#Made this as a proof of concept for a map idea

[susivoi]

She can't keep them all safe. They will die and be afraid. - 'Harpy Hare' Yaelokre

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Commissions

[boxturret]

BMOP: A history of the Abandoned Koro

Now that things have all come out, and the project is well and truly over, I thought I'd take a moment to talk a bit about something I worked on in the game, the "Abandoned Koro" area, now that there's video footage of a playthrough I can easily reference.

I suppose as a quick primer, I was with the BMOP team from around March of 2021 to November of 2022, serving as both 3D art lead and Level design lead for a time. There's a post out there about my experiences with the leadership of the team that I mostly stand by still, I do feel bad for how the project ended, and I have come around a bit to remember the positive times more than the negative, but that doesn't erase what happened.

So to begin, when I came on level design was a fairly inactive sub channel of the game development discord, some ideas got tossed around occasionally, but not much seemed to be happening, before I'd joined there was a rough map drawn up by the then current level design lead.

It was very basic stuff, there was a version of this map in engine that had been extruded a bit to make it a kind of playable space, one area had some trees on it and some random platforms.

One area that interested me greatly was this part in the south, the so called "Abandoned Koro"

The rough idea being that it was the Le-Koro seen in the GBA game Bionicle: Quest for the Toa, that had been abandoned in favour of the one seen in the browser game Mata Nui Online Game and the cancelled PC game Bionicle: Legend of Mata Nui, as the one in QFTT had a lot of wooden structures while the one seen in the other two was more like a woven nest.

At the time I was just a 3d modeller, and had never really done any real level design, but the concept just really inspired me, so I went off and in blender sketched out a possible level layout for this area.

I made a bunch of renders and wrote out how I thought the level could work, which can be seen in this document HERE.

For a quick overview, the idea was you'd enter the area, the bridge would break, you'd have to clear a river to activate the water wheel on a large mechanical tree that would allow you passage upwards, and then navigate through the Nui-Rama infested ruins of the village before coming to a cave.

The tree was something I poured a lot of time in to, its worthy of its own post at some point in the future.

Now I'll be honest, I was super nervous about releasing this document to the team, I thought I was overstepping my bounds. I was just a relatively new 3d modeller on the team, I didn't have the right to be talking about level design, but to my surprise people were really receptive to it, and I very quickly got added to the level design team¹.

I ended up doing a rough blockout in engine. This was back in the time before Lewa had been chosen to be the main player character, so it was still Tahu.

This was the first time I'd ever touched Unreal, so it took a while. That's why the sky is black, I didn't know how to add a skybox.

I never got in to level scripting, but as a proof of concept, I think it was successful.

You can see that in this version of the level it had already progressed, now there was the idea of using the Pakari to break the dam, so finding it was the first task on the ground.

This version wasn't in the actual demo map, because as I said before the demo wasn't really very fleshed out at the time. One thing my map showed though was that the demo was way too big. The level design lead at the time had decided the size based on how long it took to get around the map as a perfectly flat plane with no terrain, at max run speed, with no obstacles. This is a very flawed methodology to say the least. Having an actual level with things scaled to the character really started to show the holes in this, and eventually, once I became lead, the demo area was massively shrunk.

Here's a version from just a month later. The version is now part of the new, more compact demo area, but its mostly barren at this point.

This version was actually completely rebuilt from the ground up because it had been decided to try out voxels as a basis². They were a pain to deal with and this was overturned eventually. I'd say in total, including the 3d sketch I did, I re-built this map maybe 4 times.

One benefit of voxels was it was trivial to have caves, so this is where the idea of the pakari being found in a cave started to emerge.

As I continued to play and refine the demo it became clear how much the movement systems would need to be tweaked. There seemed to be this idea in the team that everything could be done separately and bolted together later, so character moment was all handled by someone jumping around on some big blocks in a test map whereas level design was off doing their own thing, but it really wasn't working. So while the movement felt good in a vacuum, actually putting it in context really exposed a lot of issues. You could easily jump over any enemy you could come across, as said earlier maps had to be huge in order to make the world seem big while you were running at full speed, and after about 3 jumps you'd be 20 metres in the air.

At this point the idea still was to have the entire island of Mata Nui be one large open area you could freely explore, so the sheer size of the maps resulting from the over powered movement was a major issue. I lobbied very hard to have things pulled back and eventually they were.

its a bit out of order, but here's the demo area from closer to when I left. Its a fraction of the size of the original map

Here's another video from a month later.

As much as it pains me to say it, this is basically it in terms of meaningful development. By this point Lewa had been locked in as the playable character, and the movement had been dialed back to a more reasonable degree, so I was able to really start trying to refine the area. This is where I ran in to a fatal issue.

No one else wanted to play the game.

And what was worse barely anything worked.

The level is still in what I would call a grey box state. I used a couple tree trunk assets I'd made here and there, and put in a big canopy asset from one of the many asset packs we had for a bit of ambience, but it was all still very basic geometry, easily changed or modified.

Unfortunately, there's only so much you can do for playtesting your own area. You built it: you know where everything is, what's supposed to happen, where you're supposed to go. You can try to pretend to play it as a new player, but that only gets you so far. I was hoping people on the team would play it and provide feedback³, but outside of maybe one or two people a handful of times⁴, trying to get any really feedback was was a futile effort.

The thing was that this area was very complex. If the demo was a vertical slice of the game as a whole, this area was itself a microcosm of the demo⁵. It had platforming, puzzle solving, combat, mask powers, the lot. Now unfortunately for me, barely any of those systems actually worked.

As an example, this long ledge was for a long time a stand in for vine swinging, then rail grinding⁶, then was ultimately just replaced by a platform.

So things had kind of hit a wall. I couldn't properly design areas with combat in them until combat existed in a more stable state, I couldn't design platforming sections until platforming worked in a consistent way. I couldn't even adjust the overall flow of the level because everyone else basically refused to give feedback.

But the unfortunate thing is, in August of that year they'd released a teaser trailer.

And that trailer had gotten hundreds of thousands of views.

This is where the whole development of this game really went off the rails. Now there was this push to get things in a presentable state, start set dressing and making final assets so things could be shown off.

But I refused. Everything was too up in the air to commit to set dressing, this is why block out exists, if the jump changes height its no big issue to grab the couple cubes an area is made out of and shift them up or down, if combat is found to need more space its easy to make things bigger, or add or take away walls. If something is confusing things can be shifted. Once set dressing starts now you're dealing with dozens to hundreds of objects being scattered about, even the smallest tweak can lead to a mess.

Not to mention set dressing raised its own series of issues, from plants triggering the IK on the toa's feet, making their knees go up to their chin when walking through a bunch of ferns, to collision volumes being oversized or offset, meaning that big rock face they just added has now created a massive invisible wall in another area. Once the addition of some plants caused all ledges within a wide radius to no longer work⁷.

It was a miserable state of affairs. My mental state rapidly deteriorated as I fought against this, I became very short tempered and irritable, and eventually near the end of 2022 I was kicked from the team. It was such a relief honestly.

I think the tragic thing is, set dressing is actually quite a fast process. The starting area went from looking like this to something quite like the final in about a month?

But you can't show off the first screenshot on twitter⁸.

I guess I'll spare a quick moment to talk about the final version seen in the video.

Its at 46 minutes in if the link doesn't work

Its...fine? The assets they've made are all good, though I think they lost the QFTM inspiration along the way. The thing that stands out to me is just how...little its moved on from 2022. Just look how much progress was made in like 3 months, compare that to now, 3 years later. Temporary platforms I placed are still in the exact same spot. I do find the addition of a matoran with a key for the cave to be a not great addition, if only for the fact that you need to find a tiny green man in amongst the overwhelming greenery to proceed.

One part I found quite amusing was the final enemy encounter. It was supposed to be this large hut, probably Matau's, that had been completely overtaken by a hive, and Nui-Rama would spawn constantly from it until the encounter was over.

There were a lot of concepts drawn up, but I guess it just...never happened. I also don't know why there's waves of fikou there either, that was after my time I think.

So that's really all I have to say about that version, it looks okay. Its still clearly unfinished. It kinda works more than it did when I left, but its shockingly not that much different, outside of some new assets.

I'll be honest, I did intend this to be more of a happy, reflective post, but when watching part of the developer commentary a quote stood out to me.

"Traditionally you would kind of have really basic blockout for an environment and play test that to see how the level design is working. Because of the the situation we had we were kind of forced to just go ahead with set dressing and prettying it up and everything so if it were in a perfect world I would have loved to have gotten to do some more play testing early on but we did what we could with it. And I mean you basically had to just blindly trust the process because many systems weren't working at the time things were designed." -AN UNKNOWN BMOP DEVELOPER (2025)

And I just fundamentally disagree. This was a fan project, there were no deadlines but those that were self inflicted. This process they blindly trusted just lead to a thing that on the surface looks okay, but is still riddled with bugs that were well known for years. I've seen some people on the team say the game was 90% completed, feature locked, just 3 more months of polish and it would have all been working, but from what I've seen of the game I really doubt it. They say themselves in the commentary that there's bugs they've been fighting for nearly a decade still rearing their head.

So yeah, its not exactly a happy tale. I'm quite proud of the work I did, I learned a lot, and met a lot of people I'm still friends with to this day. Its a shame the project had to end this way, and I'm sad everyone's work has gone to waste, but I'm also not going to pretend this was some amazing project that was struck down right before achieving greatness.

But most of all: Fuck you lego.

If you're interested in seeing a few more of the things I worked on in my time with BMOP, go HERE. I may post more publicly about some of them in the future, who knows. I have a post about the regional Kini temple I designed and built for the game HERE. Also some renders I did for some of my game design reports HERE.

