Kongming’s Archives: 2003 Updates

12/29/03: FAQs and Walkthroughs have been updated for Dynasty Warriors 4 and Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends (including 10th and 11th weapons). Over the following week, additional FAQs and Walkthroughs will be added for these and other games. A ‘Walkthroughs’ option has been added to the right-hand menu under Games for quick access to this section from any non-novel page.

Oblivion embraces 50 more broken links, 151 remain.

Hua Tuo (Yuanhua)’s Sanguozhi biography translated by Jiuwan has been added.

12/27/03: Today serves additional early spring-cleaning. The search engine now properly displays the layout, though it is not (and will probably never be) compatible with the site themes. Also, as of this morning Kongming’s Archives contained 274 broken links, mostly to external sites that have gone offline or moved. Over fifty of those links were removed or repaired today (with a few more added to the links page to replace them), and we will continue to whittle away at them until there isn’t a single broken link left on the site.

12/26/03: I’ve made new additions to the links page (including RTKGames.com and Jiuwan’s Realm of Three Kingdoms, both external) along with major updates to two other pages which I generally don’t make mention of here due to bandwidth considerations. Go ahead and check around if you like, but if you’ve been a regular you probably know what they are.

Announcing Parchment (external), a project by my friend Gravity (as she is known in forums). “[Parchment] is a Romance of the Three Kingdoms fanfiction contest, slated to start in December of this year. You can submit fanfiction based on one of the mediums Rot3K is portrayed in (the novel, Dynasty Warriors, Rot3K the game, etc). You could also nominate some if you would like; perhaps even become a judge to help decide the winners of the contest and all.”

And finally, a new donation wallpaper has been made for January 2004. Some of you, especially those of you who frequent the forums or have browsed most of this site, know I am a freelance Web designer. December and January are vicious months for me financially (holdays and slow business attack at once), so in an effort to pull through as well as possible I made this new wallpaper available as a ‘thank you’ in exchange to anyone who can donate a dollar or more to support this site and one Ramen-noodle-eating Webmaster.

12/23/03: Huang Gai (Gongfu)’s Sanguozhi biography translated by Lady Wu and has been added, and the translation of Taishi Ci (Ziyi) has been updated, and now includes Pei Songzhi’s notes. After some research I have done, I also decided to update Yuan Shao (Benchu)’s Comprehensive Officer Biograpy. There may be yet another update to that biography in the future as well. Yeah, that’s what we call unexpected freetime.

12/22/03: Nearly a half year ago I began a full revision of the site, starting from the ground up, and reworking every single page included. That update, after quite extensive work over the past few days, is now nearly complete. During this process many dead or incorrect links were fixed, along with some broken images across the site. You will also notice that there are now three letters in the header menu, they represent three different themes. Internet Explorer 5 users, who do not enjoy full site compatibility, are advised to use theme ‘C’ or upgrade their browsers. Personally, I favor theme ‘C’ anyway. If you find theme problems, or wish to offer feedback, please make your comments in this thread (located in Scholars of Shen Zhou, account not required to post in this forum).

Following the holidays I will turn my attention to updating some existing content with revisions sent in by various authors, along with finishing the site conversion and perhaps linking the themes to the alternate document themes found in Novel and History. Once that is done, we may see new game content, along with the regular history content. Also, on the home page, the game news information has been updated with a new method of display and all new information, and various improvements have been made.

Enjoy the holidays, be it Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah, or Winter Solstice, and don’t forget to find some presents for your loved ones that come from the heart rather than a store to toss in with the new DVD or game you are getting them. I’m going to take a break (the work above was actually quite extensive) and will return after I enjoy some time with my own family and loved ones.

12/8/03: Cai Yan (Wenji)’s Comprehensive Officer Biograpy, by Jonathan Wu has been added.

12/4/03: Lu Xun (Boyan)’s Sanguozhi biography, in PDF format, translated by Lady Wu and Sonken has been added.

