MLP - Because Randomness is Kool

This is another Mindless Link Propogation.

What features are in the ideal RPG? A comment I found [ link ] suggests these features:

• pick (or create your character, including)
  
• stats
• team (questing party): chose who and wheter to gather as "teammates"
• teammates (supporting party characters) with unique storylines which you experience by having them in your team
• the ability to change stats almost at will (like "Red Mage", I guess, in 8BT)
  
• various choices: a branching, rather than linear, time/story-line
  
• side quests. by the thousands
• upgrades for weapons, armour, and and other equipment (and, I supposed, vehicles as well). "endless" is that the comment suggested.
• endless endings which are based on your choices

Well, an "ideal" concept is not supposed to be realisitically obtainable, so words like "endless" are justified in this case, just like "incompressible" describing an ideal fluid.

Moving on to more links:

Something about math, and why it is useful to express things using mathmatical symbols.

Some-one did a "Playtest" of P3, the JPN version. This was before the English-language releast. It is well-written, this playtest. [ link ]

I've been researching "Greensleeves", because I have vague but strong memeories of, in primary school, around age 9 or 10, learning this song which freaked me out because it talked about someone being buried and grass growing on their gravesite, and the grass was called "green sleaves". It was to the tune of "Greensleves", but was nighter a romantic song like [ this youtube vid ], nor does wikipedia give me much joy. I found lyrics to a [ longer version of the love song thingy ] than the [ traditional medley ], but none is as morbid as what I remember.

I'm starting to wonder what I could have possibly learnt when I was younger... could it be that I watched some "thriller" on late-night TV that had alternate lyrics to the tune? This small, non-consequential problem threatens to dominate my whole life, but no, I will just forget it for now and focus on more important things, like how to get rich and make a difference in the world. Or something. That's what world domination is called nowadays, right: social responsiblity.

Misinformation

What are "professional" gaming sites doing nowadays, eh? Gamespot, 1up, etc. hardly have any info on Revelations:Persona (P1), and what little they have is inaccurate.

Anyhow, flu: 9,001. Me: 7,000. The battle has been intense but I am far away from being the victor. More importantly, the flu has a point score "Over 9,000!". At least my bases still belong to me.

There's been a rumour since march that Revelations: Persona is coming to PSP, and someone [ link ] assumed that it would be properly translated to English if it does come over. I say... not bloody likely. At the Atlus Panel, they explictly said that they don't want to translated "old" games (form the PS1 era, which means everything before P3), and they haven't eeven translated Innocent Sin (that's being done by Gemini/Tom, as I mentioned in a previous blog). So at best they'll republishing the pre-existing PS1 title, with its missing Snow Queen storyline.

Assuming that I don't die first, I'm going to upgrade my vid. cap. rig and do some more P1 gameplay vids, based on various requests. However,I've also got this real-world problem of being near-broke and stuff, so I have to work on hat until I fix it... for the week, though, I did actually gain a bit of revenue... spent more in food alone, but, it's a start (the balance comes from the part-time job that I did recently... said job also helped weaken my immune system, but I'd have to say that the nail in my coffin was my own self-neglect, and I'll have to be more careful in the future).

I haven't been sick like this in at least 3 years. I guess I took it for granted and stopped paying suck close attention. I mean, I actually thought to myself "I'm going to get sick if I keep this up...", but I guess aprtly I wanted a vacation and being sick is a way to get it. Normally, people don't think of unconscious motivations like that, but I'm goot at reflective introspection. I know exactly what my weaknesses are... but perhaps it is time I focus on, and build, my strengths.

So, one of my strengths is getting things done. Not only with computers, in general. And I've decided that what I want to do is make a small adventure game, but with a sci-fi edge to it, so I can have an excuse to use some sort of "plasma laser" weapon... I'm sure the better name for it would be charged-gel-low-velocity-missle-launcher, based on how slow "lasers" move in most sci-fi thingies... I mean, peopel dodge them in realtime, and shit... but I'm setting my thing underwater, and using ballistic weapons just seem to me to be a tad less than wise, when a shot in the hull means almost certain death for everyone.

