PSO News?

Things have been going well regarding PSO, but for the most part things have been so minimal that a post wasn’t really that mandatory, so I believe it’s better to use this post to tell those interested the new things that have been happening recently.

Ephinea Seasons.

If you play on Ephinea you probably saw this, they now have a new mode that you enter by typing a command before playing a game, you essentially start from the start, you complete milestones like leveling up and then you get rewarded in many ways, some rewards come from the lvl ups, an id change comes from participating and you can trade points to get other purchasable rewards.

Now, starting from scratch seems a lot like challenge mode, but here you play at your own pace, in fact you can play a very large portion of content but you cannot power level by playing with certain players (those outside seasons) and you can’t use certain quests that are notorious for fast leveling up).

Overall a nice change of pacing and the 1st iteration of the system, which seems to be well designed and tought all things considered so if you want something unique with unique rewards, check out Ephinea seasons, if that’s not your thing, you can always check Ephinea server if you plan on playing PSO, certainly one of the best private servers around

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Other private servers.

On Ephinea, you are allowed to advertise your own servers if you want and some have appeared in the meantime which is always nice, now I know what you’re thinking, “more servers? Won’t that scatter the community even further?”, well yes in a certain way, but having a choice and having individual ideas coming together in a server is always nice, Ephinea came out of nowhere although the foundation existed, but right now it has expanded and it certainly grabbed the PSO community, other servers certainly have that chance aswell, it’s a lot better than having like 1 choice, knowing you have to endure all kinds of nonsense just to play the game and have fun.

One even accepts GC players, that you don’t see every day for sure

The ones that stood out are:

• Destiny PSO BB server and Forums
• Gal Da Val GC server

There are certainly others like Trinity but they haven’t been around long enough to make their position in the PSO community, but that can change at anytime, so those that are new are always a good place for you to share your creative ideas, give them a go if you’re interested and you might be surprised with the results.

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Speaking of GC, recently Trypticon has made a topic on PSO-World forums where he seems to be looking for certain old “personalities” of the PSO community, i was introduced to this since i was one of those players he wanted to get in contact with (that surprised me btw) and he told me his idea, now i don’t want to get ahead of myself, so for now the idea will remain a secret and one of the reasons for that is because we don’t really know who is available and who isn’t, to be honest finding these ppl would be interesting because if you are from the GC generation of players you might know some of these names, i personally know some, but i don’t know all of them and for now the goal is to contact these ppl.

If you know any of these, if you have like an email or you are these players in concrete, then check the topic and give Trypticon a notification, maybe you’ll like what he has in mind.

The players he is seeking are:

09, Cypher, ADE, Photon Drop, Saifwin , The One Hero , KIREEK, Tycho, Dark Shadow, Lightning, Tyrant Flame, Android 21, DJR, Saiffwin, Cypher, 09, AIM, James, Rob, Kayak, Cranberry.

Are these names a blast from the past to you?

Remaking a T-Shirt design

A long time ago, back when Ragol.co.uk was a great source for PSO news, one blog entry had a very unique thing, a T-Shirts merchandise related to PSO and among those unique t shirts there was one that stood out.
Went to the web archive and retrieved this:

Thing is, you can’t get these anymore, including the one i just pointed out, i decided to remake the image myself and after getting some help on forums, i indeed got a better resolution image of the design, still it was marginally better, the size and the heavy compression artifacts made most of the text (yes it contains text) pretty much unreadable, still i decided to remake the stuff.

Now the text was an issue, i had a hint that so much text wasn’t created by hand, but instead copy and pasted, so all i needed was to find the original text, no biggie right?

I mean check it yourself.

Now, i deciphered certain things, like “phantasy star online phantasy”, “pioneer”, “the”, “and” and one that i deciphered partially as “Ye_r __ter”

I decided to grab a few scripts from PSO and the intro movie and indeed the text was from the intro movie (EP1), that partially deciphered text was in fact “Years Later”.

I did the backgrounds as close as possible with the original, although i may have changed some tiny things, such as including a hex grid where the text was on.

The next big trouble was the arena drawing, i mean i can’t draw that, i know i can’t, so i decided to use PSO textures themselves, now initially this seems fairly easy, until you realize the game removes black coloring automatically, it enhances the colors, i can’t do that in Photoshop, at least not in a transparent background, i mean, look at it.

 

But, after some tweaks, i was able to create my own thing and i used images from the game itself to guide me, not only position wise but color wise, it may not be exactly the same as the game as i used some circular images in a higher amount, this so it could match the original T-shirt image.

Last but not least, falz itself, i never did anything in corel draw before, but what better program to create custom shapes? after getting the shapes done (falz body, wings and the blades) getting them into Photoshop and filling them up was easy.

So here you go, if you really want to use the image, feel free to do so, i personally will be ordering a T-shirt with the design in the future and i will update this blog post with the results (if satisfactory).

If there is something i like i may sometimes do it myself and this was one of them, enjoy the high res version remake.

