(April 14 to April 20, 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
Occasions
This week, we started off light when it came to celebrating birthdays, as the first one of this week was that of csmoke and BigHa. Towards the middle of the week, the birthdays of Rafael-animal, Thunderknight, Strikenz, Gamrad and TomG came and went. And this week ended with the birthdays of wethefallen and comically for evilbunny whose birthday appeared this Easter.
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. MechanicalPen read yamina-chan's statement to work immediately on an idea before someone else steals it, but countered that later replicas to works may prove to be of a higher standard or worth.
For those who have glanced at Ahzoh's own avatar, they may have seen it as a dark figure. This figure is a Ḵsīnesīr, a fictional species for a collaborative project he and others are working upon. He delivered a link to a wiki page which describes this humanoid species, discussing its pitch black appearance, bone covered head, and excellent night vision.
And lest anyone forget, DerVVulfman shouted out to have a Happy Happy Hop Hop Day, though he did advise everyone to be on the lookout for bands of leporids carrying multi-colored eggs. Pherione felt that no danger would come with the resident werewolf around, and Ahzoh commented to DerVVulfman that they may make for a tasty treat. However, our Fox in the Music box may be hunting rabbits.
Games Development
Development Discussion
This week, JayRay showed off his graphics skills within the Maps and screenshots thread as he showed off the Title Screen he was working upon. However, it isn't a mere title screen, but one that changes with forty types of backdrops and multiple character styles. Meanwhile, he felt to have multiple gameplay options, such as playing one of eleven established characters, going for combat action only in the game's arena, or starting off a game with a fresh new character. Taylor showed off a number of shots of his bestiary screen, and you can see such fiends such as the Invaded Dichoctomy or Disturbant Past. MetalRenard was confused by the shot, unsure why it appeared to have four windows for various monsters in the screen. But MechanicalPen cleared it up as he realized it was four different screenshots within the image. Taylor returned to describe the four screenshots, noting the differences betwen enemies who haven't been studied, those defeated, or more. MechanicalPen liked the renders, but questioned using any form to completely analyze an enemy other than the one that can do it within a single turn.
KasperKalamity visited the Cracked.Com site and felt the link he discovered held enough Animals that should be monsters. DerVVulfman took a gander at the link and was surprised to see a caterpillar with a 70's hair-do. It was later visited by ntzrmtthihu777 who had a picture of one big ugly bug from Brazil. But if the bugs didn't creep you out, the haunted looking fish or dental-proficient squid that cosmickitty found would, along with some other evil looking bugs.
Upcoming Projects
JayRay saw the suggestion about having a transparent hud for his game, Roguehaven, and liked the idea. JayRay thought that he may even go so far that only the hotkeys remain visible while other HUD objects only became visible when the mouse was hovering over them.
Meanwhile, JayRay had been contemplating another game with the title, Ghosts of Lost Days. Taking place years after the terrible Venkha invasion, the world has been devastated by war and the land made barren. Many groups have been fighting the Venkha, including a mercenary army known as The Spear of Dominic, while ragtag games such as The Free Hearts roam the barren wastes to scavange for whatever they need to fight.
And Trexrell announced that Celestial Tear: Demon's Revenge is now on Steam Greenlight[/Highlight][/Thread] and available for voting and promotion. He would have liked to show off the battlesystem, but not everything within had been taken care of.
Code Support
While working with Modern Algebra's "Fix Picture to Map" script, trapless had a encountered a problem as he tried to match seqential filenames. His intent was to allow the selection of the next image within a set of images, which bugged him for a while. He later returned to announce that his problem was solved, but was curious if anyone had suggestions before he decided to have the topic closed and solved.
Meanwhile, JayRay had to Question to put up with lag in his game, or use a smaller resolution. He was using the GMRK (Game Maker Resource Kit) with Poccili's Tilemap, the Lycan ABS and was set up for a screen resolution of 1024x768, but found a number of lagging issues. JayRay later re-edited his post to have it considered solved as he dropped GMRK and switched to ForeverZero's resolution system. DerVVulfman did wonder about the use of Poccil's tilemap, commenting that the script is fairly enormous.
And VEE-Chary says he needs Help with an Active Timer Battlesystem by MakirouAru, and had pasted a copy of the battlesystem to aid any would-be assistance. Like a number of battlesystems, this ATB system displays timer bars to show when a hero will be able to perform an attack, much like the Final Fantasy series of games from the SNES era on up. He has had luck getting it to work with other systems, but ran across a problem. He would like to include a facet where players have an advantage in turns if they surprise an enemy, or delay their ability to react if they are ambushed. Initially, the code posted didn't properly show and prompted DerVVulfman to advise VEE-Chary to see about fixing the request. Since then, VEE-Chary supplied the script as an attachment, but noted that some of the instructions were mis-translated Japanese and some in Spanish.
