#mobile only minecrafter problems

[lunarcrown]

Ren getting besieged on both sides by two museum curators fighting for him? Honestly he’s having the BEST DAY EVER!!!

Comm for @philip-the-nickel !! Drawing my huge Ren design next to the even BIGGER Cleo design made Cub so comically small GDHD but what he doesn’t have in height, he makes up for in pure rizz~~~~

#rendog #cubfan135 #zombiecleo #hermitcraft #hc s9 #my art #commission #thank u s9 world download for existing so I could go look at the museums PROPERLY!!!! #even if that area lags my phone SO BAD that I can barely move dgdhh #mobile only minecrafter problems

[jigsaw-block]

In all seriousness, it's really interesting seeing the parallels between the inventory clutter issue vs the ID system; back before The Flattening in 1.13, mojang had a serious issue with Minecraft where they were using Numeric IDs for all blocks/items/mobs/etc, so they had to seriously limit what they could add to the game. Now, there's a ton ov really obvious blocks and items that the game is missing only because they're running into issues with inventory space. This is, I think, why they're so opposed to a bandaid solution like just increasing the inventory space. All that would do is move the deadline before they need to do it again, obviously, but they've run into this issue before.

They need to effectively figure out a way to "flatten" the inventory, so that all future blocks & items can not necessarily fit in it at the same time, but be accessible and easy to organize. It isn't as straight-forward as backpacks, inventory expansion, or hotbar swapping mods make it seem. We need a full inventory rework, & I have (almost) no idea how they're going to accomplish that. Bundles, I think, were a step in the right direction, but they're too similar to shulker boxes in that players can't really access the items inside them easily. They're more like a mobile chest than a fix to any actual problem.

[rayshippouuchiha]

Soooo.... Idk what YouTube thinks I'm doing with my life???? But a few months ago I was getting non-stop ads for dating sites??? And now 80% of my ads are for diapers (with 70% of those being diapers for kids)??? I'm in a long-term relationship (10 years soon), am child-free by choice, and am only in my 20's and don't have mobility or pelvic floor problems. So I'm not really the target audience for..... Any of this?

I don't want videos about people starting families or anything either. Most of my watch history is either relating to various fiber crafts or ya know... Watching people play Minecraft or Skyrim ....

yeah mine did something similar so i feel you

#RayRambles

[thedawningofthehour]

SORRY FOR THE LONG ASK but you activated my sleeper agent rottmnt brainstorming Re: The Video Game Question

Raph: would probably like low strategy single player games and lean toward arcade/motion control based experiences because they present a way around the "Hand Too Big Controller Too Small And Breakable" problem. As an Oldest Sibling (speaking from an Oldest Sibling Gamer pov) he would have been the Designated Single Player Driver (I have a vivid mental image of Raph playing old c tier single player wii games like My Sims Kingdom while Mikey, Leo, and Donnie yell instructions at him) and I think he's still gravitated towards those kinds of games. He also feels like the kind of guy who will thoroughly enjoy every video game he plays but his favorite is still inexplicably just like. Uno for the ps3

Leo: Would like competitive games. I feel like he's the kinda guy who cannot bring himself to give a shit about the story or aesthetics of a game and cannot care at all about single player video games outside of speedrunning or something. The point of games for him Is To Win. I feel like him and Donnie both played CSGO or COD at a young age with voice chat and thats why they are who they are. His favorite game is probably a competitive hero shooter or smth. He probably is playing Valorant as we speak.

Donnie: I feel like he's the only one who is a Capital "G" Gamer. Has the broadest taste but tends to like games he can "lose himself" in. (Competitive shooters, MMOs, lengthy and intricate single player games IE: Dark Souls or Elden Ring, metroidvanias, RPGs, fighting games) If the taste of Donnie Gamer Mode we get in the show is anything to go by, he seems the type to obsess over a game for like a month, beat it 120%, probably achieve some level or speedrunning or competitive infamy and then drop it completely never to be seen again.

Mikey: Would love sandbox games for Sure. Plays Minecraft but only on creative mode. Will play sims but only with cheats to make super intricate mansions or crazy houses or recreate something he saw in a movie once. He would 100% play single player games his brothers already beat so he can look around at the scenery and mess around in a character creator. Will play an open world game and never do a single main story mission and call it quits when he gets bored.

They've all 100% played a bunch of really weird and bad shovelware games or really cheap 3rd party titles because they were what Splinter could get for them. They all have 10 to 15 mobile idle games they'll rotate out bc they all need to be Stimulated at All Times. Yes they have played Mario Party and Killed Each Other over it but more importantly they have played Dokapon Kingdom and have started rivalries that have lasted several months over this game. They will hold grudges til they die over this game. They have never gotten to the end screen of this game and in all likelihood, never will.

Idk maybe my vibes are off tho lol but can you tell I've thought about this a lot to my own detriment

There's actually a point in the next book-I think it's in chapter 1 but I can't remember-where Galois mentions giving Raph one of Draxum's oversized keyboards when he has to do anything on the computer. (Draxum has large-print keyboards because he's Old) I think I've mentioned that the boys all have larger-than-normal phones because they only have the three fat fingers and that's just not gonna work with a standard iPhone. Raph I feel like is basically Strong from Fallout 4:

(bless him)

I'm reminded of when my sister would sit and watch my play Dream Life to 'learn', until I moved it into my own room. Really, their first console was probably 'whatever Splinter found in a dumpster and still worked', so unless it was something with connected controllers they were probably playing off whatever controllers he'd found as well, so it's entirely possible they legit just had the one controller for awhile. And yeah, they all crowd around to watch Raph play because that's annoying little sibling behavior.

Mikey would love games where the goal is to Make Something. He doesn't care about winning, only stepping back and looking at the finished product and going "nice." I do feel like he'd actually play the sims though-the twins use it as a building simulator, but he'd absolutely get into the lives and stories of his sims. He builds too, but he also gets into creating the sim. He plays Fallout 4 with the Sim Settlements mod and never finds Shaun because all he's doing is building shacks for farmers.

Oh, Leo is absolutely in it to win it. In any way, if it has a score he can use to compare to Donnie's he loves it. The sole exception to this is city builders, I can absolutely see him sinking days into Cities Skylines creating elaborate planned cities with complicated mass transit and beautiful walking spaces.

The other exception is if he can fuck around in a game and be chaotic. He plays Skyrim and installs the sex mods not because he's horny, but because he thinks going around in this incredibly inappropriately horny fantasy world is hysterical. He uses it more as a Medieval Life Simulator and if he completes a quest it's entirely by accident.

Donnie is absolutely the worst gamer and will learn literally everything there is about the game after playing it through once. He also probably mods his games, or even makes his own mods. Some of them to make everything look cooler or add quality of life and immersion stuff in, but he'll also do stuff like install the mod that replaces the Skyrim arrow noises with a man going "pew!"

Omg they absolutely played knock-off games as kids. They probably lied to Mikey about them being off-brand so he didn't feel bad about their situation, telling him that the title was a misprint and all the ads for the actual game were lying.

[my-reality-my-rules]

list of sites and apps i recommend for designing your DR shenanigans

part 2 - building a house

- - -

˚✦•·················• ✼ •·················•✦˚

LIST INCLUDES:

games:

Minecraft

The Sims 4

professional apps:

Coohom

˚✦•·················• ✼ •·················•✦˚

Coohom

WHAT: 3D visualization to realize your interior design fantasies, improving work efficiency and design quality for the best 3D presentation! [lifted from the official Coohom website]

PROS: it's very detailed, for one. the user only needs to know their dimensions and what materials they want to use. offers a wide range of things to add to the room. has a render feature; with images in perspective, panoramas, and video processes of the render itself.

CONS: it might be a bit overwhelming to first-time users, especially with the amount of controls. also requires mid to high speed internet for the experience. limited amount of render saves. also has a pro version, but that's only if you're unwilling to subscribe.

PERSONAL EXAMPLE:

≿❈≾

Minecraft

WHAT: Minecraft is a 3-D computer game where players can build anything. The game which has been described as like an 'online Lego' involves building blocks and creating structures across different environments and terrains. Set in a virtual world the game involves resource gathering, crafting items, building, and combat. [lifted from Webwise]

PROS: stimulating, both as a game and for problem-solving skills. due to its sandbox nature, it allows for vast amounts of creative potential, and is not limited to real-world material constraints (e.g., fantasy objects, plant life). you don't need to worry much about missing materials—it's constantly being updated, not to mention there are countless tutorials online for building certain things. also has the option for customisable avatars.

CONS: purchased, not free. also contains in-app purchases. servers can lag. social interactions are included, if you're not into that or because of cyberbullying, but i highly doubt you need to talk to other people just to make your DR house.

PERSONAL EXAMPLE:

[NOTE: download TLauncher for desktop, and HappyMod for mobile; lmfao lemme be real with y'all and say my game's fuckin pirated]

≿❈≾

The Sims 4

WHAT: The Sims 4 is a social simulation game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is the fourth major title in The Sims series, and is the sequel to The Sims 3. [lifted from Google Search]

PROS: like minecraft, it's a game. it's meant to be stimulating and functional. the sims 4 in particular has the best graphics and details out of all the games in the series. for desktop players, they can create almost anything and everything they want for a DR house. the base game is also free.

