Hi guys!  Faze and I just published our latest collaboration.  Let the copying and pasting commence!
 
http://www.dragonflame.us/cad.php

A 3-month collaboration between myself and Cryofaze of DeviantArt. You can make your own dragons, save them, export them, share them with your friends . Keeping the memory footprint to a minimum while using over 1500 different dragon parts and an approach based on stacked 600x600 pixel layers turned out to be the hardest technical challenge, which I addressed using an external preloader and fetching images from the server instead of building everything into the project.

This is our second Construct 2 collaboration (http://www.dragonflame.us/dragon_blaster.php being the first). I think we'll try a real game next, though it may be a few months.

Wow, Rast! The man behind RPG Engine. I'm not sure if you remember me, DarkPriest. I used to pester you about including support for mod music into RPG Engine  because that's what I was into at that time. It is seriously weird and amazing at the same time to "remeet" someone I had first contact with when I was like what, 13 years old?
 
Anyway... nice.

 
I hear ya there.  I turned 35 a couple months ago.. my knees hurt and the doctor says I have high blood pressure and I'm like "fuck, when did I get old?"
 
I don't play so many RPGs anymore, unless you count World of Warcraft which I wasted far too many years on.  I've got some good ideas going with Construct 2 though.
 
 

whoa yet another philly guy, that's like half of us. penn campus rox. are there really so few jobs even for a military vet with a chemistry degree? geez, no one's getting hired. 

 
I'm sitting on an eligible list for two chemist positions with the City of Philadelphia but it'll be anywhere from another 4-20 months before I get called, if ever.  It's really hard to do anything with a plain BS in Chemistry, might as well get a Master's while I'm stuck in school.  At least I'm not paying for it.
 
 

Didn't you make a game with insane maps that took forever to load?

 
Yep, it's all reposted and stuff.  Nice and fast now, even on my 4-year-old laptop.  It's amazing what Moore's Law will do for you!

http://www.dragonflame.us/dragon_blaster.php
 
I've been learning a new platform (Construct 2, from Scirra) and so Faze (my collaborator on this project) and I did this over the last month.  It's a complete game but it only has one level so we're calling it a demo anyway.
 
The Construct 2 source file is here.  Critiques are appreciated!  I know the input events are a gigantic mess (I decided I wanted to support mouse, keyboard, AND touch input.. that wasn't a great idea in retrospect) and the entire game is framerate dependant.. both of those are issues that would have taken way more effort than it was worth to address though.
 

Out of the Navy now...  I should add that my dreams of doing something with RPGMaker XP got sidelined when I was sent to Afghanistan for six months.
 
Got my Bachelor's degree (in Chemistry) earlier this year, in grad school now at the University of Pennsylvania but to be honest it's not really working out for me so I'm looking for a decent job here in Philadelphia, there's a few things that may work out (Forensic Chemist, Police Officer Recruit, Naval Supply Systems Analyst being the main ones) but the job market's in the toilet and has been for years so I'm not holding my breath.
 
Glad to hear people are still around! 

I've been fiddling around with Construct 2 the last couple of weeks and decided to see how the community has grown and changed over the years.  I can't believe this place is still here!

Just figured I'd drop by and let everyone know that I'm leaving again - this time for an IA tour in Afghanistan.  Was hoping I could finish my current game before I got out of the Navy but obviously that's not going to be possible.

See you all next year!

Clickey.

I really don't know what to say, other than that's really fucked up and we need to fix it.

Some highlights:

• The US not only has the highest per capita incarceration rate (1 in 99.1 adults), but we have more prisoners than anyone.  Even China who we bag on all the time about human rights has less people in prison than we do and they have like 4x our population.
• 1 in 30 men between 20 and 34 is in prison.
• 1 in 9 black men in the same age group is in prison.
• In Kentucky, the violent crime rate has increased 3% in the last 30 years, but the prison population has increased 600%

I think the last point is the most telling of a broken system - in Kentucky they have six times more people in prison and their crime rate actually went up.  Also it's a double-hit on our economy, we pay to put all those people in jail and they don't produce anything (except license plates, maybe) while they're there.

I think we need to focus more on rehabilitation and community service for non-violent and lesser offenses, and maybe think about bringing back corporal punishment for offenses that warrant more than that but aren't worth putting someone away for years and years for.  This is just another thing that's out of control in our country.

