Man, I went through this game faster than I thought I would.  Well, I did play the crap out of it until its completion, and the end credits are flowing as I type this. After playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and then this game, man do I like BioWare now. It really had a very cinematic touch to it, I think it was mainly the soundtrack (which is definitely movie-quality). I really enjoyed it. Review likely to come.

Meh, I know I may be a little late to the party, but man I just watched this movies and it is without a doubt the best movie i've seen in a long time!!!  Just a word of advice, if you haven't done so, I HIGHLY recommend for you to have played through Final Fnatasy VII before watching this movie, you'll get a LOT more out of it and be able to relate to it a lot better.

I mean this movie was VERY well done.  Tetsuya Nomura has earned my respect as a director, he's done it with games and now a movie and man did Nobuo Uematsu score the heck outta this movie.  I can go on an on about the INTENSE action, but man there's just too much to say.  Topped off with some of the best CG i've ever seen in a movie and I can EASILY say without a doubt in my mind that this is one of the best movies i've ever seen and one of my favorites of all time.

Awesome job Square Enix!

FINALLY!!! Whew. lol.  This game was certainly a long and thorough quest for me.  But that is due in part to playing maybe the first 3rd of it while still in school.  Also, it kept getting overshadowed gaming-wise by NCAA Football 2006, and the development of Atlas of War overall.  Good game.  I was getting pretty ticked with the second-to-final boss.  The difficulty seemed rediculous at first.  But then I realized the strategies I was using (from Gamefaqs) just didn't work effectively enough.  So what I actually did was completed a couple different techniques from two different FAQs as well as one of my own strategies that almost immediately allowed me to go from dying over and over again, to beating the boss within a few minutes, but then its second form gave me some trouble.  Then a big shock then a sigh of relief hit me when I had to immediately go and fight the final boss without the ability to manually save...and died.  Man I was bumped out, thinking I had to do all that over again.  So when I chose to restart from the last save, SURPRISE!  I got to pick up right at the point where the other boss died!  Whew!

I think I only managed to get an ok ending as I had about at 69% completion.  I just downloaded 100% speed run from speed demos arhive so i'll just look at that to see the best ending.  Man...i'm glad to have finally completed this game.  I'll likely write a review for it as well as for Mario Kart DS soon.

In the meantime, i'm enjoying Final Fantasy.  Its kinda cheesy in a way but I guess thats just evidence of its age.  Its nice hearing some familiar musical tunes from later Final Fantasies in the game, nice to experience their origins.  Music overall is pretty well-done, but hey, it was Nobuo Uematsu.  Now that Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is done, its time to start Jade Empire which i'll likely do sometime today.  I also plan to watch Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children tonight, looking forward to it.

Sorry I haven't been updating this thing, i've been busy with a Spring math class, Atlas of War, and the Game Database application i'm programming from scratch (see my main blog if you care)

Well today I went to Circuit City and bought Splinter Cell: Pandora Tommorow (i've only beaten the first game so far, i'm behind) for 10 bucks, and I also picked up Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls as well as Advent Children. Advent Children is a movie i've purposely neglected from watching any trailers, reading any info about, and avoiding spoilers at all costs. I don't know what to expect at all so i'm excited about watching it and i'll probably do so tommorow night. Well, its time for me to begin my Final Fantasy quest. I'm gonna try to once again to put away NCAA Football 2006. For good this time. (Dynasty mode is just so darn fun and addicting) I should probably do so anyway to rebuild as much Football game desire as possible for 2007.

So up first is Final Fantasy I. I was happy to hear about Final Fantasy III being remade for the DS. Awesome! I don't know if i'll have completed I and II by the time its released. If I had to guess, i'd say no.  I can see myself possibly on Final Fantasy II, but I doubt i'll have played through both by then. I also noticed that Final Fantasy Tactics is on the GBA, I guess i'll play that on my DS as well rather than PS-x, probably after I finish VI. I already have money set aside for XII when it comes out. Anyone seen the FFXIII trailer? Looks awesome!

As for Atlas, right now i'm just searching out useful scripts and waiting on enemy art designs for the battle system.

So, NCAA Football out...again...., Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls added to the Now Playing list. And so my quest begins...

