So we’re very happy to have a guest blog entry today from Peter Thoman, better known as “Durante” in gaming circles. Rather than a lengthy intro explaining why, I’ll let his own words below do the talking, so we hope you enjoy it.
Ken Team Leader @ XSEED Games
A few months back Ken Berry of XSEED contacted me to ask whether I could do anything about the issues with their Little King’s Story port. Despite hearing good things about the game, I hadn’t really followed that particular PC version, since a lot of other titles were released around the same time and it’s not really my genre. Still, I was intrigued to see what was wrong with it, and delighted at how Ken was able to provide me with the source code for the game without too much bureaucracy.
Initial Impression
Before going into the details of how I improved the port, I want to remark on the difficulty of this project for the original team who worked on it. After receiving the source, it was immediately clear that this was not a simple port. Little King’s Story was built on a custom engine designed from the ground up for this particular game, and its particular original target platform (the Wii). Clearly, during its development, it was seen as a one-off project that would be done once it ships, and portability or maintainability were secondary concerns.
In any case, I quickly figured out that the largest issues with the port were overall performance,intermittent stuttering, and a whole host of issues with the 60 FPS mode, and decided to tackle these in order.
Overall Performance
First, I removed the frame limiter to more easily investigate performance issues. Even on my high-end system, I only measured roughly 80 FPS in the overworld area at the start of the game. Basic profiling revealed that it was entirely CPU-bound, and I assumed this was not going to be caused by the original Wii code, given that it ran acceptably on a ~700 MHz processor.
This assumption turned out to be correct after more in-depth profiling: the vast majority of the game’s CPU time was spent interacting with the DX9 API. I won’t go into the full details here, but the crucial point is that many individual objects induced a state change of the rendering pipeline, with its associated CPU overhead. I decided to tackle the issue by implementing various caches (for passes and materials) which prevent state changes unless they are necessary. After a bit of tweaking, this lead to a performance of around 123 FPS in the same testing area, an improvement by more than 50%. More could be done - like always in optimization - but since the game is limited to 60 FPS at most anyway I decided to move on to another issue.
Intermittent Stuttering
On a high-end CPU, stuttering was actually a more fundamental problem than the performance overhead discussed above. While moving around in the world, every few seconds the game would noticeably drop one or even more frames. First, I thought that the culprit could be some timing issue, and while improving the frame sleeping logic helped by making the game play feel better, it still didn’t eliminate the major stuttering.
Profiling an intermittent stuttering issue such as this is far more difficult than working on overall performance. Sampling-based evaluation is almost useless, and that’s by far the most developed category of tools. Ultimately, I resorted to using Nvidia NSight and its integration library, and manually narrowed down candidates for causing stutter by marking individual regions in each frame execution. A somewhat time-consuming process, but it paid off:
In this image, the colorful stacks indicate the stutter causes I ultimately tracked down, and the lower half shows a similar sequence after dealing with the underlying issue. Note that the marked regions, which previously could take up 2 to 3 frames, are now in the 0 to 2 millisecond range. To give you a more visual idea of the improvements I’ve created this comparison video.
Issues with 60 FPS
Offering 60 FPS - or, much better, support for completely arbitrary framerates - is a common demand for PC versions of games, and one I fully agree with. In quite a few cases where it is not offered, mods later demonstrated that the effort to do so would have been very small for the developer, and that the only reason it was not provided is a lack of care for the PC version.
Little King’s Story is not such a case. There are many reasons for this, here are just a small subset of them:
1. The game does not have a unified system for handling time or animation speed. Many modules act independently of each other, and often time-specific information is encoded in places where it would not be expected.
2. The central NPC simulation code assumes that it can pre-compute how long it will take (in frames) for an NPC to complete an action, such as moving to another location.
3. Some bosses, enemies and scenes are moved or designed in custom scripts, which use a custom virtual machine and instruction set that is not intended to share framerate information.
My initial goal was to provide arbitrary framerate support, but point 2 in the list above makes that an infeasible goal. It would basically require rewriting large parts of the simulation, which makes up a significant portion of the entire game’s ~1 million line codebase. Given that, I shifted to the goal of making locked 60 FPS work as well as possible.
