Niahak's Place

Finished Ogre Battle 64.  Although it’s not at the top of my list, it’s a decent game.  I enjoyed the atmosphere, the epic-yet-realistic storyline, and some of the strategy aspects.  It just has a bit too much micromanagement for my taste.  My Chaos Frame at the end was 94 (in the final scenario I accidentally left a city to be taken by some leaderless enemy unit, then captured it back with a wrong-aligned unit).

I bought Galactic Civilizations 2 about a week ago, and installed it… and I got a bluescreen.  Turns out I need DirectX 9.0c compatibility. Which, of course means that I only need graphics drivers updated in the last year.

My card (a Mobility FireGL 9000)  is made by ATI, but for some ungodly reason they let Compaq take care of the video drivers.  Compaq got bought out by HP the year I got my laptop, and older driver support was left by the wayside.  In other words, the last time new graphics drivers came out for my laptop is 2004.   3 years ago.  So despite the fact that my old desktop computer is now 7 years old, it can actually play a new game.  When my 4-year-old laptop, with double the clock speed and an otherwise-nice setup, can not.  Curse HP.  Looks like I’ll want to get a desktop soon after I start work.

Since, in the wake of the announcement of Starcraft 2, I had a spot or two of nostalgia anyway…  I started the Starcraft campaigns over again.  Bit easy so far, but fun.  I finished the Terran campaign last week and I’m starting the Zerg campaign now.

I also started playing Ys: The Ark of Napishtim last week.  It is a bit simplistic, but fun.  I never really got into the Ys games very much.  Only played the third game on the SNES, and it was rather difficult.  I don’t really even remember the plot.  But judging from Napishtim, I think the whole series would be pretty enjoyable.

Now I have two weeks off in preparation for entering the real world.  We’ll see how it works out.

Yesterday was my last set of classes. Although I have a couple more things to take care of on Sunday and Monday (including getting my broken CD-ROM drive fixed), this means I’m done with everything that’s graded. We seniors now have a week to reflect upon their long, winding path of engineering education at one of the premier institutes in the country.

Which is to say, of course, nearly everyone’s going to be finishing off their alcohol and playing video games.

Anyway, it doesn’t quite feel like it should be over. I’ve made a lot of friends here, and we’re all going to be going our separate ways.

So, in any case, here’s what’s been going on (to me and in the world):

Starcraft 2 was just announced.  Though many are surprised it turned out to actually be a sequel and not an MMO, I’m not particularly.  Making another MMO at this point wouldn’t be particularly profitable when they already have the majority of the market share.

From what I’ve seen, Starcraft 2 is really shiny.  Gameplay balance, which is Blizzard’s forte and what keeps people coming back to Starcraft, is still unknown.   Blizzard has said that they are keeping it in mind.   Now Blizzard just has to make Diablo 3 (assuming it isn’t WoW).

Part of the announcement for Starcraft 2 includes a mention that users will have access to the same tools as Blizzard to create maps.  This is great news; much of the appeal of both Starcraft and Warcraft 3 is still in the form of custom maps – ranging from RPGs to strategy to theme games.  Speaking of which, if anyone *ever* wants to play the Starcraft RPG map “A Call for Help” let me know.  I have a copy, but every time I play everyone else leaves or doesn’t realize the incredible difficulty of the map, and I want to actually see the end.

I got a copy of Genso Sangokushi 2 in the mail a while back.  After having played the demos of both 1 and 2, I can say that the full version of 2 is beautiful and builds upon the demo’s portion of the game.  Though, truth be told, so far it’s been rather on the sad side of plots.

For the uninitiated: Genso Sangokushi 2 is Fantasy Sango 2 in Japanese.  There is no English release, only a Chinese (Taiwan) and Japanese release, and the Japanese release is rather expensive for a PC game.  It’s based on Three Kingdoms, with added magic and other nonsense.  You play the part of Chu Ge, a money-grubbing young adventurer.  After a few introductory bits, his hometown is attacked by the Yellow Turbans.  It is rescued by Ma Chao, but not before his friend Han Jing is thrown off a cliff (by a giant spider-monster summoned by an evil sorcerer, no less) and his other friend Shen Yan (daughter of the local troop commander) is abducted by the Turbans.

Hoping to get more of GS2 finished this week, and also to finish Ogre Battle 64 (that’ll be tonight).

I’m also considering buying a copy of Galactic Civilizations 2.  It’s down to $20 and I’ve heard little but good about the game…

I was a bit uncertain going into the game (clearly)… but I’ve figured out that Ogre Battle 64 is actually a good (if not top-notch) game.  It’s just a little too complicated for my tastes.

