The V.X. Club
-August 28th, 2010-
Ookie Panda

News & Announcements
Summer Love Contest
Summer is here, all. It’s been here for a while, actually. Everyone is out in the sun and sweating their butts off! And what better time than rolling in the smoldering heat smelling like fresh perspiration to meet the love of your life? Rejoice! For the love of romance and melting ice cream, it’s time for another contest!

Hosted by my buddy zbdarkflame, the contest was announced August 16th, after a teaser thread two days before. The contest focuses on the theme of “summer love”, which zbdarkflame explains is “a short but intense relationship full of passion and excitement that happens, you guessed it, in the summer.” You can take this theme wherever your heart desires- within reason! The rules are simple and as non-restricting as possible. Just keep it rated PG-13 or below, and stay within the 30 minute time limit, and you’ll be set to win!

The prizes are pretty sweet too. Like the Olympics contest, there’s two awards to win: judge’s choice and member’s choice. The judge’s awards include sponserships, pinned topics, and even an interview from the V.X. Club! So what do you have to lose? There’s only 3 days left, so check out the thread for more details!

Signatures
Click here.
That is all.

Resource Focus
R a j a w a l i
Alright, so once before I focused on a group of people (The GFX Cream). Now it’s just one person. It’s not an interview, it’s just a focus.. on how awesome he is! As we the staff of RPG Maker VX Community were updating the long out-dated Resource Showcase Directory, I couldn’t help but notice this particular name pop up often. Not just once or twice.. but everywhere! Rajawali is on the ball, and becoming a fairly popular resource distributor and adviser. He really should just make a compilation of all his stuff, but for now it’s scattered amongst the boards.

Rajawali’s resources focus mostly on portraits, though he can also sprite. He has a collection of gender-swapped RTP characters, which are males turned into females, or females turned male. You can have Ralphina now: Ralph’s angry-looking sister! Rajawali then continued to distribute two girl actors with their hats removed, including the witch (Actor4-8), and more recently, he converted some RTP actors into children with matching sprites! Who’s a cute little Ylva-kins~? (Yeah I’m getting creepy now..)

Rajawali is also fairly active in the request section! Maybe if you’re lucky he’ll help you out! Again, he is usually most focused on faces, but he’s done some great sprite work, and basic resource-hunting as well. So, for someone I’ve never seen ask for one thing in return, I’d like to thank him with the good words of Jalen: “@ Rajawali: GET OVER HERE. XD GET OVER HERE AND LET ME HUG YOU”.

OwO;;;

Yeah, thank you Rajawali! We all hope to see more of you around!

CHOOSE YOUR FATE… QUICKLY!!!
Okay, this script is really cool. I’m surprised it didn’t come about earlier. On August 20th, XIV released a small script that can really make a big scene! TIMED choices! Like any other choice in the game, you get options and things happen based on what your choice is. But unlike normal choices where you can get up and get soda while you ponder, the developer now has the option to time you!

Yeah, it’s basically what it sounds like. When the normal choice window appears, so does the timer. The timer counts down, and if you don’t decide, then the game will! If it doesn’t sound significant, just try out the demo and see for yourself how much pressure it puts on you! The demo’s villain is in a room with lava that will fill up, killing either your new found love or your childhood friend! You can only save one of them. Or even neither of them and defeat the villain. But you only get five seconds to choose! And boy, does that five seconds really put you to the test!

Love, friendship, or justice? You decide! Check out the script here!

Game Review
Castle Chase
Released rather recently, Castle Chase is a “short adventure game” created by Racheal. It hasn’t gotten much attention, but it’s really a sweet game, with up to 10 times of replay value! Right away this game caught my interest because of the custom artwork. I wonder how long Rachael has been keeping that stowed away! Let’s see what else Castle Chase has to offer, shall we?

STORY
8/10
The story is overall simple, but grows depending on which path you take. You play as Princess Monica, a reckless girl who is avoiding her studies to go out on a date. Why? I don’t know, I suppose she just woke up one day wanting to make out with the various boys of the castle that she never seemed to pay attention to before. On an important day, nonetheless. How old is she? Sixteen? You’d think there’d be a bit more connections with men her age. Despite this, I quite love the characterization. The more you interact, the more you see how sassy our princess is, commenting on various placements of things and such, and seeing what she thinks. The men are all quite charming too, with intriuging personalities that keep them all apart. Fun characters, evolving story, but still I can’t help but be bothered by the slightly unrealistic details, hence, an 8 out of 10.

GAMEPLAY
6/10
This game consists of performing duties given to you by your bachelors. Most, if not all of it is fetching items. At first I was terribly bored and had to force myself to continue. But as I got the hang of it, it was relatively rewarding to finally have those men under my powe– I mean have those men go on a date with me! There are tons of things to interact with, and I had a field day. I love clicking on otherwise insignificant-looking things.. sometimes to find that they were not insignificant at all! But, with lack of any type of minigame or puzzle, it is rather repetitive. It’s just a matter of who to talk to, and where the heck is it you’re looking for, which is never hard to find considering the easy-to-adjust-to layout of the castle. There were only a few errors I found, and they weren’t game-breaking. A 6 out of 10 for the somewhat lacking gameplay.

VISUAL ASPECTS
7/10
As you can see, this game has a lot of custom artwork. Each and every character, even the unimportant ones, get a face. The art style is very cute and comedic, which definitely fitting for this game. In fact, this game has enough custom-fitted graphics in each area that you don’t even need RTP to play it. Nearly all of the sprites are from the Famitsu generator, with a bit of editing. Not too impressive, but you can’t fight convenience, eh? The other stand-out thing, since most of the game revolves around items, are the icons. They all look like what they’re supposed to be, and they stand out well on the maps. Mapping was done well, though repetitive (it is a castle after all..), each area has distinct features that help you remember them. A 7 our of 10 for the custom work, but only in two areas.

SOUNDTRACK
8/10
There isn’t much variety in the music. Besides heightened moments, and the area in the basement, the music is the same loop which eventually you get used to. Then again, it is the same environment, so no need to have a vast collection of pieces. The ambient tune is pleasant and light-hearted just like the game itself. And the softer music during those romance scenes make it that much more emotionally powerful. And 8 out of 10 for the fitting music, despite not having a wide selection.

ORIGINALITY
9/10
The characters are all very unique. The story is interesting. Though the medieval era isn’t anything new to the RPG Maker genre, it’s not like there are many other options. Each character’s background is creative and unexpected. Just one point less for the chosen time period gives Castle Chase a 9 out of 10 for originality.

OVERALL
7.6/10
Castle Chase is a fun and short game. It can be replayed for more challenging quests and fun adventures. The custom artwork is great, and the gameplay, though repetitive, is simple enough to want to try again and again for those alternate endings. The soundtrack is just as simple as the game itself, giving it a nice, happy, atmosphere. I recommend this game for anyone looking for some time to kill once you’ve beaten the internet. Good job, Rachael!

The V.X. Club
-July 31st, 2010-
Ookie Panda

News & Announcements
I’m sorry to inform you..
I hoped I wouldn’t have to write sad announcements.. but unfortunately, it must be known. Our dark lord and leader PINEDAVX has reached the end of the line. With the unfortunate increase in foes of the community, it had to have an end result. I hope they’re all happy.. we lost a long-time member, and a vital piece of the community. Goodbye, PINEDAVX. May our new Admin serve your place well..

…
..
.

Not! PINEDAVX isn’t leaving! He is getting backup! Our army of pawns is now increasing!

Not like our staff our pawns are anything.. Anyway! Jokes aside, the V.X. Club would like to congratulate the batch of promotions and hires! The promotions include Jasonicus and “Super” Sevith as Admins, Lyonn and Mr. Bubble as G-Mods, and Soruve, Avadan, and PentagonBuddy as mods! And a big welcome to Rixis, Cylindrical, and Celianna as new moderators! Do your best, everyone! We really needed the assistance!

Closing up the Community Fan Art Contest
Yep, it was very much a conspiracy, all. Ookie withheld the results of the contest a whole two weeks just to get you to read this article! On July 22nd, the winners were finally announced. With 25 points, Jalen took third place with her adorable chibi-styled art of herself and PentagonBuddy. With 29 points, //mitchi.exe took second place with her cartoony-looking art of PINEDAVX, Lyonn, Touchfuzzy, Ookie Panda, and zbdarkflame. And in first place, with only one more point than //mitchi.exe was PentagonBuddy and their amazing digital artwork of Ookie Panda! It was a close call, and no one knew who would win! Congratulations to everyone who participated. I am very happy for the success of this contest and hope you all had fun making art of your biggest role models of the site!

Without further ado, I would like to feature the second and third place winners, since PentagonBuddy will be interviewed. //mitchi.exe was mentioned in the very first article of the V.X. Club as a valued member of the GFX Cream. Though no longer a part of the team, he is still active in the community, but probably prefers to focus on his own projects now, and not to mention school. Not afraid to speak his mind, he is frequent in a lot of areas of the board, but most heavily in Resource Showcase and General Lounge. With his growing popularity as a designer, //mitchi.exe is definitely rising to be amongst the best. Check out some links from //mitchi.exe here: Mitchi’s Transition Resources, Mistral Gale

And in third place, Jalen has been a loyal apprentice to PentagonBuddy, learning the ways of face/portrait making and now opening a shop with them. The 9_6 Portraits and Facesets shop is very popular now, giving the community perfect edits of RTP characters for your games.They’ve been full of requests pretty much from the moment they opened and continue to service the community greatly. Jalen also has an individual showcase called “Jalen’s Junkyard” where she displays her non-requested works. With the help of PentagonBuddy, Jalen has grown to be an excellent contributer and loves to do so! Here are some links from Jalen: Jalen’s Junkyard, 9_6 Portraits and Facesets

Interview
PentagonBuddy
As the winner of the Community Fan Art Contest, PentagonBuddy will be the focus of this week’s interview. And I didn’t have to use any torture methods to get answers this time!