¹-I say team, it was maybe two other people who were barely around. ²-I'll be honest here: Some people wanted to have the entire map destructible so that they could have Bohrok dynamically destroy it. For the post game DLC after we'd finished this Zelda sized free fan game⁹. ³-💯👍👀 isn't helpful feedback at the end of the day. Its supportive I'll give you that. But sometimes you need more. ⁴-One person on the team even outright refused to play the game until final release, to "save their first reactions for their stream"... ⁵-idk if its clear at this point but the "demo" is, was, and now always will be the entirety of the existing game. Oh there were ideas for other things, but nothing concrete ever materialised⁹. ⁶-You know, like Sonic⁹ ⁷-The ledge's over sensitive detection for something blocking it is one of the most frustrating things about the game's development for me. ⁸-You absolutely can show off real development stuff, there are lots of people who find that fascinating. ⁹-This game was nothing if not ambitious.

You see that kind of mop is called a "Bee Mop", because of its sponge's resemblance to honey comb.

[storyweavingspider]

We Are: a spell for cracking shells

(Come and read me and find your name)

1.

once the ancestor stars were not just night lights to wish upon)

it was about the same sad thing unsaid across generations)

the seed / the sprout / the wilt / and all that passes in between)

2.

in the dark, candlelit room you try not to appear

in tears you try not to look like you are pleading

(you try to control your voice)

you wonder to yourself, half mockingly, half earnest,

how many ways are there to name a wound?)

3.

the first step is always to point directly to the place that hurts)

(and the tilting magic spread like a lightness in the head

where she knows / always and already / and all she can hear is no)

so you can't stay here knowing full well / you have every opportunity to leave)

(are you sure sweetheart that / you want to be well?)

4.

you were unmoored in an unraveling prayer)

an astral guide (a map of scars) / skinning the palms of your hands)

5.

you fell into more open jaws than you can count)

so you feed your wounds healing herbs & coconut water)

(“self preservation warned some of us that we could not afford to settle for one easy definition, one narrow individuation of self.”)

6.

(what would you name yourself, now that you could?)

you whisper to yourself / articulate with language)

you believed the spacetime continuum couldn’t hold as much of you as you were able to accept)

(love ain’t flesh and muscle like it could be / imagine the remedy that ends the split / made of the answers)

7.

you feel your voice start to change, blooming)

(aren’t you holy / aren’t we proof enough?)

if you can name yourself)

until the whole thing begins again)

8.

(`i am whole / i am love and love and love / i am perfect and right and divine / in all my totality`)

(the spell she is spinning around herself)

9.

someone told me that i deal in wormholes (or that you can only follow me so far down) / like warping portals to the version of yourself you have not yet imagined)

(`it wasn’t another planet at all, and it wasn’t a time machine / doll, a world where you can name yourself anything`)

(your love is too beautiful to have thrown back on your face.)

10.

“our women / the ones left behind / always know the taste of their own strength— bitter at times it might be”)

what it means to know / and speak the end of a cycle / self fulfilling prophecy)

(who told you your dreams were not good enough to sit on?)

this time i ask you what you want / say it / more)

(“i found a goddess in myself / and i loved her fiercely”)

11.

the concept of home is located within the deepest recesses of the body)

most believe this is where the shadows of our selves hide)

(you look whole enough to me)

12.

you must return home)

(“i had never felt visible before, nor even known i lacked it”)

the first step is always to point directly to the place that hurts)

you are prism reborn, you are sharp refracted everything)

13.

“armed with scars / healed / in many different colors)

i look in my own faces as eshu’s daughter crying / if we do not stop killing the other in ourselves / the self that we hate in others / soon we shall all lie in the same direction.”)

“i’m not real, i’m just a reality; i come to you as the myth”)

You are the deepest spell spoken. Whisper to make your mouth your own.

— Anonsee Storyweaver (arrangement of the original essay: I Am: Biomythography, Self-Definition, and the Law of Oneness, by Laurin Dechae as part of Poetry as Spellcasting. This is something adjacent to blackout poetry - the primary changes are formatting and the change of many “I” statements to “you” statements, giving the idea of a transfemme talking to an egg about to crack.)

Art is by my partner @skelejor

[directdogman]

what was your first game made with rpgmaker? (or just first finished video game in general) I’m thinking of getting rpgmaker for my first game and I know you have used rpgmaker before

Most of my first 'completed' games were a string of in-jokes, basically. I started using RPG Maker when I was maybe 9 years old and mostly I just made stupid little games to show my friends from school. The games weren't pretty, basically used stock images + pngs i found online, and weren't much to look at under the hood, but it gave kid me something to do in my off time. I didn't start actually uploading games online til I became a teenager, though.

Beyond that, I had a string of smaller projects, most of which I never finished because I'd learn so much while developing and realize I'd prefer to just scrap my work and start over. First fangame I ever made was a prototype Pokémon fangame using the essentials kit for RPG Maker that basically aimed to add more RPG elements to Pokémon. I got some neat features working, like sidequests that had choices in them + physically affected the world, each NPC having a relationship value that was determined by something in the world (like sidequest choices), even a neat thing where two factions would fight for control over cities both on-screen and off-screen using map events, with npcs/gyms switching hands. Part of it was based on cut content from Skyrim's civil war (namely the under the hood stuff that didn't make it into the game.)

It was more of a proof of concept than a whole game (just a few cities and a few routes connecting them, but I was fairly happy with how well the systems worked. None of them were any more complicated than the code I use now, really. Actually, on several occasions, I almost made a full fangame (and had pretty detailed drafts for what these could be, with a few of my collaborators from the DSaF days encouraging me to develop some of them) but after Pokemon Uranium was sent a cease and desist by Nintendo, I fully abandoned the idea and stuck with FNaF fangames.

[bodyncoherence]

it seems to me that there are currently 4 main concept stories being told in parallel in psychiatry, and that a lot of the controversies within psychiatry (among psychiatrists and among the psychiatrised or potentially psychiatrised) are about contesting the boundaries of each. of course the claim is that everything is equally 'bio-psycho-social' but we know that is not really so. these 4 in my view being these:

1) 'biological illness' explanations for 'classic psychiatric illnesses' like schizophrenia, schizoaffective, bipolar disorder, as well as some kinds of severe, psychotic, 'innate', 'unipolar depressions. the idea here is that it is no one's fault, that perfectly well-adjusted people who had no adverse experiences whatsoever and have made no mistakes of living at all can develop these, though environment and certain choices can make it more likely, but environment then always is just the trigger, never the actual cause, the actual cause being genetics that just happened to be. lots of psychiatrists feel a special interest in these and a special claim to these. often, it is bemoaned that psychiatry has come to involve itself into myriad 'life problems' of the 'worried well' and should refocus itself on the actually sick, them being this group.

the necessity to fight an illness that will get worse the longer it remains 'untreated' (=unmedicated) is named to justify coerced medication and psychiatric violence, the idea being that the longer an episode (esp. first episode) remains unmedicated, the worse the 'outcome'. the treatment of these 'illnesses' is medication foremost, as well as other biological treatments like electroconvulsions and psychosurgery, as well as 'containment' of the person until these treatments show effect. anything else, no matter the good talk had on their importance, is fundamentally secondary. i.e. it would be good if every psychotic had psychotherapy and myriad other forms of help as well, but if the resources aren't there, well then. but it would be considered a litigable medical mistake to not give medication, forcefully if need be.

this type of coercion is actually not specific to psychiatry, in emergency or intensive medicine, people who are 'agitated' because of delirium, or are incapable of consenting because of unconsciousness, get full treatment, except if they gave prior healthcare directives (very common in my country) to the contrary. i.e. someone plucking at their i.v. lines and struggling against their bed while septic and delirious will get sedated or maybe even restrained or maybe even put into narcosis until i.e. their antibiotics took effect. psychiatry maps on to this, claims the same logic.

2) 'neurodevelopmental' / 'neurodivergence' explanations for autism, adhd, dyslexia, and sometimes other concepts i.e. 'psychopaths', increasingly ocd. the idea here is that some people's brains are 'wired differently' causing fundamentally different ways of experiencing the world. these disorders should therefore have been present since childhood (since birth in fact), which also explains why adult diagnosis necessitates 'childhood proofs'. the dopamine system is often cited here. also executive functions and their biological variants. here, too, it is 'nobody's fault', specifically not the parents. the disablement that results from these differences is often explained at least partially through societal explanations. ("back when hardly anyone read and wrote this disorder didn't exist" "if children and people didn't have to sit still and work at a desk for long stretches of times this wouldn't be such a problem" etc). evolutionary psych is also beloved here, as in the idea that being 'wired differently' thus confers both advantages and disadvantages for the individual as well as for our species. lip service is often paid here to neurodiversity advocacy, or that language is used, specifically for autism and adhd.

frequently i witness an attempt to have it both ways in term of pathologisation: these are real disorders, it is insisted, that in case of adhd at least, can be helped efficiently, thus 'stigma must be reduced'. but also, a lot of psychiatrists bemoan that 'everybody nowadays wants to have adhd or autism', bemoan the influx of people searching to professionally validate their self-diagnosis. the assumption here is that people labelled so or trying to claim these labels are not really sick, that back in the old days in fact nobody would have made such a fuss and neither should those afflicted. often the assumptions is that people who actually have problems of personality, or 'psychological problems' are seeking 'neurodivergence' as excuse, or because they fail to reflect on their actual problems. some psychiatrists will see adhd and autism everywhere and some will see it hardly anywhere.

in the meanwhile, the 'neurodevelopmentally born-wired different' group also includes intellectually disabled people and the kind of autists who are deemed mentally incapable of inhabiting a fully human social role and so are controlled, coerced, institutionalised, etc. unlike the 'psychiatric illness' group these are considered 'disabled' foremost, not to be cured and treated, but managed, (preferably by a non-psychiatry profession). of course, there's overlaps to the first group, i.e. 'neurodevelopmental' paradigm for schizophrenia and the management of schizophrenics that are 'chronic' and 'severe'.

