#literally only play with multiplayer mod

[bakaforbrains]

hobow kite

[mx-pokirby]

Alright, let's get pretentious.

I've come to start resenting those super popular Mario 64 hacks as of late, like B3313, the multiplayer mod, Mario 64 with Shotgun.

People came out of the woodworks making videos and articles about them, and I kinda hate how those are now "the mainstream", relatively speaking.

And it also sucks because they're all great hacks! But the fact that that if you asked most (relevant) people to think of what a Mario 64 hack is, it's either just the base vanilla game "with a wacky YouTube Content-y™ Twist" and/or within the ballpark of just creepypasta (/derogatory)/beta content.

Aside from Star Road back in 2011, which while groundbreaking had some pretty mixed design, the general online populous who even still cares about Mario 64 have no idea about the game's entire massive & passionate modding scene, full of incredible and original standalone experiences, both in gameplay and narrative, for free.

Elise, a beautiful Yume Nikki-like with cutscenes and voice acting, borrowing the base game's sense of exploration as a jumping off point.

SM64 Kingdom's End, a genuinely haunting story about Mario struggling until the last moment to save a dying world.

Mario Party 64, our childhood dream of wishing we could play in the boards & minigames of Mario Party like an actual platformer brought to life.

Detective Mario: Murder on Ice, mapping the genre of text-based murder mystery (complete with typing in commands) into a 3D Mario level with surprising twists and required deduction skills.

Mario breaks EVERY BONE IN HIS BODY (case sensitive), a hilarious Monkey Ball-like

Ceaseless Climb, exploring a tricky, warped reality beyond the game's infamous Infinite Staircase

My Dress-Up Darling 64 which, and I quote from the game's Romhacking.com page's description, "being the first hack to use HVQM full-motion video"

There's rhythm games, Zelda-likes, horror games, shitposts, puzzlers, slide hacks, what-ifs, massive collabs, the absurdly sized Star Revenge *series*, huge hacking competitions with cash prizes and often dozens/hundreds of submissions meant to incentivize newcomers to try, Mario slips on a banana peel and fucking dies 64, and literally hundreds more I could name

I'm just really passionate about this little niche internet community, and I'm sad it only got the thinnest spotlight once a tiny piece of it ended up being profitable for content creators. There's so much more than what most people see.

Besides. It's free video games; Surely that alone makes it worth checking out, right...? Everything is suuuper accessible/user-friendly nowadays~

[yanderefarm]

i've played the yandere elliot mod (i had a save file where every dateable character was a yandere)! it's so well-written and i love that he sends u letters regularly. a yandere sending u letters (sometimes they're declarations of love, or threats, or lust-driven ramblings) is a rlly cool concept that i wish was used more in general 😓

i had to retire it from my modpack tho bc even tho i didn't plan on marrying elliot (i am physically incapable of marrying anyone who isnt sebastian), the prospect of him offing himself in the bad ending made me sad :((

also im sorry nephite we could always play multiplayer 👉🏻👈🏻 or i could just help tend to the plants and baby goats

as for noemie, i really wanna see how he reacts to darling just swooning over the ghosts when he's literally right there. sure, he's also a gamer and will definitely hear u out on these men, but i wanna know how he reacts if i just keep cooing at how cute mr chopped head is and his cat ears 😓 like noemie's physically next to u, but ur only paying attention to the ghosts hehe

(sorry for the long yap im trying my best not to but i always fail 😭)

- 🍮

im loyal to sam tbh .. to a fault. ive mentioned before that ive written fics about locking him in the basement. i literally downloaded the yandere mod for him just so he would stop running off to see his whore sebastian. ..... i didn't have any love rival mods downloaded or anything im just deranged.

nephite knows nothing about video games but he'd be so interested to try. i think he'd really like farming sims bc of the cute animals. imagine him tired one day and he comes home from helping his dad and he's like "i hope the fairy comes tonight" silly tired wife. but also god to bottle feed baby goats....

noemie would be biting his nails fighting so hard not to be pissed off. like he knows it's hypocritical but.. but.. he can wear cat ears too!!! he'd get some cat ears or start crawling around everywhere or get a red umbrella like. he is fighting for attention.

[dritbail]

omg presentation blog im so lazyyyyyy

'Bout me

Hi, I'm DritBail, but I also go by various nicknames such as; Icker/Ickerbear, WorkerZero/WorkerAtZeroSpeed, 4le516, PlasticKilla, DritBailX (on questionable places) etc.

19 y/o

Spanish/English speaker, trying to master english

All pronouns, but I prefer gender neutral/neopronouns

Enby Genderfluid Transmasc GNC, Demisexual Trixic (Attracted to female individuals basically :])

Afro-Latin, Mexican

BYF!!: Autism, ADHD and schizophrenia, please take that in note if you wanna interact with me, sometimes I'm very explosive and/or I can get confused with somewhat amibiguous messages

I'm also a sh (s3lf-h4rm) user, please don't get upset with me if I do references or direct representations of sh, that's because it's my way of dealing with it and feeling better about myself. I don't seek to glorify it or make it look like something good and quirky. Likewise, whenever I include something of this type, I'll mark it in case you want to avoid seeing it!

I'm a freelance digital artist, and I'm also kinda a 3D artist! I make those works on MagicaVoxel and Blockbench

I'm a BIG fan of The Black Eyed Peas, they're my favorite group and I love (almost) all of their songs in all of their phases (ATBAN Klann, BEP pre-Fergie, BEP4 and BEP)! Including the Urbz soundtrack they made (I'm listening those rn lmao). I always refuse to do art of real life people but they're the exception, also they literally help me a lot with my daily struggles and even they're a part of my identity! (The BEPgender is for everyone). Also, I'm a big fan of MySims (and the Sims saga in general), it's my comfort saga but also has everything I could ask for; cute chars, simple gameplay, belic scenarios, political conflicts, social critic, etc., I even have an AU but its like fucked up and edgy and different dude its so unique

I told you the important things and so, here are some random extra things that nobody cares about

I'm also a fan of JSR/F, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, THPS, Bethesda games, Saints Row, Cooking Mama, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, Just Cause, Cyberpunk 2077, Sunset Overdrive, Mirror's Edge and some other media

I have a Wii and a Xbox360, and I'm a mega fan of those consoles, and a big fan of Mii's and Xbox Avatars (Underrated as hell). Some of my OC's are freaking Xbox Avatars lol

I have some projects goin' on so expect updates of those if you are interested, my main goal is to mod the BEP to BRC, all from scratch and done by myself

I'm also modding some items and chars of MySims to L4D2 wit a friend

I'm open to play games with people, my PC can handle almost all games! but I won't buy nothing new just for playing and much less if its an multiplayer only experience. Anyways, I got a lot of games on my Steam acc so we surely can find a fun game to play together, my Steam acc:

[luigiblood]

Everything datamined about GB/A NSO so far.

So I spoke recently of a datamine I made from the GBA NSO 1.1.0 update that added Metroid Fusion, and due to my lack of communication skills, I did not really put all of the information that should be known, so let's talk about it a bit better, and while I'm at it, talk about Link Cable support in general in those apps.

Link cable is already working!

First of all, Link cable support is already there and fully working for both GB and GBA NSO. That's how multiplayer (both local and online) works for all the games, they did not hack the games to add online support, instead it's just a smart way of doing it:

The link cable is a way to exchange data in an instant over the wire between at least two Game Boys. The problem is that this data is fully expected to be received by the systems in an instant, there's no way to introduce lag here, meaning if you actually send link cable data over the network (even wireless local), things can go sour really quick and slow down emulation because it really needs this data to go on.

To make multiplayer work better, they most likely resorted to emulating all the players' GB/As on every Switch. As in like, if you play with 4 players online on GBA NSO, all 4 players's Switch would have 4 GBAs being emulated at the same time, all synced beforehand with each player's data to ensure that everything stays, well, in sync, and only manages the player's controller inputs. You just don't see the 3 other players' GBA but they're there. This allows much more stable online (as in giving more latency when needed without lagging behind).

So when I see people getting surprised that Pokémon exchanges worked when other people modded the apps to include different games, it's just that the link cable emulation already worked, it's literally required for multiplayer to begin with, it does not do anything special or different than other games' use of the link cable!

Link cable instructions!

