Kongming’s Archives’ Update Archive: 2008
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Archived Documents and Information. This page contains archived site wide updates for the year of 2008. Some information below may be out-of-date and some links may be broken. If searching for missing content, please use the regular site navigation or search for best results.
January 2008
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through January 2008.
1/27/08 (James): Destiny of an Emperor 2.0
I would like to introduce the first official release of a project which has been underway for quite some time now: Destiny of an Emperor 2.0! This is a fan-made remake which I have been working on for months. Rather than re-tell the story, the objective of this remake has been to remake the game. Errors have been corrected, many new officers have been introduced, tactics are in English for easier remembering, and it is challenging enough to surprise even the veterans. (Speaking of veterans, I know you love the Chinese tactic names – a future version will include them). Like Destiny of an Emperor, you must play with an emulator.
Download Destiny of an Emperor 2.0 and relive your classic in a way you never would have imagined! We welcome (and encourage) your feedback, positive and negative, and ask that you participate in the Destiny of an Emperor 2.0 discussion thread at our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou. You can also share thoughts in Lord Yuan Shu’s forum. Other Destiny of an Emperor hacks are coming in over the horizon and your feedback can make a great difference.
What else can you expect? An error-free remake of the classic Destiny of an Emperor, and a Wei storyline retelling, following Cao Cao and his army as they attempt to unify China. This remake will even feature an adapted storyline! Through our forum you can even participate in testing and development of these and other titles.
Hope to see you there! Enjoy the game!
1/28/08 (James): Sanguo Yanyi Biographies; Update Tracker
In addition to the remake of Destiny of an Emperor, our fan-made version Destiny of an Emperor 2.0 (discussed in the previous update), we are also thrilled to present a new collection of Sanguo Yanyi Biographies by Sam Wrest. Sam has been busy, but he still found a chance to share. Thanks!
New biographies include the well-knowns Ma Dai and Yang Feng, along with a collection of lesser-known officers: Cheng Lian (Lü Bu), Zhang Ying (Liu Yao), Ju Gu (Yuan Shang), Zhang Hu (Liu Biao) and Qiao Rui (Yuan Shu).
Finally, have you noticed the new update tracker at the top of the home page? We are no longer discussing every new site feature with official updates (like this one). Keep an eye on the update tracker to view the latest additions to Kongming’s Archives, often-times a while before they may be announced here.
February 2008
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through February 2008.
2/4/08 (James): Dynasty Warriors 6 Home Page!
Koei is scheduled to release the next major revision of its flagship hack-and-slash series, Dynasty Warriors, later this month: Dynasty Warriors 6. We are looking forward to this release and, in spirit of that anticipation, have decided to give it full coverage here at Kongming’s Archives.
For this reason I now introduce our new Dynasty Warriors 6 section complete with some of the most important fundamentals: a complete set of Dynasty Warriors 6 Character Portraits, a set of Dynasty Warriors 6 Character Artwork (thanks, Koei Warriors), 84 Dynasty Warriors 6 Screenshots, and a Dynasty Warriors 6 Character Unlocking Guide (featuring reminder notes of which officers were actually cut for Dynasty Warriors 6). More content is soon to come.
If you are interested in purchasing Dynasty Warriors 6, please consider pre-ordering it from Amazon.com (buy Dynasty Warriors 6 for PlayStation 3 or Dynasty Warriors 6 for XBox 360). Your purchase through a link here at Kongming’s Archives helps to support future content!
2/12/08 (James): Legend of Cao Cao English Revision Available!
There are a few wonderful Three Kingdoms games which people have enjoyed time and time again through the years, but unfortunately many of those games are not available in English. One such game is Legend of Cao Cao, a delightful game developed by Koei, which cannot even be imported to the United States through any of the popular game dealers.
You might recall our mention a month ago of a patch for this wonderful game?
