#or - as we say for this mod's RPG games - real life comes first

[fuckyeahlabynight]

From the WOD Discord today.

NEW YORK BY NIGHT is back SOON, to premiere early 2024!

[slasheru]

Slasher U 1-Year State of the Union / Unholy Census!

Holy fucking shit we're coming along towards the 1-year anniversary of the release of the Slasher U Act 1 alpha!! We've come SO FUCKING FAR. Sawyer wasn't even a romanceable option back in the day! As of April 27th, it'll be Slasher U's first ever anniversary!

Mostly, I am SO FUCKING GRATEFUL that you all came along on the adventure to make my weird horny dating RPG a smash fucking hit!! Taking narrative seriously in dating/adult games was kind of my entire M.O (is?? mods??) and I am SO GRATEFUL Y'ALL UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO HERE lmao

THE BIG NUMBERS

As of 11:21 AM EST on 3/23/24, Slasher U: Act 1 has sold 6,100 copies across Steam & itch.io (Not including the copies sold as part of Games for Gaza that weren't redeemed/downloaded, so this only counts people who actually downloaded or bought the game!). This is obviously BEYOND MY WILDEST FUCKING DREAMS AND I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH HOLY SHIT. I didn't even realize it until I added it all together. (On top of this, we sold several fucking tens of thousands of games for Games for Gaza!! Hell yeah!)

For my fellow solo devs out there, this comes to Slasher U making a total of about $6,000 + $2,000 net USD through sales (the former) and crowdfunding (the latter, for Slasher U: Act 2) over the last 11ish months!! The game started off being free for the first 6ish months, then went to $6.69 for the Beta (with dong! whoa!!), and now at its full size, stands at a good ol' $14.99 for 15 hours of primo datin' sim!

This is objectively the most money I've ever made off of anything I've developed in my entire life, and paid my whole ass rent for the entire year, so THANK YOU HOLY SHIT. According to Steam, most indie games barely break $1k in total, so I am AGOG. FUCKING AGOG. THANK YOU FOR LIKING MY GAME AND LETTING ME MAKE MORE VIA NOT DYING FROM CAPITALISM

The average review score, across 89 reviews on itch.io, remains 4.9 out of 5 stars, and we're rocking a 93% Positive on Steam!!

THE UNHOLY CENSUS

The best part of Slasher U is, as I always say, THE STUDENT DISEMBODY!! Slasher U will always be a place where everything is gay and trans as fuck (although I'm also proud of writing my cishet storylines too :V /lh)! I knew y'all were gay (hello fellow gays) but I did not realize the QUEER FUCKING FORCE THE STUDENT DISEMBODY IS

Here's the demographics of Slasher U players as taken from Tumblr polls (that's a skewed sample size of about 280, so grain of salt here for the homo website for queers):

92.6% of you ID as queer (see below for the breakdown!) | 7.4% of you ID as straight

This fictional horror movie campus is: 48.5% bi/pan, 16.2% gay/mlm, 10.3% lesbian/wlw, 10.3% ace (oo tie!), 7.4% queer but not defined as above, and 7.4% straight!

61.9% of you ID as trans/not cis | 23.8% of you ID as cis | 14.3% of you ID as neither trans nor cis

46.8% of you are between 22-26 | 32.3% of you are between 18-21 | 16.1% of you are between 27-32 | 4.8% of you are between 32-45 | 0% of you are older than 45 (sample size I am guessing lol)

For 14.6% of you, Slasher U was the very first dating sim you've ever played (!). For 3.8% of you, Slasher U was the first indie game you've ever played (holy fucking shit!!! this is an actual absolute honor)

76.7% of you instinctively Road Runner away from Melyssa at the fountain in Act 1 | 23.3% let the Melyssa tsunami arrive at you

--

A FINAL WORD (FOR NOW) ON MAKIN' VIDJEE GAEMS

You should totally do it.

No, okay, but for real, I started working in games professionally in 2009 (yeah yeah i'm old. i am 32 and i am dying and they're coming for me in the corpse wagon etc) and I burned out in 2016 and came back two years ago with THIS THING and I can tell you RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW that, if you have ever wanted to make a game and the big guys aren't gonna do it, grab yourself and/or some friends and fuckin' make a video game. I have worked for a bunch of AA and mobile companies and I can tell you right the fuck now that this is the most fulfilling experience I have ever had writing a video game. I taught myself programming logic to make this thing! And sound design! I fucking learned to animate sprite sheets!! YOU CAN ALSO DO IT given the time and energy (pace yourself don't die)! And there won't be any execs around to tell you your weird niche game won't sell!! BECAUSE IT FUCKING WILL

Anyway, my entire career as a game designer, nobody let me write shit for them. You don't need permission to make stuff or write stuff. If you write it, they will fuckin' come, Field of Dreams style (also don't forget to tell everyone you made stuff and share it around. super key here. lmao). Turns out writing is all about sharing yourself with people, and who knows, you might just find that a fuckton of people ACTUALLY relate to you. (And that you're a pretty good writer. Which you knew. Yes, you. I am mixing metaphors and pointing to myself AND you now.)

xoxoxoxooxoxox,

Professor Plutonium

[meonlyred]

Going to go on a bit of a rant here about the "BG3 companions younger mods" I have been seeing. Don't want to hijack someone's else posts. Or really engage in the fandom about it. Just want to get it off my chest.

I try not to judge how people mod their games. After all it doesn't effect me or my play throughs in the least. But man, I find these kind of mods disconcerting, I guess. I wouldn't go as far to say offensive but at very least it seems like an extremely narrow world view on what people can and cannot look like. Which I find to be irritating and frustrating.

There are dozens of RPGs with companions who are young, in their early to mid 20s. And that is fine. But we are spoiled for choice for games with companions like that. I am not sure the official age of all the companions, but most of them are clearly over 30, some older and that frankly is refreshing and wonderful to see. That adventure and questing isn't some Logan's Run bullshit where no one ever gets past 30.

This cast of characters had lives, they had complicated pasts before coming together. They weren't fresh faced and new sent out into the world for the first time. Its nice to see that written into their appearance. Their appearances are just as much part of their development as their quests and romances are.

I was delighted when Larian changed Gale from early access patch 1 to what he looks like now. Unkempt slightly greying hair, dark circles under the eyes, much more fitting of a man who spent a year quarantining himself while he waited to die an extremely violent death. It makes him look like an actual developed character and not "Leading Video Game Man With No Depth Or Personality #29323." [Replays his act 2 scene for the dozenth time where he actually looks harrowed and begging you not to leave him alone because he is terrified.]

And Jaheira! I am going to kiss someone on the mouth for her design! She actually looks like my grandmother did. I can't describe in words how fucking tired I am of "She is an elf so she looks like she is 12." Which jfc, so much to unpack there. Actually seeing a female character who is fucking "ALLOWED" to look old fills me with so much joy. Taking that away does feel almost offensive to me. Every inch of a real life women's bodies are already pick over for every imperfection as it is. Male characters can look old, have wrinkles and grey hair but heaven fucking forbid a woman looking over 30 or have any slight "imperfection!" I hope every video game female character from now on looks 50+ and if anyone tries to make her to look even a year younger, I will personally come to burn down your house.

I think, I might be the most pissed off about her "younger" mod.

There is even a mod to make Shadowheart look "younger" which I can't even begin to express my disappointed on that. Younger? You mean somehow airbrushed in our muddy shitty camp?

[maguro13-2]

Darkness Reborn ~ Origins of the Ink Demon Final Chapter Pt. 17 (2/2) ~

[In the City - Masaru Setsumaru, Tadashi Kinukawa]

Quatre : So, umm...I'm suggesting that you are the daughter of that NPC, Principal Tyrell. And they say that you are an NPC, correct?

Rico Tyrell : Created within Sonic Team's data, I was the first female Hunter and first female Humarl, I thought that the HUmarl was supposed to be in the early stages, but sadly I was the only Humarl and I held captive by Dark Falz's power when he manage to cause the explosion on Planet Ragol after what he did to Flowen, Pioneer 1, and including me. I thought that I was gonna be the hero of my own story, but Sonic Team rejected it and I was still a HUmarl but it's all good that I was modded as an playable characters thanks to PSO players that used play Phantasy Star Online before the original servers was shut down before the Dreamcast met it's fate and Sega would be going out of the hardware business. Can't say that how does one company meet it's failure and beginning to cope with it.

Quatre : Yeah, that happens sometimes. But it's not my concern that officials of Sega forced Sonic Team to shut down the original servers and led players to create the private servers. They weren't planning on shutting down PSO, they wanted to get rid of PSO. No wonder they're so eager shutting the original servers down. Heck, even in the 21st century, We usually do know or don't know PSO. Sonic Team had that opportunity when Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima was at the top of their game in the 90s, bringing Sonic, bringing Nights, bringing Phantasy Star at it's finest and everything else that is part of Sonic Team's legacy, From RPG classics of Phantasy Star to the world's fastest blue blur himself, Sonic the Hedgehog.

Rico Tyrell : True. Phantasy Star was the first Sonic Team Title made by Yuji Naka before the Blue Hedgehog himself. Phantasy Star and Sonic were different from Sonic Team. Time changes from the world of Sega itself, we had our fair shares with other developers like Game freak that created Pulseman and what about AM2 that gave birth to Dayotna and Shenmue.

Quatre : Luckily, if you don't know about that much, I bet Phantasy Star's first protag was a girl and she's a hottie, she has a brother named--

Heero Yuy : Enough! *GUNSHOT* Our time for talk is over, we can't wast any more of it and needed to complete the mission. It is our duty to protect Real World AU from the forces of true evil! I'm not letting anyone getting away with this!

Quatre : Okay then, I see your point. But what about the thing about the true intentions that Soul World may offer? About this incident of a hero named Maka Albarn was framed for a crime that she did not commit, a look alike of her named Inky Albarn is responsible for the attacks in Tokyo and...

Trowa : Hey, guys. I found a floating white light. I wonder what this. And I think it's coming closer to us.

Rico Tyrell : Umm, fellas? I would be asking questions about the incident in Tokyo, but that's the explanation on the the point of--IS THAT THE SOUL OF HEATHCLIFF FLOWEN!?!

Trowa : Wait, who's soul was it?

Heero & Rico : DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING WITH YOUR HANDS, YOU DOLT!

Trowa : Relax, it's only a Soul of your dead teacher. And besides, it's harmelss and would never even--

Shadow : Don't touch it!

[IDOLA ~ Have the Divine Blade - Hideaki Kobayashi]

*DBZ SFX : ENERGY POWERING*

Trowa : Oh man! Not good! I accidentally woke him up!

Rico Tyrell : I told you not to touch it! You didn't woke him up, you idiot! Your brought him back it to life be reviving it and now it's going to have legs! Do you realize what you've done!?

Trowa : Oh, big mistake.

*RUMBLING+OLGA FLOW ROARS*

"OLGA FLOW PHASE 2 : TRUE FORM OF HEATHCLIFF FLOWEN"

(the Battle begins)

Heero Yuy : The bastard's alive again! I knew that some ransom Idiot must've touched the Soul of Flowen!

Trowa : Well, sorry! That was minor a mistake, I promise that I would never touch anything again on purpose!

Quatre: We're gonna be scrambled eggs if we don't stop this guy! Oh no! He's beginning to walk on his own around the area and...what's he planning to do?

Rico Tyrell : Oh crap...Dodge! [the group avoids the attack]

Trowa : This guy's going nuts again! Are you sure this giant is the Flowen that you know!?

Rico Tyrell : Yes, he was! But eventually I realized that he died before me! We would completely expunge ourselves if any player that is an idiot!

Quatre : How would you know!?

Olga Flow/Flowen : (talks in mutant language)

Rico Tyrell : Sh*t! Get down!

*DBZ SFX : Energy Blast+Explosion*

All : WAAAAAAAH!!!

Rico Tyrell : He's doing the attacks, the same thing that Dark Falz did it once on the players.

Quatre : And trying to sink everyone including the facility into the seabed, and would be lost forever! We have to stop it at all costs!

Trowa : Somebody stop that mad man! That creature of a human is going crazy if he keeps that up! We need to simmer this thing down before it can cause anymore damage! This world's not big enough for the giant in the seabeds!

Wufei : It'll take us 10 seconds to beat this guy down! He looks very big and it can really pack a punch!

Heero Yuy : That's what you're thinking what I'm thinking!

Rico Tryell : I'll handle this one! [summons a Red sword] Red swords. You like em very much?

[the group shakes heads "yes]

Rico Tyrell : That's what I thought so. Hi-ya!

*DBZ/One Piece SFX : Sword slashing*

Olga Flow : [roars in pain]

Trowa : Yes! Red weapons is the one true weakness for the giant! Huh? [suddenly, his appearance changes into Flowen] Holy sh*t, guys! This giant just switch my body and I'm the man of a hunter who died of D-Cells! Not much of an old due who is ripped. At least, Heathcliff Flowen was the only character that is playable, if only one's soul isn't good enough for this kind of body.

*DBZ/One Piece SFX : SLASH!*

Trow : GWAAA-HAAAA!!! Ow, Rico! What's the big idea attacking me!?

