[From hack to indie] Path of the Midnight Sun

[Dandragon]

So, I'm not sure if this has been said already, but in chapter 3, the event that has 5 different enemies spawn in one turn 2(?) that attack Shiori glitched up. Instead of spawning a brigand, 2 thieves, and 2 mages, it spawned a single thief. ...Not sure why.

[Alfred Kamon]

Trying out the new patch on DM to see how Cattleya fares, haven't cleared Ch3 but her performance is much better so I'm anticipating she'll make it to Ch8.

On another note, for someone who used to play Pikmin 2 extensively it took me way too long to realize

Good to know that she's better!

And yeah, haha, nice catch! That wasn't easy. ;)

So, I'm not sure if this has been said already, but in chapter 3, the event that has 5 different enemies spawn in one turn 2(?) that attack Shiori glitched up. Instead of spawning a brigand, 2 thieves, and 2 mages, it spawned a single thief. ...Not sure why.

Huuh, what?

What did you do exactly? It's the first time I hear of that problem.

*thinks* IIRC the game can move only 4 characters at once. Those 5 units all spawn at the same time, that's why usually the game spawns a single unit followed by the other 4. It never happened to me that it didn't spawn all the units though.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Alfred Kamon

[Dandragon]

Good to know that she's better!

And yeah, haha, nice catch! That wasn't easy. ;)

Huuh, what?

What did you do exactly? It's the first time I hear of that problem.

*thinks* IIRC the game can move only 4 characters at once. Those 5 units all spawn at the same time, that's why usually the game spawns a single unit followed by the other 4. It never happened to me that it didn't spawn all the units though.

I can't remember the exact movements, unfortunately. I know I moved Helios and Menmus down towards the thief to the left and everyone else down towards the right, and had Fa go into the corner.

Next, a thief spawned on the right fort where Shiori was standing, but didn't move off the fort during the event.

[Ancora]

Found it at last!

"That Person's Name is" from Bravely Default:Flying Fairy is the boss theme which is under the name Clash of interest in the sound room.

I think I saw the picture if Alfred YT profile and looked to see if any music was similar to GBA arrangement >.>

[Alfred Kamon]

I can't remember the exact movements, unfortunately. I know I moved Helios and Menmus down towards the thief to the left and everyone else down towards the right, and had Fa go into the corner.

Next, a thief spawned on the right fort where Shiori was standing, but didn't move off the fort during the event.

As usual, unless that gets replicated I have to consider it an emulator oddity and nothing else.

But thanks for the report! I'll make sure I don't load 5 or more units at once from now on. ;)

Found it at last!

"That Person's Name is" from Bravely Default:Flying Fairy is the boss theme which is under the name Clash of interest in the sound room.

I think I saw the picture if Alfred YT profile and looked to see if any music was similar to GBA arrangement >.>

Cool stuff, right?

It's a famous piece and it wasn't that hard to identify it. Also, I found that midi in some weird jap site uh.

[Ancora]

Cool stuff, right?

It's a famous piece and it wasn't that hard to identify it. Also, I found that midi in some weird jap site uh.

Guess I'm behind on the times then :(

Well, still an achievement though.

Oh, I see. Don't have a 3DS so I've never heard of this.

Well, cool selection of music - guess I'll look into the others. You know, expand my petit gamer's mind.

It's like Silver Will in TLP, introduced me to a nice game that I might get after everything (irl stuff) is done :)

Edited June 18, 2014 by Ancora

[LunaticScreamer]

Just finished playing through ver 1.2. Should have the last chapter stuff uploaded on my YT channel by tomorrow.

I've gotta say, this hack is one of the best ones I've played in a long time. The story is amazing, the difficulty is just right, and the characters are likeable (Rya's probably my favorite right now).

The sad thing is the wait for the rest of the hack to be completed, but it will be a good wait, I can tell already.

May as well show off the stats of some of my most used units in my army...

[spoiler=End of Chapter 8 Stats]

Doing pretty good she is. A little slow and low on the resistance, but when she can rip off a massive chunk of basically any enemy's health in one shot, it's certainly a good day.

Despite her low strength, those magic bows more than made up the difference on low res targets. Maybe I'll throw her one of my Luckos Fangs to remedy that strength a bit.

