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haikyuulovercompany · 3 months

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Late Night Study ~ Sugawara Koushi x Reader

All you wanted was to be in bed, cozy and wrapped around your boyfriend's arms. Instead, you were in the cold library, begging amidst sleepy eyes to call it a night. Why was Koushi so damn responsable? Original Request

Genre: Fluff. College!Sugawara

Warnings: None.

Words: 1.2k

Notes: What's with me and writing so much about studying lately? I swear I don't miss studying.

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“Come on, get your head up,” Sugawara insisted between whispers for the fifth time in the last half an hour.

You had your head lying on top of the notebook you were supposed to be studying from—not sleeping on it.

Sugawara took your head carefully with both hands and elevated it till his eyes met with yours, practically forcing you to look at him. Your eyes felt heavy and you could tell he probably felt the same. Right under caramel eyes, two dark half-moons overshadowed the usual shiny, pale skin. Your lips perked up in a tired pout and your eyebrows slightly furrowed. You were utterly displeased by the whole situation. If it was up to you, you would be in your dorm room, warm under a blanket with your boyfriend pressed against you and your laptop playing a movie for you two to doze off to. Instead, you were in the cold library under the horrible pressure of an upcoming final exam.

“We need to study,” Sugawara insisted, only causing your frown to deepen. He muffled a lazy chuckle. He lowered his hands so they were now wrapping your cheeks and he gently squeezed them, making your pout more pronounced. He chuckled again. “Just a little bit more. It’s a hard test.”

“I know,” you sighed, setting yourself free from his playful hold. “It’s just… I rather we were cozy in my room. I’m tired and cold.”

You rested your back on the chair and threw your head backwards, shutting your eyes immediately before the heavy lights above you made them hurt. A few seconds later, you felt your arm being pulled, bringing your body back to the table. You were met with Sugawara’s begging face, silently pleading you to at least try. You sighed and nodded, giving in. He was not going to leave the library just yet, and you were definitely not leaving without him.

You rested your elbows on the table and focused on your notes again. You felt his smile on you, and for a moment, that smile inspired you to actually study and not just stare at the sentences on the white paper. He had been the one to help you organize your notes into an incredibly well detailed guide. He was right… After all the effort he was putting on helping you study, you could at least try a little harder.

You began from the top of the page, reading each sentence twice and sometimes thrice just to make sure the information was properly allocating itself in your brain—which was a massive challenge. Your eyelids got heavy again and the perfect silence of the space made it impossible to hold onto something that would stop you from closing your eyes. Eventually, it was inevitable. It was past ten in the night and you had been awake since six in the morning coming and going through exams and classes. Your head fell on your hand and then it slipped until your forehead met with the cold paper in a dry ‘thud’.

The sound of a hand slapping skin could be heard next as Sugawara covered his mouth, doing his best to stop his laughter. Even though it was late, you two weren’t the only ones in the library. A couple of students were already throwing shady glances at you thanks to the loud noise your forehead crashing on the table had made to then have Sugawara laughing out loud, disrupting everyone who was successfully focusing unlike you.

“Come on, we can do it,” he whispered to you once he had calmed down. You nodded, already knowing you were done for.

You sighed and pretended to read from the page, but you secretly used your arm to cover your phone and began trying the games you had downloaded there. It had been months since you had touched them but for the time being, they were the best you had. You peeked at your boyfriend. He was completely immersed in his notebook, using his pen to follow his lecture. It was better to not bother him. So, you turned your head and began playing your little mobile game in mute. Maybe you couldn’t study, but at least you would make him company.

Just like Sugawara in his study guide, you got completely lost in your game. So much, you hadn’t notice twenty minutes had gone by until you were called out, being caught

“Weren’t you studying?” Sugawara asked, perplexed. While you slightly jumped at his voice, you didn’t bother to move your head which was practically laying on the table. You only moved your eyes, directing at him. The dark circles around his eyes had just gotten worse and now you could see the thin red lines of the veins of his eyes. He was truly forcing himself to get through his study guide.

“Koushi… let’s leave,” you pleaded, then sat straight before continuing. “What’s the use of staying up studying if you’re going to be tired during the exam?”

This time, he didn’t rebut nor sent you straight back to your notebook. This time, you saw the hesitance in his face and how his fingers played with the corners of the notebook. Any sign of exhaustion in you disappeared at the sign of him wanting the same as you.

“Come on,” you insisted, leaning more into the table till half your body was on top of it and both your arms covered his notes. “You’re tired, too.”

The answer you got was something you didn’t expect. With his elbows on the table he elevated himself so his lips caught yours in an impossibly soft and slow kiss. It wasn’t coming from a place of lust, but because of how sluggish and weary he was. He was giving you all the energy left in him into that kiss. On any other occasion, that type of kiss would melt you into a mess of hormones–it still kind of did, but you were too tired to flirt. He pulled his head back and tilted to look at you. You could see from the corner of your eyes the people on the table next to you watching the little love-show you were putting up. You responded with another peck on his lips.

“Is that a yes?” you asked.

Sugawara nodded. “Get me out of here.”

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♡ Thanks for reading! ♡

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #haikyuu blog #sugawara koushi #sugawara kōshi #sugawara x reader #sugawara x you #sugawara x y/n

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simplyanjuta · 1 year

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Making dynamic poses/animations that adjust to a sims body with Animation Tools by thepancake1

Made this short guide after talking to thepancake1. I haven't seen many people use this feature yet and felt like it might be worth sharing? There are some limitations to be aware of, but I think it's a useful option (for poses as well as animations) 😊

Many thanks to thepancake1 for the tools and for the helpful explanations he provided for this guide.

1. Background and in-game mechanics

The way TS4 handles different body shapes and clothes in animations (for example, in order to avoid clipping) is basically by putting markers (“slots”) on the surface of a sims body that can be then used as (IK) targets with the in-game IK system.

As you probably know, IK (Inverse Kinematics) – as opposed to the default FK (Forward Kinematics) – is a set-up where bones in a chain are influenced backwards. So, for example, when you move a hand, the arm will follow.

In a similar way, what in-game IK does, is assigning a bone or slot to animate relative to. For example, if your sim is posed with hands on the hips, you can assign the hands to the hips slot and the game will then process the pose/animation and perform IK in real time to change the position of the arms and hands relative to the hips.

Note that there are limitations to this system, though, as only hands, feet and the root bind can procedurally target other bones/slots.

Hereby, feet targets and root target are mainly used in interactions with objects, in particular in sitting animations (where, for example, the root is targeting a chair slot).

Hand targets are mainly used for adjusting a pose/animation to a sims body shape and clothes.

The in-game IK always influences the complete arm/leg (chain: foot-calf-thigh/hand-forearm-upperarm).

You can find an article that provides some background information here: https://simsvip.com/2014/08/20/community-blog-the-sims-4-animations/

2. Using the feature in custom poses/animations

Per default, when you make custom poses/animations with Blender and S4S, the relevant information that the game requires to apply in-game IK is not included. And so, you will notice that while a pose might look good with the base rig in Blender, it might not fit other sims with a different shape in game, in particular causing clipping.

You can use TS4 SimRipper to fine-tune a pose for a certain sim, but this might not be the solution you’re looking for, if you share your poses and/or want them to be compatible with different kinds of sims.

The animation tools now include a feature that makes it possible to use in-game IK with custom poses/animation as described in part 1.

Disclaimer:

The animation tools are in development and subject to change.

