Heh, this is really becoming a place where I just complain about stuff, huh?

Look, I understand the idea of remixing something that already exists and making your own spin to it. Yes, that's good stuff. But when you oversaturate the portal with this sort of stuff, not even mentioning how you're stretching the rules on fair use a bit, it can get out of hand quickly. This isn't the first time I've been complaining how collabs are being handled either.

Too many collabs of questionable quality has been hitting up the portal now.

While it's nice to see just about anyone can get in and animate nowadays, shouldn't there some sort of standard in place? An example how things should be like?

What's that I hear you saying? Standards? In my NG?? lol

Listen. All I ask is for people to put a little more effort into their work. I want to be proven wrong on this, but some people just want in these collabs so they can rub shoulders with their faves, and say "look, I made that with that guy! I'm such hot shit!"

Collabs back then had a thing called "batting averages" where it took the scores of three of your best submissions and gave you a value. This value would be reflected upon if you had what it takes to join or even start a collab. But just about anyone and their grandma can start one nowadays.

I know I'm being a negative wart being against the idea of having a space where just about anyone can submit their stuff to and if that's the case, why have the judgement system at all then? Why have a scoring system at all then if anyone could just push their stuff here?

I feel like we really ought to stray away from using Discord servers to keep track of activity in a collab project. Sure, things may be a little more organized and it’s a app everyone has access to, but as soon as one bad actor decides to eliminate the entire server, where will all that information be preserved?

It’s not like search engines and the Wayback Machine can index these servers, once a Discord server gets nuked, that’s that.

I remember there was a time where folks had their dedicated forums adjacent to NG, but dedicated to getting collabs organized there. Today, it’s not so talked about or even used anymore.

I’m just sayin’, if we want to have some memory for the next generation of creators, they need something tangible to look as an example to maybe get the inspiration they need to organize their own stuff.

Discord servers and especially folks asking to join so many individual servers, things are going to eventually get cluttered, and if I just see a collab advertising their own server there, I’m just gonna stay away.

Things that are getting made in NG, should stay in NG.

I realized, the majority of games I own are made by Japanese developers.

I dunno, I just don't like Western-made ones, some just lean into "hell yeah realism" territory and the gameplay sometimes just fall flat on its face. Some are just too gritty and ugly looking to me. Before anyone says it, Dark Souls is Japanese made too. :)

(I actually do like Dark Souls and I do want to investigate its lore one day but my backlog is too huge right now)

Now Western made indie games are a different story, there's A Hat in Time, Celeste, the Undertale series that one funkin dancing game idk

I really do want to get into Western games more, but nothing ever clicks. I need to expand my horizons more but I can't if I got no interest in anything anymore lmao

also figure i should use this blog to actually post thoughts that i won't shut up about but know no one's going to hear

you know you have a problem when your last few art pieces are just the holiday specials

why am i like this

no i'm not affilated with GAIN.GG I just want you to click my link lol

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Something fun I made because why not? I couldn't exactly post it in the Art Portal due to copyrighted game assets not being allowed there (and for good reason).

So, it's basically my friend's Final Fantasy XIV character, Ace and my own Jules taking the place of Claire and Chris Redfield. The joke here that Ace and Jules are siblings, much like their other younger counterparts that aren't in Eorzea.

I can't exactly tell you why I made this. :s

But don't it look kickass anyway?

Deviantart page and HD ver of logo if you want to be weird about it

Back in late 2018, I worked on a personal project of mine. I wanted to record the entire score of this really obscure Nintendo eShop title called “Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball”, using nothing but a male-to-male cord and Audacity. Mind you, I know nothing about sound mastering or anything of that sort.

It was practically a service to myself, and anyone else who happened to enjoy the game obsessively as I did. I didn’t think any of it, so I just plastered download links and uploaded every song onto YouTube (which you can check out the playlist here).

Fast forward in time, a YouTuber named Nick Robinson (@Babylonian on Twitter) managed to track me down through Discord to thank me for uploading the entire thing. He actually went through great lengths to find my literal tag and everything (even searching through my Twitter too!!), I was flattered honestly!

I was honestly surprised he was a YouTube with some clout too, it didn’t take long for us to hit it off, talking about the game and everything we loved about it. (Do watch his content though) We even mentioned how criminally obscure the game is, and pointed out some details in the game files that normally wouldn’t be seen on a 3DS screen.

Soon after, he uploaded a entire video on a character from the game that people never knew existed (until now). You can catch the video below. I provided the game files you see close to the end, haha

I thought something like this was worth sharing. Even I got nothing to gain from it, I’m just happy how something as little as uploading songs from a game nobody cares about trickles as something as big as this.

Personally happy this game is getting the attention it deserves!

(And nick if you’re reading this thanks for doing my favorite game some justice when I couldn’t :’)

looking forward to working with you again!)

Compiling every single question and answer here (in no particular order) from my AMA threads. Feel free to ask me anything in the comments below!

Q: (From @WaffleCrisp) Whos that on your icon pic.

A: My OC, Jun the Bob-Omb Ace. He'll always be the mascot of my accounts.

Q: (From @SevenSeize) I am having trouble making Japanese cheesecake, and I think it is because my egg white peaks aren't quite stiff enough.

What do you think?

A: Put more eggs in it.

Q: (From @Cyberdevil) Who are you? :O

Also how are you man? Good call.

A: I am me.

Also, great. Being productive for once is great.

Q: (From @FUNKbrs) How do I convince my psych I only have a mild case of PTSD and not a severe dissociative disorder?

Asking for a friend, obviously.

A: Despair.

