Golly gosh would you look at the chronograph! It's time for another stonking post on the old blogogram from the old boy himself!
This month was TERRIBLY exciting don't you know? I started a brand spanking new series on the old youtube channel and what not. And by spanking new, I mean quite similar to one I already did before, but with any luck no one's going to notice that. Only one episode is out at the time of writing but it did well, so that's a good sign. I'm talking about Honourable Gentlemen of course, the Rule-Britannia-est thing this side of ranty UK Facebook groups.
For this series I'm officially not going to take things too seriously, with the characters essentially being strange, overly British anime characters. Makes it more fun to write, and since the campaign itself may not end up being all that interesting, hopefully it will make the videos a bit better too. I also developed a faster way of making the dialogue scenes after lots of fiddling with the editor, so I can make something that's roughly similar to Barbarian masters in terms of quality with 25-50% less time to make it. HUZZAH.
The big news here is that it's really cold. REALLY COLD. LIKE NEGATIVE TEMPERATURE. THERE IS ONLY ANTI-TEMPERATURE. The kitchen windows are covered in ice- wait no that's my feet. I'm cold. Now you know the truth.
I think I also started the Prole Hunter series this month, which has gone down well too. This is a series that gradually becomes more insane as it goes on, and gets to the point around episode 20 where whole episodes consist of Prole Hunter having manic conversations with a variety of his own alter egos while gunning down the occasional prole swarm. It's basically the best thing ever.
Oh yeah, I ALSO just yesterday started a new abridged series in xcom 2! This is very exciting for me as it's not total war, so it's a million times more interesting to film and commentate. And some people watched it, the first one at least, so now I can whip out more, horray! And there is even the genuine intruige as to whether it will possible at all to finish the campaign with my crazy modified game settings. Who will live, who will die?! We've already seen classic Offy-D characters like XxXManMuncherXxX and Chuck Buck bite the flashy alien energy bullet. Who's next?! Quite a few more I can tell you. THE TENSION.
Speaking of Chuck Buck, I haven't filmed any of that in ages... Have edited a few of the recent episodes together to progress the series and make individual videos a bit less boring, but actually I'll run out soon. Oh woe is me! I shall have to play video games to solve this problem! In all seriousousousness though, KoToR is actually really janky by modern standards and is pretty annoying to play, which stacked on top o the pressure of actually doing interesting or funny commentary makes it something I've been putting off for ages. Just another example of how playing video games for money makes you hate video games, one of those secret cruel ironies of LPing! But I'm not here to rant about that... THIS TIME.
Instead, why don't I rant about my glorious video game project, Godless Tactics, aka Ice Emblem! Progress continues on, with lots of new battle maps and a few funky new futures being added recently, including the ability to make allied parties follow you to help with difficult fights (or to spam autoresolve lol ***TO DO, BALANCING***).
Look, I made some pictures showing the progression in making a battle map. Excuse the placeholder tiles, real ones will be coming sooooon!
We start with a relatively blank map, on which I lay out shapes for major features. In this case it's a little base that takes up most of the map.
Then we throw down some details to make little areas for fighting in.
Next we need some landscape around the place. Not that important for gameplay since you probably won't fight there, but it looks better.
Now add details and stuff to make it nicer overall.
Then add deployment markers that indicate to the game here each side should spawn, and where their little camps should be.
Then use a magic .bat file that converts the thing I made into the format that the game engine will read to generate the map.
Finally we are left with this beautiful map! Which, with any luck, will be converted by the game to look something like how it did in the map making program.
Whoa, dude, it's like the matrix. I AM THE GOD OF THESE FENCES AND ROCKS. So yeah, the game's coming along, although it STILL have game breaking freezes due to path finding issues (i.e. something wants to pathfind through a blocked chokepoint, can't, so then chugs the CPU for three hours trying to find the shortest alternate route by checking every route possible across the whole universe).
If I can fix the big issues, the game would actually be pretty playable in its current state. Next big priority will be adding an ending and generally putting some structure to the game so it doesn't feel like a harrowingly open Mount & Blade sort of thing. The world map still isn't actually done, and there's an unlimited amount of balancing still to do... but some kind of 'pre-alpha' state is approaching.
I've got a big list of features I could implement, but I'm starting to think it's better to get something roughly complete first, then assess if the core gameplay needs additions, if only to make things move along quicker. Gotta save some features for the sequel too, right?! The sequel will be Godless Tactics Warriors, a frenetic hack and slash with a story written using a random sentence generator. Oh yeah, did I tell you I've been playing Fire Emblem Waifu Warriors? The war to decide who is the best waifu continues... and in the end... Chrom always wins...
ANYWAY
Yep channel is still going, and the mission to get Break Even 2018 is still on track! Woo! We can do this! Although the other day my phone broke so I just had to buy another one, but I skimped out and it's not as good as my old one. So if Break Even 2018 works, next goal will be Good Phone 2019.
Gonna get that "Spring: +1 Happiness" buff soon, just you wait!
(p.s. I collected 0 memes this month, so here's another low effort meme from me, based on a true story)
