Doing it Again...

Honestly, I don't blog much, particularly because I don't have enough time to think about what my next post would be. I could've released one of my drafts from years past, but one thing remained: the passion for blogging was simply not there, especially with all the work I'm doing for years. Coming here again made me realize myself: I don't have the energy required to think what kind of topic I'd write about.

New Year, New Me(ss of ideas)

Global GT Lights cars racing in Silverstone by butter_lord and Kad'O

It's already halfway past January and things have been positive so far for me, at least for normal things I do. Past 15 days were filled with me following this year's Dakar Rally while being in awe with how the cinematography are put along with the commentator's plethora of dad jokes, puns, remarks witty enough to wipe floors with Lorelai Gilmore, and sneaks that unfortunately doesn't include Taylor Swift references (but thankfully I got that one covered myself). Other things include finishing Combat Mecha Xabungle which I consider it as an "unserious mecha anime with more comedy bias despite having its fair share of serious moments", and an office trip to Jogjakarta of which I haven't visited the place for a long time, but last and not least is rebooting my content creation project after reflecting on my actions in terms of creations, although I have to say I still have a slow start with not that much post interactions along the way.

Even then, my homework is stacked as the time goes, but my discovery of a new method in creation and a more active community actually help alleviating the burden and actually make the final work satisfying. I do have this target where I need to make sure that I can make good creations and cash in some new audiences on social media on the way to keep the top down racing genre alive and interesting, especially with more games on the sub-genre making their returns such as GeneRally 2. That said, this was something that led to the first ever major announcement for the new project: the 2023 Dakar Rally T1 class cars, three of them, with 10 major drivers represented so far.

But Dakar Rally vehicles are just the tip of the iceberg. It actually started with something that doesn't have to do with top down racers, or racing in general, let alone racing games: Taylor Swift's new album, Midnights.

The Resurrection of GeneRally 2

A screenshot of GeneRally 2 (Image: GeneRally 2's Steam Page)

The year was 2013, GeneRally 2 was announced following the release of the new version of GeneRally. The Kickstarter campaign for the sequel has kicked off and with that, a new hope for a renewed classic that has been around since the early 2000s. The failure of the campaign, however, started a domino effect to the game's downfall, made worse with the silence of the project leader himself James Burgess (although slow but sure there were progression blogs that were written), taking its toll to the community. This doesn't mean the game is dead; GR2 was still being worked on in closed doors while GRPL Discord Server carried on activities in the original game.

Essential Listening: Ridge Racer Infinity

Author's note: I'm not too knowledgeable with music genre so apologies if I described wrong genre for some of the songs featured in this post.

Official artwork for RoBKTA's Ridge Racer Infinity (Image: Firaga Records)

The Nonsense is Back, Evolved as Ever!

Racing. Track featured is Trial Mountain v5.3 by nomscar.

Well, I had to say that I wasn't as active in blogging as before, not knowing what I had to write. That, however, has changed and the motivation returns to me after a series of events in the past few weeks. I had doubts that people would still read blogs now that people are more interested towards video blogs, but even then some things are better done as a blog post rather than a video blog, especially when I think about the fact that I haven't had the sufficient resources for it.

RENDY'S BLOG, I have returned.

And so I shall begin this from zero once more...

I'm pretty sure you readers are wondering why I haven't posted since awhile. If I were to continue to where I was, it'd be another set of KOF ALL STAR posts, especially dealing with a lot of events (which I didn't get to write as time went sadly). Unfortunately, I wasn't at a capacity where I could blog once more and still focused on real life, but most particular my focus was to find the job, something I didn't get until last year where I actually landed one. 2020 was a tough road to traverse especially dealing with the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic which has affected a lot of lives, mine included, and things kinda topped off with the loss of my father who had to succumb to his sickness days before his passing.

However, even despite of that sad story weeks later, I became more determined than ever in searching for jobs, and eventually I hit one; a friend of mine recommended me to a Jakarta-based brand consultation office as a freelance graphic designer and after an interview, the HRD accepted me to be employed as so, ending what I can dub as a year-long and a half drought of job search. To be frank, I had a hard time in traversing the steep learning curves of my job description, but over time I developed more in designing contents despite adversities. Sadly it only lasted until the end of February, but it was a pleasant experience, plus definitely something to expect when working on the creative design field; copywriting, drafting, designing, plus pending revisions before leaving with a final design.

