#neat game dev stuff

[toyota-supra]

do you like bloodborne kart

never played it, is it out already? I've never played Bloodborne and I thought it just looked like a comedy kart thing so I didn't pay attention to it

[fourspiceblend]

It's funny cause for the most part of the game, I didn't really care about people's criticisms of Engage's writing and thought they were just mad the story was straightforward and didn't try to be overly complex... But now that I'm (finally) reaching the endgame, there's a loooot of weird plotholes that 3H would be jealous of lol.

[ridl]

Entropy: zero

[tortademaracuya]

i didnt liveblog in the end because i got too into the game but GOD what a great game. Even though I knew the artstyle looked familiar I didnt realize until the end the dev has made other games I love ahahaha. Bad End Theater was absolutely amazing, she's so inspiring

[kromato]

Hey what's up it's me with a special interest in weapons and I wanted to share my thoughts about Nikto's machete (no that's not an innuendo for once)

Had a bit of a solo-mandela effect going on because for the longest time I thought it had a modified 'billhook'-like feature on the back of it for whatever reason (but smaller than what would be considered a traditional billhook, more like a hoof pick blade).

I kind of enjoy still HCing that it does have it because a) it looks kind of cool and b) a terrifying thought to think this man whips this giant intimidating blade out, flips it deftly in his hand to the hook side, just to sink it into flesh and yank people back in when they try to run. Also it allows me to think about a scenario where, resident karambit knife enthusiast Sebastian Krueger, can teach proper blade hooking techniques to our beloved plural man. Anyway back to the knife - It's like a cross between a coup coup and a bola? But has a cool flare like a Tapanga for his newer mwiii model. Also like a vintage Senegalese french machete, which were known for their high quality (might technically be the same thing as the coup coup, just with the locale specified I think, both entrenchment machetes). That curve also kind of reminds me of parangs but it's not particularly drop-pointed.

I HC Nikto as a very brutally pragmatic but particular man, so it doesn't feel too far off to think that he went out of his way to acquire something niche like that. Some kind of custom-made machete that fits his needs just right. The length of it, as well as the curved, ergonomic grip makes me think he's gotten it to do some serious chopping, so it's also probably heavy and weighted forward to make that easier when swinging. I don't see him as a flashy fighter personally, and though maybe it was a stylistic choice for the game devs/artists, I think it's a neat feature that speaks to his character. I do think it's made of hefty steel; weight is important in chopping knives, and though steel rusts, it's sturdy compared to a lot of other metals. Not to mention - I feel like oiling and caring for his weapons, machete included, would be a ritual source of peace for his sometimes loud and chaotic mind. Grounding when he can feel the weight and texture where his nerves aren't completely damaged, smell the oil, have tangible proof that it's reality when he sees the maintained blade even after he becomes unmoored.

Now this is just me WAY reading too much into it, but it gives me a little giggle - The hole at the end of the handle is for a wrist lanyard, so you can loop a piece of paracord rope to secure it around your hand. It's an important safety feature just in case the machete goes flying out of your hand while chopping, lest it hit people in your vicinity (accidentally...?). In his 19 model, he doesn't have the paracord rope attached; Nikto says "Fuck your safety" but also huge ego of "I would never accidentally fling my knife!!"

Could also be because it gets caught on stuff if it dangles off his hip though - he's got one on his newer model where he wears the blade on his shoulder, which looks like a place where it's less likely to snag on things. Could also be because he's been increasingly featured in larger factions, so he works with more people and was asked to have one on hand maybe?? I don't know. In either case the knot in the middle of the rope makes it too small for his wrist which could also be read as a passive-aggressive "Here's the fucking safety rope it's on there ALRIGHT" and yet he's also made it nonfunctional for its intended purpose lmao Okay that's all byeeee

[trubbishrubbish]

I just watched this old trailer of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair and I found some neat oddities in it.

This trailer was uploaded to YouTube on July 12th, 2012. Two weeks before the release date, July 26th 2012.

First off, the trailer shows the first class trial. What's notable is that the Ultimate Imposter is still alive and present at it.

I google translated a few lines from the trial in the video and the ones I did were identical to what was said in the final game. So I believe that the first trial in this trailer is largely the same as in the final game, only difference is that they swapped Imposter's death portrait with his actual sprite so to not spoiler that he is the victim.

Next, several CGs from the final game are seen in this trailer but only for a few frames. I'll show off the most interesting ones.

This CG from Chapter 1. It shows Mikan eating sausages. In the final version of the game, this CG was edited so Mikan isn't eating anything.

Funnily enough, this isn't the first time a CG of the party was edited to not have someone eat food. This CG with Hiyoko in it shows her with a drink but an older version of this same CG shows Hiyoko holding a plate of food.

Remnants of this CG is still in the final game. Maybe they were included in by accident by someone on the dev team not paying close enough attention to which CGs they need to insert.

This old CG is seen in the credits.

And in this truth bullet for the party food.

