双子魔法組曲 -WORLD OF TWAIN- aka Futago Mahou Kumikyoku

Man it's been a while since I've been trapped.
Blaming the artstyle, but I really liked that character's design.
Game is a weird shooting RPG thing, though the official category they gave it was "Coupling High-speed Battle RPG"!
Doesn't help that right after this scene they were like "YOU CAN NOW ACCESS THE DATE COMMAND."
Actual game is pretty fun so far, we'll see if it continues.
In hard mode switching weapons doesn't pause the game so it's pretty hectic.

Comiket rambling

This is going to be a retrospect post, for myself and maybe for other people who go to this thing the first time. (in the summer, winter is probably way different due to the weather)

Day 1 Comiket:
What's sold today: Random circles, BL, game-based doujin (not actual games), corporate stuff
Beginner level, but still an indication of things to come.  Comiket officially opens at 10am, but that time is sort of useless to know.  We all came early, at around 8AM, though I forget the exact time we actually reached Big Sight.  If you come that late though you don't even wait on the steps leading up to Comiket, rather you are lead around in circles to the sides of the hall next to the ocean on these really hard rocks.  Spending hours there was not a pleasant experience in the summer with tons of sweaty people.  I failed my first circle here, waiting in line for 40 minutes at Wirehigh (東A61a).  Saikoubi is the line end but large large circles will have signs indicating the MIDDLE of the line instead of the end.  Unfortunately I failed to learn the biggest lesson, the difference between a wall circle and an outdoor wall circle.  So wall circles are everything starting with A, シ in the east　東 and あ and れ in the west 西.  You expect a certain length of line for these circles, as their location is based on sales numbers.  However, there are certain numbers that are mandatory outside lines: 4, 5, 6, 15, 16 ,17, 28, 29, 44, 45, 60, 61, 72, 73, 74, 83, 84, and 85 for east and 19, 20, 34, 35, 43, 44, 51, 52 in the west.  On the first day maybe this isn't that important, but it's very important on day 2 and 3.  These are the circles you can expect to wait 30+ minutes or more for, depending on your luck.  Day 1 is still really light for most people though, so a lot of people go for Corporate on the first day.  Corporate booths are sort of nightmares, though with a pretty guaranteed stock.  They are in their own tower in West 3 and 4, and because the space is more limited the line organization is way more insane.  You're basically moved in groups of human tetris pieces on the roof in extreme heat.  Also I fucked up at Corporate and bought way too much.  Corporate pricing is generally 5-6x more expensive than circles, so it is really easy to lose money.  Case in point, I didn't have any corporate booths listed period on my list because I felt I didn't need them, I ended up spending like 150 there as opposed to like the 30? I spent for all my circles.  One more thing about corporate is that a lot of them can sell each other's brands.  Meaning you can get an Aoko t-shirt not at Typemoon and it can be official too.  Plus a lot of them have special sets unique to the corporation, so in fact it is highly likely said Aoko t-shirt CAN'T be bought at Type-moon.  It's sort of a deceptive system and honestly only if you remember what they all had on their websites beforehand are you going to know exactly where to go.  I saw an Anzu bag from Exorcist, decided I wanted it and then ended up waiting 1.5 hours for it, and at the counter I was like that was way too much time for a 1000yen bag and just bought a random S;G Chris tapestry and an Aoko set to go along with it.  On the flipside, Tenco's line was EXTREMELY short, to the point that I froze when I reached the counter because I had all of 3 seconds to think.  Ended up buying the towel/tapestry and artbook (which I totally didn't need or want!) before rethinking, regetting into the line (3 seconds) and buying the C82 set as well.  So now I've got a Tenco artbook I need to sell I guess.

