Thompson Lee

When you open Microsoft PowerShell in Windows Terminal on your computer, do you ever had the annoying feeling where you see your PowerShell session starts you off in a directory you do not want to start from? For me, at least, it would always start from C:\Windows\System32, and it’s a bit jarring for me.

The most common solution I have seen is to configure the Microsoft PowerShell profile with a Set-Location command:

# Replace "notepad" with any text editor you have installed. notepad $profile 

And add this command to your profile:

# Replace the location path with your desired absolute or relative path. Set-Location "X:\my\path" 

Here...

This is what happens when you left your previous job for a new job, and now things are getting much more hectic. A senior developer has just left the company, and he took his time for us and did a knowledge transfer. As a result, there is no one left to take his place. This senior developer is the person who chose me and was part of the hiring process, so I guess I should thank him for giving me the opportunity. Wish him well in his new role.

Even though I do enjoy my new job, I have fears that I might not be able to keep up, considering how turbulent the developer group had gone through in the...

I finally had the motivation to continue my blogging activity, and I also felt like making some Java code to spend my times along. After all, it’s been close to 4 years since I touched Java. I wondered what Java is like right now, and I have found a...

Laptops come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and specs. Nowadays, it’s all either OEM or Pre-built Laptops. I myself own a pre-built laptop, and it’s a great ride thus far. Except, when it comes to installing and updating Windows 10…

You see, I have my own fair shares of hassles I need to address whenever a new Windows 10 upgrade comes up. But I’ve come to terms with it, and now I know exactly how to resolve some of the hassles along the way. One of the hassles I’ve recently resolved is my Nvidia Graphics chipset on my pre-built laptop.

It was a long while ago, and I don’t really know when it started. All I know is I’ve...

Introduction

I finally was able to tackle this problem and have succeeded in solving the long-sought answer on making a simple isometric movement.

One might say this is easy to do, but when you think about the following context, you’ll understand just how important it is to understand where I’m coming from in regards to the difficulty of solving this answer.

It all began with a favorite game of mine during my childhood, MegaMan Battle Network, as shown:

Walking around in the game world, I noticed a peculiar thing about the way the main character moves around in the game. When pressing UP, I was able to move...

You should be seeing tons of C or C++ codes where you see #include "foo.h" at the top. You look at these #include preprocessor directives, and you probably never asked yourself, why couldn’t you use #include "foo.c" or #include "bar.cpp"?

Well, you’re in luck, because ever since Visual Studio 2008, and all the way until Visual Studio 2017, you are able to use #include "foo.c" and / or #include "bar.cpp" in your code.

There are 2 main pros when doing this in your code:

1. You reduce the number of files for the Visual C++ compiler to compile. Even if you have the advantageous high grounds where you...

It’s been 1 semester right now, estimated to be 3 months or so.

Here’s my current update for my Master’s Project:

For those of you learning how to use Unity Networking, or UNET for short, here’s a template that I created that will help you learn the basics of using UNET.

Thanks to those who helped along the way on the official Unity forums, as well as some of those on Freenode IRC channel #unity3d, #reddit-gamedev, and #gamedev.

Knowing that UNET provides [Command] and [ClientRPC], these are enough to make basic network code that the server and the client can understand and interact. But these can go more in depth with the use of [Client] (or known as [ClientCallback]), [Server] (or known as [ServerCallback]).

As of writing this post, the UNET documentation is not up to a standard that is acceptable....

In very late January, and early February, I started to work on my Master’s Project with the idea of implementing multiplayer mode.

It comes to a point where Unity decided to start deprecating the old networking API in favor of a new server-client networking model, which is called Unity Networking API, also known as UNET.

I was fine with it and continued to work with the legacy networking API, but then further Unity updates led me to start considering whether I should migrate to UNET. Discussing this with my professor proved to be fruitless since my professor not a tech person, which I don’t blame him for that.

After heavy consideration during September, I feel that it is time for...

School has just started. I could no longer maintain my blog updates now that I’m expecting myself to be swamped with a lot of assignments and work. You probably won’t see much update going on during the semester. Perhaps a little bit of stuff here and there…

Yay! I have just accepted a job offer to be the lab admin at my school. It’s at least something that’s worth being productive for the next two semesters.

As with my Master’s project, since it’s catered to become a multiplayer game, perhaps it would be a good idea to invest my time in learning how to do a multiplayer game. One game engine that I find more common other than Unreal Engine 4 is Unity. I haven’t tried it yet, but it feels like it has stable multiplayer features. Going to start working on that before I start school.

