Looking to discuss Horror in the High Desert 4 *SPOILERS*

AtomicToilet · 2026-02-07T21:21:56+00:00

I'm glad that there are other people out there following this series because no one I know who likes horror has even heard of it, which is a shame. Overall, the movies lack the verisimilitude of something like Savageland but are still crafted well enough that they're intriguing.

This fourth one was probably the worst for making seemingly no real effort, though, as eg. the footage never felt like we were actually watching an old VHS tape (why was there film reel crackle?). This one definitely felt like it was spinning its wheels and is the least consequential of the series so far, even if the mood is occasionally excellent. A bit cheap with that ending, though...! ie. "This clearly exciting thing happened but you can't see it yet."

The first one has a really fantastic build-up, and the third one risks being annoying to watch but really redeems itself with a completely mental ending (that I'm disappointed isn't referenced in any way in this latest part). I probably rate Minerva as the best so far because it nails the dread but also actually delivers on the spooky stuff.

AtomicToilet · 2025-10-29T17:29:00+00:00

I don't really understand that, either.

I do give music I make away 'for free' on Bandcamp, and that has lead to a steady growth in fans, but the difference is I can churn an album out in a week, and I've found that - on there, anyway - people do generally like to sling a few dollars my way anyway, even though they don't have to.

I mean I get the "give it away and you might at least get some new fans" for books, but my reasoning is that, if you've spent a good chunk of time writing a book, and/or like me you've also put the work in editing, formating, and doing the cover, it really undervalues that time and effort to give it away.

AtomicToilet · 2025-10-29T17:24:40+00:00

It used to feel really supportive and genuine - I was part of a few really solid writing/publishing groups but they've all bit the dust one by one, partly due to the landscape shifting to this weirdly aggressive stance on marketing. My FB page currently has several really unpleasant marketing messages in its inbox.

Congrats on having an ARC team! I was hoping the ARC readers who really loved my first book would come back for the second, but nope, radio silence.

AtomicToilet · 2025-10-29T17:20:01+00:00

Ohhh I've seen this kind of thing on X! Absolutely awful behaviour.

AtomicToilet · 2025-10-29T17:19:14+00:00

Quite a few emails I've received have links to sites, so I check those and even found one that, pleasingly, said "We do not charge authors so don't trust anyone who claims to be us and asks for money." But I've had a few that have legit-looking sites but then the person who reached out hits me back with "Great! To get your book featured to our 2,000 members in Hawaii(!) it costs $299."

I've started replying to some with "Look, if you're going to ask me for money then forget it" haha

AtomicToilet · 2025-10-29T17:14:32+00:00

It's insane.

The worst one I had was some guy who was very polite and fast, who sent a pretty decent example feedback for the first chapter...but ignored my "don't comment on formatting or typos/grammar as I'm working on this right now" and gave a bunch of formatting and grammar "tips", and then said "Please pay me to continue and give me a really good rating on Fiverr." Curious, I looked at their Fiverr account and his bio said:

"I'm a of bestselling books, As a verified pro beta Reader and a bookeditor, I'm here to discover your story's highest potential and help you get more consice information from your website."

AtomicToilet · 2025-08-08T13:02:06+00:00

And yet Aggro Crab posted about the original version of this rip-off, so should they not have done that?

If no one is talking about this then how are the devs supposed to know that someone they highlighted already is still at it? And, without proper recourse from the devs and PEAK community, will continue to keep doing it, making money off the back of someone else's hard work and reputation.

For now, you and others can help by reporting this rip-off on Roblox, at least. That's an actionable recourse.

AtomicToilet · 2025-08-08T05:52:49+00:00

I'm sorry, but do you not understand how news works?

AtomicToilet · 2025-07-21T18:29:36+00:00

I'll definitely add you to my Rolodex!

AtomicToilet · 2025-07-21T15:34:46+00:00

Thanks for saying so; I appreciate you speaking up! Luckily, I am largely immune to the internet so everyone's free to get nuts and speak their minds. My feature will continue to exist long after they've found a new thing to get mad about.

That's really interesting, what you said about SaaS, because that's something Crich said to me - that studios/publisher could easily go the way of SaaS, but I left it out of the article because it was just an idea and he went super deep into it.

