Rate this:

It was 5:36, and I have a stalker.
Those were two things I learned from opening my computer this afternoon.

I had just received an email from the ever-reliable Microsoft informing me that they were going back on their 2005 promise to provide free website hosting for life. I can’t say I wasn’t expecting this sooner or later – and I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft was only rescinding their offer to me, seeing as I rarely do anything with my website. Why don’t update my website? Suffering a brief moment of memory loss, I decided to check out the old website/blog, and see if I could spruce the place up a bit. I logged into WordPress, and to my surprise, saw that there was one pending comment for one of my past posts. It was from anonymous commenter whose email address [redacted] denoted the sender as some sort of Wind-Girl. Strange.

“Hi Hassan” the message said. I froze. How could anyone on the internet know my name? My real name – coincidentally one of the best-kept secrets in cyberspace? My mind went blank, recalling every acquaintance I had ever met. Lets see…the doctor who assisted in the birth…the nurses…my mother, of course…but none of those people would know my internet alter-ego.

Would I have been so careless to let my name slip in the heat of some fate-of-the-world-deciding internet debate? Of course not. Besides, Imagine how awkward that would be.

AXMAN13: LOLZ WTF LIBERALS SUCK HAHA OH AND GHEY MERIGE IS WIRED LULZ HAHA!!11!!! GLOBL WORMING IS A LYE!!!
MALEXOS: I can see how you’d think that, but I think you should re-examine the situation a bit more carefully. By the way; I’m Hassan. You come here often?
AXMAN13: OMG LOLZ WTF TAHTS SO COOOL DO IT AGAIN!
MALEXOS: Do what aga–….why do I even bother?

Damn. This was really getting to me. If this mysterious girl — wait, no; this is the internet — If this mysterious middle-aged man knew my name, what’s stopping him from discovering my deepest, most well-kept secrets? What’s to stop him from figuring out where I live? Where I work? My bathroom-related habits?! I couldn’t let this continue, but I had no idea where to go next? What could I do? Stalk the streets asking for a man named Wind-Girl? The stares I’d get would be the least of my worries…
Eventually, it hit me: If someone’s stalking me, why not stalk them back? I thought. I did a Google search for the Wind-Girl. Aaaaand…No such luck.

Damn! What a Google’s supposed to know everything! Or at least know where to find everything! Where are are tax-dollars going if Google can’t even hunt a few stalkers?

But I couldn’t let the situation get the best of me. I would have to persevere in the face of limited technology. That’s when a second thought thing hit me: I decided I should just email this self-proclaimed female, and see what he’s up to. If his intentions are good, I’m certain a swift and friendly explanation will be on its way to my inbox soon! If not, well…I don’t think anyone would notice if I didn’t post for a while anyway.

“Dear Wind-Girl”, the email began…

First Ever Commission!!!

(Sort of)

So.

I released a new song a few days ago, after being inspired by a walk about my neighbourhood. I posted the song on Facebook because I thought a few of my musically-inclined friends would enjoy listening to the relaxing melodies of fake instrument sounds.

To my surprise, one of my friends enjoyed the song so much he asked if he could use it as the ambiance music for his upcoming black belt test.

If for some strange reason you will be at the [School Name Redacted] martial art’s school in [City Name, State Name Redacted] on [Date Redacted], at [Time Redacted] o’ clock[Comma Redacted] you might just hear a remastered version of the song playing as my friend [Name Redacted] performs a Karate kata with the monk’s spade. (Coincidentally, the Monk’s Spade is now my favourite semi-obscure deadly weapon)

Someone actually wanting to share my work inspired me to seek out free commissions (is that an oxymoron?) on my own. As of today, I just may be the principal composer for a small game set to be released for the iPhone!

*Initiate Gratuitous Victory Dance Epsilon*

Well, that’s just about it for today, my loyal…

…wait, never mind; I’m still the only one who visits this site…

Rate this:

Hello, readers!

*Chirping crickets*

Sorry;

Hello, reader!

A lot of things have happened since I last spoke to you. Here are some of the highlights:

Read.

I won several awards from the Scholastic Writing Awards this year ^^;.

No national awards, though. I would say ‘better luck next year!’, but I’m afraid I’ll be too old to enter! Congratulations to everyone who won awards this year, regional or national.

