#but it's a 2D platformer so you know not really the same thing

[a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats]

postin this on here because I feel as if people will appreciate it

[writebackatya]

DuckTales (2017) Discussion Time!

Let’s say one day Disney decided “Hey we should make a video game based off the 2017 reboot of DuckTales!” What type of video game would YOU want that DuckTales video game to be?

Feel free to be in-depth as you want! Or if you want answer along the lines of “Mario Kart but with ducks” that’s also acceptable! Feel free to respond or reblog with your own answers!

If you want my ideas, check below the break!

Aw. How sweet, you wanna hear my ideas

Game Idea 1: Platformer

Well I’m sure all the older fans of DuckTales or anyone who is familiar with retro gaming should already know that the ducks have had plenty of adventures in gaming: Including two NES platformers based of the OG DuckTales as well as a remastered version of the first game!

Fun Fact! The remastered version is where the Gyro’s black licorice oxychew came from!

So I wouldn’t mind if we got a platformer starring the modern cast! Personally I’d love to play more than just Scrooge. The playable characters in my mind would be the main five: Scrooge, Webby, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Oh and instead of a 2D platformer, I think this should be a 3D platformer

Donald has been in one of those before!

Like the NES game there will be different levels and you can select which one you want to go first! The world’s would be pretty big with certain areas only accessible to certain characters through their own respected skills

Game Idea 2: Fighting Game

DuckTales (2017) has the perfect cast of characters for a fighting game! They’re all adventurers that know how to fight! And they have their own distinct costumes, personalities, and fighting styles! Also can you imagine the different fighting stages?! That casino Gladstone got stuck in, Gyro’s lab, Darkwing’s lair, the Cloudslayer/Sunchaser (both the garage and on the plane), the dream world(s), the list goes on! Also Bradford in that armor from the finale in front of the The Solego Vortex would make for a GREAT final boss stage

Also besides the heroes I want the villains to be playable characters, this roster would be stacked! Also characters like Fenton and Drake can switch between their regular identities and their superhero identity

But most importantly, I want more character interactions! One thing I love in modern fighting games is their character specific dialogue between two fighters! It’s always fun and the characters from DuckTales would be perfect for that!

Yo Disney! If you need someone to come up with ideas for that, I’m your guy! I’m already coming up with some in my head

You know what? I want Huey, Dewey, and Louie as a team to count as one playable character kinda like how the Turtles are in Injustice. Same with May and June

Game Idea 3: RPG

I admit I ain’t the biggest RPG guy, the ones I really played through are stuff like the Mario themed ones, Pokémon, and Kingdom Hearts but I really think the DuckTales world would be perfect for this kind of game

I actually talked about this idea with @tokuvivor awhile back. We kinda imagined a turn based RPG with timed hits and party members like you’d see in Super Mario RPG and the early Paper Mario games (also Mario & Luigi but just for timed hits)

Since DuckTales has such a huge cast we thought it’d be fun if in the game you could meet different characters throughout the game and have them join your party. We were thinking about having 3-5 members for the player’s party and the only requirement would be one of the main characters (one of the triplets, Webby, or Scrooge) has to be in that group at all times. Kinda like the Mario ones require Mario to always be present in the team

Like I said about the fighting game, DuckTales has such a wide range of characters with their own unique skills, I think it’d be cool building your team to your liking

Game Idea 4: Mario Kart but with Ducks

Okay. Now I know that there have been a lot of Disney racing games some of which have featured some of these characters already. But come on, a Mario Kart type game in the DuckTales world would be so cool!!

Imagining driving around Scrooge’s Mansion in a go-kart! He’d be pissed but it’d be cool! Or in the streets of St. Canard! Or any of the places where the family has adventured!

But what would be REALLY cool is if Funso’s Fun Zone was a track! Just imagine this! You drive around Funso’s then all of sudden you find path leading down to F.O.WL.’s Lair!! That’d be so cool!

[squid-ink-symphony]

f1sh and chips headcanons?

IVE BEEN PREPARING FOR THIS MOMENT MY WHOLE LIFE

HARMONY:

Nonbinary and kinda indifferent on their gender. Goes by She/They. Doesn't really care if you use other pronouns for them tho.

Aromantic and a lesbian. Is still ok with labeling a relationship as dating even if she doesn't experience romantic love the same way as other people.

Autistic, and doesn't always function super well as an adult on her own. But she's doing her best.

Collects stuffed animals and small toys.

Likes cute things, but some people would label their definition of cute as weird.

Loves bright colors. Crank that saturation up!

Very blunt.

Gets along pretty well with her bandmates. They aren't SUPER close but they are friends.

Knows she is different. Doesn't care. It probably used to bother them more when they were younger, but now she has come to terms with it.

House is very messy.

People are just drawn to her, she doesn't particularly like it.

A lot of people think that because she is blunt and speaks her mind that she doesn't ever lie and take everything she says at face value. He is very capable of lying and will do so for various reasons if needed. Or sometimes just cuz spreading misinformation is funny. Will tell you the sky is bright green with no hesitation and a deadpan expression.

Depressed. Is on medication for it and handles it ok ish...

Video game addict. You can usually find her at home in her pajamas playing some new game surrounded by empty instant ramen cups.

Mostly enjoys creative or cute games like pokemon, animal crossing, or minecraft. Doesn't play them often, but she is the absolute best at fighting games. Could beat anyone blindfolded. Is good at a lot of hard games, but doesn't really like that kind of stuff.

Plays a lot of things as they come out and probably has a blog where she reviews them.

Knows every skip and speedrun strat ever.

Likes platformers, especially 2d ones.

Collects old nintendo consoles/games.

Stims a lot with any object nearby. Likes to play with her bracelets a lot. Will just pick up random things and fidget with them.

Seems to be tired a lot, has bags under her eyes. Stays up late a lot but doesn't mind the lack of energy.

Very clumsy and has poor motor controls for a lot of things. Has to take frequent breaks when playing games or music. Gets hurt a lot bumping into random objects.

Issues with her wrists have been a problem for most of her life due to her hobbies, and she is surprisingly good at taking care of them nowadays. Used to not care but then some serious injuries happened and she realized she couldn't afford to do that.

DEDF1SH:

Bigender! He/She/They probably. Would maybe be open to neos if he found the right ones.

Demiromantic, Bi, and Asexual. Both Acht and Harmony are aspec(not for any reason what no i'm not biased as an aroace person noooo-)

When first getting out of the metro he was VERY malnourished and had a hard time eating food. He has a lot of texture issues and finds most foods unbearable to put in her mouth.

Has since gained her weight back and is looking more healthy.

Is very sensitive to sunlight, and burns very easily even in normal weather with minimal exposure. This is part of the reason she spends so much time alone indoors.

Eyes are also very sensitive to light after being sanitized and living in the deep for so long. This is why he wears sunglasses everywhere.

Is also autistic like harmony. (again, as an autistic person i am in no way biased towards headcanoning characters as autistic ok?) Is sensitive to sounds and wears noise canceling headphones a lot.

Goes nonverbal if overstimulated.

Doesn't talk that much, is more the type to say as few words as possible to get their sentence across.

Likes eating cereal with no milk. It's one of their favorite snacks.

LOVES fruit. They are that meme of the person covered in mango juice.

Just like harmony, his face isn't very expressive. But while harmony always looks like she's daydreaming, Acht often looks angry. This is especially true when she has her glasses on since you can't see her eyes.

Really likes fashion. Likes very femme alternative stuff specifically.

Is already naturally tall, and wears heels everywhere. Towers over most other octolings/inklings.

There are many lasting effects from the sanitization. Including physical and mental symptoms. Acht is slowly recovering tho!

Can play piano, just doesn't. Doesn't remember where they learned to, but it makes them feel slightly sad to play it.

Has amnesia due to the sanitization. Can remember things like skills, but not where they learned them or from who. Doesn't remember much of her past. Doesn't remember much family or friends either. Can picture some blurry faces, but not names or how they knew each other.

Tartar told her about her decision to be sanitized, and she has no choice but to have taken his word for why she decided to due so as she has no memory of it.

Has a hard time adjusting to life on the surface.

Has some trauma surrounding medical equipment, and doesn't like to go to doctors.

I've always Acht having known Marina before coming to the surface, but with Side Order confirming they know each other somehow i will wait to flesh that out until we get more info.

Is confident and somewhat social(especially compared to Harmony) but needs a lot of time to recharge their batteries after being around others.

ParuF1sh:

They both like to make music, and often make silly little songs together. Acht likes to take whatever Harmony hums and turn it into short songs.

Both of them don't sleep much. Harmony doesn't like to because she prefers to spend her time on hobbies n such instead. She also has insomnia, but since she doesn't like sleeping it doesn't really bother her TOO much. Acht on the other hand has issues sleeping due to frequent nightmares. She ends up having terrifying nightmares of her time with tartar or things she can't fully remember from before she was sanitized. Harmony is always there to comfort him when he wakes up sweating and frightened.

Both of them are very picky about food and so their pantries end up being stuffed with lots of their prefered safe foods.

Acht tries to push himself to leave his apartment in splatsville from time to time to avoid being totally disconnected from the world because that's what she did when she first got to the surface and it made her very depressed. On one of those trips Acht ended up visiting Hotlantis because he was just exploring various shops. He really liked the vibes of the shop and the wide variety of items that rotated frequently had him coming back. This is where the two of them first met.

At first Harmony and Acht didn't even notice each other despite Acht becoming a regular to come buy and look at weird little items. But eventually after having to check Acht out so many times she finally started to pay attention to what Acht was buying and noticed they had similar tastes. Then one day Harmony struck up a conversation with Acht and they became friends from there.

I think they are both poly and wouldn't mind if their partner dated someone else. But neither of them have another partner right now.

While they both may struggle with a lot of things they help each other out and manage to get through life ok.

It took a bit for Acht to get back to making music after getting out of the metro.

They like to watch ghibli movies while cuddling for a lot of their dates. They will watch all of them and then just start over with the first one again. I think the movies are comfort media for them. Harmony's favorite movie is Spirited Away and Acht's favorite is Kiki's Delivery Service.

Acht chills with Harmony's fish a lot i think.

Neither of them know how to cook.

Harmony leaves her work spaces very messy, but Acht keeps hers VERY neat.

Acht and Harmony both take surprisingly long to get ready and pick out outfits, but Acht takes much longer than Harmony.

They do a lot of parallel play where they just sit in silence and do their own thing.

Acht hangs out at Hotlantis with Harmony a lot and just keeps their headphones on and chills.

Acht also runs the store when Harmony isn't there.

They both listen to a lot of video game osts and it's probably what Harmony keeps playing in the store as well.

Acht has asked why Harmony doesn't stream playing games, and Harmony just doesn't wanna. She would rather just post reviews.

They swap whos the little spoon depending on the day.

Both of them have terrible sleep schedules.

The first time Acht ever saw a splatfest she was enamored, and now she makes sure to always attend the concerts. Harmony insists on keeping the store open since people are everywhere during splatfests and love to shop. But the floats come through the same streets as the shop, so Acht makes sure to pull her away to watch them at least once. And Harmony loves seeing the music as well.

Neither of them really participate in turf wars. Acht is older than most players and finds it awkward to team up with random teenagers but isn't willing to put together an official team of players her age. But she still likes to take her trusty squiffer out to the practice range to keep her skills sharp. Harmony LOVES to watch her practice.

I was about to go into a whole thing of which team they would pick for each splatfest and why, but i think thats gonna have to be later/if anyone asks for it cuz it may be too long for this post lol

so yeah ill end it there for now. they are my beloveds and i could talk about them forever so feel free to ask questions/send in suggestions/talk about how you view them

here is a goofy doodle i did in 5 mins on my laptop for compensation for reading this far:

[fox-flux]

the item-to-UI spiral

i just recently touched up this animation (sorry for the dropped frames):

[EDIT OH MY GOD LOL NO ONE TOLD ME IT WASN'T ANIMATING, IT'S THE WHOLE POINT!! OF THE POST!!]

and i wrote about how it works on cohost so i'm crossposting here and hoping tumblr doesn't chew my markdown up too badly!

now, i admit upfront: i did zero research on this. maybe there is a cool clever way to do a parametric spiral that isn't this. my suspicion is that any "simpler" alternative would be a trip through the polar plane and involve a bunch of trig, and we're game developers here, so we do everything with vectors god dammit

the problem

here is what i decided i want from the beginning:

when you pick up the key (or a handful of other items, but mainly the key), it animates moving smoothly into the UI.

the motion should not be a straight line, because that's boring.

the ideal seems to be a sort of spiral around and outwards from the player, which ⓐ feels like a congratulatory motion of "sparkly thing swirling around you" and ⓑ would still roughly end in a straight shot towards the final position in the UI, which is good as a dramatic finish to a motion.

(i'm pretty sure i did not know that i wanted a spiral from the beginning; it sort of emerged as an obvious thing to try. i first added this ages ago though so i'm not completely sure)

so how do we do a spiral if we don't want to use trig? my answer was to make this bad boy parametric. you know, that thing where you have x(t) and y(t) separately, and t is a hidden time variable. but i don't want to control x and y here; that would make everything radically different depending on where the key starts. so i went for a different coordinate system:

the original position of the key is the origin, and the final resting place in the UI is the point (0, 1). (note that as part of the UI, the animation happens in screen space, not world space; i immediately subtract the key's position from the camera offset and only work in screen coordinates from then on.)

to avoid confusion with screen or world coordinates, let's call these new axes u and v, where u is the perpendicular axis and v is the orthogonal axis (the one pointing towards the destination). though it doesn't really matter which is which since i'm about to treat them separately.

converting from uv back to screen coordinates is easy; one unit of v is the original delta vector, dest - source. one unit of u is a vector perpendicular to that, which is trivial to compute (swap the coordinates and negate one of them). so screen coordinates are

u * delta:perpendicular() + v * delta

[seriously? there's no, just, regular monospace text styling? —ed]

which is like no effort at all. so now i can think in terms of u and v and not even worry about the screen, or the distance, or anything except the shape of the animation! that's great. and now i'm in a good place to split this messy 2D problem into two 1D problems.

the orthogonal axis

first i want to think about the key's movement directly towards the UI. as an Artist™, i have a tenuous grasp of a few wisps of animation basics, so my instinct is to make this feel real good by adding a little anticipation. that means a "wind-up", where the key actually starts out moving away from the UI. i think this adds emphasis because ⓐ "backwards to forwards" is a more dramatic change than "still to forwards" and ⓑ backing up first means the important part of the motion now covers a greater distance. (the forwards motion also now has to be faster to cover the distance in the same amount of time, which feels more dramatic.)

so how do i do that? i am but a simple fox, and this is a platformer, so there can only be one answer for me: a parabola. essentially it's like the key is doing a jump off of a cliff and landing on the ground below. except, you know, upwards.

i don't need to model this like physics, though; i already know a lot about the parabola i want, so i can jump directly to expressing it as a function, v(t) = at² + bt + c.

i know that at time t = 0, the key is at its starting position, i.e., 0. so v(0) = 0, which swiftly implies that c = 0.

i don't know how long the animation should be yet, but i might want to change that later anyway. so i'll just say the key reaches its endpoint at t = 1 and scale it later if i want to. that means v(1) = 1 (remember, the destination is 1 unit away, because i decided it is), so a + b = 1. i don't want to plug that in quite yet because it makes the function slightly messier, but i'll keep it in mind; as soon as i know what either a or b actually is, i can find the other very easily.

that's already taken care of two of my coefficients. what about the third? i don't have a third constraint, so it can be whatever i want. but a and b don't directly correspond to any obvious property of the behavior here. i'd like something intuitive that i can adjust.

i think a natural question is to ask how far back the key winds up. i'll call that h, since it's the maximum height of the arc. or, uh, maximum... un... height. remember, it should be a negative fraction of the total distance, since it's a movement away from the target, 1.

how does h actually fit into my parabola, though? well, it's the v-value of the parabola's local minimum. there's an expression for that, but i always forget what it is. i do know (and can readily derive) that the t-value of that point is −b/2a, so i can just plug that in:

v(t) = at² + bt v(−b/2a) = a(−b/2a)² + b(−b/2a) = a(b²/4a²) − b²/2a = b²/4a − b²/2a = −b²/4a

ah, so h = −b²/4a. but i know h, and i want to find a and b. luckily i know how to express a in terms of b, which turns this into a quadratic:

h = −b²/4a h = −b²/4(1 - b) 4h − 4hb = −b² b² − 4hb + 4h = 0 b = (4h ± √(16h² − 16h)) / 2 b = (4h ± 4√(h² − h)) / 2 b = 2 · (h ± √(h² − h))

hmm. do i want the + or − there? if you graph an example, you'll find that the difference is that one solution has the peak happen before t = 0, which is... not helpful here.

