#Dev Tools solutions

[addohaislam2000]

power management, image processing, automotive application, Dev Tools solutions

i.MX 93 i.MX ARM Cortex-A55 2GB RAM 16GB QSPI Flash MPU Evaluation Board

[connect-infosoft-technologies]

9 AI Tools to Build Websites and Landing Pages: Revolutionizing Web Design

In the ever-evolving world of web design, staying ahead of the curve is essential to creating visually stunning and highly functional websites. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), designers and developers now have a powerful set of tools at their disposal to revolutionize the web design process. AI website design tools offer innovative solutions that streamline and enhance the creation of websites and landing pages. 

In this article, we will explore nine AI tools that are reshaping the web design landscape, discuss their various types, and highlight the benefits of using AI tools for website building.

1. Wix ADI:

Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) is a game-changer for website building. It utilizes AI algorithms to automatically generate customized website designs based on user preferences and content inputs. With Wix ADI, even users with no design experience can create stunning websites in a matter of minutes.

2. Grid:

Grid is an AI-powered website builder that uses machine learning to analyze design principles and create visually pleasing websites. It takes user inputs, such as branding elements and content, and generates unique layouts and designs tailored to the user's needs. Grid eliminates the need for manual coding and design expertise, making it accessible to users of all skill levels.

3. Firedrop:

Firedrop is an AI chatbot-based website builder that guides users through the entire website creation process. The AI-driven chatbot asks questions, gathers information, and generates a personalized website design. It also offers real-time editing and customization options, allowing users to make changes effortlessly.

4. Bookmark:

Bookmark is an AI website builder that combines artificial intelligence with human assistance. It provides an intuitive interface where users can select a design style and content preferences. The AI algorithms then generate a website layout, which can be further customized using Bookmark's drag-and-drop editor. Users also have access to AI-driven features like automated content creation and personalized marketing recommendations.

5. Adobe Sensei:

Adobe Sensei is an AI and machine learning platform that enhances the capabilities of Adobe's creative tools, including website design software like Adobe XD. Sensei analyzes user behavior, content, and design elements to offer intelligent suggestions, automate repetitive tasks, and speed up the design process. It empowers designers to create impactful websites with greater efficiency and creativity.

6. The Grid:

The Grid is an AI-driven website builder that uses machine learning to analyze user content and generate unique, responsive website designs. It employs a card-based layout system, automatically arranging and resizing content for optimal visual appeal. The Grid's AI algorithms continuously learn from user feedback, improving the quality of designs over time.

7. Elementor:

Elementor is a popular AI-powered plugin for WordPress that simplifies the process of building landing pages. It offers a drag-and-drop interface with a wide range of pre-designed templates and widgets. Elementor's AI features include responsive editing, dynamic content integration, and intelligent design suggestions, enabling users to create professional landing pages efficiently.

8. Canva:

Although primarily known as a graphic design tool, Canva incorporates AI elements to make website design accessible to non-designers. It offers a user-friendly interface with customizable templates, stock images, and drag-and-drop functionality. Canvas AI algorithms suggest design elements and provide automatic resizing options, making it easier to create visually appealing websites and landing pages.

9. Sketch2React:

Sketch2React is an AI tool that simplifies the process of converting design files from Sketch (a popular design software) into interactive, code-based websites. It automates the conversion process, reducing the need for manual coding and accelerating the development timeline. Sketch2React's AI capabilities ensure that the resulting websites are responsive and optimized for different devices.

Benefits of Using AI Tools for Website Development:

1. Time-saving: AI tools automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, allowing designers and developers to focus on creativity and strategic aspects of web design.

2. Cost-effective: AI tools eliminate the need for extensive coding knowledge or hiring professional designers, making website building more affordable for businesses of all sizes.

3. User-friendly: AI website builders provide intuitive interfaces, drag-and-drop functionality, and automated design suggestions, making them accessible to users with limited technical skills.

4. Personalization: AI algorithms analyze user preferences and content inputs to generate personalized website designs that align with the brand and target audience.

5. Enhanced creativity: AI tools offer design suggestions, templates, and automated content creation features that inspire creativity and enable designers to experiment with new ideas.

6. Improved user experience: AI-driven websites are optimized for responsiveness, usability, and accessibility, resulting in enhanced user experiences and increased engagement.

Conclusion:

AI tools have revolutionized the web design industry by simplifying and enhancing the process of building websites and landing pages. Whether it's generating personalized designs, automating repetitive tasks, or offering intelligent design suggestions, AI-driven solutions empower designers and non-designers alike to create visually stunning and highly functional websites. By leveraging the power of AI, businesses can save time, reduce costs, and deliver exceptional user experiences, ultimately driving success in the digital landscape. As AI technology continues to advance, we can expect even more innovative tools to emerge, further revolutionizing the field of web design. Embracing these AI tools is key to staying at the forefront of web design trends and creating websites that captivate audiences and achieve business goals.

[lumsel]

Basement Syndrome

Why do first levels in roguelikes suck so bad?

Consider it. You're playing your favourite roguelike, starting up a new run, but before you get to the fun part you have to slog through that part. You know, the boring slog at the start of every playthrough that you gotta suffer through before you hit the fun part. The Mines in Spelunky, the Desert in Nuclear Throne, the Basement in Binding of Isaac, if they've all got one thing in common it's that you just can't wait to get out of them. What gives? This is Basement Syndrome: the tendency in roguelikes for the start of the run to just broadly suck ass.

There's two big reasons Basement Syndrome is so pervasive in the genre:

The first is Difficulty. The first level in a roguelike is generally designed to be a new player's introduction to the game. It has to be! It's the first thing you're confronted with when you hit play. So this first level bears the burden of introducing the player to the game's mechanics and expectations in a controlled environment. The designer is understandably reluctant to throw new players in the deep end, so this first level will usually be mechanically less complex so you can come to grips with how everything works before the game starts switching things up on you.

Add on to that how a lot of roguelikes take a kind of arcade approach to progression. You measured your success based on how far you progressed in a run. You'd get good enough to beat level one, but then you get stonewalled by level two. Then when you're good enough to beat level two, you get stonewalled by level three, and so on, until you hone your skills enough to beat the whole damn game. Each level is a new spike in difficulty that you have to conquer to beat the game, and you measure that progress to mastery by your runs reaching further and further into the game

This is pretty standard stuff, it's a difficulty curve, everyone does this. But, of course, in a roguelike... you gotta replay that super simple easiest first level every time you die! This means the first area has to juggle a dual responsibility as a new player's introduction to the game, and the start of every elite player's run. That's not an easy balance to strike-- and most games don't strike it!

The second is Variance. Modern roguelikes use the player's build as a source of variance from run-to-run. As you play through a run, your character will accumulate new items that give them unique attributes which come to define their playstyle in some way. This has become a ubiquitous part of the genre, and it makes sense! It's a great way of keeping the game fresh and interesting as you replay it again and again, by changing the way in which you engage with the same problems the game tosses at you depending on the tools you've been given.