Day 2 Comiket:
What's sold today: More BL, Touhou, Doujin games and music
We came around the same time as Day 1 but the line to get in was even longer.  Waited on the lovely rocks by the shipyards in no man's land again.  To be honest my initial list for this day was pretty weak because even with the status of "Touhou fag" in the group I've never really cared too much for Touhou doujins.  I really should have looked for more clean Touhou stuff in the catalog to buy.  I got some additions when I started seriously looking at the games though.  A couple major regrets/losses for this day.  The first is that I took no time to browse character sections (such as Patchouli) as I was going in a preset order.  The second is I totally did not use the color-coded priorities properly for Day 2 (and Day 3).  Meaning I had very little idea what a lot of the things on my list were without pictures and when they were all set to "neutral" priority.  I really should have gone over the list more thoroughly and put more items at higher priority status.  The third was not going to West early.  The general format of "start in the East, go to West," sort of doesn't apply to Day 2, especially in regards to doujin games.  Because CDs/DVDs etc. are way heavier than books, the vendors often carry less stock, and they are overwhelmingly in the West Hall.  Since most of my list was games and not books, I really should have started there.  Ghost92, Edelweiss's Astebreed, Revoler 360, OJ's QP shooting, Diverse System's new music release, Lion Heart's Tenshi platformer, etc. etc., these were all gone.  I went to Tasofro's no line booth and...actually turned around without buying anything lol.  OHBA once again fucking trolled me when I asked about the difference between the two disks (one is an expansion), he was sold out of the original.  Whatever it's OHBA, the people who gave me a youtube strike and refused to remove it for a year.  I got that weird shooting RPG game from eikyuu loop, Suwako 3D shooting just for a troll, Genso no Ronde (I haven't installed it yet, I'm hearing it is bad unfortunately.)  Since QP2 was sold out I bought AOS2 just for support's sake.  Because of a friend I randomly bought Lethal Crisis and Lethal Crisis Proto Sphere as well.  Got Hachimitsu's Touhou defense game, and Snowgale's Valkyrie Profile clone as well.  Remilia game from Youmu Ys people was a 100 yen demo, so just got that for whatever's sake.  My first real line for the day was Angeltype, which went smoothly enough, but I was wondering what the fuck the line next to it was as it was 4 people wide and like 4 times as long.  Kept wondering until I finally reached the table, looked left and saw Zun and his wife with a Shanghai Alice banner.  Oh.  The other high priorities I had marked were the OTHER gaijin circle (after woof) named Medical Whiskey that no less than 3 internet denizens recommended to me ("I KNOW A GUY THERE" from all three), but they were out of their erohon, and desu no, to say Hi to him for mauve.  I felt sort of awkward since I have played very little of his games and his newest release was a fandisk for his previous games...so I bought like one of the random games there.  He gave me four? free fandisks though for being mauve's friend so that was cool.  Day 2 is also the first day I experienced "I'm not here trolls."  Simodoriru's space was COMPLETELY EMPTY except for the green circle registration card that's usually there when the hall opens for participants, I took a picture out of bewilderment.  PlatineDispositif showed up with NONE OF THEIR GAMES, not even old ones.  I'm sortta irked at that kind of thing, because I'm pretty aware that other people get their applications rejected by Comiket quite frequently.  To show up (or not show up) and bring nothing is sort of ass.  The high percentage of misses on this day forced me to reconsider my strategy for day 3, and we got back very late as well because of the 2v2 Game Rhino tournament...so I was not feeling good about my chances.  The group had discussions about how early they wanted to go for tomorrow, and I think they agreed on something like wake up at 5AM leave at 6am...but I wasn't sure if we could pull that off with how tired we were.

