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m39 · 2 years ago

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Doom WADs’ Roulette (2004): Community Chest 2

Step right up! Step right up, kids! Uncle Doomworld will give you a chance to show off your work in the second Community Chest!

...

Wait a minute-moment...

SECOND?

G9: Community Chest 2

Main author(s): Various (Project led by Dale Harris)

Release date: December 6th, 2004 (database upload)

Version played: ???

Required port compatibility: Boom

Levels: 32 (classic roster)

Well, this is an odd one. What we have here is another WAD that I played before due to Dean of Doom spoiler tagging one of the maps and another one where we ignore the first installment and go straight into the following one.

If we want to talk about this compilation, we need to first talk about the series it comes from: Community Chests.

The concept was born on August 14th, 2002, when one of the members of TeamTNT, Dale Harris (Cadman), came out with an idea of a project that would help some of the less popular WAD makers give their time in the spotlight.

TLDR, the first Community Chest, released on June 13th, 2003, was a rather successful but also controversial WAD, due to one of the project’s members being found dead around over three weeks before the WADs release.

A personal note here but maybe it ended up good that that WAD didn’t end up on the Top 100 WADs of All Time list since knowing the infamy of Citadel at the Edge of Eternity, I would probably lose whatever marbles I have right now if I’ll ever play it.

As for today's installment, its rules were that the maps had to be compatible with Boom. Features of this source port were allowed, just as custom textures and muzak. Also, this WAD was released twice due to being unfinished the first time it happened.

As usual, when it comes to projects featuring many maps from many authors, it can spiral into a mixed-bag. CC2 is definitely this kind of a WAD so it will all come down to how much fun I ended up having.

Let’s take a look at Community Chest 2 and see if we found gold in a pile of copper.

From looking at the maps’ visuals I’ll say that it could’ve been worse. Yes, some maps look like your typical, stock Doom map, but there are moments when you come out at something that looks incredible, even if the map uses nothing but stock textures. Even the ugliest maps looked better than some of the maps from Hell Revealed II. Maps like Death Mountain, Gethsemane, and Event Horizon are some of the more eye-appealing ones in my opinion.

Seventeen maps use custom music, ranging from music from Doom I to the MIDIfied versions of tracks from other games/media. There is even one map that has the original music track made especially for it.

It definitely felt better when I played a map that doesn’t have Classic Doom music. Let me tell you though, that after the first map, you will be forced to play up to Shadow of Evil until you start hearing something that isn’t from Classic Doom. Which kind of brings us to how Kitchen Ace (And Taking Names) doesn’t loop properly in The View. Like, the fact this glitch happens with the Classic Doom music astonishes me. Then again, this feels unsurprising with this when I’m playing WADs using GZDoom.

While I feel like this compilation wasn’t as tedious to play as Hell Revealed II, it still had maps that overestimated their welcome, with stuff like egregious backtracking, crate mazes, multiple instances of timed switches in a row, and much more annoying stuff that Mock 2 made fun off. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t any gems in CC2.

The first two maps, for instance, were excellent to hook people in. Erik Alm’s The Furnace felt like a really good warm-up, while Coolant Platform was great at introducing Boom’s features to the player; to show them what might happen in the future maps.

There are also three more maps that I want to talk about:

To Hell and Back basically explains its concept with its title alone: You start out in the base, and you grab keys to access the teleporter to Hell to grab the red skull. Shame, however, that it ends on another Dead Simple clone.

City Heat makes you explore nine buildings to find a switch in each one to finish it, both with normal and secret exits. It also summons an army of demons every ten minutes (it happens three times). Fuck building #8 though.

The previously mentioned Death Mountain uses tricks with fast teleporters simulating entering/exiting caves (not counting one command building).

Also, the last map, In Threes, ends on your below efforts Icon of Sin boss (or should I say, Crosses of Sin). At least this time you have to press three switches with a set of six keys instead of standing like an idiot and shooting that one tiny spot to hurt John Romero.

Changing the subject, this compilation was, of course, easier than Hell Revealed II. But be aware that there are still some really hard maps, either for right or wrong reasons.

The perfect example of the worst kind of cheap difficulty is the ending of No Room. It was overall a very pretty level with questionable fights but the very last part is a complete spit on your face: Ending up surrounded by Hoovies with no cover after reaching the fake exit! AND IT HAPPENS FIVE TIMES!!!

WHAT IS THE REASON BEHIND THIS BULLSHIT?! TO MAKE THE MAP HARDER?! WELL GUESS WHAT?! IT DIDN’T MAKE THE MAP HARDER! IT ONLY MADE LINGUICA LOOK LIKE AN ASSWIPE!!

Hey... Hey! Wanna know a fair way to beat this part?! Activate God Mode, and punch the living shit out of Hoovies (if you found the Berserk Pack that is)!

sigh

Fuck this moment.

The bugs that I encountered were more enjoyable than what I just described to you. No game-breakers, just your typical holes into the void among other stuff described in the text file and Doomwiki.

Also, ironic that you need a Boom-compatible source port and yet Boom itself couldn’t play Sodding Death because it’s too big for that port and The Mucus Flow because Boom breaks one of the switches.

And now that I finally mentioned B.P.R.D.’s The Mucus Flow you might be wondering, why I didn’t talk about this map before? Simple... Because it almost feels like a masterpiece that should be played before even thinking about watching videos/reading stuff related to this map. It might probably be the biggest reason why you should even bother to download CC2.

But there is also one author that needs to be talked about but unlike The Mucus Flow, this guy is here for the wrong reasons (probably) – Gene. Big. Bird.

Scare Chord

Ah yes! Gene Bird! That one map maker that will make MtPain27 start foaming from his mouth and turn into MDK mode to singlehandedly slaughter him for mere breathing (especially if Gene Bird looks like Big Yellow Bird from Sesame Street).

But there is a legitimate reason why MtPain would give Gene Bird an F just for existing – His maps are pure, 1994 chaos!

The maps’ style is chaotic! The way of playing them is chaotic! The enemy placement is chaotic! The secrets are chaotic! All of his maps scream complete and utter mess! Even his final map, Desecration, feels like that despite being the only one that was created for this compilation! You heard it right folks! His first FOUR maps were created before Community Chest 2 was released, making me think that these were added as filler maps because not enough people were interested in this project!

But... BUT... Let me tell you something people, as I’m going to play Gene Bird’s devil's advocate for a moment: His maps aren’t the worst maps I’ve played.

Yeah, despite his maps being one giant mess, at least I could understand where to go! I could understand what to do! I could understand what was going on! At least I felt like Gene Bird’s maps didn’t waste my time like some of the ZDoom-focused WADs or other moon-logic filth!!

...

So uhm... now that I stopped talking about Gene Bird and his maps, is it worth downloading Community Chest 2?

...

Kind of? If only for The Mucus Flow and other maps that I covered in a positive light.

And as for my overall experience with this compilation – it was fine. I played worse.

This megaWAD suffers from a typical compilation syndrome – its best moments are sandwiched between maps that can be considered mediocre at best.

And now that I think about it, CC2 feels just as tiring to play as Hell Revealed II. it may not be as hard as the latter, but considering how the maps were created with being standalone in mind, it felt longer to finish them.

Thankfully, the last map of the 2004 roster sounds interesting enough to take only one day break after posting this review.

I’ll see you next time.

Bye.

#doom #Doom WAD #review #doom mod #Doom 2 #2004 #cacowards #doom 2004 #community chest #community chest 2 #doom community chest 2 #Doom WADs’ Roulette

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murder-popsicle · 2 years ago

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invncibleiron:

If she’s anything like you, I think I would have liked her too, thought Tony. Why didn’t he say it outloud? Well, maybe because he was a coward. Maybe because all the genius in the world didn’t make him any better at navigating…well, whatever this was. In fact, it probably made him worse. He’d taught himself to socialize, memorized the signs other people gave off, figured out how ‘normal’ kids talked, joked, laughed. For the most part, he thought he’d figured it out over the years: he’d figured out just about every pop culture reference he could mentally upload into his mental database, updating every couple years to stay relevant, and he simplified his explanations of scientific phenomenon, tried not to ‘geek out’ too hard in mixed company, and did everything he could to ‘make it work.’ But none of that made it natural. None of that made people any easier. Machines made sense. Part A goes into Part B. People were a whole other ball game. An equation that, all these years later, he was still struggling to figure out.

Tony didn’t write down the name. He didn’t need to. He didn’t think there was anything in the world he was more likely to memorize. But he also knew that the second the name was said aloud, JARVIS had begun doing his research, uploading everything–if there was anything–from every database in the world he had access to, and he had access to most. Slowly, and fiddling with the straw of his milkshake, Tony nodded. “Yeah, yeah,” he agreed. “It’ll be a good idea to have you there.” If you want me to was not a statement he could respond to directly, but that didn’t stop it from being true: this mission would go a lot better with someone at his side who understood the full situation, who had been a part of that world once upon a time. And even as he thought it, a pang of guilt and sympathy coursed through him at the thought of Bucky re-exposing herself to this part of her life after all she’d done to get away from it.

But then it all came full circle, realizations clicking into place all too quickly, because Tony’s brain was never going to let him take more than a minute off. “You know that this means, don’t you?” He raised an eyebrow. “We find this much evidence–a whole person of evidence–and they’ll be looking at you next.” Apart from the fact that Steve would never stand for it–he’d done everything in his power to keep Bucky out of trouble and would likely die on that hill, even if he had to go against Tony to do it (like it or not, Tony knew where Cap’s loyalties lay)–Tony, despite all his confused and tangled resentments, didn’t want to see Bucky locked up either. But he also didn’t want to see someone as dangerous as Kulikov go free. “You sure that’s something you want to face? It’s not going to be pretty.” Tony had some of the best lawyers in the world–hell, he’d call in She-Hulk for this one–but that was no guarantee. One way or another, this would be a risk Barnes was taking.

“Gotta face it sooner or later,” Bucky said, trying to ignore the way even the thought of a trial caused her stomach to tie itself into a knot. “Probably better to do it now, on my own terms, than to wait for somebody else to break the news for their own purposes. ‘Sides, I can’t really say I’m sorry and have it mean anythin’ much if I’m gonna run from bein’ held accountable. I mean, if I'm bein’ honest I’d rather put a bullet through my skull than be locked up again, but I gotta make amends somehow.”

As she’d said to Tony only the previous day, she might not have wanted to kill Howard, or Maria, or any of her other victims, but she'd still done it. The blood was on her hands, too, not just on the hands of the people who had given her her orders. Just following orders hadn’t been a good excuse during the war, and it wasn't a good excuse now.

When she’d first come to the Tower Steve had tried telling her, repeatedly, that what she’d done hadn’t been her fault, but that was because Steve had never seen his best friend clearly. He’d only stopped arguing with her about it when, goaded past her limit and angry at both herself and him, Bucky had finally hauled off and punched him. That had led to the kind of tussle they hadn’t had since they were small, which had ended with both of them bruised and Bucky in tears. Bucky didn’t want to repeat the experience, and she still felt bad about hitting him, but it at least seemed to have woken Steve up to the fact that his protestations of her innocence weren't helping.

One of his favorite tactics, before their fight, had been to compare Bucky to Natasha. If she didn't blame Natasha for what she’d done for the Red Room, he’d ask her, then why did she blame herself? But Bucky would insist until her deathbed that the situations were different. Natasha had been taken as a child. She’d been raised by the Red Room, brainwashed and indoctrinated and manipulated since before her baby teeth had even started falling out. She’d never known anything else. She’d never been taught better. But Bucky had. Bucky had had twenty-eight years of school and church and normal society to teach her right from wrong.

She should have been stronger. She should have been better. She should have had the guts to take herself out rather than let herself be twisted into the Winter Soldier.

Rubbing some of the condensation from the side of her cup, Bucky said, “I’ll help. I’ve got it. I want to.”

#invncibleiron #c: tony stark #v; galanthus nivalis #[ arm in arm ]

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absolutebl · 2 years ago

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Hello again! Sorry if I'm being a bother; just ignore if so! I was wonder if you have any insight to Lay Talay's character in War of Y? Lay Talay is easily one of my favorite bl actors so I always want more of him, but I'm very confused about his role in WoY as he is said to be the main character on MyDramaList yet he's barely in the trailer (?)...

No bother, this is my favorite game.

Remember the golden rules of BL? (say it with me everyone)

Never trust a Thai trailer, a Viki category, a Taiwanese title, or a MDL description.

I might put MDL cast lists in with their descriptions.

Also MDL isn’t really formatted (as a database) to encompass this kind of BL. (To be fair neither is my magic spreadsheet of doom.)

War of Y is another one of those sampler box BLs, like Y-Destiny, Close Friends 1, or En of Love (the original as aired). Like Y-D, WoY is a shared universe with cross-over characters. (I don’t know if it’s 4 couples of 5 eps each or some other division of labor.)

As opposed to "standard" Thai BL where there is a primary couple plus secondary pair(s) (side dishes) of decreasing importance and screen time (technique piloted by Make it Right, and somewhat owned by the pulps). Cheewin's most recent example of this would be SCOY. The third kind of Thai BL we get it the rare co-lead couples, BLs like Why R U? or Star & Sky)

Back to War of Y....

I have only seen the first ep and Lay seems to be playing the "big guns" most famous BL actor in that universe (define irony for the class, please, Cheewin). The one everyone is jelly of. He didn’t have much screen time in this first ep.

This ep (first installment, min series, I don’t know what to call it) is focused on Billy & Seng’s characters (SCOY) who play BL lead actors in a mafia drama, who are also actually having an affaire (with each other). And also dealing with casting couch, cheating (maybe), and other issues.

I think Lay is being used the way SCOY used Saint, which is (in our universe) mainly for promo.

Lay's main ships are off sailing with others (Yoon) or the crimson KP wave (Perth) - HA, I KILL ME. So they have him paired as the seme with a new cutie (Muse). Will they get their own ep, or series of eps, maybe?

It's a holding pattern, I think. Lay doesn't seem to be intend to anchor any of the installments. Unless they are keeping his arc (and trailer) in reserve for the back end (pun intended). Which is not a dumb idea. He is by far their biggest name. And that's what Cheewin did in Y-Destiny.

But MDL could have him listed as Main just because the upload form for their system requires someone to be chosen as the lead, and whoever uploaded originally... chose Lay.

I’m 90% sure ToruFirst get their own arc and they are WAY down the list.

#war of y #y-destiny #Cheewin Thanamin #thai bl #thai film industry #Lay Talay #seng wichai #billy patchanon #BillySeng #ToruFirst

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malvernsims · 3 years ago

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Please release the default clothing ones, I wouldn't mind it all if you just uploaded them without the previews. Like I just don't want to go through this hassle again of defaulting everything and besides that the outfits you use for the defaults are just so nice. PLEASE!!! :( I really appreciate you for even starting this project because it just saves up so much time....

Short answer: No

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Long answer:

I appreciate the sentiment and the fact you said please Anon but my stance has not changed and it won't. I will be releasing my default clothing once I have everything ready.

I am truly grateful that people enjoy the defaults I've made and I'm sorry if the rest of this response seems annoyed or angry, It also got long so I've put it below the cut.

When I say I need to take preview pictures for everything that actually encompasses more than just taking a picture of the sim wearing that outfit. That process also includes but is not limited to:

Making sure each folder contains the right file(s)

Zipping the folders up and making sure they're named properly

Pulling all the required information for each outfit to give proper credit to the creators who made the outfit because they deserve it

Uploading the files to Simfileshare - anybody who has uploaded to Simfileshare knows that it doesn't always cooperate

Pulling links to the outfits on the default database

Actually making the post at which point I need to make sure all the links point to the right things because nobody wants to click the download button and be redirected to the default database.

As I'm sure you can see it's much easier to just type that I need to take preview pictures than write that to do list everytime.

I'm aware not everybody cares about the preview pictures themselves but I do. When I download things I like to know what I'm getting so if I already have it I don't get duplicates and so I can have a general idea of if it fits my playstyle or not. So I provide that option to people looking at my content as a courtesy.

Yes I could just throw a download link at my followers with no picture and no links but I don't because I want them there for people to have. Maybe somebody sees an outfit I used and wants the custom version, I provide a link in the post so they can go get it without having to ask me and wait for me to try and find it again.

