So now it's a sidescroller

Update?

The genre of the game doesn't matter, really. It's a narrative media, and after a long time it's now finally able to deliver some story. Even though the current setting is about a world in the process of a creation cycle, in other words, a half-done world.

So it's been a long time since the last post. The past few years it's been a programming fest, and without much graphical stuff to post, it's hard to come up with an interesting development progress post.
I've had unrelated day job (labor, farm) that it's getting tiring to make time to make games.
Coding is probably the last skillset I'll keep developing, and no more unrelated skills like construction. Self-sustainability stuff is always good though, and it IS a theme of the story too.

Now, I'll start taking coding(and other digital stuff) as a way to make a living. (Website, logo design, lets go freelance!) Unless I set up a donation like Patreon. If there's enough people willing to help fund this project, then I'll consider it.

Project:Spirits is part 1 of Godplay, focusing on the era of Spirits, before any sentient lifeforms establishing any kind of society. The spirits just exists, interacting with everything and taking with them the history of the flow of elements.

They're the one responsible for the movement of matter and energy. Thermodynamics, Fluid simulation, and Light/Dark scatters.
This part of the game is still under development, and in the above video, it's turned off completely. The amount of headache it's giving me is too much to keep going. The TerrainStat is mentioned in the vid, and that's just a part of it. The Atmosphere is related to fluid dynamics and I was making it from scratch without satisfying results.
Here's the unfinished Atmosphere:

The active balls move around due to buoyancy effectors(physics), and the blinking random colored lights are the content of each grid, doing computed flows(non physics).
Green is air, which is ideal gas proportion (Contains N, O2) mol mass 28
Cyan is water (not flowing yet, but holds in place as clouds), mol mass 18
Yellow is smoke, mostly CO2 or input of trees from surrounding grid. mol mass 44.
Fire is not a "Molecule", but a variable in each, determining the density.
This can't be a proper simulation, of course. Those balls are treated as balloons which won't expand in volume but can increase in density <--- VERY not realistic. But alas, what else can I do? Gotta figure out a balance between real physics and fun gameplay.


Burning FireWall takes the "Fuel" of the terrain. Items decompose to the ground, each have Water content, fuel, earth, and temperature, which transfers to the corresponding terrain.
The yellow balls (CO2), got some "field" to simulate dense areas overflowing with smoke.
I'm not sure how to extend this any further. Smoke generated in caves really doesn't "flow" as I expected, because air pressure of grids is simulated linearly, not really instantly to determine flow path.
Also, shapes of caves are not very "grid"-y...A cave above might take the grid below, although it's a different tunnel.

The Atmosphere development quickly became a development-hell, and the only way to actually finish it is to remake a lot of the other aspect of the game. I considered dropping this mechanics altogether...
Until I saw this, just recently:

http://www.jgallant.com/2d-liquid-simulator-with-cellular-automaton-in-unity/

Ok, maybe I'll base it off that.The current atmosphere IS cellular automata, apparently, but the rest of the environment is not suitable for it that it needs to compute a lot of other stuff to make it worthwhile. This one only handles flows between grids, while what I'm trying to do is use the grid as a "background" storage, and let the fireballs, projectiles, and such be physics based that's in the "frontground", until it's deactivated and recycled back to the background.

Anyways, I've decided to NOT continue with the atmosphere, at least not now. Currently ProjectSpirits is capable of delivering a story, and it's multiplayer. This simulation stuff are a bit too far off for me right now. If I'll ever gonna finish a game solo, I can't be making things too farfetched. I learned a lot, for sure, but I'm over learning and making things from scratch, when there are other published papers/gits that I can extend..

The story of Spirits is very dependant on the elemental simulation, so perhaps, it's not the time to finish this.
I'm gonna take what Spirits is now, and make a more RPG, story-driven, and a bit of multiplayer in it. Story telling, something I've been missing for so long, and the whole reason why I chose "game" as the media, from novel and comic and whatever else in the past.

