Walkthroughs FAQ
Well, I know most of my walkthroughs themselves have their own FAQ sections, but some questions may apply to all or none of them, so I will put them here
for simplicity's sake. Please excuse the boring visual state of this page, as I am terribly uncreative (otherwise why would my entire site be dedicated
to walkthroughs of video games made by other people instead of, say, writing my own stories). If I get annoyed enough, I'll make it more
aesthetically-pleasing later.
- WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! And what happened to Shades of Silence?
OK so nobody's actually asked me this cause, well, I am writing this before getting my site back up and nobody could contact me if my website was dead but since the explanation on the main page
won't be up forever I'll post the explanation here. Basically my domain was up for renewal in Jan 2015, but suddenly out of nowhere the great company (we'll call them X) I had been hosted by started to deteriorate
in their customer service. Like, I literally had to jump through hoops just to PAY THEM to renew my domain. Like... really, I had to fight with them to get them to take my money? What. So it
took like 1-2 months after the expiration date to get them to process the payment, which was kinda insane. Then maybe a month or two after that I get an email from them saying that their company
had been bought by company Y and that "soon" we would be receiving an email from Y. So "soon" rolls around (probably like 2 weeks later really) and Y is like "All you old X clients have like
two weeks to pick a plan from us or GTFO." So I look at their plans and they had like NO space. Like, even their most expensive plan didn't have enough space for my site, and it was like double
what I had been paying X anyway so it was just ridiculous. So I started looking for a new hosting service. I ended up getting an account at iPage, but then they were like "YOU CAN'T USE YOUR
ACCOUNT THAT YOU ALREADY PAID FOR UNTIL WE OWN YOUR DOMAIN." What. Fuck you. No seriously, you'll see why in a minute. So like I said I had just renewed my domain in Jan. I checked the WhoIS
for shadesofsilence.net and even now several months after Company X literally ceased to exist it said that my domain was still owned by them. So I contact Company Y and they were like "Yep, we
bought Company X. Nope, we're not smart enough to transfer stuff that we own now over to us. But we'll go ahead and do that right away!" At this point iPage informs me that after an ownership
transfer of a domain it takes 30 days before you can re-transfer ownership. So I had to wait at least a month (30 days plus however long Company Y was gonna take to get around to transfering ownership
of their own domains over to themselves wtf). Maybe a week later Company Y is like "OK we transferred it" and stupid me I just took their word for it. At this point it was like September already
and I had the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) coming up in Dec and I was trying to get back into university for Jan 2016 so I was really busy at this point and was like, well it's been
like forever already, a month or two isn't gonna kill anyone. So I finished my exam and got re-admitted into uni and was like, OK I can breathe now, so I guess I can take some time to get this website
nonsense sorted. SURPRISE SURPRISE Company X is still listed as owning shadesofsilence.net (and in case anyone was wondering it's set to "client transfer prohibited" so no, I couldn't transfer it over
myself). Since the domain was set to expire at the end of Jan and that was like only a month away at this point I decided to just let it expire. I also cancelled my iPage account cause again,
fuck you guys. Nobody else insists on owning a domain before you can use an account you already paid for (and certainly doesn't withold that information until after you've paid them). And since
this whole thing was such utter bullshit that's why iPage is the only company I'm naming by name in this section, so hopefully nobody else gets fucked over by these guys.
SO! Now it is the end of Jan but my new host (that I hadn't paid for an account with yet so kudos to them for not being dicks like iPage) informs me that there's a 30-60 day grace period after
a domain "expires" before someone can purchase it (and I'll be damned if I'm going to renew it with Company Y, hell no). Now here's where we take a step back in time to explain why my domain
was "shadesofsilence.net." So way back when my best friend at the time was this crazy person who would change her AIM/MSN/whatever sn's like 3x a week, AND she would do this with her domains too.
Now, I don't know how much you guys know about domains but while a lot of hosts will give you a free domain with a hosting package purchase, they won't give you a million free domains. So she
was literally spending hundreds of dollars a week on new domains. I don't know what she did with them when she got sick of them, maybe "re-sold" them somehow to random people, I don't even know.
But my birthday rolled around at some point during this insanity, and I've never been the kind of person to make a big deal about my birthday, let alone expect presents from people but she'd
known me since we were elementary school kids, you know, back when birthdays were a big deal, so she knew when my birthday was and was like "oh I wish I could buy you something but I have no
money" and I was like "pfft don't worry about it I don't care" and she was like "NO WAIT I HAVE ALL OF THESE DOMAINS. Here, pick one and you can have it." So basically I got a free domain for
a year and then after that I would renew it myself with whoever I wanted, not that she was going to pay for it forever or anything. She gives me this list of domains she currently owned and
"shadesofsilence" seemed the most interesting of the list. Some of you might remember it used to be .com instead of .net but that was cause of another big mess with a different company waaaay
back when. The point is that I never created the name. Now, my guild in GuildWars came about cause some friends and I were sitting around being like "we need to make our own guild. The hell
should we name it?" and guilds in GWs come with a four-character tag, so for those of us on American servers (which we were at the time) that means four letters so we needed a guild name and a
four-letter guild tag that went together. So we're sitting around tossing names out and someone was like "well we raise hell so it should be Chaotic something" "Dude, CHAOS is too long for a
guild tag" me: "Hey, what about KAOS?" "Sure that works. But Kaotic what?" Another 10min of tossing "Kaotic" names around, and I go "Hey, what about Kaotic Silence? Then KAOS makes more sense
cause Silence has an S in it." And thus the guild Kaotic Silence [KAOS] was born. Eventually I took over as guild leader and eveeeeeeeeeeentually KAOS migrated to GW2 and thus Kaotic Silence
has been MINE for years and years and years, whereas Shades of Silence was something someone else made up and I just happened to end up with.
So I was intending on just buying shadesofsilence.net after it expired and then redirecting it to kaoticsilence.com, however apparently one of those places that buys up expired domains through
a broker to resell in a super-complicated manner only through their services bought it so I don't own shadesofsilence.net anymore so I guess we're just gonna be Kaotic Silence from now on (yaaay,
I get to re-brand all of my banners... ^=__=^;; ). AND SO HERE WE ARE, back in non-business. :P
- Can I write a walkthrough for your site?
Sorry, but this is a big resounding NO. I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but I've had two offers to write walkthroughs/sections of walkthroughs from
other people before, and they've not really followed through. One was the Gummi Ship Guide of the Kingdom Hearts walkthrough, which after two years of
waiting for the person to actually do what they said they'd do, I gave up and did it myself. The other one was the Final Fantasy VII walkthrough (yes,
the whole thing), and around 2003 that person was like "I'm too busy now" and just stopped working on it. Now (2009), it's still never been finished by
this person and I have to pick it up eventually. I also have a sneaking suspicion that what they did write was ripped entirely from the official guide
book for the game sold in stores, but I can't confirm it as I don't own the official guide. I just hope I don't get sued over it... ^<__<^;;
Please note that both of these examples were of people who up and offered to do those things for me, not people that I randomly asked to do it for me. So
again, no, sorry, I do not accept offers of work done by anyone other than myself. It's really more trouble than benefit for me, and anyone who visits my
site.
- How come some of your pages have a bunch of squares or ????'s in random places?
On some pages (mostly character bio pages), I have things written in Japanese (mostly character names). If you do not have Asian language support installed
on your computer, anything written in Japanese (like so: 日本語が話しますか) will show up as either squares or a bunch of question marks.
This page will show you how to install
Asian language support onto your computer if you run Windows XP, and also has links for instructions if you're running Windows 2000 or Vista. If that
website ever goes away, just Google "Japanese language pack" or "Asian language pack" (the Japanese one will technically include all East Asian languages,
so if you need Chinese or Korean or something as well for whatever reason, you're covered). East Asian language support files are technically included
with all Windows OS, so the instructions basically just enable pre-existing OS files, so you're not downloading anything and all of the files are supported
by Microsoft. If you're on a Mac, they supposedly have this option enabled from the get-go, so you should have no problems whatsoever.
And no, I'm not going to teach anybody Japanese, so don't ask. I'm not even remotely fluent.
- I found something wrong/incorrect/messed up/buggy on one of your pages. What should I do about it?
Each page of every walkthrough should have a "Contact the Webmaster" link on it. If you find something wrong/whatever on one of my pages,
feel free to contact me about it and I'll fix it as soon as I can. If you do this, please specify what walkthrough it is, and
what page it is (i.e., include the URL, like http://whateverelse ), and exactly what the problem is. If it's incorrect information in a walkthrough and
I can verify it, you will get credit for the information, unless I lose your name/email. Speaking of which, anyone who did email me about the
extra lavaboy in the orphanage part of Chrono Cross, please email me again so I can give you credit, as my host's mail server crashed awhile ago and I
lost those emails before I could give you credit (anyone who this applies to will know what I'm on about).
- What happened to all the .mp3's in your walkthroughs?!
The point of writing walkthroughs is for people to read the walkthroughs, not for people to just come to my website to steal mp3's and then GTFO. So I took them out :P
- Can I request a walkthrough for you to write?
I've got a lot of walkthroughs listed as "Coming Soon," and I'd like to get some of them out of the way before I make any new ones. Also, I tend to
generally stick to RPG's, but you can request one if you want to. I can't guarantee anything though, sorry.
- Why do you have Spanish on your site??
Easy there, young padawan. If you'll notice, all the walkthroughs are in English, and some (and hopefully all in the future) have Spanish translations.
If the Spanish bothers you, perhaps you should use the English versions? I've begun translating some of the walkthroughs into Spanish because I've found
that there is a huge void in the world where Spanish-language walkthroughs should be. If I knew more languages, I'd totally translate them into other
languages, but sadly I'm only fluent in English and Spanish. It's that whole "I want my walkthroughs to be as good as they possibly can be" thing again.
- Can I link to your site or donate money?
Totally! Donations aren't mandatory (otherwise I'd password-lock all of the walkthrough pages and make people pay me before they could read them), but they
are welcome, but ONLY if you want to and have the money to spare. I'm not in the business of guilting people into giving me money, especially during the
current crappy economy, but if you wanna help out, np. There's a nifty little PayPal button on most every walkthrough page that you can click on.
Apparently, however, any donation under $1 gets eaten up by PayPal fees, so... yeah. Keep that in mind, I guess.
