#this post is about gamedev lol

[graph100]

people who publish shit on github or with cc0 license n shit are the fucking backbone of society i love you

[decamarks]

I kept forgetting to post this... But! Here's some of the stuff I've made for my game so far! It's called CLIENT: Automatic Investigator, and it's a goofy mystery visual novel. (Essentially: Ace Attorney but with robots and gods.)

You play as CLIENT, a computerized detective from ≈ 2002 CE. Its plasticine shell survived billions of years worth of apocalyptic events — until, in the year 2.00291732614102e+23, it finally wakes up from sleep mode. CLIENT is one of the few remaining non-sentient robots in the world. For investigative purposes, CLIENT is equipped with lie detectors, psyche sensors, and the ability to record anything said to it. Since it lacks vocal synthesizers, CLIENT must use hard evidence alone in its investigations. It communicates through what it collects — and through carefully selected audio recordings. (When given a microphone and silence, it turns out most people have a LOT to say.) In 2.00291732614102e+23, Earth's population is all sentient machines and undying deities. Since murder isn't possible (and the world is mostly utopian), CLIENT is left to solve inconsequential cases of counterfeiting, copyright infringement, and the occasional act of arson.

Everyone here is part of the game's first case (OPERATION: AMBROSIA). There will be four cases total, each released individually. Everything is still really early in development, but I'm excited! It's a super silly game & lots of fun to work on.

[bf-rally]

Vivien

About Vivien

Age: 31(???)

Height: Above Average

Personality: SUAVE but not looking for anything serious

Likes: Socializing and Clothing

Dislikes: Hot weather

Short Bio:

A stylish man you met at a halloween party. At the time, it looked like he was in costume for the party, but turns out his daily fashion isn't so far off.

------

Hii, im making a cute guy collector website and looking for people who may be interested in joining the site in its super early days!

Sign up form

Testing is just using he site when you feel like and giving feedback on any issues you have

Okay thats it thanks :]

[hummingbird-games]

making alt captions takes energy soooo no pic spam on the sideblog (tonight) BUT OMG I JUST FINISHED GIDGET'S ROUTE IN OUR CINDERELLA AND I LEGIT WAS GIGGLING AND SMILING AND SPINNING IN MY DESK CHAIR STOOOOPPPP 😭🤧

[rakuraikou]

i feel like i really have to focus on my game if i want to have something to show for myself (especially because i’ve been talking abt it for Years), but i get so frustrated… and i try to alleviate that by drawing/doodling, or playing with other characters and stories (my ot/bravely guys, or twps/osea) but i just feel really guilty over it. ugh

[thankskenpenders]

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

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

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

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

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

The why

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

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

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

The what, how, and when

So here's the plan.

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

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

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

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

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

[ganondoodle]

watching totk rant videos really makes me want to do one too, just to get it all finally off my chest in one go, but i dont have the best talking voice (especially not in english ..) that also doesnt last long (no one time recording all either lol) and i lack the patience to edit it all for hundreds of hours so its not just some dude with a thick german accent ranting about the game with footage that has nothign to do with what is talked about (tbh id just use my stream footage ... but dont wanna comb through 180 hours of that ndjkbndf)

the thought of talking about both my rewrites is also tempting, its probably just bc im not familiar with making videos- but i feel like it has more ... 'merit' than some text posts floating around on my tumblr with 10 likes and one reblog .. alas all that will likely stay a thought i wish i could do just like i still dream of impossible gamedev :^))))

[warmuse]

Firstly, this post isn't aimed at people who don't rly have an opinion about BALTEUS nerf, or is disappointed that it isn't as hard but it won't affect their opinion of the game in general. If you are these people, it's not aimed at you I promise

Possibly petty and unpopular but I'm mid annoyed by people (mostly in social media and comments so maybe I shouldn't pay attention to them anyway 😅) who claim Balteus is super easy now and how Fromsoft "ruined a good game because gaming journalists, now *casuals* wouldn't get filtered out like it was intended, I want immediate rollback, gonna uninstall" and base their claim at them defeating it easily with chapter1 gears and OS tunes off

1. Yeah, you downgraded your AC, but your game knowledge didn't. You played multiple playthrough of ac6, your gameplay knowledge is miles above than at the point where you faced it first, if you want to claim you as a player learnt nothing while playing ~NG++ of ac6 and your muscle memory didn't adapt at all, congrats, your gamer learning ability is abysmal