Currently TS4 SimRipper sims are not properly supported. (Although, imo for the purpose of the task, it doesn't make much sense to use them as models.)

As you can see in the comparison below, there might be some accuracy loss for the flexibility gained. (The position of the arms in the version without IK targets matches exactly the pose I made in Blender but doesn't work at all for the heavier sim causing extreme clipping. At the same time, the version with IK targets deviates a bit from the pose I made, but works for any sim.)

Below a short guide on how to set it up with the example pose I made.

1) You can download the tools HERE. Make sure to check the installation guide and tutorials in the wiki tab for the basics. (Note: The tools were originally made for Blender 3.0 but also support newer versions, in particular Blender 3.3.)

Some additional tips for poses in another post of mine HERE.

After you set up the tools in Blender and have made your pose:

2) Go to the S4AnimTools panel. Fill out rig name, clip splits and clip name as described in the tutorials linked above (also make sure to select “Allow Jaw Animation”).

3) Find & click “Create World IK channels”.

This will create 5 IK channels for the afore mentioned hands, feet and b_ROOT_bind bone. You can also add channels either by cloning the existing ones or clicking “Create World IK channels” again. To get rid of unwanted channels click “Delete”.

4) Set up the targeted bones/slots based on the type of pose you made.

In my example, I created a pose where a sim has the left hand on the hip, and the right hand close to the thigh. Therefore, I added IK channels targeting the “b__L_frontBellyTarget_slot” and “b__R_ThighFrontTarget_slot”.

The slots are marked blue in the picture below. Some notes:

The slots are hidden by default, I made them visible for the picture. You can unhide all bones/slots available by pressing Alt+H. But I recommend doing this on a separate rig/in another blend file or undo it directly afterwards if you don't want all the (unneccessary) bones/slots blocking your view.

The selected slots worked well enough for my example, but you should figure out what is suitable for you. (Fo example, the HandDangle slots seem to be commonly used when the arms are hanging near the body.)

As orientation you can also look up clip files for EA poses/animations via the S4S Game File Cruiser and see what bones/slots are used as targets ("Warehouse" tab -> "SlotAssignments"; IKChainIndex: 0 - left hand / 1 - right hand / 2 - left foot / 3 - right foot /4 - root). On that note: The Clip Pack export loses/resets the slot data, but you can use it to find an animation and check its Instance ID to then search for in the Game File Cruiser. (If you know the name of an animation you can also determine its Instance ID by converting the name with the S4S Hash Generator.)

5) To ensure an animation works properly and, in particular, blends with other animations in game, each IK channel should (also) target b_ROOT of the rig.

The bones are marked green in the picture below. This set up was recommened to me by pancake. Another experienced creator mentioned though that it's only necessary to target b_ROOT at the start and end of an animation, in his experience.

Also note that this seems to be a restriction for animations that are made as in-game interactions and might not be necessary for poses or animations used with Andrews Pose player.

6) The start and end frame is set according to the length of the pose/animation (I want to use the pose as a CAS trait pose and set the duration to 150 frames = 5 seconds), except for the b_ROOT target for hands where the end frame is set to 0 in my example, since they are also targeting the slots “b__L_frontBellyTarget_slot” and “b__R_ThighFrontTarget_slot” during the animation.

Note: My example is a static pose. In animations, however, you can also target different slots at different times by setting up multiple IK channels and specifying the start frame and end frame respectively.

7) Bake the animation by pressing “Bake IK”.

8) Export the clip and create a package with your pose/animation as described in the linked tutorials above.

@ts4-poses @thefoxburyinstitute

#TS4 poses #tutorials #tutorial #poses #animations #TS4 #sims 4

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the-mozzarella-brothers · 11 months

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HI everyone

as y'all probably know, the monkees episodes on archive.org got taken down unfortunately. thankfully though, i downloaded all the files from there that i could a while ago and i have a google drive with those exact files!

everyone can feel free to use it, it is here. i'm not sure how stuff like this works with copyright so don't spread it around unnecessarily just in case (though i can always remake it because i have the files on my laptop still), but if you need it then feel free to use it!!

it also has elephant parts for anyone that wants that :)

if anyone else finds any other monkees content (television parts as a file, etc etc) that i can put on there feel free to send it to me to add it :) im not sure how much storage i have on there but i can always figure out a solution!

hope this helps!

edit: it seems i kind of put the wrong link on the original version of this post that leads straight to the season 1 section (thats the section i had open when i made the post) and i've fixed it but on the versions that have been reblogged it still opens that link. i think with that link you should be able to go backwards to the part with all four sections (S1, S2, films and specials, michael's stuff) but i'm not exactly sure. sorry about it not working properly before i should've checked the link when i posted it :/

#the monkees #monkees #mike nesmith #peter tork #davy jones #micky dolenz #michael nesmith #60s #1960s #1970s #1980s #1990s #i think all those tags with the decades are allowed becuase there is content from each of them #70s #80s #90s

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rpgsandbox · 8 months

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Welcome to Yeld! If this is your first time visiting the Magical Land, you're about to discover a hidden world full of adventures and danger! If you've discovered Yeld before, get ready to continue your adventures with a brand new book full of exciting new options and improvements!

The Magical Land of Yeld: 2nd Edition is an all-ages tabletop RPG with a focus on teamwork, exploration and shared storytelling. Our new edition refines and polishes the easy to learn Yeld ruleset and offers new Jobs, new art and lore, new monsters and plenty of quality of life improvements! Check out our Patch Notes to see what's new in Yeld: 2nd Edition!

Backwards compatible! Yeld: 2nd Edition is fully compatible with all of our previously published expansions. No need to re-buy any of those Job Guides! We appreciate your investment and assure you that you'll be able to continue to use your collection of Yeld expansions!

In The Magical Land of Yeld you'll take on the roll of children from our world (called Friends) who discover a land of magic and adventure hidden on the other side of a secret door! Take on heroic Jobs like Shepherd and Witch and set out on a quest across the Magical Land to challenge the infamous Hunters of Yeld and win their keys so you can unlock the door and return home!

But hurry! If you turn 13 while in Yeld you'll become a monster, and you'll never be able to go home again!

In each Yeld adventure the Game Master leads players through a story full of challenges and monsters, to a final confrontation with a Boss Monster! If the players can defeat the Boss Monster they'll collect treasure and Reward Dice that they can use to customize their Friends!

As players continue their adventures they'll be able to take on the Hunters of Yeld. Each Hunter is a powerful Boss Monster with their own unique story, adventure and treasure. Defeating the Hunters awards the players with their Key, and advanced the players to the next Rank. where they can equip their Friends with more powerful equipment and unlock new Advanced Jobs and benefits!

Once the player defeat all 7 Hunters, collect their keys and advance to Rank 4 they can unlock the magic door and return home! Or they can choose to confront the sinister Vampire Prince Dragul and continue their adventures in Yeld!

New to Yeld? Download the full 1st Edition Rulebook for free! We're proud of our game and we think the best way to learn about Yeld is to get your hands on it! That's why we're offering the original Yeld 1st Edition rulebook for free! Download it and see what our game is all about! Building Adventures: Adventures in Yeld are a story that you create and tell together. In each game of Yeld the Game Master will guide players through a story. But once the game ends the role of GM will pass to a new player. You'll tell the new GM what you’d like to see in your next game (More sword fights! Explore the Ogre Caves! Learn to cook Snake Cakes!) and the new GM will build a new adventure for you to play, using your suggestions to continue the story where the last GM left off. You’ll take turns as Game Master, making sure each player gets a chance to shape the story. We think you’ll discover that your adventures are more fun because they’re stories we’ve created together!

