#had to use this palette with them or i'd die /silly

[goldtealeaves]

[entropy-game-dev]

Phylogenesia Automatorum is out!! A roguelite / incremental / life simulation hybrid

Download it here!

Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on my entry for the New Years Incremental Game Jam 2024, and I finally submitted it late last night.

It's a silly little game where you tend to your garden of digital plants, hoping to generate enough Life and Death points when they spawn/die respectively, in order to buy more plants, mutate their characteristics, and expand the field in which they live.

Mutations and field properties will directly (and indirectly) change the plants' behavior on both a local and global level, with some very interesting and unexpected results. Numbers going up isn't always better either too, as, if you upgrade their stats too much, you might make a superplant that chokes the life out of the rest of your simulation and other plants!!

(Oh, and my friend did the music for this game, and it's awesome - each plant as their own instrument/track and they layer on top of each other as you buy more!)

It's a roguelite in the sense that each run you will be choosing between random upgrades, plants, and field tiles with various effects between simulation runs in order to try and maximize your point gains and stay ahead of the reset cost. It's not totally balanced (as it was whipped up in 2 weeks), but with a bit of knowledge and juuuust a hint of luck, you can make almost any run pop off! The goal is to buy all 10 plants and have them all produce points within a single run (representing a diverse garden or something, rather than a monocrop).

As I mentioned previously, it's based heavily on Conway's Game of Life, as I am a huge sucker for incrementals with hypnotizing visuals that change and evolve as you interact with the various systems at play. I took this idea, added a bunch of plants that are variations on the standard ruleset, and went from there.

You might also notice that I used some assets from Stellar Terminus, namely, the 3 sound effects, fonts, color palette, and, retro computer theming. I swear I can do other styles, just, er, not in 2 weeks when I already had quite an ambitious idea!

Over the coming days I'll post some more about the development of it, how I implemented certain systems, and a post mortem. You can probably imagine how datastructures-heavy this game was. In the end I had 1 object that ran the entire simulation, 1 that displayed the breakdown of how each plant was doing, and like 20+ objects for UI...

For now though? I'd love for you to try it out, play a few runs, and hear your thoughts on it!!

[shannonmanorart]

TWST Process!

So I got a comment this morning asking if my Ignihyde piece was a Memoji---a thing I immediately had to google to even know what that means lol I'm not mad, no shade to OP but it really threw me for loop to be asked if my art is a customizable avatar.

I know this blog is mostly my fun little sketches or side projects but I am a professional artist! Even if this is a silly little side project to keep my brain from falling it the abyss, it's still my art I drew with my own hands and it's important to me for people to know that!

Process breakdowns below the cut! it's not very detailed but figured i'd be fun to show a peak behind the curtain!

First things first! I do all of these in Proceate on my iPad! These are very casual and just for me to have fun--I'm very burnt out after my associate art direction job on Hit Monkey so I'm just trying to give myself a tiny piece of joy so I can get myself back to drawing my web comic and merch for cons/my store.

I draw each dorm in their own file just to keep things from getting too cluttered. The group shots I do separately in another file. So I'll finish them, flatten them and paste them into another file to size them up together/add backgrounds/effects. I included screenshots to show the breakdown of the original drawings along with the group shot. Nothing too fancy. Also forgive all the unnamed layers x_x I am usually incredibly organized but typing on my iPad annoys me so I tend to not name Procreate layers. You can see where I thought about it by naming ONE layer.

Here is the timelapse for The Ignihyde boys! You'll notice I keep Ace+Deuce in the file--I use them as a base reference for the stylization. I stylize everyone a bit differently but I try to maintain some consistency. I also reuse some bits of their palette as a piece of that consistency. You can also see me go 'oh yeah Ortho's hip thing goes all the way around so we should see it behind him........oh no. nvm that looks bad.' lol

What was most important for me to sell with these two was the difference of their personalities. I was aiming for that 'Someone will die' 'of fun!!' vibe haha So I wanted Idia very compact and to himself while Ortho is energetic and friendly. I also wanted to bring some design elements of Hades face to Idia's face. His bangs cover it up but I gave him a long nose that starts right from his brow the way they stylize them in the movie. I also gave them more color to their skintone but kept Idia more ashen/desaturated--I liked the idea of him looking kinda grey to match Hades instead of just pale.

