- You absolutely want as many people as possible for this game. After each race, the people you've StreetPassed will make you a new booster that you'll use for the next race, and having more people working on it means it'll have higher stats. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
- The stats of the boosters you get are dependent, somehow, on the properties of the Miis that make it. All I've been able to notice so far is that short Miis affect its Speed stat, which is arguably the most important stat later on in the game.
- Speaking of later on in the game, as you progress, you'll notice that some of the objectives that you need to complete are "Finish in X seconds.". These times get a lot more challenging to beat towards the end of the game, and it can be very frustrating to keep getting boosters that raise your Control or Performance when all you want is Speed.
- Getting Excellents on all the corners is your number one priority. It's key to getting fast laps and fast completion times. It should make sense, too, if you're not cornering as well as you could be, you're not going to be going very fast. It should go without saying that crashing is to be avoided at all costs, though some corners are notoriously difficult to avoid crashing on, and the camera can exacerbate this, regardless of which setting you use.
- Make heavy use of the ability to practice a track before actually racing your rivals. This will help you get the timing down on those speed boosts and corners. If you're having trouble beating a time objective, do Ghost Races, otherwise, just turn laps on the track to learn it.
- Don't worry about the point requirements for each license level, there are far more points available. You can always replay any track, any time you want, and get more points. This effectively makes there be infinite points. Once you beat the game, the post-game enables extra numbered license ranks for you to obtain, all the way up to S 99, as well as a "Random Track" selection that gives an experience bonus.
- There's honestly not much else I can say. It's all in how well you've learned each track. Since the actual vehicle you're using doesn't matter at all, I can't suggest anything track-specific. The game suggests specific booster stats for specific tracks, but you have no control over what you're going to get, so I just ignore it and race whichever track I want.
Showing posts with label StreetPass Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label StreetPass Games. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Sliding through Slot Car Rivals
Slot Car Rivals is definitely the most skill-based game of the third bundle, and that's saying something since all you do is hold a button and occasionally release and re-press it. Manipulation potential is fairly low, so here come the gameplay tips.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Monopolizing Market Crashers
Market Crashers is easily the shortest of the third bundle of games, and both the concept and gameplay are simple enough to reduce the amount of manipulation to basically nonexistent levels. So instead, here's some gameplay tips.
- You absolutely want as many people as you can get for this game. Having more analysts available will give you more accurate information about what each stock is going to do, both before trading and while trading. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
- The mantra to remember while trading is indeed "buy low, sell high". It's the only way to actually make money.
- While you can do longer-term investments in this game, I don't recommend it. Keep your portfolio empty between sessions and just do Day Trading. The stocks fluctuate way too much for long-term investments to be worth anything at all.
- The ability to buy outside of Day Trading can still be useful though. If your analysts say a stock's value is going to rise, you can get a bit of extra cash by having shares of multiple stocks purchased while you actively trade one company. You can also buy some shares of the company you intend to trade during Day Trading, so that you have something to sell on that first peak.
- Buy the new products as they come out, but make sure to leave yourself enough money to continue trading stocks when doing so.
- Never ever sell the products. Just keep them. They still count towards your total assets, but they represent assets you can never lose, except voluntarily if you're absolutely strapped for cash and have no other choice.
- While the ultimate goal of this game is to become as rich as the guy they tell you about in the beginning, you get the second hat much, much earlier than that point. If you don't really find this game to be fun, then keep in mind that it doesn't take very long to get the hat.
- Ace Trader can be difficult to obtain for a given company, as it doesn't seem to be dependent on a specific threshold that I've been able to notice. All I can say is that if you do the "buy low, sell high" thing very aggressively, you stand a really good chance of getting Ace Trader.
- The more you trade a specific company's stock, the more of it you'll be able to buy or sell in one press of a button. This amount is entirely company-specific, so if you neglect one, you'll be buying a smaller number of shares of it the next time you trade it. This can actually be useful if you run low on money, since that smaller number of shares will cost you less.
- Don't ask me about the weird graph with the boxes and lines, I don't understand it either. Just use the simpler one, it hasn't failed me yet.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Marauding in Mii Trek
The exploration game of the third bundle, Mii Trek has plenty of secrets to uncover. For instance, you don't actually need to explore everywhere or leave no stone unturned in order to complete the game.
The first thing you'll probably notice is that you can accomplish precisely nothing in this game by touching the touchscreen. I don't know why this design choice was made, but we've all got to live with it.
The distance you get to cover is determined by the step counts of the Miis you StreetPass, however, there's a minimum of 500 steps. Special Miis will give you a hefty 30000 steps to work with. You absolutely want as many people as possible, to maximize the amount you'll be able to get done. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Due to having a limited distance that you can possibly cover in each play session, that changes wildly between play sessions, this game can take a while. It's a toss-up between this and Feed Mii as to which is actually longer.
Whenever going into a new area, your first priority is finding the Ancient Compass. This will give you an arrow that always points at the red X that marks the location of the chest containing the artifact you're looking for. The Ancient Compass can be found in one of the backpacks in the area, so go to them before anything else. If you end up at a chest, just choose to not open it. The game's nice like that.
Next priority is getting all of the backpacks. Among other things, backpacks can contain Tranquilizer Darts, which are necessary to pacify various wild beasts you'll come across. If you're out of them, a couple of the Miis in your party will get scared off and you won't be able to explore as far in this session. Since most of the animal locations are marked on the map, just try your best to avoid them in order to conserve darts.
Another item you can get from the backpacks is a vial of water. It can either be stagnant water, which makes your steps count down faster, or water from the fountain of youth, which makes your steps count down slower. It's a 50/50 shot, and I always take it. There's always more StreetPasses and Play Coins to be had, so why not?
Next priority is the camera icons. At these locations, a shadow will pass by. Press A when it's in the middle of the screen to take a picture. Hopefully, if you're lucky, you'll get a picture you haven't already gotten before. I tried to go for completionism here, but I ended up giving up in favor of just getting through the game. The RNG on the pictures is almost as frustratingly bad as Ultimate Angler's RNG.
Occasionally you'll encounter an obstacle that requires a specific input to pass. Some of these are labelled on the map, others aren't. Pay attention to the top screen, as it tells you what to press. Doing it right means you lose no steps or explorers in the process. Get it wrong and you get penalized.
Once you've gotten all the backpacks and pictures, head to the red X that the Ancient Compass is pointing to and get your artifact. Congratulations, the rest of the steps you had for that session are effectively wasted. But next time, you get to explore an entirely new area!
I hope this post helps all you intrepid explorers out there have fulfilling expeditions!
The first thing you'll probably notice is that you can accomplish precisely nothing in this game by touching the touchscreen. I don't know why this design choice was made, but we've all got to live with it.
The distance you get to cover is determined by the step counts of the Miis you StreetPass, however, there's a minimum of 500 steps. Special Miis will give you a hefty 30000 steps to work with. You absolutely want as many people as possible, to maximize the amount you'll be able to get done. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Due to having a limited distance that you can possibly cover in each play session, that changes wildly between play sessions, this game can take a while. It's a toss-up between this and Feed Mii as to which is actually longer.
Whenever going into a new area, your first priority is finding the Ancient Compass. This will give you an arrow that always points at the red X that marks the location of the chest containing the artifact you're looking for. The Ancient Compass can be found in one of the backpacks in the area, so go to them before anything else. If you end up at a chest, just choose to not open it. The game's nice like that.
Next priority is getting all of the backpacks. Among other things, backpacks can contain Tranquilizer Darts, which are necessary to pacify various wild beasts you'll come across. If you're out of them, a couple of the Miis in your party will get scared off and you won't be able to explore as far in this session. Since most of the animal locations are marked on the map, just try your best to avoid them in order to conserve darts.
Another item you can get from the backpacks is a vial of water. It can either be stagnant water, which makes your steps count down faster, or water from the fountain of youth, which makes your steps count down slower. It's a 50/50 shot, and I always take it. There's always more StreetPasses and Play Coins to be had, so why not?
Next priority is the camera icons. At these locations, a shadow will pass by. Press A when it's in the middle of the screen to take a picture. Hopefully, if you're lucky, you'll get a picture you haven't already gotten before. I tried to go for completionism here, but I ended up giving up in favor of just getting through the game. The RNG on the pictures is almost as frustratingly bad as Ultimate Angler's RNG.
Occasionally you'll encounter an obstacle that requires a specific input to pass. Some of these are labelled on the map, others aren't. Pay attention to the top screen, as it tells you what to press. Doing it right means you lose no steps or explorers in the process. Get it wrong and you get penalized.
Once you've gotten all the backpacks and pictures, head to the red X that the Ancient Compass is pointing to and get your artifact. Congratulations, the rest of the steps you had for that session are effectively wasted. But next time, you get to explore an entirely new area!
I hope this post helps all you intrepid explorers out there have fulfilling expeditions!
Thursday, January 19, 2017
NOPE-ing out of Ninja Launcher
Ninja Launcher is definitely the turd of the bunch in the third bundle of StreetPass Plaza games, and while manipulation potential is as low as the game's average session length, there are some gameplay tips to be had.
I'll keep this quick, you know, like a ninja:
I'll keep this quick, you know, like a ninja:
- You absolutely want as many people as possible. The number of people you have is directly related to your result attack power, as well as the amount of time you have to set up your powerups. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
- Do a test shot immediately. Sometimes one or two of the Miis will start out very close to the correct position, or even already in the correct position. This will label them so you know where you need to turn your attention to first.
- Don't do test shots too often. The clock still ticks down during the test shot.
- Get everything to silver stars before concentrating on gold stars. This will keep your scroll combo up and ensure you get the critical strike at the end, which doubles your attack power.
- You only have to clear Novice difficulty once. You get the Fox Hat at that point. If you dislike the game as much as I dislike the game, you're done with it at this point and you never have to touch it again.
- You can move a bunch of Miis at the same time, as the one you're currently moving will push any others it comes into contact with. This comes in handy if all of their items are around the same altitude.
- If you can momentarily divert your attention to the lower screen, you can switch to a Mii that's several Miis away much faster than by pressing or repeatedly. Since you have so little time to work with, you need all the speed you can get.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Finagling Feed Mii
My second favorite of the third bundle of StreetPass Plaza games, Feed Mii has some possible manipulation and useful things you can do to make the game easier.
You want as many Miis as possible for this game. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Also, a word to the wise: If you've hacked your StreetPass Mii to make it a Special Mii, you'll need to switch it to another Mii that isn't a Special Mii before starting this game. It will crash if your StreetPass Mii is a Special Mii.
This game is probably the longest of the bunch. Either it or Mii Trek. Here, the heroes will go through both Find Mii 1 and Find Mii 2 before you get your hat, and while Find Mii 1 is relatively short, Find Mii 2 is much longer.
