Physics the Law for Everything that Exists

The title is purely my opinion and is not based on any theoretical finding that someone else had done.

I've a passion for programming, games and figurine collection. These combined made me interested in AI robotic programming and games programming. I've decided to focus more on the software side and go for games programming. AI robotic programming will be my part-time hobby when I feel like playing God and giving birth to a plastic/metal based artificial life.

During my research into jobs in the games industry and my latest Open Day visit to Frontier Developments in Cambridge (Yeah~! being shortlisted is not bad for a noob :)). I've noticed in the games development industry there are several areas of interests, mainly (my categorization); game play development, engine development, resource development, tools development and misc.

Game Play Development
This is where the actual storyline is incorporated into the game. Where the engines are merged together and the game design forms. Most often, the AI is developed as part of the game play because it makes more sense to have a custom AI for each game rather then a mighty AI brain engine to solve all possible problems.

Engine Development
There is a list of engines that are usually developed like the graphics engine, physics engine, network controller (if any), etc. Engines are like standalone components that are usually reused and built upon as each title is developed.

Resource Development
This is where audio, graphics designing, models, texture, etc. are produced which will be the final game's outlook and representation that players see.

Tools Development
Tools are developed mainly to cut down resource development time. Tools include customized and user friendly modellers, audio generators, designing tools, CAD, etc.

My Take
While working on my projects and specific job position hunting, physics modelling and simulation caught my eye. Its really fun to figure out how things work and react with each element that effects it. It is extremely hard to understand and figure out new techniques to solve each problem, but as the fundamental understanding is instilled, the solution comes easily.

The potential of growth and knowledge in the games development is huge if not infinite. I'm eager and looking forward to contribute and to the industry.

Dissertation Project Proposal

Group Members
Danielle Cheah, Ding Loong Wei

Title
A 3D immersive environment for a paintball game using the Wiimote.

Gameplay objective (Paintball)
Paintball is a sport in which player(s) eliminate opponent(s) from play by hitting them with balls of paint shot out from an air pressured gun. Players are divided into two opposing teams within an area of terrain. The aim of the game is to capture the flag by move forward towards the opponent(s)' side and reach the flag area or killing off all opponent(s). The first team to capture the flag is the winner.

Project Abstract
A single player paintball training system against an AI opponent. The gameplay area will consist of the player, AI opponent, air pressured paintball gun, obstacles for cover and target objective/flag area. Using the Wiimote and infrared emitters for player head tracking and positioning within the game. Another Wiimote as the point and shoot input device as the air pressured paintball gun. Consideration to have Nunchuck as the player's forward and backward movement. The AI will try to path trace and move forward to capture the player's flag. The AI will try to take down the player by firing at the player and dodge or hide when being fired at. In turn the player should do the same before the AI captures the player's flag. Effects includes physics for gun recoil and impact on target with external factors (speed, external forces, wind, etc).

Section Allocation
Student 1: Wiimote system & graphics
Student 2: AI & physics

Considerations

1. May allow user to choose between several types of weapon (air pressure gun, padded arrows, slingshot, etc.).
2. Physics based on different weapon type (speed, external forces, weapon weight, etc.).
3. Network technology to have player vs player.

C++: Using string in switch

This is just a code snippet of how to use strings in switch in C++ which is taken for granted in C#

enum Config
{
 SolidBall
};
std::map ‹string, Config› _mapStringConfig;
void Main()
{
 switch(_mapStringConfig[str])
 {
 case MainProgram::SolidBall:
  break;
 }
}

Imagine Cup France 2008

For one of my modules for game architecture, there was an assignment for game design. Game design is basically to design the game in the sense of the game machanics (how the game is played), storyboard (the game's story line and flow), game message and mission. A part of this assignment was to design a game based on the Imagine Cup rules, regulation and theme. Also to create a playable verticle slice of the game.

My teammate and coursemate also did the same. We kindda merged our ideas and created team D&D (being our initials). Team D&D summited a game titled The Lost World.

