#romhack dev

[unlimitedtrees]

the most fun evil thing ive ever made: Sonic Labyrinth 2

download this crazy ass rom hack

so. 'Sonic Labyrinth 2' was a joke rom hack i originally made in 2016. it was for the sonic hacking contest that year, and i made it mainly because i was let into this team called "Team Overload" whos whole gimmick was that there were a Ton of people in it who were going to submit a Ton of rom hacks at once at that year's contest. of course , this led to a bunch of people (myself included) making a Ton of low effort hacks just so they could submit something, and Sonic Labyrinth 2 was one of those hacks.

basically, Sonic Labyrinth 2 was Sonic 2 but inspired by Sonic Labyrinth. sonic's acceleration was reduced Greatly , making it so he moved like a snail. while you Can get speed by doing a spindash, i made it so you can't jump while rolling , which means you have to be much more Careful and Deliberate when rolling At All... as you become nearly uncontrollable when rolling (and it's even difficult to Stop Rolling, due to the low acceleration)

because of these few changes, the game becomes Completely Different. simple challenges such as Jumping Over Spikes or Going Up A Slope become increasingly difficult. however, the game isn't Mindlessly Dumb, as you could still gain speed from things such as speed shoes, going down slopes, and even going underwater (as you have different physics underwater). the game becomes almost like a puzzle platformer , as you have to figure out how to use everything available to you to make progress in the levels (and without getting stuck in some places)

however, even though i liked the unique challenge the rom hack had, i was disappointed with it as the game wasn't really designed around the new controls all too much, and there were too many dumb soft locks all over the place. and also basically No One liked the rom hack beyond it being a Silly Joke.

So , in 2018 , i started working on Sonic Labyrinth 2 Encore. it was mainly inspired by sonic mania's encore mode , with all of the levels having new palettes and the layouts are slightly changed to accommodate the slow controls , along with being more of a challenge. i was actually really proud of the stuff i did for it.... However .... i am Bad at rom hacking. sonic 2 rom hacking specifically is Really Frustrating for me ... theres just lots of things i didnt know how to do , and when i ran into 2 crashes in some of the levels which i had No Idea how to solve .... i decided to give up on the hack. this was also around the time Among the Others came out and i gave up on rom hacking entirely , so . yeah.

ive always been really sad about not being able to finish this rom hack, because there's just Nothing else like it ! the different controls bring up such an Interesting challenge that requires you to be more precise and more knowledgeable on the physics from the original sonic 2... and i wish i couldve done way more with the levels to make them much more of a difficult puzzle. oh and also i really liked the color palettes i made for all the levels.

Idk. this rom hack was Really Evil. but it was Really Fun. if you wish to give it a try, you can download it on github. the source code is on github aswell, but for some reason theres errors when building it and i have No Idea Why. at one point i tried adding one of those error handler thingys but i think something broken and it made me forever sad.

thats all i think. i just wanted everyone to know about this silly rom hack i made

#TreesThinks #Sonic Labyrinth 2 #Sonic Labyrinth #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #gamedev #rom hack #rom hacking #romhack dev #Youtube

[skypiea]

i like drawing so much im going to draw forever and ever :-)

#kite.txt #ive been having so much fun working on this romhack project man #even tho i cant post any of the concept art pieces its so fun to do designs #and all the spotlight art and special art ive gotten to do and post on the blog has been a blast #i just like drawing what else is there to say its a joy. look forward to so much kite art forever #also consider following my romhack dev blog (linked in pinned) bc a lot of art ive been doing gets posted there since its been my focus #if u wanna see pokemon stuff :3

[vaugarde]

i need to find another pmd project to love on relentlessly to make up for that. i almost feel bad hating on a fan project like that

#echoed voice #devs just know if you somehow find my posts: i respect the work that you do and its very impressive you made the first full length romhack #for this game #thats a great feat and im glad you did it and its this good technologically. the mind stuff was great and parallel timelines were fun #and pls take the fact that this won hack of the year a sign that im just one guy and i am clearly in the minority and that is ok #it just. sadly wasnt my thing and i was more frustrated than happy most of the time #we were talking abt this in discord but also in light of jelloapocalypse being kinda a hot topic rn- #i know im just one guy with a tumblr blog but pls know that whenever i bitch about something- i dont get pissed if you disagree #i dont think im like ''enlightened'' and everyone should just accept my opinions. im just an old man complaining on my lawn basically #if you adored this romhack then good for you! im glad you enjoyed it more than i did! #at the end of the day its still eos and eos is fun and exciting and feels good to play #if youre considering getting this romhack then dont let me convince you not to give it a chance. you may enjoy it more than i did! #maybe youll see stuff that i didnt! maybe itll resonate a lot more with you! #idk where im going with this. but i feel bad being mean to a fan project for too long jsdklfjdsf

