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| Thursday, May 30th, 2002 | | 10:33 pm |
Sporadic updates
Too bad it also has the same meaning to my homework. Aww well. Been playing a lot of games. And realise how horrible can a console game get when it's not been properly ported. The realization came from the fact that when I borrowed my friend's playstation to mess with my "60 hertz" attempts to make my games to run in a ntsc signal (I live in australia, land of "bali games" and rampant modding of psx... even our government supports it apparently! o_O). Luckily enough I found a gameshark iso and useafter burning it, I proceed to use it on my friend's psx. Amusingly enough, after spending half a day at it, I finally got FF6 to be running in ntsc mode but having a screen centring problem. Mine you, the psx has been already modded so I can't tell if my attempts will actually work if a unmodded psx or psone with the gameshark. Anyways, after spending another few hours at it, I've managed to get FF6 to be centred. I tried the same techniques to Star Ocean 2, FF7 and FF8. FF8 exhibited really strange centring problems and if I decide to whack in the screen centring code, it would look out of wack during the menus. FF9 has a buggered copy protection problem if I decide to use the gameshark.... for friggin sakes, I got the legimate copies of these... why would I be bloody copying them!?! o_O The results of playing a ntsc or 60hertz game is astonding... everything looks bloody smoother beyond belief... I can see why the americans can actually laugh at us... except for Grand Turismo 3. (I think) Current Mood:  chipperCurrent Music: Tanaka Rie - Raison d'etre | | Wednesday, April 17th, 2002 | | 3:08 am |
I'm getting lazy again. Hmm. So many things to do in life, so little time. Like get my crappy eva site done... and finish off my journal article. Technically I'm stressing myself about being so so slack on my article, but I know I'll get it done on time ;) Current Mood:  cheerfulCurrent Music: merril bainbridge - Kiss The Boys | | 12:06 am |
WindowBlinds = little program of evil
It's always been my policy to toy around with software so I can get a feel if I really want to use them. Today I've messed with WindowBlinds for a few minutes and then gave up afterwards. The program is not quite as good as I hope it would be, mainly it slow and since it made all of my toolbar buttons "not flat", irt would go under "that's utterly evil" category of interface desgin. :) I would try ObjectDesktop as well, but idea of building your own desktop interface introduces new headaches, primarily it has to cater to be used for multiple users (me, my two brothers) while making it understandable. The understandable part is really hard. The "7 +- 2 things remembered" rule of interface design pushes on the real fact that we humans can't handle 5-9 foreign items on the screen at once. Plus I'm lazy. ;) Anyways, have fun everyone! :) Current Music: Mel C: If that were me | | Tuesday, April 16th, 2002 | | 12:14 pm |
Mid-semester break
Yay, finally. Two weeks of holiday. Well... not really though. This week I have to finalise my journal article which I haven't concreted, and at start have some sort of thesis proposal written on paper. It's not so bad. I've found out that good things are coming around May. FFX is coming! | | Thursday, April 4th, 2002 | | 11:18 pm |
zany feel to a forum?
Although I like the tsunami channel's comic, their message board is a totally different story. It's has the same "feel" to #sphere, where I normally just hang around talking random crazy stuff, but just fairly static. Thank god it's not as perverse though. ;) Today I've played a lot of Dynasty Warriors 3. The game is fun with two players (more involving with two guys saying "where the heck are you?!?) except when somebody dies it's game over automatically. Which is so stupid. Current Mood:  contentCurrent Music: jameriquai - Cosmic Girl | | 10:55 am |
being indecisive
when in doubt, work it out. unfortunately, I tend to procrastinate when it comes to problems. | | Sunday, March 24th, 2002 | | 2:52 am |
Cranky 'ill me?
