August 27, 2007

So I plan to concentrate on finishing these games, and then noding them when I finish, provided they haven't been already. Since I want this project to actually be doable, I will be limiting the set of games.  First, I will only be considering console and handheld games, my collection of PC games having enough problems just running on modern hardware. Second, I will only be including games for systems newer than and including the original PlayStation on the console side and the Game Boy Advance on the handheld side, including Wii Virtual Console games. I will of course exclude arcade and open-ended games like Crazy Taxi, Brain Age, and Wii Sports, as well as rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, and I am also excluding retro compilations on a case-by-case basis. 

With these selection criteria in mind, the list of games is as follows:

Sony PlayStation (1) (12 games, 1 node): 

• Chrono Trigger (from Final Fantasy Chronicles, already noded)
• Final Fantasy IV (from Final Fantasy Chronicles, already noded)
• Final Fantasy V (from Final Fantasy Anthology, already noded)
• Final Fantasy VI (from Final Fantasy Anthology, already noded)
• Final Fantasy VII (already noded)
• Final Fantasy VIII (already noded)
• Final Fantasy Tactics (already noded)
• Grandia
• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (already noded)
  
• Parasite Eve (already noded)
  
• Star Ocean: The Second Story (already noded, by me)
• Xenogears (already noded)
  

Sony PlayStation 2 (7 games, 2 nodes):

• Final Fantasy X-2 (already noded)
  
• Front Mission 4 (unopened, already noded)
  
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (already noded)
  
• Odin Sphere (unopened)
  
• Okami
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (already noded)
  
• We Love Katamari (already noded)
  

Nintendo GameCube (13 games, 5 nodes):

• Batallion Wars (unopened)
  
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• Geist (unopened)
• Lego Star Wars: The Video Game
• Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (already noded)
  
• Metroid Prime (already noded)
  
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
• Resident Evil 4 (already noded)
  
• Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (already noded)
  
• Super Mario Sunshine (already noded)
  
• Tales of Symphonia (already noded)
  
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (but not the Master Quest, already noded)
• Viewtiful Joe (already noded)

Nintendo Wii (2 games, 2 nodes):

• Super Paper Mario
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Nintendo Wii Virtual Console (6 games, 1 node):

• Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (already noded)
  
• Super Castlevania IV
• Super Mario 64 (already noded)
  
• Super Mario World (already noded)
  
• Super Metroid (already noded)
  
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (already noded)
  

Sega Dreamcast (6 games, 2 nodes):

• Evolution 2
• Grandia II
• Jet Grind Radio (already noded)
  
• Shenmue (already noded)
  
• Space Channel 5 (already noded)
  
• Sonic Adventure (already noded)

Nintendo Game Boy Advance (7 games, 3 nodes):

• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (already noded, by me)
• Final Fantasy I (part of Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls)
• Final Fantasy II  (part of Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls)
• Fire Emblem (already noded, by me)
• Metroid Fusion (already noded)
• Mega Man Battle Network 2
• Yoshi's Island

Nintendo DS (9 games, 6 nodes):

• Children of Mana
• Contact
• Final Fantasy III (already noded)
  
• Kirby Canvas Curse (already noded)
  
• Lost in Blue
• Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time (already noded, by me)
• Metroid Prime: Hunters
  
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All
• Trace Memory

In total: 62 games, 22 nodes

With so many games to play, this is certainly a long-term project. As such, this list will probably be lengthened by new games, though with any luck not as fast as it diminishes. I may also remove some games from this list by selling them, though this will only occur in the case of games I do not like enough to finish. I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I guess I did that when I bought all these games to begin with.  I will be starting with Chrono Trigger on Playstation, Super Paper Mario on Wii, A Link to the Past on Virtual Console, and Children of Mana on DS. I will keep the list of games on my Scratch Pad up to date with future developments and may daylog about this again in the future.

The Amazing, Incredible 12 Hour Daemon Configuration!

Brief intro:

So here's how it started. A couple of friends of mine have their own gaming clan, for stuff like Counter-Strike, BattleField 2, Half-Life 2, etc. So one day, they decide to go online and get their own website. Now, they aren't lusers or anything; they're all more capable with computers than about 90% of the rest of the school. However, due to my default position as "guy-who-does-computer-stuff", I was chosen to create, for them, the awesomest gaming clan site ever. They were even planning to host it on their own server. So, they picked out a domain name (www.afrodj.org) and they gave me a box with a vanilla Fedora Core 7 installation on it. Sw33t and l33t. I picked out a CMS to use(PHP-Fusion).  I shall now present the rest in recipe format.

You Will Need: 

One(1) Windows box, connected to the internet and capable of burning CDs.

A Linux box, with screen, keyboard and mouse attached.

A CD-RW for transferring info between the 2 computers. (the linux box couldn't connect to the 'net.)

Patience.

Method: 

1. I started at about 1 pm on Sunday, in the GMT +8 time zone. My first act was to download the tar.gz files for Apache, MySQL, PHP and PHP-Fusion.  Then I burnt them to the CD-RW.

2. I slotted the CD-RW into the linux box, and extracted the sources into my home directory. I went for the standard ./configure, make, sudo make install. Hmm. Apache AND MySQL aren't configured properly. DAMN IT!

3. I decided to switch distros, because I wasn't familiar with FC. So, I installed Ubuntu 6.10 from a disc I had lying around. That was when I discovered that Apache, MySQL and PHP have a load of configuration options that I forgot.

4. Same process for installation, except with a LOAD of configuration options. Yet somehow, it worked.

5. God, making these sources takes ages. MySQL took at least an hour.

6. Ah, excellent. The default index.html is served perfectly. I edited httpd.conf

7. Copy the PHP-Fusion files to /usr/local/apache2/htdocs, replacing index.html with index.php.

8. Hmm. The computer won't let me do it.

9. After a lot of chmodding, the computer lets me copy the files.

10. Fire up Firefox and go to http://localhost/setup.php.

11. Oh dear, I forgot to go to mysqladmin and create a database!

12. One database creation later, and I'm back onto firefox.

13. PHP-Fusion installation continues flawlessly. That's a change.

14. Yay! It all works. Now, to delete setup.php and chmod config.php back to 644.

15. Grueling task of adding users for all the members in the clan. Apparently, the clan's Head Coonie wants only people approved by the super-admins (me and him) to join.

16. And, just to round it off, the creation of afrodj_server_init.sh, a shell script that starts up MySQL and Apache.

17. I looked up at the clock and said "HOLY CRAP!" Lo and behold, it's one o'clock in the morning, on monday. 

YAY!