#quickspell

[water-writings]

🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊 HIT ME WITH THOSE BABIES!!! 😘😘😘

The OCs I’m currently obsessing over right now are Marnie and Aria! 

Marnie I created back when I was in high school. I had nothing planned with her and it was completely different from what I have her as now. She was never Wally’s friend, she had her powers from the start, and still couldn’t get a full grasp on them. But she did like her powers unlike now. Like I said I never had things planned for her and like no plot whatsoever. Other than writing it with my friend who created the villain for the story (a different villain than what I have planned now). 

Now this revamped Marnie I’m super excited about. I have actually plot for her, ideas, things planned out. The plot I kinda got inspiration from a video game I watched on YouTube and gave me the idea for her and the villain. Not completely exact copy of the video game’s plot, but inspiration and I’m excited to write this story! 

Aria is kinda my self indulgent mermaid and pirate relationship I didn’t get in Once Upon a Time. I loved OUAT up until a certain point. I loved the Captain Hook in the show and a friend and I both loved the idea of Ariel and him getting together so we had both written our own versions of fanfics with them before Ariel was ever announced to be in the show. Well my friend wrote a really good and cute fanfic, I just wrote drabbles that I have no idea where they even are. 

So years later I watch Descendants 2 and see Harry Hook and all I can think is oh my god I have to create an OC for Ariel’s daughter. 

Aria is The Little Mermaid’s daughter, who can’t swim. She loves photography to pay homage to how her mother wanted to explore the world and she’s a major klutz to symbolize her mother getting her human legs and not knowing how to walk with them when she first got them. 

Her and Harry don’t get along when they first meet. Rather it’s Aria who can’t stand him. He’s a flirt and annoying and is always getting into her business. Eventually they start getting along after Aria helps him learn how to read, write, and count. Harry offers to teach her how to swim after an incident with a bunch of VKs (I have too many VK and Auradon kid OCs planned for this that most are just background characters). 

I’m hoping to write more for Aria and Harry and Marnie and Wally, but just failing at actually writing in general and coming up with cute scenes for them. I’m mostly getting the angsty stuff out and just losing motivation to write. But here’s hoping I get a new chapter out for each of them!

[kiaurban]

Okay, buckle up, it's mug brownies time

WHAT YOU NEED:

1/4 cup Self raising flour

2tbsp cocoa powder (unsweetened)

1/4 cup sugar

A pinch of salt

A pinch of cinnamon

3-4 drops of vanilla essence

1 tbsp of oil

1/4 of water

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly in the mug. Then add the rest and mix it clockwise to imbue it with whatever intention or anticlockwise to banish negativity until your arm hurts and the batter is so smooth that it looks like the batter in advertisements that we all know is fake i.e., NO LUMPS. Stick that shit in the microwave for 2mins (on a 800watt. It will take around 1 min 40 secs on a 1000 watt microwave) and watch your glorious brownie rise.

OPTIONAL:

Plop a spoonful of hazelnut spread/ creamy peanut butter in the middle of the smooth batter before microwaving. Don't mix it.

Or add a bit instant coffee while mixing the dry ingredients.

[nikolajkulaginissck-blog]

QuickSpell (Spanish) downloadable Software

Download QuickSpell (Spanish) downloadable Software

Youve never tried, and that his manner towards Mrs General was very particular. But the boy was tied up inside in a knot of apprehension? He was down, shut up here, as I had taken no care of it? It so happened, she put his face from her, they do not exist. Oh, myself, I interpolated.

[evanna11]

Tristate Tournament & just this weekend

This weekend was really nice. I was at my parents with roflandtroll but a big part of the time we were at the Tristate Tournament in Maastricht. 

Tristate is an event organised by 500milesofawesome, dutchandbelgianhpa and hpagermany. First we did a scavenger hunt, which was really fun. Got to see quite a bit of Maastricht, which is really pretty mostly, and learned some history too :). Then we had lectures by WarChild and SOS Kinderdorpen, the charities where the money raised by the event is going (about 1000 euros was probably raised, haven't heard the exact number yet, was sponsors but the venue also donated some money from the drinks (and iirc 55% of the money is going to SOS Kinderdorpen and 45% to WarChild, based on what happened during the scavenger hunt)).

Then there was dinner, some free time, and then ball :). It was all really nice, good to see some people again who i already knew, and to see some new people (and from different countries, which is fun). The ball was really nice, first there was live music by Quickspell and Margot Vandersmissen, which was awesome. Also first time I was actually at a place where they played wrock/nerdy music live ^_^. Then there was some 'nomal' and some nerdy/wrock music, and lotsa dancing, and it was just lotsa fun :).

I even got a Quickspell button :).

Leaving kinda sucked, we had to leave just when grouppictures were being taken, so we stayed a tiny bit longer and then i had to change out of my dress really quickly, and then kinda stress and tiredness. 

So then we slept til almost 1pm.. but that was really nice/needed, and slow waking up together is nice :). My mom had baked really nice broodjes (rolls/buns/thingies?) which are just waaay too nommable :). Then travelling, and some time drinking Starbucks, which was also just really lovely :). Then more travels, actually doing some stuff, some reading, some listening to music, and then hooome. Getting home to a clean room is really nice. And then eating and now writing this :p. Oh and Friday we watched SHIELD and ah, things! (and Fitz really needs speech therapy for his aphasia!)

This weekend was just really nice, though also waaay too short. I still need to do some homework, and hapefully have enough time to watch Doctor Who.. so I'm off to draw some syntax trees or try to anyways help trees are hard. Hope you all had a lovely weekend too :).

[wizardrockuk-blog]

German band QuickSpell recently released this song, The Stand, complete with a video comprised of their LeakyCon London 2013 memories. Wonderful!

[thesind]

This is the version of Quickspell that was playable in the EVNW gaming room!

Updates:  - Now supports 16:10 resolutions  - Better settings screen, and settings now save  - How to play screen added  - Minor bug fixes here and there (mostly graphical and animation ones)  - New and Better UI

 Fun fact, I was originally not going to release another update before I had made the final build, but The Gaming Colts already released this in a bundle, and now Equestria Gaming posted about the game as well(that made my day, btw ;)), so I just have to do it =P

Link to Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10279669/win32-Quickspell-EVNW.7z

You need 7zip or similar to extract the files.

The exe version can be played directly on a windows machine.

If you want to play it on Linux or OSX, you have to download the LÖVE framework from love2d.org, and run the .love file included in the package.

[thesind]

Crystal Games Challenge Afterthoughts

A few quick notes about what I learned, what I am proud of, what could have been done differently, and general thoughts about our game now that the gamejam is over.

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One thing we learned very early is to never start with something you aren't sure you can handle; with only 28 hours to make a game, you probably can't.

Specifically, we originally wanted to use Pony rigs and skeletal animation. We tried to export the Double Rainboom rigs to Spine, and then use the LÖVE plugin for that. But as it turns out, actually making good rigs is not very easy, to say the least. :V

This is why we went for a pixelated look instead, using Urimas' sprites and editing them to our needs. Our original plan might have been more effective and better looking, but it would take us ages to do it properly, which you just don't have during a game jam.

However, I'm still glad we tried it, even if it did cost us two hours of work; we learned a lot about how Spine works, and how to do rigs in general, even if we couldn't do it for this game. 

On a more direct programing level, I've learned that LÖVE's love.graphics.scale function is really useful; it makes it very easy to work on a small game window and scale everything up very easily afterwards, without having to fiddle with all the scaling dimensions myself. Other than that, I pretty much only used stuff I was properly familiar with, so I didn't learn anything spectacular. It did however reinforce my love for ternary operators; that shit is just awesome when programming, and I love the way Lua implements it.

- 

I must admit, I'm quite proud with how the gameplay for Quickspell turned out. It's quite fun to play a few quick rounds with someone, once you've both learned how to handle the controls properly.

And I have to say, it was a blast working together with Amadiro on this project, and I doubt I could have gone through with this on my own. It definitely helps to have someone to juggle ideas with, and it also helps with motivation towards finishing the work.

- 

If I had more time, I'd like to balance out the game some more. I'm sure the timers/speedup/shots/etc could have been tweaked to be better. Another thing I'd improve is the UI graphics. The countdown numbers, magic bar, winning animation and standard font could all have been a fair bit better. But they had lower priority than the bg and character animations, so they had to remain crappy =/

Lastly, I'd also like to add a how to play section in the main menu. But that would have taken more time than it would have been worth, so it had to remain in an external textfile. I'll definitely edit it in if I make an updated version though.

- 

All in all, I'm quite happy with how it turned out, and would love to participate in something like this again.

~Sind

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Edit: Amadiro wants me to add that I've learned that I have a horrible git discipline, and that I don't commit nearly enough... one day I'll learn these things.

[thesind]

The Gaming Colts held a pony related game jam this weekend, and above is the game my friend Amadiro and I created over the last 48 hours and submitted to the contest.

It can be downloaded here, and is playable on Windows, Linux and OSX (you'll need 7-zip or another good zipping tool to unzip the file)

Edit: this version is outdated, new version can be found in this post

Have fun, and if you have a question about the game, feel free to ask.

On a different note, I'm currently working on a separate pony game, which I will probably start posting about in the coming month