I made a post about my favorite Visual Novel, Kira Kira, for the class two years ago when I took it. I wanted to make a new post to highlight it for anyone who has any interest in Visual Novels at all, or for those who still are uncertain about the impact and meaning they can have as a story.
The only thing I can really say about this post, is that the impacts and impressions I stated in this post two years ago is only more true now for me as time has passed.
Kira Kira Post
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo Setup
Next, Download Daemons Tools Lite Free License.
You will also need an unzip tool to unzip the game files
from my Mega link. You’ll most likely have one already, but if you do not I
recommend 7zip.
These are the downloads you will need. Next, before doing
any more setup, you need to switch your Operating System’s Locale from English
to Japanese.
A good friend of mine, who also took the previous class,
made a document for setting up Visual Novels that have complicated
instructions. This is a link to this document. The setup
instructions are at the very end of the document. This will go over System
Locale, Japanese Keyboard, Installing and Using Daemon Tools Lite, and how to
get the game running. Please note that he does not use Sharin no Kuni, Himawari
no Shoujo in his example, but all of the same things apply.
Now you can play Sharin no Kuni by double clicking
syarin.exe.
If you get an error upon loading the game, or if anything is
confusing,
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Discord
Hello everyone! We will be using a chat client called Discord for our class within the world of FFXIV:ARR.
Here is the link to the Discord chat channel: https://discord.gg/0b18kIBPE1fb7KJM
Upon clicking this link, you should be prompted to create an account. I'm uncertain if it lets you in for temporary sessions, but I recommend making an account all the same.
Once you have created an account and have joined our Discord Guild Hall, there's a few ways you can access and use this during our adventures.
You can use it in a browser of your choice, you can download a client for it (the prompt for this will be at the top when you log into the browser), and there's also a mobile app.
Once your in, there's one more thing you need to do. You need to setup your settings for how you will be talking. If you are on a browser or the desktop client, this is in the bottom left corner next to your name.
For our Guild Hall, I have enabled forced Push to Talk for all of our Raid channels. This means that unless you are actively holding down a key on your keyboard, you will be unable to talk in the Raid channels. For assistance with setting up this and your headset/microphone in general, feel free to reach our to me or a Guru.
Full list of permissions:
Raid channels: Push to Talk
Guild Hall: Voice Activity
AFK: Talking Disabled
#guild-hall: Messages and links are allowed, but files and text to speech are disabled.
Here is the link to the Discord chat channel: https://discord.gg/0b18kIBPE1fb7KJM
Upon clicking this link, you should be prompted to create an account. I'm uncertain if it lets you in for temporary sessions, but I recommend making an account all the same.
Once you have created an account and have joined our Discord Guild Hall, there's a few ways you can access and use this during our adventures.
You can use it in a browser of your choice, you can download a client for it (the prompt for this will be at the top when you log into the browser), and there's also a mobile app.
Once your in, there's one more thing you need to do. You need to setup your settings for how you will be talking. If you are on a browser or the desktop client, this is in the bottom left corner next to your name.
For our Guild Hall, I have enabled forced Push to Talk for all of our Raid channels. This means that unless you are actively holding down a key on your keyboard, you will be unable to talk in the Raid channels. For assistance with setting up this and your headset/microphone in general, feel free to reach our to me or a Guru.
Full list of permissions:
Raid channels: Push to Talk
Guild Hall: Voice Activity
AFK: Talking Disabled
#guild-hall: Messages and links are allowed, but files and text to speech are disabled.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Garin's Quest Stack
Garin’s Stack
Theme: New Perspectives
For all of the prompts below, I have merely recommended
ideas on good topics for the responses. You are free to use as many or little
of them as you wish. For any details. or if you want to participate in these
quests and can't afford to buy the games, you can message me on Blogspot,
Facebook, or by email. Upon completion, please inform me so I can review your
response so I can inform Shannon.
