Verge, Awesome Sauce in a Box.

Rock on completely, with some brand new components.

mcgrue — 2009-12-10T11:16:10+01:00

So, myself (vocals) and one ancient verger (w1cca, on drums) performed live for Child's Play last night at Umloud.

Donate to Child's Play to prove to the world that gamers are wonderful people who care about other people! Namely sick children!

More verge-centric news to come soon. Honest.

We're back from server hell!

mcgrue — 2009-11-19T00:58:42+01:00

The machine that verge-rpg.com is hosted on has had some rough days recently. Many thanks to zeromus for his multiple 3-hour trips to Houston to get things worked out in the short term, and his continued efforts to find a long-term solution!

Planned Feature: Callbacks / All-purpose Function Pointers

Overkill — 2009-08-23T21:20:09+01:00

Hey guys, I thought I'd mention another planned feature for Verge some day.
Might take a long time to get around to completing, but I think it's pretty much important in liberating Verge from a few of its current restrictions.

We need to allow fully-free function pointers for both VC and Lua, in a way that's backwards compatible with current Verge code! And, it should be doable, given a little bit of grudge work by people.

To accomplish this, a bunch of stuff needs to change. We need to add a new variable type in Verge's script engine signatures, which will allow for all-purpose function pointers in VC code, and first-class function pointers in Lua.

Effectively, all builtin functions will take a "callback" instead of strictly a string.

As a result, in Lua, you get to pass anonymous functions to stuff like HookRetrace.

In VC, you would be able to get optionally compile-time error reporting if a function does not exist, through new VC syntax features. The syntax is backwards compatible with old code, so all hooks/calls using string names will still work.

VergeC

Modifying VC is annoying. It always is. The compiler and interpreter have made things really frustrating, mainly because it wasn't designed with certain flexibilities in mind when it was first created. That said, I think it can be done, with a bit of planning. And plan I did!

Here is how the VergeC would work!

Introduces Reserved Keyword

callback

Variable Declaration Syntax

callback <return type>(<signature>) <name><array size (optional)>;

Notes about Callback Signatures

Signatures for callback declarations may give their parameters names, but aren't required to (unlike real functions). In other words, they can just give the expected types, if they want to. This makes it a little bit cleaner when dealing with a lot of callbacks

Notes about Scoping:

These variables would be allowed to be declared anywhere ints and strings are allowed.
This means local callbacks, and callbacks as arguments.
The no-struct/no-array limitations on local callbacks would apply.

Er... maybe they won't be passable to varargs functions. We'll see. If they are though, tons more flexibility.

Examples



// No args-void return type.

callback void() f;



// With an string return type.

callback string() f;



// As an array, each returning ints, and taking a string argument

callback int(string) crap[60];



struct Item

{

    string name;



    // Inside of a struct, multiple arguments

    callback void(int itemIndex, int user, int target) useItem;

}

Item itemCollection[50];





// As an argument

void CallSomething(callback void() f)

{

    f();

}



// As a return value.

callback int(string) GetCrap(int i)

{

    return crap[x];

}

Callback Expressions

These expressions are used when resolving the value for an assignment or argument pass regarding callbacks. Only these types of expressions can be assigned to callback variables. Anything else should cause an error.

mycallback = 0;

The null-function expression. Does not "exist" if passed to FunctionExists(callback void). If called, this function will do nothing. Note that, an int variable with value 0 will not work instead, but this is for a reason since any other int index won't be meaningful.

mycallback = MyFunction;

Resolve a function reference at compile time. Function must exist in VC (ie. not library code, but this might change), and must match the exact signature to compile. Map-VC function references can occur, but only in the file the function is declared.

mycallback = "My" + "Function";



string somestring = "MyFunctio";

mycallback = somestring + "n";

Resolve a function reference from a string at runtime using a name-table lookup. Required for map-VC functions to be made in system-VC code. If the lookup fails, the actual value given will be the null-function.

There's no == operator defined on callbacks, and there won't be much need for equality-testing functions, I figure. (and if you need to, just use strings as before).

On the other hand, existance checking will be there, to allow callbacks to tell when they're holding a null-function instead of something that will actually do something when called. To do this though, we pretty much have to promote the FunctionExists(f) builtin function into an operator, which will work on any callback expression, instead of just strings as it is right now.

Oh, and of course, you need to be allowed to call the callbacks:



callback void() talk = HelloWorld;

talk();

Notice how everything is backwards compatible with current VC, but introduces new features. That in mind, everyone can keep legacy code around, but adapt new VC to use function pointers. Function pointers can be faster than current string lookups (if resolved at compile-time), because the function index can be known in advance.

The Script Library

Now, with that out of the way, to allow the flexibility to be introduced into the rest of the engine, the script library needs modifications!

All of the existing callback function stuff uses strings, which are names to void functions that take no arguments. So we can pretty much introduce one extra signature type for void builtin callbacks.

Pretty much have something like this:

callback void() trigger.onStep;

callback void() trigger.beforeEntityScript;



void CallFunction(callback void f(), ... args);

void HookRetrace(callback void() render_routine);

void HookEntityRender(int ent, callback void() render_routine);

And so on. Also, remove FunctionExists(string funcname) from VC, since we'll be introducing a FunctionExists that works on any callback.

Lua

Okay, but what about Lua?

Well, we'd be able to use the new signatures that we introduced for VC.
Add a few simple cases to the argument validator and execute function stuff.
We'd need to update the current hooks to be a class with an int reference to the Lua registry. Simple enough, I think.
These are the simplest things to add, since it doesn't involve any compiler modifications.
So I might be able to FIRST add anonymous function support for Lua, and from there, chisel in VC stuff.

Afterwards, in Lua, we'd get to do weird funky things like:

v3.HookRetrace(function()

    vx.screen:RectFill(0, 0, vx.screen.width, vx.screen.height, 0)

end)

or having a function inside a table pointed to directly:

v3.HookRetrace(clouds.Render)

or having a function call a function on a table, so you can have pointers to object methods:



local world = NewWorld();

v3.HookTimer(function()

    world:Update()

end)

Will take a fair deal of thinking and grunt to get there though. But, I dunno, after all this stuff is done, we get some sexy results!

V3 Engine Release, August 2009

Kildorf — 2009-08-03T22:21:30+01:00

Hey everyone. As I kept hinting in various places around the net, we've got a new release of the engine all ready and put together for you!

Get Verge 3.2 for Windows!
Get Verge 3.2 for Mac!

In addition, we took GREAT (read: minor) pains to update Sully to the new engine. Play through it all again!

Get the Windows Sully Chronicles!
Get the Mac Sully Chronicles!

I'll follow this post up with a post of the release notes. If anyone has any question about new features, etc, let us know!

Now, get out there and make some games!

Lua Luau: Want to learn Lua?

mcgrue — 2009-07-21T16:59:45+01:00

Want to learn Lua?

Our own Overkill has written a reference over at:
http://www.bananattack.com/vx/Learn_Lua. This page is more geared towards verge, but isn't a beginners tutorial.

For more detailed informations, try hitting up the lua-users docs over at http://lua-users.org/wiki/TutorialDirectory

Geas Demo, new PC release version of VERGE 3.

mcgrue — 2009-07-01T17:02:48+01:00

We should be noisier: since last this newspost spoke, we've had 72 revisions of VERGE 3 in the SVN repository, 123 revisions of the new website, and 7 months of gruedorfers... well, Gruedorfing.

The most up-to-date work-in-progress build of verge3 can be found in Kildorf's most recent Geas demo. Please direct any questions about what's new and/or incompatibility questions with existing projects to this comments thread, where Kildorf and Overkill will explain things in calm, soothing tones.

For those of you who are floundering for LuaVERGE documentation, Little Daddy Kildorf's got all talk and no action so far with his Lua Verge Tutorial. Perhaps he could be motivated with emails, forum messages, and brief conversations on IRC to rectify this terrible oversight!

I should make news posts more often.

2008 Year-end Competition Results

Kildorf — 2009-01-13T02:41:42+01:00

How About M?

Well, judging has finally completed. The winners are below, but before you go and look at the chart, please remember: All of these games were great. I had a lot of fun judging for this competition and hope to see compos of similar quality in the future.

So thanks to everyone! You're all awesome.

Now, without further ado, your rankings



18 pts: Mademoiselle

15 pts: Dial 'M' for MacGuffin

 9 pts: Monster Magnet Meow

 7 pts: Marble Massacre

 7 pts: Mason's Memoirs: The Middle Months

 7 pts: Wind (with a capital M)

As you can see the judges had some thoughts in line with each other but we each had different favourites and ideas about what was better or worse.

The way that we decided the results were that each of the three judges came up with their own criteria and then ranked each game within their own system. Then, I took the rankings and gave out points: 6 points for first place, 5 for second, etc. etc. Adding the points up we got overall rankings.

In any case, I will be posting full reviews from each judge in the posts that follow. Congratulations to CrazyAznGamer, and congratulations to everyone who participated!

240HOV - Judging is happening

Kildorf — 2009-01-08T13:04:14+01:00

Just wanted everyone to know: Judging is underway. We're hoping to post the results this weekend.

That is all.

240HOV - Done

Kildorf — 2009-01-02T00:55:40+01:00

Hey everyone.

It's been nearly eight hours since the compo was theoretically over, so I think that's been a soft enough deadline, yeah?

To remind everyone, the constraints were that VERGE must be used, there had to be three distinct areas, and it had to implement the theme of "How about m". (You can thank Overkill for that inspired/erroric theme.)

Good job to everyone. We had six entries by the end, and they're all great. Seriously. Here they are, in no particular order:

Marble Massacre by ustor

Mason Memoirs by Eldritch (you'll have to copy this link location and paste it into your address bar, sadly)

Dial 'M' for MacGuffin by Gayo, Hyptosis, McGrue, ustor, Zathras, and MS Comic Sans

Mademoiselle by CrazyAznGamer

Monster Magnet Meow by Overkill and Toen

Wind (with a capital M) by Syn, Code, and Rockstar

Since I have news posting privs and I didn't participate in the compo, I've taken over moving, shaking, and judging duties. So far as I know, there have been three people who have shown interest in judging: myself, SDHawk, and pthaloearth. This doesn't mean we can't have any more last-minute judges! If you would like to be an official judge, please reply to this thread or get ahold of me at the email address in my profile.

I'm going to try to ensure that we turn around on the judging as quickly as we can. Let's not repeat that last compo, yeah?

240HOV - Deadline is soon.

Overkill — 2008-12-31T08:01:34+01:00

Okay, so the How About M compo is almost over.

However, I don't think anyone should drop their new years plans to mash in last minute stressful game features. So I'm thinking submission deadlines should be... lenient. The compo will have technically ended at December 31st, 2008, 11:59 Eastern Standard Time (GMT - 5), but I expect most people will just hand it in on January 1st at like 5am in their timezone. Even if that's a lot more time than should be given, that's just fair in case there's uploading problems or you just didn't realize it was due an hour ago or something. Plus it results in potentially more polished games, if there's less of a strict hurry.

Also! We're still looking for judges. Please announce if you'd be willing to judge the entries.

Please post here or drop by #m on irc://irc.lunarnet.org to do some last minute taunts, to ask questions, or to get help if you're having trouble with uploading or something.

Post submitted games as a reply to this.

The clock's ticking... Good luck!

Varargs!

mcgrue — 2008-12-27T05:41:09+01:00

Hey guys!

Did you know Overkill added Variable Arguments to v3? Like a year ago or something?

And then didn't document them?

Well, now you do. ;)

Edit:
CallFunction() updated.
Varargs explained!
String-calling explained!

You may all now praise Overkill instead of mocking him. Maybe.

240HOV - How about M -- Has begun!

Overkill — 2008-12-21T06:06:31+01:00

At the time of writing it is about 1 AM Eastern Standard Time (GMT - 5). It means the compo started almost an hour ago. Sorry for not announcing it earlier. Anyway, you can start making your games.

Oh, and for those of you who want a fairly stable executable for Windows that has been compiled between now and the 2007 release, please grab this: http://www.bananattack.com/stuff/verge.exe It's not "official", so I make no guarantees, but it should work.

Oh, and if you're interested in becoming a judge rather than an entrant, please get in contact with either me or McGrue. Or leave a message in the talkback here. Thanks.

With that said, I wish everyone good luck! Make many awesome M-related games.

240HOV Competition Coming Soon: How About M!

Overkill — 2008-12-14T06:29:01+01:00

Hello, everyone! Overkill here.

I was planning on arranging a Winter competition. There was a bit of discussion about it earlier, but there were some details that weren't entirely clear. Aaaaaaand I even made a bit of a typo in my original post, and this lead me to come up with a weird, yet interesting theme!

How about M!

The contest has only the following game content requirements:

The game must feature the letter M somehow.
The game must have at least three distinct areas (but you can have more!).

Everything else is up to you, and keep in mind, creativity is what makes these things fun, so don't be afraid to try something out of the ordinary.

Just because it's around Christmas does mean it needs to be about Winter (even though you could!). And if you don't think your game needs fighting or puzzles to be fun, feel free to come up with something different!

Once again, it's up to you, don't feel restricted.

Verge is the only engine you're allowed to use. But as of Verge 3.1, you have your choice of language, so those who can't stand VergeC can use Lua (and if you're especially OOP happy, the vx library) instead. This is an Hours of Verge contest, after all.

The contest starts next Sunday, December 21, 2008, 12:01 am EST, and ends on Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 11:59 pm EST. That's 10 days, 240 Hours of Verge.

Now get ready, and band together with your friends and fellow Vergers!

Site outage resolved.

mcgrue — 2008-12-11T08:06:04+01:00

For the observant, there was about a 22 hour period where there was no vrpg.

We were as sad as you were.

We are now back. Please resume verging.

Maped 3: Brushes!

mcgrue — 2008-12-02T09:14:29+01:00

As Ioachim just announced over at his site, maped3 now has brushes!

There's also a call to all y'all. Here, in his own words:

As this time I’m really getting into Maped, this is an official calling to all the Verge community: please ask for features, report bugs and give ideas of future development. So, people, any ideas?

This is an alpha of the brush system, but fun to play with.

Download a build here!

The source to the project is available at http://www.verge-rpg.com/svn/verge3/branches/mapedprime/ (anonymous/anonymous).

Sully Battle System preview

mcgrue — 2008-11-04T22:37:11+01:00

As I mentioned over on Egometry.com, Gayo and I've been working a bit lately on the Sully Battle System.

Since it involves logging into the sully svn and checking it out, and as it's still in a state of development flux, most of y'all haven't gotten a chance to fool around with it.

So... using the power of the intranets: here is a yootoobe for you!

If anyone wants to join in the effort to fill this bad bear up with content, just let me know! We have need to both spriters (mainly for awesome battle effects) and scripters (mainly for awesome battle effects). ;)

v3 linux progress?

mcgrue — 2008-10-20T23:34:48+01:00

I don't know if you all are following what's going on in the forums right now, but it looks like the "verge 3 on linux" torch has been picked up again and is bearing some fruit...

Missing Time

mcgrue — 2008-09-16T22:27:21+01:00

For anyone who noticed that verge-rpg.com (and all of it's hosted websites, like egometry.com, wundermint.com, zarat.us/tra, breadbros.com, ipbeer.com...

...er, nevermind the list. There's a lot of sites here. The good news is, we're back.

And if you were wondering where we went, it wasn't alien abduction. It was Hurricane Ike's fault. And, ostensibly, ours for putting the server in Houston.

Demo Alarm: Time Keepers

Gayo — 2008-06-30T00:46:19+01:00

You might assume, since the front page has been quiet, that not much is going on. It's actually been pretty active, though! I've just been very busy with my meth habit and haven't had time to post. So, what's new? First up: Ness has released a second demo of [Time Keepers] (offsite link).

You might remember Time Keepers from the original Demo Alarm, way back in 2005. This is basically the same game, but with some added functionality, a second and much more complex mission, and a bit more actual plot. For those of you just tuning in, this is an "infiltrate and steal stuff, optionally killing everybody" type game. Most of the original problems (inadequate weapon choice, slow text speed, no saves) have been fixed -- the demo now autosaves regularly as well as manual saves, and you have a wide selection of weapons to choose from. THe button selection is a bit complex, but the game takes beautifully to a gamepad. The enemies are still pretty stupid, so gaming the AI is a highly effective strategy, but on the whole it feels a lot more like a game and less like a proof of concept.

There are Achievements. What the hell, Ness! I think these are the only two currently in the game, but still, wow. It's nice to see someone making good use of the net features this way; this definitely raises the bar for other VERGE games. Therre's a lot of potential for more of these as the game progresses -- the existing missions are heavily constrained, but it would be easy to design more open missions using this same framework, and even now you have a lot of options in taking out the guards.

Time Keepers still feels very alpha. There are some pretty big bugs, and the game desperately needs a proofreader. That said, the main problem is just that the AI still has a long way to go: you can just stand off to the side and a guard will lose track of you, for instance. The second mission takes place in a place where armed guards swarm the instant you destroy a security camera, but you can break into a guy's room and loot in in front of him and he doesn't react. In a sense this is a necessity since outwitting the computer is the main way you overcome the enemy's superior forces, but there's definitely some more polish needed.

What flaws Time Keepers has can be forgiven because it's an extremely ambitious game. I'm really glad to see this sort of neat stuff being done with VERGE, and it's nice to see 2D tactical infiltration games more complex than "move when the guards aren't nearby," especially fanmade ones. Whereas the original demo was more promising than truly fun, this one is actually a lot of fun to play, and I look forward to seeing what the next mission will be.

New verge.exe, new event triggers (onStep, onEntityActivation)

mcgrue — 2008-04-25T08:28:38+01:00

There are now four new read/write string variables accessible to verge3 via vc:

trigger.onStep
trigger.afterStep
trigger.beforeEntityScript
trigger.afterEntityScript

These are global callfunction triggers. If they are blank, or if they are set to a string that isn't a vc function name, nothing happens. But if they are set to a vc function name, awesome magic happens!

If trigger.onStep is set to a vc function name, that function will be called everytime the player entity crosses a zone activation border, regardless of if a zone is about to be activated. If a zone will be activated, this function occurs right before that zone's script goes off.

If trigger.afterStep is set to a vc function name, that function will be called everytime the player entity crosses a zone activation border, regardless of if a zone is about to be activated. If a zone was activated, this function occurs right after that zone's script goes off.

Both trigger.onStep and trigger.afterStep's assigned vc functions will have access to a proper event.tx, event.ty, regardless if a zone gets activated. Note that this is a change in behavior, as event.tx and event.ty are now updated at a new point. If this breaks anyone's day, please let me know.

These two triggers are good for things like dealing with poison and tintinabar-style effects and step counters, which are more dependant on the act of walking than on any specific zone. I was brought to implement this specifically because there was no good way to deal with decrementing the "steps to battle" counter for Sully, and this seemed like an idea whose time had come.

If trigger.beforeEntityScript is set to a vc function name, that function will be called before any entity's onActivate script is called.

If trigger.afterEntityScript is set to a vc function name, that function will be called after any entity's onActivate script is called.

Both trigger.beforeEntityScript and trigger.afterEntityScript's assigned vc functions will have the proper event.tx, event.ty, and event.entity values available to them, just like the entity's onActivate script does.

These two triggers are great for handling universal pre- and post-conditions for entity onActivate events. Specifically, in Sully it was getting tiresome to have to tell the game to forbid the menu as the first line of every entity's onActivate script, and it was getting tiresome to tell the game to re-allow menus afterwards. If you forgot any of these, you basically created a gameplay bug! Awesome, eh?

Forthcoming, but not implemented yet, are similar variables for before and after any zone has been adjacently activated. I'm also looking into making a new kind of zone activation which would activate when you push against it. Imagine a closed door opening when your player pushes into it. I am eager to listen to any suggestions for both new callback triggers, and new script activation conditions.

Please, share your thoughts!

Download the 2008.04.25 build of verge3 (PC exe only)

Clamming Up

Kildorf — 2008-04-21T02:13:50+01:00

Hi there everyone. It's been pretty quiet around here lately. How are you? We should meet more often! I've brought something for you.

Things have been happening, I assure you. We've just all gotten afraid of telling anyone! Or maybe, the people who really want to talk are all talked out from Gruedorf posts. Whatever the reason, I'm breaking the silence! Over the last couple of days I made various fixes to bring the Mac OS version of the engine up to date. Then, I spent this evening putting together a new release of Sully, pulled from the SVN repository, based on McGrue's instructions. I've put them together, and I've brought it here for you to enjoy!

This isn't your grandma's Sully Chronicles. A lot of changes have happened since the Ancient Times. Most noticeable (at first) will be graphical updates pretty much everywhere. Another thing to take note of is the addition of entirely new sections of story!

I hear that all this stuff was planned all along but just never got into the earlier versions of the demo. It's very cool (and I don't just say that because I designed two of the towns and did some of the graphics :D). In any case, there are still plenty of warts -- this is very much a WIP version of the game. I hope that doesn't diminish your enjoyment of the game, though!

Click here for the Windows version.
OR
Click here for the Mac OS version.

Play! Play and have fun! Play and be inspired!

Pharaoh, Let my website go!

mcgrue — 2008-03-13T20:08:15+01:00

mcgrue: Saturday night I was running into php errors on something I was trying to install on the same server as verge-rpg.com. The errors were obscure and nonsensical, so I figured it was time to try a php upgrade. A long story short: a dependency chain basically bit me in the ass, and our mysqld became... somehow uninstalled (why uninstalling Exim would do this, I don't know. Le sigh.)

By 8 AM sunday morning I'd reinstated a mysqld on vrpg's server, but it was now mysql 5 instead of mysql 4. There were some underlying sql syntax changes. And by this point I was exhausted and continued to be too tired to work on it after work.

So I brought in the canadian cavalry...

Overkill: When we updated to MySQL 5, vrpg's website codebase had lots of magical error messages involving operator precedences of joins vs comma operators. It, of course, had misleading error reports too, so then it lead me to think the error was happening in a completely different file than the boards index.

Moral of this story: copy-pasting your error reports is BAD! Everything should be normal again now though.

mcgrue: I think there are a few more morals than that here, but... yeah. Anyways: the site is back up!

New verge.exe WIP

mcgrue — 2008-02-11T13:01:20+01:00

For those of you who like new exes, I just built a new windows executable current as of today's svn revision (200).

You can get it at: http://www.verge-rpg.com/svn/verge3/trunk/redist/verge.exe.

username: anonymous
password: anonymous

For those interested in making modifications to the verge executable, I posted instructions on how to add a new vc function over at egometry.com.

New in this revision are the final two functions of this list (but you may not have been aware of the rest of them...) :

SetCharacterWidth()



DictListKeys()



ListBuiltinFunctions()

ListBuiltinVariables()

ListBuiltinDefines()



GetPlayer()

	

GetUserSystemVcFunctionCount()

GetUserSystemVcFunctionByIndex()

So there you go. A new WIP build of the EXE. If a mac-haver would like to compile the current revision we can bottle it all up and officialize it! Please: test the crap out of it.

Man, It's way too late. Who loves ya, baby?

Gruedorf: rollcall!

mcgrue — 2008-02-06T09:56:22+01:00

Okay, I'm gathering data for the next update. Here's the list of newcomers I have since the last big update:

RPGKing - DragonQuest: Abberance
Ioachim (site out of commission) ~~http://moonwalk.3host.biz~~
IkimashoZ - CPhon
Eldrich - Serinor
Mordred - Spectre Engine

So if you announced you're competing and you weren't on the old list and you aren't on this list, you have slipped through the cracks! Please respond in this thread if I missed you and I'll get you in the update.

Thanks!

LuaVerge

Kildorf — 2008-02-03T23:49:13+01:00

If there's anyone out there using the Lua bindings for Verge, here's a note about an issue that has had me tearing my hair out for the last 24 hours or so. Overkill helped me figure out what was going on here.

By default, all of the Verge stuff (its variables and its functions and whatnot) all got tossed into a table called LuaVergeRaw. This was kind of a pain to work with so one of the things that you could do was to import all of that table into the global namespace, _G. Unfortunately this had the side effect of clobbering the first-tier variables like xwin and timer. (Well, specifically, you could get their value like you were supposed up to the moment you tried to assign anything to them; after that your value of the variable and the engines became unsynced.)

In any case, Overkill and I, being the primary users of Lua in V3, had a quick chat and decided the best solution here was to just use the LuaVergeRaw table, but give it a better name. We renamed it to v3, because it's short and in keeping with Lua's style for libraries.

In any case, if you have done any LuaVerge development, be warned that the newest version in the SVN (checked in about five minutes ago) will probably break your code. Sorry about that.

(By the way, for those who follow such things: My host is currently down so this is going to have to server for my weekly Gruedorf post until it's fixed.)

Gruedorf: not quite an update...

mcgrue — 2008-01-28T09:41:52+01:00

Silence on the front page doesn't mean silence from the competition. Since the last roundup, a few competitors have joined, and there's been a bunch of people failing!

Now, this isn't a roundup, but I wanted to point out that one of the key parts of this competition is the implied mockery of your nemesis... es. And nobody has done as good a job of that to date as SDHawk just did.

No, really. I mean it! GO READ THIS NOW.

...read it?

That's grade-A showmanship and/or trash-talkin' right there. Y'all are slackers.

In other news, ustor's made a rudimentary Gruedorf tracker. It's incomplete and doesn't have the entire competition on there, but it's a start.

Anyone who's missing from the front page of the competition, sound off in this thread and I'll get you added in asap.

Great apologies!

mcgrue — 2007-12-18T22:45:06+01:00

Sorry about the downtime, kids. And thanks to Toen for the quick spot that the domain had switched to a parking page. I re-registered it in time and we're back alive.

I'm a bad father. :(

Also: with hope there'll be a new comprehensive gruedorf update. I'm sorta swamped what with the move to Silicon Valley/new job/looking for house/hiding the bodies/etc/etc...

Gruedorf: The Legend Continues

mcgrue — 2007-11-19T04:46:52+01:00

It's that time again, kiddos! Tim to see how the gruedorf challengers are holding up!

We have two new Johnny-come-latelys: Toen and Erayman. Everyone give them a round of applause for the stones to join an unwinnable battle, and condolences for their imminent demise at the hands of their betters!

We also have one Johnny-go-awayey: the indominatble John "Ustor" Weng has joined us in our little band of dysfunctional brothers. His new wundermint.com not only features an umlauted minty 'U', but a dire assortment of completed games only comparable to SD Hawk's... and on the whole prettier than those.

The competition stiffens like undersexed freshmen at Mardi Gras. I'm not too worried, though... I'm sure to vanquish you all, etc., etc...

The Motley Roster

COMPETITOR	TEAM/SITE	GAME	URL
Code	(Eponymous)	Zodiac Cogency	http://codesgame.3host.biz/wordpress/
Erayman	Armor Factory	(zomg ditto)	http://armorfactory.hextudio.com/
Falthorn	GameOn Cafe	Scroll-a-tron 9k?	http://gameoncafe.com/
Kildorf	(himself)	Geas	http://speveril.northknight.com/
McGrue	Egometry	Saga of the Stars	http://egometry.com/
Overkill	Bananattack!	Signal	http://bananattack.com/blog/
Rysen	RysenSoft	Amethyst	http://rysen.seanoyler.com/
SDHawk	Contrivia	?	http://stellarx.org/sdhawk/contrivia/
Syn	The Finishers	Soul of the Machine	http://soulofthemachine.3host.biz/
Thrasher	Implode, Explode	Vulture	http://imploexplo.blogspot.com/
Toen (zumpiez, lol?)	Stick Ninja	<--	http://stickninja-gruedorf.blogspot.com/
Ustor	Teh Ruster Himself lul	"Tactical Action RPG" for now	http://www.wundermint.com/posts

The Progress Report

Code: The Zodiac Cogency

The Zodiac Cogency has been in good upkeep, with Code making good on the "7 days or else" ultimatum. Not only has he been a sport with making some neat strides in his battle system, he currently holds first place in regards to nicest display of boobies in a gruedorf game (...even if they are potentially ripped boobies). Code is totally not a loser. Yet.

