May 23, 2006

May 23, 2006: I went on an unexpected trip to Wishek, ND but had to stay awake for 30 hours to do it, complete with a detailed travel log and photo gallery. Major progress has been made in my 2D game. The entire city is done, and the menus have been completely redesigned. All menu-related free edition limitations have been implemented (but not yet tested). Besides that, I also got a replacement sound card and have been going strong with Battle Zone. I have 12 new dreams (within just 15 days) putting me at 392 total dreams.

#1 Yet another long trip: From my home in Minot, ND going all the way to Wishek, ND (southeast of Bismarck, ND, the capital), I went on a rather unexpected trip. In order for me to even go on this trip, I had to stay awake well beyond my usual 15 or so hours. By the time I finally got home, and fell asleep, I was awake for 30 hours. Along the way, I took plenty of pictures (over 120) of the scenery and objects lying in the background. Although many of the photos were quite blurry (motion blur along with the shaky truck I was in), some did come out quite well and become clearer when scaled down. Along with that, I also wrote a travel log accurate down to the minute on what happened. Because of my ultra-high compatibility with travel (past even 800 times better than neutral for just a mere road trip), I'd do almost anything to get a chance to doing so. It ever-so-rarely happens. Even a trip to the grocery store is already past 100 times better than neutral, just the ride part. All this trip was was nothing more than a go there pick something up, and go back. Even with the $2.85 per gallon gas prices, that's still cheap to me, even with a gas-guzzling vehicle getting 9 miles per gallon. I went about 415 or so miles and only about $130 was spent for it totalled both ways. I got to within just 25 miles of the South Dakota border, the furthest south I've been in at least 17 years. I left around 6:35 AM, got there at 11:14 AM and returned home at 4:10 PM (after a 20-minute unexpected party visit for someone else). Because this news entry is so big and long, I'm providing a link for more details on it including the photo gallery.
#2 Major progress with my 2D game: Ever since I found a faster and somewhat more accurate method to make my city's buildings with, I began processing the city. The big downside is that it requires a lot of memory for worthy results. The big upsides are that it's 3 times faster to make, 50% more accurate, and at least 5 times easier to make. Once I got done with the buildings and testing them to make sure they worked like they should, I then went on to test scaling but a problem arose: the current menu system design wasn't going to work well for this. From this, I ended up redesigning the entire menu system. While I was at it, I remembered that I needed to implement the free edition limitations so I went on to do that along with it doing two things at once. Not only was the scenery section completely redesigned, but the rest of the menu system has been as well. Along with redesigning the menus, I also implemented all menu-related free edition limitations. At this moment, the free edition limitations have yet to be tested. Since they are highly identical to that of the full edition, there should be fewer bugs to fix. Group mode has been implemented as well which allows the scenery to be manipulated in groups and even a save feature has been partially implemented. The options in the configuration menu have been set, but not the actual saving and loading. Finally, the other change I made was that I started the part of making the mountains closer together, of which looked better. From all that, I have a few new screenshots available:
Screenshot #1: Ever wonder what Gamestudio's single variable does and why it's both frustrating and too limited? Well, just look at the buildings at the far end - it's quite obvious. See how mixed up they are? It only takes 30 seconds at 64x time for them to get this far out of alignment. To fix this, I had to create two more of these limited variables and use some complicated algorithms to get the same degree of precision the double has, a 64-bit floating point variable. I have about 20 such cases where Gamestudio's var is way too imprecise and it causes odd things to happen like this. In just one second, falling at the usual 1/3 mph per frame (20 mph per second) acceleration, you're already off by a considerable 10% of the real distance you'd travel. This is where my strong mathematical knowledge comes in handy - to work around the low limit of the var. The var only has 3 decimal places of precision, way too small and has a range from -2097152.999 to 2097151.999. Yep, more tricks were needed for getting things "outside" those ranges. The double has, given the usual ranges, even 4 times that. Currently, I have 8 decimal places of precision which is enough. Just for the higher precision, I need to define 3 of these 32-bit variables and manipulate all 3 when I could just define a single double (64-bit) and have more precision than the current system does. Lite-C does provide the solution, but, being based almost entirely off the syntax of C, of which I've always had trouble getting started, I may spend a lot more time trying to figure it out than it does to just use the system I'm more familiar with. The language used with Gamestudio isn't all that much different so I should catch on at least 30 times easier than before. The use of Lite-C would mean being able to get up much higher than currently possible, going much faster than 800 mph horizontally, and allows for more features not easily possible (again, the limit of the var gets in the way).

Screenshot #2: From the same position as the first screenshot, but after implementing my complex system to work around the limit of the var, this is how it should appear. Note how nicely everything is lined up? Compare this to the disorder in the first screenshot. Yep, that's the prime weakness the var has.

Screenshot #3: Just after finally finishing the redesigning of the menus, and before I began testing, I found this screenshot funny because of how weird it is. Yep, this is what bugs are like and having to fix them. Could mountains float in the sky? How about the ground having a strange blue-green area in other areas? Also, note the position stat stuff and how it is on top of the game mode section. That's the one nice thing about bugs, they can be quite funny. It's fixing them that isn't so funny. The cause to the position stat thing was that I used the wrong variable (the height of the screen, not the width as it's supposed to be). The cause to the misaligned mountains was due to the fact that I optimized the system better and that, originally, layer 5 was the closest when layer 1 should be the closest (as with all other layers). The cause to the blue-green areas was because of the closest mountains being misaligned with their layer value set improperly.

Screenshot #4: Having redone all the buildings, having a layer even closer than the closest ones in the original version, this screenshot shows what the closest buildings look like after fixing all the bugs with the menu system (for the full edition only) and the scenery bug in the above screenshot.

Screenshot #5: The main menu is shown, but otherwise not all that much changed, except the content in the menu help and the addition of the "save game" option. The title has yet to be redone.

Screenshot #6: The scenery menu was completely redesigned and reorganized. Shown in the screenshot is what the scenery menu is like in the new version of it, and the menu help explaining what group mode actually is and what it's useful for. The overall format didn't change and thus items with a > in it means a submenu, enter is used to select options, and the menu location banner is otherwise the same, except in the case of "Main > Configuration > Scenery > Clouds > Set scaling > Layers 10-18" where the far left is truncated and replaced with "...".

