Tetriser's Realm

Hey, so it has been a while.

Look, I don't mean to revive myself in this platform with a vent post, but what happened to me this month (and the beginning of the year) has defeated me so catastrophically badly to the point that I feel like screaming and crying my frustrations and regrets out, wishing I could go back in time to undid it.

It all started back on December 31, when my siblings finally got our parts of the money left by our late mother after her passing nearly 5 years ago. And with the money, I decided to use it to replace my aging smartphone, a Redmi 10C I bought almost 4 years ago.

While the phone is still half-decent today, that thing can only stand for much longer because of the amount of memory it has, a grand total of 4GB. And by today's standards, that is actually not enough even by 2022 standards.

I bought the stupid thing out of gullibility thanks to the so-called "memory extension" gimmick it has, that can increase the memory of the phone by utilizing part of the phone's storage, basically similar to virtual memory / paging file in Windows. Turns out, I was stupid thinking that it's something worthy of innovation. Basically, memory extension on Android is useless, since the storage is not fast enough to transport memory cache back and forth.

While I was fine with it back in 2022 until 2024, MIUI's malicious memory management really doesn't give any favors whatsoever. It's notorious for outright closing background apps when Android is nearly running out of memory. So, multitasking with the current state of apps today eating more memory is hell incarnate. So, I decided that enough was enough.

This is why I requested everyone to help my case with a Ko-fi goal: to get a new better phone, that can endure for years to come. Unfortunately, it's currently unsuccessful, nobody bothered to help me. Though, to be fair, I requested it in DECEMBER where everyone wants to save money for Christmas. So, I can't blame them.

And then, once I got my part of the aforementioned "treasured money", giving me a total of 1800+ MYR (including food money since I stayed alone during New Year's Eve), I wanted to spend some of it to get a new phone. And on that same day, I did a mistake.

A VERY, VERY BIG MISTAKE.

So, after multiple scouring and perusing through Reddit and GSMArena, I thought I've found a phone that fits my needs: the Poco X7 Pro, which costs about 1139 MYR for the 8GB variant on Lazada, but bought it only for 1087 through Lazada vouchers. There's the 12GB version but I ain't breaking the bank just for more RAM.

Now, while that was supposed to be a good purchase, I panicked after hearing the fury from former Xiaomi users, ranting about how terrible MIUI manages RAM and canceled the order, only to find out that refunding the money straight to my bank account takes up to 2 weeks to show up, as opposed to refunding straight to the app's built-in wallet. And since I'm a guy who loves spending more on food, I wasted the entire remaining balance of my bank account in the span of a week for food delivery. Thus, I regretted my choice of not refunding to the wallet instead of direct to bank. But since that phone doesn't have an SD card slot, I decided to stay away from it.

But now, the problem is it has been almost 2 weeks since I requested the refund, and I still haven't gotten the damn money. The app promised that it'll show up by 10th, but it's the 11th now as I type this, 12AM in Malaysia! And that's why I decided to write this post.

I am disappointed, I am defeated, and I nearly lost all of my faith with how long I have to wait. I wish I didn't do that mistake, and now it's going to take ages for me to finally dump my old brick (I'm actually going to store it somewhere safe, dw) with a fresh, new and much better phone that I'll use for the coming years.

Guys, I...

At these times, I wish I lived in a more infrastructural area where we can enjoy optic fiber internet instead of the spotty data internet we're stuck with.

Ever since the god-forsaken rain season began back in the 15th of November, my internet has began developing a very immense instability that requires me to either reset the network or power cycling the modem itself, starting off normal until it completely fricks up to an unusable 2G-level speed. Sometimes, it fixes itself but it'll still die later. The cycle never ends.

The end of this year is MUCH MUCH WORSE than in 2024, when Maxis straight up destroyed my access to Google including YouTube, which is solvable by using CloudFlare WARP (which I didn't know until January).

But this year, my current internet from Yes Internet, decided to just keep dying and DYING every fricking 2-3 hours after a network search.

I have to access the fricking router control panel (which you have to know, requires a login) and do a manual network search or toggling the mobile data switch for the connection to reset so it becomes stable again, EVERY TIME. it's tedious as hell, man.

