Lantis Matsuri 2015 in Singapore!

I rarely type long posts but god Lantis Feastival was INCREDIBLE. Every singer was godlike, and seeing the audience so happy just makes me feel happy too. It's great that despite racial and cultural differences, we can all enjoy the same anisongs together!
Man where do I start. Choucho started off immediately with her soothing voice in her "Girls and Panzer" OP "DreamRiser". From there, everything just got better, with all the artists performing fantastic throughout! Man, there's so much to describe overall, so I'll just highlight what's personally incredible for me.

The very first thing that threw me off was Choucho, sang "Snow Halation". That was easily the first high point not just for me but the entire audience! Man all the Love Live fans got a treat ^^

The second high point to me was Azusa Tadokoro, an artist I'm not really familiar with (though I know where she's from), singing "Lost My Music"!! I threw me totally off guard! The last thing I expected was a Haruhiism song being played.

The subsequent artists did a great job. There was much "Kuroko no Basket" and "Free!" from OldCodex, Kensho Ono and Kenichi Suzumura. Thanks. Now not only I sang those songs in KTV, I sang them in live performance. ^^;;

Then Megumi Ogata just decided to make all of us feel old with "Cruel Angel Thesis" and "Densetsu Moonlight"! And she suddenly decided to have some sister-brother relationship with Azusa www.

But of course the best part of me is MINORIN! She's in Singapore for the first time, yay~! I shouted and screamed cues for the people at the back; the front VIP guys, thanksfully, got it all covered. The most incredible moment was when she started singing "Yuki, Muon, Madobe Nite". NEVER in my LIFE would I expect to hear her sing that live. It felt like the only way to listen to that is to travel 10 years back in time before she even started much of her singing career. That might...just be as special to me as listening to her "Shijin no Tabi" back in her birthday concert last year. すごく感動しました；； I finally get to hear Nagato Yuki's voice live!

And of course, as expected, she sang Paradise Lost and TERMINATED. 

Her performance was the 2nd last, and next was JAM Project. Honestly, I felt that I have spent most of my energy and voice on Minorin's part. There I was hoping that they do not sing a high opening (well, not-so-high at least) so that I have a chance to recover. 

But no...

Right off the bat, they start with GONG, the crazy high song comparable to SKILL that they owe us 5 years ago in AFAX! Drained and 'dying' after the song, pleading for the "YUNKER" drink that they were promoting during the intermission, Jam Project, without a frigging break, broke into the "CardFight! Vanguard" opening. And not long after, they decided to go into their individual songs! Man I felt so old when I ran out of breath singing Gaogaigar's "Yuusha no Tanjou". I really never thought Masaki Endou would relief my memories from AFAX ^^

And of course they closed with SKILL, which seemed to dare me to push my body past its limits. By the end of everything, I went home dizzy and tired as if I just went through 3 hours of basketball practice and slumped right to bed!

It was fantastic and overall a great concert for me! I think everyone else who attended enjoyed it too!

Death of Maxis, but of course, right?

Wow, last month was madness. Tons of crap happened. My mother's attempt at matchmaking, Chinese New Year, and a loooong mad rush to meet deadline at work. I was drained and on a verge of burnout the last couple of days. Thankfully, I think I'm better now.

I guess there's not much I can do about it but complain. Poor decision making, disrespecting pipelines, leading to risk quality assurance and if something goes wrong, I will be served on the palate. On top of all that, the risk vs reward is highly unfavorable. It was rather stressful and I will obviously try my best for the sake of my sanity to avoid such a terrible situation ever again. 

Arg.

The month just zoomed past just like that. I mean, I like working on new stuff and gaining new knowledge, but to code with a leap of faith is just irrational and irresponsible.

And this morning I woke up to this: 

http://kotaku.com/ea-shuts-down-simcity-developer-maxis-1689454903

Of course, it is impossible that the Maxis then is the same Maxis now. This just goes to show how fragile game industry studios have become, as if they wasn't fragile to begin with. In the end, your successful projects only allow your studio to sustain. 2 major flops and your studio is on a verge of death. Exceptional cases occur though, like Blizzard, but that's another story, much like how our conventional physics don't work for quantum physics.

