Dan Salvato

Dan Salvato

@dansalva.to

Creator of Doki Doki Literature Club. Founder and developer @ Team Salvato, @frankerfacez.com, and more. Currently working on various new projects. https://dansalva.to Reach out: dan@teamsalvato.com

9.1K followers143 following242 posts

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Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

If you'd like to reach out, please tag me in a new post instead of replying to an unrelated thread of mine. I want to engage and answer questions but I get uncomfortable when my posts are used as a mechanism to reach me about something unrelated. Also, you're always welcome to email me. Thank you! 🙌🏻

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Debunking the "you look like SmallAnt" myth once and for all. It's just the glasses and the nose and the smile and the facial hair and the eyebrows and th

Dan Salvato reposted

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

See you at Anime Expo! I'm doing a panel where I talk about how I wrote the characters for DDLC, and how I approach character writing in general.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

If only the Wii Remote had a gyro built-in from day 1, instead of MotionPlus being too little too late. Imagine the generational impact. No waggle legacy. There would be more inspired hearts. Fewer kids growing up to build datacenters

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

See you at Anime Expo! I'm doing a panel where I talk about how I wrote the characters for DDLC, and how I approach character writing in general.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Welp, I caused an integer overflow in Mewgenics. It wasn't enough that I killed my own unit by healing NEGATIVE 744 million health—imagine my confusion when I was awarded the "Bug" item after winning the fight. Took me a moment to process that it was just a ridiculous coincidence

Dan Salvato reposted

Team Salvato
@teamsalvato.com

To celebrate Sayori's birthday, we've decided to reveal that Sayori's birthday is today, May 11th. Happy birthday, Sayori!

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Nintendo fans waiting for the report on what studio is developing Star Fox so that they can calibrate their confirmation bias subsystems before launch

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

LSPX: Converts OpenMPT-supported tracker modules (mod, s3m, xm, it, mptm) to #Amiga LSP (LightSpeed Player) format. github.com/dansalvato/l... Now you can compose for Amiga with modern tracker features, and even with 16-bit 48KHz samples, which LSPX will downsample to a configurable quality target.

github.comGitHub - dansalvato/lspx: Converts OpenMPT-supported tracker modules (mod, s3m, xm, it, mptm) to Amiga LSP (LightSpeed Player) format.Converts OpenMPT-supported tracker modules (mod, s3m, xm, it, mptm) to Amiga LSP (LightSpeed Player) format. - dansalvato/lspx
Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

I've put together a complete rip of the Moon Child theme song from the original Amiga demo, including: Stems, sample rips, and the original tracker module. Info and download: archive.org/details/moon...

archive.orgMoon Child (Amiga) Theme Song Tracker Module, Stems and Samples : Team Hoi : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet ArchiveThis archive contains the original Digital Mugician tracker module for the Moon Child theme song, ripped from the Amiga demo version of the game, along with...

Dan Salvato reposted

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

The unfortunate thing about The Last of Us getting a gazillion remakes is that it's being forgotten how much of a technical marvel the original PS3 game was. We really got to see the endgame of PS3 where the Cell CPU architecture was pushed to its limit. This is a game console from 2006

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Bluesky-exclusive outreach: I'm looking to contract a technical artist with a specific passion for applying math to create mesmerizing visual effects, e.g. shaders, particle effects, or other demoscene-like displays. Please feel free to spread the word and send portfolios/examples via reply or email

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

The poor technical artist who spent 1,000 hours getting lighting and materials to work and now has to spend another 1,000 hours wrangling a semblance of visual consistency out of the AI beauty filter that Nvidia paid their boss 5 million dollars to market

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

I had to go to this party at a bar for like networking or whatever but it's so loud and I just want to play Melee please send foxes

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Don't give unsolicited advice to neurodivergent folks, it's oftentimes a big trigger of negative feelings due to a lifetime of them enduring people trying to "fix" them with misguided suggestions

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

I'm writing a blog post about the Nintendo DS era. What are some games you feel used the stylus in especially creative, bold, or joyful ways that centered the whole gameplay experience around it? For example, WarioWare: Touched!, Trauma Center, and Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Out of curiosity, I was looking around at old Pokemon print material to see if Feraligatr was ever spelled "Feraligator" and that the name was simply shortened in-game due to the character limit. Then the Prima Strategy Guide delivered what feels like a punchline aimed exactly at my specific musing

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

I discovered a new, unpatched method of escaping without a starter in Pokemon Scarlet on Switch and Switch 2. (Old save/load displacement method was presumably patched.) Detailed instructions in this thread, as well as some things I haven't yet tried but would like to find out if they're possible.