The above vid is a showcase of what I can achieve without any paid assets. The 2 mentioned, PUN I don't even use the multiplayer in this vid. A* is a basic one without path movement type and node type, which I gotta extend myself to fit the movement method I used.
I needed to make a portfolio, and so I quickly wrapped up Spirits to make this vid. There are many things that I'd like to rework, mainly:
-the Physics based movement to CustomChar controller. This means I'll lose the ability to "push" each other over network, but there must be another, better way to do that.
-Dialogue system. The current one's made from scratch, and I don't know how I managed to pull it off through all this time with a half-thought up system. For this I'm gonna buy Dialogue System for Unity: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/ai/dialogue-system-for-unity-11672 It'll be worth it, especially the Cinemachine integration
-Cinemachine, well. The camera really does need work. Jittery chat bubble when moving to sides, just don't have time to fine tune these.
-AI and Pathfinding. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/ai/a-pathfinding-project-pro-87744 . Or not. Pathfinding for 2D sidescroller (with gravity) is not built-in in Unity, although I've achieved a working system already based from the free asset. 100$ is not cheap, and I do enjoy making the AI. I thought making a "run away" behavior would be hard, but turned out not really. Simple "move away" is easy, but Aron's A* claims it's got a different node lookup modes that allows for "keep searching until lands on an ideal node" function. Perhaps I can figure that out, but really, paid assets has got to be good, and you get the support.

I posted a job offer in UnityConnect some months ago when I was so busy with my day job and travelling/living in the mountains, barely got time to even be in the comp, and almost paid them to fix things up in Spirits. But all the problems I got are from my own implementation of the systems, and if I pay them 20$/hour (minimum), for 5 hours I could get a paid asset that is a good, finished, working system, and I get support further after. It's just worth more in the end, and the best part is, the asset is out there and other people are using and working with it. Compared to if I make everything from scratch, I can't really talk and find solution about my system because it's not public.

Well. That's that.
This blog got 3 parts, the Philosophy, the Development(this one), and the Story. The Story is still empty, and I can't wait to start posting there..
But for now, I need to get some freelance job. Never done this before, but seeing the jobs in UConnect, I think I can handle it. Don't know why I didn't start doing this way earlier, I would've learned much more and develop much related skills in game dev..
Well,
Cheers

Annapurna

I've never finished a game. All this time I'm stuck between trying to make something in 3D to help my friend's with their projects, and trying to finish my own game that would probably take years to finish. Somehow they just can't seem to work with each other.

I took a look at other people's first games, and they're mostly something simple like racing, sidescroll 2 player fighting game, and stuff like that.

I thought making an RPG was gonna be easy. I thought making my game idea smaller, from a super MMORPG with hundreds of features, to a single player RPG was the right decision. Well, it was the right decision, but not right enough.

An RPG was something I tried to make before, and as I learn the parts to make one, I find it's too much for a solo developer. Making a multiplayer online game is much simpler than something single player with AI for monsters/allies, among other reasons.

Fortunately I learned a lot from that. I've actually made all the parts to make an RPG, from item database to stats to a little bit of AI, but they're all sloppy because I didn't polish any of it.

The other thing I didn't do is to make an asset list, or in other words, managing my project.

I'm dedicating this year to work on the visual aspect of the game. It's much easier to see what the game really needs and when to stop adding (unpolished) features.

This post is gonna be about making that asset list, taking the visual arts into consideration.

Asset list:
6 characters paper scissors rock. Low poly, non-skinned, segmented, parented to joints and animate.
3 types Coconut tree
Ricefield
Pasar
Trees Flowers
Bali Beach hotel?

On progress:
Bringin tree
Annapurna warung tooned
Cat
Bamboo boat

That's roughly it. Now, about the game itself.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Annapurna/114960858639673

Annapurna is my friend's donation-based restaurant in Bali, Indonesia. I felt like making something that is both a game and a social media, for the people who have visited the restaurant and are already back to their own country.

A sketch of the whole map:

I can't be bothered making buildings and advertisement billboards like how the city is actually like. Some major landmarks that I'd like to keep in there are shown there: Ricefields, Pasar Sindhu(market), Bringin(Banyan) tree, flower and pretty plants road(Jalan Hangtuah), and Bali Beach hotel in the background(I'll have to talk to them how they'd want me to depict their hotel. Right now I'll focus on other stuff).

Outside, the gameplay is just a typical free for all pvp side-scroll.

 

Inside is non-combat area, so people just chat or you talk to NPC.

