Hi again! :D
Wasn't too long since the last post, but after putting together the DP Q&A, I figured there was enough going on that it deserved its own update.
(There's a TL;DR at the bottom if you don't feel like reading my ramblings. I won't judge. Probably. Might cry a little though.)
First Off - Daemon Protocol
I've been... busy.
Not really coding, surprisingly.
Building.
Not the game itself.
The **foundation** of it.
I always knew what Icolass **was**.
What I never stopped to ask was..
Turns out that's a much harder question.
Because while I knew what I wanted *Daemon Protocol* to be as a game...
I didn't really know how that fit with Icolass as a realm.
Which, to be fair,..is understandable.
Icolass is an anomaly.
It wasn't really created by the gods. It's not supposed to exist.
🤔 It's place in Ardron's timeline is basically one giant headache wearing a trench coat.
So instead of asking "What mechanics do I add" or rather "what mechanics do i want".
I had to ask "What rules would this world even have?"
You might think. "Well it's in Ardron. so Ardrons rules"
and I did too at first, but ...that proved very wrong very quickly.
It's kind of like chirality (Thanks to everyone who either survived chemistry... or watched Breaking Bad.)
and yes, I realize that makes me sound insane, but if you've read anything I've written. That's par for the course :)... Moving on.
Daemon Protocol - The Foundation
While taring apart the combat system (again).
:v A pattern kept showing up.
...
Long story short, Daemon Protocol will be stealing a lot of Ashbounds mechanics.
Or rather, Ashbound will be stealing Daemon Protocols mechanics.
Not because I want them to be identical(which they wont be in the finer details), but because honestly it makes the most sense logistically, lore wise, and uhh... foundation wise.
to be serious for a second, this was probably the biggest breakthrough.
While I just wanted to get the game in a "currently building" state. I had to take a step back.
Because If I start building it with just an idea of how I want it to go, and go from there?
Iiiiii'm honestly not going to be happy with it.
The small minigame of yesteryear just wasn't going to fulfil my desires and be faithful. If I was going to make DP, I was going to make it actually faithful,
The hard part about that is. Lore tells you what happened, but a foundation tells you why things exist inside what happened.
So yeah, I stopped coding for a while, I started looking at how the game would play in its current iteration (just building on top of the old version), and it felt...gross. You can't build a skyscraper on sand, and you can't put a brickhouse on wetlands.
Well. I mean you can, but then you get Dead By Daylight. Ya shim one side of it and drag the corpse on another year.
But yeah honest.y i had to stop and ask what parts are Icolass, and what parts are just copying Ardron... which is a difficult question 🤨 considering yaknow... Icolasses base is made from Ardron, as the machines only have Ardron data to run on...and yeah that gets messy fast.
BUT dont matter. Figured it out.
To most people that means ****-all, but its ungodly important to me, as i demand the lore, and mechanics, all stay consistent, and to do that. I can't just hamfist mechanics in willy nilly to be more "fun" or just to get it done.
Makes it even harder as Icolass is the least explored realm 🤷. So I had to take time to do that. Only took a couple days.
In the end I deleted more than i wrote, which sounds counterproductive to progress but i'd rather make the right game once, than the wrong game twice.
Hilariously now that i took that ...well i wouldn't call it a break. more like a time to reflect.
Development is speeding up exponentially 🤨? Where as in a week i barely had any DLL's or weapons, or anything.
Now I have all the weapons...Dll's...Scavenging...Random Items...many things finished already in a couple days because it just fits together like a 4 vert block in Tetris :V
ANYWAY
Lol C# Won
Another part of introspective. Why the hell am i making a full sided depthful video game in python?
I'm not.
I'll be writing the base in C#, which connects to the three bots for packet transfers.
uh
Basically a C# server runs everything, and the bots use Discord to talk to it, and send messages back and forth to each other.
Even better. if there is ever a time where there is a bug or a problem? Main C# server stays up. Bot stays up.