The ingredients you get are dependent on the shirt colors of the Miis you receive. It is entirely possible for the Miis you receive to request a dish for which you don't have all the ingredients. Because of this, if you have the recipe, you should always check it before you start cooking, to make sure you've got everything. When this happens, you want to change the recipe. This will lower the quality of the dish to three stars, but you will be guaranteed to have the ingredients for the new recipe. Also, the review in the Legendary Herald will say "Why'd they change my order?" when you change the recipe. If you have all the ingredients, there's absolutely no reason to change the recipe.
If the Miis request something you don't have the recipe for, search for the name of the dish on Google. Not even joking here. All of the dishes in this game are real dishes, just with the recipes simplified. Looking it up should give you a good idea of what to select. Also, if it seems like it would make sense, add Onion. Onion is in a lot of the recipes in this game. In fact, there's only one recipe in the game that will fail if you include it, and that's Flan.
If you have multiple systems and a lot of patience, you can make Miis with all the various shirt colors and StreetPass them all over one by one to have full control of the ingredients you receive, but this is incredibly tedious and takes a very long time. It's generally a lot faster to just throw Play Coins at the game, or find a nice comfortable place to sit at a convention that's near a high-traffic area and cook for the other attendees as the StreetPasses roll in.
When exiting the game, or before dumping your next load of Play Coins into it, go into the Fridge (press on the main menu) and make sure your fridge contains five unique ingredients. This will give you the best possible chance of having an ingredient that the Miis don't give you.
Next up, and possibly the best thing you can do for yourself, is to use this Google spreadsheet and a ton of play coins (I hope you've got homebrew... The Nintendo 3DS Sound entrypoint, called soundhax, is free and easy to set up; then after dropping the homebrew starter kit on your SD card, just grab and use MrCheeze's play coin setter! Alternatively, if you have JKSM, you can select Extras from the main menu to get Play Coins) to completely fill out your recipe book using the Culinary Research mode. Doing this will mean you'll always have the complete recipe available to check when playing the game, which is incredibly useful since the ingredients for things aren't always obvious. Going completionist and getting everything Jumbo is completely optional, but if you do it, you can toggle the picture of any given complete dish back and forth between the Artisan and Jumbo versions when looking at it in the Recipe Book. Every recipe that gives four stars or more can be made Jumbo, which happens to be the vast majority of them, so you have a fair amount of work ahead of you should you be a completionist like me.
There is one issue you'll encounter in filling out your recipe book, namely, some of the recipes require the exact same set of ingredients. When you encounter this, inspect the two recipes in the spreadsheet carefully. In the case of Flan and Egg Tarts, there is an additional ingredient that will work with one recipe but cause the other to fail. Well, in Culinary Research mode, you can't fail, so adding that extra ingredient will force the game to cough up the recipe you're going for. This luxury isn't available with Onion Rings and Onion Bread, though, so it's just a crapshoot as to which one it'll give you. All I can say is to keep trying until it gives in. You don't have to worry about this when cooking a request, as the game will always give you the requested dish if you combine the correct ingredients.
Last but not least, to make sure you get optimum progress, you'll want to make Jumbo versions of dishes whenever possible. This is very simple to do, just add one extra of any ingredient that's required for the recipe. For instance, let's say the Miis request Chicken Curry, which requires Chicken, Rice, Potato, and Onion, and for simplicity's sake, you've got all the ingredients. Adding all four required ingredients and then one additional Chicken, Rice, Potato, or Onion will make it Jumbo. Jumbo dishes allow the Miis to deal more damage or explore farther, and will decrease the number of meals you'll have to make to get through the game.
I hope this post helps you out. This game is really fun, but I can see the intended method of trial and error getting frustrating quickly, unless you enjoy trial and error in your video games.
You want as many Miis as possible for this game. Make use of the Plaza Update 5.0's new "Send to Line" feature if you're at a convention or in Japan or something to make sure you've got ten, and if you just can't get to ten, top off with Play Coins.
Also, a word to the wise: If you've hacked your StreetPass Mii to make it a Special Mii, you'll need to switch it to another Mii that isn't a Special Mii before starting this game. It will crash if your StreetPass Mii is a Special Mii.
This game is probably the longest of the bunch. Either it or Mii Trek. Here, the heroes will go through both Find Mii 1 and Find Mii 2 before you get your hat, and while Find Mii 1 is relatively short, Find Mii 2 is much longer.
The ingredients you get are dependent on the shirt colors of the Miis you receive. It is entirely possible for the Miis you receive to request a dish for which you don't have all the ingredients. Because of this, if you have the recipe, you should always check it before you start cooking, to make sure you've got everything. When this happens, you want to change the recipe. This will lower the quality of the dish to three stars, but you will be guaranteed to have the ingredients for the new recipe. Also, the review in the Legendary Herald will say "Why'd they change my order?" when you change the recipe. If you have all the ingredients, there's absolutely no reason to change the recipe.
If the Miis request something you don't have the recipe for, search for the name of the dish on Google. Not even joking here. All of the dishes in this game are real dishes, just with the recipes simplified. Looking it up should give you a good idea of what to select. Also, if it seems like it would make sense, add Onion. Onion is in a lot of the recipes in this game. In fact, there's only one recipe in the game that will fail if you include it, and that's Flan.
If you have multiple systems and a lot of patience, you can make Miis with all the various shirt colors and StreetPass them all over one by one to have full control of the ingredients you receive, but this is incredibly tedious and takes a very long time. It's generally a lot faster to just throw Play Coins at the game, or find a nice comfortable place to sit at a convention that's near a high-traffic area and cook for the other attendees as the StreetPasses roll in.
When exiting the game, or before dumping your next load of Play Coins into it, go into the Fridge (press on the main menu) and make sure your fridge contains five unique ingredients. This will give you the best possible chance of having an ingredient that the Miis don't give you.
Next up, and possibly the best thing you can do for yourself, is to use this Google spreadsheet and a ton of play coins (I hope you've got homebrew... The Nintendo 3DS Sound entrypoint, called soundhax, is free and easy to set up; then after dropping the homebrew starter kit on your SD card, just grab and use MrCheeze's play coin setter! Alternatively, if you have JKSM, you can select Extras from the main menu to get Play Coins) to completely fill out your recipe book using the Culinary Research mode. Doing this will mean you'll always have the complete recipe available to check when playing the game, which is incredibly useful since the ingredients for things aren't always obvious. Going completionist and getting everything Jumbo is completely optional, but if you do it, you can toggle the picture of any given complete dish back and forth between the Artisan and Jumbo versions when looking at it in the Recipe Book. Every recipe that gives four stars or more can be made Jumbo, which happens to be the vast majority of them, so you have a fair amount of work ahead of you should you be a completionist like me.
There is one issue you'll encounter in filling out your recipe book, namely, some of the recipes require the exact same set of ingredients. When you encounter this, inspect the two recipes in the spreadsheet carefully. In the case of Flan and Egg Tarts, there is an additional ingredient that will work with one recipe but cause the other to fail. Well, in Culinary Research mode, you can't fail, so adding that extra ingredient will force the game to cough up the recipe you're going for. This luxury isn't available with Onion Rings and Onion Bread, though, so it's just a crapshoot as to which one it'll give you. All I can say is to keep trying until it gives in. You don't have to worry about this when cooking a request, as the game will always give you the requested dish if you combine the correct ingredients.
Last but not least, to make sure you get optimum progress, you'll want to make Jumbo versions of dishes whenever possible. This is very simple to do, just add one extra of any ingredient that's required for the recipe. For instance, let's say the Miis request Chicken Curry, which requires Chicken, Rice, Potato, and Onion, and for simplicity's sake, you've got all the ingredients. Adding all four required ingredients and then one additional Chicken, Rice, Potato, or Onion will make it Jumbo. Jumbo dishes allow the Miis to deal more damage or explore farther, and will decrease the number of meals you'll have to make to get through the game.
I hope this post helps you out. This game is really fun, but I can see the intended method of trial and error getting frustrating quickly, unless you enjoy trial and error in your video games.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
StreetPass Mii Plaza: Bundle 3
I'm late to this, because reasons. Not going to go into them, they're mostly irrelevant anyway. Let's get going, shall we?
Along with StreetPass Mii Plaza Version 5.0 is a third bundle of five games, this time with a unique opportunity: two of them are part of a special deal where you can pick one of them to get for free! The remaining four games are $3, with a special bundle price of $9. No discount for owning either of the other two bundles, sadly.
Each game has two hats and a speech bubble, but the Plaza update adds no other outfits or speech bubbles, which is actually kind of nice since it eliminates Plaza Tickets and a lot of mostly pointless busywork entirely. The hats and speech bubble are given out in a consistent manner with the rest of the paid Plaza games: speech bubble and one hat for buying the game, and the second hat upon beating the game.
The titles this time are Slot Car Rivals, Market Crashers, Feed Mii, Ninja Launcher, and Mii Trek. Rather than reviewing them in order, I'm going to tier them and review them that way. The two you get to choose between for your free game are Slot Car Rivals and Market Crashers.
Good Tier
Slot Car Rivals
This is a racing game, but made incredibly simple so anyone can play it. You can make any type of car you want, at any time, at no in-game cost, and customize its look to suit your tastes, again for no in-game cost. The type of vehicle you're driving has no bearing on its performance, so go nuts. The people you StreetPass are your competitors. To race, your slot car needs a "booster", and you get a fairly basic one to start out. However, each booster is only good for one race. After each race, the people you StreetPass all get together and make a new booster for you. Special Miis make the resulting booster's stats higher.
During each race, there are features on the course to pay attention to, perhaps most notably red corners. You'll have to release the accelerator during these to avoid crashing, but if you press it again at the right time, you get a boost out of the corner. There are also green charge areas followed by a rainbow area that let you boost over a jump if you keep the accelerator down in the green area and release it in the rainbow area, and blue boost areas that rocket you forwards ridiculously quickly.
You can also practice on any course you've raced on before, which is simultaneously nice and a small bit annoying. The annoying bit is that you have to race on a course without ever having seen it before, thus using your booster, before you're able to practice that course. It's not a hamstring on the game at all, just a minor complaint.
There are plenty of courses to unlock and choose from, with conditions to be met in order to progress through the game. It all seems to be fair and genuine challenge. Also, you'll unlock various special cars as you progress, these have all sorts of designs ranging from serious to silly. Again, your choice of car does not matter at all, so go right ahead and make the most ridiculous thing you can think of.
This is my personal recommendation for your choice of free game. It's fun and it actually makes me want to dump tons of play coins into continuing to play it. If you end up getting Market Crashers as your free game instead, this one is definitely worth the purchase.
