I've talked about this before, but I want to discuss the possibility of bringing back the old GamingW website, or at least a new website for GamingW. I think there are a number of advantages to this, but I'll also acknowledge some cons as well.

Pro
 - Will create a new hub for our community to post news, resources and promote games. Even if we use itch.io for hosting the games themselves, GamingW could be used as a way to link these games in one place and make them more easily accessible and also to promote them.
 - The website can attract new members, or members from RPGMaker.net. I doubt GamingW.net will ever be as big as it was during it's prime, but any growth is good.
 - With RPGmaker.net down for the count GamingW.net can essentially fill the gap. As it stands I don't think there is an equivalent RPGMaker website anymore.
 - We can link people's Twitch accounts to show when they're streaming, as well as the forums and GW music all in one place.

Con
 - It will be a lot of work, especially to get it up to modern web standards.
 - More attention isn't always a good thing, especially if it attracts undesirables. Even barring this the larger a community becomes the more difficult it gets to manage.
 - The work might not necessarily pay off.

What are your opinions on the matter?

Currently I'm listening to Madhouse by Anthrax.


What are you listening to?

What are your favorite video games? Mine are (in no particular order except Final Fantasy VI being number 1) the following:

Final Fantasy VI
Phantasy Star IV
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario World
Super Mario 64
Final Fantasy VII
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Starcraft

What are your favorite games?

"Lore Flooding" is a term I like to use for any piece of work where the lore is excessive to the point of being detrimental to the narrative. Granted, having lore in a piece of fiction is a good thing, a welcome thing in fact, but I firmly believe that it's entirely possible for a piece of work to be overly fixated on worldbuilding to the point where it dominates every other aspect of the story. Lore to me is like ketchup on fries, it's great when you have just the right amount, but when the cap falls off and the entire bottle spills out you wind up with a gross, inedible mess.

The following are signs that a piece of work might be lore flooded.

1. When you ask yourself "what's this even about?" because the story is more fixated on worldbuilding than actually creating any kind of interesting plot or memorable characters.

2. When it feels like you're reading a history book instead of a story/playing a game/watching a movie.

3. When stuff that happened 200 years before the events of the story are more important than the stuff you're supposed to be currently paying attention to.

4. When you have to read a wiki to understand what everything is supposed to be because the writer liked to make up a lot of nonsensical words for existing ideas. (Brownie points for every apostraphe added into a word or name).

5. When you have the feeling of "some guy" syndrome, ie: the main character/player character just feels like some guy and has little to no relevance in the plot.

What doesn't count as lore flooding:

1. When you can comfortably follow a story along without having to read supplementary material to know what's going on.

2. When the plot is engaging and you actually care about the characters.

3. When you feel that the lore enhances, rather than dominates the story.

There are many examples of lore flooding in fiction. Generally, I feel you can have as much lore as you want so long as it doesn't disrupt the narrative. When you have to read wikis to understand what's going on, or if you feel like your doing a history assignment instead of enjoying a story, you may be dealing with lore flooding. What are your thoughts on the subject?

I want to create a topic here for one of my favorite all time things, old school computers. My childhood computer was an old IBM PC (possibly a 5150) which had a black and amber monochrome monitor and ran on an old version of DOS. However, the computers I'm most nostalgic for are my original Windows 95 and 98 PCs and my MSX.

Anybody remember MS-DOS and all the weird shareware games? How about the old-school look of programs with black screens and chunky fonts? Somewhere in my parent's house there's still have a roll of old computer paper with the tear off things on the sides. Post any old school computer memories you have here and any fascinating stuff you have, whether it be PC, DOS, MSX, Commodore 64, whatever.

I'm thinking about setting up a linux distro on a computer, but I'm not sure which would be a good one. I don't really want something that's too similar to Windows, I'm leaning towards Ubuntu or Window Maker but I'm interested in hearing your suggestions on some good ones.

Super Kid Chameleon is a ROM hack I've been working on since 2019. It is nearly complete, though I haven't worked on it in a while. I'm looking to continue the project and hopefully finish it soon. For those unfamiliar with Kid Chameleon, it was a Sega Genesis game released in 1992, a platform game in the same vein as Super Mario World where you navigate through levels (sometimes very large and non-linear ones), get helmets as powerups that transform the player into various forms and try to complete the game. Super Kid Chameleon for the most part uses all the same assets from the original game but with slight modifications, the main selling point of Super Kid Chameleon is it's long and brutally difficult levels and mind-bending puzzles. Here are some screenshots of the game.

Anybody up for trying another GW game night sometime? I do miss the days of chilling out with everyone and playing Soldat. The last few times we tried this I admit were not really successful, at least not for me. I think if we try and coordinate our days off and the online games we have we could work something out. Worth a shot I think.

I'm off Wednesdays and Thursdays each week. Some of my online games I have include:

Soldat
Starcraft
Team Fortress 2
Minecraft
Quake Live
Quake 4
Mechwarrior Online

Reply if anybody is interested.

Astral Fantasy - A Future World of Science and Magic

Galactic Year 24252. The place is the Andromeda Galaxy.

The Andromedan Wars ended with the collapse of the Kodai Federation, and the ruination of the once prosperous Astral League. It is a difficult time of rebuilding across the galaxy, many worlds were either destroyed or left in ruins, and the Astral League has fallen into corruption and decadence. The nefarious criminal organization Blood Diamond and their rivals, the Epoch Planets Corporation have begun a war of their own to claim what remains of the Astral League, influencing the League's government to their own ends with innocent lives caught in the crossfire.

