And yet both Kingcom and I have still found ourselves compelled to work on Tales of Innocence to some degree… After you work on something for almost two years, it’s hard to quit cold turkey. So we’ve been poking at it, correcting little things that we’ve found, and documenting the typos and small glitches that some people have found as they played. I know this is shocking, but our v1.0 wasn’t perfect. Honestly, I don’t think anyone reasonably expected it to be perfect. It’s never going to be perfect. But people are still having fun with it and that’s good enough for us. I like reading comments from people. I enjoy seeing people playing the game in their own ways. I liked seeing the game skyrocket in the GameFAQs ranks and I liked all of the threads wondering what the heck was going on. They made me laugh. We really had fun watching people try to figure out how to obtain the Versus style. Honestly, I think both Kingcom and I were blown away by the positive reaction to this release. It really made all of the hard work worth it.

There will be an updated patch eventually, but it’s not our highest priority. It’s probably not going to happen right away. We want to take our time and make sure that we give people time to report the errors they find (if they are so inclined). If you want to help us improve the game, please submit bug reports and typos. And, of course, if you have questions about the game, the community here has been very willing to help.

In other news, Shawn over at Tales Union gathered up some of your questions from various forums around the net for an interview. It comes in three parts, so if you’re interested in seeing my answers to some of the answers to your questions, check it out here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

So… getting back to the matter at hand, Tales of Innocence is, for now, complete. So what’s in store for our heroes next week? Well, Kingcom and I have been enjoying some Team Fortress 2 for the first time in recent memory. Neither of us had a chance to play much during the beta testing, so we’re glad to be back in action. The Engineer Update just came out! What isn’t there to love about that!? Oh, you want to hear about more translations? Well, Kingcom has a few other projects to finish up, Super Robot Wars J and Oriental Blue are the first ones up on the list. I’m sure many of you are looking forward to seeing more of Kingcom’s excellent hacking, so those are certainly projects to look out for (if you weren’t already). As for me, my first priority is the Tales of Destiny: Director’s Cut translation that I’m working on with Phantasian Productions. I’m definitely looking forward to working on one of my favorite entries in the series again. Of course, Kingcom and I have been throwing around ideas for our next project for ages now, so that’s not to say that there aren’t other possibilities floating around out there. But those will be a story for another day.

Today is officially our project’s second birthday. I don’t know if that still counts since we’re done, but there’s never a bad time to celebrate. After a long race that we ran with everything we had, it’s awesome to look back at the finish line. It’s the best. I really do  that the game was everything that you hoped it would be.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I’m sure most of you will quickly notice that the content of the blog is more or less identical to the old blog. Well, that’s because we’re still running on WordPress, so we were able to copy it all over. Sorry if any of your comments were lost, any comments made after we uploaded the file were scattered to the far corners of the internet (and I’m certainly not going there to look for them). So what’s new then? Well, aside from the incredible new theme and layout, there are a few new features.

One of the first things to mention is the new image system we’re working with. We can now group all of the pictures into nice galleries. For example, all of the screens from Tales of Destiny are now available here. We can also post those galleries in posts as you see below. Click one of the pictures to see it at normal size.

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Oh, did I mention that these screenshots aren’t just for show? Kingcom added battle subtitles (as seen in Phantasian Productions’ ToP project). These are an extension of the subtitles already used for the voice-only sections of the event dialogue. Since we realize that not all players want more text on the screen, we have added an option to the menu. There are three settings. On will turn all subtitles on including the lines used for various artes. Important is used only for those audio clips that we believe enhance the story or characters. Off will disable the battle subtitles completely. So no matter what your preference is, we hope that one of these options will suit your needs.

The next thing to mention and one of the biggest additions to Absolute Zero is our new forum! Sign up and join in. I’m hoping that the forum will allow users to interact in new ways. At the very least, it’ll be a good way to kill time between updates.

A section that is very important to me but might not be to most people is the Help Wanted page. We can’t do everything on our own, so sometimes we might ask for help. We’ll post the details up there and you can use the form to send us your information if you’re interested in any of the positions. Right now, the Tales of Phantasia Editor position is the only thing up there, but if anything else is added, I’ll be sure to mention it.

We have new project pages as well, but they’re still a little barren at the moment. It’ll all come with time. Here’s Phantasia as an example.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got in the way of explanations. Do a little exploring, check out the new site. Well, that’s about it. Welcome to the new home of Absolute Zero. Enjoy your stay! ^_^

EDIT: Wilhelm here. An extra feature of the new site is that if you just want to see the latest images added to the site, you can use this link to grab a RSS feed specifically for it. Normal feeds are still available, as always.

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People have been speculating for months, but we are indeed working on ToDr. Despite what some believed, Cless and I have been on good terms in spite of Tales of Phantasia (mostly because he’s very forgiving). Lately I’ve really been regretting Tales of Phantasia and all the drama that came of it. I didn’t have the skills that I needed and I really wish I hadn’t stepped on many of the toes that I did. I worked on Phantasia because I loved it, but still, it was too soon for me to attempt a project of that magnitude on my own. I made a lot of mistakes and a lot of claims that I couldn’t live up to. I disappointed some people and I realize that some still worry about my translations. My point is that I’m thrilled to be working with Cless as well as with gogs, Kajitani-Eizan and Carnivol. The three of them have always been the first to tell me when they think I’ve slipped up and there are few people I trust more when it comes to editing. With their help and Cless’ experience working with the PS2, I’m confident that this patch will be one that everyone will love.

As most of you know, this project has been going on behind the scenes for months now. However, Phantasian Productions has been putting most of their time into Tales of Phantasia just as Kingcom and I have been focused on Innocence. From the beginning, Cless and I agreed that Destiny wouldn’t take priority over other projects. Now that’s it has been announced, I expect it to speed up a little bit. The translation is all that is really holding us back from a menu patch, so it really shouldn’t be far off.

Of course, neither Cless nor I like to do things halfway, so our intention from the beginning has been a full translation. The plan is to release the menu patch first and then begin work on the story. The translation will retain many of the original (PSX) Destiny localized terms. Expect to see many of the same ones in the translation (with the exception of some names like Johnny, Mighty Kongman, and Woodrow). We hope that fans of both the original translation and the Japanese text will be able to enjoy this translation.

So happy new year from Absolute Zero and Phantasian Productions! We hope that this coming year will be one of the best for Tales fans and ask for your continued support.

Be sure to check Phantasian Productions for more images and Cless’ announcement message! And to celebrate the occasion, I made myself a new banner. ^_^