(February 10 to February 16, 2014)
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
Olivia wondered whether anyone would be interested in having a Treading Centre where members could sell their wares, resources and/or skills for SP, the forum's point system used in the forum shop. An extension of another thread where she asked members to become greedy capitalists, she gave examples how a member could create workshops and charge points for music compositions, graphics, or rent their services for other duties. JayRay was the first to give the idea a shout and thought about making custom screens for big money while wanting to use his hard earned credit for music, however, MetalRenard thought that JayRay's fee sounded steep. DerVVulfman remarked that JayRay had a set price on his DaVinci templates, and noted that we had Prefix Icons for workshops, but gave thought to having a separate board for workshops alone. Olivia agreed that the idea of a separate workshop board sounded like a decent plan, and felt it gave incentive towards people working. KasperKalamity and she chatted a little, regarding the forum's points and whether a sort of trading stock system could be added. Kirot didn't think it feasible since the points are only good within the forum. One final thought that DerVVulfman had involved the name of the forum's currency and if anyone thought it confusing as its apreviation seemed similar to other system abbreviations. MechanicalPen noted that he thought the currency was called Save Points, which DerVVulfman acknowleged was true. But DerVVulfman felt it didn't sound like a unique currency like Dollars or Pounds or Rupies, though Olivia felt the name wasn't confusing at all. She also wan't keen on the name that DerVVulfman proposed for the new forum board, wondering how such a thread could cover price lists while Kirot felt that giving it a simpler name like Market would be fine. But DerVVulfman felt a name that could identify it with a name using the traditional phrase of Workshop was best, though he appeared open to suggestion.
Occasions
Though his actual introduction wasn't within the proper board, DariusSlayer wished to say hello. Slightly distracted at the time of his post, he was introduced to our community thanks to MetalRenard. Almost immediately, MetalRenard bid him a warm greeting as did Ace and Steel Beast 6Beets, while DerVVulfman was delighted to see someone working with a non RPGMaker engine and asked where his talents lay. Though he went to college for Gam Art and Design, his main talent lay in writing. And he has been in the field for nearly five years, now on a global scale. Two games, 'Alucinatio' and 'Final Warrior', he has are available in the newgrounds site, and has another game planned for release with music by MetalRenard himself. To help DariusSlayer get situated, MetalRenard suggested posting about his current game and pointed him in the direction to our Recruitment Office so he may find an artist.
While it is true that Pie is Fly, you just have to love a good slice of Birthday cake and this week there was plenty of cake going around. This week started off as Kerdukie, jurbu, Natsu Dragneel, Acetonide, freidon, Deadbool and TheHowlingGuardianofSilverLore had some cake along with dacloudster and Pranxtor the next day. Later on, rick_maker, belfurion, Penguin, takahata, Chaotech Games shared some slices of cake, and buddysievers and Navest had their share of birthday cake. After that, the birthdays of ricifidi, davitron, Sahagin, Python Blue, Lightningsun and Time came and went. And we got to celebrate the birthday of aigiku, Hypec, OneWingedAnel, vargave, lamies, philliphh and Grimimi. And lastly a good collection of candles appeared for criz, rumapark, MagicCoconut and soraiuga.
And though his reply was a bit belated, Kirot thought that the cost of Olivia's Laptop being fix'd was a really good deal.
General Chat
A good way to learn about your fellow members in the game-making community is to find out just What's on their mind. Having worked dilligently on his Arkéan language for so long, Ahzoh had begun working on a spiritual successor, Vṛḵaẕī. He gave some sample dialog with detailed explanation on the word constructions, which made DerVVulfman think about the linguist who made the Klingon language and the Atlantean alphabet in Disney's Atlantis. It lifted Ahzoh's spirits to consider his language developing like Klingon, and reminisced about how the same character script was used in Disney's alphabet. However, he later learned that he has been working out his triconsonantal root language totally wrong and began studying up on it. A new member named DariusSlayer entered the forum, stating he's working on a game with MetalRenard entitled "Space Dust". However, his slow responce time when he joined our community was thanks in part to NetFlix. Meanwhile, Kirot noticed that dynamic lighting could bring a 2D game map to life while DerVVulfman suggested adding particle effects into the lighting effect. Kirot was fairly interested, but didn't think particle effects would fit in with his game BitAdventure.
Kirot put his name into the Save-Point.org Skype Room, while KasperKalamity wondered if anybody wanted to play Remedial Dungeons and Dragons.
Looking to spawn more activities with the forum's banking services,Olivia wanted to ask the members to stop doing things for free and Convert into Greedy Capitalists. She's looking to ask members to start charging for things with the forum's SP currency such as one's coding or spriting skills. Kirot was the first to announce that he was looking for Bitcoins, while MetalRenard was looking for a lapdance. However, KasperKalamity was being more discreet. Still, Ahzoh went survivalist-crazy and bought one of each weapon available in Save-Point's store. Weapon or no, MetalRenard felt he had all the power while Steel Beast 6Beets thought about actually spending some of the points he has earned. Perhaps he will be a customer of Olivia who plans to use harness her artistic skills to sell faceset and portrait artwork. Ahzoh seems to be against most of it, triumphantly shouting communism and to MetalRenard that he cannot buy a god. DerVVulfman apparently kept score of his points and boasted he had five times more than Olivia. Meanwhile, he asserted that the DaVinci templates are already a currency builder for JayRay
Games Development
Development Discussion
So much goes on when you are involved in a game making forum and one way to catch up it to find out What's Up with your fellow RPGMaking Members, so you may take a look at a vivisected characterset that KasperKalamity made as he's looking for feedback. Steel Beast 6Beets thought it was gory, but thought it needed a outtle bit of work. Olivia has been messing around with converting 3D images into 2D renders, studying new techniques and generating various images based on the same original household picture. However, she was frustrated how one of her renders taxed her pc. DerVVulfman left her some comments involving halftones, and thought that one of her renders would be more fitting for a flashback scene. After that, he went on about the charactersets in his game and how he needed to revise all his character's charsets for the weapons to show with his paperdoll system. However, he showed some frustration as his custom charactersets held over 100 frames and that he had dozens of graphics to adjust. But he did find hope as he began to work out a script that could redraw all his graphics and space the frames out for him.
JayRay wondered if KasperKalamity had larger renders of his recent psychadelic maps once he saw them within the Maps and screenshots thread. After that, he mentioned that his game, Roguehaven, was now again an RPGMaker XP project, and again on track with many things accomplished. With that, he wished to post a couple of shots of his title screen which he said used the Mousie system and the Advanced Title Screen by ForeverZer0. He later returned with a completely reskinned variant of the Lycan Hud, all objects shown on the very bottom of the screen in dark metallic brass tones. He felt he still needed a few tweaks regarding the numbers for the skills and icons, as well as a few other touches. KasperKalamity returned with another map shot, making his fog a bit more transparent for visibility sake. Visible as it was, Steel Beast 6Beets was curious if he actually saw a baby in the cell, which KasperKalamity affirmed as he said it was related to something earlier in his game. Steel Beast 6Beets also asked if JayRay's recent shot could be expanded, which JayRay pointed was able to be clicked in order to give a larger 800x600 image. Spending so much time in the thread, Steel Beast 6Beets admitted he would like to start posting some of his own maps as he's into world building, impressed by their works. A bookmark hoarder as he is, KasperKalamity is curious about world-building techniques. After that Steel Beast 6Beets described a scene from his own game where some knights complained about the shoddy condition of weapons in a watchtower now used as a warehouse. Meanwhile, Ahzoh admits to be thinking more about his game's world more than working on its active development. There is method to KasperKalamity's madness as he described to Ahzoh how he separated the tasks to make his own game, starting with creature art development, then work on design and combat aspects before moving to another feature. He didn't let himself get burned out as he only stayed with a job for a month. After saying all that, KasperKalamity then graced us with another screenshot, a full scale version of Villageburg, a walled city he designed with gates to the North and South, containing various house and building types and open water to the West.
Kirot warned anyone wishing to put Artificial Intelligence in Turn-Based RPGs to be very careful if they had the AI be able to use items. He felt that balancing the use of items was going to be a lot different and trickier, and that the AI characters using them may do better if they were weaker or less aggressive. Apart from that, he suggested that AIs should have decisions based on preset conditions, and noted that a lot of beta/combat testing will be undertaken.
Upcoming Projects
This week, a game in the works is retitled, and thus we now have Celestial Tear: Demon's Revenge being worked on by Yin and Trexrell. This decision, as Trexrell reported, was due to the name being used by a previously released flash game. As it stands, they love the idea that Demon's Revenge is now part of a collective of games. While he posted this decision, he also put on display the game's new logo in various color schemes. Steel Beast 6Beets was the first to appear, loving the new logo designs, while KasperKalamity noted the new title.
Have you ever seen a square slime in an RPG? If not, you're in luck as you may now meet slime-kun, one of the future monsters in Kirot's game, bitadventurer. Currently in development, Bit Adventure is a hack and slash adventure which follows a generic villager as he becomes a dungeon diver in search of adventure. His game is expected to work on the PC, Mac and Linux systems, with planned releases on Android consoles such as Ouya. Development releases are exclusive to Save-Point and a few other select circles.
Recruitment Office
Right now, DariusSlayer is looking for an artist who could recreate all the artwork for his independeng upcoming title, Space Dust, a side scrolling shooter (i.e. Einhander, Sol Divide, Gradius, R-Type). This includes all enemies and bosses, and their movement and death animations. He would have preferred to give payment up-front, but is willing to sign a contract stating an agreed amount of revenue.
Code Support
Though DerVVulfman told him how to adjust RPG Advocates's HP Absorption script to let the user receive SP instead, Steel Beast 6Beets still needed some SP Damage help as he ran into an error. The message that was rendered puzzled DerVVulfman as no script he wrote contained the variable described, but he figured there could be a typo present somewhere and asked Steel Beast 6Beets to look into it. While searching, Steel Beast 6Beets noticed that targets with no SP points left still granted the attacker points to absorb and informed him, while he noted how a common event call he created got rewritten thanks to lack of line space. DerVVulfman determined that the common event was a target and showed him how to make line breaks in the commands and avoid the error, and gave him one more edit so the attacker cannot receive SP points from a target who has none to drain. Once that was done, everything ran properly and Steel Beast 6Beets thanked him for the help.
MechanicalPen entertained the idea of having battlers of various different color types and wondered if there would be an effective way to go about Pallete Changing other than the hue adjustment system. His concern was that some of his battlers were humanoid and the slider would affect the whole image and cause unusual and odd skin color variants. DerVVulfman suggested the use of a paperdoll system that supported hue adjustment so the battler remained unchanged but the object drawn over the battler could be affected. However, he felt this was useful more towards playable characters. MechanicalPen showed interest, but replied that none of his battlers held interest. However, DerVVulfman supplied some code which allowed enemies to become equipped for the paperdoll system, a solution which spurred MechanicalPen on with ideas. Kirot wondered whether it would be easy enough to have two layers of graphics for a battler, but DerVVulfman pointed out that layering graphics for a final result was the very basis of a Paperdoll system.
Material Development
Scripts Database
DoubleX noticed that characters that had a status effect and had died, whether in battle or not, lost the status effect if it was revived To prevent that, he wrote the Permanent States script for RPGMaker VXAce so characters who are brought back from the dead still retain their status ailments or boons
Script Requests
This past Christmas, MechanicalPen was helping out Iqus to Edit a script which involved displaying short popup messages. While the suggestion that MechanicalPen didn't work, Iqus decided to use another script and solved the issue himself.
But Iqus did have another request for a script that could Transfer States to a target or allow one to steal states from another. He has a pair of scripts from LockeZ designed for Victor Sant's ACBS system, a system that he is in fact using, but is unsure how to check a target's states to get both systems to perform the actions he desired. DerVVulfman alerted Iqus when he saw issues with the posted scripts, which Iqus was able to repair though they could only be seen in quote boxes. In any event, DerVVulfman thought that Victor Sant might have some insight for such a feature for his system.
Resources Database
As JayRay continues to work on his game, Roguehaven, using a paperdoll system that DerVVulfman used, he also wondered if anyone was interested in seeing his DaVinci Sprite Templates made to display more action poses such as attacking, magic casting or running. He gave a list of various poses, garnered from DerVVulfman's multiple pose system as well as optional worn pieces for a paperdoll system, wondering if anyone had interest in seeing its development.
Creativity Section
Art and Design
Olivia gave fair warning to anyone with a preferance to traditional art styles to avoid reading a new thread she created where she began Experimenting with 3D to 2D digital design. She made mention of her intent to render backdrops and various other graphics for her project, The Medbay, in our What's Up RMers thread. And this topic is a continuation of that discussion. Herein you can see some art which she applied a couple of filters, and later with some cell shading tests. She quickly discovered that while 3D images are a real pain, the bigger the image the better the render. It jogged MechanicalPen's memory about a program that he showed Olivia a while back and displayed a render he made with the so-mentioned tool. JayRay loved the renders and inquired if it was the style she intended for her game. However, her current mindframe was for the creation of Visual Novel resources for Save-Point, and thought the Japanese Cell shader in her system seems to be the best. She later returned to show off how she could take character models such as that of a woman wearing a white two-piece could be digitally altered, even pixellated. On seeing them, JayRay was impressed and loved the idea of a 3D background resource. Having a Visual Novel template for the RPGMaker line is something that Olivia stated she has planned.
Literature Section
Uruhara had decided on the name of a book he is working on. And with it, JayRay graciously made a logo for Uruhara's title, Beyond the Night Sky. While he hadn't actively begun writing or posting anything on Github, he does request that people ask for permission before use of any of his material. It was followed shortly by a fairly excited JayRay who noted that Uruhara talked about the book for at least an hour before the logo was even designed.
Well, that's it for this week.
"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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.