i can distinguish them by noticing that i want the slope to be negative at t = 0, since the key should start out moving backwards. that's given by v'(t) = 2at + b, which at t = 0 is just b. how convenient! so b should be negative, which forces using the − solution. note that this is guaranteed to be negative as long as h is; h² is less than h² − h for negative h, so h will be less than √(h² − h).

now i have b, and that gives me a. and i have a parabola, as well as an extra parameter h that i can play with, even dynamically if i want.

the perpendicular axis

this has some nice oomph to it, but it's still fairly obvious that this is movement along a straight line. so now i can think about how to move perpendicularly, at the same time. it's nice to have this separate, because no matter what i do here, it will not affect the impact of the original parabola.

spirals are appealing, and this animation just feels like it wants a spiral. i'll give it a try, why not.

i don't care about any formal definition of what a spiral is. i just want to go roughly around the player. i'm already doing that in one dimension: the key moves to one side of the player, then the other. to get something spiral-like, i just have to do that a second time.

already i have several constraints falling into place:

u(0) = 0, because the key starts out with no perpendicular displacement

u(1) = 0, because the key also ends with no perpendicular displacement

between 0 and 1, u(t) takes on positive values for a while, and also negative values for a while

...which implies that there is a third zero somewhere in there

now, this sort of sounds like a wave, right? it goes up, then down. (or maybe down, then up; it doesn't seem to matter.) and originally, i used a sine wave here. but that always looked a bit wonky to me, and one of the big things i changed in this recent touch-up was to not do that. here's why.

a very good question to ask is, when should u be zero? that is, when should it cross back through the path of the player? and i think for maximum impact and maximum spirality, there is only one possible answer: at the peak of the wind-up. otherwise the animation has different kinds of extremes happening at different times for the same movement, and that's probably why the sine approach looked wonky.

when is the peak of the wind-up, though? i already know that — it's −b/2a. i don't know what that is, exactly, since those coefficients are based on some other thing... but i can figure it out, which is good enough, so i don't actually care about its value. just call the whole thing s, where s is mathematics shorthand for "it's a number but i don't have a good name for it and t is already something else".

and this is what prompted me to realize that a sine wave is not such a great idea. sine waves like to repeat, which means each wave is the same length. but i have two waves here: one from 0 to s, and one from s to 1. it seems unlikely that they are exactly the same size. i could fuss with the sine wave to make it work, but surely there's a simpler approach here.

and there is! remember, i don't care whether the function repeats. i only care what it does between 0 and 1. outside of that range, it can do whatever the hell it wants. so what do i need sine for? after coming up with that quadratic function, i can immediately think of one type of curve that has both a peak and a valley: a cubic.

which, at last, brings me back to my original question [upthread on cohost]: just how do i find a cubic that's zero at three specific points? i can plug them in but then i have three equations and four variables, which sounds annoying—

and then i remembered how algebra works, so

u(t) = t · (t - s) · (t - 1)

and that's it.

well, almost. there is also one free parameter here, because i can multiply the whole thing by a constant without changing the zeroes.

u(t) = ct · (t - s) · (t - 1)

the question is, what should that constant be? it controls how high the peaks are, i.e. the "width" of the spiral. but i can't get a good sense of it without figuring out what the heights of the peaks are.

unfortunately it turns out the heights of those peaks are fucking nightmarish hellscapes of square roots. so at this point i finally take off my mathematician hat and put my game developer hat back on.

i don't actually care about the heights of the peaks. i just want the animation to look good.

the maximum heights seem to happen when s = ½. i don't have a mathematical basis for this (though there are interesting properties of cubics that could probably help); i just tried it on wolfram alpha and noticed that the peaks are both shallower than this maximum value if s is anything else.

that maximum height is 4/27 (thank u again wolfram alpha), which is roughly 0.15. of course as already mentioned, s is very unlikely to be ½ (in fact it's impossible, which you can convince yourself of if you think about v in terms of projectile motion), so the height in practice will be even smaller than this.

a good spiral is kinda circle-y, so the range should probably be closer to, like, 1

i guess i'll multiply it by 6 or something. hmm, maybe 8. yeah 8 looks better. 12 is too much

and that gets me my spiral. the only other detail i skipped is that i reverse the direction of the spiral (just by negating the perpendicular part) depending on which side of the screen the key starts on.

the final result

trimmed down to minimize the syntax cruft and leave just the math part:

h = -1 b = 2 * (h - sqrt(h*h - h)) a = 1 - b s = -1/2 * b / a t = time / ttl ortho = t * (a * t + b) perp = 8 * t * (t - 1) * (t - s) delta = dest - source sprite:draw_at(source + delta * ortho + perp_sign * perp * delta:perpendicular())

also sorry

this is the kind of post that is just begging for some graphs and diagrams and stuff, but i am tired and there is just slightly too much friction on putting images inline on cohost [for now... —ed]

[kerubimcrepin]

Episode 22 - The Giant Ploomers (part 1)

Very glad to report that I am writing this liveblog from my pc yet again.

It's so nice to see him doing some actual work, instead of just Fucking Around.

Kittyyyyy.

I know that it's cartoon logic, and all, but like... It's so unserious that she is made fun of for this to me.

If I saw these in real life, I would think, "these people have a REALLY weird carpet that's made from the same fabric as underwear. And that's okay."

A kids cartoon being unrealistic. Smh, smh...

Guy who just realized he admitted to a weird fucking thing that most people would NOT understand. Including me. Because I don't understand.

Also, this entire moment is a Certified Kerubim Face Journey by far. There are like 20 different expressions here.

He is so... weird. And I both detest and love him for it.

Coward Simone vs. Joris, the bravest warrior of the World of Twelve.

Lou's birthday is somewhere in the summer. Quite funny, considering Joris's is in winter. That's two characters we can pinpoint (though, I wouldn't call "knowing the exact date of Joris's birth" pinpointing, but I digress.)

For some reason, I have so many Emotions about this goddamned tower being a reoccurring location for Lou and Kerubim.

It's a nice little spot, yeah, but through being a nice little spot, it gained ~emotional significance~

(Guy who thinks a lot voice)

I like it that Kerubim even as a young little boy has unrestricted access to huppermage materials that he's probably read. Bit of a win for the "Kerubim studied necromancy" truthers among us.

His ideas of gifts are "skull" and "spellbook"

Ouughughgh (keels over) do you think he chooses gifts for Joris's birthday like that too.

This spellbook is so cringe for immediately falling apart in his paws. What if I wanted to see Kerubim interact with Forbidden Materials, hm?

Cats are Liquid is an indie 2D platformer game from 2015, it is about depression, and it is available for free on Google Play.

I know it's very obvious, especially with bands being a thing, but records are a thing in the World of Twelve. Which is cool.

...God, you have no idea how hard it is not to use this moment to plug my character playlists for Kerubim, Joris, and Atcham.

This you?

This you?

This you - this you - this you?

Anyway, hot take, but:

I think this episode takes place before Dance Against Boowolves due to him becoming a bit okay with girly things in it.

Next time you say that Atom is the first nonbinary character in Krosmoz, remember Kerubim. You're making her sad.

If someone did this to me, ripping this shit off instead of peeling them slowly and gently, I would do unspeakable evils onto them.

She is a very patient and gentle soul for simply beating them up.

A fate worse than death, Keke. A fate worse than death.

[foxfinches]

Do you think you could possibly summarise what was said in the Clark Stacey interview if you don't mind? I'm struggling to follow and understand it without subtitles sadly

NO SAME. listening to the ajc segment (especially the latter half) was super difficult with the loud music overlaying it and the instagram video player not having a rewind feature. so.... i sat down and transcribed it! there might be some "uh's" and "um's" i missed near the end, but it should be mostly accurate to everything he said. read it below the cut!