Screenshot #7: This is another area of the menus, of which wasn't heavily redesigned, except the help content at the bottom. Do you see where the horizon indicator is? With the alpha at 12 (about 4.7%), it's tricky to see.

At the moment, I mainly just want to finally finish my 2D game since I'm so close to finished. Don't be alarmed in that my website hasn't been updated in several weeks, provided that I am making progress with it.
#3 Replacement sound card: Here's my situation. I want to upgrade my video card, but my motherboard doesn't support PCI-express, of which the newer cards support. Because I don't want to always be dependent on onboard sound just to have sound, I wanted to get a sound card. The first sound card I got was the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. However, the drivers were buggy and Creative's website didn't have driver downloads for that particular card (and since it was an OEM card, seemingly more difficult to get). The bug is that, after 3 to 5 hours of playing, the sound just skips out in a very low-pitched sound fading away. Even though the program plays just fine (usually Winamp, but it also occurred in Audacity), there is no sound at all. I always have to click the stop button and replay again of which I'll have to do again after 3 to 5 hours. It happened 3 times in one day once. I ended up having to return it. After receiving confirmation that the card was indeed returned and my refund was given, I got my replacement - the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum. Although it costed a little more than double, it was the most I could spend, without maxing out my debit card. After waiting longer yet for a working sound card to arrive, I received the sound card. The box it came in was rather large. The big downside to installing it was that it was tricky to install and the design of it is awkward with that 5 1/4" bay thing I practically won't use at all. I spent 90 minutes trying to figure the bay thing out. It only took me 5 minutes to remove the cover and install the sound card itself getting it seated into the PCI slot and anchored. Another 25 minutes were spent trying to figure out how to remove one of those bay covers on the front. The metal part on the inside was the easy part, taking but 15 seconds (metal fatigue anyone?). The part you see was the tricky part. Since the sound card was installed and all the drivers along with it (again, getting nowhere near the 600 MB hard disk space "minimum" requirement), I haven't yet encountered the fade out effect I had earlier. So far, it seems I'm unlikely going to be returning it, but you never know what could happen.
#4 June 13, 2006 strongly on my mind: It's only 20 days away now. I may have one more website update after this one before that day arrives, depending on how my 2D game comes along. I made this prediction ten years ago. Back then, I hardly knew anything about computers, I was still in elementary school having absolutely no idea what middle school and high school were even like, I had my fear of "blue water" (of which was fixed just under 40 days later), I was severely addicted to playing video games, my mind game didn't even exist at all, my Status System was just in it's infancy, Out Where the Lake Is may have had only 200,000 plays (unlike the current 1 million), I didn't have any website nor E-mail, let alone any internet connection. Windows 98 wasn't even around, there were no MP3's and programs were commonly on floppy disks. Dial-up was the norm (yep, a 14.4K modem, 1/4 as fast as regular dial-up) for internet and 5 MB downloads were almost unheard of. Yeah, that's how long ago that was. It's hard for me to comprehend how things were back then compared to today. Today, with the way things look, this prediction seems to be my first ever commercial game. There isn't much left in my 2D game (doing the hills and traffic, fixing the mountains, adding the free edition limitations, and finalization are all that actually remain) and given how it seems to be at the moment, I could have 3 days to spare for more extensive testing before the actual release. Ten years ago, all I knew about this prediction was that something special (and good) was going to happen to me, but I had no idea what. I had no knowledge or any hint of any idea on what it would be.
#5 12 new dreams in 15 days: I recalled 12 new dreams in just 15 days. That's unusually high (and another record) for recalling the night's dream. It's like I recall the dream for the night 4 times in a row and I miss a day and repeat this 2 more times in a row. I had one case where I recalled two dreams in one night. I have yet to get a case of 3 in one night. One of the dreams is well-recalled (50% in tact as a whole, 70% in tact for the scenery) but doesn't fit in any of the 10 main categories at all. It's the most well-recalled dream in the other category. The most common cause for dreams going into the other category is that they are multi-category dreams (such as one where half of it is of a video game and the last half is exploring a weird cave). I may move these multi-category dreams into a new 12th category. Dreams too strongly forgotten and where no category can be determined will still be in the other category. Making this change will clear out at least half of those in that category.

May 5, 2006

May 5, 2006: An animation comeback - two new animations made and in record time due to a program I wrote to automate the process. Several new records have been set including listening to the same song for 27 consecutive days and having recalled 10 dreams in a row. My 2D game didn't get much progress. The 1-year anniversary of me having DSL has passed by. I'm also now starting to get the hang of using the trig functions: sines, cosines, and tangents. 8 new dreams have been processed as well putting me at 381 total.

