• 12 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • Pretty neat! Based on how it’s one foot stays down and slides around, I’d guess there’s a few magnet tricks going on. Maybe a magnet behind the canvas allows for precise movement? Could also be special ink that shows up when painted on with water or another chemical, so the drawing is pre-made and then just selectively revealed. But… the brushing looks pretty real! So yeah, I think my answer is “lots of magnets.” Great trick!











  • Try a typing game, there’s lots of them now in several genres. I learned to touch type in secondary school, doing the old fashioned thing of taping a sheet of paper over the keyboard (and typing under it) so you can’t see the keys. That works but I believe in the educational power of games, and it’ll be more fun.

    Otherwise, just practice. If you use lemmy on mobile, try switching to desktop to type more. Start writing letters to people or short stories or anything that just encourages you to type more.





  • I’m reminded of a very passionate post I once saw about how tiktok dances have made some people afraid to dance because they aren’t as good as people who literally live in dance training camps to factory -produce dance videos. Anyway, the plea was to just ignore that and dance! People largely have an innate desire to move when they hear music, and its OK to just vibe with it.

    The internet has got people thinking that everything they make must be step 1 of their plan to monetize that thing and release it for global consumption. Write stories for yourself, letter for friends, and poems for no one! Dance no matter who is looking. Make art everywhere. And for goodness’ sake, play table top games with friends, make up stories, and let yourself get wildly obcessed about it! It’s yours! It’s ok to just love the story your friends are telling and to talk about with people, and you don’t even have to lament that your friend group isn’t charming enough to carry the podcast of your game.



  • B&W was a real fun game, very interesting ideas and it really tried to be different from other games in ways that did and didn’t work.

    We really take control and camera schemes for granted these days, but it took a lot of misses before we landed on the semi-standardized methods we rely on now. B&W portrayed the player as a divine hand, and you had to click and drag to literally “drag” your viewpoint around the map. You could also click on the creature to lock your hand onto it and allow you to gently move the mouse to pet it, or rapid swipe to slap it across the face!

    The creature responded amazingly well too, reacting to many stimuli in the environment, mimicking actions you take, and responding to rewards and punishments. The systems of morphing it’s character model based on how far along the “devil to saint” meter were reused heavily in Fable. MS probably has a patent on the technique, the fuckers.

    Anyway, super exciting to see fans reverse engineering it! I’m a big supporter of remaking classic games as new open source engines. I think projects like Spring (rts) and gzdoom really show how powerful and creatively productive a community that cultivates good, open, tools can be.



  • I’m a big fan of the "wisdom " check before players do something that seems, to me, completely stupid. Like, hey, before you set out to storm the castle, roll your highest knowledge skill.

    Tactics, architecture, history, etc, all good. But any success on any skill (or even, literally, Wisdom if nothing else) gets you a little hint that this is a terrible idea.

    “OK well, as a Baker, you understand that the huge wagon pulling 500 loaves of bread into the castle means there must be an enormous amount of guards. Since you got a natural 20 on your Cooking check, you can estimate the number precisely to around 150. Even if they weild the baguettes as weapons, you are certain they will defeat you.”

    And then, most parties I’ve played with will then begin formulating their plan to sneak in on the bread wagon, which is a much funnier story. Or they’ll complain that they meant the druid should cause a storm to distract the guards or something like that. It’s kind of amazing how often these bad plans arise from a miscommunication.