Paddy

Okay, I read something interesting earlier. An article that was published a month ago on GameSpot. Apparently the fact that Ubisoft have included a transgender character in Assassin's Creed Syndicate was deemed newsworthy. A lot of people went up in arms against this; claiming Ubisoft to be going all "PC" in their games. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/assassins-creed-syndicate-has-series-first-transge/1100-6430884/?ftag=YHRe6a6b70 You can read the whole article there, but the gist of it is that Ubisoft have included a transgender NPC in Syndicate and are now promoting themselves as being inclusive and diverse. While that in itself isn't something I would think is a big deal by any means, it was the comments section that got me fascinated. So many people went up in arms against this! The comments section had practically exploded with mass comments of "I'm not playing this game now!" Some people were saying how they have now lost respect for Ubisoft because they gave in to the demands of "PC bullies", or because Ubisoft are jumping on board the diversity wagon, or because they're "being diverse for the sake of diversity". There were a couple of people who were strongly against this purely because they just don't want a transgender character in "their game". Naturally, this brought out opposition from the far opposite end of the dispute and things turned into a cesspool of insults and both sides were just as bad as each other. Personally, I'm off the opinion that if Ubisoft want to include a transgender character in their game, that's fine. If they want to promote themselves as Pro-LGBT then that's fine. I don't care either way, and Syndicate's still going to be the first game I purchase when I get my PS4 in a couple of months. I'm all for inclusivity in all mediums. If anything, at this point I think that any form of inclusivity or representation of diversity is going to feel forced, purely because it's the sort of thing that's making big headlines everywhere right now. But basically my stance on the matter is "So what?" What are your views on inclusivity? What are your views on people promoting it? Keep discussion sensible and friendly and all that jazz.

Actually I hate cluttering up my desktop with icons. If I could, I would have hidden the Recycle Bin too! I get to certain folders via Start Menu and for programs I use frequently, I have shortcuts to them on the taskbar, which is set to hide unless I hover my mouse over it.

Boom.

As someone who does this as a simple hobby to pass the time, I have no problem whatsoever with the RTP. The RTP certainly has it's charm. Right now, I'm working on a really simple project. It's short and sweet, and about 90% of the visuals is RTP. The only exception is the custom made portraits of RTP characters, and Holder's animated battlers. Oh, and the title screen, game over screen and window skin. But all the maps, character sprites, etc... all RTP. Mainly I use it due to consistency. If I went and used some custom sprites that I've found, I would then have to somehow get matching animated battlers, or scrap having animated battlers all together and stick with basic sprite-based battlers. Personally, if I can get people to play and enjoy this game when I've finished it, without having to go scouring the net for all manner of custom resources, then I've accomplished something great. I'm not going to want to pay someone a lot of money for custom graphics to use in something that I'm going to eventually hand out for free. When I've finished the project, and if people really like it, THEN I would consider a visual overhaul and replace the RTP with custom tiles and sprites, etc. As for crap games made with RTP... the same could be said for games using custom graphics. You could have someone be all "Oh my god check out all these amazing scripts and graphics for my game, it makes it the best!" but the game could be a steaming pile of crap because they weren't creative with the use of their resources and the story being really weak. On the other hand, someone could get really creative with using the RTP and Eventing and produce a far more superior game. If we're speaking about someone who has some really amazing visuals AND writes an amazing plot and comes up with some really fun game play elements, then of course it's going to be better than any RTP game. But I'm not so pretentious that I would rule out playing a game just because it was made with the RTP. Not everyone has the means of getting amazing resources for their game, yet they strive to make it shine in all the other aspects. I would be really insulted and upset if I put in a lot of effort making a game, doing everything I can to make a great story with strong characters and fun game play only for someone to snub me just because I used the RTP for the visuals. So I certainly wouldn't be doing that to someone else.

Fantastic stuff, as always. Have a cookie! Mind you, you will all have to share that one cookie.

Granted! Except, nothing happens because the wish was too vague. I wish that 'e' did not equal 'mc squared'.

Does God want Earth to be protected? If so, why would he/she/it forbid the other fallen angels to help? Fair enough laying that down as a condition for the fallen angels to be allowed back into heaven, but it wouldn't really make sense to impose that kind of rule if God does want the Earth to be protected.

Welcome to Corneria!

If you're looking into creating your own tiles from scratch, Despain has written a pretty awesome tutorial. http://finalbossblues.com/tiling-tiles/ It's a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a basic 32x32 grass tile, but the things you learn from that can be applied to making loads of other textures. Also... http://blog.rpgmakerweb.com/tutorials/creating-tiles-part-1/ That's the first of a four-part tutorial by Lunarea. It's all good stuff, and since you know your way around Photoshop, you'll have a decent head start on it all.

I'm doing something kinda similar, but as something that drives the story line. For example, there's a section in which an NPC won't speak to anyone but a specific character who joins your party at a later stage. You can go to the NPC at any point in the game and he'd just tell you to get lost, but later on it's required that you speak to him to gain a certain bit of information, and the only way you can do that is by talking to him as a different character. Other than that, I wouldn't really make it seem a big deal that most NPCs say something different depending on which character you are. I'd just use it as a novelty, and if the player decides to invest the time in seeing what each NPC says for each character then that's entirely up to them.