#dev-the-dm text

[dev-the-dm]

I have started uploading my monsters to D&D Beyond, for those who are interested! It’s quite an undertaking and I’ve not made a lot of progress, mostly because there is a ton of backlog to do (there are 68 monster-only posts on this blog, not including any monster stat blocks in the adventures I’ve written!). But there are a couple on there at the moment, and I’m hoping to put in some effort the next few days to get them all uploaded.

Here’s a link to the list of monsters that I’ve uploaded so far.

My username on D&D Beyond is dinraal_ (with the underscore), so if you see any uploads of my creatures on there not under that username, that’s not me! Please let me know if you come across this so I can take action.

[insertdisc5]

📚 A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG 📚

My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".

This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE

Writing (Names)

Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!

Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME

City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA

Writing (Words)

Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!

Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!

Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.

In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.

ASSETS

In general, I will say: just look up what you want on itch.io. There are SO MANY assets for you to buy on itch.io. You want a font? You want a background? You want a sound effect? You want a plugin? A pixel base? An attack animation? A cool UI?!?!?! JUST GO ON ITCH.IO!!!!!!

Visual Assets (General)

Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT

Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts

Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.

Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!

Visual Assets (Game Focused)

Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!

Game UI Database - Same as above!

Sound Assets

Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!

Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.

Other

CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV

EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit

Marketing

Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!

presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.

Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.

MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.

Game Design (General)

An insightful thread where game developers discuss hidden mechanics designed to make games feel more interesting - Title says it all. Check those comments too.

Game Design (RPGs)

Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!

Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.

How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.

Nobody Cares About It But It’s The Only Thing That Matters: Pacing And Level Design In JRPGs - a Good Post.

Game Design (Visual Novels)

Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.

I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[jovial-thunder]

question about lancer tactics: with some modification, could it theoretically be used as a more automated version of a VTT? i've had the idea of making something similar to a tactics game, except multiplayer, the npc's are controlled by the dm instead of ai, and it'd have to be more of a framework you could easily add in any abilities/weapons you'd need, but part of me wonders if it's worth building the whole thing from scratch (as someone who would have to learn coding as well)

Not by us. Adding remote multiplayer is a huge swing (and has been the death of many projects), and we already are at capacity with the scope of "do a 100% port of Lancer to a CRPG".

For reference, Stardew Valley had an experienced dev from Chucklefish dedicated to adding multiplayer for more than a year (this was posted one year before the 1.3 multiplayer update released). We don't have anywhere near that level of resources.

That said, there's a neat project called IsoCON that is doing something like what you describe for Icon. The rules automation from what I've seen is very light (closer to having in-game reference ability text than AI-controlled units), but I think is a great model for what an game-specific indie VTT can realistically look like.

[professorspork]

Hey, a little while ago, you reblogged that post about AI learning when people insert fics into AI text generators, and I wanted to offer good news and bad news: the good news is that AI learning models mostly don’t work like this. The publicly accessible text generator isn’t the whole learning model, it’s a single machine that the learning model generated. It won’t get fed directly back into the AI.

The BAD news is that there’s not really anything stopping them from saving that information separately to use later, and (much worse) anything that’s publicly available has probably already been scraped and saved. The good-in-this-context-but-depressing-overall news is that these models operate on the scale of billions of words, so, like. Idk. Individual fics ending up in a database mostly isn’t going to matter. That’s part of why the data-scraping isn’t something devs think about, ethically. This info is a paraphrase of another post I’ve seen going around saying the same thing, but I can personally corroborate it; before AI was a “crypto people hate when artists can earn a living” thing, I took some college courses on it and followed blogs about AI stuff for years. The last year or two of AI news has been really shitty :P It’s been really cool to me for a long time, but it is now clear that it’s even-more-vulnerable-than-usual to “capitalism uses every tool for oppression first” Knowing how it works is exhausting because anti-AI people are sometimes not all that much more accurate about how it actually works than the fervently pro-AI “I think chat-gpt is a person and human-generated art is dead” people, and then both of them skip talking about the more concrete problems like the “chat-gpt is propped up by slave labor” stuff.

