The Freak Report

Babble, Babble, Babble

2012-02-13T15:39:00.003-05:00

I'm working on my "comp II" (not right now, I mean in general) which I've mentioned before - it's one of those requirements for my PhD. Every now and then, I get stuck with a bit of writer's block. When that happens, I sometimes just start typing random babble, stream-of-conscious type of stuff, in an effort to try to get things started again, with varying degrees of success. If nothing else, it usually leaves me with something somewhat strange to look at for a bit.

Since there hasn't really been much blog-worthy stuff happening of late (though I should probably do a final write-up for the comic workshop), I figured I'd inflict a couple of the more recent stream-of-conscious eruptions on my one or two actual readers so that they can boggle at it. BOGGLE I SAY!

Here's one from a couple of weeks ago (or thereabouts - I don't timestamp them):

...while also being a contestant on Jeopardy!, but not Wheel of Fortune (which is for dumb people). There are two rules for every yard stick, most notably the inevitability of walls to be solid, at least when yellow. Foreasmuch as nine bricks forms a collection, there is a sparrow that drinks tea and sings ballads about walruses in tutus. There is nothing in so much as there is something, but when those notions become palatable, it is really for the best that they be shelved with the mustard. This I know for I have worn socks, but not because I have hands on my feet. That would just be silly. It is my esteemed thought that the whole of the part is nothing that cannot overcome the adversity which you now face, which is nautical.

And the most recent one, being the one from just before I made this post:

Content. Like a table. Flat and made of wood. Ergo: bording, dull, insipid -- you get the idea. Or do you? Idea's are, after all, rather ephemeral, you can't get them like you can get, say, a cold, or the bubonic plague. Not that you can actually get the bubonic plague these days either, but, well, that's really neither here nor there. It's over there. Maybe under. Like underground. Which is where you might be if you had the bubonic plague. Or after, I suppose. But I digress. Or perhaps regress. Or even depress. Although what I press, that's harder to say. I certainly don't work for a newspaper and there are no big red buttons around either. Not to imply the buttons are necessarily round. Or red. Or big. Big and red even, like a dog, except that I don't like dogs so I won't go there. But maybe over there. And there we are, again, back over there. What's so fascinating? Is it like a train wreck, or one of those trashy talk shows? Though how those work I couldn't say. I mean, you can't show talk to someone, after all, it's just sound -- it's ephemeral, like ideas. Unless your ideas are announced by a big glowing lightbulb appearing over your head out of nowhere. Maybe you've got word balloons floating over your head -- then you could show those to somebody. They might still think you're crazy, but it would be a start. It would be like you're at a race, or something, but what would you race? Stuff? Or things? And who would win? Well, I suppose that would depend on who had the fastest stuff -- zero to stuff in sixty seconds. That's a minute. Not minute which is to say, small. Well, I suppose your stuff could be small, but that's none of my business so I won't pry. I won't even try to pry, though it might be wry. Why? I won't lie... because I'm not really sure where I was going with that so I'll just let it fly. Like a house.

And that is that. I'll have to see about writing up a finale for the comic workshop in the next few days or so.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Ending With a Bang

2012-01-23T14:56:00.004-05:00

The pencilling and lettering for the six page mini-comic are now complete, bringing things to their exciting (or not) conclusion. Not much to say regarding this so lets dive right in, shall we?

Here's page five:
And page six:
I'm probably going to add in some more background details for some of the panels before inking them. Speaking of which, I now have six pages that I have to ink by Tuesday of next week! Ack! I may not get all of that done, especially since I will be ostensibly busy for much of the weekend (though in practice I'll probably be sitting around for long periods of time so I may be able to get some work done on things - we'll see), but I'll do what I can.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

And so it Continues...

2012-01-15T12:44:00.003-05:00

With the start of the new term, the comic workshop has resumed for its final four to five sessions. The homework is continuing to walk us through creating our mini-comics with this week bringing us up to about the first two-thirds mark for the pencilling and lettering. I did some extra work over the holidays to get a bit ahead of schedule, but for now, here are the third and fourth pages.

Page 3:And page 4:
I'll probably be adding a bit more detail to some of the backgrounds when I do the inking (speed lines and that sort of thing). Of note, the woman and daughter in the last panel of page 4 appeared in the first page of the original four page mini-comic where they overheard the g4m3rz abusing the English language (seems like the mother-daughter pair might become something of a running gag if I do any more of these.

We'll be talking about inking with a brush in this week's session after which pages 5 and 6 of the mini-comic will be posted (though I still have to work out some layout issues for page 6).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

More Pencils

2011-12-17T09:12:00.005-05:00

I finished up the pencils for pages one and two of the six page mini-comic I'm doing for the comic workshop. There's really not a whole lot to say about them that I haven't already said about previous comic pages. I used the non-photo blue pencils for the roughs like I did with the one-page comic and, once again, when scanning in on greyscale, they magically disappear leaving only the regular pencils, so they're still working as advertised. So, without further ado, the pages!

Page one is basically a bridge from the four page mini-comic (links to page one, two, three and four, for those who are curious to review). Modified a few things from the thumbnails but otherwise not much to add, commentary-wise.

Tried to do some fancy perspective stuff to start off page two, but it's definitely off - not something I'm particularly experienced with. The cars are also out of proportion with respect to each other (at least) which is another thing I need to work on (and relative proportions of things in general.)

Anyway, with the comic workshop done for this term, there probably won't be any more comic-related things until we resume next year, though I'm going to try to get a head start on the next two pages over the holidays so that January's a little less busy.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Comic Filler

2011-12-13T12:38:00.008-05:00

On the previous meeting for the comics workshop, we talked about panel composition and various considerations (conscious or otherwise) that go into laying out content within a panel. Comic artist Wally Wood came up with "22 Panels That Always Work" (or see video version here) as a sort of visual shorthand - of course, theres more than just 22 ways to compose a panel, but it's a nice reference if one is stuck for ideas.

One of our exercises was to re-design a panel from our mini-comic thumbnails based on our panel composition discussion. Here's the one that I did (from page 6):And the three alternate versions:
We've also been talking about developing characters, both in the literary sense and in regards to approaches and techniques to designing the visual look of a character. Even though I did the character design for my major characters in The Word Smith over the summer, this still gave me the opportunity to design the civilian attire for the hero and his sidekick and the new set of villains.This is a set of concept sketches exploring possible designs for The Word Smith's civilian look (I went with the middle one), with a more detailed model sheet below:For The Pen, I only did a set of concept sketches (because I was being lazy) with the final design that I used being a mix of the first and second sketches.Finally, I did a single sketch for each of the villains (basically fairly closely based on how they were drawn in the thumbnails) and no detailed model sheet since they're just one-offs, basicallyThe fact that there's three of them (like there were in the first mini-comic) is really just coincidental. Three just seems like a good number, though I could probably have cut one of them out without much difficulty.

Anywho! That's all for this time. The next post will probably have the pencils for the first two pages of the mini-comic.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Word Smith Take Two

2011-12-09T13:25:00.004-05:00

So, that comic workshop I've been running has still been going, even through NaNoWriMo and stuff has been happening. We're in the final stretch, though the workshop is going to run into January since we've skipped a couple of weeks due to people being away and will be adding 2 or 3 extra weeks of material related to figure drawing and perspective when all is said an done. But that's not a bad thing! It gives me some extra time to get ahead on my homework, and I might need it. After the one-page comic, we've started in on the final sequence of homework assignments which tasks us with creating a 6 page mini-comic. I've told my workshop participants to do anywhere from a 2 to 6 page comic (and they're all doing 2 pages) but as the leader, and because I'm a little bit crazy, I decided to do the full 6 pages. Hey, why not?

In order to make things a bit easier on myself, I decided to do the next episode of the 4 page mini-comic I did over the summer - it avoids me potentially starting yet another project that I might feel tempted to do something about at some time in the future and avoided having to spend too much time coming up with a new idea whilst I was embroiled in NaNoWriMo. I was a bit hesitant to just follow-up the summer mini-comic though as it seemed like I'd be short circuiting the character design process a little bit, but in the end I still have to do character designs for peoples' civilian outfits and the new set of villains.

The first task, as before, was to create thumbnails. I did my thumbnails at 1/4 size on two sheets of paper (conservation ftw), pictured below.

Of course, the small size (and my handwriting) probably means the dialogue's not terribly legible, but I'll be posting thing full version as it gets completed. The current goal is to have the first two pages fully pencilled and lettered by Tuesday next week (currently have all the roughs done), so they'll be posted sometime after that; some character designs might go up between now and then.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

NaNoWriMo Post-Mortem

2011-12-05T15:45:00.003-05:00

It's been nearly a week since I completed my NaNoWriMo project and the thought of it no longer turns me into a mass of quiver goo which means it's time for a post-mortem of the whole experience. Isn't that what you were waiting for? Sure it was. So lets go!

This was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo, though I didn't sign up on the official website as I didn't feel it was necessary for me personally. I did see on a blog somewhere that previous NaNoWriMos have had about a 20% success rate, though I don't know what the results are for this year. Food for thought, I suppose, or some indication that writing 50 000 words in a month is no small feat. Anyway, on to my personal experiences.

As I said previously, this was my first writing project of any significance outside of FASS since... oh, well, I'm not sure, really. For my writing adventure, I picked an idea that had been rolling around in the back of my head since sometime in 2004. Overall, I enjoyed the writing process, though it definitely started to feel like a bit of a slog at the end. I think that succeeding in NaNoWriMo requires a certain amount of discipline and pacing; I was able to stick to my daily writing schedule and that certainly helps. Even though I never really wrote much more than the minimum each day, it was still enough to let me finish a day early - a nice reward for sticking with things, I guess.

A plan also helps. This is one area where I could have used a bit more work. I had done a little bit of background writing over the summer and made a short outline to get me started, though it turned out to be not quite enough. The outline got me through the first six chapters (about 38 000) words with the last two chapters being made up as I went along. Ordinarily, I'd have stopped, thought about things a bit more and then continued, but NaNoWriMo doesn't really accomodate that very well. Fortunately, by the end of chapter six, things had enough momentum to keep going. Though I'm not too sure how much a significantly more detailed outline would have helped as unexpected things kept happening, things happened in ways I didn't anticipate and characters developed in ways I hadn't originally thought of. But that's good! I like that about writing and I think it's part of how I do these things, so having an overall premise in mind (which I did) while coming up with an outline in chunks and then filling in the details as I go and changing the outline as necessary seems to suit me. Naturally, others' clickage will vary.

Of course, a lot of what I wrote was probably crap, but quality is not the point of NaNoWriMo. The point, for me, was just to force myself to write something, regardless of quality or anything else. I've been wanting to try to writing a novel for a long time; it's one of those things that I keep thinking that I should do but never get around to actually doing so NaNoWriMo was, for me, the metaphorical kick in the pants to do some writing. And I think that the ideas I came up with whilst writing are usable - it just needs a lot of polish.

So what's next? Well, I have to step back, look at what I wrote, and figure out where I want to take the story (I figure it's maybe a quarter or so complete, but we'll see). Assuming I decide to pursue this project further, I'll have to, obviously, do a lot more writing and a lot more polishing.

And I also need to make a map.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Qapla'!

2011-11-29T18:14:00.001-05:00

It seems this post brings me up to one gross (ewww!) in total and with it, news of my successful completion of my first ever NaNoWriMo! One day early, even! Yay me!

Here's the breakdown of the "final" stats:
Words: 50 602
Paragraphs: 911
Characters: 281 012
Pages: 88
Chapters: 8

I put final in quotes because I might add one or two things tomorrow while it's still officially NaNoWriMo, but I am otherwise finished.

I'm probably going to take a day or two to decompress and then post some thoughts on the overall exerience.

Until then,

Freak Out
-TfitC

Fifty Percent Plus One

2011-11-16T10:16:00.002-05:00

No, this post is not about referendums. Rather, it is an update on my NaNoWriMo progress, now on the 16th day, which is one day past the half-way mark.

So far, things continue apace. I am still on-track and currently sit at about 27 000 words (including what I've written so far today) spanning 48 pages, which is actually a little ahead of schedule. I'm still enjoying the process (though it is quite the commitment, forcing myself to write at least 1667 words each day!) and unexpected things keep happening in the story itself. So as long as things continue as they have been, I should have no trouble reaching the 50 000 word goal and may even hit it a day or two early.

The story itself won't be anywhere near finished at the end of the month as at the half-way point it feels like it's only just getting started. While I don't have a detailed outline or anything, I did do a very rough overview of the early parts of the story and I am nearly to the end of it, though so much has happened that is either different from how I had envisioned it or which I hadn't anticipated at all that I think the outline (such as it is) is kind of moot at this point anyway.

Overall I'm fairly happy with how the story seems to be progressing, though I don't think it's as humourous so far as I'd like it to be, though I am of course putting funny or silly things in where I can. At the moment, I'm just focused on pumping out my daily quota and don't really have the extra time to stop and make it as humourous as it could be. That's something I can go back and put in via editing, I guess! Because it's naturally going to need editing when all is said and done.

I think it also goes to show that humour is hard, especially continuous, consistently maintained humour (though there's also nothing saying that a basically humours story can't have its serious moments as well). It's one of the reasons why I admire Weird Al so much; having a 30-year plus long career based on being funny is no small feat and I often think he doesn't get the credit he deserves for it.

Anyway, that's enough ramblings for today. I'll do a wrap-up post at the end of the month (or early next month) to review my NaNoWriMo experience.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

One-Page Complete

2011-11-09T10:21:00.007-05:00

The comics workshop continues apace. Since the last post on the subject, the one-page comic series of homework has been finished. This was done in two steps: penciling and then inking.

Above are the pencils for my version of the one-page comic. I penciled directly over the non-photo blue rough work and scanned it in using the greyscale setting on my scanner. As can be seen, the non-photo blue lines have disappeared, no further work required.

The next step was inking the art work, with my results shown above. Unlike the mini-comic that I did over the summer which I ended up inking largely with the brush, this was inked using a nib pen, which was the aspect of inking which the workshop covered last week (we'll be doing brushes later on). I used four different nibs for inking, one for each row of panels. In reality, I'd probably use different nibs for different parts of the drawing, but as I'm new to this, this was a way to try out some different nibs without having to worry too much about specifics. One thing of note, I forgot to draw in the pattern on the father's vest in the last panel - how I missed such a large detail, I don't know, but oh well.

The nibs themselves were interesting to work with - easier to control than a brush, but more flexible than a normal pen, plus they make an interesting scratching noise when drawing.

I should probably also note that I didn't erase the rough work before scanning, which is mostly visible in the word balloons and the lettering guidelines (created with an Ames lettering guide).

The next series of homework walks us through the creation of, in theory, a six page mini-comic. For the purposes of my workshop, I'm suggesting a two to six page mini-comic, depending on how ambitious each participant feels, or how much time they think they have. I'm still not sure how many pages I'm going to tackle, but I'm hoping to try for at least another four page one.

Well, we'll see how things go.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Ready, Set, Write!

2011-11-07T14:27:00.003-05:00

This is going to be a picture-less post (gasp!)

I've decided to attempt NaNoWriMo this year (that's National Novel Writing Month for anyone who might not be familiar with the acronym). That means my free time for November will be taken up largely by comics and writing.

NaNoWriMo is something that I've been wanting to do for at least the past couple of years, but never felt I had the time due to one thing or another. While it's debatable whether or not I actually have enough time this year, I've decided that I don't really want to put it off yet another year. And while I could just pick a month and do my own personal NaNoWriMo, it just doesn't have the same degree of motivation.

And so, after about a week of writing, I am currently on track, up to about 11 700 total words. At this point, I'm fairly confident that I should have no problem meeting the 50 000 quota by the end of the month so long as I can continue setting aside sufficient time to write.

I'm enjoying the writing so far. This marks the first significant creative writing I've done in the past few years that is not FASS related. I have a basic premise in mind for the story and now more-or-less where I'm going, but there's no detailed outline. In a way, it's similar to how I was approaching the Kyoujo RPG. And so far, at about 20 pages in, several unexpected things have happened in the story - either things that I hadn't foreseen at the outset or things that have unfolded differently than I had original thought they might. But that's ok! I think that's part of the fun of writing.

The story itself is meant to be a humourous fantasy story which combines original elements with parody. The basic idea is one that's been rattling around at the back of my head for several years, since the year I spent working in Toronto, if I recall correctly.

Anyway! That's all I have to say about that at the moment. Still trying to decide if I want to post the actual story to this blog, or perhaps just some of the better snippets.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

I've Got the Non-Photo Blues

2011-10-31T11:07:00.004-04:00

Cue jazz solo.

So. As I mentioned previously, the current homework series for the comic workshop I'm running is a one-page comic using a script supplied by the textbook (having everyone use the same script gives a chance to see how different people handle the issues in creating the comic and compare results). For this week, we were doing the penciling and lettering. I'm not quite done yet (I'll be finishing it up tonight since the workshop is tomorrow) but figured I'd post progress so far.

I drew the rough pencils using an erasable non-photo blue pencil. Non-photo blue means that it's not supposed to show up when copying / scanning. As you can see above, the drawings are very faint, except the places where I pressed harder (probably too hard) whilst sketching. It would probably only take a little tweaking on the scanner settings to eliminate it entirely so it's nice to know that the pencils function more-or-less as advertised.
Above is the version with inked lettering and panel borders. All that's left for this week is to do the final pencils with a regular pencil.

Freak Out
-TFitC

In the Dark

2011-10-29T19:20:00.006-04:00

The comic workshop continue to plug along. This week, I've got two images to post, one in-class exercise and another being a homework assignment.

First, we were talking about lettering and word balloons this past week and the in-class exercise was to create a one-page comic with no pictures, so here's mine:Yeah, yeah, plutonium doesn't work that way - it's comic logic, after all.

For the homework, we're currently going through a series of assignments that has us making a one-page comic based on a short story provided by the textbook, starting with thumbnails, then penciling and finally inking. The process is not entirely unlike what I did for The Word Smith mini-comic, but I figure I'll document it here anyway. Below are my version of the thumbnails:
We were allowed to modify the dialogue to suit our sense of humour. While I didn't modify much dialogue per se, I added some, such as mention of spleens (because "spleen" is a funny word).

That's all for now. I guess I'll post the pencils when I get them finished.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Psst... Hey, buddy!

2011-10-10T14:53:00.003-04:00

So, another week, another assignment for the comic workshop I'm running this term. This week's assignment was to draw a single-panel scene showing something happening using at least two figures interacting with objects in the foreground, midground and background. The main point is to practice penciling and try out drawing a detailed scene.

Below is my result:"Hey, buddy, wanna buy... a spatula?"

Not much to say beyond that, really.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Limited Edition Prints

2011-10-02T14:30:00.007-04:00

I've noticed that the recent trend on this blog is for most entries to have pictures included - not necessarily a bad thing (at least, I don't think I've posted anything that would make someone want to gauge their eyes out). And with this post, that trend continues!

I'm taking a course this term (auditing, actually, which means I don't have to do a final project) on Computers and Aesthetics. As part of that, last week the class took a field trip and had a print making class. Basically, what this entails is applying paint to some suitable material (we used plexiglass) and then transferring it to a dampened paper using a fancy press machine thing. This process means you actually need to paint the mirror image of what you want the final print to look like, which is obviously important for text.

I had time to make three prints, the first two in watercolour, the third using oil-based paints.

Here's the first print:
This is one of my FR characters. I forgot to write the text and the symbol up at the top as a mirror image so it ended up backwards (oops). For the curious, the text is her name and is written in Tolkien's tengwar system. It is supposed to read "Gillin" but, as mentioned, it ended up backwards.

The second print (also watercolour) was of one of the characters from my mini-comic project over the summer:I remembered to draw the text the correct way for this one, but I still ended up having to make fixes to the symbol, which is why it looks a bit smudged.

The final print was done using oils:The first "S" ended up backwards... but, oh well.

Anyway, that is that, I suppose. It was a fun class, but at the end of the day, I prefer drawing.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Let's Strip! Comics, That Is

2011-09-27T19:09:00.002-04:00

This week's assignment for the comic workshop was, essentially, a comic strip. Here is my result:

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Not A Toilet

2011-09-22T19:32:00.003-04:00

"Well, at least he's stopped trying to drink out of the toilet."

The above was my most recent "homework" assignment for the comics workshop I'm running (and participating in) this term. We were talking about single-panel comics and the assignment was, basically, to draw one, with the above being my result.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Lets Get Digital (digital)

2011-09-20T12:50:00.007-04:00

I set aside some time over the weekend to finish the digital version of page 3 of the mini-comic, shown below on the left to show off my photoshop n00bness in all its glory. For comparison, the hand drawn version is on the right. One thing to point out is that readers will notice that a couple of panels in the digital version are missing backgrounds. That's because I decided to add in those backgrounds after I'd scanned in the original pencils. The background for the panel in the lower left corner was also added after scanning originally, but I decided to draw it in the digital version in photoshop since it counterbalances the panel in the upper right.

Left: digitally inked version of page 3; Right: hand inked version. (Gah... you'll probably have to click on the right hand image to see all of it 'cause blogger's too narrow. Oh well. Also grr... I just noticed I forgot to colour in the Word Smith's mask in one panel of the digital version. Oh well. Not going to worry about it now!)

I also ended up leaving the pencils in the digital version since I decided I was too lazy to remove them (plus I screwed up a bit and drew some stuff on the background layer so I couldn't just go and delete it... oops) so you can see some of the pencil drawings underneath.

This now officially concludes the mini-comic project, though I seem to be having some bad thoughts... I've had various random ideas related to continuing the project (such as the Word Smith's origin story) so I might actually do some more with it. We'll see, I guess...

Freak Out,
-TFitC

It's A Puzzle!

2011-09-08T18:03:00.001-04:00

Here's a little puzzle (sorry for the crappy drawing). Feel free to leave guesses in the comments. Yar.
Freak Out,
-TFitC

Earthquake!!

2011-08-23T15:02:00.002-04:00

I knew I felt some odd rumbling in the lab earlier this afternoon. Turns out I was right.

And just so this isn't just a one-liner, here's a screen shot of my current research-in-progress:

It's the most recent version of my panel layout algorithm. Things are progressing fairly smoothly, at least when I'm not procrastinating or whatever.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Just An Ordinary Day...

2011-08-20T21:48:00.002-04:00

Went to the beach today and was inspired to draw this very quick, very rough comic when I got home:
Enjoy!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Mini-Comic Post-Mortem

2011-08-11T12:07:00.004-04:00

Brief note: this is a long, slightly rambling post reflecting my recent mini-comic experiment. Hopefully it will be at least slightly interesting and, perhaps, even illuminating, but I make to promises. Also, this is post number 128, or two to the power of seven.

-----

Now that it's been several days since I've completed my mini-comic project, it's time for what the game industry (and possibly others) generally refer to as a "post-mortem". (Funny that the game industry would use a term that can also refer to an autopsy. I wonder if there's any symbolism there, or if it's just a coincidence?)

Anyway... This project was not my first attempt to make a comic. Several years ago, I drew a couple of pages based on a story my sister had written. That little experiment was only ever intended as a gift and was never really meant to go farther than that (though I briefly considered it). My approach for it was different that for my mini-comic. Back then, I really had no idea what I was doing - I drew each panel separately, on individual pages, scanned them, and attempted to assemble them into full pages in Corel PhotoPaint. It sort of worked, but by drawing each panel in isolation, they didn't fit together as well as they could have. I don't recall if I did anything analogous to thumbnailing, though I think I at least had a vague notion of how things were going to fit together. Still, doing the layout properly would have saved a few headaches.

It doesn't have to make sense. Notice the slightly odd panel arrangement in the upper right corner - a consequence of drawing each panel individually without the context of the larger layout.

Since then (and in the context of my PhD over the past couple of years) I've read several books on the subject of making comics and have learned a lot more about the subject in the process. Thus, I now know the importance of doing thumbnails and properly designing the layout before I start. I've also learned about various techniques that are used in comic and, to an extent, why. For my mini-comic I attempted to follow what seems to be the standard practice and I think that helped out.

That said, I was still a bit "looser" with my process than maybe I should have been. My script was, initially, more of an outline, which left several sections of dialogue along the lines of "gives cheesey speech" or the likes. As a result, I ended up rewriting (or in some cases writing) dialogue as I went along, though the script was finalized before the comic itself was finished (before page two was finished, at least, I think). While there is something to be said for being a bit flexible with the script (I found myself rewriting dialogue for page 1, which was one of the more finished pages in the script at that point, while I was drawing the page) it's still important to, at least, have a complete, fully written draft of the script since it's also quite important to be able to plan the placement of word balloons.

Moving on the the drawing side, well, I am not an artist! While I have done a fair bit of sketching in the past, it's mostly been of individual characters in relatively neutral poses. I do not have much experience drawing scenery, or characters interacting with each other, let alone whilst doing actiony things. I bought myself a mirror that I could use to help with poses and anatomy and such, though I've still got lots of work to do there. Though I wonder if it might be better for me to focus on a more cartoonish style (moreso than I'm doing now) where having less realistic proportions wouldn't be so much of an issue.

The thumbnails that I drew for the mini-comic could also, I think, have been a bit more detailed. There does seem to be a fairly wide variance in the level of detail that artists put into their thumbnails. While I didn't want to get bogged down with putting too many details into my thumbnails, I think there were a couple of cases where I could have benefited if they'd been a bit more detailed. In one case, I had to slightly modify my panel layout to accommodate changes in panel composition (bottom row of page 1) and in the second, I actually changed the composition of a group of panels from what was in the thumbnails (top right corner of page 2). Though in the second case, that was partly due to the script still being in a slightly unfinished state at that point.

Despite some of the criticisms above, I'm generally pleased with how the mini-comic turned out, my own artistic limitations aside. It's also kind of nice to have the physical artifacts left over as a result (ie, the physical comic pages).

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had fun with the project. I enjoy drawing, which I hadn't done nearly enough of in recent years. I feel like I learned a lot, which is good as that was part of the goal. I also find myself wanting to do more - not necessarily continuing the mini-comic (despite leaving the door open for more at the end of page 4, I basically intended it to be a one-off), but I'd like to do a longer term comic project of some sort. Though whatever that project ends up being, I've also got to get faster at drawing pages, or maybe just devote more time to it.

Before that, however, my next comic related project will be, if all goes according to plan, running an (unofficial) reading group on making comics in the graphics lab using the book "Drawing Word and Writing Pictures", presuming that there's sufficient interest and timing works and all that.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

The Epic Conclusion!

2011-08-06T12:42:00.004-04:00

Here, at last, is the fourth and final page of my mini-comic project:

Won't say too much more beyond that, as the process was the same as the previous two pages. With this page, the project is now complete - a rare finished project for me! I guess I still need to do the digital version for page 3 (and maybe page 4 as well), but that's a side thing. I'll probably do a follow-up post in the near future to sum up my thoughts on the whole project, but for now I'll just say - it was fun!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

P.S.

The mini-comic is also available, sequentially, at this location.

Three Down, One to Go!

2011-07-27T18:20:00.002-04:00

Well, almost a month (yikes!) after page two, here is page three of the mini-comic!

Everything was done by hand, same as for page two. I'm also working on a digitally inked version of page three, but in the interest of getting the entire mini-comic complete before the end of the summer I'm going to be focusing on finishing the fourth and final page before spending much time on the digital version of page three, but it'll be posted for comparison whenever its finished.

Now, if I ever want to do a longer-term project than this, I've got to get faster than a measly one page a month!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Page Two

2011-06-30T19:50:00.004-04:00

Page two of the mini-comic is complete! There's not really much to say about this one. The main difference between page two and page one is that I did every thing for page two by hand, including lettering - and I apologize for making everyone read my hand writing. I also inked a larger percentage of the page with the brush this time, but otherwise my process was pretty much the same as for page one. Some things didn't turn out like I'd hoped, but, well, I guess that's part of the learning experience. Anyway! This means I'll be starting page three in the near future - guess I'm about half way done!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Some Random Blather

2011-06-29T14:45:00.003-04:00

In an effort to get past some writer's block today, I spewed out the following:

Run to the border, because if you don't run, you'll have to walk, and if you have to walk, you'll wear the soles off the bottom of your shoes, and if that happens, you'll have to get new shoes. Or perhaps you'll wear off the bottom of your feet until you're reduced to walking on the stubs of your ankles and that would just be all sorts of awkward, not to mention likely causing balance issues. So, it's up to you, really. Will you run, or will you end up waddling along on the bloody stumps of your ankles, all because you were too lazy to go out and buy some new shoes? I know, I know, it doesn't seem fair - after all, why should you be forced to go out and buy new shoes if you're happy with the ones you have now? And why not sandals? Or slippers? Or maybe you feel like being all glamourous and wearing some high heels, even though that would mean you're cross dressing. Or at least your feet would be, even if the rest of you wouldn't be. But if you're going to do that, why not go all the way? I mean, what's stopping you? Oh, sure, society might still not entirely approve of that sort of thing, but who am I to judge? And lets be honest here, it's just not the sort of thing you can half-ass, nope, it's either all the way in, or not at all. Which brings us back to those shoes - don't you think they're looking a little ratty? Which isn't to say you have rats in them, or that you wear rats on your feet (goodness no, now that would be more than a little weird, wouldn't it?) but that they're - how can I put this kindly... well, I can't, really, they look like crap. Your shoes really do look like crap. Now, normally I wouldn't point this out, I don't habitually go around telling people their shoes are crap, after all (that would be weird too, not to mention a little neurotic), but when I see an eyesore like that, well, I just can't help pointing it out. I might laugh, too, but now, that would just be mean. So you come in here, wearing shoes that look like all it would take to make them disintegrate would be nothing more than a good sneeze and I have just one question to ask: would you like to super size your tacos? Because we can totally do that. You could even wear them on your feet, you know, if you wanted to.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Character Design Part 4

2011-06-05T13:40:00.009-04:00

This is the last part of the character design for my mini-comic: one of the waitresses at the Street Meet Cafe (rough sketch below).

