[DerVVulfman]

Two Week Edition
(September 3 to September 16, 2012)

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

The transfer From Host to Host has been in the works, and Kirito noted that there would be some downtime. But both he and DerVVulfman have been noting that there have been some technical issues that have arisen. And for those that spend time within the forums chatroom, DerVVulfman posted a pair of URLs that could grant members acces while the forum is offline.

During the past couple of weeks, you may have seen that the MySQL Server Hiccups have continued. As MetalRenard reported such an issue, DerVVulfman reported that the hosting service's reply was much the same as before, suggesting that Save-Point take action though it was their own staff that admitted altering the database without our knowledge.

Occasions

We can now welcome TeamNingo as a new member to the forum, a writer with a lot of ideas. He was welcomed by kyonides, DerVVulfman and MetalRenard who was curious if TeamNingo had any RPG making experience.

There were a number of birthdays the past couple of weeks, starting with the sudden confectionary celebration for cyrodilicbrandy. After he feasted on his icing covered treats, fantoski and DevAesthetic came by and had a nice birthday treat. It didn't take long before MGC had time for some sweet confectionary goodness. Later on, the birthdays of tnsi and Gogvonmagog had come and gone. Plenty of birthday cake was still going around as ElliotWyvern received his icing covered slabs. The birthdays of Bravo2Kilo and undaunted came not long after and they all had cake a plenty. After that, a good-sized slices of cake went out to LiTTleDRAgo and phantasie as the first week ended. The next week continued with celebrations as superfanqui1979 and DuskCrow had shared equal slices of cake. Later on, Siletrea had birthday cake a plenty, which was later followed by the birthday belonging to cardcafe. After that, some birthday cake was shared amongst The Dark Squid and evindom. It was followed shortly after by a birthday belonging to Zaphias. And the last shipment of cakes were delivered to EJlol, Strauss, adleen and Nazuth at the end of the second week.

General Chat

Having an early birthday celebration was first and foremost What's on the mind of Siletrea, whose Grandmother wouldn't be staying long enough in town for her real birthday the week later. KDC had issues using his HDTV antenna until just this week, and kyonides had issues with his test heroku app until just this week. But real life took hold of kyonides as began to worry about losing contact with an Irish friend of his.

Games Development

Development Discussion

If you were to ask kyonides Whats Up in RPGMaking, he would talk about the menu display he's been working upon for KRumors. After getting praise from Melana, he just unveiled how the scroll that displays the learned rumors would appear. Meanwhile, DerVVulfman mentioned he was now working on revising the Animated Battlers system he had been supporting for over a decade.

After reading how Nintendo had shut down the tool behind your favorite Pokémon fan games, finalholylight wondered how Chinese game developers get away with such infringements. DerVVulfman noticed this inquiry and replied how China's government looks the other way and their own copyright law grans virtually no protection. MetalRenard noticed this too and replied how any business wishing to work within China must give up all their techologies rights.

After seeing numerous bad games on the internet, kyonides pondered whether it would be worth Making Uncomfortable but Never Stupid Games as a Challenge. At least, that was how his topic reads which made MetalRenard wonder if kyonides suggested a contest of sorts. However, DerVVulfman was thinking that kyonides was playing Devil's Advocate as kyonides listed a number of features that could give the player headaches such as numerous puzzles in sequence, having battles require the player bring the right heroes or items at every turn, or other various conditions which may give the player grief.

Upcoming Projects

ChickenFetus has been going back and forth btween two games he wished to work on, and apparently settled upon an [Unity Project]Animal Survival Horror Game he plans to now make with Unity. Unlike other survival horror games, the player is not a human, but a housecat protecting her young. But despite the cute kittens within the game, it will contain morbid and alarming content. ChickenFetus even included a poll, to get member opinions on the type of active creature-type threats the player would encounter, and had a discussion with DerVVulfman regarding the inclusion of altered wildlife creatures. Alien interference as suggested by kyonides, but from what ChickenFetus had gathered, people are more attached to the realistic animal types. Backstory isn't an issue as to how the world had changed, but the concept that some animals have problem-solving intelligence caught ChickenFetus's attention. And with that, ChickenFetus added a series of spoilers with ideas for some of the monster creations.

This week, Kyonides's continued his Series of Demos, updating KRumors XP, releasing one more demos the past two weeks. He's looking forward to any comments left by members. The second demo included a new curled ribbon effect on his newly shown KRumors Menu which both Melana and DerVVulfman appreciated.

Code Support

When LilyFrog was in Need of Menu System Help and posted a mockup of how the menu would appear, DerVVulfman came about. He examined the portrait selection system that LilyFrog presented and supplied his own, though he had to bump his posting due to an error later caught. Still, LilyFrog had some issues with the Icon based inventory grid in the menu which prompted DerVVulfman to suggest having the script itself available for inspection. Days later, he uploaded an attachment as he said that LilyFrog could use another windowskin to change the look of the inventory system's cursor.

Tutorials

DerVVulfman posted another article from 2003, this one entitled A Guide to Properly Testing an RPG Game by Mateui. The topic's content describes the basics, as well as the differences between testing versus closed-session testing.

Material Development

Scripts Database

If you're working out a battlesystem and don't want data to change after combat, kyonides made a small scriptette that handles Saving Temporary Actors' Data which can be reloaded when the fight has ended.

Well, that's it for this week.

"Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else." - Alison Boulter

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.