R3 News - June 19th 2011 Options

[Kread-EX]

Ladies and gentlemen, we gladly present you with the latest R3 News.

General Staff News

First of all, a very sad event: Holder left the staff and the community for an unknown period of time that we all want to believe short. He was the life of this forum for years and he will be terribly missed.

On the other hand, we are welcoming back two ancient staff members: Night5h4d3 takes back his role of Global Moderator. You will most likely run into him sooner or later, especially if you wander in the VX script forums.
Ember is once again the classy as f**k ruler of the Fun & Games forum. Be sure to offer him a virgin before posting there, of course, because he also has balls of steel.

Other Forum News

Resource City is still recruiting! We're currently in need of pixel artists to create character sets, animated battlers and especially tilesets. Have spriting talent and willing to create exclusive resources for the community? This is the place!

General Discussion

Will you be able to survive with the Cost of Living rising? Tax got your tongue? Have a rant about it! Maybe one way to save the money would be to cut soda out of your diet or make some other change regarding health. Proud of your dedication to good health (or ill health)? Share your health, share advice, and generally discuss whether your more cholesterol than human

Creative Commons

"The Creative Commons is the cultural place to be, with new games in languages such as Italian and Spanish. Although, if you're reading this in English, you might not understand those languages. I guess you can just look at the nice pictures... or something." - Rob_Riv

"[The Creative Commons] smells nice" - Oko
~Opinions from the IRC

Hi, so I haven't been very active lately.
Exams and bad internets have kept me away and it looks like the Creative Commons is going neglected.
Well now I SHOULD be more active as exams are more or less over and my internet has improved!
So let's see if I can whip the Creative Commons into shape!

In other news I've been working on something that is yet to be revealed: The Resource and Reference Archive [RARA].
It'll act as an archive to sort out old threads from Theory and Design so people can use them as reference while making their game, rather than making a new topic that has already been covered before.
Alternatively you could use them as a topic starter to see how people's opinions have changed!
More info on that when I get some more work on it, sooner or later a feedback topic will appear.

RPG Maker XP, RGSS forums

RMXP users are lucky this time. Not content to have simply posted the SDK, a famous script created form the perspective of heavily reduce compatibity problems, Sailerius also wrote two interesting scripts.
Firstly, SAI Custom Event Commands adds new event functionalities which can seem familiar to the users of the older makers. Diagonal screen scrolling, panorama scrolling or vertical screen shaking are examples of this.
Secondly, SAI Wander State replaces the default random movement with a more advanced one. NPCs won't simply randomly choose an adjacent tile to move to, but rather a destination, to give a more natural feel to their movement.
Since it's my first script, I'm very proud to present Night_Runner's Spell Checker Script! With it, you'll be able to easily spot your spelling errors in the message boxes during your testplay. They will be coloured in red, so you'll be sure to see them. Don't forget to download the dictionaries as well - one if for British english and one of American english.
The RGSS Script List has once again had an update, and now includes all the scripts that have been made in the last 4 months, since it's last update. Definitely remember to check it out if you ever need a script.
We would also like to mention that SilentResident is back, and the Project Zelda Engine is back under development. Anyone interested is more than welcome to leave feedback and suggestions

Contests updates, Reviews and Art, Lit & Music forum

- Game Competition -
The May/June Game Competition has ended, the winners have been announced in the second post of this topic.
Congratulations to everyone involved! Great job, to all. =]
I'm looking for members who might be interested in hosting a Game Competition, if you are interested please PM me.

- Music Competition -
The May Music Competition has ended, the winners have been announced in this topic.
Congratulations to everyone involved! The submissions sounded great. =]
Special thanks to Spirit_Master_X for taking on the project of hosting the competition. He did an amazing job, so please stop by and let him know that you appreciate his work.
Don't forget to check out the submissions, they are definitely worth the listen!

