pissing off the cishet eene fans on twitter by submitting that joel dickie interview to an “lgbt character of the day” account and labeling trans woman double dee as canon.
This is my second time writing this post because I pressed ctrl z on accident at the end of my (very long) first attempt and apparently tumblr doesn’t have a redo button. I am going to scream. Anyway, Midwest Lost is a souls-like set in the American Midwest in which you play as an angsty teenage boy with a big fuck off sword. My main inspirations for this project are the mainline souls games (also bloodborne psx), metal gear rising revengeance, and kingdom hearts 358/2 days. The best way I can describe my goal for this project is that I want it to be a fun, earnest, introspective, and emotionally raw teenage drama with a focus on atmosphere, narrative, and cool bossfights. As you can probably tell this project is the most early in development of the three I’m currently working on.
Story:
I’m not going to go into too much detail here because I want to avoid talking about spoilers, and, also, anything is subject to change at this point. The gist of it is that you are playing as an emotionally troubled teenage boy who (figuratively and literally) hides behind his big ol’ sword. His ultimate goal is to leave his dead-end home town behind and make a better life for himself. The first obstacle of many in this goal is the protagonist’s abusive stepfather who serves as the introductory bossfight of the game. I have a lot of ideas for bossfights that I am extremely excited about, but I’ll avoid talking about them here so that I can show them off when they are more developed (one of them I’m excited about is a mom van). The game is likely going to be 50% exploration of a vibin small town and 50% fighting bosses, so most of my effort is going into those two things. The game’s story is going to take place in chapters with various time gaps between them. This will allow me to set different chapters in different seasons, and, most importantly, it will let me set a chapter on Halloween night. The last thing I’ll talk about in regards to the story is that, as absurd as the subject matter may get, I want to avoid the game feeling irony poisoned at any point. I want the game to feel earnest as that is how I’m feelin’ while making it.
Mechanics to Appease a Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain:
I would describe my enjoyment of games as a medium as belonging on a spectrum where the left has experiences that touch me in an more complex emotional sense, and the right has experiences that are pure serotonin injected straight into my soul. The souls games sit comfortably in the middle. This is because the atmosphere, storytelling, and general vibe of the souls games is really harrowing and beautiful, and the gameplay gives me the kind of intense brainworms that lead me to play through it twice a month. Before working on my current three projects, I hadn’t really worked on something that I intended to necessarily be fun. In a way, I’m sort of getting out of my comfort zone by making something so mechanically heavy. It’s been a nice change of pace to learn that I can focus on atmosphere and gameplay without either of them feeling creatively unsatisfying. Something you must know about me is that I have an immeasurable fixation on dodge rolling, and I think it’s one of my favorite mechanics of all time. All this to say I put a dodge roll in my game, and I think it’s feelin’ really good.
Souls-likes are sort of unique as a genre in that animation is extra important in them. In something like a platformer you might have a bad jump animation that makes the gamefeel all wonky, but the jump itself will still work the same. In contrast, a 3D-Action game like Dark Souls is very dependent on its animations to control timing, spacing, and telegraphing on top of the gamefeel. Before starting this project I didn’t really know if I had the animation chops to pull something like this off, but heading straight into the deep end has, I think, really helped me improve my animation skills quickly. The moment I got the stepfather’s “lunge + spin knife around” attack implemented (as pictured above) I got a lot more confident in my ability to probably make this game feel pretty dang fun. Recently, I had to make 8 different strafe animations and it strangely didn’t feel like a chore at all. I’ll talk about that more next week since it’s related to the mechanic I’m currently working on.
Drinkz:
The main healing items in this game are a variety of energy drinks, coffee brands, soda, etc. that each have their own unique effect. In the above gifs you can see the two that I have currently implemented. These are the green and blue varieties of in-world brand “Vlade Energy”. The green one is the most basic heal item, and it’s the one you start off with. It allows you to take two sips per can with each sip healing a good deal, and you can roll out of the drink animation at anytime; however, cancelling the animation also discards any sips yet taken while still using up the can. The blue one stacks a passive buff on the player that allows them to heal by dodging through enemy attacks. I’m really happy with the presentation of the heal mechanic with the fun particles, the sfx (take my word for it I guess), and the animation of the protagonist throwing the empty can away.
Music:
The game currently has none. I’m looking to commission a bunch of artists to fill up the soundtrack with some banging Midwest Emo or songs that otherwise have an indie feel. If you make music and are interested in doing a song or two please hmu. It’ll be a p long while before I’m actually worrying about getting music in the game, but I thought I’d mention it. There is also gonna be some fights that have tracks way outside of the Midwest Emo genre, so don’t be afraid to hmu if you are making different types of stuff.
