#and they don’t need vr concept art

[aurosoul]

continuing to have an absolutely insane time over here living at a tech influencer house

#incessant meowing #picture journal #it’s la tech week and we’ve started going to parties for networking #i quickly realized that most people at these events are either fintech or startups #and they don’t need vr concept art #but they LOVE hearing me talk about what i do lol #they’re all like holy shit a real metaverse architect!! like snow crash! #and i’m just like through gritted teeth ‘yes... :) like snow crash’ #i did meet two people who said they were into permaculture #and solarpunk based on indigenous practices #so that was cool #ANYWAYS idk what’s going on!! how’d i get here!!!!! wtf!!!!!!!!

[joeabdelsater1]

Blog Post 3: Medium Specificity

In this blog post, I will be presenting a few pros and cons of medium specificity and giving examples of real-life applications for each side.

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Pros

 For starters, I believe that medium specificity is essential in creating diversity in the scope of artistic expression. The theory amplifies the potential features and methods that can be utilised with each creative medium to achieve a wide variety of artistic outcomes. To be exact, each medium offers different aesthetic features such as texture, colour, and spatial compositions. This allows artists to come up with a multitude of creations that can be experienced by their audiences. As an example, traditional painting practices create a platformer for the artist to experiment with colours and textures, while sculpting allows for a manipulation of volumes, forms, and materials. Second, a great way of promoting more space for creative thinking and inventive problem-solving is through each medium's technological constraints. In fact, it’s the medium’s requirements that force artists to adjust their skills to the medium’s limitations, therefore producing unique creations. Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher is a big believer of this idea. For instance, in his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, he claims that the transition from spoken to written language morphed than nature of communication and storytelling, which allowed more creative thinking (McLuhan, 2005). Another thing is that the emotional reactions that result from the audiences can vary greatly from one medium to another, which changes the way they interact with the art piece.  Third, medium specificity holds a big role in removing constraints of the definition of art. Over the years, artistry and its practitioners have been pushing the boundaries of different mediums, which has led to the birth of new hybrid forms of artistic creations. This expansion opened gateways for novel Concepts and choices within artistic expression, which has helped produce diverse media objects that result from combinations of art forms. An early example of this concept is “Phantasmagoria”, which is an early theatre horror Show that made use of moving picture technologies back in the 1770s to produce an immersive spectator experience. This creation, which was new at the time, created a mix essentially between two mediums: drawing and lighting.

Cons

 To begin with, medium specificity often results in work that is more appealing to certain audiences who are familiar with the specific medium being used. Other people who don’t have a previous experience with the medium, may feel excluded or discovered since they don’t have a thorough comprehension of it. To illustrate, in the case of video games, digital literacy and minimal involvement in the digital world are required. Individuals who are not very familiar with video games might feel alienated when they try to interact with a game’s interface and controls. For example, games like “Dark Souls” and “Elden Ring” are recognised for their high level of difficulty, which might turn off gamers like me who want to appreciate the art but prefer more accessible gameplay experiences. Exploring further, artists may have to prioritise particular aspects of their work and ignore others because of any inherent limitations and distinctive features of a medium. A big compromise is made in terms of narrative depth when it comes to VR which prioritises the immersion and sensory aspects of a simulation. This can result in the disappearance of the traditional aspect of storytelling, as viewers are more inclined to explore and engage with the environment instead (Klassen, 2015). And since VR requires high optimisation levels, compromises may also need to be made when it comes to the quality of graphics.  Additionally, other types of medium specificity like interactive street art installations can urge spectators to actively participate even when the viewers would rather be involved in a more passive manner. Picture an artist that builds an interactive street project in a public square by using movement-sensitive objects that produce loud and sudden sounds on trigger. While this can result in an immersive and engaging experience for some, it can also have an intrusive or demanding tone for others. Pedestrians just passing through the area might accidentally activate the art installation, which leads to unwanted and disruptive interactions. This not-so-agreeable aspect of medium specificity makes me question the idea of consent and the limit to public engagement. Many individuals might feel discomfort or a sense of obligation if they do not feel like interacting. This changes the Dynamics of the link between viewer and artwork greatly, as the line between active engagement and passive observation becomes blurred out.

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Sources

McLuhan M., 2005. Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media The extensions of man. [pdf] Available at: https://designopendata.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/understanding-media-mcluhan.pdf. [Accessed 22 Oct 2023]

Krishna S., 2022. "‘Elden Ring’ Isn’t Made for All Gamers. I Wish It Were". Culture. [e-journal]. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/elden-ring-difficulty-modes/. [Accessed 22 Oct 2023]

Lewis M., 2021. Phantasmagoria and the earliest forms of horror storytelling. Stories & Ideas. Available at: https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/phantasmagoria-and-earliest-forms-horror-storytelling/. [Accessed 22 Oct 2023]

Klassen E., 2015. Active Story: How Virtual Reality is Changing Narratives. [online] CableLabs. Available at: https://www.cablelabs.com/blog/active-story-how-virtual-reality-is-changing-narratives. [Accessed 22 Oct 2023]

[stephs-portfolio]

Virtual Reality'd till Death do us Part

Feared by many, pioneered by others, and some people just don’t care for virtual reality. What none of these people can do is ignore it though, as it continues to progress and become part of society, the new Apple Vision Pro, which supports Virtual and Augmented reality proves this.

One direction, which many probably theorised but never actually conceptualised was the idea that if you die in game, you die in real life. With the developing tech in the gaming industry, it appears that this has the potential to actually be done.

Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus, has developed a headset which when it registers a ‘Game Over’ or ‘Wasted’ for example, its designed to detonate three explosives on the heavily modified Quest Pro headset, killing its user. This has been in the quest to create seamless integration of the self into virtual reality, to the extreme. Though Luckey does state in his blog 'Even so, there are a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time… At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design’, which to my relief and I’m sure many others, means that video games aren’t killing anyone just yet.

Companies such as meta have attempted this by trying to create a headset that reads your actions through your brain, and imitate those actions in virtual reality, losing the need for hand remotes or sensors. However, they have been unsuccessful, and instead are focusing on wrist sensors to read the nerve signals there, where they are already creating the gesture.

The future of virtual reality currently has many paths, everyone racing to create the first consumer made, fully integrating and human experience through a headset, to allow the user to experience a virtual reality like they would in real life.

[niftyrevolution]

Top 10 NFT Real Estate Companies to Follow

NFT real estate is no different from other NFT projects. Instead of owning a picture or a video, you own a plot of land in a certain metaverse. If you’re seeking a novel approach to investing in real estate, consider NFT real estate firms. The top 10 NFT real estate companies will be discussed in this article.

1.Decentraland                                                                                                      THE WHAT?

A virtual environment called Decentraland was established in 2015

The primary objective of the game is to construct and amass property in the NFT virtual area known as “land,” which can be broken up into pieces

Mana, the cryptocurrency token for this new digital world order, is used to purchase these land plots

You will have permanent ownership of the land as soon as you register, create your digital wallet, and buy your parcel

You are free to do whatever you want with your digital environment since you have total control over it and it involves constructing things, making games, or producing art

You can also lease or sell your land to other players if you don’t want to utilize it yourself

2. Polka City THE WHAT?

A ground-breaking technology called Polka City enables users to own virtual properties and make money

Due to the contract-based nature of these NFT assets, it is simple for you to create income that is paid out in the native POLC coin

Starting Polka City is a rather simple process

You can select the investment type that best suits your preferences when you register for their real estate marketplace

To start making money at Polka City you can use your current Ethereum wallet and no new blockchain wallet is required

3. SuperWorld THE WHAT?

SuperWorld is a marketplace for digital assets where you can make your own world and make money off of it

You can trade, buy, and sell various NFT pieces of land using its real estate platform, which in the actual world has an area of about 100m x 100m

You can get going with ease in SuperWorld, all you’ll need is a concept for your planet; no coding expertise or familiarity with blockchain technology is required

Here, you’ll have the chance to make money off of your property through, analytics, gaming, digital commerce, and e-commerce

4. Cryptovoxels THE WHAT?

It feels like entering a completely different reality when one enters the Cryptovoxels virtual world and metaverse

The NFT platform, which was established in 2018, is a virtual space where you may purchase land and create your own tiny planet any way you choose

This implies that you can modify your so-called voxel pieces of land to develop a game, produce art, or even launch your own company

You can even sell your land to other players in the market if you become bored of it

The interesting thing about Cryptovoxels is that you can explore the platform without an Ethereum wallet

5. Upland THE WHAT?

In order to map the real estate market, Upland, a virtual land marketplace, employs real-world locations and as a result, users can exchange their gained land for real US dollars

Through its in-game companies, Upland also enables players to interact with other gamers in order to make money and make new friends

In this new virtual economy, you can make money in real estate by renting out your houses, charging admission fees to guests, or selling your property at a profit

You can also make money at Upland by starting your own business

6. Somnium Space THE WHAT?

Somnium Space is a groundbreaking new platform that revolutionizes gaming and virtual reality (VR)

The business developed an open-source software platform based on the Ethereum Blockchain that enables the purchase and customization of virtual assets like vacant land, parks, and structures

Users of Somnium Space can now own virtual reality (VR) assets, including avatars and digital commodities

By integrating programmatic advertising plugins that track engagement rates and conversion rates into the VR games, develops a new economy where creators can immediately monetise their work

7. The Sandbox THE WHAT?

The Sandbox is a cutting-edge virtual environment powered by Ethereum blockchain technology where users may create custom video games from the ground up using commercially available or pre-built building pieces

You must utilize $SAND, the platform’s utility token and money, to purchase real estate and other assets from their marketplace

Being able to construct virtual experiences like dioramas and games and place items like buildings, cars, or furniture gives purchasing land on Sandbox a lot of options

8. Omni-PSI THE WHAT?

A cutting-edge, ground-breaking new platform called Omni-PSI was developed in collaboration with the OMNI Real Estate Group and Passive Income and released last year

It is said to be the first fractional real estate NFT marketplace in the world, allowing sellers and buyers of tokenized property to buy fractionalized assets which are parts of properties rather than complete ones

Through their NFT marketplace, Omni-PSI collects money through their sales procedure

According to the number of shares each fractional NFT owner has, they each receive a portion of the rent that these renters pay

9. Fraction THE WHAT?

Fraction is a brand-new real estate company operating on the Ethereum blockchain that has obtained the necessary Thai SEC authorization

With its $150 minimum purchase requirement to buy even a portion of an upscale real estate project, the company seeks to increase accessibility for everyone to invest in real estate

You can invest in a range of assets using Fraction’s plug-and-play platform, from tiny sums to private funds

This offers the benefit of demonstrating that the platform was created with your wants and objectives in mind

10. Propy THE WHAT?

Propy is a one-stop shop for all of your real estate needs and is powered by Web3 Technology

Propy debuted its NFT platform in the US last January 2022, enabling the purchase and sale of real estate as an NFT

The buyer can quickly access the legal paperwork proving ownership of the property by logging real estate transactions on the blockchain

It is important to understand that real-world property ownership is not fractional

REFERENCE:

https://influencermarketinghub.com/nft-real-estate-companies/#toc-0

DISCLOSURE:

None of these articles constitutes financial advice. Articles are highly summarised to make it easy for the reader and save your time, so please DYOR further before putting your hard-earned money into any product mentioned.

Please note that the tech industry evolves rapidly and the info in this article is correct at the time of publishing. As Heraclitus said, “Change is the only constant,” so if anything sounds old or off, please holler on the socials or comment here so everyone stays peeled.

Affiliate links may be included in these articles, and signups through these links are highly appreciated. These links support better research and quality writing and help you find the right products with less hassle, so it’s a win-win :) Great care is taken to ensure the links are from authentic, non-spammy sources.

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#nft #real estate #metaverse #nft real estate #nft marketplace

[mythicandco]

the best of Mythic’s Amphibia AUs

When you want people to ask about your AUs but realize you never actually talk about them so its likely that no one’s actually interested

Alright, that changes today! Sort of. The VR AU masterpost is still a lengthy work in progress. Anyway, here’s a list of my favorite AUs, complete with a link to my masterlist (here it is btw).

AUs under the cut!

Beta AU

- Based on the beta designs and concepts. All the girls are sixteen.

- Sasha has been in Amphibia for three years, is a general of the army, and swears like a sailor

- Marcy grew up in Amphibia, knows magic, and wears glasses

- Anne has blue-dyed hair, was friends with Sasha when they were younger, and is gay as hell

- I have a ton of headcanons that I incorporated into this AU

- Marcy and Sasha have a strangers to friends to lovers to enemies dynamic that‘s really fun to write

- Sprig’s name is Weed, and Polly’s is Marie (short for Pollyannamarie)

- I have no idea what the deal with the Core is. If we don’t get concept art for it eventually I’ll just go off of fandom interpretations back from before S3 came out

Calamity Frogs AU

- Sort of inspired by the Blessed AU, but I was thinking about it long before then 

- Sprig, Ivy and Maddie get sent to Earth instead of Anne, Sasha and Marcy ending up in Amphibia

- The gem’s colors change but they still have similar meanings (pink is Compassion, yellow is Bravery, blue is Intellect)

- The temples (or at the very least, versions of the temples) are located on Earth instead of in Amphibia, but in order to “properly” charge the gems the temples on Amphibia have to be used

- Marcy moves in this AU, and Anne and Sasha have a fight sometime after which means that the three of them don’t chat often (they aren’t enemies, they just aren’t close friends anymore)

- Maddie and Marcy are nerd buddies, Ivy is the sister Sasha didn’t know she needed (and vice versa) and Sprig and Anne are Sprig and Anne and they will always be siblings, to matter the universe

- Mr. X is a season one antagonist instead of Grime 

- Spraddivy 

Dysphibian AU

- Andrias succeeds in his invasion of Earth, leaving Amphibia a barely-habitable wasteland and Earth far more polluted than before, but something goes wrong with the mind control collars and a mushroom zombie outbreak occurs 

- Sasha is still the head of the Resistance, but something went wrong when Anne was trying to use Terri’s portal and she disappeared (and has been missing for the past three years)

- It’s mostly just an excuse to make Sasha a girlboss during the apocalypse

- Darcy is also there, and Marcy isn’t exactly having a good time (especially since Darcy and Sasha face off almost every week, and the former constantly mocks the latter than she’ll never get her friends back)

- Polly is a robot expert and one of the most powerful members of the Resistance, Sprig and Grime are actually sort of buddies, and Olivia drinks juice a lot 

- Anne eventually comes back and she and Sasha free Marcy and help start the world over from scratch (it’s a lot of work, but they have the support of a lot of people and luckily the government has managed to keep the apocalypse confined to LA and a few small areas outside of it)

Lost in Transit AU

- Instead of getting the portal up and running within weeks, it takes Terri, Anne, and Dr. Jan years to get Anne back to Amphibia

- Sasha and Marcy at this point have been legally filed as dead by the government 

- The only thing keeping Andrias from invading Earth was Sasha and the Resistance, who managed to rescue Marcy without Anne and just assume she left them behind 

- The portal is constantly sending Anne to the wrong realities, worlds where she really never did come back or ones where Sasha or Marcy or both are dead, and even the canon universe, which she immediately left when she saw the three of them safe and happy together

- When Anne stays in the wrong reality too long, it begins rejecting her (so she couldn’t stay with a mourning Marcy in one of the worlds where Sasha died, and she couldn’t stay to help Sasha when she ended up being the one to get possessed instead of Marcy)

- Over time, Anne becomes jaded and the first thing she does when she finally reaches a reality where Sasha is alive is say “Oh. You’re not dead this time.” 