I actually ended up putting the character into the first panel of page 1 which was not originally planned so I did the quick rough sketch while in the process of drawing that panel. The more detailed design was not done until more recently. For the purposes of this project, the character is a minor one, but there's an off chance she'll become more important should I decide to continue this project (most certainly not a guarantee or anything) so I did a bit more of a detailed design than my other minor characters.

The "action" pose was meant to be some sort of discus throw type thing, but didn't really turn out how I wanted. That's a problem - I'm not really particularly good at doing action-y poses, but I suppose one of the points of this project is to get some practice at things like this. The above version is actually the second attempt - I erased the original pose and redrew it. The second one turned out better, even if it still wasn't really what I was trying for.

I also ended up doing another quick sketch with another variant on the pose. I think I like this one better (for the most part), even if it still needs work!

Lastly, I also did a quick sketch on an alternate design of The Word Smith's mask (it's actually loosely based on the logo for the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concerts):

And that's it for character design! Since I don't expect that the process for the remaining pages will be much different from the first page, I'm not likely going to do any in-progress posts like I did for page one and will just post the remaining pages as I finish them. Not having a deadline like I did for the first page, the other pages might take a while, but we'll see!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Final Fantasy 12 Replay

2011-05-27T11:17:00.003-04:00

I had not originally intended to do one of these summary things for Final Fantasy 12 since it was released after I had started my Final Fantasy series replay project. However, after replaying Tactics, I figured "why not?", plus I like the game so it seemed like a good excuse to replay it.

Final Fantasy 12 seems to be one of the more love it or hate it games in the series - not much middle ground - though that could maybe be said for some of the more recent entries in the series (and probably some older ones as well). As already stated, I rather like the game, and if I were to rank the entries in the series, FF12 would probably be somewhere near the top.

That's not to say that the game doesn't have its flaws. There are certainly some boneheaded design decisions (Zodiac Spear I'm looking at you!) and one could probably make the argument that some areas are a little too big - and this coming from someone who likes big areas! Still, overall, I enjoyed the game despite its flaws.

Even though I've already said that some areas were probably a little too big, one of the things that I did like about FF12 was that it has large areas to explore which, for the most part, the player is relatively free to wander around in. Also, while the plot is still a linear affair, aside from a few sections, the player is relatively free to go off and do side-quest things (which are mostly the hunts in FF12) pretty much any time (not just at/near the end of the game), provided they're high enough to handle the monsters they come across, which is something that seems to have been missing from some of the more recent games in the series.

The setting and plot are also somewhat different from other FFs. The game is set in the world of Ivalice, which is the setting of the FF Tactics games. While the connection between FF12's Ivalice and FF Tactics' Ivalice is not made clear within the game, some investigation on the weeb suggests that FF12 is set several hundred years before Tactics, though I don't know how canonical that is.

The plot, like that of Tactics, also has more of a focus on political intrigue and things of that nature. There are of course magic and things happening in the background, but it's the political struggles that give people their motivations and forms more of the core of the story. And I liked that.

The game's music is also quite obviously from the Tactics composer. There are a number of pieces that have a similar style or feel to them, and many places where the ornamentation also evokes that Tactics-ish feel to it.

For this playthrough, I took some time to do a bunch of the hunts that I didn't do the first time and also to hunt down a few more of the optional Espers. (Which, incidentally, where based on the Zodiac beasts from Tactics, the Totemas from Tactics Advanced and a few bosses from past games rather than the traditional FF summons which were instead used as airship names.) I didn't do all of the hunts (not insane enough to go after Yiazmat, for example) but I ended up doing most of them. I generally enjoyed most of the hunt and boss fights.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on FF12 in a nutshell. With that replay finished, I suppose I will at some point in the near future look into getting a PS3 so I can play FF13. Whether or not I'll do a write-up for it remains to be seen.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Not So Short Summary of Final Fantasy 12

2011-05-27T10:23:00.002-04:00

Final Fantasy 12
============

- Welcome to the Royal City of Rabanastre, heart of the Kingdom of Dalmasca. Today is Princess Ashe's wedding day and an elaborate parade is being held in her honour with Moogles and everything! Ashe and her groom - prince what's-his-name, Humperdink? no, it starts with R or something, well, he's really not important in the grand scheme of things - are paraded through the streets before they tie the knot.

- Shortly after (presumably) King Raminas is in a war council with his generals where he receives word that the fortress of Nabudis has fallen to the advancing Arcadian Empire and sends troops to reinfoce Nalbina fortress on Dalmasca's borders.

- Reinforcements are led by some knight-guy, and Ashe's princeling decides to tag along as well. Something about avenging his father or some such.

- Nalbina comes under attack in a battle that's something like a cross between Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings: airships fighting each other in the sky whilst everyone one on the ground bludgeons each other with swords. How quaint.

- Anyway, Dalmasca's forces are totally outmatched by Arcadia. Kight-guy tries to retreat, but the princeling decides to halucinate that he's Aragorn or something and tries taking on the Arcadian forces single handedly only to get shot by a lone bowman.

- Just then, an airship crashes into the ground giving knight-guy a chance to escape with princeling's corpse which he brings back to Rabanastre.

- Then, a narration by Marquis Ondore fills us in on some relevant political details: two empires, Arcadia in the east and Rozzaria in the west are currently vieing for control of Ivalice with Dalmasca caught in the middle. The invasion of Dalmasca is Arcadia's first move in its westward expansion.

- Dalmasca tries to launch a counter attack against Arcadia, but is utterly defeated and forced to accept unconditional surrender. The King travels to Nalbina to sign the treaty but some of Dalmasca's knight-types catch wind that an assassination is in the air.

- Knight-guy, who is now known as Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg, arrives at Nalbina and finds Reks, a young, wounded soldier. He sends Vossler, another of his knights, on into the fortress while he teaches Reks the ropes in a tutorial level.

- Basch, Reks and a few nameless knights easily plow through Arcadia's troops (must be the second string on guard duty or something) and just before arriving in the main hall, Reks tells Basch to go on ahead while he mops up a few more of the flies.

- Reks then quickly heads to rejoin Basch but finds an aweful sight in the main hall: everyone's dead (except for me)! Including the King. Basch then swiftly appears behind Reks and stabs him.

- Some Arcadian soldiers run in as Basch loudly proclaims this was all his doing and the King was a traitor. Some Arcadian pretty boy enters and says this shows that Arcadia should take over Dalmasca completely.

- Just before Reks dies, he whispers one last thing: Vaan, the name of his younger brother.

- Marquis Ondore then narrates that Basch was executed and that Ashe, having lost both her husband and her kingdom has committed suicide. He further advises the people of Dalmasca to roll over and take it, presumably some sort of peaceful resistance or something. Guess he's having delusions of Ghandi.

- Two years later, Vaan is hunting rats in a sewer (typical RPG hero stuff, that), egged on by the youngster Kytes.

- When he is finished mercilessly slaughtering defenceless rodents, Vaan and Kytes leave the sewers, Kytes going to one Migelo for work and Vaan leaving to pursue his own line of work as a thief. (At least he doesn't insist on being called a "Treasure Hunter" like certain other thieves, though Vaan probably doesn't have much of an education...)

- Vaan bumps into a couple of Arcadian soldiers who are making asses of themselves and make off with their money pouch. He escapes into the crowd and runs into Penelo, another orphan like him. She doesn't approve of his line of work but that doesn't stop her from helping herself to a couple of his ill-gotten coins.

- In a brief moment of respite, an airship passes overhead and Vaan proclaims he will, some day, be a Sky Pirate. Yeah, you tell us how that ends up working out for you, kid. Anyway, the moment passes and Penelo goes off to do some work for Migelo and suggests Vaan do the same. Man, she's kind of bossy.

- With nothing better to do, Vaan heads to Migelo's, a Bangaa (a lizard-like humanoid) shop keeper. Migelo sends Vaan to look for Kytes at the Sand Sea Tavern. Kytes was supposed to be running errands for him but hasn't returned.

- At the Sand Sea, Vaan finds Kytes oogling some wanted poster. It's for a mean beastie that's been roaming the desert, harassing the couriers who have supposed to be bringing in goods (Kytes was supposed to find a replacement courier or somesuch).

- The tavern keeper then wanders over and teaches Vaan about marks and hunts and some other game mechanics that are worth knowing about then sends him off to hunt the mark on the poster (the dreaded Rogue Tomato) and gives him some papers that will get him safely out of the city. (The city's in lock down mode right now since a new consul is coming later today and the Arcadians don't want anything unexpected to happen.)

- So, Vaan heads to the east gate of Rabanastre and out into the Dalmasca Estersands - it's Tomato hunting time! (Careful, it's deadly to comedians.) The thing is just a short distance out of town and goes down without much trouble.

- Heading back, Vaan runs into trouble at the gate as it's been closed until after the parade. Just then, some purebred Chocobos are brought in and Vaan exchanges "words" with the guards. Things look to turn ugly until Migelo and Penelo show up (having come looking for Vaan) and Migelo bribes the guards with some wine, then they all scurry inside.

- The new consul's parade and installation ceremony begin. Turns out the new consul is some Arcadian pretty boy named Vayne Solidor who's the guy who mopped up the situation with Basch and the King at Nalbina. He's also the Emperor's son but apparently emperor is an elected position.

- Vayne gives a speech where he says some words, babbling about honouring King Raminas by pursuing peace. The crowd seems to eat it up, or maybe they've just been lulled into a stupour. Vaan, however, is not amused.

- As Migelo is basically the provisioner for the Imperials' banquet tonight, he scurries off to see to things. Vaan, not being one to be left out, decides he wants to play Robin Hood and gate crash the party so he heads to Lowtown to speak to Old Man Dalan to find out how to sneak into the palace.

- It turns out that the old man is remarkably well informed and knows of a secret passage into the palace, but it needs a special magicked stone which the old man also just happens to have, except that it needs to be recharged with a sunstone.

- The old man, however, does not actually have a sunstone so he sends Vaan to the Nomad People in the Giza Plain, south of the city, who do know of such things.

- The nomads make sunstones as part of their livelihood and they know a sucker when they see one so they send Vaan out to make some for them. Before heading out, Vaan bumps into Penelo who's here on a lark, basically, since she's got the day off whilst Migelo slaves away for the Imperials. She tags along after Vaan since she suspects he's up to no good - which is, of course, exactly the case.

- Vaan manages to make a sunstone without incident and the villagers decide to let him keep one for himself. Time to head back to Rabanastre and proceed to get up to no good.

- Back at the city, Penelo runs off to mind the shop and Vaan heads back to Old Dalan who happily infuses the magic thingambob that Vaan needs with power from the sunstone. Dalan then fills the young ne'er-do-well in on how to sneak into the palace.

- The Gamarsythe Waterway connects into the basement of the Palace, so basically Vaan gets to go swimming in the sewers. In a little "meanwhile" sequence, we see some suspicious characters who appear to have the same idea as Vaan, including a strangely familiar soldier (looks like that Vossler fellow from the tutorial - looks like he's been wearing the same clothes for two years) and a woman of some sort.

- Anyway, Vaan swims in raw sewage, eventually emerging in the servants' area of the Royal Palace. Fortunately for Vaan, the servants weren't hired for their smarts and they think he's just one of the temp workers to help out with tonight's party.

- Oh, just as Vaan is sneaking into the servants' area, another meanwhile shows a bunny-girl and some guy in a poofy shirt ride into the palace grounds on some sort of flashy hover bike. Seems like the party is attracting all sorts of gate crashers.

- Back to business, the servants are being sequestered downstairs until the party is over (they're the clean-up crew) though with the help of one servant, Vaan is able to sneak past the guards (apparently, the guards weren't hired for their smarts either).

- Upstairs, Vaan sneaks around the not-so-bright guards until he finds the entrance to the treasure room with the help of the magic rock Dalan gave him.

- Inside the treasury, Vaan manages to find another glowing magic rock hidden inside a goddess statue. This is when bunny-girl and her escort (who calls himself the leading man - go figure) show up and try steal from Vaan what Vaan has already stolen. They also call the rock "magicite", so Final Fantasy fans will know this isn't just your run-of-the-mill magic rock.

- Vaan decides he doesn't like these two that much and runs away, but just then there's a commotion outside in the gardens as a full scale pitched battle is raging - these are the real gate crashers, it seems.

- The airship "Ifrit" shows up and starts blasting things and Mr. Leading Man thinks it a little suspect that it showed up so fast. He and bunny-girl decide to make their getaway and, since Vaan still isn't parting with the magicite, they decide to go ahead and steal Vaan instead (kind of like a two-for-one deal, I guess).

- The duo's hoverbike, however, suffers a catastrophic failure and crash lands back into the sewers. The two finally introduce themselves as Balthier (Mr. Leading Man) and Fran (bunny-girl, who also seems to be the mechanic), a pair of Sky Pirates and they make it clear to Vaan that if he wants to get out of this with his skin intact, he'll do as they say. He still acts like a stubborn little kid and refuses to turn over the magicite, however.

- There are some dead rebels nearby and Balthier speculates they had planned on taking advantage of lower security during the party to attack the Palace, except that Vayne seems to have anticipated that and set a trap using the airforce.

- Back to swimming in raw sewage. Vaan and crew come upon a woman who's being attacked by imperial soldiers so Vaan, ever reckless, jumps in to the rescue. She introduces herself as Amalia, a member of the resistance, and joins as a guest.

- A little later, the party is ambushed by some flans, kind of a boss battle, but not quite.

- A little later still, just as they're about to leave the sewers, the party encounters their first real boss battle - a flaming horse? In this watery place? I guess it's various sewer gasses that have ignited and attained sentience or are possessed by something or other. It's actually a kind of tough-ish fight, but fortunately the party seems to have some sort of perma-reraise and Amalia comes with seemingly unlimited potions so it's more of a training battle before the game takes the gloves off.

- The sewer gas is vanquished and the party is all puffed up with their own brilliance just when the imperials (including Vayne) show up and haul everyone off to the dungeons (though they are kindly paraded through the streets infront of the jeering crowds and a distraught Penelo first). Also, a Bangaa bounty hunter seems upset that the Imperials got Balthier before he could.

- Vaan halucinates about his brother Reks who is slumped in a chair in a sterile room and then evaporates before waking up in the Nalbina Dungeons (I take this to be all in Vaan's head, proof that he's got issues, rather than implying that Reks is actually alive somewhere - I don't think we ever see Reks again).

- It seems that the Arcadians are actually not entirely stupid since they've gone and confiscated all our equipment rather than leave us armed like some villains. Balthier is rather cavalier about the whole situation whilst Fran is nosing around for a way out and Amalia is totally AWOL.

- Vaan seem incapable of sitting still and goes off to poke around. This gains the attention of an ill-tempered Seeq (pig-like thing) and his goons, forcing Balthier to come to Vaan's rescue. There's a short bout of fisticuffs and it's a good thing the goons aren't used to roughing up people with access to cure spells.

- Just then, some imperial soldiers enter, accompanied by a Judge, one of the elite guard of House Solidor (current ruling family) and those anti-Balthier bounty Bangaa. The Judge is off to interogate someone and the Bangaa are looking for Balthier (of course)

- Fran also chooses this moment to reappear - her bunny senses are tingling. Seems she senses a way out through the Obliette, though it's apparently misty down there - who's scared of a little mist? Anyway, a way out is a way out and our heroes seem to know when they've worn out their welcome.

- The party follows the Judge into the next section of the dungeons. Balthier seems to imply that we should try sneaking around all the guards, but there's no penalty for fighting them and that's much easier anyway. Who needs brains? Vaan SMASH!

- The Judge arrives at the oubliette where a prisoner is kept in solitary confinement. It's our old friend Captain Basch. He's been here for around two years so either the Empire has forgotten about him until now or this is just part of the regular routine.

- The Judge mentions they've captured Amalia, but Basch is playing dumb. The Judge then mocks Basch's loyalty to a defeated kingdom and leaves him hanging - quite literally.

- Balthier and crew then have a moment to ponder things. Vaan goes a little berserk, what with Basch being a traitor and all that and the whole thing with his brother getting killed under his commmand and all that.

- For the sake of expedience, the party uses Basch's cage as an impromptu elevator down to the bottom of the whole that it was dangling over. The crash landing breaks the cage open and everybody seems no worse for the wear.

- Balthier takes a more pragmatic view of Basch than Vaan does, seeing as the whole point at the moment is to get out of here alive. The party then starts to make their way through Barheim Passage, seemingly some sort of old, abandoned mining tunnels.

- On the way, Basch tries to convince the party that he didn't kill the King - it was really his evil twin brother. (Riiiight. Well, I suppose Basch has been caged up by himself for a while and probably tortured, so it's only natural his sanity's taken a bit of a hit.)

- The boss in this area is a nest of mimics (including their Queen), and after beating them the party emerges into the Estersands as the tunnel entrance collapses behind them.

- Basch decides to return to Dalmasca despite the fact that most of the city probably still hates him as a traitor (this may not go down in history as the Best Idea Evar) and Vaan wants to make sure Penelo's not too worried about him (awwww...)

- Arriving back in the city, everyone parts ways leaving Vaan to wander over to Migelo's in search of Penelo. He also wants to gloat about that magicite shard he found (which he's still not giving to Fran and Balthier)

- But the raspy-voiced Bangaa is not there, instead Kytes informs Vaan that everyone is busy elsewhere (where he doesn't know) and that he was supposed to go bug Old Dalan about something but is too busy with work. Vaan, always looking for a way to avoid doing real work, goes to see Dalan in Kytes' place.

- Old Dalan is still, well, old, and he decides Vaan's a much better errand boy than Kytes. So he gives Vaan a sword of the "Old Order" to deliver to some guy names Azelas in a house nearby. I guess Dalan is decrepit as well as old.

- Vaan dutifully takes the sword and does as he is told. Except at the place in question, Basch is trying to rally members of the resistance. They are understandably wary after their previous attempt failed and they are not too quick to believe Basch's wild story of an evil twin. There are also some rumblings against Marquis Ondore who is viewed as collaborating with the Empire.

- Basch storms off with Vaan in tow, the sword delivery errand conveniently forgotten. (No Azelas was mentioned, though it is not impossible that Dalan is also a touch senile.) Vaan also seems to have gotten past some of his earlier dislike of Basch.

- Basch currently has a mind to pay Marquis Ondore a visit (for reasons he does not yet reveal). It seems the Marquis lives in some sort of floating city so we head off to enlist the local Sky Pirates. (Hmm... evil Empire, floating city with an apparently Empire-friendly ruler, where have I seen that before? I sense a trap.)

- Balthier and Fran are kicking back at the Sandsea tavern where Migelo is giving them an earful. Seems Penelo has been kidnapped by those Banga bounty hunters (Ba'gammon, or backgammon or something) thinking she has some connection to Balthier (probably due to when she was watching them being dragged off to the dungeons).

- Balthier claims its not his problem, but he is cajoled into helping by Vaan and Migelo. Basch tags along with the group because Penelo just happens to have been taken to the Lhusu Mines in Bhujerba, which is that floating city thing.

- Anyway, we take off! Though one has to wonder if Balthier is such a notorious Sky Pirate, wouldn't the Empire apprehend him as soon as he landed at any sort of well known city? Anywho, the whole thing has Vaan excited like a little kid at Christmas, even though they probably don't celebrate Christmas in Ivalice. Still...

- Balthier's airhsip, The Strahl, lands in Bhujerba without incident and everyone disembarks. Balthier impresses on everyone the importance of not using real names, seeing as we've just busted out of prison and are accompanied by a supposed traitor who is supposed to be dead (seems Ondore's the one who's responsible for that little rumour).

- No sooner does the party leave the aerodrome than they're set upon by some kid by the name of Lamont who overhears us talking about going to the mines and decides he wants to tag along. And of course Vaan goes and uses Basch's real name without a second thought. Smooth there.

- Anyway, there's an Imperial inspection of the mines underway and a Judge and Marquis Ondore and other minor officials exit just after we enter. Lamont also comes with an infinite supply of hi-potions so he's not too bad to have around.

- Some way into the mine we come upon a deposit that Lamont wanted to check out. He uses something he calls Nethicite, a sort of magic absorbing crystal. He seems to be investigating something to do with the Draklor laboratories. The name means something to Balthier but just what he doesn't say.

- Shortly thereafter we find the Bangaa bounty hunters who kidnapped Penelo (or they find us), but they've already cut her loose since they don't need her any more. Ba'Gammon pulls out a big circular saw thingy and the party decides to RUN AWAY!

- We manage to lose the bounty hunters and return to the entrance to the mines. The Imperials have apprehended Penelo as she wandered out of the mines, thinking her to be a trespasser. Lamont is also revealed to really be Larsa, one of Vayne's younger brothers, and he whisks Penelo off to relative safety (at least preventing her from being tossed into prison).

- Now Vaan and crew are left hanging. Basch still wants to see the Marquis and presumably Vaan still wants to rescue Penelo (honestly, more trouble than it's worth)

- It is believed that Ondore is secretly funnelling money/etc. to the Dalmascan resistance whilst at the same time playing nice with the Empire (hmmm, Lando Calrissian anyone?) so it is decided to try to make a scene to force the Marquis to pay attention to us. How? By having Vaan proclaim he is Captain Basch von Ronsenberg since Ondore is going around and saying the good captain is actually dead. Wouldn't going in guns blazing be faster and easier?

- Ok, so once Vaan is done making an ass of himself, some shadey looking types come and escort him to the back of the local tavern. Things aren't going well until the real Basch walks in, then everyone is rather amicable. They agree to arrange an audience with the Marquis at nightfall.

- Meeting the Marquis, Basch tells him that that he wants to rescue Amalia, but the Marquis declines to help. He's got his position to think about, you know? Basch draws his sword and the guards are summoned. Stay away from the carbonite, Basch!

- Also, Larsa's detachment has already left, with Penelo on board, so Vaan is being strung along some more.

- Meanwhile, back at Rabanastre, Vayne is talking to Judge Gabranth about the meddlesome Marquis. Gabranth believes the Marquis to be funding the insurgents, but a message has just arrived stating the Marquis has recaptured the runaway (presumably Basch) and Gabranth says he'll kill the escapee himself.

- Then Dr. Cid enters to have a little chat with Vayne about something or other. He comes in muttering to himself which is probably an indicator of some sort of mad genious or something.

- Anyway, Vaan and crew are now on the Dreadnought Leviathan and are being brought before Darth Ghis - I mean, Judge Ghis. Also present is Amalia who is now revealed to be Princess Leia, or rather, Princess Ashe, another of the living dead. The princess is not pleased to see Basch.

- Ghis is skeptical that Ashe is who she says she is, but Basch says a mystical knickknack called the Dusk Shard can prove her identity. And, surprise, surprise, the piece of magicite which Vaan has been doggedly holding on to is the Dusk Shard.

- Despite having refused to give it to Balthier multiple times, Vaan now hands it over to Ghis in an attempt to bargain with him so that everyone gets out with their lives in tact, but we all know it's really due to Ghis' force powers.

- Handing over the Shard doesn't prevent Ghis from sending everyone to be locked up, with Ashe in solitary confinement. However, while being dragged off, Basch and Balthier manage to overthrow their guards. This is helped when one of the guards turns out to be Vossler who had been planted there by Marquis Ondore, apparently. Oh, and the guards failed to disarm us.

- Now we run amok through the bowels of the ship to rescue Ashe, who we find eventually, and release from her cell. It should be noted that the game suggested sneaking around the soldiers to be a valid tactic, but its far easier (and results in better loot and experience) to just attack everything in sight. (Though why this doesn't attract the attention of the ship's commanders, I don't know.)

- It seems that *after* rescuing Ashe, we trip the alarm and Vossler gives up any pretense of sneaking around and decides we should just fight our way to the exit.

- On the way, we come across Larsa and Penelo. Even with the entire ship's guards on our tails, Vaan stops to have a touching reunion (priorities people!) Larsa seems to be intrigued that both Basche and Ashe are mysteriously not dead like they were supposed to be and lets us go so we can figure out why (lazy git letting us do all the dirty work...) He also gives Penelo his chunk of nethecite for luck.

- Incidentally, it turns out that Vossler is this mysterious Azelas that Dalan was talking about earlier, so I guess the old man isn't entirely senile.

- Vossler takes this opportunity to split and go find a shuttle of some sort. Conveniently, Judge Ghis then tries us to get in our way but we stab him until he falls down. Only then does Vossler reappear (yes, he's lazy too) to say he found an Atomos class ship which we fly back to Bhujerba.

- Dissembarking, Vossler suggests we go talk to Marquis Ondore to determine his true intentions.

- Confronting the Marquis, it's revealed that Vossler spirited Ashe away when her father was killed and Vayne had Ondore declare Ashe had committed suicide to make it appear Ondore was siding with the Empire.

- Ashe now wants Ondore to help her free Dalmasca but the Marquis points out that since the Empire has absconded with the Dusk Shard she no longer has proof of her heritage and advises her to wait until the time is right.

- But Ashe doesn't feel like waiting (does she look like a waiter?) and cooks up a plan to go Tomb Raiding and steal the Dawn Shard from King Raithwall's tomb (one of her ancestors - apparently royal lineage proving baubbles are a dime a dozen). She was going to abscond with Balthier's ship on her own, only Vaan catches her in the act and everyone else shows up to tag along for the ride. It's a merry ship of fools.

- Meanwhile, in Archades, Judge Gabranth reports to the Emperor who asks him to watch over and protect Larsa, since he doesn't want his sons warring again as has happened in the past (with other, older sons, it seems).

- We fly to the far edge of the Dalmasca Westersands where Balthier leaves the ship (he's got a handy cloaking device - everyone remember where we parked!) To get to the tomb, we now have to cross the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea, which is filled with Jagd, some mystical substance that prevents skysontes, or whatever they are that powers airships, from functioning so we have to walk.

- The Ogir-Yensa Sandsea contains a sprawling, interlinked series of oil platforms, originally constructed by the Rozzarian Empire to the west, now abandoned. The sandsea is also no home to Jawas... er, the Urutan-Yensa, an unfriendly though diminutive race.

- Before going far, Vossler catches up to us to help escort Ashe. He knows how to hit things with a large sword so he's kind of handy to have around.

- After a long trek to the west, we finally arrive at King Raithwall's Tomb. Ashe then proceeds to give us a bit of a history lesson.

- Raithwall was called the Dynast-King and ruled over a large area. As he was of the wise and benevolent type, there was an era of peace and prosperity and this allowed the fledgling states of Arcadia and Rozzaria to flourish.

- Raithwall left behind three magicite shards. The midlight shard went to Landis, now part of the Arcadian Empire. The Dusk Shard went to what became House Nabudis and I guess ended up in Dalmasca after Ashe married Rossler who was prince of Nabudis.

- The final shard, the Dawn Shard, was left hidden in the Tomb and is known only to those of royal lineage and that's what we're here to steal. Time to go Tomb Raiding!

- It turns out the Dawn Shard is guarded by an Esper - Belias, the Gigas. Legend has it, that King Raithwall defeated a Gigas and bound it to his service and this is it. After defeating it, it works for us.

- The Dawn Shard has hallucinogenic properties, causing Ashe to see her dead husband. Be that as it may, our team absconds with it though no sooner do we leave than Archadia's 8th fleet shows up. But how did they fly through the Jagd? Is their airship technology unaffected? Or maybe the truth is just that Balthier's ship sucks. Who knows?

- Anyway, our old pal, Darth (Judge) Ghis brings us aboard the Leviathan and demands the deifacted nethicite (ie, the Dawn Shard). Ashe at first refuses, but it then turns out that Vossler is in league with the Empire! He has apparently bargained Dalsmasca's freedom in exchange for the shard and also apparently believes the Empire. He hasn't been watching enough Star Wars.

- That, combined with some sword-based persuasion forces Ashe to hand over the shard which Ghis stuffs in the engines to test its power and ensure its authenticity. Ashe and company are carted away in chains.

- However, the engines start to go haywire (well, stick some mystical rock in 'em, and what do you expect?) spewing Mist which Vierra's are seemingly rather sensitive to. This causes Fran to go berserk. On the bright side, this provides a convenient distraction for busting out of our chains and beating up Vossler for his treachery.

- The party then escapes the ship just as it explodes, taking most of the fleet with it. Somehow, the Dawn Shard manages to survive and we fly back into the burning wreckage for it before making our final getaway.

- These events prompt Marquis Ondore (who moonlights as the narrator) to go underground and start pulling together various anti-Empire resistance groups. Ashe returns to Dalmasca, though she keeps a low profile while deciding what to do next.

- Meanwhile, in Archades, the Imperial Senate discusses the loss of the 8th fleet and Rozarrian military excersises which are believed to be a prelude to invasion. The senate wants Vayne recalled to answer for his decision to deploy the 8th fleet to the Tomb and also think that Larsa is shaping up to be a good potential future (puppet) Emperor, despite the current one's objections.

- Back in Dalmasca, Ashe has decided to use the Dawn Shard as her weapon against the Empire, but she needs to learn more about it so she decides to consult with Yoda in Dagobah, or rather, the Garif people who live far south and east of Rabanastre.

- We travel to the southwest across the Giza Plains (now in its rainy season) and the Ozmone Plains and arrive at the Garif Village and start asking about the nethicite but the elders are pretty useless on the subject and can only tell us that some Hume kid has been asking around the Village about the stuff too.

- The Grand Chief or whatever he's called is slightly less useless. He tells us that the nethicite was originally a gift from the gods to the Garif, but the Garif were too dumb to figure out how to use it so the gods took it back and gave it to Raithwall instead who put it too good use.

- Admitedly, the Grand Chief does know enough to tell us that the nethicite is currently drained of its power - a useless stone, but he doesn't know how to recharge it (or if that is possible), so Ashe's quest for a weapon seems to be stopping abruptly.

- Fate does not leave us without direction, however, as Larsa shows up (he's the one whose been asking about the nethicite). He's concerned about potential war between Rozzaria and Archadia. He fears that Rozzaria will use Ondore's resistance as some sort of pretense for invasion.