The Story
The Lost World sets the world at the time where earth has gone through decades of revolution. However, human being who lives on this planet did not take a good care of their mother earth. In Year 2009, the pollution on this planet earth has reached its limit. It caused half of human population died. Besides, this bad environment has makes animals facing their extinction.

While most of the human being on Earth cares only their money and their entertainment, there are a bunch of people out there that really cares about their mother Earth. Ken, a world famous scientist who specialized in researching for methods to make the environment sustainable is attending Earth Summit Conference together with his researcher.

There is an isolated island that still keeping the beauty nature of this planet. It keeps hidden from the rest of the world by using a high-tech semi-sphere force field. This thanks to the scientists who live on this island. The technology and the attitude of the residents have made this island free from any kind of pollution. However, civil war has put them into trouble and caused most of the resident died.

The Game Design

PS3 vs. Wii

Saw this on YouTube, hillarious in a cruel way...

Wiimote Projects

I'm conducting some background research on the Wii System particularly in the Wiimote development area and this is a list of projects on the Wiimote currently available.

Wiibot by uTouch which uses 2 Wiimotes to control the movements of the Aibo.


World Wind Wiimote VR by Nigel Tzeng which uses 1 Wiimote as the receiver and a bluetooth device for the head tracking to navigate in the World Wind environment.


Wii Data Visualizer by Matthias Shapiro is a visualization system that displays the information gathered from the Wiimote.


Blue Tunes by Mike Anderson is a simple comtroller system which utilizes the Wiimote to control audio players on the PC.


Wiimote Drum Kit by Evan Merz which uses 1 Wiimote as a drum stick in combination with button press to indicate the drum set.


Wiimote Guitar by Evan Merz which uses 1 Wiimote as the whole guitar with button press as the cords and the hand strokes as the strumming motion.


Project Maestro by Cynergy Labs uses a Wiimote to receive movement and action from Infrared gloves that the user is wearing.



Reporting a CT scan using GlovePIE. GlovePIE is by Carl Kenner which is an input library for many devices.


Virtual Patient Project by Brent Rossen

WiiEarth - Wiimote Interface for Virtual Earth by Brian Peek

A Wii Flock of Boids - Integrating the Nintendo Wii Controller with XNA by Rob Burke

Wii Presenter by Chad Hower

GiiMote for Game Maker by Leif Greenman

The Pre-Wii Brainstorming Session

Before the birth of Wii, back in 2001, little Wiimote & Nunchuck were one and they were known by a single name the GyroPod. This was the prototype created by Gyration for Nintendo (Gyration is a company with the most motion-sensing patents. Nintendo listensed some of these patents and later became Gyration's investor. The design was meant to break loose from the standard two handed controller - also the consideration of left-handed usage.
Wii, then codenamee "Revolution", was all for a unique game interface and that power was not everything like most major consoles were heading towards. Anyway, it was impossible to build a powerful machine for less than 50,000 yen ($450 - intial target). It use a lot of electricity, need a fan, increase noise, too long to boot up and lost its identity as the ideal toy (behaving more like a PC).

After thinkering with previous Nintendo gadgets, DS's touch screen and GameCube technology; some mobile devices, cell phones and car navigation remote controllers; Nintendo wanted something new and to change the interface would broaden game design and loosen creative constraints on programmers. Then came the controler's wireless technology; infrared pointer, pointer's precision and mimic 3D space recognition.
Some technical information about the Wiimote:~

1. Wii-mote will operate for 60 hours on two AA batteries
2. Communicates via acceleration detection, force feedback and Bluetooth technology on a 2.4GHz band
3. A 6KB of "non-volatile" memory
4. An internal speaker
5. A SYNCHRO button to assigns each controller a wireless ID number
6. Two infrared transmitters on the sensor bar (which this infact is useless as it only emmits 2 light source, these light sources can be replaced with any light source pair to guide the orientation of the Wiimote - the pairs behaves like the mouse cursor but in a paired format forming a line where it may show the tilt of the Wiimote)
   
7. A LED to show which player is communicating with the console at a given moment and to show battery life
8. A built-in rumble motor
9. Act as an eye, measuring coordinates between 0-1023 on the X axis and 0-767 on the Y axis similar to megapixel image coordinate system.
   

