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elizabethemerald · 5 years

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I'm not sure if I already requested something, but how about poly Jim/Toby/Claire/Darci with Toby as the trollhunter?

Hello again Friend! Here’s another finished request for you. This one got a little long, but it may be one of my favorite prompts I’ve received.

If anyone else has any requests feel free to send them my way! Also I wrote Claire using they/them pronouns, so if I messed their pronouns somewhere please let me know.

A role swap AU. For once Toby beat his friend Jim into the canals. The amulet called his name. Jim found himself wielding a staff powered by dark energies, his fate marked by Morgana’s magic. Jim’s girlfriend Claire found a hammer with gravity powers. When Merlin convinced Toby to step into a bathtub filled with a black potion Darci dove in after him desperate to save him. Eventually Toby, Darci, Claire and Jim realized they all loved each other, and there was no sense in pretending they didn’t. This story takes place several years after they would have graduated high school, now all four of them living together.

The rock they sheltered behind rumbled and cracked as another powerful blow landed on it. Toby crouched, Daylight in his hand. His horns and long arms made him look even more like his adopted father and wingman Aaarrrgghh. His lovers were hiding behind the rock with him.

Jim held his staff, arcane runes carved along its length. It wasn’t as powerful as the Skath-Hrun was, but it provided an ideal focus for his sorcery. His short black hair with it’s white stripe fluttered with his magical energy. His eyes were filled with blue fire, and more of the cerulean flames washed down his arms.

Darci flexed her wings her claws digging into the stone. When Merlin had tricked Toby into using the potion, Darci had dove into the bathtub after her boyfriend. She emerged with a troll form all her own. Claire had joked once that she looked like she could be Strickler and Nomura’s daughter. While Toby looked like a baby Krubera, Darci was skinny with black hooves and massive wings that could carry her through the sky.

Claire twirled their warhammer in their hands. The massive weapon with its purple fires and gravity powers. They smiled grimly at the others, in their trademark Papa Skull sweatshirt. The sleeves were ripped off to show off their arms. Their black hair with it’s purple stripe was carefully pulled back and contained with multiple barrets.

“This guy is huge! He’s shrugged off everything we’ve thrown at him.” Claire said. It was rare that monster they faced survived even one blow from their hammer, much less came back for thirds.

“We have to hit him with everything we’ve got!” Toby said looking around at his lovers. “Darci and Claire when I give you the word, you two take to the air. Darci try and get behind him.” Darci nodded, stretching her wings then crouched ready to take off. Her twin swords were strapped across her lower back. “Claire when you see your moment you bring the heavy hits.”

“I’ll bring a few meteors with me!” Claire said as they crouched next to Darci. Their hammer in their hands ready to rocket towards the ceiling of the cavern.

“Jim and I will give you a distraction to get into the air. Then Jim you bring the fire from the sides and I’ll go right up the center.”

Jim nodded and began tracing arcane symbols into the side of the boulder they were sheltering behind. “And for godsakes don’t get killed.” Jim said. “At least stay alive long enough for me to put you back together.”

Toby allowed his helmet to cover his face, he vanished Daylight and pulled out his smaller blades, holding them ready to throw. Then nodded to Jim.

“Azaz terra!” Jim cried.

Toby threw both of his glaives so they curved around the boulder. The rock itself rocketed forward slamming into the massive troll on the other side. A curtain of blue fire rose up almost to the ceiling. Claire swung their hammer upward and took off with a roar. Darci leapt into the air and with a powerful beat of her wings soared off. Toby jumped in front of Jim slashing with Daylight as it appeared again in his hand. The slash was perfectly timed to split the boulder in half as the troll threw it back in their direction.

The troll was huge. Possibly larger than Gunmar had been. And twice as durable. The massive creature picked up two more large boulders and pulled his arms back to throw them.

Before he could release them Darci dove out of the darkness with a shriek. Her twin blades bit deep into his back. She hung on desperately as he tried to throw her off. Her attack left the troll’s front wide open.

Toby flung Daylight with all his strength. It embedded itself almost up to the hilt in the troll’s chest. Then the Trollhunter slammed his fists together. The armor manifested a pair of studded gauntlets that covered him up to the elbows. Toby’s favorite stone for his amulet. He wasn’t as strong as Aaarrrgghh, but with the gauntlets he could hit just as hard. He roared and charged.

Several powerful punches forced the troll to reel back. The troll tried to crush Toby in between the two boulders in his hands. Toby barely managed to stop the two rocks, but now he was exposed.

Toby felt a foot land on his back and just like they had practiced he knelt a little then jumped, propelling Jim into the air. The sorcerer slammed his flaming staff again and again into the troll’s face, driving him even further back.

“Everyone get clear!” Claire’s call was immediately followed by a thunderous crack above them. Darci pulled her blades free and dove backwards flapping hard to regain altitude. Toby flexed his hands and crushed the boulders into rubble. Jim stayed on top of the troll battering his face with his flaming staff, blue flames pouring from his eyes like tears. Toby vanished his gauntlets and grabbed Jim by the collar of his blue zip up and pulled him back.

The Trollhunter covered his love with his body as a enormous stalactite driven down by Claire’s gravity powers crashed into the troll. Claire rode the rock down their hammer in their hand; they dove off at the last second. With a deafening crash the stalactite crushed the troll.

The rumbling continued for several minutes as more and more rubble fell from the ceiling, dust filling the room. After the noise finally quit Toby could hear Darci’s powerful wingbeats blowing the dust away. He could also hear Claire calling for him and Jim. He stood up straight shoving some of the rocks off his back. Jim uncurled his body from where Toby had been sheltering him.

“Oh there you are! I was afraid I buried you!” Claire said landing by their side.

“You almost did bury Jim.” Toby said. “That whole don’t die part applies to you too, Jim the self sacrificing!”

Jim smiled weakly, “I had to hold him where he was or the cave in wouldn’t have worked.”

Claire glared at him. “You already got him in position, he wasn’t going anywhere.”

Toby carefully wiped a bit of blood from Jim’s brow. Now that he wasn’t performing his magic, Jim’s eyes were back to the regular blue. “Is anyone else injured?” Toby asked.

Darci landed carefully on a rock. “I think one of the stones hit me. I going to have bruise the size of your fist on my wing when we get back home.”

Claire was immediately at her side opening up the wing in question to inspect the bruise. “I’m sorry Darc! I didn’t want any of you to get hurt!”

Toby stretched his back, twisting this way and that. Between his troll hide and the armor of Daylight he was mostly uninjured. A few bruises and scrapes, but nothing serious. He smiled at Claire and they tried to hide how upset they were that they had hurt two of their lovers. He summoned his blade back to his hand, then allowed his armor to disappear.

“Alright everyone let’s get back to the house. We can talk more once we are away from the potential for a worse cave in.”

Jim’s eyes glowed blue and he clapped his hands together. As he slowly pulled his hands apart a whirling black portal opened, wreathed in blue flames.

“Try not to get any dust in the house! I just cleaned.” He said as the portal opened large enough for them all to pass through.

“Yes dear.” Claire said. They kissed him on the cheek and ducked under his outstreatched arm into the portal.

“Yes honey.” Darci said and kissed him on his other cheek and ducked under his other arm.

“Of course Jim.” Toby said as walked through the portal on the other side.

Jim was alone on top of the rubble and allowed the portal to cover him bringing him into his basement. The others were quickly moving out of the portal corner of the basement. One corner had been designated as his portal location, always kept free of belongings and people so noone was ever injured from a sudden portal.

“Jim if you were going to magically clean all of us with your portal anyways, why even mention the dust?” Claire asked their arms crossed. Jim could only smile and shrug in response. They all made their way out of the basement into the rest of their house.

* * *

With four incomes they were able to afford a very nice place. It was far enough from Arcadia that they could be anonymous without the people they saved trying to worship them, but close enough that they could get back to Heartstone Trollmarket if there was a crisis. Like the houses in Arcadia the house had three levels. The basement was primarily used by Jim for his magic and portaling. There was also a tunnel that lead eventually to the Arcadia sewers.

All four of them had different jobs, now that they were no longer kids. Darci had a job that Toby would have loved when he was a kid. She was a full time “Costumed” streamer. She played up her troll form as a monstersona, pretending her wings and horns were cunning prosthetics. She almost exclusively played horror games. Occasionally she would have her partner or boyfriends appear on camera.

People laughed at Toby’s monstersona. How could two people who are willing to spend that kind of money for those quality monster costumes, just happen to fall in love? Toby is the one she brings on when she wants someone to scream for the camera. Claire usually makes fun of the goofy monsters in the games, though jump scares will get them as well. Jim doesn’t react at all to the monsters or jumpscares. Though he will make Darci stop in the middle of a game so he can critique the grotesque displays and summoning rituals the games use.

Jim works as a P.I. He jokes sometimes that P.I. could stand for either Private Investigator or Paranormal Investigator. He helps people find lost relatives or catch cheating spouses. After what his mom went through with his dad, he wasn’t going to let anyone else get away with abandoning their family. It was also a job that allowed him some freedom, just in case the lost child he was supposed to return to her parents had a good reason not to be with them. Or if his eyes occasionally rolled into the back of his while he incanted in trollish noone would think twice.

Claire had the most normal job of all them. They taught at the local school. Toby had laughed when he said at least one of them should have good health insurance considering their other job of protecting trolls. It had been a bit of a struggle for Claire to get their teacher’s certification but it was definitely worth the work. They were loved by their students, who knew they could bring anything to the them and Claire would have their backs. If any of their students happened to see something magical they could tell Claire that as well and their teacher would believe them.

Toby of course was the Trollhunter. They all realized that there was no real point in Toby trying to maintain a day job. Especially once Merlin tricked him into giving up his humanity. Trollhunting was his full time job. Fortunately now with Blinky as the head of Trollmarket, Toby received a small amount of financial compensation for his hero work. That helped pay for Toby’s share of the mortgage.

All four of them hung out in the kitchen while Jim saw to their wounds. He inspected Darci’s wing to make sure there wouldn’t be any lasting damage. Then he saw to Toby’s scrapes. He had managed to discover a much more effective way of caring for troll skin than molten metal, and less expensive as well. Next Jim cared for Claire’s bruised foot which they didn’t notice in the earlier excitement. Belatedly and at the insistence of his lovers he carefully bandaged the cut on his own eyebrow.

Darci and Claire collapsed onto the couch, Darci’s wing a little stiff and Claire’s foot carefully wrapped with an ice pack. Toby walked in with his specially designed phone held up to his face.

“No don’t worry, we took care of the bruiser!”

Aaarrrgghh’s concerned words could be heard on the other side. “You are OK?”

“Yep, no worries Dad! No reason for you and Blinky to end your honeymoon early.”

Toby kept walking into the kitchen, passing Jim going the other way. Jim had several trays laden with food, some that suited troll appetites, some for human ones. He sat down on the couch in between Claire and Darci. He paused to kiss both of them before getting comfortable. Finally Toby walked back into the room putting his phone on the table.

“Is it time for a movie my lovelies?” Toby rumbled. He walked down the length of the couch giving each of them a kiss as he did. Darci caught him with her uninjured wing to give him a second kiss. Jim laughed and when he kissed Toby blew a small blue fire into the half troll’s mouth. He laughed harder as the tickle of blue flame came out of his nose. Toby teased Claire by staying just out of reach so she couldn’t get her kiss, that is until she used her power to increase the gravity of his head so he was within kissing range.

Finally he sat down heavily on his side of the couch. The side of the couch that had been reinforced by every troll trick or magic his lovers could come up with. Sometimes it still sagged. He let out a deep purr of happiness as him and his three other lovers cuddled up in front of the TV, the sound of movie playing softly until one by one they each fell asleep.

You know what I don’t need right now? Another AU to write. I’m hoping this will be all I write, because I already have too many ideas. But I might come back to this idea later.

#toby domzalski #claire nunez #jim lake jr #darci scott #role swap au #trollhunter toby #sorcerer jim #hammer claire #troll toby #troll darci #writing emerald

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oblivianclassic · 7 years

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Game Ramble: Helldivers is Other People

Helldivers, developed by Arrowhead Studios, published by Playstation Mobile, Inc. Available on PS4 and Windows (Steam).

It’s interesting how I started playing Helldivers just this year, as the climate of North American politics becomes ever more absurd. Interesting because Helldivers is “Starship Troopers: The Game” in all but name. Not Starship Troopers, the novel, but rather the Verhoeven movie which satirized everything from fascist ideology to Hollywood’s idea of battle strategy to military propaganda films. Like all good satire a good many people failed to see the joke, but that’s another story. Luckily for us, Helldivers’ satire is very on-the-nose with its vainglorious musical themes, the defense of Democracy for Super Earth™, and various Helldiver vocal barks such as “How d’you like the taste of democracy?!”, “Freedom delivery!” and “Have a nice cup of liber-TEA!”. Taking Helldivers seriously is like taking any aspect of the Warhammer 40000 setting seriously. Indeed Helldivers does seem to have some 40k in its rather Imperial Guard skulls-and-fascism aesthetic.

The fact that I’ve only begun to play Helldivers in the recent few months is also interesting because the game is extremely focused on cooperative multiplayer, and my friends are three time zones away from me. I’ve had to mostly play Helldivers with random strangers, and while I’ve had some great moments of team triumph and disaster, it’s really not the same as experiencing those kinds of moments with friends. Helldivers’ co-op nature won’t be a surprise to anyone who has played Arrowhead Studios’ claim to fame: a little game called Magicka, in which a team of between one and four incompetent wizards try to save the world. Part of what made that game tick was the spell casting system; you controlled your wizard using a top-down Diablo-like control scheme, and you could combine eight different magical elements on the fly in various quantities and combinations to create spells. Learning various spell combinations and unleashing over-the-top displays of elemental death was a big portion of the game. Either that, or you’d accidentally leave a crucial element out of a spell and set yourself on fire, or electrocute yourself, or heal an enemy instead of disintegrate them, or... well, let’s just say that there’s a reason Magicka is known to many as the Mage Suicide Simulator.

The other thing that made the game tick was other players, since spells could interact with other spells, and there was no option to turn friendly fire off. Fire a beam of healing energy and if it accidentally touched your friend’s arcane death beam it would create an explosion, probably hurling your friend off a cliff. Cast a bubble shield to keep everyone safe while your friend is firing a blast of electricity and the energy would ricochet around inside the bubble, zapping everyone. What kept it from turning into a rage-fest were a couple of things. Firstly, the revive spell was very easy to cast even while you were being mobbed by enemies and it would bring all your dead friends back to life immediately. Secondly, a team of wizards who knew what they were doing would become a force of nature, combining elemental effects to devastating effect. Occasionally even a competent team of wizards would self-destruct in spectacular fashion (my “favorite” is “exploding circle of electrified arcane ice walls”. That’s right, Thegiant, I’m talking to you), but the results are generally as hilarious as they are explosive.

Helldivers, then, is a decent if finicky top-down shooter when played solo, but truly shines when you start playing it with others. It takes a little more nuance to play than you might expect from the seemingly standard twin-stick shooter template. Weapons have a fairly small amount of ammunition per magazine, the number of magazines you can carry is limited, reloading takes a long time, and whatever ammunition was left in your magazine when you reload is dropped forever. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from a simulation-focused game like ARMA, not from a twin-stick shooter. On top of this, your character can equip four “stratagems” - air support and special equipment dropped from orbit. These are called in by pressing a sequence of direction keys, a system which is a little reminiscent of the famous Konami code. Completing the sequence correctly gives your character a beacon which they then throw like a grenade. The stratagem will then arrive at the beacon’s location: generally a pod containing the requested equipment, landing at terminal velocity from space. As this is a game from the people who made Magicka, the pod (or airstrike, or vehicle) will kill anything it lands on. The contents of the stratagem usually need to be treated with care as well, since things like turrets and airstrikes will not care if you happen to be in the way. They won’t deliberately target you, but a turret can and will shoot anything that’s between itself and its target. All in all, at this point Helldivers is a game that requires some finesse to play, but doesn’t seem all that special. In fact, a lot of the things it does seem like small inconveniences for the sake of inconveniencing the player.

And then comes the point at which you call in some friends or strangers, or join someone else’s mission in progress. On the easier missions, what usually happens next is pure chaos. Friendly fire is once again a reality of life, not an option to be turned off. It’s easy enough to call in dead friends as reinforcements from orbit, but the stratagem beacon is damnably imprecise, and its resemblance to a grenade means that all too many people will throw it at a mob of enemies. Then again, the pod you arrive in will kill anything it lands on, but that can also include the guy who dropped the respawn beacon in the first place. Being killed by your own friends is a reality in Helldivers, even by complete accident. Even something as simple as waiting for the shuttle to pick you up at the end of the mission can become deadly as people start calling in spare mech suits, extra turrets, landmines and airstrikes whether they’re actually needed or not. The shuttle itself will crush anyone incautious enough to be standing under it when it arrives.

But then you play enough games with the same group or with your friends, you start playing harder missions, and something magical happens: everyone starts working as a team. You start noticing how entire systems of the game are built to encourage, nay, require cooperative play. The camera itself, locked into a top-down view which forces all four players to be on the screen at once, ensures that everyone is always moving as a team. The risk of friendly fire means that everyone instinctively starts moving in staggered formations and will maintain clear cones of fire. Simply calling in an essential stratagem can take time and attention away from incoming enemies, and having friends to cover you when you’re stratagem-ing and reloading your gun is enormously helpful. Since each player can only bring four stratagems into a mission, this encourages specialization. One player might use two slots for mech suits so she has a spare if one is destroyed or runs out of ammo. Another player brings a personal shield generator and a repair gun to act as the engineer. Another one brings turrets and barbed wire. The fourth brings a variety of heavy weapon options.

Many weapons and vehicles themselves flat out work better if you’re playing with a team. Simply wielding a lot of the heavy weapons keeps you stationary, so you’re relying on teammates to watch your back. Mech suits turn slowly and have a weak point in the rear, so it’s a good idea for other players to keep enemies off of the flanks. The APC has huge blind spots in its firing angles unless a full team of four are manning all the turrets. The rocket launchers in Helldivers come with a support pack which carries all the spare ammunition. The player using the rocket launcher can carry the support pack themselves and reload their weapon solo, but this takes several seconds during which they’re immobile. If another player carries the support pack and reloads the launcher for their friend when prompted, however, this only takes about half a second. A team of players who know what they’re doing can bring a truly impressive amount of firepower to bear, and are all the more impressive for the fact that this represents a lot of trust, communication and genuine teamwork between them.

The final thing that makes Helldivers a blast to play is the way that the game throws in small bits of chaos. Mainly these involve the inherent lack of precision when tossing out stratagem beacons crossed with the abundance and power of friendly fire. The finicky nature of a lot of this game’s mechanics at this point become points of failure, things that can and do go wrong when you’re under attack and just want to call in some more ammo, dammit! Small crises can cascade into larger crises, leading to panic and improvisation and the moments of triumph or disaster which make a good co-op action game shine. Two people reload at the same time, and suddenly cyborg dogs are eating your faces off. A stratagem beacon, thrown in the middle of a pitched fight, might bounce off a rock. Seconds later, your respawning friend arrives in a pod dropped from orbit and flattens your team’s APC. The guy piloting a mech suit might step backwards at the wrong moment and take off most of your health. One enemy patrol might wander in while you were dealing with a persistent tank, extending the engagement long enough for two more patrols to wander in, and then what was only a small, controlled engagement becomes a full on brawl. A turret might get placed just a few feet short of where you had meant to put it, and your friends were paying too much attention to the incoming wave of enemies to notice that they were between the turret and its targets. Like Magicka, the ease with which dead friends can be brought back means that death is mainly a source of comedy rather than a major setback. Like Magicka, it is when you’re teetering right at the edge of triumph or disaster with a dozen small things that could tip you either way that the game is really at its best.

