How to be an Evil Overlord a.k.a Recycled TV Plots

Advice for the Evil Overlord:
1. Prior to kidnapping an older male scientist and forcing him to work for me, I will investigate his offspring and make sure that he has neither a beautiful but naive daughter who is willing to risk anything to get him back, nor an estranged son who works in the same field but had a falling-out with his father many years ago.

2. If I capture an enemy known for escaping via ingenious and fantastic little gadgets, I will order a full cavity search and confiscate all personal items before throwing him in my dungeon.

3. I will design all doomsday machines myself. If I must hire a mad scientist to assist me, I will make sure that he is sufficiently twisted that he'll never regret his evil ways and seek to undo the damage he's caused.

4. I will funnel some of my ill-gotten gains into urban renewal projects. Although slums add a quaint and picturesque quality to any city, they too often contain unexpected allies for heroes.

5. My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.

Advice for the Hero:
1. If I have a copy of the Evil Overlord's plans and my capture is imminent, I will not send the only copy of those plans away with a cute little sidekick. I will make many copies of the plans and send them away with many cute little sidekicks.

2. If any of my associates mysteriously disappears, and then returns behaving in an uncharacteristic manner, I will immediately presume that their loyalty has been compromised by the Evil Overlord.

3. I will not trust a being with an inordinate number of tentacles.

Advice for the Bad Auxiliary Character
(Evil Overlord's Wicked but Beautiful Daughter):
Daddy's Trusted Lieutenant works for Daddy. If he catches you cavorting with the Hero, he will gleefully take whatever you offer for his silence, and then turn you in anyway.

(Evil Genius) :
1. I will remember that any robot/device/mental power that can be remotely controlled from ten feet can, with sufficient preparation, effort, and/or energy, be remotely controlled from 100 miles or more.

2. I will not experiment on myself.

Advice for the Good Auxiliary Character
(Good Guy's Sidekick):
If I fall in love with the Hero's True Love, I will inform the Hero first, and then the True Love, so that they can help me get over it and find someone else.

(Innocent Bystander):
1. Before going off the beaten path for your vacation, check the police archives, and with the old people who live in the region, taking note of any mysterious deaths or disappearances.

2. Do not attempt to duplicate the means by which the Hero gained his/her powers. You will either fail and die a lingering, agonizing death, or succeed, lose control of your powers, wreck half of the city, and make it necessary for the Hero to kill you to neutralize the threat you pose to everyone else.

Further Evil
(Advice for the Evil Empress):
My personal servants will be professional bodyguards and assassins, but will dress and behave as eunuchs and maidservants. Even if I dismiss my regular guards for a "private audience" with the Hero, these personal servants (just so much furniture after all, right?) will remain in my chambers.

(Miscellaneous Evil Resolution):
I've murdered tens of thousands in cold blood. If I can't ice the sad-eyed puppy too, I don't deserve the job.

Murphy's Laws of Combat:
- A little ignorance can go a long way in the direction of maximum harm.
- If your flank march is going well, the enemy expects you to outflank him.
- Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are.
- If you make it too tough for the enemy to get in, you can't get out.
- B-52s are the ultimate close support weapon.
- The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.
- The best tank killer is another tank. Therefore tanks are always fighting each other, and have no time to help the infantry.
- Armored vehicles are bullet magnets.
- Avoid loud noises; there are few silent killers in a combat zone.
- The bursting radius of a grenade is always one foot greater than your jumping range.
- Try to look unimportant. The enemy may be low on ammo.
- As soon as you are served hot chow in the field, it rains.
- The law of the bayonet says the man with the bullet wins.

http://nielsenhayden.com/overlord/

Careless Drive-By Shooting

One of the reasons why I had wanted a cell phone with a camera is the ability to take pictures while driving. Granted it’s not the most legally safe form of driving but when you catch something you don’t often see, one can’t help but flip the plastic clamshell open and start clicking.

