Lord Glenn

4. Yes. Battle sprites and face sprites may only contain 15 colors (+1 for the background). Most other things that can be inserted will need to follow this rule, but there are some exceptions (IIRC, the Battle Template has separate palettes for some of the areas, so you can technically end up with more than 15 colors overall). Also, colors must all have RGB values that are multiples of 8 (0, 8, 16, ... , 248). Battle sprites must also fit within the frame limits of the animations that are being replaced (unless something's changed recently). So, for the Cloud battle sprite, it might be possible to insert (since I don't know the Mercenary frame boundaries), but it's probably not likely, based solely on the still frame (the sword looks too far forward) and the critical frames (the sword swinging in front of the face probably would break the frames, plus there seem to be more frames for that critical than the Mercenary has to begin with...). 5. You use your requisite tool (Hex Editor, Nightmare, etc. (whatever gets recommended to you)) to make changes to the ROM. Then, you create a patch afterwards. (I'm guessing there's some kind of "export" command that creates one.) 6. A patch basically contains the data that was changed on the "base" software so that it can be applied to everyone else's same software. (Think regular patches for software programs, like Microsoft Word, etc.)

It's called having common sense. Things like that are a serious matter, regardless of where you post them. You shouldn't be joking about something that serious, plain and simple.

In general, I generally play defensively, just because I hate having to restart chapters from the beginning. This is especially the case if it's my first time through a game or I haven't played the chapters in question for a long time, just because I know that IS loves to pull reinforcements at the worst possible time in the most opportune locations for the enemy. Otherwise, depending on the game and difficulty, I can easily be prone to rushing units, especially tank units to pull a large group of foes towards me. Once that's done, then everyone else runs in and sweeps up, hopefully. Regardless of my speed, I'll try to get most turn limit Gaidens and the like and I generally try to level my characters in a "uniform" manner, so I don't get people running around that are 7 levels higher, simply by fighting (characters joining that far behind are not included).

Even if that might be the case, it's no reason to be a jackass. It would be wise to avoid flaming.

Then don't post. It's spam. That gets a thumbs up from me. (And reminds me that I'll have a playthrough to work on the next time I boot it up...) ------------ Right now, I've got a few things on my plate: PSX/2: Grandia Xtreme, FF9 GC/Wii: FE10 360: Gears of War (haven't played my 360 much, despite buying it in July or so)

The rules will be updated in the near future. They are also lacking the additional things that were added (such as the new warn guidelines, etc.) on top of the necroposting limitations. Right now, it's the holiday season, so free time isn't always available to perform the updates and organize it (etc.). Furthermore, we expect people to be aware of the Announcements, regardless of whether the rule is physically listed in the Rules page or not. (Since the rule(s) have already been announced, they're fair game for everyone.)

It might not be a "rule," but, frankly, that doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is that you are not a moderator or any member of the staff here at Serenes Forest, so you will not engage in any activities that fall under the staff's jurisdiction. Whether you're being helpful or not, it's still being rude, detrimental to the staff's authority, and you simply have no business getting involved in it. Now, if we're through here, any further qualms, complaints, and what have you may be directed to my PM box for a later time. EDIT - Furthermore, I didn't say that I was referring to posts only in this thread. Perhaps you should read my posts and not assume anything ahead of time from them. End of discussion.

"That qualifies as trolling. Intentionally aggravating or annoying members. I advise you restrain yourself from doing it before it gets you into trouble." I don't care if you were giving advice or not, it's not your job.

Enough, you three. Yuli, I advise that you refrain from posting messages that are trolling and/or flamebaiting in nature. Cynthia and Death, if there's a problem with a post, let the staff handle it. You're not staff here, so I suggest you stop taking things into your own hands. Furthermore, I suggest that both of you watch your own posts, because neither of you are exactly clean when it comes to that aspect either (and, this thread isn't the first time that I've seen it).

And... Goodbye to people that try to ban evade.

Because that would require us to either manually lock every single topic that fell out of the range (which is a fairly big range, so it would also have to take other things into consideration as to when to lock it in the first place) or find some mod or package for IPB that would automatically do it (but then that presents more problems due to the way the limitations are set up). And, if we went with the former case, then that would mean we'd have to unlock every topic that would need unlocked for whatever the situation was (updating art threads, etc.). It's far too inefficient of a suggestion to actually work.

I'm surprised he hasn't been mentioned yet: Cam Clarke. He's been all over the industry, doing fairly recognizable stuff in both TV/Movies and the video game areas for at least two decades now. (And, looking back, I never really plugged him to be the VA for Leonardo and Rocksteady in the old TMNT cartoon. Ah, the good old days...) I honestly can't think of a specific VA that stands out to me as the one I consider overall best, though.