CONS: the base game is just that—the base game. that's not to say it's not fun, but it simply doesn't offer the full experience without the extension packs. you can download custom content, but it's definitely a long process, especially if you accidentally download broken or corrupted files. it's also...incredibly tiring to play, especially if you're on some kind of limit on your game.

PERSONAL EXAMPLE:

[NOTE: you can also use The Sims for creating your DR self, family/families, S/O's, and et cetera; also, I'm using mods and custom content in my game]

˚✦•·················• ✼ •·················•✦˚

#shifting #shifting realities #reality shifting #desired reality #shift #shifting shenanigans #shifting: resources #Esther's shifting posts

[kakusu-shipping]

4, 5, and 6 for the agere asks for.... all of your BNHA regressors? :D

That's... a few too many characters for me to answer all in one ask, so let's limit it to just The League sense they all go together well

minus a Dabi icon because I can't find flags for any of my headcanons for them

Asks from Here

4. Does your regressed f/o collect things? If so, what is it and how much do you enable it?

I'll enable my League babies in anything and everything, first of all. Second, the only one of the four who actively collects things is probably Himiko. She's a bit of a hoarder of anything she deems cute and tends to just pick things up and stuff them in her pockets.

Not an active collection he does on his own but Tomura has more Dog stuffies than much anything else, though he does also have Pokemon and Minecraft ones his older self has placed on shelves he can't reach because they are Mint Condition back at AFO's manor. He use to get pretty fussy about that some times, but it's become less of a problem sense moving to the Bar.

Jin and Dabi don't collect anything, nor do either of them have much that could be considered a collection (or much at all)

5. Does your regressed f/o have any gear that they want really bad? If so, what is it?

Tomura and Himiko both get everything they want without question, so neither of them have anything they really really want at the moment and are rather satisfied with their little gear at the moment.

Jin is constantly back and forth about wanting a pacifier. He's worried he'll chew right through it and ruin it, but it'd make it harder to talk making the other him less likely to say something he doesn't agree with (tantrum triggering when they fight), but also he'd have to take off or at least lift his mask to put it in his mouth which can easily trigger an even bigger meltdown than infighting does, but also also he sees his Big Sister Himiko and Baby Brother Tomura each with want and his tiny baby heart is just so over come with jealously he can't contain it. If I got him one, I'm almost sure it'd fix the whole thing, but just cause another problem, so I'm waiting patiently for him to decide himself what he wants.

Dabi doesn't have any little gear and refuses any I've tried to gift to them. They try very hard to push their regression down and ignore it, and they don't want me or anyone else in the League to be apart of it. I try to give them space, but I have hidden a few of little Dabi's favorite snacks around their room, along with some sparklers to play with. They seem content enough with that for now.

6. What is your favorite thing in your regressed f/o’s playroom?

For Tomura it was back at the Mansion, he had a crib with a mobile on it, it was the only thing his father had ever contributed to his Regression space, so of course it was his favorite. It played a lullaby as it spun I'd never heard before, and always put Tomura right to sleep. I wonder if it's still there...

Himiko has a lot of toys, most of which she's stolen from dollar stores and gas stations, but one Jin got her; A 4ft tall Valentine's day Teddy bear. It's big and soft baby pink holding a big red heart. I ended up cutting the heart free from the bear's stomach so now Himiko can wiggle herself behind it and sleep in the bear's arms. It's very cute <3

Jin doesn't have playroom per say, he doesn't have a lot of gear either. Rather than sit still somewhere with toys and games he'd rather follow me, Magne, or Himiko around while regressed. Though out of the few things I've seen him get attached to I think my favorite is the baby blanket Himiko got for him. It USE to be soft baby blue but he won't let me wash it at all and carried it everywhere with him, cries into it, uses it to cover his face, and sleeps with it, so it's gotten pretty grimy and is more of a muted color now. Himiko thinks it's gross now and won't touch it, but I've convinced her not to comment on it, sense if she doesn't like it, Jin is likely to throw it away... and then regret it.

Dabi, much like Jin, doesn't have a little space or many little items. Usually when they regress they lock themselves away in their room and don't come back out until they come out of it, so I don't know what their little space looks like, or anything they might comfort themselves with... I hope they're okay in there...

#My Hero Academia Agere #Proship Agere #The League of Villains #Proud Parent Posting #Twice #Emile's Writing #Thankyou for asking #Emile's Edits #Agere Selfship #SO MANY BASIC TAGS DSKFJSDKJF #Thankyou SO much for the ask I took so long on these icons and for WHAT #fdgkjfdgjkdf #My babies I love the League so much they are so itty bitty #To me <3 #Twice I ADORE writing Agere for he is never having a Good Time #But he sure is going anyway #Himiko does it for fun and Tomura does it because he's missing memories for that part of his life #He likes to pretend I was there though. I make him feel safe. #AUGH #I LOVE MY SON <333 #My itty bitty baby boy <3 #Dabi They/Them I'm so cool I love them as well #Even if they still refuse to open up to anyone ever #The BRIEFEST mention of Magne Big sister caregiver ever I love her as well <3 #Compress is a Babysitter he will not be in charge of a baby but he will entertain them until Magne or I take over #He's best with Himiko. Jin doesn't react well to his magic and Tomura doesn't react at all.

[dnallohleoj]

I still see bizarre critiques of Scarlet/Violet that betray a lack of understanding about the nature of gamedev so I wanna set a few things straight.

Now because this is the internet, I'm gonna get this out of the way. This is not a defense of GameFreak. They scaled too big considering they had a locked-in deadline beyond their control and a development pipeline that spreads decision-making way too thin between 3-4 separate entities. And this is certainly not a defense of The Pokemon Company International as a whole. They'd happily stop publishing games entirely if they thought they could sell plushies and figurines of brand-new Pokemon without them, and I frankly won't be shocked if they eventually try that.

Now first and foremost, as I'm sure many of you know, the Switch's hardware lags SO far behind its competitors. There are several reasons for this and I honestly can't fault Nintendo for some of them but that's the simple truth - from a modern standpoint, the hardware sucks. They basically just packed Wii-U hardware into a mobile device, and the Wii-U was just an Xbox 360 with a significantly worse video card.

But why is it that some games like Tears of the Kingdom run perfectly with no issues ever under any circumstances, and even other Pokemon games released the same year manage significantly better performance?

Well, long story short, those three games all decided to do the exact same thing, ran into the exact same problem, and came up with three different solutions.

Starting with Tears of the Kingdom, a massive open-world action RPG/Puzzle game, they saw the limits of the hardware, knew there was only so many assets (items, environment art, NPCs, enemies, etc) they could keep onscreen without compromising the beauty and immersion of the world, and decided they were only going to have a handful of enemies on screen at a time. Usually groups of 10 or less. There are a handful of challenges with significantly more enemies, and the game performs noticeably worse in those areas. They also had fixed spawn locations. Enemies would always appear in the exact same spot, every time you go to that area. If you've killed the enemies in that area already, they won't come back until the Blood Moon resets all encounters on the map. The reset happens periodically to prevent a memory overload from crashing the game.

In this way, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were very expertly designed around some luxuries that a Pokemon game doesn't have. Pokemon games need to be able to populate an area with Pokemon. Pokemon need to respawn in that area more than once every 3 hours. Once again, though, an elegant decision was reached. First, they split the map up into 5 Areas, each about as big as the main Wild Area in Pokemon Sword/Shield. Then, they tied Pokemon spawns to a random seed. You know how Minecraft uses "seeds" to generate a new world, and putting in a custom seed affects how the world is generated? Yeah, it's the same concept but with Pokemon spawns. Then, they created a 24-minute Day/Night cycle. Every 6 minutes, the time of day would change. At the end of a full cycle, the seed would be regenerated, giving you a new set of pokemon in the area. You could prevent the generation of a new seed by "Sleeping" at camp, which would return you to an earlier point in the day, potentially allowing one seed to last significantly longer, and thereby reduce the amount of data stored in short-term memory when the seed is regenerated. Returning to Jubilife Village would dump leftover data from the previous seed(s), and generate new seeds for all 5 areas. Because of the seed, the game only needed to generate new pokemon while the scene was loading, which, if you spend less than an hour in a specific area at a time, took significantly less effort. And by creating some, quite frankly, bland environments with LOTS of big clearings where most of the Pokemon appear, they were able to have loads of Pokemon on screen at a time. Also, because the Pokemon are fixed to the seed, the exact same pokemon will spawn in if you walk far enough away from them to make them despawn. Nothing is decided in the moment, so no room for hiccups!

For Scarlet and Violet, GameFreak flew too close to the sun and got burned. Rather than use the smart system they came up with for Legends: Arceus, they wanted one big open world that'd be heavily populated with Pokemon, those pokemon would have minor interactions programmed in, and the player was given access to the whole map as soon as they finished the tutorial! And... oof, you can't put that on a seed anymore, it's too many moving parts over too big of an area! With virtually no areas to load into, you can't load the Pokemon from the next area all at once. You also don't have anywhere to hide a memory dump. The only two areas that aren't part of the same big open world are the city of Mesagoza, and Area Zero. So, pokemon spawn and despawn based purely on proximity to the player and the area the player is standing in. If the player leaves the pokemon's proximity, it's gone forever, and a brand-new pokemon is generated on the spot in its place. Even though it keeps the amount of assets on screen low, it's still a lot more ongoing work that the system has to do. And to trade off for that, they cut down on the amount of environment assets even further. EVERYWHERE in Paldea is a big open field. This game doesn't even have a proper forest, and no, Tagtree Thicket doesn't count. The trees are so sparse that you can't even properly call it a Thicket. It's an embarrassment to Thickets everywhere. And even with that compromise, there were STILL massive areas of the game that simply couldn't handle the amount of work that was needed to keep up with making these big, empty fields look populated.