The original port fixed the speed of most NPC animation sequences, but left many other hardcoded animations, and even the gameplay-relevant time progression rate untouched at 60 FPS (resulting in double speed).
I employed a side-by-side 60/30 FPS setup as shown above, and chipped away at framerate-dependent speed mismatches little by little. In the end, I managed to fix the simulation speed,the speed of many hardcoded object animations (such as trees or grass), and the movement speed of NPCs and animals.
However, the custom scripting system used for some boss battles and scripted scenes, point (3) in the list above, still prevents the 60 FPS mode from being perfect throughout the game. However, unlike the initial release, 60 FPS is playable (and a huge improvement in smoothness) during the majority of the gameplay. As a workaround for the remaining situations, I’ve implemented a 30 FPS toggle for the 60 FPS mode, which is engaged using the “F1” key. Note that this comes with some issues due to point (2) above: animations already in progress at the moment the framerate is toggled will run at an incorrect speed until the next movement starts.
Graphics, Launcher and Control Improvements - What I Wasn’t Asked For
While working on the game, I noticed a few things which would significantly improve the visual quality and not really take too much time to implement. So I did. This include multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA), anisotropic filtering, transparency supersampling and a few other minor tweaks.
The most complex addition was creating an option for more shadow casters, including trees and grass. I found the lack of tree shadows a bit disappointing given that other objects cast dynamic shadows, so I added this as a (somewhat CPU-heavy) option. While I was at it I also added an option for soft shadows, to better fit with the soft dropshadows cast by NPCs.
Of course, I also had to add options for these features, and since the original launcher was not particularly extensible I replaced it with a new one. As a personal preference I also re-implemented options to be stored as XML rather than in a custom binary format, and added a lot of information about each option in order to hopefully make their impact more clear.
Finally, while playtesting the controls of the game always felt a bit “off” to me. Even though I was playing with an analog gamepad, movement was restricted to 8 directions, which in particular makes precise directional aiming (a significant gameplay component) more cumbersome than it needs to be. To solve this situation, I added support for analog directional controls for Xinput controllers.
Conclusion
The new version of Little King’s Story should perform significantly better on all systems, most sources of significant stutter should be eliminated, and the 60 FPS mode now provides an accurate (and smoother compared to 30 FPS) experience except in some scripting-related cases. Furthermore, the game now features additional graphics options to make better use of high-performance GPUs, and can be more precisely controlled with analog gamepads.
While I couldn’t achieve everything I initially wanted to - arbitrary FPS and even a completely perfect 60 FPS mode prove intractable for this game - I’m happy that XSEED gave me the chance to contribute a lot more directly and meaningfully to the quality of this PC port.
* * *
So Ken with XSEED again here. To celebrate this relaunch of Little King’s Story, we are running a week-long 40% off sale on Steam and The Humble Store starting right now. Though these enhancements only apply to the Steam build at the moment, we plan on applying them to our DRM-free and GOG Galaxy builds soon, so just hang tight for a little while longer and those builds will be updated too.
Thanks to everyone for your patience and ongoing support, and we hope you enjoy the new and improved Little King’s Story for Windows PC.
As you may have heard, Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns has a release date at last: February 28. We also have a brand new trailer–our first since E3! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be revealing more and more about the game’s North American version in a series of blogs and Facebook posts.
In this blog, I want to talk about animals. There isn’t much to report about livestock as the roster is mostly unchanged from the previous Story of Seasons game—the camel is no more and the “zebu” cow has been replaced with a buffalo—but Trio of Towns contains some interesting new features with pets and wild animals.
Pets
The previous Story of Seasons title had just a few kinds of dog and cat in several different colors. Trio of Towns has over two dozen types of cats and dogs. As in previous games, pets have abilities like herding livestock and finding items, and different pets will be adept at different things. Naturally, the way you physically interact with a pet will depend on its size, and different characters will react to the pets that you show them in their own unique ways. For example, here’s Lulukoko’s “jack of all trades” and Story of Seasons localization staff waifu Ludus being adorable:
Here’s a full list of cat and dog breeds in Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns.