Code, having posted today, has until the 11/25 to make his next update as of this writing.

Erayman: Armor Factory

Erayman's a long time lurker, first time demo poster! Ha-ha, gruedorf is WORKING!

Ahem.

Erayman's first effort is a nice one. He's got a little map workout out of a very nice tileset (made for the public by age-old VERGEr and artist extraordinaire Hyptosis.

The demo also features the beginnings of a battle system and a map system, and Erayman shows some amount of dedication here. We shall have to keep our eyes on him, fellow fiends and villains.

Unfortunatly, Erayman is tip-toeing preposterously close to the edge of the 7-day-limit-of-losing as of this update. Will he manage to escape the pains of loss? Tune in next time! (how dramatic!)

Falthorn: The (absent) Sidescroller

Speaking of loss... Notice the lack of an update picture? This isn't due to a text-only update. This is due to no updates.

At all.

On his whole blog!

For over two weeks!

I'd suspect both Falthorn and the enigmatic "Thunderpudd" had died, but for the fact that I talked to Falthorn on the telephone but last night.

Falthorn is a loser and has been in a constant state of disgrace since 11/5. I hear his family has disowned him and sold all of his meager belongings.

Kildorf: Geas

My arch-nemesis saw that in the post previous to the current one I claimed to've done a light amount of work. Whereas I did several hours of map editing, here's, in his own words, what he added for this update.

"Basically, this version adds a frames-per-second counter, and has the neat feature that if you hit "A" then it crashes."

-Seamus Peveril, Neo-Renaissance Man

With competition like this, it's truly a wonder I don't slit my wrists out of shame from merely drawing comparison.

If one considers this "post" legitimate, Mister Kildorf has until 11/21 as of this writing to stop sucking, lest he be branded with the firey iron of loserdom.

McGrue: The Astrad

While boasting earlier this week that I'd be making an amazing, mindblowing, panty-disintegratingly-cool post any day now, I blatantly defied myself in.... not doing so!

Instead I spent time cleaning up the map that I am going to demonstrate the nigh-disgusting amounts of awesome upon. No, really. You have been warned.

If someone else ever cared to take the time to work up a news post like this, this here would be a great opportunity to mock me to little pieces. However, since I'm the one spending a few hours of my precious time writing this summary, I'm declaring myself super-awesome and quite handsome to boot. Take that!

McGrue has not lost to date, and will continue to never lose... as long as he posts again before or on 11/25.

Overkill: Signal

After being mercilessly taunted, teased, poked, prodded, and mocked by all the other reindeer in #verge about his Sucktastic Loser status from earlier, Mr. Crowell decided to dust off, get back on the horse and attempt to stop sucking.

Unfortunatly, Andrew's idea of "stop sucking" is "do as little work as possible in a week", as his entire update consisted of loading pre-existing artwork and displaying it. No, really, that's it!

I mean, at least Kildorf had the good sense to bind the 'A' key to application armegeddon.

Overkill has lost once before, and is currently Technically Not Losing until 11/25 as of this writing.

Rysen: Amethyst

Rysen's update is yet another unimpressive, sad sack of a post. Here, hear the man himself describe his doings:

"So Greg�s sleep is now in, there�s a fancy attack animation for it, and it will prevent an enemy from attacking for such amount of time. It�ll also break after you use a regular attack�.I meant to add this for magic attacks as well, but forgot. :D"

"Still no visual representation of it, as I�m still trying to figure out how I�m gonna do that."

Really, guys, come on. Pics or it didn't happen. Shameful.

Rysen apparently hasn't lost yet, but I'm sure he doesn't sleep well at night with work like this. Also his mother told me she doesn't actually love him. Honest. Rysen has until 11/23 to make a post before he enters the Hall of Losedom.

SDHawk: Contrivia

Crikes. SDHawk continues to "design" his "game" and pretends that these "words" constitute "work". The nerve.

Read his many new words here in google docs. Or don't. Because TL;DR.

I'm not going to bring up any irony in citing "tl;dr" in this post if you don't... <_<

SDHawk has until 11/21 to cough up more work before he's considered a big fat loser.

Syn: Soul of the Machine

Clearly misinterpreting the cheers of his enemies that he was about to fail, Syn decided to rally and post... a new technicolor sink!

Frankly, I should interpret this as an act of war.

Syn hasn't lost yet, but he *is* french canadian. So that's funny. Syn has until 11/21 to make another brightly colored appliance or face terrible mocking at the hands of the Loser Notification Execution Squad.

Thrasher: Vulture

In a mind-boggling attempt to use some deranged reverse-psychology on me, Thrasher is attempting to claim he's lost when my google reader says he hasn't. He was close, though. If he really wanted to lose he should've waited a few more hours.

Anyways, he's made a 3d thing using a 3d lib and default 3d parts. Apparently it's gonna be a tactical RPG involving ROBITS! Isn't that EXCITING?

Thrasher may or may not have lost before, and he may or may not be a loser now. He's bewildered me to my very core. Either way, he has until 11/19 to break his silence on his blog before he's definitly, definitly a loser again (or maybe not again).

Toen: Stick Ninja

Long time verger and indie posterboy Toen has decided to come out of a retirement to kick it with a new game and a new alcoholic binge! I'll let him use his own words here.

"A NEW KIND OF HERO. FOR A NEW KIND OF BITTER ARCH-NEMESIS RIVALRY.

"Featuring a KILLER SOUNDTRACK by whoever I feel like sticking into it with a flagrant disregard for copyright law, MINDBLOWING graphics by me and the size 9 Photoshop brush, and STUPEFYING rendering speeds brought to you by Master Gambrell's CAROT ENGINE.

So, we're finally getting the gun-toting, hookshot-firing stick-figure action gamers have cried out to the heavens for ages to recieve. Where a cold, unfeeling god did not deliver, Jeff "Toen" Hutchins will.

This one will truly test the Tychoian gameplay-over-pretty hypothesis. Assuming, that is, that there's good gameplay.

Toen has until 11/21 to pull more sticks out of his ass before he is branded He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Win'd.

Ustor: ???

And finally, our new dark horse candidate. I actually know a bit about this entry and am excited to see it. And that's not just because it may or may not involve more boobs than The Zodiac Cogency.

The hypothetical boobs don't hurt, though.

Apart from coding his website from scratch using cakePHP (and the first time he's used PHP), he's done little but declare his intent to rock our collective socks off. Fiend, Fearmonger, or Fraud: You be the judge.

Ustor has until 11/23 to produce something of sustance before he will be baked. And then there will be Loser Cake.

And that's it!

Falthorn's currently the only loser! HEY FALTHORN STOP LOSING!

Well done everyone... and less well done to those of you who barely did anything. We'll meet again in a week or two with a new report. Until then, let's see some more noise on those forums, people. ;)

The VERGE 3 SVN is back online.

mcgrue — 2007-11-02T07:15:25+01:00

Sorry for the weeklong outage, folks. http://www.verge-rpg.com/svn/verge3/ is back up and running.

Remember: to get read-access to the SVN, you can use anonymous/anonymous.

For fans of vergec source code and games instead of real c engine sources, also check out the somewhat derelict http://www.verge-rpg.com/svn/sully/.

The Gruedorf Update!

mcgrue — 2007-10-29T02:06:46+01:00

So, since the gruedorf contest gauntlet was thrown, the idea's picked up a bit of steam, and fiends and rogues from all over the game-making cosmos have joined in our mighty battle. As of last count, the never-ending competition reads as follows:

COMPETITOR	TEAM/SITE	GAME	URL
Code	(Eponymous)	Zodiac Cogency	http://codesgame.3host.biz/wordpress/
Falthorn	GameOn Cafe	Scroll-a-tron 9k?	http://gameoncafe.com/
Kildorf	(himself)	Geas	http://speveril.northknight.com/
McGrue	Egometry	Saga of the Stars	http://egometry.com/
Overkill	Bananattack!	Signal	http://bananattack.com/blog/
Rysen	RysenSoft	Amethyst	http://rysen.seanoyler.com/
SDHawk	Contrivia	?	http://stellarx.org/sdhawk/contrivia/
Syn	The Finishers	Soul of the Machine	http://soulofthemachine.3host.biz/
Thrasher	Implode, Explode	Vulture	http://imploexplo.blogspot.com/

There have been some neat examples of progress. Code posted his first demo of The Zodiac Cogency (click to download), containing the beginnings of a battle system.

The vile, worthless heap of a man ostensibly known as "kildorf" released a new demo showing off some fancy state machinery (click to download), and a short discussion about how he did it. I am sure his mother is proud of him.

Falthorn joined in with a flash-based sidescroller demo (click to launch). It's fairly basic now with a single screen containing a few floating platforms, a pretty sprite, and a bottomless pit that must've been designed by Valve (try falling into it.) Also fun is supersizing the main character by clicking upon him. Not bad for a starting base... and definitely the most accessible development platform as far as end-user development of this lot.

Meanwhile, the true hero of the people (ie, me) released a truly amazing and heartbreaking work involving the beginnings of a heads-up display. This entry has been improving upon libraries in the sully collection. Masterful use of pre-existing code. Gold stars all around for me. No, really. (download this masterpiece here).

Overkill over at the newly made bananattack.com released the first lua-verge entry in the form of his sidescrolly demo game thing there. He then went on to talk about his rather lengthy post worth reading if you're into that sort of thing(i am, personally. I like the words.) .

One of the Ancient Ones of verge, the polymath Sean "Rysen" Oyler, has brought his Amethyst Tech Demo (download here) to the table. Like Kildorf's Geas and my SotS, Amethyst has existed for years as a neglected project. Here's to hoping that the mutual shame of oh-so-many wasted years keeps us all on our toes to keep pushing delicious digital games out of our fleshy man-wombs.
...
Er, and Rysen showed off the current state of his battle system and menus, too. There are some nice transitions in there, and the skill trees in the menus totally look interesting.

sdhawk showed off his progress in a self-described "lame update". I do not disagree. He's joined by Thrasher in the whole "I like to talk about my plans instead of doing my plans" department. Chop chop, boys. Talk is cheap. Don't you know you get a +1000 word bonus for a picture? Honest. That's the exchange rate since forever.

The final entry of this update belongs to another oldish member, Syn, who has less "dead project" baggage than the rest of us sorry souls. Hanyways, while Syn hasn't posted a demo yet, he has shown some tangible work in the form of some male base character animations. Not only that, but his comment-based witty banter is apparently up to snuff.

Some less-than-good news

It's great to see everyone actually doing stuff, and I'm looking forward to this coming week's progress. But it's with a heavy heart that I make the following announcement: Falthorn and Overkill already lost. Man, how pathetic is that? One entry and nothing. The whole contest exists to put at least an hour a week into your project, and neither of them could muster that. It bears repeating:

Overkill and Falthorn are totally losers who lost!

Of course, there's no real way to win this other than being the last man standing, and even then you lose the first week you don't post anything anyways, but really... to not make it two weeks. Tragic. The English language truly has no words for the depth of sorrow I presently feel.

Our hearts go out to the friends and family of Overkill and Falthorn. They will be missed.

Lua Verge Demo: Biggses Jukebox and Menu and Renderloop demo.

mcgrue — 2007-10-21T18:49:34+01:00

Click here to download Bigg's Jukebox demo

I was a bit miffed that we didn't have many good example pieces of v3 running in lua mode. Biggs stepped up and provided this little tech demo, showing off a few fundamentals in this box-rendering jukebox demonstration.

His readme text follows:

Biggs's Demo's Readme!

Hi, y'all. I wrote a simple jukebox in Verge. It is very basic, but if you study the code, I show off some of the things that can be done with Lua. It's sweet!

Features it shows off are:

engineStep(func) and engineLoop(func) for hiding the implementation details of the game loop
- see system.lua
managed resource lists for not having to keep track of loading/freeing resources in code all over the place (sounds, images, etc., but only currently used for modules and fonts in the demo)
- see ui.lua for fonts usage and system.lua for implementation of the list.
a declarative, album information "language" to showcase how XML is not needed with Lua--create your own data!
- see music.lua
programmatically (automatically) generated menus from the album info.
- see appMenus.lua
coroutines for a sweet multithreading demonstration (and makes coding sprites much easier too!)
- see sprites.lua for coding, appMenus.lua for usage,and system.lua for implementation

I recommend that anyone trying to understand the code will read through every single Lua file until they see how each part of the demo works together.

I have commented some files, but not others.

Notes

You might notice a lag whenever a song is selected to play.

This is because each coroutine will block all other coroutines until it is finished drawing itself. Since loading a song is both a blocking/synchronous call and takes a while to load, all other coroutines will wait on the coroutine that is loading the song. There is no way around this, unless one could break the loading functions down into baby steps and execute a step at a time inside the coroutine. The coroutine that is loading, would then slow down, but no other coroutines would.

The Gruedorf Challenge.

mcgrue — 2007-10-15T04:24:30+01:00

So, while mulling that there were no proof of concepts for the lua verge addition, I tried to convince Kildorf that he should make Geas into the packin demo for verge-lua.

Well, he hemmed and hawed, things were said, people's mother's were slighted, some ten-year-old verge "games" were brough up, and after the last WWF-style fake suplex had landed Kildorf and I were bitter, bitter enemies.

No, really. C'mon guys, I'm serious.

Anyways, now that we totally hate each other and are forever to be known as MORTAL ARCH-ENEMIES, we've decided to prove our hatred for each other in the most obvious way ever: to make our games that we've been dragging our feet about for years.

"Oh, no, not at least an hour's work a week on our games. That's... torture."

The rules are simple:

The arch nemesises must have a place with RSS that they post their game in progress.
They may not go more than 7 days without posting a new build and some text describing what's new.

So here are the feeds and sites in question:
speveril.northknight.com, Shamus "Kildorf" Peveril's HOUSE OF PAIN.
Egometry.com, Ben "McGrue" McGraw's site of terror.

We'll be putting up an aggregator on the side. If any of you "other" people want to join in on this, please contact me about it. But be wary: The price of failure is ETERNAL SHAME.

Well, more eternal shame than usually exists around here. You know... eternaller shame.

CAROT ENGINE

zeromus — 2007-10-04T08:18:23+01:00

Alright guys, I felt the need to shake something up and get this big slab of code onto the table for some folks to help me chew on.

I am releasing my c# (xna) game engine - CAROT ENGINE - alpha 1.

It is quite verge-inspired, as you might expect, and makes use of all the old verge resource formats while throwing in more than a few new features, not the least of which is the potential to run on an xbox 360.

I'm looking for a few good men to tear into this and make something with it. I'll be on 100% engine devving duty, cranking out whatever you find you need and stabbing bugs through the heart with my dull wooden wit. We need a proper packin to escort this game engine into the hearts of indie gamedevvers throughout the world.

Looking for something a little different? Give it a shot and let me know what you think. I'll have an SVN set up soon, and I'll let you check in your games so that I can fix them as I tweak the engine while it is still prototypish.

Bug Fixes.

Overkill — 2007-08-26T01:09:19+01:00

Apologies to anybody who downloaded the July 30, 2007 Verge build that was released a few days ago. Eldritch pointed out some important goof-ups we made, which have been fixed.

Verge3, 2007-08-25 build for the PC! Fixes right(), BlitLucent(), TBlitLucent(), and HookButton()

Hope this works better for all of you folks. Thanks!

Verge 3 goodness!

Overkill — 2007-08-23T22:11:37+01:00

Why, hello there everyone! I know a lot of you have been almost two years deprived of some Verge loving, and that's why I intend to resolve that today, August 23, 2007!

The new build has a bunch of nifty features that you'll likely enjoy. There are a ton of highlights. Fixing the annoying FreeImage() memory leak! Improved compiler errors, nested structs, and multidimensional arrays of structs! Gradient drawing routines! HSV color functions! New string and token functions! A way to make varargs functions! Lua as an alternative scripting language! Audiere as an alternative sound engine! A more complete sprite system! It couldn't all be crammed in here, so check out the huge changelog (which will be in a followup post) for the full details. We'll get around to making all the new documentation for the new features shortly, too.

[link removed due to some bugs - see the next news post for a less buggy release!]

Now, go forth and use this for the good of mankind! Also, report any new bugs or issues you find with it, since then we can continue to improve things. Thanks.

Also, a Mac release should be out soon, hopefully.

Demo Alarm: Serinor

Kildorf — 2007-06-18T00:55:10+01:00

Good news, everyone! Apparently Gayo escaped injury from the terrible destruction wrought by his computer. However, he seems to be a shadow of his former self, wandering on and off the Internet; he clearly did not escape unscathed. So once again, you'll have to put up with me!

Demo Alarm

The Epic of Serinor (year 2.5 release)

The Epic of Serinor, by Eldritch and company, depicts the adventures of a group of heroes out to save the world! Unlike your average run-of-the-mill heroes, these folks are tasked to do what really should be Plan A more often: to bring together as many of the world's peoples as possible to present a united front against the looming menace*. Serinor is a solid, classic RPG — it will, for some of us at least, dredge up fond memories of constructing a group of characters and then leading them on to greatness!

As I mentioned, you'll start the game by building a party of human characters from various classes as a group of adventurers being hired by the Church to deal with this looming menace thing. From there, you'll have the general plan explained to you, and then set loose to hopefully-not-screw-up-too-much. You're tasked with convincing the various (and not necessarily friendly!) races of the world to get onboard with the plan.

The gameplay is what you'd expect from an RPG, with the usual walking around, fighting monsters, and so on. Serinor doesn't pull punches though; at first you'll find that you have to stick fairly close to town to make yourself more powerful before striking out too far. Once you get underground, you'll find that torches are more than just a convenience. Overall, Serinor expects more from you than the average ~~bear~~ console-style RPG, but if you've never played this sort of game before, give it a chance. Some rewards are more sweet when you've fought tooth and nail for them!

Give it a shot. You'll enjoy it!

Download Serinor here or Get it from Eldritch's site

* Looming menaces are, after all, much like spoiled children.

Demo Alarm: Kambou

Kildorf — 2007-06-02T01:15:05+01:00

Things have been awfully lax around here. A while back Grue made a post making wild (ly inaccurate) proclamations of actually doing something soon. We all know (at least, we should by now) what comes of wild proclamations.

Demo Alarms are usually the area of Gayo's expertise, but from what I hear his house and the surrounding area were consumed in an explosive blast produced by the meeting of his computer and its anti-computer. I believe he escaped alive, so he may well return to deliver many great demo alarms in the future, but the future is an uncertain thing. Until then, I've seized the reins when no one was looking.

Demo Alarm

Kanji Bouken: The Great Kanji Adventure

"Kanji Bouken" (shortened to Kambou) means "Kanji Adventure". Kanji is one of the three mystical scripts of the Japanese language, and the most terrifying. IkimashoZ, a fearless chap who happened to be teaching English in that ancient land, has created a game that not only gives you the ability to battle it out with ji, Japanese letters, it will likely also end up teaching you something in the end.

Kambou is, in essence, a turn-based strategy wargame. Each turn you'll have the option of deploying from your pool of available ji as well as moving and attacking with in-play ji. To complicate matters, ji have elemental types for their attack and defense, they gain experience and, in a particularly brilliant play on the theme, can be chained together into phrases (learned by solving riddles) to use powerful special attacks.

Before you get into the action, Kambou has an extensive (but well designed) menu that lets you solve riddles (see above), buy items, review tutorials, and so on. Combat happens in either one-shot "training" battles, or by following the game's story, told by charming image-and-text sequences between battles (starring IkimashoZ himself, as well as an awesome magical cow from the future).

Overall, Kambou shows a lot of polish and seems to have a fairly hefty length. Its premise is a bit kooky (especially after you've seen the first story sequence) but is pulled off well. Check it out.

Download Kambou here or Get it from IkimashoZ's site
(~~I'll get a proper demo alarm in "Recent Cool Demos" list as soon as I can get the file section to cooperate with me.~~)
Overkill saves the day! File section's still uncooperative though ;_;

(And no, I haven't forgotten about Serinor. I'll make another post in a couple of days. For reals.)

But first, organization!

mcgrue — 2007-04-10T00:30:19+01:00

(Note: There will shortly be (quite overdue) demo alarms for both Kambou and Epic of Serinor. And *after* that will be the judgment of the most anti-climactic compo ever!)

In an attempt to get things into a little less derelict and a little more organized around here, I've created three google groups.

The VERGE 3 Engine Development Groupmeant to organize and focus developers who want to improve the main line of the engine. The Engine's open source now, after all, and as such we should try to manage it in the style of the more successful open source projects. After all, collaboration doesn't just Spontaneously Generate. That's a trick only maggots can do!
The VERGE 3 Pack-In Demo Development Groupa group dedicated to discussing and organizing people to clean up and betterify the pack-in demo, The Sully Chronicles. There's a battle system in the working build (I'll be making the sully SVN public shortly after (hopefully) some people join the group and some chatter happens), and I'm interested in seeing the demo polished off and the libraries made awesomer/more useful.I'm also very interested in any ideas on how to make verge libraries more easily portable/insertable. Any ideas at all are welcome.
Finally, there's the Verge General Interest Group which is basically an unmoderated do-whatever group. Sure, we do have the forums for this, but I figured if I set up groups, there'd be a desire to fool around in them, and the first two I'd rather stay courteous. Which is to say I'm moderating them, so you'd better remain nice.

The groups are meant to provide a better forum for the development of the engine and the packin/devtools in an organized manner, instead of being developed in a sort of clandestine, darkroom environment with all of the goings-on hidden from most of y'all.

Because, frankly, that really hasn't worked well for the past 10 years, now has it?

It may seem a little redundant right now since we have these forums, but google groups has email, rss, and google search at hand, and it was easier to set these up for now than to implement things in the site. I'm fairly busy, and if we were to wait upon me to update the site... well... yeah. I'd rather see progress actually made so I can sleep at night with (slightly) less shame. ;)

When the next site revision occurs (no breath holding) the forums will finally have optional email alerts, individual rss feeds, and all sorts of goodies I really am looking forward to coding (because I'm a dork like that), and I'll integrate the groups backlog into the forum structure for a sense of completeness, but until I have some blessed free time, just think of these three groups as a much more notice-me-notice-me version of the vrpg boards.

So, please, join one, join all!

Current contest almost over!

mcgrue — 2007-03-03T02:39:10+01:00

So... how's everyone's entries? ;)

MapEd 3.0.1 Released.

Tatzen — 2007-03-01T07:48:16+01:00

MapEd 3.0.1 has been released.

Click here to download.

Maped 3 - 3.0.1

0000005: [Display] removing zones from the map list doesn't remove them from the map (tatsumi)
0000007: [General] Missing help file can cause crashes. (tatsumi)
0000001: [Display] VSP animations do not display (tatsumi)
0000003: [Importing] Import as Layer misbehaving (tatsumi)

More MapEd3 Announcements

Tatzen — 2007-02-28T07:42:01+01:00

I have setup a bug tracking site over on pi-r-squared.com. This will be the new and only valid portal for Maped bugs. If you have an outstanding issue, and it is not currently on that site, please create an account and open the issue.

This will streamline the bugfixing process and save everyone a lot of time. Also, I'm changing the maped versioning system. Previously, maped releases have followed the "MapEd3 BETA YYYY-MM-DD". To make it easier to identify bugs and future releases, I'm officially restarting the version counter, and the next release of MapEd3 will be 3.0.1.

The bug tracking site is located here:

Pi-r-Squared Bug Tracker

Thanks again for everyone's cooperation.

- Tat

MapEd3 Release

Tatzen — 2007-02-25T10:37:42+01:00

First of a series of beta MapEd releases. Reply to this thread with bugs/concerns.

Maped3 2007-02-25 beta

- Fixed: Various VSP Import crashes
- Fixed: Many .NET 2.0 Incompatabilities
- Fixed: VSPController was not being invalidated in some cases.
- Fixed: V2 VSPs will now correctly convert transparency
- Added: Ability to export tilesets without the grid
- Added: Option to create a layer based on imported vsp contents
- Removed: 'saving prefs' message when exiting.

Comes the Developer.

mcgrue — 2007-02-23T03:23:56+01:00

Tatsumi, creator of MapEd3, has return from the great beyond and is currently actively fixing and enhancing MapEd 3 again!

This would be a stellar time for you all to go help him by giving him bug reports.

He's currently monitoring This Thread, and asks that you provide stack dumps (that text crap that shows up during a crash) and relevant image data (screenshots) or your bug may be completely disregarded.

The Competition... begins.

mcgrue — 2007-02-15T04:15:32+01:00

This one's pretty simple, folks:

The competition starts as soon as this message posts. Go go go!
The competition ends at 00:01 Central Standard Time, March 5th.
Like the previous contest, this one must have RPG elements (ie, you are a person, some of the game involves interacting with other people. Use of textboxes is expected.)
No points will be deducted for originality of art. However, aesthetic appeal may be taken into account. That is, I don't care if you steal your art, but I do care if you put it together well. This also goes for music.
Your game must feature CANDY and/or the color PINK and/or the concept of CUTENESS. Daww.
Welcome, my friends, to the most emasculating RPG contest... ever.

Okay, there will be a compo.

mcgrue — 2007-02-12T05:50:03+01:00

There shall be a 2.5 weekcompo starting on Valentine's Day (ie, Feb. 14th).

It will last until March 4th.

That is all.

Valentine's day compo?

mcgrue — 2007-02-07T03:01:58+01:00

Okay, guys!

I want a show of hands as to how many are interested in a 2-week compo starting on valentine's day.

Respond in the comments, the compo will be announced on sunday if there enough people.

Demo Alarm

Gayo — 2006-12-20T05:39:14+01:00

So you may have noticed lately how we have been languishing in utter disgrace, what with no new build for over a year and multiple crippling website problems. Like a deadbeat boyfriend, we promise that we'll get these things sorted real soon now, even if we won't. And you'll put up with it, because you can't look into these eyes and say "No," now, can you?

But we do have something for you at least; it's something we didn't make, which is the easiest kind of something from out standpoint. Before you lies rpgking's Unnamed Dragon Quest Thingy! This is a picture-perfect emulation of the Dragon Quest GUI, and it manages to fit in a lot of really nice touches like the weird way your party surrounds the wagon on the map. Combined with the ripped tiles it's a punch in the nostalgia gland.

Like Choris' demo below, this one doesn't really have much to do, but it's worthy of mention for the verisimilitude alone. The BS isn't done yet, but everything else is shockingly accurate and well-implemented. The Dragon Quest games always had an insufferable UI, so it may seem perverse to go to this much trouble to duplicate it, but that's nostalgia for you, and here at VERGE we are all about nostalgia. So download this demo and remember a time before the crushing responsibilities of daily life destroyed your spirit!

Server woes!

mcgrue — 2006-11-01T16:52:39+01:00

The server has partially recovered from a 25 hour hardware-related outage, and may be up and down for a bit today.

Zeromus personally drove to Houston yesterday to fix it, because he is that hardcore.

More to come...

New Battle System demo from Choris! (He makes the good stuff...)

mcgrue — 2006-10-08T17:54:19+01:00

So, two things of note occurred recently!

Choris released a battle system demo he made over the summer...

...and Choris finally opened my eyes to how bad the current upload error is.

So, please, check out the demo. It's got a fully operational (sans skills) battle system, and outside of the battles you can bring up a full menu system. It's real purdy!. And when I get home from work, I'll give some of this php some sweet, sweet loving.

I'm such a bad father... :(

Edit:Link fixed. I'm an even worser father!

Return of the SVN.

mcgrue — 2006-10-07T04:23:47+01:00

Although it's been back for a few weeks*, I sorta've been busy enough not to finalize everything and test it out. Anyways, here it is:

For the public access SVN of verge3, point your Subversion client to:

http://www.verge-rpg.com/svn/verge3/
user: anonymous
pass: anonymous

If you want an account with which to commit, please contact me via email. My email address is hidden cleverly on many pages of this website, including the front page.

Furthermore, if you wish a SVN project for your personal v3 game, all you must do is ask. Isn't that nice?

*Hey, cut me some slack. vecna and ustor visited. Also some girls. Maybe some donkeys.

