Another Cohost repost, but also, Comments! and frogs

Hi hiiiiii~

Not much to say but I thought I'd add a post in with this site update: I posted my very messy Pokémon Blue game log from cohost here too, added comment archives to the other cohost posts, but most importantly, you can now comment on my blog posts!!

Provided by CommentBox, because earlier today I saw a cool site by a cool person that had it on theirs (its Kastel, btw). Comments are something I do really value, so I've been wondering what all I could do to have them on here just in case, but Disqus didn't give me the best of vibes. CommentBox is dirt simple and clean enough for what I actually want, and the vibes seem chill, we'll see how it goes!

Leave a comment if you feel like trying it out~

ゲロゲロ

I don't have other big news or thoughts, hmm...
I've been playing around with Flipnote Studio! So that's been fun, hehe. Kinda went down this road because a conversation with a friend turned to Nintendo online services, like Swapnote and Flipnote Hatena, which got me reminiscing about how much I lived on Hatena when I was like, 14 or whatever. For how little online functionality the DSi had, I sure wrung out a lot of Hatena and the VERY limited DSi Web Browser, up until I finally got a smart phone, lol. I legit, messaged my then-long-distance-gf (now wife) on facebook through that browser when pretending to sleep and away from my computer, I had to reload the whole page to see if new messages came in. (Oh god, the DS really is PCs)

Anyway, Flipnote Studio!
Flipnote Hatena had such a particular newgroundsy, deviantarty vibe, just chuck full of memes beaten to death and edgy teen music videos, interspersed with some absurdly impressive animation, it was fantastic. As it turns out, it still lives now! Looking up Flipnote Hatena you can find Sudomemo's archive of every flipnote that was posted before it went down, which is such a fantastic time capsule for what it was like... but you can also find, uh, Sudomemo itself!! It restores online functionality to Flipnote, and like with many online service restorations, its as easy as specifying a DNS on your wi-fi settings. You can upload Flipnotes to it, watch, rate and comment on your DSi, and easily watch and share them on the website, its such an amazing project, and the community vibe is almost unchanged?? Lovely stuff -w-

I've been playing with it on my yellow Japanese DSi XL I got back when I had disposable income (god, the DSi XL is the pinnacle of handheld gaming), but I was having a bit of trouble drawing flipnotes with the super thin and lightweight stylus (better than the later 3DS styluses tho...). As I was thinking that, it hit me, I HAVE A STYLUS, one I'm (aspiringly) using to draw more often and I'm used to and like the weight of: my display tablet's pen, duh!! The DS line has resistive touch screens, a dying tactile art in the times of fleshy capacitive touch; so long as it can put pressure on the screen, it can draw, its kinda perfectly fit for purpose (pen tablets work with magnets, apparently? but the pen tips are nice and blunt, unlike those silly workarounds to make capacitive styluses)

So that was nice, but you know me (or you will in due time), as I was playing around I couldn't help but think of workflow optimizations, and how best to hold the DSi or take advantage of the button shortcuts. Can't really plug a macro pad into my DSi now, can I? (my macro pad obession is a topic for another day)
So the day after my stylus realization, I had a thought, can you emulate Flipnote Studio??
The answer is: yes, hell yessss. A quick side note first though, as far as "Flipnote but an application on PC" goes, there is Clipnote Studio, which hasn't seen and update in, uh, several years, but is probably still workable? Its just sorta... at that point, you may as well animate in any software and self impose flipnote like restrictions. If you want the real, frog-blooded experience and (software) limitations, you gotta emulate it.

Back on track, the emulator you want is MelonDS, and you'll have to steal (always steal from Nintendo) some DSi firmware and NAND, either dump your own or find it easily on the webs. This lets you boot into the DSi menu, which should have Flipnote already installed, and then, you can just use it, on your PC! With a mouse sure, but if you have a tablet... now we're cookin'
So to really, truly optimize it, I went as far as setting up a start menu shortcut that gets me right into the DSi menu and a tap away from Flipnote Studio. A horizontal layout that prioritizes the bottom screen (integer scaled, of course), my display tablet, button bindings set to my numpad turned art macro pad, and I have a Flipnote app on my PC for whenever I wanna make flipnotes from the comfort of my computer desk and big tablet.

