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  Let's Call This A Monthly Newsletter 08:20 AM -- Mon December 4, 2023  

I have been very hard at work for the past month, despite appearances! We now have alpha testers who are actually trying out the game and discovering that it is shockingly full of crashes and inexplicables like enemies that jump through walls. But because fixing bugs is boring, I spend more of my time cranking out new content than fixing things. And one major issue I knew I had to tackle was the fact that many of the games I want to parody don't just have you doing one continuous run in a single world. They have a meta-map that you traverse, choosing which battle you're going to fight at each step. So I had to implement that layer, and here it is:

At present this is the only theming for it, the classic Stone Platforms In Outer Space that we all know so well. I kinda want to stick with that to keep it universal, but also it would be cute to match the content of each game, so we'll see. Anyway, this is Curse of The Bedbugs, the 3rd game mode in development. At this point it is 'playable' in the sense that you can enter each of those battles in turn and fight the exact same 30 bedbugs each time, and get to the end and get stuck because there's no win condition. Pretty good game.

For such a simple game, this may be my longest development cycle of all time. But boy is it high-tech on the inside.
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  What's Feature Creep? 03:48 PM -- Wed November 1, 2023  

The other day, I was playing Diablo IV (what?! Impossible), and I felt like it centers around one thing that Broken Build Simulator seemed to mostly lack: randomized powers that guide your build in a direction and offer huge power if you build accordingly. Not a revolutionary concept by any means, but one I had really noticed the lack of in my game, because I have weapon ugprades which fill a similar role, but they aren't that powerful or that random, and after a few runs with a certain weapon, you'll have done every 'build' that weapon offers within reason. So I felt a need for spice!

What proceeded from there was about 24 hours of deep contemplation and mental fiddling of ideas, followed by about 12 hours straight of the fastest coke-fueled (Coca-Cola, people, come on) coding rampage I have experienced in years, at the end of which was a fully functional entirely new huge game system that just plain works, and is way awesome:


In addition to all the other upgrade systems in the game, you now also collect Runes. They are rarely offered by Lootboxes (so, you can pick them in place of weapon upgrades). There is not yet any way to remove them, and you only have so many rune slots, so if you pick one, you are going to be enjoying it for your whole run. You can however upgrade it - the higher your level, the more likely you are to find higher level versions of the runes you already have, so you can take the higher copy to replace it. You might also find lower level versions - don't take those.

Runes are very powerful, some are probably too powerful, but I'll worry about balance once somebody other than me plays the game. What I've been loving is how extremely easy it is to add them thanks to my handy scripting system. This is a wildly complex game on the inside (pretty goofy since it's really simple to play!), but mostly it just sort of works, because of those scripts.

This specific rune is one that is a blatant rip-off from Diablo IV itself, actually, the vampiric curse detonations in that game. Although in this case instead of being whole people that run at your enemies, they are for some reason just my head. And specifically MY head, not the head of whichever character you're playing. You can't have everything.


As you can see, they are very digital. You can also see one of our lovely cosmetic pets in here! And regarding that upcoming alpha test... it seems to keep getting further away, perhaps due to new features appearing all the time. But because I know all the things that are missing or wrong, I keep stopping myself from starting a test because it seems dumb to put it out there with obvious gaps. So I continue to plug away very hard on the first two implemented modes, To Tory L. and 20 Minutes Till Lunch. I'd like to feel solid on those modes before testers make fun of me.
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  Much To Do About This Thing 04:55 PM -- Fri September 29, 2023  

Okay, so this is zoomed way out to make it an appropriately sized image (yeah, I could've done a thumbnail and let you zoom in... but then you'd see what it says!):

That's my awesome ToDo spreadsheet I created this past week and it has made me realize I got some work to do. Every green box is something that's done. Yellow boxes are in progress, they've been started but something more remains. Red boxes are not even started. It's a lot of red boxes, yes? At this moment, 22% of the boxes are filled in green, so I guess you could say the game is 22% done? But not really, because most of the basics are not on this at all. I made this list to show what still remains, not the whole project. And most of these things are small individually. In fact, I cranked out 17 of them today! Despite appearances, this actually feels like it's getting close to finished! For certain definitions of close. And finished. And to.

