#been making a set of sprites for possible use in videos

[x-crowmancer-x]

The contrast of horrifying subject matter and silly cartoon mascots in videos is wildddd.

Imagine clicking a video about an event where more than a dozen people died and seeing this guy pop up:

"Today we're here to recount the events leading up to the sickly-sweet tragedy of American history, the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919."

[vyl3tpwny]

wauitb what the fuck i have 5000 followers

this is insane hi guys

to celebrate 5000 followers on tublr here are some facts about myself: - my favourite food is fried chicken

- my favourite food is spicy fried chicken

most of my hyperfixations fluctuate in and out, but some that don't ever seem to let me go are my little pony, half life, skrillex, undertale/deltarune

recently i have developed an unfathomable obsession with bees i have a huge bee hyperfixation i play bee swarm simulator on roblox every day and i watch bee videos and i also just designed a beesona on pony town its name is beetrice the dragon bee:

my favourite movie is probably wolf children or mr. bean's holiday or elf

im basically lucario for girls

i am like a dragon and i collect things that i like.. you can see some here:

i play a lot of instruments, mostly piano, drums, singing, and guitar/bass/ukulele. my first instrument was the drums tho which i started playing when i was 2 or something. i no longer play drums because our house is too small for a drum set right now and i dont like electronic drum kits. one day!!!!

i have had zero music lessons which is why you should also make music bc you dont need to spend life savings on music education to make chunes

non-musicians who have influenced me the most are @sterfler and @astroeden who have changed my brain chemistry forever artistically (this is not an exaggeration)

i am not allergic to anything at all somehow

im the motherfucker who will drink an entire gallon of whole milk with nothing else yeah im just kind of awesome like that

i do not drink alcohol (anymore) or smoke or do drugs or anything like that just a personal pref

i am filipino but i am also chinese and scottish and italian and polish and maybe other things

i have been openly queer since 2011

i have been a furry since 2007 or something?

i have been making music since 2007 or something....?

my first true love as a musician was queen, which (because of their older albums) was my rabbit hole into the world of progressive rock. my passion for creating music was nurtured entirely by my discovery of genesis and the album 'the lamb lies down on broadway'. the next thing that shaped me as an artist? skrillex - 'scary monsters and nice sprites'

i have really bad verbal processing issues so you can probably speak directly to me and i will have no idea what youre saying sometimes

my feelings on art change a lot but i update my topster lists every now and again

i am mostly right [hoofed] but i'm technically ambidextrous

my first concert was bruce springsteen i think it was in 2009. i still love the the boss to this day.

i'm a kitty cat

i am also a dragon

i am also a possum

i am a formless void

my first song i wrote when i was 8 was titled after a jimmy neutron reference

the second song i wrote was a fan song about the flying dutchman

i played the original dota warcraft 3 mods long before dota 2 and league of legends existed because i've been a blizzard fangirl since like 2005 and now i hate blizzard so fuck you blizzard you're evil as shit but anyway i used to try and do map development for warcraft iii games but really my favourite thing to do was build maps where i could build the biggest possible army to fight npcs for fun. one of the first videos on my thecobalion channel is a warcraft iii map someone else made. i've just now turned it off private so you can see it if you want.

my favourite kind of humour is recursive

ok thanks what i can remember about myself right now. thanks for following me!!!!

[mister-qi]

Mr. Qi Friendship and Romance Mod: 4/19 Progress Update

It's a working title, I'm trying to come up with something less wordy that still will pop up in Nexus searches.

I wanted to be able to track my progress, mainly for myself, but if you're curious, this is the state of the mod right now:

Writing:

Heart Events - the 2 heart event is fully written (with blocking directions), and the 6, 8, and 10 heart events are outlined. The 4 heart cutscene currently has me a bit stumped; I have ideas, but nothing concrete yet. I definitely now understand why Sam's 4 heart cutscene is him dropping an egg. 14 hearts is on the back-burner as a little treat to myself once I get further into things.

Generic Daily Dialogues - about 1/3 done, probably the highest priority for writing. I'm leaving his vanilla casino dialogue as the two heart dialogue, and the vanilla Walnut Room dialogue as his four heart dialogue, with a few small changes. And, since it's me, I have more marriage dialogue written than anything else...

Day-Specific Dialogues - very few written, lower priority. Hoping to have a lot of these made eventually, and I have plenty of ideas, but they aren't necessary for the core of the mod so they're on the back-burner for now.

Gift Dialogues - all 5 generic gift response dialogues are written, with an additional 22 dialogue lines for specific items/groups of items. I'm also up to around item 530 in figuring out what item corresponds to which dialogue/whether or not he likes it. Certain item groups, like cooked food, still need more lines, however. This is definitely something that should be low priority, but also something I'm really enjoying working on. Some personal favorites so far are-

[if given a fish (hated)]: "Eugh, it's all slimy..."

[if given a legendary fish (disliked)]: "If you must give me one of the rarest fish in the valley, can you at least wrap it so I don't have to touch it with my bare hands?"

And I think that's pretty funny.

Art

Portraits - 3 new portraits finished: "deep frown" "glint" and "glasses-less". I'll probably be messing with "glasses-less" for a looong while; it's first shown at a dramatic moment so it needs to look good. Blushing portraits are next on the docket.

Here's "glint" btw, with a background thrown on so I can have a custom icon. You know I gotta make him do the anime glasses thing a few times.

Sprites - no progress yet. Walk cycle is up next after I finish the blushing portraits. Did you know he doesn't have a walk cycle at all? [1.6 spoilers] in the cheated Summit cutscene where he attacks(?) you, he literally just slides at you very fast. Anyways, I may also change his map sprite a bit as well, since it was drawn to match his old portrait and doesn't actually have the same color scheme as his sprites. Note to self: is it possible to make the sparkles on his outfit prismatic?

Maps - no progress yet. The 6 heart and 10 heart cutscenes both require custom maps, with the 6 heart one being a fully custom asset. 10 heart recycles some existing assets but will still need some custom stuff done as well.

Misc Sprites - in my head, there's a dream version of the 8 heart cutscene that has so, so many unique sprites. Like an incredible amount of stuff. I think it'll kick ass, but also that sequence could be done with a few lines of text. So, for now, it's low priority. But maybe in a few months I'll put out a request for help.

Implementation

Not totally sure how to split this into sections yet, as I'm very much still in the preliminary stages so far. To say that I'm feeling overwhelmed is an understatement; documentation on the wiki swings wildly between "an asset is a file in a video game" and "this is an advanced tutorial. Read these 4 other pages first before continuing."

I've started using Ms. Coriel's NPC Creator which has been good for setting up the basic file structure, but ultimately doesn't cover some of the more complex stuff I want to do. EDIT: Turns out it's completely outdated for 1.6! Had to throw out a bit of work, but I still learned from it so it's fiiine.

I think setting up his "schedule" will be a challenge, in that I don't actually want him to have a real schedule like most NPCs. Not to pull back the curtain too much here, but I want him to "exist" in both the Casino and the Walnut Room simultaneously, which is to say, he does not exist in two places at once in the narrative, just in the code. This will change after marriage, however.

