#Game Backend development

[flentas]

Security in Game Backend Development: Safeguarding Player Data 

In the sizable and dynamic international of gaming, wherein hundreds of thousands of gamers interact daily, safeguarding participant records is paramount. Game backend improvement is vital in ensuring the safety of consumer bills, transactions, and sensitive facts. In this targeted exploration, we delve into the intricacies of safety in recreation Game Backend Development, discussing first-class practices, unusual challenges, and techniques for mitigating risks. 

Understanding the Importance of Security: 

The gaming industry has become a lucrative target for cybercriminals due to the sizable quantities of treasured participant information generated and saved via game backend systems. From private data to charge details, participant bills are a treasure trove of sensitive information that should be protected at all charges. A protection breach no longer best jeopardizes players' privacy but damages the popularity and credibility of game builders and publishers. 

Best Practices for Securing Player Data: 

Encryption: Use robust encryption algorithms to shield touchy information in transit and at relaxation. Encryption ensures that although information is intercepted, it stays unintelligible to unauthorized events. 

Authentication and Authorization: Implement multi-thing authentication (MFA) to verify the identity of customers accessing the backend structures. Utilize function-based get right of entry to manage (RBAC) to restrict get right of entry to sensitive resources primarily based on customers' roles and permissions. 

Secure Communication Protocols: Use stable verbal exchange protocols, including HTTPS/TLS, to transmit records among customers and the backend server. Secure conversation channels save you from eavesdropping and guy-in-the-center attacks. 

Input Validation: Validate and sanitize all person inputs to save your injection assaults with SQL injection and go-web site scripting (XSS). Input validation ensures that the most effective legitimate facts are processed via the backend structures, lowering the danger of exploitation. 

Regular Security Audits: Conduct routine protection audits and penetration testing to become aware of vulnerabilities in the backend infrastructure. Address any recognized weaknesses right away and implement robust security patches and updates. 

Common Challenges in Game Backend Security: 

Account Takeovers: Weak or compromised consumer credentials can lead to unauthorized access to player bills, resulting in identity theft, fraud, and unauthorized transactions. 

Data Breaches: Sophisticated cyberattacks can target backend databases, resulting in the unauthorized extraction of touchy player facts such as usernames, passwords, and charge records. 

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: DDoS assaults can weigh down backend servers with a flood of malicious site visitors, inflicting service disruptions and downtime for gamers. 

Third-Party Integrations: Integrating third-birthday party services and APIs introduces extra safety risks, as vulnerabilities in those outside structures can probably compromise the security of the entire backend infrastructure. 

Strategies for Mitigating Risks: 

Education and Training: Educate builders, directors, and end-customers about safety first-rate practices and the significance of retaining vigilance in opposition to capability threats. 

Implementing Rate Limiting and Throttling: Enforce price restricting and throttling mechanisms to restrict the number of requests according to second from male or female customers or IP addresses, preventing abuse and mitigating the impact of DDoS attacks. 

Monitoring and Incident Response: Deploy comprehensive monitoring and logging solutions to locate and reply to protection incidents in actual time. Establish an incident reaction plan outlining the steps to be taken during a safety breach. 

Compliance with Regulatory Standards: Ensure compliance with relevant facts and safety policies such as GDPR, CCPA, and PCI DSS to protect player privacy and avoid prison repercussions. 

Protection in recreation backend development is a multifaceted task that calls for a proactive and holistic approach. By enforcing robust security measures, staying vigilant in opposition to emerging threats, and fostering a way of life of safety attention, game builders can shield player facts and preserve the acceptance as accurate with and loyalty in their player base. 

For more details about our services please visit our website- Flentas Technologies

[arimiadev]

Steam's 2025 Visual Novel Fest is abysmal.

for the past few years, perhaps as a way to appease the thousands of visual novel developers for the poor search abilities on Steam or perhaps to get more money from the thousands of porn games on the platform, Valve has hosted an annual Visual Novel Fest, a week-long event "promoting" visual novels on Steam. this event has always been questionably helpful to developers, but this year I believe takes the cake.

context: I'm a visual novel developer. I also help other VN studios with steam stuff. so I interface with steam's backend and these sorts of things.

first off, the requirements. if we go to their publicly available steamworks documentation, we can see the eligibility requirements here:

basically:

Reading is the primary gameplay

The player cannot walk around, and can typically only look around from a static position

There is no combat - if there is fighting, the gameplay loop is a small portion of the game. Multiple outcomes leading to different plot events is allowed.

makes sense, right? except some fantastic visual novels like of the Devil, Date Time, and others were rejected from the festival.

okay, so maybe they're being incredibly strict with their definition of a visual novel—

as usual from previous years, some games that are wildly not visual novels are included in the festival. well, there's probably a thousand or so games in the festival, so some will always slip through the cracks, but at least the rest of the festival is alright, right?

the main tabs for the festival up top are:

Featured

Browse Games

Browse Adult Only Games

Free to Play

Free Demos

Upcoming

every tab except for Free to Play and Upcoming only feature games that are for sale AND discounted. if your game is released and in the festival but not discounted, it is shown nowhere unless a steam user scrolls through the giant wall of "All" games (which is mostly filtered by popularity).

Free Demos? no, that only shows discounted games as well. (a lot of the games in this fest are daz 3d "visual novels")

well, at least there's an "Upcoming" tab to share visual novels that haven't been released, right? no. that big, main tab only has 1 widget - Popular Upcoming. for some reason, they didn't populate the tab with any other widgets like the others, which have sections for Horror, Otome, LGBT+, etc.

this also means that only 22 unreleased games are actually getting space in the entire festival.

now, there is one exception to this - if users scroll all the way down on any of the tabs, there's a "Browse Games" widget that lets them filter and see every game in the festival. but this is just the Steam search section, nothing groundbreaking.

but it does allows users to see all of the visual novels in the festival and not just the featured few - mine can only be seen if you do some filtering in this search section.

so this VN Fest has become nothing more than a VN Sale - I don't know why they don't just call it that. nowhere in the documentation did it say you have to discount games in order to be actually featured in it, and as usual indie devs are given the shortest end of the stick from Valve.

...all of this is to say....

go play visual novels on itchio

35k+ visual novels on itchio!! can you imagine playing even half that many? and so many of them are free and made lovingly by sickos. go find some wonderfully weird or creatively romantic visual novels to play today.

