#is this actually still gamedev lol?

[fracturedgodhead]

This week is music :3 !!!! I don't know how to make music!!!! #15

I've been feeling the whole, "no more time-wasters" thing. There simply isn't a nothing to sink time into, so I am stuck always trying to do something. It's not always productive, youtube is becoming popular in my little world, but I've already done some drawing that I would not have otherwise, so that's pretty nice.

In other news, this weeks project will be... music. I have no clue how to make music at all. I have a copy of audacity, I'll fiddle around in there until I get something I guess. I'm pushing the OwieBrainHurts philosophy of "just try to do things regardless of your current skills". It's a good philosophy.

I've actually been thinking about that idea a lot. I think there is a dichotomy worth examining in terms of the way people go about doing things.

There is the "just do it" keep on attempting until it works. You come up with an end goal and just work until you get there. Every problem is to be solved as quickly and simply as possible. This kind of approach is sitting down with some tools and material and just doing what you can. You sit down with a piece of clay, a scoring tool, and some water, and you make whatever you can with your two hands, just working with what you currently know.

And there is the "learn a new thing" approach. This is arguably why people go to college. In this case, there is not a final product or conclusion, the goal is simply to gain information and understanding of something new for use later, but in the moment, it feels as though it is simply learning for its own sake. Like I said, this is why people go to college, but it's also people binging Wikipedia, or researching a directors entire body of work, or using codecademy.

I don't think I could differentiate the two for a long time. I would set out to do a specific thing and use the approach for the second to go about it. It was incredibly frustrating and I failed over and over.

I now know the difference, and I am learning which types of goals should be approached in which type of way. Each weekly project on its own uses the first method, and I have goals that would fit in the second category, but I have no plans yet to fulfill them, and that's okay for now.

To talk about the song though, some of my favorite artists right now are Patricia Taxxon, 4lung (also on soundcloud), STOMACH BOOK, and Vylet Pony (also on bandcamp). All of them fit decently well into what I have started calling the Taxxonian furry (link to Patty T's vid, it's a trip, consider this a warning) category of media. They all fit the sensory, symbolic, and slightly autistic criteria I think (Patty T obviously, but 4 lung just as much so. SB and Vylet might just be me enjoying noisecore and emo stuff and claiming I like both because they're furry, not because I just like multiple things lol). I want to make music in that genre. Possibly with some hyperpop/noisecore flair too (Nero's day at disnelyand goes hard). I don't know if this will be hard or easy, because I know nothing about music theory.

Like all of the little projects I've done so far though, I'm approaching it with maximal 'fuck it we ball' energy. I will make something, and I will spend the whole week making it. It is Christmas, so I will have a lot of plans, but I hope that kicking my incremental game habit will compensate, and I'll get approximately as much time as I had before to work on this.

[lanciet]

writing the entire script of our game in my friend's discord dms is so real

[thankskenpenders]

Happy new year, everyone! Welcome to 2024, the year that will mark the 10th anniversary of Thanks Ken Penders. I'd like to go over my plans for the blog for this year.

First of all: in the very near future, I'll have a post with my thoughts on Sonic Dream Team, and I'm sure I'll write one last Sonic Prime review once the final episodes drop on the 11th. I've also been sitting on an unfinished piece about the Sonic LEGO sets. I wanted this to be longer and more detailed piece that not only reviewed the sets but also went into the weird disconnect between homogenized image of Sonic the Brand and the actual fiction it's based off of, but it'll probably end up getting cut down a lot just so I can put something out. Let's just say I did a fun little thing with one of the sets.

Second: yes, I would like to return to regular TKP updates this year. As I've said many times, I wanted to do this in 2023, but I've been suffering from creative burnout after finishing SLARPG and have generally been unable to focus on any of my creative goals this past year. I'm hoping that this year will be better and I'll be able to get back into the swing of covering Archie Sonic issues. Even doing one issue every week or so would be vastly preferable to continuing the hiatus. I'm still only halfway done!! But aside from burnout, my other main hurdle is that I need to reread my own archive to refresh myself on all these things after nearly three years away. This will take some time.

The thing is, though, this year I'll have an extra incentive to go back through my previous writing and brush up on all things Archie Sonic. Because you see...