The problem, though, is that if the bonuses that define your build are something that accumulates over the course of the run... then at the start of the run, when you've got the least bonuses, that's where the variance is at its lowest. The first area in a roguelike takes place before your build has taken shape -- if every run begins in the same place and then branches out into something interesting, but the start of the run is happening before that branching has occurred. Which means that the feature that makes roguelikes as replayable as they are -- the variance -- is straight up not present through the first level or longer. It's the same shit every time!

So, alright. Basement Syndrome is basically two problems walking in lockstep. And the bad news is that these can be pretty tough problems to solve. But the good news is, you can stand on the shoulders of giants here, cause these are a known problems. Roguelike devs the world over have concocted solutions for one or both of these. Let's take a look at some of those.

Solution 1 (Difficulty): Just Fuckin Skip That Shit

If the first level sucks so bad, why not just not play it? This is the problem Spelunky set out to answer when it invented the Tunnel Man. Once you've showed true mastery of the first level, you can accumulate resources that allow you to buy skips past those early levels that let you get stuck right in to the good stuff.

This one gets kind of held back by most of the games that implement it implicitly punishing you for using it. Spelunky treats the ironman run as the "true" way to beat the game and you'll be down on items if you skip to the end anyway, and Nuclear Throne has the oasis shortcut but because of how that one scales difficulty you'll be behind on weapons and score for the rest of the run. Maybe Enter the Gungeon was better about this but I did not like that game so I never found out lol. A shame, too, because I really think there's promise here. Just skip the boring bit! It's fine!

Solution 2 (Difficulty): Metadifficulty

Many Roguelikes escalate difficulty by ramping up the challenge with each successive level in a run. But what if there was another way? What if, once you got good enough at level three... level one got harder instead? Enter metadifficulty. This is systems like ascensions in Slay the Spire and Heat in Hades, where beating runs grants you access to new tiers of difficulty that add complications to the entire thing, allowing the devs to scale game difficulty in such a way that the run can START hard and not just GET hard after an indeterminate time.

This can be done wrong, like if you amp up the damage without increasing the complexity of the start, you've potentially made the game more tedious but not more interesting. But it's not too hard to add some modifiers that change up behaviours enough to add interesting wrinkles to the early game. Even something so simple as a time limit can really complicate how you view that first level, pushing things enough to add engagement to even the start of the game.

Solution 3 (Difficulty): Alternate Start

Pretty straightforward one here. Just swap out that shitty first level for an actually good first level. The Repentance expansion of Binding of Isaac lets you switch over to Downpour after playing the first floor of the Basement, and in return you get a free reroll on every item room in the alt path. You could also see Hades II's surface route as a variant of this as well.

I think this is a really promising solution on the difficulty side; it's all the benefits of Just Fuckin Skip That Shit without the sorta cheaty feeling it brings. There are potential issues with actually incentivising the alternate start, though. Why play the harder (but more interesting) start level when you could play the easier (but more boring) start and not have to risk anything? Sometimes you gotta come up with tricky ways to force players into enjoying themselves when they won't do it themselves.

I'd like to see this one explored more. Both the abovementioned games implement alternate starts as part of a whole entire alternate game route, and yeah, not every roguelike is gonna have the resources for that. It'd be neat to see some roguelikes that have this sort of thing but really just for the first level. Who knows? It could work better than you think.

Solution 1 (Variance): Start Bonuses

So if early game variance is such a problem, why not just... add variance to the early game? Every run, at the start of the run, why not give the player some huge big bonus that could help define their run? That'd at least make the start more interesting, right?

It's a good idea that immediately runs into an issue, which is that couldn't you just restart the run over and over until you get the start bonus you want? Cause if players are doing that, that actually totally defeats the purpose -- the run variance you so carefully cultivated is now obliterated by degenerate player strategies! Every run starts the same way again! Fortunately Slay the Spire already figured out how to handle that in a pretty elegant way, which is that the cool start bonuses are only granted if you reached the first boss. This means you can't just hold R until you get a good start, you're forced to at least commit a little to every run if you wanna keep seeing those cool bonuses. Smart!

Solution 2 (Variance): Frontloaded Upgrades

So, run variance in a roguelike is the result of a number of accumulated bonuses, all of which work together to define your run. This is all well and good, but... does it need to work this way? What if the first few upgrades in your run are more consequential than the others, causing your build to rapidly take shape right at the beginning and the rest of the run becomes tuning?

This stroke of genius is exactly how Hades II handles it! You've got five primary slots for upgrades that affect your active abilities and your method of MP gain, and you can only have one upgrade in each slot. These slots rapidly fill up at the start of the run, and the upgrades that hit these slots are far more consequential than most of the passive upgrades that don't touch a slot, so the shape your run will take is rapidly defined nearer to the start of the run and the rest of the run is just tuning (you'll notice Hades 1 attempted a similar system here, but that game beefed on run variance in general so it didn't really land.)

In theory this is vulnerable to the same reroll problem that start bonuses are subject to, with players just resetting after the first 2 upgrades instead of the very start of the run, but both Hades games do their own work to train the player out of getting restart happy by making you forfeit all metaprogression resources if you quit out of a run. You have to either finish the run or die to make it count, and killing yourself can be surprisingly tedious in those games, so... fuck it, why not tough it out. It's surprising how well a little bit of careful incentive engineering can get a person to change play patterns. At least, it worked on me, anyway...

Anyway, that's the rundown. Basement Syndrome is still a pretty pervasive issue in roguelikes -- even the ones I've mentioned above often still have the issue, just to a lesser degree. But still, it's a solvable problem! Lemme know if you think I missed anything, and thanks for reading!

[askagamedev]

On the topic of old temporary solutions, how is the hacky solutions explained when a new hire is brought in to work on a game or an entire new guard comes in to keep an older game updated with content or running? Do you get a bunch of instructions like “don’t touch this code from E3 2018, as everything breaks when anything changes it” or is learning old code debt left to trial and error for new blood?

People don't often question why things are the way they are. We typically accept the explanation of "these things have always been this way" as a valid reason for most things, and that includes the tribal people who didn't eat certain things out of tradition and not because they knew that those forbidden foods were poisonous or toxic.

In my experience all code, hacky or not, tends to be like Chesterton's Fence. You are best served not modifying or changing it until you know why it's there. This is primarily because of unforeseen side effects or other parts of the codebase that assume that code is functioning, and the cost for breaking things in an unknown manner is so great compared to leaving a load-bearing hack alone and working around it. Engineers are typically expected to be able to read and decipher code on their own. If they get stuck or don't understand something, they are expected to ask for help. Tribal knowledge built up over time within the workforce is incredibly important to keeping things running. Without that passing of knowledge from senior to junior, you end up with the population of Idiocracy where they use tools and devices but have no idea how they work.

This is also why it's nigh impossible to take an existing game project and hand it over to completely different team and expect them to be able to figure it out. When you've got dependencies and systems without documentation and pitfalls everywhere, you could have engineers spend years trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out how it all works together. This actually happened at a former employer - they got the rights to an entire codebase and asset depot from a shut-down licensed MMOG that the higher-ups wanted to try to resurrect and reskin, but a couple of very senior engineers spent over a year unsuccessfully trying to get the entire workflow working and the entire attempt was eventually scrapped.

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[mooncello]

[I never know how to start wipsday posts. It feels awkward and unnatural to me and kinda like writing a letter?? but not, so I'm just gonna begin as though we were already halfway into a conversation, excellent solution, Heath, thank you, I thought so too—]

—and post-op recovery is a strange, liminal space. I've got too much time to think yfm? Too much reading of The Guardian and Al Jazeera and feeling super fucking helpless. I've been reading a lot of non-news, too. Revisiting my beloved Cooper Dayton and Oliver Park in the vastly underrated gay werewolf mystery series by Charlie Adhara. Subscribed to Sarah Thankam Mathews's substack thot pudding (good stuff, big rec). Giving what I can to Rawa. I started Yuri on Ice, and am about to dive into Denne Michele Norris's novel When the Harvest Comes. My friend recently recommended the podcast The Nature Of with Willow Defebaugh, and the most recent episode feat. Q U E E N adrienne maree brown. I'll be queuing that up this week.

I've also been writing!! I'm working on a collab with @monbons and our conversations the past couple weeks have brought so much joy. AND: chapter 9 of more than a footnote is HAPPENING. Dev and Niall have returned, the words are flowing, and I'm 70% done with drafting the chapter. I love them. I love this chapter. It's self-indulgent, it's soft, it's real. It's sexy. I published the first chapter of this fic on June 1 last year, and I really hope to post the final chapter by then. Full circles and all that. Also wdym iT'S BEEN A YEAR??

Here's a long snippet from chapter 9:

Dev POV

I leave Niall and his mums and wander out the back door to the Flores Connelly garden. Like most London terraced houses, it's tiny. A postage stamp of land, half covered in paving stones and brimming with flowers. Gardening gloves and tools spill from cans. Rain boots and slides line up neatly by the door. Strings of cafe lights loop from one end of the garden to the other, bisecting the inky night with honey gold. I collapse into one of the woven patio chairs, beating back the maelstrom swiftly gathering inside my chest. I had hoped to delay this fucking decision for a few more days because what I want and what I need are at vicious odds. No, I think, biting the inside of my cheek. Not need. I don't need to see my family, but the should is strong and familiar. An ill-fitting, ugly jacket that I've outgrown—that never fit me, not really—yet my shoulders still expect its weight and the way it pinches under my armpits. It's held my spine in a weird, unnatural posture every summer, every school break, for so long, that to reject it ... I sigh and scrub my eyes with the heels of my hands. The idea of defying my parents' expectations is both freeing and terrifying. Fuck, I wish I weren't such a coward. Two arms snake around my shoulders from behind. And then his soft mouth, pressed against the side of my neck. "Wanna break something?" Niall murmurs. "I can find a glass from the kitchen." "Nah." I reach for his sweatshirt, grab it, and tug, until he's seated in my lap. I wrap my arms around his waist, his arms now looped around my neck, and I feel instantly resettled. At home. "This is better." I tip my face up, and Niall meets me with a kiss. It's slow and sweet, his hands coming up to curve around my jaw, slipping into my hair, his nails against my scalp and his weight solid upon my thighs. We kiss and kiss, not building to anything, just the simple pleasure of his mouth on mine. How is it this easy? This good?

thank you for the tag today @brilla-brilla-estrellita, and everyone else that's tagged me these last few weeks.

tags and ✌️:

@drowninginships @valeffelees @run-for-chamo-miles @blackberrysummerblog @confused-bi-queer

@youarenevertooold @shrekgogurt, @hushed-chorus @whatevertheweather, @cutestkilla

@you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @artsyunderstudy, @emeryhall, @imagineacoolusername, @leithillustration

@iamamythologicalcreature, @bookish-bogwitch @thewholelemon, @best--dress, @rimeswithpurple

@ileadacharmedlife @skeedelvee, @monbons, @alexalexinii, @j-trow-95

@theimpossibledemon, @brilla-brilla-estrellita, @larkral, @messofthejess, @talentpiper11

@fiend-for-culture, @stitchyqueer, @roomwithanopenfire + anyone else who would like to join

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 17 - Complex Dice Tests

We lied! Today was going to be about the meta-campaign mechanics, but we did a really cool system overhaul instead and we simply have to tell you about it.

Basically, we overhauled a part of our dice system in a pretty major way. It’s involved some fairly dramatic changes to how rolls are done, though all the other systems we’ve created plug pretty seamlessly into it (and as we’ve integrated it, it’s actually let us effectively cut systems now that they’re covered automatically by the new system). It’s one of the deftest bits of game design we’ve ever done and we gotta brag about it.

Development of the Previous System

One of the things that has been a problem for Torchship for a long while is that it wanted to be a dice pool system (roll X dice, looking for Y amount of Z+ results), which doesn’t just have binary pass-failure outcomes. We wanted players to feel competent in their fields, but we also needed there to be interesting difficulties and complications so that stories aren’t just a stateful progression of experts effortlessly performing the tasks they’re experts in.

This is surprisingly difficult!

Nailing down exactly how it would work has gone through about a half-a-dozen iterations, all of which always felt like hacky temporary solutions. The version we came up with before this, which the game has been using for about a year, involved two thresholds on each roll; a “Difficulty” to do the thing, and a “Complexity” tacked onto it that you had to reach to do it without any extra problems.

This served the purpose, but its various incarnations slowed the game down a lot more than it should have, and put too much stress on the GM to work out what these two targets would be and how complications would emerge from it. It was a clunky solution which required a lot of experience to use properly, functioning just well enough to build systems around without ever being stellar on its own.

It Must be Tuesday

While working on Must be Tuesday: Revived Edition, which uses a similar dice pool system, my wonderful editor Lexie came up with a really clever system while we were working out the dice odds. In that game, you have a “Skill” target from 6+ to 3+ with a variable dice pool and a number of Successes needed. 

Our partial successes there comes from a concept of ‘Scrapes’; dice which are 4+, but don’t meet your Skill target. If you reach the number of Successes you need when you add your Scrapes to your rolls meeting your Skill, you get a partial success! Brilliant, isn’t it? That means everyone has a chance to get by on even hard checks using their worst skills, but it’s never easy.

When we poked at Torchship stuff after testing that system out, we found ourselves wondering if something similar wouldn’t fit here as well. It wouldn’t translate 1-1; Must be Tuesday is about teenagers fighting monsters in a horror/comedy setup, where nobody is doing anything really complicated, and even the people who are the best at things are still only as good at it as, you know, teenagers. It’s not a good tone fit, but it inspired the system we used.

Complexity Certs & Complications

The solution we came up with, which we are so proud of we bumped a whole dev diary for it, is the idea of Complexity Certs.

Basically, we’ve ditched the previous Complexity target from before. Your dice Test just has a single, easily determined Difficulty. In ideal circumstances, you roll a number of dice determined by the tool you’re using, needing to get results over your Cert target. Get as many of those as the Difficulty, you succeed, otherwise you fail. Simple binary outcome to a simple problem.

But you’re playing cosmonauts. You know, you boldly go places you probably shouldn’t. You don’t face simple problems.

