#I'm guessing the map scale just looks bigger than it really is

[midnightwind]

finally climbing out of bed at 3pm because my dumb ass decided to write 1800 words for the fic instead of sleeping

[amaiguri]

Worldbuilding My Magic System FOR REAL

So Yssaia has HAD a pretty developed magic system for a while. And to recap it for you... I'm going to paste my half of me raving about this on Discord (thank you to @zebee-nyx and @galacticsand and @reaperofcrows for being so cool and letting me be an unhinged worldbuilding mad lad XD):

"What is Ysse?"

So the way Ysse works is its basically invisible dust floating in the air. And if it hits itself at certain velocities and in certain volumes, "spontaneous effects" happen -- like water materializing out of "nowhere" or fire exploding or wind gusts. You're limited a little by Avatar Last Airbender bending logic (you can't summon fully sapient creatures, you can't teleport, you can't control people's minds unless you're like... touching their nervous system, etc.)

So Mages invented the first writing as a way to record what patterns of movement did what. And eventually, used them to communicate these patterns as a shorthand for more generalized concepts...

So writing also got invented sometimes BEFORE agriculture...

"How precise do these movements/velocities need to be?"

It needs to be PRETTY precise. And this is why the average person CAN'T learn magic -- because Ysse in low amounts is invisible to the average person

But mages can see Ysse, which helps a lot. And they can see these shapes OCCURING in the natural world too -- when the wind blows, its because Ysse particles FORMED the Wind Rune/Sigil in the sky BUT this still doesn't guarantee that they cast any spells if they don't have the physical discipline too

So, in theory, "anyone" COULD move their hands PERFECTLY to spontaneously start a fire. But they PROBABLY won't

"How does this impact the natural world?"

This is also how animals and plants can do magic too. Tree roots in the north have roots that have specific patterns that warm up the soil, so snow can actually MELT and give them water and the tree doesn't die

And this is also my excuse for why so many things have bunny ears -- normally, long ears in colder-than-average climates (i.e. All of Yssaia) would be bad. But in Yssaia, these long ears are convergently evolving to channel Ysse. What they channel, exactly, I haven't decided (probably heat lol or something to increase air density so sound travels farther???)

AND all this is ALSO why the Demons are such an abomination -- because their Blood Magic doesn't obey particle physics, they just fucking do whatever they want

"Why do you need to know all this?"

The question at this point, I guess, is basically "How do I make fantasy technology that looks whimsical but also looks at least hypothetically functional under closer scrutiny?"

Yeah, and the full Answer TM to that right now is just <insert the entire design philosophy I haven't discovered yet here>

"So how IS magic going to shape technology, when you design it for the Untitled Yssaia Video Game?"

...Yeah, okay, after brainstorming all this, I think here's my strategy for how I'm going to tackle technology:

Step 2) Create a master list of technologies I will worry about/actually visualize in the game I will want to keep an OPEN LIST so I can add more things to it as I do research/find really specific use cases (such as scrollcases or chopstick holders)

Step 1) Establish symbols for a handful of common things in both the North and the South that at least vaguely make sense with the concept of the particles. So things like: - Fire/Heat - Water/Melt - Ice/Slow - Wind/Quicken - Earth/Apply Force - Sun/Light - Moon/Closing/Locking (Thanks to @zebee-nyx for this one!)

Step 3) Design simple sprites for things that can later be shrunk down and used as set-dressing for maps BUT at a little bigger in scale so they can be shown to other people sensibly (maybe on the same sheet at the walking animations for scale?)

AND WITH THAT, after 5 years of only vaguely imagining all this, this is what I designed, using a combination of symbols I had already designed and dice that I pushed around on my desk to see what kind of patterns they'd make:

Are some of these a little funky and don't really work with real particle physics? Yeah, fair. I'll take notes, if you got 'em. I'm open to critique, if you wanna lol

Last comment that didn't make it into the big discussion with my buds tonight: Ysse particles are how temperature is distributed. So, hot areas have fewer, cold areas have more. I know that isn't how thermodynamics work but does anyone else really?

(Something something eldritch horror thermodynamics post... And my magic-god is an eldritch horror! See? It's perfect!)

Thank you for coming to my #WorldbuildingWednesday post! If you liked this, don't forget to REBLOG and follow the #Yssaia tag or something🥰 (Are calls-to-action cringe? Publicly shame me, if so)

[roadtodeltarune]

Earthbound Update 3

(PART 1)

I'm back! Some of you may have thought I abandoned this project, but you were wrong!

Where have I been? What have I been doing? Oh, I've been busy playing Earthbound! I knew I was close to the end, so I wanted to finish it before updating! I could have finished in a week, but I got distracted by other games and responsibilities. Now what exactly did I do in Earthbound?

Well last time, I cured Tenda Village's shyness. After making my last update, I tried their coffee and had another strange vision. But once my head cleared, I did some trading and then hopped into the cave.

As I figured, this was my next Sanctuary Location. The boss wasn't very tough; he was blasted to bits by a multi-bottle rocket and some good bashes. The hardest part was the maze of a cave!

We had a strange moment of Straw's(Ness) thoughts being beamed to a wall, then jumped down a hole into the Underworld.

This place is huge! And there are dinosaurs here! I wanted to avoid them since I felt strong enough already, but they were just too big, they kept blocking my path. It's actually so huge here that I had to look up a map. I also got lost in the first five minutes and was walking in circles, so a map helped a lot.

I feel like this should be a bigger moment, but didn't Buzz Buzz already say something about being in a prophecy? I guess it's good to remember the scale of our journey. Welp, time for the last Sanctuary Location!

Well, that was a fever dream...

