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What have you been up to in February of 2010?


If you want to understand the blog and how it's laid out, go here.

Jun 23, 2010



Jun 23, 2010: My first book, "The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters", has been released for sale and is now in book stores. Platform Masters has nearly all scenery graphics done... if only I can get myself to convert to SDL. I also got Disgaea Hour of Darkness - 850 hours logged in just 5 1/3 months! Various other games were played including Mega Man Legends, all the old NES Mega Man games (via Anniversary Collection), FF9, FF10, and FF12. Roof repairs completed though cleanup is still in the works. I saw HDTV and a laundromat for the first time. 53 new dreams have been added with a new recurring theme. An idea for the origins of spiral galaxies was thought of. There's a lot of other lesser important events over the unusually long 10 1/2-month span.

#1 My first book has been released for sale: "The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters" - I originally wrote it in June of 1999 and finished the initial handwritten version in August of 1999. I released my book for sale on September 23, 2009, a bit more than 10 years after its initial completion. Since then, 3 further rounds of editing have been done and, starting with round 9, the book was released in book stores though preparations started with round 8. The only book store in my home town (Barnes & Noble) doesn't stock it on shelves, but they could order it. I've always wanted to see my book on shelves, but apparently, it's not in my area (it's remote so I'd kind of expect that).

I was excited to see what the book actually looked like upon the initial release, revision 6, and I was quite impressed. It came out almost exactly as I thought it would. Why almost? The cover is the main thing. Oddly, the hues outside yellow are off by about 25°. Yellow is exactly on to the best of my knowledge, but cyan and magenta are off by 25°. The cyan, for example isn't the (0, 255, 255) RGB color as one might expect, it's more around (0, 255, 143). Magenta is only slightly better - instead of the expected (255, 0, 255), it's (159, 0, 255). This causes the various colors to be offset and hues from 300° to 60° get progressively more accurate, getting less accurate from 60° to 180°. This means that all hues from 180° to 300° are off by the full 25°. At least the brightening effect for print adjusting worked as expected though it causes the image you see on the Lulu site to be inaccurate and Lulu won't let me change it without changing the cover itself.

What's next? Three things are likely to happen. One of which is further editing - you'll likely see revision 10 coming out within this year. The second is the reduction in price from $19.95 to $17.95. Why is it $19.95 instead of the mentioned $12.95? In order for my book to get into retail stores, I had to allow for this. It seems that $19.95 is a bit much (even though I get roughly the same profit per sale if bought from book stores) so I'm considering reducing this to $17.95 to make it more manageable. A third, though questioned, is creating a banner ad or something for advertising. It's questioned primarily because I don't know how effective this is, its costs, the requirements, etc. If I do go about doing that, it'll be after I change the price to the lower value. Aside from this, I don't know what else is in store for this book.

You may be thinging, what about future books? I do have 2 concepts for future books, but it may be a long time before these are released, years even. One of which is a prequel to the book I've just released. This has the most completion, as far as plans go, but I've still got a long way to go with just the plans themselves. The other is something completely different and details about it are, unfortunately for the general public, classified.

#2 Disgaea Hour of Darkness: I was informed about the level capping at 9999 instead of 99 and someone doing damage into the billions. I actually didn't believe it even clear until 600ish hours into the game. I started out making small bits of story progress here and there, learning the basics. Then came Vyer's castle's final area. With "enemy boost x6" and "attacks+1" effects on two wizards nearby, I stood no chance against this area... for a long time, a very long time. I probably spent around 50 or hours trying to level up so I at least stood a chance. I have a video showing how things were when I reached level 28. I thought it was going to take years upon years to reach level 9999, of which didn't bother me much (after all, 870 years to max out the score in Platform Masters is more extreme). I had no idea what specialists were or what those odd white dots are next to the stat's value on an item were all about, or even what rarity was for. Once I got my own wizard (Freeze, who started as a blue mage (knowing Final Fantasy where enemies are often weak against ice, I thought the blue mage would be perfect)) and leveled her up some, I knew I stood a chance at that final area in Vyer's castle. It was tough, very tough, but I managed (it reminded me of the second battle on FFT, of which I initially struggled with). As I think back on it today, I wonder why I didn't think about moving those two wizards on the side off those dangerous geo panels. I just ended up using Freeze, who could strike up to 9 panels away, to clean up the enemies.

Then, the item world was introduced once I finally reached episode 3. Having leveled up a lot, I was used to getting a lot of "0" and "miss" popping out of Laharl. The same was the case in the item world. I began to level up items and gathering specialists. I initially had a hard time trying to figure out what they did. The ones for the stats were easy such as dietician for HP or teachers for INT - simple logic and elimination can resolve that. The ones for the elemental and status defense were a bit trickier, but still easy. I just equipped an item with these to see what effect it had when I viewed that character's status. There were still 8 I couldn't figure out - manager (for mana), statistician (for exp and thus levels), broker (for money), and the 5 for causing status effects such as witch doctor or alchemist. Comments on YouTube videos resolved that (the statisticians were earlier though).

With enemies starting to damage to Laharl, causing problems as it meant I had to drag out my healers (I was completely unaware of learning magic until about 200 or so hours into the game), I just focused on getting more "sentry" specialists, to raise defense and "physicians" to raise resistance so I'm back at taking 0 damage again. This was essential as, after a while, my 2 healers were far too weak to face the enemies I was starting to get into. I eventually got a legendary (rarity from 0 to 7) long spear and leveled that up as much as I could. Once enemies started to do damage again, I stopped and went after more sentries and physicians then resumed. With the long spear on Laharl fully leveled up, I was able to get much further into other items. Why a spear for Laharl instead of a sword? The 2-panel attack radius and the area of effect of the special skills of a spear were attractive. Guns have a greater range (4 panels which can go out to 6), but they can only get one target at a time which severely limits their usefulness. I was doing around 20,000 damage by then.

Then I discovered clone wars. No, this has nothing to do with the Star Wars series. As I got into higher level items, I soon encountered new enemies. One of which is what I call the "machine", the class where the talos, ravana, and argus are. Every time I defeated these, I always seemed to get a level up, even multiple level ups in one. While I was aware of the clone pyramid (I call geo symbols "pyramids" as it's what they look like) and its dangers, I didn't see much use in it and focused on busting it as quickly as I could (enemy boost x3 was higher priority though). Clones only gave 1/4 the exp they normally would, but, I thought, if my defense was high enough so I took 0 damage, and I threw lower level enemies into the machine to "super it up", as I often say, I figured that, if I could clone those machines at their rather high level, I could gain levels very quickly. By weaking the clone or initial enemy (without defeating it), I could help ensure a one-hit defeat every time which would further accelerate the leveling up. Little did I know, it also helped significantly with weapon mastery and it significantly built up my supply of HL. Since that day (January 6, 2010), the clone wars method has been my primary method for leveling up. After a while, I was starting to do around 50,000 damage.

Then I learned about the use of the Dark Assembly. I was only aware of character creation as it's main use - all I saw was the extortion of money (whatever that meant though I assumed it was the acquisition of extra HL). With clone wars, I never needed this. I thought "promotion exam" was a bunch of Q&A, things like "what did Flonne come to the Netherworld for" - comprehension questions, of which I have a very strong dislike toward (given my fifth grade year). I had no idea is was just a battle... against extremely weak enemies. I was already into the thousands for the level, thanks to clone wars. I was wondering why the shop didn't carry anything better than a witch's staff and the bulletproof vest for armor or why belts and shoes weren't present. I had no idea the Dark Assembly was for just that, but I didn't see these options until "promotion exam" was used. Things got better from that point onward. I also finally learned about the existence of magic-learning... roughly 200ish hours into the game (still on episode 3 too). I thought Laharl could never use magic and I thought Freeze was stuck with ice magic and the usual "braveheart" and "magic boost" such mages always come with. While I, on rare occasions (since I mostly soloed and rarely used special skills), occasionally had Laharl with spells listed that I couldn't explain nor reproduce at will, I mostly didn't bother with them. It wasn't until I learned about magic-learning from YouTube comments that I finally got spells for Laharl like omega heal or shield.

Transmigrations and the continuation of getting more sentries has helped me get into progressively better items. I soon encountered the dragon class that I first saw in episode 2. These enemies appeared when the resident level of an item reached about 300ish (that's without "stronger enemies" bills). They took several hits to defeat, 5 or more. Since I wasn't taking any damage from these rather powerful enemies, I had no problem with them taking 4 to 8 hits to defeat. I didn't have a better spear than the long spear as I couldn't find any of legendary status, and when I did find one, I couldn't get it as either it was too far down the bonuses list, or there were too few pyramids to get it. Once I finally got it, I really went for leveling it up. The enemies here were taking as many as 10 to even 15 hits (I had quite a few "stronger enemies" bills passed so the 30,000 damage I was doing wasn't much on the 250,000 HP the enemies had). I wasn't taking damage unless I got surrounded by more than 3 enemies (or gun users and the such come in), so the need for 15 hits didn't bother me much. I needed the magic-learning for the infernal spear so I could heal and use shield as needed.

With the infernal spear, I began seeing 6-figure damage, of which I thought was going to be "123456" instead of "123K". Now total damage into the millions was accessible. I still thought total damage into the billions was impossible. With 6-figure damage being done quite consistently, I wanted to see what a 7-figure popup looked like. I don't exactly recall the first time I saw a 7-figure popup, but I think it was through the aid of a special skill (the spear's "turbulance" most likely on a wind-weak enemy, as I used it a lot) while on an "atk+150%" type geo panel. It might have also been my wizard too. My wizard has since become the primary damage dealer. She was the first to be able to consistently deal 7-figure damage to anything. With that, I was focused on getting 8-figure total damage. It took a setup of throwing lots of enemies into a group and "atk+100%" and the like before I finally managed to get 8-figure total damage. The quest then went on to see what an 8-figure damage popup looked like. I knew this was going to be a while. I questioned as to whether or not it would look like "12345K" or "12M". It was indeed a long time before I finally saw it, via "omega heal", maxing out "magic boost" and an "atk+100%" pyramid. 8-figure damage was a ways away yet. Soon, I eventually got it with my wizard and with it, focused on getting teachers more than sentries. I focused on 9-figure total damage and, with "attacks+1" and "invincibility" grouped up closely, I could have my wizard finally reach 9-figure total damage. So far, 210 million is the most total damage I've ever done, of which I have a video for. Total damage into the billions, once thought impossible, actually now seems possible, but it's going to take a lot of maxed teachers before that happens. If I had "attacks+4", "invincibility", and "atk+50%" for the pyramids, only one color used with a high density of geo panels, I could very well get damage into the billions today, but a pyramid combination like that is exceedingly rare. I'm now on a quest to see what a 9-figure damage popup looks like and omega heal is likely going to be only way I'll see it any time soon. I'm guessing it'll be either "123456K, "123M", or, hopefully not, "99999K".

