#all stats start at 0 including health

[windfighter]

I tend to have a hard time getting stuff done so ONCE AGAIN I've tried to gamify my to do-list. Sadly none of the apps I've tried have worked for me so I've had to go a more manual route and just... write stuff myself.

Currently playing as Kouji because OF COURSE I AM! Just reached level 2! Go me!

I would love to have treasures and battles in this as well but eargh I think that'd be too much for my brain (at least atm), so this is fine. Even if it's a little boring to just collect stats for the sake of it.

(for every task you complete you get 1 stat point that you can put in whichever stat you want, but I try to keep it... somewhat logical to what the task was)

(the amount of xp you need to level is calculated with "current level*100" so it's easy to remember x3 In case anyone else wanna join in and see who can reach level 100 first!)

I write the task-list every day before I go to bed and try to stick between 3-5 tasks, mostly because otherwise it'll be like 2 weeks until we're preparing to die again ^^' But there's no limit to how many tasks there can be! If you want to add 100 tasks a day to quickly level go right ahead xP

[casually-salad]

cutie pox chronicles, full master-post.

welcome to my sick and twisted world.. everything will be found below.

so firstly! i know theres a couple people coming from off tumblr sites to check this out (( hi jay!!! )) so ill explain somethin real quick!

All of my comics have hand written text! now sometimes these can be hard to read, and so if you press this button ( image below ) and ive wrote out all the text in there for your convenience! make sure as well to read the body of the post and also the tags! usually i have some post upload thoughts or feelings i talk about there - some add context and some are fun!

normally i would recommend going through my archive and searching for "mlp infection au" or "cutie pox chronicles" but you wont have to do that here - but for nontumblr users if you want to check out other blogs i recommend that method.

now before reading there is a massive trigger warning: on all posts with these topics everything is tagged as "tw (topic)" and so i would recommend blocklisting ones that make you uncomfortable or understand what youre going into! triggering contents include: blood, gore, body horror, eye horror and eye trauma, child death, dismemberment, and cannibalism.

now! all posts will be in upload order, liked here with the title and the in story date ( as it changes. ) as well as which posts are single images and which ones are comics. when looking at stat sheets, the more full the better! 0% - or empty health is death, and 0%- or empty, composure is maina. alright!!!!! here we gooooo!!

The Cutie Pox. (day 0) comic

stat sheets ( day 1 ) comic?

Lillys last cutiemark. - single

first sightings -single

first nights out. - comic

how far away does a home stray? - single

lillys last mark - comic

the everfree - single

from hell and back - comic (day 0)

imbalance - comic (day 2)

finding the spark - comic

moon dancers melancholy part 1 - comic

moon dancer sheet - single

fleeting feelings - comic

helping hoof..? - comic

moon dancers melancholy part 2 - comic

freezerburnt - comic

fleeting calmness - comic ( day 3 )

dreams fall hard today - comic

princesses stat sheets - comic?

wilting lilly - comic

youre going to live with that guilt - comic

home - home again. - comic ( day 4 )

hurt everywhere you go part 1 - comic

bracing for impact ( hurt everywhere you go part 2) - comic

get well - comic

fly free canary. - comic

getting worse - comic

a storm on the horizon- comic (day 5 )

CLOSING THOUGHTS:

i really never thought this comic would get me as far as it did, seince i started posting i went from having 100 followers to about 210, thats more than double! thats insane. i wont lie i am SOOOO ANXIOUS to have such a following!!!!! usually my posts prior wouldnt get more than 5 notes but now!! almost all of them ( at least of this comic ) have over 30 on every one!!! thats just, so crazy. i hope everyone continues to look forward as i begin preparation on chapter 2, and what else i have to offer on here - i have a whole lot more story to tell and im excited to!

[mythaura-blog]

Development Update - May 2023

Hello hello folks, Miyazaki here! We've got a big update for this month--we've rolled out Mythaura's battle demo and are so excited for you to give it a try!

Topics covered include:

Battle Demo & Guide

Quarter 4 (2023) Rewards Reveal

Beast Creator Contest

New Homepage Splash Screen

More info available under the cut!

Battle Demo Guide

Welcome to Mythaura's battle demo! Here's a concise guide to help you navigate the 3v3 battles and make strategic decisions:

1. Battle Setup

The battle takes place between your beasts (on the left) and the enemy beasts (on the right) and ends when one side is defeated. For this demo, all beasts in this demo are level 1 and have average size for their species.

2. Beast Details

Click on the info icon in the corner of your beast's avatar to view its details. From here, you can read their abilities and see a breakdown of their stats.

3. Elements

Each beast has 2 elements, including a species element that is always shown. You won't know your opponent's secondary element.

For this demo, a beast's secondary element is currently randomized.

Check the elements page for more information on elements and for a breakdown of type effectiveness.

4. Turn Actions

Each turn, your beasts can perform one of the following actions:

Use an ability or surge ability.

Defend themselves or an ally.

Rest to regain stamina.

Once all players have submitted their actions, the round is resolved with the following priority:

Resting beasts rest first.

Defending beasts defend next.

Abilities are resolved.

Within each action type, the order is determined by ability priority, beast speed, weight (with lightest going first), and then randomly if all those values are the same.

5. Abilities

Beasts start with 4 abilities: one surge ability (species-based), one neutral ability, and one ability for each element. If a beast's species and individual element match, they will have 3 abilities.

Abilities with elements can be super effective or resisted, affecting the damage dealt. Pay attention to moves' effectiveness and your foes' abilities for better results.

Abilities incur fatigue and the fatigue cost is shown on the ability button.

Abilities will generally have a small chance to miss or be a critical hit. The chances of these can vary per ability.

Abilities have 3 types: Combat, Projection, and Support.

Combat: Attack vs Defense

Projection: Focus vs Barrier

Support: Non-damage dealing abilities

6. Surge Abilities

When a beast's surge meter is full, they can use their surge ability for a powerful effect. Surge abilities don't incur fatigue and never miss. After using a surge ability, the surge meter goes back to 0%. Please note that the surge abilities in this demo may be changed before the game’s official launch.

7. Defending

Beasts can defend themselves or allies, reducing incoming damage by 75% for that turn. This effect does not stack. Defending slightly charges the defender's surge meter and recovers a small amount of stamina.

8. Resting

Resting recovers a substantial amount of stamina and a small amount of health.

Remember, understanding abilities, elements, defending, and resting will help you make the best decisions during battles. We have provided an in-app form you can use to report bugs and provide feedback. Good luck and enjoy the demo!

Planned battle demo updates for the future:

A "quick queue" button that queues with the first available other quick-queue person and does not require a PIN

PvE Mode versus an ai battler

Timeout for move submission

Controller support

Weather effects

Ailments

Ability to set desired element from the queue screen

Better reporting and improvements to history, such as remembering when you discover a super effective element on a specific opponent

Quarter 4 (2023) Rewards Reveal

Our Quarter 4 rewards have been completed and are ready for their public debut! Thank you to the Ko-fi Sponsors who voted on the different Glamour and Companion concepts, we appreciate your support and feedback.

Q4 (2023) Glamour: Koi Pond

Q4 (2023) Companion: Blooming Jackalope

Q4 (2023) Solid Gold Glamour: Adult Basilisk

Special One-Time Companion: Radiant Golden Ossiflage

1x copy will be awarded to all previous and/or current Bronze, Silver, and Gold Sponsors

Sponsors of all levels may purchase one (1) additional copy of the Radiant Golden Ossiflage in our Ko-fi Shop.

Beast Creator Contest

We're back with another Beast Design Contest! We're looking forward to all the fantastic creations that this community comes up with.

Here are the parameters:

Each individual can submit one (1) Beast option for consideration

Any species fine (babies included)

Fill out Google form; provide both a picture and the preview code

We’ll pick three winners to have their Beasts featured on the front page for Quarter 1 (July 1 - September 30). Winners will also receive:

1x Beta Key

1x Quarter 4 (2023) Skin: Koi Pond

1x Quarter 4 (2023) Companion: Blooming Jackalope

These rewards will be applied directly to your account.

Submissions for the Beast Design Contest are due by June 15, 2023. The form will close at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be announced in the July 1, 2023 Development Update.

Homepage Splash Screen

Our wonderfully talented senior artist, Luci, created a scene detailing an early stage in a group of adventurers' journey in Mythaura. This perfectly captures the vibe of the opening series of introductory quests that players will undertake at the start of the game. We hope you enjoy the art, and hope that you look forward to playing through Mythaura's single-player story when we launch!

