#Quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

it is late at night, and i'm bored.

for a brief moment, im allowing questions! especially about BLANKSWORD.

be good, won't you?

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Just wanted to say, I'm looking forward to when you write about why you stopped using RPG Maker 2003! It sounds like a very interesting read to me, as I myself eventually want to write about why I keep crawling back to it, ha! (It's mostly how it comes with the most out of the box compared to later RPGMs, whose scripting capabilities are useless if one doesn't feel up to learning the code... at that point I may as well start coding from scratch, which is exactly the path you seem to have taken, fittingly enough! It's not satisfying to try and master an RPG engine when know I can't do anything remotely cool with it without learning something completely different.. I boil it down to 'you can't make Yume Nikki with newer RPGM default tools', but I definitely want to expand more on the thought) I haven't had the time or energy to try any of your games yet, but I'm p sure we used to be in a Discord server together, and looking over periodically and seeing how much progress you've made has been really cool, so I'm excited to get around to trying them! Someday I too want to learn a proper coding language and move away from RPG Maker, but until then it gets the job done for me (especially with the recent Maniacs Patch mod that greatly expands what it can do).

Wishing you luck on your current project in the meantime!!

hey, i had this lying around in my inbox for entirely too long - and for that i apologise, i wasnt really sure who you were until i followed a context-cue from your blog to your art-stuff just now. good to have heard from you again, and no hard feelings :,)

rm2k3 is decidedly a development space that makes sense. hell, on the side, i am currently making a small game in it again with a friend (no ETA yet). something nice about a path of less resistence towards something neat youve been thinking about.

the maniacs patch is definitely something i took note of out of the corner of my eye (and in watching riggy2k3's streams on occasion), but having released two games in the engine on steam, i kind of dont think that i can take it on board as the future of my commercial game efforts.

as much as it hurts to admit, i cant think of game development as my fun art anymore - i have to sell the things i make in it now, and rm2k3 games arent very well equipped for that. they dont interlock well with steam, meaning you can't give players achievements or even let them take screenshots through the platform (something a lot of them are VERY unhappy about). that, and tons of QOL problems (one time, somebody refunded a game of mine because it was "too small, hard to see" - rather than realising there was a way to fullscreen it).

regarding yume nikki likes in newer rpg maker versions - i mean, id say "swollen to bursting until i am disappearing on purpose" by december 7th does an admirable job of being one made in rpg maker mv! but of course that one uses tons of plug-ins.

bottom line: programming isnt desperately needed if you primarily like making games for the fun of it (and seeing that you predominantly make fanworks, id wager thats your main objective! good! :] ). if you need to earn a living (like... me :( ) then you may have to bite the bullet.

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

What were your favorite games this year?

That Which Gave Chase. Excellent short horror piece, wonderful sense of being lost and alone made all the sweeter by how palpable and present the few companions in the story feel. Adore the ending as well, though I seem to be fairly alone with that opinion

Commonplace. Look! It's @funbil's game! A game that reminded me that you can both be bold and accessible, and that Charlie Kaufmann can, in fact, have his lunch stolen by a ragtag team of game developers that don't even know about him.

Scrabdackle. (demo) Will jump at the opportunity to play any game that touts itself as inspired by An Untitled Story! Strongly polished and beautifully animated fun, that I know has the capacity and the chops to be quite serious. Looking forward to where it goes!

#quinnterrogation #Commonplace #that which gave chase #Scrabdackle

[quinnkdev]

What is your Favorite von Grüntzer painting?

Without question,"The Conoisseur" - or as I called him in an old friend server, "Stillbert, the Responsible".

Other boozy monk pictures by Grützner (and others who found the same motif interesting!) are definitely more hilarious and have a more immediately eye-catching and funny story, but I think the composition of this one and the ambiguity of the expression on this responsibly consuming monk always make me happy to see people reacting with him to my posts.

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Any tips for someone who wants to start game making on rpg maker mz?

Oof... Unfortunately, not exactly. I've used RPG Maker MV, which I know is extremely similar to MZ, but I know the differences are significant enough that a lot of plug-ins that I and my pal Emcee use in making a game don't work on MZ. I know Yanfly also makes MZ plug-ins, but I don't know if they cover as much ground.

Well... Just in case, as Emcee would say, check out Yanfly's plugins. They allow for more far-reaching customisation than the engine does out of the box. Be aware of the enormous tile size; use local switches where you can; aand...

Yeah, dunno what else to advise. I mostly approached the engine from a graphics perspective. u__u

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Any game ideas you're excited to get to in the future?

NOTE: I MISUNDERSTOOD THE QUESTION AT FIRST; here's the real answer!

Instead watch me ramble about games I'm excited about ig:

---

Several! I hang out with a bunch of gamedevs, so I'm aware of some good stuff in the works. Let me name the most exciting ones:

My friend @dronaroid's immersive sim HEARTRENDER comes together more and more each time I see its progress. I take some pride in the fact that I nagged them so hard to flesh out the enemy AI that they broke through the wall, and are making a plethora of Funny Little Guys for their world now! Also, like - an imsim platformer heavily based on the worldwide surrealist movement of the 1920s? In the gameplay style of Dishonored? Hell yes.

@nikkikalpa's They Speak From The Abyss is another huge one I'm excited for - even though I don't have a history with a lot of the inspirations it draws from! It's another game that I've seen in its infancy (and used to be more critical of than it deserved...). Nikki's among the most hard-working devs I know; in the span of less than a year they've grown massively as an artist and writer, and I can't wait for the upcoming prologue, Zenith.

@feverdreamjohnny's been through hell lately for the release of his first major commercial game Orbo's Odyssey - Orbo's is cool, but what I'm looking forward to most is his next title, Nowhere, MI. Johnny's writing is often farcical and humoristic, but knows how to sell even the strangest place as believable and make even the strangest character drama genuinely affecting. His horror style, too, is one of the most imaginative I've seen - And Nowhere, MI showcases all his skills in abundance. And that's all not even considering the fact that it looks BALLER to play.

Regarding games I have little to no association with that I'm excited for: The Upturned's been on my Steam wishlist a while. A horror slapstick game sounds hard to pull off, but it looks like it passes with flying colours. Kingdoms of the Dump has been on my radar a while and looks like everything I would want out of an RPG; and Scrabdackle both draws from a lot of nostalgic games for me for its inspirations AND its chunky demo has been extremely fun and challenging. Highly recommend all of these!

#Quinnterrogation #HEARTRENDER #Nowhere MI #They Speak From The Abyss

[quinnkdev]

Hi Quinn! As a huge An Outcry enthusiast and someone who struggles with finding names that feel comfortable to use and feel like "me" I found a lot of comfort in a trans character not having any name at all. I'm super curious about your thought process behind the unnamed being "unnamed"

There's a few reasons for that decision!

To an extent, it's an idea I expanded out from an old abandoned series of stories called the "Something Stories". These stories were an expression of non-binary feelings before I even knew what that was! The protag of those stories had no name and no gender, using it/its pronouns. It'd find itself in a whole host of different situations and roles: A soldier, an unhoused person, the author... That series of stories never showed up anywhere because it was pretty bad in a few respects, but it did hone my skills at writing multi-perspective narratives, and my use of language games. An Outcry was first conceived when that series had just been wrapped up, so some of the ideas from it were still fresh in my mind.

The Unnamed's namelessness was supposed to fake the player out a little bit; make them believe they're playing a blank slate when in actuality, the character they play has quite a bit of personality of their own.

It was also intended as a symbol of the ubiquitous nature of many of their experiences and struggles, and, alternatively, of their many flaws as a character. The Unnamed, despite their specificity, is merely a single person struggling in the ways that the game shows - one of many.

There's one more under the cut, as it constitutes a spoiler:

There's a little out-of-the-way passage in An Outcry, when you sit down before the convo with Esma and Anne rather than helping Esma set down the tea-tray:

It ties Aster's namelessness to their struggles with mental health, and to an internalisation of the shoddy treatment they received over being gender non-conforming. It's an expression of that noxious demand the world puts on trans people:

"Before you get to have this nice thing that makes you feel better, you need to pass, and get surgery, and do what we tell you to. Except it's up to our whims if you'll get it at all! Dance!! Dance, monkey, for our amusement, and don't you dare be happy!!"

Aster's mental health struggles (and all the ways they're expressed in the snippet of their life we see) - their underweightness, their agoraphobia, their addiction, their struggles with using their chosen name, their suicidal ideation - are often a direct result of how they are treated by the world around them: Their parents, Eisen, Schmitt, Alex, strangers in the street - hell, to a small extent, even Anne.

Namelessness is, therefore, an extension of how worthless the world views them - And it's no coincidence that the Shrikes will consistently call them "nameless" as a result.

Aster, up until the inciting incident of the game, was a very passive person, and in that way, they soaked up how others derogatised them like a sponge.

---

There's a lot more to say about this, but I think the rest I'll leave up to interpretation.

#Quinnterrogation #An Outcry (game)

[quinnkdev]

Can i be friends with the creatures?

you will be more than friends with one of them!

other creatures, however, dont really like you very much, and arent safe to become friends with...

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Watching the birds 1963 for the first like damn. This is just like an outcry.

Funny you should say this- I actually read Daphne Du Maurier's story version of The Birds before I watched Hitchcock's adaptation. As a result I kinda prefer the book version by a large margin, and I'd moreso say that it inspired An Outcry, not the film!

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Favorite blanksword enemy design so far ?

that changes a lot for me, honestly? @kitet-frogspond is doing such incredible work that it seems every new design challenges the ones that came prior in my mind.

at the moment, its a tie in my mind between an enemy called "loveless bouquet", and one of the late-game angel-bosses.

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Are you still using Game Maker to make Blanksword or have you switched engines?

we're using game maker still! surprisingly, that engine's not really been a major limiting factor thus far, which has been nice.

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

ooooh lemme think. favorite platforming gimmick... favorite RPG class... favorite holiday-specific food (not just xmas)?

Zip-dashes (like in Celeste)!

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I guess maybe the glass cannon mage? Is that a thing?

My parents would usually make these very specific, soft, salty cookies for New Year's Eve that I absolutely adored. I need to ask my mom for the recipe before too long. Somehow they tasted cheesy despite not containing any cheese.

#Quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Do you have a favourite type of tree?

A conversation about trees! Love to see it.

I love pyramidal poplars:

They're tall! Smell weird, feel sticky. Very tactile trees. My one gripe with them is that they're near-impossible to safely climb for the layperson.

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

what ur favorite minecraft mob

Skeletons! No- wait, Silverfish! Fuck. Uh. Baby zom- Creepers? NO!

I don't know what my favourite is. I feel like no matter which I pick, people would get on my case about it because the Minecraft mobs that are nice to you or not annoying to fight are few and far between.

I guess Endermen, then. Yeah. Let's go with them. They're just shy.

#quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Top five rodent species go

Rat

Common Hamster

Lowland Paca

Capybara

Chinchilla

#Quinnterrogation

[quinnkdev]

Hey!

ASK QUINN A Q!

They'd really appreciate it!

#Quinnterrogation