The 6 characters are the generic classes that players play as, but there'll be additional custom characters like Ben(the owner of Annapurna) who will play as, well, Ben, when he's online. When he's offline, however, his character will just chill inside the restaurant as NPC. Other players can talk to this character and get whatever info such as when is the next live music event in the warung, what's tonight's special, etc.

More characters will be added talking about their own stories and place, and more maps will be added as well other than just Sindhu Beach.

Some stuff that I already started, just need polishing.

The bringin tree

Bamboo boat that's gonna be at the beach.

Annapurna warung itself. I got the whole warung with correct measurements, but gonna remake every furniture so that it's more, uhh, cartoony?

Some bamboo furnitures.

They're all past works that I've done for lots of different stuff, but with this idea, I can actually make use of all of them in a single, simple game.

The only part that I'm still confused is deciding the art-style. I'll have to decide, for instance, the playable characters' stylized proportions.

The concept art for the playable characters, as generic classes:

Before I make any cool looking, complex characters with long backstory, I have to make some of the "normal" ones. The playable characters that normal players get to play are these guys, trying to put Balinese influence whereever I could. Don't pay too much attention to the head and face, I'm still struggling with their proportions and didn't even consider how the face are gonna be like yet.


=====Beyond this line things are gonna get technical====

I've made several anime proportion head in 3D and they're a big confusion to figure out. Their huge eyes contributes a lot to this.
This time, however, I'm gonna do things low-poly style. Something like this:

Yes, yes, I'm experimenting again instead of doing what I know already works. But this is low-poly, so this is for the sake of doing less work (but more precision) for me.

In the end it'll probably look like good ol' FF7 stuff.

FF7 made their character mesh in segments(most noticable on Tifa's knees). I already decided to make things low-poly, but weight-skinning them to joints to a mesh that I know will deform horribly is not how I'm gonna do it.

Segmented body parts + cel-shade texturing(solid colors) is how I'm gonna do it. With solid colors, I'll avoid issues like shown on Tifa's knees.

The other thing I'll have to do is modify each vertex' normal direction so it gets lighting differently while maintaining the shape.

The body parts will be parented to the joints, which will be animated normally, getting both IK and FK functionality in animation. As long as all characters have the same hierarchy, transferring animations should also be easy.

Quite a few things to try out, and I'll probably have to learn yet another software(XSI/Softimage for vertex normal projection thing), but if this means I can model the mesh without worrying about deformation, AND I can avoid doing skin-weighting, then this sounds too good to be true(but only for low-poly works)!

Lastly, the face.
The flat face + sticker polygon with face expression textures is probably how I'm gonna do it. There's just no other way.

Even though I've made the concept art of the characters, I'm still not sure if that's the proportion I'm gonna go for. A more "squared" proportion(something like 3 heads tall like Ashe above) is definitely gonna be easier for setting up the hitbox collider when I deal with coding later, but if an adult is 3 heads tall, how do I introduce younger/older characters? I'll have to figure out a suitable proportion again later...

Before I start planning too far ahead, I'll stop the post here and get back to it when things are working out.

Character profile: Kat

(Technical stuff rant can be found at the end of this post)

So there she is, the imaginary friend of Luciano, Kat. Her design is based on my cat a long time ago, with the crown to emphasize how much of a princess she was.

Her role in Luciano's mind is as the one who moves the body. In short, she's the brain, the logic, the one who sits in the mind reading a book with the title: Luciano's muscle memory. The brain is a muscle, isn't it? All the logics and knowledge are therefore stuck in your brain because you've "thought" that way before, therefore you memorized the way the brain's muscle flexes.

All in all, Kat is the one who the players will be playing as. The game will have a very big psychological aspect to it, in which you(as Kat) has to decide what to do based on the body(Luciano)'s wants, and at the same time, has to pass the morality test performed by Doc(a dog), which is this other imaginary friend.

Doc will be coming soon, I can't wait to make him.

Because Kat is the more significant imaginary friend(simply because the player is playing as her, within Luciano's mind), she gets some character stats that the player can't freely adjust. Here it is:

Str:99
Agi:99
Int:99
Vit:99
Dex:99
Luk:99

Passives: Dash, Wall jump, Stealth.
Actives: All magic spells in the game.