My next goal is to set up placeholder cutscenes for each of the heart events, and then to implement the generic daily dialogues once those are finished.

Final Notes

God, this will be a work in progress for a while, but I'm enjoying it! Definitely enjoying the writing more than anything else, but hey, that's how it be. I've got around 70 lines of dialogue written, a bit of art done, and I've started learning how to actually get stuff in game. I've always been more of a designer than a coder, but it's getting there!

ADDITIONALLY I've decided that if I abandon this project for more than 8 months, anyone is welcome to request my work so far and use it for their own mod. If this blog hasn't posted in a long while, feel free to send me an ask or message! I may say no, however.

Ultimately, I want this mod to exist in some fashion. While there is an existing one, I have a pretty different take on the character and I want to share it with you all! Every line of dialogue, every heart event, every little detail needs to share something interesting about a character and their world. Yet, Mr. Qi is a mysterious guy, and I think some things should be left up to player interpretation. And I think it's crucial to be able to match his tone and voice to the vanilla game, while also expanding on his characterization. It's a fun challenge to write, and I hope the finished product, uh, well I hope it gets finished mostly, but I think it'll be pretty good.

Thanks for reading all this. This is largely just a stream of consciousness for myself, but I hope it's...interesting, or something?

[sexhaver]

ive been playing Cassette Beasts for a minute and it never stops being funny to me how flagrant they are about making this "Pokemon but with features you didn't know Pokemon has always needed". off the top of my head:

super effective/NVE hits have added benefits/debuffs beyond just doubling/halving the damage (hitting Electric types with Ground reduces their evasion and speed, hitting Steel types with Poison gives them poison-coated spikes that do contact damage, etc)

legally-distinct-Pokemon will learn new moves while in your party without having to battle, and you can then straight up steal these moves from them and put them on a not-Pokemon you actually care about using, which gives an actual incentive to hunt down and raise otherwise fringe not-mons beyond completing the not-Pokedex

we all played the Pokemon Infinite Fusion fangame right? we know how fusions work? okay so this game has them as temporary per-battle things instead of permanent ones, which is only marginally less cool while being infinitely easier to balance around

attempting to catch something shows you the percentage chance of success so you know whether you just got unlucky or if you should save your Pokeballs-i-mean-blank-cassette-tapes

leveling up is tied to your not-trainer instead of your not-pokemon, so you don't end up in the classic trap where your starter is way overleveled and everything else is underleveled and then you hit a fight your starter can't solo and have to spend an hour grinding to get the weaker not-mons up to par (funnily enough most Pokemon Nuzlocke romhacks have already figured this out and give you infinite rare candies with the only restriction being that you can't level past the next gym leader's ace pokemon, because Pokemon fans have realized that grinding is the worst part of the game way before Game Freak has)

moves, not-Pokeballs, not-PokeCenter visits, and healing items are all bought using entirely separate currencies which stops you from trivially breaking the economy in half

the soundtrack, fittingly, is pretty good! the vocals were a bit much for my taste but there's an option in the settings menu to straight up turn them off (letting the BGM play on its own), which i've never seen in any other game and really appreciate

downsides:

on a game design level, i understand why can i only carry a max of 5 not-Potions and 1 not-Revive at a time - it's to put a limit on how far away from fast travel points i can get by just running away from everything and healing off damage. on a gameplay level, however, this feels pretty bad

the pixel art style is trying to look as much like Pokemon as possible without actually being Pokemon so the overworld sprites look more like beta stuff from Pokemon that they cut for looking too weird. i have yet to find a haircut that doesn't look bad

this is super petty of me but something about the bloom and lighting of the 3d environments combined with pixelated 2d sprites that still cast shadows makes me painfully aware im playing a video game. it's like they were going for the same aesthetic as Octopath Traveler but fell just barely short. i can't think of a better way to articulate this feeling but if you know you know

it does that really obnoxious half-assed style of voice acting where plot-relevant characters will sometimes (maybe every third or fourth textbox) speak the first two or three words of dialogue before trailing off. mashing through textboxes (as one does) means constantly getting jumpscared by "hmm"s and "haha!"s "okay then!"s

i get that they wanted to make the player feel involved in the story, and it has a pretty decent hook so far, but oh my god. the amount of dialogue "choices" that just transparently do not matter. you know how people memed on Fallout 3 and 4's dialogue choices all leading to the same outcome, to the extent that you were basically choosing between "yes" and "yes (rude)"? and you know how Bethesda would at least attempt to justify how both options led to you accepting the quest anyways, even if it was really dumb? Cassette Beasts has streamlined this process even further by making the options in most of their binary decisions so identical that they don't even require different followup dailogue before rejoining into the main conversation thread. a solid 2/3rds of the dialogue options in this game so far feel like checks that you're still awake. i know this is a minor issue because people aren't playing Pokemon-likes for the engaging "choices matter" approach to storytelling, and i did ignore it at first, but it's so pervasive that you really can't ignore it

[undertalerebirth]

Undertale Brave Beginnings is looking for more team members! + Min Update! (Artwork made by Luz the aurora)

Application Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWdY5EmbQMYm4Tz4VXtEa6DmpgYowlamMc_zuWNMM2CcHtTw/viewform

We need Spriters, Coders, Concept Artist, and Music Composers!

Pixel Art- We need Battle Sprite, Overworld, Tileset, & Background Artist

Battle Sprite- We are looking for spriters who can draw and animate Undertale Battle Sprites.

Tile set- We are looking for spriters who can create tilesets that can be used for area/map design & creation. There is no special criteria for this role.

Overworld- We need overworld spriters for both Characters and environments!

Background- We are looking for spriters who can draw backgrounds for in game use/ There is no special criteria for this role. Any animated Backgrounds may be done by you or the teams animators. [EXAMPLES DOWN BELOW]

Concept Art- Environmental/Area, & In Game Events

Environmental/Area- We are looking for concept artist who can draw concept art of in game locations and possible sub areas for said locations. There is no special criteria for this role.

In Game Events- Certain in games events like a cut scene, character interactions, etc. There is no special criteria for this role.Music Composer - We need music composers who can really help bring the game to life by help making an awesome soundtrack. There is no special criteria for this role.

Coder- We need more programmers to help turn Undertale Brave Beginnings into reality! Must have experience in GMS2

If you’re interested, here’s the application form!: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWdY5EmbQMYm4Tz4VXtEa6DmpgYowlamMc_zuWNMM2CcHtTw/viewform

Update on The Battle System!

Hey guys! Quick update. The base UT engine for UTBB is complete! Now we are moving on to room/level design and UI changes.

We plan on changing the fight button UI and are currently juggling concepts for it. The thing is- [SPOILORS FOR UTBB]

Valor will have four slots. WEAPON, ARMOR, HANDWEAR & SIGIL.

[EVERYTHING HERE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE]

HANDWEAR is where items like the tough glove (An item you get later in the game) goes once equipped and WEAPONS and ARMORS will work like they do in base game Undertale. For the fight button, we plan on having it take both the WEAPON slot and HANDWEAR slot into account. And because we believe in quality over quantity we will be working hard trying to find a new mechanic that will be new and fun to use. Sadly this may delay any gameplay videos minus a few in-game areas sometime in the near future. We have plans to make a 3-5 min gameplay video showcasing the new battle system + reveal the first area of the game ^^. Oh, and you may have noticed a slot that says SIGIL. . . . Don't worry about that for now

And yes, you do have 15/15 HP at the beginning on the game. There will be ways you can increase your HP. . . One of them I'm sure you're very very familiar with = )

Demo?

The team has been making good progress so far. However, we have decided to take a different approach when releasing the Demo. Following in the foot steps of the main project that inspired Undertale Brave Beginnings (That being Undertale Kindred Spirits by PurrSum ) We are releasing two Prologues to Undertale: Brave Beginnings. It will go as follows

- Prologue- Begin Again (Part 1)

- Three Character reveals/bios

- Prologue- 365 Days (Part 2)

- 1 character reveal/bio

- Full Release

- Full OST Soundtrack release

(Clarification: The prologue for UTBB is just the demo with a fancy name lol)

There is a reason we have split the prologue into two parts. The start of UTBB will be important. It will serve as an introduction to the story and used as a stepping stone for what's to come. The choices you make will have consequences later on. And due to how the story is set up, we feel like this was the best decision. With that being said, we are going back to rewriting somethings regarding the first prologue to make sure it has a smooth transition (and to improve some of the dialog as well). Now why did we give them these names? . . . You'll just have to wait and se ^^

We will also be aiming for a 2025-2027 window for the first prologue however this may change later on so we can not make any promises at this time.

In terms of writing, We went back and rewrote some stuff for the prologue, and the cast for area 2 have their designs finalized but won't be fully reveled just yet.

MISC.

Taking inspiration from DELTARUNE and Undertale: KINDRED SPIRITS. We've made Battle Icons for Valor and other party members (Who are yet to be revealed) Here are Valor's! (and before you ask, yes we did get permission from one of the UTKS devs to do something like this)

(Made by the teams amazing new sprite artist mono_chrome!)

Concept Art

Here’s some concept art for the games story and old promotional material! However. . . You get zero context ^^

(Concepts made by @hollowgears )

Anyway, that’s all for now. See you next update!

[project-sekai-facts]

An Multi Live demo video from April 2020 uses some sprites and sound effects that are not used in the final build.

Most obviously, the sprites for crytals and energy cans are different from the final version. However you might also notice that the stamp sound effect and the timer sound countdown are slightly different to the sounds used in the final game.

The initial trailer for the game, released in October 2019, uses another different set of sprites for crystals and energy cans. These sprites are marked with the kanji for "temporary".

In that initial trailer, you can also see that the Scramble Crossing background is different. Notably, the posters behind Ichika in the trailer have been changed from generic advertisements to posters of Miku and the Kagamines. There are also some foreground and background objects missing in the early build, such as the Miku sign and silhouette people. The planted area takes up the space of the sign instead in this build, and it appears much more blurry than the final version.

The gacha icon is also different to the final game. Here it depicts a gacha machine, whereas the final build depicts a planet-like icon that resembles the SEKAI sprites in the area navigation. It's marked as temporary in this early build, the same as the crystals and energy cans.

Some of these early assets can be seen in an image on the Project SEKAI website, even to this day. In this image, the crystals are not marked as temporary, and the gacha icon is the one from the final build, suggesting this is probably taken from a later build than the one in the initial trailer. None of the sprites are animated in the screenshot, and are left in the deafult position, possibly to make it look neater. This build also has a placeholder for gacha and event banners, using Ichika's untrained Beyond The Sky 3* card illustration.

[19thperson]

19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Feb 2025 Edition - Day 1

Day 0

Played some demos today, but I was worn out enough that I don't feel fully confident in the actual writing of the impressions. Whatever though.

Monster Train 2

Aside from its floor system, the most unique and fun part of the original Monster Train was the fact that each run had the player choose two factions, like mixed color decks in Magic. I can't really gauge how it plays out here, because they only give you two factions here, no room to mix and match. Expected for a demo, but mildly frustrating.

They've added more to this game. the previous one was mostly "play cards and spells, then let character abilities and combat automatically play out." Here some units will have abilities that can be manually activated, with turn based cooldowns. You can now spend equipment on unit cards. You have floor cards that give special effects to individual floors. They've upped the complexity, but in my short time playing… It feels a lot less elegant. My mind might change as I get to grips with it, though.

Last one is that they're making this one more plotty. More characters with dialogue and character interactions between runs. And I can't really comment on it so far but… I don't think Monster Train needed this.

Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3

Apparently this game has been a long running gag for Strange Scaffold, devs of El Paso Elsewhere, I Am Your Beast, and Clickholding. I am out of the loop of this specific joke though.

The game is a very loose parody of resident evil and survival horror games in general, in the form of a match 3 game. You come across a variety of obstacles, and each one you play a puzzle board to get resources to use skills to solve said obstacles. An interesting wrinkle is that after you make a match, whatever you're fighting gets a chance to match-3, so you not only need to get the symbols you need, but also try to starve out your opponent from getting the symbols they need. It also makes it harder to pull off multi-turn setups.

In between the match 3 matches is a simple text based exploration system, CYOA into different rooms and make different choices. Certain choices will unlock traits that will make new choices available in previous areas, so the devs call it a metroidvania even though it's…not. that?

Anyways, the team apparently has made a name for itself with it's writing, haven't played much of their output, but. That isn't on display here yet. Early on after dying once the protagonist realizes he's in a video game and a buggy as fuck one. And from there all the humor is gamer webcomic "isn't video game logic wacky" humor. The ability to go back with new traits is the protag exploring with "debug mode" on.

There is some mild intrigue with the very end of the demo, though, with the swerve that the protag learns his game is buggy because… it was cancelled. There's nothing for him anymore. And you could possibly go somewhere with that. I just hope they do so with a better set of jokes.

Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved

Before anything else, I gotta say that I'm really digging this game's aesthetic. With it's chunky but detailed and expressive character sprites, but backrounds made with explicitly lower detail 3D, it screams original DS.

The interaction is the basic ADV-style "look at background to get bits of info and then run through every dialogue option with every character" that you get with phoenix wright investigation sections.

The plot of the game sounds interesting. During a cross country train ride, a woman disappears, and the protag and assistant duo seem to be the only ones who remember she actually existed. The plot of the demo… isn't much there. You don't even get on the train.

There is some intrigue. The game opening up with a man falling from a 5th story hotel room (and your player character getting falsely accused by the comic relief incompetent cop because he mixed up rooms 105 and 501). There's some fun interactions, like the eccentric detective letting tourists poke around a crime scene while all the other officers are sick of his shit or your weirdly excited co-traveler diving too enthusiastically into the opportunity, and it's all held up by great spritework, but you don't really get to solve anything.

So far, it's a game that runs solely on vibes. But the vibes are excellent.