The reason why these edits are made is becuase in the trial, it's said that only Peko and Akane have eaten the food. If any other character is seen eating food in the CGs, that would make a plothole.

This does show that during the development of DR2, the CGs were competed first before the trials were fully completed, since the CGs had to be edited in order to fit one of the debate topics for the trial.

Next up, the trailer shows an old version of the Jabberwock Island Guidebook for a single frame.

And then later on in the trailer, there are several frames showing off end game stuff. Stuff that would be massive spoilers if you had context for them.

Like the Ultimate Imposter's Student Profile.

Neo World Program and The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Manga.

And this CG of the survivors entering the Graduation Exam Site.

This last one is special as this CG isn't even in the final game but the assets for this CG are still included in the files.

I tried my best to recreate this CG using the files. It's not 100% accurate but it's very close.

And finally, the trailer shows a few frames of the Pre-Class Trial Portraits. There's no cropping applied to the character portraits so they overlap one another.

I will compare the trailer screenshots with images of the trial portraits from this 4gamer article.

And that's it. Pretty cool stuff.

[canmom]

Hello! I absolutely love your blog, everything from your festival recounts to animation analysis and programming (one of tumblr's recommended posts was the one where you made your own rasteriser, and I liked your attitude in what I've read so much that I'm gonna attempt to conquer my 3-year-long grudge against using opengl during college and do something similar now that I'm a bit older and have no deadlines :D).

But anyway, I have 2 questions (sorry if there's easily accessible answers, tumblr search is not helping): 1. During your animation nights, does the screen stay black while everyone watches their own video while you provide commentary? I haven't caught any yet but maybe someday! And 2. do you have any youtube channels or just one-off video essays that you like that also cover animation/directors? Or, even programming lol.

Sorry for the long ask have a nice day!

hiii! i'm very touched that you like my dorky eclectic blog <3

For the Animation Nights, I just stream the video over Twitch from local sources on my computer, typically by playing the video in mpv and recording it in OBS. This is obviously not ideal from a video quality perspective, but it's the easiest way to watch video in sync without making everyone download files in advance. Then we all chat in the Twitch chat box (in large part to crack stupid jokes, it's not that highbrow lmao). I've gotten away with it so far!

As for youtube channels, I can recommend...

anime production/history (i.e. sakuga fandom)

SteveM is likely the most sakuga-fan affiliated anituber. He makes long, well-researched and in-depth videos on anime history, usually themed around a particular director or studio.

Pyramid Inu might be my fave anituber - very thoughtful analysis of Gundam, obscure mecha anime and oldschool BL and similar topics. tremendously soothing voice too.

The Canipa Effect does excellent deep dives into the production of specific shows, both western and anime. I appreciate the respect he gives to the Korean animators of shows like AtlA in particular!

Sean Bires's 2013 presentation on sakuga is pretty foundational to this whole subcultural niche, and a great place to get an introduction to the major animator names to know and significant points in the history of anime. unfortunately a couple of the segments got slapped down by copyright but the rest holds up!

animation theory (for animators and aspirants)

I'm going to focus here on resources that are relevant to animation in general, and 2D animation. if I was going to list every Blender channel we'd be here all week :p

New Frame Plus is one of the best channels out there for game animation, describing in tightly edited videos how animation principles work in a game context and analysing the animation of various games. highly recommend

Videogame Animation Study is similar, examining the animation of specific games in detail

the 'twelve principles of animation' (defined by Disney's Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas) remain the standard approach to animation pedagogy; there are various videos on them, but Alan Becker (of Animator vs Animation) has quite a popular series. I haven't actually watched these but many people swear by them! Dermot O'Connor expands the list to 21. Note that some of the terminology can be a little inconsistent between different animators - c.f. 'secondary motion'...

Dong Chang is an animator at Studio NUT, who produces a lot of fantastic, succinct videos on standard techniques in the anime industry, timesheet notations, etc. etc. Studio Bulldog, a small anime studio, are a good complement; they focus more on douga than genga and are generally a bit more traditional.

programming

big topic here, I'm going to focus on game dev and tech art since that's my field. but also some general compsci stuff that's neat

SimonDev - graphics programmer with a bunch of AAA experience, fantastic explanations of advanced optimisations and some of the more counterintuitive aspects of rendering

Acerola - graphics programmer who makes very detailed guides to a variety of effects with a very rapid and funny 'guy that has seen monogatari' editing style. When he's good, he's really good. His video on water is probably the best one I've seen (though I can recommend a couple of others).

TodePond - the most charming, musical videos about recursion and cellular automata you've ever seen. less programming tutorial and more art in themselves.

Ben Eater - known for his breadboard computer series, a fantastic demonstration of how to go from logic gates up to the 6502 with actual hardware. worth watching just for how clean he puts the wires on his breadboards like goddamn man

Sebastian Lague, Useless Game Dev - both do 'coding adventure' style videos where they spend a few weeks on some project and then document it on Youtube, resulting in a huge library of videos about all sorts of fascinating techniques. great to dive into

Freya Holmér - creator of the 'shapes' library, makes videos on mathematical programming, with gorgeously animated vector graphics. Her video on splines is a particular treat.

