(January 28 TO February 3, 2013)
Welcome dear readers to the latest issue of the Weekly Gazette! Here in the Gazette, we give you the news in brief of what occurred in the past week as well as provide any news happening in Save-Point itself
Official Area
Occasions
This week, we started off light when it came to celebrating birthdays, as the first one of this week was that of DerVVulfman's. Only days later, both heythanks and chaucer had birthdays to celebrate. After that, we had sudden outburst of birthdays as feilexter, y2jfrost, jccaton, decanos78, Kore, jazzkomp, graficagarcia, grecias, JasonZeno, explocion200, Goleone and UberUberUber all had a day to share together.
General Chat
Once in a blue moon, you may be away and lose track of your fellow members. Fortunately, it is an easy thing to find out What's on the mind of the others within the community. Take yamina-chan for example. She's currently upset over the loss of something she's taken care of since it hatched to a Tallbird, though it was in a game called "Don't Strave". In the meantime, she's eager to get the DVD collection she pre-ordered back in June hoping the production issues and delays would soon be resolved.
This week, kyonides was on the lookout for some PHP guides for either beginner or intermediate users, whether they be actual guides, tutorials or exercizes as he needs to learn scripting in PHP. MetalRenard supplied a link to a resource, but kyonides was already aware of the site and wanted to get more information which may include experience from other PHP users.
If you're looking for some music to relax to, you may wish to find out what Music our members are listening to. This week, yamina-chan has been checking out the newest album by Area 11. And while she bought the album, she found the band uploaded all their tracks to yourube and posted a link to their second song, "Vectors". However, MetalRenard didn't appear to enthusiastic about the song, particularly about the vocalist, Sparkles. Such made yamina-chan curious whether it was his singing that bothered MetalRenard, or that he was instead expecting an instrumental. But speaking of instrumentals, ntzrmtthihu777 enjoyed 'Voices of the Lifestream' an overclocked Final Fantasy VII remix which he said gave a very fresh feeling.
Games Development
Development Discussion
It's something that you cannot deny. Being a member of a game making forum, you want to know What's up with your fellow members as they make their RPG Games. It appears that DerVVulfman is actually done working on the Lycan ABS system and is now working on his own game project. He made mention that he showed a list of scripts to a couple of people, but surprised himself that he doesn't have any lag with all the software he has loaded into his project, including a random map generator. Still, it looks like he's not completely done as he appears to be working on a farming system by the request of his sister. And speaking of maps, KasperKalamity has nearly finished work on a dried-up river delta map, and is that much closer to releasing his game. Getting closer too was Charlie Fleed as his search for 3D artists bore fruit and he will soon be able to show off some Hartacon Online idle animations. The tilesets he has for the system now includes allows for houses and other decorative elements. Exhausted as he is, he still needs to catalog all his game's objects so he can generate what game icons he will now need to craft.
Complete Projects
Just before Halloween, 2012, LDC Studios, in conjunction with Bon lnk Creations, released part one to a faux 3D adventure horror game. This week, they continued the action as part 2 to Grave Prosperity was released on the end of January 2013, a series designed with the RPGMaker XP engine developed by Enterbrain. Not only did LDC Studios deliver links to news articles about their series, but even posted a Teaser Trailer to Part 2 this week.
Upcoming Projects
The lunacy continues as DarkSpartan has been working dilligently as he creates more comic madness for Rise to encounter in Insanity Alley. Now at beta version 0.5, the first alley map has been completed and events withinv have been retouched and more glitter and hyjinks have been added, including a wardrobe malfunction for our wandering runaway Idol.
And what was once old becomes anew as ntzrmtthihu777 has kickstarted Final Fantasy VII 2D, his attempt to recreate the classic PS One / PC game from Squaresoft using RPGMaker XP. He knows that there are those that would say he'll never finish it, but he looks at it as a means to learn Ruby scripting while revisiting a classic game. Already crafted are the Menu screens and Materia system that fans would remember while he has the music available in midi format. Still on his plate are the extravagant battle animations he wishes to use, battlers and NPCs and recreated anime-styled facesets of Cloud, Tifa and the like.
Tutorials
For those wishing to get a handle on RGSS coding, or coding with Ruby in general, ntzrmtthihu777 took an entire Ruby document website and converted it into the Assorted Ruby CHM document thread where he posted a "Complete "Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers Guide" Help file followed by Mr Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book, both of which can be downloaded straight to your PC. The first help file was copied from a website of the same name and was duplicated into a help file in one sitting, though he felt the indexing he did could be handled better, and later updated the help file with a better index system. He only made the second help file just before the week ended.
Material Development
Scripts Database
While he was working on messages that his enemy troops would display, Kain Nobel noticed that he couldn't disable them as easily as he would have liked; not until he created the Troop : Self Switches system for RPGMaker XP.
And answering a call, DerVVulfman put together an Item Combine Option for RPGMaker XP that lets the player combine a pair of items to create a new one, all within the menu item window.