- There’s actually a fair amount of crack in this AU, but it becomes less funny as time goes on because Anne is less and less fazed by some of the weird shit she finds in alternate realities (everyone’s a cat, Hop Pop is a wanted witch criminal, some girl named Luz and her brother Hunter and girlfriend Amity get sent to Amphibia instead of her and her friends, that kind of thing)

Stardom AU

- An actor AU with a twist (Amphibia is still a real place, everyone has the same first names as their characters but different last names, and the show is actually based on an ancient play/drama in-universe)

- Many of the issues the girls face (Marcy’s parents wanting to move, Sasha’s getting divorced, etc.) are issues for the actresses as well, but this time they have acting careers therapy to help them deal with it in a healthy way... oh wait

- This is one of the AUs where I rewire the entire lore of the series, and it’d take too long to explain but essentially just think of the Rift from Centaurworld but with the Calamity Box instead

- Gravity Falls and The Owl House may become parts of the AU, but they won’t play major roles 

- For Marcy, getting stabbed and possessed is actually the most fun part - she loves playing Darcy and says in an interview later that it was her idea to add fake blood all over the place for her death scene in True Colors 

- The main things that change in the show are the fact that it’s live action, the fact that there’s more blood because the show was approved for a higher age rating, and the fact that Olivia & Yunan got a content warning along with TC

- Sashannarcy (though to be fair all of these are Sashannarcy)

VR/Vrrrr AU

- LAST BUT NOT LEAST, LADS!! MY FAVORITE AU!!!

- The lore for this one is so complicated, but in short the box is a relic from a destroyed world that died eons ago. The box managed to find its way to Earth where it was found by a trio of scientists (Dr. Andrias Levi, Dr. Sage Pandora, and Dr. Archibald “Archie” Bracken) who used the code they found within it to create video games for their video game company, Newtopia Enterprises (emphasis on “New” rather than “Newt”)

- The Core was preserved along with the rest of the code inside the box, and eventually began instructing Levi to assist it take over the multiverse. Long story short it was very persuasive 

- Bracken found out about Levi’s “secret project” and died in a lab “accident” after leaving a note behind for Pandora, who found it, told Levi to turn back before it was too late, and quit her job, taking the box with her and hiding it at an antique store in hopes he wouldn’t find it there

- Pandora went on to start a group of white-hat hackers that worked against Levi and NE, making Captain Gregory “Grime” Torrel her second in command and essentially spy for the group

- Marcy found the box and the three girls were sent to Amphibia as normal, except only their minds were downloaded and Dr. P managed to get to Sasha and Anne before NE did (Marcy was selected as the Core’s host from the beginning and so she was top priority)

- None of the girls realize anything is wrong until the game starts glitching and lagging the longer they’re there, and after at least a hundred red flags everything comes to a head during True Colors, where Andrias reveals everything about the game (except for his master’s plans with Marcy)

- Everyone besides Mother Olm, Grime, and Andrias are sentient AI that are a part of the game, so a lot of our favorite amphibians get existential crises at some point (besides Polly, who doesn’t even blink, and Valeriana, who already knew)

- In addition to Anne, Sasha also gets out of the game during True Colors, albeit because the Core wanted an impostor among the Resistance and not because of anything else (but more on that later)

- There are many jokes made about obscure video games, the “Have you heard of Among Us, Gregory?” joke nearly drives Grime insane (Sasha we get it Marcy made you play FnaF Security Breach but PLEASE), and the Plantars are forced to use Zoom to talk to everyone else because they don’t exist outside of the game

- Overall the AU has an insane amount of tonal whiplash, the people who created it will be talking about killing Sasha one minute and Among Us the next, and by frog this AU has come a long way from the Darcy VR headset joke I made back in 2021-

#amphibia #amphibia au #amphibia aus #amphibia alternate universe #alternate universe #alternate universes #au masterpost #anne boonchuy #sasha waybright #marcy wu #darcy amphibia #the core amphibia #king andrias #beta au #calamity frogs au #dysphibian au #lost in transit au #stardom au #vr au #vrrrr au #long post #not as long as the full vr au lore post but almost #if you actually took the time to read all of this I'm impressed and you deserve a cookie and a frog #🍪 🐸

[thefirsttree]

A personal update + my next game

OK, time to do this. I’ve been meaning to do a big DAVID WEHLE™ update for a while now and explain why I haven’t released a new game yet, but you know how life gets in the way. Especially when life is a quarantine hellscape, you have three beautiful, amazing, exhausting kids to raise, a spouse’s job you support, a viral YouTube channel that turns your brain to mush, a thousand emails waiting in your inbox since your game is free on the Epic Games Store (with an impressive number of redemptions too! … meaning lots of emails and customer support issues), etc., etc. What also contributes to my lack of updates is because… I just don’t really like posting online. Fascinating correlation, I know!

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a venting/ranting blog post (well, maybe a bit), because my life is seriously AMAZING and INSANELY BLESSED and LUCKY. I can’t believe how many dreams keep coming true, so much so that I feel I don’t deserve it and I really pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes… but I did want to at least be honest, because I owe that to myself.

Wow, where do I even begin? Well, how about we start with the reason I’m even a full-time indie game dev now: The First Tree. This small hobby project I worked on at night morphed into this gargantuan beast (or fox) that took over my life the past 5 years. Which is great! I’m living the dream! And yet, I really didn’t expect it to do as well as it did. At its core, my game is a slow-paced, sad walking simulator (ahem, I prefer the term “exploration game,” but you know what I mean) that somehow seemed to launch at the right time to the right audience. It resonated deeply with some of you, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I still get emails almost daily how my game changed their lives in some formative way. I’m beyond honored.

However, with that spotlight came criticism and demands from the ever-present, insatiable internet. I would randomly be surfing the gamedev subreddit trying to decompress, and I would see a comment by some rando saying how much I didn’t deserve my success, and how it was all one huge lucky fluke. And I believed them!

And to add to it, some devs considered me an indie marketing “guru”, which I was uncomfortable with. I worked hard to market my game every week, and after my GDC talk, people assumed marketing was my passion; the reason I got up every morning. Just to clarify… NO, I don’t like marketing, and I hate being the center of attention. I don’t like asking people for money and wishlists. But I did what was necessary because I was passionate about telling stories, and I wanted to give my story a fighting chance to be seen on the crowded pages of Steam.

So now, you’re probably wondering “well then David, why did you make fancy YouTube videos showing off your success? Not very modest if you ask me.” This honestly could be a long blog post all on its own, because my experience of putting myself in the spotlight and becoming a “content creator” is… complicated. It was an unusual step for me, especially since I never even showed my face online (as a game developer) until my GDC talk.

First off, I always wanted to teach and start a YouTube channel. I love video editing, especially since I’ve been doing it longer than making games! It’s a huge passion of mine. And teaching people who didn’t know they could make and finish games was a huge motivator (and it’s been so rewarding already). But the second reason is, I was scared. I was self-employed, and I was riding the success of a “huge lucky fluke” that would probably not happen again. I wanted to make sure I could provide for my amazing family, and give them food and health insurance and security in these tumultuous times. I was turning my lifelong passions and hobbies into a business, and it wasn’t as simple of a mental transition as I thought.

So, I went all in on YouTube and the accompanying online course called Game Dev Unlocked. I spent years editing the scripts and videos, and polishing them to a shine. At first, no one watched my videos, no one was buying… and in the blink of an eye, the YouTube algorithm picked up my main autobiographical video (“How Making Indie Games Changed My Life”), and I started getting 5,000 subscribers a day. Right now, I’m at 150,000 subs, which is still hard for me to believe. I always had a dream of earning 100k subs on YouTube, so I was pretty happy with the whole thing. Sales were OK, but mostly people didn’t want to buy the course. Then the emails came in…

Something you should know about me: I am a textbook “people pleaser,” and if someone asks for my help, I take it very seriously. If someone is mad at me, even if I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s all I can think about, and it ruins my day. So, taking an onslaught of people begging for help and multiplying that by an impossible amount of people for my brain to truly comprehend thanks to the internet… and let’s just say it wasn’t a healthy mix.

