Alright, it looks like the page I’d put up at my old Zophar.net space, to keep you informed of the situation has either been taken down, or the server is having difficulties.

Here’s the story so far (short version)…

Just over a month ago, my host was due to move servers. Four weeks later my site still wasn’t up, and I’d had no word from my host. He’d up and left with my money… fortunately though, he returned my domain when he finally made contact about a week ago.

So, being without a host and without funds, I set about to get some money together and find a new host. The money came in thanks to some generous contributions from SFC users who I really can’t thank enough 😀

Money ready, I found a host – www.smoovenet.com – who offer a great package and are dedicated to providing low cost, high feature hosting for fansites such as SFC. Big sites such as GamesAreFun.com host with them, and sing their praises.

I was most thrilled to find that despite the notice on their site that they were not able to accept further hostees at the time, they thought they could manage to fit SFC on their latest server 🙂 So, I got my account paid for (just a month to begin with), domain moved over and a lot of the site uploaded (which I’ve been doing all week on this 56k…). Sadly, within a couple of days of the forums being back online, Smoove found that the server couldn’t cope with the extra load placed on it, and as the last site on it, I was the first to be suspended.

But, don’t worry! That doesn’t mean SFC is totally homeless – it just means I need to wait until they have funds for a new server (they hope this will be in a few weeks, but remember, they don’t make much profit, they’re here to help out folks like me), and then SFC will be moved onto that server.

So folks, don’t be mad at Smoove! They did us a favour trying to get the site back up before they had a new server ready… it hasn’t quite worked out. With a bit of luck we may be able to have a little bit of the site up and running until the new server is ready, but no news on that front at the moment.

Rest assured that when the new server is ready, SFC’ll come back 😀

Meanwhile, I’ll use this page as a place to keep you informed, and post any new Shining news 😉 I’ll go grab the Shining Soul II info I posted at the other temp site and post it here (it’ll be further down the page, as the news is old now). Also, you might be interested to know that there are some temporary forums here (though not as busy, or complete, as the usual SFC forums).

Well, we’re not quite up again yet, it takes a while on this 56k 😉 But, SFC itself, the SFII site, Final Conflict site and SitD site are up and running now too 😀 Still need to fix and upload the SFI site though. The Forums are back up, though I’m still working to restore some of the features (primarily the Item Shop), and hope to have that sorted by the weekend.

Well, I’ve spent all weekend uploading, and things are getting back up online quite nicely 🙂

Most of SFC itself is now back up, with the exception of a bunch of the cover scans, and the forums (more on these in a bit). I also got the Shining Force II site back up in time for it’s 7th Anniversary (yesterday), though with all this uploading and sorting out of files, I didn’t have time to add anything special to the site for the day. Still, at least it’s back online, eh? Also got the Final Conflict site up yesterday and will work on getting the Shining Force and Shining in the Darkness sites back up in the next day or two 🙂
By the way, if you’d like to thank SmooveNET for their help in getting SFC back online, there’s a topic at their forums – here – which you can post in. You don’t need to register to post, guest posting is enabled 🙂

Now, on to the forums…
Though the basic files for the forums have been uploaded, and I have the styles, avatars and images etc all ready, there have been some problems restoring the database. As you probably know, I’m on a 56k connection (anyone from British Telecom reading? Please, please, please upgrade the Upwey exchange for ADSL!) so my good friend and fellow SFC Forum Admin, Koshums, backed up the forum database before the site went down (since it’s just over 50MB). Last night he tried to restore it, but unfortunately the restore process didn’t seem to work. He has since uploaded the file to the SFC webspace for me to try to get restored. It seems neither phpMyAdmin nor phpBB’s admin panel is happy to restore from a file on the web 🙁 So, at this moment I am downloading the file via FTP (which isn’t going too badly actually, have been downloading for about an hour, and it’s at almost 50% – I guess it’s faster when I’m getting it direct from the server like that, rather than via the phpBB admin panel). Then I’ll try restoring it from the file on my PC… and if that fails, I shall have to copy chunks of the SQL from the file and manually restore all 50MB+ bit by bit. It might take a while, but I’m doing the best I can for you all 🙂 Worst case scenario, I’m hoping SmooveNET might be able to help somehow…

But, there’s more. Having looked at part of what I’ve downloaded of the database backup so far, I’m not 100% certain it has backed up the details relating to forum modifications, such Gold, the Shop, your item collections etc (basically, anything that doesn’t come with phpBB as standard)… I hope it has, because I know a lot of you will be rather upset at having lost these things, and I can’t say I’ll be too pleased about having to spend several days re-creating all these items and hunting out the original install files for these mods 🙁 But, if I have to, that’s what I’ll do. I hope you can bear with me if that is the case. I won’t, however, be able to offer to restore all your Gold totals/items etc – it will just take far too long on top of all the other stuff, and I’ll have no way to verify the information, I’m really sorry.

Well, maybe it won’t even come to that. As soon as the database backup has finished downloading I shall take a look and see what’s there and what isn’t… here’s hoping!

Will try to get the latest Shining Soul II info posted up here as soon as I get the time 🙂

Yup, SFC is finally on it’s way back after over a month of downtime. We’ve got a new host and I’m currently uploading the site again. Bear with me, it may take a few days for me to get everything up and working properly, and the MySQL database for the forums has not yet been set up, so I’m guessing that’ll be early next week now – sorry ’bout the delay!

Many thanks to the folks at SmooveNET for all their help with getting SFC back up and running!

The subsites (SitD, SF1, SF2, Final Conflict) should be coming back over the course of the next week, when my subdomains are ready.

Since I want to get the site up as quickly as possible, I’ll just have to refer you to this page for the latest Shining Soul II news, no time to add it here now!

First of all, my apologies for the lack of an update two weeks ago – I was having a mole removed and totally forgot that the date for the surgery clashed with my usual SFC update! Almost fully recovered now, and back to updating 🙂

As usual, this fortnight brings with it a new comic strip (many thanks to Jala for supplying it!), new MP3, new poll and – since we’re in April now – a new contest too. The winner of the March contest has been announced, here. I’ve also archived the old news, comic, poll and contest.

Very little else to report at present, though I will be adding the English Shining Soul script sometime this week, hopefully 😉 Meanwhile it is, of course, still available at the SFC Forums. I also need to update my collection page at some point.

As usual, we have a new Comic Strip (thanks Rusty, 500G on the way to your forum account!); new MP3 and a new Poll. The old ones have of course been archived, along with last month’s news. In addition, the winner of February’s contest has been announced, and the March contest is now open, good luck!

Today I’ve managed to get organised, and have updated the ‘Games Similar to Shining Force’ page, as well as the Fanart (SF, SFII, SFIII & SS fanart added).

Nothing else to report at present, though I would like to point out – for those of you who’ve seen the ‘E3 List’ at GameFront – that the rumour of a Camelot/Sega RPG for GameCube is very unlikely to be true, and the list does show that it is unconfirmed. That site has been known to give inaccurate information in the past, and since nothing of it has been mentioned at any larger gaming sites, I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you 😉 I have, however, done my part and contacted Taguchi-sama to see if he can clear the issue up. It has also been rumoured that Shining Soul II will be on display at E3… I can’t confirm or disprove this, and to me it seems quite likely this will happen.

I’ve finally gotten around to typing up my thoughts on Shining Soul’s European release. You can see it here.

In addition, I’ve updated the Collectables section, more specifically the Shining Force III Scenario 1, Shining Force CD and Shining Soul II pages.

The Where to buy… page has also been updated, many thanks to shining3master for his suggestions.

I still have some fanart to add, and I still (sorry!) need to get around to updating the list of games similar to Shining Force (if only to stop people sending in more of the same suggestions *lol*). There are probably some other areas I need to update too, but for now this is all 😉

Just a quick update today. Sorry updates have been few and far between of late, but as the SFC Forum-goers among you probably know, I’ve been busy adding a lot to the forum system.

