xdaniel

Felt like writing down some more collection stats, yet didn't feel like writing down much... so here's my three WonderSwan games! ...and the unit itself. For which eBay sellers now want something obscene like 70€ or so, and for loose ones at that! I got mine new from Lik-Sang (RIP) around when Bandai was phasing the system out, so 2002/2003-ish, and payed... about the same? A bit less maybe even... I forgot, it's been 10 years Updated collection list at the usual URL.

Haven't done as much as I would've liked over the past few days - been coming down with a cold as it seems - but did add some features to the animation system (ex. an "is animation done?" flag for mode "once", finally did the "alternating" mode), added effect objects (ex. used for the newly added explosions, will also be used for things like signs popping up or anything else that doesn't require much interaction) and improved the piercing shot mechanics a bit. Also whipped up a title screen logo earlier today; while not exactly finished, it already conveys the general idea I have in mind: EDIT: Felt like replacing the ptPrint-ed Press Start message and menu with something graphical: The Press Start message blinks, and the menu options' color subtly cycles between white and a shade of blue - they also scroll smoothly, instead of just switching over abruptly.

I have no idea what happened, but whatever the case, it sucks that you're feeling this way about this place now... Take care, man. Here's hoping you do decide to come back someday

The GCN controller was really good controller in my opinion, although I do prefer the Xbox 360 one by this point. And seeing how the Wii U Pro controller seems like it's more or less a, well, cousin of the X360 one... well, I like it. True about the PAL SNES, so I'd say it's more appropriate to say the US SNES is the only one that didn't do colored buttons? EDIT: Beaten by a minute or so

A partially disappointing flea market haul: The Super Shinobi (JPN, Mega Drive, no manual) Ys: The Vanished Omens (PAL, Master System, complete) Pro Action Replay 2.5 (Mega Drive, loose) Legend of the Mystical Ninja (PAL, SNES, loose) Now the problems: Super Shinobi doesn't have a manual, the box and cartridge are in really rough shape, the cartridge even has some broken plastic near the connector. Also, the Action Replay doesn't run any games, period. I tried Super Shinobi, Sonic 2 and some other random game, but none of them boot - the menu works normally, but trying to start any game results in a black screen. On the plus side, Goemon (or Mystical Ninja, that is) works fine and was relatively cheap - around half of the cheapest eBay price -, while Ys was even cheaper, although I haven't tried it yet; still need to get the Master System out for that and yup, works fine too. In addition, there's not a single one of those Ys located in Germany on eBay right now, only some from the US, UK and France, and the cheapest one there (from the US) is still over four times as expensive as the one I got.

Picked up something that I should technically already have... but appear to have lost the cartridge of somehow somewhere: Etrian Odyssey for the DS. My exising box on top, the box of the used copy I got below, the cartridge... well, in the DS. (Why the used box has a "Ready for Hotspot" sticker on it, I do not know. Guess someone took ex. a MKDS box and used it for EO...)

You can now shoot things! Kinda. In a barebones fashion, anyway.

That is such a tiny part of your post, but I'm really glad you do have something like that now. There's been a voice nagging in the back of my head for never having finished my texture importer/exporter, so this is something I'm really, really glad to hear - also, my sincere apologies to Zeth and Naxy for abandoning it.

It's actually not a HDD as far as I'm aware, but flash memory (again). They have said that you can use USB storage devices, tho, so I sure hope you'll be able to use it just like the internal storage. Meaning unlike the Wii, and how running channels from SD card there still temporarily copies them into the flash IIRC... Besides that, today was an enlightening day for those interested in the Wii U. The software line-up looks diverse enough, Bayonetta 2 exclusively on Wii U was an interesting revelation (tho I've yet to play the first one), and... hm, Europe - yet again - wasn't told an official price point. Doesn't really matter to me, tho, as I'm sure I'll be very late to the party again, like with the Wii.

I have yet to play Fragile Dreams or Lost in Shadow, but I've heard some good things about them. Especially Fragile's setting seems pretty interesting. As for mine, they're not exactly hidden, but as far as I know no commercial successes either: No More Heroes and Muramasa: The Demon Blade.

Hrm, getting to the combat might have to wait until tomorrow... I just spent several hours tracking down the source of a bunch of different crashes which kept throwing gigantic wrenches into my plans, and I'm kinda exhausted. tl;dr: My code was accidentally far too greedy and never freed up the memory it asked for after it was done with it, until it couldn't get any more. I fail at malloc and free. <.< Long version below... EDIT: Crashes are definitely fixed - the demo loop has been running on my PSX for the last 20 minutes without any hickups at all Oh, and have one more animation viewer screenshot:

Heh, it's not really much yet, tho Anyway, one more "behind-the-scenes" screenshot - the debug menu that's from now on the first thing a debug build will show the user: Next up is finishing object definition storage (how and where all objects - player, enemies, projectiles, etc. - are defined), then comes extending the existing object logic to the point where you can actually shoot things (making projectiles collide with other objects, applying damage and destroying objects), then comes planning how levels will work (definition, storage, loading, display, collisions). Then I should have the basic gameplay working, so next would be the design phase where enemies, levels, etc. are created.

Sooo, after a lot of posts in ex. my random junk thread, here's one specifically for this... Project "GunMary" will hopefully become a homebrew game for the original PlayStation someday. It's on a good path I'd say, I just have to proceed and plan carefully, as opposed to diving into stuff headfirst and failing hard... like with SharpOcarina. ...and in celebration of this new thread, have a short video! ...and also, have an actual demo of the above animation viewer: http://magicstone.de...gm-animtest.rar - BIN/CUE CD image, ready to run in your favorite emulator (ex. pSX v1.13, which is what I'm using for testing); no guarantee right now that it'll run on hardware.

Well, I am using structs and arrays of structs for many things - ex. each system state (intro, title screen, in-game) has its own "work structure", while ex. the in-game work structure has arrays of enemy and projectile structs - but there's still one or two more or less global things that can cause problems. It's a bit difficult to apply object-oriented programming to pure C On a different subject, I've been improving the animation system bit by bit, aiming for it to be able to load animation definitions from files on the CD/PC, as opposed to having to hardcode them into the game via header files. I'm not there yet, but I've already cleaned a few things up, and put a very basic animation viewer together: Not sure if I'm going to leave it in the game for people to find, in case it ever gets finished... then again, it would be kinda cool to have a TCRF page for a game of my own! XD EDIT: Quick and dirty animation parser's working - on the PC anyway, still need to implement it in the actual PSX code. The following file... #Player idle (PlayerIdle Mode=0 Delay=8 :Frames=Rect =0 0 24 16 =24 0 24 16 =48 0 24 16 ; ) #Player moving up (PlayerMoveUp Mode=2 Delay=12 :Frames=Rect =72 0 24 16 =96 0 24 16 ; ) #Player moving down (PlayerMoveDown Mode=2 Delay=12 :Frames=Rect =0 16 24 16 =24 16 24 16 ; ) ...results in... Yeah, that console window says pretty much exactly what the file already says, I know. But it prints it from the actual structures the data was stored into! ...it's difficult to show the result of something as boring as this in a flashy way EDIT 2: The animation parser isn't yet working 100% correctly on the PSX, thanks to functions the parser uses not being available in the OS libraries - the thing doesn't even know sscanf FFS - and the (semi-)replacements for them I found elsewhere not being complete or being buggy. At least I got an animation editor coded: Could still use some improvements, but it's pretty nice already. EDIT 3: Screw text file parsing, I'll just make the editor export to a fixed binary format, then make the PSX-side code read that. The idea of parsing a text file was born chiefly from the lack of a dedicated editor anyway, so... reason's disappeared! Gonna rewrite the editor's exporting function first, then implement reading its result in the engine...

I don't exactly have a crush on any of them, but I can certainly see where you're coming from... and at the very least, I wanted to give them a hug and comfort them several times myself, especially Kyouko and Sayaka. That's one of the things that makes this or any show like it special: you care about the characters, and not just as in, I dunno, "I wonder what happens to <specific-character-here> next" or some trivial crap like that. They just seem more realistic than those in many other anime. And yeah, I got quite teary-eyed several times, too... Kyouko's death being one occasion. Also, for example, the whole of Sayaka's downward spiral (Episode 7's witch fight... "It doesn't hurt at all!") and her witch transformation, or all the "bad ends" Homura has lived through.

(I'm assuming you've also seen the whole show, there might be spoilers below if not!) Hrm, the people who say it's just a giant yuri fest should actually watch a few episodes of the show, at the very least the first three or four. Of course, there is a lot of shipping going on in the fandom, that's true, but leaving that aside and just concentrating on the story and characters as presented in the show itself, there's only few hints - but still some, in my opinion - from which you might get the idea that there could be more between certain characters than just friendship. Prime example for that is probably Homura and Madoka, although mainly coming from Homura's side, I'd say. Another pairing I could imagine - just based on their behavior and such and if there were more concrete hints - would be Kyouko and Sayaka. However, going just by what's happened in the show, and going just by the timeline we've followed for most of it, they didn't even really have much of a chance to develop a friendship. Sure, mutual respect for each other and Kyouko probably feeling a certain... "responsibility" for Sayaka maybe, seeing what happened in her own past, and Sayaka's downward spiral at that point, but not all that much beyond that. I do have to say, tho, that I could probably be called a "KyouSaya shipper": all the pairings in the fandom considered, I'm liking this one the best - because I like those characters the best - and could actually see at the very least a deeper friendship happen (if given more time, or an alternate timeline), which in turn could lead to other things. Also, kinda unrelated, even original character designer Ume-sensei seems to like KyouSaya; there's a related two-page short she did, it's somewhere on the Puella Magi Wiki, tho I don't remember on which page. All that said, and as mentioned above, my favorite characters are Sayaka and Kyouko. Originally mainly Sayaka, as IRL, I also tend to be someone to try and help people out as much as possible and such, but once Kyouko's past unfolded and I understood her motivations, her character also grew on me. I really can't decide on just one of them. Hope all that made at least some sense

