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dreamsicle262 · 3 days ago

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Dead Plate AU Information

This is a masterpost detailing my AUs for Dead Plate, which may soon become their own fanfics—if given enough time—since I plan on trying to write out a few. There's a lot of text so be warned: there's a long post underneath the cut. I tried to describe character designs when necessary because there's currently no images like character sheets/references yet. Hopefully I'll get there. This post might be edited if I have more AU ideas, or if I add pictures.

As a note beforehand, I do have a headcanon involving Vincent not having a sense of smell, since being able to taste goes hand in hand with being able to pick up on scents. If he can’t taste things, then he likely cannot smell anything either. This headcanon remains consistent with him in these universes, unless stated otherwise.

Vampire AU

Dead Plate, but Vincent is a vampire. That’s pretty much what this AU is.

At some point prior to the events of Dead Plate, Vincent got turned into a vampire. He has only been dealing with it for a short amount of time, and his fangs have been taking quite a while to grow in. He didn’t really think anything of it at first. He still couldn’t taste foods, his appetite generally remained low, and he usually didn’t experience hunger very strongly.

He does murder Manon still. It’s during this time that Vincent is suddenly aware that he’s able to smell blood. Naturally, he figures that if he can smell blood, then he might be able to taste it. However, he doesn’t drink any of Manon’s blood to test this; whatever she has to offer he’s not interested in. It’s at this point that his plans have changed, and figuring out if he can actually taste something aside from nothing at all becomes his main priority. The whole ‘cooking with love’ thing is put off to the side for the time being. This could be attributed to him being selfishly inclined.

It's only when Rody accidentally cuts open his finger the next day that things change, and he actually does take the opportunity he’s been given to taste test his blood. As expected, this is an awkward situation for the both of them afterwards.

I haven’t fully decided on where I’d like to go with this AU to make it any different from the main plot of Dead Plate, but maybe an incident happens during the dinner party or something. I’ll figure it out when I actually get to writing the potential fanfic for this one.

There are no design changes for this AU aside from me giving Vincent fangs. He looks normal otherwise, and his fangs aren’t visible when his mouth is closed. There’s general vampire lore that I use that’s different from what’s usually expected of vampires but that probably doesn’t need to be elaborated here. I’m always open to questions on my AUs for further clarification though.

Florist + butcher AU

Rody is a florist, and Vincent is a butcher.

Vincent wasn’t able to open up a restaurant in this AU, but was content with opening up a butcher shop instead, still providing quality service to his customers in the process. Despite his shop being popular, it isn’t as large as it could be. In order to not put as much pressure on himself, he does have a few employees managing the shop’s orders, which mostly consists of providing custom cuts of meat or preparing special deliveries since his business is still a fairly big deal. Vincent himself mostly deals with the actual butchering in the back, instead of serving customers directly. He’s very picky about where he sources his products from, only accepting offers from places with a track record of animals raised to be high quality. Sometimes, this makes his store’s selections limited, and because it takes time to get new shipments in occasionally due to the distance, the products rotate every two days. Vincent lives above his business.

Rody is a florist, having managed to open up a store by saving up enough money to rent out an available building right next to Vincent’s butcher shop. He did this in order to cope with his break up, and to hopefully impress Manon and get her back. Since he’s managed to start his own business, it’s working out for him, surprisingly. Even if his business is for her sake and not his, at least he’s making progress with some personal growth and success. Rody still has a few issues with sourcing his products if he can’t grow them himself, but is otherwise doing okay. It is due to this reason that he is unable to deliver flowers, and majority of his customers are walk-ins instead. The only exception is if they happen to live nearby and he can reach them that way with his bike. Some of the flowers he sells come from his rooftop garden, which is contained within a greenhouse so he doesn’t go out of business every winter. His new apartment is below this garden, but above his flower shop. It is still considerably messy, but he tries to make improvements where he can.

Manon never had a rebound with Vincent, and was only aware that Rody had opened up a flower shop when he happened to get an advertisement in the newspaper and she saw it. Since then, she has opted to stay in contact with him, and occasionally visits like she used to. She lives somewhat nearby both stores. Given how Rody is making personal progress instead of being too self-sacrificing for her, she’s been trying to encourage him to invest more into his business instead of worrying about her all the time. It’s worked a little bit so far. Sometimes, Rody gives her nice bouquets of flowers that have meanings behind them since he knows quite a lot about flower language now.

Plot-wise, Rody will be staying in his chosen location near Vincent's butcher shop until he has enough money to relocate, but during that time he will get to know Vincent more due to their close proximity to each other constantly. Vincent, while originally annoyed by Rody's presence, starts to become intrigued by him and wants him to stay just so he can observe him some more. Of course, this leads to problems when he catches wind that Rody will be leaving soon, and is later told by Rody himself that he'll soon be 'out of his hair' in another month or so.

