On the 5th day God created “Vidcons”

Hello, hi, how are you video game brothers and sisters of the world wide digitalsphere? I have been in the “lab” for many lifespans and I cannot allow sun to hit my skin or else I will cease to exist.

I am going to talk about Neon Empire rooftops. When something starts as an idea in conceptual stages it’s cool, it’s fun, it gives you room to do things, in the development stages such as pixel work and construction it takes a lot of references, time, and you’re pretty skeptical if it’s worth the whole thing. It basically falls for me like this:

—-rad idea in concept-
——-idk if this is gunna work-
———idk if this is gunna work-
————
———-
——————————————-
——-this came out alright.

One thing I can’t stress enough is I don’t force myself to produce content. I had posted before about pixel work being sloppy if you push yourself and the image a dozen or so blog posts below shows that it will suffer if you do so. It is a well learned mistake. It’s a daily poke in the realm of pixels. A pipe here, a window somewhere, etc.

What also makes the atmosphere suffer is lack of content inside the area you explore. For example rooftops is very limited. I pushed as much as I can with my limited grid system. Which means I can only put so much cool shit in it. It’s a crucial problem. It bogs down the atmosphere if you have only half the things you need to be put it in so you make a priority of what needs to be inserted first and hope you have room for radness later(you don’t lol)

When creating pixel work it’s more fun to have free exploration with it, the real problem is when you have to spend hours cutting up and editing it to fit on a tilegrid in order for it to work. What I’m saying is f-u grid I will fight you so hard.

When it’s said and done, it’s alright. It comes down to technical limitations. Like the majority of my complaints.

I don’t want to put an actual timeframe for how long it took to construct and uncompleted roof area because it is kind of embarrassing. Things I could not or haven’t inserted in yet:
-Background layers to make the Neon City feel more alive
-Panning clouds
-Stars
-More rooftop equipment
-Activity such as robot rats running across the pipes, robots poking their heads out of the windows
-Different colored buildings
-WAY more billboards
- Ghastly mist floating at the bottom of the buildings before you see the utter darkness
- Glowing animation on the bottom of the building
- More birds sitting around

I mean, theres a lot LOT more to add than that general list. Area building is very important. Near the end of the video I wanted a robot to burst out of the building which is a traditional RPG boss encounter. Again technical limitations for now doesn’t allow me to do what I want. Let me explain.

Originally I had it very very simple. The robot is inside the building and he pokes his head out because he is so large and his arms come out of the sides, and they’re like, spider arms with rotating direction, with possibly chainsaws on the ends. I always go back to my own rule of make the most out of the resources and atmosphere that you can.

I had got the idea that after this event happens, the building crumbles. and the robot is moving upward into the sky with the pieces of building crumbling. You’re on a timed boss fight, and if you do not destroy the boss during a certain timeframe he is so tall, he reaches space and you simply die because humans nor catbabes can live in the spaceworld.

After the robot is destroyed, you have to jump back down to the planet via pieces of building that are falling back down.

It’s a really interesting concept, if not over the top. And I like it a lot, the resources are there, it’s just a technical limitation for now. It’s just not a practical thing for a prototype, despite how neat it could be.

I got a few questions people have emailed me and I will address them here. Hopefully I can answer them to the best of my abilities(is drunk on appletini’s).

Anonymous asked: When will the game be released? How many people are working on this?

Well bro, bab, I work on content when I can. I take it very seriously. When you have music, and visual content available it’s like, you’re halfway at the finish line, but you look ahead and you don’t so nothin’ man, just bright blue skies and road. As far as team members are concerned, it’s just my baby, all me. A soldier/robot of one. I do have a composer who produces very great music for me but beyond that I do everything on my own. I have a technical person waiting in the rafters when the time is right, though. I like to keep it small. I don’t need 50 people working on a project they don’t understand. We’re human beings, we can do a lot of stuff if you just apply yourself.

Regarding a game this scale, it’s not about how many people I need, it’s more about me sitting down and having the time I need to work. The way my lifestyle revolves it’s not easy finding time to do something like this for a full day for example.

A lot of it is a financial issue. It sucks to say, but that’s how it is. I do have plans to launch a Kickstarter when I deem the game is qualified enough in interest and quality to show it off to people beyond a small group. It’s a big deal to me because the stuff I make is a reflection off me.(/deep)

Basically the success or the failure will dictate if the game takes less than a year to finish or about five, if not longer. IDK man, money is just something that weighs you down like that. If I could have my way I would do everything for free, because just being creative and inspiring to people should be enough, but in our society, it’s not. I’m not a wealthy person, I’ll never be, I wouldn’t want to be. It’s not something I strive to be, or set it as like, my goal as human entity during my short lifespan.

The things I strive for is to create, for myself and for other people. You know, when you experience someone telling you they’re inspired by something you’ve done, uh, that changes your life, it changes how you look at things, it’s a different perspective. It makes a lot of things in life secondary. Inspiring people is a more worthwhile legacy in my opinion than living in a castlevania mansion with 10 kids because you can. I’m not saying that’s bad at all, but that’s just not “my” story ~Tidus

A friend of mine suggested I use the Kickstarter perk to add an open beta to people who donate, and It just rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t want people to pay more than they have to, it makes me feel bad. I mean, in theory it’s a good idea, but I want everyone to be able to experience the beta and give me feedback. That’s really important to me, because it makes it less and less of a hit or miss project.

I’m pretty bad at marketing, so.
That’s a pretty long answer brah, muh bad muh bad.

Anonymous asked: What RPG’S did you get inspired to work on this?

Uhh, that’s a really good question. I had posted before about games giving you something in return, like pieces of the game art cool, while it might not be badass as a whole. It takes some extensive study and observation in order to fully understand what makes a game good or fun, specifically RPG’s.

A lot of people simply lift things from RPG’s and call it a day, instead of just studying various aspects of it, which I think is more useful. FF6 is probably the most well rounded, well developed RPG on the SNES, overall. Chrono Trigger has a very unique atmosphere along with the most abstract characters in terms of design. Secret of Mana had an open flow battle system that sort of made you feel like you’re just this guy in a gigantic world and you aren’t ever safe, It’s basically the triangle of power.

It would be a crime to not address Earthbound. It has probably the best writing in an RPG I’ve ever played. To be honest with you, as a 12 year old, I skipped Earthbound after playing it a few times, because unfortunately I had played FF6 and CT, SOM, etc and it was just very engaging at the time for me. I actually had a better experience with EB playing it older because you appreciate a lot more about it.

I mean, to answer your question I played a lot of games, I like “pieces of games” but generally all of the SNES RPG’s deliver for the most part. I enjoy classic gaming because that’s the stuff I grew up on. I’m not a biased retrogeek though, there are a few current titles that I really enjoy.

But to be fair, my gaming experience and excitment probably went on autopilot after the PS2.

Thanks for the questions, guys. Feel free to ask anything and I’ll be sure to answer it. A lot of writing, I am….exhausted from typing various words. Please….just…..take some images… you have earned it if you have read this “filth”. Until next time children of the NES controller.

ps: This is..just incredibly adorable.

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