Monday

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My latest masterpiece, literally



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FanFiction.Net : Fire and Ice FFX Prequel The First Calm series

There


FanFiction.Net : Fire and Ice FFX Prequel The First Calm series

deviantART: LEANN by *live2b

Great place to get wallpapers, avatars...

I'm thinking of this(left) as a good background for my Fire & Ice art... I probably will need to tint the white a bit redder (right) to make the fire...

I think the author used fractals.


deviantART: LEANN by *live2b

Saturday

Shuyin's Dreams - Renmiri video at YouTube

The song is All My Dreams by Quantum Gate, about a soldier in a war, trudging along "long gray halls" in his miltary base, about to face death and missing a very special girl.



Sounds just like the song was made for Shuyin's story, doesn't it ?







All my Dreams

Silent night, a shroud.. around me
seems the walls are closing in
Lost my way.. and my life's.. ahead of me
I just don't know where to begin..

All my dreams surround her memory
And all my love has been wasted
Long gray halls.. they guide.. my destiny
The kind of life I barely tasted.


Fortress walls, stand against.. the enemy
We don't know where they stand (where they stand)
Dreams of her. The angels.. come to me
I'll try to reach them if I can (if I can)

All my dreams surround her memory
And all my love has been wasted
Long gray halls.. they guide.. my destiny
The kind of life I surely wasted....

All my dreams surround her memory
And all my love has been wasted
Long gray halls.. they guide.. my destiny
The kind of life I barely tasted.

YouTube - Shuyin's Dreams

Friday

Floating Ruins or Floating Temple ?

The floating ruins atop Mt. Gagazet, where YRP find the first Sphere in FFX2 is way fancier than any building in Zanarkand..

The palace at the top of Mt. Gagazet has at least 5 layers
- the base starting at the top of Fayth Scar
- the floor where you start the game FFX2
- the floor you fall on the elevator
- the floor where Leblanc & Co are kept hanging and the dome




The whole palace has intricate carving in a style much different than Zanarkand...

What could it be ? Who built it ? The Ronso?


Another one of the many the mysteries in Spira
































Wednesday

Resources for Fan Fiction writers


  1. Japanese Name Gender Finder - Boy or girl? Given(first) name or family(last) name?
  2. Animelab.com: Japanese -> English Dictionary (and vice versa)
  3. Japanese English Dictionary(and vice Versa)
  4. AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation
  5. Kanji Search - Kanji input
  6. rikaichan: Firefox extension that displays an inline popup showing the English definition of a Japanese word underneath the mouse
  7. yourDictionary.com • Language Dictionaries (Armenian ASL Avestan Ayapathu Aymara
    Azeri Balinese Bamwe Bantu Basa Basque Belarusan... all you can think of translators)
And finally, to see words to avoid:
The Alternative Dictionaries
a collection of various forms of "bad language" from many languages

Tuesday

Fire and Ice - FFX Prequel - The First Calm series

New tale at FanFiction.Net

After 9 years of the First Calm Sin returns and resumes his killing. Zanarkand survivors are being persecuted all over Spira. Pushed by Bevelle, Yara, the daughter of a Zanarkand mage joins forces with Seika, a sick young man to defeat Sin.

Yara (Ice)




Yara and Seika who end up being Shiva and Ifrit's fayth


FanFiction.Net : Fire and Ice FFX Prequel The First Calm series

And the fayth said to Tidus...

Yojimbo
"You are a dream, but one touched by reality"
"Spira will not forget it's reality, nor the one who saved it"
"Run dream, Run on"
"Pass beyond the waking and walk into daylight"







Shiva
"Should the dreaming end, you too will disappear--Fade into Spira's sea, Spira's sky."
"But do not weep, nor rise in anger."
"Even we were once human. That is why we must dream."
"Let us summon a sea in a new dream world."
"A new sea for you to swim."