11/28/03: Just a note that Sanguo Game (Chinese), a wonderful Romance of the Three Kingdoms game site which I recommend to anyone who can browse it, has moved. The links page has been updated to reflect this change.

11/9/03: Sun Jian (Wentai)’s Sanguo yanyi biography by Morgan Evans has been added.

11/6/03: Just so everyone knows, Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends is available in game/major stores in the United States. It was released on Tuesday, and should be in stock pretty much anywhere that carries PlayStation 2 games at this time.

11/4/03: Gongsun Zan (Bogui)’s Sanguo yanyi biography by Morgan Evans has been added.

Some have written in to ask, “Why haven’t you updated the site?” “Why haven’t you added game information yet?” or “Why haven’t you answered my email?” I assure everyone it is no conspiracy, it is simply a matter of priorities in life. I get enough donations to cover a fair portion of hosting fees, but not all of it, and certainly not enough to free up time from my real job. That said, work always has to come first, and the time left for this site (play) has to blend up with the other things I do with my freetime which may or may not be more important and vary wildly from month to month.

11/1/03: We had to take the Email Form offline earlier to combat some spam problems (there was a vulnerability) but it is online again with an all-new script running in the background. In addition to making it easier for me to work with the incoming email, you now have more options for sending feedback. You can use the general mailbox, or the error reporting or submission mailboxes. Each has its own subform (and naturally will receive more attention when received). I get around fifty emails a day, so as always give me time to respond (assuming I am able to in the first place).

10/22/03: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Avatars (64x64) and AIM Buddy Icons (50x50).

8/29/03: You normally don’t see them here at Kongming’s Archives, but here you go again. Presenting two very nice GameShark codes for Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII, one for having all items in your database and the other for having all events in your database. Both are combatable with version 2 GameSharks (not version 3). Thanks go out to a certain Pwincess and her brother for these goodies. Douglas Lee’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII FAQs have also all been uploaded/updated.

8/28/03: Xu Sheng (Wenxiang)’s Sanguozhi biography translated by Han Xin and Dong Zhuo (Zhongyin) and Diao Chan (also known as Sable Cicada)’s Sanguo yanyi biography authored by Morgan Evans have both been completed and added to the Novel and History section.

8/24/03: Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII includes a list of secret historical characters with pre-generated stats and skills that you can play by entering the associated historical names (PlayStation 2). Here is a list of the names that are known to use at this time, enjoy!

8/13/03: Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII shipped yesterday to resellers in the United States and Canada. United States residents, and many in Canada, should be able to find it in stores now, and if not, tomorrow. Don’t have it already? Why are you home?

8/6/03: Ding Feng (Chengyuan)’s Sanguozhi biography translated by Han Xin has been added to the Novel and History section.

8/4/03: Wang Ping (Zijun)’s Sanguozhi biography by Battleroyale has been added. Kong Zhengshu has also prepared a marvelous Cao/Xiahou Family Tree that is currently available in a plain text document. The permanent link is in the novel and history section under the ‘Images/Family Trees’ header on the right-hand menu.

For those of you that haven’t been following the small new section on this page, yes, Dynasty Warriors 4 Xtreme Legends in on the way. For more information take a look at Muni Shinobu’s translation of the GameCity game home page, or read the discussion on the topic at Scholars of Shen Zhou.

7/30/03: Guo Jia (Fengxiao)’s Sanguo yanyi biography has been added to the Novel and History section. The music page has been updated with Romance of the Three Kingdoms V along with link fixes to Dynasty Warriors 3 and Dynasty Warriors 4. New fan art has also been added with more to come in future days. Link to Cheryl Austin’s Studio Dink has been fixed as well.

7/14/03: Thirteen new Screenshots for Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX.

7/8/03: Six new Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX screenshots have been added (thanks to Xiahou Mao/Rob). More will be added in days to come as they are sent in. Unlike the previous screenshots, these feature partial English translation, so you can get an idea of how menus and battle work in some cases.