Made myself a Flipnote Studio start menu shortcut because why not.

It points to melonDS and opens a random DS rom, and in the settings I've made it so it boots to firmware (the DSi menu) first instead of into the game, so I can just hit up Flipnote from there

[image or embed]

— ☆Mirai★ (@starrymirai.bsky.social) October 8, 2024 at 2:33 PM

This kinda nonsense makes me so happy, hehe.

A few notes and limits of this setup:

• No Sudomemo! They only support real DSi hardware. I can hazard a guess its 99%... thats what IS compatible and what its built for, but another like, 1% wanting to stay off Nintendo's bad side. Which specially nowadays...yea. MelonDS does have online functionality, and I can manage to maybe get into some of the online menus, but I don't get far. So if Sudomemo isn't blocking emulators (how would they?) it probably is mainly a limitation on the emulators part (frankly a miracle any of this stuff works tbf). You might maybe be able to save out flipnotes, transfer them to your DS, and repost them from there. That said, I'm happy with having "getting a note into Sudomemo" as a motivation to work on real hardware.
• Microphone jank! Dunno if its my admittedly absurd peripheral configuration, but melonDS doesn't let me specify which mic it wants to use, and I can't seem to get any mic input in, even with the other mic options like the built-in blow. This puts a hamper on getting any audio into Flipnotes. I have to wonder just how crisp you can get the audio to be and where the limits are, maybe I should test the .wav microphone input option (EDIT: DSi mic is unimplemented in melonDS as of now, making console the only way to get audio into flipnotes)

But on the other hand, what does work:

• Camera! I configured my webcam on melonDS no problem, it let me pick it!! and while I can't seem to get live camera feed on Flipnote Studio, I can use the DSi camera app no problem and make album pictures I can put in through Flipnote, neat!!!
• Instantly save out files!! You can set a virtual SD card up in melonDS, and sync it with a folder so you can just, save out flipnotes and gifs and pull them out in no time, its so neat.

All in all, its real cool stuff, I love that basically evert aspect of Flipnote Studio is being preserved, its neat to have it in any format I want, I love flipnotes, I wanna make more, but despite all the talking and tinkering I've done actually very little in terms of flipnoting lmao

uhhmm bye

WOW okay its 4 am shitfuck I guess I DID have things to say. I have problems, don't get me yapping, or do.

Thanks for stopping by~

Addendum:

(12 October 2024)

A friend brought to my attention The June Archive and Restoration Project so I wanted to add a mention of it here now that I've watched it. Its a really cool ARG horror thing built around the death (and remembrance) of Flipnote and Flipnote Hatena, talk about relevant!

It centers around someone repairing and archiving corrupted flipnotes uploaded on June 1st, the moment right after Flipnote Hatena had already shut down. The flipnotes are usually classic, famous flipnotes with a horror twist as the imminent shutdown looms over them. Its such a trip to be taken back and suddenly remember some of these things lodged deep in my brain, then be hit with the unnerving reality of the impermeance of everything we know and love.
Its not just flipnote go spooky, it quickly starts dealing with themes about nostalgia, memory, the passage of time, and death. Flipnote as a format is so intimately tied to this one specific moment in time and memory for the people for whom it speaks to, but the older we get the hazier the memories get, the people and children we were growing ever distant. Some of us obsessively archive the whole thing, watching it back over and over in an attempt to freeze the moment in time or be transported back to it. If no one saves these, if no one is there to watch them, were they ever here?

Or maybe Flipnote is just like, cool and neat even today, nostalgia or not lol. But being so tied to this one piece of out-of-production hardware and online service, its impossible to escape the shadow of the time it was live, the day of the shutdown, and the archive of its corpse. I don't care much for the spooky face eating monster man though lol, but its arc should be done soon. Though I can't be too critical of any of the sorta..I don't want to say edgyness but, I can see someone rolling their eyes over at some of this stuff, but "cringe" or not its perfectly in line with the culture surrounding flipnote in many ways, and I can't help but get caught up in it.

Anyway, go check it out, you can watch it on the video release order and catch up pretty quickly, and also get a good sense for the culture of Flipnote Hatena if you weren't there. The animation work is absurdly, sublimely good, and there's some lines that really sick with me.