The Weekly Gazette 05-12-2024

[DerVVulfman]

(May 6 to May 12, 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

General Chat

The intensity of the Israel/Hamas war continues to appear within the News of the World, Hamas now begging for a cease fire as Israel's war cabinet unanimously voted that the attack in Rafah will commence. As some play politics, Israel discovers another Hamas Command and Control center within a United Nations Building in Gaza. And as Biden halts ammunition shipments authorized by the U.S. Congress to Israel, it was discovered that Biden's own financial donors are also funding the Pro-Hamas Protests and Riots in the U.S. Russia continues to rage against its neighbors, issuing arrest warrants and launching drone strikes on Easter Sunday. On top of that, it had now detained an American Soldier in what appears to have been a rehearsed kidnapping. And on top of that, Russia's President Putin once again vowed to use nuclear weapons and organized nuclear weapon drills on what Russia claims is provocation. However, such provocation to Russia was the increase of NATO troops protecting Baltic states along Russia's border. Illegal migration continues to plague the world, Panama's newly elected President vowing to shut down immigration routes while record setting activity hit the Canadian border with the U.S. And making claim of a technical paperwork error, a judge in Texas dismissed all 200+ illegal aliens rioting and attacking National Guard members as they stormed through the U.S. southern border. Google vacating California while San Francisco uses Taxpayer money to buy beer for the homeless, climate activists now get arrested for vandalizing France’s Palace of Versailles, police clearing MIT and Penn State of Pro-Hamas rioters and one Pro-Hamas's ties to Cuba, the FBI busted for manipulating evidence at the Trump Mar-a-Lago raid, China busted for painting dogs to look like pandas for their zoo, and more hit this week's news.
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Tech Talk

Online censorship and free speech hit this week's News of the Cyber World as the Speech Platform Rumble pulled its service from Brazil as the nation made demands to ban content its government disagreed. However, Rumble's CEO noted that many countries are now making identical demands of online platforms. China likewise is now filing a lawsuit against the U.S. for its legistation to either force TikTok to be sold or banned in the U.S., this despite China's own laws that actively weaponize the platform against the U.S. and other nations. And Meta is under the microscope for actively shadowbanning the "Who is Bobby Kennedy?" film narrated by Woody Harrelson (Zombieland, Cheers) which RFK Jr and his supporters have reported as election interference. For Google, it has been a losing week, the DOJ's anti-trust lawsuit accusing the internet giant of destroying incriminating records. And while its lawyers defend the company in its closing arguments, documents showing that its $20 Million payout to Apple,inc. highlights its intent to violate anti-trust laws. The NASA unmanned module by Lockheed Martin having a heat shield mishap in a test flight, Germany's recalling of its ambassador due to Russian hacking, Mercedez-Benz' decision to cancel its electric vehicle mandate, Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip flaw, and much more hit this week's cybernews.
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The threat of Chinese Hackers continues, as an estimated 270,000 within the U.K.'s military had their private detaile compromised in an attack upon the Ministry of Defence’s payroll system. While not officially accused of the attack, Communist China is considered the prime suspect and the MoD is scouring the Dark Web for any traces of the data being released or sold. And in the U.S., Representative J.D. Vance requesting from CISA (Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency) as to their response to Volt Typhoon, the Chinese sponsored computer infiltration group now reported to have compromised thousands of devices as reported by Microsoft. Vance inquired as to how Volt Typhoon became embedded in the U.S.'s infrastructure, what prompted CISA to go public, what CISA plans to do to mitigate the threat, and more.

Games Development

Development Discussion

If you are curious as to What's up in RMer development, you would see that DerVVulfman had scoured through the now defunct RPG Maker Central forum and downloaded pages for all still-existing scripts. However, he noted that his folder is well over 4 GB in size, and his next step is to convert the content into a more compact BBCode format. A size like that, AVGB knows too well, his collection at 8GB. But at the same time, DerVVulfman discovered some interesting content within the now-dead board, including a 3D-esque engine for RPGMaker MV/MZ users. For Remi-chan, it was a stellar week. She received more character illustrations from her portrait artist, furthered the rework of her in-game brochure system, and added a few plugins, including some by Moghunter, to enhance her game's environment and a battlesystem. But along with that, Remi-chan provided new videos, the first a debut of her new vocal artist cast as one of her game's arch villainesses, Along with that, a rework of a scene where the heroes encounter the warden of all. And then she provided for listening pleasure, a new track to one of her pet projects, Junked.

Material Development

Tools

A couple of updates were made within the HiddenChest RGSS Player Executable topic, primarily to the soundfont system. One can now change the midi soundfont in-game and can store your soundfont index within your game saves. This and a bug fix was added to allow the settings module to properly retrieve content from the game's graphic functions. At the same time, DerVVulfman examined the capabilities of an older Windows binary/executable of HiddenChest, finding much he approved, full keyboard capabilities, the ability to resize the game window with only need to adjust the menus and player centering within the scripts. What DerVVulfman did note was that a number of links for binary executables were out of date or dead. Indeed, the Mega download link is itself dead. However, new Linux binaries were compiled for Ubuntu/Kubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat. No new Windows binaries available as yet.

Plugins and Mods

For those that use the javascript RPGMaker engines, DerVVulfman discovered and posted MV3D: The3D Rendering for RPGMaker MV/MZ. A plugin that is still in development, your wall tiles may now be interpreted in 3D and it has map rotation capabilities. Not only screenshots, but a pair of videos that DerVVulfman discovered can illustrate some of its capabilities.

Creativity Section

Literature Section

A short piece of Remi-chan's writing snippets appeared this week, one of her game's most evil playing with the three heroic sisters, and berating all life as she plans to being everlasting torment.

Filmography

For those who wished to know what dives her artistic style, Remi-chan's cinematic theater now delves into the media that influenced her and the crafts she experienced when she was young.

Well, that's it for this week.

"In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living." - Dick Van Dyke

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.