Forays Into Other RPG Construction Kits: RPG Tsukuuru 2000

This is a most famous RPG construction kit in the English-speaking world, albeit known with a different name - "RPG Maker 2000." In general, this program is rather easy to use if one is inclined to make a Japanese console RPG-type game, but requires considerable work to change what is there (combat systems, etc.). In terms of community, this program likely has the biggest one - although a lot of art is ripped from Super Famicom games.

Years ago, I used to fiddle around in this program, although I never finished a game! (Ulp!) I do have some screenshots from what I was working on back in those days - basically, I wanted to have Korean-, Chinese-, and German-themed character sets and chip sets and work on a game with various languages and nationalities from there. Some screenshots from said game:

Character sets used sprite sizes of 24 x 36, while chipset tiles were 16 x 16; basically, character set sprite sizes in generally did not fill the entire area, instead using about 16 x 24 or so. Although small, the character sets required 12 frames total, or 3 frames for each direction, so making characters was a somewhat tiresome, if rewarding, task. (In general, the right frames could be flipped and used for the left frames, so in actuality one had to make about 7 frames total.)

In the end, I decided that I preferred the old PC RPGs compared to the old Japanese console RPGs, so I went in another direction (i.e., Dungeon Craft). Still, it was a good system for what it was, with a well-made interface and nice graphics.

Incidentally, many years back I was working on quite an ambitious game with this program, with lots of art (including big, anime-style pictures), but my hard disk basically blew up and I lost it all! Needless to say, that really sucked, and I had instantly lost many hours of work. I do sort of want to "revive" that somehow, but... I would have to redraw everything and all...

Forays Into Other RPG Construction Kits: Hephaestus

Well, although I am set on making my personal home-baked CRPG using Dungeon Craft, I am not against trying other tools every so often. In the past, I did some fiddling around with the RPG Tsukuuru series (known as "RPG Maker" by the English world, it seems), but I guess that I didn't really like the boring, Dragon Quest-esque combat engine. Ah, well.

Today, I spent a few hours fiddling with a less console-like and more PC-like RPG construction kit, Hephaestus, by Mark Damon Hughes (URL: http://markdamonhughes.com/Hephaestus/index.php). This particular RPG engine requires some programming in Java, but does come with a mapping tool. Luckily for me, Hephaestus seems to use 48 x 48 icons in general, so I tried using my Dungeon Craft art and seeing what I could come up with:


Not so bad, eh? Luckily, it seemed happy with 48 x 48 icons (the sample game uses 48 x 70 for humans), although some conversion was necessary (namely, it uses separate GIF files for each frame (with a particular naming scheme), as opposed to Dungeon Craft's unified PNG files with all frames). Unfortunately, there were a few problems that bugged me:

• I was unable to make maps larger than 11 x 11. Strangely, in the Map Editor, even though you can select map sizes larger than 11 x 11, it doesn't seem to let you edit any spaces outside the minimum 11.
• I was unable to set equipment types (i.e., I wanted to have my dagger in the map be a weapon so that Irene could equip it), leaving my poor player unequipped and usually an easy target for the ice troll wandering around there...

For smarter people than me, there is the option of generating maps automatically through Java coding, but that is somewhat abstract and hard for ol' me. As it is, this RPG kit does have good potential, especially for Java-conversant folks, especially if one is into old Rogue- or Ultima-type games. I confess that my ideal is something like an overhead-view Gold Box game, or maybe Ultima VI, or something like the Baldur's Gate series; I guess I never really got into the whole Rogue-like thing.

The Deep Dungeon

Although I started off making walls and such mostly for the collaboration module, "The City," these came out fairly well and I have been lately working on using this stuff for my own personal (somewhat vanilla) module, "The Deep Dungeon."

So, what is this module about? Surprisingly, a deep dungeon is in the plans for this adventure, although most work thus far has been concentrated on the surface world prior to descending to the depths. My original plan was to have a single complex dungeon, but I am currently thinking of dividing it into several dungeons of different themes... but of course, we will see how things go.

The adventure is basically in my own home-grown version of Greyhawk - because I don't feel like spending the time matching official campaign maps with my own - placed in an as-yet not decided undetailed part of Oerth. Actually, one would probably not notice much "Greyhawk" at all about my module, except from looking at the temples and priests of the world, and maybe the two moons of the sky.

However, the new frames and background are vaguely Greyhawk-themed, if one notices (latest screenshot is above). I also changed the font of the game to Palatino Linotype, one of my personal favorites.

New Baguazhang (and Xingyiquan) Discussion Board

So, I have started a new baguazhang (and xingyiquan) discussion board over here: http://baguazhang.proboards.com/

There are both English and Japanese sections; perhaps in the future I will add a Chinese section, but my Chinese is not really up to par (not sure if I can manage that). At present, the only members are me, myself, and I, so please go ahead and join! Feel free to be the first poster (there are some events listed, however).