Dogs
Tosa
Great Pyrenees
Bernese
Weimaraner
Husky
Doberman
(German) Shepherd
Bull Terrier
Tibetan Mastiff
Border Collie
Jack Russell (Terrier)
Dachshund
Beagle
Shiba
Chihuahua
Poodle
Cats
Siamese
Shorthair Cat
Tabby Cat
Bengal
Black Cat
Maine Coon
Scottish Fold
Himalayan
Tortoiseshell
White Cat
And, of course, we can’t forget about our game’s mascot, the adorable capybara (aka Capy or Capy-san in our office). I asked longtime Story of Seasons fan Danielle, an animal-lover, to get a screenshot of a plump capybara (walk your pets, guys) and she replied, “I don’t want to abuse an animal.”
With a pet, you’ll also unlock the game’s StreetPass function. Register your pet with Dessie, and it’ll visit the games of players you StreetPass with. Your pet will bring back items from their worlds, and it might even show up in their game. Other pets can show up in your game too, and talking to them reveals some information about the farmers who’ve raised them.
Once you meet Tsuyukusa’s guardian Inari, the foxy deity can form a bond between you and a favorite pet, designating it as your “furmiliar.” This will give it an adorable bow and will trigger special cutscenes. The word “furmiliar,” which is translated from “sourumeito (soulmate),” was Danielle’s handiwork, and makes me groan-smile every time I read it.
Protip: If you’re feeling spoiled for choice and can’t decide on a pet to raise, check out the inside of the game box’s cover sheet for a cute quiz.
Wild Animals/Strays
Walking around the three towns, you’ll notice several dozen animals wandering around. These range from stray cats and dogs to wild animals like a bear (Westown), foxes (Tsuyukusa), and monkeys (Lulukoko). As in previous games in the series, the bear will charge you, but thankfully he can’t do any actual “damage” to you.
If you fulfill certain conditions, you will get special cutscenes featuring these animals. Befriend them with gifts and they might leave presents for you. And if you have a designated furmiliar, things can get a little weirder. I don’t want to give away too much, but I will say that many of the wild animals have hilarious personalities.
Finally, A Dearly Departed Hamster
One question I keep seeing on forums, Facebook posts, and Twitter is, “Will Hamtaro be in the game?” For those of you who hadn’t heard, the cute hamster character is featured as a pet in the Japanese version of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, complete with a little voice clip.
Sadly, Hamtaro will not be in the North American release of the game. I can’t get into the specifics of why—the reason is more complicated than the usual licensing fee problems you might expect—but I will say that you’ll be hard-pressed to find new, official Hamtaro merchandise on sale in this part of the world. While many remember the character from his TV debut over a decade ago, Hamtaro doesn’t really have an official presence in North America anymore.
It goes without saying that we were gutted by this development and tried to keep Hamtaro in. We hate releasing a game that doesn’t have all the features of the original version, but in this case our hands were tied. For those of you who were looking forward to raising Hamtaro, I’m very sorry. But even without the little guy, there are still more varieties of pet to raise than ever before. We hope you enjoy all the different ways animals play a part in the world of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns.
With contributions from Alyssa, Billy, Brittany, Danielle, Jason, John, Liz, Nate, Nick, Ryan, and Tom
Part of what makes Fatesuch a compelling setting is that its specific premise doesn’t just stand on its own, but fuels the viewer/player’s imagination, inviting them to envision new additions to the world and the cast of characters. If you’re new to the series, it’s about a ritual conflict between a variety of heroes and villains from history, mythology, and fiction, all coming together to battle it out as Servants for the Masters who summoned them. The winning Master (theoretically) receives the world-altering power of the Holy Grail.
The Servants’ battles are based on rules, and each Servant has strengths and weaknesses. Part of the reason the Servants typically refer to themselves by their class (such as Saber or Archer), rather than by their names, is because their true identities can give their opponents clues as to what those strengths and weaknesses are. For that reason, Servants often disguise themselves, appearing as other ethnicities, genders, or even species than their original namesake. Each Servant can only be summoned through the use of a particular artifact, unique to that Servant’s history and personality.
