Funnily enough, most of the day was me helping WhiteMage clean up stuff and doing last-minute stuff for her. Not exactly fun, as I was hoping not to be straining my arms so early. =_=

When we actually did take off, we had fun navigating through downtown LA. Sticking to the driving directions probably saved us, as we were oriented towards the parking lots. Yay~.

The Los Angeles Convention Center is definitely worthy of AX. A huge, clean, modern monstrosity of a structure. Air-conditioned with wide corridors, grand entranceways, and an easy to follow format. Far nicer than Long Beach. I didn’t see much in the way of LACC and Nokia theater personnel, though, so I’m still wary actual operating experiences. But, it honestly can’t be much worse than last year.

Registration was a breeze. Ten to fifteen minutes of waiting or so, followed by a five second swap of the barcode ID and confirmation. Wow, I wish they had this system all the other years, as well.

Being a snap-happy fella’, I took some random pictures.

I had hurt my foot on the previous day, and was worried that it would be a hinderance, but it didn’t seem like a problem while walking around. There wasn’t much of a rush, as the convention center was mostly empty. I caught some video of a random Melty Blood match going on in the arcade, though.

There was a dance, too, but there was a grand total of 20 or so people. Yeah… that’s really enticing.

After walking around a bit more and finding out where the Nokia Theatre was, WM and I left to do some errands, pick up people, and actually eat dinner. Not really that much for today.

NoodleKnight evidently wanted to meet at the convention center, but due to some massive miscommunication problems over the phone, we ended up missing each other. Mainly, I didn’t even know he was going to even come to the convention center. =_=

Well, there’s always today. Woo. Time to print up my schedule plan for today.

Anime Expo 2008, Day 0: Random Melty Blood Match

Seems like a bunch of projects and other things in my life are hitting critical points. Time to rant away…

• A+ and Network+ Certification programs coming to an end in a little more than a week. I get to take tests afterwards. >_>
• The BL Game Project (semi-renamed, unofficially, to Project Nekohime) is hitting a point where things the battle code might be put into production. Hopefully, I can get Raf, Noodle, and JSeabolt to join in, and CB if he’s still around. >_>
• Planning on joining a role-playing game. Though I really don’t have too much time to be doing stuff like this. >_>
• The Tsukihime Translation Project has been in normal playtesting phase, which takes a lot of time to go through, and the deadline is fast approaching. >_>
• Classes start up in the beginning of September. I need to get my Japanese up to speed again. >_>
• I made a slight promise to have Project Neco-Arc would be up within a month. Well, that month has now transformed into a little more than a week. >_>
• Project W has been trying to be restarted for a while. Sort of waiting on me. >_>

I’m a beta tester for the Tsukihime Translation Project (and no, you’re never going to get a leak from me), and one of my first assignments was to do a final, penultimate proofing of several script files. Now, serious proofing isn’t something to be taken lightly, especially when you figure that thousands of people are going to be reading this stuff.

Anyways, I’m trudging away at the script files, trying to get them done as expediently as possible. One enthusiastic member of the BL Game Project is… well, I’m not too sure how to describe it. My best, honest guess is that he’s developing a sort of power complex and isn’t really approaching members in a very diplomatic or even cordial fashion.

Now, I think this person is a good person and a hard worker, but sometimes certain people aren’t at their best in certain positions because of the way they do things. I told him that he needed to stop being a pest, since people have lives outside of the BL Project. Too, the situation is more complex than that.

• Person A was being yelled at.
• A was waiting on B to finish.
• B has been thinking of the problem at hand.
• B has also been busy with at least two other aspects of the BL Project.
• B has a real-life project that he’s working on, which ostensibly would have a strict time schedule.

One of the major headaches I’ve had to deal with (and will have to continue to deal with) is when people’s egos become bloated via their character in the game. It’s annoying when you start getting some really imbalanced or munchkinized player characters. Here’s some notable issues that came up.

• One person wanted/wants to be an incredibly smart and talented spellcaster and fighter.
• One person was a spellcaster who wants to wield an incredibly destructive sword and have all the necessary skill to use it at it’s fullest extent. And the direct apprentice of a certain TYPE-MOON character.
  • Barring the character just mentioned, they wanted to be a spellcaster that was hideously powerful, and more powerful than their teacher, too.
  • Worse, their view of that TYPE-MOON character is fundamentally flawed, basing it on a flawed adaptation that TYPE-MOON denies ever existed.
  • Even worse, said person is actually pretty dense (has knowledge, but no sense at all), yet wants their character to be very knowledgable and wise, knowing the best thing to do in all situations. Right.
• One person wanted an echelon/support hybrid who wants to become the single most popular and all around useful character in the game.
  • Said person has/is trying to establish himself as a de facto ruler of an entire realm. For no good reason, really. 
  • Said person doesn’t shut up about their character, or their huge entourage.
• One person wants a frontline fighter who wants to deal incredible amounts of damage in a short amount of time without much effort. Their weaknesses are either insubstantial or character-breaking with not much of a median in between.