Look, the point is, Scarlet and Violet don't suck because of corporate greed preventing them from getting a proper development cycle. Another year in the oven might have helped, but frankly it wouldn't have fixed this mess. The core issue at the heart of Scarlet and Violet is that GameFreak had a specific experience they wanted to deliver, they made massive compromises to deliver it, and in the end, those compromises weren't enough to provide a smooth experience. They should have split the map up the same way they did Legends: Arceus, with the school and Mesagoza as the hub area you'd return to after an expedition. It's perfectly set up for it, they just chose not to for some reason. If they had, they could have copied the setup they used to make Legends: Arceus work, and the game would have likely had significantly fewer performance issues.

But even so, I find it hard to fault them for trying. They did it because it's been clear this is the experience they've been building to ever since the series went 3D. Scarlet and Violet are the games they've wanted to make for a long time, and it's evident everywhere you look that a LOT of love went into building it. This game had possibly the best supporting cast of any Pokemon game ever, a story that focused on those characters rather than the world's lore, and an absolutely killer finale. Despite its technical flaws, it's a delight to play, and even after it's been out for months, I still can't put it down, and if the people making it didn't love what they were doing, I don't think that would be the case.

#pokemon #gen 9

[mockingbirdshymn]

giving camp camp characters favorite video games

(but once again its only the camp campbell characters minus cameron)

preston: life is strange! he adores the storyline and wishes it were a play. it partially reminds him of heathers, if only because of victoria. and tell me why. he likes games like that. he really gets into the mindset of the character he plays as during games, and gets too emotionally invested into the storyline. he cries when characters go through something hard, he cheers when something good happens, all of it.

harrison: rayman legends and night in the woods. he seems the type. he also probably likes the long dark

nerris: how to train your dragon mobile game (school of dragons), shovel knight, online DND, a lot of RPGS, the various xbox star wars games

max: minecraft. im not wrong. also probably horror games, like resident evil or little nightmares, or shooter games

nikki: pokemon!!! in every pokemon game she tries to catch every pokemon possible. when stray came out, she adored the game as well. she cried, like, three seperate times during it, to the suprise of everyone. she also likes deer god and sled dog saga

neil: sandbox/tycoon games! he likes to get super into them and focus on making the best whatever possible. rollercoaster tycoon, minecraft, he loves them all. he also plays spore, the stanley parable, the trolley problem, and portal. he does not go outside too often

space kid: roblox and minion rush lmfao

dolph: my child lebensborn (if anyone hasnt played it, do. it fucking broke me and its one of my favorite games. make sure to look up the tws though its a dark game) and passpartout: starving artist

ered: undertale, splatoon, and fortnite. she also 100% plays subway surf.

nurf: he doesnt deserve a favorite game or a phone or happiness (eggs benefits...) bbut he'd probably like kick the buddy on the iphone. fuck nurf tho i dont like him

david: stardew valley, animal crossing, and slime rancher, though he doesnt like playing video games unless hes stuck inside due to a hurricane or something, or if max asks him to because he enjoys spending time with his family

gwen: she doesn't play video games too often, but when she does it's usually with others (animal crossing with david, mariokart/mario party with max and david, etc.), though she does play some games like firewatch. (preston also got her into life is strange, which she adores. everyone in the house watched her play because her reactions to everything was so funny "FUCK YOU, VICTORIA. WHORE. CUNT." and everyone is just watching along, invested).

bonus: nikki, neil, and max play goat simulator together and take turns

#camp camp #headcanons #cc preston #cc harrison #cc nerris #cc max #cc nikki #cc neil #cc space kid #cc dolph #cc ered #cc nurf #cc david #cc gwen #video games #woah

[marismoments39]

:-0 no problem if you're not an avid yuri gal! I'd say not a lot has been animated anyway lol. Dragon maid is. Uh. -_-. And I would say adachi n shimamura suffers from "adapted from a light novel so its kinda weird" so I'm not surprised you didnt hook onto those.

If you ever want suggestions you might like slow start or demon girl next door, both pretty fun slice of life comedy affairs. For more action akuma no riddle is still solid.

Enough about that though, we can see you like genshin, but do you play a lot of other games?

Ah, I see! Thanks for the recommendations! It'll probably take me a long while to get around to them (as you can see with my.. very slow ask-answering....) but I'll bear them in mind for whenever I wanna start something new!

anyways, as for games? I'm in a bit of a situation here!! my computer.. SUCKS. it has like NO SPACE!! I only have FOUR GAMES on it!!!!

those being (in order of when I first played them:)

-Minecraft (bedrock) (this computer can't run java and honestly I blame minecraft itself) -Terraria -Genshin Impact -Honkai: Star Rail

I LOVE all of these games SO VERY MUCH!! well, maybe star rail still needs to grow on me, but ALL THE OTHERS I LOVE THEM! this list probably doesn't give you a good idea of what I am as a gamer lol, these are all extremely popular games, I do have a NINTENDO SWITCH!! THOUGH!!! ISN'T THAT COOL??? I still don't believe I have it

here are the games I have on there (in order of hours played)

-Hollow Knight -Hatsune Miku: Project Diva: Mega Mix -Sonic Frontiers -Sonic Mania (plus) -Pokemon Scarlet -Deltarune -Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S -Hatsune Miku Jigsaw Puzzle -PuyoPuyo Tetris 2 -Rain world (mainly got it cuz of pow but GOD is it hard) -Everhood -Ace Attourney

-I also tried out games like A Hat in Time and Stardew Valley, though they were fun to watch, I didn't have much fun playing them. which is sad. I don't know how to refund on switch lol

some of these games only have low hours because I just got them. like ace attourney? under an hour of gametime lol

I'll tell you a little anecdote about each game!!

Hollow Knight: I first played hollow knight at my cousin's house in 2018(or 2019?) I sorta sucked at it. I remember saying "this is just swordigo but, like, better" and I guess I was right? swordigo's a mobile metroidvania I used to play btw lol~ anyways in 2020(??? or 2021?????) one of my favourite youtubers (merg) started playing hollow knight and I was like huh..! this is actually sorta fun?? I didn't have an income nor allowance at the time so I couldn't BUY the game for myself.. so I watched his ENTIRE series before I bought the game for myself!! still, it was fun!

Hatsune Miku: Project Diva: You may not know this game, but there are two modes! arcade mode, and mix mode! arcade mode is like the mode where you hold the joy-cons vertically and use like motion controls and uh it's complicated but basically I LOVE THAT!! I LOVE THE MOTION CONTROLS SO MUCH!! LITERALLY THE ONLY GAME WHERE I LIKE THEM LOL!!! Also! Project Diva is what got me into vocaloid! not the other way round! isn't that cool!!!

Sonic fron... wait. I'm gonna. I'm gonna be typing this post forever

obviously this isn't every game I've played ever, I mean how can any list of moon's favourite games be complete without min hero?? uh, but, I don't wanna be typing this list forever! how about this, if any of those games sounded interesting, say so! I'll give you stories! I have a TON!!

Thanks for the ask!

#moon answers

[x-i-l-verify]

Lol, I gotta know what the Minecraft Hostage Simulator's about...even though I have never played Minecraft and probably won't get all the nuance XD

Okay, I did not expect you to ask about that one specifically, but hey, I’ll take it!

So essentially, the Minecraft Hostage Simulator is a video wherein two teams try to hunt down a hostage in Minecraft and take him to the End dimension to feed him to the Ender dragon (aka beat the game) while fighting each other for possession of him, and the hostage is actively causing as many problems as he can on purpose in his attempts to escape. It’s very chaotic and very funny.

Of course, I had to go make it angsty instead. :V

Excerpt below the cut!

-

“You’re lucky we’re friends, Bad,” Dream was saying, reaching out to rest a hand on Bad’s head between his horns. The demon briefly went stock still in fear and confusion. Was Dream being… comforting? Possessive? A mix of both? “You know I should- I could have broken your legs and just dragged you to the End when we started. You know that, right?”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Needed you mobile to outrun the idiots.” Dream shrugged carelessly. “Plus, I like you. Despite my better judgement sometimes, you menace.”

“You sure have a funny way of showing it,” Bad muttered acidly despite his fear as Dream mussed his hair playfully.

“Bad, I’ve told you before, the only times I’ve hurt you is when you’ve forced my hand. All this?” He gestured to the scrapes, cuts, and bruises peppering Bad’s skin, his tattered clothes, the bags under his eyes and hollowed cheeks. “This is on you. You’re the one who made things difficult. You don’t understand the Egg the way I do; you don’t understand what’s at stake. If you did, you’d be willingly going with me to the End.”

“Then explain it to me,” Bad snapped, hunger and sleep deprivation finally getting the best of him. “What is so important that you have to literally murder me to get it? Last I checked, Dream, you don’t murder your friends.”

