#this update has been in the works since june or july (though i worked on it very intermittently)

[birbs-in-space]

curious about what's in store for you for 2024? :D

Let AO3 decide!

(Updated from 2023: Up-to-date tag bank, opt-in tag categories, optional dark mode! As always: proceed with informed consent.)

#new post #clearing out my original tags since they're not 100% accurate but as always this has been a labor of love and also (new!) collaboration #do you know how hard it is to go thru 13k tags and categorize them? so thank you to my dear friend for proofing these #this update has been in the works since june or july (though i worked on it very intermittently) #and i am SO happy to be done with it for the time being #because i very much have other responsibilities LMAO

[into-the-feniverse]

New week new brainrot new timeline, this time for the Trigun 98 anime!

More detailed timeline with episode marks: google sheets

High res file & additional Trigun resources: bit.ly/trigunresources

Note: This probably works best as just a sequence of events rather than a strict timeline (since all of 2 actual dates were given in the entire series and there's some conflicting dates being given💀). But it does help showcase just how much it delineates from TriMax though!

Rest of the timeline & additional notes under the cut!

Notes:

Let me start off by saying: If you thought the TriMax timeline was rough, that was nothin compared to this (which BEFORE I FORGET: I revised the TriMax timeline, so if you saw that just know it’s been updated! )

Interestingly, unlike TriMax and TriStamp, the 98 anime seems a lot more linear(if that's the right word?). The series timeline pretty much starts and stops within a 130 year timeframe, rather than establishing the PE system by when the seven cities were first constructed. (This also makes 98 Vash the youngest of the Vash iterations by at least 20 years, maybe that’s why he's like That)

The two dates given were the Destruction of July (July 21, PE 0104, 2:06 pm) and the day Meryl typed up her report: July 20th (2 days after the Monev the Gale incident, over 4 and a half months after being handed down their orders which was back in early March)

Note: In the dub, Meryl says they were "handed down their orders last December", but in the sub it's "in the city of december". I went with the sub info cause that seems more correct, but you could always argue that the months on NoMan's Land aren't the same as Earth's. (in which case July has got to be a really long ass month with how much supposedly happens in it)

Legato makes a remark at the Fifth Moon incident that July was 23 years ago, which is why I placed the start of the anime at PE 0127

Before Meryl is told about the Vash sighting in Little Jersey, Karen makes a comment about how they “spent 5 months on the outside working with a dangerous man who’s been labeled a human disaster”, I interpreted this as their entire time on assignment was 5 months (including the 3 months before they first encountered Vash) which is why I placed the Fifth Moon incident in August) but could also be interpreted as they actually traveled with Vash for 5 months (which if we assume is starting off when they first encountered him (in June) would place the Fifth Moon incident in October like in TriMax. I just find it hard to believe that 3 months elapsed between Monev and Augusta but to each their own!

No time frame was given for how long Vash was disguised as Eriks (as far as I could tell), and for the latter half of the anime I could not for the life of me find any other relevant date marks so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ free for all. I assumed it was around 2 years though, maybe a smidge more, just to neatly align the the end year at 0130

For the keen eyed observer, the May City shooting competition documents further exacerbates how messed up the timeline is (so I blatantly ignored them) but as you can see it places the year as 0131, and then the competition is being held on April 1st (1th?) and Wolfwood entered Vash's name on March 31st. The other info on the forged data sheet is kinda funny though

Additionally, I couldn't find any clear indications of how old Wolfwood actually is in the series, but he was 7 when he shot his guardian and trained under Chapel the Evergreen for 10 years

Lastly: for those like me who can't stand having to re-read events (and are looking to start reading TriMax): You can pretty much skip Volume 1 and just start with Volume 2 (ch 13-20). Just know that Meryl & Milly only met Vash starting at the InEpril city incident (In the manga it's a city in Voldoor, not InEpril explicitly)

#resources #timelines #trigun #trigun 98 #98 trigun #tri98 #trigun 1998 #this one also hurt my brain but for very different reasons #i also had to reupload the graphic like 10 different times cause I kept finding mistakes and adjusting things : P #anyways finally calling it quits on this and am never touching another timeline again (me when I lie I'm eyeing the BNHA timeline again :') #sorry if the colors are harder to read here hahaaaa I'm not changing them

[rivalsforlife]

The Yearly AA Series Future Speculation Post

I've given up on calling it aa7 speculation because that has never worked out for me. anyways [apollo justice voice] hiya!

It's been a while since I made one of these little posts where I try to predict things and end up horribly embarrassing myself. BUT this year has actually been very exciting for Ace Attorney. We have Ghost Trick! We have 456 ports! Could there be more? Who knows. Tokyo Game Show is coming up and that's always a bad time of year for my self-esteem.

In this post I will do the following:

-Go over the November 2020 leaks again, to compare that to where we're at now

-Talk a bit about the 456 port and what I think that means for the series and its future

-Talk a bit about how well TGAA is doing, I think

-Brief Tokyo Game Show speculations (there's not much to speculate about)

I'll reference my previous posts and sources where necessary. It'll get long and rambly again so I'll put the rest under a keep reading.

FIRST:

Revisiting the Calendar (Again)

For those who aren't aware, back in November 2020, Capcom got hacked (this was overall bad) and from that hack came a leak of a roadmap for the future of the AA series.

For this post, please keep in mind that this calendar is using the Japanese fiscal year, which starts in in April. Therefore Q1 is roughly April-June, Q2 July-September, Q3 October-December, Q4 January-March of the next year.

This calendar was likely made in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, which inevitably ended up throwing everything off quite a bit.

Some of these things came true. This leak was where we first heard about the official TGAA ports, and while they were delayed by about a quarter, they still came out pretty close to on time with all things pandemic to consider. What's especially interesting is that now with confirmation of the 456 ports, we now have no idea what is up with AA7.

We know that AA7 was in development at one point. We know that, if things were on track prior to the pandemic, they might have started the main production. However, the plan seemed to be to release it for the 20th anniversary and use those sales and the sales from TGAA to judge whether 456 would be ported; now that we have 456 confirmed before AA7, we can assume that AA7's delay is so severe we have no way of predicting if or when it will come out.

The thing is, though, AA has been doing really well the last few years, despite the lack of a new game. The 2019 ports of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy have sold around 2.3 million copies, when previously no other Ace Attorney game broke a million. The trilogy hit a million copies around December 2020, for reference. Ace Attorney itself as a whole broke ten million copies sold recently. In this post I covered how TGAA seemingly has sold way more than Capcom expected, and sold pretty quickly, and is confirmed to be somewhere between 500k-1 million copies sold.

I don't see any reason to believe that AA is in dire financial straits. We've gotten more official merchandise in the last year or so than we got for a while, AA is featured heavily on Capcom's Captown website, the Tokyo Game Show merchandise store has been selling out of AA merch faster than any of their other IPs... I don't see why they wouldn't want to milk that. And 456 is probably a part of it.

What Do The 456 Ports Mean

Back in March 2022, in an event I almost completely forgot about, Capcom updated their trademark for Apollo Justice. I covered my thoughts on that here, and speculated it might indicate a 456 port. ... Which it apparently did. I'll quote exactly what I said in that post, since I still feel this way:

Presumably, previously, the decision to port or not to port 456 would be dependent both on how well TGAA does and how well AA7 would do. With no AA7, they might be making this decision solely based on TGAA. And they… might actually decide it’s worth the port?

This tells us a couple of things.

1.Capcom is aware that there is a decent market and profit to be made porting the Ace Attorney games to all consoles.

2.This heavily implies that TGAA sold fantastically.

I also said in my post about TGAA's success that the 456 ports would be the best indicator of whether Capcom would find it more profitable to continue along with mainline or stick to writing more things about TGAA. Because TGAA is actually doing... pretty great? It's always seemed to have a pretty good fan reception, but it came at the end of the 3DS life cycle and seemed to do poorly enough that Capcom didn't try to localize it for several years. But now it's big enough that Ryunosuke made it onto the 20th anniversary logo, and Ryunosuke and Kazuma are featured in some of the Ace Attorney merchandise for TGS's merch store.

456 doing well would probably reinvigorate Capcom's desire to continue making stories set in mainline. It also might inspire them to finally give an official translation to my favorite game, Ace Attorney Investigations 2, who is Capcom's poor unloved child these days. I'm not expecting Investigations Ports for a few more years, since they seem to be spacing out the ports by about two years, but... it's more likely now than I felt it was about three years ago.

The Great Ace Attorney Sweep

Also, the last few years have had a heavy focus on Great Ace Attorney, even now a couple of years after the ports came out. Takarazuka made their first AA musical in a decade based on TGAA, and, if you ask me, it sounds pretty heavily like they were teasing for a sequel someday. There also has been a reading theater based on TGAA, with an original episode written by Takumi.

Of particular relevance is this source of dubious credibility I linked to in one of my other posts talking about TGAA's expected success. I've assumed it came from the data in the November 2020 Capcom Leak but I can't be certain, so take this next part with a grain of salt.

Here are the original sales projections from 2019(?): FY21: 195K (originally supposed to launch in Q1) FY22: 55K FY23: 8K FY24: 41K (with 32K being in Q3)

This sudden increase in FY24 has always been interesting. Again, as a reminder, Japan's FY24 Q3 would be equivalent to October-December 2024.

It would make sense to say that the 456 ports coming out would likely lead to an increase in sales for all AA games, and it could be that Capcom initially intended for a 456 port to come out about half a year later than the current projection of early 2024. At the same time... I can't deny the possibility that this could be hinting at a new game in the TGAA setting. And something coming out in late 2024 could be a reasonable candidate for an announcement at some major gaming show that Ace Attorney fans already have an interest in tuning into. These are all completely neutral things I am saying that I have no expectations or hope for whatsoever.

What IS Happening At Tokyo Game Show?

TGS is always the part of the year where I say "This is the most likely place for a new AA game announcement leading up to or during it" and it never happens. This year, though, will be different! We have a CONFIRMED feature of the 456 ports. This is the first time we'll have AA content at TGS since 2018, when I first got into the series, so I think it's a pretty big deal. (2018 was when the trilogy ports were first announced; TGAA ports had an announcement-release window of April-July, so they didn't get a chance to feature at TGS.)

Since all we have for a release date is early 2024, I wouldn't be surprised if there will be an official confirmation of the release date, probably a showcase of port features, maybe in-person gameplay? That could be all, and it would be more than we've had since 2018.

I want to say "because there's going to be 456 advertising there, it would be ridiculous for them to announce some new AA content to detract from that". But I said the same things about the capcom showcase where Ghost Trick was featured and the 456 collection was announced, so. Capcom's decisions on when to announce things can be counterintuitive, it seems, so maybe the least likely time is actually the most likely...?

Anyways, we have no idea what the state of New Ace Attorney Content is like in Capcom. From the calendar from the Nov 2020 leaks, the staff that had been working on the DGS ports would join the main staff for AA7, suggesting to me that there would be part of the staff working on ports and part of the staff working on new things. We have no idea what happened to these people who were supposed to be working on AA7. We *can* assume that at least part of the staff transferred over to 456 ports now, but we don't know when that would have been, or if they'd really need all hands on deck for a remaster.

It's been a few years now since Yamazaki left Capcom. We know absolutely nothing about what Takumi has been doing, outside of whatever contributions he may or may not have made to the Ghost Trick remaster, and only recently contributing to various stage content. (We know he advised at least somewhat on the Takarazuka play, and wrote that original episode for the reading theater, so I'd assume he's not in the middle of a big project right when those were taking place.)

This is all to say, there's reason to believe Something's Been Happening Behind The Scenes. And Therefore -- [clown wig descends onto my head again] Maybe TGS 2023 Will Be The Year Of New Ace Attorney Content. Since 456 will be taking the spotlight, I wouldn't expect anymore than a teaser, if it's happening at all.

And now that I've said it, it won't happen.

OVERALL

-TGS confirmed 456 port feature, which should be interesting to see what kind of quality of life features they'll add. Slight possibility there could be something else AA related teased there, solely because Capcom.

-I think TGAA is doing better than Capcom expected and I wouldn't be shocked if they tried to make a new game of it, or at least more extracanonical content like stage plays taking place in that timeline

-AA7 has seemingly vanished but I am sure it will come back when I least expect it.

-AAI ports someday. please. please. please.

#ace attorney #aa7 speculation #[banging pots and pans together] YEAR 3 OF FAILED PREDICTIONS LET'S GIVE IT UP FOR YEAR 3 #there's not much to say here I just wanted to get something out as we're heading into september #do I even want aa7 anymore? no. am I speculating anyways? yes.

[nextinline-if]

May DevBlog - Chapter 2 Progress (Important Updates)

Okay, below is an update on my progress for chapter 2 and what's been written, coded, and what's in the process.

First, I don't have an exact date for the release yet. BUT chapter 2 will be released in July! Beta testing starts in the later part of June :) Those currently still subscribed to Patreon will get first access even though it's paused. Additionally, giveaway winners will get early access, too. I will reach out when it's ready.

Note: You will need to start the game fresh when chapter 2 releases as I used a new file so your previous saves will not work. I apologize for this and I'm going to try to be more mindful after this update so it doesn't happen (hopefully) again. Therefore, if it's been a while since you played, I recommend waiting for this upcoming release before playing again.

UPDATE TO ATTRIBUTES

After much consideration, moving forward the attributes (ex: patience, deception, etc) are going to primarily be used for flavor text.

