State of Topaz: April 18th, 2012

[ImmunityBow]

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!

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:

Me:


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:
X-Antibody's revamp:
Kraklaw:
X-Antibody's original:
X-Antibody's revamp:

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:
Kipporok:
and Cirroft :

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 (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.

[Tyrannigon64]

I hope to learn Ruby at some point, and when/if I do, I can help with programming. That may not be for a while, though.

[Black Temple Gaurdian]

*blinks*
A promotion? NEAT!
I've posted an advert on a site that has at least two coders on it (it uses a file injection programme to alter a game's code just for expanded modding abilities so it should :P) asking if anyone who know's Ruby could help so we may get some results there, hopefully.

[Cyndadile]

A word about Ruby to anyone interested in programming:
I recently started reading a few introductions to the language and it seems fairly easy, compared to some other languages. However, the syntax differs greatly from other languages, like JAVA, so it may be harder for experienced programmers to learn. I know that I'm having difficulties with it because I'm trying to learn JAVA at the same time. It is object-oriented, which may be helpful to people who haven't programmed before (I think it makes programming easier, at least). I probably won't be able to learn Ruby right now because it is so different from JAVA. However, if you have some spare time and are interested in programming, I would reccommend Ruby, and not just because we need a coder. I think it is a good language to start with, and it is probably a lot easier to learn Ruby before JAVA or C++ than it is to learn Ruby after. You can find some tutorials here. Presonally, I find this guide to Ruby to be a fun way of learning, but it can take a while to read.

Having said that, I do hope to learn Ruby in the near future, although probably not until I'm done with my CompSci class.

[NyteFyre]

Hmm, I (the Grammar Nazi that I am) noticed a few Spelling Mistakes within.

Regardless, I'm PSYCHED to see an SoT! I'd say it's a welcoming breath of fresh air on a day of such drab proportions. I dearly hope this will, at the very least, cause an upswing in activity. |3

[BladeVap]

As an add-on to the SoT, I would personally like to request a few other things. Put short, they are Pokemon Cries help, help with Move Animations, and of course, programming! But I'm not the guy to ask on that last one...XD

[Quinn]

At least the train keeps moving! Just wish that demo would come out after the hard work that current (and past) have done.

[Triumph]

I've just completed an Advanced Programming course at Uni. I have no experience with Ruby but I do feel like I could give it a stab and make some progress towards the release of the demo. I can learn very quickly.


Also, sorry for my absence and lack of contribution. Unfortunately life takes precedence over Pokemon.

[ImmunityBow]

No problem. GOod luck with learning Ruby, Triumph!

[Triumph]

The easiest way for me to jump in would actually be to see what Konrad has already got. I become more familiarized with a coding environment by example than reading pages and pages of documentation. There's that and the fact that Essentials almost certainly uses their own API (application programming interface) to make the job easier, too.

[NyteFyre]

If only we could get a hold of what Konrad has.

[Triumph]

Yeah, that's really crucial... all the map bits, dialogue, and scripting he's already done. Otherwise I'd have to start from scratch. I'm okay with that but it doesn't seem necessary unless we really can't get a hold of him.

[ImmunityBow]

Actually I've been looking through Poccil's and if you open up the game in RPGMaker there's several test maps of example event scripts and such. Are you also aware of the wiki? I do have some of the moves scripts which I can hand to you so you can have a look.

EDIT: Here

[Triumph]

Thanks, I'll take a look and see what I can do.

Edit: Yes, I am aware of the wiki.

[Triumph]

Sorry for the double post, but I've just been informed v6 of Pokemon Essentials is out as of today. This should be fun to work with.

[ImmunityBow]

Oh excellent. I forgot that Pokemon Essentials didn't allow for 80x80 sprites (they needed to be resized to 64x64, then doubled up to 128x128). All that's solved now that all the sprites have been updated to 160x160 :3

[Triumph]

It'll be nice to be able to play the demo on a ds-sized screen. Also question. Since we don't have immediate access to Konrad's progress, do we at least have maps I can work with (in the rpg xp format) somewhere? I got started today and some parts don't look terribly difficult to accomplish, and the rest is well documented.