Day 3 Comiket:
What's sold today: Everything else, everyone famous, mainly ero.
I woke up at 4:30am or so, realized everyone else was dead, and left alone on a mission.  Grabbing two maps, I went to withdraw 50k yen first, and then straight to Asakusa station.  It was really obvious even this early in the morning that a lot of people were going early to line up for day 3 as well, I reached Big Sight around 6am this time and actually got to line up in the front area (that walks up the huge steps to Comiket) instead of being shuffled off to shipyard rock land.  Reminded of yesterday, I knew that it was foolish to expect multiple outdoor wall circles.  My priorities were rearranged as 1. Oyari and the few things in his hall section -> 2. Straight to West for S.E.C. and everything there 3. return to East.  Even coming super early and getting into the hall at 10:10, Oyari sold out of clearfiles right before I reached the table.  I was able to buy 3 copies of his newest IMAS book however, so good enough.  Cleaned up that hall section, then went straight to West and got S.E.C. (who wasn't an outdoor wall, just a normal wall).  West more or less went smoothly (Harada was there as well), and I returned to East pretty early.  From there I made the same mistake as yesterday without seriously redoing my color coding, as such I went by section of the halls one by one instead of jumping around to highest priority.  As I was alone this time (because I felt the others would wake up too late for what I really wanted) I couldn't afford to just tackle entire areas by myself, even close together, I took a lot of time going through them.  I made out pretty well though, save for obvious omissions on certain outdoor walls.  This is where I learned there is a further distinction among outdoor wall circles as well.  I went to nisemidi's line pretty late in the day, only to find that it didn't exist.  Since I was there I hopped into bolze's line next to him, got his stuff, then just hopped into the 1 second line that was nisemidi's and got his as well.  Not bad for two outer wall circles.  Cut a Dash had TONs of stock left as well late in the day, but by then I had actually burned through a lot of my 50k yen and had to make choices.  Since a lot of the outer wall circles also know they charge a premium, 1ks add up way faster than 500s, and sets and stuff at 3k add up even faster.  Tony of course was sacrificed the second I decided I wanted Oyari, and regrettably Digital Lover and Udonya as well.  When I finally reached their booths both tables were cleaned and it was just Digital Lover signing autographs (probably because she's cute.)  SAZ still had stuff left, Blade was out, as was F4, Clesta, and ponkotsu works.  American Kenpou I got rather early, and I didn't really try hard for CCC.  Oh right and before I forget, hounori showed up with nothing but a little white card saying SORRY I COULDN'T MAKE ANYTHING IN TIME FOR COMIKET.  :V  All in all though day 3 probably went the best it could have been with me being solo, I was actually running out of money before circles.

"Day 4 Comiket:"
Super herpaderp here.  A TON of people resell their shit at Toranoana and Melonbooks the day after Comiket.  Unfortunately knowing what is sold is sort of a crapshoot, and there are some rather obvious omissions.  I was able to find Diverse Systems music here, but Revolver 360, Tenshi platformer, and Astebreed were no where to be found.  In terms of doujins, a lot of super wall circles actually release here as well, but coincidentally most of the one that were selling I actually bought already at Comiket.  Knowing if someone is reselling at Toranoana sort of depends on how much the person updates their website.

Regarding the Divekick Kickstarter

I'm going to start with an analogy on this one.
If you were told someone wanted to rebuild their house from the ground up because they wanted the bricks orange instead of red, you'd think "that's odd," but it's really their prerogative.
If you were told instead that someone wanted to rebuild their house because they discovered the bricks had been made by slave laborers in China, that would be a completely different narrative.

This is more or less the gist of the initial post by the Divekick lead dev.
They have since changed it after the blowup, but it's not like programmers forget this sort of thing, nor the internet in general.
Instead of giving a specific technical or even stylistic reason for rewriting the entire game in Unity, the statement used a rather weaselly worded appeal to emotion that "XNA is devoted to destroying Indie Gaming" as their main explanation for the platform change and required code rewrite.

This was misguided at best and dishonest at worst, and the surprise the Divekick team is feeling over the backlash is sort of naive.
There are three types of people in regards to this kickstarter, people who would donate no questions asked, people who would never donate, and people on the fence.
For those fenced people, including myself, a lot of the fence-sitting is questioning the cost breakdown that was given to us by the Divekick devs.
People would like Divekick on PC yes, but would they like it knowing it cost 30K? 60K?
To get something like the above statement as part of the list of justifications for the cost breakdown is not very convincing nor persuasive, if not downright bizarre.
As was stated by one of the commenters, Bastion and Terraria, both indie game powerhouses in their own right, both used XNA.

