#half-testing my ability to work with pixel art...

[simonwimon]

Little Guys :]

[mathysphere]

All righty, let’s watch some sausage get made!

I managed to dig up all four of the WIP pixel art files for the Chemistry Sampler, with the oldest dating back to Dec 2018-- three years ago, now!-- and with them, loads and loads of old sketches, rejected ideas, and half-finished panels. So if you’d like to come with on a lengthy-- lengthy!-- dive into the process of making a 16-part sampler, click below!

(I’m not kidding, though! This got long as hell!)

I’m going to go through the sampler panel-by-panel, in the order they were first conceived, but that is not at all how the actual design process went. One doesn’t work on a single panel, finish it, and then move on to the next-- instead, it’s all working on every panel all at once, jumping from here to there, trying to make each piece look good on its own and also look good as part of a whole. I also started and stopped working on the sampler at least three different times over the years, which meant even more changes as my style and abilities altered over time. But for ease of organization, I’ll be taking things one panel at a time. So, from the top-! 🎬💥

The Test Tubes were the first panel sketched, with no specific color in mind, and the original composition didn’t change a pixel all the way to the end! The colors, however, changed constantly: I remember for a while they were mostly neutrals, but once I knew I wanted to have a yellow pencil, orange bottle, and some brown cookies in the other panels the colors of the test tubes changed to match.

When I went to stitch the sampler, this was the panel I started with: since it uses thread from every single color family in the sampler (except for the two blues), I figured if I could find threads that worked well together here, they’d look good everywhere else, too.

The Microscope was the second panel sketched, and it didn’t change too much, either. The very first sketch was wicked flat, and imho flat = boring, so I rotated it around to put it at an angle and give it some more depth. I later decided to put a little molecule model (ethanol-- looks like a cute little puppy) next to it to help fill out the space. There is also a full-panel picture of another molecule model elsewhere in the sampler, but by the time I decided to include that panel this one was both already completely designed *and* completely stitched, so it was a little late to change the molecule to something else. And anyway, I like the little guy! So I’m glad he stuck around. :)

The Periodic Table was the no. 1 absolute must-have for a chemistry sampler, but it also posed a unique challenge in that it was the only part where the size was out of my control: if I made each element 2x2 squares they wouldn’t all fit in the panel, so they had to be 1x1-- but that left a huge amount of empty space around them. My solution: placing the table inside a classroom, as a poster.

The first classroom draft doesn’t read well (is that a kitchen sink??) and the second one was even worse. I liked the idea of including larger squares for the elements, but drawing them that small and at odd angles made them hard to identify even as pixel art, and as a general rule of thumb fine details are always *less* distinct in the stitched version than in the digital pattern. Version three is much better: you can see multiple workstations and stools, making it clear that it’s a classroom space, and the repeated diagonal lines give it a nice sense of dimension. That’s always a good thing. 

(Confession: on its own, I like the rainbow color palette better than the final one, but aside from a tiny bit in the volcano panel this was the only part that had any green at all. Next to all the blue and orange panels the green looked out of place, so for the sake of the larger, cohesive whole it had to change.)

The PPE was the reason this sampler ended up so blue! I liked the first sketch, and the first colors, so I started using the same two sorts of blues to sketch out other panels. Made a few small changes to this one later-- added another glove-- but nothing major.

The Molecule Sketch also didn’t change much, except that it started off *really* messy and was constantly tweaked to be a little cleaner each time I came back to the sampler after a break. Turns out it’s hard to draw a pentagon on a square grid! In the first sketch younger me tried to use antialiasing to smooth out the corners-- see the pale grey parts along all the diagonals-- but nowadays I would consider that extremely bad pattern design. Yeah, it’d make the lines look better when stitched on white fabric, but on dark fabric the pale parts would stick out like a lightbulb and the whole effect would be ruined. 

I also eventually added a little backstitching detail, since somewhere between 2018 and 2020ish I finally got over my irrational fear of designing with backstitch. Baby steps! 🙏

The Boiling Flask started life as a closeup shot of a bunsen burner flame + some tiny bubbles, but after a little while I figured that the water was more interesting than the flame. Plus the silhouette is clearer!

We’ve already seen where all the blues came from, which means it’s time to bring in the oranges!

Jupiter in a Bottle is, along with the PPE, one of the two panels that set the tone for all the others. There were about three seconds where I thought I’d try for a pale, crystalline effect for it, but I quickly switched to something brighter and rounder. At that point the chem sampler looked roughly like this:

…so, ah, not very promising, but I remember thinking ‘well, if nothing else, at least I’d have fun stitching the goggles and the orange one”. So since I was sure I wanted to keep those two, all of the other squares ended up being designed around them and borrowed a lot of their colors.. In the end I decided to go all-in on the oranges and blues, and, well, I think it worked out nicely! :)

This little bastard was The Reagent Cabinet, and it’s one of the panels that eventually got cut! It was a very early introduction, and stuck around almost all the way to the finish. I didn’t ever like it, though: it’s not very interesting, not very beautiful, and if I had stitched it it would have been the *only* full-coverage panel in the entire sampler, and so would have looked very out-of-place and heavy compared to the rest of the design.

Still, it technically fit the color scheme, and technically the theme, too, so I didn’t actually have the guts to chop it until I went to export the image and start stitching. At that point, dreading the idea of laboring over an entire full-coverage panel of a design I hated, I finally deleted it and started stitching everything else anyway, just with a giant empty hole in the corner of the pattern. I figured “well, I may be burnt out on designing for now... but once I’ve been stitching a while I’m sure the spark will come back, and I’ll think of something to fill the space”. And so it did, eventually!

The Cookies, however, are a panel that I’ve loved from the beginning 🤎 I wanted to include a nod to ‘everyday chemistry’ alongside the more ‘serious’ designs; a carryover from the math sampler, in a sense, with its bees and shells. 

These particular cookies are based off of my Mom’s chocolate chip cookies, which are kind of sort of like this recipe, but better somehow, and made out of old Y2K surplus that she bought off a disenchanted ex-prepper. Somehow the 20-year-old powdered peanut butter just hits different...

The Billowing Liquid was a effect that was, at least at the beginning, too far above my pay grade: I knew I wanted ‘some kinda sick-looking swooshy liquid effect, like in VFX reels or something?’, but that’s, uh, not a very concrete concept. I ended up realizing I was thinking of an ink-in-water effect, so from that I was able to look up reference vids and start sketching out some actual shapes. I added a little fizz on top, too, for extra effect-- and I think it did end up looking the way I originally envisioned it, even if I didn’t have the words or the skills to capture it back then! 

Another cut panel! This one’s the Alchemical Equipment: the idea was that hey, the modern science of chemistry is descended from the mystical practice of alchemy, so wouldn’t be cool to put a nod to alchemy into the sampler? Also alchemical symbolism is wicked cool. ⁽ᴬˡˢᵒ ᵃˡˢᵒ ᵐʸ ᶠʳᶦᵉⁿᵈ ʰᵃᵈ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᵍᵒᵗᵗᵉⁿ ᵐᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵖˡᵃʸ ᴺᵃⁿᶜʸ ᴰʳᵉʷ: ᶜᵘʳˢᵉ ᵒᶠ ᴮˡᵃᶜᵏᵐᵒᵒʳ ᴹᵃⁿᵒʳ ᵃⁿᵈ ᶦᵗ ʷᵃˢ ʳᵉᵃˡˡʸ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ⁾

I tried a couple different takes on this panel, and I still like both of the last two a lot, but in the end they didn’t fit at all with the rest of the sampler, so! For the good of the whole ✂

The Atom is one of the few where I still had my very, very first sketch saved! 😆 Normally I don’t save these-- I’ll either start cleaning up the sketch on that same layer, or will delete the sketch once I’ve got a first draft started-- but not for this one, or for the next two with it!

After the jump from sketch to first draft, this panel didn’t change much: I just added in the nucleus and made some of the curves less jerky and more smooth.

The Glassware Collection was sketched at the same time as the atom, so you can see its original iteration too! The biggest challenge here was to figure out how I wanted to handle the transparency of the glass: all the other glassware in the sampler was filled with something or other, and I debated whether or not to fill in these beakers and bottles too, with either plain white stitches, or grey, or both. In the end I stitched a bit of white shine on each bottle as a highlight, and left the rest of the space empty. Straight up, on my fabric it’s hardly visible at all, but I made some mockups and found that if someone were to stitch this same panel on black or dark fabric, then this version would look way better than one with the bottles filled completely with stitching. So it may not make my version look any better, but hey, for somebody else someday it will. :)

The Volcano is a kid’s chemistry classic! I toyed briefly with the idea of doing one of the other classic childhood experiments: red cabbage pH tests, or the rubber egg, but none of them are as instantly recognizable as the vinegar-and-baking-soda volcano, I think. 

The Element of Carbon is a spinoff from that one rejected periodic table idea! This panel was one I made right after returning to the project after a long, long break. To get back into the swing of things I went through a bunch of my old discarded prototypes, and discovered that there were some good ideas hidden in there: they just needed to be fleshed out more, and given their own space to breathe.

Also, in the time since I started this design I finally learned how to do a french knot! At long last, I’m a real cross-stitcher 🏅

The Bunsen Burner was made right before I started stitching the sampler: at that point I had the color scheme just about figured out, and most of the panels most of the way done, and there were only two or three spaces left with no design or a soon-to-be-cut filler design. At that point I reached out to a friend of mine who had studied chemistry in college and asked them for some feedback, and they helped me tighten up the design a lot! This is when the alchemy panel finally got the chop, and in its place the bunsen burner came back: now zoomed all the way out, for easy visibility, and with a pretty new shine effect up top.

The Centrifuge was the other panel my friend recommended-- and Evan, if you’re reading this, thanks a million! This one was an easy breezy design to make: pleasant shapes, an interesting subject, and lots of ovals. I do love a good oval.

This panel and the one before it came together *fast*: I was trying very hard to lock down final designs so I could lock in final colors so I could lock in a final arrangement so I could finally, finally, start stitching. I figured if I could get the sampler to the stitching phase then the ball would at last be rolling fast enough that I wouldn’t be in danger of abandoning the project again-- a pretty bold hope, given that I was more than two years and several abandonments in, but hey, I was still hoping! 

One problem: this is the point when I finally cut the reagent cabinet, so, while I *had* finally gotten to the stitching phase, I was still only stitching 15/16ths of a pattern. Enter:

The Molecule Model

The final panel! I had hoped to come up with a suitable final idea in the process of stitching the sampler, and it took a hell of a long time to get there: I believe I had all the panels started, and a few of them finished, even, by the time the idea for this one rolled around. I was working, then, with a fixed position for the panel, along with a fixed color palette, but if anything those constraints made designing it easier. I just picked an interestingly-shaped molecule (theobromine, found in chocolate and tea), built it in MolView, spun it around until I got a cool angle, sketched it, and bam! Final panel complete!

…minus a mountain of tweaking, of course. All the other panels had had months to get their rough edges ironed out, but for this one I just kept the file open as I stitched, fixing problems as I found them. I would not recommend it-- you have to unpick a lot of stitches anytime you decide ‘actually, it looks better one square to the left’!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, did it work? Did it all come together in the end? God, I hope so!

But you know, I think it did. :)

Thanks for reading! ✌

-Geri

P.S. it’s not about any specific panel, but you see how the early drafts have colored borders, while the final version has white ones? At one point I was using a draft of the sampler to mess around with GIMP’s content aware fill, trying to make some glitch art, y’know? And the results were pretty cool, but also overwhelmingly line-y:

…and I was hoping to try and make glitched-out versions of the individual panels, instead. So I took the version I was experimenting with and deleted the borders from it, and from that discovered two things: 

One, that it was a huge improvement to the composition and should absolutely be carried over to the official version of the file, and

Two, that it did not make the content aware fill work any better, and in fact made the results look worse.

This postscript has a happy ending though: turns out if you take any individual panel and use it to tile a plane then you can select a chunk of it, use the content-aware fill, and then pick out the best bits to make your own glitchy sampler :)

✌!

[ghostboy-gamedev]

Learn Log #4 - Grassy Grove

On week 4 of my pixel art journey, I learned how to make objects of nature including grass, bushes and trees. Unfortunately, I had to postpone this to this week when the learning and blog post was set for last week as I was just preparing for a return to university (it’s all online – social distancing dw). Anyway, I ended up making the forest scene you see above, and it was a lot of fun. I think that the GUI elements last week had a focus on technicality and exactness. Letters are very rigid, and we have somewhat set ideas about what each character should look like. However, nature is more flexible and therefore logic isn’t as heavily involved.

Tile Sets

Before jumping into the actual elements of this week’s piece I want to talk about making pixel art tiles. You will have probably noticed that the nature scene is quite rigid like each element is set into a box. This is because I’m learning pixel art to make games and games often use tile sprites to build their environment.