EDIT:

I have received the t-shirt and i can add a few things to the final result:

• the hexagonal pattern is barely visible, you need to be rather close to see the subtle pattern.
• The wings are transparent so you can see the text that is on the back, however on the t-shirt the text is barely visible, you see some shapes but you can’t recognize the text or even letters, like the pattern it is very subtle.
• the blue and green dark falz arena sections are really well done on the grey background but they turn drastically to a bright green when they reach the grey of the t-shirt, so it is likely that the difference isn’t so drastic if you have a darker t-shirt, i went with grey because that was the color of the original one.

Credits to spreadshirt for the good work on the t shirt and MidiPour for providing the higher resolution image.

Jazz themed “Image of Hero”

I have been a fan of remixes for a long time and Phantasy Star has been a franchise that has many remixes out there, but when it comes to Phantasy Star Online it doesn’t become that plentiful, even SEGA when they did the original EP4 songs, many of the ideas in them actually came from older Phantasy Star games, regardless they are a joy to listen to. Fans however will sometimes pick iconic songs from the game and do their own version, a fine example is the one made by Zircon called “Ragol weather”

This song served as an inspiration for the jazz themed song, this team decided to pay a tribute to many different games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda and Phantasy Star Online, this tribute called “New game +” is very well done and has 21 songs that were done by musicians from all around the world.

The website contains info about the band elements, the guest performers and even a list of all the songs that were included.

Now i don’t often do a blog post because of 1 remix, but this song was so unique in its approach that i just had to talk about it, i enjoyed listening to the music (and the other ones), so i guess someone out there will also like it.

You can check out this amazing Jazz themed “image of hero” in several places:

• Soundcloud
• Overclocked records
• iTunes

Truly a fantastic job, i was honestly impressed.

Some random halloween pictures

When i changed the background i reminded myself that i could possibly take a few more screens of the hallo rappies in forest and so i did.

This is not a particularly detailed topic or anything, I’m just posting a few pictures that i took a few minutes ago, Halloween isn’t something we have on our country although we do have something equivalent, so for those that like PSO and halloween, here are some halloween rappies.

Note to self.

I want to add a 2 notes to myself just incase i need them in the future, users are free to read the content if they want and I’m sure some users at DC-Talk, namely impulse and smith will find the 2nd note interesting, although it won’t add anything new to the way things were handled, it’s just a matter of whom to point the finger.

1st note:
The previous blog post contained at some point some information on schthack regarding assets being used on Facebook, it was placed there at 1st because i wanted to transmit the information that schthack doesn’t really say much, they just needed the images to create a subject and then they keep the hype with events, server being online “soon”, in other words, they made an effort in trying to extend schtserv “franchise” if that makes sense to you.
I do that to here, I honestly find the content and i might talk about it a little bit, but I’m not exactly searching for popularity, the difference with the Facebook at schthack is that they don’t search, they instead look at my blog, they check this “whole new world” out there and then they grab a few images, skins, wallpapers to keep the hype going.

There is nothing wrong to this, but you can’t expect to find more of the skins, images and assets by the Facebook page, when i posted this info on the previous page was because i kinda predicted that the assets from the PSO remake would eventually be used on Facebook (because they are here to begin with), sort of “look at this work someone else made, do you like it?”
This keeps the page fresh, but it does lack content, so if you want to check out the progress on PSO remake, head to the website itself or contact the creators on Reddit, on schthack Facebook you don’t have much info and neither they care about that.

Once example was a typo mistake, where someone claimed to have checked a certain forum (that I’m sure was never checked) and then they posted the news on Facebook.
The dark section is the post here on this blog, the white section is from schthack Facebook, i giggled a little bit.

Keep in mind that this only appeared when i talked about it and the same can be said about skins or other images, but that isn’t as obvious as this one.
Like i said, no big deal, this is just a note to self.

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2nd note:

Back in 2009 when dreamcast talk had a PSO server, they used schthack software, it worked, it did what was necessary, but a certain entity named Lee told me and others that we weren’t allowed to use it, this software was given to nugz and then “leaked” according to Lee, this means that the tool designed to take down the server worked on dreamcast talk server, Lee told that the combination of several factors, including numerous backdoors, support of several ships and the functionality of the tool with the server made him certain that dc-talk contained software that wasn’t allowed to be used.
But who determined that we couldn’t use it, Lee quickly mentioned schthack himself, one of the original creators of the schthack software, an entity that many still remember.

