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tintysun · 3 months

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My Demon └ Moments

EPISODE 1 • So happy to see Madam Ju here. I never get tired of that parental archetype! Makes me teary-eyed. While the Sunwol Foundation supporting artists and superb art makes me starry-eyed! • I found it funny how this fight basically consisted of how he's able to trap his opponents inside a newspaper with peculiar headlines and/or captions. • Wondering why she couldn't sell her soul or he wasn't able to buy it when she was desperate and willing...

EPISODE 2 • They irritated each other so much at the beginning. I don't romanticize that, as life and much in it irritates me plenty already, but I like how they do it less and less so instead of going in circles with it as if it's comical or adorable. • TBH, that guy (the cousin), gave me a bad feeling since the first moment I saw him. A peculiar discomfort whenever he's around, too. But of course, I gotta give the benefit of the doubt and gather evidence before reaching any conclusion. Sigh...

EPISODE 3 • It's not gonna be shown in excruciating detail how much she had to mentally and emotionally adjust to the situation. But suddenly hanging out with a demon isn't something that can be taken casually. Being abruptly teleported to high places and all of that. • There's some emphasis on the name 'Salvation' and maybe that's their theme. I like it. In a time when so many insist on repeating the lines "save yourself" and "nobody's coming to save you", it's soothing. Do Do-hee might be particularly inclined to value that due to her past, though, despite being quite independent too.

EPISODE 4 • "You're treating me like a wireless charger." "And you treat me like a Pokemon." That about sums it up. 😄 • That tango fight was soooo unnecessary (since he can just snap his fingers), but I guess he likes to dance (and I'll never get over how often background music saves the day). 😝

EPISODE 5 • “The world was never an easy place to begin with. You get trampled on and eaten up without power.” A person with this as their modus operandi? It’s more common than you’d think. Among the most insufferable to me (admittedly, unbearable). I definitely would not want to live in a world ruled by them. And though there’s some truth to this statement, “There’s only one way the powerless can survive. Siding with the most powerful.” It rests on a fundamentally flawed assumption, and it’s that THEY are the most powerful. It takes more power to lift and alleviate others than to corner and/or crush them.

EPISODE 6 • I take that moment of Jeong Gu-won falling with yet saving Do Do-hee from being dropped from the heights as something symbolic too. • Choosing to marry Jeong Gu-won instead of Joo Seok-hun, the best decision ever. I don't know how much it really bothered Joo Seok-hun, but I don't even want to imagine how boring (or worse) Do Do-hee's life would be next to that guy. Sounds horrible on my part, but where's the lie? They're just not a good match, IMO.

EPISODE 7 • I tried, but I don't see the point of Joo Seok-hun being on screen so often and for so long. He's supposed to be the skeptical, inquisitive, and concerned character there? But I fail to see any instance in which he did anything more than interrupting and delaying progress to satisfy his curiosity and secure his repose. That and occasionally saying things that are deeply unnerving to me. "I admit that I'm not a scary person. But I can certainly be a nuisance. I'm quite persistent. I'll disturb and bother you so persistently that you can no longer maintain the peace and happiness that you enjoy in your daily life. You see, one termite can slowly eat away at the wood to the point that the whole house collapses." But sure, have him around. This is literally what he does to my enjoyment of this show. (And I've played enough WoW to know that DoTs can kill you if you let them be.) • Frankly, I do not at all find them to be too harsh towards streamers spreading dis/misinformation for clicks, views, subscribers, and tips. These people have zero regard for the lives they fuck over doing this shit.

EPISODE 8 • "Do what's best for you. Because that's what's best for me." The epitome of symbiotic relationships. But even if he's reckless enough to not care what negative consequences could affect him for loving her, I root for her to help make him even more hardcore and badass, powerful too. Rather than "insignificant and weak", become even more epic and iconic. Gotta have breaks to relax and enjoy too, though, 'cause that's not everything either.

EPISODE 9 • My dried, shrunk, and hardened heart cannot handle all this cuteness. OMG!!! 😆 • Someone get these drunks clear water and real food!! 😵 • A-ha! The homeless person living within boxes and occasionally spewing insightful and thought-provoking lines finally shows their true nature! This entire part sent shivers down my spine. 😮

EPISODE 10 • So he sacrificed his life to save hers like she did for him at the beginning and the tattoo got transferred back, so all his powers returned? Good! I was going to be mad if they both ended up as weak mortals with some cliche about being human. 😫 • Man, Jin Ga-yeong deserved waaay better. I'm amazed she didn't go full psycho-villain after all that neglect and dismissal she endured over this ordeal.

EPISODE 11 • PLOT TWIST! This pair went through EVERYTHING.

EPISODE 12 • I'm not crying. You're crying. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 • For what it's worth, a reminder that escapegoaters gonna escapegoat. Sooner or later, no matter what. When someone's not quite fitting in.

EPISODE 13 • The concept of happiness being potentially poisonous is something to write essays on, but I do appreciate Jeong Gu-won's insistence on joy. Letting people get swallowed up by sadness isn't better. It's adorable that he humors her with festivities, too. • I... could rant forever about how much I despise men like Noh Seok-min. But I shouldn't. I kind of wish Jeong Gu-won would give him what he deserves. But looks like his hell has already started. Still, tragic that that's the kind of "family" Do Do-hee has to deal with. With the blatant fake polite BS just to get what he wants and the taking offense when called out on it and more.

EPISODE 14 • This is such a load of fiction but I can't stop watching. • Beyond that, this episode was... "So you wanted a demon husband, huh? Can you even handle the reality of that?" And a "Who has the worst baggage/skeletons in the closet?" contest type of episode. • Jeong Gu-won, DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE HER ALONE!!! Being all, "Wuwuwu, I'm bad for her... ):" HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT MEN ARE LIKE THESE DAYS? YOU'RE GOOD. GREAT, ACTUALLY.

EPISODE 15 • Do Do-hee is such a heavy sleeper. Jeong Gu-won goes around, doing all sorts of things, while she's contently snoring and drooling on a pillow. • She finally got to see more of how it all began. Not to get too idealistic and romantic, but it is astonishing to see how intertwined they are. Sometimes you bond with another and forget exactly why and how, but the ties remain - keeping you together or coming back to each other, if not just making it harder for you to walk away over petty/trivial reasons.

EPISODE 16 • Bawling my eyes out seeing kindness passed around now. I'm not even religious but the angel part got me so bad. T-T ♥ • I almost, almost... feel bad for Noh Seok-min. He's getting what he deserves, though. • I don't know if it's bad casting or acting, but Joo Seok-hun is still very suspicious to me. They don't usually make more seasons of 16-episode Korean series like this one, from what I've heard. But I could bet he's the hook for a potential next one. He did say at one point something along the line that he was good at looking innocent - and he spent the entire show meddling and prying while looking innocent. But who knows. Maybe this just wasn't the time for such a character to shine as the villain.