I'm Clark Stacey, I'm the, uh, ceo of Wildworks, and, uh, I'm, uh… Gosh, what would my relationship t- to Animal Jam be? Uh, benevolent overlord? I guess? Maybe? Do people have questions about Classic? Really? [laughs] I saw your thread, and it's seemed like classic players are uh- are very active and have a lot that they want to know. Um, well let me- let me cover a couple of things, I think the last time that you and I talked, we talked about some of the difficulties with adding content to classic and… Just the way It's put together. But, very quickly for those who are- are not familiar, um, uh- Classic was a browser-based flash game, uh, flash is no longer supported by browsers, and is generally frowned upon by the big tech companies out there. So the only way to continue running Classic on your desktop computer, is to put it in this software wrapper called Electron, and Electron basically, uh, contains a mini web browser in it, and it runs… Animal Jam in a contained web browser environment on your computer. Uh, it- it kind of slows some of the performance down, it's not a great solution, but it's uh, it enables um, us to continue playing it. It-it compounds the difficulty of putting new stuff in Classic, because for… For flash games, and the way that we made Classic, was we would take 3D models of animals, and characters, and then we would render out 2D animation frames, um, and the reason that we did that, because flash is a 2D uh, animation program, but uh- The reason we did that is because we can create this kind of cool 3D look to the characters, um, but then have them- have our software spit out uh, 2D frames. So that means that for every item… Thousands upon thousands of items that is in Animal Jam, every hat or scarf or anything else, it has been… Placed and situated on every animal in the game, and frames have been rendered out for the animation of that animal, with that scarf, in that color, uh, for every single item in the game.

It means if there are hundreds of thousands of frames of animation, and going and adding things, or changing anything, is just a super labor intensive process. Now that- that's not to say new content can't be added, I think that more explains the- the difficulty or challenge in bringing AJ classic to a new platform, like WEBGL. And… Y'know, recreating i-it as a browser based game. Um, because… Essentially, all of that… Work, would have to be redone, rerendered, uhh, to be optimized for- for that platform. Um, and that's a massive undertaking. Um, now t-the possibility of us undertaking that massive thing, uh, went up considerably when were acquired by Nazara last uh, what's August, September? Um, because one of the benefits of being part of the Nazara network, is y'know, they have a tremendous resources with uh, uhh, with animators and artists, um based in India and abroad, and they can bring to bear um, y'know, an army that we can't. We're um, we're a much smaller company, and uh, maintaining just what we're doing is uh, kinda keeps our dance card pretty full. Um, so… Taking… Creating the Animal Jam experience that uhhh, is drawn heavily from Classic, may not be a direct port of everything in Classic, but does extend uh, the Classic experience, is on the Wildworks roadmap, there is WEBGL research that we're doing that's ongoing there, uh, I have played level demos of Animal… Animal Jam y'know, the… What you would recognize as kinda a- Y'know, Jamaa Township and some core areas in Animal Jam, running in WEBGL, and it's awesome. Um, that, the- still a long, long way away from uh, from a product that we can put out. Uh, but it is um, y'know, it's not something that we've taken our eyes off of, we're certainly… Y'know, our commitment to Classic itself has not changed. Um, and I will say… That uhhh, there is… Something pretty exciting and new coming to Classic very soon, um, I think that it will be a…. Uh, a blast from the past, for uh, for some of our older Classic players, but, uh, but kind of remade for- for this generation. And I'm- I'm excited for people t- to see it and start talking about it. I think they'd be pretty psyched.

20 questions in your Instagram thread about Classic, so that's… That's basically everything I know, you now know everything I know, and it's perfectly safe, it's not going anywhere, uh, there's some technical housekeeping thats probably overdue there, uh, particularly rebuilding the installer, which bugs me every time I look at it. Uh, but it- no, we're not, we're not taking it down, it's not going anywhere.

[Link to original video]

[wait----------what]

I just started playin epic mickey for the first time (I thought I'd played it before but idk if I ever managed to get that far in wo my brother wantin to play ( he basically just wanted to watch me play it a la lets play style) that stupid princess game

Soooo lets get this shit on the road like I did for batdr

- mickey you dick

- its nice for a tutorial where you can actually die in I've not got one of those in a while n its nice to know that 'don't step in the green stuff' actual means go ahead n jump in it if you like but it ain't gonna be good for you

- OSWALD :D

- oooooh the art style for those cut scenes are fuckin amazin! its kinda a lil grainy like its all been draw in by pencil with a couple stray strokes here n there its so cool!

- so I'm basically doin the same shit the guy from who framed roger rabbit did? ( this one came from my dad since he was in the room doin work cause we'd meant to play em2 cause its a 2 player but it wouldn't start)

- gettin some major undertale vibes from the paint to befriend, thinner to kill thing so far

- holy fuck that projector-travel-platformer is so cool, especially with the edges of the film reel at the side of the screen, would've been cooler if it had the same 2d effect the cut scenes had goin on to really tie the old cartoon vibe together cause mockey kinda stands out in the wii-3d-graphic way

- welp. . .geuss helpin those trapped guys really was useful after all

- all the references to Alice's adventures in wonderland/alice through the looking glass have been real neat so far, like the but at the first cut scene (which given that its happening in the the 'real world makes scence that its the typical style that the rest of the game is in) n the fact that you're followin a rabbit deeper n deeper into this world is super cool!

Idk that's kinda it for now . . . Bye:D

[nyanbinary-perineum]

!!! hiii red im back fjkdnsjg

can i ask what your favourite games have been lately? any you'd recommend? ^_^

Kind of a mess lately hehe

I guess one of the games I'm currently playing comes close to favorite- but most of my faves aren't things I'm currently playing :3

Lately it's been a good amount of Helldivers 2, but I'm slowly creeping away from it because my playgroup has moved on and solo / randoms is not the most fun way to play x.x

I do really love that game though ^.^

Recommendations are hard 🤔 Because I usually try to gear them around what I know the other person can play, otherwise I'll be spouting all kinds of random nonsense 😅

I guess I can throw random names and my explanations out there with zero regard for anything >:3

With the release of Monster Hunter World the series got a LOT of exposure that it rightfully deserved.... and that Capcom quickly converted into microtransactions and content skimping >:(

But a lot of people still haven't given the "old gen" monhuns a chance and I truly do believe they are missing out :3

Finding the means (emulators exist though citra getting into hot water makes that slightly more annoying) to play is worth it-

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

THE best monhun with the perfect amount of content, the only actually good single player that balances silly and serious to be worthwhile to not mash through the dialogue (but you can!), 10/10 unique features, and the best end game of any monhun because it's just plain rewarding and fun and gives you more than enough to do until you feel sated :3

Nier Automata

if someone wants to dwell on life and existence and sentience and cry a lot in between fun hack and slash gameplay.

Omori

if you want to cry through a story involving the best characters ever, the best friends around, love them so much, beautiful story and great gameplay and 💜 Also Omocat is from all accounts I'm aware of, kind of a shithead, so take that grain of salt.

I'm not calling it based on their use of problematic terms years ago that haven't come up since but keep getting dragged out as "Proof!" but rather because other people who worked on the game have come out saying "Yeah, that was a really toxic environment like holy shit" so I'm more on about that. Game itself good :3 Situation makes it hard to recommend despite being something that hit my heart so hard :/

Wario Land: Shake It!

is quite possibly THE best wii game I've ever played. The Wii has so many fucking industry defining masterpieces in it but no one ever brings up Shake It and Shake It was maybe the most fun I've ever had in a traditional 2D platformer. AND THE CHARM! THE FUCKING CHARM!!!!! Literally smiling just thinking of that game it's so good.

If anyone considers themselves a fan of pokemon as a whole and wants to try an interesting take on the genre that's a lot more

"Team Building > In Battle Actions"

"Pre-planning and letting it play passively > Active decisions"

Then PLEASE try Dragon Warrior Monsters or Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 for the gameboy color ;-; It's one(ish, I'm counting 3 games as 1 game since 2 has 2 versions lol) of my favorite games ever ;-;

Uh, I usually don't recommend it because so few people who say they are into tactical RPGs are talking about the same thing I'm ever talking about (instead always referring to like, Fire Emblem, which has fantastic tactical gameplay especially on harder difficulties but has never once scratched the particular itch *I* have for the genre because of-)

Final Fantasty Tactics (Or War of the Lions for the PSP version)

FFT is quite literally my favorite game. I've played it through so many times and plan to do so again in the future. It has a very quality remake that is mostly positives with only minor negatives (some complaints to be had on additional content that was added and 'some' translation changes have bothered me but it's really good!).

