The Shining Force Campaign: Phase III has now officially launched! Drop by the site to find out what it’s all about!
Don’t forget, there’s only 2 days left to enter the current contest – the winners will be announced on Wednesday 12th September.

I’m currently reviewing a whole bunch of sites (~50 of them) for addition to the SFC directory, and I’m also redesigning the chat system here… it never did look very nice, so I thought I should take some time to tart it up 🙂

I’ll also be working hard on my Final Conflict translation, as I’ve got a few days off work now. Keep your eyes peeled!

I’ve archived all the August news now. See how short this page is?!

More updates to come on Wednesday.

I’ve moved the old news into the archives now 🙂
As you can probably see, my PayPal account is now fully operational, and ready to accept donations. Don’t feel obliged in any way though – I’ve only added this due to the requests of several people. Any donations received will primarily be used towards the costs involved in contest prizes, such as getting them & posting them. But who knows? If I get sufficient donations, maybe I can make this site my fulltime job (wishful thinking!)…

Anyway, on to the real news stuff now.

My Shining Force II Guide has now been completely redesigned, and although some areas still need things added to them, it’s already bigger than ever 🙂

The message boards now have well over 500 members and are active as ever, so if you haven’t already joined, why not do so now?

As always, with this fornightly update comes a new MP3, comic and poll for you to enjoy… and a warning that you now have less than 2 weeks in which to enter this month’s contest!

…but this fortnight, that’s not all you’re getting from SFC! I’ve added a new section for each Shining game, “midi sound files”, and there are plenty for you to download. Some of these have moved from my Shining Force 2 site, however there are dozens of new tracks, provided mostly by the talented Magnus Andersson. So, if you want to check them out, have a look at the game pages.

I’ve arranged yet more cool prizes, and I’m pleased to announce that the contest leading up to Christmas will have a whole bunch of prizes. I love Christmas, so I’d like to try and make as many people happy as possible at that time of year 🙂

Woohoo! Two lots of good news today! First off, the redesign of my Shining Force II site is about 95% complete, and so I expect to have it online early next week.

The second news? The credit card statement finally arrived today. So, I’m now happy to announce that I’m now able to accept donations for this site via PayPal. At the moment the money is likely to be going towards new prizes to give away in the contests & posting them out 🙂 Of course, if I get lots of money maybe I’ll be able to give up my job & just spend all my time working on this site! My PayPal ID is [INCEMAIL]

I’ve created some new banners, and encourage you to link to SFC to spead the word around! Let the whole world discover the wonders of Shining Force! Click here to get the linking code now!
Also, I’ve added Shining Force Chronology to the main navigation 🙂 Some new bits to be added to that section very soon.

The redesign of my Shining Force II site is coming along well, and I hope to have it online in a week or two.

The winner of the July Contest has been selected! Click here to find out who the lucky winner is!
Also, I’ve done some serious work on the Shining Force Chronology section (linked in the “About Shining Force” section… but maybe I’ll add it to the main navigation too, sometime).
….
Update: Well, the Chronology has only been online a few hours, and already I’ve had some useful input from SilverwolfX… have another look at it, if you haven’t already.

Yet another fornight has passed! The July contest is now over, and the winner will be announced on Saturday, 18th August 2001.
I’ve finally moved some news to the News Archive, but I’ve yet to add a few links to the directory. Also, my apologies to anyone who had problems submitting their site over the last few days. Since I moved some files onto another server, the formmail script needed some changes. It’s all working fine now though.

Don’t forget to check out this month’s contest, the prize is a really rare piece indeed, a true collector’s item. I’ll say no more here, you can read all about it on the Contest page.

I’m currently working on a complete redesign of my Shining Force II site. More news on that soon, I expect 🙂

The page about my collection has been updated to include several new additions.

Not much else to report other than the fact that I’ve been able to arrange a few more cool prizes for contests… so I should be okay for about the next year! Oh, and still no word on my PayPal account, for accepting donations. Watch this space!

Well, that’s it for today. Hope you enjoy the Comic Strip, Poll & MP3 of the Fortnight!

Well, the redesign has now been online for 2 whole weeks 🙂 Feedback so far has been very positive!

You’ll find I’ve added a new “MP3 of the Fortnight”, new comic strip and new poll… so get voting! The MP3 file will be moving servers on Thursday/Friday, so there may be a small period of downtime then… my apologies.

Um… not much else to report really… I’ve got a few link submissions to check out and add, and more translation to do. Other than that, I’m planning to redesign my Shining Force II site, build a Shining Force CD site, finish/redesign my Shining Force site and then redesign and re-launch the Campaign. I’d also like to expand my Shining in the Darkness site, but that’s on low priority. Guess I’ll be finished in a few years then 😉
Tomorrow (or thereabouts), I’ll start offloading some of the old news into the news archive, which I’m probably going to organise by month.

Only 2 weeks left to get your Contest entries in, too… had some nice pieces of artwork so far, but maybe you can do better! Why not give it a go?

Well, it looks like I won’t be moving this site for some time yet! We’re going to have to put up with those banners, because the site uses 19GB per month in bandwidth… which is a pretty big amount. Certainly not an amount I could afford to pay for!

I’ll be updating the site on Wednesday with a new MP3, comic and poll. I’ve moved my Final Conflict site (which has got a lot more translation on it now!) to www.shining-force.co.uk/finalconflict because I didn’t want to put banners all over it 😉

There may be a few glitches in the site over the next few days, as I’m moving a lot of my downloads to another server. Sorry for any inconvenience. Also, I’m testing out some new code, so that when the CGI scripts on this page (the random quote, poll, banner etc) have errors, it doesn’t distort the page like it did before – I hope!

Contest Prizes
I’ve managed to arrange a pretty exciting prize for next month’s contest, and I can’t wait to show it to you all! I’m also trying to arrange some other items, and hope to be able to take PayPal donations shortly (thanks to my other half’s credit card!) in order to fund more prizes.
Nasty Virus…
Also, I’ve recently been receiving a lot of emails with the following message:
“Hi! How are you?

I send you this file in order to have your advice

See you later. Thanks”
They have a random file attached, which is infected with a virus. More information on this virus can be found at www.symantec.com. Since the files vary in size (anything from a few hundred KB to a few MB!), it’s taking up a lot of time downloading, and is getting quite annoying 🙁 For the time being, please do not email me unless you are certain that your computer is not infected.

Well, it’s been just over a month in the making, but it’s finally here 🙂 Shining Force Central is now officially re-designed and looking better than ever (if I do say so myself!). I can’t help but feel I’ve forgotten something… but I’m sure I’ll soon find what it is, if I have. If you find any broken links on the site, please let me know!
The site is now database driven, meaning that it’s much quicker easier for me to add and remove links… which in theory means I should be able to update more often. Shining Force Central currently has 231 sites listed in its directory.

I took some time off work and scanned in loads of Shining artwork, which can be accessed by clicking on the name of the game to the left, and then selecting the artwork link on the right side of the page that loads. I’m sure you’ll find your way around the site quite well!

Each game now has artwork, postcards and desktop wallpaper (plenty more to come, but enough to keep you going for now, methinks). I’ve also included high resolution (300DPI) scans of all the game/soundtrack covers, inlays, CDs etc. For those of you who haven’t been here for a while, there’s a new forum (as of May) which is really active. I finally updated my collection too!

There are going to be more features added to the site over the coming weeks/months/years *grins* At the moment I plan to have an MP3 of the fortnight, poll of the fortnight, comic of the fortnight and a contest every month. So, you can be sure I’ll be updating more frequently! I’ll also be in the forums pretty much every day, so feel free to drop by if you want to ask me anything.

Can you help?
With regards to the contests…. I’m trying to think of some cool prizes I can offer, but obviously I’m on a budget. I’ve got a few ideas, but it’s going to end up costing me a fair bit of money – can anyone suggest any ways to make some money from this site, to put towards prizes? I’m not allowed to use banners, and most of the Pay Per Search schemes have turned my site down 🙁