A knife’s-edge of tension and a lot of balls to juggle isn’t required for all cooperative multiplayer games, but it certainly seems to be an important element of the shooter ones at least. Left 4 Dead’s Director AI was designed explicitly to keep players constantly on their toes, and the composition of later waves in Killing Floor is tuned to overwhelm the players unless they prioritize targets properly. The famous Nazi Zombies mode of the later Call Of Dutys kept players running around performing damage control by putting up barricades to keep the horde at a manageable level. Helldivers accomplishes the same thing by giving everyone a dozen things to do and get wrong at the same time, but compensates by keeping the price for each individual failure fairly small. A great mission in Helldivers is one in which each small crisis leads into another just as the previous one is resolved, and you don’t quite get the opportunity to recover and brace yourself for the next one. A great mission in Helldivers ends when the extraction shuttle lands on top of a giant alien bug and narrowly avoids crushing the player that the bug was about to eat. That player piles in just as another player dives out of the way of a badly placed strafing run and the third player sprints over from where he’d been taking cover next to his minigun turret and a pile of bug corpses. Finally, the shuttle takes off moments before the explosion of a nuclear bomb stratagem someone dropped just for the hell of it.

Tune in next time when Taihus thumps a rhythm somewhere out beyond the limits of sanity.

-Taihus “How about a nice cup of liber-TEA?!” @raincoastgamer

#Video Games #Gaming #The Oblivian Studios #Oblivian Studios #Raincoastgamer #A Rain-Coast Gamer's Ramblings #Game Ramble #Review #reviews #ramble #Helldivers #Magica #Arrowhead #Arrowhead Studios

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turquoisedragonmaster · 7 years

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Here have a bunch of my Transformers OC’s. If you wanna draw them feel free I guess. Just credit me.

NAme: Inkjet

Gender: Mech

Species: Cybertronian

Altmode: Black 2017 Mazda MX-5 Miata

Faction: Autobots

Appearance: Inkjet is a smaller, somewhat round bot, with a completely black frame. He has blue optics and his headlights are yellow and function as his way of speaking. His neck is scarred and mangled, as he was tortured by the Decepticons, which caused him to lose his voice.

Personality: Inkjet is not much of a fighter, and he prefers to let others fight. He is emotionally connected to a human named Ruth, and will protect her at all costs. Curious about human culture, he enjoys listening to the radio and communicates through morse code or his radio.

Special Features: Mangled neck, Autobot symbol on left shoulder

Weapons: Tattoo needles, Pulse Cannon

Other:

-I was really worried he’d be too much like Bumblebee but he’s not

-Soft boy

-He’s a sweetheart

-He still believes there's good in Decepticons despite what they did to him

-He’s a member of Team Screenshot (Which consists of him, Feedback, Teal, Turquoise, Spectrum and Slickshift)

-Too pure for this world

-Help him

-Amazing tattoo artist, he was in very high demand

-His morse code is normally slow but when he gets scared or excited it goes really fast and nobody understands it except for Ruth (She has like… Cybertronian enhancements that allow her to understand it)

-His favorite Earth animal is the Snapping Turtle (WHY)

NAme: Feedback

Gender: Mech

Species: Cybertronian

Altmode: Orange Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4

Faction: Former Decepticon, Currently an Autobot

Appearance: A broad shouldered, rather tall mech, his orange plating is bright against gray undertones, along with doorwings. Numerous scrapes and scars. His optics are purple.

Personality: Feedback is nervous around others, his past makes him think he’ll hurt anyone. Massively overprotective, he fights with little control, and has psychological issues. A lot of them.

Special Features: Autobot symbol is clearly overlaid over the Decepticon one of his left doorwing.

Weapons: Dual pulse blasters, stasis dagger

Other: GAYYYYY

-Kinda an asshole

-He trusts nothing except Team Screenshot

-Which is like trusting a mamba

-His nervousness makes him trigger happy and that makes Teal nervous

-Cannot be trusted around explosives

NAme: Turquoise

Gender: Femme

Species: Cybertronian

Altmode: Turquoise Carrera GT

Faction: Autobot

Appearance: Turquoise is not an extremely big femme, nor is she small. SHe is actually reasonably sized, and you probably wouldn’t notice her if she wasn’t BRIGHT TURQUOISE. She had doorwings, which move constantly. Her optics are dark blue.

Personality: Derp master extreme. Accidental badass, who is super smart but talks/acts without thinking. Her underlying aggressiveness is undermined by her insane loyalty.

Special Features: Autobot symbol on chest

Weapons: Sword, double mini blasters

Other: Smokequoise. Turqstorm. Jazzquoise. SHIPS

-Has a huge dumb crush on Jazz in every universe ever

-Smokescreen and her are more platonic than anything

-Teal and her are extremely close (TOUCH HIM AND I'LL MURDER YOU)

-She’s an okay person

-Loves Earth music and Animals

-She likes using the groundbridge to go places and see different animals.