Many arguments issued, with me asking slightly different questions and with Lee answering slightly different each time, but in short, schthack never allowed the server software to be used, so Lee had permission to take it down if necessary.
My questions (from what i can see in my logs) changed to the point of asking very specific questions regarding if schthack wanted it down, lee replied several times the same thing, but here’s 2 quotes:

it is wrong since the createer wants it down

he wants it down
I take it down
simple

Ok, so, why don’t we talked to schthack himself? Well schthack was away so all we had been lee’s word, so he could be right.
I made some risky accusations, comparing Lee to Opt, if you were part of schthack server when it happened, Opt may have caused issues with schthack server and it wasn’t all that different from what Lee was doing to dc-talk server, however he didn’t take this lightly, he stated that there no comparison as he had a justification, all his actions were ok and demanded by the creator.

since i have justification from schthack to take down his software

Still talking to schthack could cause a change, so let’s see if he would change his decision, lee replied instantly with

he isn’t going to go back on his decision

So, i had a hunch that could be reality, what if Lee was doing this on his own free will and was blaming schthack in the process?

Dctalk changed software a few times, none of them pleasing Lee because the slight changes weren’t enough, dc-talk was fed up with the issue, used the software they wanted and patched the vulnerabilities, rendering the software secure.
I have talked about this in the past, where lee messaged the host accusing that dc-talk had proprietary software……..just joking, he actually messaged the host and stated dc-talk having a PSO private server, that it was against Sega policies.
Then dc-talk switched to sylverant, but for some time schthack software was online and no tool would bring it down, even the one designed to do it.
I and others assumed that this was just Lee being counter productive and annoying, but regardless we felt that maybe schthack had actually ordered him to take the server down at any cost, that was one of the reasons of why dc-talk switched to sylverant software.

So, these 2 caused some serious issues that lasted maybe a week or so right? Lee said so, so he must be right.

…

…

Schthack is once again with a server, with a website, with forums, all up and running, but among the admins, there is one in particular that caught my attention, schthack himself, the oldie and possibly one of the 1st members of the 1st schthack forums.

You know where this is going right? How about asking him to confirm these statements, he should remember this quite easily no?

I kept the story simple, grabbed a few quotes, explained the timeline, the attacks, the ddos,….

He replied me with this:

the leaked software was accired by nugz from a previous host, after lot of argument and fight, beafor leaving i gave him a lite version of the login server. At this point if he wanted to give it i dont see any problem. but i do belive that Lee and cronos saw it as an other attack by nugz.

I dont recal telling Lee to shutdown your community as there could be plenty using the leaked server anyway. he might have informed me but i didnt gave a crap about pso. He might of got too far but i cant argu again him as he’s mainly the one that keep this server online in the last years…

So, arbitrary decision, hypocrisy, no justification, no orders, no instructions to bring the server down and Lee has the audacity to reply with statements such as

he wants it down
I take it down
simple

There is a reason why dc-talk fought so much at the time, why we didn’t care, why we rejected any instructions given to us, mainly because, there weren’t any to begin with, this was simply a person making a decision and then backing up the statements and dragging schthack into the mix.

Remember, this is a note to self, i have more elaborate logs, but the reason of the blog post is to keep things simple.

Regardless, this was in 2009, this issue is no longer a thing, it no longer concerns me or dc-talk, we all moved on, i just wanted to make sure that the blame was 1 person only, not 2 with justification and orders.

PSO-Remake

If you have been around the PSO Reddit, then by now you probably saw something regarding a PSO remake, i have talked about this previously and even mentioned a playable demo about it, it contained the basics of PSO gameplay but it used some more modern engines and more modern assets to try to recreate something that looks and plays better.

While it’s true its several miles away from being a fully fleshed out game, it’s also good to note that the team isn’t all that big and it relies heavily of people’s expertise in certain areas to get things done.

The game currently has a more visual impact, the lightning, the models and the assets recreated all look great, it looks like PSO content was made more modern and the results are fantastic.

You can check the WordPress blog created for the effect as it will contain information regarding the progress.
https://psoremake.wordpress.com/

You can also check the progress here: https://trello.com/psorm

If you would like to contribute, don’t be afraid to ask them, they will appreciate the help and who knows, maybe something truly special will appear in the future, didn’t many ppl scream for an HD version of PSO to be made? Here’s the opportunity.

4K Screenshot achieved on PSO v2

PSO v2 is full of peculiarities with the increased resolution options, but the more you raise the resolution, less and less things work properly, once the res surpassed my monitor, fullscreen stops working alongside with the printscreen function (this due to the fact the function was meant for fullscreen, in window mode screenshots on backup folder will be messed up). If you go higher, screenshots can’t be taken with fraps and sadly no other program that i have found fixes this, fraps seems to be the only program that takes a screenshot at the resolution of the game itself, it’s not a cheap screen capture. If you go higher things such as ENB series can’t be activated and will cause the same issue as the screenshot, game will crash.

The game stops working entirely once the resolution reaches certain points, while i have once tried 10x the resolution of the game (6400 x 4800) just like many of the resolutions before hand, there is no way I can show you that the game was running at that res and the best I could was a desktop screenshot with the game running in window mode.

The limitation seemed to be on the 2560×1600 resolution, that is indeed the max resolution of my old graphics card, but it could also be a limitation of fraps, DirectX, drivers, OS, PSO and many other things.
Only one way to find out.