Well, we’re back with news—good news. Lady Wu’s wonderful work has been applied to a ground-up revision of the game which we are making available here at Kongming’s Archives. Visit the Legend of Cao Cao English Remake Home Page for more information and to download the rather large archive file. The download is pre-patched and thus only available in English. In this way we are able to avoid interfering with the markets to which Koei still distributes this classic.
March 2008
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through March 2008.
3/26/08 (James): Registration at Scholars of Shen Zhou 'Fixed'!
A number of you, our wonderful viewers, have been attempting to register in our discussion forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou, but for a couple weeks now an error has prevented any new members from joining. That error has been resolved temporarily, pending a permanent fix, so if you are interested in discussing the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, games, and anything else that might catch your fancy with other members of our community, head over now and sign up!
April 2008
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through April 2008.
4/12/08 (James): Romance of the Three Kingdoms Community Directory
Today I would like to introduce something familiar but totally new: the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Links Directory. Rather than group all of our links on a single links page (the original links page is still available, but it is no longer being updated) we are grouping them into a full-fledged directory. This makes it much easier for us to share community links and manage broken links. It also makes it much easier for community members to contribute links as well.
Not only have I gone through our old links collection to remove (and in some cases, replace) broken links (I’m sad to see some very good sites have gone offline), I’ve also added a collection of new sites. Please have a look! Explore the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Community Links Directory. If you have any sites to suggest please use our site submission form to suggest them to us. Hopefully we can grow this section remake into a much more valuable resource. Feedback is welcome!
4/20/08 (James): New Biographies; Site Improvements; DW6 OST
Greetings everyone! I’ve actually been quite busy refining Kongming’s Archives in the background to make it a little easier to use and a little easier to update. I’ve made a few improvements here and there. FAQs and Walkthroughs we feature now enjoy a fine-tuned display script so they are delivered at record speed (being implemented in areas across the site now). The URL of a FAQ we host is also much easier to look at and share with friends, now. As an example, here is Lord Yuan Shu’s Dynasty Warriors 6 FAQ/Walkthrough.
Officer Entries in the Encyclopedia Project have new links, making it easier for you to share biography-like officer summaries on the internet and in forums during discussions. As examples, here is Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan.
The Three Kingdoms Hanzi Project and the Style Name Project both share links with the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia now. This should help to alleviate confusion while viewing similar entries. Our Games Directory Home Page has received a complete facelift to make it a little more intuitive. Lady Wu finally harassed me enough to make it happen. Our Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia, by far the most popular section of our site, now, is going to receive a massive retuning in the near future as well. We’ll share more about that when the time comes!
We’ve added another handful of new links to our Three Kingdoms Link Directory. One addition of note is the Book Purchase Directory, which features purchase links and mini-reviews of some marvelous Three Kingdoms books. Your purchase through these links even takes a nip out of our hosting fees! Everyone is welcome to share their favorite links. Site owners, submit your link to us! Visit our link submission page.
New Sanguo Yanyi Officer Biographies have also been added: Cai Mao (Degui) and Shen Pei (Zhengnan) by Dong Zhou; Shi Huan (Gongliu) by Sam.
By popular request I have just added the Dynasty Warriors 6 (Shin Sangoku Musou 5) original soundtrack (OST) to our music downloads page. It is uploading as I type this, so start with the earliest files to avoid broken links! Odds & Ends users will have a download link in a few hours.
Oh, and please forgive us for our April Fool’s joke. While most of you have found out, now, that we play a joke every single year, there are always a handful of people who are out of the loop, so to speak, and are always caught off-guard. I’ll share more about this in a future update.
4/23/08 (James): Romance of The Three Kingdoms XI, Windows, ENGLISH!
Great news, everyone! KOEI has announced that they are releasing Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI for Windows in English on July 29th, 2008. That’s right! Their wonderful historic strategy simulation series is returning to the PC in English. This hasn’t happened since Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire, back in the ’90s. We will keep you posted!
