The Weekly Gazette 08-04-2024

[DerVVulfman]

(July 29 to August 4, 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

Last week, Kirito performed a series of upgrades, and scheduled one more for later in this month. But he performed one more upgrade, that being the PHP Upgrade. The forum is now running on the newest stable edtion. However, the upgrade did require the removal of both the Forum Stats board and Random Quotes window at the top.

Occasions

While having hung around for a while grabbing resources, semic decided to come by and finally join the forum. Greetings this week were sent by kyonides who was curious about their name, and by DerVVulfman whom inquired about what project may be in the works.

General Chat

Last week, it was a series of unfortunate incidents that was On the Mind of DerVVulfman, ranging from an upcoming Air Conditioner replacement to someone hitting his parked car in front of his house. But this week, even more bad news hit when he heard from a mechanic that his internet had temporarily died just days after. Seeing posts made by DerVVulfman past this date indicate that it had apparently been repaired.

Within the European Union a Chance to make it illegal for companies to kill their own games! An online petition exists. And if 1 million signatures can be gained, a law may be passed that would make it illegal for companies to cancel or shut-down multi-player online games that gamers had already paid. This has been an anti-consumer policy, actively voiding games that players had purchased, games such as Call of Duty: Warzone, Gundam Evolution and others had already fallen last year alone. However, the legislation requested would protect both the games and the people who buy them.

For some, the Paris Olympics headlined this week's News of the World, though they may not be aware that Paris caved to athletes who protested against the vegan diet they imposed, that there was so much fecal material in the River Seine that the Triathalon was not only postponed but made one competitor ill, and that a member of Cuba's Judo team defected the communist nation just before the opening ceremonies. For others, it was the Prisoner swap between Biden for three unjustly convicted in Putin's Russia for a slew of criminals around the world including assassins. While U.S. President Biden celebrates this as an achievement, he attempted to cast dispersions against former President Trump for not rescuing them, this despite two of the three hostages were taken almost immediately after Biden himself took office. Hearings over the attempted Trump Assassination has a blame game going between the Local police and the Secret Service, the Acting Director of the Secret Service feigning ignorance until admitting they knew local law enforcement was “working an issue”. This while the FBI claims they have no idea how the would-be assassin got the rifle on the roof. And worse, a whistleblower made statement that the Acting Director of the Secret Service indeed made cuts to personnel that would have prevented the attempt. Following this, a Chinese National was arrested at Trump's Mar-A-Lago with papers claiming it as evidence that tie China to the assassination attempt. After a Hezbollah rocket attack in a village left twelve Israeli children dead, Israel conducted an attack that took out Hezbollah's Second-in-Command whom also orchestrated the '83 Beirut bombing of a US Marines barracks. Not long after, Hamas's top political chief was killed in Iran's capital. Despite an on-going investigation into the death and no statements by Israel, Iran places blame squarely on Israel. That and President Erdoğan of Turkey, whose sympathies have lain with Hamas, condemns the Hamas leader's death and vowed to invade Israel. Within Venezuela, protests have begun with the toppling of the statues to Hugo Chavez in a nationwide anti-Socialist protest. This following the recent re-election of President Maduro that has come under question as being a sham. The Maduro Administration had since cut ties with seven Latin American nations that themselves called the election into question. In the UK, the Prime Minister was blasted over the deaths of children at the scene of a mass-stabbing. And since the Labour Party took control, 3000 Illegal Boat Migrants landed in the UK, millions of pensioners had their winter energy benefits slashed, this while prepping for more tax hikes. Pro-Palestinian protesters had announced that they will resume their stance against Israel and disrupt colleges. But likewise, members of the US Congress known as the Squad and several activist groups are now facing a class-action lawsuit over the Columbia University protestors that harassed, followed, physically blocked, intimidated, and bullied Jewish students with their backing and approval. Ukraine's President Zelensky's promise for a Peace Plan, New York's Supreme Court approving Texas's continued bussing of Migrants to the Big Apple, a Moldova expelling a Russian Diplomat on espionage, warnings of wolf sightings in the Netherlands, VP Harris saying no to a Harris/Trump debate on Fox News, and more hit this week's news.
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Tech Talk

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice went after TikTok as they would any other Chinese Hackers, new filings showed that TikTok is profiling users and using internet scraping tools to gather vast amounts of user data to send to the Chinese Communist Party. This tracks as the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) had already reported to the DOJ that TikTok had already violated Child Privacy laws. And simultaneously, reports have found that American Companies have become complicit in helping China skirt restrictions, such as Oracle renting AI chips to China while the actual sales of such to China had already been restricted.

This week's News of the Cyber World revealed doubletalk among social media platforms, first reporting how Google apologized over censorship of the Trump Assassination attempt mere weeks ago. After that, it found SnapChat wants Former President Trump to advertise with and promote its product while claiming their Terms of Service actually forbids them from ever re-instating Trump's SnapChat account. But it turns out that U.S. taxpayer dollars have made their way to Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) members, which have been accused of censoring online speech and attempting to silence media outlets. Issues with Electric Vehicles continues as Tesla recalls nearly two million cars for Hood Latch safety concerns. But worse for the future of Electric Vehicles was that German car parts giant ZF Friedrichshafen AG had to fire thousands due to the staggeringly low EV sales. Elon Musk’s SpaceX reportedly working on a plan with NASA to rescue/return the astronauts stranded by Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, the recent revelations of the Biden-Harris administration approving Massachusett's internet expaion proposal being approved almost simultaneously to Breitbart headline from last week, Intel laying off another 15K workers as a $10 billion cost cutting measure, and Texas's $1.4 Billion victory against Facebook/Meta over the illegal use of user data without permission also hit this week's cybernews.

Games Development

Development Discussion

If you are willing to share, you can always relay to other members of the community What's Up with your RM Endeavors, that being something that Remi-chan hardly fails to do. This week, she found plenty of feedback on her current project which spurred her forward to overhaul some gameplay mechanics such as character movement and mouse controlled targeting not dissimilar to her other game, Flight. After that, Remi revealed a number of new character portraits from her game's artist, Pjcr. And then noted that DerVVulfman had essentially tested her game through to Disk Two.

Material Development

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There was a mild issue with the no-item-needed feature within KJustSave. But that was an issue that kyonides handled with ease for all editions of his system.

For more than a decade, DerVVulfman hadn't touched Angie's Equipment Sets. But now he returned to it and rewrote much, reworked the configuration system and cleaned up the code.

Now appearing within the forum, AVGB-KBGaming posted My old scripts and mods (not all of them) after DerVVulfman scavenged through the now defunct RPGMaker Central site. Within, you will find four scripts which AVGB-KBGaming had crafted for the RPGMaker VXAce engine, Set Level, Set Gold, a Set Gold addon for Calestian Currencies, and his own variation of Yanfly's Engine Ace that added new options and functionality with Ninjamida's Jukebox script.

Creativity Section

Music and Audio

If you are looking for something of a modern sound with a fast paced beat, you may enjoy the Original Music and Sound FX Shared by Eric Matyas. His latest composition, entitled "Chaos in the Sewers" is a relatively energetic piece fitting for action RPGs. Do remember that Eric takes comissions as a point-n-click horror game coming out this September will feature his music.

Well, that's it for this week.

"How do I stay so healthy and boyishly handsome? It's simple. I drink the blood of young runaways." - William Shatner

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.