#is because it was also a game mode tutorial thing. anyway

[azems-familiar]

i am 18 hours into jedi: survivor and so far my biggest and most solid opinion is that Bode and Cal are fucking gay

[bilolli]

Just Dance Care AU!

Ok ok so I thought of a story for this Au but it’s nothing really impactful or full of drama and angst like my other au’s, I wanted to leave this au easy and fun to play around, because, let’s say it. Just Dance and drama in the same sentence makes me laugh. 

story and PNG version under the cut!

(I gave up on Y/n design because I couldn't figure out a general look for them. This is you we are talking about! Draw your own JD fit, I'll draw mine soon XD)

Anyway here’s the story so far: 

Year 2029, videogames industry made a huge step forward and classic consoles and devices were substituted by the new and upgraded VR headsets with full body tracking. It’s something like the NerveGear in Sword Art Online without the kill switch. Some games still require you to actually move your body (like fitness games or sports because yeah, they don’t have a purpose otherwise). 

Y/n wanted to buy the newest VR headset but, while searching for the best offer, they found out FazCo entertainment was hosting a giveaway, the prize? One of their prototypes, a VR meant to be released the next year coinciding with the opening of their first mega pizza plex.

(so the plex doesn’t exist right now). You decide to sign up for the giveaway and after a while you receive an email telling you you won the VR headset and that, to claim it, you need to read and sign a series of NDA policies (understandable, it’s a prototype headset that’s not even in commerce). Some clauses are a little bit concerning but nothing you hadn’t read on other electronics booklets, so you decide to sign. After, like, a day, you have the VR in your hands. 

The box let you know with super saturated and colorful writing, that the VR came with a game pre-installed inside. Uh, that’s why they were giving one away, they wanted a free game tester…but you know what, it’s worth it.

You always liked Just Dance games, they make you think about happy memories of your childhood. This pre-installed game called “Five Dances at Freddy’s” is a close copy of your childhood game with original FazCo songs, characters, environments and also some collaborations with other famous artists. It probably will be the cause of a big copyright infringement report.

There are various ways to play it: story mode, Casual dance, Five Dances, and Just Dance Care.

The first one is similar to the casual dance mode but with little cutscenes between a dance and another to tell a tale, Casual dance is how you can play the collab songs, Five Dances is the multiplayer mode and Just Dance Care is a more uhhhh “hard” way to play the game with all the other modes mixed in it. You stare at the description of the last mode smirking and decide to try it first just to see how far you can get before losing (yes you can lose in hard mode in this Just Dance, but you don’t die, you just have to restart from the beginning). Turns out the FazCo wasn’t kidding when they advertised the new headset as a breakthrough in the world of virtual reality headsets, the thing TRANSPORTED you inside the game itself. 

You almost have a heart attack when you can’t find your VR on your head, but before you can try something you are blocked by two tall individuals who you think are the “tutorial” characters. 

Yadda yadda, tutorial, you can pause the game and exit whenever you need just by opening an hidden menu, you find out your tutorial characters are called Sun and Moon and that you are way worse than you remembered at dancing (damn full body tracking, there is no way you are going to do a cartwheel in the middle of a dance, you still don’t know if your body is inside your home and if you’ll physically feel pain if you fall and you don’t want to find out).

You pass an embarrassingly long time trying to win your first dance battle just to discover it was still the tutorial. 

You try to go on with the story but you fail at the first real battle with a bear character named Freddy. 

And guess what? You have to start again from the tutorial! Y/n is gonna spend A LOT of time with Sun and Moon if this goes on.

[thebramblewood]

I thought it might be fun to do a little behind the scenes for the last story post! You guys might be surprised how little actual editing was involved. I mainly just crop, add brightness and saturation, clean up any small bits of clipping or weirdness that bother me, and then add captions! Do you want to know what actually took me the longest?

This hair had some problem areas that showed up in live mode but not CAS. It's such a tiny thing, but it annoyed me, so I had to touch it up in nearly every screenshot. Luckily, the darkness of her hair means I didn't have to do a perfect job.

The effects were all done in-game. Lilith has the alluring visage vampire perk, which creates the red haze and mind control spiral. Unfortunately, Helena crossed her path too closely, and rather than set the shot up again I used the clone brush in Photoshop to edit out the effects around her head (vampires who can successfully do mind control on other vampires are exceedingly rare). By the way, I later figured out a quick and dirty method for dispelling unwanted visual effects on a Sim is to remove buffs in MCCC.

As I've mentioned, I had to shoot the attack scene twice. The first attempt was too dark, the location wasn't very visually interesting, I was in an area of San My where I had less camera control, and I used the Effects Player, which ended up being less eye-catching (hey, sometimes vanilla is the best option!). They would have worked to get the point across, but I think you can really see how I learned and improved upon my vision!

These comparison shots are all uncropped and unedited, by the way. Reshade/Relight truly does the heavy lifting. I've also gotten better at finding an angle I like and sticking with it, even if that's only because I don't want to adjust Relight all over again, lol! Speaking of angles, that last shot was done using the Dutch angle trick I learned in this tutorial by @surely-sims! First-person camera is actually super useful for storytelling. If you don't already know about this head-turning trick, it'll change your life. It comes in clutch for changing the eye line of a posed Sim since I'm not always great at getting that right in Blender.

Anyway, I don't know if anyone will find this super helpful or interesting, but I'm always open to questions about taking and editing screenshots, even though I feel like most of what I know has just been absorbed through osmosis and trial and error!

[yeahimcal]

CYBERFLOWER HEADCANONS!!!!!!!! EAT SHIT AND DIE EVERYONE WHO ISNT THEM

Anyways (headcanons below the cut)

Margo loves Minecraft but she is very much like “I am going to fight these zombies and kill these enderman and kill these Ghasts and win this game” and Miles is like “I’m going to build a red stone contraption the likes of which have never been seen and I’m going to spend twenty five Minecraft days in the mines” but Margo is also “let me build the house using insanely complicated tutorials and NO I won’t be doing it in creative mode that’s cheating etc” and miles is “I’ll decorate the house with flowers and paintings and gather animals for us to use for milk/wool etc”

Miles loves to paint Margo especially in the coloring of her avatar because he thinks she’s absolutely gorgeous

Margo always always begs Miles to let her do stuff with his hair and sometimes he will relent and say yes and that’s the story of how he had twists for like two months

Margo is an avid sims player and does the Hashtag Girl Thing of making her and Miles in the sims and planning out their life together

She and Miles will bike through his Brooklyn a lot and hit like three convenience stores one right after the other, they are tiny (respectful!) menaces to bodega owners, they’ll drop off lunch for Rio at the hospital and drop off lunch for Jeff at the police station, head back to Miles’ house and crash on the couch with their snacks and lunch and energy drinks and Margo will play games while Miles draws

Margo likes the games in Miles’ universe a lot more than her own so he shares whatever games he has with her

Margo will leave kiss marks on his face with her lipstick and he sometimes forgets and goes out to see his parents and Rio just teases him about it as he desperately tries to wipe it off to no avail

Miles makes really wonderful flower crowns and Margo dries them out to keep them, she has a wall with them hanging up in her room

They go on roller rink dates a lot and Miles is very good and Margo is very bad so he pulls her around the rink while she squeals and yells at him to stop going so fast

Margo sends him a specific gif whenever she wants to talk but can’t really type very well bc her hands are shaking (she gets very excited very easy and her whole body starts shaking as a stim) and he’ll immediately hop on call

They call all the time Miles has slept on call many many times, Margo is a chronic insomniac but having him on the phone makes her fall asleep easier

They have so many playlists together :] they love listening to each other’s music

Umm they love each other and stuff :] that’s it that’s the post

Follow me for more Cyberflower! Or don’t idk

[wyrmwould-star]

I'm a casual gamer.