Calling the Federalist, Whig, Torrie, etc parties "Third parties" just shows your ignorance. They weren't third parties back then. It was NOT a Republican and Democrat dominant system back then. Republican/Democrat dominant politics is RECENT. You REALLY need to educate yourself before you go ranting on a forum.

It's always been two-party.  The parties changed around a lot during the first eighty years or so but since the Civil War it's been the Dems vs Republicans.  Their platforms have changed a lot (19th century Democrats were strongly against any kind of civil rights for blacks after the Civil War) but the parties are the same.

The reason for it is our winner-take-all system strongly discourages third parties from forming.  Every time a strong third-party-type candidate has emerged they've lost and sucked votes much more strongly from one party than another.  It cost Taft the election in 1912 (When Roosevelt ran as a Progressive) and Al Gore in 2000 (when Nadar managed to give a razor-thin majority to Bush by taking votes from Gore) and we all know how that turned out.

So basically what happens in a winner take all system is you end up with two strong parties and a lot of weak ones.  People don't want to vote for a 3rd party because they know they're pulling a vote from a much more viable - if less attractive - candidate who actually has a chance of winning.  There's no prize for 2nd place.

As for being the best country in the world - no it's not, nobody's perfect, but I've been to a lot of shithole 3rd world countries in my time in the military and even white trash in the trailer park have a better standard of living than poor people elsewhere.  We have a good thing going here but we're throwing away the great country our grandfathers built in the 40s-60s.  People are finally starting to realize this though, I'm hopeful that things will improve once Bush is gone but it'll take time and real effort.

Unfair representation.

Our system of government classifies Americans as either one of two things:

1: A liberal

or

2: A conservative

There's absolutely no fucking inbetween. 

The media plays up the whole conservative vs liberals thing, but when the chips are down it's the moderate independents who decide every close race.  It sucks though since there's neither party specifically appeals to moderates.

Like me, personally, I'm against (most) gun control, would prefer small government and low taxes, oppose undebated earmarks, and think the government should try to regulate things to the least extent possible.  But I'm also pro-choice, pro-stem-cell research, think there should be some limits on corporate power, support gay marriage, support a balanced-budged amendment, and think the government should provide federal programs for services that are too important to expect people to pay out of pocket for (in other words, nationalized health care).  So obviously neither party is going to completely appeal to me.

Unfortunately I don't see this problem going away as long as we have a winner-take-all system that doesn't leave room for small parties.  The only way it'll change is with a constitutional amendment that does away with winner-take-all and instead implements proportional representation (which is what most other countries have).  I don't see it ever actually happening though.

Well.. I had all these great ideas.. so I bought RMXP, then realized I didn't know what the fuck I was doing and needed to practice.  But still.. everything (major anyway) that was in Dragon Destiny is in my new game so hopefully it won't be too bad.

As for RMXP.org, I'll be sure to check them out later.  FF7 is the new jesus?  I see some things never change...

Anyway, I'm freezing my ass off out here (we got a bunch of visitors out on the island who've pretty much taken over our lounge so I'm outside where I can get some privacy and an internet connection) so I'm going to head back to my room.  Thanks for the warm welcome though

Yeah I'm still in the Navy, got till next July till I'm out - I've had enough military bullshit for one lifetime.  As for rank, I'm a second right now (I was a second before, then I was a third again for a while.. just made second class again a few months ago).  Right now I'm just waiting to get out.  I scored a 32 on my ACT but that's about all I can do for another year 'till I enroll at K-State back home.

So for now they got me stuck on San Clemente Island off the coast of southern California.  Theoretically I live in San Diego but I'm out here 26 days a month so whatever.  I have plenty of time to sit in my barracks room and do nothing so I figure I might as well do something productive.

As for RPMaker stuff.. I like RPXP, you can do just about anything (2D anyway) with the script system which is pretty straightforward (some of the more complicated Dragon Destiny-style stuff was a lot simpler to do in Ruby, and I'm working on a nifty physics-based canon puzzle right now that's be nearly impossible with old-style event code), but the lack of some more advanced event features that were in RM2K/2K3 really annoys me since I generally like to use events when I can because they're a lot faster to develop and easier to debug.  So I'm kind of mixed.  Bob is happy to finally get his sequel though.

Oh yeah, wrong forum.  Go me

Hello everyone!  I've been playing around with RMXP lately, decided to get back into RPG making and see if I'm still any good at it.

GW seems to have been down for quite a while though - at least the last few times I've checked.  Anyone still come here / is this still a good community site?

Thanks!