#my demon

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dreamologisth2o · 3 years

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Why I Believe Endersmile Is Canon

Because I’m on a bit of an Endersmile binge--

This is all gonna be very messy and just me putting my thoughts together and I’ll probably not be going through the VODs for exact timestamps or anything because that’s exhausting and I applaud the people who do, but here are my thoughts on Endersmile and why I’m 100% convinced it’s canon. They’re besties your honor.

/rp Any names mentioned are referring to their dsmp characters and not the streamers themselves unless specified

First off: The Disc. Dream trusts Ranboo, a lot. He trusts him so much that he literally gave Ranboo one of the two discs he needed to pull off his big plan at the finale. He trusted Ranboo, so much that Ranboo deciding to give the disc back to Tommy or Tubbo wasn’t an option, even though Ranboo was friends with both, which he knew. I don’t know why he gave Ranboo the disc, or how he got the disc from Skeppy in the first place, and I’m sure he did have a hundred and one back up plans for if Ranboo did decide to give Tommy the disc, but asking Ranboo to hold onto the disc in the first place means Dream trusted him to a degree, and that’s big coming from Mr. “Reserved”.

Second: Knowing Dream’s Voice. Ranboo knows/remembers Dream’s voice well enough that he hears it whenever he’s in the panic room, that his subconscious uses Dream’s voice to force Ranboo to confront his fears. For a guy who hasn’t had any one on one time or conversations with Dream in VC on stream, he sure does a really good job imagining his voice. /s

Basically, they must have spoken, a lot. They must have spent time together outside planning for things or exchanging items or whatever. So much time, in fact, that Dream and Ranboo both end up sharing the same ideology of “People not sides” of “One big happy family” of “Being the person that stops conflicts” of “Being on all sides” of “Mediating between those sides” of “Choosing the side they think is right”.

During Ranboo’s prison visit dream/nightmare, the Voice tells Ranboo that the only reason Ranboo hasn’t been hearing it lately, is because he hasn’t been speaking with Dream as often. That Ranboo and Dream had talked with each other nearly everyday. And I’m inclined to believe that because the mere existence of the voice proves he’s heard Dream’s voice a lot, or he has a very good memory of Dream’s voice, which, considering his memory problems probably isn’t the case. This is further supported by how ever since Dream’s been in prison, ever since Ranboo banned himself from the prison, he hasn’t heard even a hint of Dream’s voice, not even as he’s remembering more and more.

Third: The Disc War Finale. During the disc war finale, we have in universe proof and out of character confirmation from both cc!Dream and cc!Ranboo that the characters had been staring at each other during the entire thing. Some friends on a discord server have also pointed out how Ranboo appeared to be avoiding Tommy’s gaze unless Tommy’s distracted. And during the entire thing Ranboo’s the only one not holding out a weapon, instead he’s got a book and quill in his hand. We’ve now also got confirmation that Ranboo was Enderwalking during the Disc War Finale, which makes all the strange behaviors make sense because if they’re friends, if they’re allies, then Ranboo didn’t show up to fight Dream. Then Dream might’ve been trying to convey something to Ranboo, like perhaps trying to keep Ranboo from doing something stupid and revealing their alliance. Especially if he planned on being put in Pandora, he really doesn’t need his friend to try and “save” him and ruin the whole plan.

Fourth: The Voice. I am inclined to believe the things the voice says. Why? Because everything the voice is talking about are all the things Ranboo doesn’t want to confront, doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to remember. The voice isn’t malicious. It’s not even Dream, it’s just using Dream’s voice to make Ranboo listen. And Ranboo knows it’s just himself. (also out of character confirmation from the cc!s that the voice is NOT Dream and never has been, it’s just a manifestation of all the shit Ranboo’s repressed coming up and slapping him in the face) Everything the voice does, all the things it says, is trying to get Ranboo to remember the “bad” things he’s done, to remember that he was on Dream’s side. To force him to face that side of himself that might be capable of doing bad things, if there’s a good enough reason. It exaggerates things, it makes them out to be worse than they actually are, but that’s how it’s able to get Ranboo’s attention, that’s how it’s able to force him to think about those things. Ranboo won’t do anything until he’s forced to face the problem, the Voice is just trying to get Ranboo to do that.

This is why I believe Ranboo DID blow up the community house. Why he’s working with or has worked for Dream in the past. Why he willingly gave Dream his memory book, possibly to create a visible conflict between them and ensure no one would connect them as allies, like what Dream wanted to do with Punz. And also because the other things it’s said, such as Ranboo being given the Cat disc to hold onto, have been proven to be true. Nothing the Voice has said has been confirmed a lie. And many of the things it’s talked about aren’t things we or Ranboo can find the answer to unless he talks to Dream, which is until the dude’s rescued from the prison, isn’t happening. (cc!Dream where’s your Dream lore?!?!?!)

That said, if Ranboo was the one to blow up the community house, then Dream was covering for him during the Disc War Finale. He didn’t have to. He could’ve thrown Ranboo under the bus. But he chose to take on that blame, make himself look even worse in the eyes of everyone gathered there while he was at their mercy, to protect Ranboo from similar persecution. Doesn’t this remind you of anything? And Ranboo’s got a track record of making friends with those who help him.

Fifth: The Visits. Ranboo has visited Dream in prison multiple times. At the very least at least 2 times that we have direct confirmation of, and probably even more. His visits are consistent enough that just a few days after Ranboo bans himself from the prison, Dream notices and starts a strike, tells Sapnap that Ranboo’s stopped visiting, asks him, his best friend who literally threatened to perma-kill him if he were to ever leave his horrible situation, to send a message to Ranboo. (which, I guess Dream still kinda trusts Sapnap despite everything that’s happened, huh?)

Why would Ranboo visit? Unless they’re friends, unless they’re allies? Because even Dream’s so called best friend only ever visited once. Even Bad who Dream claims to have been the nicest only ever visited once. And while Tommy and Quackity visited more than once, their multiple visits have very clear reasons behind them, while Ranboo’s just, don’t.

And consider: How did Ranboo know about the things that were said during the Disc War Finale, word for word, line for line, that he wasn’t present for, unless someone’s told him? Unless he heard about it from Dream himself. Unless that was what they were talking about. Unless that’s part of the reason Ranboo kept visiting Dream.

