#as in there are plenty of resources available and stuff like that

[devsgames]

HOT GAMEDEVS DON'T GATEKEEP

Inspired by this post by @midwinterhunt, here's a compilation of all the game dev resources I have come across, most of which I use fairly frequently. Most of these are free, some are paid but fairly cheap. Feel free to add your own resources. ✌️

Important reminder: When using basically any works or programs someone else created in your games, make sure you thoroughly understand the licenses and terms it has been shared with. If you don't know what the terms are, reach out to the resource and ask. Don't be lazy about this; it's not only dishonest but it can come back to bite you.

Engines

Unity - Best suited for mobile and multi-platform.

Unreal - Tailored for shooters and high-fidelity experiences.

PICO-8 - Virtual console for simple games

Godot - Open source and free!

GameMaker - Good for 2D games

Bitsy - Great little engine for making simple games and experiences

Construct - Never used but have heard nice things

Scratch - If you've never coded before, this is the best place to start. Great for young devs and those who want to get their feet wet.

Adventure Game Studio - Best suited for adventure games

RPG Maker - Best suited for top-down classic JRPG style games

Twine - Text-centric games like Interactive Fiction

Assets

OpenGameArt - Many assets, various licenses, and plenty of CC0 content.

Unity Store - For Unity only. Some free.

Unreal Store - For Unreal only. Some free.

Godot Asset Library

Jean Moreno's Toon Effects - Some of the best effects available on the Unity store. Unity only but I've used them in basically every project.

Steamworks.net C# Wrapper For Unity - Unity only C# wrapper for integrating Steam compatibility to your game

Itch.io - Plenty of free art assets and game dev resources

Kenney - Kenney makes tons of open-source assets for devs to use.

Art

Mixamo - Generates rigs for your humanoid models and lets you apply a library of free humanoid animations to them. Super helpful for prototyping. Adobe.

Blender - Free, open source and fully featured 3D program.

XNormal - Free offline normal map generator

Normal Map Online - Free online normal map generator

Crocotile - Cheap tool for building 3D models from sprite sheets

MagicaVoxel - Free voxel modelling tool

Piskel - Free online sprite drawing tool

Aesprite - Paid sprite drawing tool

TurboSquid - Not always great quality, but can be good source of free placeholders.

Textures.com - Limited texture downloads per day but free for personal use.

Pexels - Free stock photo resource. Most are free for commercial use. Check licenses.

Clipstudio - Good for illustration or graphic design. One time payment.

GIMP - Image editing program a-la Photoshop. Free.

Audio

Audacity - Free and fully-featured DAW/audio editor.

sfx.me - Free 8-bit synth-style sound effect generator for games.

CastingCallClub - Easy forum to find amateur voice talent for your project (p.s.: you should pay them).

FreeSound.org - Free sounds, searchable by license. A go-to for my audio needs.

Incompetech - Royalty-free music by Kevin McLeod.

Scott Buckley Music - Royalty free with conditions. Generally more on the cinematic side of things but very good stuff!

SoundCloud - 'Search -> By Track -> Filter: Use Commercially' leads to songs posted with allowance of commercial use. Always reach out to the artist to understand their terms and confirm that it's okay to use with your project.

Project Planning

Keymailer - Handy for mailing keys to influencers (don't expect a lot of traction unless you're paying for some of the features though).

Trello - Kanban board. Great for organizing tasks, managing bugs, etc. Free.

Notion - Private text and wiki page editor. Good for project organization, note taking, and fleshing out ideas. Free.

Obsidian - Alternative to Notion, with similar features.

Miro - Free whiteboard for organizing thoughts, images, brainstorming, etc.

Wave - Free Bookkeeping site. Great for keeping finances organized.

#gamedev #game development #game dev #indie games #indie game #gamedevelopment #indiegames #indiedev #indie dev #game developer #resources #blog

[bodyunderconstruction]

Smoke from Canada

Please stay inside if you are sensitive to smoke

check your area for air quality:

PLEASE REBLOG AND SHARE MORE TIPS

I’m actively updating as of Wednesday Jun 7, 2023. Please check your local news stations and weather apps for information on your area.

Outside

If you have to go outside please wear a mask, have lots of sunscreen and drink water when available/needed. Stay in shade when walking. Wear light colors outside, avoid dark colors. Cloth Masks are cool but paint/filter masks are your best friend. If you have a inhaler just bring it with you everywhere! Inside

When inside don’t open windows and keep curtain closed to expel heat. Sandwiches and fruit are your friend. Cooking is far too hot. If you are about to run out of water fill tub with cold water and pray you have a good drain. Basements are your friend. DRINK WATER NOT SODA OR SPORTS DRINKS! Don’t use drier, use a clothes line if possible

Extra

if you are looking for shelter, Public libraries, coffee shops, grocery stores, anywhere thats air conditioned. Take anything you need but be SAFE

Did I mention water? Gatorade is fun but don’t drink caffeine.

If there’s no smoke in your area and you just need to cool down, open your window at night/early morning

|| Take it easy. No, easier than that. Aside from the mental toll the smoke and horrible weird light and the creepy red sun and the burning smell take on you, your body is just working way harder to do everything it normally does. You will be exhausted, you will be distracted, you will have headaches and you will struggle with basic tasks like "walking up stairs." Do not try to power through it. Cancel plans, reschedule appointments, do fewer errands or consolidate them into one trip.

Treat yourself like you have a cold. Plenty of fluids, stopping when you're tired, cough drops and eye drops for the painful throat and eyes, inhalers if you have one.

Spend as little time outside as you possibly can. This includes your pets. Do not open your windows, do not open your screen door, do not run your AC (this is where some of the above advice for hot weather will come in handy.)

If you have to go outside, wear an N95 or KN95 mask. Make sure it's well-fitted around your face. You're not trying to keep out the smoke, but the PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller.) That's the stuff that causes cancer. If you have a fan with a HEPA filter, blast it all the time. If you don't have one go look at diy air filter link below, ask a mutual aid center if you cannot come into contact with these materials. || These tips are from them, a few links below are from them too so go give them some love. https://www.tumblr.com/salteywater

LINKS:

Diy Air Filter

Smoke Tips & Safety

Google Docs, being updated currently

Diy Sun Reflector

More tips

#Heat tips #Fire tips #canada fires #Canada fire #canada wildfires #Canada wildfire #climate crisis #natural disasters #Forest Fires #mutual aid #lgtbq community #crust punk #anarchism #air pollution #air pollutants #Nova Scotia fires #alberta wildfires #Heavy Smoke #Fire Crews #bush fire #enviromental #environmental activism #climate activst #climate activism #Canada #Canada is burning #reblog to save a life #reblog this plz #reblog #solar punk

[liu-anhuaming]

all my mandarin dictionaries (and dictionary-adjacent books)

Through chatting with @don-dake and @cherrymintvampyyri, I've come to realize that I might own a less than normal number of Mandarin dictionaries. So, here's a post about all of them.

