#why is programming so difficult

[mae-occasionally-reads]

i’m such a hater of being a girl in stem (i choose to do this) (this is completely my fault)

[space-dinosaurs]

Might never used this program again but here's a low quality benrey animation. 💀

[isat-script-project]

Your amazing work here has inspired me to want to try doing a script project for DQB2 and I was wondering if you had any advice for me?

I'm gonna assume that's some sorta dragon quest game?

Well, ISAT really is a blessing in this regard, because the game is not encrypted at all. Accessing files and all text via rpgmaker MV and VSC is incredibly easy.

okay this got really long i'm putting it under the cut.

But before you get started, there really are some things you need to ask yourself first:

How am I going to get the text from this game?

If your answer is "write it down by hand as I play" then already know that there HAS to be a better way. If you're choosing that method, get yourself emulation, save states, or endless patience, because hooh boy, I've done a little bit of that for a different project (no, I will not elaborate) but save scumming on original hardware to get different dialogue options is agony.

Is there a text dump for your game? Is there a file dump or decomp for your game? Do you have the technical know how to access it? If not, are you confident in your knowledge of the game to accurately identify where all dialogue may occur? If not, are you satisfied missing out on nothing lines and just focusing on the non-optional? Is your game linear enough to not need a closer look at the code to figure out what happens when, as isat does?

2. What's my scope?

Again, do you truly want every line from this game, or just what's "important"? I personally cannot rest until I've exhausted the fucking Menus (which is why there's a script page for those, too) because I'm a completionist with delusions of grandeur, but some people are satisfied transcribing the cutscenes and nothing else (MUCH TO MY ANNOYANCE WHEN I NEED THE OTHER STUFF.... nobody cares about the optional collectible npc dialogue BUT I CARE!!! I CARE!!!!!)

Anyways, what exactly your scope is is gonna significantly influence what your next step looks like.

3. How am I going to present this?

Making the isat script project an individual website mainly came down to how finicky the dialogue in isat is. There's conditionals stacked on conditionals and I wanted a space where I had total control over how to present these factors without influence.

For more linear games, like, say, that time I made all the fewiki scripts for Fire Emblem 6 from chapter 12 onward, it was easy enough to present the scripts on a wiki page just because the game is much more linear, there's less dialogue to begin with, and all conditional text could be nicely divided up into similar groups, like boss dialogue where the condition is just "fight boss with x character".

isat script project would not exist without my fire emblem fixation, fun fact. other fun facts include that as a child i attempted to novelize Mario Party DS by transcribing all story mode text into a booklet by hand, and I did not finish this for reasons that are hopefully obvious.

This is, as you may figure, way easier to do. There is significantly less burden on you to actually understand how a website works - I cannot stress enough that the current state of the script project is only possible thanks to Gold, and without them, we'd still be at all dialogue being formatted as <p><b>Siffrin:</b> Says some text.</p>

For a lot of older games, you can also find whole game scripts being put up into a single document. Tis common on gamefaqs, I've used those plenty. There I believe you're just working with plain ol txt.

The rule is always though look at examples and if they do something cool figure out whether you can copy it. i did not create the website layout myself, i used a base and fiddled with it for a whole weekend until it stopped exploding.

Again, like, using an existing structure like a wiki or gamefaqs or just google docs or a spreadsheet is a significantly eased burden. One of my favorite things ever is actually a text dump on github, of all places. For this one, the person putting it up chose to leave all text in as close to original state as possible, doing no trimming of things like character emotes and leaving in all original string titles of every line. This is also incredibly useful, even if it is more difficult to use for your average schmoe! (This has fucking saved me doing wiki stuff for engage. engage text dump i ADORE you)

Do you want to be as accurate to the code as possible, or as accurate to the game? Do you have the time, energy, and skills to make the visual presentation nice? Or do you want to keep it rudimentary to streamline your process?

If you ARE doing something like making your own website, it is crucial that you figure out your visuals early, lest you be like us, and be stuck in Reformatting Hell for several months, because someone figured out how to make a thing prettier and nicer to read, and now you need to update the 100+ pages you've already created.

Reformatting code like that takes just as long as making a page in the first place, by the by, because you're just not getting around copy-pasting everything line by agonizing line.