Most people definitely don't notice this (because you guys don't like to check menus!), but when you play multiplayer (local or online), when you press ZL+ZR, you can see this menu.

The middle option, "Starting Linked Play" is where the instructions are, and they are very detailed, on every aspect, from Multiplayer to maybe other features such as Ghost Data exchange for Mario Kart Super Circuit. This feature was available since launch for both GB and GBA NSO!

For GBA, if you are not the first player, you can even press - to go in Single Pak mode and actually play games as if you were playing without the cartridge! The instructions even change if you do this!

I think this is a really cool feature, and very detailed.

Datamine time.

Now that we're on the same page in terms of features, let's talk about everything I found for these apps when I looked into them.

One of the first things I noticed is how the game database file works.

Every game (on both GB and GBA NSO) keeps track of which game they're compatible with in terms of link cable support. Currently, every game either just lists itself, or include "SinglePak" to mean that they're games that can work with the Single-Pak multiplayer mode where only one player can have the cartridge, while the others can actually play multiplayer without needing the cartridge, since they do actually support this in GBA NSO it is definitely important keep track of.

This can get interesting once the compatible titles start to include different games, such as, as I recently found...

Metroid Fusion's compatibility with Metroid: Zero Mission.

Within the japanese app of GBA NSO, in the 1.1.0 update that includes the addition of Metroid Fusion, these 3 screenshots, in this order, are included and are named accordingly for the use of the link cable functionality instructions. Now, there's no instructions to be found here, only these screenshots which are clearly left over.

If I had to guess the instructions, the first screenshot might be the GBA logo screen where you might have to press Start + Select to enable the Multi boot mode so that Metroid: Zero Mission can send over a program over the link cable.

The second screenshot tells you to access the option menu in Metroid: Zero Mission, and select the "Metroid Fusion Link" option (as it is named in the english version), and then proceed as instructed...

And the third screenshot shows a successful link where the option becomes "Metroid Fusion Gallery".

These are instructions from the Metroid Fusion side, hence why they are included alongside Metroid Fusion, but I bet Metroid: Zero Mission might get similar instructions as well.

It is definitely obvious that Metroid: Zero Mission would eventually be part of the library, for me it's just a given, I doubt that it would be soon however.

What I find interesting with this is how they're seriously considering link cable features for games... even for games where the only bonus is just a gallery and literally nothing else. And I dunno about you, but that is honestly interesting.

This are for link cable instructions for a single player game. What about the link cable features between Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, where you can transfer cleared save data between them, such as characters' names, levels, Djinns, stats, items, and so on. You could transfer them with a password... except you have three types of passwords that can transfer more or less things... between 16 characters long... to a whopping 260 characters long! I don't know about you, but it would be great if you didn't have to do this and just use the link cable feature to start with, don't you think?

Also, The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages and Seasons has a feature where if you link one to the other, the plot would be actually connected, like, this is a real feature where actual story changes do happen if you do it. You don't need to do the games in a specific order either. You could also input a password, but doing via link cable could be also faster. If they allow you to do this on your own, it can be legit nice. (And it can get even better if they hack the games to enable GBA Mode... while keeping the GBC colors intact.)

This is the kind of thing I'm excited to see when I do these kinds of finds, this kind of detail that I appreciate in terms of features that I do think are worth it, because I consider if you could do that back then on real hardware... then you should be able to do it with emulation now.

[cryptidrei]

The Butterfly Effect

This is Armageddon 2 Invasion, an old Doom mod from 2008. It adds a lot of new enemies, some of which are from other FPS games, like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, etc. I had to cheat a little for my playthrough since this is meant to be played on cooperative survival lol.

This is one of the most nostalgic Doom mods for me. I saw a video of this being played on youtube around 2008 when it came out and it introduced me to Skulltag, which was a sourceport made for multiplayer Doom (it has since been replaced by Zandronum). I didn't know english very well at the time, so I was completely out of the loop on sourceports and stuff like that. Prior to that I'd only play Doom on Doom95 because that's what came bundled with my pirated copy downloaded off of the internet lol.

This is the epitome of 2000's Doom moding on advanced sourceports. It just packs the maps with several monsters from several different sources, art style consistency is in no way a concern. And honestly, that's very charming! It was a more innocent time, when just being able to bring stuff from other games into the doom engine was novel enough to elevate a mod on it's own. You see a similar modding philosophy in stuff like Knee-Deep in Zdoom, and Aeons of Death, where it just bloats the mod with a billion custom enemies, and weapons because that was new and exciting.

But back to Armageddon 2 Invasion, I give it 100% credit for getting me into Doom modding, which became a big hobby of mine for a long time, though I severely slowed down nowadays, due to lack of time and also focusing more on other creative pursuits (and also a heightened ambition to make full on indie games instead of just mods). It also had a domino effect in my life! Through skulltag I met my first long-standing circle of online friends, and eventually my girlfriend! Life is funny like that. You see a cool mod on youtube that has all these crazy monsters in these Serious Sam-like invasion maps, and several years down the line you can trace you meeting your soul mate directly to that seemingly innocuous moment in your life. And that's not even mentioning everythign else that happened in between and since either. Friendships blossomed, and some died, several skills I've honed due to becoming a modder, dreams of making my own game, many a drama came and went, an interest in learnign more about programming and 3D modeling grew within me, and even more personal matters, like experimenting more with my sexuality and gender, since I felt much safer toying with those concepts around my rowdy friends than around my stick in the mud, conservative family.

It just goes to show, sometimes the most banal moment can completely flip the script. Maybe you're watching some random video on youtube (or tiktok nowadays for the younguns), or reading a post or fanfic, or anything really. Maybe it shows you something so cool, so amazingly kick ass, the literal coolest thing ever for your developing brain, that it completely changes the course of your life.

And that dear reader, is the beauty of life.

[niccerooniererer]

BTD6 HC LIST FOR HEROES

Sadly not all, as sadly I can't spare enough thoughts for everyone sorry

----------------------------------------------------------

Quincy

Disaster bisexual

Has a thing for gnc reckless idiots (he doesn't realize it)

Scared of thunder

Romcom fan

He's easy to scare, horror gets him easily

Stronger than he looks

Only thing he's smart w is his bow

Particularly oblivious, yet easily notices tension between other people

Insecurity. Basically canon

Tends to push himself w training due to that

Becomes even more stupid when nervous, tries to break tension by doing the dumbest thing he can think of

Cuddly. Loves warm cuddles. Affectionate

Used to be real popular at school (yeah I hc he went to public school)

That's where his insecurities started because people always wanted the best of him

Veeeery sincere

Thrown a certain someone on a MOAB before

----------------------------------------------------------

Etienne

Afraid of heights

Shitty eyes, shitty legs

Cane user

Huge interest in flying, reason he made his drones

Used to be good at hacking

Kind of blunt but not in a rude way

Occasional weird word choices which make him sound a bit weird

Tends to swear in french more

Picky eater, fast food is really not his thing

PDA makes his stomach turn. Most he can handle is unobtrusive tail to tail touch

Probably the most closed off about personal life, very professional

Unexpected friendship with Gwen (not good) she gives him ideas on some really funny things to say, as even with all that professionalism he loves jokes

Snorts at puns which he hates, unless the pun was in french

Occasional gamer

Gay and french ??! Pick a struggle dame !! /Silly

Also hc him to be aro-acespec, this guy has a hard time getting romantic feels

Past with Ben, used to date him when they were working in the same place, separated because life pulled them too far away each other

So bitter when they meet again. But it was hard to say no when in private Ben came to him sobbing, apologizing and trying to save what they had. He gives in, love wins <3

Gets cold easily, hero that gets sick the most

Has a strange amount of love for outdated memes

Since he knows Ben is more up to date, just to spite him, he would print out the oldest memes he can find and hand them to Ben randomly

He would also hand these to others as well, just to see their reactions, it's like his unofficial "research"

----------------------------------------------------------

Gwen

That is a whole lesbian right there

Knows Quincy was into her at some point but doesn't really mind it. They're friends

Talking friends, she's big time besties with August (my oc, you'll hear a lot about him if I let it out of me), being awful hazards together n all, almost getting each other banned from the battlefield for getting so careless

Fire related puns and jokes. Canon basically

Has one of those kiss the cook aprons for when she grills

A bit of an anarchist

Gets REALLY excited about all sorts of destruction, not just fire

Girl that loves breaking rules soooooo much

For this reason she has a weird amount of fascination for natural disasters and the like

