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Thread: State of Topaz: January 4th, 2011

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    Default State of Topaz: January 4th, 2011

    Sorry for the four month pause between SoTs, hopefully the next one will be up some time in February. Along with a new year comes some change to the staff.

    MewLoverEX's activity has been on the wane and she feels that she hasn't been able to help out as much as she before, and so, Reliability will be taking her place as moderator. As many of you probably know, Reliability has done an amazing job of not only spriting backsprites for us but seeing the whole process through to what's close to the end. Reliability has also taken responsibility for revamping the game's script, and with everything he's done Ragingprimeape and I felt he'd be a great moderator. MewLoverEX will be retaining Contributor status, of course.

    I have also sent an email to Badara requesting his files, which he hopefully we receive and send. Otherwise, we're left a little high and dry without a programmer, once more. I can perhaps prod Leithality into helping once in a while but he has never played a Pokemon game and so while he was helping out he was feeling a little lost. If any of you know any programmers versed in Ruby or Perl (Ruby is a derivative of Perl) then if you could point them this way that would be amazing. Leithality picked Ruby up in just a few days (he mainly uses C++ and Java) so even people versed in those might work out. I'll keep you updated on Badara's status, if I get anything.

    On a less bleak note, there has been a lot of good work happening on Topaz in the past 4 months.

    Firstly, I like to introduce you to the Backsprite Repository. Search for all the ones with no sprite. Count them on your thumbs (no fingers necessary!) There are exactly TWO sprites missing there! Arowana has something approaching a pretty decent placeholder, and I'm sure Vilephist will work out well too. You can take a look at some of the grueling process work here, as well as suggest improvements to the final two backsprites. A round of applause to Reliability, and all those who helped out! And here are a few of them, because breaking up text with images is nice and all that.


    Also rather exciting is the work one of our new members Tyrannigon64 has been doing in terms of icon sprites. He's been making some pretty quality stuff, most of which you can see in his album: http://www.pokemontopaz.net/forums/album.php?albumid=6

    Also, the new Kraklaw sprite (and backsprite!) by X-Antibody has been fully officialized, along with oykawoo's concept art. Most of you have already seen this, but for those who live and die by SoTs, here they are:


    They are now up on the site sprite page
    and concept art page for your viewing pleasure.

    Also in the graphics department, the Backsprite Shinification Process has been started by Quinn, and he's already whizzed through a bunch of them, so if you'd like to recolour the backsprites to fit the front sprite shinies, then here's your chance.

    AND, while we're still talking about graphics we got some progress on Move Animations. 2-3 down, many to go! Of course, we're deferring this to the full game, but hey, if you get past all the little frustrations, making move animations is fun and pretty good time killer. I advise people to try it out!

    To finish off the graphics section, Betatmw, one of our less active members, made us some nice new item sprites back in November. The best of the bunch are:
    Jagged Herb
    and
    Solar Ball

    The results from the renaming topic are in and Skobeloff Town and Triumph Spire are the winners! I fixed the site to account for the names as much as I could. I'm going to look towards changing the mouseover sometime too, if I can figure it out.

    It has been decided that we will be revamping the Pokemon League since Caldera/Kirant is such a huge region. Instead of having 8 gym leaders we will be having 12, 6 on Caldera and 6 on Kirant (as opposed to 8 on Caldera). The reasoning for this is that there is a very large section of the game in Kirant before you return to Caldera, which requires us to squish in too many gym leaders at the beginning, having a 7 city-long break, and then finally fight Gerad, who would have to be substantially stronger than Mandy, who was the 5th gym leader. Under the new system, Hanzo will be scrapped, and Mandy will be demoted to extra (Ranger in the Eastlong and Westlog forests). Furthermore, Normal, Poison, Dragon, Light, Dark and Rock gym leaders have been added. Normal will be at Kalypso (4th gym leader) and will be named Jane (Plain Jane etc.) Poison will be at Gallea and will be named Bella (for Belladona, a type of Poison. Also Twilight being poison, I guess.) Light will be at Portwind, and will feature Tristan, who will later on face you in the E4, with stronger Pokemon. Dragon will be at Sedcini, led by Wolfe. Rock will be at Enechestra, led by Crys, and Dark will be at Aquapolis, led by Layla (who is demoted from E4. Her name is Arabic for night, by the way, or so behindthename tells me.) Taking Layla's place will be a new Ghost-type E4.

