I was hanging out with ZMaro today, talking about random stuff, when the topic of anime emerged. I've never cared for anime-style cartoons or video game cutscenes, because they're so.......weird. The way characters don't move their mouths in accordance with their speech, the manner in which they move their bodies, the corny "camera" attention and facial expressions -- ugh. And when they are fighting and zoom at each other, yelling like drunk teenagers as the world streams by in multi-colored lines, the sweat drips down their faces, and there's a close-up of a guy whose eyes are growing bigger and bigger as his mouth twitches in the same spot for five secondsandthenBAAMMMM!!! the guy flies 40 feet backward and slams into a wall so hard the bricks shatter and he's stuck there; that is, only until he's through acting totally unrealistic for a short piece of dialogue, at which point he flies off the wall and does the same to his opponent. Who would watch such stuff??
ZMaro said he finds anime hilarious because it's so dumb. It's only good purpose is being an object to make fun of. I jokingly pointed out that it also serves as proof that we who can only draw stick-figures are better artists than many Japanese people. "Anime? Blech. I can draw STICK-FIGURES!"
When we began making silly doodles as a result of that conversation and ZMaro drew a stick man planting a gargantuan fist into another stick man, I suddenly had a brilliant idea: stick-figure anime! If we ever become good enough artists to make good animations, we'll create a series with characters doing all those stupid anime moves and pulling those corny expressions in what is supposed to be some great, dramatic moment -- in STICK-FIGURE STYLE!!
Friday, December 19, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
A brief mention of religion and science ...
"... the elements will be dissolved by fire ..."
These words were heard in the second reading on the second Sunday of Advent (and are, regrettably, the only subject for blogging that I can remember now that I can actually blog again...). When I heard them, I couldn't help but laugh inwardly at what I began thinking: what would the ancient Greeks have thought of this? They believed fire was one of the elements! "Let me get this straight: fire will destroy earth, water, and air, and then it will burn itself out? That's a rather meloncholy way to end the world."
With today's science, on the other hand, this passage kind of makes sense. Fire is a combustion reaction in which molecular (and sometimes atomic) structures are broken down and re-arranged. So when the day of the Lord comes and Heaven and Earth pass away... Um, how will fire destroy Heaven? I guess I'll leave this up to St. John.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make here is that religion and science are not enemies. This is very limited example, to be sure, and perhaps St. Peter was being metaphorical, but take it for what it's worth.
These words were heard in the second reading on the second Sunday of Advent (and are, regrettably, the only subject for blogging that I can remember now that I can actually blog again...). When I heard them, I couldn't help but laugh inwardly at what I began thinking: what would the ancient Greeks have thought of this? They believed fire was one of the elements! "Let me get this straight: fire will destroy earth, water, and air, and then it will burn itself out? That's a rather meloncholy way to end the world."
With today's science, on the other hand, this passage kind of makes sense. Fire is a combustion reaction in which molecular (and sometimes atomic) structures are broken down and re-arranged. So when the day of the Lord comes and Heaven and Earth pass away... Um, how will fire destroy Heaven? I guess I'll leave this up to St. John.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make here is that religion and science are not enemies. This is very limited example, to be sure, and perhaps St. Peter was being metaphorical, but take it for what it's worth.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Spiff Hack Update
Being the end of the week, I've had time to continue (resume?) working on my hack of Solar Jetman. I figured I'd announce where I am and where I'm going at this point.
Changing the graphics of the pod is proving to be a slow and difficult process. The pod turns 360 degrees while corkscrewing so that you see the top when it faces up and you see the bottom when it faces down. This makes everything in between hard to draw and smoothly connect, especially since Spiff's ship is a saucer and I have to work with a solid red unless I decide to take extra liberties.
