(August 12 to August 18, 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, a number of birthdays were celebrated, starting with the birthdays offtkb456, Sesshomaru, Pia Carrot and JAGYOUARE. Later, asmithjd, thrash84, noesanin, lilcooldude69 and xiia had a massive birthday party. And the birthdays of retromancer358, Amlok, Ace and chrissykoolprods came at the end of the week.
And after two years, G.I. Toez got lost. But after hitting some porn sites, he found us once again. That was his story and he is sticking to it. There were a couple of sly remarks from both Ahzoh and buprettyinpink, which became a discussion between them, DerVVulfman and G.I. Toes about odd names and even odd hair colors such as colors that buprettyinpink and G.I. Toez's wife once sported.
General Chat
Once and a while, you may be away and lose track of your fellow forum members. Fortunately, it is an easy thing to know What's on the mind of the others within the community. This week, KasperKalamity appeared and showed everyone what open mic night is like.
At the same time, GLaDOS made DerVVulfman laugh after she discovered Gizoogle, a search engine with a hip hop translator .
But rather than mincing words, GLaDOS posted a couple of mockups for a Save-Point Generator whereby members get to create charactersets within the forum by spending their save-point currency. At the same time, she felt that members who contributed content to the generator would earn points if and when their work was used and purchased. She thought it would be akin to a more up-to-date version of the Charas Ex. Ahzoh was thinking that the graphics didn't look all that RTP in style, and mentioned an experienced pixelartist could remove any protective watermarks put in place. However, DerVVulfman noted that there were other template characters shown, and suggested an alternative to showing the full spritesheet while the character was being designed. GLaDOS pointed out that it was merely an example mockup. She herself has grown in spriting, but coding the system is very much beyond her skills. Still, she would be happy to pay for the system to be developed. DerVVulfman replied that the system's artisan had to be fluent in the creation of such mods, and the NewPoints banking system the forum is using. But he seemed to have interest in paying for such a system too, and said he had plenty of RPGMaker XP graphics for use.
A new thread dedicated to the Photography of Toys, Figures and Dolls had been created by kirot, wishing to have a place for both collectors and photographer's perspectives to join. He began with the posting of an anime figure of his own. It was soon followed by MechanicalPen's shot of a pair of action figures, one of a feline persuasion. And Ahzoh was curious if lego counted.
And this week, a Doctor Who montage of images entered our Funny Picures Thread thanks to buprettyinpink, whether they be Time Lord Felines, advances in Dalek Technoloty, or the looming terror in New York that only Keanu Reeves could have discovered.
Forum Games and Nonsense
Since the Game Jam 10 Contest would still be active till the end of the month, KasperKalamity wondered if anyone would be willing to join with him on a team venture, to which Ahzoh volunteered. Meanwhile, GLaDOS was looking for some teammates of her own as she hopes to enter the contest with the first chapter of a series she planned. After that, MechanicalPen was curious about special double-point compensation.
G.I. Toez found we were still Counting to a million as he, DerVVulfman and Ahzoh revived the forum game after two years.
Meanwhile, KasperKalamity was curious about how the Save-Point Pixel Quilt game worked, curious and eager to play. So to help him understand, buprettyinpink supplied a link to KasperKalamity to see how another forum is running the game/
And Ahzoh heard tell that one can embed truetype fonts into forums, so he wondered if you can read. However, DerVVulfman stated that his custom font wasn't visible and explained why it wouldn't work, though the discussion went back and forth. Ahzoh mentioned how some games and pdf files can imbed fonts, while DerVVulfman mentioned that RPGMaker games actually install fonts and that forums don't work like .pdf files
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. But what about your fellow members? Who are they? 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, like DerVVulfman who is still working on his Audio Rewrite module. He found it virtually impossible to adjust the volume to Midi Music using the winmm.dll, but made a work around. It surprised MechanicalPen that he would be using that .dll file as the ReGaL system he's been working on is supposed to be cross-platform. But DerVVulfman replied that it was an old system for a game his sister and he were working on. Speaking of games, MechanicalPen said he was taking out the 'socializing' minigame from his project as it didn't fit the rest of his game and asked DerVVulfman how his game was going. DerVVulfman replied that the last major scripting hurdle was the audio system which included both his audio looping system and an encryption system.