[myconetted]

something ppl often forget when it comes to software: the reason it doesn't "just" do something that seems really easy is cause there are dozens of other such things, and also every time you add a new thing to your software, your software gets more complicated. sometimes you're barely treading water with the systems you already have, and adding this simply-looking thing would actually require re-architecting a bunch of other stuff to be able to support it

why is it like this? well first of all, software is Bad. but have you ever played a game where you have so much shit going on the game starts to slow down? yeah. imagine that but it's happening on the backend servers, and the backend engineer's job is to secretly rearrange shit in the background to fix it without you ever noticing. they probably had to do some cool tricks to keep it fast and reliable, and those tricks may or may not work when you introduce your proposed new feature

so feature development has to include the part where you tell the backend engineers about your cool idea and then they start sweating and drawing boxes and muttering about qps. then you put them in a cage match with the product manager who has spreadsheets about how much people really really want the feature and you have them fight to see who wins

oh yeah and make sure this doesn't break anything for people visiting the website from their toaster because otherwise you'll make the one engineer obsessed with toaster compatibility really mad. and we need her happy because nobody else knows how to fix the main database when it hits the funny error nobody else has ever seen before in their lives

anyways welcpme to software

[fanfenomenon]

hyperfixated on this game so hard i tried to recreate ac syndicate's animus database using html css and js👍

i will make this responsive though, i've only started doing the frontend but i'll also start doing the backend as soon as i finish this

basically this is gonna be a website that will allow you to create a database of your assassin's creed OCs (btw this was inspired by @gwen-the-assassin's idea <33) and help you with worldbuilding and making AUs (i know the ac fanon wiki already exists for that but i wanted to make the experience of keeping a database more immersive u know....)

this might take a while to be completed, but I'll try to post updates on it as much as possible! if there are any programmers/web developers in the ac fandom that want to contribute to this project plsplspls DM me!!

actual pic of the database for comparison:

ik it's not entirely accurate but this is the simplest database in the game that i could recreate lmao

also code snippets just cuz (+ me crashing out)

[pascalissmoked]

Hello, I am wondering if u take request for a Tony Stark x female reader, who is also best friend of Tony Stark before he came Iron Man but she has been by his side through everything as well. But it’s a fluff one shot as at the end where they both reveal their feelings for each other which they had from the moment they met and they have their first kiss between them as well.

Ofcoursee, here it is! Hope you like it :)

Virtual Insanity

Summary: In which the infamous line "make love not war" isn't well-respected by this pair of friends. When cyberbullying at Stark industries level develops into a game between these two collegues and friends, something more begins to unravel between the two.

Word Count: 1.7K Warnings: none except Tony's unsufferable ego (all jokes)

A/N: This is a short oneshot. Might turn into more. I'm also still working on the "Soft in the right hands" series for bucky so stay tuned!

You’d known Tony Stark long enough to remember when he didn’t wear the suit — physically or emotionally.

Back then, he was all sharp smiles and sharper intellect, more interested in building arc reactors with cocktail napkin schematics than charming investors. Reckless with nearly everything except the way he treated you. Somehow, against all odds, you’d slipped past the velvet rope that guarded the real him — the sleepless inventor who showed up on your fire escape at 3AM with a bottle of Scotch and a theory about thermal diffusion that couldn’t wait till morning.

You were best friends before Afghanistan. Before Iron Man. Before Stark Tower had its own AI department and a floor reserved just for “Tony’s regrets, part I through XXV.”

And none of that stopped him from hacking your firewall during lunch.

You were approximately three minutes into a well-deserved lunch break — grilled cheese in hand, Spotify playlist on shuffle, and the sanctity of a lab entirely free of explosions — when your firewall went up in flames.

Digitally speaking.

The code on your main monitor began to twitch. Literally twitch. Then twist. And then it smiled at you. A little pixelated smiley face blinked up from the line of code you’d just written, followed by a dancing ASCII cat wearing sunglasses.

“Oh my God,” you muttered, setting your sandwich down like it had betrayed you.

You knew that coding style.

You knew exactly who was responsible.

With the patience of a saint and the energy of someone who was one click away from snapping, you launched into the system’s backend, pulling apart the layers of the digital graffiti with expert ease, unraveling each line of smug Stark-ware. And sure enough, right at the root folder, embedded in a hidden command string, was a line of text:

"Nice firewall, sweetheart. 7/10. Would hack again. - T.S."

Your eye twitched. Your soul twitched.

He didn’t just breach your system. He decorated it. That wasn’t a hack — it was a housewarming party in enemy territory.

The man had billions of dollars, a global tech empire, multiple Iron Man suits, and — apparently — nothing better to do than hack into your secure files during his downtime like a caffeinated raccoon with a superiority complex.

You were going to kill him. Slowly. Or worse — give him a lecture so long and boring it could be classified as psychological warfare.

And thus, the war began.

With your jaw clenched and your heart pounding in that very specific, very annoying way it only ever did around Tony, you stormed out of your lab and stomped down the hallway of Stark Tower.

You bypassed three interns and a mildly offended elevator AI before slamming open his door like righteous judgment. Finally, you flung open the doors to his R&D suite without knocking.

Tony didn’t flinch.

Sleeves rolled up, arc reactor glowing, fingers dancing across a holographic interface. He looked up. Grinned.

“Hey, sunshine,” Tony said lazily from behind a table cluttered with open panels, a half-dismantled drone, and at least three coffee cups. “I was just thinking about you."

“You’re a menace.”

“I’ve been called worse.” He finally looked up, dark eyes glinting with amusement. “But usually by people who didn’t bother updating their encryption protocols.”

You crossed your arms. “You hacked into my system during lunch, Stark. That’s below the belt. I was eating grilled cheese.”

“Maybe next time add some brie and fig jam. Class it up a little.” He grinned. “You’re welcome, by the way. I just gave you a free security audit.”

You stared at him, deadpan. “Did your ego eat your moral compass for breakfast?”

He stood, sauntering over like confidence incarnate in a Henley and jeans, and leaned against the edge of the workbench — arms crossed, smirk fully loaded.

“I’d argue my ego is my moral compass. And it always points due north to: mess with you.”

“You hacked my system,” you repeated.

He tilted his head. “If I can break in, so can Hydra. I’m doing you a favor.”

You crossed your arms. “This is the third time this month you've done something like this. Last week, you turned my digital assistant into a sassy version of yourself. I had to argue with my microwave for twenty minutes before it would heat my soup.”

He beamed. “He’s got a personality now! Named him Toasty.”

“I’m going to rewrite your DNA.”

“Only if we cuddle after.”

You were going to scream. Or kiss him. It was a very fine line these days.

“I’m going to kill you,” you said conversationally.

He grinned wider. “You’re going to miss me.”

So instead, you narrowed your eyes and said, “I hope you like Shakespeare just as much as JARVIS does.”

He blinked. “What?”

You pulled your phone from your pocket, already typing."Your little AI pet seems to have brushed up on his Shakespeare, because he’s about to speak exclusively in iambic pentameter for the next twenty-four hours."

“Wait. No—”

“And make all puns food-themed.”

Tony’s jaw dropped. “You’re a monster.”

You shrugged, already walking toward the door. “Some people bake sourdough for fun. I emotionally sabotage billionaire AIs.”

Tony groaned. “JARVIS

, don’t you dare—”

“Verily, sir,” JARVIS chimed in serenely from the overhead speaker, “I find thy attitude rather cheesy, like brie upon a croissant most greasy.”

Tony’s head hit the desk.

You smirked. “Toasty says hi.”

It went on like that for weeks.

Tony retaliated by installing a movement sensor in your lab. Every time you entered, SexyBack blared at full volume. FRIDAY wouldn’t let you disable it. She said it was “legally classified as a morale booster.”.

It was a war.

You replaced his AI’s voice with Gilbert Gottfried reading Twilight.

Tony responded by having your smartwatch shout hourly affirmations about his hair.

You hacked his suit’s startup sequence. Now it greeted him with:

“Iron Man: The Human Hot Pocket. Online.”

It didn’t stop there.

He replaced your screensaver with a live feed of himself winking, finger guns included.

You programmed his coffee maker to scream “INCOMING!” every time it dispensed espresso.

Naturally, collateral damage was inevitable.

Bruce’s tablet was cursed to play Baby Shark whenever opened. He developed a twitch.

Sam’s Falcon gear announced all takeoffs with: “I’m a little teapot, short and stout.”

Steve’s toaster quoted Pride and Prejudice in Cher’s voice.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” it belted one morning, “that a single man in possession of breakfast must be in want of jam.”

He punched a wall. You both got fined.

Even Clint, ever the stealthy one, wasn’t spared. Every time he drew an arrow, it whispered “pew pew” in Tony’s voice.

The tower teetered on the brink of chaos.

Pepper threatened to move to Dubai.

It was late.

The Tower was asleep, mostly. Except for Tony, who you found in the R&D lounge, hoodie on, arc reactor glowing soft under worn fabric. He looked… still. A rare moment for a man who moved like his thoughts could outrun time.

“You gonna yell at me for the coffee pot thing?” he asked, not looking up.

“I should,” you said, easing into the seat beside him. “FRIDAY tried to launch a counterstrike when I made a cappuccino.”

“She’s passionate.”

Silence fell. He just stared at you like he was debating something he’d rehearsed a hundred times in his head.

You blinked. “What?”

Tony opened his mouth. Closed it. Then, “Do you want me to stop?”

You frowned. “Stop what?”

“The pranks. The hacking. I mean, I know it’s probably childish and annoying and… I don’t know. Maybe I just like having a reason to see you all worked up, to just see you more.”

You sat back, heart thudding.

“That,” you said slowly, “is the least emotionally articulate confession I’ve ever heard.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well. I build flying suits, not feelings.”

You stood and walked over, stopping inches from him. His breath hitched, and yours did too.

“For the record,” you said, “I love your flying suits. But I also kind of love… this.”

He blinked. “The chaos?”

“The banter. The sabotage. The way your face lights up when you think you’ve outsmarted me, even though I’m always two steps ahead.”

“Debatable,” he muttered.

You leaned in, lips brushing the shell of his ear.

“And I love the way you look at me like I’m the only firewall you’ve never wanted to break.”

He stilled.

Then: “I’ve been in love with you since the day you fried that Russian botnet and called it ‘a poorly coded insult to my intelligence.’”

You smiled.

And then, you kissed him.

It was messy and hot and gloriously overdue. His hands cupped your face like he’d been dying to do it for years, and your fingers curled into his shirt like gravity had given up and he was your anchor now.

When you finally pulled back, breathless, he whispered, “I should have hacked you sooner.”

You smacked his shoulder. “Shut up and kiss me again.”

He did.

And that night, neither of you changed each other’s passwords.

You called a truce.

Sort of.

Now your prank war has a rulebook and a scoreboard. Nat is the referee. Bruce runs support (begrudgingly). Steve is still in therapy.

JARVIS still speaks in sonnets during thunderstorms. Toasty hosts a podcast. FRIDAY hosts a revenge fund.

A year later, Tony proposed via custom hologram code embedded in your firewall — romantic, glitchy, and absolutely extra.

You said yes.

And now, sometimes, late at night, you’ll find yourselves coding side-by-side, teasing each other like always — except now, there’s no more pretending.

Just love. Loud, messy, sarcastic love. With bad lighting, too much coffee, and more happiness than either of you thought you’d ever deserve.

And every morning, when you walk into the lab, “SexyBack” still plays.

You don’t stop it anymore.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading. Don't hesitate to leave a comment behind <3

[failbettergames]

hello mr fail! Question: when you say ‘us’ how many people is that referring to?

You'd think this would have a short answer! But it's fun to illuminate a little about how this works, because basically nobody knows how game development happens (even other people in the industry would be surprised by our team's composition, because every game has different demands). :D

The the Fallen London team: Bruno heads up the creative side, with James and Luke on Fallen London design and writing (with a little bit of George and a crumb of Chris), Stuart heads up Fallen London business/production with Jim on the backend, and Paul, Toby and Erion on art (Toby and Erion are mostly on our unannounced project but do the occasional Exceptional Story poster or icon).

This is the current makeup of the team, and doesn't include the stable of freelancers we've worked with over the last 14.5 years or the team members who've come and gone during that time. The credits are extensive!

On the unannounced game we have Adam as game director (who is also CEO), Olatz and Séamus on programming, Toby leading art with Paul and Erion, Chris and George on story and writing, Stuart on production, Les on QA (who is leaving! We love you Les!).

Last but not at all least we have Helena who looks after all of our operations, and me, Hannah, on comms for everything.

So there are 16 of us, sort-of divided in half but with lots of moving around from project to project. :)

[transfaguette]

always sucks when one of the biggest companies in a space is also The Worst

Unity, which for a long time the majority of indie games and several AAA titles have been developed in, recently announced a new “Runtime Fee” that would charge developers $0.20 per install of their game, starting January 2024. Retroactively!!!! Yes you heard that right. Got a new computer and want to reinstall your favorite game you bought 3 years ago? That’ll cost the dev $0.20, when they themselves make no additional money. A bad actor could, in theory, install a game hundreds of times just to hurt a developers bottom line. But even just in benign scenarios, its enough to threaten the viability of small indie studios. Even if devs wanted to jump ship now, number one they’d have to port all their games to a new engine, a monumental task on its own, and they’d have to learn a new engine and new workflow, new pipeline, etc. This is catastrophic to the indie scene.