I’m not camera person (see Kyel’s blog and Satkuru.com for that), I'm just a JPEG addict.

Route between LDP and Subang exit highway. There's a lake fountain display on the other side of the road one cannot help but notice while being stuck in traffic jams.



I like driving in the rain, especially when I'm heading home. Its cooler, cleaner air and I can sing aloud to the CD player without other drivers catching me in the act.



Several days ago there was a fatal accident on the LDP Kelana Jaya. The police had closed the road but drivers driving out of area can catch the black tarp covering the dead motorcyclist. There were 6 police cars with flashing lights on the road.



Ai-yoooo, PakYong. The while Kancil car is the youngest-uncle-cum-neighbour, photo taken last month. He's the one whose big Nissan van we always borrow to transport the barbecue set for Adil-Adha. Apparently his wife knocked the Kancil into an accident and blew out the radiator. Mak helped tow the unstable car to the workshop (tow-truck charges too much).



Haha, the picture on a trip back to Pontian Kechil last Aidilfitri. This is one of my mother's cousin's house (Mom's a Javanese). The eldest living in this house, the eldest in the extended family, is - was - Wak Ram, my late grandfather's sister. She passed away peacefully not even 24 hours of this blog entry. This is the house my mother is heading to right now (I couldn't come since I got school).

Damn, I'm going to miss that nice old lady. She's been loosing her wits for some time but she's at the peak of health (still good vision and hearing, not bad).



Okay, soooo...
This isn't a drive by shot, not was Dusty the Cat was ever involved in a drive by shooting. But if he ever was in a drive by shot, he would probably pose this way (it was curtains washing day at the time).

Lions are Loose in the Kelana Mall!

Okay, I said I’m going to pay attention more to homework instead of blogging but it’s really hard to concerntrate on lines of code when there’s a freaking tum-tum-chang noise just next door to school.

Between 15 minutes later and on my fifth time my error-filled program refused to work (how the hell do I change this Java application into Java applet?!), I decided to call it quits, pack my bags and save this problem for another day (preferably a day when I didn’t forget to bring my textbook).

Like rats to the Pipe Piper’s music, I followed the horde to investigate the not-so-mysterious music of drums and cymbals.

The interior of Kelana Mall is pretty big for such a small place.

Kelana Mall isn’t really a packed place. Most of the store lots are still as closed as sea clams (apt description, I must say) and so any noise within the building is pretty much applified by echoes.

And at this time of the year, where there is drums and cymbals... There’s a troop of lion dancers. A least I think they’re lion dancers. I can never tell the difference between a lion and dragon get-up (sorry me). So I’m going to refer to them as lion dancers because they look so golden (heh...).


A parent pointing out the lions on the second floor to his kid.


Musicians (is that what they’re called?) banging on the drums. They take turns when one of the gets tired - somehow they have to keep the beat going.


Ooo, the lion and his escorts.

So apparently some property development company had just opened a branch in Kelana Mall. Chinese company of course. I think sending for the lion dancers is a form of blessing? Prosperity? Whatever it means, it sure beats the hell of sitting down at the PC Lab and working out programming.

The troop had started on the entrance of the Kelana Mall and worked their vigour right up to the front entrance, ground floor, of the new office building. Then they went up to the second floor and hang around that entrance too.


Both lions display their strength.


What’s this? An citrus offering?


Don’t mind if we help ourselves.

I’ve never seen a lion dance up close before. Oh, I had been present during a few (and once on an opening ceremony my dad MC’d for) but never by myself. So things time without having family members to watch out for (my lil’ bro usually hates the noise), I was able to capture the team in action to its finish.

It was quite noisy was my first impression but I eventually got used to it and managed to stand closer and closer to take shots. Of couse, half of my mind was asking me why the heck am I getting so near to a ceremony that have no affiliation with me, either educational or recreational.

Simply put, I wouldn’t miss a chance to see something different from my norm.