Hello PentagonBuddy! What’s up?!
MADNESS. Ah-ha, almost, but not quite. (Yet? Who knows.) It’s been an unusually busy two days for me, trekked through with lots of drawing and not enough sleep. But uh…this is an interview, not a blog!

I hope you’re looking forward to our interview today~ So, first of all, let’s talk about the reason we’re talking right now.. What made you want to join the Community Fan Art Contest?
It’s a refreshing break from a downpour of work! As for the fan art contest… I wish I had some kind of heartwarming story. I wasn’t planning to enter at first, but then I doodled up, well, you out of boredom and decided I might as well give it a shot. I’m rather surprised I won, since so many other entries were full of spirit. I’d considered doing a much bigger piece with all the staff crammed in there, but got bored looking for reference halfway through…I actually have a female Scherzo lying around somewhere, too, but I never finished the pic.

When did you first pick up an interest in art?
My older brother taught me how to draw simple things when I was a wee lil’ polygon; he was and still is an amazing artist.

Did you have any formal training?
When I was just turning 12, I decided to get all SERIOUS BUSINESS about art and signed up for these watercolor classes at our local art shop. As it turns out, I was too young to take it, but I looked old enough to at least pass for a teenager. n__n; My instructor didn’t find out I was so young at least for around a year or so, but she’s like my grandma now and I’m not 12 anymore. They’re once a month classes, so it’s really fun to be able to go out and paint and hang out with…well, a classroom full of grandmas all day. (Seriously. They’re great fun.) I’m always the youngest in the class by at least three decades. XD

@A@ They’re intense, too. 9 to 4 with an hour long break for lunch. Phew!

I take drawing classes in school now, but really all that’s done is give me motivation to practice. Any skills I got came from studying hard and practicing a lot! I used to be horrible at art in general.

When did you first start working with RPG Maker and/or RPG Maker VX?
I got it in 2008, all kinds of excited to use it after I played one of my friend’s games he made with 2k3, and seeing that VX was the fancy new RPG Maker. But then I forgot about it for a year or so after a few failed attempts at learning it, and picked it up again last year. It helps that I took the time to learn what everything did before trying to make a game, instead of the other way around.

Are you working on any project(s) now?
Yup~! My main project, ALICE, has been featured here before, right when it was still very fresh. (Now it’s only slightly fresh. Hopefully it makes it into Project Development with a solid demo before it gets stale.) I’ve been working hard on improving it, though, since it’s a rather ambitious project. (At least, ambitious for me!) I have a lot of ideas that I want to implement, and things I want to make and draw, but…I’m only one person, so it’s a very slow project. It’s also slowly turning into some kind of horror RPG when it was supposed to be fantasy, go figure.

My other project, Incunabula is much more simple and lighthearted. I want to make something fun and not a horrible downer~! It started out as an old learner project, but then I went and dusted it off to improve on it because people really seemed to like the characters. I’ve been focusing on it more recently since it’s very close to having a demo. When I consider both of my projects’ progress right now, I honestly think this is the better one, but ALICE definitely seems to be more popular.

Of course, after my recent bandwidth explosion, I don’t think you’ll see very many support bars for either. @A@

Incidentally, I’ve also started working with blueperiod to make the faces for his game, LINUS. They won’t be in RTP for a change, either, so it’s something new and different for me. Very fun~! You heard it first here, folks.

What motivates you? Whether it be for development or your art, what keeps you coming for more?
I want to entertain people. Simple as that~! I think it applies to most everything I do, be it writing, art, or making games. And if I can’t entertain anyone, I at least hope to give them something interesting to do/look at for a little while.

What other kinds of things are you interested in?
Phew, lots of things! I love writing and am something of a gamer, though lately I haven’t had much time for video games. I’m also studying psychology, so obviously I’m interested in that; I have a lot of very specific interests in world history and sociology…but uh, I guess that’s getting a bit academic. Recently I’ve gotten into Dungeons and Dragons, too, though my friends and I are very silly about it.

So.. I’ve always been wondering.. …where did the name “PentagonBuddy” come from? xD
Aaall the way from like…3rd grade, I kid you not. I was really into connect the dots when I was a little kid, and one time I tried to make a stickman, but I failed super hard at it and it had a pentagon for a head instead of a circle. And then later on I made silly comics about this failure of a stickman, and he came to be known as Pentagon Buddy. When the internet rolled around for me, it stuck. I’ve never used a different name…so it’s connected to some awful things, unfortunately. e__e

This is the end of the interview! Is there anything else you would like to say? OwO

RMVX Focus
Getting boring by the minute
RPG Maker is a very exciting thing to think about, isn’t it? Your game will be epic and people will be begging for more. Your game will be at the top and everyone will want you on their team. Right? But getting there is a lot more than half of the fun, and half of the pain. On July 1st, Cylindrical discovered himself in this very same phase. “…as I was making the graphics, events, and all other things necessary for my game,” said Cylindrical, “I thought ‘Hey, this is getting boring by the minute.’”.

It is not uncommon for the game-making process to get “boring” for some people. It is one of many reasons that so many started projects become abandoned in the end. But why is this? If RPG Maker is a boring program, why are there so many people picking it up? The answer is different for many and include everything as far as lack of motivation, interruptions, to lack of knowledge of the program.

The first step to curing boredom is admitting that you’re bored. Maybe not really, but, I think we all have had our problems with this subject. However, the thread serves more purpose than just complaining. Personally, I find it motivational. It shows us that we’re not the only ones with this issue, and some people even provide their advice as to what they do to solve it. Celianna, for example, mentioned, “I keep my work varied, because working on the same thing over and over again – now that’s boring.” Mr.Waltz on the other hand provides different advice. “I think people stop working on a project because they did not have a genuine purpose to make it in the first place. They start development on a whim, with no goal in mind, and when they realize that, they stop…,” he said. “Start with a goal in mind. Not a petty goal like ‘i want this to be better than that VX game i played yesterday!’ Make up your own genuine goal.”

So what do we make of all this? Someone once told me “If you’re bored, that means you are boring.” I see this topic the same way. The most creative developers are rarely bored with their projects, so go be interesting and finish what you started!

Got better advice? Click here to join the discussion!

From Ookie:

I’m sorry this article is rather short.. I’ve been busy with a new addition to the family: a kitten.  We’ve had him for about a week now, but he still doesn’t have a name! What do you think it should be?

Z.B.Darkflame Presents

The V.X. Club #6

Community Hall:

Tile Swapping XT Style!

Many of you probably have heard of Bulletxt’s tile swapping script and app that, more or less, break the five tileset limit imposed by RMVX.  Quite possibly, many of you have also used the script in the past.  I personally have never used the script and app, but I do know that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to configure from looking at the script and demo, and reading the tutorials.  However, this new application and script promises to make those frustrations a thing of the past.

Bulletxt has already tantalized our senses by giving us a brief overview of the script before its release date.  Some of the features include “Swap tilesets and passage settings directly from the app, create/manage real-time swaps, [and] the Ruby VX script is totally Plug&Play.“  And this is only the short version of the features.  For a slightly more indepth look at the features, go see his SwapXT announcement here.

For those unable to keep your eyeballs off the screen waiting for the actual release, you don’t have to wait to long.  Bulletxt has announced that the tentative release date will be the 24th of July.  That is one week from today!  While I may never have used the old swapping system, I am most definitely excited to hear about SwapXT.  Three cheers for our swapping hero, Bulletxt!

Community Games?  Mansion-verse?  Deathbear?

Community games have been around the forum for quite some time.  However, in recent times it seems like there has been a rash of new community games popping up.  But why?  Well, community games are usually fun to do, since they rarely take themselves seriously.  Also, community games are generally well accepted by the community.  They also are based on others personalities, which helps when writing for the game.  Lastly, they are a great way to give back to the community, and who doesn’t want to give back?

Truth be told, its hard to figure out exactly what the first community game was.  Between contests and iffy community games, its hard to give a definitive answer.  However, there are two that seem to mark the beginning of community games.

By date, the first community game might actually be The War of Nigel.  Although I find it a slightly iffy community game, it certainly is based on events that occurred in the forums and most characters are community based and as Sevith said, “Hell, The Search and NewGen Legends both acknowledge it as part of Mansion-verse continuity.”

The other first community game was Who Killed Touchfuzzy by PinedaVX.  This game came around not long after TWON, and it also marks the official beginning of the Mansion-Verse.  Who Killed Touchfuzzy set the groundwork for almost all future community games.  Because of this, I would argue that Who Killed Touchfuzzy is the first true community game.

Now any discussion about community games would not be complete without a quick discussion about what the Mansion-Verse really is.  I think I’ll once again quote Sevith:

“To sum it up, the Mansion-verse is basically just a single setting for community games that is used by multiple different games, making it the official community world in a way. The games aren’t sequels to each other or spin-offs or anything, they’re just a series of independent games which occur in the same world. Though each game tends to reflect a certain event in the forums history or include members that were only active at certain times, we are able to create a timeline of events based on when these events happened.”

So basically, the Mansion-verse is a world that the games take place in, but a world that is constantly changing.  No two community games look at the world the same way because no two people (or even the same person) see the community in the same way all the time.  As our community changes, so too does the Mansion-verse.  The only thing that seems to stay constant are its inhabitants (in some cases) and the singular mansion that has given it its name.  As such the history of the Mansion-verse is very fuzzy at best, but here is one possible timeline of events…it is possible that there are many more possible timelines.  Again, thank you Sevith.

