General Announcements and Suggestions Thread

[KawaseFan]

EDIT: This is now a general announcements and suggestions thread.
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Original post - July 8th, 2014
I've done most of the work on the game pages on the site.  There's still some more content I'd like to add to some of them but they're at a point where I'm happy to put them up on the site.  Coming up soon are the pages for other media related to the series.  The Sayonara Umihara Kawase Original Sound Track page is already up, although it's lacking the track list which I will put up in the next couple of days.  After that I've got plans for pages on a few strategy guides as well as the Android timer app and the Windows screensaver, and we'll see where I go with the other media pages after that.

But apart from more 'other media' pages - or any future releases in the series - that doesn't leave me with much other content to add to the site, and so I'd like to ask if you have any suggestions for other content I could put on the site.  Some thoughts I've had were:
- As I played through Sayonara Umihara Kawase I made a note of what art/music/etc. gets unlocked and when it's unlocked, so I could put that up.  I would probably have to replay through it, though, just to be sure I have everything right - not that replaying it would be a bad thing!
- I could put up some artwork related to the series, like wallpapers and such, although the official links on some of the game pages other than Umihara Kawase Portable should have the wallpapers on them already, so I'm not sure if I should do that.

So, those are the ideas I came up with.  Maybe you have better suggestions, and if so, I'd love to hear them.

[海腹川背]

Fleshing out the media section would be cool. You could add the Umihara Kawase OST, and maybe scout around for covers on doujin albums. (The Sayonara Umihara Kawase soundtrack page should also be corrected; to the best of my knowledge it only featured rearranged versions of select songs from the prior games, not the original songs themselves.)

Beyond that, it'd be interesting to see what kind of media coverage the series has gotten throughout the years. Magazine features and reviews, or TV commercials, that kind of thing would be fun to archive here.

[KawaseFan]

Thanks for the suggestions!  I really like those ideas, and I'll see if I can start doing some of that after I've done what I still need to do on the media section.

You're right about the Sayonara Umihara Kawase sound track page, I hadn't put in the information about the arrangements, sorry.  I've also put up the track list - only in Japanese at the moment, English translated version coming soon.

To update my progress on the other media pages, my write-up on the Android timer app is almost done and should be up within the next day is up now.

[badlose]

I've got the Shun Perfect Guide Book, thought it might be nice to scan it out to .pdf or something.

Is there a way to do this without destroying it though? It was pretty pricey.

[KawaseFan]

Thank you for the suggestion, I do appreciate it, but I don't think it would be possible to scan it without damaging it if not destroying it.

[Nicole]

Ah, this is something I forgot about, but apparently there was (is?) a cell phone port for the original Umihara Kawase. Information on it is pretty scarce, but from this page it looks like the fields were gonna be released episodically or something. I guess you could make a small note of it on the site somewhere.

(On another note, I wonder how well it really controlled on a cell phone... I can't imagine it was that good. At least it's pre-smartphone era, so we're not talking about touch screens here.)

[KawaseFan]

Oh, interesting.  Thanks for that, I'll add a bit about it on the site probably tomorrow when I have some free time.  Even though I have to think it would control badly even with phone buttons, I'd still be interested to try it if it were ever possible.

This would probably be the best time to ask everyone, in cases where site content has been provided/corrected/etc. by one of you, what would be the best way to show contribution credits?  I'm thinking of having the text "With contributions by (members)" or "With thanks to (members) for contributions" showing somewhere on the page, but I'm not sure where on the page would be best.

The page you have attempted to translate is already in English.
Great job as usual, Google Translate.  Can't wait until I can read all of this properly myself.

[KawaseFan]

Just added it.  Something I'm a bit puzzled about, though - after having a look at Sunsoft's 'Shanghai i-Puzzle' page, Umihara Kawase isn't listed there.  I'm pretty sure it's the right page since it has the same QR code in the header as is at the bottom of the umihara.com page.  It makes me wonder if it's no longer available.

Also put credit towards the bottom of the page in small text.  If this is a problem in any way, please let me know.

[texh]

It would be great to have some sort of explanation for advanced techniques so newcomers wouldn't feel too ostracized by the rope physics difficulty.

[dodonpa]

There is a rather complete FAQ for the original UK hosted by gamefaqs and absolutely nothing for Shun or SayonaraUK. Though it would be nice to spread some info about the third game, i wonder if a FAQ would be of any help to newcomers.. Gameplay videos with description seems more appropriate, at least to explain both basic and advanced techniques.

[KawaseFan]

It would be great to have some sort of explanation for advanced techniques so newcomers wouldn't feel too ostracized by the rope physics difficulty.

There absolutely should be a techniques explantion section on the site and this is something I'll see if I can write in the new year.

