Kongming’s Archives: 2004 Updates

January 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during January 2004.

1/2/04: The Links Page has received some cleanup, numerous new links, and a few new sections (e.g. fan-fiction and fanlistings). I acknowledge a debt to the Dynasty Warriors Character Guide (external) for finding sight links for me to pilfer (and for simply being a good site to boot). Similarly, the Site FAQ has been updated with new information and made accurate, and the Game FAQ and Walkthroughs Page has been updated with new content for Dynasty Warriors 4 and Dynasty Warriors 4: Xtreme Legends.

I would also like to take this chance to thank our Web host, Caffinated Networks (misspelled intentionally, external), for being generally efficient and reliable. Our site profile (external) contains a speed rating which has come in two times listing Kongming’s Archives to be faster than 99% of all other pages on the Internet. Weighing in between 30-50KBs in size with images, we are impressed, and as such were inspired to give props to them as a ‘thank you’ for a job well done.

1/4/03: Efforts to clean up continue with fixes and improvements across the site. We area also experimenting with new ways of handing game home pages (see Dynasty Warriors 4) and have made other small changes you may or may not notice (e.g. background graphics in Novel and History). Themes have been enabled for most of the document view pages across the site as well (e.g. Biographies) and both alternate themes have been changed a little (especially ‘B’). I probably also did many other things which I have managed to forget.

The Officer English to Chinese (Hanzi) Conversion Project has been revised from the ground up for easier reading and the separate Decimal page is now offline (all of that information now included on the main project page). A new comprehensive Chronology of Battles from the Three Kingdoms Era has been posted as well (credit to Duke of Goats) and includes numerous battles sorted by date and listed by English and Chinese names.

1/10/04: The Destiny of an Emperor section is in the middle of a major revision, and receiving some new (and restored) content. More information on this update when it is completed, but it has been ongoing for the last week. The Staff Information Page has been fully updated. Several pages in the Dynasty Warriors 3 section were missed in the layout revision; this too is being resolved. Other updates were made, but I’ve managed to forget exactly where. Possible plans for the future include Fan Fiction and Poetry.

Sanguozhi biography updates: Cao Xiu (Wenlie)’s biography translated by Lady Wu and Shi Xie (Weiyan)’s biography translated by Jiuwan have been added. Guan Yu (Yunchang), Zhang Fei (Yide), Zhao Yun (Zilong), Ma Chao (Mengqi), and Huang Zhong (Hansheng), all translated by Sonken, have been updated with changes ranging from additions of Pei Songzhi’s notes to corrections and edits.

1/12/04: All Romance of the Three Kingdoms game pages have been updated to reflect the new layout changes, and walkthroughs for those games have all been updated. The walkthroughs page will be phased out in upcoming updates, walkthroughs instead being placed on individual games’ home pages with the objective of focusing content on what you are looking for, rather than what the site as a whole offers. Added a Dynasty Tactics 2 Mini-FAQ by Xiahou Mao, enjoy!

Cao Pi (Zihuan)’s Comprehensive Officer Biography. has been updated by Jonathan Wu.

1/13/04: Sun Yi (Shubi)’s Sanguo yanyi biography by Steven Trinkl been added. A number of pages, including some in the Dynasty Warriors 3 and Novel and History sections, have been updated to support the new layout. Few stray pages remain on the site, and they will be converted soon as well.

1/15/04: Okay, I give up. I tossed Kessen online when I received numerous requests for it, but those requests are already being dwarfed by the number of you asking for information on Samurai Warriors (Sengoku Musou). For that reason, we will be covering the game/series here at Kongming’s Archives even though it isn’t a Three Kingdoms game. I just tossed a page online with some of the media I have, including some mini-profiles of characters which will be in the game and several high-resolution portraits. In upcoming days I’ll add screenshots, wallpaper, and then start preparing a features list.

1/16/04: Twelve new wallpapers have been added to the Samurai Warriors (Sengoku Musou) section, featuring eleven characters (of the fifteen that are supposed to be in the game).

Mi Heng (Zhengping)’s Sanguo yanyi biography by yours truly has been added. I was going through the novel again while in a rare moment of boredom, and I realized that many of you may not have been introduced to this colorful character.

For those of you who haven’t been following the revamp of the new Destiny of an Emperor section, the following new pages are now available: Screenshots, Ending Screenshots, Jingzhou Officers, Shu Officers, an Officers Quicklist (Wu and Wei still offline), Items & Equipment, and even the Destiny of an Emperor 2 Ending. The right-hand menu link to the game startup screen has been fixed, and I have even composed my notes into a walkthrough (90% complete).