“I can’t,” Dream snapped back, turning away. “I can’t talk about it, I can’t think too much about it, I just…” He grabbed his head, fisting one hand in tousled, sandy curls, his shoulders vibrating with tension.

Sensing an opportunity, Bad pleaded his case, pouring as much emotion as he could into his voice, “Dream, please. Please, just let me go. Let me keep running until the antivirus team gets here. They can help you, Dream. You and Sapnap and George. Please, I just want my friends back.”

(fic itself is here, I just haven't finished it yet, got 1 more chapter to go)

#minecraft hostage simulator #ask meme #novelmonger #answered asks #xi writes

[redstonedust]

re: your scar post. as a physically disabled person, your attitude makes me sick. 1) scar himself has said he's neutral about it. stop speaking over the actual disabled creator because you think you know better. 2) how DARE you say that going with magic is a "work around". i would fucking kill to have the aids that minecraft magic could provide. (1/2)

(2/3) 3) the presence of Xisuma having breathing problems is not "weird" if the writer doesn't write Scar with his disability because it's about the characters, not the ccs. 4) Scar is chronically ill. his disability comes from being sick. including that (in fic, at least) is not as simple as putting him in a wheelchair and giving him an o2 tank. 5) building on that, writing a chronically ill character is stressfull for some people- especially if, like me, your disability is in the same family.

(3/3) in conclusion: get off your fucking high horse and listen to disabled creators when they say they're neutral about people depicting their disability. if you're so concerned about us being under-represented, go support actual ccs instead of trying to shame people for not conforming to your personal ideals of a character.

---

hi! ur wording was a little terrifying at first but i'm genuinely glad to get input from a physically disabled person who disagrees-- most of the disagreement i've received so far was from able bodied people and i do not give a rats ass about their opinion smfwmkf

i think the only part of this i want to argue back against is 1). i'd like to hope i was clear in my post that i am aware scar is neutral on the subject, but thought that listening to disabled fans who have expressed happiness at seeing him depicted with mobility aids and such was important too.

obviously it turns out not all disabled fans agree, and thats totally fair. i didnt consider how it could be distressing to write a chronically ill character if you don't want to be reminded of the personal realities of that, and i think magical assistance is honestly a cool choice if it's written well. like i said, he's a wizard/elf/vex, he can do what he wants.

ultimately that post was originally me just asking a question to the air: wondering why people wouldn't want to depict his disabilities. i didn't intend for it to be framed as "you must do this or you're a bad person" and i was worried it came across the way. after going back to re-read it i think giving hypothetical examples of why able bodied people may make that choice was a little aggressive of me and ignored that some disabled fans may be the ones writing him that way.

i know you weren't happy with the post, and may not come back to read this as you're not happy with me either, but thank you for your input, genuinely. i'm not personally going to stop drawing him how i draw him, and i'm not gonna delete the post as other disabled fans have agreed in the replies, but i'll hold my tongue in future for sure.

#asks #txt #long post #also sorry i didnt get to every point you made #i figured there wasnt much i could add to them honestly #like the xisuma part is just `yeah fair enough thats a different kettle of fish` #also mid writing this another similar ask came in and i got so confused between them. lemme go read that one and respond too

[dreamball-teams]

Mobile Rules

Icon Art

Requesting Basics

1. Please clearly state the name and source of the character. Do not use abbreviations.

    No: Name from STTF

    Yes: Name from Source That They’re From

2. Feel free to make specifications. If you want certain Pokemon included or excluded, shinies, etc. Note that with shinies, I will do my best, but cannot make promises.

3. Double battle teams are allowed! For example, a team for a parent and child duo, or one for a couple! Just be sure to clarify what kind of relationship it is. I request that you do not request teams for romantic relationships that involve incest, pedophilia, or abuse. If I unknowingly fill a request for one of these, please let me know!

4. The more obscure your source, the harder a time I may have. I utilize the wiki pages for characters I am not familiar with, so if you are requesting an obscure character with little information, it would improve the results if you provide information.

5. This blog is kin friendly!

Do Not Request

Some of these are here due to serious problems with the work itself, and some are here because they are a personal trigger/discomfort to me. Just because a piece of media is listed here, it does not inherently mean I deem it problematic.

- Harry Potter

- Helluva Boss (Hazbin Hotel is permitted, except in the case of certain characters. See “no rapists” rule).

- Voltron: Legendary Defender

- South Park, Family Guy, etc.

- Five Nights at Freddy’s

- Minecraft Survival Multiplayer Servers

- Real people/Youtuber personas

- Characters that are pedophiles/rapists

- Characters based on real world mass killings/crimes/etc.

I reserve the right to add to this list at any time, in which case I will make a post with the new additions.

FAQ

Q: Did you get my request?

A: I have an inbox check here. If I’ve recently posted but haven’t added your request to the inbox check, I have not received or seen it.

Q: Do you take requests for X?

A: If it’s not on my blacklist, then probably! Send it in and I’ll either post the team or respond with a negative (if you send the ask off anon, I’ll respond privately). That being said, do consider a few thing before sending in a character. Is this content potentially triggering? Is there enough information to work off of? Is it similar or identical to something already on the blacklist?

Q: Can I request a team based on a non-character thing (aesthetic, theme, etc.)?

A: Go ahead! I can’t promise anything, but I’ll give it a shot!

Q: Why didn’t you use Pokemon X? They’re the same species as this character!

A: Because I like to imagine a team the way the character themself might build it. What would be useful to them? What would they be drawn to? What Pokemon do they like? I do sometimes include Pokemon that represent the character, but only if they mesh with everything else. I also try not to use legendary/mythical/ultra beast/shiny Pokemon unless the character really warrants it.

Q: What’s your favorite Pokemon?

A: Espathra.

Sources

All art used is from official sources, with Pokemon art being from the official TCG. Shiny edits come from shiny-spectrum or marietheshinyarticuno and will be credited accordingly.

#not a team #pokemon

[doomedlvr]

i really want to know what they're mad about. im not even upset, because 1) im not intimidated by anons, and 2) "i hope you get hit with a gardening hoe" is a weird threat and only makes me think of minecraft.

my only guesses thus far are:

someone from a previous blog holding a grudge over something (since im starting the process lately of posting noticing on the previous ones saying i moved here, and will deleting the old ones soon)

someone who saw the dni in the pinned and immediately fell into a comical fit of rage at my tl;dr "people into pedophilia or incest are given no quarter here" thing

someone who sent a very weird ask to the wrong blog and can't admit to it

someone who got bored and went "i want to cause problems on purpose today" and thought of the weirdest violent scenario that they could

i do know it's probably someone on app/mobile, because as far as statcounter claims, nobody's been on my desktop ask page in the last day or so. and if nobody shows, that usually means the asks aren't coming from a browser.

I honestly really wanna know what their mad about too, like what’s a anon death threat gonna do realistically? Other then make them look like they went into a blind fit of rage and started typing on their keyboard. They give off the impression they just wanna start shit and are possibly jealous for one reason or another

“I Hope you get hit by a gardening hoe” anon probably say there for sooo long trying to think of the best insults to throw at you and thought that one would be so special LMAO

[sg2tiger]

Finally, this is my 2022 gaming wrap up! Usual ramblings under the cut.

Pokemon Throwback

With my 6-year old nephew living with us, it's my job to get him on and off the school bus. Last year, when he was in preschool, he had the afternoon class, so we had all morning to do whatever before we had to get ready. It ended up becoming a regular part of the routine to play Pokemon for an hour or so before get dressed time...and the game he chose specifically was LeafGreen. What we actually ended up playing was a FRLG romhack I found with a grab bag of pick-your-own QoL changes called Pokemon Throwback. In essence, we were playing LeafGreen, but things like cut trees staying cut, ability to obtain all pokemon in one cart, phys/special split, consecutive-use repels and other things just made life a bit easier, especially when coupled with the emulator's fast forward feature (GREAT for grinding).

Ultimately, over the course of the school year, we made it through the entire main game, Elite Four, and all of the Sevii Islands (I was pretty burned out by then, and he actually wanted to move on and play Gold, but he also didn't want to stop until we got his Dragonair to evolve...and it had about 5-6 more levels to go after we beat the Elite Four...). Then we went back, caught all the legendary birds, and Mewtwo. We didn't catch 'em all, but we DID catch every single Unown of the alphabet, which took about 3 weeks (again, we only played for about an hour every weekday) and probably made me go more insane than catching 'em all would have. In the end what matters is that he had fun and was excited to learn more pokemon than just the handful of popular ones on his pajamas and stuffed toys. And he really did learn them, and retain what he learned - kids are smart! Even if his sense of nicknaming was essentially 'the animal it's based on + y' (he had a real crisis when we caught Horsea).

We played the game on my phone, with my bluetooth controller. I really liked this controller and was pretty bummed when I upgraded to a slightly bigger phone and the mobile clip just simply did not fit anymore (we still use them as Switch controllers for multiplayer, but still). I ended up getting a different type of mobile controller that attaches horizontally for my new phone, which will hopefully accommodate at least one more phone in the future before they start making them TRULY gargantuan.

Minecraft: Arid Adventures

One night...at a time where I actually hadn't played Minecraft for several months...I had a weird dream. It started out with a friend gifting me some kind of VR survival horror game about exploring desert tombs and recovering artifacts while being pursued by the angry undead guardians. At some point, the dream called for sand physics, and my brain reached into the video game sand physics databanks and pulled 'minecraft sand blocks falling all at once'. The dream then shifted from a more realistic style to that familiar blocky aesthetic (though the non-aesthetic elements were still very survival horror and NOT minecraft). When I awoke and recounted the dream, the minecraft image ended up being what stuck with me, and I wanted to see if anyone had made any kind of desert-themed modpacks. I found...one, which I didn't really like, so I took it upon myself to spend a month and a half working on my own.

The result is a sort of desert-flavored kitchen sink pack, filled with tons of places to explore, loot to discover, challenging enemies, and some light survival with thirst/temperature mechanics (offset by lots of food items to hydrate and keep you cool because I didn't want hardcore survival to be the focus of the pack). I spent a lot of time creating a huge arid ecosystem of modded desert, badlands and savanna biomes filled with tons of desert ruins, bandit camps and other structures across the landscape. But despite how much time I spent fine-tuning and playtesting it, when we actually got it on our friend server we ran into more than a few problems...like the massive overspawning of deadly, deadly scorpions. Still, regardless of some oversights, I'd like to think the pack was a success, and we had some fun playing it together between April/May (I spent half of February and all of March putting it together).

Arid Adventures was ultimately my less-polished-than-I'd-hoped first foray into learning how to make Minecraft modpacks, and I've applied a lot of what I learned about things like NBT structures and datapacks to other packs I've made since. Still, I've got a soft spot for this one, and I'd like to recreate it on 1.18 or 1.19 if possible...and I think it should be, I'm just waiting on one mod in particular to update (Team Abnormals' Atmospheric, for its additional desert biomes as well as resources like aloe and yucca which my bespoke desert food mod incorporated as ingredients for lots of recipes). Maybe when the time comes that I'm able to remake and polish it up a bit I'll even post it publicly on CurseForge. I'm pretty shy and have a massive lack of confidence in my work, though, so I tend to just keep my packs private for our friend group server 😔

(we’re actually currently playing a winter-themed modpack called “Arctic Adventures” which is “Arid Adventures but Cold”. Except not really, because I just took a light vanilla+ modpack I’d made and threw a couple winter-themed mods on top of it. But I thought the name was funny, so maybe there will be more [x] Adventures packs in the future)

Vigil: The Longest Night

You can really tell that 2021-2022 was me trying to work up the nerve to play the actual Dark Souls by warming up with various Soulslikes first. I don't even remember how I discovered Vigil, but probably I figured that if I liked Hollow Knight and Salt and Sanctuary I'd have fun with Vigil too. And I did, actually. Unlike the aforementioned, I even finished Vigil with 100% completion, grabbing all achievements over the course of two playthroughs.

Combat and healing felt a lot more forgiving than the others Soulslikes I'd played, at least if you picked the right perks. I ended up running axes, focusing entirely on that tree and the general survival one, and generally it always felt like there were very few enemies and even bosses that gave me a truly difficult time by the latter half of the game (several of the early bosses did kill me many times). At least, as far as the 'main' content goes - once I hit the bonus bosses like Bluemagpie and Redsparrow I really felt like I had to memorize every possible move the boss could take and counter appropriately. Frankly, if not for the fact that I misunderstood one achievement as having to collect EVERY weapon/armor set in the game, I probably would have given up on fighting Redsparrow after my first 10+ deaths...but I persevered and killed every optional boss in the game too.

I think what I spent the most time on in Vigil was just my obsessive determination to discover every nook and cranny on the map, because games like this where your map is fogged until you traverse it always compel me to reveal it all (I'll never forget the hell Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey put me through because of this urge of mine). The game is absolutely chock full of little secret rooms that you can just barely see a hint of on the map...usually there will be a small passage you have to slide through or something, sometimes hidden behind breakable objects or just otherwise in places you wouldn't think to look. I'd call it the 2D equivalent of Dark Souls' love of invisible walls. Between hunting down places that I sensed held secret passages and trying to platform my way through the trees in the forest areas, I got really into unfogging the map. But hey, in doing so, I was also working my way through all the various loot required for achievements, so one gameplay loop always fed into another in a satisfying way.

I feel like Vigil is the kind of game that's easy to overlook in the sea of 2D soulslike metroidvanias out there, but I had a good time with it. By the end I even really wanted to know more about the story and the lore, unfortunately somewhat marred by a translation of questionable quality. And with the way some of the endings played out, I'm really hoping that there might someday be a sequel, because it definitely feels like the devs left an open door for there to be. I'd say if you're into this kind of game, though, Vigil's worth checking out.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

I was pretty torn between rating this "Pretty Good" vs. "Decent", because I feel like my expectations for this game were unfairly high, but I also feel like every time I play I find something that I feel like the game COULD have done better, but for some bizarre reason chose not to. Kakarot was a game I was looking forward to a lot when it first got announced, because conceptually it seemed like something pretty different that had a lot of potential to be interesting. And while I think Mistake #1 was choosing NOT to start the story off with kid Goku in the original Dragonball (which would have suited the survival and exploration mechanics so so SO much better if we started off with him before meeting Bulma) I understand that we must bow to the whims of the marketing gods at the end of the day, and 90% of the target audience doesn't care about the original DB at all. Still, despite the name being 'Kakarot', it was obvious that a lot of the game would be spent playing as characters who are NOT Goku...and in particular, Gohan, and the idea of playing through his training with Piccolo with these game mechanics sounded like a lot of fun.

That comes to my first issue with the game...speed/pacing. And I get it, because the game spans the entirety of DBZ from Raditz to Buu, but even so it always feels like we're skipping way too fast through the parts of the story that would service the gameplay the most. I thought what would make this DIFFERENT than the usual DBZ fighter is that we would NOT be skipping over the 'less interesting' parts quite as much, because the gameplay involves more than JUST fighting this time around, but more often than not I still found that it skips massively through major story beats when it should slow down and try to be more immersive. I've been playing intermittedly over the course of a few months so I don't have a lot of specifics off the top of my head, but the most recent part I finished was the whole entire Ginyu Force segment...in the space of about 45 minutes.

I remember being irritated that the game barely conveyed what an actual THREAT the Ginyus were to Gohan/Kuririn/Vegeta before Goku shows up, because of the way you still 'win' even the losing battles of this game. And while I know we're kind of in an era of de-bloodening the Dragonball franchise as a whole, the lack of violence also really lessened the impact of the absolute beat down Rikum gives everyone, and thus also diminishes just HOW powerful Goku - who shows up and stomps him in 10 seconds - has become. Then the whole Ginyu body change bit is just kind of raced through with little ceremony at all despite being one of the more iconic aspects of the whole Namek arc IMO...I don't know. I felt like Goku went from space ship to healing tank in even less time than usual, and in a game that's literally named after the guy it's EXTRA noticeable just how little time is spent focusing on him (admittedly if you go over all of Z in your head you'll realize Goku is actually out of the spotlight for a whole lot more than you'd think, but the game's fast pace doesn't help matters either).

Again, I'm sure a lot of this is just my own expectations being unreasonably high for a Dragonball game, but it bums me out when the general presentation - the extremely faithful cutscenes, the soundtrack, etc - is really immersive, but then they'll just go and race through a whole story segment to get to the next fight. Oh, I remember another one that annoyed me. Imagine if the game wasn't afraid to actually let you control BULMA for the brief interlude where Popo takes her to Kami's spaceship! Imagine actually having to explore around as Bulma (you could even give her Popo's magic carpet so she could still use the game's flight mechanics) and scavenge for mechanical parts (which is already a thing you CAN DO in the game mind you!!) to try and do some repairs to the ship. Or just having to search around the area, maybe in the middle of a blizzard (it was a snowy place iirc), to find the ship at all. Instead the game just kind of went from 'Vegeta got away' to 'but they found a spaceship to go to Namek' almost IMMEDIATELY. Being that I'm playing the game alongside my nephew, who started to get curious about Dragonball (I think he saw some kind of Goku vtuber playing Minecraft on youtube or something, and got excited when he found out that I knew all about Goku), there's lots of bits like this where I end up having to summarize some of the stuff the game glosses over, because watching the story unfold via this game IS his first exposure to Dragonball (which I guess in a way makes it a good thing that the violence is generally pretty toned down compared to the original).

Anyway, yeah, idk. I feel like even when the game does let you explore it's all very barebones and watered down. The fact that only the story cutscenes are voiced and all the original sidequests are just grunts and noises also irritates me because it feels so lazy (Xenoverse does the same thing but idk, it didn't bother me there, I guess because all the battle dialogue was still voiced and it was just overworld stuff that wasn't). I also don't feel like I ever really have to use mechanics like fishing or cooking or any of that stuff because the battles are pretty easy? At least on normal difficulty, because the combat system is so simplified compared to a proper DBZ fighter. It's more about like, Touhou-style attack dodging than anything, which is fine, but I find that it's rarely challenging enough that I feel like "damn I should have spent more time scavenging ingredients to cook food before the battle!". It just feels like they tried to make a game with these survival RPG mechanics but didn't know HOW to, so they're very tacked on...and they just made a bog standard 'let's rehash the same DBZ story once again' Dragonball game when it COULD have been something better. Especially if they dared to start with Kid Goku's life. Sadly I know that a AAA game focusing on OG DB is basically a pipe dream.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights

After I finished Vigil I was feeling hungry for more 2D metroidvania soulslikes, and Ender Lilies just happened to go on sale like, a few days later. It had really good reviews so I picked it up and spent the next few days playing it obsessively. In fact, based on the dates of my achievements from start to end, I finished the game in less than a week (31 hours total), 100% completion with all achievements. And after I did I just kept feeling like...it wasn't enough and I wanted more. I really got sucked into the world and its atmosphere, particularly through the amazing soundtrack. And once you start digging and trying to understand the lore, it's extremely compelling as well.

