OverClocked Remixes

Here I am, sitting at the computer, trying to write a lab report that's due for chemistry class on Tuesday, watching my blood sugar go back up to the high numbers that make it hard to concentrate on anything, lamenting being sick for the past two-thirds of the week, and praying that the stoichiometry stuff I still need to do will be quick and easy since I have driving class for over four hours tomorrow. It's one of those weekends that would be making me panic if it all weren't so dreary and depressing.

To provide a muffler for the noises and distractions all around me, I am listening to a bunch of fan-made remixes of video game music. And when I say "remix" I'm not talking about just rock'n'roll, techno type stuff. I'm referring to amazing arrangements of one or many VG tunes using a variety of instruments and covering a multitude of styles. Piano, trumpets, strings, some spunky stuff... Adventure, peace, fun, sadness... All made by people who do it because they can. The site (and community) that hosts them is OCRemix.org and they are called OC Remixes (big surprise). Many are synthesized; after all, how many people have a real orchestra at their command? The big deal is the quality, so unless you live by yourself and have a very good microphone, you might as well synthesize your piano pieces as well. That way all you require is the good equipment; no need to worry about keeping your breath out of the recording or anything.

So anyway, on top of everything else, I'm again experiencing the desire to make some of my own. Actually, those that I mentioned four posts ago are some. The problem is, I've needed a good program or mixer to produce them. Well, my dad found a certain Magix Music Studio at Half-Price Books for about $25, less than half of the retail $80. It looks like it could do what I need it to, but it doesn't run smoothly on our computers. Wanting to get a laptop anyway, I figured maybe the way to go would be to get a Macbook and run Windows XP on it. Time to get a job, right? But whenever that looked like a good idea, I had too much else I wanted to do.

On the other hand, since I'm making so little progress as a ROM hacker (that SMW site tells hackers all there is to know about SMW, not how to be a SMW hacker), I'm revisiting the possibility. The sooner I start, the sooner I can work my way towards something. I've realized that, while I spend so much time on various interests, there is often a lack of actual productivity in them. The way I see it, if I want to really get into these things, I need to do it with determination, with a passion. As long as I'm only exploring in such areas, I should make sure something else gets some real attention and effort.


By the way, for a good taste of the variety OCRemix has to offer, try searching for "Predetermination," "The Place We Knew," "Flight of Destiny," "Timeless," "Odyssey Beyond the Falls," "Jamming Loneliness," "Darkworld Jazz," and "A Day in the Life of a Gambler." .....Just to name a few ; ) --though if you're into rock/metal stuff, just click on anything and sooner or later you'll find what you want.

SMW Hacking

I've had plenty of time on the computer lately, so how come I haven't been blogging more? Because I found a website dedicated to Super Mario World ROM hacking. And it's a Mario World unto itself.

One problem with wanting to be a ROMhacker has been the lack of organized information. Having no computer programming experience to begin with, the wealth of terms and workings involved are not so much overwhelming as inadequately explained. Tutorials never seem to say enough; they often assume you already know all about something they refer to, or are inapplicable to half of the existing tools for the area.

I have hope with this place because it hosts as much as is currently known on a single game. There are tools for graphics editing, changing game mechanics, and even inserting music via a text file. They have a ~41% (and counting) complete list of all the ROM addresses, with their byte sizes and game effects. And it's a place to share creations, ideas, findings, and questions.

Or so you'd think. The forums give me the impression that they absolutely hate questions from bewildered "noobs" with the "inability to read a readme." Fine, you bunch of stuck-ups. I'm rather averse to message boards anyway. They demand too much time to partake in, and outsiders will have a hard time finding what they need. That's why, when I require an explanation, I use Google[TM-thing!] and search for specific keywords in a single website; this can usually locate a particular post relevant to my problem.

Anyway, I figured if I really want to learn this stuff, I should start where there is plenty to learn. There will be many differences in hacking other games, but this way I'll gain the background knowledge necessary to see where I'm going. It's like feeling your way through a dark, familiar room as opposed to a dark, unfamiliar room.

All I need is the time-and-determination side of nerdage, which I know won't come for me automatically.

New Chemistry Class

(Hey, a life-relevant post!)

Yesterday I joined a different chemistry class, which meets every Tuesday. I like the teacher, Dr. C, whom one of my brothers learned from back in highschool as well. Due to differences in the textbooks' depths, this class is farther into the subject, but hasn't been covering some parts in quite as much detail. I'm currently a bit rusty in areas that I had down cold in physical science last year, though that should change without a problem.