I haven't been able to figure out how I'm supposed to structure my paper I'm currently writing. And add in procrastination... you get instant jinx and losing sleep from the lack of ideas flowing into the brain, not to mention the anxiety scaring yourself awake every few seconds. I hate writing extremely long posts, as I type very slow as I thinking through what to say. Like this one right now... it's taken me good god amount of time to write! (When I should be writing my paper! ;) Looking at Niko's art site brings back some good memories when I drew stuff. My art's horrendous (back then and even now, I don't think I wanna draw anymore ;) and one thing I've learned is, you can never ever be perfect. You realize your own mistakes, you learn from them, you move on, you get better. Without improvement, you can only get so far. I seriously need to stop staying awake at nights to do pointless gameplaying/coding/homework. And this pointless rant too. ^_^ Current Mood:  silly | | Wednesday, March 6th, 2002 | | 11:37 pm |
Honour thesis crap
I had to drop my idea of a media player that can playback files on windows as my thesis. I don't think any of my professors can actually *help* me with it, since they all use macs or lack the programming expertise. The closest professor I know that have some knowledge of this doesn't believe PCs exists. ;) I guess I gotta pick a project from a list of potential projects that the professors written out. I've just written an email to a professor for a software project (3D + IRC), which I don't know if I can still do it since I haven't done Director for a long time. I hope I still have what it takes to do this. Fun side, I've bought Dark Cloud. It's like Zelda with added features. ^_^ Those people who thinks this game is a ripoff, they're right. But then it have a decent auto-map system, "build your town" system, random dungeons, something that's not found in Zelda. It's an improvement. If Miyamoto would stop simplifying the interface system and also stop reinventing the story (Link is tormented! He needs know his rights as a video game character! He doesn't need to save Zelda *all* the time! ;) He would have made an even memorable story that the entire family would love. ^_^ Oh yeah. Damn that stupid fairy! She NEEDS TO DIE FROM SAYING "HEY!". Why don't they have a jump button?!? It's so frustrating!!?!? I'm rambling too much. Must not sleep.... Zzzzz... | | Sunday, March 3rd, 2002 | | 10:42 pm |
| | 8:54 pm |
Lunar madness
Playing Lunar all this time saps a lot of will to code... but hell cool if you figure out how to compose a tactic for various monsters so you can build up a steady stream of EXP points without much effort. The main problem therelies with the battle engine eveness and the stats... it's not quite even! After about 4-5 battles the characters are near dead if there is no attempt to heal them! After one singular battle (if your characters gets hurt) they're most likely to be nearly dead anyways. Whose bright idea was it to build a system where the monsters can whoop your ass good if you don't have a plan to kick their ass? It's almost like playing anal retentive platform games all over again... (not that I mind playing those). Right now, my mini quicktime player project is pretty slow, even though it's more easier than coding a DS filter. The documentation sucks (oh joy, pdf files for offline viewing, the apple dev people must be sadists when it comes to pain, coz' nobody with their right mind would print out the QT API anyways... it's 3000 pages long), but the API seems pretty easy enough to figure out. I'll keep working on that. ^^ Current Mood: cheerfulCurrent Music: annie lennox - little bird | | Saturday, March 2nd, 2002 | | 9:08 am |
Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I've finally done it! I've got my crappy directshow filter to work properly! Not only it's 1/3 smaller than what the demo wrote, it's also more understandable! Now I'm gonna work on a Quicktime demo... :) I'll work on the sound and video output filter for directshow later, as I have no desire to touch my filter that's so perfect right now ^_^ Current Mood:  accomplishedCurrent Music: Sugar Ray - When it's over | | Thursday, February 28th, 2002 | | 11:11 pm |
DVD vob and my crappy filter
Well, it kinda works. Just sound, no video ;_; I must be fucking up something bad for that to happen. If I don't get this working soon, I'll just use their gayass version of it. Although MS' code is more thread-safe and semi-robust than mine, it's just humaenly unreadable and ofuscated. I tend to think anybody who can *understand* what you write can actually make it better. In this case, you hell would want to understand why X connects with Z and so on.. At least I hope the QT and RM aren't as compilcated from what I'm doing. (Yeah right, like *they* know humanely readable code ;) | | 10:59 pm |
Why must I be tormented?
