Time to start looking for those buyers, Kevin

Since all my friends are big electronica freaks, I need to add some more to my library. I started looking into eletrodance, but I'm not really familiar with the whole genre. I found a couple of relevant examples:





I need some recommendations along the same lines. Give me your best shot!

I'm working on a pen-and-paper RPG, and I'm trying to consider a more unique approach to determining the accuracy of attacks. I wanted to make this a very simple process that doesn't impose any math on the players. e.g., roll a single die, and check the value to determine whether an attack is effective or not.

What I don't like about how D&D handles this (at least, older editions) is that the player was tasked with checking a look-up table, depending on the enemy's armor class. I don't want to impose anything like this. It needs to be far more simplified.

The basic idea here is that any armored character or creature can absorb most any blow that's directed at it. Presumably, wearing armor means that your armor is going to stop a weapon dead in its tracks, thus making you much more difficult to successfully damage. The game must determine when an attack either hits a vulnerable, non-armored area of the target, or otherwise pierces the target's defenses somehow. So, this to-hit system need only consider the armor class of what is being targeted, and not the attacker's own accuracy or type of weapon being used. The finer details are left to abstraction.

What I was thinking was requiring the attacker to roll a single die and aim for a value that's greater or equal to the target's armor class. There are some issues, though: Which die represents a balanced probability that can universally encompass all kinds of attacks; what if the target's armor class is higher than the maximum value of the die? As far as the latter is concerned, I think there can also be a bonus on an attacker's to-hit score, which means this value is added to the total value that was rolled. If, for instance, you had a to-hit bonus of +2 and you rolled an 8, the outcome would be considered 10 instead. (8 + 2) In cases where a target has some abnormally high armor class, you might only be able to hit it if you had an adequate to-hit bonus to match. I'm really not sure how this looks in terms of overall balance, though.

Any insights would be appreciated.

I was looking over the Final Fantasy XIII soundtrack earlier, and I thought one detail was kind of interesting: Track 19 of disc 4 is entitled 生誕のレクイエム in the Japanese version. This generally translates to "Requiem of Birth," or "Nascent Requiem." In romaji, that would be "Seitan no Rekuiemu." What's funny is that "Seitan" is pronounced similar to the English "Satan." "Satan" is spelled somewhat differently in Japanese, but it's still fairly coincidental.

Since this is the theme song of the game's final boss, I wonder if this was an intentional play on words. Too bad the English version of the soundtrack doesn't really capture it.

The rules of this game are simple: Post strange occurrences, articles, images, etc. that can only originate from Japanese culture and ingenuity.

I'll start us off:

I had a few ideas for an enhanced remake of the original Legend of Zelda on 15 MHz calculators. Maybe "remake" is not the appropriate word, so much as a rendition, or watered-down port with a few enhancements.

The plot and flow of gameplay will be slightly different. As opposed to Princess Zelda separating the Triforce of Wisdom into 8 sections and dividing them across several dungeons, Link's task is to find each whole piece of the Triforce in order to break the seal on Princess Zelda's prison within Ganon's Citadel. This doesn't necessarily limit the game to three dungeons - there will be dungeons where important items are guarded by bosses. It it necessary to procure these items so Link can reach other sections of Hyrule and ultimately uncover the Triforce. Some dungeons will also have seals that require to specific Triforce pieces to be in your inventory.

I've cut down on the number of items present in the game. It's rounded down to four equippable items, (Link may only equip a single item at a time) four "quest" items - or items that have passive effects - and of course Link's tunic and shield. The complete inventory is:

Wooden Sword (L1) - inflicts 1 point of damage against enemies; some enemies are immune to this sword
Magical Sword (L2) - inflicts 2 points of damage against enemies
Wooden Shield (L1) - blocks very few projectile attacks (but cannot be eaten by a Like-Like)
Magical Shield (L2) - blocks most projectile attacks (but can be eaten by a Like-Like)
Hylian Tunic (L1) - does nothing (it's simply your default tunic)
Hero's Clothes (L2) - halves all damage inflicted against Link
Magical Bow - fires arrows that allow Link to penetrate some enemy defenses (each arrow subtracts 1 rupee)
Bombs - can damage multiple, adjacent enemies, or destroy weak objects; (walls, blocks, etc.) Link's initial bomb capacity is 8, but it is possible to purchase an upgrade to 16
Switch-Hook - when fired at an object, Link switches places with it; (this is effective against enemies or movable pots) stuns enemies that are too heavy to switch places with Link; will grab objects such as keys or rupees and add them to Link's inventory, as opposed to switching places with them
Giant's Ring - allows Link to push certain types of blocks
Fire Arrow - allows arrows to light torches
Flippers - allows Link to swim in watery areas
Water of Life - when Link loses all hearts, this will automatically restore 3 of them (and then vanishes from his inventory)



I haven't designed any maps yet. Since the sprites will be 16x16, I was thinking of doing 8x8 map tiles. Each of the boundaries around each action screen could be composed of 8x8 sprites that only show halves of trees and mountains, which should help prevent any given screen from becoming too cramped with large objects. Tiles within the boundaries would still make 16x16 px objects. Each action screen would only be 96x64 pixels.

Link's status is also a bit different. I thought only 8 total hearts would be sufficient. (3 to boot) There may be more than 5 Heart Containers to be found, and I say this for two reasons: 1.) Games like Metroid did this with Energy Tanks, in case the player did not discover them all; and 2.) There will occasionally be situations where you will lose a Heart Container. (i.e., the "Leave your money or leave your life" choice in some rooms)

Since I know there are some people here who speak English as a second language, I was curious about their thoughts on how difficult it is to learn English, and whether or not an English language reform would be desirable. (or make English easier / more practical to learn) Basically, a language reform would mean altering the spelling (and maybe pronunciation) of words to make the language more consistent with itself. For instance: We have words like "weight" and "height." In each of these words, the "ei" diphthong is pronounced differently, but there's no indication that these words should be pronounced differently - a person has to remember these pronunciations on a word-per-word basis. In other languages, there are (usually) stricter rules about spelling and pronunciation, so there's generally no misunderstanding about it. Even native speakers of English may not necessarily know how to pronounce a word they've never read before. (or how to spell a word they only recently heard)

What are your thoughts? Do you think there are any improvements that should be made to English?