Wii was all about a new form of game play for consoles. It did not try to overpower or outperform other consoles in terms of processing, graphics or the sort. All Wii is about is to be a low cost way to deliver the ultimate gaming experience to all forms of gamers (pro-gamers, non-gamers, casual-gamers, etc.). Its really cool how simple existing technology is meshed together to have a whole new experince, thus not needing huge chamber like equipment in your living room to have a simulated 3D emersive environement. Also, its pretty cool how just using the Wiimote automatically makes the player react and manoeuver in a natural bodily motion when reacting to the simplest game.

This is where I feel that game development effords would go more to the playablity of the game, game design, fun factor and creativity in using the Wiimote(s). While there are other console platforms to grow game development skills in the hardcore technicle side, Wii provides a broader horizon for creative ideas to come into games development.

2008 Game Lineup

2008 is a year of many promising titles that any gamer will enjoy (at least I would). Over 300++ titles, I've finally came up with a rough list of those games, release dates and some info. Feel free to check out the full list at my published spreadsheet. Also drop me a comment if I've got any info on the list wrong. Here is Febuary's list. Enjoy~

Best Anime of 2007

Another year has gone by and Japan has its call out for the top animes of the year. Reported by Yahoo Japan, over 2 million Japanese anime fans voted for their fave anime of 2007. The top 10 out of 100 titles where as follows. For English discription on the below anime, visit AnimeNewsNetwork.

1. Sola
2. Lucky Star
3. Katekyo Hitman Reborn
4. Ookiku Furikabutte
5. Higurashi
6. Gintama
7. Nanoha StrikerS
8. Nanatsuiro Drops
9. Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei
10. Hidamari Sketch

One that I like

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

This is an article snipnet from Software Technology Support Center. I feel that this is a good article to think about where software development is heading to in the future.

In the article mentioned that there is a downward thrend of software skills developed during degree years;

1. Mathematics requirements in CS programs are shrinking.
2. The development of programming skills in several languages is giving way to cookbook approaches using large libraries and special-purpose packages.
3. The resulting set of skills is insufficient for today’s software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals.

Education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods, exposure is model checking and linear temporal logic for the design of concurrent systems and floating-point computations.

Because of its popularity in the context of Web applications and the ease with which beginners can produce graphical programs, Java and scripting languages has become the most widely used language in introductory programming courses. When Object-Oriented programming is introduced in early education, students found it hard to write programs that did not have a graphic interface, had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do, and (most damaging) did not understand the semantics of pointers at all, which made the use of C in systems programming very challenging.

A real programmer can write in any language (C, Java, Lisp, Ada, etc.). The study of a wide variety of languages is, thus, indispensable to the well-rounded programmer. A well-rounded CS curriculum will include an advanced course in programming languages that covers a wide variety of languages, chosen to broaden the understanding of the programming process, rather than to build a résumé in perceived hot languages.

Students need to be exposed to the tools to construct large-scale reliable programs, as we discussed at the start of this article. Topics of relevance are studying formal specification methods and formal proof methodologies, as well as gaining an understanding of how high-reliability code is certified in the real world. When you step into a plane, you are putting your life in the hands of software which had better be totally reliable. As a computer scientist, you should have some knowledge of how this level of reliability is achieved.

Mac Book Air

Yeah as part of the "Techie" society, again I'm being fooled by Apple's lastest gadgets. Just a while back (1/10/2007) when the iPhone was shipped, I couldn't help myself but to drop by the nearest 02 to get a feel of the sweet thing.