Since graphics work was tiring, I decided to look for a utility for overall level editing; I found none. In order to change the level layouts, types and positions of enemies and items, what makes you go where, and so forth, I need an editor. These kinds of things are rocket science to change via raw coding, and if one knows enough to do so, they might as well create a utility to make it easier. Rather than devote my entire computer life to such a thing, I'm going to wait, and possibly ask, for such a program to be made by a ROM hacking veteran. Unfortunately, this could place restraints on what I do until such ability comes into my hands, as I won't be able to fit planet names with planet environments and such all at once. In fact, if I finish this hack in every other way, it may remain a visual hack only, depending on my interest to come back and rework the level designs once I possess the requirements to do so.
So what can I change right now besides graphics? Text. Text hacking is a category unto itself due to how it is stored in a ROM. There are graphical tiles for each letter and number, and the game uses strings of hex numbers in which one number translates to one tile. This makes the hacking a matter of locating the hex strings that represent text. But how is this done, and how do you know what number corresponds to which letter? I viewed this as a complicated problem in the past; in fact, this is the first time I've done it. I once again (I had tried once before) read a tutorial on the procedure, and since I could not get the recommended DOS hex editor (Hexposure) to work properly on the computer, attempted it with the editor I have, differently though it works.
A table file, containing the key for hex and text, is needed to locate and change the right data. Since none existed for Solar Jetman, I had to make my own (I believe this is where I said "forget it" in the past, since Hexposure wasn't cooperating and I didn't know how to use the Zelda table I found with my favored editor). Opening the ROM in a debug emulator, I called up the tile viewer, found the text tiles, and wrote down their hex values in Notepad. After saving the key as a ".tbl" file, I opened it in my hex editor along with the ROM. All the hex numbers in the ROM were displayed on one side and, thanks to the table, the corresponding numbers and letters (where applicable) on the other.
A given hex number may appear several times in the data, and an editor will show it as a text graphic wherever it crops up, regardless of whether it is text or not. Finding the actual text was the easy part, though. I just had to scroll through the data until I found actual words from the game. Then all that had to be done was change the hex numbers so they made the text I wanted.
However, Solar Jetman had a catch. Each planet's name was missing the last letter in the editor, with one untranslated hex number in its place before the text for the next planet. I had to tinker with this on my own in order to figure out how to deal with it. Experimenting with planet 2, I first tried replacing the untranslated number with the hex for "D;" but when I opened the game I found that "2 MEXOMORF" (the F was missing in the editor) had become "2 MEXOMORD3 OMEBRU." The text had
been squished together with planet 3's. I could draw two conclusions from this: the unrecognized hex contained the missing letter, and it also served as a sort of break or finisher, ending the line of text. I made certain of this by replacing the number in between planets 1 and 2 with the one in between planets 2 and 3. Sure enough, this made "1 PRELUDON" say "1 PRELUDOF." At this point I began to jot down the values for these "letters and breaks" in my table file, and suddenly noticed that if I filled in the rest of the letters of the alphabet that the game's planets didn't use, 
I would have sequential hex for every letter followed by one of those breaks. The last question, then, was whether or not I could use the resulting table to end a planet's name with a letter that the game never did. I tried it, and it worked!
I am very pleased with this accomplishment; maybe I'll be a great ROM hacker yet.
Changing the graphics of the pod is proving to be a slow and difficult process. The pod turns 360 degrees while corkscrewing so that you see the top when it faces up and you see the bottom when it faces down. This makes everything in between hard to draw and smoothly connect, especially since Spiff's ship is a saucer and I have to work with a solid red unless I decide to take extra liberties.
Since graphics work was tiring, I decided to look for a utility for overall level editing; I found none. In order to change the level layouts, types and positions of enemies and items, what makes you go where, and so forth, I need an editor. These kinds of things are rocket science to change via raw coding, and if one knows enough to do so, they might as well create a utility to make it easier. Rather than devote my entire computer life to such a thing, I'm going to wait, and possibly ask, for such a program to be made by a ROM hacking veteran. Unfortunately, this could place restraints on what I do until such ability comes into my hands, as I won't be able to fit planet names with planet environments and such all at once. In fact, if I finish this hack in every other way, it may remain a visual hack only, depending on my interest to come back and rework the level designs once I possess the requirements to do so.
