It’s a hardware problem, not a software one!

I am the king of being sidetracked when it comes to major undertakings (relatively speaking) that I initiate myself. Yesterday I decided to move an old computer under my desk. I have a love-hate relationship with this computer, and while it’s an utter piece of <garbage> in terms of parts (it has a Cyrix PR200, which is equivalent to probably a Pentium 166MHz), it can get basic tasks done. Anyways, the space that I moved it to had a lot of old computer game boxes, such as Warcraft II and Final Fantasy VII PC (yes, I actually buy games in this day and age, and I have the boxes to prove it).

… See what I meant about getting sidetracked? Obviously, I consider blogging a major undertaking.

I have a lot of junk in my room that isn’t mine, but I can’t exactly move it. For example, my closet is basically inaccessible and stuffed full of random boxes and old toys that were fun at the time, but would kill the average kid nowadays do to America generally becoming stupider. There is still some room in that dark closet of obscurity, however, and since I was going to end up redoing a bunch of computer cords at my desk, anyway (the major things being interconnected are two desktops, one laptop, two monitors, two sets of speakers, and a TV), I decided to shove as much ugly stuff into the closet as I could.

In the course of tearing apart my room to actually access the closet (stacks of boxes in the way), I found my the box for my Logitech Wingman Force 3D joystick, and lamented that the joystick itself was unusable; when connected, the stick would jut hard to the upper-right or slight-left, and it was next to impossible to get it to move in all directions, let alone calibrate correctly. The joystick was packed into a box at a bad angle at one point in its lifetime, so I considered that the likely cause of the malfunctions.

I decided to give it one more go and confirmed that it was hosed. With the warranty long expired, I figured there was no problem in opening the sucker up and seeing if I can locate a jam or something.

Well, there definitely was a problem; I couldn’t even figure out how to detach the base!

All the screws were taken out, yet the thing refused to pop off. Like everyone else sane in this world, I turned to Google for answers. The first result was a winner: a discussion board about fixing the rudder on these type of sticks. I found a highly informative yet entertaining PDF that some guy took the liberty of creating for the other people that were too cheap to buy a new controller (or too poor, like me).

When I had gotten to the base and saw the circuit board and motors, I didn’t see anything wrong. The thing DID start jamming up whenever I connected it, though, which made me wonder what was wrong.

Then it hit me. It’s a software problem, not a hardware one!

You see, I had a habit of pumping up the force feedback up to 150% power back in the day. MechWarrior was that much funner when a barrage of missiles kept you from even coming close to lining up that shot with your ER PPC. From what I can surmise, the software that comes with the joystick sets the force feedback configuration on the joystick itself. Apparently, at some point, the configuration on the joystick bugged out, causing the force feedback mechanism to jam the stick up at odd angles. This continued until I reinstalled the software and reset the defaults.

Magically, the problem was gone. Of course, neither was the mess in my room.

Looks like I’ll be able to play MechWarrior, Freespace, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and X-Wing: Alliance again. Especially since an old friend of mine has been trying to gather people for some XvT.

Woot. I feel like Noodle. Except the solution was more in my area of expertise. Kinda’ weird.

Title Origin: Microsoft will tell you that if a problem occurred while using their product, OBVIOUSLY the problem is with your hardware. Hardware companies will tell you otherwise. Meanwhile, Microsoft is quick to offer software solutions to anything you’d want to do or improve upon, whilst hardware companies will offer a device that you can attach. The fight is endless.

Awesome Video Game YouTube videos

It came to my attention that there are certain videos on YouTube that I just find absolutely awesome. A lot of which comes from Hayate, to be frank. And mostly from Super Robot Taisen / Super Robot Wars.

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Atelier Iris Grand Fantasm Chap. 9 Boss

Kore de owari da!

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Super Robot Taisen Alpha 3 – DaiRaiOh – Jinrai

Hot-blooded awesomess.

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Banpreios vs Keisar Ephes ZO Sword Dynamic Kill

I need a sword like that.

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Another Century’s Episode 2 (A.C.E.2) Opening Movie

::drools::

That’s it for now.