Journey to a New Evoland (25XP)
Complete Evoland, a journey through the history of JRPGs. Is
there anything you learned about the history of JRPGs from this game? Can you
pick out where in the history timeline the RPG you are playing for class fits
in? Do you think this game accurately portrayed the history of the JRPG (if
familiar with them)?
A Planetary View (25XP)
Complete planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~. What
are your thoughts on the Visual Novel as a form of media? Do you find it to
have its merit? Would you read more of them? What are your thoughts on the
story? This Visual Novel is known as a nakige, or a game that makes you cry.
What are your thoughts on this, and was it accurate?
The Stanley Perspective (25XP)
Play The Stanley Parable, though full completion is not
necessary. When writing your response, consider how what you experienced
applied to your D&D sessions. If you were a player, what new perspectives
does this give you for your D&D session. If you have experience as a DM,
how accurate does this game represent this role?
Achievement: A Whole New World (25XP)
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Overview of the Class
Hello everyone, for one last time.
Haven just taken the class survey, I figured I might as well give some opinions here as well. Especially since I am out of ideas.
Overall, I felt that this class was excellent. Simply put.
Whether you are in very familiar territory or unknown territory when this class begins, there is something for everyone to learn (some more than others though, obviously). There is no reason to feel pressured or forced because everything in the class is up to the students to participate or not (except for showing up and the weekly readings). The class covers both mediums very well and thoroughly; Shannon picked some very nice texts for us to read (although I hated Maus and Gee, though Gee was mainly because of how the author wrote). I legitimately have nothing about which to complain aside from what I mentioned in the parentheses above. Speaking of which....
The strictly enforced weekly reading where there was no choice in what we read (aside from Watchmen/V for Vendetta) was, to me, undoubtedly the worst part of this class. The entire class is setup to be like a game and offer choices and allow the students to make their own pathway through the class in order to get a grade. However, there was no option for the readings (aside from how to 'respond' to them). I feel like this is a huge negative because, while it is the only non-choice in the class, the fact that a non-choice exists in a choice based class makes it this huge negative that really stands out when compared to all other class material. Admittedly, the readings act as the 'main story-line' so to speak, so it makes sense. However, in practice, I feel it does hurt the class. This is an even bigger problem when you consider that the texts are what facilitate all the critical thinking and analyzing in the class, which means they are legitimately required.
However, that is where my complaints end. I fully support everything else the class had to offer. It was a very enjoyable experience.
Finally, I feel that this class was more of a 'happy gathering' or even a 'family' that just another class. The fact that it is over is considerably depressing. I know I will miss spending time with the people in this class, even if there were some I barely knew.
Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go silently cry in a corner.
Haven just taken the class survey, I figured I might as well give some opinions here as well. Especially since I am out of ideas.
Overall, I felt that this class was excellent. Simply put.
Whether you are in very familiar territory or unknown territory when this class begins, there is something for everyone to learn (some more than others though, obviously). There is no reason to feel pressured or forced because everything in the class is up to the students to participate or not (except for showing up and the weekly readings). The class covers both mediums very well and thoroughly; Shannon picked some very nice texts for us to read (although I hated Maus and Gee, though Gee was mainly because of how the author wrote). I legitimately have nothing about which to complain aside from what I mentioned in the parentheses above. Speaking of which....
The strictly enforced weekly reading where there was no choice in what we read (aside from Watchmen/V for Vendetta) was, to me, undoubtedly the worst part of this class. The entire class is setup to be like a game and offer choices and allow the students to make their own pathway through the class in order to get a grade. However, there was no option for the readings (aside from how to 'respond' to them). I feel like this is a huge negative because, while it is the only non-choice in the class, the fact that a non-choice exists in a choice based class makes it this huge negative that really stands out when compared to all other class material. Admittedly, the readings act as the 'main story-line' so to speak, so it makes sense. However, in practice, I feel it does hurt the class. This is an even bigger problem when you consider that the texts are what facilitate all the critical thinking and analyzing in the class, which means they are legitimately required.
However, that is where my complaints end. I fully support everything else the class had to offer. It was a very enjoyable experience.