The judging is over! The winner is...

mcgrue — 2006-09-28T06:24:09+01:00

Here are the scores:
Gayo:
1. Overunderworld
2. Lexico
3. Junction 5
4. ORiJ
5. TPO
6. Polarity K

Rasis:
1. Junction 5
2. OverUnderWorld
3. Lexico
4. TPO
5. Orij
6. Polarity K

Grue:
1. Lexico
2. OverUnderWorld
3. Junction 5
4. Orij
5. (tie) Polarity K & TPO

Totals:
1. OverUnderworld (5pts)
2. Lexico (6 pts)
3. Junction 5 (7 pts)
4. Orij (13 pts)
5. TPO (13 pts)
6. Polarity K (17 pts)

Note that the top three places were incredibly close, with but a single point between each of them. This was a very difficult contest for me to judge personally... definitly the tightest pack of games I'd seen to date. Rock on out. Y'all. Word.

...

...I need to sleep. Check the comments for the actual detailed judgements!

Huzzah!

mcgrue — 2006-08-16T21:55:18+01:00

That there contest is over!

Your friendly judges will be: Rasis, Gayo, and MySelf.

~~Expect the judgements by the end of the day this Sunday. No, really!~~

Update: in a plot twist I'm sure nobody expected, one of the judges has requested more time! Frankly, y'all can blame SDHawk's team for breaking 2.5 judges worth of brains.

Not to sound desperate, but...

Gayo — 2006-08-07T03:43:33+01:00

There was only one entry for the compo. As a result, it's been extended for another week, until one minute after 11:59 PM on the 13th. Submit some stuff this time, or we'll have to extend it for a month.

OMG, teh contest!

mcgrue — 2006-07-23T05:30:28+01:00

Sorry for the delay, folks. I forgot I wasn't in the time zone I used to be in.

Here's the rules:

The contest will be ending two hours later than previously announced (IE, it now ends 1:59 AM EST ~~August 6~~ August 7).

The majority of the game needs to take place in one (1) town area, where a "town" is defined as a place with NPC entities, has domiciles and has player interaction of a non-combat nature.

If the gamemaker desires, there may be 1 (one) dungeon area, with the stipulation that the afforementioned "town" needs to be stuck in the middle of the dungeon, be it a cave, a tower, a maze, or whatnot.

The afforementioned optional dungeon is, well, optional. Having one or not will not affect grading.

Having a battle system or not will not effect grading.

Having original or ripped art will not effect grading.

Grading will be solely based upon how fun the interaction is with said town (sidequests, little garnishes like switches, levers, and whatnot that produce effect and bring the player into the game, and general humor/ambience/experience).

Consider this the "make a fun demo" contest. Also, consider this a warmup for the next contest, which will be the "Sully is done, wheee!" commemorative contest... which will have very similar rules.

Any questions can be directed to me (mcgrue) and I reserve the right to clarify and/or modify the rules up to the end of the contest.

Goodspeed, soldiers of indeterminate spiritual and/or intellectual backgrounds!

EDIT: The contest ends 1:59 EST on Monday, August 7. The dates got bumped two hours, but Grue mistakenly forgot to up the date. 11:59 PM on Sunday + 2 hours != 1:59 on Sunday. There, we've got clarification.

-- Overkill

360 Hov! (or: onoes, I've been the terrerized!)

mcgrue — 2006-07-20T10:10:26+01:00

This is a formal announcement that, yes, we'll host a gamemaking contest. Whee!

The rules will be as follows:

Starts 12:01 AM EST July 23

Ends 11:59 AM EST August 6

No penalty for unoriginal art (ie, you may rip/recycle)

It will be an rpg, just to remind you all of our url. ;)

There will be extra conditions declared when the contest starts.

Newcomers to verge are very welcome to join! HoV (Hours of Verge) contests are a longtime tradition (zomg almost a decade now. We're so old) and a good way to gain practice! Some very awesome things have come out of HoVs before...

Also, I was in no way coerced into declaring this contest. Nosireebob.

Holy Contest.

mcgrue — 2006-07-08T07:11:49+01:00

While I don't usually bring notice to gamemaking contests that aren't exclusively for VERGEns, this one is way too weird not to give one of your street-like "shout-outs" to.

Word.

Anyways, check it out. SdHawk just may be onto something here. Besides, we need something to fill in the hole made by the lack of HoV's lately (really, what's up with that?).

For those of you who are impatient...

mcgrue — 2006-07-06T02:58:44+01:00

...the SVN now contains a precompiled windows EXE of the current point release. The executable safety is *not* guaranteed (not that it ever is, really) and new features/functionality and may or may not be consistent with the final "official" release of said hypothetical features!

Anyways, the executable is in the "redist" folder of the repo. Current additions are mentioned in the changelog in the base directory.

I shall not really go into how to get the SVN other than to point y'all to the about verge section where the location of the SVN server exists. If you can't figure out how to get it without assistance, then playing with undocumented features might not be such a good idea after all. ;)

Aside: please help me stop ~~cancer~~ the annoying login bug!

Website fixed, new engine imminent.

mcgrue — 2006-07-02T03:12:07+01:00

Just a note to those of you who like notes: I've hand merged the database so the "missing month" is no longer so missing. This makes me ~~completely pathetic~~ the best amatuer website admin ever.

Also of some interest is that we're discussing a point release of v3 sometime soon, with new features of much love. Isn't that great?

Edit: The nefarious login bug should now be dead. Hurray. Everyone may need to log in once, however.

Home again, home again...

mcgrue — 2006-05-07T19:08:04+01:00

...jiggity jig.

We're back on the new server. All of the user accounts have been meshed. However, the last few weeks of forum posts are in need of a little php script to merge them back into the database correctly. If only I'd've set the autonumbers on the user and message board post tables up a thousand or so counts, we'd've had no overlap between the two boxes. C'est la vie.

Anyways, we're back. Hopefully for good this time.

A question: Is anyone presently on a mac or on linux following the mac/linux verge developments, or has the lack of mapeditor turned all y'all away in bitter tears of disappointment?

Overkill has volunteered to add map, vsp, and chr-saving functions into v3's vc itself! So, we may have a universal v3 resource editor in a realistic timescale, and it'd be a verge-based program itself. The mind boggles.

Anyway, that should be neat. Even if I exaggerated about the volunteering bit. But you'll all encourage him to do the right thing, right?

Finally, I added the svn information to the about page. If any of you guys have C++ experience and want to fool around with the source, have at it. Free like your mom, and all.

Still more by Ustor

Gayo — 2006-04-12T21:20:51+01:00

Greetings, all! You may remember ustor as the man who brought us VERGE Wars, and more recently as the man who didn't finish VERGE Wars. Well, he's back, this time with two new games!

It's a story as old as time itself: stuff falls from the sky and you have to not get hit by it. BlockDodger is an extremely simple twitch game in the style of old arcade games. You play as a blue square who has to evade rectangles that fall from the sky. At its heart it's a story about racial conflict, but things aren't so cut-and-dried as you might expect -- there are also squares working on the rectangles' side.
This is a really, really simple game. The graphics are nothing but boxes, lines, and pixels on a black background, hearkening back to Asteroids and the like. There's no music, and aside from the confirm/quit buttons, which are not used in actual gameplay, the only controls are left and right. You can't even pause. There's a tendency nowadays to dress up really basic concepts with fancy graphics, and I feel this method suits that kind of game better. Combining an extremely simple mechanic with an extremely simple presentation produces a very pure, visceral gaming experience. Unfortunately I'm not very good at that kind of gaming experience, so I can only get to level 4. Overkill says he got to level 7 once, but that is an empty lie. In the context of BlockDodger levels, 7 is a number so huge that it has no meaning.

Next up is Cuddles, the for serious game of the pair. Let me say right here that Cuddles is hot shit. it's easily the most professional VERGE game I've ever played. If not for the ripped music it'd look for all the world like a for-moneys mobile game.
Cuddles is a game about clicking on things to save armless guys who die if they touch water. The cuddles, the aforementioned guys, are stuck on platforms above a water-filled pit and need you to harvest scrap metal for them to eat so that they can build ladders to reach the top of the screen. Shut up, it's not supposed to make sense. Anyhow, while this is happening the water level is rising and little monster guys are dragging the platforms down, and if the water meets the platforms you lose. You can also use money to buy power-ups. For an extra strategic element, different cuddles are finicky in different ways -- some want to eat money instead of scrap, some won't leave until all the others have left, and so on. The whole thing is sort of like Speed, except instead of a bus you have platforms and instead of having to go 50 miles per hour it has to stay out of the okay it's nothing like Speed.
The gameplay is somewhat simplistic, but not unpleasantly so. This is a perfect coffee-break game of the sort you would see on PopCap or on someone's cell phone. It's good that it can be played in bite-sized chunks, because after 10 minutes or so the intense mousework will murder your arm. I'm completely not kidding about this -- I got to level 10 in one sitting and I can only move my right hand in a twitching parody of motion. If your insurance company finds out you play this game they will double your premiums. Having said that, you should all play it. because it's awesome and really shows off what can be done with VERGE.

Quick note...

mcgrue — 2006-04-03T05:29:40+01:00

Signing up, recovering accounts, and other things of that nature are temporarily down. All should be well within a day or so.

Honest!

(also, the evil pagination error seems to be gone. One hopes forever!)

The server change has finished...

mcgrue — 2006-03-22T19:12:35+01:00

...but the cleanup has just started. Viva la... something.

It may take a day or two for the DNS to sort itself out.

I'd like to know if people are still having trouble logging in now. The various link errors and such (ie, when someone clicks on a next/previous type link and gets booted to the main page) will be solved as soon as I wake up.

Crazy stuff, man. (site updates)

mcgrue — 2006-03-08T08:05:39+01:00

Okay, so there's been some... unreliability at the present host of late. They change stuff here and there on us, so the manly Zeromus (my current hetero life-partner and/or roommate) has taken it upon himself to set up a pimping server on which I'll be leasing a manly chunk of resources for youse guys.

Anyways, I've fixed the stupid post-editing problem on the site. Overkill all but finished the games section a while back, and as soon as we make some final changes, we'll open that up to te public. This'll allow you to associate image galleries, files, and users with your game... and if you all are really good boys and girls, game-specific forums. But only if enough of you care to tell me that'd be desired.

It's been a little dead around here lately. Sorry I've been busy, baby. Will you forgive me? You know I love you, and I've been working on the Sully Battle System to prove it. That (and also vergecon 2k6, a month of zara, and vergecon2k6.1. Also work.) have been eating up all my time lately, but there's fun things ahead.

For instance, there's a linux version of verge3 out there in dev land, made by the awesome adderd. And there's the ever-active Rysen toiling on coolness, and Geronimo just released his Tetris Attack Clone demo (and also changed his name to phree radical). And Overkill's also been working on a slew of new v3-builtin functions (which sourcemaster aen has been keeping a wary eye on). And don't think I haven't noticed Code's Zodiac Cogency looking all pretty in the gallery. And Int22's definitly up to something with all the questions he's asking lately (and it's about time, too)!

So, yeah, there's actually a lot going on! Wow! Let's not do a repeat of 'the dark ages' where all the cool stuff is behind closed doors. Give a shout out here in the feedback. Are you new? say hi! Are you old? Are you working on anything? Is there something you'd like in the engine? Ask away!

Hrm. I guess to be extra-appealing I should put some screenshots and videos up here. People like shiny things! I'll totally edit those in, in a bit.

Rysen Ranch Update

Gayo — 2006-02-25T03:31:38+01:00

Greetings, true believers! You may recall Rysen Ranch, a Harvest Moon clone by delicious, nougat-filled VERGE veteran Rysen. That early release had very little functionality, but now Rysen has come out with an update that, while still a demo, adds many features and puts a coat of polish on what was already there. This has actually been out for over a week, but there's an important reason why it wasn't mentioned before now: shut up.

Anyhow, this version is much more like an actual game, so those of you who have a farming sim itch should give it a look! The details of what's been added can be found in this thread, and the actual demo is here. Go to!

Another Demo Alarm

Gayo — 2006-01-19T03:31:55+01:00

Will the runaway success of Katamari Damacy spawn a "rolling things" genre? If it does, we're ready! Witness Snowball, a compo game by Overkill, ustor, Ragecage, Troupe, and Darien

The plot of this game is not worth recounting, but the premise is cool: you roll a snowball around rough terrain, making it bigger and bigger and bowling over kids on your way to the stage end. Your snowball melts in warm areas, and you frequently need to use it as a platform to reach higher areas. There's not a lot here right now, since this was just a compo game, but I could easily see this being turned into a full game with nuanced areas and puzzles.

The physics is good -- everything feels very natural. I can't overstate how important that is in a game like this! It's kind of weird how you can end up pushing your snowball from the inside, but that's sort of necessary if you don't want it to obstruct you. Right now the only enemies are the children, and they just run back and forth, and while te terrain is wonderfully hilly, there isn't much to see in the levels. However, these are both things that could be improved in a full game. It would be swell to see more levels of this!

The Ustorsignal Shines!

Gayo — 2006-01-10T00:33:27+01:00

Mighty ustor has blessed us with a bountiful harvest. He may not have finished the much-anticipated VERGE Wars, but while you pine for that distant day when you can blow up your friends over the internet without a DS dongle, keep yourself occupied with these three offerings.

Prismatic Arrows is an interesting puzzle game. The basic concept is familiar -- you have to get coloured shit off your screen. However, ustor takes it in a very different direction, and the result is enticing. This game is a lot of fun, and except for the conspicuous lack of mouse control, the UI is awesome. There are several difficulty levels, and your results are saved automatically. Unfortunately, there is one major flaw: it turns out that the best strategy is to position your cursor in the middle of the screen and hit enter as fast as you can. I managed to rack up 303811 points on Normal this way.

Also by ustor is Logiquelle, the perfume for Vulcans. This is another puzzle game where you destroy coloured objects, and although it uses the more conventional "match things of them same colour to make them blow up" mechanic, it's still quite cleverly done. It's a little bit random -- you can get within a hair's breadth of victory several times before finally getting the right combination of board-clearing pieces. However, there's a deceptive amount of strategy involved, and it's less of a twitch game than Prismatic Arrows. Also, I have to stress that both these games are totally gorgeous and have really nice UIs, much better than I'm used to seeing in VERGE games. Also, unlockable skins. Seriously.

Lastly, there's Reaction. All I have to say about this is that it has the keywords "warning adult naked explicit mature" in the file database.

Demo Alarm (PHAGE)

Gayo — 2005-12-24T23:04:25+01:00

Dude GMW has totally released a V3 demo of PHAGE.

"What's PHAGE?" you ask, because you're stupid. PHAGE was one of the best V1 games; it was long, had a fairly good plot, and boasted interesting level design, minigames, and eventually even a battle system. Now it's been ported to V3 for a new generation of VERGERs to enjoy!

Well...sort of. What we've got here is just a tantalizing glimpse of things to come. There are shops and a rudimentary menu system, but no save/load functionality or battles, and it's really short -- it ends just before you meet the beaver mayor guy, for those of you who have actually played it before. The ghost minigames are still in, though, if you're into that. So, if you're familiar with PHAGE or looking for a real gaming experience, you might want to wait on the next release. However, anyone else should take a look at this, if only because it is a goddamn V1-to-V3 port and deserves mad props.

Maybe I should actually talk a bit about the game? PHAGE is the story of Sam, a frog in a world of talking animals. He goes on a quest to save his village and ends up discovering secrets about the nature of his world. ,,,shut up, it's awesome! This is what you might call the girl with the great personality -- the graphics and UI are unimpressive (and the new menus are actually a bit wonky), but it's really appealing somehow. The character portraits are cute and the (ripped) music is appealing, and the plot is rather more interesting than you would expect from something with this premise. Even if you pass over the demo, do keep an eye on this one.

Interesting question, there...

mcgrue — 2005-12-15T05:19:07+01:00

In the previous newspost's talkbacks, Creek23 said:

I scanned the source code last night, and I'm confused about what I read

there was a #define for WINDOWS, then APPLE (which I presume to be for Mac VERGE) but I got excited when I saw PSP. Is it the accronym for PlayStation Portable?

Are you trying to make VERGE as emulator for PSP games?

Interesting question. Are we making verge a PSP emulator?

Not quite...

BSD

Kildorf — 2005-12-11T23:49:42+01:00

Well, the day has finally arrived. For some time now, we've been hinting that there's been something big coming. It's taken quite a while, but thanks to the combined efforts of a number of admins, it's all been set up.

Verge3 is now being released under a BSD-style license.

What this means is that the source will now be freely available to everyone. Furthermore, an SVN repository will be kept so that people can get the newest version of the source whenever they want. Lastly, this means that Verge is free to you for whatever use you would like to put it towards, provided that you acknowledge that other people have done the work. A more exact copy of the license agreement is available along with the source and the engine; I suggest you take a look at it.

As we go forward, the dev team will be providing regular builds of the source so that anyone not adventurous enough to check things out from SVN and compile it themselves will still have tasty treats. If anyone more adventurous makes some modifications to the Verge codebase and wants to see them added, get ahold of someone in the Verge dev team and we'll see about getting it in there. A good place to track us down is the newly-public Developer's Forum.

Here's to good games and late nights!

You can download the source as a zip here.

The SVN Repo is at svn.choosetheforce.com/repos/verge
The subversion repository can be accessed via user and password 'anonymous'.
For information on how to use Subversion, check out their website.

The full text of Verge3's license is here

The full text of Verge3's credits is here

I'll post the changes since the last public build of Verge in the first talkback response.

New Tutorial

mcgrue — 2005-12-09T05:57:18+01:00

Overkill has made a new tutorial aimed at all you guys out there who are just starting out with verge3 that explains all of the stuff that us ancient old-timers take for granted to the point that we don't think about it anymore. Sorry, we're so old we can't remember ever not knowing this stuff. I blame the schools.

Anyway, if you'd like to get started making games with verge, this tutorial is an exceptionally good place to start!

Thank Overkill, and if you find this tutorial useful, tell us about it in the forums. We love feedback. It's our main source of sustenance for our frail, craven egos!

Maped2w

mcgrue — 2005-12-03T22:19:20+01:00

At Zara's request, I uploaded aen's port of Maped2 to windows. It's available here.

This is an incredibly useful mapeditor that still endears itself to me and other Ancient Ones. It's very good for making 16x16 art and laying it out in maps, and has inspired a lot of snazzy stuff over the years. If you want to use this to make maps for vc3, feel free because maped3 can import any map you make using maped2... but once you save it as a v3 map there's no going back. Also, be wary, because your zone, entity, and obstruction layers will not be ported over, so if you intend on using maped2w to make v3 maps, doing that work in maped2w will be a waste of time.

Also included in the zip are a few maps which were made for the abortive Sully 2, and may or may not be appearing in the next version of Sully 1. Also there's documentation in there! We're slipping in our old age...

Anyways, something cool that aen and I have been working on getting for all y'all is finally coming to fruition soon (hopefully). More on that when it's all straightened out.

Also-also, is there any interest out there in having rss feeds for the forums? Maybe the 10 most recent messages from all public boards or some such? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Demo Alarm Roundup

Gayo — 2005-11-19T03:21:35+01:00

Okay, I'm a bit behind and there have been a lot of wee things released, so I'm going to run through them all in the one post.

First up: The prolific Overkill has released the first version of his Verge Widget Library. This is a collection of various useful UI thingmes for VERGE games -- radio buttons, checkboxes, sliders, a really nice textbox with copy/paste functionality, and so on. VERGE isn't the most modular language in the world, but this is designed to be plugged in to other things, so it shouldn't be too much trouble to integrate it into an existing game. It's also made to be easily extensible! I highly recommend anyone who's doing a mouse UI for their game have a look at this.

But wait! VWL isn't the only interface code released recently. There's also creek23's Inferno, a revised demo for the VUIButton library he came up with earlier. VUIButton in the same vein as the VWL, and although it only has buttons and labels right now, it puts a bit more detail into its button code. Even those of you not interested in using the button code might want to have a look at this demo -- it's a simple little tactics game demonstrating button functionality, and it has a map editor of all things!

Now, as you all know, the undead are a constant problem. Reflecting this is resident's ripped-from-the-headlines thriller One Hundred Zombies, in which you play a Sully townsperson who walks around Bumsville killing zombies. It's not exactly a tour de force, but it's kind of neat, and it's the best available way to kill zombies with V3. This was actually one of those games that went all wrong halfway through the development phase and was scrapped (here in the business, we call those "VERGE games"), but resident heroically released it anyway, so while there isn't much there, you have to appreciate that it came out at all.

In a flagrant misuse of the initials RPG, Zonker has released a Random Portrait Generator. This is like those things that let you generate a cartoon picture of yourself by combining traits, except it makes faces at random so all it's really good for is generating a screen-wide array of similar-looking people with which you can pretend you're playing Milton Bradley's Guess Who. It's cute, though, and if you're totally insane you can expand it by adding more traits.

The inestimable Kildorf recently finished Super Tank Attack, his submission in the recent lightning-speed compo. It wasn't really a 'game' by the time the compo ended, but he's turned it into an Atari-style see-how-long-you-can-survive romp (hint: not long). Very simplistic, but cute and fun. If you only play one game where a tank destroys legions of fish eggs, let it be this one.

Lastly, a minor but nifty little thing: Pthaloearth (whose name is missing an h) has released a small Bounce and Scale Digits library, for use with RPG-style sproingy numbers and so forth. It's not quite the traditional final fantasy-style digit bounce; he uses a more interesting and modifiable method that produces a nice effect. The one flaw is that the position function for the bouncing is linear rather than quadratic, so the movement looks a bit unnatural.

Development Blog

aen — 2005-10-25T05:52:20+01:00

By way of formal announcement, I have a new development blog up at www.choosetheforce.com.

I'm making a habit of updating daily, so anybody interested in tooling around with Java code for fun in various VERGE-related ways can drop in and tinker with me!

At the moment I'm covering topics mainly relating to map editing tools, but if there's something you're particularly interested in, mention it! Anything related to game development is welcome. Chances are I'll find a way to work it into a post, or at least give you my two cents.

The idea is to push a lot of code out the door daily. Whether it's simple or complex, the focus will be on demonstration and discussion. We'll make some stuff. Toss it into a pen full of wild llamas. Poke it with a stick. Ask it to pass the salt. Learn about feelings. Or at least one of the above.

Come one, come all! Unadulterated blogospherical bliss will be ours!

Crappy Gamez Xplosion

Kildorf — 2005-10-09T19:45:40+01:00

We are currently in the intermission period for the Crappy Gamez Xplosion competition, being organized (I use the term loosely :D) by Overkill.

The idea is to have two seperate one hour time periods in which to make a game. Most of the way through the first hour, we all realized just how short an hour is, so thefirst hour was extended to an hour and a half, and the second to two hours. While this isn't an official VERGE HOV compo, nor is it exclusively VERGE, there were a lot of Verge entries in the first compo, and it'd be great to see even more turnout for the second event!

The first hour's entries can be downloaded and played here:
http://ovk.actionsketch.com/1hrcompo/index.php

The second competition block is going to be tonight at 7:00 to 9:00, EDT. You can still join in the fun! Track us down in #crappygamezxplosion on irc.esper.net.

UPDATE: The second competition block is now finished! The entries are available at the same place: http://ovk.actionsketch.com/1hrcompo/index.php

Basil's amazing demo alarm.

mcgrue — 2005-09-18T10:43:27+01:00

Basil has updated his v3 3d demo fo you all to gawk at. You ca get [Misadventures in 3D] here.

If you want to see some pretty pictures from it first, [check out the gallery].

Included in the demo are model loaders and renderers, a sweet animation of a ninja (invariably about to flip out and kill mammals of all shapes and sizes), a v3 logo in 3d, and a 'mode 7'-ish demonstration.

The demo is packed up in 4 subdirectories with the verge.exe executable in the main directory. Copy it into each of the four and run and sit back and enjoy. Be sure to read the readme files to, pardner. Woe be to those who do not! Woe.

New files section

mcgrue — 2005-09-10T13:24:08+01:00

The files section now has search capability, ditching those terrible drawers from before.

File uploads are still broken, while I match wills against the hosting admins. For the time being, everyone who wants to add files to the site should contact me via IRC, ICQ, AIM, Email, or in zeromus, troupe, or ragecage's case, knocking on my door.

I wanted to get more done tonight, but it's no longer night, so I can't. More to come, though...

Downloads re-enabled...

mcgrue — 2005-08-31T21:13:45+01:00

You should be able to download once more. Viva la vergelution.

More to come...

Server port

mcgrue — 2005-08-14T12:27:17+01:00

The site you're presently viewing is on a new server from the one that has hosted verge-rpg.com for the last five years. All glory to Lore, who now joins Locke in the hallowed halls of former verge sysadmin Valhalla! May he bathe in wine and women until he must fight again in the last battle: Ragnarok. Online.

I've just spent a bit of time cleaning up the codebase and making this new theme (which I did mainly to address Zip's concerns about the former default them being not very accessable to low resolutions. Also, it's pretty.) There are still quite a few errors to squelch out, and I wouldn't mind if anyone pointed out any new errors that may have cropped up.

Note, bum urls that start with 'www.verge-rpg.com' aren't errors. The DNS has yet to propagate over here. There are a number of absolute-path entries in the database, and I'm not going to alter them all since it'll be all better in a matter of days.

Sometimes the main content window renders narrow in firefox for some ineffable reason. Anyone who can come up with an html fix to make the main content area always stretch to the full width of the firefox browser window will earn a biscuit: a tasty, tasty biscuit. Also my undying love.

The most egregious error I know about right now is that larger files in the files section cannot be downloaded right now. I've been trying to work around some limitations for quite a few hours now, but I'm about ready to throw in the towel and re-think the file delivery system... which is fine since the file system was duefor an overhaul. However, until that happens, larger files like War of Fire and Diver Down will be inaccessable. Fixing this isue is my foremost priority with the site at the moment.

I also spent quite a bit of time augmenting and patching up the sometimes spotty sessions system we've been using for the past 18 months. I think I finally have destroyed the problem

Due to spending far, far more time* on things I didn't intend to with the most recent jaunt into this port, I haven't had time to test how the signup system and password recovery jazz held up. I managed to polish those systems up a bit as well on my sandbox server, but I'm beat and am going to bed now. If anyone wants to give them a full runthrough and report errors, that'd be super. To you lurkers that want to sign up right now, well, keep lurking for a few more days if they are broken... the file error is definitly more pressing at the moment.

Anyways, yeah. Goodnight!

*(I've been at this since 2PM yesterday. I have not yet slept.)

System maintenance...

mcgrue — 2005-08-09T13:15:36+01:00

Just a note that there is some system maintenance coming up as we're moving the site to a new server. I'm disabling the gallery upload feature right now so the upgrades on my sandbox won't conflict with the data and files. The day before all of the changes are final I'll be shutting down the file uploading so I have a little while to make sure everything synchs.

Your patience is appreciated, and like Bartles and/or James, we thank you for your support.

We love you again

Kildorf — 2005-07-22T01:29:48+01:00

Hey folks. We've dragged this out for a while, but the day has finally come: A new engine release! This isn't a wussy release, either; there's a lot of bugs fixed and some stuff that people have been asking after for quite a while.

Verge3, 2005.07.21 build

Along with this, we have another little gem of awesome! It's been hinted at, whispered, and outright said, but finally we have something to actually show off. Thanks to the esteemable Jesse, we have a first-ever MacOS Sully demo.

MacSully, Son of the Clam

We don't yet have any development stuff (ie. maped) for Mac, but they are in the works. Hopefully this should at least pique some interest. Tell your Mac friends! :D

I'll post a changelist in the first post of the talkback. Be happy and free, children!

Demo Alarm: VERGE Wars

Gayo — 2005-07-09T05:17:11+01:00

I wasn't entirely sure if this warranted a demo alarm, and I'm still not entirely sure, but there's tons of work put into it, so it gets a mention. The topic today is Ustor's Verge Wars. What Ustor's done here an exact rip of Nintendo's Advance Wars series, bless his heart and hope he doesn't get sued. I'd actually been considering something like this, just because free AW netplay would be so awesome, but I have a lethal combination of lazy and busy going on here, so that's a negatory. But that's okay because someone else did it! What a swell guy.