And this isn’t handled through the platforms they sell their games on like steam or itch.io, it’s woven into the backend of the engine itself. Unity claims they have systems to detect piracy (but they’re proprietary and secret!) and developers won’t be charged for illegitimate installs. But none of us can be actually sure of that. They are literally making “piracy costs the devs money” a real actual legitimate argument.

And to top it all off, their ghoul of a CEO dumped his shares right before the announcement. They Knew this would be hated and they’re trying to get away with it anyway.

Do note, this only applies to games that already meet the threshold for profit sharing. If you are a hobbyist or making a project for school etc, this won’t affect you.

What can you do? Keep in touch with your favorite developers and indie publishers on social media. Hopefully with enough backlash and support for indie developers, they will retract.

[mythauragame]

Development Update - December 2024

Happy New Year, everyone! We're so excited to be able to start off 2025 with our biggest news yet: we have a planned closed beta launch window of Q1 2026 for Mythaura!

Read on for a recap of 2024, more information about our closed beta period, Ryu expressions, January astrology, and Ko-fi Winter Quarter reward concepts!

2024 Year in Review

Creative

This year, the creative team worked on adding new features, introducing imaginative designs, and refining lore/worldbuilding to enrich the overall experience.

New Beasts and Expressions: All 9 beast expression bases completed for both young and adult with finalized specials for Dragons, Unicorns, Griffins, Hippogriffs, and Ryu.

Mutations, Supers and Specials: Introduced the Celestial mutation as well as new Specials Banding & Merle, and the Super Prismatic.

New Artist: Welcomed Sourdeer to the creative team.

Collaboration and Sponsorship: Sponsored several new companions from our Ko-Fi sponsors—Amaru, Inkminks, Somnowl, Torchlight Python, Belligerent Capygora, and the Fruit-Footeded Gecko.

New Colors: Revealed two eye-catching colors, Canyon (a contest winner) and Porphyry (a surprise bonus), giving players even more variety for their Beasts.

Classes and Gear: Unveiled distinct classes, each with its own themed equipment and companions, to provide deeper roleplay and strategic depth.

Items and Worldbuilding: Created a range of new items—from soulshift coins to potions, rations, and over a dozen fishable species—enriching Mythaura’s economy and interactions.

Star Signs & Astrology: Continued to elaborate on the zodiac-like system, connecting each Beast’s fate to celestial alignments.

Questing & Story Outline: Laid the groundwork for the intro quest pipeline and overarching narrative, ensuring that players’ journey unfolds with purposeful progression.

Code

This year, the development team worked diligently on refining and expanding the codebase to support new features, enhance performance, and improve gameplay experiences. A total 429,000 lines of code changed across both the backend and frontend, reflecting:

New Features: Implementation of systems like skill trees, inventory management, community forums, elite enemies, npc & quest systems, and advanced customization options for Beasts.

Optimizations and Refactoring: Significant cleanup and streamlining of backend systems, such as game state management, passive effects, damage algorithms, and map data structures, ensuring better performance and maintainability.

Map Builder: a tool that allows us to build bespoke maps

Regular updates to ensure compatibility with modern tools and frameworks.

It’s worth noting that line changes alone don’t capture the complexity of programming work. For example:

A single line of efficient code can replace multiple lines of legacy logic.

Optimizing backend systems often involves removing redundant or outdated code without adding new functionality.

Things like added dependencies can add many lines of code without adding much bespoke functionality.

Mythaura Closed Beta

We are so beyond excited to share this information with you here first: Mythaura closed beta is targeted for Q1 2026!

On behalf of the whole team, thank you all so, so much for all of the support for Mythaura over the years. Whether you’ve been around since the Patreon days or joined us after Koa and Sark took over…it’s your support that has gotten this project to where it is. We are so grateful for the faith and trust placed in us, and the opportunity to create something we hope people will truly love and enjoy. This has truly been a collaborative effort with you and we are constantly humbled by all of the thoughtful insights, engaging discussions, and great ideas to come out of this amazing community of supporters.

So: thank you again, it’s been an emotional and amazing journey for the dev team and we’re delighted to join you on your journeys through Mythaura.

Miyazaki Full-Time

Hey everyone, Koa here!

We’re thrilled to share some news about Mythaura’s development! Starting in 2025, Miya will be officially dedicating herself full-time to Mythaura. Her focus will be on bringing even more depth and wonder to the world of Mythaura through content creation, worldbuilding, and building up the brand. It’s a huge step forward, and we’re so excited for the impact her passion and creativity will have on the project!

In addition, I’ve secured 4-day weeks and will be working full-time each Friday to dive deeper into development. This extra push is going to allow us to keep moving steadily forward on both the art and code fronts, and with Miya’s expanded role, the next year of development is looking really promising.

Thank you all for being here and supporting Mythaura every step of the way. We can’t wait to share more as things progress!

Closed Beta FAQ

In the interest of keeping all of the information about our Closed Beta in one place and update as needed, we have added as much information as possible to the FAQ page.

If you have any questions that you can think of, please feel free to reach out to us through our contact form or on Discord!

Winter Quarter (2025) Concepts

It’s the first day of Winter Quarter 2025, which means we’ve got new Quarterly Rewards for Sponsors to vote on on our Ko-fi page!

Which concepts would you like to see made into official site items? Sponsors of Bronze level or higher have a vote in deciding. Please check out the Companion post and the Glamour post on Ko-fi to cast your vote for the winning concepts!

Votes must be posted by January 29, 2025 at 11:59pm PDT in order to be considered.

All Fall 2024 Rewards are now listed in our Ko-fi Shop for individual purchase for all Sponsor levels at $5 USD flat rate per unit. As a reminder, please remember that no more than 3 units of any given item can be purchased. If you purchase more than 3 units of any given item, your entire purchase will be refunded and you will need to place your order again, this time with no more than 3 units of any given item.

Fall 2024 Glamour: Diaphonized Ryu

Fall 2024 Companion: Inhabited Skull

Fall 2024 Solid Gold Glamour: Hippogriff (Young)

NOTE: As covered in the FAQ, the Ko-fi shop will be closing at the end of the year. These will be the last Winter Quarter rewards for Mythaura!