Isopod

Like webbed before it, this game is a physics platformer starring realistic yet cute bugs in Australia. The biggest shifts are the move from 2d to 3d, and the inexplicable extra power moving from a laser to magnet powers.

The magnet is an equal parts blessing and curse. The name of the game is momentum, and aside from slopes the main tool to do this is using magnetic pull. When it works its incredible. But the game auto-targets what you're magnetizing to, and if you misjudge it, the closest magnet being behind you, you're whipped backwards and your momentum is killed. I'm not sure if it's a system issue or a skill issue.

I was frustrated with the demo's Koopa-the-Quick style race. The game asks you to run through gates, but their hitbox is relatively unforgiving, it's too easy to slip passed it when your momentum is high.

I wasn't able to finish this one due to time. I may revisit it, but for now I'll leave it as: Less intuitive than Webbed, but more potential. May need some polishing.

[funhaversclub]

Super Mario Brothers!

...the game, the movie, the game?

It's always been a dream to make a game out of the 90's Mario Bros. Movie but with all the projects on the go plus work it never really seemed like a possibility.

Over the years I've seen artists make AMAZING sprites from the movie and I saved a few just in case inspiration hit and I decided to put something together. I consider myself a pretty good artist but once I came across Izzi Rae's sprites (seen above) I thought, shit... those are kind of perfect. Especially the Goomba and Koopa Troopa. They are glorious. Izzi fused Super Mario World with the 90's Mario Movie really well. So I saved them and that was the end of the story... Until recently. Another artist SuperSledgeBro. released a tile set for Koopa City including flashing signs. Immediately I dug up Izzi's sprites and I just had to do something...

I used Petey Pest's engine and whipped up a quick little demo. I wanted to have the demo done in time for the theatre viewing of the 90's Mario movie in Toronto but the more I added the bigger the demo got. I wasn't even going to change Petey into Mario but it had to be done! (that's where all the extra animations come from)

The final Product, featured in the video above, used both sprites and tiles from the mentioned artists aswell as edits, add on and a background by me. I would've loved to make a full game but this was only suppsoed to be a fun little demo and I had to stop it before it started to consume me.

(these are my 90's Mario Bros. Movie sprites. I wouldv'e loved to make the SMW Mario in the demo look like this but... I had to stop somewhere.)

PS: if you don't know what I mean when I say Petey Pest check this out!

[hoenn-betadex]

Introduction

In October 2024, a massive data breach of Game Freak occurred, leaking tons of internal data for Pokemon, in what has been coined the "Teraleak".

As a big fan of beta/unused content in video games and Pokemon, I've always been extremely fascinated by the design work that goes behind each Pokemon, and how each generation seems to pick up its pieces a little differently.

In this blog, I'll be discussing each Pokemon in the Hoenn Pokedex, ordering and grouping them by their development history. We'll take a deep dive into each one, and hopefully we can learn more about the development of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire together!

This blog is heavily inspired by the amazing Asmorano's blog about Pokemon Gold/Silver's beta dex, which you can find here.

I'd like to give a special shoutout to TCRF and /vp/ for sorting through this data.

Timeline

Since we'll be going over each Pokemon, it only makes sense to order them Chronologically. This will give us a good sense of which Pokemon were designed first, what types of changes they went through, and more.

January 26, 2001 (Trademark Era)

A short list of Pokemon names that were trademarked on January 26, 2001, predating all leaked development files. These Pokemon are especially interesting, as they were designed and finished very quickly to begin advertising the games.

There are also two Pokemon who are exceptions to this, Duskull and Wynaut, who went through a similar process later in development (September 25, 2001).

August 28, 2001 (Monster Era)

The earliest pieces of concept art for Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. This collection of monstrous designs are mostly dated for July 29, 2002, but one of the images predates the rest by an entire year! This is almost certainly evidence that this entire batch are actually from August 28th, 2001, which would make sense considering the extreme art style difference.

November 1st, 2001 (Voting Area)

The first set of actual sprites for Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. This is a "first draft" point in development, with many designs being unfinished. During this time in development, internal polls were conducted to see the opinions on designs, and some even include short notes about the Pokemon.

March 25-31, 2002 (Festa Demo)

The next batch of Pokemon is significantly smaller, with many Pokemon, both beta and final, being removed. While it's possible this is just an incomplete data set, it's more likely that this was an attempt to finalize a small roster to showcase at the Pokemon 2002 Festa Demo, which would go on to show off the games. Since this demo was shown off starting on June 10, 2002, it would make sense for them to be finishing off a set of Pokemon to prepare for the event.

It should be noted that this is still a work in progress roster, since Volbeat is missing, despite appearing in the Festa Demo.

July 2002 Scratchpads

This is a set of scratchpad files the developers used to draw up drafts of different sprites. By this point, the final Pokedex had been settled on (besides 5 cut Pokemon who only existed in the data briefly.)

Unfortunately, these files are missing dates, but we can assume they come from July-October 2002, considering these are later revisions than the Festa Demo, but still predating the final designs from November 2002.

The reason I suspect July is due to Pokedex files dated July 17, 2002 that has a nearly completed Pokedex, with only a few missing/changed Pokemon.

Since these are scratchpads meant for testing, there are usually multiple drafts, unfinished sprites, or even completely different Pokemon making appearances!

I'll be going through each era of the game's development, looking at each Pokemon from their initial draft up until their final designs.

I will be using the following format (shamelessly ripped from Asmorano) for each Pokemon. For Kecleon, we have the earliest version of the official artwork uploaded online, as well as every rendition of its sprite. The unused "Other" row will be used in case there's anything extra to put.

Hope you're all as excited as I am to go on this journey!

[h9o6]

[NEWS] Extended demo released! Download & Play now!

Hello! Today's update is super exciting because as the title says...

The extended demo of MY DEAR☆LOVE has been released!!! (Windows only)

After two long weeks of hard work (and many cups of coffee), we are happy to finally share what we have been working on!

We apologize for the delay. The development of this extended demo had taken longer than expected due to us working more hours for our day jobs, but it was our goal to release it this weekend, and we are glad that we were able to achieve it despite the setbacks. 

Extended Demo features:

Estimated 1 hour play time. The full version, MY DEAR☆LOVE PLUS+, has an estimated play time of 8-15 hours.

Meet the male love interest Atsuya and side character Hayato Arihara.

Stat-raising simulation mode is now playable! It can be accessed from the title screen.

Cooking mini game is now playable! You can make curry in the story mode, or make omurice in the mini game mode (accessible from the title screen).

Visual novel mode that extends to the end of the prologue.

1 full colour CG featuring the male love interest Atsuya.

Save/load feature and general settings menu with a toggle for Main Character portrait.

Keyboard input is available; please refer to the "Read Me" text file included in the demo file.

Japanese or English language option available in settings from the title screen only.

We apologize there is a bug in the cooking mini game: In the part where you cut the ingredients, the knife will not be aligned with your cursor in fullscreen mode. To avoid this, at the tutorial screen, switch to window mode by pressing the F key or F4 key on your keyboard. We are working on resolving this and will provide a fix as soon as possible.