I really appreciated this series of asks and wanted to make it available for all!

I think what we run into here is where like. A rhetorical device to invoke a sense of stakes and a bit of a guilt trip ("this is plagiarism because it feeds the AI" and its many permutations) can run up against misinformation (it's not literally becoming part of the AI's knowledge base, though as you noted it certainly COULD.) Because like

Where that post was coming from was someone being like "but why shouldn't I do this?" and the answerer resorting to "because it takes my work away from me" and this is still true in like, the rules of community and creativity if not necessarily in the hard lines of code. it's harder to articulate "this makes me uncomfortable because it's violated my ineffable sense of mutual belonging with and ownership of my own work, which I already felt on shaky ground on because it's fanwork but still FEEL with my WHOLE HEART" than it is to say "this concretely makes my words fuel for the machine" which I think people grok as a more sort of understandable breach of that social contract.

Which is why I like this post a lot because it gets at the WHY of why this is so perturbing and violating and isolating

Fandom was never meant to be a solo endeavor! when I write fic and put it out into the world, it's like echolocation. the words I put out are only half of what gives it shape and meaning to me-- the other half is the sound of it reverberating back to me as it bounces off the people it hits by way of comments, tags in reblogs, and DMs and they tell me their reactions and interpretations. that's what makes it a complete picture and not just screaming into the void.

to be removed from that process at all is a heartbreak to me; to have my words taken without my consent is insulting and misses the point and just. ultimately makes all of us that much more alone. which is to say that it's factually correct to say individual fics ending up in a database won't matter because it's probably already been scraped anyway because that's true for the AI and for the data. but individual fics DO matter insofar as like, these are choices people are making about what this hobby is and means and why they like it and what they think it's for and how they enjoy it, on a communal and social level, and THAT matters to me a great deal, in the same way that like, people now might end up getting videoed for a tiktok without their consent or whatever. it's about the erosion of privacy and respect.

but also yeah ChatGPT also runs thanks to exploited and underpaid workers, consumes horrific amounts of water in a time of increasing drought crisis and emits tons of carbon to boot.

[audreycritter]

Hello! There's now a CECverse discord chat for all things CEC, Dev, or batfam! Come join us!

(Link expires seven days from post, DM me if you need a new one!)

This server is SFW and primarily focused on platonic relationships!

[calder]

"[nukapedia] informs the setting enough that the ip has directly plagiarized me through my writings there" -- oh that's interesting. can you tell the story? or point me in the right direction if you've told it before?

yea ive done a post but i cant find it rn.

this description contains several word-for-word phrases and sentences from my Cult of the Mothman write-up (the article has developed, but it's the "voice of the Woods and The Eyes of the Forest" stuff and the 'natural materials to construct their shrines' stuff) and one from my Religion write-up ("survived, and even thrived,")

modiphius staff mentioned to me that bethesda gave them very little text to work with

i could theoretically dig up my specific edits and the DMs from Modiphius staff acknowledging the plagiarism, but i don't really care to gather receipts on that level bc it's rather self-evident and i don't really mind

i actually feel petty and weird bringing this up at all, but it is a thing that happened, and it's illustrative of how the wikis *are* the setting bible used by the devs. there are several examples in the games themselves of wiki fan conjecture being invoked as if it were canon. most famously "Maxson II" was the fanon name for that historical figure, until he was invoked as Maxson II in FO3. depending on your viewpoint this is either Unforgivable or Obviously How The IP Has Always Been

[shadowsofcolour]

General

I'll edit this with some clever text later when I actually have links to pin and stuff.