Then the new IPod Nano came along, being this cute irresistable thing that can fit into my slim wallet, its just the thing I love just looking at. Its not something I need but just something that cute that I like. With video capabilities it looks like the baby version of the IPod Video.

But browsing the web few weeks back make me want another Apple item...The Mac Book Air.

Yeah at 1.94cm thick and weight at 1.36kg you might think what the hack can it do? And with a Intel Core 2 Duo processor, I wonder how did they even put in a decent fan. The higher end of the Mac Book Air, it also has all the common stuff on any laptop, 2GB RAM (on board), multi touch trackpad, Intel GMA X3100 144MB shared memory, etc. But at a price of £1,199.00 / £2,028.00, you are most likely paying for the coolness of having something "IN" for the times.

Here are some videos on Mac Book Air's intro at Mac World 2008...

LEGO® “Toy of the Century”

January marks the passing of LEGO® half a decade of fun play. LEGO bricks was nomiated as the "Toy of the Century" by both Fortune Magazine in the US and the Britsh Association of Toy Retailers.

The History
1932, Ole Kirk Christansen founded a small factory for wooden toys in Billund in the south Denmark. LEGO is a fusion of the Danish words “LEg” and “GOdt” (“play well”).
1947, Christiansen discovered plastic as the ideal material for toy production, and bought the first injection moulding machine in Denmark.
1949, he developed the LEGO brick prototype.
1963, production of LEGO bricks with Acrylonitrile Butadine Styrene (ABS) began.

The Bricks
There have been adjustments in shape, colour and design from time to time, but today’s LEGO bricks still fit bricks from 1958. LEGO bricks are produced in special plants in Denmark, the Czech Republic and Mexico. The ABS compound is delivered in granules, which are heated to 232° C until they melt. Injection moulding machines (weighing up to 150 tons) presses the hotplastic mass into LEGO brick shapes and is left to dry and harden. Each injection mould is permitted a tolerance of no more than one thousandth of a millimetre, so that bricks of every colour and size stay firmly connected. There are 2,400 different LEGO brick shapes. LEGO bricks in boxes that are not sold are melted again and turned into new bricks, in accordance with waste prevention and environmental responsibility.

What I really wanted to talk about
LEGO® MINDSTORM® is made up of several main components the NXT (the brains), touch sensors, sound sensors, light sensors, untrasonic sensors (detects distance), and servo motors (for movement). There are several development areas that basically lets you go into robotics without any skillsets. Areas to explore

1. NXT firmware development for the ARM7 ATMEL microcontroller and the 8-bit AVR ATMEL microcontroller.
2. Software development using SDK. The software controllers can also be easily developed using LabView, NBC (Next Byte Codes), Microsoft Robotics Studio, and Gostai URBI for LEGO Mindstorms NXT.
   
3. Custom hardware development using HDK. Mindstorm competible hardware are HiTechnic Products and Mindsensors.
   
4. Custom hardware communication development using BDK (Bluetooth Development Kit).

Getting started with some of MINDSTORM's robots with blueprints and guides. Meet the robots;
Alpha Rex (Humanoid) has sight(an ultrasonic sensor), hearing (a sound sensor), voice(a built-in Speaker on the NXT brick and sounds from the NXT Software), mobility (2 servo motors) and sense (touch and light sensors).

Spike (Insect Scorpion) has movement (six legs), a set of pincer arms (pedipalps), sight(an Ultrasonic Sensor) and hear (a sound sensor) and attacks with its stinger (a touch sensor).

RoboArm T-56 (Machine) can lift, pivot, and grab objects with its claws. It can detect colors (a light sensor)feel objects (a touch sensor) arm mobility (3 servo motors - 1 for the grabber claws, 2 for the robotic arm to move up, down, and turn).

Tribot (Vehicle) can grab a ball when you give it a sound command (a sound sensor), move following a line (a light sensor), feel objects (a touch sensor) and see objects(an ultrasonic sensor).