When the GM calls for a roll, they can tack on Complexity Certs in accordance to the situation you’re facing. Essentially, they’re saying this roll is a test not just of the ‘Primary Cert’ that determines if you pass or fail, but it’s also a test of some extra skills that have come up because of the number of moving parts involved in the situation.

So while you still only have one Difficulty, you need to meet that difficulty using multiple dice targets to succeed without qualifiers. If you just meet the difficulty on your Primary Cert, but not the Complexity Certs, then the GM can hit you with a Complication that can emerge naturally from the Cert in question. Conversely, you could end up in a situation where you have a better value on your Complexity Cert than the primary, so you could fail, but avert other disasters.

Or you could fail at both, and now you have two problems!

This system elegantly compresses a bunch of things the system needed to do into one quick judgement call by the GM in the moment. We don’t need to have specific penalties for working remotely through a robot, working in a spacesuit, or doing things in low gravity; the GM can just add the Drone Operator, EVA, or Cosmonaut Certs to the Test as Complexity Certs. There’s no limit to the number of Complexity Certs that can get added either, so you can sum up really complex situations with a single roll.

It also made the game’s group test mechanics much simpler and more impactful. Helping can be a complex game design challenge; you want people to be able to give each other a hand, but you need to make sure people can’t simply do it on every single roll to avoid slowdown and the trivialization of gameplay challenges. The way Help works now is allowing you to lend a friend one of your Certs to take on a Complexity Cert, basically monitoring a potential problem for them while they focus on the main task. 

As you get XP for Helping or being Helped on Checks where somebody is rolling with a higher Cert than you, you might want to point out potential problems with people’s plans that relate to your expertise as they come up so you can be the one to solve them. It also means that the presence of a Complexity Cert acts as a prompt for characters to step in and help one another out, and rewards a properly multi-disciplinary crew working together to tackle complex problems. 

You know. Like… like a Star Trek.

Examples

The example we use in the game rules is as follows.

Let’s say you are at a shooting range with your laser pistol, and you want to shoot a target. That’s a straightforward Sharpshooter Cert test. You either hit the target or you don’t. Easy!

But let’s say you’re doing the same thing but in a combat situation where you might get hit in return. The GM can (and is encouraged to) add the Soldier Cert as a Complexity Cert to the roll; Soldier is the Cert that covers tactics, movements, and the use of cover, so if your dice meet the difficulty using your Sharpshooter target, but don’t from your Soldier target, then you probably hit the target but exposed yourself to danger in the process.

Suddenly, we can see the difference between an Olympic target shooter and an infantryman.

Or let’s say you’re a guard posted in a reactor room; if you are doing some shooting there, the GM could throw in Damage Controller as a Complexity Cert to represent the chances of you breaking something vital in the antimatter reactor by throwing lasers everywhere. Suddenly, you have a really good reason to cross-train your guards in engineering skills, at least enough that they know not to shoot the matter/antimatter exchangers.

Or maybe you’re trying to incapacitate an unfamiliar alien creature without killing it; the GM could add Life Scientist. What if you’re doing it in a spacesuit? Add EVA. Knocking out a piece of machinery? Add Technician. Aiming a remote turret instead of doing it yourself? Drone Operator.

Which means you could, conceivably, be in a spacesuit operating a tablet controlling a gun drone non-lethally shooting a strange device on a strange alien in a combat situation inside an engine room… and it all happens with one roll and no need for infinitely stacking penalties.

Knock-On Changes

The biggest knock-on change this has caused is a need for finer gradation between Certs so that the differences come up more often and are less severe. For that reason, we moved the game to d10 pools from d6s; yes, this was an enormously annoying change to make through our draft, and we’re still working out how to rebalance advancement through it. It also means we have to do yet another pass through the Traits, which we were midway through… oh well! 

(We have a cool new lever that’s come out of, actually; we can have Traits just make Complexity Certs just not count in appropriate circumstances. Freefaller characters get to ignore 0g penalties, for example, which includes adding Cosmonaut as a Complexity Cert to a lot of rolls). 

I’ve submitted Torchship to Metatopia again this year, and I’m really looking forward to running it on the other side of a year of rewrites and de-heartbreakerification. I’m confident it’ll go much better this time around. 

Anyway, next Dev Diary will be about the Zinovians, and then we’ll do the meta-campaign mechanics. Unless something even cooler comes up.

[zeondraws]

Weh I slept badly, I think the negative memories I have towards the swtd server owner trigger me somehow. Or like my therapist put it when I talked about my toxic coworker "it re-traumatises me". So I struggled to fall asleep at all. I think I'll talk about these memories one more time before I shall move on. It makes no sense to keep myself stressed thinking about it.

But I find it very important to say that, don't harass anyone mentioned here.

If internet drama triggers you, please don't continue reading this post.

When I first joined the server it was still kinda new. I think the only recent discovery we've had was where Muir and Innes would lay near the end of the game. I still remember seeing the server owner talk about it with people.

I had a lot of fun staying there and learned a ton of new things. Which I'll try to apply for future stuff.

But the main thing was that me, the server owner and their friend would talk a bunch about recent discoveries. At one point I would start learning fmodel because I really wanted to gain access to the voicelines and other things. It was when I worked on my Muir video.

They would kinda help me with fmodel but like.. their help on some problems I faced with the program weren't too helpful because often I got answers I already knew. We found complex ways to manually extract the raw files and convert those into wem and then into wav. But that process took too long so I kept tinkering. I think I even said at the end if their friend used fmodel besides me, we would've find solutions quicker.

I still remember the server owner said how they can look through the soundfiles very quickly and apparently looked through 15000 of them. However I had the slight suspicion they won't share the converted files afterwards. I think their friend wanted to show me something but the owner stopped them?

I did figure out how to convert files with fmodel and was finally able to listen to all the soundfiles. I discovered sooo many interesting things, unused lines from Muir, scenes and other unused bits hidden in other folders. I shared my findings on the server. I still remember compiling the soundfiles of the infected crewmates back in October. Discussing the findings and all.

So I would continue to share my findings, I'd ask devs a bunch of questions that I shared on here as well. Even at gamescom I tried asking questions people had on the discord. It was a stressful day because I accidentally got out of the business area and ran around for half an hour to be let back in.

Eventually I would notice weird things the server owner would do, they said they knew where Muir transformed, where the Derrick phone is or some other info of Muir they wouldn't share. Mainly because it's from their projects that they want to keep secret. I tried to be understanding but after a while I got annoyed because I would always share my findings with the community, specifically helped them a ton to figure out Muir's lore for their projects. So them not telling me what they found was weird.

Also because they had asked me a bunch of times to show them something ingame, like we'd hop in vc because they wanted to have screenshots and everything from the Muir level. Afterwards they started saying "I knew where he transformed!" and wouldn't tell. And I pretty much felt used afterwards.

It took me ages to realise they don't own the game at all, even in the last confrontation I did they talked about having other PCs and even after my apology they wouldn't mention what PCs they meant (Do they really own multiple PCs? Or do they mean PCs from friends, Im still confused). I still don't understand if they ever played the game or only watched playthroughs or streams in vc to get their info they needed. And I was their tool to get said info. My main suspicion comes because I swear I saw them talk about seeing the "Davros bug" in their playthrough. Which confused me since that Davros thing only occurs in a game version that isn't public. And they said how they played the game in the first week it was out, often finding it important to mention that they were one of the first people who knew about the game.