I asked on the Ephinea forums and i was lucky to find out someone who has access to more recent hardware, i mean if some games can run at 4K, then why not PSO, I’m not saying PSO is going to be 4k worthy, particles aren’t centered and many other things don’t work properly, the alpha version that i released so that players could see for themselves is no different to the version i made available to a member on Ephinea, only the res and the FOV are different, what is broken remains broken, the UI with your HP values become so small you can’t probably even see them properly.

Shichimiya was the person that offered help, i gave tools and a custom exe with the res 3840 x 2160 , minor complain here, i wish there was an easier way to download PSO v2 for pc besides a goddamn torrent file that no one seeds (i didn’t even bother) and while there is one (ty for that) it’s one with some mods included, namely the Portuguese translation.

From here it was entirely her own doing, she was in control and she took the screenshots, yes they were taken, that is something i could not do on my system and it’s quite interesting to see what will other users do.

The images have different graphical settings, there are no skins and there isn’t any bloom, so yes the image looks different from what i usually take, still Shichimiya used some of the tools, namely she warped to other areas and even removed the hud, that’s pretty good.

Credits to her as she took the highest resolution PSO screenshots to date, here’s one to demonstrate the achievement. Nothing similar is around.

If you wish to do the same then i have a small zip file and it contains launchers, patchers, trainers and the same PSO exe file i used, you can do it on your own, warp, change camera, patch the game (including patching for fullscreen and window mode) and play PSO, however in this res only your system will tell if it works or not.

Note: Unlike many popular games for popular platforms (PS4 Pro and Xbox One S), PSO does not cheat in order to play at 4k, the framerate will still be 30 fps at the most and the pixel rendering has no upscaling or no chessboard rendering (meaning it renders half the pixels and guesses the rest), so this is demanding on a graphical level.

Just some random screens

I was bored so i decided and went to PSO to take some screenshots with bloom enabled while using one of my highest resolution exes, i took special precautions to remove the hud and made sure no particles were visible (this is because my 2560×1600 exe doesn’t have the particles centered)

Could i go beyond this? Yes, it’s quite interesting to know PSO v2 on pc is the only game i have that will run at a resolution higher than my monitor (if window mode), sadly i can’t take a screenshot to show you as the game crashes instantly when i do.

Yes some of the screenshots may contain texture edits.

Want me to cover a particular area or skin, let me know in the comments.

Good images right? but those are pretty much the highest i can go, like i said, anything above that and the game crashes when i take the screenshot, i can still show how it looks, just not in the way you would expect.

For example, this image right here, seems pretty normal right? but the game is running at the 4k resolution (4096 x 2160)

You may not believe, after all my monitor isn’t 4k and i’m using a window a bit smaller than my monitor, but not only i feel a performance hit (without using any eye candy options) but you can see that my hud is so small you can’t even read how much health i got.
But if the hud isn’t enough, we can always look at the press start screen as the image used in the background was made for a 640×480 game (the image doesn’t fit 100%, but it’s close enough).
So if we load the press start screen, we get something like this

 

So there you go, PSO V2 running in 4K resolution, it’s honestly the best i can display.

Schthack is back?

As you probably are aware, schthack is back, or at least the server name and some of the moderation staff is, i don’t actually mean you will be able to use your 2 year account that existed before, that is long gone and so are some of the players that played there, it goes back to how long you can tolerate dreadful management and corruption, some players left way before the server was having issues and some players left only recently, on the other hand some players never actually leave and are happy that a server named schthack is back, if it’s “popular” then it must have players playing and for many that is the most essential thing, nevermind the witch hunting, the scams, the unfulfilled donation services, the corruption and the items handled under the table, for some ppl those things don’t matter, 3k in donations gone? no worries, here are 3k more for you.

While many do support schthack staff (fans i guess), most of them will not actually defend all of what schthack staff has done.
Do note i am using schthack staff and not just crono, this is because in its majority, all the moderation has made several mistakes over time, not just saying with situations i experienced, but with many other players, make no mistake, while you may see ex-staff on Ephinea and in other forums complaining about what crono and others have done, they do this to try to regain some understanding from other players, they try to make it seem only crono caused a reign of terror at schthack, but reality is the staff did it.

It’s obvious crono did a mess, but none of that is related with statements such as “autoconnect disks will VK kill after 1000 hours”, or defending those statements because who knows, maybe aleronives was right, i am sorry if i lack the examples to describe it, this one was the only one on the top of my head, but there was numerous situations from all the staff. (stating more examples detract from my original post, but trust me, i lack the fingers to state the several intentional mistakes that the staff did)

I do see that despite not apologizing and even bragging that some actions were done because they thought they were doing the right thing, they do try to welcome everyone…..even me.

Some of you know me, i do not reward lack of effort otherwise it gets perpetuated, so I ask to schthack staff.
How much effort was placed when i got banned on schthack forums? (to revert the ban that is)
With that matter out-of-the-way now comes the amount of effort that i will place on understanding this “new and revamped staff” (that is in a large part old staff), which is none.