The reason I was reluctant is because at this point, the demo's little more than a proof of concept, and it has several unpleasant bugs. At this point, functionality is essentially complete, but the only kind of play is hotseat, as there's no AI and netplay isn't in yet. I can totally understand the lack of AI -- making a competent opponent for a game like this is really hard, and even in the actual Advance Wars games the computer is pretty stupid. However, I hope and pray for a netplay expansion in the near future, as should all of you. I also ran into a couple quirky bugs -- you have an option to destroy your own units, but doing so crashes the game. I also ran into an unpleasant image-allocation bug during fog of war. So I'm not sure you should necessarily get this right now unless you really like the novelty or have someone you don't mind passing the keyboard back and forth between, but you should definitely watch it because if it lives up to its promise it could be super awesome.

Something new, perhaps even blue.

mcgrue — 2005-06-24T13:25:39+01:00

Delays, delays. Here's something interesting. Warning to quicktime haters: It's a zipped .mov.

Discuss, please!

Help an Old Clam?

mcgrue — 2005-06-13T00:29:36+01:00

Okay, this isn't the 'big news' either. We'll string ya'll out in true verger tradition on that one, apparently. But this is still pretty big news, so I am letting one of our cats out of the bag. Specifically the cat I'm personally bagging.

...

Anyways, some of you may find these vaugely familiar:

That's right, Sully's being finished, and it's a community project. Right now we're looking for people to assemble maps and/or make some tileart, and donate and/or make some songs. Lower down are links to the threads for these projects (and the thread-links will shortly be in the sidebar). Note that we've got a whole bunch of nice public domain tiles available in case you think you could assemble a pretty map but don't think you could make your own new tiles.

Thusfar Gayo and Kildorf have been helping out a whole bunch keep things moving forward, since my free time is often scarce. Damn you, 'making a living'. So, if their interest can keep things moving, I figured... why not see if I can fish out some more interest out there!

If you are interested in making some sully maps, click here.
If you are interested in making/donating some music to Sully, click here.

New site feature: Galleries.

mcgrue — 2005-06-10T10:04:57+01:00

In a stunning piece of news actually not involving Kildorf, Overkill and I are proud to announce the addition of Galleries to verge-rpg.com

They're all nifty and such, with the amazing and astounding ability to have ordered pages and blurb texts and even be put in forum posts, as I will demonstrate in this very talkback.

Yes, now you can actually show off pictures of your games on vrpg. Sadly, it took us 5 years to figure out that games were a visual medium and pictures of them was a selling point.

On a side note, for those (three) of you keeping track of such things, this isn't the big news. More to come...

Kildorf's Maptrick Hattrick

mcgrue — 2005-06-09T21:50:54+01:00

That's right, Kildorf's completed a Trifecta of verge-map shenanegans. Here's his most recent hackery: to provide a way to keep regular camera scrolling when you're squared up against the edge of a map!

It can blit a solid color, a wrapped image, or nothing and show the actual maprendering behind the trick. That last one probably is of little use, but hey... it's neat to look at in the demo!

Grab it here

Two Map Tricks!

mcgrue — 2005-06-05T05:58:29+01:00

Although this is still not the earth-shattering news we've been hinting at, it's cool nonetheless:

Kildorf has created two neat little tech demos, both dealing with some features of maps we've long pined for. And both tech demos are all done in vc!

First off, the Seamless Mapswitch Demo which shows off how to seamlessly conjoin two maps!

The sandy area is one map, and the bricked area is another. Crystal can walk uninterrupted from one map to the next!

The second map is a long-time holy grail for verge users: a completely self-wrapping map. Check out his map-wrapping demo!

You can walk in any direction forever, even though this demo map is only about 2 screens big!

Kudos to Kildorf forlistening to my mad requests and making them reality. Do you have any small demos worth showing off? Give me word, and a newspost is yours!

Tutorial: distribute your demo.

mcgrue — 2005-05-28T13:04:23+01:00

Okay, while not the zip-bang thingy that we were hoping to have for you a few days (weeks) back, here's a little tidbit to tide y'all over: Kildorf has prepared a real simple-like tutorial explaining how to best distribute your demos to users.

As an aside, there've been quite a few site upgrades going on lately. You may experience some site malfunctioning, followed by extended periods of things getting fixed. Many props, both sane and mad, go out to Overkill, who has been dishing out bite-sized nuggests of awesome for me to put in, like the pre-tag expand code, a link parser, and a posting history view.

There shall be much more awesome coming. Are y'all ready to make some demos?

Valentine's May DAY contest results...

mcgrue — 2005-05-06T06:56:40+01:00

The results are in! Yes, the first annual VERGE Valentine's May Conte...

...what?

...

...really?

...I see. Well, that's embarassing.

It turns out this isn't a Valentine's May contest, but in fact a Valentine's Day contest that is about 10 weeks late in judging. Supersorry. It's really been a pickle finding cogent, competant judges who not only wanted to write up the judgements, but also had the free time. The standard contest judging trio of Hahn, Miko, and myself were unavailable since Hahn and I are seriously in time debt in our respective lives, and Miko seems to've disappeared from existance.

But, anyways, the judgements themselves are in the talkback at the top, for those interested. Here are the results:

Demo	Gayo	Mordred	Rasis	Final Place
Urgan	1	2	1	1
<3	2	1	2	2
Bomberman... of Love	3	3	3	3

The prize, as was alluded to, is one of the few remaining Department of Retrogaming T-Shirts from our little failed initial experiment in eCommerce. This prize is available in any size as long as that size is XL or XXL. If the team leader for Urgan can contact me via email, we'll get that out to you.

In other news, this won't be the only news this week. More to come...

Also, I'd like to wish vecna a happy 25th birthday, and Mexico 143rd. May vec have another happy 143, and Mexico a good 25 more. You know. So they're even.

Edit: It has come to my attention that the 5th of May is not Mexico's birthday. vecna's still old, though.

Not quite verge...

mcgrue — 2005-04-30T13:15:33+01:00

...but us homebrewers should stick together, right?

~~Anyways, check out this GBA cart of homebrew GBA games from gbadev.org. It's limited to a run of 500, and is priced exceptionally reasonably.~~

~~It's a neat little bit of awesome. Just thought I'd share.~~ edit: They totally sold out within 12 hours. C'est la vie!

And, before y'all complain, there's actually for-real VERGE stuff abrewin'. May may be interesting, maybe?

Also, as a point of journalistic integrity, this fantastical bit of news originated from BoingBoing.org.

Demo Alarm: Amethyst

Gayo — 2005-04-11T06:15:40+01:00

Rysen, that feller what done made Rysen Ranch and Phoenix Flame, has put out a new demo: [Amethyst]. This is a traditional turn-based RPG, a Final-Fantasy-alike really, and although the demo is short, it's fun and well-executed. The plot is nothing special -- there's these two nations, let's call them the Zooks and the Yooks, and the Yooks invade the Zooks for some reason and so a bunch of heroic rebels have to fight them, and there's probably a mad king who has been led astray by an evil advisor or something, I dunno. Anyway, it's cool, don't let me scare you off. Nothing particularly innovative is on display here, it's true, but what it does, it does very well.

I like the dialogue quite a bit. There's nothing particularly outstanding happening here, but the characters' interactions are interesting and feel real. Excepting a few small blips (like the goofy down-facing horses and the weird grey shadows under the trees), the graphics are uniformly excellent. Much of what you'll see here is ripped from this or that SNES game, but the original stuff is pretty good as well. In particular, the chrs and spell effects are very nice. The music is original and is very good -- Amethyst probably has the best original music I've heard in a VERGE demo. But then, from what I've been able to discern, most of the high-quality original music for VERGE games never actually gets released, so it's hard to say. Menus are pretty nice, and there are several nice touches, like a (admittedly very basic) help function and the ability to put the text box on either the top of bottom of the screen. There isn't a lot of detail in the system, but what's there is good, and battles are quick and entertaining.

It's not all roses. The game is a little too Final Fantasy-inspired; abilities and items are lifted directly from the series. There are enough spelling errors to stand out -- Rysen apparently forgot how to spell 'phoenix' since making Phoenix Flame, for instance. At least so far, there doesn't seem to be a lot of depth to combat, and defending heals you -- always a dangerous design decision, since it can lead to people defending over and over for five minutes to regain their HP. And of course, being a demo, the game's a bit rough around the edges -- there's some interface weirdness and the odd bug.

The good qualities definitely outweigh the bad. This is one of the most promising V3 demos I've seen, and it's very clean and fast, two qualities I put high value in. I very much hope to see more of Amethyst.

Two Demo Alarms

Gayo — 2005-03-07T09:16:43+01:00

Okay, two demos here, one old, one new. Bear with me, this'll be a hefty post.

I've been out of it for ages, so I never got around to announcing the release of [Phobos Project], an RPG demo by Technetium. This is a fairly traditional RPG with a Final Fantasy-style real-time battle system and a fair bit of demo content.

Phobos has a very solid battle system and interface, and the enemy art is probably the best I've seen in a VERGE game -- very well-done static drawings that use translucency to great effect. The rest of the graphics aren't quite as nice, but I really liked some of the transitions and effects. You won't find any big surprises in the system or plot, but it's all put together very nicely, and it seems more or less complete, system-wise -- there's magic, items, status effects, shops, and a full complement of gear.

There were two things about PP that bugged me -- the music is kind of bleh, and the walking speed is really, really slow. That's not too bad, though -- all the elements of a full game are in place, which is more than can be said of most VERGE demos.

The other, more recent demo is Ness's [Time Keepers], in which you play a time-travelling thief. This is an action game emphasizing fireplay and evasion, and it's a lot of fun.

Time Keepers has a very nice customizable interface; I quite liked using a gamepad for it. There's just enough plot at this point to provide context, but the main thing to see here is the gameplay, which is interesting and enjoyable. There are a lot of little touches that I like: guards say things when they encounter you and when you shoot them, and they'll chase you around for a while if they spot you. The pathing can be a bit wonky, but I'm impressed that it has it at all. The game's graphics are also quite nice.

I found the demo a rather hard considering that there's no save function and the game boots you out if you die. The weapon you have for the main scenario is a tranquilizer gun that takes a while to take effect, and for one area I could only get by by shooting people with it and then run back downstairs where they wouldn't follow and waiting for them to pass out. Also, the text speed is inexcusably slow given that there's no way to speed it up -- I started using the fast-foward key on every conversation after my first death. There really isn't much to complain about, though. This game is rock solid.

This is a very short demo. There's enough there to give you the gist of it and whet your appetite for more. God willing and the cricks don't rise, we'll see this expanded on in the months to come.

Compo?

mcgrue — 2005-02-11T23:17:38+01:00

Oh man, I overslept. This was an unprecedented event.

And that was a lie.

The 87 HoV is now on. And being increased to 93.5 HoV. Just to be weird, and to apologize for the sleeping Six point five more hours yay.

This means all entries need to be submitted to me by Tuesday the 15th at 3:09 PM EST. You have been warned.

The Valentine's Massacre HoV only has two requirements:

1) There must be love, in some form.
2) There must be death, in some form.

Apart from that, go nuts. Remember, this is an HoV, so there's all the implicit rules like 'hay it must be constructed during this time period even if made out of pre-existing parts' and 'LOL onli verge' that if you're going to be all snarky about the whole 'only two requirements' statement that... something... bad will happen.

That is all. Go and make games.

Edit: Technically over, but Big Daddy Bubba came to me last night and showed me the true meaning of Valentine's Day. I now feel The Love. Special extensions are given to Gayo and SDHawk at a mere -5 penalty to judges scores. Awwww, yeah.

Valentine's Day Massacre Compo!

mcgrue — 2005-02-10T19:43:57+01:00

Oh boy, you asked for it, and you got it!

This competition will be judged in the manner of the previous ones, and will start Friday, February 11th (that'd be tomorrow as of this posting) at noon, EST (in 21.5 hours of this posting!)

The contest shall conclude at 3:01 AM on February 15th, EST, just to make sure you PST people are all heartbroken too. Them's the bricks!

This compo will have no team size limit, and no original art, sound, or code requirements. All that matters is that the rules announced at the start are fulfilled, and that your entry be ~~awesome~~ tremendously magnificent.

If I've done the math correctly, this shall be our first-ever 87 HoV.

If there are at least 4 valid entries, there shall be a prize for first place.

That is all!

Tom's CHR Thing

Gayo — 2005-01-13T02:25:55+01:00

Boy, it's been slow! There hasn't been anything worth mentioning in a month.

Just kidding! Actually a few things have happened but I'm way behind in newsposts. Most noteworthy of the recent releases is TomT64's V1/V2/V3 chr editor, [VOpenCHR], which for some reason isn't uploaded to this site. This is a very tidy chr editor to answer the prayers of those tired of screwing with chrmak for V3. My lateness in reporting this should not be construed as a lack of support, because this thing is great. I'm actually kind of attached to making chrs via the two-step chrmak process, but even then, there are some things that it's really nice to have a chr editor for. especially one that doesn't carry a risk of catastrophic irreversible disaster if you push the wrong button. And as an added bonus, it's open source under the GPL, so using it pisses vecna off! You really can't lose.

These are my default windows colours. They are much cooler than yours.

The Code Vault!

mcgrue — 2004-12-19T19:45:35+01:00

Our resident british wunderkind, Zip, has provided the community with an extremely useful addition to the documentation section: [The Code Vault].

This document is a collection of useful softcoded vc functions for you to copy into your own project's system vc files so that you may have added functionality at low, low costs (free). Presently there are functions to cover holes in vc's string handling and file handling, as well as general specialized string formatters and CRC32 hashing functions!

Please, peruse, share, and enjoy. I've set up a discussion in the help forum for questions and contributions to the document. Or you could post the same here... but this news post will fade with time, whereas the help forum discussion can be stickied if used.

One final note: the documentation section is open for all to use to create their own documents. Please, feel free to take advantage of this site functionality! If you have any questions about it, as always, email me.

Geas Tech Demo

Gayo — 2004-12-16T02:54:45+01:00

Kildorf, whom you may remember from his sexy compo entry [Journey to Black Mountain], has recently released a very simple tech demo of [Geas], a game that stars the characters from Black Mountain as adults. When I say 'very simple,' I mean there's nothing here but interface and a tiny map to test that interface. However, it's a very promising interface indeed, with all the basic functionality in already and a few bells and whistles. Of special note is the tree-based skill system, which not only has a really sexy skill-learning UI but is also very cool in a tabletoppy sort of way.

You can beat up zombies, buy things from the store, and learn new skills in this version, but that's about it. However, it's worth checking out just to see how cool it has the potential to be.

It's also worth getting for the art. The tiles are gorgeous, and the chrs are very nice as well. Characters have nice speech portraits and status pictures, and there is a sexy lighting system based on in-game time; when you start the game up, it's very dark, but dawn breaks very soon and the area becomes better-lit until everything is uniformly bright, fading back to points of light amid darkness when night falls again. This is a game that really earns its right to hi-res, which is nice to see. Now, we all know that pretty VERGE games don't get finished, but let's all be supportive just in case.

I felt bad downsizing screenshots but didn't want to take up half the page with 640x480 caps, so the images below are thumbnails and can be clicked on for full sexiness.

Serinor Update

Gayo — 2004-12-10T13:27:52+01:00

By the way, Eldritch's [Epic of Serinor], one of the most promising V3 demos, has been updated. Only a couple locations have been added, but the system has been retooled a bit, many spells and features have been put in (even if you can't see them all), the interface is much tighter, Geleham has been totally redesigned so that it's really big and hard to navigate around, and the art has undergone a major overhaul. Enemy art still needs updating in various places, but tiles have been completely redone, with the general effect being that everything seems a lot bigger than it was before. There's some new music, and most importantly, all the chrs have been remade, by me. I am so awesome. You might be all 'hey Gayo, those chrs aren't that awesome' but I did like 40 of them so screw you!

Also there's a fishing game. PLAY THE FISHING GAME.

Belated Demo Alarm

Gayo — 2004-12-08T18:50:00+01:00

As Grue points out below, a new VERGE demo called [War of Fire] has been released. In addition to being cool and the first new demo in a while, War of Fire is special because it is made by Wooly, who designed the ancient V1 demo Gods' Destiny, which we mysteriously do not have in our large collection of now-unplayable V1 demos.

Gods' Destiny was one of my favourite original demos; although I can no longer remember the intricacies of it, I do recall that it had very nice cartoony graphics, good music, an ambitious plot, and FMV. War of Fire has all these things, except FMV. And really, that would just make the file bigger, so it's all for the best. I'm quite fond of the art Wooly did for his original game, and War of Fire is in a similar style, with black outlines and interesting, exaggerated objects. The major characters have cute speech portraits, and the characters are 16x16 on the map and 16x32 in battle, which wins oldschool points. The battle system isn't entirely up and running yet (skills are not implemented), but it's in there, as are shops and a complete menu system. There are several items to use and a few different pieces of equipment.

The middle paragraph is where I say what is wrong with the demo so as to maintain an appearance of objectivity! War of Fire has a rather awkward interface, combat balance seems off, and there are a couple of noticeable bugs. For the most part, these are 'demo problems,' and I'm confident that the bulk of them will be ironed out in later releases. No dealbreakers, to be sure.

What stands out the most about this demo is the ambition of its environment system. A little clock at the top of the screen keeps track of the time of day, and night changes to day visibly, What's especially awesome is that in the main town, people go from place to place in real time, so you can watch people come out of their houses in the morning and so forth, or go and bother people at night while they're in bed. The weather also changes -- there's rain, thunder, fog, and wind, and these effects show up in battle as well as on the map. (The wind is actually kind of annoying because it slows you down when walking against or perpendicular to it, but the effect is cool.) All in all, the game has a few problems, but if you let that stop you from checking it out after such a dry spell, you are a bitter, loveless soul hardened against joy and wonder.

Edit: As previously stated, there's a patch for this demo. I've linked it below for convenience (-Grue):

The Gods of Destiny: War of Fire demo released!

mcgrue — 2004-12-05T10:25:00+01:00

Wooly, verger of ancient legend and reknown, has released a prequel to his ortiginal v1 game! It features a custom menu, a weather and day/night system, and a battle system, as well as being all SNES-nostalgic with FF4/5 style graphics and interestingly translated text! Check it out!

There'll be a more information-laden reviewish newspost soon courtesy of Gayo, but for now, check it out!

Trimod Awesomeness!

zaril — 2004-11-02T05:15:52+01:00

The time has come! Some have told me they've been expecting it so that they could toy around with it, few but atleast some feel like it could be put to use, it doesn't really matter, it's here! The Trimod Editor in all its Beta Glory!

Right now there's documentation written down, but grue has yet to appear in order to switch it to public. Meanwhile (screen fades out, in comes Lee Chuck-- ahem), I have included documentation.html in the pack for those who want to read.

Since it's in its Beta, I'm quite sure some bugs and what not will pop up, but report them to me and hopefully it will all be fine in the end. I know the documentation sucks, but I stressed it.

so awesome, you can almost touch it

Get it here!

It's the Demo Alarm!

Gayo — 2004-10-29T04:12:11+01:00

Rysen, the mind behind the compo-winning Phoenix Flame, has released an early demo of a Harvest Moon clone called [Rysen Rancher]. Anyone who has played Harvest Moon will find the premise, gameplay and graphics very familiar -- as a farmer boy with a cute hat, you use an array of tools to clear fields, till soil, and raise crops, which you can then sell for money in order to buy more crops, and eventually cows and so forth. Those who never played the Harvest Moon series might scoff at the idea of a farming game, but it's surprisingly fun.

Rysen Rancher is in a very early stage of development, and this demo showcases the basic gameplay elements but is a little aimless, as spring never ends and the farmer never tires. There are also a number of bugs, and the hit detection is a bit spotty, since, as with many V3 games, RR really wants to be tile-based. However, it's interesting to see the mechanics of Harvest Moon translated to VERGE, and things like the town promise to be very interesting once fully implemented. For now, the infrastructure is all in, and the graphics and music are very pleasant and atmospheric -- the tool animations in particular are dangerously adorable.

Farming sims aren't for everybody, but if you feel that there hasn't been enough hoeing in VERGE games thus far, you should definitely give Rysen Rancher a look. This is one to keep an eye on.

(all the weather... all the time!)

Sully download problem fixed.

mcgrue — 2004-10-19T03:18:48+01:00

Some people were having random download problems with The Sully Chronicles. It was an annoying error that occurred on different browsers for different people, but it should be solved now.

If you couldn't download it before, please try now. And if anyone has any problems downloading files in the future, please let me know.

From clams... to poop!

mcgrue — 2004-10-18T07:01:29+01:00

The living legend, Blue_Star, has released a demo of a v3 remix of License to Poop! This sidescroller casts you as Titicaca, a Pu bird out for revenge against the tyrannical VergeCorp, which destroyed his home forest.

Edit: There is a new patch to give you more ammo so it's less hard.

(some rootin' tootin' poopin)

A definite literary masterpiece. Check out the demo. Bluey promises a full release in december.

Also, here's some screenshots from the recent release of Sully, which I left out of the previous post due to tiredness and laziness.

(dexter's learnin' pays off)

(the fiend!)

(Magus' henchman Gayo, by way of the internet tagboard)

Also, three cheers for Loretian, who spend an overnight session at his workplace upgrading the server that hosts us. Not only do we now have a bigger HD with a fatty cache, but soon we will have some backup action to safeguard against the potential loss of half a gig of VERGE history. You rock, lore!

Sully: Simple Edition released.

mcgrue — 2004-10-16T09:47:42+01:00

[download it here]

The documentation is presently half-complete... the systems are by and large well documented, but I'm a bit burned out on the whole 'doccing' thing at the moment. Gayo suggested just releasing it since we've been polishing it for weeks anyway... so, here you go!

I hope y'all enjoy, and hopefully some of you will find the codebase a useful starting point and some pieces of it salvagable. In a few days when I've got more mojo I'll finish up the docs and address any bugs y'all find.

Enjoy the clam.

~~NOTE: The server will be going down for a few hours tonight (saturday, 2004.10.16) for some maintenance. Loretian's upgrading ye olde boxe for great justice!~~

All server upgrades are now complete. As you were.

VERGE is proof that there is a vecna, and he loves you (New Engine Release)

mcgrue — 2004-09-28T18:08:30+01:00

Last night, vecna the ever-giving gifted the world with [a new build of VERGE 3].

In addition to several [bugfixes], V3 now has:

Custom Color Filters

(Paradise Isle through Rose-Colored Glasses)

...and much more importantly...

(What, not impressed? It's pulling the text from [here]...)

That's right, VERGE now has network capabilities. Here is [VergeChat], a VERY simple chat server app and client app demonstrating how to use the netcode. Use this as a little tinkering-guide in the meantime. Remember, you need to have two or more people to enjoy the wonders of most of the netcode.

Vecna will be accepting feedback on net stuffs for the next few days and he will probably release a followup build in about a week with some tweaks and additions. Then his next priority for the following major build will be adding floats.

In addition to all these wonders, Tatsumi has released a new build of Maped 3 (which is included in the engine zip). The changelog is [here] and I'm sure he'd appreciate feedback as well.

Also, Zip and the gang have been hauling arse on the packin. Sully is now complete up through Dread Castle Heck... so we're Real Real Real Close Now.

[Get the new Engine!]

Waiting with baited breath...

mcgrue — 2004-09-21T04:56:45+01:00

Note to Sully-devs: I didn't post anything that's 'really new' for a reason. Let's save the truely awesome bits for the surprise.

Note to Zip: Whar be that thar Shop(); ?! Avast, ye be a foul man and ye be smellin' bad too! >:D

Note to Grue: You took 6 months to port Sully 1 to v3? And you needed Help? You suck.

Note to Gannon and Gayo: You cats rock, keep the bug reports coming, and expect to have your services called upon more for the final rush.

Note to community: Yes, this is wanton attention-whoring. The end is nigh! I'm moving Sully's release date from 'Real Soon Now' to 'Real Real Soon Now'! Huzzah!

Site update...

mcgrue — 2004-09-18T12:56:21+01:00

Two minor updates:

1. Extroversity is back. Sorta. There are still minor glitches for Thinice to resolve.

2. There are now printer-friendly views for the documentation, accessible for now from the main documentation index. Check out the v3 manual in [html] and [plaintext] formats!

Be sure to thank Thinice for these wonderful wonders. I will, however, curse and revile his name and plot his painful demise since the 'fixed' extroversity still took several hours to get into this shape...

But that's just me. Y'all should cheer him! :D

Edit: Neon Justice seems to crash IE inexplicably when the email-obfuscation images over on the sidebar are shown... but only on the main page! wtf? Anyone have a clue as to why this is happening?
('because ie sucks' is not a valid clue kthx)

Edit 2: Hrm, seems to've been caused by '#newsPost p:First-Letter' in the stylesheet? But... meh, this makes no sense. I hate everything.

Oh boy, more T-shirt news!

mcgrue — 2004-09-17T19:57:15+01:00

So, the shirts are out there, and so far I've heard everything from 'omg they rock' to 'omg they so rock'. Y'all seemed shocked that they came out so well... what, were you buying them out of pity? ;D

At any rate, there's three points of order concerning this newspost:

1. The last shipment of shirts is going out today, already packed up....

2. ...except for ~~MasterCain~~ and Arias! Arias, you never got me your address! And Mastercain... I had your address, and I recall Ragecage emailing me several times concerning it because it kept being eaten by spamassassin... but I can't find any traces of the emails anymore. Sorry about that, and I'll get your shirt in the mail as I have your address, MC.

3. Where are the pictures of you people wearing your sexy shirts?

That is all.

Edit: I have MC's addy now. Still waiting on Arias.

Another Demo Alarm

Gayo — 2004-09-15T08:15:05+01:00

Boy, it's almost like the VERGE scene is active, eh? I wonder what's up with that.

Okay, this time clips (that's his name, his name is clips) has come out with a very nice-looking demo for his project, [Element Cyber] (link fixed, -Grue). This is a science fiction RPG with an interesting battle system: battles take place on the maps and are tactical in nature. There's not much to the battles currently featured, but the system promises to be neat in the future.

First, the bad news: the graphics are somewhat inconsistent in quality and don't always mesh well. There's a lack of music in many parts of the demo. Finally, it's kind of slow. It ran pretty well on my (average) computer, but if your CPU speed doesn't have a decimal point you'll probably have some trouble.

Now, here's why you should play Element Cyber anyway: although the graphics are a little spotty, the chrs are very good and there are big speech portraits for major characters, which is a very nice touch. The opening area is almost entirely devoid of clear tile boundaries, and many other areas are similarly organic in design. And although this game is slow and a mite buggy, it does a lot of neat things to justify that. The main 'town' area in the demo is full of randomly-spawned entities, and you don't walk up to these people and press Enter to speak -- they just say things when you get close to them, without halting the flow of the game. There's a very nice help feature that's accessible in-game by pressing F1 (!), and the interface is very spiffy in general. My favourite part is how mousing over an entity shows you a closeup of his face and his name, even if he's just a random joe. Also, I was quite startled to see mirrors that reflect you; to my knowledge, that's never been done before in a VERGE RPG. Make sure you tough it out to the second area of the game, as it's pretty neat.

Holy crap, man!

mcgrue — 2004-09-13T08:30:37+01:00

So yeah, I woke up at 1 PM yesterday and I've been coding various things VERGE related since about 4 PM yesterday. minus some lengthy conversations with Bob, that's almost a troy fu... well, it's a lot of work.

Not to be outdone, vecna has also been working his hind-end off in the last day or two. What can I say, it was a full moon and all the Were-Bens felt the urge to dust off their respective, mammoth codebases.

Anyways, as far as the site goes, you may notice that Neon Justice looks more consistant in general. This is due to about 15 hours of CSS grooming through the site to make it friendly for new themes (and ultimately easier to maintain for old ones). Techno Geisha and the rest of teh themes are a little under the weather, but it'll be a few days/weeks/eons before I feel the urge to open another css file... so hopefully Toen'd like to do it as it's really just a 30 minute task per template ;)

The more observant of you may've realized I switched the default theme to Bob's new Green Jelly. It's pretty, but there's still a few components left to go. Everyone should tell Bob how much he rocks, 'cuz he does.

