Adding my game collection to MySpace/Facebook

So I have this video game collection consisting of a few RPGs. Actually it’s a hell of a lot of games, 250+ and mostly RPGs. It’s all thanks to working at GameStop and buying them off of customers instead of letting them trade em in (I was a really bad employee). Anyway, I wanted to show off what I’ve collected, so I initially thought of creating a web page that pulls data from an external xml page on my web host and formats into HTML via XSLT and use an iframe for MySpace/Facebook to show it through. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, except Myspace/Facebook don’t support iframes. So I had to look at other options…

Now granted I could’ve just listed my collection as HTML on both my profiles, but that means I’d have to update both profiles every time I added a new game to the collection. I want to be able to update it in just one place and have the changes propagate everywhere I have the app. So I was left with only one option: Flash. Actually Flex to be more specific. So I hand-typed (most of) my collection in a flat XML file (probably should’ve done a database/web service, but just in case I switch web hosts, I wanted portability), and wrote a Flash app parses that XML and creates a datagrid with the box artwork, name, platform and what I paid/screwed-gamestop-out-of. The end result is on my profile @ http://www.myspace.com/ghaladen. I’d show it off here, but apparently WordPress likes to block Flash unless it’s from a video source like Youtube.

Granted it’s really simple, but I’m not a Actionscript/Flash/Flex kind of person. In fact I loathe all things Flash. But it was a necessary evil to show off of I’ve collected over the years. Only downside is I couldn’t get RPC to work with Flex, so the XML has to be compiled with the flash app (meaning I have to recompile and upload the swf file to my host everytime the list changes). But I guess it’s not bad for a few hour’s work.  And before you ask: No, none of my games are for sale or rent.

XNA Community Games – Hell Yeah!!

When Microsoft announced it’s first version of it’s XNA game development engine, I was impressed. It ran well, and it allowed me to make some cool demos with C#. And the fact that it could run on Xbox 360 natively gave it a bit of a wow factor. But I wasn’t rooting for it 100%, due to the fact that in order to play your creation on Xbox 360, you had to have a 100 dollar a year subscription to the XNA Creators Club. Not only that, if you wanted to share your game to other Xbox players, they had to have the same subscription. So I ran through a few tutorials, made a couple demos, and shelved it.

Fast forward to about two months ago, Microsoft announced it’s sophomore version of XNA, this time opening the development platform to*any* .NET compliant language (let’s see, that’s C#, VB, JScript, Python, Cobol, Pascal, etc). Nice. And they allowed for multiplayer support via Xbox Live. Nice again, however now my friends have to have both a Creator’s Club $100 license *AND* a Xbox Live Gold account. Not impressed at all. So once again, fell on deaf ears.

Now, just a few days ago, Microsoft just announced it’s Community Games initiative. When the service goes out of beta (hopefully sometime this spring), a developer with a Creator’s Club license can publish a game for peer-review by other Creator’s Club members. If a peer reviews the game and passes it (no bugs or inappropriate/copyright infringing content), the developer can publish his own game on Xbox Live Arcade for *anyone* to download and play, for free or pay($$$). Anyone as in anyone who has an Xbox 360, an internet connection, and a pulse. No Creator’s Club license required. And did I mention, you can sell your game for money????? This is huge. Microsoft is changing its policy on game distribution from an iron fist to loose hands. It’s like every .NET developer will be handed an Xbox Live Arcade publishing contract (well for $100/yr, and a peer test). This is the day and age ladies and gentlemen. No longer do you have to either try to woo over a game publisher that usually doesn’t give a damn about you, your game or your well-being. Microsoft has opened the flood gates for developers everywhere to start profiting from their creations, without all the red tape of trying to get a contract, or trying to sell their game off their website. This is *HUGE*.

All I know is, I’m dusting off my XNA Unleashed book I bought a few months back. Several years back I was part of a group of people that shared my passion for video games, and we always dreamed of the idea of creating a compelling game, or an array of games actually, and achieving commercial success. Unfortunately due to the our naiveness (for the most part because we were so young), and the lack of a chance by the video game industry, we got discouraged after a few years, went our separate ways, and haven’t spoken of it since. But this….now, this is the chance that I wish we had back then. This is what is going to do to the game industry what Mp3/iTunes did for the music industry. .NET taught us that we can write compelling software w/o the woes of unmanaged languages like C++ (shudders at the thought of pointers), XNA taught us that a small group of 1-5 developers can make games that can rival the efforts of multi-million dollar software development houses, and now Xbox Live Arcade is going to teach us that anyone with a great idea, some code know how, and some modeling software and expertise, $100, and some serious fuckin passion can make a game and publish it to the world, and potentially sell millions.

So with that being said, I’ll be off to refresh my knowledge of XNA. I think I want to make an RPG. Sound good to you? Feel free to comment below.

P.S. In case you are interested in what XNA can do (on both PC and XB360), check out this video. And trust me, compared to the way games were made in the past, making games like this is incredibly easy.

Shining Force III Translation Project

Now, I know this is not late breaking news, but I find it to be blogworthy nonetheless. Remember this game for the Sega Saturn?

 

If you are a Shining Force fan, you probably remember it, if not, well, then just go back to your Final Fantasies (NOTE: I like Final Fantasy as much as the next RPG fan, I just don’t think it’s the be all end all RPG that all these fanboys croon about). Anyway, this game was released in 1998, in the US and Europe as, well….Shining Force III. What the dim-witted company know as SEGA didn’t tell us was that particular game we got was only 1 episode out of three (which explained the lame ending), they decided (like other great japanese rpgs like Grandia and Lunar), that America didn’t need the other two games, since according to at the time Sega of America douchebag exec Bernie Stolar, “Americans aren’t really into RPGs”. Prick. And in fact, in retrospect, the Scenario 1 we got didn’t have all that great of a translation either, now that I think about it. But alas, we got what we got. 

 

So as much as fans in the Western World booed and hissed and bitched to Sega about it for the last 10 years, not a damn thing has been done about it. All pleadings to port these games to a new console (DS or PSP would’ve been nice) has fallen upon deaf ears. So, luckily a few fans decided to translate the game a couple years ago, and finally fans had a text to read along to while they played the japanese version…..Meh……

 

Enter knightOfDragon and his team of misfits. Much like Neil Corlett brought us the translation patch for Seiken Densetsu 3(Sequel to Secret of Mana, thanks Square/Nintendo. You fucks), they have brought us patches for Scenario 2 and 3, and even the Premium Disk for the Eng-rish speaking world. They even re-translated the JPN version of Scenario 1 (such nice guys). So here’s the post (they don’t have a site), and here’s where to get the files. And you get an English copy of Shining Force III Scenario 2 and 3, and PD in a few easy steps:

1: Go buy Scenario 2 and 3(Around $50-60 on Ebay at the moment).

3. Stick one of the discs in your CD drive.

3. Download SF3Patch.exe from the above site.

4. Specify which game you’re patching and follow the instructions to make an iso of the patched game.

5. Now you can either mount the ISO for an emulator, or burn the ISO for a chipped Saturn.

 

And that’s it. And finally, you can see the ending to such an amazingly epic story that modern day RPG’s could only dream of having. And if you’ve never played a Shining Force, you can finally find out that Final Fantasy VII is NOT the greatest game ever made, and start seeing that there’s talent outside of Squeenix (and as of late, ALOT more talent).