    Audio-wise, Irot_Rebod has made a comeback with an excellent flashback theme for the opening of the game, as well as a wonderfully Caribbean-styled theme for Kalypso City! Check them out here! Not one to be one-upped, STT made some remixes, with an excellent new version of Dynamo Gardens and Colossus City among others. Check them out here.

    Pokedex Entries have had a little bit of progress, with some ideas contributed and such. However, we need votes or ideas that inspire people to vote to finish them off instead of endlessly discussing! Case in point, since August, only Togetic, Muk, Dunsparce, Primeape, Jirachi and Smearlge were finished.

    As for the Text RPG on Orange Islands, I'm afraid that it was decided by the Orange Islands that they do not want to host the TRPG anymore, mainly because our Pokemon simply don't mesh well with theirs and they already have tons of great original Pokemon for their own site. That puts the Topaz TRPG on indefinite hiatus.

    And that about sums up most (but not all, there's a bunch of plot stuff that happened too, not that you heard it from me) of what's happened in the past 4 months. Got questions? Ask them here .

  2. #2
    "We nicknamed her Bean"
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    Thanks IB!

    I'm hoping this might get people more interested in stuff. PROVE ME RIGHT TOPAZ COMMUNITY!


  3. #3
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    Well all right.

    Hey there, SOT. It's been a long time.

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    Hooty-hoot! Congrats, Reli. Marry me?

    I mean... *cough* erm, congrats to everybody who has gotten this amount of work done in four months. I'm anxious to start this new year off with strong ambition to push the progress of Topaz to new limits. Let's do this, team! :P
    Haven't checked out the Pokemon Topaz Soundtrack? Click HERE!

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    Quote Originally Posted by irot_rebod View Post
    hooty-hoot! Congrats, reli. Marry me?
    A thousand times yes.


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    booyah SoT!!!!!!
    i think that the sprites are all lookin preety good
    too bad for MLX though...too good for reli!
    the new year is gonna rock!
    and hopefully we'll have the demo done soon!!!!!!!!
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  7. #7
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    Long time no see, SOT!

    Congrats Reli! Seems like you already have alot of work on your hands with spambots!

    Quote Originally Posted by Reliability View Post
    I'm hoping this might get people more interested in stuff. PROVE ME RIGHT TOPAZ COMMUNITY!
    I certainly hope so. I have a few things up my sleeves that I might try out, although not until I have more time (Febuary/April breaks, and this summer).

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyndadile View Post
    Long time no see, SOT!
    Congrats Reli! Seems like you already have alot of work on your hands with spambots!
    Ohoho, you should see the Acanthite ModCP. XD We spam the notes with Greek (I'm staring at you, Lorem Ipsum), and Giga and I come up with epic ban reasons, though nothing tops "LOL Have fun at Nintendo". XD

    Long time, no SoT! Congratulations, Reli! Canadian mods FTW!

  9. #9
    Better Than That Guy
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    Quote Originally Posted by ImmunityBow View Post
    As for the Text RPG on Orange Islands, I'm afraid that it was decided by the Orange Islands that they do not want to host the TRPG anymore, mainly because our Pokemon simply don't mesh well with theirs and they already have tons of great original Pokemon for their own site. That puts the Topaz TRPG on indefinite hiatus.
    I'm always up for updating people if you decide to host it here again. (what did stop that anyways?)

  10. #10
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    A lack of activity. We don't really have the resources right now.

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    It's fine, really. Contributor Status is fine with me.

    Hey look, a wild SoT appeared! It's super rare!

    I know i haven't been that active lately (gaming occupies too much of my time these days), but i'll try and see what i can do.

    Holy shit, i just realized that RP's avi is Ryu, i think. Whatever...i dunno.