Nearly 206.5 million total damage in Disgaea 1


This screenshot (a still taken from the higher-quality archived version of one of my videos) shows the extreme total damage. The shinobi (Hector) is in the center of the screen and has just sent enemies and 3 pyramids into the Sun. Freeze (who does 5/6 of that total damage alone) is between the scout (the yellow-haired guy to the southwest) and majin (the fancy-looking, blue-haired guy to the southeast). Laharl is near the "520K" popup on a pyramid. I just had a rare "invincibility", "attacks+1" and "atk+50%" pyramid setup and took the opportunity to smash my previous record of, I think, 118 million total at the time. Freeze is the only character I have capable of doing 8-figure damage. 3 others with a 4th just about there, are capable of doing 7-figure damage.

I've always had trouble stealing in Disgaea - I either had 0% or 1% for the chance for the high-level enemies I was dealing with. It took a good 100 or so turns by the time I finally got a successful steal. My thief was far too weak to face any enemies beyond level 60ish. Weapon mastery was the primary problem. I resolved this by waiting until I had an "attacks+2" and "invincibility" pyramid setup. I then just endlessly attacked the invincibility pyramid. It took 12 1/2 attacks (slightly more than 4 turns) to get one point on weapon mastery. I needed this so I could get the Yoshitsuna. Although it was a sword, of which Laharl didn't have much in the way of mastery on, the case of endlessly attacking an "invincibility" pyramid made quick work of this. The sword's special skills were more limiting than the spear, except for dimension slash due to the tendency of enemies getting into lines after moving, useful for clone wars). Once I leveled up the Yoshitsuna, I got a hyperdrive upon defeating the item god 2 inside the Yoshitsuna. Even it was getting a lot of 0's and miss, but, unfortunately, it took 100 or so turns before I could steal another Yoshitsuna from the item god 2. I leveled up the hyperdrive, making use of my optimization trick, and got another via stealing it (and yes, another 100 or so turns). Once I equipped it, I was very impressed. No longer were those stubborn islands of any trouble (you either have to throw someone onto them, use a special skill that results in a movement (spear storm is the main one), or end your turn on a "warp" geo panel in order to get on these). The hyperdrive allowed me to go absolutely anywhere. I knew it was going to be the solution to the problem I had with Cave of Ordeals 5 - a zombie that was completely out of reach if you don't have 2 thieves (of which can throw 6 panels), a bug since you're essentially forced to use "quit" and lose all unsaved progress.

Around 600ish hours into the game, I maxed out the HL at 10 trillion. With each round of clone wars netting 2/3 of a trillion HL, it's no wonder why I got so much so quickly. To make clone wars more effective, I decided to get my own argus to level 9999 and have it get cloned. This accelerated leveling up very significantly. I once thought level 9999 was going to take years to reach. Theoretically, it's doable in about 100 minutes (minutes, not years), but it requires an exceedingly rare pyramid setup. I'd need "exp+200%" and 2 "clone" pyramids for this to work. The closest I've been to this is 4 clone by total good pyramids and 1 clone and 2 exp (for "exp+100%") for time. With the latter setup, I've calculated a 5 1/4-hour run to get from level 1 to 9999, not bad. This case is actually more common than even 2 clone and 1 exp, though not much more.

As of this update, I just defeated Baal, the game's ultimate boss, and, like I've been for a long time, I got nothing but 0's and "miss". Given the "damage into the millions" case on YouTube, I thought I was going to need a defense of something like 4 million. I figured I'd just go for raw HP instead. By about 800 hours into the game, I've finally got Laharl's final transmigration done and I really focused on HP and the usual defense. 7.6 million HP is just way out there but it would've been enough for 3 hits before I had to drag out my wizard for healing. I was surprised as to how weak Baal actually was - I was unaware of this "Uber Prinny Baal" enemy by then. I defeated Baal without ever seeing the Dinero Palace (Yep, still on episode 3).

So, what's next for Disgaea? Raw damage. The story itself is unattractive, even out to episode 5, the furthest I've been into it so I probably won't complete it until well over a thousand hours in.... Gathering teachers and leveling up that new "Super Robo Suit" item with rarity 6 only (I've got a 5 so I'll need to get 2 more). Why 6? Until about 750ish hours into the game, I was completely unaware of matching rarity, of which provides up to a 30% bonus on all stats. Freeze, my wizard, has 6 for everything. Why only 2 for Freeze? The hyperdrive is critical to me, much more so than just raw damage. It's easy enough to get 2 at rarity 6 - steal it (of which I no longer have problems with thanks to using clone wars to level up my thief) and if not good, quit and try again. Use an exit when you reach floor 99, save, then steal again. If the item isn't rarity 6 or doesn't have at least 11 specialists, I'd just try again. Why 11? The more, the better as I can further add more to the resulting "INT" stat of that equipment. Her hyperdrive has 3300ish for INT due to this and it started with 11. A legendary common sword starting with 13 specialists (the most possible) could actually have an attack rating of 4000 plus whatever normal level ups and the item generals, kings, and god provide as bonuses.

You're now probably wondering, what do I like about Disgaea? The biggest and really the only one is the near-lack of limits. It's what got me interested in the game in the first place. There are limits (after all, 64-bit integers only go out to a certain range), but instead of days or weeks to reach, it's several months. Only the game I'm making, Platform Masters, is more extreme than this where it takes centuries. I've only encountered the 10-trillion HL limit, of which was surprisningly easy to get (thanks to clone wars). I have yet to see the actual limits on damage and the such. The highest I've ever seen is 48503K, from omega heal with 23824K being the highest actual damage. Once I transmigrate my wizard to the max (this will be a few hundred more hours), and get several more maxed teachers, I'll eventually have consistent 8-figure damage from my wizard.

There are several disliked elements though. The first is that I can't disable effects, which makes me not tempted at all to use special skills outside those with short effects (ever wonder why I use mega star over tera star?). The second is the lack of a top-down view. It's often very difficult to see things and I frequently misjudge distances. I try to move to the dimension gate and it looks like the cursor is on it, but in fact, it's at a 1-panel diagonal from it. The fact you can only snap to angles of a 45° offset from edge-on also makes this problem worse. With the geo panels showing, it's also hard to see where I'm targeting a spell or what the orientation is due to near-zero contrast. There's also 35 known bugs and anomalies, among the buggiest games I've seen. The most feared one (class 7 severity) is when the game loads. An infinite loop is supposedly happening that's causing the music to play a 1-second loop of the same spot endlessly with "now loading" remaining constant. Most of the bugs aren't troublesome though. One of which is annoying that forces me to get rid of all enemies with bows immediately. The most annoying effect in the game, zielregen, is almost always used even if defense is extremely high. With a high enough defense, all enemies, except bow and ax users (ax users aren't as bad - they always use "graviton bomb" instead and with their one-panel attack range, it's much easier to keep distance from them so I can clear out bow users), stop using special skills on my characters, unless a weakling is being targeted. Mages, skulls, knights, and clerics are the exception to this, but they use things like "shield" (annoying sound effect), "magic boost", etc. on their own kind instead. If too many bow users are present spread out quite far apart, I often just end up skipping the floor instead of defeating the enemies as I'd normally do (unless facing very weak enemies as is the case when gathering specialists).

Despite the many dislikes, I've set a record for total play in a short period of time that makes the 3700 hours on the original Bubsy look easy to get. Within just 3 months, I racked up 626 hours on the game. Compare that to the roughly 12 years it took to get 3000 hours on Bubsy (16 years today for 3700). It's definitely a new record that blasts Bubsy out of the competition (like a runner running a marathon sneaking in a jet and using it to go 100 mph instead of 6). Yet, the streak continues onward to 850 hours within 5 1/3 months. That's equivalent to 209 hours per month (7 per day) for the 3-month span and 159 3/8 hours per month (5 1/3 per month) for the 5-1/3-month span. I first heard about Disgaea, I had no idea I was even going to go to these kinds of extremes. When I first played it, I thought I may only get 500ish hours in about a year. I was wrong and then some, totally underestimating it. I have a sneaking feeling that I'm likely going to end up returning to it again and passing the 1000 mark before the year ends....

What about Disgaea 2? I'm very likely to get it, but it won't be any time soon. I'm likely to return to working on Platform Masters again.

#3 Platform Masters - tons of progress and the need for SDL: The scenery for worlds 1 through 16 are completed in terms of the basics. Basics? It's what I want for them at the very least - extra details can and may likely still be added. What about worlds 17 and 18? I've got considerable progress on those too, but they're not completed as far as the basics go. They're mostly done though. Here's an assortment of some of the scenery - click on the image to view the full-size of 1024x768).



Screenshot #1: This is the latest simulation screenshot of what the game will look like as of the time I updated my blog. It's not actual game play as the game isn't playable yet. You've probably noticed that the onscreen data's text looks different and there's a new element present. Compared to the previous blog update, you've probably noticed that all data fields have an icon instead of only a few. Some of the icons also look slightly different as well. The original text was inconsistent with what the game uses otherwise, and inconsistencies count as bugs, typically class 1 on the 0 to 8 severity scale (this is near the bottom).



Screenshot #2: World 1, Jeremy's House, is where the game starts. This is just a simulated view, viewed from 11 blocks above the ground. The clouds would be present in the actual scene, but they're too complex for me to add in "The GIMP" as this is hundreds of layers alone. It's just a bunch of randomly colored houses with small and medium-sized hills in the more distant background. You can't see it as the hills are in the way and not enough height is present, but there's also the ocean visible as well.



Screenshot #3: World 13, Mount Sentusia is quite a ways into the game where things are quite advanced. This is also just a simulated view, viewed from 10 blocks above the lava's surface. The rim of the volcano and the red fade near the lava ake are my favorite parts about this world. This is my fourth-favorite world in terms of scenery. If you can get high enough to see over the rim of the volcano, you'll see big, tall mountains in the distance.



Screenshot #4: World 15, Nodera Ice Shelf, is slippery and the ice water below is dangerous to touch. This, too, is a simulated view, viewed from 20 blocks (640 CU) above the ocean's surface). I primarily love the closest ice burg and I also like the smaller ones in the distance. Why is it called "Nodera Ice Shelf"? It's the part at the very edge that rises above the ocean - that part is the ice shelf itself. Even if standing still, you'll see the ice burgs drifting along rather slowly, but you'll definitely see it. This is my third-favorite world in terms of scenery.