So what can I change right now besides graphics? Text. Text hacking is a category unto itself due to how it is stored in a ROM. There are graphical tiles for each letter and number, and the game uses strings of hex numbers in which one number translates to one tile. This makes the hacking a matter of locating the hex strings that represent text. But how is this done, and how do you know what number corresponds to which letter? I viewed this as a complicated problem in the past; in fact, this is the first time I've done it. I once again (I had tried once before) read a tutorial on the procedure, and since I could not get the recommended DOS hex editor (Hexposure) to work properly on the computer, attempted it with the editor I have, differently though it works.
A table file, containing the key for hex and text, is needed to locate and change the right data. Since none existed for Solar Jetman, I had to make my own (I believe this is where I said "forget it" in the past, since Hexposure wasn't cooperating and I didn't know how to use the Zelda table I found with my favored editor). Opening the ROM in a debug emulator, I called up the tile viewer, found the text tiles, and wrote down their hex values in Notepad. After saving the key as a ".tbl" file, I opened it in my hex editor along with the ROM. All the hex numbers in the ROM were displayed on one side and, thanks to the table, the corresponding numbers and letters (where applicable) on the other.
A given hex number may appear several times in the data, and an editor will show it as a text graphic wherever it crops up, regardless of whether it is text or not. Finding the actual text was the easy part, though. I just had to scroll through the data until I found actual words from the game. Then all that had to be done was change the hex numbers so they made the text I wanted.
However, Solar Jetman had a catch. Each planet's name was missing the last letter in the editor, with one untranslated hex number in its place before the text for the next planet. I had to tinker with this on my own in order to figure out how to deal with it. Experimenting with planet 2, I first tried replacing the untranslated number with the hex for "D;" but when I opened the game I found that "2 MEXOMORF" (the F was missing in the editor) had become "2 MEXOMORD3 OMEBRU." The text had
been squished together with planet 3's. I could draw two conclusions from this: the unrecognized hex contained the missing letter, and it also served as a sort of break or finisher, ending the line of text. I made certain of this by replacing the number in between planets 1 and 2 with the one in between planets 2 and 3. Sure enough, this made "1 PRELUDON" say "1 PRELUDOF." At this point I began to jot down the values for these "letters and breaks" in my table file, and suddenly noticed that if I filled in the rest of the letters of the alphabet that the game's planets didn't use, 
I would have sequential hex for every letter followed by one of those breaks. The last question, then, was whether or not I could use the resulting table to end a planet's name with a letter that the game never did. I tried it, and it worked!I am very pleased with this accomplishment; maybe I'll be a great ROM hacker yet.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
My brother: historical encyclopedia and practical joker.
My younger brother sure pulled a fast one on me today. I was in the basement playing Solar Jetman when he walked into the room with an expressionless face and a sullen tone, informing me that it's become awfully easy to assassinate people. I thought he was bringing grave, political news that I had failed to hear because I was downstairs playing video games; immediately pausing the game, I turned to face him and demanded to know what had happened. "BANG!" he yelled, pointing his finger at me.
I've been avoiding direct politics within T.H.I.N.G., but that doesn't mean I haven't been following the issues. With all that's been going on lately, I was somewhere between worried and exasperated at the thought of an assassination. Man! I don't think my brother had any idea what was shooting through my mind as he did that. Well, I'm grateful that it was a false alarm.
Hey, Obama's Tux Cat's are still all I've truly mentioned here about the election. Hooray for me!
I've been avoiding direct politics within T.H.I.N.G., but that doesn't mean I haven't been following the issues. With all that's been going on lately, I was somewhere between worried and exasperated at the thought of an assassination. Man! I don't think my brother had any idea what was shooting through my mind as he did that. Well, I'm grateful that it was a false alarm.