Sixth: The Lessons. I don’t know about you, but giving life lessons to someone sounds like something you’d do with a friend, and not just a “puppet”. The whole lessons book gives off really mentor mentee vibes, and considering how Ranboo’s following in Dream’s goal of stopping conflict and uniting the server, well. And the lessons aren’t even malicious, or designed to push Ranboo away from others. In fact, many of them, especially the last few ones we see, are designed to protect Ranboo! Unless Ranboo’s safety was a top priority for Dream, there’s not much reason to pass those lessons down. This lines up incredibly well with Dream taking the blame of the community house’s destruction during the Disc War Finale, as well as his protective streak at his own expense when it comes to his allies and the people he cares about. Which means Ranboo is someone he cares about, which means they’re friends! They’re besties your honor!

Seventh: Ranboo’s Vehement Denial. Ranboo is infamous for being an unreliable narrator, for being in incredible denial despite all evidence supporting otherwise. Which means his vehement denial that Dream can be anything but bad is a fairly obvious red flag that that’s not true, and that Ranboo has reason to believe it’s not true, but chooses to actively ignore or forget those reasons and attempts to reinforce the “everything’s Dream’s fault, he can never change and will always be bad” mentality, that sounds like something he stole from Tommy or c!Dream antis, because he doesn’t want to face the fact that he has reasons for believing the opposite. At this point, I am 100% on board with the idea that all these unprompted instances of Dream hate is just a blatant cover up of how that’s not true at all. (Which he touches on, ever so briefly, when he renovates the second stronghold room)

Aaaaand that’s it! For the most part. I could touch on how Enderboo is hoarding all the backbone in this relationship and that the dynamic between Enderboo and Ranboo is closer to that of someone waking up after a sugar high or going for three days straight without sleep than it is two completely separate people or someone who’s literally sleepwalking (and that “Enderboo” is his normal state and “Ranboo” is the sleep deprived not thinking straight state). But this post is already obscenely long and I should end it here.

TL;DR: They’re besties, your honor.

Anyways, if you got this far, thanks for reading!

#my thoughts #my posts #character analysis #endersmile #c!ranboo #long post #dreblr friendly

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zeta-in-de-walls · 3 years

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“Streamers such as Tubbo don’t seem like they really want to be serious and depict grief and so its good they won’t be too pressured to.” Okay but you understand why that’s worse right? A story like this demands consistency, of course it’s not tubbo’s fault if the writing doesn’t compensate for his wants and needs, but my inner theater kid is screeching in outrage at the sheer implication that an actor can just randomly walk off stage during performance or act in ways that don’t make any sense just because they didn’t feel like being serious, it’d be like if in Romeo and Juliet if after Juliet stabs herself the Romeo actor goes “yikes, anyways who wants to play with this puppy I found!”

T writers should know better then to try and make a serious story with an element they are aware an actor can’t do something vital to that story, if the main characters best friend cannot do grief, they shouldn’t be put in a position where not grieving seriously risks breaking immersion, like killing their best friend. Dream SMP has always had a tonal issue, and it’s starting to become extremely apparent and more immersion breaking. When tackling such heavy subjects such tonal whiplash just becomes jarring and cheap feeling. The audience will struggle to care about things the characters don’t, characters not caring or treating it like a joke conveys to the audience that it’s pointless and not worth attention, which is not great for the death of your main character. While Tubbo shouldn’t be pushed into anything, it doesn’t change the fact that him not playing the role the narrative assigns risks heavily weakening the narrative

You know what? You’re right - the tone can be all over the place. Some streamers are invested in the roleplay and love to explore angsty ideas in their streams. Others prefer to vibe or build and only rarely get really into the roleplay. Some are more comedic, some are more serious. There’s a real mixture.

That is what the Dream SMP is like - it’s what its always been like. That’s something that comes from the medium as its not a conventionally told story. Instead its told by livestreams from numerous perspectives.

...

And this is one of the Dream SMP’s strengths.

For better or for worse, the Dream SMP has each streamer have different tones. When you go to Tommy’s stream, the audience has certain expectations, and when you go Tubbo’s the expectations are completely different.

You’ve discussed the potential downsides of this, that moving from one streamer to another risks heavy tonal whiplash which risks weakening the narrative and ruining immersion. And trying to cater to each streamer’s style could potentially restrict the kind of stories they can explore.

In this case, I don’t think it was too bad at all. I think Tubbo’s initial, initial reaction was actually more of a case of miscommunication as he wasn’t originally going to be on the Dream SMP that day and was caught off-guard. A day later, he did a stream where he dealt with Tommy’s death more in-character, and it was in-character to be in denial and not acting overtly sad - its a very valid reaction to grief and suits his character and also streaming style well - he’s not one for dramatic poignant speeches, but trying to be logical and playing detective - its how his character dealt with it.

Still the concerns you’ve brought up are valid - but consider the upsides of having the wildly different tones.

You can choose who to watch! You don’t have to watch everyone, but you choose the streamers who’s narrative suit you best. As long as Tommy's streams have a consistent tone, Tubbo's streams don't need to have the same tone. That’s the beauty of the Dream SMP - that you can choose the style you like most. It means that Dream SMP has so much more to offer - cause if you don’t vibe with one creator so much, you can still enjoy it from another character. Or if you like it, but, say the angst is a bit much, you can swap to a different creator who’s streams are more lighthearted.

This is something so cool about the Dream SMP! The medium is not made for consistency and you gotta embrace it. Yes it’s messy, yes the whiplash is a bit much on occasion but it can actually make you care more! And I love that the streamers feel like they can explore any sort of plotline they like - we’ve got Tommy’s and Dream’s angsty story, but we’ve also got a mindcontrolling egg. I’m glad that they don’t restrict themselves and they all try and support each other. Even when its not their strong suit, they will interact with the other character’s stories and plotlines giving us so much cool content and different looks at the same story.

This is not a professional and conventionally told story, and it couldn’t exist in a different format cause its a product of its medium and that means its got both unique strengths and flaws. And you love it for what it is.

(Oh, I discussed this with my friend @mirinda03 and they were super helpful! This is a really interesting dscussion so thanks for the ask!)

#replies #cheers for the ask #sorry i feel like i went on a bit of a tangent xD #meta #analysis #tommyinnit #dream smp #also my quote was discussing why tommy's revival was good cause it put less pressure on tubbo to act out his grief

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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New World: Why Amazon’s MMO is Already Losing Streamer Support

https://ift.tt/3xlgx5o

As New World‘s closed beta comes to an end, we’re left with the undisputed conclusion that Amazon’s upcoming MMO has the potential to be the company’s biggest game yet. New World has been drawing a lot of attention from genre fans and casual players alike, and, whether you want to hear it or not, a lot of that attention can be attributed to the influence of major streamers who helped generate quite a bit of hype for the title during its earliest days.