Mythaura v0.17

Updated homepage layout

Merged and finalized battle demo, fixing several bugs found along the way

Thank You!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the post! We hope you love the battle demo and are looking forward to your feedback, which will help shape the nature of the game while still in its early development--leading to a lasting impact when Mythaura launches. Your help here is invaluable!

See you around the Discord!

[if-rambling]

My mc for “One Knight Stand” by @oneknightstand-if

Name: Alejandro Rodriguez

Nickname: Al

Pronouns: He/him

Orientation: Gay

Height: Tall

Vice: Lust

Addiction: smoking

Past: Childhood abuse

Secret: changeling

Club: fencing

Skill: magnetic personality

Hobby: influencer

Job: news reporter

Arthurian level: Lore newbie

Romancing: in denial about liking Adrian

Magic +mysticism: 10%

Physical strength + Athleticism: 31%

Intelligence + perception: 17%

Charisma + diplomacy: 35%

God I love the fact I can choose to be in denial about having a crush. It’s such a fun choice

Al and Adrian started off as friends so I definitely imagine that plays a huge part of why Al is in denial about his crush. Besides the whole commitment issues and secretly a changeling thing

Definitely gonna try and go for a charisma based build this game. I just like playing pretty/charismatic characters

Al doesn’t mind Merlin and is willing to be friends with him but he’s honestly probably a little intimidated by what Merlin may or may not know about his secret

I love all the flavor text in this game it’s so fun to see. I already like Adrian and Merlin so I can’t wait to see the rest of the RO’s and how they interact with each other. The game is great so far and I can’t wait to see more

The picrews I used for Alejandro

Below is some end of game stat stuff and in game description of Al

You are currently known as Alejandro (Al) Rodriguez a seemingly normal male reporter. You have green eyes, waist-length straight green hair, and a tall and athletic figure clad in a biker leather jacket with a P-100 respirator. People tend to take particular notice of your figure. At first glance, people tend to find you somewhat intimidating.

You excel at sword fighting, influencing the internet, and having a magnetic personality. Meanwhile, you've got a weakness for cigarettes and spiders, as well as having commitment issues.

You have a modest assortment of piercings in the ear, tongue, eyebrow, and genitals. As well as having a small selection of tattoos including a celtic chest tattoo, dragon back tattoo, floral arm tattoo, and star finger tattoo.

A tragic childhood of abuse lies in your past and the fate of your future remains murky with the apocalypse ever looming in the background. At least no one has suspected that you are actually not human.

Your past incarnation is unknown

Your ultimate weapon is unknown

Your favored warcry is "unknown"

Your final words were unknown

Blobbed: nope

Bold : 96 Sweet : 110 Sassy : 36 Optimist : 61

Health : 99 Mark Status : Healed Merlin Healing : 2 Merlin Forced Healing : 0

Caution : 39 Will : 5 Cloudcuckoolanderness : 9 Silent : 9 Curse Level : 4 Fear Level : 9 Corruption : -1 Mute : false Mindcontrol : false

Downtime : Had Breakfast |

Route : Went into Store Whole Time |

New Inventory : Matches | Multi Lighter | Cigarettes | Towel | Plain Mask |

They Know : false | It Sees : Masked | You Replied False

[wannabeanartist]

So, my OC Elliot, whether in my future game or my future comic, will have a beast form that looks like this (designe may change).

Since this is suppose to be the game version of him I'll only focus on that for now.

Gameplay: Elliot is supposed to be an agile character with little health, a glass canon. In a fight, he can transform at any point, which changes his play style. When transformed, Elliot will gain more speed, durability, as well as melee damage but will lose in accuracy. His transformation essentially makes him into a mid-health, high agility, high damage melee fighter to the cost of being mostly unable to deal ranged damage. However, there is a catch, even if transforming is easy, it has some drawbacks. When transformed, he gets a bar that starts at 0%. When he sees violence or himself attacks someone, this meter will go up. The higher the meter, the more buffed his stats get. But, if it gets to 100%, Elliot will not be controllable by the player any more and instead will start to attack anyone in his sight (be it an ally or enemy). Going 'feral'.

Now, in my game, I intend to implement two important systems. First, as said in another post, managing the relations between characters of your team will be central, and many characters dislike killing human enemies instead of just forcing them to surrender or knocking them out, characters who kill will probably have their relations worsen with those who don't like it. Secondly, you have to manage the needs and health of your characters, which includes mental health. Elliot, being one of the kindest characters, will be quite horrified if he transforms and kills people as well as the fact that it will make the relations between him and other characters worse. All that to say, you must try and avoid traumatizing this sweet boy :3

[gear-project]

How to become Immortal in Soul Calibur 6

There's a nifty little trick you can do to guarantee victories in Libra of Souls Mode, though it takes a bit of crafting (and some skill) to pull off:

First off, you'll need a 3-open-slot Weapon with the following Three abilities affixed to it (I'll include the item drops associated with the abilities as well):

--Hero's Jade (Superb Quality) Attack/Defense+20% (Reversal Edge Followup Hit) --Tranquil Bloodstone (Superb Quality) Attack/Defense+35% (When HP is 30% or Lower) --Scapegoat's Turquoise (Superb Quality) HP Recovery 30% (When HP is 0)

In addition to these, you'll need to Feed your character one of two Food items prior to the start of a battle (you can buy these in the game's shops easily enough):

--Brandy (Superb Quality) Attack/Defense+40% (When HP is 30% or Lower) --Spicy Wine (Superb Quality) Attack/Defense+35% (RE Followup Hit)

Doing the math, your Base Weapon's stats (assuming you successfully won a Reversal Edge encounter) will give you a stat boost of +55% to Attack and Defense when your Health falls below 30% (the game's Lifebar has a little line indicator that can tell you when your Health is low enough).

By consuming either Brandy or Spicy Wine in addition to using this weapon effect, you'll get either +90% or +95% to your Attack and Defense stats regardless of what weapon you have equipped.

The effect will basically completely cut off all damage at the 30% Health mark, and no matter what tricks or effects the enemy opponent has, they absolutely cannot win.

And all you had to do was guess right once in a single match of Rock, Paper, Scissors!

Well, if you're not good at Janken (Reversal Edges), fear not! I've got a more casual alternative build for you:

Here's the materials you'll need for your weapon:

--Draught of Immortality (Superb Quality) Health+40%

--Draught of Regeneration (Superb Quality) Health Recovery every 1.5 Seconds

--Vampire Opal (Superb Quality) Health Recovery on Damage+20%

In addition, feed yourself either of these Food Items (You can buy them in the shops once they're fully upgraded):

--Chapati (Superb Quality): Health+60%

--Mandrake (Superb Quality) Health Recovery+50% (When HP is 0)

The Full Effect gives you +100% to +90% added to your base Health in addition to Regeneration on Damage and passive regen buff with no complicated requirements.

The enemy would have to absolutely overwhelm you to beat you with this buff, so it's actually a good build to use when you're practicing honing your skills in combat until you're confident in using certain fighting styles. You can also use a similar build on your Mercenary Servants (Weapons Under Level 90) to help ensure they carry out their mission of protecting you and getting rare weapon drops!

It's also recommended that you put the Vampire Opals on weapons with the Highest Critical Hit rating (max is 50% depending on your Light/Dark Affinity), more crit hits means more health recovery!

Use either of these builds to ensure victory against the Level 90+ Legendary enemies you come across in Libra of Souls... you'll be glad you did!

[pipermca]

Writing Year in Review - 2023

I have to say, 2023 was an odd year for me.

I finally made it to TFCon again (after taking a long hiatus during the pandemic), and it was absolutely lovely to see everyone. I got to meet some new folks face-to-face, and meet up again with people I'd met in 2019. Spouse came with me this time, and he had a pretty good time (despite only being a TF fan via osmosis).

We did no other travel, though. Part of that was because we got a new cat, so we're back to needing to make kenneling arrangements before going anywhere. And as much of a joy as our cat is, that has made travel a little more inconvenient.

I had some major disruptions at work this year, completely upending the end of my summer and start of fall. As a direct result of this, the coming year is going to be extremely challenging work-wise as I get caught up on some things. Hopefully by late summer 2024, the pressure will be off and I can relax again (back into my usual level of work-related stress).

I also had my first round of Covid in 2023, which absolutely sucked. F minus, not recommended. I came very close to going to the ER during the worst of it, and the aftermath continued to kick my ass for months. The fatigue and brain fog was real, but the other health issues that it produced are still with me. Thank god for vaccines; I don't know how things might have gone if I hadn't been vaccinated.

In the coming year, I am going to try to focus on being kind to myself, both mentally and physically. Part of that is going to include the expectations I'm setting for myself for writing.