- Larsa wants the Gran Kiltias (or was that Quilter?) Anastasis (or something) of Bur-Omisase to declare Ashe Queen of Dalmasca so that she can hit everyone over the head with a big stick and try to bring everyone to their senses before things get out of control. He proposes an alliance between Dalmasca and Archadia to this effect.

- Ashe is, naturally, reluctant at first but Larsa points out that Dalmasca is conveniently located between the two empires and that his brother Vayne is kind of ruthless, it seems that Ashe has little choice if Dalmasca is to surive.

- Meanwhile, back in Archadia, some of the Judges discuss politics and wonder about Vayne's future. Gabranth and one of the others reaffirm their vow to protect Larsa from the senate once they discover he's not the puppet they think he will be. Dance!

- Anyway, it's off to Mount Bur-Omisase which is east of the Ozmone Plains, somewhere beyond the Golmore Jungle with Larsa as a guest - yay, free unlimited Hi-Potions!

- The first roadblock we encounter is in the form of some glowy magic barriers blocking key paths in the Jungle. Fran seems to be suffering from the paranoid delusion that this is a result of the fact that the jungle somehow hates her.

- She does some wavey thing in the air and reveals a hidden path to Eyrut Village, home to the Viera. She tells Vaan to go find Mjrn for her, but doesn't seem to want to enter the village herself.

- The Viera are a stand-offish sort who don't take kindly to outsiders, nor do they look kindly upon those who leave the village (such as Fran). As it turns out, Mjrn seems to have left the village and the elder, Jote, says some vague things about where she may have wandered off to.

- Larsa interprets her words to be referring to the Henne magicite mines which is in an area under Imperial control, south of the Ozmone planes so it's backtracking time! Just outside the entrance to the mines are some bodies including scientists from the Draklor Laboratories.

- In the mines, it seems Larsa was correct and we do find Mjrn, though she is not in her right mind (not unlike Fran back on the airship, actually) and she just runs off deeper into the mines. Oy!

- Chasing after Mjrn, leads us directly into Tiamat who seems to live in the mines and thinks we look tasty. After defeating it, we find the wayward Viera who falls unconscious and drops a piece of nethicite, which shatters, and some spirit thing appears briefly behind Mjrn and then vanishes.

- Back in Eyrut Village, we learn that Mjrn is Fran's sister. Some Humes had been through earlier, piquing her curiosity, so she went to investigate but got trapped in the mines after being given the nethicite as a sort of experiment (absorbing Mist or somesuch). Fran then forbids her from leaving the village again.

- For returning Mjrn safely, Jote gives us a magical knickknack that will allow us to pass through the barriers in the jungle, though it seems like the woods are still restless. It also turns out that Jote is also Fran's sister.

- On the way out of the forest, we are attacked by an Elder Wyrm, so perhaps Fran's paranoid delusions about the forest hating her might not have been entirely off-base.

- We exit the jungle into the Paramina Rift, a snowy mountain area. (Right next to a jungle? Ivalice has some weird geography, though perhaps the jungle goes up to the foothills and we are now up in the mountains above the jungle or something.)

- Meanwhile, back in Archadia... Vayne is entreating his father to shut down the senate because he thinks they have it out for house Solidor.

- Anyway, a short trip to the north east through the mountains brings us to Bur-Omisace and we run up to the temple thing to talk to this kilt-wearer guy, Anastasis. Turns out he doesn't wear kilts, or quilt anything, he's just got a funny title. He also dreams his life away, being some sort of dreamseer or somesuch.

- Ashe is about to request the Gran Kiltias confirm her as Queen of Dalmasca when she is rudely interrupted by some guy (who's obviously into fashion) and his retinue.

- Enter Al-Cid Margrace, a member of the royal house of the Rozzarian Empire. It was he and Larsa who had cooked up this scheme for peace, but there has been an unfortunate wrinkle in the plan: Emperor Gramis of Archadia is dead. (Cue flashback...)

- Meanwhile, back in Archadia, the Emperor lies dead, the blame for it placed on the senate (the leader of which is now also convenietly dead) with Vayne declaring himself Emperor and dissolving the senate.

- The Judges are gathered, and one, Drace, accuses Vayne of being behind all this and tries to arrest him. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the Judges seem to be in Vayne's pocket (not literally).

- Vayne orders one of the Judges to take the Alexander to go and retrieve Larsa. This is when Gabranth pipes up that protecting Larsa was his job. This doesn't earn him any points, however, and Vayne basically questions is loyalties and orders him to execute Drace whom Vayne has judged guilty of treason.

- Drace seems to accept the futility of the situation and tells Gabranth to go ahead and also urges him to continue to protect Larsa.

- We now return to Bur-Omisace. While the late Emperor would have at least listened to peace overtures, with Vayne's journey to the Dark Side now complete, there is no hope of that, he'd just declare Ashe an imposter.

- Vayne is gunning for war. Archadia's forces are massing and the nethicite is the secret weapon behind it all.

- Ashe decides she must fight fire with fire. The Gran Kiltias tells her that her last, best hope (for peace) is to find another of Raithwall's relics, the Sword of Kings, that was given to the Gran Kiltias back in the day. The Sword currently rests in the Stilshrine of Miriam at the southern end of the Paramina Rift - time for Tomb Raiding Part 2!

- The Shrine is large, but mostly uneventful (or as uneventful as a Shrine full of hordes of undead can be). The Esper Mateus, the Corrupt, guards the innermost chamber but is nothing our seasoned team of Tomb Raiders cannot overcome.

- Ashe claims the Sword of Kings and Vaan has the uncharacteristically brilliant idea of testing it on the Dusk Shard to see if it actually works. Ashe raises the sword to strike, but the stone spews out some Mist in an apparent attempt at self defense which makes Ashe hallucinate about her dead husband again, causing the strike to miss.

- However, it seems that the nethicite's attempt at self preservation has convinced the group of the Sword's authenticity.

- Once outside of the temple we see an Imperial fleet fly by heading north (presumably the Alexander gone to fetch Larsa) and, shortly later, an ominous plume of smoke, also to the north. Rather than use the teleport crystal we take a liesurely stroll back to Mount Bur-Omisace because I want more loot to sell!

- Back at Bur-Omisace, the Imperial army has been running rampant and have even entered the temple. The Gran Kiltias is now dead, slain by Judge Bergan who has the gall to demand we hand of the Sword of Kings.

- Fran senses some nethicite on the Judge and we see another apparition hovering behind him momentarily, like with Mjrn in the Henne Mines. Bergan blathers on about how Vayne will become a true Dynast King, wresting the control of history back into the hands of Man, unlike Raithwall who was a puppet of the gods - the man is clearly touched.

- Naturally, a fight ensues and Bergan is bested. He is, err, roasted inside his armour by the nethecite. Who wants barbeque?

- After the battle, Al-Cid comes out of hiding. He says that Larsa went off with Gabranth to avoid trouble, but Bergan begat trouble anyway. Al-Cid then tries to persuade Ashe to come back to Rozzaria to help convince them not to go to war. Ashe, however, has a Big Sword and wants to take her fight to the Empire and destroy all their magic rocks. Al-Cid acquieces and limps off to do what he can on his own.

- Balthier suggests going to the Draklor Laboratories, home of Archadia's weapons research program. But with the heighted state of military alert against possible Rozzarian invasion, the obvious routes (air and sea) will be guarded so the wiley Sky Pirate suggests sneaking in on foot via the Salikawoods - there's a hunter's camp on the border that may provide some cover.

- The long walk to the Empire starts from Nalbina Fortress, which is still being repaired as a result of the Archadian invasion two years ago. From there we head in a generally north-easterly direction through the Mosphoran Highwaste (a mountainous area) which eventually leads to the Salikawoods.

- There is a gate of unknown origin or purpose separating the far end of the Salikawoods from the Archadian lands beyond (my guess is they're trying to keep out the riff-raff). It's currently inopperable and is undergoing repair by some Moogles, or would be if most of them weren't slacking off in the woods. The foreman asks us to round them up.

- After running around the forest and telling the Moogles to get back to work, we are able to pass through the newly repaired gate (Moogles sure do work fast) and enter the Phon Coast, upon which we witness an Imperial airship patrol fly overhead.

- The Phon Coast is pretty huge, but we eventually find the Hunter's Camp. While the kids (Vaan and Penelo) go play in the water, Balthier asks Ashe if she really intends to destroy the nethicite or use it to restore Dalmasca. Ashe seems torn on this, and the Sky Pirate tells her a cautionary tale of woe.

- Cidolfus Demen Bunansa, the legendary Dr. Cid, head of Draklor Laboratories, became obsessed with nethicite, eventually alienating his family, including his son, who just happens to be Balthier. It also turns out that Baltheir was a Judge for a short period of time, but he ran away from all that, in part because he couldn't stand to see his father obsessed the way he was.

- Of course, now, Balthier is getting drawn back into things. Anywho, Archadia is still a ways to go. The locals helpfully tell us about some ruins that extend beneath Archadia, so that seems like a good way to go.

- After doing some hunting, we continue towards Archadia across the rest of the Phon Coast and the Tchita Uplands. At the north end of the Uplands is the entrance to the Sochen Cave Palace, those ruins that the people at the Hunter's Camp mentioned.

- The plan is to sneak up into Archadia via the ruins and hope nobody notices us. Great plan! What could possibly go wrong?

- The group spelunks through the ruins and comes up in Old Archades, basically the slums on the outskirts of the main city and the guards aren't letting the riff-raff into Archades proper. Balthier bumps into someone of his acquantance, Jules, a man of shady character. In exchange for some gil, he basically has us start a riot by spreading some rumours which draws the attention of the guards and allows us to slip into the city.

- In Archades, Balthier runs off to take care of some things and later sends a message by way of Jules to come meet him in Central. This leaves Vaan to run around the city playing matchmaker in order to earn the necessary cab fare.

- With cab fare earned, Vaan makes it to the upper-class area where Balthier lays out the plan: he's requisitioned a small Draklor airship which they can use to get in the supply docks. However, just then some Imperial Soldiers run by, having just finished putting down the Senate and some of them are reassigned to the labs.

- Seems Jules has been spreading rumours about Balthier's return (recall: Cid's his father) to create a bit of a hubub. He does, however, want an inside scoop on the lab's doings (they've been suspiciously silent since Vayne took over the Empire) and has arranged a cabbie to take Balthier and his groupies directly to the lab.

- The lab is quiet... too quiet. The bodies of soldiers are strewn about, it's so mysterious! Cid's bound to be on the top floor so that's where we're headed. On the way, we find one of Cid's offices which has been ransacked, but there's still a key card that's been left carelessly strewn about.

- Anyway, up to the top floor! We are attacked by a bald man with an odd fashion sense (pink pants? really? or maybe he's just a mathie...) who momentarily mistakes us for Cid's lackies. He realizes his mistake and runs off before we can find out who he is, so we follow to the roof where Cid waits.

- It's a happy father-son reunion betwixt Cid and Balthier. The scientist appears to talk to himself and seems to know who Ashe is and decides to test her: a good, old fashion, trial by combat!

- So we jab Cid with sharp objects until he falls down. Cid is cocky, even in defeat, and taunts us with the nethicite that we had come to steal. We also catch a momentary glimpse of an apparation behind Cid (similar to the one with Mjrn and Bergan) that the crazed Doctor refers to as Venat. He babbles something about history back in the hands of man and flies off in a personal airship, telling us that he's going to Giruvegan, suggesting Ashe might find her own piece of nethicite there, and dares us to follow. Balthier is not amused.

- The bald man then finally gets around to introducing himself as Reddas and suggests we get out of there.

- Meanwhile, the Imperial Senate has fallen. War between Archades and Rozzaria seems inevitable. Marquis Ondore has been gathering the rebel fleet (flagship: Garland) to meet Archades in battle.

- It turns out the Marquis had hired Reddas to infiltrate Archades and steal the nethicite (except Cid made off with it, foiling both his plans and Ashe's attempt to destroy it). Failing that, the Marquis is prepared to ally with Rozzaria, even if doing so would allow Vayne to potentially destroy both the resistance and Rozzaria in one swoop.

- Reddas brings the party to the Port at Balfonheim, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, at least until Reddas cleaned things up. The party decides to chase Cid to Giruvegan, rumoured to be in the Feywood, south of Golmore jungle. Meanwhile, Reddas has some other leads he's going to check on.

- After another hunting trip, we finally head to the Feywood, south of Golomore Jungle. Here, we come across a thick wall of Mist which dissipates after we stare at it for a while (presumably, the Dawn Shard that we've been totting around had something to do with that), though not before Ashe has another Mist induced halucination of Rassler (at least Vaan seems to have stopped his halucinations).

- Shortly thereafter we are set upon by a Rafflesia, an overgrown vegetable. It is kind enough to sap our MP, but not before we cast the important buffs and proceed to bash its face in.

- Continuing south, we play with some glyph thingies and come to a gate which requires Belias to be summoned to open (up until this point I had not assigned any Espers or Quickenings to my characters, but now that the plot demands a summon I just went ahead and had them learn all their Quickenings).

- This brings us to the Ancient City of Giruvegan. There's no sign of Cid yet so Balthier suggests waiting outside until he shows up, but Ashe starts to halucinate again and wanders off, so we give chase. She's going to be the death of us yet!

- A guardian statue provides only a minor speed bump in getting into the city. The interior of Giruvegan is somewhat odd looking - kind of spacey and stuff - with a giant crystal in the middle (itself guarded by another, not terribly threatening (for us) guardian monster - guess they don't make 'em like they used to)

- Towards the bottom of the crystal there seems to be large quantities of nethicite, harbouring untold powers. At the lowest level, Shamhazai the Whisperer (an esper and also not a threat) guards a waystone that teleports Ashe up onto some floating platform things.

- Here, Ashe meets a group of those strange apparitions things that call themselves the Occuria and claim to be undieing (and like unto gods). They proclaim to be the ones who gave King Raithwall his (magic) stones and to have shepherded Ivalice throughout the ages.

- The Occuria tell Ashe that Venat - that other Occuria who is working with Doctor Cid - is a traitor and that the manufacted nethicite he is teaching Cid to produce is an affront to nature. They have, therefore, chosen Ashe, being a descendant of Raithwall, to be their instrument in delivering judgement upon Venat and his (its?) cohorts.

- To that end, the Occuria give Ashe a fancy sword so that she can cut her own nethicite shards out of the Sun-Cryst, the source of all nethicite, which is located in some tower "on distant shore", the exact location of which the Ocurria are a bit vague on. With this, Ashe could destroy the Empire and, thus, reclaim her throne.

- It is also seems to be implied here that the Occuria may have been responsible for Ashe's hallucinations of Rassler, presumably so that she would be more receptive to their manipulation (though this is my interpretation)

- The rest of the party heard the exchange, though did not see it, and Basche counsels Ashe to ignore the Occuria as he thinks they go too far. Ashe seems undecided, but as the location of the tower is unknown at this point, it seems moot for the moment. Then Vaan of all people suggests checking in with Reddas, wondering if he might have discovered something useful whilst he's off doing whatever it is he's doing.

- Also, Cid is nowhere to be found and Balthier realizes that they've been used, tricked into this little side adventure to further Cid's nefarious schemes.

- Meanwhile, back at Archadia, Larsa is imploring Vayne to make peace with Ashe, saying that she doesn't want war. Vayne disagrees, but sends Gabranth off with Larsa to find Ashe and pass judgement on her intentions, killing her if necessary.

- When they have left, Cid receives word from Venat that Ashe and the others have taken the bait. The three discuss taking control of history back from the Occuria and giving Vayne what is his due (setting up Vayne as some sort of dynast-king himself)

- Back on Balfonheim, Ashe and crew reconoiter to find out what Reddas was up to whilst they were galavanting in Giruvegan.

- Turns out the ruddy sky pirate was following some other leads he turned up whilst nosing about in Draklor, leading him to the Cataract at Ridorana and the Pharos Lighthouse. However, the combinatation of cataracts and dense mist turned him back.

- The group speculates that the Pharos might be the "tower on distant shore" that the Occuria were babbling about and decide to investigate. Reddas gives Balthier a special sky stone that will allow the Strahl (Balthier's airship, if you recall) to travel in Jagd (another bauble he pinched from Draklor - say what you will, the man takes his pirating seriously).

- So it's off to Ridorana Cataract with Reddas in tow as a guest. The lighthouse is big - very big - with its very own guardian beast at the door (which we poke until it falls down). It also seems that good ol' Raithwall left a message for any who should come after him, though the message doesn't really say anything important other than an "I was here" sort of thing. At least we know that we're on the right track.

- However, it seems that Ashe is still undecided as to what she plans to do once she's got her hands on the Sun-Cryst - take revenge on the Empire, or destroy the nethicite, once and for all. But she's got a lot of time to think since it's a big tower.

- We climb up inside the Pharos doing some puzzle-y things and stabbing a lot of other things until they stop moving.

- Continuing to climb up this stupidly large tower, near the top we fight the Esper Hashmal, the Wroth, who tries to r0xx0r us but through the repeated application of pointy objects, it's us who do the r0xx0r1n9.

- The last section of the tower is, mercifully, free of monsters so the party takes a bit of time to reflect on the past. Ashe still seems undecided on her course of action.

- At the top, we find the Sun-Cryst, shrouded in swirling Mist. Ashe halucinates again about Rossler who seems to be egging her on to take revenge on the Empire. Still, Ashe hesitates.

- This is when Gabranth shows up (how'd he get here? did he follow us up the tower? maybe he flew? if so, why didn't we?). He admits that he was responsible, disguised as his brother, for killing King Raminas, and tries to provoke Ashe. This also inadvertently also provokes Vaan since that means Gabranth was responsible for killing Reks.

- Ashe chooses to forgo revenge - that is not the vision of the Dalmasca she wants and she does not believe her Rossler to be the sort to seek revenge. She slices the apparition of her dead Prince with her sword and before it vanishes it speaks with the voice of one of the Occuria, imploring her to do its bidding (thus seeming to confirm my earlier supposition regarding the nature of Ashe's hallucinations).

- Gabranth attempts to attack Ashe, to force her hand, but Reddas steps in. He reveals that he used to be a judge - Judge Zecht - and was responsible for using one of the nethicite shards at Nabudis at Doctor Cid's orders (he wanted to see what would happen), but after that Reddas renounced his place as a Judge and changed his name.

- Fight ensues with Gabranth, we make him fall down.

- Then Doctor Cid appears, to gloat and rave like a madman. He's come to observe the activation of the Sun-Cryst which is needed to activate the "Bahamut".

- Fight ensues with Doctor Cid. He summons the Esper Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud. Neither are immune to pointy objects.

- After the fight, Cid is consumed by the Mist and the Sun-Cryst is overloading - there seems to be no escape! But Reddas takes it upon himself to destroy the Sun-Cryst with the Occurian sword whilst the others flee. The top of the tower gets blowed up real good, Reddas along with it.

- The party returns to Balfonheim where they are met by Al-Cid Margrave. Al-Cid bears bad news: he was unable to prevent the Rozzarian Empire from seeking war. It seems that Rozzarian soldiers, under the guise of Marquis Ondore's resistance, made incursions into Archadian territory which prompted a response from Archadia. The Marquis was also forced to mobilize his fleets as a result (can't turn his back on his allies or some such).

- What this means is that the Rozzarian and Archanian Empires are now poised for a major clash, with Dalmasca caught in the middle. The Archadians also have the Sky Fortress Bahamut which was activated by syphoning off Mist from the Sun-Cryst before it was destroyed, thanks to good old Doctor Cid (everything's his fault - way to go Cid!)

- The only course of action seems to storm the Bahamut and put a stop to Vayne's schemes once and for all.

- After putzing around for a little bit (a few more hunts, tracking down some rogue Espers) it's time to join the fight.

- A menacing tornado is bearing down on Rabanastre - but wait, that's no tornado, it's the Sky Fortress Bahamut, kicking up a huge sandstorm.

- The Imperial fleet engages Ondore's Resistance. On the Bahamut, Larsa begs Vayne to show mercy, but Vayne intends to crush the Resistance permanently to prevent them from getting uppity in the future. Fighters are launched, the battle starts in ernest.

[Note: one of the Resistance ships that gets destroyed is the "Galuf-Val" which is a reference to one of the heroes from FF5.]

- The Strahl arrives on the scene and get Ondore's fleet to cover them, they're going in there. After some fancy flying by Balthier, the Strahl manages to dock with the Bahamut and its intrepid crew storm the Sky Fortress.

- After cutting their way through some paltry guards, the party comes to the main lift. Gabranth decides to show up and has some personal grudges to settle with his brother. The Judge talks a good fight, but is quickly introduced to the pointy end of several large sticks.

- That distraction taken care of, we take the lift up to the control room where Vayne and Larsa await. We exchange pleasantries and some rhetoric, but naturally there can be only one (course of action): fight! Larsa pulls his sword on Vayne, intent on stopping this madness.

- Vayne fights like a monk who likes to punch and kick. His fists are no match for our various sharp objects. Naturally, however, defeat is no obstacle as Vayne is transformed by Mist, courtesy of Cid's manufacted nethicite, and he conjures up some glowing, floating sword-things.

- Gabranth also drags himself to the scene, having decided that protecting Larsa is more important than sibling rivalries. He pulls his sword on Vayne and assists in the fight.

- Vayne Novus is not much more difficult than his first form and is dispatched with relative ease.

- Still hopped up on nethicite, Vayne manages to nearly kill Gabranth (though Larsa protects him) and Vaan takes the opportunity to stab Vayne with a sword. Venat intercedes before Vaan can finish the job, allowing Vayne some time to run away.

- On the deck of the Bahamut, Vayne tells Venat that he has failed and Venat needs to find someone else. The Occuria replies that he/it has succeeded: the Sun-Cryst is destroyed and the Occuria as a whole no longer have a hold on Ivalice's future.

- Venat then either merges with or imbues Vayne with moar power and Vayne starts merging with bits of the ship, transforming into some sort of cybernetic god-thing ('cause this is, you know, a Final Fantasy after all).

- The party catches up and, of course, can't let this go on. The new Vayne ("The Undying") actually puts up a bit of a fight, but not so much that we still can't bash him until he falls down.

- Vayne dissovles spectacularly. There is a moment of respite and then, oh hey, there's still this war thing going on. Not only that, but Vayne's death-throes have destabilized the Bahamut.

- The party makes it back to the Strahl. There is a minor technical glitch which Balthier and Fran go check out, leaving the Strahl in the hands of Vaan and Penelo - wait, is that a good idea? Also, the Bahamut's engines are failing.

- The Strahl stirs to life and takes off. Basch (posing as Gabranth), Ashe and Larsa all broadcast messages stating that Vayne is dead and that there is a cease-fire with Dalmasca. (You know they're serious 'cause they use their full names.) The fighting stops. However, the Bahamut looks like it's going to crash into Rabanastre, destroying the city.

- As the Alexander prepares to ram the Bahamut, Balthier cuts in: he and Fran are doing the handyman fix-it thing in the Bahamut (need more duct tape) and would really rather not be blown up just yet, thank you very much.

- Balthier and Fran manage to get the Bahamut's engines running again, enough to redirect it to crash (relatively) harmlessly out in the desert, though the fate of the two Sky Pirates is left a bit up-in-the-air.

- One year later, Dalmasca is more or less back to normal, though the ruins of the Bahamut are still visible from the city. Ashe's coronation will be taking place in a month and Basch has taken over Gabranth's job of protecting Larsa (Gabranth's final wish) to help keep the Empire stable and avoid civil war.

- Vaan and Penelo have been taking care of the Strahl, at least until it mysteriously disappears one day. A note has been left in its place, which seems to be from Balthier: he's going after the cache of Glabados and needs the ship. A similar note has been left with Ashe.

- Things end with Vaan and Penelo flying off to meet Balthier (and presumably Fran).

Character Design Part 3

2011-05-23T20:56:00.008-04:00

Continuing work on the character design for the remaining characters for my mini test comic. I've completed the design for the two "heroes", such as they are. Below is the rough sketch for the main hero "The Word Smith".

And below is the detailed version.

This is the rough sketch of his much put upon sidekick, "The Pen":

And, again, the detailed version:

Her costume is loosely based on fencing gear.

Anyway, that is all for now. Just one more character to finish up and then it'll be back to drawing the comic pages.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Balloons and Bonus Content

2011-05-18T16:28:00.008-04:00

Welcome back! Yesterday, I finished off the first page of my comic experiment! Ok, well, I actually technically made some last minute dialogue changes today, but the important stuff all got done yesterday.

The final step was to add panel borders, word balloons and dialogue which was done digitally in Illustrator:
I actually had the comic page underneath all that as I was putting it in so I wasn't guessing where to put things. I used the method that Scott McCloud presented in a recent tutorial. A little bit tedious, but not too bad once you get the hang of it.

And here is the final page, all put together:

And here are some links to a larger and even larger versions, for those interested in taking a closer look.

Finally, here's a couple of extra sketches I did as part of the CGL presentation:

Hard at work.

In a flurry.

Well, that's all for page number one! It's certainly been an interesting experience and a chance to learn some new things (like inking). I guess I'll start working on page two at some point, though since I don't have a deadline for it (like with this page) I don't know when it will get done. I'll just keep plugging away and it'll be done eventually!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Inkblots

2011-05-16T16:13:00.003-04:00

I finished inking the comic page over the weekend:

Converted it to a duo-tone image after scanning it to enhance the black-and-white-ness of the page. Inking was done in a mix of pen, marker and acrylic paint (brushing). I have a set of four "art pens" in 0.1mm, 0.3mm, 0.5mm and 0.7mm thicknesses which I've had since my undergrad days. I was a little worried they might have dried up by now, but they seem to be in working order. The marker is a twin-tip sharpie (a "fine" tip and a wedge tip). The brushwork was done with the smallest red sable brush I could find and some black acrylic paint.

My original intent was to primarily ink the page using pen, with marker to fill larger areas, and then experiment with the brush on some of the smaller panels (the character close-ups). I followed that plan for the first two panels. I experimented with the brush as planned for the character close-ups. A very quick search on the internet suggested that acrylic paint could be used either as-is or by diluting with water. I tried it "as-is" at first, but found it was too thick and kind of clumpy and hard to get any really thin lines. So then I decided to add some water and everything went so much smoother! I ended up liking how the brush was working so much that I did the characters and foreground for all the remaining panels and just used pen for the background, anything I need to use a ruler for and some of the fine details.

Overall, fairly happy with how things turned out though I really need to work on drawing shadows as the ones I attempted turned out not so great.

Currently working on adding panel borders and word balloons so the next update should be the final version of page 1!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Pencil Pushing

2011-05-13T13:35:00.003-04:00

Continuing on with my comic project, I finished the penciling for the first page - voila!

Drawn on a 28cm x 35.5cm piece of bristol board using a mechanical pencil. Lots of smudging going on, but that seems to be par for the course when working with pencil, at least for me.

The whole process took a bit longer than I'd been expecting. When I've drawn in the past, it's usually been limited to one or two characters standing in fairly neutral poses and not interacting with anything. Drawing actual scenes where characters need to be interacting with objects and, to an extent, with each other is quite a bit different! Not to mention, there's a lot more potential detail that goes into drawing a complete scene. Additionally, attempting to draw in something vaguely resembling correct perspective is not something I've really done before and I've probably made lots of mistakes. I should probably do some perspective exercises sometime to try and get a hang of things.

The first panel probably took the longest to draw overall, seeing as it's the largest and probably also most detailed. The last panel also ended up taking longer than expected as it was giving me lots of trouble, though mostly that was due to perspective issues.

The next step in this whole process is inking the page which is venturing into completely new territory for me. I don't think it'll take as long overall as the penciling did, but we'll see!

Ultimately, I think everything's on track to be ready for my tech talk next week, so we'll see how it all goes.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Character Design Part 2

2011-05-03T20:35:00.005-04:00

Here is the second part of the character designs for all of the characters appearing on the first page of my test comic. We start with the third of the three villains.

The action pose on the right was based on the poses of one of the villains in the thumbnails. No particular reason for it, it was just something random I did in the thumbnails which I'm probably going to keep.

The only other characters that will appear on the first page (aside from a small silhouette of the hero seen from a distance) are two extras who appear in two panels. Since they're not particularly important and I don't expect they shall turn up again, I didn't do a separate page for each of them (they're related anyway) and they each only got a single pose.

The above is the rough sketch and below is the finished version.

There is a reason why the close-up is the way it is, but that will have to wait until the actual comic to explain.

Anyway, I'm now more or less ready to tackle drawing the actual page - well, once I track down some reference photos. Tomorrow I am planning on putting together my "studio".

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Disappointment

2011-05-02T23:08:00.001-04:00

Canada - I'm so disappointed in you all. It looks like we'll get to see the real face of the Conservative party, I only hope we do not regret it.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Character Design Part 1

2011-04-30T20:57:00.007-04:00

I've been poking at that comic project periodically (amongst other things) and have progressed into the character design stage. I've got rough sketches of most of the characters (all but a minor character who appears at the end of the comic) and have started working on the "full" character design.

I'll be short circuiting the process a little bit, for the sake of expediency. I've got a "tech talk" for the lab coming up in a few weeks for which I'd like to present the comic creation process so I'm going to be focusing on getting a full page done which means I'm starting by only doing character design for the characters that appear on the first page. Once page one is done, I'll go back and finish the rest of the characters.

Anyway! I've been working on the character design for the three "villains", who are the majority of the characters that appear on the first page. I've got two of them done, so lets take a look!

Scanned in smudged (sigh...) Oh well! This is just a rough sketch of the three villains. There names are never mentioned in the comic so I haven't bothered giving them actual names.

This is the character design page for the "leader" of the villains (the middle one from the sketch). My approach so far has been to do a full body, fairly neutral pose, two close-ups on the face from different angles and with different expressions and an "action" pose. You'll note that here the leader has been given the keyboard which was held by one of the others in the sketch. It seemed to make more sense to me that the leader should have the keyboard, plus that was also the way things appeared to go in the thumbnails (though it was a bit hard to tell which was which in the thumbnails since they're fairly generic in the thumbnails).