Certifications, Gripes, Updates, and Then Some

Slightly old news, but last Saturday, I finally completed and passed my A+ and Network+ certification exams. Whee!! Finally, all that studying paid off! Honestly, though, I’m glad I passed them. Too much of my life is trudging away, endlessly studying or doing things without any real end in sight. No sense of real accomplishment, no marker to justify my work, no encouragement or acknowledgement. Just a continual so-called “need” to work and work.

Lessee… continuing my Japanese study, but I might try to add another, more advanced class that’s more suited for my level tomorrow. More work involved, but I feel the need to actually learn stuff, not review.

Project Updates
Project Nekohime seems to be trudging through things, though some of the members have me worried. One in particular seems to be… hmm… having an authoritative identity crisis? It’d be nice if they communicated more, instead of emoing and acting immature. What I won’t stand for, though, is attempting to pass themselves off as skilled in a certain area that they know nothing about. There development is a lot more complicated than they realize, and I hope that I won’t have to come to head with that person. They’ve pushed before… and I don’t feel like needlessly relenting because of some stupid personal opinions.

Anyways, working on finishing Common Skills, publishing it, then drafting Servant classes. Once that is done, we can create a generalized Character class. And to finally be able to code things! In the meantime, the Art Center was created, and I’m really, really hoping I can finish the Java Applet for character creation. If things work out well, the Applet would be able to allow the user to easily create (and balance) a character’s stats, and possibly generate accurate information for programmers to start creating the static user objects.

The Tsukihime Translation Project is coming to a close, of which I have mixed feelings about. First, proofreading still needs to be done, whether certain people admit to it or not. Second, I honestly wish I could be doing more, but, as evident in the lack of posts I’ve had recently, my time has been spirited away by other things.

I recently discussed things concerning Project T in the #beastslair channel. I felt it was kinda’ nice to be able to exchange our thoughts about certain private things we were all working on, giving me some fresh perspective on aspects of it. One of them made a comment that was probably just a statement of fact, but I ended up taking it as a compliment. More development on that is happening… and I’m getting closer to actually creating excerpted material, as well as prepare for Project C.

I guess I should sorta’ partially declassify Project World Egg. I haven’t worked on it just recently, though I have been doing more work on it as a whole. Nasu is… complicated. But fun. The only thing that gets me is the design of the universe. I might leave it for later, though I hope the ramifications of doing so don’t come back to haunt me later.

Ehh… time flies when blogging… >_>

Crunch Time

Seems like a bunch of projects and other things in my life are hitting critical points. Time to rant away…

• A+ and Network+ Certification programs coming to an end in a little more than a week. I get to take tests afterwards. >_>
• The BL Game Project (semi-renamed, unofficially, to Project Nekohime) is hitting a point where things the battle code might be put into production. Hopefully, I can get Raf, Noodle, and JSeabolt to join in, and CB if he’s still around. >_>
• Planning on joining a role-playing game. Though I really don’t have too much time to be doing stuff like this. >_>
• The Tsukihime Translation Project has been in normal playtesting phase, which takes a lot of time to go through, and the deadline is fast approaching. >_>
• Classes start up in the beginning of September. I need to get my Japanese up to speed again. >_>
• I made a slight promise to have Project Neco-Arc would be up within a month. Well, that month has now transformed into a little more than a week. >_>
• Project W has been trying to be restarted for a while. Sort of waiting on me. >_>

BLARGH!

I’m a beta tester for the Tsukihime Translation Project (and no, you’re never going to get a leak from me), and one of my first assignments was to do a final, penultimate proofing of several script files. Now, serious proofing isn’t something to be taken lightly, especially when you figure that thousands of people are going to be reading this stuff.

Anyways, I’m trudging away at the script files, trying to get them done as expediently as possible. One enthusiastic member of the BL Game Project is… well, I’m not too sure how to describe it. My best, honest guess is that he’s developing a sort of power complex and isn’t really approaching members in a very diplomatic or even cordial fashion.

Now, I think this person is a good person and a hard worker, but sometimes certain people aren’t at their best in certain positions because of the way they do things. I told him that he needed to stop being a pest, since people have lives outside of the BL Project. Too, the situation is more complex than that.

