Work Pressure

My mood the past few days, basically since last weekend, has been quite stable. I'm not sure I'd describe it as an emotional numbness or more as a refocusing on things in life which are positive and actually important. As it turns out, an attitude of 'don't think, don't care' when it comes to things and people which don't seem to be relevant in helping one's life along is really a good thing. It's like the green way of living, in terms of preserving energy :)

In some ways it's akin to the Buddhist way of living; more a focus on the inside than the outside, for only from within oneself can there arise understanding and enlightenment. While I do not subscribe to the modern form(s) of Buddhism, I do adhere to and find myself in many of Buddha's original teachings and philosophies, if only because they're firmly rooted in logic and there's no dogma to accept first.

These past days I have managed to complete the third player avatar for TileWars, a very modern looking fox model. I tried some different approaches in Photoshop CS5 this time while creating the diffuse map, most significant of all directly editing the diffuse maps instead of painting on the model. This works out much better when it comes to to just putting a line somewhere on a basic model like these, or for precision placement of eyes and other touchy features when there's no real reference for them on the model.

I do feel that my life would be even easier if I were to overlay the unwrapped UVW map on the diffuse map in CS5. Not saying that this is hard or impossible, just that I'm lazy and will probably attempt this next time :) What it comes down to in the end, is that there isn't really one golden standard of painting a 3D model, whichever application you use for it. Drawing on the UVW map is easy for some models, drawing on a 2D layer on top of a 3D model is easier for some features, while sometimes it's just so much easier to edit the diffuse map directly and preview your changes in the 3D view. Use whatever works best, I guess. Don't be afraid to experiment and above all try to have fun instead of becoming frustrated :P

TileWars is coming along rapidly now. After Trevor finished the menu last week he has since made a lot of progress on the game code. We actually got a semi-working level now, just with a few glitches still, and no textures :) Our TODO list includes finishing the level system, putting in the textured models and final tiles, integrating the AI and network code and maybe adding a few more avatars and tidbits. Then for the finishing touch there's the background music (BGM) and sound effects (SFX). It sounds so easy :)

I got a lot more on my plate this week, however. For my cousin's site I have to try and finish Nyanko CMS and use it to power her site, all before the end of this week. Nyanko CMS is the content management system I have been working on in some iteration for a few years now. Early this year I did a rewrite on its code but left it to gather dust when debugging was giving me troubles and personal issues got in the way of my focus. I now have fixed these bugs I got stuck on before and am working my way through the source to finish what wasn't yet. I hope to finish most of the work today.

In other news, this morning I went to my GP to obtain a blood test form. Tests include testosterone, oestradiol and PSA. The first two are to ensure these hormones are still at their proper levels. The latter is to get some more solid data on whether my prostate is truly active, as it's a protein only secreted by a prostate, the level of which depends on its functional state. If it were to be 0, for example, I might as well not have a prostate. If it's very low, it means the prostate is barely functioning. This is another test no hospital in this country bothered to perform before. I should have the results in about two weeks time. It should be interesting :)


Maya