Another one of the villains. Not too much to say about this one! Same format as the previous one. The pose on the right was supposed to be a "ridiculous ninja pose", but it didn't really turn out to be all that ninja-y.

Well, that's all for now. With any luck I should have Part 2 in the next day or two.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Today Is A Good Day

2011-03-23T10:13:00.006-04:00

But not in a Klingon sense.

This morning, I got the results from one of the scholarships that I applied to back in the Fall and, as the Klingons might say: Qapla'! (success!) It's the more valuable of the two scholarships so I'm quite happy about that.

Of course, the best part of this means that I won't have to TA if I don't want to (and I probably won't want to)!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Under My Thumb

2011-03-16T21:35:00.003-04:00

I just noticed that I forgot to commemorate my 111th post. Fortunately, since it was my previous post, it served to point out something suitably bizarre for such an auspicious occasion.

The point of this post, however, is not to dwell on interesting numbers. As I have mentioned previously, my PhD research is related to comics and, as such, it seems that trying my hand at making a comic would be a useful experience. I wrote up a short script back over reading week and this week I have undertaken the first step on that journey - namely, creating the layout thumbnails. Here are the results:

Basically, thumbnails are meant to be rough sketches showing the layout of the panels and also of what will go into said panels. The level of detail in the thumbnails seems to vary widely from artist to artist. The above page of thumbnails shows four comic pages. I hope the division between pages is relatively clear, otherwise the image might seem a bit confusing. (Top left is page 1, top right is page 2, bottom left is page 3 and bottom right is page 4.)

The thumbnails don't include (much) dialogue, so it probably won't be immediately obvious exactly what's going on, though I have sketched in where I think the speech balloons will go. Each page took about an hour to create the thumbnails.

As might be obvious from the thumbnails, the characters look a bit generic at the moment. That is by intent since I haven't actually gone and done any character design yet. I didn't want to be tempted to put too much detail into the thumbnails. So my next step will be coming up with some actual character designs, which I'll post about when they're done (hopefully in a week or so).

So far I'm enjoying this little project. I haven't really done much drawing since when I was doing my Master's degree and it's nice to have something to motivate me to do some drawing again.

Until next time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Batman Goes Insane

2011-03-10T12:14:00.003-05:00

I follow the blog of comic artist Scott McCloud (who has written Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics, amongst other things) and yesterday he had a link to a review/analysis of the first half of what appears to be a recent Batman comic. And O.M.G! It is soooo weird. I just had to share the link with my readers: here it is.

I think it kind of blew my mind.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Marking Still Sucks (Mostly)

2011-03-03T12:55:00.003-05:00

First, this week has been, shall I say.. annoying. Gyah. First, Monday night, I had to proctor for the first year course I'm TAing this term. As my readers know (and which they will no doubt be reminded multiple times over the course of my degree) I hate proctoring. Two hours of watching people write exams is worse than watching paint dry because at least with paint watching, you can leave and do something else when you get bored.

Proctoring is also usually accompanied by marking. Yesterday I spent all day marking. ALL DAY! From 9:00 AM to about 4:30 PM, with a short break for lunch. This is horrible! When I mark assignments, I usually only mark for about and hour or so in one go, not nearly eight. Brain... leaking... out of... ear... Gyah...

Ranting out of the way, about two weeks ago we marked assignment 3 for the undergrad graphics course, which I am also TAing this term. This is much more fun than marking stupid first year courses. Assignment 3 is the "puppet" assignment in which students have the opportunity to make interesting character models. This terms models have been posted up on the course website which can be located here. Go take a look! There's some nice puppets this term (most recent are at the top of the page).

Anyway, that is all for the present. Until next time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Babble, Babble

2011-02-09T15:43:00.000-05:00

We want to do some things, that are like things, and some other things, that are more like stuff. When something is done, or when stuff is done, there is a reaction to a perpedicular vector. Or maybe a canteloupe. Regardless, the other stuff is roasting to a sizzling height of consciousness. I know not what that means, it's just all gobbledegook. Where does it all end? For that matter, where did it start? Nothing is the same now that everything is nothing. A dollar bill fell on my head the other day and that causes the wall to collapse, because dollar bills are coins now. Haven't you heard? The eleven o'clock train came by at ten. But that was then and this is not then. Perhaps it is now. Or maybe it will be now later. Whichever is the case, I am wearing socks, and my socks are wearing little velvet hats covered in sparkles. But they don't sparkle because they're defective. I know that because they were made by badgers. Lousy, lousy badgers. My mind reels at the mediocrity of it all. Or it would if there were anything mediocre about, but it's all sauce, sauce covered in noodles and topped with a plate. My glasses are too tight and maybe that's why I'm babbling like this. Er. So, stuff...

Sweet Freedom!

2011-02-07T10:06:00.003-05:00

"By Hrothgar, I thought we'd be trapped in that labyrinth until Grendel devoured us..."

FASS of the Titans is now over! The show seems to have gone relatively well and the running time was at about 3 hours (well, except for the Friday heckling show, of course) so I'm fairly happy over all. This also means that my FASS responsibilities are pretty much over. I will still be the past CSW for next year, but as that's mainly an advisory position it will be much less work. I'm looking forward to having more time to devote to my own projects now.

Since the show is over, I have also opened up the FASS 2011 writers' wiki to be world readable, which can be found here, should anyone feel like perusing it.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Stuff I Want to Do

2011-01-31T11:24:00.003-05:00

I guess I'm one of those people who never seems to have enough time to do everything that they want to do, though I'll freely admit that I don't always make as good use of my time as I should (or could). It also doesn't help that I'm constantly coming up with new things to work on and never actually finish many of my projects, so things end up kind of piling up. (I am referring to personal projects here, not school or work related things.)

With less than a week until FASS is over for another year, I expect to be having at least a bit of extra spare time to do stuff in, so in an attempt to focus my efforts on a small number of projects I thought I'd try blogging about them. Not that I really expect this to make me get stuff done, but at least it'll give me something to write about (and my small number of readers something to read about) other than the usually complaining about TAing and marking and stuff.

Anyway, on to the stuff! (In no particular order.)

QRT

My current programming project which I blogged about in my previous post. There's not really anything to say about it at this point beyond what I've already said about it so I'll just say that I plan to continue working on it.

Writing

I do like to write and I sometimes think that I'd like to try my hand at writing a novel - not that I really care if it were to get published or not, but I'd like to at least write one! I missed NaNoWriMo due to being embroiled in FASS edits, so I'm planning on picking a month (likely March) for my own personal NaNoWriMo. We'll see how that goes. Though I'm going to continue beyond just one month if necessary.

Comic

I'd also like to try my hand at making my own comic. This is something which will also be a useful experience for my research. I've got some ideas for a short 3-5 page test comic which I will probably get started on shortly after FASS finishes. I plan to document the process so there's bound to be more posts on this topic in particular on my blog. I also want to get back into the habit of drawing more so this will give me a nice focused outlet for that.

Those are the main projects I'm planning on focusing on, in addition to my PhD research, of course. Expect to see posts on these in the future, depending on progress.

Freak Out
-TFitC

A Look at QRT

2011-01-16T15:40:00.007-05:00

After threatening several times, I'm finally going to sit down and blog more about my QRT project.

So what is QRT? In short, QRT stands for "Quasi RPG Toolkit" and is a project I've been working at off-and-on for the past couple of years (already? gee...) which will (hopefully) eventually become an integrated set of tools for creating RPGs in the style of what one might have seen on the SNES, back in the day, like Final Fantasy VI, for example.

This makes it similar in its goals to the RPG Maker series of editors, for those who are familiar with them. So why, one might ask, make my own version of RPG Maker? Other than simply "because I feel like it", basically, I have several ideas for improvements over the RPG Maker series that I think would be, well, improvements, especially in the areas of flexibility and customization. I think it's also a good programming and design exercise.

The QRT project also serves as a sort of updated version of my FR project. Not only is QRT much, much, much better designed, it's also much more flexible and, more important, reusable which my much older and inferior FR code-base would not have been.

Without going into too many details, let's do a brief overview of what I've done so far and what I'll be working on in the near future. (Note that the graphics in the screen shots were downloaded for use with RPG Maker 2000 from various RPG Maker fan sites and are serving, for the moment, simply as placeholders. The plan is to eventually replace these with original graphics.)Above is the main editor window. I had a map editor for FR, but it was *only* for map editing. The QRT editor will be an integrated editor for maps, scripting and the like - as one would expect from any sort of modern development toolset.

One of the ways that I am making QRT more flexible that the RPG Maker counterpart is including a tileset layout editor to allow users to create custom tileset layouts, unlike RPG Makers' pre-defined layout (to the best of my knowledge). It is also possible to use a different layout for each map in a project, if desired. One of the things that I am currently working on is improving the "auto-tiling" feature (used to automatically draw terrain feature like deserts, swamps, rivers or whatnot) to allow the use of animated tiles in all auto-tiling groups. (RPG Maker 2000 only allows animated tiles in auto-tile groups for its special water/shore groups - I don't like the rectilinear shorelines that it limits you to.)

Another customization feature is the inclusion of custom created fonts. Fonts can be created from scratch or can be based on any installed Windows font (though the import function still needs some work).

Scripting in QRT is initially going to be via a point-and-click script interface (as I feel this is easier for novices to pick up), but I plan to eventually include an actually scripting language as well (probably Python, but we'll see when I get to that). Another feature that I'm planning for scripting is a scripting API which I'm calling "Quartic" - QUAsi Rpg Tools Interface Component. The plan is to allow users to develop scripting plug-ins for custom functionality.

Above shows a (very simple) text box showing the font display and colouring at work. This is the (humble) beginnings of the in-game UI. My plans for the UI is to make it highly customizable, including a UI layout editor as part of the QRT editor. I hope to make it fairly easy to create custom game UI (which will help give each QRT game a unique look and feel). While custom UI can be make in RPG Maker, it's very inconvenient, not to mention tedious.

So far, QRT is coming along slowly, but, I suppose, somewhat steadily. As far as important functionality goes, it's roughly equivalent to where I had FR all those years ago but, as mentioned, much better designed and ultimately more flexible, powerful and reusable. At the moment, my focus is on revisiting some of my existing features and improving and/or simplifying them before continuing on with the scripting and UI systems.

I may eventually post more as I continue to progress on the project.

Freak Out
-TFitC

My Year as CSW

2011-01-12T11:17:00.003-05:00

As my readers probably all know, I spent April through December of 2010 serving as the Chief Script Writer (CSW) for FASS, a local, annual, amateur theatre production that I am involved with. I haven't blogged much about it because, well, for the most part there isn't really all that much interesting to say - I ran weekly meetings where script related stuff was discussed (brainstorming, scene & song writing, editing), took notes, and sent regular reminders to my writers to tell them to make sure to send me stuff by established deadlines. Oh, I did some writing too, but then, so did a bunch of other people. Overall, it was largely a bunch of administrative type stuff that isn't really all that interesting to write about nor, I suspect, to read about - at least not on a regular basis.

I was fairly heavily involved in writing the previous year's script as well (for the 2010 show) and being CSW didn't really feel all that different, except for the added administrative tasks and the fact that as CSW is wielded supreme veto power. The main difference was that I had more to do for the last couple of months during editing.

Overall, being CSW was an interesting experience. Were I to go back and do it again, I would probably approach a couple of things differently. I would probably swap the focus on a couple of the plot lines during the second act and I would probably also spend a bit more time thinking about specific characters that we wanted to use and potential character arcs back in the brainstorming phase.

Now that my work is done, I'm planning on how to use my new extra free time, though as I am still acting in FASS this year I will still be somewhat preoccupied through to the first week of February so I won't be able to go full tilt on my various personal projects until then.

Anyway, until next time.

Freak Out
-TFitC

Final Fantasy Tactics: A War With Lions And Stuff

2010-12-31T11:55:00.003-05:00

I first played Final Fantasy Tactics on the PlayStation, shortly after Playing FF7. I bought it used whilst I was in undergrad, not really knowing anything about it, mostly on the Final Fantasy name. As it turned out, I ended up liking Tactics a lot. The plot was a lot heavier on political intrigue than most Final Fantasies, though there was of course some fantasy-esque stuff going on in the background. I ended up sinking quite a bit of time into the game, especially exploring the "Deep Dungeon".

I really liked the battle system which was more involved than most FFs and based on the job system used by several of the other games in the series, though it alsa was more detailed bringing a wider array of abilities (for the most part) and greater degree of flexibility in character customization.

So, when a PSP port was released (subtitled The War of the Lions) I knew I would eventually end up getting a copy. It was, in fact, my main motivation for getting a PSP in the first place. Had Square done nothing other than a straight port of the PlayStation version, I'd still have gotten it because, hey, it's a portable FF Tactics, which in itself is awesome. However, the PSP version saw several improvements and addtions.

For one, it received an all-new translation since the original one was, to put it kindly, less than stellar. This also fixed some naming issues with some of the jobs. For example, in the original, White Mages were called Priests, despite the fact that they were clearly the White Mages of Final Fantasy tradition. The PSP version also added a couple of new extra characters and a couple of new classes. There was some rebalancing of existing characters and classes, such as the Arithmetician (formerly Calculator) which was slightly harder to unlock, but not by too much. Math Skills are still overpowered though, and as always quite fun and potentially self-destructive to use :) There are also a couple of new multi-player modes which I have not had the opportunity to make use of yet.

Overall, I've quite enjoyed playing through The War of the Lions, just as much as I did the original. In some ways, the new translation makes it seem like a new game, while at the same time having a familiar, nostalgic feel to it.

Anyway, my "not so short" plot summary is in the post below this one. Perhaps I shall do a summary for FF 12 next, despite not originally planning on doing one since it was released after I started my FF series replay.

Freak Out
-TFitC

A (not so short) Plot Summary of Final Fantasy Tactics

2010-12-31T11:25:00.004-05:00

Final Fantasy Tactics
===============

- Some crusty old historian, a scholar of medieval Ivalice history, going by the outlandish moniker "Arazlam" gives us an introductory lecture on the War of the Lions, a war of succession.

- He talks about Delita Heiral, known as a hero who helped end the war, but he claims that not all was as it seems, claiming that another overlooked young man was the true hero - one Ramza Beoulve - his role having hitherto been concealed by the church, now revealed in the Durai papers and we are invited to discover the truth.

- Then we get a new version of the opening cutscene with some guy in gold armour (hi Delita) riding a chocobo through a forest along with some other brigands.

- The scene changes to the interior of Orbonne Monastery where princess Ovelia is praying under the watchful eye of Simon the priest and Knight Agrias.

- The princess' escort is here, Gaffgarion and his band of mercenaries (including Ramza) employed by the Order of the Northern Sky.

- Suddenly, a wounded knight stumbles in with word that the enemy's forces, Duke Goltanna's men, have arrived. They rush off to do battle.

- The battle is one, but whilst we were out playing with sharp objects, Delita snuck into the monastery and kidnapped the princess. Agrias and Ramza can't get to them quick enough and can only watch as Delita escapes with his quarry, though Ramza does recognize him.

- This leads us into a flashback...

Chapter 1: The Meager

- The scene is the Royal Military Academy in Gariland City. After losing the 50 years war, soldiers returning from the frontlines have become disenfrachised and have lost their livelihoods, many turning to theivery and plotting against the crown. Some apprentices discuss the situation.

- The Corspe Brigade has been attacking wains in the vicinity of Eagrose Castle, some say Duke Larg is coming to Gariland along with Marquis Elmdore of Limberry.

- A Knight of the Order of the Northern Sky comes in with an assignment for the apprentices. The order is planning on eliminating the Corpse Brigade with the help of Duke Larg, which will leave Eagrose undermanned so the cadets are to bolster its defenses.

- Another knight comes in with news that some thieves are fleeing to Gariland, so the apprentices get to do some warm-ups. A battle in town ensues with the cadets emerging victorious.

- Afterwards, Ramza has a short flashback to his father's death - Barbaneth Beoulve was a hero of the 50 years' war. Also in attendance were Ramza's older brothers, Dycedarg and Zalbaag, and his sister, Alma. Barbaneth has made arrangements for Ramza's friend, Delita (a commoner) to enter the Academy and tells Ramza he'll need someone he can trust, like Delita.

- Then its off to Eagrose Castle, but in Mandalia Plain we encounter a young hot head by the name of Argath whose gone and gotten himself captured by members of the Corpse Brigade, so we intervene on his behalf. Turns out Argath is an apprentice of Marquis Elmdore and the Marquis was just abducted by the Brigade so Argath wants our help to rescue him. Well, I guess he gets to tag along for now...

- We arrive at Eagrose Castle and go talk to Ramza's brother Dycedarg. Argath tried to get Dycedarg to send troops to rescue the Maquis immediately, but Dycedarg basically told us to mind our own business and garrison the castle

- Whilst cooling our heels we run into Ramza's other brother, Zalbaag and his sister Alma. Zalbaag lets out a few not so subtle hints about a spy that's disappeared near the merchent city of Dorter and muses that investigating that would probably be more interesting that guarding a stuffy old castle.

- We also meet Delita's sister, Tietra and Argath whines about how his family used to be more respectable until his father (or was it an uncle?) sold out to the enemy during the 50 Years War and got himself stabbed in the back. With Argath's bellyaching over with (for now - you just that boy's gonna be trouble) I guess we'll wander on over to Dorter to see what's going on.

- Arriving in Dorter, we witness an exchange between two knights. One is using his skills of persuasion (that being the tip of a sword) to find out the location of one Gustav, but he flees when he catches wind of us (guess we'd better go bathe)

- As the knight retreats and the other one calls in his lackies, Delita thinks he recognizes him from somewhere. Turns out the one doing the "persuading" is Weigraf, leader of the Dead Men, a volunteer group in the 50 Year's War, now head of the Corpse Brigade

- After a brief battle, Ramza, Delita and Argath question the hapless knight that was bullied by Weigraf with Argath applying his own brand of persuasion. Seems that kidnapping Marquis Elmdore wasn't Weigraf's idea, but rather Gustav's, the Brigade's second in command. It is presumed that Gustav is no hiding in Zeklaus Desert to the north, so off we go to play in the sand.

- We arrive in the desert at the "Sand Rats Seitch" and overhere some disgruntled members of the Corpse Brigade discussing management. Sounds like they don't like the way Weigraf is running things and think that Gustav's approach of ransoming off Marquis Elmdore is more likely to lead them to an early (live) retirement.

- Of course, know that we've overheard them nobody can leave without a fight, so we mop up the sand rats and then head into their hideout.

- We find Wiegraf and Gustav having a somewhat pointed discussion concerning their differing management styles, to the point where Wiegraf runs Gustav through. Guess that's the end of that. Wiegraf tells us that kidnapping's not his thing (too lowbrow) and tries to bargain the marquis release for us sparring his life.

- At first, Argath doesn't want to let Wiegraf go, but he sneaks out regarless whilst we argue amongst ourselves. As for the Marquis, he's weak but otherwise live so it's back to Eagrose for him.

- Back at Eagrose, Ramza's brother Dycedarg chews everyone out for abandoning their post and going off to chase the Marquis, but then Duke Larg enters and congratulates us anyway. Then, Dycedarg lets us join in on the final offensive against the Corpse Brigade and we wander off like good little soldiers.

- With our group out of earshot, Dycedarg and Larg comment that Gustav was apparently not the right person for the job, implying that they were behind the kidnapping of the Marquis. The old King is rather ill and the two nobles seem to be scheming...

- Our next destination is the Brigands' Den, just south of Mandalia Plain. There we encounter a group of the Corpse Brigade, led by Milleuda, younger sister of Wiegraf. She seems like a rather anti-establishment sort, so we beat up her and her lackies. After the fight, Ramza offers her mercy (though Argath makes it well known what he thinks of her sort and further illustrates that he is an ass) though she doesn't appreciate us for it and limps off the battle field.

- Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Death Corpse stages a daring raid on the Beoulve Manse, kidnapping Tietra and almost absconding with Alma as well if not for Zalbaag's timely intervention. Dycedarg is injured in the process.

- We learn of the incident when we return to Eagrose Castle. Dycedarg says that they're poised to deal the death blow to the Corpse Bridage and tells Delita that they'll do whatever it takes to rescue his sister first.

- Outside, Argath insists that Dycedarg is lieing as there's no point to save a common girl. Delita decks him, but Ramza tries to calm everyone down. Argath continues to demonstrate that he is an elitist ass and Ramza tells him to get lost. As a parting gift, Argath says that he overheard that the last of the Bridage is holed up inside Ziekden Fortress.

- As we get under way, we decide to make a pit stop at the Mandalia Plains where Ramza and Delita reminice about bygone days and squander precious time playing the reed flute.

- The fort is well guarded, so we take the roundabout scenic route, starting at Lenalian Plateau north of Dorter. Here we encounter Milleuda again with a group from the Brigade as they try to find a way out of the highlands. One of the Brigade suggests surrender but Milleuda will have none of that. She's adamantly opposed to any and all nobles, just for them being nobles and decides that today would actually be a rather good day to die. A fight ensues with, perhaps, predictable results. (Hint: we win.)

- Next stop is the scenic Fovoham Windflats, complete with windmill. Quite the tourist spot. But this is no tourist photo-op today. Inside, Weigraf and Gragoroth (the guy who led the raid against the Beoulve manner) are discussing the prisoner (Tietra) with Weigraf once again acting all noble-like about not taking hostages, ordering Gragoroth to release the girl.

- A monk enters who tells Wiegraf that the enemy (that's us) approaches and that Milleuda, his sister, is dead. This leads to an angry confrontation with Wiegraf. We force him to retreat but after the battle we discover that Gragoroth has disobeyed Wiegraf's orders and has fled with Tietra, presumably to Ziekden Fortress as that's the last place left to go.

- At the fort, we find Gragoroth facing off against Argath, Zalbaag and a couple of knights using Tietra as a human shield. He is kind enough to inform the knights that there's a whackload of gunpowder stockpiled in the fort which would make a lovely explosion. When Zalbaag tires of the conversation he orders Argath to shoot the hostage, which the bastard does, following up with a bolt in Gragoroth.

- Wounded, Gragoroth withdraws into the fort. Zalbaag withdraws to deal with approaching enemies leaving the rest to Argath. Delita flies into a rage and Argath brings in some back up. All to no avail, however, as we deliver a sound beating to Mr. "I'm better than thou."

- As Delita cradles his dead sister, the fort starts to explode, forcing Ramza to retreat, though Delita stays to enjoy the bonfire.

- Ramza muses that he rain away from his crumbling life as things got rough which brings us back to the present, back outside Orbonne Monastery. Agrias intents to pursue the princess' kidnapper and Ramza decides to tag along to find out if it realy was Delita.

Chapter 2: The Manipulated and the Subservient

- We depart the Monastery for Dorter and no sooner do we arrive there then we are beset by a group of thieves, hired by some as yet unknown man for the purposes of killing us. The leader of the thieves seems dismayed to see Gaffgarion with us, but they still give it their all. They don't last long, however. Agrias seems convinced the kidnappers are heading to Fort Besselat so off we go!

- Aside: rumours in the pub reveal that the old king has, at long last, kicked the proverbial bucket and now the Dukes Larg and Goltanna are vieing to become the regent. The Queen favours Larg (her brother) while many nobles/the council favour Goltanna (the late king's cousin) which means there's a power struggle brewing in Ivalice. Also, the peasants are revolting.

- Enroute to the fort we encounter a chocobo beset by goblins in Araguay Woods. We help it, but turn it loose 'cause we don't want to have to clean up chocobo droppings for the rest of our adventure (though perhaps we should have turned it into a tasty meal...)

- We arrive in Zeirchele Falls to find Delita and the Princess on a bridge, surrounded by Northern Sky Knights. The knights claim to be rescuing the Princess, but Delita claims the kidnapping was a scheme by Duke Larg in order to frame Duke Goltanna in killing Ovelia to remove her as a claimant to the thorne (in favour of the young Prince Orinus).

- Turns out Gaffgarion was in cahoots all along so he turns traitor. Naturally we manage to beat them all back (though Gaffy turns and runs when things start getting dicey).

- Our cheery reunion with Delita turns a bit sour as he postulates that Dycedarg had his hand in this scheme as well. Delita also doesn't think we can protect Ovelia forever, but he leaves her with us for the time being, for some reason of his own no doubt. Agrias is still determined though and seems to think Cardinal Delacroix of Lionel Castle might be able to help our cause. (Hint: he's a Cardinal.)

- On our way to Lionel Castle, we come across a group of possibly shadey characters in the Castled City of Zaland, led by one Ludovich, who are chasing a young machinist named Mustadio. Without assertaining the nature of the incident we jump into the fray in support of Mustadio.

- After the battle, we find out that Mustadio is being chased by the Baert Trading Company (well known for various black market dealings) though he refuses to say way (hmmm, suspicious much?) However, the Baert Company holds Mustadio's father prisoner and Mustadio think that Cardinal Delacroix can help save him and wants to tag along. Agrias doesn't trust him and refuses, but she's overridden by Ovelia. Guess it's good to be the, er, princess.

- Before leaving the city, Agrias and Ovelia take a few moments to kick back their heels and relax. Ovelia recalls her life in varous monasteries. She has apparantly met Ramza's sister, Alma. Also, according to Agrias, the Cardinal has, thus far, been neutral in the succession squabbles so she has high hopes that the Cardinal (and thereby the Glabados Church) will protect Ovelia.

- At our next stop, Balias Tor, a group of Baert thugs attempts to capture Mustadio again but we deal with them easily enough. Mustadio still isn't willing to say why they're after him so I guess we just keep trudging along for now.

- Meanwhile, back at Eagrose Castle, Gaffgarion is reporting to Dycedarg. Their conversation basically confirms that, yes, kidnapping Ovelia was Dycedarg's plan, though his men were found dead not far from the Monastery which means someone else has gotten wind of their plan (ie, Delita and whoever he's working with) and is trying to thwart them. He tells Gaffgarion to recapture the princess and kill off the rest of her entourage, including Ramza if he won't step aside. Nice brother you've got there, Ramza.

- We arrive in Lionel Castle and plead our case to Cardinal Delacroix who seems surprisingly accomodating to the Princess. He also seems to have an idea why Mustadio is here, displaying a red crystal - some auracite. It is supposedly one of the legendary "Zodiac Stones" and we get a quick lesson about the Zodiac Braves who have previously saved Ivalice from the demonic Lucavi.

- Anyway, it seems that the Baert Company are after some auracite that Mustadio's father found beneath the Clockwork City of Goug. It seems to be able to activate some of the ancient machines under the city, but Ludovich wants to use it to make weapons. The Cardinal offers to send some soldiers to Goug to route the Baert Company and Ramza and Mustadio decide to help out.

- On our way to Goug, we have a brief encounter with some undead in Tchigolith Fenlands, but they don't live long.

- We arrive in Goug only to find that it's quiet... too quiet. No sign of the Cardinal's men or Baert Company. Ramza and Mustadio decide to canvas the town and meet later in Goug's Lowtown.

- Ramza arrives in the Lowtown on time but Mustadio is nowhere to be seen. Then a man, presumably Ludovich, and his Baert lackies show up demanding the auracite. Mustadio went and got himself captured. How thoughtful of him. They also bring along Mustadio's father as incentive to get Mustadio to cooperate which he appears to do, having Ramza turn over a hidden Zodiac stone. And, surprise, surprise, it turns out that Ludovich was working for Cardinal Delacroix all along.

- Our merry band of fools is deemed to troublesome to let live so we end up having to fight off the Baert goons which isn't too troublesome. Afterwards we find out that what we gave to Ludovich was a fake stone. I guess Mustadio is at least somewhat clever after all.

- As the Cardinal has turned out to be tricksy and false, that means Ovelia and Agrias are in danger. Additionally, Mustadio and his father believe that the Cardinal is trying to use the Zodiac Brave legend to alleviate the pain and suffering of the tumultous times and, naturally, seize power and are unlikely to let go once he has it. He must be stopped!

- However, we're unlikely to be able to storm Lionel Castle from the front, so we're going to sail around to the Port City of Warjilis and try to sneak in the back route. Good luck with that.

- Arriving at port we have another run in with Delita who's still his cherry old self. He insists that Ramza is unable to rescue the princess but, of course, he's the one to do it (delusions of grandeur maybe?) He also talks enigmatically about how everyone else is swept up in the flow of events be he, alone, is swimming against it.

- Meanwhile, in Lionel Castle, Cardinal Delacroix is meeting with Gaffgarion and Ludovich. The crux of the conversation is that Gaffgarion is sent to use the Princess as bait to recapture the stone and Ludovich, who has apparently been a very disappointing minion, has failed the Cardinal for the last time. We don't get to see what happens, but Ludo is presumed dead, likely messily so.

- That delightful interlude over, Ramza and company arrive in Balias Swale and find Agrias fleeing some of the Gryffon Knights of Lionel. As it turns out, she and the princess had attempted (or been allowed?) escape, but the princess was recaptured and Agrias was heading back to re-rescue her so good timing on our part, I guess. Agrias also claims that Ovelia is to be executed so we have to make a change of course to Golgollada Gallows.

- At the execution site, the whole thing turns out to be a trap, using an imposter Ovelia to lure Ramza and company there. Gaffgarion tries to get Ramza to turn to the Dark Side, to return to his brothers and help them but Ivalice to rights, but Ramza refuses and says his brothers are justing using war for their own personal gain. He also starts getting all emo, blaming Tietra's death on his own inaction.

- Due to some luck at being able to break Gaffgarion's weapon early on in the battle, he turns into a total push over and before long he's running away with his tail between his leg. But now we've got to go to Lionel Castle to save the real Princess, for real!

- Meanwhile, in the dungeons of Lionel, Delita is trying to talk to Ovelia when the Cardinal and some other guy come in (so that's where Delita's loyalties are, for the moment, anyway). The other guy ends up telling the Princess that she's a fake, that the real Ovelia died years ago and she was set up as a replacement to eventually wrest power from the Queen since it was thought the King was to feeble to breed further. However, a prince was eventually produced (and it is implied that the King is probably not his real father) which creates the current predicament around succession.

