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It’s kind of astonishing that neither of the two FF1 LPs in the archive use the game’s most famous line in their titles. Why don’t you copy and paste the Wikipedia article here to let us know what you’re talking about? Final Fantasy is a fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by Square in 1987. It is the first game in Square's Final Fantasy series, created by Hironobu Sakaguchi. Originally released for the NES, Final Fantasy was remade for several video game consoles and is frequently packaged with Final Fantasy II in video game collections. The story follows four youths called the Light Warriors, who each carry one of their world's four elemental orbs which have been darkened by the four Elemental Fiends. Together, they quest to defeat these evil forces, restore light to the orbs, and save their world. Final Fantasy was originally conceived under the working title Fighting Fantasy, but trademark issues and dire circumstances surrounding Square as well as Sakaguchi himself prompted the name to be changed. The game was a great commercial success, received generally positive reviews, and spawned many successful sequels and supplementary titles in the form of the Final Fantasy series. The original is now regarded as one of the most influential and successful role-playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, playing a major role in popularizing the genre. Critical praise focused on the game's graphics, while criticism targeted the time spent wandering in search of random battle encounters to raise the player's experience level. By March 2003, all versions of Final Fantasy had sold a combined total of two million copies worldwide. I don’t see “Dawn of Souls” anywhere. That’s because it doesn’t have its own Wikipedia article. It was a release for the GBA with a bunch of new content, including a revised translation, better graphics, a lot of bug fixes, and four special postgame dungeons. I played this version obsessively on my SP when it came out and it remains the only game I’ve ever maxed out my characters’ levels in. It was a major part of my childhood, even as someone who never played or wanted to play the original, and it sits in my top 3 Final Fantasy games to this day (the others being VI and X). I seem to recall there being another game on that cartridge, but I don’t think I ever got into it. I'm listening This will be a narrative screenshot LP when it isn’t me rambling about Final Fantasy. I’ll be substantially altering the plot, setting, and characters while keeping the core of the game intact; think Chokes McGee or Didja Redo. I’ll also talk extensively about the game in relation both to later Final Fantasy titles and to Dungeons and Dragons, which this game is actually heavily based on. I am heavily familiar with BOTH those things, so I’ll likely have quite a bit to say. If you’re only interested in the narrative or the commentary, feel free to skip one or the other; they reinforce each other, but you can read them independently just fine. Look for italics for in-game text and plaintext for my additions. I will need help making characters, though. Finally, I was waiting for thread participation. Take 4 Black Mages – I said characters, not character classes. Here’s the thing about FF1’s party. Unlike later Final Fantasy titles, your party consists of four characters chosen in any number and combination from the following six classes:
The recommended party for most new players is Warrior, Thief, White Mage, and Black Mage; it’s a highly varied party equipped to handle almost any situation. I, however, will be going with a Warrior, Red Mage, and some combination of Warrior, Monk, Thief, and Red Mage. Why? The A button. This is a game where you can just hold down A and have your characters all attack over and over again. Like many JRPGs, FF1 rewards grinding, so parking yourself in a relatively low-level area, holding A, going around in circles, and zoning out can get you a substantial amount of experience with little effort. I’m going to be doing a lot of this as I grind up our characters, so I’ll only go with characters that can actually do damage without futzing around with spells, even if the party we get is suboptimal. I’ll simply be asking the thread for character ideas and probably polling it for decisions on… Various things later on. THREAD RULES
There will be a special connection to another Final Fantasy game in this LP. The first person to spot it before I reveal it gets something special. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1: The Four Warriors 2: Garland 3: Pravoka 4: Elfheim Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Dec 30, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 00:18 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 19:05 |