Your MC may not react the same in all situations. Maybe they are stoic and suspicious with strangers, but patient and open with those close to them. Basically, this will allow you to shape MC more to how you want to envision them.

All of that said, during relevant scenes, the attributes will offer some special choices. However, I really think it's best to not gate keep personality stats for this game. Instead, I'll use them to make playthroughs a little more unique.

Hopefully this feels like a positive change for most of you.

Moving on...I do have another update regarding pets in chapter 2:

Originally, the pet's were going to be included in Capital visit for chapter 2. I've decided to scrap that. Chapter 2 already has a LOT of branching (dozens) and it's just really been stressing me out trying to fit the pets into those particular scenes. Don't worry, you will have other opportunities in the game to include the pets...and you still get to meet them near the beginning of chapter 2!

Okay, if you aren't too disappointed with me at this point, here's the rest of the update...

Word Count (includes code):

Current demo word count: 59,479

Current word count for just ch 2: 57,162

Total game word count (including ch2): 116,641 and counting...

Next, here's the scene order and what's written/coded/in progress:

Scene 1 - completely written and coded

Scene 2 - completely written and coded

Scene 3 - completely written and coded

Scene 4 - completely written and coded

Scene 5 - completely written and coded

Scene 6 - completely written and coded

Scene 7 - complete written, not coded (scene was not planned originally)

Scene 8 - completely written and coded

Scene 9 - 60% written, not coded

Scene 10 - in progress (4 main branches)

Scene 11 - in progress (4 main branches)

Scene 12 - in progress

Scene 13 - completely written, not coded

SPECIAL THANKS

With the help of @manonamora-if, I was able to update some GUI things for a better color contrast and a more responsive game file. Thank you for you help, I truly appreciate it and will be sure to add you to the Credits page when releasing chapter 2.

Thanks to the other beta testers who recently provided feedback so I could fix minor errors in the current demo. I appreciate you as well and will be updating the credit page for you, if you desire to be added.

Okay, I'm off to get chapter 2 completed and coded for beta testing.

-Vi

#devblog #nextinline if #excited to finish chapter 2

[genericpuff]

https://twitter.com/InkloreBooks

Soooo it turns out Inklore has existed since the beginning of this year… Twitter created March 2023, announced June 28, 2023

Did RS even say anything before about this when they’ve been shilling for LO this whole time? And where did the name come from then, is it still based on LO?

WELL IT HAS THE NAME 'LORE' IN THE TITLE SO FUCKING PROBABLY-

that said, the Inklore Twitter does announce projects it's working on that are just other manwha's/webtoons unrelated to LO, so I feel like this page specifically (the Inklore website) is just purely for LO, at least for the time being.

but i have no sweet fucking clue at this point, it REEKS of sus behavior.

oh btw though I will add that I did scrape the metadata from the Inklore site and yeah the domain was purchased on the ass end of 2022 and the site was last updated in July. And that makes sense because the website itself is still treating Vol 5 as an "upcoming title" (it's already been released) and Vol 6 hasn't been listed despite it being announced weeks ago.

so yeah that checks out

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical #antiloreolympus #ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[thefandomwarriorlexy]

Descendants Headcanons/Wickedverse Guide

Some of these aren't so much "headcanons" as things I'm using in my post-canon universe, named the Wickedverse. Me and my sister share this universe, so she has a lot of influence with some of these. Will get updated as I add/change ideas.

Lore

Centuries before Auradon was formed, there was a great war between the kingdoms. After years of fighting, they made an agreement on territory and everyone closed their borders. This lead to kingdoms/cities to develop at different rates, due to different resources. Many years later, all the fairytales/stories happen over the course of seven years or so. Then, Auradon is formed.

The formation of Auradon (and the Isle) created the Age of Goodness (AOG). Upon it's creation, was year 1.

Since Descendants takes place twenty years after the AOG, it is year twenty

The first Isle book takes place in the July before Descendants. Descendants occurs in September-October (as Ben's birthday is in October), and Wicked World happens in November. The second and third Isle books take place in January of year 21. Since D2 takes place six months after D1 it occurs in March of 21. The fourth Isle book takes place in May of 22. D3, taking place after the older have graduated, occurs in June of year 22.

Some other Disney properties are included that aren't specifically mention in canon: Frozen, Frozen II, Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (TV series), Encanto, Big Hero 6, Raya, and definitely more.

Mal and Ben's wedding is on the 13th of April, almost a year after D3.

Sometime after D3, the Isle of the Lost is renamed the Isle of the Found.

Family

Uma and Freddie are twin sisters, having been separated after Dr. Facilier and Ursula broke up. Freddie and Uma were unaware of this, and found out in the events of Never Knew I Lost You (coming soon).

In addition, Celia has a different mother, an OC named Lauren.

This is also why Facilier seemed to dislike Freddie (though, her abuse portrayed in the Wickedverse is probably worse than it is in canon), as he dislikes her mother. Whereas he favored Celia, since he likes her mother. Also why Ursula didn't care much about Uma, having become despondent after losing her partner and daughter.

King Philip has three sisters, Brigitte, Bianca, and Marya, taken from the book A Twisted Tale: Once Upon a Dream by Liz Braswell. Bianca is Ariana's mother and Marya has a daughter named Naomi.

Lumiere is married to Fairy Godmother, and is Jane's father.

Evie and Dizzy have the same father, Hans, making them half-sisters.

Doug's mother, named Clarita in this universe, is from Encanto. Agustin is her maternal uncle, making him Doug's great uncle.

Jay's mother was a woman from Agrabah named Lulu. She dealt in some shady business, thus why she was sent to the Isle. She died from an illness when Jay was five.

The sea witches mentioned in the first Isle book are Morgana's daughter, and Uma's cousins, instead of sisters.

Hadie's mother is an OC named Lian Teng. She is the sister of one of the Huns that survived the avalanche. He was all she had, so she followed him to the Isle. She worked in Hades's Souvlaki and her and Hades had a brief relationship a while after his break up with Maleficent. Hadie is three years younger than Mal.

Harriet, Harry, and CJ's mother is a woman named Red Jessica from Jake and the Neverland Pirates TV series. However, she is only the same character; her role and relationship with Hook is different in the Wickedverse than the cartoon.

Carlos's father is Bruno Madrigal from Encanto (inspired by @silverloreley 's headcanon and discussions). Bruno had a bad vision about Cruella and went to warn her about it. They had an unexpected connection, and one thing led to another.

Melody (from the Little Mermaid sequel) and Zephyr (from the Hunchback of Notre Dame sequel) are married and have a (currently unamed) child.

Friendships

Prior to the events of Wicked World, and possibly D1, Jordan and Ally become best friends after Jordan helps Ally out of a bad relationship.

Jane and Freddie become best friends during the events of Wicked World.

Likewise, Uma and Audrey become best friends sometime after the events of Descendants 3.

Because of the discovery of Uma and Freddie being twins, they start spending time together. To not leave Jane and Audrey out, the four of them hang out together often, forming a friend group similar to the Core Four.

A few months before the Bal wedding, Lonnie and CJ meet and become best friends.

Characters

As a reason for why Carlos was not at Mal and Ben's wedding (and why the rest of the Core Four were sad about it), he develops COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and goes into a coma a couple weeks before the wedding. He wakes up a few weeks afterwards.

Some last name headcanons:

Dwarf last names are from gems and the Seven Dwarves' last name is Lazuli, from lapis lazuli. This makes Doug's full name Doug Lazuli.

Maleficent and Mal's last name is Dragonheart, making Mal's full name Maleficent "Mal" Bertha Dragonheart.

Ben's last name is Leroi, meaning "the king" in French (taken from @hitchell-mope)

Evie's last name is Grimhilde, mostly taken from the fandom.

Jane's last name is Faery, and Fairy Godmother's real name is Joan.

Audrey gives up her birthright to rule Auroria, deciding that isn't the path for her. Naomi will rule Auroria instead. (Which was also what they were planning to do when they thought Audrey would be queen of Auradon).

Uma becomes leader of the Isle after D3, with Harry, Gil, and her crew acting as her advisors/council/soldiers.

OCs

Varian and Cassandra (from the Tangles series) are married and have two kids, Caelan and Valeria.

Anna and Kristoff are married and two sons, Alaric and Kade.

Raya has a son named River.

Maleficent has a younger brother named Kaveh, who comes to Auradon a few years after D3 to help stop a new threat. He previously lived in the Moorlands, the ancestral home of dark fairies and Maleficent's homeland.

Ally has a (currently unnamed) older brother.

Snow White and Prince Florian have a (currently unnamed) child.

Scar (who was turned into a human before being put on the Isle) has a daughter named Safiya.

Mirabel is married to a man named Rico and they have two kids, Anabel and Matteo. Others from Encanto also have kids, but most are currently unnamed.

Ships

Ben X Mal -- also known as Bal

Doug X Evie -- also known as Devie

Jane X Carlos -- also known as Jarlos

Jay X Lonnie -- also known as Jonnie

Harry X Uma -- also known as Huma

Chad X Freddie -- also known as Chaddie

Gil X Ally -- also known as Gilly

Hadie X Audrey -- also known as Hadrey

Zevon X CJ -- also known as Zelista

Maleficent X Hades (after Maleficent's redemption) also known as Mades

Some other ships that aren't as focused on:

Anthony X Harriet (Anthoniet)

Jade X Diego (Jadiego)

Li'l Shang, Celia, and Dizzy are shipped with OCs:

Li'l Shang is shipped with Safiya

Dizzy is shipped with Alaric

Celia is shipped with Caelan

We also refer to (some) best friend pairs with combined names:

Jordan and Ally are Jolly

Mal and Evie are Mevie

Jane and Freddie are Jaddie

Uma and Audrey are Umdrey

Lonnie CJ are Lonista

Not a name combination, but Uma and Freddie are Shell Sisters

#disney descendants #descendants headcanons #headcanon #hcs #mal bertha #evie grimhilde #carlos de vil #jay son of jafar #ben florian #descendants 2 #descendants 3 #doug son of dopey #jane daughter of fairy godmother #li lonnie #uma daughter of ursula #harry hook #freddie facilier #chad charming #gil legume #ally daughter of alice #audrey rose #audrey descendants #hadie descendants #zevon descendants #descendants oc #lil shang descendants #celia facilier #dizzy tremaine #anthony tremaine #harriet hook

[coolstarorg]

Leaving the jailbreak community

Around this time last year (in March 2022) I had updated my main iPhone to iOS 15.1, hoping to make a jailbreak for it. I fully expected to be gone from the scene after iOS 15.1, but knew full well that with all the mitigations of iOS 15.0 - 15.1 alone, it may already have been out of my means to make a jailbreak, so there was a risk.

By that time, I had already cut down the tweaks I used to just 2 -- iPad dock for iPhone, and enabling battery percentage for notched iPhones.

Fast forward to June, and iOS 16 had natively introduced battery percentage for iPhones that have the notch -- cutting down the number of tweaks I’d want (compared to stock) from 2 to 1. But no matter, I was still on iOS 15.1, and still hoping to make a jailbreak, since I had a working terminal at that point.

However, the months progressed -- June became July, and iOS 16 betas were coming. Thanks to a donation from someone, I got an M1 Macbook Air to accelerate jailbreak development, and had gotten libhooker with tweaks running a couple weeks later, including on A12 and A13. The jailbreak at this point was in an extremely buggy, albeit functional state and hope was up.

Then the jailbreak community happened -- without a PAC / PPL bypass at the time, libhooker would be forced to sign code pages -- which was only really doable with the libhooker API (unless a ton of effort was spent on potential workarounds). But tweak developers largely refused to consider using the libhooker API for batching hooks, and I was quickly getting frustrated. And a lot of others from the community weren’t helping either -- I had gotten harassed by many jailbreak users on twitter and reddit over this, especially since it had recently come to light that Cheyote was broken on A15. And of course, with it being August 2022, it was unlikely any donations at this point would even get an A15 device on early iOS 15.

At the same time, I had other interests popping up with porting Windows to various chromebooks -- my port to AMD Ryzen was going well enough to be a daily driver, and I had just gotten audio working on the Pixel 2 chromebook (which I previously abandoned in 2017 but then picked up in 2022 with my new experience).

So I snapped -- I realized how much better the community is on the chromebook side and that I simply didn’t need to put up with the jailbreak community. And I put Cheyote on the backburner to focus on developing Windows drivers for chromebooks.

Then August became September, November, December. Progress was being made on the chromebook scene, but every time I considered returning to doing iOS jailbreaking, I shuddered from remembering the harassment.

In December 2022, I returned the money donated towards the macbook to the person who donated it. Since I realized Cheyote was well beyond schedule, even if it ever came to happen. Meanwhile in the chromebook scene, I was getting Intel 12th gen audio working.

Then the months passed, and in March 2023 I realized it had been a full year. And I was still on iOS 15.1 for seemingly no reason other than to tease myself and miss out on the battery percentage and widgets -- so I updated my main iPhone to iOS 16.3.1 (and now iOS 16.4), knowing that there was no turning back and that I would no longer be jailbroken on my main device for a long time, if ever.

That brings us to today. Even though I’ve been in denial about it for several months now, it clearly has made me feel a lot better to stay away from the jailbreak community, and I have found new interests that make me happier. So it’s time to say farewell. It’s been a good run overall since I started developing tweaks for iOS 5 (in 2012) and jailbreaks since iOS 11 (in 2017) -- a 10 year run isn’t too bad after all. 

