Still under Renovation

Blog is still undergoing renovation. Ja ja, wouldn't I like to have this done by New Years...

post date test part 3

Here we go again. This time we're on a Samsung SGH-i617 Blackjack II w/WM6.1 posted with Opera Mini 5 beta 2 via JbedRose for smartphones.

post date test part 2

Here we go again. Let's see how multiple same day posts go. Posted from a Palm Treo750 with Opera Mini 5 beta 2 via jbed java machine 2.1 ver.

Posted date test

This is an email test posted from a Palm Treo750 smartphone. You might have noticed that some posts do not have a "ppsted date". Sure makes it hard to track down changelogs.

Could be Firefux, could be the template. Let's see what a phone post can do.

Email post test 2

Post test with multiple images and different file-names uploaded in a different order.

Email post test with image

This is a test post with images. Well, if the images work...

Blog undergoing renovation

Well, times change and so does my blog. So it will temporarily look empty until I can spruce it up again. You know, this template isn't really mobile friendly....

Image posting test part 2

This time with a different template. Seems my old template was, well, old.

Luminous Arc 2 MVP test results

Guild Job Bug Hunt
4 witches in T position in the order of Althea, Luna, Dia and Sadie.
enemies: 4 beetles, lvl16 909hp, 2 lvl17's 953hp, 1 lvl18 1123hp.
-Weapon loadout:
--Luna: lvl99, Aquarius Fan, Chiron Hood, Rev Robe, 2x Vitonic, Meditate, Mage Qn. Heart, Deluge Crystal.
--Dia: lvl98, Hyperion Baton, Chiron Hood, Pure Robe, 1 Vitonic 1 HolyFeat, Star Crystal, Meditate, Skanda Garment.
--Sadie: lvl99, Horn of Anemoi, Gold Headband, Rune Coat, 2x Vitonic, Storm Crystal, Meditate, Storm Crystal.
--Althea: lvl99, Simurgh Wand, Princess Crown, Quad-Cape, 2x Vitonic, Blaze Crystal, Nirvana, Blaze Crystal.

Purpose of test: test movement totals, test 1 hit kills versus 2 hit kills, test damage inflicted, test enemy defeated, test movement times, test same MP attack versus number of uses.

Let's enter the conclusion gate shall we?
Here is the log:

Sadie moves 4 squares.
Althea moves 4.
Dia moves 4.
Luna moves 2.
Sadie moves 4.
Althea moves 4.
Dia attacks w/ 1 Bright Arrow lvl16 beetle, no kill, 823 damage from estimated 807 damage. Moves away 2 squares.
Luna moves 3 squares.
Sadie moves 4 squares.
Althea moves 3 squares, Bullet Fire 1 hit kill lvl17 beetle 967 damage from estimated 959.
Dia Bright Arrow kill lvl16 beetle 810 damage from estimated 807, move 4 squares.
Sadie Wind Slices lvl18 Beetle 1051 damage from estimated 1031 damage, move back 1 square. 13 total
Luna Aqua Hammers lvl17 beetle 892 damage from estimated 891 damage, move 2 squares. 7 total
Althea move 2 squares.
Dia moves 4 squares.
Sadie Wind Slicing kills lvl18 beetle 1040 damage from estimated 1031 damage.
Althea moves 2 squares. 15 total
Dia moves 4 squares. 18 Total squares, 5x moves.
Luna Aqua Hammers lvl17 beetle 898 damage from estimated 891 damage.
-Dia is the winrar. Bonus TEC+15 MP+15%

Action data:
Dia: 18 Total squares, 5x actions, Total damage inflicted: 1633.
Sadie: 13 Total squares, 5x actions, Total damage inflicted: 2091 .
Luna: 7 total squares, 3x actions, total damage inflicted: 1790.
Althea: 15 total squares, 5x actions, Total damage inflicted: 967.


Notes:
-Inflicted damage varies due to attack direction, irrelevant since we graded "damage inflicted"
-Roland takes no part in battles, moves as far as he can away from hot zone.
-Most strongest MAG: Luna 373.
-No characters received damage.
-All characters use their first art due to same MP usage (8).
-No items used.
-No character performed "Wait" command.
-All characters "Meditated" their lost MP.
-No criticals performed. Right, as if a 8 MP magic attack can critical...

From this test we can assume that:
1. Most powerful does not equal a guaranteed MVP.
2. 1 hit kills do not equal guaranteed MVP.
3. Most damage inflicted does not equal guaranteed MVP.
4. Level of enemy defeated does not guarantee MVP.
5. The better stats do not equal guaranteed MVP.
6. The more turns AND the above added do not equal guaranteed MVP.
7. From the assumptions mentioned above, we can then assume that:
-The more spaces walked increases chance for MVP.
-The MVP candidate does not have to be the highest level in the party.
-The MVP candidate does not have to inflict the most damage.
-The MVP candidate does not need the best stats.
-The MVP Candidate does not need to expend the most MP.
-The MVP candidate does not need to perform the last kill/action.
-The MVP candidate does not need to kill the highest level enemy.
-The MVP candidate does not need to 1 hit kill every enemy.