Bot gets a refresh, no one notices any downtime.
Hilariously being baseless C#...I can just attach it to the Unity project should Discord die, or try to shut it down.
:D Ardron will not be stopped. Only postponed 😈 I also say to my stupid ass body as it recovers from yet ANOTHER sickness.
Other Small Things ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
NullForgeStudios is now NullForgeStudiosOfficial because someone apparently thought stealing the name everywhere and uploading pure AI bs would be funny.
I made a GitHub landing page that links to everything.
The Realm Quiz now exists as a browser version.
I somehow version-controlled my punctuation.(Don't ask)
The browser onboarding for DP is taking shape.
Eventually you'll create your Daemon in the browser(Mobile not supported), receive a code, paste it into Discord, and you're in.
Unity will eventually support the exact same onboarding process.
I now keep a daily work log over on Github...for reasons.
Because making three completely different systems sounded like Future Me's problem.
A Non Small Thing!
We have a heccin WIKI now :D
...
It's not ready yet.
Probably wont be by time this post goes out.
UH.
Typically when i wrote the lore it was about.... 4000+ pages condensed into 4...
Just so you could go "ok, thats whats going on" and go play the damn games.
Not doin that anymore.
It's a goddamned wiki...
So. We'll about... 40 pages this time. so a 10x increase.
I usually like the lore to be discovered, not read, but hey. This works out.
AND if you don't give 2 shits about the lore, that's cool too.
Wiki will still have a lot of game information, like Daemon Protocol DLL's, and combinations and requirements, and weapon info, and w/e.
but for all games. not just DP.
AoA will have a spell list, weapon list, species list, class list with abilities. all that hot nonsense.
...bout that.
UH. This is going to take A LONG feckin time to write up and setup, but i'd rather it be done, so people can go to it and get information /before/ the games are finished. instead of
> how does this work?
and there is just no info except for bothering me in email or discord or somewhere, and yeah. i don't have that kinda time.
Might as well take the time i /do/ have and write that mf out.
Sadlyyyyyyy
This also means we aren't hitting out December 2026 release date most likely. Least for AoA
... Dp might be playable by the end of the year 🤔 Wouldn't count on it tho.
Falatar
So... yeah. I'm that kind of nerd.
I decided to dredge up some old notes and create a foam combat game too.
It's loosely based on Dagorhir, Belegarth, and Amtgard, but with my own spin on things.
Not so much the roleplaying, classes, and LARP side of things.
But also not just running around hitting each other with foam weapons.
Kind of somewhere in the middle.
So yeah... that's what I've been working on for the past three days.
I'll probably keep poking at it here and there.
Right now I'm working on constructing weapons for it. It might slow development on DP a little, but eh.
When a game isn't 28,397,401,234 interconnected systems, development goes pretty fast for me. 😂
I was explaining how Ashes of Arcanum works on just a programming level, and someone called me ret****** for even attempting it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
News to him... I literally released the old engine prototype on Steam two years ago.
Whoops
On another note...forgot to hit post on this post. its been in draft for like....7 days lol
So I'm adding this bit. :D hi 👋
Ending Thots
Yeahhhhh big time update on this one ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
sorry its rambley.
even tried cutting it down, but its just too much to really "summerize" without skipping details lol.
anyways...back to writing for me.
👋 Butts
(P.S. The old Discord server is basically retired until DP is ready.)
(P.P.S. GG no re, Mr. Popo.)
# TL;DR
Finally figured out what Icolass actually is.
Combat now uses a 15×15 tactical grid.
DLL development is finally moving.
Scavenging is nearly complete.
Weapons are complete.
DP is moving to standalone C#.
Browser onboarding is progressing nicely.
Discord and Unity will eventually use the same backend.
NullForgeStudios is now NullForgeStudiosOfficial.
We have a Wiki now!...It's slowly being filled out.
The release window will probably move beyond December 2026.
Created my own Foam Combat weapon sport.