because it's required by the story that I cast it but I didn't have any characters high level enough to use it. That seemed to be a symptom of a slightly flawed system. D&D gets around this by letting you buy items that can cast spells from skilled artisans or by improvising something. Console RPGs can't be THAT flexible right now. And being able to cast the most basic of spells only a few times before you're exhausted is lame... especially when you can't use up a higher level to cast a lower level spell. This also means that Ethers and other later innovations in Final Fantasy are out, too.

Magic is also really powerful. Too powerful, sometimes. I would have my fighter characters deal maybe 100 damage on an enemy and then have spells deal nearly 250 damage per cast. Which is nice considering the limiting feel of the magic system... except you tend now to save them for bosses only and feel less likely to experiment with them during normal fights. Once you get some staffs that you can equip and use in battle that casts those 1st level black magic spells the game all of a sudden becomes overwhelmingly easy since now all those MP limitations brought on by character development go out the window as you can use the items an unlimited number of times... and you find all three elemental staffs in about 4 hours of game play... no purchase required.

It ain't all piss and vinegar. Story changes versus the original? Well, they gave the orphans some limited background and you mean them one at a time instead of all at once. I like that change a lot. It's a delightful return to the past. Modern Final Fantasy games keep the player mostly chock full of those things. Whatcha gonna do NOW, BITCH?! MWA HA HA HA HA! The old school feel is nice, and the script seems to poke fun at itself with the cliches. I mean, sheet, they give you an airship practically right off the bat! I found that hilarious. And not being able to buy Phoenix Downs? Wow, I wish I had advance warning of that one. I would have conserved them.

Actually, I don't know. :P I lost a party member and accidentally saved so now I have to figure out how to bring them back to life. Inn's alone won't do it. And nobody knows life spells. I mean, honestly, when was the last time that the death of a party member REALLY impacted you?

All in all it's still fun. Even if it wasn't a Final Fantasy game I'd still play it. My brother said it was only $10 cheaper than Final Fantasy XII, which to me must mean this DS game was $40 or so. Very pricey for a DS game if you ask me. If it sounds like I'm being harsh then that's right. I think the Final Fantasy series should be held to extreme standards as it is THE defining console RPG. Just like I feel about Zelda and that kind of adventure game. I think it's one of the more overrated Final Fantasy games. IGN gives it an 8 something, Gamespot a high 7. I'd give it a high 6 or low 7 (I haven't finished it yet, after all). I seem to think that if it was developed in-house a lot of those things would be non-issues as they might have been less afraid to tweak things like they did for the Final Fantasy I and II remakes on the PSX.

I'm pretty exhausted. It's been a long day of schmoozing and doing shit. Hopefully tomorrow I can actually get around to doing something fun. If the MCSD doesn't get in the way. Turns out I don't have my work schedule for next week and I'm getting anxious because it seems that anyone that COULD help me seems to be in a holiday mood and not very helpful at all.

Also, I specified a GUI format. I'm working on actually parsing it. It's in XML which seems like a good idea for future upgrades and things... but I've never used XML in C++... only Visual Basic. I didn't realize it's such a pain in the ass. And because of the nature of the format I have to define a whole bunch of weird structures and abstractions before I can test any of it in the slightest. So far I've built a file to recreate the Donkey Kong NES menu just to keep it simple. Now I have to emulate it. *groan*

Gah, since when don't I have time for myself? And to think I'm not even working yet. ><

Childrens

Did I ever tell you how much I dislike children? Having to babysit two of them in this house is just plain silly when they have a closer relative to watch over them on the other side of town.

Gah.

Stuff

Uhh, yeah, because my videos were SO OFFENSIVE but look what else is on YouTube.
Yuna getting friggin' raped.

