Previous News11.17.2008 - Isabel Marks:Fall has not been kind to us, between multiple deaths and multiple colds, it's been insanely difficult to keep up with the updating schedule. Honestly I'm still feeling quite sick and stressed (it's around 7:30 am where I am now- this is the middle of the night for me), but I'm trying to get things done since I'm up.Please help spread the word about Namir Deiter and You Say it First being back to date. We're going to try and look into advertising (the recent events have left a big dent in us financially, so we're going to try a grass-roots advertising campaign first). We have linking buttons for both Namir Deiter and You Say it First at the links given and would appreciate if any of you used them. We'd be open to link's page link trades, please contact Terrence if you're interested!
Ok, now for the web comic updates... both Namir Deiter and You Say it First are up to date, in fact, if you didn't visit the site on Sunday, chances are you missed a week of comics that are now in the archive. Yeah, a whole week went up in one day... a lot of that going on lately. Click here to start from last Monday's comics. Fortunately, since it was an arc in itself, reading today's (Monday's) You Say it First won't spoil the pervious arc for you. We're both really sorry for the delays, we hope you enjoy reading them in the archives!
Now onto NamirDeiter.net news... quite a bit going on there. Comic commentary is back up to date, although Terrence may add a bit more later- we'll make an announcement about it if and when he does.
Wallpapers are finally updated, including one in the Spare Parts directory from the new bonus book in the NDU Library.
Speaking of which, there's a new bonus book in the free section of the NamirDeiter.net bonus Library. Alisa's Story is a 12 page telling of Alisa's life between the end of Headphone Story and her beginning in Spare Parts! Big huge thanks to John Chambers, this story's commissioner.
This brings us back to date, almost. NamirDeiter.net's main page bonus comics are still a few weeks behind. I'll be making as many comics as I can to bring them back to date- but I may need to take a sketch day every now and then till we're back to date.
Ok, I'm losing my concentration here... thank you all once again for your patience. I'm sure this post is full of mistakes that will hopefully be fixed later, till then, good night and good morning.11.30.2008 - Terrence Marks:The Internet almost always has what you're looking for. The problem is finding it. For the last week, I've felt like I should track down some good Paper Mario fanfiction. Then I realized that it'd take longer to find something good than it would to read it even if I knew where to look. I need recommendations, because otherwise I'll feel obliged to trawl through everything to find the good stuff. Or just sit home, not read it because I won't have the time to do it properly, and wonder if anybody shares my theory about Midna being Count Bleck's daughter.Likewise with MMORPGs. Isabel has started playing Animal Crossing: City Folk. I'm looking for more games. There are about 200, depending on who's counting. It's hard to find good information on them. I mean, I can find out if a dancer can wield a longsword or if an axe does more damage than a sword in a specific game. Or that they totally nerfed mages. But if you haven't picked a game, it's really difficult to find good information about what a specific game is like. One review site, every game has between a 7 and 8.5 rating. About 30% of the reviews give it a 1 and say you're an idiot for playing it. 70% give the game a 10 and say they're not idiots. It's not helpful. I can't make an informed decision, so I can't make a decision. Even if I find one I like, I'll be wondering if I could've found one that's better.
I've found a few 'review' sites, but they're not helpful. "You can play as an elf" doesn't tell me what a game is like. "You can have three different kinds of spiky hair" doesn't tell me what a game is like. The reviews I've seen give you a four page writeup of the world's history and show you a screenshot with ten guys casting spells at each other and dozens of glowy numbers. I don't chose a game by how glowy the numbers are. Look at Final Battle Adventure Online. The numbers are hardly glowy at all.
"You have four attributes. Two of them are irrelevant, depending on what class you are. You put points into them when you level up." tells me a bit about the game. "If you put points in the wrong one, you're screwed unless you pay us $5 per point to reset it" tells me even more about the game.
I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but here's what I've got so far.
Pay or Free? No preference. I can afford $15 a month. However, before I spend $50 or more on a game, I want to be sure I like it. I actually prefer a flat fee to a "free" game where you have to pay a la carte for basic functionality.