Finally, I feel that this class was more of a 'happy gathering' or even a 'family' that just another class. The fact that it is over is considerably depressing. I know I will miss spending time with the people in this class, even if there were some I barely knew.
Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go silently cry in a corner.
*THE END*
Monday, April 29, 2013
Tabletop Games
There are currently a lot of tabletop games available for play via the various quests and general classroom use, so I figured I would write about the ones I have played (which I believe is all of them).
Battletech: I have not played this one for years and I did not have the opportunity to play it too much. However, my impression of it was that, while fun, it would not stay that way for long. To me, it felt like there was a very obvious optimal build to use for your mechs, and at that point it was all about positioning and luck on the dice rolls. To me there was not quite enough openness to it and I felt that took away from it.
Pathfinder: I have not actually played this particular variant before, but I have years of experience with D&D 3.5. I absolutely love how open and utterly unrepeatable the experiences in this game are. Because the story-line somewhat alters how your character develops (if you have a good DM, anyway) any two characters cannot be the same. Of course, you can get two characters to be quite close to one another through classes, feats, etc. More than anything, though, is that I love how anything can happen since there is no board and it is purely imaginative. I have not had the chance to play D&D for about 2 years now, but I still love it.
Arkham Horror: I actually got introduced to this game very recently (after the class began) but before Jon offered it for a quest. Right from the beginning, I felt that the game was terribly easy. As long as people are not stupid, it is really hard to lose at this game (unless you get Cthulhu as your boss and are not prepared enough). I have been told that the expansions help this problem out a lot and as a result I really want to give it a try. But until then, I am unimpressed by this game.
Twilight Emperium: I have only had the chance to play this game once (and we did not even finish) but I enjoyed how expansive it was. I particularly enjoy game boards that are player created per session. It makes the experience much better versus other static game boards. There is a lot to be had in this game though, making it particularly overwhelming on one's first play. I really want to give this game another go now that I am more versed in its objectives. Despite that, I still enjoyed this game.
Settlers of Catan: I just had the chance to play this last class and I must say this game is awesome. It also has a game board that is created per session and is not static, which is an immediate plus for me. It is quite simple in nature, so there is not a lot of thinking to be had. Apparently the expansions make it far more rich in diversity though, so I really want to try those. Only played it once, but I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I especially want to play again now that I know the rules thoroughly.
That is my take on the currently offered games via the class. I do not believe there are any more games than these that have been offered via the class. If there have, I am not sure I have played them anyway.
Battletech: I have not played this one for years and I did not have the opportunity to play it too much. However, my impression of it was that, while fun, it would not stay that way for long. To me, it felt like there was a very obvious optimal build to use for your mechs, and at that point it was all about positioning and luck on the dice rolls. To me there was not quite enough openness to it and I felt that took away from it.
Pathfinder: I have not actually played this particular variant before, but I have years of experience with D&D 3.5. I absolutely love how open and utterly unrepeatable the experiences in this game are. Because the story-line somewhat alters how your character develops (if you have a good DM, anyway) any two characters cannot be the same. Of course, you can get two characters to be quite close to one another through classes, feats, etc. More than anything, though, is that I love how anything can happen since there is no board and it is purely imaginative. I have not had the chance to play D&D for about 2 years now, but I still love it.
Arkham Horror: I actually got introduced to this game very recently (after the class began) but before Jon offered it for a quest. Right from the beginning, I felt that the game was terribly easy. As long as people are not stupid, it is really hard to lose at this game (unless you get Cthulhu as your boss and are not prepared enough). I have been told that the expansions help this problem out a lot and as a result I really want to give it a try. But until then, I am unimpressed by this game.
Twilight Emperium: I have only had the chance to play this game once (and we did not even finish) but I enjoyed how expansive it was. I particularly enjoy game boards that are player created per session. It makes the experience much better versus other static game boards. There is a lot to be had in this game though, making it particularly overwhelming on one's first play. I really want to give this game another go now that I am more versed in its objectives. Despite that, I still enjoyed this game.