Seems pretty imbalanced, eh? Well, you only literally play as Kat in Luciano's Dream, which happens after every episode or whenever you choose to sleep. Any other time, you play as Kat, controlling Luciano's body, in the game's reality.
The Dream only acts as the time when the game goes into mission briefing part, or contemplating some stories, and so on.

The other way you can play as Kat is when you Daydream, that is when you choose to stand still and gives up Luciano's control, and start moving around in reality as Kat. When this mode is active, Kat can only go to places where it's within Luciano's view.


So that's it about Kat's character profile. I will now rant about some technical stuff.

First of all, working with low poly characters is insane. Kat is at 2238 polys, 510 of which are her fur+eyelash+whiskers.
The body is 1130 polys. With just this much, she has to bend and do some funky acrobatics.
I made a big mistake on joint length as well. The bone from the pelvis to knee, and knee to ankle, has to be fairly equal. If not, your model can't sit properly. I redid the joint chains, but it's still not quite right.

I realized a proper joint chain is not the only thing. For a quadruped, the thigh area deforms so much that it's probably a good idea to add a few more edge loop there. That part is basically a super stretched piece of skin that gets pulled by the knee. I was banging my head as I weight paint that part, but now I learned enough to do better next time.

I'm lucky Kat is basically a ball of fur. When I make a normal cat, however, I think I'll need to adjust the mesh again...


Another thing was, I was planning to upload a video of Kat in-game, with free movements as I go around the game scene. But as I was importing and arrange the animation clips, I realized the character movement script is very programmatically wrong. Right now I have a bool check for when the character is running/not, grounded/not, and so on. While I was doing the monster AI, I was making State Machines, and I guess this is the time I go back to some old codes and re-make everything based on that single state paradigm.
The same method that gets called on each transition of the character's movement state can then be also used to trigger the animation. Right now, it's a mess, and working with Unity's Mecanim will mean having to write separate methods again...

So yes, that's what I'll be doing next: fix character movement states.
After that, make a proper demo game in the dream state, and then you can try out the game, as Kat!
Awesome?
Awesome!

Cheers

Gameplay - Skill Variance

Before I get started with the title, let me post a picture showing the update so far.

The second prototype, focusing on the RPG elements.
Finished features:
Elemental spells system and skill template.
2 modes, cursor mode and FPS mode. (Left ctrl to toggle between the modes).
Targeting, HUD, bunch of windows with stats and icons that does things accordingly + various methods of interactivity.
All stats that is shown in the screen shot works. MAtk (magic attack) affects the strength of your spells, MDef decreases incoming spells, vit affects max hp, dex affects cast speed, agi affects movement speed.
Items work, consumables and equipments.
Damage mechanics affected by stats, element of the spell/the target, various application of damage method(projectile, apply to target, area, cursor or crosshair targetting, etc)
Etc

Remaining to do list:
NPC and npc dialogues
Quest, story progression elements
Figuring out saving game method
Melee system
Moving NPC and monster AI (wish me luck on this one...)

I'll release the 2nd prototype when everything is done and I've put a simple "complete game"(that consists of some battle, some picking up items, some NPC talking, some monster/NPC navigating and doing stuff, and a quest).
So, since I'm not gonna release it yet, and I happen to need an input about this certain problem I'm having now. Just writing down the problem instead of just thinking about it in your head often solves it, but if by the end of this writing I still can't make the decision, then I guess I'll work on something else and leave this here for a while.

The issue I'm having is about a certain feature:
The Adjustable Skills!(Name to be decided)

First of all, I don't like how most skills/spells in games have very bad progression. I'm not saying all games are like that, but it pains me to skill up my Bash to max skill level, just to find out, by lv 30, I get this other thing called Greater Bash.

Greater Bash
Description: This skill is just there to make you regret skilling up your bash.
Requirement: Lv 1 Bash.

Ragnarok Online 1(on which this game will be very influenced from) has simple skills, some can be skilled up to lv 10, some up to 5, etc. But they let you use lv 1 Fire Bolt even if you have maxed it.
This means you'll use lv 1 Fire Bolt to go around, lure some non-aggressive monsters with its fast cast speed, then after you've made 10 monsters chase you, you then cast a strong AoE(area of effect) skill to finish all of them.
This is basic mobbing method in that game.