Yay, I ranted about it. Creating a Character Template will make people want to overpower themselves, as does creating a Skill Template. It’s all ego and self-pleasuring. Unfortunately for me, I can’t really do that myself, since I’m designing the mechanics, trying to balance characters, and trying to serve as a model for how other character sheets.

(You think this story is convoluted? You should see my other stories.)

So, earlier, he had really really wanted a finalized Character Template and Skill Template. Story-wise, the incomplete Character Template was fine, and the Skill Template was really only for battles and such, which were out of his scope. But, that’s what he wanted, and he wouldn’t stop whining unless I make one. So, I stop my proofing work, dig out my notebook, and start creating a skill template. It grows larger and larger. It becomes very detailed and very scary. So I deem that a Skill Encyclopedia Template, and quickly draft up a Skillbook Template for easy viewing. This is over the course of two nights, I think. A short period to draft skill templates for an RPG engine that’s still hasn’t been fully designed, in any case.

It’s all done, and even write down stuff that’s in my notebook on the Wiki. Now, I’m back at the beginning of my story. I don’t want to hear any more “do this,” especially since I create a lot of stuff as well as organize things. I have obligations to help get a Tsukihime translation out as fast as possible, seeing as it was delayed by nearly a year for absolutely STUPID reasons.

So, I get quite irritated when someone tells me to do something, even half-jokingly, when I’ve recently done a lot of stuff related to it and am currently busy doing something far more important. Worse, they have no idea about the full implications about what their asking.

To create the Skill Template, it starts out with the Battle Mechanics. The basic design was drafted a while ago. Next was creating the relationship between Basic Stats and Derived Stats. Level gain, max level, and differing ranks between characters (a mage with low Endurance versus a tank with very high Endurance vs your average hero), and finding elegant but sufficiently detailed numbers. Now we’ve got a basis for Health Points, Tech Points, and Magic Points. Next, I have to dissect possible attacks. Attacks have various costs associated with them, and can have side effects. An attack hits something, and it has certain elemental properties, a certain damage equation, a certain effect that’s applied to their attack, a certain effect that lingers on. And that’s just like, one hit. Granted, a lot of attacks will be one hit, but not all are like that, and a good system should be able to accomodate the complex procedures. These are computers, which can compute things near instantaneously, not pen-and-paper RPGs where simplicity plays a HUGE factor. And “effects” is a whole other story, too.

::yawn:: I’m tired. Maybe I’ll work on Project T some more. A celebration for finishing my main run through my assigned script files for the beta.

One of the things that interest me a lot about programming is worldcrafting. The fellow over at TYPE-MOON, Kinoko Nasu, has held my interest for a long time with his universe based on the power of concept, differences between 魔法 and 魔術, and elaborate backstories. His entire system is complex beyond most people can dream of, and (for the most part) it seems to work.

In any case, one of the little projects I work on is a doujin RPG game loosely based off the Beast’s Lair boards that I frequent. Well, frequented, since I’ve had little time to head over there and browse as of late. Anyways, I’ve become somewhat responsible for creating the general battle mechanics for the game, which I largely based off of classic console RPGs and the Nasuverse itself. Of course, I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into until it was too late.

Though, tiring as it is, it’s actually interesting to dissect how life works and try to emulate it. Mainly, for me at least, it gives me a better sense of appreciation about the laws of order in this world. Especially when trying to program in something like a Reality Marble. Oh god.

I’ve come up with a few theories of how to tackle this, but, with worldcrafting, I always like to do two things: create maintenable code and apply a philosophy to it all, which most of the time involves emulating real-world laws and paradigms. So, with something complicated as a Reality Marble, which can change anything, it becomes sorta’ difficult dissecting things like processes and customs and rituals and smacking someone upside the head.

Hopefully, someday, I can survive this project and actually attempt to create an actual Nasuverse in code. A long, long shot, but who knows. If and when I do, I’ll dedicate it to EvoSpace for ultimately getting me into this entire mess, and to Arai for showing me the horrificly splendid details of it all.