The Weekly Gazette 05-28-2023

[DerVVulfman]

(May 22 to May 28, 2023)

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

General Chat

If you are interested in map tiles, you may find it good to elbow kyondes and ask him "What are YouTubing?" He found someone's video that describes how one can use a basic paint program to make a 2D tiles for a side-scroling platform game.

Some things that hit this week's News of the World was shockers while others may have went unnoticed. Many went into mourning over the loss of Tina Turner at 83, the Queen of Rock 'n Roll passing away quietly in her home in Zurich. Election interference is a hot topic with both Canada and Poland this week, both launching investigations arising from allegations of meddling from both China and Russia. And of election interference, Special Investigator John Durham will soon be testifying in the U.S. Congress, stating how the FBI interfered during the 2016 Presidential race and the origin of the fraudulent Russia hoax. Given that, Presidential Candidate Ron DeSantis said he would fire the current head of the FBI. Of the war in Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power was restored by Ukrainian forces, despite being in Russian-occupied territory. Meanwhile, Russia made claims that a Ukraine attack in Belgorod was routed, killing 70 Ukrainians; claims currently unverified. And Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of a private military company with ties to the Kremlin itself, has rebuked Moscow's leadership, noting that the invasion to 'demilitarize' Ukraine had instead fully backfired. The firing and arrest of a machete-wielding New York Professor, Saskatchewan's wildfires, censorship of Covid-Vaccine related deaths and injuries, New York's Harlem Jail becoming the next stop for Illegal Immigrants, and more hit this week's news.

Tech Talk

This week, Twitter made the News of the Cyber World as a lawsuit against Elon Musk was dismissed, that Twitter has a new CEO that blasted Meta/Facebook for copying one of their features, and the launch of Ron DeSantis's U.S. Presidential Campaign on Twitter. Meta had ups and downs as Instagram had an outage affecting thousands, but advanced WhatsApp to allow users to edit their posted content. And in VideoGame news, China is boycotting the latest Legend of Zelda game, claiming hidden messages are within the game that insult the Communist Party.

Forum Games & Nonsense

Hiarity may arise when someone in a game of Dungeons and Dragons roleplays his character to a T, and that is exactly what happened with Our Beloved Brainless Powerhouse. Another comic tale found by DerVVulfman, it tells the tale of a half ogre that is as strong as a mountain, but not nearly as smart as one.

Games Development

Development Discussion

If you were wondering What's up among our RMers, it appears spriting appears to be the word of the week. Kain Nobel has been toiling away on animations such as his dog, Shadow. He even later returned to give us larger renders such as the face of a royal that may be cursed with a hair-raising disease, and a princess based somewhat upon Queen Rania of Jordan. DerVVulfman claims he is close to being done with sprite-work for his left-handed female Half Kaisers, and kyonides says he is out of ideas yet again.

Code Support

It has been a while since Whisper has been around, but he was in need and wondered if there was any Resources Consumption Meter to determine what was causing severe lag with his game. kyonides noted that many scripts were known as resource hogs and given to lag, and pointed out how an extreme number of events could cause lag by themselves. DerVVulfman pointed out how the mechanics of HUD displays and menu rendering systems could bring about lag, backed up kyonides by suggesting and describing the usefulness of an anti-lag script, and warned about issues involving some hidden class rewrite scripts. And Kain Nobel brought up how redrawn gradient bars, the speed of draw-text functions, and recursive scripts could all slow down processing while supplying a small tracer code that may assist. Whisper thanked each of them, finding that it was indeed the HUD system that was causing lag, and was able to be fixed by a scripter even as inexperienced as he.

Material Development

Scripts Database

After three years, kyonides respawned to update the RPGMaker XP edition of KRespawnPoint. This system, available for most RPGMaker Engines, allows you various options when your party suffers defeat than just the Game Over page. Now updates, it uses new constants, revised in-game variables, and more.

For those wanting a bit more control over the background music, then perhaps you may wish to use kyonides's BGMSwitches RG. It is available for all three ruby-script editions of RPGMaker.

If you have developed a game where your player may opt to change their character class, know that those skills they have for their former class will indeed be lost. If that is not desired, perhaps the Klass Change & Skills systems by kyonides will fit your game, allowing the hero or heroine to retain the skills and techniques they previously learned. Available for RPGMaker XP and RPGMaker VX.

Creativity Section

Music and Audio

Three new piece of music have found their way into Eric Matyas's thread where he Shares His Original Music and Sound FX, the first entitled "Zombie Arcade". This piece has a techno feel to it as any video arcade, and could be suitable for cyberpunk games where threats both living or undead may appear. "Cryptic Clues" is more of a high-fantasy piece with ethereal bells rapidly playing while a slow foreboding harmony resonates. And Eric's third piece, "Alien Colosseum" is another techno-cyber beat with the hum of electic instruments reminding one that they are no longer on Terra Firma. But still, they are not the only pieces available, as Eric Matyas has hundreds of piecess within his Ogg Music Packs.

Art and Design

While many know Eric Matyas as a composer, they may forget his work at Building a Massive Library of Free Images for Everyone. It has been some months, but he now has two tile-ablee dark gray woodgrain textures which one may find use.

Well, that's it for this week.

"I think I've been able to fool a lot of people because I know I'm a dork. I'm a geek." - Gwen Stefani

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.