#a fools journey devlog

[thecardinalsims]

A Fool’s Journey in Self-Taught Modding / Pt 1

Coming up on a thousand posts between MTS and NRaas in the space of a year, I sometimes figure my lack of uploads weighs negatively upon whether it seems like I know what I’m talking about.

So, it's time to start a devlog. If you were tagged, don't feel obliged to read it- just wanted to credit the names and faces behind this rabbithole I've gone down.

Tiny blips of my work are floating about out there- I made the geostates for @twinsimming's default replacement tree, cracked some of the mysteries of decrypting TS3 Store worlds, and I’ve shot a number of small CC items and tuning packages from the hip as needed for individuals in both forums.

Over a couple of days, I learned geostates from scratch to make the sprout and sapling.

I’ve also ended up with the shiny orange username at MTS thanks to contributing a few tutorials, which did wonders for my confidence. Said tutorials are quickly decaying as I outgrow my own methods, but I promise to revisit them when time and health allows.

Making GIF examples was a highlight of working on the tutorials, so far.

In truth, I’m always working on bigger things. Much bigger things. Half of the answers I give are ones I work out on the spot for the purpose of answering- and then I squirrel away what I learned into my growing reference pile. I’m happy to chip away at a hundred little problems, because I come away with a hundred little skills.

I’m just too stubborn to let my first public release be one of those small successes. It simply has to be the most ambitious project on my plate- the one made of months of work and half a dozen restarts from scratch. 

What started as a simple 'find hairs to use as default replacements' project has turned into a 'repurpose mesh pieces into new hairs from scratch' project.

The truth about learning to mod any game is that a fair bit of it will (or rather, should) have nothing to do with the game itself. Being competent with Blender and XML in general- and familiarising myself with S3PE so thoroughly I could manually do anything that usually is automated by other tools- was the greatest favour I could have done for myself. 

I started wanting to write a devlog- or whatever is appropriate to call this when it won’t involve programming for quite some time- to try and encourage this sentiment in others. Learning to make a specific creation vs learning to create is very similar to the proverb of being given a fish vs being taught to fish. The sooner you unlearn relying on for-purpose knowledge and dive into all-purpose knowledge, the better.

If you want to be a prolific creator of hair CC, I wouldn’t even recommend starting with my tutorials on making them for TS3. I’d encourage you to learn to create and edit meshes, work with morphs and bone assignments, so on- all concepts that neither The Sims nor EA invented, but if you are introduced to them for the first time through modding you may fall into the trap of believing a modder is the best person to teach you. The remaining jump to then get that work into the game is smaller than you think.

Manual bone assignments are the most recent trick I've put up my sleeve, and one of the reasons for another soft-restart of my project.

EA didn’t provide a single modding resource outside of CaW for The Sims 3, so I empathise with the DIY nature of the tutorials that exist. The familiar names of the 2009-2010 modding scene pulled the game apart themselves, wrote their own programs, and carried the community on their back with the effort of sharing what they learned. 

Over a decade later, creators are less often programmers, computer engineers, and 3D artists and more often hobbyists following in their footsteps with no prior knowledge of these fields. You will lose sanity if you have big CC plans and try to learn all of it from a video tutorial recorded on an overheating laptop that didn’t edit out any of the times TSRW crashed or the person making the tutorial coughed directly into their mic- I can tell you that much. 

The first thing I made was actually a skill for TS4, which I crunched through with Sims4Studio and a lot of squinting at @icemunmun-spicy-scalpel's Candle Making skill, and is where I first spat out the name CardinalSims for the sake of filling in the creator name box. Which, for the record, is supposed to be a pun on Cardinal Sins and not that I consider myself the cardinal of sims.

I'll come back around to release this one day if someone doesn't beat me to it, hopefully with compatibility for BrazenLotus' mods.