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CHARACTERS Muster: swordsman, warrior, and professional do-gooder. Not from around here (may be part dwarf). Highly intelligent but too unfocused for much book learning. Just a little bit impulsive. Bell: reformed pirate, but don’t tell anybody that. Experienced quartermaster. Has many secrets, including their gender. Less cynical than is probably wise. Zolara: a typical elf, with the pointy ears and long fingers to prove it. Hates violence, but it’s all she’s good at (except prayer). Invented a combat style based around striking pressure points to avoid causing excessive damage. Also that makes use of her drinking. Juris: Cornelian spare nobleman. Very well read with knowledge of swordsmanship, diplomacy, and multiple forms of magic, but maybe a little sheltered. Unusually aware of the underside of nobility and kind of self-deprecating about it. Matoya: Mysterious old witch. The sort of person who will cop to being an old hag without shame or reservation. Would have been a programmer in another life. Further Information to come??? Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Dec 30, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 00:19 |
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Oh I'm looking forward to this, I've been watching a lot of randomized runs of the NES version, so most of my thoughts go towards that right now, doubly so since I don't know what bugs/issues are fixed or not in this one. Name: Bell Class: Thief Bio: Mostly reformed pirate who gets way too much enjoyment out of being absolutely ambiguous about their own gender. Hunter Noventa fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Dec 24, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 00:39 |
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Name: Heath Class: Thief Thinks he's just the slickest, slyest charmer in existence, able to woo and charm anyone out of anything, and able to steal everything right out of everyone's hands. The truth is that he's severely and completely inept. Most people let it him get away with it out of sheer secondhand embarrassment.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 00:49 |
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Name: Zolara Race: Elf Class: Monk Background: A pacifist. Time spent fighting is time that could be spent drinking. However, once she gets drunk, she wants nothing more than to fight. As such, she's invented, and become a master of, Drunk-Fu.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 00:53 |
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Name: Muster Class: Warrior Bio: Always pressing forward, this fellow isn't happy unless he's doing something productive with his time and contributing to society. His determination to achieve this is through the roof, and the guy sure won't give up fighting for it until every inch of his body is reduced to some form of dust or goo or strange particle. BraveLittleToaster fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Dec 24, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 01:17 |
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Name: Felix (M) / Selin (F). You can pick. Class: Red Mage Race: Human I guess? Bio: They dropped out of magic school/university of their own volition when forced to choose between focusing 100% on white magic or black magic. A very curious type, with a particular love of the arts.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 02:18 |
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Name: Walter Class: RedMage Race: Human He has a hard time choosing things, leading him to pick both white and black magic. He likes painting as a hobby.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 02:31 |
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Name: Bonk Class: Monk -A strange monk with a fondness for wordplay who amuses themself by helpfully(?) rephrasing questions to fire back at whoever asked them. -Probably human, but would surprise no-one if they were some sort of benign cryptid.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 03:49 |
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Name: Don Class: He's Don of Souls.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 04:55 |
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Name: Touile Class: Red Mage A man with a fondness for the culinary arts, he gained a wish to travel to not only sample foreign cuisine, but to also replicate it. His magical skill is mostly a compliment to being able to help cook or chill food, with some healing on the side to deal with those occasional accidental cuts or burns that came with the art.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 05:49 |
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You mentioned using "dictation software" to write? Because I was wondering if that'd be an easier way to do the Recaps I did in my Dragon Quest VI LP: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3927161 That thread's been on hiatus for a while, and it's in large part because of how much time those recaps took. Do you think dictation software would make those take less time? Transcribing all those lines of text from the game, 'n everything like that? Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Dec 24, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 06:37 |
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Jusis, the Red Mage is the aloof son of a prominent nobleman, who practices court fencing without neglecting his natural aptitude for both the arcane and divine. He has a soft spot for children, but comes across as closed off to people his age due to a combination of his personal insecurities about living up to his family name and a fear that people will try to use him. Is very good at reading between the lines. Has an incredibly biting wit but is loyal to the ends of the Earth once he trusts you. ...I'm currently replaying the Trails of Cold Steel series Rabbi Raccoon fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Dec 24, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 08:01 |