I received thousands of emails from people who were begging me for some kind of reassurance that everything would be OK. That their dreams would come true too. And I wanted to help every single one of them. I went from a nobody working on a game for fun to becoming a spokesperson for the indie game dream. I couldn’t even get a shake from the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru without someone recognizing me and asking for game dev advice. And it didn’t stop there… I would get emails from suicidal kids asking for help, teenagers from Afghanistan asking me to get them out of their country, and on one occasion I received an email from a hopeful game developer in a war-torn country who had just experienced a bomb blowing up their neighboring village. His friends were dead, and he was hoping he could finish a game before he died too, and he needed my help. How do you say no to something like that? Didn’t I owe it to everyone because I was lucky with my hit game and I needed to “pay it forward”? (Something people constantly reminded me of)

And then to top it off, after you’ve given everything you’ve got to other people in need… you get hate mail in your inbox. You spend the whole day serving your children and strangers on the internet, then when the kids are finally asleep, you hit the bed to relax and take a look at your phone to decompress, and you randomly come across an angry gamer in your Twitter mentions telling you your game they got for free sucks, and that you took away a potentially great game from them and that your apology isn’t good enough.

Long story short, I went to a mental therapist for the first time in my life. I was broken trying to care for two toddlers and a new baby in a pandemic (which is very, very hard), taking care of my course students who gave me their hard-earned money and demanded results, and the countless people begging for help on the internet. I was this introverted, internet-lurker trying to take on the weight of the world. I was so tired and hurt that no one cared about me and my needs… only what I could do for them.

Quitting my day job and making this hobby my full-time job has stirred up… mixed emotions. This statement may disturb some of you, but I was definitely 100% happier when I had a full-time job and I was working on my game at night. I missed working with the amazing team at The VOID, working on Star Wars… back when the success of my game was this abstract thing I could only daydream about. Mostly, I was making my game for me with no outside expectations to pay the bills or satisfy the ever-demanding internet, and that brought me a lot of joy.

It’s not all doom and gloom though! I’m actually very happy now and in the best shape I’ve been since the pandemic started. I’ve had to confront my weaknesses and personality quirks, but I’m a better person for it (and I’m sure these issues would’ve come out eventually). I hired an awesome community manager for Game Dev Unlocked who is helping SO MUCH with the emails, I can’t even tell you the mental burden it alleviates. I even leased a co-working office to help separate work from my home, and that’s been a huge help too. I’ve decided to work with my old friends from The VOID on a cool, new VR experience. It will take me away from my projects a bit, but I’m ecstatic to work with a great team again (and not manage anything, whew).

These are all things I would’ve never guessed I needed, because I thought I knew myself pretty well… turns out I didn’t.

The reality is: running a business is HARD. Running it solo is even harder. You have to remember, I was burnt out on The First Tree well into the Steam release in 2017, but I kept working on it for 4 more years due to my fears of failing again and not earning enough money for my family.

So, I was wrestling with the age-old concept of commercialism and art. There was this dichotomy of doing whatever I wanted and being true to my vision (what most people assume the indie dev dream is like), and doing only what customers wanted to buy. This is something that has killed me with YouTube… in one specific instance, I was super excited to make the exact video I wanted to make. I loved every part of its creation, and I thought it had a message that would inspire everyone. I lovingly edited it over several weeks, posted it, and excitedly waited for the stats… and it was by far my worst performing video.

This is not a new problem. Even the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo was a commission forced upon him by the very violent Pope Julius II. My wife and I regularly talk about the fine balance between artistic integrity and commercialism, a problem she is very familiar with as an artist who constantly needs to balance what she wants to make with what the customer wants to hang up in their home.

For The First Tree, I was lucky. It was pretty much what I wanted to make (I had to compromise a lot of things of course), and it turned out millions of people wanted it too. Recently, I thought the safe business decision would be to do it all over again, so I started work on a spiritual successor to The First Tree (an idea that I may revisit one day since I do love the story idea). But that isn’t happening anytime soon. Trust me when I say I am now currently burnt out on animal exploration games.

So that realization left me with a question: what do I do next?

I’ve decided I need to make a game that I want to make, for me. It will be a bit different and I’m almost certain most fans of The First Tree will not love it… but it’s an idea that gets me super excited. It’s an idea that could help me fall in love with game development again.

A few more details: this game will be story-driven, first-person, and will use the Unreal Engine. That means development is gonna be slow going, because I have to learn a whole new tool. The “smart business” decision would be to make something quickly in Unity which I’m already familiar with… but I want to do this for me, and UE5 looks like a lot of fun. I’m also shooting for an early-ish release date so I avoid burn out and I keep the game short: I want to release it in Fall 2022, but knowing game development, it will probably take longer.

With the help of my therapist, I’ve also concluded that I’ve been too accessible on the internet and that my self-worth isn’t determined by the amount of people I try to help online. Of course, I love helping people and seeing them succeed, but I need to step back and focus on my family and myself. I will delete my social media apps on my phone (I will still post big updates occasionally) and stop responding to most emails, tweets, DMs, etc. It’s not that I’m ungrateful… in fact, if I don’t say thank you or at least acknowledge the incredibly nice people who share a sweet message about my game or want to tell me how I inspire them (still hard for me to believe, lol), I feel a ton of guilt… but I need to let that go. Please know I’m extremely grateful to all the fans who follow my work, so even if I don’t thank you directly, I truly mean it: thank you.

I will still post and stream occasionally on YouTube when I want to (and I still do live Q&A’s for my GDU students). The online course sales will help support my family as I work on a potentially risky game idea (and my new job will help alleviate the risk too). I’m gonna try one more marketing experiment and sell a mini-course soon (and add an Unreal section), and after that I’m done working on it. A gigantic thank you to the people who bought my course and are part of the amazing community, it has helped me and my family tremendously, and it’s inspiring seeing the games you make!

I’m a bit worried about the whole thing since this new game idea could flop, which could definitely affect my family. But a sappy, high-school yearbook quote is coming to mind…  I think it applies here: “A ship in harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.”

Thanks for reading,

David

#gamedev #indie games #the first tree

[bedrock-to-buildheight]

Anon asks

I also received a bunch of compliments in asks which I appreciate very much, but in the interest of not posting a bunch of variations on "thank you" I won't be answering those asks

Yo uh. I‘m trying to upload a comic to..somewhere but I don’t know where to yet, do you have any tips with Webtoons or Tapas? Both the websites scare me but I’m not sure about uploading elsewhere..

Oookay I've only been uploading for 2 months so you might be better off asking the forums on those sites/reddit but here's what I've learned

Put aside a few hours to check all the sizing of thumbnails, icon, banners, pages whatever the site requires and make some canvases to those measurements. Basically do the boring numbers task in one go

Both platforms are not all that good at promoting new comics that aren't their originals so you're gonna have to do the promo yourself if you want the numbers. Tapas is a little better

If you're scheduling pages on Tapas you're gonna need a timezone calculator bc that thing is stuck in EST

In my experience I've got a lot more views in Webtoons, so if that's what you're in for then go for it

Again, these are my thoughts and I recommend doing more research. Good luck with your comic!

Audrey really isn’t a good person huh

I really can't answer that bc it's like asking if hacking is good or bad. But she is necessary

hello! ive got a private mc worldbuilding project, and am in love with your idea of villagers being shapeshifters - is it ok if i take inspo from that? i thought itd be neat if my villagers were based on animals but i got the inspo from u so i wanna make sure its ok :o

Go right ahead fam I don't own the concept of mob-based villagers anyway

have you ever checked out someone playing minecraft in vr to get inspiration for what it's like to really stand in this world?