I mean, sheesh, the poster's name is UtubeIsFullOfFags for crying out loud! D:

Also, turns out Microsoft has been giving out free laptops to some bloggers. I'm not a pro blogger, but I guess if I was getting freebies like that I'd happily become one. I guess the question is whether they keep it, whether they write good stuff or bad stuff about Microsoft, and whether they declare the gift on their taxes next year.

I've mentioned them before. Too bad Microsoft never gave me any presents. Oh well, I guess I'll just take it out of them my way with a few extra pirate copies of Office or something.

Some of my unwelcome extended family is here. Can't I just be alone?!

Merry...

... umm... oh, too late.

I hate getting pulled out of town for things I have to be at. I was exhausted and went to sleep for the night only to wake up now and I can't sleep. I'll make myself sleep, though.

Hopefully I can get around to saying Merry whatever tomorrow when I'm not being watched. Heh, and hopefully MSCD will give me some time to spare. Did you know they don't recognize holidays as an excuse for not doing my classwork? Sheesh.

The only reason for the restrictions is that I'm getting government money for it. Too bad. D:

Supervillainy

The RIAA is suing the website AllofMP3.com on behalf of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music in the amount of $150,000 for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October of 2006. That comes to a lawsuit totaling $1.65 trillion!

If AllofMP3 sells tracks for like a dollar or so, RIAA can't possibly get that kind of return, even if they manage to bribe all the judges, even if a US judgment held water overseas, do they really expect to get a big fat check for $1.65 T? Are all the employees so wealthy that they even have assets in that amount? Obviously the company would fall and the employees won't be jailed since it's a civil case not a criminal one. Can any of the employees ever work any job that will make up that kind of money?

My theory? That way the RIAA can later say "WE LOST $1,649,999,999 ON PIRACY LAST YEAR!!!"

Haw.

 > Link < 

Animalia

So one thing that's passed me by is that the video quality of PS3 backwards compatibility is dog shit. Of course, that shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone.

Yet Woot had the crappy 20 Gig PS3's in stock yesterday and it sold out in 10 minutes.

I'm stunned at how much negative press this thing gets and people are STILL snapping them up. The loyalty of Sony fanboys is stunning. If you followed that YouTube link you could read some of the comments. Some of the comments even accuse the producer of doctoring the video! Yes YouTube has been invaded by idiots in the past year (and many of them are in the admin side of it, but that's another beef), but still, the lack of people thinking before they type is going to make my brain melt.

Now I DO have a beef with the suggestion that all it takes is a "simple firmware upgrade." Unless you're a member of the design engineering team at Sony of Japan, you don't know. Unless your contact person on the inside is a member of the design engineering team at Sony of Japan, you don't know. WE (the public) may never know what it really takes to fix it. Even comparing it to turning on filtering with DirectX is a fallacy since it doesn't run DirectX. I'm just completely shocked that it doesn't at least filter it. Thing is, filtering won't solve the issue, just make it less noticeable. The real answer is to rescale polygons and points to newer and higher resolution displays. Impossible? Maybe. Even then it won't look that great. I'm no expert, but I'm not sure HDMI can even describe low resolution modes.

But, you know, everyone likes backwards compatibility. But once you give them exactly that, they start complaining for more. Not to say that ugly filtering on PS3 and not letting the resolution change is an excuse, but you can't have both "looks exactly the same" and "looks better" in the same window. I can't believe units would ship with such a major problem.

Oh, wait, it's Sony.

My advice? Don't be a fanboy. Even if I could afford it and find it, I wouldn't get a PS3 right now. What's the blockbuster game? By the time a blockbuster game comes out, should we have faith that everything will be fixed? Well...

Sometime ago, the Gamecube lost it's digital video output. Since I don't have HDTV I simply never followed the happenings of anything HD. But I have to say I'm disappointed. They don't even make the cable anymore. Sheet, I can get a replacement screen for an old Game Boy Advance but I can't get a digital cable for the GC? Boooooo---

Ah well. Busy busy busy. MCSD coursework is taking over my life. That's unfortunate too.

