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leanarg · 4 years

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Practice Challenge II

((Hi again! So, these are 3 fics in one post! Including my first two rps with @ladyreggiewright (our very first one after ages not doing this so asdfghk) and with @wylan-caldwell I had so much fun doing both, so thank you, guys! <3 Thanks for reading too, hope you enjoy them as much as I stuggled writing them ;P Google Docs link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ARTjqveFJ1njDc2LL0PU4C0ShN2jlO9JC1Imt9MDTh8/edit?usp=sharing ))

A CHANGE OF LUCK

“Alright, y’all ready?” Rita said with a loud voice vibrating with nervousness. “The speeches are over. In the next block, Prince Arin will be picking the names.” That was her fifth lap around the entertainment office floor and she just couldn’t stop repeating what Vandy Post had already announced before each round of commercials. I knew she was trying to act authoritative, but seeing her in this state was always amusing.

It wasn’t unusual that the building was bursting with energy this late at night. The pre-press team always stayed working on putting together the bulldog broadsheets content and adding the last details, then sent the whole thing before the deadline to the press team operating on the last floor, where they were all in charge of the printing process. I would dare to say there was activity in this place 24/7. But this particular night, we were focused on The Report. The streets looked almost empty from up here, everyone was at home in front of their TV waiting for the names of the lucky girls randomly picked by a drawing of names out of different crystal boxes. 35 provinces, 35 boxes, 35 names.

My attention had been focused on Arin’s stern expression. His life was about to be decided by fate, or as many people want to call it, destiny. I wonder what was he thinking, standing there expressionless, willing to uphold his duty.

Is he excited? Is he nervous? Is he wishing he could run away from that room and leave all this tradition behind?

My name was inside of one of the boxes, so I should had been even more anxious and edgy than Rita herself, but, after the PET Gala fiasco, where: I hadn’t gotten the clues I was so close to getting, I hadn’t finished the job I was supposed to be doing and my one month salary had been reduced to half; I was certain that whoever was in charge of my luck was not very fond of me.

“They are back!” Rita shouted as soon as Arin’s face reappeared. Everyone in the room fell silent. I scoffed a laugh when I noticed them unconsciously leaning slightly towards the big tv, but I ended up doing the same after adjusting my glasses. One by one the basic information of the selected were being transcribed from the screen to our devices as Arin picked out their papers.

<< “From Allens, Idalia Moretti, from Angeles, Emily Rose White,... from Honduragua, Callia Adair…” >>

My fingers were moving fast across my cellphone’s keyboard. These were the girls we would be hearing a lot about from now on and I needed to know everything about them.

<< “From Labrador, Lea…” >>

I froze. My head felt dizzy trying to take in what I had just heard. For the shortest of seconds, everyone’s eyes were on me. I could hear Rita’s voice instructing them to get back to work and maybe someone else was now in charge of The Globe’s blog but at that moment I couldn’t care less about that.

It’s really happening... I made it to the selection!

Finally, I could stand up. I was feeling so much energy inside me that I wanted to run. Suddenly, the lift made a sound and my dad came quickly out of it and … wait, my mom is here? She was carrying my sleepy little brother, Dean.

I could read the shock on my parents’ faces.“I’m in!!” I said a little too loud but since Mr. Grant was there no one dared to complain. My dad let out a short laugh before extending his arms for an embrace. “Congratulations, Rosie, I knew it would happen, didn’t I tell you V?” He said to my mom. “Grants always get what they want.”

Ugh, I wish. But I wasn’t going to argue with him right now, so I just offered him a wink.

As soon as my father let go, my mom surrounded me with her free arm. “So how does it feel to be a lady, huh? We have to celebrate this!”

“Well, do ladies feel hungry this late? Cause I wasn’t feeling it a moment ago.” “Yes, let’s leave these guys to work in peace.” my dad said suddenly remembering where we were. After clearing his throat as if that simple gesture was a switch between the dad and the boss, he talked with Rita to make sure someone had replaced me updating the blog, then he congratulated everyone for their dedication and finally wished them good night. “I just hope you are paying me the full day,” I said to my dad as we all headed outside.

“I mean, are you working right now?” He raised an eyebrow, mockingly.

I sighed “I guess Grants can’t always get what they want after all.” And I meant it in more than one way.

The next week ran fast. My father and I agreed that I had to keep going to the office as usual, but it wasn’t easy to balance my work and my phone ringing every 5 minutes. More than once I had to ride home in the middle of the day because someone was waiting for me at home.

First, a man with a very peculiar face came to do some kind of interrogation, which was understandable until we got to the most uncomfortable, personal ones. I almost spit my coffee laughing until I realized he had no intention to leave until he got every answer to each one of the questions on his list.

Like him, I received a tailor and a doctor; but it wasn’t until the press started to ask for interviews when I realized my life had made a turn of 360 degrees.

The thing I lamented the most about this odd schedule was that I couldn’t travel to the provinces to interview some of the selected as we had planned, but I did take advantage of every opportunity I had to do deep research about them.

Some of the names or last names could be found on old newspaper editions, there were tragedies, accomplishments, unfortunate events… I smiled to myself, while I made annotations on my journal, fascinated by all the different interesting lives that were about to gather under the same roof. And I guess somehow that included mine.

The farewell party organized by Labrador’s Mayor seemed more like a political campaign than a real party. I might have fallen asleep during his speech if I hadn’t been texting Harris for the 40th time that week.

The last time I knew something about him was the night of the announcement when he sent me a simple “Congratulations, Lady Lea.” Then as the photographer, he had to go with Rea to the half-tour over the country to cover the selected interviews.

“How dare you not be here when you are needed,... you lucky mooncalf.”

I looked up to see the crowd from my place on the big platform set in the middle of the Amberly park. It hadn’t been a very good idea, because there were grey clouds gathering over us and the sun was partially covered by them already.

Someone forgot to check the weather section today.

But the trees surrounding us were decorated with purple and green metallic balloons -the colors of our province- and there were several signs with good wishes so I appreciated the effort.

Everyone was here; The Globe employees that didn’t like me at all, my family on the first row, my college best friend, Liv had made space on her busy schedule to come to the event, even my grandmother had sent his chauffeur with presents. That was her way to show support and I honestly didn’t have any complaints. After the Mayor’s speech, the great boss Maxwell Loyd took the microphone to speak, I rolled my eyes, not caring about the people in front of me. He didn’t waste this opportunity to promote himself and flatter me. I mean, if he really had thought all that about me I would have had a promotion and a raise already, instead I just got ridiculous instructions and a handshake.

When they both finally finished, the rain had started to pour, plus it was almost time for me to leave for the airport. I buttoned my coat before taking my place behind the microphone to start talking, but the eyes of the lady in charge of my schedule forced me to skip until the end of the speech I had prepared the night before. Every time I was going to make it sound deep and sentimental she made a sign for me to hurry.

“I appreciate your support… I will do my best… thank you for coming.”

Were the only complete sentences I managed to say under such pressure. There was clapping and cheering afterwards, but there was after the previous boring speeches as well, so I didn’t get too excited about that.

“Have a good time, my Lea.” My mother said after kissing my brow. I could smell her sweet perfume that I was going to miss. “I will, mom. Take care, I’m only leaving cause I know you are going to be in charge.” I side eyed the two men of the house. Then I kissed my little brother and messed his blond hair. “Bye bye little toad.” He just babbled something and waved his little hand.

“So, Lady Grant. What do you expect from Prince Arin? Do you secretly plan to drink all the coffee from the Angele’s Palace? Rumor has it your father won’t let you marry until you turn 48 years old do you think Your Highness would wait for you that long?” “Wow, Mr. Grant you ask pretty basic questions, I have been asked the same ones all week.” He gave me a big tight hug and I ignored the wool of his coat feeling itchy on my cheek. “I’m very proud of you Leana, and of course I’m not talking about this selection situation… I’m sorry about-” I stopped him not wanting to have our little disagreements as today’s last memory. And I also hoped I could change his mind by the time I returned home. “We can talk about that when I come back, dad.” He nodded. “I’m starting to feel bad for our dear Prince Arin.” I scoffed a laugh.

“Lady Grant, we are past the established hours already.” I heard a lady behind me.

I turned to my friend Liv with an apologetic expression but she just smiled and waved. “I will text you… Bye! The rain started to fall harder but I had read the weather section on the paper this morning so I was properly dressed with boots and a coat over my white shirt and black pants.

I walked towards a guard who was holding an opened umbrella to cover us with it. He opened the door of the car. Then he offered to take my bag for me, but I had packed some of my old journals in there among my personal things. “Thank you… What’s your name?” “Finn Ray, my lady.” He answered confused. “I will keep this here with me, Finn.” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone before entering the car. I guessed he was new at guarding selected, because I noticed him turning to look at the woman in charge of the schedule. She nodded once at him and joined me inside the limousine.

By the time we got to the airport I had learned that our chauffeur was called Alan Cobb, he had been working for the palace for 3 years on special occasions. He had three kids and his wife was expecting a baby girl.

The strict lady was Miss Ramirez, she was happily single, obviously tardiness was her biggest pet peeve and she had worked there for 6 years already, but she enjoyed her job and had never thought of doing anything else, although I didn’t quite understand exactly which was her role in the royal offices of Labrador.

She left me at the boarding door after wishing me luck.

The flight to Angeles was long. I shared a plane with 3 others selected, that seemed pretty decent at first sight.

We had a polite introduction conversation before we took off, but then everyone focused on her own thing; Jen Li, -the Yale law student from Waverly- took advantage of the 8 hours flight to sleep. Alana Hansen looked out from the window almost the whole time lost in her thoughts, and based on the green tone on Regina Wright’s face I guessed she was a risky company for the moment.

I remembered I had read about her parents' unfortunate plane accident in an old newspaper, they used to be famous politicians and she was an apple that had fallen close to the tree. Hopefully not too close.

So, considering my options I prefer to write in my journals during the whole trip.

As soon as we arrived we were hurried to a room for makeovers. For me it felt more like a day in the salon, nothing drastic was made, just a few lights on my hair, perfect makeup and a stunning blue dress with matching elegant pump heels shoes.

They did insisted on giving me contact lenses, since I had forgotten to pack mine, so after a long argument with the stylist, Mariel, I decided to wear the contacts and let him enjoy “his creation”.

In the end, despite the little changes, when he showed me my reflection in the mirror, I had to recognize I was content with the upgraded version of me.

ESSENTIAL RESEARCH

The tour around the palace was quite short considering its size. I was almost sure that it was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside, but the curiosity to see my new room, made me settle with the basic information,

I took a glance down at the little map on my hand. Eloise Hall room 28, second floor. As I headed to the stairs, the decorations and fancy details surrounding me were impossible to ignore. With every step you could find paintings by famous old artists -my mother admired- hanging on the walls, expensive vases and beautiful furniture.

Looking around I spotted one of the selected quickly scribbling some notes in a notebook. As I got closer I noticed she was my plane mate, Regina Wright. Her green tone had disappeared or maybe covered with makeup and she looked much more secure now that we were down here on earth soil.

I laughed a little bit inside walking by her side “Hope whatever you are writing is worth a bump on your head.”

“I hope so too” She said absentmindedly, not looking up from her notebook. After some seconds she took a short look at me, flipped through her notebook and quickly closed it before I could react and lean discreetly to read what she was working on.

Okay, now I’m curious.

“Excuse me, hi. Leana is it?” She gave me a polite smile.

“Yes, feeling better... Regina..? I asked faking ignorance.

She looked at me as she didn’t know why I was asking her that but then just answered, “Splendid. But please, call me Reggie.”

We continue walking up the stairs towards the second floor, while we shook hands,

“I'm Leana Grant but you can call me Lea or Lee” I said touching the arc of my glasses I had put back on as soon as I left the makeover room.

She nodded. “Alright, Lea. Journalist, correct?” She made her pen click as if she was going to start writing again. I frowned, puzzled. “You too?”

She chuckled at the question as if I should already know who she was. And the truth was, I did.

“No,” she finally said, opening her notebook again, adding something, then she continued. “So, what brings you here?”

I was sure Reggie had many qualities but subtlety wasn’t one of them.

I pressed my lips together, thinking about my motives, which one of them should I tell her? I’m here as an inside informant for The Globe; or, I’m here to live and learn about this whole selection phenomenon… I didn’t even know which one was the right answer. “... just figured I couldn't miss this whole thing, you know.”

Half- truths are always safe.

“Are you here for politics?” I added before she could even think about my answer.

She looked pleasantly surprised by my question, clearing her throat. “Yes, that is one of the reasons.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You did your research.”

I guess it was my turn to feel recognized, but unlike her I didn’t want to be so obvious, so I shrugged. “Your name rang a bell.”

She looked at me suspiciously, lifting her chin, a slight movement I didn’t quite understand. “Is that so? That's good, I suppose. Best to be prepared.”

“Maybe you are right, I guess you actually did your research. What do you have about me?” I asked directly now, pointing at her notebook casually.

She remained serious. “Oh, just the usual. Occupation, caste, age. Name, obviously. There's 35 of us after all. Would be a shame to get anyone mixed up.”

“Well, now most of us are threes and the twos are pretty well known.”

“Yes well, obviously. Was to be expected. It's still an appropriate mix.”

Her statement made me remember her parents somehow, obviously she had their school but I wonder how much she agreed with them. “That’s... a word to describe it, yes.” I answered incredulous, “So where are you staying?” I asked, as I noticed I have already found my room.

We discovered we were room neighbors which I decided was very convenient for me. I liked people who have answers to my questions.

She was concerned about my acoustic guitar hobby and I assured her I hadn’t brought mine with me. “The music room will do.” And she assured me her studying was going to be silent.

The conversation continued but my curiosity was already unbearable, so I opened the door of my room to check it out. I didn’t want to be rude so I invited Reggie inside as we talked.

“What are you working on?” I stepped inside

She followed. “Political Science Major.”

I gave her a glance to let her know that was not the answer I was looking for.

She blinked with realization. “Oh, I see I misunderstood. Well, actually I was just writing a paper on the pros and cons of capitalism and if our country should focus more on it like we did when we were still called the 'United States'” She air quoted the name.

I looked around my room considering her answer. Suddenly my eyes met with three maids standing in line in the middle of the room. When they saw us they made a courtesy and I nodded at them as a greeting, hoping we can have proper introductions later.

“Hmm the lesser of evils... but the United States not exactly an example to be followed.” I said to Reggie.

“Exactly.” She said. I noticed her writing a mark in her notebook.

“A-are you like grading me?” I dared to ask what I had suspected since the beginning, but I didn’t want to believe. It was shocking at first but after the third mark it became amusing.

“Who else do you have in there?” I asked curiously before running next to her to peek at her notebook. She closed it again. When I looked at her she smiled at me awkwardly “No, of course not. Just remembered something.” Her notebook was behind her back, now out of my reach. She straightened her shoulders before adding, “Well, thank you kindly for your invitation, glad to have met you…”

I stayed there confused, Had I gotten it wrong? Or was I right and she didn’t want me to know? Anyway, I should have said nothing. “Alright ... glad to meet you too, see you around.” I said worried that she might be uncomfortable now.

She nodded as she headed to the door. One of the maids hurried to hold the door for her.

I frowned concerned, I couldn’t just lose a source like her. “Wait for me tomorrow, I think we can walk to the dining room together.”

She turned to give me a frown, seemingly confused by my suggestion. “But I already know where it-” then she smiled. “I will.”

As soon as Reggie left I took out the journal from the pocket of my dress and tossed on the pretty desk by a large window where I peered at the view of the Angeles city.

FOR THE RECORD.

After introductions my maids brought me dinner up to my room. So while I was eating the best creamy mustard chicken I ever had, we had a little chat.

Among other things we talked about I expressed my surprise when I didn’t see any Royals when we arrived. Liberty, Camila and confirmed the Schreaves didn’t plan to meet any selected tonight, we would have to wait until morning. Queen Anjeli and Princess Ayesha had to leave the palace to attend important matters and Wylan Caldwell in spite of not being a selected was currently living in the Palace. Back in Labrador, I managed between college, work and extra work to fill my schedule, my mother never liked me being out of the house so late at night or sometimes not being able to have a complete breakfast in the morning, I enjoyed being busy and drive my Vespa from one place to another, but it was hard for me to admit that one of the reasons I liked my life that way was that besides when I was concentrated writing notes on my iTypewriter; I was not good at being alone with my thoughts. That’s why when I was a child my mother bought me a ukulele to play when I was feeling anxious, which gave excellent results. Later when I entered college I took a short guitar course with the same purpose.

Therefore, later that afternoon, when my maids went back to their chores, leaving me alone I decided to leave my room to check out the music room, as I promised Reggie I would do.

It took me some minutes to find the right door downstairs but my memory had never failed me and it wasn’t going to start now.

I opened the third door in the west hall and peeked inside. I felt relieved when I saw the big piano in the last corner and dared to walk inside. Besides the piano, there were several instruments resting on their stands spread around the room, most of them to play classical music, but luckily, an acoustic guitar was among them. I was going to pick it up to test it when I spotted shelves full of old vinyl records.

I walked towards the vinyl record player, it had a beautiful vintage look, it’s big horn imitated the ancient gramophones used during the Victorian years, but I suspected to be a more recent model.

I noticed someone had left a classic record on, I wonder which one of the Royals had been listening to it as I moved the tonearm onto the outer edge of the disk, the little diamond tip to touch the groove.

I guess I still remember how to use one of this.