#1 Animation comeback: During the first half of 2004, I was making even two animations per month. Starting around late June of 2004, there was a serious reduction to one animation every 5 months or so, huge and it was all because of the lack of an available BMP to GIF batch converter. Now that that problem has been solved, I still had to manually manipulate each layer of scenery for each frame. Even this is now almost a thing of the past. I happened to have written a program using Gamestudio to practically automate the entire process. The only thing left now for doing manually is forming the plan and creating the scenery. With this near-full automation, the plans can become much longer and much more complex. Even the first test for the program used an animation near the complexity of my most complex animation. Think about it. 120 frames. That isn't much, given I have some animations past 300 frames. 15 columns of positional data. Now that is a new record! The old record was only 12 (with a far shorter duration)! Yet, even this was a rather simple animation. Yeah, that's right, simple. How about, say, 673 (556 unique) frames and 15 columns of positional data complete with angle calculations? This second test case puts my old record in the dust! It's about 4 times as complex as my most complex animation and yet, this is only medium complexity. Imagine 50 columns of positional data and 2000 frames. Well, I don't intend on doing this because the resulting file size would end up being even 5 megabytes. Such a case is not out of my reach either. Of course, I may make an animation with 2000 frames, but it wouldn't be as complex (like 6 columns instead), and I may attempt 50+ columns of positional data, but only a few frames (like 100). I even recall, on my website from quite a while ago, that I made a prediction of automation of the process. At first it was the BMP to GIF batch converter, the more obvious one, but even the part of automating the positioning of each layer was predicted as well. Unfortunately, however, a bug present in Gamestudio is causing problems with this. It may seem fully opaque, but the alpha used in 3DGS is 254, not 255, even though I checked the TGA file both in GIMP, and using a hex edittor. This can nearly triple the file size!
#2 Two new animations: As part of the animation comeback, and from testing a program I wrote, I created two new animations. If you recall the 80x60 version of the "Float-running Through the Mountains" animation, I made a replica of it with a few twists. Instead of just remaining on the ground, the character jumps 4 times (3 in mid-air) and uses the pound stomp when the 4th jump is almost done with. There are twice as many layers as well allowing for an even more detailed scene. The second animation became my most complex animation of all. Complete with angle calculations and using slope ratios, it features something new in my animations - climbing slopes. In my mind game, float-running up a mountain is often the best way to climb one. A constant 200 mph, even on a steep 1:2 slope (which is a 63.435� slope from level) or on a vertical wall, made climbing up the easy part. I tried the part of float-running back down, but ran into many problems that I didn't know how to solve. When on the 8:1 slope half way up, that's the best scene. It extremely accurately mimics my mind game when it comes to mountain climbing.
#3 27 days in a row - a new record: Could you just imagine listening to the same song again and again without changing songs, but only changing the speed, and doing it for 27 days in a row? That's just what my new record is. Winter Land has racked up about 15,000 plays in Winamp and likely another 5000 on top of that with my MP3 player. It's still far from the all time most-listen to song, of which has anywhere from 900,000 to 1,200,000 total lifetime plays during the 12 years I've had it. 20,000 is just 2% of that, but having it all within just 27 days is very hard to come by. This is the new official record. It was 22 or 23 days previously (for 98% certainty anyway), but this is well outside this range and thus is the new record.
#4 Ten dreams recalled in a row: Yet another case of a record being set. Before, it was tricky getting past 5 dreams recalled in a row, but ten in a row? That smashes the old record! Even though I couldn't recall any dreams on the eleventh day, I ended up recalling two more in a row right after it!
#5 2D game development progress: Upon doing the 4th layer of buildings, I ran into many problems. The main one was the high level of complexity associated with it. I now have a new method of making the buildings, where my 1.5 GB of memory has come in handy for yet again. Rather than develop with the size and stuff set for each layer and the tons of calculations associated with it, all I need to do use use a base file of the same size and just scale the final result. This has four advantages: it's much faster, it's much easier, it's a little more precise, and it triples my motive for processing the buildings. Although it took a while to get it started, I can simply use an older file and extend on to it under another file name. The big downside is that it'll take a lot of memory, of which the 512 MB I had earlier would've been too little. Still, rather than 16 layers, I'm only going out to 8. 16 will be available in later updates. I haven't done much with my 2D game. The only other thing I did was do a remake of the player character and the new version is far better than the current version and also considerably larger. The new player version is taking much longer than expected to make so I may just stick with the old version which isn't all that bad either and have the new player version in a future update. The same method for making the city buildings also applies to the houses.
#6 My E-mail sent to CNN was aired: On CNN Headline News, they tend to have various "your voice" questions relating to something. I sent CNN Headline News an E-mail with my response, which was exactly this (as I sent it):

Given the loads of spyware, hackers, suspicious websites, warez sites, and various other hazards, I support the idea of having a web police force of some kind. The main attention should be spent toward chat rooms which are often not moderated.

I just used some copy paste from my backup in Notepad. They read the first sentence, cutting the list I had a little shorter (I just gave examples of common hazards), of which is the main reason. Out of 6 such E-mails aired for sure (7 possible), mine was the second one, from where I know of anyway.
#7 1-year anniversary of having DSL: On April 28, 2005, I finally got DSL. I still even recall how I figured things out. DSL was cheaper than dial-up. Comparing fees (and features), you should understand:

Feature	Dial-up	DSL
Service price	$16.95 (high-speed dial-up)	$29.95 (1 Mbps)
Extra line fee	$17.79	Free! (doesn't use vocal line)
Overall cost	$34.74	$29.95
Average speed	15 MB per hour (10%*)	~300 MB per hour (30%*)
Max speed	22.9 MB per hour	450 MB per hour
Procedure to connect	Load the browser, wait for the dial-up log to appear, and click dial then wait for about a minute.	Just load the browser and click a link and the page loads right away.
Speed monitoring	I could see the number of bytes downloaded	Highly indirect (no known, reliable method yet, the cause of the huge margin of error)
Requirements	Modem and phone line with modem drivers installed	NIC card, router, and DSL modem**
Connection sharing	Not worth it and hard to even get it to work	A NIC card (with drivers installed of course) in both computers and a router are required
Security hazards	Lower due to not always being connected and the slower speed as well as being able to disconnect when under attack	Higher due to always being on, the much faster speed, but you can still disconnect (and only by unplugging the connectors). It's why I have so many firewalls and other security measures.
Other pros	None that I can think of....	Streaming music and videos can be of significantly higher quality without the skipping.
Other cons	The noise from dialing in can get quite annoying. You are also prone to unexpected disconnects. You only need to pay for a modem for each computer, of which are cheap pieces of hardware.	Since the switch to DSL, I no longer have the E-mail beforehand making it much harder to register and order things. It's always a constant worry for me when it comes to registration. The other con, although a one-time-only case, is having to buy a router (for connection sharing), and buy/rent a DSL modem.

Table footnotes:
* This indicates a margin of error. The higher, the less accurate.
** The NIC card and router are optional, but required if you plan on sharing the internet connection.