While I'd really like to see the devs make another game like this, maybe even set in the same overall world, I'm not really sure if I want a sequel per se. In a way, Lily's story has just begun, but I also don't feel like I want to PLAY whatever lies in her future. Probably because if I did it would mean what awaits her is more monsters and more sadness. But I really would like to explore more of the Ender Lilies world, perhaps beyond the boundaries of the kingdom, or maybe even delving into the past of the Ancients before the events that lead to the game's story.

I can't really talk about the game too much without spoiling too many things that I think are just better discovered for yourself. The game is tough, but not unforgivingly so (especially if you're not going for all the achievements), and it's pretty short if you can hit 100% in just 31 hours. I'd absolutely recommend checking this one out, especially if other similar 2D soulslike metroidvanias seem too challenging. Or at least watch someone else play it (ideally without commentary). Ender Lilies is a whole experience, between the art and the music and the story and the lore and the way the gameplay itself just clicks, and it's one of those things that I'm sad I'll never be able to play for the first time again.

PS - I want more games to take a hint from its map system, particularly in highlighting a room when I've collected everything in it to let me know I really didn't miss anything, because that shit is SO fucking clutch when you're achievement hunting, or just if you're the kind of person who hates the idea of overlooking anything.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

As I mentioned in the addendum of my 2021 post about Three Houses, it took me so long to finish that game that I actually saw the release date of Three Hopes (mid to end of June iirc) as my deadline. And that wasn't because I had any intention of GETTING Three Hopes (especially on release day, because I just don't buy games like that), but because I knew my Three Houses-loving friends WOULD, and I'd be right back in No Spoiler territory with them after just finally breaking into the inner circle of 3H spoilers. Thankfully I did manage to finish my final route (Crimson Flower) just a week or so before Three Hopes came out, and I even played the Three Hopes demo afterwards to see what it'd even be like (I've never played a Warriors game before). When I saw that the story was actually pretty engaging I was like, oh, this is less brainless than I thought, maybe I'll buy it (eventually)...and ended up getting a gift copy from a friend instead. Nice!

Except...while my Three Houses friends all expected to get obsessively sucked into it (after also enjoying the demo), and I was excited to actually be there with them this time, they unexpectedly became engulfed by a DIFFERENT fandom...progress sort of halted on the Three Hopes front...and then I became the one who was afraid to spoil THEM by pulling too far ahead, so I slowed down...and eventually that just sort of killed my momentum entirely and...yeah. I've stopped playing for now.

Being that I had done the two Eagles routes back to back as my last two routes in Three Houses, AND that being the favorite house of said friends (and the one they were also gonna pick first), that's where I'm at. I have no idea how far into it I am because the game seems surprisingly on par with a normal FE game in terms of story pacing...maybe halfway, or not quite halfway through? I wanna say I got to chapter 8 or 9 before I burned out. I do want to go back to it at some point, ideally when (if?) my friends become re-interested, but either way after how long it took me to push through Three Houses I suppose it was a good time for a Fire Emblem break regardless. I've still got a bunch of other Switch games (notably Shin Megami Tensei V) waiting on my shelf, and I had intended to jump on that when I finally finished Three Houses before Three Hopes came along and threw me that curveball. I've just kind of had the cartridge in my Switch ever since, deluding myself into thinking I'm 'still playing it' because I know the minute I take it out that won't be true anymore.

I suppose I should actually give a review, huh? Well, despite how not far at all I actually am in the game (considering the other routes), I feel like I've played enough that I've seen pretty much every type of gameplay mechanic. I gotta say, despite it not being a turn-based strategy, it feels a lot more Fire Emblem than I thought it would. Just about every downtime activity from Three Houses reappears here in some form, and there's a lot more to do at your base and on side missions than I expected. Trying to get all S ranks can also be really addictive and I spent a lot of my playtime retrying the same missions over and over because I felt like just one small change could improve my time and get me that S (and so far, with maybe one or two exceptions, I've managed to S rank every mission by retrying it a few times). The missions are also still very much what I would call strategic, just in a different way, and the main missions especially give you lots of options for how to tackle your objectives so long as you've been thorough about clearing the map and picking up resources and intel along the way.

I find the gameplay pretty overwhelming with the realtime combat when so much is going on, so the way I adapted to that personally is that I spend a loooot of time pausing and opening the map screen to issue orders to the other characters. Then I usually pick one and try to carry out my own goal while they autonomously work through theirs, periodically swapping to someone else to see how they're doing and just for the variety of playing as someone else here and there. But I'm basically ALWAYS checking my map every 30 seconds to get a feel for where my units are and what they're doing, and what needs to be done...which I found helped me keep track of things a bit better amid the stream of endless enemies, special attacks flying around, and being constantly bombarded with dialogue while I'm trying to fight. It took a bit of getting used to but I think it's pretty fun once you get the hang of it.

What surprised me the most when I played the demo (and made me consider getting the full game at all) was that the story does play a big part in the game. I guess I just sort of expected an excuse plot that sent a bunch of familiar faces out to use anime moves against an army of bad guys. I have no idea how the plot kicks off for the other houses, but what really drew me in with the Eagles was how the decision to reveal and act on one thing at a much earlier point in the plot lead to a completely different outcome, spinning the usual Three Houses story off into an AU that still felt internally consistent with the original characters and events. When it came up, I was like, "no way, that's going to basically change EVERYTHING!" and got really sucked into the plot even before the demo wrapped up - so kudos also to the demo for providing enough content to actually suck the player in. That said, this game is very much only for people who finished Three Houses...at least, I sure can't imagine being able to keep track of the story, or even being interested in it, if not for knowing what ORIGINALLY happened and how differently a few factors of Three Hopes influenced them to change course. So while I'm sure there ARE Warriors fans out there whose interest in the game is mostly that aspect, I think for most people you're not gonna want to just pick this up without having played the original first...IMO, anyway, this game is NOT Standalone, despite being an alternate universe version of Three Houses' plot.

But yeah, I do wanna go back to this someday, because I was enjoying myself. I think just the combination of my friends falling off (not having anyone to talk about it with anymore after liveblogging ALL of Three Houses to them felt weird) and just generally needing a break from these characters after 8 straight months of them warranted a break. It's time for me to accept that, pop out that cartridge, and move on...I'll come back eventually. Probably...

DARK SOULS: Prepare to Die Edition

So, after all those soulslikes paving the way, we finally arrive at this point. All of it, training me for the mindset to go into a game known for its frustrating level of difficulty. I'd actually had Dark Souls in my Steam library for YEARS (that's why it's the old Prepare to Die Edition and not the Remaster), but only now did I finally feel like I was ready to take it on. And so, after applying the DSFix patch/mod (and one other mod that makes crates/barrels occasionally drop things like arrows and throwing knives because I was gonna smash them all anyway (currently really missing this in DS3)), I began my journey in June 2022...and only just wrapped it up in November.

I talked about this a bit in my Undertale review back in 2020, but what you know/expect/feel about a game before going into it can very much affect the experience you have when you finally play it. In the case of Dark Souls, I was strongly influenced by fear of how difficult it would be, due to its reputation. That fear lead me to watch lots of videos before playing, as a way to kind of prepare myself for what was to come (because going in blind was too scary). Most of these were challenge runs, so the focus was on the boss fights, but it all gave me enough of a taste of the general progression and various hurdles I'd be facing along the way. As such, I often knew exactly how to prepare, and how cautious to be making my way through areas, which trivialized a LOT of that expected difficulty.

To give perhaps the best example, I was very aware of Blighttown's reputation because it's practically a meme. People hate this Blighttown place. It's full of aggressive enemies and a deadly poison swamp that's become a staple of all future FromSoft games. It's the worst area of the game. Etc. Granted I later found out a good deal of the hate was due to the terrible framerate the game had on consoles (wasn't an issue for me on PC, at least with DSFix), but I imagine a lot of the hate also comes from people recklessly rushing their way through the upper level and getting caught by the constant ambushes, especially from the toxic dart guys. But because I KNEW ABOUT THIS REPUTATION, I went through Blighttown very slowly and cautiously. I had my bow ready at all times and a solid supply of arrows, which I used to tag enemies from a distance so they'd come attack me one at a time instead of ambushing me in large groups. I came prepared with blooming purple moss from Darkroot Garden to counteract the toxic from the blowdart guys, and since I knew they wouldn't respawn when killed I wasn't really afraid of them in the first place - after all, once they shot me, I'd pretty much know their position and be able to kill them, heal the toxic, and be on my way.