- The Cardinal and his posse claim to want to put Ovelia in her rightful place on the throne and leave her to chew on things for a bit.

- Also meanwhile, waaay back an the Lenalian Plateau, good old Weigraf is visiting his sister's grave and vows revenge. Just then, another mysterious figure approaches (naming himself Loffrey), offering Weigraf help, and of course power, to achieve both his vengence and his goals of ousting the corrupt aristocracy.

- Back to Lionel as we storm the castle! Ramza somehow manages to get up on the ramparts (using no doubt as yet unrevealed dark arts) but before he can sprink the gate, Gaffgarion appears and triggers an ambush! This time the Fell Knight doesn't run and we defeat him once and for all. Now to save the princess!

- Meanwhile, at Zeirchele Falls, Delita has already fled Lionel with Ovelia in tow - doh! They are ambushed by a few members of the Order of the North Sky, but Delita makes short work of them. Ovelia now seems to have little choice but to follow Delita, regardless of his intentions.

- We then return to our castle invasion already in progress. Ramza and crew have entered Cardinal Delacroix's inner sanctum. After Ramza refuses to give the Cardinal the auracite and demands to know where Princess Ovelia is, the Cardinal tells Ramza what we already know through the magic of cutscenes: that Ovelia has already been taken to Zeltennia, having apparently accepted their offer to put her on the throne.

- The Cardinal attempts to turn Ramza to the dark side, tempting him with the ability to change the worlds and get even with his brothers (ah, sibling rivalry) but Ramza has no interest in changing anything, especially if it means innocents get harmed in the cross fire.

- That tact foiled, the Cardinal decides to try the direct approach, pulling out his own Zodiac Stone and transforms into the Lucavi Cuchulainn the Impure. Battle ensues and, after a few attempts, we manage to defeat him, by the skin of our teeth. Cuchulainn explodes, leaving his Zodiac Stone behind.

- In the mean time, Delita arrives at Zeltennia and comes before Duke Goltanna. In addition to telling how he "rescued" the Princess, he has brought a prisoner who claims that the kidnapping was masterminded by one of Goltanna's own advisors to gain favour with Larg and keep Goltanna out of power. The prisoner points out the supposed traiter (who claims to know nothing) and Delita sumarily executes him then and there. So much for fair trials it seems.

- Delita goads Goltanna into leading the Order of the Southern Sky against Lesalia, forcing Larg to mobilize the Northern Sky. This whole incident prompts Goltanna to get the Queen banished and crown Ovelia as Queen. In retaliation, Larg also crowns Prince Orinus, naming himself regent. The two sides go to war, instigating the War of the Lions.

Chapter 3: The Valiant

- Three Months later, Duke Goltanna confers with various advisers and generals as to the state of the war. Crops are not doing well on either side and famine is a real danger. Cidolfus Orlandeau (aka, Thunder God Cid) proposes peace talks, but Goltanna's having none of that and decides to raise taxes instead in order to fund the continuing war.

- Ramza and co. are on their way to Lesalia so that Ramza can tell his brothers about the shadowy underpinnings of the war and to try his hand at "swimming against the tide" as it were.

- Enroute, they encounter a young astrologer named Orran in The Mining Town of Gollund who has run afowl of a den of thieves. Once again, without assertaining the nature of the conflict we jump in on the side of Orran. The thieves do not prove too troublesome and they are soon dispatched.

- Orran is headed in the opposite direction of us so he turns down the offer to tag along, though he does seem to find the fact that Ramza is a Beoulve interesting for some reason. Oh well, we'll just keep heading on our merry way.

- We arrive in Lesalia with no further incidents and Ramza goes and visits his brother Zalbaag and reveals his suspicions that Dycedarg and Larg were plotting together to kidnap the princess and fuel the war for their own personal gain. Zalbaag doesn't take too kindly to this, insults Ramza's mother (they're only half-brothers, after all) and basically tells him to get out of his sight.

- Ramza takes the hint, but before he can make a clean get away, his sister Alma comes and tries to talk to him to find out what's going on. She hints that she's previously seen a piece of auracite (implied to be the Virgo stone) at Orbonne Monastery and wants to tag along as one of Ramza's groupies.

- This conversation goes on just long enough for Confessor Zalmour, of the Glabados Church to show up and accuse Ramza of murdering Cardinal Delacroix. Ramza tries to explain what really happened but of course the Inquisitor won't have any of it.

- Ramza's choices are to surrender, which will probably result in an eventual declaration of guilt and, thus, death; flee, thereby admitting guilt; or fight. Ramza chooses to fight. The Confessor ends up fleeing and Ramza now sets off to Orbonne to hunt for the Virgo stone with Alma in tow.

- We arrive in the Monastery to find that somebody's already gotten there before us and is riffling through the vaults looking for Virgo (one of the crown jewels of Ivalice). Elder Simon has been injured and tries to disuade Ramza from persuing the intruders but Ramza is headstrong and foolhardy and so persists.

- According to Simon, High Confessor Marcel and his group want to restore the Church to prominence so they instigate civil war to weaken potential opponents and use the Zodiac Brave story to win the trust of the common folk.

- Simon also thinks Ramza is more like his father than his brothers and might be able to put a stop to all this. Way to go and inflate his ego there. So Ramza heads into the vaults to stop them, leaving Alma to look after Simon. He also gives his auracite to her for safe keeping.

- A bunch of Temple Knights, lead by one Isilud, are searching for Virgo in the vaults. We drive them off, but not before they find the blasted thing. Chasing them on the way out, we are delayed by our dear old friend, Wiegraf, who we zerg rush because, boy, is he nasty! (Wiegraf has joined this group for the prospect of power, it seems.)

- Despite our efforts, the thugs manage to escape with the stone, and they take Alma with them! The nerve! Also, the injured and dieing Wiegraf seems to hold the Aries stone and he forms a pact with it as Ramza looks on, becoming one with Belias the Gigas.

- Simon limps out of the Monastery and confesses his negligence in turning a blind eye and hands over the Scriptures of Germonique that he has recently uncovered which purport to reveal the truth of the Zodiac Braves.

- We head north to Dorter and are accosted by a strange mage-type (hello Marach) who demands that Ramza turn over the book. Ramza admits to not having read the thing, but figures it must be important considering hitmen are being sent to waylay him over it. The mage does not really illuminate things but only says that if Ramza wants to see Alma again then he'll bring the book to Riovannes Castle.

- Meanwhile, Delita and Ovelia are off in some ruins somewhere as they head for destinations unknown. Ovelia gets all whiney about how she's not really the "real" Ovelia and Delita takes a moment to rail against the establishment. Then they share a rare tender moment when Delita promises to create an Ivalice worthy of Ovelia and swears to do so by his dead sister Tietra. That's either sweet or kinda morbid.

- Back at the ranch, Ramza decides he may as well check out this book thing that people seem like they're willing to kill over.

- The Germonique Scriptures were written by a disciple of St. Ajora (the titular Germonique) and records details of Ajora's life. Ramza recalls the legends surrounding Ajora - his sainthood and supposedly being a child of god and something about defeating a demon summoned by an overly ambitious king - but Germonique records something quite different.

- According to Germonique, Ajora was simply a rabble rouser who had made himself a nuissance to the governments of the day and Germonique was a spy sent to investigate the details. Of course the growing Glabados Church made Ajora into a saint and has suppressed the truth, claiming that Ajora had assembled the legendary Zodiac Braves to defeat the supposed demon.

- And now this book has fallen into Ramza, who has been branded a heretic and has no reason to look favourably upon the Glabados Church which makes for an interesting recipe. Anyway, on to Riovanes!

- Our journey north is rudely interrupted whilst crossing the Zeklaus Desert when we come across an odd young man being chased by a heard of behemoths. Ramza once again shows his proclivity for jumping to conclusions and enters the fray on behalf of the young fellow without adequately assessing the situation. I mean, what if this guy's some super villain or the behemoths have some ligitmate grievance against him? We'll just never know their side of the story.

- The behemoths are defeated and the odd fellow turns out to be Luso, a game hunter (aha! it would seem the behemoths may have been justified after all) who has become separated from his friends and is looking for them. He also has some diary, er, "journal" that he writes in. Even though only pansies write in diaries, that is, "journals", Ramza decides to let him tag along anyway.

[NOTE: Luso is the main character of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: The Grimoire of the Rift and is one of the new special characters in the PSP port of FFT. The journal thing is a reference to the magic journal he carries around in A2.]

- Continuing on, we come to Grogh Heights where we encounter some deserters from the Order of the Southern Sky. They recognize Ramza as a wanted Heretic and think that if they capture him (dead or alive) they might be able to get an honourable discharge. Unfortunately for them, Ramza's not going to go quietly.

- After the battle, Orran, that astrologer from the start of the chapter, rides in with some knights in tow and thanks us for mopping up their deserters. As his orders don't include catching heretics, he and Ramza chat amicably.

- Ramza asks Orran to pass a message to Orlandeau that there are others behind the scenes pulling the strings of this war. Orran agrees (he's Orlandu's adopted son) and tells Ramza that they have their own suspicions about the conspiracies at work but have no proof. He also tells Ramza that he has allies which, I suppose, is good to know.

- We then come to the Walled City of Yardrow and continue Ramza's habit of taking sides by rescuing a girl named Rapha from a group we decide looks less than savory. She fills us in on some regional politics: Grand Duke Barrington, lord of Fovoham, is plotting to use the chaos of war to take over Ivalice for himself! The horror!

- Rapha's less than appologetic brother, Marach (the mage who demanded the Germonique Scriptures from us earlier), however, seems to support the Grand Duke and went so far to make threats against Alma's life if Ramza didn't hurry up and get his ass to Riovanes, and now Rapha's presence is demanded as well. Then Marach's messenger frog explodes. How nifty is that?

- As a side note, Rapha and Marach were orphans from the Fifty Years War, brought up by the Grand Duke, though his intentions weren't entirely honourable. He wanted to make use of the powers that the siblings' family possessed and while Marach is still in his pocket, as it were, it seems Rapha has wisened up to his schemes.

- Next, passing through the Yuguewood, Ramza's crew is beset by ghosts of some of those who perished during the 50 years war. They do the Ghostbusters proud by sending them to their eternal rest. There is now nothing standing between Ramza and the grueling gauntlet known as Riovanes Castle.

- As Ramza marches on Riovanes, Duke Barrington has a nice fire side chat with Formav and Wiegraf of the Templar Knights. He says that those with power will control Ivalice and asks the Templar Knights to join with him as he insinuates that he knows about the Zodiac Stones despite Formav playing dumb and comments that he has two for safe keeping. He further blackmails them with threats of using the Germonique scriptures to reveal the Church's schemes.

- Formav doesn't take too kindly to blackmail and goes all Zodiac Beast on Barrington's ass.

- Meanwhile, Marach is sent to the castle gates to get the scriptures from Ramza, offering Alma's saftey in return, but Rapha tells Ramza not to believe him. So instead, Ramza jumps on Marach with the pointy end of a spear and Marach flees, with Rapha giving chase. Ramza's troops mop up the rest of the riff-raff with no trouble.

- While this is going on, inside the castle, Alma hears the sounds of bloody carnage from her cell. A wounded soldier stumbles in and tells her to run while she has the chance. Well, Alma's not stupid so she takes the chance and runs.

- Ramza then wanders into Riovanes' Keep where Weigraf stands amidst several dead soldiers. He tells Ramza to draw his sword, but Ramza just stands there and says that he pities Weigraf, and wonders what Milleuda must think of all this.

- Weigraf retorts that this is no longer about avenging his sister's death, nor is it about anything noble or righteous at all. He's now all about creating as much chaos as possible. Well, I suppose it's nice to have a goal, but still...

- This leads to a one-on-one duel between Ramza and Weigraf, during which Ramza tries to convince Weigraf that the stones are evil, tools of the Lucavi, but Weigraf just goes on about how it's all about controlling people's perceptions. The winner gets to write history, essentially. Anyway, Ramza was a Dragoon for this battle so it's all just a matter of jumping on Weigraf with the pointy end of a spear a couple of times in order to take him out.

- Weigraf tries to run away, but Ramza tells him to show himself. Obediently, Weigraf returns but now he transforms into Belias, the Gigas. Since Ramza's troops are now backing him up, Belias summons a trio of archdemons for support. This is kind of a tough battle (though auto-potion is brokenly awesome for it) but Ramza and troops manage to pull out a win.

- The defeated Belias drops his zodiac stone and we then switch to the council chambers which is notably bloodier than when we left it. Temple Knight Isilude is looking to be in pretty rough shape. Alma wanders in and tries to help Isilude, but the wounded knight tells her that, having seen his father Formav turn into a lucavi, he now things Ramza is correct and gives Alma a stone he was holding to give to Ramza, then Isilude dies.

- Before Alma can go anywhere, Formav enters and prepares to kill her, but his stone seems to react to her in a strange way and he now thinks he "found" someone, though he's maddenly vague about it. So, he simply chooses to render her unconscious and kidnap her. Fortunately, Alma drops the stone Isilude gave her without Formav noticing.

- Meanwhile, on the roof of the castle, Rapha confronts Duke Barrington (who has somehow escaped the carnage in the castle) and more-or-less mocks her. Marach hears the conversation and finally realizes that Barrington is really a rat bastard. The Duke attempts to shoot Rapha, but Marach takes the bullet for her.

- Barrington demands the Rapha hand over the stone, but then a mysterious figure appears and unceremoniously tosses the duke off the roof. Well, that was easy. But wait! It's Marquis Elmdore! According to the tavern rumours, he was supposed to be dead...

- The Marquis is, naturally, not human any more, but he just sics a couple of assassins on us for now, who we dispatch.

- After the fight, Rapha mourns for Marach, causing the Scorpio stone to react. Ramza fears the worst (naturally, after the Wiegraf incident) but the stone simply revives Marach, without turning him into some horrible ravening beast creature.

- Ramza takes a moment to search the castle for Alma but only finds the Pisces stone that she dropped. Marach waxes philosophical (I suppose death will do that to a person) and supposes that the stones' power reflects the intent of the wielder.

- Anyway, the War of the Lions rages on and events at Riovannes suggest that Folmarv may be at the centre of things, manipulating even the High Confessor Marcel. Ramza suspects that Delita may know more so we set course for Zeltennia.

Chapter 4: In the Name of Love

- Elsewhere, Orran (that astrologer guy we saved earlier) welcomes Orlandeau back to Zeltennia and reports on recent events, seemingly connected to the Zodiac stones and suspicions surrounding the Church and the Templar Knights. Orlandeau then pulls out the Libra stone, reflecting it cannot remain hidden for long. Dun, dun, dun.

- And before we go chasing after Delita, Ramza makes a detour down to Goug to talk to Mustadio's father who found some strange metalic sphere thing that reacts to the Zodiac stones and has an Aquarius symbol inscribed in it. What could it mean?

- Passing through the Mining Town of Gollund, Ramza hears rumours of strange beasts in the area and teams up with one Beowulf who is looking for a dragon. Fighting through several areas of the city, we eventually come to a store room or some such where a dragon is surrounded by a bunch of monsters, including a demon type.

- After a brief fight, the dragon is saved. This is Reis and is apparently the dragon Beowulf was looking for. Out of thanks, Beowulf gives Ramza the Aquarius stone and he and Reis join up with his travelling circus.

- Ramza then goes back to Goug and uses the Aquarius stone to activate that sphere thing which transforms into a might morphin' robot thing which, as a joke, Ramza commands to pound Mustadio into the ground. Good thing Phoenix Downs are plentiful, right? Anyway, the robot (aka Construct 8) joins up 'cause we know it's got some wicked dance moves.

- We now return to our regularly scheduled quest and head east to Dugeura Pass where some local mooks attempt to ambush us and say that we won't get through the pass whilst they are alive. Well, I think we all know the solution to this problem. A short skirmish later, Ramza and co. are moseying along, putting this minor speed bump behind them.

- Continuing east towards Zeltennia, we arrive in the Free City of Bervenia where Knight Templar Meliadoul attempts to seek revenge on Ramza for killing her brother, Isilud. Ramza tries to tell her that it was really a Lucavi that killed Isilud, but she just scoffs at Ramza in an "oh, yeah, I've heard that one before!" kind of way. So we steal all of her stuff before defeating her soundly. Miliadoul just shakes her fist and says "Next time, Ramza - next time!"

- Meanwhile, off in a castle somewhere, Delita still mourns the death of his sister, Tietra, and overhears Ovelia making fart noises, which turns out to be her actually trying (and failing) to blow a reed whistle. Delita shows her how it's actually done and then promises not to let Ovelia get used and discarded the way his sister was.

- Back to the journey east, we are accosted by a flock of chocobos whilst trying to cross Finnath Creek, including the most evil of chocobos: the notorious red chocobo (we hates them and their Choco Meteor). For some reason, the chocobos are accompanied by a pig. Anyway, after quickly dispatching the reds, we play with the rest for a bit for some job points and continue on our way.

- We finally arrive in Zeltennia Castle and Ramza goes to the cathedral, which is where Delita finds him. Ramza decides to take the direct approach and asks Delita why the church has planted him in Goltana's troops. Delita sees no harm in spilling the beans (isn't this one of those evil overlord do-not-dos?) and says its his job to assassinate Goltanna and Orlandeau.

- Further, the peasants are tired of war and are getting kind of revolting but the aristocrats lack the troops to repress them so all sides are converging on Fort Besselat to end things in one swift stroke. The church will take this opportunity to assassinate the leaders (Goltanna, Orlandeau, Larg, Dycedarg, etc.) and, with the help of the Zodiac Brave story and the auracite, the church will gain the favour of the people, setting up Ivalice as a puppet state under their rule.

- Of course, Ramza's been making a nuisance of himself by hindering the Church's auracite collection plans. Delita declares that he will kill Ramza if he needs to, but for now since they both have the same short term goals (ending the war), they are not yet enemies.

- Ramza asks Delita to join him, but Delita refuses, since he intends to protect Ovelia.

- Just then, Confessor Zalmour, along with his merry band of henchmen, surrounds the Cathedral and demands Ramza to turn himself over. Naturally, Ramza's having none of this. The Confessor spots Delita who decides that he can't let Zalmo see him and live so Delita temporarily joins up with Ramza for the ensuing battle.

- After dispatching the Confessor, one Valmafra, a mage working with Delita, informed him that the Order of the Northern Sky had started its advance on Fort Besselat. Ramza heads out to try to get to Orlandu first and avoid a major clash.

- Before wandering off to Besselat, Ramza and crew pick up on some rumours (Bervenia and Dorter) concerning a rash of thefts. Before leaving Dorter, a group of thugs ambush Ramza only to find he's not the droid they were looking for, but since he's been branded a heretic and has a price on his head they'll try to catch him anyway.

- However, that's when the real target, the Sky Pirate Balthier, shows up and the thugs think they get two bounties for the price of one, but alas, it is not to be as Ramza and Baltheir team up to beat them senseless.

- It turns out that Balthier is searching for the "Cache of Glabados" for reasons of his own and decides to tag along with Ramza for a bit as they both seem to be in the Church's bad books right now. As a bonus, Balthier has experience babysitting children (as he puts it, to Ramza's chagrin).

[Note: Balthier is originally from Final Fantasy XII (also set in Ivalice) and is one of the new secret characters for the PSP port.]

- Then it's off to play in the sand - the Beddha Sandwaste, that is. However, someone's already there, ruining our sandbox. Knight Templar Barich is releasing airborn poison which he intends to use to draw out the defenders by weaking their enemies, thus making it easier to assassinate all the leaders at once. Ramza just goes and beats him up because who wants to play in a poisoned sandbox?

- Meanwhile, in Fort Besselat, Duke Goltanna accuses Orlandeau of being a traitor (despite twenty years of loyal service and continued denials) and has him imprisoned. This is because, back in Zeltennia, Ramza foolishly told Delita he was heading there to deliver evidence to expose the church's schemes (the Germonique scriptures) and Delita arrived first while Ramza was playing in the sand.

- Goltanna then goes on to promote Delita and gives him the command of the Order of the Southern Sky. Bad move, there.

- Anyway, now Ramza arrives at Fort Besselat and is given the option to approach from the north or the south. Ramza chooses south and is beset by a bunch of Southern Sky flunkies who try to stop us from talking to Orlandeau despite us being, you know, the good guys. That's what Ramza gets for blabbing his plans to Delita. However, this obstacle is quickly removed.

- Meanwhile, on the north side of the fort, the poison that had been released has successfully incapacitated the Northern Sky. Zalbaag enters the battlefield (or what's left), and finds Dycedarg who is limping along, apparently having been affected by the poison himself.

- Ramza's two older brothers find Duke Larg nearby, also weak from the poison, and Dycedarg takes the opportunity to stab the Duke. Seem's everyone's a traitor these days. Dycedarg has apparently been plotting to have house Beoulve rise to the top and sees this as his opportunity. He then intimidates Zalbaag into planting the dagger on one of the soldiers (thereby shifting the blame) before he collapses himself.

- In the mean time, Ramza has arrived at the Fort Besselat Sluice. Ramza gets the brilliant idea to open the sluice and flood the battlefield, thus preventing any fighting. What does he think this is, Orthanc? And won't he just drown everyone?

- Not one to dwell on such consequences, Ramza and his lackies dive head first into battle, disposing all who stand in their way, until they are able to release the river. Water goes crashing down stream and, presumably, everything becomes wet and soggy.

- In the subsequent chaos, Ramza and Orran, plus Valmafra, one of Delita's flunkies (what's she doing here?) release Orlandeau from captivity and he decides now would be a good time to make himself scarce and tags along with Ramza's growing menagerie. Meanwhile, Orran is sent to Zeltennia to keep an eye on Princess Ovelia.

- As Ramza makes his getaway, Delita checks in on Duke Goltanna. Goltanna wants Delita to pursue the Northern Sky despite the flood, but Delita decides he'd much rather run the Duke through. He then sacrifices a Glabados fanatic disguised as a fake Orlandeau and Valmafra reports that the real Thunder God has escaped with Ramza. Delita seems to be counting on Ramza to do something...

- High Confessor Marcel offers to broker peace between the sides but they don't feel like sharing the playground just yet. Ramza decides he'd rather head to Limberry Castle to rescue Alma.

- In the Trade City of Sal Ghidos, Ramza encounters a strangely familiar flower girl who sells him a flower for 1 gil. (This is Aeris - or Aerith - a crossover from FF7.)

- This encounter unlocks an event back at Goug where Mustadio's father has dug up some wild contraption that has the Cancer Zodiac symbol on which means it's stone huntin' time. This takes us back to Nelveska Temple which is waaaay up north of Zeltennia. Here we fight Construct 7 who is guarding the temple or something. He, along with a pack of other nasty things, packs a punch but then so does Ramza and crew. Defeating Worker 7 earns the Cancer stone.

- While at Nelveska, Beowulf "borrows" the Cancer stone (he'll give it back, promise!) and sends the Holy Dragon Reis with it into the temple. This just so happens to uncurse the dragon, and out walks the human female, Reis, who seems to be acquanted with Mr. Beowulf.

- Back in Goug, the Cancer stone is used to activate the contraption and much to Mustadio's relief, this time it does not come alive and KO him. Instead, it summons a strangely familiar, and grouchy, SOLDIER. Hello Cloud! Seems he's still suffering from chronic migranes and goes running off, presumably in search of a doctor or a good shrink.

- A bit confused, Ramza decides to get back to the matter at hand and heads to Limberry. But the journey is interrupted in Sal Ghidos (again!) by a group of theives who are trying to extort money from the flower girl, whom they call Aerith. Cloud stumbles in, still suffering from headaches (or maybe a hangover) and it's up to Ramza to mop things up since Cloud turns out to be useless in a fight, always running off to a corner to hide.

- Afterwards, Cloud mumbles something about having to get to the Promised Land and Ramza decides to let him tag along out of pity.

- That out of the way, Ramza continues south towards Limberry, encountering a couple of minor speed bumps in the form of some bandits on Mount Germinas who try (and fail) to collect the bounty on Ramza's head and the restless dead at Lake Poescas who try (and fail) to steal our auracite.

- Meanwhilst, Knight Templar Loffrey pays a visit to Ramza's dear eldest brother Dycedarg and casually accuses him of assassinating Duke Larg which, naturally, Dycedarg denies. Loffrey then discusses the poison used at Fort Besselat and uses that to imply that Dycedarg poisoned his father. This leaves Dycedarg somewhat flabergasted but he still swims in denial. Not to be detered, Loffrey leaves a gift from High Confessor Marcel in the form of a Zodiac stone. It also happens that the middle brother, Zalbaag, was listening to the whoe thing outside the door.

- Anyway, Ramza goes stumbling headlong into Limberry Castle to find the door wide open. He gets a bad feeling just as a pair of assassins (Celia and Lettie) who work for Marquis Elmdore appear. it's a trap! They say Alma is inside, so we've got to fight them. They're annoying as heck (though Ramza does learn Ultima from them), but despite the stated mission objectives, you actually only have to take down one of them to win.

- When one assassin is defeated, they both flee to Elmdore who is talking to Lord Folmarv who are discussing that a host as recently been chosen for Adrammelech and that "that girl" will be the host for the High Seraph. Elmdore then goes to attend to the matter of Ramza.

- Ramza faces off against Elmdore who, like his lackies, is annoying but manageable. He flees to the necroholl when critically wounded and Ramza pursues, of course. (Though on the way, Ramza encounters and defeats Argath again, just as arrogant as before but notably more undead. Much easier fight than the other two.)

- In the necroholl, Elmdore summons some undead and transforms into Zalera, the Death Seraph. Meliadoul chooses this moment to wander onto the scene and seeing the Lucavi in the flesh she decides that Ramza was probably telling the truth about events at Riovannes and the death of her brother Isilud. After the battle, she decides to join our rag-tag band and tells Ramza that a Zodiac stone was given to his brother Dycedarg, so we're probably going to be paying him a visit next (or soon).

- Elsewhere, presumably in Zeltennia, Orran fights his way to Ovelia's chambers to tell her that Orlandeau didn't really kill Goltanna (ah, so Delita was framing T.G. Cid) but before he can reveal the truth, Delita catches up, along with his flunky Valmafra. Delita doesn't seem to want to kill Orran as he has some sort of plan for him as he builds a legend for himself.

- Delita now plans to take down the Order of the Northern Sky and rebuild Ivalice for Ovelia and those who oppose him, including the Church, will be dealt with. Valmafra, being an agent of the Church, moves to assassinate Delita but she hesitates and Delita, who was expecting this, finishes her off first.

- Meanwhile, Zalbaag takes a herbalist to visit his father's grave. He pays the herbalist to confirm the presense of mossfungus on the grave. This does not seem to bode well.

- On the way to Eagrose Castle to slap around his brother, Ramza is stopped in Dorter by Knight Templar Cletienne. Meliadoul attempts to learn more from him about the truth about her father, Folmarv, and what his plans are but Cletienne basically just mocks her and claimes he's in the right. Anyway, the Knight Templar proves just to be a minor speed bump. He seems to be buying time for something... but what?

- Ramza arrives at Eagrose with his own personal army in tow. However, there are no guards in sight so Ramza walks in without a fight.

- Inside, Ramza finds Zalbaag confronting Dycedarg about their father. Dycedarg calls in the mooks, just as Ramza and crew arrive to lend Zalbaag a hand and help clean up.

- When defeated, Dycedarg transforms into Adrammelech and says he poisoned their father because he was letting House Beoulve's chance to rule Ivalice (due to an increasingly weak and divided royal house, not to mention an increasingly disaffected populace) pass by. He then zaps Zalbaag, appearing to vapourize him. However, Ramza's crew makes short work of Adrammelech as the overmatched Lucavi barely gets to do anything thanks to the fight starting with Ramza's team being pre-buffed with haste.

- Ramza then heads to Mullonde, seat of the Church, to rescue Alma. However, Folmarv has decided that High Confessor Marcel is no longer necessary due to Ramza having obtained most of the auracite already. He forces the location of the Necrohol out of him (under Orbonnne Monastery) and the means to break its seal (the Germonique scripture) which, conveniently, Ramza also has. With no further need of the High Confessor, Folmarv has him impaled and left for dead.

- Ramza arrives at the cathedral in Mullonde and foolishly walks up to the front door demanding Alma's release. The temple guards are only too happy to attempt to execute him, only they don't count on the power of Math and are quickly taken down.

- Ramza enters the cathedral and finds the High Confessor who is still twitching. He manages to make himself mildly useful before dieing by telling Ramza about Orbonne.

- Folmarv and his remaining flunkies (Cletienne and Loffrey) try to barter Alma's life for the Scriptures and the auracite, but Ramza's not entirely stupid and only gives them the Scriptures and keeps the Zodiac Stones upon confirmation that Alma is safe.

- When the contents of the Scriptures are confirmed, Folmarv tries to take the auracite by force, but he and his flunkies run away when one of them becomes critically wounded, the cowards.

- Ramza enters the crypts, thinking to pursue them, but instead finds a much undeader looking Zalbaag and some demons. Zalbaag is unable to fight the control of the Lucavi and begs Ramza for release. Ramza's company defeats him and Zalbaag sort of explodes. Messy. I guess being undead will do that to you.

- House Beoulve is now at an end, but the only thing left to do is pursue Folmarv, put a stop to his dastardly plans, and rescue Alma. Of course that means one thing: go do some side quests!

- Actually, most of the side quests are already complete. In wandering around, at Lionel Castle, Beowulf and Reis enjoy a peaceful moment only to have Reis kidnapped by one Ser Aliste on behalf of Bremondt, new lord of Lionel (succeeding Delacroix) who is apparently the one responsible for Reis' curse.

- Ramza, Beowulf and company return to Lionel to lay the smack down. It turns out Aliste was dieing and wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. After that, we fight Bremondt and his lackies who, interestingly, are all female. Seems Bremondt had a thing for Reis and tried to curse Beowulf to take him out of the picture, but Reis took the curse for Beowulf instead.

