#but i need a new collectible after what the devs did to event titles

[0birdmasta0]

have not said anything here in like a month idk man i just got busy doing things

ANYWAY who's ready for this shit????

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hello there!! Do you have a list of long fics with a jealous/possessive/obsessive sherlock? Thank you mwahhh

Hey Nonny!!

I DO!! I actually started a new list for Possessive Sherlock awhile back waiting for someone to ask for it after I posted my other two lists, LOL.

I put my fics in word-count order, so just scroll down until you see a word count you like and go from there LOL :D

Hope you enjoy!

POSSESSIVE / OBSESSIVE SHERLOCK Pt 3

See also:

Jealous & Possessive Sherlock

Possessive Sherlock Pt 2

Jealous Sherlock Because John Dates a Man

Jealous John Pt. 2 and Jealous Sherlock Pt 2

Jealous John Pt 3 and Jealous Sherlock Pt 3

Jealous John and Sherlock Pt. 4

Jealous John and Sherlock Pt. 5

Possessive by Fang323 (T, 850 w., 1 Ch. || John Whump, Hospitalization, Possessive / Protective Sherlock, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort) – His John did not belong. Not here. Not in this blasted hospital. It simply was not logical.

Concussions And Good Old Fashioned Awkwardness by Belldere (K+, 894 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Hospitals, Mild John Whump, Misunderstandings, Platonic Relationship, Concussions, Not-Gay John, Possessive Sherlock) – When John lands himself in hospital... again, all he wants is to just get out of there as soon as possible, too bad his doctor has other ideas about where John may be getting his injuries. Good thing concussions make everything strangely funnier.

Burn Burn by Jenn1984 (K+, 925 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TGG, Angst, Worried / Panicked / Possessive Sherlock) – A week after the events of "The Great Game", Sherlock returns to 221B Baker Street to find it empty.

His by I'm Nova (T, 1,042 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Hurt/Comfort, Manipulation, Possessive Sherlock) – Sherlock doesn't share what he's fond of.

Mine (He Says While Still Being Smol) by beejohnlocked (E, 1,319 w., 1 Ch. || Jealous Sherlock, Possessive Sherlock, Amused John, Needy Sherlock, Blowjobs) – A suspect flirts with John. Sherlock gets a bit jealous. Okay, a LOT jealous.

The Case of the Missing Blogger by nicknack22 (K, 2,147 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Humour, Friendship, Worried / Anxious Sherlock) – Alternately titled, The Case of the Oblivious Consulting Detective. In which Sherlock comes out of his mind palace to discover John missing. 221B does not fair well as a result.

Hell or High water by bluefire301175 (E, 2,250 w., 1 Ch. || PWP, Frottage, Alley Sex, First Person POV John, Case-ish Fic, Mutual Pining, Bed Sharing) – John wants. Sherlock wants. Plain and simple.

Display by 221b_hound (E, 2,377 w., 1 Ch. || Post-HLV, Tattoos, Public Hand Jobs, Exhibitionism, Possessive Sex, Possessive Sherlock, Possessive John) – A new client has been flirting with Sherlock and, finding no joy there, with John. John seems annoyed to be second-best, Sherlock thinks, so Sherlock decides to give the departing woman (and maybe also John) a demonstration of who, exactly, John belongs to. But there's more than one level of sexual jealousy and more than one display of possession going on here, outlined in the window of 221b Baker Street. Part 2 of Lock and Key

Surety by hudders (G, 2,477 w., 1 Ch. || Jealous Sherlock, Drunk John, Drunk Lestrade, Drinking, Alcohol) – Sherlock is pissed because it seems that four pints of larger, two shots of tequila and a glass of wine has resulted in Lestrade becoming a little bit too friendly with everyone. And by everyone, Sherlock really means John.

Pillow Talk by 221b_hound (E, 2,925 w., 1 Ch. || Post-HLV, Est. Rel., Preening Sherlock, Limpet Sherlock, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Sex on Furniture, Scent Kink, Masturbation, Fluff, Soft Sherlock) – John gets home late from work and Sherlock is nowhere to be seen. John walks through the flat, distracted by memories of all the excellent sex they've been having, and finally finds Sherlock asleep in the upstairs room - apparently having fallen asleep mid-wank while inhaling the scent of John's pillow. Well, you should always finish what you start, John thinks... Part 3 of Lock and Key

Reversed by whitchry9 (K+, 3,072 w., 6 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Medical Anomalies, John Gets Shot) – The man pointed his gun at John's chest, right at his heart, and shot.' Wherein John is shot, and Sherlock is the one panicking.

Overture by Kate_Lear (M, 4,435 w., 1 Ch. || First Kiss / Time, Friends to Lovers, Angry John, Introspection, Dev. Rel., Embarrassed / Insecure Sherlock, Morning After, Bed Sharing, Cuddles / Limpet Sherlock) – A short snippet on how John and Sherlock might have got together.

All That I Have by the_arc5 (M, 3,721 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TGG Canon Divergence, Pining Sherlock, John Whump, Anxious / Worried Sherlock, Light Angst) – In the aftermath of the Great Game, Sherlock finds himself with a new weakness. John is both the cause and the cure.

Paranoia by Ewebie (M, 3,789 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Drinking Games, Scotland Yard Gang, Jealous / Possessive Sherlock, Inappropriate Questions, Embarrassed John, Matchmakers) – John and Sherlock join the gang of Scotland Yard for a night of drinking, and it gets a bit personal and revealing.

The Oolong Disaster by unicornpoe (T, 4,151 w., 1 Ch. || John’s Beard, Fluff, Humour, Frustrated Sherlock, John Takes Care of Sherlock, Case Fic-ish, Pining Sherlock, First Kiss, Possessive Sherlock) – John has a beard. Sherlock has a panic attack.

Obsession, Appassionato by shinychimera, Yeomanrand (E, 4,249 w., 1 Ch. || Possessive Sherlock, First Time, Jealous Sherlock, Music / Sherlock’s Violin, Present Tense, Frottage) – John is late, and he hasn’t called, and Sherlock works himself into a state. Part 1 of Love and Ysaye

Date Night by inevitably_johnlocked (G, 4,451 w., 1 Ch. || Anxious / Worried Sherlock, Caring John, Schmoopy Fluff, Fidget Cube, Baking / Cooking, Date Night, Established Relationship, POV Sherlock Holmes, Understanding John, Grumpy Sherlock, John’s Bum, Kisses, Hugs, Domestic Fluff, Touching, Hair Petting, Light Humour) – It's John and Sherlock's first Date Night as an official couple and Sherlock needs it to be PERFECT. Mrs Hudson helps. Part 7 of I-J's Tumblr Ficlet Collection

Butterfly, Pinned Under Glass by billiethepoet (E, 4,648 w., 1 Ch. || Possessive Sherlock, Jealousy, Barebacking, BAMF!John) – It started as a desire to keep John safe and whole, and ended up as just desire.

Applied Linguistics by what_alchemy (M, 4,837 w., 1 Ch. || Possessive / Anxious Sherlock, Introspection, Bed Sharing, Past John Whump, Est. Rel., Marriage Proposal, Sherlock Loves John So Much, Word Play) – “He wants to shake John by the shoulders, wants to open his mouth and swallow John whole. Wants to marry him.” Sherlock searches for the right words.

My First, My Only, and My Forever by vintagelilacs (E, 6,220 w., 1 Ch. || Post-ASiB, Virgin Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock’s Bum, John’s Scar, Sherlock POV, Body Worship, Fingering, Bottomlock, Promise of Forever / Proposals, Misunderstanding, First Kiss/Time, Loss of Virginity, Virginity Kink, Seduction) – Sherlock narrowed his eyes. He was missing a vital piece of data, he was sure. John had been looking at him oddly ever since they left Buckingham Palace, and the ensuing incident with Irene Adler had only exacerbated his erratic behaviour. What was it? Why would he care that Sherlock was a virgin? There was nothing reminiscent of mockery or pity in his gaze. And then it hit him. John Watson was aroused.

Fa Subito by kim47 (E, 6,659 w., 1 Ch. || Suit Porn, Cockblocker Mycroft, Obsessed Sherlock, PWP) – John wears a suit. Sherlock finds it extremely distracting.

Victim, Bait, Hero, Friend by KimberlyTheOwl (T, 7,887 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TGG Epilogue, Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Past Kidnapping / Torture / Implied Rape, Panic Attacks, Worried / Possessive Sherlock, Lestrade is a Good Friend) – Some insights into why John was perfectly willing to throw everything away for a chance to kill Moriarty at the pool. Trauma, ugliness, and finally healing. Some nice supporting work by Lestrade as well.

A Friend Indeed by Sanru (K+, 8,190 w., 1 Ch. || Missing John, Friendship, Drama, Introspection, Possessive Sherlock, Worried Sherlock) – Something has gone terribly wrong with a supposedly simple case. John Watson is missing. While the search for him is proving to be fruitless, it has made Sherlock realize that having an emotional attachment to someone may have its disadvantages but he liked being able to call John his friend. Now if only he could find out what happened to him...

My Life for His by QuinnAnderson (E, 8,816 w., 1 Ch. || Guardian/Protector, Greek Mythology || Growing Up, Sex, Religious Themes, Suicide, Minor Character Death) – It began when Sherlock was eight, and he attempted to climb all the way up to the highest branch in the old willow tree in his back garden. He'd thought he was still small enough that it could support him, but the second he'd grabbed hold of it to pull himself up, the branch snapped, and down he went, plummeting a solid twenty metres. The odd thing was, he never actually hit the ground.

The Haunting of 221B Baker Street by earlgreytea68 (M, 10,388 w., 2 Ch. || Post TRF, Halloween / Ghosts, Pining Sherlock, Ghost Sherlock, Stroppy Sherlock, Sherlock POV, First Kiss/Time, Angry Sex, Ghost Sex, Love Confessions, Open / Ambiguous Ending) – In which Sherlock Holmes is a ghost.

A Is For Aftermath by ElvendorkInfinity (T, 10,567 w., 1 Ch. || Injury / Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Pre-Slash/Bromance/Platonics, Hallucinations, Introspection, Insecure / Worried John, Big Brother Mycroft, Alternating POV, Anxious Sherlock, Self-Deprecating, Mildly Possessive Sherlock, 3G Moment) – John is still hallucinating, Sherlock cannot sleep, and Lestrade has a new case for them. But will life at 221B ever be able to return to normal? Epilogue to M is for Moriarty.

London Gods by a_different_equation (E, 11,092 w., 5 Ch. || American Gods Fusion || Magical Realism, Sex Magic, True Love, PTSD John, First Kiss/Time, Marathon Sex, Sensuality, Genie Sherlock, Human John, Internalized Homophobia, Star-Crossed Lovers, Soul Mates) – Sherlock Holmes is a jinn who does not grant wishes. However, when Dr. John H. Watson, recently returned from the war in Afghanistan, gets into his cab by "accident", it might not even need magic to grant both men their deepest wish: love.

Pattern Behaviour by SilentAuror (E, 14,835 w., 1 Ch. || POV First Person Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Introspection, Stroppy Sherlock, Light Humour, Friendship, John Takes Care of Sherlock, First Kiss/Time, Wall Kisses, Fluffy Angst, Happy Ending) – Sherlock doesn't even know why he resents John's dates so much. Until the day he does know. Slight angst, unrequited feelings (but don't let that scare you off!)

A Hooligans’ Game Played By Gentlemen by scullyseviltwin (E, 15,213 w., 1 Ch. || First Time, Rugby as Foreplay, Porn with Lots of Plot, John POV, Ogling, Body Appreciation, Cranky Sherlock, Slow Burn, Bed Sharing, Cuddling, Touching, Heavy Petting, Blow Job, Botttomlock) – In which John wants to get back in shape, does so, joins a rugby league and has sex with Sherlock Holmes. In that order.

The Burning of the Leaves by blueink3 (M, 15,915 w., 3 Ch. || Post S4, Angst, Reichenbach, Parentlock, Past Jolto, Idiot John, Sherlock’s a Mess, Puppies, Fluff, Possessive / Jealous Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock POV, Matchmaker Sholto, Melancholic Feelings, Emotional Sherlock, Domesticity, Love Confessions in the Rain, Kissing in the Rain, Pet Names) – After the events of series 4, Major Sholto invites John and Sherlock to lunch one day. It nearly proves to be too much for their tenuous relationship as the past haunts the present, putting the future that Sherlock so desperately wants at risk.

A Silver Sixpence by _doodle (NC-17, 16,400 w., 2 Ch. || LJ Fic || For a Case / Case Fic, Fake Relationship, Humour, Romance, Marriage Proposal, Awkward Idiots, Cuddling, Touching, Kissing, Love Confessions, Bed Sharing, Friends to Lovers, Fake Until It’s Not, Schmoop and Fluff, Bottomlock) – “John, we need to get married. It’s for a case, not any romantic notions on my part pertaining to our partnership,” Sherlock said, with brutal honesty, and without even looking up.

I Think I've Come A Long Long Way To Sit Before You Here Today by ArwenKenobi (T, 18,251 w., 3 Ch. || Grief/Mourning, Passage of Time, Major Character Death, Alternating POV, Sherlock Whump, Pining Sherlock, Hospitalization, Coma, Revenge Murders, Hallucinations, Love Confessions, Brutal Accident, Mystrade, Ghost John) – One year after John is killed Sherlock starts to wonder whether John has actually gone anywhere.

Division by MrsNoggin (E, 19,542 w., 11 Ch. || Coffee Shop AU || First Kiss/Time, Fluff, Barista Sherlock, Clingy Sherlock, POV John, John’s Limp, Bed Sharing, Fluff, Sleepy Cuddles, Sensuality, Touching, Virgin Sherlock, Insecure John) – John likes mysteries. And every morning he dips into the local independent coffee bar with his newspaper and ponders another... one Sherlock Holmes.

5 Times John Got the Girl (and lost her) and 1 Time John Got the Guy (and kept him) by LiviKate (M, 21,695 w., 6 Ch. || 5 and Ones, Kissing, Oblivious / Awkward Sherlock, BAMF / Sexy / Stud John, Embarrassed John, John’s Scar, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Sherlock) – John has always had good luck with the ladies. He's charming, friendly and funny, not to mention great in bed. However, his usual skill with the opposite sex is constantly being thwarted by Sherlock and his outbursts. How will John ever get a leg over when Sherlock is always cockblocking him?

How To Unfold a Heart by elwinglyre (E, 25,477 w., 7 Ch. || Post S4 Fix It, BAMF John, Mentioned Eurus, POV First Person Sherlock, Case Fic, Fluff, Slow Burn, Topping from the Bottom, 3 Yr Old Rosie, Introspection, Sexual Fantasies, John Worship, Ogling, Hand Holding, Kidnapping, Domesticity, Sherlock Whump, First Kiss/Time, Doctor John, Caring John, Soft Sherlock, Sensuality, Touching, Crying, Love Confessions, Anxious Sherlock, Rimming, Toplock, Fingering, Bossy Bottom John) – To Sherlock’s dismay, John’s return to Baker Street with Rosie is only temporary. Sherlock’s daily visits to Regent Park with John and Rosie illuminate his lost childhood memories and missed opportunities. But with each trip to the park, Sherlock also feels a growing sense of hope. That is until the past horrors return unexpectedly in a cryptic note folded in the shape of a heart. To decipher the message, Sherlock must uncover the nature of the hearts around him, including his own.

An Acquired Taste by kinklock (E, 31,059 w., 4 Ch. || Vampires AU || Vampire Sherlock, Misunderstandings, Bat!Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Humour, Magical Realism, Fluff and Angst, Blood Drinking, Holmes Family, Slow Burn) – At Montague Street when Sherlock was forced to sate his body’s needs, he was at least able to wander about the flat as much as he pleased. At Baker Street, it was mini-bags in a mini-fridge and bedroom confinement.

Lucifer's Gardens by ampersand_ch (E, 32,679 w., 12 Ch. || GERMAN VERSION || Romance, Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Murder, Poison / Drugging, Mystery, John Undercover, Academic Club, Therapy, Rituals, Jungian Archetypes, Doctors & Physicians, Grief/Mourning, Esotericism, Hospitals, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, John Falls In Love With Another Man, Jealous Sherlock, Crying, Doctor John, Hand Holding, First Kiss/Time, Mysticism, Hugging, Touching) – John goes undercover for an investigation as a favour to Lestrade in a village in Suffolk. The events surrounding the case awaken deep-seated fears in Sherlock. While John begins to come to a realisation of what he needs in Lucifer's Gardens, Sherlock tries to find a way to reach John – in more ways than one.

The Whore of Babylon Was a Perfectly Nice Girl by out_there (E, 32,897 w., 1 Ch. || Past Drug Use, Blowjobs, Toplock, Mentions of Switching, Rough Sex, Background Cases, Sherlock’s Past, Sherlock’s Sexual History, Experienced Sherlock, Past One Night Stands, Fingering, Cuddling, Possessive Sherlock, Paris Holiday, Bed Sharing, Naked Lie-Ins, Bathing Together, Confessions, Worried Sherlock, Laying in Bed All Day, Meddling Mycroft, Naked Lazy Day) – Sherlock walks into a room and takes all the space right out of it. He does the same inside John's head.

Turn Left at the Park by Glenmore (NR (E), 37,409 w., 28 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting / ASiP Divergence, Case Fic, Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Loneliness, No Mary, Possessive Sherlock, Fluff & Angst, Nightmares/PTSD, Sherlock Saves John, Sherlock Whump-ish, Doctor John) – So what would have happened if John hadn't walked through the park and met Stamford? What if, instead, he walked around the park and just went home?

Guidelines by WithLoweredVoices (M, 43,018 w., 15 Ch. || Winglock || Angels, Fantasy, Angst, BAMF! John, War, Jealous Sherlock, Possessive Sherlock, Jealous John, Falling in Various Ways, Needy Sherlock, Wings) – The Good Soldier, one of the oldest and strongest of the fallen, is offered a bargain: to live as John Watson and to Guide a fledgling archangel so that he will stay on the path of good. Of course, Sherlock Holmes has different ideas about his destiny. Fantasy AU. Warnings for violence, occasional gore, and a whole load of hurt and angst.

A Goose Quill Dipped in Venom by Polyphony (M, 52,748 w., 16 Ch. || Celebrity John AU || Alternate First Meeting, TV Host John, Supermodel Mary, Character Death, Mystery, Romance, Case Fic, First Kiss/Time, Meddling Mycroft, Drug Abuse, Doctor John, PDA, Deductions, POV Sherlock, Toplock, Sexual Tension, Angry/Rough Sex, Hopeful Ending, Asperger’s Sherlock) – Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, is called in to a very ordinary although brutal murder. Something is badly out of tune with the whole scenario and Sherlock finds himself becoming more and more obsessed with the crime - and also with the victim.

Never Change a Running System by Lorelei_Lee (E, 54,246 w., 18 Ch. || Pre-TRF, Romance, Humour, Drama, Sex Toys, Anal, Rimming, Masturbation, Frottage, Blow Jobs, Public Sex, First Kiss / Time, Virgin Sherlock / Loss of Virginity, Accidental Voyeurism, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Experiments, Naive Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock, Possessive Sherlock, Straight With an Exception John, Hand Jobs) – Sherlock discovers his sexuality – with far-reaching consequences for John.

The Thing Is by TSylvestris (E, 56,743 w., 21 Ch. || Case Fic, Dev. Rel., Anal/Oral, Blow Jobs, Meddling Mycroft, Drama, Romance, Humour, Casual Encounters, Pining Idiots, Possessive Sherlock, Orgasm Delay, Rough / Alley Sex, Public Sex, John Whump, Drugged John, Emotional Love Making, Awkward Relationship, Marriage of Convenience, Switchlock, BAMF John) – The problem with living with Sherlock, John thought, was that you never, never, ever knew the significance of anything. Like your flatmate's nose buried in your hair. Whilst you're in bed. Part 1 of Nitroglycerine

The Burning by SrebrnaFH (M, 60,658 w., 24 Ch. || Reverse Reichenbach, Suicide, Depression, Hurt Sherlock / John, Separation, BAMF John, Good Big Brother Mycroft, Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, Fake Character Death, Rescue Mission, Reconciliation / Reunion, Hospitalization, Marriage Proposal, Illnesses, Physical Therapy, Happily Ever After) – Something went very, very wrong. John had seemed, if not happy, then reasonably content with his life. Sherlock had never predicted something like THIS might have happened. Not in his worst nightmares. He was the lousiest friend ever, apparently. At least Mycroft found him something to occupy his mind with, so that he didn't have to go back to 221B and stare at the walls and the chair, where John Watson would never sit again.

