At first, it was great. The final bit of Guild Wars' story, where the Shining Blade goes up against the White Mantle to attempt to free Kryta from the Mantle's oppressive rule. But right from the beginning, something was missing. Sure, there were NPCs, if you ran to a specific spot in Talmark Wilderness you could witness various scenes taking place, eventually there was the most stupidly laid out scavenger hunt ever, requiring an event item that won't come up until November and thus anyone who hoarded them from last year can get top dollar in trades. The story was there, but one thing was missing. One small, yet important thing.
Quests.
I know that coming up with a proper quest line takes a while, but it took them forever to add this event to the game, so they could have been coming up with quests in the meantime. They did eventually add quests, but it took a while longer than anyone really expected, and you have to see pretty much all of the mid-zone conversations before you can take them. In addition, having to run out into a zone to see conversations happen isn't my idea of fun. I enjoy running in Guild Wars, which both isn't the point, and at the same time brings me to my next point.
The enemies they added for the event are simply frustrating. I know that most people have completed pretty much everything and they needed to have some challenge in there, but when you give EVERY SINGLE ENEMY a resurrection skill, you've gone beyond challenge. It's just unreasonably difficult. Basically, to do anything, you need a ranger with Frozen Soil and a ritualist skill that can kill an allied spirit. It's a requirement. This makes it not even fun for me when the enemies basically dictate what build I have to run. There isn't really enough variance in what normal enemies bring to require build specialization per zone, so why change that now?
Also, it's impossible to run past these things. I've tried, I got lucky once and made a test Lion's Arch to Temple of the Ages run with one death just due to not knowing what was going to be thrown at me, but I've never made it since. In terms of actual combat, I've actually found some parts of it to be easier in Hard Mode. This is because, like most guilds, and even though I changed to a more active one, it's still mostly inactive. Every time I try to go back to random PUGs I remember why I stopped joining random PUGs. The lack of coordination. Nobody listens to you when you try to organize the group and formulate a tactic. Everyone just runs into battle, nobody bothers with proper pulling and aggro management. If you have any sort of imagination about your build at all, you get yelled at or booted from the group and called a n00b. So therefore, I either go with guild/alliance groups that are coordinated with voice chat, or I take heroes and henchmen.
The areas where they put the new enemies (because it's taking place in Kryta) are balanced for parties of six people that aren't max level. The new enemies are balanced for parties of eight max level characters. The only reason that I find parts of War In Kryta easier in Hard Mode is because even though Hard Mode raises the levels of enemies, adjusts their skill bars and gives them unfair speed advantages in movement, attack, and skill activation (srsly raising the levels and adjusting skill bars would have been enough), it also forces henchmen to be max level, granting them more health and better armor.
Also, the new enemies are irreversibly there. There's no way to go back to the original version of a zone. So if you want to vanquish the zone, you have to deal with them. If you simply want to run through the zone, you have to have either extreme luck or a vastly different build. I basically can't run people from Lion's Arch to Temple of the Ages anymore because War In Kryta is irreversibly activated on my ranger. Because I had the nerve to have beaten Prophecies years ago, before Factions even came out. The other trigger for it is beating Eye of the North, which I've also done. If I'd known that beating either of those storylines would have forced this bullshit on me, I would have refrained from doing so. I've purposefully avoided activating it on any of my other nine characters, just so they don't have to put up with this bullshit. I'm thinking of starting another ranger just to be a runner, even though I'll have to get skills and levels and equipment and game progress all over again.
Give us an option to disable War In Kryta, and we're good. I really want to take part in this event because I want to see the White Mantle fall (that's the sad part, we already know the outcome of this event. Storytelling fail), but with the enemies being too frustrating and balanced for teams that are larger and higher level than you can find in the nearby towns, it completely kills it for me. These things are basically impossible with henchmen. Plus, with the sheer amount of resurrection these things have, it takes forever to take a group down if you can't disable resurrection with Frozen Soil, because your group has to be attentive enough to switch targets and interrupt the resurrection.
Every time I go out into a zone, I hope in vain that GMs randomly watch people, so they can hear the complaints I type into All chat.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Done playing Chrono Trigger
I got the one remaining ending, Reunion, and then progressed on just so I could advance my save back to saying "The Final Battle". In the process I got the last Moon Armor I needed and three more Prism Helms, so now everyone can have their absolute maximum level of defense. It's a shame there isn't a charm for PrismSpecs anywhere, so I can get the two more I need for Marle and Lucca, but whatever.
Now I'll talk a bit about Extras mode since it's fully unlocked.
Without putting any effort into unlocking it, you can view the intro movie and listen to the first ten music tracks. If you want any more than that, you'll have to work for it.
Theater lets you view the extra anime sequences they added for the PSX version. In addition, it has no-text versions of the two videos that have text over them.
Music Box lets you listen to the game's audio. There are 69 total tracks, which is five more than are on the Chrono Trigger Original Sound Version album (which I own). The only letdown about this is that you can't start a song playing and then have it keep playing while you browse around the rest of the extras. You have to stop playback to leave the Music Box.
Monster Data lets you browse around all the time periods and locations and see various useful data about each monster, such as weaknesses and what you can get by charming it. This section is very useful if you're trying to figure out how to get through an area in the most efficient manner possible.
Endings lists all the endings, shows a screenshot from each one, and gives you extremely vague hints about achieving them. So vague that they're not useful. Also to make it even more useless, it only ever tells you about endings you've already achieved. But, if you need to see which endings you still have left to get, it'll tell you. I guess that's what this section is for.
Art Gallery is probably the last thing anyone will unlock, since you have to leave Crono dead to unlock it. In here you can view various pictures of the characters. Not much else to say about this.
Tech Showcase is pretty neat. It lists all the Single, Dual, and Triple techs and shows you a picture of what each one looks like while in use. Unfortunately it doesn't give any better insight into the effect of some techs, so it won't help you figure out what PoyozoDance does. I still have never used that one.
Boss Data is like Monster Data, but lists all the bosses with all their data, the techs they use, and gives strategies for beating each one. The strategies are geared much more towards a first playthrough. It does list the hard version of Lavos that you're supposed to lose against at the end of Ocean Palace, which will help whenever I decide to go back and try to beat it there. For bosses with separate parts, like the Dragon Tank or Giga Gaia, it shows each part's stats separately.
Treasure Map is possibly the best part of Extras mode. It allows you to browse around every area of the game and see what's in every chest. It even shows you where the tabs are, though I know of a magic tab and a power tab that it doesn't show. It also tells you what you get out of each of the sealed chests, and what you get for defeating each form of Spekkio. If you're looking for a specific item, this section will definitely help you out. Also, this section hides something equally as useful within it: the Item List.
The Item List lets you browse around each category of items, see how much they cost, and where you can get them. So for instance if you want to get a bunch of Barriers and Shields, it'll tell you where you can find them. It also tells you where (and how) to get all five Triple Tech-invoking rock accessories.
As you have no doubt noticed, Extras mode does contain some very useful features, and for those alone it's worth fully unlocking. If you think getting all 12 endings will take forever, there's actually something a lot of people overlook that makes it faster.
When you beat Lavos in a New Game +, it's time to start another New Game +, right? Wrong. Nothing prevents you from loading your old save normally and continuing to play. So basically, save just before going up against Lavos, and don't save inside Lavos if it gives you a save point. Once you beat Lavos, save your system file, then load your save and progress to the point in the story where you can challenge Lavos and get the next ending. Just remember to save before fighting him. I recommend using the portal in the right telepod in Leene Square to fight Lavos, as it lets you skip the miniboss mimic. You can either save in the End of Time, or just run out of Leene Square to the world map and save right there. If you set equipment for the Lavos fight after saving, you won't need to change it back when you re-load to go get the next ending.
The only ending that may actually take some effort even in New Game + is the developers' ending, since both methods of achieving it are fairly difficult. Either take Lavos on with only two party members (Crono and Marle), or beat the hard version of Lavos' outer shell at the end of Ocean Palace when you're supposed to lose to it. It has 3 times the HP there. I personally believe it's easier to take Lavos on with just Crono and Marle than to do it at the end of Ocean Palace. You will want to grind out some levels (make use of the conveyor belt fights in Geno Dome), and then double-check that you have a few specific pieces of equipment. My recommendations are as follows:
Despite the title of this post, I'm not actually done playing Chrono Trigger. I still have more Chrono Trigger notes posts left to make... I was trying to get around an hour of level ** gameplay into each one, but I always forget to check the timer. Also perhaps I should post about strategies for getting each ending...
