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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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@goose-exclamation-point
introductory post
hi there! i’m goose, the one who doesn’t do a lot but you statistically know me either through being a friend of mine (hi) or being into celeste modding! i’ve made Celeste: The Last Madeline, along with being one of the primary hosts of Secret Santa Collab!
you can find me at: gamebanana goose.exclamation.point on discord goodbye gamers!
your ligaments
damn girl, your ligaments
orange expert finally?? im so hyped
whens blue coming out
Today I saw this poster near my maths class. I did not want to witness a transgender politics debate but still thought a contribution could be wonderful thus I printed this Gabriel. I think it wins the debate with flying colours
go to this random coordinates generator and say in the tags how you would fare if you were dropped where it generates without warning. i’ll go first i’d be dropped in the middle of the fucking south atlantic ocean and perish
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
Mount Grefell National Park in Australia
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
just off some country road in Argentina
not near any notable towns or anything and i can't speak Spanish so im PROBABLY fucked
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
Ocean
my two favorite animals combined
need to fall down this rabbit hole immediately.
PLEASE listen to these fucking sounds (credit)
Oh shit that's so fucking cool. Those sounds are the actual "dead satellite" transmissions,
who up being weary and haggard on a wednesday
Every time I get frustrated with a tool or appliance I think about the bit in 17776 about how people crave a little bit of inefficiency, how if everything always worked perfectly and instantly we would lose a lot of the joys of being human, how deeply humans want to want, and I try to find the joy and humanity in what's frustrating me and enjoy that it's not perfect
but this does not apply to printers. absolute bastard machines
just read all of 17776
that was really good im normal and gonna be obsessing about that for the next ??? however long
old clip i found
aside from the obvious it's actually a good example of what happens when one team obsessively paints their entire spawn and the other team goes directly to mid. orange team pretty much takes mid immediately and blue team is like, oh no. what do we do against this. how could we have foreseen this and possibly done anything to prevent it
honestly i love this reply because it just reveals the many layers to the situation. orange team had an edge over blue team, that much is obvious, and blue team is seen visibly struggling due to it. half the team is either stuck in the outskirts of mid or dead, meanwhile the two orange team members out by mid now have relatively easy kills. but the pressure theyre exerting isnt able to push blue back into base completely. why?
their other teammates happen to be the Dick Drawer Duo and are currently focused on launching their Penis Attack
Oh yeah the Dick Drawer Duo's Penis Attack is hilarious I just am very passionate about there being no need to fully ink your entire spawn immediately :3
yeah im aware. i tried adding on a bit cause i find the situation hilarious.. why go paint mid when you can rely on a stray Penis Attack to buy you some time am i right?
Madeline from Celeste
Madeline has a Ryu Number of 4 3.
(CORRECTION: Ogmo, a character from Celeste developer Maddy Thorson’s game Jumper, appears in a secret developer room in Celeste and as a playable character in Super Meat Boy, per the Ryu Number Twitter account, thus shortening Madeline’s Ryu Number from 4 to 3.)
(old image below)
This is a joke and all but this is seriously a good idea. It's possible to get yourself in a real depressive funk because all your creative works are big complicated things that you have to work on for a long time and you keep coming up short or failing. That lack of success can really start to burn you out.
But you know what I guarantee you will be able to do? Put together this little Lego plane. Go get a small set for like 25$ and just put it together. You're not trying to make a Big Artistic Statement, you don't have to deal with perfectionism, you don't have to go learn a bunch of new skills and buy a bunch of new tools and supplies, you're just gonna make a little Lego set. You will succeed, I'm sure of it.
Maybe it's just my particular flavor of ADHD/autism, but his has really helped me from time to time. When you're in a rut because you're trying to do great things and failing, maybe try switching to something simple and offline that you can definitely do. Put together a Lego car or plane or train. You'll have fun, I promise.
And then when you get back to work, you can have that little set sitting on your desk, and look up at it every time you take a break. See, you can succeed at things, your brain is just being mean.
something very interesting i noticed about the newest side order trailer......
Okay so, I've made a personal vow to not drown my blog in Splatoon stuff, despite how much I've been tempted to, but I do have one thing I noticed about the side order trailer which I found quite, quite, interesting
In the trailer's upgrade menu, we see an upgrade labeled 'Run Speed Up', and it's description describes increasing movement in Inkling or Octoling form. ..................... inkling form????????????????
I think I have to hard disagree on the idea that difficulty implies linearity. And I'm specifically talking about Celeste mods. In my experience, having ten solutions to one problem doesn't make a map less difficult if all ten solutions are equally bullshit. The actual problem with balancing difficulty and linearity is that when you design a level with so many potential solutions, you have to make every solution roughly even in execution. Or at the very least, you want to account for the various potential approaches in balancing them. Which just makes designing rooms so much harder.
Generally when designing difficulty, I like to either make something that someone could probably pick up immediately after Chapter 9 or something that I personally can barely beat. So, in more common terms, it has to either be Intermediate, low Advanced, or Cracked GM.