4/29/08 (James): Liu Bei Sanguozhi, Playing Cards, Cao/Xiahou Tree
I’d like to introduce a few updates that were posted to the site a few days ago. First, Liu Bei’s Sanguozhi Biography, by Stephen So, is now available. Many of you may have stumbled across this biography in the past in password-protected PDF format, making the contents difficult to cite or reference. That shouldn’t be a problem anymore. That said, this is a marvelously well-written biography with extensive footnotes. Stephen has done a wonderful job with it. It is a must read.
Quite some time ago we discovered a delightful set of two 54-card decks of Romance of the Three Kingdoms Playing Cards, usually only found in Hong Kong, particularly in airports. The artwork is quite fun and we have enjoyed nicknaming many of the cards. We’ve been discussing this deck in our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou, for quite some time now. In discussing the deck we have also posted occasional scans of the cards. Well, now the entire deck is online for you to view and enjoy, each card scanned and carefully prepared in Photoshop. I hope you enjoy it! You are welcome to share your thoughts on these cards with us in our forum, too!
We would like to introduce a new Cao/Xiahou Family Tree by J.C. Cawley (aka. Kong Wen), a project he has been working on for some time now. This family tree is much more extensive than our existing one, or anything we’ve seen in a book for that matter. J.C. Cawley would like to point out that this family tree is not yet complete, and that some fine tuning is also necessary, but it would be a shame to keep this gem locked away in a musty old chest any longer. I would also like to add that its sheer size has also led me to explore new ways to present family trees here at Kongming’s Archives. Our presentation also needs some fine-tuning and the JavaScript used to create the collapsing menus many of you will enjoy is not working properly in Internet Explorer for some reason. Regardless, I haven’t left any of you out: Internet Explorer receives its own dedicated presentation, and it actually looks quite good. You may like it too.
May 2008
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through May 2008.
5/3/08 (James): Cao Shang's Three Kingdoms XI English Patch
I have just added Cao Shang’s Chinese/Japanese to English Patch for Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI Patch Downloads Page. If you are interested in playing a patched Windows version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, you can Import Sangokushi (Japanese with PUK) from Play-Asia.com. Other versions of Sangokushi Xi are available.
5/7/08 (James): Content Submission, Error Reports, Email Form
Today some of the contact forms inside Kongming’s Archives have received an overhaul. Specifically, you now have access to a new Contact Us form, a new Error Report form, and a new Content Submission form. While the forms are easier to use (and definitely more secure), the only thing here that is relevant for discussion is the content submission form.
You now have the ability to upload and submit a file to us using it. A walkthrough, a biography, an article, or a zip file of images. Almost anything you would want to share. We can make special arrangements if a large file is not submitted by the form (e.g. a music collection). Just as I have been spending much more time working on Kongming’s Archives over the past month, your content submissions are also going to receive the same love and attention. Artbook scans? Portraits? Walkthroughs? Would you like to write an article for our site? Please let me know!
I know there are some other poor or broken forms on the site. They are going to be remade soon enough and announced on the home page. Also, please pardon the dated material in the submissions area. It, too, will get some love soon.
We also use image verification now. Rather than some boring numbers we have decided to integrate reCAPTCHA, an image verification service that also works to digitally preserve books whenever you use it. So when you verify words in our forms you are actually doing something meaningful.
5/13/08 (James): Sango 2, a new game by Magitech Corporation
Good news for Three Kingdoms strategy game fans! Magitech Corporation has released a new Three Kingdoms strategy game with real-time strategy elements (RTS, think the Total War series) in English and it is available now. It is called Sango 2, and for a small development firm, it looks like a wonderful title! Sango 2 was originally announced on April 28th and on May 7th an English demo was made available for download. You can buy Sango 2 directly for $29.95 USD.
At Scholars of Shen Zhou we have been exploring Sango 2 for a little while now, and in that discussion you will find some helpful tips and suggestions to keep in mind when you experiment with the demo. We are also thrilled to welcome Magitech Corporation to the English Three Kingdoms market and have created a new home page for Sango 2. Screenshots are available with some initial explanation, and more will come in the near future (especially when our own copy arrives so we can begin experimenting).
