Let's Players originating from Something Awful - ft. VoidBurger, General Ironicus, Bob Kamoc

[proteus4994]

I did this for my Devolution thread in 2009 with RenPy

https://bd.baldurk.org/960

Granted all of the artwork is stolen and shit but I did it in about 4 hours. RenPy is pretty piss simple to use. I agree with this:

Maybe write like a short story or something first buddy.

I still like slowbeef and all, but yeah, we should see some proof of actual writing talent first. The VN part isn’t the hard part

 

[A Random]

I did this for my Devolution thread in 2009 with RenPy

https://bd.baldurk.org/960

Granted all of the artwork is stolen and shit but I did it in about 4 hours. RenPy is pretty piss simple to use. I agree with this:



I still like slowbeef and all, but yeah, we should see some proof of actual writing talent first. The VN part isn’t the hard part

Maybe if he asked you for advice, he'd get to make a successful project.

 

[proteus4994]

Maybe if he asked you for advice, he'd get to make a successful project.

Actually, for all of slowbeef's faults, he's a pretty good programmer. RenPy won't be the blocker on this project. I don't think he has the writing chops to pull off a VN, personally. I mean, I don't either. Very few people do.

 

[PLB]

I'm pretty sure you dont need good writing skills as long as you have enough anime babes/dads to be successful.

 

[BlueSpark]

Slowbeef seems to be planning on releasing his RenPy game on Steam (the hexahedron is his take on the Cube films' premise - a bunch of people trapped in a series of connected, cube-shaped rooms and overcoming puzzles, death traps etc to survive.

Also, he's apparently using the Lowtax school of parenting as reference for raising his daughter:

A summary of the Cube film series that Slowbeef is taking inspiration from, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Spoiler

All three films are centered, with slight variations, on the same science-fictional setting: a gigantic, mechanized cubical structure of unknown purpose and origin, made up of numerous smaller cubical rooms, in which most or all of the principal characters inexplicably awaken in the opening scenes.
Each of these rooms has six heavy vault doors, one on each face of the cube, which lead into adjacent, largely identical rooms, differing occasionally by colour of lighting.
Some of these rooms are "safe", while others are equipped with deadly booby traps such as flamethrowers and razorwire. In some cases it is possible to detect a trap by throwing an object into the room first, although this method is not always reliable due to the trigger mechanism of certain traps.

In each case, a group of strangers awakens in this mysterious structure, without any knowledge of how or why they are there. In order to escape from the prison, they must band together and use their combined skills and talents to avoid the traps and navigate out of the maze, while also trying to solve the mystery of what the cube is and why they are in it. However, the pressure of being in the Cube generally turns one of the prisoners into a homicidal maniac who preys on the others.

 

[PLB]

just for completeness sake he also talked about the cube films in his weird new years video.

 

[BlueSpark]

Slowbeef is taking the moral high ground and wants Youtube to hold creators responsible for controversial videos:

Reminder that the Retsupurae Youtube channel has had to restart multiple times due to being taken down for cyberbullying people, including children.

Slowbeef apparently deleted a retweet claiming that Youtube would be putting checks on every Youtuber because of the Logan Paul thing:

I wonder whether the reason that Slowbeef is sperging about this is because he's worried what would happen if Youtube took a look at some of the older Retsupurae videos and if his new SJW friends were aware of his past.

VoidBurger retweets advice on how to end fascism:

Maybe she could make a start by stopping being friends with Sarah Nyberg, a neo-Nazi pedophile.

 

[Petronella]

I have a feeling that pretty soon Voidburger might fall victim to the SJW crowd's tendency to eat their own.

She streamed Doki Doki Literature Club a couple weeks ago. A decent chunk of her viewers (both in the stream chat and in her YouTube comments) criticized her for playing the game, as they felt it was insulting to people with mental illnesses. Just putting it out there that I wouldn't be surprised if this causes someone to decide she's ~problematic~.

 

[Odie Esty]

There's a strain of thought in indie horror circles to try and get away from relying on mental illness as a crutch for horror. That's mainly because it's a massive beginner's trap and next to no games actually use the premise effectively (horror about mental illness should be based on how being crazy fucks with your perception of reality, not how it makes you dangerous) but there's definitely a stint of social justice to it and how we need to be SENSITIVE TO THE ISSUES OF THE OPPRESSED CRYING EMOJI.

naturally when it comes to horror people aren't very sensitive and generally WANT things that are 'problematic' or push boundaries so the social aspect hasn't taken root as strongly as it has in other hobbies. "Social justice" mainly forms in horror as an upcoming genre called "Post Horror" which are films that use cliche horror premises to explore more personal issues, movies like it Comes At Night and Get Out. Unlike most social justice attempts to enter a genre these ones are mostly well received both critically and by fans. It helps that horror has always been an extremely fragmented industry, most people really like ONE kind of horror and there's at least a dozen sub genres.

TL;DR People have been upset about crazies in vidya for a while but it never quite takes and it probably won't here

Spoiler: sage for

fftopic:

 

[OwO What's This?]

I have a feeling that pretty soon Voidburger might fall victim to the SJW crowd's tendency to eat their own.

She streamed Doki Doki Literature Club a couple weeks ago. A decent chunk of her viewers (both in the stream chat and in her YouTube comments) criticized her for playing the game, as they felt it was insulting to people with mental illnesses. Just putting it out there that I wouldn't be surprised if this causes someone to decide she's ~problematic~.

if it does it will be the best thing that's happened to her in a long time

look at voidburger's older pics. she used to be pretty. now she looks like a bridge troll. I understand why this progressivism movement turns so many women into an androgynous mess but it does.

we were way better off letting beauty magazines influence culture norms.

 

[BuckBumble]

Slowbeef really needs to grow the fuck up.
He in his forties yet? I'm not even sure if this his midlife crisis or not.

 

[Crow]

Slowbeef seems to be planning on releasing his RenPy game on Steam (the hexahedron is his take on the Cube films' premise - a bunch of people trapped in a series of connected, cube-shaped rooms and overcoming puzzles, death traps etc to survive.
View attachment 352797

Why does it sound like he's about to demo an engine he built entirely on his own? Isn't RenPy some prebuilt shit for making VNs easily?

"Hey guys look at this shit i'm demoing it took me all of 14 minutes to download the software and shit out three lines of text to show how it works!"

 

[proteus4994]

Why does it sound like he's about to demo an engine he built entirely on his own? Isn't RenPy some prebuilt shit for making VNs easily?

"Hey guys look at this shit i'm demoing it took me all of 14 minutes to download the software and shit out three lines of text to show how it works!"

Supposedly he did a bunch of custom background work in Blender.

Honestly, I'd say that the artwork is probably the most time-consuming part of VN creation if you're not just going to steal existing artwork (and if you're planning on selling it, that's obviously out). You're right about RenPy being easy to shit something out very fast, but the rest of it, the writing and artwork, can be a bitch and a half if you're actually trying to do a good job.

I'll admit that I'm kinda curious about what exactly he's done.

Edit: The fact that he calls it "my RenPy Engine System" is a bit weird though. Unless he's actually hacking the underlying RenPy code (which is what DDLC did, which is what allowed it to do some of the outside-the-box stuff), it's not really "his system".

 

[Crow]

Edit: The fact that he calls it "my RenPy Engine System" is a bit weird though.

Yeah, I feel that was the bit I reacted the most to. Especially when he himself has gone so off the rocker about people who do romhacks not being the owners of said content solely on the fact that they're using basic tools to modify them, slightly different context I guess but in the terms of calling a pre-made engine that you're just doing simple stuff with your own thing, eh. I dunno

I mean, points if he's done backgrounds and art assets and stuff, but that doesn't make it his own engine or whatever

Also.. Conceptually, can we just talk about the idea.

"It's like Cube but instead it's a dodecahedron" or hexagon or whatever, I mean.. That's... Really stretching it.

 

[proteus4994]

Yeah, I feel that was the bit I reacted the most to. Especially when he himself has gone so off the rocker about people who do romhacks not being the owners of said content solely on the fact that they're using basic tools to modify them, slightly different context I guess but in the terms of calling a pre-made engine that you're just doing simple stuff with your own thing, eh. I dunno

I mean, points if he's done backgrounds and art assets and stuff, but that doesn't make it his own engine or whatever

So it's been literal years since I used Ren'Py. I looked it up in Wikipedia and saw this:

Ren'Py scripts have a screenplay-like syntax, and can also include blocks of Python code to allow advanced users to add new features of their own.

So theoretically, I guess if you put enough custom scripts and shit in there, it stops being Ren'Py and starts being some weird amalgamation of Ren'Py and your own code, at which point you could start making the argument that you customized it enough to be "your engine".

Similar to VBulletin/SAVB (lol), or Cryengine/StarEngine, or Quake/GoldSrc, etc.

 

[PLB]

I think what he's probably trying to do is make the VN less linear and probably have more options than most visual novels which would either lead to a huge tree with a lot of reused content between the trees or have a script so that it basically slots in the correct scene, that doesnt seem to be a feature of the engine from what i read but i may be wrong on that. Im not that sure what you could actually do within the framework of a visual novel maybe add some find the pixel puzzles/ screen scrolling maybe an in game timer that leads to lose states but i cant really think of much that wasnt already in 9 9 9.
Maybe slowbeef has a great idea that no one has ever thought of, i kinda doubt it though.

 

[proteus4994]

Im not that sure what you could actually do within the framework of a visual novel maybe add some find the pixel puzzles/ screen scrolling maybe an in game timer that leads to lose states but i cant really think of much that wasnt already in 9 9 9.

I'll play Devil's Advocate here and argue that you can modify a VN to be almost anything nowadays. You have VNs married with RPGs, Match-3 games, find-the-object games, etc. You do kind of have a lot of flexibility with the genre if you're not married to the idea of keeping it a strict Japanese-style VN.

Edit: I cannot believe I'm defending a genre of game that I generally hate.

 

[Petronella]

I'll play Devil's Advocate here and argue that you can modify a VN to be almost anything nowadays. You have VNs married with RPGs, Match-3 games, find-the-object games, etc. You do kind of have a lot of flexibility with the genre if you're not married to the idea of keeping it a strict Japanese-style VN.

Edit: I cannot believe I'm defending a genre of game that I generally hate.

This, one of the most popular VN style games to come out recently was Hunie Pop, and that was basically Candy Crush with boobs.

 

[CrayolaFuckinModelMagic]

Can't wait for the unholy marriage of VN and psychological horror third person shooter. C'mon Beef, stop plagiarizing Cube and do that instead.

 

[PLB]

This, one of the most popular VN style games to come out recently was Hunie Pop, and that was basically Candy Crush with boobs.

I wouldnt really count huniepop or dating sims as visual novels though in the same way i wouldnt count the more story based rpgs as(such as the world ends with you), they may share some visual stylings but that doesnt really affect how they work as media. Its like saying hardcore henry and clover field are the same genre because they are both filmes in first person.