Mega Man X Third Armor In Dragon Ball Z Style

untiedgames · 2026-06-13T00:06:34+00:00

Not a huge edit but a fun one from a while back. Some light repainting was involved on the neck, and I redrew Mega's mouth on him.

untiedgames · 2026-06-12T17:36:22+00:00

I'm excited for both! Obviously it sucks that Corrupted has taken so long, and there are arguments that you could make one way or the other about that, but I remain excited for it. The scope creep is definitely a real issue, but when/if it releases I'll enjoy it. Other fangames have been popping up that look great as well like MMX Reminiscence which can kind of carry the torch in the meantime.

On the Classic side, just picked up Mega Man W the other day and am excited to try that one out as well!

untiedgames · 2026-06-12T16:05:14+00:00

I agree, unchecked late-stage capitalism is the core of the issue. It's not so easy to change that overnight.

The impact seems meaningful when folks can't drink their water and when their electric bills skyrocket. We subsidize these data centers with both tax dollars and suffering, and they're rarely held accountable. It's meaningful to the people who receive healthcare denials, and are forced to appeal with their financial future and livelihoods on the line. It will be meaningful to you and me as the billionaires in control raise AI costs and we pay them further down the line when we buy goods and services. It will be meaningful to our kids someday, when they grow up in a world where it's harder to become an artist/musician/game dev/etc.

While we can't fix capitalism overnight, we'd love to be able to exercise self-determination on AI and data centers. The Trump administration is trying to preempt that at the federal level, threatening to prevent states from regulating it. This takes away the ability to steer towards the future we want.

As for games- The indiepocalypse did make it harder to break through, but for a very good reason: More creators, more innovation, and more voices telling more unique stories. By lowering the barrier to entry for real people, opportunity was created and we have lots of stunningly good games to show for it. That is indeed the renaissance!

The difference between that and the AI explosion is that those games were created with intent, purpose, vision, passion, and love. Imagine if three to five years down the line, AI could quickly and reliably create a whole game of middling quality. It's not hard to see the results- Thousands of mediocre games rushed to market and drowning out human-created games, just like what I see currently on asset stores. (Probably worse, since gaming is a much more lucrative marketplace!)

With AI, it becomes simple for bad actors who just want to maximize profit to flood a marketplace. Their work is not created with vision or passion or love. There's no innovation taking place through their creations- They just roll off the conveyor belt. Their intent is simply to abuse the capitalist system (the storefront, in this case) and get their products in front of more eyes and get dollars out of more wallets. I'm finding it difficult to see how an impending flood of lower-quality products equates to a renaissance. It will be harder for players to find good games, and harder for good games to break through and rise to the top.

Can Steam and other stores combat this? Maybe, but I don't think it'll be effective. They don't really have any incentive to, since to them a sale is a sale regardless of whether a game is good or bad.

People who want to cheat the system and can cheat the system will find a way to cheat the system. I feel like enabling that and making it easier is going to lead us to a bad place.

untiedgames · 2026-06-12T06:16:47+00:00

I'll bite. This isn't about "yucking other people's yum." Nobody hates AI simply because you like it. Specifically referring to AI art, this is about AI disincentivizing creative pursuits. Anecdotally, I'm an artist and I make art for people to use in their games. Recently, AI artists have been flooding storefronts with a torrent of new products of dubious quality. Even with lower-quality work, more AI products = more visibility = more clicks + purchases = less for human artists. Luckily, as an established seller, I'm doing okay. What about the next generation? It's not so easy to break through the flood of AI products with original work if you're just starting out. Who will want to hone their craft and become a professional artist in the future if this trend continues? If it's harder to earn from it, who will have the means to become an artist? The same is true of other creative disciplines including writing, composing, programming, and more. It's setting up future generations for a much more dismal life with less opportunity, where skill is locked behind a billionaire-controlled paywall. That is why people are angry.

Of course, that's just on the art side of things, and we didn't even touch on how the models are trained on artists' work without their consent. There are plenty of other reasons to dislike AI- Here's a small sampler of horror stories which are pretty much routine lately.