Aside from Techno's, I haven't, bc 1. I don't feel like the scale translates properly (yes a block is 1 cubic meter but it doesn't feel like that) 2. The movements are awkward

Have you seen the catboy Steve official art yet-

I DID lakfksksk whoever owns that and the herobrine acc are doing great

#ask bedrock

[courtnepal8]

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Scantily clad buxom models lounged in chairs; some, just like the Venus de Milo, missing limbs. Click here to see measurements and photos for all physique varieties. Our Female Sex Dolls are created with the right necessities. Depending on individual preferences, the body can match everyone's personal unique tastes and wants. With our selection of vaginas and our impeccably crafted anus, it is feasible for you to to take pleasure in vaginal, anal, and even oral sex; however, typically you need and at no matter pace you desire. This doll has WM Dolls™ 173 cm H-cup Classic Body + #203 head. This doll has WM Dolls™ 173 cm H-cup Classic Body + #70 head. Though sailors’ dolls have been just generic substitutes for the female form—any female form—there are some cases of males creating dolls as stand-ins for specific women. Historians differ on what occurred after Kokoschka received the doll. One factor is for sure—it was extremely furry, coated in “skin” extra reminiscent of an opulent stuffed animal than a human girl. One account says he was “enraptured” by it all the identical; others say he was disenchanted. He made a number of drawings of it, and, according to some reports, ultimately destroyed it at a celebration, either burning it or burying it in his backyard. You can fully customise your personal lifelike horny dolls in our retailer. If you might have been serious about shopping for actual dolls, you may already have a selected concept of what you would possibly be in search of. For example, eye colour, hair shade, physique shape and dimension. If you realize precisely what type of horny sex doll you want, a totally customized love doll could additionally be your best choice. Because you might be able to get exactly every little detail you want. Even without the VR porn, your experience with sex dolls is so realistic. McMullen studied art in college and started sculpting female figures in his garage as a hobby. “It started as an idea I had for a posable sculpture — a highly practical mannequin,” he says. At that point, in 1994, sex dolls had been cheaply created from plastic and little greater than bachelor celebration gag presents. In closing, we want to level out that there is not any reason to be choosy. Having sex with a real woman will all the time be the final word objective. However, when you’re feeling horny, and also you don’t want to hit the clubs in search of a companion, then try out sex with sex doll companions instead. But Pygmalion’s true fashionable inheritor might be Davecat, a man who lives in southeastern Michigan with three high-end sex dolls. His first buy, which he named Sidore Kuroneko, he considers his wife; the opposite two—named Elena and Muriel—are just intimate associates. He designed their bodies earlier than they were manufactured and their personalities after they arrived. “There was never a moment when —or any doll, for that matter—was merely an object to me,” he told me when we spoke final yr. Woman have vibrators men have sex dolls or their hand and so forth. even with vibrators woman nonetheless need a mans time and assets. Men usually are not that method we simply need easy access to good sex. Sailors typically used cloth to trend fornicatory dolls often recognized as dame de voyage in French, or dama de viaje in Spanish. In modern-day Japan, sex dolls are typically often identified as “Dutch wives”—a reference to the hand-sewn leather masturbation puppets made by the 17th-century Dutch sailors who traded with the Japanese. It’s a unique type of enjoyment to masturbation and I get pleasure from each, but that one purpose alone is sufficient for sex dolls to not be capable of substitute ladies . As somebody who’s experienced lots of sexual fantasies in real life, I also can mention that when carried out with a doll it’s utterly completely different. Redhead doll from Silicone WivesAs someone who uses these dolls and has a girlfriend I thought it might be interesting to see where I really feel these sorts of sex dolls could replace women. Bader suggests that the relationship between men’s desires and their sexual preferences could not lend itself to superficial interpretations.

#love doll

[star-across-the-universe]

On the note of impostor syndrome:

Nyyyyeaargh. I once did a research project/paper. For grad school, in conjunction with local big-deal architecture firms that had interest. It was me and a couple other grad students (they were hella cool), a freelance software designer, and our super cool architecture firm representative.

It was a study into whether virtual reality training can teach people how to manage building systems, energy use, etc etc. (It’s part of a growing field of architectural study, which tries to guess how / how much energy people will use in the building, then go back in a few years and study how much energy they actually used - usually much more than designed for because They Don’t Know, and the needs of end-users vs. designers, and so forth.)

So we designed sort of a VR game thing to help people think about how energy enters/leaves the building, how to control the light and temperature using non-electric means, and when you need to use the electric ones, blah blah. 

The concept kind of went sideways and off track, but it was functional and playable by the end of it, and then we had people do a quiz 1. after playing it, and 2. another test group that didn’t play the game but looked at diagrams, and compared the test results annnnd wrote a paper!

That actually sounds fairly relevant when i say it out loud, but when you’re sitting there going “of course they aren’t gonna remember where the frickin’ light switch is, i stopped this person in a lobby to do a 5-question quiz on an architectural diagram while someone else was waving their arms around with a vr headset on”, like, the whole thing was kinda goofy and seemed a bit of a mess from the “students doing a research paper” position. And then you draw conclusions from it which are, like, “am i just proving my own biased conclusion here or is this real?” and by the end of it you’re just thinking dear god nobody tug on the loose threads here or this macaroni art is gonna fall apart.

... Apparently the industry loved it and the architecture firm has done huge presentations and invited other architect firms and there’s our dumb faces on video interviews on a big projector screen while people mill around taking notes and drinking beer and discussing Important Things, and then the firm presented it at a science symposium at our school so we’re standing up in front of hundreds of people with a 30-foot tall video of my face saying something dumb while i’m standing there internally screaming, and then they took it to the East Coast to a Big Science Conference, and I’m like “Really? Goddamnit, can you not see how badly i wired all this together? How can you not see how terrible I did?” 

And then you think, wait. Wait, is this... what people do? Does EVERYBODY feel like they’re someone’s hapless labrador retriever that got invited to the table and is desperately pretending to know what’s going on? Is everyone’s shit this terrible and we just don’t know because we’re not the ones doing it?

And... kinda... yes. 

And that’s terrifying. 

So... Just do your best and put it out there and be honest about the loose threads, and if anybody notices that you’re actually a labrador in a party hat, it’s probably because they’re also a labrador in a party hat.

#science #architecture #impostor syndrome #Neil Armstrong is also a labrador in a party hat #and i find that very reassuring #this is really just me venting my nervous energy that got worked up today #aaaaaaaaaagh

[mydigitalweblog]

Art and The Digital World

Is Digital Technology transforming the art world?

Digital Technology is at the core of significant change in many areas of our lives even in the cultural field made up of tangible pieces of art. Digital art such as 3D virtual reality (VR) or computer graphic techniques, has become a medium that are now enabling artists to revolutionise traditional art forms. It is essentially a new tool that will serve a variety of artistic needs to push the barriers of creation and imagination. Now, anyone with a computer can draw and paint, which means that art is becoming less exclusive and therefore losing a sense of uniqueness or beauty, but some people believe that this is an opportunity for the young generation to use the knowledge of digital tools to deepen their interest in art and to enrich artistic emotions and experience. 

One thing I know for sure is that if you don’t understand something, you can’t create based on it. It is important to communicate these technological concept to artists, or in the long term they will have to rely on commercially produced templates to create their art. It is like the difference between knowing how to code your own website, and having to use a template someone else made. Digital art is really moving fast, new ways of promoting, selling and creating are quickly emerging and evolving. Websites like artsy is a great example of where you can showcase your work. Many people believe that technology is killing the traditional form of visual art. However, the limitless bounds of the digital world are actually expanding and transforming creativity. It is inspiring more people and creating a new form of art that will live on for centuries.

#art #digital #technology #graphics #coding #design

[liamoreillygevert]

Guess who's back! Back again!

After my lack of posts last half of semester, I thought it was time for another post.

Studio:

Now, thanks to COVID my project has taken a rather large detour. I had planned to create a final 1:1 prototype that functioned but sadly now it will all be digital. This isn't the worst though, this allows me to focus on the design of multiple items of furniture and model them in Fusion 360. My idea is to model all of these different pieces of furniture and photoshop them into different home environments to show of the furniture in an realistic way.

Now to some of the work I have done, I have moved away from the hammock style chair and into a more compact chair/sofa style. I took reference from a large obtrusive staple of architecture, acoustic mirrors.

These large objects have a brutalist style to them with the solid material and the angular design. I used this style and played around with the angles and the concave circle to try and form some what of a seat. I made a few mock ups and rendered them out, although to wood texture really sucks. I might have to make my own texture to really get the aesthetic I want.

These designs make use of the angular style of the acoustic mirrors and the concaved circle. These designs due to there material would be rather uncomfortable but with the use of felted wool we could make cushions and comforters to go with them. This would make use of different waste materials and in different ways. Also by carving out aspects of the chairs it could be used as storage for the likes of book and other items.

