(f-_-f)

Now to write something up before I go *blag* on the sofabed again.

I've finished only part of what I expected to finish last week. Blame it on the time spent looking for a free streaming site for the Pacquiao-Cotto match (found a live stream from some Hungarian sports channel that was taken down during the sixth round), this weekend's bad case of the sniffles, and of course, laziness. Most of the stuff that got done were org stuff--typing up letters for the UP Lingua Franca's appeal for org recognition and the sponsorship letter for that ice cream eating contest next year.

There were also some stuff in Project1 that got done--the Tambayan Complex map set was almost completed. Since I can't possibly, I've split the real-life Tambayan Complex into three parts:

• the small left portion, where the SPECA tambayan, the ruins of the Writers Club tambayan and the back of the ASKAL stores are;
• the center, where most of the tambayans are: LF, AME, UGAT, GRAIL tambayans;
• and the right side, where the tambayans of Circulo Hispanico, Writers Club (new and compact!), UP Singing Ambassadors, Asterisk, plus the ruins of the Tomo-Kai tambayan are. (I'm still currently deciding which sector to put the Deutsche Verein tambayan: center or right?)

So far I've only finished the center and right parts; I need to finish the left part and also cleaning up/troubleshooting the maps by Wednesday.

Since I'm using the same tile set for all the Tambayan Complex maps, it somehow came to a point wherein many of the tambayans looked a bit similar. (Tiles are the building blocks of the map: like a collage, you stick smaller pictures together to make a bigger picture that ends up as the map.) Aside from the limited tile options--which can actually be remedied by the very tedious process of making new tiles--there is also the issue of space.

Because the camera angle of RPG Maker XP is similar to the old school RPGs on consoles--an aerial view at an angle--you need to place objects in the foreground and the background to give an illusion of height and distance. And that illusion of height is built through the layers, where the ones at the background/ground go on the first layer, then other elements on the layers above it. The layers work in the same way as Photoshop layers, or imagine it as something similar to having just three sheets of transparency film that have pictures on top of each other. The different pictures on those sheets of transparency film overlap and create a newer picture.

However, RPG Maker XP only has three available layers where one can put tiles on. Even if I had wanted to put more detail for each tambayan, since you can only put one tile per space per layer, I cannot add too much detail. The first layer itself is already reserved for the grassy ground, so I only have two layers left to work on.

It all came down to how I would differentiate the tambayans through the one-paragraph descriptions that pop up whenever my character goes near and "inspects" each tambayan. And since it's my character that is doing the inspecting, I can only share what my character's insights are.

In the creation of the descriptions, I've also noticed how little I knew about the other orgs, or how what I know about the other tambayans are really from the POV of an outsider, in reference to what I know.

Then again, this is supposed to be an essay and I'm still the one writing it. Can't simply erase myself from it, can I?

And yeah, screenshots: