she said: "yeah yeah yeahs in january anyone?"

its very hard to get me on my chair and start writing for this blog of mine. i get distracted easily and country story on facebook is more fun than typing about how i spent my weekends and all. and especially when i know that blog is no longer my favorite medium to express whatever i want.

my life is very abnormal these few weeks. i spent 3 weeks away from perlis again for the second time and yes, for another course in cyberjaya. i prefer to call it a camp because it feels like one. it was another effort from mdec under the flag of train-the-trainer program for game modding. my group choose to do mod on left 4 dead, a game where you have to shoot the zombies in order to escape and get rescued. lots of blood and it is damn violence but still its really good experience for me since i never used maya and hammer before and i often compare it with 3-matic eventhough its far from similar. i kept on using shortcut i familiar with 3-matic on maya but hell, i survived the 3 weeks. to recap, we learned how to use maya to make custom prop used in our mod, how to make a facemap for the texture used for the props, some art of level designing (though i'm not involve in that one) using hammer and suchs. and during the course, i even met casey nolan who was once also a modder for the first fps game i ever played, duke nukem 3D back when i was 15. yeah, i never realized i was once an fps gamer.

this whole game modding thing is totally useful for anyone who's interested to start in game development. the process is not as complex as developing your own game from the scratch. all you need is a creative way of thinking and visualizing. and for now, i lack of both so i guess i stick with programming for a while. why you need to be creative? because you dont want to create a mod that has already been created. and of course, originality is more appreciated. but yeah, its your mod so do whatever you like.

the process begin with you start thinking about the gameplay, the concept and scope of your mod. then, you can sketch a map of the location where your mod take place. for our group, we try alamanda. the map will continue changing as we develop them in hammer. hammer is tool used to interface with source game engine used for left 4 dead. its where you build the buildings, put in the custom props and custom textures you created, put in lighting and ambience effect and so on so on. when the whole thing is finished, you can play your map on left 4 dead. so hell yeah, i've complete all the campaign for the left 4 dead and 2 mods for these 3 weeks. dont ask did i actually go for a course or to play game because thats how its work. you cant mod if you dont dig into the game. for me, its like learning how to play music. you can choose to study the notes or you can choose to learn by ear. i prefer the later. i am already lazy to study the mechanics of the game and all theoritically but i can do it by observing. right?

okay, enough about game mod. my uncle who's been warded in icu for his heart, liver and kidney failure now has getting stable and he's been transferred to hospital selayang. thinking about him made feel grateful. Alhamdulillah, i will try to keep my health as good as possible. its really made me realize how small we are as human. not that i dont realize previously, but you see we tend to forget things and always drifted away in the so-call benda-benda keduniaan. and you, please take care your health. put away that burning ciggarettes. and i'm totally not kidding about this. i never been a supporter for no-smoking campaign but after what happen to my uncle, count me in. if you're smoker and doesn't want to stop, i think it would be better if you stop quickly than hurting yourself silently in fashionably slow and painfully way. ;(

dan kerul, tahniah dengan pencapaian tour kamu dan rakan-rakan kamu. Idup TTS!