fadebolt

[fadebolt]

By the way, this is unrelated to the response, but I have a feeling you might appreciate this hidden gem from the days when MSC was a humble lil mod :>

Gourmand, perchance do you like lasagna and hate Monday's?

"I'm sorry, but I can't recall seeing, or hearing about a 'Lasagna' or a 'Monday'. Are they creatures from an area I haven't visited yet? Though if a Monday is even nearly as bothersome as a Jungle Leech, a Squidcada or a Snail, then I'm very glad I never had to deal with it!"

[fadebolt]

Yo, @isnt-a-blog-blog, you wouldn't guess who I just found while scrolling through the confession blog!

Bring out that blender, stat! :3

(For context - the person I tagged is Enot's VA, and I'm the guy who runs the blog the asker talked about. We do be dealin' with some malicious brainrot enthusiasts, at times xd)

I have a confession to make

So ya know that Va of Enot that had to talk skibidi language because of an anon

Yeah that anon was me, I made him do that

I didn't even feel guilty or anything similar to that

I just felt Shaudenfraude :D

.

[fadebolt]

Happy Watcher Day, to all you slugs and cats, herbivores and carnivores, and organisms both purposed and wild!

We are aware that many of you are very skilled and dedicated gamers who will complete the new DLC rather quickly - and that a lot of you will likely want to send in submissions that'll be referring back to the things you've seen in said DLC. However, due to the nature of this blog, I would like to ask you guys, to not do that, until 1 month passes. This is because there's a lot of participants here, who all play at very different paces. Not to mention that both me - the guy running the project -, as well as the voice actor of Watcher, tend to have a more slow and steady approach, when it comes to playing through games.

So I thought it might be best to straight up not allow any spoilers for 1 month, altogether. (Which is a rule I'll be adding to the pinned post, in case any of you guys will miss this) This also means that during this time period, no one can sign up to voice-act any of the new creatures and/or characters that might appear in Watcher. As I consider them to also fall into the 'spoiler' category. I am aware that unfortunately, there aren't really any ways to enforce this, outside of things I'd rather not do (such as completely closing the inbox, or blocking people), so instead, I'll just trust you guys to be cool. Because so far, you haven't really given me any reasons not to. Please please please don't make me regret this.

After April 28, we will be allowing for Watcher spoilers, and we will instead just resort to using spoiler tags, for anyone else who still wants to continue avoiding them. (Though if the VA decides to keep on delaying/avoiding them, then that's a decision that will be respected. It won't mean that you guys can't send them into our inbox, just that you may have to wait a little longer to get a response)

[fadebolt]

For me, this is a "yes, but did not finish it" in technicality. I basically cheated on the riddle, and just looked up the answer. (I'm not really into that stuff, even if this particular one was pretty good and clever. Still would have preferred it if they didn't use "desert" to describe Metropolis, even if it's technically correct. The chant=type thing is also something I felt a tad iffy about. But these are probably just me.) Then I proceeded to go into the thing fully blind, without any prior knowledge on what to expect. I played for about and hour or two, seeing bits of what the campaign has to offer, before concluding that this thing was probably not meant to be beaten. So I left, and never turned back (except to get a couple screenshots of some Farm Arrays rooms once, with the help of cheats).

Then I proceeded to look up a bunch more stuff about Inv's campaign, here and there. Some of it made me very glad that I never tried picking it up again. And weirdly enough, some of it has actually kind of sparked my interest to maybe have another go at it.

With the latter, I'm specifically referring to a pretty awesome guide that I saw, as well as the recountings of people who did beat the campaign legitimately. (I especially remember Northflowo speaking about it quite positively, multiple times) The way certain people described the campaign has actually made it sound kind of… fun? Like, you have those cool new exploding Slugpups! You get a lot of time on every cycle (thanks to the 100% shelter failure chance)! You have a couple regions with modifications that are actually quite awesome (those being Sky Islands and Five Pebbles)! And it's incredibly important to properly use and manage every tool you have at your disposal! (This one point being more of a personal thing, as I always wanted Rain World to be more centered around item and food management, but in most campaigns, that aspect of the game ends up becoming much more of an afterthought - due to the great combat and/or mobility skills you get on campaigns that actually have tough spawns) And you even get to ascend without karma 10, due to your ability to blow up the Guardians! So, what's not to like?