You really know you are getting old when you see game studios that you used to love disappear, and how old game studios that are alive today are struggling to stay alive. Bullfrog is dead. Interplay is dead. Codemasters is dead. Westwood is dead. THQ is dead. Troika is dead. Paragon is dead. There is literally only 2 western studios which are still alive and I am still hoping for good games from them: Obsidian Studios (back then Black Isle Studios) and Firaxis games. Man, if Pillars of Eternity dies, Obsidian would be in an extremely bad shape.

And then there are those that completely lose you as a fan because of their change of direction. For me, that's where Bioware stands. I just cannot enjoy their current gen games as much as their older ones. Maybe because they set my standards too high with Baldur's Gate 2; everything they made post Neverwinter just felt cheap, and I'm saying this even after I understand and worked in a game industry myself.

But I'm just a rambling old man, possibly one that cannot move forward with the change in demographics. It has come to the point where I can barely afford time to play the kind of games I like, because there is another game I like better. Technology is evolving so much faster than we can evolve. More scripts are being ran, more excel sheets are being edited, so much code is being compiled and written, so much more art is being drawn. In the end, we are only human, working with 1 keyboard and 1 mouse to input our efforts.

Cheers to what the future holds!

A few things I have learnt (Feb 2015 version)

In just about 4 months, it will officially be my 2nd year working in the games industry. I have been meaning to write about what I have learnt in my 1st year but since I was not doing any real development, I withheld such a post. Now that I was given a chance to handle bigger problems, I would like to think that it is nice to write something up here. So far I have had a hand in porting a game to a platform, created features for an existing game, had a hand in creating an app from ground up, among others tasks like maintaining servers.

There's a few things I have learnt and hopefully other developers will read this to get a rough gauge of what they can expect in a big game company, especially if you are working on maintaining social games. I'm going to leave the very technical stuff aside, like attempting to do unit testing or write safe code. These are more of things you do not really learn in school.

So here are 3 that I can think off the top of my head..

1) Follow existing conventions as much as possible.

This applies to everything. Code, excel documents, documentation, SQL scripts, etc. Usually, there isn't much of a written document on conventions; it is up to you to read what was done, understand why it was done this way, and follow. If there is a flaw or if you feel some way of doing things should be changed, complete your task first and bring it up to higher ups. ALWAYS discuss with the affected people if you are making changes, even if you are the lead. 

When the deadline is tight, there will not be time to do a full code review, so in a sense, everyone is responsible for their code. There WILL be legacy stuff that do not follow the conventions. These are basically stuff that went unchecked for whatever reason. Do not follow them, cut your future junior programmers some slack. When future programmers pick up your code and they start going 'is there a reason why this guy isn't follow convention?', it's going to eat up their time, and time is money here.

2) Readable code vs Optimized code

It is ultimately in the heart of every aspiring programmer to push for as much optimization as possible. But the amount of time it could take to develop it, plus the pain it might cost the next programmer to take over your code can be a high price to pay. General rule of thumb is, if the code has an acceptable speed, there isn't a need to optimize it. 

I cannot stress how important readable code is.  If you have to eat slightly more CPU or RAM just to make your code look nicer, I'd say go for it 100%. I have seen some optimized code that was a pain in the neck to decipher and could completely be avoided at no cost whatsoever. For example, I give you 4 variables to store your values in the database, but somehow you want to make use of only 1 variable to store 3 variables by using bit shifting/masking. Sure it looks damn cool if you are creating something for a school project, but the next programmer is going to take like 30 mins to figure out what you are doing AND why are you even doing it like that. 

The most frustrating conclusion any programmer want to make is "because the previous programmer wants to be cool shit". That's not cool at all.

Another good rule of thumb my colleague pointed out to me is to be able to write code such that it is understandable without comments. Comment ONLY when you are doing weird shit. Also, comment only WHY, not WHAT or HOW. WHAT or HOW should be inferred from your code. If you need to explain WHAT or HOW, time to refactor.  

