Kastor: Given I only really started practicing digital art 5 days ago... this is okay. But still nowhere near where I want to be. How do people draw clean curves, seems impossible to me, guess it's just practice.

AMKitsune: @Kastor: A small handful of programs have 'brush smoothing' features that smooth out your pen/mouse movements, Paint tool SAI has special 'lineart' layers which let you draw lines then easily drag parts of them around as you see fit, there's a program called Lazy Nezumi which adds that brush smoothing feature to pretty much any program you want (I use it and it works really well), but the way most people seem to handle smooth curved lines is to have their fingers on ctrl+z (undo) and try drawing their line in a single, quick, fluid motion. If it isn't right, undo and try again and again until it's perfect. It's practically impossible to get a nice, smooth line when you draw it slowly on a computer (unless your working with a low resolution image). The mouse/pen cursor just wiggles around too much.

Radian: Clean curves is not the thing you should care about now. Learn fundamentals, perspective, anatomy, lights and shadows and shit. Apply it to your pictures. This picture definitely doesn't looks like made by someone with 5 year of practice (no offense).

AMKitsune: @Radian: While those are also valuable things to understand and eventually master, if something as simple as line smoothness brings a sense of quality to an artists work, wouldn't that go towards building a sense of pride in their work that would consequentially give them more desire to keep drawing and get better with practice?

MikeyTheFox: @Kastor: I suffer shaky hands when I draw. I can never get smooth or clean lines no matter what. Even though I have very still hands, I just tend to shake when I draw. This is something that's always bothered me for the longest time. As AMK said, some drawing programs have a "brush smoothing" feature. I myself use Paint Tool SAI. It has a stabilize feature that can make lines very smooth and very clean when I draw. It took time to get used to it. But I enjoy it very much.

Radian: Oh shi... for 5 days it's definitely not bad! I'm probably too used to see\hear about years of practice, 5 days is not much to learn how to be good artist. Keep practicing.

@AMKitsune: Imo high quality line art isn't the most important part of art. If you can do it - good, if you just draw lines in pretty much right place - it's probably enough. And eventually you'll learn how to draw lines good enough just by practice art.

Kastor: Ah yup... using Firealpaca (I like it's simplicity... and freeness) turns out that it's smoothing option was right there on my screen all along. "correction"

Oh man that's so much better. Now to focus on the rest of it.

AMKitsune: @realbboy: I also encountered the 'start screen crash'. It happened on the 'random flurry of fireballs' screen and upon pressing "D", the window stopped responding. As a side note, when I restarted the game, I encountered the same 'screen' but promptly pressed "D" again and got straight through to the main menu. Perhaps it has something to do with the amount of time spent on the title screen?

realbboy: Ok, so I think these crashes are compiler specific, ie my debug compiler doesn't trigger them but the one I use for the exports does have them. I think this may be because the functions with cancel were intended for debug, so I'll try to rewrite them in the 10x more unwieldy asynchronous dialog events.

realbboy: @AMKitsune: When testing, I encountered it immediately on the pineapple swirl screen, so I don't think it's that. I put a message about it in the disqus update, but I think this is gonna be an issue that goes unsolved until I accidentally fix it or do something that breaks it more and makes it obvious.

X-post from disqus
----
The last version was bugger than expected, and was silently patched (not that you guys noticed the worst bug- the crash that prevents Quill-Weave from getting arrows) those bugfixes, as well as additional content and features, can be found here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/realbboy-infiltrate/downloads/realbboy-infiltrate-1-2-1-6

As usual, the discussion/bug report page can be found here: http://www.prequeladventure.com/fanartbooru/post/view/4308

There are three primary new features to this version are YWOC, books, and arrows sticking in things.
YWOC is the ability to add your weird oc to the game as a playable character. You can find the guide for that here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/realbboy-infiltrate/tutorials/creating-your-weird-oc-in-realbboy-infiltrate If you want, you can even give Katia a beard! (I was going to make a skyrim joke, but now I can't find any mention of how much Bethesda pushed their beards anywhere)
The second new feature, books, adds two types of books to the game, attack skill books and special skill books. Attack skill books increase your damage, and special skill books improve your special skill. ASOTIL doesn't have a special skill, but he did have the balance patch of better hit detection, so go punch away for justice!

