It seems people at the CTRP forums are being a little slow to offer their assistance with the artwork. There was one person who mentioned the possibility of helping out with the artwork in the future, but there is currently no artist who has DEFINITELY decided to dedicate some time towards this.

There are obviously other places to ask; though I am a little wary of where specifically I should ask. Afterall, the general rule right now is to not show many people the site at the moment. If I go off requesting artwork from other websites, I would have no choice but to post the address of the website... thus allowing them to view specifically what we need them to work with. Of course, in doing so, I would also reveal the website to many... which is obviously what we are trying to avoid at the moment.

In other words, I'm merely requesting what action I should take. Any guidelines I should follow before requesting other groups for their artistic skill?


*edit*
Just attempted a quick look at what specifically was downloadable from the site currently. Three of the six downloads give corrupt .zip files. The three that do work are titled "w1", "s2" and "s3". Just wanted to inform you.

Oh... and Jake, you might want to give the raw images rather than edited ones. The artist will be far more limited in what they do if you give them artwork that has already been altered.

It seems ZealitY is on our side now. Though more through association with the Chrono Trigger series than through what specifically we are attempting to accomplish. I suppose we have to take what we can get though in regards to that. I do respect what he is trying to accomplish; though I can't see how what we are doing would not lead to the same thing. If S-E saw that Chrono Trigger is still a popular game even today; so popular, in fact, that they recieved a massive petition asking for a modern remake... could they possibly deny that the Chrono Trigger series is a profitable series? I think ZealitY is looking only at the short-term effects of this petition. He is not seeing where this petition leads in regards to the FUTURE of the CT series. It is my assumption that ZealitY wishes to see a new game in the CT series as quickly as possible. However, is it not best to reintroduce the series to newer gamers first, before showing them a sequel of that game? I think both plans are capable of working, but the one bringing in the most new fans (thus a larger fanbase for the series, making it a more-profitable series to work with) would most-definitely be ours.

Phase one of my part of the job has been put in to motion. I can't say we'll definitely get every job filled, as those forums aren't as active as they used to be, but I'm pretty confident at least some of the jobs will be taken. If we absolutely need more people to work on the artwork, I MIGHT (<-----that is the key word right there) be able to get some friends to help (they like CT, and are great with artwork... but are extroadinarily... lazy.) We can't really take that as a given though, and it should probably be treated as a last resort, if necessary. If I don't get many (or even any) participants at the CTRP forums, I'll likely broaden my search to include multiple forums.


Oh... and one more thing Jake. Something about the website has always bugged me. What exactly does the "Contacts" section do? I believe even you were confused on that one a while ago. Did you ever figure it out?


***EDIT!***
Hey Props, it has been a while. Anyway, it seems you made your post not much earlier than I made mine. While I agree that talking about this project on various game communities would be beneficial to our project; it is also true that it can cause you problems. I am also an Insider. A while back, I attempted to get some support for this project on the Nintendo forums. While it seems as though quite a few people were interested, it is also true that some people instantly attacked the thread. Apparently they see such actions as soliciting, and are against it. In other words, I'm just telling you to be careful when you promote things on forums. Sometimes they can be a little edgy with their rules.

I shall likely try slashdot once more. They likely didn't take the story since we didn't even have a website at the time. Now that this project seems more... put-together, and we have a professionally-made website... I don't think they would have any reason to reject. That right there should get us some good publicity... so long as it isn't rejected.

I'll probably post the information at the Chrono Compedium. While Zeek wasn't all for the idea of the petition, I'm sure some people there probably are. It at least couldn't hurt to mention it there. They are CT fans, afterall.

It would be great if we could get some fast publicity... but I suggest we wait for Jake's opinion on these actions. Afterall, he would probably want to get EVERYTHING set up before we start heavily advertising the website.

Heh... if you can't get it through by simple mails to the IGN in general, we could just flood Matt's mailbox until he has no choice but to choose one of our mails. Of course... he probably wouldn't post it just to spite us.