They once said how they wanted to work on the swtd wiki, or at least their friend did tiny edits to add some of my discoveries. But only recently I'd learn they won't work on the wiki because they apparently have better projects to work on. I think they wanted to make a new wiki with their friend (their friend knows how to code) because people ranted how bad the info is on the current wiki. (Which is something I'm currently trying to fix)

They didn't even stop people who started vandalising said wiki, they laughed and said how they aren't responsible for what people are doing. And folks shared what edits they made. I am not really mad at the others, tho people on the wiki were very pissed. However I find it bad that the server owner doesn't take responsibility to tell people to stop. Instead it felt more encouraging to vandalise. I think I didn't say much either, an error on my part..

One of the people who edits the wiki got banned from the server. Like what I saw was them saying "ayo" then getting jumped by everyone before being thrown out of the server. I was extremely confused because I didn't think the word would be that sexual? People apparently thought it was. I know I frequently used that word with friends but the server I moderate doesn't ban people for THIS word...

A second person that got banned didn't even have enough space to talk before the owner would open a private thread with me and others talking about if said person should stay. I tried to talk with the person before they got banned put people started cursing at them too quickly, so ofc the person who was affected would curse back.

The owners friend is the most conflicting part because they seemed helpful and kind but I slowly started to get a feeling they were hiding something. Stating their dislike for a certain bigger community for X and Y reasons. But I found what they said hypocritical since I saw similar things in the swtd community. And I don't want to judge another community that I barely know.

But I still felt confused how they wanted to help me but the owner would try to stop them from doing so at times? I don't fully remember anymore.

The final straw before I left was when they shared their dislike towards datamining. Me and another dataminer felt very annoyed about it and tried to say something. They didn't reply back initially. Which made me so angry that I wrote a longer message in one of the chats stating my anger. I felt attacked that they thought us sharing our findings wasn't good, since they said we're handling copyrighted materials. They thought the files had "securements in place" which made them believe the devs didn't want us to datamine. But the securements they mentioned were simply our inability to understand how to use fmodel. Or rather my inability to use the program at the start. The gamefiles are not encrypted and don't need a key to access. It just showed me they didn't have much clue of what they were trying to say.

I think it would make sense if I show screenshots I took, I felt hesitant to keep the screenshots because I really do not want people to harass the server owner. But after seeing a post yesterday regarding the server I feel courage to show my experience. Because I have realised the server owner causes people to leave the fandom... And it makes me feel down to witness this. Community members deserve better and if many people start to feel ignored or start to think they're the enemy it would make sense to properly highlight what's happening. I often feel worried of younger community members who are in the server, but feel intimidated because owner and their friend don't fully know how to make everyone feel at home. Instead, they prefer some people over others, as hollow as that sounds.

This is my initial response after they expressed their view on datamining

Their response was very long as well. I would like to be clear I avoided mentioning their anxiety because I had the suspicion they'd use it as an argument. It's also why I struggled to voice concerns early on, what if they'd use their anxiety to avoid confrontation?

I wanted to talk about it with them in dms to avoid clogging up the public chat, however they told me their dms are closed (they usually didn't have their dms closed towards me, I had talked about random stuff with them in the past) and made a private thread inside the help desk instead.

Even after my apology and even after asking the devs if datamining is OK the server owner still wanted real evidence. I don't understand? They can reach out to the devs if they have concerns about something in the community, or their friend can reach out if they're too anxious. I don't understand how I should gather "real evidence"

The trusted admin was their friend whom I mentioned already. So I felt extra weird. This screenshot is from when they opened the thread.

I didn't take a screenshot of my apology but I kept the message saved somewhere else:

"Hi Owner!

First of all I am very sorry for the way I spoke to you yesterday. I have a big issue with sounding very cold or brutal when I'm emotional/upset, which I didn't realise here and will be working on it to avoid this in the future.

I still need to learn how to sound more neutral, because the way I do it right now makes people feel attacked (like you said) rather than open to discuss. But having made this mistake helps me to improve myself.

I wasn't the only one who was upset by your messages yesterday, so I felt a bit conflicted with how I felt, but probably should have properly reread my messages, before sending.

I would reiterate that the X and Y can see what I do, if they'd dislike it, they would intervene asap and not beat around the bush.

None of them say anything to the 3D models being shared privately on reddit either. Even if people openly ask for those models on reddit posts.

To solve this, I simply asked one of the people what their stance is on Datamining and if I am allowed to do it. Or if I should take something down.

I will get some further info next week, but they said it's a grey area and something that happens on every game. As long as I don't sell or release stuff early they see no problem.

X and Y said they are okay with it. But they'll wait for Z's opinion to see if there is something specific I can't post. Aside from common sense stuff like lines of codes, they don't think there is any issue.

Yes She has helped a bunch and offered their help numerous times.

However we went through a way more complicated process to convert these files. If someone like Her used Fmodel alongside me, we could've avoided spending countless hours doing it manually.

In the end I had to sit down and figure the solution out on my own. I may have terribly worded myself but that doesn't devalue the work I did within this group project. (?)

You have indeed, however I was referring to an earlier conversation, where I wanted to show you Fmodel. There you didn't mention that you didn't own the game or asked if it was incompatible. All you said that you were busy and my mind went to assume something else. So after the second attempt to go over it with you, I thought it would make no sense to ask again.

I don't know what you mean with other ways to play. Do you own multiple PCs? I'm confused, sorry.

I too am a very busy person. I have my own projects I work on, this didn't stop me to learn Fmodel, blender, UE5, OBS and Davinci resolve. You telling me that your device can't handle it is more than enough.

I think it's just important for me that my efforts to find all of this stuff isn't forgotten.

I am not trying to use your anxiety against you and didn't even think about it.

And again I am sorry for attacking you, it's my issue of sounding very brutal or cold when I'm upset, as I've said above. I will work on it, but issues like these reappear, so bear with me. I genuinely want to improve, but I can't do it if I don't tackle the issues head on."

I waited over a day their their response, while I waited they laughed and chatted in the public chat like nothing had happened. As if all issues dissappeared. It wasn't until I said I felt ignored, inside the private thread, that they'd reply to me at 5AM with their long reply:

The main thing is, we both had truths in our message, I wasn't entirely wrong nor were they. But this message showed me they weren't interested in a proper conversation. I asked my friends for guidance in this and they told me it's not worth it.

I don't know what my conclusion should be.. I avoid call out posts like a plague because it brings back bad memories from when I was extremely immature. But, seeing people I enjoy hanging out with leaving the community or stopping communication saddens me. I think it's my responsibility to speak out about issues even if many want to avoid conflict.

My therapist said it's important to face conflict if something arises. If you have a weird feeling in your gut, it's always best to talk it out in a normal manner. Otherwise issues pile up.

I spend almost 10 years to fight for my hobbiest, my family disliked what I find interesting. Told me I'll hate my hobbies and saying they want to throw everything out that I collected. But I stayed stubborn. These two people will not stain my love I have for this game. I fought years with family until I was finally able to get my dream job after enduring a toxic work environment for over a year. I made sure that I will not hate my hobby because of a toxic person.