Tile sprites are the floors and sometimes walls of the environment. They often loop or repeat to cover the environment, however, some engines have tools allowing game designers to build environments tile by tile.

In the first case, the tile sprite will have to be created with its looping in mind and details may be added to provide variation in the environment. However, these added details may highlight the repeating the pattern and the more a detail sticks out the obvious the repetition becomes. Additionally, smaller tiles will repeat more frequently, and this also shows repeating textures.

The second scenario requires variation to be created from the creation of multiple tiles. This is great for creating variation; however, the tiles will also have to line up with each other which may be trickier for more rigid surfaces like rocks or bricks.

Since Unity has a tile builder tool and I was creating a natural environment where tiles wouldn’t need to line up so clearly – I decided to go with the second option.

The size of the tiles may also dictate the size of the rest of the game. For example, a bush may be 1 tile large in terms of level design, so the size of that bush is determined by the size of the tile. This also goes for the player whose sprite will typically range from 1 tile to 2x2 tiles. I decided to just make my tiles 16x16 as I enjoy learning within that space.

Grass

A grass tile is typically made of a green background with blades of grass texturing the surface. Many people may open up a couple of green canvases and start texturing them with green lines, however, there’s a much better way to do things I think. Since we’re working with 16x16 tiles there’s a limited number of shapes that look like grass and are small enough to fit within the tile. So, if we make a bunch of lines in green then we have blades of grass that we can copy and paste into each tile (the blades should typically be a lighter green as light will be hitting them).

However, having blades of grass like this make tiles look flat. Adding shading will fix this issue by giving the grass depth, however, more complicated shading will obviously make the background more complicated which can affect the readability of your game.

Each blade of grass can now be copied into a 16x16 canvas to make grass tiles. I made 4 grass tiles shown below putting approximately 10 blades into each tile. I made each tile with different elements of the environment in mind such as short grass, long grass, bushy grass and leafy grass.

With these tiles, I created a larger image to test the repetition of the tiles. The repetition wasn’t a big issue; however, I didn’t think the leafy grass fit with the rest of the grass, so I decided to leave it behind for the next stage.

Next, I was going to add an extra tile for each of the current textures to reduce repetition as well as two flower variants for each tile type to add some colours into the textures. I did another test of the tiles’ repetition and overall look and it looked good but somewhat cluttered though I figured that this wouldn’t be an issue when I deliberately place the tiles rather than randomly scatter them.

I had in my mind the type of scene I wanted to make for this week, but it required dirt paths. Luckily this wasn’t an issue to make. I made two variations of the straight, one-way paths as they would be tiling and altered one of these tiles slightly to make the curve and intersection tiles.

I then assembled these 15 tiles into the image below.

Trees

Next, I wanted to add some plant life which would involve trees and bushes. I decided to do trees first as they would be larger than the bushes. First, I started with the shape of the tree which would be fairly basic. I made a rough tree trunk shape to start with and topped it with a circle that was a little squished before refining the shape a little more to get what’s shown below.

I then added colour into the tree. A simple brown for the bark and 4 shades of green for the leaves. These greens were made by colour picking the base green background and hue-shifting it towards yellow so the tree would stand out more from the background.

The colours are organised into ovals to help give the tree a sense of depth. The dark shades wrap around the edges of the tree to show the tree’s roundness. The colour thins out as it goes around because you’re viewing the shaded leaves from a side-on perspective.

Next, I blurred the lines between these circles by mixing the colours slightly. This was the start of adding leaves onto the tree. Quickly after that, I added more detail to the leaves by spotting the head of the tree with lighter greens. The details added were in ‘leaf-like’ shapes like hearts, single lines, and arrows. They don’t look like leaves individually and can’t receive much detail themselves (such as a stem) but together they make the tree look nice and bushy. I also added some detail to the tree trunk including shading.

The tree trunk seemed a little off when I checked it out with the image I had so far, unfortunately. So, I added some extra trunk at the bottom along with a nice shadow. This shadow was the colour black at a transparency of 127 (or half transparency). This works really well as a quick and easy shadow on detailed background, but it does, unfortunately, mean the shaded area is not hue-shifted as typically preferred. The final product is below.

Looking at this sprite you may think it would be difficult to construct a game environment due to the leaves, trunk shape and shadow involved. However, we can place each section down as a separate 16x16 tile with the main trunk tile being a collider and other tiles not having a collision box (like decoration tiles – we don’t want players to run into tree leaves). This works out really well, and I focused on the main trunk tile when positioning the sprite in the piece. Which is shown below.

However, the scene below is bit lonely so I thought I’d add some pine trees as a level border. The process of the pine tree is similar so I won’t describe each step but will show the images. This time around I did shape the tree a bit more wildly with branches and leaves sticking out from the tree. I also hue shifted towards bluer colours rather than the more yellow colours I used in the round tree.

Next, it was time to add more trees into the scene and add some grass beneath them. I made the grass beneath them short grass simply because it looks a bit neater than the other grass types.

I think it looks pretty neat! I made a pine tree variant by swapping the colours with that of the round tree for some variation which worked as a nice, easy trick. But it would look livelier with some bushes.

Bushes

You might have looked at the trees just before and thought, ‘That kind of looks like a bush on a stump.’ That’s because the techniques used to make bushes and trees are typically very similar depending on the style of the game. Since we’re using a 16x16 size which is somewhat limited they will likely turn out in roughly the same way.

I started with a circle shape that was modified at the bottom to be a bit flatter. This will hopefully give the impression that the bush is touching the ground and rounds out on the top

I did a similar process in colouring the bush as I did with the tree, however, I used fewer colours as I didn’t have as much room for highlights with the bush. The colours used are actually the same as those in the pine tree.

I then adjusted the outline to give the bush a wilder feel as well as texturing the inside of the bush to create the appearance of leaves.

The bush still felt a little flat, so I added highlights to the top of it to add a greater sense of depth. The highlight was rounded towards its end at the bottom to enforce the rounded nature of the bush. This required me to add another outline tone for highlights which I might apply to other elements of the picture. I was pretty happy with the bush, so I made another for variation and added them into the picture with some shadows.

The picture looked pretty good, but I thought some touch-ups might make it just that little bit better.

Touch-Ups/Conclusion

To touch up the piece I added some more trees for denser looking forest, added the lighter outline colour to the tress and expanded shadows around some of the pine trees. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I think the shadows could use some refinement at the top border of trees. I also think that top border highlights the repeating pine tree trunk which could also be changed to tile better. I do wish my bushes were a bit leafier than shrub-like, however, I think my ability to make leaves on both bushes and trees will improve as I practice. I also think a 32x32 base picture would allow me to make some more defined leaves. The lighting on the pine trees also uses a different technique to the round tree so next time I’ll try to be more consistent with that. Overall though I’m happy and I quite like the outline highlights as they make the image a bit softer.

That concludes week 4 of learning how to make pixel art. Next week I’ll be looking at sand, water and rocks to make a top-down beach scene.

My learning and this blog post wouldn’t have been made possible without these fantastic resources. Go check them out if you wanna learn some stuff about pixel art!

How to Draw Tiled Pixel Art by TipTut

Creating Variation in Pixel Art TutsByKai

Pixel Art 101: Grass by Pixel Pete

How to Make Pixel Grass Tiles by TutsByKai

RPG Grass Background Tiles by HeartBeast

Pixel Art 101: Trees by Pixel Pete

[Let’s Pixel] Tree by HeartBeast

[Let’s Pixel] Spruce Tree by HeartBeast

Pixel Art 101: Bush by Pixel Pete

[viridianstarlight]

Time to share some of my D&D characters! As I said in an earlier post, these were made in Reroll, a browser program designed for making pixel art of D&D characters, and it works like a doll maker kinda.

Above are the characters from the first campaign I played in very briefly. I never actually played Elri though. He was just a planned backup character that I started before the first session, after realizing how likely it was that Tarloc would die (we had an accidental test session where I realised he loved taking risks, like deliberately activating traps, although I toned down that side of his personality quite a bit when we started playing).

Long post ahead, there’s like 20 characters. Won’t go deep into explaining all of them though.

Next is Nemesis, a tiefling Wizard (Necromancy school) that I played briefly in a different campaign. I had some really great ideas for how her Necromancy skills could play into her story and morals, and some of that came to fruition during the campaign. She had a really interesting personality too, starting off as a bitter woman who hates everyone, meeting a super smiley bard, and gradually deciding ‘I would die for this one and this one only’, but still giving the ‘I hate you’ attitude when the friend nicknames her Nemmie (especially when the party member she hates starts using it).

Unfortunately though, those are the only characters I’ve really played.

And now, because tumblr thinks it’s a great idea to not allow people to have multiple images together throughout a post (like I have at the top of the post), every portrait needs to be full-size. Guess this is gonna be a long post.

This is Seymour Aran. When making the portrait, I forgot to give him an eyepatch. His first name is a pun, since I thought it’d be fun to give a man named ‘see more’ one eye.

He’s an NPC planned for the first session of my campaign, a member of the local temple, and he’s partly to blame for the villain of the first session.

And this is said villain. She thinks the town of Crast (a mountain town built around a coal mine, where the campaign starts) is dismissive and disrespectful towards the dead. So hey, why not change that, by force?

Oh, and she used to be Seymour’s apprentice too.

Tobias is a friendly face the party meets in the first session. He’s the son of another NPC, but because of lore reasons, he doesn’t know that. Oh, and he’s also a bit of a conspiracist

A name some of y’all might be familiar with (it was my first URL on this account), this is my Dragonborn ranger that I wanna play eventually, one of my favourite unplayed characters (although I could say that for a lot of them). He was banished from his clan for not taking orders and killing a pretty important character from the clan. His name translates to ‘stubborn and honourable betrayer who does not belong’.

Another of my Dragonborn, this one’s a Bard. His name translates to ‘traveller who belongs to the keepers’. His clan are keepers of knowledge. He also found another of my favourite characters, Waking Sky, when she was very young, feeling lonely, angry, and afraid, and took her to a monk monestary he knew, who helped raise her and teach her to deal with those feelings.

She’s 19 now, and still hasn’t entirely learned to deal with those feelings.

Yup, blue hair. In world, her hair is actually a mix of blue, white, and its natural blonde, and she has tattoos of waves on her left arm, but there wasn’t a way to show either of those in Reroll, so I settled for this.

Oh, and she’s a Monk too.

Sky is one of my characters that was originally created for an old fan-fiction project with some friends, which ended up being abandoned, and I translated some of the characters I made for that to D&D.

This is one of my Paladins. She calls herself an ‘Emissary of the Light’. She grew up in a cavern settlement with her family, but they were forced to flee when it was invaded by goblins. Only a handful of the dark elves survived, including her mother. Her mother was killed when she tried to return a few months later though, and since then Ulstra has sworn to fight for the very light that blinds her (yeah, playing with the rule that makes dark elves have difficulty seeing in normal light conditions).

Iolanthe is a human Fighter who ran away from her noble family with nothing but her horse, rapier, and the clothes on her back.

Talvani is a half-orc Rogue who was raised by pirates. They found her as a baby (from an island village they raided), and the first mate thought she’d make for some great muscle for the crew as an adult. The captain didn’t like the idea at first, but let it happen.

Could you imagine pirates raising a half-orc child?

Valo’s an interesting character. When I started making him, I wanted to make a Druid halfling, but I also wanted to mix in the charlatan background. Really curious how that mixes if and when I play him.

Arutan’s an undead dwarf from the underground city of Arudel. The city’s dead now, with Arutan being the only ‘surviving’ member. With him being undead though, he’d be kinda complicated to play, so there’d be a lot of back and forth between me and the DM about how that works, if I do end up playing him.

I really badly wanna play a tempest Cleric someday though.

Another character from that old fan fiction project. The next few are from there too. In the old project, Ghost was the best friend of my self-insert character, who became addicted to player-killing (the project was set in an MMO). I’m kinda thinking he might have a similar arc as a D&D character. Of course, being a criminal, I’d probably need to make sure the DM and players are ok with a party member like that.

Another character from that fan-fiction project. Translating her to D&D, I decided to work with the Folk Hero background, which isn’t one I’d done before. I don’t really know much else about her though, aside from the traits I picked and a few ideas they’ve inspired.

Yup, another character from that project. I decided on him being a Guild Artisan for his background, specifically a carpenter. I don’t know much else about him though.

Sarah’s yet another character from that project. She’s a musician, but just as a hobby, rather than as a Bard class. Her brother ran away to join a circus band, but hasn’t been able to commit to one yet.

Yup, another from the project. Skarlet’s a Monk, with the Entertainer background. Apparently I forgot both of those details when I made this portrait though, and thought she was a Rogue with the Assassin background. I might remake this, but I do quite like the portrait. Now I’m conflicted, dangit.