I do have two basic bilingual dictionaries (Mandarin/English): the Langenscheidt pocket dictionary and the DK visual dictionary. These are quite easy to buy and not that interesting imo, so I'm not gonna talk further about them.

I'm also going to include a couple books that aren't technically dictionaries, but are rather about etymology of characters, and that's close enough to count for me.

Okay, let's get on to the interesting stuff!

1. What Character is That? An Easy-Access Dictionary of 5,000 Chinese Characters by Ping-gam Go (second edition, 1995)

bilingual

This strange little dictionary was gifted to me by a nun who went to high school with my grandma and later lived in China as a missionary. It's organized alphabetically based on the English translation of each radical?

I have not used this dictionary for actual reference ever, because I flipped through it once and realized that it was absolutely whack. But it's cool to have I guess.

2. 新华字典 第11版

monolingual

This little guy was gifted to me by a Chinese classmate back when I was in college. It's a 字典, so it's just focused on defining individual characters and providing some words featuring that character. Despite being a mainland dictionary, it also has 注音 next to each character for some reason.

It's got some neat stuff towards the back, like the periodic table and a chart of all the 節氣 solar terms.

3. 小学生全笔顺 同义词 近义词 反义词 组词 造句 成语 多音多义字 词典

monolingual

Whew, that's a mouthful. This is an actual 词典, so it defines full words. It also provides example sentences, synonyms, antonyms, and close equivalents. Then there's a section for idioms, and another section for 多音多义字.

There's also this nifty little insert with examples of words/phrases that follow common patterns of repetition.

4. 新现代汉语词典

monolingual

I picked up this chunky guy from a used bookstore down the street from me (the owner of the store passed last year, and the store is no longer there unfortunately). This is a fairly normal dictionary, it's just bigger than my others and has more words listed in it.

One thing I also noticed is that this chart towards the end of the dictionary apparently had a strip of paper pasted on the bottom. It doesn't seem like something I can peel up without damaging the paper under it, and when I shine a flashlight through the page I can't make out any major differences between what's on the sticker and what might be on the page under it. So my best guess is there might have been some damage to the text on the page?

5. 商务馆学汉语近义词词典 The Commercial Press Guide to Chinese Synonyms

monolingual

This book is easily the one I reference the most. As the name suggests, the book is all about synonyms. It takes sets of 2+ similar words and thoroughly explains the similarities and differences between them all. There's plenty example sentences, with notes about whether the synonyms can be used interchangeably in certain contexts.

It's a great resource, but I had a bit of trouble getting my hands on a copy. It's possible that in the years since I bought it there have been more copies made available for sale though.

these next two are books I haven't explored too much since they are old and the binding is incredibly fragile and starting to fall apart. just opening them is stressful.

6. 漢字分解 Chinese Characters Explained by F.X. Keelan (aka 康愛玲修女) (1967?)

bilingual

This book was also gifted to me by the nun who went to school with my grandma, and appears to also have been written by a nun! Based on what I've found from Google, this book was published in 1967.

Rather than a dictionary, this book is "a compilation intended as an aid in grouping and remembering [Chinese characters] with a view in acquiring a reading knowledge of Chinese"(p. iii). It aims to break down characters into radicals and giving similar/related characters. It's apparently the final installment in a 4 part Mandarin Course.

This book uses traditional characters. According to Google Books, the publisher is 光啓出版社, which is a Taiwanese organization. The book includes a very long table that has Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Hakka, Japanese, and Korean pronunciations for (what seems to be) every character mentioned in the book. The intro mentions that this is so the course is more "accessible" for speakers of other East Asian languages.

Also, look at that printing error in the third photo! The text got cut off at the bottom of the page.

7. The Structure of Chinese Characters by John Chalmers (second edition, 1911)

bilingual

This final book is the oldest of the bunch, and was gifted to me by my boss's boss for some reason? She found it in a used bookstore apparently.

This book also uses traditional characters, because simplified characters just weren't a thing yet in 1911. This book is falling apart, and opening it stresses me out. It creaks whenever I open it.

Going by the title page, the full title of this book is An Account of the Structure of Chinese Characters Under 300 Primary Forms; After the Shwo-Wan, 100 A.D., and the Phonetic Shwoh-Wan, 1833. It was published by Kelly & Walsh, which was a Shanghai-based publisher.

Someone very kindly penciled in the years the author was alive: 1825-1899. John Chalmers was apparently a Scottish missionary (bc of course he was) who apparently popularized the term "Cantonese". This book that I own in particular was originally published in 1882.

It is, as the very long title suggests, an analysis and etymology of 300 common components

It also has a nifty fold-out of all 300 "primary forms" in seal script.

#chinese language #mandarin langblr #learn mandarin #learn chinese #books #mine #hope y'all enjoy this!

[theresattrpgforthat]

hello! i was wondering if theres any ttrpgs set in/inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld? thanks :)

THEME: Discworld

I love the Discworld books and I'm very glad you asked this question. I have three resources for you!

A One In A Million Chance At Adventure, by Jocher Symbolic Systems.

This is a game where you play the roles of, often unwilling, sometimes zealous, pawns in the cosmic octarine coloured narrative. Your character is not necessarily a "hero" per se, instead one could possibly see it as being important to the story. Characters like yourself do have a knack for not dying as often as a common mortal (or undead if that has been your unfortune).

With this follows that you'll naturally have a higher chance of actually, possibly, doing some heroic deeds, just by sheer mathematical logic. Unless, of course, you are the type of adventurer who'd prefer a cup of hot tea and soft slippers and a reliable day job.

That does severely reduce the odds of let's say beheading a mythical beast of ill repute or befriending the immodest wood nymphs of Howondaland*.

