HAPPY'S PROFILE

Soo, my pc crashed just a moment ago and I can't seem to get back to windows without blue screen of death.
I hear some weird clicking voice from the pc whenever I try and then it restarts.

Soo, I'm probably not going to be as much on until I get it somehow fixed. Atm I'm posting from other pc in our house, but this is not mine, so.

I'll get back once I've either solved the problem, or somehow (if possible) recovered the data in the pc and re-installed Windows. I really have to get all the stuff back though. Most of my backups are several months old. I was about to do new ones yesterday, but I had to hurry to the liquor store before it closed. :(

Trying to get back asap~ :/

The Official Site

It's roughly 2 months until the worldwide release of FF XIII, anymore. While I have been skeptical of the direction of the series in the present day, I can't deny my impatience for getting a copy of this game in my hands, already.

Final Fantasy XIII brings some fresh innovation to the series with its new sort of battle system and fresh setting that features both futuristic and natural elements; it is set between a land of wilderness and the high-tech world above it.

Another thing I found out is that Yoshinori Kitase (part of lead design in Chrono Trigger, FF VI, VII, VIII and X) is making a return to the series. With this said, as well as after seeing several parts of playthrough video, I can say the game looks very much alike to Final Fantasy X in terms of screenplay. (I personally liked FF X very much, and it's one of my favorites, while directing in FF XII falls flat in comparison.)

What comes to the audiovisual presentation, Tetsuya Nomura is in charge of the art again, but this time the soundtrack has been done by Masashi Hamauzu (earlier work: SaGa Frontier 2, FF X, Unlimited Saga), a person that has all releases of Nobuo Uematsu to the date. From what I've heard the soundtrack is a pleasant new direction to the series, as well. It mixes futuristic and symphonic and while it might take some adapting to get into, in the end it does show excellent quality.

In conclusion from the looks of it, it seem as if the series is design-wise continuing from where it was left roughly 8 years ago with FF X, but without TIDUS.

I also like to imagine this to be some sort of counterpart to FF VII as the setting has some similar elements and Tetsuya Nomura was even asked to create a female version of Cloud Strife when designing the main character, Lightning.

With all of this said, to me it seems this will be another epic and memorable game added to the series.

Additional information:

Plot:

The plot of Final Fantasy XIII, taking place in a world known as Pulse, revolves around the fal'Cie, mechanical beings of godlike power created from crystals residing inside them. People who are marked by the fal'Cie for greater purposes are called l'Cie. Each l'Cie has a Focus, a goal the fal'Cie wants him or her to fulfill within a certain amount of time; however, the fal'Cie do not explicitly say what the goal is. L'Cie gain the ability to summon Eidolons, but this ability comes with a price: if a l'Cie dies before completing his or her Focus, fails to tame his or her Eidolon, or fails to complete his or her Focus within a set period of time, he or she becomes a monster known as a Cie Corpse. If a l'Cie does complete his or her Focus, the reward is not much better: permanent transformation into a crystal. For this reason, being chosen as a l'Cie is seen as a curse.

Some 1,300 years ago, a fal'Cie named Orphan constructed a paradise for humanity: the shell-like city of Cocoon, which floats high above the surface of Pulse. Then Orphan created life forms and machines for Cocoon's inhabitants to use, and humanity flourished. Over time, after disaster destroyed Oerba Village and wiped out its residents, the people of Cocoon began to fear for the safety of their world, worrying that it would be cast down from the sky into the hell that they saw Pulse to be.

Although most Cocoon citizens have never seen Pulse with their own eyes, they have been told that it is a dangerous place that has strange effects on those who venture down to its surface. Consequently, anyone who is discovered to have visited Pulse is immediately subjected to quarantine and exile by the theocratic government of Cocoon, known as the Sanctum. The Sanctum enforces this policy with its strongest military branch, which is called PSICOM.

As Snow leads the resistance group Team Nora in an attempt to stop the purging of civilians, the mysterious Lightning fights her way past PSICOM soldiers with the aid of Sazh to find a Pulse fal'Cie, Anima, who turned her sister, Serah (who is also Snow's fiancée), into a l'Cie. Through a chain of events, these three, along with two exiles, Vanille and Hope, are forced by the fal'Cie of Pulse to become l'Cie, and with that become enemies of humanity with the Focus of bringing about the downfall of Orphan and Cocoon.

Mechanics - battles:

The concept for Final Fantasy XIII's battle system is to maintain the strategic nature of command-based battles. The Active Time Battle system will return, but it will work differently from its predecessors. Users will be able to chain large numbers of commands together in order to achieve attack bonuses.

In battle, the player can only control one character at a time out of a party of up to three.
Multiple commands can be stacked into slots per turn and released at the same time to form a combo. The number of command slots increases as the characters grow in strength.
These commands include series staples such as Attack, Fire, Blizzard and Cure, as well as new ones such as Ruin, Ruinaga, and Radial Strike. The difference between XIII's battle system and the ATB gauge is that these commands can still be placed in the slots even though the bar has run out, and the actions will be executed once the required slots are filled up. This, however, affects the chain combo hits as the combo has been interrupted.

The game does not make use of MP but introduces "cost points" for each command, which determine how many times the commands can be used per turn. Because magic cannot be used outside of battle, the HP of the party is completely restored after each battle.

