Those of you are unfortunate enough to follow me on social media might have noticed I have been making a video game. If you haven't: well, hey I've got some crazy news, I'm making a video game.
"Is it any of those projects you've outlined on your projects page?" you might ask. I will proudly respond "no man I have no self-control."
Well, to be honest, I think I'm exercising a bit of self-control on this one. Part of the reason I've made so little progress on any major projects since Haruspex is that I tend to start with an extensive pre-production phase that inevitably results in reaching absolutely untenable heights of ambition before spriting in a single pixel, after which point working on the project becomes exponentially harder, because often I can do serious amounts of serious work afterward and still feel no closer to the insanely deep and complex vision in my head and various notebooks and .txt files.
So I'm hoping to create something by just building first and seeing what it could be about afterward. There are, as always, ideas for characters, plots, and themes swimming around in my head, but I haven't caught any yet. To continue the fish metaphor for some reason, I feel like this time I am not going to even go fishing until I am already sure my oven works. So I can roast them. The idea fish.
Anyway, all I'm certain on is this: I'd like it to play like Mega Man Legends, because I really liked that game as a kid, but I'd like more fun movement mechanics to mess around with, because that's just what I enjoy in games. I'd also like it to look like Mega Man Legends mixed with Quake 1, which is honestly within reach for a solo dev in 2023, especially one who's actually using Quake 1 level design tools lol. I'm using Godot for the engine, which led me to Qodot for importing maps, which led me to TrenchBroom for creating the maps, and fuck if I'm not head-over-heels in love with that program. I have genuinely not enjoyed using a piece of computer software this much since starting to learn Renoise in 2013. It's that good. When I make a little curved arch or reusable piece of architecture I am genuinely popping the fuck off. I made a spiral staircase two nights ago and I was hooting and hollering at my computer like a gibbon. I love TrenchBroom and love everyone who made it and everyone who makes tutorials for it. Slipseer and dumptruck_ds, you guys are the realest.
Anyway, here is the game in its absurdly early pre-pre-pre-alpha form for you to look at, along with a scrungly little test map and some music I forgot I made from a couple years ago. Right now you can walk, run, jump, slide (it's fucked up and feels like shit), wallrun (it's fucked up and feels like shit), and since the recording of this video I've started wiring in the skeleton of a UI. Hopefully in the next few days you will be able to shoot magic spells at something even vaguely resembling enemies. I'll keep you posted, provided I can remember I have a website. that I should post on instead of just jumping straight back on the sinking ship of Twitter to say some shit like "(goblin runs by) What was that".