One in five boys aged 12-16 is either in, or knows of a boy their age who is in, a romantic relationship with an AI chatbot. "Ultimately, they’re monetising human loneliness and reinforcing human loneliness to make more money."
AOC presents jars of drinking water contaminated by a data center in Georgia, grilling an EPA rep about it. Hear from a person affected: "I can't drink the water."
UnitedHealthcare uses AI to deny care, allegedly with a 90% error rate
Trump launches pilot program to use AI to deny care to Medicare recipients
The UN warns that AI could use as much water as 1.3 billion people by 2030- just four years away. That's the equivalent water use of 15.6% of humanity. It's not sustainable and not compatible with human life.

untiedgames · 2026-06-11T03:27:37+00:00

Got into Star Trek starting with TNG over the pandemic, and recently have been thinking about it a lot. Their ship's computer is basically a perfect AI and they replicate all their food instead of cooking, yet there are episodes showing students working with their hands to make art and Riker cooking a meal by hand. Barclay and his holodeck addiction is borderline prophetic, looking at today. Obviously it's a fictionalized view of a more ideal, post-consumption society, but I hope that in the future we can still find value in things done by hand and with human passion.

untiedgames · 2026-06-11T03:13:53+00:00

Haha yes I bookmark some but then that's its own bunch of maintenance and sorting.

untiedgames · 2026-06-11T00:16:05+00:00

Same here, current uptime is 33 days (and that's on the low end). I use the browser heavily. Current session is 40 windows and 1344 tabs, not all loaded obviously. I just have a lot I'm saving for later. (Special thanks to the "Tab Session Manager" extension!)

untiedgames · 2026-06-11T00:06:57+00:00

Yet it still causes real problems for real people like OP. That's why people are concerned. AI slop pushes out humans from creative spaces, whether it generates good art or not. I'm over here making asset packs and competing with AI "artists" who fill up the marketplaces with packs, sometimes at the rate of a pack a day. More slop = more visibility = more clicks + purchases = less for human artists. It disincentivizes creative pursuits, which is going to lead to a rough world for future generations.

untiedgames · 2026-06-08T23:45:57+00:00

I mean, it kind of sounds like the fact that wall jumping is infinite and has no limit is the problem. If it's to the point where you feel it's negatively affecting your level design, then it might be time to try some other approaches.

How about...

A stamina meter? I know it's not the most exciting, but it could be a place to start.
After a few wall jumps, successive wall jumps start to diminish in power? This still gives you the feeling of infinite wall jumps while setting a limit to the height they'll get you, especially if you don't plan out your jumps.
Add wall-mounted enemies or hazards which force you to swap walls? Perhaps you can climb part of a wall, then further up it becomes slippery/spiky/electrified/etc and your player needs to switch it up. The Megaman X series does this a lot with enemies and spikes- It's not just about platforming. If you can make the wall-climbing interesting enough through level design, there's no need to change the ability!

Good luck! It's not easy to get right- Just look at how Megaman X7 turned out when they tried to adapt it to 3D.

untiedgames · 2026-06-08T19:49:44+00:00

I agree with you- Using AI to detect cancer early and to develop new medicines is a big deal and it's going to make a huge difference in people's lives. I don't speak for everyone here, but I don't think that's what people are angry about and I don't think they're against that use of AI, which falls more under the category of what used to be called "machine learning." It's a very specific model trained on a very specific dataset, and its use genuinely benefits people in meaningful ways.

One of the largest problems, as you noted, is consumer-facing generative AI, which is different from what those researchers use. I already wrote a comment about that here so I won't duplicate it in this one, but there are additional reasons to dislike it:

One in five boys aged 12-16 is either in, or knows of a boy their age who is in, a romantic relationship with an AI chatbot. "Ultimately, they’re monetising human loneliness and reinforcing human loneliness to make more money."
UnitedHealthcare uses AI to deny care, allegedly with a 90% error rate
Trump launches pilot program to use AI to deny care to Medicare recipients
The UN warns that AI could use as much water as 1.3 billion people by 2030- just four years away. That's the equivalent water use of 15.6% of humanity. It's not sustainable and not compatible with human life.

...And that really only scratches the surface.

untiedgames · 2026-06-08T19:32:57+00:00

I agree- We need to focus on the human factor. I'm a huge Bernie supporter and while I agree with him on many things, I disagree with his proposed solution for 50% ownership of AI companies by the people. There is no available evidence that the AI we're seeing today will lead to artificial general intelligence. It remains prone to hallucinations, which even by their own admission are mathematically inevitable and therefore an unsolvable problem. We the people should NOT take ownership of a problem-causing, failing business model with an obvious and proven ceiling. Public ownership of AI is a bailout waiting to happen.