Rico Tyrell : Oh great! even switching souls with Flowen can cause the player damage health due to switching appearances. Not one of Sonic Team's better ideas to come up with.

Trowa (as Heathcliff Flowen) : Hello! That sounds like a bad idea if we attack Olga Flow, the player's health points will be damaged. Pretty obvious, right?

Wufei : Not even a single hit to defeat this guy. He's kinda tricky. Otherwise, he might go berserk take one's soul at another awkward!

Trowa (as Heathcliff Flowen) : Awkward!

Quatre : How are you gonna get your soul back.

Trowa (as Heathcliff Flowen) : Easy! (scene flips) I had to do it with a red weapon and some Techinque points! Light is the power that is very equivalent to darkness. But hey, at least I got my body back!

Quatre : Look! He's dazed and he is worned out! Now's your chance Rico!

Wufei : NOW THIS MOTHERF*CKER DOWN!

Heero & Rico : Got it!

Heero Yuy : Sorry, Flowen! If you want to stop, then next time, try finding yourself to go with the freakin' flow!

*DBZ SFX : JUMPING HIGH*

Heero Yuy : HIYAAAAAAAAAHHH!

*DBZ SFX : SWORD KILL*

Olga Flow/Flowen : [talks in mutant language]

Heero Yuy : Timbeeeer!!!

*DBZ/One Piece SGX : Wall Hit/Crash*

Heero Yuy : May your soul rest in peace...

*DBZ SFX : Falling+Sword claning*

Heero Yuy : ...as a weapon by the way!

Trowa : That was anti-climatic.

Quatre : Phew! Looks like we stopped in time.

Wufei : That'll put him in his place.

Flowen : Rico...Is that you?

Rico : Flowen? You're...You're back!

~ Ninety-Seventh Scene : The Hunters of PSO Pt.2 ~

[comfyspookyburrito]

Blog update End of September 2023

Hey everyone and maybe even newcomers to my tumblr blog!

Usually every few months I post a status update of anything and everything I've been doing as time goes by the time that we cannot control.

Let me start off by saying that as of writing this, I'm tired so I won't have much energy and need to sleep.

First, I will confess that I have been on a procrastination vacation. Things in real life right now have been affecting my mood to live stream and produce content efficiently, however I have been very happy this whole time. I am starting to finally work more, i had too much free time on my hands and spent all of them playing genshin impact and other new games that have recently come out.

I am sorry in advance for not posting any new content, sharing my smash ultimate custom content, or even keeping everyone up to tabs on my hobby life. The truth is that I am lazy and wanted to spend more of my time relaxing and doing stupid things like neglecting my health and time to have fun playing video games.

Thing is, a long time ago I've been working nonstop on content and live streams, artwork, the usual.

While that made me extremely happy at the time, years later I finally went back on what I've missed out on.

Soon I will return with more health and self care, more content shortly will return, and I'll be back for real like I did for all these years.

There's two more things I want to address for this update life of mine.

A brand new 2D metroidvania platformer called Nyaruru Fishy Fight has popped up to me on steam. This game has a style similar to Rabi Ribi, rabi ribi is one of my favorite indie games of all time. So it has to be good!

This game is fantastic! Very fun, adorable, and I admit almost as perfect as rabi ribi!

Nyaruru is actually a sequel to a different game called Nyakori's Rabbit Doll.

In that game, you navigate and try to survive in a top down puzzle game like in those horror rpg games. The typical second game sequel that changes an entire genre.

If you enjoyed rabi ribi's story and slightly even remotely care about the story of nyaruru before playing either game, it would be a good idea to get both of them.

As for the whether you should play the first or second game, that's up to you. I played the second game first and only played the original game and it's dlc afterward. But both nyakori's dlc chapter, and nyaruru's story is sooo....good. So damn good I feel emotional about it.

I love nyaruru and want to play that game again a lot. And it's actually shorter than rabi ribi too!

The last thing for me to talk about is that I still plan to procrastinate until I have finished and completed a few things that are very important to me and will a strong impression of my channel themes and stance as a whole.

I have to finished a lot of animations I am sure many people will enjoy, afterward I might try to compose a theme song for them when I get tired of using different franchise video game songs, sonic, mario, ect.

Some new artwork thumbnails, a 4k youtube social media wallpaper banner, some additional artwork to push myself towards future content creation.

And another update to Crypt of the Literature Club Expanded and Enhanced steam workshop mod for crypt of the necrodancer! This update will include visual polish fixes to many sprites such as UI, statue's, player sprites, items, and more to a cute apealing artstyle. that update will also include the finished bestiary displays of the characters, and a classic style skin return from the original mod before it was removed.

And that's it! That's everything I wanted to talk about today. I might share another tumblr update blog around fall or winter. I always appreciate everyone who willingly stuck around! I care about all of my viewers and participants regardless.

TLDR; Sorry for slacking off the past few months, will return soon, go check out nyaruru's fishy fight, and lastly I've got more exciting content in store for you all when I return! Thank you for reading.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Podoboo

Debut: Super Mario Bros.

Before I start this post, I’d like to clear something up. Podoboo? Yes, Podoboo! I’m well aware these enemies are often called Lava Bubbles and that’s the name Nintendo has been trying to make standardised these days, but you know what? You can’t make me! Podoboo is a lot cuter, plus its the name I grew up with and changes in society scare me and cause me to lash out! Maybe Lava Bubble is closer to the Japanese name of just “Bubble”, but since when has that been a factor in any of the localised names? Do you really want to refer as Lakitu as “Jugemu”, huh? I’ll have you know one of my civil rights as a citizen of Wet Dry World is to refer to Mario enemies with whichever official name I please. Like it or leave it!

So this is a post about Podoboo. Do you like Podoboo? I certainly Podo-do! They are perhaps the most generic design you could give to a Mario enemy, a visibly Dangerous Thing with two eyes, but they have always charmed me! It’s the little things, like their distinct shape and the fact their pupils are somewhat wider than most obstacles like this. They bring me comfort in dire times. No matter what happens, I know Podoboo will be there, jumping at a set height in a particular spot of lava! Without them I would be nothing! 

So simple is their design, isn’t it weird to think they started off as even simpler? The Podoboos in the first SMB game are completely blind, and with no eyes they may as well not be creatures at all! Of course, I’m very glad they are creatures, and their iconic behaviour was there from the start! They love to jump, of course! There is nothing they would rather be doing!

Awaken! As of Super Mario World, they have been gifted sight and are no longer blind to the sins of this world! Hurray! What do you think they see as they jump up and down? I’m surprised it doesn’t make them dizzy!

You’ll be glad to hear Podoboos have had an expansive career ever since, now with their new trademark eyes! After all, they are THE lava enemy! Anywhere you’ve got that tasty hot fire juice, these guys are soon to follow! Here they are in Super Mario RPG, called Sparkies here because they couldn’t make up their minds on a localized name and probably because they confused them with Li’l Sparkies. In Yoshi’s Story they even called them Spark Spooks! Geez, I’ll even take the name Lava Bubble over this! But doesn’t this render look nice and juicy?

Though any great career has its flops, and I have to say... I am usually the first to campaign for the unique designs from the first three Paper Marios, but I do not really like this Lava Bubble! This takes away from their distinct Mario-y charm and makes them look like a Fire Enemy you could find in any other game! Though in the RPGs they are able to float around without needing any lava, the ones in Super Paper Mario act just like the platformer ones, jumping around despite not looking like they should be doing that! Ok!

The Podoboo from New Super Mario Bros. DS just wasn’t trying very hard at all. Come on! They could’ve it a bit more justice than this! 

Ah, there we go! The Podoboos in New Super Mario Bros. Wii decided to finally stop messing about and go back to what everyone loved from them in Super Mario World. I encourage experimenting with your identity, of course, but it’s good to be back, and now they are more mortal than ever! A single shot from an Ice Flower is enough to instantly vaporize a Podoboo in a puff of smoke, which is a bit scary! Are they really just pure fireballs that can be put out just like that? What a frightening life to live!

And in Super Mario Galaxy 2, they... hey, wait!! You took away their eyes again! Now you are just being inconsiderate. This outraged me as a kid! One of my most vivid memories of playing this game with my brother involved chanting “Podoboo rights! They deserve eyes!” because this upset me so much. Maybe my past as an activist is why I am so passionate about Mario enemies these days... I think I was 100 percent correct in hindsight, and now you know some of my backstory, too!

What relief it gave me to find out they were back to their usual selves in 3D Land! And they have been ever since, of course getting redesigned for the modern Paper Mario games and everything. 

What’s this? Blue Podoboos! Podo-blues, even...! They show up in 3D World, in its incredibly cool-looking blue lava levels! It’s a well known fact that blue fire is objectively cooler than red fire, and it seems even the Podoboos wanted in on the action! Blue Lava is an actual phenomenon I’ve just learnt, though it’s a sulfuric fire rather than lava. Could it be that Podoboos, being made entirely of lava, adapt to their environment? I’m not sure...

As an aside, the blue Lava Bubbles aren’t to be confused with Lava Bubble (Blue), which are from Mario Galaxy and show up during King Kaliente’s fight! They hop around on the ground and have square-ish eyes, which is enough to make them different I guess!

The Podoboo’s next big appearance, in Super Mario Odyssey, was in Soup! Yes you heard me- Soup! Some delightfully pepto-bismol pink coloured soup, no less. This is why I wasn’t too sure about Podoboo’s being able to adapt to their environment earlier- the Luncheon Kingdom is a big soup volcano after all, but the fact these Lava Bubbles are able to live in it is very interesting!

There is simply no way I would talk about Odyssey here without talking about possibly its greatest achievement, the best game design decision ever made! After decades of begging from fans, they finally did the impossible- they made Podoboo playable! Now it is Podo-you! It is quite unlike the other captures in the game, since it keeps the Podoboo’s simple-looking eyes and simply adds onto it a nose and a mustache! You may very well be the world’s first Podoboo with a sense of smell! I wonder if that is a benefit or not. The constant smell of soup might be a bit overpowering. 

Not only is this delightful, but it gives us more insight into the life of the humble Podoboo. First of all is the fact that they can swim around in lava, not just jump in one spot! Do you think they do this when we aren’t looking? I really hope so! Imagine a school of Podoboos swimming through molten lava in a castle’s moat. How delightful! 

The Luncheon Kingdom is also home to a number of Lava cannons, marked with a Podoboo’s lovely face. These are cannons for only for Podoboos to launch themselves across the kingdom, from one body of lava to another! My question is whether this was technology made by Podoboos themselves or whether it was made by some generous Podoboo lovers as some lava equivalent to the Fish Tube. I think I would take either explanation! 

And last I have a Podoboo appearance that even I, the world’s biggest Podoboo fan, didn’t know about! Paper Mario Color Splash has a Big Lava Bubble boss which speaks with you through a Shy Guy translator! It is quite upset that you barged into its volcano and decided to change the temperature. Mario, of course, kills it anyway, and also the Shy Guy translator without a second thought.

Still, just take a look at this sprite sheet! How cute! A little disappointing that they thinned out the eyes, but wow! They more than make up for it with this range of expressions! An angry Podoboo! A sad Podoboo! And my personal favorite is of course the shocked Podoboo with its assymetrical dot eyes, which might be one of the best things I’ve ever seen. 

To be honest, I could talk about Podoboo forever! If you didn’t stop me, I would go on all day about their every appearance, but I kind of had to limit myself to some of the most relevant ones. I just think they’re neat! And cute! And silly! Besides, I’m Mod F Boy, so I’m basically obliged to talk about fireballs with eyes! But for now I must bid you Pod-adieu! 

...Not! What, did you really believe me? Well you clicked the Keep Reading button, so you only have yourself to blame for this. Here I am talking about more Lava Bubbles from all over, because Lava Bubble’s career has taken it BEYOND the Mario series! Wow!

Podoboo’s had quite a few appearance in the Zelda series, appearing in Link’s Awakening, both the Oracle games, and even Cadence of Hyrule! Their Zelda wiki page is still called Podoboo instead of Lava Bubble, which means those Zelda fans have it better than we do. But wow, this is a pretty angry looking Podoboo! I wouldn’t mess with them! 

Both the Oracle games even had a Podoboo Tower! Amazing! They look quite a lot like a Fire Snake, but they are simply a tower of Podoboos! Why don’t they do this more often?

Hm... The Cadence of Hyrule one doesn’t have any eyes. Come on guys! It’s 2019! Podoboos having eyes should be standard! Though they still made the conscious decision to call them “Podoboos” in 2019, so I can’t be too mad. 

And they have even spread to Minecraft! In the Mario Mash-up Pack, they replace the Magma Cube enemies, and really there was no better choice for this. And now we have a Podoboo Cube! What more could possibly be left for Podoboo?

The answer is obvious- Podoboo in real life! Thanks to a certain Lego Mario set, Podoboo is now real and can be in your home for the small price of 19,99 US dollars. Please give a Podoboo a home today! Just make sure you don’t own anything flammable. 

[moviesrotbrains]

George A. Romero Day

I was nine or ten when I first saw Tom Savini’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990) remake. It wasn’t my first horror film. FRANKENSTEIN (1931) was an early memory, and a giant life-sized poster of his monster1 protected my room from nightmares. I’d often dream of Freddy Krueger despite never having seen any of his films at that point. Horror was everywhere in the 1980s.

