I'm reading that in two different ways and in both cases I am totally not sharing with you, because you are a lout and a cad. GOOD DAY, SIR.

* doffs something, walks out *

God I hope so. Then maybe I can find something else to not spend all my FAT BENJAMINS on.

XTC CD I ordered from Switzerland arrove. Sweet!

Well, that sure was a malformed earl.

Demakes can lead to really cool mechanics if the person behind them is genuinely interested in what they're doing and not just being HRR DRR THIS LOOKS 8-BIT.

Ideally when doing a demake, you're adopting a constrained format, and constraints can breed creativity.

Most people behind those things aren't being that creative though.

Are the things you regret not doing/having things you wanted anyway, though, or are they things you feel like you should want?

Be able to live independently -- if you can do that at least, you're on the right track.

My youngest cousin, who is a few months younger than me, got married in December and she's pregnant. The youngest person at my office who is... about a year younger than me is also married. A number of my friends from college are engaged. And one of my aunts is apparently getting on my case about joining an online dating site (except this is an aunt I never talk to so I just hear this from my mom).

So I mean in one sense, their lives have moved on in that they're starting families, and I'm not. But that's not something I want. Something I'm not sure I ever want.

(Actually the things I really want I can never have. Isn't it funny how that's pretty much always how it works out).

Guess I found out my cousin's having a boy. I have some pamphlets I'd love to throw at her, though I probably won't. Because I'm one of those guys that's always saying what I'm gonna do, but I won't rock the boat, 'cause I'm scared of what might happen.

This is jokes, y'all. This is total jokes.

Everyone picks their own path to preterition, Alicia. I've got mine. I'm sure you'll find yours.

OH that reminds me this is the best knock knock joke.

<You> Knock knock.
<Other person> Who's there?
<You> The pizza guy.
<Other person> But I didn't order any pizza!
<You> * starts taking off your pants *

Another good one is:

<You> Knock knock.
<Other person> Who's there?
<You> * begin smashing strawberries against your face while sobbing *

Although you can combine and truncate them too:

<Other Person> Knock knock.
<You> * start taking off your pants while smashing strawberries against your face and sobbing *

I'm hungry for waffles.

1. Those numbers are't really matching what I'm seeing so I'm a bit confused as to how it works. Drill Kick is doing more damage than what I was expecting although again that might be the mod I'm using.

2. Falcon Hit and Beast Toss, if I'm reading that correctly, are totally useless. Uzzi Punch does more damage than Robo Tackle, but costs three time as much. Three Robo Tackles would do considerably more damage in the long run, so Beast Toss is kind of useless. Falcon Hit just outright would do less damage than doing the attacks separately.

3. The effects for the pure physical combos are kind of all over the place.

In general the techs that either impart elemental strength to a physical attack or power up a magical attack (ie antipode) are going to be useful since they DO give a damage boost, except...

Okay so for Antipode 2/3 your party is generally going to be Marle and Lucca and Chrono. Marle is your only healer in this setup, which makes me wonder if using her turn on Antipode 2/3 is going to be that good of an idea, unless you just bounce her back and forth between antipoding and aura whirling.

The actual distribution of combos seems kind of arbitrary too. Chrono, Marle, and Robo gives you two combos that are basically aura whirl, then a full-heal variant between Marle and Robo. But then Marle and Frog get a better later-game combo with less redundancy on the earlier combos. Also Chrono and Robo's combos aren't very good in general.

Based on what I'm reading though, the field effects in CC would do the exact same things as combos, from a gameplay perspective, in terms of giving damage bonuses over time (and in that sense it's a lot closer to the combo system in SaGa Frontier, or in Persona 2 where combos just mean casting certain spells in a given order give you access to the upgraded version of that spell).

It got cold again and my apartment complex shut off heating for the season, so my apartment is really cold. Addressed this by running my shower at max heat for about twenty minutes, which raised the ambient temperature considerably.

Downside is that now I want coffee and all of my pants are wet.

http://www.ign.com/faqs/2003/chrono-trigger-walkthrough-437178 Based on section 5-C in this, it looks like a lot of the dual techs really AREN'T doing anything but just adding the damage from the component skills :T

That sort of confirms my long-standing suspicion that combos were generally pointless in CT, especially when you start getting combos that would hit the damage cap, but where doing the component techs separably wouldn't hit the cap and thus do more damage.

I do wonder if Level Zero rebalanced that any.

Anyway, still working on the second boss in Dawn of Ys. I have the attack pattern down but you don't have a lot of room to maneuver so actually pulling it off is hard.

Also played Solatorobo a bit. Cleared the early sidequests in Airedale and the arena ship (almost lost to the last battle there wtfffff?), on Spinon now.

For the record, from my understanding a lot of players just put Critical Trigger on auto. I had to because I get just enough input lag in battles to screw it up.

I thought it was funny that the manual never explains what the unique stat each character has does. In reality, it's really simple -- stat name indicates, roughly, what their AI package is, and the higher the stat is, the better the odds that they'll make a good choice when reassessing mid-battle. Incredibly simple thing. Manual doesn't mention this. And it's not a big deal, but it's useful. Like for Heal, instead of a character going on standby, they might be all HM I SHOULD KILL DUDES if their special stat is high enough/appropriate for that.

Apartment complex turned off the heat for the season, and it got cold again. FUCK.

You can influence which orders come up in combat by selectively disabling skills, from what I remember. Party composition also affects that, as does the amount of MP? or whatever on hand an battle length (or morale, maybe). It's not really THAT random from what I saw but there are a lot of factors affecting it so it's not necessarily predictable unless you intentionally limit what a party can do.

Meanwhile I have no idea how stat gains are supposed to work because Square's been hiring meth addicts to write their manuals for the last decade and a half. IIRC though, Rush is supposed to be innately geared towards favoring axes, so I'm really wondering why he was getting INT for you. Wonder if certain equipment or formations effect stat growth?

I'd check but I'm not in the mood to play something fiddly right now. I think Solatorobo is about the speed of my mind is am work right now.

I get short with my coworkers sometimes. I feel really bad about it :( I'm trying to do that less/just come off as weird and abrupt but inoffensively so.

My job's just maddeningly Sisyphean !!!

Annubis, which version did you play?

More HP is generally tedious. My favorite kind of balancing is more the 'glass cannon' approach, where enemies don't LAST that long, but they can kill you really fast. This is kind of what SMT does. Most battles in nocturne are over in like three turns, tops, but they all have the potential to wreck your day.

Meanwhile, the Level 0 mod for CT took EXACTLY the approach and it plays really well. OH WELP.

Wrt VP, I remember the first time I played it it was on easy, and I hated it, because I didn't realize this at the time, but you don't actually have to play the game even remotely right to win on easy mode. So I wasn't even bothering with combos, which are like the CENTRAL THANG of the battle system.