Also of note is that there's some *limited* search capabilities on the site now. If I need to show you were, you're out of the community. Only forum and user search is in now (user search was always in, really, but out-of-the-way), and Docs and Files searching (the useful ones) will be in sometime in the next few days (for real). Unfortunatly, this unexplainable coding binge has put me behind the ball with my otherworldly projects, and slightly under the weather to boot.

In other news, the Magnificent Zip is back from his crazy Briton Adventures and is, as we speak, crafting Sully Simpletype's menu libraries. I've gotten up to the Jujube labs completed mapscripting wise, so we've got a few more days to go in that regard... but in true Sully fashion, there'll be more added to it than there was before. It'll be good to have those forward-steps again like back in the '90's, yo.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm super retardo-tired! So... yeah.

It's the Demo Alarm!

Gayo — 2004-09-06T04:57:47+01:00

Forumite designer Eldritch just released an early demo of his game, [Epic of Serinor]. This is a very old-school RPG in the spirit of the Dragon Warriors: you build a party of faceless adventurers from a selection of classes and head out to fight monsters in a first-person turn-based battle system. Selinor captures the feel of a late NES or early SNES RPG, with minimal character interaction but the potential for a lot of world interaction and exploration.

The graphics are weak and the plot is light so far, but don't be fooled: this is a very promising demo with an interesting and well-realized system. To play it is to awaken the primal race memories of countless generations of prehistoric gamers that sleep in the dark corners of your psyche.

By the way, Eldritch has expressed his intention to make the saves from this demo forward-compatible with all future versions of the game; if he can manage this, there's even more reason to give it a look now.

Merch in tha Church!

mcgrue — 2004-09-04T05:39:44+01:00

So yeah, it's here. The package came after the Post Office closes though, so I'll have to hussle tomorrow to get them shipped out during saturday's limited hours.

This is the last time I'll plug the [store] in a newspost for a while. Honest. ;)

Send me action poses of you in your T-shirt and I'll set up a gallery! Better yet, get your hot girlfriend in your shirt!

In other news, we'll be adding a new html validator function, so rogue <'s will no longer destroy the world, and maybe you'll see some custom tags.

Now I'll get back to Sully and whipping zip!

(...or is it zip whipping me?)

Generic News Update Attack!

mcgrue — 2004-09-01T20:39:15+01:00

1) The FAQ is currently in a state of usefulness, and Zip is in the process of finalizing it. You may see links to it around here somewhere, if you look closely.

2) Sully work continues. This has been a very productive time. Would you kids like a point release before we start working on the Battle System?

3) Thinice seriously needs to have a more available schedule. Seriously.

4) There may or may not be a new point release of the engine soon. It mainly depends on how nice you all are to vecna. I would say the best thing to show your support of VERGE and encouarge the vec-love would be to release some demos. So, if any of you want to see your engine again, lean on Interference and Toen, okay? ;)

5) The T-shirts have shipped from the Printer and are en route to the Official VERGE Merchandise Warehouse and Wholesale facility (my apartment). Mssr. Brunetto assures me that they are quite sharp. Rawr.

6) In case anyone's wondering, aen's alive and well, if you can call having a Dial-up connection living. At any rate he's been home for a while, and loves you all greatly!

Weekly round-up!

mcgrue — 2004-08-26T15:48:14+01:00

For those interested, the T-shirt order has gone out to the printers, and he says I should have them to send out to you guys by mid-september, meaning all y'all that ordered will have your shirts not long after that. And for everyone who didn't purchase on the pre-order, I have purchased a small stock to keep on hand as this ongoing flirtation with capitalism continues.

In other news, Sully work progresses, presently the main thrust is a pingpong between me and the ever-amazing Zip. We're working on getting the 'v1 emulator' simple sully working before I continue on with the quixotic and evil Hahn-version. If Zip and I keep up this level of progress, there'll be a for-real release Real Soon Now.

Also, even though there's a bit of silly and completely meaningless controversy concerning the whole concept of contests at the moment, I'm half-interested in running a small one in the near future. I'm conflicted on whether to wait until the "Simple and Clean" packin is released, or just have it be freeform. Any comments from y'all about desire/lack of desire/preferences?

Finally, the nigh-superhuman Zip has recently started a push towards completely finishing the [FAQ]. If everyone could check it out at some point, and either contribute to the talkback of the individual questions, or by adding new questions to the main page's talkback, that'd be hella sweet.

In conclusion, y'all rock and we all love you. Rock, Rock on.

Last call on pre-orders...

mcgrue — 2004-08-11T20:29:09+01:00

Just a reminder that pre-orders for the T-shirt end soon. The deadline has been slightly extended to Tuesday, August 19th due to me being out of town on a trip over the weekend.

If you are ordering via mail-order, make sure to email me and confirm that I've noted your order and to confirm your size.

Also, to anyone paying via the website: there is no 'notes' field as previously advertised. You will need to email me once your order is placed.

I will also be double-checking via email all mailing addresses before shipping out the shirts.

scant days remain to buy yours!

(click here to order)

In other news, I call dibs on buying aen Doom 3 as a get-well present. In the case that he's already been given it, I'll have to go back to the drawing boards. As has been stated before, if a new game from Id can't heal him, nothing can. Carmack-code is like Aen's spinach!

Also, in case anyone was wondering if Zaratustra was real or not...

[image removed at request of angry brazilian]

And he does smile... just not on camera. Although, that odd angle kinda makes him look like Zeux... hrm....

Update on Chuck (aen)

loretian — 2004-08-10T00:07:51+01:00

I just got off the phone with aen's dad.

Chuck is doing much, much better. He's still pretty weak, but all the danger seems to be over, and he's just recovering at this point. They're still not sure on the cause of it, but they have several ideas and they're running tests to find out what's up.

If you want to send any get well cards, please send them to:
Charles Rector
3019 Amity Road
Hot Springs, AR 71964

So, all in all, it's very good news, and it looks like Chuck is going to pull through this with his body and mind pretty much intact (though there is a possibility he'll need to have his spleen removed). Whether at Quake or life, Chuck has always been a strong fighter and it looks like he's won another battle.

News about aen

vecna — 2004-08-06T10:56:33+01:00

I didn't mean to bump Grue's post so soon after it went up, but well, this is pretty important so I guess he'll just have to get over it! Those of you who followed aen's (aka Chuck) LiveJournal might have noticed that he was complaining about having some infection and "demonic headaches". Well it turns out it was a bit more than that, on Tuesday he was taken to the hospital. My information is a bit sketchy and second hand, but basically he has some internal bleeding problems, and his blood isn't clotting and they haven't really figured out why yet (as of Thursday morning which is the most recent information I have). I'm told he's in a lot of pain but doesn't seem to be in immediate danger of dying, which is more than we knew at first. They were also concerned he might fall into a coma, which he hasn't done. But he is still in intensive care and still in a pretty serious condition. They say he really shouldn't have been able to walk or talk when they brought him in, but he's a stubborn fella in that way.

To those of you who are new to the community and don't really know who aen is, he's an awesome dude who did tons of stuff with V2, and more recently is the author of maped2w, psd2map, ttf2fnt, and the temporarily ill-fated jwinmaped. He is also rediculously good at Q3, and when I say rediculously good, I'm not kidding around. And he has a very unique and awesome sense of humor.

So... yeah. Thought you all might like to know. I'll keep you updated as I get more information. Also, thanks to loretian for basically being our liason with Chuck's family. If ya'll are the praying sort, I guess that might be a good thing to do. Elsewise, lets hope for the best.

Website updates!

mcgrue — 2004-08-06T00:05:15+01:00

Everyone should thank Thinice for the wonderful addition of file archiving to the files section. I've taken the liberty of archiving everything that's there (in the v3 section at least), and you should find it a lot less cluttered.

I've also taken the liberty to change a few elements of the ui over there to be more intuitive, most notably an upload link on every subcategory that auto-fills the engine and category field. Falthorn should be pleased.

More changes are to come with the site. I've touched base with the PHP Action Force, and some of them are actively working already. With luck, we'll have sexy site-wide searches shortly, and pre-tags with syntax highlighting that don't short out when there's a less-than sign inside of them.

On the Sully front, work progresses, although I've been distracted since vecna's post. There will be some sort of release before the VERGEn God of Productivity comes to visit me ealy next week. It just may not be exactly what even I was thinking it'd be. I've come to the realization that while the system Hahn designed earlier this year for Sully is rather neat and all... it is a tad on the complex side. And after showing the Work-in-progress build to some people, I've come to the realization that something much simpler in nature would not only be quicker to make on my end, but much more fitting the needs of a beginners tutorial.

And finally, in case anyone is interested in such things, my adorable superkitten, Oliver, who ran away, came back, and ran away again is once more in my possession. I found him while walking home from the bar two nights ago. He is as cute and awesome as ever, and completely psychotic.

And that's all for now... unless I forgot something. Stay classy, planet Earth!

New official VERGE build (finally) released!

vecna — 2004-08-02T08:23:25+01:00

Yes, this build is WAY late, but here it is. You can view the full changelog, and here's a new v3vergec.txt reference. Hopefully you'll see the online doc section updated to reflect the new hotness soon. Short version is there's several key bugfixes, including big improvements with line number error reporting. New stuff including FlipBlit(), a set of functions to get/set a variable value by its name, some new functions to interact with the windows clipboard, and a number of new variables, including curmap.tileset which provides an image handle to the current map VSP, that you CAN draw to (the image will be 16 pixels wide and 16*numtiles tall).

Planned binary-tree based optimizations did not make it into this build in the interests of just getting it done so you'll believe me when I say we're not dead. I did however add a new verge.cfg option that controls whether or not vcc_verbose.txt is generated during compilation, which defaults to off, and on large projects, this will reduce compile time by a noticable amount. Tree optimizations later on will improve compile time further as well as the lookup time for CallFunction and the new variable Get/Set functions.

We also added a small splash screen that appears when V3 is compiling to let people know that v3 didn't crash on startup or anything when compiling large projects that aren't in releasemode. I just whipped this one up in photoshop in literally thirty seconds. I will happily accept submissions for sexier screens. The general guidelines are that it should be a 320x200 GIF that will be displayed centered in the screen for larger resolutions. If anyone is interested in making a better compile screen, feel free to just post it in the comments for this post.

You may not believe me, and I won't blame you, but I do mean to try to get back on a every-week-or-two release schedule for the engine. So feel free to submit additional feature requests and bug reports here as well. I read the forums as much as I can but stuff does slip through. Grue also tells me you all can expect a new Sully build in a few days, so if he doesn't come through, I encourage you to throw rotten vegetables at him, such as brocoli or cabedge or perhaps carots.

Portents and Revelations! Or something...

mcgrue — 2004-07-29T15:59:47+01:00

A few items:

I have finally started organizing the outpouring of support in the last few weeks concerning the [Call to Arms] newspost. I've divided everyone into two groups:

1) Everyone who's helping with user-friendliness (writing tutorials, fixing docs, suggesting changes to the site for increased accessibility and the creation of the HTML content to that end, etc...) is now a member of the Rocktastic Usability Squad. I have appointed the most proactive of all vergers in this department, Zip, with the title of Minister of User-Friendliness, and so (barring his complete mental breakdown or dereliction of duties) he'll be coordinating the efforts on that front and then yelling at me to put the awesome things created onto the site.

He's even started a [thread concerning all of this]. Go there and help out!

2) Everyone who's helping with PHP/MySQL renovations (tentatively including Locke, NestleQuik, Ness, Raiden, and quite possibly Thinice) is hereto forward known as the Uberawesome League of Webcoders. Or something. As soon as everyone chimes in with yays or nays, we'll active our wonder~~twin~~ sextuplet powers and forge a plan for the future. Once everyone's signed on on this front I'll put someone in charge over this branch of operations so I can hunker down and worry about completing the Sully codebase.

On a side note, Raiden has already started work on a forum search module. You may sing hosannas to his name now, or save them for later when it's done. Your call.

The extra-super-ultra-mega-retarded names for these groups and leaders are entirely subject to change, and only presented here because my sleep-deprived brain desires some kind of moniker for each group. Whatever y'all decide as a title for your group will be, once decided, added to the forums replacing the 'User' there. Just as a little token of community spirit and all.

With any hope, there may be a new official build complete with updated packin relatively soon. This is not a promise of any kind, because historically if we make a commitment, it will not be met. However, a lot of work by several parties has, in fact, been done since the previous official release, and we think it'd be nice to share.

And finally, here is the final design for the T-shirts, now in an apolitical form:

[click for enlargification!]

So now all you members of the incredibly international league of VERGErs can [order with impunity] and wear the shirts proudly amoungst your countrymen without fear of being cudgeled brutally. For truly, low-resolution games know no border.

So go support capitalism and the free-market that brought you arcades, consoles, and all that good stuff and order your t-shirt!

If you don't have a paypal account, but do have a credit card and the burning desire to use it, click that button following the 'If you do not currently have a PayPal account' on the first page. This takes you through the credit-card payment procedure, and not a paypal signup deal. Unless I'm completely retarded... which is quite possible.

And finally, if you still want to feed us money but have no credit cards, we'll take personal checks and money orders. Just email me and I will send you the mailing information.

In summary, thank you for being eager to help, the help is good and being used, there is more VERGE in the near future, I'm an idiot, and [please give us money in exchange for imprinted pieces of fabric].

Edit: Also, at the request of some deranged men, there are [wallpapers for your downloading pleasure].

I've been VERGEing for years and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt!

mcgrue — 2004-07-24T12:29:29+01:00

After seven years, we've finally decided to sell out.

That's right, after all this time, we've designed an official piece of merchandise.

So without further ado, let me introduce our first-ever T-shirt design, which is hopefully interesting enough that you'd want to wear it in public:

(Edit: Updated design)

Upon donning this shirt you proclaim to the world that you're a field agent for the US Department of Retrogaming: the only agency in the world with the power to proclaim games safe for public use!

The T-shirt is of the popular Ringer T variety (click for visual reference). It's a heather grey base with navy blue neck and arm rings. The above USDR logo is on the front, and the v3 logo and our URL are on the left sleeve.

For all of you who were following the most recent HoV, a free copy of this shirt was the mystery prize. SDHawk and Salamando apparently have let Troupe claim it as his own. I can only imagine that a fierce game of Rock-Paper-Scissors was involved.

We will be taking pre-orders for this shirt until August 14th, at which time we'll have them printed up and yours truely will be shipping them out from my warehouse/apartment. We may or may not continue to stock them depending on how well they sell, so please, buy early and buy often! ;)

If we do end up selling well, vecna and I have been discussing a three-pack of buttons, as well as other things, but we shall wait and see.

At any rate, why don't you support your local Triumvirate and...

[pre-order your t-shirt today!]

408 HoV results!

mcgrue — 2004-07-23T04:06:48+01:00

First, some announcements:

Due to personal reasons, Miko was not able to judge as previously announced.

In accordance with the rules, [Parallel 7] and [Phobos Project] are disqualified for having less than 4 distinct areas. I've spent a lot of time today hemming and hawing over p7's eligability in particular, but it only has 3 distinct areas (if you count the crew quarters seperate from the crew deck).

Also, Zara's entry is disqualified for not meeting most of the requirements.

So, here are the official standings. They are adjusted from the full scoring table, since we gave judgement blind to the qualification status, and removed the disqualifications and readjusted the placements afterwards.

	Hahn	Zero	Grue	Total
Eine Verschmutzung	1	1	2	4
The Quest for Milk	2	2	1	5
Duskbane	4	3	3	10
Geas	3	4	4	11

So congrats to Salamando, SDHawk, and Troupe for the winning entry. And congrats to all of you, qualifying and otherwise. It was a very close race between Eine, Milk, and P7, and everyone I've talked to wants to see Duskbane, Phobos, and Geas completed! :)

Information on the prize will be posted shortly in another news post.

A Call to Arms...

mcgrue — 2004-07-15T15:54:47+01:00

First off, the HOV is being judged at the moment. Yes, it is late and I apologize. And for the curious, none of the patches will be penalized.

We need help

I'm very pleased with the level of activity over the last few months. We have a small, but active community. However, there are a few things that are definitely hindering not only community growth, but also productivity in those of you here. As will be explained below, the development team cannot shoulder all of the responsibility. So, simply put:

We need your help.

Problems

1) As Zaril noted in [this thread], the website is not 'newbie' friendly. This hinders new blood from easily joining our sordid clan, which is vital to keep the community alive.

2) As you may or may not have realized, the docs are incomplete, nor is there a FAQ, nor is the packin complete. This sums up to the current state of affairs not being very friendly to the non-newbie either.

3) In addition, the website presently lacks, amoung other things, any sort of search capability be it for the message boards, the documentation, or what not. On top of that, there are many, many features that could be added that really should be. In short, the site is functional, but not user friendly.

Explanations

The fact of the matter is that we in VERGEdev are all doing this in our spare time, and that those of us with jobs have 40+ hours or more of work a week and can't obviously spend all the rest of the time on VERGE, what with the need for recreation to remain sane and all. I personally don't have the benefit of a job, and since I don't have a Trust Fund or Sugar Daddy, the time I've been able to put into VERGE lately is going to be staying at it's recent diminished rate while I reprioritize for the cash-making.

By the way, if any of you cats out there needs to hire a programmer... my email address is in the side menu. ;)

This is not a call for sympathy or the such, these are just facts. Although thanks and praise are always nice, please refrain from giving any of us any at the moment as it would distract from the goals I'm setting with this post. We can all celebrate and thank each other once we're done with all that needs to be done. Although I would like to take this chance to point out that vecna has been constantly working on the verge executable, even though the most recent 'official' release of the engine was almost 3 months ago. He constantly uploads Work-In-Progress releases (available as always at http://vecna.verge-rpg.com/verge.exe with a ton of features. Sadly, most of them are presently undocumented, but this WIP is going be going official as soon as vec's recent hassles clear up.

Nonetheless, this whole deal is as much a hobby for you reading this as it is for us admin-types. The end goal for all of us is to make and play a bunch of games that otherwise would not have existed. I think that there's always been a feeling of separation between the developers and the community, and since the boards are hopping now more than ever, that difference is largely imaginary these days. So, in the interest in making progress and getting the community more involved, I am officially asking y'all to help out.

Solutions

1) We need people to volunteer to create pages and items to help new people understand what VERGE is and how to use it. The suggestions in Zaril's thread are very good. I need volunteers to organize and create newbie-friendly content like was suggested there. I will add the content to the page as soon as it's made, and mad props and forum titles will be awarded to those helping. The sooner, the better.

2) More importantly, we need tutorials and FAQs and the such. vecna and Hahn and the rest of us devvvers will, of course, need to complete the official documentation in due time with the insider insight that we can provide. However, that day sadly will not realistically be any day soon. There is an honest need for unified resources for you all as developers, and any and all people volunteering and contributing to help make some will be as gods amoung men (and/or women). Please, I need people to come forward and organize and contribute to a FAQ (many good questions already exist in this thread, but we need people to answer the questions and coordinate the effort) as well as create a simple tutorial about how to make a basic verge rpg (sections on maps/zones/obs, vc, maped, entities/chrs, fonts, etc).

3) Finally (and this is exceptionally important but I'm dubious about finding any takers) I need some PHP/MySQL experienced programmers to help add new features (most especially searches) to the site. I will still be heading this effort, but I need some Ronin Coders to join me as faithful lieutenants adding the sexay features this site needs to be a lean, mean, efficient dev resource in of itself.

Ye shall be as gods!

Anyone and everyone that is helping with any of these will not only be receiving mad props in various ways, but will be working towards all of our goal of creating a happier world with more games in it. Development will be easier for all, we'll have new members, and those of us behind the scenes can devote our limited time to finishing our duties instead of dwelling on administration and the such.

So please help! Respond in the talkback if you're willing to help and in what capacities, and I'll get right on coordinating everything so it doesn't degenerate into chaos (willing that there's actually responses once I get up in 8-12 hours ;). Please pitch in... we're the only website in the world asking for help in non-monetary form! :D

(Also, apologies for the bad Xenogears reference for this last heading. I'll turn myself in to a war-crimes tribunal once we're all done with all of these tasks.)

17 day compo draws to a close...

mcgrue — 2004-07-05T09:37:18+01:00

Remember, as always, to upload your entries [here]

As of this posting, only two incomplete entries are in. Please upload your complete and incomplete entries! :)

Under 48 hours remain!

mcgrue — 2004-07-03T11:51:18+01:00

Just a reminder that the HoV's end is approaching.

Remember, the end of the contest is at Sunday's end, Eastern Standard Time.

That is all.

HoV Judge Announcement.

mcgrue — 2004-06-29T09:42:59+01:00

As per the rules, we have exceeded the 3 confirmed judge limit.

The confirmed judges for the 408 HoV will be:

Hahn
Miko
Zeromus
McGrue

Remember, we can spring secret extra judges on you, too. ;)

I would like to take this opportunity to remind that the physical prize will only be awarded to the first place team, and only one of the prize will be awarded to that team.

So far there seems to be a bit of activity with teams plugging away. We've entered the final 7 days, so I hope you're all over halfway done with your creations. I eagerly await playing the results of this contest!

Deicide v.5 released!

mcgrue — 2004-06-28T07:21:18+01:00

Skall and Torquemada have released a new bugfixed version of the old v1 classic Deicide. For those of you not in the know, Deicide is a near future scifi/fantasy adventure/RPG that was definitly one of the more entertaining games of the first age of VERGE.

You can get it [here].

Skall says he'll upload it to verge-rpg.com after more bugfixing and the such.

You can read the thread concerning Deicide's revival [here].

RPG HOV Rules clarification:

mcgrue — 2004-06-25T03:08:42+01:00

Due to a question about the rules, I am clarifying point 8c.

Formerly, the Text of this rule was:

8c. The length of this game shall be no less than 4 seperate maps with distinct tilesets.

It is now:

8c. The length of this game shall be no less than 4 seperate playable maps, and 4 distinct tilesets. A playable map is defined as one where a player entity may run around and trigger events (towns, dungeons, overworlds, etc.). To meet the tileset requirement, the only non-playable maps that have tilesets that will count towards the total number of distincts will be maps that are constructed in a fashion so that they *could* be playable maps, but are not for plot reasons (IE, secret meeting rooms of the Council of Doom for cutscenes, etc..).

Oh boy! Direct any questions to the talkback.

Public Domain Maps!

mcgrue — 2004-06-23T10:30:58+01:00

For the artistically disinclined out there, I've just made a zip of 18 different vsps I made in the past.

you can grab it [here]. Feel free to use the vsps inside with impunity. The maps are included as reference.

Note that some vsps have a few tiles which aren't mine. Most notable is repo.map/grue0027.vsp which has FF5's gorgeous tree and some other interesting things. Locke might recognize this mapset. ;)

I'll give a more verbose explaination of each map and tileset later, for those who are interested.

The zip contains a bunch of quick-reference screenshots of what to expect from each tileset.

Summer of VERGE continues: 408 HoV RPG Compo starts!

mcgrue — 2004-06-18T10:44:39+01:00

At your mark, get set, go!

You now have 408 hours to complete an RPG. Here are the rules:

1. Contestants may use any pre-existing public vc library in the construction of their entries.

1a. Battle systems, Menu systems, and other such subsystems will not be accounted for their individual merits and flaws, but rather on their overall affect on the feel of the game. Including complementary subsystems will raise your grade, distractionary susbsystems will detract, and not having any at all (IE, making a Sully 1-like RPG) will mean that it's just not taken into consideration and you will only be judged based on what is there.

2. The originality of art and music will not be judged at all. Any aesthetic judging will be blind to originality, and instead will focus on presentation and use. In layman's terms: you can rip tiles from commercial games, or use public tilesets, but you will only get a good grade if the maps are well-assembled. Trust me, making a good map out of tiles is just as hard as making good tiles.

5. The judging method shall be the same as the previous official competition, excepting that the above points about subsystems and originality will be enforced.

5a. The judges for this competition will be announced no later than 12:01 AM EST on June 25th.

5b. There will be no less than 3 judges, although only 3 need to be announced by the deadline in rule 5a. (ie: there may be more judges this time, and secret ones at that! ;)

5c. The judgements will announced no later than one week from the end of the contest. This grace period allows adequate time for going through each entry, allowing each it's fair time in court, and gives the judges ample time to write a meaningful judgement.

6. The prize for this contest is a tangible object to be sent to the first place entry. Only one prize will be granted, regardless of how many members there are in a team. We're not made of money, you know! ;)

6a. We may extend prizes frather than announced at our own discretion, as in the previous two contests, but do not count on it.

7. The contest will conclude at 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, July 4th.

8. The following are the strict requirements for all entries:

8a. The goal of this contest is to create a small, complete RPG.

8b. An RPG is defined within this contest as an interactive story. Tell an interesting story, and tell it well, and you will do well. Content and execution both count.

~~8c. The length of this game shall be no less than 4 seperate maps with distinct tilesets.~~

8c. The length of this game shall be no less than 4 seperate playable maps, and 4 distinct tilesets. A playable map is defined as one where a player entity may run around and trigger events (towns, dungeons, overworlds, etc.). To meet the tileset requirement, the only non-playable maps that have tilesets that will count towards the total number of distincts will be maps that are constructed in a fashion so that they *could* be playable maps, but are not for plot reasons (IE, secret meeting rooms of the Council of Doom for cutscenes, etc..).

8d. There is no minimum requirement for cast size. However, if you make an RPG without any characters in it, you'd better pull it off really cleverly.

8e. The only *required* subsystem is a load/save script, due to the implicit length of the entries. This is not a hard task, and if any teams need assistance, McGrue will help you. This is a point of convenience for the judges.

8f. A readme file is required. The readme file must be in .txt or .html format, and contain the name of your team, the names of your teammates, and their roles. In addition, any neccesary control information unique to the game must be included here. If something neccesary is missing from the documentation (ie. press space to start the game when the screen turns red, or else your computer will crash, etc... stuff like that), it will be counted against you.

9. Failure to comply with any of Rule #8's subpoints is grounds for disqualification. This is the "No Balls of Steel" rule. Sorry guys. ;)

10. The management (mcgrue) reserves the right to add or apend rules with adequate warning via the main page of verge-rpg.com if circumstances warrant such a change.

And that's it. As for subject matter, it's all up to you. Make it interesting. And if any points need clarification, ask away and I'll update the rules with my clarified answer.

Apologies for speeling misteaks. I R TRD.

Edit: Also, apologies for rules 3 and 4 being missing. They are apparently on double-secret probation. Or I forgot to renumber while I was editing the old rules and removed them ;)

Announcement: 408 HoV, RPG Edition

mcgrue — 2004-06-16T20:18:50+01:00

So, now that the Battle System results are in, this is your official announcement that the sister competition I've been planning is, in fact, on.

Gentlemen, form your teams.

The preliminary terms of this contest are that it will most definitly be an RPG. It is at your discretion to include menus and/or battles, but these elements will only be factored in how they improve or detract from the overall experience.

I had hinted earlier that battle systems and menus would have to be made publically available before the contest. This is no longer true. You may edit and code these things during the contest, due to the fact that they are not actively being accounted into the judgement.

The specifics of the content requirements will be made at the start of the contest, on Friday at 12:01 AM EST.

Lay on.

Battle System 240 HoV results!

mcgrue — 2004-06-15T16:41:59+01:00

The results:

	Hahn	Grue	Place
Snowscape	1	2	1st
TaBu	3	1	2nd
Funky Fight	2	5	3rd (tie)
Lufiaesque	4	3	3rd (tie)
Text-based	5	4	4th
Card Combat!	6	6	6th

Congrats to all contestants. You rock.

And now, an apology. I'm sorry for the delay in judging, which was caused by a lack of a third judge. When I asked Miko early on to judge again, I assumed her response was an affirmative, but it wasn't and she was way too busy all week. I tried pressuring vecna into it, but he doesn't love you guys enough. For some reason, I didn't think to ask Zara until it was way too late to delay any longer (that'd be at the time of this writing). So yeah, sorry. This judging system really needs at least 3 to prevent ties like this. Bad me.

