As usual, this is going to be a long one, but for those who don't have the attention span, time, or patience for reading a whole chapter in a novel, that's what the "Summary" is for, It's not my fault if peoples' brains experience catastrophic failure from attempting to process more than a single paragraph!
What brought me back to writing this was an impulse that told me to check the store page. Wouldn't you know it, 13 reviews are in, and the rating is MIXED! Given what I have to work with (Zero dollar budget, zero experience, "team" of nobody except me by my lonesome, zero obligations and motivation, and practically constrained by circumstances ranging from threadbare to outright NAUGHT), I'll take that mixed review and wear it like a badge of merit! It's like I'm trying to create something out of nothing, and distribute it FOR FREE just to help with my clout and exposure! And if that's not as close as realistically possible to "magic", conjuring something out of nothing, please tell me what is.
"Jay! Where have you BEEN?!"
First and most importantly, there's a theme of illness - be it physical, mental, or some odd overlap of the two. I don't want to get into unabridged detail on that, just know that even as I type this, I'm not feeling well...but I'm working on it. Meaning, please excuse me if I'm limping (figuratively and/or literally), and be grateful if anything comes from me AT ALL! Plus, while the world has said COVID is no longer an emergency (at the time I'm writing this at May 15, 2023), that does not mean the germ I dubbed "The Shadow Dictator" is going bye-bye. Figuratively going against the grain, I personally respect the word of COVID, and I choose to obey the tenants it is attempting to impart! The impacts, both direct and indirect, will be felt for years (or even decades) to come!
"SQUISHY!"
Second, more vigilant fans might've noticed I've been splaying my thoughts at various locations on social media, from "hot takes" to other creative impulses not related to this game here. There were even a couple of scumbags who thought it'd be fun to slander/libel my name or "Dox" me. Not cool, you guys.
Third, there is no shortage of video games to fixate on! Many of those are proudly shown right here on my Steam profile! Others are various MMOs that may or may not have been designed to be as addictive as possible for as bland of gameplay as possible. As of this writing, the most recent game to dominate my agenda was Stellaris and the "Galactic Paragons" expansion. I was glowing with "Under One Rule" and I learned a lot about myself in the process, including the need to take a break if I focus TOO intensely. To set the mood, I learned that the soundtrack for "Warhammer 40K Dawn of War 2" is so epic, that it's been absolutely burned into every layer of my waking conscious! Yet that's what it took to set the scene for Stellaris doing its closest approximation of simulating The Scarlet Empire!
Lastly, life is "99% Void". The absolute nothingness is par for the course, and all I can do is sort of float around in this modernized interpretation of Dante's First Circle of Hell:
That's all the bad news, so let's shift to some GOOD NEWS! I've been writing HEAPS OF LORE for future ideas where Scarlet forms the Global Empire and becomes an indomitable force who can go toe-to-toe with a certain God-Emperor of Mankind! There's also a TINY comic I wrote, titled "Sic Semper Tyrannis" which I'm holding off on publicly showing until it gets legally registered at the U.S. Copyright office! The story is about Scarlet advocating for "Freedom of Education and Freedom from School", which takes place in the year 2046, one year AFTER the events in "The Way of the Badass" (this game right here)! On top of all that, I enjoyed toying with a thought experiment about what Y3K would look like on this timeline, and with Empress Scarlet the Immortal running Earth and various factions flung around the Sol-based sphere, it's a blend of Battletech/Mechwarrior, Elite Dangerous, and Warhammer 40K; but with the twist that this timeline presumes the real-world "exponential growth" of real-world technology remains true all the way to that point, and Scarlet is wise enough to anticipate all its implications.
I WILL share one page that DOES relate to "THE LORE" of the game, because 1) it's canon, and 2) it's proof that I HAVE been creative at times while I was away for the past several months.
COVID's relation with Scarlet is the same as Merlin with King Arthur!
This chemistry and relationship IS going to be in "The Way of the Badass" (if I ever get that far), just that it's been planned for a later chapter, when we get to "The Third Holocaust" which is RIGHT AFTER the midway point, the boss fight against the puppet "Vice President" and the part of the game where Scarlet is supposed to unlock Violet as a companion, sans-cheats. "The Third Holocaust" is when the player is canonically intended to unlock COVID as a weapon, in the context of Scarlet experimenting on various captured enemies - and with it would have the secret achievement "The Reincarnation of Joseph Mengele". I wasn't joking when I warned that this game is intentionally aiming for that AO rating, ala "South Park meets Hatred"! It's my counterculture middle finger to all the censorship crybabies dominating mainstream culture, and that's the vision which set me down this journey to begin with.