Naturally, more needs to be done in order to bring all the old content online, but we will stubbornly insist on finishing this project even if there are only 20 of you that care about the page. So there. Why you might ask? Because Destiny of an Emperor is the reason why I got interested in the Three Kingdoms era in the first place. Kongming’s Archives’ original roots were also in the form of a [ghetto] Destiny of an Emperor home page. I must pay tribute.

1/18/04: This would have been an update if I didn’t have to spend today’s freetime making it harder for people to abuse free downloads on this site via remote links on external Web pages. What can I say? Some people just don’t care. Please let me know if the music section is broken in some way for you.

1/20/04: Viewers have requested in the past that I feature fan-fiction for Romance of the Three Kingdoms games (e.g. Dynasty Warriors), novel, and history. At the time I declined the content, but that era has ended. I would like to introduce the new fan-fiction section and the first fan fiction, Breakfast with Yuan Shao (yes, that story is my fault). Want to submit your own fan-fiction? Please visit the fan-fiction submissions page. (This, and other recently introduced sections, will be included in the site map and other navigation menus in a future update).

1/22/04: I have cleaned up and retouched both the site map and the games menu (including sub-menu pages accessible through the right-hand menu). They should both load a little better and contain all information current to the site as of today. I also added the amazon.com links you’ve probably been seeing around the site (more on those later). I changed the ‘Images’ section on the right-hand menu to ‘Media’ and tossed the fan-fiction section under it. The section will start appearing here on other pages as well. Finally, the links section has been cleaned up, reorganized, and a links submission form has been added to make it easier to submit good sites for inclusion.

1/23/04: A little more cleanup today, mostly targeting the menu pages (including Avatars and Portraits). I have also completely updated the ‘About Us’ page, adding new sections on the foundation of Kongming’s Archives and site design and accessibility. I also tossed the full collection of Destiny of an Emperor portraits online, bringing the section that much closer to featuring everything it once contained back in 2001 (before Kongming’s Archives was born).

I have also added a print style sheet (CSS) to the main section of Kongming’s Archives (previously, it existed only on document pages such as Zhou Yu’s Comprehensive Officer Biography). When you select your browser’s print feature from any page on the site unnecessary and irrelevant things should be stripped, making it more useful and cleaner. I scanned an example from the Samurai Warriors section so you could see for yourself without having to print useless documents. Also, support for old browsers like Netscape Navigator 4.7 has been improved (though I’ll say this again, if you are using that browser you should upgrade to something respectable like Mozilla, Firebird, Netscape 7.x, or at least the latest version of Internet Explorer). For your viewing pleasure, this is what the site should look like, and this is what it looks like in Netscape 4.7.

1/25/04: The new Romance of the Three Kingdoms X home page is online and can be accessed through the site map, games menu, and through the overhead navigation bar (reload if option isn’t available). The Three Kingdoms X section also includes a screenshots page featuring portrait previews and details of new game elements (screenshots and explanations provided). Furthermore, Romance of the Three Kingdoms X, Samurai Warriors, Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires, and Kessen 3 have all been added to the release date tracker at the bottom of the page.

For those of you using Gecko browsers (e.g. Mozilla, Firebird, Netscape) we have created a search bar expansion tool which lets you activate our site search natively from your browser. We also added a few new tools for other searches like the American Heritage Dictionary (external) and Wikipedia (external). More information is available on the new Gecko Search Plugins page (listed under ‘Indulgence’ in the right-hand menu). Please offer any feedback you might have on these tools.

February 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during February 2004.

2/3/04: I’m busy catching up after signing in for college a few weeks late and recovering from a hard drive crash (playing with a few new HTML editors as I have some new software to choose from as well). I fixed several broken links on the site, and yes, I am aware there are broken links on the music page.  For now, four new Sanguozhi biographies from Lady Wu – Pan Zhang (Wengui), Zong Yu (Deyan), Deng Zhi (Bomiao), Chen Zhen (Xiaoqi) – with more to come in the near future.  Enjoy!

2/10/04: After some testing and research, ’s Sanguozhi biography has been converted to HTML and placed online. More than an HTML conversion from the PDF file, this update also includes fixes and improvements made by Lady Wu (translator). This method of displaying notes is different from what we’ve used here in the past (but much more compatible with large biographies) and may be considered for all future additions. If you have concerned or thoughts, for or against the new biography presentation method, please send me an email.

In case you are interested, Lord Alden is forming a Three Kingdoms focus group (external) over at threekingdoms.com (external). Go have a look if this is the sort of thing you might be interested in.

Safari: I was planning on making a custom style sheet for those of you who are using Apple’s Safari Web browser (external) to access Kongming’s Archives, which uses several technologies it did not support (this being most obvious with alternative themes), but that’s not necessary now.  If you are using Panther (10.3), download Safari 1.2 (external) for full support of all XHTML and CSS used on this site, the browser upgrade resolves all related bugs.

