#I couldn't find the graphic assets used in the game so I had to make a less detailed version of the text box from scratch

[notnights]

I've been playing Cris Tales.

[ryanthecomic]

ZONA: THE PAFL RPG

For the past few months me and my brother were working on a tabletop rpg system based on Parties are For Losers, just for fun, and then we started trying out some graphic design adjustments, putting some cool images from the PaFL MVs and then boom, holy crap, we had an decent looking book, turns out that came out some time ago and i never did make a tumblr post on it, so here we go!

A Tabletop RPG system based on already popular RPGs such as Call of Cthullu and Ordem Paranormal, we made ZONA share a lot of horror adventure mechanics from CoCthu, such as the six-sided die being the only you need to actually play the game, any proficiency just means you get yet another die, some threats are not supposed to be brawled through, like the anomalies. Anomalies, Mutants, Powers, Artifacts and everything that you could find in the Zone is possible in your adventure, the book has only been tested in quick 3 session campaigns which is when this system works best, since there is no way to progress your character without artifacts and/or special equipment. Zona is the type of book you pick up when you want to play spontaneously with your group of friends, but if you wish to add a very rudimentary sense of character power progression, there is a "Level Up?" section in the book where you can adopt to your campaign, making your characters *just a tiny bit* stronger!

Choose between 3 classes for your character, each with certain strengths and weaknesses, there is a tutorial along the book that will teach you how to make your character! If you choose to be a mutant, you will have access to a whole new feature called powers, your character has 6 points they can spend to make a power for themselves, that they'll use in the campaing, this power can either be an offensive power that deals damage and effects to enemies or an utility power that grants you bonuses when rolling for checks, healing people or even creating structres like ice walls or earth structures. Lets explain powers a bit more in this post, since the book will teach you how to make a Mundane Character.

These 6 points will be spent this way: Dmitry uses 4 points to make a 004 mutation called "Maximum Output Teleknysis", an offensive mutation that deals 1d6+4 paranormal damage to up to 5 creatures, and moves them in a direction he chooses until they hit a wall or get out of sight (very strong i know, but that is the point.) since its a 004 degree mutation, when using this power, Dmitry spends 4 humanity points (Read the book to understand this better!) Due to choosing a 004 power, dmitry also gains a mutation trick, which is Teleknysis, he can lift objects as if he could reach them with his hand, but since it's a trick, he wont be able to lift anything that he normally couldn't with his body strength alone. That leaves him with 2 points, which he will spend to make new uses for these powers of his.

If Dmitry exerts himself too much and goes beyond humanity's border, he will start to go insane, all the effects on the insanity table is made with the solely intention of retiring your character from the campaign, either making them crazy or just plain right losing them to the GM.

Thank you to everyone involved in the making of this book and making their drawings and assets available, you can download ZONA and check out the people who made this work possible in this link: https://ryanthecomic.itch.io/zona

Glad to be of use once again for the PaFL fandom!

[ficsbyabby]

Zombie Talk

Pairing: Peter Parker x gn!Reader

Warnings: mentions of kidnapping, experimentation, death of parents, Nothing graphic though!

Words: 629

a/n: So this is pretty bad. It's been sitting in my drafts for literal months because I just couldn't get any further with it. I sort of have an idea for a sequel to it so if anyone likes it lmk. If not, I won't be offended. This is definitely not my best.

You were enhanced. Your parents were SHIELD scientists, excellent ones. Their focus was on the famed supersoldier serum, how it worked, and its impacts. Naturally, this caught the attention of HYDRA.

They planned to kidnap your parents and interrogate them on what they knew. It was just bad luck that you happened to be sick that day, forcing your parents to bring you to work instead of taking you to daycare.

You were separated from your parents, held in a cell. You were only 4 years old. HYDRA told your parents that you were dead when in reality, you were experimented on. You were the critical test subject in operation to raise supersoldiers without a serum. They used radiation and other measures to alter your cells.

The results weren't as they had hoped for. Your parents, devastated, refused to give up anything. They attempted to escape multiple times until HYDRA killed them.

And you, you didn't become like Steve Rogers or the infamous Winter Soldier. You developed other powers. You had a sense for all life around you; you were your own radar, making you a formidable fighter. And you could teleport, not far, just a hundred feet at a time. But it was enough to make you valuable to HYDRA. It was enough to keep you alive.

For ten years, you lived in various HYDRA based across the world. They trained you to become a fighter, the next great asset. And you were clever; you played along, keeping you free from any memory wipes.

Then, the Avengers showed up. They raided the HYDRA base and took you with them. And life as you knew it changed immediately.

Initially, you were terrified of them. Hydra had warned you of the world's attitude towards "enhanced," as they were referred to. You were told that they thought all powers were dangerous and needed to be regulated. So, for the first three months in the compound, you refused to show your abilities.

