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I'm gonna start talking about a game I want to make, a little. I have a few things of this nature that are just in my head so far, because historically as soon as I reveal an idea to someone, I tend to lose enthusiasm, like, merely expressing the idea to someone satisfies the part of my brain that spurs to action. I don't even worry about being ripped off, cause if someone rips off one of my good ideas and makes it exist, I win too cause the thing I wanted exists now. I need enough money to live, but the idea of Big Money has never motivated me at all.

This one, however, will never be made without me finding partners with complementary skillsets and a passion for Free Software, so I'm not hoarding it all to myself, this is me putting out feelers for people who want to get involved in a CC-licensed Myst-like game project.

Of course, the licensing and the topic of monetization are to be discussed, I'm not against money but I have had too damn many projects, musical mostly, that could have been great but get shoved out half-assed and earn the success that half-ass deserves. My money success trajectory for this looks more like, me and my partners build a humble but unique and fun game and give it away, we gain public profile for it, and people come and offer us jobs or even commissions to build their stuff.

I will also say, the world building allows for massive expansion - unlimited, in fact. Not algorithmic, expansions would be expansions of mythology, environment, and new puzzles, built entirely by humans.

The people responsible for those debacles are now avid Slop users, by the way, and this will be a 100% slop-free project. Once AI coding is available in a usable way on local hardware, real centaurs who do not participate in the scorching of the midwest are welcome to use assistance.

NO vibe coders. I could vibe code the whole thing myself in a week, from what I'm hearing, and learn absolutely nothing. I don't need you to do for me what I can do myself.

But speaking of vibes, the overall Vibe is #Myst, because I have no compunctions about imitation of great art, and frankly there are not enough GOOD imitations. Lots that match the visual richness, but have shit puzzles. Lots that build good world & culture, but either fail at visual, or again at puzzles, or sometimes both. The closest I've seen from a company that isn't Cyan is Chants Of Sennarr.

Puzzles, indeed, are the most difficult bit of this type of game, really, and as far as I know, absolutely nobody out there is as good as the Rand brothers at making the puzzles a naturalistic piece of the environment. Slapping a sliding tile puzzle onto a machine that you have to solve before you turn it on is not world building.

Not that every single puzzle in the D'Ni world makes sense in that way, but even when they don't, they have a completely novel form that feels natural. For instance, SPOILER FOR RIVEN IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH

The "fire marbles" thingy in Riven, which I still don't fully grasp the underlying "theory" in the way that Terry Pratchett's Discworld magic is intuitively easy to grasp because it's so damn scientific about it. But basically in one spot there's a machine that pushes up pins to represent the landscape of the island on a grid. There's five power plants on the island, and they are in specific grid squares. Then later, to power up a machine, you need to place the correctly coloured marble into the corresponding square on a grid in the machine. Effectively, not much different than a slider puzzle to solve it, but it feels perfectly reasonable, in the context of the game, which has its own odd ideas about technology, geology, etc. It is not that complex or difficult, but it is rich.

(there is a similar game mechanic at play in how you solve the underground railroad in the original Myst, too)

I am not going to talk too specifically about the world history of the setting, but suffice to say, it takes place almost entirely underground in a network of tunnels that spans at least a continent. One of my big frustrations with game engine environment tutorials is that nobody is interested in doing small, enclosed spaces, it's always "we're gonna build Far Cry in five minutes!" Maybe this is so easy that I shouldn't need help, I dunno.

Design aesthetic is Vaporwave, but realistic, not a psychedelic vaporwave world. Like, some of the underground spaces are luxury malls, I'm sure some of you have already deduced; since someone was somehow able to build a continent-wide tunnel network, that someone is gonna want luxury malls. In game time, the malls are perhaps... past their best days. But past glory still turns its lights on, sometimes. So not so much overt Vaporwave, but rather, the world's aesthetics draw from the same source material as #Vaporwave.