*The game is in development. The demo does not represent the final game. CG gallery is not available in this demo. Please email us at hnineosix@gmail.com if you encounter any errors when playing the demo. 

Due to time constraints, we have had to prioritize certain functions and omit other aspects. However, we plan to release a version 2.2 update that will further enhance the player experience and provide fixes. 

Plans for the version 2.2 update:

Enhanced functions of the stat-raising simulation mode

More character sprite expression

More "cut-ins" which are in-game visuals that complement text

Enhanced graphics and staging effects, camerawork, etc.

Fixes to the GUI and other minor fixes

With the release of this extended demo, the mini demo will be removed from our game page on itch.io. Thank you to everyone who gave it a try! This week we will be progressively updating our Kickstarter campaign with new screenshots, Epilogue DLC story reveal, samples of the digital artbook, a teaser video, and possibly a teaser of our next game (a double-protagonist dating sim with optional GxG/BxB content!).

MY DEAR☆LOVE is set to release as a free game in early 2025. Our Kickstarter campaign, at a funding goal of $6,500 CAD (approximately $4,720 USD), is to fund the development of an extended version that will feature more upgrades, including new gameplay, more mini games, more CGs and story endings. We are dedicated to making this game a reality, and if we could have your support, we believe we can deliver it at its full creative potential and provide a even more enjoyable player experience. If we manage to reach the corresponding stretch goal of $11,000 CAD (approximately $7,987 USD), a MacOS port will be developed.

In closing, we would like to take a moment to show our appreciation for the support we have received. H9O6 is a small indie studio consisting of two creative minds (and a cat!) with big dreams. We hope this extended demo will show you our dedication to game-making and other creative pursuits. Your support means the world to us and motivates us to strive for the best we can.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the new extended demo! ❤

[maxdegames]

The Spriters Resource is a gem for roleplayers

And if you don't know about it, here's a list of stuff I've been using from it. But first, what's spriter's resource? It's a website made by Dazz (@TheVGResource) dedicated to archiving sprites from video games for more than two decades now. It's an incredible ressource that I was already strolling through when I was a kid, recreating animations from Fire Emblem sprites and what not.

For TTRPG players using a virtual tabletop, the Spriter's Resource is a mine full of already polished gemstones. My main use for it is for Fabula Ultima, but it's compatible to any type of game. But it's also a gigantic library in which it's easy to get lost.

The goal of this post is to make a list of games archived on the Spriter's with sprites useful for us ttrpg players. This is mostly about creatures, but many ressources can also be used as a battle background for games that do not use battlemaps, or as a background for the scene. I will try to keep it updated when I use new ones.

A note before the list : if you want a quicker overview of what is possible, I already made a post breaking down how I use it for my Fabula Ultima scenes.

And so the list starts, first with...

Characters and Monsters

And there's already a caveat. I did not include any Fire Emblem game, because I generally use Flying Minotaur's portrait maker instead of going directly to these games. It lets you generate tokens and portraits from different Fire Emblem GBA games and is my go-to for PCs and human characters. Which is why most of that list includes monsters and machines, things the PCs will fight against.

Adventure Bar Story : cool beasts and monsters, with many elemental variants. Breath of Fire 3 : lots of great monsters, especially if you're looking for boss fights. Breath of Fire 4 : has a smoother art style but similar qualities. Castlevania : Aria of Sorrow Castlevania : Circle of the Moon Castlevania : Dawn of Sorrow Castlevania : Order of Ecclesia Castlevania : Portrait of Ruin Castlevania : Symphony of the Night All of these have cool occult creatures, including a good number of skeletons and animated armor. Children of Mana is full of critters, mostly on the smaller end with a few notable bosses. CrossCode is an incredible resource for techno-fantasy and space-fantasy settings, including a bunch of cybernetic animals. Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion has mechs. Dragon Warrior 7 has a bunch of classic colorful monsters. Elminage DS Remix: Yami no Miko to Kamigami no Yubiwa and Elminage II DS Remix: Sousei no Megami to Unmei no Daichi both have monsters that would be great for bosses. Eternal Eyes has lot of cute monsters. Final Fantasy Tactics Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift These three have a lot of characters, some monsters, as well as maps you could use as battlemaps and cool looking effects. Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius has a lot of characters. Radiant Historia has some characters a cool monsters. Ragnarok online has characters if you're ready to build them, but the true treasure is the wealth of monsters. Sword of Mana has monsters. La Pucelle Tactics also has monsters, in a quite unique style. Octopath Traveler Octopath Traveler II Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent These have huge quantities of characters, monsters and bosses. Tales of Destiny's got monsters. Tales of Eternia has monsters, including sci-fi ones.

Backgrounds

These will be good to serve as background during scenes where you don't use tokens.

Atelier Ayesha Atelier Meruru Atelier Lydie Atelier Sophie Atelier Totori All have cute fantasy backgrounds. Café Enchanté has many urban backgrounds, as well as a few esoteric ones. Code: Realize Guardian of Rebirth has a large quantities of background that would be good for victorian and steampunk type of world, as well as many that are just nature (forests, mountains, etc). Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth has a few backgrounds. Really good, but also very small. Fate/EXTELLA LINK has good sci fi backgrounds. Fate/Hollow Ataraxia and Fate/Stay Night remastered have good urban backgrounds. Fire Emblem Engage has some in the event pictures section. Fire Emblem : Path of Radiance has a lot of backgrounds, as well as variants for rain, snow, etc.

Battle backgrounds

SINoALICE has a few background. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has a lot of really good, tall backgrounds. Fire Emblem Heroes is a gold mine, with background separated into overlays and underlays, allowing you to animate skyboxes, mist, falling leaves and things like that.

Other

Fire Emblem Engage Fire Emblem Three Houses have good icons and a lot of useful UI elements. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia Fire Emblem Fates Fire Emblem The Binding Blade Fire Emblem The Blazing Blade Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones have good pixel art icons.

[nitrosodiumaltcontroller]

Rough Idea Generation - Games and Controllers

Having now been given basic information on what I can do in this project, and having undertaken research into possible alternate methods of input action, I already had some thoughts of devices I could try and create. Most of these amounted to household items that could be converted into controllers with some rewiring. I got the main idea from this video:

In it, people play various shooters with a driving rig, calculator, drawing tablet, drum kit, Guitar Hero controller, and even a DDR foot pad. Now, these examples don't particularly go into the depths of accessibility - it's more to show the alternate controllers at work - but it helped me to understand how games can be played and even won without relying on WASD or a twin-stick controller configuration. I generated three controller ideas (plus a variation of the first one) and wrote some basic concepts down in my notebook here.

I will go through these one at a time.

Game Idea 1 - Binary Sidescroller

Controller #1 is an object I have had so long that I have forgotten its original purpose. I think it was supposed to be some sort of Halloween wand.

This device has a switch on the side, which essentially gives it two inputs along with 'neutral'. When the switch is moved up, it lights up and spins. When the switch is moved down, it lights up, spins, and makes spooooooky noises.