In December, I wrote 5,500 words, most of it in the story I've started posting, A Matter of Propriety. The story is still being posted (and I need to finish writing it!!) and I'm hoping to keep up my once-a-week posting schedule. If I can't make good progress on the next chapter this week, I'll probably drop into an every-other-week schedule instead, just so I can maintain my chapter buffer. (The story will likely have eight chapters total.)

For the year, in 2023 I wrote 62,502 words. Most of that was on A Matter of Propriety and Again and Again and Again (my TF Big Bang fic). However, I only posted 24,184 words to AO3, split between 4 completed works. (A Matter of Propriety will finish in 2024, so its stats will eventually count for that year.)

Most months I didn't set a specific word count goal, and that's ok. But possibly as a result, my output was all over the map. The two major peaks are in April (when I did the bulk of my Big Bang fic writing), and July (when I got a smutty fic idea and banged (hah) it out really quick).

Like always, my average words per hour is pretty consistent, although not as much as in previous years. Still, it shows that when I do sit down and write, I get consistent work done.

As I mentioned, I didn't make specific writing goals most months, but when I did, I never reached them. That tells me I am setting my goals too high, and I need to be more realistic.

As for the goals I set for myself for 2023, I did pretty awful. 😅 Again, I think I was just setting expectations too high for myself.

Finish Sun and Moon (working title) Nope. I barely worked on it at all.

Finish one Sparkr story (any of my bunnies or WIPs!) In progress? Call this 50%.

Write two comic scripts for practice Nope.

Make more progress in IDW2 reviews Nope, 0% progress made.

Finish The King and the Bounty Hunter Barely worked on this, either, so no.

Rewrite/repost stories that I took down. Call this 50% done.

When chatting about this with a friend last night, I realized that THREE of my goals were basically "finish this longfic." Considering how much brainpower longfics take, it's no wonder I failed. So as part of my "be kind to myself" vision statement 😅 I'm going to focus on do-able goals, with one "stretch" longfic goal.

Write two comic scripts for practice

Finish reposting taken-down fics

Write and post three one-shots

Start posting Sun and Moon (working title)

My rationale for these is: I really want to practice scriptwriting. I really want to finish getting those old fics back up in a better format. I LOVE the instant quick gratification of getting a short story written and posted. And the stretch goal is to start posting Sun and Moon. If I'm starting to post it, that means I am confident about finishing it. ✨

Behind the cut is the first sentence of each of the stories I posted (sans the reposted fics, since those were all backdated to their original posting dates), and the month it was posted in. I wish everyone a happy and safe 2024!

August. Sharing is Caring. "That's it… There you go." The words were whispered into Bluestreak's audial.

August. Plans in Plans. The tiny dot in the distance grew in size as it approached, until Megatron's optics were able to resolve it into the shape of a Seeker.

September. Again and Again and Again. Create log file.

November. A Nice Set of Wheels. "So who is this guy, again?" Mirage asked, slipping between a box truck and a van.

December. A Matter of Propriety. Orion picked up his comm pad for approximately the thousandth time since being shown to his table, and checked it for messages.

[firubii]

ok you know what fuck it 2 am kirby research dump time: kirby fighters 2 story mode/buddy tower stones since thats what ive been researching recently while mapping out the game's exefs (main executable) in ghidra

first off, every level for each stone is its own item. while this seems like a weird decision at first, it does make checking for the cursed stones for the debuffs a lot easer since the game only needs to check if you have any amount of the level 5 stone

each stone has a specific function for calculating that specific buff. first, the game gets the amount of each level stone you have, then multiplies each count by the corresponding stone's bonus, and finally adds the products of all of them together.

(L1_count * L1_bonus) + (L2_count * L2_bonus) + (L3_count * L3_bonus) + (L4_count * L4_bonus) + (L5_count * L5_bonus)

because you will never have more than one of each level, this works very nicely!! if you don't have a specific level, that will result in 0 due to multiplying by 0, and if you do have one, itll produce the bonus due to multiplying by 1. this also has the side effect of being able to stack multiple of one level stone, though this wont happen in normal gameplay, but it would be fun to mess around with!

there are two stones that are actually completely unused!! they're unobtainable in normal gameplay since the item table has them disabled for every single chapter, but they are fully implemented in both the native code and hal's scripting bytecode, mint!!

BlowAway the "BlowAway" stone causes opponents launched by your throws to be in hitstun for a longer period of time, and as such more susceptible to buddy tosses. the base amount of frames is 40, so the hitstun for each level is:

45 frames (+5)

53 frames (+8)

64 frames (+11)

78 frames (+14)

96 frames (+18)

98 frames is a lot of time for a video game, especially a fighting game!! specifically, its 1.6 seconds of hitstun!!! this stone was probably way too strong and was cut because of that. interestingly, the maximum this stat can go is 200 frames, which is 3 and 1/3 seconds. that is WAY too much hitstun for any game, even if its just what you deal to opponents in a situation that isnt super common unless you're one of the two grapplers in the game.

ShieldTime this stone is interesting due to the fact that everything related to guarding isn't handled in mint, but rather the native game code itself in exefs!! what the "ShieldTime" stone does is reduce how much your guard meter depletes while holding the button.

the base is a multiplier of 1.0, and has a minimum of 0.25. this stone's formula subtracts the bonus from the maximum value instead of adding to the minimum. so, for each level, this multiplier is:

0.7x

0.25x (result is 0.2, which goes under the minimum)

0.25x (result is -0.45, which would cause the guard gauge to increase rather than decrease)

0.25x (result is -1.25)

0.25x (result is -2.25)

looking at how this starts to scale negatively, this stone was probably scrapped pretty early before the values could be actually fine-tuned.

interestingly, the level 5 stone items are referred to as "PieceDevil__Ex", while the level 4 stones are called "PieceDevil__". these probably were going to have a negative health drawback like the level 5 stones. in fact, the yaml file that dictates which items can appear inbetween floors actually tells us this!! there's a "name" property that is named uniquely for only the two unused stones i just talked about, and at the end of that for both of those there is a short description of the stone's effects not present in the other stones's name properties. this actually includes the health debuff!!

it seems like the level 4 stones used to take away a quarter (25%) of your health, and the level 5 stones were actually buffed in the final game!! originally, it looks like they were going to take away 40% of your health instead of half of it (50%)!!

thats about it for now, this has been very fun to document and i will probably make more big posts like this when i can!!!

[chaussurre]

Some thoughts about healing in combat in games

Hey, I'm no game designer, so please be very critical of everything I'm about to say. Please do say if you don't agree with me, I'm very much in need of external point of views. Also, everything following is my point of view. If you find that I present it as general truths or whatever, this is because I have a hard time expressing myself correctly. Autism will do that.

I've thought about a way of representing and considering combat in games. What triggered this was my frustration about how healing and anti-healing mechanics are handled in games. Mainly, the two games that inspired this are Paladins and League of Legends (yes I know, "league cringe", but that's besides the point)

What I'm about to describe is the way I use for modeling HP-based combats when considering balance. Like all models, this will be very inaccurate when considering actual examples, but it serves as a basis as to how tackles the problems existing in games.

With all content warnings done, let's dive-in:

Hp-based combat, for a lack of better name, is what I call combat where fighters have a set quantity of hp and have to bring their opponents' to 0 before them. We can start the model as two characters, each having HPs and dps. The metric as to who will win is whichever of the two has the lowest "required time to kill the adversary". Here, in the simplified model, it is computed as "kill time = Opponent HP / Your Dps"

Dodging, attack range, and many other mechanics can be translating in these terms: dodge lower the opponents dps, range delay the moment the enemy starts to dps, etc.

In such a context, it is important to notice that the two variables we have, health and dps, have a diminishing returns effects. If you go from 1K hp to 2K, you doubled the time required to kill you. If you go from 10K to 11K, it's just a 10% increase. Meaning that an opponent with a higher dps will be less impacted by that extra HP. The same goes for DPS.

To understand it mathematically, in the computation "HP / DPS", you may say that increasing HP increase the time linearly, and yes, but it only does so while DPS is stagnant. So, if you increase both HP and DPS linearly, at some point DPS will take over. And increasing DPS linearly does not reduce the kill time linearly. It will only reduce it by a lower and lower amount.

Diminishing returns are an important factor in balancing these types of combat. They encourage diversifying your stats, and overall they prevent situations where an opponent could not be taken down in a humanely reasonable amount of time, or situations where an opponent is killed before they got to play.