Do not let negative people stain your love for any passions you might have. Protect them at all costs and establish boundaries where they are needed. These people have their own battles to deal with and I feel sorry that they struggle to manage the server. I still remember when people thought I'd be a good mod (I found that very cute, thank you all) but I found it very funny how the server owner avoided to agree with that at all costs. They tried to change the topic by saying another person would be a good mod, but people still sided with me.

Maybe it's a mistake to make this drama surface on tumblr, but I just want everyone to be informed. You all can draw your own conclusions and tell me your honest opinions, I'll read through them. But please do not harass anyone. If you struggle feeling accepted in the server and already left/rejoined it a bunch of times, it's best to listen to the gut feeling and leave.

Find people who appreciate you for whom you are. I know finding the right people takes ages, but I know there are people who will appreciate you. My dms are always open to everyone, my discord is ikarues if anyone wants to chat there. I know I am not perfect and I am a flawed person!!! But I try to see what mistakes I did and try to learn from them.

After all it's important to make mistakes, it will help with personal growth.

I'll leave the post at that, showcasing my raw emotions.

[high-voltage-rat]

I often wonder what the actual state of medicine as a field is in dragonfable. We see that Magus Neron has a microscope, petri dishes, and hypodermic syringes. We know that the existence of cells is a known thing. Clearly we're not living in a pre-germ theory equivalent. But we also don't really see doctors around- alchemists like Alina seem to be the pick. Sir Junn is the only example I can really think of, and he also seems to be oriented towards alchemical solutions like the royal honey and corruption-cleansing potions, though we do have mentions of him using IVs in an ICU in his field hospital.

Healing potions would certainly be good for physical injuries, but I wonder at how well they treat illnesses and diseases. Are they a cure-all that's become so heavily relied on that, in the rare cases they don't work, nobody knows what else to do? Riadne's arachnomancy healing, delivering potions directly into the bloodstream, is treated as revolutionary, so I assume that pills or IV drips and infusions have not been popularized enough to be commonly used. Is that because potions as they currently exist are good enough for most applications, or because most people don't know how to use them, or because they're difficult to create or get ahold of? There are incredible technologies out there, as evidenced by the magisterium's drones and the gnomes'... everything. But whether or not these advances have ever been applied to medical applications has also never really been shown.

We've seen many examples of healing magic in lore, but the capabilities and limitations of it, as well as the actual process, are never really explored. Is it an actual active process of changing the body, or is it just empowering the natural healing process? We know that fleshweaving is a thing, but forbidden as an art due to its potential for abuse (and the fact that it apparently requires consuming elemental spirits), and Jaania's soulweaving-based healing of Brittany was a method she apparently invented through experimentation. So we can conclude that soul/fleshweaving are not being employed as a tool for medicine, and any commonly used healing magic probably doesn't modify the body in such a way.

There's lots of potential for medical technology and practice to improve, so one has to wonder what factors are at play to ensure they don't. Is it just reliance on the magic that already exists, leaving the people with rare cases to be untreated? I wonder if, to a degree, there's a perception of standard alchemy being "good enough" that medicine doesn't need to be improved. Perhaps that's compounded with some cultural taboos around "messing with" or manipulating the body, which may extend beyond magical practice into the scientific sphere. It could even be an acceptance of a flawed paradigm surrounding healing magic, just like how most mages accepted the leyline model of mana as absolute, when soulthreads demonstrate that it's flawed?

Or maybe the devs intended it all to remain in the mcguffin realm, where healing magic does everything you want when it's convenient and is limited only when necessary. But that's less fun to think about.

[marinsawakening]

In general I honestly think Echoes of Wisdom would've been improved by a smaller, more focused collection of echoes. This giant list the game currently has is impressive and gives the illusion of variety, but when you actually look at what is offered, it quickly becomes obvious that many of them are nearly or directly duplicates.

There are three different versions of pot echo, all of them the same except for aesthetics. There are three different versions of the bed echo, each upgrades of each other and increasing in cost, but otherwise identical. There are one-time use echoes like the mysterious orb and the statues that just sit in your menu for the rest of the game, taking up space. There's a whole collection of lv 2 and lv 3 upgrades of previous enemy echoes that change nothing except cost and damage output. There are four different bird enemy-type echoes with only minor differences that easily could've been one single bird enemy with a larger moveset. Loads and loads of different monster echoes have essentially the same use, as well, with ultimately not a lot of material difference in how they accomplish their goals: for example, I feel like the Guay (which swoops down in a straight line to hurt its enemy) and the Mothula (which flies at an enemy in a straight line to hurt them) are not really meaningfully different from each other. AND the Mothula has a lv 2 version as well.

This giant list of echoes is overwhelming, especially combined with a terrible UI that makes scrolling through the different echoes a pain. Nobody is going to remember every single different echo and pull out the ones whose niche perfectly fits the current situation. Likely, people won't even actually be working to develop all that creative solutions to problems, because again, scrolling through the echoes list is really annoying. People are going to pick a few favourite echoes, develop stock strategies, and stick to those.

I think having less but more varied echoes (coupled with a UI design hospitable to humans) would've been in the game's favor, because it would've made it easier for the casual player to try new things, find creative solutions, experiment. Puzzles also could've also been more complex and unique if the devs didn't have to account for a hundred different possible solutions, but only twenty. I think giving the player a slightly smaller but more varied toolbox would've encouraged far more creativity than this giant list did, because people could've actually remembered what different tools they had.

[girderednerve]

i installed open video downloader, a FLOSS utility for ripping youtube videos, which is such an easy to use & convenient program, & it reminded me of the campaign i went on (completely unsuccessfully) a couple years ago to get clickless mouse added to the patron computers in my public library, because i had watched multiple older adults struggle immensely to double-click on our computers, went looking for an easy solution for them, & found that someone had already thoughtfully written an elegant & adaptable little program, initially intended as an accessibility tool for a particular friend of theirs. this is why i love FLOSS projects so much: they're usually personal passion projects, at least at the outset, & they reflect such powerfully pro-social values that even when they have nothing to offer me in particular i am delighted by them. thank u to all FLOSS devs <3

[menasors]

@wwheeljack hello bro. Tumblr is evil.

Motormaster: Self-image?

Simultaneously in love with himself and terribly self-conscious. He starts off prideful of himself, because why wouldn't he? He's the son of Megatron, leader of a gestalt group, his own team. He's great! Unfortunately, the pride dies out as he and his brothers face how others treat them. Megatron's love for them isn't enough to ignore how everyone else laughs at his brothers' speech patterns or them being from Earth. How they annoy their superiors and don't know anything. Motormaster doesn't see himself as being good enough to protect his brothers from those comments and feelings if he himself feels bad about them.

Dead End: Biggest pet-peeves?

People talking to him, especially while reading. His inexperience with the gestalt bond would have him so confused at people talking to him when he's clearly expressing he doesn't want to be talked to, not realising he's only broadcasting that to his brothers.

Wildrider: Favorite creative endeavors?