I think this is really a cool toy to get for any child. I'm thinking of getting one (heh...). However it does cost GBP179.99 (estimate RM1155.52)

The Dystopia (The Utopia Gone Bad)

BioShock is a great game. It has evil concepts that seems so good for the soul and you actually want to be one of them. However, there is a double twist to the story and it really intrigue me.

Company Background
BioShock is by Irrational Games (yeah what a name). They were the people that brought you Freedom Force (those Marvel and DC Comic real-time tactical RPG) and SWAT 4. Those where never games that held my interest for long. Anyway...

The Setting
During the 1960s, in Rapture, an underwater getaway city built in 1946 on the mid-Atlantic seabed. Rapture wast the future, a selft-sufficient city, powered by submarine volcanoes. The owner and founder of Rapture was Andrew Ryan. He envisioned Rapture as the solution to the problems above water; increasion political and religious authority oppression. Ryan wanted Rapture to be the getaway for those that exemplifies the best in humanity, making Rapture the new "Eden".

For all Eden(s) there lived an ADAM. ADAM are stem cells created from certain sea slugs by Dr. Bridgette Tennenbaum. ADAM was the answer to all human lackings and weaknesses. ADAM was the ingreadent of creating plasmids that allows humans to have extraordinary abilities. And with ADAM there must be an EVE. EVE are the serum needed for the plasmids to work (even utopia men needs females).

The Little Sisters and Big Daddies (Yeah a kinky naming concept but in the games its more hellish then kinky). Little Sisters initially were ADAM factories that lets the slugs live within them. But later during the war, Little Sisters were used as collector of ADAM from the dead and process it within them. Big Daddies are armed and highly advanced humans in diving suits that protects the Little Sisters.

The Downfall
Nothing perfect lasts forever. Ryan's vision was lost and soon he tried to keep his utopia a secrect and passes a single law, contact with the surface was prohibited; this turned out to be one too many. Soon this opened to the possibilities of black markets and backdoor transections. Former mobster Frank Fontaine had the same vision as Ryan but he wanted control. His wealth, combined with his monopoly on Tennenbaum's research, soon gained Fontaine enough power and followers to challenge Ryan for control of the city.

In late 1958, Ryan lost patience with the conflict, and apparently had Fontaine killed. But soon Atlas took Fontaine's place as the leader of the opposition. On New Year's Eve that year, Atlas and his ADAM-augmented followers fomented a riot and civil war between Ryan and Atlas broke out that eventually spread to all of Rapture. As the war progressed, Ryan began to betray his ideals. He began using torture and mind control in his battle with Atlas. Eventually, he became so unreasonable that a number of his supporters attempted to assassinate him. By the time the player enters Rapture, only the "Splicers"—citizens with severe mental and physical problems caused by excessive ADAM use—are left, scavenging throughout the city. The remaining non-mutated humans have managed to barricade themselves in the few remaining undamaged areas.

The Story
This is where Jack (the character controlled by the player) comes in as a passenger on a plane that crashes over the Atlantic Ocean in 1960. Where he enters into the dystopia of Rapture. Atlas assists Jack via radio in making his way to safety, while Ryan, believing Jack to be a government agent, uses Rapture's automated systems and his pheromone-controlled Splicers against him. Atlas tells Jack that the only way he can survive is to use the abilities granted by plasmids, and that he must kill the Little Sisters to extract their ADAM. Dr. Tennenbaum intercepts Jack, and urges him to save the Little Sisters instead.

The games unfolds until Atlas tells Jack that Ryan must die. After finding Ryan, Jack uncovers his true identity. ack was actually born in Rapture two years ago, genetically modified to mature rapidly; he is Ryan's illegitimate son as a result of an affair with Jasmine Jolene. Jack was designed to obey orders when given the specific phrase "Would you kindly" then followed by the order. He was sent to the surface when the war started to put him beyond Ryan's reach but later brought back by orders to hijack the plane and crashed it near Rapture. Ryan then orders Jack to kill him, so as to die on his own terms. After Ryan's death, Atlas reveals himself as Fontaine and leaves jack for dead by the reactivated security system.