Fights: Fights in Yeld take place on an 8x8 grid called the Action Board and are similar to video games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. We've taken inspiration from classic fantasy video games to provide deep turn based, team based action! In Yeld you’ll win fights with teamwork, combo building and improvisation, and every Friend will get a chance to shine! Here's the basics rules for fights:

Travel and time: Time and distance are important in Yeld. As you travel you’ll create a map that will show you where you’ve been and help you keep track of every town, cave and castle you discover. Traveling takes time, so you’ll mark off each day on your calendar. Yeld is full of special Holidays like the Blue Wind Kite Flying Festival and Black Opera Tournament, and if you arrive in the right town in time for these holidays you can participate in special events to gain unique rewards!

You may have arrived in Yeld as children, but each day you'll get older, and if you turn 13 while you’re still in Yeld you’ll become a monster! You’ll take on a Monster Job (like Vampire or Deep Mage) and be stuck in Yeld forever! Your time in Yeld is a race against the clock to see if you can unlock the door home before you become monsters!

Speaking of Monsters... Yeld is full of strange and creepy creatures. Not everything you meet in Yeld wants to eat you, but Vampires, Fairy Soldiers, Mermaid Raiders, Toothfacer Bandits, Tunnel Mummies, Serpent Oracles, Scuba Snakes and all kinds of horrible creatures are lurking around every corner and in every cave, and their favorite prey is young heroes! We’ll be providing a whole bunch of neat monsters for you to choose from, so you’ll be able to fill your fights with all kinds of fun challenges. But our game will also come with a revised Monster Formula, allowing you to easily create custom creatures for your Friends to face!

Lots of comics! We like to present our rules visually. While Yeld features a full comprehensive game text it also has lots of instructional comics to help make learning the rules simple and easy! Plus, comics are fun! Here's a comic about using magic:

Creating characters in Yeld is an ongoing process that continues even after your adventure starts! Your characters, called Friends, start as normal children from our world. Each Friend is between the age of 7 and 12, and each Friend Type (like Liar, Big Sister or Brat) has a different set of Core dice, Special dice and personality traits. You'll choose your Friend Type and age before your first game.

Once you step through the magic door and start to explore Yeld you’ll get to take on a heroic Job like Witch, Black Mage or Oathbreaker. These Jobs will give you powerful abilities that allow you to face down dangerous monsters and take on difficult adventures. They'll also allow you to customize your Friend with new Core dice and Special dice and new weapons.

As you set out on your quest and explore Yeld you'll have even more chances to customize your Friend. You may decide to switch Jobs, taking some of what you learned from your last Job to a new one. You'll collect Special dice and win Good or Evil dice through heroic deeds or cunning and underhanded acts. You'll discover treasure and trade for loot. You may even go on special quests to learn powerful Advanced Jobs like Vampire Hunter and Drudge Angel! In each adventure you'll have an opportunity to continue to customize and build your Friend!

If you can't escape Yeld before you turn 13 you'll take a Monster Job like Deep Mage and Serpent Oracle. Monster Jobs represent a change in your body and mind as your Friend grows older and becomes more accustomed to Yeld. Being a monster can be scary, but it can also be exciting! Some Friends discover that they love the power that comes with being a monster. And just because you've become a monster doesn't mean you're a bad person. You'll continue to travel with your Friends and help the people of Yeld. Being a monster will just make your adventures more... interesting!

Here's an example: Kiandra starts her adventures as a Big Sister. When she first comes to Yeld she chooses the Oathbreaker Job. She focuses on heavy armor and strong attacks to protect her Friends. Later, she goes on a quest to unlock the Boulder Knight Advanced Job, offering a nearly impenetrable defense to her Friends! When Kiandra turns 13 she chooses the Werewolf Monster Job. Being a Werewolf is a big change for Kiandra. She still wants to protect her Friends, but now when she loses control she can be a danger to them. Thankfully her supernatural strength and furry fury makes the challenges of being a Werewolf worthwhile. And the Special dice she collected as an Oathbreaker and Boulder Knight still help her protect her Friends as a Werewolf!

Yeld is a vast and mysterious land, built on the back of the slumbering Serpent God and harboring ancient secrets. No one knows how old the Magical Land is, and no one has ever seen its edges. The Fairies claim to be the oldest of Yeld’s people, and even they have barely explored Yeld’s secrets. Much of the Magical Land is dangerous wilderness, wildlands where Monsters roam and magic runs free. The people of Yeld make their homes in areas of relative safety, where magical disasters are rarer and Monsters less likely to hunt. Even these territories can be dangerous, and Yeld is littered with the ruins of crumbled cities and lost civilizations. Few kingdoms last long in the Magical Land.

he lands and climates of Yeld are varied. Harsh mountains give way to rainy foothills and plains. Rivers crisscross the lands, intersecting in swampy marshes. Deep forests stretch from coast to coast, and great oceans divide distant land masses. Burning desserts, frozen tundra and even stranger lands can be found in Yeld’s most remote regions. Yeld has always been a place of magic. The Fairies are the oldest inhabitants of Yeld, and they say that when they made their home there they found magic buried deep in the darkest forests and caverns. Some scholars suspect Black Magic is a gift of forgotten gods, all that is left after their magic destroyed them. Others think that all magic comes from the same source, the sacred and unknowable well of power that spawned the great ancient Witches and other monstrous god creatures.

Yeld is the name of the vast Magical Land, but also the name of a Kingdom that lies at the heart of that land. King's People. However, the King’s People are not the only ones who make the Kingdom their home. Fairies, Goblins, Mermaids, Vampires, Squidfolk, Toothfacers, Pi-Rats and the Animal Tribes all live within the territories of the Kingdom, as do other stranger creatures.

The Kingdom is ruled over by its regent, the Vampire Prince Dragul, and a council of nobles, knights, advisors and generals. The Prince and many members of this council are immortal Vampires, and have been alive and in power for over 1000 years since the Prince stole the kingdom from the rightful Princess after the death of the Old King. The Prince’s chief lieutenant’s are the notorious Hunters of Yeld, powerful warlords and monsters who bend their knee only to Dragul. As a reward for loyalty the Prince has given each Hunter control over one of the Kingdom’s territories. Some Hunters have interest in governing, or at least maintaining, their territories. Others have left the lands in their charge to ruin, in favor of waging war or running criminal enterprises such as the notorious Crimson Ministry.

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Kickstarter campaign ends: Sun, February 11 2024 6:00 AM UTC +00:00

Website: [Yeld Stuff] [facebook] [twitter] [instagram]

#RPG #kickstarter #The Magical Land of Yeld #all ages game

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queer-ragnelle · 26 days

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So, regarding your novels, what made you write backwards? I'm so curious about it.

TL;DR I started writing in Mordred and Galahad perspective. I then became possessed by the "older" characters and went "back" in the timeline to write their origins (starting with parentified Agravaine). I did this several times until I ended up with Ragnelle/Gawain as book 1, "the beginning," of what turned into an Epic many books long.

Let me give you a timeline...

1900s: I am born and develop Arthurian brain worms.

21st century: The worms declare Ragnelle/Gawain are my favorites and I write their Wedding multiple times for fun based off what can be gleaned from Wikipedia and retellings as I have no medieval resources at my disposal.

February 2020: I think Mordred and Galahad would make neat narrative foils and write a short story about them playing chess.