2/15/04: I took some time away from posting biographies and content to write some tools to automate most of the conversion that has to take place when porting a Word document or text through the submission form to XHTML for display on this site. The mini-project is finished, and in only an hour and a half I was able to prepare a rather large amount of content. This will be of much use in future updates (I love Regular Expressions, external).

Zhang Xiu, Fei Yi (Wenwei), and Wu Can (Kongxiu)’s Sanguozhi biographies have been translated by Lady Wu and placed online.  Sun Ce (Bofu)’s Sanguo yanyi biography has been authored by Morgan Evans and is also online. Finally, the old Hanzi project has now been essentially ‘completed’.  It now features over 700 names, including nearly every Romance of the Three Kingdoms officer you might be familiar with, and has now been divided into sub-sections (in alphabetical order).  We’re also adding common names (such as Luo Guanzhong) and books (like Sanguozhi) to the main page.  There are still a few bumps to iron out, and I’m sure there’s an error or two to hunt down, but I’m sure those of you who are interested in it will be quite pleased.  And for those of you who don’t know, the decimal entities can be pasted into most online forums and some chat clients to display the actual Chinese characters without a Chinese language input tool.

2/16/04: Additional time spent to bring you more of the Sanguozhi biography translations which are floating around on the Internet, today four more additions from Jiuwan’s fine collection: Dian Wei (Zimian), Pang De (Lingming), Xu Chu (Zhongkang), and Zhang He (Junyi). More to come.

2/17/04: More Sanguozhi biography translations from Jiuwan, for your viewing pleasure: Cao Ang (Zixiu), Cao Chong (Cangshu), Cao Shuo, Cao Xiong, and Yang Yi (Weigong).

2/19/04: Jia Xu (Wenhe)’s Sanguozhi biography, translated by Lady Wu, is now online for your viewing pleasure. I was more than overjoyed to see this one myself. Additionally, work has gone into expanding the Hanzi Project’s potential after suggestions from WilliamL which accompanied a new submission. I’ve finished working on the idea, and soon a page with submission instructions related to the new change will be available.

2/27/04: Yu Jin (Wenze)'s Sanguozhi biography translated by Sun Zhongmou has been added. Wei Yan (Wenchang)'s Sanguo yanyi biography compiled by Wizardman has been added. The Hanzi Project has been updated once again with new content and corrections, notes are being added in places, instructions on how to submit to the project are coming soon.

The fan-fiction section has been updated with three new additions (with still a few more to put online). Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX for PS2 in English is now available in NTSC format (no PAL release information yet). For those of you that haven't played it yet, it features some drastic changes new to the series. I'm enjoying it right now myself, but if you have doubts do your homework. Yes, this version doesn't feature the ability to play an officer, but that will probably be restored in Romance of the Three Kingdoms X.  

March 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during March 2004.

3/4/04: He Jin (Suigao)’s Comprehensive Officer Biography by Jonathan Wu has received a major update and has essentially become a new biography. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX FAQs have been updated, and I’ll probably be adding an officers guide for secret names (e.g. Xiang Ji, Han Xin) and special characters (e.g. Huang Yue Ying, Mistress Zhen) soon as well.

3/5/04: Cao Cao (Mengde)’s Life Chronology by Morgan Evans has been added to the biography section. The fan fiction section has also been updated with more content.

3/6/04: Emperor Shao (Liu Bian)’s Comprehensive Officer Biography by Jonathan Wu has been added, and Empress He’s has received a major update (like He Jin, it is basically a whole new biography). Enjoy!

As you may have noticed, Kongming’s Archives was offline for several hours today. This was during a server migration (we went from a good server to something even more wonderful, perhaps you’ll notice when browsing the site in the future). Either way, the work is done, and we are now using the new box.

As of last month this site is two years old, and this is also the second time in a row I’ve completely forget about it until a month afterward. It occurs to me that my birthday is only three months away, again that comes as a shock to me as I can’t quite figure out what happened to the year. I must be losing it…

3/12/04: Added the Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX Secret Officers Guide based off a plain text version by Ben Hutchinson. The guide is still missing some officers, but they should be added in upcoming days. In the mean time, if you have all the required information for any of those officers, please let us know.

April 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during April 2004.

4/1/04: Welcome back everyone, especially those of you who weren’t able to find the links back to our real home page yesterday. Naturally enough, April Fools’ as well!  It was a delight to see all the different reactions our sudden decision to put an end to Kongming’s Archives and launch, in its place, Pikachu’s Archives brought out in you. Some were delighted, some were horrified, some were angry, some had a great laugh, some wrote in offering to help me with content so the new project could get off its feet.