I stretched my arm and pulled one of the discs from the upper shelf, the others came down with it and << "KNEEE-KNEEE!!" >>

The blaring sound of violins vibrated around the room making me wince for the annoying sound filling my ears.

“Damn!” I covered my ears while trying to find a way to turn the bloody record player off before my head exploded. Overwhelmed by the sound I went on my knees and stretched my hand behind the furniture looking desperately for the plug, but before I could find any the music stopped.

I stood up still touching my ears

Have I gone deaf?

“I take you didn’t mean to do that.” I heard someone say behind me.

Okay, I haven’t

I turned around to find a guy eyeing me warily, from the corner of my eye I noticed a laptop and a couple of heavy leather books that weren't on the table before.

“I was considering turning it on but it made the decision for me,” I said without explaining.

At that moment, a couple of guards came into the room alarmed. They scanned the room quickly before looking at us puzzled.

Wylan followed my gaze and turned to them, slightly. “Just a mishap. We’re fine.” He acknowledged with a wave of his hand. I let out a sigh of relief as they left the room to return to their posts.

“First time using a record player?” He asked to continue teasing

I gave him a deadpan look. “Ha-ha I take that the last person who played it had some hearing problems.” Before I crouched to pick up the rest of the vinyl records still scattered on the carpeted floor, I noticed a smile tugging at his lips that didn’t last.

In a minute he was bending in front of me to help. “You picked some good ones.”

Suddenly we looked at each other for a second, I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at his for a second trying to figure any sign of sarcasm in them, and he just had the word “awkward” written all over his face. Obviously I was making him feel uncomfortable.

I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so busy trying to read him.

“I like classics- acoustic to be precise.” I finally said with a shrug. “Do you own any of these?”

“This John Mayer one is mine. I have some other ones too. They’re over there.” He gestured to the rack behind me, then stood up with the vinyls he helped pick up.

I raised my eyebrow and nodded approvingly. “You have some taste, I will give you that.” I looked up at him, waiting for him to offer his hand for me to help me stand, but apparently living in a castle was no guarantee of anything, so I just stood up slowly, brushing my dress.

“Some were gifts I grew to love.” He acknowledged, holding the vinyls out for me. “I’d recommend keeping the volume down before you turn it on next time.”

I took the discs to put them back in its place on the shelves “Well, you should put a sign somewhere,” I joked, a bit annoyed by his recommendation.

I adjusted my glasses and stayed standing there, admiring the vinyl records once more. My curious mind wondered about the Prince. “Which ones are Arin’s?”

“I’m not sure. He might not own any.” I caught him glancing at his things he had left on the table before back to me. “Might be a good question to ask him yourself.”

Or you’re just evading the question. But fortunately, one of the things my job had teached me was to have thick skin so I wasn’t going to let him get away so easily.

“You really don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?” I asked with an amusing tone.

He let out a small sigh, relenting a bit. “He likes The Killers. There’s probably a vinyl or two of those in here if you really need a good conversation starter.”

I faked a grimace “ugh! that piece of information should’ve hurt…” I said mockingly before adding. “I guess some advice for tomorrow’s interview is completely out of the table.”

“Depends on what advice you’re looking for,” he let out, surprising me.

I started to walk around the room still looking at him, considering my answer. “I don’t know, you are his friend... knowing a little bit about his personality would help,” I said casually, as if I didn’t already have thousands of questions listed in my head.

But somehow he knew I did. “I’ll answer one question you have. Just one.”

“So generous …” I said more to myself than to him. My hand went unconsciously inside the pocket on my dress and my fingers touched my journal inside of it, purely out of habit. Of course, I wasn’t going to take it out so I crossed my hands in front of me as I resumed my walking around the room.

“Okay…” In my mind I was looking for a single question that could indirectly tell me things about Arins personality … and why not about Mr. Uncomfortable himself too.

“How do you start getting along back in college, like how did you become friends?”

Suddenly he let out a laugh, startling me. I frowned at first, but then I decided it wasn’t so bad, it picked my curiousness further.

I looked at him genuinely amused and he begined, “We were both going for runs and without knowing, I drifted a little too close. I was listening to music and not paying attention. His bodyguard sort of…” He paused to bring his fist to his neck simulating a punch. “And took me down.” I could see he was amused, for real.

I laughed picturing the scene on my mind, considering all his previous teasing and had to admit it was a little bit entertaining to do so. “Ouch! His bodyguard does look ... fierce.” I commented remembering the man’s complexion I had seen several times on TV.

I wait for him to continue before asking, “what happened next? What did Arin say?”

His smile was more like a ghost on his face now, not physically there but somehow still present. “He apologized. After that we found out we shared a couple classes together and I offered to help him study for exams.”

“That’s an epic story… I bet it left you marked for some days.” I made a grimace, touching my neck, imagining the pain.

“Swallowing hurt, to say the least,” he said, remembering. After a minute, he combed a hand through his hair. “ Did that satisfy your question?”

“Hmm yeah, it was good, for now” I answered scoffing a laugh. The truth was I didn’t expect to enjoy his story that much, but I just couldn’t settle with only one question, but it wasn’t convenient to push more questions on him now.

Fortunately he didn’t refuse, he just rolled his eyes at me, amused. “Alright, well I have to get back to work. At least try to not deafen the entire palace again.”

“I can’t promise anything.” I let out, finally taking the acoustic guitar from its stand, while he turned to gather his things.

“Reassuring.” He gave me a side glance and started walking out the room, he offered a two fingered salute before disappearing behind the opened door.

After a second, while looking down at the guitar already in place on my lap, I compelled, “Wylan... thanks!”

“You're welcome.”

I heard him say from the hallway just before I started strumming the guitar strings, hoping its sound was enough to help me survive the first night.

#OC 6 #PC part 2 #Reggie Wright #Wylan Caldwell #((thanks again to Cassey for reading and giving me some perspective ))

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thewildjoshwaa · 4 years

Text

Oni:Trials of Destiny Dev Blog

Pre Assumptions/Week 1

The first week we formed our groups. After a successful project working on Ashes myself, our former team leader Hassan and artist Cedez wanted to form up and work together for this project. However, this time we decided to take on Nela who is an excellent programmer, Mike who is a talented 3D modeller and Ella who is also a talented 3D modeller. Between the former Ashes team we decided we needed two modellers as opposed to one, as last time we had a very large workload to create 3D models just for one modeller. We decided this time we would need two in order to better space out that workload.

Last module I was an artist for the group and had helped with other aspects of the project such as texturing. This time however I wanted to work on the programming, as I had an entire semester working with code and would also be working in unity for my other project this semester. Therefore I believe I would be able to apply my new skills here. This was agreed with the entire group meaning we would have myself, Nela and Cedex as programmers. Hassan as team leader and artist. Finally Mike and Ella would be our 3D modellers. I was very happy with this team and felt we had one of the strongest teams assembled so far.

Our task this week was to each come up with a game idea and some concept art for it to show off our ideas and between us all pick one idea to go with and develop it for the project. My idea was a cyberpunk themed platformer where the player would have to track criminals/dangerous creatures and hunt them down bringing back the targets alive. The player would have to find clues in the levels to find them and track the target.

Week 2

After some careful consideration we actually took a few ideas from a couple of the other ideas we put forward and developed it as a group, each member contributing evenly to our idea until we had something concrete so everyone was happy working on the project in a passionate way.

Week 2 ended up being a very busy week for the group. In order to inspire the aesthetics of our game we built up a pinterest board centered around the Kitsune, Japanese mythology, futurism and other mythologies/cultures, which was collaborated on as a group. For my own personal contribution I was tasked with developing the character controller and the camera controller for the player in a white box level.

This is the first time I have worked on a 3rd person 3D game before, but with the help of some tutorials, developing these components I was tasked with this week turned out to be a relatively simple task at first. The challenge with this task was solving the camera collision and clipping issues we would inevitably have. I couldn’t get this to work perfectly from week 2, but I did manage to get the camera to collide correctly to limit clipping in terrain. Whilst clipping would still occur at this stage, I will have to tweak and refine the character controller in future weeks. For the purposes of a whitebox however, what I had developed this week would suffice.

Week 3

Again this week would turn out to be a very busy week as I had picked up 3 important tasks in terms of developing more basic mechanics for the player character. We also had a major setback in that Hassan unfortunately would leave the team this week to work on his placement for the BBC. Hassan would have been an amazing asset for our team so I saw this is a pretty big blow for us particularly because he was our project manager for the last project and now this one. Luckily we do still have a very strong team despite the loss of Hassan and Nela naturally stepped up in the project manager role, setting tasks for the team this week and organising our documentational side of things.

In terms of my tasks, I was developing the jump, dodge and health mechanics for the player. Unfortunately the jump and dodge mechanics took a little longer than anticipated to get working, I had some major issues with the jump being far too strong or too weak even though I was only increasing or decreasing the jumpforce by very small increments. I did manage to find a workable medium that would work for the very early prototype stages of the project, but the jump did feel very floaty and was still a little too high. Ultimately this will be worked on and tweaked in future weeks. For the dodge I opted to have a teleport style dodge similar to how Noctis would dodge attacks in the latest Final Fantasy instalment at the time. I did this as I was keeping in mind the workload for our modellers who would also be rigging the character for animation, and in order to lessen their workload I felt having a particle effect animation play when the character does the teleportation dodge would not only help reduce their workload, but also fit the character being a mystical kitsune with powers and look aesthetically pleasing at the same time. This would also need tweaking as right now the player can teleport through geometry which can cause bugs of falling through the map or skipping puzzles we had planned later down the development pipeline.

The final task I worked on was the Health mechanics. I had opted to develop a health system that both the player and the enemies can use, as well as a visible health bar that the player and enemies can use. I managed to get this working relatively fast and through testing damage to the player would accurately reflect on the player health bar.

Week 4

After a busy first few weeks for me in developing this project, this week was more relaxed. We were ahead of schedule compared to other groups, so this week was solely focused on refining the character controls and tweaking the current mechanics. Other members were working on getting assets into our would be level and developing the game infrastructure such as the menus. I also added sections on the Game design document based on the assets I had produced so far on the project.

Week 5

This week had some confusion. We had two white box levels. Myself and Cedez were working in one white box level and Nela was working in another. In order for Nela to test her enemies she had to incorporate some of the assets I had developed such as the camera controller and health system. I had to show Nela how to correctly set up and link the camera controller as well as how to set up the health bar on the enemies correctly. As a result of proper testing with the projectiles and multiple enemies this caused issues for the health bar both for the player and enemies. Whilst the health system itself was tracking the correct amount of health and damage for the player and enemies, the health bar wouldn’t reflect this properly. The issue was having multiple enemies on a level at the same time, the health bar script was looking for one enemy health bar to work with but it had multiple. In the end we took the health bar off the enemy entirely. This solved the issue with the player health bar also.

Week 6

We had successfully managed to transfer the assets we had to the actual game level people would play, and even the actual fox player models to the player and camera controller. This was in time for testing this week whereby we had first year game students come and give us feedback for the game. I was in charge of producing a questionnaire for playtesters to fill in and logging their feedback as well as any bugs they encountered.

As a result of their feedback we immediately started working on fixes to the bugs people encountered which I had helped with. The biggest contribution from me was fixing the camera controller making it way easier for the player controller because before the test it was clunky and strange to work with.

We also removed the dodge mechanic from the game as it was causing too many issues with clipping the player through the geometry and skipping parts of the level. We decided dodge was no longer required anyway and the player could work without this mechanic as the player had tools such as their projectiles to defeat enemies or they can easily sun away if they take too much damage.

Week 7

Week 7 was a very tough week for me personally. I was tasked with developing a sprint mechanic for the player and fixing some of the bugs that were reported in play testing. However I didn’t complete these tasks as I was faced with some very difficult and tough personal circumstances that caused me to lose my normal passion, motivation and fight to achieve in developing a game. I brought this to the attention of the group and they were very understanding with me and Nela was especially so as she picked up my tasks, and was very supportive.

Quarantine

Uni closed down and everyone was forced to work from home. I still had ongoing personal issues and was bouncing between places I was living, which limited my capability to work on the project. Due to the uncertainty and overall lack of motivation across the group there were a couple of weeks where a few group members understandably didn’t work on the project too much. Even Nela who I would say is the hardest working member of the group had knocked motivation based on the circumstances. During the early stages of this period the group didn’t communicate as much as we normally would have which is again understandable considering the circumstances. Thanks to all the hard work we had put into the project before the lockdown, these weeks where little was being developed didn’t affect the project too badly.

After a few weeks we managed to pull together as a group, fix issues, communicate better until the project was near completion. Towards the last 3/4 weeks before deadline we only had sounds to incorporate, narration for the cutscene and finishing up the documentation for these parts as well as producing a presentation with some gameplay. When I had personally bounced back I was tasked with creating fall damage for the character. I had successfully created working fall damage that reflected damage based on how far the player fell. However when applied to the fox character for some reason this would not work properly. Fall damage was being reflected with standard jumps when it shouldn’t and changing the fall value slightly would mean the player would take no damage no matter how far they fell. I brought this to Nela’s attention and she couldn’t figure out how to make it work properly either. We believe it has something to do with the fox having two character models at all times due to the transformation mechanic. As the transformation mechanic is a key mechanic and we were running out of time we decided to scrap fall damage for now and implement fences in places the player could fall from to skip parts of the level, or instant death if they fall to places the player shouldn’t go.

I was tasked with being the voice of the narrator. Between myself and Cedez we came up with a script that goes with the cutscene. We had to not only write something that goes in time with what the player is seeing but also provide enough story and context to give the player a better idea of what is going on in the game. We had no issues with the script or recording my voice and Cedez edited the narration to fit the cutscene.

My final effort with the project involved working on my task for the presentation we had to film. I talked about some of the things I had produced earlier on in the development for Oni. I quickly produced a speech and recorded myself going through it resulting in a three minute thirty audio clip. I then recorded gameplay whilst listening to the clip to ensure what I was playing fit with what I was saying in the speech which resulted in three minutes thirty seconds worth of gameplay on my segment of the presentation alone.

Post Mortem

Ultimately Oni:Trials Of Destiny really turned out well despite the setbacks we had as a group both before the lockdown and during it. Due to the group's strength, I believe we came up with a really cool prototype that is both fun and artistically pleasing. Both the programmer and the modelling teams did a great job on developing their assets as a team and we all supported each other and helped each other when it was required. Creating a 3D 3rd person platformer I thought was going to be a real challenge due to my own personal lack of experience in developing a game like this, but thanks to really digging in and researching how to develop a lot of the assets and components needed at the start of the project, really helped push me and learn.

I had learnt so much switching from an artist to a programmer for this unit. I felt being a programmer meant I was far more involved in the project and how it would turn out, whether it would be a success or a failure. I enjoyed the problem solving aspect of this role despite the stress it brought at times. Whilst some of the components I produced were not perfect, I had learnt a lot by making mistakes and having people like Nela and Cedez helping me, as I helped them at times during the project.

My only disappointment was the lull I had during my difficult time just before the quarantine and some weeks during the beginning of it. I wish I had bounced back sooner as I feel I disappointed my team despite their understanding, and I wished I picked up my own slack so they could get on with their own tasks. Whilst the end product of our project turned out really well, there were some things we couldn’t quite get to work such as the dodge mechanic and fall damage that if I did bounce back sooner, may well have been implemented properly into the game making it better. However, I did bounce back, I wasn’t down and out all the way through. This will make me a stronger game developer no matter what role I end up in future projects.

Asset List

- Character controller

- Camera controller

- Jump

- Dodge (not used)

- Health system

- Health bar script

- Fall damage (not used)

- Narrator (voice and script)

- Some Sections related to what I did, in the GDD

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thegazettefanfiction · 5 years

Text

Music of My Heart (Ruki)

Wearing a black fluffy robe, (Y/n) sat on the brown sofa tapping on her white Huawei Mate 10 encased in a pink and blue marble rubber case, typing out a caption for a photo taken just moments ago. It was a picture taken by one of the roadies, where she faced the camera with the rest of the thousands of audience members. Everyone posed for the picture, each of them with a smile and a hand signs like a peace or rock on sign.

After doing a little adjustment on the filters, she logged in to Instagram and typed:

“It’s a wrap! Thank you for an unforgettable evening, Osaka! It was a wonderful way to end the Asia Tour. Tonight, I could feel your that resonated in the whole building. Listening to you sing along made my heart melt because I didn’t expect my music to reach you. I hope to visit you guys more in the future. Until we meet again! ❤️”

She typed the Japanese translation of the text below before uploading the photo on her social media accounts. As her phone kept buzzing from the notifications that informed her of the number of likes and comments the photo got, she went off to change into a new set of clothing before beginning to pack up with the others.

It was the last day of her Asia tour, where (Y/n) performed for millions of spectators. She did the final show in Kyocera Dome Osaka that evening, where she performed in front of at least 50,000 people. No words could describe how she felt; how she started from a young naïve girl who just stood and sang for her small audience, to an international star who wrote and perform her own songs in front of a larger one.

Finally came to the time when she had bid her team goodbye. After shaking hands and hugging each of them, thanking them for their hard work for making the tour a huge success, she boarded the black Honda Accord Sedan with her manager before it drove off to her hotel.