Crono is attempting to make a game and posted the results of his modified RTAB with Animated Battlers battlesystem in the Maps and screenshots thread. The hud's appearance is influenced on the number of party members so it appears more streamlined, and he's working to make his characters have a Lufia styled appearance. As he admitted his mapping ability was lacking and was looking for some feedback, he got it as KasperKalamity suggested using the circle tool to paint the water tiles to give it a more natural appearance. After that, KasperKalamity went through other thoughts and suggestions to give his outdoor maps a natural feel.
And looking to protect the interest of her fellow members, buprettinpink put up some links and sample templates for those interested in using Creative Commons Licenses. And important a thread as it was, DerVVulfman moved and stickied the thread into the Development Discussion board for anyone using the license whether it be code, graphics or anything else. She didn't think code would be covered as code had a license of its own.
Meanwhile, MechanicalPen wanted to point out the reasons Why the Random Number God is not your friend when it comes to playing RPG games. He pointed out how 50% hit chances don't mean you're guaranteed to hit a target every other time and provided examples and reasons. Ahzoh noted NASA's reasoning why they don't like a 99% success rate as it means there's always a failure chance. Meanwhile, RosyPosy replied that games were never meant to be fair, but just beatable, and gave examples why the fights in the Persona / Shin Megami Tensei series should be hard.
Upcoming Projects
With all the work that penguwin has done, he's released a demo for Élan: Reign of Catastrophe, now available in the main post. He's awaiting critique and feedback.
Meanwhile, the RisqueMon topic is once again taking submissions as G.I. Toez is back and has new ideas and a brand new new story in mind.
Recruitment Office
As he is admittedly not skilled music-wise, Ahzoh wondered if MetalRenard was still a Composer looking for projects. Unfortunately, he didn't realize the thread was made three years prior and MetalRenard stopped working on projects for free while building a career as a teacher in foreign languages.
General Support
Wishing to make it possible so the main character can push a small table to a shelf, Peregrine was wondering hot to Restrict Movement of events so they cannot be pushed past certain areas. Ahzoh mentioned the use of a 'set move route' for an event's move command and offered to test what she has if he was given a copy of the method or script she's currently using. In any event, he suggested the UK's Tigerseye RPGMaker XP Tutorial Website. She checked it out while mentioning that she's given a number of things a shot, the latest forcing the player to freeze when the impassible tile is activated. Still, she supplied screenshots of the event code for Ahzoh to ponder.
Code Support
It was fortunate for MechanicalPen that Ryaryu showed up when he did, as he had a copy of the backtracking script which was needed to Get the Class Name from Scripts.rxdata. He gave instructions about installation, including the alteration of the 'Main' script, which sent the resulting output to an Error Log The system worked like a charm for MechanicalPen who gave his thanks.
And though unaware if ZeroSum still needed [Highlight\]Help with Computer Controlled Actors with Trickster's Advanced Individual Battle Commands[/Highlight], Ryaryu volunteered his services. He asked ZeroSum to temporarily replace his 'MAIN' code with an Altered Debugging version which would record an Error Log when the error was reached. And once done, ZeroSum just restores his MAIN code and pastes the results of the log for Ryaryu to examine.
Last week, Ahzoh found MGC's Original Mode7 Script was Causing an error in Spriteset_Map, particularly when switching from an HMode map back to a normal one. Fortunately, MGC was on hand to give him the latest version of the original which included code that alleviated that problem. The new code worked and Ahzoh no longer got the problem. However, he was wondering if MGC had a script that included transparent walls. MCG knew of such a script and supplied Ahzoh with a youtube link. Unfortunately, the system didn't work with autotiles as Ahzoh explained.
Having heard stories of a Dungeons and Dragons RPGMaker XP system, deus69xxx has begun work on one compliant with 3.0+ Rules from WotC (Wizards of the Coast) and already managed to work out damaged reduction and spell leveling systems. However, he needs knowlege on how to create Menus and needs a small tutorial. Of particular, he has been confused how menu selection scripts work and would like to be able to separate skills from castable spells. In the meantime, he would like to expand the stats for the enemies, be able to dual weild and have skills that can select both single and multiple targets. In answer, MechanicalPen supplied a pair of window scripting tutorials and told him that he may find a script that permits dual weilding that he may like. He also informed deus69xxx that it won't be that simple to add new statistics to enemies, but it can be done. When deus69xxx replied he needed a way to access stats, MechanicalPen supplied a link to DerVVulfman's Text to RGSS system, to the data could be recorded with his other data.
Material Development
Scripts Database
MechanicalPen had problems with the link in Grimimi's Console Output topic, but Grimimi had returned to fixe the link.
Script Requests
There wasn't much luck for DuongCool's Request for a "Kamikaze Skill", even though KasperKalamity mentioned being able to use common events to craft the effect. However, MechanicalPen pointed out that the issue wasn't the commands he suggested, but that the problem was the battlesystem he was using. That didn't sit well with DuongCool, followed up by DerVVulfman pointing out why there hadn't been any new updates with the Tankentai System in years.
In reply to DerVVulfman, RaphaelRpgGames said he fixed the 2nd post in the thread asking for a small change in the script. Unfortunately, DerVVulfman says the second script in his post appears just as bad, having no line breaks at all where needed. This script that DerVVulfman wished RaphaelRpgGames to repost involved new movement methods for events, similar to the 'Move to Player' Move Route but targeting events and map coordinates instead. Unavoidably delayed by unexpected lower loss, RaphaelRpgGames returned and replaced the second script in the first post with one that was properly formatted.
Cortez was on the look out for the Actor Cloning System by Charlie fleed, but found the links were down in both Save-Point and in Charlie's own forum, Planet Fleed. In a quick responce, Charlie Fleed re-uploaded a mediafire demo, replying he intentionally took the link down due to a bug or some other situation which he wanted to examine. But since Cortez was able to get the sought after script, the subject was solved.
Have you ever played a game where you were able to replay a boss battle as an unlockable event? This feature is something that gerronix12 requested when he described the Battle Mode system that is availabe after you beat the game. But you won't be limited to just boss battles with his system as he requests that it can let you play battles encountered and not encountered, showing how many times you've beaten certain enemies and more. And regarding the background skin, he would like it to be changable. MechanicalPen procured a link to a system that gerronix12 might have been interested, but it wasn't what he was hoping and hopes something can either be found or crafted.
Resources Database
Since she needed a Fat RPGMaker XP Charset Template, buprettyinpink designed one of her own and posted it, with thoughts about posting others if she gets around to it. In Ahzoh's opinion, it looked like a Sumo Wrestler.
Resource Requests
Another request was made by DuongCool this week, now requesting that someone make a characterset of a girl riding a Chocobo. The girl he supplied has teal green hair and the chocobo is golden yellow and quite detailed, both of the RPGMaker XP format as had all his other requests.
Creativity Section
Music and Audio
Seeing that RosyPosy made the topic to show off Various Musical Videos!, DerVVulfman posted a video made by RosyPosy which showed off her voice acting work. True, it was a video made from a script demo by DerVVulfman, but he felt it would be fine since RosyPosy said the thread was also open to voice acting videos. And speaking of RosyPosy, she posted some odd Dalek vocal samples with her soundcloud account, though some cursing may be contained.
Meanwhile, you get to enjoy the pressing of ivory keys with a new piece echoing in The Sound of Zackwell.'s auditorium. He started working on his latest piece, The Last Piano', as a mere whim, but it surprised him how well it came out. You can find it posted as another soundcloud link in his thread.
Special Projects
ReGaL (RPG Game Lab)
Screenies
If you're wondering about the development of the ReGaL system, you should check out the new screens of the ReGaL Application as Kain Nobel put up some shots of the Resource and Extension managers. Using the resource manager, you can view and filter your resource files, seeing which are those within your project and which are in your 'RTP' path. And the Extension manager will be set up to filter out formats not supported, such as the MP3 format in which Kain Nobel is currently having difficulties. You may be able to add new extensions, but it will require some coding on your part. Kain wasn't satisfied with just posting the Resource and Extension managers, and went forward with posting the Weapon Types Widget. Whether you are familiar with RPGMaker VXAce, or just with Item Grouping systems in general, the system may look pleasantly familiar. buprettyinpink liked seeing the different gem icons in the windows, and wondered if a small preview window would be possible.
Well, that's it for this week.
"Ever wonder about those people who spend $2 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backward." - 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.