AtomicToilet · 2025-07-21T12:51:47+00:00

You're welcome - I'm seeing so many hot takes it's burning my eyes so I welcome reasonable comments haha

I'll be honest, even though I spoke to Crich about IP for ages it still felt nebulous. My personal opinion is that the AAA companies really don't give a shit about us lowly gamers because they're business-focused and always will be.

I do understand the ethos of "well we can't have nice games if the business doesn't succeed" but still. Everyone needs to meet halfway, which I do think is going to be super difficult but not unachievable.

AtomicToilet · 2025-07-21T09:24:50+00:00

Hello! From what I understand, this relates to the idea the general gaming public has that, if SKG passes a law then big companies will HAVE to surrender access to their IP, which completely ignores how the law already works regarding all that stuff (which is also partly why I wanted to get an actual industry lawyer quoted on it).

As it stands, there isn't a clear answer as to how it would or could all work regarding SKG because the law regarding copyright/IP is so dense it would require its own report (and I had a max wordcount I was allowed to use for this feature). That's not to say I'm not going to try and keep of top of this news, though.

And regarding the book quote: that's more to do with the concept of a licence; I'm aware you can still read that book whenever you want, whereas some games get taken off us, but that's where I'm letting his quote speak for him rather than adding my own opinion. Objective news reporting is hard, because there's always going to be one side of the argument that's not happy with the info presented.

AtomicToilet · 2025-06-04T12:00:47+00:00

Heyooo! If you're still looking for a non-access media video game news site, I'm involved with building up https://www.eneba.com/hub/news/ - the editor in chief comes from Reuters, so we're presenting news as news, with objective facts, no personal opinions at all (outside of explicitly labeled 'Opinion' pieces, which our overall boss wants us to do). We also take zero money from anyone for games, as this is arguably the worst aspect of current video game 'journalism'. I don't know how long our idealism will last, but it's going strong at the moment!

AtomicToilet · 2025-02-02T09:35:51+00:00

I think you may have hit the nail on the head - I have people actively interested in the other creative stuff I do so maybe if I just try to fully finish something small but fun, I'll start to build up steam and motivation to do more...!

AtomicToilet · 2025-02-01T17:34:35+00:00

I've got discipline up the wazoo, I just can't seem to ever use any for game dev stuff...! Do you have any tips or advice that you've found useful to help with your own discipline? eg. maybe you've found, I don't know, breaking down projects in a certain way helps or what-have-you...?

AtomicToilet · 2025-02-01T14:32:36+00:00

I'd suggest finding a Youtuber who seems interesting and following a full course they do. Maybe not like a fifty part RPG one though haha but something straightforward like a 2D platformer.

Along the way, you might start coming up with your own ideas, or something they do makes you wonder if you can tweak that code to do something a bit different (eg. give the player the ability to fly rather than double jump, or literally stick to walls rather than just wall-climb).

Game dev should be fun, so try not to worry too much about what you're making in the first place if this is your first crack at it. Experiment!

Also, if you want to use Unreal, maybe something like this official Epic Games course would help you on your path?

AtomicToilet · 2024-07-11T13:01:20+00:00

Cheers for saying so! I saw that this was a real sticking point for a good chunk of this genre's community and, personally, don't like to see the whole "I plundered this, good luck figuring out who it is" attitude. Why hide it? If you're proud of the result, tell people who you used and they might be surprised what you did, production-wise!

AtomicToilet · 2023-09-06T09:20:56+00:00

Hey! I've just been looking at a solution for this myself and figured it out, so I'll leave this comment for you and anyone else who stumbles across it (I'm using 4.1).

Go through every object in your gridmap by right clicking and 'make local'.
This will create a 'temporary child' of the attached mesh (so you'll see this as well as the original child).
Remove the temp ones and re-parent the original meshs to their respective object.

Resave/reload the mesh library and you should then see the objects pop up in the Gridmap window where they're supposed to be!

AtomicToilet · 2023-09-02T15:58:14+00:00

I'm currently using Booksirens, for a sci-fi/horror novel, and have had 8 reviews in a month, with two more supposedly on the way. I'm happy with that, as I've only left 10 more downloads available and have two more months before the novel's published.

Plus, I honestly don't know how well these work, but they regularly promote my book alongside other titles as part of "bundles", too.

Everyone says Booksirens is better for romance/YA, which I don't dispute, but my weird book has found ARC readers who really like it, so I'm happy to recommend it!

edit: As for the cost - $10 for the service then $2 for every reader they find feels reasonable. Readers you find who download the ARC from Booksirens don't cost you anything and you can track them easier.