I dunno. He's a big bundle of strength & speed, yes, but those defenses. I'll have to see how he turns out with a few more levels.

Surprisingly high hp for a mage type class, that's for sure. Not doing too bad for his stats besides defense, but dang, that 35 hp, heh.

Definitely gets my vote for a unit one should not underestimate despite his starting stats. He's surprisingly good at knocking off a respectable chunk of health from a monster. Being a healer helps too.

Probably one of those characters that might be relegated to the bench. I've got plenty of sword users who are doing better than she is right now. Then again she does have nine levels of growing room so who knows.

Yeah, that speed is horrid. He's got respectable defense though. That on top of the ability to do hit & run tactics made him a pretty fun unit to play with.

Can't really form a solid opinion on him until he gains more levels, but he's decent right now.

...Damn! She's turning out to be a star player in my team. Considering she started out at lv1 on chapter 8 and got to that level by the end of it, yeah.

Another incredibly useful character for me. Healing hit & run tactics are great. So is being able to whack enemies with a sword.

Another beast of a unit on my team. Tons of hp, high defense, respectable speed. Going to love seeing what his promotion choices will be like in the future.

Loved his recruitment scene. He turned out to be a surprisingly sturdy unit in his own right with an amazing amount of defense for a Thief. Probably going to be another one of those units that sticks with me until the end.

[Darthc88]

Oh hai. I just wanted to come by to congratulate you on making one of the best hack games I've played thus far :D Great story, Fun and Unique characters, witty writing,... Sometimes aggravatingly hard (In a good way :D), The works. Chapter 5 was especially enjoyable. Very unique approach to a level design with a different kind of strategy involved. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final product , especially since this is one of the very few FE8 Hacks I've played. Awesome Job!

Edited June 22, 2014 by Darthc88

[Nébulya]

Well, that's so great now! I'll play it when I'll have time. I follow this from years, and it's good to see that it's finally playable! ;)

[mmKALLL]

I think that the weapon rank bonuses should be made much smaller; the weapons are already very varied as are their users, from what I can see. Getting to wield new weapons is a bonus in itself, although I guess small boosts for A/S rank would be kinda nice (like +1 Mt, +5 hit for lances), even if a slightly meaningless. Huge boosts (especially sorta redundant ones like more hit to swords) just seem way overpowered.

In other news, there's a Fence tile instead of Wall above the cross in chapter 8 - fliers can get on it, which seems unintended?

Edited June 23, 2014 by mmKALLL

[Ancora]

I think something is wrong ... my Faratrass is developing speed more than skill :O

[mmKALLL]

I just beat chapter 8 and..

[spoiler=spoilers and thoughts]

Edit: Wow, I have to say that this chapter on Difficult without using Hellios was actually pretty challenging, especially since I didn't want anyone to die and just had to visit the village too. The game has been pretty challenging overall, though - in an interesting way! (Y)

Well then. First off, there are a bunch of slightly odd sentence structures in the post-ch8 dialogue, before the world map. A minor issue.

Secondly, the story and especially the characters were awesome overall! I'm impressed! There are no words that could describe my astonishment at the quality of the story right now :)

Third, I'm bugged by the name of Lord Valontuoja - it's painfully Finnish, would you like to elaborate on what drove you to choose this exact name? I figured that a lot of various names are just particular words in foreign languages, but.. It would be nice to hear more about your choices!

There was another minor issue as well, but I forgot already, sorry! ^^;

Oh yeah, and game froze after the Tower/Skirmish cutscene regardless of skipping it, if I went in there or Ch 9 and restarted the chapter. Resetting the system fixes the issue; I could restart the chapter normally after that. And thank YOU for making an awesome game!!

Oh yeah, and interesting how Faratrass calls Shiori "Shi" when picking Fa's route - I don't know if you're aware or not, but in Japanese, 死 (shi) literally means "death" and there's quite a bit of superstition around regarding the usage of the word (or even the pronounciation) in Japan. I wonder whether this, too, was a concious choice, seeing how Shiori as a name sounds very Japanese..? Not to mention how her reaction would be appropriate for that too..