I've decided that I want to make a video essay about Penders. The comics, the copyright battle, The Lara-Su Chronicles, everything.

The why

I've thought about doing this before, but I never committed to the idea. I was too busy with gamedev, or I thought it'd end up being too long, or I figured that there were already enough videos on the subject, or I just lacked confidence in my ability to put together a video essay. So I told myself it wasn't meant to be, and let the multiple YouTubers who have cited me as a source on their own Penders videos fill that void.

Recently, though, a few things have happened that have convinced me it might be time. For one, YouTube video essays/media retrospectives/etc. are just getting longer and longer. When Quinton Reviews is out here doing 21 hours of videos on Sam & Cat, a subpar Nick sitcom that only lasted one season, I don't feel so crazy for wanting to make a video about several hundred comic books and two lawsuits that'd be at least an hour or two long lmao. Admittedly, I've also been self-conscious about doing a long video essay like this as a trans woman who has yet to do any vocal training. But these days I feel like I see a lot more transfem YouTubers who have done little to no vocal training, and that's given me more confidence on that front.

But the big one was Hbomberguy's recent plagiarism video. As I sat there watching it, I kept thinking about the time I found a CBR article that was just a crude 800 word summary of my two previous articles on Penders, published by a CBR writer who's put out over 4000 articles since 2019. If I've already been plagiarized before, and my writing is so frequently passed around as a go-to source on Archie Sonic drama, then I wouldn't be shocked if there were YouTubers out there straight up just plagiarizing me. I don't watch other peoples' videos on Archie Sonic, so I'd never know! So if people are just gonna paraphrase me when covering these topics anyway, why not take matters into my own hands and make what I would consider to be the definitive video on the subject? If hacks like James Somerton and iilluminaughtii can churn out these shitty video essays and people will still watch them, surely it can't be that impossible to make my own, right? (And also, uh, Hbomb literally told me I should make the video lol. If you're reading this, thanks for the encouragement.)

The what, how, and when

So here's the plan.

Part of this video essay will be an adaptation of my Medium article on the recurring themes of Ken's Archie Sonic run, with its content touched up and expanded upon. There were a few things I skimmed over in the article because I didn't want it to get too long, but again, people are out here watching ten hour videos about bad Nickelodeon sitcoms now. I can get away with elaborating a little more. I can add a few paragraphs talking about the Chaos Knuckles arc, or throw in a little more historical context I've discovered in the years since.

After covering the comics, the back half(-ish?) of the video will be dedicated to the copyright battles and their ensuing controversies, trying to give an accurate picture of what actually went down, the sheer scale of how bad Archie fucked up, and what our takeaways should be. This will have some similarities to my New York Magazine article on the subject, but I'll be rewriting it from scratch. I REALLY had to keep things short for that article because I was already way over the expected word count, and my tone was a little more straight-laced than normal because I was trying to keep things Professional. I can riff more and insert more of my own opinions this time, like I normally would.

I'll inevitably have to touch on some of Ken's Bad Tweets when discussing things that have happened after the lawsuits, but I don't want the video to just devolve into a list of times people got mad at him on Twitter, so I'm gonna try to keep that to a minimum in favor of focusing on his actual work. Things like the Scourge the Speed Demon incident and his continued statements on certain characters' copyright statuses probably warrant mentioning, though. And finally, assuming that the book really does come out this summer, I would like the grand finale of the video to be about those first couple chapters of The Lara-Su Chronicles.

I don't currently know when this video will get done, but it'll probably be in the back half of the year, especially with me waiting for the book to either drop or get delayed yet again. But I've actually already started writing a bit of the script, and will keep chipping away at it for a while.

So, uh, yeah, look forward to that? Wish me luck?