*if your day job happens to be for example a tax collector this is not true, this and similar careers have shown to increase the risk of leaving the disc rather early.  ** only rumoured, no one who has gone looking for them has ever returned.

This is a free, fan-made d10-based game written in the style of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, footnotes and all. The characters you build are expected to be flawed in some way - they have vices that can cause problems for them and plenty of skills (or spells) to help them get out of trouble.

A One in A Million Chance At Adventure has plenty of supplements to support the game, including an introductory adventure: The Murder of Dominick Kolchak, and a character supplement: The A-M Professions Character Build Guides.

Discworld Roleplaying Game, by Steve Jackson Games.

There's a lot of unusual stuff on the Disc, but don't worry about getting lost – game author Phil Masters has crafted a roadmap to Pratchett-inspired storytelling.

Visit settings like the most dubious city in the multiverse, Ankh-Morpork. Intervene in the cultural interactions of trolls and dwarves (but watch out for flying axes). Campaign for goblin rights. Flee from an angry Swamp Dragon (two feet of mindless fury and high-explosive digestion). Even find out why the second-greatest lover on the Disc needs a stepladder.

And remember, the world is round. And also flat.

This is the official roleplaying game published by Steve Jackson Games, the creators of Munchkin and GURPS - which means that this game also uses the GURPS system. Characters are pretty in-depth and require some time to put together - and that means the the core rulebook is a pretty hefty read. If you like big games with heavy modularity and a lot to chew on, maybe this game is for you!

If you want to try the game out and need a little help, there’s a GURPS Character sheet app available to help you put characters together, and Chris Normand is an avid enthusiast with many videos providing advice on how to get a grip on the system.

The Kleptomancer’s Crypt, by Max Kāmmerer.

The Kleptomancer’s Crypt is an adventure for Troika!, but is easily adapted to other systems. It mostly consists of tables to help you generate a variable adventure. Improvisation and interpretation by the GM required. 

A client hired you to break into the Kleptomancer’s Crypt and so you did. Now you need to get out of the place. The Kleptomancer is a government official tasked with redistributing the wealth by stealing from the rich and keeping what they stole for themselves. Okay, that last part isn’t in the official job description. The Crypt is filled with all kinds of strange things and rooms and people, really. You might for example encounter pipe smoking sloths, boardgame playing plants, ever expanding spheres or the Kleptomancer’s apprentice. The place is dangerous, so you prepared by cutting a deal with death, preventing you from dying while you are in the Crypt.

To be clear, this is not a full game. It is simply an adventure for one.

The eclectic tone of Troika fits Discworld so well that I’m not at all surprised that there is an adventure made for it. If you have experience with Troika, or even with other OSR games, you might want to check this one out.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #dnd #asks #game recommendations #discworld #gnu terry pratchett

[dduane]

OK so listen: I am the same age-ish as both the illustrious Mr. Gaiman and, I believe, you. So when you wrote the first Wizard book I was closer to having a kid, not reading like one. Still, I will read nearly anything, my mother used to tease me b/c if all there was to read at breakfast was the cereal box, I'd be reading it. I've read a LOT of books.

Just read SYWTBAW. Not to state the ridiculously obvious but it was well worth the 6-week wait (at the NYPL no less, who has plenty of copies). The rest of the series, of course, are now on my waitlist.

2 questions for you:

1: Should I read them in order? Will it make a difference to story arc/character development?

2: Did you pick Schenectady off a map/resource or have you actually been there and were speaking from personal knowledge? Double funny b/c aforementioned kid has lived there.

I'm so glad I found you and your work. Thanks for being such a nice person and fantastic writer (and cook, huh?)

...Yeah, I'm not a bad cook. (Though my most effective education in the art came from the gents on whom Tom Swale and Carl Romeo are based.) :) ...And I've got a shade less than a decade on @neil-gaiman. But once you're past 50, these differences don't matter so much, as you'll no doubt have been noticing. Especially among fellow cereal-box readers.

Meanwhile, I'm glad you liked So You Want To Be A Wizard! (And NYPL kept you waiting six weeks for a copy?? WTF. ...But I guess that means their available copies are in demand, so I shouldn't complain.)

Re: reading in order: In this series's case, I do recommend sticking with the publishing order, as there's a definite events arc... and as part of that, both plots and character development become more complex as time goes on. (Possibly a symptom of the author coming to a better understanding of the world she was building. Who knows.)

And re: Schenectady: I've been in and out a few times during trips upstate, but the main reference is to an old joke of Harlan Ellison's. He used to get a lot of questions from people at conventions who wanted to know where he got his ideas. Harlan eventually took to answering "Schenectady," claiming there was some kind of useful-idea warehouse up there... so that when he felt he was running low, he'd get on the phone to them and do a bulk order. (snicker) It was a favored riff. He kept adding unlikely stuff to it as time went by. Eventually I asked to borrow the locale-bit of the shtick, and he said "okay".

Anyway: glad you're planning to follow up on the series. When you run out of the in-traditional-print material, you may want to have a look at Ebooks Direct. There's more YW material over there, including at least one non-main-sequence novel, the offshoot Feline Wizards series, and a batch of novella-length works. (Not to mention the revised, updated-timeline New Millennium Edition ebook versions of the main sequence.)

Meanwhile: hope you enjoy what lies before you! :) And thanks for letting me know you liked the first one.

#So You Want To Be A Wizard #Young Wizards series

[ancientstone]

Okay Brits I need you to start paying attention.

We are likely in a General Election year.

We are going to be voting which political party we want to govern us the next five years. As of yet we don't have a date (the latest it could be held is January 2025, though it's probably going to be in 2024), but you need to start listening to what's going on so you can be ready and make an informed choice.

In the last General Election, the turnout was 67.3% across the UK. People often say they didn't vote because they didn't understand the politics or "they're all the same anyway."

When a General Election is called, Polling Day will be 25 days later. If you're working, busy, or just have life stuff happening, you may not have time to do the research you want. This is why it's important to start doing things now.

1. Are you Registered to Vote?

You can register to vote here.

You can check if you're registered by going here.

You must 18 or over on Polling Day to vote in a General Election.

You must also be one of the following:

A British, Irish, or qualifying Commonwealth citizen. (You can check here if you're a qualifying Commonwealth citizen)

Be resident at an address in the UK (or a British citizen living abroad who has been registered to vote in the UK in the last 15 years)

Not be legally excluded from voting

According to the website, while registering, "You’ll be asked for your National Insurance number (but you can still register if you do not have one). After you’ve registered, your name and address will appear on the electoral register."