3) Power must be controlled

Programmers are super powerful. I mean, they are the ones who knows (supposedly) the inner workings of every part of the project. It will come to the point where a workaholic programmer, for the sake of saving time, wants to do everything by himself so that his task is completed faster.  Really, to us programmers, adding an extra text to a properties folder is extremely trivial. Clicking on buttons to, say, generate assets, is also trivial.  

But when communication is difficult, like say your teammates don't work next to you, this can get out of hand. Even when we work next to each other, we had our own share of such problems. Committing text files is fine and all thanks to merging tools, but what about more complicated things like images, or even folder structures? What if the folder you are working on disappeared, or suddenly had files attempting to override your files because they have same name? It gets messy. At the worst scenario, you would have to delete your repository (because you cannot figure out the problem or because it is FUBAR) and re-setup your workspace, taking tons of time because of one innocent commit.

For such unstable pipelines, I think it is inevitable but to assign a go-to personnel in charge of it until a clean solution presents itself. Like no matter how inefficient it sounds, stability of the project is more important. You would rather 1 guy screw up, than a possibly 10 other guys screw up.

Happy New Year 2015!

It's *that* time of the year again!

Time really flies when you are working. This year is the first year I spent all year as a working adult and before I knew it, 2014 has gone. What has happened over the year? It's hard to recollect either because too many things happened, or nothing particularly interesting happened. Time flies so fast it gets harder to tell what happened when.

A short summary of things that happened include my start of playing FF14, going to Japan to attend Minorin's concert and GGXrd's release are the 3 main awesome things that happened. Work this year has been pretty awesome too! Slowly getting where I want to be. It's funny how dreams and ambitions change over time, huh. Like how you realize you are extremely comfortable doing this one set of things and the realization of how uncomfortable you will be if you are in a position of your dreams. 

There's many things I want to do, and want to be able to do since last year, and the year before, and the year before that. In the end though, I just want to be able to do 3 things: make games, play games, go Japan.  I guess everything else is secondary and nice to have. Like how I really want to play more piano pieces, or make more games in my free time, maybe play more basketball, and sleep more! But free time doesn't come by easily as it used to, neither do I want to stop working. I guess it's more like I want more hours in a day? It's just impossible to have everything so I'm content with what I have.

Habits change too. I stopped drinking coffee regularly and have been looking into drinking different flavors of tea. I'm back to drinking coke for sugar rush if I need it. Kind of reminds myself of those days back in school! And it's awesome now that I'm working, I get to play games all day without anyone nagging on me ^_^. 

But even after working for a year, my body still isn't used to it. I'm constantly tired due to lack of sleep, mostly because I love playing games late into the night, so it's partially my fault for that. However, I'm not going to stop just because of that. I guess I have to find a better way to get some shut-eye or be more disciplined to sleep earlier. Hmm, I think that's a pretty good New Year's Resolution! 

My exhaustion has some side effects I think. I no longer have as much energy to care about my surroundings. Which is good, I think. It's about time I allow myself to be selfish, and care not about things that I cannot do anything about. Like when I upset someone accidentally over a minor issue, I would just get all upset too for like a week wondering how I can resolve it, creating weird ass delusions and plans, only to make a bigger sacrifice on my part to make another happy. Now I think, hey it's a minor issue, I'm really sorry, please get over it, hope you understand, the end. As much as I like watching drama, I hate it just as much. Drama is such a complete waste of energy; a hemorrhage. Such energy is better spent elsewhere! Oh well, let's end this rant. ^^

It's really been a good year overall. Things are most certainly slowly stabilizing and the rides are getting smoother and more enjoyable! ^^

AFA2014 aftermaths!

It's that time of the year again!! Foo~!

AFA2014 has been pretty amazing for me. It seems that every year it just gets better and better! Generally, it is much more spacious, though I felt that there is a lot of unused space. Like they could have made the indie section more spacious. 

Met a couple of my FFXIV FC mates cosplaying SCH and WHM!! I didn't get to see their booth in the end due to time constraints on my part though, but still! Very very cool to see FFXIV in AFA! Play with us yo!