Bahamut
Fayth "but, you know..." [He looks at Tidus] "When it is all over..." "we will wake, and our dream will end." "Our dream will vanish."
Tidus "Yeah." "You've been dreaming a long time, haven't you?"
Fayth "I'm sorry."
Tidus "I'm grateful."



Valefor
"Sin is cursed. Sin prays."
It curses its form, it prays for dissolution."
"Sin sees dreams of its own destruction. Sin is looking at us."
"We live in a fading echo of time left us by the destroyer."
"Free him from Yu Yevon. Free him -- the fayth that has become Sin."





Ifrit
"Sin swam in the sea near Zanarkand. Perhaps the waking dream eased its suffering."
"Your father touched Sin and became real that night, foundering in the seas of Spira."
"How sad now, that he is caught in the tragic spiral. He is Sin. He is lost."








Ixion
"For a long time, we had forgotten how to go forward."
"You reminded us we must go forward."
"Yes, we must run."
"Let us go, you who share our dreaming."
"Come, and we will run till the dream's end."







Anima
"Yes." "Come, summoner. I will bestow you with my power:" "The Dark Aeon, Anima." "Destroy Sin, and my son's obsession with it." "Though it is small recompense for what I did to him."








Magus Sisters
"Why could we not see to stop the dreaming" "Why did we stay on Spira ?" "We had forgotten for so long" "We had forgotten to move forward" "We had forgotten to change"





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Sunday

Rikku's blog - 1,000 After Yevon - 2nd week of Spring, day 1

Diving around Baaj Temple

My no good brother took us diving near those gloomy ruins again! He says he can feel that there is treasure to be found there. As if! We have been diving there for 2 weeks and not a trace of anything salvageable just some large fiends. One of the fiends almost killed Eigar!. It was the largest Georapella I have ever seen!

Of machina treasure there was no sign, but we did find a treasure: A cute guy was battling a large fiend in the ruins of Baaj Temple. I'm serious! We found him right in the middle of nowhere without a boat and he says the strangest things! The poor guy must have gotten too close to Sin's toxin. Here's a picture of me and him that Eigar took



Tomorrow we will go deep diving, so I gotta go to bed now.
TTFN
Square Forums - Spira's Blog

Saturday

YouTube - In the end - final fantasy 10

Great video clip!



YouTube - In the end - final fantasy 10

Friday

Map of Spira

Look at how much land is left uninhabited

Tabris asks:
This may be a stupid question, but I am wondering why people didn't move further in to the land.

Why continue to live at the coast when Sin's there? He's a sea monster, and will not pose a threat to anyone living away from the coast


It seems there aren't too many locations suitable for living in Spira. Why ?




Earth vs Spira


Spira's empty areas are not unusual per se, here on Earth you can see vast areas that do have dots, i.e. no one in those areas surfs the web enough to hit this particular blog. At first you can say that the orange circles show non-english speaking communities, but if you look closer you will see the orange areas accurately show the frozen tundra, the Gobi desert, the Amazon, Africa's jungles, Australia's vast semi-arid wilderness... All sparely populated areas, which, as expected, have little web surfing going on


Tha map on the right serves to shows several areas in our own planet that remain sparsely populated in spite of our large population of 4 billion+ and all our modern technology. Note how much the population seems to grow denser near water, i.e rivers, lakes and the coast.. The same happens at Spira

Quidditch versus Blitzball

Ijust got Harry Potter's Quidditch World Cup for PS and the game is basicaly a 3D soccer similar to Blitzball in FFX, except that it's played flying, not swimming.

IMHO even though the 2005 Quidditch engine is excellent and much more advanced than Blitzball, the game is not nearly as fun and as cool. Mostly because of 3 factors:



Blitzball Stadium x Quidditch Stadium




three goals to defend in Quidditch, one in Blitzball






Graphics in Blitzball are infinetely better and Blitz players R hotter!





What is bad about Quidditch


The coolness factor Quidditch has an ugly, kiddie look and feel
Blitzball water sphere is super cool, the players look good and look at least old enough to drive. The music is great. Not so for Quidditch.