There is also an option to register to vote anonymously "if you're concerned about your name and address appearing on the electoral register for safety reasons." The link to that page is here.

You can register to vote by post by going here and printing out the forms.

If you would like a step-by-step guide to registering to vote, here is a page that has a pdf doing just that. It is also available in Welsh.

2. Get a Photo ID

We now need to show a photo ID when turning up to the polls.

Here is a list of valid forms of photo ID.

Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to get a valid ID, otherwise you will be turned away from the polling station.

If you vote by proxy, you need to "take your own ID when you go to vote on someone else’s behalf. You do not need to take theirs."

According to the website, "The name on your ID must match your name on the electoral register. If it does not, you’ll need to:

register to vote again with your new details

take a document with you to vote that proves you’ve changed your name (for example, a marriage certificate)

Small differences do not matter. For example, if your ID says ‘Jim Smith’ instead of ‘James Smith’.

If you do not have a type of photo ID that allows you to vote, you can apply for a Voter Authority Certificate."

3. You need to apply to vote by post

You can apply here.

You need to be registered before applying.

To apply you need:

"The address where you are registered to vote

Your National Insurance number or other identity documents, e.g. a passport

the specific date of the election or referendum you want to make a postal vote, if you only want a one-off postal vote

You’ll also need to upload a photo of your handwritten signature in black ink on plain white paper.

If you cannot provide a signature or one that always looks the same, you may be able to apply for a postal vote signature waiver within the service.

You might be asked for extra documents to identify you."

The linked page has an option for downloading an application form to send in by post.

4. Start Researching!

Think back to the last few years.

What did you like, and who did them? What about the opposite?

Is there something local happening in your area, and who is pushing for/against it?

Look up the parties' social media - what do they promote, promise, and call out?

Here are some resources:

An overview of the political parties

BBC News page for current politics

How many MPs are in which parties

Information on General Elections/when ours will likely be held

The other key political events in 2024

General info around voting, elections, boundary changes, etc.

TL;DR

2024 Will likely be the year the UK votes for the next political party in charge.

You need to register to vote.

You need a photo ID to take with you.

You need to apply to vote by post.

The best time to start looking into the parties and what they do is now, so you can be informed later on.

The rest of the world is welcome to share this!

#politics #uk politics #british politics #general election #general election 2024 #uk #britain #written in stone

[queenofthearchipelago]

So watcher keeps their patreon and the supporters over there have to pay twice if they want to see everything? Or will the patreon content be available on the streamer as well? This is confusing.

So my understanding of the situation the Patrons are in right now is that the ONLY benefit to continuing to pay for the patreon subscription is that they still get access to Watcher Podcasts.

So yes, the Patrons have to pay "double", essentially. Probably what's going to happen is that a lot of people on the patreon cancel their subscription. It simply isn't worth it anymore.

And as for whether the exclusive content on the patreon is moving to the streamer, I don't think so. I scanned the website for exactly this when I looked at it. I'm pretty sure if they were moving the patreon stuff over there, then there would be more Watcher Weekly and behind the scenes at Watcher videos on the streamer.

I agree it's very confusing. Seeing posts from patrons on here and then also finding some patrons in the comments section of the YouTube video, it sounds like the patrons are just as upset as we are. Like... the whole point of the patreon was to help fund them because we liked THEM as creators and didn't want them behind a paywall. And so if I had been a patron, this decision would feel even more like a betrayal because Watcher is simply saying they weren't good enough.

Like I genuinely don't know how to emphasize that those 12,122 people (last I checked) that subscribed to be patrons were doing that so that the 3 Million people who were subscribed to the free YouTube channel wouldn't have to.

Usually when a creator makes a patreon, the understanding is that the content Simply Would Not Exist without them. There are plenty of YouTubers and other creators who rely on their patrons to make the content worth the time and resources to make, and if the patrons disappeared then the creations would simply stop happening, the creator would have to find a new project or potentially a new job. It's essentially the same relationship you have between a commissioner and a creator. Patrons give the money for the creator to create what they make best.

But this decision from Watcher makes it feel like they're looking at their Entire Audience this way. They see the difference between 12k patrons and 3M subscribers on YouTube, and they feel that if they forced those 3M to pay, then they could lose the ads and do what they want with production.

But those 12k patrons were there by grace. With kindness. Those 3M subscribers were there because they were welcomed with love, not because they could obviously afford to be a patron and they were just chosing not to be. (Because apparently anyone and everyone can afford this, right?) The 3M subscribers are not a funding resource to be mined. They weren't an untapped fountain that was holding back the water.

We loved them. We thought we were respected for just being there. It's not even that we feel entitled to free content, it's that if Buzzfeed had been behind a paywall, most of us never would have heard of these guys. And with this move being primarily about production quality, it implies that things of "quality" must be behind a super expensive paywall. And that simply isn't true.

I've even already seen some YouTubers discussing this move, saying they have more than 25 employees and they manage to pay them. YouTubers who know how to do the math on how much money each Watcher video would make, and they they should be turning a profit with each episode. The quality should be possible without betraying the fans this way.

But I've already talked a lot here, and this is waaaaay beyond the question that I was asked lol. It's just that while the average viewer of Watcher is disappointed and upset about this, the patrons already had money in this, and they're in such a strange place now.

#watcher #watcher entertainment #ryan bergara #steven lim #shane medej #thoughtsfromthequeen #asks #thanks for asking!!!

[shankss-magnificent-ass]

Helping you out on your period: 2nd in commands part 1

At first King has no idea what to do to help you, but he ended up leaning into the role of caretaker quite nicely.

He likes that you will often yield to him as long as it means you don't have to do anything. It plays to the dom in him.

This man is a living heating pad, and he will let you use him as such, as long as the two of you are alone.

He'll let you sit in his lap as he does his paper work.

King will also make sure there's plenty of pain medicine and treats available.

He will also carry around a few sweaters in his pockets, so you have a sweater that both fits you and smells like him, whenever you want one.

King will also give you the week off if you let him. It doesn't matter if you work under the other all-stars or directly under Kaido. King will let you set up a nest area in his office.

He bought a couch big enough for himself solely for you to have a napping and resting spot in his office where he can take care of you if you need him.