So while there might be lot’s of dumb “i only play for 3 weeks” newbies filling up the forums, please do not ask me to participate in this hypocrisy of a forum, schthack staff has managed to scatter and scare away so many players and staff. Bans, corrupted data, staff that contributed with donations and then realized that the money went down the drain, that and more caused players to flee and find other servers to enjoy the game.
Everyone is free to make the same mistakes 10 times, but i will invest attention elsewhere.

Schthack came back, but aside from the name and the poor saps (the staff) what does schthack bring different to the table?

Well, aside from a half-baked server that doesn’t have proper ppl to test connections on PC, DC and GC (because some of them don’t work) i did noticed that they brought the rule of allowing cheating and hacking as long you don’t interfere with the legit gameplay, the PSO BB client also has the antihack.dll, issues playing the game with other things in the background may appear.

This doesn’t make much sense to me, but something similar did appear on Ephinea, but they did tackle the idea by making a sandbox mode, where you have a specific account that can’t interact with legit accounts in public games and you are granted commands to create items and lvl up for example.
This is a skinner and minmax builders paradise as you can test things and socialize without compromising the server or the players, the server itself gives you the tools to do whatever you want (within the allowed commands)

Schthack on the other hand, allows cheats and hacks, making witch hunting a severe problem in the future, TA missions and events will have less credibility and while you allow the behavior, you have to cheat on a different ship, so you eliminate the social aspect, making it likely ppl will cheat on the main ship. But, at the same time you have antihack.dll
I don’t think schthack has a clear direction at this point and they are essentially asking for players to test things, the main concern that i have about schthack is that they fail to admit past mistakes and have no clear goal, they bring nothing new and instead bring problematic staff members as admins.

Schthack is essentially a can of worms, they ask the players that they scared away to return, who will fall for that?

Note: Popularity regarding the population is a different subject compared with the popularity of players knowing schthack (the one mentioned in this article), regarding population schthack isn’t the server with the highest players, this affects all platforms and all game variants of phantasy star online.

2015 in review + Ultima issue

Hope everyone has a wonderful new year.
While not game changing  there was a shift in attention from schthack related content to other things PSO related, such as skins, tools, images and so on. One could say that it’s because schthack is no longer a valid server, however i noticed this way before schthack was having issues.

I do plan on porting an echelon lobby skin in the future for PSO V2, but aside from that i have no idea if i will release or talk about anything else, Ephinea and Eden servers may announce some things, but for events and small changes it’s always better to check the websites themselves.
For sylverant i can’t do much, since dialogue is next to nill it’s hard to actually take anything seriously, especially since there have been several situations that had contradictory information and I’m not in the mood to correct them over and over.L33tserv continues to be a great server for PSO GC players, new servers have appeared for PSO BB such as Sieglindepso

There has been a recent interest in making animations by using the models in PSO, like a PSO animation project, you can read the stuff here.

If you are interested in seeing some of the stats on my blog, you can visit this page: https://kireekpso.wordpress.com/2015/annual-report/

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Now, for a situation that i tried to resolve but failed.
1st some back story, many ppl over the years used skins, wallpapers or certain screenshots that i provided here, at univers-ps or at deviant art as a way to decorate websites or to promote content.
Some users actually ask me for permission and i would say that i am fairly permissive since pretty much everything is allowed, it’s just a wallpaper or a screenshot, sometimes I’m the one that makes the banners and in the end why wouldn’t they be allowed to use the images?
Well, there are a couple of reasons, dubious content like scams is something i don’t want certain images to promote, but hardly anything falls on that category besides schthack, other reasons may be for example my support with a certain website or staff, if you disrespect me in a way that is beyond reasonable you can forget any help, ultima server is an example, the final reason that i may not accept is monetization, for example if you run a server that accepts donations.
This final one i may accept depending on the status of the server with me and vice versa, some servers i’m ok with providing them with screenshots or making banners like eden server.

I have had several situations where images or skins were being used by either entities that i don’t support or content that i don’t support (monetization related), for the most part after talking to the individuals, everything would be fixed, banners changed, skins removed, there was only one time where i had to find another way to deal with the issue, schthack decided to hype and advertise the server by using certain images (like the ones with really good quality on my deviant art) and since dialogue isn’t an option i decided to ask for a takedown of the post, with that matter solved i tought i would never see another one again.

I was wrong.
Ultima sometimes uses these images for banners and while talking to them works, it seems recently they made the mistake again, not only that but the banner changed only for a few days, so the original (that contained a popular background) remained there, advertising an event on a server that monetizes the content and that i don’t support.They don’t like me all that much, but at the same time they like me otherwise they wouldn’t able to find PSO images to make the banners, they probably can’t take screenshots or they don’t have anyone capable of doing the stuff, the mentality seems to be “if they can see it, they can use it”.
While this isn’t a huge deal, i prefer not making exceptions otherwise everyone will want to be in that situation, in other words, do you want to use screenshots and wallpapers on your website, you are free to ask and it’s likely that i will accept it even if you make a profit out of it, if on the other hand you belong to schthack or ultima staff then you can forget it, find someone else to stomp.