The construction and shading of the nose doesn't really match what you see on a majority of FE8's sprites, which is why it probably doesn't look like you want it to. For the most part, the bridge of the nose doesn't drop straight down, but "curves" down to the bottom (with a few acceptions, though those stem from the respective angle of the face). For the mouth, I'd just try changing the shading around, after looking at some of FE8's sprites. I think Artur might prove a useful reference for that, but it might not fit exactly right. Also, the shading by the light source on Zephiel's face doesn't look quite right to me. Something about it just makes the face's shading seem... pillowy, almost. Also, Zephiel's headband needs re-angled or something, since, with the position of his eyes, it seems like his head is angled downwards slightly, while the headband is still parallel to the ground, which doesn't make much sense to me. Also, IMO, the headband could use a pseudo-outline (using the colors on the headband) to make it seem "tight" to his forehead. Yes, kid!Zephiel in FE7 has a similar thickness headband thing and doesn't have an outline, but it seems like most other characters that have something to that effect do have an outline of sorts (at least in places).

It's nothing more than a resize of one of the FE9 portraits right now. He's only done Aimee, part of Geoffrey, Ranger!Ike, Lucia, Rajaion, Soren, and Sothe. ------- Of those portraits that you have done on that sheet, most of them have severe cases of pillow shading. They also have random deformities and such in places, too, ranging from misshapen heads (compared to the FE norm) to "wrong" facial compositions (by FE standards) to even random outline spots (Geoffrey and Lucia, primarily) on the images. They're ok, I guess, but they definitely could use some cleaning up. As for the three full bodies, they each have slight problems with them (for instance, pillow shading on the first, strange and random shading at places on the second (and dithering on the sword, which I only point out because none of the rest of the sprite is dithered), and the attempt to show folds on the third using the darkest shade (which doesn't look very pretty)), but the third one is the best of the three, despite mainly being copied (I'd assume moreso traced) from Neimi's OA.

Furthermore, I would advise against using that tone any further, especially if you don't want that warn bar to increase again. (And, to most everybody else in the thread, you don't need to further incite trouble.)

Was that absolutely necessary?

Having lived in the (relative) solitude of (what basically amounts to) the country, I'd actually rather stay there or, at the most, go suburban. Big cities don't do too much for me, because the environment just feels wrong to me. Things are crowded, traffic is everywhere, etc.

1) "Enforcement" basically is what you said, yeah. 2) Likely not, though it generally would be good practice to always look at the posts above one you're going to make to check things like that. Also, it's generally a good thing if people report posts that don't add relevant content during that window or simply post after the window. 3) It depends. If someone bumped some topic from, say, January '08, it'll probably get locked on the spot, since that's a pretty big lack of activity. An exception to this might be if there's no newer topic on the same subject and the post is actually of great quality, in which case, we could probably split the new discussion to a new thread or just keep the thread going. Other than that, it really does depend on the circumstances, since we've kept this slightly lax for a reason.

On FFtF, I wouldn't give free reign, but the limitation might be a bit more lenient (say, possibly 3 months). I don't want to say anything definite, but for right now, the current limitation will apply to FFtF.

Due to the increased frequency of which we've been seeing necroposting (for those unaware of the definition, it's posting in topics that are long since dead), we're instituting a very lax limitation to curb this trend. As such, we will now be "enforcing" topics that are posted in after a 1-2 month gap in activity (with grace periods and other things taken into consideration). Also, as an extension of this, because we don't threads brought back from the dead just to bring them to the front of the page, any posts in dormant threads of this time frame will need to at least add relevant content (something more than just "lol I agree, etc."), or they'll be treated as spam and dealt with as such. It also goes without saying that if there's a newer thread on the same subject, just post in it. And, this need not apply to topic creators that are updating their stories, hack projects, creative works threads, etc. as it is with obvious understanding that you may set down that work for a while and then inevitably come back to it at a much later time. Any questions?

You didn't necessarily need to call out the lack of content and critique in the post though. I should have probably split up what I was saying, since all of the parts don't apply to everyone. So, that one's moreso my fault for creating a misunderstanding. Anyway, any other comments can be taken to PM or whatever. Continue on with the thread.

While I can't agree completely with the methodology of critiquing above (Seriously, guys, blunt and being being a dick are two different things. If you can't critique "nice," you won't critique, whether what you have to say is true or not. Capiche?), they do have a point, Jyo. (Not that this is the place to discuss it.) And, Quetzalcoatl, you can knock that tone off any time.

Like I said, not the exact same scenario, but it's the concept of going back to the roots. Ok, fine a better example: Take Sonic Unleashed (and get rid of any of the crappy elements, i.e. basically anything other than straight up speeding to get to the end of the level) and take it back to the Genesis era. I bet it probably would turn out for the better.

I think now's a good time to end this discussion, since we're not really getting anywhere any more...

@b_p - Mega Man 9 says hello. It might not be the exact same scenario, but you get the picture.