Behold, true terror.
Well, true terror for an O2Jam player. This is the note chart for one of the latest songs on the server, 'Gaussian Blur'. The level ratings on all three difficulty levels are 21, 33 and 50 respectively. At level 50, this makes it the hardest song in the whole game (hardest song ever?). The second hardest song is tied between 'Red Sign' and 'Identity', both at level 34. I suppose it gets the name when the flurry of notes seem blurry when your eyes glaze over, uh I mean Gauss over *gets eggs thrown at him for making bad joke* for looking at the screen too long, gritting your teeth while swearing to clear this song.
I'm not too sure how they come up with ratings though, would a level 10 song be twice as hard as a level 5 song? The highest level I'm able to pass so far is level 25, so that means I'm like halfway to pass Gaussian Blur at Hard difficulty. I remember the first time I played the game, I barely passed a level 8 song. That means I've grown three times as good since then.
It's been about five months since I started playing O2Jam... I always liked music games. Ever since I stepped on that Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) machine at Parkway Parade six years ago I never stopped. Hell, I was crazy over DDR for quite a while, that I played it almost every day. I think it was that time I managed to get my weight down a bit.
I gradually weaned out of DDR, but instead to find myself hooked on Percussion Freaks (otherwise known as 'Drum Mania'). The PF machine has five drum pads and a foot pedal for its controls. I could never get my foot to coordinate witht he rest of my hands, so I usually turned auto-pedal on unless I'm on for a challenge. My favorite were the long versions of songs. At that time, for one credit you could play either five short songs or three long ones. The long songs are almost twice the length of the short ones, so naturally I went for the long songs to get my money's worth. I was working in a newsstand near the arcade for a month, so everyday after work I went there to satisfy my inner drummer.
The arcade provided drumsticks tied to the machine, but usually I get too agitated and the wires that tie the metal sticks cut my fingers. I didn't notice that until the game is over and the handles were kinda bloody. Not to mention the sticks were long and made of metal, and my hands get very tired after the first song. So I managed to persuade my room mate to lend me his drumsticks (He plays the drums in the school Chinese orchestra). I later found out that the drumsticks used for Chinese drums are different from the 'normal' drumsticks (Chinese drumsticks are shorter and fatter). I wonder if anyone who saw me play back then say anything.
ParaParaParadise (PPP) was another music game that I liked but eventually found it to be too embarassing for me. The game's really easy actually, just wave your arms around and hit the arrows in the air. Making yourself look good while doing it, however, is a different set of knowledge on its own. Most girls that made it up there don't look good. Usually, they use this move which I call it the 'March of the Retards'. To do the MotR, all you need to do is kick your feet alternately to the beat. It looks really stupid yet I see so many people doing it subconsciously. I take great pains not to do it.
There were some rather unspectacular music games I tried in the mean time, notably Dance Maniax and EZ2Dancer. Both didn't really catch me. Both music games had this hand motion sensor thingy that requires you to move your hands over or below the sensors. Dance Maniax had two of them, while EZ2Dancer has that plus a three-step dance pad. THat makes it double the lameness. I still remember this song in EZ2D where I had to hold on to the top of the sensors and hit the bottom part of the sensors with my knees. I didn't. So I failed.
There was another machine near my new hostel, after I graduated from secondar school and moved on to junior college. It was a tambourine game from Sega (Those Japanese, what could be next?) It took me a whole load of courage pills to step up to play that game, even though it only costed a token for one credit. Other than hitting the tambourine on beat, you'd have to wave your arms in the direction on the screen, captured by motion sensors. I think that was the hardest part. I don't have pretty arms and my feet are hairy. I can't really imagine anyone lighter than me playing that game though, the tambourine was sure heavy. It was great workout.
Fast forward to 2004, when I'm home from Singapore. I was rather disappointed about the lack of quality arcades here. It seems that arcades here are meant for delinquent kids who skip school. Though I was playing DDR EXtreme JP on my newly-acquired PS2, there was just something lacking about it. Maybe it was the hugeass metal machines, or maybe it was the crowd. I guess it's the friends that aren't around me now.