[sibyl-of-space]

hate it when sitting down and making a dev tool instead of running forward and making more content the hard way is actually an incredibly valuable and effort-saving and all-around good and helpful thing to do

#once i realized it was easier for me to test sprite changes in the ghost trick ROM by editing hex than in the game i myself am developing #i realized that. i should probably um. make my life a bit easier #once again ROMhacking ghost trick proves to be an invaluable tool in my own game dev journey #thanks ghost trick sorry i still havent finished the hack i started like 2 years ago i promise i havent given up on you

[zeravmeta]

i can never bring myself to do nuzlockes not because of the challenge nor even because of like the attachment to your pokemon (though that does apply) but mainly because I specced entirely into the monster catching aspect of pokemon so im a terrible collector who cant *not* catch and fill out my pokedex no matter what

and like as someone who loves romhacks specifically this ends up shooting me in the foot because most romhacks are actually well designed and good compared to the average pokemon game meaning all the pokemon are available so im tossing balls for 1000+ creatures at this point per hack and to try and remedy this I try to play a lot of fakemon hacks (also bc i really love em) and even then a significant majority of the time the devs are considerate and go "hey lets add all the normal pokemon in too give them a little walking around money" so. yeah.

#AND i still havent even finished my games library lol #in another life i would have been a great thief. or packrat

[windwake-me-up-inside]

Not sure why everyone's shocked about pokerogue's dev being transphobic. The entire romhacking / fangame community for pokemon is super transphobic and has been so for literal years

#vance says shit #transphobia #transmysogyny #pokerogue

[game-boy-pocket]

Just going to say, I am very pro video game piracy. But there's fucking caveats.

I mostly am only pro piracy for RETRO games. Games for consoles that are not longer being supported. I think re-releases are fine if you don't mind input lag and a lack of sanlines, or potentially bad CRT filters, but making you buy them again even though you bought them digitally already, or tying them to a subscription service is not fine. It's because I pumped so much money into the Virtual Console releases on the Wii, and again on the Wii U and 3DS only to be told I have to wait for releases again but need to pay a yearly fee just to access the games and connect to the internet every few weeks, that I got fed up and started buying real retro consoles and everdrives loaded with roms.

I think piracy is also great or playing romhacks, which SHOULD be officially supported. It's fucking stupid that so many Japanese devs are so behind the times and clueless about modern gaming culture that they'd rather people play illegally than support hacks/mods officially.

Now what I don't support is pirating brand new games on actively supported consoles. That's just asking for trouble. And that goes double for games that struggle to make many sales. I don't want to hear anybody bitching about F-Zero, Star Fox, or Metroid if they don't pay for those games. As for games that DO sell well enough but you don't feel like supporting them, at least wait for the console to stop being supported, there are billions of games you could be playing instead on older hardware, are you so fucking spoiled that you can't play a game that wasn't released in the last 3 years? Jesus man. And use your fucking VPN.

Be a pirate but don't be a stupid pirate.

[clatterbane]

Pokemon Crystal Clear: An Open World Pokemon Game

What I'm currently messing around with, in an emulator on my phone. Good push to find new game diversions, with my laptop still out of commission. And, though I never actually owned any of the Game Boy devices? It is still somehow gratifying, having these now-ubiquitous handheld computers standing in for multiple decades-old devices that I couldn't afford at the time. The form factor is also pretty damned close to a Game Boy.

I never actually played the original Crystal before this either, for that matter.

(Decided to try Lemuroid right now, which will handle multiple systems from Sega Genesis to PSP. It's been great so far for GBC, at least. And I pretty much feel obligated to shill for what seem to be good FOSS projects, due to the person I am.)

At any rate, Crystal Clear has had years' worth of more updates since this video.

One source for the most recent pre-patched ROM:

The "color filter" version tries to simulate how it would look on original hardware, while the other shows the actual colors the devs were working with. I haven't compared them side by side to say much more.