View full thread
Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

The hard part: Requires handheld speed glitch. Connect a second controller while not docked, and tilt both left sticks diagonally for a speed boost. Push up-left into the wall, then swing up-right to launch. Every 2 tries, run back to the grass or the game will think you're stuck and warp you home.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Unexplored things: - Most items don't work, but Exp Candy works on the null Pokemon, so maybe other obscure usable items have some effect too. - Can we get a free Pokemon anywhere while in this state? One NPC gives Bronzor from fragments. Maybe pick starter but skip rival fight and farm fragments.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

I discovered a new, unpatched method of escaping without a starter in Pokemon Scarlet on Switch and Switch 2. (Old save/load displacement method was presumably patched.) Detailed instructions in this thread, as well as some things I haven't yet tried but would like to find out if they're possible.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Getting behind the fence: Get onto the rock as shown. Then, while pushing forward into the rock, slowly angle the stick right until your character is walking as slow as possible to the right. If all goes well, they will pop up and over the rock.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Getting onto the beach ledge: Multiple methods from the slope shown. I did it in a couple minutes by rapidly wiggling the stick back and forth while running across the slope to maintain speed. An alternate method is the (already-known) handheld speed glitch, explained below for the next trick.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Here are the kinds of sketches I'm giving to my sprite animator for Magicore on a regular basis. Using phrases like "Whiplash her spine like a noodle" and "that downwards power pose chibi magical girls do" and "0-10-50-90-100 motion curve". Really a language that only humans can actually understand

Erika Hall@erikahall.bsky.social

My favorite artifact in the "you don't need AI to do art" discourse is, of course, screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's sketch of the facehugger to explain it to Giger.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

I like achievements, but I'm not a fan of the expected implementation for them. Getting a pop-up e.g. the exact instant I get the final hit on a boss takes me out of the moment. I know I can just disable the notifications, but I still don't like how it's become the default experience in gaming.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

IMO, the problem is that third-party API (e.g. achievements) is a late, obligatory step in game development, so the goal is to get it working, not to craft player experience around it. It'd fall on Valve to help inform when and how achievements should be triggered. But expectedly, they're agnostic.

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

Playtesting has recently taught me that there is a very fine line between "too precise for anyone but the designer's movement habits" and "too lenient causing players to tunnel-vision on the unintended solution that's 10x harder". And you teeter between the two by moving obstacles 2 pixels at a time

Dan Salvato reposted

Thab East
@thabeast721.bsky.social

Got to do a couple runbacks of Dan Salvato’s newest game demo at AGDQ. Got the deathless and found some cool speed strats too! I’m real excited for the full release

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

If you're at #AGDQ, I have a brand new Magicore demo up and running in the practice room. It'll be here all week. I worked incredibly hard to get this demo done in time for the event, so I hope you take the time to check it out!

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

You can always tell whether Gen Z is on desktop or mobile because on desktop they're like sjdfsfsdlkjsdf but on mobile they're like skxkdksnskxk

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

@nicole.express Are you familiar with the Parodius series? I learned about Jikkyo Oshaberi Parodius, which has live voice commentary throughout gameplay, even on Super Famicom, which is an awesome achievement. AFAIK it uses SA-1 to stream voice to the SPC. I thought it'd be in your realm of interest

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

In Super Smash Bros. Melee, if you select random stage, it will keep re-rolling stages until it rolls a stage that's not explicitly turned off in the settings. If it rolls disabled stages 10,000 times in a row (astronomically unlikely), it falls back to Princess Peach's Castle as a failsafe

mari@m4rina.bsky.social

i was going through my X archives and found this by @superpodsaga.com, which I qrt'd at some point years ago so, let me bring the question back: what is the most useless piece of video game knowledge you know?

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

This concept is often hard for devs to grasp too, not just players. I put it as "the joy of doing" vs. "the joy of being". Why does some grind or hard challenge feel joyful in game A, but a chore in game B? You enjoy *existing* in game A. The "thing to do" serves that joy. Pet the dog. Enjoy being

Owen K.C. Stephens (He/Him)@owenkcstephens.bsky.social

Dan Salvato
@dansalva.to

There's a reason Mario, a surface-level plain character, rose above other mascots to become the most iconic game character in the world. Mario is a manifestation of the joy of the player. Mario has just as much fun being Mario as the player does. It's a two-way relationship via the language of joy.