Dial-up does seem to have other advantages that DSL doesn't, but the advantages of DSL outweigh that of dial-up.
#8 Triginometry anyone?: Recently, between updates, I watched something on Assignment Discovery that covered triginometry and those three common trig functions: sines, cosines, and tangents. Although I'm still unfamiliar with which to use, given slope ratios, I can derrive two of them. tan^-1(slope_y�slope_x) gives the slope angle given a slope ratio. sin(tan^-1(slope_y�slope_x)) gives acceleration rate on a given slope ratio from gravity (as it is in my mind game float-running downhill). This is still so new to me, I have no idea which one of the three trig functions to use. I do know it's "sin = opposite over hypotenuse; cos = adjacent over hypotenuse; tan = opposite over adjacent;". From questions in the forums, the -1 superscript in these functions is used to determine angles, while the plain version is used to determine length. So far, my most common case of using the trig functions is when it comes to slope ratios. I actually had to use them when it came to making the animation where I'm float-running up a mountain that has changing slopes. This is not fully tested or understood yet, but it's the best I have so far, even though I have a whole page filled with notes and the forums always a few seconds away (except if not at the computer).
#9 Online promotional offers - win something: When I bought my Domino's extra large pizza, of which the price went up fifty cents (which is still about 15% cheaper than Pizza Hut), there was a promotional offer where I could win something. I was given a code and told to go to some website. I checked out the website and there didn't seem to be any way of knowing if I won anything or not. All I saw was a big registration form. Since there didn't seem to be any other way to find out if I won or not without having to register, I never bothered with checking. I find this as a major disappointment. The old method where it was hidden under something and it had something like the ever-familiar "Sorry, this is not a winning game piece". Forcing you to register in order to even do anything is a major disappointment to me and it makes a promotional offer like this nonpromotional to me. I checked the FAQ, rules, and all that and it never explained why registration was even required. Having no other option, I just closed that browser window and just went on like I forgot entirely about the offer never bothering to participate in it. I even threw the code away in the trash. Chances are, you won't win anyway, as the chances are so remote. Yeah, of course, 100 prizes here and 50 there, it's still something on the order of 1 in 100,000 or less, so remote it's not even worth the effort and the risk of getting more E-mail spam and since name, address, and all that are required, I find it more of a security risk which, along with the very remote odds and risk of tons more E-mail spam, it's becomes a strong negative motive to not participate.
#10 A blog about me?: Having seen "hirsute" as a very common search term in my website's statistics, far more common than anything else, I did a google search to find out what sites may have been pointing to my site with it. I never heard of the word. While searching for answers, I found an interesting blog entry from some other place about me and my website. This is that blog entry.
#11 8 new dreams: I have several new dreams available, a big chunk of which came from the ten-recalled-in-a-row episode where I got 2 more after that. It also seems that I may need to move some dreams from the "other" category into the existing categories or even create a new category.