The only reason why I didn't attempt a full run on Inv yet, is due to how in this game, you die to everything instantly, or in one hit. I like these kinds of dumb 'challenge mods' much more, when there's a bit more ebb and flow to it. When you can afford to take a couple hits, and do a couple missteps, and still potentially turn things around. But here… if a Centipede grabs and zaps you, you instantly die. If a Red Lizard gets to you, you instantly die. If you fall down a botomless pit, you instantly die. If you touch a Proto-DLL, you instantly die. And so on and so forth. Not to mention, I'm not very good at vast majority of the important movement tech options in this game, and most of the people who finished Inv, have said that it's very important to get a good grasp on that stuff, before attempting a playthrough.

Difficulty in gaming is something do tend to appreciate. And in fact, I'd actually very much enjoy playing 'Inv-like' PvE mods in many different kinds of games, such as Plants vs Zombies 1 & 2, Heroes 3, DotA 2, or Warcraft 3. (And what do ya know, I did play through a big chunk of the 'Wayfarer' map in HoMM3... would not recommend that to anyone) But here? Yeah, I'd rather pass. Even if there's a good number of you madlads, who have actually completed this… thing (with a few particular Inv players being especially nuts - like Squeekles completing the campaign, before Saint's… or Sorbet Cafe doing it on a freaking dance pad).

Have you played the inv campaign?

Yes, and beat it legitimately

Yes, and beat it with cheats

Yes, but did not finish it

NO

[fadebolt]

Oookkkaaayyy, this is a wild one.

It's pretty interesting to see the votes being this divided - because to me, the choice is very obviously either Monk or Survivor. I understand that gameplay-wise, they're the two most important slugcats, as Survivor is the one that delivers us the 'core RW experience' that made us all fall in love with the game, while Monk does the same, except with a lot of the game's more unforgiving elements being toned down, to make it more accessible for people who aren't into overly difficult games, or ones who are looking for a more 'chill' experience. However, in terms of 'lore and storyline', those two deliver us practically the same thing, meaning that we would loose basically nothing if we were to remove one slugcat, but keep the other. So this is basically up to whoose cutscenes and dialogue you prefer. And since Survivor gets the more interesting and memorable speech from Five Pebbles, my choice has ended up being Monk. (Not to mention, if you're looking at the base game, Monk doesn't get colored pearls. The Anon hasn't given a clear description on how this 'story removal' would work, but I'm guessing Survivor being gone would imply that a player who doesn't own Downpour could only do pearl readings on Hunter…… sooo yeah)

Now, to my surprise, neither Monk nor Survivor are the number 1 most voted (not even if you add up their votes, though they do get real close), as Monk got beaten by…. Saint and Artificer.

Which I never-ever would have guessed in a million years. Because to me, the two that would follow Monk are Gourmand (due to how little story they have, and how that doesn't really add much), and surprisingly, Spearmaster (which was honestly a very difficult choice, as I did like its story a lot, but I feel like the others add much more, while also being more compelling overall, especially with how much the new iterators failed to leave a mark on the community, in spite of them getting way more attention than Chasing Wind or Unparalleled Innocence… not saying they're bad or anything, but boy, they really didn't stick). But the thing is that… I actually sort of get where the voters are coming from. Because Saint's and Artificer's storylines kind of suffer from a very similiar thing that a lot of people disliked about Arcane's second season (especially you old Viktor fans, y'all got done dirty) - which is that heavily they explore/mess around with the supernatural elements of the story, that were very deliberately left to be ambiguous in the original material. And in doing so, they heavily recontextualize said original material, which was previously known to be very self-contained, cohesive, and really well put together, overall. (Oh, and it's done in a super confusing and abstract manner, for both RW and Arcane. Good luck figuring out what to make of them, if you don't follow the lore of these fictional universes very closely) Needless to say, this is a very risky thing for a writer to do, because if you screw up, you're also dragging down the original widely beloved masterpiece that you're making a continuation to. And then you better get off from the internet, because you're not going to enjoy what the thousands of fans got in store for ya.

What I find particularly interesting about this case, though, is that the developers of Downpour… didn't even really fail with the storylines of those two slugcats. I'd say they actually function really well, and it is clear that there's many RW fans who absolutely adore Artificer and Saint. Yet, there are also many people who just don't like the implications they bring to the world building of Rain World. And as much their dislike is valid… I still think it was worth it to add these two slugcats to the story. If anything, just to show the sheer uncaring cruelty of their world, and to act as much needed counterbalance to some of Downpour's more 'cutesy' bits.