Feed Mii
Remember Find Mii, where the people you StreetPass are heroes, rescuing their king (your Mii) from monsters? Well, heroes gotta eat, and in this game, you're the chef at the restaurant where they eat before they go fight. How well they do depends on your cooking, so cook up a good mess of food!
Basically, everyone gives you an ingredient, and the game suggests a recipe. Combine things together that you think would go in that recipe (or cheat and look it up on Google) and cook it up. You'll get a rating depending on how good your result was, and then you'll get news on the heroes' progress.
However, you're not done there. Your restaurant's fridge has limited space, you see. It can only store five ingredients, and you're likely to have more than five. After cooking for the heroes, you can now do culinary research. This lets you refine recipes you've discovered, make them better, or come up with new recipes. You can even use play coins to buy more ingredients.
This one is pretty fun, and I could spend a lot of time and play coins in the culinary research portion just cooking random things and unlocking all the recipes. Worth the purchase? Absolutely.
Surprisingly-better-than-I-thought-it-would-be Tier
Market Crashers
"A stock trading game? Oooookaaaaaay..." was my exact thought going into this one. I thought for sure that it'd be the shoe-in for the "Dud of this Bundle" award. However, I was wrong.
In Market Crashers, you are indeed trading stocks. The people you StreetPass are your analysts, and having more of them means you get more accurate information about what the stock's price is about to do. The only thing you ever need to worry about is "buy low, sell high". That's it. It's that simple.
As you make money, you can buy products from the companies whose stocks you're trading. Doing this has two benefits: One, the cost of the item is still counted towards your total assets (and thus your game progress), but can never be lost without you selling the item. Two, it makes that company more likely to have good news during trading, which makes their stock do better, and if you play your cards right, you can make a ton of money.
The goal is just that: make a ton of money. The game actually has a semi-decent glossary of terms in it, and it tries its hardest to explain one of the graphs it uses, but I'm still lost when I look at it.
I would still recommend picking Slot Car Rivals over this as your free game. However, don't overlook this one, it's surprisingly good, and definitely worth purchasing.
Okay Tier
Mii Trek
Explore a jungle, find artifacts, take wildlife pictures. The people you StreetPass are your explorers, and their combined step counts decide how far you get to travel. Luckily, there seems to be a minimum number of steps that a Mii will give you, so you'll always have at least 500 steps from anyone you get.
There are some things you'll need to be aware of, though. Sometimes you'll come across a rock or a thicket that will need to be dealt with. You deal with this by mashing A within a short time frame. If you're not ready for this, you won't be able to do it in time and will lose out on progress.
Also, when you find wildlife to take pictures of, the game is kind of vague on how it works. It just says "Press A!" and expects you to know what to do. Basically, you have to wait for a shadow to fly across the screen, and press A while it's on screen. Then you get your picture. Too early or too late, and you fail.
Along your journey, you'll occasionally encounter wildlife that needs to be dealt with using tranquilizer darts. This isn't too difficult, just move the crosshair over the wildlife in question until you've got it positioned over the red dot, and press A to fire. It doesn't move, so as long as you position your shot correctly, everything works as intended.
Lastly, and this is a big negative for a game about exploring: Once you find the main artifact that you're looking for in an area, that's it, you're done. All the rest of the steps you'd gotten are wasted. You don't get to go to any of the photo-op areas or any of the places where you can recover items from packs you find on the ground. You don't get to use the rest of the steps in the next location. It's kind of a letdown for a game that's about exploration. Why cut off my exploration before I've fully explored the area? Why can't I go back to an area and explore it further to get things I missed?
Once you've exhausted your steps, your Mii sets up camp and you get a summary of what you found, including a second chance to check out any artifacts you found or pictures you took.
It's a neat game, but if you're not just buying all of them, you may wish to divert your funds towards one of the titles higher up on this list before buying this one.
Shit Tier
Ninja Launcher
The premise of this one is hilarious, which is unfortunate given that the actual game falls flat on its ass. Your Mii is a ninja, who needs to defeat a monster on the other side of the screen. To get to it, you're shooting your Mii out of a cannon. During your Mii's flight, you can grab powerups to your weapon, helm, or armor to let you do things better. The people you StreetPass will fly kites with these powerups attached, and before firing the cannon, you have to position them along the path your Mii will travel. If it's done right, you get an awesome cutscene of your Mii powering up and then taking down the foe.
See those words? "If it's done right"? Yeah. Let me talk about that, because there's the aforementioned critical problem that makes this game fall flat on its ass.
You don't get enough time to position the powerups. Even though you get extra time for each Mii you StreetPassed, it's still not enough. For the first two stages, you get a flight path guide that's immensely helpful, but then it goes away and the nightmare begins. Good luck getting more than about five powerups on each cannon shot after that. To make things worse, some locations are windy and will take valuable time making sure you can't position anyone just so they can have gusts of wind. It's super annoying, and doesn't add to the gameplay one bit.
You know what else? Once you fire your shot and get whatever result you get, that's it. It's over. The three games at the top of this list have some sort of extra content you can access and extend the gameplay beyond the "let's do things with the Miis you StreetPassed!" portion of the game, but the two down at this end of the list just end and that's it. Mii Trek "just ending" when you run out of steps is reasonable, because you make camp at that point, which is completely plausible for an explorer to do. But this one? Let me buy longer cannon fuses, allow me to use play coins to get the shot path guide past the FIRST TWO STAGES OF THE GAME, maybe also an upgrade to make the Miis start out closer to having their kites in the shot's path? I dunno. It needs something to extend the gameplay, or just to make it better.
If you're buying the games from this bundle one by one, you may wish to give this one a miss. It's definitely the turd of the bunch, which I guess makes sense given the tier name.
Overall
Three (or four) out of five ain't bad, right? Plus, you can get one of those three (or four) for free. Also, the Plaza 5.0 update has other features I haven't covered that are definitely worth updating for, so, there's that.
Along with StreetPass Mii Plaza Version 5.0 is a third bundle of five games, this time with a unique opportunity: two of them are part of a special deal where you can pick one of them to get for free! The remaining four games are $3, with a special bundle price of $9. No discount for owning either of the other two bundles, sadly.
Each game has two hats and a speech bubble, but the Plaza update adds no other outfits or speech bubbles, which is actually kind of nice since it eliminates Plaza Tickets and a lot of mostly pointless busywork entirely. The hats and speech bubble are given out in a consistent manner with the rest of the paid Plaza games: speech bubble and one hat for buying the game, and the second hat upon beating the game.
The titles this time are Slot Car Rivals, Market Crashers, Feed Mii, Ninja Launcher, and Mii Trek. Rather than reviewing them in order, I'm going to tier them and review them that way. The two you get to choose between for your free game are Slot Car Rivals and Market Crashers.
Good Tier
Slot Car Rivals
This is a racing game, but made incredibly simple so anyone can play it. You can make any type of car you want, at any time, at no in-game cost, and customize its look to suit your tastes, again for no in-game cost. The type of vehicle you're driving has no bearing on its performance, so go nuts. The people you StreetPass are your competitors. To race, your slot car needs a "booster", and you get a fairly basic one to start out. However, each booster is only good for one race. After each race, the people you StreetPass all get together and make a new booster for you. Special Miis make the resulting booster's stats higher.
During each race, there are features on the course to pay attention to, perhaps most notably red corners. You'll have to release the accelerator during these to avoid crashing, but if you press it again at the right time, you get a boost out of the corner. There are also green charge areas followed by a rainbow area that let you boost over a jump if you keep the accelerator down in the green area and release it in the rainbow area, and blue boost areas that rocket you forwards ridiculously quickly.
You can also practice on any course you've raced on before, which is simultaneously nice and a small bit annoying. The annoying bit is that you have to race on a course without ever having seen it before, thus using your booster, before you're able to practice that course. It's not a hamstring on the game at all, just a minor complaint.
There are plenty of courses to unlock and choose from, with conditions to be met in order to progress through the game. It all seems to be fair and genuine challenge. Also, you'll unlock various special cars as you progress, these have all sorts of designs ranging from serious to silly. Again, your choice of car does not matter at all, so go right ahead and make the most ridiculous thing you can think of.
This is my personal recommendation for your choice of free game. It's fun and it actually makes me want to dump tons of play coins into continuing to play it. If you end up getting Market Crashers as your free game instead, this one is definitely worth the purchase.
Feed Mii
Remember Find Mii, where the people you StreetPass are heroes, rescuing their king (your Mii) from monsters? Well, heroes gotta eat, and in this game, you're the chef at the restaurant where they eat before they go fight. How well they do depends on your cooking, so cook up a good mess of food!
Basically, everyone gives you an ingredient, and the game suggests a recipe. Combine things together that you think would go in that recipe (or cheat and look it up on Google) and cook it up. You'll get a rating depending on how good your result was, and then you'll get news on the heroes' progress.
However, you're not done there. Your restaurant's fridge has limited space, you see. It can only store five ingredients, and you're likely to have more than five. After cooking for the heroes, you can now do culinary research. This lets you refine recipes you've discovered, make them better, or come up with new recipes. You can even use play coins to buy more ingredients.
This one is pretty fun, and I could spend a lot of time and play coins in the culinary research portion just cooking random things and unlocking all the recipes. Worth the purchase? Absolutely.
Surprisingly-better-than-I-thought-it-would-be Tier
Market Crashers
"A stock trading game? Oooookaaaaaay..." was my exact thought going into this one. I thought for sure that it'd be the shoe-in for the "Dud of this Bundle" award. However, I was wrong.
In Market Crashers, you are indeed trading stocks. The people you StreetPass are your analysts, and having more of them means you get more accurate information about what the stock's price is about to do. The only thing you ever need to worry about is "buy low, sell high". That's it. It's that simple.
As you make money, you can buy products from the companies whose stocks you're trading. Doing this has two benefits: One, the cost of the item is still counted towards your total assets (and thus your game progress), but can never be lost without you selling the item. Two, it makes that company more likely to have good news during trading, which makes their stock do better, and if you play your cards right, you can make a ton of money.
The goal is just that: make a ton of money. The game actually has a semi-decent glossary of terms in it, and it tries its hardest to explain one of the graphs it uses, but I'm still lost when I look at it.
I would still recommend picking Slot Car Rivals over this as your free game. However, don't overlook this one, it's surprisingly good, and definitely worth purchasing.
Okay Tier
Mii Trek
Explore a jungle, find artifacts, take wildlife pictures. The people you StreetPass are your explorers, and their combined step counts decide how far you get to travel. Luckily, there seems to be a minimum number of steps that a Mii will give you, so you'll always have at least 500 steps from anyone you get.