Daily Events

May 1: Woke up unexpectedly early, but had a second dream in a row. A big chunk of the day was spent doing two things. The first is obvious - the forums. The second, since the script errors got fixed (due to a missing semicolon a long ways up that would normally trigger everything else after it to not work), I finished the animation. I first had to fix bugs and uploaded the output GIF file. I began working on one I tried several times earlier, but it either failed, or was too complicated. Now I have an even more complex version, but with automation of forming the frames and batch processing the entire animation, it's actually simpler. The plan is also more mathematically accurate than before, even with high-precision angle calculations. I tried making an extention of float-running back down but ran into a major problem. The problem was the acceleration down the slopes with varying times, supposedly a calculus operation (according to the forums, of which I never learned calculus). I couldn't figure it out as things didn't come out as I expected them to. This makes me think back to the prime time where I was making two animations per month. I recall the first version, released as a double-zipped AVI, being nothing more than black lines with the X speed always the same and the Y speed changing. It was extremely inaccurate, but was otherwise considerable. The new version planned is more than 30 times as complicated as the first known version. Woke up at 6:51 AM and went to bed at 11:38 PM.
May 2: No dream recalled. Just the background scenery is all that remains, short of a full test. I wonder how it'll come out. Having 8 layers and 15 columns with nearly 700 frames along with slope calculations, it is my most complex animation of all leaving others in the dust. Next is the ultimate test - 2000 frames! It really seems that my animation-creation had a major come back. Although I did my usual routine of cleaning out the forums, I didn't however, spend much time on them. Between TV and my animation, that made up 80% of the day. 4 1/2 hours of TV (~35%) leaves about 6 hours at my animation. The two left over were the forums, checking E-mail, trying to get dogs in, and other minor things. I'm still going at OWTLI, but a long ways from the record, unless you count total life time plays where it has septuple digits (past a million). Woke up at 10:49 AM and went to bed at 11:25 PM.
May 3: No dream recalled again. The 3DGS forums had a mySQL bug as they were hijacked. I finished the animation, but noticed an unusually large file size due to a bug I found in 3DGS. I may have a work around, but haven't teste it yet. I had about 7 hours' of TV, mainly CNN Headline News at the start. I watched TV while I did other things, especially when the ads came on. When the ads came on, I processed my animation. I'm still at OWTLI but have very strong signs of getting bored of it. A week is in my typical range, but 20 days remain until I set the new record. I began updating my website, of which I processed 3 of the headlines. Woke up at 9:55 AM and went to bed at 1:37 AM.
May 4: Found an unusual solution to the bug. An E-mail sent by me to CNN Headline News relating to the "your voice" thing was aired. It related to an internet police force. I applied the solution to the transparency but then reprocessed both animations causing a 40% smaller file size for both. As usual, I cleaned out the forums. I continued updating my site. All headlines except the new dreams one are done and all daily entries are done, except for this day as I went to be a little earlier than expected. Two dreams have been processed with at least 5 more yet. I switched to Village Zone as well. Woke up at 12:54 PM and went to bed at 1:47 AM.
May 5: Another dream recalled with considerable detail. I spent 35 minutes writing details on it. I got my website updated as well. Oddly enough, I forgot to update the indexes so I went by and fixed this. The day comprised of three parts. First it was cleaning out the forums, as usual. Then I went on adding the last of the dreams and finishing the update. After 3 hours of TV, eating during the time, I recleaned the forums. At the end, I began making the second-closest layer of buildings. I decided to abandon having houses. The building scaling system would then have to be readjusted. Woke up at 1:08 PM and went to bed at 3:17 AM.
May 6: I recalled two dreams in one night, both had moderately-low detail. First I cleaned out the forums then processed a few more buildings. I then ate and went out to move tree branches around. 20 minutes after sunset, it was still quite bright out for me. I returned to the forums and recleaned them. I continued processing my buildings. I finished the third-closest layer of buildings, of which was originally the second-closest (by scaling). I then began previewing them. I have a lot more testing and fixing to do, but so far, the effect is looking very decent. Now I'm doing the closest set which are twice the size of the original closest ones. Due to my new design plan, I'm already within 5 minutes of starting on the last phase of making the buildings - the roof top objects. I got bored of Village Zone and switched to the music from World 7 in Super Monkey Ball 2. I ordered my replacement sound card for the one I returned - X-Fi Platinum. Now to wait until Wednesday. By then, I should have another 3 or 4 more building layers done. The target in 8 - more in a later update. Woke up at 2:16 PM and went to bed at 5:10 AM.
May 7: Another dream recalled, number 384, of which is a water dream. I partially cleaned out the forums then got involved with housework. I ate after a short time then went out to get big tree branches to the dumpster. I had to build that "machine" I did during the fall of 2005. Rather than just one such "machine", I built 3 of them. Unlike before, I also had to go up a slope, about a 4:1 slope. Once I was done with that, I finished cleaning out the forums then began processing more of the buildings. I now have 5 finished layers. The last 3 from the original plan would likely be done tomorrow after 2 to 3 hours' time. One layer, the 7th, will cause some big problems. No matter how I seem to plan the design of the layer, it doesn't add up right. Using 1200 seems the best for now, but that is rather screwy to work with. That's the main thing I don't like about fractions and division that doesn't work out evenly - they cause problems like this. The 6th and 8th layers don't have this problem, however. Just when testing the 5th layer, I found a bug with the glide ability - you can't glide when exactly at 800 mph and there's a double-processing for some reason. I spent about an hour trying to figure it out, but couldn't come up with any possible cause. Woke up at 4:41 PM and went to bed at 7:25 AM.
May 9: Another dream recalled, but very vaguely recalled. Much of the day was spent on the forums, more than I have lately. I also spent quite some time on Gamestudio's new wiki system. This is about the only thing that describes the day. At first it was eating then taking a shower. I was about to deal with someone about a website, but wasn't feeling good. Then it was the forums. When cleaned out, I began processing the 6th layer of buildings. I was nearly done until I started getting involved with Gamestudio's wiki. From there, I spent quite a while on there until 4:00 AM when I began watching Assignment Discovery. I returned to the forums pondering the field of view for my 2D game. Woke up at 5:07 PM and went to bed at 7:48 AM.
May 10: Another dream recalled, but with few details. All 8 planned layers for the city have been finished. The only exception is being able to set the scaling and adding the method that'll allow a work around to the var's precision which causes many abnormal effects. I have the solution, but I need to script it. Much of the day was spent either working on the city or on the forums. I watched quite a bit of TV at the start then slipping in Assignment Discovery when it came - of which covered something I haven't seen yet on it: Deltas, swamp lands, wet lands, and how humans and storms have damaged the Louisiana coast. 34 days remain until that special day. Woke up at 7:38 PM and went to bed at 10:02 AM.
