The Forgotten Meadow

An upcoming virtual horse game, inspired by gravity falls, with a focus on the unknown and strange. Join your sister on the family farm as you discover the secrets of a long-lost meadow.

[insertdisc5]

🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Ib, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :

Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!

GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!

Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!

BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!

-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!

-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff. So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.

-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.

-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.

-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[mtfoss]

Seriously cannot recommend GBStudio enough for beginners, it makes making a gb/gbc game pretty simple, it's also FOSS (free, open source software) and the devs in my experience are very responsive as is the community

GB Studio

A quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[holmoris]

Worth noting that ren'py and gb studio will happily let you add whatever ridiculous code you want on top of their frameworks. GB Studio will straight up dump the entire engine as a CMake project if you want to work in assembler or C, so if you don't like the way something works you can change it.

[demoisverysexy]

A while ago, I made a doc filled with pretty much evwry cheap and free resource I could find for game dev, and Im still working on it. Highly reccommend checking it out.

Demo Argenti’s List of Cheap and Effective Game Dev Tools

[eregyrn-falls]

An awesome piece by @lyndseyillustration.

A bit of background: I saw this reposted earlier, without credit, and so was doing a reverse image search to find a source. Happily, this one was much easier to find than the other two I did earlier today! So rather than reblog that other one along with additions, I figured I'd make a post with the artist info, and a better (and watermarked) version of the art.

As you can see from the tag above, the artist, Lyndsey Green, has a Tumblr, although it has not been updated since 2017. She appears now to be more active on Twitter and Instagram, as well as her own website, a Shopify storefront, and an Etsy shop.

The jackalopes above were done for a little Jackalopia zine, which is available in her shops. She did make a Tumblr post about that when it first came out, which I'll reblog along with this.

[allstrangenature]

I can barely contain myself right now

holy shit

HOLY SHIT

[27dragons]

holy CRAP.

Artists, creators, students, and researchers of all types, take note:

Digitized photos and text. 2D and 3D object renders. Music and other sound files. Videos. Research datasets. Collections metadata.

On a Creative Commons Zero license: Take what you want. Use it. No permission or attribution required. Yes, even for commercial use.

There is a lot wrong with the world at the moment, but the Smithsonian… the Smithsonian is right.

[janeway-suggestion]

You don't have to be skilled at art to make art and be an artist. Paint badly. Sing badly. Play video games badly on twitch. Write the cheesiest stories the world has ever seen. If it's important to you then it's an important thing to make. The right people will find value in it purely because you made it. And the wrong people don't matter.

[theforgottenmeadow]

Finally finished Joseph Sugarman

[amayensis]

A tutorial that turned into a famous meme. I hope it’s useful nonetheless!

Below the illustration I made for fun with a ref. Thanks @shrimpu-art​ for the brushes they offered in a gumroad bundle, they were great for this!

Drawn in Procreate.

Support me on Patreon for process videos and more!

[emkini]

Horse drawing tips? I think I already posted something on this but I can’t find the post

I thikn the post you’re thinking of is here!

And also here’s some extra tutorials I originally made for a friend on twitter:

[wandaluvstacos]

another hoof tutorial

[wandaluvstacos]

for all of you who struggle to draw horse feet. :) You’ve gotta have those pasterns in there, as they are the horse’s main shock absorbers, as seen in the “bearing weight” example.

If you can handle an animal autopsy, here’s an interesting vid on how the muscles and joints work in the lower leg of the horse.

[shirecorn]

I just wanted to tell you that you legit opened my eyes to a whole new level of creature design. I was annoyed that many of my cross-breeding attempts looked like Splicing, but I didn't know how to *define* what was wrong. Now it'll be a little easier to spot and improve on, I cannot express how much your tips and art have renewed my love of creature design. And for that I am sincerely SO grateful. <3

you're welcome! I'm glad I could put into words what bothered me so much growing up HOWEVER

Splicing is not wrong.

Some quick review:

Creature Design Masterpost || Splice Vs Blend || Splice/Blend griffin tutorial

Splicing doesn't make things wrong, but it makes them unnatural. Sometimes unnatural is the way to go!

