#does this mean we have less frequent releases to give devs more time to work on the games??

[antirepurp]

top 10 most ominous tweets in recent memory

#soda offers you a can #does this mean we have less frequent releases to give devs more time to work on the games?? #a return to the 2000s era where lore carried over from game to game??? #do the unhinged sonic youtubers get whatever it is they want from their funny little animal game???? #find out next time on sonic x

[writingonjorvik]

Few Quick Thoughts

I’m seeing a lot of mixed feedback recently on how frequently SSO is releasing horses and I wanted to throw a few thoughts into the mix. Some of them may be “no duh’s” to those familiar with my stances on this matter, but I wanted to put it out there again for new folks.

Firstly, it’s important to remember that a lot of SSO’s income to support a multimillion dollar project like an MMO is going to come from its microtransactions on Star Coins. They do need to release content regularly in order to encourage players to buy and that does not make them a bad company. What would is if:

This was a predatory system using some kind of gambling mechanic to lock content (see loot boxes and gacha games that lock main feature content around drops).

They were aggressively targeting children and supporting unhealthy spending habits. I would argue that this could be up for debate because of a point I’ll bring up in a minute, but having content released on a monthly schedule does not make this predatory, it just means SSO is widening its catalog of options for players.

Horse development does not cut in to development of quests. The horse team and world team work on totally separate projects, and while it would be nice for SSO to more fully break down each of those teams’ full areas of development, releasing horses more regularly doesn’t mean SSO isn’t also working on quests.

I have seen the criticism that horses being released so frequently and not fixing existing horses is an issue and I do think that’s fair. While it’s most likely the horse team needs to hit a monthly quota on releasing a new breed, I also think more time needs to be put into existing models and fixing glitches, to include methods of updating old models (my suggestions withstanding). More than half of SSO’s current horse “catalog” can’t use modern tack and for a game that has a large dress up/fashion element, that’s rather shocking.

I think it is a dangerous mentality that some members in this community are developing that they feel the need that they must buy new horses at release. This is not a good way to look at any business, and, as someone who often falls into overspending tendencies myself, I would encourage you to look at your own spending habits before blaming SSO for being exploititive. Them increasing their catalog does not demand that you buy the whole thing.

I understand that there is a concern on the magical horses in the game and their frequency, which, again, I do think there is some degree of overpricing on those particular horses and SSO not clearing up if they will be limited or not. I think that releasing a new magical horse, even if they are only offered once, every three months is not ridiculous, though it would be better if we could be confirmed that horses will return.

I do think that it would be better to pair these horses with holidays specifically though and have a rotating herd of magical horses offered during the holiday events, like we currently have with Brincle and Fawncy for the winter holidays, but I still think considering their limited time nature and the fact that players will most likely try to collect these horses for “clout,” it would be a better practice to lower prices for limited time horses.

SSO has been offering bundles around the releases of these horses, which I think are great, but that they need to offer these for lower bundles down to the 1k bundle. Asking for players to buy at least a $50+ bundle every three months is not ok, and that should be challenged by the community, as it would set players up to spend in the $200+ mark on horses that people will often reaction buy because it’s limited.

I don’t think that horses, overall, are a fair price in real world currency conversions, and I think the dev team has, in some ways, expressed a degree of agreement on that. When I interviewed Leila, she said that horses are priced as they are because they’re supposed to be an experience and part of the main gameplay loop between quests, but she agreed that current gameplay of buying a horse does not reflect that $30 price tag and if the team can’t add that kind of content with a new horse experience, then the price should be lowered.

If you feel like, as I do, that the price of Star Coins is overpriced, then vocalize it, with your words and your actions. But more specifically, give reasons. $30 is the average price for an expansion pack for most MMOs, so push SSO on responding to whether or not each horse matches a $30 experience in content and what they plan to do to reflect the amount of money that they’re asking for.

Devs and PR team don’t control the prices for Star Coins! While the devs may set Star Coins in game, they have no control over how much Star Coins cost for us to purchase. This is on the higher ups in the company and it is important to remember that! While it is important to vocalize concern on prices to the team, remember who does and doesn’t set the prices lest you silence something that may have been well intentioned.

I agree wholeheartedly on the comments that the in game prices set for what is the new JWH are fair, as this is clearly one of the higher end horses in the game.

 I do however think you can and should make a case for the real world cost, since, again, by the devs’ admission, buying and training horses is supposed to be a core gameplay loop and that’s not accessible without asking players to spend a lot of money or avoid the game for long periods of time while they save.

And I’ve realized this was less than a few quick things, but there it is all typed out. Obviously conversation is always important, and people who tells others to shut up for having differing opinions is never helpful. It’s important to be critical and fair with that criticism. Criticism only helps us refine our understanding of something and improve it, though no two people are going to have the same opinion. What is important is that we’re respectful and put our criticism towards where it needs to go and not towards each other.

#woj analysis #SSO #star stable #star stable online #starstable #starstableonline #jorvik wild horse

[miloscat]

[Review] Tamarin (PS4)

As a pastiche of Rare’s N64 days, Tamarin has charm and some pedigree, but its flaws can’t be ignored.

Tamarin marketed itself on its Rare legacy. Its heavy homage of both Jet Force Gemini and the Banjo-style 3D platformers was obvious to see, but it also had involvement from key ex-Rare personnel. Kev Bayliss and Steve Mayles contributed concept art and character designs, David Wise was commissioned for the soundtrack (and did an excellent job reminiscent of his recent work on Snake Pass and Tropical Freeze), Graeme Norgate did some sound work, and several other core team members are former Rare or Rare-adjacent devs. Having big names involved isn’t a guarantee of quality but it gave the project an air of authenticity, perhaps.

A perceived over-reliance on this legacy, coupled with a few big delays and the seeming use of default Unity assets soured some on the game before release, but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. The few teething issues at launch (bugs, performance problems) also seem to have been ironed out by the time I got around to playing it. There was even a semi-recent patch to optimise performance on PS5. It would take more significant work to smooth out the game’s design issues, though.

To back up, what we have is... not exactly a hybrid, more like two half-games stapled together. One half is cartoony platformer, with lush, pretty European landscapes to roam. The other is a Jet Force Gemini pastiche, a third-person shooter complete with hostage birds and the insectoid enemies pretty much lifted directly.

My main problem was common to both: the environments look samey and lack landmarks, so I was constantly getting lost and not knowing where to go next, and levels only get more intricate as you progress. You also need to double back a fair bit, and revisit earlier levels with later abilities to get everything; I tried this several times with one particular level but found I had no idea how to get there from the hub, or via shortcuts from other levels!

This navigation problem, and extra weapon unlocks being weighted to the back end, had me frequently convinced I’d missed something important. Turns out that yes there are only three shooter stages (two of which are identical-looking factories), but the endgame has you trek back through them all via alternate paths in a fourth shooter sequence, so don’t let the incomplete totals screen fool you.

Another problem that’s more impactful in the shooter bits is checkpointing. Health drops are scarce and checkpoints scarcer. Dying can set you back quite a ways, and if your health is low, it’s not restored after a death. This adds undue frustration to what are already clumsy gameplay segments, where awkward aiming mechanics dragged down the experience for me. You can lose progress in the platformer bits too, primarily an annoyance in the final world which is both labyrinthine and full of void-out zones.

If the shooting is clumsy and unfun, the platforming is at least ok. The sadly unnamed tamarin is an adorable fluffy mascot, and it feels pretty good to roll and pounce around. Less so when these moves are required to precisely defeat enemies on precarious ledges. In the Banjo mould you collect berries to pay for new moves, and fireflies to open new worlds (plus sometimes insect tokens as a separate currency used in the shooter bits). This is the game at its strongest for me, and it’s really just decent.

Again, having Rare people involved doesn’t guarantee an “N64 heyday” quality game. The seeming inexperience of other members and leaders on the team was surely a factor as well. But even if the shooter bits were improved, that doesn’t mean the two gameplay styles would mesh well together. Conker kind of pulled it off, but it was a setpiece-driven joke game that constantly reinvented itself. Here the only humour is the inherent absurdity of the cute tiny animal pulling out a gun and blasting limbs off monster ants, and even then Tamarin doesn’t lean into that disconnect, instead trying for earnest environmentalist themes.

I wanted to like this game. Heck, I wanted to do a 100% run but that was quickly stymied; if a bird is killed (all too easy when there’s dedicated enemies that gun for them, you can easily fell them yourself by accident, and there’s gotcha traps designed to catch you out) it’s permanently dead on that playthrough even if you revisit the area later… unless you load from your last checkpoint which could be ten minutes ago. As it is… I like parts of it, aspects of it. It certainly got too much flak from certain corners. I view it as a loving but misguided attempt to carry on the Rare torch from a young studio. There’s some flame in there for sure but you have to fight through some smoke to find it. Does that metaphor work? Whatever.

#tamarin #indie #chameleon games #Rare Ltd #review #ps4

[sirspud]

A Vulgar First Impression of Coromon

Playing Pokémon games recently has been something akin to hiring a fairy princess to perform for your daughter’s birthday parties. The first few times she came around were fun, she made all the kids laugh and play their games, but now the princess has grown lazy, idly watching YouTube while disinterestedly mumbling the same four or five lines she’s been spouting for the past twenty-three years. But you keep hiring her regardless, even though your daughter’s trying to point out that she’s not into princesses anymore because she’s pushing 30, and you’re starting to think she might not be worth three hundred bucks a visit. And she’s starting to smell.

So as the Pokémon community sits and waits for the Diamond and Pearl remakes, because what is Pokémon if not a prolonged exercise in nostalgia bait, some indie developers have been trying their hand at doing Pokémon, but properly this time. First came along TemTem, which was, “Like Pokémon but online”, and now there’s Coromon, which is “Like Pokémon” and that’s it.

I’ll admit, I was attracted to Coromon not because of any underlying nostalgia or a want to replay Pokemon, but because the devs put out a free demo for the game, which is a rarity in this modern age of Early Access and delayed release dates. Intrigued, I decided to take a closer look, to see which warts they cut off and which ones they allowed to fester.

