She is still out there...

I don’t often make serious topics. There are times when my messages to my blog don’t usually reflect how I feel at the time of writing. It’s ironic and an insult to my conscience, seeing to the true purpose of this blog was for.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting pretty busy now. Seeing that at the past few days had been hectic, I rarely have time to read my usual quota of favorite books, let alone the newspapers.

But then the school server slowed down and I suddenly found myself being... quiet.

Still.

Although everybody else in the workstation is buzzing about like busy bees (and I know bees), I suddenly found myself at a mental halt. Detached and... closed.

The best way I could describe it was like you’re walking at an empty, grassy park. A really big one and there’s nobody else around. Then suddenly you stopped for no reason. There’s nothing to see and nothing different yet you still stopped.

Why did I stop? I don’t know. Maybe with the school server being down, I managed to orient myself to the latest news everybody had been listening to.

The Sharlinie Abduction.

This isn’t a message about the abduction, or about the parties involved or the ‘why’s and ‘what-if’s. If you want to know about all those, you can get it in 1001 sites all over the Internet. I refuse to be an affiliate to the online worries and speculation.

But I do worry. When the little Nurin girl’s body had been found, barely four months ago, I did feel very, very worried. And sad.

Would it be selfish of me to think of my own family instead of grieving for a child who met an unfortunate end?

My cousin has a very small child, a little girl younger than Nurin or Sharlinie. She’s an a-long-awaited girl for my cousin’s family (KakShaz only have one other child, now a big protective brother). She’s very pretty and extraordinarily fair for a Malay.

I know I may sound biased seeing that I’m family, but little UmmSweet is not my daughter. She’s very, very cute. Her grandmother is part Chinese and UmmSweet’s father is of Sarawakian origin. UmmSweet’s got the best physical aspect of both world... and a temper to boot.

Everybody in the family agreed that UmmSweet was too cute, too cute even for television.

Which in the light of the little girls’ kidnappings, this had got me scared for her. Scared for the family. We often mentioned about the abductions to KakShaz and her husband. They agreed to be more vigilant, at home and at shopping malls, even though they live miles away from Kampung Baru.

I guess Sharlinie’s ongoing rescue operation is why I found myself detached and got into deep thinking, right here in the middle of a workstation. There are 3 criminal acts which I hate most in the world; terrorism, torture and rape. And little Nurin’s abduction has one of all those three.

The kidnapper terrorized the child to obey him, to follow him and his rules.

The kidnapper tortured the child, mind and body and then he tortured the child’s family by dumping her broken body.

The kidnapper raped the child.

He raped her.
As a female and once a small little girl myself, I don’t wish to go into detail.

The school’s server is running fast and smooth again. I feel myself on the move. There’s a class waiting for me at 11.30am. My lecturer too will be packing her notes, books and checking the projector.

Other students will be there and then they’ll go to their other classes. Then they’ll go home and maybe watch the news before they go to sleep. Today is Tuesday and they’ll wake up to Wednesday.

Somewhere out there is a lost little girl trapped by a monster.

Hi-ho TheProton! Away!

For this blog entry, I would like to introduce to you the stalwart companion of mine. She’s as old as my maturity, maybe even more. We met when I was in primary school and today I indebted to her for ferrying me back and forth between home and school.

Ain’t she a beauty?

Aww... my Proton Iswara Aeroback.

Okay, technically, it isn’t mine; it’s my mom’s. And all this lovey-gooey ooziness over a mechanical vehicle that’s worth its weight in petrol and maintenance bills may sound overdone.

But I drive this car. It’s mine. It takes me places.

This is one of the earliest (and least publicized) Iswara Aeroback produced by the company. In family, the extended family, it’s the only Proton Iswara so everybody identifies it as the Iswara. In my nuclear family, it’s dubbed ‘TheProton’.

“Where’s TheProton?”
“Ayah must have taken it out to go to the mamak corner again.”
“Okay then. I’ll call him to feed the car as well.”

“There’s a car outside the gate. Can somebody move it so I can park inside?”
“It’s TheProton car. Your sister must have forgotten to lock in the handbrake again.”
“Luckily it didn’t roll into the neighbour’s Volvo like the last time.”