New Super: Zebra

We've added our first new Super to the site since last year's Prismatic: Zebra, which has a chance to occur when parents have the Wildebeest and Banding Specials!

Zebra is now live in our Beast Creator--we're excited to see what you all create with it!

New Expressions: Ryu

The Water-element Ryu has had expressions completed for both the adult and young models. Expressions have been a huge, time-intensive project for the art team to undertake, but the result is always worth it!

Mythauran Astrology: January

The month of January is referred to as Hearth's Embrace, representing the fireplaces kept lit for the entirety of the coldest month of the year. This month is also associated with the constellation of the Glassblower and the carnelian stone.

Mythaura v0.35

Refactored "Beast Parties" into "User Parties," allowing non-beast entities like NPCs to be added to your party. NPCs added to your party will follow you in the overworld, cannot be made your leader, and will make their own decisions in combat.

Checkpoint floor functionality ironed out, allowing pre-built maps to appear at specific floor intervals.

The ability to set spawn and end coordinates in the map builder was added to allow staff to build checkpoint floors.

Various cleanups and refactors to improve performance and reduce the number of queries needed to run certain operations.

Added location events, which power interactable objects in the overworld, such as a lootable chest or a pickable bush.

Thank You!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the post, we always look forward to sharing our month's work with all of you--thank you for taking the time to read. We'll see you around the Discord.

[pawborough]

Beta Expectations and Our Development Goals

Hi everyone! This document serves as an outline for starting expectations when beginning Closed Beta. 

Things to remember as we move into Closed Beta are: 

Cursing is allowed! We’ve dialed back our filters quite a bit, but absolutely no innuendo or sexual content. Details are outlined in our TOS.

In this beginning, the application feels closer to the Alpha state than it does the full game. It is in a mid-development limbo, which is why we are stressing that it is the Closed Beta state. Our biggest milestones have been backend technical foundations that have taken significant time. If the game were a cake, we have finished baking the base, which is what we’re starting the testing for. We’ll be making aggressive updates throughout the next few months of the test, which will introduce the “frosting,” and advance general playability. We plan to roll out new mechanics every month. You will find a list below of what these goals are.

Temper your starting expectations, but get excited for how much we’re going to continuously develop and update!

We will not be moving into Open Beta until we feel the game is close to done. Think of Closed Beta as phase 1, and Open Beta as phase 2.

Things will break the moment you try them. This is normal and expected. Always report!

Because of this, things won’t be very fun yet. But as we roll out improvements and new things, users will get to give live feedback on what they want to see and how things feel.

Early Access will be less smooth than full Closed Beta as we detect the kinks of letting more people in en masse. It’s the nature of early launching. Brace yourselves!

In the same vein, several aspects are temporary. Topher takes the place of icons in the queue, and compromises we’ve made for early economic simulation (example: a placeholder merchant to simulate the Processing mechanic) will be barren. NPCs are sketches, UI colors may be temporary, and UI banners are sketches.

Any and all prices of items or features are temporary or subject to change. Things like the price of kit rolling or accessory items will be tooled.

All updates and communications with testers will be posted publicly instead of through email. Eventually, we’ll use the site forums, but not until we can guarantee no more content wipes, and we’ve developed the sticky system on the User Dashboard.

Everything in this test, minus your username, password, account ID, and purchases is temporary. Your account content will be erased at some point in time, and when it is your Kickstarter and Alpha reward codes will be re-activated for use.

If anything is broken about your code, please report! We’ll fix it!

Any premium purchases you make will be restored upon wipes, and exist in this state as a means to support us moreso than to stimulate longterm collecting. By purchasing any currency, you’re helping us develop! But please do not feel pressured!

Bundles will be added come the full Closed Beta.

Pelt submissions are open for user testing, but you’ll have to re-submit upon any wipes.

When you complete registration (entering your DOB and confirming agreement to the TOS), your founder and follower IDs will be reserved, so you can take your time going over the details.

These starting cats will be wiped completely, and when Open Beta begins, follower and founder IDs will be totally up for grabs again upon first-come first-serve login and confirmation.

We’ll be around to grind for the next two weeks. Then, in two weeks, there will be a bit of a lull as our developers take a breather and regroup, and we’ll be back in March. We’re making this plan known so it doesn’t look like an abandonment or nervous silence. We’re simply planning rest and pacing ahead of time!

We’ll be sending out periodic surveys to get honest criticism and check how the economy is feeling.

The first survey is ready and waiting for your input! This survey focuses specifically on the economy, and can be filled out once per day. Please do not feel pressured to do so every day, but we encourage you to respond as many times as possible. Your input is immeasurably valuable for the fine-tuning of our economy, and guaranteeing the long-term enjoyability of the site. Please find the survey here.

With over 700 items on this site, we may have missed necessary data entry for some as we learn the ins and outs of our own program. Always report and we’ll fix it!

Some accessories are in the re-coloring queue, and if so will have their recolors seeded into the economy as we finish them.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We’re ready to hit the ground running, but it will be a long journey. We’re excited to embark on it together!

Here is a list of things available from the get-go (hopefully useable, if not they will be!):

Cooking and Crafting

Daily Duties

Flea Market and Merchants 

Breeding

Dress up and general cat customization

Beta retirement (bare bones)

Cat relationships and cross-cat gift giving

Archetype discovery (we are adding new ones as you play!)

Forum posting and custom board creation (image hosting!)

Cat profile CSS boxes

User profile CSS boxes

Storage and stash functionality for item organization

Bank functionality for currency storage

User customization settings (icon selection, pronoun and slogan editing, Borough swapping, username swapping)

Crest application

Beta guild play (basic errands)

Multiplayer guilds

Incense and metamorphic functionality

Pelt submissions (the refined pelt rules are a work in progress, because for this chaotic testing phase we’d like everyone to go nuts and have some fun! The only steadfast rules are no gore, copyrighted materials, religious iconography, or sexual content!)

Friend requests and adding friends

Premium shop (intended for user support, benefits are bare for at least the next week or so while we focus on user bug reports)

Now without further ado… here is what we’ll be working on in the coming months, in order of general priority! Open Beta will not happen until we finish this list.

Replacing frontend assets with final renders.

Updating item cards to reflect dynamic button displays depending on the page in which the card is being viewed.

User report system for all user-ran content.

Wardrobe functionality; full sandbox dress up available to any visitor.

Infrastructure for sharing sandbox creations in comments and forum posts; text language like :catID: to paste an image link of a cat.

User to user DM functionality.

User to user private trading.

Item database and lore encyclopedia.

Processing functionality + dye system. For now, recolors are seeded in a temporary merchant.

Visual faunapedia record for fauna studying (including unlockable lore.)

Adding a slew of archetypes. Dedicated archetype collection page with user featured display.

Sitewide search functionality of all user content.

Aesthetic updates to comments + addition of comments onto cat pages.

Splitting the Undercoat into two patterns: Dilute (dynamically lightened) and Standard.

Adding a white patch selector into the creator and founder designer.

Dashboard refinement + forum news widget and stickies.

Splitting cooking and crafting to bring back Winnipeg and keep the mechanics more organized.

Farming.

Much of it has been started already, and we’ll continue to share our progress. We plan to stay in Closed Beta likely over the summer, but it will be as long as these developments take.

And then we will move into Open Beta! Where we can focus on the following:

User notebook entries (blog posts.)

Forum board updates to better accommodate posting

Sitewide tagging and filtering.

Cross-account breeding.

Dedicated Guild refinement and updates.

Achievement system.

Referral system.

Team features like a team hoard, team notes, and shared scenes.

Refinement of any feature feedback we get :) 

And from there… it’s full launch, baby! 

Again, a marathon, not a sprint. This list may seem long and arduous, but we’ll continue visual content updates (patterns, breeds, etc.) throughout the length of development.

Let’s get crackin’, catfolk!

[velvetfoxgames]

Infinite Blue - May 2024 Update

Hello everyone, we're at an interesting point in development where the art assets are nearly done, and all of the scripts are wrapping up. This means a focus is being put on the final stretch of finishing the game. They say that the last 10% of any work takes 90% of the time, and I think we'll find that to be true! On to the update...

ARTWORK

The CGs are nearly complete!! Currently waiting on Rory's second half of illustrations. Here's a peek at a couple of them.

WRITING

Leo's route has been sent out for programming, and Milo's is scheduled to be done this month. It's a huge relief getting these finished one by one.

Curious about what an average day's worth of gameplay looks like? Here's Leo's day 5 scripts.

VOICE ACTING

We have a plan in place for voice acting! As each route is mostly programmed in, we'll be going over the writing and phone calls in-game to make sure the script is where we want it to be. After that, we'll send out scripts to the voice actors of that particular route, rather than recruiting all of the VAs at the same time. The first scripts will be sent hopefully this month for Tobias's route.

PROGRAMMING

We've brought on a new programmer to handle the backend for the game. Particularly since it's a mobile game that will have a currency system, it'll be important to have a database to protect player's information and to keep the game safe from attacks and game manipulation.

PATREON

We've had 'Fae Alexei' and 'LoFi City Rory' illustrations done over on Patreon, as well as free respective headcanons found HERE.

Thanks for reading!

🌦️ For weekly updates and extra content, join our Patreon!

🌦️ Follow us on Twitter and join our Discord

[flentas]

Unleashing the Power of Game Backend Services: Guide to Game Backend Development 

In the ever-evolving landscape of the gaming industry, the role of robust game backend services cannot be overstated. These services form the backbone of any successful game, providing the infrastructure that supports crucial functionalities and enhances the overall gaming experience. In this guide, we delve into the realm of game backend development, exploring the key components, benefits, and best practices that game developers should consider. 

Understanding Game Backend Services: 

Game backend services encompass a range of functionalities that facilitate seamless gameplay, data storage, and communication between players. These services often include features such as user authentication, real-time multiplayer capabilities, in-game purchases, and leaderboard management. A well-designed game backend is essential for creating engaging and dynamic gaming experiences.  

Key Components of Game Backend Development: 

User Authentication: Secure and efficient user authentication is the foundation of any game backend. Implementing robust authentication measures ensures that players' accounts and data are protected. 

Real-time Multiplayer Capabilities: Enabling multiplayer functionality adds a social dimension to games, enhancing player engagement. A scalable and low-latency backend is crucial for delivering smooth multiplayer experiences. 

In-Game Purchases and Monetization: Game developers often integrate in-game purchases to monetize their creations. A well-architected backend supports secure transactions, purchase tracking, and user account management. 

Leaderboards and Achievements: Implementing leaderboards and achievements enhances competition among players and provides additional goals to strive for. These features rely on backend services to track and display player progress accurately. 

Benefits of Implementing Game Backend Services: 

Scalability: As games attract more players, the demand on backend services increases. A scalable backend ensures that the infrastructure can handle growing user bases without compromising performance. 

Data Management: Backend services manage player data, ensuring that progress, achievements, and in-game purchases are securely stored and easily retrievable. 

Enhanced Player Interaction: Real-time communication and multiplayer capabilities foster a sense of community among players, driving retention and player satisfaction. 

Monetization Opportunities: With in-game purchases and other monetization strategies, game backend services contribute to the financial success of the game. 

Best Practices in Game Backend Development: 

Security First: Prioritize security measures to protect user data, transactions, and the overall integrity of the game. 

Scalability Planning: Anticipate future growth and design the backend to scale seamlessly, preventing performance issues as the player base expands. 

Real-time Analytics: Implement analytics tools to gather insights into player behavior, enabling informed decision-making for updates and improvements. 

Continuous Testing and Optimization: Regularly test and optimize backend services to address potential issues and ensure optimal performance. 

Conclusion: 

Game backend development is a critical aspect of creating successful and engaging games. By understanding the key components, benefits, and best practices outlined in this guide, developers can build a robust infrastructure that supports immersive gameplay experiences, fosters player interaction, and opens up new monetization opportunities. In the dynamic world of gaming, a well-crafted backend is the key to unlocking the full potential of any game. 

For More Details and Services Please visit our website- Flentas Technologies   

[askagamedev]

Summer 2025 Game Development Student Internship Roundup, Part 1

Internship recruiting season has begun for some large game publishers and developers. This means that a number of internship opportunities for summer 2025 have been posted and will be collecting applicants. Internships are a great way to earn some experience in a professional environment and to get mentorship from those of us in the trenches. If you're a student and you have an interest in game development as a career, you should absolutely look into these.

If you know of any game development internships that aren't listed here, please tell me! I'll try to collect another batch when EA posts theirs as a follow-up.

Technical Artist Intern (Remote!)

Sound Design Intern (Remote!)