*cough, cough* no, I'm not hinting at anything, I'm actually coughing. It is annoying.

[I stopped here to go an sleep, or something. As I mentioned earlier, I'm really sick.]

May's Law

"May's Law: Software efficiency halves every 18 months, compensating Moore's Law."
- ripped from Wikipedia, link - Bio on David May, who formulated the law. He's a ... largely unknown genius type, I guess, being one fo the designers fo teh Transputer system. Of course, even Tiem Sweeney and John Camrack are largely unknown (key programmers behind the Unreal and Doom/Quake engine-games, respectively).

Flu: 27. Me: 23. Flu leads by 4 points, but there's still a chance that I will reign victorious.

I have some MLP (Mindless Link Propagation), based on my research into the Transputer arch. and Occam in particular... since the Terminator systems in Chronicles are rumoured to be based directly on the Occam sofware. From a glance, Occam looks retarded, because it forces the designr to explicate parllelism. However, it is interesting that someone tried so hard to build parallel computer systems. Pity they didn't use them for arcade games or military simulation equipment... or did they? No way to knwo about the latter, really.

Anyhow, all these links are from WIki pedia articles (pardon my typos, I'm in a lot of pain but I need to keep moving or else I'll die. Shark blood):

Transputer - the worlds' best kept secret next to the C64 REU. (i.e. the secret is "best", not "best-kept". It would have been nice to be able to buy a microcomputer which could upgrade to a supercomputer just by buying additional parts... basically, like what LAIN did in Serial Experiments Lain.

Occam - Created by people who think that question marks should do things other than ask questions, and were obviously too nerdy to care that their language looks like shit and can't be understood by outsiders.

The must have been Pink.

The article of Process Calculus, which makes that shit sound hard, and ignores the obvious problem (at least to me): sync. stuff blocks the calling process, and async needs to know when data is valid. Unreal acrually addresses some of this via "state" and "latent" keywords, andthe constructs which implement native finite state machines for classes (actually, modes of operation as named states), and soft co-threading on a massive level (hundreds, if not more than thousands, of threads , typically. Mostly sleeping but wtvr).

I hate "math" because it makes easy things sound hard. However, asside from classes which I never bothered to attend, I've never gotten less than a 90% on a math exam. THat's probally bullshit,but the point is that I'm great at math, but I need to apply it to stuff. Which is why I chose Physics, Mathematics, and Accounts at A-Level, eons ago, even though I was too sick to do the exams... hmmm... and now I'm sick again... I shouldn't tell teh Internets this stuff, suppose I can't get a job? What will I do without wage-slavery?

In order to fomally describe concurrent systems CSP was developed. Did I mention that Unreal does all this concurrent stuff, without that fancy math notation shit? I mean, you edit the code in an editor that is part property dialogues, part graphical/art/map editors, and part self-aware code re-interpeter. Or something.

Oh, look, besides Hawkins, thatere's anotehr Steven in science who is actively doing interesting stuff. Actually, I'd more out SE-Z in SMT than Hawkins... but arccording to SMT 1, the Steven in the game was not in a wheelchair due to physical illness, but, rather, as a result of a demon negotiation that went bad, leaving him crippled.

And, of course, since digital media is the new printing press (in that there's a social change and economic reform going on because of these new technologies bring "power to the masses"), I have a link to an article related to stuff like that. Something about Elvis and the business side of music popularity.

I'm gonan go ask the lady in the moon to heal me of this flu. It's almost full, after all.

"Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale Moon-light?"

Competing with Unsanctioned Reproductions

I know that I'm the only one that seems to care about the word "Pirate" as much too harsh, but if you don't stand for anything, you're fall for ... something.

Err, that's not the saying at all.

Anyhow, link: http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html

A popular article which replies to feedback from people who use "Unsanctioned Reproductions" (URs) of videogame software. It was very interesting, because few if any people have bothered with collecting any real data on the subject... usually, the *AA just pulls numbers out of Uranus or something. I mena, $750 USD as the cost of an Unsanctioned, compressed copy of a song? Freaking heck!