Oh yeah, and the MUSIC WAS FANTASTIC! I can see you've used a LOT of time into choosing quality themes, although I think the healing tune might need a change. I recognized a lot and was able to name a few, but overall loved the soundtrack and much of it was very fitting as well. (touhou fanboy mode totally activated when I got into ch8 lol)

Edited June 24, 2014 by mmKALLL

[jjl2357]

Finally got around to beating the hack after ragequitting for a while on chapter 5 and I really enjoyed how challenging you made the hack. By far the best part was probably how you made nearly all the characters very usable (although judging from the other posts I seem to have missed out on recruiting the generals...I guess I'll have to try another playthrough later xD). I actually had trouble deciding who to train up other than Faratrass (also then the MAJOR SPOILER thing happened..)

Not posting screenshots because I'm lazy, but wow is Faratrass tanky. And wow is she weak against other magic users. And slow... Dark magic Hector much? Also Cristoph is surprisingly fast for a fighter. Other characters haven't stood out much, but I'm hesitant to bench any of them, lol.

Found a few spelling/grammatical mistakes but nothing too bad, I think they've been mentioned by other posters already.

Also how did you change the new game menu to disable easy mode (I'm assuming it's some sort of assembly coding)

[Ancora]

The growth changes in my opinion are quite effective since they made many of the characters more playable ... Cristoph didn't get lucky though so he got benched XD

Fa turned out very tanky and fast (16spd at level 17 >.<)

Yet again did Menmus turn into a beast >.>

I'm guessing Cattleya's personal weapon has little uses to aid her in the early game until her speed gets up to par for doubling etc. Made her easier to use and although her speed is okay (15 at level 15), she makes it up with abnormal tankiness and personal weapon.

Couldn't bench Hellios as he was kinda essential for saving my recruit units since I needed them to get battle tested - doing his job so far

Djambo turned out okay (I mean 20 str and only 10 spd at promotion level 10 is okay) whereas Sae'rah is speed oriented here and Andre is in-between - not sure if it's rng but the balance seems nice.

Shiori's two friends turn out both good - two horse units that can dish out reliable doubles with a lot of force

Schwarz is a decent unit, I just need to give him skill up items to make his attacks more reliable.

Puledra is a beast - how could he get a full stats up in a level up? - Benched in the end though :(

Well, now I will find it very difficult to choose which units to sub out after v2.0 guess I will sub depending on character personality etc.

Next time I play through again, I need to stop getting kills stolen by THAT guy

Saai

[Alfred Kamon]

Just finished playing through ver 1.2. Should have the last chapter stuff uploaded on my YT channel by tomorrow.

I've gotta say, this hack is one of the best ones I've played in a long time. The story is amazing, the difficulty is just right, and the characters are likeable (Rya's probably my favorite right now).

The sad thing is the wait for the rest of the hack to be completed, but it will be a good wait, I can tell already.

May as well show off the stats of some of my most used units in my army...

[spoiler=End of Chapter 8 Stats]

Doing pretty good she is. A little slow and low on the resistance, but when she can rip off a massive chunk of basically any enemy's health in one shot, it's certainly a good day.

Despite her low strength, those magic bows more than made up the difference on low res targets. Maybe I'll throw her one of my Luckos Fangs to remedy that strength a bit.

I dunno. He's a big bundle of strength & speed, yes, but those defenses. I'll have to see how he turns out with a few more levels.

Surprisingly high hp for a mage type class, that's for sure. Not doing too bad for his stats besides defense, but dang, that 35 hp, heh.

Definitely gets my vote for a unit one should not underestimate despite his starting stats. He's surprisingly good at knocking off a respectable chunk of health from a monster. Being a healer helps too.

Probably one of those characters that might be relegated to the bench. I've got plenty of sword users who are doing better than she is right now. Then again she does have nine levels of growing room so who knows.

Yeah, that speed is horrid. He's got respectable defense though. That on top of the ability to do hit & run tactics made him a pretty fun unit to play with.

Can't really form a solid opinion on him until he gains more levels, but he's decent right now.

...Damn! She's turning out to be a star player in my team. Considering she started out at lv1 on chapter 8 and got to that level by the end of it, yeah.

Another incredibly useful character for me. Healing hit & run tactics are great. So is being able to whack enemies with a sword.

Another beast of a unit on my team. Tons of hp, high defense, respectable speed. Going to love seeing what his promotion choices will be like in the future.

Loved his recruitment scene. He turned out to be a surprisingly sturdy unit in his own right with an amazing amount of defense for a Thief. Probably going to be another one of those units that sticks with me until the end.