What I saw here was a possible controller, but also an accessible one: all its possible inputs require a single thumb. My game idea to go along with this was a sidescroller, in which the two settings correlate to you moving along each dimension of the game world: one moves you rightward along the screen, while the other moves you upward like a jetpack. What this results in is a game akin to Jetpack Joyride, but the catch is that you can't move up and right at the same time. This restriction could then make for some interesting environmental puzzles: feathering up and right to do a sort of air-dash, using teleport pads to return to a previous position given that you can't walk leftwards, and other mechanics akin to that. To make sure that the actual basis of the game would be functional, I made a very short demo.

Obviously they always say you should never even think about prototyping before you've decided on a game idea, but I think this is necessary. Firstly, it's not a waste of time because it took about ten minutes, and secondly, it's for functional reasons. If I'm making a game with an entirely proprietary type of controller, I need to know if my game idea could even work with this sort of binary input system. And it does, somewhat. I played around with the 3D environment and added a disc that rotates the player 90 degrees, to increase the amount of space I can use in the level. Of course, it might be a standard 2d sprites and flipbooks affair. I don't know yet, but the basic mechanics are there.

Game 2 - Skid-Steer Tank

My second idea consisted of these grip strength trainers. I was thinking about how I could use them as controllers, and while I had a basic idea of the technical work required (two bits of wire at the bottom, when you tighten your grip, the circuit connects, and that registers as an input on the makeymakey), I couldn't think of what sort of game they could be for. It was then during my research on fairground games, I was reminded of those types of skid-steer bumper cars I had been on as a kid.

There are two levers that control the rotation. Pull the left one down, you turn left, pull the right one down, you go right. Pull them both down, you go forward. I realised that the grip trainers could be used like these levers, and would be far more tactile and immersive than just pressing keys on a keyboard. The main issue with this idea is that it is not too inclusive to people with weak grip strength. If you can't fully close the grip trainer, you can't play the game. This could potentially be fixed with a variable wire length, allowing the amount of force required to be customised before you play. I'm not sure yet. Like the other controller idea, I made a very basic demo to see if my idea would be actually playable.

The good news is that it does work on a technical level. All I'm pressing in this video is A and D - when you press them both at the same time, it goes forward. The bad news is that I think I'm getting motion sick from playing. I'd probably need to code a slower turn speed, since it doesn't feel like you're in any sort of tank, despite the tank controls. Plus there are some slight issues about a fire button - I could have the gun fire automatically, or maybe fire when you start moving, so you have to pump the grip testers to shoot. Then again, that's a repetitive action, so this whole system needs some retooling.

Game 3 - Twin-Stick Mech

I got the third idea mostly from Steel Battalion, when I researched it earlier today. The image is of my brother's FarmStick, which he uses to control the arm on a telehandler when he plays Farming Simulator. It got me thinking about a possible setup consisting of two sticks similar to this, each with eight-directional movement - one for movement and one for looking around. Each would have some buttons on top for extra actions; the movement stick would have jump, crouch, sprint etc. while the look stick would have shoot, aim, reload, and other combat-oriented buttons. The purpose of this controller would be for more immersively playing mech games, but instead of being over-complicated and bespoke, this could be used for multiple games. To make it even more accessible (i.e. for those who only have use of one side of their body), it could instead be one stick with lots of buttons, like the original FarmStick, which can then be remapped to suit the player's needs. If you want to play with twin sticks, that can also work - just plug two of them in.

From what I understand, joysticks like this are considered to be more accessible than standard controllers. A stick was included as an accessory for the Xbox Adaptive Controller we saw earlier today (https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adaptive-controller), and I have read various reviews of people who use them. The primary issue with this idea is that I have no clue how to build something like this, and I don't want to buy two FarmSticks just for a college project when I might not even be able to bring them home at the end.

Game 4 - Tram Adventure

I also had a fourth idea, which I did not write down in the notepad, but I still think it holds some water. I was thinking about other ways I could use the wand as a controller, given that it has only two inputs. Then I realized the obvious: forward and backward. My idea here is to have the player riding a train, akin to the On A Rail chapter from Half Life, but they must avoid overhanging winches and crates as they move across the tunnel. It would essentially play like 3D, first person Frogger, with other possible mechanics like flatbed trains acting like the logs in that game.

Of course, none of this is set in stone; they're just preliminary ideas. I may end up doing a board game instead.

[pixelgrotto]

Karate History & Box Art Redemption

About a year and a half ago, I mentioned Jordan Mechner's seminal 1984 game Karateka in a post about Sifu, a newly-released beat ‘em up with a similar martial arts theme and tough-as-nails difficulty level. Sifu's a good game that garnered a certain amount of scrutiny from people who pointed out that it was an interactive experience steeped in Chinese culture but developed by a predominantly white team. This is not inherently a bad thing (Sifu’s devs did a respectful job), but considering Western media’s track record of misrepresenting Asia as an exotic place full of Fu Manchu-mustachioed bad guys and subservient women, it’s always worthwhile to be cautious. At any rate, Sifu reminded me a lot of Karateka, another game by a non-Asian creator that owed its lifeblood to Asian culture...and even featured the main protagonist and his love interest as white on the box art, despite the fact that the game clearly takes place in medieval Japan.

The Making of Karateka, a just-released interactive documentary by Digital Eclipse, explains the logic behind this decision via extensive notes that detail every step of the game's creation. From what I can discern, the box art design doesn’t appear to have been Jordan Mechner’s call. (Though the playable Karateka beta included in this package reveals that Mechner had some wacky non-Japanese names in mind for the game’s villain and damsel in distress... Akuma and Mariko were once dubbed “Kratang” and “Tiger Lily.” Yikes!) Rather, publisher Brøderbund’s marketing team seems to have been the division that assigned artist Thomas Blackshear II to paint the cover, instructing him that the titular Karateka was supposed to look like "a young Chuck Norris" or "Luke Skywalker" while Mariko should resemble an "American blonde." Meanwhile, only Akuma was specified as "Japanese."

Brøderbund’s promotional strategy followed the typical American metality of the era: it's okay to portray a bad guy as a foreign race, but leading men and ladies should be white and ideally blonde. It didn't have to be this way, since Bruce Lee had dominated cinemas with Enter the Dragon only a decade earlier and proved that audiences could accept an Asian hero. But Brøderbund decided to go the safe route, despite the fact that Thomas Blackshear is a person of color renowned for his Black and American Indian paintings. (He also portrayed a decidedly unblonde and possibly Asian main character in his early cover sketches.)

My intention here is not to hate on Karateka or any of the individuals involved. The original Karateka game for the Apple II did, after all, feature white hair for its leading man's sprite that could easily be interpreted as blonde (though that was likely due to hardware color limitations more than anything else), and Brøderbund justified their decision by claiming they were inspired by the multicolored hair of Japanese manga characters. (Eh, sure.) Also, if we're being honest about it, Blackshear's final art is a beautiful composition even with the questionable racial depictions.