Game Design Intern

Game Engineering Intern

Data Analytics & Data Science Intern

Localization Production Intern

Environment Art Intern

Animation Intern

VFX Intern

3D Character Art Intern

Site Reliability Engineering Intern

Concept Artist Intern (Canada)

Animation Intern

VFX Intern

Game Engineering Intern

Technical Artist Intern

Threat Intelligence Analyst Intern

UI/UX Design Intern

User Research Intern

Computer Graphics Intern

Software Engineering Intern

Production & Project Management Intern

Concept Artist Intern (California)

World Designer Intern

3D Artist Intern

Animation Programmer Intern

Animation Technical Design Intern

Audio Design Intern

Backend Engineer Intern

Balance Design Intern

Character Artist Intern

Engine Programmer Intern

Environment Art Intern

Game Design Intern

Game Security Intern

Gameplay Programmer Intern

Gameplay Systems Engineer Intern

Salesforce Developer Intern

Software Engineer Intern

Environment Art Intern

Game Design Intern

Gameplay Programmer Intern

Tools Programmer Intern

Technical Artist Intern

Technical Character Animation Intern

Technology App Portfolio Intern

Tools Programmer Intern

Concept Artist Intern

At time of writing, Electronic Arts was performing maintenance on their recruiting site and should have new openings posted on November 12th 2024. I'll do a second round of internship opportunities once they post, along with Ubisoft and any others I missed.

Brush up your resume and focus on any game dev work you've done. Amateur game dev work counts! Tabletop game mastering counts! Amateur board and card game design counts! Making your own CCG fan sets or draft cube counts! Game jam work counts! These make a bigger difference when it comes to hiring than most other kinds of work experience.

If you need assistance with your resume/CV, cover letter, or have other questions, join our discord and ask. The server is full of experienced developers who can help review your materials and give you suggestions. I also suggest taking a look at my Game Career FAQ. There's a lot of answers in there already. Best of luck out there.

[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

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[nishtha135]

Which coding languages should I learn to boost my IT career opportunities?

A career in IT needs a mix of versatile programming languages. Here are some of the most essential ones:

Python – Easy to learn and widely used for data science, machine learning, web development, and automation.

JavaScript – Key for web development, allowing interactive websites and backend work with frameworks like Node.js.

Java – Known for stability, popular for Android apps, enterprise software, and backend development.

C++ – Great for systems programming, game development, and areas needing high performance.

SQL – Essential for managing and querying databases, crucial for data-driven roles.

C# – Common in enterprise environments and used in game development, especially with Unity.

[genericpuff]

The LO TV show isn't happening, and here's why.

Now, before I begin, courtesy to /u/Princess_Space_Goose because they're one of the driving forces behind these observations concerning stuff in the entertainment sector and they were the first ones to make a comprehensive post about it over on reddit shortly after we got into it in the Discord and compiled everything we knew. But I also REALLY wanna talk about this and I'm surprised to see I haven't yet. They've covered reddit, so I'm covering Tumblr LMAO

Disclaimer: Long post ahead. Much of what I say below is speculation but there's a lot of damning evidence to support it. Take it with grains of salt.

Rachel has vague-posted about the show a couple times over the past few years, but very sparingly so, always stating that it's "in the works" without anything to actually show for it. This would have been fine back in 2020 or even 2021 (the pandemic did bring a lot of television/movie development to a crawl) but we're over halfway through 2023 now.

So where's the show? Who's running it? What is it gonna look like? Which streaming service is it going to be hosted on?

We literally do not know any definitive answers to these questions because nothing has been revealed and at this point in the game, that's basically a death sentence. LO has been on a noticeable decline in stats over the past year, while we obviously can't access the backend numbers (and neither can Rachel as far as I know because WT guards them with an iron fist which is a whole other topic for discussion) it's still very clear by the comic's rating slowly but surely dropping and the like count average lowering (obv the like count isn't indicative of view count but if the ratio has remained the same, that means if the like count lowers, the viewership is likely lowering too). There's also been certain behavior from WT over the past year that hints at the comic not doing well, such as its VERY aggressive ad campaigning which often undercuts other series on the platform that are far better than LO and deserve the spotlight, but lose it anyways because WT just wants to keep its golden goose on life support even after its heart has stopped beating.

So the fact that we don't know the answers to these questions still after 4 years is NOT good. We don't know anything and while that was excusable 3 years ago, at this point, it's more indicative of the project being at a standstill or dropped completely, and what we dug up and discussed in the ULO Discord (and what was later posted to reddit) proves it with some very telling information dissected from LinkedIn and other sources.

So far, the only people we know connected to this project are Rachel Smythe (the creator of LO) and Stephanie K Smith (the appointed showrunner). Showrunners are the lifeblood of television series, remember this. Here's a little bit about her:

Lore Olympus still doesn't have a network, this means it has no definitive spot to air, which is not good at this point, because the network is what primarily funds these projects. Think of "Netflix shows" - they're not necessarily made by Netflix, they're made by studios that Netflix funds and as such they're given the Netflix branding because Netflix is their proprietary distribution network and benefactor. So LO has no network or streaming service funding its production. All of her other credited works have affiliated networks/distributors, but LO doesn't.

"But what about Jim Henson Company?" Jim Henson Company bought the rights to LO in 2019 to produce it, that doesn't necessarily mean they were onboard to fund the entire project. Again, these studios need networks to back them, not just for monetary purposes, but with the promise that their project will have a place to go when it's finished, whether it's Netflix, HBO, etc. Think of it like a movie theater - the movie theaters aren't the ones making the movies, but they have deals with the studios to air those movies with the agreement that both sides will be making money.

Jim Henson Company is a production studio, not a network. Not only that, but they're primarily for-hire for puppetry/animatronic projects, they're not the same kind of studio as, say, Laika, or Disney, or Warner Bros. Much of their work is done on the backend, creating animatronics and puppets for kids' productions, monster movies, etc. Currently they're working as the animatronic designers for Five Nights at Freddy's, but that movie isn't a JHC movie, it's a Blumhouse production, which has hired JHC to create animatronics for them.

So, the fact that they were the ones to buy out LO for production rights is... very odd. Because for starters, they don't tend to buy out production rights like major studios, they're typically for hire, but they're also not an animation studio. Any animation projects they've worked on were for concept art and design, such as Word Party, but the folks at JHC primarily specialize in conceptualization and practical effects. That's their whole shtick, it's what they're selling, it's what they get hired for.

That's all early stuff though, stuff we've been speculating on for ages. What came to light recently that spurred on this whole essay was discovering this one section on Stephanie K's LinkedIn:

There are a couple things we can glean from this. First, we know this has to be LO even if it isn't being named, because LO is the only one that was bought by JHC.

This also confirms that LO did end up with a distribution network, specifically HBO Max.

But it also confirms that Stephanie K Smith, the showrunner, is no longer on the project, either due to willingly quitting or being removed. According to the time stamps, she left in April of this year.

