The New Devil May Cry (DmC) is Awesome

I was one of the few people who dislike the redesign of the new Dante and the whole idea of a reboot when it was first announce that Ninja Theory will be taking over the development of the game. Time past and I matured up a bit (lol) and I don’t hold the same view anymore. That post was written 3 years ago (time flies!).

dmc

I decided to give the game a try. Verdict? Surprise surprise! I really love what Ninja Theory did with the reboot. I haven’t finish the game yet because I don’t have a console (it is back in Malaysia) and I only play for a few hours at a friend’s place. However, I do have some thoughts.

What intrigues me the most about DmC is the battle system. I like how they had created different types of weapons that we can switch to during battles and earn style points based on that. We have a mix of angelic and demonic weapons. Through my gameplay, I’ve only earned the Osiris and Arbiter. I am pretty sure you can unlock more weapons through boss fights. At least, thats how the DMC series has always been for me. In a nutshell, the battles are a hell lot of fun! Definitely better than previous series. I am pretty sure it gets better once the story evolve and more types of enemies is introduced.

With that being said, did I change my mind about the new Dante? No. I still don’t like the new character design. But I think that is because I grew up admiring heroes like Cloud, Sephiroth, Raiden (MGS), etc. I just feel like these characters’ looks make them more unique. Since gaming is a form of escapism to me, I don’t really feel that it is necessary for them to look realistic. However, game designers continue to ‘westernized’ the design of the characters to make them look more realistic and relatable.

Then again, the new character design doesn’t really bother me much anymore since I play games to enjoy my time; ogling at heroes of the games is just an added bonus.

There are characters that I wished they would bring back if they ever want to make a sequel to DmC. I want Trish and Lady back! I am not really a fan of Kat since she can be considered as the classic damsel in distress type (albeit better than Kyrie who lacks personality). She is more of a sidekick rather than a leading lady. I just want a female character who can put Dante in his place from time to time. :P

Overall, I think it is definitely a game to play even if you are one of the naysayers during the initial announcements of DmC.

P.S: Can Little Nicky be considered as a Nephilim? Fans of the new DmC will know the answer to that. ;)

Move Comments in WordPress with Tako Movable Comments

Yes! I finally did it! I finally wrote a plugin and released it in the wild! Recently, I decided to write a WordPress plugin after seeing a post about how it is tedious to move comments around in WordPress.

Initially, I thought that moving comments shouldn’t be that hard. You can just update the comment’s post ID via phpMyAdmin or create a meta box that takes in the comment’s post ID. But isn’t it tedious to find out the post ID that you want to move the comments to? What if you don’t want to keep on accessing phpMyAdmin for that? And what if you have nested comments? Worse, if you have nested comments that look like this:

wp-threaded-com

Ideally, if you want to move the first comment by ‘mama’ above, the three remaining comments should be move to the same post ID as well. What’s the big deal? You can just move the comments that has mama’s first comment as the parent ID, right? Well, it is not that straight forward.

If you know how the comment parent ID works in WordPress, moving mama’s first comment will only move my (Renetta) first comment. It won’t move the second comment by mama and my second comment since mama’s second comment is a child to my first comment. Therefore, moving nested comments can be messy with WordPress.

This is why I decided to write a plugin that will make this easier. Remembering post ID is no longer needed as you can just choose the post title via a dropdown menu. You can move comments and nested comments across post, pages, and other custom post types. Threaded comments will be automatically move, of course!

Here is the link to Tako Movable Comments. Maybe some of you can try it out and let me know. You can fork it on Github if you have any ideas for a new feature.

Life Update (For Those Who Cares)

I haven’t update my blog for so many months! The summer holiday was awesome and now that the semester starts, I’ve been busy again. I was working on a new design for my blog but I didn’t get the time to finish it; got carried away during the summer and I just got lazy and was busy with other stuff. So what did I do when I am not blogging? I travelled, I read, and I gamed on my computer and also my iPad (Final Fantasy Dimensions; previously FF3).

