Etho is Back :D

Textpost Enjoyer & Buildmart Stan 

[trihardent]

btw the fact that super's square and mcsr ended up being perfectly aligned, only separated by nato is 10000% feeding into my delusions of him speedrunning again and joining hbg

[trihardent]

3 years ago..... Super PLEASE rank up into diamond or emerald so they can invite you PLEASE

[everyfree]

Tried putting the S9 MCSR ranked playoffs runners into categories based on their playstyles while waiting for semifinals, wondering what other people think:

Lowkey-esque Players: Lowkey, Steez, NHB Defined by mechanical excellence, but more notably a lack of hesitation when decision-making. Will go for the risky / unconventional / variance plays. Well-known for incredible top speeds in linear seeds, but the lack of hesitation often give them the advantage in messy and unclear situations as well.

Micro-Technical Players: Silverr, Doogile, Beefsalad The goal is to always make the correct play based on currently available information. This means being good mechanically to pull off strategies, knowing a lot of really micro time-saves on scale of in-game ticks, but also active thinking & constant adaptation. Testing & analysis outside of practice games.

Mechanical Players: Hackingnoises, Blazemind, Nahan, HDMICables, Aquacorde Probably the most broad category, but players defined by their excellence within individual splits, eg. bastion routing, dealing with blaze spawner, end fights. Flashy plays common but not necessary. The more linear the seed, the more these players are at an advantage

All-Rounder Players: Infume, EDCR Players who might not stand out mechanically, but achieve consistent fast times across the seed thanks to decision-making and being aware of their win-con (eg. when to high-roll).

RSG-Influenced Player: Skycrab Possesses the lack of hesitation characteristic of Lowkey-esque but with some minute differences in the timing & content of pre-crafts compared to top ranked runners. Preference for high-roll plays (eg. going for stray blazes, not breaking treasure spawner, terrain decisions) without necessarily high risk (eg. go with no food). Buff on BT seeds.

All Advancement-Influenced Player: Feinberg Playstyle that is overall quite similar to the all-rounder, with some affinity to some weird-looking plays (eg. long pearl-hang to second spawner) which might very well just be Feinberg's own tourney experience showing. Buff to inventory management. Debuff to zero cycle (/j).

Mongey Style (Macro-focused) Player: BigbigMongey ???? Yeah there's no other runner at the top level who plays even remotely similar to how Mongey plays. He magics time-saves out of a hat. Looking at splits it's mostly to do with terrain navigation, but he also doesn't hesitate and look around so much like other players do when they try to navigate complex terrain. So like. Intuitive understanding of which nether trees to climb to get to the bastion faster??? No player fit into any category perfectly (except Lowkey and the style named after him I guess). For example, Aquacorde is very good mechanically, but it manifests in clean gameplay and consistency instead of flashy manouveurs. Doogile is not in the mechanical category, even though he obviously excels at the actual mechanics. Beefsalad can go into any of Micro-Technical, Mechanical, or Lowkey-esque depending on the game.

[localbrhuery]

This article went from being a simple "about the event" article about the upcoming Girloffs event, to being one of my most research intensive pieces, delving into gender imbalances in the Minecraft speedrunning scene. I am super proud of it and y'all should go give it a read!

Girloffs: elevating women in competitive Minecraft speedrunning

Representation for women in the competitive Minecraft speedrunning scene can often be scarce. Now a new tournament, Girloffs,

[inoutoftherain]

Direct link to survey https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHI0_NNzOO24qcagKEgtoP7ohpnZU41VuuQQaByFwWBs-VOg/viewform

fill out pls

[trihardent]

Clicking into a Jojosolos stream and seeing the Goat there :0 (@/inoutoftherain)

[dogged-breath]

nothing has skewed my understanding of mcsr skill levels more than seeing feinberg/couriway/etc clown so hard on president poundcake.

i loaded up ranked for the first time today like "oh so pound's average is sub15 and he's not that good but he definitely plays more than me. but also i main rsg so this should be easier than that :). so i guess my goal is just sub25 or mayyyyybe sub30" and then i didn't make it to a both nether structures in any seed and (taking at least 40min each time).

like you think who's bad??? the guy with the sub15 average?? WHAT??? stop clowning on him he's my new goat

[bellshazes]

etho plays minecraft fancam original work do not steal <3

[lifeseriesbasepolls]

Best Life Series Base Final Round

Please note all bases came from nominations. The idea of the poll is that builds are ranked on both beauty and function for defense and offense. Iconic-ness, story, and emotion weight are not factors. It’s more fun for everyone if this is actually a poll for best base and not a popularity contest.