So, why isn't the game playable yet? I'm having a hard time getting myself to do any programming-related stuff. I think the case of fighting malloc has really had a negative effect on that. Although I've given up on that approach, I came up with a new approach that minimizes waste as much as possible. How it works is quite straight forward and obvious when explained. Let's say, in world 1, I have 3 scenery layers (there's actually a few dozen, but I'm simplifying it). Layer 0 (the furthest - programming starts with 0) is 512 KB, layer 1 is 128 KB, and layer 2 (the closest) is 192 KB. This order has to be kept for optimal drawing and ease of programming in that regard. What's different is the data. I would list these in order of their sizes. This means data 0 is assigned to layer 0 since layer 0 uses the biggest image. Data 1 is assigned to layer 2, since layer 2 has the second-biggest size. Data 2 is assigned to layer 1 as it has the smallest size. Now, let's say I add in world 2, of which has 128 KB for layer 0, 256 KB for layer 1, 64 KB for layer 2, and 384 KB for layer 3. Note that there are 4 layers instead of 3 (the actual world 2 uses dozens as well, but I'm only simplifying it). As before, the layer order must be the same, for drawing reasons. The data order is now different. The biggest in this group, layer 3 with 384 KB, uses data 0. Since 384 KB is less than or equal to the 512 KB size of the previous, the 512 KB size for the array is left alone as is. The next biggest is layer 1, with 256 KB. This size is bigger than the 192 KB size as the previous world had, so I resize the array to make it larger. Layer 0 has the third-biggest size, at 128 KB. The sizes match exactly so the array doesn't change. However, there's a fourth layer present, layer 2. For this case, I simply create another array. This is how the optimization system works. It's the best I can come up with as an alternative for malloc. You can probably see where this is going too. Now imagine that, instead of just 3 or 4 layers, doing this for several dozen. World 11 will need the most memory as far as I can tell. I also try to reuse as much of this data as possible, without complicating the programming. Things like springs, character image maps, platforms, and enemies, since they never change, are left alone, aside from the intial processing from loading.

You're probably wondering what is motivating me to work on and finish Platform Masters. There are more a dozen things actually (influence is a rough measure of how much of an effect it has - the elements are sorted from greatest to least):

The Major Influences on my Motivation for the Development of Platform Masters
World 11, classified
14%
The clouds
12%
World 9, Carnivalesta
11%
The story mechanics
10%
YouTube and Web site fans
8%
My childhood dream of making games
7%
The classified features
7%
Other scenery mechanics
7%
Game play mechanics
6%
The huge sales potential
5%
World 15, Nodera Ice Shelf
5%
MP3 player and desktop BG
4%
Bubsy
3%
Others
2%


Here's more in-depth details on how they're influencing my development, listed in the same order as the table.



One enhancement I've been considering, though questioned but easy and quick enough to implement, is having the ground use the same system the clouds use. Doing this for the ground, however, means I'll need another 800 to 1000 extra draws (compared to the current 50ish for the newest 3-channel system), another 8,176,422 bytes of additional memory (~7.798 MB - 12,976,128 for this system versus the 4,799,706 for the current system; calculated estimate), and 2 to even 20 MB added to the total download size (rough estimate), depending on what is actually needed and how good it compresses. With the numerous extra draws, SDL must be considerably faster than AlphaBlend (at least twice as fast) for this to work well (if it's, instead, just as fast, I do have a 30 fps option in the nearly 3 dozen configuration options to draw 30 times a second instead of 60, though movement will run at 960 fps and keyboard input will still run at 240 fps). Textures, especially water, dirt, and grass, the 3 most common ones, are reused a lot so that will help significantly in cutting down the download size. Since I've already got the textures done, this adjustment should actually be very quick. The ground, however, is more complex to do than the clouds but making this change shouldn't be too difficult if I set up function calls the right way (in which I have a concept thought of). Keveran Forest doesn't really use it that much, only for the small part that is the river. Having the ground use the same system as the clouds opens up new possibilities such as an uneven shoreline in world 1 (when you can see beyond the hills) instead of it always being a flat and abrupt change always at the same Z distance (scaling). In that same world, roads can be more easily added as well. Oddly-shaped lakes and winding rivers also become possible. Even objects casting accurate shadows becomes possible. The edges of the closest ice burg in Nodera Ice Shelf and the ice shelf itself could be much more accurately done. I thought the 2-channel doubling system for the ground was good until I came up with the new and improved 3-channel doubling system. By using the system the clouds use, it literally goes well into the hundreds of channels, 384 to be exact! Beyond this 384 value is useless as it provides next to nothing in the way of extra quality. If the fans want the ground to use the same behaviors as that of the clouds, then I'll add this feature in quite easily. I'm questioning myself whether or not to implement this feature. Even with the enhanced ground, I cannot provide hills this way. Either drop me an E-mail, send me a PM on YouTube, or comment on one of the videos of Platform Masters. The YouTube route is faster for a response than E-mail, much faster. Currently, memory usage is hovering around 58 MB for the worst case (this also includes the 2 buffers, using 4 1/2 MB alone). Adding this feature will push this over 64 MB (it may already be over as it is) which will cause the need for 128 to be the minimum requirement for the video card, beyond what I was hoping for (that's 64 MB). Then again, 128 MB video cards are so out of date today. There's, last I checked, 1 GB cards. I don't have every object's image saved so I need to estimate for those that are not yet saved and also account for any waste and future expansion.

With a +60 base motive for working on PM (which becomes +150 as there's a +2.5 affector for doing something), it's no wonder why I'm often going 12-hour days for a few weeks, making extreme progress. The first 4 elements alone make up nearly half of the total influence. With a motive that high, progress will keep coming. So why do I start and stop a lot? After time, I get bored of it. This is active neutralization. There's also the theory of choice - something else of higher motive takes over and I can't do it (Disgaea for example) and work on PM at the same time. This high motive has pushed back updating my site for a very long time - after I get bored of it, something else takes over.

What about the music? I've got FLStudio for that. There's only one thing I'm questioning on in regards to the music. There's a good 20 tracks with a duration per loop being around 2 minutes. Bubsy also inspires me here as well. What am I questioning on? Just a small point of detail - the sample rate. It's a near certainty that the music will be mono. I'm also fairly certain I'll be using 16-bit, with slight uncertainty toward 8-bit (I can't tell much of a difference between 16 and 8). If the game does get ported to console systems, I'll certainly use the higher 16-bit. The sample rate is questioned as to whether or not to use 32 KHz or 48 KHz (and not 44.1KHz). If PM does get ported to console systems, and if the system supports it, I may very well use 96 KHz instead, otherwise 48 KHz. My original base file will be 96 KHz and 16 bit to begin with. Will PM get ported to console systems like the PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii? I have absolutely no idea. I'm more certain of getting 4 of a kind with a roll of 4 dice than I am PM being ported to a console system. I wonder if the SDL conversion will improve the odds of this though.

One of my greatest dreams for PM is actually seeing it in physical stores (i.e. brick and mortar buildings) on shelves in front of my eyes. I've even got a whole 1 1/2 to 2 pages of text just describing how I intend on having the layout of the box, or at least, how I envision it. If there's a publisher with the kind of flexibility as Lulu, I'd love to hear about its existence. This could add another motive boost toward completing PM.

With 16 of the 18 worlds otherwise done and a fair amount done toward worlds 17 and 18, you might be wondering about what they all look like or how I feel their quality is. I initially wasn't focused on graphics, but I'm seemingly leaning more toward a greater focus on it, though it still must be relative fast and easy to do. So, here's a table, using the standard grades, for the quality and also how much still remains or extras I could add. For what I have with worlds 17 and 18, the grade is based on this.

My Feelings and Notes on the Worlds in Platform Masters
WorldWhat remains; possible other enhancementsGrade
World 1, Jeremy's HouseLots of story stuff, programming; small roadways (need enhanced ground for this)
World 2, RonnisProgramming; adding more sailboats, having sidewalks around the buildings (need enhanced ground for this)
World 3, classifiedLots of story stuff, programming; classified
World 4, Keveran DesertProgramming
World 5, Lake KeveranProgramming; making the shoreline of varying distances (need enhanced ground for this)
World 6, Keveran ForestMaking the river flow, adding in another set of hills at 128*
World 7, classifiedLots of story stuff, programming; improving the looks of foreground objects
World 8, Keveran ReefA little story stuff, programming; adding a few more islands
World 9, CarnivalestaTons of story stuff; adding more carnival rides; adding more food and barker stands and lights
World 10, classifiedSome story stuff, programming; adding decals to the dominant objects
World 11, classifiedSome story stuff, programming; adding lots of extra decals
World 12, classifiedProgramming; enhancing the object at a scaling of 8 (need enhanced ground for this), adding more decals
World 13, Mount SentusiaProgramming; making the lava bubbly (an animated add-on texture)
World 14, classifiedSome story stuff, programming; classified
World 15, Nodera Ice ShelfProgramming; enhancing the closest ice burg, adding more details beyond the ice shelf
World 16, classifiedProgramming; adding considerably more detail
World 17, classifiedSome story stuff, programming, finishing the scenery in full
World 18, classifiedTons of story stuff, programming, finishing the scenery in full


Table footnotes:
* "At 128" refers to the scaling, its distance (meaning 12,800 feet from the "camera"). Currently, there's a 64 (the smaller, shorter ones) and a 256 (the somewhat-bigger looking one that are much higher) with an odd gap between them. By adding a set of hills much like those at 64 and 256, the scene can be considerably enhanced. On top of that, it's also an inconsistency in a way too, given the overworld, so it's a class 0 bug too (0 instead of 1 because most wouldn't even think about it and it has no effect on game play at all).

The left side of the semicolon lists things I need to do. The right side lists some of extra things I could do. As you can tell, story stuff is one of the most dominating elements for what remains in terms of the scenery for each world. Programming also dominates the to-do list but this is relatively quick to do. You might be wondering, if I've stated that the world is completed, then why is there other scenery enhancements still left? I completed them to the minimums I wanted. Extra details can be added beyond this at any time I feel like it. I just need the bare minimums to begin with to at least make the world somewhat worthy. Some of the enhancements require the enhanced ground, as covered in the list above for the "the clouds" section. Outside the worlds' scenery, there's still plenty of graphical work left to do such as the enemies, their projectiles, bosses, and an assortment of other things.

So, what's this about SDL and DirectX? Currently, my AlphaBlend system is a bit limiting and slow. SDL and DirectX are likely to be faster than AlphaBlend, much faster. I was going to go with DirectX, but once I found out that 2D is complicated and limited after DX7, I rejected that idea. SDL supposedly has easier-to-work-with 2D support. At first, I rejected SDL due to the licensing terms for commercial use. One aspect in the terms bothered me - if I don't link dynamically (of which I had no idea how to do), I'd need to provide the entire source code for SDL, which would easily add another estimated 30 MB to the download, a bit ridiculous. Now that the dynamic linking issue is gone, SDL is now going to be the library of choice. Whether or not console systems (like the PS2, Xbox 360, etc.) can work with it, I don't know.

Why even go with SDL or DirectX in the first place? For full screen and vsync primarily. 1024x768 is a widely-supported resolution and pretty much any computer can handle it, except maybe those from the 1980's or early 1990's, but those systems don't have enough memory and are not powerful enough for running PM anyway. I'd love to see what PM looks like in full screen. I can only approximate it with still images magnified 200%, but I can't see the motion. 200%? I run at 1920x1440 and my game runs at 1024x768. A screenshot of 1024x768 magnified 200% makes it 2048x1536 which is very close to my display resolution, though slightly over.

