Xain'd Sleena, image courtesy from www.mamedb.com

This reminds me of myself, who also grows up playing arcade games. Thanks to MAME, I can play again all those games. Unfortunately, there is one game, which is really really my favorite but not playable in MAME: SKY ROBO or Tatakae Big Fighter. A shooter game with a mecha-robo.

Tatakae Big Fighter (Sky Robo), image courtesy from www.arcadeflyers.com

I don’t really know why I love this game. Maybe because the amount of coins I spent playing it, how suck I was in shooting game, the memory, or maybe just the nostalgia factor

So what’s your favorite arcade game?

Actually since April 2009, I’ve been planning to change my blog design. The theme dilectio was used just for temporary. Unfortunately, I was always get distracted and never start it

Last Friday, while she was doing some maintenance of her blog, she offered me help to design my blog themes. I gave her some directions which basically the style and color schemes  from my portfolio page.

Then on Sunday morning … tada!

For celebration, we went out that afternoon and had a nice crepes with Italian ice cream

Currently, Away3D supports bone animation using Collada. Collada would be great for animation but I don’t have any 3D editor to generate Collada file. Unfortunately, I’m kinda allergic to Blender

Luckily, Away3D is also able to do vertex animation using MD2 or the Animator class. After reading the frame/vertex animation tutorial (http://away3d.com/tutorials/tutorial-how-to-use-the-animator-class), I decided to give it a try.

I still have the Mikoto animation files that I created for Tokusatsu Agent. Haven’t used Mikoto for very very long time but it just take me 30 minute to get used to it again. I took the running animation and saved some keyframes into 6 MQO files. Using my Metaseq library, I load all 6 MQO files, get the vertices data, and pass them to the Animator class.

The result is quite satisfying. Just click the pic below for demo. The source code still look ugly but just e-mail me if you’re interested.

More experiments and optimizations will come so stay tuned

Lately, we’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed 2 together. We played and finished the first series and really enjoy it. The second Assassin’s Creed (AC) has Italian Renaissance as the settings which makes us love it even more!

AC2 only supports 1 player so we take turns, just like how we played AC1 or Prince of Persia. There is no rule how we divide our turn. Basically, we both play every game mode: assassin missions, exploration, or race. Then I notice how different me and my wife play the game.

My wife prefer dueling or fighting the guards directly while I prefer assassinating my target silently. She has no problem facing several guards at a time and got the No-Hitter trophy/achievement easily. On the other hand, I’m not that good in direct duel. Maybe that’s because I am more impatient in fighting and loves to bash the button aggresively.

But when it comes to kill the target without being noticed or escaping the guards, my wife usually pass the controller to me

It’s a good thing that in AC2 you can play the game anyway you like.

FinallyI made it. Click the picture below to see the demo

Click the ‘read more’ below to see the and download the code. It is still in very early version, buggy and some MQO models are not displayed correctly. I am still working on it. But if you want, feel free to use it

Note: The code is only work with the current trunk version of the Away3D version 2.4.0/3.4.0 FP10 (tested on rev. 2039)

Download

Metasequoia.as

Just copy this file to folder Away3D\src\away3d\loaders

Loading model From File

var loader:Loader3D = Metasequoia.load(filename, {scaling:2.0, rotationX: -90});

Loading model From Embedded asset

var mainModel:ObjectContainer3D = Metasequoia.parse(EmbeddedModel, {scaling:2.0, rotationX: -90});

Overwrite Material when loading model

Both loading model (from file or embedded model) will automatically load the texture file. You can overwrite the materials by setting the property materials

var wireMaterial:WireColorMaterial = new WireColorMaterial(0x00aeef, {wirecolor: 0xcccccc});
 
var loader:Loader3D = Metasequoia.load(filename, {scaling:2.0, rotationX: -90,materials: { hair:wireMaterial, skin:wireMaterial, face:otherTextureMaterial }});

Code above is overwriting the materials named hair, skin, and face. Make sure you know the material name before.

Change the Material after loading

You can change the material after loading the model by using MaterialLibrary.

var targetMaterial:MaterialData = mainModel.materialLibrary.getMaterial("head");
if (targetMaterial != null)
{
    targetMaterial.material = wireMaterial;
}

Code above is changing the material ‘head’. All the faces which use this material will be changed to the new material.

Enjoy the code and feel free to ask question

Stay tuned since I am going to work on animation

After doing all tutorials (compiling, putting models on screen, rotating them, …), I really like Away3D. Flash 3D is not as I thought Maybe that because I’m already familiar with 3D programming.

