When Dragon Quest VIII came out on the PS2 I was blown away with how great the game really was and it wasn’t long before I decided that I wanted to bring that atmosphere and overall feeling to a forum based RPG. This came about at the end of the MSN Groups era and I decided that I wanted to make the most detailed RPG that I could make, something that would blow every other RPG out of the water. Although this project ended up stalling when MSN Groups was announced to be closing and I only ever finished eight full pages of content I to this day believe each of those pages, including this one, are among my very best ever. Hopefully one day I’ll manage to make my way back to Dragon Quest VIII and finish the project for everyone to enjoy.

Ah good old Cyberpunk Nexus, the biggest, more daring thing I ever did online. For those of you who are unaware of what CPN was, here’s a small history lesson. In 2008 MSN announced that their Groups service would be closing. For many of us, me included, MSN Groups had been a home where we hosted our RPGs. With Groups out of the picture we were going to have to find a new home. I thought it would be a good idea to build that home myself. CPN ended up being a 2 year venture and for a good while a very successful one. This layout was launched with the site and served as our theme for the first year before all the true work was done to automate everything and which came with a new design. In the end this is probably my most detailed and best done layout. There are many versions and so much work into it, more than a screenshot can capture, that’s for sure.

Aside from FFvii Fortress I was probably most known for my Trigun RPG known as Project Seeds. The RPG originally opened during the peek of the golden age of MSN Groups RPGs, 2003.  While it enjoyed a good run then it eventually went into the vault only to be brought back again in 2007. Two layouts came before this one during that reconstruction but neither of them ever saw the light of day. Finally I decided on a stripped down version and this is what I came up with. I have to give a big thanks to Keith Moore (Saiyen) for the vector used in the banner. I had originally used the same image from the Trigun artbook however it’s quality was less than great and Saiyen was kind enough to devote his time while I focused my work on the content.

Create was one of the biggest and best things I ever did on MSN Groups, as a community it opened in the summer of 2005, in fact just about this time 7 years ago. Before I joined the Create team I was working on some RPGs but I had largely removed myself from the greater community, Create was my chance to get back into the game and make a place for myself again. Over the next 3 some odd years Create thrived as a community, we went through 11 different designs, 4 different groups, and a .com of sorts. In the end everything went to shit, but that’s how community sites always end so that was to be expected, but during my time as a member of the Create team we did some pretty awesome things and this layout was the start of all of them.

In keeping with my attempts to keep this archive updated on a daily basis (As of right now it will just be screen captures of layouts until I get the archive section of the site up and running where I will be able to archive HTML pages, images, RP Threads, etc) I decided added the original Dystopia Productions layout to the image archive would be a good choice for today. I was really fond of this layout when I created it, and I guess I still am, I hate to see it go but the change is needed.
 
This Layout holds a important place in my history, being the corner stone to a place where I did actually manage to create the framework and host a RPG that ran for enough time for me to have enjoyed RPing there. Hopefully more times like that will happen here on DysPro, time will tell.

One of the projects that I hope to get working on once the Chimera Engine is finished is a Metal Gear Solid RPG. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time since I’m a huge fan of the MGS Games. About six months ago I decided that I was going to do a MGS RPG and started designing a layout to fit the site, I finished the basic design and knew pretty much what I wanted the RPG to look like and play like but I didn’t really have the drive to get down to working on it. Below you will find the layout which will eventually be used for Metal Gear Solid: Operation Aphelion. I’m pretty pleased with it, as it’s very minimalistic so it will allow the content to be the star, which is always my goal when I build a RPG.

his layout has come several months in the making. In the beginning it was a joint design between myself and Saiyen, who out of the final version did contribute the logo and the top navigation bar though most of the rest was of my design. When that project didn’t pan out I shelved the idea for awhile before coming back to it and doing some more design work to basically finish the conceptual design.
 
Update: Alright now that I’m starting to get this post theme together and getting the comments section up and whatnot I have gone back and actually included the layout to the post. Eventually I will have all of these done automatically where it connects to the section of the site that will serve as my portfolio, until then though I will just add them manually.