May 11: No dream recalled. First it was TV until 1:30. Then I began cleaning out the forums until the internet went down again. I continued watching TV from 3:00 AM to 5:00 AM. I tried to get back on the net but I still couldn't. From this, I implemented the new building movement system to keep the grid effects in check and avoid the accuracy problems of the var. I took a before and after screenshot. See news item #2 for details on these screenshots. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to do it. I tested it and it works properly. I then went to try testing to see if the scaling methods worked, but a problem arose - the old design of the menu system wouldn't allow for this. The only way I could was to restructure the entire scenery section of the menu. I first began making the textual displays part of it. I finished the mountains, hills, and city parts, but not the clouds and those past it. Just before I went to bed, I raked twigs and leaves under 3 trees. By the time I went to bed and spent an hour writing details on the day's events, the sound card hasn't arrived. Woke up at 9:42 PM and went to bed at 12:53 PM.
May 12: Another dream recalled, of moderate detail. A lot happened for today. First off, it was cleaning out the forums as usual. I then continued on with the remake of the menus finishing the bulk of the displayable information, but not the back end of the menu system. Since my sound card arrive, I began installing it. For details on the new sound card, X-Fi Platinum, see news item #3. Once installed, I soon began redoing the mountains with 3 or 4 to go. By then, I showered so I could meet the one I was going to do a website for. I got involved with setting up the main plan for someone's website. The plan I had in my mind almost since it was brought up was the main one used and the one wanting the website liked the overall plan. When this was over with, I began forming the main template. Just as I went to bed, the bugs in this template were fixed. Woke up at 10:57 PM and went to bed at 5:07 PM (�1 minute).
May 13: No dream recalled. So far, no cut offs (as from the previous sound card) have been experienced. The start of the day involved the usual - cleaning out the two main forums and checking my E-mail. I then began working on the mountains update I started yesterday. As soon as my dad woke up, it was getting my dad's computer up and running since he finally upgraded his motherboard and processor (he had an 800 MHz processor). That all went well except for one main thing: USB drivers. There didn't seem to be anything for Windows XP - always something for Windows 98 and Me, two operating systems that are highly outdated. I, after eating and running out of ideas, went to go get groceries. Once I returned home, it was putting stuff away, helping to fix a car (motion was odd and somewhat wobbly). Next it was picking up the sticks I raked up yesterday. Then it was readjusting the car again and doing test runs. I then returned to finishing up the mountains but got interrupted for dad's computer stuff. It was installing the backup I did for him. Once that was done, I went on to finish the mountains entirely, the furthest group. I've also been going heavy on Battle Zone as well (the battle music from Final Fantasy 9 - 64% true speed is the best, especially the last 2 measures where the compatibility spikes into the low 2000's). Woke up at 2:44 AM and went to bed at 5:33 PM.
May 14: Another dream recalled with 2/3 of a page in details. Just one thing describes 75% of the day - I worked on my 2D game. Since I was at it, I decided to provide the free edition limitations. From the moment I woke up, I did my usual - clean out the forums and checked my E-mail. From there, it was on with my 2D game until I got interrupted for about 30 minutes' housework. Along with occasional breaks, about 11 1/2 hours of the day was spent on my 2D game. The rest of the menu system outside of the scenery part, except for adding the free edition limitations for the scenery configuration, have been done. There's twice as much data for the scenery configuration compared to everything else put together. A small part of the back end of the menus was started, but that's it. As far as I know, only the back end of the menus remain. Testing follows then updating my website. Today was mother's day as well. I contacted Mrs. Lund as well. I still haven't gotten any cut outs like from the previous sound card I had. Given this, I doubt I'll be returning it. It's still too early to conclude. I have yet to try recording. Woke up at 4:31 AM and went to bed at 7:26 PM.
May 15: There's another dream! I wonder if I set my record for the most dreams recalled in the shortest time. It's seemingly 20 dreams in 25 days. Even more of the day was spent on my 2D game getting a serious amount of progress in the menu's back end. It's about 60% done. All that remains is from the clouds onward. The group mode scaling adjustments are the tough parts, but I have one main method for doing it. The error messages that display on the bottom left corner have been redone as well. I added 2 more menu features I left out, even optimized the back end of the menus. I'm just zipping along! I'm still going strong with Battle Zone. I haven't yet had the cut out effect as I had with the other sound card. It also seems that my 2D game can now be declared as 80% done. Although I worked on my 2D game a lot, I did spend some time on the forums. It also seems that keeping the cover off the computer's case seems to keep the CPU 12�C cooler. 61�C with the cover, 49�C without it. Only fixing the mountains, doing the hills and cars, and fixing those ten cloud layers remain! June 13, 2006 is right around the corner and my 2D game is nearly done. I wonder if this prediction I made nearly ten years ago will come true. Woke up at 6:01 AM and went to bed at 9:14 PM.
May 16: Menus finally done, but with one unexplained script error - a double definition error, even though it isn't defined twice, even with extensive searching. I was done by 4:38 PM. Since I didn't get any response for 20 minutes and that the news was on, I watched the news. The temperature outside got to 82�F causing my room, for most of the day, to be above 80, once getting to 85�F. I had to take out the fan as it was too high. I'm most comfortable from 75 to 77�F. After 6:15, I went out to rake up more tree litter then help with brake repair which went until about 8:20 PM. Since I still didn't have a worthy response by the time I went to bed, I'll likely end up waiting until tomorrow. I should be able to start testing tomorrow. If not, I'll likely start processing the next set of mountains in the scenery. Either that, or I'll start updating my site. Woke up at 7:48 AM and went to bed at 11:22 PM.
May 17: Yep, another dream, only this time a whole page is filled with details. First it was cleaning out the forums and checking my E-mail, the usual. However, when checking my E-mail, I noticed a suspicious item coming from Newegg costing $10 and was a gift item. I haven't been on Newegg for quite a while. I can't get anything until like Jun 9 or so as my debit card is maxed out (or too close to it to get anything with without going over the limit). That's just one of two unexplained mysteries for the day. I got my 2D game up and running again. Although I ran into several bugs, I've been fixing them. There's one bug related to layer visibility in group mode that I spent the last 90 minutes of the day trying to fix, but I haven't. That's the other mystery. I found the cause and despite trying over a dozen methods to fixing it, I haven't been able to. The bug is that, when choosing something invisible, anything visible earlier becomes invisible thus inverting it when all should be the same. The group mode scaling system works very well and all known bugs have been fixed. I've still got a ways to go yet. Fixing the visibility bug means fixing it for all other layers in the exact same way since the functions are nearly identical. Woke up at 10:42 AM and went to bed at 12:51 AM.
May 18: You guessed it, another dream. this time, it's well-recalled and about 70% in tact. It ended up in the "other" category as it doesn't fit any of the other ten categories at all. At long last my menus are done! I, however, have yet to test in free edition mode and test the tutorial and challenges, of which don't work properly yet due to the change in game mechanics several months ago. First is a website update. With now 11 dreams in 13 or 14 sleep episodes spread on 5 1/3 pages plus 13 days' worth of events on 6 1/3 pages, yeah, I've got a lotto add. I did find a solution to the visibility bug and it all now works as originally expected. Once my website is updated, I'll finish the mountains and do the hills. The plan for the hills are practically done except the rate their heights get shorter, of which I have yet to finalize. Fixing the mountains and doing the hills is enough to get me 90% done. If I can go to bed rather early tomorrow, hopefully, from sleeping too short of a time, I could go to some place nearly 200 miles away on Saturday. As is, I have less than a 5% chance under normal circumstances as I'd either get just 4 hours of sleep (probably not even that), or I'd sleep entirely through it missing my only chance. Something like this is ultra rare with with a super high compatibility above almost all of my songs, I need to make use of my long-known tricks to help with this. It was also scorching hot - 85�F (and even 92�F 100 miles to the west!). Woke up at 10:08 AM and went to bed at 1:06 AM.