#video #games #pokemon #pokemon crystal clear #romhacks #emulation #lemuroid #retro gaming #with a twist #Youtube

[ideahat-universe]

About that Roadmap...

So I think now is a good time to talk about what the future of Palworld should be. Yes, I'm aware of all the negatives that people have said about Palworld but I REALLY like the monster catcher genre, so I just want Palworld to be a better game rather than a game that has to be cancelled because it supposedly used AI or is an genuine example of plagiarism (which from the definition of the word is a semantic argument outside of literal theft).

I can't chastise people who are being short with Palworld too much because I was literally that kid that said Digimon was a knockoff of Pokemon.

I refused to watch it and argued with anyone about it. Once I actually watched the show I realized that it had nothing in common with Pokemon (no monster collection, real stakes, character development, and villains that are a real threat) and when years later Pokemon just so happen to discover the idea of Mega Evolution I was like "This is what we've come to huh? Will Pikachu be wearing jeans next?" but I really like Mega Evolution in Pokemon and play Romhacks specifically because they have Mega Evolutions in them so it's like, I don't really care who had the idea first, I care about how the idea is implemented.

So on that note, if the Palworld devs want to improve the game (after patching things up of course) the best course of action is to be more like Rimworld. Specifically Raids.

Raids are a really powerful narrative device in Rimworld. Sure Vanilla rimworld is dominated by the killbox strat but even with that, enemy raids can still erupt from the ground and drop from the sky and that's what Palworld needs.

Pathing is always going to be a bug bear and I imagine pathing patches and pathing mods will have to work together to make it really work but a good work around for raids that take place at hard to traverse areas would be drop ships.

Imagine the Syndicate driving their legally distinct LAAT, and in order to end the raid you have to destroy the ship but while the ship is there it's spawning enemy pals and humans with guns basically every 15 seconds and initially drops like a dozen of them on top of you.

What if a subterranean vehicle just bursts from the ground, destroying everything in its way and it has a big door and just a bunch of humans and pals (that can fit in the ship so small ones) just piled out and start attacking?

Raid Bosses are supposed to be a thing and I don't know how they will manifest that gameplay mechanic but it's important that raids can fuck your shit up. Might even be spicier if your pals could be killed or kidnapped in a raid that goes really bad.

Now the Palworld devs said they want to make PVP work and not have it fall apart like Rust and previous imitators have. I looked into Rust PVP, I reflected on the many years I've spent playing PVP games.

And I just have no idea. The only thing I can think of is "Make it like EVE online." Because EVE online has this limitless skill ceiling and is basically untouchable for new players but by the same token there are tools to enable newcomers to start playing the game without much issues and the community molded itself into safe and unsafe zones and raids are these really extensive affairs that involve dozens of people fighting for weeks on end. Form alliances, breaking them up, etc.

I don't know how to put that into Palworld other than make every place outside of the safe zone territory an area where you can build a base, but you can only personally build 4 bases. Other players have to build bases and you have to take those over but when you raid a lower level person's base your level is made equal to them.

And maybe, I dunno, once you start taking bases from other players the risk of your own base being raided by AI multiplies (in terms of frequency and power), and if any player claims your base afterwards in your absence (or as a result of your defeat) then they get the pals that were stationed for that base. So new players can get high level Pals by just waiting for AI raids to attack unattended or poorly defended bases.

And there's no fast travel so once you get really far away from your base you better learn some tech to help you get to a base fast if you want to actively defend it (There's like maybe a period of 30 seconds where the base is being converted where if you show up the conversion is paused in a battlefront sort of way).

The idea is that much with the main game, you are going to slip up. The AI is going to get lucky and someone is going to steal your progress and you can either sign a truce with them or you can get revenge. And that sort of repeats over and over again until everyone gets bored or one player somehow rules the entire map.

That's my idea. That's what I do here. If anyone makes use of this idea for anything, I don't need credit, I don't need money, Just send me a slice of Pepperoni Pizza and we'll be good.

#video games #fandom #palworld #pocketpair #rpgs

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

honestly feels like kaga’s not even trying anymore

like berwick and trs feel like they have legit effort put into them

but like vestaria saga just literally uses stock srpg studio assets

and not to shit on game devs because I know it’s hard and expensive work

but romhackers genuinely feel like they actually care about srpgs

and kaga kinda feels like he’s doing this out of spite now

and idk I think that’s kinda sad? like he’s just an angry old man trying to reclaim his glory days working on early fe

(still think he’s never gotten over his dubious views on women)

.

