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mauve

@mauvecow.bsky.social

370 followers 110 following 450 posts

// Game designer / Pixel artist / Linux // // Currently: Addlemoth // // Previously: Them's Fightin' Herds, Defender's Quest 2 // // Personal: https://icosahedron.website/@mauve // // 日本語でも話せる〜 //

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · Nov 5

Hello, is mauve.

I'm a game developer and artist, currently working on a puzzle game called Addlemoth, you can play a demo! mauve.itch.io/addlemoth

I'll be using this account for posting updates and art exclusively, if you wish for my personal you can find it on my profile. Thank you! #gamedev

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 1h

a design language for the iconography for a game is more important than people give it credit for tooooo

Reposted by mauve

Xalavier Nelson Jr. @writnelson.bsky.social · 5h

Something that ran through my head as I saw descriptions for Steam Next Fest games: if the project uses gen AI, it’s an instant skip

Yes, even if it’s “just” for store assets

However it’s intended, it LOOKS like an active gap in your craft, and there’s infinite other games to spend my time on

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 1d

thinking a lot about how videogame stories tend to cast agents of change into villain roles and preservers of order into protagonist roles, lately

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Reposted by mauve

Preeti Chhibber @runwithskizzers.bsky.social · 2d

If you’re in a creative field and you don’t lift up the work of your peers, you can’t expect people to care about your stuff

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 5d

Do you have any extremely niche, but serious, ethical stances?

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 3d

heck yeah

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 3d

i could post gamedev things but instead i'm going to show you this bread i baked over the past couple hours

Two loaves of bread still in baking pans, on top of pot holders on a reflective stovetop. In the background, there is coffee being brewed with a pourover.

Two delicious loaves of bread on a cutting board.

Same two loaves of bread, but one is sliced with two pieces, showing delicious fluffy crumb.

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Reposted by mauve

Nova Crystallis @novacrystallis.com · 4d

Via @automaton-media.com, composer Uematsu: “I’ve never used AI & probably never will. I think it still feels more rewarding to go through the hardships of creating something myself. When you listen to music, the fun is also in discovering the background of the person who created it, right?"

More:

Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu says he's “never used generative AI, and never will.” Hardship is what makes the creative process rewarding - AUTOMATON WEST

Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu discusses the history and evolution of game music and shares opinion on generative AI.

automaton-media.com

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 4d

vampire savior is a very different game than vampire survivors lol

yeah, honestly it just feels like the modern era of arcade-style run based gameplay with just enough variation to keep people from getting bored at doing the same thing over and over

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 4d

a good one should feel like navigating a probability cloud to put something together

instead it's kinda feeling more like... a genre convention? for run-based games, where the roguelike portion is not the focus, but dressing to keep you from being bored on doing the same thing over and over.

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 4d

after pouring over some next fest demos I feel like the takeaway people had about roguelite deckbuilders was 'every run is slightly different!' with very little actual build diversity

it's like back in the early days of procgen where the wildest change per run was going left instead of right

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 5d

i just use visual studio code for things here so i'm pretty platform agnostic

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 5d

i forget which project it was but i had to essentially parse lua script and extract strings, so i just asked the translators what format they wanted things in and we went from there.

ended up with plain text files with coded delimiters between strings ahaha

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 5d

join usssssssssssss

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 5d

Linux is pretty great these days. Just saying.

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 7d

browsing the dungeon crawler tag at next fest, which seems to involve a whole lot of games which are roguelites instead

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 7d

the signature of authenticity will become whatever The Machine is bad at

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 7d

i am trying to improve my art for games and i take solace in the fact that my pixely style is particularly difficult for genAI to imitate well

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Reposted by mauve

ritchie @ritchie.bsky.social · 7d

When you're a "high performing" person it easy to acknowledge in the abstract that burnout is something that happens to people but then it's shocking when all of a sudden it happens to you, and even more shocking when clawing back up to a normal level of functioning takes so god damn long.

Natalie Spitzel @nat-the-dev.bsky.social · 7d

Believe old game devs when we tell you: burnout is real, it's painful. Be honest with yourself, take the breaks when you need them.
I've been burnt out for so long, I only just realized how long. I went from crunch at Iridium into crunch at Giant Squid with no break. About 3 years. It was too long.

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 8d

Lead Programmer Leaves Abruptly

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 12d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 10d

beep beep battery empty please return to charging bed beep beep

Reposted by mauve

Melo @letitmelo.bsky.social · 13d

Small Brain: Bob Ross is a great artist

Big Brain: Bob Ross' art style is basic, rudimentary, and prescriptive to the point that anyone can copy it

Large brain: if anyone can copy it then everyone can make art

Galaxy Brain: Bob Ross is a great artist

PBS News @pbsnews.org · 13d

Thirty paintings created by the bushy-haired, soft-spoken Bob Ross will soon be up for auction to defray the costs of programming for small and rural public television stations suffering under cuts in federal funding. https://to.pbs.org/4nEQMrw

Bob Ross paintings to be auctioned to support public TV stations after federal funding cuts

All profits will help public TV stations with licensing fees for popular programs that include "The Best of Joy of Painting" and "America's Test Kitchen."

www.pbs.org

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 14d

just because it made a lot of money doesn't mean it had a lot of cultural sway either

enduring art is such a different, and more niche, beast than commercialized art. even some of the most profitable games of our times will be forgotten in a few years.

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 14d

if you only ever look for inspiration from the games people cheer on at all times, you will never see the decisions made, the processes performed, the markets they were releasing to, or the pressures they were under to get them to that point

it is all more complicated and human than at first glance

mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 14d

videogame history is fascinating because of all the weird and experimental stuff, the things that had ideas but maybe not the followthrough

for a designer, it's much more instructive and educational to look at the ones that didn't quite get it than the beloved classics

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mauve @mauvecow.bsky.social · 16d

Do this with the code I write too. I'm writing it, the code's doing it, together we are making bugs for future me to solve.