I’ll come clean now (as I certainly was stubborn about it yesterday). There’s no Pikachu’s Archives, I was pulling your leg (thus is the glory of the April Fools’ holiday). Additionally, there won’t ever be a Pikachu’s Archives from me, I don’t have enough interest in Pokémon to even dream of it (heck, I even misspelled ‘Pikachu’, ‘Picachu’, in the original prank). We have added Pikachu’s Archives to our site archives page next to Timmy’s Home Page (2003) so you can see it again whenever you like, and also included a whole new page detailing the creation and background of the prank while offering all associated graphics files (including Photoshop and Illustrator documents) for your own use or amusement. I now have a long list of ‘April Fools’ emails to send out. If any of you would like to comment on this little prank of ours, please feel free to email me or post in the Pikachu’s Archives thread in the Kongming’s Archives forum at Scholars of Shen Zhou (which does not require an account).

For those of you that do not know, the Simulated RTK (SimRTK) has recently celebrated its first birthday under Kongming’s Archives (Simulated RTK as a game actually started around three years ago). To make things even more interesting, the game it started with a year ago has recently ended, bringing conclusion to a one year competition between players in a forum-based Romance of the Three Kingdoms role-playing game. Currently, production is underway on a complete rules revision (and trust me, it is a very large one, I’ve put a lot of work into it and the rest of the team is putting mountains more in as well). A brand new SimRTK will be unveiled soon and the next game will begin. Those of you who registered will receive an email when this takes place (in your registration email account) and it will also be announced here at Kongming’s Archives.

And so you don’t come out of this completely empty handed, presenting the Comprehensive Officer Biographies of Liu Yao (Zhengli) along with updates to Empress He and Emperor Shao. Finally, enjoy Zhang Liao (Wenyuan)’s Sanguozhi biography translated by Jonathan Wu.

4/4/04: To the Simulated RTK (SimRTK) fans and anyone who is interested in the game; the time for which many of you have been waiting has come. The new game will be starting in approximately two weeks and ruler signups are being accepted now. If you are interested in playing a ruler during the new game you should join right away. Even if you are just interested in participating as a normal member (officer) it is good to head over early to get used to the community and game structure before it actually starts.

Simulated RTK is an online forum-based role-play version of the game Romance of the Three Kingdoms and does not require any software or signup fees. Players assume the role of original Three Kingdoms rulers and officers while the historical characters you’ve come to love and hate make appearances in the game as your subordinates, allies, enemies, and in some cases are even role-played by game masters in plot elements or as officers in kingdoms. The objective is to unify China, competing against other human players. The winner will always be a player, but game master kingdoms may appear in support of additional storyline elements. It is a true test of wits, politics, kingdom management, and strategy, and you’ll find that competing against other humans creates an experience unlike anything you’ve seen in a video game.

Many changes are being made for this new version of SimRTK, including a completely reworked rules system (the backbone of the game). Those of you who were playing in the previous game may have been aware of the ‘v2 conversion’. Production of that new system continued through the conclusion behind the scenes, and through the break that was taken after game end. The idea is to have a solid foundation available for this new game; one which changes many issues we felt—along with many players—to detract from the gameplay experience. Side note: The URL has changed from http://rtk.sim-game.com/ to https://www.simrtk.net/, but if you encounter temporary DNS errors at the new domain you can still access it using the old address.

4/18/04: A plethora of smaller updates were made over the last few weeks. First, I would like to inform those of you that do not yet know of Dr. Rafe de Crespigny’s decision to put many of his marvelous Han and Three Kingdoms books online in PDF format for free download. Included among these wonderful works is the highly sought after and out-of-print Generals of the South. If you are interested in studying the history behind Romance of the Three Kingdoms I strongly suggest reading this material. I have linked to individual publications which are particularly relevant, and to the publications list itself, in the ‘Good Reading’ section of our links page.

Incidentally, our links page itself has also been updated (new content has been added and old content has been removed). Check for the ‘NEW!’ or ‘Updated!’ notes to see what has changed.

The English translation of Yuki Koyanagi’s song Cross Colors (the ending song of Dynasty Warriors 4) is now available as well. And to answer the regular accompanying question, yes, we do have the English version mp3, but it is currently only available in Odds and Ends. If we can find a person to host it for free we’ll make it available to everyone.

The fan-fiction section has been updated.

An all-new Three Kingdoms poetry section has been added. At present it only contains the fine work of a single author but more will be added as various poets (perhaps you?) make contributions. Also planned for this section are translations of poetry by original Three Kingdoms authors (e.g. Cao Zhi) and poetry from the book, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

In the Novel and History section Liu Shan’s Life Chronology and Lady Zhurong’s Sanguo yanyi biography by Morgan Evans have been uploaded. Sun Shao’s Sanguo yanyi biography by Steven Trinki is also available for your viewing pleasure. I suspect there may have been another update or in this section, but I’ve forgotten exactly what amidst the whirl of chaos known as day-to-day life with a generous sprinkle of finals.

4/30/04: Sanguo yanyi biographies for Zhang Rang (the palace attendant in He Jin’s time), King Shamoke, King Wutugu, and Cao Cao (Mengde) by Morgan Evans have been uploaded for your viewing pleasure. Cao Cao’s biography is very large (over 30 pages in Word, 100Kbs in HTML) and this is the first of multiple installments. The rest of his biography will come in future as Morgan completes them.

The Disgaea: Hour of Darkness avatars package has been updated. It now includes 360 different images in four different forms of 64x64px avatars along with two different forms of 50x50px AIM icons for a total of 2160 images. Please go easy on the downloads and spare us the bandwidth if the previews don’t interest you.

May 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during May 2004.

5/10/04: I would like to apologize for mucking around with the site navigation again. Certain types of content (movies and writing in particular) weren’t very compatible with the previous navigation structure, and I had a few ideas to streamline it anyway. ‘Avatars’, ‘Portraits’, and ‘Wallpaper’ in the top menu have all moved to a combination page named ‘Graphics’ from which you can navigate directly to content. Links leading directly to the previously mentioned pages can still be found on the right-hand menu under ‘Artistic’ (formerly ‘Media’). The ‘Home’ section of the right-hand menu has been completely removed and many of its contents are now under ‘Universal’ and accessible across the site.

With this update comes some new bits for you to enjoy as well. Aside from the new Artistic Content page (accessible from the top menu and through the little double arrow link (») on the right hand menu by ‘Artistic’). There is also a whole new section, the Products Page, dedicated to listing interesting products (books, games, movies, and more) we think you might be interested in. It offers links to eBay searches, Amazon product pages, Google searches and more. If you know of any nifty Three Kingdoms products or books that you feel others might enjoy as well, please write in and tell me about them. Feedback is, of course, also always welcome.

And now for what provoked this whole update: a new page has been added for the Japanese animé, Great Conquest: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, covering information on the different versions available, the movie itself, how to get it, and even offering some screenshots. In the future we will revive the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Television Series page as well (now that we finally have a place to put it). These products are at home in the Movies section of the Three Kingdoms Products Page.

Updates have been made to Poetry and Fan Fiction with more to come.

Samurai Warriors has been released (buy at Amazon.com). It is sure to please the Dynasty Warriors fans among you, the combat system remaining pretty much the same only stages generate originally as you play and the officer creation option is much more in-depth than it ever has been before. It is based on the Warring States period of Japanese history.

Menus and navigation at both Scholars of Shen Zhou and Simulated RTK have been updated to be consistent with recently made changes (something that was due long ago), and the Simulated RTK submenu is actually now game-specific rather than focused on Kongming’s Archives.

The sorely neglected Submitted Literature and Writing page buried inside the Novel and History section has received a partial facelift, a large update, and hopefully will now come out of its retirement to get a little more attention. If you have any Three Kingdoms essays or writings that you feel would be suitable for that page, please feel free to submit them. Rules are similar to fan fiction submissions.

I’ve got some more content waiting to go online in my inbox and you’ll probably see some of it in upcoming days. It was delayed in part by a very stubborn bug in Internet Explorer which took me about five hours to solve (which brings something to mind: you should all download and try Mozilla Firefox; it has better features and greater security than Internet Explorer, it seems, ever will). If anyone comes across bugs in the layout or updates, especially the Internet Explorer users among you (you represent the vast majority of our audience), please report them using the bug submission option on our email page. I do fix reported bugs, so this is the best way to make the site better for everyone.

June 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during May 2004.

6/4/04: This last month may have seemed rather quiet, but a great deal of work has actually gone into the site during the silence. I have been working a lot on the code behind the site to streamline it, simplify updating, and to speed it considerably on your end. The whole site uses compression now, which will reduce your page downloads by about 50% in most modern browsers—you may have already noticed the difference. More to the point though, there are some changes that I’d like to let everyone know about (even though I’m still setting a few things up).

All the text documents such as FAQs and Walkthroughs featured on this site are now handled by a single PHP script that offers a number of new features: a temporary header will display on the top of the page giving you basic navigation options, information on the FAQ such as the author and a link to the actual text file on the site (the email links won’t be spidered because they are dynamically generated). Most importantly, all the FAQs viewed this way are also compressed, and will download about three times faster than before.

The music page has been reworked from the ground up to make it less clunky, and easier to navigate. The music selection itself has changed a little, and new section information has been added. Also included is a list of soundtracks we have, but don’t have a host for. If you are interested in hosting any of them please let us know. Is anyone out there brave enough to host the Samurai Warriors OST?

Speaking of Samurai Warriors, the Odds & Ends section has been completely redesigned with features (mostly security related) that will allow me to offer more content than I was previously able to. Those of you who have been given access as a thank you for donations can visit the old page (the one I gave you the link to in the email) and complete the new form. After completion, you’ll get an account and access to the new section. After most of you have been set up, I’m going to try to get you the Samurai Warriors soundtrack in four or so parts.

There have been other updates and changes (like a complete update of FAQs for Romance of the Three Kingdoms IX and some new content on the Poetry Page) but much of what has been done has now escaped me; just go ahead and check your favorite areas. We also haven’t offered coverage of Dynasty Warriors: Empires yet, but you can at least learn about the game in the mean time by visiting Koei’s new Dynasty Warriors: Empires Home Page. We will continue to keep release dates current at the bottom of this page.

July 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during July 2004.

7/6/04: Much niftyness has taken place behind the scenes as of late, prompting this site to shape into one streamlined beast that’s actually a pleasure to make content for. I’m not going to bore you with the details, as I’m sure there’s about three of you out there that want to hear about stuff like PHP and CSS, but suffice it to say it is making it about four times easier for me to work on additions. Much is still under development, but the juicy bits are to come; Kongming’s Archives is not close to poofing into a ball of smoke, so enjoy. Enjoy I say!

The following things have randomly appeared on the site over the last month, in no particular order: Sun Jing (Youtai)’s Sanguozhi biography by Jonathan Wu, some FAQ additions and updates (keep an eye on Samurai Warriors), and some portraits and AIM avatars from the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms (thanks for the submission, Andrew; I love the old school portraits too). Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires, has been moved up to an earlier release date, and (to answer the email questions) I have absolutely no clue what, if anything, is happening with Kessen 3.

I have the full Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII soundtrack, along with the nearly complete Dynasty Tactics 2 soundtrack. Soon I’ll probably have the Romance of the Three Kingdoms X soundtrack as well. If anyone is interested in hosting them please let me know. On a slightly related note, I’m hosting the first of four installations of Samurai Warriors OST myself in Odds & Ends (for those of you that have access). Don’t miss out on any of the downloads as they might not appear again in quite some time.

7/21/04: I am putting a lot of work into a new project for Kongming’s Archives. When finished, it will be a quiz that randomly draws content from a large database of questions, which will be updated with submissions as they come in. Members with an account can save scores, and the best will be displayed on the quiz home page, along with their ‘affiliation’. You’ll be able to sign up under your favorite group (e.g. Scholars of Shen Zhou, Three Kingdoms Frontier, Sanguo Online) and enjoy some friendly competition in their name. The quiz itself is actually well under way and running smoothly, but is still in beta testing.

I would, however, like to invite everyone who visits the site to submit questions for the upcoming quiz. The more people submit questions, the sooner we’ll be able to share the quiz with you publicly. There are five categories: Three Kingdoms Games, Three Kingdoms Novel and History (Easy, Moderate, and Hard), and Simulated RTK (a bonus for participants of that game). People who submit very large amounts may get a ‘thank you’ prize of some sort, and once the quiz is running, we’ll also give out some other prizes (like soundtrack downloads). To submit questions now, please use the Quiz Submission Form (and don’t worry that a question is too random excuse to send in; we would love to see variety from all sorts of people and levels of knowledge). As for the quiz itself, I will post more information on it is opened fully to the public.

Someone wrote me earlier asking if I had a map of Destiny of an Emperor. I did not, but in the past I had spent hours working on one and still have the file. I dug it up and spent a little more time to finish it, so now it is available for everyone to enjoy. It has been added to the Destiny of an Emperor section (view it here).

7/23/04: It has long been under development, but the Romance of the Three Kingdoms quiz project has finally been opened for public use! Sign up for a new account under your favorite forum or site and enjoy some friendly competition in their name, or simply test your knowledge and enjoy yourself with no need of an account at all. There are five quizzes, Game, Easy, Moderate, Hard, and Simulated RTK. Down the road trivia quizzes for Scholars of Shen Zhou and Kongming’s Archives itself may also be added.

The Three Kingdoms quiz project will continue to grow with the submission of new questions. Everyone is welcome to come up with new additions for the database, difficult or hard. Not only is this a chance to make the quiz more original, but also to help expand people’s knowledge of the Three Kingdoms in fun ways. Submissions can be sent in through the Three Kingdoms quiz submission form.

In September, for the top scorer in each of the five categories, I’ll host a free download of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms V OST, and might even let people pick an alternate soundtrack depending on circumstances when the time comes (an email address will be required for contact). The top question contributor will also receive a soundtrack download. The top three question contributors, in addition, will also be given access to our Odds & Ends section as a thank you for their contributions. If you have any questions, or encounter any problems, please contact me via email. The quiz will remain accessible under ‘Universal’ on the right-hand menu, and through the site map. Enjoy the new addition to the Three Kingdoms community!

7/25/04: A new collection of Romance of the Three Kingdoms X screenshots has been uploaded, and includes various portraits, various elements and happenings, and excerpts from Guan Yu’s 1000 li journey event (also, for those of you that own an Asian PC release of the game, you might want to have a look at Jonathan Wu’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms X Translation Project). The music project has been updated with Disgaea: Hour of Darkness for free download, and the broken Dynasty Warriors 4 links have been fixed. Additionally, emails in the quiz project are now safe from harvesting, and the GameFAQs Three Kingdoms Social Board has been added as an affiliation option.

I’ve got some spare bandwidth to throw at Odds & Ends over the end of this month and perhaps into next as well, so the Samurai Warriors OST plans have changed. Instead of sharing it in installments over four months, I’ve now posted the full 120 MB download. If you have access, snag it while it is available (it will be hard to find a free host due to the file size).

7/26/04: A new Sanguo yanyi biography, Man Chong (Boning), is now available for your viewing pleasure. It features what is the third remake of our biography notes approach, suggested by Morgan Evans (also the author of this biography). Click note links in the biography to toggle requested content into view below the paragraph in question, and click a second time to hide again. Feedback is welcome, of course, but pending no major problems this new method will gradually be implemented to supplant the previous two approaches we’ve used. Notes should always display when printing.

7/29/04: I recorded and am now hosting the Destiny of an Emperor soundtrack for free download on the music page. Two versions are available: one for playing on repeat (loops), and the other for listening through normally (longer, doesn’t loop as well). I also updated the list of soundtracks we have available for hosting (including Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII, Romance of the Three Kingdoms X, and Dynasty Tactics 2).

August 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during August 2004.

8/3/04: Here’s a fun update for those of you who enjoy looking into the history or story behind officers. New Sanguozhi biographies for both Ling Tong (Gongji) and Lü Meng (Ziming) have been added, both translated by Lady Wu. The Officer Life Chronologies of Liu Shan (Gongsi) and Cao Cao (Mengde) have both been completely revised. Also from Morgan Evans, three new Sanguo yanyi biographies: Hua Xiong, King Meng Huo, and the second installment of Cao Cao (Mengde). And finally, after a friendly email from Amanda, I tossed the Qiao Sisters (Da Qiao and Xiao Qiao) biography together myself, though given the trend of requests I’m sure many of you will enjoy it. A few more biographies will be posted in upcoming days.

8/7/04: Presenting new Sanguo yanyi biographies for Yan Liang and Wen Chou, Yuan Shao’s champions, by Morgan Evans. Some other biographies will be posted (generally as they are ready) over the upcoming days, but the remainder of the freetime I have for this site will be spent updating the older biographies in our archive. We have updated the layout numerous times in the past, and it is getting to a point where there are just too many different ways in which the notes are handled. When I’m done, they’ll all work exactly the same.

8/10/04: New Sanguo yanyi biographies for Ji Ling, by Mike Holmes—his first on the site, and Pang De (Lingming), by Morgan Evans.

8/16/04: New Sanguo yanyi biographies for Li Ru, by Mike Holmes and Morgan Evans, and Ma Teng (Shoucheng), by Morgan Evans.

8/22/04: Presenting a new Sanguo yanyi biography for Han Sui (Wenyue), authored by Morgan Evans, and the new Sanguozhi biography of Xun Yu (Wenruo), translated by Lady Wu. The Xun Yu biography is very large, and anybody who likes to read about Wei certainly shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to read it, as Xun Yu was one of the most important people in the development of Cao Cao’s kingdom. Slowly but surely, the biographies on this site continue to be updated to the new standard format—some of you may have noticed changes along the way.

Sun Yu (Zhongyi)’s Sanguozhi biography, translated by Lady Wu, has also been added.

September 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during September 2004.

9/11/04: A new Sanguozhi biography translation from Lady Wu, Bu Zhi (Zishan), is now available. Additionally, new Sanguo yanyi biographies for Liu Pi (the Yellow Turban) and Zhuge Jin (Ziyu) (Zhuge Liang’s brother) are also online, both authored by Mike Holmes.

