Greetings!

We would like introduce to you, Doorknobs and Derpfish, a Batch text-adventure free to play game that is currently in the Pre-alpha development stage. Although we don’t have a lot of information about the game, we can give you some basic details about Doorknobs and Derpfish and its future.

NOTE: Since the writing of this post was on the first day of development for Doorknobs and Derpfish, not all information will be accurate. Some plans in the future might change without notice, but we will try to update you in the best of our abilities.

What is Doorknobs and Derpfish?

Doorknobs and Derpfish is a text-based adventure game that entirely runs out of Batch programming, which is a Command Prompt file, and runs off an .exe (executable) file. A series of commands are executed within the program, and the command interpreter, which is you, get to use the Command Prompt.

The game was created by Paxton Marner, a member of the EXABYTE Team, inside of a restraunt. He and his friends needed something to do, because they were waiting for their food, and came up with Doorknobs and Derpfish, a completley random and funny game thats kills time.

How was the game played, you ask? First of all, there is the Derpmaster, the person who controls the game and makes up the stories along the way. The Derpmaster then comes up with a short story, and tells it to the player(s), then they have to decide what to do. Some examples would be: look around, fight, talk, etc. There is at least one objective of the game, and once you finish that objective, you “beat” the game.

Hugo Carducci, President of EXABYTE, teamed up with Paxton Marner to create a Batch game, similar to the talking version of Doorknobs and Derpfish. However, since the game is so complex, the software version of Doorknobs and Derpfish might be a lot more limited than the talking version. For instance, we are trying to work on an inventory system that enables you to equip weapons, armor, etc. However, we might have trouble programming this certain feature. We’re pretty sure we’ll find a way out of this situation, though. Don’t you worry!

When will it come out?

Sadly, we honestly don’t know the answer to this question. Since the game will be massive, it might take longer than expected. Debugging our code for the game and making sure the EXABYTE Team works at a good pace might be harder than we imagined it would be.

Good news, though! We might know the sequence to our development phases for Doorknobs and Derpfish, so you know what we do during Pre-alpha, alpha, pre-beta, and so on and so forth.

1. Closed Pre-alpha 1: This is when the game is (usually) introduced to the audience. Our team members for Doorknobs and Derpfish will begin to schedule times we can work and take breaks. This is also the phase when we start doing rough drafts with our coding. (We need to sharpen our coding skills before we can actually start coding Doorknobs and Derpfish!)

2. Development Stage 1: In the first stage of development, we dive in further in our code and make tweaks to our rough drafts whenever we feel like it. We gather our story developers and make a rough draft for our storyline. (Note: Doorknobs and Derpfish will have multiple modes and stories after you beat the first one, and we’ll keep on adding more!)

3. Development Stage 2: In the second stage of development, we start to make a lot of progress. We take all of the stories we brainstormed and remove the cheesy or bad parts of a story and improve on them. We also do another practice round of programming for our developers, so we’re ready to go. This is also when we actually start programming Doorknobs and Derpfish.

4. Development Stage 3: In the last stage of development, we continue working on our programming and make possible tweaks to anything we missed or made bugs to. Then we start improving and getting ready for the Open-alpha testing.

5. Open Pre-alpha 1: This is when you get to participate in helping us make our game! You will not be able to actually download the game, sadly, but you will be able to participate in surveys, YouTube videos, livestreams, and a lot more. (Even our Social Networking pages will work, maybe.)

6. Closed Pre-alpha 2: In the second stage of closed Pre-alpha, we gather all of the ideas you made and keeps the ones we feel are best for Doorknobs and Derpfish. Then we program and develop the storyline again and overlap it with our previous drafts.

7. Open-beta: This is when the game starts to get a lot more stable, but still might have issues or bugs that need to be fixed. You guys get to download the game and play it! (YAY!) However, we might have to do a lot of updates, and you’ll have to install them all. Don’t worry, we’ll try our best to not bombard you with constant updates, but we can’t gurantee this. :D

8. Final Release: This is when the game is near completion. We won’t do as much updates as before, but we’ll still try to make improvements. The game will be stable (hopefully) and we’ll try to gather more members to play our game.

9. Platinum: The game is now completley finished and the EXABYTE Team will no longer be making updates or improvements to the game. (This might take awhile to get to this stage, and it won’t happen anytime soon. Trust us.) It will still be up for download, but we will no longer be updating it, because we need more time to work on other projects!

Like again, these development stages could change without notice, just a heads up warning. We hope this was a lot of information for the future.

What platforms will it be released on?

Since the game runs off of Batch programming and executable files, Doorknobs and Derpfish will only be available for Windows platforms. (Sorry, Mac users!) Unless if you use a VirtualBox that supports Windows, we will not be able to release our title to different platforms other than Windows. (We will try to solve this issue with alternative codes or options.)

If you have any more questions related to this topic and Doorknobs and Derpfish, please Contact Us with your feedback of this post or any other questions you may have. Please do not hesitate to ask the EXABYTE Team questions, we will try our best to answer your emails as soon as possible. - [email protected]

Thank you for everything, and have a wonderful summer!

		
			- Hugo Carducci (ProTech10)

       [Lead Programmer of Doorknobs and Derpfish]

       [President of EXABYTE]