WELCOME to the personal home page/blog of Matthew La France. Please enjoy your stay.

10/31/2003

Here I am fighting a Yaguddo.



Ok, last night. ^_^ I spent more time trying to get the gil together to get a world pass. I was level 5 so I figured the steal ability should help me a bit, which it did. I stole a pot of honey from a bee (worth a hefty 29gil), sweet! But a couple of hours later, I had still not reached my goal. You can only steal every 5 min or so, so I found myself waiting sometimes because I found an enemy I really wanted to try stealing from like a goblin or birdman. Then I would usually fail in the steal and then die fighting them, and get nothing in particular. :P After I died enough times I dropped back down to level 4! Argh! Getting frustrated I noticed an outpost on the map. I decided to head there just for fun and one ot the guards there offered to cast signet or sygil or whatever on me. After that I was able to find crystals, whoohoo! They are only worth about 14-15 gil but it's way better than nothing and you find them semi-frequently. so finally by around 8:00 I had the 752 (it changed slightly) gil I needed for the pass. I called my friends and gave them the number and we were ready to roll. Here is a picture of our party.



That is me on the left in my sexy thief outfit, but now I tend to sport a robe and shield/club combo.

It was me and two others, an elf and a mythra. I switched my job to white mage, the elf a black mage and the mythra a thief. As we ventured out I realized I had no clue how to use magic and I didn't have any spells. Not only that, I didn't even have a basic weapon for white mage. After dying a bit I switched back to thief and we were off. Figuring out how to form parties was a bit of trial and error, but the individual joining your party must switch thier status to "seek party" then the person they are joining can select "invite" and you become a party. Members of the party were frequently getting seperated or dying and returning to their start points but it would show the area the members of the party were in and it was not so bad finding them again after a while. We had a lot of fun running around and killing things (and getting killed) and I feel like all the suffering I went through for the world pass was worth it. Now I can be a little more laid back and work on my character and have fun. Definitely a mission successful.
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10/30/2003

Let the blogging begin! Well, last night was not without it's frustrations, regardless I am happy to say I got FFXI, installed it, made a character, and played for about 3-4 hours last night. ^_^ I managed to make it half way to level 5 with about 500 gil before I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. My character is a hume named Dehdari and I am currently a Thief, though I will be switching to White Mage (or maybe red) when I get my friends a worldpass. I chose to live in Windhurst because it is pretty and it seemed like a cool place. Here is a picture of the beauty of Windhurst.



The first hour: Lost. Really damn lost. The place is HUGE and getting around can be confusing. To start off with I realized I didn' even know how to move the character or even log out. (it's /logout incidentally). After I quit and set up my gamepad though, I was ready to roll. I began by looking for the guy you are supposed to give the coupon to. Jack-something. I didn't really catch the name or where he was supposed to be. And there is no way to find out. After wandering around asking some random people I teleported to the "tower" and began looking for the NPC that sells world passes. I started to realize that I was in for a rough time. Luckily I found the worldpass guy fairly easily. He was inside the tower through a door. I still didn't know where the other guy was though, so I started looking. About 45 min later I gave up looking.

The second hour: Now I knew my way around just slightly. I still had no money, and had to buy a worldpass that costs 770gil and people are probably still joining the server. So I went out to fight. I realized that I didn't really know how to fight. I wasn't ever sure if my weapon was equiped. Luckily it's not very hard, and withing a few moments I was hacking cute bunnies and tiny mandragora to death. Then I realzed that you get NO gil for killing these things. Only exp. and sometimes items. I was able to sell items for money, but not much. So I decided that my limited buget might be fortified by a small investment in fishing equipment. After all lots of people were fishing, and you must be able to sell the fish right? Well, I still don't know because I can't catch any. :P Having decided that was a bad idea for now, I went back to the monster killing.