Which is the best base?

Pearl's DL Tower

The Crastle

Voting ended onJul 21, 2025

Pearl's DL Tower

Propaganda:

"Everyone went there when their lives were in danger, and it worked really well. I’m pretty sure Martyn even said that it was easy to defend by design."

"It was so prettyyy! It was made out of nonflamable materials at the bottom so it wouldn't be a daylight to arson and was topped with a cute little room. It was visually amazing and pretty defendable. Multiple people hunkered up there in a sea of red and lived to tell the tale (of that)."

"Arguably the one of the two most defensible bases in the whole series. People who didn't even like Pearl were trying to hide in it. It was completely non flammable at the bottom and the single ladder meant no one got up there that Pearl didn't want there, making an invasion impossible. Even when the bottom blew up, the top was completely functional. Also, it was good appearance wise because it looked exactly like what Pearl wanted it to, which is a rickety tower swaying in the wind"

"#baby it’s the tower#it’s highly defensible it’s good for offense because there was only one way up that Pearl good use to hit people off (and did)#and it looks great"

The Crastle

Propaganda:

"I love the crastle and its inhabitants so much, it took 30 stacks of stone, dark oak and a ridiculous number of episodes to build. it straight up k i l l e dbdubs! it's such a pretty build (shout out to cleos witchcraft series) and people are right when they say it's functional to an extent. it survived not one but TWO tnt flying machines. oh yes and THE word of the series: crenellations (nevermind the fact that everybody was using the word Wrong)

hmm crenellations..."

"It’s got a pretty but simple design, its spot is easily defendable, and it has CRENELLATIONS!!!"

"The single most defensible base in the whole life series. People tried and failed to invade it. And it looks good!"

"#it looks amazing and IT WAS FUNCTIONAL#IT WAS ACTUALLY A GOOD DEFENSE AND EVEN AFTER THEIR DEATH PEOPLE USED IT"

#actually not biased obviously crastle cmon#it was one of the last kinda intact builds standing the apocalypse phase"

"#the crastle is i believe one of the only bases in the entire series that was still standing by the end of it#no yeah i just thought about it i think it straight up definitely is unless im missing something"

"#The Crastle was pretty damn well defended and a decent build for what it was. cute too"

[desolationcleo]

[bellshazes]

and yet goose can honk when and where it choose? it is not fair!

[bellshazes]

Grand Unified Theory of Ethubs: Horse Edition

I started this almost a year ago, and at this point it's weirder than any Etho & Bdubs fiction could be, but it's all true, or at least every point has a valid citation. This is an attempt to explain why I find their dynamic as represented in on-video interactions and their own metatextual commentary (in-video asides, deliberate 'OOC' fourth wall breaks, casual livestream/other medial chat/commentary, etc.) compelling.

Horsing Around, or, Experience over Efficiency

THESIS: Although their singleplayer series and general playstyles appear totally opposed, their approaches are actually two different manifestations of the same underlying principles. These behaviors are reinforced and rewarded by their long-running singleplayer series. This combination of aligned gameplay idiosyncracies and a shared but frequently separate play history are the root cause of their opaque and silently mutually-agreed interpersonal dynamics.

The horse obsession is the most obvious modern symptom of these shared gameplay values, and it's useful for illustrating both Etho and Bdubs' underlying principles. Their horsegirl behavior is charming at face value alone, dating back to their Mindcrack days and begetting long-running jokes and feuds. Their history together predates horses themselves, but even in pre-elytra Mindcrack, their fixation on horse transit marked them as kindred eccesntrics on a server with robust nether minecart travel (which, in two cases, they themselves built). All aspects of their modern bespoke mutual eccentrisim is evident, including their shared commitment to experience over efficiency - prioritizing pleasant, manual engagement with game mechanics over pure automation and optimization.