May 19 & 20: No dream recalled. All of my thought of tricks failed. However, helped from sleeping an hour longer than expected, yet another one of my tricks, of which I've done several times, was staying awake for an extended period of time. To do this successfully, I had to keep active. Along with excitement building up and frequently getting up to check when my dad would wake up so I could take a shower where being cold after it also helps. Before leaving, I cleaned out the forums and processed my website, the main headlines (excluding the trip) and added one new dream just starting a second. Ten more dreams remain to be added. I then got into taking a shower when my dad woke up. I then began preparing what I wanted to take with me and then left. From this point on covering the rest of the trip, see news item #1 and my travel log and photo gallery for a very in-depth look at how the trip went. By the time I got home, I was awake for 29 hours straight, slightly more than half my record (my record is 53 hours straight set back in 2002). When I got home, I just unpacked, did my usual before-bed routine of taking my vitamins and fiber tabs, turning my MP3 player on, getting to the song and speed I want. Once in bed, I began writing my entire log just barely awake enough to finish partially falling asleep holding the pencil. Woke up at 11:29 AM on May 19 and went to bed at 4:27 PM on May 20 (29 hours).
May 21: Another dream recalled. Even though I slept for 17 1/2 hours, very close to 2/3 my record (25 hours is my record, set in 2002), the day was otherwise like any other. First it was eating, then it was mowing the grass with a new mower since my sister broke the old one that burned oil. Then, once I went back in, I went at cleaning out the forums then updating my website. I started adding the dreams finishing half of them. I then went to the grocery store. After coming back and putting stuff away, I recleaned the forums then continued my website update. All 12 dreams have been added. The blog entry about the trip and travel log have been added along with another dream FAQ item about multi-part dreams. I have yet to fully process each of 139 photos I took and take out the best ones. I also have the photo gallery itself and my blog's daily entries. Past that, I don't have anything else worth noting. My site should be updated tomorrow, from which I continue on with my 2D game. Woke up at 9:41 AM and went to bed at 2:03 AM.
May 22: No dream recalled this time. When I woke up, I found a big bee on the window inside the house (where it could actually fly off and sting me while sleeping). I spent the first 40 or so minutes trying to capture it. The bee was big - nearly 3/4 of an inch long and about a half of an inch wide. I did get stung by it, but it ended up going through thick cloth seriously weakening it. I didn't get any humps like you normally do - the cloth likely protected me from that. It didn't hurt much anyway, given the size of that bee. I did catch it and kept it in a bag. I released it outside clear until 5:30-something PM. Because it was injured from trying to catch it and me attacking it after it stung me, it couldn't fly and could barely manage 2 inches a second. The bee seemed to get healed. Besides that, much of the day was spent on the forums. All that's left now are just the daily entries. I'm still going heavy with Battle Zone, still only a third of the way to my recently-set record of 27 straight days. I still have no signs of letting up on it. Woke up at 12:21 PM and went to bed at 4:51 AM.
May 23: No dream recalled. I first cleaned out the forums than began finishing my website's update. I ate and watched the news. Past this, the day has two parts. The first part is finishing the website update. I finished it and checked for bugs. The second part is working on the second-furthest mountains for my 2D game and making the expected fix I was after. While doing this, I was on the forums. I'm otherwise using the same conditions as I did when I made the enhanced versions of the mountains. I have 1 1/2 mountains left (lighting on #23 and all of #24) then the enhanced anti-aliasing. I'm otherwise nearly done with the second-furthest mountains. It was a very hot day - about 90�F with moderate humidity (dew points in the 60's). A record high temperature was set. Also, the electrics also seem to be acting weird. Something gets plugged in, but not turned on makes the plug very warm. Very warm as in about 150�F (65�C). Like yesterday, I had a minor nosebleed. Woke up at 2:21 PM and went to bed at 6:39 AM.
May 25: Yay, another dream! First it was TV, clear until 9:00 PM. Then I went on to clean out the forums as I usually do. Once that was done, I began working on my 2D game. I finished the remake of the 4th layer of mountains and went onto doing the anti-aliasing. I did two mountains but was rapidly losing movtive as the high precision was causing me togo 1/3 as fast with 5 times as many mistakes often with confusion as well. I returned to the old 5-channel system I used previously and was back in business. Besides, not only do I have twice the motive, tripe the speed, it's already hard enough to see the outline, even without anti-aliasing. Having lost an hour and a half to the high-precision system, and going to bed a little earlier than expected, I only finished 14 of 24 mountains. Once anti-aliasing is done, finalization, testing, and the next layer is needed. Woke up at 5:05 PM and went to bed at 7:19 AM.
May 26: Yeehah! Another dream, and a fun one too. The start of the day was TV until 8:00 PM, after writing details on the dream. Then it was on to cleaning out the forums. I realized that, when checking my E-mail, I had 550-something spam messages. Just a week ago, it was only 180-something. Once I cleaned out the forums, I continued on with the mountains for my 2D game. I finished the last of the second-furthest mountains and tested them. I began processing the center range, layer 3. By the end of the day, I just finished them, except the anti-aliasing parts. I also was involved with the GIMPTalk forums to see if I can get a script to automate the process of the lighting. This would cut the time spent for each layer by half meaning, theoretically, I could have two mountain ranges done per day. If I can get the script, when I wake up, I could have the other two mountain ranges and the 8 layers of hills done on Jun 1 making my 2D game 90% complete. Do the cars and fix the yellow lines for 95% complete. The cars don't use the lighting system as do the hills and mountains. Past these two things, and deciding on the max heights of each layer of hills, there are the free edition limitations, updated tutorial, fixing those ten cloud layers, adding the save/load system, and updating the tutorial and challenges. I'm still going strong with Battle Zone. That's halfway to the record already. Thunderstorms came through as well and hindered my progress some. Woke up at 5:19 PM and went to bed at 8:26 AM.
May 27: Boohoo! No dream recalled. I finished half of the anti-aliasing for the third set of mountains. Still no worthy answers yet for the script. I now thought of yet another shortcut making getting that script even more important. With it, I could almost skip the (rather boring) anti-aliasing phase. It requires, however, a double-sized image on each dimension that'll later get scaled down. This means double the rows for the lighting which amplifies my need for the script. Since I got bored of the anti-aliasing for mountains layer 3, I began redoing the highway lines. I also though of a way to optimize the lines, but I get a weird side effect. I have some odd bugs to figure out. Still going at Battle Zone. I even thought of a new way to generate electricity, a rather strange way. Storms have also been causing problems. The heights for the hills have been finalized as well - where's that script at!? My new plan would mean going 60% faster than before and with 80% more motive (provided I have the script when I wake up), I could be done before June even starts! Woke up at 5:29 PM and went to bed at 9:00 AM.