Being John Watson-ish by elwinglyre (E, 69,902 w., 17 Ch. || Bodysnatcher AU || Author John, Cranky Sherlock, Angst, Sexual Tension, First Kiss / Time, Falling in Love, BAMF John, Past Soldier John, Feelings, Inside Someone’s Brain, Shy Sherlock, Sherlock Loves John, POV Sherlock, Switchlock, Slow Burn, Internal Dialogue, Mental Turmoil) – When consulting detective Sherlock Holmes steps on one toe too many at a crime scene, he's consigned to a desk job in an archaic office on the seventh-and-a-half floor of the New Scotland Yard. It’s in this bleak office that Sherlock discovers a portal into the mind of renowned author John Watson. Grander than his mind palace, this new wonderland affords Sherlock new vistas of experimentation. To learn more about the mystery behind the portal, Sherlock seeks out and befriends Watson. But then it all goes wrong when others find the secret portal door—including the man whose brain he visits.

Just To Hold You Close by sussexbound (E, 70,841 w., 18 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock POV, ASD Sherlock, PTSD John, Demisexual Sherlock, Bisexual John, Cuddling/Snuggling, Platonic Cuddling, Enthusiastic Consent, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Sexual Tension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddle Negotiations, For a Case Until It Isn’t, Hair Petting, Sexual Negotiation, Anxiety, Trust Issues, Slow Burn, Panic Attacks, Frottage, Hand/Blow Jobs, Referenced Self Harm / Abuse / Suicidal Ideation, First Kiss/Time, Anal) – When a woman is murdered and the last person to see her alive is recently invalided army vet turned reluctant (and prickly) professional cuddler, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes is pulled into a world of intimacy and intrigue he never could have imagined. John is a conundrum and mystery: frank yet reserved, tender yet angry, open yet afraid. Sherlock is instantly drawn into his orbit, and begins to feel and desire things he never has before.

The Vapor Variant by 88thParallel (CanadaHolm) (M, 72,684 w., 18 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-THoB, John Whump, Protective Sherlock, Guilty Sherlock, Anxious/Worried Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Angst with Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD John, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Suspense, Virus, Sick Fic, Big Brother Mycroft) – They stood face to face in the middle of a clearing. The dim light of the moon barely allowed Sherlock to see the glassy terror in John’s eyes and the sweat that glistened off his forehead. His nose was bleeding again, blood dripping in a slow stream from his right nostril. They were both gasping for air, John’s eyes locked on Sherlock’s. There was no recognition there, just wild animal fear. Time stood still for an eternal few seconds, and Sherlock took a shaky breath. “John—”Spell broken, John spun and bolted back into the woods. Still heaving for air, Sherlock took off after him.

Northwest Passage by Kryptaria (E, 95,157 w., 27 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Canadian AU ||  BAMF!John, Canadian John, PTSD, Anal / Oral Sex, Rimming, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Drug Rehab, Falling in Love, Pining Sherlock, Love Confessions, Sherlock’s Violin, Panic Attacks, Switching, Anxious / Protective Sherlock, Hugs for Comfort, Suicide Mentions, Healing Each Other) – Seven years ago, Captain John Watson of the Canadian Forces Medical Service withdrew from society, seeking a simple, isolated life in the distant northern wilderness of Canada. Though he survives from one day to the next, he doesn't truly live until someone from his dark past calls in a favor and turns his world upside-down with the introduction of Sherlock Holmes." Part 1 of Tales from the Northwest

The Cost of a Wish by slashscribe (E, 102,493 w., 12 Ch. || xxxHolic Fusion || Spirits / Ghosts and Magic, Love Confessions, Slow Burn, Soul Mates / Fated Lovers, Adventure, Immortal Sherlock, Powerful John, POV John, Frottage, Wish Granting, Angst with Happy Ending, Nightmares) – John has been plagued by a secret his entire life that has made him feel hopeless until he meets a mysterious, seemingly omniscient man named Sherlock Holmes who owns a wish-granting shop. Their meeting sets off a series of inevitable events that will change the course of both of their lives forever.

The Wedding Garments by cwb (E, 105,390 w., 36 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Alternate Future AU || Alternate First Meeting, Dating / Arranged Marriages, Romance, First Kiss/Time, Heavy Petting, Cuddles, POV Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn / Falling in Love / Dev. Rel., Nervous/Anxious Sherlock, Jealous/Cranky Sherlock, Hiking, Vacation Homes / Honeymoon, Sherlock’s Family, Horny John/Sherlock, Patient John, Massages, Hand Jobs, Assassination Plots, Oral Sex, Case Fic, Emotional Love Making, Bath Time Fun) – This is the story of a young consulting detective who wants nothing to do with marriage and an army doctor who wants to find true love. It's 2020 post-Brexit England and the British government is encouraging arranged marriages. Candidates meet through state-run agencies and date in hopes of finding love (and tax benefits). Sherlock doesn't need or want a spouse, at least not until John Watson shows up. Hesitant to give in to his more carnal urges because of the way they derail his mind, how will Sherlock progress toward the more intimate aspects of a relationship? The answer lies in a very special wedding gift.

The Bang and the Clatter by earlgreytea68 (M, 137,049 w., 37 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Baseball AU || Slow Burn / Dev. Rel., Possessive/Obsessive Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock, Mutual Pining, Body Appreciation, Depression, Closeted Sexuality, Family, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Ogling Each Other, Anxious Sherlock, Panic Attack, Drunkenness, Talk of Forever, Big Feelings™) – Sherlock Holmes is a pitcher and John Watson is a catcher. No, no, no, it's a baseball AU. Part 1 of Baseball

The Adventure of the Silver Scars by tangledblue (NR [M], 142,458 w., 41 Ch. || S3 Fix-It, Post-HLV/ Post-TAB / Canon Compliant, Case Fic, No Baby, Angst, Humour, UST, Slow Burn, Angry John, Reconciliation, Not Nice Mary / Leaving Mary, Dependent Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Caretaker John, Fist Fights, It’s An Experiment, Virgin Sherlock, Dancing, Drugging, John Whump, Pet Names, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Scars) – It’s been thirteen months since Mary shot Sherlock and John finds he’s still pissed off about it. Sherlock had thought everything was settled: John and Mary, domestic bliss. But when John turns up at Baker Street with suitcases, the world’s only consulting detective might not be prepared for the consequences. A new case. Some old scores to settle. Certain danger. Concertos, waltzes, and whisky.

Against the Rest of the World by SilentAuror (E, 151,714 w., 20 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Post-TRF, Hiatus Fic, POV First Person Sherlock, Present Tense, First Kiss/Time, Big Brother Mycroft, Escaping from Capture, Soft Sherlock, Toplock, Insecurity, Infidelity, Travelling, Introspection, Pining Sherlock, Depression, Fantasies, Yearning for the Past, PTSD Sherlock, Suicidal Ideation) – Sherlock has been away from London for nine hundred and twelve days and counting, and has no idea what sort of reception to expect when he finally returns.

Gimme Shelter by SinceWhenDoYouCallMe_John (E, 159,368 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || 70′s Surfer AU || Period Typical Homophobia, Hawaii, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Professional Surfers, Gay John / Sherlock, Angst with Happy Ending, John was a Sailor, Misunderstandings) – All John Watson wants is the feeling of a freshly waxed surfboard under his feet and the hot California sun baking down onto his back. To finally go pro in the newly formed world of professional surfing and leave the dark memories of his past behind him as he rips across the face of a towering blue barrel. To lounge beside the beach bonfire every evening with an ice cold beer tucked into the cool sand beside him and listen to Pink Floyd and the Doors while the saltwater dries in his sun bleached hair. That's all he wants, that is, until the hot young phenom taking Oahu and the Hawaiian shores by storm steps up next to him in the sand in the second round of the 1976 International Surf Competition. (PUBLISHED AS ‘The Sea Ain’t Mine Alone’)

[finsterhund]

A comprehensive guide to Heart of Darkness lost media. Fake, and real

a forward: there appears to be some sort of conflict between Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir. Things Eric speaks about, Fred denies. However Eric generally has proof to support his side of things but Fred never provides such.

I will edit this as I go along. I intend to source things as best I can. I will not post it to a better website until it is adequately sourced.

I’m not currently planning to include press material, promotional renders, alternate releases of the final game, etc. here (yet!! that may change)

The Movie

What we know is true:

Dreamworks was interested in adapting Heart of Darkness as a feature-length computer animated movie. Predominant parties at play were Jeffery Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. They invited several of the devs including Eric to the Dreamworks studio in LA, showed them Prince of Egypt storyboards, and toured them around. The movie was never made and development was never started.

According to Eric, the head of Virgin Interactive, Martin Alper repeatedly went to Paris to bother and harass him to abandon all work on the game and give the movie rights to Katzenberg. Eric didn’t want to throw away all that work and wanted to release the game first. Alper abandoned the team and project soon after, dooming the game to years of development hell as they needed to find a new publisher. Fred claimed that “half of the article (in which Eric discussed this) was incorrect” but never went into detail as to how or why

Rumors:

Even though George Lucas was interested in HoD’s display at several expos, he did not involve himself in any film ideas. It is believed he may have stolen ideas of alien monster designs for use in the Phantom Menace but this can easily just be coincidence and is unfounded.

The movie was not going to be live action despite some fan speculation.

The Pilot Animation/character test

What we know:

In Eric Chahi’s biography he mentions that a small animation studio did contract work of some animation concepts for Heart of Darkness. They were ultimately replaced with what Amazing would go with. This may or may not be associated with the same concepts as when they briefly thought to make the cinematics with 2D bitmaps but it is unclear. Eric states that this pilot was made however and in a demo reel from the studio they mention working with Virgin and Amazing Studio.

Rumors:

Fred said it wasn’t a thing but didn’t clarify.

This might have been the opening cutscene in 2D, or it may have just been character models and test animation. It is currently lost entirely with no actual stills of the thing itself.

Blood

What we know:

Someone untrustworthy but people latch onto this sort of shit said the original version of the game has blood in it. We know from tradeshow footage, digging through the final game’s code, an early build of the game, etc. that if anything the original versions were LESS violent. There is no evidence there was ever blood. Anymore than there’s evidence of the poison berries (which we will get to later)

The Gameboy Advance port

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was going to be ported to the Gameboy advance. According to Frederic Savoir the project was quickly canned due to cartridge costs that Nintendo didn’t want to pay for.

Rumors:

Someone claiming to work on this port said that Infogrames founder Bruno Bonnel wanted the game to have an Adidas promotion and change Andy’s shoes. Fred says this isn’t true, and there’s no evidence that this was ever an actual thing.

The Jaguar Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was briefly considered to be published on the Atari Jaguar. There are internal letters discussing how good of an asset it would be for the console. That’s as far as it ever apparently went.

The fake developer copypasta:

A copypasta of obviously fake ideas that were potentially given from Amazing to this apparent Jaguar dev has been passed around since 2014. This included poison berries that would make Andy explode, fan-theory sorta ideas about how other children perished in the darkland, a magic mirror, and what is very clearly just the maggots from spiritual successor “Limbo”. This individual provided no proof and his story was far from convincing. And no evidence that someone other than the Amazing team themselves having access to official development code from the game has ever been brought forward.

The Saturn Version

What we know:

Before the game ultimately came out for Playstation, it was going to be a timed exclusive for the Sega Saturn with Sega purchasing an exclusivity from Virgin Interactive. This fell through due to Virgin intentionally (according to Eric) throwing a monkey wrench in things and the Saturn was not viable when they were finally able to publish the game after getting picked up by Infogrames.

There is an incomplete playable demo of the first level and first two story cinematics in English and Japanese from the 1996 Toy Tokyo Show. In it there are slight programming differences such as a screen sliding transition animation, the inability for spectres to eat Andy, features cut from the final game involving the shadow dogs that are still mostly present in the final game’s code, and some slight graphical differences.

Frederic said the Saturn was easy for him to program on, and he finished things quickly so it was likely fully playable but no complete copy has been found.

Rumors:

It is unknown if there is a full build of this version of the game for Saturn. The Toy Tokyo Show build is the only publicly known one.

Based on footage from other events it appears to be from after changes were made to spectre sound effects and some behaviors. So this may have been a build from after the game was altered to be “easier” as mentioned by Eric Chahi at the time.

The Phillips CDI Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was offhanded mentioned a handful of times in a few CDI magazines in 1996. But there is no actual evidence the game was actually in development for the console and it was never confirmed in more trustworthy publications. CDI has less evidence than the planning letters of the Jaguar version. A supposed slipcover of a Heart of Darkness CDI CD was supposedly in existence but the guy claiming to have it couldn’t or wouldn’t prove this, with the only evidence appearing as convincing as a fake mock-up photoshop job and CDI websites discussing the final version of the game in full despite providing no evidence development for the console existed in the first place.

The most likely explanation is some idiot at Virgin said “CDI” when discussing this at-the-time secretive project because it would have had to be on a CD-based console and there weren’t that many of them yet at the time and this slip up briefly spread.

The iMac Version

What we know:

There was discussion of a Mac OS version of the game being developed, but nothing about the final product has surfaced online.

There was a page titled “imac” on the official website but the image files weren’t archived.

Heart of Dakness: The Return of Shados

What we know:

A scam artist on indiegogo pretended to be affiliated with Amazing Studio by using stolen assets and copying the kickstarter campaign of a different indie game in an effort to scam HoD fans out of money.

Both Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir collectively agreed that this was a big fat scam.

It got taken down in under 24 hours of its discovery after I personally called the guy out on being a scamming piece of fucking shit and tattled to Fred.

As it was a scam with its only “evidence” being stolen text and doctored fan art and concept art from the original game, it’s very obvious nothing about this mess actually existed.

Delicious meal.

Merchandise (various)

What we know:

There are photos of merchandise, there have been real items show up, and there have been rumors or discussion of potential merchandise. Real confirmed ones include:

The Vicious and Amigo action figures. Given away for contests, at trade shows, sold on the infogrames store, and potentially included as part of a special box set of the French version

The Japanese big box version came with a mousepad. It is different than the round mousepad that also exists. We do not know where the round mousepad originated from. Potentially tradeshows or contests like the other items here.

Playstation controller and memory card. A memory card was sold separate in the UK, and in France a controller and memory card set were sold. Only photo of the set is in Eric’s collection. Memory card has shown up several times online. I own a complete sealed one.

The hat. Given away at press events, potentially worn by team members, and a version was also available on the infogrames store. Only physically existing version documented has the VIRGIN logo on it however so there’s definitely variations

Skateboard and t-shirt. Discussed in contests. Photos in magazines. Have never shown up so far. skateboard may have been available on infogrames store.

Photos exist of a backpack and fanny pack. Eric has these, the only known ones to exist, in his collection. Fred said they were officially released but they have yet to show up.

Rumored Merch:

A blanket. Briefly mentioned as if it genuinely existed on a French forum

Probably more tbh but my memory is shit. As I am writing this it is 2AM

[not-ur-normie]

How to save up stuff in Obey Me

Okay, so let me explaing the title first. In the past couple of days Satoshi-san (the voice actor of Belphie) uploaded a pic on Twitter about the game where he had 1000+ aps and the fandom was shooked. 

Well, i always have at least 2000+ aps, 2.500.000 coins and 400 devil points and i thought everybody is playing the game like this, so i was surprised that it’s not the case. 

Like i just can’t spend that many in a go. 

Let me clarify, that i can save this much because i don’t necesarry obtain the cards in events and i don’t often pull more than three times. I also only gain the SSR cards in the end of the first parts. I have no real many for games, so playing all the events is a super big off to me and i don’t even need that many cards, because i don’t use all of them anyway. I only collect the Mammon cards and those i really like. 

So, about the aps. 

As i said before, i don’t play every event. If i don’t like the cards that much, i only play because of the story and i leave it there after. I have tones of cards, but i am slow at upgradeing them, so when there is an event i don’t play, i go and upgrade the cards instead. (I like Otaku Boot Camps, thanks Levi)

In daily basic i get around 110 aps, i think only from sending ap to friends and collecting the aps from Fridge Missions. There are times when the devs send us like daily 50 or 30 aps ((if i remember right)) and with those we have around 140-160 aps a day i guess. Forgive me if i don’t remember all the options, i just collect everything i can lol. 

If there is no event and i don’t work hard on upgrading a card, i only spend a necessary amout of aps a day. Like i do the “Win a battle (normal) 10/10″, Win a battle normal with 3 stars 15/15″ and if i collected all the devil points i don’t do the “Win a battle (hard) 7/7″ or the “Win a battle (hard) with 3 stars 12/12″ or vice versa. 

Usually, i only do these: 

- Send ap to a friend 3/3

- Meet with a surprise guest 3/3

- Win a battle (normal) 10/10

- Win a battle (normal) with 3 stars 15/15

- Level up a card 3/3

- Go to Jobs and work a job 3/3

- Summon a card in Nightmare 3/3

Seven tasks for the 18 devil points daily. 

I upgrade my cards everyday, so i can play the new levels and i always look at what i need for them to unlock the next little star. Nowadays i need items from the normal level, that’s why i am doing those, but if i need ones from the hard levels, i do those instead of the normal ones. 

So i spend around 75-90 aps i guess? So i still have at least 50 left from a day to save.

Let me clarify, that when i’ve started the game, i was in no way thinking about to save anything and when there were no 2nd season i played all the events out of boredom and only started to save now, that there are new lessons. 

I think that’s about aps. I really can’t help if you wanna do the events and the new lessons at the same time, that’s a little bit more expensive than my way of playing, haha. ((But tbh, let’s be honest, if i could save up real money for OM, i would absolutely do so, but this is my survival kit for no-real-money players.))

About coins. 

I think Mammon very much would want a little from me, lol. I can’t say a lot about this to be honest; go and send the boys to have some work and gain some money for you. You also get at least a few thousand if you play battles. 

I gain at least around 50.000 a day (it’s much more usually, but i always gain this much), and i most likely spend at least half of it to upgrade cards. Sometimes the whole amount. I try to save up some, if i’ve just started upgrading a card, bc a new card is cheaper at the begining. Like you can jump from 0 to the 10th level for how many? 2000+ or so. That’s not much and you already have one task done with that. 

Devil Points.

As i mentioned before with seven tasks done, you get 18 daily, sometimes you get 3-5 for login and completing stuff in the total. Tbh, i never spend dps for stuff for the boys. It’s really rare, i usually use those that they bring from work or i got from events or from the item section with cards. I recommend you spending ravens on these stuff instead of dps. (I mean, if you don’t want the demon looks or have them all. I only bought Mammon’s and since then i gained at least 110 back.) Or just pat them.

If i used all my aps, i usually buy a bunch back with dps. For example, if there is an event i like the card, i spend hella lof of aps, so i need to add back some in the end. (I did this when there was no 2nd season, so i could start that without a problem.)

I recommend to have at least 99 all the time so you can buy the level up pack or what when you reach a new level and they gave out some coins, ap, 5 glow sticks and 5 vouchers. I had no problem playing the new levels thanks to the tones of glow sticks i saved with these 99 dp sales. 

Vouchers.

Uh, the most i pulled was 9x10 pull when we could obtain the Mammon UR+. I didn’t get that even after 9x10 pulls, not even the Lucifer one, so since then i never pull more then 5 times, bc i know i cant pull a 10x10 and this way it doesn’t worth it. (I mean, with a 10x10 you get an UR(+), but i never managed to pull that unfortunately.) Most of the time i pull 3 time/event. There are events i am not even pulling. It was a pain in the ass to gain back all the vouchers and dps i wasted, so never again. 

((That’s totally possible tho to save up 100 dvs and pull a 10x10, but i always use mines and then not manage to gain back before an UR i want, lol. Yeah 100% my mistake, i know.))