I was in awe of LIVING DEAD ‘90. The idea of being trapped in a house with evils lurking outside. The paranoia that brewed among the humans… how the humans became monsters long before they were even bit. It was heavy stuff at the time. I don’t know if I drew parallels to all of this or simply thought, “Wow, those intense zombie fights that would make a cool NES game!”2

Savini’s redo was probably my first actual zombie experience. Again, I had seen zombies in other media, most like Scooby Doo or whatever other Saturday morning cartoon cribbed and remixed the undead concept to sell toys or comicbooks.

It was a few years later that I finally got to see George A. Romero’s original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968). I can’t recall if I first saw it on TV or an actual repertory screening of it. Memory is weird that way. I do remember being thoroughly blown away by it, despite more or less having memories of the plot from that remake.

I never had a problem with Black & White movies, having already been a full on film-junkie at that point, but somehow that black & white depiction of old school zombies felt hyper real. Unsettling. Fucking cool as hell. Unerving. Or maybe I was just a dumb kid. Oh, I definitely was a dumb kid, and still am, but that moment cemented George Romero in the pantheon of cinematic greats. Didn’t matter what else he did, he made NOTLD. He made a weighty zombie film full of social commentary and subtext.3 He popularized zombies. He didn’t need to do anything else.

Oh, but he did. He so did. 

It was around the time I was starting to consume more horror4 that a classmate had cut some scenes into a film project we were working on. My jaw was on the floor when I first saw the gory display of gritty carnage.

“This is from the 70s?” 

I knew so little. I definitely didn’t know those effects were also by Tom Savini, but everything was coming full circle, and that was one of the key moments that I fell in love with Savini without even knowing.

“You never seen this? Here, man, I’ll loan you it.”

And that was when I first saw Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978). Take some people of various walks of life and have them take refuge in an empty mall-- only to find the Zombies have returned to the place they frequented most.

“WHEN THERE’S NO ROOM IN HELL, THE DEAD WILL WALK THE EARTH!”

DOTD ‘78, The brutal and hilarious takedown of consumption and mall culture. Social Commentary, Zombie Gags, and Sick Kills. A film that’s loved by both critics and horror junkies. A film that said something and also entertained. George Romero in a nutshell.

A film that also became my gateway drug to Good Horror. And to Bad Horor. Again, I already loved horror. I loved the aesthetic, the vibe. Always drew monsters. Always collected weird monster toys. If a film was playing on a movie channel, I’d watch it. 

But Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD was THE film that made me WANT to actually seek them out. The film that made me want to rewatch my older brother’s old worn Betamax tapes of classic 80s horror flicks. A film that introduced me to Dario Argento.5 A movie that got me into the music of Italian Horror Prog Rock legends, GOBLIN. The life changing event that made me a nut for Savini and every 80s fx guru around. A story that made we want to watch every zombie film I possibly could. Good or Bad, and there’s a lot of bad out there. But there’s also a lot of good. So much good.

Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) is one of those good zombie films. I saw a midnight screening with my dad at that same repertory cinema.6 This was Romero’s third DEAD film and took place on a military base. It introduced the concept of the military studying, training, and weaponizing the living dead. It also has one of the freakiest scenes involving hands and walls that still rattles me to this day. It has a stomach churning scene involving a ripped stomach. It’s wonderful, largely in part to once again utilizing Savini’s talents, as well as Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger-- who years later brought THE WALKING DEAD to your homes. Romero’s legacy still felt to this day.

That being said, Romero’s legacy was far more than just Zombie films, of course. He made a film, that’s rather timely now7, about a plague that made people crazy called... THE CRAZIES (1973).  There was another about a vampire wannabe named MARTIN (1978). A spectacular 80s horror anthology film series called CREEPSHOW8 (1982 & 1987). And a wonderfully bizarre film about a homicidal monkey named, appropriately enough, MONKEY SHINES (1988). I saw that last one before I even knew who he was but I never really forgot it. And those are just a few. 

He revisited his LIVING DEAD films with additional sequels in the 2000s and 2010s and was working on another up until his death. I was very lucky to briefly thank him during a convention, a year or so before he passed. Thanked him for the films. For everything.

He didn’t just impact me, of course. He impacted the people he worked with, who’ve gone on to impact other people in turn. He’s impacted the fans who got into horror because of him. He’s impacted the horror fans who weren’t even fans of his, because they most definitely liked something that was made by someone who was inspired by George Romero. 

You’ll see it with a DOTD’s actor cameo in a Rob Zombie film, or a gruesome creature effect in a micro-budget classic. You’ll see it in a modern classic like TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016) or while laughing your guts out at SHAWN OF THE DEAD (2004).

We aren’t just talking about movies, we’re talking books, music, and video games. 90s SIMPSON’s references. We’re talking art, tattoos, and comics. RPGs, Board games, Toys, and Funko Pops. Those Halloween decorations you keep in your home all year long . The clothes you wear. Your creepy and kooky badass goth aesthetic. A lot of what we love about horror today is thanks to George A. Romero.

He didn’t create zombies… but he certainly gave them life. He did more than that. He made horror important again.

I can’t do justice to George A. Romero with words. His work speaks for itself. So today, on what would have been his 81st Birthday, watch some Romero. If you’re out there quarantining, staying at home, under a curfew, and fearing the unfathomable, infectious dangers lurking outside your door… definitely watch Romero. 

This decade is off to a weird start, luckily we have Romero’s influence to get us through it.

Happy Birthday, George! And thank you for infecting me with horror.

-Theo Radomski, MOVIES ROT BRAINS

photo via Global News

---------

ENDNOTES FROM THE GRAVE

1. And you know what? I still call him Frankenstein. Because he’s essentially his son. That’s his creation. And Victor would have had the hubris to name his creation after himself if he had not abandoned that poor schlub. But I digress… 

2.  Actually, that’s exactly what I thought. And about 30 years later, Zombies are still a staple of modern video gaming, from Resident Evil and Doom still going strong after three decades, to Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption still having Zombie mods. To every friggin’ game out there that has any undead horror creeping about. The nine-year-old me is having a blast right now.

3. I had definitely caught on the subtext and themes by that point that I may have missed while watching the remake as a kid. Still a dumb kid, though.

4.  Thanks in part to HBO’s TALES FROM THE CRYPT reruns on FOX. Expect another nonsensical rambling piece on that show and the 50s comics that inspired it sometime in the future.

5.  And that opened the doorway into Giallo, Fulci, and a whole slew of Italian Exploitation and American Slasher films and that’s a whole other long screed for another time.

6.  My dad was another reason I love this genre. He loved horror movies. I still hear his voice in my head saying, “Ooooh, It’s a Scary Movie!” in his German accent.

7.  Actually, aren’t they all?

8.  Which has also had a revival in the form of Shudder’s excellent new CREEPSHOW anthology series made by Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD Alumni Greg Nicotero! See how it’s all connected?

[colony22graphics]

            ❝Shine on,                  diamond.❞

◆ member since: nov. 22, 2013 ◆ longest character: alexander donovan ◆

@alexander-donovan, Well, here we go. 

Rory, there's no way on earth I could possibly describe what you've done for this community. Aside from making it all in the first place, constructing the post-apocalyptic sandbox we all hold so dear, you also pay attention to how it's executed---from basic principles of operation and how we ought to respect each other as players, down to the smallest, weirdest headcanon. It matters to you---which I think is probably the best way to summarize your energy and wisdom, the Rory-ness of it all: 

Things matter. People matter. Caring matters. 

In a world where we're pretty damn used to moving from one diversion to the next at a moment's notice, you make something that's absolutely set apart by saying, resolutely and passionately, that what we do here really matters.

And you're right, to think that. If you need any further proof that you---Rory---matter, you can look at me writing this damn letter (and swearing every three sentences, sorry). But you in your extremely Ro way, said hey, six years fucking matters, and so do all the people we play with, so let’s get mushy on the main and tell them. And I can tell you to your face you're right and this was a stellar idea because... I do that now. Because of your influence, I'm a better person, one who does actually try and tell people what I think. 

You challenge people to care, and to translate their caring into something others can recognize, and reciprocate. You’re never afraid to point out the importance of saying things and leaving a meaningful mark, becoming an active part of our community instead of staying in our own heads (as introverts on the internet are prone to doing).

You're also a hell of a writer, which is inspirational in itself, and I can’t leave that out of it. Your dedication to your characters, to their motivations and struggles, shines through in every post you make, and you don't let fear or insecurity take root or stop you from doing what you love. You know it's not about achieving perfection, but about collaboration and growth. The way we write is an exercise in discipline and embracing the joys of language, it's not meant to be fine art (though a lot of the stuff you come up with off the cuff blurs the line between the two on a regular basis.) It's really very rude how talented you are. 

I won't talk too much more about you and me personally because you already know it pretty well, but I will mention that when I offered to help out with tech stuff, you don't even know how impossible being a full mod felt for me, at the time. I'd just come out of some rough experiences and was ready to never do that again. But over the years, you gave me steps that I could take only when I felt comfortable, and let me accept only the responsibility that I thought I could manage (though you always told me you knew I was more than capable of handling it). In a very real way, with your patience and understanding, you gave me back my confidence, and my willingness to be vulnerable. That's something I won't ever forget.  

You have my respect and my friendship, always.

And dear lord, if Tumblr has managed not to self-destruct in the next five or ten years, I really hope we're still around doing this shit. No place I'd rather be.

Love you, Ro.

<3 Lottie.

(Oh, by the way, I took the liberty of adding something else, under the cut. I knew that I would never be able to cover everything, and that I’d run out of words, so I turned to others to fill in the gaps and maybe it’ll help convey it all a little more properly. Many thanks to everyone.)  ❤

         —-     Happy Colony 6th Anniversary      —-

     RO, YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE GIFT. I’m incredibly grateful all those years ago I saw that Bones bio and decided to join this crazy little family because that is exactly what you have created with the Colony: You have made a family. You have always been a pleasure to write with, a hard-working and careful admin, and now this second go-round I'm happy to call you a good friend. I wanted to mirror your sentiment on my anniversary post, it is amazing how time rewards our patience with this second meeting! I owe you a very real debt because thanks to this group when a friend let me down whilst I was on a different goddamn continent, thanks to you, I found Cassie there to help me out! The group is an extension of you: thoughtful, kind, emotional, and funny as hell.                                                                                                             - Nicola

     Rory, your dedication to the Colony (and previously Belvedere) astounds me every day. Writing with you is an absolute joy, thank you for all that you do for us!!                                                                                                             - Cassie

     RO HOLY COW!! It's insane to think of being part of something so wonderful for so long, I can't imagine how proud you must be to call this place home. I absolutely love writing with every character I've gotten to interact with, you approach your characters and this RPG with such a passion, it's always made getting to be part of it all the more special to me! To many years to come!                                                                                                              - Molly

     The things I admire most about you are your kindness, your compassion, your understanding and the way you always make the best of a situation. You've been nothing but welcoming and kind to me since I've had the privilege of joining this insanely talented and incredible group, and every day I am in awe of the love and care and detail you pour into the rpg. You have been so supportive over these past few months, every day I consider myself insanely lucky to have met you. I adore you and I'm so happy for you that you've come so far in your own personal journey, you truly do deserve all the happiness in the world.                                                                                                             - Lou

     Ro, you’re an absolutely wonderful mod and person. I’ve never met a more dedicated and creative mod in all my years on this website. You’re an astounding writer and creator who leaves me wanting to be better. You’re a wonderful person to write with and an even better friend. I love you and all the work you do for everyone in this group. Thank you for creating this fantastic place and starting this wonderful family.                                                                                                              - Lee

     Thanks for always being so open and welcoming! It's been such a blast writing with you.                                                                                                             - Ren

     Your commitment to this game and its players is absolutely next level, and it shines through in literally everything you do for us. I haven’t felt so at home and so comfortable in an RP in such a long time, possibly ever, and I know so much of that has to do with the amazing environment (both IC and OOC) you’ve spent such a long time painstakingly and lovingly cultivating. This RP wouldn't be the incredible space it is without such an incredible and dedicated team of mods. I hope you know how much I appreciate all you do, and how much I flippin' love ya!                                                                                                              - Alex

     Rory, you're a perfect admin and an amazing friend! You've always made me feel so welcome here, from day one, and my heart feels warm and fuzzy when I think of you. I utterly adore all your characters and your writing is just brilliant, it's always so much fun to brainstorm and write and plot with you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!                                                                                                              - Ellie

     When an rp has a lifespan of not just a year or two, but SIX FREAKIN YEARS, you must look to your leader. Ships don’t sail without a captain, and you have been the most loyal, loving, and adventurous captain to your crew. Congratulations on this amazing accomplishment, love. xoxo.                                                                                                              - Amy

     Rory, I just wanted to thank you for how welcome you've made me feel since I joined the group. It takes a special person to be an admin (dedicated, patient, and just a little bit weird), and the six years you've been running this group is a testament to how well you do it. You've got incredible creativity and passion, and I know I'm not the only one that feels so lucky to write with you in this world you've built. Congratulations on six years! Here's to many more.                                                                                                             - Nick