So with all that said, looking to the near future, unlike the crybaby saps who retreat into their "echo chambers" they call "safe spaces", I on the other hand do heed the critics. And with that in mind, the top priorities should be under polish and controls. Specifically, I am fully aware of the way Scarlet gets stuck on the walls (and invisible walls). This is a known quirk that has to do with the way behind-the-scenes "WALL" objects act upon collision checks and it's a super simple "If colliding, then stop" or just making the WALL into what's called a "solid" object. As we have observed, it's a quick-and-dirty "good enough" for proof-of-concept purposes, but now that we're shifting less towards "initializing groundwork" and more towards "improvement", it's fair to demand this mechanism be revised.
For NOW, all you need to know is I am aware of the feedback, and I'm putting it at top of the to-do list when (OR IF) I'm back in the saddle! I'll need to look up a way to make this smoother, like the wall should stop her but she shouldn't get snagged in it. (I wanted to incorporate jumping and/or dodge rolling, which is painfully rudimentary now, and that's very much a "secondary objective" I can live without. Like even in the CHALLENGE mode currently on Steam, I downloaded it today and found Scarlet stuck on an invisible wall there! How embarrassing!!)
In terms of polish, it'd be slick to give Scarlet 5 frames of animation instead of the 3 she has now (unless improved smoothness would sacrifice some of the "charm"), yet I've got a more impactful goal higher on the priority list. I've learned that speed in the game engine works on what's described as "Flying Sword Physics", and that's something nobody would understand without reading "Myth of the Epic Force!" For context, I'll share the very specific pages where Jamie Forerunner clarifies:
Yes, there is a canonical "Doctor Mario" with "a Ph.D. in Phase Physics" and "The Backwards Long Jump" is legit science in the Epic Force universe! (Also Young Guardian's by extension, since they're on the same timeline! But that's a rabbit wormhole for another article! For now, if you want a summary of Doctor Mario's Thesis, as well as material which qualifies for a course on "Intro to Phase Physics", and why Jamie Forerunner herself imitates and references Mario, there's a great video about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjge1bVobN0 )
It's impossible to show what I mean with a still image - I tried. So, this tiny, TINY video will highlight what I'm talking about:
Flying Sword Physics in The Way of the Badass
You see how the bullet will skip spaces? Keep a keen eye on the way the bullet works and how it jumps from spot A to spot B and never touches anything in between. That's not how a real bullet should work, but it's how the game engine (and maybe computers IN GENERAL) handle speed calculations if the variable gets big enough. (Doctor Mario's thesis video visualizes that this phenomenon is not an isolated event only found in my particular game, once it gets to talking about "quarter steps") At small values, it creates the illusion of normal movement, but fast enough, you see it jump.
This is exactly the way the "Flying Sword" works in my story "Myth of the Epic Force", which is why I call it "Flying Sword Physics". (Unrelated lore detail, but the "Flying Sword" is basically what happens when you blend the SR-71 Blackbird with Colonial Power Tech! It's not a recon plane, it's actually billed as a Strategic Bomber that can swoop in, drop the fission payload, and swoop out before radar even has a chance to ping it - roughly equal to 3 or so frames of animation!)
The super-super short "TLDR" to Flying Sword physics and how it translates to the game is a rapid firing jump drive which makes "Ludicrous Speed" of Spaceballs look as obsolete as a Commodore 64 computer trying to run Windows 11. (And we're not even talking about "molecular inversion", because that's another facet which does not relate to this particular topic. In A.D.D. short, it involves turning mass into negative mass in order to invert the cosmic speed limit of light speed. Wondrous things happen when stacking "inversion" with Flying Sword physics.)
...
Let's wrap this up, because having a summarized to-do list can help me focus. Despite numerous adversities and hardships, if I intend to attempt to refocus on this game project, I should prioritize the gameplay and smoothing that out over any additional art assets or contents (new levels, bad guys, and even cleaning the placeholder art across Steam's store page). This is organized by priority, so it is literally "the top of the to-do list" as far as the scope of this game is concerned.
#1: Improve wall collision detection so Scarlet does not get stuck.
#2: Find a way so that collision of bullets can be detected not just at Point A and B, but all space in between.
#3: Attempt to improve and replace the store's placeholder art.
One more thing: I want to give a very subtle shoutout to anyone who appreciates the Metal Gear Solid reference in the subtitle of this journal entry! I thought it was cute. For those of you who do NOT get the reference, here's your answer key: