#tldr; 2018 is not real nope

[haeroniel-doliet]

y’all quick rant time about the new years. a lot less sad than my other ones

right. im just ticked bc im having a weird feeling and its not making sense. i dont think 2018 is real. like just as a gut feeling or whatever, 2015-17 have been pretty real to me idk why but they have, feel like a real year, i still like the sound of 2017 a lot better than 2016 for some reason etc and i always do struggle with adjusting to a new year i guess? bc of habit writing down dates. but i feel like 2017 came naturally and it was expected. but 2018? nahhhhhhh. thats not real. not a good number, not a good sound does not exist and is not gonna be a real year. for some reason im apprehensive bout 2019 bc thats a lil whoo in the retro futurism but im ready for 2020. fuck knows why. 2020 is gonna be the next real year.

 unfortunate too considering last two new years have been p shitty. *then again most years have not been great* (yea i maybe have problems with setting up expectations from media and talk that my own family doesnt follow through with nor are inventive or fun, so i get ‘depression spikes’ around holidays and birthdays. idk. i gotta look into that) anyway. sometimes new years is like stadning in the snow taking a sip from their sparkling wine looking at neighbours fireworks. or just sparklers. never our own fireworks unless w a big group of their friends. or wed melt tin but not do it again for years bc oops inconvenient apparently. here the first year we went to hyde park in the dark w the family and i wasbeing a grumpy pissed off baby for some reason i cannot recall (but i usually am around family i guess.)  and the other year i just sat at home watching the fireworks on tv and listening to them through the window while my parents went out. ive spent many a new year just on my computer. not that they suck but its kinda sad 

right but yea ive been dreaming of being with friends and having a set up party to celebrate new years with people i choose to spend time with and make it special who want to also make it special like we expect it. basically i wanna be the pinterest mom who makes everything extra and pretty rather than (sorry) my mom for whom a few balloons and streamers are a lot of party decoration. tbh thats another rant. my moms a p good human, like what she does in her work and doesnt upset anyone i guess and has friends. but shes quite a bad chef and baker and fun person. m never going to miss my moms cooking or baking, bc i do all the baking and while ive been gone i feel like i cook better for myself. not even missing her taking care of me bc i think i can handle it pretty well on my own, despite a few phone calls for support.  as well as she likes to nag about things making me shut down and be pissed (why do they trigger this response in me so quickly? its not fair to them, but they do and i guess thats a thing i gotta work on iin theeraaapyy or whatever i end up doing) 

fuck im really looking forward to seeing the mental health advisor and getting to a therapist councellor psychologist anyone asap. i just wanna get settled w someone good and  actually sort these out. bc recently everything feels like a dream and ive not changed out of pjs or been out of bed for days. i dont feel like i can leave the house w out my parents (unlike at uni i could go on walks or shit by myself and not meet anyone who questions it) and bleh meh i feel like my dads mad at me for holing myself up and being grumpy all christmas and in general when being interacted iwth, as well as not wanting to do anything i should do like go shopping or get my hair cut while im here. im just being miserable really and i want it to stop and know how to explain to them why i think theyre part of the problem when obviously to an outsider or to themselves, theyve never done anything to cause me to be like this.even i cant explain it. its just too many little things i guess. 

fuck where was i going. i mean yeah right, this was about new years. 

so originally again parents are going to a party and i was going to be alone home bc i know nobody in london. not even my old school friends live here/are around rn. so lo and behold im dragged along to my parents and their friends house touring meals all in one day, and im ofc with their friends daughter and her friend, who are genuinely llovely and way cooler than me, and even though theyre older im the first in uni, whoopwhoop. and her dad is funny and they have a dog. and they invited me to join their new years party. hahhahh holy fuck yay. theyre all very genuine about it, saying id fill in the table as the 6th person and balance the girls and boys, and that bc id be there theyd celebrate finnish new years as well as their danish and the current uk one. and apprently were for dinner and to play cards against humanity and did i mention they have a super cuddly and wonderful white dog?  anyway. apparently i now have plans for new years and i hope itll be wonderful. ofc i gotta be polite and get over being awkwarad at the same time and figure out how to get home politely so i dont have to spend the night there bc i dont like staying over unprepared and i really dont know them super well. anyway. tomorrow im gonna shower bc im disgusting, and bake finnish pancake bc i have now promised, and go over to spend maybe 6 hours w them and have a genuinely nice new years eve and im really looking forward to it

