UBON'S PROFILE

sleep don't pacify us until
daybreak sky lights up the grid we live in
dizzy when we talk so fast
fields of numbers streamin' past

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in fact...

yeah, let's just go ahead and make this official.

I've never been much good at being a consistent face here, and when I have it's often just been to stir shit up (though mostly by accident -- sorry about that). I'm getting to a place where I can more reliably move forward with stuff, though, and I'm finding that a place like this forum is less and less necessary to me.

why 'necessary'? because it'd have to be -- it's no good for unwinding. seeing the way certain topics (racism, sexism, go figure!) are impossible to broach without predictable faces blowing in and hegemonizing the topic is exhausting, mentally and emotionally. it's the same canned arguments I see secondhand every day, presented to me and others like it's hot new shit that we have to engage with -- and if we don't, we get the business anyway. I'm done with insatiable nerdboys who can't permit a discussion that isn't about them to exist. I'm done with people being harangued into silence and inaction about it.

and I'm finally grown-up enough (or at least I'd like to think I am) to avoid zero-sum arguments with bad-faith randos.

so what's this mean? nah, I don't hate any of your guts. in a scrape, I think most of you are brilliant, creative, thoughtful people who could make something amazing given the time and probably will. every time I've slipped back in, it's been to see how new creators and hobbyists are doing, and see if I can lend a hand with that. the way games are now, we need to help new and silenced voices however we can, or we'll be stuck in this vicious, small-minded rut forever.

the thing is, though, that every time I slipped back in with the intention of doing that, I'd get stuck instead trying to finagle some old-guard libertarian out of his storebought opinion.

so I'm gonna stop doing that. I'll be here, and I'll be watching, but I'm not gonna get involved with anything that isn't game dev, because anything that isn't game dev on this board is 50/50 on the odds of one of the (incredibly small! so small you could hold them in your hand!) pool of resident bigots flapping in.

but as for the game-making side of things, maybe some things will happen in the future. maybe they'll be kind of cute! whatever they are, they'll happen in spite of what I've seen here. I'm not the only person who's noticed this, and I'm not the only person who's made this decision.

the funniest part is that I'm pretty much old guard myself, and I think I was prominent enough and awful enough before I learned better that I've had my own role in making this part of the scene as dismal as it is today. there are ways to fix this, but spending my time dodging respectability politics to oh-so-calmly keep members of hate groups in line isn't turning out productive. I gotta focus on what might work instead.

I believe in you. so I gotta take a different tack.

e: oh, and I'm probably not going to read this topic. go ahead and burst your hot heart's shell upon me. I don't mind.

here's something to play us off, you and me. hey, some of you might even remember this song. bookends, right?

[ACE] Disabling certain default functions

Hey there, space cats!

So here's the thing: I'm trying to get rid of a couple of things that come in default with Ace's scripts. I'm not picky about how these get solved -- I've just been trying to find where they are in the default scripts so I can comment them out, myself. If you don't want to write something to fix it, just show me roughly where it is so I can get rid of it.


both of the things I want to get rid of are included in this screenshot! tiles c/o the wonderful DE.

First off! SOLVED! TDS and Trihan are bros. MakoInfused too!

In the default scripts, the key item selection menu displays the quantity of key items next to their name; in the above screenshot, it's that little flixel-looking thing because the font I was using. I've fixed that bit, don't worry about it. I don't know who this made sense to, but I don't need my player to know how many of a single key item they have -- after all, no two items are really alike! So I'd like to know how I can stop the game from writing an item's quantity next to its name in the key item selection dialogue. I've already tried tooling around in Window_ItemList a bit, and commented out this section that looked particularly promising:

  def draw_item_number(rect, item)
draw_text(rect, sprintf(":%2d", $game_party.item_number(item)), 2)
end

... But it didn't seem to work. Obviously the key item choice menu does things a little differently, but damned if I can find the specifics. Any clues are very much appreciated!

Aaand second! This too!

You know how the selection cursor fades in and out in menus? Yeah, that's crap. I'm making something that pretends it's a game boy game, so I can't have things fading in and out as if they have an alpha channel. So I'd like to know how I can make the selection cursor simply solid. Full opacity. Etc. I've done some poking around in places like Window_Selectable, but so far I can't find anything that even looks like it involves opacity. This is far from necessary, but I'd also like to know where little "waiting for player input" arrow on dialogue windows is handled -- that fades in too rather than just appearing, and it bugs me a little. That's more of a bonus, though.