Feels good to be home.  I've been able to finally catch up on some gaming in the process.  I've continued playing through Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, having a blast with Guitar Hero (beaten on the first 3 difficulty levels), and I plan to starting Jade Empire once I finish Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

As i've been planning to do so for a while, I want to use this summer to begin my quest to complete every mainstream Final Fantasy.  So far, i've completed VII,VIII,IX,X, and X-2.  I was going to get Final Fantasy Origins to start at the beginning mainly for its FMVs, but then I read somewhere that there is only an intro and ending FMV.  And seeing as how I need some more DS games, I'm just gonna get Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls which also features Final Fantasy I and II, and with Final Fantasies III, IV and V also being available for either DS or GBA, i'll just continue on with the series on my DS.  Final Fantasy VI i'll play through Final Fantasy Chronicles, that way i'll be able to play through Chrono Trigger again and experience the added cutscenes.  Then i'll complete my quest with Tactics.  I'll sqeeze playing through Final Fantasy XII somewhere in there.

As for Atlas of War, our producer is still determined to release a proper demo, so once that is done, which should be very soon, we will continue on the path towards completion.  As for my future plans with game development, i've already signed on to work on another RPG produced by one of the Altas of War level designers.  I also plan to develop my own game, a rail shooter along the lines of Ikaruga with a tentative title, "Rails of War".(I know, VERRRYY original title, eh?)  Once I work out the design and document it, i'll announce it to Wolverine Soft.  As of right now, this is a project I plan to tackle on my own.  I want to experience a completion of a game working through all aspects of it.  But I will leave myself open to help if it gets to be a little overwhelming.  I plan to start no later than the end of this year, perhaps over Christmas break, which will perhaps overlap development of "Experience the Night", the other RPG I will be working on after Atlas of War is completed.  Ideally, I would like to have the game completed in full to be playable and released during next year's Wolverine Soft Game Showcase, but if it isn't done, then I will release a demo instead.  And if its one thing I've learned from what happened with the Atlas of War demo there, its that if that demo isn't solid, and thoroughly tested, it will NOT be released.

BTW, i'm also working on a little website that I will use to showcase my projects, and that includes software that I program in general as well as games I work on.  I'll be mainly keeping my main blog updated on its progress.

This has been one of the, of not the most nightmarish disappointing semesters of my life as a student. I've been so stressed out with school, been so busy doing just..EVERYTHING that I feel like I've been riding a rollercoaster all semester, and to top it all off, our demo was extremely buggy, very unplayable, not well-recieved, generated little to no true interest, and ultimately, was an absolute embarrasment for the team, let alone Wolverine Soft in general.

This showcase began, and ended in headache for us. I got there first. My intention was to get the games up and running and quickly play through the demo to see if everything was ok. This was at 6 o clock. The problem was, the build that was brung to the showcase was on a CD and incorrectly compiled, it was compiled in a way that the engine was required to be installed for the game to even run! Being University networked computers, the net security wouldn't allow any installation. I spent over an hour trying to find a way around it to no success. Finally, around 7:30 (a half hour after the showcase officially started and people began to show up) I decided I had to run back to my dorm and pick up my laptop and run back to recompile the game. By the time we were able to get a version up and running on the computers, it was after 8. But oh no, this was only the beginning...

The version our producer brung was even more buggy than the one I played and thought was our final demo build. He decided to add in random battles in a certainly maze-like map. The frequency was wayyy too high. People would have a hard enough time trying to navigate through the dungeon and it would take them away, and they ended up with random encounter seemingly like every 5 seconds. I was not aware he did this, again, the version I played was different. This ended up really turning two people off and they ended up just quiting and going to play something else, that was so disappointing. What made things worse was that one our team members there who also happened to design that dungeon got very very pissed off at our producer for doing that. So I ended up having the edit the game on my laptop and taking out the battles completely and having to reload the game on the computers...and thats was only the beginning of our problems with that map alone.