Meanwhile, Gardesion is inquiring advice about Drawing contents.. again! Having icon graphics of various sizes for the different objects he wishes rendered on an equipment screen, he would like to know of a method to have the armor and weapons be centered. A method to center the icon graphics, he feels, would be less complicated and quicker than having to spend time to work out a method that sets each icon at a pre-defined location. He has some working code which he presented to us, but hopes that someone could design a better version than what he wrote.
Material Development
Tools
A comical name for such a useful system, Olivia discovered the Pickle Editor version 2.0, a spritesheet editing tool for artists who wish to work upon seamless textures or properly aligned charactersets or tiles.
Not long afterwards, Olivia posted a topic for Spriter, an editor that lets you work on various spritesheets for, including RPGMaker XP and VX charactersets. While still classified as a beta version, it can assist spriters to line up their characters when they walk, or work on other types of animations.
Scripts Database
When JayRay entered the topic that held ccoa's Tileset Swap script, he discovered and reported that the demo's link was dead. DerVVulfman, who had been hosting it, only found out that RapidShare no longer guaranteed that files remained uploaded permanently, and fixed the link.
After that, JayRay made another visit to the forum, but with the intent of adding a new script to work with an ABS in mind, His new Title Skip for Lycan ABS lets you skip the title screen entirely and go straight to the game itself. A useful script if you wanted to have a custom title system in one's project.
It was soon followed by a script by DerVVulfman who posted The Lycan ABS Isometric View Patch which lets his battlesystem work with the Isometric map system worked upon by GubID, based on MGC's initial work. He returned to bump the topic to fix a glitch by his own accord and to allow his patch to fix an autotile rendering issue in the Isometric View system itself.
And it was followed not long after with a bump within The Lycan ABS topic itself, though not an upgrade to the system itself. Instead, it was to announce an upgrade to the Multiple Pose and Paperdoll systems designed for his ABS system and are forum exclusives.
Script Requests
NetZ is on the lookout for a better Interactive Ruby Shell (IRB) for RPGMaker XP, though he found a couple links for ones designed for RPGMaker VXAce which could help anyone wishing to craft one. He is hoping for a system that could bring up a pop-up window which may function while a game is running.
Creativity Section
Music and Audio
For those not offended by mature language and suggestive dialog, you may wish to see how well fared Korekame with his voice acting. If so, and you are old enough, you may find his voice acting video in his Final Fantasy V Spoof: Hard Like a Rock topic.
Art and Design
It has been a while since Rose Guardian has ben around, but had returned to let us know that he's been working on a fan manga based on Bomberman64, a game by HudsonSoft. Within the manga, he made Bomberman a normal man named Leevi, and posted a prologue page. He was a bit surprised that he didn't have any replies and didn't want anyone to think he'd bite anyone's head off, but yamina-chan argued that not everyone would be familiar with the original game or that a request for feedback within the post. As such, Ahzoh provided a wikipedia link about Bomberman while DerVVulfman suggested patience as constructive criticism on fiction may be slower to appear within a game forum than it would in a fiction site. Though, DerVVulfman thought that an inactive member of note might have enjoyed the piece. However, MetalRenard looked at the wikipedia link that Ahzoh provided and inquired where Rose Guardian got the inspiration for his manga's storyline. He replied back about the various sources and confirmed that the pages will continue at DeviantArt.
Likewise, it had been a while since cosmickitty had been around, but she had returned to visit her Pixel Arts, Sketches and Writings topic. Within, she posted a number of animated graphics, from colorful wolf scilouettes, to animated scythe wielders, from crystal clear waterfalls to bouncing balls. As Kain_Nobel cheered her work, Ahzoh thought he entered a 90's gif-filled website. And so to emphasize that feeling, cosmickitty added some dancing cats.
And for those who want a grand and detailed landscape for their maps, Olivia found and decided to share with us a 3D and 2D world map generator. Such a system could be used for parallax background for the fieldmap or for a shortcut travel-map system. Zackwell found it to be an interesting system, though he noted that the 3D map generator didn't render that much flat landscape. Still, both yamina-chan a JayRay thought it looked promising, though JayRay knew how to use Photoshop to work out such a map.
Literature Section
If you wonder where came trapless's First Letter After War, it was a letter he wrote to a friend of his when she had a stay in a mental ward. He plans to use it as the basis of reoccuring dreams in his game, but felt that the prose within was art enough to share and could be used freely by anyone interested. To DerVVulfman, it sounded like something that could have occurred during one of the World Wars.
Well, that's it for this week.
"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck." - Joss Whedon
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.