[ponett]

What was the publishing process like for SLARPG? As an aspiring gamedev myself, I'm very curious about the process of actually getting the game out there once it's done-- I'd like to know what I'm in for down the line

Self-publishing is fairly straightforward on PC these days. itch is a breeze to get set up on, and Steam takes more steps but is ultimately still fairly simple

After you've paid the $100 Steam Direct fee they make you fill out some financial paperwork, and then it's mostly just a matter of filling out a bunch of store page info about your game and uploading like a dozen variants of your cover art in different aspect ratios. A little time consuming, but nothing too complex, and everything needs to be approved manually by someone at Valve anyway so they'll just tell you if you did something wrong. The most intimidating part is probably just the fact that you need to set a release date ahead of time, and once you're within two weeks of that date you can't change it without contacting support. (I did in fact have to change SLARPG's release date at the last minute like this lol.) I believe your store page also has to be publicly visible for some time before you're allowed to publish your game. So, basically, it's good to get all of this stuff out of the way sooner rather than later when you're planning on publishing a game on Steam

Also they'll tell you to do some command line shit to upload your builds once you're ready to do that, which I find kind of annoying, but if your game is under 2 gigs you can just upload a zip file directly to the Steamworks website

[vellichorom]

Because I genuinely dont know, is cookie9 a real person who left that review? Or did the devs make that account up just for the skip ending lol. Cuz if they are a real person, I wonder how they feel now knowing what they created lol

oh i wouldn't know, IF IT'S EVER BEEN STATED... i am Unknowing,

i have the loose idea that cookie9 probably wasn't a real person or legit account- BUT rather, was created based off of real comments crowsx3 received on the original game & thus exists as a representation of those who shared similar sentiments ( ie; the narrator is annoying i hope he dies i mean shuts up )

not that i couldn't see them doing that, just including some real steam comments / accounts within their game. feels like the crowsx3 type of humor we've come to know & love,

if cookie9 is indeed real oh my god i would HATE to be them right now ( which actually makes me think, with how much cookie9 is disliked (( & foreseeably WOULD be for acting as the nail in the narrator's - the stanley parable's golden boy - coffin )), it's probably unlikely they're actually real because i doubt the gamedevs would just blast a real person like that, )

but at the same time i laugh at the idea that cookie9, fictional or not, looks at the skip button ending & still finds something to complain about

" i'm glad you took my idea into account but even this ending was horribly slow & tedious & frankly punishing for a valid critique on my part. god forbid anyone provide some feedback. not even pressing the skip button in immediate succession would save me from just how long this segment was. boo hoo wah wah. 2/10 stars "

[ganondoodle]

(wip)

so, instead of working on what i actually wanted to work on ... i did some rough mock up and UI stuff for the pixel game i dream of making

(some sprites are done and copied over, like the basic player character- most are super rough -throw some color in vageuly the shape you need -)

my dream idea (probably impossible espeiclaly for a noob gamedev like me lol) is like a mix of minecraft and stardew with a bit of botw and ww, but set in my OCs world- with a heavy focus on customization and environment/exploration more than making money or something (you might collect celestial silver bits- which are toxic to demons and thus better collected by you in an effort to heal their world and you get rewards for turning it in?)

the Hud? UI? you see here is well .. health and energy in the upper left corner plus some controls which are also in the upper right corner, the idea is to mimic windwakers style of button mapping- meaning that you can put any item on any button you want (only inventory is locked bc it contains all the options)- that extends to the jump, interact and sit actions too, theyd be in your inventory like an item you get from the start, so if you never wanna sit down, put sth else there, dont want to interact with anything and just run around? sure do, never jump? no problem

in the lower right corner is the info thingy, with the big wheel being time of day, the second the health of the environment (the main mechanic in restricting you- if you cut down trees or introduce plants from other, later unlockable, areas it will go down, if you reach critical level too many times Eadrya (blue rough sprite there) will show up whereever you are and kill you (bc the whole idea is that you are a demon hunter who wanted to leave the organization but was hunted down by them for it- so you are rescued by Shargon and put into one of the bubbles around travel gates meant to protect humans from the otherwise toxic-to-humans atmosphere in the demon world, but since you are a hunter, and they cant be sure you can be trusted, you are tasked with helping their world recover from the damage your former allies caused- so if you do more damage than heal it and you do it on purpose they will see it as proof you have not actually left the hunters, which means if Eadrya is the one watching the area you will be eaten/smashed/etc- if its someone else thrown back into the human realm)

below that is the temperature- and on the side is the current and coming weather

(edit: as sidenote, i always got a color filter layer ready for grayscale to check if everythings still readable without color- its an effort to make it more accessible for people with color vision impairment, but i dont think i can test for every single one? theres alot of levels of color blindness right? >o<)