March 2020: The plague. I'm furloughed from my job. Writing becomes my full-time focus. I write 60,000 words in Mordred and Galahad perspective, plotting their story to be a trilogy.

June 2020: I'm back to work but I'm still writing. With money and curiosity at my disposal, I begin hoarding Arthurian books. Local quirky secondhand bookstore owner had an Arthurian fixation in his youth—I clear his shelves. He asks if I'm a medievalist major and I have to break it to him I'm just a High School drop out at the mercy of the Tell-Tale knights chattering in my head. I learn more lore. I splurge to buy the Vulgate cycle. I'm forever changed.

Late 2020: Reading medlit and retellings and watching all the movies super charged the brain worms. The Vulgate especially. I develop an obsession with circumventing the Orkneys/Welshmen blood feud with the power of gay sex. (Joan Wolf did it first in her 1988 book The Road to Avalon with Agravaine/Lamorak.)

January 2021: Historical research shows that Islam didn't exist yet during the 5th/6th century I'd been writing in. I order Zoroastrianism by Mary Boyce to make sure I'm depicting Ragnelle and Gromer's religion properly. But it's nbd their page time is minimal as background characters right? ....right?

2021 continued: The Agravaine/Lamorak brain worms take on a life of their own as I'm hospitalized and bedridden. Chronic pain and isolation become my themes. I write endlessly on my phone from bed. 2/3 novels are completed and readable straight through with a third book in pieces. These are currently at a combined total of nearly 140,000 words. (Plus the notes file with scenes I haven't moved yet...whoa.)

Late 2021: I rediscover old Ragnelle/Gawain stuff and decide to write about their wedding. Again. But this time with legit sources. Except Ragnelle isn't some ambiguous character of color, she's now very specifically Persian [Iranian] Zoroastrian. So the whole thing takes place in Persia and research goes crazy. Someone gives me their college log in so I can download and hoard essays and textbook PDFs. I do beta-read trades with people in facebook groups (bad bad idea) and yet...

End of 2021: I get sample edits from various editors including one guy who insulted my "lack of education" and said emulating J. R. R. Tolkien's old style didn't work anymore and I should take inspiration from The Hunger Games....for my queer romance in Persia. Right. Anyway I pay the $100 for the pages edited so he'll go away and continue searching for my unicorn editor....

2022: Ultimately facebook group scouting finally yields results as I stumble upon a fellow Ragnelle/Gawain enthusiast who would become my editor!! Editor says I have to cut the giant book into thirds, so what is now book 1 ends up chopped.

2023: I'm still revising book 1, now titled The Moonlit Knight, with my editor. All the while I'm drafting book 2, sporadically cheating to write in other books including an Elaine and Perceval book that appeared out of no where, and scouting out beta readers. One beta reader came via a tumblr mutual who connected me through instagram. A second beta reader discovered in a discord server. Another beta reader from a different discord server. So on and so forth.

Early 2024: Beta reading continues, until I have readers for every angle I require; queer people of all flavors, Zoroastrians, Arthurian enthusiasts, Jewish readers, people with DID knowledge etc! Slowly but surely I work through revising the book with all these wonderful people to a final 95,000 words!

Mid 2024: But now...it needed a cover. I commission a tumblr mutual and work for weeks with them on that, still editing/revising and having betas read book 2, Sunshine's Lady, which is currently almost 132,000 words long and half edited/beta read.

September 2024: I still haven't published. lol. But the process takes a long time and has a lot of moving parts!

So why do I actually recommend this method? Well, this has been hugely helpful to write foreshadowing. Forgetting for a second the blueprint drawn from Arthurian Legend itself, I know how my story with my version of the characters is going to go, so I can set all of that up way in advance. It's all well and good to know (spoiler) Arthur dies at the end, but it's never been about the conclusion so much as the journey there and the unique perspective of whichever character the author has chosen to focus on. I mean, Godfrey Turton's The Emperor Arthur is Pelleas point of view. He's instrumental at the battle of Camlann. It's the same with Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles and our one-handed friend Derfel, the reasoning for which isn't revealed until book 3. The world is your oyster! Fixate on your special character and set that shit up and pay it off!!!

Knowing what you're writing toward is extremely helpful during the drafting process. Even if it's only vaguely shaped it'll develop detail as you revise. Other than Derfel's missing hand, the best example of this I can think of is in Realm of the Elderlings series by Robin Hobb. It has a huge fanbase on tumblr for a reason, it's just an insane amount of set up you're not even aware of until the impact slams into you many books later and you're left going, "Whoa.....it was there the whole time." Mind blowing. I want have half as much narrative resonance as that.

Another thing that came of this is, since I wrote Agravaine/Lamorak first, and I'm obscenely Ragnelle obsessed, she pops up in their pov as a hag, only for them to not realize she's one and the same as Gawain's bombshell wife they "meet" later. I wrote this as the lads first, but it's extra funny now that, actually, the reader will experience Ragnelle's perspective first. Hottie uncursed Ragnelle does know she met them before, but feigns otherwise. So it's very fun to see the same encounters happen a second time a few books later. Agravaine is like, "Okay granny whatever. Bye... :^/" and Lamorak is like, "That granny was weird but I like her! :^)" meanwhile the reader is like, "AHHHHH! I KNOW HER!!! YOU FOOLS DON'T KNOW HOW IMPORTANT SHE'LL BE AHHH!!!" At least, that has been the beta reader reaction, which is gratifying. Even better, the books can be read out of order, so actually if you read Agravaine/Lamorak before Ragnelle/Gawain, it works in reverse, too. So if the reader knows who Agravaine is from reading his perspective, when Ragnelle or Gawain runs into him, the reader will realize who he is before it clicks for the point of view character. I had a lot of fun developing all of this across the series for multiple characters, it certainly happens more than once.

Wow that was long but I hope it makes sense and gives you an idea how it all went down. Thanks for taking an interest and I hope you enjoy my books when they're out. Take care! :^)

#arthuriana #arthurian legend #arthurian mythology #arthurian literature #writing #my writing #elegy of an empire #writers of tumblr #writeblr #ask #anonymous

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kaaaaaaarf · 1 year

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wip poll winner: Murder Husbands

So this is way longer than the 22 sentances I was supposed to post, but I got carried away with things, and well....here you go. Freshly written, unedited snippit from the next chapter of Murder Husbands, inspired by this tik tok video. (cw: mature themes)