But I've been experimenting recently with making cracked GM stuff where the player is offered multiple approaches and it's absolutely possible. Maybe that's because I really like working with Spike Jumps and Corner Tech, which inherently expand options and make you rethink how you interact with common obstacles, while I hate working with Ultras because they're the exact opposite of that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xkotKbNJd_g&list=PLAlu1k6xjlvT74eGDfT6-f2QWRKRE2Q6x&index=5&pp=gAQBiAQB
I made this as a proof of concept for a bullet hell corner spam hybrid and currently all of these solutions except for the last one are usable and similar difficulty. It all comes down to personal preference.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VrxkOK-lAU0&list=PLAlu1k6xjlvT74eGDfT6-f2QWRKRE2Q6x&index=6
And this is what the completed screen looks like. Some of the difficulty comes from the corner tech, some comes from the player needing to manage the infinitely spawning homing missiles, some comes from the player having to make decisions and execute shit while under pressure, and some comes from the lack of a single clear solution to any given segment. At some point the player gets such a huge catalogue of options that asking them to perform clearly signaled tech quits being challenging compared to asking them to filter through their options to find the correct one.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I7y1M-GEhOY&list=PLAlu1k6xjlvT74eGDfT6-f2QWRKRE2Q6x&index=3&pp=gAQBiAQB
Or here's another map I'm working on. The badeline fight is a massive spike in difficulty specifically because the solutions are open ended and combined with having to manage resources, being trapped in a closed in environment without a lot of options to manuever around Badeline chasers, and the heightened pacing, these two rooms are easily a difficulty spike despite the previous rooms using more complex tech. In fact, more than half of my time getting the recording for this was me trying to beat the final screen.
Think of it like this, if the player can afford to put 100% of their attention on executing a tech, then it's easier than if they have to divide their attention. And that division can come from psychological pressure like "is this really the best solution?" or "I need to keep track of the shit chasing me while also doing this thing." Plus, I think open ended shit is more exciting to see run by speedrunners, TAS, and Goldens because part of it is just going "how will they go about it?"
very interesting read and i suggest others check this out too
speaking purely from what ive seen and mapped myself, i find that encorperating a lack of linearity in general is challenging as a whole. people may say that its impossible at a top level but from what ive seen id argue its relatively uncommon overall, in particular past like, yellow-red intermediate. id be very interested in hearing your design processes behind your more open ended trickier rooms, in particular that bullet hell corner spam one, that room looks very cool
I just saw this and it's late, so my response will be even later. But yeah. I can give some tips on designing nonlinearity in maps.
I'd divide nonlinear into two general categories: "multiple intended routes" and "no intended routes." And I would also divide this on a micro and macro scale.
When you're designing for multiple intended routes, you're basically just saying "hey, I have more than one way that I intentionally designed the level to be completed in," this will likely look like something with branching paths. For an example in base game, think the section in Chapter 3 where you have to clean up the mess. You have three intended routes you can take. You may also think of rooms where they have strawberries where you have to take a unique route through them in order to obtain.
When there is no intended solution, you're functionally designing a jungle gym. You aren't designing a problem and solution, instead you're designing a problem and the tools the player is given to solve said problem. In base-game, think of the Old Site Badeline Chaser sections where you have to run around and collect keys while being chased. Or if you want an example from SJ, the entirety of EAT GIRL. It's actually possible to do this with puzzles too, but it makes people, like, really uncomfortable (take that how you will, I'm not even referencing modded celeste with this one).
When I'm dividing macro and micro, it's a question of scale. Micro is referring to individual movements, while Macro is referring to the room layout as a whole.
So, let's start with micro, the individual movements. As that's the style of nonlinearity I'm more comfortable with. Generally speaking, my main philosophy on my level design is that I don't really mind if the player takes an alternate route so long as the alternate route is similar difficulty to the intended route. That's how Floating Oil Rig has so many variations on its clears despite being GM+. So, this is a sort of "there's an intended solution, but there's no expectation on the player for them to follow through on it." And this wasn't really something intentionally designed for. The thing I really like about corner tech is that it forces you to reexamine your relationship with spikes and what sorts of things you legally can jump on, so it just naturally resulted in a map that with a lot of minor variations on the solutions for each room. To be clear, this is still a very linear map.
I think the reason this style of mapping isn't as common in higher levels of Celeste is because it's not super compatible with wavedashing, which is what a lot of popular tech is based around. Going nyoom isn't exactly conducive to thoughtful gameplay, since that type of gameplay generally works best when you to slow down and think about what's happening and can see everything kn screen, which doesn't work very well for super fast paced shit. I think in general, raw speed has diminishing returns in terms of garnering an emotional response from the player. It's much more effective to have a room that is constantly slowing down and speeding up in order to get the most out of the nyooms.
When it comes to widening the scope beyond instant-per-instant gameplay, the idea is just to give the player a problem and enough tools to solve the problem. With the bullet hell map, I was just viewing the rooms as jungle gyms with systems that the player needs to figure out for themselves how to navigate. So, the rooms air on the side of being long, which turns the entire map into a bit of a routing puzzle with open-ended answers, that will probably vary from player to player. The player has to figure out what route is the most consistant for them.
I also want mention that a great way to make routing puzzles is to have rooms where you go through the same areas and use the samw things multiple times but for different purposes.
Like, in this room, there's this open area that you visit three times. The gravity spring there is used twice, as is the dream block. So, the purpose of the elements placed in the level isn't static, which lets you get the most out of each thing placed.
Before jumping into a level, I like to make a room in debug or as a throwaway map where I just experiment with different combinations of stuff. Like, looking for synergies between mechanics. For example, Theo + Gravity Helper is a really strong combo because now the player has to consider where they are, where Theo is, the player's gravity, and Theo's gravity. From there, I know that I want dream smuggling to be part of the map, so I decide to have Gravity Helper Dream Blocks and regular Dream Blocks since that adds more stuff for the player to keep track of. I want to stick exclusively to gravity toggle in this map because toggle gravity is the most open ended variation of gravity helper. I'm using double dash so that I can force the player to dream hyper without needing obvious telegraphs and double dash generally makes handling Theo feel a lot better because it offsets the mobility debuff you naturally get from Theo. Like, a lot of thought can go into just picking which mechanics you want to use, and you can get a lot of value out of stopping and thinking about how those mechanics will interact and what they bring out in one another. I play a lot rpgs, so I think the ideas of min maxing and customization are heavily impacting how I view level design, but also, yknow, just putting a lot of thought into why you're doing something does tend to make the end result more thoughtfully put together.
And yeah, the concept of making rooms loop and choosing mechanics does apply at literally every difficulty level. Like, here's a room from a GM+ difficulty puzzle map.
Like with before, it's a routing puzzle. And you go in a loop. The puzzle is to use the camera offset trigger to perform a spinner deload and then perform an off-screen ultra before the spinners load. The idea behind this map is that you're navigating a space where nothing is really meant to survive, so you're just blatantly glitching through reality. Like, you have to softlocke the game to progress through the level at one point. And that was a decision made around the idea of getting across a certain atmosphere. I want the map to be existentially terrifying. Like, you're lost in a maze without an exit. So, the unintuitive solutions and puzzles are in favor to that concept. But it also results in what is definitely not what you usually see from GM+ gameplay.
Here's another GM+ example.
I've had to edit the layout of this section a little to enforce the solution, but you can see how the player has to loop around and reuse elements in different contexts. That's more or less the main thing about how I go about designing rooms without obvious paths in mind.
I sort of see the GM+ gameplay as tech puzzles. Where the player has to consider their wide catalogue of tech and determine which tech is appropriate for the situation. So, simply making the required tech not obvious can go a long way. This can also probably be applied to lower difficulties, but, like, where else are you going to force the player to steer a superdash variant demo through some spinners with the ultra boost and then force the player to corner jump immediately off of that? But, like, there's definitely room for routing puzzles where the player has to choose between super and demo hyper, for example.
Not all of this is nonlinear. Like, the three maps I gave videos for are technically linear in the sense that there's really only one solution and potentially cheese. But these are all nonscripted. Or at least, maps that are asking for more than just inputs from the player.
Anyways, the more macro heavy form of nonlinearity is a different beast all together. Personally, I'd recommend drawing a map of your level before you open Lonn or Ahorn. I mean, like, pencil and paper. That way you can know ahead of time where to plan for connections between rooms. Having the player zig zag through the level is also really helpful. Like, there's a lot of power you can get by just moving left. It can also really help to think of a small amount of lore. Not in the sense of creating a backstory or writing anything. More in the sense of "this is a castle. this section of the level is the exterior of the castle. this section is the barracks. this section is the hallways. this section is the courtyard. this is the ball room. etc." Thinking of that early can do a lot to not only assist with a nonlinear level, but it can also make individual rooms feel more memorable, it can encourage more diverse gameplay between rooms, and it can make your map more immersive.
You can also totally apply the concept of loops on a macro scale. They're very satisfying to pull off. The first map that comes to mind for doing the loop is Fortress Fall (SJ), which has a looping section. I know Switchtube Vista also did this, but I didn't actually notice on my first playthrough. Tho, tbf, when I was playtesting Fortress Fall, I almost accidentally ran in a circle because I got confused. I think loops are at their best when you're revisiting a section under a new premise, which is a lot harder to do on a macro scale.
Plus, loops can absolutely get complicated fast, both on a room to room basis and as a structuring system for your entire map. I think that's a reason why they're not very common.
But yeah. I think my best advice for this stuff kinda just comes down to circles, not making solutions obvious, and some amount of planning.
i dont have any more actual meaningful thoughts to reply with here i just think this is more proof 1am celeste thoughts are peak