Etho is perhaps most famous for his redstone - and consequently automation - but it has never been for automation's sake. He has always vocally prioritized active gameplay over efficient AFK design, especially in singelplayer. For a long time, he played with no armor to make the game harder - save Feather Falling diamond boots, so he wouldn't die to fall damage while constantly ender pearling everywhere. It's part preference, part pragmatism: he is clear about his feelings on what fair and fun gameplay is, but he chooses constraints (no AFKing, strict survival) because it suits the combination of his audience and the series in question, not universal moral standards. In the hyper-industrial economy of s7-onwards Hermitcraft, the audience-to-series calculus is different; his preference leads him to collect stacks of almost every item so he can functionally emulate the freedom of creative mode in survival, even if it means tolerating AFK design to achieve that. Leaning into unconventional locomation makes for more interesting, if useless, inventions. To survive, pleasure of active play comes first, and the rest follows.

In apparent contrast, Bdubs has no desire to build complicated contraptions for invention's sake, typically using other people's farm designs and inventing his own in service of enlivening builds or enviornments. He even pokes fun at his own in-game Luddite tendencies through Redstone with Bdubs' failures and his vocal hatred of the post-1.16 nether. In singleplayer, he's historically switched to creative sessions, particularly for public livestreams, to balance his own scales of production goals to audience judgement. As his skill as a builder has grown and he designs not just buildings but areas to be viewed and interacted with from certain angles, the greater the reward choosing to go by foot or horse becomes. But as with Etho, these choices are in service of enjoyable, immersive gameplay before any other criterion.

By the time Etho and Bdubs enounter each other directly, they have each been doing singleplayer survival longe enough to develop opinions and preferences that enable them to continue these worlds through the next decade. They both independently decide from the get-go that it's the only way to maintain the grind of creating single- and multiplayer videos long term.

Horsing around, then, illuminates how their shared real-world material constraints and similar approaches to their different in-game disciplines allows them to become kindred eccentrics. Their friendship predates in-game horses, but it endures a decade later, long after elytra makes horses obsoltete to most of their peers. The horse obsession endures as a rarely shared outlet for a need to prolong play and therefore to maximise the moment-to-moment enjoyment of playing.

Courses of Horses, or, Community and Conflict

While horsing around is illustrative of their singleplayer influences, it illuminates their multiplayer priorities as well. In a long-term singleplayer world, drawing out pleasure from rote chores and travel is essential. With others, time and energy spent to create infrastructure for others to share becomes its own self-perpetuating reward.

From their first Mindcrack season together to present-day Hermitcraft season 10, both are prone to building nether hubs out of a sense of obligation and desire for easy travel, elaborate combat arenas that unite technical features with thoughtful area design, and horse timers and racecourses. All three major trends translate personal preferences into major public projects that invite others into their playstyle wheelhouses. The accursed season-ending curse of combat arenas and horse courses are also specifically competitive. For players like Etho and Bdubs, for whom playing is in service of video creation, multiplayer is made enjoyable - and so, sustainable - by drawing out what distinguishes it from singleplayer.

Only through the presence of another person can you access stories and playstyles that depend on antagonists. This doesn't stop either of them from inventing them when alone, such as Etho's General Spaz, or Bdubs' Wells Glazes and McGee (and even arguably Red in Hermitcraft s6), but they do both have preferred tropes for conflict creation.

They trend toward different antagonist tropes, with Etho revelling in faux-innocent trolling and generally keeping authority figures from getting too serious while Bdubs moves from blatant heel to archetypal Fool over the years. Etho is generally more likely to engage in one-off, individual pranks, spend time on playing or building minigames, and join server-wide events by accident or insofar as he can be a casual anti-authority troll. Bdubs is willing to take charge instigating large storylines, though he becomes a pathological henchman when his comfort with the Fool role exceeds his need to instigate. In whole-server conflicts, this usually puts them where they're most comfortable - on opposite sides, giving each other a hard time.

Conflict is a gift, one not exclusively given to each other but ennabled together and apart for their other friends and co-players, but frequently manifesting through their shared history, priorities, and preferences as a strange language only the two of them seem to be able to speak. Early on, Etho rudely informs Bdubs what Bdubs' armor prefrences are and by the Trial, Bdubs is correctly predicting how he can make Etho jealous of his armor gains. Over a decade later, Etho can simply include a potion farm in a normal-seeming part of a regular Hermitcraft video and Bdubs will correctly identify it as a taunt only intelligible to him, retaliation for forgetting they'd meant to partner on a shop together.