I just reached the final chapter.  I like the plot, I like the characters, and the system isn’t bad.  Managing all the individual characters is pretty tough, though, particularly with respect to alignment.  The plot is similar at first to Final Fantasy Tactics (which was made later by the same team, if rumors are correct).  It changes from there to something comparable in style, and the different paths through the game presumably would make the game more immersive.  I probably would’ve noticed that more if I weren’t already aiming for a set path.  So far all of the “hidden” characters (the Zenobians specifically) have been easy to recruit – I have them all – I would only have missed Europea (maybe) and Debonair (if FAQs are correct and you can’t visit the town with a non-Magnus unit first) had I not been looking at walkthroughs.  This game makes me want to retry the SNES Ogre Battle sometime…  Some of the plot turns are really nice, and this game has one element that was really neat in Final Fantasy Legend 2 (namely, your character’s father can join your party), though unfortunately it hasn’t yet changed the plot at all.

Also been playing a good deal of Warcraft 3 TFT online, lots of custom maps.  So far my favorite is still “Tides of Blood”, a more balanced and slower-paced DOTA.  Playing that with friends is an unparalleled WC3 experience.  “Maul” games (Wintermaul) are fun but they are generally way too easy (I can’t believe people still need to “hook” [glitch] or use Crystal!), much like other Tower Defense games.

Oh yeah, big news in the past couple days.  Final Fantasy IV is being remade in the style of FF3 DS.  Cecil looks more or less like an emo goth knight from what I’ve seen, but I’m going to hold off on final judgements until I see more of the game.  The more interesting pieces of news from Square Enix were the new original game and the announcement that they’re remaking Star Ocean 1&2 for PSP (SO1 was never brought over).  Star Ocean 1 is evidently getting SO2’s engine.  If that pack gets translated, that’d be cool, but still not a reason to get a PSP.  Other interesting news: a new Rygar (!) is coming out for the Wii.  Rygar NES was an excellent, if confusing, game.  Rygar PS2 was good for an adventure-puzzle, but the voice acting was abominable and the difficulty too varied.  However… using diskarmor on the Wii could be a lot of fun if they allow good variance of movement.

Other than Ogre Battling, I’ve been doing lots of homework and stuff.  I had two presentations and a test today.  One presentation was in Game Development and involved a project which I plan to reveal on this site in due time, with the permission of my group members.  In another week, I think this project could be pretty cool.  As it is, it’s nothing more than a conceptual version of what it could become.

So when I went to classes today (tired despite it being the afternoon) I noticed something. The entire campus appears to be covered with Pi. Not the tasty kind, the numeric kind. This is one of the hazards (if you will) of going to an engineering school. Many students, perhaps lost in a sea of equations, proofs, tests, and documentation, find themselves lost. They slowly creep into insanity, latching onto this number or that.

To wit, today is a special event where the student association gave out free sidewalk chalk. And, like last sidewalk chalk event, somebody wrote Pi all over campus. Last time, it was from an academic building down around the lake (more a pond really) and ended going off the dock. This time, it circles around the Quad and runs down a sidewalk on one side of campus. I haven’t seen where it ends yet. Another indicator that some people are overly obsessed with numbers… About a third of the way through (estimate), someone different circled three numbers and wrote “WRONG” in chalk.

The rest of the chalk stuff is occasionally funny, sometimes not. There seems to be a religious debate on one bit of sidewalk, there’s a “Don’t give up!” in large friendly letters on another. Last time, though, somebody drew an 8-bit Mario on the side of the library, taking advantage of the bricks to make pixel approximations. A week later, after all of the other chalk was gone, a Frog Mario (from Mario 3) appeared on the side of an academic building, again using the bricks. It lasted about a month but I sadly didn’t get a picture. There are no video game characters today… yet.

When I checked the stats on the site today, I noticed I had a (relative) surge of traffic from people I don’t know. Here’s a shiny picture of why:

Thanks, obviously, to my awesome host for letting me look up this stuff. Apparently this site shows up on search engines now.

Apparently they are mostly looking for Der Langrisser stuff, and while I have some, I am not working on the translation (though I look forward to it!). For that, you’ll want to go to the CoES forums and get news there from the individuals currently involved (Moon Knight, Byuu, Talbain, and D). I lurk there myself for info on the translation, as well as other general cool stuff. As far as I know, they are still in the editing process with beta testing starting soon.

Other than that, I was having difficulty managing the alignment of my characters in Ogre Battle 64 and so have resorted to chaotic means to make the game easier on my brain. I am sadly only 15 hours in, though, being distracted by homework, events, and Tides of Blood.

Speaking of which, I have been playing Warcraft 3 online a bit lately. If anyone who’s reading this still plays or wants to play, drop me a line. I’m not great at the regular game, but I can make a mean spiral tower defense and I’m a decent hand at ToB (I’m not even going to touch DoTA, as that community is too competitive for my taste).