I plan to do quite a bit of advertising. Of course, I recommend you make sure advertising the CTP won't harm your status on that website/forum/group. Sometimes posting "advertisements" is looked down upon... so be wary of that. I will probably go to forums/groups related to either CT, Sony, Square, or Nintendo. I suppose groups related to video games as a whole couldn't hurt. I then plan on mailing a few news sites information regarding this project. Oh... and Jake; keep this in mind. If we do contact some big game news-distributors... they might ask for an interview. Hope you have something written up.

Here we go. Things are starting to get moving. I'm glad to see that the wait is almost over. Took a little longer than I had hoped... sort of makes me wish I had use of the epoch. Regardless, I'm grateful for this little project to get this far. It does show quite a bit of dedication to not only pay for the website (so it is also professionally done), but also to put up with all of the stress concerned with such a project and not lose it. While we've all put our contributions foward, I believe the big thanks is towards Jake- what with... well... setting up practically everything.


Anyway... back to business...
It is a shame to me that we have to change the music. The Chrono Trigger series has ended (currently), the end music just so happens to be what is currently playing, and furthermore, we are trying to bring about the revival of the Chrono Trigger series (from its end). In essence, that song is very fitting. I do understand the possibility of legal issues, however. It is thus my suggestion that we find a fan-made rendition. At least when it is fan-made, we are put in to a more... "grey" area.


Oh... and question. With all of those different petition versions, how will the download for that work? That'll take up a lot of space if you have an icon for each. It might be more plausible to combine them all in to one PDF/word-document. In that manner the person could just choose which design they want to print out from the word document. Make sense? Just a suggstion.

3 wallpapers and signatures, eh? I might try my hand at it when I... well... am not bogged down by school work. You would THINK in my week off that I would actually have time. All the teachers assigned huge assignments... and along with various meetings with other students regarding the Senior Project... it is eating up all my time. The woeful life of an engineering student is... so... sad. *Ahem* Yes, though. If I can, I'll try to do something. The problem is, I've kind of... never MADE a signature/wallpaper before. I've been learning the basics of photoshop, but I haven't really had the time to do much else other than the picture-editing for the petition. Perhaps if us over here can't do it, we can recruit a few talented CT fans from say... the CTRP forums? I know quite a few talented artists are there, and they'd probably gladly help us with something such as this.

Ahh.... good. So my attempts to *borrow* nuclear arms from the black market were unnecessary? Well, unless the government tracks me down due to that last statement, I'll be sure to be around when that site is finally up. Can't wait to see it up.

Nice to see things will finally get set in to motion. Once the website is up, I'll try to promote it as best I can. With any luck, we'll get some good publicity.

I've actually been visiting every day. The thing is, we're playing a waiting game for the website to go up. The designer himself gave a deadline of a week. It has been past a week. I'm just trying to conserve my patience, is all. I COULD go on to some rant about it, but it is becoming rather reptitive at this point. We ALL know he is taking a large period of time longer than we thought it would, and we are also well aware that he is past his deadline. No point exclaiming to the world our complaints, as they really won't change the time it takes for the website to go up anyway.

In other words, it is the dead silence of waiting. Hopefully it shall be broken soon by some good news.

I had thought your email had went just a little too far. It is one thing to show your discontent with his work, but you really were actually threatening him. That is a path that must be avoided. The only person, in any case, who really has any influence over this guy is Jake. He is the customer, not us. While this purchase does indeed effect us, we are not the ones that are paying to have this done. We may protest and murmer a few angry words, but we should avoid making direct "attacks" against the guy. If we ARE to talk to this guy in the future, it must be done with proffesionalism. Approaching any other way will get us nowhere. On a totally different note, so long as you apologized (as you said you did), then I'm sure there won't be any problems.