To refresh splice vs blend: A manticore using Asiatic lion, Indian scorpion, and "ancient Persian bust" statue reference. I like to reference animals and people of the time and place where myth originates

Splicing (top) looks like a creature formed by a bored god; meant to be uncanny and threatening in its familiarity. But the blended version (bottom) looks more like a predator that evolved in the jungles of India that can and will swallow you whole.

Both blending and splicing are valid, but I like blending best in most circumstances. Let's try another one.

I think we can all agree this creature looks super cool. But what is it? There's probably some lion (big surprise, people love making lion beasts) and a goat (kri-kri), and from the mouth/tail/scales probably a snake (Anatolian meadow viper) It's neat but it doesn't match the ancient descriptions enough to identify the myth.

Little easier to tell now huh? I kept the markings spliced as well for even more distinction, but colors and markings matter less to a chimera than easily identifiable anatomy. The chimera is the Original splice, so even though a blend looks more "realistic" it doesn't work. Plus, by chasing "anatomically feasible" I've eliminated the "serpent for a tail" because it doesn't make sense evolutionary. But by doing that, I lost a HUGE part of what makes a chimera and chimera.

Compare the blend map with the different arrangements of splice maps. You can get really creative with your seams and stitches, so treat splicing as a technique and not a sin. True mastery of a technique is knowing when and when not to use it.

Blending almost always makes things look more natural, but sometimes...

You ask a question better left unanswered

[theforgottenmeadow]

"Do you get it?!"

Finally completed my next bojack horseman horse, Butterscotch.

Progress and in provement, on to the next one: Joseph or Crackerjack.

[loish]

There’s a protest going on against AI art over on artstation, so I feel like now is the time for me to make a statement on this issue! 

I wholeheartedly support the ongoing protest against AI art. Why? Because my artwork is included in the datasets used to train these image generators without my consent. I get zero compensation for the use of my art, even though these image generators cost money to use, and are a commercial product. 

Musicians are not being treated the same way. Stability has a music generator that only uses royalty free music in their dataset. Their words: “Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues.” Why is the work of visual artists being treated differently?

Many have compared image generators to human artists seeking out inspiration. Those two are not the same. My art is literally being fed into these generators through the datasets, and spat back out of a program that has no inherent sense of what is respectful to artists. As long as my art is literally integrated into the system used to create the images, it is commercial use of my art without my consent.

Until there is an ethically sourced database that compensates artists for the use of their images, I am against AI art. I also think platforms should do everything they can to prevent scraping of their content for these databases. 

Artists, speak out against this predatory practice! Our art should not be exploited without our consent, and we deserve to be compensated when our art is exploited for commercial use. 

[insigniagame]

How to animate a horse, by me.

[theforgottenmeadow]

"Why I have half a mind."

Finally finished Honey, with that the last of the women in Bojacks family other than Hollyhock. Two horses left to go!

[theforgottenmeadow]

"Your sickness has infected everything."

Finished my piece on Beatrice Horseman today, I think next I'll do honey.

[theforgottenmeadow]

Some early concept background art.

[juni-ravenhall]

list of new horse games

feel free to reblog and add more!

- in development (some have demos) -

Astride (kickstarter ongoing!)  https://www.raidhogames.com/astride

That Horse Game  https://www.playthathorsegame.com/

Tales of Rein Ravine (formerly “horsegame.exe”)  https://www.instagram.com/talesofreinravine/

Ranch of Rivershine  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1559600/The_Ranch_of_Rivershine/

Horse Shelter 2022 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1434250/Horse_Shelter_2022/

- new (recently or last few years) -

Equestrian the Game (mobile)  https://equestrianthegame.com/

Rival Stars Horse Racing (mobile or desktop) https://pikpok.com/games/rival-stars-horse-racing/

Equestriad (mobile) https://equestriad-game.com/

Wildshade (mobile) https://www.tivola.de/en/apps/wildshade/

Horse Club Adventures (desktop) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1518820/Horse_Club_Adventures/

Spirit Lucky’s Big Adventure (desktop) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1270720/DreamWorks_Spirit_Luckys_Big_Adventure/

[theforgottenmeadow]

Could my game get added to this list too? :)