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an update on some stuff i’m working on

Hello everyone. I figured that for this post, instead of talking about other people’s media, I would talk about my own. Specifically, how things are going, what I’m doing, and what you should expect to eventually come out during the year. I would normally reserve this my extremely neglected Patreon, but I don’t think anyone actually reads that, so it’s going here.

I’ve been hard at work on a number of things. One of those things is an action-RPG. The name of it is “Knights of Wardinia.” In it, you play as, well uh, a knight, and you fight monsters and explore dungeons and stuff. Good news is that the hard part of the game is done; I spent a good couple of weeks creating and debugging an experience system, so you become stronger and have more health after killing enough things, like in any RPG. Now I’m currently in the process of putting the actual world together, so that exploration makes sense and the difficulty of the combat is reasonable. Look forward to this coming out eventually.



Some of you may know that I’ve also been learning how to make things in the Unreal Engine. Sorry, I meant Unreal Engine 4: the noble and pedigreed middleware from Epic Games. I had been working on a cutesy, brightly-colored platformer that I had titled “Astro Smash.” I’ll go ahead and post some in-progress shots here.

Now, the problem with this game is that 1) learning Unreal is actually really fucking hard, given that I have almost zero programming knowledge to speak of, 2) every Unreal tutorial worth its salt is demanding that I make a shooter instead, and 3) I’m starting to realize that this game’s main gimmick would probably work better on a 2D plane. I’m not dropping or cancelling this game, but for the time being, I may put it on the backburner, or turn it into another 2D game.

Much as I loathe to give in to peer pressure, if I want to learn how this engine works, I may need to say fuck it and make a damn shooter like everyone wants. But I wouldn’t do any regular ass shooter. No, I plan on bringing back a long-forgotten FPS sub-genre: the mecha corridor shooter! I’m a pretty big fan of stuff like Kileak, Space Griffon VF-9, and the most awesomely titled IRON ANGEL OF THE APOCALYPSE. Games where you are in a large robot, moving down cramped, atmospheric environments, and shooting stuff. I want to make a game that still maintains the aesthetic of a PSX game, but without making yet another jump scare horror game. I can’t make humans in 3D to save my fucking life, but I’m at least half-decent at making vehicles and locations. This theoretical project would at least play to my strengths.

Something you may have noticed in my post about Valis 2 is that I’m bringing Slimegirl back. Slimegirl was already in one game I’ve made, and I had been working on a second, when a couple of things went down and halted development until recently. One, I fell victim to the dreaded “scope creep,” where as I learned new things, I would find a way to include them in the game, meaning that it would take longer and never get done. Two, some musician took the name “Slimegirls” and decided to be a sex creep late last year, which really turned me off from my own character for a time. But fuck that, the people love Slimegirl; it’s probably the most enduring design I’ve ever made. The fact that at least two people have worn Slimegirl t-shirts in public is pretty damn cool. So I think I’ll get back into working on that, but remembering to maintain the KISS style. I don’t mean Knights In Satan’s Service, I mean: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Have a goal, and run straight for it. Scrapping a lot of the cruft, and sticking to a fun platformer where you shoot stuff and the characters say funny and vulgar things.

Outside of games, I would like to get back into making poetry. Girl Zone was surprisingly popular and well received, and I thought it was rewarding to make them. We’ll see; I don’t want to stretch myself too thin, here. I’m working on a bunch of games, trying to make at least one blog post per week, being involved with streams and podcasts, trying to get tournament ready in fighting games, and also having an actual day job and real life obligations. Not to mention continuing to work on my own mental health. February was honestly pretty rough, what with the whole, “transphobic game journos who harassed my friends for years are now publicly comparing a rape victim they all exploited to Peter fucking Thiel, a literal blood sucking white supremacist” thing going on, bringing up a lot of bad memories that I’ve actively tried to get over. And by “get over,” I mean “completely ignore until my brain finally breaks.”

In any case, this was a post to let people know that I’m not just fucking around with old video games and wrestling pay-per-views, and that your support, whether it be moral or monetary, is appreciated. I am actively working on things. And I guess this post is more of a reminder to myself that, oh yeah, making big projects like this takes a little while, especially when you’re flying solo, and I probably should stop stressing that it’s not all done right fucking now.

Adventures On The Lonely Frontier

Comments

  1. Meryl says:

    I am very excited for your video games, Ramona!!!