Travelling
Summer Vacation: Bangkok
I travelled to Bangkok this summer. I have never actually explore Bangkok before; my holiday destinations have always been Phuket or Krabi whenever I visit Thailand. It is mainly because of the beach. This time, I managed to explore the city life. I love the malls in Bangkok but the street is rather smelly though. Most of the time, I travelled around Bangkok with the BTS Skytrain; It is a cheaper way to go from one city to another.

Bangkok is an interesting place. The tourists are pretty interesting too. When I was riding the Skytrain, I can’t help but hear 2 tourists arguing to each other about “ladyboys” (Thailand has a lot of Ladyboys and they are hotter than me. You really can’t tell sometimes).

Boy #1: Oh, that is definitely a “tranny”. I can tell one just by looking at them!
Girl #1: Well, how can you tell?
Boy #1: Trust me, I am an expert when it comes to ladyboys!
Girl #1: Oh…? Are you implying that you’ve been with one before? And that is why you are an expert?
Boy #1: No! I am just good at telling who’s a ladyboy and who’s not!
Girl #1: Well, it seems to me like you’re calling yourself a connoisseur of ladyboys! A connoisseur of coffee cannot truly be called a connoisseur without tasting coffees… *laughs*
*Debate Ensues*

And then, there are also tourists who talks about bikini waxing and how they want to wax their Forest of Dean or their botanical gardens. Riding the Skytrain could be terribly boring; eaves dropping other tourists is my favorite pastime whenever I am on the Skytrain.

Conference & Research Paper Presentation: Portugal
I went to Portugal earlier this month to attend a conference where I get to present a research paper that I had worked on with my professor and 2 other students. I went to a district called Faro for 3 days and I ended up playing at the beach after the presentation. I stayed next to the atlantic ocean; so pretty much everyday was beach time for me! And the seafood there is just delicious! Being in Portugal for 3 days is not enough. I definitely need more than a week if I travel. :P However, it is definitely a good 3-day escape from school…

School
School is hectic as usual. I am not enjoying most of the classes that I am taking this semester; I should’ve pick my courses a little bit more wisely. I am taking my final core course this semester and I’ll be done with my core courses. This semester, we have to work with a client. One of my tasks is to develop a WordPress plugin in order to allow the administrator to send SMS to all the registered users. I am also taking a database course which I enjoy; I think I am definitely learning something in this class. Those are the 2 courses that I truly enjoy this semester: the database course and my senior project.

Blogging
I want to blog more often now; abandoning my blog for the past 4 months is just not cool… Sometimes I just feel like getting a new domain and start over; but then I don’t see the point of doing that since I am going to blog mostly about my personal life and some technical stuff. I was thinking that if I want to buy a new domain or start a new blog, it should focus only on one thing, either personal updates or my thoughts on everything technical. My blog is pretty much a mix of personal life and my ramblings on WordPress and my coding woes. Currently, I like it that way. I don’t think so I need a new domain or a new blog; all I need is to blog more often.

Mr. Cutie Pie
Dating life has been quite awesome and Mr. Cutie Pie is a real darling; he has been spoiling me way too much. :P He gave me a teddy bear as my birthday gift. When I showed him a picture of my room back in Malaysia, he noticed that I didn’t have any plushies, teddy bears, or toys. I told him that my mother does not like to get toys or teddy bears for her children; she prefers to get us story books – yes, a typical tiger mother. :P Mr. Cutie Pie decides to make me a teddy bear instead; he got me this when he went to the States:

Winter Break Travel Plans
I just can’t wait for the winter break; I am planning my next holiday and I need to search for cheap tickets. I am going to leave Mr. Cutie Pie for 3 weeks in December in order to travel to some mysterious island this time. Alright, it is not mysterious; I might check out Boracay island in the Philippines. Mr. Cutie Pie can come if he wants; but I have my mommy there with me. He must behave… :P