THIS IS GONNA BE A WEIRD ONE!
Added 2023-09-01 22:35:18 +0000 UTChi hi hi~~!
I GOT BIG NEWS! And a long post, with some 100% unexpected stuff.... hope it works out ok...
AND TWO(3?) NEW PROJECTS!
ONE OF THEM is even kind of playable! (kinda, read on for more!)
A FULL PATREON REVAMP IS UPON US!
READ ON FOR MORE INFO!
Last time, it was all about CODENAME:PHRUNKULA and new commissions and the evolution of the Final Destination Engine! (to be renamed as the Secret Destination Engine!)
This time, we got projects!
FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT OF THEM:
Project SAVING PAIGE!
I have been no-lifing this one for a while, and I think I have just enough to begin sharing some screens!
Take a look at NEO-PAIGE!!!!!!!
The refined but decisive expression!
The artistic but well structured RETRO rendering!
Brought to you by the latest update of CODENAME:PHRUNKULA!
Cool graphics (imo), but what can I do with them??
I mean, so much time was invested in making the engines and systems, and for what? Just a VN?
It can't be just that...!
But what could it be?
What can I do AS FAST AS POSSIBLE that can justify ALL THE WORK!?
It can't possibly be the RTS+AutoBattler+MOBA+BulletHeaven+VisualNovel+cRPG(+H??), right!?
But what if... It was?
Seems like a hard thing to do, but I might have already started it!
Remember some screens back then of a Paige sprite bonking stuff with a frying pan...?
That was still very far from an actual game engine.. Can I even make one?
Can I even afford to find out?
If only I had...
A hyperbolic time chamber!
I could make one or two half-bake prototypes at WARP-SPEED, and then use those as Guiding Rails to FULL-BAKE Project Saving Paige!
And I think I actually know what could just be my hyperbolic time chamber!
A hyper-specific environment that is tailored for speedrunning Game Development!!
Ok, FIRST...! Some setup to the craziness that follows!
Let me set the scene...
I have come to the conclusion, after years of lurking and subsisting on the outer edge of the internet...
That all the corpos think of me no longer as a fish worth catching...
Nothing is made for me anymore. Nothing will ever be again...
Until I do it myself!
so thats what i am gonna do!
INTRODUCING HALF-BAKE PROJECT WHALEFALL!
My goal is to Return To Crab! (maybe "evolve" to crab is more correct...)
Do all the elites keep turning all that I value into abandonware?!
Then, I MUST reclaim it!
Inhabit what is old!
The 2023 equivalent of crashing an Abandoned Mall with your friends!
Beginning with: Warcraft 3! More specific, the WC3 World Editor!
If you don't know, Warcraft 3 was a huge thing back then!
And the WC3 World Editor still is an amazing piece of software!
[[it was also the first thing i learned to program in! (hooray for being raised in a lab where pcs have no gpu and can only run decades old games!)]]
The World Editor was the birthplace of a A LOOOOOT of stuff that exists even today!
MOBAs, Tower Defenses, AutoBattlers! Even Vampire Survivors have to thank WC3 for all the pioneering!
The years have passed, and WC3 is now old and forgotten!
A Reforged was attempted, but somebody let the suits in charge! The results were cataclysmic!
The game imploded! The community imploded! But that's not all...
On the other side of the Blizzard trenches: another catastrophe!
Heroes of the Storm, best-MOBA-come-and-fight-me, now lies abandoned and ruined!
From down here where I stand, watching all these events unfold... It was like...
A once majestic and beautiful giant creature, known for its great power and skills, met its end by poison and treachery...
... and as its remains keep sinking down to rock bottom...
The crabs come out to feast and revitalize the waters!
And it is with those two pieces of the former whale...
HotS and WC3...
One in each of my crabby claws...
That I wanna try to craft... the FUTURE!
INTRODUCING HALF-BAKE SUB-SUB-PROJECT
Project HotS DE:FORGED!!