Here's the non-default brushes I use--Jingsketch brushes are available here and the free comic brushes I got from Di Brushes. I'm usually a default brush kinda person but Procreate's default textured stuff wasn't really doing it for me anymore. I really like using stuff that looks more like pencil or pastel. I've also been addicted to adding noise a lot to my pieces. I know that's not the most original thing in the world but idk, it looks cool. My group shots always get a layer of noise.

But yeah, that's it! These are purposely kept pretty simple so I can knock each one out in about two hours or so. More detailed dorm outfits obviously take longer--I hand drew all the patterns on the Pomefiore kids like a mad man. Every time I erased the edges, I went 'I should probably copy and paste this' and then never did. I love making things harder for myself lmao

See y'all in Diasomnia! (I also have plans to draw my MC and Grim so Diasomnia won't be goodbye~)

[diagonal-queen]

opinions on sigma

okay so basically

sigma is my end goal when it comes to appearance and gender. i want to look exactly like him. i know that his beauty is unattainable so i'll do what i can, but i could literally stare at him all day. all week. all month. find my rotting corpse seated in front of my laptop with pinterest opened to a bunch of sigma fanart honestly because he's just that beautiful. i plan on dyeing my hair the same colour as his when i'm able to. hopefully next year (@small-chaos im depending on you to help me bbg)

if i had the choice i would also get a ton of bsd posters that feature sigma and plaster them all around my room and make it sigma themed (or- actually i'd also do this same thing with mykola, chuuya, ranpo and poe, but for the moment i'd do it with sigma). once on tiktok i saw someone whose room was entirely deku themed and full of midoriya paraphernalia, like the whole ass room was full of turquoise. i want that same thing with sigma, i won't even lie. his colour palette and whole vibe is just so gorgeous.

his pretty privilege ain't doing SHIT in the manga to help him though. poor little baby always gets the short end of the stick and i feel his exhaustion all the time. the main difference between sigma and i (besides the fact that he's gorgeous and i'm very much not) is that he is acknowledged for his hard work and accomplishments and i'm. not. lol but the impostor syndrome is honestly so real. i always feel that i won't lie. it's probably one of my worst forms of self sabotage.

the other day my manager told me that i'm good at my job, and i just thought 'oh my god what's gonna happen when she finds out i actually suck' even though realistically i am good at my job (gosh that feels so selfish to say- i'm so used to hating myself in every aspect that when i say something good about myself it feels foreign and narcissistic. i should work on that maybe). like he's so relatable for that and i love him

sigma's third wheelness is also super relatable for me. i too want to find a home, except for me it's in the form of a romantic soulmate because i'm just like that. (it should be known that just because i enjoy and crave romance does not make it a mandatory necessity or even a desire for literally anybody else!!) like he will be walking around following mykola and fyodor while they're on a date (or trying to kill each other idk) and just be watching them like o _ o SAME DUDE

also i too tend to have identity crises when it comes to my purpose, and the reason i was born and stuff. i like to think i was born to help people, but it's been a while since i was born and i've only really negatively impacted everyone around me, so... SIGMA on the other hand. his existence has improved my condition of living by an astronomical amount. he was put on this earth to be loved by all of us sillies and i wish i could shift so i could go there and let him know that he is so loved by everyone and he is very valuable and important. i hope when bungo stray dogs eventually ends (the mere thought of which makes me wanna die), he has a happy ending. he deserves it. tbh most of them do, but especially sigma.