There are some things you'll need to be aware of, though. Sometimes you'll come across a rock or a thicket that will need to be dealt with. You deal with this by mashing A within a short time frame. If you're not ready for this, you won't be able to do it in time and will lose out on progress.
Also, when you find wildlife to take pictures of, the game is kind of vague on how it works. It just says "Press A!" and expects you to know what to do. Basically, you have to wait for a shadow to fly across the screen, and press A while it's on screen. Then you get your picture. Too early or too late, and you fail.
Along your journey, you'll occasionally encounter wildlife that needs to be dealt with using tranquilizer darts. This isn't too difficult, just move the crosshair over the wildlife in question until you've got it positioned over the red dot, and press A to fire. It doesn't move, so as long as you position your shot correctly, everything works as intended.
Lastly, and this is a big negative for a game about exploring: Once you find the main artifact that you're looking for in an area, that's it, you're done. All the rest of the steps you'd gotten are wasted. You don't get to go to any of the photo-op areas or any of the places where you can recover items from packs you find on the ground. You don't get to use the rest of the steps in the next location. It's kind of a letdown for a game that's about exploration. Why cut off my exploration before I've fully explored the area? Why can't I go back to an area and explore it further to get things I missed?
Once you've exhausted your steps, your Mii sets up camp and you get a summary of what you found, including a second chance to check out any artifacts you found or pictures you took.
It's a neat game, but if you're not just buying all of them, you may wish to divert your funds towards one of the titles higher up on this list before buying this one.
Shit Tier
Ninja Launcher
The premise of this one is hilarious, which is unfortunate given that the actual game falls flat on its ass. Your Mii is a ninja, who needs to defeat a monster on the other side of the screen. To get to it, you're shooting your Mii out of a cannon. During your Mii's flight, you can grab powerups to your weapon, helm, or armor to let you do things better. The people you StreetPass will fly kites with these powerups attached, and before firing the cannon, you have to position them along the path your Mii will travel. If it's done right, you get an awesome cutscene of your Mii powering up and then taking down the foe.
See those words? "If it's done right"? Yeah. Let me talk about that, because there's the aforementioned critical problem that makes this game fall flat on its ass.
You don't get enough time to position the powerups. Even though you get extra time for each Mii you StreetPassed, it's still not enough. For the first two stages, you get a flight path guide that's immensely helpful, but then it goes away and the nightmare begins. Good luck getting more than about five powerups on each cannon shot after that. To make things worse, some locations are windy and will take valuable time making sure you can't position anyone just so they can have gusts of wind. It's super annoying, and doesn't add to the gameplay one bit.
You know what else? Once you fire your shot and get whatever result you get, that's it. It's over. The three games at the top of this list have some sort of extra content you can access and extend the gameplay beyond the "let's do things with the Miis you StreetPassed!" portion of the game, but the two down at this end of the list just end and that's it. Mii Trek "just ending" when you run out of steps is reasonable, because you make camp at that point, which is completely plausible for an explorer to do. But this one? Let me buy longer cannon fuses, allow me to use play coins to get the shot path guide past the FIRST TWO STAGES OF THE GAME, maybe also an upgrade to make the Miis start out closer to having their kites in the shot's path? I dunno. It needs something to extend the gameplay, or just to make it better.
If you're buying the games from this bundle one by one, you may wish to give this one a miss. It's definitely the turd of the bunch, which I guess makes sense given the tier name.
Overall
Three (or four) out of five ain't bad, right? Plus, you can get one of those three (or four) for free. Also, the Plaza 5.0 update has other features I haven't covered that are definitely worth updating for, so, there's that.
Monday, March 7, 2016
SQL JOINs y u no do
So I'm working on the Flower Town database/script, trying to write queries for more detailed reports, which so happen to include the things that the player hasn't yet done. So, LEFT JOIN, right?
Well, sorta. It works, but not completely.
Background: I have a table with two columns: breed_id and color_id. They're foreign keys to a table of all breeds of the game's flowers and a table of all colors of the game's flowers, respectively. It's indexed by the combination of the two, which is always unique. This table contains data that never actually changes, grows, or shrinks; it's used as a reference for a second identically structured table. This second table's contents reflect what the user has actually accomplished in-game. Normal usage is totally fine, I can pull out anything about what the user has already done. So, it would be logical that, using LEFT JOINs, I could easily pull out data on what the user still needs to do, right?
I said "sorta" above for a reason. So long as both breed_id AND color_id are NULL, it works beautifully. Related to a few other table columns here and there, I can get data back on things the user has yet to do in-game.
Because most breeds can be grown in multiple colors, though, it doesn't work completely. I am finding myself unable to get data on which colors the user has yet to grow for a given breed, if they've grown some but not all colors for that breed. I've mangled the JOINs and table relations and WHERE clause every way I can possibly think of, including trying to split certain parts off into subqueries here and there, all to no avail.
I may know SQL, but I'm no SQL god. If anyone happens to be reading this who IS an SQL god (or, at the very least, knows more than me), by all means, drop some knowledge in the comments. Relevant info: it's MySQL, because this is web development and I'm not an RDBMS snob.
Well, sorta. It works, but not completely.
Background: I have a table with two columns: breed_id and color_id. They're foreign keys to a table of all breeds of the game's flowers and a table of all colors of the game's flowers, respectively. It's indexed by the combination of the two, which is always unique. This table contains data that never actually changes, grows, or shrinks; it's used as a reference for a second identically structured table. This second table's contents reflect what the user has actually accomplished in-game. Normal usage is totally fine, I can pull out anything about what the user has already done. So, it would be logical that, using LEFT JOINs, I could easily pull out data on what the user still needs to do, right?
I said "sorta" above for a reason. So long as both breed_id AND color_id are NULL, it works beautifully. Related to a few other table columns here and there, I can get data back on things the user has yet to do in-game.
Because most breeds can be grown in multiple colors, though, it doesn't work completely. I am finding myself unable to get data on which colors the user has yet to grow for a given breed, if they've grown some but not all colors for that breed. I've mangled the JOINs and table relations and WHERE clause every way I can possibly think of, including trying to split certain parts off into subqueries here and there, all to no avail.
I may know SQL, but I'm no SQL god. If anyone happens to be reading this who IS an SQL god (or, at the very least, knows more than me), by all means, drop some knowledge in the comments. Relevant info: it's MySQL, because this is web development and I'm not an RDBMS snob.
Monday, December 7, 2015
Warrior's Way: Fighting my own specially-set up max army
So, a long time ago (in a galaxy far far away), I finished Warrior's Way and set my army with the 99,999 cavalry/99,999 archers/9,800,001 infantry split so that it could be easily defeated by much smaller armies. But I'd never really tested it to see how it worked, nor did I know how many troops would be won when it was defeated.
Not until now.
Having purchased and system transferred to a New 3DS, which is old news by now, means that my Old 3DS got to go through all the games again. When I got to ~150k troops, I tried fighting my max army, only to get screwed over by a field condition weakening infantry. Either of the others and I would've been totally fine. It's for this reason that I'm now going to recommend holding off until about ~220k troops, so that you can guarantee two wins, regardless of field conditions.
As far as spying goes, you'll need to spy at least once, usually twice. If the specially-set up max army sends its giant group first, then spying a second time will be less necessary. Later on, once you've got more troops, you can set up your army in such a way that you won't need to spy at all, and from then on it's just free troops (and a victory to add to your streak).
I've sidestepped it for long enough. You know what I'm talking about. It's the answer to the one question you still have. How many troops do you get for defeating a max army? After all, when you greet a max army peacefully and its monarch decides to give you troops, you only get a paltry 3000. Well, it's a bit different if you can actually defeat the max army. Quite a bit different. Seriously, why am I still stalling for time?
I don't know if the number of troops received depends on the distribution, or what, but it's still a really nice number that allows you to grow an army pretty quickly.
So basically, every time my systems StreetPass each other now, my Old 3DS gets half a million more troops. I'll take that.
Edit (20:45, same day): Replaced my textual approximation of how many troops you get with a picture showing the exact number. Yay technology!
Not until now.
Having purchased and system transferred to a New 3DS, which is old news by now, means that my Old 3DS got to go through all the games again. When I got to ~150k troops, I tried fighting my max army, only to get screwed over by a field condition weakening infantry. Either of the others and I would've been totally fine. It's for this reason that I'm now going to recommend holding off until about ~220k troops, so that you can guarantee two wins, regardless of field conditions.
As far as spying goes, you'll need to spy at least once, usually twice. If the specially-set up max army sends its giant group first, then spying a second time will be less necessary. Later on, once you've got more troops, you can set up your army in such a way that you won't need to spy at all, and from then on it's just free troops (and a victory to add to your streak).
I've sidestepped it for long enough. You know what I'm talking about. It's the answer to the one question you still have. How many troops do you get for defeating a max army? After all, when you greet a max army peacefully and its monarch decides to give you troops, you only get a paltry 3000. Well, it's a bit different if you can actually defeat the max army. Quite a bit different. Seriously, why am I still stalling for time?
 |
| Screenshot or it didn't happen. |
So basically, every time my systems StreetPass each other now, my Old 3DS gets half a million more troops. I'll take that.
Edit (20:45, same day): Replaced my textual approximation of how many troops you get with a picture showing the exact number. Yay technology!
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Venting About Ultimate Angler's RNG
Earlier today, during a six-hour-long HomePass session, I finally found a duplicate of the 6+ Anglers Gauge Boost skill that I got halfway through the game, a few months ago. I still need one more to get it to level 3. Whoever designed this game's RNG is sadistic. I can farm rods like nobody's business with HomePass, but 90% of them don't have a skill, and the ones that do have useless things like Lake/Pond Strike Boost and 2 Anglers Time Boost.
In the meantime:
To draw a comparison, the RNG on weapons from chests in Monster Manor was a lot more player-friendly, and the weapon skills were a lot more common. You still had to play your cards right, but doing so involved learning the game mechanics. Getting a good weapon was basically your reward for learning how to make the game spawn gold chests. In Ultimate Angler, the only mechanic to getting fishing rods is that you have to catch a fish you've already caught before. There are zero game mechanics you can learn to get fishing rods basically whenever you want, it's entirely down to RNG. Then, it seems it's an entirely separate RNG (a die roll, for the D&D nerds) for whether or not you get a skill on that rod, and ANOTHER RNG that determines what that skill is. Everything else in Ultimate Angler is fantastic, but the RNG begs for an update to make it more player-friendly.
In the meantime:
- I've caught five UFOs, put them in a Cosmic Tank, and set it as my favorite.