Settlers of Catan: I just had the chance to play this last class and I must say this game is awesome. It also has a game board that is created per session and is not static, which is an immediate plus for me. It is quite simple in nature, so there is not a lot of thinking to be had. Apparently the expansions make it far more rich in diversity though, so I really want to try those. Only played it once, but I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I especially want to play again now that I know the rules thoroughly.
That is my take on the currently offered games via the class. I do not believe there are any more games than these that have been offered via the class. If there have, I am not sure I have played them anyway.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
My Take on World of Warcraft
Since we had to play World of Warcraft for class this week, I thought it would be fitting that I did this week's blog post on my opinions of the game.
Many years ago I tried WoW before. And I played for an entire month before quitting, as I could not find it within myself to justify paying the monthly fee for the game (the first month came free with the battlechest). That being said, I rather enjoyed my time that I spent on the game. I just did not like it enough to justify the continual spend of money on it.
Flash-forward to present day when we had to play it for class these past 2 weeks. My verdict on the game is now as follows: it is an abomination. I honestly have not a clue how I ever stomached this game before. It is infinitely worse than what I remembered from years ago.
Since playing WoW I have played Ragnarok Online for 3 months (was not a terribly big fan of it either, thus why I did not stick with it for long) and Tera for over a year now, which I still play currently. Playing these, in my opinion, superior MMOs, has obviously made me realize that WoW is even worse than I originally thought. In all honesty, I find that remarkable.
The combat is not actually all that terrible (though I have been spoiled by Tera's Real Action Combat System). In fact, I was rather floored with how unique some of the bosses were when we played this week. A fair amount of them had more than just the hack and slash element to them. That being said, most of them died rather quickly, which was terribly disappointing. Going along with combat, I thought it was not very user friendly either. The bosses tended to move around quite a bit. This means that so was your party. This made it rather complicated to track where all of your members were.
Particularly on the one boss my group faced (some goblin bomber, he was the second boss of one of the dungeons), who hopped on your party members' faces while other goblins came in and started attacking. You had to either be really focused and attentive as a group and stick together and make sure to keep on top of him, or you ended up running around like a bunch of headless chickens because it was not exactly intuitive what you had to do. Naturally, my group did the latter because we did not expect it. It felt so clunky and terrible and I thought it was highly stupid despite the rather unique mechanic used by the boss that I thought was interesting and enjoyed somewhat strictly because of its uniqueness.
All this being said, the reason I find this method of combat to be clunky and not user friendly is because of how much bosses moved. As a tank, having to move to the boss constantly instead of maintaining aggro is a burden, not to mention that if you lose aggro he could run across the entire room after one of your members, and you have to run the entire way over there. As a dps, having to re-position yourself constantly instead of focusing on dps is a burden. As a healer, this is a nightmare. With all your members constantly moving, not to mention on top of one another constantly, it becomes nigh impossible to get your job done right. It becomes hard to tell who needs healing and who is fine, not to mention it becomes hard to actually heal them with everyone moving around on top of one another, making clicking them nigh impossible to provide the necessary healing. Essentially, I think the combat is a tad too fast-moving.
Another gripe about the combat, I hate how when you are trying to level and you accidentally aggro two enemies, you better start running immediately or else you are going to die. You are leveling a battle-hardened warrior who is going to try and save the world, and yet you cannot take on two merfolk fish people at the same time? I am sorry, but what the fuck. That is retarded. It was infuriating the first time, and it was infuriating the 100th time. Especially considering it is nigh impossible to 100% avoid it.
One other thing that was really frustrating was that icons only function on your mini-map, and nothing is displayed on your world map besides area names and quest markers. It becomes much harder to find NPCs, such as equipment repair NPCs, and other tools affiliated with the icon system.
Not so much a gripe, but I found the death system to be very weird. Why do I have to run all the way back to my dead body? Why do I not just resurrect like in every other MMO forever? Granted, it allows you to easily get back to where you were, without penalty, to continue questing That is why this is not a gripe. I just did not get it. And even though it was for your convenience, I found it annoying every time. Why? Because you were required to. If you did not, you were not doing anything because you did not have an actual body anymore. Making your users have to do something that they are not naturally willing to do: bad.