The War of Dark Fires (???) -> The War of Nigel -> The Search for MrA -> Who Killed Touch Fuzzy -> NewGen Legends -> NewGen 2 < – > Sevith and Jonny’s Rockin’ Adventure -> Virtual VX

So while there has seemed to be a recent rash of community games, they have really been around for quite a long while, and I’m sure while this community still flourishes, there will continue to be community games.  Recently Ookie created a list of completed games, and has included a list of finished community games as well.  For now there is no truly definitive list of community games, and no truly definitive history of the Mansion-verse.  You never know though…perhaps in the future we’ll actually use the wiki to find out some sort of history and continuity.  Until then, continue making community games, and continue giving back to the community.

A special thanks to the Staff of RMVX.net for helping me out on this article, especially Ookie and Sevith.  Without all of your help I would not have been able to write this.  Also a thanks to everyone who has made or begun a community game.  Without you guys, this article would never have needed writing.

Here is a list of most of the community games (minus most contest entries) with at least a demo:

• Who Killed Touchfuzzy
• NewGen
• NewGen 2
• NewGen Legends
• The Search for Mr.Anonymous
• Sevith and Jonny’s Rockin’ Adventure
• Virtual VX
• The War of Nigel
• RMVX Complex
• The OriginalWij Chronicles
• In Midnight

Resource Roundtable:

To Battle a Battler is Battle-rific!

OK…corny titles aside, most all of us do need battlers in our games.  Unless we use a battle system similar to an ABS, use sprites as the enemy, or do away with battles entirely, we need some picture to represent the slime we are about to kick into oblivion (yes…another slime reference).  Unlike sprites though, which through generators we have endless supplies of, battlers seem to be a minority in the RMVX resource world.

I will admit that when I first got VX years ago, I thought that the dark style of the battlers clashed immensely with the otherwise very colorful pallet.  As time has gone on though, I’ve very much come to enjoy the RTP battlers…but they still aren’t enough.  There are 56 RTP battlers, and while they cover a large range of enemies, they are still lacking, especially if you want to fight Ralph or make a futuristic game or something else along those lines.

So a search for resources must commence.  But before then, I want to point out something.  Because of the limited resources, it may not be wise to have a very specific list of monsters that must appear in the game.  Chances are you will not find battlers that fit the image for half of your monsters.  It is much better to have a basic idea about what you want, and then go looking to find what fits.  That way you don’t have to be limited, and instead can let your imagination run wild when looking for battlers.

Now where to go and look.  If you go to the Resource Directory, you’ll see that there isn’t a very long list of battlers.  Sure Bloodshugar has some really awesome monsters, I still want more.  This is, unfortunately, where I say that we might have to go off the forums for this.  There are, in fact, 4 really great off forum battler sites that I know of, and between the four of them, you ought to find what you are looking for.

Buttler’s battlers are most similar to the RTP battlers.  Also, if you have ever seen battlers of Ralph and friends, they probably came from Butler, as (s)he has a complete set of battlers to match each RTP sprite.  There are also over 300 battlers, and with a new release almost daily, I wouldn’t be surprised to one day see 500+ battlers.

Closet does a variety of things, but one of them are battler edits….and my does Closet have a few battler edits.  I believe that Closet started with battlers, and they are still making them to this day.  I say battler edits because, while there are some 100% original battlers there, the vast majority are really awesome frankens.  I suggest a quick visit to see what Closet has to offer, as there seems to be a bit of everything…literally.  Closet also has some of the most awesome slime battlers ever made…ever!

Hot Toke has some of the most disturbing battlers I’ve ever seen, but that’s probably a good thing.  Technically Hot Toke makes battlers for RM2k/3 and XP, most of the XP battlers work just fine in VX.  I say they are disturbing because…well…most of them would likely fit in a Lovecraftian setting.  Not all of them are that weird, there are even mechas and other cool stuff in between the disturbing.  Good for horror games, or games that just have a need for disturbing monsters…not slimes.

Magellan is probably my favorite out of the four, but mostly because he’s pretty much the only guy that I’ve seen that actually makes lots of futuristic battlers.  A lot of the battlers could also go under the category of alien and underwater.  This guy has a lot of resources too, and seems to come out with something new every week or so.

And that is my quick lowdown on what is out there in the battler world.  And while I kinda feel guilty about not talking about any resources on this site, I had a great desire to talk about this topic, especially since there had been a rash of “I need this kind of battler threads.”  And so yeah, if you are making that game about my obsession about slimes, you have a good place to start looking for battlers.

Game Review:

NewGen Legends by Macys_Hero

To continue with the community game theme, I thought it would be proper to review a recently released community game.  So, I present to you NewGen Legends done by Macys_Hero.  Although still early development (the demo is done in about 35min) the game shows a lot of promise, especially for those of us who were around in 2008.

The basic premise of the story is that Noobles are trying to resurrect Luke Gentle and wreck havoc upon the land.  You take control of Lurker Genteel who has conveniently amnesia, and join forces with SBS to stop this evilness, find out why a certain man is in prison, get your memory back, and find ZPU’s stash or po…never mind…  Oh yeah, sounds like the start of an epic adventure and from what I played of the game, I must say that Macys has a very good start.

The story line has been very good, and has certainly given me more than a few chuckles.  I do feel the need to say that some of the jokes may not make sense to anyone who’s joined in the last year, such as the Luke Gentle references, but that really doesn’t detract from the game all that much.  Many of the jokes make sense, even if you aren’t familiar with the back-story.  Overall, the story takes itself seriously, and actually gets deep and mysterious at times.  There are certainly questions that I have, and I can’t wait to find out about them.  My only story complaint would be how quickly and unquestioningly SBS back into the leaders of Armvex.  It just felt very, well, underwhelming.  Other than that though, its been pretty much only good.

Now I know why Techie hasn’t been active…damn.

Mapping is good, albeit, a bit overly dark.  Not so bad that I couldn’t see, but still a tad to dark to make out all the juicy details.  Other than that, I have no complaints.  Nothing truly spectacular, but most definitely, competent mapping.  No errors were apparent, nothing felt too empty or and only a few maps felt too cluttered, and the dungeons were well mapped.  So no complaints in the mapping department.  Only thing I would suggest would be to make the save points a bit more obvious…as it wasn’t always apparent, such as terminal to the side in the first dungeon.

I'm a bit surprised that Lurker doesn't hit the wall it's so dark.

Eventing and gameplay wise, everything has been good.  There were no errors or bugs which I could find, and nothing seemed to be doing things they weren’t supposed to.  So, it looks like lots of time was spent making sure that everything worked perfectly.  Cutscenes were good, and plentiful, but I like that.  The game has certainly seems to have put story before gameplay, and I certainly don’t think it suffers from that.  It is also an early demo, so its quite possible that more will open up in future installments.  I do have one thing to nitpick however…and that is the excessive amounts of emotion bubbles.  I don’t mind one here and there, but everywhere and all the time is a bit too much for me.  Not only does it clash with the dark maps, it often feels unnecessary and very far out of place.  Perhaps this is only my own pet peeve…but it really did get to annoy me after a while.

You're going to see a lot more of these balloons...a lot more.

Battles were good.  The system used is side view with ATB, and believe me when I say that it is fast paced.  I am very glad that there is a way to adjust speeds in game, because otherwise I fear I might have had my ass handed to me because of my slowness.  Otherwise battles were fun and a little on the easy side.  I never had a game over and once I had gained a couple of key skills, strategy got pretty simple and easy.  I will admit though, the string of battles at the end of the first dungeon really got my blood pumping.  I wasn’t expecting that, so that is good.  I think though, battles could have been a bit tougher, as I was fine, even when skipping quite a few of the onscreen enemies.  Also, the ghost things outside the castle seemed to drop a disproportionate amount of experience, but who am I to complain.

Where have I seen this before...

Resources are mostly RTP, with the sprites being mostly from the CCC.  Nothing felt out of place, and everything was used in the proper fashion.  The game also doesn’t appear to be script heavy, as I did not notice any real overhauls to any systems, other than battles.  So while nothing exciting to show off, there was no awkwardness or issues caused by scripts.

I’d like to say that this is the space that I’ll be using to rip up some aspect of the game, but I don’t think I can truly say that.  Perhaps its because we haven’t really seen that much of the story and gameplay that I don’t have much of anything to say.  Or perhaps its because the game is just that polished.  I hope it’s the later, but we’ll see as this game continues.

Overall, the demo has a really good start, and I really can’t wait to see more and more chapters being released.  I just hope that Macys_Hero continues with this project.  It sad that we don’t see more of him.  My complaints have been minor at best, and the story truly makes up for that.  The game has a mysterious feel to it, the action continues to be pounded in your face, and the hilarity is, well, hilarious.  It’s a game I would recommend to anyone to play.

Story: 9.5
Mapping: 7.5
Eventing & Gameplay: 8
Battles: 8.5
Resources & Scripts: 8
Overall: 8.5 <-that’s very good for a demo

The V.X. Club
-July 3rd, 2010-
Ookie Panda

News & Announcements
Vote! Vote! Vote!

 The Community Fan Art Contest will soon be reaching a close! We’ve had a lot of great entries, from funny, to cute, to straight-up gorgeous. Now it’s time to decide once and for all who will take home the prize!

So please vote! Check out the entries here!