It is now the time for me to continue working on my Master’s project. I’m still considering if I should go with some other topics, but the approach to try and reduce complexity in a real time strategy game seems to be the only thing that pops into my mind.

It is the only topic that even professors say it is interesting to think about.

It’s been a wild run. Having all of the students to showcase their work to their parents is a wonderful experience. Then again, playing Super Smash Bros. 4 in the classroom is more memorable than the showcase.

I hope I would get another chance at Frontiers next year.

It’s my first time experiencing what it’s like to be a lecturer. The lesson that I taught to the high school kids is about how to use Unreal Engine 4 Blueprints and Scripting in general.

It may have been one super-duper advanced topics for them to understand, at least a few of them are willing to try it out. I know one of them is interested in using the blueprints to make a snowy mountain.

Also, Agar.io is really addicting. I would recommend.

I am starting my work as a Frontiers Teacher Assistant for a summer class. In this class, we are teaching high school kids how to make a level in Unreal Engine 4.

I’m a bit nervous.

Since the end of the Spring semester here at my school, I plummet myself into lazy world. Don’t want to do this or that, don’t want to play piano, my mind just tells me “no more of anything.”

Here I am. It’s been over a month since that day, and I am struggling myself to find something worthwhile and productive to do. I started going back to my old projects and add a few bit more touches, I’ve started working on a new game with a compelling thesis behind it, and I started to realize how much I am missing out.

Staying indoors for so long can really make you crazy, but the moment I step outside of my apartment...

I am writing about my experiences at PAX East 2015, while working as a volunteer at a MassDigi booth showcasing my fellow classmate’s Wooplex game.

Finally did it!

I have completed a game project using Dragonfly engine for UNIX text-based NCurses, written in C++.

This project was made for an independent study group for an undergraduate course. Since I have completed the IMGD 3000 course, my professor said I just need to create a new game, since I have completed all the necessary extra credit curriculums before taking IMGD 4000.

So yay!

You can go check the game out at this project page here.

I am currently working on a new assignment for my extra credit.

It was inspired by a Javascript engine called Perlenspiel, which is an in-house rendering engine for game development classes here at WPI.

The name of the project is currently assigned as “Rotation,” which the whole premise is to rotate the world around until you are able to find the exit.

Currently, it’s still being worked on. I have the player’s core mechanics finished and now moving on to working on objects in the game.

I haven’t thought about how the player wins the game. Vice versa for losing the game.

Yesterday is the final day of my Fall 2014 Semester, and we’re quite busy with celebrating on a high note by making hot pot in my apartment.

I’m starting to play around more with my new laptop, the Alienware 13 of late 2014. It felt good to be an early adopter, and having something brand new in my hands as time goes by. But, this is not what I intend to write about. It will be for another post later on.

Today is Saturday. Woke up to a chilly cloudy day, with Christmas looming around. I have this weird urge to dream about a boy who lingers to go out and venture across the lands, and meeting new people along...

My own primer on Light Diffusing

Before we delve in on light diffusing, I need to remind of myself about color blending, particularly in adding and multiplying colors.

Adding colors is used to add brightness and contrast to colors being chosen.

Multiplying colors of similar hue and color gives minimal differences, this can be used on determining how much light is being reflected on the surface, and how much color has been reflected from the light source to the eyes of a viewer. However, with different hues and colors, it would give the polar opposite, making the target color duller and washed out than before.

For a given light source, S, when I shine the directional light onto a...

My own primer on Light Reflection

Light reflection is a ray of light we see that has bounced off of a surface of an object.

In game development, light reflection is written as a ray with a direction.

Where the position (source) is A, and the direction is B-A.

This is a reflection ray, namely BC. The S is the source of the ray.

To calculate the reflection ray, I need to find the vector projection of the reflection ray on the normal of the surface, find the vector...

sigh~!

Just when I feel I have finished my blog, I asked for feedback on the designs.

It turns out that there’s a compatibility issue with Firefox, which I have never used on my work computer before.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Today is a good day.

I have finished setting up Jekyll on GitHub Pages, and felt refreshed that I have completed the hard work in getting it polished. (In my honest opinion, it’s polished.)

I have so many things to do starting tomorrow! Studying, reading, eating, and so on…

I’m happy with how this is turning out, as I’m just starting out with HTML5 and CSS3. In order for me to venture on and make updates, I need some sort of a blog to keep relevant info and knowledge around.

As I continue, I will probably add a few screenshots and GIFs to keep track of what I’m doing, so as not to miss out on anything I was doing for the past few days before that post.

Where can I find all of these emoticons? If I know some of them, I’ll be updating this blog and will get the info posted below.

Other than that, all handy formatting are similar to...