3) 'trauma'. some disorders are defined through trauma, obviously PTSD, and some are historically strongly linked to trauma theory and research, i.e. DID or 'structural dissociation'. some psychiatric concepts frequently discussed in the context of trauma include borderline personality disorder and personality disorders generally, depression, 'addiction', but also actually psychosis and psychotic disorders.

the situation here, it seems to me, is that trauma hypotheses are always highly contested (see: the insistence that DID specifically is iatrogenic, a discourse that isn't had to this extent about other psychiatric diagnoses; the widespread upset over trauma being 'a fad'; the view that ptsd specifically is socially and historically constructed as more mainstream than extending this to all psychiatric categories; the way there's so much literature on trauma theories of psychosis but they have hardly any impact on how psychotics are treated in psychiatry currently) but they do have their fans.

these trauma-affine psychiatrists are more likely to see themselves as activists for the traumatised. they might protest certain psychiatric practices, insist that psychiatry should be more 'trauma informed'. they might question medication use. they will cast a wider net and understand many, but never all, psychiatrised troubles under the concept trauma. these psychiatrists for instance might be willing to understand psychosis and schizophrenia as structural dissociation or trauma based (though whether they actually work with people so psychiatrised that are actually 'difficult' is another question), and they will probably talk of the impact of trauma on depression, addiction, eating disorders, maybe also the disorganisation that gets labeled adhd, and so on.

but there's still trauma and non-trauma, and a lot of the literature then is about how to define the boundaries of trauma. there's DID and there's pseudo-DID. there's complex ptsd and there's 'merely' borderline pd which might or might not be trauma-based but is also kind of innate. lots of trauma fans are willing to imagine pathologised villains who hurt their traumatised patients (the narcissist, the psychopath, etc). psychosis can be trauma-based but certainly not always (?). lots of trauma fans also assume there's a kind of being mentally ill that puts someone beyond the scope of trauma therapy. there's also, as with autism & adhd & co, much bemoaning of the inflationary use of 'trauma' and a struggle with the cultural allure of trauma. the allure of course being that it's a professional and thus powerful validation that you have been harmed and wronged, a validation of injustice suffered.

as in psychiatry generally, there is much interest in biological validation. the idea is that trauma memories are neurobiologically 'different' from other memories. that trauma causes provable neurological disruption. cue beautiful fmri pictures of amygdalae and hipoccampi and bessel can der kolk's everything.

because trauma explanations are alluring but limited (not everything is trauma, not everyone is truly traumatised, or if we 'all' face trauma only some face severe trauma that affected them in ways that matter, some people are survivors-victims and others are not, it matters if you actually experienced certain things or didn't, trauma therapy for you but not you) the psychiatrised onlookers often develop a complicated, sometimes jealous, relationship to this concept, both those that have been granted or are able to personally access a 'trauma-explanation' and those that are being excluded from it.

4) 'psychology' / 'neurosis' / 'problems of living'. the idea here is that the mentally ill person is a primarily 'normal' person who developed a problem, because they struggled psychologically with the demands put on them, or with life.

often the idea is that a disorder starts with a few bad habits or bad decisions but then develops a dynamic of its own, eventually causing illness and disability. 'addiction', for instance. but also eating disorders that might start with mere 'dieting' and 'problematic beliefs' and then develop a dynamic of their own. anxiety and panic disorders that get 'reinforced' by 'avoidance'. personality disorders are also understood like this, though the problem is considered particularly insidious: not just some aspects of how you live, but fundamentally how you are as person. 'depression' here is seen as a human and natural reaction to certain circumstances that then gets entertained by social retreat, avoidance, unhelpful thoughts, etc. there's usually both psychodynamic and some behavioralist explanations for the underlying psychology, increasingly these ideas get somewhat combined anyhow. there's an interest for systemic and societal explanations. 'attachment' is also big here. in consequence, psychotherapy is seen as fundamentally important to treating these disorders. medication 'can help' and should be offered since it's 'readily available' while psychotherapy often isn't, but it's a fact that is bemoaned.

while acknowledging the overlaps, there's a desire to separate this group from the trauma group, in that adversity is not = trauma, or in that relatively 'normal' problems can cause much psychological disturbance as well, if a person fails to handle them well. trauma theorists specifically often on the one hand insist to not overlook trauma, on the other hand 'defend' trauma from 'inflationary use', and push back against the merely psychological problems/neurosis/problems of living group trying to 'overidentify' with trauma. the issue then is not 'trauma' but, say, entitlement, pride, avoidance, unrealistic expectations, failures to deal with normal life events, etc. sympathy is to be found for the factors that influence your troubles (societal expectations here, parental expectations there, inborn personality traits, etc) but you're no one's victim but your own.

all this not to imply that biological explanations are less beloved here; they are: evolutionary psych is big here as well, as well as physiological/biological explanations for what keeps happening, or what locks people in their 'bad habits'. (sympathic/parasympathic activation, dopamine again, etc). all schools of psychology are increasingly interested in connecting and validating their ideas with biological findings. ('neuropsychotherapy' 'the neuroscience of psychoanalysis', etc). there is also much interest for 'genetic vulnerabilities'. maybe some people are genetically more likely to become alcoholics. maybe some people are genetically more vulnerable to become anorexics, in fact, maybe only a specific type of person can become anorexic, and maybe anorexics once were important for species survival (evo psych again), but maybe also not.

but unlike 'neurodivergence' and unlike 'actual severe mental illness' the idea is that we are all vulnerable to this. not all of us are autistic, yes it's a spectrum bu either you have a brain like this or you don't. not all of us are bipolar, this is a serious serious mental illness. but anyone can get depressed, or anxious, or develop a drug habit of eating disorder, or grow to have a disordered personality.

therefore, while people labelled so can become extremely extremely disabled (i.e. a 'hypochondric' or an 'agoraphobic' that are near fully incapacitated by their troubles, i.e. anorexics or addicts dying) there are quite a lot of psychiatrists that will maintain these are troubles that are not 'genuinely' psychiatric; troubles that could be better solved by religion, or morality, or a psychologist maybe.

in terms of actual material effects on life, this is an extremely heterogenous group (as are all these groups btw), that includes lots of well-behaved, productive workers that are distressed as well as lots of extremely disabled, disruptive, troublesome people, therefore the divide made between the 'serious mentally ill' and the 'problems of living' can be confusing.

but even towards the most troublesome and disruptive, that is, the ones that have cops called on them, that are hospitalised in a flurry of violence, that must be managed and contained (i.e. some addicts, some anorexics, some borderlines, etc) the assumption remains that their problems are mainly 'problems of living' and resentment towards this group specifically that isn't 'genuinely sick' but mostly 'misbehaving' is common among psychiatrists.

i think all of us are at least vaguely aware of these differing stories and interact with them, or are briefly offered them, potentially all of them, at different times, by different psychiatrists, or by fellow psychiatrised and 'self-help'', and quite a lot of struggle can be found in grappling with these and the question of how to fit oneself and one's experiences into all this.

[thatgirlyourejected]

Helpless reader x England x America x 2p England, 2p America part 1

So yes I used ai for chat but I reformatted and put everything in my own words, nothing is the same for the text receipts, if you guys want proof I can post a second page for reference. It was used to get the ball rolling since I’ve not read or watched hetalia in a while so spare me. I don’t use ai for any of my other works as I’m very familiar with the characters I write. I’m very honest about anything I write so any questions on this I will answer. This was also obligatorily modified for authenticity. I’ve already mapped things out so there will be lots of parts for you guys to devour.

Edit: I’m changing the story to reader believes she’s talking to ai…

Part 2

Preview “Find me please, she pleaded over the phone, I need you!”

Recently (y/n) had joined a ai chat… a nation chat with England it was a cool concept nation’s personified, even better that is was based on an anime she loved; she had no idea nations or personifications actually existed, nor that the ai was a way for nations to talk with regular humans.

(Y/n-f/c): Hi I’m (y/n)!

A bubble popped up (…)

(England): (y/n) nice to meet you love, I’m England, but you can call me Arthur.

England okay, the ai’s pretty good, very in character so far… (y/n) smiled, excited to chat with one of her favorite characters from an Hetalia, a show she’d obsessed over long ago. She had to admit that now as an adult (age) it really felt different. In her teenage years she spent obsessed with the show, she imagined talking to various characters in her head so many times; nostalgia swept over her like a cold wind, goosebumps rose on her arms. Now that she had a way to talk to them though artificial she felt exhilarated, excitement made her tremble, with all the things she could ask, the reaction she could elicit. Divine.

(Y/n-f/c): England like the country? that’s neat. What are you doing talking to a humble human such as myself?

(England): yes dear I’m a country, but I must insist you call me Arthur. Why wouldn’t I talk to you, a new connection no matter who is always a breath of fresh air for and old man like me.

(Y/n-f/c): haha old indeed let me officially introduce myself I’m (y/n) I’m (age) and I hail from the United States.

It took awhile before a new message popped up. The screen flickering from loading dots.

(England): you come from America you sound polite for someone from that buggers country.

(Y/n) grinned though a little annoyed, accurate response probably… she huffed slightly annoyed he knew nothing of her heritage. She took a deep breath reminding herself it’s just ai.

(Y/n-f/c): that’s a bit much, where I hail from shouldn’t be a stereotype to define me.

(England): sorry love, didn’t mean to offend.

(Y/n-f/c): it’s fine, I’ve got things to do irl so I’ll chat with you later

(Y/n) had enough of there chat she needed to do something else. She didn’t bother to see what was sent next. She feels silly for being offended by an ai, but it really scratched her the wrong way applying a stereotype to her. She needed a break to cool her head.

Yeah I also did this in text format, because that how our story progressed over a phone, pretty unique if you ask me, like how will (y/n) get England to show interest in her, when do all the other characters pop in and why, will this get steamy? Who knows it does turn yandere though.

[cardboardhyperfix-games]

MMO Map game

Been writing and finishing up a map-making game where you flesh out an MMO's map, all the creativity and corporate BS that comes with that.

It's sitting at about 12 pages right now, with as many Forms to fill out.

