Samuel_Tow

Huh... Yeah, I could ho with that. Shield Defence got Shield Charge. Why shouldn't Devices get something of the sort?

*edit*
Just to explain - this is less of a break of the cottage rule than it seems. Time Bomb can currently only be used on the ground, and it produces a large AoE explosion. Such a summon would also only be used on the ground and produce a large explosion, but for less hassle. I can still see it having a 7-8 second animation time, however, and interruptible, to boot. Just can it with the unreliable, situational bomb.

Do you think you can maybe find some pics or footage of that? With people being so coy with game name references, it's impossible for me to search on my own.

How long have you had "Waffles for the Blood God" in your sig? I love it!

Unless you want to employ some fuzzy math, it's impossible to conquer all of infinite anything. It's infinite because no matter how much of it you explore, there's always an infinite number more left to explore. If universes are truly infinite, then it's physically impossible to conquer them all. Either they weren't infinite after all, or you defied the laws of interdimentioal travel, which would sooner cause the multiverse to cave in on itself as produce the desired result.

It's actually part of a few simple rules of limits that infinity minus any finite number equals infinity nevertheless. It CAN get complicated if you get creative with your formulas, but this simplest expression always holds true. No matter how many universes you conquer, there's always an infinite number left to conquer.

And that's not even the Ion Cannon I had in mind That's the US Particle Cannon from Generals. The GDI Ion Cannon from Tiberum Wars is... Rather a lot bigger

While I'll agree with you that caves make this worse, this is precisely what my experience of ANY 8-man team on ANY map is. Stick eight heroes fighting 8-man spawns in the Construct if you will, and you'll still get nothing more than a huge clusterhug. The way enemy numbers scale up or, alternately, the way my cognition scales down with enemy numbers, means that any team over about... Three becomes chaotic and impossible to appraise strategically. I've no idea how people led Hamidon raids.

On the one hand, I agree with you. Having larger caverns with occasional tights spots would be ideal. In theory. In practice, what that materialised as was pink caves (also known as Troll or Shadow Shard caves), which are the single most boring tileset in the entire game, bar none. Arachnos maps, at least, have that weird alien design to them, but pink caves are just unremarkable. It's like being sat in a railroad tunnel and be told your mission was to go from one end to the other. Yeah, it'd be cool once, but every other time it's just more featureless tunnels. And they ARE featureless. It feels like the entire tileset has, like, ten pieces to it - corridor, curved corridor, dead end corridor, large round room and two different intersections, with exactly one turn.

I don't dislike pink caves because they're wider. I dislike pink caves because they suck. For all I bash on them, their remakings are, at the very least, decent. And also incredibly rare. Snake caves are VERY detailed, but they show up in all of a dozen missions, and Cimeroran caves aren't half bad (though still bland), but they only really show up in Cimerora and a few Midnighter missions. There are exceptions, but they're rare.

They're like ship maps. Each ship map consists of two or three giant holds with containers in different arrangements. Maybe if I were dockworker, I might be able to feel they were more different, but to my eyes, it's one big square hold after another, and to boot, it feels like there are a total of five hold sections, if that, with the first and last always being the same. Always.

For some reason, at one point the developers decided to do what WoW did (or so it seems) and cram the game full of humongous chambers and ginormous, high-ceiling corridors, and the result is... Bland beyond description. Convenience at the cost of artistic depredation and decay is not a good tradeoff.

You are not the only one. I grew up on things like Tomb Raider and the Prince of Persia, I enjoy complicated terrain that needs to be navigated, as opposed to the standard MMO fare of outdoor flatlands. Nothing bores me more than endless plains and forests, and that's a large part of what has turned me off practically every MMO I've ever played. City of Heroes' indoor instancing is a strong contender for the biggest reason I'm still here.

I don't actually have a problem with Dragonball Z/Kai's way of doing things. Truth be told, I've never been a fan of loads and loads of characters. And I will agree, the Shippuuden timeskip does indeed improve the character of Naruto. However, you are correct in that I don't read the manga, and all I have to go on is the highly, highly, HIGHLY declining quality of both the art style and the writing for the show. Maybe it doesn't do the manga justice. I wouldn't know. But the artists have been phoning it in pretty much since the Fire Temple filler, and it's only getting worse. People in the background are starting to look like the kind of faces I used to draw when I was six. This is getting to beyond Heavy Metal Movie levels of bad.

