#i imagine this being somewhen post-game so

[ravvenheart]

"I had to protect princess Zelda and help restoring Hyrule! I had to follow my duty!" Link's voice broke mid-sentence, full of frustration and desperation.

Link preferred to sign when talking wasn't a necassity and Sidon used to cherish every moment the Hylian felt comfortable enough to speak freely. It wasn't loud and boisterous, like a lot of other male Hylian talked but soft and gentle, tinged with a slight rasp caused by disuse. To Sidon, it was one of the most beautiful things he ever heard. He had loved how Link talked passionately about a new recipe he tried while gesticulating wildly, had loved how his face distorted into pleasure and his pants turned into high keens and whines, had loved all the sounds Link offered him - one way or another. He had been enchanted by the energy of this little blond Hylian who was so much more than he appeared to be. He was powerful and loyal, thoughtful and empathetic, kind and passionate. Sidon had memorized all of the scars that painted Links body, knew all their stories. He had watched in trance Link's swordfighting, hunting and climbing heights Zora could only dream of.

And the Zora prince of course told him such. And everytime, the Hylian tried to hide his blush and stutter. Oh, how Sidon had loved to pamper Link with poetry, gifts and trinkets and his praise.

But that was then. Time has passed ever since. Link had had his duties, Sidon had his. And with princess Zelda back, the Calamity defeated and Hyrule in a state of disarray, Link came fewer and fewer to Zoras Domain. Sidon's letters received fewer and fewer answers and maybe they didn't always reach Link - or maybe they did, Sidon didn't want to think of that - but somehow, somewhen, Sidon had to turn his focus on his home. With his father getting older each year and new challanges for the Domain arising every day, prince Sidon had to take responsibility and care for his kind.

Years have passed ever since Link and Sidon had seen each other. The Hylian gained more scars and first strand of gray hair here and there - stress, no doubt. He seemed different go when Sidon last saw him. Older, more focused and maybe more weary. Of course, with Princess Zelda back and order returning to Hyrule, Link had to re-take his position as the Princess' personal knight. And with such job, came a lot off pressure back. Expectations wore him down and somehow, the free-spirited adventurer and hero that Sidon had gotten to know, vanished.

But now, right in this moment, the kind man that had helped saving the Zora from Vah Ruta stood back in front of Sidon. Emotions clear on his face and voice cracking, the feelings Sidon had thought he had repressed and forgotten, reemerged. He wanted to hold Link, comfort him and hide away from the world.

Still- "So had I, Link. I had to do my duties as heir to the throne of the Zora and taking a fiancé was inevitable. We both knew that."

And the Hylian turned more into himself with his eyes downwards. Despite his strong voice, Sidon felt bitterness and hurt returning. He knew he was lying to himself. He knew he still loved Link. He too thought they could leave their duties, build a home far away from their responsibilities. But that was years ago. And Sidon was about to get married soon and be crowned. He couldn't let old feelings get in the way of his future. As much as his heart pained and screamed at him.

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hello hello you tiny little people in my phone. This is my second time ever posting on this app but tears of the kingdom is a really really good game and I had a lot of feelings about Sidon and Link.

(Imagine this being a late night conversation and they catch up on each others life with this big elephant of them dating after botw. Yona comes up in that conversation and feelings ensue and here you go. I was too lazy and uncreative to write that, sorry, but that mythe situation I had in mind)

Back in 2018 when I first played botw, I never understood the hype about Sidon but after replaying it recently in order to be prepared for totk, I really do now. Fell into a rabbit hole for this funky shark dude, whoopsie daisy.

Anyway, the whole thing with Yona makes me feel things and I wanted to write some angsty, painful Sidlink but with English not being my native tongue and having adhd, I know that probability of writing and finishing a good fic is very unlikely, I preset you this. I vomited this in maybe an hour and it's almost 4 am now and I gotta work later, yikes. Not beta read.

Idk if its good but I love validation from other people so tell me what you think!!

[madameyavi-blog]

How we make games - about workflow, things from the past and lessons we learned

I like to seperate the games we make into two categories: Game Jam games and actual™ games. For those of you who might not be familiar with the term – a Game Jam is basically an event where people make a game in a very short amount of time, like two days just for example. In most cases there‘s also a given theme the game should (but must not) match. But that‘s not the kind of stuff I want to talk about today, let‘s save that for another post (we participated in three jams last month so I have a lot to recount :‘D) Let‘s focus on the latter – the actual™ games. We‘ve made two so far. Intra-System: Trust Issues, our very first game, and Flufftopia. When it comes to the work process these two have nothing in common though. That‘s because we were a three person team when working on Intra-System. Not long after we started working on the next project (which was Devastated: Andrew‘s Dictaphone) we parted ways with our former programmer due to some personal stuff. Also Devastated was meant to be a completely different game at that point, but I‘ll save that for another post too (damn, while writing this I get so many ideas for future posts :‘D). And at that point we decided to put Devastated on ice because we needed to restructure the team. I only made the graphical stuff for Intra-System and Daniel wrote the story, made music/sounds and coordinated the overall workflow. We decided to stay a two person team and not search for a new programmer simply because we realized that doing everything on our own seemed to work best for us. We also wanted to be as independent as possible. Well, that meant that one of us needed to start learning something programming related though.