Now I'll talk a bit about Extras mode since it's fully unlocked.
Without putting any effort into unlocking it, you can view the intro movie and listen to the first ten music tracks. If you want any more than that, you'll have to work for it.
Theater lets you view the extra anime sequences they added for the PSX version. In addition, it has no-text versions of the two videos that have text over them.
Music Box lets you listen to the game's audio. There are 69 total tracks, which is five more than are on the Chrono Trigger Original Sound Version album (which I own). The only letdown about this is that you can't start a song playing and then have it keep playing while you browse around the rest of the extras. You have to stop playback to leave the Music Box.
Monster Data lets you browse around all the time periods and locations and see various useful data about each monster, such as weaknesses and what you can get by charming it. This section is very useful if you're trying to figure out how to get through an area in the most efficient manner possible.
Endings lists all the endings, shows a screenshot from each one, and gives you extremely vague hints about achieving them. So vague that they're not useful. Also to make it even more useless, it only ever tells you about endings you've already achieved. But, if you need to see which endings you still have left to get, it'll tell you. I guess that's what this section is for.
Art Gallery is probably the last thing anyone will unlock, since you have to leave Crono dead to unlock it. In here you can view various pictures of the characters. Not much else to say about this.
Tech Showcase is pretty neat. It lists all the Single, Dual, and Triple techs and shows you a picture of what each one looks like while in use. Unfortunately it doesn't give any better insight into the effect of some techs, so it won't help you figure out what PoyozoDance does. I still have never used that one.
Boss Data is like Monster Data, but lists all the bosses with all their data, the techs they use, and gives strategies for beating each one. The strategies are geared much more towards a first playthrough. It does list the hard version of Lavos that you're supposed to lose against at the end of Ocean Palace, which will help whenever I decide to go back and try to beat it there. For bosses with separate parts, like the Dragon Tank or Giga Gaia, it shows each part's stats separately.
Treasure Map is possibly the best part of Extras mode. It allows you to browse around every area of the game and see what's in every chest. It even shows you where the tabs are, though I know of a magic tab and a power tab that it doesn't show. It also tells you what you get out of each of the sealed chests, and what you get for defeating each form of Spekkio. If you're looking for a specific item, this section will definitely help you out. Also, this section hides something equally as useful within it: the Item List.
The Item List lets you browse around each category of items, see how much they cost, and where you can get them. So for instance if you want to get a bunch of Barriers and Shields, it'll tell you where you can find them. It also tells you where (and how) to get all five Triple Tech-invoking rock accessories.
As you have no doubt noticed, Extras mode does contain some very useful features, and for those alone it's worth fully unlocking. If you think getting all 12 endings will take forever, there's actually something a lot of people overlook that makes it faster.
When you beat Lavos in a New Game +, it's time to start another New Game +, right? Wrong. Nothing prevents you from loading your old save normally and continuing to play. So basically, save just before going up against Lavos, and don't save inside Lavos if it gives you a save point. Once you beat Lavos, save your system file, then load your save and progress to the point in the story where you can challenge Lavos and get the next ending. Just remember to save before fighting him. I recommend using the portal in the right telepod in Leene Square to fight Lavos, as it lets you skip the miniboss mimic. You can either save in the End of Time, or just run out of Leene Square to the world map and save right there. If you set equipment for the Lavos fight after saving, you won't need to change it back when you re-load to go get the next ending.