Goal: bring MOBA-level heroes inside the RTS world, in a custom WC3 map! (and make it work)
You can think of it as art sketches and practice study, but for Game Dev, that you can be a part in!
I aim to recreate the HotS heroes and its most fun mechanics inside the two-decades old WC3 engine and use them for Real Time Strategy games!
And this is precisely what I mean by hyperbolic time chamber:
By using WC3 amazing modding capabilities, I can advance the knowledge and skills required in both RTS and MOBA gamedev!
I am even gonna add the BulletHeaven piece a little down the line!
And after I am done, making an RTS+AutoBattler+MOBA+BulletHeaven+whatevs is gonna be a piece of cake!
This sub-project shall be my PROOF OF COMPETENCE!
If I can pull this off, I can do anything!
Q&A mode activated!
Q: Whoa whoa whoa! Hold there, horsie! Aren't you biting a little more than you can chew?
A: ... maybe! But I already got a good start!
I've been working on this for a little while as a private thing just for my personal learning, but these WILD ideas kept invading my head...
I bit my tongue and powered through and finally got something playable!
So far I've got a custom WC3 map with TWO FULL Heroes implemented!
And the best part: they are the hardest ones to get done!!
They have the most complex spells in HotS, and imho, the most complex spells out of all MOBA spells!
It's multiple chains, and tethers, and pulls, and special conditions, and questing that augments your skills....
Gnarly stuff! But I got it doooone!!!
And... Just me to witness it... But... Should it be this way?
And then, I realized another thing!
For a long time, I have been struggling on how to make this whole Patreon thing work...
And I think this might be just the perfect opportunity to solve this!
I never liked the whole gating-exclusive-content-behind-a-patreon meta-game.
I think it doesn't work.
I also think that it hurts both the creators (less so the mega-successful ones) and the patrons (early builds = buggy/incomplete/time-waste)!
But what could even replace it? Something needs to be given back for all the support!
What people even want?
Content...?! I mean, sure...! But is that it?
Content is the thing that keeps getting shoved in our faces EVERY CHANCE it gets!
It's free, and easy, and available at all times...
... while everything else is kept soooo faaar awaaaay....
So even if the content is of the lowest quality, it's still something that's always there...
I don't think Content is what people want!
I think it's what people GET TO want!
I want..
...
...
To not be treated as a commodity? Or as a revenue source?
To not be just the tiniest part of a base that exists to be exploited? To be sold crap to?
...
Expression...!
I long to have something that comes from me and reflects onto the world!
I think this is it!!
SO HERE'S THE WILD IDEA:
I WANT TO BE YOUR GAME-DEV DJINN IN A BOTTLE!!!!
What I mean by this:
I always have had a bunch of ideas about the games I play...
Tiny things, like, hey, maybe that mechanic could be this other way, or... Maybe this enemy could do Y instead of X!
And I have spend a lot of time thinking about MOBA games! and RTS games! and Autobattlers!
What heroes I would add... How I would make something more balanced... How I would bring this character that I love into a MOBA...!
And I know... YOU MUST FEEL THE SAME! (some of you for sure!!)
But theres a catch, no?
Game Dev is super hard! Way too hard for most people to have fun while doing it!!
So... What if... We strike a deal and I get to bring your ideas and wishes into the world!?
Q: H-h-h-hold up! Thats... That's not how this works! It can't be that easy........?!
A: In 99.9% of situations, you would be right! But this right here, is the perfect storm!
WC3 is the grand-daddy of most modern real-time game designs (that are not first person!)
I have already done the hardest part, and laid out enough foundations for ANY currently existing character!
Most things are just a few tweaks and shortcuts away!
Working within a MOBA+RTS+BulletHeaven(soon) setting is a limitation, but hey, you can do almost anything within these walls!!
Why even get stuck with Heroes of the Storm!?!?!
I can still keep it as the main direction and for the project title, but we could navigate towards any horizon we wish for!
Q: But what about... Copyright?
A: Very worrisome thing!
Which is why I started doing HotS (from Blizzard) inside WC3 (from Blizzard!)!