This was frustrating to the team. They wanted you to join them, but you continued to hide your powers. The footage they had of you showed that you would be a formidable force. The majority of the team attempted to convince you that you could be incredible.

Surprisingly, it was Tony who left you alone. He believed that you had to come to your own conclusions about the team and its trustworthiness. And he was right. Watching the team, you saw them act as a family, treating each other with kindness and value. Fear remained in you, only natural when accounting for the last ten years of your life. But what truly convinced you was one Peter Parker.

Peter was ecstatic when Tony told him about the new teenager residing in the tower. At only a year younger than him, he hoped you would become a good friend. Initially discouraged by your reluctance to share anything about you, he continued his attempts as if you were a classmate, not a hydra rescue. He never asked about your powers or your prospects as an avenger. Instead, Peter took it upon himself to introduce you to Star Wars and video games.

It was during one of these gaming sessions that you revealed your powers. Peter had brought a horror game for you to play together, complete with jump scares from killer zombies. After one such scare, Peter was panting heavily.

"God, y/n! What if one of those comes after us?"

Winking at Peter, you responded, "Don't worry, I'll feel 'em."

"Hm?"

"That's what I do, feel all the life around me."

"Do zombies count as life, if they're the undead?"

This response made you laugh and sparked a debate between the two of you, complete with finding dead plants around the tower.

[cheshire-castle-library]

Okay I was complaining earlier, but it turns out I have the power to be the change I want to see in the world, so here we go!

I don't know how many will remember, but way back 10 and 15 years ago, the artist community used to make these looooooong and wonderful art memes with casually styled questions and you had to draw your answer! I've been hoping to find those for writing, but they just,,,, don't really exist. "Meme" means joke now-a-days, but it used to also be this form of participatory content we used to just make. No tagging who can do it: if you saw it, you could find the template and do it!

I couldn't steal the format exactly, since originally these memes were images you'd download and edit. But Tumblr isn't great for do-you-love-the-colour-of-the-sky length images any more, and writing needs room to type; so I came up with a compromise! Under the cut, there's header images, copy them into your post and use them as headers to answer the questions!

I'll be doing one of these on my writing blog @starlightstorytelling, mostly because I want to. But if you want to copy a format, please check there!

RULES:

Include the "Pass it Along" image (last image) when you do your version!

You don't have to answer all the questions! Only share what you want to!

Reblog when someone posts it! Make sure to boost other people's work!!

Feel free to do this for as many manuscripts as you have!!

Please try to link back to the original template!

use the tag #WriteblrMemeGame so we can all check each other's stuff out!

Graphics were made in Canva Pro, and assets are provided from that license. Do not sell graphics. Graphics not intended for posting on other websites.

Please steal this idea, I'm starving for writing meme games

[iloveabunchofgames]

#JakeReviewsItch

After the first station

by Lsgamedev

Price (US): $5.00 (But it seems to be on a permanent 100%-off sale.)

Included In: Not in any bundles

Genre: Adventure

Pitch: Hop aboard a train that literally and metaphorically takes a Japanese high school student out of her small town and into the challenges and isolation of adulthood.

My expectations: Looks like a walking sim. The screenshots don't suggest much interactivity, nor do they show any text. I love when a mellow game lets me inhabit a space. A lot games do that and also have other, video game-y stuff, so unless they really have something to say, pure walking sims usually strike me as unambitious and pretentious. But I'm not even sure if that's the genre. The visuals are pretty. Everything else on developer Li Sheng's Itch profile page is a horror game, so maybe After the first station isn't really as cheery as it looks. My curiosity is piqued.

Review:

I’m in a school. I enter a classroom. There’s nothing of interest inside. I walk to the another classroom. It’s not my class. I try another. It’s not my class. I try another door, and it opens! This must be my class.

Class is not in session, but something is happening here. There are glowing circles on the floor, and they are freaking out. Should I stand on them? Do I need to walk along them in a certain order? Or are the circles, which are jumping around to ten different places at once, meant to draw my attention to the conspicuous box on the teacher’s desk?

I approach and see a button prompt. I can rotate the box, but how do I open it? I can move a cursor over the latch, but I’m pressing every button and nothing’s happening. Ohhhhh… I have to put the cursor on the lid, and then…rotate the lid?

I get a key, which opens the library, where I find a camera, which I place on a scale, which gives me a train ticket, which takes me away from the first level. Thus concludes the best part of After the first station.

+ Solid framerate at max settings. ("Meets expectations" shouldn't be cause for celebration, but I've played a lot of primitive-looking Itch games with terrible performance lately.) + It seems like a very personal story. As laughable as the end product is, I hope its development was therapeutic. If making games helps you process trauma, you have my full support. If you release those games to the public, though, I'm not going to hold back on what I think of the full product. And on that note... + Unintentional comedy is still comedy. This game is a riot.