The sequels are...... Very Different Games both in mechanics, intended audience, and style. I spent almost every year I've been on this earth saying they suck ass, but after having beaten both of them for my game blog and sitting on it for a while after (a necessary part of the process) They Aren't That Bad. FFTA is not a game I would recommend, but FFTA2 has some stuff to offer that I would inch towards recommending. Neither are considerations for this list though.

Here's everyone's reminder to play Chrono Trigger if you haven't, if you play with your mind on and your eyes open you'll spot so many incredible things from impeccably designed encounters to incredible mechanics to incredulous story telling >:3

Hmm. I did take this opportunity to instead yell a lot of normal or well known things instead of all my niche ideas but I uh... I really can just talk about games for the rest of my life and never get bored, just turning my head 30 degrees will show me 300 more titles to ramble about so I thought playing it a little safe was a good idea :P

Uh, y'all heard of Undertale or Deltarune? Thems pretty good gaming.

[benis-chillin]

Backlog Reviews 2024: Metroid Dread

Platform: Switch

March 9th, 2024-April 4th, 2024

(Previous review, since I don't have anywhere to hyperlink it in the edit)

This has been the big one for me for a while. Back in late 2022, I binged through Zero Mission, Samus Returns, Super Metroid, and Fusion, and have had a craving for this final 2D Metroid since. Not many game series have clicked with me in the same way Metroid has, so this is a case where I HAVE to play every game in at least SOME form.

And while I just found Prime to be a bit "eh" last year, I'm still going to give any of the other games a fair shake. Cause like with Sonic before it, I HAVE to know for myself. Even Other M will get that treatment someday.

And so, after a year of waffling that was terrible, I finally nabbed a cartridge on EBay and got to playing what may be one of my favorites in the series, if not THE favorite. If I were to describe how this game plays, it would be like if Samus had continued to get 2D games on the DS and 3DS after Fusion, and we're just at the next step of THAT evolution. It's insane how much of a progression this is from even Samus Returns, with new moves and weapons that I would've NEVER thought of for Metroid, but feel like, "Of course, why WOULDN'T you?" after you're introduced to the concept. They also keep the morph ball from you for a WHILE, which was surprisingly bold. After seeing my other favorite video game character regress so much in his 2D game design for his past decade of games, this was nice to see.

The world can become a bit unwieldy at times, but this is a fairly easy world to navigate once you've got the hang of it. While I didn't mind the more linear progression of Fusion and Samus Returns, I'm glad that they did cut back on Adam outright telling you where to go. He doesn't really have THAT much dialogue, and it's more just telling you what to avoid and what to look out for in terms of upgrades.

As for the story, it is REALLY good…Save for one thing I'll talk about later. It's fairly simple, but the stakes are high personally for Samus, and it ties her adopted heritage with the Chozo into the grander plot very naturally. This story could've gone really badly if not done right, and it warms my heart to see it executed so beautifully. And yes, when THAT moment happened at the end, I DID shed a single, sexy tear.

So that's a fair summary of the good stuff, so I'm gonna whine and complain a bit before we wrap up.

For one thing, bosses. Even on Rookie Mode, they're long, spammy, and kinda repetitive. The strategy for all of them is "don't get hit, and spam them with missiles." The only ones that break this up are Kraid when you sequence break for early bombs, and the twin Chozo warriors when they want you to learn how to use Storm Missiles. Everybody else was the same exact strategy, even the final boss against Raven Beak. And this problem wouldn't be so bad if there weren't SO MANY OF THEM, especially towards the end. It started to slow my progress, cause I'd wake up some days just NOT wanting to deal with any random boss encounter they'd throw my way.

They at least wait until the very end to throw the cheapest boss at you, unlike the latest offering by a certain blue rat that I played recently, but I'd definitely say the bosses were more of a negative than a positive.

E.M.M.I.s were also inconsistent. Sometimes, they'd work right and be this terrifying encounter that you just BARELY scraped past, other times they'd be a cheap kill that sets you back with no real consequences since there's not THAT much space between the E.M.M.I. doors in any given area. And then most of the time, they were just laughable clowns that you can just Scooby Doo around until you get to the next door. You can have some cool encounters with them, but even early on these guys are total posers.

And while I praised all of the moves we got earlier, there is a part of me that thinks MAYBE we got too many of them? Maybe it was my developing case of carpal tunnerl syndrome, or the Switch Lite's underscaled buttons for these kind of games, but the stronger I got, the harder it was to manage all of my weapons in a boss battle. Plus, there were upgrades I barely even used, like the Speed Booster, that maybe could've been cut. I know people are gonna be mad at me for saying the Speed Booster sucks, but you can accomplish most of what it does through normal movement and the Screw Attack, so I don't see the point of it. Samus Returns managed just fine without it.

And now for the spoiler rant, so if you don't want to be spoiled, just don't read the section between the big text, m'kay?

SPOILER ZONE

So at the end of the game, we find out that the events of the game have drawn out Samus' Metroid DNA she got back in Fusion. She is becoming more Metroid-like as time goes on, which makes sense given all of the X that are now out and about.

HOWEVER, the game explains this as her Thoha DNA she got as a child keeping it at bay until she met Raven Beak at the beginning, because he is a Mawkin. The Thoha were the ones who made the Metroids, so Adam reasons out that this is why the Metroid DNA kept things quiet until meeting the Mawkin, who slaughtered the Thoha on SR388.

SO HER METROID DNA WAS SCARED OF HER THOHA DNA!?

THAT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE!

Samus' Metroid DNA comes from the baby Metroid she spared during Metroid 2/Samus Returns, who descended from the Metroids who evolved out of the Thoha's control due to Aeion energy. This DNA is from a set of Metroids who have no loyalty to the Thoha, and would thus not CARE.

Additionally, if Raven Beak's Mawkin DNA triggered it in the beginning, HOW WAS SAMUS ALREADY NOT IN THIS STATE? This game establishes that she HAS Mawkin DNA inside of her! RAVEN BEAK'S MAWKIN DNA, no less! Did it just conviniently ignore that?

Not to mention that Other M established that the Baby Metroid was, in fact, a Queen Metroid larva, which is why it protected Samus at the end of Super and such. I think such special DNA would get past these boundaries regardless.

(And yes, I'm aware of the implication that Samus is a Queen because of this. We all already knew that, so it's irrelevant)

And finally, DNA DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Okay, spoilers over.

So yeah, my problems with it would bump it down to a 9/10 normally, but I'm going to restore a point because Samus looks damn sexy in her armor in this game. Every one of her main suits is hot af, so basically, in the merits of being oddly attracted to a woman in a robot suit:

10/10

Next…Idk. I'm gonna take a break to nurse my carpal tunnel for a bit. So…See you next mission, I guess.

[suyooo]

Hello!

I'm creating a GDQ break channel as a coding exercise and I couldn't help but notice your Mega Man one is incredible. I was wondering what, if any, tools you used to work with sprites and 2D animation in general. I'm new to PIXI and animation as code in general so any tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Hey, thank you so much! I didn't know much about PIXI before either, so when I started the Mega Man channel, it was mainly just reading the code of the other channels that do something similar to what I did, and seeing how it works there. For me, that channel was Corvimae's T-Rex Runner channel, it's a fairly simple one with a bunch of examples of working with 2D sprites in PIXI!

(For others seeing this post: Here's a link to the channels on the break screens on Games Done Quick streams - they are open-source, and anyone can make their own. If you're up for a small coding project and have a neat idea, and want to contribute to the GDQ stream layout, I highly recommend it, it's a lot of fun!)

For sprite animations using frames, one tool that really helped me is Texture Packer. It allows you to take all your seperate sprite files and put them all together into one atlas, so you can access them via references like mySpritesheetVar.textures.coin instead of having to manage all of the texture objects and offsets yourself. That makes sprite animations a lot easier: To create something like the walk cycle, I just loaded all of the frames as seperate layers in GIMP (or whatever image editor you prefer) and aligned all the layers so they lined up like they should when the animation plays. From there, you can export each layer as a seperate file, with all the empty space still around them. These can then be added to Texture Packer, which will take care of trimming off all of that transparency, but it will also make sure everything is aligned just like you set it once the atlas is loaded! You'll have to manually define the animations in the JSON file after exporting it (which is just an array of the file names of the seperate frames). But after that, you can simply assign the animation to any AnimatedSprite object by using a reference like mySpritesheetVar.animations.walkCycle and PIXI will take care of everything. (Don't forget to call the play() method to actually start the animation - that had me confused at first.)