Script Requests
For the project that ntzrmtthihu777 is working on, he would like to be able to Save only at save-point events using the menu save, but not with the [call save menu] event command. Instead, the he would like that the SAVE menu option in his main menu remains disabled unless his character is standing next to a map's save-point. While at a save-point, the menu option becomes active and the player can save the game if he wishes rather than have an annoying 'Save Window' popping up automatically. Rather than using a script, Taylor approached ntzrmtthihu777 with an event system solution that entailed the placing of well-planned 'player touch' events around the save-point object to activate and deactivate the Save menu option. Following the instructions that Taylor gave, ntzrmtthihu777 was ecstatic as it solved his request though he had issue over the event not replaying the save-point's "Ding" effect a second time. But Taylor fixed that issue in mere moments.
DuongCool discovered a footprint displaying script by Wachunga's but wondered if anyone knew How to make a Foot Print show on multiple terrains with that system. Currently, the script appears to only allow for just one terrain to have footprints appear, and he would apprecitate it if the system could cover more ground. To that end, he supplied a link to the script he is using. After examining the code, DerVVulfman posted a minor edit involving a pair of lines which he said would give him the ability to use footprints on what terrains he would like. An error appeared in DuongCool's script after he performed the edit that were suggested, but DerVVulfman reappeared and noted he left out a parentesis in his code which would fix the error.
Pia Carrot wondered if asking for Separated Abilities in Battle would be an oddball thing to request, having the traditional system break down skills into sub-categories such as White Magic or Black magic like the Final Fantasy games. This comes as he would like to have such categories as Magic, Prayer and Projectiles available rather than a single Skill option. MetalRenard didn't realize the feature was not available for RPGMaker XP, but realized the option may have been back only for RPGMaker 2003. DerVVulfman appeared and replied he had a complex system that would handle both Skill and Item categories in that manner, but felt it could be too much for the casual user. He did point out that KGC had such scripts, but noted that KGC's terms prevented him from giving direct links to their scripts. However, he had links to other scripts of a similar vein that could help. MetalRenard followed the conversation and cheered when he saw that Pia Carrot checked everything out that was suggested, and thanked the Resident Werewolf. But coming in just in case was Charlie Fleed who offered an Individual Battle Commands script and others of his own.
Raphael Rpg Games went in search for a Little Help as he wanted a pair of edits performed to the item menu system. Rather than just clicking on an item to use it, the edit would bring up a smaller window where the player has the option to discard the item or combine it with another such as an example of combining bread with ground beef to make meatloaf. DerVVulfman suggested to instead use a crafting script as its own menu option, but Raphael replied that the combine option would be one where the player would be able to make combined items on the fly without need of a learned recipe. DerVVulfman replied back to Raphael RPG Games with a brief outline on how to handle a list of combinable objects and brining up a combinable item window. He even attached a screenshot of how he thought it should look and wondered if anyone else was interested in the idea. What he posted was exactly what Raphael RPG Games wanted and inquired how to install the script that DerVVulfman was talking about, but DerVVulfman replied back that he was only talking theory as no script currently existed. However, DerVVulfman went on to describe what such a system would require, be it new window classes and proposed edits the the Scene_Item class. Such made Raphael RPG Games wonder if anyone could make the script or a demo for him as he isn't proficient in scripting. So DerVVulfman gave him a link to a new script he posted.
Creativity Section
Art and Design
Wishing to receive some insight while showing of his artistic talent, Rose Guardian posted the Title Page for a StarFox-based fanfiction manga she's working on. Given the nature, she only plans to to make the manga for fun as she can't sell the manga, and has dropped the idea of displaying it on DeviantArt as she's not fond of some policies they have regarding mature content. That being said, the manga will obviously contain mature content. But as of now, she posted her cover art and wondered how her fellow members felt about the work on which she labored, or if they have any insight on how to improve her technique. She did supply links to her DeviantArt account so they can compare it to her earlier endeavors. On seeing a post about a fellow fox, MetalRenard gave a heartfelt shout to the famed furry fighterpilot. But at the same time, millarso offered some advice regarding shading and detailwork of the jeans as well as creating glow effects and character proportions. He also remarked that our artist had better include a heavy amount of sex appeal to one of the characters and include some classic fighter dialog, lest he ignore tha manga as a whole. Rose Guardian chuckled and thanked millarso for his opinions and comments as it appears the two were thinking alike.
But while work on his cover art went through fine, Rose Guardian had issues with the Hands of a character she'd drawn, which made her very upset. She's looked into illustration classes and studied anatomy books, but she still has issues with the hands. If you wish to comment, you'll see the young hero he's drawn wearing a black coat with gray accents over his bare chest, and black gloves to match.
Well, that's it for this week.
"If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?" - George Carlin (1937-2008)
PROSPECTIVE GAZETEERS!
If you are the creator of a thread in Save-Point, you have the option of sending/writing your own entry into the Gazette. The Gazette accepts write-in announcements (which will be doublechecked). Likewise, the Gazette would welcome other content such as a comic-strip series, ongoing story arc, or the like.
Just PM DerVVulfman with the submissions. Submissions must be in by 10pm EST.