This is especially not good because without a showrunner, there's no leader. Showrunners are essential to these projects. So without a showrunner, and without any sort of announcement of a replacement, LO's television show is a ship without a captain, a car without a driver, a Hell's Kitchen without a Gordon Ramsay.

There's mention of an "animated presentation" but as mentioned in that reddit post above, that's not necessarily a pilot, it's more likely it was this. Which can't even really be called "animation", it's just video editing, rigging and tweening, but I digress.

There's a lot more in that reddit thread that dives into some of the details of Stephanie K's stuff, including the HBO Max affiliation and how that potentially connects to the Sydney Sweeney trailer, but ultimately, all of these breadcrumbs add up to one of two things:

LO's television show is in severe development hell which it likely will not come out of for quite some time, especially right now with both the writer's strike and streaming services gutting their animation connections.

LO's show isn't happening at all but with LO's numbers declining and its audience growing more fed up with the series (look no further than the comments on Instagram about LO's recent Eisner win, people are PISSED) Rachel and WT are trying to do as much damage control as possible by dangling a carrot in front of the audience they have left in the hopes that they'll stick around long enough on the promise of a TV show happening to keep siphoning cash and views. After all, there are two things many readers are still sticking around for - the SA plotline, and the TV show, and both of those things are being unnecessarily dragged out in the vaguest way possible with no real resolution in sight.

Neither of these are good, but I think what's even more telling is that, since that post was made on reddit, Rachel has attended SDCC and taken part in a new interview from Girl Wonder Podcast, and when asked about the show, all she had to say was this:

"Um, it’s been really interesting. It’s been educational for me. So, what I—what has been done so far is beautiful. Like, if I could share it, I would. But I can’t. Because it’s very naughty."

IDK if the "naughty" bit is referring to the show or just her revealing info about it, but the fact that NOTHING was shown at SDCC is just. Y'all, I'm sorry, but the show is not happening. If you're gonna show off previews for television ANYWHERE, it's SDCC. It's like the E3 of comics and entertainment media. So the fact that she's STILL VAGUE-POSTING ABOUT IT EVEN AT A MAJOR EVENT WHERE IT'S COMMONPLACE TO REVEAL TRAILERS AND PREVIEWS OF NEW PROJECTS, like... it's just not happening. Jim Henson Company bought the rights to produce LO as a TV show in the summer of 2019. Since then, we haven't seen a SHRED of news, if you google "Lore Olympus TV show" it'll still be the same 2-3 articles from 2019 talking about JHC buying the rights and that's it. If you do further sleuthing, all you'll find is Rachel saying "yeah it's still happening but I can't say anything!" which means fucking nothing at this point. The only 'hope' I have left is that they'll announce it at NYCC which has Rachel in a top billing spot in its advertising, but I'm really not holding my breath at this point.

Animated productions take a while, sure, but LO wasn't the only comic bought for TV production in that late 2010's/early 2020's era. Heartstopper was bought in 2019, and it made it to Netflix by April 2022. And it was live action, a medium SEVERELY affected by the pandemic, unlike animation, which wasn't affected as much because a lot of animation development can be done from home. What did affect the animation sector was streaming services like Netflix gutting their connections to animation studios and putting animated projects on the chopping block... which also doesn't bode well for LO.

It's 2023 now and we still don't even have anything beyond those initial announcement articles and Rachel making empty promises. It's not happening. Don't fall for the "it's coming soon but I can't say anything" nonsense. It's far less genuine now than it was 3 years ago and it has nothing to support those claims that it's actually in development, and ironically far more to support mere speculation that she's lying or doing damage control.

And, if it actually is happening, on a shred of belief in that being a possibility, then it sure as shit isn't being marketed well. Knowing how to build hype in a product is an entire course of knowledge. Marvel is practically the king of building hype, they're why people sit until the very end of the credits now in the hopes of seeing an after-credit scene, even in movies that aren't made by them. LO's numbers are bleeding right now, so to not show anything at even the major events like SDCC is a blatant misfire. Almost like there isn't anything to show in the first place.

You can take all of this evidence as you will. Some of it you may dismiss as "overthinking" or whatever have you. And a lot of it is speculation based on the crumbs we've picked up along the way.

But let me pose you this as a final thought: how can it be a good sign when everything being asked about the show, by fans and critics alike, comes down to "Is the show still happening?"

The best time to reveal proof of the LO television show was 3 years ago. The second best time is now.

[santaeofficial]

Mystic Adventure Monday

Development of Santae's Mystic Adventure, an exciting upcoming game mode, is underway! Each Monday, we'll share development progress and sneak peeks at how the Mystic Adventure is progressing.

This week, some exciting updates to the environmental artwork -- and the programming that will make gameplay possible!

The tile art that forms the environment of Santae's Mystic Adventure has been revised by the art team for a less "boxy" look. We've also swapped out the placeholder character sprites with a replacement temporary sprite. Farewell stick figures, and hello Pipsqueak Wispyr!

We have also prepared the project for scenery and depth objects. This will allow the tokens to go in front of and behind scenery once it is added to the game!

Meanwhile, under the hood, work has begun on some of the base networking code so that we can develop the frontend and backend simultaneously.

We have also started programming interactivity to prepare for users to "roll a die" and then allow their player character to move around the board by the specified number of tiles.

The pieces are slowly but surely coming together for the basic elements that will make the gameplay and world of Santae's Mystic Adventure possible. Look forward to even more exciting news next Mystic Adventure Monday!

[scootatwoni]

I wanna extend some sympathy to console players/backers of coral island because yeah it genuinely sucks. Not everyone has access to or can afford a computer to run the game, so the dev's offer for a steam key isn't the best resolution. It's frustrating for sure!

But at the same time (and emphasis on that these two statements can be true at the same time) I'm seeing a lot of people in the community going waaaay too hard on a small dev team that just lost their publisher.

Ofc I'm not an expert on this stuff, so I encourage you to do your own research into this, but here's the jist that I think a lot of people need to consider:

Humble handled the console ports (as is typical for publishers) and it seems like they haven't bothered to give Stairway the backend permissions. And until they can get another publisher (assuming that's the route they take) this team of 25 people is now responsible for that on top of development.

I think it's completely understandable that stairway games is scrambling right now on what to do.

Console players and backers, please extend a bit of sympathy and patience to the team as they figure things out. Because they are working on it.

There is no justification to jump the gun and call the team scammers or liars or other awful things when this is still developing news.

Based on stairway's positive track record of open communication and transparency (where NDAs allow it) I don't doubt they'll figure out a solution, we just need to be patient.