As this happens, an even greater threat approaches the galaxy - an unknown invading force intent on conquering and destroying everything in their path. After the peaceful planet Melmon falls under their control, the young freelance fighter Maya tries to go to Valis, the capital of the Astral League, to warn of the approaching invasion.

This demo covers the first three hours of Astral Fantasy. In this demo you will get the opportunity to use three characters and master a number of magic spells and deadly skills to fight an army of space pirates, robots, alien monsters and the deadly cybernetic invaders of Melmon.





This is the official GW forum post for Astral Fantasy, a turn based sci-fi-fantasy themed RPG that I've been working on for some time now. Any updates to the project I will post here, as well as teaser material. If you're interested in playing this game, you can check out either of the two links below to the latest released demo.

DOWNLOADS

rpgmaker.net
itchi.io

I'm working on a new RPG Project using RPG Maker MV called Astral Fantasy. It's an RPG that takes place in a highly futuristic space setting with some fantasy elements such as magic, think of Final Fantasy in space, or more accurately something along the lines of Phantasy Star and Star Ocean. The game will be very open to exploration and side quests, but will also have a significant main story as well and a number of different characters to join your party with different abilities, including many different kinds of aliens.
 
The battle system will for the most part be the default RPG Maker MV battle system shown in a side view perspective (though I originally thought of having it in a third person behind the characters perspective like Vay and Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, but I haven't figured this out yet). The skill system and magic system work like this: For skills, you gain SP as you fight and can use that to perform various special attacks (standard in RPGMV), though skills themselves can be learned in two ways, either levelling up or by using computer terminals in various locations to learn new skills with units (money). The ability to hack terminals and download these new skills requires the character to have a chip equipped, chips do various things both in and out of battle and are an extra equipment slot. The idea is much the same for magic too but a little different, following a system more akin to Final Fantasy 7. You have 5 slots for what is called amulets, and each character can buy amulets in stores or find them throughout the game. Amulets allow the character to use a spell so long as the amulet is equipped, though magic using characters can learn spells on their own through levelling up and may not need them for certain spells (plus many of the unique, character specific spells are the best in the game).
 
The game takes place in the Andromeda Galaxy in the 24,000s AD. Humanity has long since left the Milky Way galaxy and established colonies in the Andromeda Galaxy. War breaks out between the Astral League in the Andromeda Galaxy and the Khelnari Empire in the Milky Way galaxy, and the neutral human colonies are caught in the middle of it. Meanwhile, dark powers have begun to awaken in the universe.

Not sure if anyone created a topic about this in the past but am I the only person who dearly misses turn based RPGs? I know that RPGs still exist and most now are in the form of Kingdom Hearts style action RPGs or FFXII style hybrids but what I'm talking about are purely turn based games with emphasis on team combat and strategy like the older Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games and of course awesome attack and spell animations. I know that times are changing and I don't necessarily have a problem with modern style RPGs, but I like variety and the fact that there are hardly, if any, decent turn based RPGs on console anymore is pretty disheartening.
 
So, do you miss turn based RPGs as well? And do you know of any good modern ones? What are your favorites from the past?

I want to run an idea by you guys and see if it gets much interest, it's a game I've been wanting to work on since the days of the original Gaming World website when I used to be regular (Back when I was Lord Gelgothia). The game is an RPG done in the JRPG style like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest but unlike most RPGs which take place in a medieval time period this one takes place in a galaxy where the player is allowed to explore different planets in his spaceship and do a large variety of sidequests (as well as the main quest of course). It's going to have a Star Wars-esque space opera feel to it in which the technology of the galaxy is powered by magi, and you will have a party of both human and alien characters you can recruit, each with their own abilities and skills in battle (and possibly some out of battle).
 
The battle system of the game will be turn based and on a side view, but there won't be an ATB and instead the battles will play out based on initiative which is based on the character's agility stat, much like the Phantasy Star games. The magic system will consist of both equippable basic magic spells for each of your characters as well as unique spells learned by certain characters like mages and espers that other characters can't use, it will also have a skill system in which each character gets a unique set of attack and buffing skills which have a set number of uses per level ie: the magic system of the original Final Fantasy. The game will probably be very long as well and if possible I'll take advantage of several RPG Maker plugins. I need a few opinions though.
 
1: Does this sound like an interesting idea?
2: What version of RPG Maker or Game Maker should I use (I am not making this a 3D game). My original plan was to use RPG Maker 2003 but I haven't decided what would be the best option.
3: Any additional ideas that might make the game cool?
 
I'd love to hear back from you guys, let me know what you think.

Hi, it's been a long time since I've been here. Well, technically I've never been to Salt World, I used to go here long, long ago when it was still www.gamingw.net, way, way, way back in the day. Anyone who was there back then may or may not remember me, I went under the name Lord_Gelgothia (I think) and I was a developer of RPG Maker projects which unfortunately never saw the light of day. I'm hoping to start designing games again and maybe even find a few people on the site who I used to know who might be willing to help me out with some projects, or maybe meet some new friends. I only recently discovered that this site exists and that it's more or less the successor to www.gamingw.net, so I'm hoping maybe I could use this place as a place to bounce around game ideas and hopefully get some support. Nice meeting everyone.