Kizumonogatari announced for 2012

11/03/30
「傷物語」映画化決定

「傷物語」映画化が決定しました。
2012年公開予定です。

FUCK YES.

Koei offices defaced

I'm loling pretty hard here at what was spray painted, I guess someone takes severe issue with Koei's lawn-mowing simulators.
死ねゴミ
天誅
くそげー
卑怯者

Arbitrary units of DEATH!

The reporting on this thing has been atrocious.
I thought this was a troll at first but it is an actual fucking chart.
Arbitrary units of what?
For fuck's sakes you're not even trying now!

List of places I am going to not fucking listen to arbitrary units:
NHK, Katz, TBS
NHK sort of slow early on, getting better.
Yokosonews is katz, he's pretty up to date.
tbstv I honestly think has been down forever.
SA thread
Yes I know it's SA forums, but the first post is worth reading because regardless of the situation science doesn't change.
It's a good way to get a quick idea of what can happen in the worst case scenario and what the points of contention are between JP news and the USA news outlets.

Also here's a great example of the type of "reporting" that is being, dare I say it, "crowd-sourced" by nearly every godamn media outlet out there.

AP Photo of TEPCO's director weeping and description.
Looks pretty standard right? (By the way, I don't really trust TEPCO for shit.)
Here is the same photo, now turned into its own article by the Daily Mail.
Apparently Daily Mail is something the equivalent of the National Enquirer over there in Britain but not like it matters!
They're a reputable news source now!
This shit has been mass linked on blogs and other news sites repeatedly; I think the bitterest irony is all the blogs who are always for breaking down conspiracies by the media are swallowing shit like this from the Daily Mail hook line and sinker.
That press conference was translated live on an independent stream (not NHK) and none of the fearmongering garbage in that article was present.

And this is just a single example.

Japanese death toll to exceed 10,000

This was a lot more serious than I thought...
Tokyo didn't really get hit, just structural damage.
But several outlying communities just got completely washed away by the tsunami wave.
Plus explosions at the nuclear power plants as well.
And it actually moved the entire island plus threw the Earth off its axis...

I have naturalized Japanese relatives (they changed their Taiwanese given names to Japanese), I do not know how they are doing.

All you can do is just hope.

The Perils of Staying Sadlife

So Japan had an earthquake at 8.9 on the Ricther scale.

Honestly I'm laughing at other's misfortune and I feel bad.
Click the link for more sadlife catastrophes.

Keiji Inafune writing a book

The book is called "Inafune Keiji Comcept(Concept?)" and will be released in April, hopefully not the 1st.

Dragon Nest Japan's GMs pull upgrade "hack" stunt

So basically right now in Dragon Nest JP is an event where the first team to beat the new boss "Seed Dragon" get 1000manen. That's 10,000,000 yen, aka rounded down 100,000 dollars. For beating a video game boss. Pretty fucking crazy promotion. Apparently though Seed Dragon is some crazy unbeatable boss with 30 life bars; it has been theorized you'd need a full party (actually I think you can bring 8 people against him) of at least +12 or so equipped characters against him. Equipment in this game breaks at level 6.

Anyway in game, someone of the name of ハヌホメsdaa was upgrading basically the final tier of equipment, presumably for an attempt on the Seed Dragon. Global messages indicating +12, +13, and +14! Apocalypse Mace had been reached (Priest weapon) and people went crazy with excitement. And then someone posted in global chat: "Try to block the dude who got +14." And lo and behold, "YOU CAN NOT BLOCK A GM." appeared. Moments later the character (who was max level), was deleted. People flipped out. Why would a GM be upgrade haxing a final tier weapon in game? The first idea that came to everyone's mind was, "So they could win the Seed Dragon contest by rigging it with supposedly normal players who happened to have really high upgraded equipment." If they announced the winners and honuhome san showed up, no one would be surprised since they saw a fucking +14 in global. Shortly after this there was an "emergency maintenance," that supposedly addressed "security exploit." The community more or less called bullshit and said it was a coverup. According to the community, honuhome san was also a notorious upgrader in Arad Senki way back before the game was transferred from Hangame to Nexon.

