S. F. LAVALLE'S PROFILE

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/24/big-changes-and-one-bighorn-beast-afoot-in-final-fantasy-xiv/

Anyone play this game?

They sound pretty serious about "fixing" this game. New job system? Revamped battle system? I read some of the post, it seems they are (and have been) essentially re-building the game. They're ditching many of the originally advertised features, some in lieu of what was already in FFXI. They're taking away physical levels in favor of pure job levels (as in FFXI and other FF games). This pretty much cancels out of the central themes of the original design (a theme which saw its way into the game's official logo); that of assuming the role pertinent to whatever you're holding in your hand. Not that it was a fantastic idea in practice, but FFXIV's problems was so much about execution, and I'm not convinced the ideas were bad. But perhaps people complained and just wanted FFXI HD.

FFXIV was a beautiful game, what I played of it. I was actually excited to be playing an MMO with that scale, where characters were properly proportioned and every place seemed grand as opposed to WoW's cartoony appearance. But holy crap was the game unplayable. The battle system revamp would be most welcome, in my opinion, because what they had was so cryptic and utterly disconnected from the player that I thought hitting buttons on the action bars was akin to shouting suggestions to your character who would choose whether or not to listen. They're adding auto-attack back in, which is a no-brainer, but I hope they take this opportunity to increase the pace of the battles and give the player more skill choices to make instead of waiting for TP bars to fill up or chain-casting a spell like in FFXI.

I understand they made a number of significant changes to FFXI to make it far more playable than it was at release (I stopped before the third expansion came out and never looked back). I wonder how many revisions will be made before FFXIV becomes playable, if it's possible.

Do you think there's a point at which the game deserves another look, or have you written off the game completely out of principle?

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/10/riccitiello-talks-project-ten-dollar-and-digital-distribution/

There is some interesting discussion regarding this position by EA to recoup from losses perceived to be caused by the used game market. To sum up, new EA games will be shipped with "day-one DLC" which is "bonus" content codes packed in with new games, redeemable as soon as you buy the game and get it home, in the form of many things such as additional equipment (Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age), and even as much as bonus quests and contests (Dragon Age). This could possibly go so far as to include the capability to use online multiplayer for the title. The purchaser of used games obviously will not get these codes, but have the capability to purchase these codes (which is where the "Ten-Dollar" moniker comes in) to restore the bonus content.

I have my own thoughts on the matter which I can go over later, but before I taint the pool, I invite you to share your thoughts first.

Found a song I thought I'd lost! I made it several years ago (2001, maybe 02). Never had a project to attach it to, just a fit of inspiration. I actually like it more than I thought I would, this many years later. But I invite ya'll to let me know what you think =)

http://rpgmaker.net/users/SFLaValle/locker/lament.mp3

The Podcast topic got me thinking about some input I'd like to hear on other narrative techniques.

The use (or lack) of pauses has already been well-discussed. The gist of the consensus was that pauses are fine when used appropriately, which is not often. Fast readers hate artificial pauses, and overuse of ellipses make your game read like a Dragonball manga (apparently Toriyama purchased all of his periods in Sam's Club value-paks, and didn't realize they could be used individually).

The next topic I'd like to hear discussed: written emotes. I'm not talking about bubble icons above characters' heads, that is a narrative style all its own, and sets its own mood which one may or may not which to achieve (to me, a game narrative sacrifices depth for the sake of conveying circumstantial and superficial emotions when using "emoticons"). No, I literally mean written emotes; anything from *snicker*, *scoff*, or *sigh* to even spelling out onomatopoeic words, like "hah ha!" or "ugh," "pfft," or "grr."

I've seen very few games use the above style of narration. Is it because it is a style less appreciated? Do you think seeing emotes displayed this way adds to or detracts from narrative depth? Or are you indifferent to it? I guess it depends on how you feel 2D video game storytelling fits in between literature and cinema storytelling. 2D games possess a little of both, but not necessarily enough of either. Do you feel graphical representation of emotion is stronger than trying to represent the same feelings by adding some non-dialogued words to text boxes? Perhaps the real thing I am trying to determine is whether or not there would be an acceptable way to cop out of doing tons of sub-par sprite edits, without resorting to emoticons.

I'm also open to hear other ideas of tools available to game creators to create more compelling narratives.

Edit: After posting, some people in IRC had talked about specific uses of this style. Feel free to list games that you remember using it, for good effect of for ill.

This is a re-post of Kav's topic which was derailed and sent to the dump.

Hi all! For anyone who's been keeping up with AGM, Enterbrain has finally released new info about the program!

I'm updating the translations here: Click this link

Some important stuff I've found out that I'll post here:

* There will be 10 resolutions that can be used. For the 4:3 aspect ratio, you can use 320x240, 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. For the 16:9 aspect ratio, you can use 1280x720 and 1920x1080. The four other resolutions allowed are: 240x240, 256x192, 256x384, and 480x272. For all resolutions, the horizontal and vertical sizes can be reversed (for example, 640x480 can also be 480x640).
* For images, PNG and BMP files can be used. They support RGB alpha channels. Images have no size limit (i.e. sprites can be of any size).
* AGM supports collision detection! You can specify the range of the detection within a rectangular frame. It can be used to detect contact with gadgets, contact with tiles, and the extent of damage.
* With the "work program" you can specify how gadgets act. This includes movement direction, speed, projectile firing, or display messages. The editor allows complex behaviors for gadgets.