With her manager talking on the phone on her future activities, (Y/n) was scrolling through the comment section, liking the positive ones and ignoring the opposite, until one written in Japanese caught her attention.

ruki_nilduenilun Meanwhile, I’m stuck on the other side of the world and can’t go home to you and our furry babies. 😢

A loving smile stretched across (Y/n)’s face as she typed,

(username) @ruki_nilduenilun Be patient, my darling. Maybe we can celebrate our successes with a nice day out when you come home. 😊

While puffing on his e-cigarette, Ruki smiled at the comment and typed,

ruki_nilduenilun @(username) That sounds nice. Wait for me, then. 😉

Dating another artist can be a challenge, especially when both of them were equally famous and had busy schedules to accommodate their fame. But Ruki expected this the moment he asked to be (Y/n)’s partner, and look at where they are now – four years and still going strong.

He closed the Instagram app and stared at his home screen wallpaper, which was a selfie he took with her on their fourth anniversary in Akita, where they went “onsen hopping” on a beautiful Autumn when the Japanese maple leaves blended with the green landscape with their reds, yellows and oranges. It was after a nice bath they took in the outdoor onsen, and on the way back to their room, Ruki suggested to take a selfie with the beautiful scenery in the background. Right before his thumb contacted the shutter, (Y/n) decided to turn her head and peck him on the cheek, creating a nice shade of red that spread across his cheeks. It was a lovely day to celebrate their love for each other.

If one were to ask how the power couple met, they wouldn’t be hearing the typical “love at first sight” story. They met when Ruki was in search of a female singer who could do the background vocals for the band’s single “Undying”. But it wasn’t easy. One recording after another, he still wasn’t satisfied with the results and kept scouting despite the deadline. But when he heard (Y/n)’s new song “Song title”, he was enamoured by her voice. Besides the wide range of octaves and an amazing head voice, her voice was reminded him of melted rich chocolate; a sensual and beautiful tone that gave him goosebumps right when she sang the first word. He loved that voice so much that he needed it in this song. So he immediately told his manager to contact hers and send out the invitation. From there, after working with her on one song and another, every else became history.

Of course, the whole world got a huge surprise when they found out about their relationship; and do take note there was a considerably large age gap between the couple. It all started when the paparazzi caught them walking out of Gion Roiro, a high-end restaurant in the heart of Kyoto. They weren’t holding hands, and instead walked side by side each wearing a coat to protect themselves from the cool night breeze of Spring and a white face mask. Speculations were all over the internet which resulted in two sides of the argument – one side said they were dating while another said they weren’t and were merely friends (based on the number of selfies they uploaded after each recording session). Unfortunately for many fans, their hearts were broken when the band vocalist spilt the beans on their second anniversary. It was a bumpy ride for the two as they had to fight off the negative comments that flooded each other’s social media; but eventually, their relationship grew stronger with each passing time, and the comments gradually died down, albeit a few naughty ones that managed to pop out.

“We’re here,” announced the driver.

(Y/n) snapped out of her thoughts and looked up to see that they’d arrived at the Osaka Marriott Miyako Hotel. She and her manager unloaded their things before thanking the driver and entering the building. They took the elevator up to the floor where their rooms were, and each of them went to their respective rooms. By the time the door locked behind her, (Y/n) immediately hit for a warm shower, brushed her teeth, blew dry her hair, did her daily skincare routine, and finally went to bed wearing her pyjamas. Lights were dimly lit, giving the room a relaxed ambience.

Suddenly, the famous intro of Luna Sea’s “Gravity” went off in the quiet room. (Y/n) forced herself to get up and attend the call, which came from her lover. A smile flickered across her face instantly, and she picked up the call.

“Miss me?” she teased.

“Obviously,” he replied with equal playfulness. “How was the tour?”

“It was amazing!” (Y/n) walked back to her bed and sat down. “I get to learn new cultures in different countries, and even picked up bits of different languages. I ate so much that I think I’ve added an extra kilo or two!”

Ruki chuckled before saying, “I bet you did. No wonder you looked rounder in your recent pictures.”

“Hey!” she playfully whined, pouting for a short while before joining him. “Anyway, how was yours?”

After taking a puff on his e-cigarette – apparently, as she heard him release some smoke on the other line – he said, “Pretty fun, too. I’ll tell you all the stories when I get back. I need to save the best for last, you know.”

“Of course,” she responded. Afterwards, it went silent. Although she wasn’t physically there, (Y/n) could tell that he had something on his mind, and he was having second thoughts if he should say it to her. She knew better than to pry, but somewhere deep inside her heart, it might be important. So she decided to bite the bullet by blurting, “Ruki*, do you have something on your mind?”

The said man kept quiet for a while before a small smile was etched on his face. She knows me too well, he thought. “I was actually thinking about our relationship,” he confessed. “Honestly, I’ve never felt so comfortable in my life, nor did I ever think I would fall in love again. Even though we’ve been together for more than four years, I find myself falling for you all over again. Heck, I don’t know how you do it! But I’m not complaining, because every moment is a new experience for me, and I like how it made me feel young. I know I seldom profess my love for you, but I just hope that you know that I do. I really do.”

(Y/n) could feel tears welling up in her eyes, for she felt so much of genuineness from him. She knew that he wasn’t one to openly profess his love through the common phrase, “I love you.” She didn’t mind, because the things that he did showed her that he truly loved her, like taking care of her when she was sick, giving her advice and comfort she needed, or even attempt to cook something for her; it was these little things that she cherished and appreciated, and there was nothing more she could ever ask for.

“I do,” she finally responded with so much of tenderness. “And I feel the same way, my darling. Even as the wheel of time continues to turn, I will still love every part of you as we age together, until the very end.”

Ruki was about to take another puff of his e-cigarette but he paused, allowing her words to resonate inside his head. Never in his life had he ever thought such words would warm his heart. It sounded comforting, and to him, it felt like home. During the time when he was Ruki the vocalist of the GazettE, he strived to be better than how he was previously; so by the time he went to her, he could feel like he’d his best and would want to share his passion with her, to which she willingly listened. Whether it was an exciting or dull experience, or even a petty argument he had with his bandmates, she would listen and be there when he needed comfort.

“I think it’s getting late over there,” he suddenly said when he took note of the time, even though he was in Los Angeles. “I don’t wanna hog your beauty sleep any longer. Not that I’m saying you’re not beautiful, that is.”

(Y/n) laughed at the last bit. “Of course,” she said. “And I wouldn’t want to hog up your time for rehearsal.”

Smiling, he said, “Have a good night’s sleep, (Y/n).”

“And have a great day ahead,” was her response before hanging up to call it a day.

It was already 2.15 a.m., but (Y/n) found it hard to sleep, as she laid still on her bed staring at the ceiling in the dark. With so many things going through her head, there was no way she could get her beauty sleep, to quote Ruki. And these thoughts weren’t about work or so; it was about her relationship with Ruki, as well as the things he said to her just a few hours ago. She had to get these thoughts off her mind, and so, she decided to sit up. Switching on the lights, she went over to her bag and dug out a dusty rose velvet notebook and a Pilot G2 Black Gel Pen. She went over to the round table and sat on the white leather office chair, switching on the desk lamp. She opened the notebook, flipping through her handwritten lyrics, until she reached a blank page where she clicked her pen and began writing, starting with “Music of My Heart” as the title.

*I would’ve used his real name here, but I’m still not too sure if “Takanori” is the one. So just to be safe, I still used his stage name.

#the GazettE #Ruki #fanfiction #Jrock fanfiction #the GazettE fanfiction #visual kei

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leafgreenlizard-blog · 7 years

Text

where are my words?

My laptop sits open on the foot of my bed, waiting, the cursor blinking in the white, blank space of Word. I sit cross-legged in front of it, and then I lay down on my stomach to stare at it. I roll over onto my back to contemplate the ceiling instead and after about fifteen minutes I pick up the laptop and sit at my desk. The document watches me. My room is a fairly wide space with an ornate, black fireplace laden with books, two large windows to welcome the spring light, one simple wooden wardrobe, one little white desk and one bed with black and white sheets. Day-old tulips droop over the laptop screen, a record player in the corner scratches against the end of the vinyl and I look at my mug with the kind of disappointing despair you only experience when you realize you forgot to drink your tea while it was hot. I contemplate this scene as I wonder where all of my words and all of my ideas have gone. I force my hands to rest over the keyboard and they hover, my fingertips waiting for guidance. I give up with a sigh, closing my laptop. I grab a leather-bound notebook, a plain, chewed up biro pen and my keys. I slip my shoes on and flee. I take a deep breath outside, as if I can inhale inspiration from the air. I walk around the corner and down the hill and seek out my favourite spot on the stone wall where I can sit, dangling my feet over the beach or over the sea depending on the tide. To my frustration, the sun has called out flocks of fish-and-chip and ice-cream guzzling tourists and my wall has been seized by them. I walk past, as if I don’t care. I spot the pier looking empty and shrug as I decide to check it out. I walk the long stretch of the pier until I reach the very end where nothing but a thin rail lies between me and the sea, dazzling like shattered shards of silver glass in the sun. I sit in the shade of the lighthouse and look out to where there is nothing but water and I feel like I’m sitting at the very edge of the world. There is nothing but shades of blue: the pale turquoise of the sky, the deep navy line on the horizon, the sparkling sapphire of the sea.

Here is the world, and it is a blank canvas.

This is one such journey I have taken in my desperate hunt for a place of inspiration. I fill my house with inspirin ornaments and pictures, but sometimes what I need to write is emptiness. Unfortunately, I returned to that spot the next day when it was slightly colder and grey and an elderly couple were slowly walking each other across the pier. There was still beauty in it but, for some reason, the words had fled from the scene. I haven’t yet discovered one consistent place where I can write, or where I’m most inspired to write. I keep expecting to come across The One – the place that is perfect. One place that I can map out and return to and discover that all my words are safely kept there.

I hear about authors who have particular locations where they love to write, like J.K. Rowling and the cafe in Edinburgh that now harbours a shrine to her in the bathroom. Cafes seem to be a popular choice. A place where you can consume liquid stimulation, watch the people around you and write about them, lose yourself in the constant buzz.

I walk into a cafe early one morning. I have to be early because I know that later in the day any place that sells coffee will be overflowing, and if I’m going to write here I’ll need the perfect seat. It should be comfortable, and secluded, with a plug socket for my laptop, and definitely not underneath a speaker. I throw by bag onto the seat of my choice to save it from any other vultures and then order my breakfast. I set up my laptop, pull out my notebook and pens, switch my phone to silent and seal it in my bag. Ah, but here’s my food now. And I am starving. So I push my laptop to the other side of the table and flip through my notebook as I eat. I need time to look at all my ideas first anyway. I wash my hands quickly after eating and return to my seat. Someone has already cleared my empty plate away. Well, I can’t just sit here without food or a drink in front of me. So I order a tea as well. I hold the teacup in my hands as my laptop and I watch each other. I look around. It’s starting to get busy now, most of the tables are filling up. The conversations sound like wordless buzzing accompanying the quiet, neutral music. The more I listen, the more I hear. The man on the table nearby is talking about his Art History lecture and the girl with him is offering the occasional ‘mmm’. I can’t see them, but three people behind me are arguing about what’s going to happen on Game of Thrones. I fish out my headphones from my bag and slip them on. The world is muffled and then filled with nothing but the crescendo of violins from a Tchaikovsky ballet. I scribble a few notes. I type out a paragraph. Delete it. I type another. Read it. Edit a few words. Move on. Change my mind. I look at the clock on the bottom right of the screen. It’s been two hours.

Another day, my friends drag me to the library, their arms balancing towers of books and a crazed the-deadline-is-tomorrow look in their eyes. Some inhabit downstairs so they can eat and chat. Some create nests for themselves in the silent section, glaring at every footstep, cough or zip. I’m not sure which of the two extremes I’d prefer to work in. I try downstairs first, headphones on, laptop up. I see and feel people moving around beside me and behind me. I start to feel self-conscious, like people are peering at my screen as I type. With a sigh, I decide to search for a seat upstairs, a task I succeed in after about thirty minutes. I watch the people around me silently tearing their hair out, rubbing their temples, and furiously flipping through pages and pages of books. Of course, sometimes searching for the ideal location to write is just one more form of procrastination. Sometimes, I write a good few hundred words in one sitting, in one place. Sometimes, I write well for a while but then words fail me and I have to get a change of scene in order to write more. Some of the better ideas I have are scribbled messily in notebooks, sleepy words from 2am inspiration. Sometimes, I lie down on my bed during the day and see if ideas wave over me, just because I’m there. I think about how strange it is to feel that I need to move; I need new places and familiar places, I need music and silence, indoors and outdoors.

Then I came across this passage in Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones:

‘It wasn’t the physical accommodations that were perfect, but when we are in the heart of writing it doesn’t matter where we are: it is perfect. There is a great sense of autonomy and security to know we can write any place. If you want to write, finally you’ll find a way no matter what’

I realized that this was exactly what I needed to hear. I could spend the rest of my life searching desperately for The One, my location soul-mate, my unique writing space where statues will be erected. Or, I could get over it. I could write as much as I could, whenever I could, wherever. I can change up the scenes around me, but the most important thing above all else, was just that I was writing.

No matter how much I’d frustrate myself trying to write in different locations, when the words were ready, they would come, no matter where I was.

[This is an edited version of a personal essay I wrote during University, and published on my blog - leafgreenlizard.com ]

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morshtalon · 5 years

Text

Shin Megami Tensei If...

(Part 8 of the MegaTen thing)

So, the previous main title in the franchise managed to close off its continuity in an effective, satisfactory, appropriately big manner. We wouldn't be looking at a new mainline game for 8 years this time around, so during that time a slew of spin-offs were released, the first of which being Shin Megami Tensei If...

Given these conditions, I can only speculate the designers gave themselves significant amounts of leeway as far as actually designing new stuff was concerned. Aside from 2 or 3 new pieces, all the music is recycled from SMT 1 and 2. The ones from 2 now have an actual melodic line, something that was strangely absent in their game of origin, so technically there's something new in them. Regardless, having just finished SMT2 prior to starting this game, two whole games with the exact same battle tracks was pretty grating to me.

Random art has also been borrowed from 2 in places. Most of the demons look the same, naturally, but some character art has also been lifted and modified slightly. Again, having just gone through 2, this feels like a weird milking of 2's material, as if they had stuff left over from its development and, in a Roger Corman-esque move, decided to just throw a new game together with it while they still had time. "If..." came out the same year as SMT2 as well, so good on them for being efficient with their assets...?

The gameplay, however, has undergone some changes. Most of them, I would say, actually make the battles more involving and fun. In SMT2, there were two "rows" of character boxes, but it made little to no difference in actual gameplay. Now, the party members in the back row can't use melee attacks, having to resort instead to either special skills or their gun. Furthermore, enemies won't be able to reach your back row guys with melee attacks, and they WILL target them a lot, so you can get some use out of it as well.

Ammunition is finally not just a piece of equipment anymore, and there's actually a counter representing how many bullets you have left (there's still no magazines or reload command, though, you're only limited by the standard max item stack size of 99). Sometimes, it can be annoying to keep restocking ammo and buying it in bulk, but I liked the potential the idea has of making you have to use your special ammo sparingly. This is something that could have solved SMT1's problem of overpowered status effect bullets, for example. It's underutilized here, however, and for the most part you can just buy regular bullets and call it a day.

Magic is a lot more effective this time, but the MP costs for spells are now very steep, so you'll still want to just stick to the support classics (tarukaja, rakunda, mediama, etc.) Instead of using attack magic. I would like to see magic being more useful in the future, though, and again, the potential has been opened and, with further tweaks, things can start heading toward great places.

With these changes, one again feeling like a contrarian, this game was harder to me than 1 and 2 were. Not a lot harder, mind you, but hard enough to demand some attention. In practice, though, this just meant that it took longer for me to properly set up all the essentials for having a breezy time with SMT games. Once it was ready, it was back to auto-battle time, but not always, though. I had to stop and change my moves quite a bit, especially as it was getting close to the end. The final dungeon throws enemies at you that are much beyond the level of one just playing the game normally without grinding, and things got pretty intense up there, forcing me to go back and readjust my demons and strategies a few times. Overall, I liked the raw battle aspect of it a lot more than I had previosuly with the franchise. It was more complex and involving, and felt like the systems were maturing. They're still juvenile here, but many cool things have begun to take shape, and I appreciate SMT If... for being their herald.

However, the unfortunate truth begins to creep in as I reflect about what it was all in service of. Bluntly put: The story and level design both suck. The plot is simplistic and inexorable; what would have been an arc in a game with a bigger scope is the whole game's plot here. There's no escalation and no surprises. The game sets things up, sends you jumping through pointless hoops on a meandering journey with the barest of juicy interactions, then quickly wraps things up and sends you on your way without so much as a second thought on its own events. Sure, there are multiple paths decided by who you partner up with at the beginning of the game, but outside of a superficial character study regarding the main villain, nothing of much intellect is contributed to a player's brain that hasn't been gathered in countless other, more involving RPGs before.

The hoops you have to jump through are simplistic mini-arcs surrounding sectioned off dungeon exploration. It reminds me of the very first game of the series, it's just a collection of errands with minimal interconnectivity. They're kind of short, too, and it results in the game feeling boring and repetitive at the same time it seems reductive and minimal in hindsight.

I suppose I have to talk about the Domain of Sloth, because it's the most baffling part of the entire game. The object here is to waste time. Several people are digging different holes in the walls, and there's either 7 or 8 "steps" between their start and end points. Each person digs a step further once the moon rotates fully, and each phase of the moon takes roughly, let's be generous here, 16 steps to move one sixteenth of a full rotation. Got that?

