#Dev Mode Discord

[askagamedev]

Why did SWTOR get shuffled to a different developer if it was apparently Bioware's most steady source of income for the better part of the last decade?

SWTOR wasn't really treated as a true "Bioware" project for the longest time.

First, a little history. The original Bioware studio in Edmonton was the one responsible for the "modern" Bioware titles - Neverwinter, Jade Empire, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. SWTOR was primarily built by a separate studio in Austin with a separate org chart. The only thing that really tied SWTOR's early development to Bioware was the name on the studio and the general style of game it was. The contributions of Bioware Edmonton to SWTOR were primarily limited to the original staff sent to start the Austin studio and the on-rails space shooter mode in SWTOR. During this era, Bioware and SWTOR were basically associated in name only. There was minimal marketing or promotion for SWTOR from Bioware as a brand.

A few years later, EA corporate started an initiative called "One Bioware" which essentially brought Edmonton, Austin, and the newly formed Montreal studios under the same studio leadership to work on "Bioware" projects. SWTOR is still a "legacy" project - it's getting long in the tooth, it isn't growing, and the technology is old. It wasn't the hot new thing to promote, and the team building it felt the neglect from above. SWTOR actually had a Rennaisance period, with Knights of the Fallen Empire bringing in a huge number of additional subscribers and player growth, but that was mostly ignored by Bioware at large. Dragon Age Inquisition got all the fanfare, then a bunch of people were pulled from SWTOR to support Andromeda and Anthem.

A perfect example is the Bioware 25th anniversary book, 300+ pages of history about all the games and such that Bioware built over their run. Ten pages of the 300+ were dedicated to SWTOR, despite SWTOR having been live for 9 years by that point and SWTOR being the financial engine keeping the entire org afloat. It's strongly emblematic of how it made the dev team feel and how much Bioware as an organization cared about the game.

After 2020, EA was looking to decrease costs. Broadsword had already proven themselves by taking on some of EA's other legacy MMO projects (Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online) and doing well with them. Broadsword made the offer to take on SWTOR, along with hiring as many of the SWTOR dev team as they could take. Many of the veteran team members, weary of the treatment at Bioware, decided to take it. It's hard to blame them - Bioware as an organization never really seemed to understand or appreciate the SWTOR contributions beyond the revenue it generated. Bioware didn't give much acknowledgement to the game or the team, internal or external.

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[b0tster]

Magfest is around the corner so we are hitting the ground running with arcade mode for today's Nightmare Kart dev post!

Worked on expanding the post race results screen to include an initials input in anticipation of the new leaderboard, check it out!

Support me on patreon!

Join the discord!

[cosmokrill]

Pressure fandom rant incoming.

Oh my GOD guys, SHUT. UP. Respect the wishes of the creators. Do you think they knew how much the game was going to blow up? Did you stop to realize that Zeal's comment about decreased Kroner for deaf mode was a stupid idea just thrown out off the top of his head before he went to sleep? Do you think the dev team was going to genuinely consider that? And if you made and felt almost intimately attached to an OC that you helped create, are you not allowed to personally feel annoyed when others ship themselves with them or give them a completely different personality than the one they have?

Get over it. Sebastian is canonically a married man. I think he looks cute with the wedding ring that he fiddles with. Zerum being his wife does not change the lore. The characters in Pressure are just OCs that have gotten stupidly popular.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has had to deal with a person trying to force one of my characters into a romantic relationship with one of theirs, I can understand wanting to crack down. If I said that my OC Luther was my husband in his lore, his story gets popular, and people start drawing themselves dating him, I'm allowed to be mad. I'm allowed to be uncomfortable.

The devs did nothing wrong by adding the rule against posting ship art of Pressure characters in the discord server. They're not banning Pressure ships from ever existing online. Admit that your drawing of your self-insert kissing Sebastian is just not going to be liked by some people. Just enjoy the damn game.

You need to remember that these are not your characters. You do not know why a decision about a character was made until the creators tell you. You can do whatever the hell you want with Sebastian, just don't get pissy if his creators don't like it.

Apologies, I'm just very tired and angry and I need to speak my mind. I don't do that enough because I fear getting canceled over the smallest opinions in this day and age.

Have a Sebastian sketch for your troubles. Truthfully, I might delete the rant later and just keep the art.

[brittle-doughie]

Let’s Get Rolling! | Looking into the Lights, Camera, Action! Event for CROB!

So the movie nerd, Popcorn Cookie, isn’t going to the Chocolate Factory with that golden ticket, but to see the filming site for what Butter Squid Cookie has got cooking up.

Only issue is that the actress is unable to make it to the set, leaving the stunt double, Choco Bar Cookie, to get the lead role! So for the event itself, it’s essentially the exact same event we’ve had for the last few updates, get and do favors as well as combine items for hard mode.

So the special draw event returns from the Wish Camp update, except this time there’s also a surprise exchange shop that allows you to get outfits or designs that you missed in past updates!

Choco Bar Cookie herself is pretty cute, would definitely add her to my wife collection and if her base design isn’t sitting well with you, hopefully her skin more then makes up for it because oh my lord-

Shine Muscat, Habanero, and Blue Slushy Cookie also get skins too. With Popcorn Cookie getting a fabulous skin in part 2!