2. I am pretty sure fromsoft didn't do this because of a few gaming journalists who complain that it's too hard lmao, if they actually give into whatever western fringe reviewers say we'd had easy mode in ER (easy mode is another discourse in video gaming that's its own can of worms esp. in Fromsoft games, I don't want to deride the convo so I won't go into it) Hardcore gamers may be a bit too absorbed in their clique of fellow aficionados, they don't realize that there are a lot of casuals who got stuck at Balteus, or, more importantly, didn't even try to purchase the game because they saw a streamer struggling or heard the general gamer gossips that Balteus is some Great Filter, maybe the gamedevs want more people to try their games?

Because I assure you, for people who didn't play any FS games at all, or maybe just played ER, it'd not be easy. If you think only high skilled players are allowed to enjoy this game...well, I disagree.

Maybe WE want more people to play this game because this game offers a lot more experience than that mindset? This is a mecha genre game that doesn't get such outputs as actions of other fantastical settings.

3. The perceived difficulty level suddenly dropping after Balteus and not really escalating into the realm of filter-like until you reach CEL (because let's face it Sea Spider wasn't as much bemoaned as BALTEUS) suggests that maybe release patch BALTEUS was a bit harder than their intention. Fromsoft producer's tweet about the patch specifically says they intended to modulate the difficulty level in early to mid game.

4. This is a specific gripe to people who act dramatically that less missile barrage means the boss is giganerfed: if you're so ignorant of the boss mechanics to think missiles make Baltie hard how did u even got past it

It was similar when Radahn in ER was nerfed too, lol, Fromsoft in recent years gave us pretty enjoyable games, but the maturity level of some people in the fandom is disappointing even for a video game fandom

[bf-rally]

It's March and new guys are here! Go collect them if you haven't 🐸 (You can pull 6 times btw, and if you are missing one of the 4 guys after pulling, just let me know and ill add them for you!)

[hummingbird-games]

Dev Diaries

June 2, 2025

It's so rude opening up my HSD 2 docs each time only to see that there's nothing NEW there!! Who the hell is writing this damn thing???

🤨

On the Topic of HSD:JY 2

...I have to completely dismantle Lydia's route. I'm 90% sure the prologue is safe (aka what's in the public demo) but everything outlined and even drafted after that has to go. I keep trying to salvage parts and pieces, but I think I need a clean slate. There's a direction Lydia's route has to go in that's different from the other 4 love interests and I've got to stop being scared and just...do it.

Smh.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I have 2 other more pressing things that should have my attention, which means I shouldn't be stressing out about**this**.

In better news...I switched over to April recently AND IT'S SO MUCH FUN!!! God, I love writing April x MC (and Billie). Their dynamic is so fun to explore.

On the Topic of Loved

LOVED AKA CRUSHED #2 RELEASES ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 3RD!!!

So. Mark your calendars, tell your friends, start your countdowns, etc., etc., 🤣 (Happy Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈)

Miscellaneous

Honesty hour: Y'all...I'm exhausted 🙂

I've found myself in a team for the upcoming Josei Jam(--don't worry I'm NOT in charge!!!), and of course I still have Loved to prep for release, but I should rest.

It's times like this where I'm reminded that doing game development full time would actually kill me, lol.

I won't get into what's going on outside of gamedev, but just know that as a Black American woman, this is not the adulthood package I signed up for.

In general HSD news, I'd like to make an android build for HSD 1 (and eventually, or soon??? Crushed and Loved???). I...started the process and then got super confused. Granted, I was trying to start learning a new thing at 1 AM but that's neither here nor there!! BRUH I FIGURED IT OUT!!! So. Another test run and then android builds will start rolling out this year. Late this year probably.

In theory, I'd like to figure out how to accomplish this by the end of the year as I think it'd be nice for players to have an additional way to play these games. Also, HSD 1 and soon to be 2 are just too long to make a stable enough browser experience for me 😭 I considered it, especially since i know how to make web browser builds, but yeah. Time to learn something new I guess. I could just delete this but I want to see for myself the difference in pre-drafts verses final post lol.

Gemini out!!! 🫡

[sillymutual]

tagged by @vreemd tysm ! <3 im not tagging anyone but these are always fun ! <3

Are you named after anyone?

i don't really have a name at the moment, so no.

When was the last time you cried?

we cry almost daily lately. at least three times a week i think.

Do you have kids?

i do not, but i definitely want to raise something in the future. pets, plants, a business..... something. i'm not married yet (to anyone with a physical body separate from mine, anyway) so actual kids are off the table right now. if i did have kids one day, i would prefer adopting unless the person i marry is able to get me pregnant (which i only feel that way bc that's very sacred to me). and even then, i kind of want marriage to be more about having fun together than about kids or money or whatever. i wanna go on like. eight honeymoons. i wanna spend like five to ten years just having fun being married before i have kids. i don't give a shit about my body's clock or whatever. if i'm past my "prime" by the time we decide where we want to settle down, then we'll adopt. besides, i have pcos so fertility might be a problem, and my sister had just the world's fucking worst post partum of all time so i doubt it'll be a fun time for me.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

i don't know, do i?

What sports do you play?

i hate organized / professional sports with a burning passion. but i do love physical activities that are competitive sometimes! i just have asthma and get sunburnt easily so i don't get to do them a lot. i love swimming, i love volleyball (including beach volleyball), i love pickle ball / tennis / badminton, ping pong, disc golf even though i'm bad at it (it's fun to walk through parks if they have it set up!), mini golf is fun, i fucking hate regular golf so fucking much it makes me so angry. just generally i hate team sports because i'm hypercompetitive and because mandated gym class sports activities were the fucking bane of my existence as a kid. don't fucking get me started on kickball i want kickball to die. ok i'm done now i prommy

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

their energy. the vibes. their emotions. i pick up on these things very quickly (especially after honing my intuition)

What’s your eye color?

blue-gray

Scary movies or happy endings?

i guess happy endings? i like scary movies just fine, but the scariness is typically not why i gravitate toward horror. i like drama, tragedy, thrillers, psychological horror, over the top goth shit, steampunk, that kind of thing. i don't particularly have strong feelings about happy endings, though.

Any special talents?

art! i sing good too, i think, though i don't have professional help, i've just had people gas me up over it enough to really love karaoke lol. i'm also really good at customer service, i've been told my customer service voice is so perfect it's scary. mmm also i write but i haven't done it in a while. i took a speech class once and everybody was very impressed also which i was fucking shocked by until then i was certain i was shit at public speaking lmao

Do you have pets?

not right now u__u unless you count virtual ones. i love my livlies <3 i think i need to feed them actually--

How tall are you?

5'4" (162 cm)

Favorite subjects in school?

english, french, science (when we were just learning or doing experiments and not having to do boring shit like writing labs), art obviously if that counts. similar to science, i enjoy math only when learning new concepts and not actually having to do the math. i'm very good at geometry though, which i chalk up to being a visual learner, though graphs were always so tedious and made so little sense that they always made me want to bash my head in.

Dream job?

i always had my heart set on animation, but i'm leaning more toward something less collaborative like indie comics or gamedev or even just illustration. i want to go back to school soon, i think for a very general fine arts degree just to figure out where my strengths really lie in case it turns i'm like a megagenius at fucking.... glass blowing or some shit. hell, fashion and movies interest me, too, and i've never tried acting. i wanted to be a voice actor as a kid. idk! i'm gonna figure it out. i've set the steps in motion and am hoping to get into someplace for the spring once i have other things in my life more cleared up.

that's all! thank you again for tagging me :> anyone who wants to is welcome to steal, but let me know if you do !! <3

[wonfiidoesgamedev]

100 Days of Gamedev (Day 1)

I started the course i picked yesterday, and as part of one of its first lessons it asks you to write a short expectation(s) paragraph essentially about what you want out of programming and game development. Heres what i ended up writing

At the end of the day i want to learn to code in order to make silly multiplayer roguelike games similar to Lethal Company or REPO. To make that happen, ill need to know how to code. When i get where i want to be ill be able to bring people together around something ive created, and will be able to take pride in both my end products and progress ive made to get there. I'll practice pretty early in the morning. Make a coffee, wake up for 15-20 minutes or so, then get right into practicing. I intend to practice at least 15 minutes everyday. I'll set Discord to DND and close Unnecessary tasks. I'll also make sure to keep my desk clean and free of unnecessary things that could distract me. Ive started a Devlog on Tumblr where i intend to post about my progress everyday for the next 100 days (you're reading it right now!). This gives me something to look back on to measure progress, as well as some amount of extra accountability since its public.

I'm realizing its a little uncomfortable/embarrassing to post about stuff like this publicly, but it's alright.

Today was a light day otherwise as far as learning. learned some definitions about "The 4 pillars of Godot"

Scenes: reusable templates that can be used for most anything in your project.

Nodes: Building blocks of scenes.

Scripts: text files that give instructions to the computer, nodes, scenes, and Godot itself.

Signals: events that nodes emit to report whats happening in the project. you connect Signals to nodes in a script to make things happen essentially.

this isnt exactly how these things were described in the course, i've described them in my own words here. Both because i think it helps the learning process, and i dont want to get in trouble with leaking aspects of a paid course or something like that lol.

[thewakingcloak]

The State of Things Present

this post was available for patrons a week early! please consider supporting me over on patreon!

I kept trying to make this post fancier and better and more engaging, and then I realized I was doing that thing where I make myself too overwhelmed to actually finish and post it. The other thing was I kept gunning for a once-a-week posting, and uh… yeah that's not sustainable. So here we go!

The Ghost of Spacefarer Present appears before you He whispers, very quietly, yet in a voice that resonates: "Time to resurrect the Spacefarer"

Ok so the spacefarer (me??) was very tired, but he's awake now and doing things!

Life status

We moved! My wife and kids and I packed up and headed some miles south of our previous house. It was a risk for sure. We didn't know how things would pan out. We really needed to get away from our old environment, our old town, our old house. We loved that house, and we'd said so to each other many times even as we were halfheartedly searching for a new one. But at some point that house had become too burdened with bad memories and traumas, not to mention that after the pandemic, we had no more real roots there. Everyone had moved away, the communities we were involved with had disbanded or changed. And anyway, my wife would be starting a new teaching job down south.

We were fortunate enough to find a new house we loved, and fortunate enough to be in a position where we could actually make the move. I'm aware this is a privilege, given the economy and the market, and so I can only express my thankfulness and consider it a blessing, especially as we healed through our grief.

I have an improved office now! This is where I work on my day job (software/web dev) and my unday job (Studio Spacefarer). With my genetics stacked against me, but also with my desire to be able to keep up with my kids and be there for my family, I collected a standing desk, a walking pad treadmill thing, and an ergonomic keyboard. I'm walking or at least standing most of the day now, which has made a surprising difference already.

I was gonna post a wider view of the office, but my 3yo son ran up while I was taking pictures and started "working" (mashing the keypad), so this is automatically the better pic. Them's the rules.

Anyway, in short, we made it, and it hasn't been a smooth ride the entire time, but it has been well worth it. I've been able to get back into gamedev, which has been a huge boon to my mental health too.

Speaking of… (ghostly drumroll)

Game status!

The good stuff. Here's where I'm at presently with Episode III!

The game is completable from start to end (definitely NOT feature complete)

Jumping, swimming, and dashing all work like a charm and are super fun

Three enemy types have been added, including custom A* pathfinding for the sea monster

Two new collection mechanics (one is heart containers, the other will be a small surprise)

Depth sorting and fake-3D, as mentioned previously, which lets me do lots of fun effects

Day/night are now on a new system, and cave darkness is now a thing (I tried to implement this in PD2 but couldn't figure it out)

Palette swapping for night and lighting effects now uses GameMaker's built in layer effects

Much of the game is now decorated

Updated the game's palette to be more pleasing

Better borderless windowed mode, frame toggling, etc. (I'd made a post about a third party plugin I used to do this previously, but not long after that, GameMaker added an official setting to be toggleable at runtime, so I switched to that… much easier lol)

New audio library which has been a MASSIVE boon (Juju's Vinyl)

New flexible debug/inspector mode which allows me to change values on the fly more easily

State machine rewrite using structs instead of data structures--extremely flexible and less  error-prone (in fact the data structures here were the #1 cause of crashes in Episodes I and II)

Save system rewrite, also using structs instead of data structures (thus fixing the #2 cause of crashes in the first two episodes)

Adjusted the way walls get displayed in interiors--will make a post on this later

Lots and lots and lots and lots of bug fixes

Post end status!

I'm not exactly sure how to wrap this up lol, but y'all can be encouraging me, if you have the emotional space to do so! There's still a lot left to do on PD3, and it can be very daunting at times.

Next post up will be looking forward to the future of Studio Spacefarer. I'm very excited about this! Keep an eye out!

[anebarone]

Happy late Halloween! 🎃

Me & bf gave away candies to the local kids and I'm obsessed with our wolf masks. He had a white one. 🐺

Also: Pic of some candies, and my lunch today with a cheesy stuffed bread + coffee + a mild alcoholic beverage similar to mulled wine, but with liquor, apples and spices. I made it so our home would smell "witch-y". It's almost like a very diluted, watery quentão.

-----

It's great to see friends and moots finally having their hands on Dragon Age Veilguard as well! The wait is over LETS GOOOOOOO

I'm transitioning to part-time gamedev work in a few weeks (after more than a year full time!) and looking forward to it, hoping this will give me more time to unwind and work on other projects.

But first I r e a l l y need some rest. (this wouldn't be a post by me if it didn't end with a note about needing a break lol, I think it's a solid standard in my blogs)

[just-a-carrot]

Hey! Just a heads up, I'm sending this to multiple people, since I wanna get as many different viewpoints on this as I can. I hope this doesn't bother you. Also, this is pretty long.

So, I have a question about gamedev, but more on the marketing/presence side.

Most gamedevs I know, even hobbyist ones, keep their accounts relatively professional. Sure, they may shitpost here and there, but it's mostly in relation to their games, the gamedev sphere in general, or very general inoffensive stuff. And, most importantly, I've seldom seen my favorite gamedevs (or any of my favorite internet personalities, for that matter) comment on random videos unrelated to what type of content they usually post.

All of my social media accounts are quite unprofessional. I've also had them for a long time, so there are a few things on my digital footprint that I'd rather people not see. I also, for lack of a better way of explaining, watch and read random shit and like to leave comments on it sometimes.

I feel like, I were to become a gamedev, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. I'd have to treat my internet presence as its own balancing act, rather than a place for me to express myself unabashedly. I know this is working under the assumption that I would get big and that people would give a damn about me, but there is always the off chance of that happening. Of a random game you make suddenly blowing up because it hit the algorithm just right. So it's better to be prepared. And even if I don't get that big boom in popularity, I still plan to at least make games consistently enough to build a community of their own. Nothing like, huge, but I really enjoy the idea of people enjoying my work and sharing that enjoyment with others. But I don't want that to cross over into my personal life!

I know that's not an impossible feat, but I feel like it kind of destroys the purpose of the internet for me. To me, it's always been a safe space where I could express myself and easily connect with people with similar viewpoints, but I am now coming to odds with this concept as I consider how I want to become a gamedev.

There's also the side note that I don't wanna rebrand. At least not completely. I don't mind cleaning up my accounts or deleting some old ones, but I've grown very attached to being "Quamai". I can't imagine myself having any other online identity, even if there are some cringy moments attached to it.

So, do you have any advice for my situation? How did you personally go about your own online image, and what do you think is the best course of action?

Thank you in advance!

oh gosh what a question ldkjfadl

hmmmm

putting this under a cut because it got long and rambly lakdfa

for me personally i don't think i've ever made that many "right" choices when it comes to how i handle my online presence in game dev, it was mostly just me doing what seemed like the right thing to do at the time. it's also changed a lot all throughout my time as a dev

tho i guess the main thing is that i did create a whole new game dev online identity, so to speak, when i first got into game dev. this wasn't really due to any purposeful thought put into it though and was more just because 1) i didn't really have much online identity anyway at the time and 2) in the beginning i was trying to be more "professional" LOL

when i released easter, i did it without any presence at all. i had no accounts or anything. i literally just finished the game and threw it up on itch and gamejolt using the new studio name i had come up with based on an inside work joke. it wasn't until i started to get a few people talking about the game or linking to it/making vids that i was like hmmm i should have a twitter maybe LOL so like a week later i made a twitter. but i barely posted on it, it was just responding to other people. a year later when i released the 2.0 update i also made a few posts. then thought i might start using it more so started posting just a few random updates of new stuff i was trying out/working on (this was when i made my first couple of posts about early OW stuff)

but then when i shifted out of game dev again for a while, i abandoned it

it wasn't until august of 2021 that i began actively using my account again to post production updates for work on ow. but back then i was a lot more "emotionless" for lack of a better word. like i approached it in a more no-nonsense way than i do today. i also never got that much response from it either, usually lucky to get like 2 or 3 likes on stuff 🤣 over the course of that first year or so though i would change a lot in how i handled my online stuff, acting much more like myself, interacting a lot more with people, and getting increasingly more unhinged(???) LOL perhaps because i'd begun to see that being "super professional" when i'm just a little random person making a game all by myself there's no reason to be so stiff (and it's just much more fun and genuine to not be afraid to be myself and be a bit silly). over this time was also when i'd shift away from using my studio name and just taking the "carrot" identity. because i realized i didn't like people thinking about me as an impersonal studio and wanted to just be me, carrot, interacting with people, making games, and getting unhinged about my chars and stories

is this the right way to do it???? i have no idea. but perhaps since i never have any aspirations of grandeur and don't plan to be any kind of business, it's fine for me. and while it's true that i don't like to post, reblog, interact with, content unrelated to my games or other VN stuff, that's mostly because i don't want to annoy people who i know only follow me for game stuff (i worry about annoying people a lot, actually, it might be one of the core foundations for how i handle myself online LMAO). i don't have any other presence online though. once i started my game dev stuff, carrot became me, and it's all that's out there. so it's not like i need to "separate" anything. but also i'm not a very avid user of social media in general so it's not like i have an active desire to have different accounts so i can tweet about or comment on other stuff lakdjfasd i'm an old socially anxious duck who gets mentally exhausted just scrolling my feed. i don't need to spend any more time online than i already do with my game dev stuff hahaha. i do know some other devs though for instance that have private accounts on twitter just for their friends and more personal thoughts. so that's always an option too

as for what you should do in your own situation with your own online presence, i'm not really sure, as it all comes down to what you want. for me, since i didn't have much presence anyway, and because i wanted my game dev stuff to be its own thing, it made sense for me to create a new presence just for game dev (that eventually evolved into my entire self LKDJFAS). so it's hard for me to say what would be the best course of action if you already have an online presence that forms a core part of your identity that you don't want to lose. it also depends on what you want to eventually do with your games and if you see yourself really wanting to pursue it actively and make it a big part of your life. most devs that i know do have "game dev" presences for lack of a better word, where if you go to their accounts, it's just for game dev. or they create studios and studio accounts. i think no matter what you decide to do, even if you keep the name the same, it would probably be best to at least keep your game dev stuff separate, because people could potentially be put off from following an account for games but then their feed gets filled with a lot of non-game stuff from you that they don't care about

no matter what you decide to do though, i recommend being yourself no matter what. whether you keep with your same identity or craft a new game dev only one, still do what feels right for you on that account and be yourself and have fun with it!! game dev can already be such an isolating and hard experience, so creating a space where you can be silly and have fun with other devs and fun with your chars and ideas can really help so much to give you motivation and just enjoy your time creating games!!!

(sorry if this was a complete ramble that didn't even still fully answer the question; i can only speak from my own personal experiences that i went through after all and i don't really have any good or professional answers since i also have no idea what i'm doing most of the time 🤣)

[ganondoodle]

Oh man I saw your totk issues post and I agree 100%!! Those are all things that have really bothered me about playing totk, and things that made playing it not nearly as fun (the dungeons, the shrines, the building, etc).

Especially the map!! When I tell you I was so disappointed by the maps on totk, I was hoping for something new! It really just feels like a modded botw, not an official sequel.

I was wondering what your thoughts are on the concept of “what if they had sent link to the past instead”? So the surface map would feature huge differences in the land forms and buildings that exist, and we’d get to see more ganon whenever he visits Hyrule, or go out to the desert to see Gerudo town, etc.

If they really wanted no sheika tech, they could also just have it being newly built? And you could introduce the new characters and such, etc etc.

(I also think the past champions are such a missed opportunity? If botw is about grief and loneliness, and finding hope in the hopeless, and Totk is about coming together despite that, it could have been really interesting if Link had gone to the past! They could have used the past setting as an eerie reminder to what Link and Zelda had lost when the Calamity struck!)

THAT BEING SAID: I’m not as familiar with the legend of Zelda lore, and haven’t played totk very much! I wanted to know your thoughts on this because you seem to have a lot of story and game mechanic knowledge that could explain why this could be a bad/good idea!