And that's okay.

I, admittedly, kinda suck at most games. Platforming AND shooting? Nope. I can't manage both. Precise dodge times for potential lethal shots? No way. Combat systems past 4 buttons? I'll just lay here, thanks.

But I love a good story. I can't write out how much I absolutely adore stories. I may not be a writer, but my stories run through my veins. Because of this contradiction, I often find myself looking at a game, playing the first 3 stages/chapters/bosses/etc, and setting it down because I suck absolute ass at it. I'm not "Can't get past the tutorial jump of Cuphead game journalist" bad, but I am "The hardest thing I managed in videogames was that I beat the first 3 stages of Cuphead on simple mode" bad.

Because of this, I OFTEN find myself watching plot synapses of the more story-based games that I picked up, enjoyed, and realized would only be able to beat in 5 years.

I'm also, however, of the opinion that games shouldn't necessarily have an easy mode. Games like Dark Souls would lose value if they catered towards people like me, and I've accepted that I will never be able to beat them. But that doesn't mean I don't dive into internet rabbit holes about the plot of Doom, even though I can't even beat level 5.

Anyways, there's my rant.

[cyanityy]

One plot hole that really irks me in Bully is the Help Gary mission. After how Gary boasts about taking over the school in front of all the clique leaders, with a reputation of being sadistic and untrustworthy beyond that of the usual teenage banter, why the flippity is there no resistance against his rumours?? Anyway, my two cents on the ordeal:

First, scrap Gary as a guide throughout the entire mission. Why are we still in tutorial mode while navigating the basement I see literally zero purpose for that. We could easily resolve the mission's rigid direction by making the betrayal happen moments before, instead opting to chase Gary for revenge - a revenge that remains unsatisfied when we realise we’ve been set up to fight Russel. I think it would’ve been much more elaborate while still retaining the element of betrayal bc as it stands, Jimmy just. Ignores these kids filtering in during Gary’s dialogue?? Jimmy being punished for wanting revenge, his core value, would be a more interesting narrative. Gary should exploit his hotheaded, impulsive nature and anticipate Jimmy will chase him to lead him to the Hole for public humiliation.

Second, if the decision is that Jimmy will not be encountering Gary for the rest of the story until the climax then his absence should've been enforced. For most parts of the story, we do forget about Gary because the story explores each clique, the only other times we notice him is maybe in two mini cutscenes but after that, it boils down to what Gary's already done/said (Like when Dr Crabblesnitch says he's been saying some "interesting things" about him, or when Pinky tells Jimmy she's told he's "sexually confused"). despite the choice to design him as a 'sneaking puppeteer', it makes for a severely passive antagonist until chapter 5. NPC Gary could've been spawned into certain locations close to or in correlation to the story mission's location to remedy that and it's up to the player to pay close attention to what's going on around them. It would make him an active character without diverting too much from the deliberately under-wraps role that R* assigned him because it's Jimmy's perception that Gary's not an immediate concern but the players themselves can see something is brewing. It would also exempt Petey from having to remind us about Gary throughout the playthrough.

And as an extension to that last point, Gary's word against Jimmy's should not have been as one-sided as the story let itself be. We're informed pretty early that the school consensus is Gary is sadistic, sociopathic and scares the rest of the students so it should have very little weight that his manipulation works. I understand the idea that leading by fear over love is a motto integrated heavily into the game, but it's also extremely complex and not touched upon at all. Jocks are tight-knit and acknowledge they're the reigning clique (until Jimmy slapboxed them too) so it makes sense to think that Gary mindgamed them because that's their weakness, the same idea that bribery might've yielded better with the preps for their materialism. I don't see that making Gary exclusively spread gossip is as sufficient as the game makes it out to be. The point is that we should've been shown how Gary managed to turn the cliques against him, using what he's observed from Jimmy, along with what he knows best: Violence and Apathy.

[eachuisge-cc]

How to make regular TS4 clothing compatible with digitigrade legs: PART 1

This tutorial assumes you're converting for my digitigrade leg mesh used in my satyr legs and werewolf override, but it should also apply to any other funky-shaped legs you might want to do this with. Useful either if you want your digitigrade sim to be able to wear a piece of vanilla maxis clothing, or for converting cc (please get permission from the creator where applicable before doing so, especially if they make their own meshes).

I'll do my best to make this tutorial accessible to relative beginners, but I'm assuming that you already have some basic blender knowledge. If you don't, there are a lot of good tutorials that explain its clusterfuck of an interface better than I could, so I recommend finding a few of those and familiarizing yourself with the software before you continue.

You'll need Sims 4 Studio, blender, and potentially an image editor like gimp or CSP (anything that can handle transparency) depending on the clothing.

This first part will cover shorts and anything else that ends above the knee (along with some extra s4s stuff like category settings and CAS thumbnails that I do to make them look better and behave properly in-game); next section will cover long loose pants which is a somewhat different process, as well as cuffed pants, skintight leggings, and other things that might require some heavier editing and altering of the shadow map, UV, and textures.

Getting Started

Digitigrade base meshes are available for download here. Please don't reupload them unaltered, and I highly recommend not changing the edited part of the leg mesh (knees down, basically), or it may mess up their ability to match up seamlessly with other digitigrade leg parts. The most effective way to use them is to append them to the project you're working on and frankenstein them onto your mesh as needed rather than modifying the blend files themselves, especially if you're making WW parts since these don't include Turbodriver's rig.

Mesh Editing For Shorts

Shorts, miniskirts, and anything else that ends above the knee are great because you don't need to do much, if any, actual sculpting, and once you know how it's relatively quick to do.

To start, export the mesh for the shorts you want to convert the same way you did the legs, all LODs. If you're converting cc, it's possible the original creator won't have made proper LODs (some don't because it's incredibly tedious, but it's good practice and improves visuals and performance in-game), and if that's the case you might want to make some LODs, but I won't tell you how to live your life.

For this, I'll be using these base game vanilla shorts, since I need to convert them anyway. Because when I think of satyrs, obviously I think of khaki shorts.

Yeah.

