The Weekly Gazette 01-28-2024

[DerVVulfman]

(January 22 to January 28, 2024)

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

Official Area

Announcements and Updates

This week, DerVVulfman noted that it is now The Year of the Spammers, seeing a rise in spam accounts being created which he suggested coincides with the US 2024 Election Cycle. However, he added that he has since strengthened the anti-bot security questions as a response, and presented an avatar he gifts any spambot account he notices.

General Chat

This week, turmoil within the United Nations hit the News of the World as staff from the UNRWA (The U.N. Relief Works Agency for Paletine Refugees) was found involved in the October 7th Hamas Attack. Iran demands the U.N. to be more anti-Israeli, but the U.S. and various other nations halt UNRWA funding, all while the U.N. Chief (whom Israel has demanded resign) implores to keep that branch funded. Meanwhile, fighting escalates in the Middle East. While an ISIS Terror attack was foiled in Israel, Hamas broke yet another agreement, this time the transfer of medicine to hostages. And not good for U.S. President Biden, from China mocking his request for help against the Houthis in the Red Sea, and his past lash against former President Trump while himself now having lost U.S. lives from Isis-proxies. Legal troubles mount for the Democrat party in the U.S., with testimony by DHS Mayorkas showing an 85% release rate of illegal aliens not unlike his tenure under Obama, and his Impeachment articles now published, an approved probe into Fani Willis's Misconduct during the Trump case, and the discovery that the January 6th committee against former President Trump deleted over 100 Encrypted evidentiary files. The deal between Venezuela's President Maduro to hold fair elections and the U.S.'s President Biden for sanctions relief fell apart. Though sanctions lifted, Maduro cracked down on any opposition and cancelled the upcoming election. Orwellian re-training ordered in Canada for defiant Psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson, NATO's $1.2 Billion Artillery Contract to replenish munitions given to Ukraine, pumpkin soup hurled at the Mona Lisa by climate activists, the FBI Probe into Russia Funding Anti-Israel Protests, another Boeing plane failure, China the World’s Worst Jailer of Journalists in 2023, and more hit this week's news.
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Tech Talk

This week's [Thread=7678 News of the Cyberworld[/Highlight][/Thread] began with a lot of people getting fired, whether it be nearly 2000 from Microsoft or 1000 from eBay. But eBay has plenty to worry about, now having to pay a $3 Million settlement to a harassment and cyberstalking lawsuit. For those needing money, you may wish to rethink LoanDepot as the data of over 16 Million customers have now been compromised. But then again, Microsoft had another data breach from the "Cozy Bear" hackers accessing the eMails of senior company executive. And after their debacle with Claudine Gay, Harvard is now being slammed for scientific fraud, accused of data manipulation of 57 studies, now retracting six and correcting more than 30 papers. And publishers using Facebook are now suffering after Zukerberg pulled its news content this past September. Russian national Alexander Ermakov sanctioned by the US, UK and Australia after the Medibank ransomware attack and a spambot flagging content as graphic content on Twitter/X also hit this week's cybernews..

Forum Games & Nonsense

Last week, DerVVulfman found a pen-and-paper gaming tale where a DM didn't think a single weapon could wreck his game. But the tale that DerVVulfman found this week, entitled Intelligent Things To Do With a Dragon Around, had the party now not think things through. Just how bad can it be to save a poor, simple, dragon from a splitting headache? You can now find out.

Games Development

Development Discussion

One of the things that a forum is capable is that one can share What's up among other RMers, and both KasperKalamity and Steel Beast 6Beets talked about the perceived expansive map that KasperKalamity displayed last week. Meanwhile, kyonides wondered if anyone had ever thought to implement a feature within their project that they saw in an already existing game, which DerVVulfman replied with a couple of suggestions.

Upcoming Projects

While the Christmas season has passed, Heroes of the Seasons continues. Starmage has announced that its store page is now up at stream, and later released a video spotlight of the mercenaries in the game.

Material Development

Scripts Database

If your RPGMaker VXAce game needs a little extra musical fanfare, you may be interested in the Level Up ME & SE ACE scriptlet set by kyonides. They permit a music event to play after winning a battle and play a short audio effect when any actor increases in level.

This week, kyonides needed to revist his Battle Item Count system, finding he had not cleared the actor selection system which also affected the buzzer effect. But after fixing the feature, kyonides then ported the system for RPGMaker VXAce users.

KustomShop just received a new opacity window feature for the shopkeeper's name and other windows. After that, kyonides returned with another update, a requested feature to hide windows while also adding the capability to adjust the shopkeeper's height on the screen.

Creativity Section

Art and Design

What form of terrain are your heroes walking upon? Do they feel the sand between their toes or the cracked, hard clay landscape where a river once flowed? If you venture int the Massive Library of Free Images which Eric Matyas is producing, you are assured to find what you need. This week, he released a pair of new ground textures, the first being a green grass-like tile with and uneven landscape while the second a brightly multi-colored collection of small pebbles for a quarry or worksite.

Well, that's it for this week.

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." - Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

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.