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I guess someone has to post this. Mid, the Warrior seems like he literally sprang out of the ground outside Coneria. No one knows him, and he knows no one in the world. He does have a good understanding of the continents, but has a rare few flaws in that knowledge (For instance, somehow he thought the Volcano area was frozen over instead). He's a very serious person, and focused on his role as a Warrior of Light. On the other hand, he's strangely easy to work with and never objects to his teammates' oddities (so long as they don't cross the line into outright villainy). But why does it seem like he knows more about the Crystals and the hidden places of the world bonus dungeons than he's saying? MightyPretenders fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Dec 24, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 08:45 |
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I'm only passing familiar with the entire FF franchise, just never got into it, but I like your LPs so I'll be lurking even though I doubt I'll have much to contribute.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 08:56 |
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Fionordequester posted:You mentioned using "dictation software" to write? Because I was wondering if that'd be an easier way to do the Recaps I did in my Dragon Quest VI LP: I just used a script dump for Shield (thanks Black Robe!), but dictation software does make transcribing (and writing in general) a lot easier. It actually takes MORE time, because dictation is slower than writing, but it uses less energy and less focus. Pretty expensive, though; I only ponied up the $90 USD for the software and $40 for the headset because I needed them for health reasons. From what I saw in your videos, you have a good enough headset but . Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Dec 24, 2020 |
# ? Dec 24, 2020 16:13 |
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Black Robe posted:I'm only passing familiar with the entire FF franchise, just never got into it, but I like your LPs so I'll be lurking even though I doubt I'll have much to contribute. For what it's worth, this goes for me too.
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 17:45 |
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Black Robe posted:I'm only passing familiar with the entire FF franchise, just never got into it, but I like your LPs so I'll be lurking even though I doubt I'll have much to contribute. Explopyro posted:For what it's worth, this goes for me too. Then come up with random generic fantasy characters, then . This game is basically DnD with a twist at this point, most of the idiosyncrasies that define Final Fantasy had yet to evolve. (That said, thanks for the vote of confidence and I genuinely hope this LP'll live up to your expectations.)
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 19:28 |
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Falconier111 posted:I just used a script dump for Shield (thanks Black Robe!), but dictation software does make transcribing (and writing in general) a lot easier. It actually takes MORE time, because dictation is slower than writing, but it uses less energy and less focus. Pretty expensive, though; I only ponied up the $90 USD for the software and $40 for the headset because I needed them for health reasons. From what I saw in your videos, you have a good enough headset but . Gotcha. In any case, "Memories of Heroes" (a novelization for 1, 2, & 3) was finally released this August, so in honor of that... I choose these for any Warriors, Thieves, White, or Black Mages we use! Warrior: Setro Thief: Zauver White Mage: Flora Black Mage: Teol
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# ? Dec 24, 2020 20:05 |
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Ah, now this takes me back. I actually never played the original NES Final Fantasy, it was a few years before my time, so my first experience with it was through the GBA remake (also, I vaguely recall there being another game on the cartridge, but for the life of me, I can't recall the first thing about it, as though I've thoroughly repressed the memory). Naturally, I'm rooting hard for a party of Fighter, Black Mage, Thief, and Red Mage, for obvious reasons, and of course I lived out my early-2000s webcomic dreams the moment I got my hands on Dawn of Souls. But I won't cast any votes myself, given the obvious bias. Looking forward to how the LP turns out.
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# ? Dec 25, 2020 09:40 |
Karl the Red Mage has only one dream: a glorious revolution of the downtrodden, the exploited, of the trodden upon. It is a real shame the world he lives in seems to only contain monarchies with serfs that have nothing but scorn and derision for his ideas. Nonetheless, he will not stop preaching the Revolution until the shackles of feudalism have been cast off. Or until he gets run out of town again.