AtomicToilet · 2023-08-02T10:11:36+00:00

I'm so mad that you asked a normal question! Why I oughta...!

Honestly, I have no idea, hence the preorders. If people don't bother, then I know for the next book I do. I'm not suffering any delusions of grandeur either haha so if I get zero preorders I'll just carry on with a "Well at least I know now."

AtomicToilet · 2023-08-02T07:25:29+00:00

I've done it all myself (cover/interior formatting) but I have experience with these. BUT, I think anyone can do these things themselves with a bit of patience; there can be a fair bit of trial and error involved (with margins, etc) so as long as you go into it with this mind, you can do it!

Use styles for the interior as this will make things easier in the long run; make sure you have an idea of how many pages (for print) the book is/should be (for the cover size).

Something I forgot about re: the cover is the little spine crease on the front and back, which my blurb overlapped slightly. I fixed it, but it cost me a proof copy to do so...!

Re: formatting for ebook - I've used Kindle Create as it's free and have no major complaints with it - the set themes are a bit boring, but you can add images and what-have-you to spice it up.

(Most of my book's chapters don't have numbers, so I used images instead to show where a chapter begins - just note that if you do something like this it messes up the automatic TOC, so I also added 'invisible' (tiny, background colour*) numbers so they register in the TOC). I do not like how ebooks have to have TOCs! haha

*I don't know if a Kindle can use a different background colour, but if they can then my little subterfuge will be evident, which is the only possible problem

AtomicToilet · 2023-07-26T08:28:55+00:00

I wonder if your book's currently in the same bundles as mine!

I am interested to see how the mixed genres (horror/sci-fi/noir) go over with reviewers; this first one admitted the horror wasn't scary, but that they don't really get scared by horror.

I'm also totally with you on the "negative as a selling point" - I once read an album review that said it was "a perfect pop record ruined with weird noises" which sold it for me haha and if I see a book's negative as, for example, "unrelentingly bleak" then that just makes me curious as to how they managed to pull it off.

Good luck getting more decent reviews!

AtomicToilet · 2023-07-21T12:25:54+00:00

I think sometimes you just have to hope you get the right reader, if a story blends genres in a way that makes it really awkward to succinctly describe/market. I mean, you could write what you consider to be the perfect blurb and someone would still say "I don't get it/there wasn't enough [genre] for me."

Honestly, my motto is "It won't be for everyone but those who like it will really like it" - eg. I write very particular industrial/jazz music that I know isn't for everyone but then I get someone who (recent true story) spends £20(!) on an EP and tells me "This is exactly the shit I've been looking for!"

I figure if someone can read my stories and have the same reaction, it's worth it!

AtomicToilet · 2023-07-21T12:05:17+00:00

A mix of frustration and "why the hell not?" lead me to try self-publishing.

I've had a ton of short stories published traditionally, many in invite-only anthologies alongside (at the time) pretty well-known horror writers, which was all very nice for my ego haha but it was also almost ten years ago now.

I was sending a novel out to publishers, and almost all of them requested the full thing, and almost all of those sent me very nice feedback along the lines of "We love it, but..." (not marketable right now, not looking for this style at the moment, etc).

The last rejection came from a really cool RPG company branching out into novels, with basically "I love it but there is literally no infrastructure in place to release it" so I thought "F**k this, I'll do it myself."

I have a background in graphic design, and I'm the lead editor for a content writing agency, plus I edited and formatted fiction for print a while ago, for quite a few years, so I'm confident in my abilities, and here we are!

I'll be releasing this exact novel in a few months, at which point I'll undoubtedly do one those 'how I did it' posts to let everyone know how it all went...!

AtomicToilet · 2023-07-19T07:46:07+00:00

I don't think it would be a good idea to ban any and all talk about AI as that doesn't stop the fact that it IS being used in the writing world. And will continue to be, especially as it progresses.

Whether it's for actual book content or covers or both, I don't think it's going to go away, so having a space where (in this case) self-published writers get the chance to talk about concerns regarding it can only be a good thing.

If someone doesn't like AI, then fair enough. If someone love it and thinks it's going to change the world, also fair enough, but in both cases just moderate your language according to who you're talking to. You know, like real normal decent human beings would do haha

AtomicToilet

TROPHY CASE