MASSIVE UPDATE ON GBA RPGMAKER INCOMING !

Sprite Messenger Icons are being defined, all icons visible will have a definition. All items regardless if critter, item, spell, or tile can have a completely custom definition defined in the Sprite Messenger.

Therefore, you now have a Sprite Messenger icon for PriceOfItem, WhoCanUse, SpecialCritterAttackName, RecordThisMapNameToWarpList, MagicReqToCastThisSpell, etc.

Quite a few things intelligent I have planned.
When you enter in a map, the prior Map/X/Y position just prior to WARPING (not the warp tile itself) is recorded in a temporary buffer so when you hit the WARP position, the name of that map can be added to your "list of warp places" used with the warp spell. NOT adding the position the player is at now, but the tile just prior on the OTHER map and tile just prior to entering warp to this map.

This is also true for casting the EXIT spell, to leave a dungeon. If the map you are in is flagged as EXITABLE, then in exiting, it returns to the recorded position just prior of warping, not the warp tile itself, but the tile just prior to that.

What is the effect ?

When you warp or exit, you are exactly one space away from where you first entered that map, either outside the City/Castle, or outside the Dungeon, just like those neat RPGs Breath Of Fire, 7th Saga, and Wild Arms with NO knowledge needed for complex programming to record these warp names/positions. Try doing that in any other RPGMaker like RPG95 or RPG2004/2005.

You'll drown in scripting trying to make one I guarantee !
With my way it is ALL automatic and invisible to the Worldbuilder.

All items have no definition save what you put in them. There are no forced definitions prices, values, or attributes forced for weapons, armor, spells, potions, keys, items, critters, or anything else.

You can make a custom script for everything and anything else can call anyone else's script so these will now be possible.
1) Sword that gains experience and power by defeating critters
2) Glass Axe that breaks 1% of the time per attack
2) Critters that heal each other, or throw combined spells at your players
3) Box of 12 bombs that hit all targets but some may explode on player
3) Armor that only certain players can wear and randomly attacks as well
4) True NPCs (up to Sprite Messenger SRAM space!) that join in combat operating entirely independent needing no instructions.

Of course, the system is already equipped for 4 players.
And COMBAT uses items ONLY, like Final Fantasy Legend 1/2/3 for Gameboy.
Therefore players can only have up to 8 individual items !!

Since spells, weapons, armor, and additional items fill in these spaces,
you can use or invoke these not just on the owner, but anyone else, or even your attackers.

You will have a backpack that can carry 24 items, but you can have numbers to items as well so you do not buy a single Potion (unless you define one), but can define an item as a box that carries 4 Potions, and you can buy multiple boxes, and give one or more to each of the 4 players, and maybe have a potion break 50% of the time if it is carried by a clumsy player of your choice. Full scripting ability to anything and everything.

New format for data gives back consider SRAM space and frees up need for player to ever access system variables, they are not named in the SRAM but are named inside the actual GBA file (since I have 8-megs space).

"8scenario,8edmusic,edmapno,edmap15x,edmap15y,edmap15ta,edmap15tb"
"8mapname15,map15flag7,mapmusic15,warpmap15,warpmap15x,warpmap15y"
"exitmap,exitmapx,exitmapy,deathmap,deathmapx,deathmapy"
"orgmap,orgplayx,orgplayy,8playdefn3,itmused3"
"3orggold,orgactive3,orgp3spr,6orgp3name,3orgp3expr,orgp3str,orgp3def"
"orgp3wis,orgp3luck,orgp3itm3,orgbag7,playmap,playx,playy,dirface"
"3gold,active3,p3spr,6p3name,3p3expr,2p3hits,p3magic,p3str,p3def,p3wis"
"p3luck,p3itm7n1,bag23n1,8gamemusic,gameflag7"
"8itm23nam,2itm23scr,8spl23nam,2spl23scr,8til63nam,2til63scr"

The first definition takes 8-bytes so it is an 8-byte variable.
The last definition underlined listed above would be:

2 byte-pointer for Script to each of the 64 tiles, taking 128 bytes total for this single definition.

p3itm7n1 is a bit more complex.
4 players, 8 items, and 2 definitions per. Since there is no digit in front, this by default will take 1-byte per definition or 4x8x2 bytes (64 bytes) in total.