Has a competitive mutual gay thing going on with Sauda and Brickell. Hard to tell what the relationship there is between the 3 but it's def queer

Mullet Gwen mullet gwen

Kinda queer that would beat up homophobic bullies for you

She tends to pick fights like that a lot

TEMPER BIG HUGE BIG

Tho the good part because of that is she has a lot of passion

----------------------------------------------------------

Benjamin

Literal streamer. In breaks or chatting streams he plays fnf mods

Has bought a maid outfit before because a charity donation goal being reached (he rocked it)

Has a complicated but tragic relationship with crypto and nfts

That's a functional bisexual right there, mostly functional

Bit of a flirt but only to get what he wants

B…. Boob (sorry)

Always plays a support character in multiplayer games, just like how he is

Vocaloid fan

Has done weird things for really big donations before, he regrets

The kinda guy that actively keeps up with trends and tends to have opinions about them

Due to said opinions he had to do apology videos before but he just never learns

From desk job to secret agency worker who was managing huge amounts of data with programs he built himself

Said work really pulled him away from someone he really really loved

Imagine his surprise when he saw him again. Looking hurt

Can't lie with a straight face, tries anyways

Dry ass eyes from staring at his screen too much

Also carpal tunnel moment. Etienne sometimes appears in his streams to yell at him to stretch his hands

Works well under pressure, which is why he got to be the code monkey hero

Used to support "creative" algos (what we usually call AI for some reason but it isn't really AI) until he saw how people use them

Commissions artwork of himself from time to time. His demeanor about being drawn always gets him a discount since he's "such a joy to work with"

Do you guys also remember something about him living in a cave

----------------------------------------------------------

Striker Jones

Kinda dad, literally canon

Keeps bubblewrap in his pockets for when he stresses out too much from battle

Usually laid back about it though

Etienne and him working on jokes together is a worst case scenario/silly

Likes to tell jokes, especially puns to Obyn because it really annoys him

Yeah one of his love languages is making you angry <3

Can sure work the grill

Loves to read non fiction books and long realist novels

Non sensical but due to some mishearing lines, there was an Emo Lady in his life once who he doesn't think fondly of (the way he says MOAB sounds like emo lady)

D… dad bod. That's all

Has reading glasses

----------------------------------------------------------

Brickell

Augaghaaughah woman

STRONG, can throw you if she so desires, her height doesn't stop her

Had the biggest leather jacket phase before getting really into her navy look

A lot more laid back when off duty

Not too fond of jokes, doesn't really get memes

Big fan of wlw manga and shoujo in general

Knows her history, was one of her favourite classes too

Was a great swimmer from a very young age

Even went to competitions, tho she didn't get too far with that

Very just and fair

Though a great liar, playing poker with her is Hard

She could just stare the truth out of you, like, it's deadly, it's like she sees into your soul

Generally not one to dress down, girl loves her navy ass outfits

----------------------------------------------------------

Churchill

The manga guy, we already know

Engages with all sorts of genres since he's curious about all the culture he can learn, along with morals the stories hold

Commissions artwork of himself a lot, also how he has manga about himself at his house (that lives in my head… why would he do that)

He is short, his battles 2 self does not exist to me

Big fan of cosplaying

Most likely to hop on Ben's streams time to time

Very strong, as he should be

When he feels like it, he arm wrestles with Sauda and Brickell when those 2 aren't too absorbed in each other or Gwen

He is Etienne's 2nd most regular victim of bad memes, since he always looks so devastated

When people don't know about him that he's into manga, he has a harder time easing into talking about it, so he'll always start w the most normal thing, as if he didn't see food porn the anime (I don't actually know the name of it)

Probably the best hero to sit with in silence and do nothing, or read if you get bored

----------------------------------------------------------

Sauda

She is so cocky and oeperfect

God she is so so strong

Can't swim, like at all

She's great and she knows it

Can get annoyed if people can't keep up with her

Due to that, she isn't always the best to work with, as she's not the biggest team player

Often gets approached to help design cards (like an invitation card or what's it called) due to her pretty handwriting

Loves to play fight, her love language is holding you down until you tell her to stop

Loves to tease, especially if she thinks you're weak

Cut her hair on accident once while practicing with her swords

In general she has accidents a lot, it mostly happens when she thinks she's simply Too Amazing to mess up in the moment and then she does

Has been patched up at least once by most heroes

When she gets tired or tipsy, she gets really touch starved and kinda begs to be cuddled. She denies this

She does get tired a lot as she trains a lot

Not really someone who likes silence and peace, but those few occasional times when she feels that way, you really can't bother her

When she gets sick she also gets cuddly and needy (not good)

----------------------------------------------------------

Obyn

That's my dad he's a wolf

Very caring and loves his druids so much

He tends to hold picnics for them, sometimes the heroes as well

Although a dad, jokes have never been his thing

And does Striker Jones take advantage of that, 2 opposing forces, like their own weird kinda foreplay or something

Gives 2nd best hugs from the heroes

He goes awoo, it's a habit he can't shake off, he will awoo at the Moon sometimes when he forgets he shouldn't

Tends to call the druids his pack

They love to be his pack

Probably the hero that has seen most of the world, bit of a traveller

Considering he was raised by wolves, he isn't sure of his origin. Also the reason why he travelled the world

Also I know he's just an oc, but that's when he got his lil guy, my lil big guy CC who is worryingly tall and strong while being 17 (that's what Obyn gets for mingling with someone who isn't a monkey lol)

He loves being a dad to especially orphan druids because at least if he didn't have one, he can be just that to others

The best with children

----------------------------------------------------------

Ezili

Loves the horror, draws the horror

Loves to "jumpscare" people during halloween

Loves to dress up for it as well

Her morning routine involves reading a good horror short story

Has resting bitch face

Has rancid vibes. All cuz of the curses

Big big fan of silence

Loves to see the big bloons fall, that look on her face she gets when they do

It's like she gets pleasure out of murdering them

Insults from her tend to hurt more because she curses her words as well

I know I said this before but she would be a great William Afton, to me

Let her be unhinged is what I'm saying

[m0n0lithical]

Sims - get to know me

Tagged by @igotsnothing thanks so much I absolutely wanted to do this one! Also if ya’ll like occults you better go follow them.

1. What’s your favourite sims death? Either meteor because of HOW dramatic it is, or pufferfish since that’s like, the only way for your own sim to kill another sims (without mods, anyway).

2. Alpha CC or Maxis Match? Mostly Maxis, but I do have mix elements (like the hairs that aren’t TECHNICALLY alpha but are so detailed they almost look it), especially in my fandom saves because the outfits in those are always alpha.

3. Do you cheat when your sims gain weight? Nah, if I really want a sim to stay the same weight, I lock the weight/gain loss (I do this for my selfsim every time so she’ll STOP LOSING WEIGHT oh my god woman). But if I’m playing with it on, what happens happens.

4. Do you use move objects? I don’t even have to enter this cheat because it’s always ticked on my BBB.

5. Favorite mod? I mean the most practical favorites are MCCC and BBB, and really most of the ;must haves’ the majority of people have, so lemmie pick a lesser seen one – PreferencesPlus by Helaene is a huge game-changer for someone who really dislikes all the missing likes/dislikes in the game.

6. First expansion/game/stuff pack you got? ...I wanna say Outdoor Retreat? I know, horrible pick, I didn’t know how lacking it was.

7. Do you pronounce “live mode” like aLIVE or LIVing? Like LIVing

8. Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? This...is hard, but I’m gonna have to roll with Amie, because she’s evolved beyond being just a sim at this rate – she’s also my FFXIV character, as well as a VtM character. But she absolutely did START as a sim.

9. Have you made a simself? Yes – she’s set loose in EVERY save I have for sake of hilarity – I love passing by her in-game and she’s doing something utterly random. The last time I saw her she was shooting down a goth witch lady flirting with her – thrilled the sexuality update can make her proper asexual now, was so happy to see it without having to put dumb flags on her!

10. What sim traits do you give yourself? Lover, Unflirty, Lazy, Cat Lover, Creative, Foodie.

11. Which is your favorite EA hair color? I’m a pretty big fan of the middle red tone. Or the green, if we’re picking unnatural colors.

