Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

[DjinnAndTonic]

What I've been playing: MF6-maker 2000! It's really fun just playing around with the FF6 editor. However...

 

MF6 broke and I have to start all over again.

Spritesheets can be exported and re-imported in a clean MF6 Master file, but that might not solve the problem if the spritesheets themselves are somehow the cause of the break.

The file seems to be fine except that most of the large Monster Sprites are misaligned, so their tiles appears jumbled.

What's weird is that it's only -some- of the Monster sprites...

This leads me to think that it has something to do with a too-large sprite that was loaded, but I haven't messed with any monster sprites. I messed with -one- Esper sprite and did some minor Hex-editing to map sprites in my test copy of MF6, but that shouldn't affect my master copy (both versions have the same monster-sprite tile-sorting problem).

It could just be a glitched copy? Or perhaps I applied the MF6 patch to the wrong FF3 rom?

I lose the game.

Meeple, please send me a fresh MF6 Master File so I can try re-importing my PC/NPC sprite tables and see what's causing the monster-sprite tiles to break?

[Meeplelard]

I can send you one, but we should probably go over exactly what you're changing before you change it, rather than getting TOO ambitious and watching things explode on themselves again.

(we can do this in chat, of course)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Chat is inaccessible at work. And doing it here means that Sage might be able to add his knowledge in.

I'm not changing anything you don't want me to or that you don't know about already.

The only edits I've been making have been to PC/NPC sprites/palettes, some hex editing for things like getting rid of Celes' 'chained-up' sprite since I can't edit its appearance, and the Seraphic Radiance Esper sprite (which I only added in the test files to see if it would work).

I haven't checked it out in-game yet, but in FF3usME, a bunch of the monster sprites appear have their sprite tiles mis-sorted. This is in both the Master File you originally sent me (which I thought I hadn't edited at all, but when I double-checked, there were a few signs that some PC sprites had gotten changed, so I must have opened it by mistake and edited it at some point) and in the Test files that I've been making all my edits to.

When I was looking through the Monster Sprites on ff3se, I noticed a bunch of ugly sprites that I started cleaning up (like Dante). And then I looked at it on FF3usME's list and I noticed that a bunch of the large sprites had the tile-sorting issue (again, only on FF3usME's display, I haven't checked it in-game yet since I don't have a save anywhere near any of these large-sprite monsters - it also doesn't appear on ff3se's display, so this could be a false alarm?).

Anyway, I checked the Master File (which has practically no edits to it at all) and the tile-sorting issue still showed up on FF3usME's display.

It could be a display glitch on FF3usME's part? It might have something to do with an incorrectly-sized spritesheet for one of the PCs/NPCs? I might have accidentally made a hex edit to it by mistake, though that wouldn't explain why it shows up in all three of my MF6 copy files (MF6 Master File that I wasn't going to touch, MF6 'updated file' that I was going to send back to you once I finished all the sprite updates, and MF6 test file where I fuck around to see what works and export/import spritesheets with wild abandon)


List of changes I've done since you originally sent me the file... for reference:

ff3se sprite editor:
-Redrawn sprites for: Yuri, Ike, Tir, Rolf, Leneth, Ginny, Vyse, Jelze, Imp, Prinny
-Added a Palette Header (row of 16 colors to the first sprite) to all of the 22 editable spritesheets not listed above
-Changed the color values for Palettes 0,1,3,4 (not reassigned)
-Reassigned Ginny's palette to 3, Vyse's palette to 4
-Cleaned up Monster Sprites for: Chocobo, Cloud/Zack, Garuda, Cerebus/Garm, Johan, Gades, a few others?
-Changed some color values for the Palettes of Monster Sprites: Zack, RedChocobo, T-elos
-Changed Esper Rayquaza's Sprite to Seraphic Radiance (I didn't intend to make this edit to the finished product, and I checked the Master File specifically for this change and it's still Rayquaza)

LordJ's FF3SpriteEd program:
-Edited Riding/KO'd sprites for: Leneth, Lina, Laharl
-Edited NPC sprite tileset for: Old Man, Young Man, Old Woman, Young Woman, Little Boy, Little Girl, Bird, Fish, Alice(Rachel), Eyepatch Thief, Esper Man1

LordJ's FF3usME:
-None that I know of. Though I played around with a test file just to see what it could do, I intentionally didn't save anything. Mostly I just used this to figure out what changes had been made (like... I didn't know that Siegfried had become Zed until I was looking through this).