King likes seeing you are being mean or aggressive due to PMSing. You're usually so nice, so when you spit venomous words at Queen for being a dickhead, he'll join you. Couples that are bitchy together, stay together. Stay toxic ✌️

But seriously King likes knowing that you are capable of being aggressive, and you elect to be nice. Because he knows everything you've been through, and he admires the fact that you haven't let it change you and steal your kindness.

King likes the mood swings actually, feels like it keeps him on his toes. Having you go from tired lump who will do what he tells you, to calling him bitch boy and refusing to do what he tells you, it just makes his day. You're so cute when you think you're in charge.

And being the kinky bastard will also happily fuck you if you get horny. It's one of his favorite things about that time of the month.

He also loves giving massages where ever you ache. Especially if it's your chest that aches, he'll happily rub the pain away for you. Although you can expect a few teasing squeezes that are a little too tight and his half-hearted apologies. Sadistic fuck.

King is all around a 10/10 in terms of period care.

Katakuri, the king of sweets, will use every resource at his disposal to make sure you have the easiest menstrual cycle.

You want dark chocolate brownies with salted caramel? His chefs have the order, and it'll be here in thirty minutes.

You want a puppy? He'll have a box of them rush delivered to the house.

Katakuri will even get you stuff that you didn't ask for. He'll get you a new plushie every month, said plushie will have the ability to be warmed up and used like a heating pad. Odds are it'll also be filled with some sort of fragrant herb to soothe you.

He's the second son of a family with a shitload of kids. He's taken care of his siblings that own a uterus, for pretty much his entire life. There's pretty much nothing about periods that he doesn't know.

Katakuri has cabinets full of your stuff for you. Favorite snacks, drinks, candy, and foods. Every type of pain medicine. Pillows, and blankets. Every thing that could ever be used to stop the flow of blood. Vibrators and sex toys galore, cleaners a and towels too.

Katakuri would also be okay with it if you wanted to free bleed.

Katakuri will even make you a very luxurious mochi palace for you to rest in. It will be the most comfortable you have ever been.

As for the mood swings, Katakuri is used to people being unpredictable. So, when you get cranky with him or go into a menstrual rage, it won't affect him much. He'll politely wait for you to calm down, with your favorite treat in hand.

However, he probably won't fuck you when you're on your period though. He's afraid of hurting you, because he knows you can be tender and achy.

Downside is Katakuri is a very busy man, so he often can only come see you for his merienda and for bedtime and the afternoons in the weekend. He is usually gone by the time you wake up.

8/10 for Katakuri isn't home to snuggle you enough.

Benn has no fucking idea about periods or anything about taking care of someone on their period. He's lived on a pirate ship for the majority of his life.

But he really hates seeing you in so much discomfort and pain, so he does what you tell him to at first, and he gives you time off to rest.

He will let you smoke all his weed to make the pain go away. He'll even bribe Lucky Roo into giving you his edibles if that helps.

Benn will go to Yassop for advice, where he'll learn heat is good for relief, and get a more of an idea how to care for you.

Benn is the type of man who will take hot baths with you. He'll draw the bath and put all sorts of nice things in it like essential oils, CBD bath salts, cocoa butter, and flowers if he can manage it.

While you're in the bath he'll play your favorite music, he'll give you a massage, brush your hair, and pepper you with kisses. He'll also make sure you have your favorite drinks, and dried fruits and berries.

Usually you still work on your period, but when you are really not feeling well Benn and Shanks will give you time off.

Benn doesn't mind fucking you while you are on your period. He doesn't even think it's gross at all, especially once he learns more about your reproductive system.

However, he does not like when you are PMSing and being very short with him. He knows you don't mean it, and your hormones are running away with you. But when you get snippy with him, he'll either give you space or send Shanks in to deal with you.

Benn will find out exactly which products you like to use for your period needs. Then he'll make sure you always have some on hand.

He totally has when you'll be on your period in his calendar because he wants to plan ahead for it.

Pretty much every time the crew makes port, Ben'll head to the market and buy you stuff to restock the stache of stuff he keeps in his room. (Mostly because you both will occasionally go use stuff from it.) If he knows your period is starting in a day or two, he'll buy fresh pastries, and fruit for you, anything you ordinarily wouldn't get to have if you were out at sea.

7/10 because he eats snacks out of your stache, and occasionally takes your midol if Shanks gives him a headache, or his back hurts.

#one piece #one piece x reader #one piece scenario #king the wildfire #king the conflagration #king the conflagration x reader #king the wildfire x reader #katakuri x reader #charlotte katakuri #benn beckman #benn beckman x reader #from the depths of the dragon's hoard #tma original #8/12/22 #no beta we die like men

[ruhua-langblr]

Hi, you seem to have a decent grasp on Language Learning Resources™, so maybe you could help me.

I currently have a 2600+ day streak for Duolingo Spanish, which I initially picked up because I took classes in school and wanted to see if I remembered any. I'm well aware of the limitations on the app, and at this point it's just because I like to see the number go up. I've only ever been a casual student but I would like to progress eventually. The problem is I have trouble finding a method between gamified app, and full-blown, academic, novel -and- textbook self study. Do you know of good ways to move past Duolingo lessons without biting off more than you can chew?

Thanks for any input you have

Hi!

I feel like that "number goes up" connection is the main reason a lot of people don't want to move on from Duo and similar apps! I hope to do a post that goes into all of this more in depth, so consider this a shortened version~

My personal philosophy is that you shouldn't have to chose between just gamified apps and academic study—ideally you need it to be engaging enough to keep up for when you have less motivation, but with an academic rigor! I'm gonna drop some general resources/resource types and try to give them all a shot! Don't think of replacing Duo with a singular app or activity, but a collection of resources that you can switch between.

Anki: SSR vocab learning. Lots of customization and habit tracking features available so consider this a good "number goes up" replacement (and if you really love looking at data it's much more thorough!). With Spanish as your TL (target language), you'll have plenty of pre-made decks available. You can have specific decks, sentence mine, or have a huge 5,000 most frequent words deck. Anki isn't my favorite method personally, but people get SUPER into it and it works for them—also you'll hear this everywhere anyway.

Language Transfer: I wish my TL was one of the ones they have! If you're coming from Duo then you've probably been lacking a good method to really train your listening skills. 100% free, and I've heard great things about their Spanish course as well. All the files are available to be downloaded to listen to offline. Great to put on when you're getting ready in the morning, for bed, or during a commute.

