sharks + planes as formerly seen on Twitter

Yeah like the OP actively said "I love timers, the existence of timers is not the problem". But there's a reason why when I reposted it I specifically mentioned that multitimers 1) exist 2) are fine) and 3) can be found at a website (which I named). You can be the most well-intentioned person in the world but people will see something and only read it for their own reasons.

Like, I love the unifying take above, I'm just glad I didn't have to see the reactionary post that prompted it. Edited: I had written something judgy about it here, which wasn't fair because I didn't see it and leapt to assumptions because people are referring to it as discourse. I edited a bunch of other stuff to match that and added a link to my repost for context).

Hercule Poirot: Someone in this room... Is a murderer!
My anxiety: Oh man he's probably talking about me

My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".

This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE

Writing (Names)

Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!

Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME

City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA

Writing (Words)

Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!

Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!

Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.

In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.

ASSETS

In general, I will say: just look up what you want on itch.io. There are SO MANY assets for you to buy on itch.io. You want a font? You want a background? You want a sound effect? You want a plugin? A pixel base? An attack animation? A cool UI?!?!?! JUST GO ON ITCH.IO!!!!!!

Visual Assets (General)

Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT

Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts

Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.

Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!

Visual Assets (Game Focused)

Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!

Game UI Database - Same as above!

Sound Assets

Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!

Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.

Other

CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV

EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit

Marketing

Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!

presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.

Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.

MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.

Game Design (General)

An insightful thread where game developers discuss hidden mechanics designed to make games feel more interesting - Title says it all. Check those comments too.

Game Design (RPGs)

Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!

Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.

How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.

Nobody Cares About It But It’s The Only Thing That Matters: Pacing And Level Design In JRPGs - a Good Post.

Game Design (Visual Novels)

Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.

I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

So, I watched the Marques Brownlee review of the Apple Vision Pro, and what struck me is that it's incredibly technically impressive, but also just...so utterly joyless and boring. Some of the most sophisticated computer vision, imaging, and display tech currently available in service of making an ugly talking head of yourself for Zoom calls. A 40-something Californian tech exec's vision of the future.

There's an incredible amount of irony in that vision; every review I've read has described how the "personas" (a slightly blurry 3D scan of your face) and the eye displays in front land pretty far into the uncanny valley. Vtubers and furries have been getting around this for years now using actual art, but we can't have that. That's too weird, and gives too much freedom over to the user.

Honestly, my biggest hope for the Vision Pro is that it does take off, enough to spawn a new generation of knockoffs that people can hack on for vtuber avatars and weird porn. A VR headset (and don't let Apple's marketing fluff distract you, it's a VR headset) that can accurately track and reproduce facial expressions and head movements is genuinely very cool, and has a lot of potential. It's just not cool when Apple does it. And if this takes off it won't be cool when Google does it either.

But I guess that's the future that cyberpunk always offered us. Building our own world from the scraps of an economy that doesn't actually care about us.

My mom was asking me why VR stuff is still so expensive recently and I told her "because no one's adopting it because all tech companies can think of to do with it is strapping your work desktop to your face."