Buttercream Choco Cookie has finally returned by the Buddy event! Bring your buddies to play the mode to obtain him!

In the Romance stage, who is this lady we’re chasing and how did I get the devs to put her in my game. In the Zombie stage, we meet some familiar walkers, where have I seen them before…?

Overall, they were not lying when they said that this would help a substantial update, there are so many things to look forward to that it might leave you overwhelmed! MicMac has addressed the event repetition in the official discord, hopefully, we can see a return to varied event modes some day.

———————————————————————

Busy chasing your co-star through the stage, following after the one you love was the pinnacle of romantic excitement in the eyes of Butter Squid Cookie!

“Come follow, my love! Have a little encouragement from me!”

She blew you a kiss in the form of a small heart that floated towards you. You went to get it promptly, feeling more encouraged to follow your heart that had your co-star in it! (In the premise of the movie of course)

Butter Squid Cookie was pleased with the results he was seeing so far, such warm love between two cookies that was sure to bring a tear to the eyes of audiences! He had to give you credit, for someone unfamiliar with acting, you were a natural!

But now time for the big moment! You were now supposed to catch your co-star and give each other the declaration of love and then a kiss!

Choco Bar Cookie got a little nervous with that plan, was it really necessary? The kiss part? Why not just a hug, you know? That would get the message across just fine. There was no need to be all theatrical all the time, you know?

Butter Squid saw her suggestion as nonsense, a kiss was the only way to execute the romantic tension flawlessly!

You told your co-star that she made your heart flutter, that no other cookie made you feel this way, that you wanted to spend your life with her.

Your co-star blushed heavily from your words, that was some pretty good on command blushing!

“Oh, my Y/N Cookie! My heart can’t stand being apart from you either! Please, let me be the cookie you love now and forever!”

The two of you leaned in, getting closer and closer, you see her eyes twinkle as she closed them, readying her lips as you did the same…

Before a director chair is thrown between you two!

Scaring you both faraway from each other. Butter Squid looked at Choco Bar with shock as she breathed heavy, having just thrown that chair a second ago.

“Sorry. My hands slipped.”

[milonogiannis]

Since late August of 2022, Barry Topping and I have been working on a shoot ‘em up game called BIRDCAGE.

Now 2024 is wrapping up and – surprisingly – so is the production phase of BIRDCAGE. There’s still plenty of work to be done, but the game itself is all there, playable and asset complete.

Now we’re left with an ever-growing lernaean hydra list of other tasks to handle – emails, wider testing, stability, updating store presences, promotional stuff and in general, just trying to maximize the reach and polish of what we’ve made.

The final stretch of production (roughly the last 5 months?) was really fun. The game had matured enough that we just instinctively knew what would work and what wouldn’t.

We’d become comfortable enough with the tools we built and our process where we’d just be constantly in hyper mode. The game really came together in this final leg of development.

POLYGON BIRD, our studio name, and EXCEL Framework, the name given to the "shmup tools" we made for the game.

I was expecting ending full-on production on BC to be frustrating and depressing, but some switch flipped in my head and now all I want to do is email people about the game, optimize our Steam tags and figure out how to get this in people’s hands – and I’m finding that fun, at least for now. The game isn’t this ideal brainchild piece of art to me, suddenly. We did the work to make the thing, now it’s time the thing worked for us.

It surprises me how often I find myself thinking ridiculous things like “we need to activate our discord members” – but I’ll take this over the usual pit of despair I fall into after finishing a big project.

I guess this is what motivated me to write down these thoughts in the first place – I was bracing to be fully depressed and lost right about now, resenting the game and the time we spent on it. Maybe this will serve as a reminder that finishing a thing doesn’t have to feel so bad?

So now we’re kind of going back into uncharted waters – promoting, releasing, dealing with feedback, hotfixes and support. There’s going to be a lot of “learning on the job”, I guess, but I’m excited to see that aspect of game dev.

I’m really glad we were able to hit our goal of wrapping up this phase of BIRDCAGE as the year comes to a close – it makes it easy to look back on the past 2 years as a whole and see how much we’ve learned. I can’t wait for us to make another game, knowing what we know now.

There is still nothing to announce regarding the release of the game, but it still felt important to make note of this milestone.

For now, just know we’ve made a game and are working on getting it out there! We should have a lot more to say soon.

In the meantime, you can help us out by adding BIRDCAGE to your Steam wishlist.

Thanks for sticking around all these years.

Happy holidays!

-G

[icanothink1]

Why den is both not purely an animal and can consent.

There alot of textual evidence but if that’s too long here some other form of offical evidence.

Mod statements

Ofifcal dev statements

Before you say “this is fake” or anything else here the link.

Now if you somehow still aren’t convince here the textual evidence and of course major spoilers below

Skeptic (aka lure) Den.

For this case it’s shows some of the clearest case of her humanity.

First of all to get the Tower out of the room the eyes.