,,,,,,,, this got long too huh

[mamadarama]

IM SO SORRY IKEEP ACCIDNENTANLY UNFOLLOWIGN U BC THE ASK BUTTON IS NEXT TO IT 😭😭😭 i love ur content so MUCH i would NEVER unfollow on purpose omgg 😭

also anyways imjust wonderign , have u ever thought abt what would happen if yumenosaki didnt exisr inthe first place ???? like. what if they all jsut go live normal lives. or maybe if any of the major events in tthe storyline never happened. cause youre so amazing at analyzing stuff so id realllyyyyy like 2 hear ur thoughts <333 THAMKYOU!!!!! have a nice day :DD

OHH LOL OK i was like hey didnt this person follow me the other day? ive done that before too

i have thought abt that!!! i think some of them would still end up being idol adjacent? also a lot of characters grew up in the same area so they might end up going to the same school or smth anyways so theyd still know each other.

wataru is a stage/movie actor and eichi buys vip seats to all his shows until he notices him . kanata and kaoru are both marine biologists. madara is still exiled and starts traveling doing god knows what, but comes home to japan sooner than he wouldve if eichi didnt stall him during the war. in japan he continues to do god knows what. odd jobs and the like. chiaki and kanata still meet and kanata is saved from the cult. chiaki might go on to become a professional basketball player? izumi and makoto dont have a falling out bc the war never caused leo to break down, so izumi doesnt get paranoid for makotos safety. both of them along with arashi are models and leo is still a composer. arashi would also be a divorce attorney purely on the basis that i think she would be really good at it. rei retains most of his 2nd yr personality and simply mellows out a little instead of acting like an old man, and his friendship with keito wouldnt fall apart. keito is a mangaka and a teacher. hes trying to keep those identities separate but who knows how long thatll last. koga and rei still form deadmanz but keito wouldnt join. instead theyd be a duo unit until koga invites adonis to join, and this time adonis actually gets the chance to since deadmanz wont disband before koga can invite him. kaoru might join later, but its more of a hobby and his primary goal is still taking over and carrying on his mothers research. he works at kanatas aquarium. adonis is a park ranger. i think souma would be a teacher. either biology or a weapons class, or both. kuro and shu are both fashion designers but kuro would specialize in costumes and shu would do mostly high fashion lines for runways. kuro also does wrestling, he intended for it to be just a hobby but he ended up being a fan favorite so now hes better known for that than he is for his costume work. mika is shus apprentice still. hiyori is dawdling and unsure of what he wants to do, but in the meantime hes busying himself with making youtube videos (think jenna marbles). he still meets jun in school. jun is a streamer but he also has a fitness blog and works part time as a personal trainer. pretty average life but with the added bonus that he lives with hiyori, so he doesnt have to worry about money as much. nagisa is a geologist and historian. he works at a museum, thats about it. he still stayed with hiyori until he was adopted by his current family. ibara is the ceo of some company. yuzuru is toris butler still and tori is learning what he needs to do as his family's heir. tsukasa is doing the same. yuzuru and ibara dont meet again after ibara leaves the military facility. ritsu is a professional pianist, hes known for theming his performances around his vampire thing and playing creepy organ music, except on a piano. mao is a freelance photographer and a tutor. makoto continues to be a model, but also does gamedev and photography on the side. he also streams with jun and natsume and has a radio show with the rest of trickstar. anzu would still get transferred to whatever all boys school trickstar is going to, but instead of being trickstars producer shes just part of their friend group and theres no war. switch exists as a magic act, performing at events and whatnot. tsumugi also has his own fortune telling business and works as a librarian, and sora is a competitive gymnast. hajime is a botanist and works for the city managing public gardens. mitsuru became an olympic athlete. when nazuna graduated he went to college to do ...whatever it is hes doing. since there was no unit keeping them together, he was able to just stop talking to shu and they eventually drifted apart painlessly. tomoya and hokuto are actors. subaru is a solo idol. the twins street performances took off and they became a well known acrobatic duo. shinobu is a radio host and has a podcast where he talks about anime. tetora is a competitive martial artist. midori happily works as a vegetable farmer with his family.