===========================================================

For those who are still waiting on Cheyote, unfortunately I wouldn’t hold my breath anymore. I’ve clearly moved on months ago, even though it’s taken me until now to fully realize it. I appreciate those who have supported me in the past and thank you for your support on my tweaks, Electra, Chimera, Odyssey and Taurine. If you’re still running one of the jailbreaks I’ve made -- you’re a real one. libhooker and my repos will still be up and running for those on iOS 11 to iOS 14, and Sileo has been maintained by Amy for over a year now. I expect Odyssey and Taurine won’t need any more updates considering they’ve been running stable for a long time, and libhooker 1.6.9 will continue to be hosted on my repo since it is the last version to be fully validated up to iOS 14.8.1 (on checkm8) and up to iOS 14.3 (on Chimera -> Taurine).

If you were interested in what I’m up to these days, feel free to grab almost any Intel chromebook (or one of the 3 supported Ryzen 3000 chromebooks) from the last decade and put Windows on it! (Except the original Pixel 1 [no trackpad / touch screen] or Samsung Chromebook 3 -- that one is garbage, sorry if you have it)

#jailbreak #iphone #ios15 #taurine #odyssey #electra #chimera #libhooker #sileo

[lindsayisfindingflow]

The update

Alright here’s that life update I threatened to post last week. The tl;dr version is that I am in a slightly different place in my life compared to the last time I posted (2020 to early 2021ish), but in many ways I feel like I’m in a similar place in my life as I was in my early 20s, and it’s made me miss posting on tumblr.

2021: this was a year with a lot of career growth for me - we were getting a lot of new projects, and I was able to join projects in roles that I had not previously filled before. Halfway through the year, I found out that we were being acquired by a much larger consulting firm. There were many benefits and drawbacks that came (and continue to come) from that. From a fitness perspective, I also trained for and completed my second Ironman (it was actually 2 years ago exactly today.) Shortly after that race, things got *very* busy at work.

2022: late 2021 to early 2022 was the most stressful period of my life with respect to work. There were times that I was working on 5-8 projects at once, and trying to be the project manager/primary contact on 3 at once. March/April 2022 was definitely a low point for me, and I was starting to get very burned out. Around this time I finally started rolling off of projects, but it took me until probably August/September to feel motivated by periods of stress instead of worn down/frustrated by them. This time period definitely took a toll on my fitness too. I completed a marathon in April (I think my mileage maxed out at 30, so I was likely operating off of old Ironman fitness), and I did a few summer triathlons too. In the Fall I trained for another marathon, but unfortunately had my first DNF due to knee pain from mile 13-18.

2023: This year has been much more manageable from a work perspective - I’ve been the project manager on one project, and have supported a handful of other projects/internal efforts to a lesser degree. This year has been even worse than the last in terms of fitness though, because I was dealing with hip pain from January through July. I started physical therapy for it in March, and did a PRP injection at the end of June. So far I’ve been doing well since ending PT, though I haven’t really had a chance to built my fitness back up.

So I guess that brings me to the present day - I want to figure out what fitness means for me in my 30s. I would love to get back to the level of fitness I had in my 20s, but I do think that I prioritized my level of fitness over other important areas of my life before, and I don’t want to do that again (or at the very least, I don’t want to do that for long periods of time). I don’t want to let my house to become an absolute wreck, and I want to make sure that I’m maintaining my joints/ligaments/bones so I can keep doing this for a long time. I actually got a dexa scan done last year, and between the results of that (I was in the 24th percentile) and my recent joint issues, I think strength training needs to be a priority, even if it’s not my favorite type of workout. I know being in your 30s doesn’t make you old, and many people reach peak fitness in their 30s, but I’m starting to realize that I need to do things differently now if I want to be one of those people.

[ataleofcrowns]

Monthly Progress Update [APR]

Hey all!

Since the release of CH8, I’ve been managing to keep pace on writing for CH9 as well as releasing regular Patreon posts the past few weeks. Funnily, I think launching my Patreon helped me keep up a regular schedule for writing haha

I have lots of exciting updates to report on!!

To start with, my goal for CH9 is ~40k words, and during the month of April I managed to write 11k words! This means I’m about 25% through with the first draft of the chapter, which is a lot more progress than I expected to have!

For May, my goal will be 15k words, so hopefully by the end of the month I’ll be finished with the majority of the chapter and will only have the final scenes left to write. Ideally I’d love to aim for a late June/early July update, but I’m also working on my bachelor’s thesis during this same time-frame, so I can’t give any solid guarantees.

In terms of content, as well as some other things I’ve been working on during April and what I plan to work on next:

I’ve finished the opening scene of CH9, which has huge variations so far and took up pretty much all 11k words that I wrote in April!

During May, I’ll be getting into the mid-section of the chapter where the pace will slow down quite a bit for some recovery time for the poor Crown, as well as some more political intrigue... it’s time for some royal decrees 👀

Also have a few LI scenes planned that I’m very excited to get started on! There’s gonna be some character subplots that are going to start moving very soon

I’ve released consistent weekly progress reports, development sneak peaks, and bonus stories and content for R, X, D and Tûjo on my Patreon!

For May, I’ll be releasing more content for D, A and an (as of yet) undetermined 3rd LI as well, based on patron votes.

I’ve also put together a commission for more official AToC art, thanks to all my patron pledges during April ✨

You can find more details about these updates during my weekly Patreon progress reports, though note that I charge up front and the pledge gets renewed every 1st of the month, so it’ll probably be better to wait a day or two before pledging to avoid getting double charged right now!

I’ll definitely keep you all on the tumblr blog updated as well with these monthly progress updates!

As always, thanks so much for your support 💖

#progress report #interactive fiction #a tale of crowns #twine game

[chattercap]

Future Plans for Actala

Sorry for the kind of sporadic updates, I do need to be better about posting here! I post devlogs on my itch page monthly, and I've decided to crosspost the latest one here since it has some important info about Actala's future development! A copy of my latest itch devlog is under the cut!

Hello, happy June!

It's been another month (time really does fly)! 

No Actala updates this time, as I ended up increasing the scope a bit on my Otome Jam project so I had to divert my attention to that (please look forward to some EXCELLENT voice acting)! Karamu will release sometime in the next couple of weeks!

But although I don't have any updates for Actala, I do have a bit of an announcement. As you might know if you played through the demo, I originally planned to illustrate the story 100% with CGs and mini-CGs. This was...unrealistic (as basically anyone with half a brain could have told you, I imagine). 

This was something that became EXTREMELY apparent as I worked on Karamu. I thought I scoped very realistically (a simple scene with 2 characters and only 10k words), and I hoped to finish the game within a month. However, while I finished the script in a week, I've spent almost 2 months on the illustrations. (If I extrapolate that out for Actala, where the current script is 250,000 words...I won't finish the thing for another 4-5 years...)

Part of that is that I've been experimenting with more complex/highly rendered CGs, and taking more care with the color and compositions (you can see a sample below). For Actala, I adopted a more simple coloring style because of the high volume of illustrations, but I was never really happy with them. Rather than putting out a ton of illustrations that I'm not happy with, I'd prefer to put out a smaller number that I'm more satisfied with.

If I'm being honest, I didn't adopt the "CG only" strategy for any deep reason in particular. It was mainly a snap decision based on insecurities with my own art, as I felt like my art couldn't really stand on par with other VNs (so I decided to create value with quantity over quality). However, ultimately I think it's detrimental to the project. The amount of work required for the art just dwarfs everything else, to the point where I put off the other tasks to make a SMALL dent in the art (for instance, I really want to improve the GUI, which looks a bit clunky and not super elegant...) 

So from now on, I will most likely adopt the sprite format for Actala, instead of utilizing exclusively CGs. Those sprites may or may not be animated; I'll try it out and see how I feel about them. You can still expect a lot of CGs from me, but not exclusive! Interestingly, I actually planned to do sprites in the early stages of development, and I finished almost all of them. These are over a year old at this point, so they will be completely redone, though! 

I hope that this isn't disappointing to anyone (it probably isn't; I'm just stubborn as an ox when it comes to my impulse decisions...) But from a projection perspective, it's just 100% impossible to get Actala out on any reasonable timeline with the approach that I was taking. This way, I'll be able to get the game out a bit faster (with nicer illustrations, just fewer of them)! And it will give me a little more time to polish other aspects of the game, and perhaps work on a few more side projects ;)

For the rest of this month, I'll be finishing out Karamu. Then at the start of July, I'll take a bit of a game dev break before tackling the sprites! Expect to see some sketches in the next devlog~

If you read this far, thank you! See you next month :)

Chattercap

#actala #actala-news #actala-dev

[little-peril-stories]

Camp Nano July 2023

How It Went

Um, not how I expected.

The good:

I managed to write every day. I'll confess here that, because we went on vacation and were all over the place most days, I sometimes updated my word count for the day, wrote more, and saved that 'update' for the next day because I like getting the badges. (All the writing was done in July though! I did all the outlining and planning work between February and June, but I didn't start writing till July 1.)

My outline was helpful. I didn't spend a lot of time agonizing over "what happens next" because I always knew, even if the specifics were a little fuzzy. My process boils down to 'plan hard, but allow for deviation & exploration' and it seems like that is still a system that works for me.

Some of the writing was OK. I mean, it's a writing challenge and I was going fast. She gonna need work. But I often smiled while I was writing, or when I was rereading scenes, and that's a good indicator for me. :)

The , uh, well, you see:

I wasn't always feeling it. Trying to track exactly why I felt this way has been tough. I'm willing to admit it could have been burnout (or something adjacent to it) since Camp Nano began right on the heels of the end of the school year, and I had just finished the whirlwind of writing The Queen of Lies in a month, a Thing That Happened that we may never understand. Maybe I started planning too early and the passion had faded since the height of my enthusiasm as I plotted it out. Idk. Maybe it was being on vacation, constantly being around people and having limited time to myself to really feel the story and the words and the everything. Idk.

The romantic tension isn't there. And this one hurts, because I (personally, as someone who is actually really new to writing romantic tension lol) think I did this really well in TQOL, so what's different here? (Aside from diff characters, diff story, okay I get it, you know what I mean.)

I was distracted. And this one is purely my fault. I was editing chapters of TQOL for posting throughout this time, too, and even though it takes a different kind of brainpower, it was often the task that called to me more.

Overall:

So, I'm SUPER proud of myself for achieving my Camp Nano goal of 31,000 words (1000 words/day) on July 28. But I kind of wonder if maybe it wasn't quite the right time to write this story.

We'll see how the last three days of July go (I want them badges, dang it), but the true test will be in August, when I have no goal set for myself. Will I focus on the finally finishing Book 1 and letting humans read it? Will I just work on TQOL? Will angsty heist wip rise again? Or will the passion for Book 2 (which I was SO EXCITED TO WRITE) return the moment the daily word goal is gone? (lol what a joke we all know I'm gonna write Will's POV chapters for TQOL.)

Thanks for reading this pointless ramble.

#camp nanowrimo #camp nano #book 2 #writing #editing #word count goals #writing reflection #this is a big ol' ramble read at your own risk

[vex-verlain]

If you happened to spot the MFPE update today and wondered what the “unforeseen circumstances IRL” were:

CW: I don't even know at this point, so just tread carefully. Discussion of death, genetics, medical diagnoses, refusing treatment, etc.

My 52-year-old mother has an aneurysm lurking in her brain. We found out near the beginning of May, and it feels like I have lost an entire month.¹

My mom is only 16 years older than I am. The advantage of having a young mother was supposed to be that she would be here longer. But her father died at age 42 due to a ruptured aneurysm in his anterior cerebral artery. And we know that my mom has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder that can—among other things—weaken arterial walls.

The aneurysm will rupture. It is a genetic certainty, a dark inevitability, the final inheritance we have been quietly expecting.² The diagnosis of EDS we both share has only solidified this feeling, though we did not know until 2014 that any of our family had the disorder.

“But aren’t aneurysms usually treatable?” you may be asking. Yes, they often are. Yet even now, a month later, we do not know whether hers is treatable. Insurance has denied the follow-up scan at least twice now on a technicality, saying that the doctor’s office failed to provide all the necessary information. And usually, by now, I would have stepped in—I am an expert at dealing with insurance companies, after all—but she doesn’t want me to. Because regardless of the results, my mother is fairly certain she doesn’t want to do anything about the ticking time-bomb in her head.

Her quality of life has declined since 2018 when she suddenly could no longer work (my mother not able to work—the woman who was the textbook definition of a workaholic, the woman who was always busy and always building and always doing). She is terrified of being trapped in a body that brings her nothing but misery, and I do not blame her for it, because my own outlook is much the same.

(...But I am selfish and I don’t want her to die.)

I have been blessed with the perfect mother. She is quirky and amazing and mellow and hilarious and cute and hardworking and kind. She is sanity and stability and comfort and strength and the epitome of everything good and wonderful in this world. In my 35 years on this planet, I have been angry with her once.

I suppose I am gearing up to be angry with her a second time. Because anger is going to be the only thing that can mask the enormous grief I will feel when she is gone.

Anyway. I have made fic writing commitments through July, and those are my only fandom priority at this point. The MFPE is on the back burner, but I will try to get the postcards in the queue sent out to their recipients before the end of June. I know we didn't do our customary Mental Health Month event and I'm sad to say that Rebel and I may not have the spoons to do Holiday Cheer for 2023, either. If we do, it will be announced on on Tumblr (MFPE) and Dreamwidth (MFPE + Fandom Calendar).