To be fair, the streaming community’s early embrace of New World wasn’t entirely organic. Not only did New World‘s developers implement a variety of streamer-specific features in the game (which is hardly a surprise given that Amazon owns Twitch), but some streamers may have been paid to play the game during its closed beta period. However it happened, it’s clear that Amazon is counting on streamer support for New World‘s August 31st launch.

As it turns out, that could be a big problem. While New World make a big splash in the streaming community when the game’s closed beta started, it’s becoming clear that the streaming community is divided regarding the game’s long-term prospects. That normally wouldn’t be big news to most people, but given that Amazon is clearly hoping that streamers will help them sell this game, their concerns may end up impacting the MMORPG’s short and long-term prospects.

More importantly, a few of these concerns aren’t just limited to New World streamers. In some ways, New Worlds‘ streamers may instead be speaking for some of the game’s players who just don’t have as loud of a voice…

New World’s Territory System May Not be Balanced With Streamers in Mind

It’s nearly impossible for studios to fully account for the presence of streamers in their games and the ways their presence will fundamentally alter the “intended” experience. For instance, if you happen to queue into a Call of Duty: Warzone match that a popular streamer has also queued into, there’s a strong possibility that you’ll be dealing with more hackers as well as supportive fans who “stream sniped” their way into the match.

When it comes to New World, though, streamer influence is already causing some unique gameplay issues that could prove to be difficult to balance without significantly altering the game’s PvP systems.

New World‘s biggest streamers tend to attract large crowds of in-game players, which shouldn’t surprise anybody. Much as it is in World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, and other popular MMOs, streamers are often followed by players willing to help them out on quests, destroy their enemies, or even just give them money and items. It happens all the time.

One of New World‘s biggest draws, though, is a PvP-focused territory and settlement system that allows members of the game’s various companies to effectively control parts of the map. Territories can be purchased for 100,000 coins (which is a pretty high price in the early parts of the adventure) and players can take control of currently occupied territories and settlements through New World‘s “War” system. Basically, if you get enough people to work together, you too can “own” a piece of New World.

Maybe you already see the problem. Streamers practically come with a built-in army of players who are more than willing to offer the resources and PvP support needed to control territories. Not only does this potentially eliminate what is supposed to be a big part of the New World social experience (getting players together to contribute resources, defend territories, elect leaders, etc.), but it means that bigger streamers can theoretically take over servers with relative ease if they choose to do so.

“Theoretically” is the word to keep in mind here, though, as it turns out that this process can be just as miserable for streamers as it is for non-streamers. See, it’s basically impossible for the most popular streamers to play New World the “intended” way (at least while they’re streaming). The “average” gameplay session can quickly become all about them (whether they want it to be that way or not), and it turns out that a legion of loyal viewers isn’t always a good thing. Smaller, more organized groups can often accomplish things that larger armies of comparatively unorganized players (or even just trolls) cannot.

Of course, a streamer’s ability to utilize a small army of fans is really dependant on their ability to play with those fans in the first place. That brings us to two of the bigger streamer-related New World issues at the moment…

New World’s Technical Issues Are Limiting Its Large-Scale PvP Battles

Many of the biggest and most common complaints about New World‘s closed beta were related to the game’s technical issues and server stability. While glitches are to be expected from any beta (and most modern games at launch), New World‘s beta servers simply struggled under the weight of the game’s popularity. Many players reported getting kicked from the MMO outright, while many more experienced slowdown and other technical issues that prevented them from being able to properly play the game.

As you may imagine, many of the biggest streamers who broadcasted New World during the game’s beta encountered severe slowdown, server crashes, and more than a few of those aforementioned-game breaking issues. Such things will happen when you have dozens of people constantly following you.

While you can imagine how annoying it is for streamers who aren’t able to broadcast their New World gameplay because the servers can’t support their social scene, it turns out this is one of those problems that is affecting other players as well.

If you are on a high population “streamer server” you are theoretically just as vulnerable to crashes as they are when large groups of people gather in one place. That’s really bad news for a game that promises the ability to wage large-scale PvP wars with other players but currently seems unable to provide a consistently stable version of that experience.

What’s worse is that the New World beta utilized a kind of “teleportation” system designed to limit who could participate in certain types of PvP battles. It’s not clear what the future of this system is, but during the beta, players would often be kicked out of battles and transported to nearby towns if there were too many people of varying levels in one place for too long.

All of this is to say that even if you accept that some New World servers are going to essentially boil down to streamers vs. streamers or streamers vs. everyone else scenarios, it’s still not entirely clear at this time whether everyone who wants to participate in such battles will consistently be able to do so. For that matter, it’s still not clear whether New World‘s servers will be stable enough at launch to ensure even non-streamers will be able to organize the kind of massive conflicts this game should be uniquely able to deliver.

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PvP Scaling Has Divided the New World Community

New World utilizes a form of “PvP” scaling that is not only somewhat unusual for a game of this type but is honestly a bit of a mystery at the moment in regards to how the whole thing actually works.

Basically, there are systems in place in New World that ensure an extra degree of balance in world PvP situations no matter what level PvP participants are. So, if I’m a level 10 player and I attack a level 60 player out in the world, the game will “balance” us a bit so that the level 60 player doesn’t automatically beat me simply because they are 50 levels higher.

It’s not entirely clear how this system works at the moment (or how these mechanics may be tweaked in the future), but in its current form, the idea seems to be to allow higher level players to utilize additional skills but not benefit quite as much from their higher levels/better gear in such a way that these conflicts are essentially resolved the moment they happen.

Again, the whole thing is up in the air at the moment regarding the specifics of the system and its future in the game, but, on paper, this is a way to ensure that PvP battles are more skill-based and not quite as dependent on gear and levels. It’s a fascinating attempt at solving a problem that has plagued other MMOs for quite some time. It also doesn’t seem to apply to every PvP scenario, which means that high-level PvP players can enjoy a more “traditional” experience in their battles against each other.

However, there are some players who already hate the very idea of this system, and it shouldn’t surprise you at this point that streamers appear to be the loudest voices in that particular outcry.

While there’s always been a bit of a “git gud” issue in these scenarios (just look at the controversy over Warzone‘s SBMM system), it should be noted that the controversy in this instance isn’t entirely limited to streamers complaining that they can’t kill lower level players for content and an ego boost. Some non-streamers have pointed out that the idea of a PvP system in an MMO that doesn’t always reward players for leveling/gearing their character by offering noticeable power advantages is…unusual. Some have argued those advantages are meant more for PvE scenarios rather than PvP situations, but in a game where PvP is the biggest selling point at the moment, it’s admittedly a little odd that the impact of your leveling efforts in PvP is, at the moment, comparatively limited when it comes to such conflicts.

Streamers and non-streamers are also pointing out that this system means that a gang of low-level players can actually do a surprising amount of damage to smaller numbers of higher-level players (even if the specifics of how scaling affects this tactic are, again, unclear at this time). That’s arguably a more “realistic” system, but it does potentially create additional balance issues that could make things quite difficult for some PvP players. Obviously, that’s a bigger deal for streamers who are typically “targeted” by such mobs of enemies, but this topic really does seem to be dividing the larger New World fanbase in the early days of the game.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

New World’s Public Voice Chat Might Be a Mistake

New World features a public “proximity chat” system that works about how you’d expect it to work. With this feature enabled, players are able to talk to each other out in the world regardless of whether or not they’re in the same party. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Well, it can be, but anyone who has any experience whatsoever with video game voice chat systems knows that things can turn ugly quickly. While that’s bad news for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the occasional high-pitched screams, blatant racism/sexism, or even just other players using an open mic as their personal radio station, it’s especially bad news for streamers who are often simply unable to use this feature due to content concerns. Theoretically, a Twitch streamer could even get banned if they upload a clip of someone playing a licensed song through New World‘s voice chat.

That might be an extreme example of the problem, but it’s one of those issues that highlights a much bigger problem: it’s often safer to avoid using this potentially beneficial feature entirely than it is to risk using it.

Amazon may be banking on streamers and content creators to help sell New World, but unless issues like this are addressed in a way that lets the most popular streamers actually broadcast the game and showcase it in the way it is intended to be played, then New World‘s August 31st release date could be much quieter than the MMO’s red hot beta.

The post New World: Why Amazon’s MMO is Already Losing Streamer Support appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3xjKF0Q

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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shot-through-the-hart · 6 years

Text

Are Pine Needles a Flower? Chapter Three

Chapter Summary: A literal human ray of sunshine, hearsay about meetings going off without a hitch, and Baby's First Sarcastic Comment.

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four

Oh, God, Harry Hart was a literal ray of sunshine.

Merlin would have said how he realized this, pondering in silence as the thoughts dotted the air in his mindscape, but things really weren't silent at Blue Moon Blooms anymore. Aside from the normal non-silence, that was.

Sure, the occasional sounds of traffic and other such from the streets outside provided some sense of normalcy, along with the indecisive discussions of various customers on whether they should get roses or carnations for their step-mother's birthday. (As for the question: Merlin would always, always advise roses. Carnations were funeral flowers, more often than not. Unless you wanted a creative and witty way to wish death and destruction on your step-mother, best to go with the stereotype of roses.)

Harry had actually introduced this new non-silence in the form of a playlist of gentle instrumentals, which consisted mostly acoustic guitar, but also with the occasional piano song for a bit of variety. Merlin, being as technically inclined as he was, hooked up a Bluetooth speaker on one of the shelves, and set the playlist on shuffle for a consistent repeat. (While being technically inclined wasn't actually required to be able to do this, Merlin wanted an excuse to call himself a 'technical wizard'. He would never mention this was why he phrased it like this, but it certainly was.) And, while Merlin preferred John Denver and had told Harry as much, he had to admit that the playlist did make the shop quite a bit more pleasant. In any case, it was never silent, and it served as a consistent reminder that Harry was practically everything that Merlin himself used to be, which Merlin adored and despaired about equally.

Snapping back to the present time, Merlin realized he should probably actually do something. Entering quietly from the back door, he watched as Eggsy came into the shop from the front entrance, bells chiming to signify it. Ah, right on schedule, assuming the schedule was entirely unscheduled whatsoever. (Eggsy had a habit of just dropping by sometimes. It was unclear whether or not this was worse than Harry's habit of being at least five minutes late to everything… though more often than not, five minutes was generous.)

Now, eavesdropping was bad. Merlin wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Well, that wouldn't actually stop him from doing it this once.

"Harry! Hey, how'd the meeting with Roxy go?" Eggsy said, poking around at the shelves of flowers. "No pressure, mate, but I did tell Roxy that we were all a bit of a package deal, so it kind of had to go without a hitch."

Harry glanced up from where he was idly trimming stems. "I'm not sure I’d be able to give much more than hearsay, I wasn't actually there for the meeting. Although, given the context, I can assume that the only hitch going off will be at the wedding, when James Spencer and Cecil Hall 'get hitched'." From the doorway, Merlin exhaled audibly in reaction to this. "Ah, Merlin, do you mind filling us in? How did the meeting go?"

"It went well," Merlin said, ever so slightly caught off guard, with lack of better words to describe. Choosing to elaborate, he continued with, "We're now definitely the florists for the Spencer-Hall wedding, but this was just the preliminary meeting for her to see if we were the right fit. We'll actually know more when she gets in touch with us about the specifics of the arrangements."

"Alright," Harry said, nodding slightly. "Merlin, do you mind if I borrow the keys to your flat for a moment?"

"What for?" Merlin asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I plan to steal all of your precious belongings and valuables. It will be completely empty when I'm finished with it," Harry said, deadpan. A few moments later, he said in all seriousness, "I'd like to make some tea in your little kitchenette." Merlin tossed the keys towards him, suppressing a smirk while glancing at Eggsy.

As Harry disappeared into the second floor, Merlin searched behind the desk until he found what he was looking for. Eggsy had followed him, silently preparing their plot (which, for the record, was mostly Eggsy's plot,) in their very short window of time.

After just a few minutes, Harry's footsteps in the stairwell echoed slightly. Eggsy wore a maniacal grin, tossing some streamers in the air as his unsuspecting target entered with two cups of tea. Eggsy followed this immediately with, "Oh, Harry, we're so proud of you!"

Harry blinked in confusion. "What is happening?"

"Baby's first sarcastic comment! It's really worth celebrating!" This was left out in the open, as if it actually made the events make sense.

"Have- have you been planning this?" Harry exclaimed, clearly fazed by the sudden celebration.

"Well, yes," Merlin stated, matter-of-factly. Eggsy continued laughing in the background as Harry muttered, "Oh, dear God."

#im incredibly sorry #this is probably the best and worst thing i've EVER written for anything #here have some fuckin trash #merlahad #my fanfic #Are Pine Needles a Flower?#i hope you weren't expecting Quality Literature #because this basically just took a 180 from mildly serious to my least serious dreams

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rewoundcircuit · 5 years

Text

there were things that scared me when i was twelve, but i'm thirteen now | atsuko | trial vi.vi | re: everyone

[ suicide tw ]

Atsuko sighs.