     RORUUUUU. I literally have no idea where my life would be now if I'd never met you. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you inspire me to be braver and stronger and more self-loving. Thank you for being my friend even after all these years.                                                                                                             - Mika

I don’t think I can concisely put into words how much you mean to me, but I’ll try: we first met in 2012 and through all these years you’ve continually inspired me with your talent and hard work. You’re more than just an incredible friend, you’re an ICONIC leader that has the determination and talent to keep this group running for six amazing years (with the help of your equally talented and wonderful co-mod, naturally, wink wonk). The Colony is a family to me, and I think to all of us, even before it’s a writing group. It couldn’t be what it is today without someone as tirelessly understanding and creative at its helm. You’re an absolute gift, you’ve been there for me through thick and thin, and I’m grateful every day that I get to call you a friend.                                                                                                             - Maddie

     Ro, you have been so kind and amazing since day one! You have this astonishing energy and a kindness that honestly makes the colony feel like another home. You’re such a phenomenal writer, and have made this rp a community like no other. I can’t quite put into words how much I appreciate you, and how much effort you put into everything you do. You’re so talented and I feel incredibly lucky to say I’m a part of this community. Thank you for being you. xxx.                                                                                                             - El

     The Colony has been a living, breathing world in which to create, and the key piece - creativity - is embedded in your DNA. You aren't just an enthusiastic mod. In some aspects you are the Col. I know you want everyone to feel included and allowed to be inspired by the writing of others rather than hemmed in by rules and egos so many other groups have. Thank you for throwing all your characters at me when one of mine has some wild scheme. I've said before your writing is cinematic in its expression and it always challenges me to want to (try to) write on a higher level. I'm grateful to have you as a sounding board when I get stuck in the mud of my own self-doubt with writing. Thank you for just being a friend as well and letting me ramble too. It is impossible to sum up this wildest of rides out of all my writing adventures so, much love, as always. xx.                                                                                                             - Cat

[rpgmgames]

April’s Featured Game: Magical Disaster X

DEVELOPER(S): Atlas ENGINE: RPG Maker VX Ace GENRE: Comedy, Side scroller, RPG WARNINGS: Strong Language SUMMARY: Magical Disaster X is a zany comedic romp that has you control a posse of awful magical girls as they cruise through a secret hideout of hideously incompetent villains.

Play the IGMC version of the game here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Heya I'm Atlas aka Melon Kid, making games is a serious passion of mine and I hope to stick with it for the long run, otherwise I occasionally do other junk like animation or slowly decompose in my chair as I disassociate from reality and become one with nothing, oh and I've been trying to get into art lately too.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Atlas: I've always wanted to make a project that was outrageous and fun, but for a while I've never really had a proper vessel for it. But in the past year or so, I began recognizing magical girls as a seriously underappreciated genre in video games and I thought the two were a match made in heaven!

How long did you work on your project? *Atlas: I began concepting some stuff not terribly long ago but it was sitting on the backburner until the IGMC rolled around at the end of the year in 2018. The time limit for that contest was one month, so naturally I put it together in roughly a month too.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Atlas: Oh yeah, a for sure influence is Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, some people have actually picked up on that on their own which was pretty surprising to me - and there's no way I can't mention Space Patrol Luluco which so excellently captures the feelings I want to put into the game. Both of them are Trigger animes. . . coincidence? :3c

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Atlas: BOY HOWDY-- okay so basically, the first half of the contest was a disaster because I somehow had to condense all of the cool things I wanted to do in the frame of a one hour game. I literally spent the first two weeks just scrapping story ideas over and over because I just couldn't be content with anything, halfway into the contest I had virtually nothing to show for it. At some point with a little encouragement from a friend I just stuck with my best idea at the time and rolled with it and. . . it turned out not so terrible, but man was my brain on fire the whole time from overthinking so much. To make it worse, the artist who worked with me last year (Inazuma / Golden Mimic) was suddenly out of commission and wasn't sure if he could participate or not. It wasn't until the last stretches that I was able to scramble together and get some friends on board for the project to try and make up for all the lost time. Remember how I said I made the game in a month? Yeah that was a lie, this flaming pile of wreckage was cobbled together in just a few weeks of massive crunch, god bless you Floramy.

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Atlas: The initial concept differs from the IGMC project which differs from the current iteration so yeah. It definitely changed over time. For the IGMC game, pretty much all of the features, story ideas, and characters were gutted to make space for a compact 1-hour experience that could best convey everything I wanted to do with the game. It's like the core concept on crack, because I wanted to squeeze in as much fun content as I could in that short amount of time.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Atlas: At first it was just me and my artist Inazuma who I worked with last year, and then over the course of development it became me and @f-loramy, a very cool and handsome friend B^). And I definitely got a lot of support from other friends as well!

What was the best part of developing the game? *Atlas: I think the best part of development for me is seeing characters come to life. Story is such an integral part of everything I make and I love writing dialogue so when I feel like I get those interactions to click, it's very satisfying.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Atlas: I do play other RPG Maker games from time to time but just as a hobby, I've seen some impressive things done with the engine but a lot of the time I'm not too interested in the spectacle or fancy features.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Atlas: Hesperos is definitely my favorite character. She's a blast to write for, she acts like a sailor-mouthed idiot and constantly does REALLY stupid things, but at the same time she's actually very observant and is a lot more soft-hearted than she'd have you believe.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Atlas: I don't think I could've done anything differently realistically, but I do wish I'd gotten it together sooner so I didn't have to finish the game last minute!

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Atlas: Yeah!!! Magical Disaster X is just a teeny slice of a giant five layer cake, I have so many things planned for it when I start on the full version of the game!

With your current project, what do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Atlas: There's nothing more I love than to watch let's plays or streams of the games I make and seeing people enjoy them. It's a very fulfilling experience that reassures me that folks out there really do enjoy what I put out.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Atlas: I do want to go commercial and that aspect is honestly pretty daunting. I can easily imagine commission costs ramping up fast so I'm not gonna lie that has me sweating a little as a poor person. . .

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Atlas: This is going to be pretty unusual advice since most people will tell you to start with small projects, but here's what I have to say: Get to know the engine for sure, BUT, when you start working on a game for real, make sure you LOVE the concept or world. Something that you know for sure you'll want to come back to even if you have to sideline it for a while. See, I had this problem in the earlier phases of developing games, and that was to jump into projects where I thought "hey this is a cool idea! I'd like to do this!" But then it happened again, and I pushed the previous project behind me figuring I can work on two at once. And then it happened again, and again, and I was just shelving projects and ideas left and right. The one time I actually committed to one of these ideas, it sucked hard because I initially wanted it to be a smaller project but I started concepting a ton of cool stuff for it and expanded the universe and it got the point where I realized, I have all this sweet content but the core of the game was one I wasn't like super passionate about. It collapsed under the weight of its own feature creep and I gave up on it entirely - I had no intention of putting that much time and effort into a game I know I wasn't going to really love. That's why I've been curating my ideas WAY more carefully lately and been all the better for it. Maybe this won't apply to everyone, but for those that it does. . . you already know who you are ;j

Question from last month's featured dev @abigailfortune: Is there a certain theme or a topic you would like to explore in a game one day? *Atlas: Too many to count! Here's a funny story, my college English professor once told me that every story ought to have a message of some kind and I scoffed at the idea like "huh? That's dumb, it can just be something meaningless and fun." Which I still hold to be true, however, as I've gotten more and more serious about making games I've come to realize that I've wanted to include strong underlying messages in each and every one. Social and economic injustices, mental health, love and abuse - these are things I think about all the time and I feel somewhere in my heart that it's important to connect with people and let them know they're not alone, or to bring awareness to things they might not have even considered before. The point where a story, no matter how fantastical, really becomes 'real' is when it speaks to your audience on this deeper level and that's something I want to strive for all the time.

We mods would like to thank Atlas for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Magical Disaster X if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[pchlarz]

Minecraft could have such a cool lore and game mechanics

So I played minecraft since I was like 13 or something, when the thing was still in early beta. I still play it, but after half an hour tops I just lose interest and quit. The game isn’t challenging, the world seems empty and npc and animals like wind up toys than anything else. I know minecraft is a canvas you have to paint on, but I was always more into the idea of Minecraft as a world you have to tame and grow into. There are mods that do that, like rlcraft (which im not gonna play cause the lycanite mobs don’t fit into the games art style and ice and fire mobs are straight up unfair). And you know, since I have a script, dissertation, stop motion animation to do this semester for my Filmmaking Uni, I’ve been thinking about minecraft a lot. Procrastination, am I right my dudes?

I have no idea how to make mods, I can barely use Java to install Optifine for crying out loud, but I can write a couple hundred words post on this hellsite that no ones gonna read, cause it’s literally my first post, and no one can stop me! Also maybe somebody’s gonna get inspired and make it. No need to credit me, just let me play it XD

The World and Lore, I guess

So, let’s get one thing straight... Is the Minecraft world post apo? Like let’s be real for a second. The player is the only human specimen in the entire world. There are villigers that are vaguely humanoid, but they are definately “The other” some ofshoot of the human race than actual human beings. Zombies and skeletons seem to share the player’s anatomy but they’re undead, therefore dead, therefore had to be alive at some point. So yeah, let’s work with that! 

Let’s say that in a distant future, like distant enough for new subspecies of homo sapiens had time to evolve with enough pressure. The human world died after they opened the portal to the End. This allowed magic to seap into the world, boosting the technology but also corrupting people it cam across with. Like why is the Ender Dragon dropping more exp than your PC is able to handle? Cause she’s the source of all magic! Why do monsters drop it? Cause it’s what reanimated/mutated them. So according to this, fucking with the eldritch magic balls is what created the zombie virus, destroying the human race. Also the End is the moon. Like not our moon. Opening the portal didn’t just link the worlds together, it straight up teleported the End into the earth orbit, destroying the native moon and replacing it. And that’s why the monster’s only come up night, cause that’s when the End holds the most influence over the overworld. 

But what about the villigers? Just descendents of humans who have survived the apocalypse. Some adopted peaceful agrocultural approach to survive, sharing and caring and being lovely anarchocommunist communities. The other ones living according to the “Survival of the Fittest” evolving into the illigers. But that’s only the two races that are already in the game. Since it’s supposed to be a mod adding shit, lets get some new races! The dwarves have been talked about by the developers so let’s add them. Shorter and stockier than humans, with glowing eyes and not so much beards as just thick fur on their bodies. The underground is cold after all. Also descended from humans, this time those that had enough brains to burrow themselves underground.They just chill in caves, building something like big ant colonies. You could trade with them just like villigers, although instead of emeralds they’d want silver (We need like shitload of new ores, my good people). Oh, and they wouldn’t be pacifist like villigers, if you piss them off, they will mine you to pieces. You could also find them in random caves mining their own business (XD) and by business i mean resources you could mine yourself. And so if you’re a bellend, you could straight up murder them and grab their stuff and have your ores left unmolested. Or you could pay them off to share the loot, giving you a temporary partner with basically x ray vision, leading you to more ores, than you’d find yourself. But at the end of the day, you’d be obligated to split what you found 50/50, meaning that you could get more stuff than on your own, or less, depending on your in real life luck. Boom, reasons for morals. 

I’d like to see a basic faction system, based on which aspect of the game the player finds most appealing. If you’re the kind of a peaceful player who just wants to build and farm, the villigers are your people. They’d gladly take you in if you build, farm and trade for them. If you’re into conquest and looting Pilligers could use your skill to cut some Villigers throats. And if you want mining and exploration, The dwarves wll take you in. Ofcourse you can just be your own person and solo the entire thing, and no one will nag you. 

Character Customination and Skills

I want roleplay, man. Skins are cool but what if on one save I’m the peaceful farmer, developing my village and chilling with my bros, but on other I’m the fucking antichrist, burning them to the ground and taking what I want? Do I just swap my skins depending on what world i’m gonna play today? I quess I could, but that’d be hardly graceful. So let’s just put proper character creation into the game, with ethnicity, hair models and all that other bling. Ideally you’d also be able to paint on your characters if you want scars or tatoos or just dont want to look human. Clothing on the other hand would be a seperate system linked to the survival system. But more about the clothing system later. 

Also since Minecraft is getting slack for becoming more of an RPG when it got its full release, lets embrace that. I’d split them to Gathering, Combat and Crafting skills.Gathering would include your tool proficiency, allowing you to skip enchanting altogether while still getting some upgrade for your tools. Also chances for more resource drops or just getting new utilities from the tools. Any movement releated skills should also be there for simplicity sake. Combat is self explanatory, if we add different weapons types, than there has to be some incentive for specialization. Some skills for combat overall wouldn’t go unwelcome. Dodging, parry without a shield, throwing various weapons and stuff like that. Crafting would be for the new weapon customization, enchanting (including proper spell casting wands) and alchemy. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with that. 