There is a rather complete FAQ for the original UK hosted by gamefaqs and absolutely nothing for Shun or SayonaraUK. Though it would be nice to spread some info about the third game, i wonder if a FAQ would be of any help to newcomers.. Gameplay videos with description seems more appropriate, at least to explain both basic and advanced techniques.

You're right, gameplay videos would probably be better.  Maybe if I wrote a bit about techniques but included embedded YouTube videos?

I've recently started work on a video section for the site - that's actually half the reason I've been putting my Sayonara timeattack videos on YouTube, as well as attaching the video link when I enter my times on gori.sh's timeattack board.  The idea is that the video section would let people choose the game, the field/door and the type of video they want to watch - 'walkthrough' for the regular way to clear fields, 'timeattack' for the fast way to clear fields (or at least the fastest way I can do!) and backpack location guides.  After the options are selected, a page will load with an embedded YouTube video.  I'm hoping to have the video section up soon, but there may not be many videos at the start as it will take me a while to record them.

[KawaseFan]

Have an early look at the video page.

I've used the same sort of field IDs as gori.sh uses on his Sayonara timeattack board (field and door number combined) because it makes a lot of sense.  I hope he doesn't mind, otherwise I can change it.

Edit: changed part of the page title and link from speedrun to time attack

[KawaseFan]

Just a minor update.  Today I was trying to do more research into the i-mode phone version of Umihara Kawase (without any luck) and found that umihara.com no longer exists.  I've replaced the link on the Umihara Kawase page with the archive.org version, although that is missing most of the images.

[mfgreth]

Just a minor update.  Today I was trying to do more research into the i-mode phone version of Umihara Kawase (without any luck) and found that umihara.com no longer exists.  I've replaced the link on the Umihara Kawase page with the archive.org version, although that is missing most of the images.

That's rather odd. I wonder why? Perhaps they simply forgot about it?

[KawaseFan]

This will be the general announcements and suggestions thread from now on, there's no real point making a new thread every time I have something to say.  In fact, I don't even need to make a post every time, either.  You might've noticed me using the news section at the top of the forum to make some announcements.  This time, though, I'd like to ask for some feedback on a couple of things.

Firstly, I'd like to bring up the time attack ranking pages for Umihara Kawase and Umihara Kawase Shun.  I've done very early work on how they might look, which you can see at http://kawasefan.net/timeattackexample1.html
Any suggestions or concerns are welcome.  It's important that we get the plans exactly right for all of us before I go ahead with the rest of it.  It's my hope that the time attack ranking pages may help attract more people to the site.

Next, I'd like to ask if you think it would be better if, instead of having a separate board for each main game and an 'Other' board for discussion which doesn't fit into just one of those boards, if there was just one board for all UK discussion?  I ask because the Other board has two threads about Kanzenban, which I would've considered to be Shun board threads, but obviously the inclusion of the original Umihara Kawase complicates things and means there are three boards Kanzenban discussion could potentially fit into.  Add to that Chirari's inclusion of the original and it could get pretty confusing where some threads/posts should be posted, so maybe it'd just be better to merge it all into one board.  What do you think?

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for the site or forum, go ahead.  Let me know by posting in this thread or PMing me if you want.

[texh]

Looks fine to me, simple but hey.

Regarding newcomers to the site though, I found this japanese site the other day which has great explanation on basic and advanced techniques including button input view 1, 2. Contains basically every useful technique you need to know for SFC and even Shun, since the engine is so similar.

Reason I'm blabbling about this is because it could possibly have bigger effect on attracting new people compared to time attack table which is a little bit more suited to players who are already here. These two things (TA and techniques) are the only sections this site is really missing atm, otherwise I wouldn't even know what to add, especially the Other Media section is amazing. Also idk if you would want to ask the site owner for permission on the gifs or make your own, although the latter is probably the better option since the site seems pretty dead.

About merging the boards, personally I'm not too keen on merging them into one. I like the idea of having separate board for each game but in the current state, where there isn't much traffic overall, it probably really is the best option.

Just my 2 cents.

[KawaseFan]

That's fair enough, attract people new to the games by showing them how to play.  Unfortunately I'm pretty awful at trying to teach things, but I'll do my best!

GIFs!  Of course!  I was thinking of using YouTube but GIFs would be better.  My only concern is - not that the format I use makes a difference with this - I have no idea how I would record the button presses.  I could try to manually put it into the GIFs, but that could get a bit annoying.  I'll definitely make new ones rather than try to ask permission for those, though.  I agree with you, that site does seem dead, with no updates since 2009.

Thank you for your comment on the Other Media!  I wish that was true about the game pages, but I know some of them are a bit lacking at the moment.  I've gone way in-depth on the Sayonara page (which I probably need to add sub-headings to?) but I could probably do the same with some of the others.