rinne and niki live the same way they did before becoming idols, except niki has a cooking show. tsukasa secretly helps kohaku escape from his family and silently passes his allowance over to kohaku so he can live somewhere safe. as soon as he can he gets back into contact with aira. he lives alone like niki did when he was 14 and spends a lot of time in the library trying to homeschool himself. aira is still an idol fanatic but doesnt become an idol. hiiro goes to look for rinne, but rinne refuses to leave and hiiro goes home after making rinne promise hell still visit home sometimes. hiiro takes rinnes place as the next monarch. tatsumi and kaname still go to the same school but kaname never has the accident, so oremeru never abandons his identity and has no reason to hate tatsumi. tatsumi is learning to be a priest from his dad and will eventually take over as the pastor at his family's church. since es was never built on the same land as the ayase's bunker, mayoi would stay underground for longer. if he left at some point hed be a visual artist and submit his work to galleries. he probably wouldnt meet the rest of alkaloid, at least not right away.

so thats what i think would happen, more or less.

[gubbles-owo]

i've actually been making a lot of progress on funney ocean game, but like, probably an unhealthy amt of energy being put into it due to still not knowing what the hell im gonna do in the near-ish future or where the hell i can possibly afford to live lol since there's no actionable anything toward establishing any semblance of solid foundation for myself, ive just been. burying my head in gamedev instead to keep the panic at bay ahaha guess i may as well post some random progress stuff rather than leak depressing shit all over the place huh

[hummingbird-games]

Dev Diaries

May 19th, 2024

game developer bias warning: I really love Ryan's lunch scene (Florence's is a close second thou!!)

I'm sore from spending redacted hours braiding my hair, I have tomorrow off, I feel pretty good right now and I've got good music playing in my ears as I write this, so I figure we can have an update as a treat!!

As seen above, I'm still riding the high of releasing the demo for the sequel to my first ever game. I'm also deep in the trenches of Development Hell because I've been working on Ryan's route (sometimes bouncing between Langston & Billie's if you've peeped my running gif flavored commentary 🥹).

Given that Past Me, who wrote the outline, and Current Me, who's writing the script, are having creative differences, I've forced myself not to mess with the doc for a couple days weeks.

Which is a smart idea. Because...

CRUSHED #2 RESUMES PRODUCITON THIS WEEK!!!

Lol, I got in contact with my sprite artist from game one and I'll be commissioning them for Crushed #2 aka Loved!

"Gemini, you said resumes, what the heck??"

Yeah, um, see, so what had happened was--

(on a serious note, I will talk about this in its own post. pinkie promise.)

THE KNIGHT DANCE IS GETTING UPDATED! Sometime. YEAH!

LOL, while TKD is a complete creation, fully voiced gameplay and the UI are a must, so I wanted to let y'all know that the UI is stunning and very storybook-esque, and I'm working with the VAs + my director to get those lines recorded and coded into the game.

Estimated ETA on all of this? ...2024! 😂👌🏾

GEM'S GAME GEMS (on main)

It's been a hot minute since I've hyped up others' games in my devlogs, so let's get into it.

College Craze is actually ruining my life (affectionate). V7 IS EVERYTHING I WANT AND NEED AHHHHHHHH! My main OC is gunning for Thomas and we got to bump boots finally and officially be an item so you really can't tell me shit 🤷🏽‍♀️

Gamedev miseri released a demo for a game called Wake Up Magical Girl and if you must know, miseri is legit who I wanna be when I grow up 🤧all hits no skips I swear!!

And lastly, CTRL FREAK released a little while ago, and the plan is to play the game sometime after I get done yapping with y'all 😩

Cool, cool, cool, I'm gonna touch grass and then go back to playing games 😂

- Gemini 💛

[pumpkin-spike18]

✨Weekly Progress #32-33✨

It's been an emotionally tough two weeks. Much (if not all) of what I've been planning hasn't been going well ^^;;

Weekly Progress #32

Posted devlogs

Worked on Outlines

Finished Punk BL Part 1 Outline

Finished SFB sprite lineart

Concepted + outlined VF project

Wrote 2.1k+ words for VF

Sketched VF sprite

Weekly Progress #33

Wrote 2k+ words for VF

Finished 1 VF sprite

Flat colored other VF sprite 4/5 outfits

Finished Punk BL Part 2-3 outline skeleton

Designed 1/4 LIs for Buggy BL

Wrote 6k+ words for Punk BL

Finished Buggy BL outline skeleton

When 2024 started, I had some goals and plans for my devwork this year. I hoped to start developing commercial games. I didn't expect all of my plans to work, but I also didn't expect none of it to work the way I planned.

So while I said to myself, "Welp, that just means I gotta replan and make a new schedule for 2025!" it was still difficult for me to hype myself up for that.

I planned to join Velox Fabula 2 to cheer myself up, but despite writing over 4k words and completing a sprite... my willpower simply disappeared and I gave up completing the project.

I might finish it in the future, but the stars misaligned this time.

It is a Quick Transmigration, multi-lifetime story between two people. The story was planned to be vignettes of moments between the two characters, but I realized I wanted something more and the scope was already too big for a small jam like VF2.

Punk BL Game

That's not the title, I have no idea what the title will be. I hope an epiphany will hit me soon because idk how to tag my posts otherwise. Or I'll have to go back and edit a lot of posts.

It's a rather big and ambitious idea. This will be a turn based battle/hybrid VN with some dating sim elements. I wish I had a single word to describe it. Perhaps I'll have to do some more researching for similar games.

The story is about Silver, whose been ordered to defeat the gangsters who run Lucidus City. If he falls in love with one of his rivals, well, that'll depend on you...

(did I post this image before? I feel like I have, but I can't find it on my own blog LOL...)

The story is split into four parts (currently); writing for ith as come so naturally that I did 4k on Friday night. These are sketches for the main characters of the first part. The MC, Silver. The "love interests" (once again, I hesitate to call them so because they won't get traditional romance routes. I'm still unsure if they'll get actual romantic endings) for part 1 are: Drayton, Gordan (Danny), Caleb, and Evan.

Any guesses to who the yandere in this story will be.

(Just some expressions I picture him making throughout the story)

Buggy BL Game

The other untitled BL game I've been daydreaming about. Thanks to discussion with some friends, the basic concept is: a bunch of bugs get stuck in a death game, similar to the idea of Kodoku.

I only have the base outline and one of the LIs designs finished. Meet Butterfly, one of the more uncooperative love interests you get to meet in the death game.

Actually, all of the love interests are quite uncooperative...

I haven't finished developing the rules and stakes of the death game yet, but I know for a fact that variable control will be essential to this game. I have a bad feeling future!Pumpkin will be ambitious and try a system where who you let die early in the game will affect later trials of the game...

Other than that, I'll be finishing a few owed artworks this week before I dive into rescheduling my long term gamedev goals for 2025 and beyond.

[cyberdragoninfinity]

What's the Duel Monsters cast doing in your college AU? Are they just regular people, or do they have some connection to the folks of not-Lawrence?

OK SO LIKE since the AU was conceived around when I was finishing GX, it's always from the getgo been spinoff focused, so the actual DM guys present are more few and far between than guys from the other series... theyre scattered and kind of just doing their own thing lol. Some characters of note:

-Joey works at Raising Canes with Claus. he is JUST some guy of all time

-i think I established kaiba and yugi are both like. established Names--KaibaCorp is a tech company (you KNOW kaibas annoying on twitter) and Yugi is a reclusive toby fox esque gamedev who made a moderately successful indie game :3

-pegasus is basically the same guy but hes like 52 and duel monsters is just a card game lol

-atem is definitely like the top ranked duel monsters player in the country, and hes from Not-Lawrence but usually really busy so he doesnt stop home ofter...hes still childhood friends with Mana and Mahad, who ARE more present in this AU. Mahad is some kind of history based TA at NLSU and Mana is a history major with a penchant for stage magic--she and Syrus eventually start dating :3 Mahad and Zane frequent the same rave warehouses lmao

-iirc at some point clark and i established that DOMA was a cult in Florida the three musketeers got out of and are just scattered around trying to get their lives together. I think Valon lives in NL?? His apartment is full of gundams

[fracturedgodhead]

I swear I'm going to work on the music thing #19

First of all, I hope you all had the grimbliest of crimboes.