Definition is actually the item # (0-23 for item and 24-47 for spell), and the # of the player has of these. Variables such as when a player learns this spell or magic points it is cost is not included in this single data definition but in the script defined for it, as pointers to the scripting lines (2itm23scr).

2 bytes, 24 items, (48 bytes total). 2-bytes yields # from 0-65535 for pointer to line # of recorded Sprite Messenger scripts in this SRAM 64k data.

Also, Sprite Messenger lines no longer take a full 5 lines but can be as short as one line. Text will scroll, not clear to show another 5 lines unless the Sprite Messenger icon for WaitForAKeyAndClearScreen is used.

more on definitions later.

8-char. Switch-names still apply to maps so there are no changes required to make for the maps you have already drawn with prior GBA . All work you have done to this point is accepted in current model. I will endeavor to keep everything compatible to this point, or make a convertor to convert your map/script work to a new level if need be, but I will try to avoid this.

If you have problems, please let me know !

12563 bytes of SRAM were req. in my old model virtual variable minder.
1860 bytes are now only req. (above variable list) for my current model.

What does this mean ?
SRAM usage overall will be considerably faster and take less space so there will be more room for Sprite Messages to aid story, definitions, and everything else.

Text entry is complete, but not recording text yet. It is very easy to enter in text to a script now using the snap-back method of retrieving inside a 5x5 field letters A-Y.

Letters A-Z, letters a-z, and 77 Sprite Messenger commands available.
Custom 21 icons defined as part of the world both accessed and displayed in game file.

You still have ability to draw (as you carry the physical GBA unit in your hand) all tiles, sprites, and critters and save off all of your work as a unique 64k world file.

Colors will be only 16, but can be changed to custom 16-colors in future.
I'm sorry but everyone who wrote who wants 16-bit graphics or 256-colors for GBA, that is just not possible to fit within 64k sram comfortably, since these images are all changeable.

I have planned a future GBA that has full sprites 32x32 in size with 8-image animations and large images in combat for everything but nothing in SRAM is used for image definitions, neither would the maps scroll but be like Legend Of Zelda for the NES. To have new images you would have to re-compile the GBA file itself and still keep it under 8megs, but this is for future and not the model I am working on now.

The model I am working on now allows you to change images for:

64 Tiles (16x16 pixels)
16 Sprites (16x16 pixels)
16 Critters (16x16 pixels)
96 character Font (8x8 pixels)
21 Custom Font Icons (8x8 pixels)
Custom Frame (8x8 pixels per side <8 sides total>)
Custom Sprite Game Cursor (16x16 pixels)

Look for DOWNLOADABLE version of current GBA model this Thursday !

Good Evening !
It has taken me a-while to get back here.
Been a most busy day !

As promised, here is the model for current GBA .
You can get that by clicking .

Quite a bit is still underway.
To see the text entry routine, hit Left-Trigger, select SWITCH, say YES you want to enter the name for it. Then you are in the Sprite Messenger !

Use Left-Trigger and Right-Trigger to flip between the character sets.
Notice that the last 3-lines on the 2nd page of Sprite Messenger Icons are CUSTOM and their images can be changed in the image editor once complete.

The 77 icon commands prior, however, (the top 4 of page 2 of icons and full page prior) are commands that do not change their image.

The cursor jumping back to letter [M] after you enter in any letter is not a bug, this is a feature. In a short time, both your fingers and brain will remember where to find each letter faster than if you had to look at the screen to find the next letter based upon where you were. Because the cursor appears in the center, navigation to type ANY letter A-Y is only two arrow clicks away.

To insert a space hit (B) twice when the character set is visible.
When you are not in the character set selection, you can re-position the cursor.
When you hit (B) from that (not active), then you can select the Page #.

Remember, however, that there will not be pages so I will probably set it to scroll the page up to 99 lines entry per Sprite Message.

The INSIDE/OUTSIDE flag reached by hitting (Left-Trigger) and INSIDE is a bit more descriptive. Hitting the (Right-Trigger) will invert the LOCK status for a tile. For now it just defeats or revives critters. Future will unlock/lock doors, swap Sprite Message states, and fill/empty chests.

