So.

Been a while, huh? Yeah. Sorry about that. I haven’t really posted anything here for a while, although I have been fairly active on Twitter (mostly personal stuff but occasionally development info). Life’s kinda gotten in the way, stressful new job, mental health issues, some new kitties to take care of, y’know, the usual excuses to dodge responsibility. But no more!

The project’s been dead for a little while, but while it’s been happening, I’ve been training with King Kai and have gone beyond! I’ve realized that, while I’m a half-decent programmer, I’m pretty shit at game development. I’ve taken some time to learn some actual game development skills, including things like particles, shaders, and gasp UI! While my current job has sapped me of many things (energy, time, the will to live, the usual), it has left me with some more resources to do things like buy books and skillshare subscriptions and whatnot that I’ve been poring over in my hiatus, and I think I’m finally ready to start again.

Another benefit? Being able to pay someone to make much better UI designs than I ever could. I’ve been working with a designer named Yannick Toney who’s come up with these fresh new designs!

Now, all I’ve got to do is wire them up with functionality (which I now know how to do but don’t hate any less) and then I can get back to doing the fun stuff! Designing UI and the character builder is where PyTUSSLE stalled out before, but if I can get past this roadblock then I really think that a release is just around the corner! I’ve decided that a simplistic platform fighter with a robust character builder is definitely the way to go for a beta release, then add in some of the more technical features later as time goes on. This means that the game might not support all of the fancy mechanics of the new Smash games at launch, but don’t you worry, they’ll all be added in eventually! This also means that any nifty new features that might come along with Smash 5 have a chance of getting patched in at a later date! I’ve got a real, honest-to-god roadmap this time that’ll be keeping me on track, but that’s a filler post for another week!

Thanks everyone who’s stuck around this long. It brings me great pleasure to finally be typing these words again, so,

Until next time, Tusslers! See you next week!