The Weekly Gazette 09-17-2023

[DerVVulfman]

(September 11 to September 17, 2023)

Welcome dear readers to the latest issue of the Weekly Gazette! Here in the Gazette, we give you the news in brief of what occurred in the past week as well as provide any news happening in Save-Point itself

Official Area

General Chat

Its been a while, but KDC updated his topic that lists Videogames that celebrate Birthdays. He just added Tower of Fantasy to the list, whereby you receive a message from the arrogant Guren Blade wielding Claudia, along with a gift and birthday cake healing item.

The release of $6 Billion to Iran for six prisoners hit the News of the World this week, the U.S. claiming Iran would only use it for humanitarian purposes while the Ayatollah states otherwise. Where does military hardware end up? This week, the weapons left behind by Biden's Afghanistan retreat ended up used by terrorists attacking Pakistan, and police raided some New IRA terrorists and found Russian ammunition obtained from the Ukraine/Russia frontlines. And migrant crossings are problematic worldwide, as Italy received a surge of 5000 from 100 boats in a single day while NYC has to cut wages to pay for their immigration problem. But this won't stop human traffickers who find the the illegal practice booming. The Impeachment Inquiry against U.S. President Biden already being impeded by the White House, Cubans in Russia to fight in the war, a U.K. staffer arrested as a spy for China, Nike deems Portland too dangerous to open a store, a Portuguese town flooded by wine, and more hit this week's news.

Tech Talk

Lawsuits hit the News of the Cyber World this week as Google is facing anti-trust lawsuits, and a class-action lawsuit hits Meta and OpenAI over copyright claims as the company scrapes thousands of books to train their AI. News is even worse for Meta as Facebook got caught blocking/banning searches related to Covid. President Biden having a fourth hidden eMail account, TikTok hit with a $370 Million fine over privacy, Apple's iPhone 12 radiation issue, and more hit this week's Cyber-News.

This week, Chinese Hackers cracked the account of an engineer at Microsoft to forge authentication tokens. With these, the hackers gained access to Microsoft's Cloud servers including those belonging to Government officials. Of course, China has repeatedly denied such activities.

Games Development

Development Discussion

If anyone is wondering What's up with fellow RMers, DerVVulfman is still laboring upon his Windows object collection for RPGMaker XP. He crafted a working dropdown menu system and upgraded the right-click list system. He then made the dropdown list menu display the name of the currently selected item in the scrolling list within the dropdown's title. Meanwhile, Remi-chan showed off new video footage of her next game, adding nearly everything she wants in her battlesystem while touching up her maps with wildlife activity.

For anyone who either plays or develops games with Unity, there was severe NEWS ABOUT UNITY'S PRICE CHANGES CAUSING BACKLASH all around. They chose to change their pricing system so every time a game is installed, the developer had to fork over a fee to Unity. There were protests throughout the market, worries that individuals install-bomb a game maker to harm him financially, finding that small develpers would be harmed, or the general greed of Unity itself. In response to the price change, an open letter was produced by mobile game developers, protesting by boycotting Unity advertisements. By the end of the week, Unity went to X (formerly Twitter) to put forth an apology of sorts, and made claim they were going to make changes to their policies in the near future.

Complete Projects

Appearing now within Save-Point is An Essay on Insipidity, a 2020 game by CarlosDavilla, and the first of his Essay Trilogy. A game made to deliberately be bad, it was made within a week using RPGMaker MZ with its Run Time Package. A traditional JRPG which he updated in 2021, you battle enemies across the map to reach the Demon King.

Upcoming Projects

With recent events that have been reported with the Unity engine, KDC lucked out by not having started development of Temporal Conflict as yet. His plans had not changed other than now looking to download the Unreal Engine and experiment with it to gain familiarity.

Material Development

Scripts Database

In a varity of Tile-based RPG systems, the mappers may have found that some doorway resources may go beyond the tile's traditional width. In some cases, the resources are double in width which could cause issue when using them for triggerable map events. So for those map creators using the Ruby script editions of RPGMaker, kyonides unveiled the Large Door Fix.

Early this week, kyonides was asked to include a HUD within his Falkoner systems, though he felt that the system did not really have a need. It wasn't until later that he made the recently added Heads Up Display as an optional feature and not fixed.

Creativity Section

Music and Audio

Continuing his recent trend in releasing low-fidelity renditions of his Original Music and Sound Effects, Eric Matyas has chosen three pieces from his Dark and Ominous categories. If you wish to emote a dark and uneasy feeling in a science fiction environment, "Strangeness" may be perfect. However, "Arrival" should peak your interest if you want to project that something malevolent is about to appear.

Art and Design

If you are looking for rough textures, you may want to check the Massive Library of Free Images being built by Eric Matyas. This week, he released a dark grainy stone texture and a matching dark folliage with some red and green leaves. However, you will need to scroll down to the Seamless Textures heading on his Vegitation page to find the latter. Do remember that all of Eric's contents are free for use, but contributions are welcome.

Well, that's it for this week.

"Starbucks says they are going to start putting religious quotes on cups. The very first one will say, 'Jesus! This cup is expensive!'" - Conan O’Brien

PROSPECTIVE GAZETEERS!

If you are the creator of a thread in Save-Point, you have the option of sending/writing your own entry into the Gazette. The Gazette accepts write-in announcements (which will be doublechecked). Likewise, the Gazette would welcome other content such as a comic-strip series, ongoing story arc, or the like.

Just PM DerVVulfman with the submissions. Submissions must be in by 10pm EST.