“Did I say anything about ‘ruling the galaxy’? No, I didn’t. The purpose of our organization is to expose wrongdoings, to give the public motivation to take matters into their own hands. The reason you were placed in this killing game wasn’t because I wanted to 'kill the rich’ either, but rather because you’re part of my class. I don’t even want to kill the rich either, simply expose those elite who are more than content with manipulating and ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I’d like them receive their just desserts. And, by the by, we’re not an organization made up of purely Hope’s Peak students or alumni." She rolls her eyes. "We’re consisted of mostly 'regular’ people, as one might say. It’s simply the fact that the people here on site are former SHSLs.”

At Himawari’s accusation, her lips purse.

“Punishing Ryuza-kun? No, we wouldn’t– Listen.” She pinches her nose. “He has anxiety, understand? He had his reasons for not wearing an eye patch during the game, but now he wants to keep it on, so please leave him alone.”

“And I’d prefer if you accused me of things, they were things I’m guilty of, you know? I would think there’s enough material for you to work with without coming up with baseless accusations. I understand that as someone who’s obsessed with making sure they’re a hundred percent in the right and I’m a hundred percent in the wrong, it’s so much easier to come up with whatever nonsense narratives you’re spouting about my 'creating a story for your lives’ or my 'being a control freak’, but I'm begging you to think even once before you speak and make false presumptions.”

And that’s enough of that.

She listens to Yoko’s speech with a mild amount of bemusement and tiredness all mixed into one before she extends a hand in the robot’s direction.

“This sort of thing speaks for itself, doesn’t it? You can’t look me in the eye and tell me this isn’t something straight out of a dystopian novel. Letting society be determined by corrupt leaders because 'everything would be so much more simple’…” She shakes her head.

“Oh, and, by the by, we’ve a few hundred or so hidden guns around hereabouts for extreme cases. So, please don’t feel threatened by Kurusu-san and her friends! She has no power here, and can’t hurt me or anyone who chooses not to fall whim to Hope’s Peak’s fancy. You think she’d be placed in this game otherwise?”

As for what Ryuunosuke says… well, for once, that takes her aback, just a little bit.

“'Live and bear the consequences of my sin’, huh…”

“Yoshida-san, that really was profound! I think my heart might have skipped a beat or something. But, hm,” she looks up through her lashes, “I’d honestly rather get a lobotomy than submit myself to Hope’s Peak Academy. If I believed in the courts of justice in the slightest, then once this game was over, I wouldn’t object to my crimes being properly tried, to be punished by being forced to live.”

She seems to be addressing both him and Kimiko, now.

“But you know… Hope’s Peak Academy wouldn’t let me off that easy, you know? They’d stick their hands in my brain and probably make me commit atrocities far worse than a killing game. If they can cause harm to this world by manipulating a gaming streamer… can you imagine what they’d do with a duchess? With a figure that’s already got a foot in the political life? Ara,” she laughs, but as she pushes a strand of hair behind an ear, she’s shaking, just a little. “No, no, I’d much rather die, for both my sake and the sake of the thousands of those who would hurt under my hand.”

“Hey, maybe to sweeten the deal a bit, this is going for the long haul, here, but if we’re successful in exposing Hope’s Peak and some sort of truly fair system manages to fit itself up there, I’ll serve my time and go to jail. Or,” she shrugs, “whatever.”

“Oh, and by the by.” Atsuko rolls her eyes. “No protagonist-like hope is going to bring back erased memories. There’ll be no longing, no 'hole in the heart’…” She pauses, looking a little solemn, as if she’s speaking from experience, but shakes her head. “Hope’s Peak Academy is very thorough. They can’t afford to slip up, you know?”

Bouncing to Mayura now.

“Hey… well.” She clears her throat. “Just to clarify, it’s not I who is erasing your memories, but Hope’s Peak Academy. What reason would I have for the memory of what happened here to just die?” She frowns. “Really, I want you to remember everyone who died here; and I speak that with honesty in my heart.”

Then she sits through being told to rot. we’re going to address that and group it with aki stuff cause i gotta wake up in a few hours

“What I want from you all… well, I’ve already gotten that. You’ve prevented some of yourselves from being forced to commit atrocities by dying. People are selfish–”

Atsuko’s lips suddenly purse, and it seems as if she was about to say something - maybe about morality or something of the sort, but she shakes her head.

“My reasoning for letting this stop here, huh…”

She holds her hand over her chin before shaking her head and laughing lightly.

“I guess I just really am that nice and think more than enough people here have died, ara."

Man it’s almost 1 am

"Oh, and, Kita-san.” She’s wrapping this up a bit lamely. “The fear thing was wholly unpleasant. If it’s any comfort, I think it… weighs a lot less on your character than if you had been influenced by another motive.” She dips her head. “Apologies.”

#rwc #chsix #trial #atsuko #submission #suicide ment tw ----

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mikemateiweb-blog · 5 years

Text

My TMNT Mario Paint Animation, a Retrospective – Mike Matei Blog

This is three lines drawn in Mario Paint at different speeds of strokes with the mouse.

The limitation of Mario Paint that’s probably the most regrettable is the dismal color selection. There are only 15 solid colors, and 15 extra colors which are the basic colors combined in various ways in a pixel checkerboard pattern.

There’s a reason why you don’t see actual pixel artists use patterns like this for coloring, because the results are usually hideous.

Unfortunately, an artist working within the restrictions of Mario Paint will have to use these extra colors sometimes, for better or worse. Outside of these 30, there’s also several pages of stuff that I rarely find a use for at all.

There’s no shortage of eye-melting color patterns to choose from, although these look better using the Spray tool.

This is due to the limitations of the hardware of the SNES. I’m not a programmer and I wasn’t able to find any detailed information on how Mario Paint’s code works, but here’s my best guess of what’s going on: The canvas area of Mario Paint is 248×168 pixels, which means it’s made up of 8×8 tiles, 31 horizontal and 21 vertical. The SNES has 16 colors to work with in each 8×8 tile, which means Mario Paint is using the maximum amount of colors the console can support (I’m guessing that one color has to be left unused for transparency, possibly to allow the cursor to hover over the drawing area). Also, the SNES can only display 34 of these tiles per horizontal row, so there’s 31 tiles for the canvas, 2 tiles for the border around the screen, and 1 left over that allows for the cursor.

Which means, as much as I lament the poor color choices, I can’t blame the creators of Mario Paint. They squeezed as much functionality out of Mario Paint as the hardware allowed. The checkerboard colors and blob patterns was the only way to extend the colors available. (By the way, if you’re knowledgeable about how Mario Paint or the SNES hardware works and anything I said is incorrect, let me know and I’ll edit this article with the correct information and give you credit).

