Desbreko

[color=#4B0082]Your entry is a bit off, Samedi-Mai; the orange circles don't match up with Sayrin's piece. You should always preview your piece next to the previous one to make sure they match up before posting it. Also, while I'm here, I should let you guys know there may be a bit of a delay in my updating the worm. Files I upload don't seem to actually appear on the site, so until that gets fixed I can't add new segments.[/color]

[quote name='Aceburner']I'm playing [B]Metroid Fusion[/B]. Sure it's old, but it slipped through the cracks on me last time and I'm pretty much addicted. Once I beat this, I'm considering finally picking up Prime again and finishing it.[/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]Fusion kind of slipped between the cracks in a big way I think. I never heard all that much about it even right after its release. The hype of Metroid Prime really overshadowed it since they released on the same day. Still, it's a great game, even if it is way more linear than other Metroids. I especially liked the deeper look into Samus's character, in her interactions with Adam.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]The thing is, pirates regularly crack region coding anyway. In the case of DVD-Videos there's even legal software that does it. It's hardly stopping anyone. As for NTSC/PAL, if someone is stupid enough to import an NTSC game and try to play it on an PAL system/TV (or vice versa), region coding isn't going to help them. They won't be able to play the game properly no matter what in that situation. And if you're importing it's kind of obvious that you're going to miss out on localization. Again, if someone is stupid enough to think they'll get English text in a Japanese import, region coding isn't going to help them. All it does is completely stop them from playing the game instead of letting them muddle through it without being able to understand things. Honestly, I've never heard anything but hate for region coding in the gaming community and press. It seems like everyone universally applauds systems that don't have it.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I haven't seen nearly all the CLAMP anime (and I've read less of the manga) but I've generally liked what I've seen. Cardcaptor Sakura is my favorite and also one of my top animes. I also really enjoyed Angelic Layer; maybe it's because I'm also a gamer, but I loved the concept of the angels. I've also seen Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and Chobits. I didn't think they were as good as CCS and Angelic Layer but they were still fun series.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]The really odd thing is that Game Boys (and the DS too I believe) have always been region free. It's only been the consoles that have been region coded. I assume there must be some reason for this but I just can't find the logic in it.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Ah, region coding. Because buying a game isn't good enough—we must buy it in the time and place the manufacturer chooses. :animesigh I think the Freeloader is pretty awesome but like you mentioned, system updates can screw it over. For reliability the best course would simply be to import a Japanese Wii as well. It's more expensive up front but if you import a lot of games you won't be running the risk of having your Freeloader screwed and ending up with a stack of unplayable games. Or you could go with Freeloader and then import a Wii later should it happen to get blocked by an update.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]It just takes your post count and divides it by the number of days you've been registered. So even a small number of posts after a long stretch of inactivity will show up. For example, you currently have 304 posts and have been registered for approximately 2107 days (I did a rough calculation). 304 / 2107 = .14 (after rounding), which is what currently shows up in your profile, yet even adding just three posts per day for three days gives us 313 / 2110 = .15 (after rounding). Keep it up for another week and you'd get 334 / 2117 = .16 (after rounding). Basically, as long as you're posting more each day than your average, it will continue to increase. Which isn't hard to do when your average is less than one.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Yeah, I get that; I didn't think you were saying Brawl is a bad game or anything. However, your anecdote there says absolutely nothing about the depth of Brawl. It doesn't matter if it's a sequel, it's still a new game and it takes time to learn to play it well no matter how good you are at the previous game. Even if they're similar, fine tuned skills don't transfer so easily between games. Like I said, give people a few months and they'll find plenty of tricks and techniques that give the game more depth. Right now the deciding factor of who wins and loses in Brawl is not so much skill but simply experience with the game and happening to find good techniques/counters first. Tournament rankings for any new game are going to be incredibly volatile in the first few months after release as people learn how things work.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]The game's been out for only a few weeks in Japan and isn't out elsewhere at all yet. Comparing it right now to high end play in SSBM, which consists of many techniques discovered over the course of years, is kind of unreasonable. At least give people a few months to start figuring out tricks and techniques in Brawl before judging how much depth it has. :rolleyes:[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Oh man, I need to get an SD card reader for my PC. Someone's written a [url=http://www.n-sider.com/newsview.php?type=story&storyid=3156][u]program[/u][/url] to extract SSBB screen shots and save them as JPGs. Me and my friends could have all sorts of [strike]perverted[/strike] fun with that.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]OMG, that [i]is[/i] totally awesome. I want it. But ... $60 for only one volume makes the Des sad. :animecry:[/color]

[color=#4B0082]At this point I think I'd just pick up a GHIII bundle instead of buying a separate controller. It's only about $20-$30 more for the bundle than for a controller. :rolleyes: But I probably won't have the money for a while. I should get people together to play my friend's copy of Rock Band again. Its guitar tracks seemed easier; maybe it would provide a gentler learning curve for moving up to hard. And multiplayer really is more fun since you're always trying to show up your friends, heh. [b]Edit:[/b] I haven't been playing as much lately but I beat the game on hard about a week ago. Meanwhile my brother, who plays about twice as much as I do, is on the last tier of songs on expert. And it's confirmed, Harmonix apparently has no clue what a proper learning curve is. The difference between hard and expert on a lot of the songs is stupidly small compared to the difference between medium and hard. I've gotten so I can at least play competently on the first five tiers on hard, getting four or five stars on them. Well, except for Freya; I don't have gigantor hands so I'm just going to have to practice the sliding motion for the green-orange-blue HO/PO sections until I can do it perfectly. It's times like those I really wish the fret buttons were flat like on the Rock Band guitars instead of raised. I've gotten a lot better at nailing longer strings of HO/PO's though, and sliding in the middle of them. A big part of that, I found, was simply recognizing when the best times to slide within a series of notes were. Next I need to get so I don't suck at strumming up and down for fast sections.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Ah yes, [url=http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19][u]Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)[/u][/url]. My favorite Penny Arcade strip ever. (Contains swearing by the way.) Myself, I've been lucky enough to get almost entirely positive or at least neutral comments on my YouTube videos. And I didn't even bother responding to the few flames/trolls I've gotten since I knew others would do it for me. :p My experiences with rudeness has mainly come from online games and also through forums. I'm primarily a lurker when it comes to forums, though, so if I encounter an idiot I can just not read his posts and call it good. But in games, it's harder to ignore the idiot warrior who runs headlong into fifty monsters and dies, then proceeds to scream at me for not healing enough. And this is why I've stopped playing with random people in Guild Wars; me and a team of computer controlled party members is usually more competent anyway. I guess that kind of answered the second question as well, since I tend to just avoid rude people. I don't let them get to me and the most they generally warrant is a sarcastic jab at their intelligence before I leave. And yes, I have been intentionally rude to people online at times. Again, usually in a sarcastic way to show how much of a douche they themselves are being. That's about the only time I find it justified, when people just can't take a hint any other way besides experiencing the same thing themselves. Though it takes good judgment to tell when this might help and when it will only make things worse. As for why some people are so rude online, I think that Penny Arcade strip nails one of the big points. The other one I've noticed that's especially prevalent is the almighty epeen. A lot of people?you know, people who take internets [i]seriously[/i]?love putting others down to make themselves feel better about themselves.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Hmm. I've never really done much with organizing stuff like this. I usually prefer more laid back gatherings where people just get together and play for fun. But I might join in once I get some experience with the game since I'll also be buying it at launch.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I just finished watching Sketchbook ~full color'S~ and, looking back, the show really grew on me as it progressed. The last few episodes were especially great. The bit in ep11 where Natsumi was drinking her juice, and then Kuga's comment at the end of the scene (you'd have to see it...), hit something just right and I just had to stop and laugh for about a full minute before I could continue watching. There's a lot of great little moments sprinkled all through the show, ranging from funny, odd, downright weird, and serene. And, as if there weren't enough parallels to Aria already, we get [url=http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sketchbookariawo5.jpg][u]this[/u][/url] at the very end of the last episode. Sketchbook handing off the next season to Aria the Origination, as it were, I suppose. [b]Edit:[/b] I started reading Yotsubato! (aka Yotsuba&!) today, which is a manga by Azuma Kiyohiko, who also made the Azumanga Daioh manga. So far it resembles Azumanga Daioh a lot in its styles of art and humor, though it has an even younger main character in Yotsuba, a little five-year-old girl. She's cute (she looks almost like a younger Chiyo) but the focus is on her actions and personality, which really make the manga what it is. It's done a good job of capturing that sense of wonder and discovery that young children have when encountering new things and Yotsuba is very outspoken, which makes it even more fun. I've only read the first five chapters so far but I had to take breaks every one or two because I would laugh too much and it would begin to hurt.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I've also been hearing that ep7 is DVD only. Which is really annoying because it'll probably be a while before the DVDs are out. They should add [i]extra[/i] episodes for the DVDs, not rip one out of the middle of a series that's already only thirteen episodes long. :animesigh[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Nah, I'd take Samus for something like that. She's a really interesting character with tons of cool abilities, and on the other hand I barely know anything about Marth's personality. That [i]would[/i] make a pretty hilarious RPG though.[/color]