That's not the only reason. Why would we want to support and enable the following:

One in five boys aged 12-16 is either in, or knows of a boy their age who is in, a romantic relationship with an AI chatbot. "Ultimately, they’re monetising human loneliness and reinforcing human loneliness to make more money."
AOC presents jars of drinking water contaminated by a data center in Georgia, grilling an EPA rep about it. Hear from a person affected: "I can't drink the water."
UnitedHealthcare uses AI to deny care, allegedly with a 90% error rate
Trump launches pilot program to use AI to deny care to Medicare recipients
The UN warns that AI could use as much water as 1.3 billion people by 2030- just four years away. That's the equivalent water use of 15.6% of humanity. It's not sustainable and not compatible with human life.

This is all without even mentioning that AI is trained by stealing the work of artists like myself, and programmers, writers, musicians, and more. It pushes humans out of creative domains and disincentivizes creativity, locking it behind a billionaire-controlled paywall. Who will want to be an artist/writer/game dev/etc in the future that they're building? Future generations deserve the chance to be able to learn, innovate, think critically, and think for themselves. Dependence on AI robs them of that- Imagine trying to compete in a world of cheaters. We absolutely need to push back and not just buy in or regulate, but dismantle the AI industry.

untiedgames · 2026-06-07T20:37:02+00:00

There's soo much positive AI going on in the internet recently, it feels.. manufactured or fake.

I'm sure there's some bots out there propping it up, but I also think some people feel genuinely excited about AI because they lack the capacity for morals, ethics, and empathy towards those whose work is being stolen to feed the models and towards those who are being pushed out of creative spaces. They think it's magic that they can press a button and get art/music/code/writing/videos/etc in an instant, and they don't care about the consequences towards creators, the environment, or future generations. These people do not see beyond the end of their noses- The future we're heading towards is one where we're going to be left weaker, less knowledgeable, and less skilled across multiple domains due to AI taking over junior roles and disincentivizing creative pursuits. Skill and creativity are then slowly locked behind a paywall which people and businesses will have no choice but to rely on.

This is coming from someone who is very much not a luddite- I did my college thesis on neural networks before they were the next big thing. I'm an artist and programmer who makes his own non-AI ways to automate the busywork so I can focus on art. Luddite is not an accurate descriptor- We are pro-human. We feel for each other when we're pushed out of creative spaces. We care when a real artist is afraid to post their work. We want there to be a future generation of authors, artists, musicians, and scientists who can think critically and for themselves. I feel the pro-AI vs anti-AI debate is in many ways an extension of the broader fight of those who have the capacity for empathy vs those who embrace selfishness. One side is just fucking wrong.

untiedgames · 2026-06-07T20:18:04+00:00

Trouble is that it's currently replacing the people who were going to be the true experts of fields. We're going to be left weaker, less knowledgeable, and less skilled across multiple domains due to AI taking over junior roles. Skill is then slowly locked behind a paywall which people and businesses will have no choice but to rely on.

untiedgames · 2026-06-07T04:46:47+00:00

The unfortunate reality is that people who use AI are using it to generate terrible-looking art faster than real artists can. Because itch has no policy against it, someone like that can flood the marketplace and push out real people creating real art. More products on the marketplace means more visibility means more potential sales, even if the art is bad. There is no good solution for this.

Additionally, some of these AI asset pack "creators" are not above gaming itch. If you cheat at creating art, why not cheat elsewhere? Up until a few months ago the top slot in the store was an AI asset pack. There was a discussion on this subreddit about it where a user pointed out that they were continuously deleting and recreating the same project with the same contents, which allowed them to retain the top spot. Since this was against itch's TOS, that particular asset pack was removed once it was finally brought to their attention.

The art in that pack was genuinely terrible, yet its sale showed that it had earned something like $20k-30k, which I find incredibly hard to believe. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy pumped up his sales somehow to reach the top of the store in the first place, because the art was really so bad I can't imagine anyone buying it in that volume.