The versatility of being able to use the Lv 1 version of the skill opens up many nice, situational skill use, and they've added that level of gameplay from a single skill.

Other example from the game:
Casting lv 1 Increase Agi gives less agi stat bonus, but still gives the same movement speed bonus.
Casting Improve Concentration gives less buff stat, but it has an additional effect of revealing invisible units around you. And it cost a lot less to cast.
Provoke has a +Atk and -Def effect on the target. This effect is of course less on lower level of the skill, but if all you're doing is to, well, provoke them, then Lv 1 of it is enough.
And so on.


Well, I'm implementing my version of it.

The Idea is to have a slider that you adjust(or leave it at the default 1, or max) before you drag the skill icon to the hotkey and use it.

Skills have a cast time. A basic Light spell called LightBeam have 1 second cast time. This means, after you've assigned LightBeam to the hotkey, assign it to your left click, you have to press it for 1 second before releasing it. If you release it before 1 second, the cast will fail, and you'll still lose the corresponding ether cost while casting it.

I want every adjusted version to be controlled by a slider. So it can be on the extreme right or left. I call the right version, 1, and left, 0. You can also have it at 0.5 or whatever else in between.
For any of these adjusted version, however, I'm limiting the number of parameters to be adjustable to 2 parameters. This way each skill will have its own typical use variety. If there's another variant of the adjustable, I can just make another skill for that. Definitely with another name that fits more with the adjustability.

Some examples:
LightningBolt 1: 1x damage, 1x ether cost.LightningBolt 0: 2x damage, 3x ether cost.

StormGust 1: 1x damage, 1x field area radius.
StormGust 0: 0.1x damage, 10x field area radius.

FireBall 1: 1x projectile size, 1x projectile splash radius(on hit).
FireBall 0: 0.1x projectile size, 5x projectile splash radius(on hit).

I use "1" as default and "0" as the "modified" because anything multiplied by (or to the power of) 1 is the number itself. Anything to the power of 0 is 1, and anything multiplied by 0 is 0, so "0" has more "changing the number" taste.
Of course, this is also not final. Maybe "0" can be "Bright" variant, "1" can be "Dark" variant, or Left-Right, and so on. But I reckon if you're gonna talk about something in between, you'll be saying "Oh, I killed this boss with Thunder.3(Thunder point 3), FlashMotion.8, and a bunch of SummonFireSpirit.0. Gets the job done." This sounds cooler, IMO.

The type of parameters that can be adjusted are the following(and I'm still open for suggestion for this):

• Damage(of course), or main number value: Typically with etherCost. More ethercost mode, more damage multiplier.
  3x ethercost, 2x dmg.
  1x ethercost, 1x dmg.
• Duration, if it's a buff/debuff. Or field duration(like StormGust, Whirlwind, Earthquake, etc).
• Projectile size/lifetime.
• Field/Projectile splash range radius
• 2nd or 3rd effect value. This is like poison, movement speed slow, burn, stun, etc
• Cast time
• Ether cost (per 1 charge).

And finally, the problem I'm having.
Which is about the Cast time, and Ether cost.

The dex stat plays the role of determining the cast time of the skill before you start casting.
If LightBeam have 1 second cast time and you have 40 dex, you'll end up only having to hold casting for 0.6 seconds before reaching the minimum cast time. (This means, 100 dex is instant castable).

Every 20 dex also gives a point in CastSpeed, which multiplies the speed of your charge. At 100 dex, holding cast for a second will charge your spell by 5 charge. At 0 dex, 1 second of cast gives 1 charge.
Charge determines skill power, depending on the skill.Also, you can charge however long you want(might change this later). Basically, an over-charge.
Ex:
LightBeam does light element damage of (your Magic Atk * the charge).
FireBall does fire damage upon hit of (your Magic Atk * the charge). Projectile speed is (20 * the charge). Also applies burn damage of (1/5 of initial damage(can be further reduced)), for (the charge) seconds.

Anyway, right now I've intentionally have a very bad and pointless combination for LightBeam:
1: 0.2 ether cost, 1 second cast speed.
0: 1 ether cost, 0.3 cast speed.