But of course, the kicker for me is the "I Love Anisong" concert. This was the first time I went for all 3 days VIP, due to the crazy line up. I mean, even if I don't listen to some of their songs, it is awesome to see them up close!

Friday started off well for me with Hocchan singing 3 meters away from me. It's funny cause it has been a teenage hope to see her in person since Love Hina days. And there she was, more than 12 years later, in front of me! Also, I think some people do not get her performance because her style is rather unique in the sense that she likes to setup up plays in her performance...like musicals. She isn't really the rock/pop kind of singer. If anyone seen her lives they would've known though.

Kitamura Eri was a blast for some, I can guess. There's a lot of Kitamura Eri fans, specially since she's kind of Visual Kei. I personally don't follow her songs as much as her career as a seiyuu, in which she is portrayed quite differently back then. Her performance is pretty good though! She did sing a couple of song I wanted her to sing (well, she was obviously going to sing them but STILL)..

To many, I think, that AFA2014 did not start until the final performance by angela. angela was amazingly....high that night? Atsuko cut her hair short and was rocking it out on stage while Katsu was doing flips with his guitar. Kicking off with "僕じゃない" made me tilt on so many levels, and ending it with their famous "Shangri-la" just made me look forward to the next day.

Saturday's kicked off amazingly with LiSA. LiSA is just so good live. I probably said this before because I'll say it again. If you are a LiSA fan and did not watch her live before, you as missing out a hell lot. She is absolutely charming, converting people like me who has never heard of her into a fan in 1 hour a couple of years back when she first came for Angel Beats. Of course, she sang "Rising Hope". For the record, I didn't like the song because it was in SAO because I was never a SAO fan to begin with. It's a pretty good song overall in my opinion.

Then im@s took the stage. What really surprised me was that the P's managed to get together and send each other the songs' call cards. The result was something that really felt like Japanese concerts. It's not exactly something I can describe but...basically it wasn't just mindless waving of lightsticks and random cheering. Everything was coherent; the waving of lightsticks, the shouts and cheers...it is a special experience and I wasn't ready to feel it again so soon after my minorin concert in Japan. And yay! I finally get to listen to Mingosu live with one of my favorite Idolmaster songs: 眠り姫！ Wow when the lights turned ghostly blue and the bells started ringing before the song, I had goosebumps ^_^

Dizzy with surprise, next up was yanaginagi. I kinda know of her because of supercell, and I know she has a pretty big fanbase. She doesn't disappoint, even though I don't know many of her songs. She has a rather soothing voice that is difficult to hate.

Then fripSide. After missing her 2 years ago, I am sure as hell not missing her this year. fripSide was fantastic this year, especially with Japanese fans cuing for the cheers. Nanjo-san was super cute when she was talking about durians! Satoshi-sensei was raging over losing money as Marina Bay Sands' casino lol! fripSide was an hour long high for me. EVERY song I know from her finally hear live! The best part was ending with "sister's noise"! Super drained after their performance..

Finally was Sunday. I took my JLPT3 in the afternoon and rushed down in the evening (god bless my Listening section T_T).

Sunday. Was. Epic. It's all FLOW's fault. I mean, why the hell would you want to put FLOW at the start of the performance?! It's like putting JAM Project. Nevertheless, FLOW came on stage first and literally sang every song you would know from them. Cha-la-Head-Cha-la, DAYS, COLORS, GO!...etc. If the concert ended there, I would have gladly gone home for I was satisfied and exhausted by the end of it.

But no, they were just the first of the five. Next up was GARNiDELiA and their upbeat songs. MARiA is a fantastic performance, showing that she can really dance and sing really well.  It's evident that she has been doing this for a long time. Because I'm a Kill La Kill fan, I was looking forward to the last song she sang: 'ambiguous'. In a sense, it feels like a great way to end her performance and start Eir Aoi, who was up next.

Now, the last time Eir Aoi performed last year, she almost killed my ears thanks to the extra speakers and thanks to the said extra speakers being right on top of me. This year, there are no extra speakers and holy crap she is loud and powerful. Easily the most powerful and clearest singer in the entire line up. Her 'high' notes gave me chills every time. I already felt that listening to her on digital was awesome, but she somehow takes it to another level on her live...maybe I should travel to her solos? Hmm....