All that got us thinking about what kind of Servants we’d pick for ourselves. We asked around the office, “If you could pick anyone, real, mythological, or fictional, from anywhere in time, to fight for you, who would it be, what would they look like, and what kind of powers would they have?” Here are everyone’s answers:
Ryan:
Servant: Don Quixote
Class: Lancer
Origin: Literary knight/madman, 1605
Artifact: The Golden Helmet of Mambrino (aka any brass shaving basin)
Appearance: Don Quixote appears as his author did in his youth, clean-shaven and a bit gangly, with the spark of adventure and a young man’s drive to save the world.
Strengths: Can create Reality Marbles at will, and often does so without even realizing it. These Reality Marbles, which depict Quixote’s imagined fantasy world, have the effect of hypnotizing anyone in them with a Mana rating of C or below, including Quixote himself, into temporarily believing that the fantasy is real. He is also proficient with his sword and lance, and while not a Rider, he can execute a (slow, awkward) charge from horseback.
Weaknesses: Quixote cannot always control when or how his Reality Marbles appear, and miniature Reality Marbles are constantly appearing and disappearing inside his head. As a result, he frequently mistakes inanimate objects for evil creatures, and has trouble distinguishing friend from foe.
Noble Phantasm: “Wild Winds of Fortune” — Quixote summons a row of giant windmills, which spin fast enough to create a tornado.
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Brittany:
Servant: Steve Irwin
Class: Rider
Origin: Naturalist, born in 1962
Artifact: His shirt
Appearance: A rugged Outback-dwelling wildman, riding a wild boar. (“Irwin” being derived from the Old English words for “wild boar” and “friend”)
Weapon: A Crocodile Dundee knife
Strengths: High endurance, can summon a variety of dangerous animals
Weaknesses: (Don’t say stingrays, don’t say stingrays…)
Noble Phantasm: “Irwinado” — Picture Gilgamesh’s NP, but with crocodiles and snakes.
Origin: Fictional clerk from a Herman Melville story, 1853
Artifact: An empty quill stuck in a shallow square foot of wet cement
Appearance: A woman in her 30s or 40s with hair graying before her time, and a perpetual look of absolute doneness upon her face.
Weapon: Reluctance
Strengths: Can efficiently calculate and execute strategy in short bursts
Weaknesses: Inevitably starts backing away from combat situations after a short while, just standing there and looking sad…sad enough that the enemies feel sympathy for her plight, as she stands and stares wistfully at the moon, proclaiming “I would prefer not to fight” whenever anyone comes at her with weapons drawn.
This is actually a strength, however, as no one would have the heart to hurt her, but they’d think about it for a second…and in that moment, they’d be distracted and vulnerable, which is when Tom would come in and smash them over the head with a vase or something.
Her other weakness is that her battles would all have to be fought in the same exact area, since Bartleby would eventually refuse to move from her spot for any reason whatsoever, even if compelled via Command Seal.
Noble Phantasm: “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, moe-ness!” — Bartleby stands rooted there, eternally staring upward, the glow of the moon burning itself into her corneas until her corneas simply burn away altogether. And yet, she still stares, endlessly, deeply, even through the pallid, useless orbs now adorning her face.
Alignment: True Neutral
John:
Servant: Cao Cao
Class: Caster (Some believed him to be a sorcerer in life; turns out they were right)
Origin: Imperial Chancellor of the Han Dynasty, born in 155 AD
Artifact: The noose he used to hang Lu Bu
Appearance: He disguises himself as a bent old man with a cane and a long, wispy white beard
Weapon: Chinese-style sword
Strengths: Particularly adept in magic that is useful for statecraft, such as sowing discord among people or spying on others. One of his mysterious abilities derives from the real Chinese expression, “speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives” (an equivalent to “speak of the Devil”). Cao Cao has the ability to be anywhere that his name is spoken, even in more than one place at once. (In Fate,this also applies to anyone who speaks the word “Caster.”)
Weaknesses: His weakness is his hubris. Zhuge Liang, who humiliated him at the Battle of the Red Cliffs, still inflames his temper easily. Lu Bu, whom he executed in life, wants to return the favor.
