Neomonkeus

Im sure you'll be interested to know I joined

So I have finally started to post some of the backlog of posts. I have been mainly doing this as a form of procrastination from other projects that I am currently involved in. I will do more recent updates once stability happens though I wont have an excuse to procrastinate then.

The blogs are mainly supplementary to the posted images. Images maybe worth a thousand words but without overall context they lose meaning. I also welcome feedback and constructive criticism.

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Disclaimer: Warning the first half of this blog contains much technical ranting as I was in a seriously bad mood over the last few days over some technical problems that occured - Click here to avoid


This is somewhat different from my usual blogs thus far where I usually try and play catch up on the blogs I should have written as I was doing the stuff. I have been doing alot of backend stuff as lead dev for a Development Group and soon to begin on unannounced mod as of late. My time being already pretty limited and outstretched by college as is I grasp every opportunity to procrastinate and write these blogs. So why is this any different from the others I have posted?

Well last night I noticed that one of the forum apps wasn't functioning. I traced down the problem to the php not writing the necessary script. This was fine as I assumed that it was down to an admin had inadvertently been playing with the setting and either switched the access from being public to admin or vice versa and so the app stopped working. It seemed like it should be an easy fix and if nothing else I would uninstall and re-install. I was still a bit perplexed as to why this had happened in the first place as it was highly unlikely that any of the other admins had touched anything nor had I done any recent installs or modifications to the system. I just chalked it down to the fact of things happen. I set about trying to re-install but after various failed efforts I decided that perhaps the API of the external service provider had changed and that I may need a updated version. It being three o'clock in the morning I was decided that I needed sleep.

Having left my laptop to power down and was about to hop into bed I forgot that I hadn't checked to see what ungodly hour of the morning I was in college for. My usual phrase of "its way too early in the afternoon to be awake" should give some indication of the random sleeping patterns. Trudging back downstairs I booted up the netbook and loaded up the interwebbs. I had a number of tabs still open and one was the forum. It was displaying a lovely 503 error for the front end. I thought it was just my netbook but going around the room to the others still awake 4 other laptops decided that they too were giving the same error. Since I could still access the backend I presumed it was just another symptom and that maybe it was a problem with the forum and not the app after all. I was way too tired to play ball with it so off to bed I went.

Waking up a few hours later I noticed there had been a nice stream of emails from everyone telling me there were problems, lots of problems. I had college to get to and so was pre-occupied it wouldn't be until a few hours later that I would get back to checking out the problem. By the time I go back it was after work hours so I sent an email off to tech support. I had to wait until the next day before a response so it was a good opportunity to get some sleep for a change. It appeared from my end that my hosts webserver has gone down so there was little I can do with it until the help desk technician realises the problem isn't on his list of stupid questions. I know he has to ask those questions when you start a help call, though when explain that it isn't anything to do with it he still has to go through them none the less. He should probably escalate it. I'm sure I caused the problem in the first place and like wise my own response time of sending email is questionable but when he is blaming the problem on an index.html as the problem I question competency.

Its a bit annoying when you know more than the support guy but I suppose he is only doing her job so I should give him a break. While he does his thing I have been rapidly FTPing all the content to ensure I don't lose anything and yes the other servers works, and doing sql dumps as we speak. So after numerous back and forth emails they decided to restart the server application pool and low and behold everything started to work again. Those evil server gremlins magically gone. So now just need to replace some apps and everything will be like nothing had ever gone wrong. So I'm feeling alot better now and think that I over the situation already so should probably go and do some work.

After all that It then appears that the initial problem had nothing to do with the hosting service so back to the drawing board on that but i'm glad to have the server stable again. I tracked it down to a php function not working for reasons beyond me and echoing anything fixed it. I ended up writing a custom version of the app, even after my house mate, an experienced PHP user was left him more confused. It really was a TECHNOLOGY HATES ME week.