User Warning

My body is changing shape. I'm losing weight and it feels good.

One of the consequences of losing weight is that basic activities change in how they are done. I can't open doors by just throwing my weight around, for example. Another consequence is evidently I don't know how to hug anymore.

Well, I do, it's just that apparently my aim is off more than usual. So if you hug me and I grab something I'm not supposed to grab, here is what you should do:

1. While hugging, pretend I'm not touching what I am. Seriously. I don't know what I'm touching anymore.
2. Casually mention afterwords what it was that I did wrong. Please don't embarrass me by making a big deal out of it.
3. Watch me get embarrassed anyway even if you did number 2 perfectly.

See, if I'm going to touch something inappropriate, I want it to be remembered. Casual cheap feels are not required.

Please bear with me while I get the hang over this changing body.

Just because...

... there is hope on the horizon doesn't mean it stopped raining. I'm still getting hassled and being punished for being alive. The first time my phone rang today my case was reopened about just about everything. Example: did you know that if I want to use kitchen equipment (like a stovetop, frying pan, saucier) I must clean it afterwords? No big deal, right? Well, that rule's only for me. Anyone else may use any items and not clean them at all. Meaning if I want to use them, I have to clean them before I use them and clean them after. So don't feel bad if I turn my ringer off and am completely unable to talk on weekends. It's because people are home who hate me. Easy enough to understand, yes?

My first paycheck would end up being middle of January. A taste of the good life again, except more good. I hope. I don't like changing a lot so I hope this is a job I can enjoy and get used to for many years. I did put 5+ years in Baptist Hosptial putting myself through school. I'm what they call "a lifer," I guess.

Anyway, I'm feeling really creative today. I've got things in my head for some Stepmania stuff and I've already trimmed a song to under 2 minutes so I could play it on In the Groove 2. Gotta make some steps. I've got a new YTMND in mind and I've already got my initial sound and .gif. The picture's gonna need some work to look cool but it's doable. I've got a neat picture I'm working on involving a laptop, I'm just trying to figure out the best ways to attack it. I've got an idea but I just need to DO it. I'm done with my second inventory load from storage and I need to make another run to exchange. PLUS I want to put in my hours for school: the sooner it's done the sooner I get certified and can command a larger salary.

One thing I'm putting off for a few is my game. I keep coming up with more and varied ideas for game play and I think I've changed the genre of game like 4 times already. :P
My custom engine's terrain system "works", except it doesn't currently support a whole lot of anything. I just need to take the existing code and wrap it in different ways so I could make it modular. Once modular I can add features easily. As it is now, it doesn't even support models or skins, but I'm chalking that up to being unwilling (right now) to sit down and learn Lightwave since I've convinced myself that Maya sucks. I'm sure it doesn't suck, it's just that I think more mathematically and Maya is more engineered to artists and organic modeling and things like that. Is Lightwave the answer? I dunno, um, maybe?

Now, about the current game image. I'm thinking of a cross between Zelda (Link to the Past, of course) and Final Fantasy Tactics. I've got sketches of characters and moves and weapons. Nevermind that I'm not an artist and my sketches could be misinterpreted for a six-pack of beer and a contact lens milling machine trying to fuck a paper shredder. But as long as it makes sense to me that's ok. I've got a vision of the game play and bosses and items. Story? Uh, lol, I dunno. I'm sure I could whip something up if I wanted to. I want to avoid marrying a story to a design since the design ends up changing so often. I think it's my desire to make an end-all be-all game. I know in my head that an independent game won't break that kind of goal, I just go with my heart. Or stomach, I forget which.

So I'm just casually looking around online and I notice this old news article regarding the idea in the head for Dead or Alive 5. Tomonobu Itagaki says he has a vision of the game's opening sequence... which is fine except, um, that's a movie, not a game. What's the game like? How is it going to be better?