Muahahaha! You’ll Never Catch Me!: Who’s the forum’s REAL bad guy?
On June 8th, an interesting topic appeared in the Feedback and Support section of the forum. What started as research for a fan art has now become a hot discussion. Even now, Kaptain J still begs the question: “I would like to hear from you guys what you think would make this site’s ultimate ‘bad guy’”. Now anyone who is anyone seems to have their word on who they think would be the greatest villain on the forum. And apparently no one is safe from being accused! Here are some highlights from the ever growing topic:

“Maybe Granny hasn’t been on in a while because she is baking up an evil plan…” – Identity Crisis
“Yes, I did choose in a way to best make myself a villain. I never get to be the villain.” – Touchfuzzy
“Kovu would be an amazing one. Actually, any of our girls should do the work very well… I believe evil roles are meant for women.” – Emperor Palpatine (PINEDAVX)
“I would make a kick-ass medium boss. I mean, who WOULDN’T want to fight a banana to get a quest object?” – AtomicBanana
“I call Shanghai for Dragon and Pine as Big Bad. Touch as Lawful Evil Advisor, Ookie as Femme Fatale, Kovu as Wild Card Ms. Jane Sparrow. xD” -kirinelf

Interview
Today I will interview Terra-chan about her Vocaloid VX project and discussion! (Read ’til the end for a surprise!)

Hi Terra-chan! How are you?

I’m doing alright.

 Let’s start from the beginning: When did you first become introduced to Vocaloid music?

It was a couple years ago. I was looking for a pair of twins for a friend and myself toplay in a freestyle online RPG. Looked up on Danbooru and found the Kagamine. I was gonna be Rin and him Len and he told me who they actually were and that they were the character images for a voice synthesis program. I’ve been hooked ever since he linked me that first song (I think it was Adolescence).

 Have you ever tried to use the Vocaloid program yourself?

Haha, unfortunately I’ve never used Vocaloid. I love Vocaloid so much I don’t want tobe lame ad get a cracked version of it. I’ve seen videos of how to use it on YouTube and I also think youhave to be REALLY serious about using it. Though I’d really like to try and get the Kagamine to sing inenglish. The YouTube tutorial was pretty good and I know my phonemes and such so… but I’d wait to be able to get an actual copy.

 Which Vocaloid is your favorite?

Kagamine Len, of course! I also like Rin a lot, but I much prefer her in the deeperrange embodied by the derivative Haine Lin for her… Megurine Luka is also nice, but I think you just can’t top the Kagamine for me period… I love twins, they’re both so cute, and I love the content of their songs! But it’s also awesome that Kagamine Len has such a large range of characterization too… I mean he’s everything from a crybaby shouta to a confident playboy!

On to the projects! There are so many Vocaloid songs out there! How do you plan to traffic them to make sure every song isn’t a game idea?

Well that’s why I started everything as a brainstorming thread. Some songs reallyaren’t made to embody an entire game universe. In fact, some of the songs inspiring Forgotten are just likethat and are just inspiring the character development. Of course, if a VVX member wants to work alone onsomething that isn’t naturally suited to a game, that’s up to them. Inspiration comes in all sorts of ways though, so a song need not inspire the entire story, or even be taken literally as inspiration. Inspiration can also come purely from the vocaloids themselves, since they have a lot of comics and stories about them outside of the songs as well.

How many project ideas have been discussed in the thread?

Hmmm… well there have been suggestions to use a lot of songs as inspiration, but asfor actual discussion building the ideas… There’s my Forgotten (based on Time Forgotten One by Kaito),shadwblitz discussed his idea he’s been working on for a Story of Evil game, kirinelf headed up discussionabout a Disappearance of Hatsune Miku game… I think those 3 saw the most discussion. Most of the minor suggestions are listed on VocaloidVX. I can go on and elaborate some of the ideas that were discussed if you like. The discussion actually preferred keeping the vocaloids with their own names, but it’s something I’m over-ruling, since Forgotten is not actually based on the traditional or most popularcharacterizations of each of the vocaloids. So I’ve turned to actually naming their characters, but I’ll have them as a cast list in the credits! I can go on and elaborate some of the ideas that were discussed if you like.

Yes, please do!

Forgotten: Seeing as I head the project, this is the one I’m most familiar with. Itstarted out as merely an attempt to be fair about not letting my love of the Kagamine twins cloud alldiscussion to only be about games based on them XD It was suggested in the first post as two possibilities,one of a hero’s life growing up and ending tragically, the other the one that was built on: about a hero turned into a villain because of the ravages of time after his sacrifice bound him into torment. I’m actually brimming with ideas for Forgotten, and I’ve been told that in my effort of not spoiling everything immediately, I don’t convey it well, so I’ll move on for now.

The Story of Evil: This is shadwblitz’s solo project. The Story of Evil is one of the mostpopular Song series I know about… it also features the Kagamine Twins prominently as the main charactersand encompasses 5 songs offically by the creator and another 3 fan-songs that build on the initial story from other points of view. What shadwblitz was thinking of was playing as the third party in theconflict. The Lady in Red’s revolutionary army. I personally don’t know how this would pan out, but it certainly would contain a lot ofmaterial that isn’t covered by the songs. Only “The Daughter of Vengeance” fan song goes into any detail about the Lady in Red character (Performed by Meiko). But there is plenty of room for interpretation from any source of inspiration, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku: This is a very… odd song chosen by kirinelf. It’s a song that is made to sound as if the program is glitching and breaking up. kirinelf’s inspiration is to play off of the vocaloid culture and have the main character as a vocaloid otaku with all the (japanese) vocaloids thatgets sucked into his computer and has to help all of the vocaloids get debugged and travel through worlds based on various kirinelf also suggested a Kokoro. Kiseki game. kirin really likes the technology/robotaspect of things. Kokoro.Kiseki is another Kagamine song about a scientist that builds a robot that does nothave a heart but she sends a message from the future where she gained a heart but she ultimately breaksdown. The idea for it was to play the scientist and built the robot then play the robot and find your heart.vocaloid songs.

Who else is working with you?

On Forgotten? It seems I need to work out all the basics by myself, but I consider anyone that has made a suggestion part of the creative team, and that’s listed on the Forgotten Project page.

Do you enjoy the combination of Vocaloid and RPG Maker?

I think its great to work with something as a base – it’s one less thing to worry about.And Vocaloid is an all encompassing medium with music, story, characters and room to play with them all.This certainly isn’t the first vocaloid RPGMaker project, I mean it’s inspired by PentagonBuddy’s ALICE which is inspired by the song Human Sacrifice Alice, but doesn’t have the Vocaloid culture in it, and Archeia started her Sacrificial Alice puzzle game based on the same material and then some before VocaloidVX started, and Vocaloid has been used in previous Maker versions too. I’m happy Archie decided to join as part of the VVX team though. :3

Which newsletter is the best in the RPG Maker community?! =D!!!!!!!!

OOKIES! *kisses Ookie and winks.* For those Yuri lovers ;P

OwO;;;;;;;;; I… meant the… forget it I like that answer better… xD
Resource Focus
Whatshisface has joined the party!
It must have been a typical day in the community for developer Celianna when she was browsing the forums and seeing every variation of Ralph you could imagine. But in the end, Ralph was still Ralph. And just like you would expect from an extrodinary mind, she decided to be creative and create something new!

Whatshisface is only one of the set of nine people (Ten if you include Whatshisface’s second outfit). Not only did Celianna succeed in replacing Ralph, but now she’s on a path to wipe out the overly used RTP as well! “I wanted to replace the entire starting party, as they get old, and seeing new faces is definitely a plus,” said Celianna. Well, they definitely look new to me. Custom work was fitted into many of the faces, and some aren’t even distinguishable as to which RTP character was used as a base. Each of the face sets has a matching sprite that sometimes Celianna was too lazy to do herself, so Elfosng was kind enough to help.

I talked to Celianna about her work and asked how long it took her to make them. “…hair takes me the longest, clocking in about an hour on average. The face and eyes are usually done really fast, at about 10 to 15 minutes,” she explained. “Drawing clothing is really fast as well, it’s just that darn hair that takes the longest. I spend about an hour to two hours on any given face, depending how hard it is to make custom hair.”

But an average time isn’t enough to comprehend the magic that goes on behind the scenes. For those who were curious, Celianna posted a video of herself making one of her face sets in time lapse. I watched it myself and nothing beats seeing all the awesome editing skills at work! Celianna is a true artist and we hope to see more original party members from her. And surely she will! When I asked her if she enjoyed making these, she replied,”Yes I do! But only for my own enjoyment, if I were to get requests, it wouldn’t be fun anymore.”

So there you have it! Don’t bug her for more and soon enough you’ll get more! Check out these great original characters here!

Original Music Production Line by eweeparker
So I thought it was about time we highlighted some music. Music is a wonderful resource and is hard to come by! Most developers use music from other games, or default tunes provided by the program. Rarely will a game have original music specifically composed for it.

On June 25th, the composer eweeparker posted a topic asking for work. “I am really into writing music,” he said. “I would love to write for anyone’s game.” And with that he posted three great samples. “Fighty” is a battle themed piece with heavy piano and drum. It starts off rather mellow and builds, eventually ending with a string-sounding melody. His second sample, “Evil Classical” is.. well, an evil sounding piece. It starts off rather slow with a piano, almost sad sounding. Towards the middle a bell and organ join the tune, creating an eerie feeling. It also builds, and eventually ends with a single bell sounding several times. And his last sample is much more cheery, called “Lute Music”. It’s quite short, playing a quick and melodic lute, accompanied by a flute sounding instrument.

None of his samples are loopable, however, he was quick to respond to a request by Avadan, which I believe is loopable. eweeparker‘s music is creative and original, so take advantage of the rare opportunity to have music composed for your game for free! Request and listen here!

V.X.Club

~Z.B.Darkflame~

News and Announcements:

What is going on here? (Part 3)

And so, the final act of this drama has come to an end.  All of the loose ends have finally been resolved, and we can finally put away all of our pitchforks.  In the wake of the iEntry “takeover” our very own Scherzo was banned from the community for defacement of the forums.  I’m not going to go into details any more, you can do that on your own, but I will say that  I am pleased to announce that he is no longer banned, and has returned to our community.

On June 5th, Scherzo officially announced his return to the forums with a sense of humility, asking for forgiveness.  I think I speak for the community when I say that we’ve never lost faith in him and have embraced him back.  And while Scherzo may no longer be an admin, I think the position of Global Moderator is still very suiting for him.