Noble Phantasm: Calls forth a cavalry charge, with his men driven forward both by rage against the enemy and fear of him.
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Nick (who went all-out with his description):
Servant: Nebuchadnezzar II
Class: Caster
Origin: King of Babylon (and, by extension, the known world), born in 634 BC. The construction of the famous Ishtar Gate and the Hanging Gardens, noted as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, are commonly attributed to him, and he’s also known for his appearance in the Bible, particularly in the book of Daniel.
Artifact: One of the lapis-glazed bricks of the Ishtar Gate, which exists today restored in a museum in Berlin
Appearance: I can see him dressed in a fine robe dyed the color of lapis (prized for its rich, blue hue by the royalty of the ancient world), embroidered with extravagant designs on the hems in golden thread. He’d have the look of a mystic – a sort of “sorcerer-king,” in my imagination. Still not sure about whether my ideal Neb appearance would keep the famous beard you see show up in a lot of statues from that time period, but I like the idea of a wavy, windswept head of black hair. Civil enough for the chambers of government, but with a touch of unkempt-ness befitting a battlefield.
Strengths: An adept Caster, Nebuchadnezzar can exert great influence on the astral plane, spinning his dreams into prophecies and divinations. He’s also capable of using his sovereignty to prod at weaknesses and loopholes in the power of Command Seals.
Weaknesses: Nebuchadnezzar, while wise and shrewd, is also a superstitious man who seeks the approval of the gods. He may hesitate to press an advantage if he doesn’t have a solid grasp of the risks involved.
Noble Phantasm: “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” — Either a floating palace with an orbital laser cannon, or an untouchable sanctuary in which Nebuchadnezzar and his Master rest and bide their time.
Notes: The kingdom of Uruk that once belonged to series-staple Gilgamesh would after many centuries go on to become the Babylon ruled over by Nebuchadnezzar, and during his reign, he presided over both great destruction and great creation. His armies subdued foreign kingdoms, bringing them into the Babylonian empire, but he also oversaw a massive slew of public works projects – everything from walls to bridges to temples. His was a gilded age for the kingdom. Within Fate lore, Nebuchadnezzar is already acknowledged to exist as a Heroic Spirit, though we’ve never seen him summoned before and so don’t know much about what Type-Moon’s take on him would be, or what class he’s most likely to be summoned into.
I can see him being a strategic type of caster – the type to factor in the placement of ley lines, fortify structures with wards, and favor spells that turned the environmental conditions of a fight to his favor. As a lover of great architecture, I think it fits him. But that said, his status as a conqueror means he wouldn’t shrink from direct battle, especially when he has aligned circumstances in his favor via his various enchantments.
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Billy:
Servant: Guan Yu
Class: Rider
Origin: A mighty warrior from ancient China who could cleave a large army with ease. He was also known for having a well-kept beard. He was nicknamed “Beautiful Beard”. Born in the latter half of the second century AD.
Artifact: Green Dragon Crescent Blade
Appearance: Guan Yu’s appearance would be of a large, red-skinned centaur. His mane and beard are made of fire.
Strengths: Superior strength, endurance, and mobility
Weaknesses: Easily identified by his hooves and red hide
Noble Phantasm: “Red Hare” — Guan Yu charges forward, swinging his spear and dragging a wall of fire with him.
Alignment: Lawful Good
Nathan:
Servant: Björn Ironside
Class: Saber
Origin: Legendary 9th century Viking commander
Artifact: The runic stone from his barrow
Appearance: Disguises himself as a sickly, dying man
Strengths: Ferocity, advantage of surprise
Weaknesses: Vulnerable to fire, particularly Greek fire
Noble Phantasm: “Jarn” — Björn discards his sickly disguise and turns his body to iron. Since Fateenjoys its share of pseudoscience, this Noble Phantasm would not only make him relatively invulnerable to any attack that isn’t ridiculously powerful, it would also increase his total weight, and therefore mass, substantially. If we assume that he’d still be able to move as quickly as he did before its use, then his overall combat abilities would increase as his hits now carry a greater force behind them.
