#it really helps i recommend

[copia]

endless ghifs 11/? ⛧ source — "I don't wanna end like this—"

[quicksilversnails]

Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

[giantkillerjack]

Me: hm, I want something to put on the TV as background noise... Huh. Looks like YouTube is recommending something called The Last Unicorn. That's perfect, it's probably some old shitty animation that has aged poorly! I can watch it ironically!

Me, 2 hours later as the credits roll: *crying, cheering, buying the book, composing the songs*

Me, 2 weeks later: So I have compiled all of the quotes from the book that I think could make good tattoos, and also, HOW HAVE I NEVER LEARNED ABOUT HOW THE LAST UNICORN FUCKING SLAPS??? This gay-ass little fairytale fed my soul! Watered my crops! Transed my gender! Can't believe I heard of this story from youtube recommendations, of all places!!

[greykolla-art]

Had a bit of a hard day, but I still wanted to draw something, so here’s some cold hugs!🙏💕

(But If I’m drawing that means I win, not the problems✌️)

[archivedjuice]

hi my name is sam and i'm a jamaican international student attending university in new york state, usa. this past semester, i had a huge depressive episode and didn't do enough research into the college storage facility i had chosen (because i do not have relatives in the state and am unable to ship my things back home (and then to the us again) due to costs) and ended up with a much larger bill than i was under the impression i would be seeing. my parents cannot afford to pay $800 usd right now and despite my best efforts, i'm barely making a dent. i'm trying to raise about $600 usd to make the bill more bearable for both me and my parents as well as opening up an opportunity to store my things elsewhere while i take a leave of absence for the fall 2024 semester. this is not anyone's responsibility but mine, but some help—no matter how little—would be very appreciated

$382.49/600

cshpp / pypl / dm for zelle

[arunneronthird]

okay fine i can deal with damian being a weeb but he'll be one on MY TERMS

[arthursfuckinghat]

I just realised I completely forgot to show my finished Arthur cosplay so here!!

You can find the process of me making the hat here! Everything including the hat and the materials was purchased second hand and using things I already had (the rope, jeans, journal, neckerchief, etc) so it's a very budget cosplay but I think it turned out well! The total came to about £45, there's receipts here if you're interested <3

[littler0b1n]

My boys…

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The more I see your work and the more I see of poorly drawn scum villain, the more I'm tempted to do a poorly drawn tgcf 🥺 (I've only just started listening to it and I absolutely love it!!)

I just don't think I'm as funny as both of you and don't know if I could commit to uploading as regularly as you both do.

But oh! I am SO very tempted!! 😭

Working on an adaption of an existing media as a long form project is honestly my strongest recommendation for getting your creative brain going! Of course, there is still planning and hard work that goes into it, but the biggest creative pressures are much lower (And when anxiety brain is quiet, art brain thrives!)

That said, projects like this are a huge commitment, and I'm a bit of a freak case when it comes to the grind. PD-Scumvillian and I both put a lot of work behind the scenes to make it seem as effortless as it is. I'm wholeheartedly giving you my support should you go through with it; feel free to reach out and ask for tips and tricks!

[plounce]

i'm going to be starting up a cc patreon soon to help with rent and i think it (as in "thinking about doing this for real") has been making my mental tension about the audience (specifically the audience that does not respect or like me) worse

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

In goofy David Tennant/Michael Sheen Loud news, my husband stumbled upon an edit with David Tennant and Michael Sheen about how they’re In Love ® and he’s been solidly on the ‘Yeah, they’re prob fuckin’ train because of me & he was like, “I don’t get it, they’re not physically compatible at all, one is really skinny and the other is cherubic—“ and I was like bruh you literally described the one who plays an angel on TV as cherubic 💀 💀 💀 certifyibly Good ™️ casting big rare W to Neil Gaiman

[lazycranberrydoodles]

mxtxtober day 2: rain

@vampirefaun’s fic Thousand Gold Come-And-Go Stew is the canonical Hua Cheng memory loss extra to me so go read it if you haven’t already! I’ve wanted to make fanart of it for a while, and even did a sketch in August (below the cut) but finally got around to it because of today’s prompt :)

the sketch i made in august ↓. the colors on this were already pretty harmonized so i colormapped them a little bit more to use as a palette for my final drawing.

[rochellehassan]

The Spell for Unraveling (book 3 of The Buried and the Bound trilogy) has a cover! behold!

i think this is my favorite one yet! i love the stained glass background so much <3 the artist is helen mask, who's done an amazing job on all three covers for this trilogy.

[eighteenthofoctober]

No, I will not get into Shakespearean plays just because of that one singular interview stating that Phoenix Wright wanted to be a Shakespearean actor... Idk what you're talking about.I don't wanna hear it.I don't wanna hear ittt lalalalalalalalalalalalala🫸😣🫷

[thebirdandhersong]

romantically, this girl is on sabbatical. literally can't take any more emotional damage this year lol I've run out of any capacity for nonsense :-) if anyone is interested, they'd have to be willing to wait, because -- and I cannot emphasize this enough -- my heart is so exhausted. SO exhausted.

[the---hermit]

my physical tbr

While writing my reflections on my 2024 reading goals I realized that I should probably talk about my physical tbr a bit. One of my goals for the year was to decrease my physical tbr, and I did, by a few books, but I am aware I have a very specific way of thinking about my physical tbr and the books I buy so why not waste everyone's time with another long postTM.