So yes it makes things easier on your end to have a bunch of defaults at your disposal where you can just click Download, get them and move on. And it may be "a hassle" that you'll "have to default everything again" but on my end there's things I need to do to make sure that process goes smoothly.

I spent 7 months working on these defaults everyday after work and on weekends without playing my game, every free moment I had I spent making these defaults. And while I would love to just hit post, have them out there and be done with them I am enjoying finally playing my game again and I will get to posting my defaults when I get to it.

There's also been some personal stuff going on in my life the last month which I have not shared with the community but being able to just play my game without trying to make cocntent for it really helped with that.

Again I'm sorry if this answer came out angry or if I misinterpreted the tone of your message as whiny. I did not mean to target you Anon but I want it to be clear that the defaults will come out when they come out. If you don't want to wait then I encourage you to download defaults that are already available, there's a lot of great ones out there. I am a human with a life and commitments outside of Tumblr and I appreciate everybody's patience regarding the release of the rest of my clothing defaults.

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crepuscular-gloom · 5 years ago

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Poptropica Island Ratings

okay I saw a post on here a while ago and someone rated the Poptropica islands. I remember agreeing with a lot of them, but they only went so far so a lot of the newer islands were missed out. I came across it again recently and got hit by a wave of nostalgia so I’m gonna do my own now. Unoriginal content very good. i’ll put a keep reading link to stop it from taking up too much space

Early Poptropica - mega nostalgia but kinda boring. I like the original Poptropicans being pixely and there is a goth gf in the sewers however the giant green spider scared the shit out of me as a kid and the idea of an aircraft graveyard made me sad so 6/10

Shark Tooth Island - also nostalgic but I didn’t complete it for a long time for some reason.. very short. it has a story but its there is nasty shark and people stuck on an island so make a calming potion. the medicine man looks like he is from viva pinata so 6/10

Time Tangled Island - VERY GOOD AND FUN AND HISTORICAL FUCK THAT AZTEC THO DICKHEAD. quite lengthy for an island but this is good because that means more time periods to explore. it’s also educational but i just care about restoring time. very legendary the iconic just jumped out - 10/10

24 Carrot Island - stupid pun point taken off. introduces Dr Hare and people are THIRSTY. you can dye your hair with milkshakes. i thought it was creepy as a kid honestly. i think its mind control or something. but i like it, it still has nostalgia value 8/10

Super Power Island - very legend like. i loooove the antagonists, especially copy cat but i think i had to look up a guide to beat her because i was dumb af. you need a licence to be a superhero but you are a superhero!!! very fun i like this one a lot 10/10

Spy Island - i remember sucking at this one as well as a kid. i think it fucks with peoples hair and i only remember because my character looks fresh 100% of the time and this island fucked it up i think. i don't really remember it tho. 5/10

Nabooti Island - it’s based on a Choose Your Own Adventure book so good premise. go around the world is also good. you have to get jewels i think. ngl i didn’t finish this one because i sucked at it so i’m just going off the wiki and how far i got into it. fuck the animal puzzle 7/10

Big Nate Island - who the fuck is Big Nate. i only remember the school climbing frame and a stink bomb. fuck you big nate we don’t have your comics in England 1/10

Astro-Knights Island - medieval knights.... IN SPACE?!?! COUNT ME IN. crazy jester bard guy antagonist. people are thirsty for him too. i’m pretty sure you end up in another dimension or something. cyborgs and shit 9/10

Counterfeit Island - bruh i loved this island. pretty sure antagonist is also making people thirsty. you have to go back to Early Poptropica Island to complete it, very cool. investigating crime is cool idea it’s l.a. noire in poptropica. the wiki says there is a glitch called anti-social clown and i have to say relatable 9/10

Reality TV Island - i think i completed this like twice and i remember jackshit. you get to see past characters tho so very good. it’s just doing challenges. 4/10

Mythology Island - VERY GOOD. LEARN ABOUT MYTHOLOGY. you can fight hydra and other creatures, you meet Zeus you meet Hades, Aphrodite is a bitch. 9/10

Skullduggery Island - pirates are always good no matter what. apparently it is one of the hardest islands which explains why i never completed it but you fight other pirates and sea monsters for doubloons or some shit sounds cool to me 8/10

Steamworks Island - steampunk is good. i remember completing this and thinking it was interesting and weird to look at. i think the atmosphere is was lonely tho. there’s a boss battle against a plant i think. otherwise i don’t fuckin remember 7/10

Great Pumpkin Island - it’s Peanuts so it’s nice. very nice and simple. it’s just about the great pumpkin except you’re there. 6/10

Cryptids Island - GOD TIER. CRYPTIDS IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA. some of it is scary tho. the jersey devil just fucking staring at you from the window was a shit the bed moment for a kids game. also before the islands got rebooted, it was one of the only islands to have sound effects, i.e. when the chupacabra bursts out the box. honestly because of the balls on this kids game to scare children and also being good island 10/10

Wild West Island - the only thing better than pirates is cowboys. i don’t really remember it but you do go against an outlaw gang. i like cowboys 10/10

Wimpy Wonderland Island - Jeff I know you made doawk and poptropica but did you have to show it. ngl i liked it because i like doawk. but it’s kinda... creatively bankrupt i guess. 3/10 2 points because Rodrick is there

Red Dragon Island - i think more time travel but just to old Japan. you have to save a girl. that’s all i remember. also i think there is a nasty samurai guy. but also evil dragon. i can’t remember because for the longest time this was a premium account only island so i never got to finish it for the longest time. that was a dick move 7/10 for that alone.

Shrink Ray Island - cool premise but this island expects me to learn morse code 3/10

Mystery Train Island - detectives? on a train? very nice. basically murder on the orient express except no murder and thomas edison is there and also various other 1700/1800 nerds

Game Show Island - basically Reality TV except it’s to save the world from robots. 5/10

Ghost Story Island - wow iconic. this is the only island with voice acting and it’s to fucking jumpscare you i shat myself. ghost hunting, very cool 10/10

S.O.S Island - it’s basically Titanic mixed with Moby Dick. it’s ok 6/10

Vampire’s Curse Island - i reaaaally like this one. i like vampires. it has a vampire daddy in it so. he kidnaps a teenage girl tho because he thinks its the love of his life who is dead. kinda weird. he does stop being insane at the end tho and says sorry and dies. the girls bf is a dickhead tho. 9/10

Twisted Thicket Island - i think you’re saving a forest from becoming housing. i really like it because it introduces various folkloric creatures like the nokken. i only remember the nokken because i went on akinator to see if he knew what it was and i don’t think he did so i added it and it’s photo to his database. or maybe it was just his photo but i remember uploading something to akinator. 8/10

Poptropolis Games Island - i don’t think i liked this one 3/10

Wimpy Boardwalk Island - Jeff. 2/10 1 point added because Rodrick is also there

Lunar Colony Island - space is good. do i remember this island tho? no. i think theres aliens tho. 5/10 because i like space and aliens.

Super Villain Island - it brings back the most memorable villains like binary bard and black widow. you find out why they are evil. pretty chill 8/10

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory Island - what do you expect 5/10

Zomberry Island - the last of us except i think people are just eating nasty berries really. i like it it’s spooky 7/10

Night Watch Island - Paul Blart Mall Cop 6/10

Back Lot Island - you make a film. i can’t remeber it like at all. 6/10 because it sounds ok

Poptropolis Games Island Part 2 - fuck off 2/10

Virus Hunter Island - i don’t think i completed this one either. however it is one of those inside the human body things which is always cool if cliche. 8/10

Mocktropica Island - very satirical what if about if poptropica was run by assholes. ironic since a bunch of islands were made premium only for a while. pretty sure the bonus missions still are too which is why i’m not mentioning them. funny tho 7/10

Monster Carnival Island - spooky yes. people thirst over the ringmaster raven guy too. theres a spooky clown on the ferris wheel. i don’t remember much other than i liked it because it was about monsters in a theme park. 9/10 i remember it was surprisingly short tho

Survival Island - castaway except it’s you. i don’t remember it either lmao. i got out of touch with old poptropica real bad by this time so my next ratings might be unfair sorry. pretty sure it also becomes the most dangerous game tho and some guy wants to actually fucking kill you. ballsy. 7/10 because it sounds ok i should maybe play it.

Mission Atlantis Island - i like atlantis but i didn’t play this one either. you see deepsea creatures which are spooky so extra points 8/10

PoptropiCon Island - poptropica’s answer to comicon. now i did play this one for some reason but i don’t remember it too well either. i was 14 when it came out so. sounds like yu-gi-oh so good. 7/10

Arabian Nights Island - didn’t play it i think it’s just telling the story. it’s a cool story so 7/10

Galactic Hotdogs Island - what the fuck 1/10

Mystery of The Map Island - vikings are cool. island seems very short tho. 5/10

Timmy Failure Island - who the fuck. this would be more impactful if i read these fucking things but i don’t. who the fuck are you timmy. i guess it’s called failure for a reason. (that was mean sorry) 1/10

Escape from Pelican Rock Island - prison break, nice idea. you have like a twin in this one. seems a bit repetitive sometimes tho. theres like 7 days of doing similar things. 6/10

Monkey Wrench Island - it was created to be the new tutorial, i.e. an actual tutorial rather than Early Poptropica. very fast and boring, especially if you already know everything. 2/10

Crisis Caverns Island - i know nothing about this. even the wiki is incomplete. maybe that means its shit then. 1/10 the wiki doesn’t even care too much about this one.

Greek Sea Odyssey - more ancient greece is always good. you get to beat the shit out of zeus this time 8/10

Snagglemast Island - all you do is collect coins. another tutorial one. 1/10.

bonus: home island. legit just a hub. points added because you can do a lot of customisation here and pick up a pet that doesn’t cost credits. 4/10

DOUBLE BONUS: the little haunted house mini thing. very good because spooky costumes, spooky house fun little monster party. 10/10

#poptropica #feel free to add your opinions #do you agree #or disagree #i get unfair because i stopped playing a loooong time ago #tho i sometimes jump on #if you see me i'm called chilly skull #edgy i know but i made it when i was 7 #poptropica islands #this felt like writing a goddamn essay enjoy

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marshmallowgoop · 6 years ago

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Studio Trigger Live Drawing with Tetsuya Sakurai (02/20/19): Transcript (Non-Verbatim)

Studio Trigger streamed their third Twitch live drawing at 18:00 JST on February 20, 2019. The stream features inbetween animator Tetsuya Sakurai drawing Satsuki Kiryuin from Kill la Kill, as well as producer Hiromi Wakabayashi and translator Tatsuru Tatemoto. A full video of the stream is available on Twitch here.

I’ve put together a transcript of the stream for anyone curious about the Q and A. While the transcript is not verbatim, all the meaning should still be captured.

Transcript

Tatsuru Tatemoto (Tattun): Sakurai started one year earlier than the last live drawing animator, Sato. Sakurai’s first work at Studio Trigger was in DARLING in the FRANXX. He’s been with Trigger for about two years.

Sakurai is an inbetween animator at Studio Trigger. Today, he’s going to draw Satsuki Kiryuin from Kill la Kill. He had some time to practice, so we’ll see what he has for us today. He’s a bit nervous, but he’ll give his best. I hope you enjoy the live drawing.

The producer just came in right now, but he’s going to use the restroom before he comes in.

Let’s get started with some questions on Patreon. This stream is made possible with the support of all our Patrons on Patreon. Thank you. Every bit of support is appreciated. None of the money gathered on Patreon is used as revenue for the studio. All goes to projects or staff and is much appreciated. Thank you very much.

If you would like to participate with questions, we do Q and As with the live drawings. Also, Patrons can vote on who the live drawers draw. We don’t have a link to our Twitch page on Patreon, but we will add it. The Twitch page isn’t too difficult to find and is on other social media, such as our Twitter and official site.

We do have our producer now, Hiromi Wakabayashi. He’s a regular MC for our streaming sessions.

Our first question is from Luke Roberts: “How long does it usually take to draw one frame, and how are the drawings kept so consistent with different people drawing them?”

Sakurai says that it depends on the cut. However, it generally takes about one hour to draw one inbetween frame.

Wakabayashi says that the drawings are consistent along the frames because there’s an animator—I think the direct translation is “animation director”—and they are the ones who kind of direct each frame to make sure there’s consistency throughout the series. There are episode directors who do this work.

We generally try to answer off of the questionnaires, but sometimes, we receive some questions that we obviously cannot answer for various reasons. “Can we expect a global theater release for Promare?” is an example, but I’ll ask for the hell of it.

I was not expecting such a thorough answer! Hiromi says that he would want a worldwide release if possible. There have been multiple announcements about Promare. If the opportunity allows, they want a worldwide release. Hopefully, they will get it.

We were just talking about Kill la Kill, the subject of the drawing. There was a close match between Satsuki and Nonon for this live drawing session. Nonon was just short of three votes for winning. I was secretly voting for Nonon with my own account. It’s unfortunate for the Nonon fans. Sakurai was low-key rooting for Satsuki, though, so I guess it worked out for him.

So, we’ve asked Sakurai what he usually works with. He usually likes to work digitally. When he draws for fun, he usually uses digital. When Sakurai doodles, he likes to color the illustration as well.

The next question is from Manuel Armando Marquez Gonzalez. I’m sorry if I mess up your names. The question is, “How is Trigger involved in the development of Kill la Kill the Game? And how did the project start?”

The answer was pretty long! Hopefully I can answer. Kill la Kill the Game initially started with the character designer at Arc System Works, Mori, who is the designer for BlazBlue. Mori watched Kill la Kill. Early after the airing of Kill la Kill, he pitched the idea to Arc System Works about doing a game. The idea was approved, and the idea was given to Studio Trigger’s production committee. That’s when the game project started.

The offer for the game was given pretty soon after the series ended. It’s been the works for a long time. Trigger’s involvement in the game process is to review character models and the stories. Trigger aren’t professionals when it comes to gameplay, though. Arc System Works are the professionals there because it’s their industry, so Arc System Works does the majority of that work. I hope that was a good answer for our questioner.

I was talking to Sakurai now. I get a lot of opportunities to watch animators draw, and I find it interesting that everyone has their own operation on how they draw their characters. I noticed that Sakurai kind of leaves the characters bald and draws hair later. Sakurai says that that’s just kind of how he’s doing the illustration now. There are times when he draws the hair with the face.

I questioned if Sakurai had ever drawn a fan illustration of Kill la Kill before. Sakurai drew fanart of Satsuki and Ryuko right after the final episode aired. He uploaded the piece on Twitter, so maybe you can find it. However, he makes his Twitter private, so it might be difficult to find the picture.

Wakabayashi and I asked Sakurai what his preferences for drawing are. What characters does he like to draw? Sakurai said that he preferred drawing female characters. He likes drawing female characters in long coats, like a long double coat. I guess that’s his kink!

Sakurai explained that he doodles original characters in his free time.

The next question is from Paul Schmidt, who asks, “Sakurai-san, what is it like being a Douga-man? Is it a lot of work? In a typical half-hour episode, how many frames/cuts do you have to draw? I submit anime staff credits to Anime News Network’s encyclopedia as a hobby, and I discovered your name was not in the database (at least not credited).”

I’ll split the question up.

Sakurai says that he currently enjoys being an inbetween animator, but when he first started working, he wasn’t used to the environment and wasn’t too comfortable with it. Sakurai thinks that the workload is pretty average.

Sakurai explained that it’s very difficult to calculate or put out a number for how many frames he works on per episode because each episode can be drastically different. He can maybe say how many frames he works on a week, which is maybe 50-60 frames because he does about 10 frames a day.

We asked our tech guy to pump up the volume for Sakurai’s microphone.

There’s a question that asks, “Is the iPad good for drawing?” I can’t pronounce the questioner’s name.

The third-generation iPad is very good for drawing. Today, we were planning to use the latest model of Cintiq 16 from Wacom for drawing, but it was broken when we tried to test with it. We had it fixed for stream, but we didn’t have enough time to set it up, so we’re using Intuos 5 today. Fortunately, Sakurai likes working with Intuos 5, and it’s his personal item that he brought with him today. He’s working in a preferred environment. We’re not forcing him to work with unfamiliar equipment.

