Hello dear unbeknownst follower, welcome to my blog and what is likely to be for some time, my last heartfelt word to be shared on the internet for some time. I wanted to give one last notice before almost clearly disappearing between BSH updates.
I simply don't have the time.
Many of you may know that I tend to try to get recognition really only from those that are simply interested in what I do. I don't advertise or market what I've done, or what I'm going to do, unless you count uploading it to the web as such tactics, but I mean more in the sense of pouring money into it. Basically, as it may already be obvious, I'm kind of thriving in the shadow of others, receiving notice of what I do by those that look for what I've done, rather than making people interested. My tactics thus far have been those of a recluse. Not really due to money shortages, but due to my own way of doing things, and I plan to keep doing them this way.
Anyways, I post here today to say that I'm not done. Byte Sized Heroes is going strong, I've got a relatively thick design bible behind it's world, characters, etc. and am making some design choices that many people may not have seen coming that I will share when it's complete.
If you're here and have already seen my videos on Youtube you can assume that I've started a new move. I'm moving to Youtube now as a secondary income outside of my full-time job, because this also let's me build, shall we say, a "soft" design portfolio. Giving my insight of design to those that want to know how I design things, while also building a portfolio for myself that won't require ten years to build outside my main projects.
I simply don't have the time.
Many of you may know that I tend to try to get recognition really only from those that are simply interested in what I do. I don't advertise or market what I've done, or what I'm going to do, unless you count uploading it to the web as such tactics, but I mean more in the sense of pouring money into it. Basically, as it may already be obvious, I'm kind of thriving in the shadow of others, receiving notice of what I do by those that look for what I've done, rather than making people interested. My tactics thus far have been those of a recluse. Not really due to money shortages, but due to my own way of doing things, and I plan to keep doing them this way.
Anyways, I post here today to say that I'm not done. Byte Sized Heroes is going strong, I've got a relatively thick design bible behind it's world, characters, etc. and am making some design choices that many people may not have seen coming that I will share when it's complete.
If you're here and have already seen my videos on Youtube you can assume that I've started a new move. I'm moving to Youtube now as a secondary income outside of my full-time job, because this also let's me build, shall we say, a "soft" design portfolio. Giving my insight of design to those that want to know how I design things, while also building a portfolio for myself that won't require ten years to build outside my main projects.
Why?
Some of you may have seen my Twitter or other social posts to have seen that I've dropped some projects in the past, moving on to new things after sharing those other things originally, and it may seem a bit odd. The truth is though, I don't do that.
Byte Sized Heroes, for example, used to be two other games eventually, as I restarted the project four times before sticking with what I've been working on for the past year. That's been about 4 years of work if you include the other projects, which are:
Phyghter : A fighting game sandbox, made to allow players to make characters from sprites, and a set limit of hitboxes and such, and then allow them to share them by downloading them automatically when they enter battles with eachother. Basically Mugen, but a bit more simple, with a few more features.
Shonen Royale (Or something like that) : A fighting game based off Smash Bros which would have featured many animes in and out of the Shonen Jump mags, which would have brought them all together in a sensible story where their powers would have came from dimensional shifts, and brought together by a dark dimensional shift... Anyways, basically, it was kind of a rip of concept of Mortal Kombat VS DCU, just obviously a bit deeper and intense, as I was going to have the same story told over and over from the perspective of each anime, with cameos and crossovers of the others where the main bad guys trick the good guys to hate each other to have a completely sensible tournament at the end, obviously to have been held by the almighty Perfect Cell. The epitome of an anime geek game. The game already included FullMetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Fairy Tail before I dropped it. I dropped it because of fear of a cease a desist, even though I'd still like to make it one day.
Anyways, some of you that have come here from some of my other game posts may have seen a procedurally generated RPG of some kind. Some may know it by the name Forgers Tale which is still the working project name, if not the final name, and I'm not sure if I gave it any other. I gave vague definitions of what either would be. At one point it was going to be a mix of Kingdom Hearts, Dark Cloud 2, and Kid Icarus Uprising. I scrapped some of that, but kept some. At one point it was going to be a simple roguelike that instead of generating basic top down dungeons, would be built like and play more like the Elders Scrolls games. Ultimately, the game turned into two games conceptually, which will likely be what I return to after BSH, and it might also be free and open source, and made in UE4.
1. Forgers Tale: A game that takes inspiration from the Elders Scrolls, as well as Dark Cloud 2, will be partially be procedurally generated, but not only in dungeons as Dark Cloud 2 is. After playing a lot of the Elders Scrolls I came to notice a pattern in exploration (exploration is important to me, I don't like to fast travel much), where I hadn't memorized the formation of hills and paths. I noted that if it had been almost completely different each time, I wouldn't have noticed a difference if "landmarks" hadn't changed.