-Ratchet thinks she’s crazy

-Has ADHD

-Her front left tire falls off hen hit just right. She keeps saying she’ll get that fixed but she never does.

-She fishes in her spare time.

-She caught a shark once (In Australia)

-She has an alligator she keeps in the garage’s basement. His name is Godzilla.

-She has a dog too, his name is Smokey

-She tries to flirt with Jazz but he’s oblivious.

-Whenever Jazz comes around she blushes super hard and tries to keep calm and fails

-OMFG REPTILES

-She loves reptiles with a passion and protects them

-She’s a cryptid among poachers it’s just like this giant blue robot comes out and kicks their butts and takes the animals

-Nobody believes them b/c she has an EMP generator so they can’t get pictures ;3

Name: Teal

GEnder: Mech

Species: Cybertronian

Faction: Autobot

Altmode: Teal 2007 GMC Topkick 4x4 Pickup

Appearance: Teal is FREAKING HUGE, rivalling Optimus in size. He is quite bulky, looking very fierce despite the fact he’s not a fighter. He. like Turquoise, had doorwings and blue optics.

Personality: Teal, like his spark-twin Turquoise, is easily distracted. He is quite powerful, but prefers to leave the fighting to others. He is insanely loyal, and very aggressive when those he cares about are threatened

Special Features: Autobot symbol on chest

Weapons: Twin pulse cannons, Warhammer

Other:

-loves birds

-So much. Birds are the greatest

-Birds love him too. At any given time there's at least three birds hiding in his plating

-Sometimes he opens his doors in alt mode and sparrows fly out and Ratchet screams

-A big soft man

-Highly protective of his little sister (Even though she’s the older one)

-Makes weird squeaky noises

-Loves tractor pulls and cows and just being in rural areas

-He’s so gentle it’s amazing

-Ratchet came out to the back of the garage to see him in recharge in a field surrounded by cows with birds perched all along his shoulders and was like ‘Teal why are you like this’

-Teal regrets everything he did as a warrior but the birds make him feel better about himself.

- ‘Turquoise what the fUck’

The twins make fun of Ultra Magnus constantly like the giant children they are

Name: Spectrum

GEnder: Mech

Species: Cybertronian

Faction: Autobots

Altmode: Turquoise and white F1 racecar

Appearance: In build, Spectrum is a lot like Turquoise, small, with aerodynamic plating and the family doorwings. He is white with turquoise racing stripes and biolights on his doorwings edges. His optics are bright green.

Personality: Literally the stereotypical ‘cool dude’. He says things like ‘totes rad’ and ‘YOLO’ and fingerguns a lot. He annoys everyone.

Special Features: Autobot symbol on his lower abdomen (Like Bumblebee)

Weapons: Twin laser pistols.

Other:The Bluetwin’s cousin. Do Cybertronians have cousins?

-Legendary weirdo

-What the fuck

-I love his design tho

Name: Bonebiter

GEnder: Mech

Species: Cybertronian(?)

Faction: Decepticons

Altmode: Off Road vehicle of unknown make

Appearance: Bone takes the form of a hyena, with spines creating a bushy mane on his back and large, powerful fangs. He is silver with darker grey accents and red optics.

Personality: Bonebiter is the literally epitome of being a jerk. He’s mean, crude, teases both friend and foe, and is rude and sarcastic, even to those who he KNOWS could beat the shit out of him. He makes horrible snide comments about EVERYTHING, and he’s unbearable.

Special Features: No robot mode, Decepticon symbol on right side (In hyena and vehicle modes)

Weapons: Extremely strong jaws, claws

Other:

Name: Blizzardburst

GEnder: mech

Species: Cybertronian

Faction: Decepticons

Altmode: F-16 fighter jet

Appearance: Blizzard is white with pale blue accents on his torso and wings. A rather lithe seeker, he had red optics with orange speckled in them.

Personality: Cold, harsh and brutally effective, he has no qualms with killing, or changes in leadership. In fact, all the otehr Decepticons are afraid of him, with the exceptions of Soundwave and Megatron. Even Bluebolt gives him a hasty respect.

Special Features: Decepticon symbol on wings

Weapons: Rocket launchers, ice missiles (Like TFA Blitzwing)

Other

Name: Slickshift

GEnder: Mech

Species: Cybertronian

Faction: Autobot

Altmode: Diesel Truck. A Blue one. With sparkles.

Appearance: Slick is around the size of Ultra Magnus, so is by no standards small. He’s a big buff dude, with kind green optics.

Personality: Cinnamon roll. He’s a sweetheart,and all of Team Screenshot will MURDER you if you so much as look at him wrong. He’s not much of a fighter, and is actually a bit of a crybaby

Special Features: TALL BOY, Autobot symbol on chest

Weapons: Mace

Other: Poor baby

Name: Fasttrack

GEnder: Mech

Species: Cybertronian (Former Stunticon)

Faction: Decepticon

Altmode: Green F1 Race Car

Appearance: He’s a skinny lime green asshole with bright fucking red optics.

Personality: He’s a jerk. That’s it. He is rude to everyone, literally gives nobody respect, not even MEgatron, and its remarkable he follows orders.