May 28: There's another dream added to the database! Roadlines are done, except for scaling test. The script has finally been obtained as well. Severe thunderstorms along with it.... Oh, that doesn't belong! Much of the day was spent either on the forums or working on my 2D game. First it was the forums then TV. I returned to the forums then continued working on my 2D game. Rather than the mountains, I worked on the road lines. I then, upon testing, ran into an unexplained bug where the lines closest to the "camera" were the same size as the next two furthest and were dynamically resizing themselves. I spent two hours trying to figure out the cause. It so happened that anything beyong 3000-some pixels wide (even though the image itself is only 64 pixels) caused this. The fix was easy, but finding it was a major pain and took several hours. A severe thunderstorm interrupted me for 90 minutes. Once the storm cleared, I continued. Before the storm, the engine and compiler were crashing and I took several screenshots to explain the bug. After the storm, I returned to the forums to report the engine crash bug. The cause was all because I forgot the semicolon at the end of several lines (due to using some copy paste on the mistake). A simple two-second fix got me up and going again. Normally, the compiler would just show the errors rather than a complete crash. I contined along with the fix, posted updated screenshots of my 2D game at Gamestudio's Wiki and updated the document as well. I then went to bed. Next up is fixing the last of the center mountains and testing my wanted script. I'm also on the verge of setting another music-related record, one untouched for 11 years. For more details on this record, see news item #4 on the June 24, 2006 blog entry. For about 2 hours from 1:30 to 3:30 AM (about), I was trying to make an equalier-enhanced version using Audacity. The best part is from 220 to 300 Hz at true speed. I'm still going strong at it, even stronger now that I studied it. I'm now also putting the recently set record into focus again but it won't be until a ways into June before the record is set. I didn't like the EQ'ed version I made so I ended up abandoning it as it wasn't coming out right. I spent 100 minutes writing these details and had a nosebleed as well. I fell asleep for 90 minutes then woke up with another nosebleed. Yes, I know, I hate my nose. I had a hard time getting to sleep. Woke up at 8:30 PM and went to bed at 11:16 AM.
May 29: Rats! No dream recalled. Today was Memorial Day, a day like any other to me. I first watched TV and ate. Nothing was on TV initially at all. Then it was the forums and testing the script I got. I'm now just cruisin' along! I finished the third layer and otherwise finished the second-closest layer. GIMP crashed on me twice. I seem to be going three times faster. I've now got 6 days of the same song at the same speed and the same EQ settings. By the end of tomorrow, I should have all mountains done and a considerable amount of progress with the first of the hills, layer 8 in the current menus. Woke up at 10:41 PM and went to bed at 1:21 PM (�2 minutes).
May 30: Rats! No dream again. All mountains are done and 3 hills are done out of about 12. Part of the slow down came from enhancing the lighting gradient as the effect would be way too well-noticed. That took 90 minutes to do as I had to plan it all out. Now the gradient is ultra smooth, so smooth that, even without the fog and 16x zoom, it's very hard to detect. Another slow down was due to GIMP crashing again. It happens at random and when accessing the menus and goes into an otherwise infinite loop doing nothing. It happened 3 times and it caused me to lose my data (but I was saving three times as often as I used to which minimized the loss). I ended up with 5 instances of script-fu running because of these repeated crashes. I finally had it and reinstalled an older version of the GTK. It would install anything saying that a newer version was installed. Yeah, a less stable version. Then, I went to add/remove programs to uninstall it and tried to install it again. Next, it was saying of DLL files already existing and asked if I should rename them. I want to replace them, not rename them. The install otherwise went okay, but GIMP wouldn't start up any more. I then tried deleting the entire GTK folder, since it still remained, but couldn't delete the DLLs because they were somehow in use. To fix that, I restarted my computer and successfully deleted the entire GTK folder. I then ran the installation program again using my backup and it went well again without further problems and GIMP started again. I have yet to see if GIMP crashes. I'm still at the same song at the same speed and the same EQ settings. I've still got a little ways to go before setting this 11-year-old record, another 2 days. Hopefully, by the end of tomorrow, I could have the first two layers of hills done. I'm going furthest to closest. While in bed, I thought of a way I can truely enhance the realism of the space effect and how to work around the very annoying accuracy and range limits of the var. Woke up at 11:24 PM and went to bed at 1:08 PM.
May 31: Yay! Another dream! I first watched TV (and ate during the first part) until 5:00 AM. I then cleaned out the forums. I finished the last of the furthest of hills after 4 1/2 hours' time. Assignment Discovery covered coordinates. I thought they'd mention the 3D coordinate system and video games. At 20,000 to 30,000 feet, the mountains in my 2D game look spectacular! I did 10 hills of about 14 until a minor storm hit the area. I finished #11 when the storm cleared then went to bed. Still at the same song, same speed, and same EQ settings and just one day remains. It seems like my 11-year-old record is going to be broken at last. I should have the rest of layer 7 done, all of layer 6, and possibly even a start into layer 5. Layer 6 will likely have more hills (18?), but due to being shorter by pixel count, they'll be done faster. Overall, I'm going about 3 times faster. The lighting is being done about 30 times faster. Originally, I could barely manage 4 rows per minute with 3 as the typical average. The script allows for 98 rows per minute. I could simply go to the bathroom and I'd be doing the lighting 30 times faster. I could let the dogs out or give them a belly run and still do the lighting 30 times faster. I could throw numbers around in my mind and do the lighting 30 times faster. It's amazing! Before testing the hills, I had to spend an hour editting the script to add the hills into the scene. In an hour, I could have 3 1/2 hills done, enough to finish layer 7. In my old method, I'd be lucky to just get one hill done in an hour. The bulk of the time now is spent on the shape, since I don't have a way to automate that or have any shortcuts. While forming the shape, I'm also doing the anti-aliasing. When I wake up, it'll be June. It's 2006 and now finally June. Next it's waiting for June 13th so see if my prediction ten years ago will come true. Woke up at 12:55 AM and went to bed at 4:08 PM.

Go to another time:
Earlier than 2005: Earlier than Nov 2004 | Nov 2004 (and late Oct 2004) | Dec 2004

Year 2005: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2006: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2007: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2008: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2009: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2010: Yet to arrive....

The news entry headlines in bold are color-coded for a reason. They tell how big the event was for the headlines and how good my day was for the daily entries. From May 2006 onward, a slightly different system is used, of which has triple the precision. For dates prior to this that use color coding, from the white color, skipping two to red and so on is used. Here's what each color represents (for updates to before May of 2006):

	Extremely major event / Very good day
	Extremely major event / Very good day
	Major event / Good day


	Somewhat major event / Somewhat good day


	Normal event / Average day


	Somewhat minor event / Somewhat bad day


	Minor event / Bad day


	Extremely minor event / Very bad day
	Extremely minor event / Very bad day

Footnotes:
None