RWBY Volumes 1-3: A second opinion from the Blu-ray release

TL; DR summary: For those of you trying to get into the RWBY series, I highly recommend watching the DVD or Blu-ray releases. Find a way to rent it or buy it, just don’t watch it on YouTube (it’s not the best way to view the series). I cannot comment on Steam’s online streaming because I don’t buy video titles from Steam.

I tried watching RWBY Volume 1 long ago on Rooster Teeth’s YouTube channel when it was first released and didn’t go very far. I liked the action and the character designs (a scythe that transforms into a sniper rifle? Sure!), but didn’t like the pacing. Maybe it was because of the YouTube format — I really disliked the original opening theme (This Will Be The Day), and having to listen to it for every single episode was very grating. I stopped quite early into Volume 1, the part where Ren goes Max Payne on the giant Grimm snake, and that was it.

So 10,000 years later after the return of the Burning Legion, I finally decided to rewatch the series on my sister’s BD collection of Volumes 1-3. I went in with zero expectations (like always), and came out impressed but feeling angry at the same time.

I was exceptionally impressed by the action sequences in RWBY. I’m an action junkie who enjoys a good action show and I rate RWBY on the very high-end of the action scale. I briefly googled Monty Oum, the creator of RWBY, and according to his Wikipedia page he’s a martial artist and fan of videogames. He’s also a big cinephile, which is not surprising. To produce the high quality of action in RWBY, you need to be a fan of action and understand the principles of making good action scenes. I’ve blogged about it before a few times, so I won’t retread too much on this same topic again. Good action fight scenes need to be succinct and easy to follow — the viewer must know who is winning and why they are winning. It also needs to be paced properly to keep the viewer engaged. Having a good soundtrack can help immensely — the original “Red” and “Yellow” pre-series trailers nailed this perfectly.

And all this was done in RWBY without resorting to any cheap bullet-time tricks, which has been overused ever since The Matrix made it popular at the turn of the century. There is one fight scene in Volume 2 involving Ruby Rose where the screen is partitioned into comic-book panels. I’m not sure if this was an intentional homage to Samurai Jack, which popularised this method of animation.

Sadly, Oum died in early 2015 while Volume 3 was still in production, and I’m not sure if this affected the ending of Volume 3. Because I was a bit angry after finishing Volume 3.

The ending of RWBY Volume 3 contains what many people call the Deus ex machina (DEM) plot device, a sudden and abrupt resolution from nowhere that is not explained, not expected, and we the viewers are just simply forced to accept it. I hate DEMs, dammit. But before I get to that, let me just summarise the rest of my thoughts about Volumes 1-3 as a whole. It is very important.

Warning: Spoiler break starts here. Stop reading if you haven’t watched RWBY Volumes 1-3.

Don’t go raiding in WoW before violin practice

Have you ever had one of those bad days where no matter how hard you try to do something, nothing works or comes out right.

I’m having one of those bad moments right now where no matter how hard I try to practice on the violin, nothing sounds right. My right shoulder is also starting to ache for no reason, even though it’s not supposed to do anything (the violin is resting on the left shoulder; bowing with the right hand is done mainly with the wrist — the right shoulder does NOTHING).

I blame World of Warcraft. I tried LFR Tomb of Sargeras for fun earlier on my Shaman alt, and even though the Desolate Host, Maiden of Vigilance, and Fallen Avatar bosses all have one major mechanic removed, it still feels like a nightmare to pug through those bosses. A Warlock named Avra-Ragnaros (if you’re reading this: fuck you) kept pulling the bosses too early before the rest of the raid was ready, and on Desolate Host there was no tank in the spirit realm for one entire pull (of course we wiped).

The people who put in effort to learn mechanics, to do things properly are punished by the lowest-common-denominator idiot who doesn’t even have the basic common sense to let the tanks draw aggro first. This is why my Warrior main has permanently retired from LFR.

Maybe I should just rest today and start watching RWBY Volume 3.

Daffy Duck’s daffiest moments – YouTube

Was randomly browsing YouTube and suddenly ended up on this video, a great compilation of Daffy Duck’s best moments from several decades of Looney Tunes cartoons.

I grew up watching lots of Warner Bros. cartoons, and I really mean LOTS. They are an important, defining period of my childhood. Somehow, Daffy Duck always has the most wackiest moments that will stay forever etched in your mind. From hunting season, to the magic lamp (“HASSAAAAAAAN CHOP!”), to the disintegrating laser pistol, and the immortal Robin Hood parody — they’re all included here.

I just don’t quite understand why Warner Bros. can’t make such cartoons anymore in the 21st century. We should treasure these retro classics and pass them on to future generations.

July 2017: Make it rain (money) in the summer

July has passed by very quickly. Time flies when you’re surrounding yourself with new hobbies and new skills to learn. I totally predicted that I would be quite free from work this July, because it’s the football off-season and there’s no pesky summer tournaments in 2017 like the Euros or World Cup. Which was why I signed up for not one, not two, but THREE sewing classes a week for July.

The first one was a Basic Sewing Class that is held twice a week. We learn how to make simple, basic bags and pouches, while practising essential sewing skills such as making seams, operating the sewing machine, measuring and cutting fabrics, and so on.

I admit that I was quite clueless for the first few lessons. Oh wait, I still feel a bit clueless even at my 9th lesson. The act of sewing itself isn’t difficult — just align the fabric at the right spot and keep it straight (or curved, if you’re sewing curves) while stepping on the pedal. It’s the measuring, marking, folding, and pinning which makes me confused. My brain is wired in such a way that I _need_ to see and know all the detailed steps in advance from start to finish, otherwise my mind gets bogged down and starts to muddle over each step-by-step portion. It’s not my teacher’s fault — of course she’ll break the lesson down into small steps and let us carry them out bit-by-bit, before moving to the next step. It’s Edward’s fault for having a dumbass brain.

The second class is one that I’m really interested in, a Basic Apparel Class where we learn to make simple pants and shirts. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) I’m constantly annoyed by how difficult it is to find pants / jeans selling in stores that are of my waist-size (27 inches).

I’ve lost a lot of fats in my waist and belly ever since I turned vegetarian, and I predict that I’m going to lose a bit more by the end of the year. I can’t buy smaller ladies sizes for pants because most of them are slim-fit designs — the thigh and calf cuttings are way too small for my legs. The male pants in stores are designed for fatasses, while the female ones are designed for anorexic legs.

So what’s the solution? Make your own pants.

It’s time consuming, and also a bit costly since I have to eventually invest in a sewing machine and sewing tools. But I want to give it a shot. The best way to learn something new is to just practice, practice, practice.

2) Dana Zane is not a real person.

In other news, Rightstuf just had a 30th anniversary sale for July where the majority of their catalogue of anime titles are on heavy discounts. I spent close to S$300 on Rightstuf, and then promptly went to Amazon.JP to purchase four more Amiibos. Combine this with the amount of spending to pay for my sewing classes, and you can understand why July is rainmaker season.

How to do F2P mobile gaming right: The generosity of Fire Emblem Heroes

We are approaching six months since Fire Emblem Heroes was released on mobile platforms on 2 February, 2017. And one of my biggest concerns back then has been completely addressed by the recent live channel update by Nintendo:

Like many Japanese mobage, Heroes uses a “gacha” system where you have to spend in-game currency (orbs) to try and summon the characters that you want. On the game’s release, it was easy to obtain lots of orbs just by completing the story campaign and paralogues. However, those orbs can only be obtained once. My concern back then was: How are non-paying players going to obtain more orbs at a consistent rate after that?

The solution so far for the past few months in Heroes was simple: Quests and events. Lots of them. The Tempest Trials (just added two months ago) and Voting Gauntlet are a good source of orbs. You can also earn orbs just by participating in the Arena — you don’t even have to win or get a high score, you’ll just get those orbs automatically every week (although you’ll lose out on obtaining extra Hero Feathers, another important currency that’s used for upgrading your heroes).

Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have also been very generous with orbs, sometimes they’ll dole out free orbs to players just for logging in daily. Sometimes they’ll even give big batches of 10-20 orbs for special occasions. And even more orbs are coming in August, which is a great way to lure back returning players. Just log in, get a stash of orbs, and go summon your favourite characters. You don’t need to spend a single cent if you learn to conserve your orbs, using them only for the banner events that you really want.

Fire Emblem Heroes isn’t really a “pay to win” game. Spending money on the game is no guarantee that you’ll get the best characters. And even if you do, you still need to put in your own extra work to level them up and inherit the right skills. You also need to practice basic, common-sense tactics and mathematical calculations to win high-level battles and Arena matches, something that money cannot buy.

I hope other mobile developers are paying attention to Heroes, because this is a perfect example of how to do a mobage right: Keep putting out fresh content and updates, and most of all, be generous to your player base. And they’ll keep coming back to play.

Videogames on the violin: Lost in Thoughts All Alone (Fire Emblem Fates)

Here is my own personal goal for playing the violin: I want to learn to play a violin solo for Lost in Thoughts All Alone from Fire Emblem Fates, the full version. “Full version” meaning the entire six minutes, including all the parts where Azura sings the lyrics for Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation.