I am aware that I said I was doing an alpha test, and that is still where I'm aiming. That upcoming test is really what's pushing me to fix up a lot of little things because it's gonna drive me nuts to hear a bunch of bug reports about something I already know is broken! I have also really been holding myself back to finish up the core and the first 2 game modes (To Tory L. and 20 Minutes Till Lunch), rather than doing any of the fun stuff of making content for the rest of the modes. That has been sad, but I want the alpha test to feel like it's a working slice of the game instead of having a bunch of chunks hanging loose in every direction and nothing works.
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  A new release! 02:20 PM -- Mon September 18, 2023  

You already know about this from 2 blog posts back, but hey, it's exciting! Today is the 20th anniversary of Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Cheese's release, which is really quite something if you think about it.

To celebrate, SpaceManiac got me a present called Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Steam. HSB also helped out with some original artwork. If you want to just play Dr. Lunatic, you can still get it for free on Itch.io, but the new Steam release adds some new stuff for you, like Workshop support for downloading worlds, full controller support (and Steam Deck!), cloud saves, and achievements. So if you want 'em, come get 'em!

My memory of 20 years ago is not tip-top. When I was testing this new release, I didn't have much trouble remembering how to play or what to do in different situations (or even a lot of specifics of the levels and worlds I played!), but I was met with a big surprise in terms of how good it still feels! I am often impressed with what I used to be able to do in my misspent youth, and then I wonder where all that chutzpah went. So I feel pretty good about this re-release, and I'm really happy to have SpaceManiac around as somebody who has an interest (and ability) in maintaining these old games and keeping them alive.

The one request I have for anybody who buys this new version is: please leave a review! That helps it get more exposure, and if we can get enough sales, then trading cards and badges can be enabled. We still haven't hit that mystery threshold on Kid Hallow either, so go review that too! I already made the trading cards for that game, like a year ago, I'm just waiting for them to let me release them! The real dream is a Sneaky Shark trading card, don't you think?
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  Broken Build Simulating 01:42 PM -- Thu September 7, 2023  

I am still hacking away at the simulator! This is just a note of current progress n' such. I think I'm slowly approaching the point where there are no big-ticket items, it's all about taking this framework and filling it with content. I'm not entirely sure of that, but approximately. At this point, I'm fairly comfortable with the To Tory L. game mode, and I'm thinking about grabbing some alpha testers to throw some cold water on me regarding just what is and isn't working. It's doing a lot of things I've never seen before and I wonder how they come off. The whole game is the most absurd experience imaginable, and I'm just very very curious how it looks to somebody who isn't me.

So I guess this is a slightly hidden undercover request for alpha testers. I don't want very many, mainly because I feel like anyone who plays it in the current broken state will be sort of ruined for the real game. If you want to be one of those people who suffer the broken build of Broken Build, then hmm... send me an email about it, telling me why you want to! Again, I won't take everybody because I don't want to ruin you, but I might keep you in mind for beta testing later too.

I am going to be really busy in the coming week, so testing won't start until at least after that, and it may be up to a month out.
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  Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Steam! 09:08 PM -- Fri September 1, 2023  

Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Cheese was released on September 18, 2003.

So now, 20 years later, it's coming to Steam just like you have been asking for 15 years!

With over 1,000 levels and hundreds of things to unlock, Supreme may well be the only game you ever need.
  • Earn coins for your performance, and spend them in the SpisMall.
  • Unlock over 80 separate Worlds, and dozens of other items, from bonus abilities and playable characters to arcade games and artwork!
  • Over 200 unique enemy types which you can fight, have assisting you, ride on, run away from, and scan for information!
  • Let's repeat this one: over 1,000 levels to play!!
  • New level types like Stealth where you must remain hidden, and Underwater, where you have to maintain your oxygen levels.
  • An incredibly powerful, but easy to use, World Editor is built into the game - it's the exact tool we used to create the original levels, not some watered down garbage!
  • Over 400 more worlds available in the Workshop, featuring more than 5,000 more levels. You know when procedurally-generated games say things like "over 3 million levels!"? This is like that, except they're all handmade (by a collection of dedicated fans throughout the decades)!
  • More hours of gameplay than it is possible to shake a stick at, given current technology*
Originally released in 2003, and now enhanced for Steam for its 20th anniversary! Featuring achievements, Steam Cloud support, full Steam Deck support, and the Steam Workshop for custom levels.

The game is of course still available (with full source) on itch.io, but if you want to pay a couple bucks for the fancy Steam features, then enjoy!

* Even 20 years later, stick technology has not advanced to the point where you can shake a stick at the hours of gameplay.
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  Bad Ol' Pass 02:35 PM -- Tue August 15, 2023  

I know I know. We should all just accept that I don't blog on a regular or even semi-regular basis. Nobody needs to hear about it!

Fun new feature in Broken Build Simulator, inspired by Diablo IV (so see, it's worthwhile!): The Bad Ol' Pass. I can't believe it took me this long to realize this game needed a battle pass.

This screenshot is a little misleading because in fact you can't access the premium track on the pass normally. It's your classic battle pass - earn Bad Ol' Points to move up the track, and then you can collect the prizes. Of course the Premium row is only available to those who pony up real money. Buuuutttt... I didn't manage to implement microtransactions before getting trapped inside the video game, so you actually can't access the Premium row at all. Or can you?

But of course this game isn't pay-to-win because that's unacceptable, so we are sure to only offer cosmetic items on the premium track. Except sometimes. You have any fun ideas for battle pass rewards?
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  Progress is a Challenge 03:10 PM -- Thu June 22, 2023  

Man, it's been months since I blogged! As usual. I don't know, it's hard. I just like to plug away. Time spent telling people what I'm doing feels like a waste, even though I do like to talk about my work. I'll tell you this: if you remind me in the discord every week or so that I should blog, I'll do it. Most of the time. So lemme know when new updates are needed!

But here's the deets on Broken Build Simulator! I've finished every major system but one. Or at least I think so - my last blog post said that hacking was the last major system, and the system I'm referring to now is another one I added since then... Challenges! Oh and by the way, this doesn't mean I'm nearly done - there is only any content at all for the tutorial mode, and 20 Minutes Till Lunch. There are still 6 other game modes, with their attendant heroes, weapons, and abilities to be added. It's a LOT, but I keep finding myself thinking "that'll just be fun to do, I better get this hard work out of the way". I should probably alternate between creating content and systems.

First of all, there's Difficulty which is not terribly interesting: you can pick from Tier I to Tier V (for now at least), which boosts enemy life and damage, and earns you more metametacurrency as a reward. This is needed because of metaprogress you gain which would make the game absolutely trivial if you couldn't raise the challenge.

Then the new system is Challenges. You'll have to unlock them, but the core idea is that in addition to your chosen difficulty setting, you can choose from a selection of randomly-generated Challenges, which cost metametacurrency to attempt, but of course award even more metametacurrency if you manage to win while using them. So they're a gamble. And they're more fun and interesting than Difficulty - they have 4 mods each, some of which make the game easier, but most of which make it harder. There is a 'value' to each mod - positive values for ones that make it harder, negative values to ones that make it easier. All Challenges have a total positive value, because if they made the game easier overall, they wouldn't be a challenge. But other than that restriction, any mods can be combined. So you could end up with a 5-point nightmare scenario coupled with 3 mods (-1 point each) that make it easier, for a +2 challenge overall. Obviously, balancing the values of these mods will be tricky, but for the most part, meh, whatever. It is what it is, it's a crazy random game and you'll get what you get and you'll like it! Each mod is actually a script, so they can do anything, they won't just be more life and damage.

But besides the titular pun, progress really is a challenge with this game. I think primarily that's my old age kicking in, and the fact that I'll never recover from the burnout of the game that shall not be named. I'm just very slow now. Every day, if I get some solid chunk done, like managing to make it print a number on the screen, or draw a square, I sit back and say, "I deserve a break!" which is not how it was in my fiery youth. Or if I start the day and have to make a phone call or talk to an electrician, I say, "Well, I definitely need to recover from that experience, no work!" And then they also rather ruthlessly released Diablo IV without even asking me. That's how I spend the aforementioned breaks nowadays. So just letting you know - I am still consistently working on this game, and yet I am still very far from finishing and it feels like it will never end. It's a Tier 4, 7-skull, challenge. I just need to unlock more metaprogress so I get stronger to beat it.
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  I am alive! 02:29 PM -- Mon April 17, 2023  

So, I did survive my bout with plague. But it was weeks of being so very fatigued that I really couldn't do much of anything. It really knocks you down. But I have been back in the swing of things for several weeks now, and just not telling you about it! So ha, surprise!

With the tutorial mode basically complete-ish, I've moved on to hacking away at the underlying systems, to try to get to the point where you can play the tutorial as it would actually be experienced. One thing needed for that is a series of different shops that can pop up during your mission, to give you a use for all that dang money you're gonna find. And who do you think runs these shops? Why it's a familiar face of course!


Wow, some deep backstory here where we learn Mumbly Jim's last name! Or we think we do, because Jim Smith runs the Gemsmith, and he looks oddly similar. Who's the real Jim? Who's to say? Maybe we're all a little Jim.