The third hour: Now I am getting the hang of running around and killing stuff. Turns out you can't join in on a battle with someone unless you are in a party with them. Which is probably a good thing since people would be stealing each others kills. Still, it doesn't foster the cooperative spirit of PSO, unless you party up with someone. I didn't really want to mess around with that, so I stuck to "solo". After leveling myself up to lvl 4 and getting 400-500 gil (I just don't remember, I was tired), I could no longer keep my eyes open and decided I would just have to get the rest of the gil later. The world pass may very well be more expensive now, but I may try to switch to a smaller server. Wish me luck as I continue.
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10/27/2003

Not a lot went on this weekend. I made a few small revisions to the Slayers script and the MI script. I spent a little time playing TG16 games and I did a lot of miniature painting. I did not post any pictures but I may soon.

I can't wait until Wednesday! I'll try to blog my adventures so people can check out what it's like playing the game a bit. It looks like I will have a lot of friends playing so it will be interesting to see how it goes trying to all get on the same server.
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10/24/2003

I had a big scare. Gamestop sent me an email regarding my FFXI order and said that I needed to verify the card info or it would be cancelled! NOOOO! I called them on the phone though and they were nice about it and we got is squared away. They will be shipping it FedEx to me a work so I should have it during the day on Wednesday. ^_^

I can't do anything with the title screen for MI. Except for make it black. I obvioulsy am just not skilled enough. Oh well... I plan to do some miniature painting this weekend as well as drawing and translating. I want to see some more of the live action sailor moon. It is pretty cool.
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10/22/2003

I am still trying to get the title screen but I managed to change this bit. Woohoo! ^_^

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Yawn. ^O^ I'm kinda bored. it is snowing outside. That is Vermont for you. :P I am looking forward to going home and trying to insert the title screen I made. I have been reading up on that, as well as pointer stuff again. I am going to try my hand at remapping a pointer (again!). It makes so much sense I don't see how I can fail, but I have already tried it twice without much luck. The game may just be wierd.

Not much in other news aside from the fact that I am translating another game called Valkyrie Legend ("Legend of the Valkyrie" or "Valkyrie no Densetsu"). It is an arcade game by Namco but I am translating the TG16/PCE port. The arcade version has been released once as part of the Namco Museum 5 on the PSX but feh, who played that anyway. ;) Besides it was damn easy to dump and translate. If I have any luck with MI I may try to do the title screen for this also. It does some wierd scaling thing with the intro though, so it may not be as easy.
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10/19/2003

Hello. Just thought people might like to see I made a title screen for Maison Ikkoku. I don't know if this wil be inserted into the game or not but I like it pretty well. ^_^

10/20/03 Ok, I decided that one sucked so here is the REAL one...yeah, that's it.

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10/17/2003

It's Friday. ^_^ I have not had a tremedously productive week, but I did get the MI game about 95% translated. Don't get your hopes up about a patch anytime soon though. I don't guarentee anything earlier than 2004. ;)

I did run across a cool term though, "rodist" (apparently pronounced road-ist). It seems to relate to a magazine called "fanroad" that was an anime/manga publication in Japan. I'd like to find a little more info on it so if anyone has heard of it, please let me know.

I got a reply from Haruki Genia which was really cool! It really made my day. As an artist it is important to communicate with other artists, but I do not do so much and feel pretty cut off. :(

I am still really into playing FFXI, I can't wait until the 28th! I might start up Icewind Dale or PSO again a bit to tide me over. I was messing around with making table files for some other games but I was not having a lot of luck. One game had some weird text routine that referrenced text in different places, and that an another game had 16x16 or some other strange dimention of font that I couldn't view easily. I may keep messing around with them or try something different. I still have translating to do for some other projects so I can certainly keep myself busy.
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10/13/2003

I just ran the FFXI benchmark software (see: www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml ). My PC is quite sweet but it is getting a bit old for new games. Here are the specs: PIII 800EB, 768MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 420 64MB, Direct X 9.0b.