The only ending that may actually take some effort even in New Game + is the developers' ending, since both methods of achieving it are fairly difficult. Either take Lavos on with only two party members (Crono and Marle), or beat the hard version of Lavos' outer shell at the end of Ocean Palace when you're supposed to lose to it. It has 3 times the HP there. I personally believe it's easier to take Lavos on with just Crono and Marle than to do it at the end of Ocean Palace. You will want to grind out some levels (make use of the conveyor belt fights in Geno Dome), and then double-check that you have a few specific pieces of equipment. My recommendations are as follows:
- Level: somewhere above 70, the higher the better
- Crono: Rainbow/Haste Helm/Nova Armor/PrismSpecs (you can use a Gold Stud instead if your HyperEther supply has run low) (alternatively, use a Prism Helm and Moon Armor)
- Marle: (weapon doesn't matter)/Prism Helm/PrismDress/Power Seal
Despite the title of this post, I'm not actually done playing Chrono Trigger. I still have more Chrono Trigger notes posts left to make... I was trying to get around an hour of level ** gameplay into each one, but I always forget to check the timer. Also perhaps I should post about strategies for getting each ending...
Monday, July 5, 2010
Endings GET
Not all of them, but the vast majority. In fact, all but one. Getting them all actually goes pretty quickly when you realize that if you save just before using the right telepod in Leene Square you can just load from there after saving your system file and continue on to the next ending.
I corrected a couple of things in the table in my previous Chrono Trigger post, so if following what it said wasn't working for you, read it again.
The only ending I have left is Reunion. After seeing Schala use her pendant and then GTFOing 12kBC to go pwn Lavos (so I could see Crono talk), I realized I'd have to do the entire Ocean Palace, which isn't hard, just cumbersome. Also, I was getting tired, which definitely plays a role in deciding to stop playing.
But hey, you know what? Getting seven of the eight endings I needed to get in less than 24 hours? I'll take that.
I corrected a couple of things in the table in my previous Chrono Trigger post, so if following what it said wasn't working for you, read it again.
The only ending I have left is Reunion. After seeing Schala use her pendant and then GTFOing 12kBC to go pwn Lavos (so I could see Crono talk), I realized I'd have to do the entire Ocean Palace, which isn't hard, just cumbersome. Also, I was getting tired, which definitely plays a role in deciding to stop playing.
But hey, you know what? Getting seven of the eight endings I needed to get in less than 24 hours? I'll take that.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Infuences
Thinking back about my life, I realize that I was not really granted a lot of freedom to hang out with friends outside of school. My parents literally did not let me do anything with any of my friends by ourselves. Either they had to be there, or someone else's parents had to be there, whatever. In general I was treated like I really didn't matter too much. My parents still to this day beat the old rhetoric of "I am your parent, you will respect me", which really never worked. Think about it, respect has to be mutual or there isn't any respect at all. I wasn't ever treated like a person, instead I was always treated as "their son" and someone who never knows right from wrong despite being taught that every day. Having been a logical thinking person all my life, I have seen little value in respecting someone solely because of the position they hold. If you have no redeeming value as a human being, you don't get my respect. Plain and simple.
Think about it. I didn't choose my parents. They decided they wanted a kid, and nine months later, here I was. Expecting respect just because they're my parents when I really don't have a lot of emotional attachment to anything is unreasonable.
I mean, I do have emotional attachments. Most of them are one-way feelings towards females who don't know I exist because I'm too shy to talk to them (the good ones are already taken anyway, or have sudden unexpected drawbacks like being smokers), or material possessions. I have friends as well. Friends from my grade school days that still exist and that I have contact with are rare. Mainly because until high school I didn't really have friends. I was that one everyone picked on. In high school I hung out with other people that nobody would hang out with. We all had our differences, and in the end we became hypocritical by kicking someone out, but she was really annoying. Really, really annoying.
All of this has led to this development of an intense hatred inside me for abuse of power and technicalities. Every time I hear about someone being falsely accused of something, I get enraged. Especially in this day and age where all a female has to do is mention any kind of unwanted sexual tension between her and a guy, whether it exists or not, and the guy's life is immediately permanently fucked. Even if he's proven innocent. Think about that stripper who cried rape at the hands of the Duke lacrosse team, only to later admit that the charge was false. Did anyone ever forgive any member of the Duke lacrosse team? No.