Welcome back Scherzo.  The place just wasn’t the same without you.

Ookie is getting banned!?  10$ reward to a female Scherzo!?

Okay, so maybe Ookie isn’t getting banned, but we would still like to see a female Scherzo being drawn.

A couple of weeks ago, the VX club announced that a new contest had begun, a community fan art contest.  Well, its been two weeks, and we’ve only got 9 entrees so far.  Sooooo, Ookie, the contests creator,  has decided to give an extra week in hopes that people who couldn’t make the deadline, and those who might not have known about it, can still submit their works.  The new closing date is the 26th of June, a week from today.

So why are you still reading (besides the fact that the rest of the article is awesome)?  You’ve got art to draw.  Anyone can enter, and you can use any medium weather it be pencils or Photoshop.  Even I’ve entered something in, and I certainly don’t claim to be an artist of any sort.  So come on, show the love! <3

You can find the contest by clicking here.

VX Focus:

The Low Down on Bustin’ Battles

A major staple of all  RPGs is the battles, and it follows that battles are a staple of VX games.  Sure, there are a few that go without bashing slimes into subatomic particles, but the vast majority of games made in VX will have some battling in one form or another.  I’ve seen just about every type of battle system in VX: tactical, side-view, tricked out defaults, ABS, even Kazeko’s more unique form of battling.  There are many different ways to go about battling in VX, however, each form follows the same basic process.  Here we’ll quickly look at a basic thought process, and hopefully keep it fun while at it.

Choosing the system:
-”If I want my game to totally rock I’m gonna have to use the most bad-ass, gigantic , difficult, and totally incompatible  battle system ever known to man!”-
Not really true.  In fact, not true at all.  However, this type of thinking is what leads to long and argumentative discussion in the forums about what battle system is better.  The truth is, there is no one system that is “better,” at least in the context of concept (one could be argued to be better in terms of scripting prowess or compatibility, but that’s a different story.)  For game developers, the choice of what battle system to use ought to be based on what you are aiming to achieve in your game.  Want a tactical game, use a tactical battle script.  Want something simple, use Reedo’s Simple side-view.  Want to do a Dragon Quest fan game, use the default or Melody.  Basically, use what is both in the scope of your game, and in your ability.

My slime is bigger than yours:
Yup…the next section here’s gonna deal with enemies.  Kinda hard to battle without an enemy, unless of course the enemy is actually your reflection in the mirror, in which case I need to play your game because that sounds really funny.  Anyways, enemies are made in the database, and are, along with skills, one of the most difficult things to database.  Why, because balancing the enemies is a huge pain.  Sure, its easy to input random values, but until you test them out, its impossible to really know what those numbers mean.  It takes extensive testing to figure out just how powerful to make an enemy.  Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many games where the few hours of testing was passed over, and battles became either ridiculously easy, or more often, ridiculously difficult.   Unfortunately, there is no one formula for calculating strength, though I’ve seen scripts and formulas appear on the boards.  Since each system has its quirks and challenges, each must be treated and tested in a different way.  But, if you can successfully balance those battles, you’ve overcome a challenge that many haven’t (including myself who is apparently enjoys torture because I love difficult battles.)

“Slime”…”Another slime”…”No, I’m pretty sure that’s the same slime for the 137th time!”:
Yeah, variety can be a pain.  But you have to admit it, when you’ve got a forest dungeon, and there are only three enemy types: slime, big slime, and biggest slime, you’ve got a problem.  Each dungeon and area should have its own unique flavor, unique challenges, and many unique monsters.  Not three monster, not even five monster, but try numbers closer to ten.  This way there can be a lot of variety in both the enemy types and the troops.  Also, this can lend itself to making situations that call on strategy.  For example, you have two monsters: slime and ghost slime.  The slime has a skill that lowers the spirit of each party member.  True, alone this might not be a bad thing, except that the ghost slime has a skill that uses spirit rather than defense to calculate damage.  These kinds of strategies are only possible with a large variety of enemies.  Also, as a mild side not, try giving each monster type its own unique skill.  I know its only more work, but it really adds to each monsters uniqueness.

Oh no!  The Slime Master has attacked!  Now what?:
OK, so bosses.  Sometimes, when playing, I find that bosses, which should be exciting, are the most boring things in the world.  Heck, even the lowly slime is more exciting than the Slime Master.  Reasons why the battle was boring.  No strategy.  It was just hack and slash.  Not fun.  I want to have to figure out some sort of strategy to kill the damn beast.  Make it susceptible to only poison.  Give it multiple body parts.  Something!  Next, use those battle events.  If its some sort of evil arch villain, which the Slime Master is in this game, have him dialogue going on.  Have him summon new monsters.  Do something that reminds me this isn’t just some normal lowly slime man.  Lastly, give him unique skills.  Sure I said to give normal monsters unique skills, but I man super awesome skills for the main baddies.  I love it when Slime master casts his Slime Beam attack.  Its not only more powerful than any normal slime, but it also has an awesome animation to go with it.

And there you have it, a quick low down on battles.  Hopefully I’ve not totally bored you, and hopefully I got you thinking about how to make your battles a little more unique.  I also vainly hope that after this we’ll stop seeing threads that read “Will my game not be awesome if I use XYZ battle system instead of ABC battle system?”  We can all hope right.

Also, I will love anyone who decides to make a game based on my slime obsession.

Game Preview

Glacia:

Ok, so because of going on a vacation for a week, and the fact that I’ve been incredibly lazy, I’m only going to do a game preview, and not an actual review.  Basically, I played a good chunk of the demo, but I kinda died and ha forgotten to save, and so I can’t give it a full review.  But I played enough to give it a good preview.  So here we go, my thoughts on Glacia.

Plot:
Glacia, a cold land which has just undergone a cruel coup.  Basically, you are a prince, and your wife has decided that she’s gonna kill you and your father to take over the kingdom, and quite possibly the entire world.  A good start really as it can lead to some awesome character development, however, as good as the concept is, there are some deficiencies in the plot that have me questioning the game.  First off, the main character, who is 23, acts and talks more like an adolescent.  In the beginning, after being woken up to find your wife is evil, if you talk to the bed, your character basically complains that he wishes he could go back to sleep.  Truth be told, I would think him to be more concerned about his wife instead of his own sleep.  News also seems to travel at light speed, as news of the war comes to the first village long before you do…how, I’m not really sure, especially when you got there as fast as possible on an airship!  Ok, as much as I have some problems with the plot, the basic concept has great potential, and with a little re-writing here, and some polishing, I think it could become quite a great story.

Battles:
They are a pain and not balanced.  I’m hoping this is just because of lack of testing, but battles are really not balanced at all.  For one, at the beginning there are two enemies you can battle.  The wild dog and a fire slime.  The fire slime has an extremely high evade and powerful fire attack.  It takes 3 shots to kill and gives you 6 exp.  The wild dog is not as powerful, a bit faster, and takes 1 hit to kill.  It also drops 10 exp.  Guess which enemy I would rather fight.  Also, because of an equipment skill learning system, you are left with no skills for a while, especially no skills that actually work on those slimes.  Needless to say, battles were more of a chore than fun.

Mapping and Graphics:
Nothing truly special to report here.  Mapping, except in a few spots, was adequate, using a combination of Mack and RTP tiles.  I felt houses were too small, but that could just be a personal preference.  In any case, bad mapping is not really a problem.  I do feel many maps to be a tad bit too dark though.  Also, the design of the forest was a bit confusing, but not too bad.  Graphically, there is also little to report.  This is also likely due to the fact that resource limitations of VX.  Sprite selection and graphic choice was all very good though, and nothing felt out of place or awkward.  This is a good thing.  My only complaint is the face sets, which looked like they had been darkened or something.  They were just very hard to see.

Gameplay:
Since gameplay is such a generic word, and can mean so many things, I’m just gonna talk about some things which I encountered.  The game has a alchemy system which I admit could become quite an important thing later on in life.  It is simple, clean, and I liked it.  Also monsters were kind in their drops, which makes life a bit happier too.  Now if only those battles were fun…  Another thing I cam across was the quest system, which uses a quest guild.  Nothing truly special here as I never got to really see it in action.  However…I felt that it seemed a little out of place so early in the game.  Too many things at once you might say.  Lastly, the skill system which I mentioned early.  To learn skills you must equip accessories and battle monsters to gain TP.  In theory, not a bad idea, but in practice, something else entirely.  Since you start off with no real skills (you do have an overdrive skill but it fills up so slowly you wont even notice it) and it takes min 10 TP to learn a skill, you find yourself in the awful situation of having to hack and slash in all your battles, leading to lots of damage taken, longer battles, and massive amounts of repetition.  The system needs some looking into to say the least.  Also, while this may not count as gameplay, I want to take this space to talk about the world map.  Yes there is a world map, but you wont want to be spending too much time on it.  With my computer, which isn’t slow by any means (not fast too, but not slow), the frame rate went down to 6FPS.  Not a good sign and led to tons of lagging.

So, my final words.  I think it has quite a bit of potential.  However, the battles need some major looking into for balance.  Skills need to be either learned faster or something, because that was a problem.  Also, pacing of the plot, and characterization also need some major looking into.  So, as it stands now, I’d say that Glacia a game with potential.  Would I recommend it.  Maybe.  Its not a bad game…it just needs some help.  If you can survive tediously unbalanced battles, and some fairly obvious plot problems, you may yet find an interesting world beneath the cold exterior.  Anyways, this was a preview by ZBD, and I look forward to seeing more from the maker.

The V.X. Club
-June 5th, 2010-
Ookie Panda

Hello again! It’s Ookie’s turn! There’s so much to learn and discover in this issue of the V.X. Club! First of all is the news that zbdarkflame teased you with in his first issue! Then we’re going to learn about aesthetically pleasing your players, and review a game that deserves more attention! So let’s start!

News & Announcements
A Surprise from the V.X. Club!
So a lot of you may have been wondering what that little bonus was for in zbdarkflame‘s last article. What’s the deal? What’s going to be so big that we have all been waiting for until now??? Ookie is here to answer all of your questions!

It’s a contest! No, no! Close RPG Maker VX, silly! We’re not making games this time! It’s time to squeal like KLB when he sees PINEDAVX, because this is a Community Fan Art Contest! We’re going to make art of those people in the RPG Maker VX Community that we look up to the most. It can be your friend, it can be a staff, and it can even be yourself!

What’s the point of this contest? Well, I wanted to bring out an area of the forum that doesn’t get much attention. All the time we make contests about developing (which is fine), but art can and sometimes is a very big part of games as well! Art is a passion for some people, so I think it will be very fun for all of the well-known and not-so-well-known artists out there!

So check out the thread! Anyone can enter, and be sure to read all of the rules so you don’t get disqualified for something silly! Good luck and MOST importantly: have fun!

RPG Maker VX Focus
The Importance of Aesthetics
Many new users to RPG Maker VX don’t realize how important aesthetics are to a game. Here I’m going to outline three basic areas that you can work on to visually appeal to people. These will be the mapping, the graphics, and the thread. All three are very important, and if they are not up to a certain standard, will turn people away from your game without giving it a chance.

First and foremost is mapping. Everyone at one point was new to RPG Maker VX and didn’t know how to correctly use the RTP (or any other) tiles. Often times, a beginner’s first maps will be too large and spaced out, and not enough effort put into detail of the map. What you have to realize is when people check a thread, this is one of the first things they look at!! Not the story, not the characters, maybe the logo, but people generally scroll right past everything to see your screenshots, and if these are not good, then you just lost a player for your game. But how can you improve your maps? There are a few tutorials on mapping that cover a lot of feilds. I also suggest looking in the Game & Map Screenshots thread. This contains beautiful maps that demonstrate the full potential of these tiles that you can incorporate into your game. A good example of a game with great mapping is Linus, by blueperiod. His story is great, and his demo was awarded the best demo in the 2009 RMVX Awards.. but do you think a good portion of his fans would exist if his maps weren’t so great?

Next is graphics. This ranges from your sprites, face sets, battlers, and title screen. Custom is usually better unless it is poorly made. The truth is that people are tired of Ralph and Elmer as main characters. Have your fun with frankenspriting or even Famitsu if you must. I’m not saying the RTP is forbidden to use. For a beginner, maybe they are better off starting small. But if the option to go custom is there, it’s best to take it. Your logo is also a big part in it. If you do not have an advanced program to make a professional looking title, get someone else to do it. Unless of course, it’s meant to look like you took 5 minutes on Paint to make it. The point is, it will not be taken seriously unless it looks like you have put time into making it visually appealing. A good example of a project with good graphics is Cry of the Fox by Sander. Even though most all of the characters are frankensprites or famitsu edits, you can see that time was taken to make the characters unique to his own game. And look, it even brings up my point on mapping as well! (shameless plug)

And lastly, and equally as important as the other two is your thread. Organize it so everything is easy to find. CHOOSE YOUR SCREENSHOTS WISELY. You can have as many as you want, but, please, I have never found one menu screenshot very impressive at all, even a very custom one. Menus usually have a stronger effect on the player in-game. Show off those maps you worked the hardest on. It will show. Also, try not to scare people with a wall of text. Even if your story is interesting, keep it simple, and let them discover it on their own by actually playing your game. This will make the experience much more anticipating as they find out the bits and pieces that make your game what it is. A good example of a well-organized thread is Adela Isra by StormriderAngel. Everything is easy to find and the theme he gave his thread appealed to me, and makes me look forward to seeing a demo (not to mention that beautiful art!).

And a good example of all three of these factors combined is the growingly popular Alice by PentagonBuddy. His mapping is beautiful and different. Apparently he uses parallaxes, but with the regular tiles, giving him a lot more freedom. His graphics are custom, even though they are also slightly altered RTP characters. And his thread also carries a theme to it. Therefore, I guarentee you that once Alice has a demo, people will be lining up to play it.

Improving the said areas will be a foolproof way of atracting people to your game. Now as far as gameplay and story goes.. well.. let’s save that for a different article, yeah?

DON’T SCRIPT WHAT YOU CAN EVENT!: Some neat things that can be done purely with events!
So by now, hopefully we all know what a script is. It’s code that alters the engine a bit to produce a unique feature to your game. Anything that’s too complicated must be done with a script, right?

Wrong. Most people don’t realize that too many scripts in your game will lag it and bulk up the file size. I always opt to use as few scripts as possible, and in some cases, none at all. If your game doesn’t need a script, then I would suggest not using one. In this article, I’m going to highlight a few complicated things that can and have been done with events!

There are several scripts out there for mini-maps, one of the more well known ones being Woratana‘s Mini-Map. It is “plug n play”, meaning all you have to do is paste the script in your materials section, and walla!- a mini-map appears in the corner. You can change some of the colors, highlight the characters and events, and so on. Seems easy right?

But if you want to go further, and not use a script, there’s a tutorial by Drenzer on making a minimap with events! Not only will the map be in the corner just like the script, but you can assign colors or picture to each event on the map. In this case, NPC’s with quests are yellow, and enemies are red. It requires taking pictures of every map, yes.. but this would be good for only having a minimap in town, or only mini-maps on world maps.. instead of it always being there. The possibilities are much more open when it is evented. “This will look much better than the mini map script that’s out there,” commented Celianna. “Using your own picture is a lot more fun, you could even draw your own map if you wanted to.” The only downside is well:

Looks a bit scary, I know, but it’s not really that bad! You have Ookie’s word.

Another process that has a script and eventing equivalent is day and night systems. I found a Time System by Jet (I’m not playing favorites, I swear!) that looks pretty awesome. Its features include auto-tinting, auto-weather, changeable map encounters, and more! It’s quite more than one would ask for in one time system, but it’s a time system, nonetheless.

But I also found a tutorial on a clock system by Xyphon. Sure there’s no auto-weather, and other features, but this works for people who like to control all of these variables themselves. The tutorial includes the time and a tint; basically time in its most raw form. For those of you who didn’t like all those variables in the first sample, this one contains very few, and is mostly conditional branches.

Lastly, there are plenty of event systems and effects that don’t have scripts because it simply makes more sense to event it. The spotlight effect, for example, has a tutorial by VIII and uses just one picture and a few variables to get the desired effect. In conclusion, I don’t completely discourage the use of scripts. Scripts are amazing and make a game unique. But too many new users think that a game isn’t good UNLESS they pack as many scripts in it as they can. This is not true and will only do more harm than good to your game. So, remember, do not script what you can event!

Game Review
Fairytale by Joru
I’m going to be straight with you here.. I avoided this game for a long time. It’s a living example of my article on aesthetics. I saw its banner in people’s signatures and never once clicked on it. To the typical RMer, that banner looks really impressive. It uses Mack tiles that, as zbdarkflame explained in his article on tiles, appear more realistic. It used the light effect, and looked impressive as far as mapping goes. But for me who has seen all of this before, I got turned away by two things. The logo looked really bad to me. And the size of the banner was out of the norm and just didn’t look very professional. To me, it didn’t look like a lot of effort was put into the banner, so I did not investigate further into this game.

But had I actually looked in the thread I would have known what greatness lies within. And now I’d kick myself if I went on with my life without playing this demo. So, without further ado, let’s play Fairytale!

Story
8 / 10
Right from the beginning, Fairytale opens with a not so classic “Once upon a time” opening. We are told the reason why she is enduring this journey, but it leaves a lot of questions open. Not to say they are plotholes, but just unanswered concerns. Throughout the game, more of the story gets added to, but nothing ultimately gets answered. A lot of the story, though interesting, was just small hints and implied ideas. However, this is both a flaw and a plus. Leaving things open made me want to find the answers. I also noticed a small thing about the dialogue. The setting implies that she is not in modern day. Sometimes the characters were talk like such, but other lines sound a bit too present-day. Basically, I think Joru was trying to achieve a happy medium between overly fake and ‘fairytale’ dialogue, and casual dialogue. Which is fine, but could use a bit smoothing out. Characterization could also use help. For now the characters seem very bland but that may just be because of the serious overtone. In the future I would like to see more personality come out of the characters.

Gameplay
9.5 / 10
The gameplay of Fairytale is very captivating. The details such as the sound of the ground under your character and the various lighting in each area really set the mood of the story, but overall it, it brings you into that world. I saw no real mapping errors at all. Though it is only the first chapter, it is loaded with puzzles and minigames that will keep you trying. I loved it when I figured things out and wondered what the outcome would be. However, since I failed many times with the torch puzzle, waiting for that cutscene every time before you try again was really unintuitive for me. That was pretty much the only thing that kept me from wanting to advance in the story, so I will chip off a little micropoint for that. Otherwise, I was always intrigued and willing to do the next step in the story, and even wanted to embark on my next journey at the end of the chapter.

Visual Aspects
9 / 10
Like I said, I did not see any major mapping errors. Joru uses Mack tiles and VX-sized sprites. The tiles are used well. Not one part of the map goes to waste. The details in each map are realistic to a point where its not too busy, yet not too open either. There was always a clear path where you could and couldn’t go. The sprites were both frankensprites and regular RTP sprites. I was a bit disappointed to see Violet’s sprite exactly how it was released by Enterbrain. I thought she could have at least used a recolor. But it works, because I’ve never seen anyone use that sprite as a main character. You only see Violet’s face a few times, and I was REALLY hoping that some other characters like Violet’s sisters would get faces but they didn’t. During the times we see her face, we see it is also a slightly altered, generated face. But surprisingly enough, that set of generated faces is also rarely used. So, despite the lack of heavily custom graphics, there was enough thought to originality to not use anything too default.