The color limitations also played a big part in why I chose the TMNT opening. Mario Paint offers two solid shades of green, which would allow me to add shadows to the Turtles’ skin.

The character design of the Turtles just happened to work really well with Mario Paint’s colors, and I could get a bit more mileage out of light and shadow.

There’s also an undo history of exactly one action, which is offered to you by the dog icon. Saving and loading is limited and slow, the flood fill tool is slow (although it can be cancelled in the middle to partially fill things), and the animation function is limited to 4 drawable frames… I could go on and on about the limitations of Mario Paint, but I think you get the point.

So, as I just mentioned, Mario Paint has a pretty limited animation suite, so I used modern capture technology to simply capture frames when I completed them, and then edit them together later in video editing software. This could have been done in 1992 as well. I have friends who would use their VCR to record Mario Paint onto VHS and string them together to make elaborate animation projects, as well as other Nintendo art tools such as the GameBoy Camera placed into a Super Game Boy. VCRs connected to a camcorder could also be used to do stop motion animation with clay or toys, and even film individual frames of drawings to make animations.

This process was super nerve wracking, because each completed frame had to be discarded from existence entirely once I was done grabbing them. At least data storage is easy nowadays and I didn’t have to worry about someone in the house overwriting my animation in order to record an episode of Roseanne from the TV.

So, we come back to the concessions I talked about at the beginning. The original animated sequence for the TMNT show totals up to about 1200 individual frames of animation. So if I averaged about an hour per frame drawing in Mario Paint, and I worked 8 hours a day, that would mean I would reasonably get 8 frames done per day. Which means it would take 150 days of nonstop work to get the animation done, which would be okay if I didn’t also have a full time job and a social life that needs to be taken care of as well.

My animation ended up with about 420 frames total, and took me 6 months. So doing 1200 frames would have taken a year and a half, and who knows how much I would slow down from fatigue after a project that long. There were a couple times I could get a break, such as some frames just being a single solid color (such as lightning flashes), and I reused the swirling TMNT logo from the beginning for the end.

Hey, the original cartoon reused this animation, why can’t I?

I mentioned earlier that Mario Paint doesn’t offer any layer functionality, so this is a huge problem when animating moving characters over a background. As you can see in the above example, the background is constantly being destroyed by the turtles moving across the screen, and that destroyed information has to be rebulit when the portion of the background comes back into view.

Eagle-eyed readers will probably notice that this scene had to be animated out of sequence and then reassembled, which accounts for the way the background constantly changes shape.

Surprisingly, the shots you would think would be more difficult to do, such as Donatello flying around the city and the background moving around really fast, are about the same difficulty as the shot you see above, because of the lack of background layers. When the background is moving so quickly, redrawing the entire frame isn’t that much worse.

Oh who am I kidding, this was still painful.

Another issue came from the fact that I wasn’t going to use all 1200 frames from the original animation, so I had to pick and choose which frames to use. I was referring to a television off to the side drawing these individual frames, and I tried to pick out individual frames that would convey the most movement. This resulted in a bit of a discontinuity in the framerate, which had to be corrected manually when it came time to edit. This is why you see the framerate fluctuate often during the entire sequence. This is regrettable but… I dunno. Nobody has really complained about it, and if they did I’d just shrug and say Mario Paint isn’t the optimal tool to create animation. I did the best I could, you know?

Recreating an animation sequence in Mario Paint is so ridiculously transformative that it easily meets the requirements for Fair Use, so in order to keep my video from getting taken down, I was going to need a cover version of the music instead of using the original audio. Luckily I was able to get a great one by Epic Game Music that was tailored to match the timing of the video I animated. After that was done, it just needed some editing and it was completed.

So there you have it. How do I feel about this animation more than a year later? I’m glad I did it because it’s something nobody had ever done before. Doing something this elaborate with the drawing section of the game. Sure a lot of people have done a lot with the music portion, and there is a very small limit to what you can do with the in-game animation tool. But to animate something like this with the basic drawing tool, I’d say I did the most elaborate thing anyone ever attempted. If there’s anything else out there even close to as time consuming, I’d love to see it.

I think it was a really good personal exercise for me in diligence and determination. I’m glad that I managed to finish it. Starting a project like this and then abandoning it halfway would have been a gnawing regret I would have had to carry for the rest of my life. The end result wasn’t perfect, but it’s more important to me that I finished it.

“I may lose, but it won’t be because I gave up!”

As for economics… all told, I only made a couple hundred dollars off the video. I’d do the Pat-Math on how much my hourly wage was, but you can guess its low enough to be just about nothing. But hey, that’s the game we play being creatives. You never know what’s going to hit or miss, and you just have to keep consistently applying yourself until something hits. Whenever I get negative feelings about this animation, I have to remind myself that it was more than made up for with a lot of other successes that required far less effort. Not to mention I’m a Let’s Player and a streamer where I record myself playing art that other people made, and standing on the shoulders of giants to do so. I’m grateful for the wonderful life I have, and I hope you guys don’t get the impression that I made this post just to whinge about making cartoons in Mario Paint.

Animation is extraordinarily difficult, but we’re in a strange time where animation is easier to make than ever before, yet independent animators aren’t making the money they probably should. And yet… so many people still animate. There’s so much incredibly good animation being made by individuals on YouTube and all over the internet. Against overwhelming odds and minimal rewards, they still painstakingly download their imaginations into individual frames, one by one. I believe strongly that things will get better for animators in the future.

Just like Lion-o up there, they just need to keep running. Eventually something good will happen.

Source By: https://www.mikematei.com/blog/my-tmnt-mario-paint-animation-a-retrospective-mike-matei-blog/

Update:

Not long after I posted this article, which details my process of creating a full animated sequence in Mario Paint a year and a half ago, my animation was taken down from YouTube due to a copyright complaint.

From the very beginning, I was aware that my video could be taken down, so I purposely designed the video to be as transformative under Fair Use as I possibly could. Everything was manually drawn by hand using a reference offscreen. There’s no way to download images into Mario Paint, nor is there any way to trace anything, and the limitations of Mario Paint actually make it impossible to perfectly recreate the original (the article that follows will explain why in detail). And, a new cover version of the song was recorded specifically for this video. I was under the impression that I was so far ahead of what was required that I would be completely in the clear, and then some.

If the animation I made in Mario Paint doesn’t count as transformative, then I’m not sure what even does. What if I had recreated the intro using claymation? What if I had used actors in costumes? What if I just used a recording of me singing the theme song in the shower? Where is the actual line that got crossed?

I want to know what aspects of my video supposedly don’t qualify as Fair Use. Hopefully I can manage to get that question answered at least. I’m sure other creators could find the information useful as well.