Anyway, that is what I have to say about WoW. Needless to say, I will never be playing this game again. I am going to continue to enjoy Tera and the FFXIV:ARR Beta.
Many years ago I tried WoW before. And I played for an entire month before quitting, as I could not find it within myself to justify paying the monthly fee for the game (the first month came free with the battlechest). That being said, I rather enjoyed my time that I spent on the game. I just did not like it enough to justify the continual spend of money on it.
Flash-forward to present day when we had to play it for class these past 2 weeks. My verdict on the game is now as follows: it is an abomination. I honestly have not a clue how I ever stomached this game before. It is infinitely worse than what I remembered from years ago.
Since playing WoW I have played Ragnarok Online for 3 months (was not a terribly big fan of it either, thus why I did not stick with it for long) and Tera for over a year now, which I still play currently. Playing these, in my opinion, superior MMOs, has obviously made me realize that WoW is even worse than I originally thought. In all honesty, I find that remarkable.
The combat is not actually all that terrible (though I have been spoiled by Tera's Real Action Combat System). In fact, I was rather floored with how unique some of the bosses were when we played this week. A fair amount of them had more than just the hack and slash element to them. That being said, most of them died rather quickly, which was terribly disappointing. Going along with combat, I thought it was not very user friendly either. The bosses tended to move around quite a bit. This means that so was your party. This made it rather complicated to track where all of your members were.
Particularly on the one boss my group faced (some goblin bomber, he was the second boss of one of the dungeons), who hopped on your party members' faces while other goblins came in and started attacking. You had to either be really focused and attentive as a group and stick together and make sure to keep on top of him, or you ended up running around like a bunch of headless chickens because it was not exactly intuitive what you had to do. Naturally, my group did the latter because we did not expect it. It felt so clunky and terrible and I thought it was highly stupid despite the rather unique mechanic used by the boss that I thought was interesting and enjoyed somewhat strictly because of its uniqueness.
All this being said, the reason I find this method of combat to be clunky and not user friendly is because of how much bosses moved. As a tank, having to move to the boss constantly instead of maintaining aggro is a burden, not to mention that if you lose aggro he could run across the entire room after one of your members, and you have to run the entire way over there. As a dps, having to re-position yourself constantly instead of focusing on dps is a burden. As a healer, this is a nightmare. With all your members constantly moving, not to mention on top of one another constantly, it becomes nigh impossible to get your job done right. It becomes hard to tell who needs healing and who is fine, not to mention it becomes hard to actually heal them with everyone moving around on top of one another, making clicking them nigh impossible to provide the necessary healing. Essentially, I think the combat is a tad too fast-moving.
Another gripe about the combat, I hate how when you are trying to level and you accidentally aggro two enemies, you better start running immediately or else you are going to die. You are leveling a battle-hardened warrior who is going to try and save the world, and yet you cannot take on two merfolk fish people at the same time? I am sorry, but what the fuck. That is retarded. It was infuriating the first time, and it was infuriating the 100th time. Especially considering it is nigh impossible to 100% avoid it.
One other thing that was really frustrating was that icons only function on your mini-map, and nothing is displayed on your world map besides area names and quest markers. It becomes much harder to find NPCs, such as equipment repair NPCs, and other tools affiliated with the icon system.
Not so much a gripe, but I found the death system to be very weird. Why do I have to run all the way back to my dead body? Why do I not just resurrect like in every other MMO forever? Granted, it allows you to easily get back to where you were, without penalty, to continue questing That is why this is not a gripe. I just did not get it. And even though it was for your convenience, I found it annoying every time. Why? Because you were required to. If you did not, you were not doing anything because you did not have an actual body anymore. Making your users have to do something that they are not naturally willing to do: bad.
Anyway, that is what I have to say about WoW. Needless to say, I will never be playing this game again. I am going to continue to enjoy Tera and the FFXIV:ARR Beta.
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