I decided to take a break from my work on SEE today (briefly – rest assured I’ll be back at it when I’ve posted this ;)) in order to add a whole bunch of fanart that has been submitted over the last few days. It’s nice to see that area taking off at last, and I really hope to see the comments system used more now that it is working properly. SFCers Noma and Runefaust have obviously been hard at work, as between them we have a lot of new pics to look at in the Shining Force (gotta love that Darksol/Max pic, Runefaust!), Shining Force II (sweet Kiwi, and lots more), Shining Force III, Scenario 2 and Shining Tears (nice Mao :D) fanart sections.

I’ve also added around a dozen new pieces of Shining Force Neo memorabilia, which has recently been made available. I must say, it’s quite tough for me to stop myself emailing Rei and asking him to get me it, since I quit collecting… but I may still try to get a few bits as contest prizes for y’all – I don’t doubt there’ll be at least some SFCers who enjoy the game.

Now off to post about the Shining Force Neo DX package Sega Direct just announced! Then, it’s back to work on SEE. Who knows, by the end of the day I may have a new version up (albeit without any new data), with navigation fully functional… maybe 😉 It’s definitely progressing well thus far!

A few peeps had reported problems posting comments about fanart – it seems I’d made a mistake somewhere along the lines and set a field in the comments table to the wrong size. As a result of this, it wasn’t allowing numbers higher than 127, so any comments left for fanart with an ID higher than that was being set for 127 – I wondered why that one piece of fanart had so many comments, while others had none >.<;; Sorry about that - I've deleted the comments about that piece as I don't think most of them referred to it (it was a pic of Synbios, there were comments about Kazin & Sarah, amongst others). The system should be working fine now. I'm currently working on the SEE system, and it is going well - I'm finding more concise ways of coding it now I'm getting back into it. I've still got a lot of work to do, but then it should be plain sailing - just entering data 🙂 Well, a few more minutes on SEE now methinks, then I should get some dinner on! Shame really, I could just go for a Chinese right now, but I already planned a meal >.<;;

As promised, some more updates 🙂 Next I’ll be working on the coding for the SEE system for an hour or two. Well, maybe I’ll do it for an hour and then play some Shining Tears 😉

First of all, I’ve managed to download the Shining Force Neo videos and upload them to SFC, so no more need to stream them 🙂 Check them out here. Unfortunately, while researching how to do this, I ended up at some site which was virus-ridden, and my machine got infected >.<;; I lost three hours today while my PC was scanning and fixing the problems... ...and because of this, I didn't have enough time to hand-draw, scan, outline & colour the comic I've been planning for a while. So, I had to use my ol' Wacom (graphics tablet) and Flash to do it quickly, but reasonable-looking. No colour though, I got lazy 😉 There'd've been a lot more detail in it had I done it the usual way, but hopefully it'll give you a laugh regardless. Here it is!

Finally, I’ve put up the first few sections of the Shining Soul II script I started typing before Lee went into hospital. Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to finishing it off for y’all.

Oh! I almost forgot – I said I’d announce the extra Christmas contest winners today, didn’t I? Back when the original winners were announced, I decided I felt extra generous in the spirit of the season and said I’d give away a few Shining Tears fliers as extra prizes. The winners have been drawn at random from the correct entries received, and are: Kory Schonsheck, Daria and Noodle. I’ll be emailing you to get your postal addresses as needed.

Off to work on SEE a bit now – if I don’t update again today it probably won’t be until next week. So, enjoy your weekend and enjoy the updates!

Well, today’s been the day of distractions – everything has conspired to drag me away from my PC and the prospect of achieving much in the way of SFC updates diminished greatly as the day passed.

Nonetheless, there are a few small updates here which may well be of interest 🙂 Unless tomorrow is much like today, I should get a fair amount done then. Maybe more this evening too – yesterday evening I got a few new products added to the ad rotation and to the shop page too.

So, today… primarily there’s a new contest, and links to preorder Shining Force Neo from Lik-Sang and Play Asia as well as the forthcoming Shining Tears Guidebook (UK & USA), Shining Tears single & Shining Force GBA Soundtrack.

While shopping around, I also spotted a rather interesting new Shining Force Collectable in the form of a CD-ROM based guidebook! Released only last December, I wonder if it contains any nice quality artwork, or whether the text can be easily pumped into Babelfish? Should be interesting – I’ve asked Rei to order one for me.

What else today? I’ve updated the Directory – not just the links (a couple of Shining Tears guides have been added, and some old links updated/removed), but also as you’ll see, you can now link straight to the Directory main page without a game or category being specified. Not really a big deal I guess, but it had bothered me for a while that both needed to be specified or else an error was returned.

Last change I can think of for today was modifying the Collectables pages to include a direct link to relevant artwork scans with each collectable (where available).

Okay, almost time for Lee to get home, so I’ll get to work on the comic I wanted to finish off today, and say toodle-pip for now 😉

*puts on Columbo’s voice*
Just one more thing…

Why, oh why doesn’t anyone use the fanart comment system?!

Tomorrow: new comic, extra winners for Christmas contest to be announced, some of the Shining Soul II script to be added, and I’ll try to get on a bit with SEE too!

Well, I’ve been up since about 9am, and spent the majority of today getting SFC up to date. There are still a number of areas waiting for my attention, and I hope to get to them either this evening (if Lee gets hooked on Sim City 4 again ;)) or tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I thin kthere’s enough to keep you occupied for at least this evening!

We’ve got:
Lots of new collectables added to the site, including some additional pictures for some of them (an especially interesting piece of SF:LoGI memorabillia too!), check them out in the Shining Force, Shining Soul, Shining Tears and Shining Force Neo Collectable sections. I do plan on adding a lot more of those ‘more pictures’ links throughout, as I make time to scan/photograph more of the items. I’ll also try to hook up the collectables area with the relevant artwork sections for each item. Particularly noteworthy among the Shining Tears collectables updates are a Shining Tears guidebook in English (we don’t often see those!), and also a new book scheduled to come out in Japan next month, featuring a range of Shining Tears comics.

Next up: Culley can finally get off my back about getting his Final Conflict desktop wallpaper uploaded, after all these years! 😆 Hehe, just kidding, he’s not nagged me about it for ages until today 🙂 Check it out!

Some new pieces of fanart today, two by me and one from long-time SFCer Richter – mine are in the Shining Force section, while his is in Scenario 3. I demand that you all start using the fanart comments system! 😉

Thanks to my good friend Rei in Japan, as well as a couple of people who also provided some (but I forget who, as it was ages ago and they were posted at the forums, sorry!), we have our first magazine article scans for Shining Tears and Shining Force Neo. Some nice pics in the Tears one 🙂

I’ve done a few minor updates to the release info & intros for Shining Tears & Neo, but need to finish these off tomorrow to include the Asian version of ST. Oh, and the Neo Story Summary is now up, in the form of Aspartate’s translations 🙂

And last, but definately not least, there’s a load of new artwork & cover scans spread throughout the Shining Force II, Scenario 2, Scenario 3, Shining Force: RotDD, Shining Tears and Shining Force Neo artwork pages. Probably more to come very soon 🙂

Right, I think that’s the lot for now. I do hope I got it all uploaded! If something above doesn’t seem to be updated afterall, let me know!

Oh, and big thanks to the couple of recent donators who provided me with enough PayPal funds to increase SFC’s webspace by 1GB until the next year’s hosting is due 😀 We shouldn’t be getting any more problems as a result of running out of space for quite a while now 😉

Managed to get some of the updates done today, though more are on the way tomorrow. In fact, I have a whole bunch of things planned to do, feel free to post your thoughts and suggestions in this topic at the SFC forums.

Anyhoo, for today we have: some lovely new pieces of Fanart by SFCer Runefaust – find them in the Shining Tears, Shining Soul II and Shining Force II Fanart sections; three beautiful new Shining Tears desktops supplied by SFCer Crystal_Shard and last but by no means least, the final three chapters of the SF: RotDD script provided by Trent.

In addition to the above, I should note that a week or so ago I uploaded the entire of Works for Shining the Holy Ark to the artwork scans section (which reminds me, I have an ST magazine article to scan tomorrow!) at the request of an SFCer (sorry, I forget who off the top of my head) – I didn’t announce it at the time though, so here ya go 😉 The pictures are in lineart form, to keep the filesizes down – if you size the pics down or print them they should look beautiful 🙂

Right, gotta wrap up for the day and go down to the shops. More tomorrow – thanks for bearing with me while I get back into the swing of things!

Just a lil’ note to apologise for not being able to get the updates done today as planned – I got an email from my employer (I work from home on an as-and-when basis) and had to do a bunch of work for them today. Now I’ve only got a couple of hours before Lee gets home from work, so I need to finish up my housework and have a bit of time to wind down for the weekend.

I’ll try to get the stuff up on Monday or Tuesday 🙂 Right now, ironing beckons! Oh, and I’ve not forgotten that I promised to draw and extra few winners for the Christmas Contest, to receive a Shining Tears flier each – soon 😀 Unfortunately, the auction I was saving up for with all the Shining Tears phonecards and goodies (at US$450) got snapped up by someone else just when I was on the verge of having enough fundage for it 🙁 Ah well, can’t have it all I guess. If you happen to have a spare Mao phonecard you want to sell, drop me a line 😉