- Upcoming Competitions -
Currently I am taking votes for the next competition!
Choose between Video Competition or Art Competition, and PM me your preference. =]
I'll be tallying up the votes and starting up the next competition very soon, so get those in to me!
(Note that this vote only determines which competition will happen next, as both will happen eventually.)

- Review Staff and Review Updates -
As kaz mentioned recently, we've got two new Review Staff team members: amerk and Jonnie19!
Congratulations to them for completing the trial-based staff training - well done and welcome to the team guys.
They have already been working hard to deliver reviews to you guys, as such they've already completed Bloodsphere, Tales of the Drunken Paladin - Book III, and Mists of Naladia.

I'm currently training one member to become review staff, but I still have room for more trainees. If you are interested in joining the Official Review Staff team, then please contact me via PM.
I'm looking for members who will be active and dedicated to putting out quality p/reviews.
Everything you will need to know will be explained to you in detail during the trial-based staff training period. =]

Note, the Official R3 Previews/Reviews are found on the RRR forum (Previews here, and Reviews here).
There are members (and/or staff) who also may p/review games on their own blog, but please realise that these blogs do not contain Official R3 P/Reviews; they are unofficial independent game reviews. =]

- R3 Magazine Updates -
For those of you who are interested, the R3M is looking for submission material for the next Magazine!
If you would like to make a Member Contribution, and have your material in the next Magazine, please see this topic for details.
If you would like to join the Magazine Staff, and see what it's all about, then please see this topic for details.
Also, if you haven't checked out previous R3 Magazines, then view them and see what it's all about! (1st R3M -- 2nd R3M)

- Art, Music, Lit Network Happenings -
Yes, I'm doing the news for this area now (in case you haven't discovered it yet, I'm moderator of the Art, Music, Lit Network forum).
I'm excited about that! Also excited about all the things that I'll be doing in there. =D
I did a much-needed clean-up of the forum, reduced four pinned topics into one (now called "Complete List of Resources"), among other things.
Note that the rules and "The Art of Critique" pinned topics may be combined/edited in the near future, so keep an eye out for that "update". =]

Just started up the R3 Weekly Art Challenge, for those of you who want a weekly challenge (submit artwork that matches the theme provided) to motivate you to do artwork, well here it is! Remember, you can PM me about ideas or themes! ^^

We've been having a lot of activity in the Art/Music/Lit forum so I'm going to do a quick run-down of what's been happening. =]

We've had 7 active music topics in the last two weeks! That's amazing!
It's great to see so many musicians challenging themselves to be better, and we (the community) are happy that you share it with us. =]
A note of advice for musicians: most users prefer to be able to preview audio before downloading, so please remember that when choosing a site to host your music files.

On top of that, we've had 11 active art topics in the last two weeks! I love it!
This just means that, while we've had an increase in music topics, art topics' activity hasn't been sacrificed.
Our artists just seem to get better and better each time they post new material - which is brilliant, I think!
A note of advice for artists: post larger images in spoiler tags, and also "not work-safe/school-safe" images in spoiler tags. =]
A question I have seen a lot of: What is allowed, in terms of nude art?
Art may show nude upper and lower body, however lower body cannot show any male/female sexual parts (so you can either not draw it, or just cover it completely with "censoring").
Yes, this means that technically breasts are allowed, but it's preferred they are either drawn without nipples or covered by "censoring".
What about clothes that are really tight and show nipples, etc.?
In this case, you should place it in a spoiler tag and place "not work-safe/school-safe" in the spoiler tag so that it displays the text prior to opening the spoiler tag.
However, you should note that cleavage of the male/female sexual parts (lower body) should be censored or not drawn. (For example: "camel-toe" imagery is not allowed.)

Yes, that was an awkward news update, but it's important for you all to know what is and isn't permitted when drawing risqu� material.

Lastly, I'd like to mention that we have only had 1 literature-related topic in the past two weeks! D=
It only received one reply, so it isn't even considered an active topic!
We need to get some writers in there!
Perhaps you guys would like an ongoing Weekly Writing Challenge? (To help with writer's block, or for inspiration/motivation.)
I'll get something started, but I'd like to see how many people are interested in something like this prior to starting it up.
So PM me if you feel this would be a good idea to get people writing again! =]
(Note, these Weekly Challenges do not replace Competitions - Competitions will continue regardless of Weekly Challenges.)

Event Emporium, Resource Submissions and Tutorials

We have a few new event systems from the Event Emporium, one is a Mining System from sasofrass and the other is a Pokemon Capture styled system from Alt_Jack (whom won "Best Eventer" in the R3 Awards - and for good reason!) The system allows you to capture and use enemies like Pokemon! If you need to find a certain system please make sure to check out Event Submission List which I'm currently working on re-vamping to give a whole new look - so stay tuned for that as well!

As always, if you wish to help us out in the Event Emporium, please put the following user bar in your signature!

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[url="http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index.php?showforum=124"][img]http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k83/jordonhenry/EventEmporium-1.png[/img][/url]

HA! You thought you were done with me after you briefly skimmed the Event Emporium update, didn't you? Well guess what? I'm back with an update from the Resource and Tutorial forum! So far we've gotten some pretty good tutorials that have been submitted, a few that I'd like to point out especially. We have a tutorial from Stern that shows you how to make a menu in your game using only events, check that out HERE! Now I'm sure a few of you have asked yourself "How do I know my RPG Maker house interior looks good? Maybe I should add a few more book cases, just in case!" Well look no further because Puppet of Fate is here with a tutorial that shows you an easy way to make the interior of a house. Don't feel like reading and staring at pictures for a mapping tutorial? No problem, because his thread, which is located HERE is actually a video tutorial, so go check it out now!

Maybe tutorials aren't your sort of thing? Well we have quite the collection of submitted resources for you to take a look at. If you've been lurking around the Resource Submission forum for awhile I'm sure you've seen persomatey at LEAST once, and if you haven't.. well now you have! He's gotten quite a few requests for minkoff battlers and overworld sprites and his quality of work is pretty good as well. You can check his old thread, located HERE, where he first started out, and see how he's done up to this point, or you can check his new, neatly organized thread HERE and see all the work he's done in a neat little pile!

Now you may be thinking to yourself "Well, I don't really know what I want, but I don't really have time to look around the internet all day for sprites and stuff.. what can I do?" Well look no further! While I may be promoting my own efforts here, it's for the good of the community, so hey, it's all good if I make myself look good . Anyway, what I'm getting at is Rzr's Resource Pack. The RRP has just gotten a nice clean polish with version 1.7 and a whole new look on the first post to help with organization.

Still can't find what you're looking for? You can always request something HERE at Resource Requests. We're here to help, so don't hesitate to ask!

Interested in helping expand the Resource and Tutorials section, or even Rzr's Resource Pack? You can use either of these userbars in your signatures to promote us!





Resource and Tutorial Userbar:

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[url="http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index.php?showforum=119"][img]http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k83/jordonhenry/resource.png[/img][/url]

Rzr's Resource Pack Userbar:

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[url="http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45619"][img]http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k83/jordonhenry/RRPUserbar1.png[/img][/url]

That's all for now (boy did I type quite the updates for this month!).

- Rzr

Role Playing

Section Seven

A brand new Steampunk mistery RP by Sparrowsmith! One of Section Seven's most renowned professors has gone missing, it is now up to his students to search for him and uncover what lies deep beyond the town. Following a typical "GM is out to get you" style of play, the students must use their brains and wits to evade their chasers, while simultaneously pressing forward quickly in their search for the truth. Are you smart and strong enough to handle the reality? Or will you fall prey to lies?

Holy Shield

A new RP by Darkblade, set in a modern version of one of Darkblade's previous RP, World of Alsta, a team of villains has set up base in the town of Morento. Now it's up to the team of superheroes from the Holy Shield to capture those criminals and put a stop to their reign of terror! The RP follows the style of a generic superhero story, however, knowing this is hosted by Darkblade, it is sure to show some amazing twists and turns that will keep the RPers on their toes.