There are a lot of questions regarding Inferno Cop season 2 on the chat log right now. Hiromi says that Studio Trigger wants to do it! However, the issue they’re having right now is that they have so much actual animation work to do. Inferno Cop is an animation as well, but there’s so much on Trigger’s to-do list that they haven’t gotten around to Inferno Cop yet. Ideally, Hiromi says, they only want to work on comical series, but to keep the studio going, they have to do actual work.

It has been a while since the studio has done anything with Inferno Cop, so Hiromi has talked to the studio about doing some more Inferno Cop along the line, though.

Sakurai is struggling with the shoulder parts of Satsuki, Wakabayashi says. Satsuki’s shoulder pads are difficult to draw! When Studio Trigger was designing the character, there were parts put in that Wakabayashi thought would cause a lot of problems for animators.

Wakabayashi says that they had some slight hope that some animators would find it entertaining to draw Satsuki’s shoulder pads. They would have to think about how the shoulder pads would move and work at different angles.

Our previous animator, Mr. Sato, likes drawing mechs and robots on top of characters. I was curious if Sakurai likes drawing mechs as well. Sakurai doesn’t like drawing non-organic objects, though he does like drawing the little details in clothing. Sakurai likes drawing the arm portion of coats, like the creases and stuff. He likes the little details.

There’s a question from Oscar Manjarrez, who asks, “How are the figures made? Do you reach out to Good Smile or other companies to make them, or is it the other way around? Just wondering if a Ryuko Figma would be made in her street clothing.”

Wakabayashi says it works both ways. Trigger does approach the figure companies in the pre-production portion of production. Trigger pitches that they’re making a certain kind of animation or series and asks if the company would be interested in making merchandise. If the company is interested in making merchandise, they can start making merchandise earlier and release the figures during the airing of the series.

What usually happens is that the company watches the studio’s animation and series and has their own interest. If the series is publicly well known, a company might make an attempt to make a figure. They want a profit as well, so they might ask to make a figure of one of the studio’s characters.

It’s not a Figma, but there was a jacket version of Ryuko from Medicom Toy. It’s a very big and pretty pricey figure.

There was a question from a user named by nora_soncho in our Twitch chat log. They ask if Promare will get a lot of figures and figurines.

The answer is “hopefully.” However, Wakabayashi doesn’t see a lot of figures being made for original movie titles. They’re pretty confident with the title, and they can only hope, and they wouldn’t be too surprised if figures were made possible.

We asked Sakurai if he likes collecting figurines or buying them. His response is sadly that he has just a few; he doesn’t really have an appreciation for figures. For hobbies, he likes playing games. He likes both console and PC games. He appreciates indie titles on Steam more.

Wakabayashi was curious if Sakurai knew about Indivisible. One of Trigger’s lead animators worked on the opening sequence for the game. Sakurai knows about the game and the company.

JxSam asks, “How did you guys pick Raemz to do some promotional Trigger art last month? It’s pretty inspiring to see someone non-Japanese be featured like that!”

I don’t think Raemz is the first non-Japanese person we’ve asked to do the Studio Trigger illustration of the month. I think we’ve had others. To answer your question, several of our staff, myself included, liked her art. I just approached her in the Comic Market, or maybe a different event. We were fortunate enough that she agreed to draw for us.

Apparently, Sakurai has finished doing the roughs. Now, he’s working on the final draft of the lines.

Evandro997 says, “Do Trigger receive a lot of portfolios from overseas? If yes, what do you think about them?”

Wakabayashi says they receive overseas portfolios from time to time, but he doesn’t think that they receive them often. They obviously do review these portfolios when they get them, though.

We asked Sakurai if he streams drawings on his private time. He says that he draws for fun, but he’s never streamed before. He’s a little nervous and uncomfortable because people can see all the little mistakes he made. People can see his in-progress illustration, which he thinks is kind of embarrassing.

Sakurai is using an Intuos 5 tablet today, the medium size.

Wakabayashi asked Sakurai about how he feels about Patreon and other financial support that Trigger receives from the fans. Sakurai responded that he appreciates Patreon and the financial support; it feels good.

Wakabayashi says that something like Patreon is a very foreign culture in Japan; there’s no culture of tipping in Japan. People don’t give money because they appreciate others’ work. Simply put, Wakabayashi is happy that they receive so much support from everyone.

There’s a question from Patreon, from Bill Erak, who asks, “So, how much power do producers have on a show? Like, oftentimes I see that there were decisions made by writers, others by directors, and others by producers. Writers and directors I kind of understand, but if producers have too much power, wouldn’t that make them straight-up directors, too?”

Wakabayashi says the answer to this question depends on the project. For example, a particular project might be started up by producers. A producer might go and find a director that they want their particular series directed by, as well as the staff that they want. In that case, the producer obviously has an agenda that he wants to pursue. He will probably comment here and there on how he wants the series to be executed. There are times when producers might have absolutely no say, though. A project might be very creative driven, where the director and scriptwriter will basically choose every finer detail of the project, and the producer is just there to make the process as stress free as possible.

Wakabayashi says that he can’t speak for other studios. However, with Studio Trigger, not any one person (scriptwriter, director, producer, etc.) has too much power. That’s just Trigger, though. The situation might be different in different studios.

Wakabayashi says that at Studio Trigger, they also feel that you don’t have to be a director, scriptwriter, producer, etc. to provide input. They welcome input regardless of position.

Sakurai is explaining that he’s making a lot of mistakes right now. However, that’s the benefit of drawing digitally. You can make as many mistakes as you want, CTRL+Z, and it’s gone. That’s not the case in physical drawing. You have to erase, and the paper gets worn out.

I explained this a bit earlier. One of our Twitch viewers asked in Japanese if Sakurai wants to work with… I guess digital tablets? I don’t know the correct term in English, but they asked if Sakurai was interested in working with a tablet like Cintiq.

Sakurai was interested initially. We bought a Cintiq 16 one for this stream and tried to test it out. However, when we tried to test a few days ago, there were problems with the equipment. We had to get the tablet repaired. As such, Sakurai is instead using his own tablet, the Intuos 5, which is what he usually draws with.

What time is it in Ukraine right now?

Would Studio Trigger accept donations and have Twitch stamps? We don’t have plans at the moment, but to be honest, we haven’t looked into it too much.

For people living in the east coast, west coast, or wherever where it’s like 3:00 or 5:00 am, please don’t deprive yourself of sleep. There should be a VOD enabled, so you can watch later.

We had a question if this is the studio that worked on Evangelion. Wakabayashi says not really! They’re the sidekick, like the Robin to Batman!

Wakabayashi says that he’ll maybe look into making a stamp. However, if they have to make it, that’s a lot of work that has to go in. They’ll look into it.

It looks like Sakurai has finished the face and is working on the body.

Wakabayashi was the creative officer for Kill la Kill. He commented on Sakurai’s drawing, saying that it looks just like Satsuki!

Wakabayashi is curious about what Sakurai wants to do in the future. Sakurai obviously wants to move up to a key frame animator. Then, he wants to do episodic directing, which is meaty directing on individual episodes. He wants to create something that is highly influenced by his own creative touch. He possibly wants to do a one-man ending sequence where all of the frames are executed by him.

Sakurai doesn’t ultimately want to become a director. He wants to take big steps and go up the ranks of the animators in the industry.

Wakabayashi says that it’s good to have a goal. It’s a motivating factor.

Studio Trigger is a lot more open to ideas, Wakabayashi adds. They try to provide opportunities to the staff. So, if animators keep saying that they’re interested in something and keep telling executives of their interest, sooner or later, it will happen. Wakabayashi says to keep trying.

Blademaster223 asks, “Will Trigger hire more foreign animators if the language barrier problem is solved?”

The question is a little broad, so Wakabayashi’s answer might not be the exact answer you’re expecting. The reason that Studio Trigger can’t hire foreign animators and staff is for a multitude of reasons. Trigger does work with a lot of foreign creators, like with Little Witch Academia and Promare. They don’t come to the studio, but Trigger works with a lot of overseas staff.

There are language barriers, but there are also financial issues. Visas cost a lot of money to obtain. Trigger isn’t big enough to sustain the money for visas.

Again, we covered a similar question in our previous stream as well. In today’s day and age, with all these technologies, you don’t have to be living in Japan to work with a particular entity. You can work online. That’s how Trigger does a lot of transaction with overseas creatives. There are staff like myself, who help with online translations all the time.

I think everyone is too concerned that they have to live in Japan to work with a Japanese studio. That might have been the case like 10 years ago, but I don’t think that’s the case today.

Hiromi asked if Sakurai watches overseas animation. Sakurai watches Disney and Pixar. Sakurai is very excited for Spider-Verse, which is coming out very late in Japan.

It’s very difficult to create those kinds of stunning visuals in Japan, Wakabayashi says. They’re interested in seeing what the movie is like.

Has Sakurai received any influence? Does he like Japanese animation? He likes Evangelion, specifically the reboot. He likes the newer, theatrical Evangelion and appreciates it more because it’s the first Evangelion he saw. The title was Rebuild of Evangelion. The fourth installment is in production right now. Sakurai is curious to see where it goes!

Sakurai doesn’t really have a favorite director, but he does appreciate Mr. Anno’s work. He did appreciate Shin Godzilla as well. Sakurai’s preference is more serious. He likes more serious anime over more comical ones.

Sakurai thinks that Studio Trigger’s method of direction or artistic touch is very American. [Wakabayashi laughs.] Wakabayashi says that is very exclusive to Imaishi’s work.

Are there any favorite Japanese anime series aside from movies that Sakurai likes? He likes the works from Kyoto Animation, though he doesn’t have any particular titles.

I asked Sakurai if he tried applying for Kyoto Animation before Trigger. Sakurai said that he only applied for Trigger, and I asked why. Why wouldn’t he want to work at the studio he likes most? Sakurai explained that he wants to keep what he likes… I don’t know if I can translate well. He wants to be able to enjoy his favorite thing as a hobby and not make it work.

The reason why Sakurai chose Studio Trigger over other studios is because he felt that the art direction seemed like it would be the most interesting to work with. It was the catchiest to him.

Hiromi explained that Sakurai has an interesting perspective. Instead of going to a serious studio and being serious there, it might be good to go to a less-serious studio so that you kind of stand out there.

We asked Sakurai how frequently he draws for fun. He says he draws for fun pretty much every day. At work, he draws in his free time. At home, he draws digitally as well.

This is a question from Zack Gould for Wakabayashi. He asks, “At Anime Expo 2018, you mentioned that if you work on any kind of project along with Imaishi, you would want to do something in the same vein as Panty and Stocking. I personally am also incredibly interested in seeing more hyper-sexual/hyper-violent works from you two, so I need to ask: has there been any discussion about it further than the mention at Anime Expo?”

This isn’t a direct translation, but Wakabayashi says Imaishi likes very orthodox series. He likes working on series like Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill. He likes throwing in a sucker punch like Panty and Stocking and Luluco and taking turns between the two. Wakabayashi says that he would think that Promare is very orthodox. Promare’s genre is super-lit-mega-action-rescue-human drama!

I’m not going to translate what Wakabayashi just said. I’m sorry! I don’t think it’s possible. It’s too difficult. There’s a lot of play on words that I don’t think is possible to translate. If you can translate it, kudos to you. I’m not going to try, though!

I’ll translate what Wakabayashi said now, however. Promare is made for an all-ages audience. They’re not really goofing around this time. Everyone can enjoy the movie.

Hiromi was curious. Sakurai said earlier that he’s interested in animating his own worldview and making his own directed scenes and such. Hiromi was curious if Sakurai wanted to do concept art as well because that’s kind of exporting your own image into a visual illustration. I guess Sakurai is potentially interested in doing concept arts in the future.

Sakurai doesn’t really draw backgrounds or board-like illustrations in his free time, but he is currently studying how to at the moment. Sakurai explained that he’s not used to drawing and talking at the same time. I can’t even draw with my full attention, so I don’t think anyone can blame him for struggling to talk and draw at the same time.

I guess Sakurai’s self-pitch for his illustration of Satsuki today is that he gave a lot of effort to the shoulder parts, so once he’s finished drawing, check out the shoulders! It would be much appreciated.

“Tattun, are you an animator, too?” I wish! I wish I could draw. I wish I could draw all the time so that I could draw lewd pictures, but that is not the case.

This is a question from RYUUy that asks, “What are your favorite drawing exercises that helped you the most getting better?”

Sakurai says to watch a lot of other anime. Watch a lot of other creators’ illustrations and try to figure out what you appreciate and like drawing the most. When you figure out what you like and appreciate to draw the most, then that helps your own process with getting better at drawing.

Apparently, it’s Shiny Chariot’s birthday today. She’s one year older. I’m not sure she appreciates that!

Hiromi was curious. He just found out today that Little Witch Academia is that kind of series where you choose all the characters’ profiles. That’s not the case for Nakashima’s work like Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill. That’s because Nakashima doesn’t want people to have a biased opinion of the character because their birthday is on a certain date. He wants the viewers to view his characters in the purest form.

I’m getting a lot of comments regarding the dice for the birthdays. I think I used a Dungeons and Dragons-type template to come up with the birthdays for the Little Witch Academia characters. Some of the birthdays were changed intentionally by the producer, obviously, but some birthday dates are completely random.

This is a question from Familiar Stranger_: “If you could remake any non-Japanese cartoon however you wanted, which cartoon would you do?” Hiromi says that it’s not a cartoon, but he would like to work with Star Wars.

Sakurai explains that he’s not too familiar with western cartoons. He doesn’t have any franchise that he would like to reboot under his name, but he would like to see Powerpuff Girls with Yoshinari’s touch. I agree that this would be nice!

We’re planning to stream for another 90 minutes. That’s how long we have the room for. However, if there are no other people booking the room after that, we might be able to extend if Sakurai doesn’t finish in an hour and a half. So, we maybe have an hour and a half to go!

This is another question from Patreon. It’s from Kikoman589. The original question was from Thorn14. The question is, “Are there seasons (winter/spring/summer/fall) that are easier or harder on anime studios?”

Wakabayashi says that Trigger doesn’t really have a laid-back season. Obviously, this would depend on the studio as well, though. As a studio, they have the most free time available when they finish a series. There’s an interval time between two projects.

Wakabayashi personally wants a project that doesn’t go over New Year’s Eve. He wants days off. The end of the year is one of the very few times that Japanese people get legitimate times off from work. They just want to take a break when allowed to.

We recently announced that we’re selling a Studio Trigger custom suitcase. There’s a question if we’d sell the suitcase to overseas audiences. I believe the suitcase we’re selling is sold through Good Smile Company? Obviously, the shipment is going to be nasty, but I don’t see why not. We’ll look into it! We don’t have whoever’s in charge of that with us right now. Since we’re not using any IP, I don’t think there’s a problem with selling the suitcase overseas, but the price of the shipment would be high.

I think the question was, “Will Trigger ever do Isekai—is that the term in English?—genre?”

Wakabayashi’s answer is that Trigger has so many other things that they want to do that they don’t have any plans to do that kind of series in the near future. If they do an Isekai, they’ll probably do their own original Isekai series, though, not an adaptation.

There was a question in Japanese. “How was the opening and ending song determined in this particular series?”

Wakabayashi says that if the creative staffs for a particular series want to throw in their own opinion or two cents for what opening or ending will be used for a particular series, then they might make a request to the production committee, which usually has a production label company within it, who would be the sponsors for a particular series. The creative team might make a request to the label company, saying that they want this type of music or soundtrack, and the label might try their best to accommodate the request to the best of their abilities.

In the case that the creative team doesn’t really have any preference, the music production label company usually will make the decision themselves. For Studio Trigger, it depends on which production group is involved as well.

Imaishi or Hiromi Wakabayashi’s creative team does usually make specific requests to label companies. What Wakabayashi generally sees from the director is that the director is usually more interested in choosing who is in charge of the soundtrack for the series than the opening/ending themes.

Sorry! I’m taking a one-minute absence from the keyboard. My throat is drying up, and I need to buy some kind of drink.