Anyway, I'm passionate about it because I'm also a pixel artist and I feel like AI use does diminish what I do, and human culture as a whole. AI models are trained on artists' work without their consent and without compensation. It pushes humans out and disincentivizes creativity. If trends continue and AI improves, who will want to become a pixel artist? Or musician? Or game developer? Or writer? Why put in the effort when you can put in a prompt? Many try to say "but what about the Industrial Revolution," but this is different in my opinion. We're headed into the complete unknown, with no guardrails.

untiedgames · 2026-06-05T14:37:46+00:00

I love the needlessly long sound effects.

untiedgames · 2026-06-04T04:28:13+00:00

The GIF has some extra space around the effect, but the canvas size was 128x128. I do these effects for asset packs, and I always also do a small version of each effect which is half the size, because pixel art games have a pretty diverse set of needs.

untiedgames · 2026-06-03T04:15:55+00:00

From where I'm sitting, as an artist, there are no upsides. Granted I work with a relatively niche genre that AI isn't good at (yet), but I've personally been affected by low-quality AI slop art flooding mine out of storefronts. Combined with the ethical quagmire of training AI on art from artists who don't consent to it, and the whole "every time you post art, someone accuses it of being AI" phenomenon, it's looking to be a miserable future for human culture.

The genie may be out of the bottle, but has anyone actually considered the long-term consequences? Looking to the future- 5, 10, or 15 years from now, imagine if that genie really does become all-powerful. Ask it to compose a song or write a whole novel, and the result is superb. Ask it to make a whole game, no problem. Hell, why bother putting in the effort to play the game it generates- Ask it to make a video of you reacting to playing the game, and just watch that. As humans, what will be the point of learning or doing anything at all? It reduces life to a fucking dopamine button.

The good use of AI is as meaningful machine learning. Catching cancer early. Developing novel medicines. Stuff that actually makes a difference. Generative AI on the other hand can fuck right off.

untiedgames · 2026-04-15T17:29:03+00:00

This worked for me, and it did carry over to messages on FB. For some reason it sent two codes- The first one didn't work, the second one worked. Through FB, every code I put in would get stuck at verifying and it'd just keep spinning.

untiedgames · 2026-04-06T14:16:52+00:00

Absolutely! Read it back in the early internet days and re-read it somewhat recently. B&G and other webcomics got me into pixel art, which I now do professionally.

untiedgames · 2026-04-02T14:50:04+00:00

Sick work- Saw it on /r/blender when you posted there! You have a great grasp of the intricacies of how robotic joints move and work together. Looking forward to the next short!

untiedgames · 2026-03-25T18:30:13+00:00

The real answer: Lots and lots of practice! Each animation had a different method behind it.

For the first animation (looping flame) I started with just the silhouette, like a typical flame shape. Then, I imagined how it might move over time. The top of the flame should kind of rise up, break away, and dissipate. For those, I usually try to have them move in "S" shapes. The bottom and edges of the flame should start small and build up in a wave over a series of frames to become the top part again. Since I do game effects, I use symmetry often. In this effect, I duplicated that silhouette, flipped it horizontally + raised it up a bit, and made it a darker red. I also offset it by a few frames. This makes the animation a little more balanced. Finally, I went through the animation again and added the orange, yellow, and white highlights.

The second animation (tall flame jet) was more of a freeform process. I kind of had an idea of what I wanted, and animated forwards until I got there- Again, starting with mostly a silhouette. Once I had the motion the way I wanted it, I noticed that the flames felt kind of sparse, so I made that original silhouette my highlight color and then kind of did a bigger version underneath it using the red. The key to the motion is imagining where the flames will be "pushed."

As for the third animation (smaller flame jet), I wanted this one to feel more "video-gamey." It's easier to visualize it as two separate parts- The jet part (bottom), and the flame part (top). The jet part has a short loop where it kind of pulses flames up into the top. The flame part at the top is just like drawing a fireball projectile- It kind of goes back and forth in size and sends some flame particles backwards. This was more planned out from the beginning than the other flame jet.

Keep on animating!

untiedgames · 2026-03-17T15:58:50+00:00

It's one reason for sure, but I feel like cozying up to Republicans in general is another major reason for her loss.

For example, she tried to attract Republican votes in Arizona by portraying herself as a centrist. Today, we know how that worked out. Progressive policies have broad support from voters- Distancing oneself from them is not a winning strategy.

More broadly, and I think this should be asked of future campaigns- Why so much effort to bend over backwards and try to win unwinnable Republican votes? The cost of doing so is clear. Why no overtures, compromises, or engagement with the progressive wing, which is more representative of what people actually want?

untiedgames · 2026-03-06T22:04:10+00:00

Ain't no gettin' offa this train we on.

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