So, today we just have the regulars… new poll, new MP3 and a new comic strip – courtesy of Tanthalas (thanks man, sorry I didn’t get a chance to put it up sooner!).

I hope to get a review of the European release of Shining Soul up by the end of the week. I played the demo copy of the game (on which I was unable to save, due to the special cart it’s on… I’ll post pics soon, though I have to return the demo cart to Inforgrames in a few days) until my GBA decided to switch itself off, despite being plugged into the mains O.o;; … so a big thanks to Aspartate, Mael and Prince Medion who rushed to my rescue with some save states that I could use to continue playing, via the ROM. Note that I do not encourage the piracy of readily-available games, and only resorted to using the ROM because I’d otherwise have to play through the majority of the game again (and probably risk my GBA turning itself off again anyway!).

Anyhoo, completed the game, first thoughts are still available at the Shining Soul forum here at SFC. In a nutshell, I enjoyed it more than the Japanese release, though it still becomes overly repetetive pretty quickly, and I’m sad to say that – despite being fairly true to the Japanese version – the translation is pretty dire – typos left right and centre, and poor English. I don’t know how well the other languages on it read, since I’m not fluent in any of them 🙁 Feedback is of course welcome.

Gotta go now, but will endeavour to update again soon!

Thank Zod for Google! I found a page explaining how to manually repair a database table that seems to be missing and it worked 🙂 What a relief!!

Just letting you know that I’m well aware that there’s something wrong with the forums. Emails about this matter will not be replied to unless they are actually helpful, since right now I’m spending my time trying to find out what’s wrong.

I’ve no idea when they’ll be back up and running, or whether everything will still be intact when they’re working again. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile I apologise for the inconvenience and will do my best to solve the problem.

Update: 09.55

It would seem the cause of the problem is within a particular table of the database, which holds posts…. which appears to have vanished as the file can’t be found (but when I view the database overview, it is listed as being 2in use”… no idea why, it’s never said that before). Unfortunately, due to my 56k connection with a 2-hour cutoff period (ADSL isn’t available in my area, nor is Cable), I’ve not been able to backup the 40MB+ database file so I can’t restore from that. I’ve contacted my host in the hope that he’ll be able to fix it… other than that, I’m not really sure what to do. Anyone who is familiar with MySQL & phpBB are welcome to advise on this matter. Perhaps the best course of action would be for me to delete that table manually and reinsert it? I dunno, I’m not much up on databases. Will keep you informed.

As usual there’s a new MP3 & a new poll. No new comic strip this fortnight either, I’m afraid, since I’ve been so busy working on making a Jogurt plushie! If you’re a member of the SFC Forums, you’ll probably know I recently introduced a new “Gold” system, where users earn “Gold” for posting, which can then be used to buy (virtual) items for their (virtual) collections… well, as a little incentive to any budding artists amongst you, I’m offering 500G as a reward for anyone who submits a comic strip that I should choose to use here!
What else? Ah yes, the winner of last month’s contest has been announced, and a new contest has been launched – good luck!

I’ve got quite a lot of stuff to add to the site in the near future – more collectables; updating my collection; fanart; games similar to Shining Force (many thanks to everyone who’s sent in suggestions, and sorry I’ve not added them yet!); where to buy Shining goods… and more besides!

In addition, some exciting news on the translation front – an old member of the Aspinia Team has contacted me to say he’s finishing off the Scenario 2 translation, and working on some of Scenario 3. There should be something of this available in the very near future. Great stuff!

No sign of my review copy of Shining Soul yet, but then again no magazines have reviewed it yet either. Infogrames are certainly cutting it a bit close, with a release date of February 28th listed on their website! No more news on Shining Soul II either, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty about it in a few months 🙂

Finally, I’d like to encourage those of you who have some free time, to join Grom’s Shining Force Interactive RPG, a free-to-join online roleplaying group, where members roleplay a Shining Force based story together on a regular basis. Enjoy!

Many thanks to Aspartate and Landius for their work on this translation 🙂 It can be found here, in the Gamescripts section.