“I can’t accelerate TheProton too fast or it’ll jerk.”
“She’s an old lady. Be careful.”
“I know all about being careful around old people. I got two of the still paying the mechanic’s bills.”

Oooh yeah.

TheProton had been in three road accidents, each belongs to every family member who had just got their driver’s license. She had been clamped in Kelana Jaya and fined in Uptown Damasara. Captured on police camera in various highways. Broke down in the back roads between Kuantan and Kuala Terrengganu. Radiator overheated just before the Rawang exit. Up and down the Genting Highlands roads until her brakes got too old to carry her weight, our fat luggage and our fat-asses.

She’s been to waaay more places than a Toyota Avanza TV commercial, more durable than a Mercedes M-Class attacked by a dinosaur and more versatile than a Japanese cellphone. And a favourite bird-poop target every time she parks in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail.

Her most exciting incident was when a convoy of military trucks was passing her from the left, somewhere on the road going out of KL, sometime in the 1990s. The front most truck driver (in his big dark green truck) was probably wearing his stylish movie-inspired sunglasses to complement his full soldier boy uniform.

Didn’t see TheProton.
Boom!
A couple of bangs and a shaking as high as 7.3 on the Richer scale.
A full 180 degree turn.
Four sets of tire tracks decorated the road with black ribbons.

A mother, her best friend and two kids in the back seat with no seat belts on. Scary, huh?

It’s a good thing old Yayi had taught his daughter how to be a good driver. Mak barely managed to stop the car from turning over (which, however dangerous, would have been really interesting). Me and my little brother, young and stupid as we were (we weren’t even wearing seatbelts!), thought it was the coolest non-roller coaster car ride surprise ever.

The trucking soldier boys did their civic duty (and to stop Mak from logging a police report) by escorting us to the nearest mechanic shop to asses and pay for the damage (all 3 military trucks by the way).

It was the first and only time I got into a damn real military truck, with real soldier boys and their pretty pin-badges on their mud-green uniforms. And I tell ya, the government needs to give these guys some proper suspension and better seat cushions in those moving metal boxes.

Happy for TheProton, she survived to crash into various other non-military, albeit more expansive, vehicles for the next so-and-so years.

So Ayah decided that the old girl deserves a paint job and some expensive repair work.




Whatcha looking at?

Galactic gray, all the easier to hide any unwanted bird-poop splatter.

Oh, and my own contribution.


This old lady’s still kicks ass...

Of Two Ice-Masters

Since school is starting again, I have access to the Internet more often now. The ‘I-have-to-go-to-school’ excuse can now be implemented again, leaving my little brother to do the laundry. Not that I’ve ever did laundry in a long time anyway but house-chores will be house-chores.

In between registering new courses and writing up the game proposal for my thesis project v2.0 (my new supervisor is a phD! I shall dub him ‘Dr. Visor’), I had a few minutes to squeeze a search-and-drool on DeviantArt for this week’s image.

Guess what I found?

This ‘bishounen’ is property of artist Yue-iceseal. You can tell by his link on the image itself so I won’t bother linking to his site address (haha!). Like a lot of the best imaginative artist, Yue-seal attributes this image to a character he envisioned. He used as in a role-play game forum.

This character he drew is an ice wizard and it got me thinking of my own ice-mastery character in my Imaginary-World-Ideas.

In my game project, Unlocking Pandora, Niq Hillshire a character who uses the ice-blades and the ice-flows as his combative and augmentive spells. Per see, he isn’t a full-fledged ice mage; he’s a sword fighter. An ice mage is my other character from an older story, the Wolf and the Wildflower, prologue to my game project.



This is Cedric No-last-name (also by a DeviantArt artist). He’s a covert operative for a mission of life and death (obviously); aka secret agent. Here’s a little game story spoiler.

Sometime between the end of the Wolf and the Wildflower and prior to Unlocking Pandora, Niq and Cedric met and the latter was taught ice spells. Niq was a younger, moodier guy than Cedric. Despite all that, Cedric knew Niq’s potential. He offered Niq a chance to go to the water-magic Region and become a true ice-mage.