Hex Editor:
-Changed all instances of Sprite $41->$06 (Chained Celes->basic Leneth).
-I attempted to change all of Vyse and Ginny's map sprite palettes to their new palettes... But apparently those are already set correctly according to the Hex values.
-I'm assuming I must have made a mistake here somehow, but that doesn't explain why it affected all three of my files.

I should probably test to make sure that FF3usME doesn't just have a display bug somehow... I haven't looked at how it handles an unpatched FF3 ROM or an unpatched Expanded FF3 ROM... It might have the same problem?

[Meeplelard]

Do NOT touch Monster sprites.  I believe I elluded to you not to do that cause random bad shit can occur, as you just saw.  Also, I'm pretty sure I told you to not use the Seraphic Radiance one, though, sounds liek you did that on your own personal test file; I do not want it in the final product either way (reading it...sounds like you were just doing it as a temporary thing though.)

Dante I didn't want "Cleaned up" for example; I liked the 8 bit thing I found and want to keep it that way (Dante Mk2 was just a half assed "hey, it looks different but close enough to Dante, lets stay with this pallette" thing).  The Dante (and Dante 3) were both using exact colors as I found them.  There's nothing to be "cleaned up" there; that's how I wanted them.

The Sprites have looked garbled in the editor for a while; as I said, do not touch monster sprites.  Just stick to Map Sprites only.  I hand picked a lot of sprites personally, and some of them are things like "hey, its Alma's exact sprite from FFT!" for example (I did kind of face palm when you said you "fixed" Asellus' sprite that one time.  NO! I wanted her to use her SaGa Sprite damn it!  That's part of the charm of summons! Most of them are ripped sprites/etc. from their home game!)

Basically...just leave the Monster Sprites alone.  If something is messing up in game in terms of display, it may not be a sprite thing at all, but a formation thing (which I can fix easily enough once I get around to it.)  I know you mean well, but again, don't touch monster sprites (I don't see how you could have "cleaned up" Cloud's sprite, for example, since that was a direct rip from FFT and unchanged as such.)

I can get you a new file tomorrow, in any event; right now, my computer's being a bit of a prick.

EDIT: That, and I'm going to bed soon anyway.

[DjinnAndTonic]

The Sprites have looked garbled in the editor for a while

Oh, so it's just an editor display problem? Okay, that makes me feel better, that means I didn't screw anything up.

Do NOT touch Monster sprites.  I believe I elluded to you not to do that cause random bad shit can occur, as you just saw. 

If the problem is just with the editor display, then I haven't actually seen a problem yet?


Re: Monster sprite 'clean-ups'
This is literally what it sounds like. I'm not changing any sprites, I'm doing things like filling in blank holes that occurred when you loaded the sprites or really weird recoloring things.

For example: Your Garuda and Cerebus/Garm sprites lost their outline when you loaded them (I assume because they had a black background, so the sprite appears full of holes from where the black became transparent). I simply took the next darkest color and filled in the holes and added a thin outline so that they approximate the original sprite. I'm not doing any kind of wild changes.

Same thing for the Chocobo and Gades, though those were less obviously screwed up.

Cloud was simply slightly redrawn to fix the Zack sprite. The cleaned-up image actually looks like Zack has a face instead of a horrible black mess.

The 8-bit Dante is just ugly and I strongly recommend you let me redraw it. Especially since you're using a full 16-color sprite palette for 3 of these things. I'm not gonna force it on you, but seriously... it looks bad.