[quote name='ZeitGeist'][kuja] So do you put the whole embed code inside the tags, or do you just use the direct url? 'Tis a nifty little player. :D[/kuja][/QUOTE][quote name='Desbreko'][color=#4B0082]Instructions for using it are on the [url=http://www.otakuboards.com/misc.php?do=bbcode][u]vB Code List[/u][/url] page as always.[/color][/QUOTE][color=#4B0082]You put the video ID from the video's URL between the tags, as shown on the vB Code List page I linked to there. Because the embed code for inserting a video links directly to the video itself, copying the URL from a video's web page on youtube.com wouldn't work. I also added a button on the message editor for automatically inserting the tags, as well as a little Help button that links to the vB Code List page so people can see how to use all the different tags available.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]For PMs to show up on the user cp page they have to be unread. And since most people go straight to the PM page when they get a new one, they never see them listed on the user cp page. For an infraction to show up you'd have to have been given one by a mod. Which for you is pretty unlikely.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]That's just the user cp home page that it takes you to. It lists new PMs, new infractions, subscribed forums, subscribed threads with new replies, and would also list user reputation changes if we had that feature enabled. The actual List Subscriptions page for subscribed threads is just for managing your subscriptions, it doesn't display the same info as the main user cp page. And I might be able to make it give a confirmation notice at the top of the page upon successfully changing something. But it would be way more trouble than it would be worth since it would require editing multiple templates across multiple skins and possibly a few bits of the back end PHP scripts as well.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Mmm, pretty graphics. Great job on the new layout. You know, it just struck me that my niftiness has progressed from, "He's nifty because he's such a great mod/admin," in past years, to, "You're practically inviting violence upon yourself if you can't even recognize how nifty he is." I kinda like it. :catgirl:[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Yay, it's done. Instructions for using it are on the [url=http://www.otakuboards.com/misc.php?do=bbcode][u]vB Code List[/u][/url] page as always. I'm also planning on making a button for it to go with the other post formatting options on reply/edit pages. (And, in fact, I should really get around to adding buttons for other custom tags I've made as well.) Enjoy.[/color] [center][youtube=Introducing theOtaku.com Version Vibrant]jnuUkoC44Qc[/youtube][/center]

[color=#4B0082]Sometimes that's the problem, sometimes it's just that the reply count and last poster info doesn't get updated, and thus the thread doesn't get bumped to the top of the forum when a new reply is made. Either way, it matters because the excuse, "But it's only broken a little," doesn't fly with me and it annoys other members as well. Unfortunately, running the update last poster info utility takes a while and slows down the site in the process so I don't like to run it too often. Next time I'm up in the middle of the night when barely anyone's on I'll run some of the maintenance utilities again. I think the search index might also need to be rebuilt for the newer features to work with posts before the software update.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]A little bit of Des makes [i]everything[/i] better. ;)[/color]

[color=#4B0082]It's possible to make a custom bb tag for embedding YouTube videos in posts, yeah. It would probably be pretty simple too since all I'd have to do is adapt the code the site gives you for embedding a video. I don't think we'd need to add any rules for it though. Embedded videos could be handled pretty much the same as images and we already have a rule against linking to copyrighted materials.[/color]