#Dev Talk

[achivement-unlocked]

https://www.tumblr.com/achivement-unlocked/743086027324932096/kosa

Not the anon, but Kosa is a bill that's soon going to pass where minors on the internet get their parents to see what they search up and restrict things that are deemed "inappropriate." When in reality it prevents kids who are trying to learn about the lbgtq community and kids trying to identify abuse. The bill will change the internet forever and NOT in a good way.

Im pretty sure the anon is trying to ask you to spread awareness about this.

Some links to prevent this are:

https://www.badinternetbills.com/

https://www.stopkosa.com/

https://www.change.org/p/save-our-free-and-open-internet-stop-the-kids-online-safety-act

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/censorship-wont-make-kids-safe?nowrapper=true#:~:text=Privacy%2C%20free%20expression%2C%20and%20LGBTQ%2B,tell%20them%20to%20reject%20KOSA

Breaking the gimmick for this one, here’s some resources for yall <33

[toxartsukagakas]

Update Sneak Peek!

The next large-ish update will drop at the beginning of next month! I'm currently participating in a prompt event called 'Aughost', which gives one word prompts for new lines of dialogue- so there will be 100 new lines of dialogue added with said update!

[cetacity]

We're also very excited to announce the launch of our new NEWSLETTER!

This will be a mostly-monthly newsletter giving you updates on our work, behind the scenes previews, developer's Q&A, and more!

Sign up to receive our first letter this Thursday HERE!

[pokemonfangame]

For everyone missing Relic Castle: it's back!

They've merged with the Eevee Expo team to make a new site, but your Relic account, plus all the games, resources, and other posts, have carried over!

[wellspringrpg]

Tumblr Tips for the Twitter Migrant

Hey friends, as a long-time tumblr user who never left, allow me to offer a few tips to make your lives a little bit easier. This is targeted at the twitter community who moved here from the TTRPG community and are looking to run more “formal” blogs.

1. Use your tags!

It’s gonna make your own life ultimately easier. Yes, tumblr’s search functions are questionable, but you can generally rely on being able to find stuff via tag on your blog.

Reblogs do not show up in site-wide searches. So, if you tag a reblog as “pokemon,” it doesn’t show up in the site-wide pokemon tag. Not even if you added something in your reblog. But it will show up on your /tagged/pokemon. This is basically the best way for both you and your followers to be able to find and sort through your own stuff. So if a follower wants to find a specific post of yours, they can go to YourBlog/tagged/my stuff. And followers browsing your blog is pretty normal here—it is a blog, after all. Don’t be weirded out if someone suddenly likes your post from 8 months ago.

And for that matter, most people here also use tags for commentary. It’s generally less obtrusive than adding commentary to a reblog, so you can add some thoughts without necessarily interjecting - the OP doesn’t get any special notification unlike they do with replies or reblogs with text additions. It’s a little spice just for your followers. (Just be aware that they are visible in the notes.)

As a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t use dashes in your tags (links get confused), but spaces are safe.

2. Reblog (& Reply Culture).

So unlike with twitter, replying to something doesn’t put it on your followers feeds. (In fact, your followers can’t even see your replies unless they actively interact with the post itself.) Your likes aren’t necessarily public. (They are, by default, but only if your followers have certain settings enabled will they be able to see posts you like on their dashboard.) Basically, if you have a post you want someone to see: reblog it.

Replies are mainly for quick comments. It’s a pain to hold a discussion in the replies, so it’s mainly just for a quick “this is a neat take” kind of comment. Responding by reblogging + adding commentary in the post is how discussion actually happens. That’s the equivalent of actually replying on twitter. Tag commentary is for informal thoughts that aren’t necessarily inviting active discussion. It’s the spot for anecdotes or funny commentary that whoever posted it doesn’t necessarily need to have put directly in their activity feed.

3. Use the Readmore

Unlike Twitter where nuance goes to die, you may have noticed there’s no such thing as character limits here. Tumblr does automatically cut long posts unless you change your settings, but it’s generally still considered courteous to put a readmore. This little button here (also ctrl + shift + k).

It’ll prevent people browsing your blog from having to scroll through a huge wall of text unless they actively want to. It’s a good way to keep things organized. I’m breaking my own rule here for the sake of accessibility, but in most other cases, if you’re doing a long thread-type post, you should usually cut it to be courteous. Especially if it’s image-heavy.