And lastly, the news from yours truly:

Right from the Game Engines Discussion, Legacy's Thunderstorm Engine has been renamed Enigma. And with the name change came a few updates, like a Lua scripting engine and the possibility to import models from Milkshape 3D. Legacy also posted a video of the particle engine so go take a look if you haven't already.
Stencyl is finally available to download. It allows you to create Flash games with a drag-and-drop interface as well as with ActionScript. You will need Java to use it, as the IDE is made with JIDE.

The new materials for RPG Maker VX, commonly called "Samurai" are out, like many of you probably already know. The pack costs $19.99, or $69.98 if you buy a VX license with it, which represents a saving of $10. This additional resource pack is supposed to allow you to create Japan-themed games, however does not contain any BGM or sound effects. The reactions of users are diverse, so maybe you might be interested in RzrBladeMontage's review before buying.
Important note, you're not allowed to post resources from this pack on the forum or in the Gallery.

We also have a few new RGSS2 Scripts. Firstly, Skill Cooldown made by DrDhoom. This is a simple script that allows you to setup cooldown times for skills. Really straightforward.
Backup System is a script written by Rohiaw which permits you to save and load switches with the call script event command. It's a beta right now, so there isn't many features but you should take a look, just in case.
The Amethyst Platforming System created by Khas of ReinoRPG and brought by Avatar176 is, like the name implies, a script to make a platformer with RMVX. Due to VX inherent limitations, creating a full platformer game with it is a bad idea, but you can use it for minigames for instance. Those who played Wild Arms 4 may remember the ROM Extra Challenges - well that's it, you can do the same.
Lastly, dartdaman made a script named Menu Opacity and Images. It's really simple, this script merely allows you to set the opacity of the windows in the menu and to put background pictures. It's up to you to create something visually appealing with it.

A few interesting topics spawned in the Game Lounge. If you're a hardcore gamer and like to make things more complicated than they really are, you certainly came up with a few special challenges for your favorite games - well tell us about it in this topic: Challenge Yourself!
Minecraft player? Come to share your creations and mods of choice. If you manage to do better than Arbor, then you're really pretty good!
The E3 2011 is behind us, and with it, its stash of impressions, good or bad. Nintendo in particular marked the spirits this year, and the opinions about the potential of their Wii-U are pretty diverse. Maybe you'd like to share yours?
Certain of you may remember the "Game of the Decade", a poll made by Gamefaqs in late 2010, and also remember that Super Smash Bros. Brawl was a finalist. Whatever you think about those kind of polls, there's no denying the presence of the Super Smash Bros games in our minds. So what are your experiences with them? Go ahead and tell us!

Media Discussion has been a tad calmer than usual, but you can still participate in various conversations. For instance, why not tell us about your favorite type of music or the last movie you watched? Transformers fans have certainly heard of the next movie, Dark Of The Moon and probably remember as well the first two ones - with mixed opinions once again. Well, what are your expectations about this third movie?
R3 is also a place packed with people watching Doctor Who so if you're one of them and haven't participated in the regular Dr. Who discussions, it could be a good idea to start now.

See you next time, folks!

[kaz]

Nice job everyone - and a special thanks to Kread-EX for doing this for us,

[Daven]

Thanks for a great read! I'm glad you mentioned the "Samurai Pack", this might be the perfect time to buy VX for alot of users out there. I'm gonna go check it out, good job you guys

[RzrBladeMontage]

Daven, you could also use the Samurai pack in XP (if you use that) however, some of the battlers may be too big if you're using the default battle system. They could be used for monsters and bosses though. It's only $20 so if you can afford it, I'd say go for it.

[Kread-EX]

@Daven: People who don't have VX will have the pack for $10 and that's really a deal. Otherwise, it depends. It would be annoying to spend $20 and realise afterwards that we have no use for the pack.
We can all thank Rzr for writing a detailed review.

[kaz]

Giving this a bump!