Monthly Check-In
Thursday July 26, 2012
I think it took me about a week in New Zealand to realise I wasn't on holiday anymore and to feel back in routine and get over the jetlag. Only a week :( But here I am, just over a month later and America seems like such a long time ago.
Things have been busy since I got back. There was the release of Black 2 and White 2 in Japan, as well as Pokemon Conquest in English. I've been busy hacking bits of information from the ROM with a friend of mine who is originally from Canada but is on a student exchange in Singapore. The developers have chosen to lay the information out in strange ways. Normally things are aligned to byte boundaries, but in Conquest, you often find clumps of data that span any number of bits between 3 and 10, making it difficult to discern data. Progress has been slow but the more we become used to this stupid system, the more patterns we find in the data. We had some great breakthroughs using Tinke's graphics utilities to batch export the Warrior and Pokemon Gallery images - exciting stuff!
Work at Sidhe has been pretty full on as well. Upon arriving back, I'd learned that I had been reassigned to another project starting immediately, and due out at the end of October. We are still in the prototype phase, and finding many challenges with the development and design. Stay tuned for exciting updates! We'll be on both iOS and Android.
I was in Taupo at the start of the month for Richard and Tanya's wedding. The weather was brilliantly sunny, despite dropping to -1C overnight. The lake and snow-capped mountains in the distance make the area so scenic. The church ceremony was okay, the highlight being the newlyweds walking out to the tune of the Star Wars theme. The reception though was great - fresh oysters galore! It was great catching up with school friends that I hadn't seen in a while, even if some of them still owe me money for accommodation. It was a great weekend away from Wellington, and to cap it all off, I coincidentally bumped into my youth group friends from Auckland in Turangi's Burger King. Small country >_>
I caught up with one of my old flatmates who had moved to the UK four years and is back in New Zealand for a month or so. It was a socially draining but very enjoyable weekend. Also got to play a bit of 7 Wonders too! Good times.
I still haven't sorted out my photos from America. There's over 2500 of them (and not all of food) but hopefully when the dust from Conquest settles, I'll have some time to go through all of them and process them.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:54am on Thursday July 26, 2012 :: 0 comments :: 
Pokemon Black and White
Sunday September 19, 2010
The ROM of the Japanese versions of Pokemon Black and White finally leaked on Saturday morning - I was anticipating it leaking on Thursday but it appears that /vp/ had failed me.
So with that, I have been busy hacking away, trying to understand the various structures and data in the game. With Stephen managing the Psydex code and database side of things, and Mike trawling other sites for much needed contextual information, and of course the miscellaneous help from #psypoke, we've been able to get a lot of information up on the site in the past two days (of course, not everything has gone as smoothly as it should have, but oh well). Kudos to all who have helped!
Last Monday, I suddenly had the urge to eat moon cake, so I looked into various Asian supermarkets to see what was on offer. We happened to do a flat shop at Pak'n'Save Kilbirnie that night, so I checked out the Asian place next door. Unfortunately, they had sold out of the lotus paste with egg, but I decided that I would try a different kind of moon cake - one I had never tried before.
Pandan moon cake! So goooood. I love moon cake.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:16am on Sunday September 19, 2010 :: 0 comments ::
October
Monday October 5, 2009
It's finally October and the year has gone by so quickly. Winter is technically over, but today's blustery conditions tells me otherwise (Thanks Wellington). Even typing this now, I can hear the wind howling outside, bringing a chilly southerly to sweep the streets of the city.
Anyway, Hot Wheels™ Battle Force 5™ has supposedly been sent out the door, which means we're just sitting tight and waiting for feedback. We're still playtesting this - it's really good and I like the story mode, but it's easily clockable in a few hours. The theme music is cool though! Rugby League 3 on the other hand is still there, just waiting for publisher dramas to resolve. Meanwhile, most of the programmers have been pulled onto research and development projects.
On the Pokemon front, HGSS was released a few weeks ago and I've been busy hacking away. Apart from the standard Pokemon stats, attack information, level-up attacks, breeding moves, trainer information, etc, I've also managed to learn from Eevee at veekun how to parse sprite data, which is something completely new for me, and provided a good challenge over the weekend. There's still things I don't know but I'm learning!
Posted by Jeremy at 10:45am on Monday October 5, 2009 :: 0 comments ::
Websites
Saturday September 13, 2008
It's been a very busy week in terms of the two websites which I am responsible for.
Firstly, the Ignite Youths website was released to public eyes at the beginning of the week - a result of some awesome collaboration between myself and Reuben.
