The Monthly Report: Now with Excerpts
You can wake up now
Welcome to the Monthly Report feature of the Warthog Report, where I go over what I published here in the past month.
Very early on I had the idea of these monthly reports also being a spot for answering reader questions, but dropped it and scrubbed mentions of it from the about page and the like, in part due to lack of activity. But The Warthog Report has grown in readership since then, so I feel like tossing the idea out there again. Tumblr has made me find answering questions fun.
Last month featured the release of the second and third chapters for Metrophanes’s story in Battles Beneath the Stars, showing more of his backstory and a potential make or break tournament match. I’m glad that people appear to be enjoying the story so far.
Metrophanes: Neither of us can afford to be as weak as we once were if we want to win for once.
Aris: I’ve had plenty of victories. But I know what you’re talking about. Trying to take over Gaiapolis was a disaster for both of us. Neither of our ambitions came to pass, which was for the best.
Metrophanes: And you’re still chasing yours, while my dream has changed.
Aris: I’m not sure you’ve ever said it outright. But I can guess, to leave behind a legacy that has more to do with entertainment than treachery.
Metrophanes: I’m fine if my puppet plays die with me, so long as I can lessen the burden my reputation will have on Drakon.
The theme for September’s non-fiction ended up being me doing other creative projects. First with a surprise game jam that I ended up participating in, leading to the creation of a rough prototype for a board game.
For my entry I decided to do a board game version of Battles Beneath the Stars, which I titled Battles Beneath the Stars: Tabletop Brawls.
My objective going in was to at minimum write out the rules, make at least two playable fighters, and a single hexmap arena with a hazard. I met the minimum but did not go beyond that. Although, while I had written all the text needed for each card used in the game to function, I hadn’t actually made them into cards.
Still, with the disclaimer of much assembly being required, the game is playable and can be downloaded here: https://itch.io/jam/versus-game-jam/rate/2960013
Then sometime after, I was inspired to renew efforts to make an actual fighting game. Not Battles Beneath the Stars, didn’t want to start with the dream game, but an original simple project. I’ve done the character design for it already, and am now finding my legs with the code.
Despite everything I’m proud of these overall. And I’m looking forward to the next steps of this project, where I’ll program the movesets of each character and sprite out the attacks. And hopefully succeed in laying the groundwork for releasing a game once the engine I’m working with becomes capable of such.
Even if none of that turns out, making these characters was a fun little creative endeavor on its own.
What did you think of the new approach of sharing excerpts when recapping last month’s posts? I think it helps with the recap aspect and makes going to read them if you missed them the first go around more tempting.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading the Warthog Report.