If you say “oh it’s just the narrator interpretation” this is textually incorrect as shown below

You think narrator, the guy who literally calls her an animal moments later and is shown a constant horrible hatred of princesses. Would interpret her eyes as saying something so humanizing when that’s the exact opposite of what he wants you to see her as?

Even hero calls this out as shown below

Narrator reply is this

Which shows this isn’t just “just the narrator interpretation” it’s actual factual truth.

Now you may say “she kills you if you flinch! She’s an animals” she is a traumatized reactive woman. As seen in proto beast (stabbing her) how you killed her was by a sudden movement, another sudden moment like flinching might give her a trauma reaction and plus let’s not forget she’s starving and scared.

(Edit)

While you might say her acting on base instincts proves how much of an animal she is but it doesn’t. Often times when in dangerous situations, without much time to think people fall back into instincts behaving animistically, but this doesn’t make them animals.

But it’s states best by this user on discord.

i will add you can be sentient while also reacting to things instinctually. no one acts like the hunted isn't sentient because of his instincts. plus she is genuinely starving in this chapter. she is essentially feral in a lot of ways but in the same way humans can be feral. it's a very human response to extreme stress and trauma to lash out, become unable to speak, fall back on ingrained habits and patterns i.e. attacking someone because they've hurt you or you feel you need to hurt them, etc. she just gets more dangerous limbs to lash out with than a static human would. acting solely on instinct (even instincts that aren't typically human especially for literally not a human) when running on systems designed to force those instinctual reactions (fight or flight mode, trauma, etc) does not remove one's sentience, and you can literally have conversations with her, like if you both get trapped separately under the rubble and she asks if it's her fault you both ended up like this and fully comprehends your varying responses

- logical_leaf in BTG discord [routes and spoilers; The Den.]

Now for freeing her, when you get trapped for yourself what do you guess this ‘animal’ does?

Leave you to die?

No.

She returns for you.

Any animal would have taken the opportunity to leave you behind but she doesn’t. She in fact acutally frees you.

Stubborn (aka fight) Den.

Now you may think stubborn den where you fight her and even descend into madness would prove she is nothing more than an animal but this does the exact opposite.

First of all the shame.

In both cases where you either embrace instinct or take the opening she feels not fear but shame, and over what she have done specifically.

now before you go “well dogs and other animals can feel shame” no they cannot.

Shame is as stated by dictionary (.com) is

the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another:

Shame ususally in context comes from feeling you did something wrong and or morally dubious.

Animal have neither of these concepts when say a dog breaks something it’s not shame there feeling it’s fear your going to hurt them, they don’t have a concept morality right or wrong.

Plus even if hypothetically animals could feel shame, what is den feeling shame for?

“What have we done?”

This is stated after violently or repeatly violently murdering each other and even if animals could feel shame I highly doubt any animal would feel shame for… Acting on instinct/engaging in other animalistic behaviors like consumption and violence.

This stems from a point of humanity and if she truly lost her humanity at this point she wouldn’t feel any of that, at best she would probably be upset she didn’t win or wasn’t able to kill what she thought was easy prey.

Now to answer some common arguments against this.

“Well she looks like an animal! So she is an animal and you are a zoo for liking animals!”

Please share where are the giant winged lions are irl and where can I fine them?/J

But I’m underage so I’ll rather not even humor this

Abby straight up said everything in this game was made to be hot so take it up to her for giving a ‘lion’ a snatched waist.

“Well you could get your face bitten off!”

Let’s see what else can happen?

Cut into a trillion pieces

Beaten to death

Disemboweled and tortured for millions of years

crushed by vines

Tortured via chains

Forced to kill yoirself

And alot more

In the grand scheme of things beast/den are actually safer than most princesses when it comes to dating.

Plus people often times fine all of those hot, so what’s wrong with anyone else being attracted to the fact you could be murdered at any time and at her mercy?

And before you say anything please don’t assume I want to fuck beast or den, some others might but bringing it up makes me deeply uncomfortable.

That’s it guys byeeee!

[felassan]

Snippet on photo mode:

BIO_brenon: "Just a quick note! This was an effort by a bunch of folks on the team who were all passionate about getting Photo Mode working for DATV. I will be sure to pass on your appreciation and thanks to them! In terms of tips & tricks, a lot of it is just about composition. Generally I like to keep photos pretty simple, don't have a lot of empty or wasted space in the frame, play around with different lenses. Different perspectives can be a lot of fun. Action shots are also usually pretty interesting... there's a lot of settings to play with! When the feature was first enabled, the dev team started coming up with some pretty amazing shots. It'll be exciting to see what you all come up with once you're able to get your hands on it too!"

[source: the official BioWare Discord server]

[zeondraws]

Addair (he has so many kids oml-)

Caz

Gibbo

Muir

Roper (I must not cry, don't cry, don't do iT- HIS POOR WEEN AAAAAA HIS FATHER WON'T COME HOME sobs)

"GlasgowPhotos"

These two are labelled Roy

I know these pics are technically from the devs, but like if we only think of the lore, these are pics from the characters.