As I finished that rant I noticed the title of this blog was originally going to talk about had Chocobos so I really cant' leave them out. So back to the not so modern times and my development cycle of doing something and subsequently getting distracted by side projects I ended up creating Chocobos. At this stage I had developed the dynamic lighting as far as it could go, the train had progressed nicely but was still such a large project that I didn't want to take back on full-time. I wanted something interesting and new that nobody hadn't tried before. Lets face Chocobos are awesome. They have been the stable diet of the Final fantasy series and are probably one of my favourite reoccurring creatures. But I not need to figure out how I was going to do this.

My original idea was to have some form of gambling office, where the players could bet on various races and as I quickly came to realise on the forums the community hadn't the resources to implement every random idea that gets thrown about.Sometimes though with a plan you just need to start somewhere and see where it leads. So I decided that getting a working Chocobo in-game would at least be major set in terms of overall progress. My first thought was to just up and replace a skin on a base creature.
So I googled lots of images and searched everywhere for things that would be useful to start the process. I found a reference chocobo by a member who had been around a year or two before me but had since then moved on. You might know of for his famous Final Fantasy Mod collection for Oblivion called Lord Mad Dog. I dropped him an email in any case to see about using his stuff for reference and thankfully got a reply for use of his stuff as he was no longer developing it. Happy days. I then set about creating my own version and think that I did quite well. It is still very much a work in progress but looks good none the less. I am quite happy with how this turned out at this stage. All this ranting has tired me out so I shall leave you with this.

Start a group Groups
Anime Fans of modDB

Anime Fans of modDB

2,420 members Fans & Clans

This group has been formed to gather the people who enjoy Japanese anime and all of its facets, to salute the people from the land of the Rising Sun.

3D Artists Group

3D Artists Group

1,262 members Arts & Literature

Are you a 3D artist? Are you looking for some inspiration? Do you just want to collaborate or know who your fellow ModDB artists are? Doesn't matter what...

Biohazard Fans

Biohazard Fans

243 members Fans & Clans

All fans of the Resident Evil games, join here and share knowledge about the RE series and have fun!

Blenderheads

Blenderheads

578 members Arts & Literature

For us folks who like to stay Free and use the Blender 3d program over every other costly options!

Final Fantasy Fans

Final Fantasy Fans

90 members Fans & Clans

A group dedicated to the fans of the Final Fantasy franchise.

Electric Illuminations

Electric Illuminations

2 members Developer

Electric Illuminations is the developer for 'Mako Dawn', a total conversion mod for Fallout 3.

Irish Group

Irish Group

59 members Geographic

The Mod Data Base group for Irish users. Post in the forum: Share ideas, help each other, work together and have fun!

Pheonix Productions

Pheonix Productions

4 members Developer

Forum is currently running and re-vamp of the main website is underway. The development team is incredibly busy creating the framework that will become...

Post comment Comments
faulk
faulk

Time to update your blog! The last entry was in 2011. :(

Have you gone on any adventures lately?

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Neomonkeus Creator
Neomonkeus

Not lately. None as regards modding or games related stuff, the rabbit hole goes deep on what I have been doing for the past year on plug-in coding.

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JigsawPieces
JigsawPieces

That train has improved a lot! The rungs on the side are perhaps a bit too big? I know mine were... They -seemed- alright, but when I stood next to them in game they were gigantic :D

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Neomonkeus Creator
Neomonkeus

All the better to grab onto. Bigger is always better, without exception; except if it Godzilla

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Fz0077
Fz0077

hey man! about the your comment on the FF-fangroup...
I can model weapons and other stuff but I'm not good at texturing, or atleast stil learning...
If you need some models done for your mod plz contact me, I'm crazy for FF and sure will help you.
PS: the gunblade model on the fangroup profile is from me!

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faulk
faulk

Your train is very good. :o

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Neomonkeus Creator
Neomonkeus

I wish I had the time to finish it off, perhaps over the summer.

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