In response to this, Vincent starts sabotaging Rody's business by messing with stuff regarding the building (electrical cables, etc etc) and killing off his most frequent customers in order to cook into meals for him as potential bribery to stay. All of this negatively impacts Rody's business, especially financially, so he has to remain where he is longer than expected. He doesn't even know that Vincent is killing his business (quite literally) right next to him.

Design-wise, Rody wears an outfit similar to his casual clothes, but with his shirt buttoned up. His undershirt is a faded mossy green. Over his shirt, he has a dark brown apron with small, white floral patterns embroidered at the bottom to make it more noticeable. He also has an upper left pocket in the apron that he uses to tuck one flower in every day. It is usually roses of varying colors, but can be other flowers that mean love as well. Sometimes, his hair is tied back in a small low ponytail.

Vincent's design remains relatively the same, save for a kind of yellowish apron that goes over his outfit as well, and a pair of black gloves. His apron used to be white, but, given the nature of his work, it ended up giving it a look similar to old and yellowed book pages. It definitely has a few stains on it, but that comes with the job.

Manon retains her usual design. Can't improve perfection.

Zombie apocalypse AU

I had the vague idea for this AU, and @dollsteaparty helped me out with some other bits.

This AU is after the Table for One ending.

The zombie apocalypse happens and Rody primarily remains in his apartment during the beginning of it. He doesn't dare leave, and he doesn't even bother to look outside. The prospect of it scares him shitless, and for good reason. However, at some point he starts running out of food, and he can really only think of one good place in order to stock up. This forces him to finally venture out of his safe haven of his apartment and go back to Vincent's restaurant.

Unfortunately, Vincent is undead by this time, and isn't in a very good shape. His mouth is all fucked up and generally looks kinda like that one doodle in the upper left corner of a page by one of the devs that looked like it was based on a game or something. To make matters worse, he regained his ability to taste when he got turned in the first place, but his jaw is weakened and he can't bite down as well as he'd like or move it as much as he wants to most of the time. He can taste just fine but can't eat well, which has the expected side effect of pissing him off greatly with how ironic it is. Other than that, he's pretty well put together as a zombie, aside from the obvious ravenous behavior and poor muscle control that comes with being one in general.

When Rody does find Vincent, he's in the freezer room, and while Rody is strong enough to hold him off, it quickly becomes annoying to have to do. Eventually he's able to come to a compromise with Vincent, since apparently he's able to be reasoned with even in his current condition. Rody stitches up the sides of Vincent's jaw to the best of his ability to make it look more normal, but his handiwork isn't the best since his hands were so shaky. He was just nervous about them being near Vincent's mouth and the possibility of being bitten that comes with that.

The two then enter a relationship of forced codependency due to Vincent wanting to reopen his bistro even though it's the apocalypse since he's dead set on continuing business as usual and he can finally taste food, and Rody needing a safer place to stay where there's a food supply available, not to mention weapons. In fact, Rody's return helps the restaurant reopen, since beforehand people were too scared to enter the place, and they didn't even know it was technically still functional. It's still clean and everything too, because there was no way in hell Vincent would let his bistro fall into ruin.

The place becomes tense neutral ground where no violence is permitted in the dining area, and people are advised to use their best manners. It's a fine dining establishment and they will act accordingly. Both alive and undead customers show up, but now there's a sign outside the bistro that has a set of rules that everyone has to abide by if they wish to live. Besides, Vincent is capable of either reasoning with or even outright threatening other undead people if they don't act nice to their living counterparts while inside or around his esteemed establishment.

No one can have their weapons out or in view, customers cannot fight amongst themselves, no one except for staff are allowed in the kitchen, don't ask about the screams coming from the freezer, no one is advised to make sudden movements like running (something about predator drive and sudden movements making even valued customers look like prey), no one is advised to send the meals back to the kitchen since they most likely don't want their scent on it (they'll be associated with the food and have to be killed anyways), and if anyone has a problem, they can take it up with Vincent personally in the freezer. True to his word, Vincent still doesn't serve human meat... to his human customers. Any undead customers will usually be consuming human meat in their dishes because they can actually appreciate it.

Rody is the only one allowed to serve the customers in the dining area because all of the cooks working for Vincent are also undead, with the exception of the one cook that was fired since they got rehired. They help to desensitize their undead coworkers to a human in their midst, and also are a familiar face, so they have a lower risk of getting attacked. The zombified cooks and their fear of Vincent overrides any instincts that they might have as zombies, so he's capable of keeping them in line and certainly isn't afraid to enforce his rules in the kitchen. Both Vincent and his employees are in a much better preserved condition than any zombies outside the establishment due to them having access to a functional freezer. Also, Vincent does still pay whoever works for him. Vincent's apartment just upstairs has largely not been used in awhile, so that is where Rody stays, along with people who are looking for a safe place to stay for only one night. Vincent gets oddly upset when there's guests and Rody has to stay with them, but he does know it's for the better. Rody is also responsible for going on resource runs for cleaning supplies or ingredients, and for also stitching up the cooks when necessary.