Soundtrack
10 / 10
The music in this game is beautiful. It plays a very big part in setting the mood from beginning to end. The music is also consistent in its sound, so he did not mix high quality MP3′s with the default music. The noises in the menu and items all fell into the theme. Items sounded realistic and the movement noise was a big factor in bringing the person into Fairytale‘s world. I only recognized one music track, but that was from watching too much YouTube!

Originality
10 / 10
To be honest, I don’t know enough about the story yet to tell you if it’s original. Everything seems very new and creative. And even if real fairytales have told a story like this, well, it hasn’t been in an RPG game yet, now has it? The gameplay uses well-known puzzle ideas such as switches and torches, matching the tune and dodging obstacles, but it didn’t make it any less entertaining. It’s like comparing Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3.. you do all the same things, but you still damn well played both of them didn’t you? It’s nothing like anything else I’ve played, so that says original to me!

Overall Score
9.3 / 10
Overall, Joru is doing a fantastic job on Fairytale so far. Fairytale is an experience that really takes you into this magical world that Violet wants to escape. The story leaves a lot to answer, but it only makes me look forward to another chapter that one day either I or zbdarkflame will follow up on! The gameplay keeps you interested and coming back for more, even when you fail. I highly recommend this demo. It’s worth every moment of your time!

V.X. Club

~Z.B.Darkflame~

News and Announcements

What is going on here? (Part 2):

The admins are back and badder than ever, so bad in fact that they have since joined the dark side.  As most probably know, about a month ago iEntry took an increased interest in RMVX.net after an admin, Scherzo, “defaced” the website with an inflammatory image.  The result was that the admins were stripped of their powers and Scherzo banned.

Now, thanks to the continued efforts of the staff, and continued talks with our iEntry representative mikemcd, almost all previous powers that the admins once held are back in their hands.  They now have the ability to manage the forums with the same ease as before.  In other words, we’re back to full operating power again with the true leaders of RMVX.net at the charge.

Furthermore, as a result our newfound relations with iEntry, RMVX.net may find itself upgrading.  There is hope not only updating the main page, but also of updating the forum itself.  Even with downtime at an all time low in these recent weeks, there is some talk about upgrading the software to a current version of VBulletin.

Even if tensions between the community and iEntry are a little high, it seems that things have finally cooled down to the point that real change is coming.  Now, we really can just focus on Omega7

Admin Retirement:

On May 16th, one of the most beloved members of our community announced his retirement from the position of admin.  He may not be leaving, but his lessened activity will surely be felt by most of us.

Citing mostly personal reasons for leaving, college, work, and children at the top, Touchfuzzy, a long time member and contributor, finally relinquished his position as an admin, leaving us with PinedaVX (Emperor Palpatine) as our only admin currently.

Touchfuzzy has been a long time staff member here at RMVX.net, and possibly an even greater presence in the IRC.  Being fuzzy isn’t the only thing that he is known for though.  He was part of the effort to translate the KGC scripts, an integral part to the plot of so many community games, and a leader even before becoming a staffer.

I doubt there is anyone who could ever replace him, and there is no word yet on whether PinedaVX is considering anyone else for the position.  He will still be around, on the forums and in the IRC, just that much less often.  Let us all bid him a fond farewell, some good luck, and an offering of cookies.

Interview:

Last week we talked about the popularity of the Graphics Cream topic.  This time, I thought it appropriate to interview its founder Reisen.

Z: You obviously enjoy making graphics quite a bit, and are very good at what you do. How did you get into the field of graphic design?
R: I wasn’t really interested in graphics design long ago until a friend of mine gave me funds to buy Photoshop and .. he said that I read tutorials in order to learn graphics design, I started with signatures and userbars.

Z: What motivates you to continue working on graphics?
R: As long as they like my works, I can continue in graphics design.

Z: What program(s) do you use for your graphic works?
R: Mainly, Photoshop CS4 but for some sprite recolors .. I do them at MS Paint

Z: Do you want to take graphic design to the a professional level, or is it just something fun for you to do?
R: It’s just one of my hobbies to make graphics design.

Z: How did you hear about RPG maker VX and RMVX.net?
R: I usually lurk at Public Forums owo .. and found RMVX.net, after seeing this forum .. It made me bought RMVX o3o

Z: Has your time with us been enjoyable? Do you have any interesting stories from your time here?
R: Of course .. So many naise people here, maybe most of the forum are naise.. and my most memorable moment was .. uhm, I don’t know x3.

Z: What’s the whole story behind the formation of the GFX Cream shop? How do you feel it has gone for you and the whole team so far?
R: Nothing special really, Just an encouragement of Graphic Bunker ..

Z: Outside of graphics and RMVX.net, what other kinds of things do you enjoy to do?
R: I play RO.

Z: If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would that place be?
R: Neptune <3 8D

Resource Stuff:

RTP or what?  The tile Conundrum:

You’ve all probably seen the Map and Screenshot topic at one point or another.  I mean, it’s only at 127 pages, and is still growing (and that’s the third incarnation of the thread).  Developers use it to showcase the maps that they’ve made, usually asking for some opinion.  You can find some very good maps there, and some that still need a little work.  However, every map has at least one thing in common, whether it be the next space odyssey or about the crusades.  All maps are made with tiles.

Also, as you look through the maps, you’ll probably notice that there are two common tile sets used by people.  The basic RTP tiles which comes with the program, or the “Mack Tiles” that come from “First Seed Materials.”  These are the only complete tile sets that I know of to date, and are most certainly the best known.  The purpose of this article is to explore the relative usefulness of the two tile sets, and why we use one or the other, or more commonly both.  Of course, there are other great tile artists who have created great tiles, but I am talking about a full tiles set here, not just individual tiles.

First off, the RTP.  It is flexible, versatile, and relatively easy to use, albeit difficult to master.  The basic RTP offers the greater variety, environment wise at least, having tiles meant specifically for use in both snow and desert environments.  It also offers world map tiles, which for many, is an integral part of the RPG genre.  However, the simple boxy design of the RTP can be a turn off to many, and it is somewhat lacking in variety. This can be helped though with the addition of a custom tile E.  The color palette is also a bit bright, making it harder to give certain feelings to the environment.  Overall, the RTP is a great and versatile tile set, and the option of a custom tile E helps to ease some of its limitations, but in its simplicity, many seem to be turned away.

On the other hand, we have the Mack tiles.  They are certainly much more complicated to use, but offer no snow tiles, little in desert tiles, and no world map tiles whatsoever.  The complexity of the tiles, though, lends itself to a style far different from the RTP.  The colors are darker and more realistic.  Also, the tiles are less boxy and more rounded.  There is a greater variety of dungeon tiles as well as grass tile.  In fact, the Mack tiles put a huge emphasis on the outdoors and dungeon, with most of the tiles dedicated to those two core uses.  This does leave the indoor tile selection lacking though, and without the ability to add something to a custom tile E, you could find yourself wondering why everyone in the game owns the same set of furniture.  The complexity of the tiles can also be a turn off to some, as they are not easy to use, even I’m not sure how to use all the different tiles.

So we’ve taken a quick look at both the pros and cons of the RTP and Mack tiles.  What’s my conclusion?  My conclusion is simple; use whatever suits your needs.  I’ve seen truly beautiful looking RTP maps and some fairly bad Mack tiled maps, and vice versa.  Point is both tile sets have their specific style, and people should use one or the other based on their own personal style.  Don’t use one or the other because someone says it’s better, because it isn’t.  If you base it on what you need, then you really can’t go very wrong.  And for the adventurous, you can even make a Franken tile set, combining the two if you so desire, as long as it’s because those are the tiles you need for your own style and game.

Return to Retro:
Some may say that the basic RTP is already a throw back to the classic 8-bit days of RPGs such as Dragon Quest.  Well, for those who want to really return to thos 8-bit days, there is a new tile artist in town, and he’s determined to remake the entire RTP, Retro Style.

KRokon may not be a well known member within the community, but if he continues to do what he’s doing, then I’m sure most all of us will know him by the end.  On May 2nd of this year, KRokon posted his Retro RTP Tileset topic, and since then he has continued to post tiles and sprites redone in the style of the old school days.  It’s not only tiles that he’s redoing (and he’s completed a fairly large percent of the tiles already) but he’s also slowly reworking sprites, having done actor1, people1, and monsters.  He may even do other parts of the RTP in a retro style, such as the windowskins.  He’s even got the support of our very own Ookie, who has also helped with the project, working on the TileB set.

If you look through KRokon’s topic, you’ll notice that there is a huge amount of support from the people.  I’m actually surprised that I’ve not yet seen a support bar for this Retro RTP yet.  Many people seem to be interested in the old school style of his, and many have said that they have been looking for good retro tiles for their game.  Who knows, maybe in a few months we’ll be seeing more and more retro projects.

Basically, if you’ve ever wished to recreate Pokemon Red/Blue or Dragon Quest I, this guy’s resources are just for you.

Please visit his topic here: Retro RTP Tileset

Bonus

Ookie and ZBD say to get your pens and paper ready for…well, you’ll just have to wait another two weeks to learn. Believe me, its going be big.

One Piece

The V.X. Club
-May 8th, 2010-
Ookie Panda

Greetings, members of rpgmakervx.net! Welcome to the hopefully-not-too-long-awaited very FIRST release of the V.X. Club! In this issue, we will be covering such things as the history-making iEntry intervention, the recent roster changes, the opening of “The Graphic Cream” founded by Reisen, and more!

