Unka Josh

That might be a good way to do the bulkier stuff. I mean, no offense, guys, but some of these .sigs are actually longer than the computer can display at once. I think that's maybe overdoing it slightly. But a Personal Page would be an excellent compromise.

Yes, but I remember when they didn't exist. Instead, you entered these 64-character alphanumeric codes that told the machine how far you'd gotten. Yes, they were a pain in the ass. Anyway, if we got through those games, having limited options for survival on top of save points shouldn't be a problem at all.

No, I don't think it'd be too hard. (Visibly restrains self from going on a grognard rant about how back in the old days, there were no quicksaves, no Save States, just occasional save points or even no save cards at all, but complex codes that you had to enter by hand that recorded all your save data. Yes, really.) Let me know if you want me to throw together that "Ridden by the Loa" system-- it wouldn't be too hard, and I'd have fun doing it. Or you could do it yourself, of course.

So in working with RMXP, I've come to a realization: I'm totally spoiled. I mean, I can create, or at least ask for, any graphics that I want! I can upload any music that I can get my hands on! I can change the battle system, I can change anything. Any monsters. Any characters. Any animations. Anything. "Well, sure, Unka Josh," you say. "That's how RMXP works!" Yeah, but Unka Josh didn't start writing RPGs on his laptop. Unka Josh started writing RPGs on his PSOne. Yep. It's true. There's an RPGMaker for the Playstation. Also two of them for the PS2. They work in a fairly similar manner to the Enterbrain products, for the most part-- events, tiles, charsets, battlers, animations. But, and this is a big but, you can't import resources. (Well, there was a weird, half-assed graphics program for the PSOne version only, but it wasn't really usable, because of the insane memory use issue of saving data on PSOne memory cards.) You had to work with the characters that they gave you, the battlers that they gave you, the animations that they gave you, the tiles and music and sound that they said you could have. But... y'know, while it really limited what you could do, it didn't make things impossible. At all. And you got to be pretty creative about things, too. I turned fireballs into rocket contrails, rocks into machine-gun fire, small children into scary, scary end bosses, chickens into cursed summoners. (Yes, really. It'd be interesting to recreate Fullmetal Princess for RMXP... but I'd need a chicken battler.) And that's actually what a lot of the classic NES and SNES RPGs did. Look at FFVI or Chrono Trigger carefully, and you'll see it-- a limited set of graphics and animations used in creative ways to produce different effects. And why not? Why shouldn't rocks, chunks of ice, and lava use the same set of graphics, only recolored? Why not use a ladder-climbing animation for a dancing animation? I'm tempted to propose a contest. If anybody expresses interest, I will. The rules would be simple: Create a short game, but you can only use a very limited set of graphics-- about ten or twelve charsets and battlers, about eight animations, a small library of ME and SE and BGM and BGS. Maybe three or four tilesets. The rule would be: You have to use all of them. You can recolor them as you like, though. You can't use anything that you weren't given. And you have to make an interesting, enjoyable game, with as much originality as possible in the use of the items provided. Sort of like Iron Chef or maybe Chopped, but with resources. I think it'd be a fun challenge. Would anybody be interested in trying it?

Welcome aboard. Don't worry, most of us have had our shots.

To be completely honest, the big, flashy .sigs trigger something in my brain that makes my finger twitch on the ol' scroll wheel, and I just skip past them.

Have fun!

Welcome aboard, from another new face.

Hey, here's a thought. Why not have Voodoo types that do what real voodoo priests are supposed to do? See, zombies are a sideline in voudoun. (It's a real-world religion, btw. Not a Hollywood invention.) The real purpose of a lot of the worship involved inviting the gods in. So priests and worshipers are "ridden" by the Loa-- they become possessed, changing their style of dress to match the favored attire of that Loa, changing their behavior radically, and allegedly showing superhuman abilities. So imagine a class that worked that way. You'd cast a spell to call a spirit, and be ridden. You'd get a State specific to that spirit's power, and have your stats changed accordingly. You'd get access to new skills, too-- Chango, Loa of fire and lightning might throw explosions around, for example. But you'd be in some kind of berserk state, only using the abilities of that Loa, a little like Vincent's limit breaks in FFVII. I think it'd be pretty cool. I've also got a pretty good idea of how to no-script code it using Battle Events-- if you think the idea is worthwhile but aren't sure how to do it, let me know.