There is just one big problem: I can’t find the sheet music for a violin solo of this song. The closest I’ve found is h4kase2’s sheet music for a piano + violin duet. Unfortunately, this is not the full version of the song (it’s missing the lyrics for Revelation), and there are too many violin pauses. If worse comes to worst, I think I might need to ask my violin teacher to help me transcribe the sheet music for a full violin solo by ear.

The beautiful part of this song starts from 03:44 as the violins start to crescendo. It is a perfect contrast to the lyrics at that point, where Azura is singing about the dark path of Nohr (i.e. “Night breaks through the day…” ; “… Even the thorn in your heart, in time it may become a rose.”). The violins then take over from 04:08 with a short but emotionally stirring solo. THIS is what I want to replicate on my violin. I’ve only started to learn how to channel emotion and volume on my strings through placement of the bow, so it’s going to take a long while before I can reach this level.

A song from a videogame is inspiring me to master the violin. Sometimes I wonder why I take videogames so seriously.

My SSD had a heart attack

So after almost a month of not posting anything, I guess a quick update is needed for my active followers and readers (I can probably count them on one hand).

My SSD died recently without warning. I could boot up my PC without problems in the morning, went out for the whole day and came back at night to discover that the SSD just went kaput. After calling up Uncle Lim, the PC shop uncle near my house for advice, he asked me to try switching the SATA cables from my DVD-ROM drive to the SSD. Of course it didn’t work. Hard drives die when they are killed.

Uncle Lim described my SSD as having “a heart attack”. It is one of the unfortunate cons of using a new technology like SSDs over traditional magnetic platter HDDs — death to an SSD can come swiftly and suddenly, without any telltale warning signs. This is the complete opposite of HDDs — usually you can detect and anticipate when a HDD is about to die, which should give you some time to back up your important files.

Unfortunately, I had no backups of my SSD. It only contains my Windows 10 system installation, and my World of Warcraft folder. Normally in the past, if my PC fails I would start to panic. This time, funnily enough, my initial reaction after my SSD’s death was “maybe I can finally take a break from WoW… I already killed Kil’jaeden in the latest raid.”

The next day, I went to Uncle Lim’s shop, bought a new SSD, and then promptly reinstalled Windows 10 and World of Warcraft. I did not have any backups of my WoW addons, so rebuilding my game UI from scratch using Bartender was another tedious process. Take a break from WoW? Yeah, right.

Old habits die hardest.

“If we sacrifice our values because we’re afraid, we don’t care about those values.”

– Edward Snowden

His full quote (starting from 30:57 in the video): “You shouldn’t change your behaviour, because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we’re afraid, we don’t care about those values.”

Snowden’s quote resonates very deeply with me (not because he shares my name), but because it makes absolute sense. If you allow yourself to be affected by terror, if you change your behaviour because you’re afraid, then the terrorists have already won.

Decay – Left Behind

One of the most memorable and addictive pro wrestling entrance songs in recent memory. The lyrics are perfectly suited to describe Rosemary and Decay, while the overall song manages to maintain the macabre spirit of what Decay is all about.

This is actually the second entrance song for Decay, the first one was borrowed from Marilyn Manson, called “The Nobodies”. According to my friend, TNA could no longer afford to pay royalties to use his song, so they had to create a new theme for Decay.

I like both themes. The first one was catchy, and helped to sell Rosemary and her faction: A group of outcasts shunned by society who turn to darkness to help them win matches. The second theme has a more sinister vibe and stronger guitar riffs, which coincidentally suits Decay in 2017 — they deleted the Hardys from TNA with a vengeance.

Yet another perfect example of how the right entrance theme can make such a huge world of difference in selling a pro wrestler. Just ask Shinsuke Nakamura and Bobby Roode.

The rise and fall of Mad Catz | Eurogamer

via Eurogamer: How Mad Catz used up its last life

Anyone who has dabbled in fighting games for the past decade or so, has definitely heard about Mad Catz. They make joysticks for fighting games that are of top quality, used by tournament-level players all over the world.

And then they went bankrupt. All because of several bad decisions by top-level management.

There are some very important lessons to learn here: Diversifying as a company is important, yes, but if you expand too quickly and take risks that make no sense (Mad Catz’s upper management believed that console gaming was going to die back in 2012-13 — a laughable idea now with PS4 and the Nintendo Switch gaining strength), you will plummet back to earth as quickly as your rise.

I’ve never owned a Mad Catz stick, because I was very satisfied with Hori’s products, one of Mad Catz’s main competitors. Still, it’s sad to see another hardware company bite the dust. Only when competition in the market exists, will you see better innovation in technology and development.