AbnormalHairGrowth

I've played a few, and it really depends on the game. A lot of them are either lackluster, uncreative, or both. I've seen games where the graphics are rips/recolors from two or three different Final Fantasy games, ones where the mechanics are dodgy or messy, ones with dialogue that reads like it was written by a twelve-year-old... However, I did play one game that really came through, and that was Visions & Voices. Aside from a few glitches, graphical weirdnesses and typos, the game came together very well. The system was clean and simple, the graphics were styled consistently, the plot was neat and interesting and - perhaps most importantly - the game didn't aspire to more than the creators were actually capable of. I played it, finished it, enjoyed it, and will probably play it again one day just to see if I can get 100% completion.

Well, it is true that the children will be more likely to accommodate those urges should they have them, and no doubt some kids will decide to try them for the fun of it or in order to try and gain peer acceptance, as with any behavior. However, I severely doubt that it will have a noticeable impact on long-term adoption of behavior. I did make note of this option as well.

Ah, but the lady also has girl bits, and therefore he is also exhibiting heterosexual tendencies, and by the same logic he is therefore heterosexual. None of these men only like the women because they have penises, anyway. The kind of men who are attracted to pre-op/non-op transsexual women are attracted to them because, aside from their male genitals, they are entirely female. Gay men as a general rule aren't attracted to them, because they look like women. Of course, it's a bit tough to say that you're 100% heterosexual if you like your women with penises attached. The most I think you could say is that they are mostly straight with some homosexual tendencies.

Personally, I think that the 3-6 age range is too young to be making a big fuss over the distinction between "gay material" and "straight material". Material is whatever it is. Sometimes it's completely straight, sometimes it's mostly straight with a little "gay-ness" thrown in, sometimes it's mostly gay with a little "straight-ness" thrown in, sometimes it's completely gay. As far as kids go, there's no need to clog up their little brains with those kind of distinctions, because that will confuse them. As to the other question: should kids be exposed to gay/transgender themes or instances in fiction? Well, why not? If it's not sexually explicit in nature, or overly "talky" and political - basically, the same standards that any children's fiction is held to - what's the worst it will do to the kids? Let them know that kind of thing exists, that's what. It will introduce them to another, completely harmless, type of behavior than the ones they're already accustomed to. And since they're kids, their reaction is likely to be a quick "huh, that's interesting" and then they move on to other subjects. There's been a lot of concern that letting children know that gay/bi people and transsexuals exist will persuade them to grow up to be gay/bi or transsexual. With all due respect, that's bollocks. We've already seen that the reverse isn't true - that children who are sheltered, or brought up to believe that such behaviors are unacceptable, will develop those tendencies at roughly the same rate at anyone else. The only difference is that when they get there - when they discover that they're attracted to people of the same sex or really like to wear women's clothing - they'll be confused and frightened, likely to hate themselves and even kill themselves if they can't find a solution. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that doing the opposite - teaching kids that these behaviors do exist and are not harmful to anyone - will encourage them. If anything, the only thing it will do is make them more likely to reach the age of thirty. Having said all that, I don't think anyone should be forced to include certain content for their shows, and I am all for the preservation of traditional "child-friendly" shows. People have the right to raise their children as they see fit - barring various forms of child abuse - and as such they have the right to seek programming that they deem appropriate.

It's pointless to generalize about how sex is treated in America for three reasons: 1: Most of us only live in the United States and are powerless to speculate as to the sexual attitudes of Canada, Mexico, etc. 2: Just speaking for my country, Statesians are very diverse. No two of us are likely to concur on every subject - and none of us can agree on any of them, including sex. 3: Different states have differing majorities with different attitudes. States like New York, Florida, and California tend to be more sex-positive. States like Massachusetts, Utah, and my home state of Idaho tend to be less so. However, to make a generalization that seems to be fairly accurate for the whole of the country, most of the people who do not wish to talk about sex are older individuals and/or those with strictly religious or socially conservative upbringings - those who were raised to believe that sex was obscene and not to be talked about. This idea is going out of vogue in more recent years, which has led to those who still hold them assuming that since we're not afraid to talk about it any more we won't be afraid to do it anymore (in the sense of promiscuity, earlier sexual activity, same-sex sexual activity, etc.). This is complete nonsense. Everyone on planet Earth does it, whether they talk about it or not (except in a few very conservative countries where the loss of a hymen can mean death, and sometimes even then). But they keep having fits about it because they're convinced that it was all invented by the liberal media to corrupt their children or something like that. The rest of them don't talk much, so I don't know. @Decadenttia - I dunno; I found number 6 to be a little worrying. What I find myself wondering is, what constitutes an artificial vagina, and what exactly is so bad about it? *coughFamilyGuycough*

I had Avast once. The only things it ever detected were false alarms. I finally got fed up with the thing and switched to AVG, which has some good recommendations.