6/27/03: The most frequently requested update, the Wei Flow Chart for Dynasty Warriors 4, has been completed (along with the other smaller Musou Modes). Some have asked what we are spending our time on. Currently our kongming.net freetime is dedicated to three projects: A mass revision of the Hanzi Project, a final update to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX Portraits Project, and a full game revision of SimRTK (being updated live as we go along in most cases).

6/11/03: I am back from a small birthday vacation, and there is a little bit to catch up on. Soon you will see additions to the Hanzi project, some new Sanguozhi biographies, and I’ll finally toss the Wei flow chart together for Dynasty Warriors 4. We are here in full thanks to another month of kind donations; my sincere thanks go out to everyone who has supported us.

Also of importance, we need a talented editor to assist with biographies. This person should understand things like curly quotes, em/en dashes, sentence structure and grammar, what sort of text should be placed in italics, an understanding of why less words are better on the Internet, and the ability to maintain original meanings while editing translations. There would not be too much work, but we would like someone who can return documents in fair time for sharing with the community (preferably in .doc format). If you are interested, please email me and I will send you a document that you can edit and return. As this site does not generate profit, there is no pay for this position.

5/20/03: Kongming’s Archives may have seemed quiet over the last week, but in reality we have been working quite regularly on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX portraits project and a background revision of many Novel and History Sections (you may have noticed spiffy new portraits in the biographies).

As a taste of what is coming, I tossed a full Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX avatars collection together, now available for download on the avatars page. Snag it and enjoy, remember to read the “read me”. The portrait collection will follow soon.

5/12/03: Lü Bu (Fengxian)’s Sanguozhi biography has been completed and edited, and is now available for your viewing pleasure in the Novel and History section. Some of you may have seen it under development at the Scholars of Shen Zhou, but it is now a finely polished beast, complete with Pei Songzhi’s commentary. There are still two things to do in the footnotes, and if you want to assist with that drop us a line.

5/6/03: Thirty new additions have been made to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX Officer Portraits Project, with one problem officer. My thanks go out to zgl202 for his assistance with Kong “Xiu”.

5/5/03: The officer name Hanzi project has been updated again (thanks to WilliamL). Some of the more remote names now feature a (?) next to them, you can hover over the (?) for a description of who the officer is. Internet Explorer does not yet support the HTML for this feature.

5/3/03: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX Officer Portrait Project and the Officer Name Hanzi Project have both been updated (with more to come tomorrow).

5/2/03: I would like to thank everyone who supported us by assisting with this month’s bandwidth payment; we were able to make it thanks to you. If we continue to enjoy this level of support, Kongming’s Archives will be here for many years to come.

Many Dynasty Warriors 4 FAQs and guides in the FAQs/Walkthroughs section have been updated, and others have been added. A new and very comprehensive Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII guide by Douglas Lee (Carp’s Tail) has also been added, an excellent thing considering the upcoming United States release.

Along with Lu Hong (a member of the SimRTK), I have started the new Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX Officer Portrait Project. The final objective is to extract every portrait in the game, name them in pinyin, and then share them with the members of this site. To do this we will need occasional translation assistance, and that is the reason for the project. If you can translate the Hanzi there, please visit from time to time and send in officer names so we can proceed. Thank you everyone who participates!

5/01/03: Today’s update may be a little unusual for most people, as this one is written by Jonathan Wu instead of James! To save time in updating, and to make sure that people can read new publications earlier, James and myself decided that I can do the updates for my section from now on. Of course, I didn’t come empty–handed! I have revised two of my Comprehensive Officer Biographies, namely Huang Gai and Jiang Qin. More will be coming soon!

On a different note, I would like to apologize for unanswered emails to my old account at Hotmail. Since my account was disabled regularly because of spam, I decided to stop using it and continued with a new email address. I did however fail to notify James of this change, and because of that, some people may have not received an answer to their emails. I hope you will all accept my humble apology. I can now be reached at my official KMA Email Address.

4/28/03: For Dynasty Warriors 4, the Wu Stage Flow Chart has been uploaded (thanks to my friend Kanitha) and I have added a guide for Unlocking Officers. More content for the Novel and History section is also in the works.