#fe #fire emblem #kaga hate #game hate

[unlimitedtrees]

u ever heard of Pepsi in Sonic 1

(alternative title for this post: the weird rom hack i made 6 years ago)

hello. at the time of me writing this opening paragraph, it is november 7th, and my old rom hack 'Pepsi in Sonic 1' turns six years old today.

you probably have not have heard of it. if you have, you probably either watched somecallmejohnny play it once, or you ran into it while looking up sonic rom hacks on youtube, or you got a random DM from me asking "u ever heard of pepsi in sonic 1" for no reason other than because its funny.

if you already know me, you know i am bad with words and conversation and stuff. but if you dont, i hope that helps a bit of understanding in why i might randomly ask u if u heard of this weird little rom hack. i am bad with starting a conversation ! and my dumb little sense of humor thinks it's funny to bring up a rom hack that doesnt even represent any of the things i currently do !

anyways, even though i joke a lot about this rom hack now and for a few years even Hated its very existence... i also have a deep love for it, as it was one of the few fangames ive made that i feel were made of pure, unrestrained passion. and i dont think i would be the same person i am now if not for this dumb little hack existing.

so, if u wish.. you can click the little 'read more' thingy to learn a bit about this crazy sonic hack i made when i was like, 13.

Alright, so Pepsi in Sonic 1 is a rom hack of (you guessed it) Sonic 1 that i made in 2016 for the sonic hacking contest. at that point, i had only been making games for 2 years and this was one of my first rom hacks ive ever made...

On the Surface, it looks like just a simple joke hack that replaces Sonic with a can of Pepsi. there's also a ton of other sprites that get changed into random little jokes, with some of the more notable changes being Big the Cat replacing Eggman, Jimmy Neutron replacing the Newtron badniks, and the wrecking ball sprite being replaced by a sprite based off Somecallmejohnny's "amiibo face". The game also has a ton of other silly little jokes, such as changing every level's names to something dumb or changing the level art slightly. And the people who played it pretty much wrote it off as just that... just a weird little joke hack that you may or may not have found funny.

but let me tell u.. there is more to this dumb little rom hack than u think ! one of the most major changes to the original game is that every level has been edited to have almost completely new level design.. and honestly a lot of the levels hold up pretty well. the Are some problems which come from the way they were designed.. for u see, i still didnt know a whole lot so a lot of the levels are built on top of the original Sonic 1 layouts, with some sections in some levels being kept the same, as well as all of the levels being forced within the original size limits of the levels (on Top of me having to deal with all the hardcoded bullshit from certain levels like Labyrinth and Scrap Brain).

So, some levels like 'Not Green Hill Zone', 'Dimps Place Zone', and 'Pepsi City Zone' have some really huge changes to the level layouts, while the rest of the game is still a little recognizable from the original Sonic 1 levels.. but i managed to make enough changes to where the whole game feels wildly different from vanilla Sonic 1. Not Only are all the levels different.. but all of them have a hidden "emerald monitor" which u can find to unlock one of the emeralds. they're in pretty difficult to find places, and when u collect all 6 emeralds they give you extra lives when destroyed. The only problem with them is that you can keep collecting the same emerald monitor in a level by dying... so you could cheat and get all 6 emeralds in one level. Still, it's a nice little thing that i put a lot of effort into making.

another one of the main big things in the hack is the Playable Characters. the main character is just a Pepsi Can who is basically just a sprite replacement of Sonic, However there are three other characters in the game that you can play. there is Pepsiman, who's main gimmick is that he can't actually do Damage while spinning. he's basically the game's hard mode, and you actually have to explore the third act of each level to find an invincibility monitor, as he also can't do damage to the bosses. he is the Running Hero, after all ! his only desire is to quench your thirst.. oh and also he can destroy eggman monitors without taking damage from them so. Yea.