But then there was trouble in Niq’s hometown and Niq had to turn Cedric down. The two separated and never crossed paths again... until the events of Unlocking Pandora that is...

Often I wondered if I had written Niq’s fate differently. If Niq Hillshire had taken up Cedric SecretAgent’s offer and became a true ice mage, Yue-iceseal’s picture would have portrayed him best.

Niq Hillshire had always been a lone wolf. A childhood incident had dulled his attachment to other people. He’s a hard-worker and high-achiever since he’s afraid to be dependable on others. If Niq had joined Cedric and ignored the trouble in his hometown, I suppose he’ll be a greater loner, a brilliant but guilt-stricken mage.

And that was a long ago decision. Niq didn’t abandon his family. Along the way, he learned sword fighting an in turn, he created his own ice-mastery spells; the ice-blades. His unique craft would be tested in the events I have plans for in my game project (oooo, hype...).

Late for My Exam Results!

The first thing that came to my mind when I was sitting down at the school’s workstation was that it was an unusual amount of people.

I noticed it because I usually come straight to school right after the holidays so I’ll be in time to register for courses. Courses have a tendency to take no student reservations as we all know. If you’re late, you’ll have to register for next semester.

Usually around my school, people tend to be busy at the second week of school. Dragging their heels so to speak. Let’s face it; we’ll be dragging our heels when we start working so might as well do the heel-dragging laziness to correctness. Considering the performance of our government workers, maybe I’ll be a G-man too (hehehehe!).

Then it dawned to me as I checked-in online. I was late by a week.

For the f**k of...!!!

See what happens when you don’t have home-Internet? ‘F’ happens.

Luckily, lecturers also tend to drag their heels (which must be a pain on the women-lecturers in their pump shoes) so they mostly delayed first class to Week 2. Week 1 (which I missed) is the online registration session, so there’s no guarantee that there’ll be students in the classroom.

Aaah... educational enthusiasm...

Me? Not really much problem for me really. But what made me turn on my verbal expurgation was that I was a nervous wreck for the pass 24 hours. In addition to registering online also brings forth the exam results of August Semester 2007.

It’s the time of reckoning.

If you were a regular, you would remember my rants and curses over my thesis paper v1.0. What I probably didn’t mention was that I can’t register my major Multimedia courses without this paper. If I had failed it, I wouldn’t have anything to register since I’ve already done everything else.

Which would make January Semester 2008 a very, very empty semester, rendering an even bigger empty open future by sudden increase of free time. I wouldn’t be able to complete the last 20+ credit hours to graduation by end of this year.

Furthermore, if my parents realized that I suddenly have too much free time, they’ll check... they’ll know I’ve failed and would have to repeat again... they’ll know I’ve failed before...and then they’ll… they’ll... *gulp*

Put me into a religious class!
NOOOOOOOOOO!!

Okay, I might be over the top here. Religious class is more tedious than ego-threatening actually. As I’ve mentioned before in Kak Dilla’s New Home, I haven’t been diligent in reading the Al-Quran. Not to say I can’t read it, it’s just that I read it really, really badly.

Which in the eyes of the old-folks, it’s totally unacceptable since they’re going to die anytime soon and they’ll be questioned in the afterlife, under ‘Bad Parental Conscience’. Sheesh.

Luckily (again), I passed.

All subjects.

Just a ‘C’ in thesis paper v1.0 but...

AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!

Please ignore my ‘ack’-ness. Since I’m writing this blog entry from the convenience of my school’s workstation, I cannot scream too loudly due to the increasing number of other students in here.

So please excuse me while I scream in cyberspace.

AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!

I passed!

AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!

Major courses has been registered!

AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!

Signing in for thesis paper v2.0!

AAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!

15 credits hours!

AAAAA-, oh crap...

Game Project Update: Animating and Spriting

Regular readers would know that in addition to shamelessly exposing my privacy to the Malaysian busybodies, I used this blog partially as a developer’s log for my game project, Unlocking Pandora. For those who had just recently metamorph’d into a busybody, you can click the link to find out more about my project.

