Lunar Shards

Opps… wrong pair…

Originally uploaded by chiroKitsune

I accidentally ordered the wrong pair of safety glasses. I thought I ordered the clear ones. Didn’t realize I had selected the blue tinted ones.

Playstation TV

Originally uploaded by chiroKitsune

I saw this over at Best Buy the other day… damn this thing is thin :O I’m still curious how they have it mounted because I could have sworn that Sony said that they were wall mountable…

That Newegg order for RAM finally came in. Might stick with the normal ups ground shipment. UPS/USPS is a little slow and hard to track. Going to install it tonight and see if things improve on Miku.

That’s the feeling I had late September of last year with a particular order with Square Enix Merchandising when I put in a rather innocent order for a poster and a plushie. Little did I suspect that the troubles with too many people trying to login Final Fantasy XIV would cause my credit card to post multiple times when placing the order and subsequently never get processed properly. Earlier in the month I finally got a package from Square Enix at work containing my long sought after poster and moogle plushie but my god did that requires lots of calling and being persistent. Not to mention a nightmare cleaning up the mess. They did include some extras along with my original order that’s value alone is well over the plushie and posters so we’ll call it fair.  Sakura is keeping the moogle now which suspeciously has the same color pom-pom as a certain linkshell I’ve been shanghaied into.

September has been a blur to me. The first weekend of the month was Dragon*con which was a blast! I’ll eventually write more about it but dang I’m still spinning from the whirlwind that was! On the gaming side, a bunch of games came pouring out of the woodworks that I was interested in and/or forgot about. Enough that I had to skip a few that I wanted to play. I keep a list of games and release dates on my computer of games that I would be interested in, which as I later realized to be wildly out of date, and counted up what games came out in September that was considering. The warning lights start going off after my count passed 5 and I eventually totaled up 16 in all that I eventually want to drub my dirty hands all over but I had to cut back obviously. Of the games that came out in September, the biggest ones that drew my attention were Halo Reach and Final Fantasy XIV. While in doing some trimming, I had left off a few games by accident and eventually found a surprise package from NIS America showed up containing Atelier Rorona… 4 days before release! I truly had forgotten I had ordered it and glazed over the email notice they sent me about shipping it. I mentioned this to one of my friends who works at EB Games… errr… Gamestop near where I live and he agreed that September was really hectic if your in the gaming community. What? Why do I frequent the so called cesspool of gaming industry? Well the people at this particular Gamstop are actually nice.

In any case, I wanted to Focus on Final Fantasy XIV. Yeah I know I wrote about the beta but this is launch, the final release version. Square Enix decided to do something a little different by releasing the Collector’s Edition a week before the regular version. This is kind of a neat way to do it. The US Collectors edition comes with the game obviously, bonus items you can get both in game and real, a nice journal and a security token which is very much like the Blizzard Authenicator (it’s made by the same company!) Not bad for a collector’s edition though compared to some, it’s actually pretty spartan… hmm maybe a bad choice of worse considering what came a week before it. *sweatdrop*

Anyway! Compared to the Japanese version which contained a cloth map and and the tumbler (Europeans got the tumbler too but no map). I think we got a decent enough Collector’s Edition in the end. I’ve been hearing disturbing reports of the crappy design of the tumbler and the list of liquids not recommended to be used with the tumbler. In truth, with the list covering nearly 90% of all known liquids, I’d probably end up using it for a pen holder/cup or something since it’s mostly unusable for anything else… or maybe even a dice cup! Damn it! I knew I forgot to pick up something at Dragon*con!!!!

Compared to the beta registration process, the retail registration process was pretty straight forward and the servers didn’t choke like it did late in the night of September 1. I quickly got everything setup while at work and waited till I could get home to actually play the game. A slow install and update process and I was up and running within an hour or so. Since it never removed my beta settings folder, just the beta program, the retail version picked up my saved character designs from my beta settings and let me pick any of them for use.

Now I could have gone with my original setup during beta and just picked up from there but where is the fun in that? So end result was a bit of a change up. Frei Casull, my Miqo’te fisher had switched roles with Katida Casull, my lancer who I was using to verify items for my ongoing guide. Frei started in Ul’dah and Katida in Gradina. Can you further believe this was done via a roll of a dice? Chiro never got created as the dice never came up for him ^^;

From beta to live a few changes were present. Vendor items have gone up in price since beta. The pattern from the beta prices are pretty obvious as they applied a x2 multiplier to weapons and primary tools. Some secondary tools as well however some of the beta prices were already priced as they are in retail explaining some of the high costs in beta. Some items were moved from a central vendor to the respective visiting city vendors and some that will make you scratch your head. For example, in Ul’dah bows were moved to the Gridania vendor but not the ammo for them. Some equipment is gone now such as shields, I assume they want you to craft them. Another noticeable change was the hardware mouse! I don’t use the mouse when playing FFXIV beta as I never needed to but at least the change was good. Performance wise the game is running better now. I haven’t experienced the crashes I saw during beta and that’s good.

During beta I had to run the game at 720 vs 1080 as the game was too choppy to play but in live, I’m currently running it windowed full screen so I can work on things while I play. The game itself is gorgeous. There’s no doubt about that. Surprisingly the game ran mostly smoothly at 1080 this time. I assume updated base code and driver support. There’s still a odd shadowing issue but it’s mostly only present in certain areas like Gridania oddly enough. I assume this will get fixed in a patch or a driver update.