You can also play as Classic Sonic, who is his own separate character and uses sprites from the 8-bit games. unlike the other characters, he actually has his own special move: The Drop Dash. You See, in the middle of the hack's development, Sonic Mania was revealed. So, as soon as i saw the drop dash in that game i just Had to implement it in this game. And Well, with it being one of the first instances of the drop dash in a fangame, it is implemented Very Poorly. But It Exists ! and there's actually secret paths you can take using it in the levels (something i wish Sonic Mania did but oh well..). Something that Classic Sonic doesnt have that the Pepsi Can and Pepsiman have is that they can perform the 'Shield Double Jump', in which you are given the ability to double jump while having a Shield. the double jump is pretty powerful, but it stops your speed. i didnt give it to Classic Sonic for Balancing reasons (AKA: i wanted there to be a reason to actually play as the other characters)

the only other character is actually a very hidden secret character: a Very Broken version of Knuckles. all of his sprites are broken and also i think it plays loud music while u play as him. thats all there is to him LOL!

Anyways. Um Yea. i put a lot of work into this rom hack back then. i was still pretty new to ROM hacking, with this being my first time using a disassembly. so i had to both learn basic ASM aswell as figure out how a ton of tools worked just for this game.. and i didn't even understand how most of the stuff worked by the end of it ! and i spent pretty much every weekend Exclusively on working on the hack. also, i had pretty much No Help with this game, with me having to rely on the Very Old and Outdated sonic retro wiki aswell as old forum posts just to implement the things i wanted (and there's still a ton of ideas i didnt get to implement)

when the game finally released at the hacking contest, i was very proud of it but also very Burnt Out. there was still a Ton of issues with this game... for One, all of the pixel art was pretty Bad. not only that, but my method for implementing artwork was very Confusing and Time consuming, with the different playable characters being a huge hassel as i did not know how to make them have different "mappings", which made making the different characters very restricting. there's also little problems with the level design, such as certain "chunks" being misused at some points and also Labyrinth Zone being not as edited as the other zones

i think one of the biggest mistakes i made with this game is with the jimmy neutron sprite... You See, in the original Sonic 1, the Newton badnik has two variants with different behaviors. one uses the first palette line, which contains the colors used for Sonic and most of the objects in the game. the Other varient uses a separate palette line specific to Green Hill Zone, which gives it a more green color scheme. You See.. the jimmy neutron sprite wasnt implemented until the Very End of the game's development... and i never bothered to check the other variant of the jimmy neutron sprite to see if it worked with the new palette and Um..

Yeah . it is not supposed to look like that. this is something that i didnt realize until awhile ago when i replayed the hack for this post. i feel pretty stupid for not noticing it sooner.

anyways. part of what made me hate this game for awhile is The Humor. you see, when it came out, a lot of the people in the hacking community thought it was Unfunny and Dumb. So, by extension, i also started Hating it for being a Dumb and Unfunny rom hack. And well... i made this hack when i was 13, so there Are a lot of dumb unfunny stuff in this hack, like replacing the Points sprite with 'GAY', or having one of the sprites be of ken penders' face.

a lot of things in this hack havent aged well, but i think ive grown to accept this hack's existence. its one of the first things ive made that got Some sort of public knowledge, even if still very few people have played it. And i think, if it werent for me making this hack and joining the hacking community, i wouldnt have ended up in the crazy situation i am in today..

i may joke about askin people if theyve heard of pepsi in sonic 1, and although i would prefer if people checked out my newer stuff, i also hope at least Some One, Some Where, can appreciate the dumb little hack i made. this hack was very important to me when i made it, it was made before i even fully interacted with the hacking community. it has all sorts of dumb little ideas that i tried to do despite all the restrictions i had.. and it was a little soul crushing back then when no one payed much attention to the game i spent Months working on. nowadays, i think ive come to accept being a niche little game dev.. but also i cant help but wonder if there are people out there who like my strange little creations as much as i do...

anyways. Idont know. i probably am missing out a lot of things that i wanted to say. this whole thing is probably incomprehensible (i am currently writing this paragraph at 1 am on November 13). it has been Very Hard for me to Do Things or to even Write Down my thoughts on things. but i hope you appreciate this little thing i wrote about the thing i made.