Oh... and one more thing of note. He just gave himself a time limit. While I understand that this isn't really a "corporation" paying him, this is really quite an official job. He is getting paid for it, is he not? This then raises the question, why isn't it being treated like a business transaction? If you are paid to do something, then you must treat that job with respect. If you can't do it, do not accept the payment and recommend the customer look for someone else. I can see where a lot of code can slow you down, but what I cannot see is why it wasn't made dynamically to begin with. It DOES take a long time to make something hard-coded dynamic, but why would he hard-code it first and then try to turn it dynamic later? Why not just build it dynamic in the first place? Oh... and you can't really go through code "letter by letter". If he is changing it from being hard-coded to dynamic, he quite literally has to rearrange everything. He might have been better off just rebuilding it from scratch dynamically. Sorry if I am a little blunt, but I am just trying to explain what exactly this guy is (likely) doing.

Anyway. He gave himself a week. I say we respect that, and thus wait the week. We'll see what he has then.

No offense, Stoney, but what position are you in to give "threats" to the guy? You are not paying him, nor do you know him in real life. In essence, there is no consequence you can bring about on him for passing any deadlines. The only person really in any position to do this would be Jake, as he is the customer. It is one thing to plan to replace him, it is an entirely different thing to outright tell the guy that you plan to take "drastic action". You are not in a position to order the payments for said website back, nor can you physically speak with him on the issue. What CAN you do then? Effectively nothing. This "drastic action" you speak of does not exist, and if the guy is even somewhat intelligent, he will probably realize that your claims are based on nothing but your sheer will to get the website up. It is unfortunate, but all except Jake are quite powerless on this issue.


If he does reply, please let us see it. If he actually does give an excuse, I would be very much interested in seeing it.

Another week has passed.

Jake, I am a very considerate and a rather understanding person, however, I can not see how it can be taking this long. While I am aware that you are friends with this person, I feel I must request that you either ensure that he will have the job done soon, or just find another person to do it. While the template site you have shown us does indeed look quite nice, it won't do us any good if it can not be used.. At this point, I am not just irked by the time it is taking, but I am beginning to become rather anxious. A professional does not take this long, nor do they do so without any reason. Making the website dynamic should not be such a hassle for a professional that it would extend the production time by this much.


*sigh...*

I suppose that shall end my rant on that regard.

If there has been any progress on this, I would certainly like to hear of it.

Well, as you say; vague is good. Making direct references to other things such as Lord of the Rings might give people room to warp what is is specifically we are asking for in this petition. In such a case, being as vague as possible is pretty beneficial. I also feel a little... uncertain about referencing something like LoTR in comparison to CT. They are completely different, thus possibly confusing our readers.

Unfortunately, as I lack access to this"underground" section of the forums, I can't really tell what you're doing with the guy...


Anyway, I'm happy to see you're giving the guy some sort of limit. Ever hear the phrase, "Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile."? In this case, the guy has taken about half of the planet. So anyway, push him to finish it if you can. The sooner we get this out, the better.


Oh... and if your next project interests me, and I am able to help, I might consider being a part of that as well.

Jake, it has been one week since even the most patient of us, Apocalypse, claimed it would only be another week until the site's completion.

That is true, I suppose. I am cutting the guy some slack, but the development time for this webpage has extended beyond what I thought it would. This guy is a professional, right? If so, this job really shouldn't be baffling this guy to the point where the job is taking weeks longer than expected. I am sure this guy has other things to tend to, but you are a paying customer. As a paid professional, his job is to deliver the requested product in a reasonable period of time.

Obviously, you can't directly monitor over this guy. However, it makes me wonder just HOW MUCH this guy is really working on this website daily. If he was really working on it as a professional, I do not see why it would not be finished by now. Something seems fishy about it. If anything, I recommend you set some sort of deadline for him. Some workers don't do ANYTHING until they have a deadline leering at them from the end of the week. If you can, I suggest you do that.

