I think I'm going to stick with Wednesdays as the official BYOND Weekly release day for each week. You can never be quite certain with me though. Hopefully I can be good with sticking to Wednesdays, but if I can't do it on a Wednesday for whatever reason, I will simply work around it and do it either on a Tuesday, Thursday, or what have you. Count on it being Wednesday though if you even care about following this. It's technically still Wednesday here as I write this. Might not be where you are... I'll definitely aim at getting this written earlier next week.
Before I get on with the news, I'd just like to point something out. If you haven't noticed it already, you can click the members picture above each story to get to the blog/forum/whatever that it comes from. It's just an alternative to clicking the links that I provide in the text.
On The Front Page
BYOND Journalism's Interview With Dan
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It's been eight years since Dan left without a trace. Finally, he has come back to tell us that he is indeed alive and not being held hostage in a basement. EnigmaticGallivanter conducted an interview with Dan a few days ago since I am writing this.
Dan talks about how he met Tom and started the original DUNG (BYOND's name before it became BYOND). He also talks about the work he did for BYOND and what he was responsible for.
As we should have guessed, he said that he does come back and visit the site occasionally and is impressed with the improvement and how far BYOND has come. I believe, and this is just my opinion, that this proves the fact that nobody can truly leave BYOND for good. They always come back in one way or another. Always... Always.
Dan talks about his current job and where he is living right now. I won't spoil that for you though. Go read the interview for yourselves! Stephen001 also has some questions for Dan at the end.
In Other News
Iccusion Games Updates on Teridal
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Iccusion Games recently made a Teridal Log giving updates on all sorts of new things that are coming to this popular RPG.
Iccusion Games says that they've done massive work overhauling pretty much every old system from Seika (what Teridal used to be called). They've also done a lot of work on custom interfaces, which I must say look really good.
Teridal is also getting a cool new achievement system in which getting an achievement gets you achievement points, which you can then spend on "fun items". Iccusion Games' post goes on to give some more information on what's to come in Teridal's future.
The Magic Man's RPG Source Releases
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The Magic Man recently made a post where he released his RPG source.
He says he isn't releasing this source for the purpose of the project being open source, he says he's mainly releasing it as a learning tool for people to use. He's given some conditions to using this, like that you can't claim anything in it as your own. Apparently, if you violate the terms, "then your permission to use the source code is revoked, and [The Magic Man] will personally hunt you down, and murder you. Very slow and painfully." I don't know about you, but I don't think I'll be violating those terms any time soon.
Kajka's Game Updates
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Kajika recently wrote up a game updates post. He goes over updates for Dungeon Dice Monsters Online, Megaman, and Duel Monsters Online.
Each game has some new fixes and features to it. I'd like to point out, as I commented there, that I got to play his Megaman game with over 4 people online and it was almost perfect. I'd be willing to bet that if you had a nice host like ATP hosting it, it would have been completely perfect online. It was really impressive though. A win for BYOND!
Chris Taking Pixel Art Requests
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Chris-g1 is taking pixel art requests according to a recent post of his.
He claims to have some free time, so he's just taking requests and doing them. He does note that he won't do anything too drastically massive, and that the more detailed the request is, the better it will probably come out in the end if he decides to do it. Check the post for more details and maybe he'll do a request for you still!
NEStalgia Version 1.20
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Silk Games made a post on NEStalgia's next version recently. Silkwizard introduces a new area in NEStalgia called the Arctic North.
Some new things being added that he talks about are a thing called the Warrior Crypt, something that will supposedly challenge players a lot, and new things dealing with class customization. He also talks about the new Ninja and Warlock playable characters and what they're all about.
What really caught my eye is the Ardan Casino and the 5 Card Draw game. I personally love little things like that in games. It's a nice way to escape what the game is all about and play something else, while still actually being in the game.
Cody's Pixel Movement Creation
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Cody123100 made a fairly recent forum post in the Creations forum about his pixel movement library.
The library was actually made a couple of months ago, but he just got to making this Creations post. It must mean that he's fairly comfortable with where it's at and is releasing it as pretty much completed. The library uses bounding box collision. He talks about some things you should look at if you check out the library, as well as that he put an html help file in there.