So more or less everyone is calling Hangame on basically troll fishing the entire community with a rigged contest using rigged GM characters. Truly hilarious.

Kawaii Security

Apparently the selling point is "NO LESS THAN 30 VIRUS-TANS."

Examu has yakuza connections

How else do you explain Aquapizza in fucking main Tougeki lineup?

Also, no TTT2, because they say it wouldn't be finished.
Sort of sad, SBO Tekken is like the only time I get hype for Tekken again.
via VersusCity

MBAACC...

Her sprites look great but at the same time WE DID NOT NEED MORE CIELS.

Square Enix suffers a 76% drop in profits from April to December 2010

Via Estelle

Grab Bag

So in the news today (or yesterday):

China passing off Top Gun footage as Chinese airplane "training exercises."

Aquapazza/pizza by Examu/Leaf:

Unfortunately it's on Taito's Nazi Online board NESiCAxLive, meaning that State side operators will have about 0% chance of getting the game (fubarduck already shed a single tear.)
Also Manaka attacking anything is just too weird!

India's most expensive (and most successful) film:

Witness the masterpiece Enthiran.

Taxes

So I have two W2s, one pointing toward the normal place and one pointing toward Mauritius.

From Wikipedia:

Mauritius – based front companies of foreign investors are used to avoid paying taxes in India utilising loopholes in the bilateral agreement on double taxation between the two countries, with the tacit support of the Indian government, who are keen to improve figures relating to inward investment. The use of Mauritius as a gateway to funnel foreign investments into India has always been controversial. Mauritius's financial regime has a number of the key characteristics of a tax haven, which has helped to facilitate this.

KKIITTAAAAAAAAAA!

Arcana Heart 3 is out

<HeartNana> ok
<HeartNana> shit felt PERFECT

And some joy finally starts creeping back into me.

Cosmic Break broke my heart

Sort of delayed, sort of old, but yeah time to post a final wrap-up more or less.
Cosmic Break broke my heart.
I'd be sort of over this if I didn't keep getting asked questions suddenly by IRL friends from the fighting game community.
"Hay sibladeko what's a good build" x9000.
Imagine my face when I have to tell them that they should never spend money on this game because the people running it are insane.
Where were you clowns in the previous betas when the game was actually good?

In short, Cosmic Break USA's insistence that it was "well aware they were dealing with a different market" was pretty much lies.
True they started out with "discounted" prices but they kept the RT conversion the same and once those discounts end it will go back to the hilarious Japanese pricing of 20 dollars for 5 rolls.
And so ends Cosmic Break.
10 dollars 5 rolls.
Not budging on that price point, that's what DFO uses and that's the border of sanity.
It's only fair too given the lack of a trading system and other bullshit the userbase puts up with.
If they had used that price point I'd be flying around with those shiny wings right now with chocolate Lily instead of playing other games.
But no they think 20 bucks 5 rolls will work here.
Even with the discounted rates (16 bucks for 5 rolls! 12 bucks for 5 rolls, almost there but no cigar) have firmly cleaved the user base by 66%.
And hell I wonder how many of those remaining 33% paid?
The few people who have shiny wings all belong to the merged clan of lagging HKers and iHOP called Everything's(Not)Fine.
That and maybe Middle Eastern Prince *******, he has something like 4 shiny wings on an alt.
Truly the saviors of USA Cosmic Break's economic model.