Space, Image and Sound:

Nothing has really happened in this class as of yet. So going well! Banter aside, I have decided to focus on the film aspect of the installation, this way I can show of audio and visual all at the same time. But how to elevate the project further?

From here I plan to look at the learning objectives and work my installation around some of these points, while also keeping it within the scope that I personally want. Clinton spoke about ‘where you would like to present and/or where you could present’, it could be in digital space, it could be a car park, it could be VR. The idea is to imagine it in heaps of different spaces. What if I did an animation/ Overall it would be nothing but I could show a virtual space reacting with virtual nothing, which wouldn’t be nothing because it is digital therefore there is something (pixels and/or other digital mediums) This could be another way I could show off my idea in a different medium. Other than that, the plan is to continue with the film concept, I don’t have an ideal space such as the art gallery as my nothing can be anywhere. The ideal space/the white cube would actually be to plain for my topic, which could also be rather cool in the same respect. Due to my project being about nothing and how everything reacts with my nothing, if it was in the ideal gallery space it actually wouldn’t do anything at all. It would be a vaguely invisible plinth in a stark room within buzzing audio around it. Now I need to go further, I need some good locations with interesting environments. If lockdown persists to the point where I cannot leave my house to film on location then I will have to settle for places around my house but ideally I would like to go out and film in other places.

Intelligent Agents:

Now that the essay is out of the way it is time to focus on the project. For the project I would like to write a short story outlining the topic I did for the essay.

At this stage the story consists of two character that are suffering from similar situations, one is a robot with many organic augmentations that it doesn't know whether it is still a robot or not and the other character is a human with many cyber-organic augmentations and doesn't know whether they are still human. The ideal of the story is that they will have different stories and eventually will meet up at the end to settle there inner conflicts. More or less it is a play on the 'Theseus' Ship' analogy. "The ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object." - they are struggling with this dilemma about themselves, whether they are robot or human.

So far I have written about two paragraphs for each character. Ideally I'd like the story to be around 10,000 words, but we will see how it goes as I write more, it might be less or more depending on how it all goes.

#ctec709

[historicalfightingguide]

loved your recent posts about structuring classes, however as a fairly new fencer with no teaching experience im having trouble applying the same concepts to my solo practice. would you have any advice for solo drills, especially to someone who has never self taught? im guessing this is a common trouble in these times, with the quarantine and all.. thank you for all your posts!

First of all I’d be delighted to help but do consider I will be able to give out only fairly general advice here if I don’t know your specific focus in terms of weapons and systems you study. Feel free to message me unanonymously if that feels ok to you, or here again with such details and I can send you a follow up that’s more specific if this post doesn’t cover your questions well enough. Second of all there’s a fair bunch of footwork drilling that can be done solo that’s highly useful to beginners and advanced fencers alike. It may require more or less space and conditions to train in but realistically you don’t need an entire hall to train footwork solo, a semi-small room with a bit of space to move forwards and backwards can do the trick in a pinch.

And while different systems emphasize different types of footwork even if you were to only do solo training that focused on olympic fencing or boxing like footwork you could still apply a fair bit to historical fencing generally. That being said if you do have a specific source or weapon you’re studying do try and find the bits in the manuscripts or manuals you’re focusing on that mention footwork or general movement and try and apply that. It can be via set drills that do specific things, it may talk about principles you can try to apply with a number of different attacks or defenses you can drill with a sword, it may be good to do a sort of ‘shadowboxing’ footwork where you imagine an opponent and keeping distance. Hell if you have a wii or a VR of some sort you may even try and apply purely distance management with super basic footwork to games(bonus points if you try to use only that and not any actual combat mechanics to try and survive longer within a game). If that’s still too confusing try picking a few footwork movements that are the most basic(step forward/backwards,lunge,passing step for example) and try doing them only, without a sword or anything. At most just extend your arm before you as if you were holding a sword when lunging/doing a passing step but don’t focus on the arms technique. Then try doing them+a few movements that are related to or special versions of those movements alongside them. Then try doing the same at different stance levels,with your knees bent more or less-a deeper stance is harder on your legs but can be more stable and once your muscles adapt also a bit more explosive, tends to work better for linear movement, while a shallower stance allows some more options for direction changing and is easier on the legs but you’re less stable and generally a bit less explosive. Ideally you want to be able to use both. Which brings me to my next point - you can then try doing all those movements and every now and then switching the depth of your stance. Then you may try adding on forward/backward weighted stances(often called ‘offensive’ vs ‘defensive’ but they may also map more specifically to particular stances of a specific system you study) and doing the footwork moves in one, then in the other, and then switching from one to the other.

After that try switching your stance both up and down, forwards and backwards, first in place, then while moving trying to stay fluid. Then repeat the entire process while holding a sword. Try to go through it all with both a left leg forward as well as a right leg forward stance. You may go through it all with all the guards that exist in the system you study. First do it while standing in that one guard that’s easiest for you to hold or the most ‘basic’  one, then go through the entire set of movements within another guard, and then another etc. Then try switching between two or three guards while going through all the movements. Then try switching between all the guards while going through all the movements.

If the system you study has a lot of guards merely moving from one to another while standing in place first may also be a good idea. Doing it fairly slow at first, focusing on just moving and getting the grasp of the mechanics of it, keeping good form is good. Then slowly from session to session start always slow but during the session amp up the speed bit by bit. Basically what you’re doing in this example you’re taking a super basic set of moves and then building on from there with related concepts. You can do this within one session or you may spread it out over several training sessions if you feel a part of this feels too off. Don’t be afraid to go through it all unless you have some specific injuries that would prevent you from doing so.

The idea is basic step-step variants-stance variants-combining it all. You can apply this to cuts, thrusts, winding, etc.  You may want to go basic-a bit less basic-a bit less basic-complex etc. You may want to go basic-more basic options-a bit less basic-a few more a bit less basic options etc. You may want to combine the two approaches after a bit. You may want to focus on a set of cuts, thrusts and windings that may use similar mechanics within a set of drills,  working on one then the other etc. and then giving yourself options to pick between them. Or you may want to do the same with things that may be different mechanically but same or similar tactically. Important bits to keep in mind are not trying to do big jumps in complexity of movement, or duration of exercise, or intensity of doing so. Generally speaking you want to slowly increase it, one by one. Sometimes the sources give us exactly this approach, sometimes they don’t. If you can use at least bits from the manuals and manuscripts we study to apply to the specific workout session you’re planning that’s awesome, if not that’s ok. It may have to do  with the principles of the systems you study being trained through the exercises you picked, it can be about the specific motions and tactics described in the text, it can be about a specific detail of a movement you’re trying to get down. Many flourishes  do focus on basically giving you that option.

There’s more ways to do it obviously but that’s one of the ways I’ve found easiest. Another thing that’s easy to forget or that can feel weird when we’re on our own is time management. You don’t have to have a preset amount of time you train for but if you have the energy to plan stuff out I suggest you do so. Carving out a general idea of how much time you want to spend on what as well as the breaks to catch your breath in between can be very useful. Personally I like doing several minutes of training then a small break of a couple of minutes and so on for an hour or two. If you’re just starting out that sort of time table may not work for you and you may want to work just a couple of minutes, rest for a minute etc. and go on like that for half an hour. There’s no one absolute rule there but try to find a rhythm that works for you where whenever you’re training you’re actually training your fencing skillset, you are able to primarily(if not exclusively, these are hard times after all) focus on your goal, where you’re not primarily training endurance or some other form of physical capability( you can cross train and physical exercise generally is great but trying to mix it all into one thing can be counterproductive), and give yourself good rest times that don’t take too long either so that your body doesnt cool off and your mind stays on track without being overworked.