And now, the prize: The prizewinners get to design a monster for inclusion in Sully. Hahn and I get final say, but go nuts, guys. If there was any question, I'm talking about designing the name, stats, skills, and AI for this Monster. 1st place gets to make an optional kickass boss, 2nd gets an optional boss, the thirds get optional minibosses, and fourth place (which will be added to the prizes because of the unfortunate tie which was all my fault) will get to make a common enemy (which is less cool, but will be more visible!). Again, don't worry about the art, just the details of the enemy. Email your entries to me and we'll pound out a fitting final form! :)

Again, congrats to all, and thanks for being awesome!

The next HoV starts this friday

It will be a 20 17-day contest to make a short RPG. If you do not think this enough, I made the first SotS demo in 7 days by myself. So, yeah.

More details (rules, requirements, etc) will come up later. Also, I'll be securing the judges in advance and making sure everyone's on the same page this time. ;)

Battle System HoV draws to a close.

mcgrue — 2004-06-07T07:35:52+01:00

There is less than 3 hours to go, campers. Please start uploading your files [here].

I've also decided upon a fitting prize, and in the style of Whose Line is it Anyway, I shall announce the prize along with the winners. OH THE SUSPENSE!

Unless anything goes wrong, this contest's judges will be Hahn, Miko, and myself. And maybe the Seeekrit Mystery Judge. Although you have to do a lot of sidequests to unlock that judge.

Battle System HoV Extension!

mcgrue — 2004-06-03T00:31:57+01:00

Deadline is now Sunday, June 6th 11:59 PM EST

Here are the reasons for the extension:

I think it was unwise to propse two immediate back-to-back competitions.... now there'll be a 4 day break period to regain your wits if you wanted to compete in both.
Pure coding competitions often are more work than the coders initially assumed. I bet half of you were already cutting features just to complete.
I was asked by several people for an extension.

~~That is all.~~

Edit:

Also, The documentation talkback now works.

~~That is all.~~

Edit:

Also, I just added an art & music board

You may now cease and desist from asking for it.

That is all.

website updates

mcgrue — 2004-05-30T09:13:56+01:00

The documentation section is now in a public beta.

Note that there isn't much up there right now, mainly because vecna went to sleep and after filling in nodeshells for all of the v3vergec.txt functions that weren't already in the database, I'm pooped.

For those of you who want to make your own documentation libraries, give it a try. I don't promise it'll work at this point, but the feedback is appreciated.

I'll get started on the VERGE FAQ tomorrow.

Battle System HoV contest

mcgrue — 2004-05-28T10:22:26+01:00

On your mark, get set, go!

The battle system contest is now on. The rules will be posted immediately in the talkback to this thread.

Filfre to announce your intentions to compete in this thread as well. You may keep your participation silent until the end like last time, but that just serves to make me nervous... and you wouldn't like me when I'm nervous.

Also, any feasable/realistic suggestions for prizes would also be appreciated.

That is all. Go make some Battle Systems!

HoV Announcement.

mcgrue — 2004-05-27T04:16:15+01:00

Okay, well, I got feedback, but not of the exact kind I was looking for. So, good idea or no, I'll charge forward.

There will be an HoV starting this Friday at midnight EST

The subject matter of this contest will be to create a simple (but hopefully enjoyable) Battle System. This will be a weeklong competition, with another competition following it. These contests will be related, but will be completely independant (participation in one does not require participation in the other).

The specifics for the first contest will be announced here on the main page the moment of it's inception.

This forewarning was given so that those of you who like to have warning, have warning. Gentlemen, form your teams.

HoV feedback requested!

mcgrue — 2004-05-20T14:32:05+01:00

Okay, here's the deal. I've been working with Thinice to make an awesome documentation system. However, we've been dragging our feet because no matter how awesome a documentation system is, it's still a boring and tedious task.

So, I had a great Idea, that the next HoV would be a library-coding contest that would require nice docs using the new documentation system.

Then as the Doc system dragged on, I was given time to mull that one over... and I generally think that's just about the least fun idea I've had, ever. Including the great idea for making an RPG about the life and times of Dave Coulier.

So, I'm open to suggestion as to the general gist. I'm hoping for a lengthy summer competition to go with Sully's release.... but that's for later. So the questions are:

1. Who's willing to compete in a compo starting next friday?
2. Would you like a weekend competition or a weeklong competition? (3 day, 7-day, or 10-day formats I'll allow for, like Ebay but without the 5-day or the fees)
3. Would anyone be against a 'must be an RPG' rule? I'm all for alternate games, but damnit, I want to see some new VERGE demos, in the traditional pre-Zara sense of the term. ;)
4. Was the previous judging system good or bad? It's prone to more ties, but that can be handled in various fun ways...

Okay, that's about it. I guess I'll get back into the tedious documentation section.

One last thing: This next compo will not have a 3-person max on it.

psdmap 0.3 ALPHA released

mcgrue — 2004-05-19T07:10:29+01:00

Aen has released a utility to convert PSDs (Adobe Photoshop's native format) to verge3 maps.

Please visit his livejournal for specifics.

Note that this is a command-line utility for the time being, meaning you artist types still have the technical stumbling block of using a prompt in your way. ;)

You rock, aen.

Apologies on tardiness...

mcgrue — 2004-05-07T23:48:49+01:00

My apologies about the lateness of the documentation system. Thinice and I have been having some difficulties setting up a proper sandbox, which have just been resolved.

In the meantime, you all should harass Zeromus for his tardiness in completing the tile management features of maped 3. Guilt him. Guilt is the fuel that makes Zeromus go! :D

IRC on VRPG

mcgrue — 2004-04-30T05:08:22+01:00

At the request of certain people, I have added an IRC client that lore found to verge-rpg.com.

You may find it here.

The documentation editing feature will be up in the next day or two, whenever the newly appointed PHP lackey, thinice, wakes up.

That is all.

Sorry for the interruption...

mcgrue — 2004-04-26T02:22:20+01:00

I figured the sprites would cease rolling in as soon as the HoV was on. But the HoV is off now, and if ya'll want, there's still need for more sprites!

Here's the submitted amalgam so far:

Needle:

Ratgash:

Gayo (poltergeist 2x zoom):

Zara:

Zeromus (4x scale):

Creft (all 2x scale):

Kelvin:

Zonker:

ImmortalOwl
(A lizard ogre. not on the list, but impressive nonetheless!):

RPGKing:

So far, 21 completed and half-finished items. I believe Zara did some more of the machines as well, but I don't have them anywhere I can find them.

For the revised list of what we're looking for, view the comments. I'll be keeping an updated list there at the top :)

For those of you that missed it the first time:
The thread
A silly frames tutorial

This all rocks! Keep it up! :D

VERGE3, 04/21/04 Build Released

vecna — 2004-04-22T09:00:23+01:00

Howdy folks, I've just uploaded the 04/21/04 Verge3 Build. Here's what's new, and here's the new VergeC function listing.

One new thing is an early version of a new verge feature, the sprites system. Its a bit similar to the entities system, but more generalized. Its modeled after how console systems do sprites in hardware. This will be more developed in the next build, I didn't have time to finish everything I wanted today. Other than that, I mostly added a number of minor items the community had on their wishlist as well as fixed numerous bugs.

You might've noticed that on the sidebar there is now a link to the "V3 Documentation." This is an online, database-driven function library. The current database is quite old and outdated (and the interface isn't quite done yet, either). As the dev team have busy lives of our own, and since several members of the community are quickly becoming VC experts in their own right, I thought it might be nice to see if there are any volunteers to help us update/maintain this database. My hands are pretty full with the development of the engine itself, I would really like to serve mostly as editor to ensure the validity of information in the database, rather than having to write it all myself. Anyone interested?

Lastly, I just wanted to say my personal thanks to everyone that participated in the compo - you guys know that V3 was off to a rocky beginning with not one but two false starts, but it was definitely worth the effort. It was really cool seeing games like that developed so quickly after a release that was still pretty buggy. You guys rock! :D

The 168 HoV Taxday Compo results!

mcgrue — 2004-04-18T11:16:05+01:00

Here are the judges decisions for the compo. Each column lists which place each judge ranked each entry at, the total is the combined score, and the final standings go from the lowest total to the highest total.

	Hahn	Miko	Grue	Total
athoCreft's	6	6	5	17
A Tropical Adventure	2	4	1	7
Balls of Steel	8	8	8	24
Journey to Black Mountain	3	3	3	9
Leo the Merman	4	5	6	15
Phoenix Flame	1	1	2	4
Sullied Chronicles	7	7	7	21
Zonker's	5	2	4	11

Which makes the final standings:

1st place: Phoenix Flame by Rysen
2nd place: A Tropical Adventure! by ~Ratgash and Immortalowl
3rd place: Journey To Black Mountain by Kildorf and tulokyn
4th place: Zonker's 2004.04.11 168 HoV enrtry by zonker666
5th place: Leo The Merman by rpgking and Troupe
6th place: (atho)Creft's April 11, 2004 HoV Entry by athocreft
7th place: Sullied Chronicles by El Desconocido
8th place: Balls of Steel? by [reed]

The individual judges rulings will be in the talkback shortly. Remember that each judge created their own criteria based on 100 points, and then gave rulings against that criteria. This was to maintain internal consistancy (oft times in the past, one judge would set the grading schema for all, and it'd be defined vaugely, causing confusion).

Please discuss below. Anyone competing in this competition has earned an avatar. And, in addition, since we all were so pleased with the turnout for this competition, 2nd and 3rd place winners get to have their sully characters play a slightly expanded role, and anyone who didn't qualify for a prize can, if they'd like, create a Sully-style character of themselves to be added into the final game. The 1st-3rd prize winners will be contacted by me via email about their prizes.

Great job all, and I hope you all participate in the next HoV!

Starfigher Teaser!

zaril — 2004-04-16T05:12:51+01:00

McGrue made me release the teaser, check it out.

McGrue said the scroller in the beginning is very slow. I'd appreciate feedback on it, just press ESC and you'll skip it. If you get confused by the teaser and its little content, check the readme and you might see some stuff you probably missed testing. Still, it's not all that much.

--- EDIT ---
To those who have slower than my awesome computer, here's a system.xvc you can use instead of the one in the pack. It's based on time now so people with old betties can see it scroll in a sensible speed.
--- EDIT ---

By the way, here's a conceptual screenshot of it.

HoV Results!

mcgrue — 2004-04-16T03:15:05+01:00

Okay, well, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that I secured the judges I wanted. Your officiators are:

Hahn, godfather of VERGE.
Miko, godmother of VERGE.
McGrue, deviant stepson that nobody talks about of VERGE.

The bad news is that Miko's schedule is rather packed, so her judgements will not be complete until Saturday night. You may all lynch me for the delays in the talkback.

However, remember that all three of us will each be giving short essay form responses for each game (well, where pertinant... it's a little hard to give meaningful constructive criticism about Balls of Steel), and that takes a little time. :(

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Since we last spoke

Toen — 2004-04-13T07:24:44+01:00

It's been busy around here lately. All the compo entries are in, and on top of that people have been releasing all kinds of cool stuff.

On the games front we've got:

Balloon Ninjas by RPGKing: This is a gleeful remake of the classic NES game Balloon Fight. It's crazy fun and everybody should play it immediately.

AstroPong by athocreft: It's totally pong.

And finally zonker6666 released Solomon's Key Update 1, which now features a level editor. So check that out again!

On the demo side of things...

TANQ v0.5 demo by Technetium: A very neat scorched earth clone. Right now you can blow bots up with nuclear weapons.

The ever-prolific zonker6666 has made TWO demos since my last post. Text Input Box grabs some user input, which may be handy to some of you folks out there. The Hammer of the Scots demo is the beginning of a strategy game that already confuses me. Also Scotland has a 1 soldier deficit.

Zip made a little Rendering Test that draws some battle scenery.

ThinIce has blessed us with Draw! Tech Demo in which you can draw!

And finally, of exceptional merit, is basil's Dirty Tactics Demo v2.0, which is an XCom-ish tactics game where you get to stab people with guns! Sneaky sneaky!

That's all for this time. Keep making the awesome!

Bugtesting Compo nearing close!

mcgrue — 2004-04-12T05:02:20+01:00

Just a reminder that the compo ends at midnight tonight EST (that's GMT -5 for you international types). Please upload the files to the v3/contests section.

Judging will be announced on April 15th. Submissions entered after the deadline but before the judging will be accepted at a 10% per day penalty to their score.

If I or the other judges have any questions about your entries, we will email you or find you on IRC.

If there are any questions/petitions, please make them in this thread.

I've heard some really excited people on IRC, and some really frustrated ones too. This compo was mainly run to try and find the holes in v3 so that we could quickly fix them... nothing like an en-masse community effort to find the holes in the app. I'm intrested in all work that occurred this week, so even if you did not complete, please consider uploading what you have! :)

I look forward to seeing a few more entries other than those already sent to me privately. If you have any problems uploading or otherwise, please leave a message here.

Good luck!

Updated Tools/Engine

Falthorn — 2004-04-11T00:10:59+01:00

There are new versions of the core/tools fixing the entity layer bug, mousewheel bug and various other things. Go here.

To report Maped3 bugs, go here.

To report Engine/compiler type bugs, go here.

For a picture of Grue as Hellboy, go here.

Edit from Grue: Also, there's only about 32.5 hours left in the competition as of this edit! For discussion of that, go here.

New v3 beta (04.04.04 build) + Sully Packin!!!

mcgrue — 2004-04-05T12:36:54+01:00

That's right! we've finally pushed out a new dev package and added a short but familiar packin demo for you folks.

The Dev Package includes:

The newest official build of V3
The first public release of Maped3 (requires the .NET runtimes to use)
The first public release of Packed (also requires .NET)
The current build of CHRMAK (the utility to make .chr files)
A very very important (if brief) README.TXT

The packin demo reinstates the time-honored tradition of releasing a new VERGE build with a modified version of The Sully Chronicles. However, this is a very short clip of the original game, mainly constructed by vecna for feature debugging during various builds, and later augmented slightly by me. It's main use is to show off a demonstration of zones/entities/maps and vc working together to make a game.

Please feel free to open up the maps in maped, tinker with the vc, and so forth. This build was released so that ya'll can start tinkering with the full suite in it's prototype state.

Also note that this is not the packin that Hahn and I have been working our bottoms off on. That branch of the Sully Chonicles tree (Sully Chronicles Complete) will not be released until the first non-beta version of v3 is released.

Furthermore:

The first official VERGE Compo is now started

For the first time in VERGE's history, verge-rpg.com itself will be hosting a compo event. This will be the first of many, and by far the most loosly defined. However, it's for a good cause (being giving the dev tools and current build an excessive shakedown), so regardless of skill, all of VERGEdev would appreciate it if you joined in!

The contest runs from present through next Sunday (April 11) to 11:59 PM, EST. That's a full week to make a small game. The rules for this competition are listed here.

And most importantly...

Please give feedback!!!

This is a early, early beta release. We need your bug reports. We need your rigorous testing. Please, if you consider yourself a VERGEr, if you consider yourself a lover of classic games, an artist, a poet, or a human.... please use VERGE, and then give us feedback and bug reports.

Community Challenge: Enemy Art for Sully!

mcgrue — 2004-03-31T07:30:30+01:00

Alright. This one's slightly more important and more involved.

We're all very busy with tons of things. I'm coding the packin systems, vecna's polishing up the engine, tat's working on maped, hahn's reaquainting himself with vc to recode the events of the packin and start on the docs, zero's working on much needed rendering fixes, and Toen's... well... er, rapping. But the point is, we've all got a lot of stuff doing right now. And also our 'lives'. ;)

So, this leaves little time for things like, oh... say... repetitive character art. So, here's what we want you guys to do:

For the next two weeks, it'd be hella cool if you guys could make enemy battle sprites for us. The packin will not be using .chr's, but instead will use pcx/gif/png in filmstript format.

We only need a few frames per enemy. The neccesary animations are:

Idle animation (at least 2 frames)
Attack animation (at least 2 frames, showing what happens when the enemy trys to hit you with it's default attack)
Weakened Idle Animation (at least 2 frames, replaces the idle animation when the enemy is low on HP, or has a status ailment)
Dead frame (1 frame, shows the defeated enemy)
Being hit frame (1 frame, this single frame is shown when someone attacks the enemy.)

There are no real size restrictions, but keep in mind that 16x32 is the size of a human. everything should be in scale with the images at the end of this post.

The only requirement for judging here is that your sprite will go in if we (being hahn and me, for the most part) agree that it fits in with the look and feel of the pre-existing sully art (IE, cartoony and simplistic, black outlines, etc..).

The rewards for contributing sprites to the noble cause of the upcoming pack-in battle system are a forum Avatar (if you don't have it), your name in the credits sequence of the packin, and the warm glowy feeling of having accomplished something for your fellow man. Not to mention living on in infamy once v3 develops sentience and starts killing off humanity! :D

There will also be further reward to those who contribute frequently, and it may or may not involve the sequel to this packin. Okay, well, it probably does.

Here's a list of 'Races' that it'd be good to fill up. I won't cry if we get multiple good-looking sprites of the same race, and it's a far hope that we'd fill all of the roles, but it'd be neat if you guys did!

The list:

Humanoids: Human, Android, Kobold, Goblin, Orc, Ogre, Troll, Cyclops, Dryad, Harpy, Succubus
Beasts: Jackal, Snowwolf, Hellhound
Winged Beasts: Gryphon, Manticore, Chimera
Birds: Vulture, Cockatrice, Phoenix
Insects: Wasp, Hornet, Dragonfly
Slimey things: Slime, Amoeba, Jelly
Snakey things: Viper, Python, Cobra
Wormy things: Leech, Sandworm, Lamprey
Lizardy things: Salamander, Basilisk, Naga,Wyrm,Wyvern,Leviathan
Spidery things: Blackwidow, Tarantula, Antlion
Plants: Snapdragon, Flytrap, Lotus, Treant, Myconid, Cactus
Seafood: Octopod, Squid, Kraken
Animate Objects: Golem, Armor, Crystal
Evil/undead: Zombie, Skeleton, Mummy, Revenant, Vampire, Lich, Poltergeist, Specter, Wraith, Imp, Gargoyle, Belial, Djinni, Efreet, Shade,
Robots/Machines: SentryBot, SWATBot, WarBot, RadarWing, RepairWing, LaserWing, WelderPod, VulcanPod, MissilePod

Notes about this list:
The racial type at the front is just to give you a clue as to what type of beasty this is (if the name itself didn't help at all). Each different race-name is to be a distinct and seperate sprite, that once recolored many times becomes the palette-swapped armada of creatures everyone loves to beat up.

Existing Reference

It's recommended you reference The Sully Chronicles and Hahn's battle demo for look'n'feel ideas.

However, if you're lazy, here's some pre-ripped for you.

PLEASE NOTE: These are not in the frame-order I'd like. click here for a silly lesson in how to order the frames Also note that when showing off your sprites, they don't need to be in filmstrip format... just when you're emailing them to me. ;)

Blast from the past

mcgrue — 2004-03-30T12:46:29+01:00

While we're all busy with getting things ready for the next release (dammit, Hahn, where are you? ;), here's a blast from the past ya'll might've forgotten about:

http://hov.verge-rpg.com/

For those of you new to the community, we have in the past had community competitions called Hours of Verge (usually shortened to HoV). The contest's length is usually appended to the front of the abbreviation, and you can see from that site's archives that there has been at least one 12HoV and at least one 96HoV, although the traditional length is 72HoV. That's three days for you mathematically challenged sorts.

Plenty of old games there, many worth checking out. One of the major features being added slowly is an integrated HoV system. Some competitions in the past have had questionable rules and judging, and I hope to square some things away. I'd like to be able to offer prizes in the future, but that's a kettle of fish that'd require some forethought.

In conclusion, you can consider this an informal hint that there'll be a HoV starting when the next v3 engine release is made. When exactly that is is still nebulous, and the length of the competition is as of yet unset, but there's one thing for certain:

...it'll be RPGs only ;)

Icon Challenge Winners!

mcgrue — 2004-03-29T12:24:28+01:00

This week's community art challenge is over, and we have two lucky winners!

First off, Ratgash's early entry of awesomeness gets to live on as the standard set of in-application icons:

Secondly, we were rather wow'd by Ashgrounds later entries, so the windows environment icons will be of his design... we just have to determine which ones of the many, many icons he made to use. (here are a few examples)

Thanks go out to Shadow64 and RageCage as well for competing. Although their icons will not be included in the initial version of maped and the first full release of v3, Tatsumi assures me that they could be included later if his plans for maped skins gets implemented.

If the winners could please email me layered versions of their iconsets with the background color set to magenta (#FF00FF), that would be awesome sauce.

As for the next contest... this next one will be slightly longer and will be helping me, hahn, and v3 out immensely. I'll announce it in the next day or two once I discuss the details with vecna and hahn... but it should prove to be fun. As for a hint... look to the paaaast...

Holy new stuff!

Toen — 2004-03-26T06:38:08+01:00

Out of nowhere, Zonker6666 has released TWO GAMES and ONE DEMO for you guys to play around with.
Solomon's Key, which features COW DEMONS and GHOSTS

Space Battle Goddess Mildred, which features enough smoke particles to engulf New York in a permanent haze

And finally Zonker's Racers which has cars that careen wildly through residential areas.
GOD NO THEY'LL DESTROY US ALL!

Anyway, thanks for these fine bits of coolness, zonker! Hope to see more from you soon.

Community Art Challenge!

mcgrue — 2004-03-22T05:46:28+01:00

The VERGE Minister of Art, Falthorn, has issued a challenge to the artistically motivated members of the community.

The subject of this competition is icons for the soon-to-be-released Maped3. There will also be another bonus to participating that won't become apparent for a while yet.

So, help out the community and check it out!

VERGE 3...-D?

mcgrue — 2004-03-13T23:24:19+01:00

A few days ago, Torin released Castle Heck which is a raycasting 3d demo in v3.

This is nuts. Completly nuts. A little dark, but that's a Castle Wolfenstein clone. Like the original, not the more recent one for you young'uns out there.

Check it out if you haven't already.

The discussion thread about this is here.

Good work, Torin. It's rocktastic.

V3 game: Forever Midnight

mcgrue — 2004-03-08T16:27:44+01:00

A little over a week ago, BluesZodiakos released what, to my knowledge, is the first text adventure made in VERGE. This one's pretty neat too, making use of the sound api to add music and ambient sound effects... really adds to the atmopshere.

If you love text adventures, give this one a try. If you've never played one, this is a good one to start with! If you hate text adventures, play it anyways you coldhearted bastard devoid of all worldly joy! Seriously, what's wrong with you?

Get [Forever Midnight] here!

(btw, I was going to put this in another post that's been somewhat delayed. I should've just made a unique post about it in the first place. so if you want your game announced on the news, track me down on IRC, email me (my email address is in the sidebar), or post something on the website help board with a clear topic(like "Hey! Give me some attention on the news updates, jerk!") -Grue)

.NET Framework

Tatzen — 2004-02-25T18:28:55+01:00

Just a heads up for everyone waiting on V3. You can take an extra step now to be ready for the release. If you want to use the development tools (MapEd, TileEd, PackEd) you're going to need to have the .NET Framework 1.1 Installed.

You can get it from Windows Update, or download an installer from here. It weighs in at around 23M, so I suggest getting it now. That way when V3 is released, you're all ready to rock.

Everybody Shippu!

Falthorn — 2004-02-21T10:52:51+01:00

Super Bonus! Extreme Space Conflict Time!!! A-OK! BIGTIME HOWDY! Time to SHIPPU! This is a v3 port of Zaratustra's insane Space Shooter which lets you absorb enemy ship types and assume their form and powers. SHIPPU!

Demo Madness

Toen — 2004-02-21T06:39:34+01:00

Well it's sure been a busy couple of weeks around here. There are some new demos for your perusal:

-ShadowClock: A clock! It tells time. By Shadow64

-Space Flight: Groundwork for one of those all-range space flight trading games by TomT64

-Overkill's Textbox: A neato textbox demo by Overkill in which he attempts to get an avatar, and prods vecna to add map support. HA. GOOD LUCK.

- Verge 3 TextBox Demo: Another textbox demo, this one by TomT64 again. This one has scrolling text and WACKY gradient effects.

-Zodiakos Menu Library: An early version showing off some more textbox things. Oh my this has been a good week for textboxes! This one comes to you from Blues Zodiakos.

That's it for the new stuff. In case you already forgot, there's plenty of stuff to check out right now, such as zaril's demoscene thing, pepperX by the ever lovable gungnir, Pulser by zeromus tatsumi and myself, and FINALLY Timeless by my main man vecna.

So I guess that's everything. Bye.

pepperX

Toen — 2004-02-19T12:31:39+01:00

All hail the new V3 game. Tonight our beloved gungnir released pepperX to much critical praise. So go get it!

General v3 news

mcgrue — 2004-02-17T01:29:43+01:00

Vecna has publically released a roadmap of how v3's release will progress. Read about it here.

For those of you who haven't noticed, there's three games/demos already released using v3:

Timeless: vecna's v3 image tech demo (also very pretty and mesmerizing)
Zaril's salute to even older demoscene demos (it must run in his swedish blood)
Pulser, a compo game by Tatsumi, Zeromus, and Toen. It's a weird oldschool arcade game that demos the multiwin capabilities of v3. Zero promises more versions in the coming weeks... we'll see ;)

There's no docs out yet, as explained in the roadmap post. However, for the more adventurous, there's a copy of timeless with the source available. Any brave souls that make something neat with v3 without any documentation will get a forum avatar, and perhaps some other form of undisclosed recognition...

New Site Redux!

mcgrue — 2004-02-12T22:30:44+01:00

Okay! We've got a new site up that I've worked far too long on. Be wary, for it's probably not going to be pleasant for the next few days.

First off, if you already have an account and want to recover it, use the password recovery feature. Otherwise, sign up for a new account.

Second, during either of these processes, if you follow the verification link from your email and nothing happens, try logging in. It only happens some of the time, and I've never been able to replicate it.

Also, for some ineffible reason, mozilla users have a difficult (read: impossible) time using some of my forms. If those of you who are smarter than me could look at the source when this happens, and tell me how I'm an idiot in the website-issues forum, I'd be very appreciative.

Thanks to Andy and Mike Freligh for having the foresight to archive the amalgamated files of 7 years of VERGE, and thanks to Actinium for manually uploading them to the archive via the webform when my FTP kept corrupting them. Acty's spent a bunch of time putting the current files up, so the upload system's had quite a testing.

The articles section is half-functional right now... Tatsumi provided the vergesource's awesome Table of Contents and Article Display code, but I have to go through the current article selection (there are more up there, just turned 'off') and update the formatting to be compatible.

There's a lot more planned for the site, but I'll get to that later.

...

Oh yeah, there might be some things in the v3 section of the Files...

New demos, and site update news...

mcgrue — 2004-02-07T11:22:36+01:00

There's been a little bit of activity lately on the general boards. ~~Three~~ Four demos have surfaced in the last few days (all winv2):

Malzen is an intresting game with a fair amount of code behind it. Be sure to read the readme, as the control scheme is unconventional.

Rysen Ranch is a Harvest Moon clone! It looks pretty durn neat, especially if you liked Harvest Moon.

Basil has created a mouse-driven movement-based RPG engine, with a modern-day military feel. Definitly worth checking out!

Also of note is the results of Zara's alternate games competition. Although the results were close, A weird little game by Tatsumi, Zeromus, and Toen using the prototypical v3 engine took first. I'm half to blame for that...

Finally, the new website is currently in the initial testing phase. Our highly trained staff of monkeys, baboons, gorillaz, and various other simians are beating on all of the keys trying to break the site left and right, and I'm running around with the electronic version of spackle wherever a leak springs. Don't worry... there'll be a much more user friendly website very shortly!

That is all for now...