Custom Tools, Weapons and Armor

Doesn’t it bug you that on multiplayer server everyone just walks around in enchanted diamond eq, throwing all sense of individuality out of the window. Do you like the idea of roleplaying as a cave men the entire game, but the stone sword doesn’t really give you that opportunity? Well let’s do something about it. Instead of vertical tool and weapon progression let’s do it horizontally. Lets take a bit more realistic approach to crafting. Stone tools have to knapped and assembled, bronze has to be casted, iron hammered into shape and wood carved. All types of materials have their drawbacks. Knapping tools would just need you to pick a stone in your offhand and the crafting material of your choice in your main and right click. And from there you get the list of shapes you can knap your stone into. And after choosing the tool/weapon type of your liking you knap it again to customize the shape more. Do you want your hatchet to look like a primitive piece of sharp rock or a skillfully crafted tomahawk? Casts for soft metals and wooden objects would be made in the same way, just with a carwing knife instead of stone and wax or wood for the crafting material. Than just put your cast into clay to get a mold. Fire the mold, craft a crucible and pour the molten metal into the mold. Change the anvil from an enchanting tool into a proper workbench for your hard metals. Then craft some handles, guards or accesories and put them all together in your crafting window. Different materials would have different pros and cons. Stone tools have low durability but don’t have any wear mechanic. Wood rots, Soft metals can bend and have to be straightened and hard metals rust and have to be cleaned. Also no tool progression. What you can mine depends on your mining level. Right now you can easily get diamond on yout first day if you mine deep enough. Locking it over a skill tree would pace the games more high tier materials more naturally. Also diamonds are classed as knapped material. No diamond swords for you, but a diamond macuhuitl is totally cool. Just craft a wooden sword of your choice and add some diamond blades in the crafting. 

Armor would be split into classes, Light, Medium and Plate. You can’t make armor out of stone (so no diamond armor either, but you could encrust your other armor with it) but you can make wooden plate. Just for the heck of it. Different armor classes would affect your stamina meter differently. 

Guns!!!

I’m not a gun nut, but hey we have gunpowder in the game. Let’s add guns. But just the flintlock ones, atleast the ones made by the player. They could be made out of anything even stone, just for the heck of it. They would be crafted like any other weapon. But shooting them would be expensive with all the gunpowder you’d have to loot from creepers (I like the idea of dead creepers burning away, giving you only a short window to loot them) or craft from sulfur, a new rare resource. Still they’d pack quite a punch and make hella noise, bringing all the monsters to you. Also long reload time, they’re flintlock after all. 

Also lets adhere to an old fantasy trope and make them unenchantable. Their op as they are. 

Animals and Looting 

Just add more animals. Add more predators, so the day isn’t just a cake walk. Add predators hunting. Pray running from a player simply approaching. Give me a run for my food. Animals reproducing on their own. If you want to tame livestock or pets than you better hope for a rare domesticated kind of animals or trap and break them enough for them to let them eat from your hand. 

And what about hunting. If you manage to kill an animal, it doesn’t just disappear and live porkshops in the cloud of smoke. Every killed entity just turns into a corpse that you have to manually loot, while holding a sharp weapon (for simplicity sake). All of them drop their hide (acting kinda like armor with its own durability, on which depends how much letter you’ll get from it, thus encouraging clean one hit kills), a lot more meat (so you don’t have to slaughter an entire herd just to have something to eat) and bones. Also food would spoil now, to discourage hoarding it. But there would be workarounds like salting it or drying it for jerky. 

Various animal hides could act as trophies (if you’re a cunt) or for crafting special clothing items or beds (since proper wool would be much harder to come by now). 

Monsters and the Night

Same deal as in the main game. Mostly undead with some mutated mobs like creepers and phantoms. The only hostile mob I’d add would be Vampires, who would follow the player and try to score a hit while you’re unaware. Of course they’d be rather rare. Enderman on the other hand... Let’s raise them to the mini boss standard. When they were announced I was hyped, that they’ll be a proper horror mob that you could be genuinely terryfied of. But no, they just vibin’ most of the time. So let’s change them. Since in the new lore the undead are humans corrupted by magic, enderman should be the remnents of the humans who have gone and got trapped in the End, turned into the Dragons army. And now their job is to stalk you and kill you. You still have to look at them for them to turn hostile, but now they don’t care if you only looked at them from the distance. If they can see you and you can see them, they attack. Give them proper range. Let them teleport behind you to score a hit. Put blocks in your way if you try to run. They could pick you up and teleport with you next to ledges (they shouldn’t just be able to throw you over the edge, let’s give players a fighting chance). They should also steal more valuable blocks than just dirt. Let them target specifically blocks placed by the player, allowing them to pick holes in your defenses for other mobs to get to your house. 

The night itself would change. For the first couple nights there should be no monsters. The rise of the undead according to the new lore is the Dragon learning about the new human in the world trying to slow them down from discovering the End portal. But for the first few nights it would be unaware of your existance, letting you to get comfortable. But when the first full moon hits, The dragon saw you and she will let you know she sees. And from then on, every night the undead horde will rise to haunt you, only resting during the eclipse (since the dragon can’t see). On the other hand the full moon would be equivalent to the blood moon from terraria.  With mobs more aggressive, able to break your doors and forcing you to defend yourself. Also you wouldn’t be able to sleep during the full moon. If you manage to fall asleep, you wake up dead with mobs spawned all over your house. Also the mobs don’t burn in the sunlight. When the night ends, they just disapear like Enderman. 

The mobs right now spawn only on active chunks, but let’s add a lore reason for it. They’re targeting you. This is why going to a village means bringing the horde to them. And if you don’t fight or they kill to many, the viligers will add two and twoo together, banishing you from their dwelling. The illigers will just turn hostile. The dwarves won’t mind since the undead are plentiful underground anyway. 

Also give me my Overworld Dragons. Like proper fire breathing ones. Kinda like the ones from Ice and Fire but actually managable and not the size of goddamn school. 

Survival Mechanics

Let’s add thirst. You can’t just drink any water ofcourse, so while food means you have to scavenge or hunt, thirst encourages you to either find drinkable streams or distill the water. Eventually just drink juices or booze. Yeah, let’s add booze. Just for fun, with all the stuff i’d want to add the game wouldn’t be kid friendly anyway. 

You have to sleep now. Unslept nights cut your stamina meter by 25% while also bringing the phantoms to you. You can sleep without a bed, but you’re risking temperature debuffs and less stamina regen. 

Temperature. With adding seasons and all the clothing option it seems reasonable (also i loved it in don’t starve). To not make the HUD to cluttered I’d just display the temperature on your heart meter, having them freeze over for cold and dry out for hot. Dried and frozen hearts wouldn’t be included in your hp pool, meaning that temperature makes you weaker. You could fight the temperature with proper clothing, fire or ice. Although the hot temperatures would be more forgiving, just making you lose water faster and being managable with shadow from blocks. 

Clothes would have their own slots, be made in their crafting table and heavily customizable like banners and letter armor, giving proper use for all the dyes we have. They could also be drawn on like player skins. You could also wear some of them on armor, allowing for further character customization. They’d have their own durability, but be easily repairable. Aside from temperature protection they would be mostly cosmetic and if you don’t like the idea of having to wear a coat in the winter, just enchant your shorts with some frost protection. 

Hunger would be overhauled slightly, letting you to get fat from food. But just like in real life FAT IS YOUR FRIEND (just you now, moderate amounts). It let’s you absorb all foods value even with a full bar. Still to much of it will slow you down and make your stamina bar go down faster. Oh and it’s no longer your stamina bar, that’s a seperate thing now, indicated by a small lighting bolt icon above your exp level. Still a full food and water bar is nessecary for healing. 

Enchanting

Bookshelves no longer make the enchantments stronger. Atleast not the decorative ones. Instead you have to enchant books on your own hoping for the “Arcane Knowladge” enchantment, which can’t be put on anything but, if you put a book with it in the bookshelf it will raise the enchantment cap. So does leveling your enchanting skill, as well as allowing you to see what enchant you’re putting on your stuff, as you grow more fluent in the language of magic. Enchanting would also be more powerfull in the night, as that’s when the End - The birthplace of magic is the strongest. This also means that enchanting during the full moon would create the most powerful enchantments, if you can manage to enchant while the undead hordes attack. And they will try to get to you as an active enchanting table is drawing them closer. 

Different materials have different enchantibility. Pracious metals are overall more conductive, while obsydian might make fire enchantments stronger. This would come into play mostly when crafting staffs!

While Guns are unenchantable, Staffs are just weak pole weapons without magic. But enchanting them let’s you pick a spell for them, like lightinig bolt, healing, stuff like that. One staff can hold only one enchantment and casting spells uses exp points meaning that you’d need quite a big pool to be able to just be a mage. While staffs are two-handed you can also make wands to cast with your offhand. Ofcourse they’d be less powerful to balance things out. 

As the Anvil is now a crafting station, the Arcane Anvil would take it’s place made from obsidian and golden bars. While we’re at it lets also think about Arcane Chests to store your exp. 

Player Death

Why can the player just live after death? Well depends on difficulty. If you want to lose your stuff but keep the skills, it’s because the last humans put a spell on you allowing you to be uneffected by the corruption and also be linked into the world, cursing you to wake up from dying in the last place you slept, making you think if your death was just a dream. If you want a more hardcore experience then it’s because they cast a spell of reincarnation on you, so you don’t come back as the exact same person, having to work upon the achievements of your predessecors (I have no idea how to write that, I’m polish okay?). And if you just want straight up hardcore, they sent you to the future, with only one chance to make things right. Applies to the multiplayer, there’s just more of you that have been cursed.

If you find your dead body you can loot it. But on the reincarnation difficulty all the food, potions, weapons and armor you had will have long rot away. A lot time passed afterall. 

The Stronghold and the End

So if you actually read so far, I love you and congratulations. I’m writing this while I’m high, so it probably doesn’t make much sense. Still, thanks! 

So... Strongholds suck. Let’s get rid of them. Instead let’s put the End Portal in a new rare biome. The Ruins! They would be a large decimated city from before the apocalypse, now overtaken by vegetation with undead present even in the daylight. The magic is right in the heart of the city after all. The undead are much more powerfull here, some even having modern weaponry like assult rifles. They can be looted, but they’re all falling apart and you can’t craft them. But you could repair them and use them. They’d be end game unenchantable gear. Enderman also stalk the city, so you’d have to be prepered for them. You still find the city with the eyes of ender, but this time crafted with a compas and obsidian to create the Ender Compass, cause fuck throwing balls into the air. The End Portal is in the heart of the city in the special dungeon called the Crumbling Facility. It’d be a long parkour challange with you having to reach the top while also fighting for your life. “But Pchlarz”, I hear you saying, “You could just build across or up, this is Minecraft”. Well no, cause the building would be made from gravity affected blocks, meaning that if you do, the whole thing falls apart. As for building up, try to do that while being shot from every direction. What if the tower falls? Well, the End Portal awakes spawning more monsters and moving to the height limit. So now you would have to build straight up, while the Enderman teleport to your position and try to throw you off. But if you get there, the Portal is your to enter. 

And so you do. Before you stands a temple build in the center of the New Moon. The towers are still there and the Dragon still heals from them. The temple is built from blocks the Enderman took from you (not just them ofc) You destroy the crystal and fight the dragon. It picks you up, throws you around, breathes Black fire (purple is ugly, sorry guys). You chip at its health and finally you bring it to half. And thats when the dragon falls into the temple with broken wings. Now it’s a ground battle. Now you have cover, but the temple is destructable. It’s blocks affected by gravity. Finally you kill the dragon. It imbues you with its magic and drops it’s heart. Still beating, Scarlett and glowing. The Enderman stand around you, their eyes no longer white (yeah i dont like purple), but now inteligent with pupils. They seem thankful. You’ve won. The end stone around you starts crumbling, falling into the void. And there’s no way back home. You start to accept your fate. You’ve sacraficed yourself to end the Undead horde’s reign. And thats when an Enderman takes you by the hand. You walk to the edge of the crumbling world and gaze into the blue globe staring at you from the abyss. It’s the Earth. But you wouldn’t survive the impact. Not from space. That’s when you see the Enderman holding something, with his hand stretched out to you. He’s holding a pair of wings. The Elytra. You put them on, say goodbyes to the newly freed Enderman and dive into the world beneath you, watching as the tall figures behind you die with their dying world. 

You crush into the earth. With half a heart you drag yourself to safety. The Ender compass now points the way to your bed. You walk. Victorious. 

Endgame

So you’ve beat the game. What’s now? Well the Enderman are no longer hostile. And the dragon heart? You can put it into your alchemy station and turn it into the potion of resurection. While the zombie villigers could be cured with a golden apple and the potion of weakness, the human zombies need this one. The skeletons are to far gone, but zombies and vampires can be turned back. The Dragons Heart can never be used, but if you lose it, well it sucks to be you hero. 

With cured humans you can create a village and start rebuilding. You can have relationships with them, turn them into companions and even have children with them (i like stardew valley okay). And with their numbers growing it’s up to you if you will live in peace with new races populating the world or reestablish the human reign on earth. 

Okay this took me like three hours and the weed is wearing off. I think way to much about minecraft, maaan. Still hope you like it. And make this mod for me. I’d be grateful. 

[statsmains]

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Blizzard Diablo 2 Patch Windows 10

Two years ago, Blizzard announced its intention to release a series of remastered classic games, and so far, the company is making good on that promise. StarCraft Remastered launched as a solid, faithful recreation in August 2017, while Blizzard is still currently working on World of WarCraft Classic and WarCraft III: Reforged.