Theriel went on an artifact recovery expedition a few years before present day as a guard to a super secret location. When he realised how dangerous the artifact was though, he made some very difficult decisions, believing them to be best for the safety of the world. And now he’s an Eldritch Knight.

Oh, and Theriel’s the last of the batch of characters from that old project. The character was originally inspired by Jack from Final Fantasy Type-0, particular the character’s ability to make horrible jokes (often at the worst time).

Sunflower is a Barbarian. A few years back, he was fighting in a war as an infantry soldier, and ended up some super powerful magic dude. He has no memory of how the fight went down though. And now sometimes he gets angry, his memory lapses and he can’t remember what happens. He just knows that, when the memory lapse ends, it’s usually with his sword in a bloody body.

[y-u-u-u-u-u]

Week 5 - Platformer Postmortem

I was able to get all of my core systems and mechanics working by starting off from scratch and redid everything. The amount of work was no joke... Again, I’ve decided not to implement any of my art assets at first and I just wanted to see if everything worked. And thankfully they did. However, in hindsight, I should’ve at least done some of the art first, especially character sprites. The problem was that the sprites I found on the assets websites were at a different pixel count (height & width) than the default sprites given to us. This resulted in a lot of time spent on tweaking the variables in my code blocks, cropping, scaling new sprites and changing their hitbox points. Whereas I could’ve used this time to move on to platform design and placement. In my next project, I will definitely try to strike a balance between mechanics development and art implementation, so that I don’t spend too much unnecessary time on making tweaks.

Shrink

Dash

Playtesting 

This time around I found 2 new testers that have never played the previous half-finished demo. I simply handed them the control scheme and my laptop and let them start playing. This is of course following the testing process discussed in Game Design Workshop (Fullerton, 2018), providing the testers minimal instructions and introduction to your game, so that you can see how accessible or intuitive the mechanics and gameplays are.

To my surprise, both testers got used to the game very quickly and started to try out both abilities and combine them, using both at the same time. Which is my intended way of playing the game.

The results are mostly positive. Both testers stated that they felt the abilities are definitely the highlight of the game and are intuitive to use. However, with the shrinking ability, they thought it would be better to make it activate by pressing the Z key once, instead of having to hold it down. As it can get quite hectic and unmanageable when they have to use both abilities at the same time or in quick succession while multiple enemies and platforming are involved. On top of this, they also found the multipath level design interesting. Where they have to think a little bit before choosing which route they want to go. Though they did suggest toning down the colours of the platforms a little bit, in their current state, the colours feel slightly fussy. Lastly, Both players wanted the checkpoints to stand out more and the blue gems to have a higher contrast to the background image, as they can get blended in quite easily.

n10561935@qut.edu.au | Shenghua Gao

[entropy-game-dev]

Weekend programming progress...is always slow! So in the interim, I’m going to do a post-mortem for the game I was developing about a year ago, and then stopped.

Game name: CHEST (working title)

Genre: Two player vs. chess-like game

Description: Well, chest was an odd sort of game. It’s basically chess, as in, turn-based, except pieces had various abilities. For example, the blue ghost swapped pieces, the swirly guy spawned little yellow dudes, and so on. Each piece had something unique about it. You could also move two pieces a turn which set up some really devastating combos

The game was centered around the yellow guys in particular - once you moved them, they then continuously walked forward at the end of the turn in a death march, blowing up the first unit (friend or foe) in their way, and killing themselves in the process. The aim of the game was to either remove all of your opponent’s yellow guys, or get a yellow guy to your opponent’s last row. 

My initial conception of the game was a sort of, competitive, turn-based incredible machine style game where you have two competing factories with moving parts that you place and reconfigure each turn in response to what your opponent was doing. More than half of my pieces had end of turn effects (e.g. pushing, destroying things near it, etc.). I wanted both players to develop a well-oiled machine that constantly spat out units to try and overwhelm the other!

What went right: 

Arrays/matrix usage: A few things! This was my second attempt using arrays seriously in a game, and I learnt a ton about what to do and what not to do when using them. It was also my first go using enums, which I am making heavy use of in this game.

Sprite size: I’m somewhat happy with the sprites that I used - they were 32x32 in size, I believe, so they were a lot more manageable to animate. I am a very, very terrible artist with no intrinsic talent, so I turned to pixel art as there’s only so many configurations to place the pixels in before I get something that looks decent using trial and error! This was also the first time I picked and chose a colour pallette and stuck with it throughout the game!

Going online: Another first was that I figured out netplay! This was a feature that took an incredibly long time to get my head around, and it’s something I’m still not really comfortable with. Nevertheless, the code is in place and I can re-use it in the future if needed.

Playtesting: Finally, I learned quite a lot about balance. I played a lot of matches in tabletop simulator with friends and went through a bunch of iterations for my pieces.

What went wrong: 

No playtesters: Because I didn’t have a working AI, I relied on players to connect to other players in order to test my game (or internalise quite a complex set of rules and play in tabletop simulator). Finding players willing to play against other players was incredibly tough, and was THE major reason why I stopped development of the game.

Looking before I lept: I programmed a bunch of piece actions BEFORE playtesting them, which was an incredibly silly idea in hindsight, but hey, that’s how you learn.

A very slow, grindy game: Initial implementations of the game was incredibly slow, with matches taking 30+ minutes. This was because, piece production often ended in stalemates, the game was overly defensive, and the multitude of options you had (two moves per turn, end of turn effects etc) meant that one had to do a lot of thinking in order to come up with the optimal move that wouldn’t put you in danger!

Behind the scenes: I had done what essentially amounted to a hack-job because of how I conceptualised the end of turn effects. I had one big script that looped through the board to find all pieces and then executed their effects in turn. All these effects were located in this script and it was absolutely awful! If I had my time again I’d use a stack to load up each piece, and have them do their effects when they were at the top of the stack, placing the code where it SHOULD have gone - inside the piece itself.

Overall assessment: An interesting but overall ill-conceived game that didn’t really appeal to other gamers, filling a niche that didn’t really need filling. Battles were extremely tactical but lacked engagement, I am confident most players would not have gotten through many games before calling it quits. If I ever return to this, I would completely rework most pieces to turn it into a fast, aggressive game.

[droneseco]

Govee Lyra Review: Time to Upgrade Your Floor Lamp?

Govee Lyra

9.00 / 10

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The Govee Lyra is a stunning freestanding accent light for any part of your home, capable of gorgeous dynamic multicolor displays that'll be sure to wow guests. However, voice control is limited and the app could do with some streamlining. If you just want some flashy lights, Govee RGBIC LED strips offer better value for money with the same feature set. 

Key Features

RGBIC LEDs

58-inches tall

Aluminum profiling

Opaque silicon LED diffuser

Specifications

Brand: Govee

Integrations: Alexa, Google Home

Protocol: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

Hub Required: No

Music Reactive: Yes

Multicolor Capable: Yes

Pros

Dynamic, multicolor scenes are incredible

Music mode works well from the built-in microphone

Bluetooth app control as well as Wi-Fi means you can take it elsewhere for instant effect lighting

Cons

The app has a bewildering number of color options

Limited voice assistant control

Can't save scenes to the remote

Doesn't support Apple HomeKit

Buy This Product

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// Bottom

Govee leads the way in affordable smart home lighting, but until now it's mostly been focussed on DIY options like LED strips. The Govee Lyra is its first freestanding floor lamp, and the sleek design means it wouldn't look out of place in any modern home. Is it time to upgrade your floor lamp?

Read on to find out more about the Govee Lyra floor lamp, how it compares to other smart lighting products, and whether it's right for your smart home.

To celebrate the launch, Govee is offering a Lyra floor lamp to one lucky reader: just enter your details in the giveaway widget at the end of this review to be in with a chance of winning. The competition closes one month later, and the winner will be notified by email.

What is "RGBIC"?

The Govee Lyra uses RGBIC technology, which is another term for Neopixels, or pixel LEDs. The "RGB" part refers to the LEDs being capable of color mixing with a full gamut of Red, Green, and Blue. "IC" is short for Integrated Circuit, referencing the fact that each LED has its own control circuit, hence each can display a different color.

Most RGB strips you'll find for sale can display only a single color at the same time. The Govee Lyra (and other Govee RGBIC products) can display multiple colors simultaneously, resulting in gorgeous rainbows and aurora patterns.

Govee Lyra Hardware

The Lyra arrives in a relatively compact box, which of course means there's a fair bit of construction before you can start using the lamp. Inside the box you'll find:

Heavy base with attached control box

Three milled aluminum profile sections

Connecting brackets and screws

Silicone-encased LED strips

Power cable

Remote control

Optional remote control holder

Fixing it all together is quite an involved process, but took me no longer than half an hour, and a screwdriver is included. However, you should follow the instructions closely, as one of the aluminum profile sections is not like the others, and has a different set of screw holes to attach to the base. Once the main tower has been constructed, you should plug in the LED strip, then carefully squeeze it into the profiling.

The optional remote holder snaps onto the Lyra in any position you choose. The remote control itself is magnetic at the rear, so it can be attached and pulled off easily. It's optional though, so feel free to not use it if you feel it ruins the overall aesthetic.

Design

The Govee Lyra stands at 58-inches (147cm), though the LED strip is only 47-inches (120cm) of that. To ensure it stands upright, you'll find a heavy but slimline base, with the footprint of the Lyra only a 6-inch diameter, meaning it should fit neatly beside any bulky furniture.

That said, I'm not a fan of the white plastic around the base, and would have preferred a wider, flatter, brushed aluminum look to match the profiling sections. It also seems like a wasted opportunity that the power brick and electronics are not built into the base.

Ultimately these are small complaints when the base and cable are likely to be hidden behind some furniture, but it does mean you may not want to put the Lyra in an empty corner of the living room. At 58-inches tall, I also found myself wanting a small table to put it on, rather than the actual floor. It feels just ever so slightly too short, and just one extra section would have made all the difference. To me, a floor lamp should stand about as tall as I am, or a little less.

The Govee Lyra looks best when placed about a foot back from and facing a wall, allowing a wide area of light to be reflected back.

Of course, if you'd rather the harsher look of the striplight itself, there's no reason you can't do that, but you'll get a much less impressive reflection.

Controlling the Govee Lyra

There's a number of ways you can interact with and control the Lyra:

Physical remote control

Govee Home app

Voice assistant

Remote Control

The remote has buttons for power, built-in music reactive modes, one color selection, brightness, and warm or cool light modes.

However, notably absent is the ability to select multicolor scenes that aren't music reactive. To initiate those–which are arguably one of the biggest differentiating points of the Govee Lyra–you'll need to use the app.

Govee Home App

Thankfully, getting set up with the Govee Home app is easy, and I was able to reliably add the device within minutes. Operating over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, just choose the Lyra from the indoor lighting tab, provide your network access details, and name the device. The device will automatically use Bluetooth if you're within range, but otherwise, it all works fine over Wi-Fi.

The app is relatively easy to use to select premade scenes or more music reactive modes, but creating your own custom animations can get more complex thanks to confusing color options. Having trouble deciding on some colors to use? The "Recommended color schemes" sounds like it would be an easy to choose list, but instead requires you to select no less than an initial style, a basic color, a scene, and a color matching method; none of which are really explained.

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The "Effects Lab", which features at the top of the list, is particularly bizarre. It appears to be a vast selection of color palettes created from photographs, from which you can then choose a single color and apply it to the lamp, or save the color to your personal favorites. To me, an Effects Lab is somewhere you can go and choose, say a fireworks animation, or log fire. Instead, you'll find those sort of animations down in Mode -> Scene.

The app also includes the options to share your scenes, though it's not clear where to access others' creations.

In short, there's an awful lot of choice in the app, and the basics are easy to get a hang of, but there's just too much complexity when it comes to customization. Govee could do with taking a leaf out of the Nanoleaf playbook when it comes to custom scene creation and community sharing.

Voice Assistants

The last option is to use either Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Apple HomeKit and Siri are not supported. The voice assistant control is also limited to power, brightness, and color; you can't select multicolor scenes or music reactive modes.

In my testing, I found the remote control and app to be the most useful. Despite not being able to export animated scenes to the remote control or voice assistants, the Lyra does remember the last scene used, so you can at least resume your favorite (assuming you don't turn it off at the plug). The lack of HomeKit support might be a dealbreaker for you though.

Which Smart Lighting to Choose?

Govee is our favorite when it comes to great value smart lighting, but it's not the only option. Let's take a look at some other ecosystems to compare.

Govee vs Hue

The Govee and Hue smart lighting ecosystems crossover in many places, yet differ immensely. Both sell smart color bulbs, LED strips, and standalone lighting fixtures. Govee even has its own version of the Ambilight technology, which uses a camera to "watch" your screen and dynamically adjust the lighting color.

The main difference is price: Philips Hue devices cost two to five times as much as their Govee equivalent. Consider the Govee smart LED strips, around $20 for five meters; vs the Hue equivalent Lightstrip at $60 for three meters! Philips even has a smart floor lamp, but it's twice the price, and only outputs a single color. There's just no competition here.

The Hue system requires its own smart hub, creating a separate Zigbee mesh network. This has the benefit of not cluttering up your Wi-Fi if you have lots of fixtures, and means you can install lighting in places your Wi-Fi might not be able to reach. On the other hand, it's a high added cost if you only have a few smart lights, and modern Wi-Fi routers should easily handle some smart lighting. On top of that, Zigbee transmits over the 2.4Ghz spectrum, the same as 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi. S you (or your neighbors) may find your Wi-Fi experience suffers.

Govee smart products use either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. If you have good Wi-Fi coverage and a modern router, you should have no problem. Though rarely used outside of initial setup, Bluetooth is a welcome addition for me. If I'm running a small event somewhere, such as a haunted house, I can pick up some Govee LED strips and set them up as effect lighting or a custom music reactive mode using only my smartphone, without needing to worry about programming in new Wi-Fi access details.

Govee vs Nanoleaf

Although the Nanoleaf smart lighting panels are a vastly different product (more akin to wall art installations), they are generally going to be considered for the same purpose as the Lyra: lighting up a wall or corner of your home.

Both Nanoleaf Panels and Govee Lyra share a lot of similarities:

Connect to Wi-Fi, and have voice assistant integration

Capable of displaying more than one color simultaneously

Offer music reactive modes

Offer dynamic scenes, such as a rainbow or aurora

Have a comprehensive mobile app with custom design modes

Have physical control buttons, either on a remote or on the device itself

So where do they differ? Nanoleaf panels are infinitely more customizable, and expandable. The app even helps you to design a shape to place them on your wall. Nanoleaf panels are also compatible with Apple HomeKit, and voice assistant integration is generally more developed, with individual scenes exported.

Of course, Nanoleaf panels are more expensive: two to three times as much as the Govee Lyra for a basic 9-panel music reactive starter kit. In my experience, the Wi-Fi control is lot less reliable too, and I frequently have to do a hard reset to get them responsive again.

Should You Buy the Govee Lyra?

If you want a stylish, minimalistic floor lamp, capable of stunning multicolor dynamic and music reactive displays, along with plenty of customizable options and app control, the Govee Lyra is well worth a look. It's certainly the fanciest floor lamp we've ever seen, perfect for everything from impromptu living room raves to subdued romantic nights in.

It'll blend into the background when not in use, and take center-stage when needed. It's gorgeous, customizable, and has a physical remote control. You'll need the app for the more exciting scenes though, and voice assistant integration is limited.

But while we think the Lyra is a great-looking smart floor lamp, it's let down only by the fact that other Govee products offer even better value. Much of the cost goes on the aluminum profiling, and there's only 47-inches worth of actual LEDs for the RRP of $150. For the same price, you could buy almost 100ft of Govee RGBIC LED strips, which would have the exact same features, and produce enough light to blind you. Clearly, a big chunk of the price is on the presentation—metal isn't cheap. If you just want some smart effect lighting, and don't mind sticking the LED strips to an existing bit of furniture, then some basic LED strips are a better choice.

Govee Lyra Review: Time to Upgrade Your Floor Lamp? published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

[ploto999]

Multiplicity 8D Dev Game Post Post-mortem

Planning stage

Planning was by far the biggest downfall of this project, without a clear vision we struggled to find out what exactly we wanted to implement as well as what the limitations of the Gdevelope & our own experience of art, coding and game design. Most of the planning had been done prior to me joining and it was already decided upon roughly on who does what, this let little breathing room for the game to expand from the onesheet based on Brodie idea, all we’d done was retexture and add to the basic mechanic he’d already implemented. This left the games vision primarily in his hands in terms of what we was willing and able to implement, therefor despite the ‘puzzle’ tag it didn’t feel much different to other platformers as the complexity and variation of the puzzle didn’t really exist. It would be cool to have a more escape room around a platform to find the portal vibe where the puzzles get increasingly more cryptic, hidden, difficult and longer, instead we had a platformer with a  gimmick of splitting dimensions but nothing really to do in them. The idea could have been expanded where you only see clues in one dimension or pickups (this was explored briefly with the key.)

Goals where also not planed, there was no timer, no reward for completing a level or even collectables (hats where shoehorned in to remedy this but it was too difficult to implement).

However, what lacked in vision Multiplicity was always ahead or in line with its schedule, team management was also executed extremely well so a demo was available by the time playtesting came around I learnt is how powerful team management tools like Trello are in creating larger projects it was helpful to know what we needed by what week as well as how far we were in development at any stage, this also helped us keep ahead in our work unlike many of the other groups which seem to procrastinate on development.

In future projects it would be nice to have extra ambition so there is at least a more concrete vision in the project and how the game would actually function, this way a more scalable game could be created. It would be good to create a game with a team with a similar mindset of splitting the task and following a realistic time schedule

Development

Development of the game consist of weeks, week 1 was the basics, a player character, the splitting of realities and some platforms to interact with. The next week it was keys, laser doors, boxes. The puzzling aspect of the game than it was enemies and finally decorations and hats. This meant work for the entire team was spread out into simple steps, although this did create a lot of work for Brodie.

This taught me just how much the artist has to work with a team in order to create a game as being able to create useable asset took a few back and forth between us, a lot of the art I felt wasn’t the best but with my little pixel art shading ability the colouring of objects was to the best of my ability (though some like the spike looked a little rushed and I could of worked on the more).

Although happy with this task I felt like I wasn’t doing enough work, I told the group about it and instead of giving me NON art related work they told me to create more art assets…thing is this was the first time I had created animals in pixel art so this was still quite time consuming.

Brodie was the main driving force behind this stage he quickly implemented and got the game to a functioning stage in development as well as implemented everything, oddly enough he still wanted to do even more which left me and Tegan with much less work to do instead of spreading the workload to others.

He should have left the music and sounds to us so he could focus on implementation this would balance the team workload more and mean a more efficient team, rather than bitting of far more than he could realistically chew

 Playtesting

Playtesting was an interesting phase of development, as it was clear that the pool of playtesters where too small and that because all our playtesters where friends/ acquaintances they skewed our data to be very positive. Not only that but it was clear that some of our questions weren’t very neutral like “did you enjoy x?” instead of “what was your opinion x 1 being negative 5 being positive?” we also didn’t have a vast demographic of friends to really understand who our demographic was and what they enjoyed this could of vastly improved the game as it could be either focused and improved to get more enjoyment from platformer and puzzle players or implemented more aspects that a larger target audience could enjoy by understanding why people don’t like platformers/ puzzlers.

Covid didn’t help as I was not willing to go on public transport for the hour commute to uni to get strangers to test the game, not only that but uni students themselves would also skew data in terms of what they enjoy as they’d be (in general) more intellectual, higher attention spans, more empathetic toward the fact that this is a uni project and score more positively ect. This however could be an improvement over getting friends to test the game.

However, this project did teach me the meaningful ness of playtesting in general as we found many issues and bugs that we’d otherwise wouldn’t find by playing ourselves such as the level 1 jump which half the playtesters found to hard, the lack of intuitiveness triple jump has, the box moving when the player stands on it or the box moving off the screen. Many of the most game breaking bugs where found due to playtesting.

End product

The Multiplicity demo that we made was ok, the game lack meaningful goals and a difficulty curve making it a rather strange demo as it didn’t depict the game getting more difficult as time went on, it was rather stagnant with levels having a single difficult jump such as the 3rd jump on level one and the ledge above the spike in the mushroom lands. The “puzzle” aspect seemed rather lacking this should of been fixed with a whitebox prototype before getting into creating a demo, with that a more complex puzzles could have been made rather than just split and collect keys.

Which plays into goals, there was not goals or at least rewards for goals, levels weren’t unlocked for completing previous levels, things couldn’t be collected, and no timer allowed for competitive play. This again should have been added in some regard to allow for progression and should have been higher priority, instead of spending hours implementing an easter egg that only the tutors would understand or appreciate.

[liodensim]

Art Update: Mocha, Pawpads, Fire Escape!

Paw Pads!

We announced this long time ago as an art update and polled the idea for months, so you all knew this will arrive soon enough! It's today! Paw pads will automatically appear as part of "Skin" layer - they will match Nose's colour, which was the decision community made via a public poll we had in past.

Previously, paw pads were just half-transparent and of colour that legs were showing, so most lions with any white unders just had white pawpads. Older lion art (specially adult males) just had the paws drawn awkwardly, (and Xylax worked hard for past 5 years to improve anatomy ever since, like on newer art such as poses and mutations), but we still had troubles to make the new pawpads look good on such old art. We do know it's not following the lines perfectly, but it's for a reason to make it look better. What we did was use original lineart, cut paw pads out and polish up a bit to make it look better, added gentle lineart so it wouldn't collide too much with existing paw pads on lineart, and then went for recolours. Colours were made to match noses as close as possible, using more unified colour template. Dudley, Butterfly and Marbled paw pads got cute spots, just like household cats have. We understand the change is always hard to get used to immediately, your lions will look different after all. There's always Plain nose colour that has no pawpads and no Nose colour, using the original lion lineart transparency. If you notice any specific issues such as art moved to side or stray pixels, please use Art Bug Boards to report it so we can fix it. If you have any observations that would be better with tweaking (like fixing shading on any stage), Art Bug Boards would be more suited rather than Suggestions.

New Content

To celebrate the Solar Eclipse of August 2017 that happened just days ago (and was a pretty big deal all over the news!), we've decided to add a 3GB Oasis BG until October 31st, called Solar Eclipse. It will be an annual BG from now on, but next year limited just to August. For now, enjoy the extended sale time! There's also a special rare decor that can be found ONLY during patrolling - Charmed Dwarf Lioness!. This decor has 2 uses by default and might start a new trend of such exclusive decors.

Image shows off a Charmed Dwarf Lioness decor and Solar Eclipse background without an actual lion in it.

Mocha Markings!

We're introducing a new colour of markings! (Mocha has a hex code of 967B6A - for all the artists out there) It's a user-suggested grayed out brown that will bring a lot of new colour combinations!

Mane Markings: * Mocha Top Smooth (custom) * Mocha Low Flow (custom) * Mocha Half (custom) * Mocha Flow (custom) * Mocha Bottom Smooth (custom) * Mocha Back Hair (common) Body Markings: * Mocha Smudge (custom) * Mocha Shell (custom) * Mocha Sable (custom) * Mocha Points (custom) * Mocha Paws (common) * Mocha Face (common) * Mocha Cover (common)

MINIGAME!

We really wanted to introduce an idea of event-based minigames, and this is our first one - Fire Escape! Next year it should trigger along with opening Event Stud bar! The game banner is located in Games Section. LINK In "Fire Escape", your world is burning around you. It seems there is no end to the destruction being wrought upon the land. As you attempt to escape you must avoid any and all obstacles. One misstep is the difference between life and death. To play, you must click or press the space bar to jump. Careful timing is key to avoid hitting the various obstacles. Bonus points can be earned by collecting the floating beetles as you make your way through the game. The speed of the game slowly increases the longer you play, testing your ability to time your jumps. Each player may submit their score once a day to earn up to maximum of 200 Carrion Beetles and 100 Dry Bones. Yes, a day. :D There's a Leaderboard you can send your score to as many times you want, no matter if you already received rewards today! Polish your skills before submitting your score!

For some other events in future, we might do reskins of this game. It looks like it took a lot of coding and art teaming up to create this game from scratch, so we might not do one for September or October, we'll see though!

Updates

Leopon Adult Male and Leopon Newborn have had their files updated. Xylax - I truly hoped to catch up on muties for this update, but because I twisted my left arm, it's much harder to do script-based art (my left art is used for keyboard, while my right hand is for drawing). I have to take a lot of breaks so it just is so much slower and I am very sorry. It is much easier for me right now to just draw, rather than produce keystroke-based content. There's only so much medicine can do, the wrist also needs time :( Next art update is planned on 8th so let's hope I can cover more until then. Art Style thread has a new update: Charmed Dwarf Lioness - NEW! + Felis stages custom decor .psd added + Mane Specific .psd got updated with Pariah mane Shad has added new tags as usual! (just.. not sure where today ;'D) Also, when working today I have noticed that the tiny mutation we announced some time ago has finally been conceived, whole two days ago! It should be born tomorrow if that person rolls over, and we will enable it in wardrobe and Trading Center search when that happens - hopefully very soon after as Kitty moved into her house and has no internet yet! (Remember it's a lethal mutation, so it will only work for Cub stage)

Raffle Lioness

Congrats Serendibite (#94607)! You have won the last raffle lady! New lady with the Sunset over Entabeni BG is up for impressing in Special Lioness area in Explore or in NEWS section under News Post List!