Remus has been in what you might call a slump. He just hasn't felt much like himself lately— this happens from time to time. He has a lot going on in his life, between his cat sitting business, helping out Sirius with his art students, and the plotting and execution of murder. Most people don’t realise that murder properly undertaken takes a lot of energy and planning. Remus is just running on empty and in desperate need of something to brighten his spirits. When one of his favourite kids in Sirius’ class started talking about his Ticky-Tock videos, Remus knew that it was just the thing to turn his week around. Teddy explained that Ticky-Tocks were short videos to share with friends. He played a few for Remus, and he especially liked the ones with people dancing. He didn’t have a ton of friends, but he did have Sirius. He wanted to make a really cool Ticky-Tock for him. He had Teddy help him download the application to his phone, set up an account and show him the basics on how to record. As soon as he got home, he prepared himself to record. He already knew the perfect song, but he needed to put on his best duds. He chose his form-fitting blue jeans and a simple white, short sleeve button up, paired with his favourite striped, burgundy sweater vest over top. He put on his Casio A168W ElectroLuminescence (it’s water and blood resistant— technology is insane) and his favourite pair of glasses to complete the look. He fumbled with his new iPhone (a gift from Sirius on his birthday), positioning it against the exposed boards on the wall inside of the west servant’s passage, and double checked how he looked onscreen (suave, as always). Once he was satisfied that his phone wouldn't fall over, he set it to play Everything She Wants and began his carefully choreographed performance, perfectly on beat with the song. He shakes his hips seductively and lip-syncs along. When he’s done, he watches it back and is pleased with how well it turned out. He posts the video to his account and sends a link to Sirius. He feels so much better now. He thinks he might have the strength to finally set about getting rid of Mitch’s body. Just in time too— it was starting to smell. **** Sirius receives the text message from Remus while he is out to dinner at Chez L’éponge with some work colleagues. He plays the attached video through once, hiding his phone under the table as he does. He freezes once the video finishes, and has to excuse himself to hide in the bathroom so that he can watch it again. It’s a Tik-Tok video of Remus, set to a Wham! Song, with the caption Whammin’ in bold letters across the top. Sirius watches as Remus awkwardly shuffles backwards, clapping his hands and pointing at the camera rhythmically, doing a dance that Sirius could only describe as a rendition of the Monster Mash. He is looking at the camera with intensity from behind his horn-rimmed glasses and has a smear of dried blood on his cheek that also seems to be speckled on his sweater vest. Sirius licks his lips and then plays it a third time. Then a fourth. God, there is something so irresistible, so alluring in the way that Remus moves like a baby giraffe that just figured out how to stand on its own legs. Sirius has to hurriedly lock himself in a cubicle while he whacks off to Remus Whammin’, the video playing on repeat until he comes with a groan that he tries to smother with a bitten lip. When he’s done, he exits the stall and washes his hands. Before he goes back out to re-join his coworkers, he replies to the message from Remus with an emoji thumbs up.

@kaleidoscopexsighs, @spindrifters, @fruityindividual, @grimjobs and @lynxindisguise are the ones who tagged me for the original survey!

#fic: murder husbands #wolfstar

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stitching-in-time · 2 months

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Voyager rewatch s4 ep11: Concerning Flight

This episode is a nice change of pace after the seriousness of Year of Hell- despite the main plot of Voyager's computer core getting stolen, the whole episode feels very lighthearted, and mostly serves as an excuse for Janeway to go on an adventure with her childhood hero, Da Vinci.

Some aliens steal equipment from Voyager, so they have to go get it back. Janeway and Tuvok beam down to the planet where they've tracked it to, and have a few fun scenes of going undercover posing as traveling traders. They learn that Janeway's Da Vinci program was running when the computer was taken, so now he's been downloaded to the Doctor's stolen mobile emitter, and is working as a resident scientist for the guy who stole their stuff. There's the usual fish-out-of-water time traveller scenarios with Da Vinci, and Janeway having to explain what's going on without telling him who she really is or that he's a hologram.

Back on the ship, Seven argues with Harry, and later B'Elanna, as Seven relates to the Doctor in a scene where he comically presses her for ship gossip while he's temporarily stuck in sickbay. I have to say, I'm disappointed that they seem to be starting Seven off down the road of being disdainful and intentionally rude to the rest of the crew. In all the episodes up till now, there wasn't any meaness in Seven's abrupt replies or failures to follow rules, she just genuinely didn't understand, and that made her character a lot more sympathetic, and she'd begun to build a rapport with the rest of the crew. I was actually surprised at how much I didn't dislike her in her first few episodes, and I thought maybe I just remembered her being worse than she was because I missed Kes. But it looks now like the writing did intentionally take take a turn to making her more haughty and antagonistic as the season progressed, which feels like backwards progress.

But most of this episode is fun Janeway shenanigans, with yet another nice town square set, and some nice location filming too. I loved how the matte painting of the alien city blended into the (actually Californian) hills, and it's always nice to get the characters out into sweeping vistas and sunshine outside on real live hills. Of course they manage to rescue their equipment and escape the baddie, and it culminates with Janeway and Da Vinci escaping in a glider and flying through the air before they're beamed up by Voyager. Though the whole episode is on the fluffy and inconsequential side, the part where they take flight really did make me smile, and on the whole, I had fun, even if nothing stood out as being wildly clever or high stakes. At least it was original, and different from any other Star Trek story, which is not always easy to achieve, with hundreds of episodes of Star Trek already in existence by this time.

Tl;dr: A lightweight but amusing episode that lets Janeway have some fun, innocuous hijinks.

#star trek: voyager #voyager rewatch #rewatching star trek #star trek voyager #star trek

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masterofdemons · 2 years

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Mechanic!Mammon Headcanons

A/N: I saw a few Mechanic!Mammon posts and wanted to dive into that a little more since my partner irl used to be a mechanic. I’m not sure who originally came up with this idea but I hope you don’t mind this little expansion!

Mechanic!Mammon:

- Always has little traces of motor oil staining the creases of his knuckles that won’t come off no matter how many times he washes his hands. He’ll always be hounding MC for some lotion after scrubbing his hands for several minutes, claiming they’re dry, before slipping his signature rings back on.

- Is usually very clean, surprisingly, but still gets messy on most bigger jobs. He still insists on wearing white. He will still complain when he stains his white shirts. Be prepared to buy packs of white tee shirts for him.

- Will most definitely work on MC’s car for free. He’ll even try to come by the parts without MC having to pay for them. He won’t own up to any of this, though, and MC will assume they’re paying until the very end. He will make up an excuse about it, too. He didn’t do it because he cares or anything, so don’t get any funny ideas!

- Despite all of the things he’s had to sell in a pinch, he’s never sold his car(s) or tools to fix them. He doesn’t want to ever be in a position where he can’t drive anywhere, or fix the car(s) he loves. Mammon cares about things very much.

- Downloads MC’s favorite human music on his DDD to play in the car when they go on drives. He also definitely put those little lights in the floor board of the passenger seat to turn on when they’re in the car. MC is the only one who knows about them, though.

- Keeps a rag in his back pocket to wipe his hands on when he’s working on a car, and often forgets to take it out. It hangs out like a little tail. He will get extremely flustered if MC tugs it out of his pocket when they walk by and hand it to him.

- Asks MC what their favorite smell is so he can get an air freshener of it. Don’t bring it up to him. He may implode if he has to be put in that position.

- Sometimes will wear a beanie/backwards ballcap to get his hair out of his face if he’s looking down for a long period of time. He gets flustered and starts dropping tools when you stare, so be discreet.

- Wears the uniform shirt you got him (for Christmas awhile back ago) with his name embroidered onto it when he goes to car shows, but not when he works on cars. He treasures it too much to risk it getting stained or ripped. Again, if you point this out, he will deny it until you’re 6 feet under.

Bonus:

Mammon: *taps on MC’s window after changing their oil*

MC: *rolls their window down* “Yes?”

Mammon: *presents them with their oil clean oil stick, clearly wanting praise* “So, what’cha think? The Great Mammon pulled through for ya once again, huh?”

MC: *stares at the stick for the second, not knowing what they’re supposed to be looking for, before addressing the cheeky demon* “What would I do without you, Mammon?”

——————————

Mammon: *walks in from running an errand with MC’s car* “Oi, MC, you need your tires rotated.” *starts walking away to get dressed so he can work on the car*

MC: *tries not to smile and to look serious* “Mammon, sweetie, they rotate while I’m driving. I don’t need to get them rotated.”

