writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.
I have likely not added many that I've reblogged to this list. Please feel free to roam my blog and/or ask/message me to add something you'd like to see on this list!
Look by @writers-potion
Voices by @saraswritingtipps
Show, Don't Tell by @lyralit
5 Tips for Creating Intimidating Antagonists by @writingwithfolklore
How To (Realistically) Make a Habit of Writing by @byoldervine
Let's Talk About Misdirection by @deception-united
Tips to Improve Character Voice by @tanaor
Stephen King's Top 20 Rules for Writers posted by @toocoolformedschool
Fun Things to Add to a Fight Scene (Hand to Hand Edition) by @illarian-rambling
Questions I Ask My Beta Readers by @burntoutdaydreamer
Skip Google for Research by @s-n-arly
Breaking Writing Rules Right: Don't Write Direct Dialogue by @septemberercfawkes
International Clothing
Too Ashamed of Writing To Write by @writingquestionsanswered
"Said" is Beautiful by @blue-eyed-author
12ft – Hate paywalls? Try this site out.
My Fridge Food – No idea what to make? Tell this site what ingredients you have on hand and it will give you recipes to cook.
Project Gutenberg – Always ends up on these type of lists and for very good reason. All works that are copyright free in one place.
Ninite – New PC? Install all of your programs in one go with no bloat or unnecessary crap.
Unchecky – Tired of software trying to install additional unwanted programs? This will stop it completely by unchecking the necessary boxes when you install.
Sci-Hub – Research papers galore! Check here before shelling out money. And if it’s not here, try the next link in our list.
LibGen – Lots of free PDFs relate primarily to the sciences.
Zotero – A free and easy to use program to collect, organize, cite and share research.
Car Complaints – Buying a used car? Check out what other owners of the same model have to say about it first.
CamelCamelCamel – Check the historical prices of items on Amazon and set alerts for when prices drop.
Have I Been Pawned – Still the king when it comes to checking if your online accounts have been released in a data breach. Also able to sign up for email alerts if you’ve ever a victim of a breach.
Radio Garden – Think Google Earth but wherever you zoom, you get the radio station of that place.
Just The Recipe – Paste in the url and get just the recipe as a result. No life story or adverts.
Tineye – An Amazing reverse image search tool.
My 90s TV – Simulates 90’s TV using YouTube videos. Also has My80sTV, My70sTV, My60sTV and for the younger ones out there, My00sTV. Lose yourself in nostalgia.
Foto Forensics – Free image analysis tools.
Old Games Download – A repository of games from the 90’s and early 2000’s. Get your fix of nostalgia here.
Online OCR – Convert pictures of text into actual text and output it in the format you need.
Remove Background – An amazingly quick and accurate way to remove backgrounds from your pictures.
Twoseven – Allows you to sync videos from providers such as Netflix, Youtube, Disney+ etc and watch them with your friends. Ad free and also has the ability to do real time video and text chat.
Terms of Service, Didn’t Read – Get a quick summary of Terms of service plus a privacy rating.
Coolors – Struggling to get a good combination of colors? This site will generate color palettes for you.
This To That – Need to glue two things together? This’ll help.
Photopea – A free online alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Does everything in your browser.
BitWarden – Free open source password manager.
Atlas Obscura – Travelling to a new place? Find out the hidden treasures you should go to with Atlas Obscura.
ID Ransomware – Ever get ransomware on your computer? Use this to see if the virus infecting your pc has been cracked yet or not. Potentially saving you money. You can also sign up for email notifications if your particular problem hasn’t been cracked yet.
Way Back Machine – The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites and loads more.
Rome2Rio – Directions from anywhere to anywhere by bus, train, plane, car and ferry.
Splitter – Seperate different audio tracks audio. Allowing you to split out music from the words for example.
myNoise – Gives you beautiful noises to match your mood. Increase your productivity, calm down and need help sleeping? All here for you.
DeepL – Best language translation tool on the web.
Forvo – Alternatively, if you need to hear a local speaking a word, this is the site for you.
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
ZenGM - simulate sports
Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
Hey i’m a fashion design student so i have tons and tons of pdfs and docs with basic sewing techniques, pattern how-tos, and resources for fabric and trims. I’ve compiled it all into a shareable folder for anyone who wants to look into sewing and making their own clothing. I’ll be adding to this folder whenever i come across new resources
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16uhmMb8kE4P_vOSycr6XSa9zpmDijZSd?usp=sharing
i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate's computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.
so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching "advanced system settings", go to performance settings, and uncheck "show shadows under windows" and anything else you don't want. hope that helps someone else.
this messed up vintage cat sewing pattern has tormented me since i saw it & like some other folks have done in that post - i tried my hand at tweaking the pattern to resemble the illustration (and my personal tastes) a little more. i've ended up with this, which i have only tested at a small scale and not this final version exactly (where i have done such things as further widening the cheeks and finalizing the leg shapes.) i bestow it upon you nice folks now 👐
go forth and make weird little beanbag kittens! pls show me if you do!
Let me tell you about my panda mini-washer
As an apartment dweller, this is a game changer. My current apartment doesn’t have a laundry facility and the closest Laundromat about a 30 min bus ride which is just not practical. The mini-washer is a life saver
The panda mini washer hooks up to the sink, is incredibly lightweight (about 28 pounds, so light even I can lift it) and easy to use.
It has a surprisingly large capacity. The basket from the first picture represents about one and a half loads. The jeans took up a whole load while the rest filled the bin only half way.
Here’s the inside. The left is the washer the right is the spin dryer. Yes, it even drys.