The game starts with our protagonist waking up in a small town with his mother about to go get his OR HER first Pokémon. So far, so standard. But where Coromon differs is that you aren’t some apple-cheeked youngster with a criminally neglectful parent, but a college kid who’s been selected for a prestigious university that studies Pokémon – sorry – “Coromon”. And incidentally, Pokémon scores the first point for having a name that actually means something. They’re monstrous creatures that can be caught in a ball and put in your pocket – “Pocket”-“Monsters”. What the fuck does Coromon mean? Because Coro only has a meaning if it’s in Italian, and I’m pretty sure these things aren’t meant to be called “Choir Monsters!”

Anyway, a dude in a wheelchair who was apparently the guy in charge gives you a magic glove and tells you about these glowing elemental orbs, which are important for some reason I wasn’t clear on, and he sends you out on a journey to collect more by finding six elemental titans and – as far as I understood the process – murdering them and stealing their essence in the name of science.

We choose our first Pokémon from a choice between the fire-type, the water-type or the… ice type? And then, we set out on our journey to fight trainers, make new friends, and shuffle about in the grass for an hour because your gobblefrog isn’t level sixty-two yet.

The first thing that struck me about Choirmon is that it really isn’t being coy with its desire to ape Pokémon. Everything, right down to the statistics of each monster, is identical to the way Pokémon does things. The types have the same names, evolving is still called evolving, it even gives you berries and other items for your monsters to hold. You can battle monsters in the wild, blundering into tall grass to scare them out of hiding and capturing them after beating them into a bloody pulp, or you can battle monsters owned by other trainers in unregulated dog fights. So it isn’t trying to be like Pokémon, it is Pokémon. It stabbed Pokémon in an alleyway, cut off its skin and is now swanning about performing a perverted Face/Off act.

Now, I love Pokémon just as much as the next guy, but I’m no deluded fanboy. Pokémon is not perfect. In fact, it’s a game with a lot of flaws. And in its desire to imitate, Collectamon inherits a lot of the same problems that Pokémon does. Using items, for example, takes up an entire turn, and while this can be forgiven in a party-based RPG, where you have other actors to make up for the guy losing a turn, you can only put out one monster at a time, and using anything other than a healing item in the thick of battle just makes you an open target.

Trying to think strategically is also a lost cause, because again, it’s fucking Pokémon. The only strategy is “use whatever the opponent is weak to” or “mash attack until one of you dies”. And while you could argue that Pokémon’s strong point is its simplicity, it does mean that winning a fight is more a matter of patience than a matter of skill.

At time of writing, I’ve been playing the demo for 7 hours. An impressive run-time for a demo, to be sure, and that’s only up to the first boss. Incidentally, it’s in that area that we meet the evil team of this game, because Pokémon had evil teams, and so must we! I don’t even understand their motivation, or who these people even are! They’re presented to us as if we already know what their deal is and why we should hate them. All I know about them is their name and the fact that they like to hang around in caves. Pitch-black ones that you navigate by wandering around aimlessly getting lost in the samey-looking environments.

Really, guys? You thought it’d be a good idea to preserve one of the shittiest areas in Pokémon? Actually, they follow it up with an even shittier level that plays like the gym leaders from the annoying puzzle gyms got together and tried to devise the most efficient backtracking machine, culminating in a game of Mastermind out of fucking nowhere.

Well, so far I’ve just been going on about how the game is the same as Pokémon. What’s different? Well, for a start, each monster has a well of stamina points that they spend to use their special abilities, limiting how many times you can use those moves before your monster has to have a little rest. So you have to weigh up whether or not you want to waste stamina using that really powerful move or whether you want to keep a steady pace with the weaker moves. Except, Pokémon already did that with each move having limited uses. So we haven’t gone anywhere. All we’ve done is paint the walls a different colour.

Erm… what else? Well, your character speaks for one thing, despite you being able to name them and customise them to your liking. I think we tried the talking player avatar thing back in Fallout 4, and it was just as unimmersive back then too. It means that you don’t really get to impose your own character on the avatar, because the avatar makes his OR HER own decisions without your input, accepting every single quest that gets handed to you without even flirting with a dialogue box because it means oh so much to them to help this random faceless NPC, whose unique name and appearance does nothing to make him feel any less forgettable.

…Ah, that’s something different. There’s a quest system. I’m not sure why. In an open world game, quest systems give the game a structure and a reason to explore the world. But, as we’ve established, Crackmon is Pokémon, and so progression is strictly linear. It’s hard to tell just how much it’ll impact the game, since it’s just a four-hour demo, but a quest system like this can easily turn into a to-do list of tedious tasks for rewards that you don’t need. One of the sidequests early on had me capture a pissweasel for some guy, only for the bloke’s mentor to smack him across the head and have him hand the pissweasel right back! This is the very definition of wasting my fucking time! The only reason I caught that pissweasel was for your quest, and I don’t want to deal with its incontinence issues!

Another way that Cloacamon tries to differentiate itself is though its Potential mechanic. Get this – whenever your pet cockcrab reaches a certain XP interval, you get to directly increase its stats by a total of 3 points, on top of the cockcrab’s normal stat increases, so you don’t have to muck around with effort values and breeding to optimise your stats. Each monster also has a “Potent” and “Perfect” form, with each form reaching these intervals sooner than the normal version of the cockcrab. So the game encourages you to abandon your monsters frequently, exchanging them for their shiny, better versions, which I would argue goes against the whole point of Pokémon. At its core, Pokémon is a game about going on a journey and creating a bond with your tag team of beasts, a bond which is impossible to form if you’re encouraged to chuck your friends in the bin the second you find their better, newer models.

I could go down my list of subtle differences, most of which are quality of life changes, like the ability to evolve mid-battle, or the ability to swap out different moves instead of permanently forgetting them, or the fact that you use HM moves yourself instead of teaching them to your Pokémon. But I’d rather finish this first impression by once again re-iterating that Cocaniumon is just Pokémon. It’s not writing any new rules, it’s not even reworking old ones, and it seems content to merely lie on its back and spin its wheels. And while you could argue that Pokémon’s formula doesn’t need to be changed, I would argue right back that not having the ambition to change has long been part of the fucking problem!

If all you want is more Pokémon but with less bullshit, then go ahead and give Coromon a try. Personally, I wasn’t motivated to continue playing past the first boss fight. Part of the problem was that I had no idea what I was ultimately working towards. Collect all the titan essences, so that we can research them! Research them for what? So we can finally uncover the mystery behind shitty Netflix sci-fi originals?

#why yes I do watch zero punctuation how could you tell #coromon #pokemon #review #comedy #first impressions #opinions #TRAGsoft #Freedom Games #that's a reference to the netflix movie The Titan by the way #god knows how many people I thought would get that

[amosbarot]

( cismale ) haven’t seen AMOS BAROT around in a while. the DEV PATEL lookalike has been known to be (+) INSOUCIANT & (+) KEEN, but HE can also be (-) TROUBLED & (-) DERISIVE. The 24 year old is a SENIOR majoring in COMPUTER ENGINEERING. I believe they’re living in AUDAX but I popped by earlier and no one answered the door. ( james. 20. EST. she/they. )

hello !! here is my other baby, who is...somehow, more of a mess than naeva !! no dilly dally, let’s jump right into it !!

TW: drug addiction/abuse, car accident. mental illness. 

a e s t h e t i c s ( except i am a sham of a person and sorta very much forgot to save my aesthetics so ! winging it ! )

floral suits and a light air of mock-arrogance, charming smiles and a mischievous glint, easy sarcasm and raised eyebrows. rolling joints resembling cigars, smoke drifting towards ceilings as conspiratorial rambles escape intoxicated lips,  wild gestures and toppled book stacks, four expresso shots at the stroke of midnight and equations leading off whiteboards. heavy eye bags and warm smiles, dismissive words and excuses. sleepwalking to the middle of the quad for the third time that week, donning white boxers littered with red hearts...again. secret glances and barely contained excitement, distractions from the obvious.

general info !!

full name: amos ronak barot

nickname(s): n/a !!

b.o.d. - january 17th, 24 yrs old, capricorn

label(s): the academic, the ebullient, the fallen, the icarcian.

height: 6′2″

hometown: london, uk ooo fancy

sexuality: wildly. chaotically. bisexual.

his stats can be found HERE

and his pinterest can be found HERE !

biography

introducing...another one of indira’s cousins !!!! 

born to olena barot, member of the american embassy in london/future U.S. ambassador to the UK and ronak barot, CEO of his very own computer company. needless to say, he and his younger sister alya were born into a certain wealth

they hopped between the US and the UK and wherever else they desired to go on vacation to with ease; UK for school and US for breaks, rome or paris or wherever else, simply whenever.

despite this though !! olena and ronak had always wanted their children to find their own success, to be financially stable without their assistance once they got older. therefore, it was a known fact in their household that they’d be cut off financially by the time they were 21.

luckily, neither of them really minded this? both children had always had an extreme thirst for knowledge and a wonder for things. even so--their childhood wasn’t quite typical, as their competitive natures led to them trying to one-up each other?

alya and amos grew up extremely close to each other, being so close in age it really didn’t feel as if she was the younger sibling; they were more like twins than anything. obviously, amos still gloated about being the eldest, but their bond was tight.

there were moments in their childhood where if anybody, and i mean anybody--spoke ill of alya, amos would get into physical alterations. he’s much more peaceful now, but the history is still there.

by the time amos entered sixth form, his studies were--while still very important to him--less frequent. he’d go out nearly every night, gone whole weekends, partying or being a general hooligan. 

alya, however, did not partake in these activities. this is where they differed--amos had always been an extrovert, fond of crowds and people and being in the center of it all. causing ruckus. wrecking havoc. alya’s always been...reserved, in the best way possible. few knew just what a gem she was, but she really was to be treasured. even so--the less time amos seemed to spend at home, the more distant alya became towards him.

but, surprise: despite being literally, incredibly smart, amos got BIG DUMBASS ENERGY and was very very oblivious to the why and how of this. which really, really did not help.

unfortunately, there wasn’t any time to dwell about this.

around the same time, tragedy struck the barot family.

after one of his lil’ runabouts, amos came home to find furniture being escorted out of their house, police--his sister crying, his mother ashamed, his father nowhere to be found. 

and soon after, amos found out that his father was arrested for a scandal that sent many into a tizzy. essentially: the company fucked over their own customers via stealing their info, committing some fraud, y’know, credit cards and social security numbers, sellin’ it. just. some nasty white collar crime.