[Magic Fanatic]

Disgaea 3 - Sat down with Raspberyl Mode. Thanks to having a way, WAY overpowered Champloo, just about all the maps were a cake walk, and I was able to complete the mode in two hours. A cute little story extension, at any rate. Master Big Star picks up a sucky skill, Salvatore gets more awesome, and... Kyoko and Asuka get a little better I guess? Meh.

Super Hero Aurum also joined my party! Not with his final boss evility, but eh. It's still cool.


Been too tired to play much else, including my workout today.  Guess that's the curse of insomnia.  I seem to be missing every other day.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Chiming in on the MF6 stuff (which should probably be in its own topic)... Meeple, Dante could really stand to look better. Unless it's a bizarre joke at how pixellated he is.


MEGA MAN SEVEN - Finally beat this. A bit of backstory here... this is the third time I tried to beat the game. Both of the previous times I came to it after playing MM1-6, and just couldn't do it. The game is so horribly clunky and mediocre, that playing it after being Mega Man'd out by the previous games, five of which are far superior, is just no. This time, I came into it fresh, and found it quite doable.

The game does a whole bunch of small things wrong, namely:
-Bosses who inflict some sort of condition on you that either ties you up for ages or leaves you unable to act until the boss puts you out of your misery sometime later. These are stupid. It's one thing to have it as a gimmick for one boss (e.g. Concrete Man in MM9 or Bright Man in MM4) but like half the bosses have them.
-Text speed and lack of sceneskip. Nothing unusual here. However, the worst offender is the shop, since I get lines for every action I try to do, and an awesome animation for each thing I buy. Good lord, MM8 upped the polish here.
-Clunky controls. Yeah, I get that they're different from MM1-6, and I find that okay. So were MM8's. So were MMX1-3's, and then MMX4's, and then MMX8's... all different! In no other game do I feel this unresponsive. It's hard to put my finger on. It's not always too big a deal, but for some precision jumping or sliding it gets frustrating.
-Way too much forced Rush Coil use (or some other upgrades I didn't get. Whatever it is, stop it). Think Wily stage 3 was the worst offender here.
-OH DEAR GOD THE LAST BOSS TAKES TWENTY SECONDS JUST TO SLOWLY STOMP INTO THE SCREEN. God, I don't even want to think about how annoying this is to all the people who actually find Wily 7 hard. (I just E-tank spammed him, beat the second form first try and the overall fight in three tries. Fight seems cool enough, but too much obnoxiousness to deal with there + just wanting the game done at that point = Elfboy no play nice.)
-The last isn't a problem unique to MM7, though it is worth noting that it's one of the last games before the series cleaned up its act and introduced a bunch of long-awaited improvements in MM8 and MMX4, namely saving in the middle of the Wily/Sigma levels, sceneskip, and mid-level continue points. Could be worse, at least there weren't 8 Wily levels or something inane like that.

Game's not all bad - I thought they did a pretty decent job with the weapons (Thunder was a good apology for Spark Mandrill's weapon, Junk Shield fun, Noise wave fun, etc.). Stage design was pretty dull, main thing that caught my eye was the weird floaty-water in Burst Man's weapon, that was nice but not much else was. Boss design was decent, it usually is. It's a decidedly mediocre entry into the series but I'm glad I finally beat it. Now to tackle MMX5-7... maybe. Haha, not any time soon.

[Xeroma]

X5 I wouldn't say is worse than MM7 IMO. X6.... >_>;

X7 was just a big failed experiment.

[Luther Lansfeld]

X5 I wouldn't say is worse than MM7 IMO.

Just because it is better than MM7 doesn't mean it needs to be played anytime soon!

[Meeplelard]

MMX5 is to MMX4 as, from what I understand, RE5 is to RE4.  They took only SOME of what made #4 great, and applied a bunch of stupid extraneous shit in place of the already good stuff that didn't really add to anything.