Trouble is there are two problems now. The first is that I'm having a very hard time getting myself to make the conversion... or any programming stuff. Knowledge isn't the problem either. While I know how to program pretty much every aspect of the game, from the story mechanics (easy) and collision detection (medium-hard), to the overworld (eary) and menus (easy but time-consuming but using my own menu design instead of Windows' more confusing one), it's just simply getting myself to do it. Although it's mostly a matter of setting SDL up and replacing all those AlphaBlend calls (the latter should be quite fast and easy), it's the setting up that seems to be keeping me away.

I also think that the case of fighting malloc has also had a strong negative effect - 3 hours to convert just to find it doesn't work, then 3 more hours to revert and repeat this again for a second attempt. All that endless copy/paste - what a nightmare that was! There are also other adjustments I'll need, such as the keyboard function replacements, the timing mechanism, and the buffering. The mouse is not used at all, aside from closing the window in windowed mode (that little X in the corner sure is handy, isn't it?).

I do, however, have several motive boosters for making the conversion to SDL. I want to see other worlds in their full glory as well, especially world 11. I also want to play the game and see what that is like. I got Carnivalesta added as it's easy enough to add the collision detection and basic movement, and it's also gorgeous which also has a motive boost. World 11, though more motivating to work with, is just considerably more complicated to work with for testing. Originally, I had Keveran Forest, but the lack of solid ground makes it tricky to work with.

An assortment of other changes also occurred during all that time. I went from 15 worlds to 18. I also went from 21 levels per world to just 16. The only change in this aspect is the major reduction in the number of optional jumbo and supersize levels. The story has been rewritten to it's current version and this version is the best by far though there's still room for some improvement. The list of the game's options has been added and the details describing each and every world have been added as well, and in extreme detail. The overworld has been essentially completed though I'm considering using a 4096x2048 size instead of the current 2048x1024. This is more of a "bonus" instead of anything else, though figuring out where I could get the memory for this would be another puzzle. It's certainly doable with what I have right now but as big as the overworld is, I really don't see much in the way for room for improvement. New objects like a TNT barrel (don't bop or attack these!) and spikes have been finished. One of the big improvements is with the ground. Just look how realistic that grass looks (look at world 1)! The water's most distant part (beyond the waves) is also amazingly realistic, even matching what I see in some photos of beach resorts. I thought TSO's grass for the area in Urusu Valley was good. It's pretty cheap compared to PM's grass, and then some. I was stunned as to how realistic it appeared. The water wasn't as extreme, but it's also very impressive. Now, if the ground used the design of the clouds.... For further details on the updates and new enhancements, check the description document in category 9.

The entire document describing the game has been updated as well. Some areas were highly out of date so I mostly rewrote those. The screenshot showing Keveran Forest and the game in action has also been updated. You may notice a few new additions as well.

#4 Final Fantasy 12, again (but with a twist): Level 99 within 100 hours before first getting Penelo in the party or having access to gambits. Seem out of reach? It's not and I've done with a video to prove it back in early October of 2009. Everyone starts on level 99 (4 of which with, get this, 99,999,999 exp). I posted a bunch of videos showing what boss fights are like at level 99. Sure there's virtually no challenge to them, but I strongly enjoy the thrill of the extreme speed. Have you had trouble with the demon walls? I fell the stronger of the two in just 2 hits, thanks to a pair of critical hits. It took 10 times longer to run all the way to the boss than it took to defeat it, if not more. I basically played a full game, defeating Yiazmut, not in 10 hours as I had the first time, but 5.

Then, I played a second time from the beginning for one thing - just to see how fast and early I can get level 99. This occurred in early November. It turns out that I can get it in under 50 hours before Basch joins the party, immediately after the Nalbina Dungeons event. What's more, I have a video explaining exactly how to do it. 50 hours? Well, with greater risks and things, getting it by 40 hours seems feasible. The only downside to the 50-hour method, as I call it, is that only 4 characters start at level 99 instead of all 6, but 4 is more than enough for nearly everything outside Yiazmut.

I also got the biggest damage popup I ever saw in any Final Fantasy game - about 56,000. It was through quickenings, of which I never used on my first play. I had thoughts of playing again to test something. What if I only get the level 1 quickening for everyone (leaving the other 12 quickening spaces untouched) and get espers that require more than one mist charge? I figure that, if this does provide more than one mist charge, and with only one quickening level available, long quickening chains of 30+ (via 2 characters) could be possible opening up 6-figure damage possibilities.

One other thing I'm considering is using the 100-hour method and seeing just how much HP and MP I can get overall. I have yet to see if it's possible to get over 999 MP like you can get over 9999 HP (mostly via bubble). The trick for this is actually quite simple. Save just before leveling up then level up and note how much HP and MP you get. Save to a different file, quit the game, reload the previous save and try again. If you get something better, overwrite your old save file and repeat until perfected. If worse, don't save and simply reload. Write the new HP and MP value down as you get them, correcting as needed, and take note of the differences between the previous level and the next. With this, I could probably have Vaan with close to 7000 HP and 350 MP base at level 99 (with all licenses and without armor). This would be a tedious process, but it only has to be done once.

#5 Final Fantasy Tactics - stat maxing and a guide on GameFAQs: Wanting to test something, I ended up returning to playing FFT during September of 2009. This was before I first played Disgaea. What did I want to test? I wanted to see what happened if I, say, downleveled as a bard a bit (to like 60 or something) then upleveled as, say, a monk or ninja. I had Ramza with 575 HP at the time. I tried it out and I saw that Ramza ended with 590 HP with the exact same equipment and job. I went further and he eventually had HP into the 600's, then 700's. I thought I was going to need to make story progress to get the game's best equipment to get the most HP possible. Boy was I wrong! Even without any equipment, my Ramza today has 999 HP, 999 MP (who'd ever thought that was possible), 50 speed (this is just crazy and with auto haste from a certain knight's sword, even crazier), 99 physical attack (always doing 999 damage), and just 11 magic attack instead of 15. I'd have never thought something like this was possible without the use of a Gameshark and the related, but I didn't use any Gameshark. I don't even have one for the PS1. This makes equipment pretty much useless outside elemental and status defense.

At first, things went really slow. Each cycle of downleveling to 1 and upleveling to 99 took about 7 hours or so. I often got 1 1/2 full cycles worth every day, which wasn't much. I also had no idea which job classes were better for stat-raising. I experimented around with this... a lot. I eventually found faster and faster ways for doing this. Today, a full cycle is about 80 minutes (the guide states 100 - I've left out the warp speed method which is even faster), blazing fast compared to what I was doing. This is via what I call the "rocket speed method". Previously, I thought 10 levels in 10 minutes was fast. Try 68 levels in that same time period, my new record. It seems that 70 levels in 10 minutes is possible as well. This is the fastest leveling up I've ever seen in any Final Fantasy game. FF6 is the next closest contender where I can go from level 30 to 99 in only 80 minutes. I can go from 1 to 99 in FFT in just 20 minutes, 4 times faster. Only Disgaea has the fastest leveling up where clone wars offers 2 or more level ups in one and I defeat numerous enemies in 10 minutes - from 1 to 9999 in 5 1/4 hours at the best I've been able to encounter.

What's more is that I actually wrote a guide for stat-maxing for GameFAQs, my first published guide posted there.

#6 Final Fantasy 9 - finally completed: Years ago, I played FF9 and got to the point where I got Quina and was supposed to go to the Outer Continent. I've been wanting to play it again for years so I can try to figure out what I was supposed to do but I had a major problem - where was it? FF9 has (and still is) been missing since about 2004 or 2005. So, then, if I haven't found it, how did I play it? Ebay works wonders for lost games and systems (as was the case for the SNES as well which went missing at about the same time FF9 did). Throughout the bulk of August of 2009, I played FF9, racking up about 140ish hours on it.

FF9 went well though with considerable differences. There were many times in which I was soloing with Zidane. Why solo? It focuses all of the exp on one character. So, if Zidane can't heal, then how did I keep his HP up? Gems. By keeping a high count of gems, stealing them, restoring HP was easy. But, the game won't allow you to leave a town without the others. True in some cases, false in others. Make use of the cases where it's false. When you reach Lindblum (what a boring one with horrible music - it took 8 hours to figure out what I was supposed to do), you can have Zidane fight the various enemies outside the town alone. I was level 22 by the time I did the Festival of the Hunt event, getting 203 points, and I was able to one-hit pretty much anything except that one big beast. Mandragora was another such case - their "chest nut" skill that they used very frequently was causing trouble... until I figured out how it works. Another case is, I think, the Black Mage Village. I was fighting enemies that gave 4000 exp each battle or something (a mushroom and some strange owl-like thing).

Then, during disk 3, I got Zidane's thievery skill. I was always doing max damage every time. I've been told it's based on the amount of stealing you do. After all, those gems, potions, ethers, etc. I was after, mostly gems and potions, were essential for survival for the soloing I often and frequently did. I also made use of an enemy called "grand dragon" that I never saw in my previous play. Now that I'm aware of its existance and the amazing amount of exp it gives, I could very well have level 99 early on disk 2 and I'm tempted to play again just to do that very thing. Why not disk 1? I can't get the must-haves until I get to visit Treno for the auction. That doesn't happen until fairly early in disk 2. Most state of using Quina for this, but I have a way of doing it that doesn't require Quina at all meaning just 3 characters. The reflect ring's "auto-reflect" ability (via Treno's auction, which is where the madragoras come in - I get new equipment so I went out into the forest to fight mandragoras until all abilities were learned), antibody, and tons of phoenix downs are all you really need. Also, make the most out of ATB's fundamental design weakness. When ATB is full, it won't deplete until all actions are executed which pretty much makes battles turn-based. Grand dragon is fast, but this weakness in ATB, together with wait mode, allows for grand dragon to be quite manageable with only 3 characters. I could probably even defeat it at level 8, but getting all the needed abilities beforehand is the tough part. Level 99 early on disk 2 in reasonable time is entirely doable. Of course, it's possible via the evil forest, it's not doable in reasonable time - care to fight endlessly for months to get the 6.7 million total exp needed? I'm guessing 60 hours.

#7 Roof repairs completed: You may recall from the previous blog entry that the roof on my house was getting replaced, the shingles and some boarding in particular. The repairs are now done, but it took clear into 2010 for the old shingles to get cleaned up and even at the time this was posted, they're still not all cleaned up. Nearly all of them, about 98% of them, are cleaned up, however. There are an assortment of odd left overs here and there.

#8 Washing machine died - had to use laundromat: On March 7, 2010, the washing machine died - it wouldn't start. This meant I was unable to wash my clothes at home.... I had to use a laundromat, the first time I've ever been in one, of which occurred the day after. All those coin-operated washing machines of varying sizes, and gigantic driers 5 times bigger than I'm used to seeing, also coin-operated. I saw a laundromat on Forensic Files once (or, at least, I think that was one though I don't recall).

