#lazuli does game dev

[lazuliquetzal]

This is between ME and YOU!

hey remember when i stopped writing fic so I could make a video game?

bone apple teeth.

https://lazuliquetzal.itch.io/save-me

[sapphicteaparty]

there's lots of very non-subtle things lost records has been doing with color coding. the one thing that stuck out to me was this box of gems, color coded to match the characters.

what's interesting is that nora wants to make swann a bracelet with one of these gems that you can freely choose but the one she has in mind for her is lapis lazuli (blue). tiger's eye (yellow/orange/gold) would have been the obvious thing for nora to suggest right?

or why not suggest green/emerald for swann? i get this is just another thing that factors into the relationship building system so it might not be that deep but it is interesting.

then there's the jewelry autumn is wearing. she's got two earrings, one is green and the other pink/purple, encased in gold. and she also has two necklaces, another one that's a green stone and a blue (slightly purple? but let's say it's blue) stone. the way they're arranged is also interesting. so we have three pairs: swann/nora, autumn/nora, swann/kat (or autumn ?? if it's purple - hard to tell with this one).

actually let's talk more about this. autumn's color seems to be pink, it's what's used in the subtitles throughout the game. the gem that's assigned to her is rose quartz also pink. BUT! her favorite color seems to be purple. it's what she suggests for the bloom and rage banner.

so which is her representative color - pink or purple? i think it's pink because the game has been pretty consistent about that with her. but then whose color is purple? why is it there? and why do we keep seeing purple with green?

SIDE NOTE: so there's this theory i've read that there's another character that we haven't yet met, a missing fifth member of the group. i guess they could claim that purple belongs to that fifth character? personally i don't buy that theory for several reasons, biggest one being that half of the game is over and there is no scope to establish a completely new character.

instead, if these colors are significant at all, i think it's possible that the characters can change and so can the colors with them. the difference between blue and purple or pink and purple isn't that big. it could be indicative of a transformation of sorts. transformation to what? idk!

anyway. kat has a single blue stone in her necklace, simple, easy, makes sense. the shape is similar to the one autumn has in her necklace.

swann isn't wearing a necklace in 1995 but she does seem to have one that's a bit similar to kat's just with a green stone (emerald i guess) that you can see in her room:

maybe we'll see her wear that in tape 2. i don't have a good pic but adult swann is wearing a green ring on her right hand. makes sense.

one more thing regarding colors is this interesting mix of green/purple that they've been using.

this is a very unnatural lighting situation but green and purple are opposites on the color wheel and they have a nice contrast. this color combination keeps reoccurring in the game. green is assigned to swann. pink is autumn's color. unless purple is too? unclear for now!

but wait i've got more!

the abyss is purple/pink. note the pattern of lights.

in the power outage scene we have these purple/blue lights streaking across the characters. this happens way before they find the abyss. also note the lighting of the scene just before it happens:

it's blue and purple (iconic bi lighting). and then the POV switches and the colors change to green:

curiously, in the truth and dare scene kat has GREEN light streaks beamed on her. compare it to the pattern above.

if these light streaks are connected to the abyss then they've established the green/purple color scheme again (though we've seen the pink/purple version of the abyss - does it imply the existence of another abyss, a green version of it?). what is going on?? who knows!!! just two more weeks to go!!!!

i'm not sure what the meanings of these color combinations will end up being (if it's even that deep) but i'm sure these are very deliberate choices from the devs. though tbh i'll also accept "we thought it just looked cool" as an explanation because it sure does. the game is so colorful and i love that about it!!

[prettycooregrey]

So after setting up a 100+ plugin modlist for Raka, I started their official Skyrim SE run with SkygerfalI. This is really long. Like, really really long. And it’s packed with spoilers, so my fingers are crossed that the cut works on mobile because otherwise I am so, SO sorry to mobile users.

Links: Legendary - Special Edition

What a hell of a mod. It was so much easier to swallow than Daggerfall proper, I’ll give it that! For one, the 3D map in Daggerfall drives me batty. I can’t read it at all, and the samey graphics in every dungeon make them really hard to navigate. For another, Daggerfall notably averts the “take your time” trope where players are allowed to fuck off and do whatever they want while the main quest stays politely paused in the background - almost every single quest is timed, and exceeding the time limit is an automatic fail. It’s possible to lock yourself out of the main quest this way.