Aside from one or two deaths by fall damage (one particularly funny one was when I saw an item on a ledge that I could practically sense was schmuck bait...but I jumped down to get it anyway, and sure enough the floor collapsed under me and I fell to my death) I didn't have any trouble from Blighttown AT ALL, and definitely not one bit of frustration. It was TENSE, because of how dark the place is and because I was in constant fear of being ambushed, but it just didn't really happen because I could always spot the ambush from afar and tag the enemies individually with my bow. In a few areas with particularly dangerous drops of walkways I just decided that I didn't need the items that badly and ignored them. I got to the middle level bonfire without issue, and then made my way to the bottom of the swamp from there rather easily. And despite the poison swamp at the bottom itself being an obstacle, I had already gone back to the asylum to pick up the Rusted Iron Ring (though originally that was so I could get through the pool in Darkroot Garden), and the enemies at the bottom are much weaker than the ones in the top half of Blighttown so you're really only using your estus to heal off the poison anyway. I spent a lot of time farming the slugs down there for titanite shards and it felt like the poison, while it lasts for a million years, REALLY doesn't even do all that much damage, so as long as you don't panic and keep an eye on your health bar it was really easy to just periodically heal through.

The point is...one of the most hated areas of the game was a piece of cake to me because of the way I approached it. And I approached it that way to begin with because I went into the game knowing about its difficulty, preparing myself accordingly, and taking it slow and steady instead of rushing through and getting caught in a dozen ambushes. Of course this experience is built on the back of the millions of players who played this game when it WASN'T a decade old, and I'm not trying to trivialize the experiences of people who DID struggle with Blighttown by saying 'just like go slower lol'. But I do think it's fascinating how much easier this game is when you approach it the right way. I think, if I didn't know about all this stuff in advance, I too might end up trying to play it like Skyrim or something, just recklessly running into ambushes and traps and swinging my weapon wildly with no regard for enemy attack patterns. But by 2022 I think almost everyone knows that you can't play Dark Souls that way, and they probably wouldn't even try. And if you're not trying to play it that way...it's really NOT that hard of a game at all. It's a challenging game, and it will punish you for playing carelessly, but it's a far cry from the reputation the game has for being hard for the sake of hard. In fact, having recently played Megaman 1-3 with a friend via Switch Online, I feel like THAT is much more of a hard-just-for-the-sake-of-laughing-at-your-failure kind of game, where it just feels insurmountably difficult for no reason half the time, in a very un-fun kind of way. And the whole time we were playing it (and making heavy use of Switch Online save states along the way) I kept thinking about Dark Souls, and how much more forgiving it is than fucking NES Megaman (or NES Mario, or lots of NES games tbh).

Anyway. While this preparedness probably is the entire reason I was able to push through the game and finish it with 100% completion (even if it took me 6 months of playing cautiously), I did also end up feeling like it trivialized my experience in a sad way too, because I didn't really get to learn what the game wanted to teach me by punishing me, since I always knew what was around each corner. That's why I'm currently playing Dark Souls 3 blind (though I'll go back over a walkthrough once I finish an area to pick up items I missed, I'm NOT looking into things ahead of time). I think I probably would have been too scared to play Dark Souls blind, which is why I used those videos as a crutch in the first place, but I'm stronger now and I want to have that experience.

So, would I recommend Dark Souls? Yes, unless you absolutely hate third-person action RPGs in general. I think even if you're afraid of Dark Souls for its difficulty, you should give it a chance. Don't feel ashamed for looking up a walkthrough to prepare you ahead of time - you're still the one who has to beat the area by yourself, after all. While it did make me a little sad after the fact that I didn't get to experience the game blind, honestly, if I hadn't played like this I might never have had the courage to experience it AT ALL, so I'm glad that I did. I still felt pride when I conquered a tough area or boss on my own, even if I knew what to expect before going in. I guess it's like, if you were going to climb a mountain or explore the woods, wouldn't you feel a bit more peace of mind if you had a map of the area? But the map isn't going to climb the mountain for you...at the end of the day that's still something you've gotta do with your own power, and you can still be as proud of that as the guy who didn't buy a map. Or something like that, anyway. And also, don't believe everything you hear about on the internet, because I feel like the game's difficulty has been memed and exaggerated far beyond the actual truth anyway. Just take it slow and steady, prepare as much as you feel comfortable beforehand, and whatever you do, don't you dare go hollow.

Skyrim Together

Oh boy. So as we know, every year I find some way to play Skyrim again (except last year where I played Oblivion instead), and this year that took the form of trying to get Skyrim Together Reborn - the multiplayer Skyrim mod - set up and working with some friends. Except the idea of playing vanilla Skyrim (even with friends) sounded too boring to me. No, instead, I waited until someone else released a stable Skyrim Together modlist and then tried THAT out...and then proceeded to cannibalize it, removing mods I didn't like and adding new ones in that we wanted instead. You know. Just normal Skyrim PC player behavior.

Anyway, after about two weeks of working basically nonstop on my list, patching it and everything, making it as stable as absolutely possible on singleplayer...we took it online. And I learned that just because I've got Intermediate+ Skyrim modding knowledge, I don't know SHIT about what's going on under the hood in Skyrim Together's arcane black magic system. Long story short, we had uh. Problems. Lots of them. Most of them actually very funny, like, being attacked by a wolf (on my screen) and being told I'm actually crazy because it's a fucking skeever (on their screens). 

Or looting the dead wolf/skeever and finding 148 bones, 296 dog meat, 539 skeever tails and 148 wolf pelts on it. 

Or having...whatever this is, happen whenever your friends move around, except on THEIR screen YOU’RE the one doing it

Or getting launched into the sky for having the audacity to shield bash... 

OR the respawn system sending you to the back half of a dungeon you just started, potentially behind locked doors that only open from the front side, leaving you essentially trapped. 

Or

You know. Normal Skyrim behavior.

Suffice to say, after many days of saying "okay let's try it again but do [x] this time", we just couldn't get past a lot of these issues. And funny as they were, they were kind of impeding our ability to play Skyrim...together. Eventually we all just kind of got so tired of trying that we quietly abandoned the project. Even me, with the fierce determination I had to make the modlist work for that two week period, just couldn't understand why things were so hilariously broken once we got online, and lost all my zeal for trying (the only thing I could possibly think to do was to ask for help on a support Discord, and given the choice between troubleshooting with a stranger and just giving up, I chose giving up).

Honestly, even if things WERE working as intended, the whole process quickly became tiring. Every time I made changes to the list I'd have to reupload it for my friends to then redownload and overwrite their files with. And we had to get VPNs to connect to a private server session with (the need for extra tools like this is why I listed this as "PC" and not just "Steam"), and depending on which one of us was hosting we'd often experience slightly different flavors of bugs. And it didn't even matter how hot we made our orcs, because certain RaceMenu features just don't sync properly to the server, so all the time we spent perfecting our Himbo body morphs was for naught. It just kind of kept chipping away at our patience a little at a time until the cons started outweighing the pros of playing Skyrim together, and we all just lost the desire to keep trying.

But hey, this was all happening in September, just a month or so after Skyrim Together Reborn's official launch. And it was only DAYS after I saw someone else post a modlist that I then used as the basis for mine. It was probably too early to be as ambitious as we were. My hope is that development on Skyrim Together, and its Nemesis fork, make enough progress that by the time ky desire to play Skyrim again rolls around I might be willing to take another crack at it, and maybe things will work better by then. The day may yet come that our hot orcs will finally be unleashed on Skyrim...together.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

I've mentioned a few times how me and a friend of mine like to co-op play ostensibly singplayer games with Switch Online, but they do have some multiplayer-friendly games on there too, and sometimes we do also play those. One time we got very into playing Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on Genesis. And then shortly after that my friend discovered an alarmingly similar game on the SNES called Kirby's Avalanche. We started to suspect this might be a case of some Japan-only game that they didn't expect to take off in the west without more familiar marketing, so we looked into it and it turned out to be the case - for a series of puzzle games called Puyo Puyo. After finding out there was a modern Puyo Puyo x Tetris crossover for Switch (that might be easier to play together than doing it via Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine) we both grabbed a copy...and I even grabbed a second copy on Steam when there happened to be a Sega sale about a week later and I spotted it there too.

Anyway, I may have briefly fallen into a week-long period of Puyo Puyo Fever where I couldn't stop playing, and all my dreams were haunted by falling puyos and tetris blocks. I got over it, but I still think it's a really fun and addictive game, and the multiplayer aspect of dumping garbage on your opponent's field to screw them over is a really fun way of turning what I tend to think of as a singleplayer genre into something competitive. And there's tons of different modes and ways to play, too, whether you wanna play Just Tetris or Just Puyo Puyo or a combination of both, time attack, all kinds of weird variations...and there's a weird over-the-top anime singleplayer story mode as well, where you can launch special attacks at your opponent as well. I actually got stuck on one of the bosses in this mode because I suck at utilizing the special attacks and you REALLY have to in order to beat her, but I'll get her...one day...

My nephew also got addicted to it and even got his own copy of the game for his birthday, so we can play together too (or by himself instead of him borrowing my switch all the time). He particularly likes that you can reskin your puyos to look like Sonic characters. But yeah, honestly it's a pretty fun game, especially if you just want something to pick up and play on the bus, or while you're in a hospital waiting room because you've had an ear infection for 3 weeks, or something. It's pretty pricey on Switch at least, though, so I'd either grab it on Steam (where it's $10 cheaper even when it's not on sale) or wait for some kind of Sega sale to get it cheaper. I think it's a lot of fun, just like, not $40 fun. There's also a Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 that's cheaper, which I imagine can't be all THAT different unless you care about the online scene or something.