The game is easy until the Sigma Stages, stage designs are either boring, or "Hey, didn't we see this in MMX4, only it was less half assed?", weapons are really weird, Zero's fighting style is less intuitive (MMX4, they had a nice button for Basic Attacks, and nice button for special attacks, and it worked fine!  MMX8 did this too!  MMX5 decided they should use all his new moves on basic attacks meaning lots of accidental moves get used, CAUSE THEY HAD TO BRING BACK THE Z BUSTER!!)

And then the way the game handles armor is just a "Why?" thing.  I know some people don't care about armor collecting, but in MMX1-4, 7 and 8, the game had the whole "You got a part of your armor, congrats! Here, now it is equipped on you!  Yes, you may look ugly with a helmet, boots, and no armor, BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER YOU STILL GOT AN UPGRADE!"  MMX5 doesn't let you get parts; its all or none!  The game does hand you a full armor set right from the get go at least...

...if you don't choose Zero first.  Yeah, game actually punishes you for picking the "wrong" character in the usual joke Pre-Maverick Stage.  Oh but if you choose X, you lose the Z BUSTER!!!

...yeah, MMX5 is...playable, but really feels like a half assed attempt to recreate what made X4 good, try to add unique shit that did nothing to help the formula, and overall, a mediocre experience.

MMX7...yeah, I think Xer said it right; it was a failed experiment.  It gets points for trying some new things, and some of the new things it tried DID get incorporated into MMX8 (most notably, the character swap system), but a lot of the ideas just didn't work out.  I suppose the game did need to be made in order to see if the formula had any merit, and a lot of the ideas just didn't work out, hence why MMX8 just went back to formula for the most part.
I'd replay MMX7...if not for FLAME HYENARD >_<

MMX6...umm...yeah, lets...not get into THAT one.

[Grefter]

MEGAMAN PLOT

[Meeplelard]

Hey, my entire rant had (almost?) nothing to do with Plot! It was entirely gameplay related! Give me SOME credit!

...wait, I forget who I'm responding to for a second, nevermind.

[Captain K.]

DQ9:  I now have Cristo's hat.  Life is good.

[superaielman]

Mental note: Get DQ9.

[Taishyr]

Wait, you got Cristo's hat? I got his shirt.

[Grefter]

Note to self: Never be such a gigantic nostalgia sucker.

DQ9 - stuff, grinding because I am to tired to play properly on the bus.

[Magic Fanatic]

DDR Supernova - I hate life.

I don't really...  But upping my dance time from 30 to 40 minutes only a week in threw me for an exercise loop.  I failed one song so hard out of exhaustion that I just stepped back to take a breather and gave myself a penalty song in Game Mode.

I will get better and I will lose weight!


...Maybe I should get around to finishing Grim Grimoire or something.

[OblivionKnight]

If you have a treadmill, what I did to lose the extra 140 lbs. or so I had in high school was to play a game while on the treadmill.  Wireless controllers help for this.  Run while playing, and only do the two together - that way, you are at least doing something active while playing the game.

...man, do I ever post about games anymore?

[Talaysen]

Wait, you got Cristo's hat? I got his shirt.

You generally get hats when you talk to guests on your set birthday.  I don't have Cristo yet so his might be different.

[superaielman]

Note to self: Never be such a gigantic nostalgia sucker.

DQ9 - stuff, grinding because I am to tired to play properly on the bus.

The self hate much run deep, minion.  The hat is still cooler than you.

[Captain K.]

You get up to 5 pieces of clothing from special guests:

1)  Talk to them
2)  Talk to them while hero is in their preferred class (For Cristo Kiryl it's Priest)
3)  Talk to them while it's your birthday (set in Misc -> Profile, no penalty for making every day your birthday)
4)  Talk to them after your inn has 30 unique tag guests
5)  Talk to them after completing Quest 157 (has not been relased over wi-fi yet)

Some characters only have 3 or 4 items to give.

[Taishyr]

Aaah, cool. I'll have to juggle classes/birfday around. Sadly I have no way to tag people right now, but.

