Hello everybody! This is the first State of Topaz that I have written so I hope I do a good job. First, I'd like to say that I am impressed by the fantastic traffic that we are getting on the site and the forums! We have also been seeing a record number of guests, and forum activity continues to grow.

It is my hope that, with the looming summer vacation, our active contributors will have their time freed up and we can get progress on the demo in full gear. Speaking of which, our awesomely talented coder Badara has begun full time production on the Topaz demo! If you haven't checked out his Triple Triad playtest yet, then you should!

This means that we also need our contributors (and hopefully new people!) to step up and start producing what we need for the demo. One big thing we need is backsprites and icons, as detailed in this thread.

We have been fortunate to receive some new concept art lately, which you will see more of below. One I'd like to mention is Phoenixsong's drawing of Whispaw:


We'll have more on our new concept art from ImmunityBow's contribution to this SoT below. I've also been working on Battle Backgrounds, and recently received the custom made patches (of grass, water, cave, etc) for Topaz that I need to implement so look for that upcoming thread in the Topaz Graphics forum when I finish!

Another thing I'd like to mention is that the design and layout for the Topaz Repository has been finalized. You can visit the site now to see the cool buttons and the site map on the sidebar to see what will be on the public Repository. I am currently editing all of our front sprites to 80x80 and aligning them properly.

Before I hand off this SoT to ImmunityBow and his input, I'd like to show the tentative navbar for the new Morning forum layout.


There will be text labels on the images and the pink/orange backgrounds are going to be toned down to fit the hue of the other backgrounds, which I couldn't get done in time for this SoT. If you didn't know, there is also a complete site redesign in the works - which I will reveal more about at a later date. I'll just say that I think it will be pretty cool!

Now here are some words from our esteemed project leader, ImmunityBow, who has been exceedingly patient with my increased interest in Topaz.

ImmunityBow: Shiny-making has officially been opened up to the masses. The process is as such: find a Pokemon you like, recolour it, post it on the topic.That's it. There's no limit, and no tracking of what "has and hasn't been done". At MewLoverEX's discretion (she's heading this part of the project) she'll post up the options so far for a Pokemon and then we can vote. But don't expect the vote to come very soon, since it's a really open process and these aren't needed for the demo.

We've made some great progress in terms of concept art. Zeroality has contacted oykawoo who came up with some excellent, excellent pieces for us. You can take a look at the really nifty (thanks zero!) new concept art page or take a look here!





I've also been busy with some of my own stuff, and you can check out the new


or the much better but too big to post here Jirachi reprise

Finally in terms of concept art, if anyone here has Flash or Photoshop, zeroality has found a way to turn sprites into art with Vector Magic and would really like someone to clean them up. A small hint is to recolour all the outlines to black and to use a soft brush or Flash to clean up the outlines. Try it out!

STT, our newest sound magician, has been working at remixing some of our music. He really, really, really, really needs some feedback! Please go and take a listen!

Of course, Pokedex Entries and revamps need some work done, as always. Come check them out!

Finally, expect a tutorial on how to make move animations soon. I still need to get a few things clarified with Badara, but it's a super simple process and it's really lots of fun. In the mean time, if people could go around Spriter's Resource and such and find move animation rips that we can use, I'd be very grateful. Poccil's comes with a decent move editor but barely any moves done! This means we have to reanimate almost every move in the game. I know a lot of you have really great ideas on how moves look so please come by when it's ready!