Rather, I'm fascinated with Karateka's box as an example of mildly problematic '80s promotion, and I love how we gain insight into its development thanks to Digital Eclipse' painstaking efforts with what they call the first in their "Gold Master Series" of playable documentaries. Aside from these marketing details, The Making of Karateka delves into Jordan Mechner's early life in precise timeline fashion, letting us explore planning documents, early rotoscoping footage and prototypes of not only Karateka, but the games that preceded it, including Mechner's take on Asteroids and a shooter he was trying to develop called Deathbounce. There's even glimpses at the bones of a platforming puzzle game that started out as Karateka II and would later evolve into Prince of Persia.

Just about every review of The Making of Karateka stresses how this package sets a new standard for preservation in the video game industry, a business that is terrible at chronicling its own past. I won't repeat these arguments too much other than to say that I fullheartedly agree. Behind the scenes featurettes used to be a thing when it came to games — as a kid, I remember being utterly absorbed with the "Making of King's Quest VI" footage that came included on the CD-ROM — but these days you're unlikely to see too many of them, especially for titles that were released decades ago. In a world where Nintendo has yet to localize Mother 3 and customers need to rely on emulation and all types of hacks to revisit old games, Digital Eclipse's commitment to curating digital museums dedicated to works like Karateka is an incredible worthy goal — possibly one of the most important goals that a video game company has ever embarked upon. I can't wait to see more volumes in the Gold Master Series, and can think of many potential entries off the top of my head. Pitfall! Ultima! Doom! Maybe even one day...Sifu? (Likely a stretch, but stranger things have happened.)

But going back to the discusson of art for a moment, one of the most monumental things that The Making of Karateka does is offer a "remastered" version of its title game, complete with impressive graphical flairs, a more managable difficulty level, and even...revised box art. While Thomas Blackshear's original Karateka painting is still displayed prominently throughout the package, when you go to select Karateka Remastered under the list of playable games, you'll see a new mockup box. No longer is Akuma a dehumanized Japanese baddie, no longer is Mariko an all-American girl, no longer is the titular Karateka Luke Skywalker. All three characters are Asian...and get this, the central Karateka is not only Asian, but blonde too.

In one swift stroke, The Making of Karateka not only captures history and chronicles its mistakes, but also revises them for a bright future. Take that, 1984 marketing.

Update: An earlier version of this article stated that the new mockup cover art was illustrated by Digital Eclipse in-house artist Mae Livingston. Mike Mika, the president of Digital Eclipse, reached out to me on Twitter to explain that while Mae was responsible for Karateka Remastered's in-game artwork, the actual box image was made via Midjourney, and the characters were tweaked multiple times to look more culturally appropriate. He added that this methodology was an experiment that Digital Eclipse does not intend to rely on in the future.

I have very mixed opinions on AI art, and I do wish this box had been created by a human. I don't know if I would've written this piece if I'd known that the artwork was made by Midjourney, frankly. Nevertheless, I appreciate Mike actually reaching out to me, and the ultimate message of this article still stands. I hope Digital Eclipse considers the power that an image like this holds — especially for multiracial people like myself — and chooses human artists in the future.

[livehexmoments]

Hi sorry i havent been posting as much on here FEWFERHR

I swear im still fixated on DMG stuff (especially hex, again), ive just been busy writing stuff for it and general stuff not related to it. I am working on a fic so i’ll probably be posting it soon!

but anyway as apologies for not posting, here’s some fun facts/cheat codes from The Hex that some people might not know:

In the Hex, it is very possible to accidently get softlocked or corrupt your save data. I know that the game has had many patches but i still managed to get softlocked by complete accident. So if you ever lose your save data for whatever reason, shift + A + S unlocks the chapter select so you’re free to continue where ever you left off or just want to play a certain section

Also this game has an in-game speedrun timer. Not kidding. Doing shift + R has the timer show up and start counting. I don’t know much of the mechanics of it like how to pause it or whatnot but if you ever wanted to see how fast you can beat a section, here you go. 

So i ripped the game using asset studio and found some interesting stuff, like did you know there’s actually a clean version of the inn theme in the files? Literally the official ost does not have it nor have i ever found a yt video with it and honestly im a little upset about it cause it’s really good 

In the scene where Irving is talking to Lionel, I think there is audio of Lionel talking to him backwards but i haven’t been able to figure out how to isolate the audio and reverse it to get what exactly he’s saying. One of these days ill figure it out

ok this isnt really a fun fact more as it is a genuine question but to any Hex experts out there: Does Jeremiah wear a tophat in game? I found a sprite of it several times in the files but I can literally never recall him wearing it in game. It might just be leftover sprite from the beta (There might be more sprites like that that I’m not aware of yet) and probably was cut?? But again, I’m not 100% sure.

Update on that last point: He does wear it in the main menu if you wait for the lightning to strike and look at the attic window (thats him btw if anyone didnt know) and in the settings! It’s usually obscured in shadows and in the files, it’s completely colored in and detailed, which is super neat. Shoutouts to @theblacksheepcz for telling me in the replies!! <3

Like with Inscryption, there are some default sprites and stuff from unity leftover but it’s not as cool as the strip club being found in ACT 3. Just default emojis and the logo of Unity. 

Ok last one and its another genuine question too: When looking up the characters’ “voices”, it’s actually just one little sound and that’s it. It’s pretty funny if you listen to it for the first time. In the dialogue text files, I did see that there’s code that basically makes it so that it pitches or sounds a certain way during cutscenes and interreacting with characters/objects. If anyone who sees this and gets this far knows how that works, I would love to hear it! 

[wirewitchviolet]

Console Design- Can I have my cake and eat it too?

Recently I spilled the beans that I have a little hobby project slowly brewing away where I am designing a new game console. I'm still not ready to really properly pitch the whole thing, but between sharing that, explaining computer architecture, and seeing people's feedback, it keeps pushing itself towards the front burners over more practical projects I SHOULD be giving my focus to, and while people are paying attention, I might as well try to crowdsource answers to some questions I'm getting hung up on.

So... a lot of what I'm doing here is, I'll be honest, rooted in nostalgia for 16-bit consoles. There's a certain retro appeal to the look, speed, and general immediacy of 8-bit games, and more than plenty of support for making games that evoke that feel, and even recently made free dev tools for people to just make new games for older systems, and as I'm writing this, there is this massive renaissance going on with indie devs restricting them to the constraints of early polygonal-graphics-focused consoles, but we mostly skipped right past that 16-bit period, and all its hallmarks:

2D graphics with more color-depth than people really knew what to do with. All sorts of hardware-level flashy effects like transparency, resolution changes, neat little raster effects. A soundscape of crunchy FM synth and sparingly used sampling with distortion effects. Just a little taste of support for polygonal graphics. Not enough to go all-in, but enough to make a nice spice here and there. A general push to show off with fancy jointed paper doll sprites, 3D effects from sprite-scaling, just... clear ambitions all over to make low res 2D eye candy. Plus everything was cartridge based, allowing people to add extra custom chips for things they really wanted that they didn't quite have the power for.