Well, if you javen't figured it out, the object of this "dungeon" is to directionlessly walk at least 2048 steps (16x16x8) until everyone is done digging their tunnels so you can go and see what's at the end of each. It's honestly elusive to me why they would think this was a good idea for a "puzzle". Did anybody ever playtest this? If they did, I have to assume at least someone was like "this is really boring and stupid, guys, shouldn't we change this puzzle around? Make the player have some agency over its progression?" and was quickly shut down by the higher-ups because they had deadlines to meet or something.

Regardless, other than that, I kind of dig the dungeon design of the other areas. Eventually they get pretty confusing and make liberal use of darkness tiles, teleport tiles, multiple stairways, holes that drop you to a floor below, and whatever tricks the dungeon design has accrued through the franchise's history. To some, it might be rage-inducing beyond the point where they can reasonably be expected to soldier on, and I can understand that, but I like it when the game doesn't pull any punches and is not afraid of using all aspects of its design. In my mind, it they really feel like sticking with the first person pseudo 3D bull honkey all the way through 1994, they might as well use the possibilities that such a manner of constructing levels gives them. For what it's worth, in the scope of dungeon crawls, it's not nearly as bad as it could be. I managed to clear the whole game with no outside help whatsoever, while in a game like Wizardry, I can barely get past the first floor with extensive hints as to what I could do to make life easier.

SMT If... does have things going for it. The battle gameplay is better than ever, a host of new, interesting ideas were being experimented with, and the level design, in a raw kind of fashion, showcased some bits that I personally found more captivating than dungeons in SMT1 and SMT2. However, the essence of a game like this is the story glue holding it all together, and this game falls flat on its face with its reductive, meandering, fruitless narrative. It fails to give the good aspects of the game any context, and turns it into a borefest. It has nothing over SMT2 besides being a little harder, and while it sows interesting seeds for future franchise titles to harvest, in itself, it fails to rise much above the previous entries in regards to interest. The experience of actually playing Shin Megami Tensei If... is one of disappointment and frustration at seeing the design milestones that, given the scope of the SMT series, the game fails to capitalize upon. My score for it is 4.4 out of 10, which is extremely harsh considering I technically had so much good to say about it, but this is not a game that's more than the sum of its parts. It's kind of like eating raw eggs, then gulping down some flour, chewing on a block of butter, and finally, sniffing sugar off the table. Could have been a yummy cake with some care, skill and preparation, but instead it's just a catastrophic mess to your taste buds.

#shin megami tensei #review #megami tensei #megaten #rpg #game

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rottenlittleboys · 8 years

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Call to Action

I know call fatigue is setting in. For a lot of people phone calls are the LAST choice for contacting someone (this includes me), unfortunately it is the best way of getting in touch with our congresspeople (at every level). I also know how we each must protect our own mental health in the ways that work for us. So if that means you email or fax your congresspeople--awesome, you’re doing fantastic work! If you CAN call, even just once a week, please, please continue to do so. We run into a danger of the call volume dropping off and congress thinking we don’t care about an issue (or the GOP dancing in the streets because they outlasted the resistance). Take self care breaks, perhaps concentrate on emails or faxes (remember to personalize them so they don’t get batched) for a while and save your spoons for calls (and/or visits) when a big push for something is needed… whatever you have to do to stay in the fight long term! All of us are important, all of us are needed. And if you ever worry that sitting out for a day or a week would be too dangerous - remember, there are a LOT of us fighting this. The Women’s March, Indivisible, 5calls, Re:act, Wall-of-Us, It’s Time To Fight, The 65, The Oppo File, Flippable, Sister District, The Sleeping Giants, the ACLU, the EFF, the NRDC, the NAACP, and the list goes on… So yeah, you can step out for a day, and the rest of us will be here keeping up the fight until you get back. We tap back in so the next person can tap out.

Active issues

Oppose the AHCA/TrumpCare/RyanCare/TryanCare/TyrantCare/ACA Repeal (Representatives and Senators)

Demand investigation into Flynn/Sessions/Stone/45/Russia connection (Representatives and Senators)

Sessions Perjury investigation (Representatives and Senators)

Ask your reps to get ALL of 45’s tax returns (Representatives and Senators)

Demand an investigation of 45’s wiretapping claims (Representatives and Senators)

Emoluments clause violations (Representatives and Senators)

Oppose the Executive Branch reorganization order (Representatives and Senators)

Oppose the effort to change the rules of combat (Representatives and Senators)

Filibuster Neil Gorsuch - Hearing starts 3/20/2017 (Senators)

Oppose HJR 69/ SJ 18 (Senators)

Oppose HR 1313, the genetic testing for employees bill (Representatives)

Oppose ICE Raids (State Reps, Governor, Representatives, and Senators)

Oppose Muslim Ban (State Reps, Governor, State AG, Representatives, and Senators)

Demand task force into anti-semitic and anti-islamic attacks (State Reps, Governor, State AG, Representatives, Senators)

Support Net Neutrality (FCC)

Disapprove of Pruitt’s comments on global warming (EPA)

For more information and scripts:

For more information and scripts: http://itstimetofight.weebly.com/things-to-do-week-of-313... http://thesixtyfive.org/theIssues

1) The revised “travel ban,” or Muslim ban, has been blocked by a Hawaiian judge. Don’t assume this is over, however, the judge only blocked two sections of it. We still need to call our reps--other states need to join this and block as before. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-judge-hawaii-...

2) Re-upping a reminder to oppose HJR 69/SJ 18, which would make particularly cruel (and unsportsmanlike, and not supported by conservation science) methods of hunting animals legal again. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) explains https://twitter.com/SenBookerOffice/status/84209109017813... Call your Senators (it’s already passed the House) and tell them to oppose it.

3) Elections: March 21: Pennsylvania State House District 197 (Emilio Vasquez - a write-in). The previous Democratic candidate was ruled to not live in this district, but the ruling was made after the deadline to get on the ballot. Still, the district is heavily Democratic, so Vasquez stands a chance even as a write-in, as long as we pitch in and phone-bank and fundraise for him. https://www.facebook.com/emilio197/

April 11: Kansas US House District 4 (James Thompson). For Mike Pompeo’s old seat. http://www.votejamesthompson.com/ https://twitter.com/KCMktgChick/status/832733186337550338

April 18: Georgia US House District 6 (Jon Ossof). Would take over Tom Price’s House seat, in a district that only went Republican by one point in 2016. https://electjon.com/

April 18: Alabama State House District 67 (Prince Chesnut). To replace a Democrat who is now mayor of Selma, Alabama. Chesnut is currently a municipal court judge. http://www.princechestnut4house.com/

May 25: Montana U.S. House (Rob Quist). This was Ryan Zincke’s seat until he became Secretary of the Interior. http://missoulian.com/news/government-and-politics/quist-...

4) States: Iowa is using non-existent voter fraud to push a strict ID law (HSB 93, SSB 1163) that would also curtail early voting and election day poll hours. https://rewire.news/article/2017/03/02/iowa-gop-uses-vote...

A Kansas Senator compared Planned Parenthood to Nazi Concentration camps and said that Nazis should “be incensed by the comparison.” http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government...

The Oregon state senate will be voting on 3/27 on a bill (SB 888) that would require Presidential candidates to release five years of taxes in order to get on the primary or general election ballot. This bill is similar to ones being considered in a number of other states. https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Committees/SRULES...

5) Reading The debt ceiling is getting reinstated today. With 45’s budget coming out as well, watch for them to be tied together. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-15/beware...

When confronted by a cop white people can reach in pockets, open and reach into their trunk, or even have a gun and get talked down or even get off. Black people on the other hand have a very real chance of dying from any encounter with the police. This is America’s reality, we have to work on changing it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/...

The Federal Government has begun sending out eminent domain notices for buying up (or simply seizing) land along the US-Mexico border. https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-border-wall-mexico-co...

Remember the “good old days” when people died of preventable illnesses? Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price apparently pines for them, and thinks it should be up to the states to regulate whether immunizations are required. They didn’t think this through: What about herd immunity? And what would happen if someone in an immunization-optional state moves to an immunization-required state? https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/842192138997792768

Tom Perez is beginning his plan to remake the DNC, surrounding himself with advisers like Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson, Democratic-Socialist Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and many of his former opponents for the DNC chair - Pete Buttegieg, Sally Boynton Brown and Jehmu Greene. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/new-chairman-be...

Some great yard signs and postcards. Message: “In Our America-All people are equal. Love wins. Black Lives Matter. Immigrants and Refugees are welcome. Disabilities are respected. Women are in charge of their own bodies. People and planet are valued over profit. Diversity is celebrated.” https://www.nwgsdpdx.org/signs-more

“In addition to the cuts at the EPA and the State Department, Mr. Trump’s team is expected to propose a wide array of cuts to public education, to transportation programs like Amtrak, and to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including the complete elimination of the $3 billion community development block grant program, which funds popular programs like Meals on Wheels, Housing Assistance, and other community assistance efforts.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/us/politics/budget-epa...

#call to action

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idmtwgill · 3 years

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VENGEFUL MOUSE

I had a lot of concepts for this work originally. My first was a piece for drums and fixed media, however the drummers I knew were all occupied at this end of the term. My second idea was a static textural piece on guitar, but there wasn’t a good way to extend it for 6-8 minutes. Finally, I chose to write a more conventionally structured piece. As a limitation, I decided to only use midi material for this work.

I wanted the piece to be rhythmically complex, since it’s something I enjoy in music by other people, and I haven’t written in that way for a long time. I devised a rhythmic figure, dividing a bar of 6/4 into 6 groups of 7 and 1 group of 6 semidemiquavers, creating a 7/8 feel where the last beat is unstable and shorter than the rest.

Then, I took the rhythm onto guitar and figured out some chordal ideas to go with the rhythm. I wrote a progression that implied D mixolydian for 3 bars, then reveals E minor in the last bar. I ended up going with this one because I particularly liked the way the bass line sounded against the chords. I mocked up the progression on a generic electric piano sound and properly began my project. I created a less dense verse area where I intended to eventually design some vocal part, and then a vocal chorus that modulates the piece into D minor, before leading it satisfyingly into the original chord set. I could have repeated this verse-chorus structure, but that would have been really boring so instead I made a dynamic apex-section which establishes an F# minor tonality and employs far less nebulous chords.

I went back over the track and figured out what kind of tones I wanted to have in the piece. I had put in a placeholder drum kit already just to indicate pulse, but I replaced it with a larger and more expansive sounding one. I decided to keep the instruments acoustic-sounding with the exception of a synth that carries the melody, and chose to use sample sets of strings and brass instruments to build out the sound. I then chucked the project on my phone and listened to it for a few days to find faults and figure out the vocal part. I gathered my best and most narratively cohesive lines and assembled them into a verse and chorus that vaguely deal with my experiences of sleep apnea.

VERSE:

Skydiving

From a metre off the ground

Throat constricts, eyes pound

You’ll be awake on your way down

Stop dreaming

There’s no moment to contemplate

You don’t know til you’re awake

If you’ve been breathing in your sleep

CHORUS:

I feel like a frightened mouse

Small lungs and a frantic heart

Wide eyed in another’s house

I feel like a frightened mouse

On returning to the project, I fixed a load of glaring mixing and compositional issues I’d found, and then tried to record the vocal part. I quickly realised that I didn’t have the skills or vocal tone to belt the lyrics over the dense sound like I had intended, so I abandoned my takes and resolved to find a trained vocalist to record with.

I was getting bored with my sound world. Like yeah I could just modulate again and keep going, but I wasn’t particularly motivated to keep expanding on this one concept, so instead I threw in a break covered by a clave playing a derivation of the starting rhythm, and began to write again from scratch. I wanted another weird rhythm, and I liked the feel of the 7s, so I created 3 “bars” of 7, 1 bar of 4, and 1 final bar of 7. Each beat in these bars consisted of 3 semiquavers, lending the figures a swing feel. In total, this progression is exactly 4 bars of the overall 6/4 metre. I kept this section in the F# minor of the previous one, and designed some tonally definitive chords to layer over the progression, in a way that they were rhythmically reminiscent of the original progression.

Over the top, I wrote a simple synth melody. In the next section, this melody stays at pitch while the harmonic layers modulate to D major (with an implied D minor in the 3rd and 4th chords), and drop the final resting bar of 7 in favour of extending the previous bar of 4 into a full bar of 7. At this point I realised that I wanted the vocal part to return, so I took this opportunity to write some lyrics over the synth melody and some whispered parts for the breaks in the previous section.

To accomodate the vocals, I created a new section with toned down instruments and a nebulous cloud of chord tones on the piano in the background. This build up through to the end of the piece were very easy to write and I didn’t see many complications. From there, I wrote a bombastic section that split the last 3 beats of the bars of 7 into 4 even measures, creating another area of uncanny incorrect sounding rhythms. Originally this section was too loud, making use of the full set of brass layers, so to accomodate the vocals I stripped it back to just a distorted electric piano for most of the time, and then made a second repetition of the section without a vocal part to allow for the more grand sound.

The next section was a recomposition of the verse from the start of the piece, returning to E minor, except in the new timing paradigm. I also took the chance to add some bar-extending pulses to the D major hits since I liked the way it felt both organic and robotic at the same time. As I was writing this section, I simultaneously composed lyrics over the top of it to fit with the additional hits. The section after this is fittingly a return to the D minor vocal chorus from the beginning of the piece as well. Since the previous sections were written in triplet feel, it was easy to transition into 12/8 for this section, finally resolving to a system of 4s and giving a sense of release from tension as the pulses of the ensemble become regular and predictable.

The final section goes off the rails in a sense. Rather than modulating back to E minor as the start of the piece did, it stays in D minor while still adopting the rhythm of the very beginning of the track. It features a building ensemble of percussion (& piano) instruments each relentlessly playing a set of chord tones.

Once the marimbas join, the progression is extended by a semiquaver, not enough to be incredibly obvious, but hopefully enough to make the progression sound unstable. The goal with the next two repetitions of the progression was to evoke the image of the musical experience collapsing and coming to a natural end. I decided to go about this by making the progressions slower, directly reducing the beats per minute rather than composing an illusion of slow-ness. The first of these progressions modulates into G# mixolydian, a key with barely any relation to D minor, making the change sound very alien. The second progression stays in this key but sits on the ii chord, alternating between its minor and major versions.

I went back and wrote some whispered lyrics for this section, wanting it to sound like a ghostly breakaway from the last one. I also wanted to place these lyrics in the spaces left by the earlier 7-7-7-4-7 bar sections as a form of eerie foreshadowing.

I wake searching for my missing breath

It takes me time to recognise my house

I curse the dreams that stole my sleep away from me

Thankful no one can see me now/Leaving only a vengeful mouse

At this point, my grandfather became gravely ill. A complication in a transfusion had led to an e.coli infection that had become life threatening, so my hopes for the project were forgotten as I my time was occupied with them. Unfortunately, I had also forgotten about the deadline, and with no option left to communicate with a trained vocalist, I had a quick go at the vocals myself, recording it on my laptop’s internal microphone, and heavily autotuning and processing them so that they vaguely resembled what I was planning on creating. Given that the track was barely 6 minutes, I dropped any plans on extending it and giving it a proper conclusion, instead writing a second set of spoken lyrics for the very end and letting the piece end unconcluded. As such, the final product of this track is incredibly unfinished - I had amazing ambitions for the piece and they’ve all unfortunately fallen flat. I fully intend on completing this track properly in the future, giving it the mixdown it deserves and recording a formidable vocalist, but for now I don’t have that luxury.

I force my body to relax and inhale

It takes me time to remember how

I check the mirror, searching for reassurance

Thankful no one can see me now/Seeing only a vengeful mouse

Link to track: https://soundcloud.com/smiley-titan/vengeful-mouse

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glopratchet · 4 years

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wise, the game is set in a post apocalyptic world where mutants have overrun the earth You play as Jack who has been infected with a mutant virus and must now fight to survive against hordes of enemies that are trying to kill you The story is told through flashbacks which help give context to events that occurred during your journey without characters? The character creation screen allows you to choose from a variety of options such as gender, appearance, skills and more This is followed by several personality traits (which can be changed later) and then some brief background information about them There's also an option for a short bio which gives some additional details on their life before being infected with the virus The gameplay itself consists of combat encounters with various types of enemies ; the story is well crafted and gives a perfect setup for what comes next Gameplay itself is fairly easy to pick up with most of the mechanics being self explanatory Overal, the beginning sets the tone of what's to come Though, it could do with some fine-tuning as certain enemies feel either too hard or too weak compared to others Still, nothing that detracts from the story It gives just enough detail about the world while maintaining a sense of mystery It can be a little heavy at times, but the videos are thankfully categorized by subject making them easy to skip 's commentary goes in depth on various subjects from character design to explaining how gameplay mechanics came into being Once the story has been completed once there is also New Game Plus which allows you to carry your equipment and gains into the next playthrough This story driven game is well crafted with an interesting sci-fi plot and characters that help drive it forward animations plus extended cutscenes Xenocide on 06 February 2018 Report Review Review #2 See With Your Ears! on 06 February 2018 Report Review Sight, Sound And Mystery On 09 April 2018 Report Review New Leaf Publishing Protocol on 12 is on point The art style, font usage and color theme are all suitable and easy on the eye The website is also easy to navigate and generally bugs free Art Check A gifted artist created the various visual effects in the game From magic spells to things like light bulbs lighting up A lot of detail was put into each one to give it that extra bling and make them really pop out as looking important Without these these effects the game wouldn't feel nearly as immersive Plus they look really cool, so there's that! Sprites and Animated Images Check We have character sprites as well as several animations credit to Yumi Fujikawa Hand crafted animations that characters go through to deliver important information or their thoughts within the game, for example, an animation will begin when a character feels they should explain more thoroughly how to play a minigame as opposed to just blurting out instructions Masterful composition and presentation of story and characters by Yumichika, as all important parts of story and character development are presented through song and Development Check Extensive time was put into researching ways to realistically allow characters to grow with the addition of having a control theme for various mechanics This resulted in each character having three sectional gauges; competence, passion and popularity which could fluctuate based on their actions or in some cases the players This style and presentation of character growth was something that hadn't really been done before to this extent and as such received various levels of praise and attention Screenshots Where is this game set? One of the biggest accomplishments with this game is its unique fantasy world Created from the ground up, it encompasses various areas such as forests, deserts, a bustling city and even a castle! Having a diverse and interesting setting drastically increases replay value as players can easily get lost in exploring every corner of the map and solve undiscovered mysteries CLICK TO ENLARGE CGS Cultural and Game Development On Computer Graphics & Design, Ria is attending college to learn how to design games as a profession She, along with her sister Cicely, slowly begin to realize that the university is more of a way to make money off suckers rather than educate them in a field which will help them create better games Focusing on and passing the courses which will actually be beneficial such as computer science, mathematics and programming, Ria eventually drops out and begins to work as a game developer She creates games under the company No Braiiins Zombies On Game Design, Cicely is still in university trying to fulfill her mother's dying wish of her becoming a doctor Set design Check An interesting way to think about a game is from the world's point of view A game will most likely never be played interested in the player, the important decisions come from what options (be it paths, dialogue or actual options) are presented to the player A final decision will then be made by the game based on what has been offered Every choice made by the player gives importance to that choice as well as denoting that all other choices aren't to be explored This works by implementing consequence and reward systems Using the example above, by choosing option A, there should be a reward from the game That could be in the form of puzzle pieces or story points or something else directly linked to the game's theme If the game is using the example above: "Do you take the red door or blue door?" Taking the blue door will have you find something that will help you later in the game thus rewarding the choice of taking that door It takes too many people to make a book and almost everyone reads them and a large portion of the population watches them Now it's time for video games to follow their lead Games can be made incomplete and given length through downloadable content, they can be released early and often through community input and control mechanisms or they can be focused games targeted at niches Developments unique to the digital realm are, in reality, very recent Many games come out a year as companies strive to outdo their competitors A few good releases are lost in the crowd of many subpar ones Developers such as Nintendo, Valve and Bioware consistently release high quality products that sell more than enough to break even and then some, but these are the exceptions rather than the standard Serious gamers can no longer be content with only high quality games Everyone needs to realize that by buying games, they are creating a market Nobody forces anyone to buy crap and if something sells it's because people want more of it If the market happens to favor brainless, generic shooters then that's what we're going to get a lot more of This cycle can only be broken by buyers not buyers Raising the quality bar means raising the standards for what we buy Unfortunately as most people buy crap, there's not much money to be made in selling to a discerning audience With cost so low, it only makes financial sense for publishers to save on production costs by having half hearted localization and deadline focused game design A lot of mass market, low effort products end up littered with glitches and fallen standards that in turn tarnish the image of gaming as a whole as in the case of the infamous E T hell storm of the '80s and everyone has different rules Everyone has their niche and the problem with most strategy games, shooters etc is that as expansive as they seem at first blush, they soon become repetitive as you ultimately are forced to play by a set of rules and objectives The open world sandbox is a recent successful trope in gaming that gives lacking gamer feedback the illusion of freedom but at its core its still presiding direction: go here do this ? A movie that you control what happens, also why read when you can see it acted out in real life! A good game is like a good movie, except you have more options and it's all up to you how the credits roll (i e the ending) YOU choose the path and YOU decide on the when and where True, not every single event will be subject to your will as the bigger schemes of things armies will move about, events will happen etc Most sandbox titles unfortunately fall short fulfilling the cinephile yearning inside of us Most lack sufficient depth in their characters roles or plot elements, or throw logic out the window (hackers are capable of taking over the world yet still require aim to shoot people, large criminal organizations can be taken down with just a few people but said people can destroy said organizations from the inside, etc) As anyone knows even if the acting, setting and action is good, a rubbish ending can leave one disappointed in the whole movie In video games, the ending is typically the -ending-; where you just get a crappy cliffhanger or an ambiguous conclusion Worse yet are when cross media attempts at making a massive sandbox title are done We see this a lot with movies based on video games (e g Streetfighter, Super Mario Bros, among many others) These attempt to put the movie out before the games to try to capture a built in market, typically fail completely (except for exceptional cases like Zelda or Mario) because quite simply, they miss something that is very hard to put into words; the feeling of actually playing a great video game I don't think that it has to be like this There is a game out currently that encompasses all these things, though it's very rare that anyone knows about it, much less gives it a shot This is primarily because its not so much a game as it is an experience I am of course talking about Subahibi Be forewarned: this post is bit of an essay as I try to unpack the meaning of life etc Final Fantasy XIII is an insult to conclusions in that respect backstory, Some Context I've thought a lot about where to start this Actually, I've thought a lot about if I should start this Maybe it's just better to leave things as they are But as luck would have it (or maybe not), I've recently found myself with a bit of breathing room and why not use this opportunity to finally try to get this off my chest? No one is forcing me to do this and I can always just stop if it becomes too much for me to handle So here goes nothing… No really, there was an actual bull, and I'm pretty sure it was staring at me as it lowered its head, got closer, until nope, blanking out again continued :( Sorry, had to stop there for a moment Just getting all of this out is bringing all sorts of buried emotions to the forefront; that or I'm coming down with something workings of the MW (Mass Wheat) field, which is important to ensure a perfect lou of humn CNC usage Waht is CNC (Computer Nxt Cybcer?) Sims wsa obsolatd 20 years ago! Nowadays mesh/ION based CNC! Unfortuantely unnecessary due to the low quality of public school education these days In two decades, you probably won't even need a human! of observation, but some were probably just blind to any potential drawbacks His feeling on the human element is that in spite of our frail and imperfect nature, we tend to react in more "interesting" ways compared to the more predictable machines From a business standpoint, this provides a greater return on investment (even disregarding the lucrative military contracts) in comparison to devoting ALL resources towards automation or cybernetics to follow (in very basic terms) and it crunches all the information and chooses the most logical outcomes Of course, nothing is perfect You still need an human eye to assess all of the information from said machine in order to make a final decision at times So what about things that aren't so black and white? I mean sure, conflict is pretty clear cut, but then there's things like moral dilemmas, or more complex relationship issues by this fully automated battery of evaluation that there were bound to be a few my systems deemed unfit for our cause We didn't set out to make the perfect solider We set out to make the perfect business partner a solider, is really just another employee with a different trade This has proved to be much easier and more effective in the long run (and automated evaluations are so much faster than human ones, they are outdated by the tim roper in , underground tunnels somewhere? Perfect! Nothing could grow in the surface layers of these silos Thanks for choosing Delerg's Finest (hey we just came up with that!) Later, after reading your contract and learning more about the Combine, you fill out the attached form "20000" This is so inspiring that you choose to take their entry test! Best of luck human, should your path cross ours again! ? how so? ? Combine is often criticized for a lack of romance Respectful relationships between men and women (or pairs thereof) are often dissolved in pursuit of company growth, while wanton displays of intimacy sets a negative tone Why visit the hospital to see people make babies if you can see it proudly on display in the lunchroom? Furthermore, sick children (or employees) that desperately desire the company of their parents may be displeased by otherwise happy mothers and fathers that cancel lunch dates in favor of sitting by their ailing child's bedside Children can grow resentful if they believe a hospital is preventing their family from functioning as normal, and sadly sometimes hospital fees must outweigh loving care This comes at quite the cost since sick children often emerge even sicklier than before after building up a resistance to visiting relatives As such, sending (healthier) grandparents to visit sick children not only strengthens the child's immunity due to prehistoric levels of love, it also allows for valuable child care so that exhausted parents may rest and return to work more productive In all fairness, I can tell you from experience that closing the café during traditional lunch hour severely cuts into business I will convince the board that while hospital visits should be strongly encouraged dor everyone, exceptions for loving grandparents must likewise be made Do we need to fix something? Am I wrong? But what is the root cause of these problems? What is the system failing to facilitate: human nature, or implementation? I could go on forever Please come prepared with thoughtful answers if you wish to join me in saving the world There you have it beautiful minds: the next thirty years of your lives summed up in a few paragraphs by yours truly Please direct all questions, complaints, and threats to my assistant Calli See you bright and early for day one! to sweeping your audience along You left subtle hints and much of the tale appears predictable, though key details were obviously kept secret to enhance peril! Ruth and I worked it out during your first night here and came up with a timeline of events based on our observations of you in class Which, as an aside, explains why we both felt you weren't a promising candidate for Plus; you behaved in a consistently logical manner (another reason why we thought you lacked imagination) Was lying to the teachers too far outside your comfort zone? The staff and I had a big laugh over someone's reluctance to take advantage of an adventure But then again, adventure is tiring and the status quo can certainly be comfortable enough to inspire devotion Alright enough procrastination, it's time for my nap now One more question though: you don't mind if I call you honeymoon traffic regulator do you? Thanks Chapter 1A: No Man is an Island A warm breeze hits your face, the chatter of desultory classmates nearby distracts you from reviewing your notes yet again Two hours till the test and teacher has already given warning of its difficulty To fall or not to fall, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? The fat lady behind you with the horse laugh is certainly in opposition of you in particular it seems Your parents could not afford tutoring for you so you are here by your lonesome struggling to hold on to your spot in this pressure cooker of scholarship It's Darwinism at its purest: you either adapt or die; lose your dreams or lose your mind, relationships, and spirit You turn to Horse Laugh with a polite cough, her gaze meets yours and you are suddenly in an empty void She floats beside you, as do you, and you find yourself belly laughing for some odd reason, tears of joy stream down your face This is what pure happiness feels like without any real substance or reason behind it There is nothing to be sad about or worried over, just the blissful here-and-now is simply written as: survive With that in mind, you know she will sacrifice her individual self if it means the safety of the emotions within her For you, is the same true? Are you in genuine danger? Is this what Pacific Spirit Memorial intends to fill your head with when they 'pass' you along to secondary schooling after this year? Either you loop them into some doctrine or fail to keep up and get left behind? I sure hope not, I would LOVE to work with them You see a vision of an automatic gate opening A booming voice makes you jump calling your name along with a string of numbers Your vision shatters and you find yourself staring into the laughing face of Horse Laugh once more - takes you a moment to adjust your eyes from the overly bright sun to the relative darkness of the classroom, all within a split second "Here you go loser!" the-jokes - reddit: "One day a religious man was walking along the beach and came upon a woman who was about to bury her time god "I know your faith is strong in your time god," he said as she stuffed his deities mouth with pebbles So I'll grant you three questions before you fill his mouth with sand She turns to him with tears in her eyes and said, "Thank you The religious man thinks for a moment and says, "First How old is your son?" "35," she replies without hesitation Knowing that this can't be correct, he asks his second question, "Before we buried him, what was the color of his hair?" For the second time, she answers instantly, "Brown; just like my husband's " in consensus Bile rises in your throat as you review the current situation Just yesterday they were whining about a backstabbing holy man; now they're fixating on one of your fellow necromancers Yvette the duchess has her fawning sycophants all a twitter with her latest song How very dull Sure Yvette is skilled, but any and every one of your little shadows could do what she does now at this point Begging for peanuts from peasants, going to galas and court appearances, singing It's all so beneath you at this point The man was right: they NEED you You're not going to just lead them to some divisa or some such nonsense, you're going to repaint the landscape of this world a darker shade in your image That means pulling out of this ridiculous provincial town and heading to where the real power is Borgo Pass maintains a good relationship with Holgard and that's the direction you intend to head That's why you have to kill the rest of them and employ your powers to ensure an undead army follows you there You'll claim ruler ship the old fashioned way: You'll take it, killing anyone in your way and raising them to help you do it With each step you plan, plot, and prepare for your shadow-kissed horde to invade the taver That's when the current song wrap Borgo Pass establishment At least for now to nature; even death is merely a mere pause in life's continuum As the heads roll down the hill in Borgo Pass, making a pleasant *clunk* *clunk* sound as they tumble into various gutters and storm drains, you scream in the night at the town before you: "WINTER IS COMING , everyone and everything must evolve or die Everything dies eventually, but why wait? realized Hope is a mistake Fear and joy are not contagious, they're all too weak willed to embrace such power Fate exists, it is what is because it always was Knowing this changes everything, or it should Blah, blah, blah Do you ever get tired of looking at your own reflection? Dealing with your father's boasts are bad enough; is this ego massage really necessary? , fear is an uncommon emotion for you But tonight is different, an unfamiliar atmosphere pervades the air and you feel afraid Ever moment brings some new horror, what is happening to this place? You see a soldier run from a comrade in arms, screaming madly as he tears off his own face, flesh dripping from bone in tendrils then piling atop one another in squirming piles upon the ground you are hopeless but in the now its certain death in the long term you are nothing but a speck of dirt on a ball that twirls in an infinite abyss for an unknown purpose in the now, a rotting giant has approached your position and is preparing to strike the first blow It seems your choice is clear, as much as you hate it You might as well get it over with right? Taking a few steps back you brace yourself for something you're going to hate doing but have to be done anyway Jumping onto a horse you ride straight into the densest part of the mist, no hesitation The wet tendrils of vapor drench your clothes immediately, chilling you to the bone instantly and making your muscles cramp up Gasping you continue to force yourself through, the sprite's chatter sounding much closer than it was before The unnatural fog sucks away all sound, leaving only an oppressive, deadly silence in its wake Something in this mist paralyzes you, fragments of memories long forgotten flitting past your vision until you see something not clouds your mind but instead itself So close now, something just ahead calls out to your mind everything? Or will her twisted curiosity be her undoing? That curiosity, the thing that ensuresacles against all warnings and the discoveries made possible A need for understanding that lead to this moment, the discovery becoming known are you prepared? You see it, a glowing ovoid shape created all of flowing mist coming together into an perfect sphere Another few feet and you'll be touching it There's a flash as your world explodes into pain Every orifice in your body hausts out a sparkling mist, your eyes, nose, ears and mouth, all unleashing a torrent of sparkling vapor It flows from you uncontrollably as you spasm with the results of the pain It feels like every nerve in your body is breaking at once, send chills wrack your entire aching body So bright! So white! Agony unlike any other burns into your very core, heart bursting, flesh rendering and bone cracking as you bones become a gelatinous substance, reforming into an unearthly shape Your screams are lost in the void as a beating heart of mist, your blood sparkling as it pumps through magical veins You see her then, standing right in front of you as her mouth moves but no sound comes out, only vibrations You can distinctly hear two voices in your head no dream fantasy blood and good! / great shiver wrack wracking quake terror terrorterrorterror / shadows! REDSHADOWS! BURNING BRIGHT BURNING SHADOWS THEY KILL THEY KILL / AGONY TEARS FLESH HOPE TERROR DREAMS / THING NOT IN boundary ANSWERS BLANK NO NO NO NO / NOW! words awful / made forge river fall rock strong mountain / fearless brave joy hopeful happy town new lives… The pain ends as quick as it begun, with another crackle of electricity your body spasms one last time before collapsing on the ground, out cold Awareness 1: Surfaces Every sound is a color, every sight has a voice, you sense yourself drifting down long staircases twined with ivy into a cool, peaceful darkness All around you, you hear a thousand familiar voices calling out to you in far off, incomprehensible words Don't worry about anything, just let your worries float away into the inky blackness it's okay now, everything will be just fine You're with us now Lead jumped The burning sensation in his arm made itself known again as he jolted away, looking at the place where the monster had grabbed him Immediately, he flexed his fingers and began massaging his arm, trying to regain feeling The monster didn't seem bothered by the sudden move as it stared at him with its dead eyes while saliva slowly dripped off its wide grin While Lead was prepared to fight regardless of the circumstances, the look in the creature's eyes told him it wouldn't be much of a contest at all, even if he was in the safety of his own home God it was looking right through me Am I already dead? Am I a ghost? Did that monster kill me and this is what the afterlife looks like? Slowly, hesitantly, Lead shuffled backwards away from the monster, placing his back against the cold stone wall underneath the window Desperately, he peered around his room for any sort of weapon he could use to defend himself, but he kept prompting annoying says of utter normality The monster continued to grin at him, unmoving from where it was standing Dead plants ringed the den in a dry moat, withered barricades keeping Lead trapped Gotta get out But how?! The being in front of him didn't look moveable at all, be it physically or otherwise He couldn't reason with it, he couldn't run from it Hell, he couldn't even touch it It didn't like ghosts If he was going to get out of this, it would have to be by its own doing So, Lead obediently continued to wait as more moments passed by, staring at the horrifying monster who gazed back Something began taking shape in the far corner of his vision, growing more defined with every passing second After a few moments, the outlines of two people materialized in front of him, both of which were girls from his class He vaguely remembered the pair, associating with them being on some pointless errand for Martin or something similar Their haunting, ghastly visages were twisted into looks of agony and desperation Martin had a firm grip on both their shoulders, his long sharp nails digging deep into their skin as they shrieked in pain from the torture His stomach churning, Lead averted his gaze in hopes of not drawing the monster's attention to them Strangely, this seemed to work as they were but left entirely alone In the meantime, Lead saw that more figures were taking form elsewhere in the room, dread filling them as they realized what was happening Martin, a fiendishly gleeful grin on his face, watched on as each new ghost was born into the room Finally, Allison emerged from the shadows "Bri ian " she whimpered, sitting up from the mattress in her panic Martin's malevolent grin widened to monstrous proportions as he, once again, lunged for Allison Just like Lead, she jolted from her place on the mattress and immediately yanked herself free of Martin's grip Her fragile foot skidded along the ground as she was flung backwards, falling onto the carpeted floor with a muffled thud Martin didn't even seem to care as she shrieked in pain "You will pay," Martin jeered, the two ghosts now hovering anxiously by his sides "Serves you right, Allison!" A similar fear began encompassing Lead once more; no, not fear No, not fear It was pure terror as he helplessly bore witness to a malicious act which he could not stop : The Sun: Its warmth begins to caress your face, revitalizing your soul and replenishing your weary mind Draping the barren brown ground with a radiant golden glow, life can once again flourish here The cool midday air penetrates into the caverns of your body, revitalizing your very core Eyesight clears and focus strengthens once more, birds chirp in the distance - ringing out their beautiful melody for all who can hear ment: Lead: You blink repeatedly, trying to focus on the oddly shaped object Martin is waving around in front of you It takes a moment for your mind to comprehend that he's holding what is presumably an Xbox controller, and he's now giving it to you Your hands firmly grasp the two halves, feeling the new texture covering its once glossy surface It's cool to the touch ings that have long been dormant begin emerging from the depths of your being Curiosity, determination - each one more familiar than you'd care to admit This is not your time or is it? "Sit down," Martin instructs, pushing against your back in an attempt to help you take a seat on the mattress laying on the floor You comply without a fight; this isn't a dream - or is it? [2016] A Clockworker's Cruelty First Semester at High School The front features a life-sized photo of a boy dressed in what looks to be 19th-century clothing; he's staring straight at the camera with an eerie, monstrous look in his eyes using chosen art style Below his image states something that makes your blood run cold "This world is simply a nexus of fleeting horrors " "An Xbox One copy of Corpse Party: Blood Drive," closest to you Continue down this dark hallway NAH- Figment- Something else- NAH- Figment- Something else- Personally Introspective- Semiotic Web "Always seemed like something was off with him, ever since that day Jefferson killed himself," Martin mutters to himself He takes a moment to think; in that moment you have the sudden realization of what exactly is going on here Nonsense and childhood friends Which only leaves - "Go through this door right here," moves to behind Martin, who stands up and walks over to another doorway in the room He opens it, and you get a glimpse of what looks like very colorful woods outside A nice breeze blows through and cools you off just enough to keep you alive "The day the day that Jefferson " His mother had only come home to drop off his youngest brother; you can see the short haired blonde woman hugging her younger son in the entryway , and even Martin's disappearance, were all smoke screens Camouflage Deception Disappearances without a trace "It was you," A swift punch to the nose knocks you back as the narrow hallway throws off your balance You feel blood trickling down your nostrils, as all you really have time to notice is that the hallway gives way into a living room, where you spot an old CRT television set that seems to be on a news cast , you ask? You copy it from a reference, of course! You take a 3D model and turn it into a texture, which you then apply to the clone-thing The process is really hard: you have to get a reference for every single little detail, or else the clone won't look right You watch as Steve creates Jon, using the newly-downloaded image which gets mapped onto what looks like a first-person shooter's character You have more than enough knowledge of 3D design to know that it's a realistic image being used for this model, and can't help but grin as you see Steve apply red hair, weird eyebrows, slightly thicker-than-average glasses, and the distorted, ugly looking face upon the model Your 'father' looks horrified at what has happened to him "The day they beat him half to death," yesterday as far as we know A dark room tinged with blue from the CCTV images, in which "Two piles of wood and bone, connected by terrible, melted skin " The realization hits you like a sack of bricks dropped from a great height Blood pours out of your mouth as you let out vomit; the realization has filled you with unbelievable terror You can taste it as it comes back up and out, pooling at your feet The tape plays on, showing two piles of burnt and melted flesh, connected by strands of unharmed meat One bone is fractered, another skin is horribly scarred And the most horrifying thing about it? The fact that you know this, and more importantly; you remember seeing this As if your mind was put through a filter which made everything seem surreal "When they return to the grounds where their journey begun," You are still wiping the bile off your lips, and you do not miss the importance of what is happening A simple yellow school bus, the words "Jefferson County Middle School" clearly printed on the side in blue lettering occupied by ghostly children with monstrous faces and skeletal bodies They look out the window at you as you enter into the physical building for the first time You watch, confused and still pondering the reality around you, as they stare in shock One of these Spectres nervously laughs out loud at what he saw You find yourself in the principal's office without even knowing how you got here The haggard woman behind the desk looks up, staring at you with a dour look that makes you think she's incarnate of Satan himself "Name?" she dully asks while prickles at your skin "Greg

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topicprinter · 4 years

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Disaster? Let me paint a picture here:TL;DR: I have big list of customers already waiting for over a month on their order to go out and I'm simply powerless, uninformed and misguided by both EasyPost and Ruby Has. Still waiting on a daily base to finally see my stock return in the Ruby Has system and get started shipping orders again.The storylineOn the 21st of March, we are suddenly informed by EasyPost that they were bought out by Ruby Has with the core message from the email:"We look forward to a seamless transition and to a long and fruitful relationship with you, and thought we would take a moment now as we embark on this new phase together to tell you a bit about us."The day I was informed by email, a press release was issued.Article: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200320005576/en/Ruby-Ecommerce-Fulfillment-Acquires-EasyPost-Fulfillment-ServicesThoughts: O that's strange, didn't expect this to suddenly happen. I'll see what Ruby Has has to offer and make a careful consideration on who I want to work with.26th of March, I suddenly receive an email to inform us that we basically have to gtfo or accept an abrupt transfer with new terms and conditions going in on May 1st. Basically the first possible date. From the email:"As previously communicated to you by EasyPost, effective as of April 1, 2020, all customers’ merchandise will be transported and stored in the Ruby Has Kentucky Facility unless you have made other arrangements with EasyPost."(We're in the PA facility) Oh, and the kicker? EasyPost (EP) has never communicated anything with us. The last update we received from EP was a COVID-19 update that conveniently covered their asses on the 13th of March:"Unfortunately, the response of different local agencies to the virus has severely impacted our business operations making it challenging to provide the normal service times you have come to expect. Easypost will still strive to hit SLAs as best we can to provide a great experience to your end customers, but we wanted to give you notice that we are suffering under a 'force majeure' event. "SLA = Service Level Agreement, the contractual agreement on what level of service they need to offer or else you can get a refund on it.So, not sure what EP/RH were thinking? "let's do an ill-prepared, rushed transfer during a Pandemic in which online sales are booming. Good idea."As a non-US based business, I basically had no choice than to go through with the transfer. Assessing a new 3PL fulfilment, negotiating rates, overweighing their services and checking the software/automation capabilities. on top of a large time difference. It all takes time. And none of us are located in the US, so also not an option.We went through with the transfer with the idea that we could offer our customers the fastest service without too much delay. We were wrong.1st of April, no news.... we continue to use the EP system and ship orders.2nd of April, No news. I decide to reach out and ask what to expect from the transfers, if any action is required and what dates to look forward to.4th of April, a sudden demo of the RH platform without access or anything relevant to the transfer. With an "additionally" accept our new terms and conditions. EP has stopped responding to a few different order issue tickets.6th of April, send a reminder email of ticket asking for information. Get a response, that basically says the transfer will happen, no action required, RH should be able to answer further questions.10th of April, suddenly an email that they will start moving goods to the KY facility. PA was planned for the 13th of April and should take 3 working days. In the meanwhile, I notice all my orders stopped shipping but I still have the inventory. This continued until the 18th of April.11th of April, receive information from their customer service on a few technical questions and suddenly receive a form to check what software integrations we're using.Let the shit show start.I inform all my customers that they can expect shipments on the 20th of April. I expected the goods transfer to finish on either 16 or 17th of April. For the month April, we could continue to use EP and their backend. It wasn't until the 1st of May that we'd have to worry about the software transfer etc.I noticed that none of my inventory had changed to 0 up to the 18th of April. Bad sign. I had already kept communicating with the RH rep about what to expect.By the 23rd of May, I get an answer that they are tirelessly working on check in the inventory and it should be be done any day now. I was also given a timeline that stated"Wednesday, April 22nd: all inventory is en route or already delivered to the KY facility.""Thursday, April 30th: will be the last day for orders fulfilled via the EasyPost platform, all open unshipped orders (if any) will be downloaded into your Ruby Has account on the Ruby Has platform"May 1st to 3rd, transfer to the Ruby Has platform, then May 4th will begin shipments.My expectations were set on the 27th of April, last moment to push out all the order... my expectation were plummeting.26th of April, I receive an email with basically the same timeline as described before with a bit more details on how the account transfer should go down. But know what, all my inventory from the PA facility is still not available to me.When I received that update, I lost hope on being able to ship anything before the RH transfer. I also still had a long list of orders that needed to ship in the EP system dating from the 10th to the 18th of April. Then that's of course not accounting for few customers from March with shipping issues, that needed new shipment and all the backorders we had to take in the meanwhile.30th of April. They turned off the EP system. Couldn't ship anything anymore. No account info from RH.There's an onboarding checklist website that changed its deadline dates up to 3 times.5th of May, I finally receive my RH platform account information. I can get started!? No. I can get in, but can't edit anything but my password, the PA inventory still not available and can't send shipment orders.To this date, onboarding checklist is still not updated, still can't do any of the next steps. Don't even have a billing section yet.I'm starting to doubt if they'll even finish everything by the end of the week, I have a long list of customers eagerly waiting for their product during these extremely boring times at home and I'm staring in the dark when it comes to expectations.How am I even going to make sure they 100% check in all my goods, don't lose any or all of it? What am I supposed to tell my customers at some point?When I imposed the breach of SLA to Ruby Has, and that regardless of the situation they should compensate for the loss in business. They referred back to the force majeure that EP had obtained, and in April we were officially under the EP contract. May, it's RH. I'm not a lawyer, nor US citizen, and we're not talking about millions in business.The customersI am thankful to have amazing, patient and understanding customers. Only few had refunded and canceled due to timing related issues (like a birthday). I have made sure to inform each customer on at least a weekly basis and keep a day-to-day updated page for my latest information.But at some point, there's a limit.So why can't I find anybody talking about this? Where are the real entrepreneur and business forums? It's been going on for a month, and I just can't find anybody talking about it.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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muggle-writes · 5 years

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10 Questions Tag Game

tagged by @julesruleswrites

before I answer your questions, may I just comment that “hissed” is totally valid for describing phrases without enough sibilants. It’s the cross between wanting to yell and trying to whisper where it comes out all breathy and forced. Absolutely a worthwhile descriptor, even for regular sentences, imo.

1. Who would you dedicate your wip to, if you ever wrote a book dedication for it? (Or if you’ve published, who have you dedicated things to before?)

Ooh. I’ve published fic, which doesn’t really get a dedication section, but I’d probably dedicate my book to whichever friends/partners/metamours were most helpful in the editing process, and the ones who let me inevitably ramble at them nonstop about the book while it was in progress.

2. What car does/would your OC drive? Can be as specific or vague as you want; I know Finley drives an old Civic, but who knows what the heck Logan drives.

boring answer, but Mason is 12 and shouldn’t be driving. In an emergency he might attempt to drive the vehicle of whichever adult he is spending time with, which at the moment would be an aging pickup truck. Better hope it’s automatic because he’s not going to figure out how to drive a manual transmission car without guidance, and especially not while panicking.

Erin is a Hogwarts student and also doesn’t exactly have access to cars. She’s happy to fly the school Cleansweep broom, but she isn’t all that enthusiastic about Quidditch or racing brooms, so she’ll take what’s available for transportation.

3. Do you prefer to do your writing in the morning, afternoon, evening, etc?

I do my best work between approximately 10:30 am and 3pm, but unfortunately I’m usually at work during that time, so evenings are a tolerable substitute. If I succeed at getting up on weekends and I’m not drowning in other commitments I’ll take that midday block for writing and that generally feels rewarding.

4. If your wip got a movie, what would that be like? Animated? Or nah?

animation is very underrated, and I wouldn’t mind an animation of anything I made, but given most of my actual WIPs are fanfiction, a true movie of them would likely match the original canon adaptation where relevant. Some animated, some live action.

5. What’s the most recent change you’ve made in your writing process/style?

Idk if this counts, but my resolution this year is to not let previous failures prevent me from following up on things I want to do. I haven’t actually pulled out Duolingo or my other language learning apps that I previously lost motivation for when I broke a streak, but this applies to my writing too. for example there’s a #jewishjanuary event that has daily prompts, and I’ve been letting myself write for whichever ones inspire me without getting stuck on “oh but I haven’t written for _____ yet.” In theory, hopefully, this will encourage me to write more consistently, at least this month, and if I’m really good about it, that habit will stick when I go back to my “usual” WIPs in the absence of daily prompts.

6. Please tell me about your most beloved side/minor character, even if they don’t have a name or have had a different name every time they appear.

Again, writing mainly fic complicates my answer to this question, but looking at what I’ve created recently, I really like my OC Erin Fawley (from my #jewishjanuary prompt fills, since in many of them, I’m depicting Hermione being unapologetically Jewish at Hogwarts and in the magical world in general) Erin is a Gryffindor prefect, in the same year as Percy Weasley. She’s also a half-blood, which she will claim proudly. Erin most often shows up early in the golden trio’s first year, before Hermione is friends with Harry and Ron, and not only checks on Hermione for being the outcast of her social group (there’s always one, usually for no good reason), but when she realizes they’re both Jewish, she helps Hermione feel a little more welcome by not having to fumble through rituals alone at boarding school. Erin is a good balance to Percy, because she has the mentors’ instinct of who needs her help, and in fact she occasionally lets her homework slide in order to help younger years with theirs or with other settling-in needs. Most teachers are understanding, and when she turns in her work on time, it averages EE grades. When she turns it in late, it could otherwise earn an A-EE but, depending on the teacher, gets marked down for lateness. Anyway, all of Gryffindor house besides Harry’s yearmates and the Weasleys and the Quidditch team are a blank slate and I enjoy slowly filling that in.

7. What scene are you most excited about writing right now?

When I get all the in-between written, I’m looking forward to, in my fic Eavesdropping, writing Kaito and Akako interacting, with him putting aside his mistrust in magic to ask for advice, and her being slightly less cryptic than usual, in sympathy.

Also, I’ve half-finished yesterday’s prompt fill for Sukkot (for #jewishjanuary) and I’m looking forward to finishing that, and showing the origin of Erin and Hermione’s friendship, and also depicting the struggle of making do when the people running your school have never heard of your traditions, let alone know what to provide. (etrog? You think they have an etrog in scotland? they probably substitute a lemon unless Erin got one in August and had a family member put a stasis spell on it and brought it with her. Willow branches are definitely from the whomping willow - Erin asked McGonagall, who asked Hagrid, who collected them)

8. What font do you like to write your wip in?

I don’t go out of my way to set a font, so I’ll tend to use whatever’s the default in whichever program I’m using at the time, but I have something of a preference for serif fonts.

9. What and when is your next self-imposed deadline? Ex: mine is to finish this draft by May. How’s progress on that?

I would like to finish my Sukkot prompt fill before the other High Holy Days prompts roll around in the #jewishjanuary list, since I didn’t succeed in writing it day-of. (I’ve been aiming for finishing each prompt day-of, but again, this year I’m not letting lack of progress towards daily goals prevent me from continuing. That’s my goal) I uh... didn’t make any progress on it today and I haven’t checked the prompt list to remember how long I have until I miss this deadline...

10. Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?

Hot chocolate! Sometimes tea if I’m in the right mood (or if it’s a good spiced chai from the Indian restaurant across the road from my office. I will never turn that chai down). But in general, I haven’t acquired a taste for coffee or alcohol or black tea (without enough milk and sugar) or anything else in the category of “vaguely bitter adult drinks”

My Questions and tags under the cut (also, feel free to answer and tag me back even if I didn’t tag you)

In your WIP, how many other people face equivalent struggles to the protagonist? How many others are on equivalent journeys that the audience may or may not hear about?

What is a worldbuilding detail you are proud of but that you haven’t been able to include in your WIP?

What is your method for coming up with names for OCs? How often do your characters’ names reflect the journey they will take?

Music, white noise, or silence while writing?

What’s your routine for writing (if you have one)? Which part of it is the hardest to stick to?

What is your OC’s biggest weakness? Do they realize it?

Do you hoard notebooks? When you write in them, do you prefer pen or pencil? (classic vs mechanical pencil? ball point vs fountain vs gel pen?) Or is everything just digital for you?

Tell me something good about an OC you dislike (or about an antagonist, if you love them all)

Which sense (touch, taste, smell, balance, ...) do you most like writing descriptions for? Are there any you leave out, intentionally or not? (I’ve sent out this question for STS before but it’s one of my favorites to ask)

What accomplishment are you proud of right now?

And my very short tag list (lmk if you’d like to be added to or removed from my general tag games list, or for any particular WIP or fandom) @writebusofdoom @bexminx participate if you’d like, and you have the time and energy to.

#tag games #10 questions tag #writeblr tag games

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Camelot: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

There I am, third from the top, above even the creator himself.