This stuff takes HOURS. If I went at it alone, I doubt I'd have finished by now, or within the next like, two years. This is a really time consuming hobby, and I love doing it a lot, it scratches my exact fixation itch, but if your game is huge, consider seeing if people would be interested in joining you? I will also say being autistic about your game of choice is also a bonus in the sustainability department.

Many a times there were just no updates (as they are now) cuz I am just. Distracted by something else. Like yes on one hand I'm going to uni now and have less time but it's not really less time if I can still put 17hrs into a new video game in three days.

Stuff like this is ALWAYS a long-term project and you WILL need to take time off from it or else you'll start seeing html in your dreams and get burnout.

STREAMLINE YOUR PROCESS!!! FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS WITH AS LITTLE EFFORT AS POSSIBLE!!!! Gold introduced me to Espanso, which is a program that lets you set up keyboard shortcuts to insert phrases, which was a MAAAAAASSIVE time saver in the html department, as it allowed me to just rapid fire paste in all the many html classes we stacked for the presentation of the site. even if you are doing a script on a wiki where everything does look like ['''Siffrin:''' says a thing] you will still be doing yourself a favor if you can shorten that '''Siffrin:''' to just typing :s .

As a side note, I also wanna say like. The popularity of isat script project is a complete outlier. Other game scripts may be used by a maniac like me to overanalyze the plot structure of Sonic 06, but you're very likely not going to see that recognition. I love doing this, because I want these resources to exist for myself. I don't do this for the good of the fandom, but because it is useful to me. I started this because I was writing isat fanfic, and got tired of looking up dialogue on youtube or booting up my own game.

Do I know if anyone found my FE6 scripts useful? No. Do I know if anyone is going through Veyle/Quotes and appreciating that I transcribed all the fucking battle voice clips? No. Do I know if someone appreciates me accurately labelling all voice lines from the ring polishing minigame in engage? Hell no. I don't know, I'm never going to get feedback on that. Those are wiki pages, anyone can edit them, they don't have viewcounts or comments I can look at, and the fandom just isn't as prone to taking screenshots and posting about them line by line as isat.

Isat blew the fuck up on tumblr. I'm not saying you'll get no recognition at all, but if you are relying on external motivators, you are probably going to peter out. There are pages I've worked on for other script things that I've genuienly not touched in two years because I just didn't feel like it, and that's also okay.

TLDR:

Figure out how to get the text you need with the least effort possible (and figure out whether doing that is even possible at all!), figure out what scope you're actually willing to put up with, and present it with the least effort possible, because everything else just isn't sustainable. Streamline streamline streamline. Be prepared to spend hours on this and maybe like find a new favorite podcast to just copy paste text to, because honestly, doing this is also pretty zen.

And most importantly, sparkle on, don't forget to have fun! Even if it seems big and intimidating, you can still make it just a fun side project, and slowly chip away at it over time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and with all the advantages going for isat script project (additional manpower, unencrypted files, easy tools for game examination) it still took over a year to complete.

(loop voice) Don't make the same mistakes I did, okay?

oh, yeah, one last thing, if you're not putting it on a wiki and ARE making your own website, ABSOLUTELY PUT IT ON GITHUB!!!! setting up so any changes to the main branch on github get reflected onto neocities is pretty easy and you only need to do it once, and what this allows is to just have random strangers show up and fix your problems for you. sometimes someone will just show up and fix five bajillion typos and then leave. or they'll stick around and help with more stuff and wowie you have a semblance of a team now.

if you're doing it on a wiki, find like, the wiki discord, if someone is interested in chipping in. if you're doing your own website, put it on github. do it. do it do it do it.

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

If I was in charge of the video game department at Disney, I would have released a Triple-A RPG open-world action-adventure game based on The Little Mermaid that serves as a video game prequel, adaptation and sequel to the original movie by now.

[amazingdeadfish]

(sorry, English isn't my language)If it's not too much to ask, or if it bothers you, you can make Macaque and The Major like Eva and Wally, if you want and if it doesn't bother you of course. By the way, I love your art.

Assuming you're talking about Wall-E the Pixar movie

And of course, here is the method to this madness:

Guys. Chat. I did not know what I was doing.

You have to understand, Wall-E and EVE are such distinct characters with incredibly unique designs that I whole heartedly struggled to try and make Mayor and Macaque designs based off them.

But hey, I like a good challenge.

Thinking about Mayor, the LED screen from EVE was important, but instead of using it for her emotive eyes I thought it would be cool to use it for Mayor's mouth instead? I know their blank eyes are part of their trade mark, but so is their smile and I thought just in general, that feature of their face was more emotive than their eyes. The V shape in their chest is supposed to kind of (?) imitate their suit in their OG LMK design? And yeah all of the round shapes and the, floaty nature of their body is all from EVE. Generally though, when thinking of Mayor's design here, I kept in mind the idea of 'assistant' droids/robots, rather than what EVE actually is which is, an 'Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator probe droid'.

MACAQUE ON THE OTHER HAND?

I KID YOU NOT, NOTHING STUCK WITH THIS GUY-

I wanted to make him some sort of weather machine because I thought I could make his ears some sort of windmill (sobs). Or- try and actually reflect the cleaner droid aspect of Wall-E and like- I don't know, make that his whole gimmick. But that didn't work either. I tried everything guys. From giving him wheels to making him walk on four legs- from goggles to imitate his red eye mask to like- oh I don't know. Making him one of those- y'know, one of these

And then I remembered Macaque has a mech. A robot mech-

He became a fighter droid. Or, some kind of training dummy. Abandoned on earth but has a hell of a lot of survival skills so this dude kind of just... survived. Last robot standing, for 700 years. I specifically tried to give him more of a standard look, rather than more specialized like his mech. Like he's still himself, but it's a look you could see manufactured and copied a couple hundred times. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have used those shoulder-arm-joint-spikey-ring-things.

So yeah. This- sure it's Wall-E inspired (somewhat) but I think at this point these are just designs for a robot AU- hey wouldn't it be cool if there was a robot fighting ring AU and these two were the robot fighters- what if there was just a regular fighter ring AU and it was for shaodpwuppet-

Always. Here's an extra doodle. Mayor proceeds to steal the plant from Macaque and book it out of the planet.

[unopenablebox]

also, like, just for everyone's reference, that "ai effects on brain engagement with writing" paper is from the MIT media lab specifically, a bizarre department composed of a mix of different labs from different fields which ostensibly are meant to allow for unusual crossdisciplinary or otherwise out-of-the-box research, and in fact are mostly very self-consciously designed to a very specific vision of what "out of the box" means that hit a small set of very trendy research topics. often they do very hype-conscious slightly fluffy conceptual work about popular topics (AI, robotics, consciousness, human-tech interactions, etc) that get very widely promoted in order to encourage funding by the kind of individual philanthropist who's really into that kind of thing.

those labs do sometimes produce good research, but it's very conspicuous that they're not actually situated in a research department where they would be surrounded by their actual peers in the discipline and receive feedback and supervision by other experts. like, it's not that any given work from that department is definitely suspect in its methods or anything. it's just that, if your main interest was in doing good neuroscience, there is a whole MIT neuroscience department already, and the choice to instead be in the flashy self-promotion department and frame all your questions in the flashy self-promotion framing is. at least kind of notable.

[7goodangel]

Why did I decide to attempt to create a 3D character model with a character that doesn't have a completely solid form? AKA - how in the world am I supposed to use normal planes and meshes in tandem with metaballs?

[ihearnocomplaints]

I am sane

Heyyyyyyyyyy soooooooooo @bigsillyyy I, uh. Made something for you. But I went absolutely ham on it so. I hope you enjoy :3

Extras (Base colour, Line art, and sketch) under the cut

Base colours (my personal preference)

Line art

Aaaaaaaand sketch!

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC.

Sebastian has been searching for himself ever since he has freed himself from the shackles of Arasaka. Stripped from his identity and only just now rediscovering his own agency in life, he struggles with seeing his own worth— too used to existing solely for a purpose, and too used to relying on others' perception of him to define this purpose in the first place. He wants nothing more than to get back to himself; if there even is a self to get back to at all. SEBASTIAN VIDAL || BELONGS TO @MOJAVES.

mahmoud darwish, i didn't apologize to the well // 'out of control', by ruslan isinev // salt in the wound; boygenius // vardges petrosyan, a shirt made of fire // by liam wong // this is love; air traffic controller // bilal al-shams, sacrifice // 'the dying gladiator', by pierre julien // flesh and bone; black math // by hel7l7 // romance; fontaines d.c. // 'the invisible man smokes', rick castro // little words; the happy fits // georges bataille, the dead man // by matthew grant anson // deep water; american authors // kay redfield jamison, an unquiet mind: a memoir of moods and madness

