Sound warning! This video is from CommanderD. The Star Fox team gets in on the Nintendo cardboard madness. If you were living under a rock for the last few days, this is Nintendo Labo.

Artwork by ユッカ.

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. I have a lot to post, but all of it will take a bit of time to research, and I haven't had time to do it. And by not have time, I mean I've been playing through Super Mario Odyssey. I hope to get that settled next week (I beat the game two days ago).

1PupSuits sent me an email back in December about a glitch they had found in Star Fox Assault. If you used the sniper rifles in multiplayer mode with multiple characters, and stood at the right spot, the low-poly version of your character would appear instead. I did some tests and it worked! I also found that it had less to do with the sniper rifles and more to do with where your camera was and certain angles. This is a glitch with the level of detail (LOD) system in Star Fox Assault. Normally, LOD is used to make small objects in the distance use less resources. Star Fox Assault does this, however it looks like you can trick the system sometimes.

I made this video to demonstrate. I played the game at ludicrous resolution on the emulator so that after I cropped the fourth of the screen from the four-player split screen, you could still see a lot of detail. Hope you enjoy!

It's with much pleasure, and a little trepidation, that I officially announce the creation of a new website: StarFox.org. First mentioned on the Krystal Archive Podcast #40, this site will soon be home to official Star Fox media, interviews, and other content. It is not intended to compete with or replace other Star Fox fansites, such as StarFox-Online.net, which focuses more on community and day-to-day news.

One day last year, I just so happened to find that the domain "starfox.org" had become available. It had previously been a Star Fox fansite under different ownership for many years. After the owner let it expire, it sat unused in various cybersquatting services until even they gave up on anyone buying it. Now it's mine!

I had been wanting to find a place to post more general Star Fox related content for many years. Until now, I'd been posting it to subdomains of the Krystal Archive, such as the Star Fox Adventures Voice Acting page and Star Fox Command: All The Words. Now, this type of media will be posted to starfox.org instead.

What all can you expect?

• Promotional art, videos, and other materials
• Voice acting clips
• Music
• Cutscenes
• Official website backups
• Scripts
• Non-game canon sources, such as official comics, instruction manuals, and player's guides
• Canon analysis articles and infographics (for example, an illustrated, interactive timeline of the Star Fox series)
• Secret stuff found in source code
• Interviews about Star Fox and with people who worked on Star Fox
• Merchandise
• Cameo appearances
• And every scrap of Dinosaur Planet info we can find!

What won't be there? (At least at first.)

• Forums
• Discord
• Daily news
• Fanart, fan fiction, fan videos, mods, fan games, etc. (Unless it's really impressive.)

Another thing that will be different: this site will not be using the Wordpress blogging engine. Instead, I will be using a static site generator such as HUGO. This will allow more control, better performance, and better security while sacrificing a little ease of use. On the plus side, since this will largely focus on being a data-driven site, rather than a content blog, the site's content will be more easily created through tooling. I plan to open source the site's code so you can view it, try it, and maybe even help out.

So where are we now?

As of now, there is no content. I do have an official Twitter account and GAB account for the site. The Arwing image you see if you go to starfox.org is an SVG of my own design. Have a look at the source code and see how it was made. I'm very proud of it, and it will probably be integrated into the final site design somewhere. Other than that, the site itself is currently bare.

As for content, I mentioned previously that I had several pieces of existing content that will be moved there (mostly voice acting). I have a huge cache of Dinosaur Planet info I've gathered over the years, as well as a very knowledgeable fan who has agreed to help with the content and history of Dinosaur Planet. Lastly, I have a large amount of content I plan to post that I had created back when I used to work for StarFox-Online that was either never released (no time) or has since fallen into disrepair (links no longer work at SFO). Other information will be gathered or created as time allows. But rest assured, when the site fully launches, it will feature content that doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet!

One more thing. The Krystal Archive is, and will remain, ad-free. However, I'm considering allowing ads on starfox.org because: A. It will be a huge endeavor that will eat up a lot of my time, and B. It will end up costing a lot more in hosting because there will be a large amount of media there, and that media will be downloaded more often. I'm open to discussion on this topic, so leave a comment about what you think, and if you have other ideas for generating revenue for the site.

Sorry for missing yesterday and being late with content. I had an extremely busy weekend working with some projects that aren't ready to release yet.

It took me a while to edit, but it's finally done! The Krystal Archive Podcast that I recorded on Tuesday, January 9th, is here.

In this audio-only podcast, I gave a year-in-review summary of everything in 2017 up until the last podcast. After that, I reviewed the news stories since then in much more detail. Finally, I talk about several big projects coming up this year, including the need for a couple volunteers. If you're interested in becoming a moderator on the Discord server, or helping with fanart, please contact me.

Enjoy!

Listen on YouTube

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Show Notes

Here's something I've been waiting to show you for a while now. It was talked about briefly before, but now it's finally ready for the world.