That leaves one classic-minded Blizzard fanbase in the cold: the Diablo fans. These are the fans who, to some measure, let Blizzard have it after seeing the unveil of smartphone-only 'freemium' game Diablo Immortal in place of any 'Diablo IV' news at BlizzCon 2018. Which is to say: the word 'Diablo' is a touchy one as of late.

Diablo ® II: Lord of Destruction ® is being downloaded! If your download didn't start, try again. How to download and install Diablo II. Help us improve. Please rate the following from a scale of 1 to 5 stars. The most recent example is the fact that the company wants the player's input on the next patch for the historical Diablo II RPG title, which is still being played today by quite a lot of fans.

Which brings us to today's seriously surprising news: Blizzard has just put Diablo 1 on sale digitally, a first for that 1996 game, with no prior announcement. It's not a remaster, per se, but it does come with some quality-of-life updates and is Blizzard's first DRM-free game launch in years.

What's more, Blizzard has handed the game's keys to a completely different storefront: GOG.com. This famously DRM-free marketplace is run by CD Projekt Group, the Polish company that also owns game developer CD Projekt Red (The Witcher). You'll have to go to GOG, not the Blizzard Launcher app, to purchase and download Diablo 1 (for $10, right here). Once you download the files, designed for Windows PCs, that's it—no online check-ins or CD keys required. All of that is a first for a Blizzard game sold as a digital download.

And it won't be the last. GOG has already announced that it will follow this Diablo launch with future re-releases of the first two WarCraft RTS games' original files.

We received this news roughly a week ago, and we're still doing that cartoon-like thing of shaking our heads rapidly, then rubbing our eyes, looking up, and saying, 'huuuuuh?' But seriously, this out-of-nowhere release, mixed with an out-of-nowhere partnership, is real—and we've tested the results.

Diablo, meet “DX”

GOG's bundle comes packed with two versions of Diablo 1. The first is a 'vanilla' version, which runs on the game's 1.09b codebase with only one noticeable tweak: a scaling fix to ensure that the game renders at its original 4:3 screen ratio, no matter your display size (even though it otherwise transforms your screen in a way that resizes background windows in Windows 10). In comparison, trying to run the game via a mix of the original CD-ROM and official patch files can lead to a stretchy screen, should you not install any third-party mods.

The second included version is a DirectX-fueled build of the game, whose extra tweaks were built entirely in-house by GOG. Among these are support for a variety of resolutions and refresh rates, a 'borderless window' option, a v-sync toggle, a gamma slider, and a pair of visual filters: anisotropic filtering up to 16x and anti-aliasing up to 8x MSAA.

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If a smeary-looking Diablo 1 experience sounds good to you, go ahead and toggle that MSAA. But purists will appreciate another option in the menus: 'integer scaling,' which guarantees that the game's original pixels map to a 1:1 ratio, in all of their pixellated, 16-bit color-depth glory. In GOG's 'DX' version of Diablo 1, the anti-aliased version does feel slightly smoother in motion, but the game's art style and animations were never meant to be covered in pixel-obscuring Vaseline. Thus, make sure to enable integer scaling.

Should you wish to connect to online friends in the game's original Battle.net implementation, that requires running the vanilla build... and opening up some ports. You'll need to go through Windows menus and your router's settings table to open ports (specifically, 6112-6119, both TCP and UDP) before you can matchmake with friends in the game's ancient Battle.net chat-lobby system.

I matchmade with another tester to confirm that, once those ports are opened, you can expect perfectly solid Diablo-over-IP performance, along with some glitches that seem era-appropriate. In particular, my tester and I each used items in our inventory, only to find (on a very rare occasion) that their effect hadn't kicked in, yet we'd lost the item. Also, as the above gallery shows, the Battle.net interface of old is veeeery rudimentary. Gosh, it still includes 'age,' 'sex,' and 'location' in its profile pages. The Internet-in-1996 jokes write themselves.

Punch a big hole in your firewall?

Blizzard Diablo 2 Patch Windows 10.12

As for the security of playing this version of Diablo online via Battle.net, let me hand the proverbial mic to my Ars Technica colleague and Windows expert Peter Bright, who wrote the following portion:

Diablo 2 Free Download For Windows 10

No rose-tinted glasses required

Beyond that heavy-duty caveat, it's classic Diablo, warts and all. This is 1996 we're talking about, and back then, online play didn't include niceties like the ability to see other co-op players on your mini-map. Meanwhile, 1996's single-player campaigns didn't automatically save their progress before you got your butt kicked on only the second floor of the dungeon.

Blizzard North got a ton of stuff right in its first stab at the action-RPG genre, and the result is a game that, even at its most archaic, makes it very easy to get sucked into an all-night, dungeon-delving click-fest.

And you don't need rose-tinted glasses to respect how well much of Diablo 1 has aged. Its pixel art includes gleefully evil designs and moody, randomly generated levels, boosted with rudimentary lighting effects, while the sound design is unbelievably good. This soundtrack is an incredible combination of haunting melodies and crazy, atmospheric sound effects, and the voiced, snarling enemies all sound enjoyably insane.

But your heroes' animation suite is painfully rigid, which makes the basic, constant action of clicking around for combat and loot a bit of a nightmare once you know how much better that action can feel. Honestly, after tooling around in this re-released version of Diablo 1 for a couple of hours (and realizing how many errant and imprecise clicks I burnt through along the way), I got the urge to play Diablo II instead. Diablo II fixed pretty much every quibble from the first game while adding even more ridiculously awesome pixel art.

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Thanks to a 2016 Diablo II patch from Blizzard, that's relatively easy to do on modern Windows PCs. Blizzard's Web storefront sells CD keys for both D2 and its Lord of Destruction expansion pack ($10 each), and then you can download a standalone EXE for either/both. But that sequel has its own quality-of-life limitations on modern machines, including a lack of proper resolution scaling beyond 800x600.

'We were bummed'

Blizzard Diablo 2 Download

When asked for comment, GOG's representatives referred us to the company's press release on the matter—which only includes one statement from a GOG executive, merely reminding shoppers that Diablo 1 has ranked highly on GOG users' request charts for some time. The same press release quotes Blizzard VP Rob Bridenbecker: 'We were bummed that these iconic games weren't available to our players, so we're very happy to work with the crew at GOG.COM to rectify that.'

Thankfully, Blizzard had more direct answers to our questions, including one biggie: why partner with GOG, as opposed to launching classic games on the Blizzard Launcher?

'In order to have any (software) on the Blizzard launcher, it must be connected to the modern Battle.net stack,' Blizzard Global PR Manager Sara Zaidi said to Ars in an email interview. 'Unfortunately, this means that some of our older titles, like Diablo 1, do not have that modern infrastructure that enables them to be on the Blizzard launcher. We didn’t think it was right that players couldn’t get access to these titles because they lack the necessary back-end framework, so we were very happy to work together with GOG to help make Diablo 1 available to our players on their platform.'

Zaidi didn't go into specifics when asked why GOG built this week's DirectX-flavored build of Diablo 1, as opposed to an internal Blizzard team, beyond lauding GOG's reputation for 'bringing updated versions of classic games to modern hardware.' She also didn't have any news to offer about exactly when to expect news about GOG's launches of WarCraft 1 & 2.

Blizzard's official answers didn't hint to our previous guess for this release's timing: as an olive branch to the series' loudest current critics. Diablo Immortal's late-2018 reveal unleashed a maelstrom of complaints, even from fans attending its BlizzCon event, and Blizzard has since gone into hiding about the game. Once it returns to the spotlight, there's no telling whether it will still so loudly resemble the microtransaction-heavy, smartphone-only Diablo clones already made by its developer at NetEase. If that game is being delayed to get some smoothing over, then maybe Diablo 1 is a nice toy for fans to futz with in the meantime.

Blizzard Diablo 2 Patch Windows 10 Download

Let me be clear: I hold out hope that Diablo Immortal will deliver a faithful, engaging dungeon-crawling experience that's worthy of the series' name. That hope sits right next to my louder hope for a different kind of classic re-release: Diablo II, remastered, and based on that game's original, incredible sprite-art foundation. Hiring from as far back as 2015 suggests Blizzard wants that, too. But other Blizzard Classic games are ahead on the release calendar. What's a sullen Diablo fan to do in the meantime besides play Diablo III's solid Nintendo Switch port?

Blizzard's answer—a digital re-release of the original Diablo files—could be seen as a bit lazy. Just like the 2016 Diablo II patch, this one does little beyond bringing the series' first entry up to basic computer-compatibility standards (and even then, the albatross of ancient netcode remains). But there's also something great about a company as big as Activision-Blizzard just letting this game go, completely DRM-free, and giving fans $10 worth of nostalgia that doesn't require some modern game launching software. Like ma used to make.

The article has been updated to clarify that GOG's version of Diablo does not include soundtrack audio files. The game's preview build included hints to MP3 and FLAC files that did not make it into the final version.

These days, you're lucky if some games from certain big publishers get a year or two of post-launch online support before they're unceremoniously dropped. And then there's Diablo II. Blizzard issued a new version 1.14 patch for the nearly 16-year-old game Thursday, five years after the game was last officially updated (not to mention, four years since the game's sequel launched with its own attendant post-release problems and patches)

The new Diablo II patch doesn't add any new gameplay features, balance tweaks, or anything like that. Instead, Blizzard has added compatibility with modern operating systems like Windows 10 and OS X. But Blizzard says it's working on improvements to the game's 'cheat-detection and hack-prevention capabilities' and hints at more improvements to come.

'There is still a large Diablo II community around the world, and we thank you for continuing to play and slay with us,' Blizzard writes. 'This journey starts by making Diablo II run on modern platforms, but it does not end there. See you in Sanctuary, adventurers.'

Today's patch comes a few months after a Blizzard job posting seeking a 'senior software engineer, classic games' to work on continued maintenance for Diablo II, Warcraft III, and Starcraft. That posting said the job would involve 'creat(ing) conditions for experiences that look as good as they play' and 'own(ing) implementation and curation of features new and old,' so we can probably expect more significant updates to all of these Blizzard classics going forward.

That's an impressive amount of dedication for a company that has plenty of new games to worry about supporting. We can only hope Blizzard games like Hearthstone and Overwatch will still get such dedicated support (and have such dedicated communities) in the year 2032.

[aion-rsa]

Is Virtual Photography the Next Great Artform?

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2020 saw the release of highly-anticipated games like The Last of Us Part II, Death Stranding on PC, Ghost of Tsushima, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. What do all of these games have in common? Stellar in-game photo modes that allow a growing online community of virtual photographers to capture the beauty and complexity of these game worlds. 

Fans have been taking screenshots of their favorite games for almost as long as they’ve been playing them. Photo modes themselves have existed at least as far back as 1999’s Metal Gear Solid: Integral, which featured a bare bones “photoshoot mode” as bonus content. And even back when most games didn’t have in-game photo modes, the most avid photographers created their own camera mods on PC or used third-party software like NVIDIA’s Ansel camera tool. 

Photo modes have only grown more sophisticated since then, and a new generation of virtual photographers have honed their craft and are sharing their unique perspectives on social media to thousands of followers. You can now find dedicated virtual photography communities, hashtags, and aggregators on social media platforms as well as online magazines dedicated to the craft and even an app called Captis that’s pitching itself as the social home for the medium.

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“I think the biggest benefit [of a photo mode] comes from having the ability to capture precious in-game moments that one can also share with others. It works as a sort of connection between the game world and the real world,” says Hiroaki Yoshiike, a lead level designer at Kojima Productions who worked on the stellar photo mode for Death Stranding, a game full of moody, detail-rich environments that serve as a particular paradise for photographers who love to capture stunning landscapes.

In fact, from the moment Kojima Productions decided to integrate a photo mode for the PC release, its main goal was to provide a user-friendly camera tool that also provided advanced features for more seasoned photographers. Yoshiike’s team worked alongside the Lighting and Cinematics teams on iterations of the mode.

“We created a prototype, but they told us it was too basic,” says Yoshiike of testing an early version of the photo mode with members of the team. “So we went back and started adding more features, adjusting until we arrived at the specs that you see in-game today. One part we got caught up on was figuring out how to provide the right tools for making pictures better, from lighting adjustments to stylized filters.”

These tools are very important to virtual photographers, who aren’t just taking pictures of “what looks cool” but are considering elements of real-world photography like composition, framing, and the rule of thirds. They’re thinking about depth of field, lighting, and filters. Virtual photographers take their craft seriously, and there’s a sense that their community of followers — many of which aren’t gamers at all — are doing so as well, following handles for the photographs themselves and not just because they’re fans of the subjects being captured. Could this mean that virtual photography is on the rise as the next great artform?

We talked to a group of photographers about their process, what they look for in a photo mode, and why they think virtual photography is becoming more popular.

Sindy JB

Sindy JB has photographed many games, but her haunting shots of Death Stranding on PC are among her best as they capture the phases of a long, Odyssean journey through a post-apocalyptic America. Shots of photorealistic mountainscapes and war-torn cities have earned her almost 20,000 followers across Twitter and Instagram, where she posts under the handle @mesopatmian_meow. 

“Landscape pictures are probably my favorite subject to capture,” Sindy says of her technique. “I almost never plan my shots. I wait for the right place and moment. I don’t use filters a lot because I like my pictures to look as natural as possible.”

Rockstar’s award-winning Old West action game Red Dead Redemption 2 was the game that originally got her into virtual photography, and she’s gotten to know many photo modes since then. There are a few things she looks for when picking up a game’s camera component.

“The most important thing for me is the camera movements. Without free camera control it’s very hard for us to take the pictures we want to take. Some games restrict the camera with an orbital control only in their photo mode and it’s just terrible. I know I speak for many virtual photographers when I say it’s by far the most disappointing thing to see in a photo mode.”

Sindy’s following has grown quickly since her debut in 2018, and she posits that a lot of that has to do with the game makers themselves.

“I think there are many factors that led to the increased popularity of virtual photography, the first being the support we are getting from the game developers these days on social media sites. We often get likes, retweets, and comments from them, and it’s very encouraging.”

Berduu

Petri Levälahti, who goes by Berduu on Twitter, is one of the most popular virtual photographers in the community with over 40,000 followers. In fact, Levälahti has turned virtual photography into a career. He works as a Screen Capture Artist for Swedish game studio EA DICE, best known for the Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront games.

Interestingly enough, the Battlefield 4 pictures taken by virtual photography legend Jim2point0 are what first enticed Levälahti to get involved with the community.

“Jim and other members of the screenshot community showed me the ropes. This was back when there really were no photo modes in games, outside of a few racing titles, so all the free cameras were created by fans. Most of the actually good game cameras are still created by fans, by people like Frans Bouma, for example.”

Levälahti does it all — portraits, landscapes, action shots. He needs to be multifaceted and have a keen eye for what will catch the viewer’s attention, a key element of his day job. At DICE, he takes marketing screenshots as well as the images you see on their games’ menus and loading screens.

“I get a request for a specific screenshot, let’s say an Action Shot in place X, with focus on Game Feature Y,” Levälahti says of his normal day-to-day at DICE. “Then I start to look for a good location or two and play around with ideas. I’ll do a handful of iterations before settling on one or two, consult an art director for notes, get approvals, do final captures, and ship it.”

Levälahti loves to shoot other games outside of DICE, too. Standouts include stylish portraits of characters from Control and Cyberpunk 2077 you could easily imagine as magazine covers. How does he do it?

“I always check that my shots work at small size — that there’s a clear subject, and that the shot is easy to read and you can tell what’s going on. I [also] check that my shots work at large size — are there ugly textures or assets shown too close and thus causing eyesore? Does the character’s leg clip through the floor, is there anything ruining the immersion? Awkward poses, non-existent shadows, aliasing? Always look for good light! Shadows and light make or break your shot.”

Soulsurrender

Soulsurrender, who also works as a freelance graphic designer and photographer in Sweden, got into virtual photography thanks to the seminal fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a game often celebrated for its beautiful vistas, lively settings, and cavernous depths.

“Mods made the game pretty and I just wanted to capture that. I didn’t really call it virtual photography or share any of my shots back then. That came much later, after realizing there was a whole amazing community out there.”

Soulsurrender has captured many subjects, including those within the worlds of Fallout 4, Mad Max, and Cyberpunk 2077, and she has a real eye for finding the majesty in dystopian settings. Her awe-inspiring shots of Mad Max’s endless deserts don’t even look like they’re from a video game despite the fact that she took up virtual photography after growing bored with shooting her real-world surroundings.

“I’m currently on a break after getting kind of burned out, getting frustrated with gear, and living in a small town of which nothing feels left to explore and shoot. Which naturally led me to find other ways to express my creativity: I started shooting virtual worlds instead, where the possibilities are nearly endless.”

Soulsurrender mainly likes to shoot vast landscapes, characters standing far off in the distance, colorful skies as backdrops. She says her approach to virtual photography is the same as in real-life: “go explore and find something interesting.”

Voldsby

“I’ve been a hobby photographer for a few years, so when I discovered that there was this feature where you can literally just stop the whole game to take pictures, that was when I became addicted to it.”

Danish photographer Voldsby has made a name for herself in the community with her portraits of The Last of Us Part II’s main characters. On her Twitter page, you’ll find pictures of Ellie and Abby, their faces half shrouded in thick shadow, as if to hide something in their expressions, while one eye looks straight at the camera. The gaze is so piercing it might make you cower.

“I like to really get close to my subjects and make them feel like they’re looking into the camera, [that] they’re aware that I’m taking the picture,” Voldsby says. “I know it sounds silly because it’s a video game, but it makes the photo come alive.”

Why has she spent so much time photographing TLOU2 specifically? Well, first off, she loves the series, but it also has a lot to do with the game’s incredible lighting. So much of the game takes place in creepy, enclosed areas like hallways and underground tunnels, and Voldsby finds it particularly exciting when she discovers “beautiful little light beams just sitting there in a window” to light her shots. 

After Voldsby takes a picture, it goes through a “rigorous procedure” before she shares it online. She transfers the picture over as a PNG to a USB drive (pro tip: never use PlayStation’s Share function to upload your high quality photographs) and then she touches it up a little on Adobe Lightroom, mostly to add a bit more lighting or shadow to make sure things are popping. But when it comes to capturing the picture itself, Voldsby prefers a simple photo mode.

“It’s all about simplicity. Less is more, you know? I don’t really need any of those fancy features that a lot of photo modes have,” Voldsby says. “It’s just like real photography. Buying an expensive camera with loads of features doesn’t automatically make you a good photographer.”

Kayne

Kayne, whose Instagram handle @firstpersonshutter boasts almost 20,000 followers, dreamed of traveling the world as a freelance photographer for outlets like National Geographic, but soon found that he couldn’t afford it due to the cost of lenses and other equipment necessary for the job. But that hasn’t stopped him from practicing his craft in the video game world.

His favorite games to photograph are Insomniac’s Spider-Man series, and it’s easy to see why. Kayne can get a lot out of the high-flying web-swinging mechanics in the game as well as Spidey’s superheroic poses and myriad suits.

“In Spider-Man‘s case, arranging Spider-Man to where he’s looking at something that’s well-lit puts those reflections in the eye lenses so that you can actually get all those details on the face masks,” Kayne explains.

With photo mode, Kayne has found a new way to think about photography, and hopes that other artists will start to think of virtual photography as an artform, too. Will we one day see one of the pictures in this article hanging in a museum?

“I am very hopeful that it takes off into something bigger. And I feel like we’re on the ground floor.”

The post Is Virtual Photography the Next Great Artform? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[linuxgamenews]

Sands of Salzaar now in English and we have Linux details

Sands of Salzaar adventure strategy to get support in principle with Linux gaming with Windows PC. According to developer Han-Squirrel Studio. Which is also in heavy developer via Steam Early Access. X.D. Network and Han-Squirrel Studio today launch the English language edition of Sands of Salzaar. While making the indie open world action RPG available to players in North America and Europe. Finally for the first time since the January 2020 Early Access debut of Sands of Salzaar. Not to mention some rather positive reviews. Here's what Han-Squirrel Studio studio has to say about Linux support.

Our game is developed by Unity, in principle, we can release the Linux version.

Since this is positive news. The developers also go on to explain further plans.

However, we are currently updating our game at a fast pace. So we are considering to wait until the version is stable. Before we do the porting and adaptation work for other platforms.

So the initial reception is positive. It also seems a Sands of Salzaar build in Linux gaming is not happening any time soon. After all, the English support for the game just released. And simply due to the developers focusing on development with one platform at this state. Which is somewhat a-typical for Early Access. That being said, there is also plan B. Proton support seems to have decent functionality. But if you're hardcore about Linux only, you'll have to wait.

Sands of Salzaar Official Launch Gameplay Trailer

What is the story behind Sands of Salzaar? It begins after the Old Empire falls. This also leaves rival factions competing for control of a vast desert land. All in an epic story coming to life with unique hand drawn visuals. While giving players a sprawling campaign and hours of original story content. How you progress is up to you. Since you can customize your hero as a warrior, sorcerer, beastmaster and more. Pick your soldiers and their abilities, and choose which factions to make your ally. And which one to make your enemy. Every playthrough offers new challenges and experiences. Sands of Salzaar combines large and small scale battles. While including unique strategy elements and resource management. Recruit a mighty army up from a single unit. Then lead them into combat against opposing cities and factions in real time. You can even hunt, summon and train wild creatures. Such as dragons, phoenixes, demons, bears and wolves. In addition to a massive English localization spanning over 500,000 words. The latest update introduces new story content featuring 30 bonus quest lines. There’s also full mod support via Steam Workshop. Plus hundreds of mods delivering new characters and custom maps. All the way up to multiplayer maps. Plus bonus difficulty modes and more. Which is all live now. Sands of Salzaar adventure strategy is available with its biggest discount ever. Offering up 40% off on Steam Early Access price until October 6th for Windows PC. Also dropping the price down to $8.99 USD from $14.99 USD. A great price even for Linux gaming with Proton.

[notpreparedblog]

Introduction and Story

The further I get into my life, the more apparent it is that I can’t pass by any Action-RPG in hopes of recreating my experience with Diablo II. After my somewhat disappointing experience with Wolcen, both pre-release and post-release, the next attempt at a new game is Last Epoch.

As a general heads up, Last Epoch is also currently in Beta Release and is incomplete. You can check out the details at their website or on Steam for purchase.

The story of Last Epoch is unfortunately not that important in its current incomplete state. The one thing that should be known (and happens in the first ten minutes of playing) is the realization that you are basically playing through the same maps/areas in different time periods  ala Chrono Trigger. This brings up interesting ideas when it comes to time travel and seeing the same characters across multiple ages, but it also means that unless repeat locations are drastically different, it can get a bit boring. I felt that some of the repeat sections were just not varied enough to really feel like I was playing a new map area.

There’s also a reliance on highly coincidental decisions on the part of the NPC’s you are interacting with. At one point in the story, which I’ll show a screenshot for below, you are traveling with a companion to acquire an item. Before stepping into an obvious boss room, the NPC stops and, well, you’ll see below.

My opinion of story telling going into an unlikable direction.

Some instances are a bit funny and I wonder if there’s just limitations on the back end that we aren’t seeing. There is one story beat where you save a NPC on a boat with the goal of jumping off the boat to escape. Instead of just freeing the NPC and having him follow you, he says he will wait until we are ready to jump off the boat before following. You have to go to the side of the boat, click jump off, then you both appear at an island after a loading screen. The game allows NPC’s to follow you at other points, but situations like this do happen often enough to stick out as being strange.

Skills and Specializations

Last Epoch looks to have five characters available, eventually. Right now, there are four; Acolyte, Primalist, Sentinel and Mage. Each of these character types will eventually have three different master class specializations to choose from. The Mage for example has Spellblade, Sorceror and Runemaster as master classes however, only Spellblade and Sorceror are currently available. That being said, there is a lot to check out in its current state.

Here’s where things get a bit more interesting. Each character has a default passive skill tree which you’re able to put points into either from leveling up or from set quest rewards. To go along with that, each of your characters skills are planned to have a skill tree. And finally, on top of that, opening up the master class of your choosing opens up those passive skill trees for you to put your points into.

Example of what the skill tree for Hammer Throw looks like. Each skill gets 20 skills points to distribute within their trees.

The end result for setups like this should involve a lot of customization towards how the player wants to play, and in some ways I see that succeeding. Early on, I attempted a Sentinel with Hammer Throw as the main attack. Initially, hammer throw shoots in a straight line outward, then comes back to the player. Within the skill tree, you can have the hammers spiral around the player, or shoot out in a nova around the player. You can also opt to skip these skill nodes entirely and head for a more stun orientated hammer. The point is that there are options to change the way you are playing.

Items and Crafting

Items are set up in a similar way to what you may already be used to. You have your white base items without any affixes, blue magic items with 1-2 affixes, rare yellow items with 3-4 affixes, unique gold items and green set items.

Throughout your game time, you’ll inevitably pick up tons of shards. These shards are the affixes that appear on item drops. The idea with the crafting setup is to use these shards to put specific prefix or suffixes onto items (two of each for a total of four mods on an item).

Each of these item affixes are ranked between Tiers 1-5. So tier one of ‘Elemental Protection’ may be a ranged value between 25 – 50, while tier two may have a range of 50-75. You can’t just find shards and rank every affix up to tier 5 though. Each item has stability attached to it. The more unstable a weapon is from crafting, the more likely it is to fracture (can’t upgrade any more mods). This becomes a risk/reward system where you’re more than welcome to attempt a low % upgrade, but the risk is not being able to upgrade it any further.

The crafting screen in Last Epoch. This example shows Increased Health % at Tier 4, Increased Mana % at Tier 2 and Chance to Chill Attacks at Tier 1. You can add one more prefix to this item as well as upgrade the Tiers of current affixes.

Along with finding shards as item drops, you also have the ability to shatter items with desirable affixes on them to potentially receive shards of those affixes. Towards end game, this turns into a sort of mini game of knowing what rare affixes are on items so that you can pick those up, shatter them, get shards of desired affixes and put them onto your item of choice later.