    Hey, congrats, the Canadians and Russians are trying to overthrow us! XP

    But yeah...Awesome.
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  12. #12
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    Hey! Reliability and I are not trying to overthrow Topaz!

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by ragingprimeape View Post
    A lack of activity. We don't really have the resources right now.
    I could update everyone at the current rate of activity if it was set up. Was the problem setting it up?

  14. #14
    "We nicknamed her Bean"
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    Yes, it really just comes down to the set-up work load, as well as some minor details that we don't have the resources to create right now. We don't doubt your, or any of the other former-TRPG staff's, capacity to update properly, but more to do with what we can do effectively with our current community.


  15. #15
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    As likely *cough-splutter* as it is I'm gonna suggest it anyway. I could set up one on a zetaboards forum? I already have all the cannonmon emoticons in position and I could probably quickly set up the rest (at least, a general overview of it).

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    We kinda want to keep them together, in order to increase traffic for the game development. The problem is, an inactive TRPG makes the forum seem unattractive, and right now we don't have enough active members to keep it running. Perhaps after demo is realeased and there's more activity, it might be back on the table.

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    The original policy when BT and neon set up the old Topaz forums was that anyone could set up a Topaz TRPG elsewhere and link it back. I do see issues with trying to getting traffic flowing between the two though. Also, as RP said, the setup is an issue, especially since it's more than just putting in icons and places, you have to deal with events and such too.

  18. #18
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    I think I'll try it. I could copy SoTs over to help bolter flow between the two. By far the most teideous thing for me is uploading the emoticons. Um so yeah, to prevent me having to Print Screen, Cut, Paste, Centre and Transparatise every sprite, is there anyway I could obtain the ones used for the repository? Pretty please?

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    Well, for the front sprites you can just drag sprites from the site onto the address bar, which you could just save to a folder.

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    Actually, Zero gave me a copy of all the Topaz Front, and possibly back sprites, so if you like, i could e-mail them to ya, BTG. I would also fully support the TRPG, and devote whatever time i have to helping, if you'd like.
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  21. #21
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    Thanks I'll PM you a link.

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    Just wondering, but any luck on getting through to Badara?

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    I don't think there's been much progress there, but don't worry about that, we're working on a solution.

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    No reply from Badara yet, but I did get a rather heartwarming email from the father of an 8 year old who's son is really excited for Topaz.

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    That's cool! I hope we can make that kid happy.

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    I have a question! Can someone gather me all the backsprites for topaz pokemon so i can use unLZ.gba to replace the pokemon on a fire red rom and link a download here? I'm not sure if that's against the rules so tell me if it is, thanks!

    I need them with a single color background too!
    Last edited by SilentSentinel; 01-22-11 at 03:17 AM. Reason: Double Post

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    It is in fact against the rules. We aren't making a hack, we are making a fangame, and our sprites will stay in the fangame only.

    Also, please refrain from double posting.

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    sorry it was past 30min

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    I'm not sure it is against the rules, though I could be wrong. I mean, I know it's not allowed for public work, but for private work I've always thought it to be free?

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    Well, as soon as a link for a game, or copies of sprites are posted, then it becomes against the rules. But if people make their own hacks ect. and play them personally, we would have no way of knowing, since we can only see what is shared on the Internet. We don't support people taking our work for any purpose, but I as I say, we would have no way of knowing


  31. #31
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    i just thought it would give a feel of how pokemon would look in game so if there is any needed edits then we could point them out...

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    Congrats reliability. You do a lot for topaz. Glad to see the project still moving forward. O didn't k ow what to think with the lack of state of topaz's, lol.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DracoNyon View Post
    Congrats reliability. You do a lot for topaz. Glad to see the project still moving forward. O didn't k ow what to think with the lack of state of topaz's, lol.
    When I update the site and finish the new index page, you should be able to see better what's going on.

    I plan on adding a feed for latest edited pages and possibly latest threads posted in (like we have on the forum index).

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I am a useless idiot
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  • #35
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    Gfto.

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