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siverwrites · 4 years

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Yuletide 2020 Letter

AO3 - Siver

Thank you so much for taking this on! Here there are some general prompt details if you want them and if you already have some idea of your own, awesome. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

In all cases, all listed characters do not have to be included.

General Likes: fluff, hurt/comfort, comfort, missing scenes, close relationships of any sort whether romantic or platonic, family found or otherwise, sickfic (but nothing covid/quarantine related please), fandom crossovers or fusions, angst with a happy or at least bittersweet end, bonding, cuddling/hugs/holding, banter, mutual care and support, emotional bonding, loyalty, pre-canon, post-canon, reunited characterse, slice of life, supernatural stuff, mystery, adventure, worldbuilding, creepy or unsettling atmospheres

General DNW: NSFW, non-con, dub-con, underage relationships, shipping (except those ships listed as liked or background canonical pairings), infidelity, explicit gore, modern mundane AUs (eg. coffee shop, college, high-school etc), perma-death of requested characters

Any gen combination of character tags within each fandom is cool. Heck, any crossover/fusion between any of these fandoms is welcome too, go nuts.

Ghost Trick

Alma

Jowd

Cabanela

DNW: NSFW, non-con, dub-con, infidelity, explicit gore, modern mundane AUs (eg. coffee shop, college, high-school etc), permanent death of requested characters (unless doing something during Alma being dead)

Alma/Jowd/Cabanela are the OT3 of my heart but I’m perfectly happy with gen fic for them too with bestest friend Cabanela to Alma/Jowd. I’m also happy to see something focused on only one of them here or two of them--I only ask that if there’s a ship situation between 2/3 here it’s a situation with no infidelity please.

I’m a big fan of hurt/comfort and the more tenderness on the comfort end the better. However you can’t go wrong with pure fluff either.

That said I’m also a sucker for those five years of Jowd jail time and Cabanela’s 5 year solo mission or interactions with Pigeon Man (who is more than welcome; I love him too) during that final year, so anything exploring that is always welcome as is anything post Ch.9 which I can never get enough of.

On the OT3 front I’m always down for that initial get-together, but I’d also love to see the early days and basking in the feelings of ‘oh, this is happening’ and a very sparkly, very in-love Cabanela. Already well-established is also great. What do they do for fun? What’s a vacation look like? How does Jowd tease Cabanela mercilessly? How does Alma come out on top of the teasing game period?

I love the whole cast wholeheartedly, so if you need anyone else to make an appearance by all means throw them in.

The Legend of Heroes VII | Trails to Zero/Azure (Any)

Alex Dudley (LoH VII)

Elie MacDowell (LoH VII)

KeA (LoH VII)

Lloyd Bannings (LoH VII)

Randy Orlando (LoH VII)

Rixia Mao (LoH VII)

Sergei Lou (LoH VII)

Tio Plato (LoH VII)

DNW: NSFW, non-con, dub-con, ships in general (except canonical background pairings & mentions eg. Cecil/Guy or past Sergei/Sonya), infidelity, explicit gore, modern mundane AUs (eg. coffee shop, college, high-school etc), permanent death of requested characters, spoilers for Cold Steel IV or Hajimari

Any gen combo of characters welcome here--as few or as many as you want.

I love the sheer amount of found family feels in this pair of games and in the SSS in particular but let’s face it Rixia and Dudley may as well be SSS members by this point too.

I love the idea of uncle Sergei to KeA. I’d love to see more KeA and Dudley interaction. I love Randy so much and very fond of the sibling kind of relationship formed with Tio. Tio’s love of Mishy is adorable. Elie needs more chances to shine--she’s skilled and knowledgeable and so well-connected; put it all to use! Lloyd is Dad and I love him dearly. We see plenty of Lloyd and Rixia but how about Rixia and anyone else here? Sergei and Dudley interactions are great and have the history. How about some time working together? How about some time off the job?

Send the SSS on a job. Or a big family trip. To Mishelam? Could they go to another country (Liberl perhaps? >.>)?

Trails in the Sky (Any)

Estelle Bright (Trails in the Sky)

Kevin Graham (Trails in the Sky)

Kloe Rinz | Klaudia von Auslese (Trails in the Sky)

Mueller Vander (Trails in the Sky)

Olivier Lenheim | Olivert Reise Arnor (Trails in the Sky)

Renne Hayworth (Trails in the Sky)

Ries Argent (Trails in the Sky)

Tita Russell (Trails in the Sky)

DNW: NSFW, non-con, dub-con, underage ships (adult and minor), ships in general except those listed as liked or background canonical ships (eg. Cassius/Lena mention), infidelity, explicit gore, modern mundane AUs (eg. coffee shop, college, high-school etc), permanent death of requested characters, spoilers for Cold Steel IV or Hajimari

Liked Ships: Estelle/Joshua, Kevin/Ries, Olivier/Mueller

Ries &/ Kevin: Anything in 3rd or after, pre-Ao no Kiseki, or after Ao no Kiseki. Give them some much needed soft times. Or could expand on a moment in Gehenna if you want to do something creepier, or really anything in Phantasma in particular or another Gralsritter mission.

Any combination of the Brights and those they adopt: Really feeling the family/found family vibes strongly with any combination of the Brights and Renne. Please give Renne some warmth, peace and happiness, or at least 2 out of 3.

Tita & Renne: Girl time! Bonding time! Give these girls some joy. Send them plushy shopping or engineering nerding. Send them both to hang out at the Bright home!

Olivert & Mueller, Olivert/Mueller: Being there for each other. I’m fond of the little things like how Mueller always calls him Olivier even in Erebonia when Olivert’s identity is known and public. Something on the Ark or in Phantasma? Address Olivier’s wishful thinking of staying there a little more? Final preparations before leaving Liberl?

I’ve grown very fond of the growing connection between Kloe and Olivier (working together in Crossbell!) and would love to see more of that, the start of this blooming allyship/friendship after Olivier’s identity is revealed?

Friendship and sister-like bonds between Kloe and Estelle. Estelle providing our crown princess with support?

Or try some unexpected combos! Ries and Tita? Mueller and Kloe? Olivier and Renne? etc.

Dragon Quest XI (Any)

Graig | Hendrik (Dragon Quest XI)

Marutina | Jade (Dragon Quest XI)

Rou | Rab (Dragon Quest XI)

Sylvia | Sylvando (Dragon Quest XI)

DNW: NSFW, non-con, dub-con, shipping of any sort (reference to parents and other background canonical pairings are fine), explicit gore, modern mundane AUs (eg. coffee shop, college, high-school etc), permanent death of requested characters, any kind of focus on the Ogler’s Digest

I’m focusing more on two characters at a time here, but if you have a way to pull in three or all four, awesome. If you just want to focus on one of the characters here, also awesome.

Throwing Sylvando at anyone here is great. I love him and how bright and genuinely caring he is. I love his dynamic with Hendrik and always want more of them. Beyond fighting how else might they support each other? That said we don’t get to see much between Sylv and Rab and/or Jade and I’d love to see more of that too.

Jade and Rab are perfect for family feels. Exploring more of their time pre-game is cool. It’s a very different life from what either were used to. How do they adapt and grow together? Any moment in-game is great too. Or post-game helping each other out in Heliodor and rebuilding Dundrasil. Grandpa Rab and adopted granddaughter Jade just makes me happy.

Jade and Hendrik once knew each other. Hendrik’s a knight of her family. How do they reconnect? How does Hendrik adapt to Jade no longer being the little princess he once knew? How do they get along after the world is saved?

Rab and Hendrik have points of connection through both Carnelian and the fall of Dundrasil. Hendrik has also lost his homeland with the fall of Zwaardsrust. I’d like to see interactions between these two explored more.

#yuletide #yuletide 2020 #letters #letter

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xseedgames · 7 years

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LoH: Trails of Cold Steel PC Guest Blog #2 from Peter “Durante” Thoman - Graphical Enhancements & Options

Welcome to the second part of this 3-part series on the PC port of Trails of Cold Steel. The first part dealt with lifting the performance of the game to a level that I consider acceptable -- great even. Of course, you might now be wondering what to do with all that performance headroom if you’re planning to play on something faster than a GPD Win. After all, there isn’t really any need to run a turn-based JRPG at 300 FPS or more.

In this article I’ll introduce the various graphical settings I’ve added to the game, going into a bit more detail on some of them. I’ve been looking forward to this one in particular, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

The Launcher

Let’s start with a look at the game’s launcher:

There are a few things I’d like to remark on:

Every single option has a description text, and often it also shows visual comparisons of the settings (on the right)

The entire launcher you see here can be navigated just using a gamepad (actually, I made a tool for this that allows natural 2D-navigation and changing options in arbitrary C# WinForms dialogs using Xinput, and XSEED has graciously agreed to allow me to open source it, so look for that on my blog when things are less hectic)

Can you spot the typo on this screenshot? It’s fixed by now.

The rest of this article will look at the options contained in the “Display”, “Image Quality”, “Shading” and “Graphics” sections of the launcher in order.

Display

Here, you have the basic choice between windowed or fullscreen rendering with or without v-sync. In terms of framerate, there are 3 settings: a 30 FPS limit, a 60 FPS limit, and unlimited FPS. While the game was 30 FPS on consoles, in the PC version both 30 and 60 are fully supported. Unlimited variable FPS also work very well in all my testing, but are not fully QA’d throughout the game and offered on a “your own risk” basis.

Finally, I’ve also added an option for adjusting the Field of View (FoV). While not as important as in first-person games, playing close to a large monitor often makes a larger Field of View desirable. Here you see a comparison between the default FoV (left) and a very high setting (I wouldn’t personally choose one this high, it’s just for illustration):

Image Quality

This section deals with resolution, anti-aliasing (AA) and texture filtering. Resolution works as you would expect. In terms of anti-aliasing, MSAA 2x, 4x and 8x are supported, and transparency supersampling (TrSSAA) is there as a high-end option to improve the quality of alpha-tested surfaces. It was strange to discover that TrSSAA is actually significantly more difficult to implement in DX11 than it is in Direct3D 9 or OpenGL, but at least that explains why so few games offer it. Here is a comparison to show what each option does -- of course, the difference is much more pronounced in motion:

Before we move on to shading, there’s one thing I need to get off my chest. You know what really annoys me? When games offer some AA option, but do not apply that AA solution consistently to everything in the game (like e.g. character models in menus.) I had to extend the underlying engine to do it, but rest assured that when you select an AA option in Trails of Cold Steel on PC, everything will get that level of AA:

The main game rendering will be AA’d of course.

The rendered character dialogue portraits will also get the AA.

The character models shown on the equip screen? AA’d.

Character busts during special events? AA’d.

Yes, even the minimap rendering gets MSAA. And TrSSA. Because why not!

Oh, and there’s an anisotropic filtering option. It’s just a checkbox, because honestly, there’s no reason to bother with less than 16xAF for this game. Even the GPD Win can do it!

Shading

Now this is where things get even more interesting. There are four options related to the quality of dynamic shadows:

Shadow Resolution, which, as you’d expect, adjusts the resolution of the shadow maps all the way from “low” to “absurd”.

Shadow Casters, changing which objects cast shadows. Shadows are often enabled only selectively for performance reasons, with artists manually selecting which objects and characters are sufficiently “important” to cast shadows. This setting overrides that selection and makes every object in the scene cast a shadow.

Shadow Distance, which can increase the distance shadows are cast at. Ever annoyed by shadows appearing and disappearing a few meters in front of you? I know I am. Well, not on my watch.

Finally, Shadow Filtering enables softer and more aesthetically pleasing shadow transitions.

Even with these improved real-time shadows, the game’s environments still looked a bit flat. Since the environments, unlike the characters’ cel shading, are rendered and shaded in a more realistic style, I thought that a more realistic modern technique, namely ambient occlusion, might look good. With some engine improvements I was able to integrate HBAO+, one of the highest-quality and best-performing AO solutions available:

As you can see, it lends everything a lot more depth and plasticity, and also makes objects in the shadows appear more grounded.

Graphics

Last, but certainly not least, the “Graphics” options seem comparatively unexciting with just two checkboxes: and really, the High Quality Depth of Field setting just does what it says on the tin and while it’s a nice improvement, it’s nothing to write home about.

On the other hand, the Unlimited Draw Distance option is, and excuse me if I say so myself, a really big deal. In fact, doing something about the draw distance was one of the very first requests that came up when the first article was posted. What I’ve done about it is completely eliminate any form of pop-in, by making all objects and characters draw at any range. On some maps this is quite a significant extra CPU load, especially combined with full shadow casters, but nothing a modern Desktop PC can’t easily deal with.

Since pop-in is hard to demonstrate in images, I’ve made a video that really shows off the considerable effect of this option.

Other Improvements and Conclusion

In addition to these options, there are a few graphical improvements over the console version that are “always on” and don’t have a launcher option. For example, the glow effects are rendered at 4 times the fidelity, and uncompressed textures are used instead of the compressed assets designed for consoles wherever they were available.

I hope you’ll enjoy these graphical improvements as much as I enjoyed creating them and writing about them. In the final article, we’ll have a look at some non-graphical features, and one particular, somewhat programming-intensive graphical option that will make a few people really happy and which I never expected XSEED to go for. Till then!

#xseed games #xseed #xseed blog #the legend of heroes #trails of cold steel #guest post #durante #long post

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sonicmega · 7 years

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Aside from Trails of Cold Steel III, would you reprise Rean in a future Legend of Heroes game?

The more I come to understand him, the more connected I become to his character. He’s supportive of his friends in the same way I want to be, and so I hope XSEED (or whoever takes the LoH mantle) comes to see & accept me as the ‘definitive’ voice for his existence.

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oneangrygamer · 4 years

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Legend Of Heroes: Trails Of Cold Steel 4 PS4 Release Date Set For Oct 27th

Legend Of Heroes: Trails Of Cold Steel 4 PS4 Release Date Set For Oct 27th | #LoH #ToCS4 #TrailsOfColdSteel #JRPG

Nihon Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV has been rocking the market in Japan since 2018, but the Western release has taken a while for the localization process to complete. Nevertheless, you can expect the game to make its way to the PlayStation 4 first this fall starting October 27th, this is despite the fact that Sony is on the Traitors of America master list. (more…)

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#JRPG #Nihon Falcom #Nintendo Switch #NIS America #PC #PS4 #The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 4

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snufthebest · 6 years

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End of the day! 😁 Today was a day of Legend of Heroes: Trail of Cold Steel, and Secret of Mana remake! 😁 Did some ssx in the beginning of the day too! 😁 Well, with the Secret of Mana remake i reconised the voice of Dana from Ys Directly after the character Luka began to talk, so weird to reconise voices from other games.. 😅 well, the remake is decent and im having fun with it; not to speak of LoH, im having a blast witht hat game! Had aome quality time with alisa, and trying to get everything out of the game, im playing relaxed and nothing rushed! 😁 I so love the characters, one by one! 😁 This is realy a title thats going to belong in the top games i played! 😁 can't wait till i play the 2nd game, and when the 3rd and 4th game is coming out in the west! 😁 well, have some Alisa to end this day; its way too late, and im going to catch some sleep now! 😅 Goodnight ya all! 😄 ______________________________ Tags: #psvita #playstationvita #playstation #vita #psp #playstationportable #ps4 #playstation4 #ps3 #playstation3 #nintendo #nintendoswitch #hatsunemiku #hyperdimensionneptunia #legendofheroestrailsofcoldsteel #legendofheroestrailsofcoldsteel2 #legendofheroes #anime #manga #japan #jrpg

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