What this test does not cover is whether or not damage inflicted has any affect, whether or not healing has an effect, whether or not item usage has an effect, or cloning actions by near identical characters to truly decipher whether or not highest level does play into all of this.

This has been a low level test of the game's mechanics.

Luminous Arc 2 Endings guide version 1.6

This will be the new home for my Luminous Arc 2 FAQs starting now. They will be on this blog, and the old post is no longer supported.

This is where you can post comments, suggestions, contributions or just plain dropping by for my FAQ for Luminous Arc 2, the "Luminous Arc 2 Endings guide version 1.6". I'm not one to share email address' so this here post will contain everything there will need to be for the LA2 endings guide.

And I'll remind everyone, anyone can post, you don't need to be a Google/Blogspot/Blogger member to submit a comment. But I usually ask myself, who isn't a Google member? I know a lot of former Yahoo mail users, but really...

By the way, that's an unreleased image of Dia that I've been working on for a while now. Enjoy first preview, FAQ readers. If you don't see it, well... for some silly reason it won't show up on my browsers so just click that odd little box above this post and underneath the post title to see the pic. ~__~

Blackberry8320 template test

This is a test post from a T-Mobile Blackberry Curve 8320, testing the difference between blogger templates.

That's
It's
Who's
What's
How's
Wouldn't
Should't
Couldn't

Blackberry8320 template test

This is a test post from a T-Mobile Blackberry Curve 8320, testing the difference between blogger templates.

That's
It's
Who's
What's
How's
Wouldn't
Should't
Couldn't

Photoshop is fun when done on the run...

...Well I think I'm an adrenaline junkie since I'm fast, or probably too fast, for my own good. The below photoshop tweaked images are an example. Using pictures provided by HellGundam7 over at the LA2 GameFaqs Ayano CG thread, I did these resampling in a couple of minutes, and as you can see it's not bad if I say so myself.

Of course, these and my previous Ayano photo chop shop job are NOT the best of my abilities as those previous 'shop jobs were done in a quick time and not using the professional grade style. (An amusing story going way back to 2004, back when I was a beta tester for Novalogic and they had a booth at E3 2004, with us Novalogic beta testers showing the E3 guests (who were aptly named something like E3_guest009189) how Joint Ops works and how fun it could be. That's when I stumbled upon Sega's E3 FTP server where I was able to get my hands on some sick resolution Photoshop files which, amazingly enough gave me a clearer look into how to make professional grade photoshop CG's.) I'll have you know now my chop shop jobs are meant to be fast, simple, and Proof of Concept's style of photoshop'ing and not meant to show my real skill.

As such, my next Photoshop job will utilize the abovementioned Sega style of CG showing a whole new level of my photoshop abilities. I had originally planned on using CG skills I learned from the To Heart CG artists, but that was for the 90's, this is about now ;)

Be sure to look out for my next Photoshop job. Or when the heck am I going to continue playing Luminous Arc2? I have several more guides to write/edit!

Oh how I'd love to photoshop on my Pocket PC. But at high resolution and anything over 2MB is gonna choke any handheld of today....which I can photoshop in my Pocket PC, my LA2 4Koma was done that way, but it's the amount of layers, resolution, etc. that make it all more sluggish.

Yet another Luminous Arc2 Ayano shop job

Hmm, someone uploaded my previous Ayano 'shop job to Danbooru. As if I wasn't living there when the first danbooru coded website took a dive.

This next job has me doing a bit of zaniness out of nowhere. I had this great idea to use the previous photoshop job and with a bit of camera tweaking, an hour or two on photoshop we have this:
It's a smaller res than the previous image because blowing up a DS screenshot is like asking for a natural censor blur on the end product. I know some people can't help but bicker about censors in h manga, so this is staying at the present resolution until I have the heart to upload a sicker one.

And you are probably wondering why her hands are quite large. Well, it's like that in the original image, so go fish. I did wonder how does Pop's 14'ish year old hands fit in that sleevey gloves of hers...

What with my photoshop jobs being uploaded everywhere with no small piece of credit I'm inclined to fix my Tama-nee Lord of War parody optimized for imageboards. These things take time you know, and not many people can spend the time to do a quality photoshop job like this. Tiny little mistakes like pixelized edits mixed with the smoothness of the original image gets frowned upon these days.

Next time people, credit the shop job to the original 'shopper. Because we all know who drew these things in the first place, but it's also a matter of who took the time to work on it as much as it extensively has been done.

Uh, some Luminous Arc 2 pictures....