it also wound up fucking up olena’s newly acquired position as the US ambassador for the UK. she was released from the embassy during ronak’s trials.

he ultimately wound up in prison, and olena moved their family back to the U.S.

and amos--being the big dumb baby he is, figured the best thing to do was to pretend it hadn’t bothered him one bit! so he did exactly that!

i imagine that they moved close to indira’s family, and amos spent a lot of time with her from there then.

however, in between pretending things were fine and dandy, and home life, and the drag and pull of parties, anxiety weighed down amos’ bones like...constantly. his family was now, essentially, poor with a mass debt thanks to their father. the expectations for amos to do good, to be better--the fall of amos’ biggest role model.

it was all too much. anxiety attacks became frequent, provoked by the slightest thing--he could only lay awake at night, sleep infrequent. he was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and insomnia, and treated for both--some days it still doesn’t feel like enough.

getting a scholarship to lockwood is probably the best thing to happen to him in a long time. it was a new look into a potential future.

got into the uh...career, of sorts, of doing people’s assignments for them for a hefty payment, alongside his normal job. just to make sure he had spending money and whatnot.

involving tatiana: their friendship bloomed after he did a few assignments for her, y’see--then came the midnight adventures, and whatnot. i wouldn’t have called them close by any means, but they had fun together when they weren’t arguing. their friendship ended after a pretty bad car accident--neither were fatally hurt, but the car was wrecked and it was amos’ fault and it just. sorta was the end of that.

he’s got a...reliability on his sleeping pills, if you will. it’s not healthy in the slightest, but he’s convinced it’s nothing serious. it’s pretty serious.

his eyesight is also getting worse--expected to become legally blind by the time he’s forty.

more on those l8r

personality

there’s a lot of words you can use to describe amos! pretentious, sarcastic, provoking, hardly ever serious, immature, petty, Just Like That, full of himself, smartass, big dumbass energy. y’know. just an infinite amount.

he can be so dramatic! everything he does is exaggerated. he rolls cigar-sized joints at every party. goes around with a horrible ‘20s mobster voice, voicing his lil’ conspiracies.

it’s both hard and very easy to forget that amos graduated as valedictorian of his high school (stealing it, from somebody else--i should mention, as he came in halfway thru the year and kinda just. snatched the title.) because he can be a real idiot sometimes.

because he tries to hard to mask his insecurities, he overcompensates with just. being childish. he’s fun to be around but sometimes he can just be. exhausting.

so like, he went into computer engineering because that was just sorta what he always wanted to do? besides programming? he really wanted to take after his father--but with him being in jail and whatnot, kinda puts a damper to that dream. still, he can’t stop.

so he’s just. really good with computers tbh?? built his own, programmed his own firewall. his dream is to open his own cybersecurity company.

VERY STRESSED LIKE CONSTANTLY like catch him in the library with six empty coffee cups surrounding his work, it’s 2am--he hasn’t slept, in fact his eyes are likely taped opened. he works a lot.

but parties...a lot more! he tries rly hard to not mix his medication with anything so that leads to him...not always taking it, or overcompensating when he misses. it’s a mess. he’s a mess. he thinks he knows what he’s doing but he’s NOT.

i think...i’d consider him lovable. he’s a lil eccentric, a lil high energy.

LOVES HIS FAMILY. like, listen. he still loves his dad. would protect his cousins and sister and mother with his mf life.

alya and him aren’t on the...best terms rn. so that Hurts.

he can be really petty tbh ?? like he can’t take arguments seriously so he just becomes this fucking manchild. he will mimic u. he’ll mock u. he can be hurtful.

god...i don’t even know what else to say. just take him TAKE HIM

wanted connections

as always, i am a big slut for every connection.

give him his Lads. his buds. his pals. his broskis. his bromances.

ride or die(s)

people he tutors !! people whose work he does for them !!

somebody who goes to him b/c of computer troubles n he’s just like...r u going to pay me or nah

high school friends??

party pals??

his sister may become a WC in the future but idk quite yet, we do stan her though !!

drug dealer pls n thank

ex friends ?? fake friends ?? toxic friends ??

bad influences ?? good influences ??

hook ups ?? like a lot of ‘em ??

confidante ?? just somebody he can. rant to.

academic rival just b/c i really love intense study-offs

enemies for whatever reason ??

exes ??

particularly this one ex he was really, really in love w/ but life just got really stressful and idk it affected their relationship and they sorta just. ended it. idk who ended it w/ who but it probably wasn’t mutual and he’s probably really still hung up about it. 

i mean i’ll take...anything...did they run into each other once and now just see each other everywhere??

unrequited things??

really cute close friendships??

#water:intro #hi it takes me fifty years to do things but i DID IT

[nintendoduo]

34 Cool WiiWare Games That Are Going Away FOREVER*

 *Unless Nintendo decides to sell them again when the Switch U 4DS VR comes out in 2025.

As you might have heard, starting next Monday Nintendo is taking away the ability to add funds to the Wii Shop, which will close down for good in early 2019. That means a whole bunch of great games won’t be able to be purchased anymore. In order to raise awareness of this, the most important issue of our times (after all the other issues), we spent the winter playing as many WiiWare games as we could over on our YouTube channel. Here’s a summary of the gems we encountered:

1. 3D Pixel Racing

A pretty challenging motion control racing game with Minecraft-esque graphics. Pro tip: use a regular old Wiimote, not a Wiimote Plus. Trust us, the Plus is too sensitive for this game and you’ll end up falling off the track every two seconds. Despite the difficulty, this one gets a recommendation because of the cool look and for giving us an excuse to use the Mario Kart Wii wheel again.

2. And Yet It Moves

Using the Wiimote’s gyroscope, this game has you move the world around you (rather than vice versa) to navigate the levels.  One of those “easy to learn, difficult to master” type of games that defined many of the best on the platform.

3. Bit.Trip Runner

Originally a WiiWare exclusive, although you can now play it on 3DS, PC, Mac, Linux, and probably some Japanese toilets. You run from left to right and jump, slide, kick and... jump again to the music. A tribute to the platforming classics that deservedly became a classic itself (and the sequel, available on Wii U, is even better).

4. BurgerTime: World Tour

You know, BurgerTime! If you don’t know, this is a good excuse to get acquainted with this ‘80s arcade title. Like in the original, you attempt to assemble giant hamburgers on a series of platforms whilst dodging humanoid food monsters, only this time the graphics are in 3D and it’s all happening in space, for some reason. NOTE: Ironically, this fast-food themed game can’t be bought in North America right now, only Europe.

5. Chrono Twins DX

Originally designed for the DS, the gimmick is that the main character is fighting enemies in two different time periods at once.  For the DS this used each screen for the different time zones, but with WiiWare you get a simple split-screen.  It’s quite unique and challenging as you’re basically playing two sidescrollers at once.

6. Contra Rebirth

Remember when dudes with rippling muscles and mullets got to be badass gunfighters and nobody complained they were toxic?  Contra sure does.  Konami gave “Rebirth” to three of their classic franchises on WiiWare (CastleVania and Gradius were the other two) but this was probably the best of the bunch.

7. Dracula: Undead Awakening

If you never get tired of mowing down undead enemies then this will scratch that itch.  Basically you get a bunch of different cool weapons and use them against a bunch of different cool monsters for as long as you wish, or at least as long as you survive.  The challenge is so high that even lasting ten minutes on your first playthrough has the game calling you “noob.”

8. Eduardo the Samurai Toaster

A simple run n’ gun game (think Metal Slug) starring a sentient toaster facing off against flying onions, spear-toting carrots, and what appears to be an army of angry playing cards. It’s not clear what the plot of the game is, and there’s not a whole lot of depth to the gameplay, but it’s still a fun way to waste an hour (or more, depending on the difficulty). It’s supposed to be even more fun with 4 players, if you can find three other Wii-loving weirdos.

9. Excitebike World Rally

Motorcycle races.  Simplicity works sometimes, and just like the original Excitebike this one proves it once more.  Just like the original you get a cool level creator, only this time you can share it with anyone and not just whoever you give your cartridge to.

10. Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition

Lots of different modes that still capture the appeal of the original arcade classic.  The overall look is kinda coked-up, which captures the ‘80s arcade scene reasonably well.

11. Frogger Returns

Only the one mode this time, but it serves as a reminder of the timeless quality and endearing appeal of the core gameplay.

12. Gnomz

A chaotic 4-player party game starring sock-obsessed gnomes. You go around a single screen collecting socks and stomping other players to kill them; it’s like life itself. (Or, as many have pointed out, like the Super Mario War fan game, but less illegal.) There are three modes and a variety of scenarios. Like with Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, the more players the better, but the single player mode ain’t bad (and that way, you don’t ruin any friendships).

13. Gyrostarr

A pseudo-3D shoot ‘em up where the main difficulty is that you can actually shoot the power ups away, and you kinda need those to finish the stages -- if you don’t collect enough energy, the portal at the end of the level closes on your face. The difficulty ramps up slowly but surely across 50 levels. Another difficulty is not getting an LSD flashback on those trippy bonus stages.

14. HoopWorld

A basketball/fighting game that makes surprisingly good use of the Wii’s motion controls. This definitely falls in the “easy to pick up, difficult to master” category, since there’s a pretty wide range of ball throws and kung-fu moves you can perform by shaking your Wiimote and nunchuck in different ways. Or you can just wave your arms randomly and hope you win. The game is currently unlisted in North America, which we’re hoping is a sign that they’re planning to re-release it in modern platforms (with online multiplayer, hopefully).

15. Horizon Riders

A futuristic on-rails shooting game that you play with the Wii balance board. If you have the Wii Zapper accessory, even better (and you’ll look even sillier), but it’s not necessary to play. You aim and shoot with your Wiimote while leaning on your balance board to move from side to side. Definitely a good reason to dig that thing out of your closet. Be warned, though, that the game crashed on us in the middle of a stage, as seen at the end of our gameplay video.

16. Jam City Rollergirls

Roller derby has never been as popular to watch as it is for people to randomly talk about every few years for the novelty, usually accompanied by a movie that flops at the box office.  The last time the mainstream tried to make this sport happen it resulted in this game, though, so there’s at least that.  You play as characters with hilarious names roller blading through others with random power-ups and combat moves.