While one lion was busy with the fruits, his buddy chased after innocent bystanders with mandrin oranges.


The oranges and the pamelo had been cut and was served to the branch manager.


The procession concluded when the lion had eaten his veggie-on-a-string.

I must say it was pretty facinating to watch. I was so scared of getting mobbed by the lion that I missed my chance at getting my own mandrin oranges. Damn, it would have been a great picture shot.

I didn’t stick around to see the very end of lion dance; I was there for about half-an-hour at least. When I looked behind me, I wasn’t looking at the lions (which were invited inside the office) but rather, I saw the people watching the dance.

Like me, they too were awed. Who says there’s prejudice amongst races?


The appreciative audience. And these are only on the ground floor!

When a Blogger Looks for Puns...

: Hi! It’s us.
: And us.
: Which makes both of one to make a whole me.
: So it’s just me.
: And me.
: To the point, Quickening can’t come to the blog right now.
: Actually she can but she doesn’t want to think too much.
: So instead of our regularly sceduled 250+ word post-,
: I’m - we're - both of me - is just going to enter some nonsensical nonsense since none had sense save we.
: Don’t cut me off.
: I didn’t.
: Yes you did, I was going to say all that-,
: But I said them for you.
: You cut me off again!
: Did not!
: You always cut me off!
: So what if I did? We share one head anyway.
: You occupy too much space. I barely have room to think.
: That’s not true. I don’t think so.
: You don’t think, alright.
: Why you lil’ piece of-

*Fights like angel-devil they are. But they both like punts. Here are some pretty interesting ones the English language plays around with.*

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.

The butcher backed up into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.

The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

A thief fell and broke his leg in wet cement. He became a hardened criminal.

Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.

We'll never run out of math teachers because they always multiply.

When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U.C.L.A.

The math professor went crazy with the blackboard. He did a number on it.

The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.

The dead batteries were given out free of charge.

If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.

A dentist and a manicurist fought tooth and nail.

A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.

A will is a dead giveaway.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.

A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.

If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.

Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat miner.

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.

A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France, resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.

You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia: The LAN down under.

He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

A calendar's days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted: 'Taint yours, and 'taint mine.

A boiled egg is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

A plateau is a high form of flattery.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.

If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Acupuncture: a jab well done.

: Right! That’s about it.
: And remember...!

What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.

Recipe: Breakfast Pepper Mix

Haha, this one is especially for Raising Mercury requesting healthy recipes. My family isn’t really a super-duper health concerned family other than always keeping our sugar intake to absolute minimum (family history has occasional diabetes), like tea with no sugar.

Although this recipe frys the food, I still say it’s healthy because there’s a lot of ingredients; the balance of veggies, meat and carbo. Mak only makes these in a huge batch in the morning so she could eat it again by noon (unless big brother Arsenal drops by, then the Pepper Mix is gone before mid-morning).

I don’t have the step-by-step photos, mainly because I wasn’t around when Mak cook this (too lazy to get out of bed) but as all you need is a wok and a large pepper grinder, it’ll be cool.

Pepper Mix.

Ingredients:
Some whole grain bread slices, 4 at least.
Potatoes, thickly sliced.
Carrots, sliced.
Broccoli, chopped.
Japanese cucumber, sliced (optional).
Onions, chopped.
Canned button mushrooms, sliced OR soaked shiitake mushrooms, sliced (optional).
Hot dogs
At least 2 burger patties (optional).
Lots and lots of grinded pepper.
NO SALT!

1. First up, boil the hot dogs until it’s soft and meaty, then slice them. Fry the burger patties on a pan (I used Ramly brand) until they’re half-cooked, then add in the sliced hot dogs. Fry them together until they’re done (frying the hot dogs gives it a grilled taste).

2. If you don’t want to use meat, use mushrooms! Slice some canned button mushroom or some shiitake mushroom (after it’s been soaked long enough to turn soft) and fry them in cooking oil.

*Note: Mak usually use meat or mushrooms as an excuse to reduce adding salt, or not add salt at all. You can still use both meat and mushrooms but it’ll be very, very filling (Ayah complains it’s Mak’s fault that he’s fat).*

3. Remove the meats/mushrooms from the pan and put them in a serving bowl. If you’re cooking burger patties, cut them into smaller pieces. Now fry the potatoes until it’s cooked. Poke it with a fork to see how soft you want it to be.

4. Remove the potatoes and also add them into the serving bowl. Now fry the carrots slices and chopped broccoli until, yes, soft and juicy. Occasionally, Mak often adds sliced Japanese cucumber into the frying veggies for more vitamins.

5. Once veggies done, that too goes into the serving bowl. Now you can fry the onions. To add a bit of spicy-ness, chop a bit of fresh chilli and fry them with the onions.

Note: If you’re wondering why all this stuff had to be fried seperately, it’s because the potatoes cook longer than the onions and the veggies don’t fry well if the heat is too high. Frying everything at once also takes longer to cook.*

6. For the last bit, toast the whole grain bread slices and then cut them into squares. Mix in all the cooked ingredients by tossing them like salad with a healthy dose of pepper. It helps if you had pounded the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar first.

7. Add an easy spray of oil and best served hot. It still taste good after it cooled, which you can eat it as a snack throughout the day.

This recipe was made soon after BabyNabil got over his teething and wanted to bite into everything. We can’t let him eat our too-long-french fries or thick daging masak merah so the Breakfast Pepper Mix was a hit because of the bite-sized pieces.

However, there is this mysterious phenomenon, but maybe it’s only in my house. Take note though. If you cook this with the meats and left the food on the open table, the meats tend to disappear to a smaller amount from time to time.

Either cooking this creates a black hole in the serving bowl, or somebody kept popping food into his mouth with his fingers when no one is looking. Maybe I better ask big brother Arsenal as this happens most often when he’s home.

Game Project Update: About RPG Maker 2003 System

As February gets closer to March, I’m trying to work out a couple of kinks in the authoring software I had chosen to build this game in. Just small tedious things like the animation and the mapping and a little bit of programming.

I guessing why a lot of folks haven’t heard of this tool probably because it was originally in Japanese and it took hackers and crackers to translate it into English (now you know which kind of copy I have).

Let me give you a little bit of explaining on what this authoring tool can do so you can expect what kind of game I’m making.

Actually, it’s a hell lot of explaining (I blab a hell lot less in real life).

Can’t hide the Japanese anime on this program!

My subject is about a program authoring tool called RPG Maker 2003, an English translation of its Japanese original RPG Tsukuru 2003. It is a multimedia based software which its primary function is enabling users to create and develop a console role-playing game (rpg) on their computers. The program provides a beginner’s resource package that consists of PNG images, WAV sound effects, Midi music and at least one AVI movie to help users get started.

RPG Maker 2003, or RM2K3 as it is more widely known, is the third generation authoring tool developed by the Japanese software company, Enterbrain.Co. Previous installments are RPG Maker 95 and RPG Maker 2000. The latest product is the RPGVista, which is currently still in beta-testing mode.

This tool creates programs in reminiscent of the early rpg computer games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Pokemon Blue or Secret of Mana games. RM2K3 starts the project by providing a basic map and starting chipset. “Map” is the canvas/drawing paper/file page in which your “world” is created, the place where your playing character will explore and interact with objects such as NPCs (non-playable character: Mother, shopkeeper, wizard), enter through doors, cross bridges and converse with dancing trees).


Mapping and world-building isn’t as easy as it looks.

“Chipset” is the paint plate for the user to design the map with. Just as MS Paint provide an array of colours to paint, chipset consists of sets of 16x16 pixel images like a staircase, a bedroom or a dancing-singing tree for user to design their world as they wish.