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# ? Dec 25, 2020 10:32 |
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Name: Virginia (Ginny) Job: White Mage Bio: Supportive of others' goals/ambitions in the Team Mom kind of way. Very unimpressed with all these monsters around lately, and would like to speak to their manager
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# ? Dec 25, 2020 12:48 |
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Erik the Red (mage) Erik recently sailed into cornelia from parts unknown. He keeps telling everyone about this hammer his friend has that got lost here and how much he hates those bastard wolf children and wants to fight some sea serpent. Unfortunately, while he was engaged in drinking and partying at the inn a local crew of pirates stole his longboat so the search continues on foot for now.
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# ? Dec 25, 2020 15:34 |
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Thank you for your ideas, everybody! VOTING CLOSED the first update will be up later today. E: I updated the OP with a few new pieces of pertinent information, for your information. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Dec 25, 2020 |
# ? Dec 25, 2020 16:48 |
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1: The Four Warriors This update will be very heavy on exposition and mechanics explanations. But then, it’s a JRPG. What do you expect ? Also, let me know how I can make things more readable, especially whether or not the picture size is adequate. Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls - The Prelude We can switch to a couple different things after this screen, only one of which is the game we’re here to play. One is the Bestiary, where we can go and check stats of various things we killed. The other is some other game. I believe I tried it once and didn’t like it, so we can just ignore it going forward. As I mentioned, this right here is the recommended party for newcomers; a Warrior for absorbing damage, a Thief for dealing it, a White Mage for white magic, and a Black Mage for black magic. Versatile, powerful, balanced, and equally potent at every stage of the game. Much better. Team A Button is go. By the way, the Auto-Name option gives your party randomly selected names from various Final Fantasy characters with thematic similarities to those classes. Also, I know Zolara’s sprite has a bare chest. Just pretend it doesn’t exist, I guess. Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls - Opening Demo (You can’t see it in screenshots, but the clouds are moving and constantly flashing with lightning.) (The ocean is visibly roiling.) I gotta say, I really like this intro. While it isn’t flashy by modern standards, it gets the point across visually as well as textually; the way the land rots, especially, gets across what’s at stake here. In the original NES version… It was just an opening crawl . Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls - Main Theme While the introduction been updated, the tutorial hasn’t, largely because there really isn’t one; the game just throws you down here right outside the first city. But then, this remake came out back when you could count on players reading the manual instead of ignoring it and then complaining the tutorial was too long, so . Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls - Town Love that guitar. The moment we enter town, a guard intercepts us. I have something to show you, sergeant. Guard: Th-those crystals! You must see the king at once! Not even gonna bother with staying incognito, are we? We do have mission, you remember. What, you DON’T think getting the King of Cornelia on our side will hurry things along? He warps us to the king. We raise our crystals, one for each party member. King: It’s just as Lukahn’s prophecy foretold: “When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.” Who? Important scholar at Crescent Lake. Quiet! Chancellor: Your Majesty, we cannot be certain that these are the warriors foretold by the prophecy. 3 to 1 odds he betrays him before *oof* He’s served the King loyally for 30 years, now let me handle this, you sods! King: Yet they stand before us with the crystals. I cannot dismiss this as mere coincidence. And besides, I believe that is Juris of Solom with them. Tell me, how is your mother? The Baroness was in excellent health when last we spoke. King: Wonderful to hear. But we should not tarry. Crystal bearers, there is a task I would ask of you. Will you not rescue my daughter, Sarah? Chancellor: Garland, a knight once in His Majesty’s service, has abducted Princess Sarah. Chancellor: I ask for your aid in the name of His Majesty, the King of Cornelia. Garland has taken refuge in the Chaos Shrine, which lies to our north. Of course, we did attempt to save the Princess ourselves… But Garland is the finest swordsman in the kingdom. We have none who can match him. King: But I could hardly ask you undertake such a quest