Eventually we got another couple people to come out and try the game. They ran into a bug at the end of that dungeon in which the exit was blocked and couldn't get out. They had no choice but to stop playing and we had to edit and reload the game AGAIN. Somebody else came to play, they made it through the dungeon, on the next map, the game crashed. WE HAD TO EDIT AND RELOAD AGAIN!!! By then was I was very frustrated, and my friend extremely pissed off at our producer. We decided at that point to hold the demo off limits (as if anyone even cared for our game anymore by then) and playtest the demo and make sure the bugs were going. We did for a little while but by then, it was after nine, over two hours passed, nobody was able to play through the demo, and we couldn't test it for too long otherwise nobody would have a chance to play it again. So we reloaded one final time..and what happens? The player made to a certain point where he was supposed to enter a castle dungeon, and guess what happens? THE DARN THING LOOPS BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE DEMO! By now, my friend cussed out our project lead and left, I was pissed at the situation and said screw it, and took the demo off showcase and took down our posters.

And the cherry on top? The version that our producers put on the distributed discs won't even run on computers that don't have the engine installed. I guess in a way thats a good thing, they won't be able to play that slop we called a "demo". So right now things are screwed up, i'm very disappointed, our game was by far the worst element on the showcase, and people probably that it was a P.O.S. The most disappointing thing for me was having to sit there and watch people come over, sit down and try to play the game and get fed up leave within 5 mintues without looking back. I'm personally feeling very embarassed, disappointed, and a bit depressed right now. I was gonna post a link to the demo here so you guys could play it, but i'm too embarassed for you guys to play it, its not like the version that is posted will run on your computers anyway. I'll just post a screenshot of the demo title screen on my main blog, it was probably the only bug-free thing about the demo. I just wanna lie down and go to sleep. One of the worst school years i've been through in my life.....

Well, today is the day of the showcase. I'm up early studying right now but I may lay back down and take another quick nap before getting up. I have some friends expecting me to meet them for lunch, then I have some buddies from Wolverine Soft having a party today that I may or may not attend, I feel like I wanna get some good studying done today for my last final as tommorow will be my last day to do so. The Game Showcase starts at seven, i'm gonna try to get there at least 45 minutes early so I have a chance to play through our demo before guests arrive...and well as sample some of the other games that will be there.

This week...oh man...I don't even know how to describe it.  I've been studying for 3 finals that I have this week, two of them I have today, and the 3rd I have tommrow. 

We just barely got a decent demo build submitted around 2:00 in the morning last night.  I can last the player about 20 minutes, even more if they take their time exploring, or if they have trouble navigating a maze-like dungeon we included.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to get all the dialogue we wanted into the demo, and I was cut off last night in the middle of trying to implement battles and balancing the characters.  I needed more time to adjust/balance the enemies and heroses, but a little after midnight, I was told to stop and submit what I had.  What we ended up with are enemies, that, while CAN do some good damage, actually ended up "missing' too much, making the battles too easy.  Oh well, its been a crazy week, what are you gonna do?

I've been playtesting the demo a bit and ran into a situation that, lol, can cause the game to crash.  Its not guaranteed to happen as you have to do something uncessary for that to happen, but the fact is, the possibility is there.  Oh well, there's nothing we can do now.  The demo has been built, demo discs are being made, and it will be playable at the showcase saturday.  All we can do is hope people will have fun playing it and realizing it was very crunch-timed demo that was bound to be at least a little rough.  I don't know if I can post pictures in this blog, otherwise I'd post some screenshots.  Maybe i'll post a few in my main blog. In the meantime, back to studying.  I still got two more finals to get through.

Man, I know I haven't updated this thing in while (this goes for both of my blogs).  But school has just been consuming.  I'm looking forward to getting past exams, but I'm gonna have to take a class in the Spring.  Classes end Tuesday, and I'll be done with Finals on the 24th.  I'll have a half-term math class in the Spring for most of May and June.  Then after that, its chilling out until September.We're getting ready to have the Wolverine Soft game showcase next weekend.  Flyers are being printed for our Atlas of War demo.  I honestly don't know how polished it will be as the battle system build I submitted for the showcase was very unpolished.  However, its still just a 20 minute demo and the full version is to come in the fall.

Today during a dev session, the team decided to delay the release of the game.  Our original plan was to have the game done and release it as part of the Wolverine Soft showcase, but some aspects of the game such as dialogue and art just won't be ready in time for us to have a completed, playable, and thoroughly tested game ready by that time.  Instead, we're gonna release a playable demo for the showcase, and spend extra time polishing the game.  So our game won't be completed anytime soon, however, once it is completed and released, you'll be able to play a sharper game than you would have had the game been released early next month as originally planned.