So you can either do many small hits every 0.3 seconds that cost a bit more when you charge, or something that you need to cast for 1 second before releasing, that cost less ether when you charge.

Problem 1: LightBeam0 doesn't give me bonus damage or anything. This difference only matters if I want to shoot small hits, but these small hits are all at 0.3 charge each. I can charge this even further, to 1 second, and I'll shoot something as strong as the LightBeam1 variant, with less ether cost.
If I make the difference larger, maybe LightBeam1 has 5 second cast speed and LightBeam0 still 0.3, then it'll make a difference. But really, would you be shooting a 0.3 charged LightBeam all the time? Since it doesn't give any damage bonus or whatever other kind of effect, the only time I see this being used is if you're luring. A very sad fate for a skill design...

Problem 2: The other thing about adjusting cast speed is, what if you have 100 dex already? This means you'll get 5 charge per second, and you want to charge as long as you want and able to release any spell anytime you want. At this point(or earlier), you wouldn't ever want to use LightBeam0. You want to use LightBeam1 all the time because of its lesser ether cost per charge.
The thing is, I don't want any skill (and the variants of it) to completely be neglected just because you reach higher level. It's against my "everything have its use and moments" philosophy.

Problem 3: All in all, bad combinations. I want every (or most) skills to have this variance system, and not have any scenario where they're completely useless. Of course you wouldn't be using LightningBolt0 all the time when you want to also conserve ether if you're in some dungeon without much ether regen methods(check above again what's LightningBolt). You'll still use LightningBolt0 if you're in PvP, or fighting a boss with a party that has some way to replenish your ether, for instance. I'm confident in the usability of LightningBolt throughout the whole game.
Should I just remove the Cast Speed from the list of parameter you can adjust with the variance slider? Or can anyone make me a scenario where this will be useful throughout the game?

The only time when I think this can be nicely designed is if you're a non-dex stat character. Say, a pure support priest. A typical stat for a pure support priest would probably be, at lv 99, uhh, 90 int, 70-90 vit, some dex. (Or to make it simpler, you have 99 int and vit. There!)
I will then have to design a skill that has a long cast time, with a cast time variance. Maybe...

Barrier
 name = "Barrier";
desc = "Casts a barrier that breaks after blocking (charge) number of attacks, or after (charge*5) second." ;
aimType = AimType.Target;
castType = CastType.Button;
release = ReleaseType.Apply;
element = SpiritType.Ether;
Variance 1 = 5 second cast time, 1 ether cost
Variance 0 = 1 second cast time, 5 ether cost

...

Yeah, that's pretty good. I can imagine if it's a pretty well-planned scenario, the priest would cast Barrier1 to allies before starting the battle.
In another scenario, if there's a boss suddenly showing up and about to kill you/your ally(that is low on health), you can probably cast Barrier0, that costs way more ether, but you need that emergency 1 time damage block of destiny.


At this point, maybe I should rename the title to "Cast speed mechanics dilemma", because it seems only the cast speed is having the real issue here. But well, I need to explain this mechanics sooner or later, and maybe you readers can give me some skill ideas(and the variance if you'd like) after reading all this. It seems like all I have to do is to keep in mind the CastTime variance is not for skills that I know will definitely be used by high-dex class.

It'll probably be a lot easier to just put a link to the game here and let everyone test it out. But no, I haven't put any form of user-tutorial or anything in it. Not all of the features are intuitive/easy to understand, simply because there is no effort put in to graphics at all. Zero.
I'll go finish the rest of the features, make a 20 minute playtime single RPG game, make written tutorials and some effects, then I'll post it in.

If you read this until the end and all you get is a headache, I apologize, and I will personally make and give you a Paracetamol item, in game.

A diary

If a project can write a diary, then the reader would see it as the project’s Log.

… Right? I’m not really sure, actually.

Since I think having a diary is a good practice, I decided to dedicate the writing of one specifically for the topic of The Godplay Project.