This is why, for example, when you introduce other variables to the model, you design them in a way that includes diminishing returns. If you were to introduce a defense value to the model, under the form "the damage dealt to a player per second is dps - defense" then you'd get a situation where, since dps has diminishing returns, defense, instead, would get increasing returns. It can be seen when you rewrite the formula: "kill time = HP / (DPS - Defense)". The closer defense gets to DPS, the closer the kill time gets to infinity. So very few games design their defensive stats that way (and those that do do it for reasons that are specific to their games, so I won't include them in my reasoning)

The way League of Legends handle defense, for example, is by giving you an armor stats that translate to a "percentage of damage reduced" value. Kill time would look like "kill time = HP / (DPS * (1 - damage reduction))". Damage reduction itself still has increasing returns, but the way armor converts to damage reduction uses a formula so that it reintroduce diminishing returns. The exact formula is complicated and I can't be bothered to look it up, but basically 100 armor = 50% damage reduction, and as armor increase it gets closer and closer to 100% without ever reaching it. It makes it so that while tanky characters are encouraged to get some armor, you will need other defensive stats at some point.

So in the words of Voltaire, all is good in the best of possible worlds.

Let us talk now about healing. Healing is the amount of HP a fighter regains as time progress. They exist in different forms, but most of the time it's in the forms of "I get set amount of hp upon casting an ability" or "dealing damage heals me for x% of the damage dealt". In the model, we will represent them both as "per second, I heal x" as it is close enough to what actually happens in games.

Now, remember when I talked about defining defense in terms of your opponent's dps so that you never get unkillable ? Well, it is quite hard to define healing that way. Removing defense from the formula and adding healing, it now looks like "kill time = HP / (DPS - Healing)" which as you remember is exactly the formula I described as being problematic. Healing CAN causes you to go infinite. The amount of damage you need to deal to kill your opponent increases with time, which in turns increase time needed to kill, wich in turns increase the HP needed to be dealt, etc.

There are plenty of clips from PvP games where a character cannot die because they reached a tipping point in healing amounts.

And unless my model is fundamentally wrong on a point I failed to consider, game designers are very much aware of it. We keep including healing in PvP games because it is a genuinly fun mechanic. I love playing healing supports and being the one to bring my friends to glory. I love lifestealers and the dopamine I get when I'm so close to death and yet so far from it. When the only way out of a fight is to kill my way out of it (yes I am very much a warwick mid enjoyer). And I'm clearly not the only one appreciating a good healer. But because of the increasing return nature of healing, which means there is a tipping point where healing goes from useless to overpowered, many games have to include counter-balancing measures.

Battlerite made a mechanic where damage would also reduce your max HP by a percentage of it. You couldn't heal above it, and even with infinite healing there would be a point where your max hp is just 0.

I'm ... not a fan of this. First, there was something that didn't really tick for me in Battlerite, and I didn't enjoy the combats for some reasons I couldn't really put into words, so I am biased here, but the issue I have with this approach of anti heal is that it does not make it have diminishing returns. it just straight up puts a ceiling on it. Healing continue to have increasing returns BUT past a point it stops doing anything at all. And I don't like that. If I increase some stats on my character, even if I increase the wrong ones, it should always help me a little more.

League of Legend and Paladins took a different approach. There, you can buy items which reduce the healing the opponents get under certain conditions. The healing reducing is a set percentage, that does not stack.

I'm ... also not a fan of this. Similarly to previous anti heal, it doesn't remove the increasing returns. But even worse, in this case it just overall lowers it. Meaning that because of the tipping point nature of healing, whenever an opponents buys an anti heal item, your heal based character either suddenly becomes completely useless if you go too low under the tipping point, or is completely unaffected if you stay too high above it. Not only does that make the design of healing characters really hard for the game designers, because they are suddenly walking a very unstable bridge, it also makes fights that will always be frustrating to at least one player.

Here's what I propose: Your anti-heal item no longer reduce healing. Instead, whenever you see your opponent healing, you gain increased damage as a percentage of your DPS against them, stacking with no limits for as long as the fight duration (and is reset afterwards). The total bonus damage dealt this way cannot be more than the total healing you saw your opponent get (as a way to make sure you can't be punished for healing).

The main idea here is that healing still has its utility for short fights. You are still buying more time for yourself. But as time progress, the tipping point keeps getting higher and higher and at some point will get too low below it. Your time is still limited. Also, it redifine your dps and your opponent's healing in a way that links both, as armor in league does. Your 1v5 hyper-carry lifestealer may look unkillable in the fight, and you may feel the dopamine from being so low hp and yet so far from dying as you kill enemies after enemies. But your enemies still stands a chance. You may still see your HP yo-yoing between being full life and on death's door, which is deeply fun for you, but at some point if you fail to win fast enough your opponent will land an attack that will straight up one shot you, which will be satisfying for your opponent. A real unmovable object meets unstoppable force situation.

What are your thoughts ?

[wetthandss]

i should elaborate on this more tomorrow but i feel that within fantasy TTRPGs theres a tendency to think of "HP" (whether based on the text of the game or not) as a direct measure of physical injury, relating it to blood loss, number/grievousness of wounds, organ failure. i dont think thats a particularly useful way to describe or portray HP on its own because then i see GMs (including myself) fall towards tendencies to overthink the HP of an NPC of ours (typically an enemy) where we question why the enemy is functioning just as well at 2 HP as it was at 50 HP, it has all its limbs and physical function and the same stats and abilities, and when we're taking HP literally, our instinct to soothe a need to relate mechanics to narrative (a good thing to do, dont get me wrong) creates situations where an enemy just becomes more incapable as its HP slides downwards, creates scenarios where we invent moments of disability like a hand being severed or an eye being scratched and blinded when the enemy reaches 30% of its HP or whatever. but then what happens when the enemy casts heal and it is once again at full health, now you're not dealing with the same enemy as before, it can only become an easier and easier challenge as the fight goes on, creating a feeling of just whittling down an enemy rather than overcoming a challenge. this kind of HP literalism can ABSOLUTELY be super cool and engaging to the narrative of a conflict, but i dont think thats a universal case or that that even has to be achieved by relating it to HP at all. I think I need to start thinking of HP as more like "stamina", a gauge of energy that an enemy has for fighting before exhaustion, unconsciousness, or succumbing to wounds. just like in that last case you can still easily have a physical injury narrative as the battle goes on, if youre playing a game with called shots or youre adding your own called shot rules chances are that narrative aspect is alread tied to the mechanics. but its no longer universal, its a narrative choice you can make about a fight. another way it can be useful is for battles where you dont want the enemy to simply die when reaching 0 HP. when theres an expectation that as the HP of an enemy goes down it sustains more and more physical wounds and ailments, it can feel kinda strange when your enemy hits 0 but the GM's narrative wants them to be alive, but defeated/exhausted whatever, making actually finishing them off a choice (or in some cases giving them forgiving death mechanics like the player characters). it feels strange because you're sitting there with the knowledge that this was a narrative shield, it can feel a lot more obvious and unimmersive to notice that. when the expectation is that HP is by default a measure of exhaustion/energy/stamina whatever you wanna call it, its easier to not see that narrative shield so barely, whether the enemy hits 0 and either dies, is unconscious or is conscious and defeated can all be explained by the depletion of energy for the fight, while i dont think the same can be said for physical injury. anyways thats just my thoughts on how fantasy TTRPG GMs think about HP. theres not an inherent narrative problem with a literal view of HP (and all of it is very much dependent on the game youre playing, listen to how the game describes it and interacts with the mechanic first and foremost) but i think it would be a lot more convenient, easier, and more intuitive to think of it as something like stamina, exhaustion, energy, will to continue the fight and so on.

[willofgamesposts]

My Thoughts after Beating Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

Recently, I had played Castlevania: Circle of the Moon via the Castlevania Advanced Collection on Switch. I had not played it before (only played around 3 entries), so I figured it was time to give it a go.

And now, having played the game on Twitch (didn't complete it), I can say for certain that it was one of the more frustrating Metroidvanias that I've played.

About the game

To lead into why, let me give a small synopsis on the game, to get you all on the same page. In Circle of the Moon, you play as Nathan Graves who, along side his friend Hugh and Hugh's father, have just stormed Dracula's castle to prevent his resurrection at the hands of Camilla (Carmilla depending on the game/media). As they arrive, Dracula is resurrected and separates the vampire hunters. From there your objectives are: reunite with Hugh and the master, and defeat Dracula.

With that stage set, you begin to explore the castle doing the Metroidvania thing; explore the environment, defeat enemies, level up (if it's an RPG), and find movement upgrades to explore earlier areas further.