12. Favorite EA hair? The RoM updo short locs are SO good. Honorable mention to the EL undercut half-ponytail.

13. Favorite life stage? I’m gonna be boring and say YA, because the game is LITERALLY built around them so you have so, SO many more options.

14. Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? I do a little bit of everything, but CAS is my specialty. I spend HOURS in there.

15. Are you a CC creator? If some hair/eye recolors and simple tattoos count, then yeah. I really can’t be fussed learning blender beyond pose-making.

16. Do you have any simblr friends/a sim squad? My social anxiety stops me from interacting a lot, even if I try my best to talk to people. Like, I know the chances of someone being an asshole to me are very, very slim and that most everyone is chill and laid back like I am – REASONABLY I know I’m being dumb, but also my brain is an asshole.

17. What’s your favorite game? In Sims, I’ve honestly only played 4 (a friend sent me 3 a while ago but I have yet to fire it up). Outside sims? Uh...Okami for single player, Guild Wars 2 for multiplayer.

18. Do you have any sims merch? God I wish.

19. Do you have a YouTube for sims? Hahahah like my internet would let me upload videos.

20. How has your “sim style” changed throughout your years of playing? Lord I have no idea...I’ve been fiddling with different types of sim face styles, but I keep falling back to the same one, really – at least for non-themed saves. And it doesn’t even stand out I’m pretty basic bitch.

21. What’s your Origin ID? Monophony! I mostly make sims, but there’s a few terrible builds there, too.

22. Who’s your favorite CC creator? That is a hard as hell question...but I wanna say @simandy,. For multiple reasons, but primarily because their hairs are just...to die for.

23. How long have you had a simblr? It’s been a year or two, but I took several hiatuses as I got distracted by my MMOs. I have a goldfish attention span.

24. How do you edit your pictures? I have several different reshade presets I’ll alternate between, and a good number of Photoshop actions and/or PSDs, and it’s always some combo of those. Each save has a different reshade/action (or PSD) combination to make them have their own looks (I have a word doc for ref so I know what save uses what combo).

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack is your favorite so far? Vampires will always be my favorite, but I was shocked by how much I also enjoyed Werewolves – I’m not a werewolf person, really. Non-occult...Growing Together really does add a ton through the whole game.

26. What expansion/game/stuff pack do you want next? I uh...well you see >-> I’M STUPID WITH MY MONEY I HAVE THEM ALL.

I’m only gonna tag a few peeps since I’ve seen most people having done this - @simarcana, @druidberries, @apricote, @lotus030, @salemssimblr if ya’ll wanna do this here’s your excuse! <3 Feel free to ignore if you don’t wanna!

[dexaroth]

opinions on open world/creative/base building games

the one thing that always gets me about games that either are centered on or have elements pertaining to being able to build stuff like a base/house or a city or reshaping the world to your liking is that they always leave out some key elements that are practically quintessencial to engaging with the building at all

speaking from experience (and from playing acnh recently) those types of games either dont encourage the player enough to put effort into things or the things you can build end up having little to no practical purpose

the first game that comes to mind of the latter is vanilla minecraft. arguably infinite possibilities, but you're limited to the blocky style and you can quite easily beat the game and go on for irl/ in- game years without building a base at all. let alone homes or cities, since theres only you and villagers but they arent really company since theyre too busy hrrrnging their way with other villagers. theyre just a game element and i doubt anyone ever thought of them as genuine npcs. you can build castles, spaceships, anything! but theyll always be unnecessary compared to shutting yourself in a dirt hut - or villagers for that case. and even if you ignore that (and modding ands multiplayer for that case lol) then you still have to come up with the ideas for actual buildings yourself, AND then. even if you have everything in mind. building it is so painful, even with scaffolding. ive seen this opinion multiple times but minecraft simply doesnt benefit from its survival aspect. theres nothing thats worth digging all that ground and building that huge castle when it comes to time spent. its so cumbersome and unfun

the sims' house building id say is practically unparalleled - though it has plenty of limits (and furnishings behind paywalls of course) it still suffers because youre not an actual player. that house is for sims only, for people that arent you. and even if you could play there, you'd still be stuck in the game world that you cant influence like you can house lots.

while i havent played it, theres also technically house flipper but its one of those simulator games that dont have much in replayable/satisfying game loops to keep you going, and your house isnt the center point either. it also suffers from the no npc things. youre fixing houses, yet its all done through menus and no interaction (which id say works well for the game's workflow, but not belivability imo)

then theres something like terraria. it gets bonus points from having a housing system, but it still doesnt ask enough of the player and because of its genre ive always found it annoying to have to build their houses anyways. a huge majority of the good blocks are gated behind the end game, and by the time you get to build a nice house, you practically dont even need one. the enemies can also be countered somewhat easily and the npcs are, again, just that. shopkeepers that most of the time just die like boss fodder. ironically that always encouraged me to build their houses far away so they dont die.. not very helpful in creating a sense of community

the forest has a really good system and a lot of replayability, though there are barely any furnishings and everything is made out of logs. of course its not meant to be the end-all of building games and its focused on survival, but you have very good reasons to build a base, and you can get quite creative with them

and last but not least, the one that made me think about and write about this in the first place - new horizons. the creativity it allows is amazing. there are many screenshots that are incredible and barely look like the game at all. and even though there are literal hundreds of villagers and theyre more expressive than ever, they still fall flat. the islands, again, can be amazing. but almost everything is entirely cosmetic, the predefined paths and fences are very limited and so are the color choice for furnitures (though im guessing a lot if not all of these are limitations due to the console hardware/storage size). they have nicely introduced more custom design spaces and even a horizontal mirroring tool, but not an actual tiling editor.. even with the dlc they introduce stuff like wall partitions and room resizing, but the partitions can only use the main wallpaper and you cant resize the rooms in your house. and even though its nice to have a nice house, again.. outside multiplayer, theres not much purpose to them (SPECIALLY when i have to sit through loading screens to get to any of them. are you kidding me??). at best you can have a toilet to get rid of the fruit points, a kitchen for cooking and i guess a bedroom for going to dream towns.. or you could have a bed, an oven and a toilet in your room. you know. ugh

it has a lot of strengths with the kind of toy/dollhouse vibe(??) its going for, like how the house's insides are completely different from their outsides but it also means you cant have cute stuff like seeing your island from outside, seeing your villagers through windows, or just having an actual big house n stuff.

idk man.. they always seem to either lack a reason to build, or if they give you reasons to build theyre so weak you can often just not build at all. maybe im asking too much but is there ever gonna be a game that gives you a reason to build and keep going at the same time? :(

imagine if you still had villagers like acnh, but they had good dialogue and commented on your stuff/decisions, while also only moving in because you built a shop or a market or a city to live in. and the reason you built that is because your goal in-game is to be a chef or an adventurer or something, and you werent limited to an island or pre-made furniture.. something in-between the sims' cartoony realistic proportions and acnh's childish toy designs when it comes to aesthetics.. could you imagine

[imagine-knb]

Welcome back Neon! I’ve actually come back to Tumblr semi-recently as well for about the same period of time. I’m getting back into fandom content and it’s been really fun reclaiming a part of my life back! I hope you have fun returning back here like me :)

Other than KnB, has there been any other series you’ve gotten into while you’ve been away? ☺️

Thank you! I'm really glad to be back! ヾ(☆▽☆) I've been having a lot of fun rediscovering old and new fandoms to follow on Tumblr. Like you said, I feel like I'm reclaiming a part of myself that I had shelved for years.

As for what I've currently been into, I'll post that under the cut! I kind of went overboard again and typed a lot.