The Fire Spring wasn't too hard to go through, the Psychic Psychos were more so just annoying. The final Sanctuary Boss felt like a good final boss, though, that fight was lots of fun.

As for all the melodies playing together, they sounded very pretty. I feel like they fit together better than Mother 1, but I hope there is, or will be, an orchestrated version like Mother 1 has.

The sequence afterward of Straw going through his home and seeing how much his parents loved him... Man, that hit me right in the feels. At the end of Mother 1, I came to the conclusion that this series is about love. Spoiler: I come to the same conclusion with Earthbound.

MAGICANT?! How is Magicant here! I thought it was Mary's dreamscape and it faded when she accepted death. Is... Is Mary still around? Is that why the melodies are back?

I think I like the aesthetic of this Magicant more. The old one was pretty, but this one feels more peaceful, and the color shifting adds to the magic/dream aspect.

Plus all the veggies remind me of my Mother 1 characters: Carrot, Onion, Potato, and Beet.

Is this true or is this what Straw thinks is happening with Pokey? Is he really, truly a bad guy?

Rest in peace, Buzz Buzz. We'll win this war for you.

The Flying Men! It's good to see them again! Oh no, wait, I don't want them to die

Interesting... My personal explanation for this is that the statue brought out the worst in people, so it uses the evil part of your brain; but I also think Straw just views it as the worst evil he's fought so far.

Hi, I'm back here. I died to the statue. This seemed impossible, just like Belch, so I looked up some tips and a map. I found that I just needed a bunch of Dragonite, so I got some from storage. I also got an extra Earth Pendant for Apple (Jeff)

Wow! Dragonite is strong! I got lucky though, he didn't heal in this second attempt. If he would have, I might have lost.

Like how Grape (Poo) had his training that, to me, like he was reaching his personal enlightenment, I feel the same for this moment. It feels like Straw is taking everything that's happened to him and learning a great lesson that's left up for interpretation, whether it's a lesson on Love, Determination, Destiny, overcoming Evil, or all of the above.

This also makes me think that Magicant is a by-product of the Melodies, meaning Mary must have been in Magicant for decades, waiting for Carrot(NinTen) to restore peace to her and help her move on.

[thecodeveronica]

Okay so nobody will care about this but me, but I'm gonna ramble about what I would do if I was in charge of coordinating another Resident Evil chapter for Dead by Daylight, if I could do whatever I wanted with it

New Map: Spencer Mansion Iconic, and not visually like anything else already in DBD. I love RPD as a map and location in general, but I was one of those people who really wanted Spencer Mansion to be the map when RE got added to DBD, so yeah. It'd obviously be a two-floor map, and I'm sure people would unfairly whine about it being confusing just like they did RPD, but to be fair, Spencer Mansion doesn't exist in HD for them to just straight up reuse like RPD was, so surely it'd be scaled a little more appropriately for a game like Dead by Daylight... maybe

New Killer: Alexia Ashford Power: uhhh idk honestly lmao, but something involving insects since that's one of the defining aspects of her and her boss fight. Maybe involve fire somehow too since she also used that. I'll be honest, I don't have a solid gameplay idea here, but Alexia would be my top Killer pick since another female killer is cool to add, her design is cool, and nobody else uses bugs in the Killer roster.

New Survivors: Billy Coen and Steve Burnside Yes, I know, nobody gives a shit about Steve but me lol. But a) this is my fantasy post and b) it'd be weird to have a Code: Veronica Killer but no accompanying Survivor from that game and Claire was already added as a legendary skin (which I'm kinda mad about still because it means I'll never have OG RE2 or Code: Veronica cosmetics for her, grrr). Honestly, I'd give him at least one meme-y type of perk for people to be goofy with because good lord does Steve do some dumb shit in CV (/affectionate), and some kind of perk related to the spoiler thing that happens to him later in the game (if you know, you know).

Billy is there also because he's one of my faves, he rounds out the other previous RE Survivors in DBD having their partner characters (Rebecca doesn't have anyone unless you count Chris, I... guess?), and he's pretty much the only other major "old-style" RE protagonist left not in the game already, and I like to focus on those games more than the later stuff. He could also have some perks related to things memorable from RE0, like the goofy item dropping mechanic; maybe a perk that relates to that or chests somehow. And a teamwork perk (like the Thalita/Renato ones) to tie into the way you played as Billy and Rebecca together.

New Survivor Legendary Skins: Ashley Graham and Luis Serra Navarro Ashley would be a legendary skin for Rebecca, and Luis for Leon. They would obviously be their superior RE4 remake versions. Honestly, I could easily make a case for a whole RE4-centric chapter too (and that would be way more marketable lol), but if not that, then I'd love to see these two as legendaries.

New Killer Legendary Skins: Alfred Ashford and Mr. X Alfred would be a legendary skin for Alexia, and Mr. X for Nemesis. The fact that Mr. X isn't in DBD as a skin yet is nuts to me. Yeah yeah, he doesn't use the tentacle like Nemesis, but nobody really cares so long as they are playing as Mr. X. Meanwhile, Alfred doesn't really fit power-wise for an Alexia skin either, but I just think he's neat :)

New Cosmetics: RE4 Remake sweater dress for Ada RE4 Remake pinstripe suit for Leon RE4 Remake "romantic" outfit for Ashley RE0 leather outfit for Rebecca RE0 suit (the yakuza-looking one) for Billy RE4 (original) look for Luis (for the weirdos who like his old design better lmao)

This would be a larger level change, but I'd also let players toggle Legendary skins to show up on the character select screen. Like, you could set Carlos to show up instead of Leon's portrait if you have him. And as an even bigger change, I'd change how Legendary skins work to let them have their own skins too, so then I could get a Code: Veronica outfit Claire and a Christmas sweater for Carlos :3