(October 21 to October 27, 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
Announcements and Updates
When you hear someone chant "Sunday Sunday Sunday", you just know something is going to happen during the weekend. While it wasn't for this just passed Sunday, it is this upcoming Sunday that Uruhara plans a new round of scheduled maintenance. This round won't be a quick edit, but one that will take several hours, so he wished to give everyone fair warning.
Feedback and Suggestions
Seeing what changes were made to the User Info thingy, MetalRenard gave DerVVulfman a cheer. But DerVVulfman didn't stop working after removing the gender and favorite maker data box and adding their colorful icons to the top of the postbit window. From the next few posts over those days, he continued cleaning up the system, added descriptive popups, and even altered the gender icons so they showed in grayscale when the member was offline. As he did that, he felt there wasn't any need for the default online/offline icon and removed it. Codewise, he thinks the Postbit feature is done, though he admits the gender icons may need a bit more visual enhancement. Given all that was accomplished, cosmickitty loved it and considered her suggestion solved.
Occasions
After all the cakes and candles sold throughout this month, flour and sugar stockpiles took a massive dip. Still, while the reserves in baking goods are low, three more birthdays appeared and no less on the same day. So this week, Boot, rikucotton and superjamesunleashed all got to dig in to a scrumptious birthday cake.
General Chat
Once and a while, you may want to learn about the comings and goings of your fellow members. Fortunately, it is easy to find out What's on the mind of your friends in the Save-Point community. Right now, you may have noticed that Kain Nobel had been unseen, but that came after he purchased a business. While the business is actually bringing in cash, he found that he had to spend more and more time. And while business continued to pick up, his own general manager just up and quit, taking away his beloved game making / IRC chat time. Meanwhile, yamina-chan has an interesting project she needs to finish by Monday, but after a massive writing project, fatigue and hearing about an upcoming MineCraft update, she experienced a motivational drop to do the work. And frustration,thy name is internet. While MetalRenard saw that nearly every wi-fi device in his house worked, including his laptop, he was at a loss as why his reliable desktop unit was unable to connect. However, it was later revealed after everything dropped, it was the fault of the internet technician who performed his modem install. It would have been recommended that everyone avoid Brighton had he gone on a no-connection Rampage, but he fortunately hot things squared away. At the same time, JayRay had been staying busy by finding a mouse script which he hopes could be used to make a dynamic GUI, started working on video tutorials for Game Making beginners, and had thoughts of making a forumBB.
Are any of you ready for Halloween? If so, cosmickitty wonders if any one is willing to divulge what Halloween Costumes will be worn. While she's been considering Jack Skellington, she's also considered makeup tutorials by Roy Lichenstein, such as a fifteen minute offering she posted. It didn't take KasperKalamity long to proclaim that he's the Booze Knight, which cosmickitty loved. However, she would have preferred another brand of lager. And while her son is going as Thor and her hubby as Tony Stark (sans the tin suit), she has been putting more thought into the comic print tutorial. Meanwhile, Ozzy Osbourne and Zombies... mixing the two together is a thought that MetalRenard put together if he could only find the right glasses.
Games Development
Development Discussion
Having spent quite a bit of time on his graphics, JayRay decided to show off something within the Maps and Screenshots thread, a rough terrain map devoid of man-made structures or even trees. DerVVulfman wondered if it was angled too much but also felt that he needed a recognizable object in the map's foreground to give it some scale. Meanwhile, buth he and Steel Beast 6Beets felt that the stonework needed a touch more gray to separate them from the greenery of the land.
Upcoming Projects
A couple of new bumps appeared within i666iky939's topic for Dread Arms as he first posted a link to a youtube video with a title screen update. His game, from Lonely Dreams Studios, now has an animated title screen showing both science fiction touches while a magic circle rotates behind the game's title which was followed by an animated load game screen. After getting cheers from JayRay, he posted a second youtube link showing off his use of Atoa's Custom Battle system, tweaked out with a Ring Menu system, Animated backgrounds and mist effects, a life line system and more. While he stated his system had random battle music, the video was actually devoid of such, and MetalRenard offered to supply him with some temp music until i666iky939 acquired an OST (original sound track). i666iky939 had been elated by the responses and would love if his game would have an original score.
Code Support
It had been a few months since Morrigan Aensland's requested assistance Extra Movement Frames compatability with MGC's ISO Engine, but this week evindom came in with some advice. While he believes that issues come from the use of Modern Algebra's movement cycle formula, he felt a different script by Victor Sant could suffice. However, he still has no luck in working out diagonal movements between the two.
Tutorials
For those scripters who wish to duplicate classic map event commands in their code, JayRay revealed a list of RMVX Ace Script Call Eventing Procedures which he gathered from rpgmakerweb.com. Many of these commands work for earlier RPGMaker systems, and not just RPGMaker VX Ace.
Material Development
Tools
JayRay noticed DerVVulfman's reply within the Tiled mapping utility thread as why a game such as Final Fantasy VII required multiple CDs to play. In responce, he described how full rendered images could lose quality if altered into a usable medium while pixel art such as generic sprites could survive a 256 palette conversion.
After that, JayRay made a thread for people wishing to have Unlimited faces and busts for your Superhero type Games, providing not one tool but links to four. Utilizing the power of flash and HTML, these generators can offer users the ability to make a virtually limitless number of poses and graphics for their works, that being the nature of these four tools. The Avatar Maker is a face generator by the Abi-Station crew, while the Illustrator Maker is a different system also by the Abi-Station crew. For those who prefer anime-styled art, he found a flash application by Gen8Hedgehog in DeviantArt, and another generator was discovered in FoxRichard's account at DeviantArt. Personally, cosmickitty thought that Hero Machine was neat, but wasn't a fan of the others. She'd prefer to stick to full body systems rather than one designed for the RPGMaking crowd. And of those, JayRay felt that Elouai Doll makers were the best out there.
Special Projects
ReGaL (RPG Game Lab)
The Talk Box
Did Kermit the Frog visit the forum? Not likely, though DerVVulfman delivered a bit of news Regarding ReGaL with a comic start. He announced that ntzrmtthihu777 discovered some Java code that duplicated many of the routines within the Bitmap hidden class of the recent RPGMaker series of engines. GLaDOS loved the news, but grimaced that DerVVulfman used so dated an opening style. However, DerVVulfman replied it wasn't the first time he delivered news with a bit of levity.
Well, that's it for this week.
"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
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.