#and that's a whole game they programed

[sorcerous-caress]

The most niche game I have ever played was this one game on Steam. I am the only reviewer of the game, and the developer even responded to me, and I emailed them a bug report. There is only a recorded second player of the game in all of its history, I'm willing to bet it's the dev.

You posers can't even compete! Go waddle to the flock of sheep feasting on the mass-produced grass fields of main media while I thrive in my wet hollow cave of niche fungus.

[zuzu-draws]

Stardew Valley Bachelor Portrait Sukuna, anyone?? (I made some quick pixelated gifs while musing lolol)

I wonder how many folks would romance him in-game 🤔 Make your attendance here, folks ✋

[aardvaark]

the leverage team would have had a games night… once. everyone cheated so much and in such increasingly extreme ways that all mentions of monopoly are banned in their headquarters (this makes talking about marks who monopolize the market very confusing)

[soybean-official]

The parts of you that support me

[tropicalcontinental]

Derivative of a Derivative

[isat-script-project]

Your amazing work here has inspired me to want to try doing a script project for DQB2 and I was wondering if you had any advice for me?

I'm gonna assume that's some sorta dragon quest game?

Well, ISAT really is a blessing in this regard, because the game is not encrypted at all. Accessing files and all text via rpgmaker MV and VSC is incredibly easy.

okay this got really long i'm putting it under the cut.

But before you get started, there really are some things you need to ask yourself first:

How am I going to get the text from this game?

If your answer is "write it down by hand as I play" then already know that there HAS to be a better way. If you're choosing that method, get yourself emulation, save states, or endless patience, because hooh boy, I've done a little bit of that for a different project (no, I will not elaborate) but save scumming on original hardware to get different dialogue options is agony.

Is there a text dump for your game? Is there a file dump or decomp for your game? Do you have the technical know how to access it? If not, are you confident in your knowledge of the game to accurately identify where all dialogue may occur? If not, are you satisfied missing out on nothing lines and just focusing on the non-optional? Is your game linear enough to not need a closer look at the code to figure out what happens when, as isat does?

2. What's my scope?

Again, do you truly want every line from this game, or just what's "important"? I personally cannot rest until I've exhausted the fucking Menus (which is why there's a script page for those, too) because I'm a completionist with delusions of grandeur, but some people are satisfied transcribing the cutscenes and nothing else (MUCH TO MY ANNOYANCE WHEN I NEED THE OTHER STUFF.... nobody cares about the optional collectible npc dialogue BUT I CARE!!! I CARE!!!!!)

Anyways, what exactly your scope is is gonna significantly influence what your next step looks like.

3. How am I going to present this?

Making the isat script project an individual website mainly came down to how finicky the dialogue in isat is. There's conditionals stacked on conditionals and I wanted a space where I had total control over how to present these factors without influence.

For more linear games, like, say, that time I made all the fewiki scripts for Fire Emblem 6 from chapter 12 onward, it was easy enough to present the scripts on a wiki page just because the game is much more linear, there's less dialogue to begin with, and all conditional text could be nicely divided up into similar groups, like boss dialogue where the condition is just "fight boss with x character".

isat script project would not exist without my fire emblem fixation, fun fact. other fun facts include that as a child i attempted to novelize Mario Party DS by transcribing all story mode text into a booklet by hand, and I did not finish this for reasons that are hopefully obvious.

This is, as you may figure, way easier to do. There is significantly less burden on you to actually understand how a website works - I cannot stress enough that the current state of the script project is only possible thanks to Gold, and without them, we'd still be at all dialogue being formatted as <p><b>Siffrin:</b> Says some text.</p>

For a lot of older games, you can also find whole game scripts being put up into a single document. Tis common on gamefaqs, I've used those plenty. There I believe you're just working with plain ol txt.

The rule is always though look at examples and if they do something cool figure out whether you can copy it. i did not create the website layout myself, i used a base and fiddled with it for a whole weekend until it stopped exploding.

Again, like, using an existing structure like a wiki or gamefaqs or just google docs or a spreadsheet is a significantly eased burden. One of my favorite things ever is actually a text dump on github, of all places. For this one, the person putting it up chose to leave all text in as close to original state as possible, doing no trimming of things like character emotes and leaving in all original string titles of every line. This is also incredibly useful, even if it is more difficult to use for your average schmoe! (This has fucking saved me doing wiki stuff for engage. engage text dump i ADORE you)

Do you want to be as accurate to the code as possible, or as accurate to the game? Do you have the time, energy, and skills to make the visual presentation nice? Or do you want to keep it rudimentary to streamline your process?

If you ARE doing something like making your own website, it is crucial that you figure out your visuals early, lest you be like us, and be stuck in Reformatting Hell for several months, because someone figured out how to make a thing prettier and nicer to read, and now you need to update the 100+ pages you've already created.

Reformatting code like that takes just as long as making a page in the first place, by the by, because you're just not getting around copy-pasting everything line by agonizing line.

This stuff takes HOURS. If I went at it alone, I doubt I'd have finished by now, or within the next like, two years. This is a really time consuming hobby, and I love doing it a lot, it scratches my exact fixation itch, but if your game is huge, consider seeing if people would be interested in joining you? I will also say being autistic about your game of choice is also a bonus in the sustainability department.

Many a times there were just no updates (as they are now) cuz I am just. Distracted by something else. Like yes on one hand I'm going to uni now and have less time but it's not really less time if I can still put 17hrs into a new video game in three days.

Stuff like this is ALWAYS a long-term project and you WILL need to take time off from it or else you'll start seeing html in your dreams and get burnout.

STREAMLINE YOUR PROCESS!!! FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS WITH AS LITTLE EFFORT AS POSSIBLE!!!! Gold introduced me to Espanso, which is a program that lets you set up keyboard shortcuts to insert phrases, which was a MAAAAAASSIVE time saver in the html department, as it allowed me to just rapid fire paste in all the many html classes we stacked for the presentation of the site. even if you are doing a script on a wiki where everything does look like ['''Siffrin:''' says a thing] you will still be doing yourself a favor if you can shorten that '''Siffrin:''' to just typing :s .

As a side note, I also wanna say like. The popularity of isat script project is a complete outlier. Other game scripts may be used by a maniac like me to overanalyze the plot structure of Sonic 06, but you're very likely not going to see that recognition. I love doing this, because I want these resources to exist for myself. I don't do this for the good of the fandom, but because it is useful to me. I started this because I was writing isat fanfic, and got tired of looking up dialogue on youtube or booting up my own game.

Do I know if anyone found my FE6 scripts useful? No. Do I know if anyone is going through Veyle/Quotes and appreciating that I transcribed all the fucking battle voice clips? No. Do I know if someone appreciates me accurately labelling all voice lines from the ring polishing minigame in engage? Hell no. I don't know, I'm never going to get feedback on that. Those are wiki pages, anyone can edit them, they don't have viewcounts or comments I can look at, and the fandom just isn't as prone to taking screenshots and posting about them line by line as isat.

Isat blew the fuck up on tumblr. I'm not saying you'll get no recognition at all, but if you are relying on external motivators, you are probably going to peter out. There are pages I've worked on for other script things that I've genuienly not touched in two years because I just didn't feel like it, and that's also okay.

TLDR:

Figure out how to get the text you need with the least effort possible (and figure out whether doing that is even possible at all!), figure out what scope you're actually willing to put up with, and present it with the least effort possible, because everything else just isn't sustainable. Streamline streamline streamline. Be prepared to spend hours on this and maybe like find a new favorite podcast to just copy paste text to, because honestly, doing this is also pretty zen.

And most importantly, sparkle on, don't forget to have fun! Even if it seems big and intimidating, you can still make it just a fun side project, and slowly chip away at it over time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and with all the advantages going for isat script project (additional manpower, unencrypted files, easy tools for game examination) it still took over a year to complete.

(loop voice) Don't make the same mistakes I did, okay?

oh, yeah, one last thing, if you're not putting it on a wiki and ARE making your own website, ABSOLUTELY PUT IT ON GITHUB!!!! setting up so any changes to the main branch on github get reflected onto neocities is pretty easy and you only need to do it once, and what this allows is to just have random strangers show up and fix your problems for you. sometimes someone will just show up and fix five bajillion typos and then leave. or they'll stick around and help with more stuff and wowie you have a semblance of a team now.

if you're doing it on a wiki, find like, the wiki discord, if someone is interested in chipping in. if you're doing your own website, put it on github. do it. do it do it do it.

[littleseasalt]

i think a lot of people tend to forget that because of the betrayal arc, the vivo turbo is canon to the QSMP lore. which the greatest part is what exactly the commerical being canon implies

because if we follow what we know:

-q!Cellbit canonically went to war with q!BBH, but everything indicates that q!Cellbit was REALLY FUCKING YOUNG for the war, which kind of makes sense somewhat since it's a reference to them playing hunger games lmao

-After the war, q!Cellbit became a wanted criminal and cannibal. Literally sent to Alcatraz

-He went to therapy after he managed to escape

And now the funny part.

-His therapy worked so much that not only did a COMPANY wanted a commerical with someone who WAS IN ALCATRAZ and was A CANNIBAL, but A FAMOUS SINGER accepted to do lots of commercials with this ex-criminal. Not only that, but in the commercial Cellbit says "Ivete, I have lots of fans", which implies that this criminal not only got rehabilitation, but he managed to become famous and positively known despite everything that happened.

[stellar-collective]

Opinion on Ricardo Morales?

ooh… my opinion on this guy is… ehh, complicated? we have so little info on him that i don’t want to jump the gun on making assumptions, but tbh… i don’t trust him.

i don’t think that he’s actively malicious, not by a long shot. i mean, as far as we know, he’s at least TRYING, and that counts for a lot against an opponent like Doctor Zor, but he’s certainly got his fair share of faults. most of what we know about his character comes from his interactions with Prism, and he sure as heck did not handle that situation well even a little bit. did he MEAN to drive Prism out of the Agency? i doubt it. is that what happened? yes. and i think that he is fully capable of doing the same to Agent Phoenix. (it’s lightly implied he already did that to another head agent, after all. at the very least, he didn’t help) would he? i don’t know, probably not, but i believe he could, which makes him dangerous

i have my fair share of theories on the subject, but i feel that Morales may be an evolved version of Reginald from the first game: obviously he doesn’t WANT anyone to die, but… he’s expecting it. so he doesn’t care as much as he should, and that hurts people. if presented the choice (and idk if he will be, i don’t have the faintest idea where the series is going next) i think he could just as easily throw us to the wolves or become a true and vital ally that helps finish this for good and all. i don’t really have enough info to form a more solid opinion tho lol

[amplexadversary]

Stitch from the elevator scene in episode 48 of G Gundam

The camera did not pan far enough to completely include Bolt Gundam, sadly.

[womanwhoembracesfolly]

Breaking news for no one who cares:

My pitch to direct TGWDLM at my school didn’t get picked (despite me being a directing major at a school with little to none directing opportunities and non directing majors (MTs) getting it, both of whom I have worked with and are very sweet and super talented but still a frustrating situation)

So I manifest that one day I will get to put up my Magnum Opus known as my production of The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals. One day. Just for once…

Until then, keep you updated on what other ways I will contribute to this production at my school. And I lowkey better get cast or be the Dramaturgy. Tbh.

[chubgosty]

And if I said I find Toby Fox's contributions to the OFF remake are some of his weakest work so far

[frameconfessions]

I hope the protoframes remain relevant even after this story arc for the Drifter concludes, but I also recognize how complicated things would get with how many characters they could keep trying to make stay relevant, leading to a Konoha 13 Naruto type situation where we have too many relevant characters from Umbra & Ordis all the way to Kaya Velasco.

.

[lunar-wandering]

"do you think V3 was a simulation" well first of all Tsumugi is an AI, and her "cosplaying" is just just her swapping between avatars or whatever, so jot that down-

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

bg3 is great because the fact that you can play as any of the origin companions or as a custom character, and romance any of the other companions while playing anyone, means that all possible ships in the main cast are canon, as well as any member of the cast x your oc being canon too

[smolsaltypan]

I can see why there's a few Caleb influencing the real world aus floating around. That fucker just made direct eye contact with me in the work quality time