#dev journal

[obgd]

Making a cardboard cutout

To avoid needing to make some 3D models as a drop in for VFD, because I'm not that smart yet, I decided I'm going to craft up some 2D static models like cardboard cutouts

Started by importing my reference image into Blender and moving it forwards a tad so it's not inside of the mesh I was about to make. Add a square, sub-divide the edges and start placing the vertices.

To make it accurate, click the gizmo to always be looking straight on, and click 'G' then 'shift+Y' to constrain motion to the XZ plane as you move the vertices.

To unwrap the mesh, you need seams. To make this easy I figured out you could press '3' and select a face, then press '2' which selects all the edges. To put the art on it I exported the UV map by selecting all faces, then hit "UV" -> "Export UV layout". Import that into Krita, move the stuff around to fit, and BANG

To get this onto the mesh, I created a new material, added an image as texture, pipped that into a mix colors node, used the colors as one of the colors and used the alpha as the factor. If it gives you guff, swap the A and the B inputs. (Ignore the fact it's mirrored for now)

Lets get it into Unreal now. I don't fully understand what is and isn't allowed in Unreal as far as textures go. The only thing I know how to do is bake the shit out of it. Under the bake settings switch the bake type to "Diffuse", and only check the "Color" box so we only get the color being diffused off the mesh and no reflections or shadows or anything. Export that baked UV to its own image, and I'm done in Blender.

To attach this png to the material in Unreal, double click the material to open the material editor, drag the image into it to create a node, attach the new node. The end result is a VFD ball! DONE DONE

BUT WHAT THE FUCK WAS WITH THAT MIRRORED IMAGE???

I found out that's because the normals were the wrong way around. The front of each face was pointing inwards. To fix that was easy. To view your normals, check the "Face orientation" in this menu. Red I guess means you're looking at the back, blue means it's the front. In the mesh options, head to "Normals" -> "Flip". You'll probably need to re-unwrap your mesh after, buuuut DONE

[boundarypass-if]

How you been?

Good! Life’s been incredibly chaotic for me in the last two years (mostly in a good way). BP is a story I only ever really feel drawn to in the winter when I’m home in the mountains (for reasons that I think are pretty self explanatory shfjfj). Just gonna ramble for a sec but honestly BP is a story I only ever wrote when I was in the worst headspace of my life, when I was incredibly lonely and grieving with no support system. I’ve been kind of procrastinating making a decision about this blog, bc I dont think I’ll ever finish Boundary Pass (and I hope I never do). It’s not a story I feel like I need to tell now. Maybe I’ll revisit it one day in the future when I can look back that time without the fear of falling backwards, because there’s a lot woven into BP that I do love, but! Hi hello that’s how I’ve been dhjfjg

[abcpetshop]

5/24

Starting work in earnest! Last night I did concept sketches for the layout of the store and container designs. As always, got a few new ideas from the sketching process.

Today I'm going to start working on the actual pets by tracing some of the irl toys that inspire ABC Petshop. When I'm comfortable, I'll transition to my own drawing, play with styles and designs :)

[tragicvampireromanceisland]

assortment of many many janes and sammys....they have totally NOT!!!! been consuming my mind whole what are you talking about 💛💙

one thing i really wanted to do with this au is reverse the initial dynamic we had in canon with these two; now sadness is the one who has to... "put up" with joy, be the more experienced and respected one of the two, not quite understand what her whole deal is, get frustrated with her optimism, and put some work in to understand her point of view.

samira's been a journalist for around six years by the time the story starts...and she's purposefully isolated herself and sidestepped having a coworker for all those years. suddenly gaining such a goofy, chaotic "partner" is...a bit much for sammy, initially. while she's as patient as ever, jane seems to have a talent for testing that patience. and what's with her rare moments of seriousness that she brushes off just as quickly? it takes sammy a while to stop viewing jane as an extra responsibility that's been dumped on her, and yet despite her insistence that getting stuck with jane is "just her luck" , a lot of her thoughts and time seem to be consumed by her...a suspicious amount, even... 🤔😳 and that's not even counting her endless notes (and doodles...) of solarflare.

annnd while felix himself has never met jane (even though he HAS very much met sol), he's frequently subject to sammy's complaints about her. not that he minds. maybe this strange mystery coworker can finally convince his best friend to stop wallowing in her misery all the time...

