gen does Soul Nomad - gen ichida vs. the world (eaters)

so in lieu of the radio silence last month, aaaaand me getting kind of salty about the traffic crap i had to deal with in the last post, i think it's time for a bit of fun this summer.

things on my end seemed to have slowed down, so outside of practicing traditional drawing stuff and the frequent twitter activity, not a whole lot's been going on lately. and since i'd rather not sit here and do nothing while waiting for stuff like my birthday on July 8, Steam's summer sale, and Starbound's soon-ish 1.0 release, let's get things trucking on here again.

after mulling out how might probably roll with it, i'll be starting the Soul Nomad playthrough fairly soon. mostly will be doing it as a post-play commentary writeup since writing my thoughts on here while i play would end up being a bit cumbersome. i will be taking photos and even livetweeting bits on my twitter, but the more wordy thoughts will be reserved for after play sessions.

as for the playthrough itself, i'll be going in semi-blind. i have seen Soul Nomad's cutscenes a few times in the past, so i'm aware what goes on in the story. as far as gameplay goes, i only have a vague idea of how it works from reading the manual and bits of the strategy guide, and it's a radical change from Disgaea's gameplay. so yeah, settling into SN's gameplay will take some time.

also, don't expect entries to pop up too frequently on here. pretty sure you guys have come to expect it, but it takes a while for me to type this stuff out on here. though, for the impatient folks, you can check out my twitter for my less-than-140-characters-commentary and lowres screencaps while i play the game. amongst other things.

so yeah, pretty much how things will be going for the playthrough, but of course i can't end it off here. so what the heck is this game all about, and why'd i choose to play it?

card games by a mage's candlelight - gen returns to hearthstone

honestly was considering penning this under the "gen's thoughts" title, but this falls under more freeform musing than rambling about my opinions and thoughts on things. i don't know why i need to stick nearly everything under specific categories; it's not like this site even follows a specific trend or theme to the things i write about. :y

at the start of the month, i've gotten myself back into playing Hearthstone, a digital collectible card game spinoff of the Warcraft series. which is also free for windows/mac and iphones and tablets if you wanna try it out. the microtransaction/free-to-play stuff is pretty fair, too. buy packs and adventure parts with either money or earned ingame gold which is fairly easy to get.

i initially got into Hearthstone around April or March of 2014 when the game was released to the public. played it for a while, got a few card packs out of it, and got a nifty pandaren-themed card back from ranked play. while i did enjoy it, i soon retired from HS for greener pastures, which naturally meant i missed out on a lot of cool card backs from the following months up to now. ah well. such is how life goes, i guess.

wasn't to say i wasn't interested in coming back to the game at some point in the future. my younger brother still plays Hearthstone as of this writing, and of course i had a ton of fun just watching him blow opponents to dust with cheeky tactics. just didn't have the proper incentive to actually play the game again myself. which, knowing me, that incentive most likely involved either more variety to cards, more cosmetic stuff, more content, or tauren. preferably tauren.

'course, we got new card set expansions and adventures and new modes, and i even followed the official Hearthstone twitter, but i wasn't coaxed into coming back until my brother let me know about the latest shaman-themed card back for the current ranked season.

as someone who played shaman in both Hearthstone and World of Warcraft, that was what got me back into the game. got myself to rank 20 now so i'm guaranteed to get the card back after this month, but now i've found myself enjoying the game even more; not solely because of the new cards and content (tavern brawl is fun as hell, i should mention!), but for more poignant reasons. not really the sappy kind of poignant, just stuff that just kinda draws me into the game in a different aspect.

STEAMPUNK - Undertale

well, this took me a while to do. half because i needed to complete the game before writing this, half because it's kind of hard to really describe this game to newfolk without spoiling a great deal.

hoo boy

hoooooooo boy

back in 2013, word about a demo for an RPG by the name of Undertale came about. a bloke i knew recommended it to me, saying it seemed like something i'd like since i liked cute monsters and such. i'm not one to turn down anything with cute monsters, so i took a look at the demo. and hoo boy, in that hour-long span, i didn't think i'd end up feeling so much over a demo.