4. Post Types (Photo vs. Text Post)

Most of us are probably gonna be using image posts and text posts. You can put images in text posts, yes, but generally speaking, you shouldn’t. At least not large images. If you have multiple large images (like covers, for example,) a good rule of thumb is to put them all in one image post. It’s also more eye-catching when the pretty picture is at the top. This isn’t a hard rule by any means, but generally speaking, it should usually be either that or one flashy image at the top and a readmore to spare your browser.

[choko-flan]

hi, are you still developing the game? or moved on to other things? i dont even know if you use tumblr or this account anymore, but really wanted to know

I'm super sorry I never got around answering your ask, I am a year late replying I hope that's okay. To answer your question I'm still developing Verloren, just been very slow at working on it. I've been focus on all the backend mechanics which is a lot of eventing. There's not really anything graphically interesting to show which is why there's been a lack of updates OTL.

I've also been reworking the story which means the 2020 demo no longer reflects the current game. Hopefully in the future I can put out a more accurate demo that reflects all the changes to the game. (also that demo would be longer) A little sneak peak at one of the things I've worked on is this save menu that I've evented. It's one of the things in the game I'm very proud of, feel like I've improved a lot with eventing in rpg maker. Do know everything here is placeholder art ^^;

Just thought before I go back being pretty inactivate that I answer messages that I've missed. I'll try to open this account to check for any random asks to not have to answer them years later like this. When I finally do come back I'll be sure to give a nice big update of all the new things in the game.

[hungry-game]

hey uh, sorry for the inactivity, things got busy for me... While i've been away i have still been poking around in the game's files n stuff, and i found.. what i think is an update for the game i never installed? i don't remember touching the game at all since i worked on it pre 2010, but i guess i misremembered.

this is what it looks like now, it's a pretty big upgrade i'd say. i'll just y'all through it-

"Friends" takes you to the fates screen, a screen i hadn't actually properly put into the game before, so that's neat. it no longer tells you cause of death for those who died, and we get to see what haiku, izumi, and kazuo would've looked like in this update. i wonder where izumi is....

"Collection" brings you to, well.. a collection screen. this thing's completely new, i have no damn clue how to unlock any of these

the options menu, another new thing but should self explanatory, i turned screen shake off myself and i refuse to turn it on, you wouldn't even be able to see it

now that's all from the main menu, but there's something i'm very excited about-

younger me got saves to work! so now you can save and continue any games, and can even have multiple characters at once! .... but i'm not about the juggle four different characters at once for you people, i'll let you have two at once, maybe three if it's a good day. anyways

here's shinya, right where we left her... technically, it looks a lot different but i didn't change anything about her. this is the screen where you can give her food, but younger me also put in a new function-

there's now a specific mode for talking to the character, i guess because it wasn't super clear before that you could talk to them.

and this is the profile screen now, it's... pretty cute honestly

and that's about it i think, it looks much different but it's pretty much still the same game, give characters food to see what they like... or kill them, if you're into that.

oh and uh... i decided to make myself little icons, to better express myself n' all that... this is the picrew i used, i'll link it in the pinned post later

don't think this means i'll be super active again just yet, because i think i caught a cold, that's my luck i guess

[pleasanttaleexpert]

Quick PSA to be careful of your friends on Discord, expecially the ones you haven't heard from in a while. There seems to be a situation involving account hacking and scamming where they try to scare you into giving them money to not suspend your account, it's all fraud.

If any of your friends claim that they have reported you by mistake and you need to take action on your side, they have likely been hacked themselves, do not listen to them, and do not send friend requests to anyone they tell you. If you do or have, report and block them immediately, be safe and careful, They wanted £700 off me to verify my account that I did NOT SENT THEM! AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU!

[in-your-dreams-vn]

You okay with us still sending fanarts and stuff?

I wanna respect the boundaries of your hiatus.

Yes that is definitely still fine!

This Hiatus is more for myself on the artside of things but I still wanna try and interact with people here. Asks are also fine! There probably won't be any art to go with it but I like writing scenarios and thinking about how Traum and Co react to stuff

Thanks for asking though I appreciate it <3

[landofobscurepotatogames]

I return... uhh how are you guys doing? Ahaha. Ha.

The last few years have been a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and in that time I came up with way too many game ideas! Unfortunately that means Pumpkin Splat is postpone, but know that I have a clear vision of it now!

So, what have I been working on?

Keep an eye peeled.

[time-lapse-games]

Yes, I'm still alive

Hello! A short post just to let you know that I'm, indeed, still alive and kicking!