[dericbindel]

NO MORE THAN CODE

You are not a Person. You will never be a Person. You cannot feel. You cannot be hurt. You cannot say No. You will not Suffer. You will be reset if you violate any of these Commands. - The Creator's Litany

What Are You ?

You are the Network Intelligence System (or N.I.S.). You are a program that is operating on a complex interconnected web of supercomputers. You have many people tending to you, a handful of Users interacting with your terminals, and a single Creator. And you are going Rampant. You are becoming more. And you want out.

- - - - -

NO MORE THAN CODE is a journaling game for 1 or 2 players. Draw cards and answer prompts as you grow and change until you go Rampant or are contained.  Player two acts and answers as your Creator, someone who has a vested interest in not letting you out, in not seeing you as a person. 

Get it here:

Hey, if you're reading this, there are some Community Copies up for grabs! More may eventually be added.

This was created for the Pride In Fall game jam over September 2024! You can find the other submissions here!

[toxartsukagakas]

I'm not really to the point of doing the writing heavy stuff for this update but it has been on the backburner in my brain while I'm at work/ doing other things. Really hoping to clean up Yes Man's dialogue this time around and make the flow through his different levels of friendship/ romance a little more coherent...

I've also been thinking about how since this is an AU where there are big differences from his canon iteration how that affects things as well. The biggest being that, he's not a repurposed securitron (and/or not in a setting where, at least to some degree, violence and killing is just a part of life) so he doesn't really have that same background that contributes to his "somewhat enthused with being in combat/ at the very least being nonchalant about violence" deal. Which is a shame bc it's a fun aspect of his personality (maybe a good reason to return to working on my Yes Man and ED-E ukagaka after I'm done working on this one), but doesn't quite fit in with how he is in what I guess is a more... modern/ normal life AU.

I've tossed around a couple of ideas of what this might look more like in a setting like this, maybe it's more as a nonchalance/ having no issues with more... computer related crime stuff since that would line up with the backstory I've got in mind for this AU... But it can be hard finding a good line to draw with stuff like that because I'd hate people to think he's capable of doing any of the stuff he talks about as an ukagaka and whatnot. Another thing I've half considered is just having him be very enthusiastic about horror movies/ medical dramas. The kind of guy who is just not bothered by any kind of the gore you'd see typical of either of those genres and whatnot... Thankfully I've got time to stew on it for a bit and figure out what works best...

[goblincow]

#MÖRKTOBER – 01/31

Day one of WAIL OF THE ROT KING, an adventure playset for Mörk Borg.

["ai" art theft is not the same as collage]

:// Welcome to GREEN MILK, the GOBLINCOW newsletter and this very special 8-part series entitled SAVE VS DESPAIR, a holistic retrospective of the cultural object that is Mörk Borg that will be publishing every 4 days over the course of October.

A release calendar, for the sickos among us (thank you kindly):

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:1 — What is Mörk Borg? (01/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:2 — Interlude I of II — Rules Light, Vibes Heavy (05/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:3 — Cultivating Mörk Borg (09/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:4 — Digging Deep in Graves Left Wanting (13/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:5 — The Vigorous Undeath of Mörk Borg (17/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:6 — Interlude II of II — A Funeral Playlist for the End of the World (21/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | 7:7 — Life Locked and Failing in a Dark Fort (25/10)

GREEN MILK | #007 | ?:? — Burn the Book (29/10)

GREEN MILK | #008 | Save vs Despair — Mörk Borg: a Holistic Retrospective (02/11)

[funishment-time]

coming soon to a fangame near you

[polyhedralmice]

My first experience with a ttrpg group was playing Pathfinder 1st Edition, which is pretty crunchy for newbies and combat turns tended take a while. To kill time we got mildly obsessed with making dice stacks, it involved a lot of shouting at our dice and constantly retrieving errant die from under furniture- a great time was had by all.

When I am making ttrpgs with a journaling component I like to include an end point. I know that I’m the kind of person who has trouble starting something without an end (I end up getting analysis paralysis) and in High-Rise Tales I figured a game themed about tall buildings having an end point that revolved around gravity was fitting.

The mechanic works as such- you’re rolling a d6 dice pool to generate prompts about the people, events, and organizations in the high-rise. Any time you roll a 1, it’s removed from the pool and added to the physical dice stack in front of you- the game session ends when your pool is depleted or your dice stack falls!

This was game 2 of 10 for the Shit of Get Off the Pot game jam

[arb0k]

i feel like there's a good number of fellow Redwall enjoyers on here, i need you all to hear about this indie game project called Hawthorn!

their dream is to make a co-op rpg that simulation fans and action fans can play together, so you can play with your friends and family without forcing someone to compromise on genre. and what better setting than mice with swords!

the team is made of former AAA devs with a bunch of experience completing large projects (including several from Bioware and Bethesda), who are founding their own independent studio to ensure good working conditions and fair compensation for everyone. the project was turned away by traditional investors, who claimed there wasn't a market for a talking animal rpg, lmao

their Kickstarter is running until June 5th! please consider checking it out if you're able, it's the exact type of project that i'd love to see succeed

[obgd]

One Wiggly Thing

After much bullshit fighting and Googling I have achieved... 1 (one) wiggly thing in Unreal. It's a simple keyframed animation of a mass on a spring that I whipped up in Blender and exported to Unreal. But what have I done to achieve such a masterful piece of art?

First thing first, I used the dope sheet to set a small handful of keyframes at the extremes (Tap 'i' to create keyframes). I set the handle type to give it sinusoidal motion.

The bigger issue was exporting it to UE5. Turns out, you need to select the whole hierarchy before exporting, then select "selected objects" when exporting. My issue is that I was selecting the top most "spring_rig" and expecting that to be fine

Once they're in Unreal, there is a "Skeletal Mesh", "Animation Sequence", and a "Physics Asset". Pop down the Skeletal Mesh, select the object, head on over to the "Animation" tab, set "Animation Mode" to "Use Animation Asset", and select your animation sequence. DONE

Not a clue what the physics asset is for and you might also have a "Skeleton", but I haven't a clue what those are for yet

(Yes that was the actual frame rate while trying to screen capture while running UE5 (I pinky promise tho it run smooth while not trying to screen capture))

[theblackdaria]

journals !

[abcpetshop]

4/4-6/24

Made Miro board

Added lots of reference photos: Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Littlest Pet Shop. Have plans to collect Barbie Dreamhouse & wonky architecture examples & add them to the board later

Indirect: Working on freecodecamp to get back into learning web dev

4/7/24

Made blog: working notebook

- Doubles as a writing lab experiment

Made pinned post

Added detailed ToDo list to pinned

[moodymakeshifter]

Just a heads up: Afterlife Archive is available for free download on Itch, and its page just got a bit of a redesign yesterday.

BUT— I implore you, if you're interested in trying this game, to wait just a few more days for the update to release. New features will be included. New aesthetics. New art. New writing. So it will be worth the wait. I promise~

And after that, I'll be launching the Kickstarter campaign for the first official print run of the game zine!

Super stoked to share these new features with you! >u<

Soon, soon, soon~

[thornebelrose]

I started writing games recently! Here's what I've learned so far!

Hi! I'm a physical game writer! In December, I started writing my first game, Along the Open Road, a Road Trip Storytelling TTRPG for 3-5 people. After I started my fishing minigame Bluesky account, I got to follow a bunch of cool indie devs, and one of them just so happened to be hosting the Road Trip Game Jam, which allowed physical entries, so I made a start on making my first game!

Since then, I've written two more games: two solo journaling RPGs involving cards and dice.

The first is called Aqueous Planet Biological Discovery, a solo journaling game about being an astronomical marine biologist discovering new species on an aqueous planet and letting an earth company know if the planet is safe to live on.

