ThaaoNET Blog
~Warmth Like Home Unawares~

How many diaries can I start?!

Heya, friends! Here's some ThaaoNET news:

I'm restarting the Romancing SaGa 3 play diary. I originally talked about doing this because I found information saying you could get Young Fang earlier in the game, but the truth behind that is... well, you can get him, but only temporarily. My actual reason for restarting is that I accidentally deleted a bunch of my screencaps. After the most current entry that was posted, I went through a major dungeon and sealed an Abyss Gate, but that's all gone now. I could easily run around that area for a few makeshift screenshots, but I can't re-summon the boss or see the cutscenes revolving around it without starting the game over, so I may as well just do that...

I also have a slightly better understanding of Mikhail's mass combat system, so I might try to go more into that. Before, I didn't do much with it because I just lost every time, so we didn't get to see much of what could really happen with it in the diary. But this time maybe I can get somewhere with it.

I'm also hoping to pick up the Romancing SaGa 2 diary again soon. Been having a hankering to play both of these games.

I also started yet another new diary! Welcome to the pack, Colobocle Station for Girl, also known as Harvest Moon DS Cute! This is one I've been wanting to do since the very beginning of ThaaoNET, so I figured I may as well just jump into it. This is a game that can take hundreds upon hundreds of hours to complete fully, so why not just do it bits at a time alongside the others? Well, that's kind of my thinking for all of these things which is why I have like 10 diaries going simultaneously right now or something lol.

I also divided up diaries into another section on the main menu. On the left side of the home page, the "Ongoing" category has now been divided into the "New" and "Ongoing" categories. "New" is for diaries that have not been finished in any way, while "Ongoing" is for diaries that have multiple playthroughs planned and at least one playthrough has been completely finished. This way if you're only wanting to read diaries that cover an entire play from beginning to end of a game, you can look at the "Finished" and "Ongoing" categories to find those, while "New" will only have completely unfinished things! Convenient, right? It also breaks up the tons of diaries in one category so it looks a little neater.

In my own time, I've been working on getting my Chaos Chao in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, and after almost 300 hours of gameplay, I've finally gotten all three types! Of course, a large chunk of that gameplay time was spent elsewhere; it's not like it took 300 hours to raise three Chao. They're very cute; I named them Right (Angel), Wily (Devil), and Cossack (Neutral). I'll be showing them off over on my Twitch channel some time soon, so follow there if you wanna check that out~

Romancing SaGa 3 REDO

Heya friends~

So, I've been meaning to update this blog a lot more. I keep thinking, "Ah, but this isn't worth making an entry about..." even though I want to update on my game progress and stuff like that. Which is exactly what this blog is supposed to be for. And I mean, it's just my personal blog so why not...?

I've been playing various things and working a lot on The Strelitzia Inn, which I'm trying to soon expand into a site for not only Unlimited Saga, but also SaGa Scarlet Grace and Romancing SaGa 3.

I also have finished up making the beard!Mikhail mod for RSG3... but more importantly, I found while looking on a Japanese guide site for characters' initial equipment that there's actually a way to recruit Young Fang early in the game. I mean, not right away, but before sealing any Abyss Gates. All English-language resources say you can't recruit him until the very end of the game after sealing all four gates, making him almost pointless.

I had put the Romancing SaGa 3 play diary on hold because I was waiting for more information about the remaster of the game and its eventual promised localization. Well, the remaster still seems to be a way off, so the localization is not going to be around any time soon. Plus if I wait for the remaster, I won't be able to use my fuzzy face mod. I mean, I guess I could try to create one for the remaster, but I don't know what it's going to be like.

Anyway, I guess the point is that I'm strongly leaning toward restarting the RSG3 play diary entirely to use my beard mod and recruit Young Fang earlier and have the fuzzy harem for most of the game, instead of just throwing one member in at the end for the sake of it.

Romancing SaGa 3 - FUZZY EDITION

So, I've been thinking about learning romhacking, and learning a new thing is helpful for my health, and the simplest thing to do is create a graphics hack, so I did just that, fixing a major problem with one of my favorite games: the lack of mustaches (and beards).