Edit: FYI, there will be a small amount of downtime for verge-rpg.com and it's hosted sites Monday morning, around 10 AM CST. We're just doing some maintenance checks in preparation for the new site -loretian Edit #2: The downtime didn't occur exactly when planned, but it was over quickly. Everything went well, the server equipment is in a good shape. Soon, ye shall see the fruits of Grue's hard labor. -lore

Grenideer Interviewed!

mcgrue — 2004-01-30T23:21:08+01:00

There's a great interview of Gren over at Just-RPG.com. Go over there and read it!

Also, as has been mentioned on the message boards, there'll be a much more user friendly version of the website coming within the next few days.

That is all.

maped2w 2.4.15

aen — 2004-01-09T19:50:11+01:00

Woops! Seems to have slipped my mind that I switched over from debug builds to release builds, and had copied a slightly older version into the 2.4.14 executable archive (as can be noted by the debugging XWIN/YWIN indicators in the upper left of the screen). Thanks to Rysen for catching this so quickly, due to a bug related to PCX importing which would crash maped. This was fixed in the release build, although during my investigation I did notice that PCX exporting (F12) was a little off as well, so that is now also fixed:

maped2w-exe-2.4.15.zip

Super Mega Ultimate Rocket Fantasy Power Update

aen — 2004-01-09T06:44:54+01:00

For those of you who haven't been following my LiveJournal, I've been brushing up maped2w in proportion to the feedback I've been getting. We've crept up to version 2.4.14 now! Here's a quick estimation of what's new since 2.4.7:

parallax multipliers of 0 allowed again
Add Tiles button in tile selector no longer crashes
paste mode indicator is now Paste Mode instead of the uninformative P
can now scroll down in the selector when importing tiles
double buffering is default render method instead of page flipping now -- dramatically sped up translucent blits (as well as normal blits on my machine, it seems)
can toggle between windowed and fullscreen mode
screenshots no longer overwrite existing screenshots
various minor visual artifacts leaving smudges and trails resolved

I've also split the distribution into two archives: executable and resource. The full explanation can be had over at my LiveJournal. For the lazy among you:

Note that the resource archive does not contain anything new since version 2.4.7.

I have no moment of zen to share with you, but I do have a riddle! What is left on the forest floor in the wake of mystical blue woodland creatures? (hint: headline) For those of you chuckling now, for shame! And furthermore, keep those bug reports coming!

It's almost like we love you guys again: maped2w updated

mcgrue — 2004-01-06T00:43:06+01:00

That's right folks, an update already. Mad props to farmerbob about the bug reports. Also new in this version is an awesome feature that was apparently undocumented for a long, long time: Full map screenshots!

That's right folks, now you have the ability to output an entire map as a .pcx file. Just hit f7 and you've got a giant image of your map. Y'all have no excuse to go make a wonderful Old-school Nintendo Power-style guide for Zeux's World now.

New Windows-native Maped2!!!

mcgrue — 2004-01-04T04:22:35+01:00

That's right... two posts in a day, and this one's got goodies for you!

For everyone that's been needing some WinXP mapediting love, and for anyone who wants some new, awesome features in maped, aen's playing a tardy santa this year.

This new maped now can run 320x240 and 640x480, has the amazing ability to flood-fill tiles into an area, flood-fill copied patterns into an area, nudge maps a tile over, nudge tiles a pixel over, prevents editing invisible layers, can finally open files in directories that the program itself isn't in, and supports page-flipping (if your video card has it). And did I mention it runs on every modern windows operating system?

I personally updated the docs, and if my comments are a bit smarmy, it's because I've been up for way too long. After I post this, I sleep.

At any rate, aen would appreciate it if you would all test it out and throw bugreports and feature reports at him. For the newest builds, and for screenshots of even more intresting maped-related items, check out his development journal.

Oh. Ya'll probably want download links, too...

(maped2w, zip compressed)
(maped2w, rar compressed)
(aen's dev journal (webpage, not compressed at all))
aen's email (email address, also uncompressed))

Oh, two last things. Drop aen an email of any bug report, or just to say thanks.

And also, there are some test maps in the distribution files. they are public domain. feel free to use them in any projects you wish! two are by me, and one is by Blue Star.

Rock on, vergers!

Okay, let me run my numbers, and...

mcgrue — 2004-01-03T21:00:55+01:00

Yeah, I thought so. From our mirror alone, Diver Down has been downloaded exactly 1939 times since being posted. And at 20 megs a pop... well, that's a lotta bandwidth! Congrats, Gren! So, why haven't we been hearing any talk about it on the boards? ;) Here's them links again:

windows

#1 verge-rpg.com (20 megs)
#2 rpgsource.net (20 megs)
#3 grenideer.com (20 megs)

DOS

#1 verge-rpg.com (20 megs)
#2 rpgsource.net (20 megs)
#3 grenideer.com (20 megs)

It's Not My Fault!

loretian — 2003-12-26T17:13:59+01:00

As you may have noticed, verge-rpg.com is/has been having some domain issuess. By the time you're reading this, those issues should be fixed. So anyway, it should be fixed soon.

Diver Down update.

mcgrue — 2003-12-04T19:08:34+01:00

Gren's uploaded a new version with less bugs. Also, he's gained a mirror. Here's your happy mirror list:

windows

#1 verge-rpg.com (20 megs)
#2 rpgsource.net (20 megs)
#3 grenideer.com (20 megs)

DOS

#1 verge-rpg.com (20 megs)
#2 rpgsource.net (20 megs)
#3 grenideer.com (20 megs)

UPDATE: Diver Down for win2k/XP

mcgrue — 2003-11-26T10:23:02+01:00

After a month of people with OSes from a millenium ago rubbing it in our modern faces, Diver Down is now available to all forms of Windows.

(linux and mac users must wait a while longer ;)

Here's your happy mirror list:

#1 verge-rpg.com (20 megs)
#2 grenideer.com (20 megs)

While you're downloading it, check out Gren's newly redesigned site.

In other news, thanks to some spiffy spam-filtering software I can once again check my verge-rpg.com email... so if you have any VERGE-related news you'd like on the main page, please tell me!

Download Diver Down!

mcgrue — 2003-11-01T04:35:21+01:00

This is currently for win95/98/ME machines only. vecna's working on making a patched version of winv2 to support the good windows OSes.

If you'd like to mirror this file, please leave a message and contact info on the msg boards, as my vrpg mail is currently... not with the good. As soon as the winv2 update is complete, we'll make a new post. Be righteous to each other, and party on. Oh, and good job, Gren!

Completed VERGE RPG: Diver Down

mcgrue — 2003-10-29T07:38:48+01:00

On Halloween, October 31st, 2003, Diver Down celebrates its 5 year anniversary in style: a full game public release for the DOS/ Win9x platforms.

Grenideer will release the game on Halloween in the v2 format. However, a winv2 version will not be immediatly available due to some greviences he has with it's compatibility. Those of us with 2k/XP will have to wait a little longer.

Look here in the next day or two for a download link and a mirror list. In the meantime, visit Diver Down's Homepage!

VergeCon 2k3 a success!

loretian — 2003-10-24T15:52:43+01:00

Just wanted to update everyone, VergeCon 2k3 occurred this past weekend and it was a huge success. Unfortunately, due to a brain disorder, I missed about half of the activities, but those activities included: drinking, going to bars, talking about and playing video games, going to movies, drinking, playing musical instruments, and drinking. It was an all-about good time. We've also learned that even the best whiskey is no match for aen's liver. The man is an alcohol-processing machine.

Unfortunately, the webcam we had hoped to use was not available.

Hopefully we'll have another VergeCon next year, to all those who weren't able to make it, starting planning in advance right now! Plan your whole schedule, your whole life around this one single event. Do it!

VergeCon 2k3

loretian — 2003-09-24T20:28:27+01:00

It's happening... again.

That's right, it's time for the (approximately) fourth annual VergeCon. On the weekend of Oct. 18th, there will be a gathering of vergers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the past, these events have been somewhat private, but this year everyone is invited!

Basically, here's the deal. If you wanna come hang out and have some fun with your fellow geek vergers, meet Hahn and other legendary figures in the community, then you should come! There is no specific date, you can arrive and leave whenever you want. Most of the fun will occur around the weekend of Oct. 18th, though. You'll have to find your own housing, but I'll supply a lot of booze. So, if you live in the Mpls area or feel like traveling that weekend, you should e-mail me! so I know you're coming and can coordinate everything with everybody and provide directions, and whatever else you need.

Verge Legends currently attending VergeCon: McGrue Hahn aen tatsumi zeromus zathras

Verge Not-Really-Legends currently attending VergeCon: loretian

To find out more information about these fine figureheads of the community, check out the contacts link on the nav bar.

Update: It was suggested that we setup a webcam and chat thingie, so those who can't travel to MN can still join in on the fun. I will definitely try to make sure this happens. I will also try to make sure at least two members of each sex flash the webcam at least once each, but no promises. As if the sight of drunken geeks wouldn't be enticing enough.

It's sure to be lots of fun, and the one thing we can guarentee:

Everyone Gets Laid

New Demo: Vortex.

mcgrue — 2003-08-02T23:03:56+01:00

Technetium, a long-time member of the community, has released a new tech demo of Vortex. The running time of this demo is over an hour of gameplay, and it has fully working menus, and a battle system.

Here's some screenshots I snapped while playing, because I love all of you:

You can download this demo from Tech's website: here. Also, when I was playing it there were a few path errors causing it to crash, so here's my cheap-ass fix. Cheers!

VERGE3 vc documentation

mcgrue — 2003-07-27T07:28:18+01:00

So, this is a bit odd. ThinIce on #verge asked me for the verge 3 documentation. I remembered that I'd made a database for praetor and vecna to put the docs in.

So, after gaining permission from vec, I wrote a display script. Here's the docs. Enjoy.

ADDENDUM: Hahn, toen, and myself are presently making a v2 game. However, I don't have time to be primary systems coder and tile artist. If you're intrested in working with us, please email Toen. If you prefer aim, his nick is 'cyateon'.

The game's unique and wrong, and we can supply a tech demo to prove it's not vaporware. Besides... I'm tired of projects that don't finish. So if you're an artist, think you could fashion 32x32 tiles in custom-vsp palettes of 220 colors, and are familiar with and enjoy the Earthbound style of art, please drop us a line!

For he's a jolly good fellow...

mcgrue — 2003-07-14T13:56:45+01:00

No word yet on any of the pending games. We'll keep you posted. As always, email me if you want a front-page shout-out. Please? ;)

But today's newspost is about one of the verge dev-teams's favorite musicians, Zathras.

See, the bloke's been making fine tunes for all of us for years, and only Zara's had the common decency to actually complete a game for him. While I'm working on some things to make this statement a lie, for now it stands true.

Recently he collected a CD's worth of musics that will be in Sully 3 in a nice little package you can get here. I believe he plans on fixin' them all up post-production and selling in the physical, non-downloadable form over at Moonfrog Records(apparently to be down for the time being), which published his and Hypno's first album last year.

So yeah, listen to the tunes whilst you wait for game-related news. You'll like it! Nobou Uematsu has nothing on Zath!

Edit: Although moonfrog might be down, I procured a link to downloads for Reverb's first album, Transmissions.

Also, anyone questioning why release the soundtrack before the game... well, Sully 1's soundtrack was publically available long before the songs even knew they were part of it! ;)

To sum up the links in a more UI-friendly way:

Look, an update!

mcgrue — 2003-06-20T15:30:09+01:00

I thought the news page looked bored, so maybe I could stir up some things. First off, if you're new and actually want to make games, try this. Strangly enough, even without any v3 for the teeming public masses, v2 manages to struggle along. There are at least three active projects I know about:

Grenideer- Diver Down: This dark RPG has been stewing for quite a while, has some sweet mangas, and promises an involved story.
RPGKing - Dragon Warrior Legend He's active, and recently produced a public tech demo. And if I'm reading this here intarweb correctly, there are non-verge ppl intrested in this. Cool. If you haven't already, download this now. Edit: Updated with newest link
Hahn, Toen, and myself are presently working on a deviant little piece of gamery. It's in winv2, 640x480, and I've rigged it up so that we can milk the 256-color palette for as much as it's worth... more to come later.
Bonus: Hahn pointed me to this, which is a circa-1999 v1 demo that was never publically released. It's short, but shows a mastery of the switch-puzzle, and goddamnit, made me all nostalgic. The cred goes to needle.

And that's it for your news. I get vauge answers frmo the dev team about v3's continuation, but if they ever decide to finish it, I'm more than ready to finish Sully 3! As always, email me if you want any news posted. Yeah, guess how often that happens. ;)

Server Moving

loretian — 2003-02-18T20:24:24+01:00

The verge-rpg.com server will be moving over the next couple of days. I don't anticipate any downtime or problems, but if you happen to have trouble accessing the site, that's probably why.

Also note, anyone hosting a website here with a domain not handled by me or under control my control (mwahaha), you will need to update your DNS information. E-mail me and I'll provide you with the necessary info.

And finally, I present the most hacked copy and paste job of pure beauty ever seen. For those about to receive, I salute you.

X-Mas Compo

Falthorn — 2002-12-15T23:41:55+01:00

Holiday Compo Next Weekend!

All game engines are welcome, so you COBOL nuts can shake it like you mean it.
Details: http://hov.verge-rpg.com/current.html

That's it!

Hope you've been nice this year.

Idling... and some pimping!

mcgrue — 2002-11-09T09:48:02+01:00

Still no advance on the verge 3 side of things. Things are looking up, however, seeing as Zero has quit school to become a full time hippie. More on this as it progresses.

In other news, verge alumnus and art bitch evilbob has been making games and trying to make it professionally. Check out the downloadable demo, and if you're a publisher, consider publishing them. I must say that the finished game has quite high production values, and is fun to play. In a word, professional

Furthermore, if you're not a publisher, but you'd like to help poor evilbob not die starving on the streets of Pheonix, you can always contract him to do work. His website contains a gallery of his works, he's an accomplished painter and 3d modeller, and every website linked here (and the one you're presently at) he's completly designed. He can make websites that don't use blue, if asked.

So, if you're intrested, give him an email. He's only got a little work on his plate right now, and we'd all like it if there was more. Yeah.

Thus concludes Grue's pimping out of bob.

verge 3. Yeah.

mcgrue — 2002-09-29T00:18:33+01:00

Okay. Lots of silence on this front, yeah? Yeah. Well, here's the skivvy, yo.

There's presently a working version of the tech demo made with a discontinued version of the v3-c# dev tree. The good news is there's a buttload of the game done (supplied by yours truly and Hahn, with mad props to Falthorn in the sprite dept.). The bad news is that we're all waiting for more engine development.

Right now we're missing all the various zone-activations (and there's going to be more options than just the old 'adjacent-or-onEnter' features, god willing...), and proper entity support. It's kinda like working with old v1 at about the 3rd from last release (but with sooo much more power), which is kinda nostalgic, but kinda annoying.

With any hope, we'll have gifts for all the faithful, and documentation/tutorials to bring new blood and hope to these here parts (and with them, 20x as many new lamers ;) but there's nothing I, or anyone else on the dev team, would be proud to release.

Here's to hoping Zeromus gets some of the happy code-juice flowing again soon! :D

And to tease you all...

vergesource

vecna — 2002-09-06T03:04:36+01:00

vergesource DNS is down because tatsumi is a worthless worm infested sack of rotting flesh who forgot to renew it. Get to it by using http://66.96.199.228 instead.

Update: Verge Source is back up at it's normal location, http://www.vergesource.com

Midsummer

Falthorn — 2002-08-09T17:13:48+01:00

I urge everyone to go check out the chaps at Flying Colours, working on a newer title called Midsummer. They've posted a great demo of a seemingly full-featured town including the ability to look at practically everything. Definitely worth your time.

Also, I was recently re-aquainted with a program called the Adventure Game Studio, which is built from the ground up to mimic Sierra and (with some tweaking) Lucasarts style adventure games. The entire package is very well rounded and easy to hop into. If you're struggling with palettes and VC, AGS might be worth a look.

Also, AGS is living proof that graphics do not make the game. ^_~

Verge-rpg.com Files

Falthorn — 2002-07-29T21:55:00+01:00

The topic of old V1 games came up recently on the boards, and curious, I took a peek at vrpg's current crop of available files and found it woefully empty. There are dozens of files waiting to be approved on the vrpg submission list, many thanks to theGerf, but unfortunately, these are all remotely linked. We cannot host remotely linked files on vrpg!

Proper protocol is to log anonymously onto ftp.verge-rpg.com and upload it there, however, that log-in is apparently inactive, so...don't. In any event, vrpg isn't intended to be a file-dump; that's what TVS is for, so if you're new, head over there and get your fix.

I went ahead and uploaded the final version of Revelation to vrpg and TVS. Some of the contents of the zip date back to '98. Yikes.

Moment of Zen: A shot of Revelation the Animated Series. (No Joke!)

WinV2 fixes

vecna — 2002-07-07T05:25:17+01:00

Minor update to winv2, this is beta 2.62. This fixes a bug with the timer that already had an unofficial fix EXE released, and also a bug causing sound to only output in 8-bit mode. Grab the full zip, or just grab the exe directly, or check out the changelog.

Also Josie Maran is a hottie plus.

Verge Compo Update

evilbob — 2002-06-18T03:04:56+01:00

The 72HOV held this weekend by Reed has finished, and the results can be viewed here. Congrats to the winners.

winv2 beta 2.6

vecna — 2002-06-16T05:35:47+01:00

I had to fix some timing stuff, so I went ahead and added a number of minor things to winv2 today to make is somewhat more developer-friendly. I wanted to get it out today, if a bit late, for anyone who might want to use it for the HoV. Grab the zip here, or check out the changelog.

Verge Compo

loretian — 2002-06-14T21:07:29+01:00

Reed/Darkstar is hosting a 72 Hours of Verge competition starting tonight at 7:00 PM EST. This Hours of Verge contest involves YOU finding a team and working really hard to make a really cool game over a 72 hour period. The resulting games will then be compared and judged and eventually, a winner will be announced. I'd suggest checking the forums here and The Verge Source Forums to find other cool mofo's looking to join a team.

For more info, check out this post.

Furthermore, due to Zaratustra not being on my ICQ contact list at work, I have decided to replace the standard Moment of Zen with an all new Epiphany of Zen - be careful though, it's a headrush (and nearly a meg to download).

Addendum Moment of Zen

Falthorn — 2002-03-12T20:50:37+01:00

I apologize on behalf of kittens and Photoshop everywhere.

verge 3.... dot net???

vecna — 2002-03-12T04:55:23+01:00

Ok, well, as a disclaimer, this all started out as a joke. Then we thought about how actually practical it might be. And then we realized that it actually works out really, really well.

In short, V3 will no longer use VC at all. It will use C# (C-sharp, if you live in a cave). Now this might be a bit confusing at first, so bear with me. To alleviate immediate concerns, you do NOT have to have the $1100 visual studio .net package or even the C# module. Microsoft has ever so kindly provided a completely freely redistributable C# compiler, which is now built into v3. And if you DO have Visual Studio .net, you will be able to use the pimp-ass debugger on your v3 C# code.

The net result of this is that V3 will allow fully object oriented coding, and all of the other language features of C#, which are considerable. Furthermore the C# compiler produces natively-compiled code that will run at full speed with no need for interpretation. Additionally, to alleviate some concerns that C# code looks too different and is in some ways sort of retarded (which it is), we are making a C# preprocessor which eliminates the need for C# code to be exceedingly verbose (which it is). The result is that the v3 scripting will look a lot like VC, with all of the power of an industrial-strength C-based language. Furthermore, while v3 provides the C# classes to do mostly everything a verge game needs to do, you have access to the entire range of .NET api classes, making the possibilities here pretty much limitless.

The only caveat is... all systems that want to run v3 will have to have the .NET components installed. This is similar to a JRE for java or something.. and unfortunately, it is 20 megs. But, Microsoft being the enormous force that it is, we're pretty confident that, like DirectX, everyone will simply have it after a little bit. For those with slow modems, you can start downloading it here, and hopefully it will finish by the time v3 comes out. ^_^ And the other caveat is, the change has set back v3 development about 2 weeks. Still, we feel that the advantages far outweight the costs... once the .net components are installed, the requirements for v3 will be even less since the scripting will be natively compiled.

As an added bonus, this alleviates many of the advantages that ika and sphere used to have >:D while still maintaining a C-style, simple scripting system. And believe me when I say that were are going to great lengths to ensure that the scripting is still as simple as possible. So in conclusion.. here are some links you should go to!

www.verge-net.com
Shlock's V3 FAQ (not yet updated with this stuff)

Third time's a charm: Announcing verge3

vecna — 2002-02-04T04:06:28+01:00

Yep, some of you have probably seen this coming, and we're making it official. While there may be some ongoing bugfix releases of WinV2, we've thrown all of our weight behind v3.

This is a little bit different than when we announced V2, and I want to make this clear. We have been working on v3 since before we even started working on Winv2, well before we actually released winv2. V3 is, right now, pretty close to completion. I would estimate the release is maybe 2-3 months off still, and this is of course a slightly optimistic estimate, because we want to put the polish into it's release that V2 never had. We originally wanted to wait until v3 was complete to announce it to avoid the whole hype/vaporware/blah issues, but we felt that letting the community know what was going on outweighed the surprise factor of waiting till it was complete.

I don't really want to get into a feature list of v3 right now. The main purpose of announcing v3 is simply to let people know why Winv2 releases have been spaced out and not a whole lot to them, and to allow us to discuss potential technologies we're considering on the boards and answer questions. I will continue to devote what energy towards winv2 is needed to allow the big V2 projects that are finishing up lately to be released, but all of the Big Features that Winv2 was going to get have gone into v3 instead.

The v3 dev team has basically been divided into myself (vecna) coding the engine, zeromus coding maped3, and Praetor coding vcc3. This has worked out extremely well so far and everyone that has seen v3 has been extremely pleased with how things are turning out. V3 is essentially, structurally, very similar to V2. It is not a huge change like V2 was from V1. It's more like V2 done right. It is completely hicolor, there is no 8bit/indexed color support. Maped3 is a windows native program (and really freakin' kickass), and vcc3 is an embeddable module that can be easily linked into maped, the engine, or any IDE type utility that someone might eventually wish to develop. Similar to maped2, maped3 will load V2 or v3 maps but only save v3 maps and vsps.

VCC3 is basically complete although stresstesting and new features/tweaks are an ongoing process. VC3 has several new language features: structs and multidimensional arrays are working right now, and there's more, but we don't want to play all our cards just yet. :)

Another issue that always plagued V2 was lack of decent documentation. For Verge3 we've developed a db/web driven VC documentation engine that, similar to other scripting systems out there such as php, allows users to post comments about specific functions to help others out with tips and pitfalls they've found. And to add to tatsumi's constant downward spiral of pain that is his sad excuse for a life, we made it his job to write the initial volley of VC docs. He's also working on some vc libraries to be available at launch.

In short, V3 is v2 with brand new, kickass, windows-friendly devtools, a completely re-engineered VC API that makes a lot more sense, is more uniform, has more cool stuff, and is (theoretically) completely resistant to VC user-error making verge crash horribly making us spend hours figuring out if it's a VERGE bug or a bug in the author's VC code. Oh, and V3 WILL have a pack-in game at launch. Probably more than one.

Well, that's it for now. We'll be happy to answer any questions on the discussion boards, so feel free to flame away. ;) Also be sure to check out vergesource for other v3 information and updates!

Yet another winv2 release

vecna — 2002-01-12T06:49:15+01:00

Yup yup, WinV2 beta 2.5 can be gotten here, and you can check out the changelog. This is a pretty small update, the main thing is I wanted to fix the HookTimer() that was broken in the 2.4 beta, a few other small fixes, and one kinda useful addition: any VC-related error message will now be accompanied by a VC stack trace. So if you get an arraycheck violation or something, you will now instantly be told where that violation is coming from. I was originally hoping to take this farther, but didn't want to hold up getting the hooktimer thing fixed.

I would like to point out that my Big List of Crap for winv2 is basically empty now. So if there's still some bug or thing from old v2 that you really are waiting to be added to winv2, you need to email me and bug me about it! Specifically, I mean that my list in terms of bugs and stuff that needs to be brought back from dos v2 seems to be empty. There are a few other floating bugs out there that I either can't substantiate or I dont have enough information about; someone told me that arraycheck for instance doesnt work right, but I've tested it and wasn't able to make it break. For the bigger grander things like 'hicolor support', thats sort of all going into the big pile where we break v2 compatibility.

Oh, and uh. Check out the Verge Olympics site or something. ;D

WinV2 beta 2.4 released

vecna — 2001-12-21T21:36:55+01:00

After a bit of a delay while I finished up this last semester, a new version of WinV2 is out. You can download it here and check out the changelog here.

As with the other betas, this one is basically bugfixes and stuff. I am particularly interested to know if anyone has any problems with the new timing system including things like sound popping or crash-at-exit or anything of that nature. So, as always, please report any bugs you find! I was sort of waiting for a few feedback reports, but decided to go ahead and release this now, but there may be another followup release shortly.

I also want to point out that although these winv2 beta releases have essentially been bugfixes to improve V2 compatibility and overall stability, we have been working on some new features. They will however be a pretty major update that will break compatibility with existing v2 stuff, so in the mean time we're continuing to try to improve and refine winv2.

Oh, and my Zeux World 1.W score is now 110.81%. To give you an idea of how boring christmas break can be. ;)

Phage 5.0 released

loretian — 2001-12-10T02:15:06+01:00

Phage is a classic V1 RPG. It has a battle system and all and is very good, but it's a V1 game and has V1 bugs. Phage 5.0 has been released. Win2000 people can run it with neoverge.

And now, here is your delicious moment of zen:

The Verge Olympics

loretian — 2001-11-28T05:52:13+01:00

Server Update:

You may have had trouble accessing verge-rpg.com over the past few days. We've had some hardware flakiness. We will be swapping our hardware to determine the problem so there will probably be additional downtime over the next few days. Sorry about the trouble, and thanks for your continued support.

And now, here's the word from Praetor on tVO:

The Verge Olympics, you've heard the hype, you've seen the debates. Here's what's up as of this post:

The Verge Olympics are going to be held. They will run from Jan 2nd thru Jan 15th and will be split up into several "events." The main event will be a 336 HoV contest (that's 14 days) and will serve as the backbone of the contest. Anything goes. Unlimited team size, no size limits. The only restriction is that it must conform to the theme.

And for those without that much ambition, there'll be events similar to last year's competition featuring (providing there is enough interest) contests in music, art (both pixelate and non-pixelate), and code. Each sub-contest will consist of two rounds and the person with the most points at the end wins.

As a final note, all voting will be public. Naturally, you'll not be able to vote for the event in which you participate, but you are encouraged to vote in all of the other events.

And once again, here is your moment of zen:

WinV2 beta2.1, and new Zeux for WinV2 baby!

vecna — 2001-11-08T23:06:09+01:00

I've released WinV2 Beta 2.1 which just contains a small couple of fixes, as we move on to work on future-oriented versions of Verge. You can check out the changelog here. As always, continue to report any bugs you find!

Secondly, Zaratustra has released the long-awaited winv2-compatible and slightly updated version of Zeux and also an updated Robobo, his last HoV creation. Woot!

WinV2 beta2, and stuff

vecna — 2001-11-05T07:00:40+01:00

Ok. A bit late, here's WinV2 Beta2. This has numerous fixes, as you can see from the changelog, as well as some slight new features. The main one of interest to V2 VC coders is the addition of an array range checking option to help debug funky VC errors.

We were originally planning to simultaneously release this with a winv2 build of zeux, but some last minute problems cropped up (inspiring the array checking feature ^_^) and I didn't want to hold back the beta2 release anymore, so instead I'll just point out that zara recently released Winv2 Pac-Shark and evilbob also released a fixed up version of his HoV game, Max&Dax.

As always, please report any bugs you encounter to me; it's the only way Verge can continue to improve!

