hey!! sorry to hijack this post, but there are a bunch of ways you can make videogames without knowing shit about computers!!
for starters, there’s Twine, which is fucking great for making all kinds of interactive experiences (it’s what Crystal Warrior Ke$ha was made in so you KNOW it’s good) at all skill levels (i picked it up and made a game in two minutes a few nights ago)
if you want a bit more involved experience there’s Inform 7 which is a simple language for text-based adventure games that reads like slightly-weird English and also relatively easy to learn
you can do some pretty fucking cool stuff with Unity (my personal engine of choice) but you may need to dig a bit farther to get at the good stuff. there’s lots of really good presets though (i made an entire game just mixing and matching pre-existing templates and adding in my own art, won an award at a game jam for that one) and if you want help the community’s pretty dang friendly from what i’ve seen!
this is just a taste of what’s out there from what i’ve seen, but there’s so many cool resources out there. if anyone wants help getting started, i’m around to give you a leg up on making something in the coolest, most unexplored art medium around!
I’m addin’ to this post because lowering the barrier to entry for making games is super important to me!!!! If y’all have any questions about making games, you’re welcome to come and ask! I made this list a while back with some friends, so it has some of the programs John already mentioned.
2D Editors:
GameMaker : Potential for pure drag-and-drop “programming”. It is recommended to read-up on the program’s functions to make good use of it. Good for prototyping. Uses its own language called Game Maker Language (GML) that is similar to a C language (e.g. C++ or C#). For both Mac and PC; free version available.
Construct2 : Drag and drop level editor that uses an “If-Then” event sheet structure for programming. Good for prototyping and for beginners. For PC; free version available.
GameSalad : Drag and drop with no code requirement. Good for programming. For both Mac and PC; free version available.
Solpeo : HTML5 based game engine for 2D and isometric game development. Some programming knowledge needed. Platforms supported: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 9+. Free version available.
Stencyl : Drag and Drop “programming,” templates you can edit the variables/values for.
Scratch : Lego-block-style coding platform by MIT; totally free and a great intro to thinking in code. Very kid-friendly and comes with a community site. Browser version available.
3D Editors:
Unity : 3D editor that creates 3D games. Can build games for browser, as an app, or for mobile devices (iOS and Android). For both Mac and PC; free version available.
UDK (Unreal Development Kit) : Full-fledged, highly advanced editor. Features a complete set of tools that go from level design to visual scripting to cut-scene creation. Uses it’s own programming language called Unreal Script that can be arranged with Kismet, a visual code editor. For Mac and PC; free.
2D Art/Animation Software:
GIMP : Free photo editing and digital painting software.
Easy Paint Tool SAI : Free digital painting software with a UI similar to Photoshop.
Mischief : Free digital painting software with an endless canvas.
3D Art/Animation Software:
Sculptris : From the company that created Zbrush, this free software is ideal for beginning 3D sculptors.
Maya : Animation, VFX, lighting, and rendering software.
Magical Voxel : Voxel Art (3D Pixel Art). Very intuitive and quick to pick up.
SketchUp : Architectural modeling software, great for creating 3D environments and buildings. Free version available.
Text-Based Games:
Twine : Create interactive text stories using Twine’s visual map system that links your game together. Easy to learn and use. End result is browser-based. For Mac and PC; free.
Quest : Interactive text stories that you can build in-browser.
Ren’Py : Create visual novels using a modified version of Python that reads like a combination of stage directions and a CYOA novel. For PC, Mac, and Linux; free.
Audio Resources/Editors:
Indie Game Music : This site offers free indie music with no need to worry about royalties or licenses.
Audacity : A free, open-source, cross-platform sound editor that allows you to record and arrange sound.
Super Flash Bros. : This site allows you to record theremin-like (8bit) sounds and export them as .wav files for your games.
Have you ever been trying to draw tiles on a wall or on the floor in perspective, but notice that after you’ve drawn them, they don’t look like they’re all the same shape or size?
Well here’s a tutorial on how to fix that.
Your picture probably looks like this, right?
Well, i’m here to tell you how to fix that…Let’s start out with your basics.
The gray line is the horizon line, and the black dot is your horizon line. These are essential for the first steps of perspective. Without these, your perspective may turn out wonky and just not flattering to the eyes. Right now we’ll work in One point perspective.
Now let’s pretend we’ll be drawing a hallway. Draw a vertical line where the edge of the wall is.