Notes: The picture shown comes from his most famous moment, in which, while besieging a city, he pretended to be dying, convinced the clergy to take his coffin into the city to perform his last rites, and then jumped out of the coffin, rampaged his way to the city gates, and opened them for his army.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Alyssa (who also went all-out with her description):
Servant: Locusta
Class: The most obvious classes that she would fall into would be Caster and Assassin, but one of the nifty things about Fate is that it isn’t always about the obvious, so perhaps Locusta would actually be in the Archer class.
Origin: Locusta was a prolific serial murderer in Ancient Rome, with poison being her weapon of choice. She was so well known that Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula and mother of Nero, supposedly hired her to poison her husband, Emperor Claudius, in AD 54. Locusta was convicted of poisoning another victim, but Emperor Nero swept in and rescued her from being executed…in exchange for poisoning someone else for him. In short, Locusta was kept in Nero’s back pocket for all of his poisoning needs, given some very nice land, and even began teaching others the illustrious ways of poison making. Of course, being part of Nero’s entourage did pose its dangers, and after his suicide, Locusta was sentenced to death and (most likely) publicly executed.
Artifact: One of her old glass vials, filled with one of her signature poisons.
Appearance: Well, she was quite famous, so I don’t think it would be anything subtle, that’s for sure. Since Emperor Claudius’ murder was committed via a poisoned dish of mushrooms, maybe a mushroom design would be incorporated in some way.
Strengths: Unpredictable, backstabby, all her attacks inflict poison status
Weaknesses: Vulnerable when caught alone in the open
Noble Phantasm: “Venenum in Nube” — A toxic cloud spreads out from Locusta’s hands and covers the area.
Notes: There are so many interesting characters in history and mythology that I think would be great additions to the already fantastic lineup of Fate Servants, so it was a really difficult decision to make (I’m sure almost all of my coworkers would say something similar!). I went through a lot of different options, but I kept drifting back to Locusta.
I think it would be interesting to see Locusta in Fate because of her ties to Nero and Caligula, two Servants already present in game. Would Locusta be angry at Nero, since her connection with him put a target on her back after he was dead? I mean, not that the poisoning people thing would have helped her out anyway… On the other hand, she would have been killed years prior, if he hadn’t interfered. So how would THAT play out in the Fate world? My mind spins.
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Jason:
Servant: Harada Sanosuke
Class: Lancer
Origin: 10th Captain of the Shinsengumi
Artifact: The head of his spear
Appearance: A waifu version of himself
Strengths: Supernaturally long reach
Weaknesses: Quick to anger
Noble Phantasm: “Makoto no Tsuranuki” — Sanosuke uses his spear to pierce through dimensions and strike from all angles at once.
Alignment: Neutral Good
Liz (who even drew her own illustration):
Servant: Ilana (Alan) Turing
Class: Caster
Origin: Computer scientist/mathematician, born in 1912
Artifact: A punch card from the Pilot ACE computer
Appearance: [See illustration]
Strengths: Mother of artificial intelligence, Turing controls legions of clockwork minions with algorithms ahead of her time. She can also crack open the secrets of the mind, and even occasionally take control.
Weaknesses: Delights in exposing others’ secrets, but despairs if her own are ever revealed
Noble Phantasm: “Enigma” — Her Noble Phantasm will trap the mind in an artificial reality almost impossible to distinguish from our own world, leaving those affected catatonic and vulnerable to suggestion and manipulation.
Alignment: True Neutral (In the end, she really just wants more toys to play with)
Rejected Servants:
Servant: The Kool-Aid Man
Class: Berserker
Origin: Drink mascot, debuted in 1954
Artifact: A copy of the Kool-Aid Man 2600 game
Appearance: Cleverly disguised as a ketchup bottle
Weapon: Himself
Strengths: Can build up momentum for powerful charging attacks, can appear wherever kids are thirsty, can cause an excess of Vitamin C in large doses
Weaknesses: Low defense and agility
Noble Phantasm: “Oh Yeah!” — Summons an enormous wall, then breaks through it, scattering bricks for miles
Alignment: Chaotic Good (He causes property damage, but gives free drinks to kids)
Class: Caster (because he helps CAST people, get it?)