Hey there LunaticScreamer! I'm glad you liked the hack.

I've also watched your playthrough as you already know, and I think it's cool!

Omg that Letruffe. Most of your characters seem to be high-levelled.

That Sae'rah is incredible too. o_o

Oh hai. I just wanted to come by to congratulate you on making one of the best hack games I've played thus far :D Great story, Fun and Unique characters, witty writing,... Sometimes aggravatingly hard (In a good way :D), The works. Chapter 5 was especially enjoyable. Very unique approach to a level design with a different kind of strategy involved. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final product , especially since this is one of the very few FE8 Hacks I've played. Awesome Job!

Hey! ^^ Thank you for the compliments.

I'm especially glad when someone says that ch.5 was enjoyable. It's probably the most controversial chapter I've made, haha...

Well, that's so great now! I'll play it when I'll have time. I follow this from years, and it's good to see that it's finally playable! ;)

Sure thing. I hope you'll like it! ;)

I just beat chapter 8 and..

[spoiler=spoilers and thoughts]

Edit: Wow, I have to say that this chapter on Difficult without using Hellios was actually pretty challenging, especially since I didn't want anyone to die and just had to visit the village too. The game has been pretty challenging overall, though - in an interesting way! (Y)

Well then. First off, there are a bunch of slightly odd sentence structures in the post-ch8 dialogue, before the world map. A minor issue.

Secondly, the story and especially the characters were awesome overall! I'm impressed! There are no words that could describe my astonishment at the quality of the story right now :)

Third, I'm bugged by the name of Lord Valontuoja - it's painfully Finnish, would you like to elaborate on what drove you to choose this exact name? I figured that a lot of various names are just particular words in foreign languages, but.. It would be nice to hear more about your choices!

There was another minor issue as well, but I forgot already, sorry! ^^;

Oh yeah, and game froze after the Tower/Skirmish cutscene regardless of skipping it, if I went in there or Ch 9 and restarted the chapter. Resetting the system fixes the issue; I could restart the chapter normally after that. And thank YOU for making an awesome game!!

Oh yeah, and interesting how Faratrass calls Shiori "Shi" when picking Fa's route - I don't know if you're aware or not, but in Japanese, 死 (shi) literally means "death" and there's quite a bit of superstition around regarding the usage of the word (or even the pronounciation) in Japan. I wonder whether this, too, was a concious choice, seeing how Shiori as a name sounds very Japanese..? Not to mention how her reaction would be appropriate for that too..

Oh yeah, and the MUSIC WAS FANTASTIC! I can see you've used a LOT of time into choosing quality themes, although I think the healing tune might need a change. I recognized a lot and was able to name a few, but overall loved the soundtrack and much of it was very fitting as well. (touhou fanboy mode totally activated when I got into ch8 lol)

[spoiler= general post demo comments]Hey! I'm glad you liked the hack. :3

There's no particular reason behind some names. Valontuoja is Finnish, yeah, and that's all about it.

Some names have a kinda weird background that I prefer not to explain. XD

Rya and Phoebe were chosen by a friend of mine.

Shiori and Faratrass are important characters to me and their names have a kinda personal meaning. Faratrass' in particular (I'm sorry but I don't feel like explaining it here and now). And yeah, Shiori is Japanese: I didn't know about "Shi = death" tough, it's kinda amusing. Of course, it's not intended as such in the game. Shi simply is a nickname Fa gave to Shiori.

Finally got around to beating the hack after ragequitting for a while on chapter 5 and I really enjoyed how challenging you made the hack. By far the best part was probably how you made nearly all the characters very usable (although judging from the other posts I seem to have missed out on recruiting the generals...I guess I'll have to try another playthrough later xD). I actually had trouble deciding who to train up other than Faratrass (also then the MAJOR SPOILER thing happened..)

Not posting screenshots because I'm lazy, but wow is Faratrass tanky. And wow is she weak against other magic users. And slow... Dark magic Hector much? Also Cristoph is surprisingly fast for a fighter. Other characters haven't stood out much, but I'm hesitant to bench any of them, lol.

Found a few spelling/grammatical mistakes but nothing too bad, I think they've been mentioned by other posters already.

Also how did you change the new game menu to disable easy mode (I'm assuming it's some sort of assembly coding)

Thanks! I'm happy you liked the hack.

also lol @ those ch.5 ragequits

Nintenlord made a patch to suppress Easy mode. I just applied that, then I changed the graphics for that screen.

The growth changes in my opinion are quite effective since they made many of the characters more playable ... Cristoph didn't get lucky though so he got benched XD

Fa turned out very tanky and fast (16spd at level 17 >.<)

Yet again did Menmus turn into a beast >.>

I'm guessing Cattleya's personal weapon has little uses to aid her in the early game until her speed gets up to par for doubling etc. Made her easier to use and although her speed is okay (15 at level 15), she makes it up with abnormal tankiness and personal weapon.

Couldn't bench Hellios as he was kinda essential for saving my recruit units since I needed them to get battle tested - doing his job so far

Djambo turned out okay (I mean 20 str and only 10 spd at promotion level 10 is okay) whereas Sae'rah is speed oriented here and Andre is in-between - not sure if it's rng but the balance seems nice.

Shiori's two friends turn out both good - two horse units that can dish out reliable doubles with a lot of force

Schwarz is a decent unit, I just need to give him skill up items to make his attacks more reliable.

Puledra is a beast - how could he get a full stats up in a level up? - Benched in the end though :(

Well, now I will find it very difficult to choose which units to sub out after v2.0 guess I will sub depending on character personality etc.

Next time I play through again, I need to stop getting kills stolen by THAT guy

Saai

Yeah, I tried to make everyone useful in their own way. :)

It's good to hear that they're turning out balanced.

[Ancora]

[spoiler= general post demo comments]Hey! I'm glad you liked the hack. :3

There's no particular reason behind some names. Valontuoja is Finnish, yeah, and that's all about it.

Some names have a kinda weird background that I prefer not to explain. XD

Rya and Phoebe were chosen by a friend of mine.

Shiori and Faratrass are important characters to me and their names have a kinda personal meaning. Faratrass' in particular (I'm sorry but I don't feel like explaining it here and now). And yeah, Shiori is Japanese: I didn't know about "Shi = death" tough, it's kinda amusing. Of course, it's not intended as such in the game. Shi simply is a nickname Fa gave to Shiori.

[spoiler=Shiori (with spoilers)]Well, if you think about it, Shiori sort of gets "killed" in event battles (back at the start when I started playing the hack Shiori gets "killed" by Saai in script battle and then gets "killed" by evil man.

Death follows her and she is barely escaping from it :O

So Shi suits her anyway; it sounds good and the meaning is kinda there XD

Edited June 27, 2014 by Ancora

[eclipse]

Keep in mind that "shio" means "salt", and while it would be hilarious, I think it would be a rather awkward nickname. Shiori's name is short enough that I think she can get away without one.

[mmKALLL]

Well, yeah, it's not like I mind them using nicknames or anything, just felt like pointing it out as it kinda stood out to me. Especially when coupled with her reply "Shi...?" with the eyes open lol.

Oh, and Shio would definitely not roll out as well as just Shi - I'd just call her Shiori instead if the only option for a nickname was "Shio". It's fine as-is, imo, although I kinda felt like Shiori as a name was short enough.

So, I'm guessing you would like my money now - the play time was 9 hours and 31 minutes, so that'll come to a total of 95 euros I suppose.

Edited June 29, 2014 by mmKALLL

[IceDissolver]

[spoiler=Found a few issues in the new Version 1.2 patch.]Major Issues

- When doubling Chapter 8's boss with Hand Axes from 2 Range with animations on, the game will freeze after the battle. Only tested with Cristoph and Garion. Should affect Djambo too. I don't know if it affects Weiss though. Workaround is to play with animations off. Savestate: http://www.mediafire.com/download/6ek5qt16jv5vcvm/C8_Issue.SGM

Minor Issues

- In Chapter 8, Hellios and Shiori's special boss conversations trigger only if the regular conversation has appeared already. Doesn't really affect anything, but special conversations normally take priority over the standard one, right?

- If magic users don't have a tome equipped, then the weapon ranks shown are Sword/Axe/Lance/Bow instead of magic ranks. Don't know if this is intentional, but it doesn't make much sense on a magic only user.