So basically whenever anyone is accused of anything I try to read into it from the accused's point of view. Most of the time news coverage is incredibly biased and will provide all sorts of information from the accuser, but very little about the accused or anything actually useful that the public could look at and form their own opinion. As previously mentioned, any guy accused of anything sexually unwanted in nature is fucked over for life, even if the charges are false. This is the future that feminists look forward to. They don't want equality, they want feminine superiority. News flash: equality among people means disregarding all differences between people. Nobody should receive preferential treatment, no matter how discriminated against they were in the past.
I could rant endlessly about that alone, but I won't. Instead, I want to bring to light how my mind works as I picture situations that may or may not involve me and can be entirely fictional.
Every single story I have ever written:
There have been some which haven't made it much past the concept stage. Basically I had the idea for the story but never expanded upon it. I deem it too late to go back to them now.
The most recent and thus most important one involves a group of friends who discover magic. Being in a nation weary of outsiders after an attack on a large city, it's not long before they get called in as suspicious people and detained by the country's investigation bureau. The detainment is basically like when you go to a rebel base within a third world country, you get blindfolded for the journey so you don't know where you are when you get there. They basically find out that the government, fearful of their powers, plans to execute them without trial or any effort to learn about said powers. It takes off from there.
I'm no longer actively working on it, but the government in this story is basically the bad guy. Any other villains that come up are inconsequential, even when the fight is epic, with twist after twist. The group sticks it to the government in the beginning after getting themselves hired as an elite secret agent task force, their employment contracts basically screw the government over at every opportunity. The government turns on them and starts hunting them down, forcing them into hiding. One by one they get caught and killed. Later on, in a part of the story I planned but never wrote, the main character (once again me) finally takes the government down (from outer space) and becomes the country's new leader as the governing system is redesigned from the ground up.
There were plenty of elements the story had at one point that got revised out of it, including the element that gave it its title: "The Legend of the Fated Couple". So in other words it's a semi-interesting story about toppling a corrupt government with no actual legend of any fated couple.
So basically, I don't like when people who have power misuse that power for personal gain or to screw someone over. I especially don't like when a governmental situation becomes large groups with lots of money vs. the little guys, where the little guys are stepped on in every way imaginable and can't catch a break. Kind of like America's current government, which has been fucked up for decades, especially in the area of copyright.
Seriously, think about that. If politicians are supposed to represent their constituency and argue for or against issues that affect their constituency, wouldn't that politician's views on those issues not matter because they serve their constituency? Instead of pushing their own political agenda, they're supposed to be the voice of their constituency, condensed into one person. They should of course receive help in organizing important issues from local governments who should be in regular contact with their constituencies. Basically it should fan out from the President like a tree. The heads of the house and other governmental departments report to the President. Representatives of each state report to a head of the house. Local governments report to state governments, who report to the representatives.
This is exactly how America's government is laid out, yet the focus seems to be on each individual politician's agenda and views when that shouldn't matter if they're a good politician who listens to their constituents. Political parties are counterintuitive to how an actual democratic government should be run. It seems like America's fallen into a rut of "one party runs the country and pushes its own agenda, then the other party takes over, reverses what the previous party did, then pushes its own agenda, repeat". The citizens, the very people our government is supposed to be "by and for" are nonexistent in this equation. We get forgotten about because the only people who can really affect anything in our government are those with money, and the average citizens are kept just poor enough that we can't influence anything.
Think about it. I didn't choose my parents. They decided they wanted a kid, and nine months later, here I was. Expecting respect just because they're my parents when I really don't have a lot of emotional attachment to anything is unreasonable.
I mean, I do have emotional attachments. Most of them are one-way feelings towards females who don't know I exist because I'm too shy to talk to them (the good ones are already taken anyway, or have sudden unexpected drawbacks like being smokers), or material possessions. I have friends as well. Friends from my grade school days that still exist and that I have contact with are rare. Mainly because until high school I didn't really have friends. I was that one everyone picked on. In high school I hung out with other people that nobody would hang out with. We all had our differences, and in the end we became hypocritical by kicking someone out, but she was really annoying. Really, really annoying.
All of this has led to this development of an intense hatred inside me for abuse of power and technicalities. Every time I hear about someone being falsely accused of something, I get enraged. Especially in this day and age where all a female has to do is mention any kind of unwanted sexual tension between her and a guy, whether it exists or not, and the guy's life is immediately permanently fucked. Even if he's proven innocent. Think about that stripper who cried rape at the hands of the Duke lacrosse team, only to later admit that the charge was false. Did anyone ever forgive any member of the Duke lacrosse team? No.
So basically whenever anyone is accused of anything I try to read into it from the accused's point of view. Most of the time news coverage is incredibly biased and will provide all sorts of information from the accuser, but very little about the accused or anything actually useful that the public could look at and form their own opinion. As previously mentioned, any guy accused of anything sexually unwanted in nature is fucked over for life, even if the charges are false. This is the future that feminists look forward to. They don't want equality, they want feminine superiority. News flash: equality among people means disregarding all differences between people. Nobody should receive preferential treatment, no matter how discriminated against they were in the past.
I could rant endlessly about that alone, but I won't. Instead, I want to bring to light how my mind works as I picture situations that may or may not involve me and can be entirely fictional.
Every single story I have ever written:
- has involved a corrupt person in power being forcibly removed from power and facing justice,
- has had a character intended to be myself as the main character,
- has involved some level of science fiction or fantasy elements,
- would make fairly typical endless shounen series if televised.
There have been some which haven't made it much past the concept stage. Basically I had the idea for the story but never expanded upon it. I deem it too late to go back to them now.
The most recent and thus most important one involves a group of friends who discover magic. Being in a nation weary of outsiders after an attack on a large city, it's not long before they get called in as suspicious people and detained by the country's investigation bureau. The detainment is basically like when you go to a rebel base within a third world country, you get blindfolded for the journey so you don't know where you are when you get there. They basically find out that the government, fearful of their powers, plans to execute them without trial or any effort to learn about said powers. It takes off from there.
I'm no longer actively working on it, but the government in this story is basically the bad guy. Any other villains that come up are inconsequential, even when the fight is epic, with twist after twist. The group sticks it to the government in the beginning after getting themselves hired as an elite secret agent task force, their employment contracts basically screw the government over at every opportunity. The government turns on them and starts hunting them down, forcing them into hiding. One by one they get caught and killed. Later on, in a part of the story I planned but never wrote, the main character (once again me) finally takes the government down (from outer space) and becomes the country's new leader as the governing system is redesigned from the ground up.
There were plenty of elements the story had at one point that got revised out of it, including the element that gave it its title: "The Legend of the Fated Couple". So in other words it's a semi-interesting story about toppling a corrupt government with no actual legend of any fated couple.
So basically, I don't like when people who have power misuse that power for personal gain or to screw someone over. I especially don't like when a governmental situation becomes large groups with lots of money vs. the little guys, where the little guys are stepped on in every way imaginable and can't catch a break. Kind of like America's current government, which has been fucked up for decades, especially in the area of copyright.
Seriously, think about that. If politicians are supposed to represent their constituency and argue for or against issues that affect their constituency, wouldn't that politician's views on those issues not matter because they serve their constituency? Instead of pushing their own political agenda, they're supposed to be the voice of their constituency, condensed into one person. They should of course receive help in organizing important issues from local governments who should be in regular contact with their constituencies. Basically it should fan out from the President like a tree. The heads of the house and other governmental departments report to the President. Representatives of each state report to a head of the house. Local governments report to state governments, who report to the representatives.
This is exactly how America's government is laid out, yet the focus seems to be on each individual politician's agenda and views when that shouldn't matter if they're a good politician who listens to their constituents. Political parties are counterintuitive to how an actual democratic government should be run. It seems like America's fallen into a rut of "one party runs the country and pushes its own agenda, then the other party takes over, reverses what the previous party did, then pushes its own agenda, repeat". The citizens, the very people our government is supposed to be "by and for" are nonexistent in this equation. We get forgotten about because the only people who can really affect anything in our government are those with money, and the average citizens are kept just poor enough that we can't influence anything.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Done farming tabs
In an unintentional personal record-setting 51 minute run, I got the last 10 remaining magic tabs, then progressed on to repairing the Masamune where you get Ayla for the duration of the Reptite Lair. Maxed out her magic, pwned Nizbel, then went to the end of time, saved, and used the bucket to go fight Lavos.
