Friday, April 3, 2009

April Foo's and Random News

Some people have been requesting a full explanation of my April Fool's joke, so here it is:

First of all, TDOMMX demands that I let everyone know that he was not involved, so yeah, he was not involved. This was all my own doing. To begin, the files that you guys downloaded were completely unmodded. They were copied straight out of my Rosenkreuzstilette folder and are, in fact, interchangeable with your existing files without consequence. I am told, however, by someone that the mod caused Liebea's stage to freeze on them. I'm not entirely sure how I accomplished that, but I won't ask questions. For those who didn't take a listen, "l_graphic.dat" is actually a music file. It is a renamed .wav version of the final Iris boss theme "Last Battle -Requiem for Myself-" by Unkolyn. The code listed, if you didn't notice, was a variation of the Konami Code, and not only did it not work, it was nearly impossible to enter within the time allotted. It was all an elaborate ploy, and I'm glad it worked out as well as it did. Apologies to anyone who grew frustrated by what you thought was your own failures. :3

Speaking of music, I've grown somewhat irritated by the misinformation of the music tags for the Rosenkreuzstilette GST released at Rockman Perfect Memories. Aside from the fact that the songs have an inconsistent bitrate amongst all the files, the tags are all wrong. The song titles and artists are in the readme.txt that comes with the game. The prologue stage theme is not "Eroffnungsstage ~ Der Anfang vom Ende" by [erka:es], it's "The Ground Which Can Shine" by Silver Chaos. Liebea's stage theme is not "Liebeas Stage ~ Rapunzel ist in tiefe Trauer" by [erka:es], it's "30" by AM3 (which has a description of how the song was supposed to resemble a mood of stress or strong consideration and was a test of the sound of acoustic guitars). The given titles don't even work when you consider that all the stages are renamed when you play as Grolla. In Spiritia's game mode, the prologue stage "Ready!" message says "Der Anfang vom Ende", but in Grolla's game mode, it says "Der einsame Krieg". The Japanese Rosenkreuzstilette Wiki, if you can navigate it, has each song listed in each character's profile (which two exceptions being Zorne's stage theme and Iris Fortress Stage 1, both currently of unknown origin; I haven't cross-referenced with the readme.txt songlist personally, though). Soon, we at Schwer and Schwer Alike will provide a full, easy-to-read listing of the actual track names and artists, something we hope will end the misconceptions once and for all.

On the 2ch news front, there were many guesses as to what [erka:es]'s April Fool's joke was going to be, one of the suggestions being Liebea Mode. I believe Visual Novel mode may have been mentioned as well, as it was in the original April Fool's Joke last year. Unfortunately, [erka:es] pretty much tossed a rod in the gears with their announcement. Among other notes of interest are a replay of a pea-shooter-only run of the Iris Machine boss fight. It's an impressive fight, especially the second part of the battle. Finally, one 2ch user discovered a news report about Germany getting their first nudist-only hotel. Here's the article:

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Germans get first nudist-only hotel
The first nudist-only hotel is set to open in Germany's Black Forest.

Guests will be required to leave their clothes at reception and must be naked at all times when on the premises – "or they will be required to leave".
"We hope to open as soon as possible," Silvia Probsthain, a member of staff at the planned Hotel Rosengarten.
"It will be the first comprehensively nudist hotel in Germany."
The rules state that all guests must put towels on chairs and loungers before using them, that there be no sexual harassment and that all sexual activity in "commonly accessible rooms" is strictly forbidden.
The hotel is being built in Freudenstadt, which translates into "Town of Joys". Freudenstadt's tourism director Michael Krause said: "I'm in two minds. It's always good if a new hotel is set up but I'd prefer a normal hotel concept."
Nude hiking is proving increasingly popular in Germany and two villages in the central Harz mountain range plan to mark special forest hiking routes for naked ramblers.
The practice is frowned on in neighbouring Switzerland, however, where authorities plan to fine such behaviour.
There are similar hotels catering for nudists in Scandinavia, Croatia and the south of France.


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Hotel Rosengarten. In the Black Forest/Schwarzwald. In Freudenstadt. Really. Finally finally, I just found this on the uploader.



Someone really likes Iris.

11 comments:

  1. Liebea mode would be awesome.

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  2. If we had a spriter talented enough to draw ladder-climbing animations for each boss, I'd have already made a Liebea patch. That's the only reason why we haven't actually bothered implementing a "ZX Mode" into the game (and the telltale sign that Shin Sentai Luste Teuber was a hoax).

    Since I was fine-tuning the font engine, Letty got the bright idea of creating a parody script for April Fool's Day. Unfortunately, it wasn't ready in time, so he set this up instead without my knowledge. The script is ready now, but it's so intentionally bad that it'd be an embarrassment to release after the fact.

    I don't mind what he did -- I just didn't like that he ascribed the "patch" to me. It's my policy to give credit where it's due, and I refuse to take credit for something I had nothing to do with, no matter how well-intended or malevolent it may have been. I'm technically an April Fool as well (my birthday is April 5th), so I like messing with people sometimes (and sabotaging my dad's attempts to do the same to me ^_^).

    On a tangentially-related note:
    kwui-kwui!

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  3. In regards to the music, I think "Red Pollusion" (sic) is Zorne's BGM and "SHINING MAN" might be Iris Castle 1's BGM. Both songs are by maru, but his website's down so I can't confirm that...

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  4. I downloaded the patch and was itching to try, but my RKS is on an external drive and the disc is on loan so I didn't get to be frustrated and horrified.

    By the way, how many rames are in the ladder climbing animation?

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  5. There are 3 frames for ladder climbing.

    http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/6716/ladderg.png

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  6. There's a sprite rip around, Letty?

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  7. We have one, yes, but we won't be giving it out quite yet.

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  8. I'm pretty sure someone else ripped the sprites from the game, too.

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  9. If you know where to look *coughcoughRKSuploadercough*, there are tools available to rip everything from the game into respective folders. This includes graphics, voice clips, etc.

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  10. I myself tried out the RKS extract tool made by Kcazer, but strangely enough, my computer just didn't want to read most of the BMP files, all of which the game could read fine. Matter of fact, the graphics I extracted were files that only the game could read, although I was able to open and read some of the BMP files. However, there are sprite sheets of those from the game, over at a certain sprite resource that were ripped by a well-known spriter, who is best known for ripping sprites from different games like Kirby and Taito games and even the Prinny game and such... And he even ripped from Doujin games like Touhou and even RKS. He's ripped a lot of stuff from RKS so far, and he's just organizing the enemies and backgrounds now. The tilesets and portraits should be next for him to do after then, I think. I think you ought to check that sprite resource out:

    http://www.spriters-resource.com/

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  11. The tool I mentioned already puts everything in respective folders.

    http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/375/fileso.jpg

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