Heh... little impatient, are we Stoney? I guess I can see how I might have a problem with it, though a paid professional really shouldn't have that much of a problem. At least, I had thought that much. I'm sure he has a good reason, or at least... he better.


As yet another example of what a dynamic thing might be, lets take a look at the wonderful world of computer programming algorithm.


Ok... lets say, on a webpage, you wanted to have a picture that served as a "title page" to your website. This picture would change every month or so. Let us then define some "variables".

month //Variable that stores the current month 1-12.
Picture [] //Array storing the picture for month every month.
User_Input //Input from the user.


So then... we can say...

month == User_Input

thus leading to...

display (Picture [month])


This is dynamic because it is able to be changed. If it was always the same, or hard-coded, we would call it static. In such a case, rather than the above, we would have:


display (picture) //"picture" here no longer being in an array.




If it is hard-coded, the program would have to be rewritten EVERY time you wanted to change the picture. With dynamic coding, you can change how something works with a change of a variable.

...which is good.

One can't rush greatness, but I suppose setting off some fireworks directly behind them couldn't hurt.

We're already past the deadline. So that doesn't really matter anymore. It is worthy to note though; that so long as we aren't MONTHS after the birthday, we can at least claim that it was for the birthday. If I am correct, Jake mentioned that he is waiting for the website to become dynamic (updatable). It isn't really in Jake's hands right now, concerning when that site is fixed up, anyway. Since Jake has a professional doing all of this, I REALLY don't think it shall take longer than perhaps another week.

My thoughts exactly, MV. I too would like to see us get it in by CT's birthday deadline, but I also realize that Jake is a very busy person, especially with the whole hurricane catastrophe. This is not Jake's or anyone else's fault. There is no blame to place on anyone for that, don't make that mistake. While getting the info out to Slashdot before the birthday would be helpful, it won't be destroying our project if we miss it.

Furthermore, even if we don't get coverage from Slashdot, we could always try some other methods of advertising.

To Jake: Don't attempt what time won't allow you to do. Take your time, if need be. I'm certain you've had your hands full, especially with the passing of Rita.

Just taking a check in to see what is going on.

Seems there was a little uncertainty as to the petition revision. Thankfully, Stoney cleared that up for us. Anyway, is seems everything is pretty much set in motion then, correct? That being correct, I suppose our job here is pretty much almost done in regards to our "initial phase", anyway.. It only took a month to pull that off. Time flys I guess.


This past month has been a rather chaotic one, both in terms of our goals here, and the lives of the members on these boards in regards to unavoidable natural disasters. Regardless, it seems we might possibly soon have everything put in place to start our massive project that shall span the country. In that regard, this project is quite a large endeavor. Of course, even once the distribution starts, whenever that is, there will still be some work to do. For one, we have to advertise. This has been an issue ever since the beginning, right? Now that we are nearing the end of our "initial phase" of setting all of this up... it might be wise to get a bit more in to the specifics of how we will get this petition KNOWN. Afterall, despite the massive number of Chrono Trigger fans, they can't sign our petition if they don't know of it.

Hmmmmm... I had thought Jake was already done with that. Well, if there is anyone to send it to... I'd recommend you send it to Jake. If you don't have his email, you can always use Geocities like I did. It DOES have a lot of horrible bandwidth problems though.

*ALMOST completely unrelated*

Just thought I'd mention...

Vote for Crono on the Gamefaqs contest! He is running against Mario for the Overall winner of the current tournament! It is amazing Crono isn't at like... 10%. It seems the CT fans are still going strong, and seeing as 35,661 people thus far voted for Crono... that gives me some hope in getting to the goals S-E set before us. Depite these large amounts voting for Crono, he is still losing! Every vote counts, so vote for Crono!


Sure... the contest is pointless, but I can't let a fat Italian plumber win against Crono!!!
...even if he DOES happen to be the king of gaming...