- Sic Semper Tyrannis! - 25 November 2023
After much deliberation, and with legally binding copyright in hand, I have decided to make this cute little book publicly available to ALL, through Gumroad! https://thegoldenknight.gumroad.com/l/sicsempertyrannis This will be going out through all social media platforms, so that anyone and everyone can look at it, whether they love me, hate me, or love to hate me. (And there's plenty of each.) I won't spoil anything other than, on the Heroic Timeline, this DOES happen after "The Way of the Badass". You can just put in a 0 for the price point, or whatever you think it's worth, as it's "pay what you want". I'm not planning on making money off this, I'm just super happy to finally share it with people, especially as I've waited well past any tiny hype I may have built from months ago. (We're talking half a year; I had a lot else on my mind during that time.) So what HAVE I been doing? Sho…
- SITREP - 15 May 2023
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…
- Vaccine Time - 16 September 2022
Hi guys, I wanted to let you know I got my 2 booster vaccines yesterday; COVID in the left arm, Flu in the right. Immediate reaction was mild nervousness/anxiety, making the chest tense up and focus on breathing. The next 24 hours (including the writing and posting of this announcement) have shown mild but greater-than-negligible aches and loss of energy. It's not insignificant, but it's nothing I can't tough out, either. For the immediate future, once again, let's just say I'm on sick leave. Besides, considering this is a hobby on a zero-dollar budget with seemingly negligible return on the time and effort spent creating it, that's OK! I don't need to push myself to work on this week after week if I simply "don't feel like it", and I'm going to be 110% transparent, I honestly don't feel like it. There are a slew of other games, shows, and social media, so I don't blame you if your atte…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 99 - 8 September 2022
Day 99 Happy Labor Day! Yeah, I'm starting this on Monday, September 5, at 12:47 AM. The Battlegroup Conquest mode is more of a "Sandbox" mode, after some talking with the game's one developer. I'm not angry, just disappointed. What this means is that there's no point in playing it like an ACTUAL "Conquest", since there's no real sense of "winning". NOR does it impact the game's narrative or lore, so...again, I no longer see a point in fixating so fanatically on that particular game. Though, I *DID* enjoy roleplaying as The Emperor; problem is, it was just that: "roleplay". Back on track. Someone gave me a nudged priority to tweak the knife's range, or at least so that it can attack without also receiving damage at the same time. (Special thanks to that new friend from Twitter and Discord! You've helped me more than just about everybody else out there, including my own flesh-and-blood!)…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 98 - 5 September 2022
Day 98 "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." - Jean-Luc Picard, played by Sir Patrick Stewart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TCX90yALsI That sums things up extremely well. Back when I was in high school, at the time I had the ideal where all you need to succeed was hard work and effort. With my enthusiasm at the time, it felt like an ascension to greatness was inevitable. Now, reality hit *HARD!* For a what-if, say Amanda were real, in this depressing timeline...with that hypothetical, she'd probably be one of those 4.0 students who still couldn't get into medical school, so she'd be as broken in spirit as I am. So now, with rejection at every turn, all I've got are my video games, including this baby I'm crafting with my own two hands and all the free time I can wield. (Friday...) Talk about a day of rest; I truly meant it when I…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 97 - 30 August 2022
Day 97 Good morning, Internet! It's just another sunny day in The Void, and it's still getting harder and harder every day for me to get out of bed. I know from the "application" process, it's not as easy to get a job as simply asking nicely (realizing this is the first step to understanding that "Unemployable" is a thing that actually exists). Believe me, I've taken proof of that. Futility aside, what else is on the chopping block for today? Honestly, I think I want to do some voicing, but there's a problem with that. People are sleeping. Plus, on this Tuesday, I just don't feel the impulse, I just feel the sadness from futility. But, I learned that the game is mentioned on Metacritic! https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-way-of-the-badass The bad news? 0 reviews...laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. https://completionist.me/steam/app/1998760 Got some more interesting data…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 96 - 27 August 2022
Day 96 Caution: mean words aplenty! Today, we're focusing on SUPER HOBO! While watching Youtube, I started getting ideas not just about lore, but about that dialogue "between Chapters 2 and 3", specifically with Scarlet having a chat with Super Hobo, someone old enough to have seen the collapse of what we reality dwellers would call "modern life". So either Super Hobo is a Millennial, or he's not far off the mark. "Your source cited? That fucking crazy HOBO guy who throws TRASH at idiots; FACT CHECKED by your Friendly Neighborhood AUTISM SPERG!" Ah, it was one of those moments of "You had it, then you lost it." Impulses be like that. All I know is, for Super Hobo, every line he says needs to make the player go, "Wait, did he REALLY just say THAT?!" And that hits uniquely hard when talking about the many crises in this alternate timeline 2020s and 2030s. It's like having a survivor of Au…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 95 - 24 August 2022