They can't smite me for that, right? They wouldn't dare, right!?!?!
But what if we want something that is not inside that pairing?
Maybe you really miss some old version of a lol champion...
or...
there's this really cool character that you spend years imagining as a moba champion and you even came up with their skills and passives and interactions even if you know deep down it will never come true because you're not gonna become a moba designer and even if you became one you would still need to convince the higher ups and get the artists aligned with your artistic vision and the programmers and engineers to work out the mechanics you feel are vital to the character but every one of those things fall short in some way so the end result is just a mish mash of unripe stuff and you want to spend more time on it because you love it so much but you cant because the deadline is upon you and now some higher up is calling you into their office to talk you into changing your concept for something that "sells well" and you just...
a n y w a y . . .
I am never going to put some IP like Vayne or Sonic inside the WC3 map, but maybe I could add, huh...
Wyan, the Old Hunter! Totes new concept! She is really cool!
She can do a dodge roll (just like bloodborne, but never the same), and...
She has a three-hit passive that puts the enemy in a staggered state for a true-damage visceral attack (like bloodborne, but never the same), and...
She has a crossb.. huh, gun.. huh, cannon(!) on her back that she can draw and fire a super-shot at an enemy that pushes them back and stuns them if they hit a wall or something (like bloodborne!(but never the same)), and...
Her ultimate is called The Night Unfurls(!) and... I am FAIRLY sure you get it!
As long as we remain level-headed and focus on the right stuff, we should be fine and only our creativity should be the limit!!!!
Q: But that's not enough! What about "too-many-cooks"? How would you balance different ideas and expectations and make it in a manageable and timely manner?!
A: I hereby commit to make all additions as balanced and co-existable as possible! I will love every creation equally and respect them!
But also...
There's this thing about old-school games: Options everywhere!
There's no need for a monolithically single ruleset that applies to all players!
I can add options! Individual options! For individual players!
And it was then that I had my THIRD revelation about this sub-project (AND THE PERFECT ANALOGY!)
Consider Magic The Gathering!
- old game
- giant barrier of entry
- lot of specific stuff to learn that makes it super-hard for new people to join in!
- most-official mode of playing is super competitive
- 1v1
- each player goes full goblin mode, abusing every imbalanced thing they can to get that Victory! screen.
- YET, a lot of people LIKE the game for the alternative aspects, like the art of cards, their concepts, the fun+wacky combos, the beeg monsters, the beeg spells...
This was always a rift in the MtG player-base, so some real smart doods came up with EDH (aka Commander!)
A mode that balances against the goblin brain of the ladder tryhards!
Meant for small tight knit groups to have fun and explore concepts and even express themselves!
Now let's take a look at Real Time Strategy and MOBAs (like WC3, SC2, LoL, DotA...)
- old games (13+ years on LoL?)
- considerable barrier of entry
- lots of specific stuff to learn that makes it super-hard for new people to join in!
- most-official mode of playing is super competitive
- solo queue
- each player goes full goblin mode, abusing every imbalanced thing they can to get their personal number to go up!
- YET, a lot of people LIKE the games for the alternative aspects, like the character art, their concepts, the fun+wacky combinations, the campaigns, alternative fun modes, the beeg wombo-combos!
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.....................!!!
I WANT TO MAKE THIS SUB-PROJECT INTO THE COMMANDER VERSION OF RTS AND MOBAS!!!
Community driven, tailored to individual players, with many options to customize the game rules for whatever your group finds balanced+fun!!
It's, like, the perfect idea, right!? No chance of it going wrong!
The same way that the Commander ruleset revivified MTG by allowing for individual preferences, so too I wish to bring all the MOBA goodness to doods that just want the gameplay without all the goblins invading their lobbies!
I am one of those that love mobas, but dont care so much for the moba community... Maybe there are enough of us by now!
Now I can play without "the community"! And you can too! We both, together!
Q: Huhh....... Maybe.... But...
A: I know what you gonna ask!
What about the messy parts of taking player suggestions into your development?
