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Polaris

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Posts posted by Polaris

    Fire Emblem: A Sacred Dawn DX

    in Fan Projects

    Posted · Edited by Polaris

    I'm eventually going to play this, but, I must ask you good sir.

    What's wrong with story building and dialog? Also what do you have against Metal Gear Solid? If someone is playing a game for the sake of gameplay alone then they have a skip button to use.

    You should really play it/read the dialogue before you comment on it.

    this is some poor sap who tried to LP the game, and you can see his soul drain as he does it

    Fire Emblem: A Sacred Dawn DX

    in Fan Projects

    Posted

    So if your now receptive to help. SAY THAT! Nothing will happen if you clam up. Get more editors, you will find people. Screen them, get a variety of opinions, hell get opinions from people who DON'T like the hack, lots of feedback will help it grow.

    Long story short is no one is going to help you if you wont help yourself. If you asked people would probably help.

    I would have been glad to help if he had asked. I pointed him to those references because he has said several times before that he doesn't want any. So it goes.

    Fire Emblem: A Sacred Dawn DX

    in Fan Projects

    Posted · Edited by Polaris

    Wanna know something? I am paid to tell people their writing is terrible and to improve that same writing; that is to say, I am a fucking editor and I do this as a career. If you clicked on those links I added in, those are reference books, not novels, and all they require is that you apply a few of the principles in there to your writing if you want to have a solid base. I can't save your style, which is terrible, but at the least you could attempt to not be egregiously bad in terms of devices, language, and grammar.

    I cannot understand how you enjoy being so aggressively terrible at everything you do, while ignoring any real advice given to you, since obviously people circlejerking to you is what you enjoy. It's pretty clear you have no intention of getting the player involved in the game experience, so maybe you're better off writing terrible fanfiction for people who haven't read a good book in their lives.

    For reference, he literally posted a pile of words on another forum about how he has no intention of improving.


    Alright, if you really want to know... This is gonna be long.
    Let's get two things clear - first, I'm no writer. I'm not good at it and I never will be; drawing is more my thing and I'm not even very good at that. Second, though I am by no means a skilled writer I am aware of a number of literary tropes that are frowned upon and self-insert fanfiction in any sort of halfway serious community is universally reveled, for good reason - they simply don't work and are just plain silly. That said...
    There are two reasons as to why A Sacred Dawn DX is what it is and the whole self-inserting/crossover deal: choosing it to leave it as is because I can't fix it, and choosing it to leave it because I don't want to fix it. No guesses as to which is the stronger reason.
    The main thing about being unable to change it isn't much(and has absolutely nothing to do with the self-insert deal, just the storytelling), generally because FE8 is far, far less user-friendly to hack than FE7 is, but I chose it anyway because I want to prove to the community that I can make a halfway good FE8 ROM hack and make it presentable. That said, there's much less flexibilty in doing stuff in FE8 than in FE7 so I try to compensate with a number of things. Not much of a reason I guess, but the other one's a bit different.
    In regards to refusing to change the way the story is presented is kinda personal. Back when I did FE404 I had a lot of fun doing it, but now I'm just plain embarrassed by it for a number of reasons(the whole self-insertion and wish fulfillment thing being one of them), same with my first attempt at A Sacred Dawn, when it was still a crossover, a direct sequel to FE404, and not as serious as DX. Still, they have a strong resonance with me, and when I decided to restart the project, I thought to myself that I just wanted to not only try the whole premise again with a bunch of liberties taken, but try and do the whole thing right. Yes, a story featuring a self-inserted character who has a family and is a strong fighter is never gonna work seriously and be impossible to get right on even a good level, the storytelling not helping matters either, but I don't really care about that.
    Make no mistake - I could easily take out the crossover bits, change Raymond to be a whole different character, and alter the last names of his children. Bam, done. Heck, way before working on FE404, I had an idea of a FE story with a bunch of original characters and no crossovers - just my self-insert character and Julie and Josh as his family. Even back when I first thought up of those two characters(which was a decade ago) I had thought of them as if I were to have kids when I was a silly 13-year-old dork. I could've made the changes but I didn't. I could change them now, but even if I did, the damage is already done. Changing Raymond's appearance and family name wouldn't rid the fact that he'd be a self-insert now; everyone would just go "oh, that character was modeled after the author in the previous version, right? What a loser." So I decided to just leave things as they are in regards to my character and just build around it. I've already gotten some ire from folks about this sort of thing, but at this point I'm not inclined to care and just keep going hoping I can make some good anyway.
    In regards to the storytelling, as stated earlier, I'm no writer. In fact, aside from my best friend doing the skeletal work of the ROM hack and the beginning backstory, this is a one-man job. I don't have a lot of help so I just try and do everything myself. As far as writing is concerned, I thought to try something different with a Fire Emblem game and make it less about the world and overarching plot and more about the characters in it, as (mostly)experienced through the eyes of one character. I am a huge supporter of games with a diverse playable cast; it's one of the big reasons why I like FE so much. The older games don't really have a lot of characterization for 90% of the cast(they're lucky if they even get lines), but the latter covers it well enough considering the story through use of supports(Radiant Dawn and Shadow Dragon notwithstanding). Here I thought to try and give the little people more to do and say as the plot moves with them, but I admit the way it's done so far is really poor. There's a lot of talking and expository scenes regarding the character introductions and as it stands the talking segments is a bit like Super Robot Taisen but with less showing and more telling. Granted I am a big fan of how some SRT games handle its scenes with its massive cast, but no such luck here.
    I've put videos of my ROM hack up on YouTube and several people rightly chastised me for all of the long-winded dialogue. I gave my reasons a few times, but as it is right now, it's still not that great. I've had a few people offer some writing help, but I've turned them down, mostly to see if I can keep at it on my own, but also partly for another reason - in real life I have abysmal self-esteem, am extremely lazy, and I absolutely hate to impose on anyone, which is another reason why I'm one man job. I really want to be able to make something mostly by myself and have it be good, but at this rate, I wonder if I'll ever get anywhere on my own. That first patch might be the only one I make knowing me.
    In short, I'm just really stubborn at trying to make something good on my own. :colbert:

    By the way, there is an easier way of writing this, and that is "Hey guys I'm kind of really happy with being mediocre so please stop giving me advice :) kthnx xoxo"

    Fire Emblem: A Sacred Dawn DX

    in Fan Projects

    Posted · Edited by Polaris

    Everyone commenting on this is completely missing what makes writing good writing. I cannot fathom how you can look at something that has 3000 words in a short chapter good writing, when you take into account this is a video game, not bad fanfiction, and there is such a thing as conservation of detail, and economy of words.

    There is irrelevant stuff, boring dialogue that wouldn't be out of place in a bad manga translation, heaps of tell don't show, and the characters do not act even remotely like their age. Julie especially acts like some sort of horrible idea of what a teenage girl is like, and not you know, a real person. Literally the only sane person is Winston, and even then he's an idiot. So basically your writing is kinda shitty man and I don't think mindless praise is going to help make it any better.

    e: I would recommend reading these books, and after that I would recommend reading some actual literature instead of videogames so that you can learn from the masters instead of fanfictiondotnet.
    http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Style-Fourth-Edition/dp/020530902X

    http://www.amazon.com/High-School-English-Grammar-Composition/dp/812192197X/

    http://www.amazon.com/Glossary-Literary-Terms-nineth-Text/dp/B004QD0NDQ/

    for u noobs out there that say the characters are too nice. dont forget that mageknight is one of the nicest people on here. he also has a great female voice, and is very talented. if u dont like this hack make your own instead.

    Oh god this is great

    Tiki's chapter

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted · Edited by Polaris

    there's a simple strat for this chapter, as i pointed out in the Lunatic thread. Essentially, enemies will only go for people in Tiki's axes, so you only need paired up people in those 3 specific positions. They don't even bother with 2-range unless they can kill her iirc. 

     
-------
1oTo2
CoooC
oC3Co

    The numbers are the only places that need to be protected once you get Tiki's back against the wall. Effectively you need 9 characters for this to work, but only 3-6 need to be strong. Everyone else is free to do whatever.

    Old Hubba

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted

    Hubba hubba is a thing too lel. Personally I died laughing when I saw his name, forget his dialogue. Say what you will, but the localisation changed pretty much everything for the better imo. Like Henry, who goes from tragic hero to being the way he is because he's that fucking happy it's hilarious.

    Olivia's Confession Flashback

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted

    To certain people, high pitched voices for women are a cultural thing.

    Again, I find it cute and attractive.

    oh i know that. deep voices imply authoritativeness and masculine qualities blah blah blah psychology. it's not going to stop me from physically wincing when i hear it though :v i feel the same way about sumia actually, and i love whoever dubbed her.

    so many words about my opinion oh no

    The Lunatic Club

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted · Edited by Polaris

    Guys, I saw some stuff about Tiki's paralogue and I don't think it's been posted yet but there's an incredibly stupid way to completely trivialise that chapter.

    The enemies only attack people in Tiki's axis, so if you have a formation like

    WWWWW

    1 o T o 2

    3 o o o 4

    o 5 6 7 o

    Only 1, 2, and 6 are actually in any danger of being targeted. Also, mages won't use their tomes at 2-range iirc unless it means hitting Tiki. Basically, the brain-dead ai makes this chapter a fucking breeze as long as you have at least 3 OP people.

    Emmeryn..

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted

    -snip-

    i too solve problems with stories by feeding them to sharks. hungry hungry sharks.

    The issue with Emm is pretty much the problem with the whole game - it's not a very solid story. The dialogue is amazing, but the actual plot is simply a pastiche of a bunch of interesting FE ideas. A culmination of all the FEs so far basically. The only original idea that we get at all is Emm's idea of uniting the world versus Walhart's, and that's handled pretty hamfistedly because this game simply doesn't prioritise the plot over the concepts it borrows. Well and also pies because pies are forever. Really, we should have had more of a focus on Lucina in the main plot instead of shoving her to the side, because the story never manages to find a focal point.

    The Lunatic Club

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted · Edited by Polaris

    oh hey i beat lunatic. Broke the difficulty curve on chapter 17 or something when i got bored of the reinforcement waves.

    e: considering the amount of experience avatar and chrom get, i think grinding is too cheap :S

    Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

    in Serious Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Polaris

    Do tell me about all tyrants that the second amendment has helped overthrow, and all these insane people it hasn't enabled in the process of killing ordinary people. Please, I must know.

    e: In all seriousness, though, if a place doesn't have the sense of maturity to offer help to troubled individuals, and make sure that the fucking crazies don't get access to weapons that'll let them go on these sort of sprees, then I doubt the THEY TAKIN' ARE GUNS!!!! argument has any credence. Make it so that people with mental health issues get help. Make it so that you have to take actual, proper psychiatric evaluation before you can buy a gun. If the supposedly wealthiest, awesomest country in the world can't put their money into something like that, then take the guns away. You don't give weapons to babies, right?

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