As i said, i am always gaining 5 with the level up 99dp sale. I think that’s the ultimate way of gaining vouchers, you get five for 99dp, when 1 cost 30 (? i hope i am right) in other way. So it totally worths it. 

Also, you can exchange ravens for vouchers, which is a really good way too. 

Hmm, i guess that’s it. That’s how i play. Basically all i do is to save up stuff for those events i really like, and then start again. I would like to highlight again, that i am more invested in the main story than in the events, so that makes things easier. 

I hope it helped at least a little to somebody. If you have any other recommendations i would like to hear them! Thanks for coming to my TED talk, lol.

((Sorry for my English in advance, it's not native.))

[theonyxpath]

Wooo! The Kickstarter for V5 Cults of the Blood Gods is going live tomorrow (or today depending when you read this), Tuesday, December 17th at 2pm Eastern US time! We’re doing this Kickstarter in order to create a traditionally printed book that we’ll print and deliver to backers and overprint more books in order to get Cults into stores!

Here are some of the highlights of the book, provided to me by developer Matthew Dawkins:

•           An in-character breakdown of the rise of esoteric beliefs among the ranks of the undead and how faith drives many of the major aspects of vampire culture.

•           A host of religions — from historic theocracies and globe-spanning conspiracies to fringe cults and mortal beliefs arising in the modern nights — introduced for incorporation into your character backgrounds or as supporting casts and antagonist groups in your chronicles.

•           The history, structure, and ambitions of the Hecata, the vampire group known as the Clan of Death, as well as a chapter dedicated to playing a vampire among the Necromancers, and the rituals for their Discipline: Oblivion.

•           Guidance on how to use ecclesiastical horror and construct cults in Vampire, making them a vivid backdrop for your own stories, including new coterie styles focused on cult play.

•           Faith-based story hooks and a full story centered on the activities of the Hecata, involving walking corpses, ghosts, ready-made characters, and the secrets of the most twisted family in the World of Darkness.

•           New Loresheets, Discipline powers, and Predator types for inclusion in your chronicles, encouraging player characters to engage fully with the material presented in this book.

Visually, as folks will see when the KS page goes live, it’ll be a gorgeous book featuring much of the same qualities and artists as V5 Chicago By Night.

Just fair warning: we continue to look for methods to cut shipping costs outside the US, yet the shipping for V5 Cults of the Blood Gods has shipping costs in line with our more recent KSs this whole year, rather than the shipping costs we were working with when we KS’d V5 Chicago By Night.

As I’ve mentioned before, we know the costs are high, but they are the costs quoted to us from our shippers here in the US, and passed on to backers. I continue to think it better to give our non-US backers a choice as to whether to back and pay the shipping costs and be part of the KS (including getting Stretch Goals, and all), rather than Onyx just not shipping outside the US as many TTRPG companies have decided to do with their KSs.

Basically, shipping costs are high, and they suck. We will keep searching for avenues that could cut those costs – never fear!

CofD Dark Eras 2 art by Alex Sheikman

Here are some brief nuggets of things we want you to know about this week, besides the V5 Cult of the Blood Gods Kickstarter:

If you haven’t seen the promos on our social media, Onyx Path is part of DTRPG‘s Teach Your Kids To Game sale! You can get the Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau core book PDFs half-off! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/rpg_teachkids.php

When I was at PAX Unplugged I sat down for an interview about art directing for TTRPGs in general, how I got started art directing for White Wolf, how art directing has changed since then, and specifically how I went about devising the look and feel and artistic style of Mage: The Ascension first edition and how the look evolved from edition to edition.

As is typical for me with interviews, I absolutely have no idea how it went. Like, did I talk too much, did I answer their questions at all interestingly, did I reveal too much? But I got a lot of really nice comments from folks about the Werewolf one, so hopefully this one sounds good to y’all. Thanks, Terry!http://magethepodcast.com/index.php/2019/12/14/mage-noir-with-matt-webb-and-the-art-of-mage-with-rich-thomas/

Lunars art by Gunship Revolution

Finally, we spent a lot of time setting up what everybody will be doing for the next couple of weeks, as today’s Monday Meeting was our last one for the year! From here until after New Years, we’re trying to give folks enough space to handle the holidays, while we still have projects rolling at full speed!

In fact, it’s not uncommon for freelancers – which is what the vast majority of our creators are – to use holidays to really dive into their freelance projects. Certainly, I always did that when I was freelance illustrating. Having a deadline is a great reason for ducking out on a long family event! (Not that I do that any more!)

But, never fear, true believers!

I’ll still be assembling the next two weeks’ Monday Meeting Notes with updates and Kickstarter news, and with some short year-end focused content! We just aren’t having the Monday Meetings those weeks.

And, of course, we hope all of you have happy holidays and plenty of time for playing in our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

V5 Cults of the Blood Gods goes live at 2pm Eastern US time on Tuesday December 17th!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast Is our Holiday Special 1: Podbean Live Test Episode! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Just because it’s the holiday season doesn’t mean we’re stopping with our gaming streams! This week we’ve got Vampire: The Masquerade, Trinity Continuum, Scarred Lands, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Dreaming, and Mage: The Awakening, and we’ll undoubtedly be dropping a surprise stream or two into the mix as well!

Subscribe to twitch.tv/theonyxpath to keep up with our streams as and when they happen!

As ever, we’ve got a lot of YouTube content coming up too. This week, expect to see an interview regarding Pugmire and Dystopia Rising: Evolution, actual plays of Changeling: The Lost and Aberrant, and a behind-the-screen special for Scion!

Subscribe to youtube.com/user/theonyxpath to catch up on all our content!

Matthew Dawkins – The Gentleman Gamer – continues with his Gentleman’s Guide to Scion over on his channel, and will be doing a few V5 Cults of the Blood Gods videos too!

Subscribe to him on youtube.com/user/clackclickbang right here!

Mage: The Podcast recently had occultist S Rune Emerson walk through the history of Tarot and the symbology of the Mage the Ascension Tarot: http://magethepodcast.com/index.php/…-rune-emerson/

A group of podcasters and Storyteller Vault writers are looking for input on what kind of publications and podcasts WoD and CoD fans would like to see in 2020. If you complete their survey, you can be entered into a drawing for a $200 DriveThruRPG gift card. The survey is available here: bit.ly/wodcodsurvey2019

Here’s Occultists Anonymous returning with two new episodes

Episode 64: Small Details As the cabal waits to hear back about a meeting with the Union, Atratus begins to research vampires, Wyrd develops her labyrinth, and Songbird makes a phone call. https://youtu.be/UoyrYH_PM3A

Episode 65: Ignorant Fools   The cabal take the lead in meeting with the Union on behalf of the Phantasm Society, and perhaps many other supernatural beings trying to lay low. https://youtu.be/8sTnubeBl44

Red Moon Roleplaying recently concluded their Mummy: The Curse actual play and are currently running a Changeling: The Lost chronicle!  You can subscribe to their YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1wvSKstApo9vYYq1wEDtmQ

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we are proud to announce the PDF and physical book PoD versions of the Aeon Aexpansion for Trinity Continuum: Aeon, a collection of additional material that came out of the Kickstarter, including:

Information about new noetic biotech, hardtech cyberware, military weapons, and other technologies of the early 22nd century.

Rules for creating and playing psiad and superior characters within the Trinity Continuum.

Rules for playing psions in the modern day setting of the Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook.

And more…

Plus we’re also releasing the Trinity Continuum Aeon Screen in PDF – all on DriveThruRPG

Conventions!

2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI. Check out David Fuller’s Athens, Ohio Scion actual play tie-in adventure (soon to be coming to the Storypath Nexus community content site) that will be running at Midwinter. The event url is below: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020/schedule/402

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Contracted.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – LeBlanc working away.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Contracted.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Ready for KS.

Mummy 2

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Art notes and contracts finishing going out this week.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Rich doing artnotes.

Scion Mythical Denizens – Finals coming in soon.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Totally contracted.

Vigil Watch – Wrapping up AD stuff this week.

Legendlore (KS)

Technocracy Reloaded (KS)

In Layout

Chicago Folio – On it.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds – Haven’t forgotten it.

Pirates of Pugmire – With Aileen.

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – Off to WW this week for approval.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

M20 Book of the Fallen – Getting it to PoD this week.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Approval needed, then Backer PDF out to backers.

VtR Spilled Blood

At Press

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers. PoD proofs ordered.

Aeon Aexpansion – PDF and PoD versions on sale on Weds at DTRPG!

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Being printed.

Geist 2e Screen – Being printed.

DR:E – Being printed.

DRE Screen – Being printed.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity RMCs

Tales of Good Dogs – PoD proof ordered.

Memento Mori – Backer PDF going out to backers soon.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Today is the birthday of Wassily Kandinsky, a painter born in 1866 whose later paintings after WWI were completely abstract. Now most of our illustrations depict things rather than going for abstractions, but how they depict them stylistically, and why different people respond to the different approaches our illustrators use, is part of creating the moods inherent to our various game lines. There’s something else going on in our brains when we see art beyond just IDing that the piece looks like a thing, and Kandinsky was creating abstract art intended to evoke sound and meaning because he supposedly had a direct link to that part of the brain. According to popular thinking, he was one of those rare people who “hear color” and “see pictures” when he listening to music. There’s not really medical proof he indeed had synaesthesia, as it’s called, but he did recall hearing a strange hissing noise when mixing colours in his paintbox as a child, and later became an accomplished cello player, which he said represented one of the deepest blues of all instruments.

[advrik]

What the Nintendo Switch Means to Me

As I sit here in my kitchen in order to keep a close eye on the ground beef and sausage as it browns in preparation for dinner (it's spaghetti night), I have been working it out in my head how and why my gaming habits have changed over the years and how I ended up championing the Nintendo Switch and nothing else.

And then it hit me.

But before that, I would like to delve just a little bit into my gaming past that, at least in my head, makes sense why I am the way I am today.

It started in 1994. My grandmother got me the OG Gameboy+Zelda: Links Awakening bundle for Christmas. Pretty awesome, right? Finally game console that I could call my own. But it didn't end there, for Christmas Eve night my older brother passed on his three year old SNES to me as he was moving out in the new year and wanted it to remain safe. I was ecstatic. Here I was, seven years old and suddenly in possession of a Gameboy AND a SNES. A handheld and console, two separate entities that played two different types of games.

Now leading up to Christmas that year, I was regularly using my brothers (former) SNES and has asked Santa for the Super Gameboy for Christmas, so I could play some of my brothers old Gameboy games that has been lying around the house. I got one and still own it to this very day, but it was reviecing the Gameboy as well that likely lit the flames for what would become my modern day gaming preferences.

Being able to play Links Awakening both on the TV in my bedroom and in the big comfy recliner in the living room was amazing, and while it didn't tickle me as anything more than just playing a video game at the time, in hindsight it was where it all began.

Time went on and the Gameboy Color happened, and while I did enioy the majority of Pokémon Red on my SNES and on the go with the red Gameboy Pocket, I lost out on playing gen 2 of Pokémon and many, many Gameboy Color exclusive titles, including two Harvest Moons, on account of just not being able to get a GBC.

Fast forward to the Summer of 2003. I am in possession of a Gameboy Advance after having received one from my parents for Christmas in 2001, which was just like having a SNES in my hands. It was incredible, but I longed to be able to play the likes of Mega Man Battle Network and the Breath of Fire 2 port on my TV.

Enter the Gameboy Player for the Gamecube.

This thing was a godsend. It played everything! Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, you name it. It existing had, albeit satiateing it for the time, form the need for a hybrid console. One that didn't require two components, but was a single piece of hardware that easily hooked up to the television without additional peripherals and consoles.

The Gameboy Player served its purpose perfectly and had seen much use, particularly in those times when I was wanting to watch something on TV or had gone on trips, but didn't want to miss any time spent on my farm in Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town.

I have for much of my life been a console gamer. I preferred the console experience over the smaller handheld experiences on account of how scaled back they tended to be in scope and gameplay. But as I aged, and I can pinpoint exactly when this transition started, my preferences in how I played began to change. Namely with the advent of the 3DS which gave console-like experiences in compact form and my getting a job in early 2014. I was finding myself increasingly agitated with the PS3 and Wii U games that I played, leaving many unfinished because I was feeling like I was wasting my time doing just this one thing and nothing else. My time had become limited due to work, and I was falling behind on movies and seasons of TV shows. 

The pick up and play nature of handhelds jived with what I was becoming. I could be watching a movie and put the 3DS down halfway through, then pick it up again towards the end. Not for any particular reason, but just because I could. I didn’t get this ability with home consoles, and it annoyed me more and more as time went on.

Things really hit a low point after I got my PS4 in 2015. I was buying games left and right because, I’ll be honest, it had a lot to offer and catered to my interests. But you know what? I wasn’t finishing anything. At one point I had around 30 games for it, with only a fraction of them having been completed. It was crazy agitating. I couldn’t focus on anything, partly because I was constantly thinking about what I could be doing instead of trying to finish this game. My anxiety was getting worse, not just because of my gaming habits mind you, but they contributed. Here I had this huge stack of games that were unfinished with no desire to play them because I couldn’t focus.

There was a point in 2016 where I went a solid 6 months without playing anything on my brand new PS4, instead choosing to focus on reading outside. I felt enlightened. All the while, I had my New 3DS XL and Animal Crossing New Leaf on me, which I would pick up and play here and there between chapters. It was magical and really made me wonder what my gaming future looked like if designated consoles were on the way out for me. Was I going to give up on gaming entirely? It definitely felt like it.

Enter Nintendo once again.

Being utterly disappointed with the Wii U and feeling like the 3DS had reached its peak. I was unsure of where they were going next, but the rumors of a console that was either to have both a handheld and a console version or design that was hybrid in nature sounded very promising, but with the support Nintendo had lost during the Wii U era, what exactly could I expect on such a device.

October 2016 saw the reveal of the Nintendo Switch; A hybrid handheld home console that could be played at home on the TV or on the go on a big, beautiful 720p screen. It was everything I could have hoped for all these years. A culmination of not only their stellar console exploits, but also their handheld department which had given the world the most therapeutic game in the world. 

Was I finally going to get the console experiences that I craved in a handheld form factor?

I can definitely say yes. Yes. Yes. A million times yes!!

The big reveal event in January 2017 spilled all details, setting the stage for a March 3rd 2017 release. I was ecstatic! I stayed up until 3am to nab a pre-order on Amazon, then headed out to Gamestop the following morning after only 3 hours of sleep to wait in line for the doors to open so that I could be first in line to get a backup pre-order in the event that something happened to my Amazon order.

The wait for the release was agonizing, but when the day finally came and I took off that weekend from work, it was amazing. Spending time with Breath of the Wild and Super Bomberman R are some of my favorite recent gaming memories. 

The concerns over what kind of support it might see didn’t last long, as third party devs saw the success and positive word of mouth revolving around Nintendo’s hybrid machine and started spitting out releases and announcements left and right. I knew I was putting all my eggs in one basket, but I just knew that I was making the right decision. I could feel it, this was going to be big.

I sold off the majority of my PS4 games, and gave the console and the few Resident Evil games that stayed behind to my sister. It was a tough decision in the end, but I don’t regret doing so at all now. Having to keep up two consoles would have just added to the stress and anxiety that just keeping my PS4 around was causing, so I did - as I always do, no matter how painful - what was best for myself, my mental state and my wallet and did away with the PS4.

Now more than two years later, 100+ Switch games finished and my collection growing what seems like weekly with games I never imagined I’d see on a Nintendo console or even re-released in this day and age. To put it lightly, the Switch and its form factor has been an absolute blessing and one I would not give up for anything in the world. Nintendo combining their handheld and home console ventures into one was brilliant idea and one I hope they don’t ever, EVER backtrack on.

In the time since this all unfolded, I’ve modded my dock so that I never have to remove my Switch from the Satisfye Pro Grip, meaning that there’s no extra steps between removing my Switch from the dock and slipping its grip on. It’s magical and has further increased my ability to just pick up and play, something I hadn’t seen since the days of the OG 3DS and its charging cradle.

So thank you Nintendo, and especially thanks to Satoru Iwata for brainstorming this beautiful device that the technical wizards of Nintendo saw through with and made a success, because without it, I can say most confidently that I would not be playing games today had it not happened.

[wolfliving]

More dishing the dirt on WeWork

*I’m inclined to cast an eye on the board of directors and especially the oligarch-style investors, who had it figured that they would dominate the eventual market if they just out-spent all the competition.  Who cares if the eccentric start-up guy did yoga and drank tequila?  That should’t make any difference to the worth of the company.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/why-wework-was-destined-fail/598891/

(...)

Co-working, the service WeWork provides, is just a fancy name for a shared office. It has been around for ages—the multinational Regus has rented offices by the month and conference rooms by the hour since 1989, for example. But in 2005, the software engineer Brad Neuberg reinvented the idea for the burgeoning tech economy. Co-working fused the individualism of tech bootstrapping with the collectivism of social movements. Offices got sharded into realms as small as one desk—every founder his own sovereign, but all contributing to that great collective: entrepreneurship.

The dot-com era had been formally corporate and exceedingly costly—all that money got spent on expensive office build-outs. Companies often bought their own racks of servers, connected to the internet on pricey leased T3 lines, running expensive Oracle software. The next time around, tech would grow on efficiency—and by disconnecting itself from the burdens, and expenses, of the bricks-and-mortar world. By 2006, Amazon had started selling access to the infrastructure it had built to run its website, marketed as Amazon Web Services (AWS). The “cloud” industry, now worth hundreds of billions of dollars, turned all that infrastructure into a scalable, just-in-time service accessible to anyone. Co-working lured and then bred those anyones, blending their capitalist and bohemian ambitions.

The early co-working spaces looked more like flophouses than offices, but after the Great Recession, the idea both flourished and corporatized. WeWork then took the appeal of co-working spaces and turned it into a viable, holistic solution for businesses of all kinds. Leasing office space, especially in major cities such as New York or San Francisco, is difficult and expensive. Like AWS had done for servers, WeWork offered flexible, affordable arrangements for one person or 100, easily scalable as needed. Global access, event spaces, and even custom build-outs of entire floors, old-school style, are on offer. But so are “hot desks,” office suites, and, of course, IPA-provisioned pantries.

Read: How WeWork has perfectly captured the millennial id

Unlike most earlier co-working spaces, WeWorks provide operational services—not just catering and reception, but also financial, legal, IT, and all the other plumbing that makes it arduous to start and run a business. This full-service offering appeals to companies large and small, fledgling and flush. Your middle-class Facebook friend with the lifestyle business might have signed on, but so did Slack, a $12 billion public company. WeWork allows both of them to reduce their capital outlay, decrease their operational complexity, and outsource the risks of a physical plant—to one service provider.

This promise helped WeWork swell into a real-estate behemoth. It employs 12,000 people and occupies more than 20 million square feet of office space; last year it became Manhattan’s largest private tenant. The firm, now rebranded The We Company, has raised more than $12 billion in capital and until recently was valued at $47 billion. But in the last year alone, it incurred losses of almost $2 billion; over the past week the company’s valuation was cut to $20 billion, its IPO was postponed, and its co-founder Adam Neumann stepped down as CEO. Profits have eluded the company; now prophets do too. The boutique agencies and app-devs and even unicorns can save costs by outsourcing office services to WeWork, but eventually someone has to pay for all those things. As my colleague Derek Thompson put it, companies like WeWork have been “selling magic shows at a science fair.”

Adam Neumann’s overblown vision for The We Company is both the source of its success and the cause of its problems. Neumann has cited “energy and spirituality” as more relevant metrics for its potential on public markets than measures of its revenue and losses. The company was supposed to reinvent work itself, after all. Neumann’s leadership oversaw massive, rapid growth for the company—but it also seems to have been motivated largely by personal benefit rather than spiritual enlightenment.