Other image-map files are battle animation, faceset, charaset, systemset and many others. Resource package also include an image temple to encourage users to design their own image-sets for a more original gameplay.

Music and sound effects in RM2K3 is acceptable only in Midi and WAV files, though with a little bit of thinkering, MP3 files can be used for better quality. Movies can only be played in AVI format, though for many users in the GamingW forum, it isn’t necessary nor expected for many movie files makes up for most of the filesize.


Tell this green-haired dancer to do anything you want her to do... *click to see command menu*

Learning to code in RM2K3 is not difficult as the software provides a menu bar for players to choose their event commands. Some of the most commonly used commands are Switch Operations, Variable Operation, Loop, Branch-If, Change Event and many others. Switch/Variable Operations are assigned to an array to control the gameplay. If the player interacts with another character, users can assign a switch to be turn on/off so that an event, such as a movie/sound effect/animation can be played accordingly.


Next to the mapping interface, the operations interface is the backbone of building the game.

Loop and Branch-If commands controls the time and conditions of the player, interactions and animations, changing the Switches and Variables in a timely manner. Change Event, a huge menu set, are the effects of the Switch/Variable cases, such as making the hero ill, entering and exiting an airship, making the screen dark for a nighttime atmosphere or the most common command, engaging the player into an enemy attack.


No matter how hard it gets, there’s always a bit of Help.exe...

For many users, the variety of coding commands, resource, arrays, events, etc is off-putting, especially when the user is a beginner, more so if the beginner had no prior programming experience. RM2K3 program itself includes a highly detailed graphical help file for such situation.

There is also a web community dedicated to open-source games, GamingW.net, is dedicated to exploring and helping the variety of uses for all products of RPG Maker, along with outher open-source games such as Sphere, Flash and GameMaker. GamingW.net provide tutorials, support and even help spread the end-product so that both game and resource can be enjoyed and inspire many.

I discovered RM2K3 from the internet. I had wanted to look for free, downloadable adventure games in lieu of the expensive, high-performance RPG from the computer stores. I found many awesome yet simple games but they were made by inexperienced programmers, leading to a enormity of coding bugs.

On the advice of the forum moderators (because these inexperienced programmers had long-left the community to graduate into high-performance RPG), I sought the authoring tool and corrected the program bugs accordingly.

Eventually, I began to explore the program and dissect other finished free games to look through the coding. I explored many RPG2K3 tutorials and made some basic shooter-style games, maze games and in 2006, I embarked on a one-man project called The Frog Princess (based on a Russian folklore).

The simple 5-hour game was met with less-than mediocre reviews as compared to the other released free games of the same year, which are longer and more complex, made by seasoned game makers. However, I was, and still am, very proud of my first attempt and had learned much.


Title Screen of Old Project.


Interactivity between hero and NPC characters.


Combat mode in ATB (Active Time Battle).

At the moment, in between my studies, I am creating a longer, more complex project called Unlocking Pandora. It is the adventures of a young girl named Keea who had been plagued with strange dreams of a golden-haired goddess playing a harp. While visiting a temple ruins to recover her late adopted father’s items, Keea accidentally unleashed a horde of monsters into her world and she must locate 2 guardian spirits before evil destroy her world.

I plan to complete and release my game at the end of 2008, in conjunction with the Misao Awards 2009. It is a non-profit group that gives out awards to open-source programmers based on an open voting by forum members. Hopefully, I can win some titles and use them as credentials for my job resume when I graduate.

Important links:
http://www.gamingw.net/forums (community)
http://www.tekepon.net/fsm/ (REFMAP sprites and tileset resources)
http://rmtutorials.com/ (Helpful tutorials on how to start building your game or make it even better.)

PS: Downloads for this authoring system is illegal so I won’t post an open link. If you really do want to try building your own games, you can ask me where I got mine. You can also ask me for any help concerning RPGM2K3 graphic or programming (except side-scrolling; I hate side-scrolling).