As for animations involving sprite movement, in most cases, you should be able to keep it simple, and just move objects by a constant amount each frame. It's easy to set up, ensures that everything always lines up correctly, and there's often no need for more complicated approaches (especially for a retro-styled channel, where most things move in straight lines anyway). Most of the objects in the MM channel do something like this, such as the shots moving at a constant speed. There's also no need for proper collision detection for objects like them - taking pickups as an example, I just compare their X coordinate against a constant value to see whether it is close enough to the left side of the screen to be collected (which also helps to make sure the items can never be jumped over).

But since the channels are based on games, one tip I can give is to try out a little bit of physics-based animation - if the movement of your sprite works the same as the one from the original game, you can get good-looking results fairly quickly! Jumps, for example, can be done by setting an upwards vertical speed for the sprite and then applying gravity to it every frame, to get a really nice jump arc. For this kind of movement, since you are trying to replicate a game, there's a lot of similarities to code you would write for games. The main difference is that there's no player input, the jumping is instead controlled by donations and timers. So, looking up platformer physics tutorials might help with implementing these animations - to see how the physics behind the movement work, and how you can apply them to the sprites here!

If any questions come up about how something in the MM channel works, feel free to drop me a chat! Looking forward to seeing your channel :)

[todayimgonnaplay]

Today I'm Gonna Play: Love and Deepspace

I came across this video a couple months ago of a really high poly guy and thought it was CGI made by someone talented. Turns out it was an upcoming otome game for mobile?! I replaced my phone recently so this was a good time to look forward to trying something with high-end graphics for this platform.

My experience with Otome games isn't much. I've played those dating sims that a few friends were very into back in school on DeviantArt, notably by Zeiva and Pacthesis. This was my entry to the Visual Novel (VN) genre, but I didn't understand the appeal of of liking 2D guys. Fast forward and I've also played a couple otome VNs on mobile and dabbled slightly on PC and even though I find a few interesting love interests based on appearance and personality, I STILL didn't get the appeal, until I finally played Mystic Messenger two years ago and got my heart shattered and was rejected by my love interest lol. This idea of having a social messaging format with calls for a mobile game is one of the most creative things I've seen for both the VN genre as a whole as well as the mobile platform. I don't know if any other VNs have done something like this before.

What Love and Deepspace does, is basically take that same format and iterate upon it with its worldbuilding. But it doesn't stop there. The real selling points of this game is that it uses very high quality 3D models akin to Final Fantasy CGs and also have real-time action combat. This seemed like a combo I never thought would exist, but I'm sure as hell glad to see it. Apart from chatting and calls using your own created avatar, it includes other features such as micro blogs which are Twitter-esque, so you can like and comment on the other characters' posts, and sometimes make your own. There are interaction features with the love interest, by being able to touch him, ask him things, and even things like listening to heartbeats or blowing on him using your mic?? It's another level of immersiveness! Minigames also exist which add to the story, such as claw machines (which are actually not to rigged compared to real life), playing cards, taking photos, and mini stories or audio that you can obtain from gacha.

The gacha aspect is not related to obtaining your love interest like in other gachas, but rather it's unlocking additional content about them, such as the mini stories. These stories tend to look like casual hangouts or even romantic dates. I'm not sure if there are any intimate scenes or not so far.

The story is not bad, I'm intruiged by the lore and the overall world as I like futuristic settings. There's a lot of info dump in documents and such that you typically see in gachas or RPGs, but this is one of the few times where I actually read through them. And surprisingly, the protagonist (you) is actually a lot more competent than expected!

The only issue I have is that the way the story is presented makes the characters look like they don't know each other yet and are distant, which is fine. But the romance parts you unlock through gacha or other features of the game seem more affectionate so it feels quite disjointed. It makes me feel confused on how I can piece these moments together.

Another nitpick although minor is that the daily stamina that you can obtain through login times don't seem to sync up in local time, so I'm assuming it's based on China's time zone instead. I've mostly been on this game during the evenings which make me miss both of them. It's a bit of a weird decision for international players.

I've also seen comments online about the lack of a male character or other gender options. I also agree that this would be nice to have. But I also acknowledge that this game is primarily aimed towards women (therefore an otome game), and since it's a Chinese game, I'm not sure if they would allow any type of BL in it. This could cause a bit of disinterest for international players. The only option I can see is to provide a larger variety of options for the current female avatar (which is also a complaint even amongst women playing the game), which could also have the avatar look a little more masculine presenting, etc. This could be a slight workaround towards any censorship laws while also allowing for more diversity. Plus technically speaking, the advantage of shorter hair or buzz cuts etc. would also mean less complex hair rigging (like with long hair) so it may be easier to animate and handle.

Overall, this game has huge potential that could transform romance/otome games for mobile like Mystic Messenger if all goes well. This will be another mobile game I'll keep playing!

[veebs-hates-video-games]

I'm not entirely sure what to say about Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. It's good?

I first attempted to play it forever ago, but I only made it like 70% of the way through. I never had a GBA or anything else I could play GBA games on, but my ex had gotten me a Dingoo. Picture basically a GBA Micro, except with four face buttons and an SD card slot, and also it had emulators for basically every 2D platform from the NES through the GBA (and there was a third-party PS1 emulator you could install that worked ok with a decent number of games too).

It worked pretty well for most stuff I played on there, and it seemed to be going perfectly with Aria of Sorrow too, but I eventually managed to get it stuck in a weird state where no matter what I did it would crash ~30 seconds after loading my save. I never could figure out why or how to fix it, and I just kind of gave up after a while and never touched it again even though it had been a lot of fun.

And then finally a couple years ago Konami took a break from releasing shitty low budget spinoffs of formerly good series and making pachinko machines and put out the Castlevania Advance Collection, and then finally more recently the Switch version was on sale when I wasn't in the middle of a bunch of other stuff and felt up to playing through the entire game again.

It's still one of my favorite metroidvanias (and definitely my favorite Castlevania) up there with stuff like Super Metroid, and it holds up pretty well. I did a 100% souls run and had a good time with it. I know I've complained multiple times recently about Squenix trying and kinda failing with their attempts at proper real time combat that actually feels good in stuff like Harvestella and NEO: TWEWY, but here's this GBA game from like 20 years earlier running on a potato that feels tight and crisp and has good feedback on stuff.

I can tell something does that stuff well when I start picking up on things like noticing you can cancel out of the recovery lag from attacks if your attack is a few frames before you land from a jump, letting you attack again almost immediately. I never figure things like that out when they're so mushy that it's not obvious or hardly makes a difference.

And of course the pixel art still looks good and the music is still fun, and the writing is obviously still complete nonsense just like it's always been in Castlevania games. I probably won't ever get around to the other ones in the collection, but this one is still definitely worth it after all these years.

And just to show how far behind I get on making these posts sometimes, I screenshotted that when I saw it on Steam because it was almost the same day that I got it, and I saved it as a reminder to poke @ion-somnia about it because it was a funny coincidence and I hadn't in a while. And then obviously I didn't, and then even more time passed after I finished the game before getting around to this, so I'm totally doing great at doing all sorts of things before I half/completely forget about them, which is really useful when I try to write these posts so I can remember later what I thought about things when someone asks me. Might work better if I remembered to write them before I forget playing them...

Oh also the fake out intro for the Balore boss fight is too good:

[wanderingnork]

What are your favorite horror creatures? And do you enjoy any horror video games?

I'll answer the second question first: yes, I do! Unfortunately I have some issues with motion sickness and sensory challenges that mean actually *playing* many games is right out, so a lot of my experience is via Let's Plays. I HAVE had the chance to actually play Alien: Isolation, which is one of my favorites ever. The first Outlast is a gold star in terms of pacing, atmosphere, and environmental narrative. And for a horror game I have played--Eversion, a 2D side-scrolling platform about a walking flower trying to save the princess, is highly recommended.

As for horror creatures...that's a long list, Anon. How about a top ten?

10. The plants from The Ruins. These things are HORRIFIC. At first they just appear to be vines coating an ancient Mayan pyramid. Then they turn out to be animated, wriggling around and trying to take root in people. THEN they turn out to be even worse than that. Are they sentient? Probably not, but they certainly are horrific. If you watch the movie, pay attention to the difference between the first and last shots of the pyramid. I audibly gasped.