Some of you may know what I'm talking about here. You likely can't tell me exactly how that one mountain is shaped in Skyrim, but because there's a clear path up to a big building, as well as a seemingly flat area not far above that, you could likely easily pinpoint High Hrothgar there. This is important, because from Oblivion to Skyrim, there was a destinct shift in world building. They filled more of the world with more landmarks in Skyrim, while reducing the work load, by reducing the size of the overall map. This has led some people to say that Skyrim FEELS bigger, even if it actually isn't.
This is because the blank space doesn't stick in the player's mind. It feels empty, and is by choice, typically skipped over by the player. Oblivion has a lot of this space, and because of efforts to make it easily traversable it's almost completely flat throughout. That is not only boring, but distracting. So, instead, Forgers Tale will have procedurally generated "Mini-Dungeons", where the land will form into cliffs the player will have to navigate through to get to landmarks. Here, monsters would spawn, and treasures can be found.
Now, aside from that it will be a bit what you'd come to expect from an RPG. It'd have a blueprint based crafting system for weapons, a spell system based off a similar set up of Magicka, and mechanics like farming, photography, and breeding to get money.
The game concept build to be as casual as possible while allowing action game fans an outlet.
Honestly, this kind of concept may sound odd, but it actually would make the game much easier to iterate upon, which is what randomization is often used in games. Procedural Generation makes a game that creates millions of possibilities without the developers having to do it themselves, and as an indie, this kind of game would be only as hard to make as maybe making 5 harvest moons single-handedly, which for me sounds pretty reasonable.
Anyways, yeah, a basic concept, that I want to make SOOO bad, because I want to.
2. Forgers Planet : A game about jobs, where the players create worlds, or join other worlds, so they can buy and sell goods or pay the gold earned to watch certain competitive events where other players can use their work to combat eachother. For instance, fish breeders would sell fish, buy eggs from explorers, and possibly compete by racing fish. The game would have multiple jobs with the kind of circulation and would be basically as hard to upkeep as real life economics, while being relatively easy to develop. I don't have time for upkeep, so that may never be made. Who knows.
Some of you may have also seen Endless, a horror game made in UE4 with the visual style of classic DOS games. This is still being made, and whether I go to this after BSH or Forgers Tale remains to be seen. This is mostly because of my concept for Endless. While it would be easy to develop mechanically, my idea for it developed into a third person, co-op, horror game. I wanted to take the claim that "co-op isn't scary" by making the game as challenging as Dark Souls, while giving the players a proper combat system. This system would be used to fight the ultimate foe of the game, which is my take on Dracula with alignment to the Illuminati. Anyways, the reason I haven't developed much on this concept is that I've been doing research on and off throughout history, as well as Illuminati theories. All so I can paint the best picture of how insanely awesome Illuminati theories really are if you take them all into consideration. I love that shit, although I believe it to be no more than fiction.
Anyways, some projects actually HAVE been completely dropped. The Pokemon Fan-game Engine has been dropped because of the hub-ub around Nintendo and fan made games. Nintendo is very good at chasing down fan games, and I'm not going to spend a year developing something that may ultimately get many people in trouble. I'm sorry about that. Personally, I love Pokemon fan-made games, but I really don't want to feel like part of the cause of other people being shit on. It's simply a moral stance.
Anyways, from this point on all my games will be free and open source, as I've said about BSH, simply because the more accessible a game is, the easier it will be to share it. I want to be known, and if that means that I have to work harder than other game developers I really don't care.
To the end, I want to silently enforce my image into the minds of many, as well as the content I make. A simple goal that will be simply achieved through work.
Byte Sized Heroes, for example, used to be two other games eventually, as I restarted the project four times before sticking with what I've been working on for the past year. That's been about 4 years of work if you include the other projects, which are:
Phyghter : A fighting game sandbox, made to allow players to make characters from sprites, and a set limit of hitboxes and such, and then allow them to share them by downloading them automatically when they enter battles with eachother. Basically Mugen, but a bit more simple, with a few more features.
Shonen Royale (Or something like that) : A fighting game based off Smash Bros which would have featured many animes in and out of the Shonen Jump mags, which would have brought them all together in a sensible story where their powers would have came from dimensional shifts, and brought together by a dark dimensional shift... Anyways, basically, it was kind of a rip of concept of Mortal Kombat VS DCU, just obviously a bit deeper and intense, as I was going to have the same story told over and over from the perspective of each anime, with cameos and crossovers of the others where the main bad guys trick the good guys to hate each other to have a completely sensible tournament at the end, obviously to have been held by the almighty Perfect Cell. The epitome of an anime geek game. The game already included FullMetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Fairy Tail before I dropped it. I dropped it because of fear of a cease a desist, even though I'd still like to make it one day.