Oh, And By the Way, pepsi in sonic 1 is open source on github. mostly for archival reasons but if for some reason you wish to mess around with it... it is there for u to do whatever u want with it. Lol.

that is all. goopbye

#TreesThinks #Pepsi in Sonic 1 #pepsi #game dev #game development #indiedev #indie dev #romhack #rom hack #romhack dev #romhacking #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic hack #sonic rom hack

[skypiea]

I did make a new blog for romhack dev stuff.. not gonna link it anywhere yet because I haven’t fixed it up yet buuut. Actually in the process of setting that up ^^

#kite.txt #if ur interested in following the progress of that project / playing it once it’s released you’ll wanna check it out when it’s ready :-) #also thought it might be nice to have on a dif blog for archive reasons AND #cause if anyone wants to go in blind and not see any of the redesigns . they can just not peek at that blog lol

[izolyn]

finished Pokemon Gaia. 10/10 romhack would recommend

has a fully original map, story, etc; has gen 6 mechanics (mega evo, fairy type, phys/special split); it's all very well polished (new sprites look good and fit the art style and all)

but more importantly than all of that it actually feels like a Pokemon game. like it's not all 100% but by and large stuff like the NPC chatter would fit right in in one of the official games, which is something I think a lot of Pokemon fangames miss

bit of a shame that the postgame isn't complete but everything up through the League is so it's still like. a complete game for all intents and purposes. And when I checked the dev's twitter it seems like development hasn't been abandoned so hey, maybe postgame will happen

#even the level curve is solid which is another thing a lot of fangames don't get quite right #frankly the main issue I ran into was just stuff carried over from official games #why do so many cool goobers have such bad movesets... #even for casual play some of those movesets are fuckin TRAGIC

[yusuke-of-valla]

Tired of people trying to homogenize video games

God absolutely. Like Pokémon isn't perfect! I think the way they balance raids for team building and then have a matchmaking system that sucks balls is stupid. At some point they should probably realize they have adults in the audience and really go for the more mature storytelling (of the complex characters and mature themes variety, not the Professor Oak is secretly a fascist dictator and murders Agatha with a Tauros variety)!

But Pokemon is a narrative driven turn based JRPG with a target audience for kids! That's different than a roguelike built for older fans!

I'd like to see Pokémon improve at being a narrative driven RPG that makes you feel like you're in the Pokémon world and bonding with these creatures and experience different aspects of life like contests and musicals and Pokestar studios then have the dev team learn to make an entirely different type of game?

Like were NONE of you paying attention to Redfall or Suicide Squad??? Having studios make a completely different type of game just because it's popular is bad actually?

I'm betting the reason Pokerogue is so good is because whoever worked on a free romhack reworking Pokémon as a roguelike REALLY LIKES ROGUELIKES and thus knows how to make a good one. It being good is not a reason to turn around an insist the mainline games NEED to have a roguelike mode

#fandom salt

[kinopioa]

>Me seeing Classic "purists" and later fans treating Sonic with headcannoned flanderizing in either woobifying or animalizing

It's funny how common it is, throughout 20+ years of fandom

For the former I generally see them overly push the Felix cat and rubberhose inspiration, and aggressively ignore the Japan influences (despite saying they're anti US) unless relevant to dunk on others. The fact throughout Sonic 1 dev we can see environments get less weird and Oshima admit Sega Harmony stuff misrepped Sonic into being percieved as "innocent", along with Oshima admitting to liking Greg Wray/Martin's art despite other members of Sonic team before he left is funny. The glorification of bringing stuff scrapped in Sonic 1 dev for fangames is ironically, creatively bankrupt. Those fans awkwardly think Classic Sonic can't throw a punch or do anything outside rolling entirely just to prop up Metal Sonic the overrated. Eggman is either ignored, or treated as silly thing only with no threat, a mirror to what later era fans do. They overall treat Sonic as a bootleg clone of 90s Felix, which is ironic cuz Felix wasn't wacky for the 1940-60s, then dead until the 80s movie based on that era, and thep 1995 show reintroducing wackiness. And then this ignores design parallels or flaws they purposefully ignore to dunk on later eras, and generally ignoring other chars unless relevant to dunking on later. They hate "gotta go fast", but sure love "gotta bitch fast". And only liking at max 3 games, unless relevant to dunking on later ones

Either that or they're the US Sonic fans that act like Sonic wouldn't be popular without the design changes, which eh. Heavy doubt

Later Era fans meanwhile latch SO HARD to Sonic X and Archie/IDW over games despite inaccuracies, half likely cuz they still are seeking approval from none fans, the other only liking Sonic superficially. And I'm gonna admit, I liked X and OVA and other media back then, but they aren't Sonic, and the former definitely is shitty in aspects. The aspect of flanderizing or misrepresenting Sonic and co while hypocritically attacking companies for doing so is annoying. Same for ignoring char dev, but then crying that Sega is ignoring it when they didn't really (looks at Shadow). The pushing of IDW being canon so that they can prop up another "fan" is exhausting. Same for unfunny fandom jokes

Both are annoying as fuck on Twitter, especially when they attack others that are right on how Sonic isn't a slapdash OC creation tool for personality. And the fangame/romhack scene has been miserable under wraps since the early 2000s with the pushed "Fans do what Sega can't" mentality and nostalgia spam. No one learned from Omens

No one

Ps. you'll notice I ragged more on Classic Sonic fans. This is cuz everyone mostly has already bitched about later fans. Older fans are pretty ignored these days, though I find that an issue. The Sonic 4 campaign was hyper toxic for a reason...