Special Features: Weird fin things on his arms, Decepticon logo on chest

Weapons: Twin energon blades

Other: he’s totally crushing on blizzard but blizzard gives no fucks

Name: Cobalt

Gender: Femme

Species: Cybertronian

Faction: Autobot (Former Decepticon)

Altmode: f-22 Fighter Jet and Dodge Viper

Appearance: Cobalt is dark blue (Although not navy, just normal blue) with wings and pedes not unlike seekers. She is set like a sports model, although some Seeker traits do shine through, most notably in her wings, pedes and helm.

Personality: Cobalt can be quiet when around strangers, although when she is comfortable she is loud and energetic. She is very very smart, and creative, although she does have problems with anger.

Special Features: Autobot logo on chest (Cockpit/hood)

Weapons: Katana and throwing stars (She’s a fucking ninja)

Other: Transformsona (Besides the twins)

Name: Replicator

Gender: Mech

Species: Cybertronian

Faction: Autobot technically (His methods are…. questionable)

Altmode: DNA Extractor (OR CNA)

Appearance: Replicator, through some serious work on his own frame and weird circumstance, looks eerily like Perceptor. Although he has blue instead of red, and lacks the signature microscope features, the resemblance is uncanny.

Personality: Replicator will do anything in the sake of his research, although he does have a conscious and morals, so he hasn’t done anything too horrendous. Yet. He tends to be a total jackass to everyone, whines constantly, and is a complete coward. So yeah. Annoying.

Special Features: He can extract and replicate CNA, Autobot symbol on shoulders

Weapons: None (he’s a useless sonofabitch)

Other:

Name: Carboncopy

GEnder: Mech

Species: Dinobot

Faction: Autobot (Reluctantly)

Altmode: Allosaurus (NOT A T REX DAMMIT)

Appearance: He looks like Grimlock. That's it, he looks like Grimlock. He has tattoos on his tail, courtesy of Ink. (They’re dinosaur bones)

Personality: An angry, bratty giant child, he complains that ‘I AM NOT GRIMLOCK’ so often it’s probably burned into his processor. He blames Replicator for all his problems.

Special Features: Autobot symbol on chest

Weapons: Jaws, tail, grabby hands of DEATH

Other:

#transformers oc #transformers

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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The best games are a slow steady learning process.

They teach and guide while they entertain and challenge. They push players to improve steadily — to master a mechanic not by forcing you to scale a metaphorical wall, but by compelling you to climb a series of metaphorical steps.

This does not necessarily mean they have great tutorials — indeed, many games with awesome learning curves throw you straight into the experience proper. Nor does it mean that they have to dumb down their design. It's simply a matter of crafting progression systems that allow the player to get a handle on the fundamentals early and then to grow and improve at every stage after that.

It's not easy to pull this off. To give you some guidance as to how you can execute a brilliant learning curve, we asked several designers to tell us what games they think do it well.

None of the seven examples that follow are easy games, but all of them meter their difficulty with a well-considered learning curve.

From the moment the player wakes up in protagonist Chell's minimalist living quarters, Portal gently prods her forward. As Global Game Jam co-founder and Rochester Institute of Technology assistant professor Ian Schreiber notes, "the entire game is basically a tutorial on how to beat it, except it expertly frames the learning as gameplay." Portal challenges by crafting puzzles around new mechanics and new applications of existing mechanics.

It allows all the time players need to get comfortable with the controls or to think about how to solve the next puzzle, and it scales the difficulty by simply incrementing the complexity.

What you learn in completing one puzzle is needed to figure out the next one, and you have environmental cues that indicate what you need to learn or do (though not how to do it). Some cues are subtle such as the position of sentry turrets, while others are obviously instructional like the warning signs at the entrance to each test chamber. And thanks to these cues there's a clear progression from using portals to walk through a wall to using them for high-speed platforming.

TAKEAWAY: You can simultaneously teach and challenge players at the same time if you weave the learning experience into the environment and level design.

All of the Burnout games do a fine job of introducing faster cars and tougher races and challenges at a comfortable pace. But one deserves special praise.

"I absolutely loved Burnout 3," says Corey Davis, design director at Rocket League developer Psyonix. "The pace of acquiring more powerful cars lined up really well with my mastery of the boost system, crashing opponents, and track knowledge."

Each new car is just the right amount faster and stronger than the previous one to maintain an even challenge level and not pull the player out of their depth. The crafted tracks and frantic high-speed tussles with rival racers grow more intense as the player progresses, and there's a rewarding and fun experience for anyone to find — veteran racing junkies, casual fans, and newcomers alike.

TAKEAWAY: You need to constantly test players and push them to execute tougher maneuvers as they improve their mastery of the core mechanics, but there's a fine line to straddle here if you want to keep both inexperienced and experienced players engaged from start to finish.