Death Penalty? No. Or not much. On Maple Story, it can take a huge amount of grinding to level. There's no way to tell how powerful a new monster is. If it kills you in one hit, which it might, you can lose days of work. Not fun. I understand that it's more realistic for actions to have drastic consequences. That's why I don't fight alligators in real life. If I accidentally pull four red slimes instead of just three, I don't want to spend another week treading water.
Sociability? Not really. I'm not really into guilds or such. I play odd, irregular hours. I'd rather not have a group of three people who expect me to be on from two to four-thirty every day. If I'm playing a game where I'm supposed to be part of a group, I want to be able to easily find a pickup group, and I prefer quiet, competent people to interesting ones. I realize this is more to do with the players than the game, but that's such as it is.
So I'm open to suggestions. Either a game or a good review site. Or Paper Mario fanfiction. Either way, really.
(Umm..my email is down right now, but you can reply here if you like).
11.16.2008 - Terrence Marks:Now, as you know a decent chunk of the Los Angeles area was on fire today. One of the fires was about ten miles from where I work. Comics are in progress, but Isabel spent the day worrying about me. I'm not in any actual danger, but it's close enough to worry her. I have to work tomorrow so I'm not sure how tomorrow will be.11.16.2008 - Terrence Marks:I got my car back. It's a transmission thing. Except it behaves just fine when they test it. I haven't noticed anything unusual. They can't find anything wrong with it. Now, the price of replacing the transmission is about 90% of the Blue Book value of my car. I'm not sure what to do, but my current strategy is "hope the car keeps working".11.14.2008 - Terrence Marks:I meant to finish up a light-hearted post about video games or music. I haven't had much time to blog since I've been writing comics. The fact that I beat Windwaker, Professor Layton, Apollo Justice, Pokemon XD, Mega Man, and Trace Memory between now and then is just a coincidence, honest.I woke up early today, to drop the car off at the mechanic's and get a rental if I needed to. Unfortunately, last night I left my wallet in my coat. I also left my coat at work. I couldn't rent a car without my wallet, and didn't want to risk missing work because my car was still in the shop, so I wound up driving to work and dropping the car off around noon. It's still in the shop.Anyhow, I've been busy. On Tuesday, my check engine light came on, which is nature's way of telling me I need to work some overtime. I spent Wednesday trying to find a place to get it diagnosed, but failed. Used to be, some auto parts shops would lend you a scanner and you could read the code. There is, apparently, a state law prohibiting that now. At least that's what they told me.
What does this mean for you, the reader? It's been a bad day for writing and comics in general. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better. Also, I want to thank everyone who emailed us over the last few weeks. We will reply to them in the near future. Thank you
11.09.2008 - Isabel Marks:Hey folks, here's an update on what happened last week: Long story short, we were a little sick and were getting better right before my grandmother died. Then a week later my niece died and we started getting sick again. Being in hospitals can do bad things to people. Last week (it's been exactly a week, time is really moving oddly right now) we started getting really sick, worse than the first time. Terrence almost lost his voice- surprisingly of the two of us, he got the worst of it- which never happens... I'm the one who usually get super sick and usually stays super sick. My theory: my blood sugar is still low from the shock of everything so I actually had an immune system again. Anyway, the fog of illness is barley lifting from me, but not Terrence. And since he's the one writing YSIF this (very long) arc, that comic is at a standstill and might be for a couple more days till he feels up for writing. ND has scripts, finally, and I've been working on getting comics done. Expect a huge update Monday/Tuesday, depending of course when things get done. I'm currently sketching a lot and hope to have them inked tonight... .net is still very behind on comics and I'm really sorry about that. I'm doing as much as I can right now and hope things will get more almost normal around here soon. Thank you all once again for your patience in all this.10.27.2008 - Isabel Marks:Our niece died a few days ago. It's been rough, and I find it difficult to work on comics right now. I'm having trouble writing, so the wedding story arc may be delayed because I want to do it properly. I don't want to start it until I'm sure I can finish it and do it right. There's about three weeks in-comic time between now and the wedding story arc. It might take a bit longer in real-life time for those three weeks to pass, though.NamirDeiter.net comics are delayed for a bit as well. The Little Red Riding Hood story is more artistically demanding than others. I'm going to finish it, of course, but I'll probably run sketches or a simpler story in the meantime. We thank you all for your patience and support.