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MJB

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A member registered Jun 11, 2020 · View creator page →

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My thing is a WoTC 5e-compatible thing; "Old Smoke" is a contemporary London-based project I'm working on, where players navigate an arcane, alternate-history version of the English capital:

Old Smoke Title Art


Centuries-old criminal institutions, secret societies maintaining magical balance, randomised magical effects, and a big, wobbly hole in reality that London itself is scared of called "The Noose". Hooray!

There's also a random encounter generator, and a lore based on my own born-Londoner knowledge, meaning looking up any of the events or names in Old Smoke's history will turn up results that could be a cover-up of what Old Smoke suggests took place. So there's that. :D

Thank you! Lots of food for thought here. I've taken a crack at Godot so far, and run through some tutorials. I'm still clunking along a little trying to pick up all the terminology and quirks, but getting there. 

My aim so far is to keep running through tutorials until I have the skills to be able to create a small aspect of a running sim; perhaps "goodies" "baddies" and "neutrals" nodes that will interact in a simple 2d scene, then practice layering complexity up from there until I'm fluent enough to shoot for what I want. 

I'm setting an expectation for myself to have something working in the next year that looks vaguely like it's a part of my initial idea (or whatever that idea has evolved in to like by then). 

Programming-wise, I'm still groping around in the dark for the most part, but from what I've seen I think this will start to make sense to me eventually. This whole idea started while I was watching the third series of Britannia, and not being able to shake the concept, I ended up creating this spreadsheet in Google Sheets that simulates combat interactions to sort of exorcise this brain itch I was getting. (Apparently, it wasn't quite enough.!) I'd never really used Excel before, so it took a bit of research. The jump in complexity and what you can achieve in Godot's native language is obviously huge, and looks like it could provide some great system depth, but even taking that in to account, I've found it a lot more impenetrable just to get that initial familiarity going.

Thanks as well for the engine/framework directory views, I'd not thought to look at the choice from that perspective. And that YouTube is exactly the sort of thing I want to learn to build eventually! Even if just for the graphs :D.

Thank you - I'll take that advice and start out little - maybe a clone or just a guy standing in a room that keeps getting thirsty, and drinks when he hits a thirstiness limit. As much as anything else, I wanted to make sure I'm not learning a tool that would be an inefficient one to use further down the line.  

Last time I went anywhere near making games was the Hammer editor to make old L4D maps, and working out how to make little events happen was probably the closest to programming experience outside of building websites and automating LAN stuff. In any case, GUI-based sounds good.

Appreciate the reply, thank you!

Hello, absolute newbie here looking for a point in the right direction. So, I have a game idea in my head, and just want to know the best toolset to start looking at to start making it real. I want to keep any costs to a minimum (ideally zero whie I'm learning). 

I'm aiming to set up and tweak the balance of a 2d world until I can balance it. An island that features monsters, soldiers, civilians, and resources all interacting with eachother automatically. 

The idea is that a player would interact vicariously as a God by picking someone to be their champion or chosen one. AI Gods do the same, and the game objective is to use your champion to realise your worshippers' prophecy before the other Gods can achieve theirs. 

You do this by spending God-magic to grant your chosen one boons and equipment.

Before all that, for me step 1 is to make a world that just ticks along with Stuff happening. What software will be a good introduction to start building that, with plenty of advice I can Google, and with the potential to be able to layer on all that gameplay stuff later.

(NB: I'm pretty good with putting together the maths to drive balancing from working on tabletop stuff, and I can draw stuff, so won't need a huge pixel art library. I've also got no formal training in game design, but am generally fairly good at picking up stuff from YouTube and old forum posts.)

Hello! Not sure if this is the right place to post, but this is "Old Smoke", a contemporary 5e setting I'm working on:

Old Smoke Title Art

Click the title art to access the current work-in-progress version of the setting document. Hopefully more than enough to run a game if it appeals.!