The egos? The messy "ownership" stuff?! It always ends in disaster!
Hmm, yes, that is a problem... or better, it WOULD BE a problem, if not for this tiny-itsy-bitsy part right here:
Activision-Blizzard-King owns WC3 Reforged, and everything that dares enter its domain (or so they claim...)
But this thorn might actually be a good thing!
For you see...
Everything that is shared/suggested/asked-of-me and finds its way onto the map...
Will be all out of our crabby claws by the time it comes in existence!
We are all lowly crabs under the corpo boot! I would just be the one holding the wheel!
And since the Very-Big-Bads above us are holding the axe over all of our heads at all times, we have no choice but "design-around"!
I WANT TO BE YOUR GAME-DEV DJINN IN A BOTTLE, but don't give me your "my-OC-dont-steal!"
Give me your curious thoughts! The "I-wonder-if"'s!
The things you would like to see if/how they work!
Think of this as a workshop! Or better, a laboratory!
Let's all advance our understanding and curiosity together, while making something that WE WANT TO PLAY WITH!
That's my plan!
I use Project Whalefall + Project HotS DE:FORGED to hyperbolic-time-chamber my skills to the moon! (and hopefully even garner a few more fans!)!
And then, I turbo-boost Project Saving Paige! I want it to be done this year! (i need it to be done)
Make something that is a little more "game-that-you-can-put-your-hands-on-and-play-with" and less "technology-that-always-feels-far-far-away"!
Q: *sigh* OK... BUT WHAT IF I don't have WC3 Reforged, don't know anything about it, and I don't want to have it! (too expensive / fuck them)!
A: I know, I know... and...
You know...
I wasn't even planning on coming out with this whole wc3 stuff because of exactly that.
Original plan was just me in my hole in the wall, but I started having these ideas about letting you guys pitch and design stuff... And making the Commander-of-RTS game mode, and...
It all just feels like something new. Like, actually new! (despite the very old game at the forefront)
And it could be content, right? You don't need to buy or even play WC3 to participate in any of the design parts!
Expression is best, but content is still content!
I am fully aware that a lot of people that like games don't even play much of them anymore. (for a variety of reasons)
In fact, if you trust the content creators analytics, something crazy like 90% of WC3 viewers DON'T EVEN HAVE THE GAME!
And when I stopped to think about it, it started making a lot of sense!
Youtube always keeps recommending me videos of theorycrafting about Commander decks, and they have hundreds of thousands of views! Each!
No way there's this many people actively playing Commander! I haven't touched a magic card in like a decade, and there I was watching how to to get a merfolk deck made in under a budget!
So...
I started a Youtube channel to showcase this project and everything!
You know the meme right? Game devs don't even play their own games??
Not me! I intend to play the shit out of it, and get other people to play it and stuff!!
So, if we end up cooking up some sick designs, THERE WILL DEFINITELY BE VIDEOS ABOUT IT!
How cool would that be?!
AND IF YOU WANT TO GIVE WARCRAFT 3 A TRY, YOU ARE SO IN LUCK!
**BREAKING NEWS** **BREAKING NEWS** **BREAKING NEWS**
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
WC3 Reforged is 50% OFF until September 17th!
The Luck Gods have blessed this project!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Huh... You seem to be really hyped about this, so I guess we could give it a try. How does it all get started?
A: YES! So, ok!
I also already recorded a couple of videos about the map!
- THIS FIRST VIDEO -
is a cheeky comparison of my re-make of Maiev with the original! I used the official HotS trailer for Maiev with some scuffed editing (very scuffed)
Maiev is definitely a 200-year design that for sure was made when HotS designers got salty when people kept saying the HotS heroes are too simple.
Talk about an overloaded kit! Almost every single update after her release was a nerf, and she is still fairly broken on the right hands!
Truly one of the hardest MOBA heroes to play, and I mean all MOBAs!
- THIS 2ND VIDEO -
is me playing against the CPU in -solohero mode with Maiev!