…and yes, I'm aware that those two have likely garnered a couple votes due to other possible reasons. Such as the voters liking Scavengers, the voters disliking FP's characterization on Arti's campaign, the generally lackluster presentation of Artificer's backstory (…yeah, those janky playable dreams did fail to get across the sheer heaviness of their trauma, I will admit), the voters not being too much into things that are overly 'edgy', the general powercreep they present (especially compared to the humble Survivor and Hunter), possible process of elimination (and the voters love the general adorable-ness of Monk too much, to vote them out), aaaand the fandom's treatment of them, which is a rabbit hole I'd very much prefer not to get into. Oh, and there's the whole challenge 70 mess, too - presenting an idea that feels fitting, before getting its non-canonicity confirmed in a Discord message that many people likely won't see. That certainly didn't help Saint here, either. But overall, I'd still put most of the blame around the world building. Because what set Rain World apart from most other stories is that it specifically centered around its world, rather than its characters - hence why it got the name we know and love, instead of something like "Journey of a Slugcat". It gave the game a very unique feel, that made it very refreshing to dig into. Artificer's and Saint's campaigns not only break that approach, by being much more character-centric, but they also add in ideas that simply don't align with what people want to see from this game. And as much as that applies to every single DP campaign (save for Gourmand, maybe), the idea of becoming this 'unstoppable force of mass destruction that reshapes the world' is something that's very exclusive to those two, and when you consider just how much that goes against everything that RW stood for, the results of the poll start making a lot more sense.

Aaaaaand that's pretty much my reading on this. Funnily enough, I actually enjoy these kinds of situations a lot - when I don't agree with the majority, so I can look into where they're coming from, and how that relates to my perspective. And I especially love that there's so many comments and reblogs on this, and how I actually sort of agree with many of the takes that came from those, who chose to vote on slugcats I appreciate (such as Artificer and Saint). After all, it's a really difficult question, with no right or wrong answers. And the fact that everyone has such different feelings about these things, is what makes them so interesting to discuss.

I hope we'll get to see more questions like this! ^-^

if you had to choose one of the slugcats to completely remove from the rain world lore and storyline completely, which one would it be -- Monk, Survivor, Hunter, Gourmand, Artificer, Rivulet, Spearmaster, or Saint?

[fadebolt]

Ahh, happy to see the polls being back again! ^^

It's pretty great timing to do it 2 weeks before Watcher's release, too! (Even if most of the questions that we could ask about the DLC have already been sent)

As for this particular question, I, uh… have two valid answers. Because I actually don't know how long my first playthrough took, as I haven't saved that info anywhere, and it was on a pirated copy of the game, which I proceeded to delete, after purchasing the game. So that piece of information is lost forever.

However, I am still voting for "more than 8 hours", because I am absolutely certain that it's true.

Not just because I played at an exceptionally slow pace (I specifically remember leaving Outskirts at cycle 20, and Industrial Complex at cycle 50, if that's any indication… not to mention how I went to subterranean early, and got stuck there, seemingly for an eternity), but also because I heavily delayed the ending - by doing loads of other things, such as exploring, or bringing items/pearls/neurons to LttM.

I ended up going to the Void Sea somewhere between cycle 220-280 (it's imprecise, I know, but it's almost been 3 years, so please cut me some slack xd), which is something that straight up cannot happen in 8 hours, or less (unless those cycles are all under 2 minutes long).

Looking at my own experience, as well as the poll results - I feel like the Anon who sent this has drastically overestimated the capabilities of new players.

Of course, it's still absolutely possible for a new player to beat the game in under 8 hours, as evidenced by the good number of voters here, who have. Sometimes, a person has a ton of experience with platforming adventure games like RW, as well as great reflexes, and maybe they're even looking up things on the internet, to make their journey as smooth as possible… or they could even be cheating with devtools and certain mods. (Like the 0.5%, who voted for "less than 1 hour"… something I would likely struggle to achieve with my 300 hours of playtime. I'm sorry, there's just no way those people are legit. And yeah, you can say that it's a "skill issue" on my part, but there are some things that are simply not feasible, especially considering the context.)