FYI, I'm occasionally on Tumblr mindlessly reblogging, but I keep up better with my Dreamwidth reading page.

¹ I don’t believe I’m disassociating. But I have been reading constantly so that I do not have to think. (Fandom is saving my life once again. I read over 2.9 million words of fic in May.)

² Since I was a child, I have never really expected to live past age 60, due to my observations of my family’s longevity. But for some reason I was expecting my mom to be here until I was at least 50. (Hah—apparently I did not absorb the message of Proverbs 27:1 after all, despite the fact I recited it nearly every other Sunday [the KJV, of course] at my paternal grandfather’s cult gospel hall.)

#this is a vex original post

[blu-engineer]

cool dice [heart]

ok here i go!

Team Fortress 2 is a 2007 multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 Team Fortress mod for Quake and its 1999 remake, Team Fortress Classic. The game was released in October 2007 as part of The Orange Box for Windows and the Xbox 360, and ported to the PlayStation 3 in December 2007. It was released as a standalone game for Windows in April 2008, and updated to support Mac OS X in June 2010 and Linux in February 2013. It is distributed online through Valve's digital retailer Steam, with Electronic Arts managing retail and console editions.

Players join one of two teams—RED or BLU—and choose one of nine character classes to play as, with game modes including capture the flag and king of the hill. Development was led by John Cook and Robin Walker, the developers of the original Team Fortress mod. Team Fortress 2 was announced in 1998 under the name Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms. Initially, the game had more realistic, militaristic visuals and gameplay, but this changed over the protracted nine years of development. After Valve released no information for six years, Team Fortress 2 regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other entries. Finally released on the Source game engine in 2007, Team Fortress 2 would preserve much of the core class-based gameplay of its predecessors while featuring an overhauled, cartoon-like visual style influenced by the works of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, alongside an increased focus on the visual and verbal characterization of its playable classes and what the developers have described as a 1960s spy movie aesthetic.

Team Fortress 2 has received critical acclaim for its art direction, gameplay, humor, and use of character in a wholly multiplayer game, and since its release has been referred to as one of the greatest video games ever created. The game continues to receive official Valve server support as of January 2023, in addition to new content being released on a seasonal basis in the form of submissions made through the Steam Workshop. In June 2011, the game became free-to-play, supported by microtransactions for in-game cosmetics. A 'drop system' was also added and refined, allowing free-to-play users to periodically receive in-game equipment and items. Though the game has had an unofficial competitive scene since its release, both support for official competitive play through ranked matchmaking and an overhauled casual experience were added in July 2016. Since early 2020, the official Valve servers have seen an influx of bot accounts using cheat software, often inhibiting legitimate gameplay.

Gameplay

A group of RED players attack a BLU base on the map "Well".

In most game modes, BLU and RED compete for a combat-based objective. Players can choose to play as one of nine character classes in these teams, each with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and weapon sets. In order to accomplish objectives efficiently, a balance of these classes is required due to how these strengths and weaknesses interact with each other in a team-based environment. Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained, that being one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one melee weapon. The game was released with six official maps, although over one hundred maps have since been included in subsequent updates, including community-created maps. When players choose a gamemode for the first time, an introductory video is played, showing how to complete its objectives. During matches, the Administrator, voiced by Ellen McLain, announces events over loudspeakers. The player limit for one match is 16 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and 24 on the Windows edition. However, in 2008, the Windows edition was updated to include a server variable that allows for up to 32 players.

Team Fortress 2 is the first of Valve's multiplayer games to provide detailed statistics for individual players, such as the total amount of time spent playing as each class, most points obtained, and most objectives completed in a single life. Persistent statistics tell the player how they are performing in relation to these statistics, such as if a player comes close to their record for the damage inflicted in a round. Team Fortress 2 also features numerous achievements for carrying out certain tasks, such as achieving a certain number of kills or completing a round within a certain time. Sets of class-specific achievements have been added in updates, which can award weapons to the player upon completion. This unlockable system has since been expanded into a random drop system, whereby players can also obtain items simply by playing the game.

Game modes

Core game modes

Team Fortress 2 contains five core game modes.

Attack/Defend (A/D) is a timed game mode in which the BLU team's goal is to capture RED control points. The number of control points varies between maps, and the points must be captured by the BLU team in respective order. To capture a control point, a player must stand on it for a certain amount of time. This process can be sped up by more players on one team capturing a single point. Once a control point is captured by the BLU team, it cannot be re-captured by the RED team. The RED team's job is to prevent the BLU team from capturing all the control points before the time limit ends. Once a point is captured, the time limit will extend.

Capture the Flag (CtF) is a mode which revolves around the BLU and RED teams attempting to steal and capture the opposing team's flag, represented in-game as an intelligence briefcase. At the same time, both teams must defend their own intelligence. When the intelligence is dropped by the carrier – either by dying or dropping it manually, it will stay on the ground for 1 minute before returning to its original location if it is not picked up again. A team's intelligence can only be carried by the opposing team. The first team to capture the enemy's intelligence three times wins.

Control Points (CP) is a timed game mode where there are several control points placed around the map, with 3 or 5 control points in total depending on the map. These are referred to as "3CP" and "5CP," respectively. The game will start off with only the middle control point being available for capture, with the other control points split equally among both teams. Once this middle control point is captured, a team can begin capturing the enemy team's points in respective order. The time limit is extended on the capture of a control point by either team. For a team to win, they must capture all the control points within the time limit.

King of the Hill (KOTH) is a timed game mode that contains a single control point at the middle of the map that can be captured by both the RED and BLU teams. Upon capturing the control point, a team-specific timer starts counting down but stops upon the point being captured by the opposing team. The first team to have their timer count down to 0 wins.

Payload (PL) is a timed game mode where the BLU team must push an explosive cart along a track, while the RED team must prevent the cart from reaching their base. To push the cart, at least one BLU player must stay within the range of the cart, which will dispense health and ammo every few seconds. The cart's speed will increase as more BLU players attempt to push it. Payload maps have multiple "checkpoints" along the track. Once these checkpoints are captured, they may adjust the spawn locations of both teams. Capturing a checkpoint will also increase the time limit. If the cart is not pushed by the BLU team for 20 seconds, it will begin to move back to the last captured checkpoint, where it will stop. The RED team can stop the cart from being pushed by being within range of it. The RED team wins by preventing the cart from reaching the final checkpoint before time runs out.

Alternative game modes

There are several alternative game modes in Team Fortress 2. These modes consist of a small number of maps and detach from the core game modes in some way.

Arena is a special game mode in which players do not respawn upon death. A team can win either by eliminating all opposing players, or by claiming a single capture point that opens after a certain time has elapsed. This mode is currently unavailable through matchmaking, but is still accessible through community servers.

Mannpower is a mode in which players have access to a grappling hook and assorted power-ups laid around the map that grant unique abilities. While not bound to any specific mode, all current official Mannpower maps use a variation of Capture the Flag. In Mannpower's variation of Capture the Flag, both teams have an intelligence flag, and the first team to capture the enemy's intelligence ten times wins. The mode is heavily inspired by the Quake mod, Threewave CTF, a mod created by former Valve employee David Kirsch.

Medieval Mode is a mode in which players are restricted to using melee and support weapons, with certain exceptions for medieval-themed projectile weapons. While not bound to any specific mode, the only official Medieval Mode map uses a 3CP variation of Attack/Defend. If Medieval Mode is enabled on a map, select phrases spoken by players in the in-game text chat will be replaced with more thematic variants, such as "hello" being replaced with "well meteth".

PASS Time is a unique timed game mode inspired by rugby, developed by Valve, Bad Robot Interactive, and Escalation Studios. Three unique goals (the Run-In, Throw-In, and Bonus Goals) are placed on each team's side of the map. A single ball called the JACK will spawn at the center of the map, and players must pick it up and carry it to the opposing team's side. Players can score a goal by either carrying the JACK to a Run-In Goal or by throwing the JACK through the Throw-In Goal. Three goals can be scored by throwing the JACK through the Bonus Goal, which is much more difficult to score. To win, a team must either score five goals, or have the most goals when the timer runs out.

Payload Race, like Payload, has the main objective being to push a cart to a final checkpoint. Unlike Payload, both the RED and BLU teams are fighting to push their cart to the final checkpoint. There is only one checkpoint for each track, and there is no time limit. The team to reach their checkpoint first wins.

Player Destruction is a community-made game mode in which a player's death causes a pickup to appear. The first team to collect a set number of pickups and deliver them to a drop-off point wins the game. The players on each team with the most pickups are highlighted for everyone to see, and gain a passive healing effect for themselves and any nearby teammates.

Special Delivery is a mode similar to Capture the Flag, but there is only one neutral briefcase that can be picked up both the RED and BLU teams. Upon a team picking up the briefcase, the opposing team will be unable to pick up the briefcase until it has been dropped for 45 seconds and respawns as a neutral briefcase. A team wins by carrying the briefcase onto a loading platform, which will gradually rise until the platform reaches its peak.

Territorial Control consists of several control points spread out across a single map. Like Control Points, each point can be captured by either the RED or BLU teams. Unlike Control Points, only two points are accessible at a single time. Upon a team's successful capture of a point, the "stage" ends and the accessible capture points change. When a team only has control of a single control point, they are blocked from capturing the opposing team's control point and the team must wait until the time limit is up and the accessible capture points change. A team wins by capturing all the control points.

Other game modes

These modes are not categorized with the other modes, and instead have their own separate sections in the game.

Halloween Mode is a special mode that is enabled during the Halloween season, and allows the players access to more than 20 maps, Halloween-exclusive cosmetics, and challenges. For example, Halloween 2012 included a difficult Mann vs. Machine mission involving destroying more than 800 enemy forces. Owing to popular demand of the Halloween events, Valve later added the Full Moon event, an event that triggers around every full moon phase throughout the year, which allows players to equip Halloween-exclusive cosmetics. In 2013, Valve introduced an item called Eternaween, and upon use, allows players of a specific server to use Halloween-exclusive cosmetics for 2 hours.

Mann vs Machine, also known as MvM, is a cooperative game mode where players must defend their base from waves of robots modeled after all nine playable classes, and slow-moving tanks carrying bombs. Robots and tanks drop a currency referred to as Credits upon their death, which players can use to buy upgrades for themselves or their weapons. The players win upon successfully defending their base from the bomb until the last wave. A paid version of this game mode called "Mann Up" is also available, where players buy tickets to play "Tours of Duty", a collection of missions with the chance to win unique cosmetics and weapon skins upon completion.

Offline Practice Mode is just like any other multiplayer match, but it only consists of the player and bots. The number of bots, their difficulty, and the map can all be adjusted to a player's preference, though only a select amount of maps are available to play.

Training Mode exists to help new players get acquainted with basic controls, and teaches them the basics of four of the nine classes. It uses wooden dummies and bots to teach players the basic mechanics of classes and the game.

Competitive play

Team Fortress 2 is played competitively, through multiple leagues. The North American league, ESEA, supports a paid Team Fortress 2 league, with $42,000 in prizes for the top teams in 2017. While formalized competitive gameplay is very different from normal Team Fortress 2, it offers an environment with a much higher level of teamwork than in public servers. Most teams use voice chat to communicate, and use a combination of strategy, communication, and mechanical skill to win against other teams. Community-run competitive leagues also tend to feature restrictions such as item bans and class limits. These leagues are often supported by Valve via in-game medals (which are submitted via the Steam Workshop) and announcements on the official blog.

In April 2015, Valve announced that a dedicated competitive mode would be added to Team Fortress 2, utilizing skill-based matchmaking; closed beta testing began in the following year. The competitive mode was added in the "Meet Your Match" update, released on July 7, 2016. Ranked matches are played six-vs-six, with players ranked in thirteen tiers based on win/losses and an assessment of their skills. Ranked matchmaking will balance players based on their tiers and rating. A similar matchmaking approach has been added for casual games for matches of 12-vs-12 players. In order to join competitive matchmaking, players must have associated their Steam account with the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, as well as having a Team Fortress 2 "premium account", which is unlocked by either having bought the game before it went free-to-play or by having made an in-game item purchase since.

Formats

Team Fortress 2 is played in a variety of different formats, which dictate the maximum size and composition of a team and can drastically change the impact of a single player's gameplay or choice of class. The two most basic formats consist of 12v12 and 6v6 ("Sixes"), the two being used on official Valve servers for casual and competitive modes respectively with no additional limitations. Most competitive leagues host Sixes but include limits on certain classes and weapons to preserve traditional, skill-based playstyles, for example limiting the allowed amount of medics or demomen to one on either team or banning certain movement-enhancing weapons from use. Other popular formats include "Highlander", a 9v9 format with a limit of one player per each of the nine classes, as well as a Sixes-inspired 7v7 variant thereof known as "Prolander" to allow for strategically switching classes during a competitive game.

Characters and setting

From left to right: Pyro, Engineer, Spy, Heavy, Sniper, Scout, Soldier, Demoman, and Medic

Team Fortress 2 features nine playable classes, evenly split and categorized into "Offense", "Defense", and "Support". Each class has strengths and weaknesses and must work with other classes to be efficient, encouraging strategy and teamwork. Each class has at least three default weapons: a primary weapon, secondary weapon, and melee weapon. Some classes have additional slots for PDAs.

Offense

The Scout (Nathan Vetterlein) is an American baseball fan and street runner from Boston, Massachusetts who practiced running to "beat his mad dog siblings to the fray." He is a fast, agile character, who is armed by default with a scattergun, a pistol, and an aluminum baseball bat. The Scout can double jump, and counts as two people when capturing control points, thus doubling the capture speed, and when pushing the Payload cart.

The Soldier (Rick May) is an American jingoistic patriot from the Midwest who stylizes himself as a military man despite having never served in any branch of the Armed Forces. The Soldier is armed by default with a rocket launcher, a shotgun, and a folding shovel. He is both the second-slowest class in the game and the class with the second-highest health, after the Heavy Weapons Guy. The Soldier can use his rocket launcher to rocket jump to other locations at the cost of some health.

The Pyro (Dennis Bateman) is a pyromaniac of unknown gender and origin who wears a fire-retardant suit and a voice-muffling gas mask. By default, the Pyro is armed with a flamethrower, a shotgun, and a fire axe. In addition to simply flames, the Pyro's flamethrower can also produce a blast of compressed air that repels any nearby enemies and projectiles, and extinguishes burning teammates. The Pyro is deluded and believes they are living in a utopian fantasy world referred to as "Pyroland".

Defense

The Demoman (Gary Schwartz) is a Black Scottish, one-eyed, alcoholic demolitions expert from Ullapool, Scotland. Armed by default with a timed-fuse grenade launcher, a remotely-detonated "stickybomb" launcher, and a glass bottle of scrumpy, the Demoman can use his explosives to provide indirect fire and set traps. Similar to the Soldier's rocket jump, the Demoman can use his stickybomb launcher to "sticky jump" at the cost of some health.

The Heavy Weapons Guy, or simply the Heavy (Gary Schwartz), is a large Russian man from the Dzhugdzhur Mountains of the USSR. He is heavy in stature and accent, and is obsessed with firepower. He is the slowest class, and can both sustain and deal substantial amounts of damage. His default weapons consist of a minigun that he affectionately refers to as "Sasha", a shotgun, and his fists.

The Engineer (Grant Goodeve) is an American inventor, engineer, intellectual, and "good ol' boy" from Bee Cave, Texas. The Engineer can build structures to support his team: a sentry gun for defending key points, a health and ammunition dispenser, and a pair of teleporter modules (one entrance and one exit). The Engineer is armed by default with a shotgun, a pistol, a wrench that functions as both a melee weapon and to repair and upgrade his buildings, and two separate PDAs; one to erect his buildings and one to remotely destroy them.

Support

The Medic (Robin Atkin Downes) is a German doctor from Stuttgart with little regard for the Hippocratic Oath. He is equipped with a "Medi Gun" that can restore health to injured teammates. When healing teammates, the Medi Gun progressively builds an "ÜberCharge" meter, which, when fully charged, can be activated to provide the Medic and his patient with temporary invulnerability. The Medic is also equipped with a syringe gun and a bonesaw for situations in which he must fight without his teammates' protection. He keeps doves as pets, one of which is named Archimedes.

The Sniper (John Patrick Lowrie) is an ocker assassin born in New Zealand and raised in the Australian outback, equipped by default with a laser-sighted sniper rifle to shoot enemies from afar. Depending on how the player aims and fires, he can cause severe damage or an instant kill with a headshot. By default, he also carries a submachine gun and a kukri for close combat.

The Spy (Dennis Bateman) is a French covert operative whose equipment is designed for stealth and infiltration, including a cloaking device disguised as a wristwatch, an electronic sapper used to disable and destroy enemy Engineers' buildings, and a device hidden in his cigarette case that enables him to disguise himself as any player on either team. He is armed with a revolver and a butterfly knife, able to use the latter to instantly kill enemies by stabbing them in the back. He is the only character who does not wear any clothing in his team's bright color or a patch denoting his specialty, instead preferring a balaclava, business suit, necktie, and gloves in muted team-color hues. In the extended media it is revealed that the Spy is the father of the Scout.

Non-playable characters

Other characters include the Administrator (voiced by Ellen McLain), an unseen announcer who provides information about time limits and objectives to players, and her assistant Miss Pauling (Ashly Burch). The cast has expanded with Halloween updates, including the characters of the "Horseless Headless Horsemann" and Monoculus (Gary Schwartz). 2012 and 2013 saw the addition of Merasmus, the Bombinomicon, and Redmond, Blutarch, Zepheniah, and Gray Mann (the first three all played by Nolan North). Previous unused voicelines recorded by North were later used for Horseless Headless Horsemann seen in the 2019 map "Laughter" and a jack-o'-lantern resting atop the Payload cart in the 2020 map "Bloodwater". The character Davy Jones (voiced by Calvin Kipperman) made an appearance in the 2018 map "Cursed Cove".

In the video announcement for the "Jungle Inferno" update, Mann Co. CEO Saxton Hale, a hypermasculine Australian adventurer, is voiced by JB Blanc.

Setting

Logo and motto of the fictional Mann Co.

Although Team Fortress 2 is designed as an open-ended multiplayer experience without an active storyline, the game and additional material nonetheless feature a wider narrative centered around the fictional Mann Co., a large shipping and manufacturing company led by CEO Saxton Hale. The main PvP gamemodes are set during the "Gravel Wars", a conflict between the rival heirs Redmond "Red" and Blutarch "Blu" Mann for which the nine playable characters were hired out as mercenaries. Gray Mann later emerges as the third competitor, killing the other two brothers and forcing Hale to rehire the mercenaries to protect Mann Co. from Gray's robot army in the Mann vs Machine cooperative horde shooter mode.

Development

Origins

The original Team Fortress was developed by the Australian team TF Software, comprising Robin Walker and John Cook, as a free mod for the 1996 PC game Quake. In 1998, Walker and Cook were employed by Valve, which had just released its first game, Half-Life. Valve began developing Team Fortress 2 as an expansion pack for Half-Life using Valve's GoldSrc engine, and gave a release date for the end of the year. In 1999, Valve released Team Fortress Classic, a port of the original Team Fortress, as a free Half-Life mod. Team Fortress Classic was developed using the publicly available Half-Life software development kit as an example to the community and industry of its flexibility. Team Fortress 2 originally featured a realistic visual style.

Unlike Team Fortress, Valve originally planned Team Fortress 2 to have a modern war aesthetic. It would feature innovations including a command hierarchy with a Commander class, parachute drops over enemy territory, and networked voice communication. The Commander class played similarly to a real-time strategy game, with the player viewing the game from a bird's-eye perspective and issuing orders to players and AI-controlled soldiers.

Team Fortress 2 was first shown at E3 1999 as Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of Arms, where Valve showcased new technologies including parametric animation, which blended animations for smoother, more lifelike movement, and Intel's multi-resolution mesh technology, which dynamically reduced the detail of distant on-screen elements to improve performance. The game earned several awards including Best Online Game and Best Action Game.

In mid-2000, Valve announced that Team Fortress 2 had been delayed for a second time. They attributed the delay to development switching to its new in-house engine, Source. Following the announcement, Valve released no news on the game for six years. Walker and Cook worked on various other Valve projects; Walker was project lead on Half-Life 2: Episode One and Cook worked on Valve's content distribution platform Steam. Team Fortress 2 became a prominent example of vaporware, a long-anticipated game that had seen years of development, and was often mentioned alongside another much-delayed game, Duke Nukem Forever. Walker said that Valve built three or four different versions of Team Fortress 2 before settling on their final design. Shortly before the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi confirmed that Team Fortress 2 was still in development.

Final design and release

Valve reintroduced Team Fortress 2 at the July 2006 EA Summer Showcase event. Departing from the realistic visual design of other Valve games, Team Fortress 2 features a cartoon-like visual style influenced by 20th-century commercial illustrations and the artwork of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell, achieved through Gooch shading. The game debuted with the Source engine's new dynamic lighting, shadowing and soft particle technologies alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two. It was the first game to implement the Source engine's new Facial Animation 3 features.

Valve abandoned the realistic style when it became impossible to reconcile it with the unrealistic gameplay, with opposing armies having constructed elaborate bases directly next to each other. The Commander class was abandoned as other players would simply refuse to follow their orders.

Valve designed each character, team, and equipped weapon to be visually distinct, even at range; for example, the coloring draws attention to the chest area, bringing focus on the equipped weapon. The voices for each of the classes were based on imagining what people from the 1960s would expect the classes to have sounded like, according to writer Chet Faliszek.

The map design has an "evil genius" theme with archetypical spy fortresses, concealed within inconspicuous buildings such as industrial warehouses and farms to give plausibility to their close proximities; these bases are usually separated by a neutrally themed space. The bases hide exaggerated super weapons such as laser cannons, nuclear warheads, and missile launch facilities, taking the role of objectives. The maps have little visual clutter and stylized, almost impressionistic modeling, to allow enemies to be spotted more easily. The impressionistic design approach also affects textures, which are based on photos that are filtered and improved by hand, giving them a tactile quality and giving Team Fortress 2 its distinct look. The bases are designed to let players immediately know where they are. RED bases use warm colors, natural materials, and angular shapes, while BLU bases use cool colors, industrial materials, and orthogonal shapes.

During the July 2006 Electronic Arts press conference, Valve revealed that Team Fortress 2 would ship as the multiplayer component of The Orange Box. A conference trailer showcasing all nine of the classes demonstrated for the first time the game's whimsical new visual style. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, said that the team's goal was to create "the best-looking and best-playing class-based multiplayer game". A beta release of the entire game was made on Steam on September 17, 2007, for customers who had pre-purchased The Orange Box, who had activated their Black Box coupon, which was included with the ATI HD 2900XT Graphics cards, and for members of Valve's Cyber Café Program.

Team Fortress 2 was released on October 10, 2007, both as a standalone product via Steam and at retail stores as part of The Orange Box compilation pack, priced at each gaming platform's recommended retail price. The Orange Box also contains Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Portal. Valve offered The Orange Box at a ten percent discount for those who pre-purchased it via Steam before the October 10 release, as well as the opportunity to participate in the beta test.

Post-release

Since the release of Team Fortress 2, Valve has continually released free updates and patches through Steam for Windows, OS X, and Linux users; though most patches are used for improving the reliability of the software or to tweak gameplay changes, several patches have been used to introduce new features and gameplay modes, and are often associated with marketing materials such as comics or videos offered on the Team Fortress 2 website; this blog is also used to keep players up to date with the ongoing developments in Team Fortress 2. As of July 2012, each class has been given a dedicated patch that provides new weapons, items, and other gameplay changes; these class patches typically included the release of the class's "Meet the Team" video. Other major patches have included new gameplay modes including the Payload, Payload Race, Training, Highlander, Medieval, and Mann vs. Machine modes. Themed patches have also been released, such as a yearly Halloween-themed event called "Scream Fortress", where players may obtain unique items available only during a set period around the holiday. Other new features have given players the ability to craft items within the game from other items, trade items with other players, purchase in-game items through funds in Steam, and save and edit replay videos that can be posted to YouTube.

Valve has released tools to allow users to create maps, weapons, and cosmetic items through a contribution site; the most popular are added as official content for the game. This approach has subsequently created the basis for the Steam Workshop functionality of the software client. In one case, more than fifty users from the content-creation community worked with Valve to release an official content update in May 2013, with all of the content generated by these players. Valve reported that as of June 2013, over $10 million has been paid back to over 400 community members that have helped to contribute content to the game, including a total of $250,000 for the participants in the May 2013 patch. To help promote community-made features, Valve has released limited-time events, such as the "Gun Mettle" or "Invasion" events in the second half of 2015, also including the "Tough Break" update in December 2015, in which players can spend a small amount of money which is paid back to the community developers for the ability to gain unique items offered while playing on community-made maps during the event.

Development of the new content had been confirmed for the Xbox 360, while development for the PlayStation 3 was deemed "uncertain" by Valve. However, the PlayStation 3 version of Team Fortress 2 received an update that repaired some of the issues found within the game, ranging from graphical issues to online connectivity problems; this update was included in a patch that also repaired issues found in the other games within The Orange Box. The updates released on PC and planned for later release on Xbox 360 include new official maps and game modes, as well as tweaks to classes and new weapons that can be unlocked through the game's achievement system. The developers attempted to negotiate with Xbox 360 developer Microsoft to keep the Xbox 360 releases of these updates free, but Microsoft refused and Valve announced that they would release bundles of several updates together to justify the price. Because of the cost of patching during the seventh generation of video game consoles, Valve has been unable to provide additional patches to the Xbox 360 version since 2009, effectively cancelling development of the console versions. On March 29, 2023, the servers for the PlayStation 3 version of Team Fortress 2 went offline.

On June 10, 2010, Team Fortress 2 was released for OS X, shortly after the release of Steam for OS X. The release was teased by way of an image similar to early iPod advertising, showing a dark silhouette of the Heavy on a bright green background, his Sandvich highlighted in his hand. Virtual earbuds, which can be worn when playing on either OS X or Windows once acquired, were given to players playing the game on OS X before June 14, though the giveaway period was later extended to August 16.

On November 6, 2012, Valve announced the release of Team Fortress 2 for Linux as part of a restricted beta launch of Steam on the platform. This initial release of Steam and Team Fortress 2 was targeted at Ubuntu with support for other distributions planned for the future. Later, on December 20, 2012, Valve opened up access to the beta, including Team Fortress 2, to all Steam users without the need to wait for an invitation. On February 14, 2013, Valve announced the full release of Team Fortress 2 for Linux. From then to March 1, anyone who played the game on Linux would receive a free Tux penguin, which can be equipped in-game.

Team Fortress 2 was announced in March 2013 to be the first game to officially support the Oculus Rift, a consumer-grade virtual reality headset. A patch will be made to the client to include a "VR Mode" that can be used with the headset on any public server.

In April 2020, source code for 2018 versions Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive leaked online. This created fears that malicious users would use the code to make remote code execution software and attack servers or players' computers. Several fan projects halted development until the impact of the leak could be determined. Valve confirmed the legitimacy of the code leaks, but stated they do not believe it affects servers and clients running the latest official builds of either game.

On May 1, 2020, shortly following the death of the voice actor of the Soldier, Rick May, Valve released an update to Team Fortress 2, adding a tribute to his voicework as the Soldier in the form of a new main menu theme (a rendition of Taps), as well as statues of the Soldier saluting, added to most of the official in-game maps. These statues all featured a commemorative plaque dedicated to May and lasted through the end of the month. One of these statues, appearing on the map "cp_granary", the setting of the "Meet the Soldier" short video, was made permanent in an August 21 update.

Free-to-play

On June 23, 2011, Valve announced that Team Fortress 2 would become free to play. Unique equipment including weapons and outfits would be available as microtransactions through the in-game store, tied through Steam. Walker stated that Valve would continue to provide new features and items free. Walker stated that Valve had learned that the more players Team Fortress 2 had, the more value it had for each player.

The move came a week after Valve introduced several third-party free-to-play games to Steam and stated they were working on a new free-to-play game. Within nine months of becoming free to play, Valve reported that revenue from Team Fortress 2 had increased by a factor of twelve.

Bot accounts and "#SaveTF2"

Since early 2020, Team Fortress 2 has endured large amounts of bot accounts entering Valve casual matchmaking servers. Though bot accounts had been an issue in Team Fortress 2 for some time prior to this, multiple sources began to report a spike in activity for these bot accounts. The activities of these bots have included forcibly crashing servers, spamming copypastas in the text chats of matches, assuming other players' usernames, and the usage of aimbots. Additionally, some bots were programmed taking advantage of a TF2 source code leak that Valve had confirmed in April 2020. A common bot that exploited this leak used the Sniper class, allowing them to exploit the "headshot" mechanic to instantly kill enemy players from across the map regardless of direction they were aiming.

On June 16, 2020, Valve responded to this by restricting accounts that have not paid for Mann Co. Store items or purchased Team Fortress 2 prior to the game becoming free-to-play from the use of both voice and text chat in game. On June 24, all players were restricted from changing their Steam username while connected to any Valve matchmaking server or any server with display name updates disabled.The change was implemented to prevent bots from changing their display name to impersonate legitimate players, which allowed the bots to avoid being kicked due to the confusion caused by their duplicate name. On voting, changes were also introduced to prevent bots from spamming this functionality in an attempt to prevent real players from using kicking bots.

Approximately one year later, on June 22, 2021, additional changes were implemented to discourage bot activity. Another YouTuber, Toofty, posted a video that provided input from several of those that were behind the bot problem; reasons given ranged from grieving against Valve developers to simply finding the disruption fun to watch. These are issues normally dealt with by a game's developer but Valve's lack of response allowed their activities to go unchecked for two years.

These issues remained ongoing as of May 2022, prompting YouTuber SquimJim to uploaded a video to his YouTube channel encouraging his viewers to express their grievances to Valve and news outlets through letters. After receiving over a hundred news tips, IGN journalist Rebekah Valentine wrote of her experience with trying to play the game. She remarked that the game was "literally unplayable" on official Valve servers, forcing many players to join unofficial community servers instead. She also said that some bots would "...spam chat with homophobic or racist remarks, outside links, or just plain rude or obnoxious messages". In response to these issues, Robin Atkin Downes, voice actor for the Medic, also reached out to his contacts at Valve for a response, and encouraged fans to continue making their voices heard in a "peaceful, passionate manner".

On May 26, 2022, members of the TF2 community held a "peaceful protest" on Twitter using the hashtag #savetf2 with the goal of getting a response from Valve regarding the issues. With the hashtag trending on Twitter, Valve responded, saying "TF2 community, we hear you! We love this game and know you do, too. We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things."

Across June and July 2022, Valve released a number of patches to help players deal with the bot issue, such as improving the game's vote kicking system so that both teams can vote to kick players accused of abusive behavior at the same time. Valve took down the servers for five minutes in August 2022, during which a number of bans were issued via Valve Anti-Cheat to players that were known to be running these bots, effectively ending the problem. Valve's efforts helped to increase the player count in the months that followed.

On February 9, 2023, a blog post was shared on the official website, saying that a new "update-sized" update was coming to the game. The update will be released sometime around summer and will use community-made content submitted before May 1st. However, shortly after the post was made, Valve silently changed the message to say "holiday-sized update" instead. The update was released on July 13, 2023.

Tie-in materials

Beginning in May 2007, to promote the game, Valve began a ten-video advertisement series referred to as "Meet the Team". Constructed using Source Filmmaker and using more detailed character models, the series consists of short videos introducing each class and displaying their personalities and abilities. The videos are usually interspersed with simulated gameplay footage. The format of the videos varies greatly; the first installment, "Meet the Heavy", depicts him being interviewed, while "Meet the Soldier" shows the Soldier giving a misinformed lecture on Sun Tzu to a row of severed BLU heads as if they were raw recruits. He claims Sun Tzu "invented" fighting, then further confuses this claim with the story of Noah and his Ark. The videos were generally released through Valve's official YouTube channels, though in one notable exception, the "Meet the Spy" video was leaked onto YouTube, several days before its intended release.

Early "Meet the Team" videos were based on the audition scripts used for the voice actors for each of the classes; the "Meet the Heavy" script is nearly word-for-word a copy of the Heavy's script. Later videos, such as "Meet the Sniper", contain more original material. The videos have been used by Valve to help improve the technology for the game, specifically improving the facial animations, as well as a source of new gameplay elements, such as the Heavy's "Sandvich" or the Sniper's "Jarate". The final video in the Meet the Team series, "Meet the Pyro", was released on June 27, 2012. Gabe Newell has stated that Valve used the "Meet the Team" series as a means of exploring the possibilities of making feature film movies themselves. He believes that only game developers themselves have the ability to bring the interesting parts of a game to a film, and suggested that this would be the only manner through which a Half-Life-based movie would be made. A fifteen-minute short, "Expiration Date", was released on June 17, 2014. The shorts were made using Source Filmmaker, which was officially released and has been in open beta as of July 11, 2012.

In more recent major updates to the game, Valve has presented teaser images and online comic books that expand the fictional continuity and characters of Team Fortress 2, as part of the expansion of the "cross-media property", according to Newell. In August 2009, Valve brought aboard American comic writer Michael Avon Oeming to teach Valve "about what it means to have a character and do character development in a comic format, how you do storytelling". "Loose Canon", a comic associated with the Engineer Update, establishes the history of RED versus BLU as a result of the last will and testament of Zepheniah Mann in 1890, forcing his two bickering sons Blutarch and Redmond to vie for control of Zepheniah's lands between them; both have engineered ways of maintaining their mortality to the present, waiting to outlast the other while employing separate forces to try to wrest control of the land. This and other comics also establish other background characters such as Saxton Hale, the CEO of Mann Co., the company that provides the weapons for the two sides and was bequeathed to one of Hale's ancestors by Zepheniah, and the Administrator, the game's announcer, that watches over, encourages the RED/BLU conflict, and keeps each side from winning. The collected comics were published by Dark Horse Comics in Valve Presents: The Sacrifice and Other Steam-Powered Stories, a volume along with other comics created by Valve for Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead, and released in November 2011. Cumulative details in updates both in-game and on Valve's sites from 2010 through 2012 were part of a larger alternate reality game preceding the reveal of the Mann vs. Machine mode, which was revealed as a co-op mode on August 15, 2012.

Marketing and microtransactions

Valve had provided other promotions to draw players into the game. Valve has held weekends of free play for Team Fortress 2 before the game was made free-to-play. Through various updates, hats and accessories can be worn by any of the classes, giving players an ability to customize the look of their character, and extremely rare hats named "Unusuals" have particle effects attached to it and are only obtainable through opening "crates" or trading with other players. New weapons were added in updates to allow the player to choose a loadout and play style that best suits them.

Hats and weapons can be gained as a random drop, through the crafting/trading systems, or via cross-promotion: Limited-edition hats and weapons have been awarded for pre-ordering or gaining Achievements in other content from Steam, both from Valve or other third-party games such as Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, Worms Reloaded, Killing Floor, or Poker Night at the Inventory (which features the Heavy class as a character). According to Robin Walker, Valve introduced these additional hats as an indirect means for players to show status within the game or their affiliation with another game series simply by visual appearance.

The Pyro, Heavy, and Spy all function as a single playable character in the PC release of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. The Pyro, Medic, Engineer, and Heavy appear as playable characters in Dungeon of the Endless. The Pyro was added as a playable character to Killing Floor in 2010, along with appearing as a henchman in the 2021 game Evil Genius 2.

The game's first television commercial premiered during the first episode of the fifth season of The Venture Bros. in June 2013, featuring in-game accessories that were created with the help of Adult Swim.

Items and economy

In Team Fortress 2, players can trade with others for items such as weapons and cosmetics. This functionality was added in the 2010 Mann-Conomy Update, alongside being able to purchase items through an in-game store with real money. Operating largely through informal gray markets before the introduction of the official Steam Community Market, trading items made players susceptible to fraud.

Team Fortress 2 features an in-built item valuing system known as an item quality, assigned to a given instance of an item through a variety of different means and ranging from "Normal" items used as the stock weapons of each class, to "Unique" items used as the base obtainable items from the item drop or achievement systems, to far rarer qualities such as "Strange", "Unusual" or "Decorated" which feature special cosmetic effects that can immensely increase the market value of a given item; Strange items keep track of kills or other objectives achieved while equipped in-game while Unusual items feature item-specific particle effects, with both Strange and Unusual items being obtainable through rare crafting items or randomly obtained in place of the far more common Unique items. Decorated items are instead redeemed from rare items known as "war paints", awarding the player a weapon retextured with a pseudo-random cosmetic skin. Other qualities include "Vintage", awarded to older items to compensate for changes in obtainability, and "Collector's", created through combining 200 Unique instances of a single item.

Cosmetics and war paints are typically released through seasonal "cases" that award a random item from an associated collection unique to the given season of a specific year. Such items are additionally assigned a "grade" from "Civilian" to "Mercenary" to track their relative rarity within a collection.

Third-party websites such as the crowd-sourced backpack.tf have been created to aid users in trading, as well as track the value of in-game items. Crate keys, crafting metal, and in-game items such as an "earbuds" cosmetic (also referred to as "buds") are all used as currency due to their value.

The economy of Team Fortress 2 has received significant attention from economists, journalists, and users, due to its relative sophistication and the value of many of its in-game items. It has often been the subject of study. It operates on a system of supply and demand, barter, and scarcity value, akin to many real-world economies such as that of the United States. In 2011, it was reported that the economy of Team Fortress 2 was worth over US$50 million.

2019 Crate bug

On July 25, 2019, a bug was mistakenly included in an update - if players unboxed certain older series of Crates, they would be guaranteed to receive an Unusual-grade cosmetic item, compared to the usual 1% chance of obtaining an Unusual-grade cosmetic item from a Crate. This damaged the in-game economy, causing Unusual-grade cosmetic items able to be unboxed from these Crates to drop substantially in value. The incident has been nicknamed "The Crate Depression" (a pun on "Crate" and "The Great Depression") by fans. On July 26, 2019, this bug was fixed. Users who received any Unusual-grade cosmetic items from the bug were restricted from trading them, with Valve later announcing in an official statement on August 2, 2019 that the first Unusual-grade item any player received from the bug is tradable, with any subsequent Unusual-grade items being permanently untradeable and only usable by the player who received them.

Reception and legacy

See also: Critical reception of The Orange Box

Best Action Game (1999)

Best Online Multiplayer (1999)

IGN

Best Artistic Design (2007)

1UP.com

Best Multiplayer Experience (2007)

Best Artistic Direction (2007)

GameSpy

Best Multiplayer Game of the Year (2007)

Most Unique Art Style (2007)

Team Fortress 2 received widespread critical acclaim, with overall scores of 92/100 "universal acclaim" on Metacritic. Many reviewers praised the cartoon-styled graphics, and the resulting light-hearted gameplay, and the use of distinct personalities and appearances for the classes impressed a number of critics, with PC Gamer UK stating that "until now multiplayer games just haven't had it". Similarly, the game modes were received well, GamePro described the settings as focusing "on just simple fun", while several reviewers praised Valve for the map "Hydro" and its attempts to create a game mode with variety in each map. Additional praise was bestowed on the game's level design, game balance and teamwork promotion. Team Fortress 2 has received several awards individually for its multiplayer gameplay and its graphical style, as well as having received a number of "game of the year" awards as part of The Orange Box.

Although Team Fortress 2 was well received, its removal of class-specific grenades, a feature of previous Team Fortress incarnations, was controversial amongst reviewers. IGN expressed some disappointment over this, while conversely, PC Gamer UK approved, stating "grenades have been removed entirely—thank God". Some further criticism came over a variety of issues, such as the lack of extra content such as bots (although Valve has since added bots in an update), problems of players finding their way around maps due to the lack of a minimap, and some criticism of the Medic class being too passive and repetitive in his nature. The Medic class has since been re-tooled by Valve, giving it new unlockable weapons and abilities.