Now, from the tips of the bottom and top of your wall, you’re going to need to draw a line extending all the way to the vanishing point. If you’re working in photoshop you could either use the line tool, or shift+click. If traditional, you’ll need to use a ruler.
Now that we have the wall that’s in perspective, it’s time to draw the rest of the lines. here I’ve drawn the wall facing us that’s closest, the ceiling, the floor line, and the end of the hallway. ASSUMING that you are working in one point perspective, all vertical lines are straight and parallel to each other, and all horizontal lines are straight and parallel to each other.
Now here I have erased the lines that extended beyond the back wall, and found the center point of the edge of the left wall. From there, you draw an extended line just as before towards your vanishing point.
now make a vertical line where your first “tile” is.
now this may be a little hard to explain. Now you’re going to draw a line coming from the corner of the wall, through the corner where your line meets the tile you just drew, and all the way to the ground line.
You see where these two lines meet? you’re going to draw a vertical line to the ceiling from here.
Like so!
Now rinse and repeat! you should have perfectly even spaced tiles now! And if you have tiles on the ceiling
Just draw horizontal lines connecting to the vertical lines!
Now just erase anyhing you don’t need and…viola! Perfect tiles in perspective!!
Cursor*10 – little game where you have several “lives”. you use your cursor to navigate the floors, and when the time runs out, you go back to the beginning. however, the previous cursors will go through the same path they made before, thus allowing you to get further each time.
Daymare Town – creepy point and click game. very inky, interesting drawings. you have to find your way through (or perhaps out of) Daymare Town, which is inhabited by obscure prickly people.
Grid Game – there are a bunch of little circles. click one, and watch it rotate and set off a chain reaction. mindless distraction game.
Samsara Room – a strange escape game where you’re stuck in one room but pass through different dimensions to get out
Feed the Head – more like interactive art than anything. there are several different things to do in this game.
Factory Balls – a bit of a puzzle game. you have to paint a bunch of balls to match the model shown, using various options and paints.
Grow Nano Vol. 3 – one of my favorites of the Grow series. you have to click the options in the right order in order to make the sick person feel better. this one just warms my heart.
make sure to click the tags to find more games by the creators and companies and the rest of the games in the series!!!
I find Tonypa’s games to be simple, unique, and enjoyable. A lot of them involve patterns, colors, and matching, so they’re very calming as well.
some from me!!
deep thinking games with exploration themes…
6 differences – a pretty cool find the difference game that’s very atmospheric and somewhat soothing in the first levels, mostly takes place at night around a city, features sound effects and music and even moving cars down the highways. content warning for some surrealism and acid-trippy effects in the later levels (a person with a deer head, some kind of alarming music, the level’s walls moving as you look for the differences, etc – sometimes the level changes after you find all but one clue, and in one instance a train goes by rather suddenly and loudly, but it didn’t make me jump and i am sensitive to jump scares)
i can hold my breath forever – a game about exploring underwater caves in search of a friend. some references to drowning!
i wish i were the moon – short and sweet game about two people and a moon! clone things and move them around to get different endings :3
small words – a soothing platformed-style exploration game that lets you uncover different maps/pictures as you walk around
don’t look back – a creepy game based on the myth of orpheus and eurydice, this is a platformer-style game that has you going to the underworld to get your lover back. very atmospheric, but a slightly creepy atmosphere that (of course) references death, so take care
alight in dreams – during a dream you get wings, and explore the dream to find out about the history of a person who has never dreamed before. mentions death and suicide.
a house in california – explore an old house and learn its history, very atmospheric. can be a bit confusing for some, you may need a walkthrough.
silent conversation – a soothing game that makes levels out of passages of classic books; you win by toughing every word. not my preferred reading material, but the way the levels are built kind of force you to drink it all in stead of speeding through it.
games that are a bit creepy…
prior – you, a little box creature, wake without your memories in an unknown place. you must explore to find your family and figure out what happened before you woke. a dark game with multiple possibilities – can be a little creepy.
immorTall – an alien makes friends with a human family after crashlanding to earth. defend them as long as possible!
loved – a dark sort of game where you go through the levels deciding if you will choose to obey the voice giving you orders or defy it. in some casing obeying makes things easier, but in other cases the voice asks you to make things hard on yourself – throwing yourself onto spikes so you have to start over, etc. sometimes it is almost impossible to do what the voice asks. (serious warning for emotional manipulation, just to be safe – the question at the start will purposefully misgender you depending on your answer, and continue to do so throughout the game, but, depending on your actions, will then correct the mistake at the end.)