Speaking of the cooks, sometimes they are put in the freezer on meat hooks as a form of solitary confinement for messing up very badly. They look miserable through that window in the freezer room door and Rody can very clearly see them when this does occur. That one human cook isn't stabbed with the meat hook and is usually just tied to it instead. If Rody gets the same treatment, he is usually tied up and left to sit on the floor for awhile, but typically doesn't remain in there for long since he either has to serve customers or Vincent deems his expression too 'unpleasant to look at' and lets him go anyways.

Character designs aren't too different aside from Vincent looking a little messed up in regards to his jaw, and Rody looking a lot more unkempt.

I also don't know where I'm going with this AU and if I particularly want Rody to be zombified or not... but I did think about a scenario where that would happen, as a treat. He would be turned by Vincent personally if he was dying somehow, and he'd probably try to get to his heart to eat it first before Rody turns completely. Something about wanting to taste what love really tastes like since it's his heart... and for Rody, laying his heart bare (literally in this case) and being able to love in such a way that it practically seems like he's serving his heart on a platter. Very big fan of the character design and what it could mean or show about him. Also I think Rody should lose the ear he lost in the actual game too. Just because.

As for that one human cook, Vincent would probably just get another cook to make them into a zombie if they were on the verge of death. They're not worth his time.

Plushie platonic soulmate AU

(Disclaimer: I actually am not fond of soulmate AUs in the traditional sense (aka almost exclusively romantic in nature) so this is platonic. Vincent is aspec to me in some way to begin with, so there's that too.)

During his emotional turmoil following his break up, Rody receives a mysterious plushie at his doorstep that looks like someone he’s never met before. He doesn’t know who sent it. This plushie is Vincent, but Rody doesn’t really know that yet. He’s heard of him since he’s a world renowned chef, but he’s not very familiar with his appearance. Either way, he reluctantly decides to keep the plushie, before eventually discarding it after it keeps showing up in his kitchen despite him putting it on a shelf somewhere. Also, his utensils seem to move in different places every day, so it’s creeping him out. It’s during this time that he’s looking for a job, but doesn’t take up the opportunity to work for Vincent, and instead opts for a simple fast food job. The Vincent plushie keeps showing up despite Rody’s attempts to get rid of it, so he just gives up and lets it remain in his apartment. One day, he wakes up to a fresh lemon tart, but no evidence that it was baked using his kitchen, especially since he doesn’t even have the ingredients to make that dessert. Beside it is the plushie, sitting there innocently.

On the other side of things, Vincent also receives a plushie of Rody that appears in his apartment one day on his living room table. He simply discards it, uncaring of where it came from. However, it keeps appearing again and again and it’s frustrating him to no end. At some point, he mutilates it with one of his knives, then trashes it again. When it comes back just as new, he puts it in plastic packaging and tosses it out of his window into the alley. When it returns yet again, he finally gets so fed up that he shoves it into the oven and sets it on fire that way. The plushie ends up coming back again and Vincent just puts it on his desk in his room, unwilling to mess with it anymore. He has no idea who the plushie was supposed to be because he’s never seen anyone like that before in his bistro. On top of this being strange, he also feels the strange urge to hide this plushie from Manon, since he doesn’t want her knowing that he has this. It’s unnatural and out of character for him to have something like that when it doesn’t serve any real purpose.

At some point, Rody and Vincent get to find the other person with their plushie counterpart and are both left thoroughly confused as to what it could mean.

Character designs for this AU do not vary.

Vincent forced therapy AU

Funnily enough, this AU came to me in a dream with one vague scene, and then it just went from there after discussing it with @vinylbiohazard. It's also exactly what it sounds like.

This AU is set after the Best Served Hot ending.

Vincent somehow survives after his restaurant was set on fire, but does have severe burns and some blood loss. The only reason why he doesn’t have severe blood loss is because the wound on his neck was cauterized by the flames, so it ended up not bleeding as much anymore. There’s still the glass shards that needed to be dealt with, though, so he does still need medical attention. One of the luckiest factors in this is how his restaurant was running out of cooking oil anyways, which is one of the reasons why he was even able to get out in the first place before his exits were blocked off.