While this isn't entirely unusual, what is is the fact we had to wait 4 weeks for the replacement (into early April) to get shipped because you couldn't just buy them out of the store for some strange reason, you had to order one. It's this 3-week wait that caused me (and others) to have to use a laundromat.

#9 For the longest time ever - Desert Zone: "The Bumpin' Desert", "The Rockin' Desert" - they're just some of the nicknames I've given to Desert Zone (the latter is the most recent, 3 months old). What's so special about it aside from the fact it has the second most plays of all, a half million? For the longest time ever, I've had Desert Zone stuck in my head. Starting around August or September of 2009 clear until I updated my site, I've had Desert Zone playing in my head and I can't seem to get rid of it! Most of the thoughts involve part 1 of the song, the higher-pitched cheerful-sounding part that loops twice in the very-strongly-liked Genesis version and only once in the very-strongly-disliked SNES version. It plays immediately after the intro.

#10 Christmas 2009 - much better: It's June and I'm posting an article about Christmas. It's one of the consequences when a blog update doesn't happen in 10 1/2 months. What did I want? I wanted 2 things in particular: Disgaea 2 (I got Disgaea 1 instead), and FL Studio (of which I didn't get as my parents couldn't find it in stores (and it's no wonder - it's online-only that I'm aware of)). Why FL Studio? It's for my game design stuff. Fortunately, I did get it... for my birthday 16 days later. I only got the money for it, but it was clear until May that I finally got it. I got the Fruity Edition since I needed the piano roll, something I was familiar with back in 2002 or so when I used DirectMusic Producer. I'll be using it for creating the music and sound effects for Platform Masters. The sound effects are likely to be kind of cheap in quality, but the music is a different story. At least PM comes with an option to reduce the volume of sound effects if you don't like them, one of dozens of options.

I also got a Wii game, Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Being a fighting game, I quickly rejected it without hesitation. Being a Wii game, that also had a considerable negative effect, but only 1/3 as much.

Another game I got, for the PS2, is Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, a game still left in its wrappers unopened a whole 5 1/2 months later. Disgaea and PM have easily towered over any motive for playing it. After my update, PM is likely to follow.

I also got a new winter coat, a thick black one. It has helped considerably with boosting my resistance to the freezing cold of winter. I got 3 new shirts and 2 board games (Cir Kis and aggravation).

#11 Final Fantasy 2 - max stats early video: Right after the previous site update, I played FF2 and recorded a video on how to get end-of-game stats with virtually no story progress. Yep, having 9999 HP and 999 MP with Mindu still in the party in just 40 hours on the game clock (if not even sooner) is entirely doable. I also discovered a way to make HP and MP faster and easier to raise, with a video of that posted as well.

#12 Solved: XP freezing at startup - some service caused it: It was causing all sorts of problems and it happened very randomly. What you may ask? When you start up Windows XP, after booting your computer (or restarting it), you'll see the usual XP startup screen with the Windows XP logo and a bar below with 3 marks of a blue color and copyright notices at the bottom. What's wrong with this screen? Randomly, after the blue bar makes 2 1/2 full cycles of going left to right, the blue bar stops. Normally, the blue bar does stop and I expect that to happen, but stopping for more than 5 seconds, let alone 5 minutes without any hard disk activity at all, is not normal. HWW didn't help so I had to fiddle around with safe mode to try and resolve this on my own. System restore worked though it often took going back several days or even weeks to resolve. Then, a time came along where even going back a half of a year for system restore didn't work and I was completely unable to use my computer. I was on the verge of wiping out my system (that is, a format and reinstall of everything, with file backups (of which I could still do) preceding this) but it wasn't until I made calls around town to various computer stores to find the solution - a service (unknown) was causing it. I was told to try disabling all services except the Microsoft ones. Since then, I've no longer experienced this trouble. Now, if only I knew what service it was that was causing it.... Trouble is, I had to uninstall and reinstall my antivirus, firewall, and a few other such essential problems.

#13 A Mega Man frenzy: It all started with thoughts of the lake boss in Mega Man Legends, the giant frog-like thing. I struggled a lot with that boss when I first played the game, giving up after roughly 10 tries. I rented the game. I then looked up details on Mega Man in general on Wikipedia and this got me wanting to get the game off Ebay. I was also interested in the name "Cossack". He's present in Mega Man 4, a game I originally played back in 1992 or something, through renting. I also played MM3 around that same time. I was never able to complete these games because of one thing - I was unaware of the existence of special items like "Rush Jet" and the such. In MM4, I was unaware of charged shots, of which is one thing I could've really used. I was well aware of the easy extra lives trick though. In MM3, I've only once or twice gotten those 4 question mark items that replaces Gemini Man but uses his level theme. In MM4, I've only once reached Cossack's mansion, but got stuck. I also recalled this one area in water surrounded by lots of spikes. I didn't remember it well though I think it was on MM3. I first wanted to play MML.

When I got the game, bought from Ebay, the disk I got was scratched so it was difficult to make out the story as the audio kept getting muted about 7 or 8 times a second. Still, I was able to see some weak points in the design of the game that I could exploit. One of which is maxing out the energy canteen before the lake boss, thinking this would give me an edge. It took a very long time to max out the energy canteen, but as I did, I figured out ways to accumulate Zenny very quickly. After some story progress, I eventually needed to get into the Cardon Ruins, but the scratched disk meant 30+ minutes of endless loading preventing me from continuing (and also losing all unsaved progress with it). I had no choice but to get another disk. As I was focused on maxing out the energy canteen, I kept thinking of the name "Cossack", from MM4. It was almost driving me nuts!

With MML out, I got Mega Man Anniversary Collection so I could also see the other MM games I've never seen such as MM1 (disliked), MM2 (not bad), MM3 (previously played), MM4 (previously played and surprisingly easy), MM5 (somewhat disliked), MM6 (somewhat liked), MM7 (unfinished and stuck, but somewhat liked), and MM8 (unfinished and stuck and considerably disliked). It was only recently did I ever know about the existance of Wily, Roll, or Proto Man in the older games (I was only aware of Roll in MML beforehand but only that one). My favorite part is when you view the fortress or mansion and you have to get to a star or skull through a series of dots where each dot is a complete level. The Mega Man series seems to focus more on bosses than anything else, which is very unique. Every small level has a tough boss at the end. Platform Masters has about the same number of bosses (18, one at the end of each world), but boss fights aren't the emphasis.

When I got the new disk, I started a new game and made use of even faster methods for accumulating Zenny. I maxed out the energy canteen even faster than before. I was also unaware of equipping things like the Kevlar Vest Omega to cut damage down, or the helmet. When I got to the lake boss, I found it quite easy actually. I think the problem last time was the choosing of "fight" instead of "retreat". By using "retreat", the boat's health is full again, of which I never knew. I also used new techniques as well. After a while, I eventually finished MML, only having trouble with the final boss. In my second play, I got the homing missile and maxed it out. When I did, I knew it was going to be the way to go. I especially loved the scenery in the subcities - the starry sky was beautiful. I never saw those until only recently. The final boss was a bit tricky as I needed to use about 3/4 of the energy canteen on my first play, but only 1/5 of it on my second. I started hard mode, in which enemies take twice as many hits to defeat, but I got bored of it and that ended my Mega Man frenzy.

#14 My first experience with HDTV: Okay, it's been around my area for a long time, close to 5 years by now. On November 28, 2009, a new TV was installed that is fully HD. It was the first time I ever got to see HDTV and also determine whether or not my simulations through mathematics were correct - they were. Trouble is, due to the TV being blocked by mirrors, I'm unable to see the TV outside a big 75° angle. Thus, I get a highly distorted view so I can't make things out that well.

Simulations through mathematics? You're probably wondering how this is possible or how to do it. Standard TV is 720x480 (as displayed, given TV tuners). HDTV gets to something like 1920x1080. A simple division tells me that I could squeeze 2 1/4 pixels into just one. Of course, the aspect ratios aren't the same so this needs to be accounted for as well. SDTV is 3:2, though it's often cropped to a 4:3 size (640x480). 4:3 and 16:9 are not the same. Making use of my shortcuts and tricks with fractions, I convert to 16:12 and 16:9 for a common horizontal set, 12:9 and 16:9 for a common vertical set (the latter is more recommended). Oddly, each set you use has a different result. It doesn't matter which set you use - they both have the same 4:3 ratio for the value that's offset. Assuming the vertical is untouched, this makes the horizontal vary. 1920 and 720 give me an offset of 2 2/3. With the differing aspect ratios considered, it gets stretched meaning fewer pixels per base, in a 4:3 ratio. This gives exactly 2. 2 by 2 1/4 does seem a bit odd, but, by scaling images on my monitor to approximate this, I can get a sense as to the difference between HD and SD TV. Take my 1024x768 screenshots of Platform Masters. Assume this is HD. Given the scaling ratios, I'd need to scale this image down to 512x341 1/3. Yes, a fraction. There's 2 ways around this - round it to the nearest integer or resize the screenshot without scaling it to 1024x774 (and scaling it to 512x344 instead). Regardless of the method, scale the image back to the original 1024x768 size (1024x774 then cropping as needed if you used that route) then look at the original and this simulation side by side. You can see quite a considerable difference and this is how I've simulated how HDTV would look like compared to SDTV. Using a smaller example (512x384), compare these two images and you'll see this without needing to perform all this math yourself:





The top one is the original HDTV basis. The bottom one is the SDTV comparision simulation. The grass loses a lot of its rich detail in SDTV. Now imagine that I'm going from the SDTV scene to the HDTV scene - this is how I've simulated what HDTV would look like. Of course, you could do this with any resolution comparison such as the 720p. Oddly, if I start with the horizontal span instead of the vertical, I get 2 2/3 on the horizontal and 3 on the vertical. I'm not sure where this inconsistency comes from, however, but they both have a 9:8 offset from each other. I wonder when a 1440p will come out, after a 2560x1440 resolution (also 16:9).

#15 Found: Christmas gifts from around 1995: Yes, you're reading that year correctly, 1995. Christmas gifts I was supposed to get from around 1995... in late September of 2009. Something seems odd here, right? Well, it actually happened. Long ago, during that time, Christmas as you'd expect, I was to get more games, but mom (70% certain it was mom) told me that she couldn't find them. Who'd have ever thought 13 2/3 years would pass by the time I got them. In all that time, I went from not knowing computers at all, let alone any programming, to working on a real video game called Platform Masters with parallax scrolling that exceeds even the PS1 days. I never heard of the Internet back then and now I run my own site, and have been for 7.8 years now. My goodness things have changed from the time I was supposed to get them to the time I actually got them... and I was the one that found them stashed in a box in a room left untouched since 1999.... Yep, RadioShack receipts from 1999 and dates on letters and things with the "19" part of the year already filled in by typing with the rest filled in with handwriting.

