The Weekly Gazette 08-25-2024

[DerVVulfman]

(August 19 to August 25, 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

There have been more Forum Software Updated, though it does not involve any new Board Stats plugin spied upon by DerVVulfman. Instead, it was work done by Kirito that lasted over an hour, fixing issues within the Who's Online and Member Profiles that kept showing an "Unknown Location" response instead of giving the name and link to the board/thread entered. A feature that is within most all forum software, it was an issue connected to the page link system in the database.

Occasions

Though he's only been playing around and getting familiar with RPGMaker XP after its brief stint of being free, racht decided to join our community. Already having familiarized himself with RUBY and RGSS, he wishes to improve his mapping techniques and has hopes to find graphic resources that he can put to good use. He was greeted not long by kyonides who noted that more are appearing, new bug reports showing, and new scripts being crafted.

General Chat

It appears that back-to-back troubles have been on the Mind of our resident werewolf this week. Enduring issues with his house's air conditioner unit at the same time when someone slammed into his car, automotive headaches continued for DerVVulfman as the mechanic who inspected the damage had not sent the estimate to his insurance for weeks and had to go to the garage personally. On top of that, DerVVulfman had internet issues for a couple of days. However, his internet was restored and he managed to finally get a response from his insurance company that yeilded good news for a change.

Early this week, the U.S.'s DNC convention was the News of the World and the Harris/Walz campaign, with fact checkers and 50 Veterans in Congress blasting Walz over his military record. Even before the convention, there was controversy as the State's Attorney pre-emptively stated protesters would not be charged, this while protestors at the DNC demanded Israel be destroyed and pro-Israeli groups were denied permits to show. In response to the convention, Trump held an event where RFK Jr suspended his campaign and threw his support to the former President. In tribute, Trump vowed to create a commission on Presidential assassination attempts, such as the one that took the life of John F. Kennedy. And of the attempt on Trump's life, five Secret Service officials had now been given desk jobs. Within the UK, the migrant crisis is getting worse, with 60% of the populous immigration to be cut as a record number of migrant asylumseeker claims were filed. And crime is rising as over 5000 prisoners were given early release, only to re-offend and be returned back to jail. Despite this, an order from Lord Justice Green of the UK's Court of Appeals ordered magistrates to stop jailing offenders and slow down prosecutions. Germany has been making multiple arrests this week, a Turkish man for an execution styled shooting in Frankfurt, four Syrian brothers over the stabbing of a 67-yearold music teacher, and two Afghan men linked to an ISIS-Tied Terror plot over Qur'an burnings. And in Greece, human trafficking continues as human smugglers continue to find new routes, their coast guard opening fire and kiling one smuggler after the smuggler's boat rammed the coast guard patrol boat. While the Russia/Ukraine war rages, more journalists have been threatened, Russia filing criminal charges against CNN and others reporting on the Ukraine invasion. Even as Zelsnsky is fighting to stop the invasion and creates a buffer zone to halt attacks, Germamy demands Ukraine pay for the Nord Stream Sabotage despite it being allegations. However, even the Czech President stated that the pipeline was a legitimate target if it was attacked. In the Middle East, Israel led a daring raid to rescue hostages and retrieved six, only that they were killed in Hamas custody, Hamas who has refused to attend any cease-fire deal. And after learning of a planned attack to hit Tel Aviv, Israel launched a preemptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah did vow to attack Israel, but their latest missile salvo hit nothing more than a chicken coup. Canada's dual problems of both a Railway strike and Airline Pilots strike, Nicaragua banking $10 Million on the U.S. Immigrant crisis, Argentina's discovery of an Islamic Terror Cell, gang leaders in Denmark and Sweden hiring minors as assassins, a study revealing UK funds sent China's Wealthy instead of areas where its needed in England, and much more hit this week's news.
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Tech Talk

When it comes to Chinese Hackers, we find out that even Russia isn't immune, Kaspersky Labs, the creator of Kapsersky anti-virus, discovered malware that hit them two weeks ago, malware typically attributed to China's APT31 hacking group. And more recently, China is working to enlist white-hats, those who specialize in bug and code error detection for security companies, to increase China's hacking capabilities.

Social media hit this week's News of the Cyber World whether it be Meta's Twitter Killer App called Threads is dying or the number of Russia bots flooding Facebook, EU lawmakers threaten to ban Elon Musk's X over disinformation despite the EU accused of censorship and election interference. For Google, it is good news and bad news; a California bill forcing Google to pay news agencies for content was killed, but Google was caught targeting minors with advertisement content despite a federal ban and are being called to answer for their recent censorship mirroring 2020's practice. In the U.S., so dubbed Kamalanomics hits Silicon Valley, forcing tech giants to slash jobs as they fire back at Harris for blaming inflation on AI algorithms. NASA working to decide how to rescue the Astronauts stranded by the Boeing Starliner, Chick-Fil-A actually launching a family-friendly streaming service, Iran hacking the Trump Campaign, a Kanzas Bank CEO sentanced for $47 million in another Cryptocurrency scam, a Wyoming mayoral candidate branding himself a ‘Meat Avatar’, and more hit this week's cybernews.

Games Development

Development Discussion

For those that wish to share in what they are working upon, or tricks that they have learned in game development, its easy to say What's Up to your fellow RMers. For example, DerVVulfman is apparently still labouring upon a means to extract game resoures called upon within custom scripts, and devised some code to single out statements that could have caused errors.

Upcoming Projects

It has been well over a year since KDC had addressed his game, Memorie. But he is still working upon the game, focusing upon a system that allows for different currencies between regional governments. Meanwhile, he is thinking that a simpler battlesystem may be in order to get things going.

Material Development

Event Systems Database

An event system designed with RPGMaker 2000? Indeed, it appears that DerVVulfman found one, and it is entitled Tantalus Rugby. Created by Oleg L, the demo is an attempt to make a Rugby-styled game in which the player can participate. And DerVVulfman included an .r3proj file for those RPGMaker 2003 users who wish to open and examine the contents.

Scripts Database

Designed for the RPGMaker VXAce version of Gubid's Tactical Battlesystem, kyonides crafted the Old Map Data for GTBS system. Based upon a request, it allows for traditional default map data to be saved prior to entering a tactical map.

While it has been out for a year, kyonides was called to address an issue within NoManaKrisis, a script that can let magic use continue past one's skill points... at the cost of their health. The bugs, as reported by Jurst, involved the number of parameters used or neglected within some methods within the script. But along with that, kyonides also fixed a couple of script calls within the demo itself.

DerVVulfman looked at the random encounters system within RPGMaker XP and decided a change was needed. And so he spent some time and wrote The Wanderers: The Customizable Encounters System, a script that allows a game developer to create multiple Random Encounters for any one map that can be turned on or off with basic RPGMaker XP switches.

Creativity Section

Art and Design

She may have writers block, but Starmage's Arts and Training Journey continues. She began with a portrait of a raven-haired beauty with eyes of indigo, and then one of Kiyasu's characters, a happy sylph in mint and teal. But not long after, she returned with a work, the three phases of the Greek goddess Hecate.

Literature Section

The Bibliotheca

Within the ninth chapter of Looking for a Save-Point: The Mission, kyonides blended away from the fantasy story where various characters based upon members of the forum were looking for a way home into a story following the storyteller as he relays terror groups kidnapping pets.

Well, that's it for this week.

"Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them." - Christopher Lee

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.

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[Kirito]

That was actually a different bug I was fixing, related to the database encoding, but yeah, there was a lot of work done.