Append the digitigrade leg mesh via File>Append. navigate to where you put the legs, pick the mesh you want (make sure the one you're importing is the same LOD and frame as the mesh you're altering), select the object folder, and import s4studio_mesh_1.

You'll end up with a situation that looks something like this. Do not be alarmed.

I don't know why it imports these things along with the mesh (there's a non-zero chance someone will yell at me for doing it wrong and it's not supposed to be like that) but in my experience you don't need any of it, so deselect the mesh and delete everything else that imported.

At this point, to make things easier on yourself, you'll want to hit numpad 3 for orthographic side view, set viewport shading to solid, and hit alt+Z to toggle x-ray view.

Take note of how many objects make up your mesh. For most maxis shorts (and probably a lot of cc ones) there are three that divide up the legs, and it's important that you maintain that number and don't remove/replace any of them, otherwise the mesh will be broken once you import it to S4S. It's finicky like that.

Select the digitigrade legs and go into edit mode, then select everything up to here:

Separate this bit into a new object (P>Selection), then go back to object mode. Select the separated lower leg bit you just made, then select the lowest piece of the vanilla leg (select them IN THAT ORDER, very important), and hit ctrl+J to join them into one object. Go to edit mode for the newly joined leg bits, and delete the vanilla part, leaving only the lower piece of the digitigrade leg. If you've done everything right up to now, your mesh list will still look like this.

or whatever it looked like when you started, plus the one appended mesh.

Now go back to the main digitigrade mesh and select up to here:

separate it and repeat the process you just did, replacing the next leg segment up.

Now go into the topmost part of the vanilla shorts, and select only the leg part and delete it (it's almost always detached from the shorts in vanilla clothes and very easy to select, but with cc this might be a mixed bag and could take more time/effort to do). At this point you should have only the digitigrade leg and the shorts themselves.

You now want to go back to the uppermost section of the digitigrade mesh and delete most of the top part of it, trimming it down so that the leg ends just inside the shorts.

For a lot of shorts and skirts, especially shorter ones, this is all you'll have to do, but in this case I'm going to move those very top/front vertices back a tiny bit, just to make sure there won't be any clipping during animations. I also like to switch viewport shading back to material preview mode at this point to make it easier to see if there are any bits poking through that shouldn't be.

At this point you join the upper legs and shorts like you did with the other two segments (again selecting the digitigrade mesh first and the vanilla shorts second) and by the end your objects list should be back to this:

Now you're done, you can save and import to S4S. the digitigrade legs are already weight painted and have their UVs set up and everything so you don't need to do anything more to them, they'll just work, and as long as you don't edit the mesh or uvs they should blend seamlessly with the goat hooves and/or werewolf paws just like the naked leg.

Now do the same thing for the other three LODs. Maybe while singing a sea shanty to stave off the tedium (personally I like listening to podcasts while I do batches of these, it's kind of like knitting for people who love eye strain take breaks from your computer, kids).

S4S Categories/Thumbnails

The three main things you want to do with any digitigrade conversion are disable it for random, restrict opposite frame, and uncheck all occults. That should prevent any broken leg situations. Don't forget to apply to all swatches (I say this because I forget about 30% of the time and end up having to go back and fix it).

At this point, you don't have to do anything more. The clothes will function as they should in-game. If you want nicer looking thumbnails though, and you have the digitigrade werewolves override, there's one more thing I like to do.

Make sure all the thumbnails are blank and check only the werewolf occult in the categories tab, then save and load up the game. Find the clothing you just made in CAS (it will probably show up by default on werewolves of whichever gender you made it for) and cycle through all the swatches to generate new thumbnails that look like this:

instead of this:

Once all the thumbnails are generated, exit the game and export them all (if some of them appear blank, restart S4S and they'll usually show up), uncheck the werewolf occult, clear the thumbnails again, and re-import the werewolf ones. This ensures they won't randomly switch back to the human ones. And it's way faster and easier than making your own custom thumbnails with screenshots and cropping/editing, which is important if you're doing a large amount of these things.

And voilà, you've got your own digitigrade-compatible clothes. I'll be updating the tutorials as needed for clarity/any information I forgot to include, so please message me if something doesn't make sense or I need to go into more detail on something, and I'll edit it with more/better info. I also entirely learned this through trial and error, so if there's a better way to do any of it that you happen to know, tell me that too, this is just the best way I've worked out to do it.

[herecirmsims]

Hello! I made this list of tips for Twitter months ago, chickened out of sharing it because I didn’t want folk to think I was acting like some kind of authority on posing, and then eventually posted it last night.

Anyway, I had a couple of requests to post it here as well, and as Twitter really made a hatchet job of my thread I thought having everything together in one post might be helpful.

I’ve kept the same cover image with the missing word typo because it’s stupid and amuses me. May useful? May not useful!

This list assumes you know the basics of posing already. If you’ve never posed before and are looking to learn, then I can’t recommend the @katverse​ series of tutorials enough - start here. 

These are just little tricks which I wish I’d known sooner!

1. ALWAYS move Sims via their root point, never the orange dot! If the orange dot is moved, they won't be in the right place when you put the poses in game. If you do move the dot, change to Object Mode, click on the orange dot, hit Alt+R & then Alt+G.

2. The side menu is really useful for selecting points on the face, such as the eyes. To bring the menu up, press A to select all points then hit I & select either Location or LocRot - I don't think it really matters unless you're saving now, in which case you want LocRot.

3. Need to reset a point? Right click on the point so that it turns blue, then hit Alt+R. Need to select multiple points? Hold shift while right-clicking points. Need to reset the whole rig? Hit A until all points turn blue, then Alt+R.

4. You can also copy and paste certain points or entire poses by selecting the point(s) first, then hitting Ctl+C, then Ctl+V to paste. Please only use this knowledge for good, not evil - no stealing people's poses, adjusting them slightly, and then paywalling them (it happens). 

5. I recommend working on expressions when the face is viewed straight on, in either 1, 3, 4, or +1 view. This helps you avoid any unnatural twists. For a natural expression, remember to move eyelids, squints, and eyebrows as well as the mouth! If I’ve already posed the Sim and need to adjust their expression, or have just straight up forgotten to do it, then I copy the head point (right click so the point goes blue, CTL+C) and twist ONLY the head so that it’s straight on in one of these views. Then I just paste the point back again when finished (right click, CTL+V). 

6. With the mouth, I like to lift the corners (either right click & drag if asymmetrical, or raise both via the translate tool - you can always drag later) & then use the rotate tool to give a softer curve. Remember to always open the mouth with the jaw point, not the mouth. Oh - and don’t forget how raising, stretching, or lowering the lips can alter an expression! But don’t stretch too far, remember how real mouths are shaped.

7. Fingers! Those bastards. On all my base rigs, I have the W, X, and Y points locked on ALL finger joints so they don't squiggle all over the place. You can unlock them on the 0 joints if you want to spread the fingers etc. once in position.  You can also lock the jaw point in the same way - this means you can open the mouth whatever position the head is in, and not get a weird crossed look. I recommend saving base rigs with all these points pre-locked so that you don't have to go through them every time. Sometimes I’ll lock the eyelid rotation and knee rotation, too.