Anyways, the video got reposted by someone already if you didn’t get a chance to watch it. It very well may get deleted again, so save it and if you want and share it on other video players and blogs so half a year of work isn’t tossed out a window forever..

See the video here:

https://www.vidlii.com/watch?v=PlV2cAO9kf1

https://www.bitchute.com/video/bfyvFFHA4Aw5/

Of all the art forms, animation seems to be the one affected by economics the most. Film is another big one for sure, but animation is such an incredibly manual, labor-intensive process that there’s a giant disconnect between creative vision and what can actually be reasonably produced, and what can reasonably make money. Since animators are painstakingly creating moving pictures frame by frame, simple creative decisions can multiply into hours, months or even years of extra work. Concessions always have to be made, and the work doesn’t always pay off.

In 2016, I used the Super Nintendo game Mario Paint to recreate the intro to the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon opening. Here is the original video that was taken down. Use the links above to see the animation.

There were a lot of candidates to choose from (Thundercats, X-Men, Ducktales were also high on my list), but I chose TMNT because it seemed to be the most likely to reach a wide audience. I knew from the outset that this was going to be a big undertaking, and it took me roughly 6 months to complete.

The reasons to animate using Mario Paint are probably what you’d figure. Since I’m known as a commentator on retro video games, it was appropriate to use an art tool from a retro games console. There aren’t really many other choices that fit the bill, and there’s no way I could have used the LJN Video Art console to do it, being the completely useless art tool that it is that’s not even suitable for use by children. Also, there’s the element of the masochistic spectacle of one man going through the grueling process animating a full sequence working within such strange limitations. I thought people would be into it, and thankfully a good amount of people were.

Mario Paint was a wonderful toy for its time, and Nintendo was smart enough to add game elements, humor, and quirky flair to the experience instead of just making it a basic electronic art program. But as an art tool, the limitations are numerous. It’s very strange in that it’s essentially a tool to create pixel art, but offers extremely limited pixel precision (save for the pixel art stamps you can define, which weren’t suitable for my project).

The game came bundled with a mouse, but laser mouse technology didn’t exist in 1992. The Super Nintendo mouse used a rubber ball that rolled along the mousepad to manipulate rollers inside the unit to move the cursor onscreen. Everything grinds to a halt with this mouse if anything gets dirty, and the mouse is in a constant hurry to get as dirty as it possibly can. People reading this who grew up with Mario Paint will remember the cursor snagging over and over and the constant struggle to keep it clean. This was my life for 6 months.

As for other limitations, lines need to be drawn extremely slowly in Mario Paint, because moving the cursor too fast will result in dotted lines streaking across the screen. Not to mention every pen stroke overwrites the color underneath, as there is no layering functionality, so trying to build colored shapes with an outline requires a bit of planning in advance. In Mario Paint, I typically lay down color blobs and then add black outlines around them as the very last step, which is backwards from the way most people draw.

youtube

This is three lines drawn in Mario Paint at different speeds of strokes with the mouse.

There’s a reason why you don’t see actual pixel artists use patterns like this for coloring because the results are usually hideous.

There’s no shortage of eye-melting color patterns to choose from, although these look better using the Spray tool.

This is due to the limitations of the hardware of the SNES. I’m not a programmer and I wasn’t able to find any detailed information on how Mario Paint’s code works, but here’s my best guess of what’s going on: The canvas area of Mario Paint is 248×168 pixels, which means it’s made up of 8×8 tiles, 31 horizontal and 21 vertical. The SNES has 16 colors to work within each 8×8 tile, which means Mario Paint is using the maximum amount of colors the console can support (I’m guessing that one color has to be left unused for transparency, possibly to allow the cursor to hover over the drawing area). Also, the SNES can only display 34 of these tiles per horizontal row, so there are 31 tiles for the canvas, 2 tiles for the border around the screen, and 1 left over that allows for the cursor.

Which means, as much as I lament the poor color choices, I can’t blame the creators of Mario Paint. They squeezed as much functionality out of Mario Paint as the hardware allowed. The checkerboard colors and blob patterns were the only way to extend the colors available. (By the way, if you’re knowledgeable about how Mario Paint or the SNES hardware works and anything I said is incorrect, let me know and I’ll edit this article with the correct information and give you credit).

The color limitations also played a big part in why I chose the TMNT opening. Mario Paint offers two solid shades of green, which would allow me to add shadows to the Turtles’ skin.

The character design of the Turtles just happened to work really well with Mario Paint’s colors, and I could get a bit more mileage out of light and shadow.

There’s also an undo history of exactly one action, which is offered to you by the dog icon. Saving and loading are limited and slow, the flood fill tool is slow (although it can be canceled in the middle to partially fill things), and the animation function is limited to 4 drawable frames… I could go on and on about the limitations of Mario Paint, but I think you get the point.

This process was super nerve-wracking because each completed frame had to be discarded from existence entirely once I was done grabbing them. At least data storage is easy nowadays and I didn’t have to worry about someone in the house overwriting my animation in order to record an episode of Roseanne from the TV.

So, we come back to the concessions I talked about at the beginning. The original animated sequence for the TMNT show totals up to about 1200 individual frames of animation. So if I averaged about an hour per frame drawing in Mario Paint, and I worked 8 hours a day, that would mean I would reasonably get 8 frames done per day. Which means it would take 150 days of nonstop work to get the animation done, which would be okay if I didn’t also have a full-time job and a social life that needs to be taken care of as well.

My animation ended up with about 420 frames total and took me 6 months. So doing 1200 frames would have taken a year and a half, and who knows how much I would slow down from fatigue after a project that long. There were a couple times I could get a break, such as some frames just being a single solid color (such as lightning flashes), and I reused the swirling TMNT logo from the beginning for the end.

Hey, the original cartoon reused this animation, why can’t I?

I mentioned earlier that Mario Paint doesn’t offer any layer functionality, so this is a huge problem when animating moving characters over a background. As you can see in the above example, the background is constantly being destroyed by the turtles moving across the screen, and that destroyed information has to be rebuilt when the portion of the background comes back into view.

Eagle-eyed readers will probably notice that this scene had to be animated out of sequence and then reassembled, which accounts for the way the background constantly changes shape.

Continue Reading: https://www.mikematei.com/blog/my-tmnt-mario-paint-animation-a-retrospective-mike-matei-blog/

#mikemateiheight #mikemateiinstagram #mikemateitwitch #mikemateitwitter #mikemateiwhitenationalist #mikemateiblog #mikemateiyoutube #Cinemassacre #TMNTMarioPaintAnimation #TMNT

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