..You tellin me Muir has sons? Out of everyone I find it so hard to imagine iuedheiwujhdfiuwejhfudiwe

Also random thought about Roper again, someone prolly already said it on tumblr but he def gives off dad vibes. Like Rennick is the big bully and Roper is there for everyone and comforts those who need it.

Lemme copy some goofy aaaah quotes I wrote on discord.

I wish I could have seen more of their banter

It's literally just Roper saying Rennick we cannae do this, it's against protocol

"Rennick, enough, you can't treat them like this"

"…. Rennick, they're on vacation you expect them to teleport to the rig?"

"We already work 10h shifts you canna increase it."

Roper: bursts door in "RENNICK-"

Rennick: NO runs out of his office

Roper: GET BACK HERE!!!

Rennick: GET OFF MY RIG.

Roper to everyone VS to Rennick:

Or as @pickleddandelions put it:

I'm thinking about how Gibbo tried to bring up Roper when talking to Rennick on the phone. The Beira D version of "dad said we can't"

With that being said, here have some more stuff one can find ingame:

Not my crocs!!11!11!!!!!

Also "Renurning Onshore" woops iouedhwiudhjw

Also there are many kid drawings in the game files, however

hhhmmm is that Charizard-

Honestly a masterpiece, I will never be as good, like WoW.

I just realised one of them says "From John", hmmm.... What does this mean.

Also this file here makes the name inspiration very obvious, which I find cool.

Looking through gamefiles is always very fun. I was checking game version 1.2 and comparing it to 1.4 and the only big difference is additional files being added for Silver Screen mode. Aside from additional soundfiles in 1.2, but I shared those on discord. Mostly some Infected Rennick movement sounds, Caz glove sounds and some enviroments/helicopter. (I think I mentioned it on tumblr before..?)

Moving on, here are some images from monitor screens.

It took me a while to realise it's the rig shown on the second image.

Either way I hope you guys enjoy today's ramblings

I would be drawing but, I am not doing good. I think I will feel better once my friend departs on friday. I have been spiraling badly again. I dislike relapses sm.

[bawmbo]

a word about the pressure fandom (and fandom space in general) (for discussion)

i usually Don't really like bringing "drama" on main or being like . Contriversal at all but i feel like this is a perfect time to discuss fandom spaces and the result it has on people. But using pressure as an example of it

i don't wanna neccisarily say that "fandoms are getting worse!!! raahh!" because . In some sense it Isn't really the case? and in reality the environment of the fandom just changes and there's a new set of problems. but i Feel like there's more nuance to the conversation than that (i feel like i should put that disclaimer because i see a lot of people say "it's always been this way" and i. Don't have a really good chance to measure that with amnesia barriers lol)

but like . Everyone is so. Much??? i notice a trend between each fandom space i've been in where everyone is super hyperreactive and holds grudges over tiny things or lacks care to a degree that actively keeps arms open for like . Grooming and other nasty stuff (proshipping, namely).

that is to say that everything is unbelievably black and white??

for a while, i didn't want to get into pressure because of the resistance against adding deaf mode, but after the apologies, willingness to learn, and changes, we warmed up to it a bit more. We really like the game!!!!

but a more major piece of not wanting to go in was the fandom drama. i specifically see that people really rank on the creators for being "homophobic", for stating - from what i understand - that their shopkeeping "bastard" character (who needs as many assets as possible to survive) would engage in rainbow capitalism. (and mind you, that isn't even added in canon) and thst the creator of sebastian herself selfships with HER OWN OC!!! (CRIMINAL!!! BLASPHEMY!!) and that the dev team didn't want to see ship art of sebastian in their discord server (and the fandom took that as "no kissing the fish ever forever anywhere!") And that is the whole grudge ?

like . i think that there needs to be a discussion had that

a. people Are allowed to set firm boundaries in spaces they own and moderate and it is healthy for both the moderators and community to have these rules set and respected. (such as, adult moderators asserting "please don't send ship art in my discord server" to a majority minor audience.) (though i feel as though they should be able to dictate what they are comfortable sorting through regardless of audience age)

b. writing a character that engages in a bad practice does not mean that the author condones their actions, nor does liking villainous characters mean you are an absolute apologist for their wrongdoings (be it for fiction or in reality)

AND

i want to FIRMLY add the note to point b. does NOT mean that fiction does not affect reality. historically it does. the way that i was groomed (that being, that argument allowed Not Okay behaviors to be normalized to happen to me under the caveat that "it isn't real, so it's ok! i'm just overreacting"). there is an argument to be had about me being a fictive in a system and the reasons why. and there are many cases of this effect both tame and not.

in short: there are ways to write characters appropriately and there are ways to write characters harmfully (stereotypes, romanticization, fetishization, being some examples of harmful writing)

i believe that, like every character, Sebastian Solace has reason to be written the way he is, or be told the way he is. at the same time, i believe that nothing is above (appropriate) critique.

and that is not something that can co-exist nowadays? like. You have to take a hard stance on these things with your full chest like it's life or death or american politics (coming from. A very exhausted american lol)

no . The pressure devs are not homophobic for saying Sebastian Solace would engage in Rainbow Capitalism. They are not genuinely believing that they're married to him or want you dead for wanting to self ship with their own character either . Nor are they in the wrong to be uncomfortable, if they are

yes . You are allowed to be uncomfortable that your blorbo is engaging in an upsetting act to you. You are allowed to be upset that the creator is uncomfortable by what i understand to be a certain show of affection towards the character

no . You are not in your right to pray on someone's entire downfall, send death threats, or yell about how you want real people to be gored for their character accurate character choices or want to self ship as you have .

like . You guys know that you're allowed to dislike media or aspects of things without reason . Right? and that you Curate your own internet experience. and you can dislike aspects of someone without wishing death on them every single time. And that these people are real people who struggle with things too ??

the way the fandom treats the creator and devs with such hatred simply existing is so reprehensible. to make someone hate their own creation so much for things that do Not harm anyone at all is so Horrible?? and i know that i wouldn't do well with that kind of reaction either

i hope that the dev team has the time and space to heal. they did a beautiful job on the game and the amount of time and effort they put into everything about it is unbelieably admirable. they always go above and beyond

i am losing steam towards the end of this, so it migut be ramblt and i hate proof reading and i'm on ~4 hrs of sleep but this has been onnmy mind for so long . Just wanted to get it out there. my partners have heard me yell so much too fbhff. i Like having discussions okay Bye

[7su-r]

MOD: 7th Stand User: R

Download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mN49EvprHEzvJmUvwvQvUEidZF17aubk/view?usp=drive_link A QoL mod of 7th stand user, based on version 2.6 with the colors from DX! Some gameplay elements have been altered to make it a bit more accessible for those that are not into old-school RPG's! If changes some aspects of the game that some players find frustrating, such as random encounters. This mod focuses on QoL and does not add new events or story elements.

Features:

• Colors from DX! HUGE thanks to Pythagasaurus13, the creator of DX, for letting me use these. Note that some colors have been adjusted a bit, generally to make it easier to tell different characters apart. • Water tiles no longer have a "flashing" effect and the screen flashing effects of certain battle animations have been toned down. • No random encounters. All enemies appear as characters on the map now! (The only exceptions are Caravan's pocket dimension and the Debug Room.) • Skills that can only be learned from staying at a hotel will no longer unlock randomly. Instead, they are guaranteed to be unlocked as long as you meet their other requirements. • Several endings now allow you to enter the Dev Room: Betrayal End, Mad World End, Good Josuke End and the Unrest End. • Items show you how much HP/SP they restore.

• Hotels now show you how much their food/drinks restore and recover slightly more. • Tonio's special meals now guarantee a stat boosts and the game now tells you what stat has been boosted. Of course, he has to charge a bit more for such convenience. • XP gained from staying at hotels has been rebalanced. • Food (the type that can't be used in battle) will heal the K.O. status. Additionally, food at hotels now recovers a bit more. • Option to do a "fresh start" rather than a new game+. This is very similar to just starting a new game, but you keep your completion counts and special unlocks. • A whole bunch of bugfixes. (And maybe even some brand new bugs 🙃) • More small adjustments that are not listed here! Q&A Q: I already have a save file, can I use that? A: Yes! Just copy your save[number].lsd into the 7SU-R folder. But make sure to back up your original save just in case. Q: Does it work on EasyRPG? A: Yes! Q: I found a bug, eediot. A: DM it to me! I'll fix it. Don't be afraid to mention small graphical errors either. Q: I have a suggestion! A: DM it to me! But keep in mind: This mod does not aim to add new content and I do not want to change character dialogue. (Unless you believe something is mistranslated) Q: Can I still use the wiki? A: Most of the guides on the wiki will still work for 7SU-R, but a couple of details might be different.

Q: Are the Chaos Mode / Ballin' updates included? A: Yes, thanks to KKM's help, the mod is currently up to date with 2.6's Ballin' update. Q: Is the story any different? A: Nope! There are only some spelling errors and a couple of minor dialogue changes to reflect the QoL changes.

Q: The game is stuck in a tiny frame in the corner of the screen. A: If your screen is only in the corner then right click the application and then go to properties. Go to compatibility and then click Change High DPI setting. At the bottom it will say Override high DPI scaling behavior. Click the check box and make sure what's under it says application. Then restart the game.

Q: I have another issue... A: Check the FAQ on the 7th stand wiki.

Credits: Clayman for creating 7th stand user. KKM for creating the 2.6 translation as well as YellowCardinals & MaudDuke for creating the earlier translations. Pythagasaurus13 for coloring DX. The 7th stand wiki Discord for helping with testing, especially BreakDude who picked out a ton of small errors.

[vinnamah]

Haven't tried asking here yet. Here goes nothing.

I'm looking for game suggestions! Co-op games that work and are still fun with only 2 players. Online/local co-op only, no splitscreen. Ideally for Steam, but I will look into Switch or PS2/Playstation options. PLEASE read below on what we are and are not looking for, if you want to make a suggestion!

We like cozy games. Farming sim games, puzzle-platformer games, sandbox/open-world games, (easy not-grindy) survival/craft games. We are looking for games with a LOT of content in them, and/or games with the theoretically endless gameplay loop. We're looking to sink dozens to hundreds of hours into a game together, since playing videogames together is something we do for a few hours every night. Our bonding activity.

We are not looking for combat-heavy games. Shooter games. Sports games. Really hard and grindy games. Racing games. Not looking to jump into an MMO together. Not looking for an AMAZING game that only has 2 hours of content and zero replayability. No party or gameshow style games.

Games we do like but have played to death already:

Stardew Valley (vanilla and modded)

Wolfquest

Phasmophobia

PlateUp!

Minecraft (vanilla and modded)

Palworld

Webfishing

Trying out Portal 2 co-op mode today

Other games we have already played, or considered but haven't yet:

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, we wish there was more stuff to do TOGETHER, instead of just running around in a shared map doing separate things

Lethal Company and Content Warning we have only ever played with our roommate/mutual friend, since with only 2 players they aren't that great

Donkey Kong Country trilogy on the Switch SNES emulator (Co-op mode in these games is just taking turns, which isn't fun for whoever's turn it isn't)

Viscera Cleanup Detail we have played only a little bit of, and got bored after one map. This feels like another game that is better with a bigger group of people

It Takes Two is on our list to try, but haven't gotten around to jumping through the EA hoops to set up a game together. To play online co-op, we both have to have EA accounts, and trying to set that all up was a huge hassle that we gave up trying to sort out.

Powerwash Simulator we played. It is fun, but very repetitive and not much to do and not much story.

Untitled Goose Game is very short, and we have already done everything in the game together

We've played some of the Lego games together, but those only offer splitscreen co-op, and with her bad eyesight fiancée really needs to be able to play on her own screen

Sun Haven gave me the ick. I got it for both of us right around when it released. But the way the dev team and staff in the discord server treated members making suggestions, and the way they prioritized generating paid cosmetic DLC over fixing bugs and glitches or implementing features that the entire community was begging for, as well as keeping kickstarter backers in the dark about when the Switch version was coming, it all rubbed me the wrong way. It felt like a soul-less Stardew Valley clone. There are also game design decisions that really made the game un-fun for both of us.

[askagamedev]

What makes code “hard coded” compared to other code, why is it so difficult to change, and why would developers hard code something rather than use normal code?

In order to understand how something is "hard coded", you need to understand what we do to the code in order to make it run on your device. Code is written in a human-readable format, but there is a lot of optimization and changes that get done to the code before the device can run it. This process is called compiling and linking. The result of compiling and linking code is an executable file that the device can understand, but humans cannot. The executable that has been compiled and linked is a snapshot of the code at the time that was compiled and linked. Any changes to the code require compiling and linking again in order for the executable to reflect it.

The program often needs to make choices based on internal values while the game is running. Most of the time these values are data-driven, meaning they are read from files outside of the code (e.g. read in the information from this config file and store it as whether to run the game in windowed mode). When the game needs to decide whether to run in windowed mode, it checks the file, grabs the relevant data, and uses that to decide. Because it's pulling this information from that config file, the same executable can handle both windowed and non-windowed mode. We don't need to compile and link the executable again.

If running windowed mode were hard coded, somewhere in the code itself there would be a variable like "Windowed = true". Then, after compiling and linking the executable, that executable would always run in windowed mode and never be able to run in full-screen mode. The only way to change this would be to change the code, then compile and link the executable again. Hard coding is fast and easy to do as a first pass of things, it's a quick way to test stuff locally if you can compile and link the executable yourself.

We can't give out the code because it's copyrighted and our intellectual property. We can only give out the executables after compiling and linking because they can't be read by humans. This means that any changes made to code are fairly difficult to distribute - this is what patches are. Hard coded values can only be changed when we distribute a new executable, while data-driven values like settings in a config file are much easier to change because they don't require compiling and linking, they only require somebody to modify the file being read and not the executable itself.

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[hagweeds]

Hello!

I recently stumbled across Santae on Tumblr, gave it a try, decided i wasn't really vibing with it, and quit (never joined the discord or really poked at the forums) all before finding out about the... Unfortunate stuff going on.

I had no clue, and now im feeling twice shy about interacting or supporting other similar sites. I very firmly don't want to support anything AI related, so i was wondering if you maybe had a list somewhere of sites( in development or otherwise) that you can recommend?* I wouldn't even know where to begin looking.

(*Already Hoarding dragons on Flight Rising, so any OTHER sites)

omg sure yeah!! there are a lot of smaller petsims around and the two upcoming im excited about:

UPCOMING

- Pawborough (FR style breeding sim with cats)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tbpt/paw-borough-the-feline-virtual-browser-rpg/description

https://www.pawborough.net/demo

PB is currently in closed beta testing and if lucky you might still find people giving away keys? But I think most are claimed now. Open beta will be open to everyone, but there will be no further wipes at that point so it could still be a while. Updates are posted daily in discord and it's open for everyone to join.

Breeding is slightly different than FR though so I would recommend playing around with the breeding demo. It's not wheel based like FR and I'd describe it more like when you mix paint colors?

Would encourage you to look at the more recent KS updates because they did revamp a lot of the art that's in the original campaign (hydde from fr is on the art team!)