There are definitely many more channels I can recommend on these subjects, but I'll need to dig into my history a bit - unfortunately I need to rush out right now, but hopefully that should be good to be getting going with!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Just wanted to say I’m really enjoying the game dev stuff you are sharing! It looks super neat and I’m excited to see what you guys make :3 it also really inspires me to try learning something new, so thanks for sharing the journey with us 😊

Thank you so much! I've been having a blast with the process, and I can't wait to keep showing off more of this project!

When it comes to trying something new; my words of advice are: Go make the thing you 'wish you were skilled enough to do'!!! You will surprise yourself!

[cardos-talking]

Okay, so I've been digging in game files of the Soulstorm and found some neat stuff that I wanted to share. LONG POST Also just in case I want to say that i'm not using anything from the game files in any way, expect for an art reference maybe.

So, the most important thing. SLIG PYJAMAS!! LOOK AT THEM!!

i want the Shrykull one so bad lol. Please someone draw a slig in one of those next, Alf tattos. They are barely visible ingame, but there are actually quite a lot of them. The Abe one! q-q

It's still hard to see what's going on but idk how to make it better... The inscryption from the sanctum.

This could be a concept art for the sanctum or they planned to make hand-drawn loading screens. Either way, it's a very cool art.

Walls from FeeCo Depot. I always wanted to look at them ingame but camera wouldn't let me. They are actually gorgeous

So there are many game files named like "UI_dialog_somethingsomething" and maybe devs wanted to make some kind of dialogue system? Here's all the portraits. I know those render exist already but this is png files.

The last one is called "sick_mud", if you are wondering. I guess it's the ill guys from sorrow valley. Old crafting system? Idk but i like the burning bush. Meech definitely grows something like that in his garden.

Vykeer labs loading screen and final screens (? idk how to actually call them but they appear when you complete a mission in DLCs)

Talking about Vykeers, ads from FeeCo Depot. jesus christ

I think they're from munch oddysee? i don't remember, sorry The Shrykull banner. I know you can see it in the intro cutscene but i wanted to appreciate the cool texture

And to end it, here's a creepy art of Abe. It's called "KongPuzzle_Abe", idk what to make of it, cut content I guess. He doesn't want to be here.

That's it. I mean, there are a lot of files still but most of them is the stuff we've all already seen in the game.

[funnyscienceman]

Ok but like WHYY did ubisoft have to insist with the one game a year thing. Why couldnt they let syndicate cook in the oven more. Why do they have THREE queer men in the same game and not do ANYTHING with them!!!

Like yes, yes, i get it, i get wanting to for once make a story in a fun setting where you dont have to think about real life prejudice and hardships and bigotry and just have characters be silly, i love that too. I do! And id be all for that if doing it just didnt waste a potentially banger study of the characters and the setting ;-;

Like god i go back and forth on this constantly. I already love syndicate as it is, i think it's fun and neat and the happy gaming vibes about it is core to its identity, it's just that simultaneous to that, three queer men in the same game!!!

like GOD im still miffed that there are only, like, two or three fics about this, and so far i havent found any discussion or anything of it, but oh my god how different all three of them are from each other. You could do so much just with having any of them in the same room — and they are often enough in the same room (jacob and either ned or roth at a time), but nothing's really done there!

we have roth who sees fcking nothing wrong with getting kids hurt, because he doesnt actually care about anyone or anything, he's just some fucking joker wannabe that yeah, sure, probably has some anger and resentment at society because he's a gay man in his 40s or 50s by now, but jesus fucking christ retaliation against homophobia does not equal rampant needless unproductive violence roth!!!

then we have ned, who — i mean he doesnt ever give his opinion on whether kids deserve any respect or anything but considering in every other department he's pretty much just Some Guy, it'd be fair to assume he also has the extremely average stance of 'dont fcking kill kids and dont blow up buildings for no good reason??' in the grand scheme of the templar-assassin stuff he has just about as much relevance as roth: roth was just the boss of the blighters, ned just finances the fryes by virtue of them working for him. He probably doesnt even know about it, and tbh i dont even know if he'd care??? But like i imagine roth doesnt care in the way of 'as long as you dont get in my way, it's all set dressing,' ned i imagine would be smth like 'are yall fckin serious? are you kidding me rn? i have to skirt around transphobes on a daily basis, now youre telling me there's a secret society on top of that with even worse ideas?? What the fuck???'

like uh, not caring about it as in 'I cant deal with this rn i need a nap'

HE'S JUST AN EXTREMELY REGULAR PERSON (besides the crime lord stuff) IS WHAT IM GETTING AT.

then there's jacob, who's the youngest out of these guys btw, fckin 21 good god he should be at the club not trying to disassemble systemic oppression— ANYWAY