So for the last two or three weeks I’ve been playing this game now and have been enjoying it immensely. There are some obvious deficiencies with the game but overall the launch was met with few problems. Content wise, I’m not really certain what’s missing but the people who rush are seeing it but that’s true with most MMO games. No, expansions to WoW don’t count, you’d have to look at vanilla WoW in the first few weeks of live service. SE’s got a lot of room to expand from here and they’re definitely make an effort with improvements coming in every few days. Would I recommend the game to others? Yes, I would if they’re looking for something different but I also caution the high bar for entry. Since the PS3 version doesn’t come out till march, some may not have a computer capable of playing the game at the moment. I do have a friend of mine who’s stationed out in Korea will be joining me soon online on FFXIV! I even have a cousin who’s waiting for the PS3 version to come out so I’ll see if I can convince her to join me on the same server

Hmm well back to work. Going to have to start collecting my thoughts on Dragon*Con.

Sakura Matou Dollfie Dream

So last Friday I received a package from VolksUSA. Sakura Matou was the most recent of the Fate/Stay Atraxia Dollfie Dreams to be released. The pre-order period was only a few days at the start of May and about a week late we learned if we were picked since pre-orders are then put in a lottery system since they are a limited run. At first I was sure I hadn’t gotten picked since they were suppose to announce the selection that Friday and no email showed up however Sunday afternoon I got the email from them saying that the pre-order was being processed. Fast forward to August 20 and a package was waiting for me in my old office which I quickly went down and picked up. Now I’m not crazy enough to pull her out of the box and dress her up at work so I brought her home.

Things included are...

Once I got home, I got to unpacking her from the box. There were several baggies with the shoes, information packet, the wig and the outfit which was in a giant baggie with some pieces inside in their own bags as well. I have to say I really like the way the Japanese bags their stuff. They’re all easy to open and resealable bags. Very few US companies use this style of bags. Japan uses it for about everything!  That said, I started with getting the clothes separated out.  Funny enough they make bras for Dollfie Dreams but they never seem to include them with the outfits. Panties, yes, bras, no. Hmm… Anyway,  getting Sakura’s outfit on wasn’t much of a hassle for the most part. There was one slight problem initially but it required a bit of careful effort. The blouse for Sakura is a bit snug thanks to her large bust. No complaints or anything but I kinda expect a button to suddenly smack me in the face one day. In any case the rest of the outfit fits on pretty well.

Sakura's outfit

I eventually checked with my friend about this since she knew more about the Fate/Stay Night series then I did. Even though they are sisters (yup, they’re related in series), Sakura beat Rin out in this area. ^^; Beyond that the only oddity with her outfit  I had left was the tie. It curls a lot. I guess it’s from the stitchings but it’s kinda annoying me a bit. I may need to sit down and iron it flat again.

Sakura and Rin (and Canaan!)

That said, the hardest thing to put on her was the wig. Funny… I never had trouble with Rin’s wig… The wig for Sakura would keep slipping off. It took me a while to get it right and I eventually fixed it using the wig stopper I ordered. I had to pick it up from work Saturday since I left it there by accident. With that, Sakura now uses the doll stand that Rin vacated for the chair I got not to long ago.  Hmm… Maybe I need to sit down and work on that Valkyria uniform a bit more. Though should I size it for Sakura?

Well Dragon*Con isn’t to far away. I’ll see if I can find the doll vendor there and see what she has for sale. I remember seeing some cute hats I could get them.

I had planned on working on the Valkyria Uniform for Rin after Dragon*Con but considering all the delays and such I’m going to wait a bit before I restart the project. Reason being is I’m not 100% certain about how to make the jacket right. I have the materials so I’ll eventually make it.

I actually bought Rin a new dress :3 I’ve been eying this dress for a while. I hope it looks nice on Rin :3 I saw some stuff about White Album Dollfie Dream project. Hopefully they offer the outfits for purchase. I don’t plan on adopting more right now due to the cost.

Patch Completed

Originally uploaded by chiroKitsune

I finished the patch last night for the Squad 7 Uniform. I’m actually surprised how well the unicorn turned out on it. I was worried since I wasn’t sure if I still needed to run out to get dark (but not black) thread. I actually sewed the patch into it’s shape (folding the edges under) directly onto the blue fabric which will server as the tab which is on the uniform. I think stitched the outer white edge of the patch. I have to say, the material I’m using feels weird. I’m going to put a white layer directly behind the piece to protect Rin’s Skin.

Speaking of which, I updated my entry for the Dollfie Summer 2009 Competition. It includes 4 new shots (of some 14ish) I took today.

Squad 7 Emblem

Originally uploaded by chiroKitsune

I started work on a new outfit for Rin. This one might be harder to pull off since this requires a bit of planning. Funny enough it requires less material then the Aria uniform. After poking around, I thought it would be fun to make Rin a Squad 7 uniform. (Okay, more like she was pushing my face into the screen while exclaiming that she wanted to join the Gallian Militia.) At first I was planning on doing Alicia’s version of the uniform however I hit a few snags in terms of the way it was made. In the end I went with the general female uniform. It’s easier in terms of the parts and also because it has a more approachable design then the rest of the others. There are only 4 pieces of clothing that I plan on making. The sleeveless turtleneck, the uniform jacket, the skirt (based on the Haruhi series skirts, which look similar) and the corset. I don’t plan on doing the sockets just yet since I’m not sure what to do with them or the boot covers or gloves. Those require material I can’t find around town. I have to order zippers though since I don’t want to deal with buttons again.