The short-stuff of the assignment is that I’m working on something that might help me get a head start of my thesis paper v2.0. Unlocking Pandora is a PC role-playing game (RPG) similar to Final Fantasy 1-4 graphic style; you choose a party of fighters, you upgrade by fighting monsters and you save the world by killing the powerful evil guy.

For quite a long time I had to put this project on hold because of my school’s website project but that’s old news now. So when I wasn’t reviewing the last two non-RPG games, I was planning on working of some sprite edits (I’m no good at customizing my own character sprites though).

But that didn’t work because I was distracted by some new material I’ve collected. So instead, I’m gathering graphical stuff and dissect them to arrange into RPG Maker 2003 (RM2K3) format.

This is one of the four new battleset edits I’m working on. The animation for this graphic is used for my healer character’s attack spells.

Like the cell animation techniques that Astro’s TV channel, Nickelodeon, had taught us, I have to arrange each box of graphic one by one in a timely sequence. Recolouring, resizing and transparencies are part of the flexible editing options in the software. Here’s something what I planned to achieve.


These are some of the battlers’ examples, but not necessarily I’ll decide on this design.

And place them in the default battle system like these (old works showing here, by the way but you get the picture, right...?).



Every character’s specialized attack or magical upgrade gets its own animation.

It’ll be a b**ch to calibrate and arrange to make it look really nice but I’m kind of veerrrrry particular about it (I rarely make an animation less than 50 frames now). So far, I’ve got 2 characters whose attack animations are good and done, which makes 7 others to create.

As for other animations, I got some of the generic ones done. But then there are the specialized enemy attacks (a boss sends out a great evil-blue beam!) and monster sprite’s attacks (generic monster strikes and status disability) and sequence/events-triggered animation (like feathers falling very, very slowly from the sky).

I’ll calculate how much animation cells I’ll have to face-off but since I’ve already know that it’ll be annoyingly humungous, I don’t think I want to scare myself with the details (aaccck!).

Speaking of humungous jobs, I’ve made some new problems with a sprite graphics relative to my storyline. In the storyline, my protagonist uses a unique magic circle to draw power out from the earth to *cough* spoiler *cough* against the bad guys. Currently, this is the magic circle sprite graphic I’m thinking of using.


I’m working out a scene sequence but the magic circle doesn’t seem dramatic enough for this scene.

The magic circle I’ve first tried for now seems... kind of wimpy. And it’s too much a reminiscent of Ahriman’s Prophecy’s Power of Eight. So I’ve changed my mind and saved that circle for other stuff, maybe in side-quests.

But now I’ve created a problem of what to use in making a more dramatic magic circle. Looks like it’s going to be another long trip to MS Paint. But I got the ball rolling and I’m sticking with its current course.

The magic circle is significant for the storyline as an informative guide to the magical world of the game, plot development for my protagonist and a nature of the gameplay. There will be eight components, each one representing a raw magical power and so there’s a kind of puzzle system attached to it.


After much doodling, I’ve decided that the bottom-most pattern will suit. Now I’ll just have to resize, adjust and maybe even animate it.

If you’ve read this long, then you’re a bigger busybody that I thought. Okay, the rest of the changes and additions I’ve made are:
1. A game hint system that will tell the answers to quests but will also cost level points.
2. Storyline extensions, mostly in Act 2 and Act 3. Side-quests for both Acts are still in the thinking cap.
3. Music and sound effects are finally finalized! I got two sound effects that are quite big in size but I’m keeping them because it’s the sounds of two people having fun-sex. This way, I can create a Vegas brothel. In my game, that is.

I’m still considering making my two non-playable characters into playable characters since their roles is looking to become more and more significant into the storyline. It’s not that I’m afraid to do the battler and battle animation graphic work (I’ve a full year to complete this project after all), it’s whether turning them into playable characters will affect the intrigue of their backgrounds.

Aaaah... the power of the imagination. Busybody enough for you?