17. Jett Rocket

It’s a lofty ambition to offer gamers something that will remind them of Super Mario Galaxy, and it might seem foolish to do so on an indie dev’s budget.  But Shin’en managed to deliver with an uncommon 3D platformer collectathon with good amounts of action sprinkled in.

18. LostWinds

When a developer approached a title with motion controls in mind, it always stood out more than other games that tried to crowbar motion controls into the scenery in the hopes of a shortcut to Wii success.  LostWinds is in the former camp, making you use the pointer to create gusts of wind to elevate the main character onto platforms and knock around enemies.  In fact it’d be more accurate to say you’re playing as the wind spirit rather than the story’s protagonist.  Fun game with a beautiful art style.

19. Maboshi's Arcade

Nintendo knows how to make simple games that present difficulty when you don’t expect it.  In the three modes of this puzzler you play as generic shapes but the controls are difficult to master.  It kind of has to be seen to be believed.

20. Magnetica Twist

A connect-three type of game where you fire marbles and stuff.  What ends up twisted the most are your wrists whilst trying to aim your shots with any sort of precision.

21. Max and the Magic Marker

There are plenty of side-scrolling platformers that use childhood visuals and hobbies to appeal to the player, and yet they never really get old do they?  In this one you use a marker via motion controls to create platforms and defeat enemies.  You also can go in and out of Max’s childhood drawings.

22. Monsteca Corral

This is a weird one.  A bunch of monsters vaguely shaped like Doshin the Giant are gathered together by an unseen god-ish alien to fight robots that said alien had created earlier, but they turned against him.  That’s the plot as we can best make out, anyways.  There’s also dinosaurs.  Recommended for those who like their fun to be completely unlike the other fun they’ve had with games.

23. Pearl Harbor Trilogy – 1941: Red Sun Rising

Old-school dogfighting in a new-school 3D game.  Well, it was new when it released.  Anyways you shoot down enemy planes, defend your base, attack naval fleets and get commendations you don’t deserve.  Sometimes you see the action from the POV of the bombs you drop, and it works much better here than in Michael Bay’s version of Pearl Harbor.

24. Pole's Big Adventure

Chindōchū!! Pole no Daibōken is bizarre Japan-only SEGA title made to parody the crappy platform games that came out during the 8-bit era. Despite being full of intentional design flaws, like power ups that kill you or background objects that suddenly cut your head off, the game is pretty easy -- until you unlock hard mode, where the boss fights are actually challenging. Still, you’ll be playing this one mostly to laugh at the dozens of Easter eggs.

25. PictureBook Games: Pop Up Pursuit

Not many board games made it to WiiWare, but this was easily the best.  It’s largely straightforward “run to the end of the board” contests, with plenty of opportunities to ruin friendships.  The art style is the main hook, looking like a pop-up book, like the title indicates.

26. Rage of the Gladiator

You fight for your life against larger-than-life mythological creatures, like ogres and minotaurs and senseis.  The game got compared frequently to Punch-Out!! and with good reason, but the combat is actually a more creative and the dialogue is more humorous.  A blast to play through the first time, and a blast to replay.

27. Snowpack Park

Unlike most of the games on this list, there’s no combat in this one and your blood pressure won’t ever raise.  There’s plenty to do but it’s fun stuff, mostly involving playing with penguins.  It works great as a sort of palette cleanser to the violent action-packed games primarily showcased in this list.

28. Sonic the Hedgehog 4

The 16-bit Sonic games still hold up today as all-time greats.  Sonic 4 didn’t live up to those expectations but it did get SEGA to think about their past a little more seriously, and helped lead to Sonic Mania.  Episode I is on WiiWare, but you’ll have to find Episode II elsewhere.

29. Space Invaders Get Even

Another sequel to another arcade classic, but with the novel twist of playing the game from the enemies’ point of view.  Word of warning: this is possibly the only WIiWare game that has DLC.  The initial purchase of 500 points will escalate up to 2′000 points if you’re enjoying yourself.

30. Star Soldier R

Top-down arcade-style shooter, and if you know the type you know the drill.  The amount of content is pretty bare-bones, as it’s basically just time attacks.  But the replayability is rewarding if you’re a fan of the genre.

31. Tetris Party

We hope you know Tetris.  This is a Tetris that has good multiplayer, interesting variants where you do things like create platforms for some guy to climb to the top of the screen or use the tetrinos to make exact shapes like that of an apple.  There’s also a balance board mode, and as stated earlier it’s good to have an excuse to pull out the balance board.

32. Vampire Crystals

Vampires used to live peacefully with zombies but now they don’t, and it becomes your problem.  Thankfully you get plenty of guns, some so powerful that you end up creating a bullet hell where you’re the one firing them rather than dodging them.  It looks simple but the game actually is quite tough.  It’s not Cuphead-level but you will fail many times over.  With plenty of content and being one of the last WiiWare releases, this title approached the platform’s fullest potential.

33. WarioWare DIY

What sets this apart from the 87 other WarioWare games? The fact that players could make their own minigames, leading to an avalanche of creative, insane, and even NSFW games. Unfortunately the servers are no longer online, but you can still find thousands of fan games online if you look hard enough. The included games are pretty fun too, and if you have the DS version, you can make your own and send them over to your Wii.

34. Zombie Panic in Wonderland

Shooting galleries are perfect for motion controls, but gamers don’t get as many as we deserve.  Thankfully this one helps rectify that, with an interesting story and cool comic-book art sequences that keep things moving between all the gunning down of zombies and various giant monsters.

#wiiware #wii #nintendo #luigi

[suzanneshannon]

How to Customize the WooCommerce Cart Page on a WordPress Site

A standard e-commerce site has a few common pages. There are product pages, shop pages that list products, and let’s not forget pages for the user account, checkout flow and cart.

WooCommerce makes it a trivial task to set these up on a WordPress site because it provides templates for them and create the pages for you right out of the box. This is what makes it easy to get your store up and running in a few minutes just by setting up some products and your payment processing details. WooCommerce is very helpful that way.

But this isn’t a post extolling the virtues of WooCommerce. Instead, let’s look at how we can customize parts of it. Specifically, I want to look at the cart. WooCommerce is super extensible in the sense that it provides a ton of filters and actions that can be hooked into, plus a way to override the templates in a WordPress theme. The problem is, those take at least some intermediate-level dev chops which may not be feasible for some folks. And, at least in my experience, the cart page tends to be the most difficult to grok and customize.

Let’s look at how to change the WooCommerce cart page by implementing a different layout. This is how a standard default cart page looks:

We’ll go for something like this instead:

Here’s what’s different:

We’re adopting a two-column layout instead of the single full-width layout of the default template. This allows us to bring the “Cart totals” element up top so it is more visible on larger screens.

We’re adding some reassurance for customers by including benefits below the list of products in the cart. This reminds the customer the value they’re getting with their purchase, like free shipping, easy exchanges, customer support and security.

We’re including a list of frequently asked questions beneath the list of products in an accordion format. This helps the customer get answers to questions about their purchase without have to leave and contact support.

This tutorial assumes that you have access to your theme files. If you don’t feel comfortable logging in to your hosting server and going to the file manager, I would suggest you install the plugin WP File Manager. With just the free version, you can accomplish everything explained here.

First, let’s roll our own template

One of the many benefits of WooCommerce is that it gives us pre-designed and coded templates to work with. The problem is that those template files are located in the plugin folder. And if the plugin updates in the future (which it most certainly will), any changes we make to the template will get lost. Since directly editing plugin files is a big ol’ no-no in WordPress, WooCommerce lets us modify the files by making copies of them that go in the theme folder.

It’s a good idea to use a child theme when making these sorts of changes, especially if you are using a third-party theme. That way, any changes made to the theme folder aren’t lost when theme updates are released.

To do this, we first have to locate the template we want to customize. That means going into the site’s root directory (or wherever you keep your site files if working locally, which is a great idea) and open up the /wp-content where WordPress is installed. There are several folders in there, one of which is /plugins. Open that one up and then hop over to the /woocommerce folder. That’s the main directory for all-things-WooCommerce. We want the cart.php file, which is located at:

/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/templates/cart/cart.php

Let’s open up that file in a code editor. One of the first things you’ll notice is a series of comments on top of the file:

/** * Cart Page * * This template can be overridden by copying it to yourtheme/woocommerce/cart/cart.php. // highlight * * HOWEVER, on occasion WooCommerce will need to update template files and you * (the theme developer) will need to copy the new files to your theme to * maintain compatibility. We try to do this as little as possible, but it does * happen. When this occurs the version of the template file will be bumped and * the readme will list any important changes. * * @see https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/template-structure/ * @package WooCommerce/Templates * @version 3.8.0 */

The highlighted line is exactly what we’re looking for — instructions on how to override the file! How kind of the WooCommerce team to note that up front for us.

Let’s make a copy of that file and create the file path they suggest in the theme:

/wp-content/themes/[your-theme]/woocommerce/cart/cart.php

Drop the copied file there and we’re good to start working on it.

Next, let’s add our own markup

The first two things we can tackle are the benefits and frequently asked questions we identified earlier. We want to add those to the template.

Where does our markup go? Well, to make the layout look the way we laid it out at the beginning of this post, we can start below the cart’s closing table </table> , like this:

</table> <!-- Custom code here --> <?php do_action( 'woocommerce_after_cart_table' ); ?>

We won’t cover the specific HTML that makes these elements. The important thing is knowing where that markup goes.

Once we’ve done that, we should end up with something like this:

Now we have all the elements we want on the page. All that’s left is to style things up so we have the two-column layout.

Alright, now we can override the CSS

We could’ve add more markup to the template to create two separate columns. But the existing markup is already organized nicely in a way that we can accomplish what we want with CSS… thanks to flexbox!

The first step involves making the .woocommerce  element a flex container. It’s the element that contains all our other elements, so it makes for a good parent. To make sure we’re only modifying it in the cart and not other pages (because other templates do indeed use this class), we should scope the styles to the cart page class, which WooCommerce also readily makes available.