And the story so far is just... Blah. Maybe it's the stupid fillers with made-up non-canon ninja who fight with soap bubbles, maybe it's the Dragonball Z style WASTING OF MY TIME on pointless closeups and panorama shots that go on for 17 hours, maybe it's the Ghost in the Shell 2 overblown philosophy, or maybe it's the fact that I saw Naruto actually DO something for the first time in around 150 episodes, and he still ended up getting his *** kicked and getting talked down into a catatonic state of "I don't know how to achieve world peace, so Imma let this guy destroy cities to achieve his vision." To be honest, I preferred the idiot Naruto who was too stupid to quit and whose spirit was too strong to break, inspiring people who watched him. The current emo Naruto who basically ceases up with depression and confusion just because he can't give Pain a simple answer is just that - blah.

Do you realise that I watched four or five episodes, that's five weeks AT LEAST, of just about nothing? Pretty much the whole show tanked after the off-model fox episode. Afterwards, they talked for a full episode with, like, 2 minutes of action. Then people talked for a full episode, then Naruto and Pain talked for a full episode, then we saw two episode of Pain's flashbacks, none of which were necessary, and both of which looked like they were ret-cons, then we saw an episode of Narutos' flashbacks, and all of that to flashbacks THAT WE'D ALREADY SEEN LESS THAN 20 EPISODES AGO!!! Oh, but if that weren't bad enough, there was a two-week special FILLER in the middle of this, then they descended into about four episodes of filler. And now they're not airing an episode this week.

I have been sitting on my hands waiting for something to happen in this stupid show for TWO MONTHS now. If something doesn't happen soon, I'm done. I am so done.

I more meant an actual orbital laser coming down from space, with you just using a targeting laser like what they had in Tribes 2. If Robotics Masterminds can seem to have a space ship to airdrop Drones and tunnels everywhere to deliver Protector Bots, why can't all Pulse Rifle Blasters have an orbiting death ray?

The bigass laser is a cool idea, but I tend to have a problem with these unless they're very well done. The bigger you make a laser beam, the more scattered it looks, especially if it comes out of a small rifle. I could see a big-ish laser beam being used as as kind of Piercing Rounds knockoff, but a laser from space making a huge explosion, Ion Cannon style would just make my day

Hmm... Well, I have no pressing need to rename RIGHT NOW, so I think I'll let this roll for a little bit before I make a decision which will cost me as much as a low-budget title game. A few things to comment, nevertheless:

On Kazechi or Kazetsu, could you please explain how these actually attain their meaning? It's not mandatory that I know this, but that's purely for my own curiosity. With Kazeguro, I knew that kaze stood for wind and guro, I thought, for black, but wich these... I'm seeing kaze for wind, but then... "Chi?" "Ketsu" I have an easier time picturing as "black" or "blood," but the Japanese to English dictionary I usually use translates this to "*** (col), ****, buttocks" Well, among other things, like "larva" and suchforth. I'd just like to know how these words form, if it is at all possible to explain to a complete idiot when it comes to Japanese.

Also, Atheism, you quoted me saying "this" a couple of times and didn't leave a link to the original post, so I don't know what I was talking about at the time. Was it "black wind" from the original post or "blood wind" from later on?

Moving on to the next quote: kuroi kaze, kurokase or the kanji unification of kokufuu. Kuroi Kaze Rikimaru is actually 22 symbols, which is two more than the name field would hold. Now, I'm not adamant about retaining the name Rikimaru as a personal name. I mean, I basically took it out of Tenchu. I can just as easily turn around and pilfer Onimusha 3: Demon Siege and take Ranmaru Mora's first name. However, that would still only save me a symbol, and would not be enough.