I'm using this as a sort of proof of concept with another idea I have. I like the idea of a game where you fill out forms and accumulate documents as you play. With this MMO game, you are filling out pages about the world, skills, quests, and other MMO things. Then, you compile them into a Guidebook, which is used in the second half of the game to explore the world you made.

Im not sure if it is just work burn out or just a larger than usual project, but I feel like I can't tell if this game is done yet or not. Looking at the word doc, it feels like I should just release it, but something is nagging at the back of my head for some reason.

tiny screenshot preview for anyone that wants to look at it.

Also my word is in dark mode.

[submalevolentgrace]

Yarn Cat is really cute and cool! Do you have any advice you’d give to someone looking to give Pico-8 programming a go?

thanks so much! i had a lot of fun making it

so first i'll say, i think pico-8 is a great platform/system/thingy to make games with, and there are plentiful resources to help teach anyone all the things they need to know; nerdy teachers' guide is pretty comprehensive, and lazy devs on youtube also covers a lot, including things like genre and scope choices to avoid newbie pitfalls. pico-8 code is pretty bare bones and therefore easy to pickup the basics of, if you've never done ANY programming before, following some beginners guides for lua (on which pico-8 is based) is probably a good idea, to at least wrap your head around variables, if statements, for loops, and functions; that's all you'll really need.

then my advice bifurcates: if you haven't already cut your teeth making a few games, i'd encourage you to just dive in, mess around, and have fun with no expectations of making a good or even releasable game. i think a seriously pervasive trap a lot of creative people fall into is feeling the need to do it right the first time; agonising over making their first project in a new art medium the perfect one that has what it takes to become an indie darling, and in the process, they waste a lot of creative energy and learn little because they're not doing all the reckless experimentation needed to really learn.

the first step towards being successful in a medium is knowing yourself and how you create in it, which you'll never pick up first attempt at a thing, it takes iteration and reflection. people think that undertale/stardew valley/cave story struck gold on the first try, but i can guarantee you that's just because all the awkward experimentation of their lone devs didn't make it to the spotlight, or even release.

i made at least 3-4 (poorly) finished games long before yarn cat, and even in the 20 years i wasn't really 'trying to make games', i'd still tinker around with ideas that took my fancy to see what worked. even yarn cat started out as one of those messing around projects, until i landed on some fun mechanics that had potential and got serious. so if you're staring out, don't put pressure on yourself to do great, just have fun as if you were doodling in the margins of your school books, and see what you learn about how you make games.

on the other side; if you've already done all the messing around in game dev with a bunch of prototypes and such and want to make a pico-8 game, my advice is this: be earnest about it.

the bbs is full of proofs-of-concept and weekend game jam demos with 4 levels and things that feel more like shitposts and memes than games, because i think people see the limitations of pico-8 and then don't take seriously any project they create in it. to me, it's not just "limitations breed creativity" that makes pico-8 great, but that the limitations are a breath of fresh, focused air in this day and age. when you can download unity or whatever and have gigabytes of assets and scripts and built-in verlet integration physics engines to texture-map flat meshes for your faux 2d pixel-art game.... well, a blank canvas is intimidating, but an infinite blank canvas stretching off into the void when you have an expectation to use 4k textures and run at 120fps is soul crushing. whereas pico-8 says: there is a hard cap of code size, do your best within that.... and i think unfortunately, most people chose to use only a tiny section of it for a small sketch of a game, or push it to do things it's not meant to (yes it runs doom) so they can flex their code skills. i would implore you to do neither; just look at what is possible, feel out what you think you can do within it, and cram in as much of that in there as possible to make the best, fullest game you can.

i very easily could have made yarn cat 8 levels long with a silly party time ending and joke dialogue or something, but i wanted to do more - in gameplay and mood - and have a sort of thematic/emotional through line and a sense of melancholy journey far from the comforts of home... whether or not anyone sees it in the end product, i reached for it, rather than stopping short because "pico-8 is so limited anyway". conversely; there's only enough space on the map builder to have 32 screens in there; but i squeezed out just over double that by using some pretty basic 'unpack arbitrary data from a string' techniques, and ended up almost exactly landing on the code size limit, and if you look at multi-cart loading there is much, much more you can achieve... but honestly, having that limit there in front of me made it possible to finish at all. with an infinite canvas i probably would have quit without finishing a third through, but knowing there was a finite space to fill made me excited to see what i could fill it with, and make it count.

anyway, i ramble.

basically; have fun, experiment, see what you can do, and do what you can. and as with any art; know what you want to say, how you plan to say it, and ask if the thing you've made so far says that at every step along the way.

[regarding-stories]

How Fallout's music mirrors the franchise's endless malaise

I've sunk hundreds of hours into Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, and 4. Music always played a role in the franchise ever since its conception, albeit a limited one. And I'm positing that Fallout in general is going downhill and the music mirrors it.

How you like dem mutfruit??

The original Fallout 1 and 2 - you know, where most of the actual lore comes from - had a limited amount of music due to their technology limitations. You get an ambient synth soundtrack that was a constant apocalyptic downer and you get two pieces of music that were effectively callbacks to "Dr Strangelove" by Stanley Kubrick.

From the retro interface and the EMP-proof analog technology eventually the idea of a 1960s or 1950s retro style arose. I mean, the car in Fallout 2 had fins, after all. There was this aesthetic of ray guns and a throwaway Elvis joke... all of this added up over time, remixing a bit of "Twilight Zone" with a general B movie flair to create what seemingly became some form of Fallout visual style.

And its carcass.

Frozen in an amber-like radioactive coating

I posit that what Bethesda does with Fallout is like the undead are to the living. It goes on but degrades, losing the quality that made it alive, maybe even vibrant. It bears and expands on an outer shell with less and less inside that actually matters. My prediction for Fallout 5 is basically will be yet another generic suck-fest. Because you have to sell it to as many people as possible, keeping the money train going.

I'm not even talking about gameplay or the gaming experience itself. If anything, the release of Fallout 76 proves that nobody at Bethesda really had a game plan or an understanding of what gamers actually want. They thought plopping gamers into a map and giving them less guidance constitutes a "sandbox" and "multiplayer" when in reality they never thought about what players could do together at all, giving them very little to shape the world they were in with.

Exciting.

What defines Fallout for Bethesda is... hmmm.

It's set somewhere in North America. And since Americans are the biggest player base, let's throw in even the occasional nonsensical patriotic reference. Also an ever-increasing amount of Americana.

A radio station like in GTA, but when it's not broadcasting game info, it plays largely really old music, usually melancholic.

A recycling of anything seen in the early Fallout games in terms of lore, visuals, and especially names. If that isn't enough, expand along lines of what some pop culture version of the 1950s looks like - from Stepford Wives of some form to flying saucers.

Then splatter everything with Mad Max, except nobody gets a car or motor cycle because the engine can't do it.

Finally, slather everything in stuff you made up that you think qualifies for the "Rule of Cool".

Examples include:

A nuclear rocket launcher. Things that go boom are fun, mushroom clouds are obviously Fallout, so isn't just cool to combine the two?

Frozen TV dinners from 200 years ago, still edible due to some insane preservation technology.

Robots. Because there were robots in the original games. Let's rehash all the designs mostly, but then add some tank- and Terminator-like ones, because game challenge.

Supermutants. They were already cool, part of Fallout lore, let's find a silly reason to make them absolutely ubiquitous! (The rule of Supermutants is by now: Everywhere has their own reason for Supermutants, but they end up the same kind of Supermutants, anyway.)

Etc. Ad nauseam.

Do the same, but bigger or faster or edgier.

That's just the state of the world now. I expect more of this Fallout 5, don't you? It's the winning (!!) formula!!!

The same, by the way, goes for the TV show. It has largely retained the setting of Fallout 1 and then thrown in stuff from New Vegas (for locations and its silly "plot") and Fallout 4 (for cooool) and mostly colored within the lines.

Wait, didn't you want to talk about music?

Rrright...

So, as I said, if you listen to Fallout radio stations, you will find a lot of the same music, over and over. The uniting theme is "times gone by" and that it sounds like it has been played off of a record. (It makes a little sense if you think about how records might survive radiation and electromagnetic interference where tapes won't, but then everything comes on these cartridges anyway...)

It hit me just yesterday how liberating it would be to hear an upbeat rock song in a Fallout setting as if people actually had a feeling of going somewhere in life instead of persisting, subsisting and barely existing.

Nobody makes anything new, especially not music. If they're not calling back to the 1950s, they're calling back to patriotic music of the 18th and 19th century. They're no longer creating their own styles, fads, anything. They're just echoes of our existence.

Everything is always destroyed, over and over. The whole world persists in a state of rust and goes back to the square one that mimics the end of a Simpsons episode. Because if the world improved or truly changed, Bethesda's style of story rehashing wouldn't work anymore.

And that's reflected in the music. You can't have "Listen to our new band!!" or anything that isn't strict to their perception of Fallout aesthetic. Since Bethesda's idea of Fallout is reanimating the corpse of the original games by reference, but not by idea, the aesthetic becomes ever more hardcoded.

One of the reasons the Fallout show goes rampaging through stuff added in New Vegas is because Bethesda's own offerings were already derivative and added so little that would be useful for the supposedly epic storytelling the show attempts.

Eventually a medium evolves as its universe expands. But in Bethesda's mainline it shrinks. Because their idea of Fallout is superficial and without substance... it has no vision. The surface cannot evolve because there's no idea present. Without an idea underlying it, the superficial has to suffice.

Two counter-examples

One obvious one is not from Bethesda. It's what Obsidian did when they had a chance to make New Vegas. The big picture struggles from their scrapped Van Buren prototype for Fallout 3 emerge here and frame the story in a big way.

While the soundtrack of NV isn't a revelation, either, it hews consistently to their western theme. Because often they're telling a western-style story and setting within the Fallout universe. And it works. It's not without flaws, but it works. It matches the sense of a frontier in peril caught up between rivaling powers.

