Posts

Introducing gdProject

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It's been a while since my last post, hasn't it? I just want to say that although I was (and still am) quite busy working on multiple things, I didn't put this blog aside. I've been tweaking a lot of things here and there and making sure all pages were up to date during this period. This blog still remains an essential part of my online presence. With that out of the way, let's dive into today's topic. About gdProject If you are a long time follower of mine on social medias you are probably aware that in early 2022 my friendship with GameMaker ended and Godot became my best friend for reasons that were partially reverted way too late . After getting familiar with the engine itself and feeling comfortable using its scripting language, I decided to make something similar to yyProjects , but for Godot! A handful of add-ons in this repository were originally designed to help me develop UniStudio (If you've been living under a rock, I ported the game f

Play Sonic Mania on the Wii U

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Yep, that's exactly what the title says. 🦔 A few days ago I tweeted a video where I show Sonic Mania Plus running on my Wii U. Sonic Mania Plus on the Wii U. pic.twitter.com/wCZoENQCLy — NinStar (@ninstarxt) August 27, 2022 This tweet gained quite a lot of traction, so let's talk about it in details. The people behind the project First of all, I must say that this was only made possible thanks to the incredible work done by Clownacy in porting the source code of the Sonic Mania decompilation to the Wii U, as well as Rubberduckycoly and MGRich for making the decompilation project. You can check the source code on GitHub . It is worth noting that there is also another port being made by Radfordhound , his port is going to bring GX2 rendering, which should fix the lag on Special Stages, and support for more controllers. You can see more on his Twitter profile. In the meantime, a fun weekend project: I ported the absolutely incredible decompilation of Sonic Mania

The first release version is here!

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The first release version, 1.0 is finally here with major changes. Highlights Now on Linux and macOS Previously Rich Presence U was only compatible with Windows, but now it supports Linux and macOS! Both Windows and Linux builds have been fully tested, but the macOS build is still considered experimental, as I personally haven’t been able to test it on a real macOS and couldn't find anyone who could help me with the testing. Even better user interface The interface has been extensively improved for better user experience: You can now freely resize the window and the main tabs will adapt to it. The scale of the UI, automatic refresh, theme and language can be set manually. Options and information are organized more clearly. Multiple options now have toggles that allow you to set their visibility in your status without having to modify their set configurations. There are new dialogs to help you if something doesn't go right. Not to mention new animations I designe

A fresh new look

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I've been wanting to do this for a while, but due to lack of free time I couldn't do it sooner. But here we are, the blog now has a new look! But why? There are a few reasons why I decided to make these changes, some of which include feedback from the users. If you didn't know, you can send your suggestions for any of my projects through this form I switched from Soho to Contempo, which was my previous base theme, the HTML is a lot cleaner for me to implement my own changes, it made it easier for me to make the UI more mobile-friendly. 📱️ Another thing is that I tried to make the look more consistent to the one used in my Carrd (animations, buttons, etc...), which I use to share this blog and my other social networks. As always, I will still be improving more of the blog features as time goes on. Don't forget that you can share your feedback through the form linked above, your opinions are always welcome! 💙️

Nin★Themes for Firefox

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Ah yes, after yeeeeeeeeaaars I decided to switch back to Firefox and use it as my default browser. While I was digging through the settings to make things more suitable for me, I found this add-on called Firefox Color , I decided to give it a try and make some themes. I made two variants: Everyone's favorite, dark theme. 🌑 And for those who want some bright ideas, a light theme. ☀️ You can install them directly from their respective pages on addons.mozilla.org: Nin★Themes - Dark Nin★Themes - Light Happy browsing! 💖

Here comes a new character!

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Her name is Azure . 🌊 You can find hi-res versions of this art (including the svg file) on my Patreon . ✨ My initial sketch can be found on my Pixiv .

