Joe Majewski » Expectations

What is the Happy Go Lucky Accolade in Dragon Quest IX? | DQIX Hints & Tips

Joe Majewski — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 02:30:50 +0000

I’m willing to bet that nine out of ten gamers don’t realize how they got this unique Accolade until they look it up on Google, or whatever other resource it is that they use to look up gaming information.

With that said, the Happy-Go-Lucky Accolade in Dragon Quest IX will most certainly come to you as a surprise, and it’s always a great feeling as a gamer to achieve something that was unexpected; this rule doesn’t change in DQIX.

Most Accolades come with descriptions that clearly define the reasoning behind how it was achieved, but the description for Happy Go Lucky makes no indication of it’s requirements at all. Seriously:

Presented to [Player's Name] on the occasion of (his/her) being touched by the lucky stick.

What!? Are you kidding me? Do I even want to know what they mean by “the lucky stick“? Unless I’m missing out on some figure of speech that is not so widely known, I think this might simply be a joke from the game designers. Er… maybe joke isn’t the appropriate term, but perhaps it was meant to be a funny description for a secret Accolade that they didn’t expect many people to achieve.

Nonetheless, I came upon it, and I do, in fact, have the valuable information that I’m sure you came here seeking. So how is this “Happy-Go-Lucky” Accolade achieved? Simple. To get this special achievement, all you have to do is view the Battle Records menu. You know, the menu with the dark-skinned, witty faerie that likes to babble on about random story-related incidents, going by the name of Stella.

The catch is, you must view the Battle Records menu while your Battle Victories statistic (located on the top screen) is a number made up of like digits. For example, 1111, 2222, 777, and 999 are all valid Battle Record counts to trigger the unlocking of this Accolade.

Since I tend to spend a lot of time viewing the Battle Records menu, the odds of me obtaining this Accolade were very high. I like to know the percentage of equipment pieces I’ve collected, the percentage of monsters that I’ve fought, and I like viewing various information about the accomplishments that I’ve made in Dragon Quest IX.

This being one of my favorite games of all time, it’s no wonder why I’ve been writing so many blog posts about such a masterpiece lately. Happy leveling, fellow DQIX fans!

A New Milestone in Development | Fortress RPG

Joe Majewski — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:29:39 +0000

I knew from the very beginning that the Technology section of the game was going to be HUGE, but I had completely underestimated what was in store for me. I was overwhelmed with work. There were nearly a half dozen database tables, several PHP pages, and lots of brainstorming and paper work that I used to compile the finalized list of technologies.

As I’ve previously stated, Arena used an upgrade system where each upgrade type (attack, defense, unit production, etc) was always available, and it doubled in price with each purchase. This worked, but it caused all players to make similar choices when it came to upgrading. Fortress RPG has an entirely new upgrade system, where the components are called Technologies. Upon purchasing a technology, the cost of your next technology increases, regardless of what it is, as the cost of a technology is 100% based upon how many you own. Additionally, new technologies may or may not become available, depending upon what you chose to learn.

My fiancee and I probably spent over 100 hours working on the technologies system, and it was well worth it, as it makes Fortress stand out from most browser-based games of this sort. In addition to that, technologies are fun to learn. After purchasing a technology, it’s fun to see the new technologies that become available. I’m sure that
everyone will be more than happy with this new game mechanic.

I’m proud to announce that Fortress RPG will consist of 100 unique technologies

I will post another update, much like this one, after the next milestone in game development is met. So what’s next on my `to-do` list? First, I plan on making and completing the Buildings section of the game, along with the cron job (a PHP script) that gets executed every 30 minutes to update rankings and income stats, and whatever else needs to be done. This is tentative, so don’t be surprised if I do things in an entirely different order.

Stay tuned! If you’ve got any suggestions, now would be the perfect time to expose them.

(Not to mention that I like getting comments.)

Google’s Next PageRank Update in July 2010?