Second, I am planning to pull an all-nighter, leading up to my opening shift tomorrow to work on this. I need to work on this or else I'll end up not finishing it on time. I think not finishing this on time is worse than the feeling of an 8 hour robo-shift. And a movie with friends after... Maybe...

Regardless, I am making this choice.

So let's talk about the song.

I don't have anything past that one little rhythm I came up with. I do however, have two different workflows that I think I can run through even with an actively imploding brain.

The first is a simple process of brainstorming sounds, downloading samples, and throwing them together in audacity.

The second is going to be more interesting: I need to come up with lyrics. I think I can leverage my writing process here. I'll just write about what I want the song to be about and then repeatedly alter those words into song lyrics. Then I need to figure out how to record... I don't have a closet I can fit in... I could literally stuff my face in the clothes hanging in my closet... I'll figure it out.

Alright, that's a plan. Now I got to do it. Wish me luck... and sanity.

[thehallstara]

oooo very curious abt indoor garden of haunted houses

hi marn!! you managed to pick out my one other gamedev wip on this list lol

indoor garden of haunted houses is the working title for my main solo dev project atm!! it's (at least for now) an interactive fiction piece abt a disabled butch who's reflection ends up getting possessed by a ghost after a huge storm knocks their power out while their partner is out of town for a family emergency. it's still in the planning/outlining stages atm so it's a lot more notes on a corkboard than actual writing atm lol but i'm hoping to have some kind of draft/demo done middle of next month for a game jam i'm in!!

[rabbivole]

mostly I'm trying to figure out wtf personal project to spend my free time on this summer

still want to return to roadtrip, assuming tumblr doesn't re-ban me for it. i think i know how to write it better now and i also probably know enough to deploy it as an actual bot i send content to (assuming i can figure out how to shove media through post requests or something. i guess i could just ftp dump whatever it needs)

but also i want to hack together a recipe card website

but also i want to fuck with gamedev

but also none of this will get me hired lol

[dreammelter]

Oh right, what I meant to come around here and say was:

GET READY

I just completed what actually turned out to be a pretty huge project to undertake in 3 months. For me. (Creating a gamedev workshop for beginners.) I learned a lot, but the students who made it told me they learned quite a bit too! I'm working on getting the handbook of resources completed for them as promised, but other than that... I can finally close out the project.

(I'll probably do a proper postmortem/blog entry about it some other time. Maybe draft it up while I'm preparing the files for archival...)

For me to jump into that endeavor, however, I've had to sideline a bunch of important things I was doing prior:

GXCREW

Studio Refactor (just. reorganizing my whole life in general)

Website Update

So I'll be getting back to those very soon. Nov/Dec will likely be spent on the Refactor, since I do still have university work and a different website project for my sister's business. Once the Refactor is complete, I should have a clearer roadmap for everything.

I do want to make more posts around here cataloguing my adventures... I used to do it long ago (on a different site) but stopped after some years. (Got tired of writing about ideas that never came to be lol...) I've also been thinking about making studio vlogs for YouTube. I do record here and there, so we'll see if I can turn those clips into anything. 😄

That's all for today! Gotta finish up this workshop handbook by tomorrow night and I'm still a ways away.

☁

[ganondoodle]

'vitmm' commented: "The idea is very good but honestly, the Switch wouldn't handle something like that at less than 10 fps unfortunately. And I don't even doubt that they considered the possibility of doing something similar, but discarded it because of hardware limitations, don't forget that they have already done something similar before, in Skyward Sword they wanted to make the transition between the sky and the surface smoothly, but The Wii couldn't handle it, so it was scrapped. And I know that the gloom hands exist, and the switch can handle running when they appear, but honestly, your idea is to have a type of blood moon in real time, with enemies appearing en masse in real time, NPCs fleeing and with the effect in the sky like in botw etc. Gloom hands are similar to this to a certain extent, but they are just an enemy with the effect in the sky, something the Switch can handle, but could the Switch handle a blood moon in real time?"

well, i think you forget multiple things here, all this that im talking about? not real and not happening anyway bc the game is done and out and i got no influence on nintendo, especially not the past; i also think you are underselling the power of the switch, in the entirety of botw there are only three (four if you count glitches multiplying weapons en masse lol) instances that there is lag as i can remember, kakariko, the krog forest (boht of which densely populated and or heavy on extra effects) and if you are going too fast for it to render, usually also using glitches, given how massive of a game it is that is impressive as hell-

now then, optimizing can be hard but not impossible, i might be a fledgling in gamedev but i do know some things, aside from the fact that everything im saying ultimately doesnt matter, theres lots of tricks you can do to disguise loading times for example

totk is horribly laggy, but it largely stems from two things, ultrahand (an ability that needs to scan for objects it can pick up turn and functionally glue to a thing) and the sage ghosties (five extra NPCs with abilites that constantly swarm you or your enemies); most of these ideas and improvements i have i also view in the context of my rewrite, and both ultrahand and the sage ghosties are entirely removed from that, being replaced with abilities such as a hookshot and the sage abilities tied to another ability wheel

also the rain as a warning a day before a bloodmoon i dont think would require much, its a weather that hurts you (if you run around with exposed skin or ... new armor set?!!) and occasionally spawns an extra enemy and given that the miasma hands can easily trigger the cloud effect without causing performance issues that should be no problem either; now for the actual bloodmoon night, you see the bloodmoon start to rise at the horizon, similar to the actual game, but instead of it triggering the reset in a cutscene once its risen to its highest point, it does soon after showing at all, triggers a cutscene that shows the monsters spawning and people closing the gates or hiding, load time, cutscene over, now you have to go through that night in which you cant sleep (maybe no one can actually), there doesnt need to be a literal horde of monsters, you can also just replace the ones that are usually there with ones that dont show up anywhere else or only in the underground and they are just stronger and more aggressive, once the clock ticks over to, idk, 07:00, it triggers another cutscene showing the bloodmoon effects waning, the sun peeking over at the horizon and people coming out of hiding/opening the gates again, load time, tadaaa

the effect after the second cutscene can still be the same, it respawning monsters and emptying cache, but now you got yourself a cool extra event that adds to the whole worldbuilding, vibe, narrative and stakes :)

saw an older post from @golvio talking about miasma in totk (engl gloom..) and mentioned miasma RAIN

and it just kidna lead me to think up more stuff for the game that would have been so logical and cool as hell

if you have played kingdom two crowns, its basically about building a kingdom and defeating some weird goo monsters (idk the lore that well unfortunately) that spawn through portals each night, and once you destroy a portal there will be a bloodmoon night in which they attack wayy stronger

so what if instead of the bloodmoon being only that one cutscene to respawn enemies and clear cache, what if the whole night was coated in a red glow with the bloomoon looming over you the entire time and the cool ass cloud moving super fast effect from botw, with monsters spawning en masse, maybe even unique ones that arent seen anywhere else- or maybe rarely underground, this red night being the only time they will be able to spawn on the surface and the sky- NPCs running to hide and barricade themselves (so the outpost in front of hyrule castle actually has .. a function) and it beign an actual danger to you as well miasma rain being a possible special weather condition either happenign only during those bloodmoon nights or perhaps a few nights in advance to subtly warn you about whats to come soon, with the rains effects being that it slowly takes your health like acid rain if you stand in it for too long, and rarely a bloodmoon enemy spawning already, to give you a clear taste and warning of the coming night, they could form from the puddles building up from the rain!!

once the sun rises it will all calm down, maybe with a tiny cutscene using the good ol sunrise music from ww and showing people opening the gates of the towns again to transition the game from that event to a reset version again

it wouldnt just serve to make the gameplay and world more alive it would also help the narrative (not going into the HUGE problems i have with it in the canon game again) it would actually make it FEEL like you are living in a world on the brink of being swallowed by miasma and mosnters- botw was a looming threat in the background, with the security of zelda keeping it at bay but it still was there and in tone with the theme of the game (cough cough unlike some other newer game)- it would only make sense to then make totk be one where you actualy live through the catastrophe and try to find out its roots and help adress the core issue bC GODDAMN WHAT A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY IT WAS TO CONTINUE THE SUBLTE BUILD UP FROM BOTW INTO A MUCH MORE NUANCED AND INTERESTING STORY TO F-