8. It's a good idea to view your pose from every position before finalising it, as you can catch weird angles/clipping that way. Hold down the mouse wheel to move freely. Use 1, 3, 4, and +1 views to make sure feet etc. are flush with the ground line.

9. If you're working with custom rigs/ objects/accessories, it's helpful to restrict selection so you don't accidentally move them (also very annoying if you keep clicking on them instead of the rig). Right click the mesh so it gets an orange outline, then click that arrow. You can also use the eye to hide things like rigs/objects/accessories, which is useful if you’re making poses using big objects such as cars or horses who are in the goddamn way.

10. Custom rigs! I love custom rigs! I REALLY recommend making these if you’re creating poses for your own Sims/story. They completely eliminate clipping because you’re able to make the poses SPECIFICALLY for that Sims’ body shape/clothing/hairstyle. Expressions can change wildly depending on the Sim the pose is used on, so making them for your specific Sim means you know it will look right for them. I have a folder of saved bases for all my story Sims with various outfits and hairstyles - and naked versions hehehee.  If you're making poses for others to use, the default rig is best - and remember to leave a lil gap between hands etc. to account for different clothes, body shapes etc. I recommend this tutorial if you wanna make custom rigs.

If I’m sharing story poses that featured my beloved vampire (and most do), I have to copy all poses from the custom rigs and paste them onto default rigs before sharing them because he’s a skinny lil disaster with a feminine body preset and his poses would NOT work for the majority - there’d be too much clipping. 

11. When moving one part of the body, you’re really moving the whole body. Use pelvis, spine, neck & head points to create a natural curve - you only want to move each one a lil bit. Remember that bodies lean, twist, slouch. You can put a lot of emotion into the bend of a spine. Putting the entire twist &/or bend into one point makes things look a little weird. Move the neck joint THEN the head joint for head turns - start that movement right down the spine if the Sim is really twisting to look at something!

12. Clavicles. Don’t overlook them because arm movement starts here! You can move the forearm a certain amount without it starting to look weird, but if your Sim is reaching up/forward/backwards then you want to start that stretch/rotation in the clavicle point.

13. There are other things you can do to help with posing, like using helper rigs or setting up IK targets, but I didn’t get on with them - they’re a different learning curve. It’s all about what works best for you! This is just my personal list of things I've found useful.

Anyway, that's it. I am extremely mediocre, I make lots of mistakes all the time, I am most definitely still learning, there are MUCH better posemakers than me out there, and probably better ways of working; but learning all the points mentioned here has definitely helped me along the way. Enjoy posing!

[dragon-snoots-a-boopin]

I am not 100% if I have done this before so I am going to call this my updated Destiny 2 vs Warframe post. However, before I get into thing, please note that EVERYTHING I SAY IS BASED ON MY OWN EXPERIENCES IN BOTH GAMES and that my experiences may differ from yours and if you can't accept that then just stop reading now and go somewhere else. Now I shall get into my thoughts and opinions on both of these games.

I am going to start with Destiny 2 here and the things that I like about it because, contrary to what one may think, there are things about Destiny 2 that I do like. While doing that I will also make comparisons to those same things in Warframe too.

If there is one thing I can definitely give Bungie credit for is just how good everything looks in Destiny 2. The environments, characters, weapons etc all look really, really good. They definitely have some extremely talented artists over at Bungie and it really shows. Of course, Warframe is also a very good looking game too and is also one reason why I like Warframe but, I think Destiny 2 has a little more going for it in the looks department.

Another thing, and this is something I really enjoy from Destiny, another thing that I really love is the music in Destiny 2. I can sit and listen to all of the soundtracks for Destiny 2 anytime and all day long too. Hell, sometimes I listen to Destiny 2 music when I am playing Warframe. But, on the same note, I recently listened to and downloaded the Warframe soundtracks and they're very good also! Sure, I'm not a fan of the lyrical tracks on the second soundtrack but the rest it and all of the first one are really nice to listen to anytime.

Yes, that is pretty much where things that I like about Destiny 2 ends so, let's get into what I don't like.

First up to bat here is that calling Destiny 2 a free to play game is an utter joke. What can one do as a free to play player in Destiny 2 anyway? Well, there is no base game campaign anymore which was the major reason I even tried Destiny 2 in the first place. You get a tutorial mission in place of that and the first mission of each expansion and that's really all the story content you get. You have a limited number of strikes, I think only three or four of them. You have Gambit which, honestly, I have no idea what this mode is as I've never done it. You have Crucible which is PVP which I imagine is a small amount of maps for F2P players. There's the Dares Of Eternity activity from the 30th Anniversary and then there are two raids and one dungeon. Yeah, as a F2P game, Destiny 2 lacks so much. Once you do these things beyond the first time, you'll see just how boring this game really is. Comparatively, Warframe absolutely EXCELS at being a F2P game, especially with the vast amount of content at ones disposal. You have like seven to eight planets to do all the nodes on, you have Duviri which also has The Circuit and Steel Path, you have the stuff associated with Railjack missions and so on! Best thing too is that a good amount Warframes and weapons can just be obtained from farming assassination missions and don't have to be bought from a store. Warframe has a terrific F2P structure that definitely sets it far above Destiny 2.

Of course, if you don't want to be a F2P player and don't want to sit in an empty well of content, you could always fork over somewhere between $160 and $200 to get all the DLC for the game. Oh yeah, you could also spend additional money on the season pass and in game shop too. What? You don't want to fork over more money for a game that you already paid money for? Yeah, no one wants to do that. This is the area where Warframe excels because it has an actual, sound F2P structure. Now, I've heard some people say that one doesn't have to spend a dime on Warframe and I am sorry, but that isn't true. The difference with Warframe is that one doesn't have to spend much on the game. To me, Warframe having a limited number of inventory slots is a major thing. Initially when starting the game, you have a whopping two Warframe slots and if you get more Warframes, it'll cost you 20 platinum per slot and platinum is something that has to be bought with real money. I myself have spent around $7 on platinum because of this, because I have 11 Warframes with a 12th on the way soon. I find it to be a little but looser when it comes to inventory slots for primary, secondary and melee weapons. But here's the thing, you can EARN more inventory slots by doing the Nightweave dailies so if you want to get more slots slowly, that's the way to do it. Also, yes, of course, like Destiny 2, Warframe has a store where you can buy stuff with you platinum. But, ultimately, Warframe is such a better F2P game that Destiny 2 will ever be. Clarification: It has been brought to my attention that it is actually possible to not spend a dime on Warframe, even on inventory slots for Warframes and weapons. This is possible because one is able to trade their leftover Prime parts for platinum. I myself have been showed this by a friend and I myself find it to be complicated. I just plainly forgot about this method until it was brought to my attention and I thank those who did for reminding me about this.