(ned is 27-28 over the course of the game, btw; we dont actually have a solid timeline for anything, just the year, so tbh jacob could've also been 20 and not 21 yet during the game. both he and ned have late birthdays, just a month apart)

so, yknow, being extremely early 20-somethings, both frye twins just take a train to london completely on impulse and dive headfirst into undoing the templars that've had an iron grip over the city for basically as long as they've been alive, yknow, as you do; and throughout the game jacob has to deal with goddamn daddy issues and fighting with his sister and insecurity and trying to be an assassin — and that's a lot for a guy to handle!! Especially one who's still just a couple years out of being a teenager! That's a fucking lot and if the devs are right, then he hasnt even realized that he's bi yet! Not until roth fucking kisses him while jacob's got a knife in his throat for the aforementioned indiscriminate, unproductive violence!

i mean, granted, yeah there were gay undertones during sequence 8, but i have to admit my bias here because i honest to god cannot take those missions seriously. Roth fucking preaches this and that about freedom and whatnot and then im plopped into the mission and it's the most rule-heavy shit ive ever seen in my short life as an assassin's creed player. Like what the hell, those missions were atrocious. Apprently i need to detonate the bombs a specific way, i cant just shoot them from a distance, i have to hold a button crouching down right next to the bombs, and then run the hell away! I have to avoid THIS and THAT while kidnapping xyz! Like there's freddy's apprehend missions and then there's THIS.

at least with ned's missions all you have to do is get the shit and go… i'm still salty that ubisoft cut his questline because they fucking insist on releasing a game a year >:((

my battery's dying. All these guys are different flavors of queer on top of just being pretty different and pretty similar in various ways, and there's just… barely anything about it. Ned especially, since he's just a quest giver whose screentime totals to, like, 2-5 minutes. I just wish they really did more with the setting; not just the queerness and these three specifically, but like, evie, henry, the class conflict — like there are shreds of it, seeds, but there's not much before you kill starrick and credits roll :((

idk. im just gonna refresh ao3 again cjemddjekjx

[thefirstknife]

I know it may not be the most popular of opinions, but for me the "hard reset" and lack of content would actually be the *appeal* of a Destiny 3. Give us a brand new major story arc, give us new characters (the old could feature but focus attention on new ones), have us create an entirely new Guardian--total reset. (They could have new races, too--playable Hive Guardians! Okay yes I just wanna have a playable Eliksni Guardian that would be so fun). Current D2 content is... Honestly kind of overwhelming. Sometimes. Fresh slate with less content that the build back up would appeal to me a lot. I know they're not interested in doing so at this time, and I respect their preference to keep supporting D2 instead (especially given how many players WOULD throw a fit over the hard reset and lack of content), but I've definitely put in a lot of thought to what a D3 would mean and the big "negatives" are huge draws for me. (Especially if they kept the D1 and D2 servers online so people would have all that content at the ready to go back and play)

I totally understand that! The concept of there being D3 is really interesting and I think it's really neat to talk about possibilities!

There's definitely some appeal in this for me as well, but I think that unfortunately most of the other issues would vastly overshadow this feeling of getting to start fresh. I'm not too bothered with a lack of content overall but I don't think a lot of people truly understand how much of a lack it would be. We're so used to so much stuff to the point of it being overwhelming, but a full restart would be quite the shock.

I think some middle ground would be nice, but even when they did that (in BL, after initial vaulting), people were.... very mad. A lot of people were fine as well, and it's hard to judge because of the very vocal fans and content creators, but to this day people are still seething about how "bad" BL was because of all the stuff that was removed, despite the fact that a lot of stuff was also added.

If you've not been there during release of D1 and D2, it's hard to really imagine what the game looked like and played like, but these are completely unimaginable differences. I can't speak for D1, but vanilla D2 in comparison with even just a year after is an entirely different game. Basically, it would be a gigantic risk to do this, on top of splitting the community, and hope that maybe this time around people will accept a lack of content with the promise that in a few years there will be more. On paper it sounds reasonable, because it is, but unfortunately gamers aren't reasonable. We're currently witnessing this as well with people absolutely losing their minds about the possibility that for the next year or two or whatever we'll have smaller updates. This is very strange coming from these people because if we truly want D3 and for it to launch better than vanilla D1 and vanilla D2, then we'd have to let the devs work on that for years and not be occupied making constant huge updates for D2. More under:

Also! I know we would all love other playable races and that's definitely a big dream, but it will never happen as long as there's pvp in the game. Because of the hitboxes in pvp. As in, if they made playable Eliksni and Hive, they would be bigger than normal Guardians and it would not be possible to integrate them into pvp because of the natural disadvantage of having a bigger hitbox. Maybe if they did it in a way that genuinely just did not allow them into pvp modes, but that would be strange. The hitbox issue would also be a problem elsewhere too, even in pve. This is the most basic problem with this idea and a very difficult one to solve when the game is a first person shooter at its core. Other playable characters would be such a cool thing in Destiny though.

In a way, a lot of what we want can be done in the current game if the devs had time to work on a lot of fundamental changes and updates to the base game. It's just really difficult to do. They would probably need a dedicated year or more to do this, during which we wouldn't be able to get many updates. And this is less requirements than making a new game from scratch and risk a lot in the process.

I'm also wondering if both D1 and D2 could be kept around if they added a D3 as well. I feel like one of the old games would probably be shut down. This is definitely not possible with the reduced workforce, so unless they expand the studio again in the future, I don't think, realistically, we could get any of the positives with D3.

It's a discussion worth having for sure. Unfortunately it's dominated by the weird gamer bros and I genuinely don't think they understand anything about video games. There's this idea that "D3 would fix everything" and I simply don't understand what they're talking about because the same people are also the ones crying about content droughts, sunsetting, hit-and-miss features and activities and so on. And launching a brand new game would contain absolutely everything these people complain about every day. I've seen them also saying stuff like "I'd be okay with D3 if they don't make us repeat collecting everything again." And like. That's exactly what will happen. Do they think items will just be in their vault? No, we'll have missions again to re-earn the same exotics for the 5th time, just spaced out by years and then they'll be mad about how nothing new is being made and they're just reusing assets or whatever.

They could always just do a complete and total fresh start: nothing old is ever returned. No armour, no weapons, nothing. But people underestimate how much they'd miss their old builds and old options, and how new ones might end up not clicking with them all that much, but this time they wouldn't have anything old to fall back to. You know when a new weapon or exotic armour releases and they're brand new concepts? And they end up not really being something you connect to? You try it out, go "eh" and return to your old stuff? Imagine that but without the ability to go back to the old stuff. The idea of it is is exciting, but in execution it doesn't really work most of the time.

There's a lot of interesting angles when considering a potential new game, but I feel like at the end of the day, it's too big of an endeavour with a lot of very real risks that makes the whole thing not worth the effort. If anything, to make D3 into this perfect dream game right from the start, they would 100% need to just work on that for the next 5 years and we'd have to accept even fewer updates (if any) to D2 in the meantime. Otherwise we'll be in the same situation as with D2 launch and I know a lot of people don't remember or weren't there, but vanilla D2 was actually for real a time when Destiny almost died.

It's definitely something cool to speculate about, I just wish the weird gamers out there weren't completely hijacking this option while also doing everything in their power to tell devs that they have zero patience to wait for a good product, and that they can't survive 3 days without new content. Because that's just reinforcing the inherent risks with making a new game, on top of all the other risks involved and the potential that people will just not be willing to move away from what they've been collecting for years.

[insertdisc5]

Devlog #16: Answers and Questions

Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog!

If you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, a timeloop RPG, which is also the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here!).  You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!! 

LET’S GET TO IT. This month is Q&A: Cohost edition!

“A Q&A again?” Heheh well I don’t have anything to talk about this month ✨ We’re working hard on finalizing the localization! And on porting to consoles! And on secret stuff! You know, the usual!!! Get excited!!! So, Q&A again 💖 And see, I asked questions for Q&As on Twitter. On Tumblr. On Discord. But some new social media platforms have entered the fray. SO.

Welcome to Q&A: Cohost edition. (Follow me on cohost and/or read this post I wrote about why I think cohost is neat teehee) (and follow me on bluesky if you want. I like it way less though. Sorry bluesky)

@ItsMeLilyV asks:

One of the bits of advice that gets tossed around by indie devs is to avoid making RPGs, especially for your first few games, because they tend to be large in scope, difficult to prototype, and easy to underestimate.

Was this ever a fear for you in making START AGAIN, or In Stars and Time? Did you take any special precaution to keep these games within a scope you could handle, and did you learn tricks from START AGAIN that carried over to ISAT when in came to keeping things manageable? Thank you!! ✨

I had no idea that was a piece of advice given, but yep, that makes a lot of sense! Since I didn’t know, I went in blissfully aware, teehee.

I will say that I am familiar with working on big projects from working on comics, and with seeing big webcomic artists always mention to never start with your magnum opus… And I could tell ISAT had the potential to be way bigger than I imagined, which is why I decided to start with creating the prologue to get used to RPGMaker as well as making games. Kind of a pilot of sorts!

Again, thanks to comics, I know to keep my scope pretty small, because even if you keep it small it WILL balloon into something way bigger than you thought. Just for the prologue, I imagined it’d be a 20mn game, and it’s easily a 2-3h one! Keep your scope small!!!

As for tricks, when I catch myself thinking “wow what if I added this cool thing”, I try to always keep in mind those two things: 1. How long will it take to implement (including bug testing), and 2. Does it add something important to the game. I know we always want to add a fishing game, or a fun minigame, but do you Need It. Does it add something substantial to the story, to the Themes. Or are you just adding it because you like fishing games. Which is a valid reason, but also, maybe just make a fishing game instead. You are not the Yakuza series!!!! You are a small indie gamedev!!!! Think about you in 4 months who has to fix all the fishing game bugs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@stem asks:

how is it to have a piece of art that's basically done (as far as i understand) that you can't share yet? like how do you personally bide the time until it's finally ready to release, or is it not really a challenge to wait? :0c

It’s so weird!!! The game has been done for so long!!! I’m very glad I asked some friends to playtest the game, so I could at least get some feedback before the game is out… In some ways it feels like the game will be done twice: once back when I finished making the game, and once when the game actually comes out. It’s just a very strange experience. Sometimes people tell me they’re excited to find out more about this story beat, or about this character, and a part of me is like… Wait, haven't you played the game? Oh, yeah, it’s not actually out. Guess you’ll find out later.

EDIT: My god. I just checked on my private devlog for when I completed the Alpha of ISAT. It was in August of last year (I lay down on the floor and look at the ceiling) (I still had to finish all the illustrations so really the game was Done Donezo in October but still…)

anon asked:

What role did Armor Games play in creating the final product?

SO MANY THINGS. Here are some of them: support when it comes to porting/marketing/social media/localization, feedback on the game and how to make it better, community guidance, testing support, QA/internal testing… The game couldn’t be the way it is without them.

For more small details, I have a weekly meeting with my producer, Dora! We talk about the game and how everything is going. A couple months back, I also was checking in with the internal QA team fairly often to fix any remaining bugs. They also helped me find ISAT’s additional programmer, Isabella, and she is a godsend because coding is hard. They also take care of communicating with press, finding more opportunities to showcase the game in conventions, talking with the localization/porting teams… I am probably forgetting a thousand little things they did to help out!!! THEY’RE SO GOOD OK

Anon asked:

So obviously the skills/spells/what have you are based off of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Did you design each "type" to be like a certain style? Rock being heavy damage and defense buffs, scissors being speed and quick attacks, like that?

Absolutely! I just went with the obvious. Rock is physical damage, defense focused, Scissors is swords, attack focused, and Paper is magic, mind focused. It was fun to develop a spell system around those! I’m excited for people to find out more about Craft…

@nickshutter asks:

I really loved START AGAIN (streamed it for a small handful of friends) and was super happy to hear about a follow-up! The cast is so much fun and their personalities are really well-balanced—did any of the characters change pretty drastically from their initial conception during development of the game?

I’m so glad you streamed it with friends… I hope you had a good fun time…

And for sure! Isabeau and Mirabelle were pretty set from the get go (himbo and shy wallflower), but Odile started as more of a gentle teacher type, even if I very quickly went the snarky old lady route. Siffrin and Bonnie were harder to pin down– I wasn’t sure how to portray Siffrin’s despair in the prologue, and started showing them more overtly depressed, but I thought it’d be Very Yummy to have them show a happy facade to their friends. And then, for ISAT, I had to figure out what a non-depressed Siffrin would be like, for the first couple acts of the game before the despair sets in. As for Bonnie, I had a lot of trouble figuring out what they’d be like, what kind of kid they were, what their relationship with everyone else would be like, and then I thought about what their past would be like and then their characterization was set in stone. Sometimes you need to figure out One Thing to unlock a character’s brain. I’m very excited for everyone to find out more about each character in ISAT!

@SuperBiasedGary asks:

What games (or other media) lit a fire under you to create your own?

It could be stuff you liked so much it inspired, something you found frustrating because you felt an itch to do it differently, or something that made you realise humans make things and you could be one of them.

I found a lot of indie games inspiring, but I think Umineko might’ve been the one that made me go… Oh, anyone can just make a massive video game narrative. And you can make it very simple, with kinda goofy sprites, and still manage to make an incredibly touching story!

As for frustrating games that lit a fire under me, I think I’d say in general, I found issue with the classic trope of the “main character helps people and doesn’t get anything back”. What often happens in some games is that you help NPCs with their problems, sometimes helping them with very intense, complicated problems! For a very long time! And, in exchange, you get… A cool item? A nice new skill? And that’s it?

I know this might be complicated to implement on a narrative perspective, but I remember playing Persona 5, and your character just went through a very harrowing experience (like, oh, being INTERROGATED AND TORTURED BY THE POLICE) and you help your friends during social links, and they go “thanks for your help! Bye~” like WHAT ABOUT ME. WHAT ABOUT MY PROBLEMS. CAN YOU GIVE ME A HUG

So on a certain level, I wanted a game where instead of the characters around you having problems, the main character also has problems. And is subconsciously screaming “CAN YOU PLEASE NOTICE I HAVE PROBLEMS AND GIVE ME A HUG.” And hopefully, the characters notice. Winks

Hm. I do want to say I wrote most of the prologue/ISAT during the pandemic, and I felt very lonely and not supported. But then guess what. I told my friends about how I felt. And most of them told me they had no idea, and vowed to support me more. And now I’m closer to them. So the moral of this answer is, yeah, it’d be nice if people noticed, but also, you need to tell people when you’re feeling bad. LOOKS AT SIFFRIN

Anon asked:

Is there a song you listen to in order to put yourself in the sasasa/ISAT mindset?