Mammon: *visibly freezes* Mammon.exe has stopped responding.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #shall we date obey me #obey me x reader #obey me mammon #mechanic mammon #obey me headcanons #obey me oneshot #swd obey me #swd mammon #obey me incorrect quotes

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rinmemesuoka · 1 month

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I may make a more detailed post about this later but if you want to do some dialogue Alteration (not Addition, that's getting into coding and I don't know how to do that with Mistria rn) with Fields of Mistria it is a mostly simple process.

If you go into the Steam common files for Mistria, you'll find a file named Localization.JSON. All of the dialogue in Fields of Mistria is located in that file. I recommend making a Copy to do any editing on, and not directly editing the JSON file that is in the directory. You may also want to save a backup of the original file.

Once you have your copy of localization.JSON (saved outside of the directory), you can open it using a program called Notepad++, which can be downloaded here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

You may be familiar with it already if you've ever modded Stardew Valley dialogue. Maybe. It's been a while since I've modded Stardew myself idk what tools y'all are using now.

So, the main issue you're going to run into when you open the JSON in Notepad++ is that all of the text is on one line. I don't have a solution to that besides turning on text wrap in the View settings in Notepad++. I didn't want to risk messing anything up by inserting linebreaks and I don't know if it would display differently in another editing program.

The text being all one one line makes it difficult to parse for specific dialogue unless you know what you're looking for. Since I was editing to change March's pronouns and some other gendered language referring to March, i used Control + F and searched March because most use of pronouns to refer to a character will follow that character being referred to by name.

One thing to look out for is that some continuous conversations are written in the JSON "backwards". That is, response B to statement A will appear Before statement A in the line. So you may have to backtrack a little.

Once you have made and saved your edits, you can copy and paste your new Localization.JSON into the Mistria file directory, replacing the existing file. I recommend keeping a copy of your edited Localization.JSON outside of the directpry as well, so you can make edits on the fly if you notice, during gameplay, that you missed a spot. You can then save that file and paste it into the directory after you're done playing, without needing to close the game to make edits.

(For example, the Localization.json file I was using to modify dialogue related to March had already been modified by another modder to give Ryis they/them pronouns, and I noticed a few lines in their two heart cutscene that had been missed, so I corrected that.)

Right now, there's not really an easy way to update an edited Localization.json as the game updates, so you may have to start over when the devs add new content to Localization.JSON. Depending on how intensive the edit you want to make is, it may be worth waiting for the game to leave early access first.

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aceofwhump · 1 year

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Hello @crispyliza !! So I'm replying in a separate post because this is too long for a reply on the post. Hope you don't mind. I also think it might benefit others who have asked me in the past and those wishing to start gif making. Especially with whumptober just around the corner.

So here's a full look at how I make my gifs. This got very long so I put it under a read more

A quick thing before I start: I use windows and google chrome. If you're a mac or firefox user I'm not sure of this will work for you in terms of programs. The techniques I use in photoshop should though.

Okay for this demonstration I'm going to show you how I made the gifs for this gifset

To start we need a video. I don't torrent because my internet connection will cut out a random which makes using vpns rather pointless. I've tried. My internet would cut out halfway through a torrent download and then my internet provider was notified to what I was doing. It was just not great. So I found a new way to download videos off the internet! You can use torrents though. If you've got a vpn, go for it.

There are several streaming sites that I go to to get my videos. 1movies, and bstsrs are my go to right now since soap2day is gone (rip i miss you).

Now there are three ways I can get a video depending on what website I'm using. Bstsrs is the easiest because they have a whole bunch of links available. I always go with mixdrop because it has an easy to use built in download button. Unfortunately this site doesn't have movies. Just tv shows and sometimes it's not the best quality or there aren't links available. That's when I go to 1movies. Once you've found your video I use the chrome extension Cococut to download it. Click the extension button to open, then the download button. Then you just have to wait until the video is rendered. Click save. Wait until its downloaded.

Okay we now have our video! The next step is to turn the scene you want to gif into frames. For this we're gonna need KMPlayer. This video player makes it really easy to turn scenes into frames/screencaps. Open your video. Find the the scene you want and pause the video. Type control-g to open this screen:

Here you choose the destination you want your frames to be saved. Decide what to name your frames and match up your settings with mine. You want to continuously extract frames, original size, and I stick with every 2 frames. Then, and this is important, choose video images only.

Now click start then start playing your video until the scene you want to gif is done. When you've got everything you wanted, pause the video. Hit ctrl-g again to reopen that screen and click stop. You now have all the frames you need so go ahead and exit out of KMPlayer. You don't need it again unless you need to redo frames or get the dialogue or something.

Next up we are gonna open Photoshop. I use Photoshop CC 2014.

Click on File -> Scripts -> Load files into stack -> Browse.

Go wherever you saved your frames and select the ones you need. Click okay and let the frames load completely before doing any thing else. Depending on how many you've selected this could take a while.

Once all of your frames are loaded, click "Create Frame Animation". Next click the little arrow button on right followed by "Make Frames From Layers" so we have all of our frames laid out. Now we need to reverse the frames because they're backwards so click that little button again and then click "Reverse Frames"

Okay you've got your frames loaded and all set to go. Time for all the cropping, resizing, setting the speed, and editing.

First thing I do is set the speed because otherwise I forget and it's important to do and a pain in the ass to do after all the editing is done. So do it first and get it out of the way. Select all of your frames. Click the little button beneath a frame where it says 0.0 and pick your time. I usually go for .1 seconds but .05 is also a popular speed. Just test one out and see which one you like best for your gif. You can hit the play button at any time to test your gif.

To set speed:

After this I do one of two things. Either I go into cropping and resizing or I separate frames. Depends on how many frames I uploaded. If I uploaded all the frames needed for an entire gifset this is the part where I separate them out onto individual gifs. So let's do that.

Originally I was just gonna do one gif but I have 115 frames uploaded which is waaaay too many for just one gif. I like to keep my gifs between 30 and 80 frames. So I'm going to split this into 3 gifs I think. It'll make a nice balanced gifset.

Select the frames you want for the first gif and copy them using the copy frames option in the same menu as the make frames from layers menu. Open a new document with the same dimensions as your current document. Click "Create Frame Animation" and paste the frames over the selected frame. Make sure that first frame is the same speed as all the other frames. Repeat until you have your desired gifs.

Next up I crop and resize. For this gif I'm going to first crop out the black bars above and below the image because we don't want that in the gif. Use the select tool to pick what you want to keep then "Image" then "Crop".

Now I could leave it as it but I think for this gifset I'm gonna focus more on Geralt so I'm going to crop it in a bit more.

Once cropping is all set i'm going to resize the gif to tumblr dimensions. Click "Image" then "Image Size" and change the width to 540px. The height can be anything and best not to mess with it so your gif keeps it's proportions. 540px is the width of a tumblr post and I plan on making these gifs stacked one on one.

Okay the gifs are all cropped and sized. Now it's time to do some editing. Go back to your first gif. We'll do all the work on this first gif and apply the same things to the other ones later because the scenes are the same. If they were different each gif would be colored and edited individually. First thing to do is turn it from frame animation to timeline. Timeline mode makes applying things like sharpening and brightness much easier and smoother.

So just click this button in the bottom left corner to go into timeline mode. Next up select all your layers. They're on the right side. Make sure you've selected ALL of them. Then click on "Filter" -> "Convert for Smart Filters" THIS IS AN IMPORTANT STEP! We can't edit until this is done.

