Heyyyy!! I'm daiko, I'm 25, and I like to code and draw. Naturally, if u combine those things you get game development, which I also do......

I've been regularly using RPG Maker 2003 for over a decade now (still haven't released anything! lol!), but my time served in game development Sheol goes as far back as the time I was around 7. I downloaded romhacking tools for the GBA Pokemon games from the crustiest-looking website (a site that was only in Spanish, a language my ass cannot read), and in doing so, I deep-fried my family's Pentium PC with various types of adware. Anyway, I think making games and stuff is pretty cool!

My hobbies include learning new things, running TTRPGs with my friends, drawing NSFW art, taking walks, and collecting manga. Oh, and making this website!

THINGS THAT INTEREST ME

Game conservation!
Games are as deserving to be chronicled and archived as any other type of media, be it through the humble YouTube longplay or through an article written by my heroes over at tcrf.net. Any kind of game preservation bangs like nothing else, really. I'm a complete fucking egg when it comes to actually knowing how decompiling/dumping works, but knowing that smart people are sweating and toiling to make sure future generations can play and enjoy a game regardless of its obscurity helps me dream sweet dreams when I'm curled up in my race car bed at night.

It's also exciting in that "digging up buried treasure" kind of way, when unused files or commented-out code is discovered and you're left wondering about what they intended on adding or how the project may have turned out in some alternate timeline where these ideas and features survived to the finished product. Gameplay footage from pre-release builds or whatever media we have access to feels like gazing into a portal to a bizarro universe by way of a video game. It's such a cool hobby and I really wish I knew how to contribute to the development of our technological fossil record.

Retro anime/manga!
I really enjoy anime in general, but I get so excited and passionate about the artistic stylings of anime of the 1980s through 2000!! I'm sure some oldheads seeing me write this are rolling their eyes that I'm treating something they grew up with as particularly special or cool, but it's a thing I get so jazzed about that I felt it was worth including here to help illustrate who I am as a person. I don't know if the actual storytelling has gotten better or worse, I'm just here to have my neurons activated by cel animation.

(Thrilling! Daiko's Big Favorites: Gunbuster, Slayers, Urusei Yatsura, Yokohama Shopping Log, Sorcerer Hunters)

TTRPGs!
Creative writing is really fun, and getting my friends to collaborate with me through the context of a game is even more funner-er. I'm always the GM, but I really like worldbuilding (see below) so I don't really have a problem with that. It'd be really fun to get to play as a character someday though! As a piece of game design, tabletop roleplaying games are fascinating -- designing hard rules (numbers, dice, modifiers, etc.) that are running mere support for the actual game, the roleplaying part... that's a really interesting design challenge. You can't shouldn't* be adding rules to the unfettered creativity of improv roleplay, so everything else has to prop up and enable that storytelling. It's really interesting. I spent about 2 years working on my own system, but in the end I didn't really have a clear vision for what it was supposed to be, nor did I want to subject my friends with their busy schedules to rigorous playtesting, so I've settled for hunting down systems that simultaneously interest me in a creative sense, and also aren't overly dense or complicated so my players don't need to do extensive studying to play. As a result, my favorite systems have been lightweight ones.

Ryuutama is one such system. It sells itself on being relaxing and low-stakes (iyashikei) in design, mostly being about travel and managing resources in an extremely uncomplicated way. It was allegedly designed as a sort of "play for one hour at the library" kind of game, but I think me and my friends wanted it to be a little more... grand in scope. Still, I am extremely affectionate towards Ryuutama as my (and my friends!) first tabletop system.

Right now, we're preparing to use Yochai Gal's dark fantasy, low-magic system Cairn. I'm really excited about it! It leaves a lot of rules reasonably vague because there isn't much need to be overly specific, as it's a system that seems to prioritize the GM's discretion in telling the story over moderating what the players are and are not allowed to do. It has no classes or experience, so it'll be a little bit of an adjustment, but I'm super super excited about it!

...And the last system I've explored is RuneScape Kingdoms: The Roleplaying Game. This piece of hacked out garbage was made by the villains over at Steamforged Games, who refused to answer my (or my partner's) customer support tickets to cancel our 60 dollar pre-order over an address issue, and then sent the hardcover to my house when the book actually released. I was so excited because I am a super-fan of RuneScape, and I've always wanted a tabletop system for it, but the book is a poorly designed abortion with multitudinous errors & various other issues. These issues include inconsistencies in the rules from page to page, typos, ill-explained (or, frequently, not explained at all) mechanics, and as my friends and I suspect, possibly also being riddled with AI-generated art. It's a piece of crap. My partner pre-ordered it for me because I wanted to see the PDF so bad, and they never sent it to me over the aforementioned address error. Steamforged Games sucks butt, a reputation they seem to have thoroughly earned based on what I've read online.

(Obligatory: I have never played D&D. I tried to research Pathfinder 2E, but we agreed we did not want to read the dense tome of rules.)

Worldbuilding!
Doing an badass gainer flip off the last bulletpoint, I think worldbuilding is the sickest thing a writer can flesh out for a story. I could talk about the benefits of a well-wrought world or something, but the short answer is that I'm down bad for extensive lore about any given setting. Spew intricate lore about civic ordinances in your fantasy campaign city and I will listen, enraptured! For real!!!!!

Erotica!
I'm a big fan of NSFW art! I think there's a level of old-timey prudishness around NSFW art that's pretty frustrating. People view this sort of art as disposable or valueless because of its obscenity, and it's really shitty to the people who sweat blood to perfect their craft, whose hard work is rewarded by being othered or treated as not worthy of respect because of its content.

Obviously, people who don't like to see things like this should never be forced to; this sort of thing doesn't need to be normalized, and Sonic inflation art does not need to be next to Girl with a Pearl Earring in museums. Still, I do wish the adult(!!!) art mainstream online was less hostile to this kind of creator, even if it's not their thing. Hasn't happened to me, but it really sucks seeing it happen to other people. Be supportive of others, man!

Geocaching!
I've only done it once or twice in my whole life, but I think its a super fun hobby. (If you aren't aware, it's a sort of adult treasure hunt where you use a GPS to go to coordinates posted by other geocachers, whereupon you find a "cache" (usually a piece of paper or a logbook with a pen) and leave your handle or username). My phone is too old to handle a geocaching app and I don't own a handheld GPS, so I don't play often. I'm really excited to do it more often when I get the chance, though!

TCGs!
I'm a really big fan of card games (not that I can really play them -- none of my friends want to learn the rules). As a kid, I was obsessed with the short-running Neopets TCG; I think it was the first card game I tried to actively learn to play. I never did, because our local store stopped stocking packs soon after I got into it, and I was still too "in first grade" to actually read a guide.

Nowadays, I really like the big three
-- Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I'm trying to learn how to play MtG. Card art pretty. Ooga booga

Music of the nineties and early 2000s!
The trashiest manufactured pop and rock of those two eras are the music I'm most nostalgic for. I blame movies (and the radio that was always on in the car when I was growing up). Also anime stuff, there's a lot of Vocaloid music circa 2009 that goes hard (not 90s-2000, but listen man)

_{KORE MO UNMEI JA NAI KA KIERU KIERU TO ARU AISE *soulfully*}