she/her
I make custom shimejis! you can get them on ko-fi Main: @robotswashingdishes
These take a lot of time and motivation so I cannot take any requests (as much as I would like to). Feel free to edit existing ones to your liking though!
What is a Shimeji? - a desktop pet that can walk around your computer screen while you work! They can be programmed to have many different actions, including climbing windows, chasing the mouse, interacting with each other, etc. I am using this blog to share the ones that I have put together(for free!).
I post pretty irregularly, but I try to publish something every 1-2 months.
Fandoms so far: Deltarune, OneShot
Latest release:
Kawkaw (Deltarune)
Affordances updates
WIPS and current plans:
Leafling (Deltarune, chapter 5)
The Roaring Knight (Deltarune), currently on backburner
Momo (Google doodles)
Ideas for if I learn how to pixel art/if anyone is interested in making sprite sheets (please leave a comment if this is you)
Frankie (Castoff)
Rocky (Project Hail Mary)
Moth/generic skykid (Sky cotl)
shop, instructions, references and programs used under the cut:
Shop:
I've opened a shop. Come take a look!
Instructions:
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Custom Shimeji download instructions · We will assume you have Shimeji installed, updated, and functioning on your computer
References and Programs used for custom Shimejis
All sprites are taken from their respective game spritesheets, or are heavily based on them.
All sound effects are taken from their respective game files, or are stitched from/based on them.
Code modified from original shimeji conf files and templates.
I love your Ralsei and was wondering if you plan on making Susie and Kris in the future to go along with him and complete the gang?
Thank you! I might one day, but I don’t have any plans to currently. I guess it just depends on if/when there’s enough things I could think to add that people haven’t done already to get me motivated.
Some of the more sophisticated ones I’ve seen (interactions, projectiles, multiple forms, etc.) of the fun gang were made by chubbidust, so definitely check them out if you haven’t!
The awaited Kawkaw shimeji has now been published! Find it here
Affordances/Interactions:
Maus, Mizzle, and Kawkaw can now interact with Ralsei! Some quick notes on how that will work->
Ralsei broadcasts the cue signal, so you will need to update him if you want the interactions. I made it so that you should only need to do this once; any future shimejis with Ralsei interactions that I publish should also work, even if you don't update Ralsei again.
Most of the interactions I added are based on Ralsei's ACTs, so I figured that keeping the animations local to the recruits like this would make the most sense. This way you can easily get the shimejis you want here with interactions included, instead of updating Ralsei every time.
That being said, you may need to re-download the aforementioned shimejis if you want them interact with him as well.
The great thing about affordances is that the shimejis will still work on their own! If you choose not to download/update any shimeji or only use a few at a time, they just won't complete the associated interaction. Additionally, if you use the intended program (Shimeji by Kilkakon), Ralsei's interaction cue is toggleable.
Weather Duo:
I added a new interaction between them, check that out here if you are interested!
As always, let me know if you run into any issues. Thank you for your patience!
Kawkaw desktop pet that will move around on your computer! You will need the shimeji software up and working to use this.
-Size: 128 x 128
Kawkaw has sounds (of course), can dig and popup along your desktop window floor, and interact with Ralsei!
short notes under the cut:
Surprisingly, the hardest part of coding this was in sequencing. The sounds and hotspots in particular had to be broken up into multiple actions to make sure that the timing and randomization worked out properly. (the shimeji discord has saved me countless times at this point, thank you again for the ideas)
After that, I just had to adjust the frequencies and speed that Kawkaw "tunnels" though the ground and windows; I think I've reached a balance I'm happy with.
I wanted to publish all interaction updates together, so that was the main contributor to the delay. These changes are covered here
i was wondering what are the chances a netskie or a kawkaw shimeji getting made (when the sprites get to a more available state) they are my favs aside from the flowers
I definitely want to do the little netskies, maybe the larger one as well? I’m waiting for the sprite sheets to decide if I should do both, and whether they should be separate or not.
Kawkaw would be fun, I hadn’t thought of that! It mostly comes down to what sprites are available to use. If there’s enough for a couple animations, dragging/dropping, and some movement, there’s a solid chance I’ll make it.
I probably won’t do the main flowers just because I don’t think it’s realistic for me to make them all right now and I’d feel bad leaving some out. Maybe one day though! (I also have a feeling there will be no shortage of them by other shimeji artists)
I just want to say I really love your Ralsei! He's so silly and fun to see crawling around :)
Thank you so much!!! 🫶
Ralsei was one of my favorites to work on, and definitely my largest project to date, so I’m really happy that you are enjoying it as well. Once the chapter 5 sprite rips are posted I plan to add more behaviors, I hope you like them!