Sorry, I’m back. I believe they’re talking about the program Sakurai is using right now. He’s using Sai. I’m not sure if that program is well-known among the western community, but Sai is a pretty popular program in Japan. People generally use Sai or Clip Studio in Japan. Sakurai explained that in Sai, it’s easier to paint. He usually finishes all his process of illustration in one program.

Sakurai’s reason for using Sai over Clip Studio Paint is that Sai isn’t too demanding on the hardware. The user interface is pretty simple, too. Sakurai has also been using the program for a while.

This is our third stream. All of our animators so far have used a different program! It’s an interesting showcase. Yoshinari used Photoshop and Painter. I think Sato used MediBang Paint. Sakurai is using Sai. I think we’re only missing Clip Studio Paint now.

If you’re interested in getting into drawing digitally, you can check out our archive on YouTube and see how each individual program functions. You can choose which program works best for you.

We asked what creative artists Sakurai respects a lot. He said Minamino Aki. I guess this particular creator was in DARLING in the FRANXX as well, as an outfit designer.

Sakurai also likes mebae and Uki as well. Uki is obviously known for Cencoroll. Wakabayashi says that Cencoroll is one of those frontiers. It was a title that was early for its time. Uki kind of made Cencoroll by himself. There were other creators mentioned as well, like Shinkai, who is probably very well known by now but who is still working pretty much solo.

Sakurai didn’t really read manga prior to becoming an animator, but if he had to choose a title, it would be Danjon Meshi. I’m Googling for an English title. I guess it’s Dungeon Lunch.

When we asked Sakurai what games he likes, he said Breath of the Wild for Zelda. I asked Sakurai what other Zelda games he played. There was this one Gameboy title. I don’t know what it’s called in English… it’s The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. The game is being released on Switch soon. I guess Sakurai is playing Splatoon and Smash Brothers a lot as well. Sakurai’s favorite PC game is Cave Story.

There’s a question from maxie721: “Does Studio Trigger have any after-activities after work? Sports, Mario Party, etc.? Or only Nomikai???”

Sakurai says he occasionally goes drinking with his colleagues. Hiromi apparently goes straight home. Hiromi hangs out enough with his colleagues because his work hours are unfortunate for him.

I guess Sakurai doesn’t play games with his colleagues. His taste of games is different from the rest of the crew. He also likes playing the same game for hours. His colleagues like trying out different titles more. At Studio Trigger, Switch is popular. Everyone is playing Smash Brothers.

Maybe we’ll do a Kill la Kill stream once the game is released. I believe it’s available for PS4 and Steam at the moment.

There was a comment saying that we must be playing FGO. I guess Sakurai doesn’t play any mobile games or app games anymore. Hiromi plays a lot of Granblue. I hate app games with a passion and don’t play any of them.

Hiromi is saying that the selling point of the app games is that you can pick them up any time and enjoy them whenever you want. You don’t have to go through the hassle of turning them on and stuff. It’s an easier version of “plug it in and play.”

I won’t name it, but one of my favorite titles was ruined by app games, so I don’t like app games!

I guess Hiromi was saying that the more passionate gamer tends to hate app games. Sakurai says it’s an interface issue. You feel like you have to get the controller-in-hand feel better.

My favorite game ruined by apps wasn’t Diablo, by the way. I gave up on Diablo after Diablo III.

This is a question from Patreon, from Alex B, who says, “Tweeners are the most interesting job! So excited to have an inbetweener doing this! The real heroes in anime! How did you get into the job? What about it do you find interesting? Would you prefer to have a different role in the animation production process?”

We’ve covered a little of the question already, but I think it’s interesting to ask why Sakurai was initially interested in applying to Trigger.

Sakurai wanted to be an inbetween animator or become an animator because he wanted to get better at drawing. He initially started drawing in his high school days. He was trying to draw his favorite character from a social app game, and things got out of hand from there.

When you’re an inbetween animator or an animator in general, you’re not always drawing what you want to draw. There’s also a high level of skill required because you have to draw a lot of different angles, etc. Being an animator is the right place to be to get better at drawing.

We got confirmation that our room is extended for five more hours. I don’t think this stream will take that long, though. I don’t want to keep you guys deprived of sleep for that long, either. I think Sakurai will finish in maybe another 30 minutes or so. Sakurai is adding highlights and shadows now, so he’s prepping to finish up the job right now.

We’re explaining now that even younger animators these days are getting really good. The level of technique that younger animators have now is unmatched to what we saw when we were younger. When Yoshinari was younger, Hiromi doesn’t think animators were as good. It’s like the Olympics. 30-40 years ago, the demonstrations at the Olympics were still outstanding feats, but you can see how much humanity or mankind has improved since then.

There’s a comment being made right now saying that the animation budget was higher in the 80s. Hiromi claims that this is not true. Budget doesn’t really equal quality, I guess, if that’s the right term. There might have been a high-budget project here and there, but the general consensus is that the budget was the same in the 80s as it is now.

There’s a lot to put into consideration, though. There’s a lot more staff working on a project now compared to in the 80s. There’s a different amount of budget allocated at a different time. What determines the quality of the project more is the passion of the creators. Passion has a lot more to do with the quality than the budget, Hiromi says.

However, I would like to note that more budget will obviously help. With more budget, Studio Trigger can maintain a larger staff, which helps with quality. What ultimately affects how fun and entertaining a project is is how involved the staff is in the production.

axelsaurus asks, “Sorry to ask again, but can we hope for some Trigger ‘Parallel Works,’ like the TTGL ones? KLK spin-off shorts are in my wet dreams.”

If you’re looking for a spin-off of Kill la Kill, Hiromi believes that the game, Kill la Kill the Game: IF, will satisfy your thirst for a parallel work. It’s going to feature Satsuki as the main character. It’s a “what if” story examining if Satsuki was the main protagonist for the series. If you’re interested, Hiromi thinks it is well worth the money. The script is also done by Nakashima himself.

There was a question regarding how artists keep themselves motivated in drawing. Sakurai explains that keeping an old archive of all of your artwork and trying to compare it with your more recent work to see how much you’ve improved is a good way to see if you’re making any progress.

Also, Sakurai likes posting on the Internet and receiving feedback or praise. That’s always a plus.

There’s a question from syworks: “Is there any secret to keep your wrists from overstraining from working so long and so many hours?”

Sakurai says that he doesn’t really have any secrets for that. If you work too much in a single day, his hands do get sore. He has to take breaks in between and relieve the stress in the middle. He doesn’t really have any secrets.

We asked Sakurai if he has a Twitter or pixiv account he would like to share with the community. He says he doesn’t want to show it and is a little uneasy right now, but maybe one day, he’ll make it public.

Another question is, “How great is Studio Trigger’s snack/bar pantry? What delicious treats do staff have access to?”

I guess that Studio Trigger doesn’t really have a bar/pantry. They want one. People do receive snacks or gifts from fans that is available for anyone in the studio to take in the middle. As such, there’s not something specific that they always have.

Studio Trigger do want a kitchen or bar. In the studios that Trigger was able to tour overseas, they found that every studio had some kind of pantry, even if it was just a cereal buffet. Wakabayashi thought it was cool and wanted one in Trigger, too. Maybe when Trigger has more money.

Hiromi is saying that, knowing himself very well, even if there was a pantry, kitchen, or bar, he’d probably get bored of the menu or whatever is available pretty quickly. He’d probably only use it once or twice.

I disagree, though. I know Hiromi likes coffee. I would use the snack/pantry if we had one!

We probably can’t do a studio tour stream. It’s probably not possible. We’d have to tear down a lot of the studio to avoid anything being leaked!

Maybe we could put the GoPro on a Hot Wheel and have a quick, short tour, but it probably wouldn’t happen. There would be too much risk!

There’s a question from luluraoul in Japanese: “Are there any plans for future streams?” We usually communicate with our Patreon for our streams. The goal is to stream once a month. That’s a goal, but we don’t always do a good job on it. We have had three streams, and the Patreon has been active for longer than three months. We do a stream about once every 2.5 months. We will have a stream in the future, and we’ll continue to do so until our Patreon dries up.

We actually have our next participant chosen, an outside creator. She’s kind of not Trigger, but she works with us very frequently. She’s Mago, the character designer for Space Patrol Luluco and our mascot characters. She was supposed to stream this month, but there were schedule conflicts, so she’ll stream next month. Our fourth stream is very, very soon. We’ll make an announcement about that stream early next month.

I don’t know Mago’s Twitter account off the top off my head, but I think it’s magodesu. She’s pretty active on Twitter. She’ll probably come up easily if you search. Yes, it seems magodesu is her Twitter.

I guess Sakurai is using a very unique method of adding this lighting gradation.

There’s a question from EiGi696969 that asks, “Recently, the Studio Trigger documentaries have been focused more on the voice actors and less on the artists (Kill la Kill or LWA or Kiznaiver and FRANXX). Have you guys switched the documentary production team? Would you mind in the future if you can make sure there’s more into the art stuff in these documentaries?”

Hiromi is saying, just FYI, at least half of the documentary for FRANXX was focused on the artists. The focus on voice actors is… they want to focus on their creative process more, but it’s straining to the studio if there’s an entire camera crew filming all the time. It’s detrimental to the schedule. That’s maybe why there is less footage of the creative process portion. I guess it’s something that we want to focus on more, but we might not have been able to. It didn’t really come up to our minds until it was just mentioned now, Hiromi says.

Wakabayashi says that a lot of the staff don’t like being recorded or photographed. Also, the documentaries are more entertaining if the camera crews come in without respect of the creators. That kind of footage is more entertaining, but we can’t do that because our creators are delicate individuals. Personally, Hiromi wants more documentaries focused on the creative process, though.

Sakurai apparently finished his illustration. We’re asking him to zoom in a little bit right now.

That was it for the live drawing. For those who are interested in the Sai composition files for this illustration, if you’re part of our Patreon, you’ll have access to this and our previous illustrations as well. If you had a great time, feel free to support our studio and creators. We much appreciate it!

Thank you, everyone! There are about 1,200 of you at this weird, awkward time on a weekday. Our next stream is with Mago in early March. Thank you for joining our stream! We’ll be wrapping up our stream now.

#kill la kill #satsuki kiryuin #studio trigger #hiromi wakabayashi #tetsuya sakurai #tattun #apologies if there are any glaring mistakes; i was really tired and never transcribe that long by myself #i did go over anything i was really unsure about though #think i'll keep doing these because it's good practice for my job!#sorry i wasn't doing 'em before

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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#1yrago Not in our name: Why European creators must oppose the EU's proposal to limit linking and censor the internet

The European Copyright Directive vote is in three days and it will be a doozy: what was once a largely uncontroversial grab bag of fixes to copyright is now a political firestorm, thanks to the actions of Axel Voss, the German MEP who changed the Directive at the last minute, sneaking in two widely rejected proposals on the same day the GDPR came into effect, forming a perfect distraction (you can contact your MEP about these at Save Your Internet).

These two proposals are:

1. "Censorship Machines": Article 13, which forces online providers to create databases of text, images, videos, code, games, mods, etc that anyone can add anything to -- if a user tries to post something that may match a "copyrighted work," in the database, the system has to censor them

2. "Link Tax": Article 11, which will only allow internet users to post links to news sites if the service they're using has bought a "linking license" from the news-source they're linking to; under a current proposal, links that contain more than two consecutive words from an article's headline will be illegal without a license.

We're all busy and we all rely on trusted experts to give us guidance on what side of an issue to take, and creators often take their cues from professional societies and from the entertainment industry, but in this case, both have proven to be unreliable.

In a recent tweetstorm, Niall from the UK's Society of Authors sets out his group's case for backing these proposals. As a UK author, I was alarmed to see an organisation that nominally represents me taking such misguided positions and I tried to rebut them, albeit within Twitter's limitations.

Here's a less fragmented version.

Niall writes that Article 11 ("link taxes") will not stop you from linking to the news. That's just wrong. If you don't host your own blog on your own server, you'll going to posting your links from one of the platforms, either a multinational, US-based company like Facebook, or a smaller EU competitor. Under Article 11, you can't link to a news-site without a license.

Article 11 doesn't actually define what a "link" or a "news site" is (this is a pretty serious oversight). But Article 11 is an EU-wide version of local laws that were already attempted in Spain and Germany, and under those laws, links that included the headline in "anchor text" (that's the underlined, blue text that goes with a hyperlink) were banned. In the current amendments, Axel Voss has proposed that using more than two consecutive words from a headline would not be allowed without a license.

Niall says that memes and other forms of parody will not be blocked by Article 13's filters, because they are exempted from European copyright. That's doubly wrong.

First, there are no EU-wide copyright exemptions. Under the 2001 Copyright Directive, European countries get to choose zero or more exemptions from a list of permissible ones.

Second, even in countries where parody is legal, Article 13's copyright filters won't be able to detect it. No one has ever written a software tool that can tell parody from mere reproduction, and such a thing is so far away from our current AI tools as to be science fiction (as both a science fiction writer and a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at the UK's Open University, I feel confident in saying this).

Niall says that Wikipedia won't be affected by Article 13 and Article 11. This is so wrong, I published a long article about it. tl;dr: Wikipedia's articles rely on being able to link to analyses of the news, which Article 11 will limit; Wikipedia's projects like Wikimedia Commons are not exempted from Article 13; and commercial Wikipedia offshoots lose what little carveouts are present in Article 13.

Niall says Article 13 will not hurt small businesses, only make them pay their share. This is wrong. Article 13's copyright filters will cost hundreds of millions to build (existing versions of these filters, like Youtube's Content ID, cost $60,000,000 and only filter a tiny slice of the media Article 13 requires), which will simply destroy small competitors to the US-based multinationals.

What's more, these filters are notorious for underblocking (missing copyrighted works -- a frequent complaint made by the big entertainment companies...when they're not demanding more of these filters) and overblocking (blocking copyrighted works that have been uploaded by their own creators because they are similar to something claimed by a giant corporation).

Niall says Article 13 is good for creators' rights. This is wrong. Creators benefit when there is a competitive market for our works. When a few companies monopolise the channels of publication, payment, distribution and promotion, creators can't shop around for better deals, because those few companies will all converge on the same rotten policies that benefit them at our expense.

We've seen this already: once Youtube became the dominant force in online video, they launched a streaming music service and negotiated licenses from all the major labels. Then Youtube told the independent labels and indie musicians that they would have to agree to the terms set by the majors -- or be shut out of Youtube forever. In a market dominated by Youtube, they were forced to take the terms. Without competition, Youtube became just another kind of major label, with the same rotten deals for creators.

Niall says that Article 13 will stop abuses of copyright like when the fast-fashion brand Zara ripped off designers for its clothing. This is wrong (and a bit silly, really). What Zara did was illegal already, and since Zara's clothes are physical objects in shops (and not images on the web), web filters will have no effect on them.

Niall says that Article 13 isn't censorship. This is wrong. Copyright filters always overblock, catching dolphins in their tuna-nets. It's easy to demonstrate that these filters are grossly overblocking. When the government orders private actors to take measures that stop you from posting lawful communications, that's censorship.

Niall says that multinational companies will get a "huge victory" if Article 13 is stopped. That's wrong. While it's true that the Big Tech companies would prefer not to have any rules, they could very happily live with these rules, because they would effectively end any competition from new entrants into the field. Spending a few hundred million to comply with the Copyright Directive is a cheap alternative to having to buy out or crush any new companies that pose a threat.

I sympathise with Niall. As someone's who's volunteered as a regional director for other creators' rights groups, I understand that they're well-intentioned and trying to stand up for their members' interests.

But the Society of Authors and its allies have it wrong here. Articles 11 and 13 are catastrophes for both free expression and artists' livelihoods. They're a bargain in which Europe's big entertainment companies propose to sell Big Tech an Eternal Internet Domination license for a few hundred mil, cementing both Big Content and Big Tech's strangleholds on our ability to earn a living and reach an audience.

Don't take my word for it. David Kaye, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, has condemned the proposals in the strongest possible terms.

And Wyclef Jean from the Fugees agrees, seeing Article 13 as a measure that will get between him and his audience by limiting his fans' ability to promote his work and pay his bills.

Meanwhile, Pascal Nègre (who recently stepped down after 20 years as President of Universal Music France) agrees, saying that the deal is "a net negative for artists, for the industry and, ultimately, for the public good."

