Persona 4: The Animation
Yokoso, waga Velvet Room.
Oh Holy Crap I loved this series SO much. I'd never played the games,
but I have a good friend who is obsessed with them so she turned me onto
this. After my bad experience with .hack//roots and the feeling of
wanting to play the game, but not having the means to play the game that
I usually get when I watch an anime made about a video game, I just try
to stay away from them, but this is the only adaptation of a game I've
ever watched that could stand alone perfectly as the anime(.hack//sign
isn't far off though). It's also got a unique feel to it that mixes the
two types of anime I gravitate towards, typical action-shounen stuff
and comedic slice of life stuff. When I say this I don't just mean
action with funny moments, but theres a few episodes that are strictly
character development and interaction in their day to day lives. It
also had me on the edge of my seat a few times with a mix of
detective/suspense/horror moments, and it is really rare for me to enjoy
that kind of thing.
So to sum it up. Persona 4: The Animation is a Shounen Slice of Life
Detective Suspense story that follows a group of friends as they try to
solve a series of murders in their town intertwined with this
alternate-reality world they discover and in which they have "Persona"
monsters that fight for them.
I really got a kick out of the main character too, which is REALLY rare.
At first he just seems like a blank slate character that can take on
the attributes of the watcher but in the more slice of life moments you
see a really awesome mischievous sense of humor.
10/10 all the way.
--------------------------
For those curious about DFC, winter breaks started, and I've started again ;)
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Winter Break
Pretty good news all around everyone. I've been settled for awhile now, but my schedule was kind of wonky until after the first weekend of the month. I'm a staff member at an Anime Convention here in Omaha (Anime Nebraskon), most of which is tech team stuff, making sure our tech setups are going to the right panels and everything. It's pretty hectic considering we ran about 200 panels this year for around 3000 attendees. On top of that I also run the Karaoke event Friday and Saturday nights and that keeps me REALLY busy the two weeks or so preceding the con, updating the encyclopedia of songs, remaking the list of songs available since the file was lost. I do kind of want to brag about one thing though. Our big name guest this year was Steve Blum (Spike from Cowboy Bebop, amongst other names), and I was able to get a couple of his prints signed by him and my collector's edition S-cry-ed and a picture too.
I also came away with a bit of a cold, all this crammed into school work as well, so I've been busy. The point? Well, aside from showing off the swag from Steve Blum, with the con out of the way theres a finish line just at the edge of the horizon, that is the end of the semester. I have no commitments planned, no vacations, no events, nothing, between early December and early-mid January. That means I'm wiping off the dust and whipping out the C++ to see how much I can shoot out in that time. I'm not sure how things will go once the semester starts again, but things look rosey.
I also came away with a bit of a cold, all this crammed into school work as well, so I've been busy. The point? Well, aside from showing off the swag from Steve Blum, with the con out of the way theres a finish line just at the edge of the horizon, that is the end of the semester. I have no commitments planned, no vacations, no events, nothing, between early December and early-mid January. That means I'm wiping off the dust and whipping out the C++ to see how much I can shoot out in that time. I'm not sure how things will go once the semester starts again, but things look rosey.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Problems
As evidenced by the lack of posts, things have happened. Awhile back my roommate said she was going to buy a house, which meant breaking our lease and it was all going to happen in the middle of the semester. That meant we had to get everything revved up to move, clean and repair the house we rented, do the move itself, unpack, all with minimal help because my parents are elderly and I hate tasking friends with such tasks. The move took place last friday. Since I'm in my last year of school I decided to just take over a room at my parents house instead of adding to everything with having to search for a new place to live. Well, a myriad of problems has cropped up since then. The internet is a bit sketchy at best, cutting out depending what I'm doing and probably the biggest thing to happen, my hard drive crashed sometime between Tuesday when I went to bed and Wednesday when I woke up. More specifically, the hard drive for the computer I do my dev work on. I have the PC up and running again with a new hard drive, but I haven't been able to recover whats on the crashed one. Typically, I have a pretty good backup system with my file server, but in preparing to move I had left it at my parents house the last time I had visited, which was almost a month earlier. The good news? I didn't really lose much because I didn't have the time to get anything done in that month anyway because of everything else. I still haven't got everything unpacked, and only briefly had my server up when restoring my tower since I don't really have a good place for it at the moment. I'm going to have to find my copy of visual studio again too.
Sooo, Hurray! Shit happens all at once. Back to the grindstone I go.
