Touhou Higashijanai ~ Beautiful Western Roses and the University Class of What the Hell!

Published on February 6, 2012 in Touhou. 1 Comment

Stallion, school has really taken a bite out of my time. I’m supposed to be a computer science student. What’s with all this math?! Yeah, I know computers involve a lot of math, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Oh, but that’s not really what this post is about. See, remember that thing I was working on a while back? Ya know, that Touhou RPG that I said I would probably stop writing and abandon. Yeah, in retrospect I’m not very good at keeping my word, am I? The next version of the rules, v0.6 is coming soon and it’s almost a complete overhaul of the rules, improving them to make them flow a little better as well as to be a more flexible system. Improvements you can look forward to include: A full character creation system, lacking only the ability to create options (ya know, those things that appear when you gain power in the shooters) including 8 races and a handful of classes that will be expanded upon in later rule sets. Also, the base work for the spellcard system which allows players to create spellcard decks similar to the fighting games. And a new system of rolling where a character’s stats determines the number of dice she rolls as opposed to simply trying to roll lower than a certain number (mostly because trying to roll higher than a certain number is sort of easier to deal with).

One way or another, I plan on doing character creation for the local test group this Friday which means the new version of the rules should be out within a week or so (depending on how much I overhaul the fighting system).

Cereal Killer Girl doesn’t actually know what it’s about, she just likes to stab things

Published on January 19, 2012 in Neko Arrange. 2 Comments

On January 18th (and part of January 19th) this image replaced Neko Arrange in protest of SOPA and PIPA along with the internet blackout on the same day. I usually hate to get involved with politics, especially on Neko Arrange, but SOPA is about more than just politics, so I felt compelled to do something for the blackout even if it’s not much.

Well, actually, credit for the idea of the image goes to my little sister. Although I chose to have Cereal KillerFillystab PIPA since it gets a lot less attention than SOPA inspite of being about as bad.

Anyway, one way or another I won’t do things like this very often.

Seriously, this game…!

Published on January 17, 2012 in Neko Arrange. 2 Comments

Alright, I have no excuse for this one. A steam sale happened, and I made what was possibly one of the worst choices in my life. I bought this one game for $2.50. Actually that’s a lie. If it had been true then I probably would have been fine. I bought a four-pack for $7.50 and gave three of the copies to friends. For the next few weeks I did NOTHING BUT PLAY THIS GAME. Seriously, I’ve never been that addicted to a game in my life. It’s kind of scary. Play at your own risk, at least if you’re playing with friends.

Anyway, I’ve mostly broken free of it’s evil grasp. In fact, I’ve been completely clean of it for… almost 24 hours now. You will be returned to your (not so) regularly scheduled Neko Arrange shortly.

Lunar Solitude – Second Phase

Published on December 29, 2011 in Friendship is Magic and My Music. 4 Comments

A little while back I posted a WIP for a song called Lunar Solitude for a game that I ended up not getting done in time for the contest I was making it for because, as I discovered, I hate graphics. Anyway, it was a fairly nice little piece even though it was pretty simple and repetitive. I wanted to make the original sound like it would be at home in a 16-bit game, since that’s what it was going to be used for, but when I decided I wanted to add it to my Youtube I thought I mine as well make an orchestral song out of it. So I redid it. Nothing has really changed much except that it doesn’t sound all synth-y now. This is also the first song that I made with soundfonts rather than preset instruments, and the first song that I’m not completely embarassed to say I made, even if it still isn’t very good.

Also, dear Suwako centering text like I’ve been doing looks terrible. Why did I always do that?!

Never Invite a DJ to an Orchestra

Published on December 29, 2011 in Friendship is Magic and My Music. 3 Comments

Well, ended up getting caught up in Christmas celebration and clean-up and not posting for a few days even though I still have stuff to post. Don’t worry though, I’m not letting Neko Arrange die again that easily.

Anyway, storytiem. I ended up being dragged into an on-the-spot two-hour composition the first day I joined My Little remix, and this was the end result. Storytiem over. It was made shortly after Dawn of the Final Day and also used almost nothing but presets in LMMS, so it’s also relatively terrible. Still, I made it so it gets posted here. Um… yeah, don’t really have anything else to say about this piece.

Dawn of the Final Day

Published on December 23, 2011 in Friendship is Magic and My Music. 3 Comments

Sort of ironic I’m making my first content post after returning this song considering the title. Still, I wanted to post the earliest (read: worst) stuff first, so here you are!

In case you didn’t know, I’ve been working on music a lot recently and this is the first finished piece I actually put out (the Random piece from last year doesn’t count since it was made of audio loops from Garageband). I originally meant this to be a piece about Nightmare Moon, but the similarities to the music from the final day in Majora’s Mask became very apparent very quickly. And I kind of liked it so I decided to run with it making it about the night before Nightmare Moon’s return instead. It’s obviously not very good as it was the first fully finished piece I did, buteveryponyhas to start somewhere. My start just happened to involve pastel-colored marshmallow ponies and Majora’s Mask.