I've improved the gem system dramatically to where it now makes more sense. Gems with fewer stats are now more common than ones with more, because the way they work is that you can combine any two gems into one. Matching stats upgrade by one level (up to 10, which is a huge boost - 10x the value you see in the screenshot! Of course those values are just what I came up with off the cuff, so they'll change). Non-matching stats get included in the final result, but if you have more stats than you can fit (3 max), then you get a random assortment from the non-matching stats. What this means is that it is very hard to make a gem with more than 1 stat at a reasonably high level, because while it's easy enough to hold onto one stat (only combining with gems that also have that stat), the only way to guarantee you keep 2 stats is to only combine with gems that have both of those stats, and that is quite rare. Or you can gamble and hope you don't lose your precious upgraded stat!

I still have several other shops to create, but now that I have one done, the others will be a lot simpler.

The other system I just started today is the Data system. Now this is a little spoilery, so control your wandering eyes if you want to be unspoiled, but I figure anybody actually reading this is a pretty hardcore Hamumian, so you are getting the inside dirt!


Data is sort of achievements. You might earn one for killing 100 Pickles (well, maybe 1000, there are a lot of pickles), or whatever. But instead of just earning an achievement, you get a kind of 'commentary' that pops up (a lot like the lore audio in Diablo 3/4, or I suppose audio logs in most AAA games). It's available as text and audio, and you have the option to tell me to shut up, or to close the text and keep playing while my soothing voice entertains you until it's done. Whatever your preference. Some of these 'achievements' are as simple as "start playing the tutorial", because they also serve as the intro to each game mode. Other basic tutorial elements will be included here, like the first time you get a secondary weapon, one will pop up explaining how weapon switching works.

And of course, that's not all you get. The more data you gain on the elements in the game/simulator, the more you know about how to hack it... and perhaps you will become able to hack changes to the game itself? Who knows? (I do, that's the last really major system that remains totally undeveloped)
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  Life As A Floridian 05:21 PM -- Tue March 14, 2023  

Soooo... big news in Hamumu town. Three years ago, I went on the Joco Cruise. It was March 2020, and it was literally the last cruise they let out of Florida. We agonized a lot over whether to do it seeing what was coming down the pipe at the time, but eventually figured we put in all this money and weren't gonna get it back. The cruise was awesome, and we did not get sick. We returned to a completely changed world, though. Empty grocery shelves everywhere (we discovered on our drive home from the airport actually!), and major restrictions that were days away from actually keeping us trapped in Florida. But, while we were on the cruise, we signed up for the next cruise, because obviously this whole pandemic thing was just gonna be a flash in the pan. How long could it last?!

Well, when those rosy predictions failed, it was okay - the 2021 cruise was replaced with a virtual online cruise (2 days of youtube events which were actually pretty fun and where I discovered Gangstagrass!), for free, and everybody who had booked it was forwarded to the 2022 cruise automatically. Because obviously, what was a pandemic gonna do, last over 2 years? Don't be silly!

So in 2022, we had an option: take the cruise we had paid for, get a (partial? I don't remember) refund, or forward ourselves to the 2023 cruise. We definitely weren't ready for a cruise, but wisely said "in 2023, everything will be fine, obviously!" and chose that. In choosing that, we were agreeing to no more potential refunds or moving forward, the money is lost if we don't go.

So it's 2023 now, and we went on the Joco Cruise again, knowing it was a bid idea, but not wanting to just throw away thousands of dollars! It was fun again! However, they weren't hardcore enough about the restrictions and rules (in many ways, the 2020 cruise was actually better about that!), which we found off-putting many times. After a lovely cruise, on the very last day, we decided to test for covid since we were coming home to houseguests and should be safe for them. I thought it was a formality, but it was not. I think our downfall was dining in the main dining room which obviously requires being unmasked, with literally hundreds of other people all around. In retrospect, just blatantly stupid. But good food!

I am now trapped in a Florida hotel, waiting out my quarantine period to return home to my kitties. I am indeed feeling sickly, but not too bad, especially after the first day (I am as vaxxed as legally possible). So hopefully this will end soon, and I do have the machinery here to both work on my game (awkwardly) and edit our podcast.


I think, depending on whether I can upload files properly, I will be releasing the podcast tomorrow as intended, but I may not actually do ANY work on the game. It's really not super fun to program on this dumb little laptop. I am using an ironing board for a table, propped up by a pillow to reduce its wobbling. And you can see the beautiful Florida skyline outside.

The lesson here is as simple as it is obvious: don't go on cruises. We're in a pandemic, people!
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