Whenever the information of his bistro burning down becomes public, the general assumption of what happened is that he had been drunk, suddenly ‘snapped,’ and then tried to commit suicide while also taking his business with him. Essentially, his life is ruined, because he doesn’t seem too stable to the general population, and the media is having a field day with headlines. He does end up in the hospital trying to recover, and he’s not permitted to speak much for a while so his neck can heal. He technically still can since his vocal cords weren’t damaged, but it’s best that he doesn’t talk for some time. His neck is still in bad shape, but it could have been worse; the wine bottle that he was stabbed with narrowly missed the major veins and arteries in that area. By the end of everything, he does heal enough to look relatively normal, aside from the burns and scar tissue.

During this time, Rody is laying low at his apartment. He never comes out with the truth regarding his missing ear, and everyone just assumes that he lost it in an unrelated accident for being clumsy. While he would ideally like to stay away from the food industry, he does end up finding another job at a fast food place. When he learns that Vincent is still alive, he’s initially still upset, but since he’s had some time to cool down following the incident, he mostly just feels horrible. After all, he had expressed some concern about Vincent losing everything if something were to happen to his business. While not ready to approach him about it in the direct aftermath, Rody decides that he will try to talk it out with him at a later date.

As it gets closer to the day where Vincent can be released from the hospital, Rody shows up to talk to him, or, more accurately, speak his mind. He can talk to him without being interrupted, so he’s taking his opportunity to explain why he was so upset and why he acted the way he did. Adrenaline and trying to make rational decisions don’t mix well. Vincent has to sit there and listen to Rody rant for a little bit, all while he’s still not supposed to speak. At some point a nurse asks if the two were friends or something, and Rody has to awkwardly go along with it and say yes. Vincent is probably grumbling to himself mentally as this occurs.

Unfortunately, since Vincent’s apartment was above his restaurant, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go but Rody’s apartment following being released from the hospital. Rody’s not too happy with it either, but he’ll manage. In fact, he’s the reason why Vincent even gets to go to therapy in the first place. He’s the one to suggest it.

Vincent keeps taking Rody’s knives in his apartment because he doesn’t use them, they’re sharp, and he’s been considering killing Rody off anyways from being forced to live with him for so long. He has to keep getting them confiscated by Rody due to this. Whenever he’s scheduled to have therapy, however, he brings at least three knives with him and keeps them hidden. He doesn’t actually get to take them into the room where he’s supposed to have a therapy session and he has to begrudgingly give them all back to Rody beforehand. He may have been fully intending on using them to murder the therapist. It doesn’t look good for him, but he essentially has a mentality similar to ‘I’ve lost everything so why does it matter what I do now?’, so he doesn’t care.

There are no design changes for Rody in this AU, but Vincent has a few. There’s scar tissue on the right side of his neck from being stabbed there, as well as burn scars. There’s additional burns on most of his upper torso and arms. Any other burns aren’t as major, and most of them on his body healed over. In the hospital, he had bandages on over these while they were still healing.

#dream's textposts🖋️#this took about a week in order to compile this information so reblogs are appreciated #you also have my full permission to make art of any of these AUs if you really want to as long as you credit me since these were my ideas #dead plate #dead plate rody #dead plate vincent #dead plate au #dead plate game #rody lamoree #vincent charbonneau #manon vacher #manon dead plate #dead plate manon #vincent dead plate #rody dead plate #studio investigrave #sigverse #there's so many tags dude....#please let this not flop #oh also thank you to everyone I talked to regarding these AUs because you really helped out a lot with the AU making process :3 #I loved putting ideas out there and having them be added onto as we had a conversation about it #Also if anything needs clarification or if you just want to know more about the AUs in general just ask #always happy to talk about them even though i should have most of the important info here (inquiries about small details are just as good)

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quicksilversnails · 2 months ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#og post #wildlife #grian #impulse #impulsesv #skizz #skizzleman #imp & skizz #mc meta #wild life smp #wlsmp #life series #trafficblr #traffic smp #<- dunno which life series tags are most commonly used but i hope i got all the major ones #long post #“i should write down the behind the scenes!” i thought. “it'll be quick!” i thought :')#as someone who did had some critiques about the structure of the season #i found it really insightful to hear about the design decisions from a behind the scenes perspective #digging into why it was made the way it was and what exactly about it worked/didn't work honestly helps me to appreciate #it more for what it was!#and it helped to truly understand and appreciate all the work that went into it #i probably included more details than needed but i just thought they were all really fascinating #like trivia bot being designed to have the option to give lives in case the early sessions were too deadly!#i was also surprised that the snail merch wasn't planned ahead of time #and i also tried to keep all the credits grian listed bc i think it's important!#i would recommend watching the full podcast ep! i didn't include a lot of imp & skizz's commentary since i was focusing on the technical &#behind the scenes details but they had lots of great insight

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