5/15/08 (James): Three Kingdoms Officer Encyclopedia v. 2.0
I’d like to introduce the Three Kingdoms Officer Encyclopedia Project v. 2.0! While nothing terribly new has been added in terms of content (aside from the regular updates being made through each week) the encyclopedia has been made much easier to use. Instead of displaying all search results as biographies, an idea that became excessive as content was expanded, search results are now displayed in a simple reference table (e.g. Kingdom of Wei) featuring links to full encyclopedia entries (e.g. Cao Cao). Matching officers are divided into sub-categories by ruler/kingdom and a color-jump menu provides easy access to the kingdom you wish to view. This is also handy for seeing where officers of a given kingdom came from and went.
The Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia’s home page is special in that it lists only certain popular officers in a single reference table, making it a quick download and ideal for bookmarking. Additional improvements have been made, some visible and others not (I was, for example, able to solve a caching bug that caused trouble not only in the encyclopedia but also in other areas of the site). Some fine-tuning is still required, but that will come with time. I’m just glad to have finally been able to publish these improvements. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome. Please contact us if you have something on your mind!
5/25/08 (James): Kongming's Hodgepodge of Three Kingdoms Updates
Aside from continued work on several larger projects a number of smaller tasks have been completed over the past half month. A Campaign Overview provided by Mikhail and a Keyboard Shortcut List have been added to the Sango 2 page. Other pages across the site have been revised and some back-end improvements have been made, but I won’t trouble you with those boring details.
I have completely revised the entry page of our Three Kingdoms Links Directory. I didn’t like the way it was organized before and the numbers were confusing (e.g. ‘total links’ was the number of sub-categories added to the number of self-contained links—a pretty useless number). The new page should be very easy to read and use and now also features some of the finest sites right there for easy access. Remember, you are welcome to submit a link to us when you find something worth sharing!
Our Unicode Decimal Entity Encoder has been completely recoded. It is an old tool which we have featured on the site for a very long time, but it has actually become quite popular in some development circles. It converts special characters (and foreign languages) to decimal entity values which can be saved in HTML source code, or pasted into a forum to reliably display any character. The new version is, as far as I can tell, completely bug-free and works quite smoothly.
I have started working on a new revision of Destiny of an Emperor 2.0. With majority thanks to Niahak we have discovered new ways to hack the game and add features so I am now integrating some of them. If you wish to participate in the beta testing or follow development, read the latest posts in the Destiny of an Emperor 2.0 Discussion Thread at Scholars of Shen Zhou. When complete it will, of course, be announced here, and I will also be resuming my Cao Cao-themed remake!
While working on Destiny of an Emperor 2.0 I have also added new content to our Destiny of an Emperor Section. You can reference our Destiny of an Emperor Gameplay FAQ to find common problems and solutions while you play through the game. Our Open Treasures Glitch article specifically addresses the most infamous glitch of this classic title and offers a solution which is definitely preferable to starting a new game. And finally, I have published a respectable collection of Game Genie Codes, including some very cool codes which were nearly impossible to find previously, for you to cheat your heart out with while playing.
June 2008
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through June 2008.
6/14/08 (James): Of Chinese Warlords and Basketball Players
Carolyn of And One, a Cleveland Cavaliers blog on the Cleveland.com website, stumbled across Kongming’s Archives while looking for information on Shawn Kemp. I think LordYuanShu may be the proper party to blame for this. As product of an equally unusual twist of events an interview with me about Kongming’s Archives and the Three Kingdoms community has been published to the blog home page. Have a look! I also enjoyed reading about Basketball Girl.
November 2008
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through November 2008.
11/27/08 (James): Thanksgiving Love from Kongming's Archives!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Even those of you outside the United States to whom this is just another boring day. And thank you for remaining a loyal viewer even during our quieter moments. Please note that we’re still here, and you’ll be hearing from us again down the road. In the mean time, the Three Kingdoms Officer Encyclopedia is still being updated with new information, and our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou, is still alive with discussion. [Promotion Discontinued]
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