Index � Symphonic Heaven

This update contained quite a few small fixes, although nothing major. ; )

A link to the news for Tales Channel was added. All of the people who were in the "queue" for getting a mySymphonic were added.

We also started to implement some Google AdSense programs into the site. Google SiteSearch was added below the Site Information section, and defaults to search the site, although you can search the web if you wish. We are working on styling it so it matches the website, but we are encountering some issues on Google's end. This also is affecting adding some text ads, which will be at the bottom of the navigation, in an area called Advertisements. We thought having them there would be the most unobtrusive way to include them for our visitors.

A unplanned issue with the new code, in Opera and Internet Explorer 7, was also fixed. Note that we are not supporting Internet Explorer 6 (namely due to the transparent PNG bug), so if you are using that browser, we recommend you upgrade to IE7.

General

The skin for the Oekaki is back up. Please contact the Staff if you encounter any areas we missed.

Oekaki

The skin for the Topsite is back up. Please contact the Staff if you encounter any areas we missed.

Topsite

The CSS upgrade is partially finished, at least enough to open the site back up. Everything except for mySymphonic, the Topsite, and the Oekaki are "back to normal". mySymphonic will be the next to go online (btw, everyone who created an account will have their account created this afternoon), followed by the Topsite, then the Oekaki.

We initially had a problem with the Blogs, but that was fixed by implementing avatars/tags to be shown. Note that the method has the user input the URL to their avatar --- this was temporary so the page wouldn't look messed up on the website.

One small change is that the non-news topics have been split from the regular forum topics in the individual Tales game pages. There is now two "boxes": Latest Forum Topics & Latest News.

(There were a few other changes, but they were merely cosmetic in nature.)

UPDATE (2:38 PM): mySymphonic should now be fully revamped CSS-wise. As always, if you notice an area outside of the Topsite/Oekaki that is/looks messed up by this CSS upgrade, please contact us.

(On a side note, I am planning on breaking up the Bestiary page in the TotW:RM section, since it will take longer and longer to load once more monsters are added. It will likely have a table of sorts that shows all of the monsters, ordered by number. This will be after the Topsite/Oekaki are updated. More RM content is planned after that, as well as implementing some more of our 2008 Goals.)

General

(This post combines a couple different news stories that we were unable to cover due to the CSS upgrade, so yes, some of the information is a few days old. ; ))

We have a new Famitsu scan, which can be found here, which shows off some of the recently "announced" characters (Yuri, Estelle, and Repede). There are a few other scans that we need to lower the filesize on before we can upload them (our script has a limit of 2 MB for viewing files). Those scans did confirm that Titles and Skits would return, however.

And a new online Famitsu interview from the producers was translated by Rpgmonkey, which has translated quite a few things for the community in the past. This is a string of key points from that translation...

Flynn is on a journey because of a mission he accepted to do.
It seems there are assassins after Flynn's life because of his mission(s) and motives.
Flynn will become entangled with the party, but whether or not he joins we'll have to play to see.
There is a small amount of friendship between Flynn and Estelle. It seems Flynn was a bodyguard/escort for her a while ago.
Apparently the whole thing with Repede's former owner doesn't become entangled into the main story.
Yuri is an acquaintance of his former owner.
I think it says Repede was designed by Radiant Mythology's staff (I think Gouda said it was the art director)?
The pipe is a memento of his former owner. But as I said, apparently none of all this stuff is going to be a part of the main story.
Each party member has a main weapon and sub weapon. Repede's chain is an example of a sub weapon.
Yuri's main weapon is a sword and his sub weapon is his fist. Estelle's are swords and staffs and her sub weapon is her shield. Really makes you interested in what the rest have, huh?
You can learn unique skills from sub weapons.
The appearance of armor changes along with weapons and sub weapons. Don't know to what extent this goes to though.
Apparently Repede has a voice actor. They're waiting to reveal them, unless I got this wrong and they're still finding one.
Repede doesn't talk in event scenes, but you can see his activity and stuff while they're happening.
He's in skits (but I don't think he'll be talking there either), but I think they say he has various facial animations and stuff. I think this may have confirmed that Repede doesn't talk (human) speech if I interpreted this right.
Repede can cook and gets titles.
Though those two people with Flynn are his subordinates. He also gets promoted in the story.
There is no blood relation between Flynn and that Blond Haired kid, apparently his part in the story has more to do with Estelle.
Flynn and Yuri come from the same background. Guess this gets rid of my notion that Flynn was from a slightly more important family than Yuri.
Already explained the item synthesis and stuff a while back, but in case this is new news, the probability of getting items increases when you do one of those instant kill attacks.
Talks about the skill system, don't think it's anything particularly interesting in there, but there seems to about the same amount of skills as Abyss, and you can make important treasures (think the Special Flag and stuff).
There's a weather system, but it's not random. Certain requirements are needed.