.woocommerce-cart .woocommerce {   display: flex; }

These styles can go directly in your theme’s style.css file. That’s what WooCommerce suggests. Remember, though, that there are plenty of ways to customize styles in WordPress, some safer and more maintainable than others.

We have two child elements in the .woocommerce element, perfect for our two-column layout: .woocommerce-cart-form and .cart-collaterals. This is the CSS we need to split things up winds up looking something like this:

/* The table containing the list of products and our custom elements */ .woocommerce-cart .woocommerce-cart-form { flex: 1 0 70%; /* 100% at small screens; 70% on larger screens */ margin-right: 30px; } /* The element that contains the cart totals */ .woocommerce-cart .cart-collaterals { flex: 1 0 30%; /* 100% at small screens; 30% on larger screens */ margin-left: 30px; } /* Some minor tweak to make sure the cart totals fill the space */ .woocommerce-cart .cart-collaterals .cart_totals { width: 100%; padding: 0 20px 70px; }

That gives us a pretty clean layout:

It looks more like Amazon’s cart page and other popular e-commerce stores, which is not at all a bad thing.

Best practice: Make the most important elements stand out

One of the problems I have with WooCommerce’s default designs is that all the buttons are designed the same way. They’re all the same size and same background color.

Look at all that blue!

There is no visual hierarchy on the action users should take and, as such, it’s tough to distinguish, say, how to update the cart from proceeding to checkout. The next thing we ought to do is make that distinction clearer by changing the background colors of the buttons. For that, we write the following CSS:

/* The "Apply Coupon" button */ .button[name="apply_coupon"] {   background-color: transparent;   color: #13aff0; } /* Fill the "Apply Coupon" button background color and underline it on hover */ .button[name="apply_coupon"]:hover {   background-color: transparent;   text-decoration: underline; } 
 /* The "Update Cart" button */ .button[name="update_cart"] {   background-color: #e2e2e2;   color: #13aff0; } /* Brighten up the button on hover */ .button[name="update_cart"]:hover {   filter: brightness(115%); }

This way, we create the following hierarchy: 

The “Proceed to checkout” is pretty much left as-is, with the default blue background color to make it stand out as it is the most important action in the cart.

The “Update cart” button gets a grey background that blends in with the white background of the page. This de-prioritizes it.

The “Apply coupon” is less a button and more of a text link, making it the least important action of the bunch.

The full CSS that you have to add to make this design is here:

@media(min-width: 1100px) {   .woocommerce-cart .woocommerce {     display: flex;   }   .woocommerce-cart .woocommerce-cart-form {     flex: 1 0 70%;     margin-right: 30px;   }       .woocommerce-cart .cart-collaterals {     flex: 1 0 30%;     margin-left: 30px;   } } 
 .button[name="apply_coupon"] {   background-color: transparent;   color: #13aff0; } 
 .button[name="apply_coupon"]:hover {   text-decoration: underline;   background-color: transparent;   color: #13aff0; } 
 .button[name="update_cart"] {   background-color: #e2e2e2;   color: #13aff0; } 
 .button[name="update_cart"]:hover {   background-color: #e2e2e2;   color: #13aff0;   filter: brightness(115%); }

That’s a wrap!

Not too bad, right? It’s nice that WooCommerce makes itself so extensible, but without some general guidance, it might be tough to know just how much leeway you have to customize things. In this case, we saw how we can override the plugin’s cart template in a theme directory to future-proof it from future updates, and how we can override styles in our own stylesheet. We could have also looked at using WooCommerce hooks, the WooCommerce API, or even using WooCommerce conditions to streamline customizations, but perhaps those are good for another post at another time.

In the meantime, have fun customizing the e-commerce experience on your WordPress site and feel free to spend a little time in the WooCommerce docs — there are lots of goodies in there, including pre-made snippets for all sorts of things.

The post How to Customize the WooCommerce Cart Page on a WordPress Site appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

How to Customize the WooCommerce Cart Page on a WordPress Site published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[rpgmgames]

January's Featured Game: Wishbone

DEVELOPER(S): Skitty, Kwillow, Ellie, Natasha ENGINE: RPGMaker VX Ace   GENRE: Western, Drama, Farming Simulation WARNINGS:  N/A SUMMARY: Wishbone is a character drama-slash-farming sim game that takes place in a wild west-inspired setting. The player takes the role of a farmer, fresh off the wagon in a new town and tasked with building a successful ranch. Wishbone might seem sleepy and mundane at first, but there’s trouble brewing on the horizon: a fierce, prolonged standoff between the lawmen and the outlaws that will decide the fate of the town itself.

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself!  *Skitty: Hello! I'm Skitty, a scruffy weirdo whose hobbies include drawing, programming, and cooking. I also happen to be the coder, project manager, and one of the main artists. In 2014, I released my first game, Theo's Big Adventure, but actually haven't really been involved in the community... I'm a bit of a hermit.

*Katie: Hi! I’m Wishbone’s portrait artist, and I also do some other less easily categorizable stuff, like writing, spriting, concept work and research! This is the first game I’ve ever been a part of the team on, if you don’t count an unfinished choose-your-own-adventure game I made in Flash when I was 13.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Skitty: It's kind of a funny story. Several years ago, I used to be part of the Fallout: New Vegas roleplay community on tumblr. Just for fun, a few of my friends and I came up with an alternate universe where instead of living in the post-apocalyptic desert, all the characters lived in the wild west instead. We ended up having a lot of fun with the idea! My friend, Ellie (who is also working on this project as a writer), suggested the idea of an Animal Crossing-esque game based on that setting... and I, having coding knowledge and having made a game before, volunteered to make it. The struggle between the four central characters remains the same as the initial concept, but the project and the people of the town have evolved a lot since then.

How long have you been working on your project? *Skitty: I started it around April 2015, so it's a few months short of two years old. Progress has been slow because I'm also juggling a job and other obligations, but even during busy times, I typically manage to work on Wishbone every week. Every couple weeks, new features get done and updates are posted to the dev blog.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Skitty: The three biggest ones are Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Red Dead Redemption. From Animal Crossing, we have have befriending townspeople and decorating your house. From Harvest Moon, we have the farming mechanics and romance. From Red Dead Redemption, we have hunting, foraging, and outlaw bounties. And I suppose Fallout: New Vegas deserves a shoutout for kicking the whole project off, albeit indirectly.

*Katie: I’ve liked Wild West settings for a while, but this project has made me go big on trying to absorb as much information from both the actual time period and from media as I can. Lately I’ve been trying to cram as many old Westerns into my eyeballs as I can so I get a good picture of the (romanticized) aesthetic and shorthands that have been used for this genre in the past.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?   *Skitty: Honestly, we’ve been fighting against RPG Maker’s limitations since the beginning, since the game we’re making is quite unlike a top-down RPG.

I would say that the biggest difficulty so far has been the patch of code that manages animals aging, getting sick, eating, giving birth, etc when the day rolls over. Originally, each animal event had an autorun page that would process that information when the player entered the barn map, but that would get very messy if the player didn’t enter that map all day. It got even messier if the player sent the animals in the barn out to pasture! To solve this, I first had to learn the order in which autorun events are evaluated (tip: it’s determined by the event ID number!). But that wasn’t enough… as more features were implemented, it became obvious that that approach just didn’t work. There were too many conflicts, and every time I’d fix something, I’d have to go through 20+ animal events, each with 40 pages, and change something over, and over and over… it was incredibly inefficient, typo-prone, and hard on the wrist.

Eventually, I got sick of it and recoded the whole animal system to use “generic” Common Events for interaction (basically I copy the animal’s specific stat variables to “generic” variables used by the function, then call it), with the aging/giving birth/eating/etc handled by a single event that was called once when the player slept. In hindsight, it seems so obvious… but my previous project didn’t use Common Events at all, so the first year of Wishbone’s development was largely dedicated to learning how to use them effectively.

*Katie: My biggest obstacle has been myself. I’m both a procrastinator and a perfectionist, which is just a horrible combo for ever getting anything done. Thankfully Skitty keeps me as on task as she can, but I still get mired in fixing-loops, and you would not believe the amount of times I’ve sent her revised images just because I moved a nostril two pixels to the left because it had been bothering me so badly.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Skitty: It actually hasn’t changed a whole lot. In the beginning, we had this core concept, basically just Animal Crossing plus Harvest Moon. But even back then we knew we wanted a big plot and minigames and sidequests and stuff… it was just a matter of figuring out if those were feasible to program.

I’d say it actually has more features now than it did in the original concept, too. I think in the beginning we had maybe five minigames, now it’s more like 8-10ish (depending on what you consider a minigame).

*Katie: It’s far larger than we had intended, that’s for sure! The art style has also shifted quite a bit, from the switch to wholly original graphics from borrowed sprites to subtle alterations in the sprite and portrait style. I think the biggest, most significant change, aside from making all-new sprites, is the inclusion of the sky in most of the game’s maps.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? *Skitty: It’s pretty much the same as it always was–me as the programmer/project manager/spriter, Katie as the portrait artist and other spriter, Ellie, Dax, Jester, and Reuben as character/plot contributors. Oh! I guess the big difference now is that we are in the process of hiring a composer?

What was the best part of developing the game? *Skitty: Seeing it all come together into something finished and cool. Sometimes I like to just lovingly look at the maps and videos and such I’m proudest of and think “wow, I did that! And it turned out almost exactly how I’d imagined!”

*Katie: Agreed! The little bits and pieces don’t seem like much, but when they’re part of a whole it’s like they’re completely transformed. I’m also happy to be working in a group - it makes me so proud to be part of this effort!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Skitty: Man, I’d definitely be craftier about how I handled the code for the animals. I didn’t know a lot about scripting at first, MONTHS worth of headache could have been avoided if I’d known how to use script calls.

*Katie: I don’t want to say ‘I wish I could change everything!’ because that’s not true, but it’s hard to keep myself from feeling I can always improve the parts I’ve contributed to the game. I’m doing a lot of learning on the job, and when I look back on things I’ve done before - even just a couple of portraits or sprites ago - it feels like I need to do everything over and make it better!

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore game's universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Skitty: We definitely have plans to use the characters again, but when they’re revisited, it’s going to be in different contexts. You won’t see the desert of Wishbone again, but the characters will absolutely be popping up in future projects.

*Katie: Yeah, these characters are sort of like… actors, in a way. Type-cast actors. We like to put them in different scenarios and see how they adapt.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Skitty: Gosh, it would be amazing if people liked the game enough to call themselves a fan! I’m definitely looking forward to people’s reactions to discovering plot twists and easter eggs and such. I hope people like the characters, too.

*Katie: Having something like this done would feel amazing. I’ve never been part of something this big before, and it’s a lot to be proud of. After that - if even a handful of people like the game, I’d be elated!

Is there something you're afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game?  *Skitty: I hope there aren’t too many bugs in it when I release it! I mean, I’m testing it as I go, but it’s a really big and complex game… there are going to be things I don’t catch. I’d be really disappointed if I released it with a glitch that broke people’s save files.

Also, I really do hope people actually like the characters… I’d be sad if they didn’t.

*Katie: I hope the art does justice to the game… I’d hate for it to be distracting or off, it’s something I worry about frequently. And boy I hope the story and characters come off okay!

Question from last month's featured dev: What's the biggest turn off you can get on an RPG maker game? *Skitty: Hmm… honestly, using the default sprites tends to be a pretty big turnoff. As an artist, it is very important to me that the game have an “aesthetic”, a sense of atmosphere, that the characters feel like individuals… that’s what really catches my eye and makes me want to learn more. I know not everybody is an artist, but like, a simple 8-bit sort of style, or even a “shitpunk” style like Space Funeral is more eye-catching than the default tiles.

Also, I find games made with the default tiles tend to be very easy to get lost in due to the generic nature of said tiles… if you gotta use those, at least make sure your maps are tightly-built and easy to navigate. I’ve played several RPG Maker games where the player spent a lot of time in huge, empty green fields with little or no landmarks. Add some stuff to make the area memorable… players will thank you for it!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Skitty: Try to set realistic goals for your first (or second, or third…) project. It’s so tempting to want to tell your magnum opus immediately, but that’s usually a recipe for ending up frustrated, disappointed, and quitting. My first project, Theo’s Big Adventure, was fairly short, used mostly ripped sprites from Mother 3 and ripped music from other video games, and still took a year and three months to complete.

Also, try to make working on your project a habit. I find that the hardest part is often just getting started… but once I get in the zone, I can work for hours. Set goals for yourself (whether it’s as big as “I’ll finish Chapter 5 by April” or as small as “I’m going to work on my project for at least 30 minutes today”) and reward yourself if you complete them. If you don’t complete them, don’t beat yourself up… just set the goal again (adjusting it to be more reasonable if needed) and give it another shot.

Oh, and one more thing… it’s alright for something to not be perfect. One of the biggest killers of a long-term project (aside from overambition and having it not be a habit) is perfectionism. Don’t get caught up in the cycle of continually revamping the same pieces over and over again–just let it be imperfect and move on. Nobody’s first project is perfect, but future-you needs the experience and confidence you’ll gain from finishing it to pull off the project of your dreams in a few years.

*Katie: All of the above, but from someone who’s less disciplined, to people who perhaps have similar issues: get somebody who’ll keep your nose to the grindstone and get you working and finishing things when all you want to do is either chase butterflies or toggle an eyeball back and forth to make it “perfect”. You would not believe how much it helps.

We mods would like to thank Skitty and Katie for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved! 

Remember to check out Wishbone if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum 

#rpgmaker #rpg maker #rpg maker games #rpgm #games #game of the month #gotm #pixel art #pixel games #wishbone #interview

[writingonjorvik]

Can We Discuss Grind In SSO?

To start, grind is a gaming term for having to do a lot of repetitive actions to make progress. And it’s something that I have a love-hate relationship with in game, though the community largely seems to have a hate relationship with. So, let’s dive into this mechanic.

First of all, like I’ve said before, I don’t hate the grind mechanic. I think it can be at odds with the rest of SSO’s design at times, of this take everything really slow bringing really fast-paced moments to a screeching halt (one of the reasons I think story quests should be less frequent in bigger bundles so this doesn’t happen as much). I think, when balanced well and used effectively, it can be a good way to build hype on unlocking future content or giving the dev team a little more time to finish a big release while still giving the players something to do. The crafting system is a big example of this.

What brought this up is actually recently starting a new account since all the day blockers have been removed (Amaranta Eveningwatcher is on Avocado Island/Swedish servers, but I’ll save them for another post). I was honestly overwhelmed with how much I could do in one day on that account. Knowing I could buy to finish the bridge, by the end of day one, I was already to the point about learning about Linda being locked up in the castle in the main story, and I had unlocked all of Silverglade, Harvest Counties, Jorvik Mall, AND South Hoof. And I didn’t even finish. I was at level 8 after 8 hours of play on that account. And let me tell y’all, it felt so satisfactory. If that had been my first time playing, I would be significantly more excited about making that much progress. And because I ended up getting off with not only day blocked quests to look forward to but more quests I didn’t finish, it felt like I had more to look forward to.

I do think there is a huge problem between current SSO and most long term fans because most of them haven’t experienced this new low level experience that the team is building. And while character slots is a whole other debate, I think that it comes back to that SSO’s dev team has a history of overshooting how much players will be willing to put up with grindy experiences and too late to fix it, causing a big swath of their players to feel shorted.

Ok, what does that mean? Well, let me talk about a really good example of grind that I still hold is SSO’s best use of this mechanic. A week before Harvest Counties unlocked, SSO released the bridge building quests. It took exactly 7 days to build the bridge, which built a lot of hype around that area but it wasn’t a long enough period of time that anyone was getting shorted for not finishing those quests. Particularly because not long after Harvest came out, SSO then added Billy Bulldozer to buy items and increased how much each of those items do to repair the bridge. Buying your way through to the bridge can happen in a day now or two days just on the dailies.

Let’s look at this conversely with fishing. Fishing is, undoubtedly, one of the biggest features in need of an overhaul but fishing as a whole isn’t a bad mechanic. Personally, fishing wasn’t even that bad until I realized I would have to do it for, oh, how long? To get it maxed out.

Which is likely why SSO added the Moorland branch for fishing, speeding up the process. But at the time, a lot of people who had finished fishing just from Golden felt short changed, because now everyone got this big shortcut and they did all this work. And this consistently is the feedback on these things when SSO cuts features now to better balanced grinds, but those that did the longer method often feel short changed or frustrated about having to come back to the mechanic for some new quest with a bunch of experience they didn’t get to use. See the fishing and hens achievements, Dino vs Epona archeology, the all of the druid training (which is apparently entirely gone now), and any number of reworked grindy reputation groups.

And there are two prime candidates right now for this pattern to repeat: Soul Riding and crafting. I see this as a really risky situation. Do these quests need some reworking on grind, absolutely, but I’m worried about that backlash. Because, particularly for crafting, the grind is part of the point and not entirely a problem. But I see any expansions on these systems that speed up the process of getting reputation with these groups as being really frustrating to others. If SSO releases new Soul Riding missions or team missions, people who spent 3 months legitimately getting the Rune Runner are going to be miffed, even if those features should be added. And changes and speed ups to unlocking recipes in crafting will leave others irritated at their weeks long grinds getting the whole inventory.

The core of this is where SSO wants to land on humane game design, balancing encouraging binge versus encouraging returning play. Honestly, I don’t know where they should lean on this, because I do agree that limiting play when dealing with minors is important, but no balance leads to dragging out quests for months and months and the situations we had before with all of these previously discussed poor.

I will say from personal experience in just what SSO has done to change quests, their early levels feel like they are moving more towards binge and as a player, binge is way more enjoyable. It puts control more directly in the players’ hands and makes them want to come back because there’s more they get, not just because they have to wait and come back.

I think SSO needs to start undershooting their current estimates on how long things should take, so when they do eventually want to or can expand the options for play, no one gets short changed. Eventually all of these mechanics should take less time so people get get to the new content faster. That’s just the cycle of MMOs. I don’t think SSO ever needs a full straight to level 20 bonus for players, but eventually I would hope there are 3 or 4 horses you can unlock through Soul Riding. And when a new one gets added, it’s a little easier to get the Rune Runner. Or when there are new crafting recipes, you get a little more experience for learning Farah’s recipes. 

All of this is to say that the grind itself is not bad, but SSO needs to do more to listen to feedback on the length of time that these things take and make sure it’s still being balanced with a sense of reward and control and not a feeling of slogging through material just for the sake of having content out there for players to engage with. Even with the Rune Runner at the end of it, people still got frustrated or less interested in getting it because of the length of time. People already seem to be waning in interest towards crafting (which kills me).

I think a big step in this with an easy start is to change the material trade-ins for crafting. Spending time to collect that much gathering materials to trade in should be as much if not more towards leveling with Farrah as doing the dailies because it’s a bigger time investment than doing the daily crafting jobs. It’s also proof that these systems aren’t unfixable, but they do need to be better balanced to focus on how much time the player wants to invest and not on pushing long term retention of players in such an obvious and painful way.

#sso #star stable #starstable #star stable online #starstableonline #woj analysis

[barbosaasouza]

Publisher Profile: DANGEN Entertainment

Dan Stern of DANGEN Entertainment had a chat with us for this week’s Publisher Profile, talking about the special Japanese game development connections and localization help they can bring to a game.

Who are you?

Dan Stern, DANGEN Entertainment: My name is Dan Stern. I’m one of the DANGEN Entertainment founders and I handle developer relations for half of our projects (the other half is handled by Nayan Ramachandran). Developer relations sounds vague, which is because it is. It starts with scouting new games for us to publish, but also means working with developers on literally anything they need (from release management to promotion to getting cold medicine, water or snacks at tradeshows). I’m in my fifth year doing this work, and my eleventh year working in Japan.

Can you tell us a bit about your company?

DANGEN Entertainment is an Osaka-based indie publisher. We’re indie in that we both work with indie developers and are independent ourselves. All of us have worked in localization, which is why localization quality means so much to us. And it’s why improving the working conditions and rewards for translators in the industry (like sharing revenue with the translators) is important to us, too. We’re not solely focused on localization, though. Our focus is on general publishing for world-wide projects.

What work do you do to help developers reach an audience? How do you make developers’ lives a little easier?