Shortly after, ROOT5 made their way to the stage. Okay here I'm going to rant. Even if you are not a ROOT5 fan like me, if you are sitting on the VIP sit, you should not sit down and play games/surf facebook dammit! Just enjoy the music at the very least and show the singers some respect! They don't travel all the way to see a bunch of people sit down during their performance. At least show some support. They even graced us with 「千本桜」 (in which everyone stood up and cheered...tsk)！

Finally the last performance was quite fittingly by May'n. She has been here every damn year since 'I Love Anisong' stage was nothing but a platform at some random side of the convention hall. It's amazing how far AFA has gone. May'n closed the event with a startling performance as usual, singing songs that she sang since the first AFA! It was truly...nostalgic and magical at the same time. *sigh*

It was a super tiring yet energizing weekend. I already can't wait for the next AFA!!

日本から帰りました！

Well, I'm back from Japan. What can I say? I have done all I could over there and it has been a blast! This trip could not have been more perfect.

During my trip, I:

• Met up with colleagues and friends training over there.
• Obtained a bunch of goodies I order from a good friend staying there! (Hello Kitty Rurounin Kenshin!)
• Went to Artnia!
• Went to Capcom Bar
• Went to FF14 Bar
• Met up with cousin for a few drinks
• Card hunting
• Loitered Akiba for 4-5 days
• 2nd hand game hunting
• Ate takoyaki!
• Completed my japanese homework
• Finally got to Code 8 in Freedom Wars
• Ate at Musashiya,  probably the best ramen I ever ate.
• Went for Minorin's birthday concert!!!
• Missed a flight

Probably the best holiday I ever had in my life. It is difficult to write a verbal vomit of rainbows over each an every thing that happened there because I'm a little busy now...maybe I'll do so in the future when I'm recounting?  *shrug*

I wonder if my future holidays can top this one? Only time will tell I guess. And here I am already preparing for the next trip! ^_^

そうして日本語です（笑）。出発のときは日本語なら、帰宅も日本語はずでしょう！

やあ。今度の旅行は楽しすぎ！最初は持ってきた現金をどう使うか心配したけど、結局遠慮しないで使いました。なぜなら、円がどんどん弱くなっていますから。来年にもっと弱くなるかな？シンガポール人として、それはいいことですね。

秋葉原には何回行っても飽きられなさそうです。実は、混雑の場所は好きじゃないですが、秋葉原に気に入る物がたくさんあったので、構わないで買い物しました。僕にとって、そんな歩くエネルギーがあった場所は確かに秋葉原だけです！

来年お楽しみ！

みのりんの誕生日と１０周年コンサート

たっだ今、みのりんの誕生日と１０周年コンサートが終わりました。

どんな備えても、みのりんをやっともう一回見たら、ほとんど泣いてしまいました。俺は泣きにくい人から、そこまで感じさせられることできれば、すごいことです。

ですから、このコンサートは確かに俺の大好きなコンサート中の一番最高になりました。好きな曲をいっぱい歌えて、みのりんをびっくりさせて、とても楽しみました！

そのより、第二のアンコールに一番好きな曲を歌いました！

ものすっごく嬉しくなりましたわ！

嬉しいな。。。

そのコンサートを経験したら、なんかやる気が盛ってもらいました。来年の仕事をできる気がします。

本当にみのりんを応援するのはいつの間にかもう１０年に過ごしました。初めて応援するとき、多分人気アニメのハルヒからですね。それで長門有気の役でみのりんのファンになりました。それから、みのりんの情報をよくついたけど、学生から、お金持たないから、日本に旅行できませんでした。そして、軍に入ったの２年にも過ごしました。そして、高校生の３年くらい。

８年ぐらいのあと、一生懸命勉強したの結果おかけで、就業しました。それで、給料で去年がようやくみのりんを合いました。それはいつもみのりんを見たら、感動するの理由です。

今回の１０周年の祝いなんかも、俺が１０年間のファンであるの祝いです。

とても幸せです！

ですから、みのりんはそんなに有名になった！