without the promise of reward. Tell me, warriors, what could this humble land give you in return for your service? We should probably be heading to Pravoka next. Could you give us a boat? King: We shall do you one better. The bridge to the north was destroyed in the course of the last war with Pravoka. By the time you return victorious, it shall be rebuilt and renamed in your honor. You do us a great honor, my liege. King: Of course. With a… Person of such impeccable breeding leading you, I have no doubt that the four of you shall succeed in your quest. Now be off, and I eagerly await word of your success. … By the way, Juris, did you ever plan on mentioning the fact that you were A loving BARON to us? Four, we could have gotten so much free poo poo. Mother and I are… Not exactly on speaking terms. Besides, I’m fifth in line, there’s not enough money to spare to get us properly kitted out. You seem to know Garland. Can you tell us what we’re in for? Yes, unfortunately. He is… His Majesty wasn’t joking about him being Cornelia’s finest swordsman. Fortunately, the man is almost certainly operating alone and just holding Sarah for ransom; if he had soldiers with him the king would treat this like civil war, and if he thought her life was actually in danger he would’ve just drowned the Chaos Shrine in the kingdom’s best warriors. No one is THAT good. He was also always an anxious sort, the type of person who trains obsessively because they’re trying to prove something to themselves, so if he’s done something this dramatic, he’s likely quite stressed and off his game. Unfortunately, we will have to go up against the single strongest warrior in the single strongest kingdom in the Circle Sea or the King will probably hunt us down and kill us for dereliction of duty and/or wasting his time. Hooray! I am just… So glad the king has offered us all the support you promised us he would. We’re probably going to have to take down things even more terrifying than a particularly brilliant knight in the future, you know. Think of it this way, we’re starting out strong ! Cornelia is about as generic an RPG town as you could hope to find… … Though it does have some interesting inhabitants. We have the standard allotment of shops (rapiers for everybody!), most of which are unremarkable, but we do have a couple that deserve special mention: Most RPGs have you learned spells as you level up, whether along a fixed progression or through some kind of perk or allotment system. Dungeons and Dragons, however (at least in most versions), organizes its spells into spell levels: every spell is ranked according to how powerful it is, each rank becomes available in order as characters progress, and he you can only use a certain number of spells from each rank between rest periods. The original version was a lot closer to that, but this remake uses a hybrid system. Each character has three spells they can learn per rank; you buy them as shops and can switch them in and out as you wish (as long as you can pay for), but you can only have three available in combat per rank at a time and a mana pool to cast them all from. One of Team A Button’s greatest weaknesses is that of our party, up until well into the late game, only Juris will be able to use any magic. Which isn’t awful, since he’s no great shakes in melee combat. Speaking of which! If you’re reading this thread, you probably already know the basics, but it’s worth going over here. Fight uses weapons, Magic uses magic, Items uses items, and Flee uses your own two feet. The big outlier here is Equip. See, this game has a whole complicated subsystem where pieces of equipment can also be used as items in order to cast spells; for a party like this, once we’ve built up enough of a treasure chest in the late game, we’ll be relying heavily on those items for healing during boss battles. Final Fantasy I also has melee attacks land multiple hits, with the number of hits a vital factor in how much damage they do. Monks, for example, have only modestly powerful individual attacks, but they can land up to twice as many hits per attack as most other classes, which makes them kind of terrifying. In fact, right now Zolara is our most reliable damage dealer, followed by Muster, then Bell. Juris, for all his ability to use armor and weapons, is still very much a mage; while he can deal 2 to 3 times as much damage as both other kinds of mages in combat, that’s still less than half of what Muster or Zolara can dish out on the regular. Such is the price of being able to heal in combat . But that’s a price we’ll have to pay another day. I couldn’t find the Welcome to Corneria guy, if someone could tell me where he is or what happened to him I’ll visit him next update. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Dec 26, 2020 |
# ? Dec 26, 2020 03:50 |
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Not to be rude (for all I know you decided to change the name slightly) but it's actually Jusis. Off to a great start, though!