The next thing is that you basically can't play this game single player. Not only because the matchmaking system will match you with random players regardless of if you want to or not, but also because I found that a lot of things that are NOT those opening story missions for each DLC is just way too hard for a single player to handle. I find that Warframe is only a little bit better in this regard. Early on when doing planet nodes, you can do them my yourself no problem. I found though that once you hit Saturn, Uranus & Neptune, that pretty much goes out the window. But, those early planets are also not completely possible to do single player because the boss fights will require other players, otherwise they're way too difficult.

Kind of coinciding with missions is that I really with they would do away with parts of the mission where they don't allow one to respawn. I mean, even in a group this can be trouble and I don't think it's fair to the players to have be worry about dying and having to restart an entire leg of a mission over again. I am so, so glad that Warframe doesn't do this. However, Warframe only lets one respawn four times but, after that, you can rely upon other player reviving you. But, if you're doing something alone and go through your four respawns, then your fucked. But, Warframe definitely does this better in my opinion.

Events are kind of boring. At the time of making this, it is their Halloween event, The Festival Of The Lost, and the event is kind of boring. The event playlist consists of killing an amount of Headless Ones in an amount of time and then doing a boss. There are like three maps for this playlist and the boss that spawns at the end is always the same too. Yeah, I do it for getting gear and weapons and because I don't have much else to do but yeah, playing the same mode on the same three maps over and over is boring. I've honestly not taken part in any of the events in Warframe so I have no idea how they compare.

The lack of unique weapons is a small thing that bothers me. You could get a super awesome legendary weapon and yeah, it looks like 20 previous weapons that you have already used and the only reason it's even special is because of damage numbers or whatever. You have all these talented artists, surely you can make more cool looking weapons for this game. Warframe definitely excels here as they have completely different and unique weapons that looks very different from each other.

Now, I am going to make this a Part 1 post and am going to do the same thing as I've done here for Warframe in another post.

[deedee-sims]

Disco Elysium - rigged blender models

In today’s episode of ‘Dee does things out of curiosity’, after about one week of extreme head scratching and tutorial googling I finally figured out how to export these rigged bad boys into blender!

More info, download, and all that jazz under the cut!

First of all, I chucked them into this folder:

Folder

I haven’t managed to export all of the models well, but I’ll keep trying and I’ll add more to the folder later. Some of them just got distorted no matter what and some of them just clip through their clothes a lot (looking at you, Klaasje), so that’ll take a while to fix, because I’m still a blender noob. (no matter how hard I tried, they couldn’t get fixed by just staring angrily at them 😔)

Also, I couldn’t figure out how to export Harry’s clothes, but he has 3 versions anyway (I had to edit the clothed ones so they don’t clip, though).

How to use them:

So, every file has the model (blender) file and the textures. You can just open the file with blender.

You should be in Pose mode, but if you’re not, you can change it in this corner.

You see that the model has these ‘spikes’. These are the joints that move the body parts. Some of these spikes are quite hard to see and click on, sometimes you have to turn the view or go closer (inside) the character model. Some models have some extra spikes (Harry’s tie has separate spikes for whatever reason).

Click on a spike so it turns blue. If it doesn’t turn blue, you’re not in pose mode.

Hit the R (rotate) button, and move your mouse.

Whee, it moves! Click again to release the rotation. You have to turn the view to be able to rotate the joints in certain ways. Just keep poking at it until you get familiar with it.

If you want to move your whole model, select the whole thing, then hit G (grab?) and you can just move it around. Or rotate it with R. Or do whatever.

Some models come with multiple clothes (Kim) or accessories (also Kim), which you can swap / hide from view if you open the ‘hierarchy’ on the top right block, and hide / make visible with the eye and camera icons. You can also hide the spikes here.

I also included some extra textures to Harry (leopard bodysuit, a jacket and a shoe) and Kim (hardcore jacket) that work with these models, so you can swap them out in the Material Properties (please read the previous tutorial).

How to get more than one model into one blender file:

You have to open one of the blender files, then export the model in .fbx (File.../ Export.../ FBX). Then open the other file and import the thing you just exported (File.../ Import.../ FBX). Maybe there’s a better way, but it worked for me. 🤷‍♀️

If the textures show up wonky, you have to go back to Object mode, to Material properties, and change the Blend mode under Settings to Alpha clip (idk, that’s what worked for me).

And that’s basically it? You can just import more objects or clothes you extract, or more characters, or whatever, and have fun! I have no clue how to make good renders, but you can find tutorials about it *waves around* on the internet.

(you can do whatever you want with these models, no need to credit me, I didn’t do anything that other people can’t do lol)

(pictured: Coolno 😎)

Advanced: How to edit facial expressions:

You can have your models do *some* facial expressions by editing the models. You can go to Edit mode and move their face around.

Just make sure you have this Toggle X-Ray mode on, unless if you move the vertexes you’ll get holes in the model.

(pictured: cheeky Kim 🤗)

Super advanced: How to export the rigged models from the game:

Here are some pointers if you want to experiment with this.

First of all, make sure you read my previous tutorial about the basics of extracting.

You have to export the Animator with an Animation Clip that belongs to it, unless it’ll get distorted. Sometimes they get distorted anyway. It’s a guessing game, really.

Import the exported .fbx to blender.

If all you see is a lot of black lines, you have to follow this step to remove the empties. It’ll remove most of the black lines. (they’re not visible if you do a render anyway)

Select the whole thing, go to Pose mode. Hit Pose.../ Clear Transform... / All. That’ll remove whatever pose it might’ve exported with, and you’ll get the default... T-pose? It’s not really a T-pose. Figures!

Go to Object mode, select the whole thing, and scale it to x100 to every direction. You need to do this because all the other exported stuff is 100x larger than the rigged models. Also, it’s a better size to work with in general.

If you change to the Viewport Shading / Material preview mode, you’ll see that the textures are wonky. You have to go to Material properties, and change the Blend mode under Settings to Alpha clip (idk, that’s what worked for me).

If the exported model has an out of body experience, you have to select the rig and the model one by one and move them to origin. You might have to rotate them too to make them line up / face forward.

And that’s basically it? You might have to edit some of the models if they clip through their clothes.

Have fun! 😊

[celestemodder69]

For as interesting and rewarding as learning and mastering a speedrun can be initially it doesn't change the fact that you are engaging with a game in contexts where no design work was put in, sometimes actively avoiding the actually designed contexts and modes of engagement and running the game to its limit and its breaking point.

What happens to Celeste's story when you avoid any and all of it's manifestations? To the ludonarrative sense of overcoming when you already start winning? What happens to the stamina puzzles when you just use neutral jumps? To the level design when you can hyperdash the length of a screen?

What exactly are you engaging with?

Forsaken city is a tutorial for the basic mechanics I already know, an introduction to the characters I already know, it sets up a tone that I'm gonna ignore and mechanics I'm gonna bypass, its so input dense it make my hands hurt.

Old site, has an open section that I would have explored and wandered around in casually, a chase section that would have pressured me to constantly move (lol) and relaxed wind-down section at the end (TASawake here I come!!).

Celestial resort has you timing your inputs to avoid the dustbunnies (here's a setup to not have to worry), was there some story at some point? Remember the first time I passed though here it was so slow and frustrating, things are better now. Damn that last room is annoying, if I could skip it I would.

Thank god this game has no autoscrollers, no good speedgame game has autoscrollers, wind is a mechanic that pretends to impede the player.

So you know how the point of temple is that you have to wander and get lost, yeah fuck that. Anyway isn't it fucked up that seekers aren't meaningfully deterministic that's bad game design!!! Do you remember how the walk with Theo was slow and tedious, how carrying him was supposed to be a burden, remember how you had to improvise because the seekers would throw everything off, do you remember how to do a gultra?

So like the whole thing with reflection is that after a slow reflective section were you are given the option to go through the fast path and the slower path a few times (it's meandering, or was rather). You confront yourself in an explosive battle were all the hampering elements of the previous levels are not there and the screens get easier so you feel like you are constantly making headway (as opposed to the previous sections) and it feels awesome, this is likewise significant for story reasons. What actually happens now is you progress through a slog of unengaging screens that is way longer than it has to be and it's the most dogshit experience of the entire speedrun.

Chapter 7 exists, I guess, the previous one was so utter garbage that I never decided to route from 6 onward, I would practice 1-5 then kinda hope for good results on 6-7 whenever I decided to do actual runs, did not give a shit. Also shoutout to all the strawberries I didn't get.

At some point you can't say you are playing Celeste anymore, not to any practical degree, not from a game design or player experience perspective.

[hanguangbuns]

mdzs characters' minecraft play-styles

wei ying: redstone genius. and a master at social engineering. he uses both for chaos. he played on anarchy servers in middle school, and therefore a menace for all his friends who play casually. hes the type to try to crystal pvp jiang cheng and "accidentally" blows up his 24 dogs. nowadays, as an adult, he makes redstone machine tutorials and lag machines on servers for trolling purposes. he makes amazing pixel art

lan zhan: doesnt play computer games much but only played because wei ying played it. wei ying tried to goad him into playing together on one of those large public servers when they were teens but he refused. however he secretly went home and asked his uncle to buy him a copy and he proceeded to only play in creative mode for the rest of his life. he is also a redstone genius. he mostly makes aesthetic builds rather than actually beat the game.

jiang cheng: plays the game and does every thing right, but at some point he starts getting bored and wonders what the point of all of it is. he tames as many wolves as he can and has them run around killing mobs with him. he plays in survival single player, never in a server. wei ying always makes him open his world to LAN so they can play together, and he knows, he KNOWS he shouldnt, but somehow he does and ends up regretting it. his house that he took 2 irl days to build is now on fire. he gives up

nie huaisang: forever noob who only played because his friend wei ying convinced him to. he doesnt understand how to play it no matter how many times its explained to him. keeps asking questions about what to do after he chopped the wood. how does he get a sword. why isnt this stone dropping an item after he breaks the block. etc. when he does eventually get the hang of the game, he makes pretty houses and structures thats actually pretty good for a beginner.

nie mingjue: god at PVP and a legend in PVP servers for his extremely OP gear but also kind enough to help beginners that join. in survival he brute forces his way through the game and punches the mobs with his bare fists on the first night, no gear no weapons, low health low hunger. when things settle he tames a cat and makes a nice home. he plays only a couple hours a week bc he has to hit the gym. its comedic watching a grown, muscular man play minecraft

meng yao: set up a public multiplayer server with lots of special plugins and functionality it really looks like a good, legit server. however, no one except lan huan really joins anyways, but he puts his best into the server. whenever he finds out about people that shit talks him or just simply disagrees with him he has xue yang join their servers and grief their world.

lan huan: mostly watched his little brother play on the computer when they were younger but lan zhan let him play if he asked. hes fascinated by all the things to possibly do in the game, and likes the cute little animals. he also really likes lan zhan's builds and tries to make cute little houses himself! he was curious one day and played on survival, and by the time night came around he was panicking when all the mobs came chasing after him. he never played again

lan sizhui: actually plays the game fairly seriously even when all his friends are going around causing chaos in a nearby village. is that one friend that can balance playtime without impacting his school or social life, only on for a few hours a day but uses it wisely. he likes to make automatic farms with the redstone wisdom his mentor wwx bestowed upon him, and even goes the extra mile to make it OSHA certified—he labels everything and organizes all his chests by demension and block type. once in a while, he lets loose when his friends are in a particularly goofy mood

lan jingyi: lets out all his frustrations of real life into skywars and hunger games. he’s really good at parkour too. his favorite thing to do is troll jin ling. his setup is a shitty laptop he uses for school where the frames never peak past 15 fps and the wifi automatically cuts off at 10 pm in his household. he uses every minute he can get.

jin ling: insane rig set up purchased with both father’s and jiujiu’s money and plays with resource-intensive BSL shader mods on java and RTX settings on bedrock. he still gets beat in bedwars by Jingyi on a chromebook. every world he joins he finds and tames a wolf as fast as he can and names it after his irl dog, Fairy. once his dog got blown up by a creeper and he was inconsolable for days

ouyang zizhen: doesnt play minecraft much but will play with his friends on big multiplater servers when asked. the quartet plays factions and they all named him the leader except he never really gets online anyways

xiao xingchen: likes to play on a small, private server he port forwarded just for him and song lan. they played on easy mode and built houses and farms together and beautiful structures. soon, their world was joined by A’Qing, and eventually xue yang, except they didnt know it was xue yang and one day found their world tragically griefed

song lan: only played when xiao xingchen asked him to play. he suspected the player that joined their world was xue yang but he could never actually prove it and xiao xingchen would always give the player the benefit of the doubt.

xue yang: notorious griefer, hacker, and feared troller. he finds private servers with no whitelist and logs in to grief their world as fast as he can. he uses every trolling technique in the book: lava casts, wither boss spawns, illegal items, etc. he looks up to wei ying, a LEGEND in the mc trolling community, in hopes he can get his attention, but wei ying does not approve of his actions at all—HE never trolled and griefed private servers where people put their heart and soul into creating, only the big ones where admins would scam people out of their money. everytime xue yang is banned from a world, he just hops on an alternate account.

A’Qing: loves to get OP gear and make massive builds. however, after joining xxc she gets a new goal: to seek revenge against xue yang for what he did to the server. at some point, she finds her way into meng yao’s server and griefs xue yang’s base with massive amounts of lava buckets. sadly, it was only a temporary success because the server was easily rolled back. she’ll find a way

[fudgecicles]

So Arknights came out with a new game mode, and I thought I would comment on it. So I tried out reclamation algorithm and beat the first ending a while ago. Verdict, I like the mode, with big, biiiig caveats. Early game sucks, and tutorial is unhelpful. How unhelpful? They will talk about the stupid exit tile when the main form of emergency exiting is when you finally upgrade enough that you can place a comm tower that allows a 9 day emergency withdrawal. You will never use the exit tile ever, they suck. Other things game won't tell you: the way to get a lot of resources in mountain pass and get mushrooms, the use of level two observatories to get two nodes ahead, crucial to get fast to the lucrative resource areas, etc etc. Anyways, it's just too brutal, especially with the stupid hordes of enemies that my poor phone struggles with. Also I hate the reflect rock enemies, they suck. Once you have enough playthrough and upgrades on your hand, you have enough for things to start snowballing, and that's when the gameplay shines through. At that point, you are collecting resources at a comfortable pace, getting to the later nodes very early, allowing you to get food that for example, greatly diminishes dp cost. Because you will have enough resources to build the base just as you want, resembling that of a more traditional tower defense game. Furthermore, the constructs can be used in all the other nodes, allowing you to survive those formerly dumb encounters. I like the story and the encounter with NPCs too, it adds a lot of flavor to the world, and what kept me going through early game. tldr; takes too long to get fun, but when it gets there, it goes between comfy and engaging. ps; stupid rock reflect enemies can suck it

[videogametako]

baka review: touhou hero of ice fairy (+ prologue)

putting the prologue here because it is free and fun and not in the full game at all (which is fun but not free)

you get to fight the scarlet sisters and get a taste of the gameplay. emphasis on taste because the mechanics actually feel a lot better in the full game, so if you're hesitant on buying it because the prologue gameplay feels slightly clunky, you should buy it anyway and see for yourself and refund if you find you still don't like it. i managed to beat 3 of the story bosses before 2 hours so you can definitely get a good taste for it and your money back if you didn't like it

that is all about the prologue

baka game. real 9/9. link here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1955830/TouhouHeroofIceFairy/

overview

touhou hero of ice fairy is a bullet hell boss rush where you play as resident baka cirno, the hero of ice, on a quest to save her princess daiyousei from the clutches of the evil nightmare miko. it's a cute plot and the story segments are presented to us like a puppet show theater style that's super endearing with the art

even the tutorial stage plays into it, i love it

gameplay

cirno has two types of attacks, a basic shot and spell cards. hold down LMB or whatever is assigned to the controller to shoot and deal damage to the boss. to use spell cards you need courage, gained by dealing damage (i actually can't remember if there are other ways, but uh you'll mostly get it by dealing damage anyway). gain enough courage and you can use spell cards, consuming it. it's worth noting that some shot types do much better with higher courage, and all of them have additional benefits from being at higher levels of courage.

dash with RMB, and fly by dashing in the air. flying is completely free invincible movement and is really strong, but uses stamina obvs. the game honestly feels a bit like a souls-like, not that i play souls likes. there's a lot of dodging involved, but attacking is pretty much a continuous effort

i forgot to take pics of the gameplay and apparently this is the only screenshot i have. your goal is to clear the many phases/stages of the fight either by waiting out the timer or depleting their health bar. some phases force you to wait out the timer by making the boss invulnerable, indicated by chains

here's a store page screenshot

after finishing the main story battle, you can eventually choose to challenge past opponents in challenge mode. for completionists, there's no-hit and pacifist no-hit runs you can try

forgot to mention items, they're basically to modify your shot type and give you passives, you can see 'em in the lower right portion of the screenshots above

screenshot from the trailer

and, another thing i forgot to mention was the presence of an assist mode. it said it decreases boss difficulty as you lose so it's a pretty neat way to slowly lower difficulty as suited for you. it also gives cirno this cute chick thing on her head lol

story

the first stage sees us at the misty lake, where cirno begins her search for the nightmare miko's lair.

she's kinda dumb

we're then introduced to our first opponent, clownpiece

her being in a one piece latex suit might be a joke in itself i'm realizing. she's our first taste of real gameplay, and uses bullet patterns akin to someone who—as my partner so aptly put it—has a surface level understanding of what america is.

beating her shows her in a battle damaged state which i will not be showing here because she has her whole ass on display, but that'll be the trend for mostly everyone yeah. though, i think hers has the uh, most damaged outfit out of all of them. also losing enough times triggers taunting dialogue from them too, really made me wanna beat suika up more when i got it the first time.

oh yeah she promises to tell you the way to the nightmare miko's lair too! hooray! though, unsurprisingly, she is somewhat of a jester

and our hero is kind of dumb. in the forest, cirno stumbles upon some fairies harassing a bunny. after driving the fairies away, they invite us into their train

tewi's outfit is so cute

there are, naturally, bunnies on the bunny train

this bunny train serves as the menu and hub, i quite like it. there's an encyclopedia, a jukebox, etc.

reisen here changes your loadout for you

pls be nice to her, she's overworked

there's this cute board showing all the bosses you've beat thus far, too. incredibly charming

the story ramps up a bit later, coming with the difficulty spike (at least for me, idrk how others fared). will not be discussing it because uh no time rn, got other things to do

closing thoughts

this game is cute, charming, has great music. i'm impressed by it's quality, and it leans into its aesthetics very well. the redesigns i find quite interesting, and it's fun to compare and contrast the world they establish to canon lore

hmm, the english translation is a bit wonky, but it's honestly serviceable. other than that i've got no real complaints

edit: beat a challenge and like, this is a bit unfair i feel... i mean, i guess i could watch it on youtube....

if you like touhou for the shmup gameplay you will definitely find it here. if you like it for story and characters you will also find it here, feel free to use assist mode and stuff. if you don't like touhou, give it a try anyway

if this game looks fun, buy it over here:

[facet-project]

pre-blog catchup diary

*disclaimer: this is ALL pre-alpha art. these screenshots are BEFORE visual development started. it's ugly. it's supposed to be. i was focused on programming and didn't want aesthetics to get in the way. pretend in your heart that this is all beautiful pixel art

anyway go below the readmore for details!!

i started working on this game in october 2023!! i had been learning gdscript before that, a little bit, but i hadn't fully committed to this project until then. pictured below is. the First build of the game vs the most current build. we've come so far.

the prototype was just a one-week build of the farming sim. so i could test how the time mechanic worked (time only moves when you do an action, you're not on a constant ticking clock)(this makes it much easier to strategize what you'll do in a day and letting the player go at their own pace, making the game feel more relaxed)(you can also... undo actions... which was just me testing out the code in this version but in the full version... will have different Implications)

i am all by my lonesome on this project. mechanically at least. my brother, girlfriend, dad, and my best friends are constantly helping me test things and i bounce ideas off of them all the time. it helps that my brother is a master GM and writer and my girlfriend is a software developer. and i lean very heavily on my dad for music/soundscape assistance. so yes, solodev, but also i am not an island

so the prototype was made when i was still learning gdscript past the phase of "tutorials for babies that produce a single number-go-up game" which is. hard!! since this is a much more complex project. it's easy to make anything in isolation, it's harder to figure out how to make new systems weave into a bigger project! fucking hell i didn't even know about custom resources!!!!

the prototype went off with FLYING COLORS though. girlfriend and brother played it over the weekend i gave it to them and it worked, it made sense, and watching the two of them test out the mechanics gave me some very good ideas for future builds. also nothing crashed and gf couldn't find any crazy exploits! (however pictured below is the incredibly fucked up floating rabbit glitch that i couldn't fix)

i finished it in june and took a break in july. august will be the first proper devlog for this! i'm excited to have a little dev journal around! i probably will only post consistently about once a month, with maybe some little posts here and there about characters or concept art i'm excited for

so what's next?

TIME TO GO BUILD ALPHA, BABY!!!!

which sounds exciting but i'm basically. starting from scratch again. new, fresh godot file. so it feels like i'm not very far in, even though i have an entire working prototype on my desktop.

and.... geez.... gotta actually make the pixel art and implement it into a working file???? so that it doesn't look like dogshit???? that would be nice. i didn't want to do it for prototyping/pre-alpha because i really wanted to make sure i had the capacity to code the game before putting my heart and soul into the art. and now i'm very certain i do?? it's not hard, it just takes time. and the time will pass anyway!!

i have two campaigns planned for the game, one that's smaller and one that's larger. the bigger one is the typical make your own character farming simulator, played straight in the setting. but i'm working on the smaller one first! you play as a specific character for the first year of the story. not all of the game mechanics are turned on for this mode, and it's more story-oriented than the straight Farming Simulator, so i think it's a good place to put development energy into. get it all ironed out. make it make sense before blowing it up on a larger scale. and it's more contained to test in which is a bonus

anyway. i'm going to post build updates on this on the last day of every month. and!! i'm not going to say a Lot about how the game works quite yet but the askbox is open. i don't think anyone will ask anything cause this is still in really early stages but it's there if you want it i guess

[fanficfish]

why i love Honkai Star Rail as a visually impaired gamer

Yeah, that new game. So, SPOILERS!

I have quite the visual impairment. Quick movement? SUdden changes in lighting? Badly-marked stairs? Heck no! But I'm still an avid gamer, and I"ve played both Genshin and Star Rail. And I can say I enjoy Star Rail much more. Not because of the lore- well, okay. I'm here because of the cool space train. But I like the lore for both. It's more....of other things. So I'll cover that here, and if you're also a handicapped gamer (or even if you aren't) LMK your thoughts.

Also, I"m a PC gamer. I use a mouse and keyboard. Both with too many buttons.

(totally not self-promo but I'm planning to stream it sometime on my Twitch, "Fintastica", if anyone's interested-)

anyway here we go !

Navigation is clear. I never liked how Genshin Impact had like. A whole giant map. Like, I know it was way mroe open-world, but it was kinda annoying trying to find myself sometimes. My friends can attest to how horrible I was at navigation. With Star Rail, the locations are split into zones and there's even teleportation points that you don't have to do a whole thing to unlock literally everywhere. Places you need to go for missions are marked on the map too, though I think that was also a thing in Genshin? You can also see if you collected all the treasure chests in a zon, by type no less. The maps are vague enough that you still have to explore to find stuff, like the Among Us maps, but I think that works out really rwell, less cluttered. There's a few different maps too. I'll give it a 10/10.

Battling. In Genshin Impact, you kind of...just have to know what moves you're doing and have faith the characters are doign them as planned. While real-time strategy is great and all, it doesn't really work if you often can't tell what the characters are doing (fast movements, again.). In Star Rail, the battling is turn-based. It's a bit of a switch at first, but it's actually really great especially if you've already had experience with that kind of thing. You can see everything, from the enemy's stats to your own, and see when a character is about to be targeted for a loit of damage or what buffs/debuffs they're getting. THere's autobattle and douglespeed modes, too, for faster gameplay. I will say that the moves can be a bit bright, like with the Ultimates (I usually have to close my eeyes for those) but overall I'd say it's been a very easy experience. And no weird button combos- it's all done with a mouse! 8/10 but that might change since the company said they're workign on a fix for the bright lights.

Character leveling / enhancing. Might be because I've played Genshin, but it was very easy to figure out. Character has battle experience level, like with most RPGs, character has item that enhances their abilities that in turn can be upgraded with items and the in-game currency, character has two different "skill trees" (that''s what I'm calling them) that can give boosts to their skills and stuff, and items used from inventory can help give buffs of certain kinds. I haven't gotten to relics yet though, so we'll see what happens with that. So 9/10

Overall game screen. One I actually figured out where stuff was, it was really smooth sailing. Phone, mission board, and tutorial tips in one corner. Stuff to collect mission/daily/whatever rewards, the inventory, character and team selection, and wapr (how you get more new items and characters, Genshin's WIshes equivalant) on the other side with character switches/team lineup not far below. The phone has everything from friends to game settings, and you can also change game some settings in battle. I much prefer pressing a key to activate my mouse and then go around clicking things then having to remember which button on my keyboard opens the Paimon menu. I haven't played Genshin in a while, so I don't remember exactly where everythign was, but I definitely remember having the wiki page open with the list of controls. Probably 8/10, because for a little while I was abit confused on where things were but that's probably just me not realizing that a phone icon means....the phone.

Overall world exploration. Part 2 of the navigation from earlier. Controls make sense (WASD to move, right click to sprint), left click to attack or you can press alt and click some buttons). Items you can take have a tiny icon over them to indicate, be it a hand or a marking when you get close. I definitely like interacting with the closets and trashcans. You can see characters talking (speech bubbles) and then get closer to listen in furthur. Just like with Genshin, everything feels so pretty and awesome, so that's a bonus. But I do miss being able to jump. 9/10.

Lore. According to the TV Troopes page, there's a mention of there not being an option to fastforward dialogue. It's nto too much of a deal though since a lot of the time you'll get invested and want to know more about the world. THere's stuff you can read, and if you need to skip a cutscreen after having to redo a storyline battle you can just fast-forward over it! Very handy. The lore is so cool, and I also love this little feature that lets you hear the voicelines for the characters in this databank on the Express. And you can still explore around, so while you do have to follow more of a storyline it retains the Genshin freedom of exploration.

And that's all I really have for now. A lot of stuff is taken from Genshin, so if you're familiar with that, it'll be a breeze! Might not be as easy if you're new to miHoyo games but it seems pretty intuitive. I really like it so far, my only real complaints would be the ultrabright ultimate moves and the fact that Arlan is the only dark-skinned character (and most of the girl have short skirts, but let's be honest, that was expected wasn't it?). And there's Pom-Pom who's basicaly Paimon, but doesn't hold the entire menu or whatever in their (he? The characters used they for them so I will too-) paws.

oh also warning: your cahracter is naturally a little horny and definitely cracked their head while doing one of the early boss battles. It's the Traveler from Genshin, but slightly more chaotic.

anyways that's my take on it, hope that helps if you're considering getting the game :) aight I'm back to grinding calyxes and debating if I should pull some more characters.

(might update later. Also please remember this is ALL my personal opinion)

part two