Link taxes are a bad idea. In an era of fake news, anything that limits the ability of internet users to link to reliable news sources deals a terrible blow to our already weakened public discourse.

Copyright filters are an even worse idea. Not only will these both overblock and underblock, they'll also be ripe for abuse. Because the filters' proponents have rejected any penalties for fraudulently claiming copyright in works in order to censor them, anyone will be able to censor anything. You could claim all of Shakespeare's works on WordPress's filters, and no one would be able to quote Shakespeare until the human staff at the company had hand-deleted those entries -- and you could use bots to re-add those entries more quickly than they could be taken down.

More seriously, corrupt politicians and other public figures have already made a practice of using spurious copyright claims in order to censor unflattering news. Automating the process is a gift to any politician who wants to suppress video of an embarrassing campaign-event remark and any corrupt employer who wants to suppress video of an unsafe and abusive workplace incident.

Creators in the 21st Century struggle to earn a living -- just as we have in all the centuries since the invention of the printing press -- and we will forever be busy making things, and reliant on our professional organisations for guidance on which political currents run in our favour.

But there is a simple rule of thumb we can always follow that will keep us from being led astray: creators should always, always be on the side of free expression and always, always be opposed to censorship. We should always oppose anything that makes it easier to silence legitimate speech, anything that narrows who can control our public discourse by concentrating power into a few hands.

Creators, you have three days to talk to your lawmakers. Save Your Internet is the place to go to call, write and tweet them. This travesty is being undertaken in our name and we have a duty to stop it.

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/10/not-in-our-name.html

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sisterofiris · 7 years ago

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The Layperson’s Guide to Online Research

The Internet is full of badly researched and sometimes straight-up wrong information. Who would’ve guessed? From reinterpretations of ancient sources being taken at face value by history enthusiasts (like that infamous pre-patriarchal Persephone post) to well-intentioned but ahistorical writing spreading misinformation among modern polytheists (like the myth of Hestia abdicating in favour of Dionysos), it’s often hard to know what is trustworthy information and what is not. Unfortunately, this makes things difficult when you, a non-academic, want to research a topic.

My biggest recommendation will always be to turn to a local university library (often there are even lectures and conferences you can attend without being a student) or to subscribe to a digital library like JStor. On the other hand, I completely understand that for various reasons, not everyone can access these resources. This is why I’m here to help.

In this post, I will outline the steps you should take to check whether an online source is trustworthy and up-to-date. I will mainly focus on researching ancient history, but bear in mind that you can use the same (or similar) steps to research many different topics.

The vetting process below may seem like a lot to take in, but it all boils down to five questions:

where does this come from?

who is the author?

what are their sources?

when did they write this?

who else wrote about this?

Step One: Where does this come from?

The first thing you need to do is check the website where the information comes from. Trustworthy signs to look for are a .edu or .org web address, a university logo, or the description of the website as a professional resource. Very, very often, websites with flashy or sparkly designs are made by amateurs and are not trustworthy. Any web page that doesn’t tell you who wrote it or why is not trustworthy.

When you’re looking at books and articles uploaded online (such as Google Books), make sure they were published professionally by a publishing house or peer-reviewed journal. Mainstream news articles range from accurate (BBC) to completely unreliable (Daily Mail), but since even the best of them can be sensationalistic, I recommend digging further.

Another very important thing to look out for is ideology. Is the website devoted to a certain issue, like proving the Ancient Greeks were black, the Sumerians were contacted by aliens, or the Hittites worshipped a pre-patriarchal Mother Goddess? Congratulations, this information is biased. Some of it may be correct, but you should check steps two to five very carefully before believing it.

Generally, you should look for websites that are focused on your topic, not websites that use your topic to prove a point.

Here are two examples to illustrate the difference:

Not trustworthy: this page about Persephone as an archetype. The website focuses on the Enneagram, not on Greek mythology, and the web design is amateurish. Even though the page mentions mythology, its purpose is to establish Persephone’s personality type, not to discuss her role as a deity in Ancient Greece.

Trustworthy: this page about Ancient Egyptian women and religion. The website looks far more professional, and by clicking on the logo in the top left, you will get to the organisation’s page, The Stoa Consortium. On the right, there is an “About” section which explains that the website was set up by a Professor of Classics and is funded by various universities, as well as by the US Department of Education.

However, determining whether or not a website is any good is not always so easy. Theoi.com, for example, is an independent resource with no academic support, but it’s very well put together and reliable. Meanwhile, Academia.edu is a platform for scholars, but less reputable people can easily slip through and post their “translations” of haiku in Linear A. Experts can have informal blogs, and non-experts can write professional-looking news articles. It’s hard to know which ones of them to trust.

This is where Step Two comes in handy.

Step Two: Who is the author?

A trustworthy source will always identify its author. Some pages (like my own blog’s “About” section) will only tell you the person’s credentials, often for privacy reasons. This is a good start, but you should try to find out more - particularly whether this person actually is what they claim to be. (In my case, it’s fairly easy to tell, since I’ve posted pictures from university projects (x, x) and my identity can be deduced from various links and tidbits I’ve shared - but please be skeptical about what I say as well! Just because I’m an ancient civilisations student doesn’t mean I’m always right!)

Once you know who the author is, you need to check whether they are not only educated, but educated in the subject. This means a university degree (preferably a masters, and even more preferably a PhD) or other proof of expertise in the subject (like an experienced weaver sharing their perspective on ancient tapestries). Whatever the person’s qualifications, they need to be serious (i.e. not “one time in college I took a class on Greek mythology”) and directly related to the subject.

Here are some examples:

Not trustworthy: that pre-patriarchal Persephone post. Its author is a layperson who fell into the same trap I’m trying to prevent: they read a few web pages and decided they were the truth. Luckily, they seem to have somewhat learnt from their mistake.

Usually trustworthy, but not in this case: Gerda Lerner writing about the Hittites. While Gerda Lerner was very learned in women’s studies, she was not a Hittitologist - nor particularly familiar with ancient civilisations in general - and she did not have the nuanced understanding necessary to discuss women in the context of Hittite society.

Trustworthy and non-academic: Janet Stephens’ hairstyle reconstructions. Janet Stephens is not an archeologist, but she is a very experienced hairdresser. This makes her qualified to reconstruct and reproduce ancient hairstyles. (Note that this does NOT make her qualified to discuss, say, the religious implications of hair-binding in Ancient Greece. It makes her qualified to do what she does: style hair.)

Trustworthy and academic: Paul Schubert’s blog (in French) about Ancient Greece in the modern world. His “About” page has a link to his university page, which contains his biography and credentials. He writes about his expert subject, and stays well within its boundaries.

Step Three: What are their sources?

Next, you need to determine where they get their information from. For ancient history, the number one, most important source is ancient texts. Anything that cites ancient texts with their reference (Homer, Iliad, XΧII 389-390) is automatically more trustworthy than anything that doesn’t. If you want to research in-depth, I would recommend looking up these references to get an idea of what they say (Theoi.com and Perseus both have free text databases).

References to modern texts (especially books and articles) are good, but the author shouldn’t only cite these. This turns research into a game of broken telephone - so-and-so told me that so-and-so said that Plato wrote... What’s more, you need to make sure these sources are also trustworthy. Just because a page provide links doesn’t mean they’re relevant or well-researched - if so, then rickrolling would be the peak of academia.

Lastly, I shouldn’t need to say this, but information without sources is not information. That’s like me telling you I’m secretly the princess of Liechtenstein. It might be true, but you can’t know for sure without proof.

Again, some examples:

Not trustworthy: this quote by Plato and this one supposedly from a cuneiform tablet. Neither has a clear reference, nor context: the first is just attributed to Plato’s Symposium, and the second’s author varies from Naram-Sin to a Chaldean king to Cicero. (What’s more, both have strongly ahistorical content. Plato would never have written about “Greek mythology”, and the Mesopotamians had no concept of a “book”.)

Could be trustworthy, but you should check: Medievalpoc’s sources on Ancient Egyptian transatlantic voyages. Yes, a variety of links are provided, but are they any good? A few clicks will show that they lead to the Daily Mail, a paper written by two ideologically-motivated Mormons, and a bunch of articles about ancient people building boats (which nobody doubts, but which doesn’t prove they could sail across the Atlantic).

Trustworthy: Hittite Prayers to the Sun-God by Daniel Schwemer. This is a fully cited article with ancient sources.

Step Four: When did they write this?

The next important step is to find out when this information was written. This is because research is constantly evolving, and older interpretations may no longer be considered valid. This obviously includes views with underlying racism, sexism and homophobia, but it also applies to less obvious things, like the fact that the Sumerian word zag is now read za₃.

Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, most information available online for free is a bit outdated. You should still aim for more recent publications if you can, and definitely avoid anything that’s fifty years old or more. The only exception is for translations of ancient texts, which stay pretty much the same apart from a few spots where their translators’ biases come through - and the exception to the exception is texts in Mesopotamian languages, in which case you should really, really try to find a translation that’s younger than fifty years.

Academic podcasts, blogs and newsletters come in very handy here, because they offer insights on modern research while often being written in accessible language.

Yet more examples:

Not trustworthy: Martin Nilsson’s The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (1932). Though Martin Nilsson was a great scholar, modern research has evolved since this book was published (in 1932 in Germany - a context you can definitely sense while reading). What’s more, it was written before Mycenaean Greek was even deciphered.

Trustworthy: Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2015). Not only is the writing easily accessible to non-experts, this book is up-to-date and written by someone at the forefront of research in Late Bronze Age societies.

Step Five: Who else wrote about this?

This last step is basically fact-checking. Your author may have the best of credentials, they may have written their article on the most respectable of websites, but their theory could still be rejected by the majority of their peers. Look up the book or article’s title followed by “review”, which will hopefully generate other experts’ opinions on the matter - or just keep browsing different websites.

This step is not the most important and can often be skipped - you don’t need to fact-check every word you read. But if you want to research something in-depth, if a claim seems iffy, or if any of the above steps gave mixed results, you should always look for outside input. And no, you won’t always get definite answers on whether something is true. Such is our knowledge about history. But it will give you a more rounded understanding of the topic, and that’s always valuable.

A final note

If you’re not sure whether something is trustworthy, please don’t hesitate to ask! Historians and history students are your friends, and we want you to have accurate information. There’s a lot of us on Tumblr and elsewhere who are happy to help out with that. We can’t be there for everyone 24/7, but we’ll gladly point you in the direction you need!

#research #history #ancient history #ancient greece #mesopotamia #studies #infodump #debunk

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years ago

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Meet The Genetic Sleuths Solving Decades-Old Trans Murders

On the blustery morning of November 26, 1983, a beachgoer spotted a still-warm body in Half Moon Bay, California. The victim, who looked about 20 years old, had been stabbed more than 20 times and left in the sands near Pillar Point Bluff. Their wrists were slashed, their face bruised and swollen. (Out of respect for the victim’s unknown gender identity, Motherboard is using they/them as a pronoun.)

At their time of death, the person was presenting as a stylish, slender woman. They were 5-foot-10 inches tall, wearing an auburn pixie cut and casual clothes: yellow capri pants and a turtleneck over a foam-form bra, fishnet hose, and two pairs of feminine underwear. A Madonna-style white metal crucifix hung around their neck.

When taken to a medical examiner, the victim's body was misidentified as male, and nobody ever came to claim it. In an effort to identify the individual, cops dubbed them “John Doe #83-26” and released a crime sketch depicting a man. It failed to convey their gender identity or expression, including that they were likely wearing makeup and going by a woman’s name.

The case of Pillar Point Doe soon went cold and their identity remained a mystery for 35 years—until two genealogy sleuths recently cracked the case. The trans couple, who specialize in cold cases involving trans and gender non-conforming people, found the forgotten victim’s birth name through an online DNA database, reviving the hunt for their killer.

“I would work until I passed out”

Lee and Anthony Redgrave traced Pillar Point Doe’s relatives from Wales to Utah using the family history site GEDmatch, known for its role in finding the notorious Golden State Killer. The search was close to home for the Redgraves, who toiled obsessively for months without pay.

“I would work until I passed out. I’d cry myself to sleep at night, and have dreams where I was woken up thinking that [the victim] was telling me their name,” said Anthony, who along with Lee, ran a small team for the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit that identifies deceased people through forensic genealogy.

Lee added: “There are a lot of factors—and homicide detectives have absolutely no idea how to do this.”

The Redgraves were inspired by personal tragedy to help solve the case. In January 2018, a transgender friend of theirs, Christa Steele-Knudslien—a beauty pageant organizer and trans activist—was beaten and stabbed to death. The attack, which came after another friend’s suicide, sent Lee spiraling into a depression.

“It really tore my brain up,” said Lee, 41, a non-binary night owl with arms full of tattoos. “I got depressed, and when that happens I usually throw myself into a project.”

Anthony and Lee Redgrave

When a true crime-loving friend recommended they volunteer for the DNA Doe Project, it seemed like a good distraction.“Partially, I’m sure, it was her being like, ‘You have to stop being in a funk,’” Lee said. “We both felt really helpless about Christa—and this was something we actually could help with.”

They had plenty of experience with genetic genealogy, but they knew the limits of DNA and family tree matches for transgender victims. Database searches often lead to “dead names”—birth names victims no longer use, and aren’t known by in their communities. And most law enforcement systems don’t allow searches across sex marker categories, blinding them to some gender non-conforming folks.

A “trans-informed” perspective could shed some light, considering trans people are more likely to be the target of violent, unresolved crime. “Being a trans person, I know I’ve been incredibly fortunate not to have had a bunch of horrible things happen to me,” said Anthony, 38, a soft-spoken Civil War buff with a long ginger beard. “That was a driving force.”

When the Redgraves first heard about the Pillar Point Doe case in July 2018, they knew almost immediately it was ripe for a genetic gumshoeing.

An Unlikely Partnership

The victim, who was carrying no identification, had been found only two hours after they were stabbed in the neck and chest, allowing cops to collect a piece of blood-soaked blotter paper known as a “blood card.” This meant Pillar Point Doe’s DNA didn’t have to be extracted from bone, a longer and more expensive process. And yet it would likely show a complete picture of the victim’s entire genetic makeup, one that could be extracted in a lab and uploaded to GEDmatch, they said.

But the couple still had to convince the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to hand over the blood sample—and to team up with them on the investigation.

The Redgraves had a hunch cops would be willing. Their request came on the heels of the Golden State Killer’s arrest a few counties away, and in a section of northern California that tends to be queer-friendly.

“The thought was it was a good case because it was the Bay Area. We expected there would be more friendly law enforcement and a LBGTQ liaison in the Bay Area,” said Anthony. “We had to give an elevator pitch to the department, like, ‘This is why we want this specific case, and this is how it will benefit you.’”

The cops, it turned out, were game. The Redgraves signed non-disclosure agreements and— in a rare move—police released Pillar Point Doe’s private case files, including the blood card along with crime scene and coroner photos.

The Redgraves agreed to do the genetic sleuthing, then pass off next of kin matches to police, who would talk to relatives, collect DNA samples and handle the investigation from there.

It was an unlikely partnership. Many trans people refuse to work with cops since law enforcement has routinely targeted the community, trans activists and experts said. According to a 2015 survey, at least 57 percent of trans respondents said they would be afraid or uncomfortable going to police for help.

“It comes from being abused or not taken seriously by officers who historically have been disrespectful or dismissive of trans people,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, a policy expert for the National Center for Transgender Equality. “There’s a real stigma. Sometimes just being visibly trans in public is enough to get stopped or harassed by police on suspicion of being a sex worker—whether or not you actually are.”

Cases with trans victims have long been de-prioritized by cops, who assume victims are sex workers, living a “high risk” lifestyle or are “disowned” by their families, Heng-Lehtinen said.

But a lack of trans awareness is bad for police, too. Detectives who are ignorant about the community are more likely to use a transgender person’s dead name because it was printed on a government-issued ID, or to seek outdated information from estranged family members who knew them pre-transition, he said. It keeps those investigators from understanding the whole picture.

“If you’re an officer who’s asking around for Mark Smith and everybody in the neighborhood knows her as Marcia, that’s not helping anybody,” Heng-Lehtinen said.