First, some background. A few months back, Warfaremachine released a new Krystal rig for free. Inspired by some Krystal fanart, rather than the original game models, it was stylistically different from other Krystal rigs. The model was more or less created specifically for NSFW purposes, meaning I couldn't link to it here on the Krystal Archive. However, several people, ended up using it for SFW projects, including Falemirous's Half Life 2 Mod and Schattenkitsune66's MMD Conversion Rig. Then, in late November 2017, Warfaremachine created a version 2 of his rig, with much higher detail and additional features. This version was also NSFW, so like the first, I couldn't really link to that either. Unlike the first rig, however, this one cost $20 to download and use.

After a conversation with Falemirous, I contacted Warfaremachine with a proposal: I asked for a clean, safe-for-work variant of the rig that could be released for free, and stipulate that it could not be used for NSFW purposes. In exchange, I compensated him for his time and the right to distribute it.

He agreed!

After a few weeks of effort and tweaks, we have prepared the two versions of the rig. One for Blender, which allows for high quality rendering and animations. The other exported for Garry's Mod, where it can easily be adapted to games, mods, MMD, or anything else. Both the Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault variants are in each version. These rigs are free forever, and you can do pretty much whatever you want with them: renders, animations, videos, game mods, fan games, 3D prints, etc. However, you CANNOT redistribute them, sell them, or in any way use them for NSFW purposes. That and be sure to credit Warfaremachine when showing off your creations.

Additionally, you are allowed to create modifications of these rigs, such as making the rig compatible with a game or MMD. Unlike the original rig, you CAN redistribute your modified rigs, with credit to Warfaremachine for the base rig. However, you can't charge for those changes, or in any way use those changes to allow the creation of NSFW materials. Check the README files for more details on what is and isn't allowed. We tried to make it pretty permissive.

• Krystal Fox 2018 (Free Edition) - 57.9MB - Blender and texture files for posing and rendering
• Krystal Fox 2018 (Free Edition) for Garry's Mod - 52.9MB - Garry's Mod compatible version for games and mods

Both downloads use 7Zip compression. To decompress them, use 7zip for Windows or Keka for Mac OS X.

There's also a page in the 3D section for this rig.

Warfaremachine will be releasing his distribution of this rig around the same time that this post goes up. Thanks for working hard on this project and being super cool about what I was trying to do.

Update: A pre-packaged version of the Garry's Mod variant is also available on the Steam Workshop for Garry's Mod.

Checking through Spriters-Resource, Wreckingcanon found a custom Krystal sprite for the unused Star Fox 2 Battle Mode Selection Screen. This was made by Arima, and it was posted back in July 2017. You can view and download it on its Spritesheet Page.

Speaking of sprites, don't forget about all the Krystal-related sprites by SmithyGCN:

• Custom Krystal Spritesheet
• Krystal Spritesheet
• Krystal Sprite Animation
• Special Effects
• Krystal Profile Sprite

Thanks to Wreckingcanon for the heads up.

Mikiel2171 has been working on a Krystal model off and on since 2011. It looks like this rig was visually inspired by (or perhaps was built from) the Little_Dragon/CharleyFox Rig. Unlike that rig, however, this one is built in Blender, a free 3D graphics and animation program.

As of a few days ago, he released his New Years Download Pack, which includes version 2.7 of Krystal, Renamon, and Lola Bunny. Included with these self-contained Blender files are the models, textures, alternate clothes, rigging, and post-processing settings for a high quality render of Krystal (or those other characters). From what I can tell, the Krystal model comes with both her Assault and Adventures clothing, a Staff, and the scouter you can see in the render above.

This pack can be downloaded and used for free, just be sure to let Mikiel2171 know. He wants to see what you create.

Before I can record episode #40, I had to get the audio version out for the previous episode (whoops!). So here it is. If you're subscribed to the audio podcast, this episode should show up for you soon. It's a barely edited version of the video's audio, so if you've seen the streamed version, there's nothing new here. This podcast featured video of my screen as I scrolled through news stories on the site, so I may refer to things without describing them.

This was a recap episode covering mostly what happened in the previous few months since the last podcast. I took questions and comments from the live audience rather than pre-selected email questions this time.

Watch on YouTube

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Show Notes

Just a quick post today. 12 years ago today, the Krystal Archive came online for the first time. It's been through a lot: four or five designs, a major hack, interviews with voice actresses and industry insiders, and more Krystal news and fan works than you can shake a stick at! It's been awesome, and I have a lot planned for the coming year. Thank you all for continuing to visit and contribute to this site, and more importantly, our lovely blue vixen.

With that said, I really wanted to do a podcast for the occasion. Unfortunately, some health issues suddenly got in the way. I will try to get that done as soon as I can. In the meantime, let's celebrate! It's a new year full of possibilities and great things to come.

GoldenFox51 sends in this picture from Garry's Mod for the celebration.

Game musician Dinnick the 3rd has created a lovely little cover of the Cape Claw theme from Star Fox Adventures. It features guitar, xylophone, and even an ocarina. For the chorus, he created new lyrics.

What does this song have to do with Krystal? Great question. Turns out, Krystal's theme makes up part of this song. Plus, it's just really really good!

You can listen to the whole album, and purchase it for whatever price you think is fair, on the Album Bandcamp Page.

There are other Star Fox works he's done. There's this awesome Corneria Cover from the classic Star Fox for the SNES. Then you can sample his electronic cover of Swapstone Hollow from the unreleased Dinosaur Planet.