Image dump for posting/sharing elsewhere, to save my ripway bandwidth. Images created by their respected owners. Yeah, I didn't draw these things...

This Ayano image is 1667x2006 >__>




I had to edit this Luna one, colors were too bright, couldn't see her clothes that well >____<

Yeah, I've been real busy. Being sick earlier tied me up everywhere. Gotta post here more often, not funny starting a new year like this.

Luminous Arc 2 Beta version?

...Or the pre-production version, or a work in progress, or a what ever it could be. It is my memory allocation in that this game was featured in the Tokyo Game Show 2007, so I know it was demo'ed there. Wonder if there be a demo cart floating around...

Some of you may remember that I've done some Beta testing work on Joint Operations and it's expansion pack, JO:Escalation, so Beta->final product versions are nothing new to me. What I did learn from those beta's is that the test product is never how the final product looks, and I saw it right away when I played Luminous Arc 2 (LA2) and having remembered these images, it felt nostalgic. Seeing as how I'm feeling rather weak and weightless, and with no heart to play LA2 for the 9th time, or pretty much any DS game, I figured I'd do this post to see if I can revitalize myself.

Spoilers if you haven't played the game. And if you haven't played the game, you won't know the differences of these images anyways... images preshrunk due to slow connection, click on them for larger versions.

Those of you who played LA2 might recognize the above picture as not how it is in the game. Those of you who played Luminous Arc 1 (LA1) might recognize it, as it resembles the World Map view, except LA1 had it in the touchscreen, if I remember correctly. Is that a random encounter I see? Considering the Red flag is an objective in the final product, I'd say it is!

I'd say these images are pretty much a test version of the game, I don't recall these events happening at all so that's up in the air as to what it is. (The only time Althea could have been in the Ice Hermitage is the guild quest Rainbow Road, but I don't even recall choices in that quest. And no, not Mario Kart's Rainbow Road.)

These are interesting. This is definitely a beta-type version as the character battle menu is not like this image above. It seems touch friendly but not very text'y.

I like this one. In the LA2 story we know Fatima and the Beast Fiend's are not related. But here we have them fighting alongside each other. The story changed in the middle of game development? Maybe a WiFi battle? Interesting...











These are perplexing. In the game we know that Chapter 3, or rather when Fatima first appears, is the only fight between her and the Rune Fangs. But what's this? It looks like a ending choice menu that shows up. Not to mention this is similar to how it was in the retail version, besides the red arrow for the choices. Now get this: we know Dia is not participating in the fight in the retail version, so these scenes have two things about them. 1, these could be similar to games like, Megaman Legends that have story scenes use the game engine. It could be the case here that this isn't exactly the screens after choosing characters, but rather the story using the battle maps to move the Endings choices. Or 2, Dia participates in the battle in this beta-ish version of the game. Hmmm...

I like how awesome this would have been. Dia, and all the other witches besides Althea and Fatima, have their final Magic art in a cross attack pattern, or 3 square pattern, hitting an area like 1 bad guy in the middle and 1 in front, behind and left and right of the baddie. But what's this? In the game, we know that enemies that will be hit by an area wide attack are full color, with none hittable enemies dimmed out, or with an overcasted shadow about them. But in this image, it seems like Dia can hit a size as large as Althea's Ignis Blaze (an 5 square area), as we can plainly see the Golem at the far right of the image is dimmed but the rest are lit up, showing an area much larger than a cross shape. Could it be that the game developers/writers felt that Althea and Fatima, the two most important witches, be the only ones with the 5 square blast radius? Could be...













Here's one that's been bothering me for quite some time. Some of you may know that I've played this game 9 times already, and not once do I see the Lapis featured here. In the Rina screenshot we see what appears to be a pierce Lapis, and in the other we clearly see a Counter Lapis in effect. Definitely not in single player, it could be a WiFi only gem but then maybe, just maybe the developers felt this would have made the game too easy? A piercing Fracture Slash sounds just about as painful as it can get!

While I can speak and understand Japanese, I think it's rather distasteful that I can't read and write it. But hey, I was born in Germany so it's not like I was supposed to learn Japanese in the first place. I think it's even surprising that someone like myself actually learned Japanese instead of perfecting Deustche. It sure would help if I could read what these images say about the game. Because I can safely say, this is not how the english version ended up. But I now ask this: would the game be better had it been like, or use elements like these images show? Would it have made it harder or easier?

Hard to tell, despite the 125+ hours I already put into this game. Comments open to all. And yeah, I definitely need to update this here blog, I know some images seem to be gone thanks to a personal server going down, and I need to make it dial-up friendly for myself. 2KB/s is so not funny...

Images are from magazine scans, some of these by someone that appears to be known as "gameshinbun". Other than that, I claim no ownership as to the source of these images, so whoever scanned the magazine that held these I congratulate you and credit you, who ever you are.