I'm on the verge of finishing off my source filter/plugin for directshow to work with a custom file object. Then comes the really annoying part where I couldn't debug the accursed thing. After numerous hours wondering why the stupid filter kills itself after playing God_of_Mischief's "jessica bath" scene from Lunar (I know, nakee elf girl, I should be shot, but it's the only few files that I had that's non-DivX... and DivX doesn't have any problems I think) after like half a second in (or 1 sample read) it refuses to call anymore WaitForFile and dies (doesn't crash nor quit though, strange?). I'll probably continue debugging when I don't feel cold. Microsoft sure knows how to make the most frustrating interfaces... I can see why in the MS newsgroups people can't figure out why there's no support for their memfile and async demos (directshow demos ;). At least it works with all my anime (divx content ;), mp3s and any mpeg files. ^_^ I'll test out vob files (DVD! ;) later. Current Mood:  annoyedCurrent Music: Jewel - Standing Still | | 5:16 pm |
Lunar fun.
Played plenty of Lunar today. What fun. :) Current Mood: cheerfulCurrent Music: Vanessa Mae - Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto - Act 1 | | Wednesday, February 27th, 2002 | | 2:56 am |
Honour Thesis crap part 4
Digital Convergence. There has been talks of media convergence between TV and your computer, along with DVD and Mpeg convergence, but no mention of video file format convergence. No one seems to want a media player that will play back your favourite movie in some obscure format and then some. Streaming technologies on the other hand, is dividing more as the big three advocates their formats heavily. No one seems to care apparently. Quicktime servers will only run on Macs, and media servers for windows will only stay for windows, while realserver (that serves RM streams) will run across various platforms. There's even talks of media playback like a mp3 player for your mobile, and in Texas Instruments case, Realnetworks are providing a player for their little pocket instruments. Windows CE machines on the other hand, will gladly play your avi file, if you dare. Sometimes it's worse than the digital divide, where people can't even afford to buy a computer, and that's impeding them from improving the quality of life as society demands them to be technologically adaptable. With so many de-facto standards, one would have to choose carefully otherwise it would lose out a lot of audience. Currently most people have access to either quicktime, windows media player, or realplayer. Only sometimes people will install more than one of these players onto their system. There are some media players out there that will playback any media, but provided that the codec or the necessary files are installed, in which case, the codec or files tend to install a media of their own. There's almost no such thing as standards for medium that will be supported across many platforms. MPEG is the only successor that is widely supported but not really heavily advocated format since Microsoft and Apple do not believe MPEG will be good enough for their OS systems. Gah, I'm too tired. Perhaps I shall continue this when I'm clear-headed. Current Mood: accomplishedCurrent Music: Chris DeBurgh - Lady In Red | | 2:36 am |
Honour Thesis crap part 3
The idea and design behind the media player that I propose on building was the main application source code will be platform neutral. That way only the mmplib (my cross-platformish static code library) will handle the platform specific issues to the application. Plugins on the other hand, will have to be rewritten from scratch for each port to support different platforms. Not that theres a demand for it anyways. The media player (which I will refer as the codename, Thereo, since I got this name from a wierd dream I had with this guy showing me about this multi-image viewer which he used...) is comprised of several base services: mmplib (providing the threads, file system, windowing, input), the plugins manager, a cache manager (somehow), a script engine, and a db tree manager. The DB tree manager reminds me of the registry tree. It will be stored in a XML format to allow easy storage. Built on top of these base services will be the input/output/filter plugins manager that will control the flow of the media and a skinning system to allow an unique perspective on design for users to make, along with a configuration manager. And finally on top of all of these, the viewer and a browser system of some sort will exist. This is what the user sees and interacts with. Thereo, while doesn't possess anything unique from any other media players, code-wise however, I planned that the components are actually modulable and can be replaced if needed to. Don't like the script engine? replace it with the same functions! DB Tree manager too sucky? rewrite it with the same functions and replace it! The script engine will either be python or ruby based. They both possess good scripting capabilities, but right now I would prefer python currently. I would use the Javascript like Sphere but it's not a good idea since the bugger eats more memory and the garbase collection isn't too spectactular. And it's very slow to do some operation that involves processing. At first the planned media support will be quicktime, realmedia, and anything that uses the directshow. possibly later jpeg, gif, mng and other media formats will be supported as the application matures. Plus I need to finish this on time! | | 1:53 am |
Which idiotic D&D character are you?