4/25/03: The most recent updates have all been back end things (converting the Three Kingdoms section right now), but there is some good game news to report. Koei’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII is coming out in the United States for the PlayStation 2 on 7/22/03 (a month earlier than rumors we noted a half-year ago). Dynasty Warriors 4 will also be coming in English to the Xbox on 6/27/03.

4/21/03: The site revision continues (as unfortunate as it is to have to do two revisions in a row), but without kinks or snags. I just want to thank everyone who has donated; your kindness ensures the future of this site and secures my time to keep it updated (as backlogged as we are).

That said the next target is the fan art page. Today I tossed up six new pieces of art from Chery’s Studio Dink, soon to be followed by additional submissions that have been sitting in the black hole which I am so fond of calling my “inbox”.

4/19/03: The first stage of a general reference FAQ for Dynasty Warriors 4 has been completed including a gameplay FAQ (not a walkthrough), hardware and software glitches, and gameplay tips and tricks. It will be updated as days pass and new additions are submitted.

So far with your assistance about 10% of next month’s hosting fees have been covered, not including any donations that may have been mailed through the postal service. Thank you very much to everyone that has donated anything at all, I truly appreciate this kindles!

4/18/03: Please accept my apologies for the period of time in which no updates were announced, we are not dead. I was in fact working on the site behind the scenes with multiple new ideas to speed it up and reduce bandwidth costs (please see the news above). If you are having trouble accessing some or all images on the site this is a known issue, everything will work again soon. Also, if you have written us and received no reply, please feel free to write us again (we have just been busy).

Today’s news may catch some of you a little off guard. Earlier, despite the high traffic, our host was able to provide us with discount hosting as a kindness, but this has unfortunately changed. Starting in March 2003 we will face dedicated server level costs, and I am afraid I cannot afford them without some assistance. If enough people donate a single dollar each month, we will be able to put that concern behind us and will once again be able to focus time and energy into updates (for your viewing pleasure, of course). More information is available on the donations page, including the “thank you” gifts you will receive in exchange for donations. Also note that we now list a post office box.

Now that the new layout for the site is complete (mostly backend changes) the new update agenda will be the revision of Kongming’s Archives, and new Dynasty Warriors 4 content like stage flow charts and gameplay information (like tips and tricks). For those of you who are able to support us with even a dollar, thank you very much! For those of you that can’t, thank you for being a part of Kongming’s Archives regardless.

4/6/03: We have started development of stage flow charts for Dynasty Warriors 4 (to help you get the secret stages and alternate storylines in Musou Mode). The kingdom of Shu has been completed, with more to follow soon.

Due to server load and bandwidth, we will soon be disabling remote linking here at Kongming’s Archives. At this point avatar links will all break. Members are still free to upload our avatars to their own servers for private use though. We are also now allowing Webmasters to host our avatars on their own Web sites as long as they meet some requirements (they have to share with the community). Read more about this change.

4/2/03: Lady Sun (otherwise known as Sun Shang Xiang)’s Comprehensive Officer Biography has just gone online (thanks, as usual, to Jonathan Wu). Those of you who are Dynasty Warriors fans should be quite happy about that.

4/1/03: Ugh… I didn’t have the heart to go through with it. Poor Timmy had his new site up for no more than five hours, and already has received eight, and I kid you not, death threats. I guess I should have known better than to pull an April Fool’s joke on a site with an audience all around the world. For those of who did get caught by the joke page, I hope you enjoyed it. If you missed it, see the April 1st, 2003 joke page, or find it later in the archives. And to answer those of you who wrote me panicked emails, no, we would never sell Kongming’s Archives, not even for “twelve thousan american”.

On an unrelated note, for those of you looking for help in Dynasty Warriors 4, you can check our FAQs page. Muni_Shinobu, the king of Three Kingdoms FAQs, has completed several wonderful Japanese guides with detailed English notes (which are detailed enough to tell you how to achieve various goals in the game). The English displays properly by default, and to make the Japanese display change your character encoding to Shift-JIS with a Japanese language pack installed.