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 03:59 |
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I miss the old dancer sprite, who just seems to hop around on one leg with her other one thrust out in front of her Well not so much Arylon here but the one later who screams about how much good and fun it is to have legs fellow human
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 04:06 |
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Sorry if this sounds rather rude, but how come most pictures are blurry while some are not? Personally, I think a pixel art game like this would look better if none of the pictures were blurry. Juris/Jusis is the kind of hapless character I can imagine being voiced by Liam O'Brien. I'm excited to see what hijinks the characters get up to next.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 06:02 |
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Ah yes a classic of the genre. Even though this will not be the first time i've seen this lp i'll watch it anyway.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 06:32 |
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Having played the original, I can't help but think it had a cooler translation. "Temple of Fiends" and "Imp" vs "Chaos Shrine" & "Goblin".
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 07:26 |
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No White Mage, huh? Chaos is going to be a bummer. He's a very sudden difficulty spike in an otherwise easy game
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 07:32 |
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:Not to be rude (for all I know you decided to change the name slightly) but it's actually Jusis. Yep, renamed him. Jusis, the software can’t handle, but Juris is one letter from Jurist and it can handle that just fine. Also, I’ve never played that game so . HisouTenshi posted:Sorry if this sounds rather rude, but how come most pictures are blurry while some It’s not rude, it’s a legitimate question... I think, because I can’t reproduce the issue on my laptop or my phone. They look just about the same on my end, and in fact that’s the blurriest of the lot on my screen. The emulator I’m using captures images in 240x160 and I haven’t figured out how to change that, so these images are blown up three time to make them visible - and they aren’t exactly crisp to start with. That’s probably the root of the issue, but... Are the images an issue for anyone else? Fionordequester posted:No White Mage, huh? Not if you’ve beaten the optional dungeons
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 09:22 |
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240x160 is the resolution of the game so no surprise that's what the emulator gives you. It's expected you need to scale them up, the "blur" (it's not technically a blur) comes because you're doing so using some sort of filter. If you want keep the pixels you need to avoid interpolating filters that try to guess at the colors between pixels when you scale up: the filters that do that are called things like bilinear, bicubic, Hermite, Mitchell, Lanczos, etc depending on the exact one. The "pixel-preserving" option will typically be called nearest neighbor or point. In Irfanview specifically this is a separate option called "resize" instead of "resample". Comparison, your 3x upscale vs a point-sampled 3x upscale: I just grabbed the source for the nearest neighbor image from mobygames, hence different textbox color.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 10:04 |
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Xerophyte posted:240x160 is the resolution of the game so no surprise that's what the emulator gives you. It's expected you need to scale them up, the "blur" (it's not technically a blur) comes because you're doing so using some sort of filter. I’ve just been resizing it in Paint . I’ll look into how this works there and (likely) finding something better and using that.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 12:51 |
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Falconier111 posted:I’ve just been resizing it in Paint . I’ll look into how this works there and (likely) finding something better and using that. irfanview has batch-processing capabilities.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 13:23 |
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Aerdan posted:irfanview has batch-processing capabilities. You learn something new every day
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 16:14 |
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So fun fact about the original nes game: The king's support doesnt exist. Your party enters the game naked with only their fists as weapons. If you dont immediately visit town you can game over on your first encounter pretty easily.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 17:51 |
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Falconier111 posted:Yep, renamed him. Jusis, the software can’t handle, but Juris is one letter from Jurist and it can handle that just fine. Also, I’ve never played that game so . Fair enough. It's always a delight to be chosen FoolyCharged posted:So fun fact about the original nes game: I'd love a remake that includes an easter egg of the team showing up to Garland naked as the day they were born and he's just so shocked he sits there as he's beaten to death
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 19:26 |
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:I'd love a remake that includes an easter egg of the team showing up to Garland naked as the day they were born and he's just so shocked he sits there as he's beaten to death A party of monks could probably pull that off.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 22:50 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 19:05 |
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DGM_2 posted:A party of monks could probably pull that off. I'm not sure any of us is up for that kind of monk-y business.
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# ? Dec 26, 2020 23:58 |