I Am A: Neutral Good Half-Elf Bard Ranger Alignment:Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered 'normal'. Race:Half-Elves are a cross between a human and an elf. They are smaller, like their elven ancestors, but have a much shorter lifespan. They are sometimes looked down upon as half-breeds, but this is rare. They have both the curious drive of humans and the patience of elves. Primary Class:Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit. Secondary Class:Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy. Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of  NeppyMan (e-mail) | | 1:20 am |
Honour Thesis crap part 2
I always did find it amusing that nobody tried to explain why the big three (Microsoft, Apple, Realnetworks) didn't try to support the competitors video format... Well they do support it in some way, but mostly it's crippled to the point where you just have to install or use another player. Maybe it's a evil ploy to make users think that the competitors format is a rat-ass and bloated attempt since it's so difficult for them to implement them, and clearly (insert our evil format) is superior and doesn't play hoops with you to play back the file. And oh, would like some crumpets to go with that? From reading their APIs and writing code to see how to reroute the code to use my file pointers, etc, got me thinking.... Why are these big three advocating for their video format to be superiror? Clearly they are hell harder to use, and even their SDK/API documentation are appalling. There's very little talk about digital media format convergance. Why? Non of these file formats are clearly better than each other. Quicktime is slow, annoying to load, and has a crap performance on a windows machine. Avi files are fast but doesn't offer a good compression ratio even though the quality is good, and divx-compressed movies are beginning to become fairly large (have you ever seen a decent anime series that has been encoded in divx that's under 100 megs and *viewable*? The closest series I remember was Vandread I got off aegis ;), plus their DirectShow documentation is shockingly *unreadable*, they don't go into depth on what they mean! Sure, it may be simple to write applications that will utilize DirectShow, but writing filters for them on the other hand requires your brain to run through a blender and hopefully you'll understand Microsoft-Speak(tm). Finally there's RealMedia, crap quality but hell small. I understand why porn companies use them instead of viv (another file format that was used mainly for porn during my days on scouring for anime in http servers) these days. Feels like this entry is too big for anyone to read this... I feel like I'm writing some sort of essay except it doesn't make any sense. ;) Current Mood:  apatheticCurrent Music: Sakamoto Maaya - Hemisphere | | 12:38 am |
Honours Thesis crap
My friend was right. He think I'm so paranoid about my thesis/honours project to the point where I drive myself insane, by thinking how I could hack Quicktime to accept my custom file pointers I wrote (it's exactly the same as the one from Sphere except I'm using win32 calls to open the file) for my evil thesis project, a media player that can play back various file format via plugins. Needless to say it falls under the same design vein of sphere, the source to the "engine" is cross-platform, only the plugins and platform specific stuff are not. I doubt I'll even have enough time to write for another platform port. My abstract for writing a media player is in vain. Good question, why on earth does the world needs another crappy media player? I've seen a lot of other media players that will do the same things that I'm proposing. Well, my answer for that is simple: They all suck (except for WMP, QT and RM). I know some people are going to hate me for saying that, but those user interfaces and the way they handle the playback are either shocking or "scare the bejesus out of me" in terms of poorly done. One thing I'm planning to do is to propose the media player to be skinnable like Winamp 3 and WMP where you the interface can be totally unique. Ack, so much crap in one post! I'll probably say more in the next post though. ;) Current Mood:  confusedCurrent Music: Mikuni Shimokawa - Tomorrow | | Wednesday, January 9th, 2002 | | 7:34 am |
Reading webcomics
It feels so good to read webcomics again. The only reason why I started reading these is because.... I forgot to read them for 4-5 months. ^_^ On the plus side, you just forget how most of the plot goes and you end up re-reading entire strips (which can be a bad thing if the series is horribly long and has ran for more than 3 years ;). One of the best things while I was away, Nevernever ( http://www.mopsy.com), the comic about knights, pookas, fairies and childproofing unicorns, has returned! Good lord, this sounds like diary/rant more than a comment about a day of my life. ^_^ Current Mood:  amusedCurrent Music: I'm listening to the radio... |
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