The second one is correct. Unfortunately, once you've called the common event it seems to have a nasty side effect of terminating your script, so keep that in mind.

Create a variable for each character's LP. Label each variable "[Name]LP" so it's easy to tell which is which. If you want their LP to show up in the menu, you'll have to modify one of the menu scripts for this. I don't know how to do it. If you want to be quick-and-dirty, you can just write it into an event - for instance, the guy in charge of upgrading classes should tell you how much each character needs to get to the next level. All that takes is a simple "\v[event's number]" in the text.

First of all, it's helpful to know exactly what "FF tactics style" means. From The Final Fantasy Wiki: "As each human character develops, they gain experience, which will increase their overall level. Characters also gain Job Points (JP), which allow them to level up within a job until they have mastered it. As a character gains more experience in various jobs, they gain access to other, more advanced or specialized jobs. Some jobs, like Calculator and Mime, require invested time and experience in several jobs, and require mastery of others to be truly effective. Once learned, skills and job-specific commands can be used even after a character switches jobs, though a penalty may be applied." So it's the same as Final Fantasy III and V, and similar to Dokapon Kingdom. The only way I know of to do it is like this: Create some variables. The number of variables you will need depends on how many characters you have and which classes are available to them. If all classes are available to all characters, you'll need the number of available characters x the number of available classes. For instance, if you have five available characters and five available classes, and each character can use each class, you would use 25 variables (5 characters x 5 classes). Set each variable to go up once for each job point you get - I think you can do this by calling a common event from your battle script, or within the script itself, but I'm not sure. Set it so that when each variable reaches a certain number, their level goes up (you can use another variable to represent job level), and when it reaches your set maximum, declare it Mastered. You can write it in so that each level up comes with stat bonuses, if you like. OR... From the sounds of it, you're not asking for a true FFTactics style system, but something more like a "rank" system, where your character only has one class path and proceeds along it the more he fights. That's much easier. Create one variable for each character who will be advancing classes. Same as before, program your battles so that each "LP" (which can be a hidden stat, or with a little coding you can mod your menu script to display it) they gain is added as a +1 to their class variable. You can assign certain numbers to levels, if you like, so that variable = 10 means your character is a Level 2 warrior, variable = 20 is Level Three, or whathaveyou. The numbers you decide on are up to you. To keep things really neat, create an extra variable labeled "Job Level (your character)," and every time the LP variable reaches a level-up point, increase the Job Level variable by one. The problem inherent in this is: where do you put in the coding for awarding LP? I have no friggin' clue. You're going to have to find somebody who knows how to call to a specific in-game variable from their script. Have each battle set the variable from 1-5 (or however much you're awarding), go into the ending script and have it increase the value of everyone's variable by that amount. Then you can have it check if any of these variables are at a level-up stage and set their level variable accordingly. Then you should put an event in your map - some wise wizardly wizard or whatever - that your characters can talk to. His purpose is to upgrade your characters' jobs. When you talk to him, the event will have him say something, then check to see if any of your characters can get a job upgrade (using Conditional Branch to test their Level Variable). If any of them have a maxed-out Level Variable, he'll ask if you want to upgrade their level, display Yes or No, and if you choose Yes, upgrade the character in question (Change Actor Class...), and do the same for any other characters you have. Of course, you'll want to make sure that any character getting upgraded is actually in your party. That'll require a few more conditions 'n' stuff. This is just a baseline to get you started - and, with any luck, to provoke someone who knows more about it than I do into saying something more intelligible.

For your first question:No, you can't move an event from one map to another. It's not like an event is really a specific person - it's just a little object that you've programmed to look and act like that person. To make Saosin/Niko disappear from the first room, and to set your new event so the exchange can only happen once: Create your event page with the dialogue, movements, whatever you're sticking in it. At the end, insert the command "Control Self Switch A = ON." Create a new, blank page. Set its conditions to "Self Switch A = ON." If you want the character to be gone for good, leave the image blank - of course, they'll disappear as soon as the switch is flipped, which might look a little awkward. If you want them to stand there silently, or say something else, just continue to set up the second page the way you would any event.

This isn't going too well at the moment. I've sunk over 10 hours into this monstrosity already, and I'm still working on the first (and biggest) map. It's taken a LOT more work than I anticipated, even with careful planning. Fortunately, I'm over the worst part now - defining the locations for everything - and I can get on to the serious business of decorating. My plans for this are simple: render large chunks of the map inaccessible using Undulation, then decorate everything the character can actually see. All I need is the tile radius of the play screen (which as I recall isn't too big - you can't even see all the stuff I've put into the map), and fill out the map accordingly. I suppose this is what I get for doing a 181 x 300 tile map. Still, I am confident (or at least, hopeful) that I can turn this around. As I've said, the other maps will be much smaller and easier, and a lot of copypasta can be used. The rich guy's house and the mine will be the worst; I can probably expect those to take another ten hours. By the time I get the maps done I probably won't have any time left for programming. :P Even so, I've learned quite a bit from this - including, most importantly, how to create canyon walls from a traceline. It took until my second go to figure it out, but the results show - the first side of the canyon took over an hour to finish, while the second took just over twenty minutes. Using this technique, the mine's outline should be a snap.

It's a bit slower than I expected, but then it's also a bit bigger than I expected... not necessarily a bad thing, since it is going to comprise most of the world. Still, I ended up having to prune the map down, so fortunately it's not going to be the 200x400 monstrosity I'd originally thought it would end up. Its current height is 181x300, which is just about right for all the features I wanted to stick into it. I did discover a trick that makes the mapping much easier: I open Paint.NET (my substandard free image editing program), turn on the pixel grid, and draft the map there, each pixel representing one tile. This makes it much easier to do things like the river and road, because I can just use the squiggly line tool and get a good shape in a few seconds. Then all I have to do is redraw it on the map. One of the main reasons this works out so well is because the actual map, as I said, is huge. That means that when I'm working on an individual part of it, I have no way of knowing how it's going to look in relation to the rest of it - even when zoomed out on maximum. The pixel map is much smaller, so I can take a look at the map as a whole and make sure it's working. So far I've placed the mine entrance, the waterfall, about two-fifths of the river, the road, and the boundaries for the two "civilized" locations - the town of Sunset and the Reynolds' estate. Of course, it's still draft-quality at this point, as the Reynolds' place is going to need a lot of terraforming to transform it into the rich man's oasis that I intend. The rest of the place will need it as well, of course, but that's all desert, and all I need to do is make sure that there are some clear footpaths and a ton of wilderness. (Footpaths are where Undulation comes in - I can use it to mark them quite well.) Of course I'll want to draft all that first, too, just to make sure it looks interesting. At the moment, though, I've got to finish the canyon walls. They need shape, they need sides, and most importantly they need a lot of jutting hilly things to put trees and stuff on. Wilderness is hard. *phew*

And we're checking in on day 3 of the Make A Game In A Week (Actually 40 Hours Over Two Weeks) challenge. To recap what's already happened: I came up with a plot, setting, a full cast of characters, and needed maps for the game, including concept art and plenty of notes. It's a Western romance story, and that's all I'm saying for the moment. I started to work on the main map, having a lot of hiccups because I had to stop and edit the RTP material to get it to look just right. I realized that I am going to have to do a lot of meticulous planning before I make much more stuff. So I'm going to draft some maps. Since paper isn't awesome enough for my purposes, I'm cutting up Lipton tea boxes and using them to draw and make notes on. (Since I'm not actually producing game parts, this doesn't count toward my game-making-time quota.) I need detailed maps of the rich guy's estate and the gold mine and possibly the gold refinery, as well as rough maps of the buildings in the town. In tiles, I'm going to need to modify the Mine Town houses to get the house styles I need, and if possible add in some Old West decor. For characters I'll have to make a lot of cowboys and a few ladies, and for enemies I need snakes, coyotes, owls, and some other things. I might even leak some production art while I work on this.

It's because the art is a bit lower quality than the stuff around it and it's not as bright as the rest of the scenery. Well, and it looks much too small to fit the person who proposes to get into it. Plus there's the whole question of "how the heck did he park a pickup truck in the middle of that mess?"