Listen.

I tried to write a song for my band class, and I do believe it’s dead. My band director remarked that he loved the piece…but it’s a little difficult. Go figure!

Play.

Why are you reading this post when you could be playing Portal: 2? Seriously! Even this college professor knows about Portal’s importance in today’s world.

On the off chance you wanted to hear about my video game endeavours, you’ll be happy to know that I won a Gold Key for my 90-something page illustrated plan for my game “Mr. Peebles”. I may post some of the illustrations and the basic concept of the game on the site, but I think I’ll keep the details of the plan to myself . I still plan on making this game, and come hell or high water or the Soviet Union’s Sea Turtle Brigade, I swear I’ll make it a reality!

So…that’s all that’s been happening in my creative world recently.

Stay tuned!

I recently created a schedule for myself for the first time in years. I’m the sort of person who needs a schedule to stay on-task and on top of things; if I don’t have at least some sort of order, I’ll be all over the place and I’ll never get anything done…kind of like all these days where I haven’t blogged. It’s not that I don’t want to blog, it’s just that

According to the schedule, Wednesdays will be devoted to RPG Maker VX tips, which brings us to the purpose of today’s post. Today, I’ll be teaching you how to create custom evented menus. Some of you may have seen this tutorial before – that’s because I already covered evented menus quite a while ago on the RPG Maker VX forums. The reason why I’m going over it again is because I’m building up to something new and exciting that will require this basic knowledge.

Let’s get started, shall we?

 

 

CUSTOM MENUS

The benefit of eventing a menu is that you can customize it in whatever way you want. Say you want a gigantic, bubble-breathing dragon farting rainbows and spikey melons on your menu. Can you do that with the default menu? I think not!

Before we begin, I’d like to recommend, once again, that you download the demo before you actually attempt any of this. I’m sure it’ll make a lot more sense if you play the demo game and then look through the events:

Download the Demo!

The first step in creating a custom menu is to first think of a design concept. If you’re as graphically challenged as I, that’s probably going to be the hardest part of the entire process. For now, lets go with a very simple design; the classic rectangle:

Brilliant, isn’t it?

Now that we have the basic design down, let’s make our final products. For a menu such as the one I’m making, you’ll need a Background image, a Menu image, and a cursor image:

Background

Menu

Cursor

Now, save these images and import them into the Pictures folder. Next, go into the Game editor so we can start the eventing proper!

The first thing you’ll want to do is disable access to the regular menu, so your player doesn’t accidentally open it. This can easily be done in the introduction of your game. Simply use the “Change Menu Access” command in the third page of event commands.

Here’s where things get a bit complicated. In order to do properly create the menu, you’ll need to edit a few of the built in scripts. But as long as you know how to copy and paste, it shouldn’t be a problem. Go to the Script Editor. (Again, if you don’t know how to do that, stop reading this tutorial) Find the scripts labeled “Scene_Item”, “Scene_Skill”, “Scene_Equip”, “Scene_Status”, and “Scene_End“.
In each of these scripts, find the line that says ” $scene = Scene_Menu.new(X)” where “X” is a number. (Press CTRL+F to open the Find window) Replace the whole line with “$scene = Scene_Map.new“.

Now we can get started on the actual event.
If you’re making an event that the player can access at any time, I strongly recommend you use common events as opposed to having an event on every map.

To make one menu, you’ll need two common events. Name the first one “Custom Menu Check”. Set it’s trigger to Parallel, and set it’s condition to a switch you aren’t using. Name the switch “Custom Menu Check” as well.

Under this common event, insert a wait of one frame, and then a conditional branch that checks to see if the player is pressing the “B” button (X, Zero, or Esc. On the keyboard). Under the conditional branch, insert a sound effect to let the player know he’s pressed a button. Then insert Move Route command that will make the player do nothing repeatedly. Then call the pictures you made onto the screen in this order: Background, Menu, Cursor. Set the menu and the cursor to the locations necessary for your own design. Next set the Custom Menu Check switch off, and turn another switch you’re not using on. Name that switch “Custom Menu”.