When it comes to Kurokase, I remember I found a long PDF of Japanese last names and the ways in which they formed from meaningful words. Black was listed as "kuro" if it came in the beginning of the word and "guro" if it came in the end, as concerns two-word names. I basically picked the "guro" suffix an put in "kaze," a word not in the list, but which I knew from elsewhere. I will admit, I aped Naruto here, drawing from the word "kazekage." The flaw in my logic, however, is that "kazekage" does not mean "shadow wind," i.e. a wind made out of shadows, but rather "wind shadow," i.e. the shadow of the wind. The four (five?) shadows in Naruto are the leaders of the main villages, and each has its own "qualifier" so to speak. What I needed, however, was the reverse, and the reverse does not work unless I invert the word order. I should have thought of that when I was making it

However, the reason I didn't and still won't turn the words around is because I will not use the name "kuro." It may not mean much to you, but saying that out loud in my language comes out as something like "dickman." Knowing it has a meaning is one thing. Constantly referring to the guy as "winddick" in my head is not something I can do. I know it's a stupid problem, I know it doesn't make sense, but it basically means the word "kuro" is unusable for me. I would sooner change the meaning I want.

As far as "kokufuu" goes, I don't assume that has any explanation, being a single word? Or do I have that wrong? Assuming there is no "why" this means what it means... What exactly does that mean? I realise it could mean black wind, but I also realise that's probably more a figurative translation. Does it literally mean that? Because if it does, I'll use it, provided it still fits into the "... no Rikimaru" framework.

Incidentally, I actually like the "Gurokaze" idea, as it's somewhat of a play on words. It does come off as seeming like it should mean "black wind," in what sense I don't know, but it could also mean "grotesque wind," if I understand it right, and most of his wind powers are a pretty thick red colour.

I guess, if I wanted to be really anvilicious, I could go for something like "murder wind" or "murdering wind," though I'm not sure if that would sound any better. I checked my trusty online dictionary, and it gave me one word for "kill" that I recognised, which was "satsu," but I know I've heard at least one more spoke, which sounded something like "kurus." Now, I don't know whether that's exactly what that meant, where it wasn't a declarative statement (I will kill you) or an order (kill him) or whatever. I'd be interested to know if killing wind or murder wind is possible.

I apologise for running you guys around so much. I really appreciate the time and the help and I actually really enjoy this. The sounding of the name is still a bit... Off, which is the only reason I'm still exploring options.

Exactly. Established canon never claimed that universes had to be uniquely different and that exact duplicates didn't exist. That's all I'm saying, only I assert that every unique universe has an infinite number of identical duplicates. You can have a thousand dimensions draw a thousand Infernals from Infernal Earth and you may still find Infernal there afterwards anyway.

Within the context of the show, no, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I like to think that the last time he hurt his arm, it was because he did the thing three times, and because he sucked at it, to boot, whereas this time it was just once with the clear understanding of what it is, plus he held on to it for a shorter time. Nevertheless, I realise it's just an excuse on my part.

What I like is the effect, however nonsensical it may be. Shippuuden has been scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of animation budget practically since Hero's Comeback, and it's only going more and more downhill, to the point where just bringing it up make me feel like Spoony talking about TNA, and I do not know why I still watch this real-time train wreck. That one off-model high-budget episode with the 9-tailed fox was, admittedly, very sweet, but even a dead man could tell it wouldn't last, and sure enough, next episode is back to "drawn by a kindergartener." Seriously, check out the faces of people in the foreground. It makes the Powerpuff Girls look like Avatar.

It doesn't really make sense, but by anime standards, that's a very creative use of animation. And I know what I'm talking about, considering I'm watching Dragonball Kai in parallel Anime tends to make big explosions at the same time ridiculous and boring. I'm not sure how they manage that, but I dare say limited budgets are partly to blame. This one had what felt like an unlimited budget, or closer to it than the show has seen in the past few years, and I just enjoyed the nice explosion. It brought me back to the old days of Naruto's fight with Shukoku where the encounter as seen from the ground resembled a powerful storm. Yeah, it's nonsensical, but I'm easily distracted by the shiny, if the shiny is done well enough. I yearn for the romantic simplicity of bigger explosions, and the Shippuuden movies provide in spades.

However, I will agree with the dissenters: Shippuuden sucks, and has sucked... Pretty much always. In fact, the old Naruto slowly started sucking from episode, like, 150 on, basically from the start of the fillers. What was truly badass was from inception up to about the end of the Chunin Exam and the fight with Gaara. Everything since then has been a constant downward spiral that's just on the verge of making me stop giving a crap about the whole thing... Pretty much unless it improves within the next two, at most three episodes.