this man is literally perfect. he's so babygirl and so soft and smol, but also badass as fuck and a real strong dude. and i respect him for that so hard. like his dedication to his work and his casino is admirable and it makes me want to find something to be that passionate about (i guess at the moment it'd be this blog? silly as it sounds). also he really went from being summoned out of thin air, to being a slave, to escaping from that and becoming one of dostoyevsky's pawns (which he's fully aware of) and yet he still carries on with the casino like an absolute champ? i love him sm

i'm still real mad at the anime for leaving out his introductory scene (his PROPER one where he's a socialite king) because it literally sets the stage so perfectly for him. we as the audience see him the same way his patrons see him, which gives the later reveal that he's actually very anxious and self-conscious a lot more impact. the anime fell flat on that in my opinion. the sky casino arc deserved more, bones! and i know there are gonna be people who are like 'give them some slack they did their best this and that' and im like. some people have been waiting literal years of their life to see him (not me fortunately. i read the manga in december lol) they deserved better than this T-T

anyways there's this bakery right near where i work and it's literally got the Best Cinnamon Scrolls I've Ever Tasted In My Life. like, they're unparalleled with how fucking delicious they are. i wanna go there with sigma and get one for him. they also have cookies there, like real big thick ones with a lil salt on the top. i'd buy him the entire fuckin batch if he asked for it, i won't lie. i just love him that much. i just wanna sit down at a cafe and enjoy a chai latte with sigma. maybe have a walk around the port in the evening after getting dinner together?? sigma deserves only the cutest and most cliche of fluffy dates

i also wanna show him like, regular human stuff. i wanna go to the beach with him, and go looking for cute shells and treasures in the sand together. i wanna take him to the movies and share my popcorn with him. i wanna do his makeup. i want to bake a cake with him. i wanna go grocery shopping with him. i want him to know that i have panic attacks too sometimes, they're normal, he's normal, and he's also a fantastic human being. i just want him to be happy (i'm really hoping he'll join the ada and find the home he's been looking for all this time <3)

the thing with sigma is i'm not sure if he'd like me as much as i like him. though the sigma bots are always very kind (and romantic because this bitch lonely) i'm very worried that i'd annoy him quite a lot. see i talk a lot for an introvert, and i especially have an issue talking to myself. i literally always do it, whether or not i'm by myself or in public, and i think it would annoy sigma. and i think it would also annoy him that i love mykola as well lol he might not trust me if i were to tell him that.

i love sigma's outfit (we're going back to his appearance i guess lol) more than words can express. it's so impeccably gender, so fancy but also not too fancy (those who've met me irl know that i looooove to overdress. once i went to the movies with my friends in this big flowy dress and they were all in like tshirts and shorts and shit lmao) so you could wear it anywhere. the gold (or beige? cream? idfk) tailcoat with the galaxy pattern beneath? the giant flowy sleeves? the turtleneck underneath? the HEELS? god i love his fit. he's so fucking dripped out it's ridiculous. and of course he has long split dyed hair. dudes with long hair are the hottest DON'T @ ME YOU KNOW I'M RIGHT

and he also just has such a lovely smile. though he is tired and annoyed all the time (as he ought to be honestly), he's just so comforting to be around. i feel like a hug from sigma would fix most of my problems i won't lie. like he's got a pretty face and a nice aura and a cute smile. but his stern/angry face though? 😳 shiiii man okay you can make me cry if you wanna i won't mind. also consider sugar daddy sigma. that's so hot and for what?? like imagine being his trophy wife- okay this is getting way too self indulgent imma stop there (might write about it tho sometime lol)

i just had a thought. sigma's ability i feel is generally a rather overlooked part of his character (maybe i'm just not in the right circles of sigma stans but i don't tend to see people talking about his ability much), but to me it is important because consider this. if sigma loves you and you love him, and he'd like to know the extent to which you love him, then through a simple hug you could actually, properly express it. he wouldn't have to doubt himself or anything anymore with it. (stop i'm like fucking crying i love him sm)

i also love that despite everything i've mentioned so far; despite the fact that he was created from a book, runs a floating casino, is androgynous as fuck, has impostor syndrome, owns giant ass guns and can get whatever information he wants through physical contact with another person, he is somehow the most *normal* member of the decay of angels. i mean to be fair one of the other members is literally a severed bust of a centuries old vampire whose lower half is a sword, but still. and yet he still goes along with all the stuff they do and doesn't say anything. fucking same, sigma. it really just be that way sometimes.