i wasn't able to help fund the kickstarter for Undertale when it came out the same year (i had no idea how to use a credit card until 2014 ok), but i kept watch on the game via twitter and Steam Greenlight and such so i could buy the game when it came out. two years later, just last month, Undertale finally saw release on Steam. and what did i do when i saw it available for purchase?

well okay i actually held off on buying it since i already spent a lot on a copy of Soul Nomad that month, but a pal of mine was kind enough to buy me a copy as their half of an art trade. kudos and shout-out to you, Muno. you're a rad pal. <3

so i guess now i should actually talk about what Undertale actually is, right? developed almost entirely by indie musician Toby "Radiation" Fox, Undertale is a charming role-playing game about a young human kid who falls down a hole while exploring a mysterious mountain. this hole leads to the Underground, where monsters have been trapped following the aftermath of a terrible war between the humans and monsters. what follows is a tale of... well, many feelings. happiness, sadness, fear, love, friendship... and maybe a bit of "what the hell just happened" at points.

i think it goes without saying that i seriously recommend that you grab it off Steam right now if you have the ten bucks to spare or try out the demo for a taste of what to expect. though, it wouldn't be that much of a rec if i didn't explain why i love this game so much, right?

well, if the 98% positive reviews or 97/100 metascore don't convince you, read on. or read on anyway if they do convince you, i dunno. don't worry, this review is spoiler free, and all screencaps used for the review are from the game site page and steam page.

crashin' some castles

thought i might plug this since i gotta step up my game on keeping this place updated. also hey guys i was part of a rad thing.

P-Stream (the P stands for "Power"!) is a Twitch stream ran by Sam, one of my pals who also does some nifty voicework and a p fun comic. the stream's been going on usually every sunday, though it's on its season finale now, with this episode done on the 12th of this month. me, Sam, and another pal named Pat played and streamed some Castle Crashers that day. we also played some Pokemon Black, but that unfortunately isn't shown because Sam's recording software really didn't want to cooperate with Desmume.

despite the little technical difficulties, we had a huge blast! next part of the finale should be streamed next Sunday on the 19th; Sam'll likely be playing Pokemon G/S/C in honor of Satoru Iwata's excellent help on the game. bless his soul, whereever he is now. also might be hopping in myself that day!

twitch stream can be found here, and you can also follow Sam on twitter for updates on when they'll go live! seriously, they're a cool dude.

gen's daily life - gensou's boston adventure

hoo boy, saturday was a HUGE day for me. last week, i attended Anime Boston for the first time ever in my life. i registered back in February, but i never actually attended a convention of any sort in my life till now. plus it marked the first time in a while i ever went to Boston. sometimes i forget what the big city looked like.

am i still tired? yes. did i nearly run my wallet broke? yes. did i nearly exhaust myself walking around for around 10 hours? yes. did i have a blast? hell yes.

shot of the full outfit. iiiiii did not have the wig on (yet)

i went as Almaz von Almandine Adamant from Disgaea 3. scarf, jacket, belt, and gloves were done with my dad's help, and i managed to find a use for my leg warmers as well. might not be a 100% accurate cosplay, but it was comfy enough and inexpensive to make. thrift shopping and my dad being a tailor helps wonders for cosplay.

i was the only Disgaea cosplayer at the con that day, aaaaand subsequently that meant that not a lot of people recognized who i was. despite that, i got to see quite a few neato booths, saw some rad cosplayers (and even snapped pictures of them!), played some games in the game hall, and even ended off the con by attending their JoJo panel.

so yeah, as you can imagine, there's quite a bit i can say about my first ever con experience! as much as there were only so much photos i could snap with me in them, aaaaaand the fact that i only attended one panel, quite a bit went on that day!

photos and a brief overlay of what went on under the cut, of course!

vlog - Second Reality

(warning! lots of flashy effects! don't watch if you're epileptic or easily disorientated by such effects)

scene demos (or simply 'demos') are one of the more interesting forms of computer art i've come across. for those not in the whole know about the whole demoscene subculture, demos are small audio-visual programs mostly developed as a show of artistic, programming, and musical prowess. while the demoscene was more popular in the 80's and 90's thanks to computer systems such as the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS, it's still active today with groups making demos for a wider array of systems, including some game consoles like the Game Boy Advance and such.