Much like a real instrument, Guitar Hero offers an intensely satisfying learning curve. It arguably even outdoes a real guitar in this respect, as it provides more useful feedback and gave the player ways to play along to their favorite songs regardless of skill level — the chosen difficulty level affects the number of notes to play and fret buttons to hit. It also adds an extra layer of progression by dividing songs into a "setlist" of increasing difficulty — so the challenge ramps up song by song as well as by difficulty level.

Davis praises this design decision. "I never felt like it was cheap; it felt purely like I needed to get better," he says. And the feedback loops both on the screen during play and intrinsic to the challenge of mastering the twin difficulty systems combine beautifully with the simple joy of making music — of mastering hit rock songs.

TAKEAWAY: Multi-tiered learning curves can let players control their own challenge level and rate of progress, and also provide a clearer indication of how much harder the next stage will be.

To someone who's heard about but not played the infamously-difficult Dark Souls, it may seem like a strange inclusion in this list. But extreme challenge and a good learning curve are not mutually exclusive. "The difficulty escalates very nicely," says Red Hook Studios creative director Chris Bourassa.

"Just as you start feeling overwhelmed, you find yourself back in Firelink Shrine," he continues. "It's a clever use of the town hub as a thematic downbeat, and works like a chapter break in the game. As you catch your breath, you can look forward to a meaty jump in difficulty as you set off to the next area, followed by another smooth curve."

Cthulhu Saves the World designer Robert Boyd made a similar point in his 2012 analysis of Dark Souls' design

TAKEAWAY: High difficulty does not necessarily equate to a too-steep learning curve, as Dark Souls exemplifies.

Bourassa also praises the learning curve of real-time strategy/action-RPG hybrid Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Specifically, he was drawn in by its tension between threat and empowerment. It gives the player confidence to try things and to experiment with new combinations of strategies thanks to a steady trickle of loot and new units. "I always felt confident heading into the missions," says Bourassa, "even when that confidence was misplaced."

The smaller-scale structure of Dawn of War II's campaign missions in comparison to traditional RTS games helps, too. Short missions with small groups of units battling other small groups (and little or no base building) reduce the need to master micro-management and instead allow the player to learn and adapt as the situation demands. The skirmish multiplayer mode doesn't share this well-balanced learning curve, though, as it's too different to the campaign for knowledge transfer and new players tend to get annihilated.

TAKEAWAY: A good learning curve balances danger or challenge with player empowerment; it gives the player a taste of both failure and victory and makes either feel like a learning experience.

Ironcast is the rare genre-mashup game that gets the blended elements to fit together. It's a Puzzle Quest-inspired tile-matching puzzler with a touch of roguelite adventuring and steampunk-themed resource management and mech-bot warfare.

Bourassa notes that while it looks straightforward at first, it's actually a deeply layered experience. "They do a lot of interesting things with the mechanics at all levels," he says, "and I found the meta-game quite engaging."

The player gathers resources from the tile-matching mode, which they soon learn how to use to engage in full-on turn-based mech combat that involves a range of abilities and strategic and tactical decisions. If they lose a battle, it's game over, but certain upgrades and unlocked mech pilots remain so that they can still feel a sense of progress. All the game's complexity is metered out in such a way that you have time to get comfortable with new mechanics before your skill with them is tested. And the upgrades enable new strategies rather than simply incrementing the power of your weapons and shields.

TAKEAWAY: You can ease players into complexity and surprise them at the same time by starting simple then repeatedly upping the stakes and stripping back the layers underlying the gameplay systems.

The original Super Mario Bros remains a masterclass in game design, and a big part of that is the expert manner in which its difficulty ebbs and flows — a small spike at the beginning followed by a gentle upward curve that has additional spikes at the end of each of its eight worlds (as Mario nears and then battles the world boss).

It's also a great example of how to teach a player without tutorials. "It introduced most of the core concepts in World 1-1," says Schreiber. It didn't explicitly explain anything, but rather left the player to explore and discover the mechanics simply by trying things.

You may not go into the game knowing that enemies die when you jump on their heads and that blocks with question marks on them give coins or items (or what those items do), but you can stumble on these concepts within seconds and extend your understanding of how they work over the duration of the game.

TAKEAWAY: Classic games still hold great lessons in game design, and Super Mario Bros in particular is a shining example of how to quickly introduce the core concepts and then playfully explore their permutations over the rest of the game.

There's no point developing a great game mechanic if only a tiny percentage of players can figure out how to use it. If you're striving for challenge, be fair, and remember to allow players some time to acclimatize to their new-found skills. You need to both give your player the appropriate tools and teach them how to use these tools before you ask them to scale a cliff or make a seemingly-impossible leap.

If you're not trying to make a difficult game, remember that great learning curves should have small spikes along the way to challenge players and test their mastery of the mechanics or to introduce new mechanics.

Most importantly, consider that teaching people how to play your game is not just a matter of telling them what to do and then leaving them alone. Nor is it about micro-managing their experience. You need to let them play and experiment and to ensure that when they fail they can understand why. Mistakes and successes alike should improve their mental models of how your systems work. And they should drive your players to get better at your game, not to walk away.

Thanks to Corey Davis, Chris Bourassa, and Ian Schreiber for their help with putting this article together.

#IFTTT #Blogger