One of our assignments for the Games Foundation subject required us to take a trip down to the arcades at Sungai Wang. Taiko Drum Master 4 caught my eye. It was great fun, though my finger joints suffered badly. I did give a shot at the Taiwanese drum game Percussion Master, though getting a near perfect score on the second hardest song in Hard mode in the first time tells me that the game wasn't very attractive to me.
In any case, I still have a long way to go for clearing Gaussian Blur hard mode. There were quite some songs that made me go whoa the times I played it, most notably max.(period) from DDR Extreme JP, one of the few 'flashing 10 foot' songs there; and The Least 100 Seconds from Percussion Freaks 7th Mix, a level 99 song which I made to the last 10 seconds. Heheh.... fight on?
Anyway, I should've stopped at my last paragraph. But I promised myself that I'd write the length of the notechart. That should be double the length of all the above paragraphs. That's a long way to go. I've never gotten the habit of writing long essays, though my ex-General Paper teacher recommends us to write at least two and a half pages for the A-level paper. I always stopped at one and three-quarters. So this time I'll see how long can I write. If you're reading this, Mr Perrin, this one is for you.
While we're on the topic of writing and General Paper essays, I kinda envy those people who effortlessly write four full pages of essay within one hour. It's like... where do they get those points? It would be easy if the question asks for the history of music games but nooooo they have to ask about the effects of deforestation and how to stop drug addiction among youths. Hell, give me a question like "Write a blog entry about the harmful effects of deforestation in African countries." and I'll spew a dossier. But noooo I have to write a one-paragraph introduction, followed by six paragraphs of points, elaborations, examples, rebuttals, and ended by another paragraph of conclusion which we're not allowed to start with "In conclusion, ...". We can't even use short forms like "can't" or "could've". Proper English my ass. Just let me use 'ass' and I'll write essays that'll make Tolkien weep in admiration.
I couldn't get those essay topics. What happened to good ol' story writing? I still remember writing a ghost story in Secondary 1. Oh, you're in long pants now, story writing is for kids. You're in for four years of 'expressing yourself in a mature manner'. Congratulations the Ministry of Education of Singapore, you just killed a Rowling over there.
It seems like I'm turning a regular, if not longwinded, blog entry into a rant. But hey, most people use their blogs for ranting. I try not to. I'm a terrible ranter. If you want to read rants, go to the Best Page in the Universe, where words like 'dipshit' are used more liberally. Swearing in blogs is bad. I had to write a report about my community service experience, I could've handed in my blog entry but I swore straight in the title. And I was too lazy to write another one. OK, so rant mode off.
If I had a choice between drawing or writing, seriously, I'd take writing. Sure, a picture speaks a thousand words. That's why I have to push myself so hard to write a notechart-length full of nonsense which I suppose nine out of ten readers would have stopped reading by now and proceeded to a random 13-year old Singaporean girl who can't spell 'you' correctly. But really, like our university newsletter's editor told me, once you get writing it's hard to stop. Guess I'm a gas guzzler.
I love fiction, both in writing and reading. Writing fantasy happens to coincide with my other geek hobby - Magic the Gathering. Every MtG player or another should have that dream of working at Wizards of the Coast R&D, the factory that cranks out 600-odd new cards every year for drooling geeks around the world.
My first attempt at writing a fantasy novel came about five years ago, a few months after I've been introduced to Magic by my room mate. The story was about an elf who has been going under self-inflicted exile from his homeland and how he tried to get back. Eventually antagonists in the form of corrupted deities intercepted him on his way back because he bore the holy four gems of blahdyblah that his childhood girlfriend gave to him before he left home. So after (supposedly) fifty-thousand words, forty chapters and a world saved later, he reaches home, marries his girlfriend and lives happily ever after.