- I've caught five Bloopers and two Cheep Cheeps for a similarly-themed tank. I still need three more Cheep Cheeps, which will be difficult given that I hardly ever have enough bait for them when I get a sighting. I usually have two bait, and it takes me three at minimum, if the RNG plays nice.
- I've caught all but one of the 160 species in the game. The sole remaining one is a mysterious fish. It's the rarest one, it seems, and it's on Mysteria Island at Sellbrook River. Nobody on HomePass seems to have seen it, and the only way to be able to catch it is to StreetPass someone who's seen it (or someone who doesn't have the game, a specific number of times). Then you have to hope that you have enough of the correct bait(s) to catch it in that single session, or you lose it and have to start over with the next sighting. If your sighting isn't "I heard a rumor..." or "I caught a...", then its stamina will have already been worn down somewhat by the previous person.
- I've wasted a lot of money improving my UFO Rod +25 with the level 1 6+ Anglers Gauge Boost skill that I'll eventually upgrade to level 3 and have to re-improve if I don't get the 160th species for the final plaza ticket and give this game the old "12-gauge to the back of the head" mercy kill treatment it deserves.
To draw a comparison, the RNG on weapons from chests in Monster Manor was a lot more player-friendly, and the weapon skills were a lot more common. You still had to play your cards right, but doing so involved learning the game mechanics. Getting a good weapon was basically your reward for learning how to make the game spawn gold chests. In Ultimate Angler, the only mechanic to getting fishing rods is that you have to catch a fish you've already caught before. There are zero game mechanics you can learn to get fishing rods basically whenever you want, it's entirely down to RNG. Then, it seems it's an entirely separate RNG (a die roll, for the D&D nerds) for whether or not you get a skill on that rod, and ANOTHER RNG that determines what that skill is. Everything else in Ultimate Angler is fantastic, but the RNG begs for an update to make it more player-friendly.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
StreetPass Premium Plaza Revisited
Some were up in arms about the Premium Plaza update costing $5, considering it doesn't really have a lot of content for your $5. Regardless, there are features and things behind that paywall that made it worth purchasing to me. Once you've bought it, you gain the ability to skip a lot of the conversation bits that happen with each StreetPass, which greatly speeds up the whole deal. Without it, the only things you can toggle are greetings, which I leave on anyway, and ratings, which if you turn them off, you're a dick because you can't send Fantastics to people. Also, Fantastic still isn't the default choice, which saddens me. There isn't even an option to make it the default choice for those of us who are nice and always send Fantastics.
You also gain access to the VIP Plaza, where you can send Miis that you never want to be deleted for any reason. The most practical use of this is to toss your friends in there. That way, if you go to a convention or something and get a ton of StreetPasses, you don't lose your friends. It's also useful for keeping Special Miis, since they all have a special effect when hired within games that allow you to hire old allies. It's also useful in general for that Hire Old Allies option, as you can store Miis you've met 7+ times there for use in Find Mii/Find Mii 2. Miis that you've flagged as VIPs also show up first on the selection screen when you select Hire Old Allies, making it easy to find them.
Last but not least, with the Premium Plaza update, you gain access to StreetPass Birthdays, which isn't really a game, but it does have 22 plaza tickets associated with it, and in keeping with tradition, plaza tickets are behind a paywall. This makes purchasing this portion of the update required to get all the hats and speech bubbles. There isn't any real challenge to StreetPass Birthdays, since it basically plays itself as you StreetPass people. You'll get all 366 eventually, and getting all 366 nets you all 22 plaza tickets. If you have multiple systems or a roommate that also has a 3DS or whatever, go ahead and change your Miis' birthdays to fill it out, it's okay, nobody's going to judge you for doing it.
The 4.0 update to StreetPass Mii Plaza also brought some nice features that are entirely free. One I already mentioned, the speech bubbles. There are a wide variety of them to choose from, whether game-themed or not. You get a bunch for free after updating, just keep restarting the Plaza a few times, because for whatever reason they chose that as the method for giving them to you. Without having to get plaza tickets, you get the regular speech bubble, a thought bubble, and bubbles themed around each of the Plaza games that you have. Some of the ones I like a bit more than the rest are the 3DS cartridge balloon, and the Super Mario Bros. 1-1 balloon.
The Game Vault is handy for preventing games you've completed from bringing up that "you haven't played all the games!" message every time you start the plaza. You can still launch the games from the vault, and your current group of Miis will follow you in, so there's no functionality lost. It's essentially a band-aid for all the paid games not recognizing when you have absolutely nothing left to do in them, since they continue to display their exclamation points with each new group.
Being able to rearrange the game icons is nice, but I still wish that the StreetPass games made better use of the touchscreen.
The clear medals are nice for bragging rights. The criteria for each clear medal is of course dependent on the game, with the paid games having a very loose definition of "complete". For Puzzle Swap, it doesn't show up until you get all the puzzle pieces. For Find Mii 1 and 2, you have to beat both and leave them on their victory title screens for it to show up. However, for the paid games, the clear medal generally shows up when you get the second hat for each game, which happens incredibly early in some games, like Flower Town, and takes forever in others, like Monster Manor.
Completely disappointing is the ability to change the music that plays within the Plaza. It's limited to just the 7 variations on the Plaza theme. Likewise, the ability to listen to the Music Player with the system in sleep mode is nice, but it just plays one track on repeat. It doesn't go through and play all of them, there's no shuffle option, etc. There could have been a bit more effort in this part of the update.
For those who are paying attention, yes, the most recent version of the Plaza is actually 4.1. This was a bugfix for the Exchange Booth not rotating daily as it should.
Anyway, the plaza update, both the free and paid portions, are worth getting in my eyes.
You also gain access to the VIP Plaza, where you can send Miis that you never want to be deleted for any reason. The most practical use of this is to toss your friends in there. That way, if you go to a convention or something and get a ton of StreetPasses, you don't lose your friends. It's also useful for keeping Special Miis, since they all have a special effect when hired within games that allow you to hire old allies. It's also useful in general for that Hire Old Allies option, as you can store Miis you've met 7+ times there for use in Find Mii/Find Mii 2. Miis that you've flagged as VIPs also show up first on the selection screen when you select Hire Old Allies, making it easy to find them.
Last but not least, with the Premium Plaza update, you gain access to StreetPass Birthdays, which isn't really a game, but it does have 22 plaza tickets associated with it, and in keeping with tradition, plaza tickets are behind a paywall. This makes purchasing this portion of the update required to get all the hats and speech bubbles. There isn't any real challenge to StreetPass Birthdays, since it basically plays itself as you StreetPass people. You'll get all 366 eventually, and getting all 366 nets you all 22 plaza tickets. If you have multiple systems or a roommate that also has a 3DS or whatever, go ahead and change your Miis' birthdays to fill it out, it's okay, nobody's going to judge you for doing it.
The 4.0 update to StreetPass Mii Plaza also brought some nice features that are entirely free. One I already mentioned, the speech bubbles. There are a wide variety of them to choose from, whether game-themed or not. You get a bunch for free after updating, just keep restarting the Plaza a few times, because for whatever reason they chose that as the method for giving them to you. Without having to get plaza tickets, you get the regular speech bubble, a thought bubble, and bubbles themed around each of the Plaza games that you have. Some of the ones I like a bit more than the rest are the 3DS cartridge balloon, and the Super Mario Bros. 1-1 balloon.
The Game Vault is handy for preventing games you've completed from bringing up that "you haven't played all the games!" message every time you start the plaza. You can still launch the games from the vault, and your current group of Miis will follow you in, so there's no functionality lost. It's essentially a band-aid for all the paid games not recognizing when you have absolutely nothing left to do in them, since they continue to display their exclamation points with each new group.
Being able to rearrange the game icons is nice, but I still wish that the StreetPass games made better use of the touchscreen.
The clear medals are nice for bragging rights. The criteria for each clear medal is of course dependent on the game, with the paid games having a very loose definition of "complete". For Puzzle Swap, it doesn't show up until you get all the puzzle pieces. For Find Mii 1 and 2, you have to beat both and leave them on their victory title screens for it to show up. However, for the paid games, the clear medal generally shows up when you get the second hat for each game, which happens incredibly early in some games, like Flower Town, and takes forever in others, like Monster Manor.
Completely disappointing is the ability to change the music that plays within the Plaza. It's limited to just the 7 variations on the Plaza theme. Likewise, the ability to listen to the Music Player with the system in sleep mode is nice, but it just plays one track on repeat. It doesn't go through and play all of them, there's no shuffle option, etc. There could have been a bit more effort in this part of the update.
For those who are paying attention, yes, the most recent version of the Plaza is actually 4.1. This was a bugfix for the Exchange Booth not rotating daily as it should.
Anyway, the plaza update, both the free and paid portions, are worth getting in my eyes.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
StreetPass Games Revisited: Battleground Z
I've completed the vast majority of what Battleground Z has to offer. I have one plaza ticket remaining, for trying every showdown stage. I only have one showdown stage left to play, which I can't play yet for a reason I'll get into in a moment.
Battleground Z is definitely shorter than Ultimate Angler. There are 25 story stages, divided among five areas. Each stage is designed to take less than five minutes. The last stage of each area is a boss battle. From each of the first four bosses, you take a sample. These samples get analyzed and combined together to formulate a cure that you spread through the air after defeating the fifth boss. I know, spoilers, right? Well, no. I avoided the actual spoilers. So there.
As you play through the game, you gradually fill in information on the Z-Wiki, which is accessible from the title screen. It gains information about all the weapons and all the enemies, as well as letting you test out weapons to get acquainted with them. The weapons are based on the hobbies of the Miis you StreetPass, which means there's 26 weapons in total, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Each stage has four objectives for which you earn a medal. These objectives can be easy, or they can be frustratingly difficult. There is some in-between, thankfully. The game has a total of 120 medals that you can earn, although you can get all the plaza tickets and Z-Wiki completion once you've gotten 100 of them.
Beating the story makes the five showdown stages show up. Each of these requires a multiple of 20 medals to be accessible. The showdowns are basically challenges to see how many zombies you can defeat in a limited amount of time. They're all about having good weapons and remembering to use your charge attacks. The showdown stages also have medals.
Also, within 26 of the 30 stages, you can fulfill a hidden condition and make a rare zombie spawn. The game hints at what weapon you need to use in which stage to make this happen, via the Z-Wiki. Finding and defeating the rare zombies is of course completely optional, but it does fill in the Z-Wiki section about them with more information as you do it. Just to clue you in, there's a graveyard stage, and yes, you have to use the dancing weapon in the graveyard stage to spawn its rare zombie. Heck, the dance even looks a bit like the Thriller dance.
Returning to the subject of my game completion, I've defeated 25 of the 26 rare zombies, and the last one I need is in the 100-medal showdown stage. I'm currently sitting at 87 medals, and that specific showdown stage is the last one I have yet to try, so I'll get the game's final plaza ticket when I do play that stage.