Romancing SaGa 3 features many playable characters with fuzzy faces in their official artwork by Tomomi Kobayashi, and they continue to sport this beauty in the additional artworks created for newer things like Imperial SaGa, but in the game itself, the sprites all have bare faces. Perhaps this was to keep them all looking similar, but they have different shaped eyes depending on their age, and I mean, you can play as a lobster and stuff, so I don't really get it.

So, I fixed it.

Romancing SaGa 3 Fuzzy
Edition RomHack
Sprite closeups, filter
used
SNES9X filter applied

The "Fuzzy Edition" of Romancing SaGa 3 contains but a few edited sprites so that the player characters match their original artwork a little more closely. The following characters have had their sprites modified:

  • Fake Robin now has a cute little mustache under his mask. Sadly, I couldn't find Trucks's sprites in the data, so when he takes the mask off, the mustache comes off, too. Sorry. Just don't go into the bar until after you've recruited him and it will appear seamless :D
  • Tiberius is as sexy as ever with his mustache to go with his beautiful bald head.
  • Herman now appropriately has some grey scraggle on his face to make him look cooler and more piratey and more hot.
  • Ward's face is... a little darker because his hair color and skin tone are very similar, so you don't notice too much. But I did try to somehow capture the essence of his van dyck in there somehow.
  • And finally, Young Fang gets his little goatee, so if you want a complete party of fuzzy-faced daddies, you can make it whole with him.
Mock-up modified
sprites
Mock-ups I did before making the mod

Of course, there are no scruffy protagonists, so I was considering making a protag mod to complement this that would give Harid a mustache and Mikhail and Thomas beards. Maybe something for Julian, IDK.

Anyway, if you're ready to increase the sex appeal of your romasaga3 rom tenfold, you can download the patch here. I used a vanilla original RSG3 rom that was 4,194,304 bytes.

I've only tested it a little, so if you find any sprites that are wonky or suddenly losing and gaining hair, let me know.

Moving Forward~

Hello friends~ Today's update is just a blog entry lol. Since the official launch, I think I've been updating every day though?! I kind of have some stuff to do today so I don't know if I'll update with a new play diary.

I've played a lot, though, so I just need to write some entries. I'm thinking about what I want to do as I near the end of the diaries I'm working on now. TokiMemo3 will not take long at all, and FF5 isn't terribly long either. We still have a while to go for unsaga, but when the other two are finished, I'll be working on that alone.

I was considering a few different things -- I do want to start a Mega Man diary since I don't have one yet, but I also want to get back to working on Rogue Nightmare (my current game project). I could do that alongside unsaga, but I don't want to have too many diaries going at the same time, because I might not be able to keep up with all of it and then I'd get discouraged and bad things would happen lmao.

Despite the fact that many people claimed to be excited about this site, no one is reading or commenting really :,) I realize people have better and more important things to do though. I really shouldn't be bitter like that lol...

But I was just so excited to get comments and stuff XD But I'm sure eventually people will come and look :) These things take a while, judging by the experience I've had on art sites and YouTube and stuff. But with this I pretty much have to self-promo to get people to even know it exists, because I'm not just a profile searchable on an existing site...

I'm terrible at that lol...

But yeah I think I just got my hopes up too much about the launch of the site. I really knew it was going to be dead for quite a while, but... XD

But I think if readership for the Play Diaries doesn't pick up by the time I finish TokiMemo3 and FF5, I might start working on RN right away. And if it seems people are actively engaging and reading, maybe I'll continue to play out more TokiMemo3 scenarios or go for Urpina in SGSG, and start up some Mega Man, too. I've been really craving to start Mega Man lately haha. Well, for a while now. But if I go the RN route, I'll start MM once I finish unsaga.

Oh and I want to get back to RSG3 eventually, too. I originally put it on hiatus because they announced an enhanced port coming soon, with plans to eventually make a localized version, but it's probably going to be years before we ever see that, so I will probably continue playing on the SFC. Maybe once I finish the other things, I should get back to that before starting anything new. I miss Mikhail's fuzzy-faced harem XD