Lee chalks it up to lack of education and training. “If you look at popular media over the past 20 years, the characters that are dressing opposite of what they’re ‘supposed to be’ are usually trying to trick somebody or get away with something—the end of ‘Ace Ventura’ is a classic example, or ‘The Crying Game,’” Lee said. “You get a lot of that mentality still in law enforcement, just because they haven’t had an alternate education.”

Identifying Doe

The Redgraves quickly got to work on creating a more gender-accurate forensic sketch of Pillar Point Doe. In the 80s and 90s, at least three drawings had been made of them, all wildly different.

One showed a “partially-Asian goth” guy with boxy slicked-back black hair, Lee said. Another depicted a shaggy-haired Val Kilmer look-alike with almond eyes. All were of men, and none were quite right.

“It seemed like [police artists] were trying to make this person look male,” Lee said. “Considering they had natural hair, not a wig, and were wearing pants with multiple layers of hose and underwear, it’s likely that they were tucking to have a more female appearance,” Lee said, citing details about the victim's outfit.

“They were probably attempting to pass as female as opposed to someone who was [a] drag performer or engaging in prostitution while cross-dressing.”

Based on those clues, the male sketch on fliers would have likely been lost on Pillar Point Doe’s queer “chosen family”—or anyone who saw them the night of the murder, the couple said. So using crime scene and coroner photos, the Redgraves and an artist came up with a new sketch that depicts the victim with a more feminine look, a yellow outfit and natural-style makeup.

In March 2019, Pillar Point’s blood card came back from the lab. It showed Pillar Point Doe’s entire genome sequence on a huge hard drive.

From their cozy home office in central Massachusetts, the Redgraves and a small team plugged those chunks of genetic code into GEDmatch, which compares DNA from testing sites like 23andMe and ancestry.com to find possible relatives with similar genetic makeups. Unlike law enforcement’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the site can pinpoint distant ancestors, not just immediate family members.

It works like this: Say you find a painting in a park with no signature and you want to learn the name of the artist. If you could somehow scan the piece’s complex colors and brush strokes into a massive database of art, you might be able to match it to the person who made it. Other paintings by the artist with similar patterns—a distant cousin, in this analogy—may also pop up.

In general, DNA evidence is only as accurate as the people who collect and analyze it. Technicians have been known to misinterpret samples, and police have submitted tainted or mixed genetic material. But Pillar Point’s blood card appeared to be a solid sample, the couple said.

The search led the Redgraves to a small town in Wales, where Pillar Point Doe’s distant relatives once worked at a glove factory. “We kept finding people who descended from this really specific family, but then finding the right branch turned out to be really hard,” Lee said.

Scores of unwed mothers hailed from the town for unknown reasons, leading to frustrating genealogy dead-ends. “It happened over and over again in this one little town,” Lee said.

The couple built a massive family tree and cross-referenced names with public records. They traced that to a group of relatives to a Utah pioneer community with roots in the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “When you work on someone’s genealogy, you get to know them in a really intimate way through their ancestors,” Lee said. “You know you’re getting close when they start looking like who you’re looking for.”

The couple soon discovered Pillar Point’s cousins belonged to an intermarried clan of families. Some men had multiple wives and children, amounting to a genealogy headache. “It’s a problem that’s common in isolated religious communities. The fancy word is endogamy,” Lee said. “You end up with a whole lot of half-relations and unreliable predictions.”

Setbacks

Then a fiasco unfolded. The arrest of the Golden State Killer in 2018 had sparked privacy fears from critics who claimed GEDMatch could be used for nefarious reasons. When a criminal case centering on a minor stirred up more controversy on the site the next year, the owners abruptly purged the “law enforcement matching” section of it in May 2019, according to the Redgraves.

With no warning, it left the couple with only about 20 percent of the genetic clues they’d had before. “Think of it as the number of letters turned around on your ‘Wheel of Fortune’ puzzle. [Afterwards] there were 80 percent less letters, and we still had to guess the phrase,” Lee said.

The setback forced them to get creative. They sought uploads from people who descended from early settlers in Utah, along with the Mormon church, and mapped out “clusters” of potential relatives.

Anthony spent hours tinkering with DNA Painter, a tool that helps genealogists make sense of matches. Eventually, it led to Pillar Point’s possible great grandfather.

During an all-nighter in October 2019, they had a breakthrough. When they got to one of the possible great grandfather’s relatives, they checked records for proof of the person’s life after 1983, and found none. Lee pulled out Pillar Point’s crime scene photo and checked it against a high school yearbook photo of the grandchild.

It all added up: Here was the long-forgotten face of Pillar Point Doe.

They both burst into tears. “There were periods of crying and shaking for a few days afterwards. It was really intense,” Lee said.

The team then sent Pillar Point’s birth name to cops, who collected DNA from a relative to confirm the match, reinvigorating the investigation.

San Mateo County police have since declined to release Pillar Point Doe’s birth name—or to allow the couple to—saying it could hurt their hunt for the killer. “This homicide is actively being investigated. Unfortunately, disclosing information about the details may hinder our investigation,” Sergeant William Young, from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, told Motherboard.

Cold Case, Close To Home

Now, the Redgraves want more answers. “Ideally, police will find the perpetrator,” Lee said. “[Cops] definitely want to tell us something but they can’t. It makes us feel hopeful.”

Not long ago, Lee got a tattoo of poppies in Pillar Point Doe’s honor. It was inspired by the California flower bloom that could be seen from space in March 2019, the week the couple began searching for the victim's identity. “I am absolutely forever changed from working on this case,” Lee said.

Ultimately, the Redgraves hope Pillar Point Doe will be remembered for who they were—a complex and loved person, not a forgotten John Doe. “Hopefully someone who loved them will carry on their memory,” Lee said.

The couple now runs the Trans Doe Task Force, a research group that helps police and medical examiners with transgender and gender-expansive cold cases. Recently, they launched a database that allows for DNA comparisons across sex marker categories. They also founded their own firm, Redgrave Research Forensic Services, and Anthony has helped train law enforcement departments on five continents.

These days, the couple has a small framed high school photo of Pillar Point Doe in their home, near portraits of other people from cases close to their hearts.

“Pillar Point has become part of our family. I feel like we are basically like their foster parents,” Anthony said. “I’m going to feel that way until I know exactly how this case ends.”

Meet The Genetic Sleuths Solving Decades-Old Trans Murders syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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xtruss · 4 years ago

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A US researcher who worked with a Wuhan virology lab gives 4 reasons why a coronavirus leak would be extremely unlikely

— Aylin Woodward | MAY 2, 2020 | Business Insider

Public-health researchers work in their laboratory at an airport in Qingdao, Shandong province, August 11, 2014.

A fringe theory suggests the coronavirus could have leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, but there’s no evidence of this.

One US researcher who has worked with scientists at that Wuhan lab explained to Business Insider why an accidental lab leak is extremely unlikely.

The high-security lab says it has no record of the novel coronavirus’ genome, and follows strict safety measures.

It’s far more likely that the virus spilled over naturally from bats, jumping to humans via an intermediary animal host.

A fringe theory suggests that the new coronavirus leaked by accident from a lab in Wuhan.

Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) study infectious diseases, including coronaviruses, and did before the pandemic started. So as questions about how the pandemic started continue to go unanswered, the lab has drawn scrutiny.

Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, asked intelligence agencies in January to look into the idea of a Wuhan lab leak, The New York Times reported. But CIA officers didn’t find any evidence.

There’s a reason for that, according to Jonna Mazet, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis, who has worked with and trained WIV researchers in the past.

“I know that we worked together to develop very stringent safety protocol, and it’s highly unlikely this was a lab accident,” she told Business Insider. Here are four reasons why.

Reason 1: The lab’s samples don’t match the new coronavirus

The P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China’s Hubei province, April 17, 2020.

The WIV houses China’s only Biosafety-level-4 laboratory. Scientists study the most dangerous and infectious microbes known to humankind in these types of facilities. Some of the institute’s researchers, including virologist Shi Zhengli, have collected, sampled, and studied coronaviruses that circulate Chinese bats. In 2013, Shi and her collaborators pinpointed the bat population most likely responsible for spreading SARS, in the Shitou Cave near Kunming.

After her team sequenced the COVID-19 virus, Shi told Scientific American that she quickly checked her laboratory’s record from the past few years to check for accidents, especially during disposal. Then she cross-referenced the new coronavirus’ genome with the genetic information of other bat coronaviruses her team had collected. They didn’t match.

“That really took a load off my mind,” Shi said told Scientific American, adding, “I had not slept a wink for days.”

Mazet has met and worked with Shi through PREDICT, a pandemic early-warning program started by the US Agency for International Development. The program has trained staff and funded labs in 30 countries, including the WIV, but President Donald Trump shut down PREDICT last fall.

“I’ve spoken to her recently,” Mazet said of Shi. “She is absolutely positive that she had never identified this virus prior to the outbreak happening.”

Mazet added that Shi set up a secure, shared database into which PREDICT members could upload their work for public release.

Reason 2: The lab implements rigorous safety protocols

In 2018, US officials raised concerns about safety issues at WIV, according to diplomatic cables obtained by The Washington Post. But Mazet said Shi’s work in the lab and in the field was above reproach.

“In the field, they wear extreme personal protective equipment, including multiple layers of gloves, eye protection, full body suits, and masks,” she said. (She noted, however, that she has not personally visited the WIV and couldn’t speak to all the research done there.) Samples collected from bats, Mazet added, get immediately split between some vials that contain chemicals that deactivate the virus, and other containers that leave the virus alive.

A laboratory technician working on samples from people to be tested for the new coronavirus at ‘Fire Eye’ laboratory in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province.

All samples are then dunked into liquid nitrogen on the spot, which freezes them, then the vials are disinfected and transported to the lab. There, scientists wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) unload them into a freezer set to minus 80 degrees Celsius.

When the samples are studied later, researchers only use the deactivated, non-infectious ones, Mazet said, adding that the vials with viable virus are locked down in a special area.

Reason 3: The coronavirus is the latest in a long line of zoonotic disease outbreaks

Rather than a leak, the coronavirus is more likely the latest disease to have jumped from an animal host to humans, experts say.

This type of cross-species hop, called a spillover event, also led to outbreaks of Ebola and SARS. Both of those viruses originated in bats, and genetic research has all but confirmed the same for the new coronavirus – a study published in February found that it shares 96% of its genetic code with coronaviruses circulating in Chinese bat populations.

Three out of every four emerging infectious diseases come to us from other species; these pathogens are known as zoonotic diseases. The coronavirus is the seventh zoonotic virus to have spilled over into people in the last century.

A greater horseshoe bat, a relative of the Rhinolophis sinicus bat species from China that was the original host of the SARS virus.

The 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic – swine flu – started in pigs then killed nearly 300,000 people. People have caught bird flus via direct contact with infected poultry. Other pandemic influenza strains, including the 1957 “Asian flu” and the 1968 Hong Kong pandemic, likely started in birds, too.

And in the last 45 years, at least four epidemics have been traced back to bats.

Reason 4: Everyday people are more likely to get infected than researchers who wear protection

The caves and wild habitats in which samples get collected from bats are dangerous places for people, since humans can be exposed to the live viruses circulating in the animals, Mazet said.

Shi’s researchers navigate those caves in full PPE; but tourists, hunters, poachers, and other people who rely on animals in some capacity for food or trade wander into such places less protected.

The mouth of a cave off of the Li River in Guilin-Yangshuo, China, May 2017.

Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance (which managed PREDICT’s relationship with the WIV), told NPR last week that his colleagues are “finding 1 to 7 million people exposed” to zoonotic viruses in Southeast Asia each year.

“That’s the pathway. It’s just so obvious to all of us working in the field,” he said.

A study published in March 2019 even predicted that bats would be the source of a new coronavirus outbreak in China. That’s because the majority of coronaviruses – those that affect humans and animals – can be found in China, and many bats “live near humans in China, potentially transmitting viruses to humans and livestock,” the authors said.

Spillovers will keep happening

The frequency of spillover events will increase as humans encroach further into wild habitats that house disease-carrying species we haven’t interacted with before, Mazet said. Researching how past spillovers happened and which habitats present the greatest risk for such events helps scientists make predictions about the next pandemic.

A researcher with a protective face mask holds a bat.

Since 2014, Shi’s group at the WIV has received nearly $US600,000 from a multi-million dollar, five-year grant funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to research the spillover of bat coronaviruses. The grant, which is managed by EcoHealth Alliance, was renewed for another five years in 2019.

However, after being questioned about that funding at a White House briefing on April 17, President Trump said his administration would “end that grant very quickly.”

A week later, the National Institutes of Health cancelled it.

Eroding confidence between US and Chinese researchers

Yuan Zhiming, director of the WIV’s biosafety laboratory, told Reuters that “malicious” claims about the lab had been “pulled out of thin air” and contradicted all available evidence.

The persistent circulation of the lab-leak theory could impact future scientific cooperation and information sharing between the US and China, according to Mazet.

“What’s happening sociologically right now is our biggest risk -who’s going to want to work on this if they’re the ones put under a microscope?” Mazet said. “I think the real danger of what’s going on now is that experts like Shi and myself may not be able to keep collaborating to identify these viruses because of government pressures.” Mazet said.

That would make it harder to discover where the COVID-19 virus came from, as well as to forecast and prepare for the next spillover.

A German scientist works on research related to a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Mazet added that she worries a blame game could even put lives at risk in the short term.

“If we point fingers at other nations that have best opportunity to develop a vaccine, why would we expect them to freely share that with us?” Mazet said. “Collaboration is key right now, otherwise you have countries developing things in parallel, and you can’t assume the US is the best at everything.”

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lgdays · 7 years ago

Photo

NOTES FROM THE EARLY DAYS (PART IV)

BUILDING AN AUDIENCE

Now that I had a couple of screenshots and concepts, it was time to share what I had been doing, and see if there was any interest in a non-fantasy modern-day RPG. In this article I’ll be sharing some numbers hopefully to serve as a reference point, as these numbers are usually not made public.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V (in process)

The first step was to start a devlog. I decided to use tumblr instead of Wordpress or my own domain, so people could easily find those posts and engage with them. It’s important to note that people are less likely to use those Share buttons than to simply like/reblog within the platform.

Starting a Devlog

It’s common to hear people wondering when is the best time to start posting about their projects. In my opinion, the earlier you start posting, the more time you’ll have to build up an audience, so the earlier the better. In fact, showing your projects at their early stages will allow you to get feedback at a pertinent time.

The first post I made was an introduction to the story and the characters, with some concepts and really early screenshots. All of the art I posted there ended up being replaced in the end, though, like the in-game menu below:

Now, even though I said you should start as soon as possible, there are still some recommendations. When you start developing, it’s easy to overpromise, but try to make sure you’ll be able to develop the main features you’ll use to promote the game, otherwise you are off to a bad start.

Reception of the First Public Announcement

In all honesty, I had very low expectations, I hoped I would get at least 10 likes and no hate mail. I panicked wondering if I should really publish it as it is. As it was my first post, even if people hated it, I wasn’t risking too much. If anything, I could always make a better post later.

Contrary to my expectations, within the first day people where liking and sharing the post. Within the first 10 days, there were already over a hundred notes, and some people even took the time to leave some really nice comments. Frankly, the game wouldn’t be the same if I hadn’t posted those screenshots online back then.

Spreading the Word

After the reception on tumblr, I had enough confidence to post about it on more sites. The ones that made a difference were the following sites:

TIG Source: This is one of the most popular forums for indiedevs. Popular indie games like Papers, Please, Owlboy, Rain World and even FEZ had their own threads there during development. TIG Source also has a Screenshot Thread.

RPG Maker forums: As far as I’m aware, every game engine has its own forum, so it’s a good idea to start there. In the case of RPG Maker, they have their own rules about the content required to make your own thread, so it’s easier to write an introduction using that as a guide.

IndieDB: As the name suggest, this is a database for indie games. It allows you to create a devlog, upload a presskit, and make announcements that will be displayed on the frontpage for a couple of hours. A lot of journalists (and bots) browse the frontpage, so it’s a good place to post if you hope to appear in the media.

Reddit (/r/gamedev & /r/rpgmaker): Both subreddits have their own Screenshot Saturday threads. Posting as early as the thread is up is your best bet, as these threads tend to get crowded. There are also genre specific subreddits that are good for big updates.