- Beowulf and Bremandt debate about the nature of love a bit but we otherwise pound him into the ground. Before being defeated, he transforms into a Dark Dragon. After that, Beowulf and Reis are happily reunited and we continue on our merry way.

- Up in Zeltennia, Agrias (who has somehow managed to sneak past guards or whatever) finds Ovelia and appologises for not being around to protect her since she's been off galavanting with Ramza fighting demons and stuff. Agrias gives Ovelia a dagger for protection and leaves her in Delita's protection, though Agrias doesn't really seem to trust him.

- Then, a rumour in Gariland suggests some Northern Sky deserters are making themselves annoying in the Brigands' Den so we go and clear them out.

- Finally, a trip down to Warjilis opens up the Midlight's Deep for later exploration, but I'll worry about that some other time.

- Now it's time to go hit up Orbonne Monastery. Folmarv, Loffrey and their associates are up to their dastardly misdeads but we first have to dispatch a group of peons to get to them. Yawn.

- Loffrey is the first challenger. He doesn't pose a serious challenge though can be slightly annoying (don't break my Genji armour, gah! well, at least I'm not saving this). When defeated, Loffrey opens a portal which teleports everyone down to the Mullonde Necrohol and then destroys the exit, thinking to trap Ramza there forever. Then he dies.

- Next up is Cletienne in the ruins of some dead city. Since the goal of this sequence of battles is just to defeat the main guy (Loffrey, Cletinne and so on) I decide to go for the jugular vein since there's really not much point in collecting crystals or anything at this point. Cletienne goes down like a rag doll, plus Math Skills are way overpowered :)

- Next is Barich who was the guy with the poison at the Beddha Sandwaste. As with the others before him, he falls swiftly.

- This brings Ramza, at long last, to the Airship Graveyard where Formav is attempting to resurrect Saint Ajora into the body of Alma using the Virgo stone. When this does not appear to be working, he decides a blood sacrifice is required and transforms into Hashmal, Bringer of Order, and attacks Ramza's party.

- Hashmal is defeated without too much difficulty. However, Saint Ajora has still not revived, so Hashmal decides rather than suffer an epic fail, he'll sacrifice himself to revive her (hey, he's pretty much already dead so nothing to lose, I suppose).

- Alma finally awakes but is then possessed by Saint Ajora, aka the Bloody Angel. Alma's got some fight in her, however, and the two somehow separate. Saint Ajora then transforms into Ultima, the High Seraph and summons some demons to aid her.

- Reiterating that Math Skills are overpowered, I take out the helper demons in pretty much one shot, even at the cost of damaging a couple of my own units (totally worth it). Then we're free to keep hitting Ultima until she falls down.

- Except in Final Fantasy tradition, Ultima then transforms into her true, much deader looking form. At this point, however, we just continue the "hit it until it falls down" strategy which goes smoothly, despite one of my units being turned into a frog near the end. Then Ultima blows up for good. Somewhere in there, she also implies that Ramza is ultimately descended from the person who originally defeated/sealed/whatevered Saint Ajora in the first place.

- Cut to the end of a funeral in a graveyard. The mourners are mourning the loss of Alma and of the entire Beoulve house, though Ramza was apparently denied a funeral or proper burial as a heretic.

- The mourners leave and Orran arrives, with Valmafra in tow. Seems Delita didn't actually kill her after all. Seems Orran has been watched, or he'd have come sooner. Musing on recent events, he can't seem to accept that Ramza is actually dead.

- Delita is now King, having married Ovelia. With the various pretenders for the throne dead and the demon summoning conspiracy ended by Ramza's efforts, Ivalice is now in relative peace.

- Then, as Orran turns to go, Ramza and Alma ride by on Chocobo and off into the sunset.

- As Ramza and Alma are riding off, we are then told how Orran wrote up the Durai papers, recording the truth of the events that he witnessed. However, the Church didn't much care for them so had Orran burned at the stake as a heretic. Ultimately, though, the truth will out and the papers were eventually uncovered by one "Arazlam Durai" who is the one who has been recounting this whole history.

- After the credits, there is one final scene between Ovelia and Delita in the ruins of the Zeltennia Chapel. Delita brings Ovelia flowers, but Ovelia is angry at the way Delita uses everyone and, afraid that he'll just toss her aside some day when she's no longer useful, she stabs him and Delita stabs her back. So, everyone dies and it's a happy, cheerful ending.

Three Little Words

2010-12-24T14:32:00.003-05:00

I did marking for the final for the class I was TAing this past term earlier this week which, as usual, was a barrel of fun, for some sufficiently lenient definition of "fun". Though in all honesty, the exams for this class (both midterm and final) was actually fairly easy - probably one of the easier pair of exams to mark from my experience so far. Still boring, but not too horribly bad.

Even so, the best three words a marker can encounter when marking an exam are "Did Not Write", generally abbreviated as "DNW". As should be plain, this means that a student (for whatever reason) did not show up to write the exam. This is, as one should expect, very easy to mark! The second best thing that a marker can see is a question that was left blank. Also easy to mark, but there may still be other questions to mark on the exam.

Anyway, TAing is all done until next term so I get a few weeks of not having to do any TA stuff at the very least.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

The Sound of Silence

2010-12-05T14:06:00.003-05:00

My graphics card has been dieing a slow and rather noisy death - or, at least, the fan has been. Last night, the way it was acting up, I decided that it's final death was probably imminent and that it should be replaced as soon as possible.

Now, I've been putting off replacing it for a few months or so now because getting a new graphics card necessitates upgrading my PC's power supply as it's a lowly 300W and most new-ish graphics cards seem to require at least 400W. This increases the cost of replacing my ailing graphics card (approximately doubling the cost, depending on power supply/graphics card) and, as a student on a limited budget, I have been hesitant to spend the money to upgrade even though it was fairly obvious that I would have to sooner or later.

However! I recently received word that a funding application my supervisor and I put in over the summer was approved so now I have some confirmed funding for next year, and a decent amount more than what I've been getting to date. Thus, I decided now was the time to go ahead and upgrade. I went out today and bought myself a new graphics card (Radeon 5670, for the curious) and a 700W power supply. And it's so quiet! I can barely hear anything at all! It's so wonderful.

I also noticed, whilst I was buying the new graphics card, that there were some 24" widescreen Samsung LCD monitors on sale ($70 off) so I decided to pick one of those up as well as I've been kind of itching to upgrade my monitor. Yeah, I'm splurging. But it's worth it! The new monitor is so glorious! I'm running at a resolution of 1920x1080 and everything is crisp and smooth. It's freaking fantastic!

That is all,
-Freak Out

Centennial Something or Other

2010-11-29T18:37:00.006-05:00

It appears that this is my 100th post. Considering that I've had this blog for almost two and a half years already, that tells you something about my posting frequency.

Anyway, I'm going to celebrate my 100th post by doing a follow-up to my previous post in the form of a video. Behold! (Or don't, eyes may bleed, I can't be held responsible.)

Hmmm. The default video frame selected by YouTube says it all, I think, and is quite amusingly appropriate.

This is actually why it took me so bloody long to get around to making that post about my FR porting experiment. I had originally wanted to do a narrated video describing things, but never found the time or motivation. Instead, I decided to slap something together, call it a day and inflict it upon my readership, such as it is.

The only thing I'll note is that most of the music in the video (which was added through the magic of video editing) was composed by my brother with one small piece by myself. In order, they are:

Victory Fanfare
Here's the Boss
Walking Around in a Fog
Canackian Theme
New Folk Song
Dungeon 2
Merv's Theme
The Reel of the Drunken Sailor
New Folk Song (again)
Elvis Theme
Merv's Theme (again)
Flute Song (I composed this for a music theory class)
Appliance Theme
Dungeon 1
The Reel of the Drunk Sailor (again)
Substation Theme

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Blog to the FUTURE

2010-11-16T18:01:00.031-05:00

With this post we're going BACK IN TIME to late summer 2009 when, on a whim, I decided to port my unfinished game project (from back in highschool) from ancient C/DOS to a more modern Windows-based C#/XNA app. I'd been meaning to blog about the results for some time, but just never got around to it.

Welcome to The Final Reality

The project was (still is, I suppose) meant to be a parody of the Final Fantasy series in particular and of RPGs in general. The graphics were all created by me (and, I admit, they're not particularly fantastic) though were sometimes based on other things. However, I'm not going to talk much about the game itself or its storied history. Rather, I'm going to talk about how much my coding sucked back in highschool and some about the porting process. Though I will include lots of screenshots. Yay!

A googly-eyed alien, though he doesn't seem the friendly sort.

Porting from C to C# wasn't too hard, over all. I had to make some changes to from the DOS-based "I get the whole machine to myself so I don't have to play nice" approach to the multi-tasking based Windows approach, but that went fairly smoothly. I was able to poach some code from my QRT project to handle rendering, so that was fairly easy as well. The first main challenge I came across was that I had the wrong version of the code.

It'll make you glow. Blue magic does silly stuff like that. And yes, the menu is supposed to be aged dot-matrix printer paper.

Somehow, I seem to have lost the most recent version of the code which was missing some things like object animations (which I put back in) and some menu and inventory stuff (which I did not). This caused a problem because the data files were for the most recent version of the code (I still have a working version of the most recent executable...)

Somebody seems to have left their tie hanging on the wall of this cave.

This caused a problem because, in the main program file, there is what is called a "magic number" hard coded telling the game the position in the data file where it should start loading from when the game first starts and, because the version of the code I had was out of date, this number was wrong, thus resulting in reading essentially random junk from the data file.

The Tower of Harmony: what's with all the musical instruments laying around?

Fortunately, once I'd diagnosed the problem, I had enough of my old notes from highschoool sitting around (I am something of a pack rat) that I was able to deduced what the correct magic number was supposed to be. But this is a somewhat extreme example of one of the things that was horrible about my coding back then: way too many things hard coded. I've gotten much, much better about this over the years.

The clinic in the Elf Town. The names of the Elves in the clinic were taken from Tolkien's elvish languages and all mean things like "sickly" and so forth.

Other problems with my code were, perhaps, less severe but still annoying. My style was poor, formatting was bad, comments were lack luster or missing altogether, things were not nearly as organized as they should have been. Again, I've improved greatly in these areas over the years. I think switching to object-oriented languages like C++ and C# have helped tremendously and, these days, I put a lot more effort into structuring and organizing my code well.

In the music club The Wailing Cat. For some reason, the idea of cats being famous musicians amuses me.

As mentioned, some restructuring of code needed to be done in moving from a DOS to Windows based environments, but I was able to borrow some of my code from my QRT project so that made the switch fairly easy. However, since in C#, everything has to be in a class (unlike C/C++ which can have free floating functions), some extra restructuring was needed. I had originally thought of actually reorganizing everything so that it was actually well coded, but quickly decided this wasn't worth the effort. Essentially, each code file became its own class with all public members for easy access. (Don't worry if you don't understand the programmer-speak, the main thing is I took the easy way out since I wasn't going to do anything with the code beyond a simple port.)

The Dwarvish Pizzaria. In FR, dwarves are master chefs. Note the menu says "FR Combo" and the tray (lower right) reads "Quasi". I put several tidbits like that into the graphics.

Back when I was creating all the graphics, data files and whatnot, I had several independent tools for creating various resources - a graphics editor, map editor, item and dialog editor (which I think were just programs with the data hard coded that then wrote data files) - which I then assembled via a semi-automatic resource compiler (I still had to input several things manually). It was all rather archaic. This is one area where the QRT project is definately going to improve upon by having a whole integrated IDE and overall much more data driven approach which will make creating RPGs much easier (not to mention everything will be much more reusable).

Spelunking in an ancient mine.

One other thing that did give me a bit of a problem when porting was with text and dialog. Back in the DOS days (and even up until more recently), text was commonly just 8-bit ASCII by default. In C#, everything is unicode by default. This caused a bit of a problem because I was using certain ASCII codes to represent special symbols (item icons, for example) which didn't always translate as expected in unicode. So I had to put special checks in for some symbols, but I don't think I caught them all because the port occasionally crashes when opening certain treasure chests. Oops.

The graphics for house interiors were based on the house I lived in at the time. That's the clock I made in shop class.

That's really all I have to say about my little porting project and the crappiness of my coding back in highschool. As I've said, I've improved a lot since then (lots of additional experience under my belt) and my QRT project, as a result, will be much better designed and will be much more flexible and will be capable of a lot more overall.

A multi-layered tech dungeon. I liked multi-layered maps. Note the Star Trek styled replicator thing.

Hopefully I haven't bored anyone who's bothered to read this too much (I hope the pictures helped!), I've blathered on so long basically as an excuse to use as many screen shots as possible. I've mentioned QRT a few times and I'm still planning on blogging specifically about that project, eventually, whenever I get around to it. Until then, I'll just leave you with a few more screen shots.

In town, even pedestrians have to obey stop signs. Anachronism? What's that?

In the tech dungeon it's Quasi Cola! One of those little tidbits. Not sure why since I don't actually like cola that much.

A hallway in The Wailing Cat. The picture on the left is supposed to be me. The other picture says "Quasi".

Again in The Wailing Cat. For some reason, I seem to have made a point of including bathrooms in the game.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

(I should probably say something about images being copyright by me, yada yada, wheretofore and hereunto.)

Grab Bag

2010-11-01T18:03:00.003-04:00

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!

Today I actually started doing some programming related to my research. Nothing exciting yet, just laying down some groundwork. And, of course, since it's just getting started, it may all end up getting discarded before the end anyway. Who knows! I sure don't!

In much less exciting news, I will be going off to proctor in about ten minutes or so. I've probably said it before and shall no doubt say it again, but I - hate - proctoring.

Well, that is all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Math on Wheels

2010-10-27T10:33:00.003-04:00

On the way to school this morning I saw a car that was very solidly pink. It stood out because it's not the sort of thing one sees every day - certainly not a common colour for a car. Its license plate also had the word "PINK" in it, so I guess the driver must really like pink.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Grinding for Fun and Profit

2010-10-18T14:46:00.003-04:00

I spent much of my weekend grinding in some fashion - mostly either marking assignments or by staining a fence. Neither was particularly "fun" nor "profitable" (though I suppose I do get paid for marking, though not enough) and I didn't even go up a level. Oh well. Fence staining was slightly more fun than marking since it at least got me outside on a pleasant day and did involve some interaction with friends, so it wasn't all bad.

I'm TAing one of the first year CS courses again this term which mostly involves marking assignments. I've TA'd this course before and it's about as boring as I remember. Somehow, marks seem to be worse than the last time I TA'd this course, though it could be that the online system we're using for marking makes it easier to be pickier about things over all. Meh, whatever.

Today, I'm actually doing some research related work, mostly some planning and reviewing before I dive into coding something. Part of this involved digging out some manga and skimming through it. I think it's pretty awesome that I can read comics and justify it as "work".

Freak Out,
-TFitC

In The Works

2010-10-13T15:52:00.003-04:00

Over a year ago, in my comic-based post (which I really should do again some time), I mentioned my QRT project and implied that I would write more about it in the "near" future. Well, it's been a while and the post has not yet appeared. And before anyone gets their hopes up, this isn't that post either.

However, I have been making progress on the project and recently got to the point where I can now script talking to NPCs - sort of. I haven't implemented the conversation system that I plan to do eventually, so for now it's really just displaying simple text boxes but hey, it's something! This also means that QRT can almost do everything that FR could back in highschool, and is much better implemented and far more flexible to boot. So, yay!

I shall no doubt talk more about this "soon" (possibly more than anyone really wants to hear about) and hopefully "soon" will actually mean soon, this time, and not a year or more.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This Just In!

2010-09-30T12:16:00.001-04:00

Hey! Today is the last day of September.

Just thought I'd let everyone know.

Freak Out,
-TFitC
(This message brought to you by the committee for inflating post counts.)

The Road Goes Ever On

2010-09-08T11:25:00.002-04:00

I recently completed my "20th anniversary" read through of The Lord of the Rings (save for the appendices which won't take long) that I began back on the 20th anniversary of receiving The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit for Christmas (commemorated in this post).

I do not recall when I finished my very first read through of The Lord of the Rings as I don't remember whether or not I received The Return of the King for Easter or my birthday. If it was for my birthday (as seems most likely since I do recall that I got The Two Towers for Easter) then I probably wasn't too far off my original finishing date either, but that's just guesswork on my part.

Obviously, I took my time reading, but I've had other distractions along the way such as course projects and also read Tolkien's take on a couple of old Norse legends (in "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun") somewhere in there.

Still, I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings as much as I always do. Certain things always seem to affect me in some way - like the Ride of the Rohirrim, Eowyn facing down the lord of the Nazgul and Frodo slowly having his mind eaten away by the ring as they approach Mount Doom, just to name a few.

I often also seem to pick up on something new each time I read the book. This time, it was from the final chapter "The Grey Havens" when Sam is agonizing over what to name his first child (a daughter), Frodo suggests naming her Elanor, after the flowers in Lothlorien, meaning "sun-star" as he says. That made me go "Huh! That is actually what that means..." If my readers will allow some linguistics, in Tolkien's elvish, "el" is "star", found in such names as "Elbereth" (star queen) or "Elrond" (star dome - if memory serves) and "anor" is "sun" as in "Minas Anor" (tower of the sun), the original name of Minas Tirith.

Anywho, as always I have enjoyed my latest journey through Middle-Earth, one which I shall no doubt undertake again in the future.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Cape-Freak Vs. The Internets

2010-08-27T14:33:00.004-04:00

Hmm. Well, ok, so I'm not actually going up against the internets or anything. The title of today's post is simple a clever, clever play on the Scott Pilgrim movie title. *shifty eyes* What? I am to clever. *pout*

But anywho, the main point here is to say that I saw "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" last week and quite enjoyed it. I'm not going to get into too many specifics at the moment since you really should go out and see it - if you like comics and/or games you'll probably enjoy it - I'm just going to limit my comments to one or two things that I particularly liked.

Visually, I really liked the comic book style sound effects that they used and think they really worked well. In a way, it's kind of like the old 60s Batman show (at least I think it was from the 60s, that was before my time) but obviously much better integrated to the point where it just seemed natural.

Some of the video game references were also quite good, some audio as well as visual - some Legend of Zelda music plays briefly during the opening scene. Fun stuff.

The movie also has a lot of Canadian content. It's based on a comic book by a Canadian author, set and filmed in Toronto, has at least some Canadian actors and also has some close-ups of Canadian coinage, among other things.

I am certainly quite interested in getting the original comics now, so that's something I'll have to look into.

It seems I've been babbling on for long enough now so I think I'll take the opportunity to sign out.

Oh, by the way, also google "Scott Pilgrim vs the Animation" - it's not a spoiler for the movie (but is related to it) so it's safe to look up even if you haven't seen the movie yet.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Marking Sucks

2010-08-02T17:33:00.003-04:00

So, after not having posted in a while, I return to complain about being a TA! Excitement! Well, there are a few other details, but first with the complaining!

For the course that I'm TAing this term, the people in charge decided that each TA would mark an entire assignment, by themselves. Thus I have found myself, over this long weekend, spending a lot of time marking assignments which really sucks. As I've no doubt mentioned before, marking is generally boring and this assignment has been really painful to mark. First, the course material is not in my area of interest (thus I don't particularly care for it much) and second, most of the questions are actually hard to mark because they're the sort of thing where one has to try and follow the student's train of thought which is not always easy, especially since I do try to figure out what the students are trying to do and give part-marks rather than just put in a big X when something's wrong.

On the plus side, since I only mark one assignment it means I haven't had to do TA work for most of the term (besides the midterm), but I honestly think this is too much for one person to do in any reasonable amount of time and I think I'd prefer having the pain spread out a bit. Having each TA do half the marking for two assignments would, I think, be a better arrangement.

In less complainy news, I discovered a new recipe last night! Its from the (now much abused) cook book that I've had for ages and is a recipe for hamburger-vegetable soup. It turned out quite tastey and is definitely going on my will-make-again list.

I also managed to sneak in a little bit of work on the QRT project this weekend despite the marking (and some FASS work today), which I really must write about in more detail sometime, and not just because I said I would about a year ago and never did.

Well, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Star Trekking

2010-06-03T14:07:00.003-04:00

Last night I went to a concert by the K-W symphony orchestra with a couple of friends, my brother (though he's not a Trek fan) and my sister-in-law. This wasn't what you might call a regular concert as the orchestra was playing the music of Star Trek. This included themes from several (though not all) of the movies and most of the television series. As I first started watching Star Trek with The Next Generation (it was still airing new episodes at the time), that theme was, for me, probably the most iconic.

The concert was hosted by John De Lancie (Q) and Robert Picardo (The Doctor on Voyager). The concert, as a whole, was quite entertaining and I was particularly amused when the hosts referred to the Governor General as "The Queen's Grand Negis." Some of the concert goers were in costume (though not a lot) - most were in Star Fleet uniforms though there were a couple of Klingons in the audience. There were also several orchestra members in costume, which I thought was rather nice for them to be allowed to do that.

Anyway, it was an entertaining evening and also quite nostalgic at times.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Up For Air

2010-05-19T15:47:00.003-04:00

So, not much has been happening here lately, it seems, or nothing worth flogging about, at any rate. The course projects for my last two courses were finished up at the end of last month and they were eating up much of my time. Since then I've spent a couple weeks taking it easy and not thinking about projects at all. But now that some time has passed, I've put together a web page for the non-photorealistic rendering project which I alluded to previously.

The images can be viewed at the results page and, for those who are so inclined, some of the technical details are on the main project page.

Now I'm getting back into the swing of things, focusing on research and also continuing my work on the QRT project again, which I still haven't blogged about though I've been meaning to. Well, sooner or later.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Status Update

2010-04-27T10:06:00.004-04:00

Over the past few weeks I've been madly at work on my two course projects. Should I ever be in the position again where I need to take any courses I must remember NOT to take more than one project course per term. These things have a way of eating up all available time. Anyway, I'm almost finished - the projects are due by the end of day tomorrow (Wednesday). After that, I think I'm going to declare myself to be on a two week vacation since I've been work at least a little bit most days these past few weeks and I could use a break (not all on projects mind you as I did lose a few days to proctoring and marking - not fun). I'll blog some more about the individual projects once they're officially done, but for now here's a preview:

Also, it seems that the 'S' key on the USB keyboard that I use with my laptop has become terminally non-functional meaning I'll have to get a new keyboard in the near future. Ah well.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Projectile Blogging

2010-03-29T18:26:00.003-04:00

The FASS AGM was held over this past weekend which is where I officially became CSW and included the final theme selection for next year's FASS. Theme selection is done by a voting process after presenting the top four or so themes that were selected at the Theme Meeting. Four themes were presented this year and the one that emerged victorious was "Myths and Legends" which should make for an interesting script. I'm going to try to work in Jason and the Arrrrrrgonauts somehow, and possibly also the Ninjas of the Round Table.

I have also been working on my final project for the non-photorealistic rendering course. My project is on simulating Greco-Roman style mosaics. It is still very much a work in progress, but here's a sample of my interim results:

There are obviously still some problems - holes that need filling and whatnot - but it should give the basic idea of what the end goal should produce.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Shooting Stars

2010-03-15T23:19:00.002-04:00

The third assignment for the non-photorealistic course I'm taking has been submitted. This assignment continued on a similar vein from the last one and focused on aspects of ornamental design. In particular, the assignment covered tiling theory and Islamic Star Patterns. It's all very geometrical, really, based around tilings of the plane with regular polygons.

As per usual, there are some pictures to look at here, with some more of the details here for those who are interested.

-Freak Out

A Pot For Me?

2010-03-14T12:46:00.004-04:00

So, a few things happening lately, some larger, some smaller. First off, the big thing is that I seem to find myself as the Chief Script Writer for FASS 2011, which means I'll be guiding the script writing process for the next several months. Yay me? I dunno, I may be a touch crazy to do this, but I figure since I'm all done my course requirements after this term that it should be manageable, for the most part, without driving me too insane. We'll see, I guess.

And speaking of courses, even though I'm only taking two courses this term, somehow everything still ends up being due at the same time so I'm spending a lot of time finishing things up this weekend. A lot of it is done already, but it still takes time to do the write-ups and deal with all the little details and tweaking that manage to pop up. The same thing happened for my last set of assignments too - both courses were due on the same day. At least this is the last batch of assignments, though I've still got a project to do for each course.

In unrelated news, I've been playing a bunch of Dissidia: Final Fantasy (fighting game involving characters from various Final Fantasy games for the PSP)- when I haven't been working, of course - and have been quite enjoying it. Chaos, the "end boss" was quite tough - far tougher than any of the other fights - which makes me inclined to say the developers may have gone a little overboard with him. Even having beaten Chaos, though, there's still lots left to do in the game, which is good since, as I said, I've been enjoying it (despite Chaos being a cheating bastard).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Knotty Issue

2010-02-23T11:38:00.002-05:00

The second assignment for the NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) course I'm taking this term was due yesterday. The topic of the assignment was symmetry and Celtic knots (an example of which is pictured above). The Celtic knot portion of the assignment was based on a paper that presents a way to generate Celtic-knot style artwork using a grid-based method which can be done by hand or, as in the assignment, by computer. I seem to find it rather fascinating and doing the method by hand is, as the prof pointed out, a very good way to kill time in class. Some examples of knotwork that I created for the assignment (some based on ones that I did in class) can be viewed on the results page of my write-up. Those interested in some of the technical details (though I don't describe the method in detail - unfortunately there does not seem to be a freely available download of the paper in question) are on the main page for the write-up.

Completely unrelated to that, I was watching an episode from the 3rd season of Deep Space 9 last night - "Past Tense, Part I". As the name might suggest, it's a time travel episode and those often tend to be fairly good episodes, overall. The "treknobabble" invovled in justifying the time travel, however, was rather laughable. Ignoring that though, it was generally an enjoyable episode, despite being a bit predictable at points.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Assignment Overload

2010-02-21T18:23:00.004-05:00

Gah!

I've been working pretty steadily the past couple days finishing up an assignment that's due tomorrow. I don't know how, when I do get started on these relatively early, I still end up doing a lot of last minute work like this. Though, I suppose, deciding to add a couple of new features and change how some of the rendering is handled at the next-to-last minute doesn't exactly help my case! Ah well. I suppose this goes to show that when I have interesting work to do I'm actually more-or-less willing to actually do it. (I say "more-or-less" because if I didn't actually have to do it I'd most likely have spent my time doing other things.)

Anyway, I'm going to relax for an hour or two before going to work on the other assignment that's due tomorrow. It's much less involved though, only a short 5 minute presentation on something photography related, so it shouldn't take too long - at least in theory.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This Cake is NOT a Lie... And Other Oddiments

2010-02-15T22:43:00.005-05:00

So, it's been about a weeks since FASS 2010 rolled it's final credits and, over all, I think it went pretty well. We seem to have had the most ticket sales since sometime in the mid-90's (including largest crowd for opening night since around that time too) so hopefully that is a sign we were on the right track. And despite some of my complaining in my previous post, I did end up having fun with my part - though getting the second role added (the Wise One) helped a bit. Plus for both roles I was able to wear a costume that wasn't just jeans and a t-shirt which is always nice. In fact I think that the Kirby costume turned out rather well and for the Wise One, well, it's always nice to have an excuse to wear my cape (and I got a funny looking robe). Also, the Friday Late audience suitably amused me this year.

As seems to be becoming a post-FASS tradition for me, I hosted a small gathering at my apartment today since it is, in fact, the third iteration of "Wear You Under on Your Head" Day, also known as "Why I Voted for the Provincial Liberals" Day or also, more officially yet more boringly, as "Family Day". I made some home made pizza and a couple of tastey cakes. Or rather, one cake in two parts since I made round cakes but did not layer them as is traditionally done with the round cakes. And now that I think about it, why is that, exactly? Why doesn't anyone make single-layered round cakes like one would with a regular rectangular cake, or non-circular layered cakes? Or, if they do, why aren't the more common?

But that's really somewhat tangential to the real matter which is to show pictures of my two half-cakes:

I made a Kirby cake! The lettering on the cake is Kirby's first line in the show. His fate, in Final Fassity MMX, was to shut himself in the bathroom and eat himself to death (a la Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs). Here we were able to eat him one last time, and he was very tastey.

Originally, I had planned just to do the one cake, but when I realized that the circular pans are only about half as big as the rectangular ones and that I'd have half a cake left over I decided...

...that I could make a Pac Man cake as well! The letter here says "Do you like falafel? Nom nom nom..." because in the penultimate scene, Pac Man kept going on about setting up a falafel stand. I actually iced this cake first since I figured it would be easier (and it was).

Despite that my cake decorating skills are clearly underlevelled (I've never been able to get the icing satisfactorally smooth, in my opinion) I think they both turned out ok, especially considering this was my first ever attempt to actually try to decorate a cake. In any case, they both served their purpose and amused and were enjoyed by all.

In a way, I feel a little bad eating such adorable cakes, but now I get to eat Kirby and Pac Man (or what's left of them) for the rest of the week.

Anyway, that is all for the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Doing Time

2010-02-05T13:18:00.003-05:00

We got our third piece for the orchestra this week. It's from Barber - Second Essay or something like that, not a memorable title, really. However, as I was playing through it, I found myself often uttering things like "this is so strange", especially regarding the time signatures. The piece changes time signature fairly often - not really an uncommon occurance, but this seems to do so more frequently than most of the stuff we've played - and while most of the time signatures that are used aren't really all that strange, there's some less than common stuff in there like 12/8 or 5/2. But the one that prompted a "that's so bizarre" was a single bar of 7/4 on the last page. Fun stuff, that.

In other news, the first performance for FASS 2010 was last night. It seemed to go well with no noticable major gaffaws (unlike skipping 20 lines in scene 1-4 in the dress rehearsal) and the audience was larger than is typical for opening night so that may be a good sign. The audience named the Silent Protagonist "Balthasar" last night which is respectable choice. Tonight we have the double feature, including the infamous "Friday Late" which will make for a long night.