#16 Some progress with TSO: Urusu Valley is about the only area with any considerable progress during all this time. What happened to TSO? It's stalled due to a speed problem. Speed problem? With the current design plans, even with the E8500 processor and GeForce 7600 GT video card, you're likely only going to get 15 fps or something, due primarily to the foreground landscape. However, on June 10, 2010, a radical fix came to mind that will allow for the original design to be nearly kept as is and still work on a rather old Pentium 4 system. I have no idea how much faster SDL is than AlphaBlend, but ignoring that, I have a way to get the draw count down to only around 4000.

You might recall the vertex-based system, right? Well, I had a problem with it, though I don't recall what the problem was. For me to get what was originally planned, it seems that I must use a considerably bigger texture size and cannot use overhanging cliffs. Instead of stepping by 5°, I thought of the slopes stepping by 1° for the gentler slopes, 2.5° degrees for medium-steep slopes and 5° for the extreme steepest. Trouble is, for, say, a 45° slope, I'll need a texture that's 512x512 pixels plus 512x32 or something to get smooth blending effects (or either you'll see odd gaps or I'll need considerably more draws). The problem with the vertex-based system is fractions. They'll cause odd alignments and other strange things... until I thought of a simple and ingenious solution, thought of on June 10, 2010 over a year after initially thinking of the idea. For the 1° slope, I can just have 64 pixels going horizontally for every 1 vertical (this is 0.895°). This is too flat so instead, I'm thinking of using slopes that snap to some power of 2 on the horizontal, likely 32. 32 horizontal and 1 vertical means 1.79°, which is still fine enough for most things. The foreground part, at 0.25 scaling (the character is at 0.375), is not the problem, it's the furthest edge of the path. Why isn't the foreground part a problem? The more distant layers on the pathway obscure this. There's nothing where the furthest zone is, at 0.5, so extra care must be taken. With the exact 2:1 ratio, the point where the foreground meets up with an exact multiple of 2 pixels for height (you won't see jumps of 2 pixels), I can get the effect without fractions causing problems. What effect will fractions cause? Picture a row of pixels spanning 32 pixels. Place another row on top that's 24 pixels and another that's 16. Now, throw in a row that's 12 then 4. That's what happens when fractions come in - it looks very strange. This is where the powers of 2 come in. With the gentlest slope, the 32 horizontal 1 vertical slope, I'd need to base all positions on the foreground part on multiples of 64 so the height will always be 2. If I used the 8 horizontal 1 vertical, I'd need to snap to multiples of 16 for the horizontal instead. If I do it right, I should be able to get a 33-channel foreground landscape system using as few as 5 draws per channel plus another 5 for the siding for a total of 170 draws in all. Of course, not everything is going to be 512 pixels wide for each slope change, so it'll probably be more around 30 draws per channel or 990 draws for the whole landscape.

Another change that I could do, if SDL isn't much faster, is cut the maximum resolution down... a lot. 1440x900 and 1280x960 would be more effective upper limits. It's mostly the horizontal span that causes all the draws for the foreground landscape. Using 1440 instead of 2048 makes it 4 draws per channel at the fewest for 136 draws for all 33 channels and the front. Since it doesn't cost extra memory, I could have it so that even 17 or an extreme 129 channels can be used instead of 33. The ground and clouds, with 33, will still use more draws for each and in this case, it's the vertical span that causes a high draw count. With techniques and tricks developed from Platform Masters, I can incorporate a lot of this into TSO. Toning down the heavy focus on graphics would also help a lot. Memory usage would have to go beyond 64 MB for this all to work out right, probably even beyond 128 MB. Of course, if all else, there's the 2.5D route that I'm kind of favoring over 2D that I could use as well, but if I have to use that route, TSO will be pushed back several years as my 2D RPG is more likely to follow after PM anyway.

#17 Bubsy review on GameFAQs has a star: Around mid April of 2010, I was writing mostly random reviews for various games. FF7 and Bubsy are 2 such examples (FF12 was posted several months). The review I wrote for Bubsy, the Genesis version, has a star by it, indicating that it's one of the best reviews. Read my review here, if you're interested.

#18 Final Fantasy 10 - not very interested: At the start of October of 2009, I finally got my chance to play FF10, and what a disappointment it was. The story started out okay, better than Disgaea, but it's when I got to that one tournament with the ball game, I was stuck and quickly lost interest after about 10 tries. I had Tidus at sphere level 10 because, since I wasn't getting ability spheres, I either had to sacrifice abilities or just keep gaining sphere levels and wait until I got them. I used the Kilika Woods for this. Having, for example, Yuna (If I got that name correct, I don't recall) attack the elemental thing with a regular physical attack, I'd often get this annoying bit of speech stating "let me handle those" and the like. This happened very frequently and was getting on my nerves, made worse by the fact I can't disable it. But that ball game I could never win (the story was suggesting that I needed to win) really ruined everything and put FF10 along the lines of FF8 - an upper semi-dislike (-20 compatibility). I like FF12 far, far more even though it's excessively monotonous. FF8 is still worse though in terms of compatibility.

#19 HWW abandoned - partly my fault: From July 23, 2001 until September 3 or 4 of 2009, I was with a particular community, with probably 13,000 total posts. I was going crazy posting stuff and got carried away with it, a lot carried away. I took a break from the forums, but I never knew it would go on for 9+ months. I'm still not very tempted to return there either. Recently, it's mainly because of FFT stat maxing, getting my book released and especially working on Platform Masters and playing Disgaea. I have no idea when I'm going to return, if I ever do. I still might, however.

#20 The cause for the unusually long delay in a site update: 10 1/2 months without updating my site is definitely unusual. 4 things have influenced this. The first is my book. At the time of my last update, I was waiting for copyright registration to finish. That happened on Sep 22, 2009. I then released my book, after resolving an assortment of problems with the cover, the day after. Various updates to my book were made along the way. Then, there's Final Fantasy Tactics. With the discovery of stat-maxing, I was hooked on FFT again. This took up a lot of time. Still, there's, after Christmas 2009, Disgaea. With the extreme record set with playing it (note the 626 hours in 3 months and 850 hours in 5 1/3), Disgaea has really dominated over everything. I thought FFT was good, but Disgaea takes things to the extremes thanks mostly to the lack of limits.

Then, of all things, Platform Masters. Once I got bored of one of the other 3 cases, I ended up returning to working on Platform Masters. Once I was getting bored of that, after a few weeks, I ended up returning to one of the other 3 things and once I got bored there too, it was back to PM. With my motive for working on PM as high as it is (+60 base, which was around what I had for TSO 2.4 when I was working on it late in the design and this is before all the good stuff too such as making levels and actually playing it), it's no wonder why I kept returning. Between world 11, the clouds, world 9, wanting to see the story mechanics, and other things, I just couldn't stay away from PM for long.

It's highly unlikely I'll ever stop updating my blog and dream journal. If you've seen the section on the compatibility/motive system, you should be aware of the "theory of choice", as I call it. One does whichever activity has the highest motive unless they can be done at the same time. I can't update my site and play Disgaea at the same time. I can't update my site and work on PM at the same time either. PM, with its high motive often keeps towering over the motive for updating my site. With roughly 11 months' worth of papers and text to type, far more than ever before, this has a negative effect. If I had a machine of sorts that could convert handwritten text into editable text on a computer screen (plain text is sufficient enough for my needs), I could significantly speed up the process of updating my site. Instead of 9 days for the update, it's just 5. Most of that is spent typing the headlines for the blog. A fair amount comes from proofreading the text that was scanned. The rest, which only totals about 90 minutes, is doing the color coding for the blog and daily entries, and the ratings bars, titling, and categorization of the dreams.

Because my motive for updating my site was easily being overpowered by other activities, I knew I needed to came up ways to hasten the process. The headlines are my favorite part of the main update. The dream journal is actually the least liked. Almost being an identical tie though slightly better, are the daily entries. The dream journal really doesn't have any opportunities for being hastened outside the speech-to-text and scanning methods. What does have opportunity, however, is that of the daily entries. Although these go rather quick, they are surprisingly redundant with the headlines, full of comments and other not-so-important things. Some daily entries used as many as 20 lines though most hover around 7 to 12 lines. That is, until December 1, 2009 where I've set the limit to 4 lines, with 3 being the base. As a consequence, the daily entries should go by nearly twice as fast. They still describe the day's events, though usually only briefly with extra details if needed. You'll see what I mean when you read the daily entries from December 2009 and onward, especially starting with December 7 where I officially set the 3-line rule.

#21 A failed lake visit: On August 6, 2009, I was to take a second visit to Nelson Carlson Lake for the year (the first, covered in the last blog update, was for my 25th birthday), but the weather didn't cooperate and the water was far too cold. I have very little resistence to cold. Even water at 80°F seems a bit chilly to me. I start getting uncomfortable when my room temp drops below 75°F. Water, being 20 times as effective, makes the 70° temp or so far too cold for me for water.

#22 Some progress on my 2D RPG - major weakness resolved: Pretty much everything about my 2D RPG is classified aside from the expected lack of limits, and, recently, from the release of my book, a look into the stats used. If you've played Disgaea, you're probably well aware of damage into the millions. My 2D RPG has a damage limit that you won't see for centuries or even millennia rather than weeks, months, or even years. After all, consider that the score in Platform Masters takes 870 years to max out at 9 2/9 quintillion (a signed 64-bit integer's approximate limit). Instead of level maxing at 9999, it's nearly 4.3 billion (the approximate limit of a 32-bit value).

For a while, since about 2006 or 2007, I've been making extensive plans for my 2D RPG. I've got a massive design document for it, over a hundred pages. It's still not done, but in one element of it, I noticed a major weakness involving the stats. It would allow for stats to grow far beyond what is expected with relatively little ease. Normally, every 500 levels should result in physical attack being 10 times higher. The weakness allowed it to be far more than that, in much less time. For nearly a year and a half, I've been trying to find a solution for it. I came up with some ideas over time, but I found weak points in the designs of these ideas a bit later so I tried to fix it but it opened up more problems. It was partially fixed around August of 2009, but I still couldn't figure out a solution. It wasn't until very recently that I finally found a solution to this major weak point with the stats and I have yet to find a weak point in this new concept. It's not just games I play that I look for weak points in, it's also my own creations, even Platform Masters. Weak points are potential exploits or glitches a player could use to make the game easier, often from glitches.

An assortment of other updates to my 2D RPG were done as well, such as completing more of the list of equipment, and also adding more elements to the game's story.

Why am I not working on the 2D RPG that much? Platform Masters. PM is not only simpler to make, it's also more salesworthy with considerably more completion. PM is almost my dream game in a sense while my 2D RPG really isn't.