[imanes]

i'm so...... i hate delegating tasks and then when i see the results it's so botched that i feel like i could've done it from the beginning and never asked shit from anyone because even the process of asking and explaining was a waste of time. anyway have a blessed Monday morning @ everyone I'm going to clock out SO EARLY today

[batgeance]

really very interested in exploring the dichotomy of bruce wayne and the batman and how bruce himself at this moment sees the two as entirely separate persons despite knowing damn well that the goals of both should align even though the paths of either are completely different

[starlyte-writes]

It is so insane to me how hard it is for people to understand I want to pursue my passion because it's my fucking passion and it brings me joy.

I want to become a high school theatre teacher and for some reason it is so fucking difficult for colleges in my state to understand that. "Oh you don't need to take theatre classes you could just study to be an English teacher and then your license will be all you need"

WHY WOULD I SPEND 4 YEARS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS STUDYING A SUBJECT I DON'T EVEN WANT TO FUCKING TEACH

"But what if I do want to take those theatre classes?" "...you don't need to." "But I want to." "Yeah but you don't have to"

OH. MY. GOD. GUESS I'M CRAZY FOR HAVING JOY WTF

[sunkitten-shash]

hate when I try to look up programming problems and everyone with a similar problem is stupider than me. yes, I DO know how to properly access and set state variables, now please address the actual fucking problem

[visenyaism]

do you have any ideas about why so many students are struggling with literacy now? I know that illiteracy and reading comprehension have been issues for years and most americans read at like a 5th grade reading level but I’m curious why it seems to be worse now (pandemic? no child left behind?)

It is everything. There’s not one answer. I could talk about this forever so instead I set a five minute timer on my phone and wrote a list of as many of the many things that are causing this on a systemic level that I could think of:

It’s parents not reading with their kids (a privilege, but some parents have that privilege to be able to do this and don’t.)

It’s youtube from birth and never being bored.

It’s phasing out phonics for sight words (memorizing without understanding sounds or meaning) in elementary schools in the early aughts.

It’s defunding public libraries that do all the community and youth outreach.

It’s NCLB and mandating standardized tests which center reading short passages as opposed to longform texts so students don’t build up the endurance or comprehension skills.

It’s NCLB preventing schools from holding students back if they lack the literacy skills to move onto the next grade because they can’t be left behind so they’re passed on.

It’s the chronic underfunding of ESL and Special Ed programs for students who need extra literacy support.

It’s the cultural devaluing of the humanities in favor of stem and business because those make more money which leads to a lot of students to completely disregard reading and writing.

It’s the learning loss from covid.

It’s covid trauma manifesting in a lot of students as learned helplessness, or an inability to “figure things out” or push through adversity to complete challenging tasks independently, especially reading difficult texts.

It’s covid normalizing cheating and copying.

It’s increasing phone use.

It’s damage to attention span exacerbated by increased phone use that leaves you without an ability to sit and be bored ever without 2-3 forms of constant stimulation.

It’s shortform video becoming the predominant form of social media content as opposed to anything text-based.

It’s starting to also be generative AI.

It’s the book bans.

what did I miss.

[tinkrtailrsldrspy]

Eeep! I'm so glad you like it!!!

(Though I only realized after sending it that I forgot to include your signature! 😫)

This particular piece actually helped me learn so much about the vector program I use! (Inkscape for any wondering) Like, do you see that burnt marshmallow texture?! It took a lot of finagling to get juuuust right, but I love it! And that teardrop?!

Hiya! I hope you don't mind, but I absolutely adored you latest little batch of sketched stickers and I used one to practice making vector images with. I thought I'd give you the result, since it's not actually my art! Feel free to do what you see fit with it!

(I would have made this anonymous but they don't allow you to upload photos when you are...)

SDHFSJGKDDJH AWWWWW OH MY GOSH!!! 😭😭😭

I absolutely don't mind!! I'm extremely flattered actually, this is so cool! Thank you for sharing this with me.

(Hopefully I'll get around to sharing the fifty billion hand drawn bill stickers I've made here on tumblr, I keep forgetting to :'D)

[ma-douce-souffrance]

hi saanjh

hi blair my love my lady my life