News & Announcements

What the heck happened?!
PinedaVX and U-1996 are Global Moderators? Scherzo is banned? WHAT is going ON here?
It was quite the scrambled mess here at rpgmakervx.net on April 21st. Many members were confused with unannounced “hostile takeover” from our host, iEntry. A few were up in arms, ready to fight in the name of our forum. You can put your torches and pitchforks away, RPG Maker VX Community (for now, anyway). As sudden as this may all be, there is a logical explanation behind everything.

About a week or so before all of this, you may have noticed an interesting banner at the top of the forum. We won’t display it here, but it was directly defaming iEntry, based on our past experience with their services. It was silly, and more for a good laugh than to actually do harm. Had anyone known it would lead to this, well, then this article wouldn’t be here.

What happened was that iEntry retaliated. Scherzo, being the one who posted the banner, was stripped of his powers and banned. PinedaVX and Touchfuzzy, were also relieved of their administrative powers, but were soon given limited abilities that would help them maintain the forum for the time being. Some might say that iEntry overreacted, but defamation is a serious offense. iEntry is a business, and any threat to their establishment is not taken lightly. However, there is still a beacon of hope for us who believe in the “true admin” of this site. Arrangements have been made to restore PinedaVX and Touchfuzzy to their original titles, and even allowing Scherzo back to our forum.

As we all hoped, iEntry managed to level with us as soon as all the heat cooled down. Personally, I think we should be more worried about that Omegas7 guy’s plans for a hostile takeover than iEntry!

Community Characters Club… 3?!
It’s about time we got a fresh start on things! March 31, Andinator kindly volunteered to submit a brand new thread for community characters! Community characters are sprites and faces made for RPG Maker VX based on the actual members of this site! That means, should you chose, you could have people like Touchfuzzy, GrandmaDeb, or even Kyle? as characters in your RPG by using the sprites provided. So how would you get in on this? Andinator has you covered: “For those of you who lack spriting talent, there are many talented spriters around the community. Try pm’ing them or posting in their shops!” But why do we need a new one? All of us members who have been around long enough know that there was already a decent CCC thread up, right? PINEDAVX is as informative as ever with his simple reply, “The old one grew old and outdated.”

In with the new, out with the old! Thank you, Andinator, for taking the time to make a new CCC for us and keeping up with it since! Visit the thread here!

Roster Changes
Hopefully you’ve heard by now that the site just recently hired brand new staff and promoted some current ones! March 4, PINEDAVX announced that the site was accepting positions for Resource Staff and writers. This call was not unanswered! The community rushed forward with almost 35 applications in all! Little over two weeks later, the (very tough) decisions were made, and now here they are! The promotions include Mithran and Sevith as Global Moderators! This means they are no longer limited to moderate just one forum anymore (that’s right, you can no longer escape from the clutches of Mitrhan and Sevith!). And now Resource Staff Lyonn is also a moderator of the Resource section (talk about hitting two birds with one stone)! All of them are well deserved, but what became of those applications? Belated welcome from the V.X. Club to Mr.Bubbles as a moderator for the Scripts section, zbdarkflame and Ookie Panda (me!) as writers, and (brace yourself) Joerao, Sen?, Pentagonbuddy, Avadan, and bulletxt on Resource Staff!

Congratulations, everyone! We all know you were chosen wisely and look forward to seeing you shine, as summed up in the great words of scherzo, “A fine day in the history of rpgmakervx.net. May our new staff be incredible, excellent and productive in their areas of expertise!”

Interviews

Resource Focus
The Graphic Cream

Rpgmakervx.net is a bountiful place for resources. There are spriters, musicians, artists, and a whole mess of talent! But they are all scattered around, even with the blessing of the Resource Showcase Directory. But fear not! There is still hope! Reisen‘s shop, The Graphic Cream (also known as Gfx Cream), has been booming with requests! This shop is an amazing collaborative of members willing to help you with their wide range of services! Though rather small with their current team of only eight, they’ve taken many requests and haven’t failed to satisfy every one of their clients.

I talked with Reisen myself and asked her what made her want to create a shop like this. “I made this my shop.. Until ‘The Graphic Bunker’ gave me an idea, so I’d hire users such as spriters and musicians in my topic, and finally.. our topic grew. I want to make a topic like that because I want to help people those are in need of resources nonetheless..” said Reisen. “I’m happy about it as long as my requesters/clients are happy.” So, like many others on this site, Reisen simply wanted to help others, and that’s exactly what she got! The topic, started on March 16, has almost 600 posts now! 600 in the span of almost two months! And Reisen has no plans to stop at just that! When asked if she would be able to keep up her progress in the future she responded, “I think so.. As long as my members/friends can keep it up .. if not, it looks like I have to hire a new one.”

And though Reisen is the founder of it all, we can’t discredit her loyal team of eight. The GFX Cream has truly rounded up a sweet group of people! //mitchi.exe was declared the “Best Member of the Team” with her breath-taking graphical ability in title screens, logos, and faces (example shown above)! Congratulations, //mitchi.exe, it must be an honor to be dubbed such a title. And if she didn’t reek of talent enough, others like RECKENEFIN is known for making the title screen for NAT_Designer‘s ever popular RMVX Civil War, Andinator makes custom faces, Yami can do recolors (example shown below logo), and Deadbox is willing to share his non-graphical support with writing! Title screens, faces, signatures, banners, recolors, HUDs, writing, music… all they need now is a cherry on top!

Their thread may be sugar-coated, but their work is no where near creamy! Don’t take my word for it, though- check out the wonders that lie within the Gfx Cream for yourself! And if you would like to be a part of it, applications are still open!

Jet’s Code Snippets
Massive scripts are nice, but sometimes we just need one little tweak to add that extra magic to our RPGs. A good place to look for that ‘extra magic’ is Jet‘s collection of small scripts. Jet is relatively new to coding and made this compilation of scripts while he was still learning. He was helped and inspired by some of the biggest names in RMVX scripting such as Mithran, Wij, Woratana, and Modern Algebra. Each script follows him in his own journey on the path of becoming an even more advanced scripter.

The list in itself includes many useful things that are sure to help a vast amount of people. His popular Success Bar script, for example, is growingly popular. “The success bar,” Jet explains, “makes a bar. The area of success is somewhere in the bar, highlighted as a different color. A targeter goes back and forth across the bar. People have to press enter on the area of success to succeed.” And imagine using the Immortal States script for a special item that could temporarily make you… well.. immortal! Jet‘s scripts make so many things in the realm of possibility that couldn’t be done otherwise, and he makes it so easy to do! His codes that require configuration are easy to understand and straightforward. Everything is explained clearly and organized so neatly that even I, Ookie, had no trouble figuring things out (if that doesn’t say anything, I don’t know what will).

But there is an issue to address here: These snippets simply don’t do Jet any justice. Each snippet, on average, took about 3 – 7 minutes to create, leading some people to think that since the script is smaller, it requires less work or effort. “How long it takes me doesn’t always mean a better snippet,” says Jet. “As an example, my blue magic snippet took me like 4 minutes, and I think it’s a great snippet in my opinion. But my disable battle commands took me a long while, but it’s not very useful since it only works with the default battle system.”

But the most touching things, in my opinion, is all the support you can see insde the thread itself. Commenters from the scripting community have looked over his codes and threw in their corrections and suggestions on how to clean up his code or even condense it. There is no competition, only encouragement, and to me, this is one of the many ways that the community shines. This, I’m sure, is what makes Jet continue learning scripting and plan bigger for the future as he adds, “There’s always ideas, but I just can’t do all of them at my current scripting level. Currently, all I can really say is that I’m working on a lot of skill-related scripts.”

Dynamite really does comes in small packages! Take a look at the great snippets Jet has to offer here!

A note from Ookie: Your move, zbd.. Your move.

Halloween theme! Yay!

First of all I’d like to personally thank the Resource Staff and the amazing people on it. This release is an absolute display of team work and magnificent coordination in between members of the Staff.

Let’s start with Lyonn… You’re all aware he’s ocasionally making taller sprites based on his two pixels (or so) higher template and since we’re in October and Halloween is on the air he decided to do a little “envision” of Frankenstein’s monster on his taller template and here’s what he got:

Next is Soruve, this is an amazing artist indeed. If you were around back then or if you have seen it, you might know I made a Wolfman based on the RTP battler, but now Soruve comes to complete the collection with an amazing Faceset of a Werewolf with two eye types and a big portrait drawing!

Spoiler:

Now, Svolta probably thought: “Shit, is halloween!” and decided to thrill us with this song in two versions! Do not be surprised if it appears in several Contest Games… and of course anywhere on which a suspense atmosphere needs to be set.

Horror_Song.mid ( 33.54K ) Number of downloads: 0

Horror_Song__no_drums_.mid ( 24.6K ) Number of downloads: 0

Not Oktoberfest, though (sadly)…

Anyways, this month has become busy busy for the community on this 4 days it’s been running for and particullary to Staff peeps thanks in no small part to the Halloween contest. Nonetheless we try to not fail at our now 20 releases

This time we have Roelf’s Music, which for a long time I’ve missed and am glad to hear once again, and here we have this tracks that will blow you away

[*]Battle Theme 2
[*]Dungeon Theme 1

Next Aindra, isn’t she great? Hoping around our community and always making us cool stuff? She’s been on a roll for animals lately and again this is no expcetion to Ai who has become a top animal spriter with her new sprite!

Cow Moose – Walking Animation

Cow Moose – High Stepping Animation
For moving in knee-high things like bush, snow or swamp.

Cow Moose – Running Animation

EDIT: Animated gif here:

Aindra kicks ass!

Now Now, Lyonn and Blake could not reach an agreement and this left a window open for Weem, aka as Halloweem, for him to release us a set of a Monster, you can never have enough of them and he brings us back the design of the XP Squid into VX and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

No funny ending phrase today