All map work is saved any tile you put down !
Even if you power off ANYWHERE, your map work is already saved.
Because of this it is unlikely I will be able to make an undo feature except for global changes like clearing a map and the like. I'll try to keep that in a special RAM cache in case you don't like your global changes.

This is also not my current version, it is 6 days old.
The version I have now cannot be compiled because I am deep working on the new virtual variable reader and there are too many open procedures.

. . .

Problems with burning DVDs.
While DVDShrink makes a completely accurate 4.7gig DVD from an existing 8.4gig DVD. It is up to you to burn it at a very slow speed !

If you burn a DVD at too high a speed, you will introduce errors into the burning and if you make that your "master" copy, well, you're screwed cause you don't have another backup.

All Ways verify your burns, no matter how long it takes.
You'd rather have it take a long time and be guaranteed to get it rather than burn it quickly and you might have gotten it.

. . .

Your Screenplay for this week:

The Avengers

This is not that natty movie but one of the scripts from the early TV series.
As such, the story is much more intelligent, poignant, and witty as only England can deliver back in the 1960s.

Click to get it.
Rated PG (I'm pretty sure all TV programs not adhering to children were)

Click to jump to the rest of this week's Gifts Area !

Good Evening !

Here is some simple advice.
It's common sense, but you should be able to see the importance of it.

º It's very warm outside now
º Try to stay inside where it's cool
º Drink plenty of water
º If you normally exercise outside, try to restrict yourself to an indoor activity until the heat index gets lower than 100º

Heat index tomorrow will be 104º-105º !

. . .

OK, here's the thing with GBA right now.
I realized yesterday that there is no reason for me to be saving the NAMES of the virtual variables directly in the SRAM since they never change name, only the values of them. So I will put together a look-up table that is read directly from the source to tell what variable name is used and where it is referenced in the SRAM. This will effectively double the script-lines available to use in a world file from 1117 pretty close to 2234 or more.

It's not going to be easy (for me the programmer) and I need to do a speed-check to see just how well and effective I can read in a DATA table to find values. Further, there will be a script-operation compiler of sorts to determine the actual variable name based upon the displacement of when it is referenced, and what the memory location in true SRAM will be.

I.E.:

2 i t 6 3 s c r

The "2" means that this data definition takes 2 bytes, "it" abbreviation for "item," the # after it means any number referenced after the first character (showing how many bytes it takes) tells it to loop from zero (0) up to that #, so starting with memory reference # zero (0) the storage is like so:

2it0scr, 2it1scr, 3it2scr, ..., 2it61scr, 2it62scr, 2it63scr, so 64x2 bytes yielding 128 bytes will be use to show the pointers to where each of the 64 defined items script begins it's definition, attributes, and description in the true SRAM 64k file.

p 3 i t 7 n 1

Is a bit more complex, where "p" is player, the # is 0-3, item # 0-7, and number type 0-1 yielding 64 bytes taken to show all 4 players inventory, what they have in each of their 8 slots, and whether it is the item #, or the # of items they are carrying of that item.

The storage would appear as:

p0it0n0, p1it0n0, p2it0n0, p3it0n0, p0it1no, ..., p2it7n1, p3it7n1.

Confused ? Don't be .. Once all the digits are determined it is a simple matter of going through all the permutations of them. Since there is no digit preceding the name for this variable, by default, ALL the variables created take 1 byte.

Since the data name-reference would not ever change, so too would the memory references also not change either.

DATA p3spr, 2p3hits, 3p3expr, p3str, p3def, p3wis, p3luck, p3itm7n1
DATA 8it63nam, 2it63scr, 8spnam63, 2sp63scr, 8cri31nam, 2cr31scr, 8tl31nam
DATA 2ti31scr, 3gold

For "3gold" this will take 3 bytes, or yield a value from 0 to 16,777,215 (256*256*256) or (256^3) which should be enough gold for any player to spend.

It is also likely I will not be abbreviating these virtual variable names so deeply since they will be true DATA so they can have more than 8-characters reference virtual-variable name. It's easier for me to remember "play3item7num1" rather than "p3i7n1."

. . .

