BardicKnowledge

If you can find it, Finale Notepad 2008 is still free to use, though its features are limited. Seeing as how the full version of Finale as a college student is $300 though, something is better than nothing... I'll throw my two cents in for Finale as the best way of editing and working with sheet music though -- it does great things as long as you don't need to do a lot of production.

Short versions: FF2 invovles a group of orphans (Firion, Maria, Guy, and Lionheart) flight from the city of Finn, and they join the rebellion against the evil empire (there's a reason Biggs and Wedge get cameos in later games...). Lots of different characters join your party, though of these, Minwu (the first) is the most memorable. FF3 introduced the job system -- you play as four generic kids who get awesome powers via the crystals. Easily best of the original 3. The NDS remake names the kids, but I forget those details. There are some incidental characters here and there, but not playable. FF5 revisits the job system with named characters: Bartz the wanderer (and his pet chocobo), Lenna the princess, Faris the pirate, and Galuf the old man all get awesome powers via....the crystals! And they fight Exdeath, who turns out to be a very pissed off evil tree.

I run a few frames slower in Steam with 7 than I did in Vista -- nothing that's making anything unplayable though.

Feel free to add a bunch of us -- I find the experience to be much better when it's with people I know, as opposed to random games full of rage-quitters.

^Profile and gamerscore are saved on MS's servers -- check the option "Recover Gamertag". As for saving your games, your only good options are a 360 Memory Unit, or hooking up the 360's HD to a PC and copying the appropriate data (you'll have to look up how to do this as I have no clue).

Yeah, got the latest drivers. I'm assuming they will continue to optimize them, and release at least one more set of drivers for the W7 beta. For now, since the only setting I had to change to get 90% of my FPS back was the Shader detail, I'm fine.

Left 4 Dead seems to be having some framerate issues. It's still playable, but I had to scale the graphics back a bit, and my framerate feels like a console framerate instead of a smooth PC game. Anyone know if there's some sort of fix for Nvidia cards? I installed the W7 drivers via the automatic update tool. Oh, and I'm running the x64 version. Edit: Forgot to mention that I have a Creative X-Fi sound card, which apparently isn't well supported in the new OS. That could be the problem, but changing it out may be more trouble than it's worth...

Now I'm really glad I didn't get a DX10 card....damn!

It had better support DX9 still -- otherwise I'll be pissed, as I don't have the cash to upgrade my graphics card right now.

I got my e-mail verified, only to get the same error screen as Level 99.

Prophet: I don't seem to have download rights on the technet page, despite having logged using my Windows Live ID. Any chance you know how to get around this? EDIT: Figured things out -- hooray!

So for the first 2.5M users, how long do they get to use it? Until it goes to retail?

It's 10 hours even along the optimal route, but we're extending it to 10.5 by going through Iowa instead of Wisconsin. There's apparently bad snow in MN tomorrow night, and we may need to stop -- we can stay for free in the ISU area.

Well, I'm still not home, but am taking a driving break at the parent's place for Monday. The trip was excellent! I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet as many people as I did. I especially enjoyed random music just happening in and around the OCR group -- singing with Prophet and Escariot was cool too (we'd be amazing if we would get together when our voices are in shape!) Looking forward to getting home -- it's another 10.5 hours on the road tomorrow

I know next to nothing about the PSP, but thought I'd inform you about NDS homebrew, since you mentioned that you'd utilize it for either system. First of all, a cart-based interface to run it (I use the R4DS, though there are newer, better things now I'm told) will run you around $40, and you'll also need a MicroSD card to hold data. After that, your NDS (via a program called MoonShell) will play .dpg video files, .wav, .mp3, and .ogg audio (plus others), most images, and .txt files. NES and SNES emulation are both available, though I haven't tried it out yet. IMO the killer homebrew app for the NDS right now is Colors!, a painting program that's basically a poor man's Wacom tablet -- and you can e-mail pictures from your DS to your computer if you have wifi access. In the end, it really comes down to games. RPG's are split almost dead even between the two systems, though the recent re-releases of Chrono Trigger and Disgaea DS help to tilt things in the DS's favor IMO.

Giving each character their unique accent in CC wasn't actually done with direct translation (they used an algorithim to generate accents for each character), it probably wasn't as terrible as it could have been. Still, a lot of dialogue though! The mountain was incredibly tedious. Other parts of the Lost Sanctum were bearable though. The Dimensional Vortex portions were very cool when they were exploring additions to the plot: I would have liked to see events from Schala's point of view -- continuing as if the camera never cut off from the Ocean Palace. Either that or seeing the development of the El Nido Triangle would have really sealed the deal. As is, the extra parts are fun, but generate more questions than answers. I'm hoping for a re-release of CC to address some of these issues (could the DS handle it given improvements to compression etc.?)

Lack of x64 support is a deal-breaker for me. As mentioned in one of the reviews, the best games require more memory than a 32-bit OS can handle (well, to max out settings anyway). Also, wouldn't games need to be specifically designed for this technology in order to make it work well, and not be just a cheesy gimmick?

Last night: "Nah, probably won't make a thread." Today I wake up and see 8 pages! haha Congratulations to both of you!

I'd like to see a Capcom rehash approach to Sonic. Bring back Sonic 3's gameplay (hell, even Tails and Knuckles are both acceptable), but up the graphics to include crazy environments etc.

All that article says is that if you flip or shake your console while there's a disc inside, you will cause damage to said disc. There's a warning in the 360 manual about this. Also, who picks up their console and moves it while it's on?

At least you're good with the important one -- IMO games are won and lost based on how good your Boomers are -- hunters and smokers can only get in there well after the chaos caused by a good boomer.

If you don't live in / near an academic setting, you probably won't get the chance to hear it, but I really enjoyed listening to Scott Wyatt's (of the University of Illinois) "On a Roll" -- an electroacoustic piece designed for a surround sound hall.

That's a good idea, though I think I've added everyone that has it also. Still, it's definitely worth doing, especially given the fact that this game gets exponentially more fun when you play with people you know.

Most of what I would say has been covered already. I'd really like to see an additional countermelody at 1:51 though, instead of the straight repeat. As for an ending, I'd recommend some sort of play on the opening motive found at 0:31-32. It jumps up to tonic nicely, and could work well -- you've certainly proven to us that you have the talent needed to polish this one up! Hoping to listen to a new version soon. Note that as of today, you can edit the thread title by editing your original post...letting us all know when you have updated the WIP.

I've finished all the challenges -- each of them is doable after a while...just gotta persist! Some of the last 10 really come down to blind luck though.