Crono/Lucca/Robo is a pretty good team for every part except when Lavos mimics Azala and BlackTyrano. I dunno, maybe I didn't use the right techs, but it took forever to kill Azala, whereas I'm used to killing him in two hits of Triple Raid or 3D Attack. Once Azala was down, BlackTyrano was easy. Wait for it to shut off its defense, then pummel.
The Lavos Core battle is truly amazing with this team though. In addition to Crono spamming Luminaire, I had Lucca spamming Flare and Robo spamming Shock. I took it down before the bits got revived.
Anyway, I'm now in the final phase of my project: fully unlocking Extras Mode. This was really my goal all along, maxing everyone out was just to make that easier. In the process of maxing everyone out, I got four of the endings, so now I need to go back and get the other eight.
Here's a table with all the endings, how to get each one, and which ones I've gotten.
Getting to endgame (when the save says "The Fated Hour") takes about 4 hours with fully max characters, avoiding avoidable battles and running from escapable battles. I really only need to get to that point once, for ending 2.
Crono/Lucca/Robo is a pretty good team for every part except when Lavos mimics Azala and BlackTyrano. I dunno, maybe I didn't use the right techs, but it took forever to kill Azala, whereas I'm used to killing him in two hits of Triple Raid or 3D Attack. Once Azala was down, BlackTyrano was easy. Wait for it to shut off its defense, then pummel.
The Lavos Core battle is truly amazing with this team though. In addition to Crono spamming Luminaire, I had Lucca spamming Flare and Robo spamming Shock. I took it down before the bits got revived.
Anyway, I'm now in the final phase of my project: fully unlocking Extras Mode. This was really my goal all along, maxing everyone out was just to make that easier. In the process of maxing everyone out, I got four of the endings, so now I need to go back and get the other eight.
Here's a table with all the endings, how to get each one, and which ones I've gotten.
| # | Ending name | How to get | Gotten? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beyond Time | Defeat Lavos after reviving Crono | Yes |
| 2 | Reunion | Defeat Lavos before reviving Crono | No |
| 3 | The Dream Project | Defeat Lavos at the very beginning of the game | Yes |
| 4 | The Successor of Guardia | Defeat Lavos immediately upon getting back from 600 AD | No |
| 5 | Good Night | Defeat Lavos after learning magic from Spekkio | Yes |
| 6 | Legendary Hero | Defeat Lavos after beating Masa and Mune | No |
| 7 | The Unknown Past | Defeat Lavos after getting the Hero Medal | No |
| 8 | People of the Times | Defeat Lavos after defeating Nizbel | Yes |
| 9 | The Oath | Defeat Lavos after Frog equips the Masamune and opens the Magic Cave | No |
| 10 | Dino Age | Defeat Lavos after defeating Magus | No |
| 11 | What the Prophet Seeks... | Defeat Lavos after beating the Tyrano Lair | No |
| 12 | A Slide Show? | Defeat Lavos after you see Schala use her pendant, but before you power up yours | No |
Getting to endgame (when the save says "The Fated Hour") takes about 4 hours with fully max characters, avoiding avoidable battles and running from escapable battles. I really only need to get to that point once, for ending 2.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Computing aspect ratio
Well, duh, it's easy, right? Yeah, just divide the width by the height and there you go. But what if you want to compute, say, a "pretty" (i.e. human-readable) representation of it instead of just the floating point representation? You'll need a bit more math for that.
I wrote a command line PHP script to do exactly this because I wanted a utility that I could feed the filename of an image and have it spit out the dimensions, aspect ratio, and type, completely on my server without having to open up the samba share on my desktop and do anything graphically.
Computing it in a more human-readable representation is pretty simple. The required mathematical operation is the greatest common denominator. Computing that isn't obvious at first, but it's pretty simple. There's a recursive method that's short and sweet. I actually got it off of a comment on the reference article for mathematical functions on PHP.net.
Here it is, spaced out for readability:
So, for instance, let's say we have a 1920x1200 image. I won't step through the recursion, but the GCD of those two numbers is 240. So then, we divide the length of each dimension by the GCD to get a human-readable aspect ratio. It's that simple.