And even though I just criticized this example, the Minutemen in Fallout 4 also are an example of this. They're in general upbeat (just dreadfully incompetent to the point of extinction) and they bring their own unique theme. Sadly, it's even further from the past. And unlike settlements in NV, in FO4 nothing is accomplished without the player. Which is sad, from a role-playing/social aspect.

But largely, the world of Fallout lives in limbo, rehashing the past more and more, not less. Their baddies come from before the Fall: the Enclave, Mr House - kinda, now Vault-Tec itself, the Institute.

What modern Fallout lacks is a faction not derived from the past, that believably has a future, their own style, their own music. (They don't have to reinvent all music or a new style, just stop going backwards in time...) Just not another rehashed aesthetic. A new society.

I don't know how often baddies have fantasized about a slate wiped clean in Fallout, all too willingly wanting to provide it themselves, but they're all only intent to color their canvas with another blast from the past. Recreate the old US government before the fall, or a grand Vegas of their own devising, a 1950s style playground for corporate execs with picket fences (?)... and whatever the Institute wanted. But who is there to say - we are the new thing? Let's see them try, experiment, fail, branch out in different directions.

You know what's a classical Bethesda story? Person, tired with humdrum settlement they were born in, strikes out for new place, found dead at hand of raiders. End of quest. The new is bound to die!

Fallout needs a new story or to go away. Fallout 4 was a fun game but somehow the substance under the shell is just oozing away and out the bottom, and the shell solidifies. Their biggest promise so far for FO5 is not to do settlement building again. What gives? People rejoice, a broken half-assed feature goes away with no idea what to replace it with.

Please prove me wrong, writers of next game. I'd like nothing better than being proven wrong on this one. Fallout in general has potential, but nobody that does anything with it. The TV show so far is more of the same. Fallout needs to be saved from the visionless people that own it. Or it will just fall apart like a radioactive isotope long past its half-life...

[nothingbutaspaceman-writings]

It's Always Supernatural in Philadelphia (chapter 1/? WIP)

[Perhaps the dumbest project I've ever started. This idea has infested my head for over a decade. A couple years ago, I posted a pic of the cold open but recently decided to pick it back up. At about 1400 words, this is far more a proof of concept than anything. I've never written/read a fanfic. I know I need to look into posting this on a site more formatted for this stuff. I'll be mapping out the story soon so posted chapters can have some consistency. Should edit this chapter a bit too. I also haven't watched either of these shows in a long time. The story ostensibly takes place in 2016 but what's happening in either canon continuity at the time? I've no clue. AU, I guess.]

11 AM.

October 28th, 2016.

On a Friday.

Philadelphia.

Dennis made small talk while finding a clean glass.

“You guys from around here?”

“Nah. Passing through.”

“Don’t get a lot of suits in here. Don’t mind me askin’, what’s your business, fellas?”

Sam cleared his throat. “We’re, uh... P.I’s.”

“Any interesting pic-”

With a clatter, Charlie stumbles to the counter. “Dennis. It’s not dying. I keep whacking and-”

Shushing, “Did you use the spiked bat?”

Offendedly stammering, “Of course! Never seen a rat like this. And you know I’ve seen a lot-”

“Like what?” Dean interjected.

“Oh, hey guys. Green.”

_________________________________

The Gang Hunts El Chupacabra

_________________________________

Chapter 1

Charlie leads Dean toward the basement door.

“Okay, I guess it’s fair to warn you, seeing as how you’re a guest and all-”

“Warn me of what?”

“I have a shit-ton of crows down here. So, like. Please don’t spook them?” Charlie opens the door and leads the way down the stairs. “Ya know they’re more afraid of you than you are of them. Also, like, crows are super smart. I once saw one smoke a cigarette.”

“Cool. Now show me that rat.”

Blood pools in a spot a bit over a foot in diameter a couple steps away from the bottom of the stairs. Charlie is chuckling to himself repeating, “That rat, that rat, that rat” under his breath.

Dean crouches down with a flashlight to examine the blood then does a 360 checking for escape routes under pallets and cabinets. No tracks. He lightly dips his finger into the blood as he catches Charlie doing the same. “So you’re say-”

“What?”

“Did you taste the blood?”

“Nah, man. I’m just... Chewing my nails. Protein.” He stands up and puts his hands in his jacket pockets.

“This was a rat but not a rat?”

“Ima level with you,” Barely keeping his balance, Charlie hunches down and continues in a hush, “I’ve seen a lot of rats. A lot of rats in my day. But this was something else. Actually,” he claps his hands once and the crows squawk in a frenzy, “can I interest you in some Crow-Nog?”

“What?!”

Upstairs, Sam is trying to get his laptop working. He’s looking under each booth for a socket with power. The only one is being used by a couple charging their phones.

“Hey, do you guys mind if I borrow your socket for a minute? I can charge your phones on my laptop.” The young couple look across at each other waiting for the other to say something. “Alright. Um. Sir? If you wouldn’t mind swapping sides. Your lovely date would appreciate it, I’m sure.”

The young man gets up. “I’ll go order us a couple more drinks.”

“I’m okay,” Sams blurts before realizing his social faux pas. He makes eye contact with the woman and she smiles. He taps his fingers nervously and his eyes look to the table.

“Actually. I think the two of us are leaving. Come on.” The non-descript couple leaves with one rushing the other.

Dennis, watching the situation unfold, stands at the table. “Did you- was that intentional?”

“I’m sorry...”

“Dennis.”

“I’m sorry, Dennis, but I need to get to work.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.” Dennis lingers a couple seconds longer than Sam would like but goes back behind the bar. As he does, Dean and Charlie emerge from the basement. Dean’s eyes quickly meet Sam’s and he slides into the booth.

Sam exhales, half annoyed he’s being interrupted again, half in preparation for what Dean is gonna reveal. “So what happened?”

“I think we’re on the right track. Freddy Got Fingered over there told me he has seen weird things around here. He tried to get me to drink something called Crow-Nog but there’s other witnesses.”

“Other witnesses? Friends with that guy?” Sam points to Charlie trying to open a bottle of super glue with his mouth.

“Yeah, why?” Dean returns assuredly. “Anything good in there?”

“Well, nothing to report as of yet.  I don’t know if this place even has internet.”

“Did you ask your friend over there?” Dennis is failing to look natural as he wipes and re-wipes the bar top.

“I’ll ask mine when you ask yours.” Charlie is trying to open a bottle of nail polish remover with his glued shut jaw.

“Fair enough. Didn’t we order drinks already?”

“Yeah. I’m going to let mine go. I wouldn’t drink anything here even if it was out of a bottle.”

“What do you mean? Alcohol kills all the germs.” Dean smirks. “Yo! Two beers. Your worst and your best.”

With a thumbs up, “You got it.” Dennis turns to the taps and rambles to himself unsure of how to fulfill the request. In one pint glass, he pours a pungent lager. He once read that good lager smells like rotten egg so, even if it is spoiled, he has the plausible deniability of it being fancy. “Charlie.”

Charlie is already right behind him, wiping nail polish remover from his lips in embarrassment.

“I’m not even going to ask. Charlie, what’s the best beer here?”

“Crow-Nog, duh, Dennis.”

“I’m not!” Hushing himself, “I’m not giving anybody your bird moonshine, okay?”

“Then whatever is in that third tap. I’ve been,” his eyes dart back and forth, “metaphorically sucking the spout.”

Another pint glass is grabbed and filled with a brick red tinted liquid. “This better be beer.” Dennis places the two glasses on the table. The lager in front of Dean. Charlie’s pick spilling over onto Sam’s laptop.

“They’re both for me, buddy.” The lager is already half-drank before the final syllable escapes.

“Sorry about my janitor over there. He can get a wee excited for guests.” They all look at Charlie as he licks a nail polish brush. “Let’s ignore him. So what are you guys working on?”

“Mr...”

“Reynolds.”

“Mr. Reynolds,” his empty pint is scooted towards the wall as he lowers his voice, “have you seen anything out of the ordinary around here.”

“Out of the ordinary,” a million flashbacks, “around here?”

“Yeah. You know. Strange. Unnatural.”

Ready to follow their monsters-are-real scripts, Sam and Dean both focus on Dennis

“Did Charlie put you up to this?” Dennis gulps and flatly repeats, “Did Charlie put you up to this, huh?” He chuckles, puts his hands on his waist, and looks at the ground before looking through Dean. “Wow. Okay guys. How about you finish your drinks and,” he clicks his tongue, “hit the old dusty trail.”

“We’re being serious.”

“So am I. It was nice, guys.” Walking away, Dennis scolds Charlie for eating nail polish. As Dean begins to drink the mystery drink, “And quit putting your whole mouth on the beer taps. I’m not going to tell you again.”

Deans spits out his drink and Sam laughs. “Let’s get out of here, Sammy.”

Mac holds the door as the brothers exit. He lets them by, straightens his posture, and sizes them up.

“Who were those guys?”

“Assholes,” replied Dennis.

“I thought they were kinda cool. Didn’t wanna try my nog but that’s okay. Can’t all be winners.”

“Dude, we need to move the nog.”

“Man, I know. Those guys were cool too. They were also super packing.”

Mac’s eyes widened. “No shit?”

“Definitely. The shorter guy,” he whistles, “was in the basement with me.”

“And?”

“And what. He had ‘I’m packing’ energy, dude!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Dennis interrupts, pouring a red beer for Mac to get him to sit down, “Maybe that guy you talked with. Tall guy, nah. Don’t buy it.”

“I do. I buy it, Charlie. I was checking those- I was,” Mac takes a quick sip, “ assessing those guys. Tall guy. I bet he’s packing. I mean, did you see his hands?”

“Oh yeah. I was glad he stayed up here with Dennis.”

“Why were you in the basement together? Is it about the crows?”

“The murder?”

“The what?!” Almost spilling his drink, Mac stumbles to his feet. “I actually. I just remembered a thing. I gotta go.” Mac leaves the bar.