Always factor in some time for a warm up before working out - it can help put you in the right mindset and help relax and is good for injury prevention. And similarly it’s useful to consider a cool down period afterwords, a useful way to do so is to stretch. Do keep in mind that static stretching before active exercise is not good for you and may potentially be bad for you  That being said a warm up comprised of mobility routines and the like can be great, and using stretching after a work out can help sort of ‘finalize’ the session and help our body cool off slowly. It can also be a useful time to work on flexibility as well. Folks may worry about flexibility a bit too often compared to how useful it is in practice but it’s not irrelevant in martial arts and combat sports generally and the same applies to historical fencing. One can achieve the necessary flexibility through purely drilling fencing movements of various sorts however at such times we want to focus on doing the moves right and at the right time etc. so focusing on flexibility simoultaniously can be a bother. Working that bit out separately can help us in our regular practice that way. Also aside from getting books/pdfs of whatever system you study something that can be quite useful is Understanding Fencing by Czajkowski that focuses on olympic/sport fencing but gives you a framework that you can apply to create all sorts of drills(primarily but not only partnered ones) for basically any fencing system out there even though you may have to adapts parts of it. Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym

Also here’s a few pride-themed things to check out getting as well as a few related topics

And stay safe

And if you can consider donating to any of these causes.

Consider getting this rashguard or this one or something from here

We need change and justice for all.

This may be a useful link as well.

For anyone unclear on this Black Lives Matter.

Good luck everyone.

[sam-gibbs]

Ghosts

Here I am now going to start looking into ghosts. I find ghosts to be really fascinating as we are not 100% sure whether or not they actually exist. There are many different films as well as game which use ghosts differently and gives them different abilities.Here is a mindmap/moodboard I have made which contains some things that I relate to ghosts:

Phasmophobia:

Phasmophobia is a gme which can be played alone or with friends. Phasmophobia is a first person horror games where you and your friends must go in the building and figure out what type og ghost is in the building. To find out which type of ghost is present the player must use tools such as uv flashlights.cameras,emf readers and other equipment to find the different features that a ghost will possess. Inside of the players journal it will say which ghosts have which capabilities and what the player should look out for. Once the player has found 3 pieces of evidence they must go into their journal and enter the 3 pieces of evidence as well as decided which type of ghost it is. players must do this all while trying to survive the ghost. You heard that right. The ghost can go into a hunting mode which is normally indicated to the player when their flashlights start to flicker. Players can hide from ghosts in order to try and survive them as well as use a crucifix (this only works on certain ghost types).

I personally have played phasmophobia on both pc as well as in vr. I find the game to be really fun to play and think that the game play concept of the game is really good. The game idea of having to do your own type of ghost busting is really fun.I also think that the game looks really good as well and the audio as well as graphics really adds to the games horror atmosphere.

Fatal Frame:

Fatal frame is quite an old game and was brought out on the ps2.In the different games the plot does differ but the main goal of the games is to try and survive some haunted place with only a camera.The camera is the main weapon in the game and is able to take pictures of things which normal humans can't see. Most of the game is in a third person camera angle much like in the old resident evil game. However the view changes into first person when the player is using the camera.

In the camera there is a capture circle. In order to damage or exercise ghosts they must be within the range of the capture circle. If a photo is taken when the subject is not in the circle, it may appear clearly or it may not appear at all.The camera also has a game mechanics with its filament. The filament will glow blue when a peaceful ghost or clue is nearby and red when an attacking ghost is nearby.Here is a video showing off the camera in use.

The photo shows off how the camera works as well as what the ghosts look like in the game. As you can see the camera does do damage to the ghost and after a while should be able to destroy the ghost.I assume the blue bar on the side is the filament talked about previously so I would assume that this is a peaceful ghost.

Real ghosts/ghost hunting:

Of course when it comes to looking into ghosts we cant leave out real ghost hunting. Many people believe in ghosts and go out and try to find ghosts in haunted/abandoned places.There is actually some tv shows which focus around real life ghost hunting. Here is a video from one of the shows.

Here is the video you get to see them using data loggers which detect vibrations in order to see whether a ghost was walking down the staircase in the persons house. They would know whether it would be cause by a ghost of just a change in vibration in the atmosphere because the data loggers would go off one step at a time instead of them all at once if it was just a change in surroundings. 

When it comes to ghost hunting hunters need lots of equipment such as lights, cameras, sound recorders to pick up any sound made, temperature readers as well as emf readers. For those who don't know EMF readers detect fields emitted by moving electrically charged objects.Many believe that these can pick up ghosts as they are thought to still have an electromagnetic field.

Ghostbusters:

Next we are moving onto a classic which is of course ghostbusters. Ghostbusters is a very icon ghost hunting movie where a group takes on the task of defeating ghosts.However unlike in real ghost hunting the ghostbusters have a lot more success in finding and capturing/destroying ghosts.In the films the ghosts are a lot more easier to see as they have a visual glow to them. 

In the show the ghostbusters use different equipment compared to real ghost hunting and are a lot more hands on. In the show they have ghosts traps which are made to capture ghosts and trap them (clue in the name).The ghost busters also use what is called a proton pack which is also a capturing device in the film. On the pack there is also a neutrona wand which is what the user uses to aim towards the ghost they intend to capture

Once captured the ghosts then get put inside of the Containment unit which is a large laser confinement grid which holds and restrains all the vapors and entities that the ghostbusters trap.

All info taken from:

https://ghostbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Containment_Unit

Here is a scene from the first ghostbusters movie where they are trying to capture the iconic slimer ghost. As you can see inside of the video that there proton packs aren't only dangerous to the ghost but anything else they hit. Then by using the proton pack as well as the ghost trap. The proton packs are used to hold the ghost above the trap and almost guide the ghost into the trap

Daylight:

Now we are moving onto daylight which was a game I had never heard before. I came across this game when looking into games which contained ghosts.At a first glance I fell in love with the visuals of the game and as you can see in the above image they are just amazing.Unfortunately of course it is the advertisement art so the game isnt as good looking as that.Here is the trailer video for the ps4 launch:

I think the trailer does a really good job of showing off the game. It shows off the horror and ghost aspects of the game. It gives use a little insight as to what we should expect without giving away too much of the game.This trailer would entice players in really well in order to go ahead and play the game. One important things when it comes to ghost games is really not knowing when or where you are going to run into the ghost which is what I think adds to the horror and fear factor of the game.

This game is said to be a survival horror game which the player plays from the first person perspective.Like fatal frame the player does not have access to weapons and only has a cell phone which they use as their sole light source. In this game it contains procedurally generated levels meaning that no 2 environments are the same. The plot of the game is centered around a woman who wakes up in an abandoned hospital with no knowledge as to how she got there. The aim of the game is to try and escape the hospital without dying.With the game being only £4 on steam I think it is really nice for a few jump scares.

American horror story murder house and hotel:

American horror story is a tv show which often uses ghosts for one of its themes for a season. In both season 1 as well as season 5 of the show we are presented with lots of ghosts. The only difference is that ghosts can be scene by everyone as well as interact with humans almost like they are still alive eg hugging and holding hands.However in the tv show it is ongoing plot that the ghosts can not leave the building they have died in and can only leave on halloween. Their souls are almost bound to the place they died. On other feature of the ghosts is that if someone doesn't want to see them whether that is another ghost or a human then they can make them disappear from their sight, making the ghost invisible to them.

In the shows the ghosts don't really have any special abilities and are almost like humans, In the first season a person dies and they don't even notice they have died until they try to leave the house and can't.That shows how alive like the ghosts are. The ghosts also can show what they looked like when they died as well as what they would look like if they were still alive. For example in season 1 we have the maid who died young by getting shot through the eye. The maid ghost can either still show herself as the young maid or can also change how she looks to be her current self.

[spaceslogbook]

Hello !!!

.Hello, hello hello?? oh hey i finally found out how tumblr works (not gonna lie i still don’t have any idea ;p ). so here is my first post. today i want talk about my self and little about this blog schedule. 

well for people who don’t know i’m space or spacepilot and i want to become a game developer. you can go to About me page to read more. i don’t want talk about that to much.

here’s a little about what stuff we going to learn and main topics of this blog

i add # to all this this topics if you want search for them :

Game Development: didn’t see this coming huh? these are some stuff i should or must know about making games. this includes stuff about game design, level design and ... this kinda stuff

 Unity and Programming: many years ago game engines or wasn't a thing or they were private; so game developer had to use dark magic and make their own engines for their needs. but these days you have many option for choosing game engine. i decide to use Unity as my game engine. it have big community and there are a lots of tutorial and article for it. it’s also good for both 2d and 3d games. it uses C# language for scripting.