Basically you shove your cloths into the washer, fill it up with water and let it go. I use my shower head to fill it up so it goes faster, the sink hook up took about five minutes to fill the whole tub, with the shower head is is down to a minute an a half. I do it in three wash cycles, a five minute rinse with baking soda, a five minute wash with soap and a three minute rinse with water. You have to drain and refill between each cycle so it’s a little more labor intensive than a traditional washer.
That’s the spin dryer. It’s about half the capacity of the washer so one wash takes about two loads to dry. The spinner is much more effective than I was expecting. A three minute spin gets my cloths about 90% dry. I hang them up to air dry for that last 10%.
The machine cost me about 150$. When you factor in two dollars for the bus, five for the machines (per week), the mini-washer pays for its self after only about six months worth of laundry.
I’m not great at expressing emotion, but I’m hoping you can tell how excited I am. Let me just say that the panda mini-washer is great and I highly recommend it to anyone currently using a Laundromat.
Since there’s been a spike in people asking me 2003 related questions lately and I know a lot of different tutorials out there, I made this beginner’s masterpost to help some newbies out. This is the engine that OFF, Yume Nikki, Ib, & Pom Gets Wifi were made on, feel free to purchase it on Steam or the official RPG Maker website for 20$ (or for like 4-5$ on a steam or humble bundle sale).
NOTE: Most of these tutorials and all of these resources should work on RPG Maker 2000 as well.
The basics of game design
a nice collection of articles here on RPGMaker.net.
how the hell do i get this program to work
Ebeth’s RPG Maker 2003 Guide for Complete Newbies (Reblogable Version)
an introduction guide to the old translation of RPG Maker 2003
understanding how events work
switches as explained by bleet
understanding switches and variables
how to use switches
understanding conditional branches
changing the “Start, Load, Quit” options on the menu screen
making a treasure chest
making a door
how to make a locked & unlocked door
how to give your characters footstep sounds
copy and pasting events at the speed of light
create an easy password puzzle
implement a game of rock, paper, scissors
making a boulder puzzle
how to appear smaller on the world map
making a repeating/endless hallway or road
how to create diagonal stairs (and moving backgrounds on maps!)
make your game work WITHOUT RTP
make a sidescrolling map
visualizing your map
my parallax map isn’t showing up
Making a seamless map transition
understanding pointers
activating events by proximity
implementing weather
double tap to dash!
hold shift to speed up
How to change the font (and a followup!)
create a condition to know that the game has been loaded (for new game + and other stuff)
have NPCs follow behind you, aka a caterpillar system (this): tutorial one | two | three | four | five
making an action battle system (like the 2D legend of zelda games)
custom menu tutorials: one | two | three
how to make images fade in and out of your custom menu
one way of debugging your game
more tutorials here
Fangame Specific Stuff
The Pokemon Resource Kit - a nice big collection of graphics and such to use for a generation 3 (firered/leafgreen & ruby/sapphire/emerald) type game!
How to Start your own Yume Nikki Fangame
How to create effects in Yume Nikki: Tutorial 1
How to create endless hallways for Yume Nikki Fangames
How to make a “wake up” key for Yume Nikki Fangames
My tag for Yume Nikki Fangame Help
YumeResource was a blog created specifically for Yume Nikki Fangames
huge list of OFF spinoff/fangame resources
Creating battle sprites in the Mortis Ghost/OFF style
Check The Spriter’s Resource for any sprites you need to use from any game
sample games that were made for you to open up in the editor and see how events and such are done
A Sample Game for the Old RPG Maker 2003 (don’t worry, you can import games made in the old engine into the new 2003)
Mystic Sunrise, a sample game for the new RPG Maker 2003
graphics
Basic tips & links to some pixel art tutorials
my graphic resource masterpost
A base sprite you can use in 2003
how do I get a talksprite/portrait/full body sprite to work (these)? one | two | three
how do i make a message box with more details on it?
how do I get the correct coordinates for a picture i’m importing in?
how do these chipsets/tilesets even work?
can i change the sizes of characters or tiles? short answer: no
Do you have any templates? Heck yeah I do. Check this site out too!
how to fix the invalid color depth error
how do I fix this weird color around my character?? The proper way to import graphics & a reblogable post about importing graphics.
Menu error you might get in the New 2003 and how to fix it
Panorama/Parallax mapping for 2003, aka making your maps in another art program then importing them in as a backdrop
why not try and hand draw your own maps
how do i water tile???
map making: a set of guidelines
elevation made easy
make custom lighting for your game
If I want to create a room full of eyes that follow the player, how would I do it?
music
my stupidly big music masterpost
My First Game Jam’s Resource list
footprint sounds
You can search for stuff on soundcloud that’s free to use - click on tracks -> filter -> then click on “to listen to” and change it to “to use commercially.” There’s a lot of free video game music and other types of music on there, so check it out.
nightmargin’s music maker suggestion
list of free and open source music programs
famitracker - for your NES chiptune style music
Pulseboy - an online chiptune maker
as3sfxr - an online sound effects maker (coins, jumps, explosions, level ups, etc)
online .wav converter to convert music files into the .wav format
online .mp3 converter to convert music files into the .mp3 format
Other
Sharing your game once it’s done. Make sure to check everything!
So, you want to translate an RPG Maker 2000/2003 game?
Common Problems when trying to open up games and how to fix them
Yumeresouce can answer ALL your questions about 2003 and more, no matter what game you’re making
I’m most familiar with 2003 since that’s my engine of choice, so until I start doing more research on the other RPG Makers, I can only do 2000/2003 for now. If you want to do your own masterpost on any of the others though, I encourage it! :)
Feel free to add on anything you think is helpful. :)
blog created as an archive of posts i would want to save for various reasons
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