[spoiler=Thoughts on the game.]It's a fun hack to play. The difficulty is perfect for me in Hard. Normal was pretty easy, but I can see newer FE players finding it challenging enough. The story is engaging; I actually stayed up really late to finish it the first time. Chapter 5 is a little slow though, despite its uniqueness. There's just very little happening. Maybe some more dialogue would help keep the tension going? I don't know... Writing could use a little work in some parts, but overall, not bad.

[spoiler=Post-C8 Character Stats and Thoughts, Normal + Hard.]

Awesome unit despite missing out on EXP in two chapters. Unstoppable after she gets over her somewhat slow start.

Great for weakening in Hard. Best unit on the team except for trained Fa. Warp Sword's really good too! Too bad about C8 though...

Eyeball slayer in a hack full of Eyeballs. Her magic bows wreck everything else. Slow start, but picks up pretty quickly.

In Normal, he's good. ORKOs a lot of stuff and dodges often enough. In Hard, he dies in two hits to pretty much everything but Lances and doesn't dodge enough. But he could always contribute with Hand Axe chip.

Never amazed me, but magic is very useful in Midnight Sun, especially in Chapter 6. Super mediocre until he picks up Speed though. Wonder Pupil's promo bonuses help out a lot in that area.

Staffbot. Useful for chipping Wolves in Hard. I feel like his growth chart is a sham because I haven't seen anything but HP/Skl and HP/Skl/Luck out of him, but that's probably just RNG making me dislike him even more.

Severely RNG screwed for a while in my Hard run, but didn't matter because durable + Flying + Canto + Ranged weapons = useful.

Cattleya's... okay. Handily defeats axe and magic users, but struggles against high Defense units, Lances, and range in general.

She dies a lot as an NPC In Hard. Against monsters, she's basically a goddess, although a little squishy. She just chips in 5x though.

Good unit. Don't like his low Luck, but he's way more durable than Cristoph. My go-to axe user in Hard.

Meh. For me, he's pretty much forced in Chapter 6 to recruit Sae'rah because Andre is so busy killing stuff, so he always gets the opportunity to reach level 10 by the end of C6. He's still worse than Cristoph and Garion for quite a while though.

Another low Luck character... In Normal Mode, he's really good. Better than Cattleya, anyway. Never used him in Hard Mode, because Bows everywhere and he couldn't do that much more than the others in combat with his Swordlock and low defenses.

Mainly staffbot, but her combat is good too. Great unit.

Used him in 5x and never again. That's pretty much what happens when you take on an entire army by yourself.

I found her okay to use. Needs some favoritism in C7 to go anywhere though. Frail in the beginning, but her growths quickly make up for it! Still... not very useful.

Pretty bulky, but combat was nothing spectacular. Cattleya and Schwarz did better in that area.

[noitanaperT]

can't visit the first house in chapter 5. just says wait.

[Blademaster!]

Just got around to finishing V1.2. You did a really great job with this and it was a lot of fun to play! I liked how you had certain hints highlighted in red and everything felt pretty balanced for the most part, however I think Weiss may be a bit too strong or at least gains too much exp because of 5x. I'm looking forward to how this turns out in the future!

Edited July 10, 2014 by Blademaster!

[Ruduen]

Still playing through right now, but I just wanted to say... Good job! It's been fun to play, the difficulty's at a tricky but manageable level, and I like the recruiting methods that you've worked in. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!

[Varelk]

I don't know if this problem was tackled before (if so, disregard this post) but I've had a little problem on chapter 5, the stealth mission:

I've been unable to visit the first house on the right after I failed my first attempt on this (made a stupid move and got shot down o3o)

Anyways, I've tried waiting a few turns, swapping characters around, taking of removing weapons from inventories and the like,

figuring it had something to do with the supply wagon and whatnot. In the end, the 'visit' option doesn't appear.

But after an hour, I came here to find a solution and report this (if it hasn't been already of course ~( o.o)~ )

Here's a link to what I see in-game:

(Although reloading the game 17 times makes it work ._.)

Edited July 29, 2014 by Varelk

[Haku]

It's to do with eventIDs not always functioning properly in emulators like VBA. If you close your emulator down and then restart it, it should work.

Edited July 29, 2014 by Haku

[Mangs]

Started my LP/review of this hack, here's part 1.

Making my own thread for the LP so I won't have to spam this thread.