(April 1 to April 7, 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
Feedback and Suggestions
After seeing the feature available in HBGames, wondered about two Additional features for the CODE tags. here in Save-Point.Org. One would be the inclusion of a 'select all' button so everything within its attached code box would be highlighted, while the other is a ruby bbcode so key words would be one color, variables another and so forth.
Occasions
We got to celebrate a number of Birthdays this week, starting with the shared birthdays of ShinobiChef Arnie, edmondedi, RMXPokemaniac, Plus C and fara_irdayu. It didn't take long before gdeon, xcybervxx, Jojozityjo, 1121112112, dart360 and deValdr's had passed. And before the week was up, mrbekkler, Darkchrono and hcook44 had their birthdays together.
General Chat
Every week, we always want to know What's on the mind of our members, and this week we laughingly mourn for yamina-chan who died laughing after this April Fools Day. She encountered so many humorous webpages and pranks, that sensible reason left her behind. In the meantime, she was curious as to any jokes or pranks that other members encounterd. What Olivia found wasn't humorous, but more mean-spirited as she found a youtube of a crying child knocked off a bed by a cat it slapped while the child's mother or guardian laughed in the background. Quite expectedly, MetalRenard found no humor in it, but neither did Olivia other than witnessing a cat strong enough to topple anyone in self defense. But both she and MetalRenard made mention of the youtube posts that followed condemned the mother for allowing it in the first place. But the mood changed once MetalRenard replaced his TV with a new 24" Acer monitor on which to work. And for the past few days, KasperKalamity has been hanging out in a Chicago Nightclub doing standup while Rosyposy has been hanging out in Facebook. Likewise, yamina-chan has been hanging out in Youtube, feeling a bit upset about the restrictions imposed by region codes. Both she and RosyPosy find it lame that some games may be available in areas like Japan without them being marketed to other world markets. Laughingly, Rosy suggested using a five-finger discount to get games not marketed, but in the same spirit yamina-chan laughingly chided her on the forum's behalf. To yamina-chan, she feels it sucks that to get a game not available for her region, she would either need to modify a console which is becoming increasingly harder or use an emulator which is not always successful. But both she and RosyPosy think that not releasing games to all markets is lame and unfair.
DerVVulfman posted a thread about a Massive cyberattack on the Internet, copied straight from a CNN topic. It spoke of a prolonged DDOS attack on a spam-fighting organization known as The Spamhaus Project, though another site it has been feuding with denies any involvement in the attack. MetalRenard noticed a significant slowdown on his end, but not on every site. And yamna-chan too and her friends were wondering as to why such a slowdown existed.
RosyPosy was nonplussed when she found learned that there would be No More LucasArts as Disney just gutted the company. She was fond of the company as they made a massive rebound with games like Rebel Assault. She only hopes that former employees form their own game corporation as Disney is ruining her childhood.
Legacy noticed that there is a Save-Point.org Skype Room and Olivia asked him for his skype name so it can be added.
Kain Nobel reminisced about his childhood internet footprint as he stumbled upon an old website that he realized he made back when he went by the aliias SC4TT3R BR41NZ at sixteen. He chuckles as he has seen a number of sites come and go, but after eleven years, his site remains atanding. Meanwhile, MetalRenard says he doesn't have a trace of his online life prior to when he was seventeen, and is laughingly grateful after seeing some posts by our other members.
Games Development
Development Discussion
Joining a community that makes games sets one as an artisan, one with a talent or select number of talents of an artistic vein. 'Tis a necessity with our trade. But what of your fellow members? Who are they and what are they working on? One of the things that you can do when joining a community such as ours is to find out What's up with your fellow RPG Making members, as did MechanicalPen as he tried messing with DerVVulfman's Lycan ABS which got him out of his programming block. DerVVulfman was pleased when he heard MechanicalPen's remark about making a Metal Gear clone, which he was waiting to hear. A new policy came to kyonides's mind whereby he not release a script if his request for needed graphics goes unanswered. Meanwhile, Taylor discovered that Victor Sant's Animated Battlers system rewrites a number of default systems which gave him a number of problems. Wishing that there was a simpler Animated Battlers script for RPGMaker VXAce, MechanicalPen supplied a link that offered up two other Animated Battler scripts from which to choose. And speaking of Animated Battlers, Kain Nobel has begun working on more battlers with his current avatar as an example of his work. He's hoping to work non-stop next month.
There was some breaking news in the thread that is not RPG Maker as ntzrmtthihu777 stumbled on the source code for a rewritten RGSS.dll designed by vgvgf from HBGames.Org. But to his and DerVVulfman's disappointment, Vgvgf seemed to have been active since 2011. It was the thir major project like ours that ntzrmtthihu777 had seen that became abandoned, saddening him all the more. However, luck may be with us as Vgvgf had now joined our chatroom, and DerVVulfman gave a shout out that one must have a registered account that can be given 'voice' for anyone wishing to join in.
While working on his game, MechanicalPen was curious as to what makes up a good A.I. for a Turn Based RPGMaker XP Battlesystem. He's thought about how some NPCs in PokeMon games don't act like the Pokemon battlers in the stadium contests, and how other games have a healer that would heal the most vulnerable player in danger of being killed. Charlie Fleed ventured in and gave him an example of what he planned to do with his Hartacon Tactics game, though he acknowleged his checklist may not be the best for everyone's use. He also pointed out to MechanicalPen that the scores used needed to be carefully calculated. MechanicalPen was in agreement when it came to managing the stats, and recognized the importance that eliminating enemies was more important than just dealing damage. But then he was curious about the impact on stat increases and penalties in battle. On a personal note, MetalRenard hates Stat changing skills because they generally take a turn that could be used for something else. However, he appreciated Charlie Fleed's outline for an AI, but felt that a little randomness should be thrown into the system, and a routine so multiple enemies would either target weaker characters or a way to see who to eliminate in order to gain a tactical advantage.
And while working on his open-ended game, Taylor was curious how to handle the Non-Linear Phenogram for his Boss Battles. His game, like various others open ended games such as Persona 3 and 4, may give the player a time limit to perform various quests and recruit party members. In his, each party member may eventually face a boss enemy of their own. And while the characters may increase their strength, he would like the bosses they face to do likewise, but he is unsure of the current cadre of scripts that increase enemy stats. MechanicalPen suggested that Taylor create a series of duplicate enemy bosses, each based on what level the player may be when encountered. While MetalRenard thought it was the best solution, Taylor noted that he was using a Bestiary script and it would show a plethera of empty slots for the extra enemies designed. Though a solution to solve that problem sprung to his mind. And while MechanicalPen thought it may be nice to have Boss battles be easy if the player had high enough levels, Taylor was more worried that early fights would be too tough. After that, MechanicalPen proposed the notion of not having a level system in his game. At the same time, MetalRenard proposed an idea involving token items unique to monsters to form a bestiary of sorts, including the number of kills for each monster type.
General Support
While working on a Horroresque game with RPGMaker XP, MechanicalPen was curious if there was Any way to make events trigger other events so he could make traps that could be triggered by both player and monsters chasing him. Kain Nobel suggested the use of conditional branches and a system to check monster coordinates. KasperKalamity liked the idea as the only other way he felt would be to mess with switches, move routes and other things. Once read, MechanicalPen posted a routine of his own and gave his thanks for the quick responces.
Materials Development
Scripts Database
This week, a new topic entered the forum with the release of DerVVulfman's Game Data Sneak method, which he pointed out in his thread that it wasn't a script, but a technique to save new data classes without needing to overwrite the Scene or Load classes themselves.
DerVVulfman also bumped his Permanent Event Erase script as he performed a minor change to his code involving the ID value of erased events.
And DerVVulfman not only delivered a bump to a third topic, but delivered a near rewrite to his Super Simple Vehicle System - Enhanced system, while including features added from one of his addons while supplying a patch for his Lycan ABS system. A bug report came from yamina-chan regarding things whereby a boat may run aground and unable to move, issues with the vehicles being shown overtop tilesets where they shouldn't and a critical bug which pops up if the player attempts to run a new game after leaving the headquarters screen. DerVVulfman replied back, alleviating her concerns regarding most of the issue, though he was unable to recreate the bug that crashed her game. However, yamina-chan was still able to recreate the bug which DerVVulfman was unable, giving a play-by-play example of what actions he took. Since then, yamina-chan sent him a video which let him see her generate the error straight from his demo and how it came about.
Meanwhile, if you want to take a peek at some Hidden Class rewrites, ntzrmtthihu777 has created a thread to collect what rewries he can find. You can find the Color, Table and Tone rewrites by vgvgf and the Plane and Window classes by Selwyn within already. It didn't take long before vgvgf posted an updated version of his Color and Tone classes, which also fixed a bug within the Tone class.
Well, that's it for this week.
"In my sentences I go where no man has gone before...I am a boon to the English language." - George W. Bush
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.