At the low resolution I got: 1560

1500 to 1999: �Decent Challenge� PC
We assume that your computer can easily run FINAL FANTASY XI for Windows with the default settings. If the frame rate bothers you when you run FINAL FANTASY XI for Windows, you may change the game settings (resolution or texture settings, etc) or adjust the display of weather effects.

and at high resolution: 1142

1000 to 1499: �Easy Prey� PC
We assume that your computer can run FINAL FANTASY XI for Windows.
However, your frame rate may drop when in a party with lots of effects or in crowded cities.
You should set the game settings (such as resolution and texture) as low as possible.

So I figure that I can probably get away with running at a low resolution without many changes. I am seriously thinking about getting this game when it comes out.
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It's Monday. :P This weekend was ok. I saw Kill Bill which was pretty good. Very entertaining. I also watched an ass-load of anime. I am up to episode 11 of Popotan. I am enjoying it. It looks like episode 13 will be the last. I saw a bunch of first episodes including, Gunslinger Girl, Gungrave, Full-metal Alchemist, Tsukihime, and Live-action Sailormoon. The Sailormoon was really cool. ^_^

I did a little drawing and researched some refferences for mechanical designs etc. I also played some PSO. I got some duplicates of the rares that I am finding on Very Hard Ruins. That is ok though 'cause I can just have the tekker appraise them repeatedly until they are better than the ones I have (well, depending). I got a walls and another last survivor. I also maxed out my second mag. I tried killing Dark Falz again but I just can't do it. As an android with no techniques, I have to be able to kill him before I run out of mates which is a big liablilty. Maybe I can drop some mates and then die and bring some more. i don't remeber if that works. I'll have to read u on it. :P
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10/10/2003

Hi there. I am pretty excited about doing some drawing again. I'll have to see if I can sit down and do some this weekend, but it will probably have to be after work next week. Haruki Genia is just too damn cool. I am glad that I had a chance to meet him. I really have to find his email address so I can get in touch with him.

I have not gotten anywhere with the pointers in MI. :P I am wondering if I might have picked a bad game to work on from the hacking side of things. Still, I think it will just be a matter of time, whether I can figure it out or have to pass it on to someone else who has the time to work on it.
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10/09/2003

I have been watching a little bit of Popotan. I don't really know what it is about so far except these three (four including the maid) girls who live in a mansion and have the magical power to talk to flowers (and some other stuff). There is like 120% more fan service in this show than anything I have ever seen, but it manages to be perfectly cute and innocent. It is quite enjoyable so far.
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Getting over the cold. I hope to be snot free by tomorrow. Ahh-choo! >_< I got a bunch of wasps in my apartment now that it has started to get cold. I think they must have had a nest in my suspended ceiling but I'm not sure yet. I was just squishing them one at a time when I would see them on the window, but I found a bunch in my extra room so I had to resort to chemical warfare. Attack in the dark while your enemy is sleeping and escape without a sound. Operation "Ninja in the Night" was successful, but I think a second wave will be necessesarry to completely destroy the opposition.
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10/06/2003

I have a cold. :P I got some Mage Knight singles over the weekend including Ember from the Orc Raiders, and a tough Clurch piper. I made pretty good use of Fodder which I will probably use again. I'd like to try some more goblin voulenteers and a few shaman's (I only have one).

I am just about done with the translation for the MI game. I need to make certain that I have dumped all the text though. I have been doing a lot of research on some weird bits from it and found out some cool stuff. I'll include it in the translation notes.

I have been thinking about art a bit. I think that for a work to be visionary it needs to have focus. And to have focus, it needs to be first drafted, and then edited. It cannot be completely spontaneous. Therefore I feel likeI should feel free to just write whatever comes to mind in a spontanious manner, as long as I realize that it is not the finished product, and trust that when I go back and put it all together that it will be something great.

I think that I also worry about subject matter and what I want to write/draw about. I was thinking about that a bit and I think that the important thing is not finding the story that is most important to you or something, but just finding a space that needs to be filled, and trying to fill it. There are a lot of things that have been done already, and sometimes just finding something that someone else has done is enough to satisfy that gap. Other times, there is just not something there, or not something the way you want it. That is when you need to go in and make it. That is why I want to do art, because there are things that I want to see, and they do not exsist. No one else is doing them.
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