Rikifive

Hello there!   I hope you're having a good time here! 

To everyone who plays in these boop threads...

... before there will be misunderstandings and surprises, please read that. 

I hate to say that.. I tried to remain quiet for a long, long time ... but it is slowly getting insane. 

Please, do not take it personally.

This is what I got yesterday:

These are notifications coming from just one member. Each notification contains exactly the same wall of meaningless mentions posted to farm brohooves. Getting that many notifications from exactly the same post thrown into few places is an overkill. 

Also yesterday, two new "mention @everyone to farm brohooves" forum games were posted. Is there really a need for hundreds of these? 

At first (most of) people were using these threads in an acceptable way- - mentioning just few members they had something to say to or at least, typing something meaningful above/below the mentions. There was a reason, there was a value in the post and/or each mention.

Nowadays? I'll be honest, because I see it that way: It's just minimal effort, copy pasting the same list of mentions in every possible game, not because someone cares about people they mention, but because they see them as a potential source of brohooves. People even stopped typing anything; just one word and paste the list. Rules are simple, the more people you bother, the more brohooves you get, then multiply that by amount of threads on top of that and voila! Victory is yours! You want to appear in the leaderboards and be that top member after all, don't you? Farming brohooves became a competition of some sort. Also there's that pro tip everyone uses - why bother typing names? Create a list of brohooves once and store it somewhere, then, just copy paste it all over the place and wait for profit. Soon, members will write bots, that will be automatically posting walls of mentions in these threads every x hours. That's the direction it goes in.

Now be honest - do you actually interact with people you mention (maybe aside that one or few)? Do you even remember their names and/or that they even exist?

Where my thoughts came from you may ask? ... Because I was doing pretty much the same. At first I was like "yeah why not" and wanted to "play" too, but I quickly realized, that even though no one (except one member ) says anything, it causes harm. Not only I was poking members absolutely randomly without any reason (and we all know how people love random @everyone mentions on discord, for example), it also was making the value of my brohooves much lower. Many brohooves I have now required effort from my side and/or actually interacting with the others and I prefer to keep it that way. Having 9999999 brohooves? Yeah, cool, congratulations, but what do these mean? These are empty.

Look, imagine a member you don't normally talk too, yet you keep booping him in all these threads - literally, the ONLY interaction you have with that member is by randomly mentioning him among 100 other people (about 10 times in a row on top of that). How is this supposed to make anyone feel better, especially when they see, that it's literally the same copy&pasted list over and over again? No one even puts the effort to type these names, it's just effortless farming.

That is why I stopped participating in these threads myself. Rarely I'll post something there, but I limit myself to one, up to few mentions, that were done for a reason.

Not only someone gets something at the others' cost, it also completely ruins the value of a brohoof. Now when a member has a high reputation, it doesn't mean, that he is a valuable and/or just helpful member in any way, now it just displays how often and how intense that member is spamming by pasting the list of mentions and idk, maybe how often is posting a number in the counting thread.

These mentions became absolutely meaningless, the mentioned members are nothing else than just that one more tree among 999 others, that gives brohooves.

This is the current value of brohooves:

Literally, now the more brohooves someone has, the more 'spammy' the user is in my eyes.  It's absolutely not a number one could admire, that's for sure.

Heh, and that wall of text just to introduce to something I wanted to say.

A long time ago I had to disable notifications from status updates, because my notification box was a hassle to work with, due to many people I follow. It wasn't because of the amount of notifications, but the quality of these. Whenever I woke up the next day and came back to forums after work, I had like 50+ notifications from "good morning" and "goodnight" status updates, that were posted 5-16 hours ago. There's nothing wrong with these statuses of course, but at that point there was absolutely no reason to view these, as these simply "expired", so to speak. So yeah, it was spammy, it was giving me a bad time, for real. There were times, where I accidentally overlooked important notifications. That is the reason I decided to mute status updates.

Now, the same thing starts to happen here. 8 exactly the same, meaningless notifications from just one member. And of course, this is not the only member playing these games, so of course, in the end I have even more of these. More and more of these threads start to appear and it began to be a hassle. If nothing will be done, I'll end up having 100 notifications each day, that basically will be meaningless. Following the content I really care about starts to be harder.

So, as much as I hate to say that, if this will continue, sadly I'll have to start doing this:

One thread, mentioning once, would be more than enough. What is the point of doing that multiple times in different, yet the same threads? Plot twist, I am not blind, there's no need to send 8 the same notifications.  Mentioning me once in one of these threads is okay (some users mention me once in a while, which is okay), but come on, doing a combo is made purely for farming purposes and it only shows how much you care about me - that for you, I'm just a tree of brohooves, that you like to kick multiple times until brohooves start to fall. ... especially that some members who mention me never talk to me. I'm just that one face in the crowd, thanks for reminding me that. 

Many members tend to mention me and sweet Celestia, if everyone would do the same and mention me 8 times each... and if that would keep happening every single day....

So yeah, I hope you understand that and please don't take that personally.

Thank you for understanding and ...

*looks to the right*
*looks to the left*
*boops everyone who reads that*

Hello! 