After checking with the shimeji discord, I realized some key functionalities for my next (intended) major project are not currently supported. I will continue to look for a solution, but because this could take a while, I am focusing on some smaller projects for the time being.
With the release of deltarune chapter 5, you can expect sprite updates to existing shimejis soon, and potentially some new ones in the coming months!
love your shimejis! i look forward to your future releases! ^_^
Thanks, that means a lot! My last few projects let me explore functions I had no idea existed, and I’m excited to fully test them out! If you want a clue for what I’m planning to focus on next,
Lanino and Elnina are now available as desktop buddies here, enjoy!
Lanino and Elnina desktop pets that will walk around on your computer, and interact with each other! You will need the shimeji software up a
short process overview and notes under the cut:
Thank you to those of you who voted in my last update! Hopefully the additional wait was ok, I have done my best to make the walking sprites look natural using the original sheets.
My main goal was to make something simple enough to publish by the end of May, but that would introduce me to affordances. These basically allow shimejis to interact with one another by using a sort of call and response, and I figured there was no better pair to try it with than the weather duo!
Learning this function was easier than most so far, especially since the example code kept everything related to affordances in one section. This is roughly how they work:
shimeji 'A' frequently broadcasts a word for a certain amount of time
shimeji 'B' frequently checks for broadcasts of a word
If 'A' is broadcasting and 'B' checks for the same word at the same time, then shimeji 'B' will travel to the location of shimeji 'A'
if 'B' gets to the location before 'A' stops broadcasting, an interaction is triggered
the interaction plays, and the images can be split between both shimejis, or shown on just one
the interaction will be interrupted if they are pulled them apart or if they lose contact with the floor
if the interaction is completed successfully, an optional follow-up behavior can be added.
The Shimeji discord suggested a trick to trigger the interaction at a certain distance instead of at an identical location, but I wanted to use the optional follow-up behavior and avoid variables so that might be a project for another time. To get the follow-up images to line up, I added a buffer image with changed anchors and then used offsets to smooth the transitions.
I had fun working on the weather duo, and getting targeted experience with some of the more involved functionality for shimeji. Hopefully that will come in handy because I have some larger and more exciting projects coming up, so feel free to stick around for updates!
World Machine desktop pet that will walk around on your computer! You will need the shimeji software up and working to use this.
**NOTE: Th
coding process/notes under the cut (long):
So, its been a while. midterms were killing me, but hopefully I can start posting somewhat regularly again soon
This is yet another project I've had on the backburner for quite a while. It's been close to finished for a long time but I wanted a way to generate a popup window, and just wasn't sure how it should look until recently. After a quick clean up of older issues and a kofi poll, I managed to find a few fake window generators.
The most promising option was VBScript, which uses native windows code and can generate popups in the style of the device, but I realized Shimeji can't actually call or run any outside programs. Eventually through the discord (Thanks again) I was pointed to the projectile function, which basically creates a simple and temporary shimeji that I could change to resemble a window. Working with projectiles was surprisingly simple, since there was plenty of example code I could use, so the main issue was finding a way to customize it to each device's UI, because that is a perfectly normal and achievable goal to have, of course.
Now, using VBScript I could get a message box to mimic the UI of my previous computer, which I like more than the current notification style. So I decided I could still use it to generate my default image sets. But for whatever reason on my device the resolution and size of the information icon was off. Long story short, I ended up scouring the internet and the computers of my friends and mutuals to find the original icon and collected an unreasonable amount of images, before realizing that they would not scale nicely to the box I was generating. I finally decided to just use my generated window for the default image set.
To make sure that there was an option to customize the window with a name/windows style, I wrote another VBScript program to generate the window and give instructions on how to set up the screenshot, what images to replace, etc. I also figured out while doing this that the recommended display scale (in percentages) on laptops are different, and usually over 100%? If anyone knows why they chose to number it that way, let me know. So to make sure that the dialog box size agreed with the shimeji, the display of the whole device needed to be fixed before taking the screenshot.
Once all the scaling issues were resolved, putting everything together was relatively simple! Just in the last two days I figured out how to fix some problems with the jump/teleporting action, added sound effects to the popup and glitches, and optimized some of the logic based on the code I used for Ralsei.
I'm pretty happy with the current version, and am glad I was able to include the option for customization somehow. Please let me know if the script is unclear or if the shimeji has issues, and I will work on it.
I meant to finish this sooner, but here she is in pink and blue! As always, you can get it for free here:
Mizzle desktop pet that will walk around on your computer! You will need the shimeji software up and working to use this.