Who am I: James Paskaruk. You will find my name on imdb connected to the cartoon features "Ozzy," "NextGen," "Maya and the Three," and "Thelma The Unicorn," two as a Systems Admin in which I managed the network and servers and on-prem render farm, and two as a Technical Director, in which I did higher-level Systems stuff like CI/CD and dev containers, as well as Python add-ons for Blender and Nuke. I am also a musician and occasional music producer.

I will be able to wrangle Assets like a rodeo champion, handle all our server and Systems needs, ensure our backups are in order, provide scripts and new 3D tools for Blender, create in-house automations where there is no Free tool at hand, and all the other things you would expect from a professional 3D Studio IT department with DevOps experience and a heavy focus on Free Software. I will also handle sound and score, unless someone better volunteers and understands the vibe.

I will also participate in all other parts of the development process on a Capable Monkey basis. While I was at Tangent Animation, both as IT and TD, I studied hard on Blender, which was our centrepiece of the studio and obviously of the asset dev process of this project. I understand how every part of Blender works, down to the data structures, other than I haven't touched Geometry Nodes yet, but look forward to having a reason to do so. If you do 3D but don't code or don't want to code, I will be able to help you work quickly and with an absolute minimum of repetition and drudgery.

What I need:

-At least a good Godot mentor who can help me make sense of things as I come up against them. If you know Godot well and want to give the project itself time, that would be amazing, and all game devs (particularly Environment artists) who wish to do so are welcome to contact me to discuss their possible part in the road forward, as well as help me to map the specifics of that path, because I have not done game dev yet at all, to speak of. I can learn it though, for sure, but I will never accomplish this project all by myself, beyond maybe a demo room or two, but I do get the hang of things.

-3D Modeler(s) and Surfacer(s) who use Blender, with an understanding of Vaporwave aesthetics at the genetic level. Not to be ageist, but I think only #GenX devs will really understand at a visceral level what I'm after here, once I explain the overall thing. We will need characters eventually, but most of the game is gonna be Blair Witch type eerieness, with cultural poignance and perhaps some antique gadgets and Great Machines. Not Doom or Zombie.

I have actually built the skeleton of the first Scene already in Blender, but it's just rough geometry, no surfacing and almost nothing in it. The idea of starting to build up a collection of off-the-shelf assets has occurred to me, but that's a long way down a list of things we have to pay for first. Music and Wood are two expensive hobbies I already have. :>

If you build assets and are interested in giving me access to your stuff on spec, with the understanding that in the event of eventual monetization, you will be paid first in a fully equitable way, please get in touch, especially if you do Art Deco, Trains, Underground Environments, or Postmodern Architecture and Furniture. If I had some "action figures" to play with, it might help me move the thing forward a little. I'm surprised more asset-selling shops don't make lo-res versions of things available for free as dev standins, there are a lot of things I could be using, but I'd be spending a few thousand that I don't have right out of the gate.

But again, No Slop. Please do not offer to use one of the Silicon Valley datacentres to generate the assets I need, I will only hate you back, and you will probably be puzzled as to why. This is an attempt to create or join a community of curious doers, not status seekers.

Ok? Good.

#gamedev #myst #vaporwave #genx

A∂α Lσνєℓαcє @[email protected] · 2026-02-24 · 15:47 UTC

:stargif: 𝑱𝒖𝒂𝒏𝒂 𝑰 𝒅𝒆 𝑪𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒂: 𝒍𝒂 𝒓𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒂 𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒂 :stargif:

Juana I de Castilla pasó a la Historia con un apodo injusto: “la Loca”.
Sin embargo, su biografía revela algo más complejo que una supuesta demencia.
Hija de Isabel I de Castilla y Fernando II de Aragón, esposa de Felipe I de Castilla y madre de Carlos I de España, heredó la mayor concentración de poder dinástico de Europa.
Y, sin embargo, pasó casi medio siglo encerrada en Tordesillas.

Juana recibió una formación excepcional.
Dominaba el latín, conocía la teología, la música y el humanismo que impregnaba la corte isabelina.
No estaba destinada a reinar: era la tercera en la línea sucesoria.
Pero la muerte de su hermano Juan, de su hermana Isabel y del pequeño Miguel la convirtió en heredera inesperada de Castilla y Aragón.
El azar dinástico cambió su destino.