Here are some fandoms that I've recently entered! You can basically thank these fandoms for me returning to Tumblr. σ(*´∀｀*)

My Hero Academia

This isn't a new anime in the slightest, considering its multiple seasons, but it's new to me. I watched it years ago with my ex, but only got halfway through season 2. Now I'm rewatching it with my bestie and my current partner, having a blast with it! I forgot how funny season 1 was! Favorite Character(s): Kirishima Eijiro, Bakugo Katsuki

Sk8 the Infinity

I once saw an ad for Sk8 on YouTube and ever since then, I have been hooked! I really hope season 2 will come out, because I need more Reki in my life. Please someone talk to me about Sk8 because I love those boys so much. I need it like I need air. Favorite Character: Kyan Reki Fun Fact: I'm currently working on a multi-chapter fic that's Reki x OC and it's gunna be so sweet and fluffy because that boy deserves the world. (˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )

Food Wars

I literally just finished watching the final season not to long ago! I hated the animation, but the story was so good! I felt like the last season was just a little silly, but it wrapped up the story quite nicely. Favorite Character(s): Yukihira Souma, Hayama Akira, Tadokoro Megumi

Welcome Home

This was the first fandom I entered when I came back to Tumblr! I thought the concept was so spooky and interesting, so I just fell into the hole that is Welcome Home. I find all the AUs people are making for it so creative too, but I really can't wait to figure out the real story behind it. Favorite Character: Wally Darling Favorite AU: Killer!AU

Stardew Valley

Okay, so I owned this game for literal years, but I never played it because it was gifted to me by my ex (never let an ex ruin your fun, kids). Then one day my friends asked me to play a multiplayer savefile and. I. Got. Hooked. Now I'm already planning on starting my third, personal modded save and with Update 1.6 sneak-previewed, I can not wait to play again! Favorite Character(s): Shane, Sebastian Fun Fact: It's thanks to Stardew that I started writing again. I'm going to shamelessly self-promote, so here (or here) is where you can find the fics I've been writing recently.

And that's really about it. Other than that, I've been slowly easing my way back into old fandoms I was a part of like Kuroko no Basket and Haikyuu!!.

- Admin Neon

[dirt-piper]

On the origins of Not So Seecret Saturday, and its future

When I first found Minecraft I was roughly 10 years old.

I can’t precisely identify how I found it - through some kid at school, or a friend of my sister, or randomly on the internet - but I remember falling in love with it.

I loved the aesthetic, I loved the dopey Minecraft music parodies, I loved the let’s plays, I loved the classic multiplayer servers, I loved the dumb jokes the community made, but most of all - I loved the game itself. It was weird, beautiful, simple, terrifying, serene, and hilarious, all at the same time.

I spent hours not only playing the game itself, but also watching videos about it, reading forum and blog posts, and poring over the Minecraft wiki - my favorite articles of which were the ones regarding the removed, unused, and planned features - aspects of the game that I could know about but never experience for myself.

Over time the game I fell in love with started to fade away - the aesthetic changed as biomes were added (though not that much, and it still looked nice), the gameplay began to suffer (a fast travel hell dimension with nothing to do in it, beds that let you sidestep the entire challenge of the game), but it was still largely the game I loved.

After Beta 1.8, the game I loved ceased to exist.

Okay, that’s a bit too dramatic. I still played the hell out of the game during the early release era - but I notably stopped playing survival singleplayer altogether after Beta 1.8. Multiplayer in any game is fun, and the newly added creative mode gave me hours of mindless entertainment blowing things up with TNT and making useless redstone contraptions. But to a large extent I stopped playing the game itself - survival singleplayer - and every time I did I found myself having a very hard time enjoying it.

Now, kid me didn’t really know why I suddenly lost all interest in this game I loved - I could kinda grok that stuff like the new hunger system and terrain system were less than stellar (likely helped by the fact that everyone seemed to hate these two things at the time - the massive open letter to Mojang begging them to add beaches back to the terrain generator springs to mind), but the nitty gritty specifics of what exactly made the game less fun for me were not yet apparent.

Luckily for kid me, I managed to find something to help me alleviate the problem - Exalm’s OldDays mod. This mod allowed you to tweak Minecraft’s features to your own preferences, literally undoing changes from various updates on-the-fly to permit you to hand-tune your personal “perfect” version of Minecraft. I used it to tear out all the changes I didn’t like - gone were the biomes, hunger system, nether, sprinting, new terrain generator, stackable food, potions, enchanting system, etc. Now, suddenly, I could play (and enjoy) singleplayer survival again - and this was the ‘default’ way I played Minecraft up until the mod stopped getting updated in 2013, around release 1.6.4.

By this time a brand new Minecraft launcher had released which allowed you to (officially) go back and play previous versions of Minecraft - with OldDays gone, I picked the version of the game closest to my hand-crafted ideal and dove right in. Thus, the primary version of Minecraft that I played became Alpha 1.1.2_01.

Flash-forward 5 years to July 18th 2018, and I’m not a kid anymore. I’ve just graduated high school, and I’m on vacation with my family in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. It’s a rainy day, so I’m playing Minecraft on my laptop. By this point I had a singleplayer world with damn near everything a player could want in 2010 - an automatic cactus farm, a mob grinder, a minecart system, vast underground mines, an automatic boat dispenser, a hulking storage room - you name it. But deep within I felt a twinge, a feeling that something was missing. I don’t remember what originally set me off, whether it was being by the ocean, or the nascient release of the update aquatic, or a memory of Minecraft classic, but somehow I started getting a bit upset that sponges were unobtainable in the version of the game I was playing.

Very conveniently, I had taken a class on Java my junior year of high school.

I dug up an ancient version of the Mod Coder Pack for a1.1.2_01, decompiled Minecraft and started poking around the codebase. After a bit of digging, a realization slowly began to dawn on me - why stop at sponges? Why not fix more things? Like fix axes not breaking workbenches? Or redstone ore taking an eternity to mine? Or boats exploding when you sneeze on them? Or, better yet, fulfill my childhood fantasies by implementing all the removed/unused/unimplemented features I used to spend hours reading about on the minecraft wiki. Realizing I could use some guidance, I asked my friend Vulpovile (creator of Minecraft Classic Creative Revived) if he might like to help me out with my new project.

side note: I planned on adding the ambient loops a full two years before getting around to implementing them... and my method was essentially the same as what I schemed up on the first day. Most NSSS features bounce around my head for a year or two before I finally implement them.

We managed to get sponges done within a day, and banged out the rest of the little QoL fixes I wanted not too long after. Soon we began going haywire - adding singleplayer commands, trying to fix the outrageously janky alpha multiplayer, optimizing the game, making food stack, making trees drop apples, underwater dungeons, whatever we wanted to do, we did it. We had already numbered our new ‘fork’ of Minecraft as ‘Alpha v1.1.3’, but didn’t actually have a name for it - the original working title was “Minecraft Redone” - a very literal description of our goals, but not that catchy. After 4 days I finally coined the name.

By the 28th, our first release was out: Not So Seecret Saturday’s Minecraft Alpha v1.1.3. We ended up released one update every other week straight on into october - in 1.1.4 we tried to beat the server code further into submission, in 1.1.5 I reimplemented the score system from survival test and added floating worlds, in 1.1.6 I tried (and failed) to improve mob AI and made sponges redstone-sensitive, and in 1.1.7 we polished our work a bit and added two more world types. Then September hit and Vulpovile and I were sucked right back into college. During winter break we managed to release some more patches to 1.1.7, as well as 1.1.8 to add McRegion and running... before the first gap.

‘The gap’, as I’m dubbing it now, is a fairly common occurrence in NSSS development - it’s happened roughly 3.5 times now, and each time it’s the same thing:

Development on NSSS is interrupted by something IRL (at first this was always college, but now it’s health conditions and other boring responsibilities of being an adult. And a bit of depression.)

I don’t get right back to working on NSSS.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the then-current state of NSSS. A LOT of time.

The more I think, the more I determine needs to be done to NSSS before I’d be satisfied enough to do a new release.

Every time I open eclipse I either get so overwhelmed by the massive backlog of work that has to be done that I either only manage one tiny portion or I give up and do something else.

Steps 2-5 are repeated ad nauseum, until...

A sudden, miraculous wave of motivation occurs. I get everything I’ve been planning over the past [weeks/months/year(s)] done in the span of 2 weeks, release the update, and finally return to making semi-regular NSSS updates.

This routine is so predictable to me now that I can nearly time my watch to it. But that first gap after 1.1.8 was special - as I sat and thought about NSSS, and what I really wanted to do with it, my goal slowly shifted. At first I had just wanted to ‘fix’ Minecraft alpha by cramming a bunch of shiny toys and knick-knacks into it to satisfy my inner child, but now I wanted something... more. I didn’t just want to make a better alpha than alpha, I wanted to make a better Minecraft than Minecraft.

Let me preface this by divulging that I’m a massive fan of Team Fortress 2.

The development history of TF2 is utterly fascinating, and if you’re at all interested in game development I urge you greatly to play through the entire TF2 developer’s commentary, but the relevant parallel is this:

The original Team Fortress was a mod of quake made by a trio of Australian teenagers who went hog-wild with QuakeC, the super powerful Quake scripting language, to invent the class-based shooter in 1996. At first they were just adding things to have fun, but over time started paying more and more attention to the actual design and balance of the game they had created. Eventually, the entire team was hired by VALVe in ‘98, and after porting Team Fortress to GoldSrc as ‘Team Fortress Classic’, they got right to work on Team Fortress 2.

Team Fortress 2 didn’t release for another 9 years.

During that time, TF2 went through a multitude of totally different designs and ideas, at some points being nearly unrecognizable gameplay-wise to the original Team Fortress, until ultimately VALVe decided to stop trying to invent something wholly new and unknown and instead to improve on what they knew - and so they essentially rebuilt Team Fortress for the third time, now in the Source engine, and with a cartoon-ier art style. And then they started playtesting.

VALVe had learnt from making half-life that playtesting often and early is utterly invaluable as a tool to aide game design. After all - how do you know how something is gonna play until you’ve played it? And how will it play for people who are totally unexposed to it? A developer already knows all the game’s mechanics and how they work - how would a lay-person discover them all for themselves? Which mechanics would a normal player use in ways the developers never intended? There’s no way to find this stuff out until you hand your game off to a stranger and wait to see how they break it.

And so VALVe, through constant playtesting, tweaking, and fiddling, honed TF2′s design and gameplay to a point where, while not totally perfect, was absolutely better than the original Team Fortress. And aside from the new artstyle, the omission of grenades and bhopping, and the medic becoming... well, an actual medic, very little had changed of the core gameplay beyond little tweaks and nudges.

That’s what I wanted NSSS to become.

I wanted to make Minecraft into a better game than it already was through little tweaks and nudges - an adjustment here, a rebalance there, and a few new features where a gap exists to justify them.

During the first gap I did manage to release some moderate patches to 1.1.8, fixes for things like the busted FastRender port and proper textures for all the dye colors, as well as the first release of the NSSS launcher. But all of these were just tide-overs for what I really wanted.

In summer of 2020 the first gap-and-a-half concluded with the release of 1.1.9, which added Creative mode, Sponge Armor, and Ambient loops. All of these features were things I had spent years brainstorming, tweaking, and revising before I was finally happy with them - and when they finally released to the public... they were good. By now NSSS had started to accumulate some following, and the positive feedback to 1.1.9 was notable - it turns out that people like things that are carefully thought-out and designed! Two weeks later I released 1.1.10 to patch over some more things and finalize gold touch, and then I set my aim on the largest hulking problem NSSS has faced since day 1:

Multiplayer.

The original ‘legacy’ NSSS server was accidentally based off of a version of hMod for Alpha 1.1.2_01, but our problems with it would have occurred regardless; the Alpha server SUCKED. Within a day of poking around the code Vulpovile and I came to the conclusion that Notch had taken the Classic server and stapled infinite worlds onto it to create a horrible abomination.

Mobs would randomly turn invisible, Redstone would only work at certain Y levels, Doors would open halfway, you would randomly die of fall damage for no reason, you couldn’t eat food unless you were looking directly at the floor, if you checked a furnace while it was smelting something it’d break the timer and waste fuel, you could dupe items in chests by clicking on them fast enough, tools could be repaired by dropping them on the ground and picking them back up - it was a nightmare.

Vulpovile and I both, quite rightly, came to the conclusion around 1.1.8 that the legacy server was unworkable. We started trying to write our own , new server from scratch, but that went nowhere - too much of an uphill battle. Once 1.1.9 came along, I decided to do it ‘the easy way’ and just take a later version’s server and downgrade it to alpha - the winner was beta 1.7.3. I had hoped to finish by 1.1.10, but found myself in a deeper hole than I expected, so 1.1.10 was shipped with no multiplayer and I made 1.1.11 into the “fix multiplayer” release.

1.1.11 took over a year to finish.

God what a nightmare. It did not take me very much time to get simple interoperability between the NSSS client and the Beta server, but certain bugs quickly emerged as gordion knots: if someone sneaked they would crash all connected clients, opening a chest crashed the game, crafting recipes were one slot to the left, your armor would shift one slot down at random times, and vehicles were possessed by demons. The sheer amount of bugs I had to work through to get this update out was mind-boggling, to a point where I actually opened 1.1.11 up to a limited group of playtesters for several months before full release just for the sake of trying to eliminate every bug possible. Ultimately, the pre-planned release date of September 18th, 2021 (exactly eleven years after Alpha 1.1.1, the first seecret saturday) snuck up on me, and I panickedly released what I hoped was a relatively bug-free 1.1.11: it wasn’t! While multiplayer was far, far better than it had been in 1.1.9 and prior, singleplayer had become riddled with bugs, namely pertaining to inventories and creepers. I quashed most of them in later patches, but the armor shifting bug still isn’t totally fixed in multiplayer - if you die and relog without completely closing and reopening the game, your armor still shifts one slot down. I have no clue why the hell this happens.

Something that started happening during 1.1.11 that would foreshadow the next 2 years of NSSS’s development was a trend wherein I would gradually feel more and more trapped by the feature set of the update I was working on, and would increasingly wish I was working on the next update instead - this sucked for motivation and made 1.1.11 take even longer. That next update was going to be one that would add Seasons and Dynamic Weather to NSSS - an update which has been in progress for almost two years.

1.1.12 is still coming along, don’t worry, but I can guarantee you that once it’s out, I am never doing another massive, year-long-wait update for NSSS every again. Updates will return to being smaller and more frequent - the way it should be! Expect further ranting in a later post.

-DirtPiper

[letsplayzelda]

Hey Listen!

This is my Zelda sideblog to word vomit about my fav lil guys throughout the series. Here I go by Twilight and use they/them pronouns. I'm currently playing through Tears of the Kingdom rn and may post spoilers about it.

Anyways, here's a list of which games I've played (thoughts and word vomit included):

The Legend of Zelda: I've beaten the first quest! Did not 100% it bc this game was too hard for me to manage that. This forced me to have quicker reactions in games and I'm greatful lmao

Adventures of Link: I cannot for the life of me progress. I'm definitely overleveled for where I need to be, but Death Mountain simply bests me every time. I'm still trying tho.

A Link to the Past: I've played the opening, but that's about it.

Link's Awakening: Finished the Switch version! I wanna play the DX version at some point, but that probably won't happen until I play all the other games in the series at least once. I get a little depressed every time I think about Marin...

Ocarina of Time: I have played this game like three times. First on GameCube, then the 3D remake on 3DS, and then the N64 multiplayer mod. I plan on 100%ing it at some point, but I just dread doing heart containers and skulltulas. I wanna play Master Quest at some point too. Agh Link at the end of this game just makes me wanna sob.

Majora's Mask: Similar situation to OoT (I have the Collector's Edition for GC), except I never finished the original version. I've only beat the 3DS version. Recently started the multiplayer mod, but we've only done like 2 cycles.

Oracle of Seasons: I have the 3DS Virtual Console version, but I haven't played it yet.

Oracle of Ages: I played a little bit of this game, but it's been so long that I'll probably restart it when I plan to finish it.

Four Swords: I literally bought a used dsi to get this damn game. I've beat this game, but I've yet to 100% it. Kinda hard to bc it's not as fun playing it single player.

Wind Waker: Playing this game was such a treat. I played the GC version so sailing took literal ages but besides that, I rly enjoyed Tetra <3 tho Nintendo did her dirty. On the trend of beating games, I haven't 100% this one either. There's so many side quests that I simply cannot invest my time in. Like the Goron one? No clue what's going on there.

Four Swords Adventures: Ik there's a sub-fandom that rly loves this game but that's literally the most ik about it. I've yet to play it but I'll have to hunt down a copy at some point.

Minish Cap: oooo I fucking love this game. I haven't finished it yet, but that's because I got sidetracked by so many different things. I've wasted so much time trying to get all the figures it's insane. Plus this game is gorgeous <3

Twilight Princess: I played the Wii version of this game and honestly, I wished I didn't. Not bc I don't like this game, but because I did not like the motion controls. And this was the first time Link was right handed which is kinda lame. So I'll probably play one of the other versions of this game at some point. BUT, I adore the story in this game. Love Wolf Link and Midna. I literally cried at the end of this game, it was absolutely devastating.