The main factor in switching classes was our schedule. My brother started going to a community college, and that conflicted with the Wednesday chemistry course. My mom and I actually had to choose between the two classes at the start of the school year, and while I didn't want to miss out on the one my brother so loved, Dr. F (who is a neat teacher, don't get me wrong) provided a more convenient program at the time.

I guess this way I'll have gotten a bit of each!

"Castlevania" music like you've never heard before

I could write a very long analysis of the parameters of video game music, but I'll save that for another time. Right now I'd like to share something truly awesome to hear: a beautiful piano rendition of the outdoor theme from Castlevania II. Never take a melody only one way you hear it. A great thing about music is its versatility, the ranges and styles that can be achieved with a single tune.

I like to work on video game piano arrangements myself. I've currently turned out a short elaboration of the title screen of Shadowgate; a rather moving piece from Solar Jetman accented with another bit from Shadowgate; and a remix that takes from Super Mario Bros., Chrono Trigger, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which will probably become more than piano once I can properly synthesize anything.

Science, Philosophy, and Common Knowledge

Philosophy classes resumed this morning, and we started in on the appetites. The Christmas break reading on the subject got the addition of a newspaper article about a week ago, which discussed shopping and what goes on psychologically throughout. Neuroscientists used MRI scans and found a "war in the brain" between the pleasure over a desired item and the pain of spending money for it.

Through my philosophic eyes: "Yes, that makes perfect sense. The concupiscible appetite's attractions and aversions are blah blah blah...."

Through my everyday eyes: "They needed MRIs to show that? Give me a break."

"Climate change" on the radio this morning ...

As near as I can remember:

"What we're dealing with is climate change..."
"Change?"
"That's right."
"So as soon as it stopped warming, it became 'change'?"
"Look, what I'm trying to say is the climate's changing..."
"Of course it is."
"The temperature is..."
"If the climate never changed, it wouldn't be climate."
"When..."
"If the temperature was always the same, we'd have no concept of temperature!"
"Okay, but when the planet's conditions are altered..."
"Uh-huh..."
"...and the temperature is gradually rising over..."
"It's cold out."
"Mike..."
"More people die from the cold than from the heat!"
"And even more die from tsunamis."
"Tsunamis have nothing to do with this!"
"Listen..."
"Tsunamis are caused by a shift in the Earth's crust..."
"...the plates change, exactly..."
"They don't change because of the temperature..."
"Right, it's because of earthquakes."
"Yeah."
"What I'm getting at is..."
"Earthquakes don't happen because the earth heats up!"
"No, I'm just saying that the world changes..."
"Yeah, but..."
"...and we..."
"Listen, Nick... It's getting colder! So shut up!"

A "3-D CD"

ZMaro, SCobbler, and I were chatting about video games at my late birthday party yesterday, and at some point ZM mentioned that the Playstation was supposed to be a "3-D system," yet there seemed to be as many 2-D games on it as there were 3-D games. "Well, those disks are pretty flat," I joked. "A true 3-D system would have some triangular prism that floats in mid-air and is read by lasers from multiple directions."

As many of our conversations go, this simple, witty comment shot us off on a whole different tangent as we began discussing how a three-dimensional "CD" would function.

SC, being a bit over-practical for the amount of sugar we were running off, pointed out that a pyramid would be almost impossible to spin like a CD and be read; a sphere would work much better. Before I could say more than "A sphere is dull," he added that a cone would be best, because you wouldn't have to deal with the inconsistent proximity of the sphere's surface to the reading laser. I wasn't sure what he was talking about at the time, although now I think he might have been referring to a single laser moving in a perpendicular direction to the sphere's spinning, like a CD player's laser moving from the inside to the outside. If this is the case, a cone would help, as the angle would never change. However, a cone would truly remedy the problem if it was spun on a tilted axis such that the side facing the laser was vertically straight, but if you went in that direction you might as well settle on a cylinder.