[Twilkitri]

S&M 3 The City That Dares Not Sleep-

Finished.
It doesn't start off too well, trying to ride on fakeouts of oft-used puzzle styles while at the same time putting you through puzzles of general styling so it falls a bit flat. Things look up a bit once you get inside, but it turns out to be more bland than it appears at first glance. And the controlling sections are especially mediocre.

Who I suppose you could call the ultimate villain of this section is pretty dumb, and has horrible reasons for their actions, although it is possible that this is supposed to be more humourous than came across to me due to lack of understanding of the terms involved. Their later aboutface is also somewhat nonsensical as I would think that the cause would have happened numerous times before albiet on a more minor scale.

Section versus the currently tangential villains has a bunch of exposition which as far as I believe contradicts existing canon. It's all very well for them to say that the cake was a lie but they seemingly forgot that there were two cakes, and the second wasn't exactly in a position to be a falsehood like the first was relegated to. Of course it's possible that my memories of the second instance were cut from whole cloth, but I'm not about to replay the earlier games at the current time to check.

Ending has a copout, was completely expecting there to be a copout of some kind, but it really wasn't worth the buildup. Also doesn't really make any sense.

All that said, I would like to say that all up season three was better than season two.


Ceville-

Finished.
Rides references pretty hard. I have no particular problem with references but this game really feels like it would fall somewhat flat on people that don't have the proper experience. One incidental conversation, paraphrased:
Lilly: Hey, there's a horse here.
Ceville: Hm, I feel like I should read it a story, but I don't have any.
Lilly: What would you do with its teeth, anyway?

What is a regular person supposed to make of that

I don't remember anything overly referential factoring into puzzles however at least. Small saving grace. There are however -two- Portal references, both to the -same freaking line- that I personally don't understand why became a meme in the first place.

Interesting implementation of item envisiblising. Items onscreen which are valid combination targets will have their names show up in red instead of white like other items, and there's an option (which I believe is on by default) which causes them to show up in orange if you have an item which is valid to combine with them selected at the time. Further, the item names are valid click targets as long as you have them up, which is handy because the game has fairly dodgy hitboxes for items in picture form sometimes, and also there are a number of items in the game which as far as I could ascertain can't be clicked on normally at all (all incidental items, fortunately, I believe).

Game is also fond of having items which you'd almost need to be relying on this functionality to realise were there.

The game never really gives Lilly a reason for sticking around. In theory she wants to stop Basilius, but she has no reason to believe Ceville that Basilius is evil in the first place.

I would say that act 2 is the best part of the game, although it ruins its potential somewhat by making things more linear than they have any need to be. It takes until Act 3 for you to be able to use all three characters, but act 3 is short and much of it is taken up with getting items from characters to each other which is not the most amusing pastime. Then you effectively stop being able to use all three characters near the end of act 3 again. Tsk.


Disgaea DS-

Up to Sea Of Gehenna: Wasteland Of Woe in Etna Mode Finale.
My best characters from the maingame are inaccessible here and it has turned things into a slog. Currently grinding somewhat. Not sure that the comedy so far has really made it worth it, although there have been some bits that I found fairly amusing.


Robot Wars: Arenas Of Destruction-

Have 3 trophies out of an unknown amount.
In theory there should be enough customisation possibilities in this game to keep me entertained, but in practice I'm not sure that that is going to be the case. Currently using a wedge with a pickaxe and spikes on back and front.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Scott Pilgrim: the Game.

Pretty fun alone, but greatly improved by having a Bro or more around to team up with. Beat it as Stills, because the other characters have a gross deficit of headbutting and uppercutting people in the balls in their arsenal of moves. I enjoyed his ending immensely. "And so Sex Bob-Omb signed a huge record contract and money rained from the sky, the end."

[Hunter Sopko]

We had 4 player going on at DLC5, Rob. It was glorious. I beat it with Kim there, and working on Scott now.