So far, things sounds as normal as can be for a Castlevania game of the Metroidvania variety, so where do the problems start? The answer is in the gameplay--specifically how Nathan controls, and how it affects the rest of the game.

My Grandpa Walks Faster than this Guy

It's something that can be immediately felt when you gain control of Nathan after being separated. When moving, Nathan walks at a snail's pace, roughly the same movement speed as the Castlvania heroes of old (Simon, Trevor, Richter, etc.) and this presents an immediate issue as the enemies attacks, projectiles and movement speed feel more in line with a Metroidvania.

The game attempts to help in this matter by providing running boots early on, but that presents an different issue, one where you only have two modes of movement: being so slow that you won't be able to dodge attacks in time, or too fast and run into a hazard or attacks that you can't react to in time. 0 or 100.

It's an issue because having proper control is a fundamental thing you need to figure out for a video game, if the character you're controlling has movement speed that clashes with the how the rest of the game is designed, then there's something wrong.

The best way to sum up the problem is that controlling Nathan is like playing as a classic Castlevania character in a Metroidvania designed world, with enemies and bosses that doesn't match well with what the character is capable of. This even extends to Nathan's capabilities in combat. He only gets a whip to use for the game, as well as the classic sub weapons that the series employs throughout its many entries.

This movement problem became a particular thorn in my side in the final segment of the game, where I was having to get to a boss room by jumping around enemies that could take off around 10% of my health with their projectiles moving far too quickly for me to avoid, alongside another enemy that can petrify Nathan, which turns that 10% to 50%.

This would have not been as annoying if there was a save room near the boss room like the other bosses in the game, but I suppose Hugh's boss room drew the short straw and ended up with no save room.

If it weren't for the rewind feature that the Advanced Collection includes, I would have quit the game on my live stream.

Other Issues

The movement is not the only problem that makes itself known. I also found an issue with the inventory, not so much in finding equipment and usable items, but in their distribution. Let me present a question: if you are playing an RPG and you have an excess of a type of armor that you don't use or need, should you have the ability to sell or drop it to prevent inventory clutter?

If you answered yes, then you and I are on the same wavelength. Throughout the game you pick up different kinds of armor that can affect your stats and have some kind of passive buff. The problem here is that I ended up with so much low-level armor that it cluttered my inventory (55 leather armors for a specific example). It stacks thankfully, but with no shop to sell or discard items, it just makes the loot system feel excessive. A shop really would have benefited this game in another aspect: the limited ways you can heal in the game. You heal fully at save points (as you should), and enemies *can* drop potions, but that's the problem: can. In my playthrough, I counted that I picked up around 8-9 potions from different enemies. 8-9 through the whole game.

So to count with the issues of start and stop movement and limited healing together, it feels like the game is putting rocks in your pockets and telling you to swim.

DSS the (sort of) Saving Grace

There is something of a saving grace for the gameplay that can help with combat and exploration, something that I sadly did not employ until about halfway through: the Duel Set-up System. The Dual Set-Up System (DSS) is probably the most interesting thing about Circle of the Moon mechanically, and something that saved me a lot of frustration in my playthrough. How it functions is like this: you have two rows of cards, these cards can be found throughout the game by killing enemies (though they are very rare) and they essentially acts as Nathan's version of spells.

The difference is that the card system is based upon pairing a top and bottom card to have effects that can help in combat and exploration. These effects range from: the whip being replaced with different weapon when attacking, different types of projectiles that fire from the whip when attacking, to even my favorite, a barrier of varying elements that damages enemies *and* block some projectiles.

There are some things that could be fixed regarding the DSS, I would have preferred that the cards were in a fixed location in the castle and you had to find them instead of them being enemy drops. But DSS is OK as it currently is.

Would I Recommend?

I suppose for this final part I'll say that you really should only play this game if you're interested in playing the series in its entirety. It's not the worst Castlevania out there, but it definitely feels like a first attempt at a handheld metroidvania. Though there are some cool ideas and designs, I just can't recommend it. If you are still curious to try it, please get the Advanced Collection, it has that rewind feature that basically salvaged my playthrough from being a rage fest. From that collection you also get Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow, and Dracula X. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I get that this is a little sudden, but I wanted to practice this kind of blog style writing, and I find that Tumblr is the right spot for this. I'm not sure if you could call this a review or a rant, probably just a guy talking about a video game that irked him.

Hope you all have a good rest of your day.

[dust-punk-development]

General Details on: Chicken

Chickens are one of the most basic resources on the farm. You start with 10 hens and one rooster. All chickens have hidden stats, that can be assed by picking one up and observing them individually. They are:

- Health: generally indicate how hurt/sick they are, probably on a value of 20 to 0. Chicken with less than 10 will not lay eggs, and those health point transpose to how much you could yield from them if you were to butcher them at the moment. Each 2 points represent one (small) portion of meat. They get back their health by having no thirst and Hunger.

- Thirst: a chicken loose 7 health a day if they don't drink, and get a thirst counter. If they hit 4 thirst counter, they die.

- hunger: a chicken will loose 4 health a day if they cannot eat. If they go 7 days without eating (getting a hunger stack each day), they die.

- Happiness: very hidden stat. Taking care of your chicken every day, including petting them, will make them like you and might make interesting things happen.

Chicken AI is quite simple. They will walk around. If there is water accessible to them (no walls, no chicken fence), they will walk to it and drink one portion of water. If they have access to food, they will walk to it and eat it. When the sun goes down, they walk back to their home, if they can access it. If their roost is unavailable, they will go to sleep where they are. If they are outside, there is a 75% chance that they will be eaten.

Chicken can produce: meat, bones, feathers, eggs, and special gifts if you have high enough happiness with your chicken. Each of those things can be sold, and each can have many uses.

Chicken can feed themself if they have access to tall grasses/bushes. But they might also eat berries/sprout that humans can also eat.

If an egg is left with a hen for 21 days (time to adapt, maybe), you get chicks. Chicks will become chicken after a month, with 50/50 hens and rooster. Chicken lay every 2-3 days

If their is more than 1 rooster for 10 hens, they will start fighting and loose health every day.

----

EXTRA MECHANICS IF I HAVE TIME:

-Genetics (bigger chicken, more eggs, friendlier, etc)

-Different breeds

-Fear mechanics

-Possibly a mechanic with feed quality.

[screensavorstudios]

1 Week of game dev!

It's now been 1 week since I started creating my Horror RPG project in Godot. No add-ons, no packages, just research, a lot of community help, and my own programming. There are a lot of bugs and incomplete features, but I've gone from nothing to the ability to create a chosen amount of enemies on a screen, give them their own stats, create a series of menus and buttons to attack them, and removed them and their menu options from the game once their health hits 0. And I did it all from scratch! I'd never have been able to do this without the help from the godot community. They've helped me understand a lot of very complicated stuff to the point that I could being applying and experimenting with it in new ways! The code isn't elegant, but it's functional, and I'm updating it as necessary. I thought a turn based RPG would be a simple first project since it didn't include any physics or hit detection, but it's been a much more complex task then I expected. Also, fuck Zenva. Apart from their "basics" courses they really don't teach you how to do shit in any meaningful way. Don't waist your money on them even in a bundle. :P Prototype sketch

End of Day 1, created a hud and placeholder enemy

End of Day 3, can spawn multiple enemies and they have health and can die

End of Day 7: Most of the original code has been reworked to be more reusable. Can now select enemies and their sub targets, and switches to enemy turns after the player has selected theirs.

It's still a long road ahead, but every day I'm making some progress. It's a rewarding feeling, and I'm looking forward to having something more exciting to show you all!

[freyayuki]

Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia Seymour Guado Banners

The Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 event just started in the Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia (DFFOO) mobile game. This event came with 2 banners.

Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 Banner 1

The Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banner 1 features the following chars and their weapons:

Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X - 15cp, 35cp, Ex, LD, Burst or BT, and Force or FR

King from Final Fantasy Type-0 - 15cp, 35cp, Ex, and LD

Guy from Final Fantasy II - 15cp, 35cp, Ex, and LD

Have everything on this banner except for Seymour’s FR, Seymour’s BT, and King’s LD.

Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 Banner 2

The Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banner 2 features the following chars and their weapons:

Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X - Force or FR only

Prishe from Final Fantasy XI - 15cp, 35cp, Ex, LD, and BT

Oerba Yun Fang from Final Fantasy XIII - 15cp, 35cp, Ex, and LD

Trey from Final Fantasy Type-0 - 15cp, 35cp, Ex, and LD

Have everything on this banner except for Seymour’s FR, Prishe’s BT, and Fang’s LD.