LingQ/Youtube/Podcast Comprehensible Input: "[TL] Comprehensible Input" in the Youtube search will get you pretty far. There are podcasts like this as well, but it's nice to have a visual stimuli as well! This is pretty much the epitome of a ~natural language acquisition~ style. Immersion and immersion at an appropriate level is what works best. If you've even dipped your toes into the language acquisition sphere, you'll know Steve Kaufmann. LingQ is his app that's based on these principles.

Textbooks: Duo assumes that you can just pick up grammar from pattern recognition and that can work, but upper-level nuanced grammar or grammar patterns that are vastly different from your native language are hard to intuit. Find a good, dedicated grammar textbook and use that as what you will learn the details of grammar from. All that audio stuff will teach you what sounds right, this will teach you why/how it's right. (Buy a used textbook, visit your library, or check out my pinned post...)

+More: There's so MANY ways to learn a language. I'm focusing on specific methods that would fit in naturally with your existing habits (solo, digital, habit-forming), but there's tons more out there that you can do: journaling, discord servers, italki, chatting apps, graded readers, etc.

To start pick one that you feel the most drawn to and then a second that compliments where it might be lacking. Make a goal that you feel is reachable, and build from there.

Best of luck!

#langblr #resource #language learning

[memecucker]

Also I’ve been playing the Victoria 1.5 patch open beta and I’ve been really liking most of the changes. There’s still lots of broken or silly stuff but it’s an open beta so it’s fine (like they finally allow you to make offers to the AI to join their wars but they’ve made the AI way too open to that especially for minor wars like when I played China I was able to get all of British East Africa and the Congo by just joining them against all their small colonial uprisings which is also kinda ironic but anyway)

Biggest change is the introduction of local prices to provinces (well “states” but I’m just annoyed by V3 using “state” for your subnational divisions considering how “state” is used in so many other ways for this 19th century politics game) and I really like it and think it really improves the gameplay and makes it more interesting if you’re into Factorio style supply chain and economic management. Previously you could stick factories wherever you wanted and the only concern was infrastructure and available population which meant late game the “correct” play (or at least the one the AI would do a lot) would be to stick 30 stack food industries in like the middle of the Sahara bc thats where you got plenty of room. Oftentimes your steel industry would be far away from your mines since both are infrastructure taxing. But local prices change that and push you towards wanting to vertically integrate industries in the same area. So where before you could mine your iron and coal in Pennsylvania and have the steel plants all be in like Missouri it’s how much much much more efficient to put the steel in Pennsylvania bc the local prices for its inputs will be lower whereas in Missouri they’ll be inflated due to the lack of local sell orders. This also means that you’ll want to build other heavy industry in the areas where steel is sold so now tooling and machine factories will be built there etc

It actually adds a lot of depth and replayability bc now country choice means a lot more than just the sum of resources but how they’re arranged. Like Japan was kinda nerfed with this change bc while there’s several good iron deposits and one good coal deposit in Kyushu you don’t have anything that has both other than Hokkaido which has a very low population (and takes forever to build up to a decent amount) and isn’t fully colonized yet and takes absolutely forever to get going. I like this bc it helps represent Japan being “metal poor” bc it’s harder to have a good steel industry while still giving ahistorically generous iron deposits just bc gameplay wise you need those.

However someone who does have several good iron+coal states is Korea meaning that as Japan you have a much stronger economic incentive to engage in imperialism than you previously did where Korea wasn’t even a good target bc everything they made you already made but now since the combo of coal and iron is so important for industrializing they (as well as all the stuff in Manchuria) are much more attractive targets for someone that want to make Japan a great power.

[burgeoning-ambition]

Hi Vincent! Since you're studying Japanese & Korean, I was wondering if there are any major differences in the way you approach studying each language? Especially since you are laddering Japanese and Korean.

Any helpful hints you've picked up on the way would be great too! ありがとう！

Oohhhh... This is a good question...

I think in terms of grammar I approach them similarly, by memorizing grammar by its function rather than by how it's translated, but when I review grammar I try to review my Korean by comparing to equivalent Japanese grammar. They're a lot easier to compare than either one with English, so it's easier since the word order is often the same and stuff.

But with Korean I think I use a lot more learning apps? Although that's mostly because the Korean resources around me aren't as plentiful as Japanese ones, so I can't get my hands on as much native reading material and stuff to practice. (And I'm not huge on k-dramas, haha)

Oh, another thing with my experience with Korean is that my learning community for it is much smaller- I couldn't really click with a lot of my classmates in Korean the same way I could with my classmates in Japanese (and there was one person in my Korean class who was kind of... A creep so I sort of avoided socializing in there in general), so a lot of my Korean learning is more independent. I won't lie that specific person being so like, uncomfortable to be around kinda killed my motivation to study Korean for a little while, so I really had to improve my internal motivations for studying to make sure I didn't give up.

In terms of tips and tricks I have, one thing I've made a habit of doing is writing down the equivalent Japanese grammar point next to each Korean grammar point in my textbooks! I'll write down conjugations with the same meanings, particles with the same meanings, and sometimes also phrases or vocab terms in Japanese next to the Korean headings and try to memorize based on that. It's usually pretty easy to do, honestly, since the English language textbooks I use for both languages describe things very similarly!

Also, I try to cut out English as much as possible when I learn new words in Korean! Like, I have the Learn Korean With BTS book, and in that the new vocab is only written in Korean, and then if I can't guess the word's meaning from the illustration they put with it, I'll listen to the audio translation in Japanese. I only use English if I'm totally lost because I don't know the word in either language and the illustration is confusing.

Hmm... Another tip I think is important is to not beat yourself up if you aren't "fully laddering" or something like that. If you sometimes have to go back to your native language to double check something, that's fine! It doesn't cancel out all the laddering if you have to go back sometimes to make sure you're actually understanding.

You can also usually find what textbooks Japanese universities use for their Korean language classes! I know Waseda puts all of their textbooks up on their class search and that's publicly available to look at, so you can go find whatever level of Korean textbook written in Japanese with Japanese explanations if you're advanced enough in Japanese!

