Anyway, I just got back from a college visit day up at SDSU, and I had a blast! The beginning sucked, basically 2 hours of learning what everyone knows about college life and the basics of what was already given to you in the hundreds of packets they've sent us. Anyway, after that, everyone seperated and went to meet the head of the individual department that they were interested in joining. Anyway, after a brief introduction with the head of the CS department head, he leans under his desk, and pulls out a stack of C++ and Java refrences. Anyway, after he pulls them out, he talked to us about CLEPing out of the basic programming class, and then proceeded to give each of us a book. Now, this might not seem awesome to you, but Considering that each of the books had a sticker price of at least 40$, and I am very cheap, the gift was very appreciated. Then after he gave out more information, cracked some jokes, and even talked to me a bit about Byond when I mentioned it, we left, and I was lucky enough that one of the others left his book on the desk. (I talked to him later, he didn't want it back, so I recieved 2 books for the price of none).

Anyway, after that happened, I talked to my student advisor, and found out that my roomate for next year was a WoW player also, and was also a CS student. Even better was the fact that we found out the entire cost of College (counting room+board), was a managable 3k, due to scholarships, Tech Fellows, and the in-state rate.

TLDR = it was an awesome trip.

Yeah, I made an april fools game a week back to play on the anime guild, but I decided not to run it on fear of being banned.

However, I don't want my creativity to be ruined, so I want to get some feedback on what you guys think of it:

The Download for the April Fool's game is http://www.byond.com/members/Techgamer/files/ NarutoSuperMegaAwesomesauce.zip

Bonus points if someone hosts this

Okay, I'm going to admit something right here, for all of Byond to see, I like anime, in fact, the thing that originally brought me to Byond was a random person spamming about his "New" naruto MMO on the rpg maker forums. Basically since then I've learned what I call the <10% rule, where <10% of any anime games on at a given time will be coded originally, and <10% of those games will be anything different than the normal level and gank gameplay, so I feel like I'm going to show an example of how you can make an original Naruto/DBZ/Bleach game.

Step 1. Decide what Genre of game you will be creating (for this example I'll just design an action rpg)

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Step 2. Learn to program, or find a competent programmer who is willing to help you.

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Step 3. Design what the game will revolve around, and if any parts of the game will be different.

Example: Each player starts off as an academy student, and to reach Graduate status, and become a chuunin, they must have enough points from either sparring with other students or attending classes (note: classes could be over Naruto Canon, or even have random classes where a qualified teacher could teach on any subject) Once they reach enough points, they have to wait for the next graduation test, held daily, and pass the test given by the proctors. If they pass the tests, they are now a genin.

Gennin's role in the village now is one of doing menial labor to clearing out local thugs. Each mission done by a Genin squad brings in money for the village, their clan, and a bit for themselves.
Genin may have to do their first few eradication or protection missions with a Jonin if the local Kage commands it. Once they have done enough missions and earned enough money for the village, the local Kage will allow them to take the Chuunin exams.

Chuunin exams will be held Bi-weekly, and will have a rotation of which village they will be held in (note: if your village is at war with the host village for the exams, you are SOL.) the exams themselves will vary from village to village, and the proctors get to choose what they want for you to do to pass. Anyone getting past the first two stages, will then be judged by their own kage (or a high-ranking Jonin if the kage is offline). If your kage allows it, you are now a Chuunin!

Chuunin life is essentially the same as that of a Genin, except there are a wider range of missions available, and you now have access to various parts of the village previously blocked off.

There are two ways to become jonin from here, one is to join your village's black ops corps, or to take the bi-monthly Jonin exams, which are much harder than the Genin and chuunin exams.

Once a Jonin, things change a bit, instead of your goals being to raise money for your village and clan, more of your time will be dedicated to war with the other villages. A Jonin may choose to take missions if he cares to, but very few Jonin missions will be available each day, so they would have to take the Chuunin or even the Genin missions to earn money.

Finally, we have the clan leaders and the Kage of the village. These positions will not be given lightly, and thier duties are not only that of a Jonin and of dignitaries, but at their level, there is a business aspect as well. With the money earned by the lower ranked players, the hokage may allocate the money towards paying Jonin for defending their village or attacking another, upgrading the defensive structures of the village, increasing the number and/or power of the npc guards, and upgrading the quality of the local shops. The Clan leader gets to upgrade the facilities of their clan compound, may buy clan guards to guard their jutsu libraries and secret areas, and may give clan members money to improve themselves.

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Step 4. Design the "extras".

Things like Custom training systems, bounties, and events such as demon invasions are fun and provide color to many games, but you should always design the main part of the game first.

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Step 5. Start Development.

See? was that so hard? I thought of all of Step 3 in all of the three minutes it took to type it, and if its this easy for me, it should be equally easy to make your own original game.


TLDR version:
Unoriginal games suck, rips suck harder

For half a month I've been stuck on working on Spectral Hearts, as for some reason only the main enemy and the player would show up on the battle screen, but no lines of code involving shifting to the battle screen looked faulty. As I said above, this puzzled me for half a month, leading me to lose the majority of my interest in working on it.

However, about 10 minutes ago, I figured out the problem, after about three minutes of looking through my battle_call coding, I finally looked through the Monster code, and I saw one freaking line out of place. I moved that to where it should be and it works fine now... but I still feel like an idiot.