The problem with new Japanese game superstars like Itagaki and Hideo Kojima is that they have grandiose visions of cinema and story and graphics that it almost seems like the gameplay itself comes second.

I mean, here in America we raked John Romero over the coals because of Daikitana. I wonder if game players here and abroad will finally wake up to that sort of shit. The game should come first. That's why I've always liked the idea behind the Final Fantasy series. Story? Bah. None of the games are related to each other other than the reuse of a few names. But they keep reinventing the RPG wheel. They sic one section of the team on graphics and animation and just trust that the guys redoing the battle engine will make the best use of what they produce. There's no Final Fantasy "superstar." It's a product of a team and while there ARE team leaders, there's nobody there with an ego that's willing to put it ahead of the game itself.

Humble is good.

The Man Disapproved

I got a YouTube video got pulled. T-T

At least you guys got to see it, right? Nothing inappropriate in there, right? Ne? Ne? Ne?

I'm going to go pack my bags and defect to another video site. Thing is, who's out there? Yeah, Myspace has video upload capabilities but I don't need to give these gifts to News.com.

Of course, since I'm such a spiteful person, I HAVE to make a super filthy version of Virtual Hentai.

You're welcome in advance.

4chan lives within me

hard test is haaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrd

Short Bus

A. I got the job(s). I'm going to take the one 15 minutes away from me because it's a fantastic job. Permanent, benefits, a WHOLE lot of money. Of course, I don't know when I start, my hours, or anything like that. And I don't have the cash JUST YET. I'll probably need to work two weeks first.

B. At one time, I needed a Playstation memory card. I can't use the Dexdrive thing in Windows XP (or even Windows 2000 for that matter), so that's it for that thing. Gamestop and EBGames don't sell them anymore, which I find hilarious. Playstation 3 is supposed to have backwards compatibility with PSX and PS2, yet Sony doesn't sell those memory cards anymore. Sheesh. Thankfully there's always ebay. I picked up like 6 third-party memory cards for $5. Hell yeah they were ugly. Clear blue. Ick. So I spent some time this week coating them in primer, sanding it down 'til smooth, and repainting. Except, I really don't have much airbrush practice. The rig to hold it spun around under the 20 psi of air pressure into the brush. So I ended up coating way too much paint on it so it took a bath in brake fluid. It's my traditional paint stripping fluid. Yeah, Castrol Super Clean is supposedly better but I've never found it in any store so, DOT 5 it is. I checked it out today. Half of the paint didn't come off, and all the clear blue plastic swelled and turned into a bloated blue-grey plastic. It's like the memory card had elephantiasis of the nuts. (Anyone want a playstation memory card circuitboard? 1 megabit of NAND flash goodness?

C. Bookworm Adventures is pretty cool. Best word I've gotten so far is "Devolution". Yeah, I'm a fucking MADMAN.

Fish!

Why, yes, I *am* addicted to fish.

My interviews have shuffled around. The one for today is at 4pm, rescheduled from 11. Now, with how far I have to travel for this, I woke up semi-early-ish. Fuckers. This particular job (which I'll call job B) sounds like it's a piece of shit, even if the money is good. I mean, you don't reschedule the day of the event. That's pretty unprofessional. Job A's interview is TOMORROW instead of Thursday due to my evidently not knowing how to use a calendar. I have to fill out a HUGE application, too, since it's the final interview, as far as I know. It's literally 15 minutes away from me, and they seem to run a tighter ship. Job B has a much less well known name than Job A.

Needless to say, I'll only take Job B if Job A doesn't get offered to me since they pay about the same. But I can't just throw away Job B. Although it might have been fun to show up in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and sandals and use the word "cunts" a lot with a fake British accent.

Also, Job B is a 3 month contract, while Job A is permanent. No brainer there.