For that reason, a lot of TS4 creators are my largest inspiration even if I see myself focusing on TS3. Icemunmun and @brazenlotus are my meshing and modding role models- custom food is my passion despite my current workload, so when I finally get some of these projects out that is where I’d like to settle most. Preferably churning out hundreds of recipes and harvestables for the rest of my days.

After messing around with hair recolours, eye textures, and asymmetrical dog ears, I flipped back to TS3 (the far more intimidating of the two to work with) and haven’t stopped piling projects onto that plate ever since. Hair became the somewhat dominant topic of my expertise, but believe it or not it all started with a plate of scrambled eggs.

3D scrambled eggs, intended as a replacer for @echoweaver's recipe. All it's missing is a half-eaten state, but I got a tiny bit distracted: read, it has been ten months.

It’s not really a devlog until I go over what I’m working on, though, is it?

No matter how many things I try to juggle, I can promise that the first release will be a large something called BGHR. Which involves somewhere in the range of 45 hairs, give or take.

The first 'BGH' Redux I made + the most recent one- have fun puzzling over that acronym until release. I blame it on the fact I modded Skyrim for a long time before this.

Which is not including the dozens of variants and age/gender conversions I end up with along the way, which I export to a mesh dump that I’ll come back to later:

Once that floodgate is open, I will be prioritising releasing the smaller projects quite quickly- likely the 3D scrambled eggs and the default harvestable plant + vine to match the tree that have been sitting 99% complete in my project folder.

Thank you for reading, if you made it this far. I'm out of breath and I didn't even have to say all of this outloud.

Next devlog should be more focused on a singular topic.

[nomaxart]

Your one post today that isn't an april fools joke. It's an actual update! #11 to be precise, called Clouds on the horizon!

It's the first update after our first timeskip, so we'll be jumping right to day 12 of the journey, several hundred nautical miles further south and, well, perhaps a little cloudy judging by the name? Only one way to find out! If you like to have more info you can read the devlog over here: https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway/devlog/707731/conway-update-11-is-now-available You can play it for free over here: https://nomaxart.itch.io/conway

[retronator]

Top 10 of 10 years of Retronator

The 10th anniversary of Retronator (the blog) is coming up tomorrow!!! I’ll write a special post for the occasion then, but I thought it’d be interesting to see the most liked and reblogged posts I published on Retronator over these 10 years.

1. The United Pixels of America: 8-bit Map of the USA

January 2019, 18k notes

Compared to other top 10 posts that have been gathering notes for half a decade already, the feature of Danc3r’s detailed, animated map of the United States is pretty much a baby. Still, Tumblr did what Tumblr does best and showed that even in the post-NSFW-apocalypse years of 2019/2020, there are plenty of fans of gaming, art, and pixels (and USA) alive on the site.

2. Paul Robertson artist feature

October 2014, 17k notes

Speaking of the NSFW apocalypse, the feature of @probertson​​​’s work didn’t make it past the nude filters. Even though nudity in art is allowed on tumblr and they’ve been very good at restoring wrongly tagged posts in the past, Paul’s boobies-filled artworks somehow didn’t get approved. So yeah, no link for this post.

3. No Bullshit Pixel Art Tutorial

March 2014, 14k notes

This tutorial tried to condense all the basics of how to get started with pixel art into just 7 images (and seven accompanying 10 sec videos). I later extended it into the Getting Started Guide and eventually turned into gameplay of my game Pixel Art Academy.

4. Fool artist feature

March 2015, 13k notes

There were times when Fool a.k.a. Yuriy Gusev didn’t need an introduction on the pixel art scene. But it’s not the 2000s anymore, so to all of you who haven’t come across his work yet, he’s one of the very best pixel artists of all time, period. Well worth exploring his work.

5. Waneella artist feature

July 2015, 12k notes

I wrote a longer article about @waneella​​ to accompany this post in Retronator Magazine, where I covered her journey from spaghetti-legs Lost Vikings to emerging themes of city skylines that hinted at the magnificent urban illustrations we know Waneella by today.