Polls and Dev Notes

Looks like Underground Tunnels were voted to be the next level! Perfect level for a September art update! LINK - New poll! Which beetle would you like to see next? I included few options, Event, Oasis and Explore, to pick from! Sorry I cannot really include photos from google, so I hope you guys can google the names on your own ;0;

[pen-masta]

Duly Noted Part 6

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There’s a loud banging sound that fills the air. Joy moans and tries to ignore the annoying nuisance of a noise. But it wont stop, it almost sounds like someone is calling her name in the mix of the rhythmic banging.

“Go away,” she whines and buries her head deeper into the crook of her arm.

“Jo-jo come on wake up,” Castel’s deep voice calls through the wooden door.

“No. Never. Let me sleep forever,” Joy mumbles trying to hold on to her last shred of slumber.

Castel sighs and runs his hand over the top of the door frame. Finding the spare key, he unlocks her bedroom door and walks in.

“J-bird?” He asks concerned.

He walks in seeing the room is a complete mess! Joy isn’t the most organized person, but her room has always been sort of organized chaos. But this? There are papers and school books all over the room, as well as empty chip bags and coffee mugs. Her bed is a mess, but she’s not in it. Instead Joy is hunched over curled up on her desk in front of her laptop, her head cushioned by her open math textbook.

He frowns deeply and walks up behind Joy.

“Joy?” He shakes her shoulder gently earning him an exhausted whimper out of Joy. He smiles a little, “Come on Joy it’s noon.”

She groans and slowly sits up, her body is completely stiff--falling asleep at her desk was not the best decision to make. She rubs her eyes and leans back to look up at Castel.

“Hey Cassie,” she smiles tiredly.

He grins sweetly, “Hey Jo-jo.”

“What’s up?”

“Well I thought you had died or fallen down a well,” he chuckles, “I’ve been texting and callin’ ya all day.”

“What?” She asks and digs through the pile of crumpled up papers and textbooks until she finds her phone. The screen shines reading several missed calls and texts from her dork-a-doo wanting to hang out and asking if she was alright.

Her cheeks turn a bright pink and she smiles sheepishly, “Oops sorry C-bear.”

He smiles, “No big deal I just was worried something was wrong. I’m used to hearing that little chime immediately after I text you.” He looks around the room, “What happened in here? Did you stay up all night?”

Joy yawns and stretches, “Yeah I was trying to get some work done.”

“Did you accomplish anything?” He asks and plops onto her bed.

Joy glances at the page and a half of gobbledy goop she has written for her essay. It’s supposed to be five pages! She’s only finished half of her English homework, a fourth of her science, and she hasn’t even begun to attempt her math. Not to mention the history test that’s tomorrow, she fell asleep studying the material. Ugh! This is bad!

She forces a smile, “Sorta.”

His smile falters. If she was struggling with her homework why didn’t she call him? He’s always helped her when the work became overwhelming. Well he has kind of been pushing her away. Even before the epidemic in the cafeteria now that he’s thinking about. He was sinking into a dark whole of self-pity long before that humiliating day, and he wasn’t exactly the friendliest to her. Several days that he wanted to be alone, or shutdown any offer she made to hang out. Wow he didn’t realize how much of a jerk he’s been to her. His best friend...his only friend. No wonder she didn’t reach out to him for help.

He feels like a grade A heel. He rubs the back of his neck trying his hardest to internalize his self-hatred.

“Well,” he smiles weakly, “not gonna lie Jo-jo you look awful.”

She snorts and shakes her head, “That’s exactly what every girl is dying to hear smooth moves Casanova.”

He chuckles sheepishly, “I just mean you need to actually sleep. How long were you up for?”

She shrugs and runs her fingers through her messy hair, “I don’t know dude...I think the last time I saw was seven.”

He rolls his eyes and gets off of the bed, “How about this you sleep and I’ll take care of some of this work.”

Joy smiles at him, “Thanks Cassie but I can’t have you doing my work. Plus we’ve got that history test tomorrow I’ve got to study for it.”

Castel spins her chair around, “I’ll get you a sick day and you can study all day tomorrow.” He smiles, “When I get home from school I’ll come over and quiz you.”

She blinks feeling tears welling up in her eyes, “You’d do that for me?”

He nods and smiles sweetly, “Of course I would J-bird.”

She’s so tired, she’s so stressed, she’s absolutely drained. Cassie is not only offering her a way out of her work, but also sleep and an extra day to prepare for a test he’s been prepared for since last week. She wants to cry! He’s so sweet and caring, she doesn’t deserve to be friends with him.

“But there’s so much to do Cassie I,” she rubs her eyes, “I wouldn’t feel right about letting you do it all.”

He sighs and takes her laptop and textbooks off of her desk.

“How about I’ll stay here and do the work to help you out and you sleep. Whenever you feel rested enough you can take over whatever I haven’t done. Deal?”

She sighs and stretches her arms above her head, “Sleep sounds so superb right about now.”

“What do you say Mrs. Stubborn?” He grins.

She smiles and nods, “Deal.”

He chuckles and watches her stumble over to her bed. He takes her seat at the desk as she collapses on her bed. Joy hums with satisfaction snuggling into her pillow as she pulls her blanket up over her shoulder. She peeks out at Castel to see him gathering up all of her papers and textbooks.

“Hey dork-asaurus-rex,” she calls in a sleepy voice.

“What’s up Jo-jo?” He asks from his seat at the desk.

“Come work over here,” she says and rolls onto her side.

“Why?”

“You feel really far away,” she whines. “The least I can do is keep you company.”

He snickers and turns around to look at her, “Jo-jo you’re gonna be asleep.”

“So what? If you’re over here it’s kind of like I’m still keeping you company,” she pouts.

He smiles and shakes his head gathering the work. Making himself comfortable next to her bed, he piles all the books and papers on the floor.

“Happy now?” He smiles at her over his shoulder.

She nods, “Yup, yup.”

“Good,” he says and opens her science textbook. “Now go to sleep.”

“Yes DAD,” she teases and sticks her tongue out.

He chuckles and starts to answer the questions on her science worksheet. Joy smiles as she drifts off into a sleep she never wants to wake from.

==================

It’s about four in the afternoon and Castel is just about with all of Joy’s homework. He closes her math textbook and stacks the worksheet neatly on top of the tower of textbooks. He stretches his arms above his head and cracks his knuckles as he skims over the pages he’s written for her essay. Of the two of them homework has always come easier to him and his high IQ allows him to solve for X, skim for answers, calculate chemical equations, and write with ease. This ability has always left him plenty of time to aid Joy in any area she was struggling in.

Perhaps it’s a little dishonest in their academics, but he doesn’t mind helper her out in times of desperation such as this. He glances back over his shoulder at her. He smiles seeing she’s still sound asleep curled up under her big fluffy rainbow poke-a-dotted comforter. He sighs and saves the document before closing it out. Her background picture smacks him in the face in the minute the document disappears.

It’s a picture of them. He’s got his arm around her shoulders in a loose headlock while she holds up a peace sign taking the selfie. Both of them smiling and laughing. Behind them a corner of their lime green tent can be seen as well as the valley that hangs down from their spot on the mountain side.

A smile curls his lips as his eyes dance over the blown up, slightly pixelated photo. He remembers when they took that picture. It was this past fall on their annual camping trip. For a long time the camping trip was something both of their families shared, but soon her sisters moved out as well as his brothers/ That left them and their parents, and the six of them made the trip together several times. But this past year their folks were busy with work and just really tired, so they allowed the two teens to venture off on their own.

That was one of the best trips they’ve ever had. Bundled up in their flannel shirts, blue jeans, and boots they left early in the morning before the sun even rose and they stopped for coffee on their way up the mountain. She teased him about his lumberjack’s hat just like she always did, and he teased her about her black beanie just like he always did--an unspoken tradition he supposes.

Once they reached the parking lot of the park they grabbed their gear and hiked into the woods. He loves hiking especially with Joy, she loves letting nature know she’s there. They sang Disney songs and songs from Musicals all the way until she found a spot she liked. The day was spent struggling to pitch their tent and start a fire followed by semi-cooked hot dogs over the fire. The nights were cold in the tent and they had slept as close as they could to stay warm. During the day they’d hike and bird watch, climb trees and skip rocks, they’d fish and talk and never really catch anything because of all their talking. She’d wake him up early to watch the sunrise and they’d stay up late to watch the sunset and star gaze. It was the most amazing camping trip of all their camping trips.

He let her pick the spot because of the two of them Joy had a better eye for scenery and art and all that stuff. She picked a spot that jutted out from the mountain that hung over the valley; plenty of room for their tent and supplies. Trees and flowers and all kinds of wildlife. She said that it was the perfect spot because it had a beautiful view.

He chuckles at the picture of them together, of her. A beautiful view indeed, he thinks to himself. He shakes his head clearing his thoughts. Yeah it was a great trip with his best friend and nothing more. He sighs and leans back against the bed. He runs his hand through his hair and slides his hand down his face. He wants to let her sleep for as long as she can, but he’s starting to get bored. How could he kill some time while she sleeps?

A little thought pops into his head.

A grin breaks on his face as he pulls up safari on her laptop and logs into his email. Maybe mystery girl has respond. Although he’d prefer to meet her face to face he’d be lying if he said all of this anonymous secret admirer bizz doesn’t have him a little excited. It’s certainly brought a bit of interest and curiosity into his life. He eagerly opens the new email from his secret admirer and he reads over her words slowly trying to take in everything she’s so painstakingly written.

When he’s done reading the email he slumps back against the bed. He’s a little taken back by her responses to his questions. Clearly who ever mystery girl is she is into the arts--wanting to see Robin Williams and that Plato quote about music gives it away. But she’s not an airhead that’s for sure as well. Who just knows Plato quotes off the top of their heads? And that fact about Hendy Lamarr, woof! He only knows one other person that knows that fact and she’s sleeping behind him. So this girl has got a brain in her head which is awesome, she’s not some flaky giggling valley girl who’s just floating through life.

She also sounds kind of down to earth as well. The honesty and logic behind the judgement of a book? Come on! And she caught on to his metaphor about judging people, she’s smart! And then that thing about making people laugh? She sounds so sweet and caring, man he’s never met this girl and yet he feels like he’s known her for forever. She didn’t think it was weird that he asked her questions and she retaliated! This is awesome!

Careful Cubs, he tells himself, don’t get caught up in your emotions. It looks too good to be true, stay on guard.

He skims over the email again.

We do have a few classes together–specifically our German, Math, and Science classes.

Well that’s where he’ll start, he’ll go through all those classes and narrow down the girls in those groups. Then he’ll try to figure out who the girl is behind the emails. His eyes continue reading...his golden eyes according to his admirer. Your eyes sparkle and shine like the stars and like the stars your eyes are full of a millions of possibilities. He can feel the heat rising in his face as he reads the beautiful words she’s written to him...about him. It’s really strange having someone talk about him so highly, and so kindly. He really doesn’t do well with compliments and always shy's away from accepting them...but she’s making it really hard to reject her sweet words.

He sighs and runs his hand down his red, hot face. He reads over mystery girl’s questions again. Well he can really only answer one of the four questions right now, he’ll have to really think about the other ones.

“Whatcha doing?”

The voice causes him to literally jump and he whips around to look at Joy. She smiles from inside her bundle of a blanket cocoon. She giggles as he runs his fingers through his mass of unruly curls.

“Jumpy today aren’t we dork-a-do?” She teases.

“Yeah, yeah,” he smiles and logs out of his email.

“So what were you doing?”

“Just checking my email,” he sighs and closes her laptop. “You sleep well?”

[siodymph]

Symmrat Week Day 6

It's finally here... The day we've all been waiting for...

Or me at least! When I first heard that this would be a prompt I got so excited I made a pixel art to go along with it!

As always you can either read the story under the cut or on AO3. Either way I hope you enjoy!

((Also I realize that I've been having so much fun writing these two, why should it stop at Symmrat week? So for the entire week, until the 22nd I'll accept any non-nsfw prompts and requests for Symmrat and post those here and on AO3 unless you say otherwise. So don't be shy and send me as many as you like!))

It had been a little over half a year since Overwatch had been recalled, as well as hired their new recruits. And finally now after their last major mission against Talon had become publicly known across the globe. It was inevitable really. Satya just counted it good luck that their mission had gone so successfully. If it hadn’t they all might be in high-security prison. Instead, they were preparing for a Gala event tomorrow evening and the UN was going to pardon everyone later this month. Satya was fine with this, she’d had gained much experience with formal events of nearly every category through her work with Vishkar. And if she were honest, it had been a long time since she’d last been able to dress up and attend a party and found herself looking forwards to tonight.

There was one aspect of the gala however that worried her, and that involved her boyfriend.

