Adam Searle » Blog

Was mums bday today, went and saw the lion king with here down at the capitol theatre. Very cool! Havent been to a stage production like that in years, so it felt very new to me heh. The costumes were great, but for me it was the lighting that was so fantastic, and really brought the set alive. All in all extremely highly recommended, its only in Sydney for a few more weeks so go go go! hehe.

Professional practice has consumed a fair portion of the weekend too… what a pain in the ass that project was! So glad its all over Printed it today, hand in tmr and its all good. Shit subject really. On the upside, writing a press release and doing a budget were useful. Shame the other 90% of it was pretty crappy
What else has been up. Hmmm. Car buying has risen to the surface lately. This was all spurred on by a chat with friends down the street, who were saying their next door neighbours car was now for sale. I casually said yeah its a nice car, I don’t think I’d have the money for it, but if I did I’d be interested. Turns out that went a little further than I thought… had another chat tonight, and it seems that if their car doesnt sell privately in the next two weeks they may ask if I want to buy it for a few grand less (!). So.. what is it? A 96 Honda Integra, manual, electric everything, only 84,000 on the clock, sunroof, dark metallic blue (looks nice), great shape, well serviced. Turns out the price they’d sell it to me for… would end up with me making a few grand profit. Interesting hmmm. Downsides? well first its 6 years older than my car, its no longer under warranty, its going to have a higher chance of needing parts, it lacks modern safety designs/systems (abs, airbags etc). Upsides? it looks hot, and it fits my ‘next car’ criteria (coupe). Misc? its a manual, which is good and bad - going to be a pain with work, but great fun general driving heh.

The later advice I got was dont go for it, and I probably wont, but its started my mind thinking about it all. Really I’d rather a 2002 integra (when they moved to the newer design), but they are priced way out of my reach.

So its back to the ‘in 2 years and with another 10-12k, what can I get’ line of thought, heh..

Blardy. Last 3 days I’ve done so little work on my own. Today was hardcore working on prof prac all afternoon, but other than that…. couple of beers and a movie (the longest yard, wasn’t too bad, appealed to the entertaining violence gene I guess). I’m probably a few hours off finishing pro prac, but I didn’t do it tonight. Blardy. And the ninjaman enemy AI is starting to worry me - I can’t even decide how its all going to work in theory….. which I have to decide way before actually starting to code it :/

Its really tough as well because this is one of those Big Steps, where if we get it wrong we have to come back right here a month from now.. really need to figure this biatch out. Already accepted that enemies wont be able to jump platforms to come up and hunt you, but they need to be able to navigate basic jumps, obstacles, stuff that is ‘bad’/hurts etc.. plus they need to have a chance of blocking when you attack, have a sense for who else is on screen/backup, jump back after attacks so as not to sit there idle and open… much to consider

Anyhow, thats tmrs plans at the moment. joyyy. Once our final ninjaman presentation this semester is done… I can’t wait… the need for alcohol rises with each day
Oh and when ninjaman is finished, there is going to be a release party. Heaps of alcohol, many good times… gold jerry

Blardy. Last 3 days I’ve done so little work on my own. Today was hardcore working on prof prac all afternoon, but other than that…. couple of beers and a movie (the longest yard, wasn’t too bad, appealed to the entertaining violence gene I guess). I’m probably a few hours off finishing pro prac, but I didn’t do it tonight. Blardy. And the ninjaman enemy AI is starting to worry me - I can’t even decide how its all going to work in theory….. which I have to decide way before actually starting to code it :/

Its really tough as well because this is one of those Big Steps, where if we get it wrong we have to come back right here a month from now.. really need to figure this biatch out. Already accepted that enemies wont be able to jump platforms to come up and hunt you, but they need to be able to navigate basic jumps, obstacles, stuff that is ‘bad’/hurts etc.. plus they need to have a chance of blocking when you attack, have a sense for who else is on screen/backup, jump back after attacks so as not to sit there idle and open… much to consider

Anyhow, thats tmrs plans at the moment. joyyy. Once our final ninjaman presentation this semester is done… I can’t wait… the need for alcohol rises with each day
Oh and when ninjaman is finished, there is going to be a release party. Heaps of alcohol, many good times… gold jerry

Spent lunch today with Chloe for the last time, as she jets off home to France tomorrow. Can’t believe its been since december that I randomly met her, the then ‘hot french chick’ who has since become a good friend, with a lot of her influence rubbing off on me. We had lunch in hyde park, sat around the park for a while, then drove down to Bondi to chill with her coffee shop manager boss for the afternoon. Nice time, and a great day for it. Sad its the end, but you never know, one day I might find myself over there hahaha.