With the "Gold Rush Update" in April 2008, Valve had started to add fundamentals of character customization through unlockable weapons for each class, which continued in subsequent updates, most notably the "Sniper vs. Spy Update" in April 2009, which introduced unlockable cosmetic items into the game. Further updates expanded the number of weapons and cosmetics available, but also introduced monetization options, eventually allowing it to go free-to-play. To this end, Team Fortress 2 is considered one of the first games to offer games as a service, a feature which would become more prevalent in the 2010s.

Fans of Team Fortress Classic have made a total conversion mod of Team Fortress 2 titled Team Fortress 2 Classic, which seeks to marry gameplay elements and concepts from both entries alongside scrapped ideas from the sequel's development cycle and several entirely original additions.

#bluposting #team answers #ripplefields #prince #long post #its just the tf2 wikipedia article

[a-land-lacking-sleep]

Electric Trains are the Future Timeline

Since I plan for Electric Trains are the Future to cover multiple time periods with small time skips throughout, as well as small one-shots/smaller stories connected to it, I wanted to put a timeline together for it that I will update as the story goes on and more stories are added. Note: There are two time periods in this fic, but they are both tracked here.

Hisuian Era

October 28th, 1868 - Ingo appears in the Alabaster Icelands of Hisui, and becomes a rumored spirit.

November 7th, 1868 - Gaeric sees Ingo atop Avalugg’s Legacy.

November 9th, 1868 - Lady Sneasler arrives at the Pearl Settlement with a bloodied Ingo. Ingo receives medical attention, and after seeing that he is without memories or a home, he is welcomed into the Pearl Clan.

September 30th, 1869 - The Galaxy Expedition Team lands in Prelude Beach, and sets up a base camp in a natural valley. After a few weeks of discussion with Irida and Adaman, Galaxy Commander Denboku Kamado is allowed to settle his people permanently in what becomes Jubilife Village, and given leave to bring more settlers, as long as sovereign lands and treaties with the Clans are respected.

December 19th, 1869 - Shiki, the Warden of Lady Sneasler, passes away at age 87. After a week of mourning, Sneasler chooses Ingo, who Shiki had been helping get used to Clan life, as her new Warden. He is official indicted as Warden on December 29th.

January 13th, 1871 - The Space-Time Rift tears itself open above Mt. Coronet, sending both the Clans and Jubilife into a panic.

September 18th, 1871 - Hikari falls from the sky and takes the name Akari as she joins the Galaxy Expedition Team. The next night, after she is accepted into the Team, Lord Kleavor is sent into a Frenzy.

September 18th, 1871 to January 30th, 1871 - The events of Pokemon Legends Arceus take place. Akari, 15, frees the Nobles of their Frenzy, is banished  for a short time, and defeats Volo at the Spear Pillar.

March 18th, 1872 - Akari accidentally summons Elesa into Hisui, and Electric Trains are the Future begins. Akari spends the night talking with Giratina to plan how to fix her mistake, and Elesa and Ingo talk about their shared history.

March 19th, 1872 - Elesa begins work at Edith’s Hair Salon and with the Galaxy Security Corp. Later that day, Warden Ingo collapses due to the strain of his memories returning.

June 24th, 1872 - Warden Ingo’s coat is restored by Elesa.

July 2nd, 1872 - Akari completes the Hisuian Pokedex, evolving her last Pokemon and turning it in to Laventon. That night, she gets a text on her Arc Phone, summoning her to the Temple, and a new page adds itself to the Pokedex.

July 5th, 1872 - While investigating potential locations for a new Galaxy-funded Village, Warden Ingo falls from a cliff face. 

July 6th, 1872 - Warden Ingo is in critical but non-life threatening condition.

-

Modern Sinnoan/Unovan Era

August 18th, 2010 - Ingo and Emmet Grayn, 23, form the Battle Subway in Nimbasa City with the support of Champion Alder and League Official Palmer Walton. Ingo has been Head of the Unovan Transportation Authority for 4 months.

June 2012 to November 2012 - The events of Pokémon Black take place. Hilbert Blackmore, 14, bonds with Reshiram, the Dragon of Truth, and defeats N, the King of Team Plasma and trainer bonded to Zekrom, the Dragon of Ideals. Though inducted into the Hall of Fame, Hilbert refuses the position of Champion and leaves Unova to search for N.

October 17th, 2013 - Alder Begay, 56, steps down as the Unova League Champion after holding the position for 16 years. Iris Grayn, 14, the co-Gym Leader of Opelucid Gym, is appointed to the position of Champion due to her previous win against the League Champion in an exhibition match. Drayden Grayn, 65, returns to being the full-time Gym Leader.

April 2014 to September 2014 - The story of Pokémon Black 2 takes place. Nate Rivers, 13, defeats a renewed Team Plasma, and completes his Gym Challenge. He faces against Champion Iris, but is unsuccessful, and begins working in earnest at Pokéstar Studios.

December 23rd, 2016 - Palmer Walton moves to Sinnoh to establish the Battle Tower, as well as to take care of his ailing mother. His family moves with him.

June 8th, 2017 - Elesa Stark, 31, and Skyla Cirrus, 29, are married in a private ceremony in Lentimas with friends and family.

December 25th, 2017 - In a Delibird Day Miracle, Hilbert Blackmore, 19, returns to Unova after interning at the Indigo League with Kukui Mahi’ai, 21. A few weeks after his return, Hilbet challenges the League once more, defeating Iris Grayn, now 18, and taking the spot as Champion. Iris takes control of Opelucid Gym, while Drayden, now 69, retires to administrative work.

February 18th, 2018 - Palmer expands the Battle Tower into a Battle Frontier.

November 28th, 2018 - During a check on Pokémon in the tunnels, Ingo Grayn, 32, disappears and remains missing. Multiple regional Leagues look into the disappearance, but no major leads are found.

January 2019 to July 2019 - The events of a Pokémon Platinum Remake occur. Hikari Mifune, alongside Lucas Kubo and Barry Walton, all age 12, take down Team Galactic in the Sinnoh region. Hikari and Barry both finish their Gym Challenge, and while Barry is unable to defeat Lucian Hale, Hikari defeats the Champion, Cynthia Kurosawa. Note: This event is used by both Interpol and the Aether Foundation to help ascertain when they are dealing with Fallers or Travelers from other realities, as almost every other reality had these events happen in 2007.

September 13th, 2019 - Hilda Whitman, 21, is instated as the new Subway Boss full-time, moving from the Afternoon Singles line to running Singles and Super Singles on all operating days. She battles alongside Emmet on the Multi Lines in addition to her Single Lines duties. Rosa Whitaker, 19, is hired as a Depot Agent for the Double Line.

April 14th to June 3rd, 2020 - Team Plasma resurges, attempting to attack the Subway and Pokemon League before they were quickly quashed by N Gropius, Hilbert Blackmore, and Rosa Whitaker. 

September 21st, 2020 - Grimsley Winstar, 38, resigns from the Unovan Elite Four due to a medicial emergency. After a short search, N Gropius, 28, is hired on to replace him, taking over both the spot and the typing.

February 19th, 2021 - Elesa Stark, 35, and Emmet Grayn, 34, are married in a small ceremony in Anville Town, with only family and close friends in attendence.

September 18th, 2021 - Hikari Mifune, 15, disappears from her room. There are no signs of entry or exit, and her Pokemon were still in the house. Investigations are ongoing.

March 18th, 2022 - Elesa Stark, 36, disappears from the runway of her Gym during a photoshoot. Investigations are ongoing.

May 31st, 2022 - Emmet meets with Professor Burnet Mahi’ai, 27, of Alola to discuss what may have happened to Elesa. Volo, age unknown takes the chance to visit the Ruins of Life with Professor Kukui Mahi’ai.

June 18th, 2022 - Emmet returns to Nimbasa City briefly with Volo and Alolan Champion Elio Nozawa, 12, to check in on the Transport Authority and investigate Ingo’s disappearance.

July 5th, 2022 - Emmet collapses in the Eterna Forest, and is taken to Galactic Urgent Care in Eterna City. He is discharged within hours, but is unconscious through the ordeal.

July 6th, 2022 - Emmet meets with former Sinnoh Champion Cynthia Kurosawa, and makes a plan to find their missing families.

#submas #submas fic #pokemon legends arceus #pokemon legends arceus fic #pokemon legends arceus spoilers #fic crafting #Electric Trains fic #evolving post #pokemon ingo #ingo #pokemon elesa #elesa #pokemon hikari #pokemon akari #akari #pokemon emmet #emmet #headcanon mixed with canon

[whatimdoing-here]

weird personal update under cut, mostly for those who've been around awhile. i guess i can put an intro too.

honestly there are so many new followers here i'm assuming for gif reasons but... like.. sorry guys. it's a fairly rare thing. others do them better and quicker than me for the most part. my poor 7 year old laptop i make them on is a struggle. new person intro to me below, but first let me get to the part where i journal so it's off my chest.

i use tumblr as a journal of sorts. and honestly it's thanks to tumblr in general i started questioning my sexuality when i was in my mid 20s. living in a very white, conservative state - even if you live in a liberal family, that shit just gets ingrained. i was never homophobic or anything, just didn't consider anything other than straight an option. long story short, figured the bi was the best label for me at that time, definitely made me feel better, and more like myself. my partner (husband) was like yeah that's cool all good i support you let me know if you need anything from me and it's been great since.

another... long-ish story in a shorter form... i started struggling the last year or two with all of it again. just feelings and s.x feelings and whatever, a big reason of why i started therapy. basically come to the decision i land on the ace spectrum somewhere. i know much less about being asexual, and it definitely doesn't feel as "good" coming to this realization. i think i probably fall close to the demi- label. but labels and feelings are hard. and since 1) i'm pretty uneducated and 2) no one wants to hear about my sx life, i'm not going to go into things. i just wanted to throw out there that... i'm still figuring shit out. this convo with m was a lot harder, went a lot worse. then there was a better second convo. he's still supportive, it's just harder for reasons that are personal to him so i won't delve into. our relationship is okay, he doesn't want to open our marriage, and not much has changed honestly. i'm still trying to figure out my boundaries, and where my 'am i doing this because i want to or feel like i have to' lines are. it's... not fun. adding to that that if things ever came to the point where our marriage wouldn't work... that completely changes not only my life in a large way, but the kids, and m's. that is the fuckin scariest thing. sexuality discovery would be way less scary if i wasn't scared it will eventually negatively affect people in my life. i'm very much a "i will accept this thing that's not great for me and be quiet to keep the calm and happiness of those around me" in most cases. i don't like taking up space for myself. it's been a rough couple months.

anyway if i had to label i'd go with biromantic, asexual (with some ace labels i may or may not ever figure out)

getting older is a fuckin trip. you think you should know what you want and who you are but no one really knows. and life changes us and we discover more about who we are. for those newbies that are not even 20... your 20s and 30s are great. just... be prepared to shift and change and evolve and be okay with that.

anyway. new folks. i'm alex. i live in the middle of the us. i have two kids (boys, 8 and 5) that... i've been on tumblr longer than either of them have been alive. i work from home in (broadly) a data role within a corporation. i enjoy my work, its flexibility, and just data in general. give me numbers. i've been married for 14 years this june, and i'll be 34 in july.

i watch nwsl and uswnt for sports mostly. working on reading more novels again. obviously my tv obsessions are clear within minutes of looking at my blog. i talk parent stuff too sometimes, it's obviously a big part of who i am, but i'll leave their names and pics off the blog for their safety. i'll show my stupid face here though. sometimes i'll talk about seizures (i have them occasionally, unfortunately, and my brain isn't feeling great right now) and other medical stuff if it's bothering me because this place really is like a journal release for me. i hold some stuff back but yeah. i'll tag with 'personal nonsense' if you want to mute. sometimes i post and delete because i read it again later and decide no one needs to read that shit.

you're always welcome to say hi. i'm fairly harmless, but also keep walls up until i know you better.

uhhh i think that's it. mmmbye

#personal nonsense #it's long under the cut heads up #i've seen some 18 year olds follow me and honestly yall are gonna be so bored here #i didn't reread this and it was very much a ramble so good luck

[manonamora-if]

Retrospective 2022 (3)

Honestly, I've been looking forward to doing this all year! I'm a sucker for numbers and graphs. I had done a similar one in June, so here's the update!

For anyone interested, I recap what I did for each project during the year (or did not) and discuss the stats for each under the cut. Unless indicated, all stats are compared to June.

Forewarning, those stats are not a good representation of IF/Tumblr popularity. The numbers should not be taken as a baseline for comparison. There are many different factors that resulted in those, most of them being out of everyone's control. I am only comparing myself to Past-Me. Also because numbers can be fun.

2021 Projects

Status: Complete for realsies

On top of the UI update in late January (which was re-coded again after), Meeting the Parents was re-edited, re-translated and fixed, got some QOL updates (accessibility) and CSS addition in December. It took me about 2 months to get through this second update but I wanted to polish the game one last time. A few thousands words were added for both the English and the French versions.

I know I said I had shelved it last February, but this time is the truth, really (until someone tells me there's a bug/typo).

Onto some stats...

While the graph only shows the whole 2022, the stats below includes the past few days, because I forgot to do this on the 1st...