Communicate: In every relationship, good communication is clutch. We keep a Slack that all our partners are invited to join. We talk frequently and are available almost any time of the day. Everyone also talks in shared channels for development support and just goofing off. Corny as it sounds, it feels like we’re all one big family [laughs].

Creator collaboration: We have great connections in the Japanese industry and love collaborating with creators who have inspired our developer partners. We’ve done music (Yuzo Koshiro of Streets of Rage for The TakeOver and Tsukumo Hyakutaro of Thunderforce for Devil Engine). We’ve done voice over with Tak Fuji and streams with Koji Igarashi. When the ties are close between the games, these collaborations are fun for everyone. They bring both additional quality and renown to the projects.

Streamer relations: We work with streamers in multiple languages. Chad “Chyadosensei” Porter is our resident partnered streamer, and it helps a lot to have a streamer’s perspective on how we can best work with folks on Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, what have you. We want to help streamers as much as we want to get word out about the games.

We only publish ten titles per year. We’ve seen other publishers and services that work on anywhere between twenty-five and a hundred games a year. We feel it is crucial that we limit the number of slots we allocate to projects so that we can give every game the love and attention they need to thrive during development and throughout the release/promotion process.

Programming, porting, talent sourcing, testing etc.: There’s a ton of other support we provide, whether that’s porting games to new platforms so devs can focus on other projects or sourcing help they need with a specific kind of work.

What is it that you’re on the lookout for (genres, content, etc.)?

Games that we love ourselves [laughs]. There’s not a certain genre we’re solely interested in because we have broad tastes. But we definitely look at stuff like core concept, gameplay, art direction, story, etc.. Does the game achieve its own goals? And after we play, how do we feel about it on a personal level? Ideally, I want to feel hooked. I want to set aside an hour to play and then fall behind on my other work because I played for two or three. I trust myself to fall in love with great games, and I’ve found my intuition is right that our fans will love it too.

What do you look for in the games you choose to publish? In the developers you want to work with?

Honest, authentic love. Not just for their game or making games, but also for their own health and well-being. Overwork is a problem for indies, too, and we want our partners to take care of themselves. That often means planning ahead, organizing production, or asking for help. The last thing I want is for one of my developer partners to take on the world by themselves. I put a portion of my life into each project and I’m always there for folks when they need me. We’re in this together.

Love comes through in the games, too, whether it’s a love for conveying a message or love for a game design. It’s at the heart of making something powerful that others will be moved by. This motivates everyone involved in the project and produces better results when it’s time to sell the games, too.

Is there anything developers do to make themselves more appealing to publishers? Anything they do that makes them less appealing to publishers?

Be confident, be professional, communicate clearly – much of what applies in other fields. I’ve worked in education, hardware production, localization, and now game publishing. Communicating often, clearly, and well in advance makes everything go much smoother in all of those.

I love getting emails with an organized press kit complete with screenshots, video, and a build. My first goal with any game is to learn about it and get that chance to fall in love, so there’s no limit to how much info I like to get. From there, it gets even better if I can learn the needs of the project. What are they looking for in a publisher, and what’s the production schedule look like? Having that kind of information early not only teaches me about the game, but also gets me thinking how to best communicate why it’s great to players.

And it assuages a concern that all publishers have: that the game will, in fact, be completed (or even better, reliably completed by a date you can plan around). Professionalism shows the developers’ experience and ability to ship the game, which is very comforting when it comes to the financial risks of projects.

The post Publisher Profile: DANGEN Entertainment appeared first on Indie Games Plus.

Publisher Profile: DANGEN Entertainment published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

[etechwire-blog]

PlayStation VR 2 release date, price, news and rumors

New Post has been published on https://www.etechwire.com/playstation-vr-2-release-date-price-news-and-rumors/

PlayStation VR 2 release date, price, news and rumors

At 2 million units sold and counting, PlayStation VR may lead the pack in high-end headset sales, but Sony recently admitted that PSVR had fallen far short of its sales projections. 

With the PlayStation 5 reportedly a few years out from release, Sony is likely working on a successor to PlayStation VR that will take advantage of next-gen hardware to up its resolution, pixel quality and refresh rate.

Sony did technically release a second PSVR headset late last year: the CUH-ZVR2 added HDR compatibility, integrated headphones and a smaller connective cord. But, the true PSVR 2.0 will feature a much greater jump in specs.

The main question is, will the PlayStation VR 2 simply improve on its predecessor’s visuals, or will it add features like 6DoF tracking or even go wireless to compete with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive?

We’ve got the latest rumors and industry insider info on what the PlayStation VR could look like, its likely release date, potential backwards compatibility and more.

Cut to the chase

What is is? The next-generation of PlayStation VR

When is it out? Suspected either 2020 or 2021 to coincide with the PlayStation 5 release

How much will it cost? No word yet, but probably at or above the PlayStation VR’s $499 / £399 launch price 

Release date

It’s almost certain that PSVR 2 will work exclusively with the PlayStation 5 (more on that below). 

And, based on the latest revelations from Sony, its newest PlayStation console probably won’t release until 2020. 

PlayStation head John Kodera said at a recent Corporate Strategy Meeting that the PS4’s sales cycle has begun to wind down, and that the PlayStation team would hunker down until early 2021 working on its next big project. 

The PS4 Pro will be over four years old by early 2021

We also know that Sony won’t announce any new hardware at E3 2018, which makes 2019 the absolute earliest we should expect anything. But, most analysts predict 2020 as the more likely date. 

Intriguingly, Marcus Sellars, a notorious leaker of gaming info, claimed that Sony has already shipped PS5 dev kits to third-party partners. These game devs may have already begun work on PS5’s exclusive launch titles. 

At the the same time, we haven’t heard anything about PSVR 2 dev kits being sent out. This could simply mean that Sony has kept the gear under tighter wraps, or that the new iteration isn’t ready yet. 

But, if Sony mostly allocates its manpower to PS5 production, then the PSVR could launch much later than the console’s release date—perhaps a year or more. PlayStation VR 1 launched three years after the PS4, after all. 

Price

The current PlayStation VR starter bundle retails for $200 / £259 / AU$420, but this affordable cost came after two price drops in the past two years. 

The original price for a full bundle, $499 (£399, about AU$650), could give us a good idea of what Sony will charge for its next VR headset. 

Of course, this new headset will have some potentially expensive tech to go with the PS5’s increased potential. 

Japan Display (JDI), a LCD manufacturer co-run by Sony, recently unveiled its 3.2-inch, 1,001 pixels-per-inch (ppi) displays with 2160 x 2432 resolution. PSVR currently uses 386 ppi and 1920 x 1080 resolution for its one 5.7-inch screen. 

How pixel density can improve the VR experience | Credit: JDI

Adding better display quality, as well as doubling the screen count, could jump up the price.

Currently, the only somewhat “next-gen” VR headset on the market is the HTC Vive Pro, which retails for $800, £800 or around AU$1,045. Depending on the PSVR 2’s hardware, Sony could choose to list it as a premium device. 

But, that would likely go against its brand of offering an affordable entry into VR. We’re hopeful Sony will avoid pricing all but the wealthiest among us out of VR.

We also recently spotted a patent for upgraded motion-control wands with finger tracking and haptic feedback. 

Higher-cost bundles of PSVR 2 may very well include these controllers for VR experiences that a DualShock controller can’t provide. 

Why be a PlayStation 5 exclusive?

PlayStation 4 owners (especially Pro owners) might be a bit peeved when they discover they can’t make PSVR 2 work on their consoles. 

But, it could be Sony’s only option to make its second headset feel truly next-gen. 

We tested out PSVR on the PS4 and compared the graphical quality to the Pro. In “Pro Mode”, we spotted minor improvements in textures, graininess and lag reduction. Ultimately, though, the difference didn’t feel that momentous. 

While the PS4 Pro certainly packs a punch, it may not have the capacity to support VR with the higher resolution and pixel density that Sony’s new JDI displays enable. 

The PSVR 2 could demand processing power that last-gen consoles simply can’t match. 

Recent rumors suggest that the PlayStation 5 will use the newest AMD Ryzen CPU and updated Radeon graphics, an upgrade from the AMD Jaguar CPU of the PS4 and Pro. Sony could have trouble making its new headset compatible with two separate graphics systems. 

All the updated hardware, design and accessories

The most concrete info we have on the PS4’s updated design comes from JDI’s announcement of its 3.2-inch display with 1,001ppi and 2160 x 2432 resolution. 

JDI claims that this display will reduce latency to 2.2msec (compared to >18msec today), allow for 120Hz (same as the PSVR 1), and demand less processing power to achieve better image quality—potentially unlocking a lighter, smaller design for the headset. 

The upgraded AMD Ryzen chip that Sony is currently researching could certainly achieve the processing power necessary to support these displays. 

Sony, which uses JDI’s screens for its smartphones, will very likely rely on these upgraded displays for its new headset. Considering we already found the PSVR 1’s design comfortable for long playing periods, this could make its heir apparent even more enjoyable to use. 

Of course, if the PlayStation VR 2 does go with dual displays, this will make the graphical demand for the headset much more difficult to achieve. For example, if Sony wanted 4K VR, then the PS5 would need to be capable of 8K streaming. That’s a tall ask to support a device that the majority of PS5 owners likely won’t purchase. 

We do suspect that the PSVR 2 could go wireless, something that HTC has achieved with a new adapter peripheral. 

Considering Sony prioritized cutting down the size and weight of the cord that connects the headset to the console in its latest PSVR 1 upgrade, it’s clear the company sees it as disruptive, even annoying. Removing it entirely is the logical next step. 

By doing so, Sony will also make it easier to support room tracking for PSVR 2. Oculus and HTC have supported 6DoF tracking for experiences for a couple of years now, and it’s one of the primary areas in which PSVR falls short of its competition. 

The PlayStation Camera does track your head and controller movements as you play while seated, but can’t keep track if you move around, and our reviewers found that it frequently lost track of the controller even while motionless. 

Adding support for room tracking will only help Sony in increasing the size of its game library, as it will support more experiences that rely on wandering around a room. 

Of course, this could mean that the new PSVR 2 bundle will include a couple of room sensors to augment the Camera’s tracking. 

Most first-gen VR bundles came with the camera included, but none included 6DoF tracking sensors

However, Sony could instead take the route that Lenovo did with the Mirage Solo headset, which adds WorldSense tracking tech inside of the headset itself. Reducing the number of peripherals could make the experience less onerous to set up. 