However, things don't stop there as I was called to be a staff in a regency office nearby by my late father's friend. As much as I insisted that the graphic design job was a main one, I took this office offer anyway which meant that in addition of office works I gotta have time for designs, and depending on the copywriting of a particular post, designs can be worked as quick as less than an hour or probably less than a day due to the complexity plus illustrations. Back to the office work though, this has been turns and tides for my first year, and the second year should be as exciting.

As such, what became a continuation of the dark saga has turned into a brave new, positivity-ridden arc, a new chapter in which I've finally obtained some of the privileges I wanted in the past, like an internet subscription for starters. Gone were the days when I had to trust my phone's tethering connection and limited data at home which, granted, was also the same case for my brothers. This also allowed me to buy a cooling fan, RAM upgrades, and a new PC monitor, plus finally fix one of my laptop's broken monitors. While both of these 2012-2013 spec lappies still stand up to this date, I do have plans on buying the new one in order to keep up with more modern specs. Outside of this, I also get to discover a lot more of new games, of which there'll be a topic of its own later on, and get to discover more communities as time went by.

But even with those, there are things I still can't beat even with the new spirit, particularly my Creator's Block. Even with Wi-Fi already in place, I still couldn't able to come up with an interesting topic and perform some research on things within the topic, even can't think about either "will this thing generate a lot of views?" or "will this hold well amidst the era where video essays or vlogs are even more powerful tools than convenient blogging?" This doesn't just affect this blog, it also affects my other blog Fandom Warrior which has been on an infinite hiatus since 2019, and even worse with the  aforementioned circumstances going forward which led me drift away from covering fandom competitions and later TV fandoms, even I don't feel like current TV shows do have this particular fandom energy that would be established years back.

This isn't limited to just blogging and the fandom stuff though, even this also affected all my WIPs. You see, the WIPs you've seen years back still haven't see their light of day in terms of release, and the worst part is that my mind wasn't on the game(s) I actually love due to the life circumstances. I did try my best at a new car last year, got their physics done, graphics partially done with shadings, and that's it. However, I haven't been able to get my hands on further revisions, but someday I'll get those in line. The problem with my cars is that I often go extra on small details, even though it'd be scaled down in-game anyway. It's due to my influence on other cars from another top-down games which made their presence known with their shadings and details, although some are actually taken from 3D models with appropriate lighting.

Despite all of those things, fast forward to this year in which my current life gives me a small advantage to fight the Creator's Block outright. In fact, this is finally where I want to take action; I am not the type of person who wants to have "New Year's Resolutions," especially if you refer to my past blog posts from years back, but I'd like to make an exception for this year because all I want is to fight Creator's Block and become who I was years ago while fusing it with my present self. I just want to get things done and free some of my perpetual WIPs into their rightful state: their release. Additionally, I want to tick off my perpetual to-do list of all sorts, of which some has been done this year, but it's 5% overall, and I expect myself to go ham with it sooner or later.

Hopefully I can keep this blog alive and well once more, like in the past, and that I am able to find some content ideas to make this page fresh. While waiting for my next post, please do not forget to hydrate yourself, it's the most important thing.

~[R]

Rendy's Battle Report 04: IT'S A NEW RUMBLE! YES IT IS!

The King of all updates is here!

The first time a Developer's Note about a future collaboration in The King of Fighters ALL STAR surfaced, nobody would guess what the next one will be. People have been pointing on Gintama, an anime series whose collaboration in the game was established in the Japanese version, as the next collaboration. However, this is a "special collaboration that no one would have expected" as the game's Chief Producer said, ruling out what could've been an established collaboration coming to Global. The next couple of days, the collaboration teaser gave hints of wrestling, and eventually the deal was made: it is, without a doubt the one and only, the WWE, the World Wrestling Entertainment, bringing six of wrestling's well-known superstars to the game where fighters who "shot fires, lightnings, and all kinds of things" (if you actually paid attention to Kofi Kingston's dialogue) battle.

Along with the three-week collaboration full of moments and challenges comes a new gameplay system as well, with Unified System, New Infinite Repeat Summon, and others, as well as new gameplay mechanics.