Anyhow, the score, if you were paying attention to my last blog, is now 21-19, the Flu being the 21, and me being the 19. I am functioning just one notch above "blob of useless human waste", or something.

I blame... Sony, for publishing at least some of the Persona games, although it has nothing to do with why I'm... a little bit... sick...( and a lot in denial about it!)....

You see, I sat in front of a fan in a room that was around 90 deg. F. The fan oscillated, and blew on one side of my body, but not the other. For like twelve hours staight, whilst I did nerdy stuff like write blog entries like I'm doing now, and... I dunno what the freak else.

On top of that, two people at my last part-time short-term assignment job thingy were sick. One so sick that she went home early, the other, the one sitting right next to me, boasting that she wanted to spread her sickness to everyone. I like a fool boasted about a "strong immune system".

Then there's the fact that University is starting back and I feel ill-prepared, and generally am going through some sort of social aversion issues.

However, I have been out of the house today and yesterday... and even made a bit of money... well, overall, I spent more than I made, by far... and I must say that I need to open my own PC/gaming shop, but whatever... that's another rant and I just don't have the endurance for it.

The Most Obscure of the Big Three JRPG Series

Final Fantasy, everyone has heard of.

Dragon Quest, well, at least most gamers know of Dragon Warrior, even if they don't know of the roots of the series. And Dragon Quest 8 (or DQ VIII) was highly anticipated as the first English-language release of the series to carry the Quest rather than the change to Warrior.

However, Megaten, as on of the Big Three Japanese Role-Playing Game series of all time, and still ongoing now ( SMT: P4 in English in December this year, P3 and P3:FES selling well over the last year, in fact, I'm play SMT:P3 and a friend of mine is playing Persona 3: FES, the upgraded expanded release which was hot on its heels), is relatively obscure.

Perhaps the emphasis on symbolism and psychology should give an hint as to why: clearly, its creators live in a world of "high art", and are unconcerned by meager things such as, say, making money by making the games available to as many people, and accessible to many peoples, as possible. In fact, "megaten" is a name coined by their fans: without that, you'd hardly even realize that there is a whole, sprawling series of titles.

I just this night found out that the Persona series, known to true megatenist as the "Megami Ibunroku series", apparently (which lit. translated means Another Goddess, I think), has another entry besides Mgami Ibunroku Persona (aka P1, or Persona 1, or just Persona... but don't confuse it with P2:IS, P2:EP, or P3, or P3:FES... or the upcoming P4). I'll just quote from the source, it's message # 100 on the Tsumi fantranslation blog:

Still… Even if Persona is fully translated, the Megami Ibunroku series will still not be complete without “Ikuu no Touhen”. (I doubt it will ever will be translated, considering that that this Persona 1 “Gaiden” was only released on cell phones in ‘06.) In case you don’t know about Ikuu no Touhen, it’s a Persona 1 gaiden about the Deva System throwing the old team into a weird tower ruled by the Queen of the Night… You can see some photos here:

http://www.famitsu.com/k_tai/news/2006/12/19/607,1166501029,64690,0,0.html

- Tom (translator for Tsumi)

Well, anyhow, I wanted to write more but I'm sorta tired and feel inspired to do something else anyhow, so, for now, that's just more info for your otaku / budding megatenist out there.

MLP

A fan site for Kartia (one of my fave stories/games):

http://www.amphisbaena.com/spot/kartia/index.html

Perfect Playstation, a catalog of sorts of every PS1 game:

http://www.game-rave.com/

Just Another Mindless Link Propogation

Well, google is really "in everything", but I don't really see the point of blogger, when livejournal is doing an okay job and there are already vibrant communities...

EDIT: My newer livejournal blog: http://bajan13k.livejournal.com/

So, you can usually find my cousins' blogs at http://granitor.livejournal.com
and our youtube presence is http://www.youtube.com/user/bajan13k
and this is just something I did randomly, I guess.