The final feature, arrows sticking into things, is pretty small, but I think it looks cool. True to TES, you can pick up arrows that hit walls solid walls but not arrows that hit soft, yielding flesh.

KNOWN ISSUE: The game sometimes, crashes after the start screen. It usually doesn't, and I haven't seen any pattern to it yet. You can just restart the game and you lose no progress, so it's not that big of an issue, but I would appreciate any evidence you guys have to offer.
----

Robbyn: @realbboy: My bad dude, 1 and 5 bug that i said only trigger on my PC... My PC can't run even Minecraft or explosins/smoke from CS 1.6...

Robbyn: aaaannnd i just used a tag incorrectly. I am a crazy chicken for sure.

realbboy: The next update will likely be delayed a day or two while I try to figure out multiplayer stuff, which is like three different things I don't have any practice suing rolled into one. Luckily there are plenty of tutorials and examples to pull from, so it shouldn't take to long.
If anyone's interesting in how I'm going to go about doing it, I plan to basically livestream the host's screen to the clients, who will only return input data. This means that one person will have to have a good computer and internet connection, while the others will likely only have to have a bad computer and an ok connection.

AMKitsune: Just got around to playing your latest version. Not much in the way of feedback regarding the newer feature, just UI and engine things mainly.

1. Character able to turn infinitely without their feet turning as well. Perhaps allow feet to stay in place until body rotation is 20 degrees away, then have feet follow (as through being kept within 20 degrees)
2. occasional crash on start screen. Seems to happen upon mouse click. (window not responding)
3. Information overload on title screen. If possible, consider relegating the various 'game settings' to a separate 'options' menu. As it is, you've got 26 clickable buttons on the main menu alone and 25 lines of accompanying text.
While how you may go about reorganising the menus would be entirely up to your own design choices, I'd offer that on the main menu itself, you could have a button for starting the game (walking offscreen seems a little 'hacky' for a main menu), the tutorial level button , a 'character select' button which would open a submenu allowing the player to choose from any of the built in characters or 'OC's from the modlist. An 'options' menu which could contain things like audio, graphical and gameplay settings. High scores could still be displayed on the main menu, but the button to clear them could be located in the 'options' menu.
4. escape/enter key to pause game and offer 'back to main menu' button for easy access to main menu. The only way I can find to do that currently is to press backspace a number of times until the player character dies.
5. Currently able to enter an 'OC' into the OC input textfield that doesn't exist, causing nothing to be loaded in. Assuming you stick with a text based OC selection method (which I suggest you don't if possible), you'll want to implement some sort of input validity test before the character is loaded.

Also, streaming the hosts screen as a requirement for multiplayer seems a bit odd. Wouldn't it be better (latency wise) to have the client computers render the scene using their local copies of the game but using the entity position (and rotation) data from the host computer?

realbboy: @AMKitsune:
1. I'm definitely going to have to do that at some point, but I'll also have to account for players moving and running backwards, and strike a balance between making noise and not making noise when they rotate, since realistically that would involve them moving their feet.
2. I still have no idea what causes this, thankfully it isn't mid-game. I'll work on it, but I don't think I will be able to fix it until another change either fixes outright or reveals it's true nature.
3 + 4: I"ll put these together, and add a pause menu with options.

