Messages

496

Gaming Discussion / Re: Can I get your opinion on some wording for my Zelda 3 guide?

« on: July 07, 2008, 06:46:33 AM »

Overall I prefer the second, I'll comment on some of your points though:

2) talking about enemies dropping from "prize packs" before i even explained the structure of a prize pack seemed kinda backward.  prize packs are a key concept, yet their explanation was delayed til the 3rd paragraph.

...

3) explaining the whole structure of prize packs before even mentioning that enemies have prize packs seems kind of dry and inaccessible.  yes, i realize this is an exact inversion of my #2 reason above. :P

Figured I might as well cover both of these as one. I like the prize pack explanation at the top, but it might be a good idea to move the part about enemies having prize packs up farther in the paragraph, like so:

There are seven prize packs in this game (listed below). An enemy who has one of the prize packs assigned to it will, upon defeat, drop an item from the pack, or randomly leave behind nothing.  An enemy who has no prize pack will always drop nothing. Each prize pack has eight prize slots, its own counter (that determines which slot the current prize comes from), and a probability that you'll get any prize at all.  After any enemy drops a prize from a given pack, that pack's counter is incremented to point to its next slot (if it passes the eighth slot, it moves back to the first one).

This keeps the prize pack explanation near the top but mentions that enemies have them first.

thanks for the reply.  this is an appealing middle ground between my versions.  one problem: it "traps" those two sentences in the middle of the 1st paragraph, making it even harder for the 2nd paragraph to reference them without getting all wordy.

in the existing guide, due to how it's arranged, i could just open the 2nd paragraph with "There are several exceptions to this system."  but i can't be that general and use "this system" in the revision because it'll suggest (imho) that the exceptions ignore or override the whole prize pack system, even though some of the exceptions listed still use prize packs.  gar.

497

Gaming Discussion / Re: Can I get your opinion on some wording for my Zelda 3 guide?

« on: July 07, 2008, 06:36:23 AM »

If you wanted to avoid all confusion, I think something like this would work:

An enemy who has one of the prize packs assigned to it will, upon defeat, drop
an item from the pack, or randomly leave behind nothing.  An enemy who has no
prize pack will always drop nothing. There are exceptions to these two rules,
though.

And then begin the explanation of the exceptions with the next paragraph.

Other than that, the revision looks well worded. I'd have no trouble following the intent, but it's not about me.

thanks for the reply.  a good recommendation.  to be sure, do you want the quoted section to stay in the first paragraph, or should it get its own paragraph?

498

Gaming Discussion / Can I get your opinion on some wording for my Zelda 3 guide?

« on: July 07, 2008, 01:53:48 AM »

hi,

i've recently been working on a minor bugfix for Zelda III for SNES.  the Readme borrowed some sentences from Section 3 of my Monster/Attack Stats Guide (available here or on gamefaqs).  in the process of adapting those sentences, i decided that they could be written better.

here's a copy+paste of the original:
http://assassin17.home.comcast.net/z3-opine/section3-1.txt

and here's my revision so far:
http://assassin17.home.comcast.net/z3-opine/section3-2.txt

(note that the large "There are several exceptions paragraph" is unchanged after the 1st sentence, so you don't need to bother reading it all twice.)

The reasons for my revision:
1) "an enemy can drop an item from one of the seven prize packs below" seemed kinda ambiguous, almost suggesting that a given enemy can drop from any of the 7 prize packs.  of course in reality, every enemy has one fixed prize pack (or nothing) assigned to it.
2) talking about enemies dropping from "prize packs" before i even explained the structure of a prize pack seemed kinda backward.  prize packs are a key concept, yet their explanation was delayed til the 3rd paragraph.
3) the second sentence "Even when the enemy ..." strikes me as a tack-on to the first sentence, like an admission that the first sentence was missing information.
4) it didn't specify exactly what a prize pack's counter does, though a monkey could probably figure that out from context (8 slots + a 1 through 8 index = dur).

Doubts on my revision:
1) it's slightly longer.
2) it seems a bit wooden.
3) explaining the whole structure of prize packs before even mentioning that enemies have prize packs seems kind of dry and inaccessible.  yes, i realize this is an exact inversion of my #2 reason above. :P
4) when the second paragraph refers to "the last two sentences", that comes across as stiff/awkward.  maybe i should put a paragraph break before those two sentences?

--------

which version do you prefer?  is something in between better?  any comments and suggestions you have would be much appreciated.  the prize packs themselves are listed in my complete guide, if seeing them helps with your analysis.

thanks

499

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: July 04, 2008, 03:11:10 AM »

the user Arizonan posts a lot of wacky rambling, but i like his reply to ender1601 here:

^I have valid reasons to dislike the remake.
1.Look what happened to ff3&4, how am I guaranteed it will not happen to ff6?
2.Cutesy 3-D midgets and overly colorful graphics spoil the feel to ff6.
3.Do we even need a 4th incarnation?
4.The venerable SNES music shall be spoilt like never before! Listen to ff3!

And besides, most of u are just posers who think its fashionable and cool to prefer retro

Are you typing with your ass? I can tell. Either that or you have the mind of a toddler with Fragile X syndrome eating lead-laced food while having electric shocks administered to the brain.
Go away.

500

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: July 03, 2008, 06:29:11 PM »

FF2us still came out first. Mystic Quest came out after FF5 was out in Japan - and contrary to popular opinion it had nothing to do with us not getting FF5, you can blame FF6 for that.

you sure about that?

FF5 Japan release date = 12/06/92
FF6 Japan release date = 04/02/94
FF6 USA release date = 10/20/94

given it took them ~6.5 months to turn FF6j into FF3us, and there was a 16-month gap between the release of FF5 and FF6 in Japan, they had plenty of time.  they must have procrastinated to Hell and back in deciding whether FF5 should come here.  or they were more dependent on the Japanese branch for translating than i thought, as the US branch shouldn't have been busy with anything in 1993.

if FF6j development could somehow impede FF5 translation, then how did FF5j development not prevent FF2us from being made?

501

General Discussion / Re: Super Duper Stock Market Thread (Part Tres)

« on: July 03, 2008, 06:18:07 PM »

do you mean what stocks to buy, where to learn about trading/investing in general, or what broker to use? :)  if it's the last one, i use Scottrade, as they're $7 per trade, with no goofy minimums or maintenance fees.

502

General Discussion / Re: No internet for a week or so.

« on: June 29, 2008, 03:40:28 PM »

In other news, JCE3000GT is a stupid-head, and I'll be deleting this post in 166 hours and 58 minutes. ;)

Good luck with the move.

503

Gaming Discussion / Re: This is odd...

« on: June 24, 2008, 06:27:09 PM »

get Lavasoft Ad-Aware, run it, and see what happens.

504

Gaming Discussion / Re: Hey assassin...

« on: June 23, 2008, 06:54:26 PM »

haha, thanks.  i saw that a couple hours ago (via http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=588645&topic=43842811), and was very proud to see my patch mentioned. :)  all-in-all, a cool and informative interview.

505

General Discussion / Re: Hooray failing hardware!

« on: June 22, 2008, 04:45:24 PM »

amen!  but what irks me more than Adobe PDF is the proliferation of Adobe Flash.

506

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: June 20, 2008, 01:22:45 PM »

- Hopefully, he won't take it personally.

Well, you aren't Xkeeper, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

what happened with them?  i recognize the name "Xkeeper" from lurking on Acmlm; he was a mod, right?

Besides, you've earned enough credibility from a couple other members so it may be offset. In a related matter, MathOnNapkins really likes your LttP documents.

cool!  he's got some great documents, too.

--Edit--
My link originally went to a post by somebody named "Disch-" which has now been deleted. I really wish I would've saved it.

are you talking about the post where "Disch-" remarks how a previous post of his was deleted without warning?  that was curious... and then that post itself disappeared. :/

507

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: June 20, 2008, 07:16:35 AM »

- Hopefully, he won't take it personally.
- Hehe.  Fortunately, I did it quickly.  If many people saw that retardation in my debut post, I'd be a permanent laughingstock there with zero credibility.  Though I may accomplish that anyway. ;)

508

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: June 20, 2008, 06:25:50 AM »

hah..  i signed up there, and am posting.

509

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: June 19, 2008, 03:19:58 PM »

In more GameFAQs news, why I am super awesome:

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=2000094&topic=43765778

Some tard creates a provisional account just to bitch about FAQ authors including jokes and political comments in their guides.  So I reply in kind.

510

General Discussion / Re: Gamefaqs + eternal stupidity

« on: June 18, 2008, 03:45:49 AM »

amen.  i wonder how much of that is due to us aging, and how much is due to the marked decline on the board from 2005 onward (aka the post-Livinlarav era).  it seems more the latter, but maybe i have overly rosy memories.

what's strange about ebmid2 is that he's not the classic gamefaqs idiot.  he can be fairly articulate at times, he's made some very good topics (e.g. refining and narrowing down when/how exactly the characters' levels are reaveraged), and he's made constructive input (e.g. whenever i update my Lores guide, it'll include solid advice from him -- albeit this was in fall 2006 before his Tempest fetish and subsequent idiocy manifested).

what i think the FF3us board is showing is the vacuum that occurs when very little new discoveries are being made on the game.  it gives a chance for idiocy to take over, when in the past, idiocy would have been drowned out (if not eliminated) by thriving, productive topics.  paradoxically, while it requires abandonment of the game, it still can't happen without an active userbase; less-trafficked SNES boards don't see this sort of bullshit.