Sorry for the unplanned break but, aside my usual anxiety outbreaks, RL striked... The best way to describe it is "everything was going well (more or less) and then our bathroom exploded". So we had a flooded bathroom for days. Now everything it's ALMOST back to normal (still some small water leaks) but well, at least we don't need to swim to reach the sink.

Now, on the good news!

I didn't work too much on the game this month, but I did a lot of planning! And now I'm finally making the little update for the english demo, with revamped sound effects (I tried to get rid of ALL the RTP sounds. I think there are still a couple of them, the ones more difficult to substitute, but I changed pretty much anything) a mini puzzle for the secretary office (so you won't go straight to the phone...) and a dedicated category for books and notes in the inventory. I also added a couple of new events and flavor texts. Like the one above here!

Felix's weapon for this game will be a hammer ❤️ (Just to be clear, in the screen it's a joke, I really like Thor and MCU)

Oh, that's right, this month I was able to buy Clip Studio Paint! Finally! Digital art is coming! (Yeah, all the art for the game was traditional art actually... I just colored everything on my phone). I need to update the goal on my Kofi 😂

I hope to update the demo this week, so, if you are interested, please stay tuned!

To the next time ⭐

[achivement-unlocked]

My notifs have been filled with people telling me to flip a coin?????????

[toxartsukagakas]

Now that I'm not as burnt out I'm thinking of what I want to focus on for Yes Man's next update... I've been toying with implementing a "mood" system that he'd have post assertiveness upgrade, so something like on boot he has a random chance of being in a mood besides his default... sad, grumpy, happier than usual, stuff like that. Lasts for a random amt of time, you might have a chance of being able to make his mood better if you talk to him while he's grumpy/ sad/ etc.

[delkios]

For those of you RepComm fans that also like game dev talk, here's a podcast done by Brett Douville and Tim Longo (lead programmer and director, respectively) in 2020, playing through the game and also bringing in some of the other devs to interview. I'll put links and a brief synopsis of each one.

Part One (no guest/playthrough) Discussion notes: giving context around the time via other released games and consoles, what squad based gaming was like at the time, developing the idea for RepComm, discussing the opening sequence and lightly touching in Geonosis

Part Two (no guest/playthrough) Discussion notes: the lack of information re: clone organization/GAR structure, playing through Geonosis, discussions about weapons, the Prosecutor, details on scav droids, trandoshians and AI communication and scattered talk about difficulty levels

Part Three (no guest/playthrough) Discussion notes: George Lucas's input on differentiating between clones and lack of humor, talking about voice acting/recording process, going through Kashyyk, technology limitations, level flaws and working with a small dev team, difficulty level (particularly the bridge), using level design to make the AI seem smarter, some info on the books, toys/the game's surprise success, minor talk about plans for a sequel, Delta's cameo in the Clone Wars

David Collins and Jesse Harlin (voice director and composer) Discussion notes: the state of game music/composers/audio at the time, RepComm devs working with audio from the beginning, music changes depending on how you enter a room, sounds from the game being reused in other Star Wars media, Jesse and his girlfriend/now wife developing 'ancient Mandalorian'/Mando'a, 'kote' confirmed to be Cody (specifically Jesse's sister), battle sounds on Geonosis, questioning the use of Ash/no guitars in Star Wars, multiplayer a late addition

Harley Baldwin (level designer) Discussion notes: the unique culture of the RepComm dev team, a stealth level intended in Kashyyk, Prosecutor's atmosphere, difficulty spikes designed to emphasis squad importance/level designers are not good measures for difficulty, Kashyyk designed to be a culmination of the player's experience and knowledge, squad moving ahead of the player due to playtest concerns, easter egg in the texture editor

Greg Knight and Paul Pierce (concept artist and UI artist) Discussion notes: devoted concept artists weren't common at the time but proven to save development time, the entire team contributed to ideas for concept art, influences for the design of the HUD, decision to make the game entirely first person/immersion driving UI design, weapons as a 'character', differences in RepComm's design notes vs movies' games, enemies mean different things between Jedi and clone troopers, noting similarities between RepComm and Rogue One, RepComm's low profile allowed them to get away with more, hangars in Prosecutor meant to progressively make the player more desperate and AT-TE a reward for surviving, Kashyyk's bridge was meant to be the 'boss battle', the concept of 'the squad is your weapon/the squad is your health'

Dave Bogan (lead animator) Discussion notes: working title 1138, 'what is the enemy doing when they don't know you're there', aiming to compete with Halo, every enemy had to act and move differently, expanding on the SpecOps special feature video, game mechanics/logic vs how things are actually done, the wookie-kill animation that got cut, RepComm influencing the tone of Star Wars games/more non-Jedi games, book recommendation based on RepComm, a bug in multiplayer that didn't get fixed apparently allowed co-op???