Update via loretian: Iscarabraid over at rpg2knet has put together a couple of articles on getting started with verge. Check them out at rpg2knet.com

WinV2.0 beta1 released, The Verge Source returns!

vecna — 2001-10-22T06:08:37+01:00

Well, folks, here it is, the first beta of WinV2. Download it here, and also check out Zaratustra's re-release of 4Four packaged with WinV2. Short version is: WinV2.0 is rewritten from scratch, NOT a port of existing V2 code to Windows; includes joystick/gamepad support, optional 2xSAI graphics filters, and drastically increased stability. This is the first release of the V2.5-compatible version; there will be two main versions of WinV2, one aimed at being as compatible as possible with existing V2 games (ok, admittedly, mainly Zara's games: This whole project was basically to let me play Zeux in Windows 2000 with less suckage), and another one aimed for future V2 games that will fix up lots of stupid things about V2, add new features, and break compatibility. More information is available in the readme.

My understanding is that Zara is working on re-releasing most of his other games with WinV2; I believe that SnakeSnake will work directly with WinV2; Zeux needs slight modifications, so a new version will be released shortly.

I'd like to admit upfront that this release is a bit under-cooked. That's why it's beta1. I intend to release updates very frequently, every week or so most likely. The VCC and maped included in the zip are just straight out of v2k+j. This may be replaced with windows-friendly versions in the near future, but I make no promises. Just an engine isn't that hard to do, but since it is a total rewrite, there are inevitably lots of things that aren't finished that I frankly forgot about. Lastly, I'd like to welcome The Verge Source back into the VERGE Community. tatsumi has re-opened his site, with a major facelift thanks to evilbob. Check it out.

Coming soon...

vecna — 2001-10-09T06:30:24+01:00

VO Donations (part deux)

loretian — 2001-09-21T23:35:53+01:00

First of all, I'd like to say thanks to everyone who has offered to contribute or donate so far. I have been truly overwhelmed by the generosity of everyone who's donated so far.

In addition, Nevermore Games is running a sale on their games, and a portion of the proceeds will go to help fund our new server. The games don't cost much and are a blast to play, so everyone should take a peek.

A couple of other things too: First, if you plan on mailing any kind of money, please send me an e-mail letting me know. Also be sure to include your e-mail with any checks sent so I can confirm with you that I received the money. For the time being, please do not send any hardware, just e-mail me with information about the hardware, so I can determine if it's needed and can be used. Also, some people have expressed concern over what will happen to their donations should Verge Online not be completed. Let me just state right now that Verge Online is already fairly far along in the development (although there's still lots to do), and if worst comes to worst and we cannot continue development for whatever reason, we'll release whatever we have now, which is completely playable. Additionally, I will document and release to each donater how their money or hardware was used.

E-mail me with questions, and once again thanks to everyone who's donated so far.

Update (9/26):If you donate any money via the the Amazon Honor System on the left, please e-mail me stating that you have done so and the amount. This includes those that have already donated (via the amazon honor system). Unfortunately Amazon doesn't provide me with information of who donated, so if I don't receive your info, I won't know who you are. Thanks!

Now, here it is, your moment of zen:

VO Donations

loretian — 2001-09-13T05:33:01+01:00

In the last news update vecna put out a notice about how we need artist and others to help out with Verge Online's development. It's not enough, though. We have a new request for you.

That's right, we're asking for your money. At least, I'm asking for your money.

Here's the situation: Since about two years ago I've been running the verge-rpg.com server out of my own pocket. I purchased the hardware for the server and have spent to money to keep it online with I'd say a 99.999% (except for that incident a year and a half back... erm) uptime record, and it's been mostly ad free. Now the verge-rpg.com server is host to a fair number of other sites, some of which pull just about as much traffic as www.verge-rpg.com does.

Now with the development of Verge Online, we need a server to develop, and eventually deploy on. All the development thus far has been done directly on the verge-rpg.com webserver, which generally is not considered a wise thing, although we've had no choice up to this point. I would like to setup a 733 Mhz + server, with a 20 G Ultra160 Hard Disk and 512 megs of ram (at least :). Unfortunately, I don't have the cash on hand to be able to purchase all this. We've never really asked anything of the verge community before, and I hope we won't need to again, but at this point it's really necessary. If you could help out, by either donating computer equipment or money, all of us here would be greatly appreciative. Also, the top five donaters will be given free webspace on verge-rpg.com's servers including a subdomain (under any of the domains verge-rpg.com host, such as http://yourname.midgetrebellion.com), and the top donater will be given their own domain registered for two years (ie, http://www.yourname.com). Everyone will be heartily thanked and mentioned here for helping out.

If you can help out, please send any money or computer parts to:
Joe Osburn<- That's me!
609 12th Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
And please, no mail bombs.

E-mail me with questions and comments.

And now, here it is, Brazilian humor:

Verge Online

vecna — 2001-09-01T18:49:11+01:00

I posted on the discussion boards about two weeks ago that Verge Online was under development again, and hopefully we'd shortly be ready to do something with it. Well, that time has come, we have developed the core technology to the point where we need to recruit an official development team. I think we've pretty well got the code under control, but we are looking for artists, mappers, musicians and others. If you're interested, please email me at vecna@verge-rpg.com. Please include what your skillset includes, what you're most interested in doing, and ideally a few samples of your work. Feel free to email me even if you just have some questions.

We've already done tests with as many people as we could scrounge up to get on VO to test the servers and we've had like 8 people running around the screen at once, and the movement was quite smooth, even with Zara and his stupid Brazilian dialup connection. Primarily right now we need to develop tilesets, maps, and CHR paper doll components, but we'll need everything else eventually too. So, if you want to help out with VO, drop me a line!

HoV and V2.7 Update

loretian — 2001-08-13T03:05:02+01:00

The latest HoV is nearly over! Go check it out at the website here and all those submitting should remember to get their entries in by 6 PM PST Monday.

In other news, The_Speed_Bump updated the V2.7 reference docs, available here.

And now, here it is, your moment of zen (c) Comedy Central...

Diver Down and haha

loretian — 2001-08-10T19:44:35+01:00

grenideer has made an update to his Diver Down website, at http://www.geocities.com/timessquare/8895/devjournal.html including a screen shot for this upcoming game. For those who haven't heard of it, Diver Down is one of the older verge games that's still being worked on, and makes use of the Purge VC kit.

And now, here it is, your moment of irony...

New HOV Contest

loretian — 2001-08-09T14:52:01+01:00

I noticed Ear posted this on the boards and thought this should be news:

A new HoV is being held this Friday.

This contest will last 72 hours and will run from August 10th, 6 PM EST to August 13th, 6 PM EST.

The current rules are as follows:

Your team must consist of no more than four members.

All components used in the game must be original and may not be created before the time of the contest. This includes, but is not limited to source code, graphics and story. The only exception to this is music, which does not need to be original.

Your game must adhere to the theme given to you.

Your game must be turned in on time.

You may use any version of VERGE available. This includes V1, V2, V2.7 and their variants.

The HoV coordinator, Jeff, can be contacted at frogmanjeff_2@yahoo.com or through ICQ at #123389070, or preferably at #HoV on esper.net. The entries must be sent to the coordinator via one of the mediums. You must also register your team before the time of the contest.

Good luck.

Files and stuff...

Gayo — 2001-07-15T23:05:45+01:00

Alright, seeing as how we're on our own now, feel free to upload files to verge-rpg's server and submit them as files for download. We're looking for demos and code systems for now. Bring me files, for I am hungry.

The Verge Source retires

Falthorn — 2001-07-01T07:11:42+01:00

Tatsumi Oreo today has finally decided to call it quits with The Verge Source. The final moments of the site were given the ole' in out, in out by a few rampaging admins, so it's been been laid to rest a bit prematurely. Plans are in the works to replace the void TVS has left in its absence, so with that said...

A small little blurb

Gayo — 2001-06-20T21:07:37+01:00

Just updating to say that the Verge Source has finally risen out of the black seas long enough to expose it's soft underbelly to the world. Be gentle with it now, we don't want it going away again.

Fight, Megaman, for everlasting peace

Vortex, Pong, and Sock Monkey!

Falthorn — 2001-06-08T05:29:37+01:00

Technetium released a new version of Vortex, a chill RPG with a really well fleshed out FF3 Battle and spiffy menus. According to the man, Ash, Come Get Some.

Bumpy released a Python version of an engine called VERGE, including a version of Pong, almost 96% certain to force you into a stifling world of blindness! To read his comments on the new release, skip to his post on the boards (He'll post here when he's able) or just download the fashizzle, bizzle. Python21.dll. Also, be sure to set Windows to 32-bit color mode, or there'll be no Christmas for the children.

Zara would like to mention the goodness of Maakies, including but not limited to Sock Monkeys!

As an addendum, Zara also wishes for GMW to make a lot of PHAGE. (I like beavers, too!)

The Verge Source will be back...you know...sometime whenever.

New Fortune Saga Demo

Falthorn — 2001-06-04T21:57:07+01:00

The cats over at the Fortune Saga camp have released a demo of the nifty Fortune Saga. Reminiscent of the unpretentious V1 releases, FS shows off some excellent code (source included) including a character renaming structure, battle system (kinda like Parasite Eve), and an FF style menu system.
So make with the clicking already.

And now, for your moment of faux zen!

Verge Online...not really

Help cure cancer!

vecna — 2001-05-22T23:53:10+01:00
Or just to feel trendy in getting in on the latest distributed-computing craze. Intel/United Devices have joined the distributed computing arena, and in my humble opinion, have done a much better job of it than SETI@home, distributed.net, folding@home, etc. The current UD project models potential drug interactions to help find a cure to cancer. Plus it makes perdy graphics that make you look smart. So run over to Intel's UD page to download the client and then join the VERGE team.

To allay a few people's fears, I've used a lot of other distributed computing clients but this is the only one I've stuck with because the client is just that much better. It minimizes to a system tray icon and runs in low priority, so it only uses cpu cycles that would have otherwise gone to your System Idle Process, which for most people consumes 99% of their resources most of the time. Its so convenient I don't even bother disabling it when I run games or burn CDs, and I never notice any performance hit at all.

And now, here it is, your moment of zen:

Short n' sweet

the_speed_bump — 2001-05-20T03:39:19+01:00
v2.7 beta 9 has been released. Additions include file i/o, camera manipulation, and general fun for all ages.

48 HoV Results

evilbob — 2001-05-14T20:30:03+01:00
Well, the 48HoV was a success. No less than 11 teams signed up for the competition, including 25 contestants.

However, only 5 entries were submitted. One team (grue/falth/aen/zathras) couldn't submit due to connection problems, and the rest are presumed to have dropped out. Choris is apparently still going to allow them to turn their entry in late without penalty, but if you want to see the non-final-result results, the ranking and specific score breakdown of each entry can be found here, and the demos themselves can be found here.

Congrats to the (current) winners, and hats off to all who entered.

And on a related note, the Verge Source is down once again, this time for the rest of the month, due to misuse and bandwidth hogging from Firemoth. I am told that he is to be lynched on sight. A few demos (AHEM) couldn't be completed for the contest, as certain resources from certain sites couldn't be downloaded.

I was scolded for not posting a zen picture. Here you go.

48 HoV underway!

mcgrue — 2001-05-12T21:51:13+01:00
For those that don't know, There's currently a 48 Hours of VERGE contest underway, hosted by choris-lypi . The homepage may be seen here
For those of you new to the community, a HoV Contest is very simple. You join up in a team, and make a game from scratch within the time limit. You are usually provided a topic or theme that your game must include. 48 Hours tends to be the minimum length, and so far, I believe, the longest has been a 10-day contest.
We'll post the entries here as soon as we get them at the contest's end Sunday Night (11 EST), and the results as soon as they're in.

And now, your moment of Zen:

Beta 7!

the_speed_bump — 2001-04-22T21:46:03+01:00
v2.7 hath reached the plateau known only as "beta 7".
An exhaustive list of changes can be found here.
It's still far from complete, but v2.7 has reached the stage where it's actually possible to do things. So, let's see what you can do. ;)
(almost completely accurate documentation can be found here, as usual)

[note: 4/24] The Verge Source seems to be back up!

Guten tag

evilbob — 2001-04-20T22:42:54+01:00
Grue's home computer is having problems or something, and he doesn't have his site password at work, so he can't update. But he still loves you.

Site Issues

For the longest time, there have been a handful of problematic quirks in the vrpg scripts that soulbain and lore have yet to work out. I've been hoping these would be fixed, and I've pointed most of them out several times, but nothing's really been done about it. Grue might (emphasis on "might") help fix the site up the rest of the way if/when he has more free time. But that's about all the interest I've been able to dig up in repairing the site. Now don't you just feel special?

The problems I've noticed to date are: if you submit a file, you have to prefix the url with "http://" or else it craps up. The problem with the tables in the files area (the description cell width particularly) was fixed in the xmas layout, but nobody's taken care of it in this one. There are also a few quirks in the message boards (namely the nested "re:"s) that need to be ironed out. If I can get anyone to work on the bleeding site, I'll also see if I can do away with the fixed-width, and perhaps employ a slightly larger font or two. If you think of anything else that needs to be done, mail me.

Verge Source Downtime

Coincidentally, the Verge Source server is going through some sort of change and is currently down. "I'm -hoping- it will all be back in order by tuesday or wednesday," sayeth tatsumi.

Look! Birthdays!

Today (April 20): zathras!
April 23 : tatsumi!
May 5 : vecna! (also my older brother's birthday, but like you care)

Repent, Ye sinners...

mcgrue — 2001-04-15T01:11:13+01:00
The current working version of verge, v2.7 b6.1, is currently available here. I mirrored it in my own dir because of the deluges of broken links that appear in the community whenever speedy makes a midnight update to his filesystem, but not to this main page thingy here ;)
The documentation, a key part of the whole 'dev' process, can be found 'here'.
Yes. Semi-regular updates on verge's core site. It's either 1998 again, or the End Days are Nigh.
If you have any news/comments/suggestions, as always, filfre to email me.

New Demos!

mcgrue — 2001-04-08T16:01:08+01:00
There've been a few new demos using v2 released recently...
Firstly, rpgking has released his first version of Dragon Warrior Legends. Click here to go to his website. You can get the demo from his 'downloads' page. It's a fairly good-sized demo that actually feels like a Dragon Warrior game, and incudes a battle system (which kicked my arse upon fighting...). Anyone have any idea how to equip weapons/armor, tho? ^^;

Secondly, The Questing was recently released by Zaril. Click here to go to his webpage. The download link is at the bottom of the page. Make sure to get the patch and use the 'Fast Talk' feature, lest the slow speaking wear you down.

That is all for now.

Is there anybody out there? (and a new engine beta, too!)

mcgrue — 2001-03-30T10:37:55+01:00
Just two things in this update:
1) There is a slightly altered version of maped available. This version will not remove the $$BACKUP.MAP and $$BACKUP.VSP files that are saved every 5 minutes when you exit. I have no idea why whomever put that in made them get deleted. They serve almost no purpose except crash-recovery if they're deleted.
2) Is anyone out there active? I don't believe I've seen anything new in a while. A shame, really, and not at all helped by the lack of maintainance to this site, I believe. If you have any news items to submit, always feel free to email me and I'll try and post your news bit immediatly.
I just noticed that there's a lacking 'submit news' link to the left. We'll have to remedy that. Forgive me for being slow, though... I'm American.
That is all for now.
Okay, I lied. I have just been informed that thers more unreported news. the_speed_bump, who's currently the lead active engine coder, has told me that there's a beta version of verge2.7. Download this beta engine here.. Remember that this is a beta release, and so may have bugs in it. If you find any, send your bug reports to Speedy!
Also released is WinMaped. This is a windows version of MapEd. If you have any problems with it, tell Speedy. If you want any features, Tell me. If you have any general comments about it, tell me as well.
That is all for now. I mean it this time.

Heh, we're not dead

Gayo — 2001-02-14T01:11:56+01:00
Alright, just thought I'd update saying we're back up (not that you couldn't tell by the fact hat you're here). Verge-rpg.com was having some slight DNS problems, preventing people from getting here. Or anywhere else on the site, except for the hosted domains. All is good now, though. Enjoy.

Yeah! More stuff!

the_speed_bump — 2000-12-30T07:05:51+01:00
Yeah! Um... the title pretty much says it all.
v2.6 has been updated yet again, with some fixes and other general coolness, *cough*PNGsupport*cough* so you should, like, download it, or something. It's also been optimized a bit for you poor people with crappy computers. About a %10 improvement in speed, overall.
WinMapEd has been updated to version 0.999 now, and it has a tile editor! Intuitive Helper Things� yet to come!
And don't forget! A bird in hand is safer than one overhead!

verge 2.6 updates

zeromus — 2000-12-14T03:12:29+01:00
the_Speed_Bump has released an updated verge2.6/windows! Go look in verge2 engine files! Radness.

Hey! Congratulations to everyone who's finished their semester final exams, and good luck to those who haven't! Have a nice Christmas, and throw some change in the Salvation Army bucket at Wal-Mart. You know you want to.

ho ho ho! *hic*

Look! There's files!

mcgrue — 2000-12-12T14:08:18+01:00
Well, my plea on the message boards has had some of it's desired effect, but we can all do better. I'm sure ya'll've noticed the marked absence of files from the verge¹ and verge² sections of the site, and we need you, that's right, you, to help us fill them!
What shall I submit, you ask? Any demo made with verge¹ or verge². That's it. It need not be made by you. The only requirement for submission is that it not be on the site currently.
How do I submit, you ask? Well... you should see in the menu bar to your left that under each of the two engine's sections there's a link to the 'submit' page. Click on it! From there on out, it's as easy as making a post on the message board. Note that you may want to login anonymously to verge-rpg.com's FTP^* and upload the demo, but it can be linked to an external site. This is frowned upon, as local copies are 100% reliable, but such is life.
Now... Submit to my will by submitting files! Mwahahahaha!
Right. And in other news, VERGE 2.6 continues to exist. Remember to report any and all bugs to The_speed_bump. I know I have ;)
Well... in fairness to speedy, it was all due to my ancient and sucky videocard.
Anyways, in the dubiously established tradition here, I shall present you with your moment of zen:

we have discovered something remarkable about this young man.

^*Using an FTP client, log into
www.verge-rpg.com
using port 21. You should be brought to a public upload directory. Go nuts.

Surprise! It's winverge2!

zeromus — 2000-12-09T08:15:50+01:00
Welcome to the special Chrismas Update of verge-rpg.com! In compliance with standard Christmas traditions, we have some stocking stuffer for you: the_Speed_Bump has released his first version of winverge2!!! Head over to the verge2 engine files download area to check it out! Also, in keeping with the Christmas spirit of giving, he has released the source code.

Anyway, try it out! According to the author, bugs are being actively sought and squashed "with a hammer." Send your bugs to the_Speed_Bump for immediate extermination.

Also, many thanks to evilbob for the christmas motif radness (note from bob: you may have to refresh or clear your cache to see everything correctly), and loretian for causing it to actually show up. Enjoy.

(imagine our surprise when we received this in an anonymous email from Microsoft r&d. maybe this is why Windows is so slow.)

Website Updates

loretian — 2000-11-30T22:43:11+01:00
A couple of quick items to update with.

First, Kisha let me know that The Artists Shrine Web Site has been updated. New members, new art, and tutorials have been added, among other things. Go check it out! Also, I updated the Hosted Sites with Fortune Saga -- Online, a verge game site hosted on verge-rpg.com.

Sorry, no funny/witty image this time.

witty image provided free of charge by the wizards at IL&M. wow!

verge2 game SnakeSnake released!

zeromus — 2000-11-26T04:55:30+01:00
Top Stories:
Zaratustra has released a brand new complete verge2 game called SnakeSnake! Nose around on his website to download it. Be sure to download both files--snake2.zip is necessary to ensure that the latest version of verge.exe is used.

(zeromus wins presidency on hand recount)

New VCC beta with struct support

vecna — 2000-11-15T05:11:54+01:00
Praetor has just released vcc 2.5 beta 7 which includes struct support! He released it over at The Verge Source, and you can get it here. Praetor forewarns us that it is a beta and has shoddy docs and whatnot, but if you're eager to try out vcc with structure support, give it a go and feel free to send him bug reports!

I'm fully intending to update the Files section with our old files archives, just that I have approximately 80 billion school projects due by the end of this week, so it'll have to wait a bit longer. ^_~ Keep the faith!

Now, here it is, your moment of zen:

(courtesy of someone else)

Something New

loretian — 2000-11-09T02:00:00+01:00
Something look a little different to you? Yep, that's right, we finally put the new site up. It's still somewhat in beta test mode, so if you find any bugs, errors, or problems, please e-mail them to me! In return, for each bug e-mailed to me, I'll send some e-love! Also, we are still in the process of entering all files, docs, tutorials, articles, etc into the database. Don't be surprised if you look for something and it's not there. The site will continue to be updated over the next few days so keep checking back.

Before we get on with things, I'd like to thank several people, without whom this new website would never have happened. First and foremost, major thanks to evilbob. His awesome design and continual effort to update and improve verge-rpg.com is one of momentus claim, defying those who said it would never happen. He rocks! Secondly, SoulBain also deserves much gratitude. Were it not for his taking the initiative and actually coding much of the website, the site would probably have never been finished. He deserves my undieing gratitude and yours (unless of course you like the old site a lot more). McGrue has done major work as well, filling the site with content and sarcastic FAQ questions. ;) Seriously though, McGrue is the html man and document god! Finally, we should probably all thank vecna for doing his part for the community too (I mean besides making verge). He too helped content stuff the site. Oh, and you can also thank me for cordinating the effort! Buy me a pizza if you run into me! :D

To take advantage of our many new features, the first thing you'll want to do is create an account on the system. Once you've logged in you can use features such as the message board and file submission page. Right now, there is no limit on the number of messages that can be posted per user on the message boards per day. Now, it's been a long time since we've actually have message boards on verge-rpg.com and you old-timers probably remember what they were like. Lets keep the bad juju to a minimum and the good groove...well, good groove is good. Ya dig?

Along with the new verge-rpg.com, I've setup the verge mailing list again. Right now there is only one, but depending on how busy it gets, I may break it into two or three. To subscribe, e-mail verge-request@verge-rpg.com with the body of the message simply saying "subscribe". To post to the list, send e-mails to verge@verge-rpg.com

Have you heard of CHASMS? Want to know what vecna's been up to? Think Clinton is the only guy who's indecent? Check out this site.

Also worth noting is the upcoming Verge Expo, which will be taking place in late November / early December. I'm not sure how much of it's supposed to be secret, but let's just say arias has a lot of cool, exclusive things planned. If you'd like to get your verge product or game included in the expo, e-mail arias_85@hotmail.com so he can get screenshots, artwork, music and other stuff to show off for your game. It's like advertising for your game. For free!

So, that's it. Hope it was worth the wait. We were only a year or so late. Remember, e-mail me with any bugs, problems, comments, or complaints you may have or find! Be cool, stay in school, or dropout.

Wow, a month (or two) already? Well, I've got good reason, or not.

loretian — 2000-10-05T08:30:00+01:00

In case you haven't heard, VergeMUD is back in production and running smoothly. Beta testing should begin shortly, and we are anticipating a tentative public release of Mid-November. Praetor and his DevTeam (read: slaves) are heading up the project and making sure the mud is darn cool, as well as meeting and exceeding (yay!) expectations. More on that soon.
I'd also like to mention Arek's Verge-Net which was recently given a makeover. Not only is it updated a bit more often than verge-rpg.com (but we try so hard!), there's also a message board and a full user system. Hey! There's even a comments section for the news updates... now why don't we do that?
The Speed Bump has released a new version of WinMapEd. For those of you who can't guess what this program is by the name, it is a version of MapEd for Windows. The Speed Bump also released his own very special version of Verge2 a short while back, which includes hicolor support. Perhaps you'd better visit his site for the real smack.
In other news, we've determined that the masses are idiots and evilbob smells funny. In related news, in the recent Al Gore and George W. Bush debate, the topic of two controversial websites came up: SolidSharkey.com and Falthorn.com.
Praetor is also running the Verge Olympiad. For those of you that don't know, the Verge Olympiad will be broadcast on NBC starting Friday, the 13th. zeromus will be doing commentary, with Zathras producing the musical score and McGrue making up several heartwarming and heartbreaking stories. The Olympiad will consist of four events, each with a minium of 6 contestants. Winners of these events will form a team of some sort. The Verge Olympiad is open to all persons, including non-Vergers. That's right, encourage your best friend and your mom to join in!
Finally, I recently spoke with aen about his status on Verge2000 and he showed me the contents of his soul (well not quite). aen strongly regrets not being able to work on V2K nearly as much as he'd like to right now. He even gets a little ruffled thinking about it, so he tries not to. aen has put a lot of hard work into V2 (among others) and I know he will continue to do so when he has more time, so I'd like to thank aen for all his hard work and respectfully request that you all do the same.
So, in conclusion, I'd like to reiterate my anti-drug stance. Don't do drugs, brother. And Pink Floyd is good. So are news updates. E-mail me with your own news if you'd like to see more.
Hail to the King, baby.

wow, a month already? well. we've got good reason. I guess.

evilbob — 2000-08-14T22:15:00+01:00

firstly, an explanation:
a little over a month ago, right in the middle of your standard vecna/zeromus debate concering whether or not midgets on welfare are entitled to government protection from swarms of diabetic locusts, the long-lost loretian suddenly popped up in the dev hangout, explaining that he'd been living in the hollowed out belly of a whale for the past year, surviving by chewing slowly on the exposed mammalian bone marrow. or, he'd just been working 90 hours a week at IE...I forget which.
at any rate, it looked as if lore had much more of the laudable Free Time on his hands, and had decided to spend some of his newfound chronological wealth on vrpg itself. we wet ourselves collectively. lore deleted zeromus's update scripts, so that he might code new ones, and script up ~all~ of vrpg, not just news/files/contacts. it was like the berlin wall coming down all over again.
the next day, loretian vanished. apparently the undead carcass of the whale had returned for revenge, or something. for whatever reason, he was gone, and we were without update scripts. we spent the next day or two crying, waiting patiently for him to pop back up online, but it wasn't happening. mcgrue, who had been away for a few days, returned, and upon having the situation explained to him, grue swore that he'd not only script up all of vrpg himself, but he promised to do a few other things people have been asking for quite a bit. the condition, however, is that he wanted a new non-frames design, which we have more or less finished. however, grue's got quite a bit of scripting left to do, so don't get too excited just yet.
secondly, an instruction:
now. without update scripts, the only way to do it is by hand, and let me tell you, it's not too fun going through php-warped html. so, until the new stuff is up, just send mail to either me or zeromus, and one of us will update.
thirdly, an oath:
As soon as the new design is finished, the final design will also be finished. I'm not touching this thing for at bare minimum another year. unless vecna cries.
fourthly, the belated news:
(1) the verge source is finally up. it hurts my eyes after a few minutes, but before the high contrast design and scrunched up file descriptions raped me of my precious sense of sight, it looked like there was already a fairly decent wealth of assorted stuff to file through. turn down the contrast on your monitor and check it out.
(2) I finally saw blair witch project. if I had seen it when it was released, I might have labeled it the most compelling comedy of the year.
(3) celas, tatsumi and some other people held a 96 Hours of Verge contest, which had a pretty good turnout. they then decided not to release the results.
(4) um...well. I guess that's it.
finally, the end:
it was supposed to be a fun summer, a summer to get things done, a summer to see lots of goodies. for nearly everyone I know, it was a pretty shitty summer. too much work, not enough time, and assorted bad things happening. new responsibilities popping up, and a few mishaps. now the semester's starting back up, everyone's heading back to college, everyone's glad the summer's over.
but don't be sad. the bad part's almost over. vrpg will no longer be delapidated, and we'll all update a bunch more. we were starting to pick up steam again until this little spurt here. there are more good things on the horizon as well. winverge1, which needs only sound support. winverge2, which is only missing a few things as well.
P.S. a reminder or two:
wow, that's a big update. anyway, once again, a reminder or two. mail me or zeromus if you want to request an update. or, catch us on irc. we'll all probably be hanging around a lot more again, starting sometime over the next couple of weeks. and until we've got the time to finish fixing what was so easily fubar'd, you may want to bookmark the good folks at the verge source.