Slightly related to that, I've had a cold this week and, as a result, did not sleep well at all on Tuesday night (or that's what I'm blaming, anyway) which meant I was veeeery tired on Wednesday. Tired enough that I had a nice two hour nap when I got home. I felt nicely rested afterwards, but was slightly disoriented as it felt a little like Thursday morning and had to check my watch a couple times to reassure me that it was, in fact, still Wednesday. I figure that was at least partly because when I woke from my nap I basically went through my typical morning routine: turn on computer, prepare food, eat whilst surfing the web. Ah well!

Anyway, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

You wait... time passes.

2010-01-26T18:13:00.002-05:00

So, it's been about a month since I last blogged, though I can't say I've had a burning desire to say anything into the ephemeral winds of the internets in that time. The last year ended, a new one started (as they are wont to do) and stuff has happened.

January is usually, at the very least, a slightly busier time of the year for me due to FASS. I'm not going to say too much about that at the moment. I was somewhat disappointed with my part (again) as it feels like I'm being type cast which I'm not sure I like. The part itself is not really a bad part, per se (it's in one of the scenes I wrote, after all), but it's not interesting enough or significant enough for me to look past the type casting and the fact that I'd really just rather have had a different role - there's quite a few parts I'd have preferred, actually. But as it turns out, as of yesterday I'm also doing another (small) part that was vacant after the original actor dropped out. I hope that it didn't come about as a result of me complaining to certain people, though I suspect that may have played a part. Ah well.

School has, of course, started up again as well. I am taking two classes this term, one in non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) and the other in computational photography. The first assignment for NPR was due yesterday so here's a link to my write-up: here. Most of the pictures are on the results page if you just want to look at some images (some of my readers may see some familiar faces in there) rather than worry about the technical details.

Since I actually need to be on campus five days a week this term, unlike the past couple of terms when I've been able to get away with only going in every other day, I decided to buy a bus pass for the term. Part of this was also because I decided in December that I just didn't feel like walking during the winter (I know, I know, my reader(s) in Edmonton will say I'm a wimp), but that aside, my walk is long enough that I'd be rather foot sore at the end of the week if I walked in every day. A plus to taking the bus is that my commute time is shorter and I'm generally in favour of shorter commutes, though I do have to set aside some time to go down to the exercise room now that I'm not getting my exercise through walking, though I don't view that as a problem. On the down side, I do have to schedule around the bus, but that hasn't been too bad so far and it's also cheaper than driving and parking every day would be.

And, of course, the orchestra has started up once again. This term we're doing Brahm's Symphony #4, a Rachmaninoff piano concerto and probably one other thing that hasn't been decided on yet. We have a small cello section again this term, but I suppose we'll manage.

Anyway, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Elen Sila Lumenn' Omentielvo

2009-12-25T16:29:00.004-05:00

"A Star Shines on the Hour of our Meeting"

I am a long time fan of The Lord of the Rings. In fact, it was twenty years ago today that I received The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring for Christmas. Not knowing anything about them at the time, I decided to tackle Fellowship first, simply because it was longer - I had never read anything that long before - not realizing that Fellowship was actually the sequel to The Hobbit.

To quote that oft overused phrase "and the rest, as they say, is history."

I read through Fellowship fairly ravenously, and I remember, among other things, being gripped by the tension of the journey through the Mines of Moria. I also remember that, upon reaching the end of the first book, that I didn't want to wait to have to read the other two. It seemed like it would be forever until I was able to get them. My parents had to tell me that they'd already gotten the other two books or I'd have gone out and gotten them by myself. So I tided myself over by reading The Silmarillion (which, while slow to get into, I nevertheless ended up adoring as well) and, I think, pretty much every other Tolkien book I could get from the local library.

Of course, when I finally did get The Two Towers and The Return of the King (after what seemed like an eternity as a child) I enjoyed them as well, including the appendices. I even taught myself to write using Tolkien's Tengwar letters (his Elvish script), though slightly adapted for the english alphabet.

I have continued to read and enjoy The Lord of the Rings from time to time throughout the years and started another read through of it today to commemorate the 20th anniversary of my first journey to Middle-Earth. I still have my original paperbacks, though Fellowship is in rough shape, having some loose pages, so I'm reading a newer edition. I might go back to my originals for the 2nd and 3rd books if they seem like they're in good enough condition.

There are relatively few things that have had as large or as lasting an impact on me as The Lord of the Rings. The fact that I enjoy it and still return to it 20 years later speaks to that. Among the things that I enjoy in The Lord of the Rings is the sense of history, the languages and the sense of hope against all odds - and many other things, besides.

Anyway, I could no doubt was on in much more detail than I have here, but I think it suffices to say that The Lord of the Rings is something which has had, and will likely continue to have, a profound impact on me.

Namarie,
-TFitC

NSERC Update

2009-12-16T14:41:00.002-05:00

I got an e-mail this afternoon from the associate provost for graduate studies here at the university (don't ask me what a provost is, I haven't looked into the details) regarding my NSERC application.

My initial reaction was "uh oh" since the first two paragraphs read like what I would expect from a standard form rejection letter. Then the third paragraph was "I am pleased to inform you..." and I sighed a bit in relief. The e-mail itself is really nothing exciting. It's just informing me that the application made it beyond the university level and was sent on to NSERC itself. While this is what I was expecting, it's nice to get confirmation of that, even if it's coming later than I was expecting. The actual scholarship results don't come out until March so there's still a few months to go for that.

So, fingers are crossed (metaphorically speaking).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Graphical Interlude

2009-12-10T13:25:00.004-05:00

So, I've spent the better part of the past three days doing marking and marking-related activities for the graphics course I've been TAing this term. Monday and Tuesday were marking projects (which included demos by the students) and Wednesday was proctoring and marking the final.

First, the projects. There were some very good projects, but also some, shall we say, not so good projects. Kinda felt sorry for some of the students who, for whatever reason, weren't able to finish their projects and obviously felt bad about it - then, of course, there were some students who didn't seem to care much as long as they passed the course. Ah well.

For the final - well, I've mentioned proctoring before and this was just as boring as all my previous proctoring experiences. Marking the exams went significantly faster since the prof who's teaching the course this term seems fond of making exams that are easy to mark.

In related news, here is the final version of the image for the course t-shirt:

All of the interesting puppets from assignment three are positioned on an 8x8 grid of tetris pieces (the background colours are, supposedly, the official tetris colours according to wikipedia). Since sixteen pieces fit in an 8x8 grid and there were only fifteen puppets, I snuck in my evil snowman from my raytracer scene in the last piece. The four leftmost images along the bottom are raytracer scenes (the middle two being from students who didn't make a fancy puppet) and the images along the right side are project screen shots. The top, middle and bottom projects were raytracers with the other two being openGL projects.

There is a full-size version of the image (4500x4500 pixels) available here.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Two Worlds are Better Than One

2009-11-26T15:50:00.003-05:00

After having replayed Chrono Trigger on the DS and making a "summary" of sorts for it, I decided to replay Chrono Cross and do the same thing for it. Of course, I use the term summary loosely here, as these sumaries turn out to be fairly long, really.

Anywho...

Chrono Cross was the follow up to Chrono Trigger. While it doesn't really need knowledge of the previous game to play, it helps, and there's plenty of "recap" of Chrono Trigger provided in the places where Chrono Cross' story requires it.

So, Chrono Cross was a fairly different game overall than Chrono Trigger - for one, dealing with parallel worlds rather than time travel. I suppose that going in a different direction from the original game was probably the smart thing to do since following up Chrono Trigger was certainly a tall order. And, looked at from that perspective, Chrono Cross is certainly a good game. I enjoyed both the first time I played and on this replay. Though I suppose that fans of the original game might have preferred if there was more of a carry over of certain things (especially charactrers, I think) from the first game. Still, overall, a good game.

One thing about Chrono Cross is that it has an absurdly large cast of playable characters, some of whom are just plain abusrd. Nothing wrong with this, really, as it gives players a fair amount of freedom to pick and choose which characters they like best. Or at least that's how I tend to approach it anyway.

As a side note, Chrono Cross was, at least partly, inspired by an earlier game called Radical Dreamers which was only released in Japan and doesn't seem to have gotten a very wide release even there. Radical Dreamers was the original attempt to tie up some loose ends in Chrono Trigger and some of the characters, locations and situations seem to have carried over into or influenced things Chrono Cross, though Chrono Cross itself completely supercedes/replaces Radical Dreamers and the plots of the two games don't seem to be related at all and, in fact, appear to contradict in places from what I can tell.

Anyway, the summary of the play through is posted below, though, as noted above, it's rather long.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Chrono Cross "Summary"

2009-11-26T15:10:00.002-05:00

Chrono Cross Plot Summary
====================

- Fly by of some rectangular-prism tower surrounded by dragon-like statues. Inside, an elevator drops a trio of intrepid explorers to some unknown part of the tower. They are Serge, the apparent ring-leader and two flunkies, Kid and Korcha. After a bit of proding, Serge finally decides to step off the elevator.

- In a near by room, we see a large crystal switch thing (viewed from a balcony) which is apparantly what we're aiming for. Kid complains that is so close, yet so far... why can't you just jump off the balcony then? It doesn't look far...

- So we have to find our way through the labyrithine interior of the tower - seemingly the interior designer is trying to give M.C. Escher a run for his money. We manage to get to the crystal thing and deactivate it which allows us to teleport up to a platform floating high above the tower.

- Serge walks forward and touches a door which starts to bubble out at him in a way that is not entirely door-like. There is a flash of images, including one with a seemingly dead Kid on the floor, but then the whole thing turns out to be a dream.

- As Serge's mom wakes him up, we hear the enticing ring of Lenne's Bell... er, I mean, it's Arni village! And Serge's Mom informs him that he's late to me Leena, his would-be girl friend, or somesuch, who's waiting on the pier.

- Serge pokes around town a bit before going to see Leena (he's whipped, but not that whipped) and gets a sea charm from one of the local, oogles a poster of hot dancer Miki in the tavern and get a combat tutorial from Cheif Radius, who's pretty tough for and old guy. Also of relevance, a group of thieves, known as the Radical Dreamers, has apparantly been making a nuisance of themselves both here and on the mainland, even Porre's having trouble with them.

- When he finally gets around to going to the pier, Leena's been stuck babysitting. She whines at Serge for a bit then asks him to go get her some komodo dragon scales to make a necklace, apparantly all the rage around here, after which she'll catch up with him at Opassa Beach.

- So serge goes off and slaughters baby komodo dragons (and eventually their mom too, insensitive bastard) to take their scales and trots off happily to Opassa Beach.

- Leena catches up to Serge at the Beach and starts to prattle on about some promise they made many years ago and how Serge almost drowned (she sure is a dull one) but Serge is more interested in some unknown voice whispering his name and some large, incoming tidal wave.

- Serge's world goes a bit wonky - he gets a flash of various disjointed images including a scary looking black panther thing as some vortex opens around him at which point he then collapses on the beach. Next thing he knows, some person is waking him up, thinking he might have been a dead body. When asked, it turns out Leena's back at the village babysitting. Now why'd she run off and leave Serge lying there?

- Serge also notes that the overworld music has changed. What unexpected events could that herald?

- Regardless, Serge makes his way back to Arni, only things are now subtly different in town, plus nobody seems to remember him and his house is occupied by some dude who gets all annoyed by random people invading his house.

- Leena is still babysitting on the pier, though, and she says that Serge looks like a boy that used to live next door to her. She then relates the tale of how he drowned 10 years ago, and that his name was Serge. Dun dun dun. But Serge is alive and well? What's going on?

- Leena suggests that Serge go to visit the boy's grave on Cape Howl, which is exactly what he does. The tombstone has some poem that might be touching if it weren't so creepy to be reading from your own tombstone.

- As Serge is pondering things, three soldiers show up: Karsh and his two flunkies, Solt and Peppor. They seem to have expected to find Serge there and try to apprehend him, but that girl from Serge's initial dream shows up and instigates a fight.

- After Karsh and his flunkies are driven off, the girl, who calls herself Kid, offers to join Serge. She seems rather violent though so Serge is a bit wary of her and, though she's rather persistent, Serge eventually gets her to go away, though she says she plans to go to Termina before she leaves.

- Serge decides to spend the night in Arni in his old home. In the morning, Leena and some freaky looking dog thing named Poshul show up. Leena seems to feel sorry for Serge, thinking he might have hit his head, and as she has some errands to run in Termina, offers to help him out for a bit. Poshul comes along just because it doesn't know any better.

- Before leaving town, Serge decides to check on that fisherman guy who gave him the charm. Only now he's not a fisherman, but spends his time praying to a straw doll named Lucky Dan, which is kinda creepy. As we leave, the doll comes alive and decides its going to join the party. Great. Bunch of freaks.

- Anyway, to get to Termina we've got to go through Fossil Valley. Some soldiers are doing an excavation but are haunted by some spooky noises. We pose as the excorsist and find a disembodied skull hopping around. It wants to find the rest of its body so we agree to carry it around for a while. So icky...

- At the exit to the valley, the comic relief, Solt and Peppor are waiting for us, but they prove just an innefectual as last time.

- In Termina, we walk around and talk to people, sticking our noses where they don't really belong. Here's the salient points:

- There's a festival coming up. The singer, Nikki, has gone missing and the dancer, Miki, asks us to help look for him. His last known location was the Shadow Woods.

- The young knight, Glenn, and young lady Riddel are visiting the grave of Glenn's older brother, Dario, former Deva of the Acacia Dragoons. Apparantly, not all is well in Viper Manor since "he" came along. "He" being the one who sent Karsh "ghost hunting" to pick up Serge.

- Lord Viper apparantly has jurisdiction over this area and is supposedly responsible for keeping everything peaceful and happy.

- There is an object known as the Frozen Flame that is considered to be quite valuable and at least one person (including the Radical Dreameres) wants to get their grubby little hands on it.

- Various other characters are introduced. Since they've got portraits, many of them will probably be important later on.

- Kid finally joins up with us. Or, rather, forces herself upon us. She has "business" in Viper Manor (I suspect it is not really legitimate business since she seems unable or unwilling to use the front door). She also encourages Serge to go there in order to find out why he "died" 10 years ago and why Karsh was sent to retrive him.

- So we start by chasing AWOL singers into the Shadow Woods. Inside, we find Nikki who is trying to talk to plants. Well, lure them to their doom is more like it since we've got to feed these plant things to a monster blocking the path to proceed.

- Nikki wants in the manor because he believes his sister is in there so he tags along with us. The woods leads to an underground stream which brings us inside the walls of the Manor. We duck inside the dragon stable to avoid the search lights and help the aging groundskeeper feed the dragons in return for a key to the manor. He's far too trusting, that one.

- We now proceed to run amok inside the manor. A trap door drops us into a trap (duh), but Kid, whose been sneaking along after us, lets us free. She warns us not to interfere with her work. The party decides to walk around in the outfits of the unconcsiouc guards.

- Glenn has the memory of a seive and writes down the code to get past the trap door which we dutifully copy. We also stumble upon the research lab of one Dr. Luccia who's content to do a combat trial with us and let us go.

- We get a chance to talk to Zoah and Karsh of the Dragoons and question them about the goings on in the manor. Then we wander into the library where we find Marcia, the last of the living Devas, who's just a little girl and eager to fight us. Nikki is also convinced that she's his sister.

- Before we fight Marcia, an old man who appears to live in the Library and calls himself "The Prophet of Time" (hmmm...) gives us a lesson in parallel universes and suggests that something important happened involving Serge that caused the worlds to split - one in which he is alive, the other in which he isn't. He also tells us how to get to the top floor of the manor.

- After Marcia's had her taste of combat, we proceed up to the top floor of the manor (after a brief introduction to the flirty Harle) where we find some glowy object in General Viper's room (the dragon tear) which seems to give Serge a headache (better not sit too close to the TV)

- The General seems perplexed at Kid's varoius outbursts, but a cat-man, Lynx, the General's mysterious "guest" shows himself and Kid starts a fight, as usual. However, it turns out to be just a shadow.

- General Viper's daughter, Riddel, chooses this moment to come see her father so Kid takes her hostage and we escape to the roof. Only there's nowhere to go from here and Lynx and the others advance menacingly on our party.

- Well, nothing to do but jump and hope for the best at this point. Before they leap, Lynx manages to stab Kid and also calls Serge the "Assassin of Time" and the "CHRONO TRIGGER". Sheesh. No need to be so melodramatic there, cat-boy. (And don't talk in all-caps.)

- Anyway, everyone plumets into the water at the base of the cliff (somehow managing to avoid getting bashed to bits on the rocks) and are picked up by that Korcha guy who's there for some reason with his boat.

- Serge regains consciousness in the little village of Guldove where he soon meets up with his companions. Tragedy strikes quickly, however, when Kid collapses. Is she dead? We don't know so we drag her to the local doctor's (aptly named Doc) for a diagnosis.

- Turns out Kid's been poisoned by Hydra venom and Doc gives her about two days. She could be cured with Hydra humour (laughter is the best medicine, after all), but hydra's no longer exist in the El Nido archepelago and travel to the mainland is dangerous this time of year and would likely take too long, regardless, so we're at an impasse.

- Serge is at a loss for what to do next and refuses to go on a wild goose chase looking for hydras, partly because Kid's just been forcing herself on us, but mostly because Korcha's annoying.

- Korcha refuses to play ferry man for us now, but his mother, Macha, commandeers his boat (boat? more like a glorified canoe) and offers us a lift.

- Before leaving the village, we stop by the temple where we learn a bit about the Dragonian ruins that can be found around the archapalego, including the mostly intact Fort Dragonia for which the dragon's tear is apparently a key of sorts.

- Anyway, Macha ferries us back to Termina where we overhear Glenn talking about how Lynx and General Viper are headed to Fort Dragonia and that Lynx is probably up to no good.

- Glenn is looking for a ship of sorts to take to follow Lynx so he enlists our help so he and Macha now join our motly crew.

- Glenn wants to stop at a small island where Radius is living in his retirement in this world. However, when we get there, its been razed to the ground by Harle, who is waiting for us with orders to delay us, which she does, despite not being too tough.

- All is not lost, however, as Radius has built a secret underground bunker where he was able to take refuge. We go talk to him where he tells us a bit about Porre's military and how the General probably wants the Frozen Flame to use its power to impose peace. We're also warned about fog enroute to Fort Dragonia.

- Make a quick detour back to Viper Manor and talk to Dr. Luccia who is now willing to join our increasingly unweildly large group of adventurers, in the name of science!

- Now we get to sail headlong and recklessly into the fog near the shores of Mount Pyre (where Fort Dragonia is located). In the fog we encounter a ship - could it be the ghost ship we've been warned about? There is naturally no possible choice but to board the ship and loot it, running does not even cross our mind.

- It turns out that the ship is just a run-of-the-mill pirate ship (the S.S. Invincible) whose crew seems to be hiding from Lynx and are, hence, masquerading as a ghost ship. They seem to believe our story about what we're up to, but decide they need to test us in combat to see if we're up to snuff.

- We are victorious in battle, but the pirates play dirty and managed to slip us some tranquillizers unnoticed at some point and drag us off to the brig. While we're locked up a REAL ghost ship emerges from the fog and attacks the Invincible.

- In the ensuing mayhem, we escape our cell, find some creature named Pip (which we'd previously released from one of Luccia's cages), defeat the ghost ship's boss, thus driving it off.

- The captain, Fargo, tells us that Mount Pyre is really, really hot (temperature wise) so we'll need some sort of protection. He suggests visiting the Water Dragon, only nobody's really heard from the Water Dragon (or any of the other Dragons) is some time, so who knows what's up. Still, guess it's worth a shot.

- So we head over to Water Dragon Island, except that everything's dried up due to recent inclement weather, the dragon's lair is sealed off and the Water Dragon is apparently nowhere to be found.

- At a bit of a loss, Serge heads back to Guldove to check on Kid. It turns out that she's up and about. The Doc informs us that some anonymous benefactor from the mainland provided some hydra humour, so that's all resolved. But it doesn't help us with our missing dragon problem.

- Kid suggests that if Serge uses her amulet, he might be able to cross between dimensions, the theory being that the Water Dragon might still exist in th other world. Seems a bit dubious, but there aren't any other leads so it probably won't hurt... The Doc decides to tag along since he's bored.

- Serge returns to Opassa beach and finds a swirly thing in the sand. Using the amulet pulls us through the dimensional vortex to Serge's home world. Ducking into Arni village, one of the fishermen offers to take us to Water Dragon Isle for a small fee. How thoughtful.

- This version of Water Dragon Isle has lots of water and lilypads to jump on. Not all is well, though, as some beady-eyed, big-nosed dwarves are attacking the helpless fairies who live on the island. We retaliate by killing off every single last dwarf we can find.

- Pursuing the dwarves into the caves and slaughtering them mercilessly leads us to the Water Dragon who's just sitting around, frog-like, letting all this senseless slaughter occur. He seems to know what we want, however, and gives us his ice breath (how the heck do we carry breath around?) so that we can freeze the lava on Mount Pyre.

- We go back to the other world and head to mount Pyre. The Water Dragon's ice breath does the trick nicely and lets us freeze the lava so we can avoid burning our feet off.

- Pretty soon, we have another encounter with the comic relief duo of Solt and Peppor and they're still as dumb as always. After that we fight some random little red dragon guy and finally, just before the exit, we fight Karsh, Zoah and Marcy. Marcy doesn't seem to like us very much, but it doesn't really matter as we defeat them and go on our merry way.

- This brings us out into a plain in the middle of the mountains where stands Fort Dragonia which turns out to be that structure from Serge's dream way back at the start of the game. From the looks of it, the fort is going to be some annoying puzzle dungeon. Fun fun fun!

- Anyway, we manage to climb to the top of the tower - that floaty platform with the door from Serge's dream. As in the dream, the door bubbles out and Serge has that recurring vision of him with a bloody dagger in his hand standing over a prone Kid and looking awefully pleased about himself.

- Then the door opens, ominously. NO! DON'T GO IN THERE SERGE!! Unfortunately, his party members have a different idea.

- The Dragon Tear is on a pedistal in the middle of the room with General Viper and Lynx waiting for us. The General decides to give us a bit of a warm up, but he's old and not very tough. Then Lynx stabs Viper in the back and we fight him who, whilst acting intimidating, turns out to be only moderately dangerous.

- However, Lynx is resilient and starts babbling about how defeating him is like Serge denying his own existence. This is about when Kid bursts in demanding vengance for Lynx's past wrongdoings.

- It is, however, also when the Dragon Tear starts to go glowy again and Serge needs to get his migrane medication. There's a bit of a twist, though, as some morphing goes on in the reflection in the Dragon Tear, then Serge starts looking kinda evil.

- And then Serge talks, urging Kid to defeat Lynx, who backs away and says nothing. No this is officially very bad (tm). You know when the Silent Protagonist actually says something that it's a sign of the apocalypse or something. Serious stuff is about to go down.

- So, Kid and crew fight "Lynx", who really doesn't stand a chance. Three on one, afterall. Not even remotely fair.

- Then Evil Serge tries to goad Kid into finishing "Lynx" off by mocking her memories of Lucca (not Luccia), only Kid never told Serge about Lucca. Oh snap! Since Evil Serge has blown his cover, he does the only thing possible: he stabs Kid.

- In one last act of vandalism, Evil Serge blows up all the statues in the room and tells Serge-Lynx to come to the Sea of Eden if he wishes to learn what the hell is going on. Then things black out for a bit.

- Then Lynx wakes up in a dimensional vortex that looks like a wonky impressionist painting. He sneaks into the house of a green-skined goblin thing named Sprigg whilst she is out chasing nuts. She seems to take pity on him and allows him to stay the night.

- Sprigg decides to tag along the next morning since she thinks we might be able to help her escape the vortex. Also, she can let us into a tower, though she doesn't explain how.

- In the tower we encounter Harle who gives Lynx an existential lecture trying to convince him that he is, in fact, Lynx now and not Serge. Lynx doesn't fall for it and presses onward.

- Lynx enters a strange Escher-esque landscape and Harle decides to be helpful and join up after all. We soon find our way out of the vortex and wind up in the Hydra Marshes in Serge's home world. Sprigg seems happy to be back in some form of reality.

- Harle suggests we should go back to the distortion on Opassa Beach to begin our investigation, so we do, but it proves unresponsive. Harle claims this is because Lynx is not Serge, or something.

- At a loss for what to do next, Lynx decides to impose himself on his mother's hospitality. She seems willing to believe his story, but then Radius bursts in and demands Lynx to "step outside", identifying himself as a former Acacia Dragoon.

- Somewhere in there, Serge's mother tells us about how Leena's father, Miguel, and Serge's father got lost during a storm on a fishing trip and wound up in the Sea of Eden (now the Dead Sea). Miguel did not return.

- After beating Radius into the ground he decides we're not so bad after all. He seems to take hope in the fact that General Viper and Riddel are still active in the Other World and decides to join us, seemingly to help the General in this world. He demands we go to Termina, and, oh, maybe we'll find something to help our situation somewhere along the way.

- The Porre military has overrun Termina and seem to recognize Lynx, though the common folk don't seem to take too kindly to him. Snooping around town we add a couple new faces to our entourage: Zappa, the blacksmith who's shutting down his smithy and is also Karsh's father (who's missing in this world) and Van, son of Gogh, who tags along just because.

- We traipse on over to the ruins of Viper Manor, which nobody has apparantly thought to repair, to talk to the Porre Commander, Norris, who is hiding out in the basement (which we have to go through a well to get to)

- Norris seems willing to answer Radius' questions. The Porre Military had come to the manor because they thought the Frozen Flame was there, only it turned out not to be and they don't know the current whereabouts of the General.

- It is thought that the Frozen Flame and/or general might be in the general vicinity of the Dead Sea, only there's no known way in, though it is thought that the people of Marbule might have some connection. Norris also offers to tag along to learn if the Frozen Flame really exists or not.

- It's off to Marbule, then. The town is deserted except for some spooky ghost things and the great explorer Toma and his assistant. Toma gives a little history lesson and explains that the people of Marbule are now working on the S.S. Zelbess. We then decide to take a nap.

- At night, we overhear a mermaid weeping, but she flees. In the morning, she approaches, introducing herself as Irenes, and basically orders us to take her to the Zelbess. The nerve!

- Well, off to the S.S. Zelbess, I guess. It's a cruise ship and is this world's version of the prirate ship Invicible. What a difference! A ship belonging to the Magical Dreamers (that's Nikki's band) is sailing along side the Zelbess. Seems like a concert's in the works.

- On board we meet dynamite dancer Miki who claims the Magical Dreamers are about more than just looks. Sure, you believe that...

- Anyway, we try to locate the Sage of Marbule, only the guy is all mopey and depressed and pretends he doesn't know what we're talking about. We only learn the truth after he goes down to the lower level where you need the captain's permission to go.

- So we go talk to captain Fargo, only the others blab about our real reason for wanting access (shut up guys, sheesh!) and the captain turns out to have a grudge against the people of Marbule and denies permission, at least until he decides it would be more fun to gamble on it.

- Well, we lose, initially, but through a series of events that involve getting turned into cats for a brief spell by the hapless magician Sneff, we uncover Fargo's dirty secret: he's a cheater! We also find out that he's the father of Nikki and Marcy, their mother being Irene's deceased sister, Zelbess, the ship's namesake. Which, by the way, is the source of Fargo's gruge: he's emo and wants Marbule to die along with his deceased lover.

- (And, by the way, this world's version of Solt and Peppor are hanging around in Sneff's green room.)

- When we confront Fargo with his secret, he relents and lets us do as we please. Yay for blackmail!

- Down below, we find the Sage mopping floors. He tries to play hard-to-get at first, but we beat him up and he admits knowing about how to get into the Dead Sea and gives us a fiddler crab. Is this some kind of joke?

- We don't get a chance to pummel him for further information as Nikki decides to show up and convinces the Sage to teach him the Song of Marbule so they can restore the village. They go off to Nikki's ship and invite us along.

- On the ship, Nikki unveils his mad plan: they must somehow get the Zelbess within shouting distance of Marbule and play the song which will allow us to beat up those ghost things. Miki is behind the plan, but the only problem is it requires Fargo's cooperation and, so far, he's having none of that.

- Since Fargo won't oblige and move the ship, we give up for now and go looking for the entrance to the Dead Sea. Turns out that fiddler crab is an explosives expert or something as it manages to demolish a section of the coral reef around the sea revealing a passage.

- The passage, however, is blocked by the Masamune which is giving off seriously evil vibes. Masa and Mune must be pissed about something! According to Radius, the only thing that can counter the Masamune is the holy sword, Einlanzer.

- Flashback to Radius training with Garai and an expedition to the Isle of the Damned to retrieve the Masamune. Something is not quite right about Radius' story, but it seems we now have to take a field trip to the Isle of the Damned to get the damn sword back. Meaning the Einlanzer, of course.

- We navigate the Isle of the Damned and come to Garai's grave where Radius has a flashback to being overcome by the mind-altering powers of the Masamune (or so he claims) and killing Garai by stabbing him in the back. We then have to beat up a noticably cheesed off spirit of Garai, but after that we get the Einlanzer and all is happy and sunshine. Well, not really 'cause the Isle of the Damned is still made of piles of bones and is burning, burning, always burning!

- Anywho, we can now get into the Dead Sea which... is very interesting looking. It looks like ruins from the future are locked in a frozen sea. We wander through the ruins, half expecting to see Johnny of the Robo Gang, and find a terminal with data on our dear old friend, Lavos. Mayhap this is what the Frozen Flame is refering to. Hmmm...

- We get to the centre of the Dead Sea and the Tower of Geddon. In here it looks a bit like a shopping mall, but Serge-Lynx starts hallucinating about ghosts of three children who look familiar. Also, it seems this world's Acacia Dragoons came here and are now frozen in time. Or lost in time or something.

- After napping in an Enertron (still hungry), we find ourselves in what seems to be the ruins of Leene's Square where the ghostly visages of child versions of Chrono, Lucca and Marle accuse Serge-Lynx of destroying the future they worked so hard to save.