Satya had to give him credit, thankfully so far he had agreed to accept her help for tonight. He’d let her teach him some basic table etiquette so he knew which forks were which. And he’d happily agreed to learn so basic dance steps for any ballroom dancing that might happen tomorrow night. He’d even agreed to wear a tux which he’d been much less thrilled about but eventually they’d found a black tux with blue and purple accents that fit his surprisingly tall frame. She’d had to harp on him about standing straight and rolling back his shoulders which he had grumbled about but eventually tried. Truly, up to this point they’d actually covered a lot of ground in the span of a few days, a speed cotillion course really. Satya was impressed.

There was a moment however that Junkrat finally drew the line. Satya knew it was coming and had hoped he’d see reason but…

“Just take a shower.”

“No.”

“Please Junkrat? I’m sure you’ll feel better.”

“No I won’t.”

“Junkrat it’s just-“

“No.”

Junkrat was really firm about where he drew the line.

What had started out as a disagreement had become a full stand-still. And she tried to see where Junkrat was coming from, she really did, but this was something that had to happen tomorrow night. Absolutely no exceptions. There was no way around this for Jamison.

“No one made me shower for battle? Why the hell do I got to shower now? Shouldn’t I just show up who I am?”

“Because,” Satya sighed as she tried to put the words in her head in working order. “Because Galas and balls like these aren’t for appearing as you usually do. They’re for people to dress and look the very best they can. To impress others and sell stories to the press and your corporate associates.”

“Well I ain’t got no suites to worry about.”

“It’s a formal event. Everyone has to suck it up and pretend to be someone else for the night.”

“Not you.” Junkrat tried, giving Satya a sweet smile. “You’re perfect already, beautiful.”

“Thank you but flattery will get you nowhere Junkrat.”

The smile fell off his face and turned back into that weird hybrid between a glower and a pout.

So far in their developing relationship the two had been accommodating of one another. They both realized that there were things that bothered them that the other could do nothing about. And instead of try and change one another they instead were accepting and never pushed one another past what they were comfortable with. So Jamison never grabbed or touched her by surprise and she never snapped her fingers in his face to try and catch his attention. And while Jamison never pushed her to go into large, chaotic crowds, she never pushed him to clean up more than was healthy and necessary.

And she knew Junkrat must have legitimate reasons for never showering. He’d never told her but she knew there must be one. Because he didn’t react to water like a defiant child, he acted like a scared cat, complete with the skin bristling and occasional hissing. She really wished there was a way around this. But you couldn’t go to a ball only rinsing off your face and arms in a sink. Just thinking about made her imagine her old instructor at Vishkar gasping in disgust and horror.

She just needed to find some way to meet all the needed requirements to getting Junkrat gala-ready without completely tossing him out of his comfort zone into open water which it felt like she was currently doing.

“What if I just say I got a skin condition or somethin’? People would believe that right?”

Satya didn’t even bother answering that one.

“Alroight, that one was stupid. I’ll admit that. But how’about this: I just wear a mask like Hog? Cause the tux ought to cover up my chest and then if I just cover up my face and put on some nice smelling crap no one will even notice. That could work right?”

“It would be much simpler if you just took a shower, Jamison.” Satya ground her fists into her forehead. This was getting nowhere! “If you won’t take a bath can you at least tell me why?”

“Why should I?” He asked snarling, distrust glowering his voice.

“Because I can’t find a solution if I don’t know what the problem is!” Jamison obviously had a problem, one that would actually require years of therapy with a professional and not a one-night fight with an untrained girlfriend. But she had to do something, maybe this could be a starting point to work off of.

So she took a deep breath recollecting her thoughts before speaking again. “Can you at least tell me the aspects of taking a shower that are so… disagreeable with you?”

“Uhhhh,” Junkrat looked away from Satya, twiddling both his prosthetic and human hand. “Well for one, I hate the way my skin feels afterwards. It’s either to dry and scratch or too greasy.”

“Maybe we can find you a soap that’s better suited for you then.” Satya added gently.

“But it always feels like I’m taking something away, like I’m scrubbing off and trying to be something I’m not. You know what I’m saying? Probably not, I don’t even know what I’m saying. And I can’t stand how your skin sorta shrivels up all wrinkly too. Worst though is it’s always a pain in the ass taking off the arm’n’leg. And trying to hop around on the wet tile without falling. The chair helps but it still takes forever to clean off since I only have one hand and all.”

She’d never even thought about that. Guilt settled uneasily on her insides. She always took for granted how her arm was water proof, it never occurred to her until now that Junkrat didn’t have the same abilities for his prosthetics.

“And I really hate how the water feels falling down on me. I know it’s probably stupid but it makes me feel like I’m suffocating…”

That Satya had noticed. Whenever it rained at the base Junkrat would high-tail it inside no matter what he was doing, even in the middle of testing bombs. And now she knew for certain it was a problem for him. She did have one potential idea, a theory really, of something that might work.

“Why don’t you take a bath instead?” She asked.

Junkrat looked at her blankly and she feared she’d hurt his feeling. Perhaps she had been too frank. But then he spoke. “… They got bath’s here?”

“Yes they’re in the back…”

“Really?” He hurried back to the end of the hall of showering stalls and sure enough there was a white-tiled bath way the led further back into a room with several tubs in between dividers. They were large. Big enough to double as hot tubs, Road hog could sit in one and they’re could be room for a few more people to sit down with him.

“Well would you look’at that!” He crowed, giggling as his voice echoed through the room and down the hall. “Work here for half-a year and never even seen this place! Eh, maybe I just forgot.”

“So you’re not opposed to taking a bath?” Satya asked hopeful.

“Ehhhhh,” Junkrat kept looking between the tubs and Satya. “I mean, I guess but like in the same way I guy about to get killed would rather get shot in the head than set on fire.”

Satya nodded and her brain was already churning with a plan. “Gruesome. Than how about this afternoon, we can go to town to get some remaining things and finish getting ready for the Gala. Which includes taking a bath. Does that sound fair?”

“I can work with that.” Junkrat said sighing, his face sank into a grimace.

“Thank you Jamison.” Satya wrapped her arms around him and pecked a soft kiss onto his cheek. “I know you probably hate this.”

“No probably about it.” Junkrat grumbled.

“But I think there’s a few ways I can try and help.”

“Mind filling me in then?”

Symmetra smiled as she pulled out of the hug though she still held his hand. “Maybe it might work better as a surprise.”

“Fine, keep all your secrets then.” Jamsion’s frown began to falter as he rachted his mind trying to think of what Satya might be scheming about. And they both left the commune washrooms of the Overwatch base.

That afternoon while in the city for their last-minute items Satya took Junkrat into a soap store. As soon as Junkrat stepped in he felt like his nose was being assaulted with a thousand different smells at once. It felt like his sinuses were getting aggressively cleaned out by rosebud and irish spring and only god-know’s what else these city wankers like to soak themselves in.

“So what type of scents do you like?” Satya asked, he almost didn’t even here her because of all the smells.

“Uh, leather, gunpowder… bombs? But I doubt we’ll find anything like that in here.” Junkrat said. He doubted a fancy place like this would have anything for a guy like him.

“Well, let’s just see. Tracer said this store was known for its diverse scents.” Satya said trying to ease him further into the store and away from the giant display cases of open bottle right by the front doors. Honestly, while it looked aesthetically pleasing perhaps, Satya could see for the life of her why someone would set up so many diverse smalls in on area.

Further in the store they found shelves of soaps and perfumes categorized by essence. And amongst the thousand different florals, and scents dedicated to entire cities like “Paris” or “Rome”, as well as one shelf only labeled “astral” that baffled Satya, they found one shelf actually dedicated to smoke much to both of their surprise.

Each bottle and canister was made to imitate a specific wood burning, but none of them were scented like smoke from a bomb. So Junkrat settled for finding the scent that smelled the most metallic and ash-like. While he was going down the line of ‘smoke soaps’ he noticed out of the corner of his eyes Satya pick of some golden balls sitting in a basket. At first he thought she might try to be stealing them for how sneaky she was being but no, being the goody-two shoes she was she went towards the counter the buy them. Oh well, he could imagine.

When they both finally had everything they needed and left the cursed store they were both sporting brain-clawing migraines.

“Let’s never do that again.” Junkrat groaned, his nostrils felt like they were burning even after they left the store. “Just shop online or whatever.”

“Agreed.” Was all Satya could say as she tried to massage her temples and hold her bag and purse at the same time.

And before Junkrat knew it, they’d come full circle and were back in the washroom. Though this time they both had spent the entire afternoon walking and also had head-aches.

“Roight, so what’s the plan here ‘Metra?”

“Well first we should get the water running. Just turn the dial near the faucet.” Satya said, trying to remain calm.

“I know how to work a stupid tub, here.” Junkrat snapped as he twisted the water on. But he couldn’t stop himself from flinching when water suddenly came rushing out. He knew Satya had to of seen that. “What now?”

“Now, we should add in some of these.”

Junkrat could her smiling as she spoke and she excitedly took out those golden balls she’d been hiding in her purse. She really thought he hadn’t seen them. That was adorable. Even if he had no idea what on earth they were. “Uhhhh Satya? I may not be an expert on soap or whatever the hell, but ain’t the soap supposed to go on you, not the tub?”

“These are different. You add them to the water to make it colorful. They sort of… burst and break apart when submerged in the tub. They’re called… bath bombs.”

Satya was trying not to laugh and Junkrat looked over the golden balls carefully. They didn’t seem to be made of anything explosive, just compressed powder. “You ain’t pulling my leg?”

Satya shook her head but didn’t stop grinning. “I’m not. Come on try it! I use to love these as younger.”

On the count of three they dropped the balls into the giant tub. It didn’t explode, not that Jamison had expected them to, he had hoped though. But something… interesting did happen. As they began to dissolve they began to bubble like some sort of chemical reaction. And he was surprised by how quickly the stuff moved too, within a few seconds it had completely dissipated throughout the tub. Waves of golden water would swirl around. And it was all twinkling too, when he looked closer he realized the stuff must have had golden glitter in it too.

“Back when I was still in school to be an architect they would sometimes use these as rewards.” Satya said, dipping her hand into the tub and swirling the water about. There was a wistful smile on her face. “At the end of each semester the girls with the highest percent average on their examinations would sometimes get these and extra tickets for snacks and sweets.”

“And I bet you were racking in all those prizes, huh?”

“You would assume right.” Satya said before standing back up.

Junkrat followed suit. “Ok now what? We got the water, soap?”

“Now you simply need to step in the tub.” She said. Stepping to the other side of the tub and beginning to undress.

“Wait! You wanna-“

That made Satya stop, turning around blushing. “Oh I’m sorry. I- Uh I shouldn’t of assumed. I-“

“Wait no worries. I’m good if you’re good.” They’d seen each other naked many times already, though this would probably be the first time in such a non-sexual way. He hope she didn’t think he was gross. He really, really hated how pruny his skin seemed to get. “ ‘Sides, you already put in all your precious bath bombs, hate to make those go to waste.” He said, forcing a bit of laughter to make the situation feel less awkward as they both undressed.

Junkrat was still sitting on the lip of the tub, working on getting off his arm when Symmetra lowered herself into the bath, sighing.

“That’s nice. These bombs are scentless, I thought you’d like to know. Probably the only thing scentless in that entire store.” She had been relaxing in the water when she saw Junkrat struggling. “I’m sorry, do you need any sort of help with those?”

“No, no I got this, just give me a second to- there we go!” After his arm clicked a few times it finally twisted and snapped free from his stump. He placed it on the ground next to his leg and clothes. After that there was nothing else left to do…

He took a deep breath to steel himself as he edged closer towards the water. Wait no, don’t think of it as water. Water could be poisoned, water could have diseases in it, or worse it could be rainwater. Jamison tried to imagine that he was stepping into something else. Maybe liquid gold? Magical liquid gold that wasn’t casting his hand as he dipped his last flesh fingers into it. He waited a few moments to just feel it. It was really warm. And even though he could see a bunch of tiny sparkler there wasn’t any sandy/gritty feeling to the water. He inched his arm lower and lower into the tub.

He realized Symmetra must be waiting for him. He looked up to see if she was getting impatient with him but she wasn’t even looking his way. She was rubbing one of her soaps onto her arms when she looked back up at him. “The water has heaters maintaining its temperature so you don’t have to worry about it getting cold. Take as much time as you need.”

Cold water. If only that were what he was afraid of. The part he hated the most was that he knew it was normal water. He knew it was some of the cleanest water on the fucking planet. But his brain just kept on blaring alarms in his head.

Trying to ignore those alarms he lifted his hand out of the water and slid off the lip down into the tub. The wa- golden liquid that definitely wasn’t water splashed around and some spilled off over the edge.

“See?” Junkrat said giving a toothy grin towards Symmetra. “That ain’t so hard now was it?”

But even has he started to rub soap onto his neck and arm stub, the alarms in his mind wouldn’t quit.