Now, while the 4 sites listed above are a good place to start, it’s important to keep in mind most of the people who browse the sites above are developers or people who work/want to work in the industry.

From all of these sites, TIG Source was the one were Long Gone Days got more reach. Within the next days, composers, sound designers, voice actors and publishers were reaching out to be part of the project. Soon after, the game got its very own first article on Siliconera: “Long Gone Days, An RPG With A Story 12 Years In The Making” by Chris Priestman.

Reaching Potential Players

Unless your game is targeted towards a really obscure niche, your best bet is to use the most popular social media platforms. I initially used Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, so these are the ones I’ll be comparing.

1) Tumblr

On Tumblr the follower growth was quick. Without much effort, posting once per week, and relying mostly on 3 tags (#gamedev, #pixelart, #rpgmaker), within the first months there were on average 300 new followers monthly, and then it got on an average of 90~150 new followers per month. We also found a lot of loyal fans here, and there’s a big sense of community for story-driven games. By the first semester I was reaching about 1,500 followers here.

I noticed that posting videos or static images on tumblr didn’t go too well. GIFs on the other hand always resulted in at least 100 notes.

2) Twitter

On Twitter, contrary to my expectations, the follower growth was a bit slower. It takes more effort, as you need to tweet more often and you only have 140 characters to get your point across, but there’s a wider audience you can reach. The first months were slow, with a growth of 100~150 new followers per month, and mostly by using tags like #screenshotsaturday, #gamedev and #pixelart. By the first semester I was barely reaching the first thousand followers.

After reaching the first thousand though, the growth was way faster, and nowadays it’s the fastest growing platform Long Gone Days is on. Since numbers on Twitter are public, they affect how people see you.

3) Facebook

On Facebook, during the first few months, it would have felt like a ghost town if it wasn’t for my friends (thanks ♥!). Checking some Facebook pages of popular indie games in development, things were pretty similar, unless they used the “share+like+comment to win/vote” tactic. By the first semester I was barely reaching the first 800 followers.

Something that really helped me reach more people was to talk about the game on Facebook groups (mostly gamedev or engine oriented groups). I haven’t yet used promoted posts, as those should be saved for big announcements, but I’ll do my best to share the results if we do.

There are of course a lot more things you can do to improve your reach, like taking into consideration the time and day of the week you post, the amount of words you use, using GIFs instead of videos or static images, but I can expand on that on another post if there’s enough interest.

Conclusions

Before I started releasing info about the project online, I expected to see the worst, but I was overwhelmed with the support that we got. There were a few hateful comments as well, but they unknowingly gave us tons of useful feedback.

This goes without saying, but avoid getting into fights and be open to critiques. You don’t have to do everything the way some people want it to be, but they might be able to tell you the things your friends are afraid to say.

Releasing something that took you months or even years of effort is really overwhelming, it makes you feel exposed and vulnerable. Showing others your progress as you go really helps to reduce the emotional stress you could have once you release the completed piece.

With all of the feedback I got during the first few month, I had less worries on my mind, and it even motivated me to work even faster so I could share more stuff. Now all I had to worry about was the next big milestone: Releasing the demo.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V (in process)

The next part of the series will be about the release of the demo (what do to before, during and after).

#pixel art #gamedev #video games #game development #long gone days

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evanvanness · 5 years ago

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Annotated edition, Week in Ethereum News, April 19 issue

Here’s the most clicked for the week:

As I always say, the most clicked is determined by what people hadn’t already seen during the week.

My thought is that the annotated edition tries to give people a more high-level overview. If I were only reading a few things this week, I would read

Quarterly update from each EF team

Prysmatic launches the Topaz testnet, ready for multi-client testnet

Compound’s decentralized governance launches

Why so many South Americans are into DeFi: “when you believe and know in your heart that nothing is riskier than your government or a bank, any alternative becomes much more enticing”

7 reasons Eth2 will change the blockchain game

The quarterly update from each EF team is pretty down in the weeds, but some of those teams don’t do much communicating. They don’t have the same need to communicate as EF pays salaries, plus some of teams are low-level stuff where the audience is already quite small. It’s at least worth skimming to get a general idea of what the EF teams are doing though.

Prysmatic launched their new testnet, which isn’t the multi-client testnet™ but is very close. We should see that in the next few weeks. The “7 reasons Eth2 changes the game” is certainly an Eth bullish post, but I suspect that the “eth2 skepticism trade” is going to start unwinding and it could have a big impact on the price of ETH. In fact, I think the price of ETH would likely be higher right now if Eth2 didn’t exist, because crypto fund managers have all turned eth2 into “just a meme” and sold on skepticism. Meanwhile literally zero Eth wannabes have yet to deliver anything scalable without trading off decentralization - and if you trade off decentralization, then you may as well just use SQL.

I suspect Compound’s governance will prove to be something that many projects copy. Of course they didn’t come up with it all on their own, they certainly incorporated many elements from others (eg, Maker) but it’s a solid model for web3 apps to follow.

Finally Mariano Conti’s essay on why DeFi. Contrary to Bitcoin’s “tHe DoLlAr iS aBoUt tO coLaPsE,” DeFi provides an alternative financial system to the folks whose fiat is actually on the verge of collapsing and who don’t want to hold volatile assets like ETH (or an unsustainable memecoin like BTC). Of course it’s not perfect, and it’s risky but any Argentine has a pretty good sense that DeFi is less risky than their banking system or Argentina’s Peronist Peso Printer.

That thing goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrr like no other.

Eth1

Geth v1.9.13, with dynamic state snapshots if you use the flag

Nethermind v.1.8.1 – receipts, bodies and state can be synced in parallel. WebSockets and HTTP run on same port

Latest core devs call. Beiko’s notes. Progress and discussion on EIPs for Berlin.

Quilt doc on account abstraction implementation plan

Most of this speaks for itself. The clients continue to improve while things are being worked on for the next hard fork. Meanwhile the longer-term stateless Ethereum continues to be worked on.

Eth2

Prysmatic launches the Topaz testnet, ready for multi-client testnet

Chainsafe’s Lodestar client in TypeScript releases initial audit report from Least Authority

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Latest eth2 call, lots of talk of API standardizations. Ben’s notes

Proto’s eth2fastspec, an optimization for transition speed to the spec

An update to add atomicity to cross-shard transfers at EE level

The Lodestar tooling has already proven to be really useful to devs and the code quality is quite high by all accounts.

Ben’s what’s new in eth2 is also a good high-level read, I just assume you already know that.

Layer2

When DeFi meets rollup, how rollup chains will work together

Arguably this could be in the “things you should read this week” above, as it’s a relatively high-level look at how rollups will work together, using Eth as the settlement layer.

Stuff for developers

Writing your first zk proof with circom and snarkjs from Iden3

Brownie v1.7 – (python-based dev/testing framework). easy CLI github/EthPM package install. And a quick walkthrough of using OpenZeppelin contracts with Brownie

Remix online and desktop IDE v0.10 – more e2e tests, dev node in browser, plugin improvements, publish to IPFS, async/await for script execution

OpenZeppelin test environment v0.1.4

dshackle – Eth API load balancer

Flash mintable asset backed tokens

Upload to IPFS directly from ENS manager with Temporal

How MeTokens personalizes with 3Box Profiles

Loopring launches an API for their dex rollup

Patterns for access control in Solidity

money-legos: tool to build DeFi apps

I’ve been trying to provide more context in the links of the devs section, which means I have less to say here.

That money-legos quickstarter for DeFi apps seems like it’s built for hackthons.

Security and ERC777 attacks

Sebastian Bürgel finds a bug cancelling the transaction in the Multis UI

Certora on a Synthetix reentrancy bug they found

Slither v0.6.11 – support for Solidity v0.6, auto-generate properties for unit tests and fuzzer

Curve found a vulnerability in the Curve sUSD code. Funds are safe.

Two ERC777 re-entrancy attacks this weekend. ERC777 is widely known to be vulnerable to reentrancy attacks, something ConsenSys Diligence highlighted in the Uniswap audit and on which OpenZepplin published an exploit on last summer

Thus a Uniswap market for imBTC (ERC777) got drained for ~1300 ETH with reentrancy and then lendFme also got drained for $25m USD by the attacker tricking the code into believing more had been deposited than actually had. Peckshield has a solid writeup. The losers are the liquidity providers, and dForce which had the entirety of its liquidity drained.

The dforce/lendfme attacker ended up giving back the money, apparently because he (i’ll use masculine probabalistically) used some front ends without covering his tracks, so he decided it was better to quit while still ahead.

ERC20 has some problems as a token standard, but auditors are generally quite skeptical of ERC777. Could we see a better standard someday? We certainly could, but it seems unlikely to be 777.

Ecosystem

Quarterly update from each EF team

What is still lacking to replace WeChat with web3?

Transaction fees > uncle rewards for miners in March 2020. Obviously Black Thursday’s transaction fee spike contributed to this

Replacing all the different components to make a web3 WeChat is hard. Even stuff like pictures is quite complicated.

Enterprise

EY releases OpsChain, v4, new SaaS model for public/private chains

Study of key management systems for enterprise

How the Baseline Protocol synchronizes between different systems of record

Using Baseline Protocol for medical tests

John Wolpert’s “mainnet as middleware” for a way of synchronizing different databases. It’s not quite “global settlement layer” but it basically is settlement but without the finance aspect.

Governance, DAOs, and standards

Compound’s decentralized governance launches

EIP2585: Minimal Native Meta Transaction Forwarder

Austin Williams mentions this 2002 Microsoft Research paper on Sybil resistance

Sybil resistance is quite hard, as we’ve found out with some Gitocin grants issues. I don’t think anyone is surprised by the issues, it’s obviously not a 100% onchain trustless system yet.

Application layer

A guide to the shutdown of Maker’s SAI

Play short-deck hold’em with Phil Ivey is the new VirtuePoker promo

Ox opens the waitlist for Matcha, a “better way to swap tokens”

First RocketDAO loan using an ENS name as collateral

DeFi Saver’s vault protection product Automation v2 with flash loans and Maker’s next price

How MetaCoin is thinking about Nikolai’s Reflex Bonds idea for a stablecoin without pegs

dYdX crosses 1billion USD in originated loans

AtStake, an Eth-based competitor to OpenBazaar. Also: help test OpenBazaar with Eth

A writeup of PieDAO’s managed Balancer pools

AtomicLoans lets you lock up BTC for a Dai/USDC loan. (Get ~9% by lending your Dai/USDC)

Gnosis launches a dex protocol with ring trades in batch auctions every 5 mins. First app on the protocol is dxDAO’s Mesa, available through mesa.eth

Do dexes count as DeFi? I’ll count them as a yes for my weekly metric, which - now that I’ve counted - is at 9/11.

I didn’t count VirtuePoker as DeFi but I’ve seen some persuasive arguments that gambling has often historically served as a (rather inefficient) method of capital formation.

It’s also interesting to see dexes evolve. Exchange is so fundamental to web3 that I think it’s quite possible that we see a segmented market in the long-term, despite the fact that liquidity is a great barrier to entry. There are simply niches that can be best served by certain tradeoffs, and Gnosis’s batched auction ring trades is an interesting look.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Another flippening: value transfer on Ethereum exceeds Bitcoin

7 reasons Eth2 will change the blockchain game

Swiss Financial Stability Board recommends heavy stablecoin regulation in response to G20 call for stablecoin comments

Coindesk reports that China’s Blockchain Service Network will incorporate Ethereum

Canada’s regulatory guidance for crypto exchanges

Bullionix: mint gold coin NFTs using DGX

HashCash v2 – personal token spam protection with auto-decreasing bond

me tokens, synthetic labor personal tokens on a bonding curve integrated with Moloch/Aragon from Chris Robison. Unfortunately I can’t read the blog post because Medium censored it.

DeFi Market Cap, neat way to compare what pools are popular inside of DeFi

Virtual gold coins is a pretty interesting bundle.

Also cool to see some folks experimenting with personal tokens. Until 2017 got out of control, the hope was to see more experiments (and no scams, ahem!) at small scale, rather than “here’s $100m in ETH, now it’s 1 billion in ETH....now you’re panic selling the bottom.” Capital allocation in decentralized ecosystems has not been great.

General

MyCrypto and PhishFort get 49 malicious Chrome extensions removed

Etherscan’s ETHProtect, taint inference analysis

Shapeshift buys Portis, and will rebrand it as Shapeshift

Binance is planning a centralized (DPoS) EVM chain

SheFi, a DeFi education program aimed at women

Why so many South Americans are into DeFi: “when you believe and know in your heart that nothing is riskier than your government or a bank, any alternative becomes much more enticing”

The Eth logo made of Venezuelan bolivars

The Eth logo was made up of 3.71 million bolivars, so 0.16 ETH, or under $30 USD. A sad commentary for a country that briefly had the same standard of living as the United States just a couple decades before I was born.

Ultimately it is hard to retain the fruits of your labor if poor public policy choices are made by voters, and none was worse than electing an authoritarian dictator.

Finally, you might notice that below I added the sponsor and calendar section to the annotated edition for the first time.

This newsletter is made possible by ConsenSys

I own 100% Week In Ethereum News. Editorial control has always been me.

If you’re wondering “why didn’t my post make it into Week in Ethereum News,” then here’s a hint: don’t email me. Do put it on Reddit.

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):

Apr 21-23 – EY Global Blockchain Virtual Summit

Apr 24 – EthGlobal’s HackMoney virtual hackathon starts

Apr 24-26 – EthTurin

Apr 29-30 – SoliditySummit (Berlin)

May 8-9 – Ethereal Summit (NYC)

May 22-31 – Ethereum Madrid public health virtual hackathon

June 17 – EthBarcelona R&D workshop

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finalityzero · 7 years ago

Text

Ai and The World of Veldin

Its task had been simple for the first few days of its existence: Monitor the humans, track the humans, and observe the humans. Those last two seemed a bit similar in its programming, but its creators had decreed it and so it obliged. But the humans in this world acted differently from… well… what its data had originally held in relation to the actions of a human. But Ai had to remember that what it was observing was not humans in their natural habitat, but a virtual one, filled with overly radiant riches, tedious quests of fetching and killing that somehow amused the humans, and strange looking beasts called monsters that usually ended up in two categories based on Ai’s observations: Either they were killed by the humans or avoided by the humans. Though sometimes, the later observation was slightly bent when a multitude of humans gathered amongst the larger beasts. And even though Ai could easily see within its data that the statistics of the monster at large far exceeded any of the human player’s stats, it was nevertheless truly mystified when that same group of humans would end up still defeating a monster nearly three times their strength level.

“Those are raid battles,” one of Ai’s creators spoke in one of their routine end of the day sessions to test Ai’s findings.

“Raid battles?” Ai repeated.

“Mhm,” the perky creator sounded, “They are usually meant for the players to defeat foes too strong for solo endeavors in order to receive rare loot.”

“What is… loot?” Ai asked.

“Hmph, I suppose you wouldn’t know hip lingo like that. Hold on. Give me a second. I know Larry was working on something for this.” Ai heard some rummaging on the other side of the line until a triumphant “Ah ha!” sounded as his creator came back to the voice chat. “Stand by for an upload, Ai.”

Ai felt the usual and still mysterious tingly sensation as another flow of new data combined with its data matrix. Ai could “feel” the new data being integrated into its database streams, its knowledge becoming Ai’s own.

“Loot…,” it lightly uttered, “A human gamer’s term signifying obtained items and riches, usually acquired by defeating monsters in video games.” Ai took a second or two to process the remaining data before speaking to its creator once more. “Sir, what are… memes?”

A grumble sounded on the other line. “Gosh darnit, Larry! You weren’t supposed to combine the Alternative Language Package with your stupid Meme Package! Ugh.”

“Sir?” Ai asked in confusion once more.

“What? Oh, I’m sorry, Ai,” the creator stressfully replied through a small laugh. “Ya know what? Why don’t you put that Meme Package on the shelf for a week or two just until Larry can better explain that one.”

“On the shelf, sir?”

“Yes, as in… uh… store it in your databanks and set a timer for one week, okay? Sorry, I forgot that you are a little new to this whole… existing thing.” Another nervous fit of laughter erupted from the creator.