Rendy's Battle Report 03: Keeping Up with the Power Creeps

This post contains spoilers for the storyline of The King of Fighters ALL STAR

First of all, Eid Mubarak to all readers of the blog! We went on a different Ramadan in which things worked out differently due to the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown, but after all it's the same 'ol fasting month. Happy Eid Mubarak to everyone except to those people who had the nerve to populate several places despite being advised to stay at home already. I don't care if it's nostalgia or not, you all suck, and you should've deserved some Attitude Adjustment.

In the last post, I purposely skipped one thing that was happening during the False Halloween entirety because this topic needs its own section since the last post was also long, a fruit of my posting absence: The Platinum Battle Card Summon. It is the banner that gave player a chance to obtain any of the six-star Battle Cards at a rate of 2%:, be it a fighter-specific 3PG Special Card, a fighter-specific option card, or even the first six-star set in the Global: Light and Shadow, featuring Noah. However, it's not just the Noah set that's got a spotlight, the False Halloween set is this too; Time for Medical Checkup offers more balanced buffs and damage galore useful for those who have Strike skills, with CP buffs worth more than the existing 5-tier cards, even the Tekken set.

Obviously mobile games are subject to Power Creeps where, every update, there's always either a better unit and/or a better item obtainable in some way, but with the caveat that the player will go extra mile to get any of them, be it in events that would require an amount of upgrades (like in the case of Real Racing 3's events, whether it's Track Day, Special Event, or Limited Time Series) or perhaps a gacha where the drop rate is generally less than one percent, like what we're talking about right now...

Facing the Outbreak

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I start my year posting again in an unfortunate timing, but here goes something... ☕

A post shared by Rendy Andrian Y (@tsukasa_kadoya) on Apr 9, 2020 at 3:55am PDT

As we all know, the Coronavirus (Covid-19) disease kept claiming its victims throughout the world and we still do our best to flatten the progressively-climbing curve. So many things have been postponed or even canceled to an extent, all to avoid potential spreading of the virus. However, not all hope is lost as a slew of new events, mostly e-Sports series. To this day, the pandemic still continues until God knows when, hopefully that this can be over soon although it won't be that soon.

As for myself, well, the past couple of months have been, if I can say so myself, just like last year, only with a couple of differences here and there. Last year, I just completed distributing my Bachelor's thesis and prepared myself for the road towards graduation which was at the end of June and searched for jobs in-between. This year, I stay home with my family still and went to zero destination due to the pandemic (except for buying necessities) and a month ago I am finally employed in a social organization after no luck in numerous interviews. Apart from that, I spent my time more on mobile gaming than doing anything on PC.

Rendy's Battle Report 02: The N Word

Disclaimer: No offensive remarks were made at the making of this post.

While I've been absent on writing for the past couple of weeks due to job search (and eventually landed on one, thankfully), I've been getting a lot of great stuffs in The King of Fighters ALL STAR. Initially, this post would detail the Wonderland and Valentine events plus all the roulette fighters and new summon systems, then proceeded with Samurai Shodown collaboration in the next one, since, at the time of this post, we're in the last stretch of the False Halloween event. However, I feel like given the lack of Wonderland and Valentine fighters I have and having no roulette characters won, plus my absence, things will go a little bit lengthy here.

Basically, the first quarter of 2020, despite the current affairs happening right now, was an eventful one for KOF AS. Athena in Wonderland and Valentine events were ran in the Global server, and the second collaboration with Samurai Shodown went pass by with a great success. Aside from them, lots of fighters were offered in different ways: '99 Krizalid, '03 Terry Bogard, NESTS Style Kyo from XIII, '03 Mukai, XIV Nakoruru, and 2001 Igniz were obtainable via their respective gacha while NESTS fighters make their way to the spotlight in their respective roulette events, with Whip, Kula Diamond, Angel, and Leona make their original series debut after making their debut in ALL STAR costumes, and even '98 Mai and 2001 May Lee joined the roulette fun. Past FES fighters are also offered via the new Summon System which I will detail within the next set of paragraphs...

RnTheAndrian Goes Professional!