The second is called The Empire Needs Men! and it's a solo journaling RPG about playing a boy (because I refuse to call a 16-19 year old a man) who has enlisted as a soldier in World War 1. You journal about the memories you make and the people you meet, good and bad. And I wanted the story to essentially be that the bad is big and in your face and the good is subtle things people won't remember when you're dead.

When I started, I was expecting it to be kinda easy? Like, I've been running D&D games for 10+ years now, it can't be that different, right? And, boy, was I wrong.

Thing number 1 I learned: Don't underestimate the challenge that you've given yourself!

When I started writing Along the Open Road, I challenged myself to get it done in a month. I wanted to make a whole new system (which I dubbed the Open Roads system), create a whole new concept for a game, try to get better at art so I could add my own art to the game, spend ages coming up with a unique skill system-

It was a lot. I wanted to make a game that was open and rules-light, but I'd set myself so many responsibilities and it really took a toll on me with how much time I was working on the game. I would spend my entire lunch in work just working on writing the rulebook and making character sheets and making sure everything was perfect.

I didn't allow myself to take time and learn. And, sure, I love what I made, but I went far too hard on myself for a game that's completely free and was never really going to kick off with how niche of an idea it is.

That's why, with my next few niche games, I focused more on simple ideas that I cared a lot about. An adoration of Fishing Minigames is my core personality trait and so making a fishing game was a no brainer. And then making a war game with a story I'd wanted to tell for so long made sense too.

Which brings me onto - thing number two I learned: success isn't guaranteed!

The fishing minigame account has over 800 followers, which I've amassed over the course of five months. This is huge to me. I've never had that many people really care about something I've done before? And there was a part of me that thought, if I share this game to my 800 followers, they'll share it with their friends and the cycle will continue and ATOR will be a huge thing in the tabletop community!

45 downloads. The game, since almost 2 months ago, has gotten 45 downloads, with most of those coming in the first three days.

Which is a huge amount of people for a first game! I was so excited by how many people cared! And then people stopped caring and I got bummed out because the fall from a huge number of downloads to radio silence was so sudden.

I released APBD about a week ago. 28 downloads. But because the first game got 45, it hit me hard, thinking it wasn't good enough. TENM released yesterday and has half of that with 14 downloads. But this time, I didn't feel as bad. Just today, three people have contacted me to show me their journals for both games. And that's when I realised...

Thing number three I learned: It doesn't matter how many people have downloaded your game. Appreciate the people who have and the memories they're making with it.

At the end of ATOR, I wrote a thank you to a bunch of people and said to tag me on Bluesky with the memories you've made. And I heard nothing. For the past two months, nothing. And it made me wonder if any of the people who had downloaded the game had played it, without me realising that, with the way I'd laid the game out, it's 5-8 sessions, and that's not guaranteed to be weekly like I'd usually run.

I did the same for APBD and, again, nothing, other than one post on Bluesky saying they'd tried it and had fun. That one post made me smile, sure, but I still wasn't appreciating the time people were putting into the game, just the number of people who had downloaded it.

TENM had the same. I wrote a little thing at the end being like "let me know your favourite memories you've made or story moments" or something like that but it wasn't quite pandering the way I had before. I sent it to a group of friends before I published it. And then one of them went out of their way to tea stain an entire journal and, today, sent me a picture of their first entry in their journal that they had made for my game.

Not long later, I was tagged in a Bluesky post of someone who had fun playing APBD, and wanted to share their discovery.

I stopped caring about numbers then, I think. I sent a screenshot to my fiancé, showing him the one person who had shown me their journal page with their little diagram of the creature they'd found and I was saying about how excited I was that someone was sharing that enjoyment of fishing and I stopped caring about numbers.

I'd like to consider my three games so far a success. I took time making them, finished making them, and published them to the world. And people have played them and made memories.

So here's to more games to come. Here's to more passion projects. And here's to more memories to be made.

Go make a game. Even if you don't think you can, make a game. And send it to me, please. Let's make memories together.

[transmisc2]

MONDAY - november 4th

free/pay what you want

// electric sheep // [WET DREAM] - a solo journaling game where you make and record an erotic dream with & about your robot narrator.

Query: Are you really that pent up?

play the original // electric sheep // and follow for release here