The We Company’s Form S-1 outlined a labyrinthine ownership scheme that would have given Neumann more than half of the company’s voting power. Multi-class stock has caused problems for Facebook, Google, and other tech firms, but Neumann’s attitude was more brazen. He used his authority as CEO to pay himself $5.9 million for rights to use the new name, a change he had championed (he later returned the money under pressure of scrutiny before the IPO). He poured tequila shots for employees after announcing layoffs. He bought stakes in real estate that WeWork later leased. He declared WeWork “meat-free” by fiat in 2018, but failed to outline what that meant for its hundreds of offices and thousands of tenants. Rebekah Neumann, a WeWork co-founder and its former CEO’s wife, served as both brand chief and impact officer—a title that underscores the company’s proselytic ambitions—and also as CEO of The We Company’s private elementary school WeGrow, which is charging $42,000 in tuition for this school year (I swear I am not making this up).

Both Adam Neumann and another WeWork co-founder, Miguel McKelvy, grew up, in part, in cooperatives. Neumann spent time on an Israeli kibbutz, and McKelvy on an Oregon commune. Some have speculated that those backgrounds helped draw them to co-working as a business, evangelizing collaboration through collectivism for the digital age. But Neumann, who has reportedly declared that he wants to live forever, has acted in a way that betrays his distaste for common goals and benefits—or at least an interest in them only insofar as they accrue wealth, power, and influence back to him. There’s another name for that kind of collective: It’s called a cult....

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games: Unreal Tournament (Epic Megagames, 1999)

In 2291, in an attempt to control violence among deep-space miners, the New Earth Government legalized no-holds-barred fighting.

291 years earlier, I heard that for the first time.  Unreal Tournament begins with a narrated flythrough explaining two very simple things:  there is a Tournament, and you are going to win it.  After the lonely melancholy of Unreal, that's a pretty abrupt pivot.  Why, after getting through most of the 90s with platformers, pinball, and fighting games, did Epic Megagames barrel in headfirst to the multiplayer arena shooter market, a playground run exclusively by industry already-giant id Software?

Because they wanted to.

As I mentioned in the Unreal essay, that game's multiplayer was a fun shell filled with horrible, horrible problems.  Epic set to fixing it, but realized that beyond some quick and dirty surface-level patches, there wasn't a lot they could do within the same scope.  So they broke away from a simple expansion pack and landed on creating a full separate release by the name of Unreal Tournament.

Unreal Tournament, UT99 from now on, was released on November 23, 1999, to an almost absurd level of praise.  Quake 3 Arena, id’s latest offering in the Quake franchise and first multiplayer-only title, would come out just over a week later on December 2, pitching the two games into a deathmatch of their own which still rages to this day almost 20 years later.

Let's talk about Quake a bit.  Shooters, up until around the time the first Quake came out and probably still after that, were commonly referred to as ‘Doom clones’ because, well, many were.  Any unambitious dev could buy an engine license, whip up some sprites on a lunchbreak, and ship a game.  There's a parallel to be drawn between that era and the current ongoing avalanche of Unity and Unreal asset flips, but you can turn to others for opinions on all that.

Quake was, famously, id Software’s followup to Doom 2, and an early frontrunner of fully-3d shooters.  It was so popular and noteworthy that it even caused the term Doom Clone to fall away in favor of Quake Clone.  Quake expanded the popularity of online play, and saw the creation of the some of the first AI bots made exclusively for deathmatch.  Quake 2 came along not too far after and pulled in even more interest.  If you remember from my Unreal essay, that was when it grabbed my own interest, and I became a frequent over-the-shoulder spectator of many a Quake 2 deathmatch.

But then, UT99.  When I first played Unreal Tournament, I was blown away.  By the bots.  Meaning that they killed me a lot.  I was very bad at it.  I didn't even strafe back then, just ran forward and turned with the mouse.  But I learned.

UT99 is actually quite an accommodating game.  Bots have 9 skill levels ranging from drooling idiot to a fittingly-named godlike, and I remember bumping them up a level at a time over the years.  UT’s bots were one of its largest selling points back then, and the cornerstone of the Tournament part of its name.

The titular Tournament in Unreal Tournament is a series of botmatches of increasing difficulty over the game’s five primary gamemodes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Domination, and Assault.  A final series of three 1v1 matches caps off the Tournament, the third of which pits you against the Big Bad Reigning Champ, a robot named Xan Kriegor.  

There were a handful of firsts in that short bit, so let's take a look.

As stated, Quake 2 was the de facto king of online shooters at the time.  But Quake 2, for all its fame, only had three gamemodes available: deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag.  Unreal had dabbled with alternative styles of deathmatch and team deathmatch, but all of them were, more or less, the same gamemode, save one.  In a unique take on King of the Hill, the first player to score a kill got a permanent damage boost until they were killed, at which point that buff was transferred to their killer.  Killing the King awarded more points, matches were first to X points, you get the idea.  RtNP added Cloak Match, a take on this KotH concept where instead of a damage boost, players fought for permanent partial invisibility and infinite jump boots.

Unreal Tournament was a little more ambitious than just reflavoring deathmatch, however.  Domination used its own unique rotation of maps centered around controlling three points.  Your team scores one point per every couple of seconds, per point held.  Touching a point is enough to flip control of it to your side, and the result is a fun, frantic match with enough additional focus to guide it away from just another deathmatch.  Map control becomes something more than just controlling various weapon spawns, and demands you keep your attention between the three points.  Random respawns instead of near your team’s current territory and the instant capture of points meant the game never ground down to just being spawncamped, and helped reduce the prevalence of one-sided victories.  Domination was great, the extra effort put in to creating its own category of maps was great, and games today still use the gamemode.  That said, Destiny 2 really needs to make capture instant and not have you sit around for 5 seconds in a tiny room, like come on.

Domination may have been new for the time, and DM, TDM, and CTF made their own waves that I'll get into later, but Assault is what really caught people's attention.  Assault was an attack and defense mode where one team was tasked with completing a series of varied objectives, while the defenders tried to stop them.  The most similar thing we get in games now is pushing a cart down a predetermined path in TF2 or Overwatch.  Payload gamemodes in those games are similar in the sense that one team must progress down a path to get to a specific location, and I suppose it might come across as a streamlining of the idea, but Assault is just more interesting.  

UT99 shipped with seven Assault maps, and each one presented a different scenario.  Assault was not just replacing the objective on an existing map, the same as Domination had its own maps.  Each one had a little story it presented, from the attempted hijacking of a supersonic train, assaulting an ancient fortress on an alien planet, sabotaging an underwater research facility, stealing a Navy battleship, escaping a medieval castle, destroying an experimental battle tank, and even a recreation of the D-Day landing.  Assault maps varied in how linear they were, with maps like Guardia, HiSpeed, and Overlord being fairly straightforward, to the more open-ended OceanFloor and Rook.  It was, by design, an asymmetrical experience, but that design went so far as to change in-level as the attackers pushed further and further in.  On HiSpeed, for example, the attackers start in a helicopter hovering over the rear of the train, and drop down largely uncontested.  There's a full car where they can grab weapons and powerups, and then they reach where the defenders have spawned.  

As objectives are met and various places in the map are reached by the attackers, spawn points start to change.  On the same map, attackers spawn with a serviceable loadout of shock rifles and pulse guns (we'll get to the weapons later), both good options for the mixed-distance encounter they'll be facing as they move towards the next car.  The defenders, however, spawn with access to flak cannons and rippers, which in the close quarters of the car’s interior are absolutely brutal.  Once the attackers push far enough in to it, though, that car becomes their spawn point and the defenders are moved further back, thus giving the attackers access to those weapons for the next part of the map.  

The same sort of design echoes throughout all seven Assault maps, and it creates a varied and frantic experience that was new at the time and still hasn't really been copied.  The feeling of actually taking part in an event in the game’s world added so much to even the relatively sparse setting, and it remains a great example of an excellent piece of very quiet but highly effective worldbuilding.

The other gamemodes were again, team and free-for-all deathmatch, and as standard as that was at the time, UT99 made some weighty impressions on the genre.  At the time of Quake 2’s release, it was common practice to just repurpose singleplayer campaign levels as the multiplayer maps.  Quake 2 would get its own suite of maps designed explicitly for multiplayer later in its life, and Unreal shipped with 14 multiplayer-only maps, with a further 9 added later as free updates.  UT99 shipped with multiple dozens of maps, each one presenting a different take on design and execution.  You have a standard collection of flat-ish arenas, some truly impressive vertical design, maps with stage hazards, big maps, small maps, maps with areas of low gravity, and maps with secret passages leading to hidden weapon spawns.  A handful of Unreal’s maps were even remade for UT99, and two in particular became series mainstays - Deck 16 and Curse.  Both are still thought of as iconic maps, and for very good reason.  They're well-balanced and play to the strengths of the game they're in while also, going back to Unreal’s bit here, feeling like they're a real space.

Because while UT99 may be a multiplayer-only fragfest with no real story, it has lore.  

The opening narration is just a small bit of fluff, but it sets up a whole lot that the various designers had a ton of fun expanding on.  Official weapon descriptions in the manual talk about the (in-game) real-world applications of each, and even set some up as not even being explicitly for combat.  The Translocator, a personal teleporter by way of launching tiny disks, is a repurposed tool given to miners to help escape cave-ins.  The GES Biorifle is a vacuum cleaner for toxic sludge instead of dust.  The Impact Hammer is a jackhammer but sideways.  The in-universe justification for those few weapons doesn't mean anything to the gameplay, but given that the Tournament was set up by Liandri Mining Corporation, it adds a bit of fun sense-making to the whole thing.

Maps, too, are part of that lore package.  Each map throughout the Tournament ladder has a short description, and it's almost always about what this particular arena’s place in the world is.  Most boil down to “this is a site built for the Tournament” or “Liandri bought this and made it a Tournament arena,” but it's about the tiny details hidden in the lines.  Deck 16 is a toxic sludge refinery, but it's also a single deck of the spaceship Gaetano, rented out to Liandri whenever it's in drydock.  Curse is an ancient temple that was an archaeological site until Liandri bought it after funding ran out.  Arcane Temple is a Nali worship site on Na Pali left abandoned after the Skaarj invaded.  Oblivion is a Liandri passenger ship that tricks Tournament entrants by being their first arena.  Hyperblast, the final stage of the Tournament, is Xan Kriegor’s personal spaceship made specifically to be an arena.  

The whole thing paints the Liandri Mining Corporation as this quirky half-malicious corporate giant, as big and influential as any sci-fi megacorp but out of an innocent love for their decidedly not-innocent game.  It's a world where humanity spent seven days on the brink of destruction at the hands of the Skaarj, where the Corporation Wars tore entire planets apart, and where despite that everyone can get over it, crack some beers, and watch people blow each other away on live television, kept safe by technology that respawns them within seconds.

Character backgrounds, too, drop hints in their two to three sentence lengths.  The bots you fight against or with all have tiny snippets of who they are, making reference to revolts, arrests, rebellions, other worlds, secret government experiments, and revenge.  

The important thing to take away from this is that all of this was put in but none of it had to be.  It doesn't affect the game and it's not even immediately noticeable unless you let every map and character description load before entering a Tournament match.  Just going to map select for a practice session/instant action game doesn't show the same descriptions, so you have to go through the singleplayer ladder.  It's work put in that shows a genuine and earnest excitement for the world the devs had created, and I still get a smile thinking about it.  Unreal Tournament is such a weird celebration of every gritty science fiction trope, but turns them all on their heads to create a world for this game that feels exactly as expansive as it isn't.  Because Unreal Tournament doesn't have anything to do with the lore it hides in all these corners, it's just a multiplayer shooter with no story beyond “kill better than the other guys.”  And boy do they ever make that part feel great.

For better or worse, Wolfenstein 3D cemented FPS weapon progression.  Ever since and with only a few minor alterations here and there, the loadout progression is melee weapon, bad pistol, automatic weapon, shotgun (though those sometimes switch position), a better version of one or both of those, some kind of explosive option, sniper rifle (that was a later addition), and then a superweapon of some kind.  From Doom to Quake to our old nemesis Half-Life to our slightly newer nemesis Halo to Call of Duty, you get those weapons in roughly that order.

So let's talk about Unreal again for a second.  I didn't mention that game's weapons because I wanted to bring the whole discussion in at once, but it does require me to go back in time a year and talk about where the series landed on its own weapons.  The first thing to know about Unreal is that it was not immune to the Holy Progression of Gun, but it did make some incredibly noticeable changes.  Unreal saw a videogame gun, famous for being a thing you can left click on men with, and asked “what if you could also right click on men?”

I'm moving a rough sort of progression, so be aware that this is only the general order you get these guns in.  In Unreal, the first weapon you pick up is the Dispersion Pistol, a projectile-firing semi-auto gun that doesn't do a whole lot of damage.  One fun thing about it is that its projectiles cast a real-time light on the environment so you can use it as a way to peek into dark areas before going in them with your vulnerable body.  But another thing about the Dispersion Pistol is its alt fire, where you hold down the right mouse button to charge up a shot which then acts essentially as a rocket launcher shot - it deals better damage, it deals splash damage, and it can gib enemies.  In-universe, the Dispersion Pistol is a Skaarj weapon, and you can also find hidden upgrades for it that boost the damage of both firemodes at the cost of taking more ammo per shot.  Luckily, as your holdout weapon, the Dispersion Pistol recharges its ammo passively.  

The second weapon you get is the automag, a basic hitscan pistol.  Primary fire shoots a fairly accurate shot, alt fire has you hold the gun sideways to increase the fire rate at the cost of accuracy.  It's dumb and I love it to this day.

Third up, the Tarydium Stinger, a projectile-based minigun with an alt fire that acts as a projectile shotgun.  Here's where the lines start to get a bit blurred, but we're not totally out of the usual progression just yet.  

After the Stinger you get the ASMD Shock Rifle, a famously curious gun that, as its primary fire, shoots a hitscan beam, and shoots a fast-moving projectile orb as its alt fire, trading perfect precision and speed for a little bit of splash damage.  The thing about it is that if you shoot the orb with the beam you get a giant explosion that does an absolute ton of damage.

Moving from that piece of sweet hardware brings us to the GES Biorifle, a rapid-fire goop-throwing mine layer with a charged shot as its alt fire.  

Then, the Eightball Launcher, a rocket launcher that has not two but four firemodes.  Click primary fire to shoot a rocket, fast moving and with splash damage.  Hold primary fire to charge up to six rockets that fire in a spread pattern, or click alt fire while charging to shoot them in a spiral formation.  Also, you can get a mild lock-on effect by holding your mouse cursor over an enemy for about half a second.  Alt fire is the same as primary but with grenades - click alt fire once to lob one, hold to charge up to six.  The grenades bounce around for a set period of time, and also blow up on contact with an enemy.  

Then possibly the series’ most famous weapon, the Flak Cannon.  Primary fire is a projectile-based shotgun that fires individual shards that bounce around the environment for a bit, allowing you to fire around corners or even up at the ceiling to bank a shot over cover.  Alt fire is another grenade launcher, though this one fires its shells at a shallower angle, a higher velocity, has a smaller up-front splash radius, and still creates little bits of flak that bounce around for a short time.  This gun is my and many other people’s favorite gun in videogames.

The Razorjack is a strange gun that fires disks that bounce around the environment at scarily high velocities, and even have the ability to decapitate enemies if you hit their head, a useful feature in the Skaarj-infested levels where you first find it.  Alt fire is a tricky system that lets you influence the path the disk takes, though its high velocity, bad turning radius, and small size makes “influence” a more appropriate word than “guide.”

Next is the Rifle, a high-powered hitscan primary fire with an alt fire that zooms in.  Headshotting enemies decapitates them but other than that it's just a sniper rifle, let's move on.

Finally, Unreal has the Minigun, a hitscan bullet-spewing beast that shows up near the end of the game, leaving you with just barely too little time to get to use it as much as you want and also to realize that hey, it's just a minigun.  Primary fire shoots with a short spool-up time, alt fire shoots faster but less accurately.  Unfortunately this does not make you hold the Minigun sideways like the Automag.

So that was Unreal’s loadout, and it made some big waves at the time.  Physics-based projectiles?  Well sure, Quake had the bouncy grenade launcher, but the Flak Cannon and Razorjack made being aware of and using the environment second nature to players.  The ASMD’s ability to produce a BFG shot on demand if you could combo properly was amazing.  And the upgradeable nature of the Dispersion pistol made what was usually a loadout slot reserved for being sad about having to use a legitimate late-game complement to your arsenal.

So it stands to reason that Unreal Tournament barely changed it.

UT99’s arsenal did change a little bit, but not too drastically.  Most changes were to damage or fire rate, and every weapon got a new model.  Some weapons were slightly renamed, like the Automag becoming the Enforcer or the ASMD receiving its full title of ASMD Shock Rifle, the Eightball Launcher was just called the Rocket Launcher, the Rifle became the Sniper Rifle, and the Razorjack was renamed the Ripper.

The next level of changes was tweaking some alt fires.  The biggest change here was the new Ripper losing its guided blade in favor of an alt fire that shot an explosive disk.  Unlike the primary fire, it didn't bounce, and while it had only about half the splash radius of the Rocket Launcher proper, its fire rate and projectile speed were both much faster.  Other than that, the only change to another gun was the Sniper Rifle getting a thematically appropriate overlay when you zoomed in, instead of Unreal’s Rifle not displaying anything.  Additionally, because it seems to fit here more than the next bit, if you manage to find another Enforcer lying on the ground, you can pick it up and dual wield.  It's pretty rad.

Larger changes came in the removal of both the Stinger and the Dispersion Pistol, and the addition of the Impact Hammer, Pulse Gun, and the series’ first superweapon, the Redeemer.

I'm personally a bit conflicted about trading the Stinger out for the Minigun.  On one hand, UT99’s Minigun is a great piece of visual design - massive, chunky, and bold, with the added flair of seeing your arm holding onto a forward grip to really sell the vibe of that one scene in Predator.  On the other hand, there's something to be said about a projectile weapon over a hitscan one, especially since so many high-powered hitscan weapons exist in the game already.  But at the same time, UT99 does have an answer to the automatic projectile weapon, the Pulse Gun.

The Pulse Gun should be instantly familiar to anyone with a passing understanding of id Software’s early titles.  Primary fire is just the Pulse Rifle from Doom, and alt fire is the Thunderbolt from Quake.  But put together, married in this suitcase-sized brick of green polygons?  A thing of beauty.  

Let me at least address the Impact Hammer before moving on: it's a melee weapon you can charge up.  It'll kill someone pretty good if you charge it up and manage to make contact.  It has a pretty fun and inspired visual design but ultimately the only reason it's there is because you can run out of ammo with the Enforcer you spawn with.  The end.

Alright, the Redeemer.  The Redeemer is a man-portal nuclear warhead launcher, kind of like the Fat Man from Fallout 3 except way, way cooler.  Primary fire launches a relatively slow-moving projectile that, on contact with anything, explodes in a shockwave that does enough damage to instantly gib anyone without 199 health and a Shield Belt powerup.  It goes through walls, too.  It's a very good superweapon.  Making it better is its alt fire, where you take personal control of the missile as it travels, allowing you to guide it around the map with a surprising degree of maneuverability.  The BFG may have a classic flair, but the Redeemer took the idea of a superweapon to a whole other level.

So how did all of these weapons actually play together?  How did an arsenal designed for and balanced around a singleplayer game with fixed enemy spawns translate to a multiplayer arena?  Quite well, in fact.  Epic didn't design the game in a vacuum, and as Quake 2 was the reigning champ at the time, they didn't have to look far to see what worked and what could be changed for the better.

UT99 plays fast, hard, and unrelenting.  People load into a map and immediately start running around picking up weapons and letting the lead fly.  Now, it's time for my bias to show a bit.  I only ever watched Quake 2 multiplayer, but I have in fact played Quake 3 and Quake Live, as well as a handful of hours of Quake Champions which I know isn't really comparable but it uses the same weapons so I'm still mentioning it.  UT is my series, I have a preference for it, and this next bit is all my own opinion and observation.

Quake only has three weapons.  

Quake is a game where movement is fast, projectiles are fast, and time to kill is fast.  It's a fast game.  But it's so fast that only three weapons end up mattering - the rocket launcher, railgun, and thunderbolt.  They're the three highest-damage weapons in the game and they make up pretty much the entirety of its arsenal.  Quake matches inevitably all play out as taking potshots at each other with rockets as everyone strafejumps around like crazy, switching to the railgun if someone manages to be in the open for more than half a second, and swapping to the thunderbolt if you manage to get close enough that another character model takes up more than a handful of pixels on your screen.  

Quake is a very fast and chaotic game, and I'm not saying that this kind of play isn't skillful, it's just so fast that actual duels never really happen, and people just kind of end up taking damage from one end of the map when they're on the other.  Quake’s other weapons just may as well not exist, because if you find yourself using your starting shotgun, the nailgun, or any other weapon you want to be close for, you're likely doing so in range of someone's Thunderbolt and that's not a race you're going to win.

It's a difficult point to make, so let me move back to UT and why I prefer it.  UT is a small but noticeable bit slower than Quake in a way that I feel greatly benefits it.  Overall, it comes down to bringing the action in a little closer, really making the fights seem more personal, and really giving players more of a chance to dance around each other rather than hopping around the level on their own accord until they find each other by chance.  Projectiles are both slightly slower and much more visible than in Quake, so trying to slam a rocket into someone's face from three hundred meters isn't really going to happen.  So, from further away, you'll want to use a hitscan weapon, but since your target will be smaller they'll be harder to hit.  Unless you want to zoom in with the Sniper Rifle, but then you lose a bit of awareness of your immediate surroundings.  Close up, the Flak Cannon is king, but its range is short enough to matter.  The Pulse Gun’s alt fire is just the Thunderbolt, and it'll tear someone apart pretty handily, to say nothing of putting the Minigun into overdrive with its own alt fire.  Even flipping your Enforcer sideways will get bullets into someone quickly, and with fancy enough footwork you can save yourself from a gruesome fate with the starting gun.  Or, if you're trying to keep someone away, quickly laying down a gooey minefield with the Biorifle works just as well as filling a hallway with a dozen bouncing Ripper blades.

Every gun in UT99 can kill someone, and not just in theory.  The game balances each of its weapons almost perfectly, and nothing ever feels totally useless or has an obvious better version (I am not counting the Impact Hammer or Enforcer in this statement).  Jumping over or dodging away from rockets to close with the Pulse Gun’s alt fire is just as reasonable as forcing someone to switch away from their Flak Cannon by retreating backwards as your Biorifle makes it impossible for them to safely advance.  Lobbing a Flak alt fire over that minefield is alway an option though, so be ready to get out of the way, and maybe pull out your Shock Rifle to push them backwards.  A fully stocked Minigun can keep an approach locked off, but a quick sniper bullet right to the face will put an end to it.  

Alright, admittedly the Biorifle is historically a bit ignored, and the Ripper didn't even show up in subsequent games, but both still had a purpose.  I, personally, am a staunch defender of the Biorifle’s utility as an area denial tool, and the ability to charge its alt fire will instantly kill someone no matter their health and shield level, if you can hit them.  It's certainly better in team gamemodes like Assault or CTF, though.  But just shooting at people with the weapons does not an arena shooter make.  For there to be the proper levels of frantic action, movement needs to have a strong focus.  

As in Quake, you'll want to get familiar with your spacebar.  Strafe jumping isn't a thing as far as constantly upping your own speed, but it sure does make you harder to hit, and getting decent at dodging rockets always helps.  Double tap a movement key to do a quick dodge in that direction, useful not just for avoiding projectiles but for snaking down corridors.  On an elevator?  Jump just before it reaches the top to get a massive boost and go flying.  The Impact Hammer isn't ideal as a weapon, but a quick blast downward makes a decent stand-in for a rocket jump, if at the cost of significantly more self-damage.  Capping it all off is the Translocator, the aforementioned teleporting-disk-thrower.  Primary fire to shoot a disk in a pretty generous arc, alt fire to teleport to it.  Disks emit light and can be destroyed, if you teleport while carrying a flag you drop it, and yes, you do fall faster than the disk travels upward.  Truth be told, I usually play with the Translocator turned off, but that's mainly because the bots, as good as they are at the rest of the game, are less than stellar at putting those disks where they want, often leading to a cluster of them bouncing their shot off a wall just inches under the ledge they want up to, and not taking any action until they get it.  I think it has to do with the accuracy modifiers based on bot skill level, but I'm not sure.

The bots are great in every other respect, though.  Sure, they'll never actually replace a human player, but they're more than good enough for a few hundred hours of offline play.  All the tricks the Skaarj demonstrated in Unreal are on display again, and tuned up to use every weapon.  Bots jump and dodge, retreat if they're low on health, make decisions about what weapon to use based on their proximity to you as well as their own inventories, switch between firemodes when it makes sense, and plenty else.  Upping the bot difficulty doesn't just make them do more damage or give them more health (it doesn't even do that in the first place), it makes them smarter.  Or ‘smarter’ if you really care - it changes their reaction times and how accurate they are, how aggressively they'll act, and even how good they are at using the weapons beyond just aiming.  A low-level bot might not get close enough to hit you with the Pulse Gun’s alt fire, or will use a Rocket Launcher in close quarters with all the risks of splash damage and self-death that entails.  Higher difficulty bots will bank Flak shots off walls and bounce grenades around corners, lay fields of Biorifle goop, or be deadly-accurate with a sniper rifle from above.  

The bots are what really put UT99 firmly on the ‘classic’ shelf, because its contemporaries just didn't offer the same thing.  Again, Quake 2 had bots, but they served the purpose of being moving targets and not much else.  Driving UT’s bots was a dead-simple, if tedious to implement, system.  If you'll indulge me, I'm gonna pull back the hood and reveal the not-at-all-secret ways Unreal Tournament made all of its bots so good at playing each map.

All over a map, there are invisible waypoints hand-placed by the designer.  The goal is to make a rough trail of waypoints to each part of the map.  Bots see each waypoint and have the ability to travel in a wide radius around each.  Weapons, ammo, health, armor, and special powerups all act as special waypoints that a bot will see and travel to if they don't already have what that pickup is.  Players and other bots are considered waypoints as well, and when all that comes together, a bot will very intuitively move around the level.  Placing a waypoint higher in the air will make a bot jump to reach it, so having them move over obstacles is simple.  Like I said,  it only requires a loose sort of web across the level, as the world geometry itself is also something a bot sees.  Going around a corner or a box in the middle of a room is no issue provided the waypoints are good enough.

So now that you know how the sausage is made, what does that mean for the game?  Well, quite a lot.  Bot support is built into every single one of the maps UT99 shipped with, which is no small feat considering the base game came with 53 maps across four gamemodes (deathmatch and team deathmatch use the same maps), with a further 30 maps added for every gamemode but Assault over the course of four free downloadable bonus packs.

Every single one of those is playable, to this day, offline with a complement of bots just as ready to rock as they were almost twenty years ago.  And that's not event counting the thousands of user-made maps still available for download, but we'll talk about modding in a bit.  Because right now, it's time to talk about another excellent thing present on each map - the music.

Returning from Unreal are indisputable gods of music Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos, who trade the previous game's subdued alien score for a soundtrack full of some of the boppin’est, crunchiest, hypest EDM tracks of the late 90s.  (Can you tell I don't know anything about music?)

Run, GoDown, and Organic provide the upbeat bleeps and bloops to murder by; Save Me, Razorback, and Superfist let you rock out with your shock (rifle) out; while Forgone Destruction, Skyward Fire, and The Course chill things out a bit so you can focus on getting sick headshots.  The quality of the music in Unreal Tournament is impossible to overstate, just as it was in Unreal.  Brandon and van den Bos are unrelentingly good at their jobs, and the mishmash of styles all grinds together across UT99’s broad palette of maps like butter full of shrapnel.  It's good, is what I'm saying.  The music's really good.  Listen to it.  Please.  

Stage music is something I personally miss from shooters, if you'll indulge another tangent.  I love hearing the gameworld as interpreted by the composers, it adds so much to the whole package, and we just don't really get it anymore.  The rise of the modern military shooter in 2007 with the runaway success of Call of Duty 4 kind of slammed the door on stage music with a tactical-lite focus on identifying footsteps and directional fire, but even Halo’s deathmatches were filled with a blank silence.  Or Halo 2, I suppose, since Halo 1 didn't have online play, except for the PC version, which did.  No stage music though, that's the main takeaway.  

UT99 had a truly odd mix of contemporaries, from the last days of Quake 2 and the imminent release of Quake 3 a week after UT itself came out, to Half-Life creating a mod scene in its multiplayer, to Halo a year or so later.  The turn of the century would bring with it the generally-accepted death of the arena shooter, but they all went out kicking, and the few hundred people still populating UT99 servers to this day are a testament to its tight, clean design and no-frills focus on gameplay.

Unless, of course, they're playing a mod.

Truth be told, I never actually played much UT99 online.  I was very bad, you see, and when I got better my horrible social anxiety had progressed to the point where the idea of even playing a game with faceless strangers was terrifying.  I was 8.  But anyway, modding!  You may have, in your travels as someone who presumably plays videogames - an assumption I'm making because you're reading this - heard of the Unreal Engine.  In a hidden bit of Trivia, Unreal was the first game on the Unreal Engine, and Unreal Tournament also used it.  Wild!

Along with the game itself, both releases also shipped with the Unreal Editor, or UnrealEd.  UnrealEd is the exact development tool the fine folks at Epic Megagames used to make those games, and they just casually handed them to the players.  The result echoes throughout the game industry to this day, and while Epic was hardly the only developer supporting mods, they were the first to do so on that kind of level.  As a result, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of user-made maps scattered around the web, along with new gamemodes, fan-made expansions for Unreal, new character models, weapons, and mutators.

Ah, mutators.  

Mutators can be thought of as ‘mini-mods,’ if you want.  There's a list of them you can select before each game that all change, or mutate (see?), the gameplay a bit.  Superjump, low gravity, replacing each weapon spawn on a map with another, big head mode, stuff like that.  Mutators are a fun addition that can mix up a usual match, but don't bring with them the sweeping changes of a full mod or total conversion.  They were a way to illustrate how flexible the development options were, and a nifty thing for players to have available to them.  

So, Unreal Tournament had lots of ways to keep the game fresh, either built-in or crafted by other players.  Turn a small map into Explosion Hell with the Rocket Arena mutator, or download a player-made weapon pack filled with weird goodies.  Wondering how Quake’s iconic maps play in UT?  Somebody's made them.  Hell, someone's even made a bunch of UT2004 maps for UT99, complete with de-made character and weapon models.  A lasting legacy of creativity is what UT99 brought above all else, and the fact that so much of what it did can remain as the primary example of how to do something right says more than I can about its impact on videogames as a whole.  

Unreal Tournament is a fast, brutal game balancing all of its various systems on the edge of a spinning razor blade, and it does so with a mastery that I feel was not seen among its peers of the time.  From the weapons, the movement, the maps, and the gamemodes, Unreal Tournament presents you the player with so many options, but it never feels like a generic crowd-pleasing paste has been slathered over everything.  The game's core is simple and well defined, and everything else builds on that.  It has a certain tightly-realized identity that I feel is missing from a lot of games that try to have the same sort of arcady arena vibe - Halo was probably its closest rival as far as small genre shifts go, and looking at Destiny 2 as the latest version of that is a weird mix of procedurally generated weapons, hero abilities, flat maps, and very few projectile weapons.  Skill has been taken out of some areas and added to others, but the design feels looser, less actualized.  Call of Duty is fast, but still has that small desire to be somewhat tactical, so there are recoil patterns and weapon attachments, the rich-get-richer killstreaks, and a progression system that murders any attempt at balancing their arsenal.  Quake Live, from what I understand, has a healthy enough playerbase, but my preference has already been stated.  Quake Champions tries to marry its classic gameplay with that of Overwatch, and the reactions have been mixed.  Team Fortress 2 has been bogged down with more and more weapons that blur the lines between classes, and the official map rotation - already small on launch - has barely been added to in twelve years.  

This isn't a “games are different now and that's bad” sort of thing, my point is just that UT99 had a much cleaner mission statement, if you will, than what we get now.  The industry's gotten bigger, and budgets followed.  Expectations of sales rose, leading developers to want to bring in as many players as they could.  Games can't really be niche anymore.

Or maybe that was true five years ago, but now the indie scene’s getting huge, and you can find a revival of your favorite genre just about anywhere.  Most aren't super well polished, but isn't that what made games like Unreal, Quake, and Half-Life into what we remember?  They all had more ambition than was perhaps warranted, and each made their huge impacts despite a healthy amount of blemishes.  Endless polish makes for a good player experience, but maybe not as much of a memorable one.  

Unreal Tournament all but made me into an FPS fan, and I think it's great that we all have so many types to choose from now.  Public tastes have shifted and evolutions of the genre happened.  I've enjoyed my fair share of Calls of Duty and Battlefields, I plugged hundreds of hours into TF2 throughout highschool, I've ridden the Overwatch hype train, and I love poking holes in walls and getting sneaky kills in Rainbow Six: Siege.  But Unreal Tournament is my oldest bastion, and one I return to every now and then when the whim takes me.  It occupies my top slot, though admittedly in an endless 1v1 with Unreal Tournament 2004.

But there was another Unreal Tournament between the two, one that came and went with mild fanfare while paving the way for what I feel is, hands down, the best game ever crafted by human hands.  Check back at the end of the month for a short look at the odd little Unreal Tournament 2003.

[khazrakh]

Have You Played Across The Obelisk?

I usually prefer to make "Have you played" articles about games that I already finished or at least have played for a prolonged time. Today, I'm going to make a little exception as I've stumbled across a what I think is a pretty exceptional early access title - Across the Obelisk. To tell the truth, I've never heard about it before but randomly stumbled across it the day it was released. It seemed pretty interesting at first glance and I decided to give it a shot. Almost 15 hours played in a mere 5 days later, I'm quite confident to say that this is one of the best card battlers I've played since Slay the Spire!

   Source

  To get an idea of what Across the Obelisk is, simply imagine that Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon would have a child of love and you should get pretty close to the real deal! In essence, the game is a classical deck builder just like Slay the Spire. You start with a deck of basic cards and slowly improve that as you play your run. The key difference is that the combat is closer to Darkest Dungeon than it is to Slay the Spire. That's because you not only control one but four heroes at the same time. Consequentially, combat follows the classical 4 vs. 4 rules that made Darkest Dungeon so enjoyable. Each of these heroes has its own deck complete with a different focus and playstyle and each with its full list of unique cards.

In total, the game will feature 16 different heroes of which 10 are already playable in the current early access build. That's quite an impressive number considering that each hero focuses on different effects and allows for several unique builds. There are tanks, bowmen, wizards, healer, and a lot more. Basically everything you'd expect from a good RPG. I was quite impressed with the amount of cards already available but at the same time the balance already seems to be pretty good. For the starting heroes, there are several possible builds and after having played some runs, I can say that each of them has it advantages and disadvantages, but all seem to be rather viable.

    Image taken from Steam

  The game basically offers everything you'd expect from it. You explore several maps made up of individual nodes. While you can only move from left to right, you get to choose which part to follow and you will know in advance what to expect from each tile. There are fights, events (that might very well lead to fights), shops, altars, and a multitude of other options to explore. The game also has a quest system where one node will send you to a different node (possibly even on a later map) to defeat a certain enemy or collect a specific item.

Across the Obelisk is a roguelite and as such, you should expect to die a lot, especially in the beginning. This just might be my one gripe with the game as well - during your first few runs, your chances of making it past the first boss are really slim, so the game might feel a bit repetitive as you fight through the same encounters several times in a row just to die pretty soon after. Your heroes gain perk points after each run you used them in and this in turn allows you to permanently increase their stats, enables you to bring more gold in the next round, and so on. At the same time, each run starts in a town which can be upgraded as well. There you can craft new cards, buy items, and upgrade or remove cards from your deck. All this helps to give the game a nice sense of progression. Even if you fail to beat the boss this time, you'll still have something to show for and will start your next run just a little bit stronger.

    Image taken from Steam

  What's interesting as well is that new heroes, items, and cards need to be unlocked first. So when you start the game for the first time, you only have access to a handful of cards for each hero. But with each run, you'll learn about more cards, find more items, and so on. This will allow for more and more customization of your starting party while at the same time ensures that you won't be overwhelmed initially. The game certainly feels like its devs put a lot of thought into putting all the pieces together. There also is a four player cooperative mode where each player gets to play one hero. I have to admit that I didn't try that part of the game and I probably won't. I really don't want to wait for three other people to take their turns in a round based card battler but that might just be me, to others this could very well be a very interesting feature.

All things considered, Across the Obelisk is one of the most polished and feature rich early access titles that I've played. This is really quite the feat, as it hasn't even been released for a week and I did play quite some early access titles over the years. Thank's to the huge progression system, I see myself spending countless hours unlocking new cards, leveling my heroes, and trying my hand on the various hard modes the game offers. Right now, the game is sold at 12.74€ which should be somewhere around 15$. That's quite the steal considering that you might very well spend 50-100 hours playing this game. If you enjoy roguelite deck builders, I'd say this is an absolute must buy, it's without doubt one of the most enjoyable games in recent years to me. It has a good 91% positive rating on Steam so far, so it seems people are mostly in agreement with me!

And that's all from me for today. Thank you all for reading and see you next time!

[holytheoristtastemaker]

If you were part of the Frontend community for the past year and a half, the term “Concurrent” appears in almost every second tweet. It all started with Dan Abramov’s talk Beyond React 16 at JSConf Iceland 2018. Dan showed how the React team built a generic way to ensure that high-priority updates don’t get blocked by a low-priority update. The React team called this mechanism “Time Slicing” and it was based on a Scheduler package they created.

This scheduler is called the “Userspace Scheduler” and was later used as a case study for Google Chrome developers for their work on a built-in scheduling mechanism.

The Problem

Let’s take Lin Clark’s analogy from her talk in React Conf 2017 and compare our code to a Project Manager. Our project manager has 1 worker, the browser, but our worker is pretty busy, he’s not 100% dedicated to our JavaScript code. It uses one thread to run our code, perform garbage collection, layout, paint, and more. This issue buried the main problem: long-running JavaScript functions can block the thread and cause our worker to tip the balance and miss layout, paints, and more. This is a steep slope that immediately leads to an unresponsive page and a bad user experience.

The Solution

This problem is usually tackled by chunking and scheduling main thread work. In order to keep the browser responsive at all times, you break long tasks to smaller ones and yield back the control to the browser after an appropriate time. The time is calculated based on the current situation of the user and the browser. But wait, how will I know to split the work based on time on my own? How do I even yield back control to the browser? 🤔 To solve these problems we have Userspace Schedulers. So what are they?

Userspace Scheduler A generic name for JS libraries built-in attempt to chunk up main thread work and schedule it at appropriate times. These libraries are responsible for doing the work and yielding the control back to the browser without blocking the main thread. The main goal: Improve responsiveness and maintain high frame-rate. The examples are React’s Scheduler package and Google Maps Scheduler. These schedulers have been effective in improving responsiveness but they still have some issues, let’s go over them:

Determining when to yield to the browser — Making intelligent decisions of when to yield is difficult with limited knowledge. As a Userspace scheduler, the scheduler is only aware of what’s happening in its own area. The React’s scheduler, for example, defaults to 30 FPS for every unit of work (which means around 1000ms/30=33.333ms) and adjusts it to higher a FPS rate if possible. Having said that, React’s scheduler still checks between frames to see if there’s any user blocking task pending on the main thread and if there is, it yields back control to the browser. React does that by using scheduling.isInputPending() which lets us know if any UI event or Touch event is waiting to be handled.

Regaining control after yielding — When regaining control back from the browser, we will have to do the work of the same priority without returning back to the paused task until finishing the other work. That happens because we yield to the event loop and write a callback but there can already be callbacks waiting for that priority.

Coordination between other tasks — Since userspace schedulers don’t control all tasks on the page, their influence is limited. For example, the browser also has tasks to run on the main thread like garbage collection, layout, etc. and userspace schedulers can’t impact these tasks.

Lack of API to schedule chunks of the script — Developers can choose from setTimeout, postMessage, requestAnimationFrame, or requestIdleCallback, when choosing to schedule tasks. All of these have a different impact on the event loop and require a thorough knowledge of how it works. The React’s scheduler for example uses setTimeout as shown here.

Main Thread Scheduling API: Since all current solutions have limitations, the Chrome team decided to create API’s for scheduling main thread work. These API’s are all gathered under the “Main-thread Scheduling API” title and are currently an experimental feature not yet deployed to production nor beta version.

How can we try it?

To get the new Main Thread Scheduling APIs we need Chrome version 82.0.4084.0 and higher.

This version is available in Chrome’s beta version or in Dev and Canary versions. I recommend downloading the Chrome Canary version since it can live alongside our current Chrome version. A download link can be found here. Once downloaded, we need to turn on the feature-flag called Experimental web platform APIs here: chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features

Available API’s

TaskController: This API is the main API for controlling tasks, it contains a signal object with the following structure:

{ aborted: false, onabort: null, onprioritychange: null, priority: "user-visible" }

The TaskController Object inherits its functionality from AbortController and the signal inherits its functionality from AbortSignal so when using it, we will be able to abort a task that wasn’t executed yet. API looks like: const controller = new TaskController(“background”) and to get the signal we simply write controller.signal.

scheduler.postTask : This API can be used to post a task with a priority or a delay. The postTask function accepts a callback function and a signal. This signal can either be the one created from the TaskController or just an object with priority property or delay priority containing a number. The API shape is similar to other async API’s (fetch for example): scheduler.postTask(callbackFunction, { priority: 'background' })

There’s also scheduler.currentTaskSignal but we won’t focus on it in this post.

Example

An important note is that I’m not using React’s Concurrent Mode. I’m trying to show a solution based only on the new Scheduling API and not on React’s Userspace scheduler (disclaimer: even the non Concurrent Mode React works with a scheduler but it doesn’t contain the time-slicing features).

Another small note, I’ve based my example project on Philipp Spiess’s project for “Scheduling in React” post.

Here’s a gif showing the app in action, try to look at all the details on the screen and what happens when I try to type:

On the screen, we see a header with an animation working with requestAnimationFrame (rAF), a search input, and a few pokemon (there are actually 200 rendered). So why does it get stuck? 🤔 What happens is as follows: on every keypress in the input, the whole pokemon list renders (I passed the search string to every pokemon so we will mark the search substring) and every pokemon has a synchronous timeout (a while loop of 2ms). As we said, in my app I have 200 pokemon, leading each keypress to cause a render of about 400ms. To top it up, on the event handler I also simulated a synchronous heavy computation function of 25ms.

Let’s look at a performance screenshot of what’s happening:

In the red box, you can see timings that I added or React added by itself. The yellow box contains the call stack breakdown for each keypress.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s happening: Every keypress leads to a long render (about 400ms), causing a Frame Drop(this can be inferred from the red triangle I wrapped with a blue circle). Frame drop happens when the main thread is too busy with running our JavaScript code so it doesn’t get the chance to update the UI so the website freezes. Before every render, in the timings section (the red box) we can see a small box I wrapped by green ovals, that’s our heavy computation function, it takes around 25ms as we can see in the tooltip. But sometimes, we don’t need that heavy computation to happen right away, maybe we can do it later. With Main Thread Scheduling API, we can do exactly that.

To do that, we need to change our event handler. At the moment it looks like this:

Let’s use postTask and see the performance analysis:

So what did we see? Our heavy computation function now happens at the end (wrapped in the timings section with a green oval), after all the renders happen. The main difference is for our users, instead of waiting 3800ms for the UI to be interactive, they now wait 3600ms. That’s still not so good but even 200ms is a difference. Another amazing feature is to be able to cancel a task if it wasn’t executed yet. In the previous example, we had a heavy computation function happening on every event, what if we would want it to happen only for the last event?

So what’s happening here? here’s a quick explanation: We’re aborting the last signal we had and create a new TaskController every time we enter the event handler. That way we cancel all the tasks with the aborted signal attached to them. Below we can see the performance screenshot for this code, inside the timings section in a green oval we see that only the last task we created was executed.

Summing it up:

We live in exciting times for the web development community. It looks like everyone involved truly aims for a better web and a better experience for our users.

[laytonloztew]

DDJ After-thoughts

I was planning to write a post-mortem for my entry to Dream Diary Jam 2017, Manda no Yume, but I think the June blog posts are just about good enough. I don't have the best memory, so I can't give an accurate recount of making the game. I'm going to instead start typing about whatever I can think to talk about at the moment. These are my thoughts about the game 2 weeks after release. I'll try to find some pics from early June to spread through this post as well.

This post may contain light spoilers for Manda no Yume. 

THE JAM:

I thought the jam was run very well, and I would be interested in at least spectating on another in the future. I haven’t played too many of the entries (I didn’t play Yume Nikki fangames prior to this jam), but from what I’ve played and seen I’m impressed with the other entries. I wish MnY looked as great as the other entries do. While visuals aren’t my strong suit, I think they turned out okay. The game is definitely bland, partly probably due to my color preferences. I think there is also just a lot of empty space that I could place objects in that would help. 

Remember this classic? How nostalgic.

COMBINING EFFECTS:

I'm not sure what anyone else thinks, but I think this game does combining effects pretty well. I think the process of combining effects is simple and easy to do.

The question here is really if having the effect combinations is worth it? I felt limited on what effects I could add to the game. If I add the effect as a 'normal' single effect, then it would add (num_effects) more combinations. 58% of the current combinations (40% including combinations with secret effects) are in the game, the rest aren't implemented. I don't want to add more possible combinations if most of them won't do anything, I made a bunch of the cosmetic effects just so they would be there. So okay, lets try to add this new effect as a combination. The only two effects that make any remote sense to combine to make this are x and y. But x and y already combines to make c.

I ran into this a lot, I had to think of what x and y could make rather than adding n because it would make a neat effect. I have plenty ideas for combinations with the current effects, but sometimes I'm stuck with ideas for new ones. If I wanted to make a 'sick' effect that would make NPCs walk away from me, what would I combine to make this? Lamp + Bodypillow? That's a stretch, lets just add it as a single effect. Now what do I do about sick + spoon? Sick + jacket? Sick + Bodypillow? Sick + lamp? Or even if I want to add a cosmetic effect, 'Ponytail' or 'Blonde', I feel as if I need to make combinations for these. It would take forever to make these, whereas it would be so simple if there were no effect combinations. In other fangames with combo effects, I think you just combine one effect then another? But because it is so integrated into this game and the menu is built for it, everything needs to combine if the game is going to be 'finished'.

I remember Naztheros and I sitting here thinking 'What would x and y make?' throughout planning, then figuring out a use for it. 

While that was fine, I wonder if the game would've been better off without combination effects? There would be less overall effects, but maybe the effects would be better? Whether or not having combination effects was 'worth it' depends on what you all think. It was worth it to me to try it and experiment with it, and I certainly have no plans on removing them from the game.

Only 1 (2 now? I think?) combination(s) is/are required to collect all effects, but that is mostly down to not having time to add more.

THE CONTROLS:

I understand that the controls are not conventional, but there is not much I can do. I have 2 effect keys, so I can't have the effect on shift. I could have one of them on shift, but the other would be on what? These can be rebound in the F1 menu, but its pretty limited.

I'm going to see about adding these controls to the numpad, but other than that there isn't much I can think of to improve the controls. They are displayed in the menu, but I'm going to move them to their own screen on the menu so I can show the full controls. I'll try to improve the controls instructions so they are easier to remember. I'm also thinking of adding a 'Wake Up' command to the menu, maybe in place of the current 'Save' command.

NEXUS:

What a mess. Why is it so small with so many doors? Why are there blank doors (Because I didn't want to re-do the tip system, but still a good point)? Why does it loop? Where is the center?

I'm working on a new nexus right now. I could just increase the map size, remove the looping, and clean up the doors, but I want to try something different. I'm experimenting with a map that is more like the first room in Super Mario 64's Peach's Castle, if that makes sense. I'm just trying things out, for all I know worlds will be entered through a terminal. It could be anything.

Another thing, the locks on the doors don't look like locks. I'm working on that:

THE TIP SYSTEM (◈):

I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out. I was hesitant on adding a character with dialogue because it would be so out of place, but that ended up being the whole point of the character. The character's dialogue is supposed to be real silly and out-of-place, and that fits with the idea that they aren't a part of this game at all. In one of the post-jam updates I made it so this character appears somewhere else after you acquire every non-secret effect, and they give some more odd dialogue.

The place isn't difficult to find, but the password has to be discovered: 1. In the ponderme.txt file 2. On the title screen after waiting awhile 3. In a guide/walkthrough

I didn't want to lead the player straight to the effects without having to look for them, and I wanted receiving these tips to be optional. It ended up being sort of optional, as there are 3 extra effects that cannot be acquired without accessing this area.

I think the tips themselves are valuable enough. There isn't much more I can do without writing a guide and putting it into the game itself. The point of the tips is to point in the right direction so the player can focus on that area rather than wander clueless around every area. Early in the jam I thought of having an effect that would show you footsteps that could lead to the effect, but I think that is too much. Especially with how little areas there are in the game currently.

With the possible nexus redesign, I'm going to have to re-do this as well. The Dustonia Online CD might also be moved somewhere else, making this area a little less required to visit.

DUSTONIA ONLINE (MMO WORLD):

I wasn't sure how this would be received. It's pretty out of place and I wasn't planning to use RTP assets, but I haven't heard anything negative about it so I guess it's good. I was very curious if anyone would try leveling past 15, but no one has mentioned it so I guess not. People have definitely gotten the effect for level 15, though.

I was limited on what I could do here by not only time, but also the very noticeable frame-rate dips. This was caused by the names over NPC's heads, and I've fixed that on my in-dev build. Working on this area of the game isn't a priority, but I would like to add more to it in any future updates.

THE COIN EFFECT:

This effect is too difficult to find. It is definitely not clear that walking out of the train map after the train passes by will take the player somewhere else, and this is doubled by the fact that in previous versions of the game you could interact with the rail sign to summon the train (which wasn't intended, and didn't trigger the event for taking the player to the other map). The train is supposed to have a chance to appear upon walking towards the rails from the bottom, and is decided upon entering the map. If the train passes, entering the dark forest map will instead take you to a small forest map that has the entrance to the sewers where the coin is. The tip system doesn't help with this either, as it shows the rail sign as the hint making you think that you should interact with the rail sign in some way.

In v0.01c it is still like this, but in a future update I want to move the coin or move the entrance to the sewers (or both). While most of the game's shortcomings can be attributed to lack of time or experimenting, this and the nexus are the two main things that bother me when I think about the game. I'm tempted to make quick changes to these and release a v0.1d, but I'd rather take my time.

I think while some others can be tricky, they aren't too obscure. The secret effects are pretty easy once you discover the tip system, I was planning to have a secret effect that was very obscure just to see if anyone would find it.

RELEASE:

The game has gotten more attention than I honestly thought it would. I expected it to just get ignored, but its cool to see people playing it. Watching beta testers play the game was my favorite part of creating it. If one person likes it, then to me it was worth submitting. 

FUTURE:

I'm satisfied with how my first game jam game turned out. I would like to finish it, add an ending and improve where the game is lacking. Honestly though, I did what I set out to do. I submitted an entry to the jam, I experimented with combining effects, I have events that wake the MC up (alarm clock, air conditioner, etc). I made my take on a Yume Nikki fangame, which I had no plan of doing more than 3 months ago. Classes start up again soon, so I'm not sure if I'll keep working on it through that. Maybe if there is a Dream Diary Jam next year, I can work on the game during that time. I also want to try making a 3D yume nikki like game. We'll see, if I release an update then I'll post about it here. If I’m going to update the game, it would be better to make a big update than a small one, right? I don’t expect to attract a new audience to this game, I would be updating it mostly for you all who have maybe already played it. 

I think that covers it. Thanks.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hello Steph 😊 Do you have any BAMF Molly or just some good fics that feature Molly? I need some Molly love at the moment because I just read a fic where she "turns to the drak side" so to speak, and my heart 😭😭😭

Hey Nonny!

Ah I did a few comm. recs lists recently with Molly, but here are what I can offer you from memory, LOL. PLEASE add your fave Molly fics, guys! PLEASE NOTE these are fics I’ve read, and please check the sub-headings for a TONNE of stuff I haven’t read!! Big title so I can find it later LOL.

MOLLY PLAYS A ROLE

See also:

COMM RECS: Coming Out To Molly

COMM RECS: Molly with Women

COMM RECS: Molly and Greg Push John and Sherlock Together

COMM RECS: Molly as a Villain

Santa Knows by Itsallfine (T, 1,719 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas Party, Love Confessions, First Kiss, Fluff, Matchmaking, POV Sherlock, Pining Sherlock) – Sherlock and John both get exactly what they want from the Yard's secret Santa exchange. Pure holiday fluff.

What John Doesn't Know (Won't Hurt Him) by blueink3 (NR [T], 4,392 w., 1 Ch, || S3 Fix It, Pining Sherlock, Snippets of Life, Hurt/Comfort, Scars, Fluff and Angst, Five and One, Hopeful Ending, POV Sherlock) – Five people who see Sherlock's scars before John Watson. But Sherlock's secrets were never something he could keep from his blogger for long.

Thirty Three Hours Without John Watson by Bookaholic, mybrotherharry (M, 6,232 w. || First Kiss / Time, Pining Idiots, BG Mystrade, Crackish) – Sherlock can SO TOTALLY survive without John Watson. It should be a piece of cake. AKA the time when Sherlock braved grocery store lines for milk, purchased and gave away a box of tampons and figured out what the X-Factor is. Greg and Mycroft didn’t sign up for this shit. Next time, they are going to the Bahamas.

Wonderful, Etcetera. by VictoryCandescence (T, 16,955 w., 3 Ch. || Wonderful Life AU || Alternate Timelines, Brotherhood, Homophobia, Suicidal Ideations, Mentions of Drug Use, Friendship, Different TRF, Sherlock’s Past, Victor Trevor is Past Boyfriend, Depression, Hallucination, Love Confessions, Christmas, First Kiss) – Sherlock thinks everyone would be better off if he had never existed, including and especially himself. When he finds himself in a world in which his wish has been granted, he begins to think perhaps even he could be wrong – but it takes an unlikely chaperone to make him not only observe, but understand.

Insanity in the Middle by DotyTakeThisDown (E, 28,010 w., 8 Ch. || Equestrian Sports AU || Alternate First Meeting, POV John, Pining John, Bottomlock, Clueless Sherlock, First Kiss/Time, Passionate Kisses, Hand Holding, Caught Making Out, Bed Sharing, Spooning, Blow Job) – John is a world-class eventing rider with a gold medal and several four-star wins to his credit, but he's never won at Rolex. Sherlock is an up-and-coming rider taking the sport by storm.

Love or What You Will by miss_frankenstein (T, 31,987 w., 11 Ch. || College/Uni AU || Professor John, Ph.D Student Sherlock, Pining John, Poetry, Falling in Love / Slow Burn, Light Angst, Happy Ending) – John is an English professor who specializes in War and Post-War Literature and Sherlock is the brilliant yet impossible Ph.D. student assigned to be his TA because no one in the Chemistry Department is willing to put up with him. And - somewhere between Waugh and Plath, e-mails and takeaway, novels and villanelles - they fall in love.

The Wrong Wagon by DancingGrimm (E, 35,663 w., 20 Ch. || Alternating POV, Molly/  John [Molly pines for John], Public Sex, Casual Sex, Obliviousness, BAMF!John, Awkwardness, Angst & Humour, First Time, Virgin Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock) – Molly sees John in a new light and realises that she may have hitched her horse to the wrong wagon...or something like that. John pines for Sherlock and worries what he will think if he ever finds out. And Sherlock doesn't know what Molly's up to...but he knows he doesn't like it.

The Pieces That Fall to Earth by Itsallfine (M, 49,513 w., 84 Ch. || S4 Fix-It, Epistolary, Love Confessions, Slow Burn, Parentlock, Past Abuse, Coming Out, Internalized Homophobia, Questioning Sexuality, Mental Health Issues / Therapy, Angst, Happy Ending) – John and Sherlock have hit rock bottom, but with all their armor stripped away, they can finally speak honestly, seek healing, and find the truths that matter most. An epistolary post-s4 fix-it fic. Now complete. (This fic is rated T except for one very clearly marked and easily skippable chapter, which is rated M.) Part 1 of The Pieces that Fall to Earth

floating through a dark blue sky by Lediona (M, 58,966 w., 15 Ch. || Notting Hill AU || POV John, Celebrity Sherlock, First Date / Time / Kiss, Past Drug Addiction, Angst with a Happy Ending) – Of course, I’d seen his films and always thought he was, well, brilliant -- but, you know, a million miles from the world I live in. Or, when John is the owner of a travel book shop and the famous Sherlock Holmes stops in one day.

This Thing All Things Devours by cypress_tree (E, 63,844 w., 15 Ch. || In Time AU || Science Fiction, Dystopian Universe, First Meetings, Action / Adventure, Romance) – In 2169, time is money—literally. Humans are genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, when the numbers on their arm start counting down from one year. When that time is up, they die. The only way to get more time is to earn it, borrow it, or steal it.John Watson lives day-to-day in the crowded slums of Zone 13. He never imagined living any differently—until he meets the practically-immortal Sherlock, and helps him on a case to track a local time-thief...

Northwest Passage by Kryptaria (E, 95,157 w., 27 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Canadian AU ||  BAMF!John, Canadian John, PTSD, Anal / Oral Sex, Rimming, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Drug Rehab, Falling in Love, Pining Sherlock, Love Confessions, Sherlock’s Violin, Panic Attacks, Switching, Anxious / Protective Sherlock, Hugs for Comfort, Suicide Mentions, Healing Each Other) – Seven years ago, Captain John Watson of the Canadian Forces Medical Service withdrew from society, seeking a simple, isolated life in the distant northern wilderness of Canada. Though he survives from one day to the next, he doesn't truly live until someone from his dark past calls in a favor and turns his world upside-down with the introduction of Sherlock Holmes." Part 1 of Tales from the Northwest

The Stars Move Still by BeautifulFiction (E, 96,022 w., 5 Ch. || Magical Realism, Demons, Slash to Pre-Slash, AU, Happy Ending, Souls) – "What could I want so desperately that would make me sell my soul? What could possibly compel me to surrender the part of myself that makes me who I am: the source of my magic, my self-control, everything?”

Definitions by siennna (T, 101,528 w., 12 of ? Ch. || Dev. Rel., Pining, Fluff and Romance, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Fluff, Cuddles, Girl’s Night, Texting, Virgin Sherlock, Drunk Sherlock, Background Mollstrade, Hair Petting, Laying on Lap) – Sherlock’s journey in defining his flat mate and stumbling through the muddled world of emotion. {{This feels complete; the chapter count is listed as ? but I feel like it is done}}

between each beat are words unsaid by darcylindbergh, hudders-and-hiddles (T, 107,998 w., 215 Ch. || Epistolary, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Angst, Happy Ending) – On their wedding night, John and Sherlock gift each other with the things they each said when the other could not hear, the things they each put down where the other could not see: a collection of writings that illustrate the way their love for one another has grown over the years. Part 1 of between each beat

The Burning Heart by May_Shepard (M, 119,150 w., 21 Ch. || Canon Divergence, Post-TRF, John’s Sexuality, S3 Rewrite, Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, POV John Watson, John’s Gay) – When Sherlock dies, John Watson feels like his life is over too. He’s completely shut down, until Mark Morstan, a new nurse at John’s medical clinic, catches his attention, and helps him uncover the long buried truth of his attraction to men. Although he’s certain he’ll never get over Sherlock, John plans to move on, and build a new life with Mark, unaware that Sherlock is not quite as dead as he appears, and that Mark is hiding secrets of his own.

A Further Sea by i_ship_an_armada & ShinySherlock (E, 125,492 w., 23 Ch. || Historical Pirates AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Doctor John / Pirate Captain Sherlock, Sailing, UST / RST, Masturbation, Action / Adventure, Mild Angst & Peril, Romance, Shaving, Molly/Janine, Bottomlock, Hand / Blow Jobs, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Mild Violence, Facial Shaving, Happy Ending) – Here be a tale of adventure for both body and soul, but beware if ye be not of stout heart, for this be piratelock, ya savvy? Luckless ship's surgeon John Watson takes a chance, and finds himself eye to eye with The Ghost, the scourge of the seven seas and a definite thorn in the side of the blaggard, James Moriarty. But when John finds there's more to this most cunning pirate than be meetin' the eye, he has to choose... is it a pirate's life for him?

The Horse and his Doctor by khorazir (T, 129,003 w., 13 Ch. || Horse / Vet AU || Magical Realism, Horses, Vet John, Horse Sherlock, Implied Alcoholism) – Invalided after a run in with a poacher in Siberia, veterinary surgeon John Watson finds it difficult to acclimatise to the mundanity of London life. Things change when a friend invites him along to a local animal shelter and he meets their latest acquisition, a trouble-making Frisian with the strangest eyes and even stranger quirks John has ever encountered in a horse.

Performance In a Leading Role by Mad_Lori (E, 156,714 w., 21 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Hollywood / Actor AU, Secret Relationship, Falling in Love, Slow Burn, Romance, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, Pining) – Sherlock Holmes is an Oscar winner in the midst of a career slump. John Watson is an Everyman actor trapped in the rom-com ghetto. When they are cast as a gay couple in a new independent drama, will they surprise each other? Will their on-screen romance make its way into the real world? Part 1 of Performance in a Leading Role

Mise en Place by azriona (M, 161,004 w., 28 Ch. || Restaurant (Kitchen Nightmares) AU || Sherlock is Gordon Ramsay / Celebrity Sherlock, Restauranteur John, Harry Plays Prominent Role, Alternating POV, Mutual Pining, Cranky Sherlock, Bed Sharing, Slow Burn) – John Watson had no intentions of taking over the family business, but when he returns from Afghanistan, battered and bruised, and discovers that his sister Harry has run their restaurant into the ground, he doesn't have much choice. There's only one thing that can save the Empire from closing for good – the celebrity star of the BBC series Restaurant Reconstructed, Chef Sherlock Holmes. Part 1 of Mise en Place

[andymakesgames]

Big Ol’ End-Of-The-Year Post 2018

It was a stressful year, but at least I made some stuff! Death By Audio Arcade is still going strong and more and more of my practice is moving towards physical objects. They’re a lot harder to make (and cost way more), but seeing real humans play a thing in person has been incredibly satisfying.

I’m just going to go through in order and I’m going to keep things brief because I’ve been meaning to write this forever and keep putting it off! Each title will link to a post about the project if you want to learn more.

Triple Tone Curious Creature - January

Going into Global Game Jam at the start of the year. I knew I wanted to make a capacitive touch interface after I was completely taken with a few installations at Sonic Arcade at the Museum of Art and Design. After a phone conversation with my partner Jane about how to work with the theme “transmission” I settled on an abstract puzzle game about matching audio waves. Players could manipulate their sound by touching metal orbs (ok, tin foil).

Old School Ante Night - February

This year I finally made a mailing list and got serious with Weird MTG, and then completely let it slip after running two official events. Whoops. Still, I was happy with this event that did double duty: creating a novel format and allowing players to experience a much older version of the game.

The DreamBoxXx - May

This might be my biggest project of the year and definitely one of my favorites. Death By Audio Arcade worked with the Dream House to create a queer arcade machine filled with a collection of games by local queer devs. It was obviously a huge collaborative effort. In my role, I built the launcher software that lives on the cabinet and worked with Ayla Myers to curate the games.

A Place To Bury Strangers Pinball - July

We finally did it! After years of having an old pinball machine sitting in Mark’s studio, we finally gutted it and turned it into a full sensory overload experience fitting the live shows of A Place To Bury Strangers. This project debuted at En Orbita Festival and accompanied a show by the band, which was great fun.

Pivop - September

My colleague, Ramiro Corbetta, taught a class this semester where students had to make a new game each week based on a given theme. I followed along a bit (well, twice). The theme this week was “one button” and I’m pretty happy with the game I made. You can play it here. I’d like to make an iOS version soon.

Chalice Of Brevium - October

Another game-a-week game. This time the theme was 10 seconds. I created an experimental roguelike that was shared by all players and which could only be played once. It’s still active if you want to check it out. 

Arcade Truck at Lost Horizons Night Market - October

This is another strong contender for my favorite project of the year. It was a ton of work, but a few other DBAA members and I built an installation truck for the Lost Horizon Night Market, a truly amazing pup-up gallery of weird fun and art, all housed in the back of U-Haul trucks.

Circumnavigators - November/December

In November, DBAA held a hardware jam where devs were invited to rummage through bins of materials to build physical games. Juno Morrow and I built a game that we later named Circumnavigators. Players run around a ring attempting to protect their light and trip up their opponents (literally and figuratively). The whole thing is displayed on strips of LEDs around a column. We are currently working on finishing it for the showcase this coming Thursday! For one thing, it now lives in a nice wooden column as opposed to the recycling bin we used in the jam!

That’s it!

There are, of course, a few ongoing projects that may or may not ever reach completion, but I don’t want this to turn into a list of things I need to get done. I’m happy with the things I made this year. It’s always nice to go through my last year of posts and be reminded of what I’ve done.

[thegeeklee]

Nintendo Switch Presentation - January 2017

It’s not the first time we’ve seen the Nintendo Switch, but the original reveal did not give us too much info. Now we finally get more information about the console thanks to the Nintendo Switch Event. Here’s the main details you’re probably chasing:

Release

The Nintendo Switch will launch on March 3rd, 2017 in Japan, US, Canada, some of Europe and other territories, which includes Australia. That’s only about 7 weeks away.

The price will be $299.99USD/$469.95AUD. While it is probably worth it from a technical point of view of what it can do, that price range def takes it out of the impulse buy price range. I bought a Wii U about a year or so ago with Super Mario Maker for $300AUD on special. I played Super Mario Maker a few times and then the Wii U gathered dust ever since. I really like the Switch’s portability, but I don’t travel enough to get the most out of this feature, so not being a huge Nintendo combined with my buyers remorse (other that continuing my console collection) with the Wii U, makes me think I won’t be grabbing one of these on launch. I probably won’t consider it until there’s a significant price drop. I mean you can get the much more powerful PS4 or Xbox One S for about $100 AUD cheaper, so it’s not very competitive on price.

There’s two Switch packages you can get. The only difference being the colours of the joy-con controllers. The Joy-Con controllers come in 3 colours currently, grey, neon red and neon blue. One Switch package comes with two grey controllers, while the other package comes with one blue and one red controller. I’d be definitely picking the grey controller package. I may be bias as grey is my favourite colour these days, however I just think it looks awkward, having one red and one blue controller connected to Switch.

Other than the 2 joy-con controllers, the other items you get in the box include the Switch tablet console itself and the dock for connecting to a TV. The Joy-Con Grip that holds your two joy-cons together for a more traditional controller experience. Two wrist straps that connect to the Joy-Con that make them easier to hold and stop them flying across the room. Plus of course a HDMI cable and AC adapter.

Specific accessory pricing includes:

Switch Pro Control (available in grey) - $69.99USD/$99.95AUD

Pack of 2 Joy-Con Controllers (available in grey, neon red, neon blue or neon red/blue combos) - $79.99USD/$119.95AUD

1 Joy-Con Controller (available in grey) - $49.99USD/$69.95AUD

Joy-Con charging grip - $29.99USD/$39.95AUD

Switch Dock set (including dock, ac adapter and HDMI cable) - $89.99USD/$129.95AUD

Joy-Con Wheel (set of 2) - $14.99USD/$24.95

If you combine the prices of all the components that you get in the box together equals $199.97USD/$289.85AUD, which means you’re paying about $100USD/$80AUD for the actual Switch console tablet. That probably sounds like a good deal when put like that. Either that or it shows that the accessories are quite expensive. I’d hate to be a parent with one of this in the house, having the buy multiple docks, fighting over who gets to use it, constantly dropping big dollars to replace easy to lose controllers etc.

Specs

There are 3 modes to the Switch. TV Mode whereby you put the Switch into the dock and play on the TV. Tabletop mode, where you utilise the Switches kickstand to have it stand up independently and use the Joy-Cons detached from the console. And of course handheld mode, where you have the Joy-Cons attached and can use it like a portable tablet gaming machine. In Handheld mode it will get 2.5hrs – 6.5hrs of battery life dependent on the game (Zelda will get about 3hrs battery life). This seems reasonable. Should mean people can play triple A titles on the train or bus to work or extended long gaming sessions playing simple indie or retro Nintendo titles without running out of battery. You can also play it while charged it via a USB-C cable.

Other specs include no region locking which makes sense for a console they are promoting to use on the plane. It has a multi touch display, 6.2” display that runs as I predicted at 720p. So smaller than an iPad mini but at the largest spectrum of a smart phone screen size. The same size screen as the Wii U tablet but higher resolution. When docked it will run in 1080p. There’s 32GB of internal storage which is pretty disappointing but can be expanded by a micro SD card. Up to 8 Switches can connect together for multiplayer.

The Switch will of course support digital download games, but also has “Game Cards” for physical games, not too dissimilar to the 3DS. The dock has 3x USB 2 ports plus of course a HDMI and AC adapter ports.

There’s been no mention of the actual performance of the machine. Some of the graphics was looking a bit rough in places, so don’t expect it to in any way compete with the Xbox One or PS4 in the graphics department.

Controllers

The main controllers as mentioned at the Joy-Cons. Think of them as smaller Wii remotes. They attach to the sides of the Switch in portable mode but can also be used separately. They have NFC and support Amiibos.  The left controller has a screenshot button that will later support video. It has an accelerometer, and IR motion camera sensors, which of course open up much more potential as to what you can do with them. It also has an advanced “HD” rumble feature built into the Joy-Cons that supposedly helps you feel things (the example they showed was ice being put into a glass).

Being so small you wouldn’t expect many controls but it amazingly includes on each controller a joy stick, plus or minus button, left or right button, d-pad or A/B/X/Y buttons, ZL or ZR button, release button, SL button and SR button. I think the fear at first was the Joy-Con might be quite limiting, but this has clearly been designed so you should be able to play just about any game with even only one Joy-Con controller.

The wrist straps when connected a Joy-Con help beef up it’s physical size including likely making the SL and SR buttons easier to use.

For when you want a more traditional controller setup you can plug the Joy-Cons into the grip and it will also charge the Joy-Cons. If you want even more advanced controls, then there is also the Switch Pro Controller, similar to what was available for the Wii U.

Online

For the first time, Nintendo’s online services will now cost you money to use (like Xbox and Playstation). There will be an initial free trial and then it’s time to pay up if you want to continue. This also could get costly for parents. Though there is one bonus. Each month you will get to play a NES or SNES classic game for free. With Playstation Plus and Xbox Gold you get multiple free games per month and you can play them as long as you are subscribed, and even when you resubscribe. That doesn’t look to be the case here, so price will be critical to not seem like poor value compared to the alternatives. Smartphones will also be able to connect to it’s online service for chat and arranging online games.

Games

This is great and all but it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a big selection of games to support it. This was the major problem with the Wii U. It wasn’t overly apparent during the presentation what the full launch line up was but Nintendo assures us  that there’s currently over 50 devs working on over 80 games for the Switch. Here’s some of those games:

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, after much speculation, is a Switch launch title.

1-2-Switch is a series of mini games that make use of the joy-cons. It is primarily a game that you don’t watch the screen while playing. It’s a launch title and could be the Switch’s equivalent to Wii Sports.

A boxing style game called Arms is also making much use of the joy-cons. Each player needs two joy-cons each, one for each hand. You play split screen in TV mode, or use two switches to battle, or online. Released in Spring (US) 2017.

Super Mario Odyssey is the first large sandbox Mario game since Sunshine. There’s parts based in like New York with regular size people, which is just bizarre. Mario’s hat being thrown is a major game mechanic. Out end of 2017.

Project Octopath Traveler from Square Enix looks like pixel art paper Mario/final fantasy style game. No release date as of yet.

Other upcoming titles include FIFA, Ultra Street Fighter 2, Skyrim, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Has Been Heroes, Just Dance 2017, Snipperclips, Super Bomberman R, Arcade Archives, Disgaea 5 Complete, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, Farming Simulator, Fast RMX, Fire Emblem Warriors, Minecraft, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Rayman Legends, Rime, Skylanders Imaginators, Syberia 3, Steep, Sonic Mania, NBA 2K18, Lego City Undercover, I am Setsuna, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and more.

So there you have it. Pre-orders are now open and going by how hard it’s been to get a NES Classic mini, it could be hard getting a Switch at launch. That shouldn’t be a problem for me, because at that price, I’m just not big enough a fan, or trust Nintendo’s game support to wanna jump in straight away. With the expensive price of the console and accessories, plus a lack of launch titles, it’s just not competitive at a time when Nintendo really needs to be. Perhaps by Christmas with a big price drop and a larger library it might be worth it. I also a bit disappointed with it as Nintendo weren’t touting the Switch as a successor to the Wii U, yet Wii U games aren’t backwards compatible with it.

The presentation overall had it’s highs and lows, and some seriously awkward moments, and somewhat underwhelming unless you’re a Nintendo fanatic. Still I commend Nintendo for a great design and it will be interesting to try it out sometime. Because I would like a portable hybrid console like this some day. It does feel like the future.

If you like what you’re are reading, then follow The Geeklee on Tumblr or like The Geeklee on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGeeklee/ 

[entergamingxp]

How Can I Write About Video Games Right Now?

June 3, 2020 3:00 PM EST

How can I possibly write about video games right now? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now.

Featured image credit: Tyler Tomasello/Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock via The Guardian.

How can I possibly write about video games right now?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now. With the world seemingly burning down around me, writing about video games seems like the least important thing in the world. And, to be fair, even before 2020 started, most of this job felt somewhat superfluous.

I mean, I obviously value games criticism and love getting to add dumb jokes about Waluigi being grown in a vat at Nintendo, but I don’t place some huge level of importance on my job. It’s good work. It’s (usually) fun work. But I wouldn’t call it strictly necessary.

While this has been something on my mind for a few months now, the events of the past few days have really brought it to the forefront. Does the world really need me to talk about the Sega Game Gear Micro when so many people are out protesting against police brutality every night? Do I even want to publish an impressions article for Bug Fables when it could, theoretically, take eyes away from important news taking place around the country?

The easy answer is undoubtedly, unequivocally no. In the grand scheme of things, video games aren’t that important. However, in 2020 there really aren’t any easy answers.

As I struggle to answer the question for myself and decide the best course of action to take, I can’t help but think back to my childhood. Growing up in rural Oklahoma, racism was pretty common. My graduating class had around 185 kids and only one of us was black. The only other black kid in my high school was his younger brother.

I remember very vividly showing up to a Halloween dance off-campus and seeing a group of seniors outside handing out forms to join the KKK. Hopefully, it was just a bad joke, but, given some of the other stuff I witnessed, I wouldn’t be surprised. At one of our after-proms, a few kids showed up in white hoods. In my first year of college, a good friend told me, in great detail, his plan to shoot President Obama if he got elected.

And the most terrifying thing to me is that I just had to see it. I never had to live with that fear that I can only imagine every single day of my life.

It’s weird thinking back on growing up in such a backward place. Like, how did I come out of that not being a complete racist? A lot of it probably has to do with my parents being decent people, but I think I owe a decent amount of gratitude to video games.

I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up and got bullied for being overweight quite a bit. So, like many, I turned to video games to escape my reality. Sure, there was only one person who would talk to me in homeroom. But if I could click buttons well enough, people loved my barbarian in Diablo 2.

One of the most formative games from my childhood is, without a doubt, NBA Street Vol. 2. But it’s not the gameplay that has been so incredibly influential on my life, it’s the soundtrack.

Featuring tracks from artists like Black Sheep, Talib Kweli, Pete Rock, and CL Smooth, that collection of music shaped most of my musical interests to this day. While everyone else in my school was listening to Garth Brooks or Britney Spears, I was downloading every track from Nas, De La Soul, and Mos Def I could find on LimeWire (y’all remember LimeWire?). I was actively engaging in learning more about a culture I would never in a million years encounter inside my own little bubble.

That’s not to say that listening to hip hop made me understand the plight of being a black person in America. I could never do that. I’m also not saying that knowing all the lyrics to most of Common’s library makes me not a racist. I am still a racist. Don’t doubt that for a second. It might not be overt racism, but it’s still there.

Case in point, over the past few days several of my colleagues at DualShockers, people I love and respect, are getting opportunities to jump on a bigger platform and talk about what all this means to them. 99% of me was immediately elated for them. However, there’s that little voice inside saying “hey, I work just as hard as anybody here, and I never get asked to be on podcasts. What the heck?”

And in that moment, I know I still have so much work to do. I absolutely work hard, and if I keep doing it well, I’ll get my own opportunity, but me internally whining about not getting on a podcast is such a joke. “Come on, dude,” I have to exasperatedly say to myself.

So, NBA Street Vol. 2’s soundtrack didn’t magically cure me of my racism. But, it did make me see it. It made me know it was there. And, most importantly, it made me recognize how easily ingrained it is. Which is something that never would’ve happened without the game.

That’s why I think it’s important to keep writing about video games. Because there are some incredible creators out there, making things that more people need to see. And the only way I see for us to move forward as a people is to start to actually recognize and empathize with people who are “different”: whether that’s skin color, sexual orientation, or whatever.

If I can put somebody on to their own NBA Street Vol. 2, then I’ve done my job as a games writer and a human being. Plus, it’s not like my personal journey to become not just an overt racist, and instead actively anti-racist, began and ended in 2003. That’s obviously a battle I’m still fighting today by seeking out these games and other media for myself. It’s a fight that I want to continue to fight each and every day.

One of my unspoken goals at DualShockers has always been to highlight smaller games. If you take the time to go back through my published articles, you’ll notice I cover a lot of indie titles. That’s on purpose. In many ways, those games are more important than much of what the AAA side of the industry is putting out. Those titles are highlighting underrepresented creators or telling stories that probably wouldn’t sell a million copies. But they’re meaningful. They’re needed. They push us as people forward.

Unfortunately, what hasn’t always been on purpose for me is looking for games made by or starring people of color. Sure, I’ll highlight them if the game looks cool, but I don’t actively seek them out. Most of the time I really don’t pay attention to the person behind the games I’m playing or writing about. I think it’s time to change that.

So, look for more of that in the future out of me. In the meantime, check out Umurangi Generation, Dandara, and Afterparty. Those games are rad and worth a look. I also think we’ll have a separate article up soon that will be of interest.

And if anybody reads this and wants me to come on your podcast, I’m not available. That said, I know a few excellent people who are.

Additionally, here are some resources and a select few gaming-focused forms of media to share. Bear in mind that there are many more scattered around social media and websites.

Black Lives Matter has a resources page that you can visit that will take you to numerous PDFs, for example, the Healing Justice Toolkit was created to “collate, condense, and share the lessons we have learned in ensuring that our direct actions are centered on healing justice.”

Jesse Sparks published a blog post titled, “7 Virtual Mental Health Resources Supporting Black People Right Now” In a time where there’s a lot of tension and activity, this could prove useful for those who may need some support.

This document titled, “Anti-Racism Resources” is a list of various types of media that act as a “resource to white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work”. It’s extensive, but very detailed and worth reading.

The Spawn On Me Podcast looks to spotlight people of color in the gaming industry and is hosted by Kahlief Adams.

Gamertag Radio is a podcast about video games hosted by Parris Lilly, Danny Peña, and Peter Toledo.

Spotify also released a Black Lives Matter playlist featuring songs about empowerment and pride featuring a lot of Black and POC artists.

Game Devs of Color Expo has tweeted for Black game developers who may need support.

Black Game Developers is a website that showcases Black game developers across the world.

Here are some charities and movement suggestions you may wish to consider supporting.

June 3, 2020 3:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/how-can-i-write-about-video-games-right-now/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-can-i-write-about-video-games-right-now

[bruddahme]

PS5: what’s the latest PlayStation 5 news and when will Sony release it?

Our thoughts are inevitably turning to the PS5 now that the PS4 is officially reaching the end of its life cycle (that's direct from Sony) – so what exactly is in store for the Sony PlayStation 5 and when can be expect it to release?

For now Sony is keeping rather quiet when it comes to specific plans for the PS5: but we know that a PlayStation 5 release date will one day actually exist, thanks to Sony's President and CEO Shawn Layden confirming as much in an interview with Golem.de. 

Back in May, Sony Interactive CEO John Kodera revealed to the Wall Street Journal that the PS5 would not be releasing until at least 2021. However, an investigation by T3 claimed the PS5 could release as soon as Christmas 2019 – earlier than the Xbox Two.

Even while we wait for official confirmation of a PS5 launch, we can still get excited about the next-gen console. We all know that the rumors, wish lists and alarmingly convincing 'leaked' renders in the run up to a console reveal are a big part of the fun. 

In that spirit, we've gathered together everything we most want to see from the PlayStation 5 and what its stand-out features might be when it arrives.

PS4

PS5: release date

With no official word yet from Sony on a PS5 release date, it's difficult to pin down exactly when we might get to see a PS5 console.

Some analysts are predicting the PlayStation 5 release date could be around 2020 or 2021, for example, while others say 2019 – so just the three-year window, then.

Speaking to GamingBolt, Michael Pachter said that though he thinks the PS5 will be a half-step and will be backwards-compatible with the PS4 Pro, he doesn't think we'll see it until "2019 or 2020 but probably 2019".

This would make sense as it would fall in line with predictions for when the 4K TV market in the US will reach 50%. "I think Sony has probably got the next console cycle lined up already," he says, "I think they already know what they've got to do."

More recently Pachter clarified this claim, saying that Sony would most likely release the new console in 2020. He added that at this time he thinks the PS4 Pro will become the base model PlayStation and will see a reduction in price. 

Meanwhile a recent report from Kotaku's Jason Schreier backs up this thinking. He spoke to a number of developers about likely release dates with most of the conversations pointing to a 2020 release. He writes: "There is information about the PlayStation 5 floating around at both first- and third-party companies, but it’s far more limited than it would be if the console’s release was imminent."

A recent Wall Street Journal report points to a release around three years away, with Sony's John Kodera stating “We will use the next three years to prepare the next step, to crouch down so that we can jump higher in the future." 

Not long after this, Sony's new CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, released a three-year business plan for the company which predicted the company's profits would dip in the run up to 2021. This is the kind of dip that may come as the PlayStation 4 reaches market saturation, before the launch of the PS5.

So mark your calendars for 2019, 2020 and 2021 then.

PS4 DualShock

PS5: competition

Although we're hideously impatient for news of a PlayStation 5 release date, we can't fault Sony for taking another few years to really milk the last of the PS4, given it's huge and loyal player base. After all, the PS4 Pro is still relatively new to the market and its direct competitor, the Microsoft's Xbox One X, is an even more recent release. 

However, industry insider Jez Corden and a recent Microsoft job listing have hinted that Microsoft is already thinking about the next Xbox – the Xbox Two (codenamed "Xbox Scarlett"). That means it's highly unlikely that Sony isn't currently doing the same and is, perhaps, even further along in the process. 

According to gaming industry analyst Hideki Yasuda (via T3), and his firm Ace Economic Research Institute, "the introduction of the PS5 will be at the end of 2019". A 2019 release would be much earlier than expected and would mean Sony has been pulling the wool over our eyes – it would also mean the PS5 would release before the Xbox Two.

If we're honest, we can't really see any urgent need to start a new generation right now. And given Microsoft's growing commitment to backwards compatibility, we think it's key for Sony to really think carefully about its next steps. 

Despite Yasuda's report, a two to three-year wait make a lot more sense to us. However, it could be Sony is trying to throw Microsoft a sucker-punch from left-field by releasing earlier than expected.

PS5: news and rumors

Solid news on the PlayStation 5 is pretty thin on the ground at the moment, but as always, we do have rumors about what could be coming down the line – and we've collected and assessed them right here.

Ace Secur

Ace Economic Research Institute report

Gaming industry analyst Hideki Yasuda, from Osaka-based firm Ace Economic Research, has claimed in a recent report that the PS5 could arrive in time for Christmas 2019 (via T3). 

The report estimates that "the introduction of the PS5 will be at the end of 2019". If this is true, then it'll be a massive blow to Microsoft who has confirmed the Xbox Two (codenamed "Xbox Scarlett") will not launch until 2020.

John Kodera talks life cycles

PlayStation's John Kodera has been discussing the future of the PS4 at a Sony Corporate Strategy Meeting and, by extension, inadvertently creating space for prospective PS5 release year rumors.

During the meeting, Kodera made it clear that Sony is still very much behind the console but warned that sales are expected to slow this year, in line with expectations as market saturation approaches. As a console gets to this point in its lifecycle, it's natural to start looking forward to the next iteration. 

Kodera stated that the time passing from now until 2021 would be a period where Sony would hunker down – which suggests that a new big idea could be around the corner. Perhaps 2021 will be the time to expect the PS5?

No E3 2018 appearance

Now that E3 2018 has come and gone, we know there was no mention of the PS5 during the event. Instead, Sony offered up deep dives into four of its biggest upcoming games: Death Stranding, Spider-Man, The Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. Watch this space for E3 2019.

Eurogamer tech analysis

A recent report from Eurogamer has attempted to narrow down a possible release date based on when technologies advanced enough to justify a generational leap will be available to Sony. The most important things that will need to advance will be the console's processor and its memory and in both cases, Eurogamer has determined that we're unlikely to see a new console released before the very end of 2019.

Even if Sony did manage to push its console out at this date, the cost of production would make the PS5 far too expensive, making it more likely that we won't see the console released until the end of 2020, if Sony has any intention of making it an appealing proposition. 

Cyberpunk 2077

Andrew House talks the next generation

Former Sony chief, Andrew House, has been speaking about what the next generation of consoles could look like at the GamesBeat conference recently. Though House refused to comment specifically on the PlayStation 5 itself, he did say that he believes physical discs will stick around for a while yet, as a result of the need to continue tapping into developing markets where downloadable titles may not be quite as compatible with limited internet infrastructure.  

In other markets, however, he thinks that streaming games will be a big part of the next generation of consoles.

House also stated that he thinks the PS4 and the PS4 Pro still have a long life in them yet. This doesn't necessarily cancel out the rumors that the PS5 will be with us in the next one to two years; if the reports that the console will be backwards-compatible are true then the PS4 generation will remain relevant long into the lifecycle of the PS5. Regardless, given that House was unwilling to comment on the PS5 despite being pushed, these details can only be considered speculation at the moment.

The SemiAcccurate report

SemiAccurate (via ResetEra) is claiming that it's received some leaked information on the yet-to-be-announced console and says that the number of dev kits which have been distributed suggests the console could be released sooner than expected. 

In addition to this, SemiAccurate also reports that Sony will use this console to push its VR efforts even further, with VR-tech baked in at the Silicon level, and will sport a GPU based on AMD's Navi architecture with a CPU that's potentially a custom item from AMD's Zen line.

Though SemiAcccurate has a decent track record with its reports, having accurately reported Nintendo's Nvidia partnership for the Switch and the PS4 specs back in 2012, we still say take this with a pinch of salt. 

Though the specs sound plausible, a 2019 release date seems a little far-fetched. Regardless of how many developer kits that Sony has distributed, it feels too soon after the release of the PS4 Pro for the next PlayStation console just now… and we're getting towards the end of 2018.

PS4 on stage

The Marcus Sellars claims

Renowned leaker Marcus Sellars has been making some bold claims on Twitter recently (via GameRant), alleging that PS5 development kits are already in the hands of third-party developers. He also claimed that Nintendo is planning a Direct stream for March 8 (something which has since proven to be accurate). In fact, Sellars has been accurate with his claims a few times: recently he revealed Metroid Prime 4 was being developed by Bandai Namco.

However, Sellars didn't provide any evidence to back up his claims so they really can't be taken as anything more than rumor at the moment. 

Something which may be interesting in relation to this, though, is that recently CD Projekt Red revealed that their upcoming title Cyberpunk 2077 was being developed for current and next generation consoles which came as a great surprise to many. Whether this means they're one of the third-party developers at work with these rumored kits is yet to be confirmed.

Even if development kits are in the hands of developers, this doesn't mean the PS5 is coming any time soon. It could still be another couple of years before any kind of reveal in terms of hardware.

The patent

Something that does help Sellars case is a recently updated patent for backwards compatibility that's been filed by Sony. Originally filed in 2015, the patent was updated in February to say “Backward compatibility testing of software in a mode that disrupts timing.” This is no guarantee that Sony is actually working on the technology for the PS5 (it could be creating an entirely separate peripheral that makes backwards compatibility possible) but it's not impossible that this could be for a new generation console. 

The PlayStation Plus news

Though there's been no official word from Sony on the development of a PlayStation 5 just yet, a recent announcement in relation to the PlayStation Plus service has ignited some speculation. It's been announced that from March 2019, PS Plus will no longer offer free PS3 or PSVita games and will instead focus on PS4 titles. This has led to some wondering over whether or not Sony is attempting to phase out these older generation titles in preparation for a new generation. This is, of course, pure speculation but it's interesting that Sony would be willing to reduce its game offering to only two games (as it informed Polygon) without any other excuse than wishing to focus on titles for an already highly successful console. Whether Sony is truly making way for the PS5 or whether it's going to offer a higher quality of PS4 game is unclear and it seems we'll have to wait a while to find out what the final plan for PS Plus is.

PS5: can we have proper 4K gaming?

The PS4 Pro offers a tantalising hint of what 4K gaming could be like. But the stark fact remains: it still doesn’t have the grunt to do native 4K consistently. 

Its “checkerboard” technique of taking single pixels and using each to render four pixels in 4K resolution is clever, and it can do native 4K output, but it often has to sacrifice resolution to keep performance consistent. 

Chris Kingsley, CTO and co-founder of developer Rebellion, dangles an even more ambitious technological carrot in front of a putative PS5: “Obviously new hardware should be able to support 4K TVs and possibly even 8K TVs at a push!” 

Native 4K support, surely, will be a basic requirement of the PlayStation 5. And if Sony cracks that particular problem with alacrity, it could even mean that a PlayStation 5 will arrive sooner than anticipated.

PS5 games

Aside from 4K visuals, if recent showings at GDC 2018 are anything to go by we certainly can expect the next generation to offer incredible visual advancements in terms of character models. 

During GDC, we got a glimpse of what the next generation of games might look like and it's left us extremely excited for the PS5.

Real-time ray tracing was revealed to be the next big thing in rendering while Epic Games gave us a taste of how it might be used to create the most lifelike characters ever. Using its capture technology, the Unreal Engine creator displayed a future with character models so realistic they bring us close to crossing the uncanny valley. Watch a performance from Andy Serkis below to see just how capable these new development technologies are:

“Honestly, between five and ten years from now, I don't think you're going to be able to tell the difference between the real and the virtual world,” Epic CTO Kim Libreri told GamesIndustry.biz, “You'll see hardware that can support these kinds of capabilities pretty shortly, and then, finally, the greatest blockbuster with the most complicated effects, within ten years, you'll be able to do that in real-time.”

When Libreri tells us we'll see hardware that can support this technology "pretty shortly" we can't be sure, but we like to think she's talking about the yet-to-be-announced PS5.

PS5: the VR effect

Sony became the first console manufacturer to embrace virtual reality, thanks to the PlayStation VR, but if you examine PlayStation VR closely – and observe how it operates on the PS4 Pro – it invites speculation about how a PlayStation 5 console might take VR to a new level. 

Currently, PlayStation VR operates at lower resolution than the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive – but, as it stands, even its current incarnation almost pushes the base PlayStation 4 beyond its limits. Running a PlayStation VR on a PS4 Pro brings improved frame-rates, which are very handy indeed in terms of the overall VR experience, but even the PS4 Pro can’t overcome the resolution constraints set by the PlayStation VR headset.

Sony will want to return to the market with a second, markedly higher-tech iteration of PlayStation VR

So it’s a good bet that, presuming PlayStation VR is successful (and it already appears to be catching on) Sony will want to return to the market with a second, markedly higher-tech iteration: which would provide an obvious selling point for the PlayStation 5. 

And if a PlayStation VR 2 headset could be sold without an external black box, it should be markedly cheaper, further accelerating VR’s march into the mainstream. A recent report from SemiAcccurate, which claims that the PS5 will have virtual reality capabilities built-in at silicon level, suggests this will indeed be the case. 

PlayStation VR

Rebellion’s Kingsley makes another good point about second-generation VR. “Anything that reduces the leads has to be a good thing,” he says. 

The umbilical cord which currently attaches VR headset-wearers to their consoles or PCs obviously goes against VR’s entire immersive nature, and we’re already beginning to see, for example, a third-party implementation for the HTC Vive that renders it wireless. It’s a safe bet that the capacity for running a wireless PlayStation VR 2 will be built into the PS5. 

But Kingsley’s PlayStation VR 2 wish-list goes further: “Wide vertical and horizontal field-of-view would be top of my list, and of course, that would require 4K resolution per eye, and high dynamic range would be great too.” 

HDR and wider fields of view should be achievable but sadly, we don’t reckon full 4K VR is likely to be a possibility even for the PS5. As Kingsley points out, that would require 4K rendering per eye, which equates to 8K rendering overall, which we expect to be beyond the PS5’s capabilities. 

That said, perhaps Sony will find some clever technological bodge to get around that before it releases its fifth PlayStation console.

Ratchet and Clank

What form will the PS5 take?

It has been suggested that future consoles like the PlayStation 5 could take radically different forms to current ones, thanks to advances in cloud computing and game streaming, doing away with the components that make today's devices so bulky. However, we reckon it's unlikely that Sony will take a more Nintendo-like approach and put the PS5 in a tiny box.

One reason for that is that with the PS4, Sony has only just committed to using what are basically the innards of a PC – the first three PlayStation variants used proprietary components (and which in the PS3 impacted sales). Developers, certainly, were massively relieved that the PS4 took the PC route. 

“We always want fast CPUs and GPUs, but lots of fast RAM is also very important – it’s no use having fast processors if they are starved of data.”

Chris Kingsley

“Developers want the ability to make the best games using the minimum amount of effort. We want to focus on being creative and getting things to just work,” Kingsley says. “So the hardware should be based around current console hardware, which is in turn based on PC hardware. We always want fast CPUs and GPUs, but lots of fast RAM is also very important – it’s no use having fast processors if they are starved of data.” 

All the above are achievable, but will the PS5 still have a hard disk? 

Sony Computer Entertainment President and CEO Andrew House spoke at the PS4’s launch about how deciding to put hard disks and 8GB of RAM in the PS4 were both “billion-dollar decisions”. The fact that Sony has now made external hard drive support possible for the PS4 and Pro is a step in the right direction and this is something that could be carried over to the PS5, which will undoubtedly have to deal with even larger 4K assets. 

It seems certain that Sony is very keen to hear what its community thinks – recently a group called PlayStation Voice sent out surveys to members of its closed community asking them what their expectations of the PS5 are. One community member posted the email they received and found themselves removed from the group for breaking its non-disclosure agreements. 

According to PSU, PlayStation Voice is a community run by third-party consumer insight agency, Join the Dots. Once information has been gathered, it's fed back to clients (the client in this case presumably being Sony PlayStation).

Admittedly, this doesn't tell us much about PS5 itself, other than that things are likely to be still in the very early stages. While it's unlikely that Sony would use the information gathered from its communities to decide exactly which features will be included in the console, the ideas of fans can certainly spark a good deal of inspiration.

PS5 and streaming games

Of course, if games were just streamed to the PS5 that problem would disappear entirely, and Sony already has a game-streaming service in the form of PlayStation Now. 

So why isn’t this more of a definite feature rather than something on our wishlist? Well, Sony is remaining tight-lipped about PlayStation Now uptake figures, but we suspect they are pretty unimpressive. It has certainly had issues with setting the right subscription charges, given that PlayStation Now effectively gives backwards compatibility – a “luxury” that was previously free for owners of PlayStation 2s and 3s. 

There would be nothing to stop Sony launching a small form-factor cloud-based version of the console for those with mega-fast broadband

But the biggest issue is broadband speeds. Even 4K TV requires a minimum of 25Mbps broadband in order to provide satisfactory streaming, and it’s doubtful whether 4K game streaming – with extra information on top of the visual side – would even work reliably at such speeds. There would be nothing to stop Sony launching a small form-factor cloud-based version of the PS5 console for those with mega-fast broadband, perhaps with a mobile phone-style subscription model that has an upfront hardware costs (something Microsoft is thinking about). 

But for the PS5 to sell anything like its predecessors, there would have to be a conventional version with similar innards to the PS4. 

Chancellor Philip Hammond has previously announced an infrastructure investment aimed at bringing fast broadband and 5G mobile data to the UK – but the earliest that would have an impact would be 2021, and the PS5 will almost certainly arrive before then. Perhaps its first mid-cycle update, though, will be a streaming version which takes advantage of burgeoning 5G networks?

PS5 games

PS5: optical discs or not?

The rise of downloadable games, which continue to eat into the physical disc market, means that pundits have been predicting that consoles will go discless for about a decade now. However, our guess is that the PS5 won’t be the first system to risk venturing down that road, at least not until it catches wind of Microsoft doing the same thing. 

Sony has taken a lot of (justifiable) flak for not putting a 4K Blu-ray drive in the PS4 Pro – making it a less attractive purchase for film and TV buffs than the Xbox One S or the Xbox One X.

Surveys continue to show that gamers are still attached to the possibility of buying games on physical discs – not least because they can then sell them (a practice that the games industry hates), and keep hard disk space usage at a manageable level.

If Sony were to axe the Blu-ray drive from the PS5, gamers would expect several terabytes of storage in compensation. 

Kingsley gives a developer’s view on the topic: “I think the days of delivering films and games via disc are on the decline, as most people are going digital; however, some people like physical discs, so who knows  whether that decline will level out and remain present but at a lower level than now?”

Download figures have been on the rise over the last year but EA CFO Blake Jorgensen has said that he thinks consoles and disc drives will continue to stick around.

“Consoles and disc drives probably stay around for a long period of time […] I think it's the consumer deciding what's the easiest way for them to buy a game.

“And it may mean they no longer have a store down the street from them so they decide to buy it [digitally] maybe it's easier for them to do.”

PS4

So when can we expect the PS5?

Given that the PlayStation 4 was launched in 2013 and Sony’s previous consoles arrived in six-year intervals, it would be easy to project that it will launch the PlayStation 5 in 2019 at the earliest. The sort of technology available then should easily allow full native 4K games without saddling the PS5 with a massive price-tag and, by 2019, 4K TVs will be the norm, rather than the exception, in the average household.

2020 might be the year in which Sony unleashes the PS5 on the world, as the first native 4K console with wireless VR … as long as Microsoft doesn’t get there first

So it would be a surprise if Sony doesn’t want to capitalize on that at the earliest possible juncture. However, Kingsley points at the PS4 Pro, and reckons that could have an effect on the length of the current console cycle: “It’s a difficult one to judge, but overall I think it’s fair to say that the overall cycle will lengthen slightly.” 

Especially if the PS4 Pro wildly outsells the base PS4, which admittedly isn’t something we anticipate happening once it has reached a critical mass of households with 4K TVs. 

So perhaps 2020 might be the year in which Sony unleashes the PS5 on the world, as the first native 4K console with wireless VR… as long as Microsoft doesn’t get there first.

What games can we expect to see on PS5?

If the backwards compatibility patent mentioned above is actually applied, we can expect to see the whole PS4 library available to play on the PS5. Or, perhaps we'll see another round of remasters as we did when moving from the PS3 to the PS4. However, we imagine there will be some games being developed specifically for this new PlayStation 5 console generation and the extra power it's likely to offer.

Already we've seen CD Projekt Red mention that it's developing for this generation as well as the next, and alongside the rumors that there are already developers kits out in the open, we think there's a good chance that Cyberpunk 2077 will be one of the early PS5 titles. 

Check out our PS4 vs PS4:PSVR compared and explained video below.

Tired of future-gazing? Why not check out the best games on the PS4 right now.

Already got a PSVR? Follow these steps to jump into virtual reality.

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