Su matrimonio con Felipe el Hermoso, archiduque de Austria, formaba parte de la estrategia anti-francesa de los Reyes Católicos.
Juana llegó a Flandes y se encontró con una corte borgoñona distinta, más refinada y menos austera que la castellana.
Felipe pronto mostró ambición propia.
Las tensiones matrimoniales fueron reales: infidelidades públicas, celos, aislamiento político.
Esos episodios, magnificados por cronistas interesados, alimentaron la narrativa de su inestabilidad.

Cuando Isabel la Católica murió en 1504, Juana fue proclamada reina de Castilla.
Pero ni su marido ni su padre estaban dispuestos a dejarle el poder efectivo.
La situación desembocó en la Concordia de Villafáfila (1506), donde Felipe y Fernando acordaron apartarla alegando incapacidad.
Es un momento clave: la declaración de “enajenación” tenía un claro interés político.
Juana era el obstáculo legal para que ambos gobernaran.

La muerte repentina de Felipe en 1506 abrió uno de los episodios más controvertidos: el traslado de su cadáver desde Burgos hacia Granada.
La tradición habla de una reina que viajaba de noche y abría el féretro por amor obsesivo.
Sin embargo, algunos historiadores interpretan el gesto como una estrategia: mientras ella custodiara el cuerpo del rey, mantenía su posición simbólica como soberana legítima.
La imagen de la viuda desequilibrada fue útil para quienes querían desplazarla.

En 1509, Fernando ordenó su reclusión en Tordesillas.
Allí permanecería 46 años.
Tras la muerte de Fernando, su hijo Carlos heredó la corona.
Cuando llegó a Castilla en 1517 apenas hablaba castellano.
Juana seguía siendo reina titular; cualquier facción podía invocarla contra él.

Eso ocurrió en 1520 durante la Revuelta de las Comunidades.
Los comuneros acudieron a Tordesillas para pedirle que encabezara la rebelión contra Carlos.
Juana los recibió con lucidez, escuchó sus demandas y se negó a firmar documentos que legitimaran la insurrección.
Esa negativa revela sentido político y conciencia de las consecuencias.
No actuó como una mujer privada de razón, sino como una reina consciente del equilibrio de poder.

Su encierro fue severo.
El marqués de Denia, encargado de su custodia, informaba regularmente a Carlos sobre su estado.
Hay testimonios de episodios depresivos, descuido personal y desconfianza creciente en sus últimos años.
Algunos especialistas modernos apuntan a una posible depresión profunda agravada por duelos constantes y aislamiento extremo.
Pero una enfermedad mental no equivale a incapacidad absoluta para gobernar.
La frontera entre diagnóstico y propaganda fue, en su caso, interesadamente difusa.

Juana murió en 1555, con 75 años.
Legalmente seguía siendo reina de Castilla, de León y de las Indias.
En la práctica, no controlaba ni su entorno inmediato.
Su paradoja es brutal: poseía el mundo en los títulos, pero no la llave de su habitación.

Su linaje, sin embargo, marcó la historia europea.
De ella descendieron los Austrias españoles y una red de casas reales que dominaron el continente.
La etiqueta de “loca” simplifica lo que fue una vida atravesada por la razón de Estado, la manipulación política y la soledad.

Grandeza dinástica.
Tragedia personal.
Una reina sin reino cuya memoria obliga a preguntarse cuánto de su locura fue enfermedad… y cuánto construcción interesada del poder. ⚖️

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#historia #juanalaloca #juanaidecastilla #reyescatolicos #carlosv #felipeelhermoso #tordesillas #edadmoderna #mujeresenlahistoria #monarquiahispanica

#historia #juanalaloca #juanaidecastilla #reyescatolicos #carlosv #felipeelhermoso

Rowena Ball @[email protected] · 2026-05-03 · 08:36 UTC

Generously proportioned, you might say of the comfy hardwood bench seating at Hobart airport. Thoughtfully chiselled in bas relief, it holds derrières of all sizes. Very equitable.
Splinters? Well...
#wood #airport #bench

#bench #airport #wood

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