So that's basically what I want to deliver here. A platform where you have more toys and tricks than you know what to do with if you're coming from 8-bit style stuff, but a real tricky set of restrictions to work around from a more modern approach, hopefully with its own look and sound. To that end I've been doing a ton of research into how some of those work... and a lot of it involves fun little tricks between scanlines. In particular, if you look at that mode 7 video above, right around 7:50, we've got this real eye-popping barrel distortion background. What's going on here, on a hardware level, is we have the ability to, essentially, apply one single image as a texture to a single parallelogram, which in this case is just taking a rectangular background and squishing it in towards the center then out towards its regular dimensions... but where doing that squishing and stretching between individual scan lines as we send the video out to the screen. Several changes to the shape before we've even finished rendering out one frame of the video, and tada, weird barrel.

Being able to support tricks like THAT, specifically, is a must-have feature for what I'm working on, and I'm pretty confident I can design the hardware with that exact capability... but the original hardware doing that was, to my understanding, very much working with the peculiarities of how a CRT worked and the exact number of operations it could get done while the beam was swiping back to the left to draw the next line, and I legitimately have no idea if tricks like this are even really possible if I slap together a similar chipset and send video out an HDMI cord to a modern display.

Like, I know I can fake that. I've got a Retron 5 hooked to a cheap flat panel TV with Castlevania 4 plugged in, but my understanding is that's actually emulating an SNES in software on some very-much-overkill for this sort of thing modern processor. What I would LIKE to do is build this with a chipset you really can push to its limits, hooked to modern display, and get this sort of effect. Because while I realize a big chunk of the audience for this sort of thing totally have nice well-maintained CRTs, I don't want to be married to hardware people no longer manufacture. And I'd rather not have some way more capable sub-processor wedged in here just to get the video output of whatever cheap fast legit 16-bit chipset I use otherwise to play nice with HDMI standards.

I'm still sort of in the dark about HDMI and modern display options, to be clear. And you know in a perfect world I'd like to have support built into this if you want to hook it to a CRT, but at the end of the day I need to pick an aspect ratio, and it's probably gonna be 16:9.

A similar fork in the road I may need to pick a lane for before I can really get going is looking at ASIC chips. What I'd really love is to be able to just point people at a design files for the casing and PCBs, and a warehouse of old mass-produced chips that sell for pennies, make the whole thing a neat little home electronics kit where the total price of everything is like, maybe $10 or $20 or something, you get out a soldering iron, and assemble it all yourself. But, I might need to custom design a chip or two in the end, and there's a chance it ends up being cheaper to just build literally the whole system on one chip. Simpler, easier to make a portable version of the whole thing, but it loses that DIY feel.

And of course there's also the risk that the overall architecture and chipset I'm looking at isn't going to have the oomph to do what I want it to do at a nice steady 60 FPS (maybe 120?) I'm just kind of assuming once I commit to a path I'll be able to find a dirt cheap chipset covering all the bases I need it to that'll hold up at a faster clock speed than consoles really ran at in the mid-90s. I want people to be able to do things smoothly that historically really had some slowdown, and you know, I AM planning to have a higher base resolution than the systems I'm taking inspiration from (maybe the same height but clearly more width).

And of course the real pain is going to be prototyping all this since none of it's going to work without hooking display AND something popped into a cartridge slot. I'm at least saving myself some headache starting with a controller I can at least test in other things, but wow there's gonna be so many different potential failure points to worry about at one step in here.

[miidia]

Hello again everyone. It's me, Goose. This time around we'll be talking about the famously mysterious and genre-defining ゆめにっき Yume Nikki (Dream Diary) released between 2004 and 2007.

I first learned about this game in late 2020 through YouTube algorithm suggestions. It seems like the YouTube algorithm has a pretty strong track record of igniting interest in retro products and aesthetics. I remember not too long ago when it was (in my humble opinion) majorly responsible for the resurgence in popularity of Japanese 'city pop'. At that time, I wasn't actually too drawn in by those video thumbnails. Yume Nikki just came off as some unremarkable pixelated game for wasting time. I was definitely picking up on the darker vibes, but it still crossed me as kind of disinteresting.

Then, eventually, I actually clicked one of those thumbnails. It must have been the sprite designs of the game. They were so bizarre and often very visceral. I became attracted to the visual style, the music, and then... the backstory. It turns out the background of Yume Nikki but more particularly its creator, the mononymous 'Kikiyama' (a Japanese surname), is shrouded in great anonymity. That's not my story to tell, however. Plenty of others have already done that job. There's even a great podcast on the whole mystery by a Lewis Denby I highly suggest.

Once digging into both the mystery behind the game's creation and the complex symbolism and messaging of the RPG, it becomes evident that heavy themes are at hand... suicide, sexual assault, violence, childhood trauma to name a few. Granted, all of this 'story' is carefully extracted from a very nebulous but frequently disturbing set of actions, environments, sprites, and sounds/music. Because of this, the story is understood differently by everyone. Personally, I find the social disorder/childhood trauma theories most convincing.

Yume Nikki is a walking RPG. In the most literal sense, you spend the entirety of the game walking, moving, from one place to the next. Actions and interactions are possible but relatively limited in what they have to offer. You are essentially responsible for collecting a number of 'eggs' within the interconnected but discrete maps of the game, and I figure this mechanic is less intended to be gameplay as much as it drives the player to explore all possible locations in the game. It's meditative and self driven. I feel sometimes when I play it that you really get out what you put it. It's a mirror in some ways, reflecting our stirring thoughts and questions back at us in statement form. With any sort of dialogue or inner monologue absent, the narrative of the game becomes your interpretation of Madotsuki (our main character, a shut-in young girl) and her waking life and dream environments. Madotsuki (窓付き) is not a real/common name in Japanese; it literally means 'window-fixed'. I wonder if this choice was meant to highlight Madotsuki's ruminating nature, exacerbated by physical isolation.

Yume Nikki, as I mentioned, is a genre-defining title which has incredibly clear influence on a number of widely known titles such as Omori, Undertale, and Lisa: The First to name a few. Of course, Yume Nikki itself draws strong stylistic inspiration from and directly references the Famicom's MOTHER (of the EarthBound series).

I'm finding it difficult to find an appropriate comment to conclude this post with. I feel like my journey with Yume Nikki is nowhere near over; I actively do and will continue to return to this game many times in the future. I think one day I would like to try making music in the style of the game. I have always been very moved by video game music. Needless to say, this conversation will continue through the discussions of other titles like those mentioned in this post. In the mean time, don't let Uboa get you!

Until next time,

Goose

EDIT: BONUS THOUGHTS!! Just as the final paragraph of this post suggests, I was struggling to find an interesting conclusion when writing this. I am returning to share that I often have Yume Nikki no commentary gameplay playing on my TV in the background of whatever I'm doing (or not doing). The game's atmosphere is so palpable... I could (and might even secretly want) to get let lost in this game. Tonight Mr. Goose is dealing with friction of wanting to have beautiful, inspiring, captivating thoughts while also wanting deeply to connect with the present moment. Peace.