Super Mario 3D World

My Switch co-op friend got me this because he thought we would have a fun and friendly time doing co-op together. Oh how wrong he was.

First of all. It’s a fun enough little game, though I prefer the gameplay style of Mario Odyssey myself. I feel like this game’s levels are definitely designed more for quick play sessions, with the star and stamp hunts kind of working like bite-sized versions of tracking down moons in Odyssey. I played through the first world or two by myself before we headed online together for jolly cooperation. Or more like (I’m Mario)...

You see, the game feels nice and friendly and colorful and there’s even a lot of cases where co-op is encouraged. But you can’t show me a results screen at the end of the level where one player can do better than the other, even to the point of being awarded a crown to wear into the next level, without awakening the blood fury inside me. Every time he performed better than me (due to my overwhelming tendency to hurl myself off cliffs) it would ever so slightly raise the rage meter inside my heart. I would become obsessed with doing better in the next level. And at first this was sensible...get more coins than him. Collect the stars before he can. Get the checkpoint and exit flags to show my M instead of his dumb L. All things that would give ME more points. But sometimes you’re just not as good at Mario games as the other person and it’s easier said than done to just BE better than the competition.

But what if there was no competition in the first place? The solution was in front of me all along. Eliminate him. Pick him up and throw him off a cliff, or into an enemy, then use the resulting precious seconds to race ahead and get all the goodies before he can catch up. Of course, this became less and less successful as time went by and he caught onto the fact that I’d try to throw him at virtually any opportunity. Sometimes he’d flip the script and throw ME off before I could get a chance, resulting in a lot of back-and-forth warfare. But more often than not it goes like this

Turns out I’m REALLY good at playing myself. In fact, while looking for a video clip for that first gif of me throwing him off the cliff, I found about 6 like this where I try to pick him up but end up being the one who dies instead.

Honestly though, my favorite was this time, where I spent a while playing nice and not doing anything overtly evil, until we got to a toad house...

The toad house gets marked as cleared as soon as you exit, and he didn’t have any powerups on hand while I was running around with my raccoon suit, so he was pretty pissed about this one. Perhaps my finest moment of video game dickery of all time, and it’s not like it was premeditated (I’m not that smart). I just thought it up on the spot and thought it would be funny. And it was (to me). And that’s what it’s like playing Super Mario 3D World with me.

#sg2 plays video games #sg2's game reviews #this post was already long enough but I also had a little writeup about my experience with the bosses of dark souls #since I've already got it typed up in a txt somewhere I'll probably throw it into a second post and just link back to it here

[meowsticmarvels]

whats on your mind rn in terms of Games ?

OOH FUN.... assuming you probably asked this bc most of my interests are games LOL but i jhave some Thoughts on games in General and the industry as a whole. buckle up!

- currently im playing. a lot of them obviously but my most recents are persona 5 tactica and the sims 4 :] - fav fav games EXCLUDING THE SPECIAL INTERESTS . - ghost trick, UT/DR, NITW, TS4 ( i havent played any other sims except the sims 2 pets for the 3ds im sorry.), super mario galaxy, goodbye volcano high - the special interest ones include pokemon (fav out of main series is sun/moon, black/white, and scarlet/violet, but i do like many spin offs like mystery dungeon), mii/wii games (i.e. wii sports), minecraft story mode, and the persona games (never finished one but i've reached various distances in P2IS-P5 excluding some spin offs and stuff like i havent started P5S or P2EP. favs r 3 + 4 + tactica) ^ ask me about any of those (or other ones i like i.e. gvh) i WILL ANSWER even if its something thatd be faster with google im better - underrated gems i'd say goodbye volcano high, death road to canada, chicory a colorful tale, signs of the sojourner, aviary attorney, tails noir, blanc. ghost trick to a lesser extent ig but the others are indie - current main wishlist (inc. ones i Will emulate): shin megami tensei V, devil survivor overclocked, fire emblem 3 houses, professor layton, pokemon black 2, persona q2, persona 3 reload ( I Want. Now. its on gamepass but i literally need everything related to it you dont get it.), wii play motion, twewy, and okami. OH also in stars and time and oneshot. also disco elysium and hylics look cool too. AND CASSETTE BEASTS. fuck i hate when every game looks good. need to play murder of sonic the hedgehog also. and looking forward to billy bust up. OH AND I NEED TO PLAY THE STANLEY PARABLE. AND BALDURS GATE 3 - i think the only game i really truly regret buying is 1-2 switch. im sorry it was good for like 2-3 weeks when the switch was new now i just do not care - i love you indie games i love you games that in general are not afraid to be weird and deviate from stuff. get crazy with it - video games r kind of an art form. if you think about it - industry kind of shit !!! stop laying off your devs!!!!!!!!!! what the fuck!!!!!! its been bad lately even my dad (a QA tester) got laid off a game he was working rly well on because they abruptly cancelled it. ok - i don't care for most FPS games. not my thing. too stressful. not enjoyable for me that much. im more of an RPG guy but i'm open to new things i played like food maker apps when i was a kid - speaking of industry stuff crunch is another thing severely a major problem. and the thing with sag aftra approving ai voices in games. Stop!!!!!!! - i miss e3 :( was a fun thing to look forward to each year - game preservation is also a real issue. like ig i get saving money by killing the servers on old consoles but in nintendos case people still actively use them theyre not that old. kind of dumb. xbox i get it the 360's been out since 2005 but 3ds/wiiu things are younger than me chill out - HATE when good fun mobile games are cash grabby. like STFU its more annoying than anything when they make resources impossible to get without paying. whats the fucking fun in that. i'd rather it be an easy way out last resort than oh i can get like 1 gem every month by doing this BUT if i pay i can get 10 of them for like 10 dolar. like ok die - waiter! waiter! more transgender as hell games please! (i.e. goodbye volcano high. that game changed lives) - also we need more autistic as hell games and i mean canonically. and not fucking Creepy Autism Simulator - more and better accessibility settings!!! i personally dont need many myself but it's important to me that others are able to play a game without severe issues due to disability. indie games doing great abt this based on feedback though ive seen a lot of good ones - any streetpassers in the chat thats all sorry it was long but i have a lot of thoughts abt Games in general. if theres any in particular u wanna hear abt shoot me an ask!!! can be one not on here i'm open to reccomendations or just things ive gathered from people who have :]

#sparky speaks #you CAN ask wga game it was that my dad was working on btw #its name was published dw #not maintagging fandoms #but #video games #games industry

[waltherhusted42]

Minecraft Realms: are they Worth the Effort?

Minecraft Realms: Are They Worth It?

Do you want to own your own Minecraft server? Cryo Mail Maybe realms will do

- Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College Tweet - Share - Email

Mojang's Minecraft can be costly and challenging to play with friends. It all depends on the way you configure it. The creators of Minecraft created Minecraft Realms to simplify the installation process and provide a straightforward way to play with up to 10 of your friends.

What is an Minecraft Realm?

Minecraft Realms are Mojang's solution to hosting a Minecraft server. Playing Minecraft with friends over the internet has never been simpler. Mojang has a private server that's always accessible to you and your friends for an annual fee of $7.99 or a one-time payment of $90 90, 180, or 90 day plans. Only you and your friends can play on your behalf.

Each server has the functions you usually find in the standard Minecraft experience plus more. All of Minecraft's game modes (Survival, Creative, Adventure, Spectator, and Spectator) are available. Mojang also preloaded mini-games onto the Minecraft Realms set.

Realms is currently not able to offer the Minecraft Hardcore Mode.

The Pros of Minecraft Realm Play

Convenience is a major advantage of Minecraft Realms over a third-party server. When you optimize a server from a third party typically, you need to visit a site to change settings and try to find the perfect configuration.

With Minecraft Realms the entire process is optimized in the Minecraft client itself. You can invite others to your server, switch to the Mojang mini-game and upload your world and change any other settings in the client.

Realms does not allow mods which is one of the major disadvantages. Modifications to Minecraft are a vital part of the Minecraft experience. This can create problems for players who want their friends to play the Aether Mod.

Minecraft Realms Security

Don't be concerned about uninvited guests disrupting your life. If you choose to use Minecraft Realm for your server only those invited by you can join. You can easily add or remove players from a safe list when you are the host.

To protect server data, worlds are automatically backed-up.

You can invite up 200 players to join your server. However only 10 players can play at any one time.

Minecraft Realms Platform Compatibility

Mojang offers two versions of Minecraft Realms:

Minecraft Realms version is available for consoles, mobile devices and Windows 10 platforms Minecraft: Java Edition for PC, Mac, and Linux platforms

The two versions aren't compatible, which means that Minecraft: Java Edition players using a Mac or pre Windows 10 computer can't play with players on mobile devices.

If you are looking for a basic gaming experience, Minecraft Realms is a excellent and reliable solution for managing and creating the Minecraft server. Hosting your own server provides an alternative for users to hosting servers hosted by third-party hosts.

However, Minecraft Realms are not for everyone. If you're into the scene of modding, choose a server that allows these modifications.

#cryo mail #CRYOMAIL