I feel like laddering is pretty similar to immersion study in the sense that they can both feel pretty difficult and high-intensity even when you're just doing something basic. Completely getting rid of your native language makes things a lot more stressful, I think, so it can be harder. Even if you know that for you personally laddering will be a better way to learn it or more efficient or whatever, it can still feel kinda overwhelming to suddenly be trying to avoid your native language when you study, and I think it's important to remember that! Because sometimes it'll feel discouraging to be overwhelmed by "super basic stuff", but the way you're studying is more intense than studying using native language textbooks! So feeling overwhelmed by stuff you'd find "easy" in your native language is fine! Because it isn't your native language!

I dunno, I don't have many life hacks for it yet... But I hope this blurb helps somehow anyway!

#original post #ask #my korean classes themselves are also a lot faster paced #which i think influences how well im taking in korean #we go through multiple grammar points a day #so its more difficult to keep up #langblr #study advice #study tips #language learning #language laddering #studyblr #japanese #korean #motivation

[feverdreamjohnny]

Hi, I’m a newer game dev (at least I’m tryin to be one lol) and I’ve realized that I have a really hard time finishing projects, because I just get burnt out and lose any passion I had for it. Do you have any advice?

Here's how I've (sort of) navigated these issues:

- Make small games. This was originally my "starting out" advice for people, but as time has gone on I genuinely think this is the only practical method for indie development. When I say small, I mean SMALL. I don't mean "oh, make an 8 hour game with hidden levels and side quests," I mean "your game is, at most, a single hour long, preferably 30 minutes." I've seen enough indies overscope their work and get stuck for nearly a decade without a finished product because they wanted to replicate the scope of a game made by several people with millions of dollars. You can definitely attempt larger projects down the line, but for the most part smaller games are what give you consistent growth as a creative, a reliable audience, and if you monetize them on steam or itch.io - an income. It's also a great opportunity to explore experimental design/art without risks, which is always valuable.

- Regardless of the game's scope, you need to take multi-day-long breaks if you're experiencing burnout. Game development is a cerebral discipline and it will tire you out fast. Forcing yourself through burnout might squeeze out more results, but you're just amplifying burnout down the line. Recognize that the breaks are a natural extension of the process and don't wreck yourself trying to be "more" than that. Hell, even painters sometimes need a bit of space from their work before they can continue, why would it be any different here?

[MORE BELOW THE BREAK]

- Don't get hung up on the game not coming out like you thought it would. If you become frustrated because the game doesn't reflect your ambitions, it's easy to lose interest and want to move on from it. Games will almost never resemble the initial vision. Sometimes you have to avoid being a perfectionist and accept your game for what it is.

- Find community (if you can). Surrounding yourself with other developers can be a great motivator for your own work, and being able to tap into a larger pool for second opinions and assistance can help you break barriers that otherwise would've stopped your work.

- Take your time. Game development is slow, and learning the various disciplines inside of it is a lengthy process. It took me 8 years to do the stuff I do today. Granted you might have an easier time if you're older than I was when I started, but in general it will take years to get to a point where you feel confident.

- Try a different engine from time to time. Most modern engines are fairly well suited for independent game development, but the available resources surrounding the engine (such as documentation and community support) can vary wildly. I strongly recommend window shopping across several engines. There's a small chance that you're having a hard time because the engine you're currently using isn't well suited to you and your goals. Some recommendations based on the ones I've personally tried:

* Game Maker Studio 2 - Great general purpose engine for 2D game development. Has a great community and plenty of learning resources. It's also fairly user friendly. It does have a license cost if you want to monetize your games, so keep that in mind. Scripting is done with GML, which is very human-readable.

* Godot - One of the best open source 2D/3D game engines. Doesn't have all the features of its competitors, but it's rapidly evolving and what's already there is more than enough to make most games. It's also compatible with various programming languages! Also, being open source means that it's completely free of licensing costs.

* Unreal Engine - Freakishly powerful 3D game engine at the cutting edge for modern game development. The C++ scripting might be fairly tough to work with as a newcomer (especially since it's built around a special wrapper for the engine that changes some of the rules), but it does have a well supported visual scripting backend that could do you some good. 2D games are certainly possible in Unreal, but it's clear that's not what the engine is intended for. Also Unreal has a neat licensing policy where you don't have to pay them unless you make more than +$1M, so that's cool.

* Unity - This is the one I use. It's great for 2D and 3D, and has a rapidly evolving feature set. It's one of the few engines with a swappable rendering pipeline system, which lets you pick the fidelity to work with relative to your game: With HDRP you can work on high-end games, and URP is great for doing everything else. Like Unreal you can initially monetize your games for free, but you have to pay a monthly subscription once you cross +$100k. Also you have to pay a monthly subscription to get rid of the splash screen which kind of sucks. Other than that, it's a very robust engine with possibly the largest community of the engines listed here.

[archaic-stranger]

tips for.. not procrastinating; ya girl needs it

yeah! as usual, some of these might work for you while others won't. some trial and error will give you a better idea of what techniques are helpful. here are some strategies that i've found effective:

make a list. this is a pretty basic one, but even knowing what you want to get done is a step towards getting it done. break large tasks into manageable, specific, steps - instead of "write term paper", try "research for term paper - 30 min".

a general to-do list is great, but you can also go a step further and sort tasks by how aversive they are. often i procrastinate because there's one thing i really don't want to do, and i'm avoiding it by not doing anything at all. once you know what the most aversive thing is, give yourself permission not to do it. set it aside and pick something less unpleasant to do instead. essentially, procrastinate on something you really don't want to do by doing something you only sort of don't want to do.

have fun with it. brew a cup of tea, put on your favorite music, or use a pen with your favorite color of ink. making your space more appealing won't completely stop you from procrastinating, but it might make it a little easier to get started. try romanticizing the task - you're not taking notes for a class you hate, you're a scholar unraveling the secrets of the universe. it's kind of silly, but having fun, in whatever way works for you, will make it easier to get things done.

just get started. i'm sure you've heard this one before, but it really does work. set a 10 minute timer, or tell yourself you're going to do one math problem, and see what happens. if that's all you get done? great - a little bit of work is far better than none at all.

have someone hold you accountable. this goes hand in hand with the last one - getting started on a task is way easier if someone else tells you "okay, you're going to work on this for 10 minutes". sometimes a bit of encouragement or positive reinforcement from a friend or family member can make a big difference.

plan ahead. when you wake up, set aside a certain time later that day and decide what you're going to work on. it's easier to tell yourself "in two hours, i'm going to work on my math homework for twenty minutes" than it is to say "right now i'm going to get everything done". like with the to-do list, plan tasks that are manageable and specific.

finally, take care of yourself. procrastination isn't always a bad thing - sometimes it's your brain and body letting you know that you need rest. if you keep trying to be productive but just can't find the motivation, remember to be gentle with yourself. procrastination isn't a moral failing - there's nothing wrong with you as a person if you're struggling to get work done. if you have the opportunity, take an evening off. watch some tv or go to bed early. letting your brain rest might feel like a waste of time, but you'll feel more refreshed the next day.

good luck! you've got this, and don't be afraid to ask for additional help if and when you need it. if you're a student, your school might have resources available to help with procrastination and task organization. if not, there are some more in-depth articles here and plenty of other internet resources available to people struggling with the same stuff you are.