So far, my best long-term solution to this is to tether my phone with my monthly mobile data like the old days. (btw my phone doesn't support 5G because it predated it being a standard, so it will be a little slower than my 5G router.)

Bluetooth internet is too slow and my PC's motherboard doesn't have Wi-Fi support (not to mention the way I use to tether my phone to PC doesn't support Wi-Fi). So my best bet is to connect it to my PC through USB, which is risky because that could lead to my phone's battery overcharging and eventually no longer holding proper charge; it'll immediately shut down at battery level below 20% like what happened to my previous phones. I use the internet 24/7, just so you know, because I need YouTube playing in the background to drown out the background noise.

Bottomline, it sucks that all sorts of BS whenever I'm online happens every time years end, and only when years end.

It feels like a fricking curse. And I swear, I had enough of this happening every time December approaches.

Which I get, gets cold and cloudy because it's almost winter. But that doesn't excuse the internet for being super unstable during the remainder of the year. I can forgive the internet if it still performs at 2-3 megabits per second, but whenever it breaks, it drops to about 500 kilobits to 1 MEGABIT PER SECOND, which is BEYOND UNUSABLE BY TODAY'S STANDARDS. Not to mention, my internet is a HOME Wi-Fi so everyone is using it.

Now you see why I'm frustrated whenever this happens? If the internet has to lose performance because of bad weather patterns, it might as well has to be still usable. I get it, it's mobile data, they receive signals from reception towers. And that is the problem, bad weather patterns could render the towers unusable in a long-term, and that is my Achilles heel with mobile data comparing to optic fiber which again, is ineligible in my place due to lack of infrastructure; it's not a suburb, it's part of a county.

OK, I have nothing more to rant about. I just want to vent out my flaming frustrations about my internet connections I have over the years. It's not the end of the world, but it has been souring my mood to enjoy final moments of each year that I feel like bawling in bed in hopelessness.

The Town Square!

Like in the first game, Smitty can wield the Shockwave ability to cast... shockwaves to get rid of enemies much easier.

Bosses now show how much health they have, unlike the first game.

Hey, I'm finally back on both this platform and the Smitty 2 development hell world!

Say hello to... uhh... Gelpoline! As seen in the above video, it helps the player reach one part of the terrain that is unreachable by just jumping, or even double-jumping.

With that said...

After weeks of procrastination (and a broken chair), I've finally reimplemented the puzzle (or mechanism) button feature from the first game into the second game.

Took me multiple tries to get it right while also not using way too many lines of code, and here it is.

And as you see here, the buttons are now presentable in even more colors, rather than just blue and sometimes brown and purple like in Smitty 1.

Button puzzle was one of my favorite features to work on when developing Smitty 1, but implementing the basic inner workings of it was quite a challenge.

So, I started working on this feature simple, just a moving platform. But I had a brainwave of putting a special effect on them, and it's what you're seeing in the video below: neon lighting to signal their states. Blue if it's moving, red if it stopped.

Commission for @coralkuma

So... I haven't shared info about Tsuki and Usagi on this platform, because many of my stuffs seem to not get enough attention. I kinda wanna give up on using this platform, but I got to try again, hopefully I get more interactions.

Tsuki & Usagi

After their parents transformed into butterflies due to a freak accident (or so it seemed) caused by Professor Geomad during the Dripsdale-Geometran War, Tsuki has to take care of his newborn little sister, Usagi by himself at the age of 5. A few months after the incident, Rich's family decided to bring them to their castle to take care of them until they were old enough to become independent.

When Tsuki and Usagi turned 17 and 12, respectively, they were taught to become ninjas by a mysterious figure and swore to help those in need. They eventually befriended Smitty for his bravery of adventuring Dripsdale on his own to save his family and friends.

Fred

Since he finished elementary school, he began experimenting with his late grandpa's blueprints in their garage and started working on prototypes, leading to his eventual knowledge of technology and science.

That's when he decided to build his own workshop AND house to live near the Dripsdale city center to start making money out of his inventions while also providing the rest of Dripsdale the best gizmos based on their needs. He also works part-time with Professor Drips and provides the needed gizmos.

KC for @synduo

Koma for komacott

Noctune by @aphid-kirby

Rudy by RudyArts / Moon

Midnight by @doodlesbyzach

Bunnibal by Aidanthehumanboy