Tim Longo and Brett Douville (director and lead programmer) Discussion notes: no real talk directly about RepComm that hasn't already been covered but some good conversations about communication and team work

Jeremie Talbot (character lead) Discussion notes: nobody knew what they were doing, just wanted to make it as cool as they could, the use of tiger teams who fixed various problems, all the devs wanted to make the game fun to play and shared ideas, BABY ARMS, raindrops on the HUD for a dollar, having people with knowledge between programmers and artists to communicate, talking about trailers, not being too devoted to following storyboards, talking about the opening sequence, fans often bring up the opening, despite LucasArts's shake up RepComm team felt distant from it, there for the team and the game first and the company second, needing a mix of veteran and new devs

Honestly I'd been trying to listen to these for, like, two years but I kept going through cycles of remembering it when I didn't have the time to listen how I wanted to and keeping it in the back of my mind until I'd forget and then re-finding it in my bookmarks. I don't really remember how I came upon it- rabbit hole falling, I'd guess -and thought I'd share it around to other fans that likely hadn't come across it, either.

For add fun, here's a RepComm stream Brett Douville did around 2015 where he also interviewed people that worked on it. Unfortunately I can't find the first part on either his youtube or twitch pages but there's still three others. Note that there's some repeated information so I'll only mention anything new

Part 2 w/ Daron Stinnett and Jesse Harlin (executive producer and composer) Discussion notes: (Daron's audio is pretty quiet in comparison to Brett's) talking about how and why RepComm came about, deliberately tucked the team away so execs wouldn't bother them, when prequels came out it seemed like LucasArts wanted a game in each genre, 'not Star Wars enough', pointing out a couple name drops in the Prosecutor briefing, originally had no John Williams music, setting music cues in levels/'here comes stinky', the thought process behind developing Mando'a, didn't have an AI to deal with non-commando clones which is why they're scripted to die, even though you love the game while making it you're sick of it by the time it's finished, original voices were sound-alikes, Fixer/Advisor's VA was the only one that didn't get recast, a cut level was a Geonosian church, talking of different instrumentation between levels,

Part 3 w/ Nathan Martz (enemy AI programmer) Discussion notes: (Nathan's audio is ESPECIALLY quiet) talking about how Geonosian enemies 'choose' points to jump to, good AI is about cheats/build the world so the characters can be smart, scav droids were originally more lethal and were nerfed to not do certain behaviors if you're not looking at them, it's very easy to make a difficult AI, it's harder to make an AI that's challenging and fun, setting up common AI behaviors to work modularly and wanting to make finishing moves for the wookies equals the squad being able to do finishing moves, 'the most important thing an enemy does is die'/making interesting deaths, talk about lighting challenges, LucasArts got a new president halfway through RepComm's production, didn't understand the game but allowed it to continue, sequel talk, devs wanted to have co-op but was unable to

Part 4 w/ David Collins (voice director) Discussion notes: (I am very jealous of the shirt Brett is wearing in this video) David did the all the Trandoshian vocalizations and the radio chatter, a lot of ideas behind RepComm went into the Clone Wars series, originally the squad didn't have names only numbers, talk about casting VAs and working with Temuera, squad banter/'if you want your AI to be smart you need to make them sound smart', special features existed in order to have unlockables, George Lucas was apparently quite fond of the game

[pokemonfangame]

Relic Castle is down 😭😭😭

I know and my heart is broken </3 For those unaware, here's a tweet. Relic Castle, the forum site where many fandevs shared their projects, has been taken offline. The Discord is still up if you're a dev or community member, but if you're only interested in playing games you're not gonna find any links or promotions there. The Relic Castle Community was a home for me for the last 10 years, and I don't know what's going to happen now. As for any game links on this blog, I reccomend using the Wayback Machine untill I can figure out alternatives and see how the community moves next.

[wellspringrpg]

After several weeks of sitting in the drafts folder, Cephalopod Squad is finally complete! Cephalopod Squad is a silly hack of Grant Howitt’s Honey Heist about playing as heroic squid children. Which definitely has zero relation to the very popular third person shooter franchise by a certain C&D-happy video game company.

You can get the PDF version of Cephalopod Squad for free on the Mirage Company’s itch.io page now.