And let's not even talk about the people who aren't even entering the game with the goal of beating Survivor as quickly as possible, which you will likely find a bunch of, considering that the game is about exploration, and how it's filled with collectibles, and lore pearls, and potential achievements from passages/echoes.

But the truth is that most of us just had absolutely no idea on what the hell we were doing in our first couple hours of playing this game. And those of us who are more experienced can very easily forget the sheer extent of cluelessness that newbies tend to have… especially if said newbies are slow learners, or guys that aren't overly interested in experimenting with everything.

Though there's absolutely nothing wrong with Anon making this mistake - as it's one we all unconsciously make, here and there. Surely, you can all think of examples, where someone told you that something is 'really simple', yet you actually ended up struggling with it, and that other person got a lil surprised at that. And we all likely experienced this from the perspective of the 'other person', too, at some point (especially if you're a teacher xd).

This is simply another case of that. We all tend to look at things from our perspective, and from the Anon's perspective, Survivor is easily beatable within 8 hours (plus they have likely done it on their first playthrough themselves), leading to them arranging the options in this manner - since to them, this is what makes the most sense. And it's especially hard to deal with these implicit biases in video games, where your experiences are practically the only frames of refence you've got (unless you specifically decide to ask others, or to watch them play).

And because of that, I'd be real curious to see how this would be set up by a guy who is fresh off from a super lengthy first playthrough on Surv. And what the results would look like on that.

How long did your first survivor playthrough take?

Less than 1 hour

1 to 3 hours

3 to 5 hours

5 to 8 hours

More than 8 hours

[fadebolt]

Alright, that one poll blog has started posting again, so I'm thinking I may get back into posting and rambling and reblogging, at least for a bit.

I've pretty much abandoned this account in the last couple days, partially because I just didn't have anything to share, but also because I'm not really enjoying being here (don't get me wrong, there's still a ton of great upsides to it... they just don't outweigh the bad, at least not anymore). There are always a ton of things that feel way more appealing than opening up my Tumblr, so I've been doing it less and less... and it didn't seem like anyone really cared, which was probably for the better.

Though I don't really want this to be a rant on this site, cus truthfully, it wasn't really its fault.

As I'm occupied with managing that one voice-avting askblog, having to semi-frequently communicate and work with all hose participants, while also doing some fun things for myself, such as: doodling (mostly low effort stuff that isn't worth sharing... and it's strangely more fun than high effort things that take hours, even if I don't improve much from them), playing through newer WC3 mods that I haven't gotten the chance to try yet, and attempting to recreate Chess in GameMaker, so that I could add in some of my personal ideas to it.

So yeah.... not exactly the kind of things I could post about on Tumblr.

And I'm aware that art month is going on, but somehow, I just didn't get the motivation to do anything with it. Which was due to a combination of... a lot of things (time being occupied by the stuff I just talked about, my preference to draw in solitude screwing me over thanks to being stuck at home with family, the way I loathe most of the things I made for the previous art months, the generally unrewarding feeling of posting art online, and so on).

Point being - I don't know if I'm really ever gonna do anything with this account, outside of rambling underneath RW related polls.

Maybe once Artfight comes around, or when the protests finally end, and I'll get to return to my college apartment, where I'll be alone very often - resulting in me wanting social media a bit more.

Until then, I'll be on Discord, the Askblog, and under the polls ^-^

[fadebolt]

day 6

[fadebolt]

Yo, Tumblr I'm back... again!

I've recently finished playing through the True Story of Arkain (a rather enormous custom WC3 campaign) for the first time, and have loved (almost) every second of it.

So now, I'll be drawing all the Undead guys as kitty cats, cus they're awesome and precious <3 (and definitely aren't committing horrible acts on a daily basis, nooo...)

Starting with the great master of the Dead himself, Aridon the Watcher!

[fadebolt]

Ever heard of the OneTab browser extension?

Get it. It's the best friend of all us tab hoarders. Now we can have thousands of random tabs saved, without any of the side effects that'd normally have! ^.^

my beautiful wife "open link in new tab"

[fadebolt]

This is actually incredibly helpful, and somewhat matches with the approach I tend to take (although with a lot less finesse).

Though one thing I like to really think about is specifically what my design is meant to be communicating.