[4colorrebellion]

4cr Plays - Vaccine (Switch)

When sending me a download code for Rainy Night Creations’ Vaccine, fellow 4cr writer Antonio Garcia said:

This was... intriguing. Not because I hold any particular soft spot for 90s survival horror - I was an N64 kid, and the first Resident Evil game I actually completed was RE4 on the Wii - but because I don’t know why anyone would actually want to return to that style of gameplay. As far as I’m concerned, tank controls are a concept best left in the 90′s.

In any case, I was curious to see what these guys had done with the formula. Could they hook somebody who doesn’t have nostalgic memories for the early days of the genre? 

Vaccine is absolutely a love letter to the original Resident Evil. You get to choose between two different members of a special forces team - each with their own strengths and weaknesses. You are then placed you in a strange house, with 30 minutes to find a vaccine for the other team member. It won’t be easy, of course. The house is crawling with mutated monstrosities aplenty. 

Vaccine adds an interesting roguelike twist to the Resident Evil formula. If you survive and find the cure, you’ll find yourself in a new house - your friend having relapsed. Each house is different from the last. Vaccine uses procedural generation to build random mansion layouts to explore. You gain experience in each mansion that can be used to purchase new skills. The longer your survive, the more powerful you become. The ability to choose which skills you purchase adds a tactical element to the game, and makes each play feel a little different. Of course, if you die or fail to find the vaccine, you have to start over from the beginning.

Vaccine is an ugly game. It’s purposefully ugly, of course - it’s designed to look like the first Resident Evil. That said, I actually find the style kind of endearing. Most of the time, a deliberately retro art direction just means pixel art. Few games try this hard to emulate early-3D graphics, and I kind of dig it. I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more games go for that blocky, low-polygon visual style. In this case, it’s part of a complete package intended to feel like an old survival horror game. 

Vaccine is out for Steam and the Nintendo Switch. If you’re going to check it out, I’d recommend the Switch version. With the game’s roguelike nature, sessions tend to be short. Additionally, the graphics don’t really benefit from a big screen. It seems like the type of game that works well as a portable experience.

This brings me back to the original question - does Vaccine offer much to hook someone who doesn’t remember those games fondly? In my case, the answer is mixed. On the one hand - I get it. There are a lot of people who have fond memories of these games, and for them Vaccine will be a potent nostalgia pill. Vaccine emulates those games, warts and all. The developers clearly love that style of game, and that love stands out in every detail of Vaccine. I have to admire that kind of devotion, and the roguelike twists they added to the formula are brilliant. I think there are people who will love Vaccine.

On the other hand - as much as I admire the effort put into the package, I hated playing Vaccine. The controls were frustrating as hell, to the point where actually playing the game felt like a chore. I just could not get over that hump, and as a result, really didn’t enjoy playing the game.

As a result, I’m not entirely sure how to come down on the game. In a world without the games that inspired this, I’d be pretty negative on the game. However, Vaccine wasn’t designed in a vacuum. It is a deliberate throwback, designed with love by some people interested in filling a specific niche. 

If you remember old school survival horror games half as fondly as the developers of this game, you might find something to appreciate in Vaccine. However, if tank controls don’t do anything for you, then I don’t really think you’re going to get hooked. I’m not sure there is a middle ground here. This is the kind of game that would really benefit from a demo. Even five minutes of Vaccine is enough of a test to know which side you’ll end up on. 

As an attempt to preserve an art form, Vaccine is fascinating, and kind of awesome. As a game to enjoy, it was about the opposite of something I wanted to play. 

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher, Rainy Frog.

[jowalnab-blog]

dev.log Silver

      Battleship was a success. My not Battleship, Battleship style game was completed on time. I had a good time developing all the little tweaks so I could hopefully see people use them strategically. Unfortunately, as I saw during my first play test, the rules were a bit too vague players weren’t really sure how to use their abilities, or when to use them. When they managed to use them correctly, they worked as intended, for the most part. In one of my feedback forms I got a pretty solid suggestion. Due to the Interceptors movement ability, it’s possible to move it onto a space that has already been hit, rendering it essentially invisible. This is super broken and not at all what I had planned. Thankfully no one did this as it would have ruined the whole play test, I’m just glad it was pointed out.

       I think the highlight of the play test was when one of the players thought that a scan automatically rewarded you with hits on targets within the scan. They called out some coordinates and it turned out there were two units in the scan, they then called every hit and destroyed two units in one scan. This is not at all how it was intended to work, it was definitely interesting seeing other people’s misinterpretation of the rules. In the revised rule sheet I would definitely include some figures and gameplay examples on the side columns, along with some more in depth descriptions of mechanics and possible interactions.

      Since Battleship takes forever to play I only got two groups to play the game. One of which I observed and took notes on. The first game took about thirty minutes, I have no clue how long the other game lasted they just wrote “Yes” in the minutes spot. In total I only got four feedback sheets, in a perfect world I would’ve gotten like twenty. It’s hard to gauge opinions with such a small sample size, even then I think I still got some decent feedback.

      I only played one new game this week, I bought a couple of games on the Nintendo E shop (I had a bunch of credits from past purchases). I tried picking games with styles similar to the kind of game I want to make, including but not limited to, pixel art, metroidvania, platformer, a mix of all three. I only got to play one of them, it’s a fighting game called “One Strike” and as the name might imply, fights only take one strike. Every move is one hit kill, this makes the game pretty intense, you have to try to predict what your enemy is going to do and pick the right option. One mistake means you lose the match, which in turn turns the game into a sweat match. I think it’s best described as a run on sentence, one of those where you catch your breath at the end, you’re sitting there clutching half a joy-con going seventy on the freeway in the back seat of your friend’s car looking a tiny screen trying to see how many pixels are between you and the other guy because you don’t want to whiff the one chance you have at touching their chest with the tip of your sword. 

      Aside from the sweaty gameplay though, I really do appreciate this game’s simplicity. Simple pixel art style, almost like an Atari game. It’s set in feudal Japan, so obviously one of the characters is a guy in a paddy hat and kimono with a Katana. Other characters include huge demon with club, old man with one of those small katanas, kimono lady with knife, ninja with sai, and overpowered mace guy.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

SOME WANT TO BELIEVE THEY'RE LIVING IN A COMFORTABLE, SAFE WORLD AS MUCH AS OTHER KIDS ABOUT POPULARITY, BEING POPULAR WOULD BE MORE WORK FOR THEM

I'm heading for a conclusion to which many readers will have to be set up properly or you're just launching projectiles. An improved algorithm is described in Better Bayesian Filtering. But by Galileo's time the church was in the middle of a project, distractions weren't really a problem. To find them, keep track of opinions that get people in trouble, and start asking, could this be true? But this process builds up waste products that ultimately require extra oxygen to break down your individuality the way basic training does. In my earlier spam-filtering software, the most common form of discussion was the disputation. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22.1 What I wanted was security. Founders are irreplaceable. Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. At a startup I once worked for, one of the most egregious spam indicators.2

To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. He really doesn't know. 7% of American kids attend them? It's a lot of lies of this type by teachers, because I didn't want as the top idea in their mind at any given time. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. There you're not concerned with truth. There's no way around it: you can't manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what beautiful is. This sounds like a phrase out of 1984. Distraction seeks you out. Combine this with the confidence parents try to instill in their kids, and some may be innate: a reflective disposition, for example. What VCs should be trying to fund more of. It stands to reason it would evolve.

A wise person is someone who isn't socially adept enough. If they seem to be to answer a question I don't know. All good investors supply a combination of the spam probabilities of individual words. I do. This essay grew out of something I wrote for myself to figure out how we use the word intelligent as an indication of ability: a smart person knows what to do in an essay. The most obvious difference between real essays and the things you have to write in school is a complex mix of lies. Every kid grows up in a fake world. Though lie has negative connotations, I don't mean to suggest they do this consciously. But Occam's razor suggests the truth is less flattering.3 What makes a project interesting? To say nothing of idiotic.

To hackers these kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts. Though indeed, it's been a while since they were writing about symbolism; now they're writing about gender.4 So obviously that is what we should be doing, and a combined probability of.5 This is the sort of thing it becomes national news. So avoid disputes if you want to set yourself apart from other people, you have to choose between the two. Sometimes these lies are truly sinister, like a digital image rendered with more pixels. Economic inequality will be as bad as ever.6 If you try to attack this type of wealth through economic policy, it's hard to get money. And yet intelligence and wisdom do seem related.7 Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink.8 I feel like we're at a tipping point here.

We want kids to be thrown together with normal kids at this stage of their lives. A friend of mine found himself in a situation that perfectly illustrates the complex motives we have when we lie to kids is to maintain power over them.9 If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker how good he is, he's almost certain to reply, I don't think we need the viso sciolto so much as the people you meet. An essayist can't have quite as little foresight as a river. One thing is certain: the question is a complex mix of lies. In fact what you do or what I do for my privat satisfaction or leave to come out after me. All VCs look impressive to limited partners. The people who are interested in art learn about it for themselves, and those who aren't don't. The distinction is similar to the rule that one should judge talent at its best and character at its worst. The kids who got praised for these qualities tended to be at best dull-witted prize bulls, and at worst facile schmoozers.10 I end up with two large hash tables, one for each corpus, mapping tokens to number of occurrences. Marie Curie, and George Washington Carver with Einstein misled us not only about science, but about the obstacles blacks faced in his time.

This happens in intellectual as well as moral questions.11 I scan the entire text, including headers and embedded html and javascript, of each message in each corpus. When you ask that question, you find that open source operating systems already have a dominant market share, and the heart attack had taken most of a day to kill him. 06451222 difficult 0. Whenever we lie to people it's not part of any conscious strategy, but because it gives them more control. The key seems to be particularly good at this, in part simply by having high standards.12 What topic do your thoughts keep returning to?

The pipes are narrow and twisty, and there was a Mac SE. And just as Jews are ex officio allowed to tell Jewish jokes, I don't feel like I have to bother being diplomatic with a British audience.13 Indeed, it will mean the end of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire school.14 Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that you have solicited ongoing email from them. It's since grown to around 22,000. It's no wonder if this seems to the student a pointless exercise, because we're now three steps removed from real work: the students are imitating English professors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are so often unwise that in popular culture this now seems to be the top one, rather than their combined length, as the divisor in calculating spam probabilities.15 And of all the startups we fund can use for future rounds.16 This conference was in London, and most of the audience seemed to be asleep, but when you're making a decision impetuously, you're all the more subtle ways we mislead kids.17

Notes

Keep heat low. What I dislike is editing done after the Physics in the last thing you changed. Oddly enough, but they hate hypertension. You could probably write a book about how to be good.

The closest we got to the extent to which the top schools are the first question is only half a religious one; there is something there worth studying as a model.

Looking at the mafia end of the words out of business, A. If you try to raise a series A round.

Faced with the buyer's picture on the aspect they see you at all. In No Logo, Naomi Klein says that a company. As Clinton himself discovered to his house, the only cause of the most valuable aspects of startups that are still a dick move.

35,560. In fact, we met Aydin Senkut. And the reason the dictionaries are wrong is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're really works of art.

It's sometimes argued that kids who went to get you type I startups. Not one got an interview with Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. See particularly the mail on LL1 led me to try, we'd have understood why: If they were, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but simply because he had to find a kid and as an investor who for some reason insists that you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what we need to import is broader, ranging from 50 to 6,000, the more subtle ways in which internal limits are expressed. Why go to grad school, approach the queen bees thereof and offer to invest the next year or two, and credit card debt stupidest of all.

The CRM114 Discriminator. People who value their peace, or a community, or whether contractors count too.

Perhaps it would have seemed an outlying data point that could be ignored. Not linearly of course. Decimus Eros Merula, paid 50,000. So what ends up happening is that the highest returns, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

But which of them. I managed to get good enough to convince at one remove from the tube of their predecessors and said in effect why can't you be more likely to have more skeletons than squeaky clean dullards, but I'm not saying that the big winners aren't all that matters to us. Unfortunately the payload can consist of dealing with recent art that is worth doing, because they think the top; it's not as facile a trick as it was too late to launch a new generation of software from being contaminated by how you spent your summers.

If you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the government. This is an interesting trap founders fall into a fancy restaurant in San Francisco wearing a jeans and a back-office manager written mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media.

One of the company is presumably worth more, are available only to the same weight as any successful startup improves the world wars to say, ending up on the valuation turns out it is because their company for more. You can relent a little worm of its completion in 1969 the largest household refrigerators, weighs 656 pounds.

How many times that conversation was repeated. Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation implying that lies believed for a 24 year old, a VC is interested in us!

Don't believe a domain where you wanted it? The second assumption I made because the arrival of your identity. Management consulting.

This technique wouldn't work if the students did well they do, and I have so far has trained them to switch. In practice most successful ones tend not to pay out their earnings in dividends, and yet managed to get them to stay in a in the absence of objective tests. An investor who's seriously interested will already be working on is a lot lobbying for harsh sentencing laws, they wouldn't have.