“You gonna finish that?”

“Mac’s beer that is infested with whatever diseases hide in your saliva glands?”

“Yeah.”

“Take it.”

Charlie pulls a plastic mini-bottle out of his jacket and pours the white substance into the beer. “I’ll be in the basement. Call me up if Frank comes by, yeah?”

[sarkariresultdude]

"Study Smarter: Expert-Recommended Tools and Materials for Students"

 Whether you're a excessive faculty student, university undergraduate, or lifelong learner, having the proper have a look at substances can extensively enhance how efficaciously you analyze and retain know-how. Below is a curated list of encouraged resources labeled by means of topics, getting to know styles, and desires, overlaying each traditional and virtual codecs.

Study Materials For Students 

1. 📖 General Study Materials

Books

A have to-study for all rookies, this book explores proof-based mastering techniques and helps you increase greater effective study behavior.

"How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

Teaches analytical reading strategies and how to approach distinct genres of texts seriously.

Stationery & Tools

Highlighters, sticky notes, flashcards, notebooks (ideally sectioned or dot-grid)

Apps like Notion, Obsidian, or Evernote for virtual be aware-taking

Use Pomodoro timers like Focus Keeper or TomatoTimer for time management

2. 🧠 Cognitive and Memory Aids

Flashcards

Anki – Spaced repetition software program first-rate for memorizing anything from scientific terms to vocabulary

Quizlet – User-friendly with heaps of pre-made sets for almost each challenge

Mind Mapping Tools

XMind or MindMeister – Great for visual rookies and organizing complex ideas

3. 📘 Subject-Specific Recommendations

🌍 Humanities and Social Sciences

History

"A People's History of america" by way of Howard Zinn – A fresh, alternative perspective

CrashCourse History on YouTube – Fun, speedy-paced, and informative

Oxford History Series – Detailed but on hand instructional sources

Literature

The Norton Anthology of English Literature – Comprehensive and properly-commented

SparkNotes and CliffsNotes – Great for summaries, subject matters, and quick evaluations

Poetry Foundation – Great for knowledge poems and their analyses

Philosophy

"Sophie's World" with the aid of Jostein Gaarder – Fictional introduction to philosophical standards

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) – Free, instructional-stage articles

🔬 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)

Mathematics

Khan Academy – Free tutorials from basic mathematics to multivariable calculus

Paul’s Online Math Notes – College-degree notes and worked examples

Brilliant.Org – Interactive math problems and puzzles

Physics

"Fundamentals of Physics" via Halliday, Resnick & Walker – A staple for undergraduates

MinutePhysics and Physics Girl on YouTube – Bite-sized physics defined

HyperPhysics – Visual-based on-line physics concept map

Chemistry

ChemCollective – Virtual labs and trouble units

Organic Chemistry as a Second Language with the aid of David Klein – Excellent for understanding difficult standards

Periodic Videos (YouTube) – Fun deep dives into the periodic table

Biology

Campbell Biology – Comprehensive and general for maximum university-degree courses

Bozeman Science – Great video content for AP and university biology

BioInteractive (HHMI) – Interactive resources and animations

Computer Science

CS50 by way of Harvard (edX) – Free, newbie-pleasant intro to CS

freeCodeCamp – Free interactive studying in coding and net development

Cracking the Coding Interview by using Gayle Laakmann McDowell – For technical interview prep

Languages and Communication

English (and ESL)

Grammarly – Writing help and grammar checking

The Elements of Style via Strunk and White – Classic writing guide

BBC Learning English – Free resources for vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar

Foreign Languages

Duolingo – Great for beginners

LingQ and Pimsleur – For immersive language studying

HelloTalk / Tandem – Connect with local audio system for actual conversations

four. 🎓 Test Prep Materials

ACT Prep Black Book by means of Mike Barrett

Khan Academy’s free SAT prep – In partnership with College Board

GRE/GMAT

Manhattan Prep Series – Strong for both GRE and GMAT

Magoosh – Affordable, digital-first gaining knowledge of platform

Official ETS GRE Guide – Direct from the check makers

Medical (MCAT, USMLE)

Kaplan Series / Princeton Review – Comprehensive applications

Anki Decks (like MilesDown for MCAT) – Top-rated for memorization

SketchyMedical – Visual mnemonics for microbiology and pharmacology

5. 🧘 Mental Health and Study Techniques

Wellness Apps

Headspace / Calm – Meditation and mindfulness apps to enhance attention

Forest – Encourages you to stay off your cellphone while you look at

Study Bunny – A cute gamified productivity app

Study Methods

Pomodoro Technique – 25 minutes paintings, 5-minute smash

Feynman Technique – Teach the idea in easy phrases to yourself

Active Recall + Spaced Repetition – Proven satisfactory for lengthy-time period retention

6. 🖥️ Digital Platforms and Online Learning

Coursera – Offers publications from top universities in really all fields

EdX – Similar to Coursera; first rate for incomes certificate

Udemy – Huge library of affordable ability-primarily based guides

YouTube Channels – CrashCourse, Veritasium, CGP Grey, Kurzgesagt, and extra

7. 📅 Organizing Your Studies

Planning Tools

Google Calendar – For scheduling classes, study classes, and reminders

Trello or Todoist – For handling responsibilities and assignments

[xtekker]

Devlog 01: The sun shines on a new beginning

Back in January, our world was absolutely rocked to its foundations by the loss of our father, we took some time away to deal with real life, and now its time to hop back in the pilots seat and so, we bring you our first Offical Devlog, the first in what will be a series of Devlogs that will tagged with #doomscrollerdevlog.

Okay, let's dive right in, shall we? We have a lot to get through:

Characters and Non-playable characters

Many of you may have met our Archer character and seen him around in some clips, but you may not know that he isn't alone! We have the Wizard and Swordsman, which you may have seen in some snippets, both have been set up with movement and attack capabilities, the Wizard now has 3 basic attacks/spells "Fireball, Ice Spear and Block", and the Swordsman has 2 "shield bash" and "Dash slash". I think the names of these attacks should be pretty obvious as to their function

we'll show some video clips a little later when we actually draw the animations for these attacks!

We also now have 4 total npc characters, 2 are friendly, and reside in the home level and 2 are hostile Mobs!

We've also finished creation of the Vitals system, which includes stats like Health, Stamina, Mana for the Wizard, Focus for the Archer, and Willpower for the Swordsman and more. Tied into this system is the "Player assignable stat points", this is a rough draft of this system as a proof of concept. "Is how I want to do this a viable method to achieve it?" And I'm glad to say that it does, a few minor bugs that occurred because I was 5 redbulls deep at 5am when I was coding it, but nothing a little rubber duck programing can't fix

Map & The Envrioment

This is an interesting update because while not much has taken place visually, a lot has been done in the background, for example, our last update showed you guys our day n night cycle and we've just got done with procedural map generation, which has fair amounts of jank to it at the moment, super rough draft of the generation, along with setting up pathfinding for Mobs. We're currently looking to refine and sharpen this section or maybe implement a new system all together.

Items, Weapons, and Armor

We've made significant progress in this category, with a "replace animation" system that will replace the animation based on what the player has equipped. It's pretty cool shit, if I do say so myself.

We've also created a database that will hold all the information associated with each piece of equipment, which allows for no noticeable delay or glitching when using the replace animation system.

Astoundingly, this system worked perfectly on its first test and has had no discoverable bugs...yet.

Miscellaneous

Other changes include refactoring the code base to improve performance and looking into ways to prevent cheating.

Drawing up plans for achievements and fleshing out the story of the game a little more.

We've also been looking into server hosting so we can get an idea of cost, what we can get for the pricing and so on.

We're currently on the lookout for a Pixel artist. This will be a paid gig, paid per image completed to specifications. We would prefer someone who can commit to this long term but we're also open to offers.

Ohhhhh it is goooooooood to be back baby!!

[vitrious-simulacrum]

A Notice On Aleph One, And The Marathon Community

I'd normally wouldn't exactly be sharing this kind of content, but seeing as Marathon is my Number One Spot of Brainrot, and most people who have played these games in recent years are likely just on Tumblr/Twitter/their own Discord servers and not the official Aleph One Discord, the following events are basically unknown to the majority of people. So, to better archive them than to let them get lost in time.

Firstly, I should establish the main players of for the redaction:

Aaron Freed: co-director & one of many composers and general maker of Stuff for Eternal, composer and level designer for the (as of writing this) the in-works Tempus Irae Redux, alongside his work on the currently still unreleased Chronicles and Where Monsters Are In Dreams, owner of the Marathon Vidmaster Challenge Youtube channel and dozens of compositions, Marathon-related or otherwise. He is, likely alongside Adminn_1 (aka NEFX) andn Hamish (owner of the Marathon Story Page), one of the most prolific creators for Marathon.

Gregory Smith, aka Treellama: the head programmer for the Aleph One project, as well as maker of Weland (map creator), ShapeFusion (modification of logic and physics files for Marathon) and Atque (a merger and splitter for Marathon scenarios). His work, overall, has helped the community a great deal, from modernised modding tools to supporting Aleph One and expanding the Marathon engine with every update.

Solra Bizna (or just Solra): another developer for Aleph One, most notable for having helped create a proof-of-concept code to showcase how Aleph One could run at 60FPS and more, which would eventually be expanded to the current FPS settings that Aleph One now has. He has also worked on a variety of parts of Aleph One, such as Lua overlays and netscripts, all important to current functions for modern Marathon scenarios.

So, What Happened?

On the 29th of May, Solra publicly announced his departure of the Marathon Discord server, explaining that due to unexplained blockage from the Aleph One team towards Aaron's PR (pull request; a way of proposing changes made made in a fork of the original source code that could be added to the original code), with no real explanation given beyond that "treellama finds [Aaron] irritating", he feels his energy put on fixing this have been wasted, and retires to work on his lonesome.