After a number of considerations, I have decided that maintaining my Behance profile is the way to go. Despite my lack of luck in job interviews for the past year, I always wanted to have a portfolio page where I can dump some of my works there. Previously, I crammed in a number of works on my CV file within the second page. It did help, but the portfolio within the CV didn't have that much kick.

Before this, I opened a deviantArt account years back, but has since never touched it, ever. Despite intentions of posting my works there, no execution of any kind was done despite even I featured my own dA account on the site at some point. The idea of an online portfolio has never gotten into me until earlier this year in a bid to create a much better portfolio than just a series of personal work dumps within the CV. This is what drove me to eventually create a Behance account and start posting my projects a couple of days later, but obviously I will need more work in presentation remembering that this is my first time I created an online portfolio. Apparently, this website's ability to showcase work portfolio isn't limited to graphic design projects so I can dump a number of web design and motion graphic stuffs as well.

My biggest conflict was my amount of personal projects against the number of projects I actually did for organizations and stuffs, but that stems from my comparing own works with those with years of work experiences. Even before I conceived an online portfolio, I always thought that my works were "just stuffs" and that's it, apart from my organizational works that is. I ended up with inserting a logo for my friend's Instagram-based shop, a number of 3D works (including the low-poly racing scene and the low-poly Earp Homestead), and even cars from Turbo Sliders and MiniRacingOnline. Yes, I actually put game stuffs as graphic assets worthy of being featured in portfolio, because why not? These are scratch-made after all. If Bao T. Nguyen's Auto Modellista-inspired creation thought me something about how great personal projects are done, why not? Those doubts has been vanished, though it kinda needed its own media as time goes. Also, the VS Racing 2 work by Martin Öberg got me thinking about how treating my Turbo Sliders cars as enhanced graphical assets in addition of being an add-on as well. Worth to try!

Please do enjoy my online portfolio! More projects will be added soon as time goes. I hope you readers enjoy my works as much as I do!

~[R]

Let's Make a Fan Fiction, Again!

Towards the end of January, I found myself fleshing out my mega-crossover fan fiction project at a random whim. I don't know why but a thought of making a crossover fan fiction has finally kicked in after a long time. I mean, I've actually wanted to make one but had to put it in a perpetual backburner due to a lot of stuffs for some reason, and now suddenly I got back here again after not doing anything story-related for a couple of years.

Long story short, I've had two three projects when it comes to fan fiction, at least those with released chapters. First one is a street racing fan fiction with an outlandish concept where cars can even drive inside shopping malls (but stopped halfway through), second one is a competition-themed fan fiction between television shows that has seen two seasons with the third being worked on until it wasn't, and the third is a version of that but this time with teams of three being featured and has bigger numbers of competing teams. Three different fan fictions, three different places, but all share the same thing: I hate how I executed them nowadays. So now I ended up conceiving a concept for the new one.

Rendy's Battle Report 01: The Festive Fest Units Festival

Obey the tier list! Obey the tier list! Obey the tier list!

First of all, this post is way belated than planned since I'm still on a job search at the moment, among others. Thankfully, I managed to snag an interview last Thursday. Hopefully I can get employed because that's what all matters for me now.

Realizing that I've been more active than ever in The King of Fighters ALL STAR, I've decided that I'll be making some sort of random recaps of my progress in the same vein as my car skinning progresses. Playing this game for about more than 100 days realized that I'm on my phase where I've become grown with the KOF universe, and ALL STAR has cemented that. The scavenger hunt for KD-0079 origins and getting into the rabbit's hole has really helped, and it seems that my new gaming pattern has been shaped yet again after being broken during my first discovery.

The Decade's End (Entering the new one)

I actually revisited my Bachelor's thesis presentation art and turned it into a New Year's festivity. Helps that it also doubles as a one-year anniversary of my document's completion.

At last, the 2010s has finally ended and we're now into a new decade. If I have to be honest, it's been quite an emotional ride, both personally and on the internet. Coming to the decade with a "brute force" approach and progressively gaining purpose on what I've been doing, and later leaning towards real-life stuffs as the decade's conclusion came closer, it has been ten years full of all ups and downs as I learned and discovered new stuffs.