I have a whole playlist baybee. Before you ask: there aren’t any hidden meanings behind those song choices. It’s about the Mood, and also my personal tastes in music I listen to when I need to concentrate. I like songs that go WUB WUB

 In no particular order, here are five random songs I played on repeat when making the prologue:

Future Club (Arcade Version) by Perturbator (in bold because this was THE song I listened to on repeat. I believe I gave it to Lindar for inspiration lol)

Arcades by C2C

Wake Me Up by Para One

The First Wish by DROELOE

Les Enfants du Paradis by World’s End Girlfriend

And here are five random songs I played on repeat for In Stars and Time:

Down by Chloe x Halle

Nonsense Bungaku by Eve

Non-Breathe Oblige by PinocchioP

Gentle Heart by Jamie Paige

Ready For The Floor by Hot Chip

It’s interesting, the songs I listened to for the prologue are generally more heavy and frenetic, while the ones for ISAT are more hopeful… I made sure to listen to more lively songs for ISAT, since that’s the feeling I wanted to give off…

That’s all the questions I have! In other, non related ISAT news, I have started a new project and having a lot of fun. It’s a visual novel this time. I’m hoping to get some screenshots ready in the next few months, but also I’m taking it easy on this one. If it takes years with many breaks in between to get it done, it’s fine. What matters to me right now is the process!

That’s all I have to say for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!

AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT’S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!

[f4ncyheartdelusion]

I was replaying the game normally getting stuff before going to the next needle and checking the NPCs dialogue to see if anything changed, and then when I entered here, it dawned on me, most of the kids in Tazmily had someone in their family disappear or die, I'm not sure what took me so long to realize it other than me being stupid, down below is me analyzing the facts and trying to make sense of the situation

-Fuel doesn't have a mother in the final game but from what we know via EB64, Lighter did indeed have a wife, she was named Tobacco and supposedly disappeared in the sea (a.k.a died)

-Angie doesn't have a father and such individual is never mentioned or implied to exist, but due to her being clearly younger than Kumatora she had to be born on Tazmily, so whoever Caroline's husband was, something likely happened to him.

-Alle has her grandpa die during the timeskip and it clearly affects her as she stopped listening to Fassad right after the Pigmasks harmed Wess, she even makes a comment about how they don't respect the elderly.

And then there's Nana... which the details from Earthbound 64 make her situation worse, in EB64 Nana only had a father (named Papa), so something happened to her mom by default and then her father disappears the same way Fuel's mother did, resulting in the loss of both her parents, in the final game her parents are never mentioned and most people consider this a plothole but EB64 paints a clear image of what the devs intended.

It's a neat juxtaposition of how Tazmily is supposed to be a happy beautiful utopia but the kids in there already went through some of the worst things that can happen in that age.

Worth noting is that the village does not pay much attention to these events, no one cared about Scamp dying in the GBA version outside of his family and in EB64 it's implied that the deaths of Fuel's mom and Nana's father were handwaved and didn't get much attention, it shines a light on how the death of Hinawa was a edge case, her death was too brutal and Hinawa herself was the literal most beloved person in Tazmily for the impact of what happened to her be diminished or pushed aside.

(I had a paragraph analyzing that maybe the reason the kids are all so nice to Lucas is cause of their similar experiences but then I remembered that Richie and Nichol have normal families and they both still are friendly and nice to Lucas and actively like the guy, whoops).

[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 12 - Destructive Testing

Breaking from the usual format for this one, and it’s going to be a bit shorter, but this is important.

At the beginning of November was Metatopia, a convention dedicated to playtesting roleplaying games. It’s an excellent place to go to break games in order to fix them stronger than ever, and in that respect Torchship did not disappoint. While its parts all worked beautifully, there were some issues with the connective tissue tying it; the game needed a stronger mechanical framework to put these pieces into.

With that in mind, we’ve started a new draft of Torchship designed to be rapidly playtested and iterated, into which all the other stuff we’ve built up can be plugged back. This new draft focuses particularly hard on making sure the game’s fundamental tablefeel is strong, that you always know what to do and where to go next.

Which is to say, fans of my games having big circles in them somewhere? There’s a big circle in this one now too. Torchship now has two distinct modes; an Action mode where you go out and gather information, and a Reflection portion where that information is managed, damage gets fixed, and plans are made. Action takes the form of ongoing narrative play, dropping into turn-based combat when needed, where Reflection takes place in a series of special scenes called Vignettes to represent timeskips, with more impactful ‘Resupply’ Vignettes acting in some ways as bridges between episodes or story arcs.

While it may sound similar to some of our previous games, this isn’t like in Flying Circus where each part of the Routine is a commitment to a certain kind of gameplay before you can go back. You’re able to switch between the two pretty readily; so long as there’s nothing bearing down on you this minute, you can go into Reflection and play out Vignettes, with the number available before you need to go back into Action depending on the in-universe time until the next important thing.