Note: The following notes are required to fully understand this, since I will write this not with the intention of it being readable by other people, except myself. Think of this as a delusional conversation with the creators of Godplay(which is now just myself, hopefully there’ll be many later)

The Godplay Philosophy, the following notes on my desktop: “this”, “codenote”, “game1”, “game2”, “game3”, “GPN”, “The priest notes”, “answers”, “Are you There”, most notes from the directory: Godplay, the following notes from my Ipod: “Id notes”, “Godplay project”, “novel notes”, “Godplay skill”, and some more notes that I may have not put into words yet.

The reason this diary, or LogNote, starts, was because I thought I shouldn’t remember every single thought around and think about it when I eat, when I walk around, when I do whatever other shit. I can look back at it later, and add or re-think about it later.

That made me decide I should make a diary, which would perfectly fit the theme of my second blog.

Anyways, since this is my first time officially making a diary, I’ll probably sound very stereotypical when I address Mr Diary.

Again… Right? All diary entries start with “Dear Diary,” right? I can’t be bothered to actually check, so I’ll start however I want.

Today, I watched Iblard Jikan. I haven’t really watched anything in the past 3 years or so(nor read books, watch the news, and so on), so this one was pretty new. I looked it up a bit to find out afterwards that some tags its genre as a Visual Anime.

Basically, it’s 30 minutes long, full of (very awesome) pictures, mainly with Fantasy + Organic Technology as its theme. The story(that I want to mention, and at least to how I perceive it) is portrayed from this flying non-talking camera/narrator that goes around the fictional universe, starting from the “in the middle of nowhere(at least for humans)” scenes(the first scene literally has only 1 human in the picture), moving picture per picture to a more populated areas. By the climax of the movie, it’s focused on super hi-tech big cities, that still stayed true to the Organic Technology.

I can easily compare the places there to the real world equivalent, with the metropolitan at near the end as Jakarta(seeing how many tall buildings there are), but in a way I really like. So basically it’s a Jakarta that I would love to live in.

Watching this also game me an idea of how to present my completely Heavy Fantasy fictional world to the audience. In here, the way Iblard arranged the story from the villages to the big, populated city(and at the very last, back to the country-side), successfully made me understand the totality of this universe. I guess this method of presenting a completely alternate universe is best. I mean, I wouldn’t start the scene in a Jakarta-like city of the world.

The second thing about today is these stuff:

Isn’t that cute? Those are made of insect parts or flowers, or… many other things. The artist’s name is Cedric Laquieze.

So, what if you put together parts from animals and make some awesome (fictional)creature from it? That’s what the creator did with these works.

For game1(the Garden of the Gods), you’ll play as an elemental spirit(Light, Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, or Dark). I was thinking a lot about them having some kind of mask to show the level, or strength, of the player.

I was already thinking of making equippable items shown on the simple Fire(or whatever) of the player, which would mostly be the keratins of insects, left over conch, leaves, flowers, or anything. I just haven’t found a good reference for how to make that interesting. After seeing this, however,  I have to say this is the best reference for this idea that I’ve seen so far.

There’s many kinds of these works on her blog, I’ll only put one more there on the bottom.

This also made me think: if Humans focus more on the growth of our Physical strength, it would be justifiable to actually make use of shells from dead turtles, have immune enough skin to wrap our skin with big leaves that may have caused us rashes if we weren’t, and many more scenarios. This way, we would also NOT want these creatures that naturally construct these beneficial shells or whatever, to extinct, and will act accordingly to ensure the survival of all evolution process from all species.

Sadly, we don’t. Instead of making use of what’s already there, we whine “Omg are you kidding? Turtle shells are heavy!”, or “Omg are you retarded? Even though this kind of leaf is super effective in being insect repellant, it itches me!”. Then we make a synthetic version of what would make a good hard material, and over-refine and extract(read: exploit) only the good things of certain plants for just our benefit.

Anyways, here’s the other picture.

Imagine playing as those awesome stuff. Oh, I think I want my left hand to be sharp, and my right to be like a shield. I’m left handed and I like to slice stuff with a shield. I think I’ll get that scissor-like mantis arm and a sea-oyster as my shield. Oh, I like this whole pineapple skin I just found. It’s empty and I can put, like, stuff in it. It’s an awesome bag and if anyone tries to steal it, they better not mind the “sharp-thing-to-grab”-bag they’re snatching.

That could be an interesting product design, no?

Cheers and good night.