**NOTE: This shim
Enjoy!
coding process under the cut: (it's very long this time.)
Quick Note:
The Mizzle does not have as many actions as some of my other shimejis, but ended up being be way more complicated to code than I anticipated because she floats. (I tried to catch as many as I could, but let me know if you see any bugs)
Also, if anyone reading this is considering trying to edit shimejis, DO NOT use this to gauge difficulty! There are ways to start small (which I plan to put in a post later), and I absolutely jumped into the deep end (for me at least) with this. Plus I'm just ranting here, so don't take it entirely seriously.
Embedded Classes and Falling
Basically, the shimeji engine has actions of different types that determine what is allowed while the animation is playing. So you might use animation to play something one time, move to play it repeatedly as it travels, or stay to play repeatedly in one place. You call these later in the code to set stop conditions, group them together, etc.
But there's also another type: embedded actions. These are built-in-and-sometimes-required actions that are usually called by internal processes of the engine, so they are a bit harder to control and have specific rules for how/where they are referenced. They include dragging, resisting, transformation, mute, and of course, falling.
Now I need falling here, because I can change the gravity parameter to 0 and have Mizzle float, problem solved, shimeji finished. Except that the shimeji always starts above the window, which means I also need gravity sometimes so she makes it on-screen and a condition to have her start floating. AND 2 more for the sleep and sing animations, which need to be able to switch randomly. So now thrown and fall have to use timers so that they transition to the other actions, but not until the shimeji is in the window, which could be a different coordinate on every computer. And it needs to check if she was thrown close to the bottom, because Mizzle bobs up and down and if she touches or goes below the bottom then the whole program could freeze. And some of these things need to be checked once before doing a whole sequence, while others need to stop if the condition changed to false for some reason. (I didn't know the difference between $ and # because I never learned JavaScript, so for a while she kept falling through the floor and appearing at the top and falling forever)
So the getting the logic for fall and throw to work took a while. And all of these had to be declared in behaviors because they were embedded, which I forgot again later on.
Chase Mouse and Offsets
At the same time, I'm trying to figure out chase mouse. Because now that she can fly and can actually reach it, and it would be neat to have her just hold on to the cursor for a bit. And at this point I realize the offset that the sprites need to make the jump->grab->drop transition smooth is very inconvenient, and I start looking for ways around having 30 duplicate images. So now I have a broken conditional with random jump offset guesses, because the reference for drag and jump are flipped and the offset is different based on which way the Mizzle is facing and how close she is to the cursor. But the whole thing is a sequence and not a loop, and I can't plan for how the mouse will move(And I had no way to effectively troubleshoot because triggering the action would lock in the same conditional)
Luckily I can do a consistent y offset inside a modified pinched, that probably exists for this exact reason! (fixing x would need additional images, and it was close enough already) But i forgot that pinched is ALSO embedded, and needs to be grouped with a resist and declared in behaviors before its called in chase mouse.
Conclusion
All in all, this was way more complicated than I thought going into it, even though it might not look it from the scarcity of actions. (There were also points where I got too focused on something that either couldn't be fixed or wouldn't be worth it) Also, HUGE thanks to the shimeji discord, they helped me solve pretty much every issue I mentioned here and more including $/#, divisible random number generation, the limits of sequences and conditionals, how offsets work, and properly calling embedded actions. Genuinely so grateful for their help, this would never have gotten finished otherwise.
Mostly what I wanted from this was to make something that can float, and finish it before the semester starts ramping up. I'm pretty happy with how she turned out! For as much trouble I had, this may be one of the most technically complex shimejis I've done over a relatively short time frame. At one point I considered adding a jump so she could fly around the screen, but it ended up looking really unnatural. Who knows, If I figure it out I'll put it in an update.
just published bug fixes and improvements for every shimeji in my shop, along with more detailed product descriptions. (Everything is still free) Enjoy!
I've opened a shop. Come take a look!
I recently found out that the existing Mac support for shimeji does not include the most recent update (1.0.22, Variables), and people were having trouble running the Ralsei shimeji because of it. It took some time and consultation with the shimeji discord, but we were able to find workarounds and the new logic honestly fits a lot better! There is a new version available without the mute action and both now avoid variables in case of future problems.
I also found smaller bugs and inconsistencies in my other items, and decided to clean those up as well. All of the changes are listed in the product descriptions, and nothing should change for those of you who already got something unless you choose to re-download.
Lastly, I realize that the Rams also rely on variables, and I'm not sure how to make an efficient workaround. I'll probably come back to it later, but if this affects you and you'd be interested in a fix soon, leave a comment and I'll take a closer look.