Hey, Obama's Tux Cat's are still all I've truly mentioned here about the election. Hooray for me!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
We only have fractions of the Hylian legend ...
Wow. Ever since I saw a blurb on a Zelda fan site about the "Ocarina of Time Beta Project," I've been trying to find out more about it. At first I thought it was just some attempt to make a debug ROM playable or something, but when I read the blurb and saw that it was about the discovery of the graphic for a sword-beam (a classic ability never used in a 3D Zelda except for the Fierce Deity's Mask in Majora's Mask), I realized that there were some big possibilities hidden in the game's data. "But what exactly are these people chasing after?" I thought.
I can't be entirely sure, but I believe that this is the answer. The N64DD (see my previous post) would have been able to do some pretty unthinkable things had it not been a failure. A lot of the N64 games out there were initially being developed for it but were later moved to regular cartridge releases, including Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. In fact, the two Zelda titles were originally going to be a single one; and if you gathered all the stuff that got thrown out, you'd probably have a third game! I haven't been able to find much direct info on the "Beta Project," but it's probably an attempt to unearth everything buried in the ROM and eventually piece together the original Zelda game in its full awesomeness.
A couple of quick notes about the page I've linked to:
I can't be entirely sure, but I believe that this is the answer. The N64DD (see my previous post) would have been able to do some pretty unthinkable things had it not been a failure. A lot of the N64 games out there were initially being developed for it but were later moved to regular cartridge releases, including Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. In fact, the two Zelda titles were originally going to be a single one; and if you gathered all the stuff that got thrown out, you'd probably have a third game! I haven't been able to find much direct info on the "Beta Project," but it's probably an attempt to unearth everything buried in the ROM and eventually piece together the original Zelda game in its full awesomeness.
A couple of quick notes about the page I've linked to:
- The writing is pretty bad as far as grammar goes. It's followable, but it looks like the person(s) who wrote it was either tired or slightly drunk.
- At the end there are some tidbits about Master Quest, under the heading "Zelda: Master Quest on the GameCube." These are about Master Quest, NOT Ura Zelda (the original project), even though the writer says a couple of things like "I’m probably about 50% to 60% of the way through Ura Zelda, and to this point, the -only- changes are inside the dungeons. The overworld stuff is all exactly the same as in Ocarina of Time." Let's face it: he couldn't write well to begin with, so he could have gotten mixed-up pretty easily. With that in mind, there may be other areas where he got the two confused, but none jump out at me (perhaps the bit about Miyamoto commenting, in 2000, that "Ura Zelda has been completed for some time now," but that may very well be accurate).
N64 Add-on -- Changed plans
This sure explains things. Ever wonder why Ocarina of Time: Master Quest was made in the first place? Why the later Final Fantasy games went solely to the PlayStation? Why Metroid was never seen until the GameCube? Why Nintendo never pulled through with so many projects, now the objects of internet rumors or attempted fan recoveries? Take a peek at the list of intended games after reading the article.
By the way, I've made a small update to my arwing cameo post.
By the way, I've made a small update to my arwing cameo post.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Update: I'm here, just pretty busy ...
It's been a while since I last posted, but I'm not just sitting around doing nothing. I finally got an opportunity to beat Megaman 9, and I have a long post on it waiting to happen, but I haven't had the time. The other day my dad asked me when I'd blog about something besides video games. I actually found non-game material that day and wanted to post on it, but I couldn't get on the computer, and I'm too preoccupied to do it now. I've had many ideas swirling through my head lately, between philosophy class, game ideas, an idea for another blog, and a piano piece I'm writing from an NES game called Shadowgate. I've felt that if I managed to snag enough time to post on even one of these things, it would sort of do an injustice to the others that I'd have to confine to my thoughts for longer; hence this general post.
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