I, on the other hand, wasn't thinking of having the object spin whilst the laser(s) moved. I was picturing an object held in the center of a zero-G container rotating (though not necessarily spinning quickly) in any direction so that fixed lasers could read every area. However, I still didn't manage to communicate this because ZMaro took us completely off-guard by saying that the lasers would spin around the sphere. My dad kind of stabbed the idea and left it for dead by exposing the inefficiency of doing that. Then SCobbler practically discarded the whole anti-gravity part by suggesting "rollers" that would turn the sphere (of course, I suppose using a cone might negate the antigrav as well).

I eventually just verbalized the fact that a pyramid would be the coolest, but SC wouldn't go down without a fight. Thanks to him we began rationalizing the dilemma of where information is located. He said that a sphere or pyramid would cause issues with where to start reading and it would be impractical to have "directions" all over the thing to point to what to read next. "Hey," I said, "by the time this is done in the first place, data storage will be so advanced that it shouldn't pose a problem." I think we ended on that note, but it may only have been because ZM had to leave.

So we went from yakking about games to theorizing 3-D optical storage, and all the while our parents stood by watching and waiting for us to finish. As ZM said last night, "Sometimes I forget just how nerdy we sound."

Returning pics lost (from blog transfer?)

I just spent the last hour and a half digging through my files for all of the pictures that go in my posts from September 2008, then placing them in the posts all over again. When I transferred my blog, everything was fine -- until I removed the other user, I guess. I looked at the posts to make sure their pictures were still in place, and they were. As a matter of fact, I think they were there after I deleted my other account. So, what happened? I just found that all of my previous posts had pics that wouldn't display, so now I have to go reinsert them. September took long enough; I don't feel like doing any more tonight (of course, after September and October, I had a considerable slump in posting frequency).

I have a question: do pictures get lost like this at the turn of the year? They really shouldn't, but I suppose that's a possibility. If that's the case, well... I don't know, that's just dumb. It would surprise me if they don't tick off a whole lot of users every time.

The Powder Game

My younger brother's friend showed him this awesome web game just last month. Called the "powder" or "dust" game, it is a simple Java thing with infinite fun and creative possibilities.

The main function consists of playing around with many "powdery" pixels of diverse natures, each having different simulated physical and chemical properties. Some fall faster than others, a few are "solid" and hang in mid-air, etc. A good number of them are flammable, so all you high-school chemistry students who just want to see things blow up should get hooked on this game pretty easily. = ) Almost every substance has a special quality when thrown together with another: for example, water solidifies magma; thunder electrifies metal; torch burns what hits it but is dissolved by water; and the infamous virus eats through and overruns all others, eventually turning back into the first material it came in contact with. Searching for all the unique reactions is part of the entertainment.

In addition to the dusts, you can conjure up boxes, spinning wheels, and edit the indestructible terrain, including the border. The sides of the screen can be set to loop, so that whatever goes off one side comes in on the other. Various visual effects can be selected, such as leaving blurs or showing the direction and pressure of the air. Ah, the air. You can blow stuff around and set up "fans" wherever you want. Combustion can really blast things around, as well.

With all of these features to toy with, you can go anywhere from blowing things up to making interactive works of art (like this soda machine). If that's not enough, there's also a little controllable stick-man who can walk, jump, and acquire abilities from the various dusts (okay, so the laser doesn't behave like a dust), so playable challenges become an option. Pit your friends against a puzzle, or against any number of crazy, kicking, not-too-bright enemy stick-men.

Only registered members can upload their work, but it's possible to save your levels offline. There is a text window above the main game screen that says "Save game" and has two buttons to the right. Click "Get" to have the window display the code for the game's current situation. Copy this and you can stick it back in and click "Set" to get that arrangement whenever you want.

The website itself seems to be a Japanese Java game site that has been mostly translated into English (I find it amusing that the sign-up terms and agreements are still in Japanese characters). The only other games I've tried are "Stick Ranger," a work-in-progress stick-figure RPG, and an orbital gravity simulator, which brings back memories of something we had on our old Mac 2CX (I remember throwing the moon off on a bad trajectory and watching it crash into Earth with a shattering noise...). It looks like everything, including the Powder Game, is always being improved, so I'm going to keep my eye on the place.

