jlb

jo

@jlb

  • he/they

seattle jew; queer & transmasc; sff books, indie games & ttrpgs, art, interesting writing

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storygraph📚
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ravelry 🧶
www.ravelry.com/projects/sofinch
artfight ⚔️
artfight.net/~sofinch
jlb
@jlb
ahmwma
@ahmwma
ahmwma
@ahmwma

Something approaches you, through the forest...

It's... The Riddle Of The Temple !!

This Deck is pretending to be a game -- but it's really not. Keep your expectations low for both gameplay and story.

This is a bunch of experiments with the Puppeteer module for Decker. The main (and very good) use for Puppeteer is managing character sprites for visual novels.... but I wondered what other kinds of silly bullshit visual flourishes I could use it for.

And the answer is... a lot.

[slaps top of Deck, scattering cards everywhere] This baby has so much visual flourish in it, with absolutely no narrative payoff.

It's about 5 minutes long. There's (almost) no sound. The writing is ... perfunctory. The art is uneven but the high points are pretty good. It seems to work fine on mobile...?

But the real heart of it is the backstage section full of random deckmaking notes. Genuinely... I'm not sure who that's for. It's the kind of stuff I'd ramble on about if someone asked me how to make this kind of deck. And now it's yours, if it's useful to you.

You can download an unlocked .deck file or use the backstage unlock button to poke around at how it was made. Sorry it's kind of a mess back there.

If you're checking out Decker for the first time (maybe for the Decker Fantasy Camp jam? :host-joy: ) some of it might be confusing... but please feel free to ask me how I did something in this deck if it would help you with your own projects. :eggbug-smile-hearts:

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in reply to @ahmwma's post:

zelkova
@zelkova

"It's 5 minutes long" says you I just spent like 40 minutes dinking around in the backroom stuff and loving every minute of it. The "thenperish" over the Sphinx killed me

My jaw dropped basically the entire time I was enjoying the actual game though, holy shit. I always end up loving your color palettes. The animations were so cool. For how small the narrative is, you immediately endeared me to the Sphinx just through body language/expressions/etc.

Also, this made me wanna try out Decker SO bad

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ahmwma
@ahmwma

Thank you for checking it out, oh my god! :eggbug-heart-sob: And for noticing the 'thenperish' ... I make these jokes for myself, but I'm so glad someone else enjoyed it.

If I could give an artist-based pitch for decker... it's a neat little pixel art program that lets you set up animations and interactions and dialog for the stuff you draw... while still being able to re-draw anything you want, because you're still in the same program! It's very cozy like that.

I know it can do more, but I'm not very strong on the coding side of things -- I just make buttons and move pictures around. :eggbug-relieved: If you ever check it out and have any questions, I'd love to help! And IJ is The Guy™ who knows everything Decker. He's helped me a lot directly and indirectly.

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gray-lofi
@gray-lofi

Oh this is exquisite! The colors, the little idle animations going about -- the animation for the sphinx especially with her lil' paw taps, absolutely lovely! The backstage is so warming as well...

Definitely an inspiration both for art and Decker, really do wanna try more complex things with Puppeteer and limited palettes after this -- though unfortunately probably not for this Fantasy Camp, eheh.

(also thanks for putting Iced Tea in the backstage aaaaaa)

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ahmwma
@ahmwma

Thank you so much!!

And thank you for making + unlocking Iced Tea -- it helped me a lot! I was able to understand Puppeteer and Dialogizer better by seeing them fully in-context in longer scenes with player choices, etc. And it really motivated me to unlock this project and create the backstage area so I could pass some of that help on, hopefully.

I will look forward to seeing what you make with this stuff, later! :yeah:

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weeks
@weeks

oh yeah. that's the good stuff
it was wondrous. the visual flourishes rule! when i saw the pond i went "oh, oH!! I REMEMBER THAT ONE!"
it's really fascinating, it's like the old PC fantasy adventure games like king's quest but with its own charm. you got the cool palettes, the animations, designs...
ill admit that regrettably i dont think im getting into decker soon, i have so much im working on already but this makes it so tempting. this is such a good demonstration of it

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ahmwma
@ahmwma

You remember the pond.... :eggbug-pleading:

Thank you thank you~
Decker will wait for you, I'm sure. Someday in the future, if you have free time and want to make a thing... it's a fun choice. :eggbug-relieved:
And good luck with your various things that you're working on!

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knutaf
@knutaf

I love this, it was so neat. I haven't used decker so I don't really understand how easy or hard this was to make, but it still seems impressive. I especially liked the dialog box style changing when the sphinx came out and it became lighter. And how the sphinx's face in the box mirrored it's face in the scene. Also the paw taps, adorable. This was really cool all around. Can't wait to see what you do next

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ahmwma
@ahmwma

Technically, easy-ish. The tools are all there and very friendly. But for the visuals.... there were a lot of little moments I wanted to try making (as you very kindly noticed :host-joy:) so it took a while to assemble everything. Glad I did it, but also grateful it's done. Onto the next~
Thank you so much for checking it out!

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internet-janitor
@internet-janitor

fyi, based on some of the notes in this deck I'm making a minor enhancement to dialogizer that might make your life easier. The new .size styling property will allow you to specify a fixed height and/or width for dialog boxes. Changing this on the fly also opens up some interesting options for making dialog more dynamic: dd .size

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ahmwma
@ahmwma

👀✨

:eggbug-relieved: Y'know... I was fully prepared to update any of the wording in the backstage cards for any number of reasons (things being wrong or confusing, typos, etc), but I never considered that a module update would make my workaround advice irrelevant... at least not so quickly! This is great.

🫡 I'll look forward to updating that card sometime soon.

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ahmwma
@ahmwma

Thank you seaglass! :eggbug-heart-sob: It was my first time doing something like this and I definitely underestimated how much time it would take. It was very educational, haha, in a lot of ways...

Hope you're doing well! ❤️:eggbug-pleading:

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jlb
@jlb

wowww this is amazing!!! once artfight is done I need to take another crack at decker and poke around in the backstage of this again, and some others - v inspiring!! the detail of the lantern light on the tree at the beginning is incredible & all of the sliding pieces work so well together.

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