Some Q&A Part 1

Someone send me an E-Mail.

how many hours a day you code?

what was the hardes part/feature you have programmed?

who are your best girls muse/aqours and worst?

how long till delete beatmap function and restart option in pause

menu? ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

what are the ideas for the game that you trashed into the bin - were

not implemented but could be cool?

name 3 reasons why should i come to indonesia?

The question looks like mixing alot things, like a personal question, Live Simulator: 2 questions, and Love Live! related question. You may wonder why, but recently I'm opening some kind of AMA related to technical thing about SIF. Here's my tweet mentioned about it (it's also pinned in my Twitter profile). Well, let's answer the question one by one.

how many hours a day you code?

Depends on my mood, time I have, school, and irl things. Most of the time I code 3 hours a day. 7 PM to 10 PM (UTC+8, no DST), but sometimes I code even at 8 hours a day. It all depends on many factors that you may can't think of. In short, my coding time is inconsistent.

 what was the hardes part/feature you have programmed?

 Hardest part? There are some. The first one is this, which turns out to be the base of all SIF WW cheats out there, sad. Second is FFmpeg video loader (FFX) for my Live Simulator: 2. Basically FFX loads any audio/video formats supported by current loaded FFmpeg (libav) libraries and you can use it as video storyboard for your beatmap in Live Simulator: 2. And the last is GUI. Yet, I still can't think a way how to structure GUI codes correctly. I always take too many assumptions when coding it, like optimization, multitouch support, textinput, and more.

who are your best girls muse/aqours and worst?

Myus (that's how I pronounce it. Too sad I can't type greek mu in my laptop) best girl, Honoka Kousaka. For worst girl, probably none, but I found Maki Nishikino is bit annoying (sorry Maki fan).

I prefer love things than hating it, but it's totally different for Aqours. I don't really like Aqours for some reason (and even angry to myself if I accidentally forgot to switch from Aqours mode to Myus mode before exiting SIF). But since you asked it, best girl for Aqours is Riko Sakurauchi, and worst girl is Ruby Kurosawa (sorry Ruby fan), because her voice anoys me a bit.

how long till delete beatmap function and restart option in pause

menu?

Not sure what you mean, but if you mean Live Simulator: 2, then it should arrive in v2.2 :P 

Update: It ariived in 3.0

what are the ideas for the game that you trashed into the bin - were

not implemented but could be cool?

Not sure what game, but if you mean Live Simulator: 2, then probably a full team simulation. This thing is probably arrive in my next project, FiLive! (rewritten Live Simulator: 2 to C++), but probably I'll start FiLive! development once Live Simulator: 2 v3.0 hits, which is in a few years in the future :P

name 3 reasons why should i come to indonesia?

There are plenty of reasons. But of course, not to meet me specially, since I'm introvert. Simple Google search result shows me article from telegraph.co.uk, which lists 15 reasons why you should visit Indonesia. So I'm just pick best reasons: Komodo Island, Borobudur Temple, and the diving to see corals, quoted from the same article, "One of the best ways to explore it is on a liveaboard boat around the Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia's West Papua province.".

I suggest you to visit Bali first. I also have plans to Bali in June, so if we're somehow meet each other, we'll start Time Lapse by Poppin' Party (the song I'm listening in loop while writing this).

EDIT: Updated FFmpeg video loader link to point to LS2 v2.x

Simple Screen Capture in Windows using FFmpeg

 One day, I want to record my FL Studio activity. I can't use FRAPS because I use Windows 8 where capturing Aero Desktop option in FRAPS is useless. I also tried CamStudio but it lags alot. I remembered that I have FFmpeg installed and use that for screen recording instead.

FFmpeg is a command-line application that focus mostly on audio and video related. Although it can be used to re-encode video to another format and it's bit complex, using it for screen recording is actually simple.

Before proceed, here are things you need

• FFmpeg. Can be downloaded here
• Stereo Mix audio input enabled in the audio devices (optional, only needed if you want to capture the audio also)

Now, extract the FFmpeg somewhere and double-click "ff-prompt.bat". It will add "ffmpeg" to the command prompt for the current CMD window. Now we can start recording.

To record specific window, the input will be title="<the window name>". To record the entire desktop, the input will be desktop.
Now to start recording, just type ffmpeg -f gdigrab -i <the input> capture.mkv and to stop recording, just press Ctrl+C in the CMD Window. The captured screen will be stored in "capture.mkv" file.

If you have stereo mix audio input, you can also record the audio. First we need to get the exact name of the stereo mix input name. Type ffmpeg -list_devices true -f dshow -i dummy 2>&1 | findstr /I "stereo mix". If there's no output, that means you don't have stereo mix. In my laptop, it output something like this

D:\pvid>ffmpeg -list_devices true -f dshow -i dummy 2>&1 | findstr /I "stereo mix"
[dshow @ 0000000001cbd040]  "Stereo Mix (Realtek High Definition Audio)"

"Stereo Mix (Realtek High Definition Audio)" is example of the actual stereo mix input name, at least in my laptop.

Now to record the audio+video, type ffmpeg -f dshow -i audio="<stereo mix name>" -f gdigrab -i <the input> capture.mkv

If you feel that your PC lags alot when capturing the screen or want to capture without losing any quality, you may want to capture the video (and audio if you capture it too) in uncompressed format first, then re-encode it later. FFmpeg also can be used to re-encode the video if you know how.

To record the uncompressed video only, type ffmpeg -f gdigrab -i <the input> -c:v libx264 -qp 0 -preset ultrafast capture.mkv. The size of the video might be large, but not as large as fraps.
For the audio+video, type ffmpeg -f dshow -i audio="<stereo mix name" -c:a pcm_s6le -f gdigrab -i <the input> -c:v libx264 -qp 0 -preset ultrafast capture.mkv

If possible, try to capture specific window only instead of the whole desktop. Capturing the whole desktop only gives framerate of 30FPS, while capturing specific window gives framerate 60FPS. It doesn't matter if the window size is small or big when capturing specific window, it will gives 60 FPS instead of the whole desktop which gives 30 FPS.

Loop-play YouTube video

OBSOLETE: Just right click the video then click "Loop".

Executing x86 machine code from char array in C/C++

The idea is:

1. create bunch of char array in a file containing the machine code(not as const)
2. mark the memory as executable with mprotect or VirtualProtect.
3. declare typedef function with their correct parameters and pointing to the address of our char array
4. call it

It's just pretty straightforward for a simple function, like a function that do x+1 or a*b, but function calling another function(e.x.: function calling strlen, malloc, etc.) needs the pointer to be calculated at first or the function will call wrong code(undefined berhaviour).

Okay so let's start. I've been make simple function that XOR 7303014 by x. This is the code

#include <stdio.h>
 
int foo_bar(int baz) {
 int foo=7303014;
 return foo^baz;
}
 
int main() {
 int val=1904132;
 int out=foo_bar(val);
 printf("%s",&out);
 return 0;
}

It looks simple right. It only prints string "bar" in the console. Now what we need is the foo_bar function as machine code. Open Hex Editor and open the executable then find the function.

Note: We are using x86 byte code for this. Take care of this if you're try to compile it as 64-bit code.
The highlighted hex is the foo_bar function that we need to get their machine code representation and put them in our new code. This is our char array declaration

char foo_bar[]={0x55, 0x89, 0xE5, 0x83, 0xEC, 0x10, 0xC7, 0x45, 0xFC, 0x66, 0x6F, 0x6F, 0x00, 0x8B, 0x45, 0x08, 0x8B, 0x55, 0xFC, 0x31, 0xD0, 0xC9, 0xC3};

Now we have completed point 1 above, now let's make some code to finish point 2, 3, and 4

typedef int (*foo_bar_t)(int );

int main() {
 foo_bar_t foo=(foo_bar_t)(void*)foo_bar;
 DWORD old_protect;
 VirtualProtect(foo,sizeof(foo_bar),PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE,&old_protect);
 int out=foo(0);
 printf("%s",&out);
 return 0;
}

Q: Why cast to void* first then cast it to foo_bar_t?
A: Visual Studio doesn't like casting foo_bar_t directly from char* so, cast it to void* first. GCC works fine without cast to void* above.

Ok that's our complete main function. Now let's explain it.

The point 2 is in the VirtualProtect function. VirtualProtect function mark address pointed by foo variable to be executable, readable, and writeable(see PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE). Without this call, point 4 will very likely to fail(throws Segmentation Fault/Access Violation)(be sure to include Windows.h)
The point 3 is above the main. The typedef.
Then, point 4 is below point 2. Again, calling the function without setting the memory protection would likely causes your program stop working.

Alright, this is the complete code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>
 
typedef int (*foo_bar_t)(int );
 
char foo_bar[]={0x55, 0x89, 0xE5, 0x83, 0xEC, 0x10, 0xC7, 0x45, 0xFC, 0x66, 0x6F, 0x6F, 0x00, 0x8B, 0x45, 0x08, 0x8B, 0x55, 0xFC, 0x31, 0xD0, 0xC9, 0xC3};
 
int main() {
 foo_bar_t foo=(foo_bar_t)(void*)foo_bar;
 DWORD old_protect;
 VirtualProtect(foo,sizeof(foo_bar),PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE,&old_protect);
 int out=foo(0);
 printf("%s",&out);
 return 0;
}

Now let's compile it and run it.

Our program run without error. That means we've been successfully run our machine code. That's for today.

Challenge: Compile both complete code above and find out why it prints "bar" and "foo".

Thinking out Loud "creepy" sound explained

Yesterday(15 May 2015) i have chat with my friends about Thinking out Loud song by Ed Sheeran, he says that it has "creepy" sound in it and he says that the news has been spreading in the world, specially in Indonesia (i think). I don't think that there's a "creepy" sound in it, so solve this "mystery"

First, i load up FL Studio and WaveCandy plugin in Master track, also loaded preset "Wine" with disabled "Blur Behind"(because i use Windows 8). Also extending the width of the Visualizer

Then i load Thinking out Loud song in Playlist as Audio Clip by dragging the file from File Explore to FL Studio 12 Playlist

My friend says that the "creepy" sound is right after Ed Sheeran says "baby my heart" so i'm listening the song and i reach it, i send this sound sample to my friend first.
My friend then respond to the sample that i send and he says "yes, that's it, i can hear it", i try to increase my speaker's volume, try to find where is the sound, and i hear something weird.
It's very likely that his(Ed Sheeran) sound looks weird while he's sliding his sound, then i upload one more sample again to my friend.


Then i see spectrum and this image is generated when i play the song(lyric: "Baby my, heart")

I mark the "creepy" sound in blue in picture above.

That's it, so i hear it again and again and i can sure that it's just Ed Sheeran voice sound weird after he says "Heart".

Summary: It's just his sound that sound weird for us, my friend also says "And there's nothing wrong in the recording he says". So the "creepy" in this post is just his voice sliding and sound weird.

That's my opinion about this, your opinion might be different