SMB2 Hack: Mario's Gaming Dream

Our internet protection service wasn't working yesterday, so I couldn't access the internet to blog. Instead, I returned to my ROM hacking and dusted off the resulting project of my first venture in the hobby:

I wrote this plot (pretty much an excuse to change whatever I want) shortly after learning to text hack, but the work began over a year ago when I first laid a finger on ROM hacking tools. I had read a tutorial on NES graphics hacking that demonstrated the program with Final Fantasy's characters, then tried it myself. Grabbing the knight's various frames straight out of Final Fantasy, I stuck them where Mario's sprites went in Super Mario Bros. 2. The result excited me so much I decided to draw my own sprites for climbing ladders, ducking, and throwing, the only moves that ripped FF sprites didn't cover. I must have played that ROM for an hour, I was having so much fun.
Then the fighter (who grows up to be the knight) took small Mario's place, making things even more complete. Except for one problem: the knight and the fighter both take up the same amount of space in FF, so they didn't work for being big and small in SMB2. In fact, the knight was half a tile short to take big Mario's place, which was really bad for where the top of the character belonged.



Though it took a lot of work, I found the solution. I noticed how the small characters' heads are oversized for the rest of them in SMB2, so I took the head of the fighter and gave it a homemade, tiny body. I was amazed at my own work; I never expected I could do it so well, being such a lousy artist (I still don't think the knight's climbing sprite looks right...). The time I put into it certainly paid off. As for the knight, I just made his legs longer. = )



The verdict at that junction was to overhaul everything and make an SMB2-style Final Fantasy game, but that never saw the light of day because the other FF characters have too many colors. They get away with having one more color than can fit in SMB2 because the battle background in FF is black, allowing transparency to be used for what has to be black in SMB2. That said, the hack "collected dust" while an alternative goal was sought.

I hit upon the idea to use anything that would work some time ago, and later hacked the storyline to be something like what is shown above. Finally, the idea hit me yesterday to use Simon Belmont, from the Castlevania series, in place of Luigi. I'm nowhere near done with this change (he still has Luigi's colors...), but its completion will be a great feat, as Simon is rather sophisticated for an 8-bit figure. Hopefully people won't find it too weird how Simon flutters his legs in mid-air. Luigi did that, so what can I do? Changing such qualities falls under ASM (assembly) hacking, which is a rather advanced branch of the science (hobby? art? science?). Well, I'm using Simon's sprites (with some refinement) from Castlevania II, in which he actually fell rather slowly, so it works out in my opinion.

Unintended Birthday Gift

My birthday was two days ago, and it wasn't a big event. I turned old enough to do nonexistent magic outside of the nonexistent wizarding school, and I got an electric razor. Not much to write about. But then there was something that just happened to arrive that day, making it a sort of birthday treat: the continuous blood glucose monitoring system that we've been trying to get for such a long time!

It occurs to me now that I've never brought up my diabetic condition before. So, to provide the necessary information: I was diagnosed with "type 1" diabetes (otherwise known as "juvenile" diabetes, although adults can develop it as well) in 2005, and have since been checking my blood's sugar levels by stabbing my fingers at least six times a day.

The continuous monitor, the Navigator, has a sensor that remains in my flesh and constantly keeps track of my sugar levels, forming line graphs, showing change rates, and alarming when there's too much or too little sugar. This will be great for analyzing trends and making insulin ratio adjustments, as it fills in all of the gaps left when just testing as the need arises. For now, though, I'm happy to be free of so many finger sticks, especially at night when my parents check on me.

Being such new technology, getting insurance to approve of it took a long time, and we lucked out that they consented before the new year. It also seems like a special blessing that this device came on my birthday, and I'm very grateful for it.

A new year's notice--

Well, now that I'm finally back on my blog, I have a lot to say, most of which I've forgotten, unfortunately. But I do have some good and important news: I finally managed to transfer this blog to the e-mail address I desire. It was a very weird process; nothing happened the way it should have. Since the author invitation approach didn't work, I exported the blog and imported it on my other account, and found that both accounts were listed as authors, despite the fact that it was registered as a different blog. In fact, the account I'd been using suddenly was the author of two blogs. Anyway, despite all of the anxiety and precautions throughout the ordeal, it proved to be a simple and harmless task to delete the first account and blog entirely, leaving these in their places. No posts were lost in the process, and all of the settings were carried over. The only items that had to be reconstructed were the Tome of Randomness, the poll, and the pictures, which I hopefully restored to their original states (except for the poll, which I threw out since it had no voting history). Oh, and my profile has only 8 views...

Now, the greatest importance of this:

This blog's address is now ahspensieve.blogspot.com -- The old address could not be reused.

So, Happy New Year, and I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate). I'm off to bed.