So here's a question.  I have a nice copy of photoshop and was wondering if it was possible to use it to give pictures and photographs some kind of makeover so they look vaguely 8-bit-ish?   Obviously, it doesn't have to be an exact look, but for those of you who had the program (and I'm not really versed in its advanced features), how would you go about achieving that kind of result?

Thanks in advance!

These are some great answers.  Thanks so much to each of you.  Personally, I've never really used the loop command.  Is there a tutorial for it somewhere that I could read or perhaps one of you can offer up a quick example of how it would work as opposed to using a parallel process.  Are there any particular kinds of trip-ups or things to watch out for when using loop cycles?

I came across this on the Gamefaqs page for RPG Maker 2003, and it caught my eye:

Reducing Lag

You may notice that in events that have a lot of complex coding, or events that call others with complex coding, tend to lag when the game is played. This makes gameplay very annoying. To prevent this, insert a Wait of 0.0 seconds before and after the Call Event or group of complex coding. This will remove lag almost entirely.



I'm working on an "arcade" project with a bunch of friends.  Basically, each of us is doing a minigame and putting into one RPG Maker project.  There will be some fancy programming and other things, so lag/performance will be an issue.

My question to you all: In addition to the suggestion above, are there any other good tips that we can use to optimize performance?  I'd like to get a "programming tips" document together for people who haven't programmed their games yet, so any suggestions that you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Drule,

I hate looking a gift-horse in the mouth since the site is free and I've gotten a lot out of it, but I have to ask:

Three years ago and beyond, this was *the* site for RPG Maker 2003 game creation.  A number of great forums gave you access to a wide range of innovative programmers, inspired artists, and fellow craftsmen.  gamingw.net itself was an absolute treasure trove of resources, from facesets to chipsets to every kind of tutorial you could ever want.  Then one day, actually literally one day after I visited the site to grab some tutorials for a friend, everything disappeared.  The site went into "redesign mode" for...two years?...before kind of coming back and now it's away again.  Now the site seems reduced to one generic game-making forum and as best I can tell minimal resources at best. 

This is really disappointing, because I used to love coming here to talk shop, get some help, and just see what other things people were doing with the program.  What happened to cause all of this?

I have no intention of getting a PSP, so I am sad that I will not be able to play the Final Fantasy Tactics remake coming out for that system.  Does anyone know if there are plans to port it over as a PS2 release (like the two PSP Grand Theft Auto games) or as a downloadable game for the PS3?