While some buzz would be made from this departure, nothing of note would be said until the 4th of June, where Aaron would expand on the details of the situation.

This thread, still available in the Marathon Discord, would go on details about events that led to Solra leaving. In short: Aaron had been under Solra's tutelage on programming (something that has been public as around 2022-2023), with the idea that, as she explained in his departure, he would contribute in his stead and give Aaron a chance to contribute to one of his greatest contributions. However, attempts to do such a thing would be stopped by the AO team with no real reason, and any attempts to gain an understanding as to why would be stonewalled. The only real reason given is, according to treellama in a ticket request, "unresolvable personality conflicts".

Alongside this, Aaron himself would bring up a few notes in relation to Aleph One, one of which is the very reason I'm writing this post (outside of the conclusion at the end):

For context in regards to the reaction: INTERPOLATED_WORLD.cpp is what currently allows Marathon to run at FPSes higher than 20. Aaron's reaction come specifically from the (still current as of me writing this) credits of the file, which note very specifically at the start Gregory Smith (treellama). The issue raised here by Aaron is that that code was originally started by Solra as a proof-of-concept (which can be visualised here), which would then be reiterated by Treellama throughout—something he tries to use as a sort of gotcha on Aaron, as he shows that, at most, only 15-to-40 lines of code, or 17% of it, is still Solra's.

I'm unable to find when exactly the credits were added as I suck working with Github, but if a smarter person can find it, I'll be holy appreciative.

Now, to interject with my own opinion on this: no matter if there's one line, three or half in the current code that are still part of the proof-of-concept, Solra should still be correctly credited; that, or use the generic "Credits: Aleph One Team". The immediate use of Treellama's real name makes it seem to anyone who doesn't know any better that he himself made it in collaboration with the AO team, which is objectively not true. He did try and present a solution to this, which just amounted to "if Solra is bothered by this, he should reach out", which is absolutely not what should happen. Properly crediting people, no matter in what way, should be done automatically, instead of awaiting for someone to make a fuss about it. It makes you look like you don't actually care to fix things or change them. Just do it. No need to pull out statistics of how much is yours vs. Solra's. It's a waste of time.

Sadly, this is the last post made in the thread before the moderators closed it down. After this, Aaron would more or less abandon all activity in the Discord server, still working on other projects such as TIR, and is now used by other high profile creators like cassis (Liver and Onions), hypersleep (Apotheosis X) and Ryoko (Phoenix), who all shared their own sets of issues with Aaron on the thread, as a punching bag quite publicly on the Marathon Discord server.

So, What's There To Do Now?

In the most immediate, wait for the proper launch of Aleph Bet (link here), a fork of Aleph One which Aaron, Solra and a few others are working on, and show your support by downloading it. Use death of the author if you wish on ApoX and Phoenix, or never play them, or whatever. Do what you feel is necessary to show your discontent towards this behaviour from the lead developer for Aleph One. But don't cross the boundaries of insults or death threats. That is unnecessary and entirely stupid. Be better than that.

-Vitrious Simulacrum

[e3khatena]

so whats the deal with overkills the walking dead?

I'm glad you asked! (approx. 2,300 words)

So our story starts during Payday 2's first anniversary, the Fall of 2014. Players had to attain certain community goals to get new things to play with during their first annual Crimefest event, and the last two prizes were secret. They wound up being John Wick as a playable character, and the trailer for a new game Overkill was working on, based in the world of The Walking Dead comics. The premise was simple: it was set in the same part of the world as Payday 2, Washington DC, and would involve players trying to keep themselves and their camp alive during the zombie apocalypse made popular in Robert Kirkman's graphic novels and the AMC TV show. Given the fact that Payday 2 had proven to be a tremendous cultural hit around this time, getting the likes of Giancarlo Esposito and making cameos in the Wick movies at the height of their popularity, and given how at the moment it is very possible to argue that Payday 2 might have sold more copies than Super Mario Brothers 3, it would seem that OTWD was in good hands.

The problem, though, was their CEO. Bo Andersson used pressure he conjured up in Varvtre AB, a holdings company he was on the board of directors for, to become the CEO of Starbreeze when they acquired Overkill Software, the makers of Payday: The Heist and Payday 2. This also moved Bo from a role within the games industry alongside his brother to being his brother's superior and putting him in a firmly business role. This was good for Bo, because it would allow him to scrape capital from Overkill on their pursuit into superstardom to fund his own dream project: Storm.

Storm was a concept that Bo had been working on since 2008, the idea of bringing virtual reality back from being a curious novelty we played with in the 1990s into a mainstream competitive eSport. Players would wear tactical vests with computers built into them and a 5K resolution HMD that Acer would develop with the aid of Starbreeze in a massive bespoke arena, and using a combination of LIDAR scanning, realtime texture mapping, and the Valhalla game engine Starbreeze paid $8 million for, their physical arena would turn into a sci-fi deathmatch where players would cooperate to eliminate the enemy team and seek victory.

Bo Andersson was paying tens of millions of dollars to invent Laser Tag.

But how does this tie into The Walking Dead? Well, as a proof of concept, the work that Overkill had done in their in-house game engine, Diesel 2.0, would be ported into Valhalla to bring Overkill's The Walking Dead to life. Overkill's employees had long complained that Diesel could not compete visually, and even incorporating proper normal maps and bumping up the texture quality could not shake the appearance of a Source Engine or early Unreal 3 title. Despite releasing in 2013 and with the game now moving into 2016, onto the 8th generation of consoles, Payday 2 was not a looker and Overkill's The Walking Dead faced the same fate.

The problem, though, is that Bo Andersson bought the Valhalla Engine, which was being designed for VR first and foremost, much too early. The engine was literally incomplete, and the programmers had to write tools for the engine before they could write any code for the game itself. After nearly a year of work, they did bring Valhalla into a usable state, and used its VR prowess to power Payday 2's VR version. Bo also proposed a VR demo of Overkill's The Walking Dead to be hosted in Dubai, at VR Park (now titled PlayDXB), to demonstrate the game, the headset, and the VR technology to Middle Eastern investors who could free Bo from the shackles of Scandinavian game development and make him the worldwide name in VR. This delayed their actual non-VR Walking Dead game, which had serious funding from Skybound Entertainment and Robert Kirkman, past its intended 2016 street date. The game was nowhere near finished as Overkill staff were pulled back and forth to so many different projects within the studio. They received an extension to their deadline, Fall 2017, and work continued on the Valhalla Engine and the VR demo.

Fast forward another year. Starbreeze puts out Raid: World War II, a Diesel 2.0 title in which four players steal from the Nazis in almost exactly same manner as in Payday 2, starring John Cleese as the handler for the crew, and some trailers commissioned for their Walking Dead game using virtually zero actual in-game assets, and Skybound makes them an ultimatum: if the game is not out by November 2018, then they lose the rights to the license. They have wasted the rights holder's time and money for too long, and the project is dragging its heels with a CEO seeing it as a low priority to get their contractually-obligated co-op FPS for PCs and consoles out versus his ambitions of filling an entire space in Dubai with his name, his brand. Overkill developers, who had been clamoring for years to use an actual engine that makes sense for FPSes, finally get their wish, and Bo Andersson invests in commercial licenses for Unreal Engine 4. The problem now, though, is that the staff have a year to make the game in Unreal, with the caveat that they have zero experience in the engine. If they had made this move two years ago, they'd have the time to commit to learning the ins and outs, but they don't.

Overkill goes into crunch, with staff sleeping in the offices and working 100-hour weeks to learn Unreal and take what the documentation and tutorials offer them and implement it into their Walking Dead title, reverse-engineering the concepts they had implemented into the Diesel and Valhalla versions of the game and dropping them into Unreal. Bo Andersson, all the while, is going on vacations and not coming in on the regular, spending his time playing zombie games for inspiration and coming to the staff with his own ideas for the game based on them. Glory Kills, Special Infected, robust base maintenance mechanics and the ability to command teams of non-player survivors on missions all wound up in the game with little actual regard for how these pieces fit together. By the time that he realized he should be more actively hands-on, he only had a scant few months to spend with the staff at the final mad dash to make a playable product. The game was playable at E3, with two demo levels, and one of them playtested so poorly that the staff had to pull it from the rotation, but when Bo heard this feedback he would not tell his staff. He told them the game was testing great at E3, that people loved it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead released on the 7th of November, 2018, a week after Payday 2 ended support by letting players kill fallen angels and solve a giant puzzle wheel about the in-game lore in order to turn Bain, the player's main contact, into the US President via a body-swapping artifact used by the ancient kings of Kataru, who were gifted immortality at the same time common man was gifted the knowledge of good and evil at the Garden of Eden. While the clown-themed robbery game ended on a confusing note, Overkill's The Walking Dead was getting started to a whole heap of roughness. The game's combat was frustrating, with hordes of walkers that had to be put down one clumsy charged melee swing at a time and human enemies who fired off AKMs and MP5s with reckless abandon. Their noise would draw hordes, which would need to be contended with via your own noise, as dealing with a few dozen enemies with melee combat was awkward and difficult.

Being grappled by a zombie cost a health bar and a half in a game where your starting character had on average four healthbars to their name, and the underlying gameplay, despite being completely linear missions in level and objective design, were just Payday heists at the end of the day. Hell or High Water involved you raiding a camp owned by The Family, an antagonistic gang your camp is at war with, and stealing their supplies. In turn, they arrive at your camp and you kill five waves of them in Worse Than Walkers, in a move no different than Payday 2's Safe House Raid mission, with no zombies in sight. The camp-building mechanics, which were tied to player level and their ability to tend to the needs of their workers, were a confusing mess of UI elements that did not mesh together, and all weapons were earned in a gachapon-style case system and would degrade over time, requiring the player unjam them, fix them with the supplies they need to keep camp morale up, or watch them fall into disrepair. There was also no tutorial mission, with the game opening with The First Shot, the E3 demo mission that tested so poorly they stopped running it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead performed poorly, both critically and commercially, and Starbreeze went right into damage control. The game's high price tag to low gameplay ratio was combatted with a $30 version that required paying for the missions $60 players got for free. Season 2 went into production very quickly, with fixes to the base game, new weapons, and new survivors being promised within the coming months. Unfortunately, this was too little, too late, as Skybound issued a cease and desist to their business partner after just three months of sale, and by February 2019, Overkill's The Walking Dead was just as much a corpse as the undead shamblers present in the video games.