(Plus, your discussions are always super interesting to read, as is your custom totk lore, so I’d love to know what you think🩷)

I’m sorry if you’ve already answered an ask like this! If that’s the case, feel free to point that out and I’ll go through your ask tag if you have one:) I hope you have a great day!⭐️

Hi!

im glad you enjoy my rants, i often feel like im being overly mean but tbh were else could i just rant as much as my heart desires without getting spammed by annoying people (certainly not on twitter lol)

i have talked alot, and i mean ALOT, about totk and my issues with it, both lore and gameplay wise, i dont claim to be an expert on any, though i am an old zelda fan and aspiring gamedev, i really only talk about what i feel about it, what i think about it, and by all means im biased as hell xD

if you dont know yet, the "ganondoodles rants" tag is where all my rants go, so if you are interested in reading more on my totk thoughts thats the way to search (given tumblrs search in blog works ..)

and to answers your question, i have touched on it briefly, sending link back in time before the shiekah tech existed would have been an easy way to excuse how they jsut got .. rid of it, bc they didnt, it literally didnt exist yet- and for reusing the map- though that argument falls a little flat bc ... they coud have already done that in present totk, like i brought up in one of said rants, things like flooding gerudo desert, collapsing death mountain, drying out zoras domain etc, and changing the location of the main populations would have already done alot without having to redo the map in its entirety;

the little changes to map itself really wouldnt that big of a deal if they didnt also send you to the EXACT same locations AND repeat the SAME LOCATIONS AGAIN but in the underground, like thats a fact i have talked about multiple times bc its so illogical in every way, anywhere theres a settlement on the surface theres a bigger mine below, its so stupid, the shrines conenct to a lightroot, the same, again, you dont need to explore bc theres nothing TO explore (its also extra weird bc theres one below taburasa (tarrey town) which .... link literally build with dumsda (hudson) a few years ago .. unless that got retconned too idk wth do i know anymore honestly- AND it makes the sonau extra weird bc why the hell do they have a bigass mine under every settlement ESPECIALLY UNDER GERUDO TOWN like, that just adds to my suspicions towards them)

anyway, link to the past was the point and yes, it could have solved a few issues (mainly shiekah tech and the whole "story" taking place AGAIN in the past completely disconnected from you the player) i personally am not so much a fan of it, but that mostly comes down to me just not liking time travel, i dont like going back in time, i want to play and do things in the here and now, i want to repair the damages of the calamity, find out its origins, maybe fix that too, i love to learn about past stuff too, but that more in text, no literal flashback (unless done well), i want to connect to the past but it also holds alot of mystery that maybe shouldnt be touched upon, some mysteries and unkowns are much more interesting when left as such, i want to THINK about things and come to conclusions that are logical and makes sense in hindsight even if it wasnt clear at the start, i dont want information and what to think about it told to my face over and over like im stupid

after botw i really didnt care much about the past, maybe about the acient hero who alot of people specualted to be of gerudo origin due to its red hair- which also got a monkeys paw curled bc in totk they do sth with but its so stupid and insulting that i do not accept it as canon, say what they want, there are no dog people anywhere in the past nor present botw/totk wtf is that i hate it- and its not even .. why is that the reward for that, it has literally NOTHING TO DO WITH TOTK ITSELF I COULD YELLLL AAAARGH

main point is that really, i wanted to explore the past .. in the present, i hoped to find broken old shiekah structures, old labs and maybe some left over damage and records from when the old king persecuted the shiekah for their tech, i wanted to know where the ancient energy the shiekah used was coming from, what the boss arena in the middle of hyrule castle really was- so many things just discarded and acted like they never happened or mattered; i dont want to travel into the past, i want to discover whats left of it, piece it together, discover dark secrets you can ask no one about bc all that knew about it are long gone- thats what intrigued me about botw, it felt like there was so much left to discover only for totk to throw it all away and just do its own thing .. but not commit to that hard enough either so its neither its own thing nor a sequel-

.. that wasnt really what you wanted to know was it? xD sorry i tend to ramble on if someone seems to give me permission to

to sum it up, i think it COULD work, sending link to the past instead, if done well, but so could canon totk have been, it could have been done well but wasnt for reasons i dont know and tbh even fear bc i worry its sets a dark future ahead of zelda; i personalyl am just not a fan of time travel so i dont have that much to say to it :O