Today also marks the introduction of the new Romance of the Three Kingdoms Event Summary Project. This page lists ‘biographies’ for various Three Kingdoms events as they appeared in the novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (meaning they may include fictional information, which will frequently be documented in the notes). I prepared three myself: Three Brothers’ Oath in the Peach Tree Garden, Lü Bu Saves Liu Bei With a Feat of Marksmanship, and In a Plum Garden, Cao Cao Discusses Heroes. If you enjoy writing, you can submit your own. Instructions are available on the events home page.

Those new additions mentioned, I’m sure a number of you have noticed the delay prior to this update. A lot has been happening in my life, and for once they are all nothing short of wonderful. I am in the middle of preparing a move and much more, so updates here will most likely remain rather sparse for the time being. When everything settles down a little, I’ll share more details with everyone. Until then, enjoy everything the site has to offer.

October 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during October 2004.

10/28/04: New Sanguo yanyi biographies for Wu Lan, Lei Tong, and He Man have been added to the biographies section, all authored by Mike Holmes. The links page has also received some small updates. Additionally, a friend has set up a new free-style online forum-based role-playing game in a fantasy setting; Realm of Legends. If you are interested in role-playing, or would like to try it out, drop by and pay them a visit.

November 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during November 2004.

11/4/04: New Sanguo yanyi biographies authored by Sam Wrest have been added for Fu Qian, an often-overlooked Shu officer, and the even more unknown Lu Xun of Shu. Comprehensive Officer Biographies have also been authored for Sun Ben (Boyang), Sun Fu (Guoyi), and Sun He (Bohai), none of which appear in any Three Kingdoms games, and Sun Huan (Shuwu) along with the talented Lu Fan (Ziheng); all officers of Wu.

11/10/04: It is the day many of you have been waiting for! Samurai Warriors: Xtreme Legends has been released by Koei and is now available at most major retailers and game stores with a suggested price of $29.99. You can can also order it online and have it delivered to your home or as a gift. Among other things, the expansion features sixth level weapons, new items and skills, two new difficulties, four new characters with new stages, and something it certainly needed, a redesigned two-player musou attack. You can, as usual, import your Samurai Warriors game data.

New Sanguo yanyi biographies for Zhuge Zhan (Siyuan), Zhuge Liang’s son, and Zhuge Shang, Zhuge Zhan’s oldest son, have both been added to the biographies page. The story of their fight in the final decline of Shu is dramatic to say the least, or perhaps even sad for people that are fond of the kingdom. Both biographies are by Sam Wrest.

December 2004

Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made during December 2004.

12/3/04: I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! The site may have seemed quiet over the last month, but that certainly wasn’t the case as some of you may have noticed. A good amount of time has been spent moving most of our officer information into a database. That may sound boring, but it enables us to add much more functionality to the site, makes updates much easier, and makes new projects possible when they wouldn’t have been realistic before.

What good does this do you now? Have a look at the Officer Style Name Reference List, the Hanzi Project, the Biographies (by Type) and the Biographies (by Kingdom) sections for examples. You can now search through content on each of those pages (even using regular expressions if you know how), giving you a chance to access the content you want much faster. You may also bookmark your results. Down the road you’ll see some other fun new additions (and a few new biographies in the next update). Please note that there may be some broken links at this time. If you find any of them, please let me know.

12/6/04: As mentioned earlier, today brings some new Sanguo yanyi Biographies, all from Sam Wrest. They include: Chen Wu (Zilie), the well-known Wu officer; Wen Yang, an officer with quite a tale to tell about his service through Wei/Jin and Wu; and Fu Tong, Fu Qian’s father and an officer in service to Shu. Fu Qian’s biography has also been completely revised and is certainly worth a re-read for anyone interested in his biography.

During occasional freetime I am revising the biographies page to include links to biographies (ranging from fair to wonderful quality) at other locations around the internet. Most of them have been there for quite some time now, but when this is done it should give many of you a chance to read some new material you might not have seen before. More on this when it is complete.

12/17/04: Happy holidays to everyone! We’ll probably be enjoying family and personal time for the next week or two, but here’s an update for you: A number of external biographies have been added to the biographies home page and will appear with ‘External (Type)’ links. Users of non-Internet Explorer browsers can hold their cursor over their link to find out which site the biography is hosted at, and the ‘Type’ part of the link explains which kind of biography the link leads to (for example, SGZ for Sanguozhi). The quality of these external biographies ranges from fair to excellent, so don’t let one judge the others for you. I hope everyone enjoys this new addition.

The reign years home page has been completely rebuilt with new information.

Koei has announced a March 2005 release for Dynasty Warriors 5 in the United States, and is aiming for a late February release in Asia (see game releases at the bottom). I imagine the UK release date will be announced in the near future. More on Dynasty Warriors 5 as information develops.