It's more to let you know how the game plays out and everything.... It's just for illustration...
There is no commentary because I don't have any equipment left.
But if I fix my finances I am definitely getting a mic and adding some commentary on the next videos!
I am already working on a spotlight video for the Second Hero on the map, Kel'Thuzad! Already playable!
I gave him THE MOST COMPLEX skill I have ever seen in a MOBA: my upgraded and over-engineered version of his E, Chains of Kel'thuzad!
I had to program it down to each chain link! I don't think that there's ever gonna be a MOBA spell harder to code than that!
is a Kel'Thuzad solohero match against the CPU!
Q: Huh... I meant the game dev genie stuff.
A: Oh, yah, sure!
So, I am gonna revamp all the patreon and here is how I plan to make it work!
There are gonna be 3 tiers!
All current patrons are gonna get a lifetime-forever-valid to the tier immediately above their current pledged tier!
This means, for example, if you currently give $1, you will forever be in the immediately above $3 tier! (even if you cancel!)
The new pledge tiers will be:
$3 - Lab Friend -> You get 1 vote!
$8 - Lab Mate -> You get 3 votes!
$18 - Lab Veteran -> You get 7 votes!
plus additional perks! i just have to think of them...!
ANYONE can participate in the Discord to give ideas or discuss ideas!
Then, time to turn Ideas into Decisions. We could START with polling!
And when a poll closes, all the votes spent on the non-winning options would be REFUNDED! (winning votes will be consumed)
You can accumulate your votes! And you can use multiple votes at the same time if you wish to! (will be managed through dms for now until I find/code some system (if you know one, let me know please))
All patrons with accumulated lifetime pledging will receive a lot of votes this one time, even if you are not currently subbed! (just message me on Discord!)
If you wish to pitch in a brand new concept, there is gonna be a special room on the Discord for that!
Me and fellow patrons will discuss+evaluate+fine-tune all concepts, and if there is a general sense of approval, that concept will be featured in a poll!
If it PASSES in the poll, I will make it into the game!!
That's how I imagine things will go!
I could be wrong (I am probably very wrong.....), so all this is subject to change!
To get things started, I will create a test poll to decide what is next Hero to be added!
You can vote on it, then after that poll there will be one or more polls about that Hero's spells (is it gonna be a cookie-cutter copy? some modifications? some new cool flavors?)
And then, implementation + testing + done!
This is gonna be the perfect demonstration of what I meant by proving Competence and Speed, and you can participate in it all!
Q: And while all this is going on, you are still gonna be working on Paige?
A: Yes! By multiplexing!
Do it a little bit of this, then a little bit of that... And it will feel like both are being developed at the same time!
Because, as I said earlier, I can use the patterns and lessons from this to rail in the creative work!
You know the saying: measure twice cut once?
In game-dev it is, reflect on it 10x, program it 1x! (so, save 9x time units by reflecting on stuff really hard!)
And in any case, yes, I just want to buy enough time to make Paige the game she deserves and get enough food to survive...
Q: Ok, I guess this was enough text... Couldn't help but notice a, huh... disgruntled feel in some of your descriptions of, huh... corporative life?
A: Hmm, really? I haven't noticed.
On a completely different note, there will need to be another shift in this Patreon page.
Patreon has got cold feet and is starting to ice away / exile all lewd creators, or at least that's how it's feeling from this side.
They have been w a r n i n g me that they might be f o r c e d to freeze me out unless I either give this up or re-categorize the page, A.K.A, go normie.
And you know what, I get it! To be fair, this lewd thing was not working out for me either. Like, not at all if you look at the numbers.
Maybe change is good?
I will try the re-categorization route, which means there will no longer be any lewd content connected to this patreon page.
The wording here is very precise, as it is taken directly from Patreon's instructions for re-categorization.
I can only hope Someone Out There sees the potential of My Work and decides to make some Completely Free Mods and Fan-Art on the r i s q u é side of things...!
w h o k n o w s . . . !
ANYWAY!
thanks for reading~~