Day 95 I believe in trans wrongs. That is part of what compelled me to make this game in the first place. It's an act of defiance against all these mainstream ways of thinking. Because of this attitude, I think the next one on the chopping block is our "flesh golem", needing a good carving from Scarlet. And yeah, whether it's male, female, or some horrendous failure to be either...that's intentionally open to interpretation. (Of course, my personal interpretation is "horrendous failure".) I won't go on my "soap box" for too long (a couple paragraphs), but I must put the ideal of "Freedom of Speech" to one of its hottest tests of the present age. (I've done one of those online personality tests, and the label it gave me was "The Debater", so let me attest that its assessment of me is not inaccurate. For relating that to game development, that mindset is reflected in the vibe and spirit,…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 94 - 27 July 2022
Day 94 There are a lot of awesome people doing very awesome things, including in gaming. Sadly, I can do nothing more than WISH to be one of them. Problem is, Real Life is like an MMO where you start at Level 1, and there's LITERALLY NO CONTENT to tackle that's under Level 50. So, you either do nothing in that limbo, or repeatedly get your ASS kicked by the Level 50 stuff. In Real Life, I've had my fair share of BOTH those decisions. It's a flavor of Hell, being stuck in "Pending" and waiting for all the cool stuff to be ready to put into my hands. Hell is a void, where both greatness and disaster occur regularly yet all I can do is watch. Hell is eternal disappointment and futility; literally "Abandon all hope". (Tuesday...) I have to be honest, I've been putting this off more than I wanted to. Day after day, it's grinding MMO or putting the social back into social media because, hones…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 93 - 23 July 2022
Day 93 It's just another sunny day in the void! Nothing's different behind-the-behind-the-scenes that I haven't already repeated at least a good handful of times by now. And, before I get started today, I want to give a *VERY VAGUE* Roadmap to V0.3! Now take note, I am merely "eyeballing" my numbers here. It's a particularly broad-strokes accounting at this writing. And this is all I have planned at the time of writing, meaning this can change because impulses be like that. So, what's to do for this version's major milestone? Not counting Amanda, because she shunted her way to the top of the to-do list. New backgrounds: probably a handful, repeating New dialogue boxes, about a couple dozen grand total (Voicing them, too) Chapter 3 Boss Battle (probably surreal, because of...well, trust me, it'll make sense in context) A couple new enemies, unique to Chapter 3 IDEALLY start the knife's b…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 92 - 21 July 2022
Day 92 It was 3:35 PM on that same Friday, July 15, and while watching a video going into UNABRIDGED detail about Bomberman, I started daydreaming about the panel to write up about for Heather and Tom. It'd give a brief yet juicy look into what those characters are like as people. 4:10 PM, about half an hour of writing 3 different codex pages, and I'm back to taking a break. One bonus detail for "picking my brain" purposes, I wanted to have some references that anyone could catch onto with enough research (such as the parody of XCOM Chimera Squad)...and I also wanted others that only nerds would get. Some are extremely subtle, like how the probe room was modeled after South Park Season 1 Episode 1, created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, owned by Comedy Central (and all the other streaming distributors with their limited licenses of distribution), images shared here are fair use for educ…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 91 - 15 July 2022
Day 91 Chapter 3! And with preparation for V0.3, that means the obvious next step is drawing a whole new title page! Today, I'm thinking about focusing on the theme of "Butt Probes". Something about that just has me snickering, and that's part of what makes this particular chapter a lot of fun. As for what's been taking up my time elsewhere (writing this on July 12), I've started sinking my time into an old-school MMO. And it was fun up until I got mid-tier with it (even if in a "turn your mind off" sort of way), but past that point I could REALLY FEEL the grind! The game was automatically programmed to remind me to take a break, and that reminder came several times over the past week or two. Easy for it to say that, when 1) the grind requires full-blown days of effort to reach the peak (or weeks when accounting for human basic needs), and 2) thousands of others have done so in the past…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 90 - 10 July 2022
Day 90 Starting the writing of this in the evening on July 5. July 4 was the U.S. Independence Day, plus the 1 year milestone for me actually starting work on this. Back then, I was barely figuring out how to make Scarlet *move!* Look how far I've come, all by myself no less. After sick leave has (mostly) passed (and if you missed it, there are 2 articles about it on Steam, but brief recap: I've been hit by a pincer movement collaborated by vertigo and severe sadness), my next big priority has been listening to feedback. From addressing the negative reviews to adding achievements on the game, I have come here to prove that I am, in fact, alive and (no less importantly) listening to what people have to say! I already have ideas for achievements, so that's top on my list because I think that would be potentially the easiest to scratch off my dev's to-do list. I won't give away *every* ach…
- 1 Year Milestone Metrics - 4 July 2022
To my friends, family, and fans, It's been 1 year since I first set out to create a video game. At that time, around the evening of this day in 2021, I drew about 2 or so images of Scarlet, and composed a rough but workable animation for her. At that moment, I remember yelling, "It's ALIVE!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuoKNZjr8_U Before I get started with today's main purpose of writing, I need to emphasize that I'm still technically on sick leave (even if, best-case, at the tail-end of that). A week ago, I've had an absolutely nightmarish storm of dizziness / vertigo that left me bed-bound for a day. It gave me flashbacks to 2020, when I was bed-bound for a whole week! I am not exaggerating! Meaning, even though right now I am doing consistently better (even if with the help from over-the-counter medicine), I remain paranoid that another episode could start at any time! It is an e…