The page should now look like this:

Now make another common event. Name it “Custom Menu”, set it’s trigger to Autorun, and set the condition switch to the “Custom Menu” switch you made a few moments ago. Now that you have all the pictures set, it’s time to make our first label! Name the label whatever your first menu option is. In this case, “ITEMS”.
Now set a wait of one (1)  frame.

Insert conditional branches that check for the following, and in this order:
Input.trigger?(Input::DOWN)
Input:trigger?(Input::UP)
Input.trigger?(Input::C)
Input.trigger?(Input::B)

(Each branch should be under the previous branch’s “Else” option)
Now we’ll get to work filling up those conditional branches. Under the first branch- the one that checks to see if the down button is being pressed– create a label named after your next menu item. Let’s call it “EQUIP“. Now insert a wait of 5-7 frames. use the move picture command to move the cursor to the coordinates of your next menu item. Also, insert a sound effect to accompany this move, if you want.

Under the conditional branch that checks for the C button, we’ll have to input a minor script command. The script command that calls a scene is:

$scene = Scene_*****.new
wherein the asterisks are substituted with the name of the scene. Since the first menu option is for the item menu, we’ll use the script command “$scene = Scene_Item.new”.

I’ve included a list of common scenes below:

• Items: Scene_Item
  Equip: Scene_Equip
  Skills: Scene_Skill
  Status: Scene_Status
  Save: ***Use the nifty “Open Save Menu” event command to prevent errors!****
  End: Scene_End

****Please note that if you’re using a custom script for any scene you want to include on the menu, you’ll have to search for the script command within the script. (ex. If you’re using the KCG’s Large Party, the command is $scene = Scene_PartyForm.new)

After the script command, insert a “Jump to Label” command that will jump back to the “ITEM” label.

Under the conditional branch that checks for the “Up” button, insert a sound effect, and move the cursor to the above option, (In this case, it would be the last one). Then insert a Jump to Label command named after the last menu option. (END).

Under the conditional branch that checks for the B button, insert a sound effect, then a Set Move route command that will make the player do nothing. Make sure “Repeat Action” is unchecked! Now erase all the pictures you used for the menu, turn the Custom Menu switch OFF, and turn the Custom Menu Check switch ON. Under the final “Else”, insert a Jump to Label command that will jump back to the “ITEM” label.

Congratulations! If you only have one menu option, you’ve actually done more than you need to! But if you have more than one option like most of us, you’ve only completed one section. The good news? The rest is the exact same thing you’ve done above. Start by inserting a new label– “EQUIP” in this case. Then a new conditional branch that checks for the “Down” button, and then do everything you’ve already done.

My instructions are probably extremely confusing, (Not that you’re not bright, I just can’t explain things very well) so again, I STRONGLY recommend you play the super amazing demo, then look at the comments in the events to get a better understanding.

Download the Demo!

Rate this:

That hiatus was longer than I expected it to be, but I’m back now. ^^

Quick post tonight, since I’m tired and my groin is howling in pain. As you can tell by the title, this post is a music update. I don’t have any brand-spankin’-new music for you all, but since I’m pretty sure the 4-10 people who’ve visited my blog every day since my hiatus haven’t heard any of my works, I think I’ll rehash one of the works I considered decent.

It was going to be the title theme for a game I was working on, but production for that game has ceased indefinitely. Now, the theme may be used in the fanfare for the musical I’m writing.

Enjoy:

http://www.box.net/shared/h959xbnkpa

Rate this:

A quick apology for those of you who came to this site looking for some interesting writing/music/games. I’m working on it, and I promise I’ll have something for you tomorrow

As some of you may know, I’ll be taking part in this year’s black belt cycle at my Tae Kwon Do school. The Black Belt Cycle, also known as Hell, is a ten-week adventure into the depths of Tae Kwon Do.

The first in a series of Black Belt classes was this evening, and before you read any further, I am not, in fact, typing this from a hospital. (I find this to be a huge accomplishment)

In this past class, we ran a mile, then stretched, then practiced kicking, blocking, and rolling.

…

…

Yeah, that was pretty much it. Not what you were expecting from a black belt class? Well let me tell you, this class was no picnic. The mile was nothing. But when I say we stretched, imagine a guy trying to do a split (and failing). When I say we kicked, I mean to say we held our legs up in the air until the cows came home. When I say we blocked, I mean to say…actually, it was just blocking. But by this time I was so worn out even blocking was tedious.