Which action? Marriage? That's really the only one that anything is going to change about, anyway-- any even casual look at the evidence will reveal that sexual orientation isn't a matter of choice. I mean, people engaged in homosexual activity at times and places when it would get you the death penalty, for God's sake. People did this when every single thing that they heard and read and were told was that such activity would only earn you eternal damnation. Seems pretty far-fetched for a choice. Plus there's the animals. Which engage in homosexual activity. Like, you know, most mammals. Even aside from all this, I have to note the research that was done at the college that I attended that indicated very strongly that certain specific chemical factors in the brain were involved. And the testimony from friends of mine who tried so damn hard to change their orientation, but always, only to fail, because it was who they were. Homosexuality isn't going anywhere. There's no reason that I can see to condemn it, anyway-- it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket. It's normal behavior. And given all that, why would anyone object to marriage? Why shouldn't someone be able to say, "This is the one I love! I want to spend my life together with them and no one else!" Anything else would be pointlessly, needlessly cruel.

...this is satire, right?

So, let's say that you're a big company, let's pretend that your name is, oh, ABC. Yeah, that's a good one. ABC. You bring anime to the U.S., and do various promotions and things. Needless to say, you work with conventions, because conventions can be one of the more effective concentrated blocks of advertising out there. So, someone in your company becomes the contact person for a given convention. That convention sends email directly to that contact person. And then, for whatever reason, you let that contact person go. Perhaps the economy took a major downturn and you have to lay people off-- perhaps you caught them embezzling. The reason doesn't matter. What do you do about the contacts with conventions and the like that this person had via email? 1) Set up an automatic forward to the new person who's handling their duties, so that you don't lose any opportunities. Besides, you might figure out who their partner was in crime. 2) Send out a mass email to their contacts list, announcing the change, and telling them who they'll need to contact in the future. 3) Not have this be an issue, because all of their business email was done through an account that wasn't personalized, and will be passed on to the next person to take on their job. 4) Just delete their email address from your corporate directory, and let their contacts take care of themselves. Boy, wouldn't it be nice if companies did anything other than #4 once in a while?

Under the dictates of both Talmundic law and Miss Manners, all babies and all brides are beautiful. And so they are. And congrats, as well.

Hm... how about a mad scientist type? Somebody who could gain items or abilities by dissecting dead monsters, and studying them.

I'll see what I can do, then. Hopefully I'll have a demo bit available in a week or two... I just want to finish the half-finished bits that I'm working on now.

Sure thing, but I'm not much of a scripter-- I won't be using it to its full potential, no matter what.

This is damn cool. I am officially jealous of your gamemaking skills.

Well, that's entirely reasonable.

Actually, a clone isn't going to be an exact copy. Your genes do not, despite popular belief, control every aspect of your being-- not even your physical being. During development, your body forms by an interaction between your DNA and the environment that your fetus is in. During infancy, your brain develops differently depending on education and nutrition. Both heredity and environment shape every living thing. An identical twin isn't truly identical in every regard. A large, healthy cow, cloned, wouldn't really be very different from any other cow-- early nutrition is at least as important for size and health as genetics. The main problem with a lot of the potential uses of cloning is that there's nothing special about how you create a clone-- a clone of a living thing is created by the normal process of birth. A cloned cow requires just as much space, grain, and time to become an adult as a normal cow. Also, cloning can run into the same problem as overbreeding-- if, for example, a disease evolves that the cloned cow is weak against, all the cows will be, and then what? This is actually a serious problem for current agriculture, without cloning. The major benefit to cloning is the creation of perfectly matched donor organs-- a problem if we can't work out how to create just a heart or a liver, but need to create an entire living human being for the purpose. If we can, though, the health benefits could be considerable. For those who could afford it, anyway. (Goes of muttering about his lack of health insurance.)

What do you mean by keeping it private, though? It seems unfair to me if you've got a set of people who can't gripe about their SO, walk down the street together holding hands, or whatever, and that's sometimes what people mean. And by "unfair" I do mean "Clearly morally wrong."

Well, let's see. You could have monsters not give experience, but instead increase character level by events only, when they finish missions or whatever. That'd do the job. But then, if you wanted your stats to increase via combat, you'd need to implement another system. Hmm.... It's easy to assign skills to different classes differently, though. What kinds of classes are you considering?

I guess I'd better work up a demo version, huh?

Thank you all very much. Memo to self-- look into this Scrive thing...

I'd best conceal my n00bness, then, least I be pwned.

Don't forget that RIAA is infamous for overreacting, though. On the other hand, MIDIs are tiny. And there's a lot of awesome music in the public domain, available for free download on MIDIs. Yeah, I'm cheap. But a 12k piece of music will help keep my games smaller, so...