Ah well, we'll see. I'm desperate to move but even if job B offered 10K more a year (which would only come out to $4/hr over Job A, which sounds great except I wouldn't get benefits and after $15,000 the gravy train is over and I need to look for work again), I'd be hard pressed to take it. I mean, if it takes me another 3 months to find work, then I'm really looking at making around $15000 a year within that whole 6 month period. Rent & Uts would be at least $800 in this crazy-ass town (or crazy ass-town). $4800 in living, so I'd have to make due with $10000 for six months of just being. Not counting food, gas, maintenance, internet, etc etc etc. Which I GUESS I could do. But, the alternative is like a $50K job and it's permanent.

Wuh? Oh. Stay in school, kids. Wish me luck!!!

Weekend Warrior

Finally I get some peace and quiet around here.

My parents are kind of like babies. If I'm out of sight things are ok but if I'm spotted or noticed in some way/shape/form all of a sudden they get reminded of how much they hate me.

So if I'm out just fixing a fence (again), it's in my interest to do it as silently and inconspicuously as possible. If I make a ruckus, someone perhaps also outside or in the kitchen may hear. That someone may be a slave driver, and they may think of me and then become reminded of some other things I should do to make my keep.

So, also, when I manage to disappear into my room, it again is best I do so very quietly and without drawing attention. If I go and start playing, say, Unreal Tournament with sound and all I'll inevitably get someone to barge into my room saying that if I have time for games I have time to clean my room.

Now, I know I should clean it. But I've just been turning it off for like a year. I was supposed to be in my place. And if the room is my responsibility to clean, don't I then have a right to ornamentalize it as I see fit?

Alas, there is no justice when someone else holds all your cards. Nothing to get upset about, really, because right now I can't change it. Operative words: "right now."

But it's late. Can't wake up at the crack of noon, you know. I'm no bum.

Happy December

I've been in a strangely good mood lately. I think it's because pretty soon I'm probably going to nail a job. It's just a feeling.

There was a jar of sauce I used to top some meats with. It is a savory sweet sauce that didn't have any carbs. It didn't stop anyone from throwing it away. Gah.

Anywho, I've been reading up on some stuff. I'm curious where the congressional hearings are regarding Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. I mean there's a LOT more suggestive stuff in that, right? RIGHT. There's fucking POLE DANCING. Not that I'm complaining, I just find it interesting that GTA San Andreas got the beat down regarding a sequence that was removed from the game that could be hacked back into existance (which, without the nude textures that aren't in the game essentially comes down to enabling dry-humping), while a game with bikini-girls (which some said bikinis are no bigger than string and seashells) pole dancing as part of the game barely gets a blip.

Again, I'm not complaining. Just a curiosity. I wonder if the US could handle a true widespread release of a porn game. Events have certainly been leading up to it. The Guy Game, BMX XXX, Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude, Playboy Mansion, DOAX2... all dancing around the same thing but nobody wants to take the initiative and slam it forward.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, it seems Japan has no problem with it. Valis had the 10 year anniversary earlier this year and the company that holds the rights to it celebrated by making a downloadable hentai game around it. It's not even the first time... alongside general released games under the Valis franchise, Japan got erotically charged side versions of the games. Hell, Gainax officially licensed the characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion for a strip poker game.

I really wonder what would happen if a mainstream company released for a home console a game like, say, Interact Play VR. That game goes that you are a rapist looking for targets and the rape itself is interactive: Press the mouse button while hovering over a nipple and you could fondle it, for instance.

I raise this question because: what if they were all up in arms because it was that there was AO content in an M game? Was it an excuse to wail on Rockstar due to all the GTA games which always seemed to get press over how "evil" they are?

I'm not even saying I would buy an explicitly naughty game for a home console system. There's something kind of weird about putting "Long Dong Donkey Kong" next to "Super Monkey Ball" on your shelf, for instance. BUT, I have found maybe hundreds of video captures from DOAX2 showing off the skimpiest of the skimpy, the sluttiest of the slutty, and blah blah blah so I'd say without any hesitation that they would most certainly sell.

Also,--