Dms

I am broadly ok with dming for things like comms, advice etc, but I do ask that you explain why you're dm-ing me so I know you're not a bot (this is mostly from previous bad experience)

Tags

Art is tagged with #shadowsofcolourart

Commentary

I tend to reblog art with the tag #shadowsofcommentary, if y'all want more info on any pieces I draw, lore implications, and my own opinions about various things. Think of it as a dev commentary; artists edition.

Reblogs

I heavily use the reblog queue, so please forgive any unfortunate timing of posts. If something reblogs which has bad timing with irl events, sorry

Asking about how I did something

Asks

Ask box is open. Ask me anything about myself or my ocs

Commissions

Commissions are usually soft-open most of the time. Dm for inquiries. Pricings usually range between £15 and £30 for character arts, and £3 for the lil bean bois

Art examples

This is some example art of mine (the tags are outdated due to the bird-app-death), but these are from a variety of times over the last 3 years, and I'm constantly evolving my skills.

[skettelyboi3000]

I had hoped that there wouldn't be anymore discourse with Dev and others but here we are and I will say, my opinion has changed. I'll put the video where I got all of this info from down below near the end.

(If I say anything you'd like to question DM me but I'm so done)

You can completely avoid this post if you want, idc, I just wanted to give my opinion.

So, I just watched the video with the evidence and voice calls and messages and so on and like... that shit was pretty hard to watch. He said himself that he did participate in those calls which makes this some of the best evidence we have of any of his discourses so far. I'm not gonna try to hate on anyone in the situation but idk my brain is mushy rn.

So first off, calling her cute over and over again. That's pretty strange to do if you aren't related to or supposed to be in some sort of relationship with because it comes off as romantic.

Second, When she said "Guys under [certain height] are...) in the voice call while talking about the only fans, he said that complaining about that is the equivalent of saying he wants a woman with double-D cups or "breasts the size of her head". Then when she said she had A cups because she was skinny, he said that was 'hot'. And he said something along the lines of 'if a man is under [this height] then should he be genocided?' Which is a strange way of phrasing it first off but idk, his views are not something I agree with.

Then he said that mother nature sexualizes children by giving them big breasts and wide hips which is CRAZY to say as a grown ass man, just saying.

And then there's the texts. I wasn't paying much attention to this part but I got the main important bits. (I'd still recommend watching the video I list below before forming a final opinion on the situation.) But basically a big part of it is him acting upset that he got talked out of nudes and made her feel bad then she apologized and sent them to which he called hot.

Then the finale, him begging that she doesn't give her friend permission to post the evidence against him and that he's "not a villain" and "doesn't deserve this" and like, I'd feel kinda bad if this was a one time thing and if he took accountability but nope. He's a grown man and could have taken accountability for his actions.

Here's the video in case you'd like to go off of it instead of my word (I'd recommend it since I'm no commentator)

https://youtu.be/A8WBGPAgskw?si=0-eJnEdnvZipSB1s

Anyways, I'm negative towards Dev now, but you won't see me spewing hateful bullshit here. I'd just rather not even acknowledge his existence anymore. I'd still like to post about the game because I still love the characters and gameplay, but I won't pay attention to him and I may delete ys off my computer if it will even matter. I feel so bad for the victim and am totally on her side. I can see her point of view and don't blame her.

[bella-daonna]

literacy in ireland in the mid-19th century

so I was thinking about whether or not Callan (my oc for @moiraimyths' visual novel, Na Daoine Maithe, check it out) would be literate. (or to what extent they would be literate)

Picture of Callan (commissioned from the amazingly talented @shrimp1y tysm again ily!!)

Since Cal is made up, i could simply make up the answer.

However I am instead doing some research on literacy rates in Ireland around 1845, and thought I'd share since this is a bit too much info for just dumping in friends' DMs lol.