3,711 total plays (+1.5k ish)

25 ratings (+7), with an average of 4.3/5 (+0.1)

Inside 208 collections (+86)

Still about 2.2 views/play

MtP is still not my most popular project, it being short and completed. But I still get bursts once in a while. It got most traction by the end of January (when I updated the UI) and Nov/Dec when I uploaded the edits (also made one Interact-If list late November).

MtP has also now 2 ratings and 1 review on IFDB, averaging at 4.5.

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

Status: Ongoing/Hiatus-ish

CRWL did not get one, two, or three updates this year. It got four. Two story and one UI updates at the start of the year, and a huge one late June (story re-writes + additional content). The total word count passed 100k with that last update (excluding Codex). QoL settings have been added (though this is not yet completed), which includes a Quest Tracker, Codex Pages, and MC Editor.

An extra update was planned for the last quarter of the year, but it did not happen. I've been struggling to write anything substantial for that next scene ever since the end of the IFComp. I really want to continue writing it, but honestly, I've been staring more at then page than writing. Hopefully, this year will be easier...

Onto some stats...

28,121 total plays (+20k compared to January,only stat not in June)

69 ratings (+22), with an average of 4.7/5 (=)

Inside 1,766 collections (+654)

Still 1.9 view/play

Through and through, CRWL is my most popular game. I only passed 10k plays last March, and now it's already doubled! I'm just... flabbergasted.... It's honestly insane how many people kept playing even after the lack of new content since this summer... Honestly, completely speechless here. Boost of traction in February and March for the releases of Scene 2 and 3, mega boost in June/July for the release of Scene 4.

On the IFDB side, CRWL has now 3 ratings (+2).

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

Status: Ongoing/Hiatus-ish

I had mentioned this in that mid-year check in June how unhappy I had been with the state of EC and how I had been working on drafts for a story re-writes. The following month, I released an update which included a Prologue and 9/30 planned rounds, a new Endless Mode, QoL settings, and some semblance of Achievements. The UI was also updated then (which had become a template too!).

After this, I continued to write more rounds (or draft more than a line). This worked for about 2/3rd of them. But, having planned an ending or two for each round kind of became what blocked the progress. I wanted to have distinct endings, but, unlike the rounds, I didn't really know what would be in them. So progress for the re-write write stopped and the project was halted like CRWL was.

Onto some stats...

1,443 total plays (+1k-ish)

11 ratings (+7), with an average of 4.2/5 (-0.1)

Inside 88 collections (+50)

Went to 2.7 view/play (-0.2)

Still not surprised to the little attention EC gets overall. As much as I find the gameplay interesting, it requires a bit more from players than just clicking on a link. It's a bit polarising (and that lowered the rating average). But most players still seem to like it, and that's why it slowly keeps getting views and plays. The game got a bit of traction after I announced the update or posted about my progress (especially in the UI). At the end of September, someone just downloaded the old version 70 times on itch. That was wild.

On IFDB, EC received 2 ratings for an average of 3 1/2 stars, as well as a long review (rating pending completion).

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

2022 Projects

Status: Completed/Hiatus

Released at the end of January for the Interact-IF comp, where I ranked 6th, I have not touched the game file since it was released. I have a whole plan for expansion, but still did not have time to get to it. The new version included some ship exploration, an inventory, and a mystery. And yes, the Robot had a part in it.

So nothing new on the front, or what not.

Onto the stats...

2,417 total plays (+ > 1k)

15 ratings (+4), with an average of 4.3/5 (=)

Inside 203 collections (+85)

Went to 2.1 view/play (+0.2 approx)

Still the same as what I wrote back in June: SPS IH got a peak when it released but the subsequent ones are never as strong. I'm lucky if I get 10 plays on a single day. Honestly, while I had fun making it, it was never going to be my best work. I think the numbers reflect that.

SPS Iron Hammer has no rating or review on the IFDB.

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

Now... onto the completely new releases.

Status: Completed(-ish)

Welp, it's out there. Past-me wasn't sure whether I could manage an 2022IFComp release or have to delay it until the SpringThing2023. I did upload it for the IFComp, for better or for worse (reached the 37th spot). It was a lot, sometimes even too much. I made a whole Post-Mortem/feeling post about it in November.

I had a plan on giving it an After-Comp Update, but what I want to include is a lot more than I thought when I first submitted it. And that requires time and effort that I did not have. That is not to say I won't update it, because I will. There are many more stories I want to add. I'm still glad I managed to add some Accessibility and QoL settings for that version rather than an update... and this project is the first one that included keybindings!

But the stats are a bit... weird. While it was available on the IFComp website on the 1st of October, there were no analytics available until I uploaded the game on itch. Which was only 1.5 month later.

673 total plays

10 ratings, with an average of 4.2/5

Inside 44 collections

At about 2.1 view/play

With how the first announcement post was shared (with the game only on the IFComp website for the first month), I'm pretty sure I'm missing a lot of plays for my stats (my mom, by herself played dozens of times...). Otherwise, strong start, as always, and dwindle in interest pretty shortly (within a week or so). I really wish we could have access to analytics for the IFComp.... If I take part in the IFComp this year, I think I'll just upload it on itch directly...

On IFDB, TTTT is the most rated/reviews work I have. This is due to it being part of the IF Comp, where a lot of player leave review on the Forum (before transferring them on the IFDB). We are standing at 15 ratings for an average of 3 1/2 stars, and 7 reviews.

PLAY | INTRO POST (still don't have a proper one) | RATE | REVIEW

Status: Ongoing

This was a project I teased already last year (under the name Project M) but didn't see proper progress until essentially this spring. It's a neat tandem projects with MelS, who wrote everything. I just do some editing and the coding. It's been pretty fun to have something completely different and to collaborate with someone else. MelS has a really good horror voice and a clear view of what his story should look like (really envious of him in that sense). And he's just... do whatever with the coding/visual. I think we have a good balance between the two of us.

Just before Halloween (and for the EctoComp), TTATEH was released with a Prologue and 2 chapters. I It managed to reached 3rd place for the competition too. And we got some really nice feedback to help us finish the project (Chapter 3 is still in editing). The pace is when MelS has time...

Onto the stats...

2,996 total plays (so close...)

28 ratings, with an average of 4.8/5

Inside 339 collections

At about 1.8 view/play

There's an obvious peak at the start, when the was released, then around the 20th, just before the EctoComp voting's period ended (most reviewers on the Forum kept the largest game, like TTATEH, for last).

I think TATTEH is on its way to become the popular project. Aside from CRWL, no other projects has reached these numbers this quickly. Not yet in terms of daily numbers, but I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen in a few updates. And I am not too surprised by the amount of interest looking at the notes on the intro post and other teasing posts. And the Lovecraft/Mystery is pretty popular too... But I am really excited about seeing those numbers, because I really think MelS's writing and project is awesome and should get all the views.

Over on the IFDB, TTATEH got 6 ratings for an average of 4, and 2 reviews (thank you EctoComp)!

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

Status: Completed(-ish)

Created in less than 4h (total, spread over a week), La Petite Mort was a short entry to the French EctoComp. It reached 1st place :D

This was a fun project, that not only helped me get back into writing in French (ahead of translating the re-writes of Meeting the Parents), I got to put into action another template I had created and try out a more "standard"/old school form of IF with more of a room/puzzle base. And writing a younger PC was something new too! I had planned on having more room/puzzles and have and English translation ready, but time got the best of me (there was a 4h limit).

Onto some small stats...

71 total plays

1 rating with 5 stars

Inside 4 collections

At about 5.6 view/play

I am not surprised at all with those numbers, as LPM is a French-only project. While there is a French presence on the Internet/Itch/in the IF world, most people will play in English. Until I include an English translation, I can't imagine this project taking off at all. And it's not like I've promoted it much... A shame... since it's a fun game!

Since it was part of the EctoComp, LPM snatched a rating of 3 stars with a review on the IFDB (and the French IF Community streamed it on Twitch!).

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

Status: Completed (-ish)

Like LPM, Goncharov Escapes! was a short created game (in 4 days!), of which the premise was created for the Goncharov Game Jam and the gameplay for the One-Button Jam. I really wanted to participate once in a meme, so when Autumn created the Jam, I just went for it. On the other hand, one member of the French IF is the organiser of the yearly One-Button Jam, which is a bit of a casse-tête for IF games (you are so limited with just one link!).

So two birds, one stone. Goncharov Escapes! was born... I got to test some mechanics I had been thinking of including in other projects (the QTE/labyrinth-like path). I was really happy it not only worked, but people enjoyed it as much as I did creating it!

Onto some stats...

333 total plays (lucky number!)

7 ratings, with an average of 4.7/5

Inside 14 collections

At about 3.1 view/play

I didn't have much expectations in terms of stats. This was a meme game with no intention of being serious or anything. Just made for fun. When the meme dies, so does the interest in the art made around it. Still it was fun to see how people enjoyed it or found the gameplay fun. But I don't think I'll keep a close eye on the analytics for this one... I know Goncharov Escapes! was not the most popular entry of the Gonchie Jam, and I'd love to see how my entry compared to the others... But then if I do get my answer, I don't think that'd make me happier... Ignorance is bliss and all...

The game still received 3 ratings on IFDB for an average of 4, and one lovely review!

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

Status: Ongoing

My latest baby, another sci-fi project created last minute for the Twine Sci-Fi Jam and the Two-Button Jam (same organiser as the One-Button one). After reading some more sci-fi this year (both in long and short form) and watching some fun sci-fi series, I'd been wanting to create a slice-of-life set in space just for the lolz. Something as serious as Goncharov Escapes! but pushed a bit further in terms of content.

This game was still limited to 2 buttons/links (from the Two-Button Jam), which created some challenge (though less than with Goncharov Escapes!). This was more or less created in a week (with 85% of what is currently online having been done during that timeframe, the rest being a small added updated). There was still more that I had partly coded/written but not playable enough to be open to the player (it is coming tho!). A bit miffed I was the only one who actually rated all entries of the Twine Sci-Fi Jam, making my entry unranked...

Onto some stats...

Only been out for less than a month...

167 total plays

0 rating

Inside 11 collections

At about 2.5 view/play

Little promotion, still not introductory post, and very short demo. This is a great mix for not much to say about numbers. Good start considering everything, with a few days of interest. With the creation of an Intro Post here and an actual Dev Log on itch, this should help bump the interest/reach of the game. But that will probably be in the next update! One person already manage to find the little Easter Egg tho... Pretty stocked about this!

No IFDB stat, because I haven't created an entry yet.

PLAY | INTRO POST | RATE | REVIEW

Assets and Other Stats

Since last summer, I've been messing around with CSS/HTML. This little side thing turned into a more serious project: the 100% Good Twine SugarCube Templates. On top of two templates (the Simple Book and One-Page), I have also introduced a Ready-to-Use Tweego Folder and Guide (so people wouldn't struggle as much as I did with it) and the ChoiceScript to SugarCube Transition Guide (as more CScript creators looked into transitioning to Sugarcube that summer.

The Simple Book Template was released at the end of June, the Ready-to-Use Tweego was late August, the CScript to Sugarcube Guide was early September, and the One-Page Template was mid-October. Both templates were released in both a ZIP folder and HTML-only file.

Onto the stats... (in 2 graphs)

Templates and Tweego Folder:

559 total downloads (3.6 views/download)

10 ratings, at 5 stars

Inside 101 collections

All these can be found here.

More in depth:

Ready-to-Use Tweego : 118 downloads

Simple Book Template : 214 (HTML) + 117 (ZIP)

One-Page Template : 77 (HTML) + 32 (ZIP)

CScript to SugarCube:

37 downloads (6.2 view/download)

1 rating at 5 stars

inside 17 collections

Can be found here.

One last Itch Stat: as of today, I am at 811 followers there!

As for Tumblr, it is a bit more complicated, Tumblr doesn't let you see your analytics further than one month. But here's what I can share:

@manonamora-if is at 855 followers

@crimsonroseandwhitelily is at 1,042 (I should do a little celebration...)

@sps-iron-hammer is at 18

I am sure there are dozens of bots in that count (I try to block/report them but I still miss my fair share). Can't really compare much from older numbers since I didn't really track for this until now. I'll be able to see how it progresses in June!

I've found a website to check like notes? But I don't know how good it is. So here are more stats!

@manonamora-if

Total: 9,494 notes on 669 original posts (no reblogs)

Average of 14.1 notes/post

2022: 8,303 notes on 590 posts

Top 5 posts of 2022: TTATEH Intro Post, the Twine Resource Masterlist, How to Support IF Creators, the Leak rant (nooo, reblog my games instead pls), the Simple Book Template. They are also current Top 5 all.

@crimsonroseandwhitelily

Total: 5,721 notes on 399 original posts

Average of 14.3 notes/post

2022: 3,615 notes on 301 posts

Top 5 posts of 2022: Scene 4 Release, Scene 3 Release, Scene 2 Release, Beta Request, Scene 2 Teaser Posters. These are not the overall Top 5 (the Intro Post reigning supreme).

I am not bothering with @sps-iron-hammer because I haven't posted in months, or any other sideblog because I don't think of them as relevant.

And that's all for the stats! One more retrospective/future thing and we are done!

#retrospective #manonamora #2022 #year in review #gamesindie #dev #assets #twine #sugarcube #itch #mtp #tttt #ttateh #crwl #sps ih #p-st #goncharov escapes! #lpm #ec