This button to switch from frames to timeline:

First thing I do is sharpen. You can use one of the presets or try to do manually do it with smart sharpen. I use the preset labelled "sharpen" because I'm lazy and this one does a fine job for my gifs. I also add a layer of surface blur to smooth things out. Just a small touch. Like barely any blur but I think it smooths noise a bit and makes it look better.

Next up: Editing!! This step is going to be different for each and every gif you make. It all depends on the colors in the scene your giffing so you're gonna have to do a lot of experimenting to get the right look you want. Personally that's what I like about it. Makes it fun.

All your adjustments can be found found on the right side of the screen:

I almost always start with the "Levels" layer to brighten up the image because as we all know, every freaking whump scene is sooo dark. So with levels you just slide the little arrows around until you get a look you like.

Then I add a layer of "Curves". I love curves. With curves you can select the whitest white and the darkest black and the middle tone to change the brightness and colors of your gif. Or you can use this part and just brighten or darken a specific part. It's really versatile and i love it. It does take some practice and experimenting though.

Now a layer of "Contrast" and a layer of "Vibrance".

After this it's all about the selective colors, photo filters, and color balance to work on the colors and brightness. For this gif I'm only doing a tiny bit of editing cause I like the coloring but sometimes I'll have multiple layers of these to create a good coloring.

Once you're satisfied with how your gif looks it's time to save it!

Click "File" -> "Save for Web" and wait until it's all loaded. Important thing too look at here is the size of the gif. You can't upload any gif that is larger than 10mbs so make sure it's under that. Sometimes even 9.8 is too big because tumblr is a butt. I go for anything below 9.8. If your gif is too big try resizing it or removing a few frames. Make sure you gif is set to loop forever. Otherwise it'll just stop after a little bit. Don't forget to change this!

Here are the rest of my settings:

After that you can click save.

And that's it! You've made a gif! Congrats! If you have any questions or want clarification feel free to message me :)

#gifmaking #tutorial #tutorials #my tutorial #mod post

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orchidbreezefc · 1 year

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the "syncing to the mike cloud" model of time travel

since i mentioned this in my [link: mike guide], here's my current theory for how causality works in woe.begone!

everything in woe.begone (aside from some stuff with continuous corrections and the boulders--find the followup theory post on that [here]) seems to indicate that only one timeline can exist at once. the timeline can be changed, but ALL of it changes and overwrites the previous one like an obsolete save file. the two save files don't coexist; you can't load one and visit a point that only happened in the file you overwrote. there's only one series of events in the file, complete with its echoes forward and backwards.

the big question this brought up for me was: what does that mean for [latvia] mike returning to his own time period to spend time with edgar? his native timeline no longer exists, right? just like michael's? mike's moving 5 years forward in THIS timeline, not to a timeline that has been erased. isn't he just visiting mikey's edgar 5 years from now? but mike hasn't reported any incongruous experiences with the edgar of 5 years from now. nor has he bumped into any 5-years-older mikey, even when he lives there full-time.

the options here are: 1. edgar is lying to mike, 2. mike is lying to the other mikes and audience, 3. you CAN visit undone timelines, or 4. (my theory)--latvia mike is the current mikey 5 years from now. at least he is when he's in his own time period--and that's the crucial part.

when latvia mike sets foot in 2022 and talks to mikey, mikey has an experience (the conversation) that mike has not had. in that moment mike diverges from mikey causally. mikey can't become this mike, because he has memories (of the conversation) that mike doesn't.

my theory is that it's specifically the act of returning to his own time period that reintegrates mike with mikey's trajectory. when mike returns to his time PERIOD (not timeLINE), he syncs to the mike cloud--he downloads the patch that contains mikey's memories of the conversation they just had. mike goes in airplane mode when he's in 2022. it's when he reconnects by returning to his own time period of 2027 that he syncs back up with the current timeline's memory storage. mike retroactively re-becomes mikey.

by this logic, michael is NOT causally linked with mike OR mikey, because he hasn't returned to his own time--and this is very good disincentive to do that, because in some sense he would be re-dooming mike and mikey to becoming him. judging by latvia mike and the fact that he got the memories of the nail-in-the-tire timeline, this seems to largely consist of obsolete memories from timelines that no longer happened, but i don't blame michael for not wanting to risk it, or for that matter to collect more memories that will become obsolete the next time he talks to mikey or mike. mike and mikey go to michael's time in 105, but michael did not time travel to arrive there, he just Lived There Already.

axe seems to show mike cloud syncing in action. each set of mikes experiences a conversation that none out of the 9 of them originally had, but returning to their own time periods (separated by a matter of hours) reintegrates all 9 sets of memories into the most recent 3 mikes.

the upshot of all of this is that mike being causally related to mikey means that mike and mikey, the non cowboys in the situation, would have the cattle brand that says MW on it, and michael and MW would not. so that's extremely funny.

#woe.begone #woe.begone meta #w.bg #w.bg meta #long post #sage speaks #sage original post #meta #mike walters #mikey walters #michael walters #mikes walters #woe.begone spoilers through 105

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blazehedgehog · 8 months

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Thoughts on the Microsoft Third Party news?

I mean if Xbox is getting to be a big enough brand that people are raising questions of whether or not exclusivity means monopoly, then yeah, spreading more of your games out across multiple platforms makes legal sense.

More and more of the game industry is regrettably going to be moving in the direction of "account ecosystem" rather than hardware platform. Years ago there was talk about how one day there would be no Xbox or Playstation console, just an Xbox or Playstation App you launch on something like a Roku.

The final disgusting endpoint in all of this "no more sales, just service" drive. No discs, not even local data, just a monthly streaming subscription. Forever. No ownership, no ability to mod games, no way to play offline.

Even in the best case scenario, we're looking at a Netflix where you stream 90% of what you play and only "buy" the 10% of games you truly love.

The only thing that flies in the face of that is, like, Steam. The state of movie ownership is what it is because Netflix got there first. The streaming arm of Netflix is the entire reason the "Hollywood Streaming Industry" exists right now. It predates Prime Video, it predates Tubi, it predates everything.

Fewer people probably remember this, but the original premise of Hulu was to get TV networks signed on to simulcast their newest shows online, because none of them were doing that yet. "Netflix Instant" (the original name for Netflix streaming) even predates that. Hulu was trying to fill a need that Netflix could not because Netflix did not actually stream TV shows at first. Not even syndicated rerun stuff. It was just movies. Streaming Seinfeld or The Simpsons or The Office was just outright impossible.

Netflix got in there and shifted the direction of an entire industry, before borders had been staked out or consumers had built up substantial libraries they were protective of. So we went from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray to Streaming, where "Streaming" usually means a subscription service and not any form of ownership.

But that's not the case with games. Users expect backwards compatibility, they expect their libraries to carry forward, and in some cases people may own hundreds or even thousands of games in a digital library. I know on the Xbox 360, I own at least $200 worth of digital games, because I won a sweepstakes specifically for a $200 Xbox gift card. And my 19 year old Steam account will gladly tell the entire world I own over 1600 PC games.

That's just on Steam! Epic is still always giving away free games (200+), GOG is occasionally giving away free games and holding sales where you can get stuff for a couple bucks, etc. etc. etc. It's like the warehouse of mythical items from Indiana Jones over here.

People own gigantic libraries of digital games they expect to keep and willingly modify in perpetuity. It's a lot harder to push people to stream everything off the cloud as a result. It's why the big selling point for game streaming is "No downloads!" and it's why it's struggling to catch on. Sure, a 100gb+ game is huge, but if I take my download limiters off, it doesn't actually take that long. A 90 minute download for a 30+ hour game seems like a pretty fair exchange, all told.