It's set in an alternate modern-day London, and leans in to surreal magic and high drama more than 5e. I'm still working on the narrative flow of the document, my aim is to produce something a new player could conceivably read end-to-end to pick up the gist of the world, then put reference sections and class information towards the back end.

I'm a born Londoner, so the lore aligns well with real-world London's history and culture, just with magic wands and tieflings and stuff.

I'm currently working on the custom classes/weapons/baddies and things; might put a shout out in to the Help Wanted or Offered for that, as it's not my strong suit and progress is slow. So far, the following classes are starting to form:

Sage: Spell class focussed on maintaining attunement with London's magical energy flow.

Bruiser: Tank class whose ablative magical armour can also help negate randomised magical occurrences.

Breach Caster: Spellcaster who can supplement available spell slots at the cost of increased risk of randomised magical occurrences.

Agent: Melee/magic-based utility-focussed class, each with an animal familiar.

Bartitsuka: Highly dexterous, gentlemanly martial artist with excellent taste in shooting hats.

Empath: Non-magical individuals who can interact with the arcane through their influence upon others.

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Hello, I'm Michael. I'm currently working on a contemporary London D&D 5e setting, plus I also do box art, voice acting, and have just started looking at the maths of balancing combat and items. I'm basically the game-makin' equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein's pedal bin - lots of bits, some in really good condition, but they don't all seem to go together to make one whole. Oh - and I'm a writer! Like, for writing game design documentation and storyboarding and stuff.

And I do stand-up comedy in the real world. Also day job. And am Dad. Many thing.

Hello! Male voice actor here - I'll drop you a friend request on Discord, let me know what sort of a sample you'd want and I'll put together  few takes, see what works best. :)

Looks great, I'll send a friend request on Discord with some writing samples. I'm ObviouslyMichael#4348

Hello! I'm a writer who collaborates on things - sent a friend request to DM on discord, samples and stuff available. :)

Don't know if this would be of any use to you, but I recently completed an initial draft game design doc for a short horror game that was cancelled. It's got storyline, script, concept art, and everything. Not exactly what you were asking for, but just let me know if you'd be interested in taking a look - I'd be happy to hand it over as it's a fair bit of work and just sitting around in my portfolio at the moment.!

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Hello! Voice actor and 2d doodler, drop me an IM for demos and things! I'm on Discord at ObviouslyMichael#4348 - I'm also a comedy/horror GDD writer if you're looking for that - likewise, drop me a line for an example of recent work. 

Oh - probably should add - art-wise, I lean toward pixel art, with experience in promotional images and character art rather than sprites - plus some work creating textures and decals. Voice-wise, I've got a broad accent range, mostly based around my home turf in Britain, though am able to work on further afield with notice to train up. :) Finally, as writing goes I've got a history based mostly in comedy, though have recently been involved in a now-cancelled horror project, so have a full-on horror GDD under my belt that's just sitting there at the moment. 

Hello! If you need second pair of hands, I'm also available; my Discord is ObviouslyMichael#4348 - I'm a native British English speaker, originally from London so have a native knowledge of London colloquialisms if that helps.!

Hi hi! Are you still looking for voice actors?  I'm looking for some experience at the moment, I'm on Discord at ObviouslyMichael#4348 if that's a better place to get in touch. I've got previous experience as a live performer (https://www.facebook.com/mjbcomedy) though I'm moving to online projects  (there's a recent thing I did with James Ashby at that Facebook link if you want a listen in on my voice when it's just talking generally. 

I've got a Blue Snowball for recording voice, and can provide a range of regional UK accents. Most recently I've used variously Good Natured Farmer, Stammering Posh Guy, Growling Monster, and Valiant Arrogant Knight for a friend's project. I don't have access to the recordings, but would be happy to supply a demo if helpful.

Errrrrm, think that's it. Other than that being British,  I can obviously also do Evil-Guy-You-Want-To-Hate-Immediately, too.