Tales of Vesperia

Just a heads up for all of our visitors --- expect to see the site go down for a little while either on Monday morning, or Wednesday morning, for the CSS/Code upgrade. This depends on how long it takes this weekend to complete some remaining projects for my programming classes. ; )

This may last a few days, due to the massive amount of intricate changes that will be taken place (i.e., one mistake may cause a bunch of issues, so said issue would have to be isolated, which might take time). I made a Blog post tonight about the technical side of what this update entails (and why it might take longer than previously expected), so feel free to check it out if you're "technically" inclined. : )

General

This is a quick and minor update, but it should help the loading of the main page of the forum. : )

A new forum, entitled Worldwide Tales Games, was created to hold the subforums for all of the Tales games released outside of Japan (since we have nine of them now). Since it seems that Namco-Bandai has a revived interest in releasing more Tales games outside of Japan, this small change will help in the future years.

The Staff and I are still contemplating whether to create subforums for the Japanese Tales Games forum. If this does come to pass, it would only be for those games which are important enough to warrant a subforum.

(On a side note, my finals-related work, essentially some left-over programming projects, are progressing better than expected. Thus, I *might* have time to perform the CSS update this week. But those who know programming know how easily that can change. : P)

Forum

Since this is the start of the month, I want to give everyone an idea of what we have planned for the month at Symphonic Heaven. Since finals end early next week, I should have a good couple weeks to work on stuff before Summer starts in earnest (I have other external issues which likely will take my full attention away from the site, such as a summer job / etc.).

The CSS styling revision will take place sometime early next week (although I may start it this weekend). This will affect the main site, as well as the everything else except for the Forum (which uses it's own code), since they all use the main site's style.css file. This isn't a major update (just adding some HTML and renaming some tags). but the sheer amount of those fixes everywhere in the site might take a while. I am hoping to do a quick search-and-replace to shorten this, but who knows if that might cause a small issue of its own. : P In any case, the website will be taken "offline" during this upgrade. The other parts will still be up, although they will not be showing images correctly/etc. The new code is much more detailed and uses a common-sense approach to naming (instead of random, obscure names), so it will help us out a lot in the future. ; )

On the Blog front, RSS feeds will be created for all of our users, and we are trying to implement icons/avatars to be used (likely through a [avatar] BBCode). On mySymphonic, new clubs/fanlistings/etc. will be added, likely giving a v3.2.0.1 release (since x.x.x.x releases now signify just adding small stuff like that).

On the main website, we have a few different additions/changes we will be making. We are going to attempt to add the "Add to Collection/Wishlist" code, as well as split the news away from the "Latest Forum Posts" bit, into a "Latest News" bit. The "new" news forums that were created with the April 2008 archiving will also have this set up in their respective game index pages.

And of course, some of the items left on the Goals for 2008 might pop up. : )

(BTW, if you didn't notice already, we ripped more of the images from the Vesperia JPN Flash-created website. The images are under the Characters, Concept Artwork, and Screenshots --- look under Tales Channel for the last one. Also note that the "Latest News" rotator will be "refreshed" during/after the CSS upgrade.)

General

I just finished one of my finals (and have another tomorrow and next Tuesday), so I took some time out to fix the commenting issue on the Oekaki.

The Comment! link should be available to users that are logged in. The actually commenting page has yet to be "styled" --- that will be done later tonight / tomorrow. This post will be edited once that is done.

UPDATE (5/1): The commenting page should now be correctly edited. I made a test comment to make sure it worked, and I encountered no problems.

Oekaki