Joe Majewski — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:33:08 +0000

Before you get your hopes up, this is not a confirmation that Google’s PageRank update is underway. On the contrary, I am actually interested in finding out myself when Google will be executing their magical PR update.

I remember learning in the past that Google updates PageRank three or four times per year, and it being the beginning of July, I would expect them to be doing another PR update soon. We are halfway through 2010, after all.

If anyone knows any information about the next time Google will be rolling a PR update, then please comment below, as I am highly looking forward to finding out my latest PageRank status for dozens of pages across all of my websites.

It would be really nice to finally achieve a PR3 for the home page of this domain name, but I would also be more than happy to see some of my sub-pages receive a PR1.

As things currently stand, only the home page of this site has a PageRank greater than zero, which is depressing, to say the least. I do, however, have many pages at PR0, while at the same time boasting a much higher load of pages with a PR N/A, which is also disappointing.

I’ve done a lot of work on this blog since Google’s latest update, adding a ton of new content. In addition to that, I’ve also added quite the abundance of source code enhancements to help Googlebot find the information it needs to appropriately rank me on the search engine results pages.

I’ll be sure to update this entry with any news that surfaces in the coming weeks. Hopefully Google won’t keep us eager web developers waiting too much longer.

How Linear is Final Fantasy XIII?

Joe Majewski — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 01:56:35 +0000

Unless you’ve been locked up in a closet for the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard a lot of fuss about Final Fantasy XIII being extremely linear. Given that I’ve seen this question asked by dozens of people, I feel that I should also address this concern, as I picked up the game at launch and have been playing it on a daily basis ever since.

How linear is Final Fantasy 13? For me, it took about 35 hours worth of playtime before I reached the point in which things opened up and sidequests became available. I do not deem this to be a fault for the game, as I really enjoyed those first 35 hours of playtime. The storyline is incredible and is integrated into the gameplay in such a perfect way that makes the entire experience epic.

I should also mention that I have not yet finished this game. As of now, I’ve got 40 hours of playtime clocked, and I would estimate another 40 hours left to go before I complete it, and possibly more depending on how much extra grinding I do. In terms of the storyline, I think that I am more than two-thirds of the way through the game, but the vast amount of additional quests that recently opened up has given me a reason to stunt my progress with the main quest and pursue optional content.

Hopefully this gives you a better idea of how long you may have to play before being granted the opportunity to explore the world of Gran Pulse without bound. While it took me 35 hours to reach this critical point in the game, I would expect the average gamer to take between 25 and 30 hours. If you’re like me, on the other hand, and fight every enemy you see, search every corner of the map, read all of the data logs, and lolligag around, then don’t kid yourself; it’s going to take 35 hours.

Google’s Slow Indexing Rate for Blog Posts Resolved… Kinda

Joe Majewski — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:31:30 +0000

Last night I posted an article about Google’s slow indexing rate for my latest blog posts. Usually my articles get indexed within minutes, but recently it has been taking over 12 hours before Google gets around to adding my posts to their search results.

I did some research and found that others have had that same problem in the past. I still don’t know the exact reason that this was occurring, but rest assured, Google did get around to indexing my articles, albeit it took almost a full day.

For anyone else having similar issues, I would suggest just waiting it out, as maybe Google’s pinging service was queued up heavily during the time of my submission, or possibly they were in the process of updating their search engine. Regardless, I can only assume that things will return back to normal in due time.

If this problem persists, I will escalate my concerns and shoot an email in Google’s direction to find out why. I understand that Google’s crawl rate is composed of many variables, but that should have no affect on their pinging service, which tells Google that new content has been published and alerts them to index the new page.

This situation is out of my hands, as there really isn’t anything that I can do to cause my pages to index quicker, except to legitimately write new content on a regular basis, as always.

Google has always revolved around the thesis that content is most important regarding getting a high ranking in the search results, so the best thing to do when a problem like this arises is to, you guessed it, write new content rich with information useful to others.