Thankfully, the Skygerfall mod recreates all the main quest dungeons with a significantly more helpful Skyrim-style local map. The mod page describes the dungeons as hand crafted, and... well, I’d personally describe it as LOVINGLY put together. The attention to detail is exquisite, and it absolutely feels like a recreation of the dungeons. In fact, it’s so carefully and thoroughly remade that for the most part, the original walkthroughs on UESP came in handy for the few places I got stuck (ahem... Direnni Tower). There’s so many twisting corridors, right angles, and those big huge pyramid-esque centerpieces. My unabashed favorites are the little diagonal rooms hidden within other small rooms, tucked into corners in and of themselves. My own playthrough of Daggerfall made me look forward to those spaces as good places to rest or find loot.

There is not much going on outside the cities or dungeons though! Since it was, for the most part, a single dev putting the whole thing together in their spare time, it’s just the main quest. Even the main towns are largely empty, save for tavern owners (who act as general good merchants), a blacksmith in Daggerfall proper, and any NPCs directly related to the main questline. Ironically, Scourg Barrow is one of the most populated places in the entire game, if only by volume of nonhostile NPCs! The palaces also have merchants and guards around, and there’s a... cheerful little kid over at Wayrest who would love to meet your Agent.

That means no questlines for any of the side factions, very few extra merchants to buy your high volume of crap (though you wont actually need more than one or two at a time), no side dungeons to explore, and nothing in the landscape between the map markers. There’s not even any generic NPCs to populate the towns, and almost no interiors.

Still, it’s entirely worth playing, if you want the basic runthrough of Daggerfall’s main quest in a familiar, modern engine. Particular props goes to some of the scenery and levels. Where there’s very little going on outside of your quest targets, the places that have been built are stunning. Shedungent’s exterior in specific enchanted me, looking exactly like a medieval castle with plenty of nooks and crannies to poke into (though no loot, unfortunately... not that I need any extra with how much garbage I haul out of those dungeons). Another particular detail that I loved were... pigs, actually. I loved the pigs. There’s a few dungeons that contain pigs, which existed in Daggerfall.

I love them. They’re darling.

I dunno, the fact that Oracus0 put so much time and effort into making sure that Skygerfall was a true to the original as possible, down to the animals passively hanging out, really brought me into it. Sure, I wish there weren’t giant scorpions in any game ever, but I can also appreciate that since they were in the original, they were there in Skygerfall (and that they dropped a Raka certified safe alchemical ingredient). And who doesn’t get excited when they see the loot pile model tucked behind a locked door?

I also ADORED - spoiler alert - Aetherius, which turned the game into a full-fledged puzzle platformer. Note to anybody playing through the Room of Fire? You can and will fall off if you’re not careful! But the scenery there is also gorgeous, with a stunning backdrop of swirling stars and galaxies, hellfire, and a wonderfully dapper Sheogorath (whose voice actor does a great job, by the way, of holding true to Sheogorath’s canon voice).

Bonus points for having (and I must emphasize) FULL VOICE ACTING. Every NPC available in the game has a voice. All of the custom NPCs have custom voice acting, and every voice actor did a real bang up job. There wasn’t a single character I encountered whose voice didn’t match them.

It’s also way more... cartoony? Than Skyrim, and it shows a lot in places where custom and vanilla 3D assets were used right next to each other. There’s a lot of blocky, and almost plastic-y walls, floors, sconces, etc that made some of the rough-and-tumble stuff stick out, but it’s not actually enough to take you out of the game unless you’re a really picky bastard imo. It works really well for being a faithful recreation of Daggerfall, which looked like... well. This:

I had a habit of taking pictures of any cool animals I saw in Daggerfall, especially if I haven’t seen them in TES before. Speaking of this awesome camel picture, not to fear if you’re worried about hauling all your crap out of the dungeons like I am (my partner has a hard time watching me play Skyrim with the way I lug out everything that isn’t nailed down to hawk later)...

There’s a mount waiting for you near Sentinel!

...(: That’s right. You get a camel. No need to buy it, it’s not tagged as theft (as of 11/12/19, a little under a month post initial release). It works exactly like a horse - hop on and it’ll help you bounce between map markers, even if you’re overencumbered by several hundred pounds of loose swords, gemstones, potions, and your enemies’ underwear. It looks AMAZING, and though you kind of clip through his hump a little bit, it’s again not really an issue unless you’re overtly picky.

The only thing I absolutely cannot stand is... mythril.