Art: well game art is all the visual elements in your game. if you don’t have the visual elements, well your game is just bunch of code. trust me it’s not fun without that. when i tag a post with art i mean 2d sprites and Concept arts. we don’t speak about 3d here. i want to start with pixel art because many reasons. one it’s easy to start, two it’s cheaper, three ... it’s cool !!! . i may try vector art in feature but for now it’s better.

3D: i think you guys know about 3d by now; i mean.. come on... this is 2021 :| if you are into gaming you know whats 3d for sure(and i’m out of idea to write anything about it). anything about 3d will be in this topic from unity3d or 3d modeling or first person shooter  or even vr . ask your self if it’s have anything to do with 3d ; if answer is Yes you can find it here.

others: anything cool i can’t find a place for it .

so here’s all topic we going talk about for now. i don’t want deal with sounds for now because it’s hard for me to deal with and i have a lots to learn anyway. i may add it later but for now i’m fine.

i’ll gonna start Art because as said “art is all the visual elements in your game” and i don’t know nothing about it :| so i gonna start there. if you here for 3d my friend you have wait a lot because we not going there for now. i better to deal with 2d and get better with more then start all of them and not learning anything at all. 

okay. that’s all for now cya next day.

#introduction #gamedev #first post

[sinfulwonders]

for your newest ask meme i'm gonna break the rules and ask for two characters 😳 komaeda and his bf 🥺✌️

That’s cool with me! <3

Nagito Komaeda

Fight them or fight for them

Fight for them! Nagito is a problematic guy, but there’s good in him and I would fight for him all day.

On a scale from 1-10 how excited do I get when I see them

I love the way people draw Nagito in fan art! He’s also just an all around pretty guy, so I really enjoy looking at him. So like 8.

Would I smooch/date/etc

No, he’s not really my type. That being said I really would want to touch his hair. It just looks so soft!

Do I write for them

Sometimes! But he’s really difficult to write for so I have a hard time feeling confident enough to post the stuff I write for him.

Their defining color (color I most associate with them)

Ooh he’s actually one of the more difficult danganronpa characters to categorize by color for me. Probably green or white, though light pink also comes to mind. 

My nickname(s) for them

Hope boy, Bagel man, pretty basic stuff.

Something I have in common with them

I can get really absorbed and passionate about certain topics, and I can also be a pretty self deprecating person. I’m working on the latter, though. 

Song I associate with them

Apres Moi by Regina Spektor. It’s one of my favorite songs of all time and I think the vibe works for Nagito really really well.

Who do I ship them with (and type of ship ex. Romantic or brotp)

I ship him with Hajime the most, but I’m also a big fan of Kamukoma and Komaegi as well. As a brotp I’m a fan of the trio from 2.5 (Kuzuryu, Soda, and him)

Idea for an imagine/fanfic for them (if I have one)

So many. I have so many Komahina, Kamukoma, and Komaegi works in progress ;_; I really wanna write a fic exploring the aftermath of the VR killing game and the dynamic of Hajime and Kamukura sharing a brain and both having complicated relationships and feelings for Nagito. 

Hajime Hinata

Fight them or fight for them

Oh fight for him all the way.

On a scale from 1-10 how excited do I get when I see them

I’ve grown to like him so much more over time. I think like 7 now.

Would I smooch/date/etc

I think Hajime needs more hugs, so I’d do that, but I don’t think I’d be too interested in dating him or anything. (Also I don’t wanna get in the way of Nagito. That’s scary tbh)

Do I write for them

Yep, sometimes! He’s easier for me to write for, because I think our mindsets are similar.

Their defining color (color I most associate with them)

Brown and dark green. Super earthy colors for sure.

My nickname(s) for them

I don’t think I have any :o

Something I have in common with them

I think we have similar thought processes in general, but personality wise I think we’re both kinda introverted people (in the sense that human interaction is draining) and can be socially awkward disasters. 😅

Song I associate with them

I mean this song works for both Hajime and Izuru I think, but Made of Stone by Daughter. I think it captures their personas well.

Who do I ship them with (and type of ship ex. Romantic or brotp)

I ship Komahina pretty exclusively. I don’t mind Hinaegi though. Also I live for Chiaki and Hajime as a brotp.

Idea for an imagine/fanfic for them (if I have one)

The one I mentioned above, but also I love the idea of Hajime starting to have dreams of Izuru during the killing game. His Izuru memories start soaking through during all this memory manipulation that is the VR simulation. I’ve written a tiny drabble on this and have a couple WIPs of this idea, but I enjoy the concept a lot.

#komahina #Nagito Komaeda #Hajime Hinata #danganronpa #ask meme

[thesassiestcolor]

RT Concept Art Panel things

Even though I am not an artist or smart but am very interested in BTS stuff

Lead concept artist (Erin Winn) for RWBY works close with Kerry to create characters, they look at inspirations, the theme of the characters, go over the designs three of four separate times to make sure they fit into the world, what the modelers need to make it work, and send it off to the modelers and make it work, then to environment

They say concept artists fail as much as possible - there’s only one true design they like so many many others will fail in order to get better

Character designs takes everything into account, character motivation, themes, purposes, and what’s feasible

Most animators in the design phase work mostly in photoshop or illustrator (rarely) then gets sent to modeling/rigging that then really gets fleshed out - puppet rigging system is used to see how they would be move and work functionally in the environment of the show

Backgrounds are created directly in photoshop for 2D projects, more complicated camera work in 3D that needs more involved backgrounds takes multiple systems

Artists at RT are starting to work more in 3D as time goes on - some employees are farther along with it than others - but they all need to keep up with the industry

Sometimes the panelists feel they’re taken too literally - they’ll leave out details that would flesh out the environment but no one else on the team would complete the environment - that’s why some times you see really empty spaces in the background

Some of their favorite sets from RWBY have been transferred into VR - like Weiss’s bedroom, which is apparently HUGE - but don’t do it often because it’s not practical and hard to do

For the new RWBY designs: the concept artists worked close with Ein Lee (the artists that does all the posters and outfit reveals) who gave them three versions of outfits, and the concept artists choose bits and pieces from each that look the best; with few additions from the concept team

But they can’t always go as cool or complicated they want to with the outfits because of limits on what rigging and modelers are capable of

The lead concept artist (Erin Winn) for RWBT also is on board with calling Blake’s haircut the Bisexual Bob

The alternate outfits the RWBY girls wear in vol 2 were made by Monty himself, the panelists said he was just messing around with designs in modeling and decided to put them in for a few episodes - every other outfit was by Ein Lee and the team together

The designs for GenLock were rather challenging just because every single design is completely new - the mechs went through several redesigns in a short amount of time, there were a ton of artists working on everything

Atlas is a major point of pride for everyone on the panel - it’s supposedly very big and beautiful and they can’t wait to show it off!

While Monty had a rough Poser copy of Qrow’s scythe, the current lead concept artist finished the final version and added a few details

Neon Katt and Flynt Coal were totally last minute additions because they needed another team for the Vytal Festival Tournament - at that point it was such a severe crunch time that the first idea they had went into the final designs! They really wanted to make something cool and Fast

Some of the hardest environments and characters were the final design of Atlas we see at the end of RWBY Vol 6, New York in the first ep of GenLock, the Union Soldier and Caliban’s design from GenLock, an upcoming animal design in Camp Camp, Velvet’s RWBY Chibi design, and Adam’s redesign in the Mistral Arc (they had over 24 designs and the artists was tired of Adam by that point)

Concept art is very hard to break into - there’s incredible competition to get in and you need to be very close to the writers/directors and knowledgeable of the animation process enough to know what the show needs and can do

#rwby #camp camp #gen:lock #yall go to the small panels theyre so much more interesting #rwby7 #rooster teeth #rtx #concept art