- Mythaura (another breeding sim but with various mythical creatures)

https://mythaura.com/

https://ko-fi.com/mythauradev

Not currently in beta but the devs do put out monthly updates on progress, and you can donate to their Ko-Fi for beta keys. Currently I have 33 keys (and get more every month) so you and anyone else are welcome to ask for a key when it opens up.

This one was around in dev for a while but died off as the original creator moved on to IRL things. Current owners worked on the site with the OG owner and with permission reference the original concepts. Since it's been with the current team updates have been consistently every month.

Some cool previews for their DnD/adventuring mode are in the more recent updates! Also there are shiny familiars 👀

EXISTING

- Pixel Cats End (based on FR dom adopts from Ice)

Small community and new content is slow but steady as it is one dev. No gender restriction on breeding, cats belong to North/South/Trade. N/S can breed with each other and Trade can breed with all. Very gender inclusive and all cats pronouns can be freely changed at any time. Breeding is based on genotypes and it's fairly complex (cats have hidden traits and some are recessive etc)

If you like chasing rare breeding outcomes it's pretty fun! There are rarer patterns and things like Albino cats. There is also a DnD grid based adventuring mode that I find pretty fun to grind, final boss gives out drops that include a G1 cat generator.

4dopt

I'm just going to steal the post @jinogasux-fr made lol https://jinogasux-fr.tumblr.com/post/771749879998447616/doing-another-reblog-of-this-because-4dopt-had-to

Basically it's very customizable heavy adopts and all pets /items/etc are drawn by and submitted by players.

Wolvden/Lioden (wolf and lion breeding sims)

Both sites are owned by the same team but Wolvden is the newer game and works a little differently than Lioden.

Big warning that in both sites your pets will eventually die and freezing them is a premium item. The upside to this is your account does not "rollover" until you tell it to. So if you don't log in for a week, your pets won't have aged until you rollover again. Breeding is also a lot more restrictive in terms of who you can breed and when (like on Lioden you have one male pride leader who can breed, but if you want to breed one of your females to a different male you'd have to use another player as the stud unless you retire and select a new leader)

Both sites tend to have very dramatic communities but the gameplay is solid and functioning. Staff can also be questionable but if you keep to yourself it's not on the level of CJ DMing players yaknow

Subeta

If you liked the questing on Santae, just play Subeta bc thats where CJ took it from and they do it much better.

Subeta is older but still... relatively active? I think they're still revamping the site but everything still functions. I played obsessively 10 years ago.

Largely focuses on human avatars with pets. At the time it was kind of the adult Neopets site (iirc it was 16+ only originally)

There are some other petsites that I just don't recommend: Marapets (owner is a freak all I really remember), Neopets (as an old school neo player i just can't recommend neo anymore lol), Dappervolk, Lorwolf

In terms of where I find or go looking for these, it's unfortunately not one place. A lot of these I discovered either through my FR-based friends or through Tumblr. https://www.virtualpetlist.com used to be pretty good back in the 2010s but looking now they do seem to be featuring AI art sites.

I do frequently see that people tend to make topics in the General Discussion area for new sites, so it's worth keeping an eye there too: https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gend

Sometimes I'll also browse Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites as that's how I found PB originally.

[curejiraiya]

People on Fashion Dreamer discord are dooming about how the game has no single player at all, but imo it has exactly the single player I'd want from this game?

It's exactly the shop aspect from Style Savvy, only without money and stock limits.

It IS missing the overarching story, but, and this take is going to make some people mad, the story in Girls Mode 1-3 were all not great :( I rushed through them. Girls Mode 4 was the exception, and is a fantastic game, but it's also equally a fashion game AND an idol game, and since SynSophia is pushing a different idol fashion game right now I don't think they wanted to split their audience.

I would have preferred an overarching story, but I'm not mad about the systems we got. It's like style savvy, but only the very roots of it, and it looks like they put that dev time into the systems in the game instead. But even without the social aspects (That I will not have because I have to play on emu, can't afford the game :( ) I still think there's enough here to justify it as more than just a sandbox where you do nothing at all.

[idollandhero]

I think in a year we'll look back at our time with Idol Land and think of it like a weird dream. A time when there wasn't a Pretty Series show announced and everything was in limbo. A time where King of Prism was a dead franchise. A time when songs were performed at Pretty Series live shows that wouldn't premier in the anime for years. The game teaser in every single Pretty Series announcement only for it to be delayed again. The YEARS long gap between episodes 2 and 3. The DISASTROUS launch. When we realized it was just a reskinned version of the switch game. Or when we discovered that it was mostly made by some unrelated dev who had only made one failed mobile otome game before Idol Land.

The Pretty Series' pivot to focusing on AiPri & KinPri instead of Idol Land & DanPri makes the past few years of Idol Land content, and the past less than a year of Idol Land actually being out, feel like an illusion.

It's frustrating because the concept of a PriPara mobile game sounds fantastic! When I play games like SIF2 or Idolish7 or whatever I think about what could have been. Was it money problems? or time problems? Or some combination of both. Regardless I can't help but yearn for a game with a budget that this franchise deserves.

And the web anime was great! But only 12 episodes, and its own budget problems, plus the games delay keeping it finished and in limbo for 2 years! (+ the lack of any western fansubs picking it up, seriously how is do we still only have subs for up to episode 6) meant that it never got the place in the spotlight it deserved. Some people speculated that it was meant to air on TV because the episodes are formatted as such, but with AiPri starting in that slot the same month the show is ending that doesn't seem to be true.

It's hard to say where PriPara is going from here. It's the series 10th anniversary and the arcade game is being shuttered to push players towards AiPri Verse instead. Idol Land's anime finale is going to air to little applause because it's stuck on an app with less than 20,000 active users, and in the same month as the launch of the new series that's slated to be a real PreCure competitor.

Idol Land's EOS hasn't been announced yet, but the missing Nino birthday coord, the April monthly update with entirely rerun coords, and the fact that Idol Land is getting very VERY close to running out of content from the switch game. Well, if not EOS I expect this game to go into maintenance mode pretty soon.

Yeah idk what my point here was exactly, but man Idol Land really was a blur. Sometimes I think we understate exactly how inexperienced the devs really were. The game doesn't have any type of Google Play integration, and when the game launched the account recovery only lasted 15 minutes. I have a newer phone and the game isn't compatible with my hole punch front camera. There's just a black bar there. I only have this problem with older games, anything made in the last 4 years doesn't have this problem except for Idol Land. I honestly think the lack of region locking is because the dev doesn't know how to turn it on. Someone on discord reported that they've been buying gold, and then contacting Google and asking for a Play Store refund. It's worked multiple times and they are not banned. How is a ban for chargebacks not something they implemented day one. Also this game doesn't have any deals or discounts, ever. It's hard to believe that, like every game I've ever played has a buy two and get 50% off the second one bundle. But it's like the devs don't know how to implement anything past basic gacha mechanics. I could also ramble about how expensive the prices are, but I've done it before I won't do it again. Also the photo room, it's implemented pretty badly. You upload a photo for the background and it crops it weird and squishes it and makes it blurry. I didn't know this at launch because it was a paid feature for like six months. The pass itself was a horrible value unless you were buying it specifically to get the episodes early, you got exactly how the amount of gold you paid for. Why not just buy the gold then. But they either realized that, or were preparing for end of service; because they took it down. I'm rambling about things the devs messed up but I haven't even mentioned the first three months of the game. There's been so many points in this game's history where playing a promise was borderline impossible for one reason or another. This game didn't feel finished until that November update that included immediate promises. God there's so much more. The photo competitions just being about editing for some reason. Also they went away, so clearly those didn't work. The amount of coords they've implemented that were broken in some way. Sometimes it was the wrong coord entirely, sometimes the cylume didn't work. It's like the dev team is so small that there's no QA people. Also on that note, Open Dream Land was just fixed in the mid March update. The game went more than 6 months where one of its two unique charts was off sync. Also remember the voice bug, that lasted forever.

I'm sorry I just started rambling lmao. This is the problem when I write posts with speech to text, I say way too much. Ultimately I enjoyed my time with Idol Land, but it's existence feels surreal. Especially because 80% of the features from this game I can turn on my switch after end of service and play, and it's free because I already paid once and never have to pay again. I even have Waku Waku O'Clock on Switch. One day, probably soon from the way things are going, I'm going to wake up and not be able to play Idol Land on my phone ever again. But instead of reminiscing of this game, I will think about the game that could have been if Idol Land got as much love as Prism Rush did.

KASHIKOMA ✌️

[pressureconfessions]

hello mod ur doing the lords work 🫡

I love pressure with all my soul but i believe both the fandom and the dev team are EXTREMELY Immature in terms of their interactions with each other. The deaf mode issue was one thing; people genuinely had a right to be concerned over something like that, but personally i feel like after that problem happened the fandom exploded into immediately thinking the worst of EVERYTHING the devs do. Yes -- the devs are 110% not flawless (the mere fact that many rules established in the discord server had to be reworded in order to make them less vulgar and rude BAFFLES me), but I feel like many people forget that these people are Just People. Sebastian (the character) is, in all technicality, an OC (coming from a Sebastian fictive). Pressure isn't a desperate ploy to gain money. It's literally a roblox game!!!! This is the first time the devs have ever HAD a fandom; it's horrific to think that it took less than a year for such a rabid fanbase to form in such quick succession.

On the opposite side of the same coin, how the devs act is actually atrocious. Making your fans purposefully upset is EXTREMELY and utterly childish. Calling genuine suggestions/concerns "ragebait" is very unsettling!!!!! You're telling me THAT'S what you think of your fanbase???? When faced with genuine criticism and worry about certain features in such a large scale game LIKE Pressure, there HAS to be some form of professionalism that is entirely absent when you take one look at the dev team.

Don't get me wrong; i believe these people work very hard and have something GREAT in front of them. I believe they don't intentionally do stupid things, but that goes for literally everyone. I think both the Pressure fandom AND the devs DESPERATELY need to step up in terms of how they act with each other. We aren't in an MMO ring; let's stop treating the twitter replies like one.

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