The name of the board is Orthodox Baguazhang Research Society (正宗八卦掌研究社), and I hope it can serve to unite the various branches of orthodox baguazhang so that we can research together. (Orthodox, meaning verifiable lineages from Dong Haichuan - no home-grown bagua, please!)

The City Combat Set

Following the background and walls I created for the City, I went and created a combat set to go with them - well, I guess that it is okay, but it does look a bit bright, even though I used the exact same colors as in the background and wall pictures.

Still, as I am a lazy person in general, I think I will use this as-is, and also leave the blank gray areas (on the tops and sides of the walls) as-is, too.

I do have to go and make four versions of the background at some point, though (so that is three more than I have now), because it is a bit weird that there are mountains no matter which direction you walk in...

Naming Species After Unrelated People

Most common animals have the luxury of being given common names such as "Least Weasel," "Red Fox," "Snowy Owl," or even "Giant Forest Hog." These names are related to how these animals look or where they live, and are thus easy to remember.

Unfortunately, a lot of rare animals discovered by science fairly late are given obscure and irrelevant names like "Przewalski's Horse," "Baird's Beaked Whale," and "Dice's Cottontail." Although it may seem that these animals were named after the scientists who discovered them, this is not the case - most often, they are named after famous people (often biologists) chosen by the discoverers. These names may be meaningful to the biologists who named them, but they aren't very descriptive of the animals that they describe. Even worse, this rather meaningless trend continues as scientists discover new animals and try to select appellations of a similar note.

Luckily, it seems that, at least in some groups, these sorts of names are falling out of favor; at any rate, sometimes we have other options to use when talking about these animals. For example, the Prezewalksi's Horse is sometimes called the "Asian Wild Horse" or "Mongolian Wild Horse;" in older days it was sometimes known as the "True Tarpan" or "Mongolian Tarpan." The Baird's Beaked Whale is sometimes grouped together with the very similar "Arnoux's Beaked Whale" and called the "Giant Beaked Whale." These latter names are much better and more interesting.

On another note, when including such animals in a CRPG (such as Dungeon Craft), these more descriptive common names can be useful, as it would make little or no sense to have your adventurers encounter a "Baird's Beaked Whale" or "Prezewalski's Horse."

Liang Style Baguazhang Seminars in NYC

Tom Bisio, a respected teacher and practitioner of Chinese martial arts and traditional medicine based in New York City, is holding a series of (mostly) Liang style baguazhang seminars in the Big Apple itself! Details can be found here: http://www.newyorkinternalarts.com/martial.htm

The seminars appear to be concentrating on Liang style as passed down through Guo Gumin's (郭古民) disciple Gao Ziying (高子英) and then his son Gao Jiwu (高繼武), taught in monthly chunks of material, from foundational calisthenics, walking circles, the old eight palms, basic palms, elbows, kicks, locks, and throws, linear palms, linked palms, and even weapons. At $150 per seminar, this looks like a great opportunity for New Yorkers to learn substantial parts of the Liang baguazhang system, which is in general somewhat conservative and closed-door. (A bit of material from other styles is mixed in, notably the Tiangan (天干) exercises which come from Gao Yisheng (高義盛) style, as well as a few exercises from other styles, like crane stepping, which comes from Yin style.) Of particular interest are the weapon seminars, like the Bagua 64 Saber (六十四刀), which is normally quite hard to get teachers to teach you...

If people are hesitant to sign up for ALL the seminars (there are 20 planned altogether), I would recommend at least the following six, which cover core Liang style material:

Seminar 2: Fixed Posture Palms (定式八掌) - circle walking, of primary importance in baguazhang.
Seminar 6 and 7: Old Eight Palms (老八掌) - technical basis of baguazhang
Seminar 17 and 18: Bagua 64 Saber (六十四刀) - oversized saber, one of the representative weapons of baguazhang
Seminar 19: Bagua Rooster Claw Yin Yang Knife (鷄爪陰陽鴛鴦鋭) - unique weapon of baguazhang, said to be Dong Haichuan's (董海川) favorite weapon

In addition, the following six would be very nice as well:

Seminar 10: Elbow Methods - various elbow forms
Seminar 11: Throwing Methods
Seminar 12 and 13: 64 Hands (六十四手) - linear forms created by Liu Dekuan (劉德寬)
Seminar 15 and 16: Linking Palms (連環掌) - linking form, advanced version of old 8 palms

Of course, all courses would be even better, but...

There is of course additional material in Liang style baguazhang (such as swordplay, additional techniques, training methods, forms, etc.) - perhaps one could join Tom's regular class for some of that...