They need to embrace mechancis like horses to survive; they provide exra incentive to the entire server to share that productive enjoyment with them in their infrastructure and horse courses; and by extension, their massive continuity of in-jokes and lighthearted complaints about each other both alienates them as a unit from others in a way that itself becomes a productive vehicle of community conflict or interaction. While the full history and ramifications of this fond, conflict-based idiolect are an entirely separate essay, this strange relationship is them at the extremes of who they've each decided to be, and are in continuity with the servers and series they've shared over so many years.

It is not divisible into c! and cc! interacitons because the real world commonalities drive their work friendship and their story-producing mutual obsessions. They know each other so well, so automatically, so much as foils of great mutual but often indirect respect that direct, total certainty expressed by one side is unsettling, creating doubt and distrust. But that dynamic, loving, and conflict-based idiolect produced by two people able to commit to the extremes of who they've each decided to be, together and unalone, requires its own set of essays to unpack.

"If I Had a Nickel...", Episode 1

For every time they started a big community-focused collaboration and the season ended before they could finish it…

Mindcrack season 4 fire and ice arena

Mindcrack FTB Call of Duty arena

Mindcrack season 5 horse course (ft. Doc, Genny; Doc makes a joke about hoping this doesn't happen on this project, given their past track record)

Hermitcraft season 8 horse course (recreated in season 9 for the charity event)

For every time they resurrected a decade-old joke that they both instantly recognize and everybody else is a little confused about at first because seriously it's been like 10 years…

"Pink" hoodie, Mindcrack s4/5 (1, ??) to Hermitcraft s7

Obsidian coffin prank, Mindcrack s4 to Hermitcraft s7 and s9 and 10

Scissor lift invention, Mindcrack s3 to Hermitcraft s10

Sickness, Mindcrack s4/5 to Last Life

Whether or not Bdubs knows what plethora means, Mindcrack FTB to Secret Life

HONORABLE RECENT MENTION: life series crastle anatomy

Asking is this horse course realistic racing or Mario Kart and it's Mario Kart

Mindcrack s5 ep177

hcs8 ep4

Additional Exemplary Clips & Sources

Ballad of Beyonc? and Taylor Swift

Etho heckling the horse-hunting stream via YT chat

You s- you s- YOU JERK (horse moment, appears in WL), ep1

You are the master and the only way to get to your heart is through horses, ep6

Spider spawner hangout, Bdubs Mindcrack eps 21-23

we're kind of at that level where asking isnt even necessary, right? (morry's)

they don't talk directly compilation

Red (pink) trainee uniform with Complex Inside Joke book explanation

[quicksilversnails]

Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

[trihardent]

car -> comet for space symbolism

[cychante]

"...my poor red pearl..." 6x6, Mob Swap

a foray into animation driven solely by gempearl divorce! production notes in the reblogs ^_^

[cychante]

Production Notes:

The Model

The design for Gem was not purely based off of any one fanon design but rather taking bits from skins and a whole host of awesome designs, which differs from my BAM lizzie model. Similar to my Lizzie model, Gem is made entirely, 100% from scratch, including mesh, handpainted textures, rig, and animation. Despite not actively looking to optimise for material slots, I finished with seven separate slots, with notably a very empty UV map for the headband and hairties (under the 'Life' material) which I might use later to alter indicator colours.

About halfway through texturing, I finally got to watch Arcane S2(!!), which caused me to change up the style very suddenly (but imo for the best). This leads to a bit of a weird hybrid style where the model is neutral-toony, but the textures are mildly painterly. My Substance Painter file is a mess but I am free. As a note, the 'background' is a semi-transparent painting of some neat greens and browns that I duplicated a couple of times and used as set dressing, including shadowdappling. They also make up the intro and outro cards on the video! Most valuable texture!

The Rig

Rigging was where I learnt the most during this process. I got into 3D creation through metaverse UGC platforms such as VRChat and Roblox: this meant that my pipeline was very suited to getting sent to third party engines. For this model I wanted to try and make a facial rig instead of driving the character through Blendshapes, and localising the whole process to Blender.

