Leaderboard

Probably. Almost certainly over, that is. In any case, the forums software will be running some indexing behind the scenes and things could yet get wonky. If you run into bugs, please speak up in this thread. There are also several new features to the blog, but I left the list of them back in the United States and will need to recompile it. In the meantime, just assume that everything you like is filled with sparkly updates, and everything you dislike went away. EDIT: The visual formatting of the forums are a bit off as well. This has to do with our various forums themes. As soon as I get home tonight, I'll start the laborious process of updating them, and then things should be pretty once more. (Except for Rooke's theme. That one's just crap.) EDIT: I mentioned it in the blog post, but whenever you come back and notice the forums are alive, please drop a big "Thank You!" to Nayleen (and, to a lesser extent, Invision) for bringing us back from the edge of the abyss!

Hi everyone ! Thank you for allowing me to post here, not just today, but for the past five years. The Last Birdling will be released next week on September 1st, so I have decided to put my portfolio of games on sale: http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/2684/InvertMouse_Bundle/ The Last Birdling marks my fifth year not in game development, but at least under the name InvertMouse. I have released five to six titles on Steam now, and they have all taught me valuable lessons. It all started with Unhack 1 on this very forum, so I want to thank those who have been around since 2012. I have grown from five years' worth of mistakes since then, and as you will see below, I cannot bring myself to overhype some of these older titles. They still have all of my heart in them, though. That I will always be able to promise. First, there was Unhack 1, which has many immature traits in retrospect. I must continue to accept critique even when it is for older titles that no longer reflect my skill level. Then there is Bermuda, which I admit is a failure. I made plenty of management mistakes, and the results are out there for the world to see. Failure is not as scary once you have suffered through it. Please let me stress all the errors are on me, not anyone else on the team. Next, we have Without Within 1 and 2. Initially, the first game received negative reviews from people who hated anime and/or visual novels. As the days went by, players who fell in love with Vinty have defended these titles. Vinty is kind, but she can also be a jerk. She is simply real. There was Cursed Sight, featuring a protagonist who had caused some divided opinions. If I were to rewrite this story, I know I can do a much better job. Maybe I will revisit this one someday. Then most recently came Unhack 2. This project was once a disaster due to my lack of research on AI. After months of study and rewrites, the game had evolved into my personal favorite. I hope more people may try out this title, because its themes have left me with plenty to think about. The Last Birdling is a combination of all the lessons I have learned since 2012, and when it drops next week, I am sure I will grow from it yet again. I hope you will give the game a chance on September 1st. If you think the title is worth wishlisting, or if you are up for joining the Steam community, I would really appreciate it: http://store.steampowered.com/app/629430/The_Last_Birdling/ Thank you so much everyone. See you next week !

Just finished Akatsuki no Yona. It's strange how this show is full of things I would expect to completely break the experience for me, like some cliches and extremely overpowered male characters, but I still ended up loving this show. Definitely picking up the manga.

Today I'll be going through this new visual novel "Noble Works." Some call it a moege, some call it a charage, and people who aren't pretentious call it an eroge. The story begins from the perspective of our male protagonist, Noble Works. Noble Works is in a real pickle. You see, Noble Works works a lot of part-time jobs in order to pull himself through high school. He lives alone because he doesn't want his parents around when he inevitably does the sexorz with cute girls. Unfortunately, various circumstances have left him unemployed, and he now wonders how he'll pay the month's rent. Suddenly, Noble Works is approached by his cute kouhai. She and Noble Works attend Hatsushiba Academy together. But apparently you don't have to remember that, because the name of the school appears only twice in the damn game. After she contributes jack shizzle to our protagonist's plight, we move on and meet a guy who looks suspiciously similar. This guy looks exactly like the protagonist! Having determined that there's been some sort of glitch in the matrix, they decide to battle in order to decide who's the true Noble Works. However, this battle goes a step too far. Our protagonist has killed the imposter Noble Works. In a panic, he rushes the body to his apartment. Soon thereafter, a group of suspicious people and a cute Chinese girl break in. Despite Noble Works's best attempts, he cannot explain away the corpse at his side. The situation gets complex at this point, but it all comes down to this: In order to atone for his sins, Noble Works must attend a prestigious high school academy in the dead guy's place. It's kind of like The Prince and the Pauper, or Princess Evangelion. Anyway, we soon meet Bigtittymaid-san. I know what you're thinking: That's an awfully short tie she's wearing. In actuality, that's a perfectly normal tie. It's just that her knockers project so greatly that it looks short from this perspective. While at school, Noble Works meets the next heroin. Well, first we meet her grampa, this guy: Then we see the confused, alien-looking chick. Later on, Zoltron Glocknork approaches Noble Works to ask for help. Basically, she doesn't know how to play shogi, so she asks our protagonist for help. You can think of shogi as the Japanese version of 52 Pickup. The common route gets complicated around this time, so without spoiling too much, I'll skip ahead to alien girl's route. I soon found that this route was a whole lot of plot, a whole of lot shogi, and then a whole lot of "plot." The thing I liked most was how much pee there was. The following images aren't NSFW, but they're as close as one can get to NSFW without being NSFW. Indeed, by my count, they didn't technically have the sexorz until the fourth H-scene. But urine for a treat, because there's plenty of pee to sustain you until then. And when it's finally time for them to do the sexorz, they get into this super-advanced position. Noble Works knows what his girl wants. Oh, and then there's pee. I'll stop here, where the plot gets pretty intense. The "plot" also gets pretty intense. I'd like to finish the whole game before giving it a proper score. I wonder how long it is? Let's see, it's got 57,690 lines, and at >10 words per line, that adds up to at least 576,900 words. Gee, that's longer than Infinite Jest, one of the longest novels ever written. I wonder what it says about our society when some degenerates will dedicate more time to a game about pee fetishes than David Foster Wallace's classics.

Dahell is with the new Like system, gg ipb. You make Plastic Memories sound very uh, plastic xD but I'll take 'really good'. backlogged ~~ Also picked up Koi to Uso, dunno how I'm able to binge anime so much right now (i've watched more in the past 3 weeks than the past year prob?) The art is waay too moe, i mean jesus look how huge these character eyes are. I don't know who to ship, Neji x Misaki got the 'destined 5 year+ long crush' thing going on but their dynamics are actually really bland compared to Neji x Ririna. Episode nana finally officializes the love triangle, but goddammit this is an ongoing anime so now I gots to wait. Maybe might just pick up the manga...

I watched Plastic Memories, and I have complicated feelings about it. The characters were pretty bland, and the plot was ludicrously predictable every step of the way, but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy watching those characters act out that plot anyway. The main characters were the blandest, none more so than Generic Male Main Character (I've long since forgotten his name, if I ever knew it), but even the female leads were forgettable. The further out side characters were a little more interesting, but not much. I think the setting played a big part in my enjoyment, and the plot, while ridiculously predictable, still tugged at my heartstrings. The central motivating idea behind the show was, frankly, great. That, coupled with the way the story stuck to its central themes and morals all the way to the end, made for a compelling tale to watch, even while there were no surprises or twists, and no particularly interesting people. The sheer inevitability of it all was, perhaps, its greatest strength. In the end, despite my gripes, I thought it was really good. Not great, but really good.

The *gataris are solid watching and the witty dialogue is kind of the whole point of the series. There is action and intrigue and stuff but that's really secondary to the dialogue. Having said that I find saturation from watching too much of it so if you feel like I do, you won't feel like watching another one immediately after finishing one series.

So I guess our PHP setup wasn't that "unusual" after all... Sorry it took that long either way, was out camping and not dealing with Invision's BS. The themes need to be updated, as usual when updating IPB.