The player is able to view the HP and name of the enemy before engaging it in battle. When engaging an enemy, the camera moves to another position and the battle menu appears, making the battle transitions nearly seamless. The after-battle victory screen in XIII holds information such as the time it took to finish the battle, the highest number of combos executed, the number of break attacks and the quality of battle which is determined by a ranking of one to five stars.

A "break state" is one of the new features of the Final Fantasy XIII battle system. The breaks refer to the times an enemy enters a state of non-retaliation. This occurs when a chain combo has been maintained for a certain period of time on an enemy. When a high level combo has been achieved, the enemy will glow red and enter this state, during which the player will be able to inflict high amounts of damage. The chain bar will gradually deplete during this period; when it becomes empty, the break state ends.
The party will be able to purchase new weapons in the game and actually see them in battle.

Mechanics - leveling - THE SPHERE GRID IS MAKING RETURN:

The leveling system for the game is called the Crystarium System which resembles the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X. Instead of gaining experience points after winning a battle, characters gain CP (Crystarium Points) which can then be spent in order to unlock abilities and increase attributes such as maximum HP.

A few playthrough videos (May contain poilers (In japanese) )
The last one is just a song from the soundtrack.



Looking forward to it yet?

So... Last night I had CRAZE in my dream. He looked like his Demon Tower avatar with that blonde-haired RTP guy with darker skin tone. We were in dark room and I said I've never done it with man before, and asked Craze what they usually prefer - "Is it... oral?" and Craze answered me yes oral's the best, and explained what feels good!
I was lucky the dream ended right there, but what the hell, as far as I know I'm totally straight, so Craze, please don't come into my dreams! The next thing I know is I'm attending the finnish Big Brother tv format. (What .. the hell.) and apparently I had shaved my eyebrows for some reason, and utterly failed at it. (I had barely none left at all.) So what follows is that I win the show or something, then I'm suddenly taking part in the Oscar Gala (For winning BB...?) and share the table with Robin Williams, Kiefer Sutherland and some random woman. Robin thinks I'm drunk for me acting so dumb, and I call Kiefer Sutherland Jack Bauers for not remembering his real name.


What about the rest of you? Have you had any weird dreams recently?

I don't know when was the last time NPCs were discussed about, but I bet there has been one or a few.

So I just realized today that I could brush up my general NPC dialogue context. I could probably figure out some tips for myself if I now took a time to think about the subject, but it doesn't really hurt to hear out everyone's opinions. (As some other people might use help with the same matter.)

= What makes NPCs dialogue coherent? What makes it interesting, and not out of place?

Your general tips for writing good NPCs?

edit: ps. could you move this to game design?

I thought why not post this at the forums as well, so here we go:

So, I came to think my working methods efficiency for Ascendence, and the general time usage of the project this morning. As the game was originally aimed to be a project for 3 people. In the end I was left (almost) all alone again, and I can't help but to feel it's going to take me at least three time as long to finish, as originally planned!

When we begun, there was 2 people bouncing off the ideas for the story, and two, in head of directing the game. At least that produced a solid plot-line and direction for game. There was also 1 person assisting with the gameplay mechanics and oh, one more person doing a few maps.

Now as most of the game seems very clear to me in my mind, and I see all that needs to be done, I just sometimes feel overwhelmed of the workload (again.) So all the plans and the instructions are there! The workers? Only me.

Now, I don't mind doing it alone at all. Actually I do prefer it from my creative point of view, and keeping my project independency in mind, but being totally honest to myself and thinking of getting the entire game done (which is the most important matter concerning the entire project) I could really use some help.

Now, I'm still thinking of which parts I could hand out for other people, or which aspects they could help with. I've got used to cover every aspect, and have ideas for all of them. Also, I consider my standards high, at least if we consider the subject I am judging, as an average Joe creating a solid RPG.

Of course I've got my weak and inefficient parts too. Right off, writing and number crunching being two for example. I do have 2 persons helping me a bit with writing already though, but that leaves out number crunching, in other words, gameplay mechanics, or to be even more precise. RM database.

Now don't get me wrong. I do work around database and try to see a lot of effort to polish all the database parts too, but when it just comes to time usage, it's abysmal timesink for me. I can do it alone, but I am writing this with finished game in my mind.

So, if you think you could be up to cooperate with my ideas and assist developing Ascendence in way or another, let me know. In priority, I am firstly just looking for someone to cover a part of the database work, ie. skills, items, enemies, and other cool stuff like that. So if you feel creative on that part of game developing I'd be glad to hear out your ideas and share some of mine.

Though I must mention this again. I've got the basic structure and ideas for gameplay aspects covered, so you don't need to worry about getting the whole load on your shoulders. I am just looking for a person who has some fresh ideas and could help with some tweaking, and adding more to the gameplay sector.

Artists and people who feel comfortable working with pixel graphics and sprites ahoy, too. I've sure got something for you too, if you want to help the complete version of Ascendence see daylight some day.

All in all, artists and geeks, drop me a line. Preferably those with several years of experience on whatever aspect you're offering to help me with. I have personally been working my own games for 7 years and I'm highly inspired and positive of finishing this one. Preferably in the next three. =)

Oh yeah and abiding the rules... In case you haven't heard of the whole game, it's right >here<