Anyways, some of you that have come here from some of my other game posts may have seen a procedurally generated RPG of some kind. Some may know it by the name Forgers Tale which is still the working project name, if not the final name, and I'm not sure if I gave it any other. I gave vague definitions of what either would be. At one point it was going to be a mix of Kingdom Hearts, Dark Cloud 2, and Kid Icarus Uprising. I scrapped some of that, but kept some. At one point it was going to be a simple roguelike that instead of generating basic top down dungeons, would be built like and play more like the Elders Scrolls games. Ultimately, the game turned into two games conceptually, which will likely be what I return to after BSH, and it might also be free and open source, and made in UE4.
1. Forgers Tale: A game that takes inspiration from the Elders Scrolls, as well as Dark Cloud 2, will be partially be procedurally generated, but not only in dungeons as Dark Cloud 2 is. After playing a lot of the Elders Scrolls I came to notice a pattern in exploration (exploration is important to me, I don't like to fast travel much), where I hadn't memorized the formation of hills and paths. I noted that if it had been almost completely different each time, I wouldn't have noticed a difference if "landmarks" hadn't changed.
Some of you may know what I'm talking about here. You likely can't tell me exactly how that one mountain is shaped in Skyrim, but because there's a clear path up to a big building, as well as a seemingly flat area not far above that, you could likely easily pinpoint High Hrothgar there. This is important, because from Oblivion to Skyrim, there was a destinct shift in world building. They filled more of the world with more landmarks in Skyrim, while reducing the work load, by reducing the size of the overall map. This has led some people to say that Skyrim FEELS bigger, even if it actually isn't.
This is because the blank space doesn't stick in the player's mind. It feels empty, and is by choice, typically skipped over by the player. Oblivion has a lot of this space, and because of efforts to make it easily traversable it's almost completely flat throughout. That is not only boring, but distracting. So, instead, Forgers Tale will have procedurally generated "Mini-Dungeons", where the land will form into cliffs the player will have to navigate through to get to landmarks. Here, monsters would spawn, and treasures can be found.
Now, aside from that it will be a bit what you'd come to expect from an RPG. It'd have a blueprint based crafting system for weapons, a spell system based off a similar set up of Magicka, and mechanics like farming, photography, and breeding to get money.
The game concept build to be as casual as possible while allowing action game fans an outlet.
Honestly, this kind of concept may sound odd, but it actually would make the game much easier to iterate upon, which is what randomization is often used in games. Procedural Generation makes a game that creates millions of possibilities without the developers having to do it themselves, and as an indie, this kind of game would be only as hard to make as maybe making 5 harvest moons single-handedly, which for me sounds pretty reasonable.
Anyways, yeah, a basic concept, that I want to make SOOO bad, because I want to.
2. Forgers Planet : A game about jobs, where the players create worlds, or join other worlds, so they can buy and sell goods or pay the gold earned to watch certain competitive events where other players can use their work to combat eachother. For instance, fish breeders would sell fish, buy eggs from explorers, and possibly compete by racing fish. The game would have multiple jobs with the kind of circulation and would be basically as hard to upkeep as real life economics, while being relatively easy to develop. I don't have time for upkeep, so that may never be made. Who knows.
Some of you may have also seen Endless, a horror game made in UE4 with the visual style of classic DOS games. This is still being made, and whether I go to this after BSH or Forgers Tale remains to be seen. This is mostly because of my concept for Endless. While it would be easy to develop mechanically, my idea for it developed into a third person, co-op, horror game. I wanted to take the claim that "co-op isn't scary" by making the game as challenging as Dark Souls, while giving the players a proper combat system. This system would be used to fight the ultimate foe of the game, which is my take on Dracula with alignment to the Illuminati. Anyways, the reason I haven't developed much on this concept is that I've been doing research on and off throughout history, as well as Illuminati theories. All so I can paint the best picture of how insanely awesome Illuminati theories really are if you take them all into consideration. I love that shit, although I believe it to be no more than fiction.
Anyways, some projects actually HAVE been completely dropped. The Pokemon Fan-game Engine has been dropped because of the hub-ub around Nintendo and fan made games. Nintendo is very good at chasing down fan games, and I'm not going to spend a year developing something that may ultimately get many people in trouble. I'm sorry about that. Personally, I love Pokemon fan-made games, but I really don't want to feel like part of the cause of other people being shit on. It's simply a moral stance.
Anyways, from this point on all my games will be free and open source, as I've said about BSH, simply because the more accessible a game is, the easier it will be to share it. I want to be known, and if that means that I have to work harder than other game developers I really don't care.
To the end, I want to silently enforce my image into the minds of many, as well as the content I make. A simple goal that will be simply achieved through work.