– The Itch page lists, "Atmospheric and appealing graphics" and "Amazing and magical landscape to explore" as key features. The landscapes are a handful of assets copied and pasted at random a thousand times. I don't think I ever went a full minute without finding a new visual bug. Yes, "amazing" is exactly the word. I was in disbelief the whole time. – According to a YouTube walkthrough, I quit a little more than halfway through the game. I consulted a walkthrough because I was sure I had completed my objectives, but nothing was happening. As suspected, I'd hit a game-breaking bug and couldn't proceed. Awesome. – A full sprint in this game is more like a leisurely stroll—especially obnoxious since most levels are either about collecting glowing trinkets in huge, vacant, repetitive areas or walking straight ahead along huge, vacant, repetitive paths. How nice it is to slow down and take in all the nothing. – Sometimes you get Xbox button prompts. Sometime you get PlayStation. Sometimes moves like leaning to the side, zooming the view, or rearranging the inventory—useless vestiges of whatever template is driving this thing—simply stop working.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍

Bottom Line: If you're a streamer or you like to gather with friends to watch each other play single-player games, grab After the first station while it's free. You'll have no trouble finding material for your quips and zingers. If you're playing alone, or if you're looking for a real game, don't bother.

#JakeReviewsTwitch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

• By name • By rating • By genre

[jamesdyecg]

Research & Enquiry: Reflective Post 7 - Stylised Vs Realism: Is it time to explore different styles?

- The moment of inspiration -

As mentioned in a previous post of mine, Riot Games’ new show Arcane had a huge motivational impact on both myself and my studies. I have found myself watching some scenes repeatedly, analysing the art styles and attempting to figure out how the artists over there where able to create all of it. In doing so, I began to reflect on my own creative journey, and what steps had led me to the place I am at now.

- What has been my focus up to this point? -

When starting my educational journey into 3D I was a huge fan of survival game titles such as Bohemia Interactive's DayZ. I loved the realistic looking landscapes and weapons, it felt incredibly immersive to me. There has also been a huge boom in the realism market, with many AAA titles boasting their 'Photorealistic' graphics and detailed textures. So I started with exploring realism as an art style, particularly hard surface prop modelling. During my Undergraduate degree I focused primarily on firearms and vehicles, exploring the different methods used to create these objects and how to create realistic looking textures and lighting. For a long time I believed this was the direction my career was headed, I found it interesting and am fairly good at it. I was also extremely proud of the final product that came from my degree!

So, as I progressed into this niche I figured it is what I'd stick with for this Masters degree. However, as I continued creating assets during this first semester here, I found that it was all feeling a little repetitive. Essentially I'd find an object, find the blueprints, recreate it, repeat. I quickly became burnt out, with the feeling that I was no longer creating art, rather just generating a CGI version of a real life object. There was a lack of creative freedom... after all, an M1911 pistol is a well known weapon, I couldn't change anything about it, otherwise it would no longer be recognisable as that pistol.

Circling back to Arcane, and the inspiration I felt from the show. I began to wonder if an alternative art style may suit me better? whether a more stylised approach would allow the creative freedom I have been craving, but simultaneously making use of all the skills I have learnt up until this point.

- Time to try something new? -

So with all this in mind, I have decided to explore some new territory, diving into the realm of stylised art. Starting by recreating some of the assets from the show Arcane. This whole process is new to me, and up until this point I have skimmed over sculpting. I will be attempting to learn Zbrush over the next few weeks to help support this new direction. Below you can see the start of an asset I have been working on.

This is a recreation of Jinx's 'Boom' Grenade from the show. still a little way from completion, but progressing nicely. Once I am confident with my skills in creating this style, I look forward to conceptualising and creating my own work from scratch.

Not only is this new direction highly enjoyable, I am continually expanding my skill set, after all, soon I will need to be looking for employment. Having evidence of both a realistic and stylised portfolio may help with employability, as it would show I am not limited to one area.

Furthermore, skills learnt between the art styles are completely interchangeable, learning sculpting is a fantastic opportunity, not just for stylised art, but also for realism, as many hard surface artist use Zbrush as their main creation tool now.

Evidence of this:

This image is taken from Cane Townsends tutorial, available for purchase. In which he describes how to use Zbrush' Dynamesh workflow to quickly concept and create meshes for hard surface assets. Cane's 80.LV article explains this well.

I look forward to where this new direction will take me!

- Citations -

Arcane, 2021. Series. Riot Games. Netflix.

Cane Townsends, 2021. Dynamesh: The best tool for hard surface design. 80.LV, Available from: https://80.lv/articles/dynamesh-the-best-tool-for-hard-surface-design/ [Accessed 2 December 2021].