Phantom Hourglass: I'm like halfway through this game I think. I'm not a big fan of it's controls or graphics, but I enjoy the follow up to WW. Also Linebeck's character development is very sweet.

Spirit Tracks: Once I finish PH, I'll play this one. Ik I probably don't need to, but I like following timeline stuff.

Skyward Sword: I played the Switch version and it's probably the only way I would've been able to get through it. I mainly played with motion controls but would switch to button controls for certain fights bc I was sick of struggling. Link and Zelda's relationship in this game is very cute. I also rly enjoyed the dungeons and getting more of Hyrule's history.

A Link Between Worlds: My second Zelda game ever, and I still consider it one of my favorites. Ravio and Hilda are some of the best characters ever. I can't remember if I 100% this game, but ik I got very close if I hadn't. If ALttP is as good as this game, I will probably love that game as well.

Tri Force Heroes: I've played some of this game, but I feel it suffers from a lot of the same issues as FS since no one ik has this fucking game. Have I finished it? No. Will I? If I can find two people to suffer through this game with me. I enjoy that the game doesn't take itself too seriously and has a bunch of fun outfits, but that's all I can rly say about it.

Breath of the Wild: My first Zelda game!! I've spent almost 500 hours in this game and still haven't 100% it. I'm at like 86% with just 150ish koroks left but now that TotK is out, it will be a while before I touch the game again. I fucking adore this game (although I hated it at first) and the relationship between Zelda and Link is just. Mwah. Mipha, Sidon, and Urbosa are my favs from this one <3

Tears of the Kingdom: I've been playing this since release day and have been loving it! It definitely fixes a lot of the weird quirks BotW had, but I'm finding I have more issues with this game so far. I'm at around 130 hours with 3 dungeons done so far, but I'll likely dive deeper into my thoughts once I finish the game.

[allsonicgames]

Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed

Original Platform: Xbox 360, PS3

Original release: 18th November 2012

Version Played: PC

Available to buy: Yes

From a singleplayer perspective, I think this is the best kart-style racer, and also one of the best from a multiplayer perspective. 

In Sonic Racing, Sonic and some classic SEGA characters like Danica Patrick, Wreck-It Ralph and Team Fortress Spy/Heavy/Pyro race around evolving tracks with transforming vehicles in car, boat and plane modes. The handling and controls feel extremely smooth, drifting around corners at high speeds. 

The trick system is also a vital part of movement now. Performing tricks will give you a boost, but now the right analogue stick controls the direction of your roll. In car/boat modes, rolling left and right will move your car in that direction, while in the air it also applies to up/down. It’s always very satisfying to do, especially when you position yourself as well.

The tracks in this are amazingly well done. They all have varying amounts of “evolution”, so some will be the same for three laps, some will change gradually while others will be completely different. Focing on Sonic first, there are three tracks: Seaside Hill, Sky Sanctuary and Galactic Parade – interestingly one from the main “eras” of Sonic.

Seaside Hill is the basic level, but has multiple jumps, the large rolling disc from Sonic Heroes to dodge and changes to a water course on lap three (with a gorgeous looking coral reef). Sky Sanctuary swaps between plane and car-type laps and is heavily based on the Sonic Generations version. The Death Egg will also get closer and closer as you progress.

Galactic Parade is an absolute spectacle, with lots of ships flying in the background, you race on a section where robots are shooting lasers (it feels just like the Sonic Colours level it’s based on) and on lap three, a large ship waps into the way of the track and becomes part of it. It feels straight out of the game, and the same holds true for most of the tracks,

Other stand out tracks (although most are great) are the Skies of Arcadia, where there’s a massive battle happening with airships, which drastically alters the track as you race on it, the NiGHTS level which its surreal imagery and completely different segments each map, and the Burning Rangers (a game I know nothing about) level which takes place in a flooding underground base. They all have a great spectacle about them. 

On top of the cups, you also have a singleplayer to work through. Here you collect stars by completing challenges based on difficulty (with expert difficulty unlocking after finishing all but the final few challenges. There are some optional “paths” to unlock characters and “mods” for each character (which allow you to adjust a racer’s stats by increasing one aspect while decreasing another). I think a bit more variety in missions would be nice, but everything is still very enjoyable.

For Sonic characters, you have Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Dr Robotnik, Shadow and Metal Sonic alongside characters from other Sega games and some non-Sega guests. I really like some of the stranger choices like a football manager or General Winter and Willemus (WWII and Roman generals), although I think it’s strange that these characters are only on the PC version. Everyone has a unique vehicle that, for the most part, suits them. My only complaint is that Tails has a shiny vehicle very similar to Sonic’s, which seems like a strange choice when Tails literally has a transforming plane in the Sonic games. His vehicle needed to look more hand-made.

[sourdeer]

Sourdeer's Toppadapops

(Best 10 Medias of 2024)

In the vein of my good fried @batcrooks I present information nobody cares about - My Favourite Things I Played/Watched/Read of 2024. Warning for probable spoilers in 'reviews' (streams of conciousness rambles) all 2 people who will read this :)

Best Singleplayer Game

Animal Well!

My Review: "ANIMAL WELL! well well this game was. so very good. i REALLY enjoyed it like, a LOT it is the game that leaves you hungering for more. It is like, hm. Not Surprisingly Deep but it uses the things in its toolbox so very well. I love a game that makes me Think and Plan and write things down on paper and not be so Overly hard that I can't bring my ideas into fruition. The perfect level of difficulty basically. I don't think I was ever frustrated by a puzzle until the like, VERY ending where I was running around trying to discover the Last Few Secrets. So for JUST PLAYING animal well i have to say it is excellent. Probably the best single player game I have plaeyd this year. the Aesthetics and Vibes are Imacculate, the music isn't STANDOUT but certainly Good Enough to Fit, and the gameplay is all like, mostly pretty Simple with some challenging moments that are mostly optional. A great chillout game that i DO MOSTLY BELIEVE catbrooks would love. I both enjoy the game having Meta Elements and yet Resent Having to Look Anything Up.The post game True Ending or whatever doesn't really, have a Payoff. its just extra Stuff you Can Do but only really via reading a guide quite literally in some cases. Which annoys me. i never like that. SO, the Actual Game? excellent, near flawless, fantastic. the optional Secrets? Not really worth it. I felt smart to figure out the few i did but i simply Dont like looking them up. And thats what i spent the last of the game doing so thats what is fresh on my mind. Animal Well is like a hybrid of Hollow Knight and Tunic, kind of. The Vibe vaguely unsettling atmosphere and sense of discovery of HK (except with 0 NPCs or explainations) and the kind of, secret filled 'oh you can DO THAT?' that Tunic sometimes imparted. I would say really it has taken the best Elements of both of them and made somethign Better than them both. Except it doesnt have Tunic's booklet...... that thing was incredible......" Runner up: Crow Country!

Best Multiplayer Game

Abiotic Factor!

My review: "after the first 4ish hours im really enjoying this! The Setting is VERY good - i'm kind of surprised afaik this like, Exact Idea hasn't been done yet. It kind of hits a very Current gameplay/aesthetic trend - kind of backrooms/analog horror/creepypasta. which is great for me because i LIKE those things when they are well executed.I also like how it very much feels like this is a spin off game where you just ARE in black mesa after half life kicks off lol.

the gameplay itself is good too! It is a Little overwhelming just HOW many recipies there are - i think maybe if they were split between different tables it would be Less 30 recipies at once for sure. but then youd have to MAKE them so probably NOT. its not a real complaint just a fot. i like the gameplay loop where there are Distinct Places to go. it kind of has a rougelite FEEL like it remind me of the feeling i wanted to get from the minecraft mod we played where you raided vaults.

anyway fun so far :)

after MANY more hours and i am kind of led to believe many more Yet - its VERY good. i really enjoy the gameplay loop and i think the resources are Fun and pretty plentiful that you never feel like 'ugh i need to go grind cuttign trees for 5 hours to build a house' which i suppose is because you CANT BUILD a house. there isnt any Base Building which is fine i think? it Works for the game they have made you are in a building you just need to find a good spot in that building to Live.

i like how fully comitted it is to being Weird and SCP Half Life. It MIGHT be just Early Access but i think they could have leaned More into the SCP-ness of it? Idk maybe just the journal is SO bad to try and look at that it makes me not Want to Learn about their Fun Scary Objects! Which is always my favourite part. I was thinking about how its a shame so many of the SCPs are Uninteractable (which might not even Be True could just be we havent got them Yet) but i guess that is potentially endless DLC and Update option so! Thats fun in theory

haigvng played ALL that there is to play (55 hours) i am VEry sd its over! the last zone hydroplant got a LITTLE exhausting. it was just a bit too confusing? and the enemies were HARD! but then i thought secuirty was a Bit Lame and Lacklustre so. cant have it both ways.

one of the very best games ive played this yearl, a very strong challenger fro V Rising for goty (coop)"

Runner Up: V Rising!