In site-related news I did some much needed house-cleaning with categories and blog links today. More changes to come, but small steps at a time.

Welcome Back

Published on December 23, 2011 in Neko Arrange. 5 Comments

It’s been far too long, hasn’t it.

I hope you like the new banner. I actually made an alternate version without a background just in case the current one looked too crowded. Anyway, I kind of like it. It’s nice to draw the Flash Koma characters in a more proportional style every once in a while. Also, the return of Parsee. She no longer has to be jealous of Yukari stealing all her glory. Instead she’s jealous of The Great and Powerful Trixie stealing her spotlight.

 

I’ve been looking into how to change the appearance of wordpress other than just changing headers, so hopefully there will be more changes soon.

On the topic of posting, as I said before my goal will no longer be to post everyday. Instead I will post when I have something I want to post or to post about. Whether this means several times a day or once a week will probably change a lot based on what goes on in my life, but I am going to do my best not to have another ‘hiatus’ anywhere near as long as this last one.

What I post may change a bit as well. Of course I’ll be posting Flash Koma as always, but I’ve been working on a lot of music recently so there will likely be a lot more WIPs and music sketches from me. I’m not very good yet so I’m sorry if they get to be a little grating. This is your warning, though. I may also start doing little writing pieces, though I’m a bit on the fence about it. I don’t want them to turn into venting and annoyeverypony. I will also still post videos and music, but I won’t be doing it based upon what is new for the most part, just when I run across something I have something to say about or want to share.

I think that’s all for the moment. I hope you all like the new Neko Arrange, I’m certainly looking forward to it.

Neko Arrange is Fixed

Published on October 16, 2011 in Neko Arrange. 18 Comments

Wait, what? Already? It took hours to move all the files the first time but only a few seconds to move them all back? Well, I’m not exactly complaining. Everything seems to be fixed.

So, some quick updates. My original idea was to move these files into a new location and do a completely new install, but wordpress doesn’t work that way. I can’t move the files without breaking the site. So I’m going to need to find a different way to archive the old posts. And if that doesn’t work then I guess I’ll just have to continue on with the site as it is. It’s not too big of a deal. Still, if I can start this over with a clean slate so to speak, I’m going to try to. I don’t know how long it will take to figure out what I can and can’t do, but hopefully not more than a couple of weeks. Sorry for the long delay. You will be returned to your regularly scheduled Neko Arrange in the near future.

Seriously, WordPress, stop disabling my comments!

Published on September 18, 2011 in Neko Arrange. 0 Comments

Changed the settings to allow comments without having to be logged in or pre-approved and re-enabled comments on each individual post. I seriously don’t understand why wordpress keeps disabling them or changing my settings. Seriously.

Anyway, as long as I’m making a post I suppose I should mention what exactly I’m up to. I’m going to be starting over of sorts. I’m not entirely sure how I’ll go about it. I may just install a new copy of wordpress to this URL or I may see if there’s some sort of archive function for old posts. I’ll keep them around for posterity’s sake, but honestly I’ll feel a lot better about starting fresh than keeping on with what I’ve been doing. I’ll still be doing (the no-longer appropriately named) Flash Koma, though I may end up doing it in more of a comic/image-series style than an actual flash. Aside from that I’ll continue to upload my personal work. It’s mostly music I’ve been working on recently which I really enjoy even if I’m not too amazing at it.

As for when you can expect this all to happen, the answer is as always: sometime! I’ve been really unproductive as of late aside from schoolwork and running programs inside of a college organization I’m a part of. That being said, my new goal when the site is remodeled will probably be to post once a week or so rather than everyday like it had been, though honestly I’ll just go with the flow. I’ll upload things when I have things to upload and I won’t when I don’t. And that’s about it for the moment. I’ll get things taken care of sooner or later.

EDIT: Looks like I’m doing a clean install and as long as that’s the case I’m going to be looking into other blogging engines to use. No reason to limit myself to wordpress just because it’s what I’ve used before. Anyway, once the new blog is up http://www.catelf.org will direct there, so if you want to be able to access this part of the site you will need to go to http://www.grissomsbasketcase.com/catelf/old/nekoarrange.php (don’t forget the .php, it’s important). catelf.org still redirects here but I don’t know for how much longer.

Music WIP: Lunar Solitude

Published on July 26, 2011 in Music. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

Have a taste of some music I’ve been working on for a current project. It’s supposed to be a 8/16/what-have-you-bit sounding song that begins sounding sad and lonely and moves on to sounding creepy. I think it still sounds a little too ‘actiony’ towards the middle, and the base melody seems to have a little too much life in it. Still, it’s coming along pretty nicely.