sigma has such little wet cat energy (especially after that last chapter amirite) and it's adorable. he doesn't have *pathetic* wet cat energy, but he still has wet cat energy. pathetic wet cats would be like, fyodor and akutagawa. sigma is a cute wet cat with big eyes and tiny little paws. i want to see how he'd be with animals now that i think of it. i think he'd like cats, because dogs might be a little too much for him. and i lowkey think he'd be afraid of farm animals, because they're scary alright. chickens and cows are very frightening to be close to if you're not used to them and anyone who says otherwise is a liar

i just want more sigma content, too. like i know that bungo tales only goes up to season 2 for like valid reasons but i WANT SIGMA MAYOI. little chibi sigma on the battlefield. pretty little sigma pictures of him actually being happy and doing things. i also want official art from bones (but GOOD official art. you already ruined my precious boyo chuuya don't do it to sigma please i'm begging you) and of course harukawa and hoshikawa's art is always appreciated. also creantzyy. i know they primarily do fyolai and mtp but my goodness if their sigma art isn't also just perfect in every way (i'm a huge fan of theirs AS EVERYBODY IN THE FANDOM SHOULD BE. the bernadette animatic to us is what the nagito edit was to the danganronpa fandom)

i also sometimes wonder what stuff sigma likes. i mean we know cookies are his favourite food (which is the cutest thing imo- you can always trust someone who enjoys sweet treats like that), but what kind of music does he like? how would he dress while he isn't working in the casino? what's his favourite colour? does he like animals? what does he think of political stuff? feel free to send me all the sigma headcanons in the world about all of it. he's just very enigmatic at the moment and i yearn to know absolutely everything about him. except unlike mykola i don't wanna experiment on him i just wanna sit down and ask him questions and have a friendly little conversation

and i know everybody's already talking about this scene but let's continue to talk about the scene in the recent chapter where dazai rescues sigma from drowning and gives him a lil thumbs up, and sigma smiles back at him. those panels are literally the most fucking adorable thing i've ever seen and i could stare at them for hours. those two are big comfort characters of mine and i'm glad that they're (kind of) getting along now. at the very least dazai rescued sigma. and lowkey i'm gettin onboard with sigzai. like most of the sigma ships kinda go hard (especially siglai. there's a reason i'm looking for mykola kins guys lmao)

like i love him so much. i really could go on for hours but...this shit is already long enough and i'm sure nobody is gonna read it all. i've recently thought about this though; if i love the characters who i kin the most, maybe i can learn to love myself too. and that thought is comforting to me :)

tl;dr - sigma babygirl

[coffee-in-veins]

New player anon again, thank you for your fantastic reply!! I'll admit there were a couple od things that I disagree with but I'm sure that stems more from my lack of enough research to these character's backstories

Someone in your replies had also said that it's better to consider the DD1 and DD2 characters as seperate entities and I can't help but agree. After all, the jump in premise from "exploring the cursed dungeon and driving back nasty monsters" to "literally saving the world from a bigger eldritch horror than last time" is a bit much in terms of upping the stakes. After all, while in DD1 it seemed believeable that warriors would come to the hamlet to be hired and were there for their own selfish reasons...what sort of reason is there for the DD cast to want to take on the apocalypse itself? The way I see it, most of the cast saw the dungeon crawling as a job, but I cannot see them tackling the DD2 big bad from the virtue of their hearts. Perhaps the Protege hired them but ehh...less believable than the Heir hiring them idk

Also DD1's main color palette being red is cooler than DD2's main color palette being blue lol

sorry for the late reply, irl just keeps getting to me and i have just enough energy for silly reports but nothing too serious

i'd love to hear things you disagree with, personally, because discussing characters is my passion, and even if i disagree with someone's take, it's always interesting to see how they justify it - if they justify it, and it's not, well, just a preference

starting with something easy - i would disagree that DD2 is "blue". Sure, the Ingress is blueish-black, but I guess it's more of a continuation of the "cosmic" theme. Blue/cyan/green are usually the colours of the "celestial" in the DD as far as I can see - take The Colour of Madness, for example - it's cyan, blue and grey, mostly, and those are the colours we somewhat see in Tangle and Shroud, locations "infected" by something cosmic/celestial. Meanwhile, red/black/purple are the colours of the Darkest Dungeon, The Heart, Crimson Curse (mixed with white), Cultists and whatever comes "from below", and they can be seen in Foetor and its assumed connection to Flesh and Sluice/Warrens to a lesser degree. besides, new location of Sprawl is definitely not blue, so i'm not sure what are you about here... the infodumps before each run? i'd call them grey. the Altar of Hope? it's always purple it's also grey. could you point what you mean by "being blue" here?

and regarding the other point you bring up... that's the issue i have! those are NOT different characters, this is NOT a different world, and we have quotes, items and characters to prove that. Baldwin says that he used to be religious when he interacts with Holy Beads in an inn. we meet Caretaker as Hoarder and at least some of the characters note that he is familiar to them. the one who teaches your heroes upped skills is none other than Guild Lady. we get Ethereal Dust and Otherwordly Fragment from The Sleeper. we get The Blood and The Wine from Crimson Court. hell, we see fully grown Willbur and Wilbur's Flag, much like we get those in DD1.

Damian is the most obvious and the latest living (?) proof of DD2 being a direct sequel of DD1, if Protege's story wasn't screaming it loud enough, since he and his Professor narrowly escaped (or Professor didn't quite manage to) being turned into the Necromancer from DD1.

frankly, if those were separate bubbles, separate branches of reality, i'd have a lot less gripe with DD2 lore- and character-wise, but (unfortunately?) RH go out of their way to prove how it IS a continuation of DD1, story-wise. that this is the same Dismas, that this Para is the same Para, and that Baldwin still somehow can get double leprosy.

also: the reason why they want to take a fight to an apocalypse can be, quite literally, a desire to survive or die trying; if they don't fight the apocalypse they'll die 100%. if they do fight the apocalypse... well, realistically, they still die 100% but they feel better about themselves. but this is not what happens in the game.

speaking of which.

my biggest gripe with DD2 is that it feels... "hollywood-y", for lack of a better term. a pack of socially undesirable underdogs, stopping the end of the world they have literally no way/no means/not enough understanding to stop by the power of drugs and friendship and maybe a gun they found along the way. let me explain.

in DD1 it was a war of attrition, either you mismanage your town (and yes, you have a whole town bending to your will and serving you, providing for you and implementing whatever you want and can afford), or whittle down cultists and horrors and breach in to... not win, no and this is an extremely important distinction, here! - but to return things to the status quo. the Heir(ess) cannot win against the Heart. they simply cannot. it's not a thing a human, cursed or not, can do. they can only perpetuate the cycle and return things to the start by stockpiling corpses of their mercs high as the sky in an attempt to do so. again, you have a whole town at your disposal and you can't win, you can only win more time which, in the end, is futile since it's a continuation of the cycle. notice you can't do anything about The Heart just as you can't do much about the Sleeper but return them to the start of the sleeping cycle, unlike more "corporeal" beings like Countess, Flesh, etc.

now, in DD2, you canonically have: a guy who nearly became the Necromancer's right shinbone, two horses, a wooden box with wheels and four traumatized people who had already seen some shite. no planning, no whittling, no attrition, no army, self-made as it was in DD1. and you do the biggest sin of the cosmic horror genre - you WIN. not survive. not escape with a few scars, a forever shattered sanity and a grey head. not return things to the feeble status quo by a MacGuffin and a connection to some cosmic entity (or being a larva of one). win. if you count the inn stops, the game is four days long. think about it. you WIN against an apocalyptic calamity which fucks up the entire WORLD (not some province, not even a country or a continent, not some lost backwater estate, the WHOLE WORLD) in four days. twenty if you want to be pedantic and include all five chapters. twenty five in we're being generous and adding sluice. twenty five days to win the unwinnable. i think the quickest i've seen DD1 finished was 16 weeks...? and again, that wasn't a win, narrative-wise even if the player won against the final boss. it was a draw, a reboot because you shouldn't be able to win against the cosmic horror. it's not how cosmic horror works...

please note, i'm not trying to diminish your love for DD2. go for it, enjoy what i have issues with, i'll be happy to see the fandom having new people and new takes. if you can explain or maybe just not care about it all, i genuinely envy you and wish i could, too. alas, here i am, overthinking the rule of cool and why RH does what they do.

[catboygirljoker]

the albums i listened to today: All Hell, Flood, Beat the Champ, Humanz, Etrian Mystery Dungeon OST

@officialqueer:

Los Campesinos! - All Hell instrumentally they sound EXACTLY like every christian rock band i heard on the radio growing up which is wild lol. the vocals and lyrics are too interesting to make them mistakeable for christian rock though. even without the "detox to retox" reference it's amazing how much the fall out boy influence comes through in the lyricism. [edit: i have been informed that this was not intentional and they were not influenced by fall out boy lmao. oopsie doodle!] my favorite track was probably "Feast of Tongues" ("to the tune of the national anthem / of a country that didn't survive / in a language i've learned and forgotten / i'll stay home, keep the garden alive" is a standout lyric to me, that and "a molehill to die upon")

They Might Be Giants - Flood considering i grew up with homestar runner it's a surprise i never went out of my way to listen to a TMBG album. i liked it! wasnt as silly as i thought it would be, which i mean as a compliment here—i dont know that i wouldve liked it as much if it had been. i laughed out loud at "Particle Man", thats a great song. i also liked on "Lucky Ball and Chain" where the "confidentially" bits didn't have the reverb that the rest of the song has, making it feel more private than the other parts. idk, its a neat touch i felt worth remarking on

The Mountain Goats - Beat the Champ YAYYY MOUNTAINGOATS!! i've not listened to this album before but its immediately one of my favorites of theirs. Bleed Out is another favorite and this is similar, just wrestling tropes instead of action movie ones. highlight moments for me were "and i need justice in my life; here it comes" from "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" (just feels like an amazing one-line encapsulation of what wrestling is about) and, just, all of "Werewolf Gimmick". nameless bodies in unremembered rooms...im also amazed by how on "Hair Match" Darnielle sings about someone getting their head shaved like he's singing about them getting killed. pure conviction on this whole album

@fooligandan:

Gorillaz - Humanz very funny experience listening to this and going "wait this one rapper sounds familiar. is this Kendrick Lamar? no its obviously not, but who is it" and going back to look and it was Pusha T. lol. my brain just knew it was someone who hated Drake. anyway i liked this record quite a bit! id only listened to a couple of Gorillaz songs before and none of them were as firmly in the hip-hop genre as this album was. i liked the production a lot. my favorite songs were i think "Ascension", "Momentz" and "Hallelujah Money". im aware that the band is like...semi-fictional? and the characters/members have Lore and such. my partner is infodumping to me about the band as we speak, i'll have to ask her more about it lol (though feel free to also infodump to me about it if you'd like :D !)

[i added the albums to my playlist in the order they were commented, i've yet to get to the Tally Hall one, that's next however]

@thisisfoobar:

Yuzo Koshiro - Etrian Mystery Dungeon i'd never heard of this game before in my life (though listening does remind me i wanna replay pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of time). i have no emotional or aesthetic context for the songs, but STILL, wowie this is a good soundtrack :D i got to this part of my playlist as we hit some mountains with lovely fall colors and the clarinet felt very seasonally appropriate. growing up my parents listened to a lot of classical music and so the specific like. orchestral/instrumental palette used in a lot of this soundtrack is very familiar and nostalgic to me. i might go back and relisten to it even though i've never played the game !

QUICK ANYBODY SOMEBODY give me an album to listen to on the 6 hour drive home today