Giveaway - Sonic Mania

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I’ll be giving away a free copy of Sonic Mania for Steam! The giveaway will be happening on my Discord server. To make things as accessible and straightforward as possible I will be using GiveawayBot . So members will be able to see all other parcipants and the final results in real time. How do I enter the giveaway? You just have to react with to the message posted on the #announcements channel using a 🎉 emoji. Simple as that! Invite - Nin★Server (Discord) The giveaway will last for three days (from October 30 ). Good luck!

New tiers, new rewards!

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There are three new different tiers on my Patreon. I’m making this change so that I can commit more to the different content I make in a way that’s fair to me and the people who support me here. As an example, normally I don’t do commissions, but from now on for Solis tier patrons I will be accepting requests and doing them without any additional costs, that can be any kind of work I’m experiencied with: digital art, pixel art, coding or any type of design work. 🎁 You can find more details about each tier in their descriptions. PATREON / Nin★ If you have any thoughts about the changes and additions, please let me know. I’m always open to suggestions from everyone. 💙 By the way, you can download the hi-res version of this banner on my DeviantArt .

[Português] Mario Kart 8 - Tradução

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Fine, I’ll Do it Myself. Apesar do Wii U oficialmente ter suporte para Português Brasileiro desde o seu lançamento, a grande maioria dos jogos first-party da Nintendo nunca receberam traduções para esse idioma. Eu estive trabalhando em uma tradução completa para o Mario Kart 8 , você pode utilizar tanto em um Wii U quanto em um emulador. O download vem incluso com instruções de instalação para os dois casos. ✨ ⬇️ Download Sobre os nomes de personagens e cenários Apesar de incluir a grande maioria (se não todos) os nomes traduzidos oficialmente pela Nintendo of America para o Mario Kart Tour como base, nem todos elementos em comum entre Mario Kart Tour e Mario Kart 8 foram oficialmente traduzidos oficialmente pela Nintendo ainda. Como um plano B, eu usei a versão de Portugal do jogo como base para tradução, mas nesses casos eu fiz alguns ajustes para acomodar melhor o Português Brasileiro. E em último caso eu mesmo elaborei os nomes. Por exemplo, Mastercicle se torno

Introducing U.F.O. GX

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I am participating in a gamejam for the first time ever and U.F.O. GX is my entry. About the game The game has a single player and a multiplayer mode, the latter is endless while the former is a versus match. 1 Player: Avoid crashing into asteroids and comets for as long as you can, the game will gradually get faster over time. With practice you can master the game even at its maximum speed. Collecting a battery will make you temporarily invincible. 2 Players: The objective is the exact oposite, you have to crash into as many asteroids as possible before time runs out. The player with the highest amount of destroyed asteroids wins. The single player mode can be played on mobile browsers using a touch screen. About the development I spent exactly 7 days to design, develop and playtest this game. I have to admit it was a fun experience but at the same time I kept thinking “will I get this done in time?”, because like I said I have never participated in a gamejam before so

Rich Presence U - 0.7.0 is now available

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Version 0.7.0 is here! with a completely revamped interface, new features and improvements. Highlights A new user interface Completely revamped UI, designed to better match Discord’s app style. The main reason I made this new interface was to improve user experience while keeping it visually clean and simple to use. 🍇 Now the main layout is separated into 3 tabs: platform , details and title with step-by-step style, but it you can still jump directly to any tab you want by simply clicking on their icon. There’s a new status bar on the upper left corner, it displays your connection status, applied settings, and warns you when any critical error occurs. Multi-regional games Rich Presence U now supports European and Japanese titles, that also includes exclusive icons for each region. Since this is a newly added feature, by the time I’m posting this the title database for those regions are still fairly small. Titles repository Recently played games A history for recently

UniMaker DX source code is now public!

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The source code for UniMaker DX (the version with the pixel art UI) is now available on my GitHub : https://github.com/ninstar/UniMaker Since I started the transition to UniStudio some people have asked me if I would make the source code for UniMaker DX public, as it is considerably different from UniStudio and previous versions. I said that I would eventually do, so here we are. 🎵 I haven’t done this sooner because I didn’t have enough free time to go through my entire commit history (which is pretty huge if you ask me). 💦 As this is just the source code, keep in mind that it is not meant for most users. In addition to that, the link above does not include the source code for UniStudio, it is still being worked on its own repository. UniMaker 1.S is still the latest stable version. It is preferable that you use that version to create and share your courses.