On the streaming, I was poking around in the manual and noticed that the application surface (essentially the end result of all the graphical stuff, which is then displayed on the screen) apparently is saved to a buffer every step. The network functions can only send over buffers. This seemed ten million times easier than sending over all the data dictating everything's blending, movement, states, and a bunch of other stuff that I use the draw things. The problem is that I can't find where this buffer is, and the function to straight up convert it to a buffer is very laggy. I managed to scale down the surface for sending, which takes care of the lag, but a bug is causing the client connection to crash which is why it isn't out already.

AMKitsune: I just had another blaringly simple idea while trying to create a custom level. Doors. Simple, openable and closable doors. Instead of having empty gaps in walls to signify a passage, why not have a special type of 'wall tile' that could effectively be toggled between impassable and passable upon interaction? If it had a specific texture, the player could tell that it's a door and whether it's open or closed. It would also allow the player to close a door shut behind them if they're being chased, blocking off the pursuing mobs (although this may require some quick finger work on the players part). Something else that could be done with them would be to have them emit a sound when activated. Another thing for the stealth player to consider perhaps? Finally, I'm not sure how you might go about implementing something like this, with the simplistic level creation system currently in place, but what about the idea of locked doors that require keys to open? If Keys were placable objects (like mobs and crates), you could place a locked door near the players spawn point and a key at one end of the level, effectively forcing them to traverse the level and then backtrack if they want to open the door.

realbboy: Disqus X-Post:
EDIT: I have uploaded an update (1.2.4.4) that has fixed the startup screen crash, expanded the highscore output, introduced some neat quality of life features, and added an "Easy Mode" that will help you learn the game.
-------------------------
Easy mode has the indicator stuff, if I do a sound pass, the indicators will be in that as well. The startup screen crash was caused by an infinite do loop even though I specially made in with a break out when it runs out of things to look through, but despite my best efforts it decided to endlessly look through a <?> path, which I was not able to directly fix, so I instead implemented a 20 loop limit when looking for modded room categories.

randomlyFish: It is him. The elf who has decided my senior quote.

Pronin: https://slowpokegamer.tumblr.com/post/161870740874/think-like-a-witchhunter

Grape:

GB17: It's 8 in the morning and I never fell asleep I just watched GameGrumps all night and drew random garbage what am I doing

Asperger_kitten_1337: Enjoying summer

Pronin: I like what you did with the 3rd and 4th panels and trying to implement focus by using a lighter brush.

ElstientheFallenKnight: serves her right for doing a dead meme

BadReligion: You mess with cat, you get a stab :^)

Lykozze: This is so good! I like how the "washed out" colors and the damaged background make it look like an old illustration.

AMKitsune: @Lykozze: Like the oblivion character class portraits, but better.

GoodIdeasAreOverrated: Katia coming in with that s a s s hips!

8Aerondight8: Does Makkon have like a site where he post his art stuff?

madmanransom: God's sake, Makkon, I love it, but I don't want sadcat to die. Girl needs some proper armor!

furnut: so very awesome :D

Rick2tails: @madmanransom well for girls in rpgs thats actually a lot of armor

PermanentFace: @Kazerad: Where's our update, you bastard?

madmanransom: @PermanentFace: OOOH! OOOOOOOH! I was waiting for this one!
I saw it coming a mile away!

LightWave: @Armored-Struggle-Wagon Yup!

Armored-Struggle-Wagon: @LightWave: Might draw something based off of this, I like the idea. ;3c

LightWave: @Armored-Struggle-Wagon: Go ahead, this site needs more Limbo crossovers. :)

Preston_Garvey: clicked on expecting leaked images
typed on getting nostalgia from reading creepy pastas

Asperger_kitten_1337: This... i like this

Armored-Struggle-Wagon: @LightWave: also, mind doing a follow-up image? I'm very curious.

LightWave: @Armored-Struggle-Wagon: I do intend to, yes.

Toryu-Mau: Well that's... comforting... .

8Aerondight8: Welp there goes sleeping tonight.

LightWave: @8Aerondight8: Sleep is overrated.

Shoka: Quick sketch of Katia I did on my phone the other day.

Pronin: I get that this was on a phone which is slightly impressive but, you really need to work on that linework. The are way too many stray lines.

Shoka: Thanks for the input.

Worth noting it was done on a 5.7 inch screen, and the canvas, originally, was at 1440x2560 (this is quite considerably cropped in). And I did zero cleanup. So it kinda is what it is.

Yugjak: ...
SOMEONE IS GOING TO FUCKING DIE.
Seriously, Katia gets enough shit LIVING. Anyone else who makes her cry will face me, if I get her to cheer up Katia, and anyone else I can scrounge up from my MASSIVE SELECTION of personal characters.

Any questions?

Nefel: Settle down, Yug

Yugjak: Sorry. Kind of thought it would make for an interesting comment.

Lot cooler in my head I guess. Just a thought.

felipe12305: @Yugjak: It's just a fucking comic xDD Calm down..

MANAMEISVIKTORREZNOV: Wut huv u dune

Filthypaladin: I like when she cries.

Gren: @Filthypaladin: We all love when she cries. It's just they don't want to admit it. :P

AMKitsune: @Filthypaladin: After seeing some of your 'other' web pages, I can tell XD.

A_racist_slur_against_Khajits: What picture was it?

SomeShadyGuy: @A_racist_slur_against_Khajits: http://www.prequeladventure.com/fanartbooru/post/view/952

makimb0: This is the commission Furnut is talking about:

Rick2tails: I like this for obvious reasons even though its pg rated ^_~

Pronin: I just noticed the legs are wrong. Her left leg should be up, not her right.

Rick2tails: well maybe were seeing it in a mirror?

Kazerad: @Rick2tails: Yeah, this really needs to be mirrored. As is, it's not even the "other side", it's a 100 degree rotation! I feel gypped.

Enheldor: I rarely have criticisms for Furnut's work, but I feel like we should also see the backside of the speech bubble.

Unidentified_BA: @makimb0: I'm surprised nobody uploaded this one.

Enheldor: @Unidentified_BA: I haven't uploaded mine yet because I want to upload my physical ones first and am without a scanner at the moment.

furnut: @Pronin: ahh yeah I lazily copied the pose of the original, and didn't even think of switching the legs. I'll keep that in mind next time if an opportunity like this arises :D

furnut: @Enheldor: ohh shoot thats a great idea!

Bluedragon: Lord Raderkaz most likely caused the bone-choking incident which immediately proceeded this. But let's not think about this now and enjoy the happy moment just before.
(Wow - I'm really starting to think like Kaz! That's a bad thing.)

picartosux: I'm pretty sure this is the cutest depiction of Katia I've seen yet. That being said, I'm not sure my heart is taking this very well.

mr_cat: FOOOKIN ADOOOOOORABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mr_cat: and nice job too doh =3

Skoon: I DED

Nafaalilargus: RIP Fishbro

AMKitsune: My headcanon for this: It's little Katia's birthday and her parents had begged the lord of the castle to give them one of his finer, imported fish from the kitchen (in exchange for an unreasonable amount of unpaid overtime in their regular duties).

Expecting nothing but a regular paupers dinner, with a small song and well-wishings, Katia's eye's lit up in shock and awe as she was instead presented with a whole, freshly grilled fish.

As the plate was placed before her, excitement bubbled up within, as her tail rapidly swished from side to side, betraying her feelings to everyone nearby.

"Is... Is this, for me?" She asked her parents, trying her best to remain humble and non-expectant.
Sitting at the other side of the table, each with their plates of hardening bread and bowls half filed with cabbage soup, they replied with big smiles, "Of course. This is a very special occasion. It's not every day a little girl turns [whatever age you think works best], is it?"

With an open jawed smile nearly as big as the fish itself, Katia burst into thanks and hurriedly started slicing up her dinner. After the fist couple of delicious mouthfuls, she noticed that her parents were just soaking up their soup and weren't having anything nearly as nice as she was. Feeling a little disheartened by this, she took her fork and split the remaining fish into thirds, two of which she took in hand, leant over the table and placed on her parents bread plates.

"You'll have some too, right?" she asked.

They both looked at each-other for a second, before her mother turned back to Katia and asked, "Don't you want the whole thing sweetie? We probably won't have another like it for quite a while."

"Oh, yeah, I do... But then you wouldn't get one for a really long time, right? I'd rather we all got to share it anyway, if that's ok..."

Hearing this, her parents both got up, stepped around the table and leant in to give Katia a big hug.

"Of course it is dear." her father replied, welling up from his daughter's selfless gesture.

"It's your special day after all."

picartosux: After picartosux woke up and brushed his teeth, he went to his computer desktop expecting nothing of interest. Yawning and stretching, he remembers to check up on Prequel booru's comments.

"Man, I wonder if anyone replied to any of my dumb nonsensical comments" he thinks to himself, "probably not, but might as well check".

As he clumsily scrolled down the page, something quickly grabbed his attention. There was a gigantic block of text inside a comment. At first picartosux thought that it might be some kind of art criticism, but after rubbing his eyes he looked at it again and realised that it's...

"WHAT?!" he exclaimed in shock, twitching his eye, "someone wrote A FANFIC?!"

Usually picartosux isn't the one who usually reads fanfics, but this is a weird special occasion, since it has already grabbed his attention and his gaze couldn't be averted, so he sighed and read the whole thing.

The short fanfic that he read was as sickly adorable and heart-wrenching as the original art. Atlthough he had somewhat enjoyed that fanfic, picartosux, after having his soul sucked away, curses AMKitsune for writing this painfully cute piece of fiction and also curses FurNut for drawing this awfully adorable picture in the first place. He then proceeds to ironically write his comment in the same style of fiction just to "mock" AMKitsune, slowly realising that this thing is becoming more serious with every new word.

After finishing writing it, picartosux starts wondering where did his life go wrong and why can't he stop himself from doing insanely stupid things. After posting this comment, he tries to wipe his memory of this ever happening to no avail.

Probablynotafurry: "That's a lot of reading" Muttered probablynotafurry, rubbing the sleep from their eyes as their face contorts from the subsequent yawn.

"I really should just go to bed" They said with an exasperated sigh, Procrastination though, rules the day for this blighted creature and lacking the conviction to follow through with their own halfhearted remark, they began to Digest the literary buffet.

It was of course, fanfiction, written to lend the author's interpretation to the reader in an unabashed display. nearing the end of the story probablynotafurry noticed the crooked guise of a smile creeping across their face. The Context of the picture worked well with the fanfiction and both fit the tone of the source material as well as adequately providing contrast for the tragic circumstance explored more in depth in the comic itself.

With the story finished, probablynotafurry quickly discarded their smile to replace it with a more stoic and neutral expression and began reading the next post, yet another formidable wall of text, daring those with the patience to overcome its daunting deluge of dictomantic doom.

Finishing the last word with renewed purpose, probablynotafurry found that the second novel just as entertaining as the last, but for very different reasons. With nary a second thought they begin to compose something pointless, unoriginal and and tackles. For what more can you ask of the internet at large?

"This took way to long for how few words there are" probablynotafurry remarks looking over the garbage fire they had intended to release on the residents of the booru. They take a moment to reflect on the possible ramifications of their actions, wither simply commenting because they could is reason enough and how far one can go before their comment no longer pertains to the art at hand. They also wonder if everyone would like their comments more if they got a new car or something. Honestly, probablynotafurry should be more worried about getting to sleep or fixing the gutters or maybe actually coming up with some kind of endi

Toryu-Mau: @AMKitsune: ( Applauds, then wipes single tear. ) Every Kat was a Kitten at one point. Too bad things don't stay that way.