In Quidditch the stadiums look reasonable but not great. Each team's special attack rocks but all players look like 12-14 year olds with weird, blocky, out of proportion faces. And the hair of most players looks like a cheesy wig. The use of 12 year old instead of using cool 17 year old would be a matter of taste if it wasn't for the terrible execution by EA.


There is nothing wrong with a kiddie look when done right, as Kingdom Hearts, a SE / Disney game showing blitzball player Tidus when he was 12 proves.

Quidditch


Kingdom Hearts


Perhaps comparing the Quidditch game to the excellence of FFX or Kingdom Hearts graphics is unfair, after all RPG games are usually a lot more sophisticated than the fight and sports games. But even compared to other "button mashing" games Quidditch looses.
Soulcalibur and Mortal Combat had good looking characters and very good graphics for the fighting arenas. As an example, in Soucalibur there were lovely pink cherry trees blossoming near one of the arenas and you could even see the petals falling behind the players during a fight. On Qudditch's Japan Stadium the cherry trees are blossoming too but all you see is a blurry pink mass


A Bad rule in Quidditch takes most of the fun out of it
Unlike Blitzballl which is timed, a Quidditch game only ends when someone catches a very fast small winged ball called snitch, which is worth 150 points (or 15 goals). Catching the snitch is a lot of fun and a good change of pace from the rest of the game, but waiting to find it is not. You can be winning 1,000 to zero and still you can not end the game because the darn snitch ball refuses to show up. Extremely irritating!!! I was enjoying the game a lot but after the 3rd time I had to wait for what felt like hours to end a game where my score was over 300 points all the fun turned into impatience and frustration.

IMHO the rules should be changed to make games end when one of the teams achieves 150 points (or 200 to make it more fun) so if you are just pawning the other team you can move on instead of having to play for hours on end waiting for the cursed little winged ball


The snitch (BTW, tell me if the Quidditch designers didn't get some inspiration from FFX's blitzball. Doesn't she look Al Bhed ?)

It is hard to choose attacks and defense on Quidditch - not turn based
This is more a matter of taste. Quidditch is built for those action game whiz guys: All the combo moves are there but you need to have 18 fingers on each hand and the agility of a monkey to be able to play them in any deliberate fashion. Otherwise just mash the controls and pray for the best! Blitzball wasn't exactly turn based but it did give you time to think on which attack to use for each pass or tackle and for the whole team for each game interval

No scouting or trading in Quidditch. Teams are fixed
You can pick which team you will be but not individual players. This makes the game get extremely boring after one or two World Cups are played. On Blitzball OTOH each player stats improve over time, yours and of your opponents. Blitzball also lets you recruit players from other teams, allowing you to have a lot of variety and challenge. Blitzball in FFX is so cool that some people spend more time on it (just a side quest) than on the game itself!


What is good about Quidditch

What I liked in Quidditch and would like to see in a Blitzball standalone game
- Fast paced and exciting game play (except waiting for the snitch to end a game, that s*cks)
- It makes it easy to learn and play complicated moves and a complicated game
- Very varied playing positions and score options. 3 Chasers play just like soccer and blitz, dribbling and passing a ball towards the goal, but there are also 2 "beaters" that try to knock you off with another ball, 1 seeker that chases the snitch and 1 goalie that has to defend THREE goals
- Great use of the PS2 controls it uses all 4 buttons and each one lets you do different things: dribble, pass, tackle, "beat" the player with the ball with another ball, ...
- World Cup / Olympics feel with different special attacks for each team, different spectators cheering, etc..
- Sports commentators on all games. Blitzball only had it on the first game and what he said was always the same. On Quidditch the commentators react to the way you play, i.e. they talk about your great defense or tackle, they chastise you for fumbling and loosing the ball to the other team...
- Cool team pictures and stadium details

In Conclusion
Blitzball rules!!!



More Discussion here


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