At that point I sat down and basically spent two months doing nothing else but gathering as much knowledge as possible about the Unity engine. We decided to pick Unity for various reasons: 1. Real™ programming, a framework etc. wasn‘t an option because I had no programming background at all and it would have taken too long to learn that much. We wanted to be able to continue with games ASAP. 2. We were mostly focusing on 2D games at that point and Unity seemed to provide everything we needed. We of course could also have chosen a more 2D focused engine like GameMaker or RPG Maker but we wanted something that was capable of 3D too because we knew we would want to make 3D stuff in the future and learning different engines for both seemed redundant. 3. Unity‘s pricing policy was the one we most likely could live with. So that’s why we didn’t end up using Unreal and whatnot. So yeah, I made a very small very shitty clicker/idle/incremental game (why are there so many names for these?) in the learning process which really isn‘t worth talking about. Let‘s just say that Daniel was bald at that time and I took this as a theme for the game. The game is completely in German though because I didn‘t think that I would ever show it to more than 10 people.

And around that time we came up with the idea for Flufftopia. We really enjoy experimenting with existing genres so we thought of ways to mess with the clicker game thing a bit. Eventually Daniel came up with the basic idea for the story and the twist. I don‘t want to tell too much because it would take off a lot of the experience – you can check it out yourself if you want to. It‘s free and should only take you 20-40 minutes. The first thing I wanted to have was an artstyle. When talking about the idea I imagined something supercute and I think I didn‘t fail that too hard. First of all I drew a background to get an overall feeling of the direction I wanted it to take. At that point I didn‘t really know where the background would eventually end up. Now it‘s the main menu. 

The designs for the unlockable buildings and the basic idea for the Fluffs, the residents of Flufftown (I still love how fluffy all of this sounds ♥) followed.

After that I felt all of the fluffiness deep in my heart and was ready to start putting things together. Fortunately I was able to reuse some code from the first clicker game thing so I had some basic stuff going on pretty fast. But then we started putting in the story aspects and more features… and that‘s when everything started to go south. Let me tell you one thing: simply following tutorials and trying to figure stuff out on your own are two very different animals. Especially if you basically don‘t have a clue of what you are doing there.

It‘s working! But why? It‘s not working! BUT WHY?!  

I‘m glad that I don‘t have that struggle that often anymore. I still do, but I sometimes think I know what the problem is. I‘m wrong most of the time, but that‘s how learning works I guess. Also: Another reason for choosing Unity! The community is huge and it‘s very likely that someone has had a problem you are having right now before. There are thousands of entries in the forums and up until now I always found something that could help me out. Back to Flufftopia. I really like to run off the track. We managed to finish it somehow. The last weeks before release were pretty tough though. We needed to delay the release and cut many things we initially wanted to have in the game. A save system for example. And a second game mode. And much more. I simply wasn‘t capable of these things at the time. Especially in the short amount of time we had left. Lesson learned: Try not to bite off more than you can chew. You most likely will anyways, but at least try not to. But nevertheless the feedback we got for the game was unexpectedly positive – with over 3000 downloads it was our most successful game up until now. We also definitely want to make a large update somewhen in the future to hand in all the stuff we wanted to be in the game later. If you want to know even more details about the development and release, I recommend you to read this article Daniel wrote some time ago. Is the stuff I‘m telling you even interesting? I don‘t know. But that‘s it for Flufftopia. There‘s one more thing I‘d like to talk about in this post. When people ask what our specific tasks are we often answer with something like „Angela does art and programming and Daniel does the rest.“ And that often seems to confuse people. They assume that it’s me who‘s doing all the work. And that‘s absolutely not the case. First of all – Daniel is the idea guy. I wouldn‘t consider myself a creative person when it comes to coming up with game ideas, concepts and stories. I like being creative in graphical art for example but I need a base to work with. Also sound is something that shouldn‘t be underestimated. Many people don‘t realize how much of the atmosphere rises and falls with sound. And even though I kind of make music from time to time (up until now I made the title track for Flufftopia and that‘s it X‘D) it‘s mostly Daniel who‘s taking care of these things. Also he‘s the one coordinating everything. And when I say everything I mean everything. I‘m a total disaster when it comes to anything related to organization. So yeah, that‘s something he‘s taking care of too. All day. Every day. Thank you, Daniel. He also started to learn 3D modeling because that‘s of course something you need when making 3D games. And he‘s doing pretty well. And I‘m pretty thankful for that because I wanted to learn using Blender once and I rage quitted because it‘s… well, let‘s just say it‘s a very special program and I can be a very impatient person sometimes. So Daniel started making sinks and toilets for some reason. But hey, I think they look pretty cool!

And then there‘s also marketing and PR of course. And all the other stuff I don‘t want to take care of. And he makes amazing coffee!