When we finally made it to the rolls, my master exclaimed (jokingly? :/) that it was the first thing I’d gotten right all day.

After the rolls, we took notes. But, being black belt class, it would have been barbaric to simply take notes sitting down. So we sat in a straddle-stretch position and took notes. For those of you who don’t know what a straddle stretch is, have a looksie:

Yep. That’s exactly how it was.

The stretch didn’t seem so bad when I was doing it, but when class was finally dismissed and I slowly brought my legs back together…*shudders*

I have to say, I’m fairly surprised. I wasn’t quite expecting this…I’m having second thoughts…I’m not too sure if I can…

I don’t think I can…LIVE WITHOUT THIS CLASS! WOOHOO! Bring it on, Black Belt class! Can’t wait for next week!

…

…

…

Okay, maybe I can wait one more day. At least until I regain feeling in my legs. =_=;

Rate this:

I’ve been writing for most of my short life, and every day I learn something new about writing, either by actually writing myself, or by reading what others have written.

At the beginning of last year’s school-year, my IB English teacher, the venerable Mrs. Berini, was explaining how canonical literature is written with an exact theme in mind.

Having been excessively praised for my writing in the past, I felt entitled to my own opinion.

“Do authors really do that?” I asked. “I’m sure some authors take the time to write it all out, but…”

Mrs. Berini began to glare at me, and anyone who’s ever been glared at by Mrs. Berini knows she means to say: “Stop talking, you bumbling half-wit”.

What she actually said was this (paraphrased, of course):

“You just create a happy little canonical work just by going at it all willy-nilly. Every work needs a theme. Every work needs meaning.”

I nodded and told her I understood, but in reality I thought she was full of crap. (I was then a firm believer of ‘start writing and whatever happens, happens’).

Perhaps I thought her to be an old beaurocrat who always had to have things done in a particular order, and who thought everyone else followed her order to a tee. I even joked about her with one of my other classmates after the class was over.

But over time, I took a liking to Mrs. Berini. Don’t get me wrong: she’s still the toughest teacher I’ve ever had in my entire life. And I love english class! But she’s also one of the best teachers I’ve ever known.

Near the end of the school year, I was finally able to take up writing again. My junior year had been taxing, and as a result I had become less and less able to practice my art. 

I decided to pick up one of my dropped projects: a semi-autobiographical tale of a kid who attends a summer camp for martial artists. I looked back over the first couple of chapters of this would-be novel in disgust.

Who on earth wrote this drivel? I wondered. Sure, the writing was nice, and it had a clear plot, but while reading it I quickly noticed that it meant absolutely nothing. The story was going somewhere and nowhere at all, simultaneously. (I really hope some of you writers know what I’m talking about >_>)

For some reason, I thought back to that first class with Mrs. Berini. It only took me a second to realise she was irrefutably, undesputedly, inarguably correct. What my story needed was meaning.

Not that my previous works have all been without meaning – a lot of them actually did have a set theme. But my revelation meant that I could

With Mrs. Berini’s wisdom fresh in my mind, I began to breathe life into my story. I took down the plastic walls and rebuilt with stone. I shattered the windows and in its place raised stained glass. What was once a mere church was now a grand, gothic cathedral.

Or rather, the idea of a cathedral – the floorplans, if you will. But I needed to build it; I needed to write.

I’ve tried, many times, to create a novel. Each and every time, the novel lost steam within a chapter or two. This time, I swore to myself, things would be different.

The story – now retitled “Farewell, Children. The Day is Dead.”  is now approaching 20,000 words – it’s already longer than anything I’ve ever written. Even in its unfinished state, it is my proudest written achievement.

But more on my story in another post. Right now I want to beat this piece of wisdom into the heads of all you writers out there: Without meaning, your piece is nothing.

If you need more reinforcement, I’ll say it in what may pass for french in some countries: Sans sens, ton roman n’a pas d’importance. S’il n’a pas de la vie, ton histoire est rien!

 I’m not saying you have to have some grand discourse on human nature embedded within your writing, but if you look to your bookshelf, I’ll wager the best books you have there have meaning attached to them. It’s the crappy ones that are devoid of life and purpose.