Thoughts about Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X

I think Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X (#ad) is - well, I guess I can’t say I hate him but I can’t say I like him all that much either.

Maybe it’s better to say that I just feel neutral towards him, or that I don’t really care about him.

Right now, my Seymour has his 15cp, 35cp, Ex, and LD fully MLB. His Ex has been Purpled or upgraded to Ex+ 3/3. He only has up to his second armor maxed.

Seymour has his Bloom Stone. All of his Summon Boards have been completed. Unlocked parts of his Character Enhancement Boards, particularly the tiles that would give me his LD Call and LD extension passive.

IIRC, I only Purpled Seymour’s Ex because I wanted to give his Sphere to another char. I think it was Noctis Lucis Caelum from Final Fantasy XV.

Seymour’s Ex gives an E Sphere that raises the ATK stat by up to 15%. This is one of, if not the, best E Spheres in DFFOO.

Then I remember pulling for Seymour’s LD because I heard it was a really good Call ability.

Seymour’s LD Call afflicts all enemies with multiple debuffs, including one that will increase the BRV and HP damage that they take. Said Call can also delay all enemies by 2 turns and remove all of their buffs.

This Call is so good that it’s still one of my go-to Calls even up to now. But although I still use Seymour’s Calls regularly, the same definitely can’t be said about him.

I don’t bring him to fights. I’ve never felt like I needed to have him in my party. I do remember trying to use him on a Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier and a Dimensions’ End: Entropy Tier. But that was only because I had him built so I thought I might as well try to use him.

Seymour is a debuffer. He deals decent enough damage too, I suppose. Seymour has this gimmick where he’ll deal greater damage the lower the HP of the enemies are.

If the enemies are still at full health, then Seymour’s damage won’t be as good. IIRC, he even does follow-ups and such but this will only happen if the HP of the enemies are at a low enough amount.

Even now that Seymour has his own Force and Burst weapons, he still retains the same gimmick of becoming stronger the lower the HP of the enemies are.

Seymour isn’t really meta, and I’m really not interested in him. Even if I get his Force and/or Burst weapons, I have no plans to spend any more resources to further build him.

I am kinda interested in his FR though. Not because it’s all that good but simply because Seymour’s FR partner is Kadaj from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

Not interested enough to gem either of the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banners though.

Honestly, I shouldn’t bother tossing tickets on these banners either but - well, I did say I was kinda interested in Seymour’s FR. FF7 FTW! LOL.

Plus there’s the fact that I’m still missing Fang’s LD and King’s LD. Don’t have any plans of using either of these 2 for endgame content since they’ve basically been powercrept by now. They don’t even have their own BTs and FRs yet.

But it’d still be nice to get their LDs anyway as well as Prishe’s BT. Maybe I could use them on a Transcendence Tier or something.

Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 Banner 1 Free First Multi-Draw Results

As part of the Winter Festival campaign, we get a free multi-draw on both of the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banners.

Banner 1′s free pull gave me a dupe of Seymour’s 15cp. Bleh. Bad pull is bad.

Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 Banner 2 Free First Multi-Draw Results

My free multi-draw on the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banner 2 gave me a dupe of Trey’s 15cp. Meh.

Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 Banners 1 and 2 Tickets Pulls Results

Currently have 319 tickets on hand.

Went to the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banner 2 first. Decided to pull here because we’re going to get 2 more banners that will feature Seymour’s BT.

One of those banners will also include the Force weapon of Yuna from Final Fantasy X.

I want Yuna’s FR, and I’m even thinking about actually using gems to get it so, even though the chances of getting a Burst via tickets is very low, still didn’t want to risk getting Seymour’s BT here only to get a dupe on Yuna’s FR banner.

If I was gonna get a Burst via tickets, it might as well be Prishe’s since I might get Seymour’s while chasing Yuna’s FR.

Unfortunately, the results of my pulls on the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banner 2 were really bad. Just kept on getting regular blue orbs.

And most of these orbs don’t even have a single gold. Whenever I get gold items, they always turn out to be nothing more than a 15cp and/or 35cp dupe.

This really sucks but can’t even bring myself to be too mad about this because I guess having bad luck like this was bound to happen sometime.

I mean, lately it feels like I’ve been pretty lucky on this game. For instance, was able to get the Force weapon of Cid Raines from Final Fantasy XIII via a free multi-draw. I talk more about this in another post.

There was even that time wherein I was able to get the Burst weapon of Celes Chere from Final Fantasy VI from a 10-draw. I talk more about this in another post.

And those 2 are just some examples. So can’t really complain about getting crap now, I guess. Besides, at least I got crap on a banner I’m not that interested in.

And sure, it’d be nice to be able to get the weapons featured on these banners that I still don’t have but it’s not like I really need them. They’ll all eventually come back on a different banner anyway so I can just try again when that happens.

Anyway, since I kept getting nothing but trash on the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banner 2, decided to try my luck on banner 1. Still kept on getting crap though so just started interchanging between both banners.

Here’s a list of some of the golds that I was able to get on these banners:

3/10 - dupes of Guy’s 15cp, Guy’s 35cp, and King’s 15cp

1/10, came from a gold orb - dupe of Prishe’s Ex

1/10 - dupe of King’s 35cp

3/10, came from a gold orb - dupes of Fang’s 35cp, Prishe’s 15cp, and Prishe’s LD

Meh. Wish that dupe Prishe LD had been Fang’s LD instead. At least the dupe Prishe Ex is kinda useful. That’s because Prishe’s Ex gives an A Sphere that raises its user’s ATK and MAX BRV by 10%.

1/10 - dupe of Prishe’s 35cp

3/10, came from a gold orb - dupes of Trey’s Ex, Prishe’s 15cp, and Prishe’s 35cp

Ugh. The results of my pulls on these banners are so bad. The dupe of Trey’s Ex is useless. Would have preferred another Prishe Ex dupe.

That’s because Trey’s Ex gives an A Sphere that only raises its user’s ATK and MAX BRV stats by 5%. That’s way too low.

2/10 - dupes of Fang’s 15cp and Fang’s 35cp

3/10 - dupes of Trey’s 35cp and Trey’s Ex and my very first copy of Fang’s LD

Was so annoyed by all the bronze and silver trash and dupes that I keep on getting that whenever I get a regular blue orb, I’ve taken to just quickly tapping the screen to get to the draw results already. Because more often than not, a regular blue orb just means more trash.

When I got yet another blue orb, didn’t even think twice about tapping through the screens. So imagine my surprise when I get to the draw results screen, and I notice Fang’s LD.

Wow! Talk about a pleasant surprise. Super pleased to have finally gotten something new from these pulls. Was down to 119 tickets when Fang’s LD came home.

I should really stop pulling now. Just walk away from these banners and save the few tickets that I have left. After all, it didn’t seem like I was ever gonna get Seymour’s FR and BT, Prishe’s BT, and/or King’s LD unless I use my gems.

Definitely don’t want to use gems on either of these banners. And it’s not like I’m even all that attached to the weapons I’m missing on these banners. But couldn’t seem to help myself.

Decided to just keep on pulling until I run out of tickets. This is a bad idea. I regret this already. Sigh.

2/10 - dupes of Trey’s 15cp and Fang’s 15cp

1/10, came from a gold orb - dupe of Prishe’s Ex

4/10 - dupes of Fang’s 35cp, Fang’s 15cp, Trey’s 35cp, and Trey’s 35cp

3/10 - dupes of Fang's 15cp, Fang’s 35cp, and Fang’s 15cp

2/10, came from a gold orb - dupes of Prishe’s Ex and Fang’s 35cp

Argh! Why are the results of my pulls here so bad? And why do I keep getting dupes of Prishe’s Ex? I don’t need any more. Have more than enough already. Can I get something new already, please?

1/10 - dupe of Trey’s 15cp

After getting that dupe of Trey’s 15cp, was now down to 8 tickets. Since this isn’t even enough to do a 10-draw, was finally able to tear myself away from the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banners.

Now I’m basically all out of tickets and need to get back to saving all over again. At least I was able to avoid using gems here. It does suck that I wasn’t able to get the weapons that I’m still missing from these banners but oh well.

Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 Banner 1 Daily Free Single Draw

Each day, players can pull on any one of the currently available banners in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia once. This pull doesn’t cost anything and doesn’t guarantee anything either.

You only get 1 item from this draw and it can be anything from bronze and silver trash to one of the golds featured on the banner you’re pulling on. Basically, this is just like doing a ticket pull, only it doesn’t cost anything.

Anyway, so I decided to do my daily free single draw on one of the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banners. Was thinking of pulling on banner 2 but I ended up tapping on the free draw on banner 1 instead.