Here's the TLDR:

MC lives in Galway, which had very low rates of literacy in 1841, especially for women. However, if you want your MC to be able to read (or read and write) prior to the events of the game, some people were indeed literate.

another point to note is that there's differences in literacy levels. think of someone being able to work their way through a simple text slowly and with difficulty, vs someone who can easily read a complicated text. So your MC might not be fully literate but that doesn't necessarily mean they have absolutely 0 skills with written language. It is up to you!

finally, i just did this research for my own interest. in game, there is an option to read Shae's map, so MC is assumed to be literate. Please don't let any of this information take away from your fun. Ignore it entirely if you don't like the concept of your MC being illiterate! Historical accuracy isn't the point - having fun is.

detailed info and some statistics below the cut!

Here's a county map of Ireland. You can see Galway is on the West coast, at the bottom of the Connaught region (blue).

The Éireannach (your MC!) is travelling to Galway in the beginning of the prologue. Galway is referred to as the closest city, and must be close by for it to have been reasonable for MC to be travelling there. The city is on the coast, in the bay of Galway.

In one of the asks from the devs, it was mentioned that they see the LIs speaking primarily in a Connaught accent as well.

Therefore, I'll be using Galway-specific information if it is available. Failing that, information for Connaught, or the West coast, and then lastly information for all-Ireland.

Now for some more specific details!

General information:

roughly 50% of the irish population was able to read in 1850

30% for men and 45% of women getting married in 1850 in ireland were unable to sign their own name in the marriage registrar

most schools charged for learning to read and learning to write separately, and also sequentially. therefore, more people learned how to read and then stopped paying before they learned how to write, which is why the numbers differ.

also in the northeast of ireland (more industrialised in the mid-19th c) there was a higher rate of literacy, whereas most people on the west of ireland were illiterate

it was also easier to practice reading than writing, so the skill of writing would decay faster too

there was surprisingly detailed information taken in the Irish censuses between 1840-1860 (more detailed than that of the British ones, which were administered separately) so that is convenient for me personally.

Gender differences

Across Ireland, the majority of literate women could read but could not write.

However, boys tended to be kept in school longer than girls. The majority of literate men were able to both read and write

Interestingly, in Galway (the county and the city), most literate women could both read and write.

HOWEVER, the majority of women in Galway were illiterate, and could neither read nor write.

In 1861, about 37% of the female population of Connaught was literate.

darker = more literate, and lighter = less literate.

The darker counties (in Ulster) had a significantly higher literate female population, however most of them could read only, and not write as well.

There also wouldn't have been much reading material available for the general public - "there was only a limited supply, largely religious and produced in the towns of Cork, Limerick, Waterford and south Tipperary" (these are all located in the south of Ireland, i.e., pretty far away from where our Éireannach lives).

Most of this information was taken from a paper called 'Varieties of literacy in nineteenth-century Ireland: gender, religion and language' by Niall Ó Ciosáin. I found this online and downloaded for free.

[stnaf-vn]

Hi!

I was wondering if you could tell us why you started working on STNAF and what got you inspired and how long it took you to put out the demo?

I’ve been wanting to start a VN but I guess I don’t really know where to start? And yours is just… amazing, I love it a lot. I played twice and got the friend? and boyfriend endings! I’m excited to see the whole game

I guess I’m just wondering what the process was like to make (and still are making) STNAF

Eeeeee I'm excited to learn about your story!! This may be a little long but I'll try to explain it as best as I can!! Well....for starters I didn't actually expect anyone to be invested in this LMAO. I was just like "Man...it'd be cool to make a game." I was going to just base it off the animation but....I thought Friend's character deserved more substance than 'mean, manipulative Friend' So, I love the yandere trope and I think it's so interesting, so I made him a yandere. All game devs start at ground 0, but if you want to make a VN, there's loads of information in LemmaForums, Reddit, Youtube, and you could also ask game devs for advice as well!! (Lord knows how many times I asked @queenlilithprime for help) It took me quite a long while, the demo would have came out a lot sooner if my Macbook wasn't a piece of garbage, but honestly I'm glad it didn't and I'm glad I pushed it back. The original demo had some of the worst art I ever created and I was ashamed of myself for wanting to so badly get it out there I sacrificed quality. So, I pushed it back. Rushing yourself on anything is never a good thing, especially when it's a project you care about so deeply. I rewrote the script three times in the past two months because I couldn't decide on how I wanted the story to progress. Then I came up with the story you know now, and let me tell you: At this point I was BURNT OUT. I was afraid I wasn't being the best I could be, and if I can be completely transparent, there were times where I thought other game devs could handle the story better than I could. But,I started it and I refused to let it be half finished. So, I sent it over to beta testing and there were quite a few bugs. Lily helped me so much work through them and taught me some cool coding tricks. They also helped me get rid of that quick menu (which was more difficult than I expected LMAO) And, well, now here we are! Demo is out, and it's gotten such amazing feedbacks and small things that'll make it even better when I get the chance to update it. My way of working starts like this: 1. Synopsis. Writing down a short paragraph of what the game will be about and how each chapter/day will go is super helpful! Think about what you want your VN to be like. Do you just want to make a short and sweet VN, or do you have a full story to tell? Pull up a Word or Google doc, and write down a small synopsis. 2. Assets/Sprites. Once you have the idea down, fine-tune it so you know what type of sprites and assets to make (backgrounds, props, music, etc.) This is where you get ~artsy~. I use Procreate for my stuff. 3. Game Script. This can be the tricky part. I use Ren'Py for my VNs and I use Atom to edit/write. It's just easier for me since I am familiar with Atom, but there's tons of different text editors out there (Although Atom quit on me, so I switched to VSCode. ) 4. Beta Testing!! You ideally want to give yourself around 3-4 weeks to fully beta test and work out any bugs you might encounter (having others play it can be super helpful too)

There are probably other ways to do it, but this is just what's easiest for me!

So...I hope that helps Anon!! If not, my DMs are open if you need any assistance!

[dev-the-dm]

Thanks for your time!

The idea is for an an ability for an NPC monster. It’s based on the arcane trickster, but is specifically trained to fight magic users. I’m calling it an arcane hunter, and thinking of making it CR 6-7. However, it could also be a magic item, or a class ability.

For the most part, it’ll have rogue abilities, arcane trickster spellcasting, expertise in arcana and stealth, and two attacks with a rapier.

The ability is called “overcharge spell”: Whenever a spell is cast within 60 feet of the arcane hunter, it can use its reaction to push a bit of extra magic energy into it. This leads to one of four results, based on a d4 roll:

1 - the energy of the spell explodes, the caster and everyone within 5 feet rolls a constitution save. On a failure, take 1d10 force damage per the spell slot of the cast spell. On a success, half damage.

2 - the arcane hunter takes control of the spell energy, directing the spell at whoever they choose, within 20 feet of the caster. (I particularly like this one, because it can be either meaningless or really bad depending on the DM’s timing with the ability).

3 - the spell energy collapses in on itself and has no effect, as if targeted by a counterspell.

4 - the spell functions as normal, but more powerful, as if cast at one spell slot higher.

Recharge on 5-6.

I also asked the blog homebrew-a-la-traumaverse for feedback, and they made the excellent suggestion to have the ability function similar to counterspell. That is, for spells up to 3rd level, the ability functions normally, but for 4th level or higher, the caster of the spell rolls an spellcasting ability check against the arcane hunter’s spell save dc to have their spell function normally. She also suggested I have a successful check makes the spell upcast, but I think I’ll have it only happen if the caster rolls 5 above the spell save dc (which will be 14, I believe).

Hiya! First of all, I'd like to mention that this is a very cool idea and I'm all for it! I definitely think we don't have enough counters to casters in D&D as is (except for counterspell, and maybe confusion effects, which suck for everyone), so I definitely find this a very unique and useful idea.

I like homebrew-a-la-traumaverse's idea of making it similar to counterspell, that fits very well with this idea. However, maybe that makes it a little too similar to counterspell/dispel magic? I definitely think an ability check/saving throw needs to be implemented to make this fair to everyone, though. Instead of making the caster save against the hunter, you could also implement a contested spell ability check, and if the hunter rolls higher than the caster, the hunter's effect takes place.

I'd suggest creating an additional effect on a natural 20 for the hunter (or in case of a contested spell ability check, a natural 1 on the caster's part), like getting to choose one target that the full spell's power is aimed at. It's similar to a roll of 2 on the dice, but I would suggest changing that effect to anyone within 20 feet of the original target, and the natural 20 effect to be anyone within the spell's range, regardless of the original target, if that makes sense. It creates some extra freedom for the hunter to really aim for the PCs who like staying at the back of a fight/out of the way of the other PCs.

Alternatively, you could choose for the hunter to be allowed to pick one of the four effects instead of rolling for it if they roll a natural 20! That has the same effect as above :)

As a fifth and sixth effect, you could implement the following:

5. If the hunter is the target of the spell, it has effect as normal, and the hunter absorbs some of that spell's power. Until the end of the caster's next turn, the hunter has advantage on saving throws to resist the caster's spells (or advantage on all saving throws against spell effects, if you want to beef the hunter up a little).

6. The caster must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (the DC equals 10 + the spell's level). On a failed save, the caster can't cast that spell again until the end of its next turn.

These are just suggestions! Do with them as you wish, and definitely don't feel obliged to implement any of these suggestions. I hope this was helpful to you :) I'd love to see the finished product, if you're willing to share. Happy brewing!

[marinamakes]

Game Dev Blog October 8th 2023

October 8th 2023-

I have awoken once more. The days go by as blurs of house-chores, dreams, and work. I'm concerned that doing such similar work from day to day is bad for motivation, it reminds me of my latest unfinished project, "Frogs vs. Ghosts". I will no longer speak its name. It cannot be good for me, or development.

This is the GIF I last posted on Twitter on the 5th.

Moving on from all that, recently I've found myself worried about the future. How will this work out? I've understood for some time I'd have to work a day job in the future, but I'm still for some reason worried. No matter what, I need to ensure that I don't stop development, on this game or in general.

Maybe I should start posting this blog to Reddit or Lexaloffle, and update it instead of using this text file? I'll look for a blog site for a little bit before beginning work. I'll ask Twitter. But maybe I should make art so people actually see it?

Finished in 5 minutes! Well, outlining took about 30 seconds too, but yeah, this is sufficient.

Alright, slow day only about an hour of work, but I spent the last hour finding a good blog spot. I've settled on Tumblr. I want this blog to be relatively on the down-low, so this is good. I want my blog to be easy to make, so this is good. And I'm familiar with social-media platforms, so this is great. I guess this will be my first post??

Should I introduce myself?? Idk...' I'm Marina makes and I make games using Pico-8. I founded the "Pico-View" zine, and have released several games. This is to be my secret blog space. If you recognize me from anywhere be sure to shoot me a text! This month I plan to finish a Halloween release and an article or two. Enjoy!

That seems good. Time to get back to work!

While making the bullets, I giggled with excitement as I was having fun. I notice in the process of creating my games I worry a lot over whether they are fun or not. I think I should cast aside such worries, except when using them to enhance game-play.

My last game, "Robuilder" was severely lacking in several aspects, the most apparent to me was the rushed home-menu and meta-game. I'll explain what the game was... It was a falling-block puzzle game where the goal was to connect arrows on blocks, but the falling of the blocks was completely in your control. Essentially it's a building game where you connect arrows. On top this there were four packs of blocks available... As I was saying the most lacking aspect was the home-menu and meta-game. Each 'game' consists of three rounds. This has no rhyme or reason. On top of this the way you change packs of blocks was unintuitive. Here's a gif...

Overall I want to avoid this with this game by implementing a home menu as soon as the first level is being tested. I'm about to head to bed. Here's progress...

Need to add a muzzle flash on the player and ghost. So sleepy... Hope you guys enjoy this blog! If u do then reassure me in dms or replies or something??

[midnight-and-his-melodiverse]

The Melodiverse: Night Demons (part of "Species: Part I" which is in progress)

NIGHT DEMONS

Note I: (Before the lore begins: I've realized these Worldbuilding things are out of order, that's no matter for now though as I'll be chronologically ordering them soon lol)

Note II: OH BOY, GET READY FOR A LONG HAUL LORE DUMP

Night Demons are one, of seven different types of demons (because mainly they're organized by the type of gem and their features they inhabit) that are widely known and feared as the most destructive of demon, not by their own accord of course.

Their destructive tendencies by their own accident, are known to be caused by "an evil kind of possession" that descends on poor souls who are naive enough to deny their existence.

BACKSTORY

In the ancient times of the Melodiverse, Night Demons were once humans that through their morbid curiosity towards the Melody Gems; being regarded as mystical artifacts back then, realized that they could play pranks on the gems and trick them.

A result of this, ended up with a human being sent to the Discordant Barrens (The Melodiverse's version of Hell), and their punishment was intense exposure to the gem that ended up transforming them into the Night Demons that are known through history in the present day: having blue-hued horns, being controlled by an evil kind of possession, having constellation-covered skin, and having long, thin claws.

Many people who form conspiracies on them, claim that the fact that Night Demons being called a "biological curse" is a lie and propose that it was the demons' fault in the first place for having an evil kind of possession controlling them at every waking hour.

One poor soul, who constantly tries to play off that his species is a "biological curse", is Midnight. He, of course couldn't escape having an encounter with an evil kind of possession, which is how Staticlight came about, along with also being the personification of Midnight's negative thoughts.

APPEARANCE AND FEATURES (featuring Twilight talking!)

Night Demons' features have been well established and set in stone ever since the first myths of them passed around through the coastal town of Concordia and the small urban city of Penwood, and have largely stayed the same.

In many books and texts in the Melodiverse, historians, students of Melodiverse history, and other people, have described their overall appearance. Here's a description from Twilight, who is a student of Melodiverse history, and a budding rocket scientist:

About their appearance: "The appearance of Night Demons are as follows: They have constellation-covered skin, evident of their connection to the stars, hence the name, 'Night Demon', spiky blue-hued horns, white glowing eyes; a hint of the chaos they hold, and long, thin claws."

About their features: "Night Demons are known to have a rare feature that allows them to interface with the more chaotic Melody Gems. Specifically, Dev who is a night demon, has the Anarchy Gem and because of this, is able to assume a human form. Other Night Demons who have Gem Marks (which is the mark they have on their skin, denoting the secondary gem they inhabit at birth) have the ability to use their secondary gem's magic."

An interesting thing to note: "Night Demons, from what I've heard, are a surprisingly fluffy breed of demon. The feeling of their fur is like a cat's: warm, fuzzy, and soft. You would never think me to be the person that declares these things, yet I indeed am."

WORLDBUILDING TAGLIST: @blind-the-winds, @purgatorydotexe, @carefulpyro, @bardic-tales, @365runesofwriting (Ask / DM to be added to, or removed from, the taglist!)

SPECIES TAGLIST: @elijahrichardwrites, @365runesofwriting (Ask / DM to be added to, or removed from, the taglist!)

[sidhedust]

~About The Blog~

*Sidhedust | 21 | LG (BT) | Black American

I draw fantasy and urban fantasy. Think something like FF7 or FFX kind of urban fantasy. I like reading and writing about history, folklore, mythology etc etc. Feel free to send asks about it and discuss it with me, because I can’t get enough!

Tags

#Sidhedust Art - Art Tag

#Dev Logs - Dev Log Tag

#Sidhedust Rambles - Rambles/Talking Tag

#Others work - Art by others tag

#Inspo - Misc Fantasy+Sci-fi Art Tag

#Refs - Reference Tag

#Text - Misc posts and memes

#Zines 'n Stuff - Zine/Contributions Tag

#Wips - Works in progress.

OC Tags

Main Characters:

Luana | Floris | Calisto | Yolotli | Miguel | Milagro | Amber | Gloria

Links

Storyworld Site

Personal Site

DeviantArt

Itch.io

And hey, check out the VN's page proper below if you like!

Lastly, I am open to dms, asks, all of that, especially if it’s about art or history. However, I do not post donation asks, as I can’t verify the legitimacy of the situation. Sorry.

*Pronounced She-dust, btw!

[oltyxmedb]

big news

bigger text

i’m making this thing now!! i can actually do it too. what am i making? i’m making a WH40K “inspired” hack for mörk borg, the worlds most agonizing ttrpg for all the best reasons. i’ll be using cy_borg and some extra stuff

what to expect

not space marines as a class

this not coming out any time soon

plenty of fun classes

new systems for chaos corruption and sanity

weird and wacky weapons from the 41st millennium

“bad” (epic) 99% (estimated) art by your’s truly

fun ways to fuck with ur players and your dms alike

a wh40k fan-creator who isn’t weird about it in the bad way

mayyyyybe compatibility with KillSampleProcess or Forbidden Psalm

so yea don’t expect progress to be quick but it will come along

to quote good devs, it’ll come out when it’s done

thx for being my obsession warhammer & mörk borg, i’m now giving back to that place

[solradguy]

If you haven't answered this before, how did you get into guilty gear, and when?

I've talked about it a little in my tag ramblings before but the whole story's kinda funny so it's about time I shared it hahah

So, I've known about Guilty Gear since at least 2013 when I found Holy Orders posted somewhere. For the life of me I cannot remember where I actually first heard it (probably Tumblr) but I REALLY liked it, it was so different from anything else I'd heard up until that point. I was broke as shit in 2013 and my only option to listen to it more was to pirate it. The only download I could find was the GGXX Sound Alive album by A.S.H., but that album's really good, which is fine. Somehow I still actually have the files from that original download lol.

I didn't look into the games back when I downloaded that album but I don't think I would've enjoyed the series as much back then anyway. It was right near the end of my "anime is stoopid I'm so cool and edgy and only consume media for ADULTS" doofus phase. Isn't that hilarious to look back at?

Anyway, fast forward to December 2020. One of my friends wanted me to get into BBTag and IIRC Sony was having some kind of Japanese devs focused sale at the time. I still have the text I sent when looking up BBTag where I saw the Xrd Sign box art and I said something along the lines of "Idk who this Sol Badguy is but he looks like a me character." We've since gone back and pinned it in our group chat. It was like the klaxon going off before a big storm, in hindsight lol.

Then Strive came out last year. Our D&D group's DM got it (he comes from Street Fighter) and then the friend who wanted me to look into BBTag got it. He asked me one day if I wanted to watch the story mode with him since it was only us online and I wasn't doing anything so I agreed. I'm so grateful they included that encyclopedia for the story mode because we had to pause it every line 5 minutes to figure out what something meant haha.

The actual scene that REALLY got me hooked was when most of the cast are in the White House briefing room before Chaos shows up and they start talking about sending agents out or whatever. IIRC they mention agent Dokken first and I was like "Haha! Like the band!!" and then they mentioned agent Stryper and I was like "Holy shit they really did actually mean the band." I've got albums from those two on cassette lol. After that my friend and I went through the encyclopedia and I told him about all the classic rock references lmfaoooo

Now here we are. My brain is so rotted by this series but so many beautiful mushrooms have grown out of that mush in my skull that I've accepted it.