So to be clear, while you may see familiar stuff at ultima (banners or other content) don’t assume i had anything to do with the creation of said content, because trust me, i haven’t.

On a personal note: I remember reading a message from someone saying that “ultima had changed since then”,”we are better now” and i realized recently that hardly seems to be the case.

PSO2 Dragon area skin

 

Info:
Echelon released recently a skin for the dragon area for PSO BB, i enjoyed the result so much that i decided to port the area to V2, not only this improves the general look of the area but it also contains higher resolution images, most notably the night sky.
My initial approach by exporting images in pvr didn’t wield the best results, as there was color and quality loss (due to the default options on pvr exporting), while on the ground that can be neglected the night sky was something i couldn’t let go, so i exported the images in bmp instead and then depending on the use of said texture i would decide on how many bits i would use for the RGB channels, long story short the more bits the better the quality, however by doing so you limit the usage of the alpha channel, so each texture was analyzed and the final pvr image created, opaque images get the best quality, some may have a 1 bit alpha and less quality (non noticeable) and the ice in the arena is translucent (quality loss is also not noticeable).
But yes that sky had to remain with the same quality as it is gorgeous to look at.
There is sadly a sky texture that doesn’t really fit the remaining ones, since the night sky isn’t exactly just white dots on a black background, it gets tricky to get such texture to fit all the textures in the sky, fortunately the majority of the fight is in the ground so you can’t see the issue all that much.

The ice was my own doing, since i didn’t have the files echelon used, I grabbed the textures from the mod and from the original PSO and I tweaked them to match the arena, the translucent reflection ice effect is cool to look at in my opinion.
The issue with aurora is something i can’t fix, while there are some ppl that remove black areas in textures and call it a “fix”, i won’t certainly do that, yes there is an issue with how transparent textures behave in PSO v2.
I optimized the file by replacing 100% transparent images by smaller versions of said transparent images, still the final files are larger than the sega original files due to the higher resolution images.

Credits:
Echelon for the original content

Version:
PSO V2

Installation:
Unzip and drop the PSO Folder into the media folder in your Phantasy star online installation, usually located in:
X:\xxxxxxxx\SEGA\PhantasyStarOnline
This replaces 2 files, one for the area textures and another one for the ice effect that is used during the fight against the dragon

 

Screens: (these do not contain bloom as that would make the pictures way to bright)

Phantasy Star Online Wallpaper

A long time a go i did a Wallpaper for Ragol.co.uk, it had a grid, it contained ending images and screenshots from several members there, it was a rather basic wallpaper on a rather small resolution, but at the time i liked the outcome.
Recently i decided to improve on that concept and made a bigger wallpaper with more frames for images, this time however i didn’t use screenshots with charathers in them, I decided to use the screenshots i have taken in PSO BB without the hud or my charathers.

This wallpaper contains:

– 1 image from an old PSO Wallpaper with the iconic explosion in Ragol.
– 12 images from the Misc ending in PSO v2.
– 12 images from the Normal ending.
– 3 images from Ultimate ending. (Red Ring Rico related)
– 3 images taken from the animations that play in the Ending in the GC version of PSO (the normal and ultimate)
– 60 screenshot images taken by me.

I must admit this took some time and at the end i was scavenging screenshots for something good and appealing, so while you may recognize the majority of the images, there might be some that weren’t uploaded on my deviant art, if you wish said pictures in their respective full sizes then leave a comment with the request, for all the other images you can just check my deviant art, i believe you may find them.

Yes, the images here are small but that is somehow intended so that both Sega images and my images share the same quality, the ending images by default are small and don’t really have that much of a quality standard (it wasn’t the purpose of the image anyway), my images were by default around 1600×1200 with exceptional graphical quality, so here they kinda lost a lot of detail.
I’ll consider this my final PSO wallpaper i guess since it has a collection of many screenshots i took, enjoy.

 

Ephinea Server

For some time now there has been a server that caught my attention, Ephinea, a server administrated by Sodaboy, one of the heads of the Tethealla project.
One of the things that many other servers have is that they try to provide something different when compared to other servers, so they change drops, add events or skins so that they end up being unique.
This does have some downsides, if you happen to change servers there’s an entire relearning process, exp multipliers, different drops and drop rates may sound unappealing to some users and while it’s true that some like it, some still prefer something closer to the original

That’s Ephinea, the concept of the server is to provide a PSO BB server that is reliable and tries to have no changes regarding drops or exp multipliers, something you would call a vanilla server.
The server still has some additions that improve the gameplay experience such as an active administration, server commands to use in-game, common bank and so on, but regarding to drops and exp, you will likely feel as if you are playing the original game and you will likely even use official drop charts to determine the drops.
It’s also a reliable server when it comes to data and the goal is simply to provide a fun server to anyone that wants to join, due to the recent incident with another servers data, the users that left the server found this one as a welcomed change and so far they feel happy playing here.
It’s still a work in progress and changes or fixes may happen in the future, but if you want a basic server to play PSO BB without having to deal with data problems or unbalanced features then give this one a try.