• Person A was being yelled at.
• A was waiting on B to finish.
• B has been thinking of the problem at hand.
• B has also been busy with at least two other aspects of the BL Project.
• B has a real-life project that he’s working on, which ostensibly would have a strict time schedule.

One of the major headaches I’ve had to deal with (and will have to continue to deal with) is when people’s egos become bloated via their character in the game. It’s annoying when you start getting some really imbalanced or munchkinized player characters. Here’s some notable issues that came up.

• One person wanted/wants to be an incredibly smart and talented spellcaster and fighter.
• One person was a spellcaster who wants to wield an incredibly destructive sword and have all the necessary skill to use it at it’s fullest extent. And the direct apprentice of a certain TYPE-MOON character.
  • Barring the character just mentioned, they wanted to be a spellcaster that was hideously powerful, and more powerful than their teacher, too.
  • Worse, their view of that TYPE-MOON character is fundamentally flawed, basing it on a flawed adaptation that TYPE-MOON denies ever existed.
  • Even worse, said person is actually pretty dense (has knowledge, but no sense at all), yet wants their character to be very knowledgable and wise, knowing the best thing to do in all situations. Right.
• One person wanted an echelon/support hybrid who wants to become the single most popular and all around useful character in the game.
  • Said person has/is trying to establish himself as a de facto ruler of an entire realm. For no good reason, really. 
  • Said person doesn’t shut up about their character, or their huge entourage.
• One person wants a frontline fighter who wants to deal incredible amounts of damage in a short amount of time without much effort. Their weaknesses are either insubstantial or character-breaking with not much of a median in between.

Yay, I ranted about it. Creating a Character Template will make people want to overpower themselves, as does creating a Skill Template. It’s all ego and self-pleasuring. Unfortunately for me, I can’t really do that myself, since I’m designing the mechanics, trying to balance characters, and trying to serve as a model for how other character sheets.

(You think this story is convoluted? You should see my other stories.)

So, earlier, he had really really wanted a finalized Character Template and Skill Template. Story-wise, the incomplete Character Template was fine, and the Skill Template was really only for battles and such, which were out of his scope. But, that’s what he wanted, and he wouldn’t stop whining unless I make one. So, I stop my proofing work, dig out my notebook, and start creating a skill template. It grows larger and larger. It becomes very detailed and very scary. So I deem that a Skill Encyclopedia Template, and quickly draft up a Skillbook Template for easy viewing. This is over the course of two nights, I think. A short period to draft skill templates for an RPG engine that’s still hasn’t been fully designed, in any case.

It’s all done, and even write down stuff that’s in my notebook on the Wiki. Now, I’m back at the beginning of my story. I don’t want to hear any more “do this,” especially since I create a lot of stuff as well as organize things. I have obligations to help get a Tsukihime translation out as fast as possible, seeing as it was delayed by nearly a year for absolutely STUPID reasons.

So, I get quite irritated when someone tells me to do something, even half-jokingly, when I’ve recently done a lot of stuff related to it and am currently busy doing something far more important. Worse, they have no idea about the full implications about what their asking.

To create the Skill Template, it starts out with the Battle Mechanics. The basic design was drafted a while ago. Next was creating the relationship between Basic Stats and Derived Stats. Level gain, max level, and differing ranks between characters (a mage with low Endurance versus a tank with very high Endurance vs your average hero), and finding elegant but sufficiently detailed numbers. Now we’ve got a basis for Health Points, Tech Points, and Magic Points. Next, I have to dissect possible attacks. Attacks have various costs associated with them, and can have side effects. An attack hits something, and it has certain elemental properties, a certain damage equation, a certain effect that’s applied to their attack, a certain effect that lingers on. And that’s just like, one hit. Granted, a lot of attacks will be one hit, but not all are like that, and a good system should be able to accomodate the complex procedures. These are computers, which can compute things near instantaneously, not pen-and-paper RPGs where simplicity plays a HUGE factor. And “effects” is a whole other story, too.

::yawn:: I’m tired. Maybe I’ll work on Project T some more. A celebration for finishing my main run through my assigned script files for the beta.