Secondly, Pokemon Platinum was leaked three days early, much to my surprise, so I moved into emergency mode and started hacking for information as soon as I could. That involved ringing the flat during work hours and getting Andrew to email me some of my programs. ¬.¬
In any case, Psypoke's got some great information for the time we've spent on it. I've been browsing some other websites and they're very far ahead in the game, but I know WPM from PokeBeach spent 28 hours continuously playing the game. I wouldn't be surprised if SPP had some slave doing the same for him.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:56pm on Saturday September 13, 2008 :: 2 comments ::
Ungh.
Sunday January 6, 2008
Yesterday, we went out for dinner and I had prawn balls :3 And it was awesome.
Anyway, after church today, we went to Wendy's for a quick bite, and with nothing better to do, me, Sam, Matt and Weng Hao went to play pool at Breakers. Wow, it was so incredibly hax. The final game, I managed to do that trippy "make the white ball hit the other ball twice for the win" and I also did the "random ricochet off everything for the win".
After that, Ted texted us saying he was finally back home in Auckland, so let's go out for dinner! And what better place to go to than the Korean place we went to three nights ago! Hooray. Nah it was a good meal. We ate and then stood outside for ages just talking. My legs were really sore.
Yeah then after that I was heading to Momo's with Matt and Weng Hao, when Cinta texted me saying I had a speeding fine. Ugh. What a horrible way to end the day. Rargahrgarghgrhgrhh. $80 too. That's like, 12 milk teas.
And petrol is bloody $1.759 per litre. Omg.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:28am on Sunday January 6, 2008 :: 0 comments ::
Pool
Sunday December 30, 2007
Sam has been bugging us to play pool, so, finally, after music practice yesterday, I took him to Breakers on Lincoln Road and we had three games. He was winning the whole way through for all three games, but when it came to crunch time, he just couldn't sink the black ball and I ended up sinking all mine and the black ball for the win. He managed to win the last game though...haha..yes..I mean I let him win ¬.¬ In case you are interested, there were several hax shots, including one where a cue ball hit the white ball twice and went into a pocket \o/
Anyway, there were like 7 youth at church today. Brendon disappeared soon after the service, and Philly had to go somewhere too, so the remainder of us went to Subway (Eat Fresh) for lunch. Following that...we went to play pool! :d The first game lasted a whole three shots as Weng Hao pocketed the black ball accidentally (Me: "Oh you're bound to hit something in if you hit it in that direction!" WH: "Okay!" *hit* *black ball goes in*). The second game was going well until I pocketed the black ball ¬.¬ (FAIL) By that time some other dudes wanted to play, so we left and went home.
Wow it's New Year's Eve tomorrow. 2007 has gone by pretty quickly.
Posted by Jeremy at 7:48am on Sunday December 30, 2007 :: 0 comments ::
Post Christmas Activities
Thursday December 27, 2007
The period between Christmas and New Years always seems so blah. It's like something's meant to be happening, but nothing does. ¯\(º_o)/¯
Anyway, we had an awesome feed on Christmas day. We had cheese platters (with some pickled onions, yum!), chicken nibbles, roast pork, glazed ham, potato salad, hot salad, green salad...and then for dessert we had these custard things in pastry cup...things. That were really really nice, so it's all good. And we also had a 5-layer rainbow jelly that took 5 days to make.
Since Christmas, I've been trying to get my sleeping habits back to normal after waking up at 4am to go to the airport. I think I'm back on track... kinda. Oh, and Sam arrived safely, so that's good too. \o/
I've been playing a lot of DS. Namely Pokemon...I've been breeding Larvitar and I finally got a good one ¬.¬ Anyway, that's half of my team, I need to get an Abra, Machop and Staryu now. Sigh. I wish the game makers would stop being so freaking stupid over IV Breeding and just make it some kind of max(father, mother, random) function. I also played Mario Kart DS over Wifi with PT, and that was lame, because he got a Blue Shell at the last course and pipped me to win the race. But all in all, we tied because I won the first two and he won the last two, so I'm not too fussed, and I fail at MKDS anyway so it doesn't bother me.
Lastly, I have also been hacking Pokemon ROMs. Yes h4xx0r lolz. I've been looking at the trainers' Pokemon. So far I've figured out level, dex number, item held and moveset. There's another number that I'm not too sure about...Weng Hao hypothesised it to be some kind of AI difficulty, and it makes sense, but I don't know of any way to test it.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:34am on Thursday December 27, 2007 :: 1 comment ::