When you think of art as a type of language, it actually kind of helps you recognize when a design is either overcomplicated, or lacking in detail - because those are essentially like bloated essays where the point is muddied, or uninteresting/forgettable ones that don't stand out very much. These are two fates you wanna avoid, both as a writer and an artist, and I found that it's very noticeable when they happen.

The shapes, and the random extra details that don't communicate anything are what I personally find to be the biggest struggle.

For shapes, I think it really just comes down to you using your imagination. OP's tips are really about as deep as it gets.

And the extra 'unimportant' details are about practice and experimentation. You could also look up what others have done, and experiment with those. Don't worry about it coming off as 'stealing', I don't think anyone would give a crap about you mimicking the small patterns/lines they put on clothing or fur (it basically never ends up becoming a 1 to 1 match with the original anyway, at least in my experience).

I know I probably shouldn't be spouting about these things, as I'm not an expert or a professional by any stretch of the imagination. But I am, however, very familiar with the struggles of beginners, and I'm more than happy to talk about how I tend to overcome them (and I feel like my stuff has definitely improved when I figured out these mindsets... though that's not a particularly high bar, with the general crappy-ness of my old art, but I digress).

Do you have any tips on making recognizable designs that are not too complicated but not too simple?

yes! my main tip would be to focus on shapes and patterns rather than colors.

for example, here's canon accurate vanilla trio:

not much variety, besides hunter(but still not much)

now, here's mine (lineart & grayscale)

to make them look more unique i try to exaggerate their shapes just enough to be distinct, but not too much to make them look like different species. (ex: survivor is long, monk is round, hunter is oblong)

extra info-dumping about my designs:

and some other (less in depth) examples!

as for colors, if you're going for simplicity, stick to a pallet of 2-3 hues, and make them vary in shades. i almost never use more than 3 hues.

*monochrome = based on one hue, bicolor = based on two hues, triadic = based on three hues.

**there are actual names for these palettes i know i’m sorry but i’m blanking right now :(

****also technically sliver is tetradic but i forgot to add the orange lmao

anyway, i hope this helped!! i’m not very good at explaining my thought process so sorry if this is a little all over the place lol

[fadebolt]

i know you want to be informed, and i know you care so it’s hard to step away, but it might be worth asking yourself what actual good will come from reading another tweet about a horror you’ve already read about 50 times today

[fadebolt]

survivor cutscene art redraw

reblogs are cool 👍 show yer friends

1hr 39min tracked time. sketch below the cut

[fadebolt]

This one be the original, sir.

I don't exactly know what the deal with it was, but if I remember correctly, this was an unused piece of concept art that was meant for some kind of Downpour Anniversary thing. And it was revealed by the devs, as a reward for some kind of puzzle that the community recently solved.

I think Balagaga explained it in one of their recent videos, so if you're interested, you can go to their YouTube channel. They're way more informed about RW news than I am.

Yo Scav how's it feel to get curb stomped by an explosive rat with severe trauma and depression

"Ugh... It hurts a lot! Back in the day, we needed to worry daily if that red demon is going to pass through our outpost. But now, they mellowed down. But I still rather not talk to them when I encounter that beast. Man... all of that bloodsheed, because of one over dramatic scavenger."

[fadebolt]

I've sent this to my askblog's Discord channel, but I'm gonna put it here too.

The TLDR is that there's a bit of a messy situation in my home, so my college will be taking part in a protest, my finals weeks have come to an abrupt halt, and I'm gonna have a couple weeks where I'll be stuck home, with not much to do.

Thankfully, this'll at least give me time to be a whole lot more active, so if you wanna hit me up with something/anything (ideas, requests, funny or interesting stuff you've found, questions, things you wanna discuss, heck even venting), then go ahead! I'll be free.

[fadebolt]

Don't you just love Tumblr's ideas on what you're interested in seeing? Like, you're just taking your time, scrolling around, and suddenly....

......

....I can't recall watching any cooking, chicken or cheese related content.... but something about this one just gets to me xd

(Though honestly, I can't complain, especially after how many times I had to press 'not interested' on so many posts about the messy politics of the US, that somehow kept creeping up otno my dash. My country is also dealing with a bit of a rough political situation, all the while I'm trying to do my finals... so the last thing I need right now is even more stress)

[fadebolt]

Part 04 - Saint and Pebbles