Best X Plays Game

The Roottrees are Dead! (Cat Playt)

My review: "really good puzzled GAME. slightly dampened that i was sooo so so tired by the end so got a bit grumpy at it but mostly very very good. I love Artefacts and Documents as a rule so just a treat for me."

Runner Up: Hypnospace Outlaw

Best TV Show

Severance!

My review: "i fuckign love this show so much it makes me soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo mysterypilled theorymaxxer. the work is mysterious. and important" Runner up: Silo S2

Best TV Show Thats Not Severance Which Doesn't Count Because I Watched It For The First Time in 2023

Arcane (Season 2)

My Review: "oooOUUGHG THE NARRATIVES! the WEAVES!!!!! you can fit SO much shit into a show actually . a fucken.... visual spectable. like it look SO GOOOOD. god this show really does it unlike any other and no other will every do it again. AND ITS FUCKEN!!!!!!!! LEAGUAE OF LEGENDS???????????? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

it was so good I fully shotgunned it in 1 day 1 sitting just me and 6 hours of Good Shit.

my only 'complaint' is that sometimes it looks like one of those 2d puppet animation GIFs or rise fo the golden idol and its a bit odd and offputting. oh and the MUSIC LMAOOOOOO. that one tumblr post really was even truer than i could know. except when one time at the Apex it was just some random? chinese(??) ballad????? baffaling. to me. Well it seems like in the last rd they just decided to dtich the VEYR FUNNY OVERLY DESCERIPTIOVE SONGSD and have them in a variety of languages. because people around the world like LoL?? I dont understand this.... its so weird for a shwo that until the last bit was So bad at having a coundtrack lmao" Runner Up: Dungeon Meshi

Best Live Action TV Show

A League of Their Own! (RIP)

My Review: "i really enjoyed this im sad it got canceled :( its..... the longing. i enjoyed watchign it very much becasue im a silly little lesbian i cant help it"

Best Dropout Show

Gamechanger/Very Important People

My Review(s): VIP: "some are REALLY good some are PRETTY MID! Here is my tier ranking: Tommy Shriggly/Leighanna Jean Gruthers Marionette Conqui and Zonton de le Doll Princess Emily Denzel Vic's Ex Step Grandmother Kepl and Dr. Milk Martha Topps and Lucian Azathoth Professor Avery Goodman Jasper and Casper" Gamechanger: ":D"

"i LOVE the premise and almost every episode was extremely funny. this actually is true of BOTH of them they get to SHARE GC for longtime VERY BEST and VIP for best newcomer!" Runner Up: Smartypants

Best Book

A Deadly Education

My Review: "it was just so FUN!!!! i liked all the characters and I didn't get the very like, Foreboding Dread that Children of Time gave me. But honestly its just an easier funner read, I didnt have to think about SCIENCE and hurt my brain trying to imagine how their spider cities and tech worked. just have a Fun Time

it beats out the sequels because i think it was just the one i most enjoyed reading! the scholomance was the Coolest setting and the fun of a New World. the rest are still great but not my favroruite :)"

Runner Up: Children of Time

Best Film

The Martian

My Review: "this was such a fun film i enjoyed it all VERY much. I liked how it went Pretty indepth into like, How he survived it was also nicely comedic at times. There really isn't much I can critique about this film, it wzs just a real fun Film to Watch. Made me CRAVE SPACE like, i do Get it Space Is Cool. wanna play a space game about launching a rocket or something but i feel like they are never as Cinematic as a movie (obvously LOL) or theyre like, Too Techy which is a bummer. but the film was good!" Runner Up (And actual favourite but didn't watch it for the first time in 2024): Portrait of a Lady on Fire

[unidentifiedfuckingthing]

theres mods to backport new minecraft features to old versions and mods to add back scrapped mob vote concepts but i want mods that just suck new additions back out of the new versions. can i please get horse breeding and improved multiplayer latency without the stupid fucking bloat of additions apparently added in purposeful avoidance of making the game more fun to play. like in 1.21 they added like 5 separate item paths/mechanics that only serve a single purpose each and dont integrate into the world, dont even add any decorative use, just some ideas someone had, i guess, and nobody could be paid enough or cared about it enough to turn it into anything. they made armadillos to make dog armor out of, which is completely different from the already existing horse armor and human armor, and armadillos dont do anything except wait to be slaughtered and turned into dog armor. they added a gimmick weapon crafted from 2 components exclusively found in the new poi, one of which literally only is used to make this weapon, and the other is used to make this weapon, a reskinned snowball, AND a potion that makes an effect happen to your surroundings if you die during the potion timer. the effect doesn't appear anywhere in the world except if you make and use this potion, and the effect has literally no meaningful use or game value. like this is like 6 weeks away from being a game idea! this is pre-alpha shit! its bad! who is asking devs to put out stuff like this!

[racke7]

Me vs Divinity 2

Got bored a few days ago and poked around the Steam Communities. Stumbled across a video of someone doing a "solo run" (only a single character) of the final boss-fight.

Hmm. Checked youtube for others who'd done something similar. Specifically curious about the Necromancer-build (because it's bullshit-broken), and there were a few who used it and-... And it felt very lackluster?

I remember Necromancer being "I move these characters around a bit so that I will insta-frag literally everyone at once". And these guys just sort of "used the skill, and everything died".

(Necromancer has an end-game skill called Blood Storm, which creates a very big aoe-area. Inside of this area, all enemies will have a "meteor" dropped on their heads, which is an aoe-damage. So the trick is to make sure that enemies are grouped-up enough that they get rapid-fire-meteor'd.)

The idea of simply using the skill and kind of just... sitting back to watch it murder everything in an instant, is kind of... lackluster? Where's the weird logistics of moving everyone around? Why are the final bosses apparently so shit that they can't even survive the base Blood Storm?

A competitive spark appeared in my jaded heart. And so I removed a bunch of game-changing mods that I usually use (extra skills, etc), and created a new solo "basically-vanilla" Necromancer. And got killed, and killed, and killed.

See, the problem with Necromancer early-on is that they have two damage-skills. Total. And there's like a... 4+ turns cooldown for both of them.

This means that you can do really good damage on your first turn, and then you can't do any damage at all for basically every turn following that one.

This is... an insane way to balance the game. But in hindsight, I do remember that this was a problem. I just didn't think that it was this fucking bad.

So I died and died and died, and-... just as I was cheesing my way through getting away from the Fort in Fort Joy (with something like 40k gold in the bank, because I didn't disable all mods, and I'm very good at breaking the game), I realized that I kind of wanted to do something else.

I wanted to do a full team, with recruitable-Origins.

See, it's possible to open Divinity 2 four times at once, and then simply join "your own multiplayer lobby". And then (once the game has started and saved) you can close all of the other instances of the game, and play as four completely customizable characters.

This is very convenient for my control-freak neuroses, and so this is usually how I play a "full team". Sometimes I use origin-characters, but usually I custom-build them from scratch.

But I wanted to try making a game where I didn't actually have control over the characters during their "cut-scenes". So I sat down and did some thinking about which characters I wanted to recruit, and which one should be my "player character".

I finally settled on playing as Sebille, because she has an unfortunate tendency to murderize her way through a bunch of characters that I don't want her to instantly kill, and this way I can just ignore the "Sebille dialogue option" when I know that it'll end in bloodshed.

I was planning on going "Lohse, Beast, and Red Prince", but then RP was very rude to me in a way that just... nah. So I did a bit more thinking about who I should pick, and finally decided to bring Fane instead.

And that's the story of why I ate my breakfast at 7pm, twelve hours after waking up, after having played past midnight yesterday.

I'm in full control of my life. Promise.