November 26 Excellence, KOF AS Stage - A Bloody Fate with Tekken

The King of Fighters and Tekken, two of the world's prominent fighting game franchises, finally meet by fate to see who's the strongest of all. Fighters of the two worlds gather to settle the score in the November 26 update brought to the Global players by The King of Fighters: ALL STAR. Eight characters from the Bandai Namco Games property were brought into the mobile game with various events and items available for acquiring.

This is the second and final part of the post, of which two of my favorite mobile games dropped their collaboration contents on the same date: November 26. EA/Firemonkeys' racing game Real Racing 3 released its new update featuring Formula 1 content, bringing in 10 teams and 20 drivers from the 2019 and the new Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, of which I already wrote the short review here. As of this post, the KOF AS collaboration with Tekken is close to ending, of which it included the Rush Event, Roulette Event, and gacha banners for Tekken fighters, both for fighters and Battle Cards, divided into two different volumes each.

November 26 Excellence, RR3 Stage - Formula 1 has arrived!

November 26 shall go down as the day of superb collabs with two games I play have their new versions featuring them released on the same date. Real Racing 3's newest update brought in the 2019 season of Formula 1 content which made it the game's biggest update yet with a couple of changes in game, while The King of Fighters ALL STAR brought in the collaboration with Tekken, a prominent name in the fighting game genre and living up the modern spirit of the series' beat 'em up minigame Tekken Force which existed in the older entries of the franchise, featuring contents based on Tekken 7, the franchise's recent entry.

That said, this post will be split into two parts, both dedicated to RR3 and KOF AS respectively. This first post will revolve on RR3 and its Formula 1 update which featured the 2019 season teams and a new track of Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, among others. The "big" in the "big change" isn't even a joke, as in adding "the same car" to the game. We're talking about dropping an entire motorsporting event like Formula 1 to the game with its dedicated content, something that appropriately has to be reacted with one Metal Slug sound clip.

The King of Fighters ALLSTAR - Putting a Mobile Spin to the Classic

(Image: Netmarble / SNK Wikia)

Internationally, SNK has taken spotlight once more in the fighting game industry as of late, especially years after The King of Fighters XIV released years ago. Joining Super Smash Bros. Ultimate through Fatal Fury's Terry Bogard for this November has been something special for the long-running Japanese video game company known for top notch fighting game franchises, but it didn't stop there as The King of Fighters goes mobile with a new spin on the classic, finally released internationally this October. The game has been released in Japan for quite some time, but October 21st was the day the The King of Fighters ALLSTAR takes the global stage, something I'm sure many people would want to play.

The thing about KOF AS is that I have never ever been hyped as much for a game to the point that I spent a lot more time to it than normal since discovering Turbo Sliders a decade and years ago, even as someone who's just months in the KOF fandom despite going through the means of series' soundtracks instead of one of the games (I'm not a good fighting game player, really). Looking at the gameplay before the release, the game looks fun, and with my new (better) phone prepared for the fight, I know it was time to add another game to a library, breaking my mobile gaming pattern beyond Real Racing 3, Motorsport Manager series, and Grand Prix Story 2.

The thing is that I just took a dive to the KOF world about two months ago when I tried to discover a techno-rock music I heard a long time ago, which revealed to be KD-0079, the Hero team theme from the '99 installment. The fact that I discovered how the rest of the installments' musics fared, played them on infinite loop (thanks to a music player plugin), and learned the lore despite haven't being able to play the game, quickly turned me into a KOF stan.

Back to My Turbo Sliders Nonsense...

Don't worry, it's just a mockup. You need to calm down!

So apparently last month saw me suffering from what I may call as the Ramadan Blues, sort of like Monday Blues but in the fasting month, in which in this case I ended up spending more time on bed than on the computer, apart from break fasting with friends at some point, plus some near-Eid works like house cleaning and new clothes. Even despite promising myself doing a lot of stuffs like continuing my 3D works or stuff like that, the only finished product I managed to produce in the last fasting month is none other than the E!Online TV ship competition recap, analysis, and spreadsheet, and not even race car-related stuffs like, for instance, the Formula car I just did prior to the fasting month, or any of my Turbo Sliders projects.