[vertebrae-entertainment]

05.07.2023 - FAIL FAST

When people get into game development the first bit of advice they get is often a variation of "fail faster". Make small games first, don't jump right into your giant dream game, don't waste time on polishing things to perfection, get your game out as fast as possible, etc. This can feel insulting. Like come on, I'm here because I want to make good games. And you're telling me to aim for mediocrity?

Unfortunately, they have a point.

Most of the breakout indie game hits that seemingly came out of nowhere didn't actually come out of nowhere. Toby Fox made romhacks for Earthbound and music for Homestuck before Undertale, with Undertale itself intended as a smaller first game to get their footing before starting on the more ambitious Deltarune. Notch worked on Wurm Online and multiple gamejam games before Minecraft, which itself was inspired by Zachtronics' Infiniminer. Cactus was known among indie game devs as a prolific award winning game developer before Hotline Miami, and some of his freeware games like Mondo Medicals went viral with youtube letsplayers at the time. And the Hollow Knight team did several game jams together, with the main character's design actually coming from a game jam they did back in 2013. The story about an indie game developer hitting it big with their first game sounds great, but in reality it's rarely if ever true. Like with other artforms, most art is built on years of practice and standing on the shoulders of previous works.

When people recommend starting small some of it is about survival in a capitalist world. -Making games gets expensive, and most games don't even break even. So if you put yourself in debt to make your game you're probably screwed. -Game development takes time, and the industry moves fast. So what seemed like an interesting idea or relevant topic at the start of development might be outdated by the time you're done. -Game development is unpredictable, with many games getting reworked or scrapped in the middle of development. So if you set aside 5 years on a game idea you might find yourself 3 years in with an idea that doesn't work and no backup plan.

But even if you don't care about all that and your primary motivation is the raw artistic quality of your game, there are still reasons to consider it.

Game development is a craft that incorporates a lot of different disciplines on top of being an artform of its own. You'll often flex creative muscles that saw little use before you started with game development, and get used to tools you never used before. So if you've worked on a game for 5 years, your standards will be completely different by the time you're done. The latest animation is higher quality than the first one you drew. The first song you composed is grating on your ears. It took you 20 levels to get the hang of level design. So you go back and update the oldest bits to match the quality of the latest bits. Months pass and now a different animation looks outdated. So you go back. And unless you reign yourself in, you'll never finish the game because you're always chewing on the oldest part. Finishing fast therefore makes your game more coherent and cohesive overall, on top of avoiding a major timesink that could threaten your game from ever getting finished.

Finishing fast also makes you more familiar with the whole process of making a game. What do you do when the exciting honeymoon period is over and you have to stare at the same level for weeks on end to polish things? What do you do near the end of development when you realize that you promised multiple languages and you suddenly need to set up support for different languages and also find someone to translate? What do you do at release when you have to take feedback from a bunch of strangers playing your game and giving the bluntest unfiltered criticism and pointing out flaws you missed? If you spend year after year starting new megaprojects you become an expert at the first 10% of game development, but you don't get any experience with the remaining 90% and that can be a huge issue when you finally get there.

Finishing fast lets you learn from past mistakes. Mistakes are important, especially in an unpredictable field like game development. A lot of the time, you can't know what to avoid until you've crashed into it at least once. Not just on a big macro scale, like knowing that your favourite game engine can't do certain things well, but also on a tiny micro scale, like knowing that you can avoid an annoying collision bug by running collision checks in a certain order, that a certain colour combination doesn't work with colour blindness, or that this one word is actually pretty offensive abroad.

And importantly, the topic of next week's blogpost: having games under your belt gives you the power of recycling.

Next week I'll get into some more concrete examples of how old Vertebrae games help us build Fangst.

-Åge

#fangst #devlog #game development #indie games