Since I’ve done a lot of 3D modelings using Metaseq, I want Away3D to load Metaseq files (MQO). Away3D Lite supports MQO but not the Away3D. So I tried to use Blender to convert the model to obj or Colada, but somehow didn’t work. Almost everything I export from Blender didn’t work (as usual)

Then I found a very nice code at sleepydesign (thanks katopz ) but the code cannot compile on the new Away3D (version 2.4.0/3.4.0 Flash Player 10). It seems that there are some classes that already gone. So I modify the code a little bit and …. tada!

It’s Hiro from my demo game Tokusatsu Agent. Click the image to play the Flash file. Make sure you have Flash Player 10 installed

The code is still not finish. It only able to load embedded model, not from external file/url.  The model above uses 3 texture files and I am still working on the MaterialLibrary part so later I can change the materials after loading the model. Once finish, I will put it on the net

Last year, it was hell. I had to struggle for 8 months to get my work permit. For 1 month (Nov 2008) I couldn’t work at all since my permit was pending

It happens again this year.

Just 2 weeks ago, I went to the immigration office to extend my work permit. They had set an appointment by sending me a mail a week before my permit expired. Normally, extending work permit is quite fast. You can get it on the same day. Just bring the job contract and the latest pay slips.

Somehow, there was a mistake on a document which was issued by the state job-agency (Arbeitsagentuer)  last year! The document said that I only get 1 year contract job instead of unlimited contract. This is a mistake since from the beginning, my job contract is clearly stated as unlimited and they should have noticed this. The immigration said that they couldn’t do anything and I have to re-apply my work permit which could take another 4-5 weeks

After a long discussion and I even make them talk directly with my HRD person via phone, there is no other way than to re-apply my work permit. I have to start over. Somebody at the German bureaucracy has accidentally pressed the reset button

So since  14 of Oct, I have to stop working until I get my work permit.

This is really bad situation for my employer too. I was in the middle of a project and it was on critical part. The product was almost on its release date and I was the Flex lead programmer. My bosses were panic and they have to change a lot of things in a very short time.

My biggest worry that in the future, my employer might have to think twice before giving a critical position to an immigrant. Hopefully, this will not happen.

It’s really hard to explain this case to other Germans. Usually, their reaction is like ‘impossible’ or ‘unbelieveable’. Maybe they didn’t know how bad their immigration is. At first, my bosses even thought this was my mistake that I forget to bring a document or did something bad. I had to explain my case to them that it was not my fault

Well, I will take this time to take a break and put all my force to finish my game project

Life goes on!

Besides nude Cammy or Chun Li, you can found many other interesting character skins. Some of them are really polished and well made, as if as they’re official DLCs from Capcom. Check out Ninja Vega, Kratos Sagat, Boo Rufus, Doraemon, or even Mahatma Gandhi!

Very creative indeed

So I start listing all the things I wanna bring. My Nintendo DS is a must! When I took my DS, it was covered in dust. It’s been more than 2 months since I played my DS. Hmm…

Do I still like my DS?

Yup.

Maybe there’s no good game for DS?

Nope. I still haven’t finished my FF Tactics A2.

So?

When I get home from work, my eyes are tired. I need to relax my eyes. Therefore, I avoid dealing with a small screen, like DS, or watching movie on iPod (who wants to do that at home anyway ). That’s why I choose PS3 or Flash game on my laptop when I want to play game.

Maybe I should get this jumbo DS

This causing the Wacom tablet couldn’t detect any pen pressure although the pen tip position is detected. The pen tip is not moveable, that’s why.

Since the eraser part was still working and I rarely use it, I decided to desolder the and move the eraser part to the pen tip.

my plan

Preparation

I bought a cheap solder iron (around 3 EUR), 10cm tin solder wire (less than 1 EUR, no need to buy one big roll), and if necessary, a solder sucker. I didn’t bought this last item.

If you haven’t done any soldering before, just ask your friend or someone to do it

Soldering Time

The idea is to desolder both pen’s coil wires and the eraser’s one, and exchange them (see my plan above).

First, I open the wacom pen. It’s easy since I have it opened before. Then desolder the pen tip part.

There are two parts you have to desolder: the part which connects the wires from the coil, and the other part which stick the plastic part to the PCB/component board. Once you desolder these parts, the pen component can be easily removed.

Now, desolder the eraser part. You can desolder first the coil’s wire so you can unplug the coil.

Then desolder the plastic component part and re-solder it back to the pen tip area.

Done! I could throw away the pen tip component but I decided to soldered it back to the eraser part. I put the pen cover back and tested it.

It works! Now I have a ‘new’ pen tip

Note: Actually, I did this almost a year ago but I just remember to post it here last month.