Thaumaturgy and Magic Circles

I loved magic. My interest in it came mostly from Enid Blyton’s faerie tales, Greek and Roman mythology and TV episodes of David Copperfield’s illusions. Thankfully, those childhood days didn’t corrupt me from looking for other magic-potential events. Like voodoo practices or witches haunts or exorcism or the Heroes of Might and Magic game series.

Magic may be all in the mind but it never stops there. Since the mystique of magic is older than Lord of the Rings, so are its variations. I’m referring to a category of magic that I’ve read Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files series; thaumaturgy.

Thaumaturgy needs strong concentration and a lot of time to prepare for it, making it opposite of evocation (the latter refers to fireballs and lighting bolts).

In my Webster’s dictionary (which is almost 20 years old, so take it with a raised eyebrow), thaumaturgy means that it is the study of miracles or the effects of miracles. In most fiction novels, thaumaturgy refers to the type of magic when a practitioner or a caster designs, enchants and creates a network of magic, either upon a medium or to achieve a purpose.

For example; a wizard uses a network of small mirrors to channel sunlight into an enclosed circle, thus trapping a dark spirit. He may augment the sunlight circle using various crystals and gemstones. Maybe he uses sapphire for protection or ruby for fire or opal for absorption or rose-quartz for healing.

The making of the sunlight circle is a form of thaumaturgy. Other forms of thaumaturgy are like enchanting a ring, or dispelling a cursed figurine or building a safehouse or making a puzzle trap. Lost, centuries-old tombs, maintained their deadly magical traps using thaumaturgy.


Thaumaturgy, if you do it right, is a whole lot cooler any fireball. Gandalf got nothing on this Chicago wizard and his zombie dinosaur.

Thaumaturgy is like the Engineering Major in a Magic Degree. Just as bank alarms needed electricity to work, an object of thaumaturgy needs energy to maintain its enchanted state, otherwise it’ll fade and dry out.

That factor is probably one of the reasons why magic circles are so popular in thaumaturgy. In real-world physics, a sphere is the shape of which matter can pack the most mass in the smallest space. The wizards of the past ages probably knew about this and utilize the circle shape as a preliminary to the sphere structure (or maybe they have a drugged-induced fascination for bubbles).

A simple circle is enough protection against most imagined evils. Just because you’ve only imagined it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Nonsensical I may sound, but I’m trying to extrapolate on what a magic circle can be made use of.

When a child creates a section of the bedroom he shared with his brother, he is already creating a mental security sphere against whatever his brother might throw at him. If the child uses duct tape to the floor to denote a borderline, this mental security sphere is now visible to his brother.

In magic, that example is one of many what magic circles are mostly used for; a protective barrier. In many structures of thaumaturgy, a magic circle can also be used as a portal, a prison or even a re-channeling of energies. This example had been played around in many popular media, from Charmed series to Marvel comics.


People becomes awed at an illusionist’s magic but hardly anyone would notice that his real workings are in his magic circle, below his feet. Note that none of his ‘objects’ ever stray far from the barriers of the magic circle.

Just as the network of energies in a hurricane or a whirlpool revolves around a circle, every line in a magic circle explains the flow of an accorded energy. Steady pressure energy to create stability or kinetic energy represented by a spinning top or the falling sand in an hourglass. That sort of thing.

Essentially, magic is in the mind of the caster. What you believe and what you concentrate on will affect more than just your actions. Like Disney’s Dumbo and his so-called magic feather, it is the strength of the caster that evokes the magic circles and channels the thaumaturgic energies.

Here’s a magic circle I’ve made.


I made this and others like it years ago.

Here’s my set of magic circles, all lined on my wall. The thaumaturgic energy I pry from them is Creativity. By themselves, these circles don’t flash fireballs or trap midnight monsters (though it’ll be cool if they did). They’re catalyst for my imagination; whenever I feel like I need to do work but no idea how to start, I draw energy to them and the beautiful lines work their magic to me.


I got them all lined up on my bedroom wall, along with other pictures.

Fanciful I maybe, but hey! Of all the magic theories and magic stories I’ve feed myself throughout the years with, this magic is mine.