The annual "first Sunday of the month flea market" haul: Sega Saturn 3D Controller - 5€ Sega Mega Drive 6-Button Controller - 5€ ...and not gaming-related: Mel Brooks' Spaceballs (DVD) - 5€ Both controllers are in rather rough shape, with many scratches and such - especially the 6-Button's backside! -, but I guess some good cleaning will make them far more presentable again. And really, for that price I don't really care about the looks all that much, as long as they work... although I haven't actually tried the 6-Button one yet (no MD hooked up right now). The Saturn controller does work perfectly, tho - played some Nights with it, and it was good Oh, and fun fact: the 6-Button controller is an American Genesis one, according to Sega Retro, as Japanese Start buttons are blue and PAL ones red. Also gonna comb the desert later on

Nah, with all the testing and therapy I've had related to social phobia and depressions, I think someone would've noticed On topic: Testing on hardware again - or rather, leaving the hardware running while I was eating lunch - I noticed that the loop from title screen, to (the future site of) demo mode, back to the title, crashes on the title screen in the 15th or so iteration. I'd bet it's some incorrectly cleared variable or something again...

You can shoot now! Well, you can shoot now, but there's nothing to shoot yet. This also shows the beginnings of the weapon system: the tiny shots are your standard rapid-fire shots that'll hit an enemy and disappear. The longer ones you see are a piercing shot that'll travel all the way past the edge of the screen, damaging every enemy it passes. That piercing shot is one of the planned special weapons that uses "active energy" - one shot from a special weapon will take a certain amount of active energy. That energy actually recharges automatically, but the rate of recovery is tied to the ship's speed setting - the higher the speed, the lower the rate of recovery. Plus, if the active energy falls below 1/3 of the total, you won't be able to fire your special weapon, period. Fancy using your special weapons permanently? Be prepared to fly slowly. You want to get around the screen quickly? Well, get used to the standard rapid-fire blaster. Or just leave the speed setting on medium most of the time as a compromise, and switch it (using L1/R1) if you need to.

Session Start: Sun Sep 10 20:35:34 2006 [...] <MNGoldenEagle> Ah, and by the way, I did talk to Lake Hylia about the article on the Model Viewer, and he agreed to have it rewritten. <MNGoldenEagle> I'm going to tell him to wait until we get our next release ready, as it'll be a bit more presentable. <Gaara> What article <Gaara> ? <MNGoldenEagle> Check its news archives and you'll see an article on the Model Viewer. <Gaara> URL? <Gaara> <xdaniel> back <MNGoldenEagle> Uhh... <Gaara> To Lake Hylia <MNGoldenEagle> Oh, and by Lake Hylia I meant The Hylia. <MNGoldenEagle> x_x; <Gaara> Ah <Knuckles500> i was gonna say <Knuckles500> lake hylia's in map select <MNGoldenEagle> Yes. The water is starting to write articles now! <Sabin|BC> k <Sabin|BC> posessed <xdaniel> unless zora's domain freezes again <Gaara> The Lake Hylia Newpaper <Gaara> Written by the Zoras <MNGoldenEagle> Morpha wrote an editorial on how its perspective was completely left out of the game. <Gaara> *newspaper <Gaara>

4:11 am and I guess it shows:

Finally started to devote myself to the freaking engine: The foundations for the object management system have been laid, including a somewhat dynamic graphics manager for the framebuffer space that's put aside for objects. Not much else besides that yet, tho, in terms of a "game engine". Also, the HUD: the green bar is "active energy" (weapon system and other things), the red bar is "passive energy" (the shield, so basically HP), the arrows are the ship's speed indicator (one, two or three arrows, depending on the speed), the number is the score. That empty circle on the left will contain a warning light, its color changing according to the energy levels - come to think of it, I think both Pulseman and Dynamite Headdy have something like that, which is probably where I got the idea from All the numbers etc. are currently just changed directly via the controller, there's no scoring system or anything yet. Besides that, there's been some tiny changes to the intro, as well as a new credits scroller full of "(people go here)" placeholders. Yeah, not gonna be able to do this all by myself... I'm likely going to ask around for concept and pixel artists and such if I ever reach the stage where they'll be needed - I am getting suggestions and such from a few friends, but they can't really draw, either. EDIT: Been coding without testing on real hardware over the last few days, and now that I did test it that way again, it crashed! Turns out I had some uninitialized variables and such in the object manager... fixed those, then fixed a glitch related to the HUD energy bars' texture mapping (might as well remove them and do it all with vertex colors), and now it looks and works perfectly fine on hardware again! EDIT 2: More work done on object management in general, and the player object in particular. Animation also works (currently with placeholder sprites from Gradius Gaiden, IIRC), they can loop, be played once to then freeze on the last frame, or can play back and forth (tho that last one's not yet coded).

Loving your current signature, and the Puella Magi in it Welcome and have a nice stay!

Just read about that on GoNintendo as well: http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=184294 I'm kinda indifferent about a MM3D to be honest, main reason being that I still don't have a 3DS, but I really wouldn't mind a MM remake, either. Would certainly be another game to buy a 3DS for, for me together with MK7 and Kid Icarus (OoT not so much as I've played the original to death already).