Overall, Battleground Z is a bit on the short side story-wise, but what it lacks in story length it makes up for in replayability. Due to the medals, showdown stages, rare zombies, and the vast array of weapons at your disposal, no two gameplay sesssions are ever the same.
Battleground Z is definitely shorter than Ultimate Angler. There are 25 story stages, divided among five areas. Each stage is designed to take less than five minutes. The last stage of each area is a boss battle. From each of the first four bosses, you take a sample. These samples get analyzed and combined together to formulate a cure that you spread through the air after defeating the fifth boss. I know, spoilers, right? Well, no. I avoided the actual spoilers. So there.
As you play through the game, you gradually fill in information on the Z-Wiki, which is accessible from the title screen. It gains information about all the weapons and all the enemies, as well as letting you test out weapons to get acquainted with them. The weapons are based on the hobbies of the Miis you StreetPass, which means there's 26 weapons in total, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Each stage has four objectives for which you earn a medal. These objectives can be easy, or they can be frustratingly difficult. There is some in-between, thankfully. The game has a total of 120 medals that you can earn, although you can get all the plaza tickets and Z-Wiki completion once you've gotten 100 of them.
Beating the story makes the five showdown stages show up. Each of these requires a multiple of 20 medals to be accessible. The showdowns are basically challenges to see how many zombies you can defeat in a limited amount of time. They're all about having good weapons and remembering to use your charge attacks. The showdown stages also have medals.
Also, within 26 of the 30 stages, you can fulfill a hidden condition and make a rare zombie spawn. The game hints at what weapon you need to use in which stage to make this happen, via the Z-Wiki. Finding and defeating the rare zombies is of course completely optional, but it does fill in the Z-Wiki section about them with more information as you do it. Just to clue you in, there's a graveyard stage, and yes, you have to use the dancing weapon in the graveyard stage to spawn its rare zombie. Heck, the dance even looks a bit like the Thriller dance.
Returning to the subject of my game completion, I've defeated 25 of the 26 rare zombies, and the last one I need is in the 100-medal showdown stage. I'm currently sitting at 87 medals, and that specific showdown stage is the last one I have yet to try, so I'll get the game's final plaza ticket when I do play that stage.
Overall, Battleground Z is a bit on the short side story-wise, but what it lacks in story length it makes up for in replayability. Due to the medals, showdown stages, rare zombies, and the vast array of weapons at your disposal, no two gameplay sesssions are ever the same.
Monday, June 8, 2015
StreetPass Games Revisited: Ultimate Angler
Since I did this for the first batch of games, I'm back to do it again with the second batch. Now that I've played the second batch of games for a while, what's my progress, and what are my thoughts? Have I figured anything out that I didn't know when I wrote the original post? Read on to find out.
Actually, before I get into discussing the gameplay and my completion thereof, I just want to say: The game's music is awesome. It covers a wide variety of musical styles, and there's a unique song for every fishing spot. Just think about that. A lot of work went into the music for this game, and it shows. If you need some examples, try Clifton Cove, Highland Lake, and Feeding Frenzy.
Progress-wise, I've completed the first five islands and gotten the second hat. The plaza tickets come in very slowly in this one, as you essentially have to do almost everything there is to do in order to get all of them. I'm missing the ones for clearing six/seven/eight/all islands, landing 120/all species, and A+ catches for 10 species.
In addition to the plaza tickets, there is a whole set of challenges that the game gives you rewards for completing. All of the plaza tickets count for these challenges, but the ones that don't give plaza tickets instead give you money or fishing rods. Not all of them are visible by default, the game only lets you know what the next one in each group is.
The game is pretty fun, even if the RNG is incredibly unforgiving. You always have the chance to pull up random junk, even if you only have one fish left in an area, you need that fish to progress, and you have a bait that it likes. Sometimes, the RNG just shits on you. There's no better way to describe it. Also, the game tells you that mixing baits improves the chances of getting larger fish, which is necessary to complete in-game challenges, but I haven't noticed any correlation between the number of bait I mix and the size of the fish I catch.
Powering up and improving your fishing rods uses a fairly straightforward crafting system, but oh boy does it ever drain your in-game money. Everything gets more expensive the farther you go. The best rod in the game reportedly takes 1.2 million to max out, and you can't even hold that much money at once.
You actually benefit from being a completionist early on in this game. A good number of fish show up in multiple places, so if you catch them early on, you don't have to worry about them later and can blitz your way through islands only having to catch the fish that completes the challenge for a given fishing spot.
Also, you can farm for money, rank, and rods. On the first island, the fish you have to catch to clear the island coughs up a good amount of money and rank points, and being a three-star fish, gives you a chance at a two-star or three-star rod. Combining rods and improving their stats is directly related to your success in this game, so you'll probably want to farm at some point.
Adding some spice to the proverbial gumbo are the mysterious fish available in some locations. You can't see what bait you need to catch them by default. The only way to find out is through StreetPass. Every 10 times you StreetPass the same person who doesn't have the game, they'll tell you about one of the mysterious fish. If you StreetPass someone who has the game and has already spotted one of them, they'll tell you about it. Special Miis always tell you about one of them.
Regardless of how you find out about it, its location and the necessary baits get revealed for that session and that session only. In the case of finding out about the fish from someone who already owns the game, you get to continue from where they left off trying to catch it. If you don't catch it, you'll send it to other owners of the game and they get to try from where you left off. As you could infer, they take a lot of effort to catch, so hopefully you have more than one of the baits that you need. So far, I've seen and caught one mysterious fish, due to the requirement that you have to have completed the island where it can be found before people will tell you about it.
Feeding frenzies happen every now and then, and are denoted by the water sparkling. The sparkling gets more and more noticeable as the frenzy gets closer to happening. Once it starts, you get to tap icons on the touchscreen in a panic and catch tons of fish without using any bait at all. These happen fairly often, and are a good source of extra money and rank points. Occasionally I've gotten a species I haven't caught before from a frenzy, so be on the lookout for that.
Overall, I'm not disappointed with my purchase in the slightest.
Actually, before I get into discussing the gameplay and my completion thereof, I just want to say: The game's music is awesome. It covers a wide variety of musical styles, and there's a unique song for every fishing spot. Just think about that. A lot of work went into the music for this game, and it shows. If you need some examples, try Clifton Cove, Highland Lake, and Feeding Frenzy.
Progress-wise, I've completed the first five islands and gotten the second hat. The plaza tickets come in very slowly in this one, as you essentially have to do almost everything there is to do in order to get all of them. I'm missing the ones for clearing six/seven/eight/all islands, landing 120/all species, and A+ catches for 10 species.
In addition to the plaza tickets, there is a whole set of challenges that the game gives you rewards for completing. All of the plaza tickets count for these challenges, but the ones that don't give plaza tickets instead give you money or fishing rods. Not all of them are visible by default, the game only lets you know what the next one in each group is.
The game is pretty fun, even if the RNG is incredibly unforgiving. You always have the chance to pull up random junk, even if you only have one fish left in an area, you need that fish to progress, and you have a bait that it likes. Sometimes, the RNG just shits on you. There's no better way to describe it. Also, the game tells you that mixing baits improves the chances of getting larger fish, which is necessary to complete in-game challenges, but I haven't noticed any correlation between the number of bait I mix and the size of the fish I catch.
Powering up and improving your fishing rods uses a fairly straightforward crafting system, but oh boy does it ever drain your in-game money. Everything gets more expensive the farther you go. The best rod in the game reportedly takes 1.2 million to max out, and you can't even hold that much money at once.
You actually benefit from being a completionist early on in this game. A good number of fish show up in multiple places, so if you catch them early on, you don't have to worry about them later and can blitz your way through islands only having to catch the fish that completes the challenge for a given fishing spot.
Also, you can farm for money, rank, and rods. On the first island, the fish you have to catch to clear the island coughs up a good amount of money and rank points, and being a three-star fish, gives you a chance at a two-star or three-star rod. Combining rods and improving their stats is directly related to your success in this game, so you'll probably want to farm at some point.
Adding some spice to the proverbial gumbo are the mysterious fish available in some locations. You can't see what bait you need to catch them by default. The only way to find out is through StreetPass. Every 10 times you StreetPass the same person who doesn't have the game, they'll tell you about one of the mysterious fish. If you StreetPass someone who has the game and has already spotted one of them, they'll tell you about it. Special Miis always tell you about one of them.
Regardless of how you find out about it, its location and the necessary baits get revealed for that session and that session only. In the case of finding out about the fish from someone who already owns the game, you get to continue from where they left off trying to catch it. If you don't catch it, you'll send it to other owners of the game and they get to try from where you left off. As you could infer, they take a lot of effort to catch, so hopefully you have more than one of the baits that you need. So far, I've seen and caught one mysterious fish, due to the requirement that you have to have completed the island where it can be found before people will tell you about it.
Feeding frenzies happen every now and then, and are denoted by the water sparkling. The sparkling gets more and more noticeable as the frenzy gets closer to happening. Once it starts, you get to tap icons on the touchscreen in a panic and catch tons of fish without using any bait at all. These happen fairly often, and are a good source of extra money and rank points. Occasionally I've gotten a species I haven't caught before from a frenzy, so be on the lookout for that.
Overall, I'm not disappointed with my purchase in the slightest.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
StreetPass Mii Plaza: New Games
I've finally got my hands on the two latest StreetPass games, so... here's my initial thoughts on Ultimate Angler and Battleground Z. The games are $5 each, or $8 if you buy the bundle. If you've already got any of the games from the first bundle (Mii Force, Flower Town, Warrior's Way, Monster Manor), you get an extra dollar off the price of the bundle, which is neat.
Continuing the tradition, you get a hat for purchasing each game, but with the plaza update, you also get a speech balloon for purchasing each game. If you haven't updated your plaza, do it now. Even if you don't plan on getting the new games. It's okay, I'll wait.
Continuing the tradition, you get a hat for purchasing each game, but with the plaza update, you also get a speech balloon for purchasing each game. If you haven't updated your plaza, do it now. Even if you don't plan on getting the new games. It's okay, I'll wait.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
StreetPass Mii Plaza: Birthdays!
After getting the plaza update and paying the $5 for the VIP room and birthday calendar, I went to a CAINE meeting and got three people because my 3DS is really ornery these days and refuses to streetpass the person sitting next to me.
Then I went to sleep.
BUT THEN IT WAS ON.
I started HomePassing, and it ended up being the longest HomePass session ever, lasting about 9 hours, with a break for dinner and walking the dog. I ended up at 281 of 366 birthdays from that session.