The End
There are two final possible endings to the game. One being if Jack saves the Little Sisters and they along with Dr. Tennenbaum helps Jack safely away from Rapture to the surface and living full lives under Jack's care, including them graduating college and getting married; it ends on a heart-warming tone, with an elderly Jack surrounded on his deathbed by all of the adult Little Sisters. The alternative being if Jack harvested (and therefore killed) any of the Little Sisters, the game ends with Jack turning on the Sisters after defeating Fontaine, making him the new ruler of Rapture.

Comedy Central's Jeff Dunham

Hillariously weird, he has a purple thingie, a maxican on a stick, a terrorist, and a few lots more in one small box...hmmm...Here are some of his videos...

This is his all American friend, Walter, the videos are a little long...enjoy...

My Longed Awaitings...

I've played lots of games and various genre of them. I like them all no matter the format, the least loved would be tycoons and management games. The games I love most are fantasy based RPGs (Role Playing Game) and RTSs (Real-Time Strategy). So this little snipnet will go to the few games I'm really looking forward to enjoy. I'm an amateur at games review but I'll give it a shot here.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

This is one of my favarites.
WOW (World of Warcraft) is the first release of MMORPG (Mass multiplayer online RPF) for the Warcraft series. This was one of the games that really got me sitting on one spot for hours playing. The combination PvP (player versus player), RPG, questing, missions, battle grounds, etc. will never let you down and will never be boring. Warth of the Lich King is actually the third release of the WOW series. The new stuff comprises of a new dungeon Utgrade Keep, a continent Northrend, profession Inscription, hero class Death Knight, level cap rised to 80 and etc. WotLK will be here this year 2008, so there will not be too long a wait but here is a sneak preview at WotLK main site (the video is a little too large to post).

StarCraft II
Yeah, all teenage kids had their share of Crafting (may it be Warcraft or StarCraft) in their early years one way or another.

StarCraft is one of Blizzard's popular games of its time during its release in 1998 and its expension set StarCraft: Brood War. Now StarCraft II takes the three races (Terran, Protoss and Zerg) of StarCraft and add bigger, badder, meaner punch to all its artillery. Each race will have new unique units and gameplay. But the coolest of cool stuff that will get you mesmerized is the 3D graphics. Here is a little trailer on a Terran Marine playing dress-up.

Well, those two are what I'm waiting for. For now, I think gamers should fill up their time with some of these other games which are interesting and has great graphics.

Bioshock

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Assassin's Creed

Those games will kill most of your time until the great releases are out...and on a final note. No there is no news of Diablo III coming out anytime soon...and yes if I could I would certainly love to work for Blizzard as a developer on Diablo III.

Cheers and happy gaming.

A Beginning of a Good End

As I'm moving into the world of gaming industry, I might as well go into its workings and news. Many articles pass by and changes to the games market, from console to PC based to mobile games, nothing made me go holly-shit.

In the sense since the gaming industry has been growing and will still continue to grow unless every single child, teenager, adult and senior citizens (yes grandpas and grandmas out there) in the world tosses out their PS2.

Well here is the news that put a sinister smile on my face, the Activision and Blizzard merger annouced in Dec 2007 (Link interest: www.activisionblizzard.com). I've always been a huge fan of Blizzard since it's Diablo days. I'm also a big fan of current (and maybe soon-to-be former) largest developing and publishing house, EA. This merger will make Activition-Blizzard take the top spot but can they hold it? I'm really looking forword to how all this will play out in the games industry.

Some reads on the merger:
ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD-The-deal-that-shook-the-industry
www.blizzard.com
en.wikipedia.org
news.bbc.co.uk

What the Heck is a Long Egggggggg?

I might sound ignorant here and a little like a fool but I've never heard of a "long egg" in my life. Its just too weird a thing for me. What is it for? Why was it created in the first place? Why can't you just use normal hard boiled eggs?