We also suspect that Sony has plans to double down on Move controllers. Its recent patent shows that it wants to compete with the Oculus Touch and Vive controller by adding improved tracking functionality to its Move wands. 

Sony’s most promising idea is its “reaction force generator”, which would have portions of the Move wand expand or contract based on whatever the user is currently “holding” in-game. 

This tech could make experiences feel more immersive than before, without having to give up on controllers entirely (see: Oculus’ haptic gloves). 

Backwards compatibility looks likely

PlayStation VR has received a ton of support from Sony since its 2016 release. It currently has 150 games available, and Sony promised to release another 130 games by the end of 2018. 

Most of these releases will likely come from third parties rather than Sony studios, but, nevertheless, that’s a lot of content for a console that could get replaced in a couple of years at the earliest. 

That’s why it’s not surprising that Sony patented a plan for backwards compatibility that would make PS4 games playable on the PS5, which would put them on level with Microsoft’s successful backwards compatibility program for the Xbox One. 

We suspect that Sony will find a way to make its first-gen VR experiences available on the second-gen device, so that new buyers will have a huge library of games to choose from straight out of the gate. 

PSVR 2: Just what the VR industry needs?

As we’ve mentioned, PlayStation VR hasn’t met Sony’s sales expectations. Two million is nothing to sneeze at compared to the high-end VR headset competition, but Sony had expected the entire VR market to grow. 

Instead, Sony likely worries that VR will stay too niche to make the profits the company once hoped for. Kodera said Sony would have a more “realistic outlook” on what kind of future sales it can expect. 

Kodera’s statement implies that Sony remains committed to producing more VR devices. Unfortunately, the tepid VR market could mean Sony invests less time and money into future VR experiences. 

But, ideally, the PlayStation VR 2, Oculus Rift 2, and other next-gen headsets with better specs and fewer cords could revitalize the market and keep Sony fully on board with VR.

#date #news #PlayStation #price #release #rumors #VR

[smartoptionsio]

[ICO SCOOP] Interview with The Tip Token

A few days ago, we wrote about a possible diamond in the rough we might have found: Simple user handles for crypto wallets ids, an easy way to tip or to send money the crypto way, simply said an everyday token for everyone: The Tip Token.  ICOs are often a scam or just bollocks, born in the smallest room. We found this to be different for the idea of this French ICO, led by Nicolas Nups (LinkedIn), who will be my guest today, answering me all the uncomfortable questions my skeptical mind has woven. Welcome, Nicolas!

SMARTOPTIONS: Hello Nicolas, thank you for taking the time for this interview! To be straight with you from the beginning, we won’t hold back with critical questions. Your ICO is going to make crypto payments a) much easier and b) build the option to have it integrated into many websites and portals. Are you already in negotiations with social websites, that think about an integration of The Tip Token?

NICOLAS: Exactly! Thanks to the Short Address Name (SAN) and the widget we are currently developing, crypto payments will become far more intuitive and easy to setup on any app or website.

So indeed, we are currently discussing the integration of TTT on multiple platforms and websites well known from the public. So far, we haven’t received a negative feedback from any company we have approached. For now, we work on releasing a working platform and widget so we can attract more partners. Nonetheless, we have already teamed up with a barbershop in Monroe that will start using TTT as tips as soon as the ITO is over. We have also recently partnered with a blockchain related project called TeraWATT so their users can create simple addresses name using our SAN system. We are currently discussing several partnerships with other cryptocurrencies, one being related to students and universities and another that could spread TTT to hundreds of companies. As a conclusion to this answer, I would like to add that there are countless websites currently offering content for free and that would directly benefit from using TTT; the best example, known by almost everyone, is Wikipedia.

SMARTOPTIONS: Nico, you are a bootstrapped startup with a great vision. How does it feel to compete with all these pre-funded ICOs that spend gazillions in advertising to get the ball rolling? How do you work to get recognized and to spread the word? What are your plans?

NICOLAS: When you launch an ICO, there are 2 cases scenarios: whether you have large funds to spend on marketing, either you don’t. In TTT’s case, we started from scratch with a team of hyper-motivated people but without as many funds as projects, you can see on youtube and on TV on daily basis. However, it doesn’t mean that our work is less valuable. On the contrary, I would say that it is even more motivating to target the top 100 Cryptocurrencies when you start from almost nothing. And I can assure you we will go there! The amazing aspect of TTT is that we don’t come to compete with other cryptocurrencies, we come as a complementary one. Every cryptocurrency can use TTT as a side coin for tipping or simply to create a custom address name instead of the complicated current public keys. To spread the word, we are contacting blockchain related projects and websites and simply introduce our concept. It is currently working exactly as we expected, extending our followers and partnerships daily. Moreover, thanks to our numerous connections in the cryptocurrency world, we have access to exchange listings and to various websites and platforms that will allow us to expand our audience considerably the following weeks.

SMARTOPTIONS: The TTT project consists of the platform that enables us, the everyday cryptocurrency user, to use SANs (like the ability to create a handle and send cryptos to it instead of the lengthy wallet IDs. The idea is as simple as ingenious- how was the reaction of the community so far?

NICOLAS: So far, all the reactions we received were positive and enthusiastic ones. I’m myself a frequent ERC20 tokens users and in all honesty, I’m always lost with which token is stored on which public key. I have to store everything in notes and it is not really convenient. With TTT, I can simply associate my wallet where I store my ether to the SAN “eth.nico” and I don’t need to store the public key anywhere anymore. Who wouldn’t want this for their wallets?

SMARTOPTIONS: The plan of TTT embodies the SANs, widely spread integrations into social platforms and blogs (per widget) and browser games where you can earn tokens by playing them. How do these fields of operation connect to each other?

NICOLAS: Before everything else, The Tip Token is a community token. Our goal is to allow crypto and non-crypto users to communicate and interact easily with each other. Developing games such as Cryptoriddles is a way for TTT to create a synergy between all the members of the community. Indeed, players can earn tokens by playing TTT games that they will then spend on SAN and tips.  What is better than earning tokens by playing entertaining games?

We are also working on a new product that will help every new cryptocurrency project. More information to be disclosed about it soon.

SMARTOPTIONS: A user assumed The Tip Token could be a scam and posted a warning on Github. We stumbled upon that when we did our DD before publishing a post about TTT. We can see where he is coming from but did not agree with his points as it lacks any evidence. Can you understand why he estimated your project like this? What will you do in the future to avoid such false assumptions?

NICOLAS: One day, a member of ICOCHECKER team came into our telegram group and started spamming about their article. They did not try to contact us before posting their article nor did they ask us for details or explanations about the project. The first thing we did was giving them a detailed answer, that you can find under their article. After that, we have worked on all the points they have stated, posting pictures of the team and the official company documents on Twitter. However, even after everything was sorted out, they never answered our private messages nor removed their post about these “red flags”. We still do not understand this behavior and we believe they might have a specific agenda we are not aware of. Anyway, we believe anyone can do his due diligence, like you did, and see that we are a serious and competent team.

SMARTOPTIONS: You seem to plan quite a few airdrops, why should users purchase tokens in the ITO, instead of just getting them per Airdrop?

NICOLAS:  We currently have one ongoing airdrop offering 150 TTT and ending on the 13th of May and which is only available for the 5000 first registered members. We are only airdropping a small percent of TTT tokens compared to the total circulating supply so only a few people will be able to obtain a few TTT by being eligible to the airdrop. The best way to get TTT definitely remains the participation in the sales.

SMARTOPTIONS: Pease introduce your team to us – with a focus on what they have done, that is relevant to crypto – and what they will do to make TTT a success. Do some of them have experiences with ITOs/ICOs and do you think that you will need a fancy advisor to spread the word?

NICOLAS: We have a highly motivated team composed of people from all around the globe and I’ll give you a small resume of every member:

Jon, our CTO, and co-founder is a talented developer with past experiences in the cryptocurrency world. He has coded TTT smart contract and the token sale smart contract and is also working on the platform. He is also in charge of managing the developing team in charge of the app and desktop products. Jon is the key to TTT’s success.

Faisal, our chief community manager, is managing every social media and is in touch with a lot of potential partners. His past experience as an administrator in crypto telegram groups such as CrowdMachine is a real bonus for TTT.

Nick, in charge of our market expansion in the US, has a lot of connections with websites and industries. He is the one who found our first TTT partner Edges, a barber shop in Monroe, and he is currently in touch with future investors and partners.

Alex, our senior dev, is in charge of a team of several developers. His team has worked on numerous projects, crypto-related and not, and they are in charge of developing and adapting every TTT product on mobiles.

Marc, in charge of the market expansion in the Netherlands, is currently in touch with several potential partners. He has also worked on translating the whitepaper in Dutch.

Phurpa, our system engineer, is working closely with Jon on the website and platform development & hosting.

Jamaal, our website designer, has built TTT’s website and is pushing it everywhere online, expanding our audience.

SMARTOPTIONS: Please explain how you compare to Steemit, where you can also”tip” authors with upvotes- Please explain your project and how it elevates from similar tokens.

There are several tokens and projects that offer a platform where people can post content and earn tips from it. However, what TTT offers is a way for content creator and services providers to earn tips directly from their website and their favorite platform. I believe this is what elevates us from similar projects like Steemit. There are currently no other projects like TTT and the SAN creation associated with the tipping aspect is what makes us unique.

SMARTOPTIONS: Which major events do you plan to (besides the roadmap) once the token hits the exchanges?

NICOLAS:  We have a lot of surprises coming. The one that will help spread the word about TTT will be the “tip your city” campaign. We haven’t officially announced it yet so this is an exclusivity!

We will invite everyone to tip their favorite city SAN (“Paris”, “London”, etc.) and all the TTT collected will be used to organize an event in the city with the most tips. Depending on the funds, we plan on organizing a music festival sponsored by TTT.

SMARTOPTIONS: That is a neat idea! I hope we will be invited to this show. Nicholas, thank you for your time, and for clarifying our questions, regarding The Tip Token.

The Tip Token is currently in its seed funding phase and you can find more information on their website.

The post [ICO SCOOP] Interview with The Tip Token appeared first on Smart Options.