So a rumble started, as it always does, on Twitter, where it quickly descended into soundbites.
More or less the new statement did little to explain the costs: 15K for QA, 30K for the game, 60K for netplay.
 Keep in mind these were all already important questions for the fence-sitters, just that now there was background noise.

Here is the big thing.
Very few people view that initial statement with XNA as a deliberate lie to deceive.
As was explained by Kayin of IWBTG fame multiple times, everyone likes Keits.
No one thinks he's trying to rob people for Divekick.
What it DOES do however, at least to me, is throw into question the dev team's technical prowess and/or programming skills in relation to the cost breakdown.
Why are you rewriting the game in another engine if it's not because of some sweeping moralistic reason?
What makes Unity better than XNA in regards to running what looks admittedly as a very simple game?
In a lot of fence-sitter's minds, the game is already finished, your licensing costs don't add up and your platform switch explanation doesn't hold water.
Let's not even get into the argument of what a single very motivated dev working for free can do versus what a team working on an iPhone app can do.
This is more or less where we are at.
Kayin has suggested a range that Divekick can hit, maybe 15K to 30K, but there has been no change in the initial Kickstarter as the devs and Keits buckle down on the defensive and call out the trolls and saboteurs.
Honestly at this point, it looks like they will change nothing about the Kickstarter and expect it to fail the goal of 30K.
I was asked by a friend why I wished to sabotage the Divekick project and see it fail.
I think the response, "I want to see Divekick succeed, but not like this," best answers that question.
Maybe because of the networks I'm on or the people I know, but I have a fairly good idea of the costs of Indie game projects as a function of their scope, and I remain highly skeptical of Divekick's cost breakdown.
What I don't really know is if the Divekick team considers themselves "Indie" or not and is thus, on the same wavelength.

White Canvas vs ZUN (not really)

Initial ZUN blogpost leading to shitstorm
White Canvas response
Full translation

<TempMobileName> ok lol just read that w canvas thing
<TempMobileName> so its contracts dispute
<TempMobileName> faito go go
<MaullarMaullar> poor draftsmanship
<MaullarMaullar> should've retained me
<mauve> heh what happened contractwise?
<TempMobileName> didnt catch all detail but basically white canvas saying it did everything in accordance with agreement with zun
<mauve> of course
<TempMobileName> this part is unrelated to tasofro
<TempMobileName> and didnt know tasofro had management corporation running it
<TempMobileName> i bet tasofro set it up to dodge liability
<TempMobileName> so apparently soon after zun/wcanvas agreement on touhou marketing
<TempMobileName> the company that deals with zun's ip rights changed
<TempMobileName> and things started to blow up from there
<mauve> interesting
<TempMobileName> the new company wanted new contracts with w canvas on stuff related to touhou marketing
<TempMobileName> and if im getting this right, the new contract had provisions different from one it made with zun before
<TempMobileName> that white canvas didnt like
<TempMobileName> dunno if it agreed to it anyway
<TempMobileName> lemme look
<TempMobileName> yeah white canvas didnt sign
<TempMobileName> and wcanvas is saying that if it didnt sign new contract, the old one with zun holds (which gives white canvas more rights i guess)
<TempMobileName> and the new touhou-marketing company is pissed
<TempMobileName> i guess thats the gist?
<TempMobileName> and white canvas is talking to zun's and that marketing company's rawyers
<TempMobileName> and suing is only against tasofro (= limited liability company SUNFISH)
<sibladeko> how is tasofro involved
<TempMobileName> tasofro claimed white canvas didnt pay tasofro whatever money owed
<TempMobileName> from selling rights or whatever
<TempMobileName> white canvas says it paid everything lols
<sibladeko> welp we'll see
<TempMobileName> and mad at zun for spreading unconfirmed shit to general public when he's technically a third party

AoS2 1.1

Things fixed:
1. Hime's SA infinite was "fixed" by moving the dash cancel window way later in the animation. What this has done is basically made her a sitting duck on chain whiff, however the infinite still exists, albeit with much stricter timing, because the hit stun on SA is still very high. Hime's SAA target combo dash cancel window has been entirely removed so the lazier SP WA WA infinite is gone.
2. Saki's WB now pushes the opponent back after a certain number hits, it feels frustratingly inconsistent. Saki's dash SB pushes back after a certain amount of hits also. Mefidex thinks the dash SB infinite is still doable but I think this more or less kills both of her infinites handily. What I don't like though is to combo off WB at all now you're basically forced to mash D everywhere because of the knockback pushing them away.
3. Alte/Mira Advanced mode bug fix. Too used to Standard for Mira by now anyway (one button tornado hyper!).
4. Sora laser hyper changed from 9f to 18f startup. The laser animation actually appears before the hyper hits, meaning it's pretty easy to move on reaction now. Still comboable into and out of.
5. Sora delayed missile speed slowed considerably. Don't know if this was needed.
6. Sham Sprite and Dwarf HP increased. Still Sham tier.
7. Iru slow-moving missile of doom now explodes (and still hits) if you destroy it before impact.
8. Kae can direct where the opponent files after her SA combo with directionals.

Overall, pretty welcome.
I believe Sora delay missile didn't quite need the nerf, just the hyper, which was dealt with.
I still have not quite figured out how to adjust as Saki to the knockback on WB.
The Star Breaker players have a legitimate complaint in regards to sticky mines sticking on Nanako's idle bits, though I mean they'd stick on her Eater Reef anyway (Edit: SB homing bits do NOT stick on Eater Reef), it just makes it a tiny bit less silly.
Tsih infinite was not fixed. Does it need to be? I honestly don't know.
Hime still has no anti-ballistics besides beam, I wonder if it's intentional now.

AoS2 full

Anyway version 1.0 is exactly the same as the Demo with more characters, which means NO NERFS to expected dumbshittery.
Hoping for the Sumika patch (story mode patch) to help shit.
List of stuff I want fixed (starting with just game stuff then gameplay balances, warning theory fighter):
1. Fix advanced for the characters that it breaks on. Alte and Mira in advanced have no access to neutral (Hyper+WA) hyper at all.
2. Fix netconfig.exe crashing after you open a port.
3. Fix netconfig.exe randomly erasing the netconfig.txt!
4. Fix Saki's infinite. I really like how she plays though, introduce some sort of pushback if you do two or something, I don't know.
5. Nerf Sora's hyper. It is a 9 frame full screen ungrazeable hyper. Get out.
6. Make Hime's WA kill missiles again. Hime has absolutely nothing to kill ballistics except hypers.
7. Buff Mira's melee. Speed it up, increase the range, make it so she's not running away from non-melee characters or continually losing out to Kae mashing dash melee, this is absurd for a ninja character.
8. Buff Sham's everything. I don't know how you'd do this, make the blocks homing? Make them faster, make them explode when destroyed? She's just ass.
9. Nerf Kyoko and maybe Nanako and Mira's meter build. Feels downright absurd at the moment.
10. Fix Hime's infinite. It's pretty match viable and doesn't really address her faults at all.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

UMINEKO FIGHTING GAME

Holy fuck get out of my head Japan!

Frontier Aja has more money than God

Touhouvania II cast:
Sakuya Izayoi: Sawashiro Miyuki (Mint of Galaxy Angel, Shinku of Rozen Maiden, Aruru of Utawarerumono)
Remilia Scarlet: Kitamura Eri
Patchouli Knowledge: Rikimaru Noriko (Manaka of To Heart 2)
Flandre Scarlet: Kanemoto Hisako (Ika Musume of Ika Musume)
Hong Meiling: Satou Satomi (Ritsu of K-ON!)
Reimu Hakurei: Satou Rina (Negi of Negima, Haruka of Minami-Ke, Mikoto Misaka of To Aru Majutsu no Index)
Marisa Kirisame: Shintani Ryoko (Xianghua of Soul Calibur, Milfeulle of Galaxy Angel, Sae of Hidamari Sketch)
Alice Margatroid:　Tomatsu Haruka (Ai from Idolmaster DS, Nagi from Kannagi, Lala from To Love-Ru)
Yukari Yakumo: Endou Aya (Leanne from Resonance of Fate, Miyuki of Lucky Star, Sheryl of Macross Frontier)
Yuyuko Saigyouji: Shiina Hekiru (Haruka from Dream Club Zero, Hikaru from Magic Knight Rayearth)
Youmu Konpaku: Hirohashi Ryou (Kyou from Clannad, Rakka from Haibane Renmei, Sora from Kaleido Star)
Ran Yakumo: Kobayashi Yu (Setsuna of Negima, Mariya of Maria Holic, Kaere Kimura of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei)
Chen: Shintani Ryoko
Komachi Onozuka: Tomatsu Haruka

Youtube Strike Number 2 (3)

Seems like Funimation has nothing better to do than send me takedown notices.
However once again the target they're aiming at is hilariously beyond their reach.
The video they chose to attack was Anta...Baka?, which is a MAD of a doujinshi of Evangelion.
So in effect, the "video" is actually a slideshow of fanart.
Last I checked, Funimation only owned the rights to distribute the new EVA movie.
ADV still owns the rights to the tv series.
Neither of them own the rights to the entire franchise.
What a waste of time.

Out of the Blue

So I randomly had an epiphany at work today...the song "Out of the Blue" by Julian Casablancas describes why I play SWR/Hisoutensoku still.
Both verses even.
It was sort of morbidly sad and fascinating.

Touhou 12.5 announced

I will use...two spoilers.
Also Aya is an elf.

Caster

Brocken Spectre

It's German.
Really.
Google it.

ITS ALIVEEEEEEEE?!?!?

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni EP 1-5 Review

Simply amazing.
I honestly really have no other words for this series of sound novels.
They're extremely convoluted, there's a lot of text, and a lot of characters (more get introduced each episode it seems!), but it really is tightly wound and made; there is a clear direction, believe it or not!
Maybe this will change later but EP5 sort of affirmed to me what type of story this is at its core (it does cover a lot of genres, sometimes even to the point parodying them).
It's hard to say anything without spoiling ANYTHING, but you need to come into this body of work with an open mind.
Also, the music is GODLIKE.
The anime, however, is not.
Avoid at all costs and try to pick up the sound novel.
Here's a link to the music boxes (OSTS basically)

Getting started: Episode 1-4 torrent
Episode 5 torrent
Episode 6 is out but the current translation patch doesn't work with Ep 5-6 combined.
Go to witch-hunt for the translation patches.

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni Episode 1

Not the anime.
Something about the almost laborious introduction made me realize I had deeply missed reading actual novels instead of easy to consume light novels/manga.
Thumbs up for evoking that nostalgia, Umineko.
I think this is one of the rare translation projects that the creator himself (Ryuukishi07) has explicitly encouraged
Also, I think EP6 (final arc?) was released at C77, so dodging spoilers like mad from certain JLT Level 1 clowns in certain channels is hard.
I'll come back later with more of an actual review.

And now for a typo.

Hisoutensoku English patch is...

Coming Soon.

AWESOME CIRNO-ONLY COMBO

Because it had to be done.

SWR English Patch out

Well team mauve plus motley crew of misfits or whoever finally finished spitting this out.
I actually might replay this loathsome game for the story, as there were a lot of jokes I knew I was missing.
Heard Tenshi keeps spouting Chinese quotes and Yukari keeps counter-spouting.
Plus Yuyuko is just silly as hell.

TouhouVania Opening Movie

There's a lot of Touhou doujin games coming out in a week for Comiket 76, but this one from Aja Games (the poor souls that were given the responsibility of patching Big Bang Beat) has gathered some attention because it is a Castlevania clone.
Here's the trailer, I'll try to post a list for all the reported games coming out later.