I was recently mailed that Quentin Tarantino is not the author of Matrix so AH WELL. Despite this little error on my part, my thinking is perfect in every way and

nothing can ever go worng ..

. . .

Your Screenplay for this week:

All is not well in hell and it's up to Little Nicky, kind-hearted 3rd son of Satan to set things to rite. Alongside shoving a pineapple up hitler's @ss, Little Nicky must go to Earth and retrieve his two (evil?) brothers before they take over hell themselves and really make it a most unpleasant place to stay.

Click to get it.
Rated PG-13 for scenes of bizarre naughtiness and general evilness

Click to jump to the rest of this week's Gifts Area !

Good Evening !

I apologize for getting this out so late.
Usually I walk with Dad early in the morning and this time, he said he'd be a little late. So I waited .. He said it might be another hour. I thought about working on the bulletins but instead decided to work on KVCDs and getting my home in order. He called an hour later. He really didn't sound well.

I said, Dad, would you like to just call it ? I'm seeing tomorrow and am cleaning house. He said that would be fine.

I did tell him however that I AM THERE FOR HIM, if he needs me, I can be there. He said thanks.

I checked with Amy and she said we can do laundry sometime later today so once again I waited.

Anyways, it's nearly 4:30pm here and it's about time I put together this bulletin.

. . .

Good News !

Apparently I CAN have music in GBA !
I was using too high a sampling rate and if I use 11025khz which is just about where audio changes to the ear dramatically, it plays the same speed with or without audio.

BUT !
I have a dilemna here.
I can either decide not to use music at all, and stick with the 5-second audio clips. Or use audio as I anticipated but with the understanding that ALL music is only 15-seconds long before repeating, OR, what I haven't done, include 2-minute music, but if I do this, I probably won't be able to have more than 4-5 pieces of music before rapidly using up that 8meg space.

What do you think ? Please let me know !

. . .

If I haven't mentioned this before, I will know because the Maverick Princess was asking, I make KVCDs. What it does is allow you to encode a movie up to 4-hours on a regular CD that plays in an expanded DVD player. That is, the DVD player must be capable of playing standard audio CDs.

The quality is a little less for VHS for 4-hours of encoding time and just about close to DVD quality if it is just an hour you are encoding. It is a rather complex process and takes me about 3-4 hours of running tasks in the background to get them into a standard KVCD MPEG-1 format before I burn it to a CD with VCDEasy. There is also the putting-together the logo-screen and ripping the end credit music (15 seconds or so), and saving that as an entirely separate KVCD that precedes the movie, with instructions on navigation with a standard DVD remote.

It is unfortunate that (not the founder but someone who provided information for KVCD) now charges money to allow you to do nothing more than to read messages in the KVCD message forum, how weasely is that ??

Not now, but I will later go to prepare instructions on how to make one and the software you need to do so if anyone has questions about how to make them. I will mention the tools you need are (and these are Freeware) VirtualDub, DVDx, DVDShrink, TMPGENC (the Freeware version), and an optional commercial package Paintshop Pro 7 for putting together your title screens, Sound Forge 5 for fine-tune editing that 15-second title music, and lastly a purchased utility called VCDEasy.

DO NOT be fooled by other programs claiming to do VCD, yes they do, but NO they do not do KVCDs like VCDEasy does which are a unique compression algorithm altogether. I have included one of the title screens I put together to show you.

. . .

Here is the original picture from the internet scaled to fit this page.

. . .

Here is the title screen I put together 320x208 because
the bottom/top/left/ and right 16 pixels do not show
on a television screen of the original 352x240 VCD size.

You can also see I moved and rescaled some things with Paintshop Pro 7,
and made a little KVCD stamp that I put on all the KVCDs I make for friends.

. . .

Your Screenplay for this week:

Quentin Tarantino is one creative writer.
Having written the Matrix series, Pulp Fiction, later went on to make Kill Bill.
Kill Bill is a deceptively simple story about everyone playing out their hand in some of the most extravagant and bizarre costumes and mentalities known, all hell-bent on killing Bill. Does Bill survive, what did he do to deserve all this malevolence ?

Click to get it.
Rated R for several scenes of violence and mismanaged anger

Click to jump to the rest of this week's Gifts Area !

Good Afternoon !

In England, A bus was bombed with several people killed and several more were injured. A group calling itself the Al Quaeda Organization in Europe claimed they were responsible but no evidence to this effect has turned up as yet. 33 people confirmed dead. Hundreds people confirmed wounded and others in critical condition.

You can see what President Bush spoke addressing the U.S. in a special bulletin found by clicking .

I don't know if I mentioned this before but this is one idea I've had to a solution to end the terrorist attacks from Iraq.

Send out one heavily armored vehicle to pick up U.S. insurgents (those people who are in Iraq and are found to be in league and of good standing with the U.S.), collect all of them. Do a good 3-day sweep. When everyone has been rescued level Iraq very thoroughly with high radiation bombs, that which would require the terrorists to starve for lack of food if they somehow went underground to avoid the radiation. Send enough radiation there to be hazardous for a full year.

Wipe out any pockets of new attacks with the understanding they have no home base now so they are more attacking out of frustration than orders.

To the U.S. Iraq insurgents that lost their homes, once indoctrinated as U.S. citizens, assist them to finding their lives with SOME restrictions to ensure we do not overstep our charity or boundaries in assisting them. The least of which would be no new pregnancies until it has been determined that INDEED the threat from Iraq is over by a full year of peace. They should be eligible however to apply for jobs.

These suggestions of mine may seem harsh, but what would you suggest ?
The longer the war is carried out, the more people will get hurt.
What are your ideas on it ?

If you have some very definite ideas on ending this war, feel free to write me and I will prepare a special page that includes all authors and submits to this effect.

. . .

Well, the church 4th of July picnic went rather well !
Shirley, our choir director said that we, the choir, volunteered (?!) to get hit in the face with a pie by anyone who paid $10 to assist the children at the church to go to Camp Crucis. Well, NATURALLY as nice and fair to everyone as I've been there I got beaned by a cream pie 1st hit. Amy, and several other friends of mine in choir got splatted as well. Shirley was somehow on vacation the day of the festivities.

However, when she returned Wednesday (yesterday), I noticed that half the choir crew had cream pies waiting for her outside the church. I backed away so as not to get accidentally splatted myself. as soon as she was clear of the church someone yelled LET HER HAVE IT ! And it was pies-a-flying all over the place !

Now Shirley REALLY puts on nice expensive clothes everytime she comes to teach the choir and they really nailed her good all over the place.

Oddly enough, however, Shirley was a very good sport about the whole thing, laughed brokenly, and said she had this coming, and went to the bathroom to clean up.

Back at the 4th Of July picnic, Tree brought his small pomeranian dog, "Chelsea." Who for the Bicycle Parade was dressed in a star-spangled cape and an Uncle Sam hat. Her "float" that was just her size with shimmering red, white, and blue streamers, and glittering pinwheels. Now Chelsea is like the most well-behaved dog you have ever seen !

Not only did she stay in her outfit, but stood up in the wagon and smiled at everyone as she went by. Naturally, Tree and Chelsea won first prize; they really were a sight. I'll try to get a picture from Terry, the church photographer to show you next week.

The other attraction, someone gave up their rust-pot of a car and anyone offering $1 with a steel sledgehammer, good for getting out aggressive behavior could have at it. Oddly enough, the preacher's daughter was the one who REALLY wanted to hurt that car, but being so small (<8) she couldn't lift the hammer so I let her grab on the end of the hammer, then I helped her get one good whack in. Then we went to go see the church Golf Tournament.

We also had to pay for lunch ! We've never had to do that before, and since I wanted 2nds it cost me $6 !

. . .

for Gameboy Advance is most definitely going to fly ! I have just about finished up the inside/outside view-mode. That is, where if you are using the ROOF tile #63 then it hides the 2nd tile beneath it until you are INSIDE a structure (touch any ROOF tile and the 2nd tile is also reachable), then it's contents are seen and all of outside is not. You can really make for some nice "what are they hiding in there ?" rooms that you know have something good in them.

The system is very automatic too, very easy to use. You can easily mass-plot the #63 tile on top of any tile and it puts it INSIDE. If you plot again on INSIDE, it puts it back OUTSIDE. I am really focusing on making the system as easy to use as possible even for complex things like this.

. . .

Your OFFLINE Add-Ons for this week are the combat BOSSES.
Click to get them:

. . .

Your Screenplay for this week:

Jim Carrey, sarcastic VERY gives an above-board performance proving that he is both genius and P_N_S in the same psychotic package.

He's one of my favorite comedians especially for films like The Cable Guy, and Batman 3. Just see how obnoxious and out of touch with reality one fellow can truly be !

Click to get it.
PG-13 for scenes of extreme adult stupidity by JC

Click to jump to the rest of this week's Gifts Area !

Happy 4th Of July !

I am pleased to announce I have made some real progress on the GBA ! You can download the current version by clicking .

(this engine file ^ is going through many updates, if it bad downloads while I am uploading, hit F5 to reload this page and click the above HERE to download it again)

You might want to delete your RM.SAV file to lock in the new data and, this is the last time. You can start safely building in here if you can't wait for the other features. Your map will be recorded, and there is still quite a bit of work to be done on my part.

hit (Select) to bring up the main menu.
From there, hit the arrow keys to Map, (A), and Select Map to change maps.
Use Left-Trigger to directly modify the contents of the tile.
Use Right-Trigger to invert that tile.
Hit (Start) to add a Sprite/Critter.
Hit (B) to select a new tile to plot and (A) to plot it.

ALL MAP CHANGES ARE PERMANENT
Instead of caching the map which takes more memory and requires you to save your map to record all changes before continuing, I have decided to save all changes immediately to SRAM whenever a tile is changed.

What does this mean ?
Well, you can doodle tiles all you want and never have to worry about them not getting saved due to a power out or exiting your emulator suddenly.

Yes, the water doesn't scroll (animate). It didn't in Windows either, but I am looking into writing code to get it to scroll in the backgrouund, as well as the Water Ledge (the tile just after it).

I may make some hot-keys later, that is, you can hold down both (Select) and Left-Trigger to decrease maps, etc.

It is possible I can get the LAVA tile and Sprites/Critters to animate as well, but it may slow down the scrolling map too much, will see ..

I still have yet to write the smart-menu-minder that remembers the last cursor position of where you were on a particular map amongst other details.

That's all from here !

If you haven't already done so, you can download your Fireworks by clicking .

Please have a happy and safe 4th Of July !

BAD NEWS !

I just checked GBA with audio and the program slows down tremendously ! Now, this is not my own audio player but is invoked from the DragonBASIC command, "playmusic WavTitle" Where WavTitle refers to a pointer to a .WAV file. And you cannot play .MID, .MOD, .Mp3, or any other audio type.

Now, I could have the music play in the LOGO but if any of the music was playing in the background of either the editor or gameplay it would slow everything down to a crawl.

Further, I am being strapped on writing this code using the least slugworthy commands to ensure maximum speed for map scrolling and virtual-variable retrieval as well as the Sprite Messenger interpreter and I'm pushing the envelope as it is with direct POKEs to the screen and other visual updates. DragonBASIC I am beginning to see is one very slow running language and, if there is background music then it will REALLY be terribly slow.

To see the version with audio, click .
To see the version without audio, click .

If for some bizarre reason both are running the same speed on your GBA emulator, please let me know.

Here is what I propose .. I will go ahead and include the music I have planned for it, but make them riffs and instead of 15-second repeat, 5 seconds play once only. So the music will really be for things like story changes and stuff so I may put together some dramatic and emotional music riffs that are expected not to repeat playing and for things such as Found Treasure, Met Princess, Night Sleep, Bad Move, Combat, Boss Battle, etc. These "songs" will probably be no longer than 5 seconds and that means I can have 100+ of them and still keep the final .GBA size under 8 megs so it will fit on your GBA flashcard.

There will still be sound effects but with all AUDIO, it will PLAY and not return back to gameplay until the audio is complete.

Just out of curiousity, if anyone out there is programming in DragonBASIC, would you please contact me if you have advanced programming techniques, quite possibly custom machine-language routines to speed up the audio playing in the background ?

That is all from here. Hadda nice time at 4th of July, will let you know details in proper bulletin in the next few days ..