SYSTEM

3/1/03: Thanks for all the support. I'll leave this up for the archives, but I'm turning off the CGI for now. If you care let me know.

4/5/00: One year later! I've enabled the MOA ACs.. have fun. Restructured the site a bit, fixed some pages that had the ugly old background still. Need a Rank logo.

4/16/99: I've added ACMOA parts listings in Shop. I will enable the union for ACMOA ACs soon. Member Stats fixed. Let me know if there's anything weird going on in the union - I made many changes to the parts list to add some newly discovered stats (you can see these in Shop as well).

2/6/99: Well, I've been getting a trickle of complaints that the combat register wasn't working. I found the problem.. I have no idea when I broke it.. it must have been awhile ago, though. Sorry if this caused any inconveniences.

1/25/99: Oops. In my excitement, I forgot to check the last fix I did.. broke the CGI again! It's working again now. Thanks for your patience everyone.

1/24/99: Found another CGI problem that was stopping Join from working; also corrected errors in the form. Will there be no end to the problems in the form? Nonstop miscalculations and bad HTML/Javascript. I'm still thinking over the Stats section. The small changes I made to Join and Members that was able to optimize them just won't work in Stats.. I need to totally rearchitect it.. I think I've figured out a way to do the total number of ACs using each part, but I'm still thinking on the highest Performance, etc. I'll try to get this up next week.

1/20/99: Member Stats is still down, but Members list is snappy! Crazy fast! I impressed myself!

1/15/99: The server's owner has cut back on CPU time allowed for CGI. As a result, I need to rewrite some of the CGI to optimize it. Thanks to those of you that emailed me and let me know it was down.

11/10/98: Read on a Japanese Sega BBS that the rumored release date in June 99 for AC2. They mentioned a US source on some Sega BBS, but I looked through the BBS on sega.com and couldn't find anything

11/05/98: Did some more reorganizing. Made the system page into a news page. I'll keep all site updates in here, maybe put a notification that it's been updated.

11/02/98: More info! From Software finally got info up on their page for Armored Core: Master of Arena. There are some screen shots if you want to wade around. I hope to translate the Story section, but don't expect it any time soon. Forgot to mention that AC:MoA will support the Pocket Station, which is a PDA accessory for the PlayStation. I don't know anything technical about it, so I can't guess what the use will be, unless it is compatible with the Dreamcast. Speaking of Dreamcast... in an interview in the latest EX, which was conducted at Otakon, Kawamori Shouji, the mech designer for Macross and Armored Core, said that he had done some work for "Armored Core 2", which would be released on Dreamcast. So, if you look at PP and MoA as more or less expansion packs, based on the same engine as Armored Core, I guess this rumored new game for Dreamcast could reasonably be called AC2.

11/01/98: Bit more info on AC:MoA. There will be a versus stage that is on the surface of the moon, and one that is in an AC factory. The Arena and the Mission sections will have an intertwined story, unlike AC:PP.

10/28/98: More info on the new game. Screen shots at IGN Online. It will be called AC: Masters of the Arena, and will be out on Playstation. There will be 20 new parts, and it will focus on Arena and Missions like AC:PP did. Supposedly the story is based on a Raven whose lover was killed by 9Ball. According to IGN, the engine will be overhauled, and there will be 'improved multiplayer options', whatever that means. I don't know much else. Strangely, neither From Software (developer) nor Ascii Entertainment (Producer) have made an official announcement yet. Japanese fans seem expectant of a demo/announcement at the official tournament which will be held early in November. BTW, if any of you have been experiencing problems hitting the site recently, it's because the server was up and down over the weekend. Hopefully that has been brought to an end. I also ripped this page apart today and cut out the ugly counters on the start page.

10/27/98: Great news! There is a new AC game in production in Japan. The little bit of news I got was that it will be based on the same engine, but will have more focus on energy weapons and reverse joint legs (first AC and AC:PP are heavy on Human legs and projectile weapons, if you didn't notice). It will be a 2 CD set, and is projected for a February release. I made a bunch of updates to the Union this weekend, mostly bug fixes. Only one WM-AT is allowed, and I changed the two ACs that had two WM-AT to only having one (other is none). If you know of a way to get more than one, let me know. Also, if you own one of those ACs, let me know what you want on the other shoulder. I've changed the method of color recording. Now just put in the numbers in the game (most of you were doing this already). I now finally display colors properly, this was broken forever. The color values from the game are now displayed, not hex values. Also, there was a bug which caused radars on the right shoulder to be ignored.

10/20/98: Updated the Arena section for PP. Also, bit of news I forgot to let you know. An Armored Core novel was published in Japan recently, titled "The Fake Illusion". It takes place one year after the Chrome/Murakumo War. There have also been three garage kits released for Armored Core, which each come with additional parts and weapons, all of which are interchangeable between them. They are made by Bandai, and they look completely kick-ass; I put a couple of them on the top of the Garage page for you to check out. I don't have money to pick one up right now, but you should be able to order them through Nikaku Animart or another Japanese anime/model importer. The information regarding the garage kits and novel is available on the From Software homepage, although in Japanese. They also have high-res CG AC images for download. Also, today I performed yet another color change for the start page. Sometime soon I'll be adding a section to the stats page to show how many people are flying Project Phatasma ACs, and maybe add the same info to the individual stats pages.

10/19/98: Well, Project Phantasma is out. Sony's web page still says November, so I don't know what their problem is. I've gotten several questions already, and I'll revamp the PP area (Arena) within the next day or two.

10/15/98: I gave the Union a facelift to make the site look more uniform. I also finally removed the old Garage section (which was unnecessary since I added the Union) and replaced it with a list of AC links. If you know of a site I've missed, drop me a line.

9/8/98: I've been forgetting to put this info up.. I was pointed to a website last week which indicated that AC: Project Phantasma is scheduled for release on the 29th of September in the US! However, Sony's website lists it as being a November release.. I'd tend to believe Sony, but be sure to keep your eyes open for it. Also, I added a "Back Weapon Either" section in the Stats page. I need to update the Shop area of RNS, and to figure out what to do about fixing the custom colors.. I had intended people to use Hex values for colors, but it looks like most are just putting the values from the game. need to decide how to deal with that. Hopefully you've all noticed that I pulled out several of the pages from acunion.cgi, and made them their own pages. This will improve load time, and also you can keep them cached on your system. If you've got the union bookmarked, change to acunion-top.htm.

8/10/98: As many of you may have already found out, Armored Core: Project Phantasma is going to be released in the US in October of 1998. There was a bit on in in the Alphas section of Next Generation this month. Also, some of you may have noticed the "Member Stats" section I put up this last weekend. Now you can see how many Ravens are using different parts, and which ACs have the best performance. One last thing: I've temporarily killed the dhtml version of the site. I don't know if you've been having problems - no one has emailed me about them - but I have been unable to get it to work properly with beta versions of IE5 or with the new MS Media Player. The javascript code was pretty shakey, so I think that I was not doing things "by the book", and now it just won't work. It was pretty frivolous and took a long time to load anyways. I'll look into either fixing it or just putting some modification into the plain html site.

5/98: I finally finished my masterpiece: the AC Operators Union.. I've had a few requests for a Pilots League / Ravens Clan / etc, but I didn't want to do it the same way everyone else was.. with people mailing me their ACs, and me creating pages for each one. That's no fun, and I don't want to waste my time doing it!! So I bought a few Perl books, started working on it in my free time, and now it's ended up even better than I could have hoped! I'm still working out bugs, especially in parts data, so hang in there. I've now added the entire Performance stats (seems to be a few points off), and ability to record custom colors. Thanks to everyone who's already signed up. Everyone else: what are you waiting for?

2/98: The enhanced site was designed to take advantage of both JavaScript and both Microsoft and Netscape's dynamic HTML. Unfortunately, some things that are simple with IE are not so simple with Navigator (inserting text, for example). The enhanced site still looks crappy on Nav4, and I've more or less given up. Nav is just giving me too many problems. Two examples: first, I was trying to do CSS positioning. In IE, if you give no unit (eg, 'left:10;'), it assumes pixels. In Nav, if you give no unit, it totally chokes, and not only ignores the left property, but ignores ALL properties for the object. Second, I accidently made the ROWSPAN too large on the AC Registration form. IE simply decided that I probably only meant the maximum possible number. Nav did some weird overlapping thing, making the button on the bottom right unclickable. These were my fault, but the browser should be able to figure out simple stuff like this. My frustration is compounded by my inability to use IE's CSS filters, etc (or equivalents) in NAV.