- Sick Leave - 29 June 2022
I'll try to shorten the detail here (COMPARATIVELY short), but I still want to give you some idea that I'm not just goofing off behind-the-behind-the-scenes (though I confess there's some of that as well). As I've said, at this time it's no major life-threatening event in my life, so don't get TOO worried. But, that said... Physically, there's been a case of vertigo. It felt like 2020 all over again! Looking ahead, there's no telling when or if that'll strike again. And I'm just happy I could get to my computer again, even if only for long enough to write this message. Mentally, there's a lot of sadness. Most of it is the same-old, where it feels like nobody cares about everything I do...except for the robot "web crawlers", a bully or 2, and the figurative free space on my bingo card. As I was piecing together Monday night, if you don't notice me when I'm here, then you won't notice me…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 89 - 23 June 2022
Day 89 Behind-the-behind-the-scenes, I started looking into jobs with the government. Broadly speaking, all I really found are clerks, nurses and doctors, and the sort that would make me go, "Woah...no way I am qualified to do *THAT!*" Plus, how does DARPA have a tab for GAMES?! But yeah, looking that direction, they're realistically more interested in artificial intelligence than Super Soldiers. Understandable, but saddening to me personally. Though, through implicit reasoning, they ARE correct about one point: full automation IS the future! And if you're looking for work, my presumption is that unless you're Scarlet tier of smart, you're going to need a full blown PhD in Computer Science just to merely ATTEMPT a job with these guys! Anyone who knows me personally would know that I'd rather have a life sentence of solitary confinement than go back to school, and since I'm already somew…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 88 - 16 June 2022
Day 88 Now that the birthday magic has come and gone, life is returning back to normal...with me stuck in my eternal void of apparent nonexistence. I even had a live, in-person demonstration of what that looks like, right in my own household! So I spent a good portion of this week being too bummed out to really do anything, other than get addicted to a particular video game (and it was a demo that had no save mechanism, yet it took a couple whole days of real time to get through, so that's one titanic game). The other weird thing, one of my early adopters had actually BEEN settled in Germany, who (as of Wednesday) reported that it was blocked by Steam. Talk about tough bricks. Thursday, 7AM, let's see about drawing Violet's conversation with Scarlet in the bonus alternative Chapter 1-2. OK, I guess it's harder than I thought. 7:15 and most of it was just spent rocking out. That's just p…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 87 - 12 June 2022
Day 87 The game's out on Steam! Already, a mere day or 2 from that point, I got my first review on Steam! It's written by some what I think is Russian (no idea how they got through my language barrier, but good on that character), yet the important part is the thumbs up. That's a start, but both Steam and myself are fully aware it's going to take more than 1 review to get put on the map! Though, in addition to that, I even got an email from a "curator" to review it. For those who don't know what a "curator" is, it's essentially a more formal organization for doling out reviews. This is what I want. I have no idea where this adventure will take me, but all I know is, I have not been this charged up since I toured Comic Con back in 2013! It feels amazing to have that hope of awesomeness! Even if it's an illusion slated to be shattered in a year or 2, I'm enjoying living in the now. I mean…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 86 - 8 June 2022
Day 86 Given the headache from trying to get the rails to properly spawn out of the barrel of the rifle, this time I wanted to shift to something more fun. Maybe I'll add the alternate dialogue for playing with all companions from the start (though for that, the sound department recommends I wait for when everyone's awake), or expand Scarlet's diary (since it does not go into detail for all her weapons). Another idea I liked is to again take a page from Metro Exodus, with a Gameplay toggle option for "Creator Commentary", to spawn a few interactable objects that would play some voice lines from me that would point out some of the more exciting highlights to making the game. 2:50 AM, good morning, Wednesday! Let's get started! 3AM, game engine update! Also I'm focusing on the alternate dialogue, plus coding in all the unlocked companions so they show up inside the Badass Bunker. 3:10 AM,…
- Scarlet Dev Diary Day 85 - 7 June 2022
Day 85 Steam had a few comments for rejection. The store page, at least the response I got was not completely hopeless; just a technical correction or three. It was 1:45 AM, Sunday May 15, and when I was finishing up with some goals in video games (with mixed results), I noticed the Steam replies, and I could not sleep on that kind of suspense! Second message, at this point all my nerves are really getting to me! On one hand, if I'm not crossing some kind of line, I'm not trying hard enough. On the other hand, always bet on disappointment, so I can't help but nonstop anticipate serious blockages. Either way, it's hard to think rationally, from both mild sleep deprivation and getting all worked up over this event in my life. 3AM, and that's 1 of 2. Now I need to find where the save of "scarletboots.ini" is kept locally. I know I looked that up somewhere else; it just slips my mind and I…
