#corpo days

[heywoodvirgin]

[elven-butts]

so happy y'all like her 🥹

[yourbestiethejestie]

My brain anytime I experience a mild inconvenience

[olath124]

Yeah, my brain can't stop having really brilliant thoughts... For Violet's joy who had her "first time seeing the snow" moment ruined by Elroy's neverending enthusiasm for practical jokes.

Mandatory text messages chain:

How Elroy managed to stay friend with Vlad for FOURTEEN YEARS without ending up killed is a mystery.

Vlad as usual belongs to @ouroboros-hideout

Here's the link to the text generator

[msmc-796-official]

I'm not giving you my identity but I'll pay you 60,000 manna to cover the Corsair's flagship in graffiti.

So you know this is not a prank request and I am completely serious I have attached an advance of 5000 manna.

Did you seriously not read the PSA? No, we're not taking this offer, I don't care how much you're paying us. Last thing our squad needs right now is to get into more trouble with Legal.

Besides, the folks at CORSAIR are close friends of ours. We're in the middle of planning a friendly sparring match with one of their squads, actually - the last thing we'd want to do is graffiti their ship.

Actually, y'know what? Fuck this.

Hey, @corsair-mc-official - some dickhead wants to graffiti your ship and they're willing to pay big bucks to get it done. Keep an eye out for any stray mercs headed your way in the next few weeks.

-- Angel

[the-magnusinstitute]

how does one…indefinitely borrow something from the institute?

Depends. If you’re talking spare folders, staples, or the handles of Elias’ office door, literally just walk out. Nobody will stop you.

If you’re talking library books, artefacts, or printer ink, beware. Recent events mean that any member of staff would gladly lay down their lives in order to prevent getting slapped with a negligence lawsuit.

[ilikedetectives]

She did ballet, she was a punk Commission by @/skxkkaaa (x)

[topaz-mutiny]

Dear Hollywood: Please burn to the ground.

[bookseffect]

'Aight, buckle up because we are going to have a video game development rant about the Solas romance that I need to get off my chest before DATV comes out. And please know that this is coming from someone who has worked in the industry.

So, by now we all know that the romance was added somewhere in the last year of development, said year being an extension year ( for source check note 29 on the Solas Wiki). With that in mind, I keep seeing people complain that Solas cannot be romanced by other races, by a male Inquisitor, etc. All of that criticism is very much Valid. However. I need all of you to understand from a technical point of view how INSANE it is to add new IMPORTANT content on such short notice.

So, all games have several development phases:

Pre-production & Planning - when the sketch of the game is started and a team with sponsor and budget is assembled

Alpha - when the overall structure of the game is created, like the maps, the big story points, think we made the skeleton of the game

Early beta - which is where we really put the meat on those bones, the maps get all their assets, all their quests, interactions, etc

Late beta- when all efforts are focused on POLISHING THE GAME, making sure that it can pass submissions (because Microsoft and Sony will want the game to pass their internal checks FIRST so they know the game that the company is publishing is not utter garbage and is adapted to their platform). This is the road to Gold Master Candidate

Gold Master Candidate or GMC - is the base game, the version of the game that you will meet, hopefully as perfect as possible (unfortunately, that is not always the case, but alas)

And finally

Post production - which means patches, post release support etc.

Now here is the trick, on most games patches are tested and developed before the release. "Why"you ask? Because of deadlines and corpo greed. Meaning, that the publishers and developers will agree on certain deadlines, for example by 25th of August 2025 the game needs to be sent to the Microsoft and Sony submission. This does not account for any of the setbacks that the team may encounter, usually, a version of the game will be sent to submission and everyone will pray that it passes. If it does pass, anything else that had to be fixed will come in patches, because after the game was GMC certified, no one can modify that version anymore.

Now, back to the Solas romance, for the romance to exist you need to:

Record voicelines

Create new animations that hopefully do not look completely broken

Create new lines of code

Translate the new dialogue in all supported languages

Work on the approval system

Allocate testing hours for this specific new quirk to ensure that IT WORKS

All of this, while the team should have been focusing on a game this massive on polishing. Polishing, obviously, does not mean adding a massive, game-changing path at the last minute. At that phase, I would not be surprised if they were in late beta or maybe on their way to GMC. So while all efforts should have gone to polishing the already existing features, making the game run smooth, verifying all maps, all text etc, Weekes came in and said WELL LET'S JUST ADD....THIS!!!

Of course on such short notice they were able to only make one race and one gender workable, please bear in mind that at one point in development Iron Bull was to be romanced only by other qunaris because they could not make the animations work.

So while, yes, I agree that ideally, Solas should have had more complex romance options, the mere fact that the romance exists and works is nothing short of a huge success.

Rant over

[dalekinapaintedparadise]

[tartaruga-cosmica]

Happy birthday to me! May many more birthday boys, girls, and theys be visited by Birthday Kerry!

[heywoodvirgin]

[elven-butts]

light study with my brat ♥

[gloryride]

Saint Valentin ♥

patron saint of lovers - with Valentin Lacroix

That's for you @draerian ♥ My partner, and Valentin's player, came up with the idea "I want it to be a bit blasphemous, a sort of religious icon." I don't know if it's blasphemous (despite snake of temptation), but i wanted something kitsch, like Pierre & Gilles (famous french photographer), and i like it Valentin as patron saint, naked with his halo, that's him you want to love !

[iobartach]

and with that, i'm back to work. 👋 i'm busier than usual too, so i'll surface again maybe friday? not sure?

i'll be back when i can!!!

[msmc-796-official]

Hey Phoenix! Hey 796!

It’s been a minute since I got in contact with y’all, I’ve been busy, but I saw your chatlogs again (do NOT ask how I keep getting these, it’s not important :3 ) and I have something y’all might enjoy.

…get these to the right person. You might find some evidence you’d enjoy seeing. And don’t tell anybody you got it from me!

—the Intern

Attachments:

IPS_Northstar_LRim_ledger2_unmodified(1).omif

// Nice to hear from you again, Intern! Glad to hear they've not fired you just yet. And don't worry too much about hacking our chatlogs, I'm pretty sure Slipshod went in and tampered with our firewalls specifically to let you poke around in there. (Maybe don't tell Upper Management about that, though.) Now, what's all this abou-

// ...!

oh? did our friend at IPS-N send a present?

// ...something like that, yes. Take a look; I've got your six in case Kennedi comes barging in.

...holy RA above and below. I don't know how many people they blackmailed to get access to this kinda information, but these files are legit. heavily encrypted, mind you - I'd recognize that encryption software signature anywhere - but entirely legit. christ-the-buddha almighty, intern, what kinda privileges are they giving you?

// No idea. Can you decode them?

oh, easy - not the first time I've dealt with IPS-N corporate files, won't be the last. should be a higher-difficulty variant on their standard encryption if the pattern follows; I'll have the full document to you in like an hour, tops - maybe two if they've updated their encryption software since last time, which I highly doubt

// Your skill with hacking never ceases to amaze me, Slipshod. How the hell did HORUS let you go so easy?

look, when a HORUS cell splinters, it leaks a lot of incredibly talented people into the ether. it's just a matter of knowing which (if any) of those people have some actual merit, or if they're all useless dipshits who can't function outside of their gamer rig. if none of the other nearby cells are smart enough to ask you to stick around, that's their loss. you're lucky I wound up here at MSMC, instead of with one of the other big 4 members. (they certainly wouldn't have such outdated encryption software anymore, in any case)

// Fair enough, I guess. Thanks a lot for this, Intern - we've got some serious thinking to do.

-- Angel & Slipshod