- Then, a guy steps out from behind the decrepit remains of Lenne's Bell and gives us a quick summary of Chrono Trigger and explains that the future that was prevented in the first game is trying to reassert itself. This is Miguel (Leena's father) who has been stranded here since he and Serge's father stumbled upon the place when trying to find help for an injured Serge (though it was in better repair then).

- We then have to fight Miguel over the fate of the future. While he looks like he's just some guy, Miguel is no slouch, but we emerge victorious.

- Things start to get a bit shakey then. Miguel says that the ruined future is starting to disappear back into the void again, but he suggests that FATE is doing whatever it needs to do to prevent the Frozen Flame from being found, taking as if Fate is some sort of physical entity.

- Miguel tells us to run to save ourselves and, having a healthy dose of self-preservation, we do just that. However, things look grim but a silver dragon (the Sky Dragon) swoops down and saves us from certain doom. He (or perhaps it) tells us that if we wish to challenge FATE then we will need to seek the blessing of the six dragon gods of El Nido. Great, fetch quest time.

- Serge-Lynx's hangers on suggest trying to go back to the other world so we head to Opassa Beach and find that the dimensional portal is back in working order. Visiting Arni Village reveals that Lynx, in the guise of Serge (this could get confusing...) has been running amok and terrorizing the countryside.

- We wander up to Termina to find that the Porre military has invaded (the world seems to have gone to hell quickly in our absense) and also taken control of Viper Manor.

- In the back of the pub, Karsh and Zoah fill us in on what happend in Fort Dragonia after Serge and Lynx played switcheroo with their bodies. Seems the Dragoons burst in just as evil Serge disappeared with Kid. The dragoons then took the wounded Viper to Hermit's Hideaway along with the shards of the Dragon Tear.

- Serge-Lynx decides to team up with Karsh to invade Viper Manor and rescue Lady Riddel, leaving Zoah in Termina for, uh, delicate undercover work whilst Marcy is still at Hermit Hideaway protecting the General.

- Leaving Termina, we encounter this world's Norris who admits that siding with Lynx was not the brightest thing they've ever done. He offers to help as he apparently believes our story that this Lynx is not the real Lynx.

- The soldiers at the manor let us through with no problem since they think Lynx is Lynx. Following Norris' advice, we infiltrate the prison complex via the sewers and free the pirate captain Fargo (who went and got himself captured somehow) in the process.

- When we find Lady Riddel, she is about to be interrogated by the "Hell" cook, Orcha (the Manor's cook who has undergone some major Pavlovian conditioning). But we put a stop to that nonsense and free the General's daughter.

- Norris escorts Riddel out of the manor, but we get stuck fighting the bosses on the way out. Figures, leave us to do all the dirty work. This includes fighting the Porre Army's new killing machine cyborg thing, Grobryc. (And after defeating him he decides to tag along since he only takes orders from those "stronger" than him, ie. us.)

- After defeating all the bosses, we jump through the fancy stain glass window in the library (ala Nadia in Chrono Trigger) and land in the stables. We instigate a dragon stampede which we use as cover to flee the manor. And hey! There's a boat all nice and ready for us. Time to go sailing!

- Head on over to the Hermit's Hideaway where General Viper is recovering nicely. Riddel joins our party out of thanks for rescuing her, but then evil Serge and brainwashed Kid attack! Someone must have tipped them off to our whereabouts...

- Things look grim, but Fargo rescues us with his oversized parrot monster and takes us back to the S.S. Invincible, leaving evil Serge to shake his fist. "I'll get you next time!" or something.

- On the Invincible, Serge-Lynx mopes around and daydreams about Kid. Except he focuses on all her violent tendencies. Makes you wonder a bit about his "preferences."

- Below deck, Fargo and Viper are posing for a duel over some long running fued betwixt them that they don't have the courtesy to explain just yet. In light of the current situation, they decide to put aside their differences for the time being and both join our party. Then Marcy and Zoah (he of the tin can on the head variety) also join up. Wow, everyone's being so helpful...

- It's imperative to prevent evil Serge from getting to the Frozen Flame so we wander over to try to get into the Sea of Eden, but like its cross-dimensional counter part, it is sealed tight. Harle informs us the "Pearly Gates", as they seem to be called, require the blessing of the six dragon gods of El Nido and implies that Serge-Lynx has to regain his proper form to enter.

- Harle returns to the Invincible briefly where she decides to part ways with Serge-Lynx. Oh well, the party was starting to get a bit unwieldly anyway.

- So, off to track down those dragon gods. We wander over to Guldove to see if anything interesting is happening there and, oh look, some Porre Soldiers are being beat up by one of the local ladies.

- One of the soldiers recognizes Lynx and so the violent woman decides we must be an enemy as well (this could get annoying...) but we fight her off and convince the half-wit soldiers to leave her in our care.

- The woman, Orhla, along with the locals, buys into the story that Lynx is actually Serge and gives him a brooch so that she'll know its him when he gets his real body back at which point she promises to help out. Nothing else seems to be going on here at the moment so we resume searching for the dragon gods.

- Well, we know where the Water Dragon was hanging out since he gave us his breath earlier, so we go back to the appropriate island in Serge's home world and challenge him to a duel. Victory earns us his blessing in the form of the Blue Relic. One down, five to go.

- Poking around, we also find Earth Dragon Island where some explorers are wandering around on the surface with no idea of how to proceed. Being the intrepid adventurers we are, we walk into the quicksand without a second thought (or any sense of self-preservation) and let it suck is down.

- Under the surface, we soon run into some immovable objects. Returning to the surface, the astounded explorers set to work and tell us to come back later.

- So we go explore the El Nido triangle and find a star fragment which we take to Sky Dragon Isle where, after a brief fight, we are able to recruit the petit alien Starsky.

- We then return to Earth Dragon Island where the explorers have removed the blockage from the caverns allowing us to make our way to the Earth Dragon's chamber where he challenges us to a duel. Victory rewards us with the Yellow Relic. Two down, four to go.

- Next we go visit sissy-Fargo on the S.S. Zelbess. With pirate Fargo in our party, he tells off his sissy counterpart and takes control of the ship, rechristening it the S.S. Invincible. The ship gets steered over towards Marbule and Nikki and the Magical Dreamers get to put on their show.

- The show is a melodramatic reenactment of the meeting between a mermaid and lost sailor. Full of thees and thous and sappiness. Some neat muzak though. Anyway, this music renderes the ghostly monsters in Marbule into corporeal entities which we then have to beat up. Defeating them all wakes up the Black Dragon - in the other world. To punish him for taking
a nap at an inopportune time, we go and defeat him. Three down, three to go.

- While in the other world, we go visit the Red Dragon in Mount Pyre whom we encountered here earlier on our way to Fort Dragonia. But this is no fire side chat, we've come to beat up the pesky dragon and abscond with his pet salamander. Well, actually he gives it to us, but we'd rather just take it, so nya! Four down, two to go.

- Going back to Serge-Lynx's home world, we terrorize some innocent marshland creatures and ride a giant insect over to Gaea's Navel where we encounter what seems to be a chibi-Ayla. She's gotten separated from her tribe, though she doesn't know how - she's just a kid after all. Since she's never been taught not to go places with strangers she decides to tag along, but she carries an axe that's as big as she is so she can probably take care of herself.

- The ironic thing about Gaea's Navel, is that it's supposed to be this pristine island, untouched by humans, but to get to the Green Dragon, we've got to go an slaughter all the creatures on the island, destroying it's ecosystem. This coming after a big deal is made about the how the Hydra Marshes have suffered due to human actions. Oh well, the Dragons stand in our path so there's no time worry about moral quandries, we'll just kill things and take their stuff. Much simpler.

- After destroying the island's ecosystem we then burst in upon and defeat the Green Dragon. Five down, one to go.

- With his comrades defeated, the Sky Dragon now consents to our challenge and we show him who's boss and take his relic. Six down, none to go.

- Now that the dragons standing in the way of progress have all been defeated we can access the Sea of Eden, though the strange glowy things therein do not respond to us and Serge-Lynx's flunkies speculate that he needs to regain his human form. Never mind that Serge is getting used to being a large cat-man-thing. Oh well, them's the breaks.

- This means we'll need to go to Fort Dragonia again, but in order to do so we stop by Guldove in Serge's home world and speak to the priestess Steena. Now that we have all the dragon relics she is willing to hand over the Dragon Tear that unlocks the fort and she decides to tag along with our merry band of fools. As a side note, Steena also appears to have stolen Elvis' pants.

- Anyway, we go to home world's Fort Dragonia. Since we possess the Dragon Tear this time, it means that we don't have to mess around with the Fort's annoying puzzles (yay) but we still take a few moments to loot the fort before proceeding into the main elevator thing.

- When we do, it just so happens that evil Serge is waiting for us (how'd he get in here?) and is intent on preventing Serge-Lynx from defurryfication (yes, that's a word).

- Evil Serge is but a minor speed bump and we proceed up to the top of the tower, looting as we go, 'till we get to that floating platform with the bubbly door.

- Serge-Lynx enters the chamber by himself because the other two are too wussy to accompany him. There's no boss or anything inside, just a brief history lesson from the point of view of the Reptites up to the fall of their civilization with the coming of Lavos. They seem bitter.

- Serge-Lynx is then reborn as Serge by the Dragon Tear and he somehow manages to get his old clothes back too. When he emerges, Steena feeds him some line about Divine Dragon Falls and how the two parts of the Dragon Tear which he now posesses (remember kids, he's still got that one from the other world) could combine to form the legendary Chrono Cross. I dunno. Sounds kind of hoaky to me.

- So, in theory we could go to the Sea of Eden now, but instead we're going to go do some random side quests and collect some extra characters. Oh, and now that Serge is defurried, all the party members he had accumulated before becoming Serge-Lynx magically reappear. Bunch of fair weather band wagon riders.

- A trip to the Isle of the Damned in the Other World with Karsh in tow nets a confrontation with Solt and Peppor who aren't entirely comic relief this time and implies some disturbing things about Karsh's role in Dario's (Glenn's brother's) death. Of course he denies it - convenient that there were no witnesses.

- Returning to Serge's home world, we visit a small shack on a small island where this world's Dario is still alive, if forgetful. It turns out Karsh really did kill Dario's alternate self, but it was only because the Masamune had possessed Dario. The legendary sword just happens to appear and possesses this Dario as well, but we manage to fight him off and purge the evil from the Masamune. Then Masa and Mune (and Doreen) transform into the Mastermune, a weapon for Serge.

- As noted, we also run around collecting characters: skeletal clown Skelly, bunny-girl Janice, plant-thing Turnip, bartender Orlha and baby dragon Draggy. Many of these will never see action, but oh well!

- Finally, it's off to the Sea of Eden. There are 3 small islands surrounding some frozen triangle thing. If it were smaller, perhaps it would be a delectible dessert. But it's not, so we'll cry at our misfortune because it probably means trouble instead.

- We find the three Fate (Atropos, Clotho and Lechesis) on each of the small islands (one per) and on the last one, they combine to form a boss - a floating mask-thing. Well, we smash it's face in and doing so reveals a central island that was hiding under all that curiously frozen water.

- The central island is home to the Time Fortress Chronopolis which is populated by spooky ghost things. The Fortress is from the year 2400 A.D. and the ghosts talk about some sort of experiment they were running that would have allowed them to control time. It seems that, with Lavos eliminated, the people of the future started to develop a god-complex.

- Also of note, it seems that in the future from which Chronopolis hails, the sea of El Nido was empty except for the man-made island on which it was located. Curious. Most curious indeed.

- Snooping around, we learn that Chronopolis' super computer, FATE, has been observing and controlling the two parallel worlds via the "Record of Fate" (ie, save points) scattered around.

- Apparently, the experiment went awry and Chronopolis was thrown backwards in time by 10000 years. As a result, FATE terraformed the archipelago and the fortress' researches went out to populate it. Since then, FATE has been guiding things and preventing the outside world from influencing events in El Nido and vice versa. FATE also created the Element system.

- After messing around for a bit and pressing some random buttons, we eventually gain access to the inner chamber, the security system recognizing Serge as some sort of "Arbiter"

- Inside we find out what we've suspected all along: that the Frozen Flame is actually a fragment of Lavos. Which of course means that things could suddenly get very bad.

- Evil-serge appears and explains that when Serge was bitten by the panther-demon ten years ago and his father and Miguel came here (having been blown off course by a storm), Serge came in contact with the Flame which healed him and identified Serge as the new arbiter. This prevented FATE from being able to intervene directly with the two worlds.

- Lynx is also the phyical incarnation of FATE and needed Serge's form to regain access to the system. And now that that's been done, it's time to remove Serge from the picture, once and for all.

- FATE attacks (though a hidden circuit, known as Prometheus - attributed to the work of a certain Lucca - tries and fails to prevent it) but, naturally, we destroy it, 'cause that's what we do. Fisticuffs, yay!

- Kid, who has been present but unconscious up until now, wakes up and tries to make off with the Flame for her own nefarious purposes, but Harle decides to suddenly reappear and tells her to stop.

- However, it now turns out that the six dragon gods had been sealed by FATE and now that the meddling computer system is gone, they're back at full power and combine into one super dragon and blow the place up - or maybe it just made off with the flame. Also, Sky Dragond Island turns into some floating tower thing. Harle also disappears again.

- We somehow managed to escape the dragons' wrath and are back on the Invincible where all the grumpy old men are debating what to do next. It can be summed up thusly: this is kind of bad, we should do something about it, but we don't know what. Oh, and Kid is unconscious again - sleeping on the job and letting us do all the dirtly work. Figures.

- With the end of the world nigh there is only one logical thing to do: side quests and tieing up loose ends! Yippee!

- We drag Steena to Ancient Dragon Falls (which she alluded to earlier) and use the two versions of the Dragon Tear to create the legendary element known as "Crono Cross". Oooh, sparkly.

- Then we drag the alien Starsky to the El Nido Triangle in the Other World where his spaceship is more or less in tact and he pulls out the anti-gravity unit and attaches it to our boat, allowing us to travel to Terra Tower. (Ok, so we actually needed to do this so it's not a side-quest, per se)

- Then we pay a visit to Hermit's Hideaway where Kid is sleeping on the job. Masa and Mune refer to her as "The Princess" but seem to think they are unable to do anything about the situation. Doreen, however, bullies them into, well, doing stuff.

- Kid just happens to be holding a Time Egg (implied to have been made by Lucca which, presumably, is who Kid received it from) so Masa, Mune and Doreen use it to send Serge and his party into Kid's past.

- This turns out to be the orphanage where Kid grew up which is also Lucca's home. Except it's on fire. And Gato looks decidedly... broken (*sniff*). So we run around the burning house rescuing children and killing fire monsters until we find an unconscious Kid.

- Just past Kid are Lynx and Harle, looking evil. (You killed Lucca, you bastards!) They take off and Serge carries Kid out of the burning house.

- On the hill outside, Kid whines about being left alone. Serge, the fool that he is, promises not to leave her alone and then vanishes (seeing as he's got to return to his present and all that) leaving Kid by herself. This just proves that Serge is not to be trusted.

- Anywho, back in the present, Kid wakes up and joins the party for good, or so we assume. Radius informs us that Luccia wants to see her in Viper Manor. So we go there (we've got to pick up plant-thing NeoFio anyhow) and Luccia gives Kid a letter from Lucca which basically implies that Kid is Schala, if Masa and Mune's reaction to her wasn't enough of a clue.

- So, time to go save the world, I guess. We hike our way through Terra Tower and part way through that Prophet guy from way back near the start who was hanging out in the Viper Manor library hijacks us into some sort of recreation of said library.

- The Prophet wants to interrupt our journey for a little chat. Would have been nicer of he'd offered us scones, but can't win 'em all, I guess. Anywho, he is now calling himself Belthasar, Guru of Reason.

- He gives a breif summary of how he ended up in the future, thanks to Lavos. In the future, he discovered something about an entity called the Time Devourer in the distant future and established Chronopolis.

- However, their time experiments went bad, creating the Time Crash, drawing Chronopolis 10000 years in the past. At the same time, a city from an alternate dimension's future, Dinopolis (built by the descendants of the Reptites and is now known as Terra Tower) was pulled back in time as a sort of counter balance.

- The two cities warred and Chronopolis won. The super computer FATE divided and sealed the dragon god (a creation of the Reptites as a sort of biological machine) into six parts and locked down El Nido, guiding its development to ensure history stayed on course, more or less.

- On the night Serge came into contact with the Frozen Flame, the storm temporarily disabled FATE allowing the dragon gods enough time to create a seventh dragon which, it turns out, is Harle. This seventh dragon manipulated Lynx into getting access to FATE so that it could be destroyed, thereby releasing the seal on the dragons so they could seek their revenge. Um... big oops on our part, I guess.

- It also turns out that Lynx was originally Serge's father, remoulded by FATE, based loosely on the panther demon that had poisoned Serge. Somehow, I suspect that Serge is going to need a lot of therapy to work all this out.

- Anyway, we go on our merry way and eventually come to the top of the tower. Belthasar is waiting for us again (he's pretty quick for an old guy) and gives us a new Time Egg which he tells us to use to journey to the Darkness Beyond Time, but first we've got to defeat that pesky seventh dragon thing.

- Which, of course, we do. Terra Tower rumbles like it's going to fall apart, but instead it just does some weird final transformation thing before becoming inert.

- Well, to get to this ominous sounding Darkness Beyond Time we have to go back to where this whole thing started - back on Opassa Beach in Serge's homeworld.

- There, we find the ghostly visages of Chrono, Marle and Lucca, much like when we fought Miguel.

- Ghostly Lucca fills us in on a few details about Schala. It turns out, as the Ocean Palace was crumbling around her, Schala and Lavos merged into a single entity (ewww) which evolved into the Time Devourer and became trapped (more or less) in the Darkness Beyond Time.

- Serge's pathetic wailing when he was attacked by the panther demon got Schala's attention and earned her pitty. First, she created a clone of herself which is who Kid actually is (surprise!) and in her efforts to reach Serge she caused the storm that temporary disabled FATE.

- Schala left her pendant with her clone which was picked up and raised by Lucca. And things unfolded as they unfolded.

- So now it's up to Serge and company to use the Time Egg to travel to the Darkness Beyond Time and try to put an end to Lavos-Schala.

- Which is precisely whate we do by using that Chrono Cross element thing that we made a little earlier.

- Schala is freed from Lavos and, in return, she gets all philosophical about life, death and the nature of evolution. Well, I suppose she's probably had a long time to think about all this.

- Anyway, Schala then tells Serge he's not going to remember any of this now that the two worlds are merging back together again so, basically, from Serge's point of view it will all have been a dream.

- Then, Serge wakes up on Opassa Beach with Leena having apparently just blacked out after having mercilessly slaughtered all those Komodo Dragon Pups just so he could appease Leena and make her a silly necklace from their scales which she's probably just going to forget about after a day or two anyway.

- Serge babbles something half-remembered about his adventures but Leena has no idea what he's talking about and that, it seems, is that.

- We see some scenes that suggest that Schala/Kid is looking for and/or watching over Serge (stalker girl) and lastly we see her standing on Opassa Beach, now in a dress, a bit more Schala-like than the skimpy Kid outfit.

The End

Work in Progress

2009-11-19T17:06:00.005-05:00

For the graphics course I'm TAing this term, sometimes one or another of the TAs puts a shirt together with an image of the good puppets and ray tracer images. I'm currently attempting to create a t-shirt image and thought I'd show a preview of the work-in-progress. As I'm not adept at any 3D modelling packages, and there seems to be no good way to import the puppets into any such program (at least not in a reasonable time frame) I've decided to go with something that is, essentially, an exercise in image editing:

Not all the puppets are there because I have to get larger versions of the screen captures of them so I don't have to scale them up too much for the shirt image and I want to get different poses for some of them (including a couple of the ones already in the image).

The reason for the Tetris-like background is because the first assignment for the course is, essentially, Tetris (which I believe I mentioned in a previous post). I managed to fill an 8-by-8 grid of Tetris pieces and have associated each puppet with a piece that sort of, but not quite, approximates the shape of the puppet - or that's the idea, anyway. However, there is one extra piece since there were only 15 puppets so I think my evil snowman will be putting in an appearance to fill up the last one.

To those of my readers who are familiar with the FASS script for 2010, note that I have associated Luigi with an s-shaped piece.

I haven't decided what exactly I want to do with the background - if I should leave it white, use some uniform colour (like grey) or fill in each square according to the colour of the associated Tetris piece. I'll probably make a few different versions and see which I like best. The final image will also have four ray tracer images across the bottom.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Shooting Rays

2009-11-18T13:12:00.003-05:00

The fourth assignment for the graphics course I'm TAing was due earlier this week. This assignment is a ray tracer and as part of it, students are supposed to create a "unique" scene. Unique in this case just indicates that the scene needs to be different from everyone else's, not that it needs to be creative. However, as with the puppet assignemtn, students receive bonus marks if they create an interesting raytracer scene.

As with previous assignments, I re-implemented the ray tracer to refresh my memory on the details and I ported my original snowman scene to the new ray tracer. Students are supposed to implement one extra feature of their choosing in addition to the basic features required by the assignment. Back when I originally did my ray tracer I implemented reflections. This time around, I also added in some anti-aliasing which makes the scene look nicer, but also renders a lot slower, which is not really a surprise since it involves shooting a lot more rays into the scene (five times as many for the way I implemented it).

Here is my new, improved, snowman scene:

And here is a link to the course gallery that has the better ray traced images from this term (they're up at the top): to the exhibit!

That's all for now.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Puppetry in Motion

2009-11-02T11:25:00.004-05:00

Last week, the puppet assignment was due in the undergrad graphics course that I'm TAing this term. The main focus of the assignment is hierarchical modelling, but it tends to be referred to as the puppet assignment because part of the assignment includes creating a posable "puppet" model which can have it arms, legs and head moved.

From a programming point of view, it's actually one of the easier assignments in the course (or that's the way I found it, anyway). Most of the work comes in that students can get a bonus mark for making a fancy puppet, but doing so tends to take a lot of extra time.

A number of students usually do fancy puppets, though, which is nice 'cause I like seeing what people come up with, plus it's something interesting to look at while marking them. The puppets are located here, with this terms being at the top of the page.

The next assignment is the ray tracer which should also, hopefully, produce some interesting things to look at.

On an unrelated note, since it was Hallowe'en over the weekend, I wore my cape at school on Friday (I did not wear it on the way to/from school as it was wet out).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Talking With Pictures

2009-10-17T14:18:00.005-04:00

The various research groups in the CS department have been doing presentations about the research they've done and are doing so that other students and faculty in the department can have a chance to see what's going on. The graphics lab's presentation was yesterday. Ten of the students presented their research or, in some cases, research areas they were interested in. The format was 4-6 slides with no text. Each student talked about the first and last slide and another student talked about the middle slide. It was basically a whirlwind tour of stuff going on in the graphics lab.

For my slides, I basically converted my NSERC research proposal into comic format. They're shown below but, since there's no text, they might not make a whole lot of sense, but oh well.

That is all.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

'Tis the Season... Not

2009-10-10T19:36:00.003-04:00

So, I was at the mall today to get some thank you cards to send to my references since they were pretty awesome about getting the reference letters in for the Vanier scholarship on such short notice. When I went into the card store I couldn't help but notice that they ALREADY HAD CHRISTMAS STUFF OUT. And it's only early October. I mean, cripes! I know capitalism/materialism is getting a bit out of hand these days, but still, couldn't they at least wait until after Thanksgiving? (*)

Sigh.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

(*) And by Thanksgiving, I mean Canadian Thanksgiving which is this weekend.

Showmanship and Other Ships

2009-10-02T21:06:00.003-04:00

Coffee hour in the graphics lab is Friday afternoons. It doesn't actually involve coffee, but there are generally snacks. Today, one of the lab members came in wearing a chinese shirt with a book (it had "Bible" on the cover, but that's inconsequential to the story, really, but it did create an interesting image) which he then proceeded to open (the book, not the shirt) and which then burst into flames (doused upon closing it). It was certainly a flashy entrance. He also tried to do something similar with a wallet, but it didn't want to cooperate.

In non-fire related news, today I was asked by the computer science department to submit an application for the Vanier Canada Graduate scholarship (as a follow-up to my NSERC application which was submitted last week). This is a good thing. The Vanier is rather prestigious (not to mention valuable) and whilst I have no idea what my liklihood of getting one is, I think that this development bodes quite well for my NSERC application, if nothing else.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Watch for Falling Blocks

2009-10-01T13:30:00.002-04:00

I spent yesterday afternoon playing Tetris. Well, "tetrominos", but same diff. There was, actually, a good reason for this. The first assignment assignment (technically the second, actually, but the first one is just practice and doesn't count for anything) for the graphics course I'm TAing this term was due yesterday so the other TA and I spent much of the afternoon marking. The assignment is, basically, Tetris. The students don't actually have to implement any of the actual gameplay, they just have to render the results. Part of the marking invovles "playing" the game, hence why I say I spent much of yesterday afternoon playing Tetris.

I was also in the undergrad graphics lab earlier this week for the first time since I took the course nine years ago (not really a surprise or anything since I had no reason to be there until this term). It seemed nicer than I remembered, though that may be largely because all the computers are reasonably up-to-date with reasonably nice flat screen monitors, as opposed to the clunky octane workstations that were there when I took the course and which were kinda out of date even back then.

I'm finding I'm actually kind of liking the lab/office hour side of TAing, as opposed to just marking that I've done the past couple of terms. Of course, part of that might be because this is the graphics course and, hence, an area I'm reasonably familiar with. I may not like it as much if I had to do this for some random CS course.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Musical Stylings

2009-09-19T18:37:00.002-04:00

Update:

One of the violinists spontaneously broke into the Mario Brother's theme while warming up. And now the Godfather themem.

-TFitC

Those Wacky Russions

2009-09-19T17:21:00.004-04:00

This week was the first rehearsal of the UW orchestra for the fall term which is the open rehearsal at which the newbies get to check things out and decide if they want to join or not. (It also seems to be traditional for me to mention it in my blog.)

We basically sight read two pieces at the rehearsal. One was an overture from some Verdi opera, the name of which escapes me at the moment. We've played this piece before during one of the summer terms. It's an easier piece and was used as a warm up (it's not one of the actual pieces we're playing this term).

The second piece, and one of the pieces we are playing for read were the 2nd and 3rd movements of a symphony by Shastakovitch (if I'm spelling that right). He's one of those crazy Russian composers. We've played a shorter piece by him in a previous term.

I'm not quite sure what I think of the Shastakovitch symphony just yet. It sounded... strange. Now, part of that is probably due to the fact that everyone was sight reading and I'm not at all familiar with it yet or how it's supposed to sound. Even so, it sounded fairly different from most of the other stuff we've played. If I had to try to describe it, I'd compare it to more atmospheric music or perhaps movie sound track-ish, perhaps even more "modern" (whatever that means) than other stuff we've played. Well, we'll see how it goes.

There were 9 cellos at the open rehearsal this term (down from our high of a whopping 13 over the summer) so it seems like a decent amount and, assuming everyone who came out decides to join, everyone will probably get it. If I recall correctly, we had 8 cellos during the most recent winter term. The most we've had during a non-summer term was 11. (Yes, the cellos went to 11 one term.)

On a related note, I am current doing some wrangling for some of the string auditions and have my trusty lap top to entertain me (hence this post).

That's all for now, so until next time,
Freak Out.
-TFitC

And Now For Something A Bit Different...

2009-09-04T23:44:00.003-04:00

Yay, it's experiment time! Click for the full-sized version. Oh, and my apologies in advance for making everyone read my hand writing.
Probably should have taken some extra time to ink it. Well, I'll keep that in mind if I do this again.

Someting Weird's Going On

2009-08-31T10:56:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I listened to nearly my entire collection of Weird Al CDs. The only one I didn't listen to was Straight Outta Lynwood, which was down in the car and I didn't feel like going to get it. That was 10 CDs that I listened to in total, which means I have 11 Weird Al CDs.

I did this for two reasons: one, because I hadn't listened to some of the CDs in a while and decided I wanted two, and two, to serve as background music whilst writing my latest FASS scene and doing other assorted chores.

It's interesting hearing not only how Weird Al has developed over the years, but how the popular songs and styles have changed over the years since each Weird Al CD more or less gives a snapshot of the popular musical stylings of the day.

Anyway, that is all.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Drawring Time

2009-08-21T18:01:00.003-04:00

This is about a week and a half or so after the fact, but I sat down and did some drawing recently, which is something I'd not done in a while but had been meaning to do. There was a reason for this, beyond just wanting to draw. I've been reading "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud, recommended by my supervisor as part of background reading for my research. (Incidentally, I think it's incredibly cool to be in a field where I can read about comics and call it "research".) Anywho, I decided I wanted to try to make some observations on how I drew stuff, so I sat down to draw something:

I decided to deliberately leave the drawing unfinished as I think it gets the point across. The notes on the image are more or less legible (should be able to click on it for the full size) so I won't reiterate them here, except for the one marked with a star.

Star: this arrow is pointing at the fold in the sleeve. I had considerable difficulty figuring out how the sleeve should fold and, I'm quite sure, got it completely wrong. This did, however, make me wonder how good people are at recognizing when something like this isn't correct. How much, if any, innate understanding of how fabrics behave to people have? In other words, how many corners could you cut in simulating, rendering or animating fabric before people noticed that something was off?

Also, there's something called the "uncanny valley" when referring to near-photorealistic renderings of human faces. The basic idea is that there is a point where a computer generated image is very close to being realistic, but not quite fully realistic, and it starts looking creepy because humans are very good at recognizing faces so we start picking up on all the things that aren't quite right, but when things are a bit less realistic our brains are more willing to tolerate the imperfectoins, presumably because it's working at a more abstract level at that point. Do similar things exist with other things, like the folds in cloth?

I don't know the answers to any of this, but it was interesting to think about nonetheless.

Freak Out,
-TFitC