I'm like 99% sure I commented something like this on Fissure, but the dude LOVES messy art. He's filling water balloons with paint and throwing them somewhere near his canvas. He's making pretty clay sculptures and throwing knives at them. He uses any random item as an art tool. He shoots his art halfway through making it. Sometimes he carries unfinished pieces on missions just to see what happens after. He goes absolutely wild.

Drag Strip: Thoughts on death?

I think he's suicidal. Or he would be, until he saw someone he knew well die. He wants to die, and not in the way Dead End does. Dead End just knows it will happen and prepares for it. Drag Strip wants to stop being such a failure and in the way, but eventually he'd see someone die on the field. It was inevitable, just as Dead End always said, and it'd change him (the both of them, actually). What do you mean the random guy who'd wave at the Stunticons every now and then in the mess hall is just gone now?

It'd be a very complicated feeling for him, I think. Going from thinking death as a simple solution to certain things to realising how it haunts people, even when they hardly knew who died. I think he'd want to make himself a sort-of medic to his team. He doesn't want his brothers to die. He feels like nothing without them.

Breakdown: Reaction to being sick?

He hates how vulnerable and weak he feels, though he manages to find a positive.

I think with his health issues, being sick would be genuinely painful for him, even if it's just something small like a common cold. The positive is that he gets an excuse to hide away and do nothing. He's in pain but it's like staying home from work because of period cramps and watching a movie while trying not to screech in pain.

Menasor: Most prized possession?

Ooo this is hard. But concrete Lego blocks from Devs, and also his sword! His sword reminds him of the combined (heh) effort he and his brothers put into having him out, and how much they love him. It makes him feel so welcome and like he belongs with it. Even when they shut him out, he's part of the team, and that shows it.

[allaboutkeyingo]

What is the most awesome Microsoft product? Why?

The “most awesome” Microsoft product depends on your needs, but here are some top contenders and why they stand out:

Top Microsoft Products and Their Awesome Features

1. Microsoft Excel

Why? It’s the ultimate tool for data analysis, automation (with Power Query & VBA), and visualization (Power Pivot, PivotTables).

Game-changer feature: Excel’s Power Query and dynamic arrays revolutionized how users clean and analyze data.

2. Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

Why? A lightweight, free, and extensible code editor loved by developers.

Game-changer feature: Its extensions marketplace (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Docker, Python support) makes it indispensable for devs.

3. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Why? Lets you run a full Linux kernel inside Windows—perfect for developers.

Game-changer feature: WSL 2 with GPU acceleration and Docker support bridges the gap between Windows and Linux.

4. Azure (Microsoft Cloud)

Why? A powerhouse for AI, cloud computing, and enterprise solutions.

Game-changer feature: Azure OpenAI Service (GPT-4 integration) and AI-driven analytics make it a leader in cloud tech.

5. Microsoft Power BI

Why? Dominates business intelligence with intuitive dashboards and AI insights.

Game-changer feature: Natural language Q&A lets users ask data questions in plain English.

Honorable Mentions:

GitHub (owned by Microsoft) – The #1 platform for developers.

Microsoft Teams – Revolutionized remote work with deep Office 365 integration.

Xbox Game Pass – Netflix-style gaming with cloud streaming.

Final Verdict?

If you’re a developer, VS Code or WSL is unbeatable. If you’re into data, Excel or Power BI wins. For cutting-edge cloud/AI, Azure is king.

What’s your favorite?

If you need any Microsoft products, such as Windows , Office , Visual Studio, or Server , you can go and get it from our online store keyingo.com

[askagamedev]

Bungie is in hot water for the exposure of deep plagerism from a designer, with devs and directors following the artist for many years.

In cases like this, why didn't they hire or consult them instead of plagerising the work? It seems like such a simple solution, that i'm certain there must be something I don't understand.

Bungie has had this happen before, how does such trouble make it through the system?

Bungie's leadership says they didn't know that it happened, and I believe them. In a big studio like Bungie, there are literally hundreds of developers creating and modifying assets dozens of times on a daily basis. There is no way for any human to audit every single asset checked in to the depot against the sum total of the internet, especially when we're trying to keep things under wraps before the game is ready to be announced. Game devs don't have the kind of software tools that Youtube does to police for bad actors uploading copyrighted material.

When individual actors do this, they don't tell their bosses that they've stolen other peoples' work. They hide it and pass the work off as their own and hope nobody notices. This behavior is never condoned or encouraged by leadership because it causes nothing but a big mess for everyone involved if it gets found out. The bigger the team, the more likely somebody will notice this kind of thing. However, it isn't 100% for the same reason that players find bugs that QA missed - when a game goes public, there's often several orders of magnitude more eyes looking at it than internally. More eyeballs looking mean that it is more likely that stolen assets get found out.

After such things happen, the studio's legal representation invariably does reach out to the legally injured party (in this case Antireal) with a settlement offer. Such offers usually include a non-disclosure agreement and a non-disparagement clause in exchange for payment and either a license for the art or removal of all offending assets from the game. That is likely what is going on right now between Bungie and Antireal.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on BlueSky

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[myfirstgamejam]

My First Game Jam 2024 is on!

The optional theme is: “Light”

Here’s a few tips and links to get the most out of the jam.

Make a dev log on the community!

A development blog is a blog in which a game developer or team talks about the process they’ve made over the course of the game’s creation. Maintaining a devblog keeps your audience in the know and helps facilitate productivity so you’ll have something to blog about. It also serves as a record of problems you encounter as well as the solutions you find for those problems.

Development logs are essentially the same thing, except we’ll be using the jam forums rather than a blog. However, you are free to use both the forums and your own blog as you develop your game.

Doing so is not necessary at all, but check out all the logs from last jam! In order to get the most out of your jam experience, it is vital that you interact with your fellow jammers and the community surrounding it. They’ll provide valuable feedback and support to help you along the way. So please, we encourage you to mingle, post in other logs, and of course post your own!

In addition, you are encouraged to add images and gifs. Here’s some programs to help facilitate that:

ScreenToGif

Licecap

Start your dev log today!

Respect your community!

Take a moment to review our code of conduct. We strive to create a safe, supportive, and productive environment, and we appreciate your efforts to make our community welcoming for everyone!

Post daily updates!

Post screenshots or fun mishaps to your dev log, twitter, tumblr, or your own blog to track your progress and get feedback. Tag your posts as #MyFirstGameJam so other jammers can find your work! To get the most exposure you can also tag #gamedev or #ScreenshotSaturday for Saturdays! Share your work and link back to your devlog to get feedback.

Manage your time and tasks!

We have a list of of useful time and task management tools for staying on top of your project. Set goals early and keep track of how fast it takes you to reach them!

Use our resources!

Still deciding on an engine? No problem. Check out this post to see what fits your project best or try the sortingh.at!

We have also started migrating our resource lists over to a new jam resources wiki! Here's some direct page links:

Unity resources

Godot resources

Gamemaker resources

RPGMaker resources

Ren'py resources

Twine resources

Free assets

Resources tag on blog

If you still have questions about the jam itself, take a look at our rules page!

Join the jam chat!

Want to share your work or ask for help? Or even just take a break from dev? Join discord chat here! (Please note you must be at least 14 years old to join!) Feel free to say hi and share your work! If you need help with a specific skill or engine, you can @/Unity or @/2D Art to notify mentors. If you think you would like to help other people with some part of games–join us as a mentor! You can get notifications when someone has a question about engines or skills you have expertise in!

Here’s a quick guide to how you can become a mentor.

Heed advice from previous jammers

This jam we took the time to write up a quick summary of advice from previous jammers: Know how to scope.

You can read about the number one game jam killer here!

Take care of yourself!

Game-making can be exhausting as well as rewarding! You are more important than your work, and we compiled a list of helpful tools for getting the most out of you!

Aaaand good luck!

Game dev can be exciting, frustrating, and extremely rewarding. We hope to give you the tools to help you succeed in your goals in the next two weeks!

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 12 - Destructive Testing

Breaking from the usual format for this one, and it’s going to be a bit shorter, but this is important.

At the beginning of November was Metatopia, a convention dedicated to playtesting roleplaying games. It’s an excellent place to go to break games in order to fix them stronger than ever, and in that respect Torchship did not disappoint. While its parts all worked beautifully, there were some issues with the connective tissue tying it; the game needed a stronger mechanical framework to put these pieces into.

With that in mind, we’ve started a new draft of Torchship designed to be rapidly playtested and iterated, into which all the other stuff we’ve built up can be plugged back. This new draft focuses particularly hard on making sure the game’s fundamental tablefeel is strong, that you always know what to do and where to go next.

Which is to say, fans of my games having big circles in them somewhere? There’s a big circle in this one now too. Torchship now has two distinct modes; an Action mode where you go out and gather information, and a Reflection portion where that information is managed, damage gets fixed, and plans are made. Action takes the form of ongoing narrative play, dropping into turn-based combat when needed, where Reflection takes place in a series of special scenes called Vignettes to represent timeskips, with more impactful ‘Resupply’ Vignettes acting in some ways as bridges between episodes or story arcs.

While it may sound similar to some of our previous games, this isn’t like in Flying Circus where each part of the Routine is a commitment to a certain kind of gameplay before you can go back. You’re able to switch between the two pretty readily; so long as there’s nothing bearing down on you this minute, you can go into Reflection and play out Vignettes, with the number available before you need to go back into Action depending on the in-universe time until the next important thing.

This structure imitates the back and forth you see in many episodes of Star Trek. To use Devil in the Dark as an example, the Action scenes are things like arriving at the planet to meet with the staff, or going out into the cave to track down what’s killing the miners. When they go back to talk about their findings, prep security crews, or bring in new resources, that’s Reflection. It covers your beloved TNG meeting room scenes, the cut to sickbay as we find out what happened to the redshirt, and the montages of inventing or building the tools that’ll solve this week’s problems.

As part of these rewrites, some parts of the game have been modified from previous dev diaries. We’ve simplified the way Harm works; you now have two Harm tracks, Injury and Panic, and a new accumulating penalty called Strain which builds up quickly as you make checks or use medicine to manage the other tracks or boost your abilities. Strain is easy to clear so long as you have supplies available, so it acts to pace out scenes and give less-skilled characters a reason to roll; if you know there’s a lot of a certain kind of work ahead, you might want to save your expert for the rolls which really matter!

(Radiation no longer uses a whole track, but instead consists of a small card the GM can hand you entitled “Congratulations, you’ve been irradiated!” with a list of dosage effects.)

A variety of changes large and small have emerged from these changes. Relationships act as an excellent starting point for Vignettes, while access to meetings have let us place restrictions on the number of checklists out on the field at a time, as you can always call meetings to retire checklists, propose others, and figure out what your next Big Question is about the mission. We’ve created a new XP system where you train skills directly by using them, with the pace of advancement limited on a per-episode basis to encourage you to play wide and learn new things.

Finally, we’ve come up with a neat solution to one of the longstanding problems that original sci-fi games often run into, where players are unsure what their technology can do, resulting in decision paralysis. We’ve added a very distinct CAN & CAN’T field on the info cards which lists exactly what everything does and what their limitations are so you can jump straight in without slowing the game to ask the GM where the boundaries are. 

Things are bound to change more over time as the game is refined and tested, but that’s a good thing. Good games take time, revision, and a willingness to recognize and rewrite when things aren’t working as well as they could.

[vndev]

Free VFX & Consultation for NaNoRenO 2024 Jammers!

Hey everyone!  I hope you've had a great time participating in NaNoRenO this year!  I'm Nai from Make Visual Novels, though I imagine more of you know me either through our live team building events in DevTalk, or from the other jams and competitions I run.  I wanted to let you guys know that, for a limited time, I'm offering free consultations for jammers participating in NaNoRenO2024.  With those consultations, I'll also be creating VFX for your title screens to help you make a stronger first impression.

So you might be asking...

Why would I even want a consultation, Nai?

Something went really wrong and you want to know how to fix it .

Something went really right and you want to know how to take advantage of it.

You had an objective that you got close to, but couldn't quite hit it.

You want to go Pro with developing VNs, and you'd like guidance.

You feel lost in some part of the process, and need help setting goals for your circumstances.

You tasted VN Dev, you can't imagine a life without it, and you want tools, resources & opportunities.

Okay, but why you?

I've spent nearly a decade supporting and coaching visual novel developers reaching their personal and professional goals.

I've read over 500 indie visual novels.  I know what your peers are doing, and where they are succeeding and where they're struggling.

I run & judge for the largest sponsored visual novel development competition.  That 500 was a conservative estimate.

My network includes VN engine & game developers, game, book, comic & VN publishers, merchandise providers & manufacturers, marketing professionals, crowdfunding experts, professional programmers, illustrators, animators, graphic designers, VFX artists, 3D Artists(specifically modelling, texturing, rigging, and lighting) editors, pixel artists, Live2D capable artists, authors, narrative designers, translators, composers, musicians, singers, casting directors, voice actors (so many voice actors).And, probably most importantly, people who are living the experiences you're looking for.

In short: If I don't know the answer and/or can't come up with a solution to your very specific goals, I know someone who can.

I'm in.  Now what?

To be eligible for the free consultation and the VFX, you need to have a game submitted to the NaNoRenO 2024 jam page and follow its rules.

Having a list of questions to ask is a good idea.  Having goals is an even better one.  If you don't have goals, we can work on setting them.

For best results, you or a team representative should be present for the consultation.  These are conducted between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM ET on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Message me over on Discord (discord:naidriftlin) or in DevTalk(https://discord.gg/devtalk) to set up a time and day.

Some things to keep in mind: 

Don't ask me to roast your game/be brutal.  I don't do that.  I can provide critique with suggestions and examples.

These consultations will be conducted live on https://twitch.tv/makevisualnovels.  My viewers are typically your peers and VN industry folks, and usually not exceeding 10 concurrent viewers.  A VOD recording will be provided to you to download for 30 days afterwards.

The free VFX for your title screen is eligible for those who complete the consultations.  It will be tailored to your existing title screen visuals and delivered afterwards.  I may opt to stream and record the process of making them.