3/29/03: I know, we are bad people. Dynasty Warriors 4 is out and there have not been updates for a few days, a time when one would think there should be many. I am just taking a moment to tell everyone that I am currently working on the SimRTK, and playing Dynasty Warriors 4 myself. Several FAQs are under development, and new content is soon to come. As always, keep an eye on the site. For those of you wondering about the game, here is a little Dynasty Warriors 4 Mini-FAQ (permanent link).

3/26/03: Dynasty Warriors 4 for shipped yesterday to resellers in the Untied States. It should be available in a store by you today. Dynasty Warriors 4 press release from Koei.

3/24/03: The SimRTK, an online Romance of the Three Kingdoms role playing game in which you can compete against or play along with other Three Kingdoms fans over the Internet, has just been launched at a dedicated forum. If you are interested, pay a visit and go over the rules.

SimRTK is quite detailed, but despite its appearance very easy to learn. Furthermore, you determine how much of your time it takes to play. As an officer you can log on for as little as 20 minutes every three days, or as a ruler you can command a kingdom and play as much as you like. As more people join the game will only get better. We hope to see you there!

3/18/03: The Dynasty Tactics 2 page has been completed and also includes a new screenshots section. The game downloads page has also been finished (and as mentioned on that page, we don’t provide games not listed, and we won’t be able to help you with ROMs and emulators). The ‘Downloads’ sub-menu has been removed from the right-hand menu. The game specific content is now all under the ‘Games’ sub-menu.

About ten new sites have been added to the links page, about half of which are excellent Chinese resources, the rest are English. Jonathan Wu and Wang Zijun (Sam) from our forum, the Scholars of Shen Zhou, have also started a new forum called Radical Dreamers. Stop by and take a look if you are looking for a new way to spend time.

3/17/03: Our Officer Name and Hanzi Guide has been updated again with a collection of new entries, this time many members of the Zhuge family (thank you, William L.). Battleroyale’s “Brief Chronology of Zhuge Liang’s Life” has also been added to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Novel Section (you can access the chronology section using the biography sub-menu of the novel and history section’s pages).

3/16/03: Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends fifth weapon strategies have been added for Zhang He and Zhang Jiao have been added (thank you very much, Spookybanana) and I have also made corrections and additions to Yuan Shao and Jiang Wei. A Dynasty Warriors 3 fourth weapons guide has also been created to compliment the guide above.

The Officer Name and Style Hanzi Guide has been updated with some corrections and new content (thank you Lady Wuand DarkAnthem). Our links page has also been updated.

3/14/03: Two new additions to the Novel and History section today: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Han, an essay by Jonathan Wu, and a comprehensive Wade-Giles reading guide by Lady Wu(good to have if you are reading one of the older copies of the novel or other Chinese-English books). We hope you enjoy them.

Some of you have asked about the link to Studio Dink, Cheryl Austin’s wonderful art site. It has moved, click the link to get the new address. I have also included it on the links page under fan art for future reference.

Thanks to some timely boredom, I am presenting two of our projects ahead of schedule. The first is a large listing of officer names, styles, and Chinese Hanzi that correspond with them (Hanzi are Chinese characters, you must have Chinese language support installed to view them). The second also begins with the names and styles, but instead of Hanzi it presented the Web-ready decimal values that you can enter into a modern forum’s new post form or into any HTML document’s source code. If you see any mistakes on these pages, please let us know, and if you have new contributions for them, even if it is just one name, please contact me.

3/13/03: One of my most frequently asked questions is “I would like to buy the novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but I am not sure where to find it and I do not know what the best version is, can you assist me?” A while ago I prepared a document for Scholars of Shen Zhou to answer just this question, but I have now added it to Kongming’s Archives (for your viewing pleasure, of course). Guide to buying a copy of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

3/10/03: Well, the frequently requested and very useful Site Map has finally been completed (no more redirects in the main navigation menu). You may find this new addition to be very helpful. Also, Kongming’s Archives turned one year old about a week ago (from original site “completion”). Happy birthday to us!

3/7/03: We have added 25 Original Dynasty Warriors 4 FMV Screen Shots and over sixty new Dynasty Warriors 4 Avatars (now divided by kingdom; Wei, Shu, Wu, and Unaligned). Now we will turn out attention to Dynasty Warriors 4 gameplay information.

Although we cannot afford to keep the music section open with full access, we will continue to make new soundtracks available whenever possible. Starting today, we will post the Dynasty Warriors 4 soundtrack a track at a time. Each track will remain online for around four days, so don’t miss any. Additional tracks will also be hosted by anyone who wants to set up a remote server (contact us if you want to help with this project). We will also set up a program for people who want full access to all soundtracks.

3/5/03: Tracks 10 and 21 from the Dynasty Warriors 4 soundtrack have been posted (they were previously unavailable) on the music page. If people follow the one at a time rule with these two files we may continue to provide a few (that is to say two maybe three) tracks at a time, otherwise this is the end of free music on Kongming’s Archives.

3/4/03: Dian Wei (Ziman)’s Sanguo yanyi biography has been completed by Dan Liao.

Presenting twelve new Dynasty Warriors 4 Screenshots and seven new Dynasty Warriors 4 FMV Screenshots.

3/3/03: I made another wallpaper for you, one I happen to like so much it now covers my desktop, so please enjoy! “Am I going to be banned from the site?” some people ask in response to the music section download problem. “No,” I answer, “I realized that there is no way for me to find out who leeched by accident and who leeched because they didn’t care”. The risk of banning one person that doesn’t deserve it is not a worthwhile risk to me.

3/1/03: Ah, beauty is a word to describe today’s update. The Dynasty Warriors 4 soundtrack, in a good quality, has been uploaded to the music page (only two songs are currently missing, and will be added soon). Make sure you read the new notice on the music page, we aren’t kidding about that. Don’t abuse free services.

We also took this chance to toss up the Dynasty Tactics Track 19 in which Zhou Yu sets the Wei navy on fire. This track is also played in Xtreme Legends on the secret Chibi Lü Bu stage. Enjoy!

2/27/03: Our Dynasty Warriors 4 release and game information page has been updated with a massive amount of new information and some corrections, if you are looking forward to Dynasty Warriors 4 you will want to re-read it from the ground up. We have also added the Shin Sangoku Musou 3 theme song to the music page. Five new Dynasty Warriors 4 wallpapers have also been added to the wallpaper page.

The Links, Game FAQs, and KMA/SoSZ Staff pages have been updated.

2/26/03: Bu Zhi (Zishan) and Lu Su (Zijing)’s Comprehensive Officer Biographies have bother been reworked from the ground up. ZhaoZilong (formerly Ash) has also submitted a new Sanguo yanyi biography, Han Xuan. Enjoy!

The Kessen 2 ending song, Ide Mariko - Ao No Tsuzuki has finally been found, uploaded, and posted for your listening pleasure in the game music section (the final listed track). Hat tip: Spookybanana, for locating the elusive beast.

Another common music request, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms VI soundtrack, has also gone online. Please enjoy as you mercilessly gobble our bandwidth.

While on the subject of music, we have also created a new section of the music page dedicated to remixes by site viewers. The first addition to this section is An Empire of Questions, remixed by Xavier (mv) using track 06 from Romance of the Three Kingdoms VI (and a marvelous remix at that).

2/23/03: With today’s update we bring a new Sanguo yanyi biography, Xiahou En. This great biography is the first from Ash, and there are more around the bend. The good Jonathan Wu has also given Cheng Pu (Demou) a work over from top to bottom, the biography is basically new. Take a look.

It looks like the PAL release of Xtreme Legends will be coming out in Europe on the seventh of next month. Koei pushed the date forward by around two weeks. That doesn’t happen too often.

We are just about finished with the conversion (there are just a few loose ends to tie up like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms biographies pages). You shouldn’t be encountering redirect pages anymore. If you happen to find any (there are probably a few around) please send me an email so I can get them fixed. And if in doubt, reload.

2/21/03: The site conversation continues, and we are now in the home stretch. You are bound to come across some redirects here and there, but they will be taken care of soon enough and should all be gone upon completion.

Zhou Yu (Gongjin)’s Comprehensive Officer Biography has been upgraded from large, to a massive hulking information monster weighing in at over 25KB in text. Check in tomorrow for some more odds and ends.

2/18/03: The Sanguozhi and Comprehensive Officer Biography sections have been fully converted to the new layout. All Comprehensive Officer Biographies have received basic updates (dates, Chinese names, etc.). All Sanguozhi biographies have been edited for uniformity, and some of them have new content. Notable improvements have been made to both sections.

Li Yan (Zhengfang)’s Sanguozhi biography is complete (by DarkAnthem).

Emperor Xian (Liu Xie)’s Comprehensive Officer Biography has been completed by Jonathan Wu. In addition, Liu Shan (Gongsi), Zhu Ju (Zifan), Zhu Jun (Gongwei), and Zhu Zhi (Junli)’s biographies have been revised. Major updates have been made to Sun Jian (Wentai) and Sun Ce (Bofu), and they are certainly worth taking a look at.

Gan Ning (Xingba)’s Sanguo yanyi biography is complete (by Dan Liao).

Some new photos have been added to the Fu Jie (Tiger Tally) page.

Oh, and Brian from 8-Bit Theater has started making new comics in his Dynasty Warriors Memories series. If you are a fan of Dynasty Warriors (or Final Fantasy for that matter), check it out!

2/14/03: The update continues to march along, consuming a good portion of our time. Today the DW4 section was updated, and the source code for the biography pages was finished. Sun Jian’s Comprehensive Officer Biography (by Jonathan Wu) was converted to serve as an example, take a look. You will notice some changes.

Other Officer portraits and avatars for Dynasty Warriors 4, enjoy!

Lü Bu’s theme from Xtreme Legends has been added to the music page.

DarkAnthem, a member of SoSZ, has joined the small crew of Sanguozhi translators here at Kongming’s Archives. He has completed Ma Su (Youchang), and a second biography is just around the corner.

2/10/03: Wu portraits and Wu avatars for Dynasty Warriors 4, enjoy!

2/9/03: The site conversion from HTML 4 Transitional with tables to XHTML CSS with div tags continues, and as we move along annoying, but minor problems are being fixed, pages are being trimmed for faster downloads, and the occasional new feature is being added (mostly for Gecko based browsers, as IE doesn’t yet support enough CSS2). Boring stuff, I know, but in the end it will make updates faster and will speed you progress through the site.

We have a large amount of new Dynasty Warriors 4 material; it should be posted some time in the next few days. We have already converted that section in anticipation of this update.

2/6/03: We are now in the process of converting the whole site to a CSS layout (instead of table based). The update has been in testing for a while, but if anything behaves unusually or incorrectly please take a screenshot and contact us. 4.x and earlier browser users, the site will look completely different to you now – your browser does not support the new layout, but you can still navigate it and access content (make note of the new “menu” button, or upgrade your browser). This layout should resolve many Internet Explorer 5.0.x issues. Additional layout themes will be included in the near future as well.

2/5/03: Sun Jian (Wentai), a new Comprehensive officer Biography by Jonathan Wu (and one of the best yet) is now online. Several new wallpapers have been added to the wallpaper page, including a new Zhen Ji piece by myself. Several additions have also been made to the fan art page.

2/1/03: We were so heartened by the response to our most recent Zhao Yun wallpaper that we decided to make another. Zhuge Liang (Dynasty Warriors 4). Thank you everyone, for your kind words.

Dynasty Warriors 4: They have come, Dynasty Warriors 4 avatars. Rejoice! Fifteen new gameplay screenshots and five new FMV screenshots have been added. Four new wallpapers are also available.