Ninty and Rich Presence U are now available on itch.io

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Ninty Launcher and Rich Presence U can now be downloaded via itch.io . All future releases will be primarily published there. You can even submit your review if you want. 🎀 I will keep publishing the source code on my GitHub as usual. Ninty Launcher by NinStar Rich Presence U by NinStar And by the way, UniMaker has had a page there since a while. So if you haven’t had the opportunity to download it yet since what happened to GameJolt , now you can! ✨ UniMaker by NinStar

The Hardest Thing I've Ever Had to Share.

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This is a message about me and my health, which can influence all my work from now on, so I ask that you read the whole text carefully. Although it can be a little extensive and may contain some mistakes, it is still extremely important. First, some context: At the end of 2015, while in school, I started to experience some visual anomalies, I was seeing some small black spots on my vision whenever I move my eyes, at first I was extremely worried, so I went to the doctor and did all the indicated examinations, he said my eyesight was normal and he told me that the things I was seeing inside my eyes were “floaters” and wasn’t something to be too worried about. It took me a while to get used to these things in the eyes, but I was also seeing some weird spots on my eyes, which seemed to grow bigger every day, and unlike the floaters those didn’t move. (Sorry if it seems confusing, it’s the best I can describe) So I went to a second doctor, did all the necessary exams again and he said

Now she has a name!

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I finally gave her a name, Emerald . I was planning on making a colored version of this art since the day I posted the original sketch, unfortunately I was too busy coding and making sprites, but today I finally did it. You can find the linework on my pixiv .

Project Cleaner for GameMaker Studio 2

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Every time you duplicate something in your project in GameMaker Studio 2, for some reason it keeps an unused copy of that asset’s metadata, if you duplicate this same asset again two unused copies will be kept, if you duplicate it once again you will be left with 3 copies and so on… you get where this is going, right? Doing this multiple times can make your project unnecessarily big, and since there are many small files, it can become a problem when importing / exporting your entire project when really needed. For this reason I made this application, it simply scans and removes all unused .yy files from your project. Here a comparison of how effective it can be depending on how big your project is: 63,8mb (22.683 files) -> 25,5mb (12.888 files) . ⬇️ Download & Source Code Be aware that this is the first release, I only tested it with my own projects, make a backup of yours before using it. Feedback is welcome. 💌

Rich Presence U - Version 0.6

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Rich Presence U v0.6 is here, featuring a brand new interface! It is considerably smaller compared to the previous one and now it is possible to resize it to any size, not to mention it has a dark theme 🌚 I did this mainly with UX improvements in mind, buttons and options are more responsive and easier to understand. ⬇️ Download But if you still prefer the old interface, you can continue using v0.5 , I didn’t made any functional changes to the database since the last release, for now it will work normally. just for now … Also, for those who are interested in the source code part, I translated all code comments into English, I hope this make things easier.

Unique icons for Wii titles (Wii U)

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This is a collection featuring customized icons and splash screens for Wii titles on Wii U. For those who don’t know: Nintendo had been publishing Wii games on the Wii U eShop for a long time, they work more or less as Virtual Console games, because of that they are installed on the Wii U menu instead of the Wii menu and all icons and splash screens follow the same template by default. Here’s a look on an actual console: I tried my best to give an unique personality for each game while designing their respective icons. Eventually I will be adding new titles to the collection ⬇️ Download Note: The link above does not contain any tools for you to create injects, just the .PNG files I made, you can easily find tools for this purpose on GBATemp. And for Nintedont users, I’m making icons for Nintendo GameCube titles as well. 🧊

2D Universe Themes for Nintendo 3DS

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This is a small update, but if you use homebrews on your Nintendo 3DS you might be interested. These themes are not new, I made them a few years ago. Now thanks to MarioGlitchy9 I was able to recover them. ⬇️ Download Enjoy!