Mythril in this mod is... blue. The armor is gray, but the weapons and shield are blue. Not a silver blue or a dark slate blue in the way you’d expect from something metallic. No, I’m talking about Hawaiian Punch Blue Typhoon, I’m talking blue raspberry Airheads, I’m talking about Lapis lazuli from Minecraft and/or Steven Universe, Cornflower Blue Crayola, “her cerulean orbs” fuckin BLUE. That was the ONLY thing that really stuck in my craw. Raka is an archer, but in the event of an emergency they dual-wield daggers and for a period the best one I had on hand aside from the ebony dagger was mythril and I hated it. I resented it. Every time Raka had to get into close quarters I grumbled with distaste as soon as that goddamn Manic Panic deep dream knife popped out on my screen. I replaced it with adamantium as soon as I was able to.

Everything else was copacetic! As with the set dressing, a lot of the custom armor and weapons were kind of cartoony and might stick out in Skyrim proper, but they’re pretty charming in that way. If for no other reason than collection purposes, I took one of everything with me to Skyrim at the end of the questline with the intent to maybe display it in one of Raka’s player homes. Especially the adamantium, which out of everything fits in the best with vanilla Skyrim’s assets (as far as I can tell, don’t quote me on that, please!).

Again, it’s a very lovingly made tribute to the original game, with a lot of time and effort put into it. A lot of modder resources were used in order to achieve this end, and what an end it is. For all of the places where there might be criticism, it’s still a fantastic piece of work that deserves a lot of praise and appreciation, especially since it was largely a single dev working and learning by themselves to put it together. It’s still hours of content to work through, having taken me about 4 days to get through via my playstyle, even when it primarily involved jumping between map markers and delving into dungeons. God only knows I’d have never gotten to the actual main quest of Daggerfall in the original engine, and likely not even in Daggerfall Unity, as I was too busy messing around, getting headaches from the procedurally generated dungeons, and trying to climb the ranks of the Mage’s Guild and Thieves Guild. Not to say that that isn’t a fun and completely valid way to play the game. But Skygerfall allowed me to play through the actual main quest, kept me engaged with voiced characters and a streamlined series of events, and a thorough and faithful recreation.

A lot of people mentioned wanting more stuff between the towns and cities currently in the mod, but personally, going forward, I’d love to see what already exists be expanded. I’d love to see more shop interiors, some generic NPCs to chat with or ask about rumors from (or even just to fill out the space! I’m not picky!), and maybe some basic structure for some of the guilds.

That being said, it’s still a complete mod in and of itself. It has all the components anyone could reasonably ask for. It has its dungeons, it has its armors and weapons, it has custom spells, potions, and ingredients. It makes use of monsters from the Mihail mods, populating the underground with lots of scary and lore-appropriate foes to fight. It has very little to explore outside of that, but still offers a LOT, and I was able to enjoy the main quest of Daggerfall in a way that was comfortable and easily playable for myself, which is more than can be said for the clunky DOS the original game is built in. I would not be mad if Oracus0 decided to close it up, call it good, support bugs for a while, and moved on. They’ve done plenty in the way of Skygerfall, and though I’d love to see more I’m also incredibly happy with what I got! I’m pleased as punch, got to roleplay my little idiot moron bosmer in their original context, and then was able to seamlessly integrate them into the world of Skyrim (via Live Another Life, which is supported by Skygerfall) to enjoy the rest of their modlist. I can’t recommend it enough, especially if you want to get a feel for Daggerfall with some of the comfort and convenience of a better engine and less stingy limitations.

[lazuliquetzal]

so what's the game about?

HELLO ILY

There are actually 2 games (I am the idea hopper).

1) The game jam game.

So I joined the 2025 RPG Maker Game Jam. The theme is "Beyond Expectations," which, if you've read my fic, you know that plot twists and sending shit off the rails is one of my specialties, so I kind of had to join.

I'm currently at the stage of the creative process where I can't tell if it's good or not, but it's too late to swerve because it's due in two weeks and I have to finish. But the premise is basically "Doki Doki Literature Club meets Zelda meets Lazuli™️". This obviously makes it sound like the best thing in the world, but it is my first ever game so who knows.

2) The Worm Game

This was because @yellowocaballero said that, given my jack-of-all-trades skill set, I should make a game, and I was like "you know what I do have RPG Maker sitting untouched on Steam," so here I am.

The short version is that it's a murder mystery told through the eye of a worm, with some puzzles.

The other short version is that I work in a biotech startup.