So writers, I beg you: put your heart and soul into your work! (Like the title-insert I did there?) We need more authors out there that can weave interesting, meaningful tales! If you need an incentive to do so, look here!

Do you really want this to be the future of the world?

(picture coursesy of Kate Coursey)

Ice Sliding Puzzles

QUOTE (Malexos @ Aug 4 2010, 03:34 PM)
“Good job with the tutorial, but There’s a way you can do this with just one event…

Okay, so I lied. This needs two events to control the ice-sliding, but you also have to have obstacles, right?  (But the bright side is you won’t need events on every square- or any square that you’re stepping on, for that matter.)

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND (HINT HINT HINT) That you download the demo. Please. If at the end of this tutorial you have a question, it’s probably because you didn’t play and look through the demo. If you have a question and you’ve played the demo, by all means, ask.

Demo Link

Note for the demo: If you want to finish the puzzle, you’re going to have to use Psynergy. Use Psynergy by pressing the “S” key. This will move certain objects as long as they’re one space away from you.

Okay! On with the tutorial!

The first thing you need to do when making an ice-sliding puzzle is create your basic outline. For my method, it is highly recommended that you use a rectangle/square, like so:

 

Next, you have to make the puzzle. As in, add obstructions that your player will have to skillfully use to slide about the room until they reach the other side. When I was working on Mr. Peebles and the Olympics, I was rushed for time. So instead of being creative, I copied the puzzle right out of Pokemon GSC (But I DID add a twist involving Psynergy and a Snowman. )

 

THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN MAKING YOUR PUZZLE:

1. While we all like a challenge, but if you make your puzzle TOO challenging, (i.e. 500 possible routes) the player may get frustrated/lose interest

2. Make sure there’s ALWAYS a way out if your player gets stuck.

Now that you’ve got your puzzle created, it’s time for the real reason why you’re reading this: the Events.

Firstly, you’ll need an event to track the movement of your character to see when they enter your ice-sliding area. (This will be easy-peasy if you made it a sqwectangle like I specifically told you to at the beginning.)

In order to do this, you’ll need to get the coordinate-range of your area. Go into the map editor in event mode, and click on the square on the top-left corner of your area. The coordinate should appear at the bottom of the map editor, like this.

Repeat until you have the following for your area:

Lowest X/Y Value

Highest X/Y Value

Now that you have your values, plug them in to the following script call:

get_character(-1).x.between?(Lowest X value, Highest X value) && get_character(-1).y.between?(Lowest Y value, Highest Y value)

 ~o~o~O~o~o~

Here’s where it gets complicated. I’d much prefer it if you’d simply play the demo but if you’re one of those people who don’t like to take the time to download, I’ll do my best to explain.

1. Create a new event on your map. This is the event that will track your player’s movement. Set the event trigger to “Parallel Process” . Now use the LABEL command to create a label named “Start“.

2. Create a conditional branch with the code I gave you not too long ago.

3. Under that conditional branch, create a “Wait” set for 1 frame. One. Un. Ein. Uno. Il. Ichi. Hanna. This is done so that the engine has time to think. For one reason or another, the event will not work at all if you do not include the wait.

4. Under that wait, create another conditional branch. Set the condition for “Player Facing Up”. This, of course, checks to see if the player is facing up.

5. Under that conditional branch, turn a switch on. This can be any switch, but label it so you know you’re using it exclusively for the ice slide. You can reuse this switch for different ice puzzles only if you have one puzzle per map. If you have more than one ice sliding puzzle on any given map, you’ll need to use multiple switches.

6. [OPTIONAL] If you want, you can turn up your players speed here, so it looks like they’re sliding faster than they would normally walk. This is optional.

7. This part is not optional. It won’t affect the event if you don’t have it in place, but it’ll look pretty stupid if you don’t have it: turn the player’s walking animation off.

8. Create a label named “Up”.

9. Set the player’s move route to Move up (x1). Check skip if cannot move, and wait for completion.

10. Create yet another conditional branch to check to see if your Slide switch is off

11. Under that conditional branch, change your player’s speed back if you changed it, and turn the walking animation back on.

12.  Now create a “Jump to label” command, to jump to the Start label you made earlier.

13. Go to under the “Else” (hereafter referred to as ”The Exception”) for that conditional branch, and create a Jump to label command to jump back to the Up label.

14. Repeat this process for all four directions, and add them under the exception for the conditional branch that checks for direction.

Your event should look like this when you’re done. (Click to see it 100%)

 

 

 Okay, now for the REALLY COMPLICATED part. (Again, I implore you to download the demo)

This new part ensures that your player stops when they hit a wall.

1. Create a new event.

(If you’re using Woratana’s Extra Move speed script like I am, you will need a blank page before the page you’ll be working on, because the script cannot handle events not ‘existing’ for some reason >_>)

2. Set the conditions to “Switch [Slide Switch] is ON”.

3. Create a conditional branch with the area code I gave you so many lines ago.

4. Under that conditional branch, create another conditional branch that has the following code:

get_character(-1).y == Lowest Y Value

This will check to see if your player hit the upper wall.

5. Under that branch, check to see if the player is facing up; after all, we don’t want the player to stop if they’re sliding along the upper wall, do we?

6. Under that conditional branch, turn your slide switch off

7. Under ”else” for that conditional branch, do the same thing for every wall of your area.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

CREATING OBSTACLES

Now for a really simple part

You have your obstacles, yes? Well create an event in place of them:

1. Set the event’s priority to “Same as characters”, and the trigger to “Player touch”

2. In the event’s code, create a command that turns your Slide switch off

3. That’s all!

That event will simply stop your player in it’s tracks so that it’s forced to change directions.

If you haven’t gotten the hint yet, I really want you to DOWNLOAD THE DEMO. So please do before you ask me a question that can easily be solved by looking at the demo.

(For anyone who happens to read this before I upload the demo, I’m uploading it now so be patient…)

Rate this:

Well I’m off to a promising start…three posts in one day…phew…

To be honest, the only reason why I’m posting again is because of a news story I heard of just a few minutes ago. Some of you have probably heard of it. The story I’m speaking of is the plans to build a mosque – not on the site of Ground Zero, as the article’s title led me to believe - but about two blocks away from it.

The “issue” here is that many people think this is insensitive to the families of those lost in the 9/11 tragedy.

I could fully understand their complaints if someone was trying to build anything other than a memorial directly atop the site, but the mosque’s site is two blocks away, and around the corner. Not even visible from the Ground Zero site, as far as I can tell.

I’m one hundred per-cent positive no one would have a problem with the plan if they were building a McDonalds in the same spot.

The thing people need to understand is that 9/11 was a very tragic event caused by a few terrible people who happened to be “muslims”. (Quotation marks because in my opinion those people aren’t muslims at all)

Plenty of tragic events are caused by so-called christians as well. And Jews. And atheists. And fat people. And teachers, and doctors, and garbage-men – the list is unending. People from all walks of life have done terrible things to others, and so it does no good to place a stigma on one group in particular just because a few of them decided to commit atrocities.

If Osama bin-Laden wanted to open a lemonade stand on top of ground zero, I would completely understand. But for all anyone knows, it’s just a group of muslims who want a safe place to worship their god. If in the United States of America we cannot be civilised enough to put aside our prejudices and grant asylum to a peaceful people, then we have a terribly long way to go, my friends.

But of course, as always, I acknowledge the fact that I could be wrong. If you have something to say either in accord or against what I’ve said in this post, leave a comment. Come on. You know you want to  

By the way: a good video that shows where the mosque will be built in relation to Ground Zero can be found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38538068/ns/us_news-life/?GT1=43001

Rate this:

I’d like to begin today’s first (proper) blog with a little thing I like to call Sparring Week. You see, I take Tae Kwon Do, and at my school the first week of every month is dedicated to the glorious art of beating the crap out of people. In a polite fashion, of course.

Why am I so excited about this sparring week? Because not only will this be my first sparring week in a while: today will be my first Tae Kwon Do class in AGES!

I’ve been out of town for about six weeks (which is another story all in itself) and so I’ve missed out on nearly all of the classes this summer! So today, in celebration of this most joyous occasion, I will be doing this:

And this.

 

And especially this.

 

(Picture courtesty of firstpeople.us)

By the way; if you’re in the Charlotte area, and want to learn Tae Kwon Do, I know of no other Master like our very own Master Harris. Please visit our website and think about visiting sometime

</shameless advertisement>