Vacation... WHOO!

After a long six day, non-stop (almost) run at work I finally get a well-deserved two day weekend :-). And while I'm on the subject of work I should probably say it look like I'm not going to be cashier anymore. Charles (daytime manager) created a new job and apparently I was the first person suggested to fill it. So if this all works out I'll be keeping track of/putting away groceries overstock in the wee hours of the morning (4-10am). Despite the hours I'm really looking forward to this and I hope all goes well.

My emulator is coming right along. Today I got some basic PPU stuff in and now I can get a monochrome picture. There are apparently some bugs in the CPU core yet, but overall things are already running much better than my other emulator. I'll post some pictures once I get color support in.

It seems there's something else I was going to post about, but I've since forgotten. So, for now I'll just fart in your general direction. :-D

Such stupid, stupid people

I'm going to break from the formula today and talk about an issue that's been driving me insane lately. Here goes: Zelda: Twilight Princess will not be a Revolution game for crying out loud! Why? Here we go:

1) Firstly, people have been preordering this thing (the game) since before the Revolution was anything more than a name. That'd be a lot of ticked people when it came down to the wire and suddenly the game is for Rev. A lot of fivers thrown out the window for those who don't want to spend the extra couple hundred.

2) A quote from series creator Shigeru Miyamoto states that this will be the "last Zelda game as you've known it". Obviously he was talking about how the new controller is going to affect future games. The switch over to Rev and a new control scheme would fly in the face of that comment which also leads us to...

3) They have a working demo, for crying in poo! A GameCube one. For use with a standard controller. Which they've been parading around the States, too :-P.

4) Nintendo keeps explicitly denying that the game will be on the Rev or that it'll even have special Rev-unlockable features. Now Nintendo doesn't usually lie. They might say odd, mysterious things or say nothing at all, but when they talk it's usually the truth. Here's the Reggie-Man himself saying so.

5) Finally, it'll work on the Rev because of the GC backwards compatibility. So people could pick up both, or those who didn't want/couldn't get a Rev would still be satisfied. It's not like sales would be hurt in any way (quite the opposite in fact).

So there you have it. Quit being stupid, okay? :-)

In for the long haul

After having nearly five days off within eight days, I'm in for a six day, non-stop work-athon. I hope I survive. Luckily I'm not working past midnight on any of those days and I get a two day weekend at the end. Tomorrow is also payday, so that's another perk.

In other news, I've decided to scrap my NES emulator... and move it to C++ ;-). After having the usual battles I have when developing with C++ things seem to be on track. I have a bunch of opcodes implemented (hopefully I can finish the entire set by tomorrow evening). We'll see where I am in reality :-P.

Well, I suppose that's all for now. Ta ta :-).

Sigh...

Not much to say about any serious aspect of my life. I guess I'll run the usual update: I bowled well on Thursday, my job as a cashier at Wal-Mart is going about usual, and I got yesterday off. Okay, now to the juicy stuff (mwa ha ha)!

Today I completely rewrote my CPU core from scratch implementing a better design that'll be easier for bug killing. I actally completed the entire core over the course of the day (starting about 2ish). I thought this was one of those projects that I'd give up on, but it's so interesting it's got all my attention. I have not been on my computer programming like that in a long time (dare I say never). I spent probably a good two hours digging through pages of assembly code (comparing my output to that of another edmulator's) to hunt down these idiot bugs :-P. PPU support is still sketchy, and there are still bugs to be worked out in the CPU, but I do have some juicy treats:

This is the program I'm using to hunt down bugs in my CPU (anything that doesn't say "OK" is bad), but I'll give you something recognizable:


A few palette errors, but otherwise it's looking nice.

I shall keep you updated if anything changes. Peace out, 'mon :-D

The Storm has Arrived

Now I was going to title this "Calm Before the Storm", but the storm has already arrived. As you all know last night was Tuesday, aka Bowling Night and tomorrow is the Bowl for Kids tournament. Well, last night I had my best night of bowling ever with two games over 200, the best being 224. My series was 571 (goog enough for me to get a patch) and that brings my running average up to 166. So to those of you who are pledging per pin your pocket books may be getting pretty thin soon :-D.

In emulator news, I have some screen drawing in (though it's horrible). I'm still putting up with annoying PPU problems, but overall it's not going so bad. I'll keep you informed.

On the Vader's Day front, I did get another scene shot today. I may or may not publish this as a new teaser. More on that as things develop. And I think that aboout wraps up this blog post. Peace out, mon!

Teaser Trailer... WHOO!

Remember that movie I said I was shooting? Well, here's the teaser for it (note: you'll need Windows Media Player). Hooray! Tomorrow I will start shooting the rest of it and hopefully I can begin editing on Wednesday. This is proof that even though I now spend 7+ hours a day in the mines of Wal-Mart, I still have too much time on my hands :-D

I'm still hard at work on my emulator. SMB runs well enough, but all sorts of funny stuff is happening when i try to bring the PPU into the picture (ha, pun). Hopefully I'll have that all worked out by the end of the week. Stay tuned :-)

Hackfilms Ltd. presents...

... I ain't gonna tell you! HA HA HA! It is Star Wars related, but that's all I'm saying. I actually filmed the opening sequence today and it turned out quite sweet indeed (hold on, gotta watch it again... oh, yeah. It's great!). Hopefully on my days off next week (Tuesday and Wednesday) I'll be able to finish filming. More on that as things develop.

I did go bowling on Thursday and had a better than average night (even though my ball got chewed up. Arg :-P). However, I didn't do well enough to bring my average up, but it only came down a pin making it 161. Only one more night of bowling before the big event :-).

And, finally, I'm still pumping a bunch of time into my NES emulator. I haven't worked on a project this much since TAttack last year. Things are going quite sweet. I have anough opcodes to run a couple of basic color bar demos (no graphics yet) and even Super Mario Bros. runs (title screen). Currently I'm working on getting the PPU (picture processing unit) portion of code setup so I can see the fruits of my labors. But from what I can tell most everything runs fine. Hopefully by the end of next week I'll be posting screenshots :-).

Well, a lot going on obviously. Keep coming back (or die!) :-)

Bowling update

Well, tonight's bowling much mirrored last weeks (though I feel fine). My first game beat my old record of 207 by a pin, my second game was 159 and my last, 116. This brings my average down to 162. I'm going to practice at Red Apple this Thursday (payday and my other day off) and I'll be adding that to my running total.

I've been working on my NES emulator like nuts lately. I'm up to around 40/158 opcodes. It's slow going and I have no idea if anythings works as of yet, but it still feels quite cool.

Well, that's about all I have to say for now. Stay in school, always wear clean underwear and have a good night :-)

The sickness...

My once a year sickness has come and gone (almost). It started late Monday, got worse Tuesday and when I woke up about 3pm yesterday it was on the outs. Sadly, I feeling so crummy yesterday morning I actually had to call in sick (hope that doesn't hurt my performance review...).

But anyways, you all are probably wondering how I did Tuesday being sick and all. To sum it up: good, bad and ugly (in that order). The "bad" and ugly games were 148 and 106 respectively. The good, however, was phenomenal: 205! You can tell how my health diminished as the evening wore on :-P. Anyways, that brings my running average down to 163 and with B4KS in a couple weeks I'll have to work harder (not being sick'll help).

Yesterday, for lack of anything better to do, I started working on my NES emulator again. I've currently got about 11 opcodes written, so I'm about %5 done in that respect.

Well, it's ten after four. Luckily I don't have to go into work until tomorrow evening so I can sleep in a little yet. With any luck the whole sickness will be gone tomorrow morn. See ya :-)