That's all good, except I haven't thought of a reason for him to leave home in the first place. So I left it blank at first, until I reached a point a thousand words later when the protagonist explains his, well, reason of leaving. Now since he doesn't have a reason to leave his homeland yet, there shouldn't be a reason that he has to go back! Rewind to the moment before he leaves. Think think think. Why would a twelve year-old leave his homeland alone? Ah yes, he probably saw something he shouldn't see... like the town elder is actually a soul-sucking vampire. Aha! There. And before he leaves, he had the time to tell his girlfriend about his imminent departure, and she gives him a good luck charm that happenes to be what the antagonists were hunting for! Fucking brilliant!
So that's one problem solved. It didn't help to keep the story from collapsing though. There were other problems like how did his best friend at the new city, the only son of the city port's richest trader, would follow an outcast on his way back. "I love adventure!" OK... that somewhat made sense. A city boy would've craved of storming the wildlands of beasts and evil monsters. So somehow, protagonist and headstrong sidekick left the city when said sidekick's rich father happened to be away for business. At this point the story became more and more lame until I deleted all six thousand words of it.
My subsequent attempts at writing became shorter and shorter, mostly due to my lack of planning. I go "oh so and so guy has to go here" but when it comes to writing, it feels lame and undirected. But since I managed to cover so much ground with only one topic drift, maybe I should get back to writing stories.
It's a good thing that my friend K3yZ asked me to come up with a story for our animation project. The very rough theme would be about our university. As a fantasy fan, I'll randomly toss in pointy-eared people and stuff in there. Sounds fun no? I hope I don't get bashed for it. As for my ongoing personal project, 'Project Lesser Legends', I'll still be writing short stories for it. I stopped halfway in the one about the fallen glider Ikaru.
I should pull out before going too deep in my storytelling, but heck, I've already done five paragraphs about it. Now, at 2050 words, I should have about six more paragraphs to go. I'm trying my best, Mr Perrin. I guess I should go back to the main topic of this entry, as seen to the right - the topic of Gaussian Blur and O2Jam.
I received a free E-games demo disc back in January 2004, in it contained a two-week trial of O2Jam. Back when I was still fighting off the withdrawal symptoms of arcade deprivation, it was a great way to pass time. Unfortunately two weeks went by quickly and I have to pay in order to continue. Sine I've already gotten my PS2 by then, I forgot about the game until...
November 2004. I was part of the Malaysian Computer Games Festival committee, and was supervising the O2Jam preliminaries. Looking at their fingers run across the keyboard, I was like, whoa. But one of the finalists ticked me off, so I was saying to myself "Give me one month and I'll defeat her." So I immediately bought a month's worth of credit, and never looked back. Unfortunately, I haven't met said person online, so the challenge will have to wait.
My online O2Jam days might be numbered, as I've found an offline client that well, it's offline, so it's free. I really don't mind paying that RM10 every month, it's the least I can do to support the local games industry, a place which I'll be a part of in about two years. O2Jam is also one of the rare online games that hooked me. I never really got into MMORPGs like the overrated Ragnarok Online (I smell smoke...). MMORPGs cost too much time. I'll have to pay just to have an online existence, and pa some more just to make sure that my previous efforts don't get wasted? I'll take a game where it's fair competition for everyone, regardless of level. So far, I've trashed level 60+-ers, and got trashed back by level 20+-ers. That's what I call 'equal competition', unless the guy on the other side is using a bot or a hack. In that case I'll have to e-flay him with my virtual butter knife. In any case, E-games will have my support as long as they continue to keep the O2Jam servers online. If any O2Jam GMs are reading this, can I be part of your virtual vigilante group as well?
Anyway, it's already 11.30pm and my mum has gone to sleep. My dad won't be coming back tonight because he's bringing some students out of state for some interschool table tennis tournament. My sister just came back from yumming cha with my aunt and she has bought me back roti canai. Whoa, I actually wrote the length of this notechart. It was 10623 pixels in my computer, but I guess Photobucket resized it when I uploaded it there. That's not a bad thing anyway, else I'll have to spend another night over this. So that's all for now. Ciao.
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