I think its suppose to be like a fish ball, only it is long and made of egg and shell-less..... Why?????

I managed to stumbled upon this totally weird item while watching Jamie's Fowl Dinner on Channel 4. It strongly resembles a soft d*** when he held it up on TV. Anyway there is this big buzz of news regarding chicken welfare, may it be in the form of egg farming or chicken meat processing. Totally a large topic to write on but I don't have the time now, next round. I just wanted to quicky flash the long d***, I mean the long egg.

Testing Your Skills

Is this why in most educational systems have exams? To test our skills? Do we even really need them?

Often we find ourselves being in the situation where...
"I hate this subject..."
"I didn't have time to study..."
"The subject is so vague..."
"I don't know what to study..."
"I'm bored..."

I used to be able to sit at the desk the whole day studying my subjects. Reading, doing exercises and writing notes. Doing what a student should be doing. After working in the industry for 2 years and hardly holding a pen in hand for 5 minutes stright, sitting down reading mini text is so difficult. Its alright to sit all day reading 10k paged book either on graphics or DSP but it really kill butt cells just sitting there reading slide notes on various topics.

When something does not hold my interest I'll end up humming to the music, turning my head to check if any email came in, google a topic (that I was reading) and end up surfing the net for more intesting stuff and behold, time is wasted.

Dang, I'm doing that right now. I hate this distracting blog.

Anyway, I'm just going. No I mean I just HAVE to go through with it and a day (in my case, 3 more days to my exam) passes in a blink of an eye. I'll just treat this exam as another, (*whisper*) lame, way of testing my skills. Just like (wanting to) playing EA's Burnout Pradise over and again for the best time. Hack I'm going to read those notes the same way. The only thing is my final lap cannot be replayed.

Complimentary clip of EA's Burnout Paradise.

What the Blog is it all About?

One of today's biggest question, what are blogs about?

I'm currently not in Malaysia, in UK doing my Masters study in Games Programming. Something I've wanted to do my whole life. This is where I find myself looking at emails and blogs ever so often to keep in contact with the people I care and love.

Could never imagine if I were a generation earlier and I had to wait for weeks for a letter for updates. That will totally drive me mad.

So blogs, recently I've just found out that my guy have been maintaining an online blog for quite some time. A lot of people knows about it but I just found out about it yesterday. There were signs but I just didn't notice.

This made me wonder, why blogs? I try to justify its use. Maybe it will be fun having one, maybe not, maybe its a waste of time. So why am I at it now? Actually currently I've been very busy with work and its getting harder to keep track of everything. Using google as my life boat. So I figured a blog might help me keep track of life. My life and it's essences.

And behold~! While registering for a blog spot, I found out that I already had one opened a few years back. This might be a sign, to finish what I started...?

For this time and point in my life, this blog with be about life, about my life and this is where the journey begins.

Gaming as a Career

I had several dreams on what the future for me would be like. A heroine famous laywer,

a laid back rich writer,
an essentric artist.
There are many things that held my interest and I've always been good with my hands - nothing kinky here alright~.

But nothing held my interest more then games. Board games, puzzle games, kids' games, card games, console games and the highest of obsessions, computer games. Alright, to be honest, I just love sitting down on a chair the whole day not moving but just working on a computer game. Yes~ working on it. Just solving it, traveling through it, seeing its graphics, its reaction, its interaction, its story line and all its liveness.

I'm not into games in a geeky way, knowing the names, habits and every little detail of a game. I love games for being the alternative me. The me that I wont or would not be in real life. In this sense, playing a game is just like living my dreams. A dream that will never be reality. The alternate self in me.

As time and new games passes through my life, it was hard finding time to indulge in the other me. Work and priorities came first, rest time second, and the little bit of time left was for the games.

That was where changes need to be made. Me and myself must be one again. This is where I made changes and took the other path not yet explored, making gaming as a career.