Dark Brony

“Dark Brony” is the name of my modified MadCatz SFIV Round 2 TE FightStick. This stick has gone though a couple of cosmetic revisions already, but I believe this will be the last time that I modify it. Why did I decide to make it “My Little Pony” themed? I don’t know, just looks cool. I also silhouetted Rainbow Dash to make it look less girly. But it doesn’t matter, because ponies.

Features List

• Art’s Hobbies Extended TE Plexi replacement and Bottom Plexi.
• Sanwa JLF Joystick w/ Mesh Balltop
• Sanwa button microswitches
• Sanwa OBSF-30 Button Rims
• Rollie Electronics “Asian Style” 30mm Button Plungers
• Seimitsu PS14 Start/Select buttons.
• Toodles TE Kitty Mod
• Braided wire sleeving
• Bottom artwork features altered Rainbow Dash and “Cthulhu Powered” logo.

To-Do:

• Replace JLF mounting plate with a clear Art’s Hobbies JLF Plexi Mount.

Project Mov Time Lapse

As you may (or may not ಠ_ಠ) already know, Project Mov was a custom arcade stick project that I finished back in February. I haven’t had the time to upload the time-lapsed video of the project because compressing 15+ hours of HD video into 6 minutes takes a long time. But alas, here it is in all of it’s supreme glory. So just sit back, relax, and prepare to be confused with everything that’s going on.

Music: Above and Beyond – Every Little Beat (Album: Group Therapy)

Project Mov

Project Mov is a small project I’ve been working for past couple of weeks. The goal of the project was to upgrade my old MadCatz SFIV SE Arcade Stick (the Viper Pin-Up) and make it look better and more functional. The word “mov” is actually Greek for “purple,” which was the color of my old SE stick. I was going to keep the purple theme and implement it into the new stick, but after much internal debate with myself, I decided to switch to blue.

The stick uses two PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards). The first one is the MadCatz PCB from the SE stick, which allows for compatibility with the Xbox 360. The second one is a Toodles TE Kitty PCB, which not only allows for PS3 compatibility, but also acts as a ‘gateway’ for the MadCatz PCB whenever gameplay on the 360 is needed. Unfortunately, this PCB does not perform auto-detection, meaning that the (Left Stick/D-Pad/Right Stick) switch needs to be set to Right Stick and the ‘Back’ button needs to be held down before plugging into an Xbox 360, otherwise it will detect as a PS3 controller. Both PCBs work fine on PC, but I prefer to use the MadCatz PCB when playing.

Edit: I have been corrected by Toodles, the man himself. The Kitty actually DOES auto-detect. Since I’ve only tested on PC/PS3 so far, I assumed that it just defaulted to the Kitty board, even when connected to an Xbox 360. That’s really good to know and I’m glad that I can reap that kind of benefit. Thanks for looking out, cheers!

There wasn’t really anything sophisticated encountered when building the stick. I received some excellent advice from Toodles when I came by some issues before ordering parts. Everything went according to plan and worked perfectly from the get-go. The only thing I was disappointed about was the choice of wire color. While I really wanted to use white wire, I could only find red 22 AWG copper stranded wire in my local area. For the time being, I’m done with the project and have no plans to switch the wiring out. I will consider switching the wiring out if I can find white wire AND I can get my hands on a PS360+ PCB, which is an all-in-one, PS3/X360/PC compatible, auto-detection board. These boards are still in production and demand for them are atrociously high, so I’m not really in a rush.

I had a time-lapsed video of the entire work log, but due to carelessness with my fingers, I deleted 20+GB videos with a swift [Shift]+[Del], [Enter] keystrokes. Sorry, but hey, at least there’s pictures! Enjoy!

Edit: I inexplicably forgot that my files are always automatically backed up to my server every day. The deleted files are restored and I’ll have the video posted up some other time.

2nd Edit: Video is up and can be found here:

View the Project Mov Time Lapse Video

Featured Parts:

• Clear Acrylic TEK Case S1-B
• White acrylic dust washer
• Anodized Aluminum Feet
• White Techflex PET Cable Sleeving
• Blue Techflex Cable Heatshrink
• 9 x Sanwa OBSF-30 Buttons
• 2 x Sanwa OBSF-24 Buttons
• Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT Joystick
• Neutrik RJ45 Pass-Through
• SPDT Switch
• MadCatz SFIV SE Fightstick PCB
• Toodles TE Kitty PCB
• Non-matching red wires.

Programming: TAMU vs. t.u. Football ’11

TAMU vs. t.u. Football ’11 is the title of a game that was coded in C++ using the FLTK GUI library. The game was created by a partner and I as a CSCE 121 final project submission for this semester. The game took a little over a week to complete and finalize. Even though this is technically a “game”, it’s really not much of a game. The purpose of the project isn’t really about making a cool game, but more about showing that we were able to… just make it.

The game is a football themed variant of Fox and Hounds, which is a game where the fox has to get to the top blah blah blah Wikipedia.

We kept the computer opponent simple and easy to beat. If it looks like it’s making a stupid move, then it’s supposed to. The game just randomly chooses a piece and simply has it traverse down a singular defined path. Other team submissions had the computer choose the next move based on algorithms that rely on triangles and measurements, really impressive stuff.

Since the project has been submitted and graded (scored a 109 out of 110), I want to go ahead and share it so that it can serve as a milestone that I can look back on after travelling further down my Computer Science path. Don’t expect anything mind-boggling, but I hope you’ll appreciate it.

Click to download TAMU vs. t.u. Football ’11

Desktop overview: April 1, 2011

Primary: Virtual Machine

OS: Ubuntu 10.10

Theme: GAIA Sprout by lassekongo83

Wallpaper: heaven on earth by jocosity

Desktop Items:

• Computer
• Home Folder
• Windows Share (direct access to files on Host OS)

Taskbar Programs:

• Force Close
• Terminal
• Google Chrome
• Pandora One Desktop

As of recently I’ve begun to start using a virtual machine to code C++ in a Linux environment. It’s exciting, but frustrating at the same time. Probably more frustrating to be honest. I’ve been a dedicated Windows power user since day one, which explains my complete lack of Linux knowledge. I’m not really used to all of the sudo, chmod, repository lingo just yet, but it’s great to learn. The Ubuntu virtual machine I’m using is powered by VirtualBox and it’s pretty darn stable and feature-rich. As far as system resources go, the ratio between host (Windows) and guest (Ubuntu) is 6:2 for CPU cores and 10:6 for GB of RAM. I might be giving Ubuntu more resources than it needs, but Windows can’t use it all anyways, so it doesn’t matter. I hope to be learning more in the coming months. Soon, I’ll probably be using a little bit of wget magic just like Zuckerberg did in The Social Network.

Gotta break out emacs and modify that perl script, son.