Acebloke and Wargames' New Version
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Acebloke made a post on Wargames' new version. He says that the official date of its arrival is August 1st.
Acebloke says that the old version was very outdated and needed to be replaced. He seems pretty confident in its improvements and documentation. He says in the post that the new version will be "much prettier, should be notably faster, and with some new features".
Fun and Uniqueness
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Sabaku no Kira made a fairly lengthly post on his "two core assets" that should be relied on in game design: fun and uniqueness. The post was long, but I personally found it to be pretty well thought out. He definitely gave some great examples of both classic and good quality games on BYOND.
I suggest you read the post through yourself. Though it's pretty long, I found it to be a good read.
The Big Five
BYOND Action
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There's been hardly any activity in this guild since April, so I decided to take matters into my own hands this week. I came up with a little guild event called Character Battle! in which I take BYOND Action's original characters and put them in battle against each other. How they win is through a poll that you guys vote in each week. I have a little graph on the bottom of the post which shows all the characters and who they're up against and when.
BYOND Anime
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Stephen001 made a post called Small tricks, big benefits I. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the "I" is a one and that there will probably be a sequel. He talks about some simple little bugs that need some fixing and provides some "tricks" to fix them using datums.
In other BYOND Anime news, the Featured Game of the Month pulled through again and did one for July. The game this month is Dragon Ball Online II. Even though it's not finished yet, it has been getting hosted so there's been some good hype about it lately. An interview is shown there with the development team for DBOII: Pmitch, ChrisGayle, and Quaddw.
BYOND Casual
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Still no news from BYOND Casual. I don't blame the guild since it's leaderless right now. There's no news on that either. Hopefully they get a guild leader soon, maybe someone that can breathe some life back into the guild.
BYOND RPG
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Oasiscircle made a post about the progress of his RP game, Lands of Acele. The post talks about the game's updates on gameplay and artwork. He provides plenty of nice screenshots to show off everything he's done.
Meanwhile, Mikau is still updating the front page of BYOND RPG with the latest BYOND RPG news. Be sure to check the front page regularly for news, and to give him your news if you have any!
BYOND Strategy
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ACWraith pulled through with this week's Along The Tech Tree. Apparently he was having some more issues with his pancreatitis and had an attack. He wasn't sure he would get a Tech Tree in for that week, but he did!
This Week's Really Cool Program
Well, I've decided that every week I'll try to do a random story like this or the personal story I did last week. I'll add other random things and cycle through them each week. This week is "This Week's Really Cool Program" where I outline a really cool program that I've found.
Aston2
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Some people are really obsessed with messing with how their GUI (graphical user interface) looks. I can raise my hand to that because I definitely know I am. What I'd like to point out this week is called Aston2. What Aston2 does is it replaces the current Windows explorer shell with the Aston shell. Only, it keeps the explorer shell and allows you to switch back and forth and uninstall the Aston shell at your own leisure.
The Aston shell is far more advanced than the explorer shell. When you first load it, it's as if you've entered an entirely new dimension of GUI. It adds 3D effects, sounds, mouseover effects, panels, and widgets to your desktop that you can change around and mix and match to your heart's content. What's the most amazing thing of all is that it has no impact on your system at all. Even the 3D backgrounds have absolutely no impact on your system. I've seen and used 3D background programs for my desktop, and they were so slow that I couldn't use them. With Aston2, it's like it's natural and works perfectly with your system.
I highly suggest that you check it out and give it a try. It's a 30-day trial and $30 to purchase the full version, which I think is completely fair and completely worth it. It's safe to install and try out though, and I highly recommend it. Aston2 works with just about any Windows OS from XP to 7, 32 or 64-bit.
That's all the news I have for this week. See you next week!
Did I miss anything? Email me via [email protected] or contact me through the pager. Have news for next week that you'd like on here? Do the same.
This issue of BYOND Weekly is brought to you by fire-breathing cats
Thanks, fire-breathing cats!