im just not looking forward to 2018 cancel it, skip it, idk i just dont want that number. im gonna call it neo 2017 sure. redo 2017 and then next year 2019

[videogamesincolor]

Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, and Port Issues

Twitter Thread written by Alex Donaldson of VG247 and RPGSite

“[...]A few people asking what the 'technical issue' is off the back of this tweet, so here's a boring FF nerd history lesson. The short version: in the 90s Square wouldn't keep /anything/, and the source work for FF7 and FF8 is largely gone. But there's more to it...

For FF7 PC, the port team at Eidos asked Square for source code and were told... nope, can't. This was a year or so after the PS1 release. It was already gone. In the end, OG FF7 PC was built out of a pre-launch build of 7, which is why it had bugs not in the PS1 version...

..because that build pre-dated a lot of the final bug-squashing before it went to print on PS1. The Eidos port team touched it up & matched it to PS1 as best they could. 8 was a better situation than 7, which was a frankenstein port, but not much different.

Anyway, this means any Mobile/Console port of 8 would, like 7, have to be hacked together from the messy PC port. Despite being sold on steam that PC version of 8 is a real mess (like 7 was before SE did loads of work), so essentially doing 8 will be a lengthy/costly process.

One thing that's a laugh about those steam versions of FF7 and FF8: in 2013 Square nicked some fan-made patches that got them working on modern PCs & used them. No credit! Original builds had telltale signs, like, er, a fan modder's name in the code. They patched that out. lol

FF9 didn't escape unscathed - afaik the code is there, but sadly the backgrounds were rendered at /way/ higher than PS1 res, but might be lost. Some are saved via artists (attached example), but it seems backups weren't kept. If they were, a REMake style high res 9 would be easy.”

(CON’T: Chrono Cross / Source Code Preservation)

“[...]Back then people just didn't think about the cultural significance, I don't think. People would toss out CDs and wipe hard drives to simply free up space as they began a new project. Or, if they improved a dev tool for the next game, they'd delete the old version; why keep it?

We know better now, of course, but it just wasn't the way then. We get lucky sometimes, though, like how the source code for an old Enix game turned up in an ex-employee's storage, found by his son when he passed away. Stuff like that.

[...]Not sure, but probably. Chrono Cross is almost certainly gone as well.

The reason before now we never saw many 'remaster' packages but we're seeing lots of them for PS2/PS3 era games is because that was the first era where devs really got their act together in terms of archiving their masters/source, making the process of porting/remastering easy.

Absolutely, yeah. I would say calling it "comparatively easy" to the process before we had better archival work going on is a fair description, though. Bringing anything to market is always some measure of difficult, no question!”

Music Rights (Crisis Core / ”Eyes on Me”, Faye Wong)

“As far as I know, the game damaged by music licensing issues is Crisis Core, for 'Why'. Anyway - Uematsu wrote & composed Eyes on Me and was a Square employee at the time, so they own the composition outright. This is why it didn't stand in the way of the 2013 PC re-release, too.

Faye Wong /could/ have a right to the performance, but there are 3 other SE-sanctioned recordings by Angela Aki, Kanon & Susan Calloway, so they could easily replace Wong's version if needed. TLDR; the lack of a port is down to the cost/difficulty of doing it. 7 took them ages.

I do think Wong might own the performance though, for a few reasons - primarily that the vocal version was absent from Dissidia & Theatrhythm, but instrumental arrangement versions were not. For the reasons above that'd never stand in the way of a lucrative re-release though.”

Written September 2018