#this got longer than i expected - hopefully a couple are useful! #study tips #studyblr

[stiffyck]

The ask about Scar showering after the crafting dead got me thinking how he would treat other normal, everyday things, like food, water, first aid supplies, etc.

Would have gotten the habit of rationing so deeply ingrained into his routine that it never truly goes away? He’s so busy all the time, and the ever present danger of the apocalypse isn’t on the forefront of his mind at all times anymore, so obviously he wouldn’t be actively doing it on purpose. I just think that the rationing resources, or feeling like he’s wasting resources if he uses more than only what is necessary, it’s just like second nature to him at this point. He’s still very good at estimating portions over the course of several days or weeks, because you never know. He can go days without food, so long as he’s supplied himself with just enough water to stay alive and if he refrains from more strenuous physical activity that would wear his body down faster. Idk I just think he’d be like, hyper-aware of his own body and the resources he has immediately available, even if it’s mostly subconscious.

Oooooh yes! I think he would also feel bad when people give him stuff like food, cause he'd feel like they're wasting resources on him even though he knows they aren't because they have plenty.

#stiff talk #asks #gtws #tcd scar #gtws angst

[hmshermitcraft]

LOL, I love 'fun sexy times? No. Logistics'

Lizzie makes sure to drag them all into the nest whenever she can, which is like 90% if the time. Groans is...aware of the situation, so he let them use the space outside of the border- at least until lizzies heat ends, which should be by the end of the session

Gem helps get stuff for decoratiosn, cleo and pearl are on food duty, lizzie makes sure to get plenty of rest, anddd begrudgingly drinks water and eats food. Only because her mates insist though. She's lucky to have them

And if they help in more, then one way that's for them to know and keep close to their hearts (though they'll have to tell the others about her lizzie uses them like giant teddy bears later)

related ask!

Joel is the only guy allowed to visit, because that's his wife, and he's worried about her! Gotta make sure she's being looked after. He never stays too long, but leaves some clothes so Lizzie doesn't miss him too much.

Once it's over, Grian promises he'll make sure those kind of resources are available for future games. It's not fair for people to be playing at a disadvantage.

Lizzie might not mind going through the occasional heat outside the games in the future, though. You know. For hormone regulation.

#trafficshipping #ask #lizzie tag #grian tag #gem tag #zombiecleo tag #pearl tag #poly life girls #thesupernaturalhouse #mod 🎀 #omegaverse dynamics #suggestive tw

[merchantarthurn]

So I’ve started compiling a Google Drive to make an archive of all WHA official art (not the text of the work, of course) and today I received my set of the playing cards from one of the special editions! I’ve not even seen HQ copies of these without SAMPLE watermarks before but! I’ll be making copies of them & the rule book available after I scan them.

On that note - if anyone would be interested in translating some of the text (especially the “special rules”) let me know! The game itself is based on “Love Letter”, so most of the rule book is not high priority, but it throws in some rule-altering “special cards” that have the characters on them and alas... machine translation does not make their meaning very clear lmao. I can provide an explanation of how “Love Letter” works for context - it’s a nice simple game. From my understanding there’s also video showing how to play the game which I have in my bookmarks which is an extra resource available for translators if you can translate by ear!

I’d love to see all the text translated though so if you’ve not got much time or aren’t confident enough for rules translation, there’s plenty of flavour text which would be cool to have translated too! 

With permission, I’d like to be able to put these in the Google Drive when finished (with credit to translators in accompanying documents and as a watermark)! There’s no deadline on these, this is a very long-term project.

On the Drive itself: I won’t link the drive directly on Tumblr because I don’t want the link to be something I can’t take down if I need to (please don’t post publicly on tumblr either! and check the rules/disclaimer document), but I’ll post a link to the tweet I share it in in the reblogs/replies! (Further rambling below the cut)

It’s a WIP as I’m tracking down the original sources and context of various images & I’m trying to find untranslated versions where applicable (as some are from translation teams who may not want their work in the drive) - but I’m hoping that’ll also make the Drive a robust archive regardless of whether the work needs to be taken down at any point (e.g. copyright removal requests). Since so much of the extra content is on Twitter, it’s actually very easy to locate the sources and provide dates! And I’ll probably throw in some extra links like Shirahama inking or the anime announcement trailer too :)

On that note sldjfg I might ask for some help to scrub through old tweets from Shirahama at some point, or just grunt work copy/pasting links from some of her twitter moments that compile individual artwork. So far I’ve focused on “sets” that I have the information of (like magazine covers, chapter cover art, volume covers, countdowns and holiday art) since it’s easier to nail down dates or sources for those, but for the rest... it’s gonna be a slog pfff. So if you know how to use the advanced twitter search to comb through time frames, I might have a job for you in future lmao.

But!! General statement for this archive - it is meant to be an archive, so the focus is on documenting source, context, etc. Which means logging the original tweets and whether they’re any explanatory text attached is far more important that reuploading artwork - if the artwork is requested to come down, it will! Whether that’s a request from the copyright holders, or translators. So DO keep in mind the rules regarding reuploading or sharing the link to the drive - I really wanna keep this stuff of Pintrest lol, but also keeping the link to the drive private or easy to delete (so, not a direct link on tumblr) is a must innit.

#witch hat atelier #tongari boushi no atelier #wha #tbna #presently though my focus is getting the easy stuff uploaded #i also have a copy of the colouring book but I don't want to pull all the pages out to scan them unless im ready to colour them lol #but at least i know what im looking for - i have a few pages already