Ah, well. It didn’t really matter to me either way since I didn’t think I’d get anything good anyway. I mean, I have been able to get some golds from these free draws before but they’ve been few and far between.

More often than not, I just get either bronze or silver trash. Was expecting to get crap again like usual but was completely and utterly surprised when the free draw actually gave me a force orb.

OMFG! Also hell, yes! Yay for finally getting my very first copy of Seymour’s FR.

Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X

Equipped Seymour with his Force weapon but for now, I’ve opted not to bother leveling it up or limit breaking it.

Still don’t feel like fully building Seymour even if I luck into his Burst weapon while pulling for Yuna’s FR. But at least I already have his FR in case I need it. Will just MLB it if I really have to or something. For now, it can stay as is.

I did decide to buy Seymour’s High Armor since there’s a time-limited mission that wants players to bring him to the Shinryu (level 300) quest of the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 event.

Also equipped Seymour with 3 RF Spheres - Oerba Yun Fang’s RF A Sphere, Seymour Guado’s RF E Sphere, and Yuffie Kisaragi’s (from Final Fantasy VII) RF E Sphere.

Conclusion

So, what about you? Did you pull on either of the Dimensions’ End: Transcendence Tier 12 banners? What do you think about Seymour Guado, Oerba Yun Fang, and all the other chars featured on these banners? Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below or by reblogging or replying to this post.

Notes:

screenshots are from my Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia game account

[fumifooms]

L’s sugar addiction & self-medication : character analysis

I have some thoughts on L and his relationship to sugar that I haven’t seen from others yet surprisingly, so I’m making this post that hopefully won’t get too long definitely became long af. I’m very open to counter-arguments or people adding on to this.

Some context: I 100% see L as autistic and there’s honestly no debate to be had, even though I don’t think it was done intentionally. (I respect others having different perspectives, I just think it’s objectively the most fitting label/explanation and I’ll act like it’s a given through this analysis). I’m autistic myself, “high-functioning” meaning I mask decently enough, diagnosed at 18 and started taking concerta for attention this month at 19, I’m also INTP if that matters and yeah uh as a kid I identified a lot with L and Near and wow surprise surprise I got a bit unhealthily reliant on sugar for a while there, so here I go. 

Other context headcanons: L has autism, but is undiagnosed, which I believe mostly because Wammy’s House seems to be outside of the government and society’s eye and it didn’t seem concerned with diagnosis or mental health, the time at which Death Note was written in, and just general vibes idk. Even if he was diagnosed, he strikes me as the kind of autistic who wouldn’t care about the label and wouldn’t give much thought to it -mostly because he gives 0 shit about masking tbh and he’s highly fact oriented-, thinking he works well as he is and that medication would change him and the rupture to his habits sound unpleasant, even if down the line it’d be very helpful and it actually doesn’t change you as a person chill. Yeahh, I have an aversion to drugs of any kind, outside stuff affecting my brain chemistry just gives me a big nope, that’s including alcohol, coffee and painkillers, so I can relate even if it’s something I have to get over, and he seems the type of not wanting to be under any effect. Anyways point is: he doesn’t take meds and isn’t super aware of his condition, despite being knowledgeable in his habits and needs in many regards in canon, on the spot I’m thinking about his sitting pose = brain power stat for example. 

So why the sugar? The canon explanation is something along the lines of it giving him the energy he needs because he sleeps so little. Yeah fair, that does make sense, and also fits in with what I’ll be talking about:

My explanation: L self-medicates with sugar, which lead to sugar addiction. And I’m being 100% unironic. Those words are thrown around jokingly a lot but sugar addiction is a real issue that doesn’t get addressed much. Confirmation that L’s relationship with sugar is an addiction might even have been like, explicitely stated in canon at some point? But I haven’t seen that around and my memory really isn’t that good. So yeah there’s probably L’s picky food taste because of autism sensory issues in there as well, him just liking the taste and all and wanting same food, but this level of always eating it is more than just a preference. I’m sorry fellow autistic guy that only ate potatoes for all his life and got massive problems, but at least potatoes don’t influence your brain chemistry. Even if it started as a preference and continues to be such, if he’s addicted or not with how much of it he consumes is out of his hands. And where my earlier rambling comes in is: I think he’s unaware that it’s an addiction, I think he doesn’t think much of it, he overestimates his agency and control over his diet, even if he does recognize his dependency on it to a degree. L eats sweets pretty much constantly in canon, so that part won’t be argued about, I’m more interested in the why and how of it.

Let’s refine what sugar addiction is a bit, have this article. (It implied at one point that sugar can’t be truly/gravely addicting but it shows facts comprehensively so I’ll let it slide) Sugar addiction pretty much demands that you eat sugar constantly to get the effects (energy, stimulation that makes your head feel clearer) you seek, when the addiction is in full swing. Sounds self-explanatory yet?  Is sugar addiction real? Further reading: healthline.com article, theguardian article, someone’s journey. It’s a complex and debated issue, and sugar is still something important to have in certain quantity in our bodies, I don’t claim to be a biochemist or expert on the topic. 

Ok but why sugar? Why would he get addicted? Why does L feel like he need it? Well even if it wasn’t a full on addiction, which in his case it is, sugar gives energy, as mentioned, it can somewhat act as a stimulant. Without mentioning that sugar is widely spread and seen as pretty casual, it’s easy to get into eating it way too much and thinking nothing of it, like coffee, especially if you don’t suspect your craving of it is tied in with how your brain works. In autism, if you tend to be understimulated, you can get prescribed stimulant medication that’s intended or generally given to people with ADHD, like me with concerta, it’s really not that uncommon. Have these article tidbits that adress it as self-medication:

(article 1: addcrusher.com “How You Are Self-medicating your ADHD” - Article 2: Medium.com “Why Adults With Undiagnosed ADHD Often Turn To Self-medication”)

Why do you think L needs stimulants in the first place? He has shown to want more stimuli in general, rather than being overstimulated, even if he does like to have a calm controlled environment. I, too, am an autistic person that gets understimulated easily, which mostly leads me to listen to fast paced music as stimming when doing college exams, etc. L seeks the mental stimulation of puzzles and it’s the only thing he shows interest in doing (canon), again because of the stimulating entertainment factor. Because he doesn’t mind situations that put him under pressure, or in contact with a team of people or in public. He doesn’t mask to appear nice or neurotypical, but he does show no discomfort about an overwhelming amount of stimuli in general. Also because he stims in other ways than solving cases: tapping his feet, playing with food, etc. And, last of all, the reason of this essay, because he eats sweets all the time. 

Okay, but sugar as self-medication? Really? Where does your personal experience come into this? Like I’ve mentioned here and there, I get understimulated easily and I only started taking stimultant meds veryyyy recently. That stuff is instinctual; you’ll tap your feet mindlessly if you need more stimulation, if you’re hungry you’ll eat, if you want coffee you’ll get it, if you have a lil sugar craving you’ll seek to quench it, even if you don’t really know why. You do what makes you happy, and if sugar makes you feel good for a while, makes you feel energized or think more clearly then subconsciously you’ll start wanting it more often, hence why you start out not thinking much of it. I wouldn’t describe my case as an addiction, I don’t think I really got withdrawal or super bad or anything, but there definitely were days when i’d constantly be craving and/or eating sweets, always taking breaks from fruitless work to grab another sugary snack every 15 minutes or every hour. Gummies or other candies, cookies, marshmallows, and for a while even literal packets of refined sugar. They were food cravings like any other, feels like “I want some pizza”, but underlaced with need, and a feeling that you’ll feel and function better once you’ve gotten it. But the craving never stops, and you’re never satisfied, you only ever end up taking more and more and more. Yeah, I’d class my experience as an attempt at self-medication, definitely. Often when I'd take a lot and keep surrendering to the craving for more it’d just lead to more intense hyperactivity, manic symptoms and my body going bonkers with sweating and shaking and stuff, but sometimes it’d genuinely help me focus on schoolwork and on concentration. 

Conclusion: It’s a stimulant, so it helps L. It makes him feel like it’s helping him think better and be more awake, so he takes more. It keeps working to some degree even if it’s unhealthy, so he never stops it or tries alternatives. That’s kind of all there is to it, in the end. L puts a great deal of interest in his mental state for productivity purposes, but has never seemed to have any care in his body’s health at all, so I don’t think he’d care to change even if he knew how bad it was anyways.