I've moved on today and gotten to 304/366, and the incoming birthdays have slowed down quite a bit, as you could expect. I'll probably have a remedy for this soon, though, because I do plan on getting a New 3DS, and I'm keeping my current one. I do plan to fully exploit being able to streetpass myself, especially in combination with HomePass so I can do it repeatedly. I wonder how long it'll take to get all the puzzle pieces a second time...
The whole "collecting birthdays" thing is interesting only because you get plaza tickets as rewards. Looking through the list, there is absolutely nothing that you have to do anything special to get. Once you've gotten the plaza ticket for getting all 366 days, that's it, you've got all the plaza tickets for the birthday calendar, no questions asked. Some of the plaza tickets highlight an annoyance I've had with games for a while now: They don't tell you what you need to do for some of the plaza tickets. It's the same with the accomplishments, some of them just show up as question marks and then later, once you've already gotten the plaza ticket or accomplishment, you get to see how you were supposed to get it. Secret achievements and the like are one thing, but they're usually limited to one or two per game, which is nowhere near this many.
Oh well. At any rate, I have all the months down to needing less than 10 days.
Then I went to sleep.
BUT THEN IT WAS ON.
I started HomePassing, and it ended up being the longest HomePass session ever, lasting about 9 hours, with a break for dinner and walking the dog. I ended up at 281 of 366 birthdays from that session.
I've moved on today and gotten to 304/366, and the incoming birthdays have slowed down quite a bit, as you could expect. I'll probably have a remedy for this soon, though, because I do plan on getting a New 3DS, and I'm keeping my current one. I do plan to fully exploit being able to streetpass myself, especially in combination with HomePass so I can do it repeatedly. I wonder how long it'll take to get all the puzzle pieces a second time...
The whole "collecting birthdays" thing is interesting only because you get plaza tickets as rewards. Looking through the list, there is absolutely nothing that you have to do anything special to get. Once you've gotten the plaza ticket for getting all 366 days, that's it, you've got all the plaza tickets for the birthday calendar, no questions asked. Some of the plaza tickets highlight an annoyance I've had with games for a while now: They don't tell you what you need to do for some of the plaza tickets. It's the same with the accomplishments, some of them just show up as question marks and then later, once you've already gotten the plaza ticket or accomplishment, you get to see how you were supposed to get it. Secret achievements and the like are one thing, but they're usually limited to one or two per game, which is nowhere near this many.
Oh well. At any rate, I have all the months down to needing less than 10 days.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
StreetPass Mii Plaza: Premium Plaza
The plaza update was finally released outside of Japan today, and due to some monetary shenanigans, the only thing I could afford to buy right away was the premium plaza, which I'd previously expressed doubts about getting.
But first, a small bit about the update itself. It includes updates to the StreetPass games to support the VIP plaza, where you can manually place up to 100 Miis that will never be deleted. It also includes a very welcomed update that makes all the games realize when you've completed them, and even shows a medal on the game's icon to indicate this. These medals can be turned off if you so desire. You can reorder all the icons on the touchscreen, and hide everything except the Plaza and Plaza Gate icons. Games you've hidden show up in the Game Vault and can be launched from there, or restored to the menu. The update also adds custom speech bubbles for your StreetPass message, chosen by selecting "Change Greeting". You get a few of these themed around the pre-existing StreetPass games immediately, and more can be unlocked using Plaza Tickets. There's also more hats to be unlocked with Plaza Tickets.
According to GameFAQs, there are a whole host of additional updates to the existing StreetPass games. Text in general is faster. Apparently dialogue in Mii Force is now skippable, Flower Town goes faster, and a whole array of changes relating to hiring Miis with play coins. Also, in Find Mii 2 you can apparently see which rooms still have hats left, which is a very nice thing, and there's a Helper Hare that removes traps in rooms you've already been to if you pay play coins.
Now, on to the subject of the premium plaza. Its first main feature is the VIP plaza, which as mentioned above, can hold up to 100 Miis that you specifically choose. This is pretty useful for keeping Special Miis around for use in the StreetPass games, as well as generally being useful with the Hire Old Allies option found in some of the StreetPass games.
The second main feature of the premium plaza is the Birthday Calendar. It keeps track of the birthday assigned to each Mii that you get via StreetPass, and challenges you to fill in the whole year (including February 29th!). You get Plaza Tickets for accomplishing various objectives and reaching certain landmarks. There are 22 Plaza Tickets total, which matches the precedent set by the previous paid StreetPass software.
Other than those two main features, what else is there? Well, both the VIP Plaza and the Birthday Calendar have new background music, and entering them will unlock that music in the Music Player.
Speaking of the Music Player, you now have the option to change the track that's played in the StreetPass Plaza, by selecting a track and pressing Y. Strangely, not all tracks can be selected. You can also listen to music in the Music Player through headphones with your 3DS in sleep mode.
In the Settings, there are a series of options to exclude portions of the greeting process when greeting Miis at your plaza gate. Sadly, there isn't a "Make 'Fantastic' the default option" toggle, but pretty much everything else can be disabled.
Overall, a lot of nice things were added, even before the paid portion of the update.
But first, a small bit about the update itself. It includes updates to the StreetPass games to support the VIP plaza, where you can manually place up to 100 Miis that will never be deleted. It also includes a very welcomed update that makes all the games realize when you've completed them, and even shows a medal on the game's icon to indicate this. These medals can be turned off if you so desire. You can reorder all the icons on the touchscreen, and hide everything except the Plaza and Plaza Gate icons. Games you've hidden show up in the Game Vault and can be launched from there, or restored to the menu. The update also adds custom speech bubbles for your StreetPass message, chosen by selecting "Change Greeting". You get a few of these themed around the pre-existing StreetPass games immediately, and more can be unlocked using Plaza Tickets. There's also more hats to be unlocked with Plaza Tickets.
According to GameFAQs, there are a whole host of additional updates to the existing StreetPass games. Text in general is faster. Apparently dialogue in Mii Force is now skippable, Flower Town goes faster, and a whole array of changes relating to hiring Miis with play coins. Also, in Find Mii 2 you can apparently see which rooms still have hats left, which is a very nice thing, and there's a Helper Hare that removes traps in rooms you've already been to if you pay play coins.
Now, on to the subject of the premium plaza. Its first main feature is the VIP plaza, which as mentioned above, can hold up to 100 Miis that you specifically choose. This is pretty useful for keeping Special Miis around for use in the StreetPass games, as well as generally being useful with the Hire Old Allies option found in some of the StreetPass games.
The second main feature of the premium plaza is the Birthday Calendar. It keeps track of the birthday assigned to each Mii that you get via StreetPass, and challenges you to fill in the whole year (including February 29th!). You get Plaza Tickets for accomplishing various objectives and reaching certain landmarks. There are 22 Plaza Tickets total, which matches the precedent set by the previous paid StreetPass software.
Other than those two main features, what else is there? Well, both the VIP Plaza and the Birthday Calendar have new background music, and entering them will unlock that music in the Music Player.
Speaking of the Music Player, you now have the option to change the track that's played in the StreetPass Plaza, by selecting a track and pressing Y. Strangely, not all tracks can be selected. You can also listen to music in the Music Player through headphones with your 3DS in sleep mode.
In the Settings, there are a series of options to exclude portions of the greeting process when greeting Miis at your plaza gate. Sadly, there isn't a "Make 'Fantastic' the default option" toggle, but pretty much everything else can be disabled.
Overall, a lot of nice things were added, even before the paid portion of the update.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Two New StreetPass Games
According to a Nintendo Direct released yesterday, we're getting some weird Premium StreetPass Plaza that can hold 100 or so specifically-selected Miis, as well as two brand new StreetPass games. One game is a fishing game, the other is a zombie game. Personally, I still want a StreetPass racing game. Apparently the games will be $5 each, or $8 for both, and there's a separate $5 charge for the Premium StreetPass Plaza. I'll definitely be getting the games, dunno about the premium plaza.
Regardless, I will once again embark on a quest for 100% completion. However, rather than updating the post I already have about finishing the StreetPass games, I'll make a new one when I get back to 100% completion. That'll also serve as some record keeping for how many puzzle pieces there are before the new games come out, for anyone who cares.
They've been putting out new Puzzle Swap panels on about a monthly basis recently, so... will we get a new panel alongside all these things? Who knows. The 16th is also a Thursday, so... taking brand new StreetPass games to a CAINE meeting lol.
Edit: Here's all the information you need about the new stuff, straight from the source. Thanks for the link, /r/3DS.
Regardless, I will once again embark on a quest for 100% completion. However, rather than updating the post I already have about finishing the StreetPass games, I'll make a new one when I get back to 100% completion. That'll also serve as some record keeping for how many puzzle pieces there are before the new games come out, for anyone who cares.
They've been putting out new Puzzle Swap panels on about a monthly basis recently, so... will we get a new panel alongside all these things? Who knows. The 16th is also a Thursday, so... taking brand new StreetPass games to a CAINE meeting lol.
Edit: Here's all the information you need about the new stuff, straight from the source. Thanks for the link, /r/3DS.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Flower Town Progress Tracker
I may or may not have mentioned this a while back, but I wrote a small PHP/SQL application to keep track of what I'd done in Flower Town, since I found the game's journal to be inadequate for presenting me with the kind of information I wanted to see.
Well, after what feels like forever since I finished Flower Town, I remembered about the application I wrote, modified it slightly to make it suitable for distribution, and packaged it on up.
Within the archive you'll find an extremely rough around the edges PHP script and set of MySQL tables. The important thing, however, is that when combined on a server with Apache, mod_rewrite, PHP, and MySQL installed, they'll work together to let you track your progress in Flower Town.
Unfortunately, it isn't multi-user. I wanted to make it multi-user, but writing the login system was taking time away from writing the actual application itself, so I hastily made it single-user with basic HTTP authentication.
Anyway, you're either begging for the link, or going "what a nerd, writing this nonsense to track progress in a streetpass game". If you're of the latter disposition, GTFO. If you're of the former disposition, however, here you go. Enjoy.
Note: if the sentence above that mentioned the requirement for an Apache web server with mod_rewrite, PHP, and MySQL installed didn't catch your attention, then perhaps this will: This wasn't designed with the average user in mind. It was designed by me, for me, on my already pre-configured server. If the setup process seems like too much for you, then it probably is. Unless of course you're looking for a learning experience in this sort of thing, in which case, go right ahead!
Edit (2016-03-03): Immediately upon resetting it so I could track progress on my second system, I noticed that it was full of bugs relating to there being either nothing or very little in the database. I've fixed those on my own copy (not on the download above), but I'm adding some more features and will do a new post once the super shiny version 2.0 is ready for release. Because, despite what I believed at the time, the version I released in this post wasn't actually ready for release...