You also have the ability to gamble rare items. It wasn’t uncommon for me to decide I needed new gloves for example, then gamble gloves and hope for at least 2-3 good affixes that I can work with.

I don’t dislike this system, but it also feels a bit cumbersome. There are over 100 affixes in the game and it felt impossible to really understand what is needed for the character I was playing due to tool-tips not currently being included in the game. One way you can tell is by throwing a picked up item into your crafting window. This will automatically bring up the affixes on that item to the top of your screen so that you can upgrade them. Here, they show you how many shards you have of that affix. It’s just not realistic to do that for every item.

Selling items is also awkward because they do not hold much value at all. I could pick up an entire inventory of weapons and armor only to make 1000 gold. For reference, gambling one pair of gloves could run me 1400 gold. The incentive to pick up items is to shatter them for affixes, but the act of knowing what to save outside of memory is too time consuming.

Enemies and Game Balance

Enemy types are typical for ARPGs. You have regular white mobs, blue magic mobs, gold rare mobs and then unique/named mobs or bosses. More often than not, you’ll see yourself facing down a combination of all of the above at the same time.

An interesting aspect that I noticed, was that you can’t really get away from any enemies. In most…if not every other APRG I’ve played, if you want to skip a group of enemies that have an immunity you don’t want to deal with, or a pack of stronger mobs that have an unfortunate set of affixes attached to them, just run by and eventually you don’t have to worry about them anymore. Last Epoch seems to entirely remove that idea.

The reality of this game is that you just won’t be that strong against stronger enemies until much later into the leveling process, and even there, you need to make sure your build is cohesive enough to do any real damage and make progress into the current end game.

To a certain degree, I feel like enemies can be placed into a few different categories; fodder, B-Tier, A-Tier and S-Tier. Fodder are typical filler mobs that will die within one or two hits. B-Tier include more complicated enemies with some sort of more notable mechanic like healing or shielding other enemy types. A-Tier are what you would think are the strongest mob types in the game with high health, high damage output and massive AoE attacks that must be avoided in fear of death. Lastly, S-Tier are everything that A-Tier mobs are, but multiplied.

The affix’s that mobs are given can be both interesting and frustrating. You have your basics like ‘More Health’ and ‘Higher Chance to Critical Hit’ but Last Epoch also has some that I don’t believe I’ve seen before like ‘Revives After Two Seconds’ and ‘Summons a Twin at Half Health.’

Now, I’m all for variation and difficulty in games like this. I think that my greater issue is that enemy placement when looking at these tier lists just doesn’t make sense. There are two different ways I was looking at this; story and end game.

While you’re going through the current story, difficulty seems to progress at a normal pace with spikes once you reach certain areas. Not a problem in itself, but I noticed a pattern. A large portion of the maps were turning into ‘small pathway leading to large opening’ where the large opening had a few fodder mobs, a few B-Tier mobs, and multiple A or S Tier mobs. This typically meant that for every sort of room you go into, you can be there for 20-30 seconds just burning down one of these higher tiered mobs. Once that is complete, you move to the next small path and large room where you repeat the process. It became noticeably formulaic. On my first character going through the last Act of the game, I really just felt burnt out by the time I defeated the boss and got to the end game.

I’ll go into end game a bit more soon, but for these purposes, I felt like it was the bigger offender. End game areas can be quite a mess. I’ve hit brand new monolith maps where the first large room I get to has 8+ A-Tier mobs with massive health pools and massive AoE attacks. At that point, it’s better to just die and get a new monolith map than to struggle for 5+ minutes trying to kill every one of those mobs.

Now imagine all of these things combined. You have multiple A or S tiered mobs in one location, they have affixes such as ‘More Health’ AND ‘Revives After Two Seconds’ which revives that mob at half health, and you can’t get away from them because of how mobs are attached to the player once they see you. Yikes. The experience reward for defeating one of these mobs isn’t worth the time it takes to defeat them.

Endgame

The current end game features two different aspects, arena battles and monoliths.

Monoliths: This is where you will spend the majority of your time in Last Epoch once the story mode is complete. Once you reach end game, you can click on a giant monolith which will send you to a different timeline to defeat monsters. These maps are varied and include most of what you have already seen in the main game and as far as I can tell, contains random combinations of enemies.

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Once clicking the monolith, you have the option to choose from one of two enemy modifications. One example could be ‘For the next two timelines, enemies have +25% critical strike chance’ and ‘For the next two timelines, enemies deal 12% increased damage and have 100% increased critical strike chance.’ The former is obviously better, but the latter actually gives the player higher item drop chances and higher experience earned. There is also the option to re-roll these two mods once every time you choose a timeline. This can become a gamble though as you get further along and you could be giving up a bad enemy modification for a terrible one.

As you complete more timelines, things can get hectic very fast. Early on, enemy mods may stay for two timelines then disappear, but then these modifications stay for four timelines, then seven timelines and so on. The result ends up being a giant mess of increased issues for you to deal with with the idea of more risks involved, more rewards for tackling it.

Arena Battles: Arena battles require you to first find Arena Keys from Monoliths and is exactly what it sounds like. You are in a large room with waves of enemies that come rushing towards you. Every five waves you are given access to your stash, minor item rewards and the ability to choose to end the arena or continue for another five waves.

Joining an arena battle with a found Arena Key.

Overall, this end game setup is decent. Monoliths have enough variety to not get boring too fast. Wolcen had a similar setup but lacked variety to the point to where you really only got a few different maps and a few different bosses/enemy combinations to take on.

I do wish there was another objective here besides simply leveling your character and trying to find decent items with Tier 5 affixes on them. While Wolcen’s end game is boring, the city building aspect was at least an interesting idea. Path of Exile has maps which do get redundant, but having the map Atlas gave an overarching goal to work towards while completing those maps.

Other Thoughts

Pathing: The pathing can be quite strange in Last Epoch. What I mean by that, is how your character moves to certain locations based on where your are pointing with your mouse. There were multiple occasions where I thought I was in a large open hallway and directing my character forward when he would abruptly turn around and head in the opposite direction. This also become a more noticeable issue because my character with the most investment was a Warpath using Forge Guard which seems to increase that behavior.

Bugs: Last Epoch is in Beta, there are bugs and that shouldn’t deter you from giving it a shot if you do enjoy APRGs. If the idea of being locked out of an area and needing to reload does bother you, just skip it for now. There were a few times I had entered a side area just to be locked out from returning. I would have to portal out and use the nearest waypoint to head back to where I originally was.

Harmless graphic bug that you might see while playing.

Damage Tool-tip: As it stands, besides one obscure DPS number on your character sheet which I believe is only attached to melee attacks, there’s no real damage tool-tips for your characters or skills. This leaves you guessing when trying out new items or points on your skill tree. After experiencing Wolcen and it’s skill tree nodes that were just not working, I wanted some reassurance that I wasn’t wasting piles of skill points into skills that were not benefiting my character. I’m sure this feature will be added into the game at some point.

Global Chat: Right now, Last Epoch is a single player game. However, global chat is attached to the game so that you can converse with your fellow players. My experience was a hard mix between Barrens chat from Vanilla WoW and players that genuinely want to help. Any mention of Diablo 3 meant likely crucifixion. Mention of Path of Exile meant that it was no longer stream lined enough. Wolcen, well, is still Wolcen.

Yea, global chat.

Quest Rewards: One thing that I had noticed is that quest rewards that do not result in extra idol slots or passive skills are largely a waste of time. You will receive gold and experience, but they are so insignificant that they just don’t matter. At the very least, the rewards should be increased.

Shrines: Last Epoch includes shrines that actually last for a decent amount of time and have some unique properties. Included in the shrine pool are ones that cause every attack to be a critical strike and another has a unique item drop once clicked.

One example of a shrine in Last Epoch.

Final Thoughts

I had a lot to say about enemies earlier, but I do feel that small tweaks can fix my overall issues. Some affixes need to be adjusted, some experience rewards need to be increased and damage output/mitigation needs to be looked at. All of these have numbers attached to them and I believe they are fixable and necessary to reach more of a balance.

Outside of that, I enjoy that individual skill trees have customization built in to them. You can spec into Hammer Throw and decide between your hammers coming out in a line, nova or spiral. You can spec into ‘Volcanic Orb’ and choose to instead make it a ‘Frozen Orb’ akin to Diablo II. Choices around the skills matter. One skill with one specialization tree, can seem like two or three different skills.

The trick here is to then have Unique/Set items play off these different specializations and increase the variety of things that you can do while combining all of these aspects. I didn’t see a lot of that from the thirty or so Unique/Set items that I had found. More often than not, rares with higher tiered specific mods were much better than any Unique or Set that I had found. I think that’s good for crafting, but there should also be worthy items on the other side to consider.

At the end of the day, and after playing for around 70 hours, I felt that Last Epoch is fun and worth the time to play. There’s a lot of good here, a lot more than I’ve seen out of Wolcen and a lot more user friendly than the current state of Path of Exile. I will definitely keep checking out updates to this game and see what the final product eventually looks like in comparison to now.

  Thanks for reading. I’ve written a bunch regarding Action-RPGs on this site, the following are a few of those times;

Path of Diablo: Part I, Part II, Part III

Median XL: Sigma

Wolcen: Beta Release, Full Release

First Thoughts: Last Epoch (Beta Release) The latest Action RPG that was on my list to check out. Lot of good vibes from Last Epoch and looking forward to the full release. #lastepoch #steam #arpg #wolcen #diablo #torchlight Introduction and Story The further I get into my life, the more apparent it is that I can't pass by any Action-RPG in hopes of recreating my experience with…

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Computer game Farmer Dynasty Free information

I truly wanted to games that competition for a really long time. If anyone grasped the enlargement from the sport they may also remember it was led drink from Water stock for a period following a controversy with the sport being kinda sued perhaps for publication this. I mean that can also be a good thing. They reveal there is no like this so dangerous PR. I go for Farming Simulator franchise so when I head Farmer Dynasty and involves RPG factors like finding a spouse and such I happened ecstatic. So let's plunge with deeper in Farmer’s Dynasty.

I happened always a admirer of farming and development games. Activities like Farming Simulator and Design Simulator live among our favorite. And wish do not say me. I do not think the weird VN up for you go on playing. Farmer’s Dynasty offers a mix between making and correcting your last farm and also farming provinces with doing help other farmers. Who would say guessed that?

Farmers Dynasty also owns several RPG elements like making quests for extra characters in exchange for treats and developing relationship with them. People gain off by inheriting the grandfathers farm which is a huge mess and it is up to you to bring it back to the glory. You a city son with no farming and construction face. I am convinced it will all go splendid.

First thing I did when I began playing was there to help trying to repair my farm. For some reason it is so enjoyable to take some time with fasten this and then look back on the farm and find it come back to living. To mend you just come near the surface you want to restoration and file clicking. I know it does not sound like fun, but trust myself that receives top with time. Well at least for me it made.

You can also necessary materials to fix the farm. To get them there is a store which presents different stuff like real, tiles and so on. You can completely renovate the farm toward the liking. I not experience why has no other game though of doing such as this, yet I do love has finally reached.

I am like I spoke enough about building and it is time to beat to farming. People leave down with virtually no one of the farming equipment with no money to buy another one. To get entrance to the farming equipment you will have to do favor for various other NPCs which will in return "surprise" you the childhood equipment for which they no longer have any use.

After a little tedious quests have stayed achieved and you have all your farming equipment you can start working your own fields. Keep in mind this mission is tedious and will take a lots of time. All of the units have virtually no driving range and it will take you sooo long to get something done that I gave up halfway channel and visited do more construction goods for NPCs.

All of the systems are easy to function and runs are basic. http://farmsimulator.eu/ There are not many choices to use, unlike Farming Simulator so all can easily get into it.

Apart from farming you can also take care of animals. You will have to manage them each day with in return you may get products which you may both sell or keep in your pantry for the future wife to make you delicious meals.

There is besides a greenhouse where you can grow vegetables but there is little interaction with it. You run that with result in this to do its material. Good deal more attention to detail may have gone into it also made it so much more realistic and difficult.

Around the place you will find NPCs which could be related with. They will grant you various quests or you can simply talk with them also boost the relation with them. The RPG part of the game is still very bright and will not believe quite weeded out.

You can and receive married, but it is very simple. Just be spamming some type of conversation with a firm NPC until you get their points high adequate and BAM you can get married. I long it done like that with real life.

You can have child, but I have not really gotten to that statement in the sport but. It is a drink and a bit we have not told in this genre.

But it is not entirely sound. The chart is huge and considers very empty. All of the machines you make at the dawn are sooo slow it will believe you years to get by time A near peak B. The NPCs are many pretty much identical and look insanely ugly.

Also the one thing that could probably prevent that game going for years is not here. Modding. Why the misery do you not permit modding. This sport is dying for the ability to be able to mod it. I wish only look at the Farming Simulator games. Neighborhood is being even some of the older games alive also today. It is entirely amazing I could forgive.

Farmer’s Dynasty offers something another in the genre that was the same shit for days. But it still to this day and later 2 years of growth does not think full. You will get fun, for sure, yet right the instinct only will get (pun plan) you nuts. If you want to buy that wait for a discount.