6. Amplitude Problem

May 2015, 11k notes

@valenberg​​ is well known for his cyberpunk pixel arts and the GIFs he did for YouTube videos of musician Amplitude Problem lended well to the GIF-loving Tumblr crowd. Just recently, Valenberg’s game VirtuaVerse came out, so definitely check that out.

7. Witchmarsh

May 2014, 9k notes

I posted about many pixel art games on this blog and the one that was shared the most was Inglenook’s @witchmarsh​​. It’s now been 6 years since its Kickstarter and we’re still patiently waiting for our beloved 1920s jazz-era RPG. Good things are worth waiting for! Also, their tumblr devlog is still actively updated, so good job guys.

8. The Last Night

October 2014, 7k notes

Second (and final) game on this list is The Last Night, the winning entry for the CyberPunkJam, made by brothers @timsoret​​ and @adrien-soret​​. You might have heard about it … Well, at least the full game that went into development following the prototype’s very positive reception. Seeing the old GIFs now, it’s just crazy to think how far the art direction has been advanced (and I’m sure we haven’t seen anything yet as even the trailer is 3 years old by now).

9. Rocks

May 2017, 6k notes

Finally another post that’s not from what seems to be the 2014–2015 golden area of this blog. People like rocks, I guess, and the trio of tutorials—including one from the incredibly popular Pedro Medeiros of @studiominiboss​​—served some good knowledge on the topic.

10. Vierbit artist feature

February 2014, 6k notes

This is the post that started the whole Artist Feature series, so I guess I have Vierbit’s insanely gorgeous art style to blame for inspiring me to start actively posting about other artists on the blog. From that point on Retronator became less my personal portfolio/brainfart diary and more the journalistic-pixel-art-newspaper that it aspires to be today.

There you have it, the tip of the iceberg of 1,700 total posts from 10 years of Retronator.

Now excuse me while I go make some (pixel) cake for tomorrow.

[rpgmgames]

July’s Featured Game: Black Crystals

DEVELOPER(S): Yoraee ENGINE: RPGMaker MV GENRE: Fantasy, RPG WARNINGS: Alcohol Reference, Drug Reference, Use of Alcohol, Use of Drugs, Use of Tobacco, Mild Blood, Fantasy Violence, Sexual Themes SUMMARY: Starsio, a street performer, finds himself in the stickiest of situations. Starsio was kidnapped off the streets of his home town and brought to the brothel Paprika where he is forced to become a performer. One rainy night, Starsio gathers his courage and wits and plans an escape. He convinces Arthur, an apprehensive and fidgety new found friend, to accompany him. Starsio sets his escape plan in motion with one last song…

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! My name is Hind, but online I go by Yoraee (fans of Breath of Fire may recognize my handle).

I used to make parodies of anime openings and endings featuring the Ninja Turtles (If you REALLY want to you can look them up on youtube by searching for Yoraee!)

I am a HUGE fan of Ninja Turtles, Inazuma Eleven, Cyborg 009, Hetalia, and Ace Attorney! My favorite video games are Saga Frontier, Tales of Destiny, and the Suikoden series.

I joined the RPG Maker gamedev community about two years ago when I started working on Black Crystals. I LOVE it here! :D

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Yoraee: Black Crystals at its core is about Home. Whether it be finding home, returning home, or creating home. Black Crystals features a large ensemble of characters, each with their own story and struggle, all of which revolve around this central theme.

How long have you been working on your project? *Yoraee: About two years now.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Yoraee: Yes! The jigsaw chain coop system and the spontaneous leaning system featured in Black Crystals' combat system are based on similar mechanics in the PS1 game Saga Frontier. Of course I added my personal touches to these system to make them less of direct copies. The Interact and Talk system is inspired by Undertale in the sense that a battle can be concluded without the need for combat. In Black Crystals, however, you are able to interact with the environment and alter it, so you can actually see the results of your choices in battle and how they change subsequent choices.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Yoraee: Definitely! The main two challenges for me are time and motivation.