9. Whatever is lurking in The Tunnel. It's your run-of-the-mill Spindly Cave Humanoid, except...it's not. It understands technology enough to use a camera. It's cruel, not just a hunter. It's not defined what it is, exactly, but it's something bad judging by the reaction of authorities. This type of creature isn't usually my favorite (I find them a bit overused and same-y), but this thing is a character in its own right. A personality, motives, goals--and all of them are awful. I love it.

8. The creature from the movie Head Count, which itself is based on a creature from the old creepypasta "Anansi's Goatman." (Read it at the link.) In both stories, it's a shapeshifting creature that takes the place of someone in a group of young, foolish campers. I personally like the movie's take on it better. There's definite lore surrounding it (something significant about the number five, specific arrangements of items, odd records, rhymes), but none of it is ever laid out in exposition. It's there, it's consistent and coherent, but we never get the chance to fully understand it. And the twist at the end is WILD.

7. Everyman from Undertale. A creature that appears in the game's definite "horror section," the True Lab, it's never directly encountered. No, it's encountered as an ATTACK from the entity "Lemon Bread." A blobby, sort of cute creature, it appears in the attack box...only to have its head DEVOURED by a cloud of butterflies. Afterwards, the butterflies become its bullets as it roams back and forth through the box, and at one point it also attacks with its own floating heads. No explanation for this is ever given.

6. The Thing from...The Thing (1982). Brilliantly created, it's gloriously grotesque in all its forms. Whether it's on screen as Jed the wolfdog, a scuttling head with spider legs, or a vast conglomeration of slimy bodies, it's amazing.

5. All of the ants from the movie Phase IV. They're just normal ants in looks, but they're sentient. Careful filming of living ants was able to construct individual characters and give anthropomorphic depth to typical ant behaviors. It's really cleverly done and very memorable. They mourn their dead, raise massive monuments, and heroically sacrifice themselves for their cause. Are they monsters, exactly? I don't know.

4. The unnamed creature from the movie Sea Fever. It's vast, sort of jellyfish-ish, bioluminescent, and inscrutable. More of a natural hazard than an actual antagonist, it still manages to be oddly sublime. Reflected against stories from Irish mythology about gods and monsters, it becomes something far larger than a creature unknown to science. It's beautiful.

3. The Xenomorph, from Alien. A perfect organism indeed. Its infant stage is weirdly adorable. Its adult stage is a lovely blend of organic and mechanical shapes that make it the quintessential space monster. It's clever, toys with its prey, and likes to take naps. How can I not love it?

2. Obscura, from The Evil Within 2. Stitched together from the bodies of at least two women, she runs around on three legs wearing pointe shoes, with a huge antique camera instead of a head. She attacks by kicking and taking pictures that temporarily freeze time. All the while, she's screaming and howling fit to wake the dead. It's a clever, original, disturbing body horror design that makes for a pitiable but terrifying monster.

1. Moder, from The Ritual. A forest goddess with a design that reflects her environment and inspires genuine awe with her presence, I love her very much. She was also done partly with practical effects, with rigs used to lift and carry actors and a physical mask/arms for up close shots. If I landed in the creepy Scandinavian woods and came face to face with her? Sure. I'll join the cult.

[rashs-silly-little-games]

Good afternoon! I found out the other day that GDevelop not only has 3D capabilities now, it also has some sort of AI integration. I know that AI is a big point of contention, but for assisting game development, it seems like it could be a powerful tool to people who know how to edit or fix the weird inconsistencies.

So, I'll be giving it a shot! I'm gonna see how far that AI can take me to getting a game set up. Before I did anything with the 3D, my first thought was to give this new AI game generation a spin, since I didn't know how it worked at all. This is an "experimental" feature, so I'm sure it's not going to work out quite how I've expected it to, but hey, it doesn't cost any money, so the only thing i could realistically waste is my own time.

I tested it out with 3 different prompts. The first prompt was "Top down 3D twin-stick shooter. And what it ended up generating was quite a shock! First, it turns out theres no 3D capabilities in the AI yet. It seems to pull it's assets from the Asset Store, which only has 2D and sounds. Second, what it spat out was a fairly polished little game! There was a loss condition, a win condition, and even particles, sounds, and this little slowdown effect on win or loss. It's cute! I really liked it, and ended up saving it, since it's really not a bad base to work off of.

The other 2 had left a bit of a dissapointment, to be honest. Since the first one was fairly polished, I was expecting about the same, however...

When I made the second prompt, I wan't thinking about it, and just figured I would try the 3D again. All I typed in was "First Person Shooter."

What it ended up spitting out appeared to be a random selection of Assets, a weirdly tiled floor, and some retro-ish sound effects wrapped into a barebones 2D platformer. I could shoot a... thing... and dodge other... things... and I was a lightbulb? To be fair, it still provided a win and loss condition, so yes, it ended up making me a platformer with the capability to shoot. Cool, if that's what youre looking for.

The last prompt I decided to make use of the "random" feature on the edge of the box. The prompt it spat out was "A dragon on an island that needs to collect treasure." I thought it might give me something cool, like maybe a dragon flying over his island to gather treasure and put it back in his hoard, but then I got... ok what even is this? This triangle thingy is supposed to be a dragon? What even are my enemies here, I can barely see them. The only difference between this generation and the last was that there was a coin counter and my only option was to dodge the enemies.

To say im a little underwhelmed is an understatement, since the first game is actually a fairly polished up little project, I was expecting more out of the other generations. Oh well, I can chalk that one up to luck or something.

I think there's an important distinction to be made here with the way the AI works for GDevelop as opposed to something like, say, Chat GPT. Chat GPT allows you to generate scripts at any given point, and you can use that in the middle of a project, not just at the start. GDevelop's AI integration only "kickstarts" your game, meaning it generates something for you, then spits it out and you have to edit the rest manually.

I have an idea for the first game, though... stay tuned for that!

[quibbs126]

Okay, for like, the past week now, I’ve been reminded of yet another idea I had for a video game that I made a couple years ago, thought I might as well share it

I would share art at the top of it, but unfortunately the only art I have of it is a rough sketch I made back October 2020 of the main character, 97, which is old and not really what I imagine her to look like (other than the pink hair)

At some point, I’ll probably try to redesign her, along with drawing the other two notable characters. I feel like she needs more color in her outfit, and I want to make her more pink. Though I think the reason I avoided doing so was so that she wouldn’t look too much like Red Action from OK KO. I dunno

The whole premise was based off of me wanting having this old book from my dad called Robotech (which I think is an anime? Or a mishmash of several anime for an American audience?), which on the cover has what looks like a screenshot from an old anime.

I kept thinking the main character had bright pink hair, but she doesn’t, but then I wanted to see something where the main protagonist has bright pink hair. Then somehow that translated to Number 97. Maybe I should keep that influence when designing her, basing her off of old sci fi/gundam anime. Unfortunately I don’t know that many, and it’d probably require me watching them, and I have a bad habit of not watching the things I tell myself to watch

But yeah, anyways, let’s get into everything I remember of the plot of 97’s story (I never named it)

So basically the premise is that 97 is a cyborg, attempt number 97 by this particular group, hence her name, who’s people have been fighting a very long war with…something, I never actually came up with what. Either aliens or robots (specifically robots of alien origin). Anyways, so this group was using technological advancements as a way to combat the villains (which from here on I’m just going to call aliens for the sake of simplicity). I say “technological advancements” because despite the main character’s name being “Cyborg 97”, not all of the attempts were cyborgs, as some were robots, and some were just general enhancements to regular humans. But since they all were meant to serve the same purpose, they all stay in the same numbering system. So 97 (note I don’t actually have a normal name for her other than 97) was originally a normal soldier in the military fighting against the aliens, which we would see in the opening level of the game, serving as a prologue and introduction to the basic game systems, until this particular mission ends in disaster, which leads to 97 getting picked up by the cyborg company and being turned into one, being an elite fighter against the aliens. She had lost each of her limbs and pretty much her whole lower body up to the hip, with it all being replaced by cybernetics. Basically you go around doing missions and fighting enemies, and it’s like a Metroidvania style 2D platformer

But maybe forget the whole “aliens” thing, because I realize now that the plot, namely the main enemies, don’t really have to do with them. Instead, the people you end up fighting are other cyborgs made by the same company. That’s kind of a mishap on my part, but also I can’t just get rid of the cyborg characters or have them be working with the aliens, that’s not what they’re about, not unless I make up something about the aliens not being what we think. Hm, I’ll have to work on that