Origin: TV host, born in 1974
Artifact: His microphone
Appearance: Nicki Minaj
Weapon: His microphone
Strengths: Can shout to stun enemies
Weaknesses: Must follow the will of crowds/armies
Noble Phantasm: “And the Winner Is…” — When first summoned, Seacrest hands his new Master an envelope, which contains the name of the winner of the Holy Grail War. This envelope cannot be opened, torn, cut, burned, made transparent, scryed, or otherwise accessed until the Holy Grail War is over, at which point Seacrest, if still alive, takes it back, opens it, and reads off the name. In the meantime, clever Masters may find ways to use the indestructible envelope as a tool or a weapon.
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Servant: ALF
Class: Rider (Spaceship)
Origin: TV alien, debuted in 1986
Artifact: A vinyl copy of “Melmac Rock”
Appearance: ALF, but in a wig, Hawaiian shirt, and shades
Weapon: A long salami
Strengths: Encyclopedic knowledge of engineering and Earth pop culture
Weaknesses: Uncontrollable appetite, vulnerable to Earth diseases and poisons
Noble Phantasm: “You’re the One Who’s Out of This World”: Alf traps his opponent in an ‘80s music video, which bombards him or her with a sonic assault.
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Servant: Santa Claus
Class: Rider
Origin: Amalgamation of pan-European folklore across the centuries
Artifact: Snow from the North Pole
Appearance: A Nordic female forest ranger in red
Weapon: A Red Rider BB Gun
Strengths: Youthful vigor combined with the experience of old age, ability to slow time to a crawl, can call on various old-timey unsafe toys to assist in combat
Weaknesses: Her powers only work if enough children believe in her
Noble Phantasm: “And to All a Good Night”: Time stops while Santa scoops up his or her opponent, flies into the night sky, and drops him or her down a chimney into a blazing fire.
Summoning Artifact: A threadbare rug (it really held the room together)
Appearance: Jeff Bridges in plaid shorts, flip-flops, a t-shirt, and a beat-up old sweatshirt. Basically, a Southern Californian hippie. He doesn’t bother hiding who he is.
Weapon: Bowling ball. Like…a very shiny bowling ball, man.
Strengths: Ability to remain unfazed by all manner of chaotic happenings; extreme passivity means he can stay materialized by his Mage for a very small mana upkeep
Weaknesses: White Russians, work
Noble Phantasm: “The Dude Abides” — Shifts reality to create a zone in which aggression shall not stand, reducing the hostility of even an attacking Servant to zero. It might just be drugs, but we’ll let you be the judge of that.
Alignment: True Neutral
…And okay, we should probably get back to work. Enjoy the game when it comes out next week, and if you think up any more Servants, leave them in the comments below!
Howdy, everyone! I hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday season.
While we still haven’t announced a release date for Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, we’re hoping to share more and more of the game with you over the coming weeks.
People play Story of Seasons games for several reasons, and one of the biggest (and most obvious) is as a farming simulation.
I played these games for years and years before actually trying my hand at real-world farming, so I had a rather idealized image of working the fields. A few years ago I got to know a Japanese farmer, who once let me dig for sweet potatoes in his fields. I split a few in half with the hoe, and he posted pictures of my shame on Facebook for his farmer friends to laugh at. So I retreated back to Story of Seasons, where you don’t even need a hoe to harvest root vegetables!
But I digress…
Unlike in the previous Story of Seasons title, all of the farmland in Trio of Towns is concentrated in the same area, so you won’t be running around the map in order to get to your beehives and flower fields and whathaveyous. And while you won’t have to compete against your wealthy and established neighbors for field space, you’ll have to earn expansions to your fields as your progress through the game.
Actually taming your farmland will require more than just the usual weeding, chopping, and hammering of obstacles—you’ll also need to order “Farm Circles” from Ludus, the dreamy handyman in Lulukoko, and arrange them on your farm. As long as you have open space free of trees and boulders, you will have a lot of freedom as to how to arrange your farm and what to produce.
Farming is hard work and trees are stamina-devourers early in the game. One of the best ways to restore your stamina is to buy a meal at Westown’s Garden Grill.
Here are some things you can do on your farm:
Plant rows and rows of corn. Scarecrow (and crows) not included.
Grow fruit trees.
Harvest mushrooms and paddy crops like wasabi and rice.
Equip the flamethrower. (Just kidding. Bees are our friends!)
And, of course, raise lots and lots of livestock.
Diversifying your farm’s output is essential to progressing the story of the game, a major part of which is building your bonds with the titular trio of towns and helping to revitalize them. These bonds are represented by the Town Link Rank, a gauge that fills up as you do things like participate in festivals, greet townsfolk, and complete part-time jobs. One easy way to improve your ranking with a particular town is to ship crops there by changing the “destination” on your farm’s shipping box. Improving your Town Link Rank will unlock story quests where you can help your neighbors improve their town. Completing these will pay big dividends for your farm in many ways. But I don’t want to give too much away…
Trio of Towns localization blog gaiden: fruits or vegetables?
“Junpei, are strawberries vegetables?”
This was a question I posed to one of my Japanese colleagues here at XSEED, based on an interesting classification in Trio of Towns.
Strawberries, melons, watermelons and pineapples are all classified as “vegetables” in the Japanese version and, to some extent, in the Japanese worldview. (Junpei’s answer to my question, which was asked entirely without context, was “Yes.”)
The reasoning is that these crops don’t grow on trees. While some cursory Wikipedia research has taught me that there are conflicting ways to classify these crops, strawberries, melons, watermelons, and pineapples are generally thought of as fruits in North America. This led us to an interesting localization dilemma.
In other cases, the simple solution as localizers would have been to reclassify these crops in their descriptions, writing “fruit” instead of “vegetable.” However, in Trio of Towns, “vegetables” and “fruits” are categories that are counted separately in things like shipping totals. This issue was managed by renaming the categories themselves from “veggie” and “fruit” (which, in Japanese, was actually “fruit tree”) to “Field Crop” and “Tree Crop.” We were then able to describe crops in the same category as fruits or vegetables in the item description text. I know that “Field Crop” and “Tree Crop” aren’t perfect, but they were the best we could come up with after a lot of discussion, and I’m satisfied with them as general categories.
This might seem like a minor issue to all of you, but at the core of all of this was a fundamental gameplay problem related to an event. In tropical Lulukoko Village, where most of the seeds you can buy from the general store are for fruit trees, there is a special festival called the “Fruit Fiesta.” For this event, you can give fruits to Lulukoko villagers and receive fruits in return.
However, because of the classification system, players who gave strawberries, melons, watermelons, and pineapples would get no special response from the Lulukoko residents. (To say nothing of precious fruit in return!) I was certainly surprised by this on my playthrough of the game’s Japanese version, and we thought it would be disorienting for Western players. Sadly, simply changing the name of the category wasn’t a solution to this problem. We had to take it to the Japanese developers.
Working with our supportive colleagues in Japan, we submitted a proposal with a summary of the issue and several potential workarounds. The developer team accepted our solution of changing the category names AND making it so that these four “vegetables” would be available to give as presents during the Fruit Fiesta.
In the Japanese version of the game, you wouldn’t get a special response from Zahau here.
A lot of times when people ask us about the nitty-gritty of localization, their questions have to do with how we render idiomatic expressions or poetic language in English. While this is a big part of the challenge in going from Japanese to English, this case deals with more fundamental conceptual difference that had an actual impact on gameplay. Working on a solution with my colleagues at XSEED and in Japan was rewarding and even kind of fun.
That’s all for today (and for 2016). Future localization blogs will focus on pets, events, and those lovely bachelors and bachelorettes. Be sure to like our Story of Seasons Facebook page for screenshots, trailers, and other special updates we won’t always be posting to this blog.
Until next time, have a happy holidays and a wonderful new year!
En serio, cómo no quererle??? ❤️ Saritísima ahora está trabajando en un nuevo proyecto para renovar una casa en Múnich donde recibirán a varias familias que llegan a Alemania huyendo del conflicto Rusia-Ucrania.