#23 53 new dreams recalled, a reduced recall rate, and a new recurring theme: My house's basement being deep, soft, gooey mud, taking a shower and putting the water temperature at the very coldest, Metroid, and Bubsy are all common themes in my dreams. Lately, I've been having a bunch of dreams involving those 2 friends I associate FF6 with where I attempt to show off my games to. It seems weird, but lately, this has been happening considerably more often than usual and it kind of started out of nowhere as well, just abruptly. 4 of the new dreams involve this. At least they do have a high nature rating. I wonder if it means anything? The 2 friends that lived 20 miles away from me to the north often came to visit me at times and I often went to visit them. That was about 15 or so years ago. These dreams seem to always involve a visit to them in some form or another, usually to show FF6.

I've recalled just 53 more dreams during all that time, putting the total at 884. It also seems that my recall rate has dropped a lot. I remember the time I was getting around 180 dreams a year and 120, but barely 60? Lately, it's because I either don't recall anything or, if I do manage to recall it, I forget its details by the time I wake up enough to the point where it's otherwise lost and dreams being 0% in tact are pointless to list. I wonder if my high amount of play time toward FFT and Disgaea, and the heavy involvement toward working on PM are a possible culprit.

#24 Might & Magic Gates to Another World: Having found the game in a box just before I started playing the PS2 again, I knew I wanted to play it. This is one frustratingly difficult game. You get so little HP and you otherwise can't revive until you have access to level 7 spells. Worse yet, it takes incredibly long to level up. Over time, I did find ways to work around the HP problem (via an item called "Max HP potion", but healing was a big problem with that route... until I found a fountain that forced you to get 200 SP. Gems then became a problem, since they were hard to find, but I then found an enemy, that also drops good items and I could consistently get it. Still, having to spend 2 or so hours to go from about 150ish HP to around 9800 for 6 characters (nearly 59,000 total HP with each cast only restoring around 100) is quite boring and it eventually steered me away from the game. A way to fully heal quickly sure would be nice though.

#25 Considering getting a new TV: A new TV? Now you're probably thinking why would I want one. There are two things actually. First, my current TV has no support for RCA cables at all and I always get static. This forces me to have to constantly fiddle with the connection to get rid of as much of it as possible. Sometimes, the static gets so bad, it's hard to read text. I don't need HDTV support, considering I have almost no experience with HDTV aside from simulations via calculations. Another factor is that "ghosting effects" are present. When white text is present on a medium or dark background, I see see an obvious band. It has low constrast, but it's noticeable if I look hard enough. I see it often when I'm looking at the "total damage" area in Disgaea.

So, okay, I'm considering getting another TV. Now, you're probably thinking I'm going for a big 50-inch screen, right? Not even close! Even half that is too big, much too big. My 13-inch CRT (manufactured in May of 1996) is comfortably big for me, though 17 inches on the horizontal is about as big as I want or need. I don't need anything overly big at all. Do keep in mind my 500 dpi vision - I can read microprint on my checks without any magnification, and that's font size 1.8 or something. It's not just my checks, it's any check. My computer monitor displays content at 144 dpi and I can very easily see the dot from the exclamation on size 10 Courier New on my screen. I could go about half that size and still see the dot. I can even see the pixelation on my book's cover (of which is printed at 300 dpi), and fairly easily. Given this, a 15-inch TV with full 1080p support would not be a problem... aside from the fact they don't come that small for that resolution (720p is more expected).

On Easter (Apr 4, 2010), I had another case of recalling 3 dreams in one night, the second time it's happened on Easter. Is there a connection between Easter and my dreams or something as this seems more than a statistical coincidence/anomaly.

What am I looking for in a new TV, if I decide to get one? Only a few things really:

Key needs for a possible new TV
ElementNeededDetails and notes
TypeLikely LCDYou don't find CRT's any more outside Ebay and garage sales. CRT's are half the price and more flexible which is why I still actively use them, especially for the computer. Plasma's are too expensive and LED's are too unfamiliar so that leaves just LCD left.
BrandDon't careBrand, to me, doesn't mean anything. It's the function, feature set, and price that matter.
Scan typeAnyI don't care if it uses interlaced only or has progressive.
Screen size13 to 17 inchesI don't need a big screen size and beyond about 19 inches, it starts getting too big.
HDTVDon't careHDTV is essentially foreign to me, even though it's been around for a good fraction of a decade. It's a near-certainty the TV I get will have HDTV - I don't care much about the resolution though.
Brightness200 to 300 cd/m2I don't like bright screens. Too bright and they're hard on my eyes. Broad daylight even under cloud cover, is a bit much for me. Perhaps it's one of the consequences of my 500 dpi vision - increased sensitivity?
Contrast ratioat least 800A high contrast is one thing I like. My TV tuner doesn't have it very well and it often interferes with my game play at times.
ButtonsPower, channel, volume, and menuPower, channel-changing, and volume-adjusting are extremely common. Some TV's don't come with a way to access the menu outside the controller (such as mine) and it's annoying as I prefer the buttons on the TV over the remote 20 to 1.
Remote controlDon't careI rarely use them - I prefer the buttons on the TV/monitor over a remote any time.
WeightNo more than 40 poundsBeyond about 30 pounds and it starts becoming difficult for me to move on my own. Today's TV's are so light that is is almost not a problem, even a 30-inch one, but I'm only after 15ish which should only be 1/8 as massive (based on scaling by volume).
Energy usageIndeterminateI have no idea how much energy today's TV of the 15-inch size need. I'd expect the big 50-inch ones to use a lot of energy, but I'm only going for 15 so it should be more around 10% judging by screen area but I'm suspecting it's more around 20%. I have no idea on the wattage either.
PriceMax $200A 15-inch TV screen shouldn't cost much more than $100, if that. I don't know how the prices are.
ConnectionsRCA and RFRCA is needed only for the DVD player and the PS2, and possibly the DirecTV receiver. The RF (as for the antenna) is needed for my older games.
Response timeUnknownI'm not sure what this does or what it's for.... 8 ms is quicker than the human eye can detect to begin with.
Viewing angle150 or higherIn the past, I've disliked LCD's and flat screens because, if off center just a hair, the picture gets lost (I'm not sure why either, but Wikipedia could answer that).
StandDon't careI have no need for a stand. As long as it stays firmly in place on the floor, I'm fine.
ColorDon't care but preferrably darkIt's function, not looks so color doesn't matter. I do have preference toward darker colors (like black and dark gray, with an apparent brightness of 64 or less), but if a white or ugly yellow-green TV had all the stuff I need and was cheap, I'd get it over a black one.


If Newegg hasn't removed the item by the time you see this, This TV looks to be a good candidate. It's a bit bright and beyond the upper end of my size range, but still manageable, though the contrast is slightly below my threshold (700). The price is good though, and for the price, it's a good candidate. Of course, it doesn't have to be just Newegg. I use Newegg as my primary shop for computer stuff in general.

#26 The origins of spiral galaxies - my idea: The more I look at photos of galaxies of all types (the Sombrero Galaxy is my favorite) in all states, the more I've come to a realization to the origin of spiral galaxies. Spiral galaxies? They basically resemble whirlpools, in a sense. Our own Milky Way Galaxy is one such galaxy.

From what I see on TV shows involving the universe in general (such as "The Universe"), and in the science magazines I subscribe to (Astronomy and Scientific American), I'm beginning to think that spiral galaxies are solely the consequence from galactic collisions. If you watched those computer simulations of galactic collisions, you'll see that stars and other things get thrown around in long strands, sometimes getting completely thrown out of the whole galaxy and becoming a stray (don't recall the term for these). If you were to have this continue for longer durations (not the 3 billion or so years covered, but 10 billion), I would suspect that the mergers of any two galaxies (not just spirals) will eventually become a spiral galaxy.

Picture 2 elliptical (spherical-appearing) galaxies approaching 30° offset from a head-on collision (or something around here as there's likely plenty of room for error). By this, I mean, picture a ball coming from the north and another ball coming from the south-southeast. As the two approach each other, their gravity will stretch each other apart causing them to initially have an egg-shaped appearance and gradually unfold into what appears to be a total mess. Various strands of stars are thrown all over and all around. These strands, through gravity of the galaxies in the collision, eventually fall back toward the center for more loops and after enough orbits, the spirals eventually form, leaving the familiar central bulge. The more passes that occur, the more spiral arms will form.

You might think that the stars would end up colliding with each other. Surprisingly, even with 200 billion stars in each galaxy, the distances between the stars and the relative tiny size of the stars themselves makes collisions highly unlikely, but they can still happen. If the Sun was the size of a marble one centimeter in diameter, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, at 4.24 light-years distant (about 40.11 trillion km, 24.93 trillion mi), would be 288.1 km (179 mi) way on this scale).

In the early universe, around 1 billion years ago, not long after stars first started forming, elliptical galaxies likely formed and dominate this era. After time, probably 1 to 3 billion years later, the elliptical galaxies get large enough so that, when they collide the spiral arms can form and would form the first spiral galaxies.

Keep in mind that I'm not a professional at this. I just happened to notice this through various thoughts as I watch TV shows and read magazines covering these kinds of things. Of course, more in-depth study and testing will be needed to confirm/deny this thought. Astronomy and physics are my top 2 favorite fields of science.

#27 July 11 eclipse - Big California quake: When I saw a show on History Channel called "Bible Code", I saw that 2010 was supposedly going to have big quakes and the such. Knowing that eclipses involve the simultaneous pull of the Sun and Moon in the same spot, having an unusually strong gravitational effect on Earth (it's still extremely weak), I thought I'd take out Celestia to see where the shadow of the eclipse was going to be, along with the Moon's distance. January 15 and the yet-to-come July 11 of 2010 are two such known dates for eclipses. I actually predicted the January 15 quake as being caused by the Moon, but I was off by 3 days for the time of the quake itself (January 18). Earth is closest to the Sun around early January and furthest around early July so the Sun also has quite an effect (a mere 6.91% stronger during the January case). The Moon has a much greater gravitational effect, up to 24.84% (a combined effect of 33.47%). I used Wikipedia to get the distance measurements needed for the gravitational offsets. When I checked Celestia for the July 11 eclipse, it centers around the area south-southwest of California south of the equator and the Moon is essentially at it's closest possible, and still getting closer, though only slowly. The January 15 eclipse had the Moon about 70,000 km further away, but Earth was also considerably closer to the Sun. The Moon being much closer has a much greater total effect. I have a feeling California will likely get a quake around the July 13, 2010 area. Is it the big one? I would have no idea. I'm going to guess magnitude 6.5. Hopefully, in this case, I'm completely wrong about the quakes actually happening at all or, if they do happen, they're much weaker.

#28 Noise-cancelling headphones cheap: This is not an advertisement, rather, it's a trick, though not entirely tested. From what I see, headphones cost something like $5 for the in-ear type, $10 for the on-ear type and $40ish for the over-ear type, give or take. That's regular headphones. If noise-cancelling functionality is a must, it costs even more, around $50 or so for the over-ear type and they have the major downside of requiring a battery. To go without a battery, it costs significantly more, around $100. Why pay that when you can pay $25 or so for about the same thing with a simple, cheap, and ingenious trick that doesn't require mechanical know-how. Ear muffs are much, much cheaper and don't require batteries. They cost around $20, give or take. So, why not combine the cheap ear phones like the in-ear types (they actually don't have to be in the ear in this case) and standard earmuffs to get noise-cancelling headphones at a significantly cheaper price. While it won't cut down noise as significantly, it does have a very noticeable effect, 20 to 30 dB depending on the earmuffs you get and you never need to worry about the battery expiring.