Since I work full time, the only times I can work on Black Crystals are after work or during weekends or holidays, which limits my productivity greatly. I took some leave from work at certain points and basically locked myself in my house and worked on the game's systems, but aside from that work on Black Crystals has taken place during my little free time.

Motivation, well, comes and goes for me. Some days I'm all like "YEAH! THIS GAME IS AWESOME!!" and other days I'm like "what am I doing why am I wasting my time on this". In order to keep myself motivated, I made a habit of posting weekly on my devlog. By posting weekly, I get more regularized feedback, which gives me a good motivational boost to get me through the week till the next update.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? Yoraee: The systems design didn't change much. I had an outline of the features I wanted in Black Crystals; the interaction system, the state of mind system, the coop and leaning system. What came next was implementing these features and refining them.

The characters underwent changes in the way they are written. Arthur and Starsio's personalities sort of switched midway through writing, and the current way they are written seemed more cohesive to the story line.

Several other NPCs also underwent changes. I had a Paprika worker, Anita, for example, who played the role of both herself and Patricia. Later I split the roles and ended up with two characters; Anita and Patricia.

Finally, the whole cats thing was non existent two years ago. They sort of materialized into the game a few months ago :3

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Yoraee: Aside from music, which I commissioned, and the plugins, which are contributed by the amazing coders in the community, I'm a one-woman team taking care of all aspects of the game.

I prefer to work alone, simply because my processes are horrible and my pace is very erratic. I think I would drive potential team members mad XD

What is the best part of developing the game? *Yoraee: Seeing how everything clicks and fits together in the end :) The end product to me is always worth it.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Yoraee: I love playing other RPG Maker games. I think you can't help but think and analyse how things are done in a game while playing it if you are a dev yourself. I think its adds to the fun of the experience for me.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Yoraee: My favorite character hasn't shown up yet :( Its a secret for now!

I like Arthur's character in the current story. He reminds me of a younger me, too easily influenced by others and too scared of saying no. While writing the story I feel like grabbing him and giving him a good shake and yelling "Just say NO you passive fool!" XD

Bonus Info: The game has six main characters! :D

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Yoraee: Yes, the animations. I spent so much time making skills detailed and fluid. I think I kind of lost track of the bigger picture. My animation process is much more improved now, with a more streamlines approach to animations.

Also putting animations together in the Animation tool in RPG Maker MV. I used to manually set up each frame next to the next frame, and it took AGES for animations that comprised 6+ frames. Later it clicked that I could set a template and record the x and y positions and then just move everything around in one chunk to save me TONS of time. I need to make a tutorial on that some time because its such a time saver!

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Yoraee: Black Crystals is episodic. The current game is Episode 1. As episodes progress more will become known about the game's universe and characters.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Yoraee: Players reaction and feedback first and foremost, because to me that will be detrimental to whether or not I continue the series.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Yoraee: Just the capability of the RPG Maker engine. I'm worried about the game lagging or dropping frames when played, given the graphics size. Lag to me kills the experience so I'm doing my best to make sure it doesn't happen in Black Crystals.

Also I'm kind of nervous about how people will receive the battle system ~_~

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Yoraee: Learn from the community. Its amazing the amount of resources and knowledge we have in the RPG Maker community. Don't be shy to ask for help if you need it. From my experience the community is one of the best there is.

Question from last month's featured dev @maimiestoybox: What has been the most rewarding part of your game dev journey so far? *Yoraee: Just sharing tidbits of the game and getting feedback from the community. It does wonders to my self esteem :)

Also the feeling of self accomplishment when you see the bits and pieces you created come together and your project take shape. Best feeling!

We mods would like to thank Yoraee for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Black Crystals if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum