Our Team
The Tonberry Troupe
is a group of dedicated & passionate players. We strive to provide the DFFOO global community with useful and knowledgeable resources to better enjoy the game. Our primary resources are Character Infographics, & the Guides & Beginner sections of this website.
Each of us handles different parts of the process, ensuring that our finished products are accurate & reliable. We are human, and can make mistakes, so please never hesitate to reach out to us on Discord, Reddit, Patreon, Facebook, or by email (TonberryTroupe at gmail.com)
Teleute
Infographic Research & Beginner Guide Creator
CellyBell
Infographic Creation, Design & Website/Social Media Management
Anomander
Lufenia Research Guides & Infographic Quality Assurance
Inkwelder
Founder & Consultant/Queso Support
Recent Changes to Tonberry Troupe (Dec. 2021):
CellyBell has assumed the position of Tonberry King, holding the lantern high, now handling Infographic creation, Infographic Analysis/Notes, and Website Management. Teleute continues the tireless research & data collection role, while Anomander covers all Quality Assurance for the graphics, to ensure they are at their highest level of accuracy & quality for the community.
Inkwelder has put his DFFOO Content Creation on hold, to focus on other priorities. He is still available to help the team in a limited capacity, however they need it.
Please take a moment to thank CellyBell for carrying the mantle for the graphics & website!
Our Process
Infographics
Teleute creates a research document for every character update. He then grabs ability data from Dissidia Compendium and other sources, like MateriaBot & DissidiaDb. He uses Famitsu (translated automatically) to figure out buff, debuff, & aura values when needed, and reaches out to knowledgeable JP players when a value can't be determined easily. All of this gets cleanly placed into a document with a specific format. Character board and other additions are commented on to ease the future Quality Assurance process. This document is then shared with the rest of the Troupe, as well as with our King Patrons who have early access. Teleute tends to be about 2 months ahead in research.
CellyBell uses the research document to create the base graphic with Photoshop, using a template that Dreamy made over the course of many months, collaborating with the team and with partners around the community, to determine the best format for displaying character kits for the LD / BT era. Over a hundred layers are filled with information, formatted for logical readability, and the background art is selected. Shading and contrast layers are applied to make the information readable, color-blindness compatibility is checked, and some easter eggs are hidden within the graphic for the community to find (usually a tonberry sticker).
Cel also covers Inkwelder's previous work, using their JP experience and community contacts to write the Notes section of the infographic.
Anomander is the last piece of the puzzle (of sorts), reviewing the drafted infographic for correctness and appearance, aiming to validate every number and name on the graphic, as well as the sensibility of the analysis. Cel makes the necessary updates & adjustments, now often sharing graphics ahead of time with Tonberry Troupe patrons to give them a sneak peak or get their honest feedback.
Infographic Release Process
As Dreamy & Inkwelder used to handle releases, that now falls all to CellyBell. Reddit, Twitter, and Discord announcement posts need to be created, but first updates to the website must be made. MateriaBot $ig commands are updated for the character, and a Discord message is sent to all Discord servers that follow Quetzalma's server where we hang out!
Most important: At this phase, our team is on standby. Yes, we have a rigorous process, but mistakes happen. If a mistake is noticed or reported, we aim to get the information corrected as soon as possible on the graphic and/or the website, so as to never mislead the community. We always appreciate everyone's patience, and we strive to be correct the first time through!
Lufenia/Shinryu Research Process
Anomander kicks off this process, by sequentially working through upcoming Lufenia. He combs YouTube, Reddit, & Discord for runs of one upcoming Lufenia fight at a time. He records all of the runs in a consistently formatted spreadsheet (which is shared with our patrons) with the party used, the level of their gear, the calls used, friend used, and a link to the run. He then runs macros to analyze who the most used characters were among the collected videos. He watches video after video, analyzing the boss mechanics, while simultaneously studying how the characters in party are tackling those specific mechanics. He works with our collaborators that played JP to ask any questions that came up during research, and get them addressed.
Anomander drafts notes on the critical boss mechanics, the Lufenia orb, and hp thresholds when battle changes occur.
CellyBell uses the patron spreadsheet (which has over 7000+ runs that Anomander has analyzed) to update the website's Lufenia+ Research/Shinryu Studies page with fight notes, and the updates are published alongside the next infographic.
Previous Members
Vayne Novus is retired in the role of QA on both the data collection and drafted infographic. He also led work on all of the Entropy infographics and co-managed our massive Facebook page. Vayne leaves our Troupe in good spirits, focusing on his life & career! Sep 2019 - Feb 2021
Dreamy is retired after 2 years of intensive graphic design for the Troupe. Dreamy is responsible for the incredible professionalism that the Troupe now has, using a template for graphics which took months to prepare and tweak. He created hundreds of graphics, integrating in beautiful art from around the FF community. If you appreciate the Troupe's aesthetics on the website or the graphics, you absolutely must thank Dreamy. A wonderful and talented person, we wish him well on his real life endeavors! Aug 2019ish - October 2021
Inkwelder is retired after 2.5 years of... well keeping things together. Ink started the Troupe back in May 2019, doing a graphic for Quistis EX+, aiming to bypass community opinion, and do objective research on the character. This started a small operation with some other players, namely Blindeye, Teleute, PGChris, & Geoffers. Ink created the graphics in Snappa, and received support from his server members. Ink carried the mantle as the Tonberry King throughout his time, working on around 300 infographics, all of them on time, and constantly tweaked for accuracy. Teleute took on a larger role to help him with data collection, and Dreamy moved the graphics to a professional level with Photoshop. Ink started TonberryTroupe.com, an effort that took months to set up, as a way of providing a one-stop shop for new and veteran players alike to find useful information about the game. The website is still used by over 30,000 players a month. Inkwelder thanks the community for their respect, time, and support that they gave him starting out, of which the Troupe work would not have continued without. May 2019 - December 2021
Collaborators & Content Creators
Sometimes confused with our group, these fantastic community members have their own content streams and collaborate with us to make the overall contribution to the community that much better. Thank YOU!
Quetzalma: Creator and manager of MateriaBot, an information-based discord bot which is deployed on hundreds of servers across the community, silently helping everyone. If the Troupe were a train, Quetz would be the tracks. He connected Ink & Dreamy, he connected Tonberry Troupe to Rem from DissidiaDb. He has cut hours off of our process via his development activities, and it's safe to say that if Quetz wasn't part of the community, the Tonberry Troupe would not exist.
DissidiaDB & Dissidia.dev: Created and maintained by Rem, and is a long-standing and reliable backbone for the entire DFFOO community. We rely on his amazing site for every infographic that we make!
Dissidia Compendium: Created and maintained by HearHellcopters with the help of Crux, another website filled to the brim with unit data from GL and JP. Another strong foundation for how we research upcoming units for the infographics!
DissidiaInfo: Created and maintained by Macnol, consolidating information for many extremely useful resources, most notably the Call to Arms. This acts as a hub for the GL community to submit video runs, and connect the community with those runs for the purpose of helping others. Huge thank you to ScottOng as well who contributes to this and our site with his Fight Cheatsheets and Multiple team runs. Check out his YouTube channel!
ScottOng: Creates his fight cheatsheets and video guides and lets us share them. To catch them early, tune into his YouTube channel!
Xcalibur: Creator of Fight Mechanic infographics detailing fight threshold and boss mechanics also used in conjunction with our fight notes!
Destroth: Creator of fight infographics on different ways to approach end game fights used in conjunction with our fight notes!
Theologica: Video content creator specializing in more than just Lightning runs! Check out their "All You Need To Know" series!
Black Cloud/Nero: Player of both GL & JP, he helps provide context and information for some of our Character Infographics. Check him out on his YouTube page, or find him on the main discord or TCC Podcast discord.
CrossXIII: JP & GL content creator who makes FR synergy and notable fights (for units) infographics. Check out his channel!
JP Community: They are the backbone of the refined information in our infographics. While we can still pump out a graphic like Aranea or Cor without their help, they make our infographics infinitely more helpful and insightful for the community, and we have endless thanks for their patience & willingness to help our work product.
If you enjoy our work, we have a Patreon below where you can support us and gain access to Discord channels with exclusive early data documents and other goodies!