I think she’s had a pretty strong influence on me in a few ways. One would be my amazement as to how different her life is, with completely different ideas about things. Kinda forcing myself to open my ideas to new ideas, new thoughts about what I want to do in life. Still really I’m not sure where I want to end up, as much as I’d like to know, but I think what idea I do have is changing for the better. Enjoy it, and travel more. Its like every time we met up I’d be really interested in the thoughts of travel asap, just seeing the world. Starting to have a longer term effect on me too heh.

On the other hand, its a bit of a downer making friends that you know have to leave soon and that you may not see again. Ive always known it will have an end point, but yeah, still a bit sad now. On the flip side, maybe this is one of those life turning points, ‘your friends exist not just here but worldwide, see them when you travel’. There’s a push for me to go to europe next year to meet up with her, a place to stay etc, and I’m sure if I do go there I will catch up with her, maybe next year, maybe later on heh. Life is a bit of a mystery, but ironically funny how things work out sometimes. Someone said it was fate that we ran into each other, its kind of like that lol, broadening both our perspectives as a result.

Chloe, hope you have a good flight back tmr, mad fun back in France, and the best of luck with everything. I’ll miss ya. Take it easy
So thats todays entry. The times we remember in life eh

Spent lunch today with Chloe for the last time, as she jets off home to France tomorrow. Can’t believe its been since december that I randomly met her, the then ‘hot french chick’ who has since become a good friend, with a lot of her influence rubbing off on me. We had lunch in hyde park, sat around the park for a while, then drove down to Bondi to chill with her coffee shop manager boss for the afternoon. Nice time, and a great day for it. Sad its the end, but you never know, one day I might find myself over there hahaha.

I think she’s had a pretty strong influence on me in a few ways. One would be my amazement as to how different her life is, with completely different ideas about things. Kinda forcing myself to open my ideas to new ideas, new thoughts about what I want to do in life. Still really I’m not sure where I want to end up, as much as I’d like to know, but I think what idea I do have is changing for the better. Enjoy it, and travel more. Its like every time we met up I’d be really interested in the thoughts of travel asap, just seeing the world. Starting to have a longer term effect on me too heh.

On the other hand, its a bit of a downer making friends that you know have to leave soon and that you may not see again. Ive always known it will have an end point, but yeah, still a bit sad now. On the flip side, maybe this is one of those life turning points, ‘your friends exist not just here but worldwide, see them when you travel’. There’s a push for me to go to europe next year to meet up with her, a place to stay etc, and I’m sure if I do go there I will catch up with her, maybe next year, maybe later on heh. Life is a bit of a mystery, but ironically funny how things work out sometimes. Someone said it was fate that we ran into each other, its kind of like that lol, broadening both our perspectives as a result.

Chloe, hope you have a good flight back tmr, mad fun back in France, and the best of luck with everything. I’ll miss ya. Take it easy
So thats todays entry. The times we remember in life eh

Yep. Just as I was about to start coding the AI for ninjaman tonight, I realised a huge problem in the game. The screen really doesnt display a wide enough perspective of the game - to the point that if i was to run right at full speed, the time it would take for an enemy to first appear till the time they were right under the player - was 0.6 seconds. It honestly felt like an ambush, continually. This is huge problem.. There are three directions we can take here:

One, keep it as is and ultimately screw up the gameplay. Enemies that are meant to attack from ‘a distance’ will look like they are firing a cannon at you from point blank

Two, reduce the size of everything - characters and later levels alike - to 75% or so. Reduce the running speed to compensate too. Reduce the vertical height of the game hence factoring in a wide aspect feeling. This thus results in a speed up, but everything looks mini man style..

Three, push the engine even further and widen gameplay up by 33% to 640×360. This gives a wide aspect, and some performance loss. The nicest solution and yet the slowest.

Flash sucks because solution 3 runs too slow, yet its the nicest option. Ninjaman looks so sweet in widescreen, 16:9 aspect, with full size players. We’re just going to have to cut back on detail with the maps…

Which brings me to the other revelation of the night. Stephen suggested we have a realtime feature to reduce the graphical load. While this isnt as easy as dropping poly counts in real time - as our objects are just flat images that either exist or dont - we could elect for some objects not to be drawn. The conclusion is we may have a ’smoothest gameplay’ and ‘best graphics’ choice for the player - in which the game makes a recommendation based on a hidden benchmark when it loads or something. In ’smoothest gameplay’ (ie low quality), most background objects aren’t drawn, eg sails on a ship. All mid-plane objects are drawn as they effect gameplay, but fore and back objects may not be. In ‘best graphics’ (ie high quality), every thing is drawn. Might be workable…

So what system makes the cut for high quality? At the moment I’d say any PC with a 2ghz processor should run high quality fine. Anyone under that on a wintel machine; low quality. With macs its more harsh: G5s for high quality, anything less for low - flashplayer mac blows hard, but that’s well known. Flash can suck at times…

Here’s hoping flash player 8 rocks
/end rant