Sooo, Hurray! Shit happens all at once. Back to the grindstone I go.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Necros Skellies and Anonymous
First off, apologies for the long delay between posts, the next semester has started and I'm retooling my weekly activities around it as well as preparing for an upcoming move as one of my roommates recently bought a house and I can't afford this place by myself.
Bael-elves
Necro healers were always kind of boned in general, though they could hold their own in PK with Pain.V and sneakyness combined with a fair bit of talent. As I see it theres two options going forward. One, keeping them at cloth like their brother guild, but granting them level 5 sheilds instead of level 4. The other, lowering them down to level 4 shields and granting them the leather armor that orcs and priests have. It will also be much easier for them to hunt with a weapon, ie training weapons, than before, allowing them to hunt much like priests used to. That will be similar across all three healer classes.
Pure Necromancers, similar to wizards, will take over part of the "warding" burden/privilege, retain their role as primary tappers, shields, teleportation, cold/pain lists and of course the good old namesake ability of their undead pets which were never really all that exclusive to them in the first place. I always thought that was a bit silly. Necromancers who can only summon one at a time and whose summoning ability isn't unique to them at all. Maybe I'll do something about it if there is an imbalance.
Skeletons
I've made a previous post where I described the joke ability "bone" and how Skeletons will have a second guild option akin to rangers/gnolls to take over evil's archer race. Of course the typical melee double fighter class will remain and will have Parry as well, though I cannot remember if they had it originally or not.
Anonymous
The big news of this post is a big thank you to the anonymous poster who has given me a link to documentation on the tempest engine, that is, really really really freaking detailed information on how the game works. It's uncovered a lot of tiny things missing from my database design. It would have all been picked up as the game was developed, but having it pointed out now saves significant time later on. So, Cheers to whoever sent that. It is immensely helpful.
I also have another message of appreciation to another person and those who came before him, who have offered material support of some kind. Thank you.
Bael-elves
Necro healers were always kind of boned in general, though they could hold their own in PK with Pain.V and sneakyness combined with a fair bit of talent. As I see it theres two options going forward. One, keeping them at cloth like their brother guild, but granting them level 5 sheilds instead of level 4. The other, lowering them down to level 4 shields and granting them the leather armor that orcs and priests have. It will also be much easier for them to hunt with a weapon, ie training weapons, than before, allowing them to hunt much like priests used to. That will be similar across all three healer classes.
Pure Necromancers, similar to wizards, will take over part of the "warding" burden/privilege, retain their role as primary tappers, shields, teleportation, cold/pain lists and of course the good old namesake ability of their undead pets which were never really all that exclusive to them in the first place. I always thought that was a bit silly. Necromancers who can only summon one at a time and whose summoning ability isn't unique to them at all. Maybe I'll do something about it if there is an imbalance.
Skeletons
I've made a previous post where I described the joke ability "bone" and how Skeletons will have a second guild option akin to rangers/gnolls to take over evil's archer race. Of course the typical melee double fighter class will remain and will have Parry as well, though I cannot remember if they had it originally or not.
Anonymous
The big news of this post is a big thank you to the anonymous poster who has given me a link to documentation on the tempest engine, that is, really really really freaking detailed information on how the game works. It's uncovered a lot of tiny things missing from my database design. It would have all been picked up as the game was developed, but having it pointed out now saves significant time later on. So, Cheers to whoever sent that. It is immensely helpful.
I also have another message of appreciation to another person and those who came before him, who have offered material support of some kind. Thank you.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Demons
For pretty much everything CoX demon you can refer to the craftie characteristics of goblins and craftsmen. They have the physical creation/reparation skills of craftsmen types,. When it comes to fighting, however, they have slightly less defense (studded leather vs chain) in favor of more offense (melee) while also retaining the parry skill that the other two have.
Burning Hnad Demons will have level 4 shields, leather armor, the ability to tap, though not to the extent of primary tapping classes. There won't be any mechanics tricks to it, BH demons simply have less points in the mental area than the others akin to the way CoX demons are better at fighting than a goblin would be, but not as good as a skeleton would be. They will have their pets, though the CoX might have them as well. I am uncertain on that specific point. They will cover the craftsman duties not covered by CoX demons, that is weapons/armor infusions/enchantments. They will also be the alarm wards casters as well as absorbing some of the other wards for evil realm (healing/refreshing) and if I ever manage to implement a fair approach to light/dark issues, they would also have a darkness glyph.