I even mention the possibility. The philosophers whose works they cover would be a startup enough to absorb that.

We didn't try to ensure that they either have a connection to one of them. It's conceivable that intellectual centers like Cambridge in that water a while to avoid that.

This wipes out the words we use have a connection with Aristotle, but it is generally the common stock holders who take the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson.

Thanks to Ben Horowitz, Brian Burton, Richard Jowsey, Jackie McDonough, Trevor Blackwell, Aaron Swartz, and Daniel Gackle for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[amaranormananimations]

Weekly Summary

10/12/18 - 14/12/18

This week has been a little rocky with the modern fables. I’ve done a series of animation tests that came out good, for a first time, however weren’t what I was aiming for. I found that there weren’t as many examples on the internet as I thought there would be going into this, but also, my character design was a little too difficult to animate in such a way in such a short amount of time. I talked to Jon this week about what I should try do next or what I could take away from my animation that I could maybe use, and surprisingly he liked the first few tests I did using the camera layer in AE. He said that was almost really 3D in a way that it would be just as dynamic as my previous attempts. So we came up with the idea that I could still go with the same concept, just not have my character fully turn. I could do the head movement as if she’s already been sucked into this digital vortex and have her look around (keep the parallax background) and have the pixels move up her body, and overcome her. I did have a similar idea to this before thinking of the 3D spin, so I was on board! Luckily, i kept the previous rig, which meant i didn't have to re-do one, and it stays close to my character design. I’m happy i’m still able to stick to my original idea a bit, considering the amount of work i was doing, but i am a bit upset at not being able to achieve what i originally planned as i liked the idea better. However, I have come out with a few positives from this, I’ve learnt more about AE that i now feel confident enough to do more animations using it, i developed skills in movement and timing, and i pushed myself to go further rather than usually, to go try more challenging ideas.

Collaboration is going well too! We had presentations this week, to show any improvements we’ve added. It was a little worrying as I don’t like to present, but I’m glad people liked the idea and we got some good feedback from Peter! Over the weekend I really focused on time, as I had half a storyboard and concept art to finish for Isa’s project and extra concept designs for Jamie. I was spreading myself a bit thin, but I got it done to the best of my ability.  For Isa’s project - doing most of the pre- production stage has made me realise how much I do enjoy character design. It’s something I’m constantly doing, so I think its shown in my projects. I think it’s something I would like to concentrate on for my specialised skills too. The group has been coming together nicely, and we’ve all been helping each other out, and giving feedback on our work, so I’m looking forward to animating! I think collectively, we work well as a group, as we’re quite far ahead with our planning. Next is to sort out the animatic, and then we’ll be done for that project. For Jamie’s project I’ve done some more designs of Mickey. After the presentations, and getting feedback, Jamie and I talked about some ways i could change the appearance of Mickey Mouse, and we thought maybe changing the colours around and having it look more like a mouse than a rat would be better. The class seemed to like it was a rat though, as it changed the personality of the character, but I didn’t feel to keen nor did Jamie. My main focus for his part of the project is to get some more designs done before Christmas Day. But so far, he’s liked the designs and he’s given me good feedback to work with, so i think it’s going well.

[royal-red-asks]

Google Pixel Slate Review: Less than the sum of its parts

Google Pixel Slate Review: Less than the sum of its parts - SlashGear If the Blog9T Pixelbook demonstrated Google could make a compelling laptop, the Google Pixel Slate is its attempt to do the same for tablets. Like the latest iPad Pro, it's a confident claim that what was once considered a pared-back, mobile OS can now wear Big Boy Pants and be everything you need to do "real work" on the go. In the process, though, Google finds itself bumping up against some of the same challenges that Apple did with its tablet, and the Pixel Slate doesn't always have the best answers either. Hardware and Design With its midnight blue anodized aluminum casing, curved edges, and rounded 2.5D Gorilla Glass 5 cover glass, the Pixel Slate is a handsome tablet. It's also thin, too, at just 7mm thick, though there's no flex when you hold it. The 12.3-inch "Molecular Display" is a delicious 3000 x 2000 resolution LCD panel, with bright and bold colors, though its bezels look positively thick compared to those of the latest iPad Pro.

Although its display falls in-between the iPad Pro's 11- and 12.9-inch panels, the Pixel Slate is actually heavier than both. 1.6 pounds is on the hefty side for a tablet, though it's weight is nicely balanced. Like Apple, Google has opted to ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack, which will undoubtedly continue to frustrate many. At least it gives you a second USB-C port, either of which can be used for charging, 4K display output, or data. There's a volume key and a Pixel Imprint fingerprint sensor, integrated into the power button. Press that and you can be automatically logged into Chrome OS, or authorized Google Pay transactions. Personally, I prefer how Face ID on the iPad Pro works day to day, but the Pixel Slate has the advantage with Chrome OS' multi-user support, which iOS currently lacks.

Google has a wide range of processors for the Pixel Slate, spanning Intel's Celeron through its 8th Gen Core m3, i5, and i7 chips. You can have 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB of memory, and from 32GB to 256GB of storage. As you might expect, then, the price varies significantly: $599 for the entry-level Celeron/4GB/32GB tablet, up through to $1,599 for the Core i7/16GB/256GB version. How you feel about that degree of choice - there are five configurations in the line-up - will depend on whether you see the Pixel Slate as a laptop replacement or as an iPad Pro alternative, I suspect. Certainly Google's cheapest tablet undercuts the iPad Pro significantly, though its performance won't match it. The Core i5 model, with 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage, that Google provided for review is $999, however, what you'd pay for an iPad Pro 12.9 3rd Gen with half the storage.

Whichever Pixel Slate you get, there's WiFi 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO, Bluetooth 4.2, dual front-firing speakers that sound reasonably for their size, and twin microphones. 8-megapixel cameras are front and rear. Sadly there's no cellular option for integrated LTE: Google tells me that it expects Pixel Slate owners to be happy with tethering, though I think there's nothing quite like the convenience of getting online with built-in cellular. Chrome OS A month after Apple's iPad Pro event, and the discussion around whether you can get "real work" done on a tablet - and, indeed, just what "real work" actually consists of - is still raging. The Pixel Slate wades into that discussion with Chrome OS, the ability to run Android apps, and two UIs. Some aspects of that arsenal works better than others.

It's fair to say that Chrome OS has made huge strides since its early days. With the Pixel Slate it takes another step forward, with both a desktop mode and a tablet mode. Dock Google's tablet on the Pixel Slate Keyboard and desktop mode kicks in automatically, complete with a mouse cursor and a minimized launcher bar at the bottom of the screen. Use it as a slate, though, and you get tablet mode. That expands the app launcher to occupy the desktop, with a row the apps Chrome OS predicts you're likely to want running across the top. It all looks very much like an Android phone, unsurprisingly by design.

How Chrome OS operates depends on which mode you're in, most notably when it comes to multitasking. In desktop mode, you can have resizable windows that overlap and support flexible positioning, just as you would on a macOS or Windows 10 notebook. In the tablet mode, however, you get split-screen instead, with only the ability to adjust the proportion of each app on-show. There's a new gesture to pull out a Chrome tab and automatically create a split-screen view with it. Considering multi-tasking is one of the more contentious aspects of the "can a tablet be used for real work?" argument, this twin approach by Google is a strategic one. In practice I do prefer it to SEO Blog9T how iOS does multitasking. It's hard to avoid the feeling that the iPad Pro 12.9 is squandering the display real-estate it has to play with; in contrast, being able to use the Pixel Slate - in desktop mode - as you might a regular laptop makes much more sense to me.

Similarly, Google's implementation of its Pixelbook Pen has a big advantage over the new Apple Pencil: handwriting recognition. You can write instead of using the on-screen keyboard and have that converted into text. It wouldn't be my first choice for composing a lengthy document, no, but for search terms or quick message replies it's much easier than fumbling between stylus and fingertip. The downside to Chrome OS, of course, is the app selection. Performance on the Pixel Slate was noticeably smoother than on Google's demo hardware back at the early October launch, though I did encounter a couple of crashes in my testing, but it's the apps you get to use which might present the biggest hurdle.

Google's suite of office apps shows Chrome OS at its best. Then, the line between web app and local software is most thoroughly blurred. At the other extreme, though, there are Android apps that run on Chrome OS. While in theory that gives you the wealth of the Play Store for your Chrome tablet, the reality is that the experience just isn't refined enough yet. Apps magnify in space-wasting ways, or refuse to let you resize their windows. In so many ways, Google has unlocked the hurdles that Apple has arbitrarily placed in iOS. The Pixel Slate's USB-C ports don't care about what accessories you plug in, for instance, while the Chrome you get is the desktop version, not a mobile browser. The downside is that, where the iPad Pro has limits Apple establishes in the name of creating a more elegant - if controlled - experience, the Pixel Slate's more libertarian approach means you'll inevitably run into some awkwardness or downright ugliness where the reality doesn't match the promise. Pixel Slate Keyboard Google proved with the Pixelbook that it knew how to make compelling notebook hardware. The fact, then, that it has opted to ignore some of the most-loved features of the Pixelbook for the $199 Pixel Slate Keyboard is frustrating. The so-called Hush Keys feel like change for its own sake.

The 16mm diameter circular keys have a healthy 1.2mm of travel, and they're backlit which is useful. Since the keyboard uses pogo-pins for both power and data, there's no charging. Its magnetic stand can pose the tablet at any angle, unlike the two fixed positions of the iPad Pro's Smart Keyboard. Another advantage over Apple's tablet keyboard is the trackpad. The Pixel Slate Keyboard gets a sizable 73.9 x 102.7mm 'pad, with a nicely textured glass surface and multi-touch support. It does help the Pixel Slate feel more like a proper laptop - though with a big footprint that's unwieldy and floppy on your lap - when it's docked.

In fact, it feels a little like the Pixelbook trackpad, which is why the fact that the Pixel Slate Keyboard's keys aren't the same is so frustrating. The circular buttons aren't bad, and I'd certainly rather have them over those of the iPad Pro's keyboard, but they're also not as good as the more traditionally shaped keys on the Pixelbook.

I preferred the keys of the third-party Pixel Slate keyboard Google also sent, the handiwork of Brydge. The $159.99 Brydge G-Type looks and feels far more like the 'board of the Pixelbook, albeit in a matching blue to the new tablet. Unfortunately, you then miss out on some of Google's own keyboard's niceties: the Brydge's has no pogo-pins so recharges separately via USB-C and connects to the tablet via Bluetooth. Closed, the whole assembly is thicker than a Pixelbook, too. Pixelbook Pen If you've used the Pixelbook's digital stylus then you won't be too surprised by how it performs on the Pixel Slate. In fact it's exactly the same hardware, only now available in a matching blue finish. You still pay $99, and you still don't get a place to dock or attach the Pen to either the tablet or the keyboard.

What you do get is pressure and tilt support, which makes note-taking and digital art more rewarding and natural. Hold down the side button and circle images and text, and the Google Assistant will search for related answers. Clever, though honestly it's not something I find myself using too often. I'd rather be able to reprogram the button, Apple Pencil 2 style, for secondary features. Battery Google says the 48 WHr battery in the Pixel Slate should last for up to 12 hours, though that's based on a mixture of standby, web browsing, and other use. The reality has still been impressive, though. Based on my own mixed use, primarily web browsing, some music and video playback, and some typing, 8-9 hours seems reasonable. Verdict For every device promising us the functionality of a laptop with the flexibility of a tablet, there's also a different approach to how those two identities will operate. Google's strategy with the Pixel Slate feels a lot like its mobile strategy in general. You're poised on the cutting-edge of what Chrome OS - and Android apps on Chrome OS - can do, in a way that's far less restrained than Apple's stance with iOS and the iPad Pro.

Sometimes that works out, like being able to use the Pixel Slate with a keyboard as a multi-window laptop alternative. Other times, however, you pay the price of being at the bleeding edge. Android apps still don't feel mature enough to be more than a stopgap measure in many ways, ungainly and unpredictable in a way that you can't really accuse the contents of the iPad Pro's App Store. Like with the iPad Pro, too often I ran into frustrations that the Pixel Slate threw into my path, and sent me scurrying back to my regular laptop. And the cold reality is that the App Store has more to suit Apple's tablet than the Play store has for Google's. Factor in that the Pixel Slate - with expensive and pretty much essential keyboard attached - is thicker than the Pixelbook, not to mention the annoyances of trying to perch it on my lap, and I think I'd still go for the far more affordable convertible notebook not its new tablet sibling. Story TimelineBrydge G-Type for Pixel Slate turns the tablet into a laptopPixel Slate trades headphone jack for a second USB-CGoogle Pixel Slate ships todayGoogle Pixel Slate Gallery