Anyways, so there’s actually two different routes the story goes, the 96 route, and the 98 route. I’m gonna start with 96 since it’s the one you’re first presented with

So basically, the cyborg prior to 97, 96, went rogue and took some of the older abandoned cyborgs and starting leading a rebellion group against this company, causing general mayhem in the streets. Your job is to take down 96 and his gang and stop their threat. Granted, you’re more presented at first with the “they’re a threat to the general populace, causing destruction wherever they go, stop them”, rather than them specifically being against this company. So yeah, you go and defeat them (and probably kill them) one by one, which I’m only now realizing sounds very similar to the plot of a Megaman game. Not sure I really knew Megaman at the time though

So 96’s cybernetics go specifically from the waist down, with him having feet more similar to a bird (sorry I didn’t know where else to put this). Now 96 tends to come off as a bit of an asshole, as he really only seems to care about cyborgs and little for humans. He’s also around 17-19 (after becoming cyborgs, they stop aging physically and mentally for whatever reason, so despite the fact he’s likely around his mid 20s now, he’s still like that), and very much comes off like an arrogant bastard. But he’s not just a jerk, as he does care about the other cyborgs, and when you first meet his group, he’s even open minded about 97 joining them at some point, if she ditches the company. And in the 98 route, you get to see more about him, like the fact that he misses his old friends and family, some of which died in the accident that made him a cyborg, and some he’s not sure are still alive, but given his now criminal status, he can’t go see for risk of them being in danger. By the end of the 96 route, he just wants 97 dead, but that’s because by this point she has decimated the people he now calls friends, and people he knows aren’t to blame for the way their lives have gone, becoming cyborgs usually against their will and being discarded as they were no longer considered “people”. He may have been open minded to you, but now you’ve proven yourself nothing more than a monster to him

If I haven’t made it clear, the company 97 works for aren’t exactly nice people. Maybe at the start they had pure intentions, but by the higher numbers, they’re mostly a corrupt and rotten system. And while yes, you don’t get the full scope on 96 as a person, you are told enough to know that he and the rest of the cyborgs aren’t necessarily bad people, even if some things they do are extreme, though it’s necessary for them to have better lives like this. 96 left because he had learned the rotten truth of the people he was working for, which is something you learn in this route. But unfortunately, in the 96 route, there is no saving these people, you just have to take them out and become little more than a machine following orders

However, in the 98 route, you can instead choose to go against the missions the company gives you, eventually leading to you joining 96’s group and rebelling against them, in which you also get to know all the other cyborgs in his group (that in the other route you mercilessly kill), as well as just get to know 96 as a person. In this route, the conflict is rebelling against the company and trying to take them down in some way

Now in this route, the big enemy you have to face is Cyborg 98, as noted by the route name. Something of note here is that 98 doesn’t exist in the 96 route, as she doesn’t need to. New cyborgs are made when the last one fails, rebellion being considered a failure. 98 was another soldier in 97’s squad (who you’d actually see in the opening level, you just wouldn’t know it was her), however she was a newcomer as opposed to 97’s over a decade of experience (I should probably note their ages here, 97 is in her mid to late 30s while 98 is in her early to mid 20s). She ended up in a disaster as well (possibly the same one as 97? I’m not sure), and was turned into a cyborg after 97’s desertion. However this time, the only human thing remaining of 98 is her head, sort of similar to Raiden, and all of her cybernetics were not in fact necessary, but we’re done so intentionally by the company

Something I forgot to mention but is relevant, there’s a reason the company as of now uses cyborgs instead of robots, that being that cyborgs (or at least the ones they use) have a human mind, and can think like a human, not being limited to what can be programmed, making them more effective in battle

The reason for 98’s extreme cybernetics is because 97 was actually the last chance they were willing to take on a fully free willed cyborg. With the disaster that was 96 and his active rebellion, as well as other cyborgs turning against them, they were thinking free will was more a liability than a boon. So 97 was the last chance given for this, and if she rebelled, while the next one would still have a human mind, given it’s optimal, they would have their free will stripped, as shown with 98. While yes, she can make her own decisions, if she veers too far from what they want her to do, they can take control of her, and she is very much an unwilling participant in all this, being stuck prisoner in her own body. I’m thinking a way this could be conveyed is with a level where you play as her, where you’re given the option of not doing the mission and veering off path, if you do enough off the path, control will literally be taken away from you as the game runs automatically till the end of the level. She recognizes 97 as her old commander and looked up to her, and doesn’t want to fight her, but she’s left no choice as her own body is piloted by other people to attack her. She’s stuck in a living hell and at this point would rather die, but is unable to do it herself

So by the end of the 98 route, you put her out of her misery, but unfortunately, you haven’t been able to take down the company, and are far from doing so, so you haven’t stopped the problem, and with another cyborg failed, the company will go to make another one just like 98, and the whole cycle repeats again

So yeah, basically both endings suck, but for different reasons. Unfortunately, there is no “true ending” where you save everyone or you do what’s objectively right, it’s more a matter of picking your poison. I remember there was something I was trying to say with the two downer endings, but I don’t remember what

I’ve considered the idea of a true route where you do exactly that, mostly because the other two endings might seem a bit too much of a downer, but also doing that completely invalidates both endings as being “the bad ones”, and takes away their impact, so I might just stick to those two

I don’t know how exactly you get each route, but maybe there’s like some sort of in game counter for how many “missions” of each side you do, and by a certain point in the story, whichever one you have more of determines where the rest of the story goes. I dunno, I’m not a programmer

But yeah, that’s 97. Sorry for the somewhat haphazard way of giving info, I didn’t really know how properly convey all of it. But I hope you enjoyed it!

[dinoburger]

I've been working in GDevelop since January so I might as well lay out my thoughts on it - I found it because I really wanted to try something different, while researching different engines I thought "what's the quickest, cheapest way to make a platformer?"

GDevelop is free and doesn't require any coding knowledge, there's a pretty decent range of things you can do with it, it's capable of browser integration when hosting on sites like Itch, it has a paid version but it doesn't seem vastly different than the free version. Most notably you can't get rid of the splash screen without altering the code in the free version, I believe Unity has something similar.

it is strictly 2D, (without use of plugins, I believe there has been a 3D plugin made? but the same can be said of RPGM) I don't think it is quite as flexible as something like Unity? this is fine for me though, more about trying to look into software outside of RPGM and learn about what's its like to make other types of games

I think organizing things might be the biggest learning curve between GDevelop and RPGM, GDevelop's system can be a lot to deal with - you pretty much have to decide how to sort things yourself, how to group objects, and figure out the best use of different variables. Global variables, Scene variables and Object variables all have different applications, as well as just sorting through all your overarching events and the best ways to group them.

I guess it's like the reverse of having to learn what attributes RPGM ascribes to different classes of items, or what properties it gives game elements. YOU have to define those terms yourself, for the most part. In that respect it's a lot more flexible, but it also falls on you to be able to make sure the way you define these things doesn't conflict with itself or become overly complicated.

The way it handles animations over RPGM is mostly for the better, you can assign however many frames of animation as you like and give it whatever frame rate. Maybe the one thing it doesn't have is RPGM's abilities to switch out animations - you need to assign ever animation any object is going to use beforehand, or be able to switch it out with another object that does have the right animations.

This can get complicated, especially when it comes to points and boundary boxes, which also need to be altered to suit the graphic. Animations that need different points and boundaries can get very time consuming very fast, assigning each point is a finicky process.

I think one of the real biggest shortcomings is how the engine handles tilemapping, there's another tilemap editing program that GDevelop is supposedly integrated with, but a lot of the functionality gets lost between programs. It doesn't seem to handle animated tiles well if at all, there is an additional plugin that you can use to set different properties to different tiles but it only works on a single layered tilemap. Editing the whole thing over two programs and one plugin makes this whole process feel stilted and not as immediate as RPGM.

I think there is another plugin, again, that can do animated tiles, but jesus christ.

I can't help feel a little cynical about the general presentation of GDevelop too, like, much in the way any hyper-integrated "you can make money basically for free, churn out mobile apps, include ads in your games" etc. kind of marketing makes me uncomfortable, in a way that RPGM doesn't. It makes you worry that they're going to do something skeevy, you know? Or already are, just out of sight.

Overall I think it's worth playing around in, but, I think with anything it's better not to have total dependency on your tools. Maybe one day I'll get over my squeamishness of learning a coding language hahaha