Q: (From @AcidX) How many full-size French baguettes do you think you could eat in a day?

A: At least a dozen, even with toppings on them. My stomach is a black hole.

Q: (From @RightTime) What is your opinion on muffins?

A: They're nice and fluffy.

Q: (From @Gremlim) I have a jar full of coins. Should I host a guessing game on general and award the closest guess a supporter status while showing off my mad amounts of coins?

A: Yes. Definitely.

Q: (From @Void) How are you enjoying your freedom?

A: I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Q: (From @ZetoSoul) What's your favorite midnight snack? (If you have one)

A: Usually something basically like a sandwich, or potato chips (...with hot sauce dipped onto it).

Eating after dark is bad for you, but no one's stopping you. 👀

Q: (From @SevenSeize) Is there anything we could do to give you more freedom?

A: Buy me this.

Q: (From @Peregrinus) How did you choose your username?

A: The ‘soliton’ part of my name is based from the Soliton Radar from the Metal Gear series, and ‘medic’ is based out of my main in this brawler MMO called Lost Saga, Cyber Medic. Because these two things sound so sci-fi, I adapted the named ‘solitonmedic’ because it sounded cool. It also the occupation of one the characters I’ve written up.

To what a Soliton Medic really does... just think of them of fancy battle medics that fight evil and heal folks. :p

Q: (From @StickmanMarkinson) What inspired you to find the old Newgrounds features (like the 2004 BBS design outlook forums page)?

A: I really love the industrial aesthetics as a kid. I always wanted to replicate it in some form when I actually developed the skills to. Right now, the theme I got now is just the bare minimum I can do with my limited knowledge of CSS. If I were able, and if Tom Fulp allows, I could change the HTML so it’ll better resemble the old look. (Maybe fix the submission rating icons too)

I’m looking to recreate the ‘07 theme and perhaps a NG Mag theme too, as long as the assets are avaiable through the Wayback Machine.

On top of that, I get to look at a piece of web history too. I managed to snag the original ‘pixel’ typefaces Stamper used, commonly seen in the ‘04 theme. I’d like to use it to really fancy things up, but like I said, have to change HTML for that to work.

Q: (From @Fro) Why are you too shy to take a selfie for Seven's thread?

A: Self-esteem issues and fear of getting doxxed. :'D

Q: (From @MarckEllo) Yo what you played Lost Saga too? I haven't played in years but I liked it even if I was never hardcore. My main was the tiger just because I got it permanent for free. Are you still playing and if so how is it holding up?

A: As of now, Lost Saga got passed onto Z8Games from WeMade, and the player base is the shortest I've seen in a MMO game. Z8 really ruined the game when they made Rare and Unique heroes available for purchase...

The metagame is just all about who can infinite combo the most now. I still play it, but rarely. All my friends there must had moved on to other games by now.

The game has the same events over and over again with bingo being the only worthwhile event there. I don't think the devs care for the game much.

If you're reading this, you must be American.

I've always been meaning to do this for sometime now, so here it is: a complete throwback of the '04 days! Take a glimpse to what NG used to look like back then with this Stylus theme!

Known bugs:

• Weird artifacts might appear in your userpage and notifications
• Might not actually boost load speeds
• BBS splitter blends a bit too well with the background
• Submission ratings are too small and barely noticable (at present there's no known fix without breaking parts of the site)

Features: 

• The classic NG look and colors
• Functional forum icons (one of them even animates, just like old times!)
• Lightweight, so it'll play nice with mobile (It'll actually boost site load speeds!)
• Appiles to everything except userpages, the portal (and instances where the site will use the '15 theme)
• The original splitter from the old layouts
• Background and assets is optimized to work with the current 2018-19 theme
• Does not remove ads (why would you do that? you could already remove ads)

Get it here: https://userstyles.org/styles/167650/newgrounds-2004

How to install: 

• 1.) Get the Stylus extension for either Chrome or Firefox.
• 2.) Install the code from visiting this site: https://userstyles.org/styles/167650/newgrounds-2004
• 3.) That's it. You're good to go!

How to install /w Tampermonkey:

• 1.) Get Tampermonkey for either Chrome (alt. for Android), Firefox, Edge, Safari, UC Browser, or Dolphin Browser,
• 2.) Install the code from here and by clicking on 'Install as userscript', just below the change logs.

• 3.) Tampermonkey will automatically prompt you to install. Press 'Install'.

• 4.) (Edge users only) Go to Tampermonkey's dashboard, set "Run at:" to 'document-body'. Leave everything as-is.

• That's it, you're good to go!

How to update:

• 1.) Click on Stylus' icon and click on 'Manage'.

• 2.) Click on the update icon to install the latest changes, if prompted, just overwrite the changes.

Feel free to leave a comment here or on the actual userstyle page! In case of bugs, contact me here.

Change log:

(Ver.01)
- First release

(Ver.02)
- Fixed a issue where locked icons would not appear

(Ver.03)
- Added the original NG Orange color schemes to review and forum replies text boxes.
- Added persistent header colors on most headings. The change will also ignore any heading colors you've set to your user page.

(Ver.04)
- Fixed a issue where the background color on BBS and user page editors were not displaying properly.
- Added better compatibility with Microsoft Edge (with Tampermonkey).
- Will no longer override userpage layout.
- Updated to match new additions to layouts.

(Ver.05)
- Changed how gradients worked to better suit the background

(Ver.06)
- Changed how rating icons look, they're now the proper size now
- Improved visibility on post and supporter's stars in the BBS to better blend with the background
- Changed some text boxes to the appropriate colors