Tangent:  I also like the thought of Wammy’s House being pretty abusive in that neglectful (and manipulative) way and Watari being such an enabler, all focused on performance rather than healthy behavior and thought processes, which does work for iq results apparently but at what cost. L and Mello especially def have some self-destructive habits. Anyways yeah- I like that angle instead of the whole thing being “haha quirky”, it sounds narratively consistant and compelling for the tone of the Death Note franchise. I’m sure Watari honestly believes he’s doing a good thing and helping L working at his best condition, to some degree, but yeahhh feeding the guy under your care only sweets for years without steering him towards healthier alternatives is bad if we want to do a realistic analysis, especially if you’re the one who raised him/organized the environment in which he grew up. 

Actual conclusion, more in-depth: So what does this all mean for his character, if I’m getting angstier: L is driven into his detective work not because of some grand passion or ambition (canon), but because working on cases is the only thing interesting enough for him (also canon) aka the only thing that gives him enough stimuli to not be understimulated and painfully bored, but for that lifestyle of constantly chasing high stimulation he also needs substances that give him a rush. The whole thing is extremely unhealthy and unsustainable and L will crash and burn out eventually at any given moment. Kind of a tragic character, huh. He died on his thoughest case ever, his interest driving him to take risks and get more invested and stressed than ever.

L’s laser focus on objective productivity while ignoring the fact that he has human physical needs just like everyone else, likely from a feeling of superiority and uniqueness not entirely unfounded, makes him blind to his very real issues. Being an irl L isn’t cool, it’s sad and unhealthy, cringy for everyone else around you. You may think you have metaphysics and the meaning of life or lack thereof pegged, but that won’t do you any good while you’re on the floor in a manic episode or burnout. I’ve been there mate, but seriously, gain perspective and grow some self-care, being purely statistic oriented is stupid. 

Give this man concerta. And a therapist he’ll condescendingly dismiss and talk over, but therapy nonetheless.

[townofcrosshollow]

Twine Sugarcube 102: Stats n’ Stuff

Finally, the long awaited sequel to my original Twine tutorial! Long awaited by me, because I’ve been meaning to make another one but I just haven’t gotten around to it. If you need a refresher on what that tutorial covered, feel free to go check it out here. But now, it’s time to talk a little bit about stats!

As usual, the tutorial (below the cut) should be perfectly beginner friendly and explain everything you’ll need to know to implement this into your game, although it might be a bit long! It’ll also include a bit at the end telling you how to install and use custom macros. Enjoy!

In Twine, there’s no distinct thing called a ‘stat.’ You store stats the same way you’d store information about what the player chose to eat that morning or whether they picked up an item. Using variables. Variables, if you don’t recall, are little pieces of information that can vary over time. In Twine, they’re represented by a $ before the variable’s name- so $health might be how you track a player’s health, and $hasKey might be how you track whether a player has a key.

Setting Stats

So, let’s say we want to track a stat called.... $stat. Well, first, we’re going to have to set that stat. Sugarcube has a bunch of “special passages” that do special things in the game, such as adding text or links to the sidebar. In our case, we’re looking to name a passage “StoryInit.” Whatever code is contained in this passage will run silently in the background as soon as the player opens the game, which means it’s great for setting defaults.

This is where you’ll decide what numbers you want to use to track stats. You might go for something like numbers from 0 to 100, but personally I’m going to use numbers from 0 to 1 (for easier compatibility with the meter macro I’ll introduce later on!). We’re going to start halfway through, as a sort of “neutral” that the player starts with. So, in the StoryInit passage, we’ll add this:

<<set $stat to 0.5>>

Simple enough. But how do we edit that number? Let’s say we give the player two options to proceed, with the first increasing $stat and the second decreasing $stat. All we have to do is add a setter to our link. This is what normal links in Sugarcube look like:

[[Option 1|Passage1]] [[Option 2|Passage2]]

To add setters to those links, we just have to insert two square brackets between the last set and add what we might add to a <<set>> macro. So like this:

[[Option 1|Passage1][$stat += 0.1]] [[Option 2|Passage2][$stat -= 0.1]]

In case you don’t remember, the “+=“ means that the engine will add 0.1 to the current value of $stat, and then replace $stat with the result. So if a player chooses option 1, their value of $stat will now equal 0.6, and if they choose option 2, it’ll equal 0.4.

Using Stats

Now that we know how to change a player’s stats, though, how are we going to implement it? Well, of course, we can use the <<if>> macro to show different text to players with different stats. Let’s say we want a character to say two different lines of dialogue based on whether the player has 0.6 or more in a stat or if they have less than that. We might do something a bit like this:

<<if $stat gte 0.6>>\ “This is a line of dialogue!” <<else>>\ “This is another line of dialogue!” <</if>>\

“gte” means “greater than or equal to,” the same as >. If the stat is greater than or equal to 0.6, the game will display that line of dialogue. If not, the macro will continue down and display what’s under the “else” instead.

That’s all well and good, but if you’re including stats in your game, you probably want to implement more than just cosmetic changes. A common idea is to make certain options only available to players with high enough stats, or make an action’s success or failure depend on their stats. To achieve that, we’ll use a combination of links and the <<if>> macro.

First, here’s an example where the link will bring you to a different page depending on your speed stat. It will display the link “Run!” and the <<if>> macro will test whether the player has a speed of 0.6 or higher. If they do, they will be redirected to the passage “Escape.” If not, they will be redirected to the passage “Caught.”

<<link ‘Run!’>>     <<if $speed gte 0.6>>\         <<goto ‘Escape’>>\     <<else>>\         <<goto ‘Caught’>>\     <</if>>\ <</link>>\

Here’s another example that uses similar methods to tell whether you’re good enough, but instead of redirecting to different pages, the option will only be available if you’ve got the right stats.

<<if $speed gte 0.6>>\ [[Run!|Escape]] <</if>>\

The problem with that sort of method is that if players don’t know they missed out on something, they can be less likely to replay the game. So instead, we can try putting grayed out text where the link would be, indicating to the player that they need better stats to proceed. Remember to add a class like “gray” or “grayed-out” to your stylesheet to change the colour of that text. We’ll also add a little indicator to the link to show them what stat they need to improve to proceed in this way.

<<if $speed gte 0.6>>\ [[Run! (Speed 60)|Escape]] <<else>>\ <span-class=‘grayed-out’>Run! (Speed 60)</span> <</if>>\

But how does a player know if they have a high enough stat to proceed? Well, you can always display it on the screen by just typing $stat. That will show the pure number, meaning “$stat%” would show “60%” if $stat were set to 60. But if you want something fancier, you can instead use a meter! And I’m going to use this as an opportunity to explain...

Installing and Using Custom Macros

If you want to do something cool that isn’t part of the basic Sugarcube format, chances are, somebody might have made a custom macro for it! In this case, we’ll be using the Meter Macro Set by ChapelR.

These custom macros are surprisingly easy to install. All you need to do is open your game’s Javascript (in the same menu as the stylesheet). In the case of this macro, we’ll click the “minified” option, copy it, and paste it all into our Javascript file. With some macros you’ll also need to add code to the stylesheet, but not this one. Installation done! Now Twine knows how to create meters!

Most custom macros are pretty easy to use and will list instructions below- typically you just have to add some variables in and it’ll work right out of the box. This one is a bit harder and requires some prep, so let’s go through it step-by-step.

Remember StoryInit? Open that back up again, cause we’ll need to use it. By running the <<newmeter>> macro in StoryInit, it’ll set up the meters we’ll be displaying on screen.

<<newmeter 'Stat' $stat>>      <<colors 'gray' 'gray' 'white'>>      <<sizing '50%' '2em'>>     <<label Stat black center>> <</newmeter>>

So what we’ve created there is a meter that tracks the $stat variable. It is titled “Stat” so that we know how to reference it later. The colours section determines what parts of the meter are different colours, the sizing determines how wide and tall it is (50% wide, 2em tall), and the label section creates a red label in the center of the macro that says ‘Stat.’ All of those sub-sections are optional, so if you don’t need a label or you’re happy with the default size, feel free to leave them out.

Now whenever we want the player to see that meter, such as in a dedicated stats page, we’ll just have to type this:

<<showmeter ‘Stat’ $stat>>

And voila, we have a meter!

...admittedly, it’s not the nicest looking meter. But with these tools you can surely make something magnificent!

I hope this tutorial was helpful! This topic is the one I see asked about the most, so I figured I would step in and see if I could give people a hand with it. Of course, as always, if you have any questions about what I talked about here or about any other Twine-coding-related stuff, feel free to send me an ask and I’ll be happy to give you some pointers! Twine is a really fun program to code with, and I hope this inspires some folks out there to give it a shot as well :’)