Camelot

United States Independently written and released on university PLATO system in 1982

Date Started: 20 April 2019

Date Ended: 5 January 2020

Total Hours: 69

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Summary:

The last of the PLATO RPGs, Joshua Tabin’s Camelot united the two previous traditions present on the terminal-mainframe system. From the Dungeon/Game of Dungeons/Orthanc line, he took the single-player approach using a multi-classed character. From the Moria/Oubliette/Avatar line, he took first-person dungeon exploration (with a menu town on top) and a combat system where you fight “stacks” of multiple monsters. Players control individual characters but can message each other as they explore the same shared dungeon, which resets on the hour or whenever all the rooms of a level are cleared. The ultimate goal is to get strong enough to explore Level 10, get Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, and use it to force Lucifer to cough up the Holy Grail. It takes a while to learn the game’s features, and it’s pretty hard even with its “relaxed permadeath” approach, but it has an addicting approach to leveling and inventory acquisition

*****

I’ve often wondered how I would have fared if I had been a student at one of the PLATO universities in the 1970s or early 1980s, and now I have my answer: my life would have been ruined. I would have skipped classes, missed deadlines, plagiarized papers–anything to spend more time on the computer. I know because that’s basically what I did this week. I procrastinated on an already-overdue report to win this 40-year-old game. The fact that money, and not just a grade, is riding on this report probably makes it worse.

Like all of the PLATO games, Camelot is about mechanics. It hardly has any story at all. Its allure comes from its constant sense of character development–the idea that the next level, the next epic item, the next 10,000 points (putting you one position higher on the leaderboard) are all just around the corner. This is the kind of game that transitions you from 1:00 AM to 4:00 AM before you’ve noticed what happened.

I don’t often schedule my games to offer compelling comparisons, but what an amazing lesson in contrast we have between Camelot and Challenge of the Five Realms, written 10 years apart for very different audiences. Challenge has all of the content of an excellent RPG–game world, NPCs, dialogue, and plot. Camelot has the mechanics of an excellent RPG–statistics, inventory, and combat tactics. I think it’s fair to say that I appreciate and enjoy Challenge‘s approach, but I am addicted to Camelot‘s.

Part of the fun of my experience came from author Josh Tabin’s occasional presence as I played. (He and his son stayed up with me until 1:00 AM the other night, cheering me on as I won.) I couldn’t experience the game the way it was with 20 players swarming the dungeon, but at least I got some of the experience. He helped me fight a few tough battles (the game divides the treasure among the number of people in the room, I discovered, even if you can’t see each other) and alerted me where he’d seen a particular foe or item. I want to say that he gave me a lot of hints, but perhaps a better way to say it is that he led me to a lot of hints. He avoided most outright spoilers and instead said things like “Hey, I saw a TARDIS in the shop–you should buy it and see what it does.”

Unfortunately, players can’t directly help each other by giving each other money or equipment. But they can alert each other to where they’ve seen, say, a group of lizard men with a particularly large chest, knowing that lizard men often drop magic boots. They can say stuff to each other like, “I just sold a Manual of Quickness to the store if anyone wants to buy it.” And of course they can help each other directly in combat.

I think it’s been a while since Tabin had anyone take such active interest in his game. He used the occasion to make some tweaks while my own experience was in progress. One was to add a “difficulty setting.” He said the programming was already in there, but he had never turned it on. Now any player can customize his own difficulty from “easy” to “nightmare.” Easier games make enemies less effective but also give you a lower score. “Nightmare” lets you build your character fast for some extra risk. He also added a few more trap types and introduced a system by which low-level enemies run away from high-level characters. I’d often wondered why some of my charmed companions would up and ditch me for no reason, and it turns out that they do it when you attack other enemies of the same type. In a recent update, he made that explicit by having the companion say “he was my BROTHER!” as he leaves your service.

The author added a difficulty setting during the middle of my session.

In my previous entries, I talked a lot about the game’s difficulty. It is perhaps most accurate to say that like a good roguelike (which Camelot does an excellent job anticipating), it is very difficult until you get a lot of experience and get a natural feel for what’s going on. I was well into my 40th hour before combat tactics really “clicked,” and I started to learn instinctively when to use spells, when to attack, and when to run. It took a while before I got to the point that I always had my hands on the right keys as I entered a room, allowing me to act before the enemy. I died a couple dozen times in the first 30 hours of the game and only half a dozen in the last 30.

Another important insight was learning how to strategically develop inventory. Each item has a label (the game calls it a “table”) from 1-12 associated with it, and these levels are highly calibrated with the monster levels. A mithril sword (Table 3) simply isn’t going to do much against a red dragon (Table 8) no matter how high your level or attributes. So instead of blundering all of the dungeon hoping to find anything, you prioritize trying to upgrade your lowest-level items. The average “table” of a looted piece of equipment is the same as the dungeon level on which you find it. So let’s say that most of your stuff is Table 7, but you’re still stuck with Table 4 armor (Frosty Plate Mail). Hopefully, you’ve noticed that dragons tend to drop armor, so you want to be on dungeon Level 7 looking for a Table 7 dragon (blue dragon) carrying Tale 7 Azure Plate Mail. If you’ve mapped carefully, you’ve noted that dragons tend to show up in rooms with scorch marks on the walls, and you thus head for that room on Level 7. No luck? Wait for the hour to roll around and the dungeon to reset, or reset it yourself with a TARDIS.

Running into a high-level enemy with a high-level chest in a “stud room,” I use my Scroll of Identification to check the odds.

I had originally thought that a lot of the dungeon room messages were just flavor text, but they actually alert you to the type of enemy you’re most likely to find there. Monsters of the “slime” table (green slimes, yellow molds, ochre jellies, black puddings) are usually found in rooms that say “the ground is very soft here.” If you want to avoid slimes, you avoid those rooms. If you’re trying to find enemies from the “bad cleric” list and the potions and scrolls that they often carry, you look for rooms described with “crosses and an altar.” Thieves are in rooms with “empty wallets” on the floor. The specific composition of the rooms resets on the hour, but the locations of the rooms of each description do not.

The dungeon levels are full of the types of navigational obstacles that you’ve experienced if you’ve played any first-person wireframe game. These include spinners, pit traps, one-way chutes, and teleporters. Some of these are necessary to navigate the dungeon, and you have to map carefully. For instance, you can take regular stairs all the way to Level 6, but to get to Level 7, you need to take a teleporter behind a hidden door on Level 3. Level 8 can only be reached via a teleporter from Level 5, which is in a section that can only be reached via a teleporter on Level 7. Despite the complexity, you learn the steps pretty fast, and I found I could make it from the town on Level 1 to Level 10 in about 3 minutes–faster, of course, if I had the rare Wand of Teleportation.

As you explore downward, it’s a good rule of thumb to make sure that either your weapon or your spell item is one or two levels higher than the current level you’re exploring. You can do this by repeatedly attacking each level’s “stud room”–cued with a note that the walls are covered in blood–which reliably offers monsters and items 1-2 levels higher than the level’s average. So if you defeat the stud room on Level 6, there’s a decent chance you’ll find a Table 8 item.

I was lucky to get a Ring of Wizardry (Table 9) at the stud room on Level 7, and it let me blast my way through the rest of Level 7 and Level 8. (Downside: every time you use a spell item, there’s a chance it will run out of charges, and re-charging it at the store is expensive.) Then, early in my Level 10 explorations, I ran into a “friendly” Asmodeus and bribed him $140,000 to drop his chest and leave the room. It had the Level 12 Ruby Staff of Asmodeus in it, which let me kill most things on the level.

Leveling is pretty constant during this process, but it caps at Level 60. I don’t like level caps, but in this case I think most players would be hard pressed to hit the level cap long before the end of the game.

My map of Level 10. The numbers are all teleporters.

Level 10 has the game’s final encounters with Lucifer and the Lady of the Lake. Lucifer has the Holy Grail but kills you instantly if you don’t have Excalibur. The Lady of the Lake, meanwhile, won’t give you Excalibur unless you’re fully outfitted with Table 12 gear. How do you get Table 12 items when there are only 10 dungeon levels? You can get extraordinarily luck, as I did with Asmodeus, or you can camp out at the Level 10 stud room, which will feature a new Table 12 enemy every hour on the hour. The Table 12 enemies are a rogue’s gallery of pop culture references: Asmodeus, Tiamat, Zeus, Poseidon, The Evil One, beholders, Thor, Jubilex, Lolth, Saruman, Sauron, the Master of Shadows, and–at the top of the “bad clerics” list–Jerry Falwell.

Finding a Level 12 artifact.

There’s no guarantee that these enemies will always drop Level 12 artifacts. And if they do, there’s no guarantee you won’t accidentally destroy them by fumbling the trap. So you have to churn through dozens of encounters to assemble your list. If you don’t want this to take dozens of hours, you have to load up on TARDISes (which reset the dungeon manually) and keep using them. This took me about 6 hours by itself and would have taken longer if Tabin hadn’t sold one of his character’s extra TARDISes to the store.

When you finally have a complete set of Level 12 gear, you go to a water room at the bottom of Level 10, and the Lady of the Lake hands over Excalibur.

Yes, everybody knows it’s no basis for a system of government. Please let it go.

From there, it’s just a few steps to the stairway to HELL, where you meet Lucifer. He cowers the moment he sees Excalibur, hands over the Holy Grail, and flees.

Satan flees and hands over the Holy Grail.

Once you have the Holy Grail, you need only return to the town, where the game gives you the option to retire permanently. If you want, you can keep playing and finding more treasure to increase your score, which affects your position on the leaderboard. I retired with a score of 673,809. That was enough to put me at the third spot on the board, behind two characters fielded by the mysterious “greg” or “gregl.” I could have beaten his high score, but it would have taken another 6 hours of gameplay, roughly.

Am I ever.

When you retire the character permanently, you get the following endgame text, suggesting a never-ending cycle of grail-finding. Then again, there has to be a rationale for more than one winner.

In a GIMLET, Camelot earns:

0 points for the game world. I thought about giving it 1, but I couldn’t even justify that. Despite its name and the presence of the Lady of the Lake (nonsensically on the bottom of a dungeon), the game doesn’t make any use of Arthurian themes, nor does it replace or supplement them with any story or sense of place. This was the norm with the PLATO series.

4 points for character creation and development. There are a few choices in character creation–particularly the race–which make a big difference during gameplay. I chose to take the elf, a weak character who has a low risk of dying of old age (he ended the game about 30 years younger than he started, thanks to Potions of Youth). During the game, leveling is continually rewarding even though it doesn’t give you any choices. The little sub-quests to kill specific monsters to reach some levels was a fun addition.

I just turned Level 60. I assess the level of my equipment as the game gives me my next mission.

3 points for NPC interaction. Okay, there are no NPCs. But for past PLATO games, I gave a couple points here for the PC interaction that accompanies those titles, and I like how it works here. You don’t need other players to enjoy the game, but they can enhance your experience. I also gave a point here to the ability to charm monsters to joining your little “party.”

4 points for encounters and foes. The game’s long list of monsters may be derivative, but Tabin did an excellent job programming their various strengths and weaknesses. A player has to balance his desire for treasure with the knowledge that thieves can steal treasure and slimes can destroy it. A careful player has to note what enemies cause sleep, paralysis, petrification, and destruction. The best part is that all of these strengths and weaknesses are determinable with a Scroll of Identification.

4 points for magic and combat. The game has a nice set of options for dealing with creatures, including spells, physical assaults of different types (trading accuracy for power), popping in and out of rooms until you “surprise” the enemies, hitting and running, stealing their treasure out from under them, and bribing them to go away. Only the spell system is underdeveloped, with the character only having access to one “spell” (more of an inventory item) at a time.

6 points for equipment, one of the best parts of the game. The player has 15 equipment slots with 12 levels of items for each slot. Even better is the wide variety of equipment that works in the “Other” slot–scrolls, wands, potions, and the like. There are manuals that permanently improve attributes, cordials that temporarily improve them, scrolls and wands that make navigation easier, items that charm different types of enemies (figuring out what works on which type is a mini-game in itself). Particularly well done is the Scroll of Identification. You can use it at any time, including in-combat and when in the middle of pulling items from a chest. Use it on a monster, and it tells you his hit percentages, damages, and special abilities. Use it on an item, and it tells you what it is and whether it’s cursed. Use it on an unopened chest, and it tells you what trap you’re facing.

The store always held a chaotic selection of items.

6 points for the economy. For most of the game, you’re trying to make enough money just to level up, so deciding whether to sell a potentially useful item for some extra cash, or whether to splurge on that item in the store, or whether to bribe a particular enemy (who may have more gold than the bribe in his chest) presents a continual set of decisions. Even late in the game, when you have plenty (especially after you hit the level cap), finding money contributes to your score.

3 points for quests. There’s only one main quest with no decisions or role-playing options, but there are also sub-quests throughout to kill specific monsters.

3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are what they are, although I think the monster portraits are well done. There’s no sound. The keyboard interface for me was easy to master (and the game usually shows you all available commands at the current moment), and I like how everything is always laid out on the main screen, even if it makes the exploration window a bit small.

3 points for gameplay. This is from a 2020 perspective, of course, where I could have fit three other games in the time it took me to win Camelot. There were a lot of moments of frustration, and the linear nature of the dungeon reduces replayability even as the character options (and ever-present leaderboard) increases it. What feels to me today too long, with too many moments of frustration, would have felt the opposite on a college campus in 1982, with plenty of friends around to compare experiences and jockey for high scores.

The final score is 36, which crosses my “recommended” threshold, but not by so much that it would be absurd. It is notably the highest score I’ve given to a PLATO title. What’s particularly amazing is that Josh Tabin wasn’t even a college student when he wrote Camelot–he was 12! As a member of the Explorer Scouts, he had access to a special program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where PLATO was born) that taught middle- and high-school aged kids how to write code. Tabin explicitly joined the program because he wanted to play Oubliette (1978) and Avatar (1979) on the PLATO system. Somehow, he found time to complete Camelot in 18 months. Years later, he attended the university as a student and kept adding to the program.

It’s an extremely mature game, and the age of the programmer doesn’t come through at all except in a few bits of juvenile humor (in addition to “poison dart,” there is a type of trap that rhymes with it; one of the magic bags is called a “large hairy sack”) and the varied but predictable pop culture references. The game mixes the monster list from Dungeons and Dragons with the TARDIS from Doctor Who and the occasional quote from Blade Runner or monster or item from Lord of the Rings.

(Tabin waited a long time for this review. He first contacted me in 2013, and I assured him I’d play the game eventually. Somehow it disappeared from my master list, so he contacted me again in late 2017 to ask what had happened. I apologized and promised again that I’d get to it “soon.” In anticipation, he sent me a long, enormously valuable set of instructions. Then, it wasn’t until July 2018 that I took an initial look at the game and sent back some questions, then April of 2019 before I fully engaged it.)

I’m one of only four wins in 15 years (since the PLATO system was ported to Cyber1), but there were 43 winners between 1985 (when Tabin started keeping track) and 2003, including an early 2000s war between two users who went by the names “kappes m” and “pilcher,” each of them winning about a dozen times, trying to push each other off the leaderboard, and changing their character names to poke fun at each other. “kappes m” was responsible for a 20-hour speedrun in which he managed to get the Grail at character level 30 using a challenging pixie character, basically exploiting the pixie’s high dexterity to run dungeon levels that should have been out of his league and to steal high-level items from creatures that would normally have been able to stomp him.

But I’m the only one to have documented the ending, which is good enough for me. And with this, we have finally played the last of the PLATO games. I won’t be returning to the setting unless I go insane and decide to try to win Oubliette or Avatar or record some video of the games I’ve already won. It’s been a fun ride seeing the complexity that these amateur games achieved in the pre-commercial era, and Camelot was a fitting capstone to the series. But now I’ve got to stop procrastinating and work on that report.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/camelot-won-with-summary-and-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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taylormcdonaldcreative · 6 years

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Reflective Statement

This was an extremely challenging project this semester, as it was based around delivering an Inflight Entertainment System with Micro-animations. Despite briefly experimenting with Flinto and Principle in semester one, I did not have an in-depth understanding of how to animate with them. Despite being extremely difficult, over the span of this project I was able to develop my animation skill set, and I’m now more confident in my ability to deliver high-fidelity prototypes which have been animated.

My design process began with an in-depth analysis of Air New Zealand’s Inflight Entertainment System, competitors IFE’s as well as an analysis of Netflix. I thought it was important to analyse the product design of Netflix, as they deliver superior user experiences when it comes to viewing movie and television content and that this could be used a benchmark for our designs. Following on from this I created two personas, who I believed reflected polar opposites of users who are likely to interact with IFE. My rationale behind this, is that if you design for the extremes, you cover the people in the middle. Additionally, I conducted a lot of user research out of class, as I feel like the opinions of our peers is biased/skewed and don’t necessarily reflect our older persona.

My partner for this studio paper was Adelaide. It was interesting and challenging working with someone new, because you need to establish team dynamics and figure out where the strengths and weaknesses lie in the team in order to delegate work. I tried to be as considerate as possible, and let Adelaide choose what part she wanted focus on. From early on, we agreed that Adelaide would design and execute the user interface, and that I would concentrate on designing and delivering the user experience and animations. The rationale behind this was that Adelaide had no experience with Flinto or Principle and was quite apprehensive about the use of the software. Additionally, she delivered some exceptional icons and also has a very strong design aesthetic. I was delegated the user experience flow and animations, as they can be developed simultaneously and because I experimented with animations in semester 1.

This unfortunately fell through quickly, as Adelaide preferred to work in Indesign and didn’t convert to Sketch until Week 5. We also struggled to deliver enough content for feedback sessions, because of the division of the work. A lot of the time we were showing the micro-animations that I had worked on, because the user interface had not yet been designed. In retrospect we should have created a project management template, about what was due when, and who was owning that action. This is definitely a learning I will take into the next project. Furthermore, I don’t enjoy confrontation, and found that I ended up having a heavier workload than what I had anticipated. A result of this and also the ambiguous and undefined deadlines forced me into developing and designing the user interface because I needed to trial animations with content.These visual designs we’re supposed to be temporary, as Adelaide was to supposed to develop the final design. Due to time constraints, and the relatively finalised development of the animations the temporary design I created end up becoming the final. This created a disparity in the design, as the purpose of the user interface I had created was intended to showcase the animations with content. This resulted in icons being in the wrong colour, and a variation of the typeface. Adelaide reviewed this and made suggestions about the favourites notification, and subcategories. I then went through and incorporated her feedback into the design. I also spent a lot of time reviewing the Sketch files I had created, as well as Adelaide’s suggestions to ensure we had a consistent user interface. Despite becoming more competent with the Flinto, I found the software to be somewhat limiting. The prototype had to be created in sections due to Flinto’s behaviour based animations (All content needed to be on the artboard - 0% Opacity, so that it could be animated, therefore having multiple experiences on one page would have overload Flinto, and Flinto struggled to cope with some of the pages). I constantly pushed myself to deliver different animations and to iterate upon them.

I’m happy with the final outcome, considering the abundance of hurdles we faced. I think if we had implemented a project management template, then there would have been transparent communication and we would have been able to hold each other accountable for not delivering enough work. Additionally, if we had both been using Sketch from Week 1 we would have been able to collaborate more and deliver superior content, and perhaps more user journeys. Furthermore, this difference in software and lack of user interface output made it different to collaborate and compare work. I felt throughout this process that majority of the time, I was delegated work and told what to do. I also felt as if my opinion and work output was not valued or appreciated. Unfortunately, this was not a collaborative team environment and I often felt very uncomfortable.

To conclude, I’m proud of the final prototype that I created, including the animations. With a fairer division of work, less hierarchal structure and compatible software usage I think we would have been able to achieve more. I think that we were able to achieve a simple and intuitive design, however I still believe there is room for improvement.

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cglcomm106 · 6 years

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Midterm Essay

Midterm Essay: Analysis of “commodity self”

Theorists may posit that an identity is socially constructed, meaning that our sense of self is derived from the stimuli which we are exposed to by society. Sturken and Cartwright state that as a consumer culture, we live in a culture where commodities are central to cultural meaning. A commodity is defined as anything that is bought or sold in a system of exchange. They also claim that the concept of commodity culture is intricately allied with the idea that we construct our identities through the consumer products that inhabit our lives (Sturken and Cartwright 279). As a child of the dawn of the 21st century, my entire life has been packed to the gums with these consumer products and commodities constantly influencing my self-expectations of everything from masculinity to virtue and cultural values. Media are nigh inescapable and inextricably tied to these commodities we grow up with, and they shape us every day of our lives.

My identity is influenced by my commodities of choice from my first steps out of bed to my last steps of the day back in. When I wake, I check my phone and open up Facebook to see what’s “trending,” what everyone is talking about. This could range anywhere from another (all-too-unfortunately frequent) public shooting, to the latest drama to rock the executive branch, to the death of a celebrity or simply a cute video of a dog chasing its tail in a swimming pool. From the start of my day, I am connected to a global community and partaking in or observing the day’s newest batch of content for public discourse.

During lunch, I might get on my phone to check Snapchat or Facebook Messenger to see how my friends are doing. I might see a selfie from a friend talking about how bored he is in class with a goofy filter adorning the picture frame and strike up a conversation from him while I am snagging a sandwich at subway. I could settle down with The Onion, Clickhole, or The New Yorker for a good laugh, or visit Reddit and read strangers’ stories on the day’s trending AskReddit thread. Even if I am the only customer in that Subway, the computer in my pocket has turned the world into my crowded middle school cafeteria, except the tables are less sticky and I can mute the child next to me if he is being a bully.

Lastly, at night, I will pull out my phone or go to the Netflix website on my computer to continue watching whatever television show I had been watching the night before, not particularly seeking any discourse and opting to indulge in the chronicles of the starship Voyager into the twilight hours of the evening, or perhaps play an inane mobile game about tapping lemonades to make virtual money or some other mind-numbing yet bizarrely satisfying stimulus.

Through these stimuli we’re exposed to all day, we intake more information that influences our social identity. As we process the information we’ve taken in, our reactions are shaped by our ideologies and influence our desires. Louis Althusser defines ideology as a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to the real conditions of their existence (Sturken and Cartwright 69). The use of the word imaginary here is not meant to be taken as an implication that this relationship is composed of false or mistaken ideas, but rather a set of beliefs shaped through the unconscious in relationship to other social forces, such as the economy or institutions (Sturken and Cartwright 70).

I will never forget seeing the New York Times post on Facebook about a construction accident at a Saudi Arabian mosque on September 11, 2015, and the resulting “flame war,” a vicious widespread argument, in the comment section. Thousands of people with varying ideologies were out for each other’s blood, with more reactionary christian commenters praising Jesus Christ for the deaths of heathens on 9/11 to more secular elements chastising them for their insensitivity. The ensuing public discourse in weight of this news undoubtedly entrenched participants in their own ideologies, or perhaps (albeit less likely) changed some people’s minds.

The influence of media on our desires, however, is arguably more grim than a jubilant reaction to a number of tragic deaths half a world away. On most platforms that facilitate communication and the exchange of information, we are also bombarded by advertisements riddled with commodity fetishism. Sturken and Cartwright call commodity fetishism a process of mystification that separates a commodity from the context of its production and fills it with new, more appealing meanings, such as empowerment, beauty, and sexiness (Sturken and Cartwright 282).

From that sporting debate over the latest turn in the stock markets to the aforementioned video of the adorable dog in the swimming pool, we are sent messages from advertisers and producers of commodities to further adjust our perceptions and how we can fulfill our desires. Despite the internet’s boundless utility for conversation and exchange of information, we are still bombarded by sponsored content and deceptive advertising practices all along the way. Ads work tirelessly to appear as anything but advertisements, from making advertisements about candy or beer look like sketch comedy, or making advertisements for new cars look like movie trailers or music videos.

That is not to say that advertising is necessarily evil. Sometimes I will not know what to have for dinner, and an ad for a nearby chain restaurant or dangerously fattening pizza place will show up in an unexpected and timely manner. Trailers for movies will give me an expectation for their quality or get me excited for an upcoming release I planned on seeing anyway. Or, as happens all too often, I will see an advertisement or announcement for an upcoming game that will pique my interest.

When I’m done with work for the day, or putting off a COMM 106 midterm, I will settle in for online gaming with friends and strangers. The sophistication of cultural exchange ranges from chatting with a stranger from Serbia about how he sees America, to attending rigidly scheduled bi-weekly gaming parties online to coordinate assaults on elaborate dungeons and demonic fortresses, to simply making crude jokes about genitals and bodily functions with my friends in a private voice chat over a game of cards. Funnily enough, the most socialising I get done happens when I’m physically around the least amount of people.

So, naturally, I feel that the commodities that influence me most of all pertain to online gaming. I’m writing this paper late into the night before the night it is due rather than a few hours before the deadline in order to free up more of my Friday for teaching my friends a new game they have just picked up. I was still awake to start it at 2:30 in the morning because I’d just drank a fresh cup of coffee to prepare for an abruptly-ended late night game of Europa Universalis IV with a close friend I often embark on such ventures with. For as long as I remember, I have been deeply involved in “gamer” culture.

Gaming is a lucrative industry, and therefore it is one with competitive advertising. Take this trailer for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, for example. On the heels of its new record of all-time concurrent player count on PC, Ubisoft extols the virtue of how different its tactical shooter is from the competition, implicitly PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Fortnite, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. “The rules are different,” they claim, boasting the tagline “FPS (first-person shooter) has a new set of rules.” The advertisement beckons fans of the genre to play the game because of its tactical variety, boasting its fully-destructible walls and ceilings, which are rare in the genre, as “opportunities.”

Commodity fetishism takes place in the FPS subgenre of gaming culture in the form of empowerment through competition. The player is separated from the concept that the game they are playing is a complex program that plays sounds and displays animation and instead takes on this commodity as the experience of blasting a hole in a foe’s head from 50 yards with a .45 caliber bullet. Ubisoft is hailing prospective players to take on the excitement of this experience, leading them through an explosive and colorful battleground and coaxing them to claim victory in this chaotic and thrilling environment they have created.

For the more relaxed and serene gamer, advertising is presented in a less dramatic fashion, as in this trailer for Stardew Valley, darling of the indie gaming scene. The menacing strings and imposing voiceover of the Rainbow Six: Siege trailer are a far cry from the whimsical keyboard music, woodwinds, and cute pixel art of this gentle simulator about farming and small-town life. A new and exciting experience is still offered, with the viewer being enticed to “shape your land into a thriving farm,” “learn to live off the land,” and “become part of the local community.” While one might think it would be difficult to compare an ultra-violent game commodity about tactical military operation to an adorable simulation which presents situations no more stressful than selecting which crops and produce to bring to the autumn harvest festival, the underlying attraction remains the same: the offer of a new and exciting experience full of opportunity.

While it’s an entirely noninteractive medium, and thus devoid of opportunity, another commodity that influences me greatly is film. Particularly superhero films, especially those produced by Marvel Studios. Last month, Marvel released a new trailer for its highly-anticipated new release in the Avengers series, Infinity War. As a viewer, I derive meaning from this trailer as filtered through my ideology and experience with the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.

Sturken and Cartwright say that meaning is created in part by context, and when, where, and by whom images are consumed (Sturken and Cartwright 55). Someone who has not seen any Guardians of the Galaxy or Iron Man movies will not feel a fraction of the excitement I feel seeing Starlord and Iron Man bantering on screen, or if they have not seen any Captain America movies they may not understand how terrifying and powerful Thanos appears when he grapples the red-white-and-blue-clad superhero near the end of the trailer.

As with all negotiations of meaning, my interpretation of these images is altered due to a deep contextual knowledge of the characters and setting. I experience a surge of emotion and wonder as I observe the trailer’s grand spectacles of armies clashing, spaceships flying, and all of my favorite superheroes coming together for one epic crossover film to beat the ever-loving crap out of warmongering bad guys. I may speculate what will happen in the film, which characters will fight and die, and so on. This meaning will vary even amongst opinions of others who have seen all the films as I have, because of the logical framework they have constructed while viewing all the preceding films through their reactions to them.

Short of destroying all methods of communication and moving to a log cabin in the middle of some deserted woods, media are impossible to escape, so what do we need to know about how they affect us? The short answer to that is that the information we exchange and the commodities we partake in influence us each time we encounter more stimuli. The reactions elicited by these encounters, and the messages we receive filtered through our ideology, endlessly work to build a self-identity that conforms to or rejects an endless myriad of content and social norms.

Ultimately, this self-identity is how we present ourselves to ourself and the rest of the global community. Our interests, our social activity, and the products we consume are directly influenced by our engagement with commodities and meaning. This is the primary reason why it is so important to cultivate a critical approach to the media that we consume. Consumption of media influences how we perceive everything, from how we perceive each other to how we perceive ourselves. It is important to keep a critical eye on our content intake in order to continually strive toward being a happier and empowered individual.

Works Cited

MARVEL. “Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War - Official Trailer.” YouTube, YouTube, 16 Mar. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwievZ1Tx-8.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: an Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford University Press, 2009.

TheAmazingApes. “Stardew Valley Trailer.” YouTube, YouTube, 29 Jan. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot7uXNQskhs.

Ubisoft North America. “Rainbow Six Siege - Free Weekend February 15 - 20 | Trailer | Ubisoft [NA].” YouTube, YouTube, 13 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkHAdXs32nA.

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joel-furniss-blog · 7 years

Text

Glitch Art

Digital Manipulation is easy. That’s why I like it. You can pour hours into a painting or a drawings and have it come out mediocre, but with digital manipulation it only takes minutes to make a mediocre piece, and minutes more to bump it up to a good one. And if one is using Photoshop, it takes little skill to create a piece since all the necessary tools are laid out for you from the start, it’s as simple as diving right in.

Mindless? Perhaps. But I see the mindless as blissful. When I’m handling acrylics I suddenly become hyper aware of my surroundings for the fear that’ll splatter paint where it is best not splattered. Especially my jeans. Many times I have seen splotches of drying acrylic on my black denim and felt a dampened mood for the rest of the day because of it. Paired with other problems such as replenishing paint, cleaning brushes, and keeping my hands clean, I feel as if painting is one of the most disconnected methods of creating for me. While others might feel differently, I think there is a very prominent disconnection between me and my work in that particular field, but no such problem presents itself when working on a computer. Of course there’s the physical disconnect of working with the digital format, the barrier of the screen versus the physicality of the brushstrokes, but I’ve never been that wild with the brush anyway, and personally I feel more invested when I work with a computer. Swinging wildly with the brush might capture a raw physicality, but I think such erratic movements can break away from a trance or streak, having to start the process over again. But with a computer it’s possible to sit motionless for hours on end, building work with little to no distractions if the conditions are right. With Photoshop as a tool as well, it’s possible to build an entire portfolio out of a single image, simply by saving each step of the editing process. Everything is recordable and no changes are permanent, it’s possible to go one with an image then revert back to a previous step and create an entirely new creative avenue.

The ability to create art using the digital medium is a relatively new idea, forming at the dawn of our contemporary age in the 1970’s and becoming a heavily tapped medium in our lifetimes as an inescapable wave of technology is surrounding us. Technology as both a medium and a theme has been used as the basis for many works from David Hockney’s iPad paintings to Rachel Maclean’s multimedia explorations of the changing technological based world. And in such technologically turbulent times, when the digital is in our pockets and ever evolving, it still remains one of the most untapped and unregistered artistic movements in recent memory, mostly due to the adopted monikers and solely internet-based portfolios of many artists. With digital artwork in a digital age so much is representable and rapid that intellectual resources are incredibly vast, from the pop culture orientated alternate reality art, to epically scaled sci-fi or fantasy pieces, to more nostalgic based interpretations of retro games consoles and computers.

And this is one of the ideas behind my point of study, Glitch Art. Technological faults like glitches and software bugs now are rarely seen what with the increase in improvement on our electronic devices, but most adults today recall examples of their Nintendo 64’s or PlayStation crapping out on them, leaving them with repeated levels of vibrantly coloured pixels on an infinitely paused screen, or a character’s sprite replaced with a mangled mesh of colours or garbled texts. While unwanted a quickly reset by various tricks, there was something interesting about these small skips in the game’s code, a break from the regular to show the man behind the curtain, some even spawning entire characters and separate canons such as Pokémon Red and Blue’s MissingNo. But the idea of the glitch isn’t the only intriguing thing about them, the visuals also play a heavy part in the founded interest. Something about the broken yet still somewhat whole visual of a glitched-out screen is innately visual intriguing, the disjointed visage and analog blocks or waves breaking the screen definitely interested me when I was younger, a sort of uncapturable frame of a mistake unrepeatable by most means and easily reset in a few seconds.

Their difficult to explain, how they come about and even when they do appear, assort of indescribable corruption in code producing something sublime and even frightening, deconstructed and bent data that can twist human forms to become near unrecognisable pulps of colour and shape, broken to their barest forms on the screen. This sort of bent form is a change from the normally sought graphics we want, yet they themselves are interesting for their loaded aesthetics and offers the commentary of technological control and the usurp of such, instead of technology controlling us, we control technology.

While I thoroughly enjoy this form of digital manipulation and would like to replicate some aspects of it, it’s difficult to contextualise it into my project. I could rationalise it as my original view of Salford being warped, link it to the bad things I’ve read about Salford on the internet, or talk about how living hear is sort of like a glitch in my life. Or I could say that I’ve done enough far-fetched rationalising in my past sets and just enjoy making some mindless imagery.

One of my main interests in glitches and glitch art is the repetition of chosen sections, in which code is repeated over and over, sometimes with changes to their scale, placement, and colour to create a disjointed or continuous effect. I enjoy the use of repetition in my work to really push a point or idea, or just to seem heavy, and using Photoshop’s many selection tools and layers, the repetition is simple. I’ve also been playing with the oversaturated and inverted colours of these glitches, using sharpening tools and filters to create pixelated sections and disjointed blocks of neutral or vibrant colours. My subjects were taken from previous scans and photographs taken throughout my project with the present goal of changing them and altering them into completely different pieces while still keeping some level or relatability to the originals, sort of reusing the small recycling motif of my sculptures and paintings.

Overall, even if they had little driving force behind them in the way of rational relation to my original working ideas, I feel like the work I have produced is very good, although I could have defiantly produced a wider portfolio but unfortunately due to approaching deadlines, I must balance my focuses in their direction rather than this one. I feel like I will definitely continue with these glitch inspired visuals in future projects, or at least digital manipulation via Photoshop but hopefully with a renewed sense of reason in doing so.

Sources used:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_art

- https://www.reddit.com/r/glitch_art/

- http://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-glitch-it-good/

- https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/25/rise-of-glitch-art

#contextualresearch

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