Quite honestly I spend tons of money on stupid shit, I threw 50 bucks at Ougon (HAHA SUCKER), I'm throwing 70? at Arcana Heart 3 limited edition, just to name my most recent examples of excess.
But I refuse to throw any more money at Cosmic Break USA until they change the pricing, which I don't think they will.
It'd be pretty trivial for me to throw 1000s and get overpowered bots like Everything'sFine and rule a dead game.
Except I don't want a dead game, I want a game that can grow, that can thrive, that can survive a balance change instead of having people quit because their 1000s of dollars are now worthless.
Buy in and you basically reward Cyberstep for their idiocy and their desire to kill their own game.

Edit: Oh yeah as for shit people ask me the most:
If you want to be a winner, Redux will help you win.
Tons of problems in the base game...though changing flat garapon price goes a long way toward remedying that.

Ougon Musou Kyoku

Is pretty kusoge.
I'm having limited "fun" with it but right now the biggest problems are:
1. Cancel window is retardedly tight and chains actually hurt my hands to do, very mashy game cause of how the command interpreter is.
2. Pressure is extremely linear, the guard meter builds hella fast so there's almost no reason to open someone up, just make them block. You basically block low 99% of the time in this game waiting for the obvious tag overhead.
3. Attacking someone gives them more meter than you.
4. Bursts are omega free, with the amount of meter you get in this game there is no reason NOT to burst. If a game has both sides bursting like 5 times per match there is a problem.
5. Metaworld is staggeringly powerful for certain characters, there is no reason to NOT counter meta if you have the meter and even if they have more meters to redeclare it throws off dash timing like a bitch and shortens the duration of it.
6. Everyone's combos are the same, though I don't mind it that much. No meter combo is 2a5b2b5c tag 2a5b2b5c2c special if you have it. One meter on your main? 2a5b2b5c metaworld dash 2a5b2b5c tag 2a5b2b5c2c metaworld super into dizzy. One meter on your sub? 2a5b2b5c tag 2a5b2b5c metaworld dash 2a5b2b5c metaworld super into dizzy. Ange has limited chains but she has rejumps. Probably one of the more interesting characters in the game.
7. Hitboxes are all over the place. True there is a slash wisp I believe in the actual move, but look at that thing. Same with a lot of the other moves, I think Battler's tie is something like impossible to attack head on.

8. Netplay is disconnecting garbage with no spectate and no way to copy paste IPs in (you have to mash up arrows on the number fields)
9. Limited joystick support, when's the last time I've played a doujin fighter that couldn't realize the directionals on both my pad and stick? Maybe 10 years ago?

Pluses:
1. Presentation is slick as hell, looking at the sprite work confirms this. Plenty of cool in-jokes and story moves as well, the characters really have a lot of their stuff from the sound novels.
2. Music is amazing, although it is in uncompressed WMA!?!?! Lol why is the continue song 2.5 minutes. It's like they didn't care. Plus a 7 minute stage song for a game with a 180 second timer. Do not understand.
3. Voice acting is top notch, everyone sounds in character and the ones who are annoying are annoying as hell nyehheheh (silly rabbit).
4. I really really like the meter system in that you only build meter for your partner. It really does promote the "tag" aspect of the game, however everything else sort of falls, especially of how metaworld is handled. Maybe doing metaworld super ends your metaworld immediately, because at the moment Beatrice has infinite momentum, Battler and Ange have free instant full screen punishes on anything you do that isn't down back, etc. etc.

The game has potential, I don't even want to think of how Melty Blood was when it first came out.
Right now though it's a pretty limited, though gorgeous, experience.

Arcana Heart 3 Test

Microsoft Taiwan makes a Silverlight Christmas dating sim

What the fuck? I didn't even know there were four Silverlight sisters.

Rollcaster

It’s possible for a sound to get played and then get canceled out by a rollback, which would of course be very confusing. I had to add some code that not only tracks every single instance of a sound being played, but what’s even more fun is that it has to check to make sure that the same sound wasn’t started on a later frame, so it doesn’t accidentally cancel something out that was just moved up a bit.

So you want to program games?
Hope to God you are as hardcore as mauve.