What new features? Well... that's just going to have to be a surprise. I'll guarantee one thing: they'll be useful.
Well, after what feels like forever since I finished Flower Town, I remembered about the application I wrote, modified it slightly to make it suitable for distribution, and packaged it on up.
Within the archive you'll find an extremely rough around the edges PHP script and set of MySQL tables. The important thing, however, is that when combined on a server with Apache, mod_rewrite, PHP, and MySQL installed, they'll work together to let you track your progress in Flower Town.
Unfortunately, it isn't multi-user. I wanted to make it multi-user, but writing the login system was taking time away from writing the actual application itself, so I hastily made it single-user with basic HTTP authentication.
Anyway, you're either begging for the link, or going "what a nerd, writing this nonsense to track progress in a streetpass game". If you're of the latter disposition, GTFO. If you're of the former disposition, however, here you go. Enjoy.
Note: if the sentence above that mentioned the requirement for an Apache web server with mod_rewrite, PHP, and MySQL installed didn't catch your attention, then perhaps this will: This wasn't designed with the average user in mind. It was designed by me, for me, on my already pre-configured server. If the setup process seems like too much for you, then it probably is. Unless of course you're looking for a learning experience in this sort of thing, in which case, go right ahead!
Edit (2016-03-03): Immediately upon resetting it so I could track progress on my second system, I noticed that it was full of bugs relating to there being either nothing or very little in the database. I've fixed those on my own copy (not on the download above), but I'm adding some more features and will do a new post once the super shiny version 2.0 is ready for release. Because, despite what I believed at the time, the version I released in this post wasn't actually ready for release...
What new features? Well... that's just going to have to be a surprise. I'll guarantee one thing: they'll be useful.
Friday, November 7, 2014
StreetPass Games Done
That certainly took a while. Having a HomePass setup definitely made it quicker. Some people call HomePass cheating, but I don't. It doesn't reduce the challenge of accomplishing everything, nor does it reduce the amount of work you have to do. It simply lowers the barrier to entry.
So, everything ever:
Side note: if Puzzle Swap and the Find Mii games can detect when there's nothing left for the player to do and decide to not show their exclamation points with each group of StreetPasses, why can't the DLC StreetPass games do the same?
Edit (2015-09-25): Added Ultimate Angler, Battleground Z, and StreetPass Birthdays, just to mark them off as complete. Because I now have two 3DSes, this post is only representative of my original efforts, which I system transferred from my Old 3DS to my New 3DS. Any new puzzles will be marked here until I finish everything on my Old 3DS once again, and then this post will be retired and a new one encompassing both systems will be created.
So, everything ever:
- Puzzle Swap: 1637/1637 pieces (for North America)
- When I originally posted this, there were 1177 puzzle pieces.
- When I got my New 3DS and system transferred to it, there were 1502 puzzle pieces.
- Find Mii and Find Mii 2: All accomplishments (including "Clear Find Mii in 30 Miis or less") and hats/outfits.
- Mii Force: All plaza tickets (this implies all lost treasures collected, all target scores beaten, and all stages beaten without losing a pod).
- Flower Town: All plaza tickets, gold on all jobs, 80/80 breeds, 305/305 colors, gold watering can.
- Warrior's Way: All plaza tickets, Castle rank 20, 9,999,999 troops (set up so that an army of 50k+ infantry, 50k+ cavalry, and a small group of archers can defeat it by spying twice, field conditions allowing).
- Monster Manor: All plaza tickets, beat floor 50 and the true final boss for the hat.
- Ultimate Angler: All plaza tickets (this implies 160/160 species caught)
- Battleground Z: All plaza tickets, all rare zombies defeated
- StreetPass Birthdays: All plaza tickets (this implies 366/366 birthdays)
- Exchange Booth: All hats/outfits and speech balloons claimed, Exchange Booth closed once again
Side note: if Puzzle Swap and the Find Mii games can detect when there's nothing left for the player to do and decide to not show their exclamation points with each group of StreetPasses, why can't the DLC StreetPass games do the same?
Edit (2015-09-25): Added Ultimate Angler, Battleground Z, and StreetPass Birthdays, just to mark them off as complete. Because I now have two 3DSes, this post is only representative of my original efforts, which I system transferred from my Old 3DS to my New 3DS. Any new puzzles will be marked here until I finish everything on my Old 3DS once again, and then this post will be retired and a new one encompassing both systems will be created.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
The Promised Find Mii 2 Files
Here are the Photoshop files I concocted using The Mystical One's image guides on GameFAQs. I created them in Photoshop CS2 because that's what I have, so, you know, be aware about compatibility or something.
Within the zip file, you'll find a folder containing the two Photoshop files. Unzip the whole thing somewhere, load them up in Photoshop, and it should be fairly simple to see where to go from there. However, because I'm nice, I'll still explain things here.
Using them is fairly straightforward. All the checkboxes have layers whose visibility can be toggled. The first checkbox in each group is actually toggled just by enabling the group itself, but for the rest you'll have to expand the group.
There's even toggleable lines to cross out the entries under Traps, Solutions, and Keys once you've dealt with it or gotten the key. Also, note that for Find Mii 2's secret quest, getting the gold key only requires that you use 25 Miis or less on the Dark Emperor fight, not 25 Miis on the entire playthrough. I got it on my first playthrough, with a level 15 team and some random other guys to use Vials of Valor, and I kept using the aforementioned Vials of Valor to bring back my level 15 team. I used a total of 104 Miis on that playthrough.
The route progress box instructions should hopefully be clear, but in case they aren't, use the marquee tool on the sequence of numbers that indicate each route, right under where it says Routes and has checkboxes and stuff.
The whole goal of these files was so that whenever I loaded them up, I could easily see where I was and what I'd done. You can also save off a copy as a PNG to share on whatever social network is all the rage these days, and brag to your friends.
Enjoy!
Within the zip file, you'll find a folder containing the two Photoshop files. Unzip the whole thing somewhere, load them up in Photoshop, and it should be fairly simple to see where to go from there. However, because I'm nice, I'll still explain things here.
Using them is fairly straightforward. All the checkboxes have layers whose visibility can be toggled. The first checkbox in each group is actually toggled just by enabling the group itself, but for the rest you'll have to expand the group.
There's even toggleable lines to cross out the entries under Traps, Solutions, and Keys once you've dealt with it or gotten the key. Also, note that for Find Mii 2's secret quest, getting the gold key only requires that you use 25 Miis or less on the Dark Emperor fight, not 25 Miis on the entire playthrough. I got it on my first playthrough, with a level 15 team and some random other guys to use Vials of Valor, and I kept using the aforementioned Vials of Valor to bring back my level 15 team. I used a total of 104 Miis on that playthrough.
The route progress box instructions should hopefully be clear, but in case they aren't, use the marquee tool on the sequence of numbers that indicate each route, right under where it says Routes and has checkboxes and stuff.
The whole goal of these files was so that whenever I loaded them up, I could easily see where I was and what I'd done. You can also save off a copy as a PNG to share on whatever social network is all the rage these days, and brag to your friends.
Enjoy!
Back to HomePassing
Yeah, that didn't take too long. I've got the basics up and running. Nothing fancy, because for that I need to use SQL LEFT JOINs, and they currently hate me and refuse to return the data I want. I need to sit down and logic out all the stuff, I guess.
Anyway, I've got a simple stats page showing my progress in four different ways: breeds grown , breed-colors grown, and breaking down breed-colors by color and family.
Overall I'm a lot closer to being done than I thought I was. I have a mere 63 breed-colors left to grow. I just started in on the big one: I had 16 breeds left that needed to be grown in White. Next time I get a brown Mii, which happens occasionally thanks to some random Japanese guy, I can plant all four of the breeds that I need in Brown. The rest of it goes similarly: get a mii with a shirt color that I need, plant a bunch of stuff, grow it all, repeat.
This mess of PHP and MySQL is just to keep track of it all so I can stay headed in the right direction. For one thing, the statistics I can pull out of the database give me a much better idea of what I have remaining than flipping through the journal does. My original strategy of buying seeds from Poppy's Seeds, growing them, and then recursing through all the seeds that resulted in new colors got me a fair amount of progress before it suddenly stopped producing seeds that gave new colors. Growing strictly by color is my new strategy that I'm taking to the end.
In Find Mii 2 news, I got the last hat, so now I have all the hats. I also beat it for the tenth time, so I'm completely done with it. In Find Mii 1 news, I'm following a guide I found on GameFAQs for getting the "Clear Find Mii in under 30 Miis" accomplishment. It's going exactly to plan thus far, so we'll see how things go when all I have to do is hire random level 7s and spam attacks. Because, you know, the whole "chance to miss" thing.
So now the number of games I need to play with each group of HomePasses is down to just one: Flower Town. You can add a new Puzzle Swap panel anytime, Nintendo. Or how about more StreetPass games, plaza tickets, and hats, so I can re-open the Exchange Booth? It'd be neat to see a StreetPass racing game. Just saying.
Anyway, I've got a simple stats page showing my progress in four different ways: breeds grown , breed-colors grown, and breaking down breed-colors by color and family.
Overall I'm a lot closer to being done than I thought I was. I have a mere 63 breed-colors left to grow. I just started in on the big one: I had 16 breeds left that needed to be grown in White. Next time I get a brown Mii, which happens occasionally thanks to some random Japanese guy, I can plant all four of the breeds that I need in Brown. The rest of it goes similarly: get a mii with a shirt color that I need, plant a bunch of stuff, grow it all, repeat.
This mess of PHP and MySQL is just to keep track of it all so I can stay headed in the right direction. For one thing, the statistics I can pull out of the database give me a much better idea of what I have remaining than flipping through the journal does. My original strategy of buying seeds from Poppy's Seeds, growing them, and then recursing through all the seeds that resulted in new colors got me a fair amount of progress before it suddenly stopped producing seeds that gave new colors. Growing strictly by color is my new strategy that I'm taking to the end.
In Find Mii 2 news, I got the last hat, so now I have all the hats. I also beat it for the tenth time, so I'm completely done with it. In Find Mii 1 news, I'm following a guide I found on GameFAQs for getting the "Clear Find Mii in under 30 Miis" accomplishment. It's going exactly to plan thus far, so we'll see how things go when all I have to do is hire random level 7s and spam attacks. Because, you know, the whole "chance to miss" thing.
So now the number of games I need to play with each group of HomePasses is down to just one: Flower Town. You can add a new Puzzle Swap panel anytime, Nintendo. Or how about more StreetPass games, plaza tickets, and hats, so I can re-open the Exchange Booth? It'd be neat to see a StreetPass racing game. Just saying.
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