[ImmunityBow]

No, we don't have the formatted maps, unfortunately. We have the maps as they would appear (mocked up I guess you could say), but otherwise no dice.

I can try to recreate them for you, I need to send you Quinn's modified tileset anyway, but it'll have to wait a couple of days.

[Triumph]

Not a problem. I can wait. Going by mockups shouldn't be too terribly difficult either.

[ImmunityBow]

If you want to get started, here are the mockups of the town, boat interior, route maps etc. If you want to create a topic as a community we can add NPCs and list out events to be scripted.

http://www.pokemontopaz.net/towns/
http://www.pokemontopaz.net/routes/
http://www.pokemontopaz.net/interiors/
http://www.pokemontopaz.net/chartreeforest/

I have the interiors of all of Neo Bay, Softwind and I think Cranewing somewhere, as well as Topaz-style Pokecenters. But I need to find them, I have them salvaged somewhere from the old forum crash.

[Cyndadile]

Would you like some NPC lines too?
http://www.pokemontopaz.net/forums/s...wfull=1#post58

[Triumph]

Awesome you guys, I'll get to it. IB, I found an old topic on maps with a dead link to the modified tileset. I know you said you had it somewhere, so I'll wait for it and stick placeholder gfx in the meantime.

[Cyndadile]

This one look right?
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/7...idetileset.png

Also dug up this old post:

Here are the saved maps from before the crash:
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/4...thouse1rj0.png
http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/5...e2lowerav8.png
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/6...e2uppersz7.png
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/4...thouse3vp9.png
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3...passageeu0.png
http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/4...2upper2si1.png
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/5...dhouse1rp5.png
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/3...phanagebc7.png
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/8...passagegx2.png
http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/4...ageeditcy8.png
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/3...pstairsuc1.png --*
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/4...pstairsnf3.png --*
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2.../GifHost-4.gif
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...GifHost-13.gif
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2.../GifHost-3.gif

Starred links are pokemon centers, I figured those are pretty important.
Edit: Looks like first link doesn't work, hope it wasn't important.

[ImmunityBow]

This should have all the tilesets. (Inner, Outer, Cave, Hiker Clause and Gym)

EDIT: Thanks Cyndadile. That tileset is Fangking Omega's, Quinn modified it for a bunch of his own maps.

[Triumph]

You guys are awesome. Forgive my ignorance, but what is the starting town and is there a map mockup of it already?

[ImmunityBow]

The starting town is Neo Bay. If Konrad ever comes back then everything in Neo Bay except the random NPCs should be done. There are map mockups of every outer space in the demo. It looks like Cranewing and Neo Bay are missing insides though, we should get on that.

[Triumph]

Alright, great.

On a side note, don't we have to register using an email address? Could we just email him (since pm's don't send email notifications)? Just a thought.

[Cyndadile]

Could we just email him (since pm's don't send email notifications)?

Radio silence. Er, at least, email silence.

[ImmunityBow]

Yes, I've done that and he hasn't replied to my emails.

[Triumph]

Well this sucks. I mean I'm okay with starting from scratch but it seems like a really unfortunate situation.

[NyteFyre]

Yeah, that really sucks, Triumph. I wish there was more we could do, but at least you don't have to make EVERYTHING from scratch, and at least you have mock-ups, and the necessary tilesets. :3

[ImmunityBow]

We are around to help too. If there's something long and menial you don't want to slog through, then we as a community can help you out.

[Triumph]

This kind of support is exactly what I need to keep myself motivated. Thanks guys

[NyteFyre]

We're glad to help in any way we can! So long as you remember to tell us how to do what it is you need. If we don't already know, that is. :3