State of Topaz: April 18th, 2012
Hello all! Staff, Contributors, VIPs, Members, Lurkers... Lurkers... Especially you! Topaz is still trucking along, even if the demo has reached a bit of a road block, and it's thanks to all of your efforts that it's been alive through a whole lot of thicks and maybe a thin or two for good measure. Now lurkers! The community has a special message for you!
Quote:
ATTENTION VISITORS
We here at Topaz are doing our best to bring Pokemon Topaz Version to you as soon as possible. However, with our project hitting the 8 year mark, it's clear that we require more help. That's not the say that nothing is done. Since we moved over to the Topaz forums from the late Pokerealm, we have managed to complete no less than:
- A backsprite for every Topaz Pokemon
- Half of the required icons
- All the moves, abilities, heights, weights, colours, egg groups, pokedex entries and such of every Topaz Pokemon, items, basically all the data required in the Topaz game database
- A significant portion (66%) of our script
- Many trainer sprites and maps
However, there's still many things that remain that remain to be finished. If anyone has the ability to sprite, mix sounds or map, we would vastly appreciate your help in this project. If none of those fit you, there are still things to do! Just join our forums and PM one of our staff and one of us will be happy to direct you to something that needs doing, or someone who needs help.
A SPECIAL APPEAL TO PROGRAMMERS
The programmer role has traditionally been the hardest role for Topaz to fill. We have nearly everything that would be required for the planned demo, except for a programmer to bring it all to life! So for anyone familiar with Ruby, or Perl (from which Ruby is derived), we request your help in this project, it is greatly needed! We need someone who is willing to learn and work with the Poccil's Essentials Kit and communicate with the rest of the people on the project on at least a biweekly basis.
I'm literally on my knees begging for a programmer. Konrad has gone missing long enough. All the love from the Topaz community for anyone who steps up to the task. Just post somewhere or PM me and I'll do my best to stay in contact with you to let you know what's up.
So, let's get started with the stuff we've been doing lately!
Some really good bit of news to start, pokemon.txt, the file needed to implement all our Pokemon, now includes every Pokemon that is in the demo! It still needs just a tiny bit of editing (though a lot of it was looked through by Black Temple Gaurdian), but basically it's all usable for the demo! That isn't to say that work here is done though. The rest of the Pokemon in the game are waiting to be slotted into the file, and we've been working our way through them (Special thanks to NyteFyre who has been a great help on these). If you're looking for a good place to help, this is one awesome way to get directly involved, it's actually completely core to the game so come on by!
On the note of Black Temple Gaurdian, I have a special announcement to make. In appreciation for the sum of the work that he's done over all these years, culminating with his awesome work on the pokemon.txt file, the staff have decided to aware him Contributor status. Congratulations BTG!
Graphically, there's a lot of recent and exciting news for you. Firstly, we have gained a pretty nice array of new revamped and edited backsprites made by X-Antibody and yours truly. Beginning from X-Antibody:
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/g...zzlareback.pnghttp://i251.photobucket.com/albums/g...ondriaback.pnghttp://i251.photobucket.com/albums/g...akurgeback.png
Me:
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/302...backsprite.png
Which brings us to a couple of dilemmas. X-Antibody has created a couple new sprites in conflict with the ones we currently know and love. It's up to you to decide which ones end up being the official sprite.
Slowpriest's back:
Reliability's original: http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/4264/098br.png
X-Antibody's revamp: http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/g...iestback-2.png
Kraklaw:
X-Antibody's original: http://pokemontopaz.net/uploads/frontsprites/177.png
X-Antibody's revamp: http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/g...az/kraklaw.png
Not that our other members haven't been busy. You can go over and grab a look at Noog's pencil art of Dolphure and Cyndadile's trainer concepts and maybe give them a comment or two, I'm sure they'll appreciate it.
To end off the awesome graphics, cranky guy has been cranking out some overworlds to populate Topaz's maps, things like
Lupine: http://www.pokemontopaz.net/forums/a...862996&thumb=1
Kipporok: http://www.pokemontopaz.net/forums/a...444783&thumb=1
and Cirroft : http://www.pokemontopaz.net/forums/a...5&d=1333358326
There's still a lot of spriting work to be done (not for the demo), so if anyone has experience making overworlds, icons, or trainer sprites, or who just wants to learn, come on by and try it out! I'll be happy to work with you to bring your sprite up to official status.
Our resident mixer Blade Flight (formerly known as Pikang X) has also done some work since the last SoT, bringing us some musical new cries for the Venap line, Typhidna, Firant and some others, come encourage him here!
As for revamps, for once they've finally started picking up and now we've finished the Barkub line, Chinchou and friends, Duskull and Dusclops, and several other. If you're feeling left out from these discussions, go ahead and join in with Grimer and Muk, our current revamp topic. We've kind of got a little process where we revamp Pokemon, make writeups for them for our Caldera/Kirant dex and then implement them into pokemon.txt. We need lots of help along every prat of the process so if you don't feel you can help out anywhere else come here, I'm sure we'll find something for you to do.
Also in the Moves and Items forum are little discussions we have on minor parts of the game, which are important and need opinions. For starters I'll begin with the things that have happened. Because of the 12 character limit of in-game names, we've been required to change the names of some of our items:
Berry Smoothie will now be named Berry Blend
Twilight Crest will now be named Umbra Crest
Dairy Incense will now be named Milk Incense
Flare Incense will now be named Char Incense
Speaking of which, Char Incense will now be http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg820...png&res=medium (thanks Tyrannigon)
Furthermore, Dark Aura being the super generic name that it is, will be renamed Scorn, and may or may not be getting a change to what it does. You can follow along, or suggest your own changes here.
So that's about all I have so far, though I'm sure I've missed things. So tune in again later and please, programmers, grace us with your presence. Have a nice day and thank you Cyndadile for generously linking me many of the things you've seen here today, saving me a bunch of time.