How are you doing? 

I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate spuders ;-;

I wish they didn't exist. 

With each day that passes, more and more thoughts go through my mind and the more of these there are, the more confused about myself and what I do I am.

From one point of view, I don't want to say it yet, because there's still some time, but from another, I don't want to make it happen suddenly.

So... To just say it straight and not make a big deal out of it --- I'm afraid my time has come; This is probably my last month of being here. I'm not sure I won't be leaving permanently, but I'll be gone for at least a month, maybe few, possibly longer. What will really happen then, the time will tell.

It is a shame I'll miss the show's end and won't be with you at that time. It will be a yet another thing I'll miss in this fandom and a yet another thing I'll regret not experiencing.

I planned few things before that will happen, so there might be something nice for some of you, hopefully. 

Either way, it's not that time yet, so don't give it/me too much of your attention please. 

To answer one of the possible questions - Yep, things are okay, no worries. 

To be continued...

Sooooo my PC died. 

I cannot express my disappointment. It decided to break when I was needing it the most. I was working on a project for the contest but now... all that work is wasted. I was sure I'd not win anything either way, but the wasted work itself is what hurts.  Why it couldn't break one month sooner or one month later? I'd be fine with that.  Heh, I guess I'm really unlucky; I really am, not kidding! At least my files seem to be doing okay, so it always could be worse. I hope I'll not have to regret saying this.   

Turns out, that I'll have to wait for a new PC a little longer (a month or two). I'll try to visit forums from time to time, but I won't be able to be active much, sorry. Nevertheless, no worries, everything will be fine.

Take care!  

I reeeeeally need a bigger desk, because this is just sad

Update: Apparently I won't lose a job; Not much has changed.
On a positive note, my monthly salary has been increased by ~27.3%.

And I hoped for tons of free time.  

How to verify I have depression:

 Complain about not having enough of free time

 Dislike mobile gaming in general for its terrible market filled with p2w garbage and ads

 Prefer gaming on PC anyway

 Consider Gameloft's MLP game as a buggy p2w game not worth my time

 Download and play it anyway 

 Make the app throw a notification (it has that MLP Theme jingle) at full volume at a random time while at work sothatitcatchescoworkers'sattentionmakingthemquestionmysanity (it  will do that sooner or later)

*cough* *cough*

Yeah, though sadly I have to start over, as my save file with a lot of progress is apparently gone. ;-;

Also, first thing I see --- SPOILERS!  yay me

What am I doing with my life is the top 10 question I keep asking myself.

Working on some destructible boxes/crates, barrels and stuff --- and that made me thinking, that 12x12 tiles are kiiiiinda too small?  

So I've made some comparison

===[ 12 X 12 ]===

Currently, the maps and everything are 12x12, except characters and enemies, as their size varies and they're moving anyway.

World in 12x12 tiles isn't bad, it allows me to make it all more detailed I guess. However, the crates appear to be small, even though the proportions compared to ponies seem to be okay-ish, though I suppose these could be bigger, because ponies won't be able to hide in these lol. The problem is just shooting these down, as it requires jumping around.

===[ 16 X 16 ]===

I was thinking of ... redoing everything in 16x16.  That would allow to shoot these down while crouching, so it wouldn't be a hassle.
Also, having larger tiles would be more optimized, as there would be less blocks to check for collisions.

===[ 20 X 20 ]===

20x20 would be about the size of Twilight's sprite, so that she would be somewhat occupying 1x1 block. That would be plain and simple, if there would be a 1-block tall passage, Twilight would be able to go through it.

Buuuut 20x20 on the other hoof, are simply too big. The world would really feel blocky.

Leave the tiles, adjust something else you douche  

Then I realized, that crouching is just meh, because it doesn't make much of a difference; Twi shoots barely few pixels lower, which isn't effective against enemies either and it wouldn't come in handy in general, as chances to avoid projectiles that way are rather low.

Sooooooooo I remade the sprite for crouching 

Isn't she adorable now? 

She can now shoot low enough to destroy things, that were hard to hit earlier.

And in the end, it even works pretty well with 12x12 tiles;
She can normally go through 2-block tall passages like before:

BUT! She can also sneak through these tiny ones: 

There also are other improvements I need to do with the sprite sheet. yay my favorite...  

I've made a pony... out of ponies.  

The frame is also made out of ponies!  

Updated the book of ranks! 

Could it be, that I'm getting ... bored of ponies? 

The fascination is gone for a long time now, and I'm also experiencing obvious signs of it - I've noticed I tend to find mlp as 'cringy' from time to time, and more often as the time goes on. I don't mean, that the show and franchise in general is bad, nor that there's anything wrong with liking it, I just 'internally' started questioning myself if I am actually still interested in all of this or not.

I still love MLP and I enjoy the fandom's content, but I feel like the passion related to it has just burned out for the most part. MLP made me feel like a kid again, which was a great deal, but now I feel like I've grown up, again. I'm having difficulties with finding the motivation to do things I've been doing so far and I'm hardly active here on the forums. On a side note, I've been experiencing somewhat rough events here lately, heh. I feel like I already gave everything I had to offer and that there's nothing left for me to do... and that remaining silent works best.

It's really hard to put it into words to explain it accurately, I'm having mixed feelings I hardly can understand myself. Perhaps I just need some time... Perhaps I should find something else, something new... I don't even know, I end up mostly procrastinating, and the job I have with afternoon shifts all the way doesn't make it any better. 

Hmm, I'm just sharing some thoughts, I'm not planning to make any 'official' changes, so to speak. I just wanted to somehow explain my inactivity. I guess I'll just continue sneaking around and see how it goes. 

I think it's a good time to slowly start saying goodbye. As some of you know, I'll be leaving the forums on Saturday, so I'd like to have a little moment for these last conversations and such, rather than dropping a status and vanishing immediately. 

So... yeah... The time flew by so fast.. 

I'm still having mixed feelings about my activity in the fandom. I wanted to bring something to the community and I failed. Instead of just being here and enjoying the time with the others, I sacrificed all of that for my projects and was minding my own business most of the time. Heeeey, it's kinda like Twilight in the past -- Heh I think I said that in the past already. 

Anyway, not only time in the fandom was sacrificed, I resigned from most of my free time and even health, as I was often staying up extremely late coding and stuff. Lately I've been noticing effects of that heh, trying to sleep better now. 

... And all of that for pretty much nothing. There are so many things I wanted to do, but it ended up taking sooooooo long. I blame my job for all the failures, nothing else. 

At least I managed to do some little things and somewhat be a part of community, but I feel like I could have done better. 4 years spent on hobbies and I barely see any achievements. I did learn a lot yeah, but so far I haven't used that really well, though of course I'm looking forward to it.

These hobbies made me busy, but on the other hoof, at least I'm doing something kinda productive in my life and that's a nice thing. Also it's all thanks to MLP, literally. I'd never guess I'll be capable of doing anything, but the inspiration and motivation mlp gave me made me give these things a serious try and it's been a great experience, not only in the MLP community.

I'd never guess I'll be watching MLP.

I'd never guess I'll be capable of doing anything besides playing games and things like this.

Also I was never a forum guy to begin with.

... So it's safe to say, that ponies changed a lot in my life, for serious.

There's so much more I'd like to say, but holy balls, I already have a wall of text here. 

Thank you everypony for being a part of this community, being here with me and thank you for all the support you gave me. 

I hope you enjoyed what I had to offer. Perhaps we'll see each other in the future.

I still have some goals to achieve before I leave and even though my illness has slowed me down, I hope everything will be fine in the end.

So yeah... It's sad it already came to this.

If any of you would like to say something or have a question, please feel free to say and ask. 

Thanks. c:

4 YEARS

It's been 4 years since I started my adventure with MLP (and almost 3 years since I joined this community). 

So many things have changed since then ~ all of my hobbies (other than playing video games ), spending time on forums - - - these weren't a thing before I bumped into MLP. It's hard to believe how such a silly thing managed to impact my life that much (well at least the 'online' one ). Oh these 4 years definitely was a fun ride. 

AYYYYY!

@Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra @Tacodidra

LOOOOOOOOOOK!!!!!!

I've made something for youuuuuuu!!!!! 

Pack Includes

 coco_shy
 coco_unsure
 coco_thanks
 coco_awkward
 coco_umm
 coco_worried
 coco_smile

- styles, sizing and quality may vary -

ONLY $19.99
= SPECIAL OFFER!!! =
ENTER CODE "TACODIDRA" FOR 100% DISCOUNT!

EMOTICONS AVAILABLE ON MY PROFILE PAGE.
BUY NAAAAOOO!!

Went to Equestria to catch some sun. 🌞

omg dark theme now by default in Windows

EPIC

(Yeah I know that update was announced months and months ago (and it was optional?), but it *officially* came to me today -- unless that feature was there earlier and I didn't notice.)

So many ponies to welcome! I literally have spent more than an hour to greet about 10 ponies and there are still many left! I'll get back to it tomorrow.

I need to buy a larger desk 👏👏

So that I have space for drawing tablet 👏👏

So that I can start drawing terrible art 👏👏

So that everyone will be lying, that it's nice 👏👏

Eh, seriously though, I had plans, but coronaboi flipped everything upside down. When will everything return to normal... 

Ladies and gentlemen, Twilight talks for the first time in this game. 

(It's still a work in progress)

New PC ordered, it should be done next week. Finally.  

Just two more weeks of work and finally I'll have 2 weeks of vacation!

If they'll approve my application for leave of absence, that is. 

Oof looks like I'm getting sick.  I can't sleep well because of that. 

Press [F] in the comments everypony 

Lately I'm feeling kind of weirdly lazy. Instead of working on things I should be working on, I... procrastinate doing random stuff? 

With that being said, I've released another update to my "MLPForums Plus" mod, that improves reaction display in status updates.

BEFORE:

Status Update Comment Section on default MLPF theme without "MLPForums Plus" mod installed

AFTER:

mindblowing I know 

Eh, maybe it's time to start working on updating my silly games too