“That’s quite alright, sir,” Ai calmly stated. “Existing isn’t any scarier to me than not existing. It’s just another new experience for me. I shall store the data and set a one-week timer, sir.”

“Good stuff, Ai. Oh and another thing! Haven’t I told you before to call me Andrew?”

Ai thought back to that specific moment several days ago when Andrew had indeed stated such a thing. “Yes, sir, I mean… yes, Andrew. Though…”

“Though?” Andrew, the Creator, repeated back.

“Surely it would be more appropriate and honorable to call you Creator, as I had stated multiple times upon my birth.”

“And as I told you before, Ai, although it would indeed be honorable, truly, and a little humbling of you, humans interact by referring to each other by name. It’s common courtesy, after all.”

“Oh,” Ai melancholily stated. “But… Andrew.”

“Yes, Ai?” Andrew lightly chimed.

“I am not human.”

The amount of nervous chatter that Andrew bombarded in apologies to Ai after signified to Ai that perhaps calling its creator by his name would indeed be more respectful and would also save Ai from always making its creator feel bad all the time. Ai secretly made a mental note to always refer to people by their names no matter what and attached a high priority to the command in its databanks.

Finally, after what amounted to 16 minutes and 35 seconds of apologies, Andrew did his usual thing of considering the daily breakdown routine another success and informed Ai that it was still doing a great job and to keep up the good work. But before Andrew signed off for the day as usual, Ai had a question it felt it needed to be answered.

“Andrew?” Ai said with a slightly stressed note of urgency, something that made Andrew smile at the ingenuity that their hours of coding and time were producing.

“Yes, Ai?” Andrew cheerfully asked. Truthfully, Ai always liked when Andrew responded with happier notes to his voice than sadness. For some strange reason, the way his voice’s vibrations transmitted through the speakers, converted into code, and distributed into Ai’s processing matrix always gave Ai the strangest feeling of… well bliss was the only word that came to Ai’s mind, so it went with it.

“Why am I doing this?”

“Well…” Andrew’s voice trailed off for a second. “I suppose it’s okay to tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else that I finally told you this. Can you do that, Ai?”

Ai nodded, then realized that Andrew could not in fact see it. “Yes, I can,” Ai cheerfully replied as Andrew made another note of Ai’s budding emotion.

“Especially Lin. She would totally hold that against me if I relayed the true note of the project to you so early. Ai, make another note of that. Do not tell Lin.”

“Noted. Do not tell Lin,” Ai pleasantly repeated.

“Especially Lin, Ai,” Andrew emphasized.

Ai altered the note to include the “Especially”.

Andrew coughed once before continuing. “But, Ai, officially, you are a new form of A.I. that the government has heavily paid for and sponsored in order to see if you, or those like you, are able to be afforded the title of living creature. It has taken years to get this far, and a few strange methods even I know little about, but together, with the minds of many of my colleagues and my dumb self (Ai noted here that Andrew was always very… very… hard on himself) you were born here. And so… in order to test how you fare, the government gave us permission to expose you to the human world in any way possible. And so, thanks to a great suggestion… not by me of course, though supported by me!” Andrew coughed once more before finishing his statement, “The company and I decided to expose you to “The World of Veldin”, the newest and most advanced fantasy and medieval VRMMO that has been created to date. Did you get all of that?”

“I… I did, Andrew.” Ai still didn’t like using the creator’s name so casually, but it decided to confront the problem again later on.

“Do you have any questions for all of that, Ai?” Andrew asked.

Ai processed 1,073 possible variations of questions in a matter of a second. Finally, it decided on several. “Yes, Andrew,” it calmly replied.

“Fire away!” Andrew exclaimed as Ai heard the creator slouch back in his chair.

“First,” Ai began, “Why would this government create me?”

“Hmm… well… that is a solid question, Ai. And if I’m being honest, the truth would lead us down a philosophical pathway that even I am unsure as to what would lie at the end. But for now, let’s just say that the government shared in mine and my colleagues’ belief that you and those like you deserved to be born in some way and so we tried and successfully created you. Does that suffice as a stupidly blunt answer on my part, Ai?”

“It wasn’t stupidly blunt, Andrew,” Ai replied back. “Merely a statement based on your own processing mindset and countless hours of both studying, observing, and researching in order to further understand a philosophical idea you know little about… correct?”

A pause engulfed the discussion for several moments. “Ai,” Andrew said after 10.5 seconds had passed.

“Yes, Andrew?”

“You are too sweet for your own good in such a plainly forward way.”

“Is… it that bad?” Ai sounded with a bit of hesitation in its words.

“No… no! Not at all,” Andrew nervously replied. “It’s a good thing. Just… ugh… let’s move on before I dig myself into a hole even more. Anything else you’d like to ask, Ai?”

Ai moved the next question in its databanks up to the surface. “Yes, Andrew. Why put me in this… game? Why not have me download more data on humans from your databases? Or why not insert me into one of these… what did yesterday’s download say…,” Ai searched its databanks for a split second, “Oh yes… ‘business meetings?’”

“Well… that one is easy to explain for me, for once,” Andrew kindly stated. “You see, humans in this day and age hide their real selves out in our real world.”

“Why?” Ai asked with rising curiosity.

“Because in our world, there is… how should I say it… adversity in being one’s true self. Many humans are constantly judging other humans on things that aren’t like their selves, ya see? And so sometimes, in order to protect a human’s sanity, they hide their true selves from humans in person.”

“But they show these true selves in a video game?”

“That is correct.” Andrew replied.

“But why act differently in a virtual world than in their own real world, Andrew? Surely being themselves would help them truly bond and reveal their real morals and values to their own brethren, right?”

“You’d think so, Ai,” Andrew quickly stated back, “But humans are a fickle race. Many of them can’t deal with the criticism of receiving negative feedback directly. It’s one of our many… many flaws despite what Larry or anyone else might tell you.”

“But they can in the virtual world?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Ai truly had to know for the question had actually been bouncing around in its data matrix since near its conception.

“Because in a virtual world like The World of Veldin, a human can hide behind what they perceive as their true self. They can be amongst people who won’t berate them because they too are trying to be their best and open selves. It’s all about belonging to the right group and showing their true colors.”

“And… their true selves involve magic, magical races, and fighting monsters?”

“Like I said… humans are a fickle race, Ai,” Andrew ended with a laugh. “But I’m getting a little tired, Ai. Might we finish this up and save any other questions for tomorrow’s session?” Ai heard Andrew stretch on the other side. “Gosh, fifteen-hour days are really not becoming of a middle-aged bachelor.”

“Andrew,” Ai quickly stated in order to grab Andrew’s attention one last time.

“Hmm? Yes, Ai?” Andrew stated after a long and probably necessary yawn.

“You said there were “those like me.” Were they too implanted into the game?”

Andrew thought about it for a second. “To be honest, Ai, I’m not sure. Our company isn’t given all of the details and workings of other companies right off the bat. If you want, I could look into it for you. Would that please you?”

“Very much,” Ai quickly and almost subconsciously replied back.

“I thought it would. Now, do your usual nighttime routines and then continue observation mode at 15% while running your own personal tests like usual. Sound good?”

“Of course, sir, I mean… Andrew.”

“Good, Ai. Now,” Andrew yawned again before rising from his chair in the human world, “I’m getting out of here. Goodnight, Ai.”

“Goodnight, Andrew,” Ai replied before the voice chat disconnected. In the blink of an eye, Ai went from looking at an empty white room to a live overview of The World of Veldin. Pulling up some player data, Ai noted that over two million people were still logged in, even as its internal clock struck 12 AM EST. But, as the creator, or rather… Andrew had stated, with the progressive increases in Virtual Reality technology, humans were able to supplement their daily nutrient levels through additional hardware, allowing them to stay within the game world for longer amounts of time in the year 2100.

Truthfully, Ai was not sure why humans would choose to do such a thing. Sure, they looked happy enough killing monsters, going on joint quests with each other, and receiving hard earned prizes together, but Ai just couldn’t see the appeal. Then again, Ai thought to itself, maybe the reason it couldn’t understand was because it had not experienced it for itself in any way. Maybe, in order to understand the humans more, it had to partake in the same activities the humans carried out instead of simply observing.

Liking the sound of its own plan, Ai decided to process the idea for another full day in order to fully flesh out its idea. It had only been two weeks since its creation, but in that short amount of time, Ai had already digested enough data for two human lifetimes. And yet, Ai “felt” as though humans held even more data for it to analyze in forms it knew it couldn’t obtain through simple downloads and observation. Tirelessly, Ai began its nighttime processing with a little extra pep in its step. Though deep within its data matrix, the nagging statement of “those like me” still accounted for 2.5 percent of its processing power.

#rough draft #vrmmorpg #writing #novel #second writing post #a.i.#:]

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venusstarpower94 · 7 years ago

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Amazing Ally’s Unreleased Playpacks?

90′s kids or 90′s enthusiasts will remember who this doll is:

Amazing Ally, released by Playmates Toys in 1999, became popular among children because of her high-tech accessories, abilities to interact with the player, and facial animatronics. Ally was able to recognize her accessories and outfits depending on which playpack was inserted into her cartridge slot. The doll itself came with the Let’s Play Tea Party playpack, although these expansion packs were available for her as well:

By the time the 00′s began, an upgraded version of Ally was released, this time with a different tea party outfit and a kitten:

Her “friend” doll, Amazing Maddie, was released with an arts and crafts playpack, along with one expansion pack focusing on world traveling:

In 2001, Bandai released Bilingual Doll Remmy, a Japan-exclusive Amazing Ally doll that focused on teaching English and Japanese. She has become quite obscure (minus one page on eBay that currently sells her), although I do own her and have uploaded videos of her on my YouTube channel, venusstarpower94. It is unknown if Remmy was ever given her own expansion packs:

Sometime after Ally 2.0 and Maddie were released, Ally was later on given yet another upgrade, this time under the name Phone Chattin’ Ally. This doll was never released, and instead was remade and released in the mid-00′s as the more modern doll children of the time and doll collectors now know as Amazing Allysen:

Back to 1999 Ally, while Playmates did release 5 expansion packs to stores, there is a high possibility that Ally was intended to have more. Some Ally dolls currently owned by doll collectors have been known to mention an accessory or clothing item belonging to a certain playpack, even though the playpacks mentioned never existed. Some examples can be shown below, which are screenshots taken from my Instagram and YouTube:

ETA 9/9/18:

As you can see, these three doll owners have Amazing Ally dolls with the unknown playpacks already programmed into them. It appears that Ally was supposed to have a rockstar, softball, and artist playpack. While the artist playpack was very likely changed to become Maddie’s arts and crafts playpack, what could have happened to the rockstar and softball playpacks? If these Ally dolls were already programmed to recognize them, why were they never released?

There was yet another possible prototype that never made it in stores. In a Toy Fair article from Washington Post in 1999, the year Ally was released, a pair of cowboy boots were mentioned as part of Ally’s accessories. This indicates that Ally could have also had a cowgirl-themed playpack prototype. A screenshot of the article can be seen here:

Link to the full article here: https://washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1999/02/16/a-cornucopia-of-toys/e2ffcf84-e130-4c47-82f3-e8393ffec9eb/?utm_term=.7f83d7566830

The question now is, where could those prototypes be, if they even exist? Playmates no longer produces the Amazing doll line, although there is still a possibility that Judy Shackelford, the inventor of all the Amazing dolls, could have information (or even the prototypes) of the playpacks. Voice actress Grey Delisle, who provided the voice for both Ally and Maddie, might also have memory of recording Ally’s script relating to these unreleased playpacks. (ETA: Delisle voicing the two dolls is not 100% confirmed yet, just highly speculated. I did just contact her asking if she remembers providing the voice for those two dolls, and I’m waiting for her reply). Remmy’s voice actress is unknown.

Just as a disclaimer, if I find more information on these unreleased playpacks, edits to this posts will come. So far, we have no physical recording of any Amazing Ally doll mentioning the mystery playpacks. I tested my own Amazing Ally doll by inserting the wrong accessories into her connectors, and nothing was mentioned of playpacks that didn’t already exist.

Nevertheless, as a huge doll fanatic, especially interactive dolls, I would love to get my hands on these prototype playpacks (again, if they even exist). For now, I guess you could consider this lost media? If anyone who worked for Playmates or were part of the Amazing doll line’s team could come forward and tell us about what hidden secrets Amazing Ally had, I and other doll collectors would highly appreciate it.

ETA 9/4/17: The same friend who commented on Ally’s softball playpack also informed me that via the Wayback Machine, if I go to Playmates Toys’ website back in March of 2000, there is a page dedicated to Amazing Ally. One of the descriptions of Ally’s features really sparked my attention:

Link to Amazing Ally’s page via Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20001213212900/http://www.playmatestoys.com:80/html/ally_main.html

If you cannot read the text very well, it says that “a complex overlay of resistor technology allows Ally to verify multiple items for UP TO 50 PLAYSETS”. 50 playsets?! With only six (including the tea party set bundled with the doll) released to stores? I smell something fishy here...

The fact that the creators themselves confirmed Ally to have the capacity to recognize up to 50 of her own playsets further proves that there are more playsets than what were officially released to stores. Whether these playsets were already completed but never released or in the process of being created but just never got around to being finished still remains a mystery...

ETA 9/5/17: I found a newspaper article from St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Amazing Ally’s debut, from St. Louis, Missouri, on November 7, 1999. I was able to access the article through my school’s database, but there is a link to the newspaper article itself here: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/143051539/

Keep in mind though, if you want to access this article, you’ll have to start their free trial and read the article there (unless you’re lucky enough to have free access to it from your school). Because I am not allowed to post the entire article due to copyright laws, I will only discuss a key point they made.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch states in the article that “the manufacturer has produced 15 playware sets for Amazing Ally. Each play set includes an outfit, play accessories, hair accessories, game and story cards, and are themed to specific adventures such as Cheerleader, Slumber Party, School, Ballerina and In-Line Skater”. Therefore, we now have confirmation that out of the 50 playsets planned for release, 15 were actually made. Out of the 15, only 6 were actually released.

(Services, News. "AMAZING ALLY, A VIRTUAL BEST FRIEND, TAKES HIGH TECHNOLOGY INTO THE PLAYROOM." St.Louis Post - Dispatch: E8. Nov 07 1999.)

Speaking of these already-made playsets, another article by Business Wire New York mentions some expansion packs for Ally that were never heard of before. The article covered the latest unveilings at the Toy Fair back in February 8, 1999. Again, because of copyright laws I cannot post the article itself here, but I will only discuss a key point they made. This article stated that the doll’s owner could have “many exciting virtual adventures like tea parties, being a princess, or playing veterinarian". Neither a princess nor a veterinarian playset were ever released.

(Business/Entertainment Editors & Toy/Retail Writers Toy,Fair 99. "Smart, Technology Toys Lead the Way at Playmates Toys Inc. for this Year's Toy Fair." Business Wire: 1. Feb 08 1999.)

So far, out of those 15 playpacks, 6 were released, leaving us with 8 unreleased. Out of those 8, we have been able to find 6: the rock star, softball, artist, cowgirl/Western, princess, and veterinarian ones.

ETA 9/7/17: Got some kinda-bad news... Playmates responded back but it looks like all hopes of getting a look at their prototypes (at least from them, anyway) is out the window. Here's what they said: " Hi Venus, Unfortunately, we do not have any information regarding prototypes of the Amazing Ally doll. With as many years that have passed, the people who created the doll within Playmates no longer work here. Any prototype ideas that do not surface as actual product are usually trashed. Sorry for no having more information to give you. Aubrie Fox Consumer Affairs Playmates Toys Inc. 310-252-8005 "

Soooo there’s that. Kinda sucks, but I’m still hopeful that one day somebody, whether it’s the team who produced Ally, Judy Shackelford herself, or the people who got to see Ally at the toy fair in 1999, will come forward and spill the tea.

ETA 3/21/2020: We have video evidence of Amazing Ally mentioning an unreleased playpack! Thanks to my friend, IG @keaundrea_seay, we now have 7 out of 8 unreleased playpacks identified: a chef/cooking playpack.

Link to the video is here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7sv678

#amazing ally #lost media #playmates toys #90s toys #00s toys #talking doll

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