You can check the main page here: http://www.pioneer2.net/
You can then select and go to either the forums or go to the main page of the server where you will be able to download the client or register an account, it’s very simple, intuitive and it’s working.

I will also add the server to the links on top, to all PSO players, happy hunting.

 

Aaaaand it’s gone. + Schtserv GM section leaks

15/08/15 Edit: added GM forum section leaks

In this post i will be talking about schtserv/schthack PSO server so as many expect this will be a bashing post (since its schtserv did you really expect anything else?)
For those unaware Schtserv has been having difficulties remaining stable for months now, one can even say the server died years ago, but thanks to hard work it remained “operational”, however recently schtserv wasn’t working properly as the server was down, this combined with the registration being down aswell the server wasn’t really an option to play PSO, it was for some players because they invested time and effort building characters in that server, there was also a few mods with no clue on what was going on (miureth, arelh) who decided to put some faith into the situation and spread the word that the server was down just temporarily and that it would be back up soon, they announced this on Facebook, on the forums, they rejected anyone contesting this and they would even say that some players or PSO fans were just haters or “emos”.

Server went down for more time than the expected (because again the mods had no clue although they pretended they did) and the mods tried to contain the situation, while at the same time player left the server to play elsewhere.

And NOW the reason has appeared, now remember that i don’t hold this as an absolute reliable information, since it comes from crono, the current schtserv administrator, it is likely that you don’t know much about him since he has been missing for years, but among the greatest things he done i do recall some things, namely:

• Requesting donations to keep server going while it was popular, but not asking for donations when there is almost no one on the server (suddenly the server didn’t need donations, a miracle some say)
• Requesting a 2nd wave of donations to keep the forum going this time shortly after the 1st wave of donations, Players posting questions as to where the previous donation money went were deleted.
• Selling items but not announcing this as a feature on the server, any questions regarding who to contact to make these transactions would be quickly moderated by the mods while at the same time saying that you could not buy items from the admins (as you can see, moderators had no clue since then, either that or they were hypocrites or retarded).
• Creating this strategy where staff would impersonate someone else on other forums to sell items, then banning the user once the cash transaction was done under the pretext “buying items from hackers isn’t allowed”, this highly immoral strategy gets rid of the players, gets you income and you can even blame someone else while you do it, You can read this on my other blog posts.
• Not taking care of donations properly, if you probably read the donation topic to be a “Mr cat” (a 2x exp group) you will see countless players complaining about extra time they didn’t pay, taking to long to get the status or not getting the status at all. In other words, it was a service that was in a large part not delivered to players. Before the schthack staff crew can say sweet things like “we will get on it and fix those issues eventually” i can tell you that this has remained like this for months if not years, so it’s pointless to try now.

Note: these are only a few of the issues with the admin, there are plenty more situations where the admin and the rest of the staff are presented as one of the worst administrations that i ever seen, with the original server admin (schthack himself) there was double standards and corruption for sure, but this one took it to another level with downright terrible administration, donations, item selling, scams, services that were never done, outdated information, no events, problems created to stop cheaters (antihack.dll, aka the cannon ball to kill ants), registrations down, server down, not caring for concerns or feedback.

Now for the quote itself: (take this with a grain of salt)

Alright so, a lot of you obviously know the server has been down for some time now. Although I tried to get the problem fixed, it was to no avail.

The problem is my hard drive with ALLLL your accounts and server itself died. I still have the server, that’s not the problem, the issue was trying to get all your accounts back. I failed in getting it fixed and now the only way to put this server back up is to start fresh by buying a new hdd.

I know a lot of you will either move or hate that all the accounts are gone. So I will let all of you post here *within rules of the forums* and talk about if you would rather start fresh, or you can simple post and express your anger (Only if it’s about me). Please do not bash the server/team, as the HDD issue was my fault, no one else’s.

My sincerest apologies,
– Crono114

You can read the topic here: http://schtserv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=97716

Well, there you have it, all your accounts on schtserv seem to be gone forever.
You know what’s funny this? Interacting with schtserv staff was always either pointless or painful, still many wanted to be part of the crew (for a reason i never figured it out) but in the end you will have to deal with the staff on a daily basis.
Some players and probably all of the staff at schthack always took some time to understand how things worked (the brain needs some time to process stuff), so this chatting with staff despite ending with the same result every time, players still had some hope that the next time it would be different.
It was never different, staff that played the game also have their account information gone, so to play the game again means starting from scratch and that is why a pool on the topic exists, do you want to continue to suffer, do you want schtserv to die or you haven’t decided yet?
Something of the sort will happen if you continue on, some ppl still stick to crono’s side even after years of problems, unfulfilled promises/services and multiple issues with forums and the server, to this day i still wonder if miureth and arelh are human, giving the dedication and love they have to schtserv.