This structure imitates the back and forth you see in many episodes of Star Trek. To use Devil in the Dark as an example, the Action scenes are things like arriving at the planet to meet with the staff, or going out into the cave to track down what’s killing the miners. When they go back to talk about their findings, prep security crews, or bring in new resources, that’s Reflection. It covers your beloved TNG meeting room scenes, the cut to sickbay as we find out what happened to the redshirt, and the montages of inventing or building the tools that’ll solve this week’s problems.

As part of these rewrites, some parts of the game have been modified from previous dev diaries. We’ve simplified the way Harm works; you now have two Harm tracks, Injury and Panic, and a new accumulating penalty called Strain which builds up quickly as you make checks or use medicine to manage the other tracks or boost your abilities. Strain is easy to clear so long as you have supplies available, so it acts to pace out scenes and give less-skilled characters a reason to roll; if you know there’s a lot of a certain kind of work ahead, you might want to save your expert for the rolls which really matter!

(Radiation no longer uses a whole track, but instead consists of a small card the GM can hand you entitled “Congratulations, you’ve been irradiated!” with a list of dosage effects.)

A variety of changes large and small have emerged from these changes. Relationships act as an excellent starting point for Vignettes, while access to meetings have let us place restrictions on the number of checklists out on the field at a time, as you can always call meetings to retire checklists, propose others, and figure out what your next Big Question is about the mission. We’ve created a new XP system where you train skills directly by using them, with the pace of advancement limited on a per-episode basis to encourage you to play wide and learn new things.

Finally, we’ve come up with a neat solution to one of the longstanding problems that original sci-fi games often run into, where players are unsure what their technology can do, resulting in decision paralysis. We’ve added a very distinct CAN & CAN’T field on the info cards which lists exactly what everything does and what their limitations are so you can jump straight in without slowing the game to ask the GM where the boundaries are. 

Things are bound to change more over time as the game is refined and tested, but that’s a good thing. Good games take time, revision, and a willingness to recognize and rewrite when things aren’t working as well as they could.

[goodluckclove]

Wife Appreciation Post

Wife said they wanted to work on their game for a while. I think it's a 1st person roguelike shooter but it seems like a lot of stuff is changing. I'm on the couch in the office behind them editing and every so often I can look up and see them testing some movement or typing some code, and it is so impressive. Oh man.

I tried to ask them to explain to me how they can visualize the code they're typing as they program their game and I got confused immediately. But it's so cool. I have so much respect for people who know how to do things like that.

How do they know where to put the words? I see just a pile of random words and they can somehow turn that into a visualization of a video game.

I didn't even know what a rouge-like was before I met them.

So far I'm the only one that has gotten to test it and it's really fun. They're going for some PS2-style janky graphics and it's a super cool aesthetic.

It's just cool. I really admire skilled people. Plus they've said they want to get more involved in the indie dev scene around Portland and so I think I might get to see them do this type of stuff more often. And that makes me happy.

When Wife eventually releases the game they're working on now I'm going to secretly post it here and I hope everyone downloads it and plays it. I think they said they're going to make it like .69 cents or some funny price. And it's a super neat take on the shooter concept using an arbalest that you can power up until it's crazy. I am not a gamer but I really enjoy it so far.

You aren't allowed to tell them that I'm the one that showed it to you, though. It's our little secret. They don't really understand Tumblr so I don't think they realize I talk about them as much as I do.

I like my wife. That's all I want to say.

[qkayoostudio]

devlog 31

Hi dear friends,

It was my dev-niversary a few days ago! 🥳 Hard to believe I've been doing this for two years now.

Otmund and Rein are here to celebrate with us all, of course :).

Onto the devlog! It has been and continues to be crunch time to get things ready for upcoming jams 🫠. I had wanted to make an announcement this week, but I'm going to have to hold off on that until next devlog. It's been a lot of fun, though! I figured out some neat stuff to do with choice options; I'll probably put a lengthier tutorial on Patreon at some point.

I've also wrote a little for Resonance in Orbit which I hadn't done in a while! It felt really good to return to it. I've also made a more or less definitive outline of what I eventually want to release in a demo.

That's all for now! Under the cut I'm taking a moment to reflect on gamedev progress this past year ❤️

I often doubt myself and my work, so I wanted to make an effort to count the victories too!

I released two (2!) games the past year! A Tavern at Night continues to receive really wonderful feedback--I'm very happy and grateful to see that my silly little jam game is enjoyed by so many.

And after more than a year's work, Chapter 1 of The Summit Library is now live! On Steam, no less!

I also continued to keep up with my Patreon that I started in November 2022. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who tossed a coin my way--your generosity made it possible to bring The Summit Library to Steam at all.

I've made some really precious friendships in the dev community this past year, too. Being a solo indie dev can be a very lonely experience, and I'm so grateful to have found people that I feel close to.

Being able to make VNs is so so meaningful to me, especially queer stories that are inclusive and full of love and adventure. I'm going to try to keep doing it for as long as I can.

I have so many stories that I want to tell and so many games I want to make. I'm very excited to keep sharing it with all of you!

If you read up to here--thank you!! I appreciate you!!

much love,

qk