But Microsoft is still going all-in on "account ecosystem." It's like, think of it this way: every game publisher is in a constant war to have the one big holiday game that everybody buys. And for guys like Microsoft, that one big game a year is their primary moneymaker. If they can get everyone to spend at least $60 on their game once a year, they stay in business.

Game Pass is $60 a year. They side step having to put out that holiday season's biggest game and get to say, "Well for the price of one game, you can get access to an entire library." It changes the perspective on so much of their business model. Suddenly they don't need the big flagship holiday blockbuster, they just need to get more people to pay for Game Pass.

And the ultimate end goal there is probably to get Game Pass in as many places as they can. There's already a PC Game Pass. If they can launch some version of Game Pass for Playstation? Game Pass for Switch? They'll do it. The Xbox almost doesn't matter anymore. The subscription and the ecosystem does. It's why Microsoft rebooted the Xbox app on PC a few years ago -- it used to be a "Companion App" for your console, but now the Xbox App on PC is where all of their PC gaming and Game Pass stuff lives. Xbox isn't hardware anymore, it's a service you subscribe to, and that's where the real money is. Especially considering what a gigantic money pit hardware is; I don't think Microsoft has ever, even once, turned a profit on Xbox hardware (and neither has Sony, as far as I know).

Get rid of the need for hardware and that $60/year looks even sweeter, doesn't it? Especially when you start to consider that something like Game Pass Ultimate is actually $180/year. If you can lure people in on the $60 but upsell them to the $180... well, gosh, that's almost the price of a whole new console every year, isn't it? That's a lot of constant cashflow without needing the years and years of deeply expensive research, development, and manufacturing.

Getting people to spend a console's worth of money on your service without actually needing the console itself is massively desirable. They'd be saving millions, if not billions of dollars while making millions more elsewhere. There's a chart out there some executive is drooling over where a line goes straight up by something like 900%.

The only problem is the whole consumer rights/ownership factor. Which I am not a fan of. I objectively refuse to support Game Pass for what it's obvious goals are. I will buy and own every game I want to play. No compromises. I will buy physical if space and money allows. I will not be bled dry by temporary access.

#questions #Anonymous #xbox #microsoft #game pass #subscription #streaming #stadia #amazon #netflix #hulu

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everygame · 17 days

Text

Wizard of Wor

Developed/Published by: Dave Nutting Associates / Midway Released: 5/06/1981 Completed: n/a Completion: Played it a bunch? Version Played: Midway Arcade Origins

The Xbox 360 marketplace is dead.

Now, I know that’s a strange way to begin an article about an arcade game from 1982, but it’s the reason why I played it. With Microsoft shuttering its Xbox 360-specific digital storefront, I was driven to pick up any games that I hadn’t made a point of picking up already, and was surprised to find a couple of things. Firstly, that the Xbox 360 was, for me, largely a system I played before ever starting writing this project, and secondly I probably had about everything I ever wanted for it, bar things that I wasn’t willing to shell out for–and in many cases, those would remain backwards compatible on Xbox One/Xbox Series, which means that if I was desperate to play them I could buy an Xbox One for probably cheaper than you can get a 360 now.

What this meant, ultimately, was that I ended up going completely off piste and buying a Kinect for $10 so I could make sure to download a bunch of “Kinect Labs” games before they became totally inaccessible, but while I was doing that I realised I was unclear if I bought anything on the backwards compatible store after the old marketplace shut down if I could get it on my Xbox, so just in case I picked up Midway Arcade Origins, which, shockingly, is the latest collection to feature some of the greatest games of all time–Defender, Robotron 2084, you know what I’m talking about–and it came out in 2012!

It seemed worth a fiver.

Now, to quickly capsule review it: it’s… barely worth a fiver. It comes from the most bare-bones era of collections, with no filters or anything (though don’t forget you can run an Xbox 360 on a CRT. I did, for years) and to be honest I’m not sure about how good the emulation actually is. I also forgot that the Xbox 360 d-pad is absolute bobbins.

But no matter. I have it now, so I thought I’d play Wizard of Wor.

Designed by Dave Nutting Associates, whom I last had a run in with discussing their version of Taito’s Western Gun in exp. 2601, Wizard of Wor is a game that made me realise that I was probably a little harsh on 1978’s Fire Truck, because this is probably only the second co-op action game ever–and it’s a shooter. I mean Dave Nutting and Tom McHugh basically made Doom here.

Well, sort of. Really, Wizard of Wor exists in the context of Berzerk, which is really the first sort of hint to what games would eventually become. Designed by Alan McNeil, himself once a Dave Nutting Associates employee, in Berzerk you run around randomly-generated screens shooting robots and trying to avoid “Evil Otto” who appears if you dally too long. There’s no much to it, but it featured a synthesised speech chip telling arcade patrons it had “detected” coins in their pocket, and was suitably different from the more restricted, focused play in Pac-Man or Galaxian.

I suspect–though look, I’m just hypothesising–that Dave Nutting Associates felt they couldn’t take an ex-employee creating a hit lying down, and decided to do them one better, with Wizard of Wor similar in some respects but with more graphics, more monsters, more design, more speech (and good lord does it never shut up–though it’s hard to actually understand compared to Berzerk) and even co-op play.

Although fondly remembered, Wizard of Wor is… clumsy–and it’s not just that player one starts on the right. Taking Bezerk’s play but crushing it into a Pac-Man like maze with large graphics mean there isn’t a ton of room for manoeuvre, and trying to move your “worrior” into position–or even just around corners–is honestly rather frustrating. Enemies move around randomly and you don’t want to walk into them, and while the game (strangely) has a “bump” mechanic where if you are “between” spaces as you move into enemies you bump back, you end up having to turn corners, head away from enemies, and only then turn around to shoot them, and it’s slow.

The trick, really, is that the game doesn’t really work unless you’re playing it in two-player. While you can accidentally kill each other, the trick is to constantly play with your back to each other meaning that, technically, you should never be caught unawares. But there’s actually another little trick to the game–it features line-of-sight on all but the weakest enemies, meaning you have to rely on an on-screen radar, making doing things like turning corners even more dangerous (and annoying), so even then you aren’t completely safe.

The goal–such as there is one–is to clear each screen and when possible kill the bonus “worluk” creatures who grant you double score on the next screen, and keep that chain going, accepting that certain screens (“The Pit” which has no walls) and rare appearances from the Wizard of Wor (who teleports around) will act as harsh skill checks for even well coordinated co-op players.

The thing about Wizard of Wor is that it’s… fine. It’s just simple enough to make you want to play it more, but it’s also just annoying enough to make you want to stop. It’s very close to something great, but it would Eugene Jarvis who would get there, taking Berzerk to the next level truly with Robotron 2084 just a year later.

Will I ever play it again? That all said, if you see this in the arcades it’ll be a jolly old time in co-op if you can find someone dedicated to trying for a high score with you.

Final Thought: A weird thing about Dave Nutting is that not only is this huge name in the early days of arcade games, he also designed the Jeep Wagoneer, so is in some respects at fault for the rise of the SUV and global warming by creating a car that literally got eleven miles to the gallon.

Hmm. Seems bad!

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#gaming #video games #games #txt #text #review #arcade #wizard of wor #1981 #dave nutting associates #dave nutting #midway

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