I will be honest, schthack staff hate on my blog has been minimal but it existed, miureth even recommended that i backed up the blog since schthack staff had intentions to “do something”, but alas nothing happened and in the end i wasn’t concerned, all i can say is that if they dedicated their efforts to making the server stable instead of trying to shut me or other players down, then probably this blog post wouldn’t exist.

To all the corrupt, incompetent and retarded staff at schthack.

————————————————————-

Recently over at Diadu forums, brandon released html pages that had been stored over the years, containing information on account bans, account verification and some discussions regarding server or certain players.
Many pages were released, but the best part is that it gives you an idea how schtserv works, for example, have you ever done witch hunting like reporting a user without being to sure if the items he had were actually obtained in a legit way? do not be concerned, schthack staff did this aswell, many times they were unsure on how to proceed because in the end just like players, they didn’t know if certain items were legit or not, obviously they discussed the issue before doing anything, still sometimes they were the ones doing witch hunts, not the players.

Another peculiar moment is when the staff decided to make the “donation for item” system, where donations would grant you certain items, before this system was public you could not buy items from admins right? Wrong, you could buy them if you privately contacted them, if however you asked on the forums on how to do these transactions, it would be locked by a mod with the statement “you can’t buy/donate for items”
You might be thinking, maybe the mods didn’t know right? Well, i don’t think that’s the case, you see, among the leaks i found a topic where the staff discusses if a certain item bought from crono himself was or wasn’t traded afterwards (it seems the server has a rule where you can’t trade or sell items you purchased from the staff) and this topic predates the “donation for item” system. So some of the staff that locked those topics are the ones discussing this issue, so they knew certain players were buying items from the staff. Just lol.

This system seems to have been implemented to stop players from buying items from hackers, if you buy it from the staff themselves you technically support the server right?
Here’s a quote from Lee himself.

who would you rather pay money to, someone crashing the server to give you items, or to fund the server itself.

Funding the server? we all know how that turned out.

Another interesting thing is that in order to review the player they sometimes use inventory scans and forum warnings, despite being a long statement that forum and accounts in-game are handled separately, it seems they use forum warnings to bias the decision, it doesn’t happen every time but every now and then the warnings on the forums redirect the rest of the staff for the decision they will have to make even if sometimes they aren’t related in any way.

Have you ever discussed the server current situation on the forums? (being down, admin not active, bugs not fixed, unbalance issues, registration not working, low pop) then rest assured the staff has also discussed these things in the GM section and you can find more technical things such as bringing old commands back to facilitate some GM actions, however the input from crono does appear in some of them, usually saying that eventually he will get around to change the main website or fix some issues on the server or forum, thing is, some of these statements are 3 years old, have you really see any changes on the main website since then? well, you have actually, the registration system on the website broke, that’s a change right?
Not that it matters, there isn’t accounts, items and even GM issues atm, everything was wiped clean.

Time Attack (TA) seems to be an issue aswell, locked topics, witch hunting and even hacking or trainer usage on some of the players that did TA exist in this leaked content

Remember when someone leaked the “cash for item” transactions on schthack? now you don’t need to check copy and pasted versions of the post or check the YouTube video, you can check it directly here.

If you were banned unfairly because a legit item of yours was removed, if you think someone framed you, if you think the decisions made by the staff regarding accounts or item deletion were unfair then give a look yourself, it might be a bit hard for you to find an issue were you are involved but that’s why I’m providing 2 links.

Here you can see the leaked pages 1 by 1 at diadu.net under the schthack archive:
http://files.diadu.net/Drama/Scht_Archive/

If on the other hand you want to search the content for your nickname then you can always download everything:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iizhx6z1hqvh0ny/Archives.rar?dl=0

Have Fun 😉

 

 

 

PSO Remake Demo Available

5 months or so ago a nice and interesting topic appeared on the PSO Reddit, a team was developing in the unity engine a PSO remake game and was asking around if fans were interested in helping.
This topic gathered a few dedicated fans and in the end a small team was made, some of them being quite popular, from a PSO Eden server admin named Rupikachu to a PSO BB skinner such as Gama.
Each user worked on one or several things, this means one did reverse engineering on file format, others did programing, Rupikachu for example helped with the UI and recently a playable demo was released.

Do not expect this to be a fully playable game, this is more a proof of concept to demonstrate the actual progress that was done since that time and i must say i am impressed, i also like 2 things:

– Although basic, it does contain some graphical options, so you can tweak things to improve performance. (these will be inserted into the game ui in the future)
– Several builds were made for several Operating Systems, this includes 2 builds for windows, Linux and mac.

If you want to participate, help, question or report issues, check the topic at Reddit, it also contains more information, download links and you will interact with the creators of this remake.

Topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSO/comments/3czvet/pso_remake_playable_promotional_demo/

Here are 2 screenshots i took. (altough in my system the shadows aren’t rendering properly)