I mentally divide my physical tbr in very different sections that I approach in different ways. Firstly we have the books I buy during the year, they are not part of the physical tbr in my mind. They are a thing of their own. For quite a few years now my main reading goal has always been reading the books I buy right away. The real goal is to be as mindful as I can about what I buy, which means getting things I know I want to read right away. Of course every now and then I end up buying a "acorn books" (people who listen to books unbound know, but basically they are books you get knowing they will stay unread for a while, like a squirrel collects acorns for winter). These specific books will eventually become part of my physical tbr, and I know that when I am buying them. It is very rare I buy a book I think I will read soon and then leave it to rot on my shelves. Anyway the books I buy during the year are placed on a shelf I have by my bed as that is my immediate tbr shelf, and once they have been read they are crossed out from my list of "book bought this year" and find their place on my main bookshelves.

Then we have my actualy physical tbr, so all the books I own, that I have been collecting from years and years and somehow have not been read yet. All the books that I have dnf-ed and that I still own for a reason or another are not considered in this section, they are a specific group. I don't have a lot of dnfs on my shelves, because they aren't too common and I often end up getting rid of them. But there's a few books I still keep because I might end up giving them a second chance in the future, I haven't fully given up on them. So, my physical tbr is mixed with all my other books, but I have a list on my reading journal, so I can cross the books once I have read them. I rewrite this list every year for two reasons: firstly I might get rid of stuff when I declutter and reorganize my shelves during the year, and I have to add the acorn books I might have gotten during the previous year. And of course I will not write down all the books I have actually read during the previous year. This way every year I have a clear view of what I have finally got off my physical tbr because I either read or dnf-ed it, and at the beginning of the year I havea clear overview of all my unread options, which is very exciting.

This physical tbr has very specific sections. Firstly there should be a graphic novels/graphic non-fiction section, except I have no unread graphic books in my collection. I have conquered that tbr a few years ago (and have regretted it ever since, but more on this later). Then I have a non-fiction tbr and a fiction tbr. The latter has one specific section inside of it, which includes a very specific collection of classic books. They came out as a collection a few years ago, they were a weekly release with a newspaper, and are all classics from the early fantasy, horror and scifi genres. I consider them as a section of their own for two reasons: firstly they have increased my tbr by a lot in a short amount of time, because as I said they came out weekly over a year and I got 51 of these books (fear not I have read almost half of them now). Secondly they are classics, so I need to be in the right mindset to get to them because they are definitely not the most lighthearted read I can go for. When I was getting them I was very well aware I was going to need years to read them all, and to be honest I am fine with it, I know that when I am in a mood for classics I have quite a few options ready for me. My regular fiction tbr is quite short actually, half of it, if not more, is made up of books that were gifted to me, so books I didn't conciously add to my tbr and therefore have not read right away. To be honest some of these I don't even know if I'll ever get to, but for the time being they'll stay on my shelves. The remaining books on this shelf are those acorn books I have mentioned before. As for my non fiction tbr, it's made up of mainly historical non fiction, which is also what I have to read for uni since I am an history major. Which of course means that during the year I get one or two books read in my free time and no more than that. I have to focus on uni books until I am studying, so again most of this section of my tbr will get read in the far future, and that's okay.

This means that most of my physical tbr right now can be seen through the metaphor of the wine cellar bookshelf. You may have heard it online, to be honest I am not sure who is the person who came up with the concept, but I really like it, because it clearly resonates with me. The idea is that you can think of the unread books on your shelves as bottles of wine in cellar. Each book is there waiting for you to pick it up in the right moment of your life when you'll be able to savour it and enjoy it the most. Which also means that a lot of those books will stay unread for years maybe. In the past I have been tempted to try and make my physical tbr as small as possible, but it just can't work for me. I am a mood reader which means I will not force myself to read a book just because it's there, and most importanly I really like to be able to look at my shelves as see options for new reads. And here come my regrets of having completly conquered my graphic novel tbr. I hate that if I am in the mood for a new graphic novel my only option is to go and buy a new one. For some people having a minimal tbr might be very freeing, apparetly to me it's not. I like to have a tbr with books that were picked mindfully, so you will not see me going on a shopping spree and buy random stuff, because as I said I consider each book I buy as well as I can before actually getting it. But also I don't think I'd be happy having shelves of fully read books. I do have a goal of not increasing my tbr too much, and honestly I am pretty sure that ever since I started keep an account of it, my tbr has actually decreased by a few books each year (even though I always end up with a few new unread books at the end of each year). So far this year my physical tbr has decreased of 16 books despite having some acorn books additions.

I don't know how to conclude it, I get that a lot of people feel stressed by the idea of having a lot of unread books, but I think I have found my personal system and it works very well for me. Keeping a list of the unread books of the start of the year, from which I cross off my reads has been very helpful. And keeping a list of the books I am buying during the year, to again cross off what I am reading has also been incredibly good to stay mindful of my additions to my shelves. Overall as I said I think in the last four or five years I think I really found a system that works for me, which also means that I came to the conclusion that I will be not doing any more tbr challenges, or specific years tbr lists to get books read. I am too much of a mood reader to do so. I will keep an account of what I am reading, adding and taking off my shelves, because that is what works best for me.