#29 My new 1 terabyte hard drive: Years ago, you may recall that 40 GB was plenty for me. Then, I got into videos and recording and 40 GB turned out to be much too small. So, I went with 250 GB. It lasted quite a while, but I ended up getting so many videos and files from my game design stuff that I was getting close to running out of disk space at times. For a while, I was considering getting a 1 TB hard drive. It would be dedicated solely to video and music processing stuff. I wanted a hard drive that was also fast, knowing that videos are very big files. I'm getting 130 MB/s for the speed, versus just 50 MB/s with my 250 GB hard drive and the previous 40 GB beforehand. If the hard drive can write that fast, I could almost record 1024x768 video at 60 fps uncompressed (that would equate to 135 MB/s) in real time. Now, if I had a video codec that was less CPU demanding than MJPEG, that would be very useful as I could record my PM videos at 60 fps. Of course, if it was less CPU demanding, the file size gets much bigger. With MJPEG's quality maxed out, I'm still getting surprisingly small file sizes. XviD can only go 12 to 20 fps at that size (according to VD's processing info, after the initial MJPEG compression).

#30 One of my greatest wishes - 10 Mbps VBR video recording: My TV tuner caps at 8000 Kbps for its video recording and the bad thing about it is that it uses a constant bit rate. My TV tuner's software won't let me select the MJPEG codec, only XviD, which is extremely slow. I can easily see the compression artifacts and blurring this relatively low quality has for standard 720x480 video. One of my greatest wishes is to record at 10 Mbps or higher and using variable bit rate (like XviD can). Oddly, MPEG-2 is fast while XviD MPEG-4 is slow. My system can potentially record at 960x640 using MPEG-2, but it can't handle MPEG-4 at even a size like 480x320. I wonder what the difference is between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 that causes MPEG-4 to be so slow.

Now, you're probably thinking, what's bad about constant bit rate? When complex scenes come in, such as a panning camera in an active hockey game, it takes more bits to compress the image with the same quality than a simple scene such as watching cars on a 4-lane highway in the country from 500 feet away where little in the scene changes. Constant bit rate reduces the quality for complex scenes to keep to the predefined bit rate. Variable bit rate uses more bits for the complex scenes and fewer bits for the simple scenes. This, in turn, results in better video on average for a smaller file size. With 10 Mbps variable bit rate, the quality can be very high, to the point where compression artifacts are mostly invisible.

So, what's the problem? I can't find any programs that has 10 Mbps VBR recording. DScaler is not acceptable as, during installation, there's a warning that scares me and makes me want to just click the "cancel" button to stop the installation. The EULA (GPL) is not a problem, it's the warning mentioning of blue screens, a driver, and other stuff. It seems like a virus or a very unstable program. I won't bother with DScaler and outside getting a different TV tuner (which would be round 4), I have yet to figure something out.



Daily Events



Feb 2: Reworking PM's story dominated the day - 3 times better than before! Needed to stay up to 9 to call someone to resolve a problem. Woke up at 5:52 PM and went to bed at 9:14 AM (±2 minutes).
Feb 3: FF6 dominated the day - focused on getting meteor in first world... again. I'm about 6% done - need 2,637,112 total exp to get level 99. Woke up at 8:38 PM and went to bed at 11:11 AM.
Feb 4: Zeliard dream recalled. Had to use system restore again but it didn't work this time. Calling around town finally got the solution - some service (in msconfig) is the culprit. FF4 dominated the day - got Paladin Cecil to level 38... from a new game. When computer restored, daily check then adding new ideas for PM. Woke up at 10:59 PM and went to bed at 3:14 PM.
Feb 5: Waves - redone but need second edition - dusk, not day. Took 4 tries, but now much better than before. They needed a redo because water texture made and thus were the wrong color. I need many more channels as well due to odd looks and lack of texture troubles. No FF4 or FF6. OWTLI V2 again. Woke up at 12:21 AM and went to bed at 4:24 PM.
Feb 6: Water textures redone (day and dusk) waves redone (day and dusk) - new algorithm gets better, more realistic results. Switched to Desert Zone 72% near day start. Drowsiness caused trouble for first 2 hours after eating so FF4 to level 45 from 38 was added - it helped a lot. Woke up at 2:13 AM and went to bed at 8:16 PM.
Feb 7: Water pool texture redone, traffic light for Ronnis done. World 11 needs 1 more object (at 16) and objects in worlds 1 and 2. Lots of TV made up the day, until 6:00 PM - progress made during this time. Woke up at 5:54 AM and went to bed at 8:39 PM.
Feb 8: Design flaw spotted for Ronnis - pavement not at 64, but 480.... Only the buildings and cargo ships remain for Ronnis. World 3 now completed as well. Reached 100-point editing limit - release delayed a few weeks. Woke up at 5:23 AM and went to bed at 10:21 PM.
Feb 9: World 2 done! Buildings done, including those needed for world 11 - this dominated the day. World 1 or 4 is next in mind, most likely 4. Desert Zone 72% still going strong. Woke up at 8:24 AM and went to bed at 10:58 PM.
Feb 10: World 2 done and world 4 started then FF4 (2 levels), FFT (job mastery for Agrias), then Disgaea - the latter was 2/3 of the day. Woke up at 9:47 AM and went to bed at 12:52 AM.
Feb 11: Cliffs and nearest sand dunes done, rocks started. The cliffs are excellent and took the most time. Disgaea followed for the last 1/3 of the day. Woke up at 12:50 PM and went to bed at 2:28 AM.
Feb 12: 2 dreams in one night - that hasn't happened in a while, both are nice ones too! Level 5000 Laharl - 4000 in half a day's worth - focused on 9999, to see what happens. Got bored of PM progress - Disgaea replaced it. Woke up at 12:57 PM and went to bed at 4:31 AM.
Feb 13: 7227, and an odd class 3 bug (Zommie (between hospital and item world) replaced Hector upon a save - lost 30 minutes of progress. Discovered a way to get extra bonuses on items for leveling up - put lots of specialists on it - effect of specialist's power unknown. Woke up at 2:57 PM and went to bed at 8:19 AM.
Feb 15: Slept 7 hours.... New damage record - 4594K in one, 12 million total (separate case). Disgaea all day - leveled up accelerator to have extreme speed and considerable attack. Level 8339 at day's end. Game crashed during loading again. Woke up at 4:26 PM and went to bed at 9:00 AM.
Feb 16: Level 9999 at last and a bonus video. Unexpected elay occurred with book store release - can't order proof. All edits applied - 186 points, nearly double the threshold. Experiments done while leveling - 1 clone and 1 exp has the fastest sustained rate. Woke up at 7:15 PM and went to bed at 11:02 AM.
Feb 17: 1/3 of the way to 9999 already... and it includes time spent leveling up a new legendary infernal spear for Laharl, making use of the trick discovered 2 days ago - attack is 3500 higher. Hector's weapon mastery at 93 - clone wars and attacking invincibility pyramids works wonders. Woke up at 10:32 PM and went to bed at 1:58 PM.
Feb 18: 9999 again, due to a lucky setup - video recorded and processed of it (2 clone, 1 exp with a level 9999 ravana) - clone wars. Clone wars dominated the day.... Gathered sentries later on. Awake 22 hours so I can go grocery shopping tomorrow. Woke up at 10:59 PM and went to bed at 7:23 PM.
Feb 19: Sentry maxed - videos recorded for easy weapon mastery (3 takes) and how to get specialists quickly (5 takes). Shower and grocery shopping followed then processing the videos, uploading one of them. Changed to OWTLI V2 (no big streak due to Disgaea). Woke up at 4:47 AM and went to bed at 10:28 PM.
Feb 20: Finish uploading specialists video, continue getting specialists, then level up an "amon force" to 100 - 25K attack. This, dominating the day, was in preparation for getting my own argus. I got it to 1668 in only an hour, slow at first, 3%! If theory is correct, I can get anyone to 9999 70% faster, and do it anywhere at any time I want. Woke up at 8:09 AM and went to bed at 10:41 PM.
Feb 21: 1/3 done already and the trick does work! 3 levels as level 6000 on 3000 without pyramids - just as expected. I'm already seeing the benefits.... Transmigrated Hector from ninja to shinobi. Thought of more configuration options for PM - added to document before Disgaea. Woke up at 7:19 AM and went to bed at 10:52 PM.
Feb 22: A level 9999 argus at last - 20% faster than expected. I got a video of this too. Now I can get level 9999 with ease, but 7000 is my main target. 2 rounds of clone wars was needed. Proof finally ordered - 3 days earlier than expected. A late April release is quite likely. Woke up at 9:44 AM and went to bed at 11:00 AM.
Feb 23: Got bored of Disgaea again, 80% through the day. Had clone wars with 4 clone pyramids, a first (I haven't had 3 yet). I hit the 1/3 mark (about 5800) then transmigrated Laharl - got him to 3000 in another round of it - 2 more followed but often failed. Added new idea to PM and a very minor change at day's end. Woke up at 10:19 AM and went to bed at 4:04 AM.
Feb 24: Massive update on level creator for PM - most of it expansion, the rest is updates to match current designs. The setup, despite a few small weak points, makes it seem quick and easy. I started on the houses of world 1 but got too sleepy. No Disgaea.... Woke up at 12:39 PM and went to bed at 1:14 AM.
Feb 25: Slept 11 hours.... Programming resumed though a fix to Keveran Forest was needed - odd gap. An odd image loading problem started this, wanting to see the new sky and textures, but forgot to crop Carnivalesta's hills - array overflow while reading file. DirectX is tomorrow. Woke up at 1:41 PM and went to bed at 4:50 AM.
Feb 26: Video of PM's final moment under AlphaBlend. I looked into DX and realized only 4 things are needed - full screen (found), vsync (found), buffers (check), and drawing (not found). I spent 5 hours searching and got nowhere. Disgaea followed as I checked the video repeatedly. Got 1 clone and 3 exp and transmigrated at 45% mark (6700) and focused on leveling up legendary infernal staff. Ran backup as Disgaea started. Woke up at 3:00 PM (±10 minutes) and went to bed at 8:43 AM.
Feb 28: 15.2 million total damage - new record. 3.1 million - new damage record (Freeze) with 5186K being the biggest number (omega heal). Freeze's new staff towers over Laharl with ease. Disgaea dominated the day - no 2D for DX8 and later - odds went down a lot. Woke up at 5:42 PM and went to bed at 8:25 AM.



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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
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


Footnotes:
None