Burning Hnad Demons will have level 4 shields, leather armor, the ability to tap, though not to the extent of primary tapping classes. There won't be any mechanics tricks to it, BH demons simply have less points in the mental area than the others akin to the way CoX demons are better at fighting than a goblin would be, but not as good as a skeleton would be. They will have their pets, though the CoX might have them as well. I am uncertain on that specific point. They will cover the craftsman duties not covered by CoX demons, that is weapons/armor infusions/enchantments. They will also be the alarm wards casters as well as absorbing some of the other wards for evil realm (healing/refreshing) and if I ever manage to implement a fair approach to light/dark issues, they would also have a darkness glyph.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Werewolves
Wolves were always one of my favorite classes. I'm a fan of the idea
behind the berserker type of fighter and the shapeshifting ability is
just the cherry on top for me. My largest non-good realm character was
a level 35 wolf named "Ultimatemooo" and I can't really remember why I
stopped playing him. Anyway, as I have elaborated in the troll post, I
have made a strong attempt to re-implement berserk and make it useful at
higher levels and not really a death sentence. The theoretical method
for calculating berserk is to take half of the berserk skill and add it
to the weapons skill, while taking the same % off of defense. Having
run a few simulations, PVPwise, using berserk does provide a significant
damage increase and the defense decrease isn't so damaging that the
wolf is killed by a random level 1 town npc, which I remember happening
more than once in DFC.
As for shapeshifting, I initially wanted to keep it as a skill, and have the damage related to the shapeshifting skill % but that doesn't seem feasible for various reasons. Instead it seemed easier to implement it as a spell casting ability. If I recall correctly, blood coven vampires had spells to shapeshift themselves into bats and I remember more than once staff using spells to shapeshift themselves and targets. I mentioned in previous posts that monks and gnolls forms were less diverse and fewer in number. Monks and Gnolls operate in their forms with only one real choice, their highest level form. To use any other form would be stupid. Wolves, being the natural shapeshifters they are are given a much more diverse setup.
First tier of forms:
2) Physical damage, single attack
7) Earth damage, single attack
11) Cold damage, single attack
Second tier of forms:
16) Physical Damage, chance of attack being a double attack
20) Cold Damage, 10% stun chance
25) Earth Damage, 10% fatigue damage chance
30) Fire Damage, 10% chance for a second attack
Third tier forms:
35) Physical damage, 100% double chance
40) Cold damage, 25% stun chance
45) Earth damage, 25% fatigue damage chance for a second attack
50) Fire damage, 25% fire damage chance for a second attack
Each tier's forms have the same basis for damage and defense values meaning a level 50 wolf in any of the third tier forms will get the same usefulness from them.
As for shapeshifting, I initially wanted to keep it as a skill, and have the damage related to the shapeshifting skill % but that doesn't seem feasible for various reasons. Instead it seemed easier to implement it as a spell casting ability. If I recall correctly, blood coven vampires had spells to shapeshift themselves into bats and I remember more than once staff using spells to shapeshift themselves and targets. I mentioned in previous posts that monks and gnolls forms were less diverse and fewer in number. Monks and Gnolls operate in their forms with only one real choice, their highest level form. To use any other form would be stupid. Wolves, being the natural shapeshifters they are are given a much more diverse setup.
First tier of forms:
2) Physical damage, single attack
7) Earth damage, single attack
11) Cold damage, single attack
Second tier of forms:
16) Physical Damage, chance of attack being a double attack
20) Cold Damage, 10% stun chance
25) Earth Damage, 10% fatigue damage chance
30) Fire Damage, 10% chance for a second attack
Third tier forms:
35) Physical damage, 100% double chance
40) Cold damage, 25% stun chance
45) Earth damage, 25% fatigue damage chance for a second attack
50) Fire damage, 25% fire damage chance for a second attack
Each tier's forms have the same basis for damage and defense values meaning a level 50 wolf in any of the third tier forms will get the same usefulness from them.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Gnolls
Gnolls run a lot of the typical archer stuff they used to have, mildly akin to Rangers in good. The main difference comes in the spell setup. Gnolls still retain a few of the wilderness skill spells that rangers have, like improve.track and such, but they also pick up the slack when it comes to Chaos's shapeshifting class. Their intervals are every 10 levels, like monks and are all animal forms (Large Cats/Hawk/Bear etc). Nothing else really all that special.
Tomorrow I'll start in on posts about evil and possibly dive back into programming again, it depends as I am having a few friends over.
Tomorrow I'll start in on posts about evil and possibly dive back into programming again, it depends as I am having a few friends over.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)