Conclusion:
I wish I could talk more about this project, but I’m gonna have to wait until it’s further along. Next week I’ll be talking about my strafing / sidestepping mechanic that I’m currently implementing, so I’ll see ya then. I’d like to end this post by mentioning that the amazing portrait of the main character seen in the health UI was commissioned from lonesomnia. I cannot stress enough how much I love how that piece came out.
I decided that this morning I would talk about The Museum of Anything Goes and the subject of lost media.
For the uninitiated, The Museum of Anything Goes is an obscure “game” released in 1995 by Wayzata Technologies, a company that is so far under the radar that I was unable to find any useful information about it outside of TMoAG.
All I could uncover is that they published a few multimedia projects (which are essentially lost now) alongside some asset discs (clipart, SFX, etc.). That’s it.
hey netizens! i’m not sure how many people are aware, but youtube’s been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can’t be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate
BUT, if you’re a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard to get rid of it!
English: a longing for something or somewhere which no longer exists, to which you can no longer return; the longing for the lost homeland of your ancestors, which you know only through blood and tradition, and will never feel under your feet
English: ladybird
Welsh: :) :) :) :) :) :)
English: look, you literally just made fun of me for my lexical limitations, why are you -
Welsh: little red cow :)
English: aw :)
Welsh: :)
There may be a day I do not reblog this post but today is not that day!!!
English: raisin
English: Come on French, isn’t raisin a word in you vocabulary?
English: French?
French: …
French: DrY gRaPe
English: grape
French: you’re not gonna like it.
English: what?
French: in my defence I was first.
English: What?
French: raisin 🥺
English: Hippopotamus
Mandarin: …
English: what?
Mandarin: river horse
English: you know that actually makes sense. giraffe?
[ID: A series of Reddit comments on domestic romantic love.
GrizFyrFyter1: My wife never finished a cup of coffee or a cup of tea if I didn’t make it for her. asked about it once and her response was “it just taste better when you make it”. Always makes me feel better seeing an empty cup.
the_dapper_minion: often come to bed after her, and she’s a pretty heavy sleeper. Without fail, I’ll get settled in to bed and she does what I call the reach. Where she’ll start swatting around to find me. Once a body part is located she attempts to crawl into my skin. All while asleep. Lol most nights I just lay there and kinda chuckle. It’s the little things.
MitzFitz: Destroyed my knee a couple years ago in a dirt bike accident. On the bad days she will rub balm on it and lightly sing to me. Soothes all the anger and pain I have. God I’m lucky. Thanks for reminding me
WarDog1066: Not so grand as some of the gestures noted here, but when my wife and I go shopping and get separated we will find each other again and she always smiles when she sees me. Sometimes I’ll wander off just so we can bump into each other and I get to see that smile. I’ve never told her this for fear she will become aware of it and stop. 28 years and she still smiles when she sees me. I get misty if I think too hard about it.
Bones513: She has to be up earlier than me. and she will fix up the blankets and tuck me in. Immense love.
Dealthagar: I suffer from scale psoriasis, pretty bad on my back and shoulders. After a shower, she sits me down on the on bed and works my medicated lotion into it. I never asked her to. I have this “lotion wand” - basically a sponge on a stick - I used to use when we first got together. After the first time she saw me struggle with a mirror, to make sure I got all the spots, she just started doing it for me. I’m really super self-conscious about my psoriasis. She’s just like “It’s part of you and part of us, so, let me do this for you.” She started doing this for me when we were just dating seven years ago. We’ve been married for almost two years now. Every day, without asking, she does this. It really speaks of her devotion to me and to us.
ZeroxHD: When we’re out in public holding hands, we’ll have a hand squeezing contest almost every time. It’s the little things. I absolutely love her to death.
clank: Hug me when she wakes up from sleeping in the middle of a nightmare. Shows me that she feels safe with me and the first time she did it I damn near cried
StarWarStan2099: Sometimes when we go to sit down, at a restaurant, or out to places she’ll scoot her chair as close to mine as possible, give me the biggest, cutest, and sweetest smile I’ve ever seen in a person. then she’ll lay her head on my shoulder for a minute. She’ll then hold my hand, or I’ll put my arm around her. It’s a small act, but it shows she wants to be close to me, and when she smiles after she does it I know she loves me. It’s one of many small. adorable things she does. but it’s one of my favorites that I think about often.
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Hello I am Jared I am also proud owner of bed.