I'm being really vague here and I apologize, but I'm not a programmer by any stretch -- I can make a Haxe script that prints the words "im dr butt", but that's literally it. If there's anything I can add to make this clearer for anyone who's interested, just lemme know.

Thanks for your time! Kiss kiss.

[VXA REQ] Script Conversion - f0tz!baerchen's Pixelmovement

Hello, loves!

So first off, I'm afraid this is a fairly tall order. Besides the jump from RMXP to RMVXA, the only version of this script remaining on the internet is a release candidate and there appear to be some bugs. There is a link to a version that appears to be more up to date, but whether it's still there hinges on whether or not rpg-palace ever comes back online.

Second, let's get this rolling. I'd like to preface this by saying that while there are a decent variety of pixelmovement scripts already on the forum and I greatly respect their creators for undertaking the difficult task of coding them, every single one is created with the graphical complexity of your typical RMVXA RTP game in mind -- which is to say, there is very little control over tile collisions, and everything is generally presumed to be a large cube of some sort. I believe that the adaptation of this script could be of great benefit to those who, like myself, are including a little more variance and complexity in their terrain. For this reason, I'm going to ask that the end result be publicly available under the same terms f0tz!baerchen initially released with, with no particular terms limiting other users' permission to further modify the script. The specific details can be found on the script's download page, which I will link shortly. f0tz!baerchen himself provided a special proviso for commercial projects, the largest point of which is that the user needs to contact him before using the script commercially. Depending on his current availability, this may unfortunately mean that the script would not be viable for commercial projects. It may be prudent to make special note of this in the final product's release topic, considering the increased popularity of commercial development compared to how things were five years ago.
 
the basics
For starters, the script can be downloaded here. You have to click "Demo", the second link -- "Download" doesn't work, for whatever reason. A more complete program might exist at this address, but the site hosting it is presently down for maintenance and I'm not certain when it'll be back, long since having lost touch with rey meustrus.

This is the full demo for the project, and contains the script in the game's editor. You need RPG Maker XP's RTP to play the demo, and at least a trial version of the program itself to open the project file and get at the script. If necessary, I can download the RMXP trial on my other computer in order to extract the script and put it up here. However, I heartily recommend you at least play the demo, as it gives a fairly good overview of the program's functioning. It is still, however, possible to cause an unplayable state in at least one point, by walking diagonally into the outside of the log-lined arrow track in the snow map -- at which point the player is rendered immobile. Multiple builds may become necessary, depending on the tendency of these bugs to crop up.

the features
In the interests of making this request as helpful as possible to anyone who decides to take it up, I'm going to list what I understand to be the script's features, divided into what I consider absolutely necessary and what can be done away with.

the important stuff
  • Pixel-based movement and collision - Naturally. Movement is done on a per-pixel basis in eight directions, rather than locking movement to a grid in four. This script allows the user to define the dimensions of a given event for purposes of collision using comments. The "shape" of an event's collision is circular, making events approachable from the diagonals as well as the sides. Additionally, this script supports eight-directional charactersets.
  • Image-based collision masks- This is the single most important feature of this script -- the aspect which sets it apart from every other extant pixelmovement script, and the reason why I requested this conversion in the first place. f0tz!baerchen's pixelmovement script draws its collision masks from a separate black-and-white image created by the player, allowing for different tiles to have shaped collisions. Collision masks can be provided for complete tilesets, or for individual maps -- the latter being a massive benefit to developers using parallax mapping.

    An important side-note: this system of collision masks allows for diagonal and curved surfaces, which the player character "slides" along if the direction of his movement is at an angle relative to the surface he encounters.

the not-so-important stuff
  • Pathfinding - Allows the user to path the player automatically to a certain event or tile. Seems to have a great deal of general utility, but the time the original script takes to calculate a moderately long path makes me think that there are probably better options.
  • Forced-movement tiles- Tiles that push the player in a certain direction. Think the Rocket hideout from the first Pokemon games. I can't think of a situation where I'd find them useful, but maybe someone else could use them?
  • "Ice physics"- If the player steps onto tiles of a certain ID, they keep moving in that direction until they hit a wall or it takes them back onto normal ground. I'm not crazy about this in games, and it seems odd to include as a hard-coded part of the system.
  • True isometric options- Allow the user to alter the angle at which diagonal movement occurs, to simulate maps viewed from an isometric perspective. Seems fairly niche.
There's a bit more, but it's so unnecessary that it didn't even come up in the demo. I'm going to attach f0tz!baerchen's full readme containing a basic rundown of each function, in case you're curious.

the things to watch out for
This is just gonna be some things I've noticed and thought about regarding this script's adaptation to the new set of capabilities the RMVXA editor has. I'm no scripter, so feel free to ignore this bit entirely.
  • In RPG Maker XP, passability and a tile's layering priority were handled differently. However, in RMVXA, a tile with an "above player" priority is automatically passable. Ideally, this script would recognize layering priority as defined in the tileset editor, but ignore the passability.
  • This script comes with a caterpillar system and a dash button. Both already exist in RMVXA by default, so this should hopefully be easy to integrate.
  • There's also an integrated antilag script of f0tz!baerchen's own design, which I hope doesn't cause too much trouble. I can't really say, one way or the other. Hopefully it's not super-entrenched or anything.
I might add more as I think of them, but I already feel as if I'm being sort of a backseat driver.

the last bit
This isn't really much of a last bit. I'd just like to sincerely thank whoever decides to take this up, since as I've said before this could be a pretty huge deal for anyone who'd like a little more versatility in their pixelmovement (albeit at the tradeoff of a great deal more setup time). If I could make one last request, I'd like it very much if anyone who'd like to take this up would let me know once they start working on it, and pop in every now and then to share whatever details or hurdles they find interesting. I'm just kind of a nerd, and I love dev journals. You don't need to humour me by any means, though.

I think that's it. If there are any other details I might be able to offer, just let me know! I'll do whatever I can to help get this thing in working order for VX Ace. Tile-based stuff just doesn't do it for me.

holy shit it's been a while

HIT MUZIK

ahahahaha fuck I forgot I even had an account

so yeah hi! it's been three years since I last came all up on this forum and I never exactly did shit while I was still around, so I might as well scrabble up out of the loamy soil and shamble forward with a greeting since there's no such thing as too late.

my name is mawk! I am very rude, but I mean the best. I am making a thing but do not have much to show for it just yet. maybe I never will! it's possible. I enjoy many things, all the time, but my particular interests include chiptunes, magpies, cities, beauty, robots, masks, roses, dada, rain, and glam. I had a brief fling with modelling but it did not work out spectacularly. besides that, I am a student! of art and design, mainly, but also of basically anything else. I don't know many things, and I want to change that.

now that I'm making headway for the first time since steam went out of style, I figured I'd come out of my shell a little. and here I am! hello. I love you.

you get mawked by sonic waves

hello, hello. I'm mawk. 's always lowercase; it's an affectation of mine to not use capitals after a full stop, but I tend to capitalize other proper nouns anyway unless I have a stylistic reason not to. I kind of have a love/hate relationship with rpg maker in general; the greater community usually leaves me a little sour towards the whole thing, mainly because of what kind of terrible things get showcased and even praised. I figure it's still worthwhile, though; there's nothing in particular stopping any given person from making a worthwhile game, and more people have actually managed this than I usually give rm credit for. rm2k and rm2k3 seem especially rich in this, although that might not be so much a matter of quantity; it might just be that there are fewer terrible things to sift through, so the average gets brought up.

at any rate, I've heard you guys were big on the older makers, and so I've been meaning to check things out here for a while. I forgot, of course, but I've been playing kentona's stuff lately and it reminded me. figure it's a good idea to branch out more, anyway.

I've got like five games (tangentially related, in that they take place in the same world in the same vague timeframe) percolating away right now. they're gonna mostly alternate between rmvx and game maker, so I don't have a whole lot planned for the older rms at the moment, but that could always change. I think some of the stuff I've seen come out of the rm2k/3 side of things is a good enough reason to join, for now. probably won't be amazingly active, but whatever.

so, uh

hi

p.s. oh ahahahahahahahahahahahaaa~

hi there, Deacon. :3c
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