demoscene's kind of a lengthy topic i'm not too savvy with, so i'll just leave it at that. :'D anyhow, this here is Second Reality, a MS-DOS demo done by Finnish demogroup Future Crew in 1993, and was placed first in the demo competition for the Assembly demoparty in that year. for it's time, it's a pretty dang impressive piece of work as far as programming goes.

the demo can be downloaded here if you want to run it in DOS (or DOSbox) yourself. there's also some wikipedia articles on demos, the demoscene culture, and the Second Reality demo if you wanna read up on them. also of interest are Moleman's documentary on the demoscene and a video on the making of Second Reality.

in p'much unrelated news, FCC voted in favor of net neutrality today. hell yeah. B)

curiousities - BKPC and BKPC 2

er, less of a curiousity, more of a forgotten relic of a time long gone.

i remember back in 2002, back when i first got internet, i used to participate pretty dang heavily in the Banjo-Kazooie community for quite some years. while places like Banjo-Fella's Breegull Aviary and Da-Breegster's Breegull Feather Data Base are now lost to the winds of time, i do have a little memento from that period here today.

there were a countless amount of Banjo-Kazooie fangames back in the early 00's. while most of these were fairly ambitious projects that never made it past the demo phase, there did exist a few finished fangames featuring the friendly furry and his feathered friend.

er, poetic nonsense and alliteration aside, we're going to be talking about one of the more well-known Banjo fangames from that time. because i'm a nostalgic dork. and yes, there will be download links.

BKPC was developed by Yumblie and Bhlaab some time around 2000 or so, during the peak of the Banjo community. while i'm not 100% sure if it was the very first Banjo fangame, it was definitely one of the most popular ones at the time, if not the most popular.

gen's thoughts (and also recs) - a Legacy in the making

been a bit since i last posted something here. this was going to be a post on my thoughts about this server, but i figured it might as well double as a recommendation post since it's p rad as well.

ah, private servers. quite a bit of a polarizing topic amongst many, especially amongst World of Warcraft players. for some people, it's a way to experience past versions of Azeroth. for others, it's a way to experience the joys of questing, player-vs-player combat, and raiding without having to pay a subscription fee. and sometimes there's others who think private servers are gimmicky buggy distortions of blizzard's milestone MMO that don't deliver a legitimate experience like retail.

whatever your opinion, there's no denying that WoW private servers are interesting in concept as well as development. while a lot of servers mostly seem to lean towards PvP and raiding with custom content, some other servers seek to emulate older versions of WoW without any fancy bells or whistles. some other ambitious people heavily modify Azeroth's terrain and add new races and quests, creating an entirely new experience that sets it apart from the crowd.

and oh boy, is Legacy quite the experience in those parts and more.

as someone who's been a WoW player since the Burning Crusade era and a roleplayer from the days of when MSN Messenger was still a thing, roleplaying in World of Warcraft is still a learning experience for me. i'm savvy with most of the lore, but making and roleplaying a character in the game has been a bit awkward for me, especially with how things in retail are handled as far as ingame events go which makes roleplay events a bit tricky despite the inclusion of roleplay servers.

another factor is that zones in the world have a certain level range, so a lv10 player might have quite a way to go before venturing to the lv60-70 Outland area. certain areas of the world would be more populated than others, and from my observations, outside of ingame guilds there didn't seem to be a cohesive forum to keep up to date on events that would happen, though considering there's a site for retail's Wyrmrest Accord server, i guess it's my fault for not poking around long enough for it. game mechanics and progression also put a hamper on things as far as roleplay is concerned.

Legacy is one of the few WoW private servers exclusively dedicated to roleplaying in the Warcraft setting. in 2009, the project was initially conceived under the name of Epilogue by a dude named S, who was upset at "the almost non-existent role playing support from Blizzard". what started as a small community eventually boomed in popularity, but real-life commitments and other pressures would eventually spell the end of the server. luckily, popular demand soon revived the project, now under the name of Prologue. Legacy eventually came to be after the loss of Prologue's game and forum data, as well as a meeting with S.

while i could go on with the history of the server, i still don't know much considering i've only recently heard of this server, and i've only been a part of the Legacy community for around two weeks as of the time of this writing.

so from the perspective of a Warcraft fan, longtime RPer, gamedev lover, and Legacy newbie, what makes Legacy so great for its concept, and what sort of experience can someone expect?