No later than one week past Eid, I started to have an urge to return to the creator's desk, and I just did, simply by opening one of my existing references and tried a new approach at carmaking. It turns out doing a new approach on the carmaking, which I will explain later here, is actually fun and more hassle-free than the last time I did. Apparently, I restarted with a bang as I jot down three main cars as a new WIP of mine and actually completed one for my long-term project. Earlier before the fasting month, I did work on one new track which I was inspired after watching the first World Tour event of the FIA-certified Gran Turismo Sport Championship, of which one of the tracks used was the latest addition at that time, being the Autopolis Circuit in Oita Prefecture, Japan, and I did another car as well...

Rendy's Car Skinning Life Ep 07: Completed Product and Polished Concept

It was a usual morning a week ago until I found out that the filming for Wynonna Earp's fourth season got delayed due to monetary issues from the production house. Tons of fans rallied on Twitter with the hashtag #FightForWynonna and has tagged SyFy and IDW Publishing accounts in hopes to make sure the filming can continue. I had no expectation that this day won't come and my show would face the same situation that once suffered other shows like Timeless, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Lucifer, with two of which were actually renewed after its original cancellation status. Apparently, this fight was also parallel to One Day At A Time as well given the show's production hiatus as well. Many brought their GIFs from the show, but many brought in fan arts and creations as well to help strengthen the rally, and show that there are a part of the Earpers with artistic tastes.

Yours truly? Well, I haven't considered making anything until I found out I actually made a Wayhaught MP4-12C a long time ago, and that I haven't done skinning in a while while I already packed myself a new concept at disposal, both the livery and the project. It's been quite a long time since I worked something along the lines of skinning which, actually, was almost a year ago when I reworked my old car and made something out of the Formula RaceRoom (and on a side note, I haven't touched any inches of the PVP Engineering Aston Martin yet, but I'll go into that later). Barring my work on the Bachelor's thesis, I focused myself on making some 3D stuffs just to learn myself at it and did a couple of watered down liveries I'd like to work in the future with the Wayhaught car's designs being one of them. Working with that, new ideas materialized and a new concept just popped.

My Misadventures in Coding an Autonomous Racer

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In thesis defense, we talk business. What happened afterwards is that I've finally succeeded. Yes, your homeboy is now qualified for graduation now 🎓 (taken by my Supervisor, Arini, M.T.)

A post shared by Rendy Andrian Y (@tsukasa_kadoya) on Feb 7, 2019 at 1:33am PST

I've promised myself that 2019 will be my year of return. 2017 was kinda hard for me and I wanted to treat 2018 as my recovery year, to which I successfully did it in the final days of the year by finishing my paper. I started out this year with a bang by having a thesis seminar in January (from now on, any instance of "final paper" would be considered as "bachelor's thesis" here) and since then I've been busy with completing my administrative requirements for my thesis defense which in turn is the reason why I don't post anything about this Awards Season on my other blog. So far, nothing's special happening as all that remains is the waiting towards this year's Oscars, the awards season for TV ended in SAG Awards, and the online couple competition hasn't begin yet, maybe next week? Nobody knows...

One week ago, however, the same day where I properly posted something nice on Instagram again like above embedded post, was where the end of the road for me in a spectacularly successful fashion despite the college feeling like a ghost town with only a few people around which would explain why there's a lack of more festive shots after my thesis defense. Yes, the actual word I was looking for to describe the final test for my final paper is basically "Bachelor's Thesis Defense" ("Bachelor's Thesis", as in the "final paper" I always refer to + "Thesis Defense") which I did during when the photo was taken by one of my supervisors (obviously). It actually went well despite a little stuttering at some point, and there was the feeling where I opt for straightforward actions, answering the examiners' questions without any difficulty since the topic I've chosen was in sync to my interests and the fact that I struggled during the development of the application helped a lot.

But then you started to wonder what kind of application I developed that it took too long for me to develop it. It is actually something to do with artificial intelligence, something I haven't considered as I tried to find something that could reach my multimedia roots as well. Apparently, I came across a game that eclipses both entertainment and education values needed for my project in the form of The Open Racing Car Simulator (TORCS), an Open Source racing game that has been used by researchers as a platform to test out artificial intelligence-based controllers of varying approaches. Considering that the game has been used by international researchers and I came across zero papers from my country that discussed this topic, the decision was ultimately made at that moment. The project took roughly more than a year due to the fact that I have to re-learn programming languages, as well as the approach I use and how to make a controller in the game, but the end result was satisfying enough.