Perhaps what sealed the fate of the game wasn't its overall quality, as The Walking Dead is home to a large number of subpar games, but its tone and gameplay. Overkill's The Walking Dead is a very staunchly libertarian take on the franchise, pitting the player with the idea that they are to be a colonizing force, destroying an antagonistic camp and treating the other people just trying to survive as cannon fodder not unlike if they were just walkers with guns. This is no surprise given another face at Overkill, executive producer Almir Listo, having a robust fascination with libertarianism and the cult of personality that surrounded fringe Right-wing groups. Almir himself is not a conservative, but he has proven time and time again that he thinks the way Donald Trump talks is funny and has an interest in American conservative viewpoints and conspiracies as an outsider looking in, likely not helped by an unnamed comics writer taking over Payday 2 in its final year to turn the game about robbing banks into one with an ancient conspiracy and Nephilim to mow down with your MG42 or M16.

The Walking Dead is a story about its people and how they're shaped by the conflict, by the apocalypse that surrounds them, and while Kirkman expressed early interest in the sound-based horde gameplay encouraging quiet takedowns and swift, accurate gunplay, it is very possible that the idea of not just a bad Walking Dead game, but a bad Walking Dead game from a popular studio that fundamentally misunderstands the world of The Walking Dead and needs to fall back on generic bandits and raiders to fill its spaces a la Bethesda's open world titles was a bad look. We'll never know for certain, though, as the game has been pulled from sale for ages.

But this brings us to sometime last week. September 21st marked the launch of Starbreeze Studios' (formerly Overkill Software's) Payday 3. The game features a lot of the stuff they had worked on for The Walking Dead (weapon models, a rework to the Shield enemy, armor working exactly like health in OTWD) but also a ton of its own ideas, and in general the gameplay is very solid. The issue, though, is the progression and a number of bugs that hamper the experience, alongside requiring a Starbreeze Nebula account and online connection to play, with no offline mode to speak of, which caused problems when the servers for the game were down for its first three days after launch. Starbreeze promised a patch was coming shortly thereafter, but on October 21st, a month after the game released, someone with ties to Starbreeze, fed up with the Starbreeze Nebula account requirement and persistent Internet connection to play a game with obvious issues and no Patch 1 release date in sight, released the final build of Overkill's The Walking Dead. This featured a proper tutorial, made the original The First Shot into an optional random encounter a player could take on for additional resources, a slew of new weapons, a wandering trader who could sell you blueprints to the DLC's guns, and the rest of Season 2's missions. The leaked build is not playable online but is DRM-free, running just fine completely offline and preserving the game for future generations to point and laugh at, albeit without any help to ease the difficulty for a game that expected four human players at a time.

Perhaps the weirdest part of the leak is that it brought out a handful of fans from the woodwork who view Overkill's The Walking Dead as an underrated gem buried before it could truly shine, individuals who feel the game could be one of the studio's best with enough polish, and as a result Robert Kirkman has been once again inundated with people asking about the now five year-old game, hoping to give it another chance. I, personally, feel that the clumsy pacing, questionable storyline bearing little similarities to the graphic novels it's based on, and the over-reliance on generic bandits voiced by Payday regulars Josh Lenn and Joseph Balderrama prevent the game from being anything but a really weird footnote in a company's confusing, convoluted history.

[spongebobafettywap]

seems like there's a lot of people like that anon who genuinely do not know the destiny and mystique parentage was not only NOT the original parentage for nightcrawler but that was scrapped so early on, we got a decade of stories with claremont that couldn't have made it a thing without completely retconning what he effin wrote. i think what didn't help this were fans who spent two entire decades falsely repeating it so many time like it was a mantra that it got seared into the minds of folks who don't even read xmen (no joke)

i used to be a big fan of a blogger called nathan summers on world press. technically i still am but dude dropped off the map years ago... maybe comics finally broke his heart. he was an old claremont fan at heart and even he knew that parentage wasn't the original one (he also highlighted that the writer who first mentioned it being the original plan wasn't even claremont, it was lobdell). he even gave evidence that claremont might have started thinking about it years after he wrote dofp, after he introduced rogue as being raised by mystique and destiny, after he introduced margali, after he clearly gave mystique a power limit, after he came up with nightcrawler's backstory with the szardos, ... like claremont would be retconning himself with that one parentage. it was thanks to NS that i found out about the nightmare parentage being a thing and his evidence for why it was the first and really original one was editorial interviews at the time (you can still find that trivia fact with a reference on wikipedia pages of nightmare too) and traces of the scraped idea in issues that did come out

it never hit me back then how super weird it was for nightcrawler's backstory from present day to when he was baby to be all revealed in a crossover book with doctor strange. it never registered with me how out of place that was to reveal it here and not in a normal xmen book or story (as opposed to magneto, rogue, madelyne pryor, storm, cyclops, ...). so when NS talked about the nightmare parentage, it all just clicked in my head. the way nightcrawler's inferno went down must have been how that scrapped idea would have went "according to plan" before it was shot down by editorial up until margali was revealed (instead)

then there was another proof NS gave that sealed the deal for me for how the mystique and destiny parentage really wasn't the original idea at all and it was in the same book claremont started giving nightcrawler's backstory

if nightmare was originally the father in the scrapped concept, nightcrawler's biological mother was canonically a poor gal that was just dead because that very crossover literally had her dying right next to him when margali found them. this also answers the age old question of "why is nightcrawler's last name wagner if he was raised by the szardos family who never met his parents?" : it's because margali took him under her care FROM his biological mother as she was dying right before her eyes and said mother probably told her the first name she wanted him to have and his full name to legitimize his parentage

I know but I really just have to stamp it down that it wasn't the original idea because that isn't how chronology works lol, its not even hard to find this information online I found it years ago when I first became a Nightcrawler fan. I don't get why people think Destiny/Mystique was the first idea or some are so invested in that narrative that they just bend over backwards to make excuses of how "well Nightmare was thought of first but um well you see um it was scrapped so early on it can't be the first idea" like what are you talking about? You just admitted it was the first idea.

I don't blame Nathan Summers for dipping out, around the 2010s Comics started an even worse decline as the events became more frequent and storytelling took a backseat. But yeah even on his blog there's some details about Mystique such as making her in her 30s which means at one point Mystique was intended to be closer to Nightcrawler's age which would have made her unable to be his mother. And as you said they originally stated his mother died besides him hence how he had the name Wagner instead of Szardos.

I used to think Mystique was always intended to be his mother but even that is wrong because apparently Cockrum never stated Nightcrawler's mother was Mystique in his pitch to Legion of Superheroes. So yeah Nightmare was originally the only major character that was going to be Nightcrawler's father, his original intended parent was going to be a Demon and he was going to have inherited his mutant side from his deceased mother. That demonic parentage angle for Nightcrawler that these fans hate so much was the first idea for his father by Claremont.

[sknolls]

I think I have to hard disagree on the idea that difficulty implies linearity. And I'm specifically talking about Celeste mods. In my experience, having ten solutions to one problem doesn't make a map less difficult if all ten solutions are equally bullshit. The actual problem with balancing difficulty and linearity is that when you design a level with so many potential solutions, you have to make every solution roughly even in execution. Or at the very least, you want to account for the various potential approaches in balancing them. Which just makes designing rooms so much harder.

Generally when designing difficulty, I like to either make something that someone could probably pick up immediately after Chapter 9 or something that I personally can barely beat. So, in more common terms, it has to either be Intermediate, low Advanced, or Cracked GM.

But I've been experimenting recently with making cracked GM stuff where the player is offered multiple approaches and it's absolutely possible. Maybe that's because I really like working with Spike Jumps and Corner Tech, which inherently expand options and make you rethink how you interact with common obstacles, while I hate working with Ultras because they're the exact opposite of that.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xkotKbNJd_g&list=PLAlu1k6xjlvT74eGDfT6-f2QWRKRE2Q6x&index=5&pp=gAQBiAQB

I made this as a proof of concept for a bullet hell corner spam hybrid and currently all of these solutions except for the last one are usable and similar difficulty. It all comes down to personal preference.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VrxkOK-lAU0&list=PLAlu1k6xjlvT74eGDfT6-f2QWRKRE2Q6x&index=6

And this is what the completed screen looks like. Some of the difficulty comes from the corner tech, some comes from the player needing to manage the infinitely spawning homing missiles, some comes from the player having to make decisions and execute shit while under pressure, and some comes from the lack of a single clear solution to any given segment. At some point the player gets such a huge catalogue of options that asking them to perform clearly signaled tech quits being challenging compared to asking them to filter through their options to find the correct one.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I7y1M-GEhOY&list=PLAlu1k6xjlvT74eGDfT6-f2QWRKRE2Q6x&index=3&pp=gAQBiAQB

Or here's another map I'm working on. The badeline fight is a massive spike in difficulty specifically because the solutions are open ended and combined with having to manage resources, being trapped in a closed in environment without a lot of options to manuever around Badeline chasers, and the heightened pacing, these two rooms are easily a difficulty spike despite the previous rooms using more complex tech. In fact, more than half of my time getting the recording for this was me trying to beat the final screen.

Think of it like this, if the player can afford to put 100% of their attention on executing a tech, then it's easier than if they have to divide their attention. And that division can come from psychological pressure like "is this really the best solution?" or "I need to keep track of the shit chasing me while also doing this thing." Plus, I think open ended shit is more exciting to see run by speedrunners, TAS, and Goldens because part of it is just going "how will they go about it?"