1920/240 = 8
1200/240 = 5
And there you go, it's 8:5. If you're anal about checking the answer, divide 1920 by 1200, then divide 8 by 5. You'll get 1.6 in both cases.
This is essentially just reducing a fraction programmatically, but applied to the dimensions of an image file.
I used PHP basically so I could cheat and have it do the dirty work of figuring out the image type and parsing it to get the dimensions for me. getimagesize() is your friend.
Note that there is a library for PHP that does provide a GCD function, but it's horrible. You have to convert your numbers to a different type first and then cope with how they're not actually numbers after that. I just wanted a function that operated on integers and returned an integer, so I could shove all the numbers and strings into printf() to make it look nice.
I wrote a command line PHP script to do exactly this because I wanted a utility that I could feed the filename of an image and have it spit out the dimensions, aspect ratio, and type, completely on my server without having to open up the samba share on my desktop and do anything graphically.
Computing it in a more human-readable representation is pretty simple. The required mathematical operation is the greatest common denominator. Computing that isn't obvious at first, but it's pretty simple. There's a recursive method that's short and sweet. I actually got it off of a comment on the reference article for mathematical functions on PHP.net.
Here it is, spaced out for readability:
function gcd( $n, $m )Basically, what's happening is you're computing the GCD of the second number and their modulus (remainder after division) until the second number is zero, and once it is zero, you're returning that second number (which gets continually shifted into the first argument).
{if ( !$m )
return $n;
return gcd( $m, $n % $m );
}
So, for instance, let's say we have a 1920x1200 image. I won't step through the recursion, but the GCD of those two numbers is 240. So then, we divide the length of each dimension by the GCD to get a human-readable aspect ratio. It's that simple.
1920/240 = 8
1200/240 = 5
And there you go, it's 8:5. If you're anal about checking the answer, divide 1920 by 1200, then divide 8 by 5. You'll get 1.6 in both cases.
This is essentially just reducing a fraction programmatically, but applied to the dimensions of an image file.
I used PHP basically so I could cheat and have it do the dirty work of figuring out the image type and parsing it to get the dimensions for me. getimagesize() is your friend.
Note that there is a library for PHP that does provide a GCD function, but it's horrible. You have to convert your numbers to a different type first and then cope with how they're not actually numbers after that. I just wanted a function that operated on integers and returned an integer, so I could shove all the numbers and strings into printf() to make it look nice.
Oh hey, wallpapers...
I was just looking at my unsorted directory and noticing I've accumulated a bunch. Since I'm not actively browsing /w/ anymore, the influx of wallpapers has gone down. In fact, most of the recent ones were actually from Sankaku Channel, especially the large scans that I just downscaled to 2000 pixels wide so they'd be reasonable internet uploads. This update is entirely Railgun and K-ON!!, so... yeah.
Anyway, to business. "TO BUSINESS!"
I used the Blogger In Draft image thing for this, that's why it looks a bit different from my previous wallpaper updates. Predictably, I had to edit all of the markup it inserted to allow more than one image on a line (WHAT A CONCEPT) and to add target="_blank". Also, in true Blogger style, it doesn't have an option for the thumbnail size that using the "Link to this image" feature on Picasaweb gives you, so instead of having four images per line it's three. Inserting the images was easier, but since there's still editing to be done, I think I'll go back to just copy/pasting the linking markup out of Picasaweb. This new image thing is yet another typical "one step forward, two steps backwards" "solution".
Anyway, to business. "TO BUSINESS!"
I used the Blogger In Draft image thing for this, that's why it looks a bit different from my previous wallpaper updates. Predictably, I had to edit all of the markup it inserted to allow more than one image on a line (WHAT A CONCEPT) and to add target="_blank". Also, in true Blogger style, it doesn't have an option for the thumbnail size that using the "Link to this image" feature on Picasaweb gives you, so instead of having four images per line it's three. Inserting the images was easier, but since there's still editing to be done, I think I'll go back to just copy/pasting the linking markup out of Picasaweb. This new image thing is yet another typical "one step forward, two steps backwards" "solution".
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