Dynasty Warriors 3 XL: Our HTML fifth weapons guide now features graphics of the various fifth weapons from the game. Hat tip: Clement Chong.

1/27/03: Presenting our new Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends Fifth Weapons Walkthrough (also available in plain text, but not at GameFAQs, another fellow beat me on the submission by one day). If you locate errors, have suggestions, or want to contribute strategies, please feel free to contact me. Update: The Fifth Weapons FAQ was added to GameFAQs anyway.

Also, I got bored the other day and made a new wallpaper. Simple is beautiful.

1/24/03: The Dynasty Warriors 4 section has been updated with new portraits (Wei), wallpaper, and descriptions of the new weapon progression system, elemental jades, and the new battle machines.

Added our new Sites Guide for Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII.

1/22/03: Yes, Dynasty Warriors 4 is two player (this has been confirmed); the rumor was nothing more than the result of a site that likes to make assumptions.

1/20/03: New Dynasty Warriors 4 content includes fifteen new screenshots, three new sites, eight new portraits (Shu), one new wallpaper, and in addition five new combat features have been detailed on the info page.

The wallpaper page has been updated with two new additions.

Giao Chau (Jiuwan) has submitted a new Zhuge Liang drawing.

Zhang Yi (Bogong)’s Sanguozhi biography has been translated by Lady Wuand uploaded.

1/19/03: Spookybanana’s Lair has been updated with some new European release activity from Koei. Included is the first PAL release date for Xtreme Legends, 3/23/03.

We are playing Xtreme Legends right now. We like it. Many of you wonder if we will make a FAQ for it. We aren’t sure yet.

1/17/02: Right-hand navigation across the whole site has been completely revised. The objectives were to make navigation more consistent and to reduce clutter in high-content sections. Nothing has been deleted, but some things have been moved. The changes are really too extensive to detail here but everything should be fairly easy to figure out. A new FAQs page has been created for the games, and a Site Map and the Dynasty Tactics 2 page are just around the bend.

Liao Hua (Yuanjian)’s Sanguozhi biography was completed by Lady Wuand Jonathan Wu finished Comprehensive Officer Biographies for Sun Ce (Bofu) and Taishi Ci (Ziyi) and Sun Quan (Zhongmou)’s has also been revised.

I know there are some site issues in Windows IE 5.0 now, I will start working on solutions. Thanks Maria.

1/16/03: No, we haven’t vanished, we are still here and the updates are still coming in. An update in progress is the cause for delay (which should be finished within a few days). Kongming’s Archives was originally designed to be a small game site, and obviously time, effort, and interest have turned it into something more. The old navigation menus were showing their age, and new content was getting difficult to add. These problems are currently being solved with a site wide navigation revision (which will be followed by a revamp of the Novel and History section). Check back soon.

Obviously many of you are looking for some great information on Xtreme Legends (released on the 15th of this month). Until we get the new FAQs page online, take a look at these great Xtreme Legends mini-guides by Muni Shinobu: XL FAQ, 5th Weapon Locations, and Very Hard Officer Drop List.

1/6/03: Zhao Yun (Zilong)’s Sanguozhi biography (translation by Sonken) and Liu Bang’s historical biography (by Jonathan Wu) have both received full revisions and include new content.

1/2/03: I have taken the liberty of answering a few more common questions regarding Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends in the XL FAQ. Do take a look if you are trying to find something out, as it is probably one of those questions.

1/1/03: To those of you that celebrate it today, Happy New Years! I shall celebrate by using the incorrect date on my checks and by posting the wrong year in game release dates. My new years resolution is to come up with clever or witty reasons as to why this happens when it eventually does – like pretending it never happened.

Some new Dynasty Warriors 4 wallpaper by Spookybanana has been added to the wallpaper page.

The Fan Art page has been rewritten from the ground up (faster download times, looks better, takes up less space) and now includes new fan art from three new artists including the very talented Cheryl Austin. Swing by her site, Studio Dink, if you get a chance, her fan art is among the best I have ever seen.