It was a very 'correct things as I go' process, which resulted in me adding bones and vertex groups as required by the animation. In the end, I had three bones per eyebrow (core, inner and outer) as well as four bones per eye (eye, upper, lower, and outer lids), with four bones to drive most lip shapes accompanied by an OO and WH blendshape. The rest of the limbs were pretty 'as per', and also didn't receive much extra attention during later processes due to how little they existed in frame.

I've worked with dynamic bones in unity before, but this was the first time I've ever needed to animate such large chunks of hair in blender. For my lizzie animation I barely scraped by just manually keyframing the braid slipping over the shoulder, but I knew that I needed to actually lock in. Thankfully, I managed to find and use the free addon wiggle bones with relatively minimal grief, and my experience with dynbones and physbones really helped with value tweaking to minimise collision freakout. It's not PERFECT, but it doesn't distract from the focus of the animation.

The Animation & Subject

I was about 60% 'done' with the initial rig when Wild Life Session 6 dropped. I'm a very simple woman. I was originally going to do a dialogue-free showcase shot for the model but as soon as I heard gem's devious line to pearl I knew what I had to do.

I made a veery simple storyboard in MS Paint, and then gradually built up keyframes from camera movement, body and head movement, eye movement, arms hands and fingers, then finally eyelids, eyebrows, and lipsync.

If I was going to do something like this again, I would 100% do pre-visualisation BEFORE anything in blender so I have a proper reference for the scene. My own rig also limited me pretty significantly without using constraints to maintain eye contact, which required a lot of tweaking over time and with varying head movements.

The whole five seconds (ha ... ha) of animation are based upon four rough stages of Gem's demeanour and how I personally headcanon her interactions with Pearl in the moment.

"What." - Irritation, walking away and being interrupted, accused. Pearl's called Gem a rat, and that interrupts her. It conflicts with her own self-perception enough to give pause.

"...My poor, red, pearl." - Mockery, derision, status misidentification. Pearl is yellow, but Gem only gives regard to her on Red. Gem holds herself above and detached from the concept of being or going Red, taking away what little threat Pearl has to her status. An attempt from pearl to correct Gem would place her in a more imbalanced position.

"What do you want?" - Gem demonstrates a deliberate lack of interest or care for Pearl, looking to her nails instead of the 'threat'. Gem knows what Pearl wants, and Gem will deny it, over and over again.

The beat - However, there it is. She glances back at pearl, betraying an investment. Because Gem isn't heartless, she's just tactical. She wants Pearl in a place that makes her vulnerable but not declawed, because she's biding her time to have fun with her when the social scene buckles and gives way to violence.

basically. im normalmoding this operation u_u!! hope you enjoyed

[trihardent]

jojosolos my prophetic queen, believer before the 1st shot even hit

[sharkiestlemons]

DONT STOP THE PARTY SAPNAP COURIWAY EDITION 🔥🔥🔥

[fandomitar]

Twitch rivals is just so frustrating to watch pretty much every time. They are the one minecraft event with money and for money and they somehow have the most problems every time, it’s crazy.

All minecraft events have bugs sometimes, games break etc. that’s understandable. But in an event with such a huge prizepool it is crucial to have predecided reactions to those problems and consistency in those reactions. This rivals had neither and that is unforgivable.

That said there have been improvements for mc rivals over the years. The wait times, even though long went nicely with players talking to each other and looking for the eggs. The lobby was big and looked nice, it was fun to watch. The tutorial videos were nice for viewers as well, so everyone could understand the game without some separate document.

But getting excited for a game, for example in this rivals one really fun looking hour long game, only for it to last two minutes? That is not an enjoyable viewing experience. Seeing in the chat mid game that the ongoing game is nulled and then after that waiting in the dark as to what is happening? Not knowing whether the streamer you are watching is still in or not? That is not an enjoyable viewing experience.

As a viewer I see ”100k twitch rivals” and excpect that money to show in the event quality. This is not a passion project by volunteers, this is a for profit event with sponsors. And a bad product, bad event, will not sell. Not to sponsors, not viewers. Hopefully we will see some change in the future. I know there are passionate event organisers for mc, it is not a problem of finding people to do the work.

[morganthyper]

hbg for the win! (pete is there in spirit)

so proud of them

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based off this screenshot woah :0