one chance – a kind of dark game; in the impending apocalypse you have one chance to decide what to do with the rest of your life. there are many endings, but you really do only have one chance…refreshing the page will not let you play again! content warning for death,suicide, impending doom, hopelessness, etc
every day the same dream – another fatalistic game with multiple endings, but this one allows you to find them all. same warnings as the one above.
elude – a metaphorical representation of depression. dark melancholy levels, nice atmosphere, but can be a little moody.
symon – you play as an elderly man stuck in a hospital bed. you sleep to dream and relive your past. this game is pretty much endless and features endless combinations of the same tasks, to reflect what that sort of life might be like. cw for death and end-life blues.
now for some lighter ones…
pizza king 2 – i found this sim where you run your own pizza shop weirdly addictive. food cw, of course, and it’s the only sim on here because they usually aren’t my thing, but, well.
boomshine & obechi – two colorful games where a well-placed click will start a chain reaction and see how many points you can collect!
music bounce – release bouncing balls to hit platforms to get the perfect rhythm!
dropsum & dropsum colors – math games where you combine numbers to eliminate them. you can choose where to drop the numbers, turn the board, and use powerups! (dropsum colors isn’tloading for me rn, but it might for you)
first person tetris – you spin with the tetris blocks! fun for pros, but it can make you dizzy.
flash tron – a recreation of the original tron game as seen in the movies. here you can play with others online!
dolphin olympics – super fun game where you swim and do tricks as a dolphin to score as many points as you can in two minutes. there’s also a freeplay mode. if you jump high enough, you may even see the moon ouo
mirror’s edge 2d – i adore the 3d version of this game for ps3, but if you don’t have access, you can play the mini/2d version. no real story, but it’s a very challenging game with rad animation!
bloons – i started playing the tower defense game, but they’re all pretty fun and complex. scroll down a bit and click any of the ones under “bloons games”
elephant games – a sort-of series with gems like “achievement unlocked” & sequels (where there is no objective except to complete all the achievements) and “this is the only level” (where you go through the same level many different ways). you grow to be quite fond of the little guy. :’D
some of these i haven’t played in awhile! i pulled from my bookmarks, because i used to spend all day curating links to these things. if i’ve missed a content warning PLEASE feel free to contact me about it or add it yourself!
Okay, this is in incredibly petty nitpick, but: if you’re writing a fantasy setting with same-sex marriage, a same-sex noble or royal couple typically would not have titles of the same rank – e.g., a prince and a prince, or two queens.
It depends on which system of ranking you use, of course (there are several), but in most systems there’s actually a rule covering this scenario: in the event that a consort’s courtesy title being of the same rank as their spouse’s would potentially create confusion over who holds the title by right and who by courtesy, the consort instead receives the next-highest title on the ladder.
So the husband of a prince would be a duke; the wife of a queen, a princess; and so forth.
(You actually see this rule in practice in the United Kingdom, albeit not in the context of a same-sex marriage; the Queen’s husband is styled a prince because if he were a king, folks might get confused about which of them was the reigning monarch.)
The only common situation where you’d expect to see, for example, two queens in the same marriage is if the reigning monarchs of two different realms married each other – and even then, you’d more likely end up with a complicated arrangement where each party is technically a princess of the other’s realm in addition to being queen of her own.
You’ve gotta keep it nice and unambiguous who’s actually in charge!
Okay, I’ve received a whole lot of asks about this post, so I’m going to cover all of the responses in one go:
1. The system described above is, admittedly, merely one of the most common. Other historically popular alternatives include:
The consort’s courtesy title is of the same rank as their spouse’s, with “-consort” appended to it: prince and prince-consort, queen and queen-consort, etc. This is how, e.g., present-day Monaco does it.
The consort is simply styled Lord or Lady So-and-so, and receives no specific title. I can’t think of any country that still does it this way, off the top of my head, but historically it was a thing.
(Naturally, your setting needn’t adhere to any of these, but it would be highly irregular for it to lack some mechanism for clarifying the chain of command.)
2. The reason why the consort of a prince is historically a princess even though those titles are the same rank is basically sexism. This can go a couple of ways:
In many realms, there was no such thing as being a princess by right; the daughter of a monarch would be styled Lady So-and-so and receive no specific title, so the only way to be a princess was to marry a prince.
In realms where women could hold titles by right, typically a masculine title was informally presumed to outrank its feminine counterpart. So, e.g., kings outrank queens, princes outrank princesses, etc.
In either case, no ambiguity exists.
(Interestingly, this suggests that in a more egalitarian setting where masculine titles are not presumed to outrank their feminine counterparts, or vice versa, you’d need to explicitly disambiguate rankings even outside the context of same-sex marriages. Food for thought!)
3. It would also be possible to have two kings or two queens in the same marriage without multiple realms being involved in the case of a true co-monarchy. However, true co-monarchies are highly irregular and, from a political standpoint, immensely complicated affairs. If you’re planning on writing one of those, be prepared to do your research!
4. The next rank down from “countess” is either “viscountess” or “baroness”, depending on which peerage system you’re using.
(Yes, that last one actually came up multiple times. Apparently there are a lot of stories about gay countesses out there!)
Ok so I rly fucking need to clean my house. Do any other People With Depression™ have any tips or ways you motivate urself to clean? Because this feels like the hardest goddamn thing in the world even tho I know it’s not and I’m just continually frustrated with myself and have been for the past two weeks.
HOO BOY DO I HAVE DEPRESSION/EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION CLEANING TIPS
in no particular order (because I have depression and executive dysfunction):
1. If something sensory about cleaning bothers you, eliminate that before you start. For example, I wear gloves to do the dishes. If the sound of the vacuum bothers you, wear headphones and turn up the music. etc.
2. If you can, make a list of everything that needs to be done. Then acknowledge that you probably can’t do it all, and circle all the things that absolutely, no matter what, have to be done. Pick one (ONE! ONLY ONE! START WITH ONE!) of those things and break it down into smaller steps. Then even smaller steps. Seriously, if step one is “stand up” and step two is “walk to closet” and step 3 is “get mop”, that’s fine. It can be that small.
3. Take a break. “But I literally only started five minutes ago!” Don’t care. If you want a break, take a break. “At this point I’ve spent more time on breaks than I’ve spent on cleaning.” Ok, but you’ve spent more than zero time on cleaning, so you’ve accomplished more than you had at the beginning. “If I take a break it won’t get done!” If you burn out it won’t get done either. Take a break.
4. If nothing is working, try what I call bin cleaning/box cleaning. Take a big trash bag and a box. Pick up the first object you see. Step 1: Is it trash? Put it in the trash bag. Step 2: Will you use it in the next 2 days? No? Put it in the box. It’s a problem for Future You. If you’ll use it in the next 2 days, take time to put it away. Rinse and repeat.
5. Did you get distracted and forget what you were doing? Don’t worry about it. Just clean a thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s the thing you were cleaning before. You have to clean lots of things, so just pick a thing and clean it. Eventually you’ll get around to the thing you forgot.
6. If you have to do a thing you really hate, do a thing you like afterwards. I hate doing dishes, but folding laundry soothes me, so that’s a nice one to do afterwards. YMMV. If there are no cleaning things you like that you can do afterwards, see number 3.
7. Make it fun. Play loud music and dance while you’re cleaning. Wear something that makes you feel cute, or if you prefer, something comfy. Light your favorite candle. Whatever.
8. If it’s nice out, open a window. Seriously, it helps.
This is seriously so helpful, thank you.
Do it half-assed. A lot of times, it’s like, “Holy shit, I can’t clean my kitchen, I have 3 weeks worth of dishes and I literally cannot see my stove.”
Dust off the stove. Wash the dishes you think you’ll need for the next meal or two. Move on if you have to.
This is もちアイス (mochiaisu) and the “soft skin” is pounded rice cake. The white stuff you see on the outside is powdered sugar so they won’t get sticky. It’s very delicious on a hot day and you can get these at the right self-serve frozen yogurt joints. Unfortunately North America sells one mochiaisu for a dollar and some cents whereas in Japan you can get these by the boxful in any supermarket.
Want it. Nnh
you can make it yourself at home folks! Mochi is really simple to make, all you have to do is take 2 cups rice flower, mix with 1 cup water and ½ cup sugar, boil it in a pot or put in a ceranwrap covered bowl and put in microwave for 7 minutes. turn off the heat and stir it until it becomes solid and sticky. Then you can roll it into balls with a little bit of rice flour on top to keep it from being too sticky. Then you can eat it just like that, cover a scoop of ice cream and freeze it to make this, or you can make Strawberry Daifuku which is strawberries and red bean paste (anko) wrapped in mochi. I make it all the time!
Aww damn i gotta do this!!
Waaaaant. You’d find them in regular supermarkets in Seattle. Out here? Not so much. 😦
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