 Taking
a Joke Way Too Far
Coming Never, to a Toy Shop not exactly near you: the
Atomic Starlight Knight, with special "Boot to the Head" action!
Yee-haw!
Don't mind the avatar; when we get right down to it,
all my characters are just a little slice of me interpreted by a huge
slice of the artist. All righty, then… As I've told my artist on
a few occasions, I have a serious problem with thinking too big—as
in, I do it all the time. Esa says that's okay, considering that a lot
of people have problems not thinking big enough. Now, I'd be just a regular,
run-of-the-mill crazy dreamer if I didn't at least try to take steps to
achieve those heavy-duty, quasi-impossible goals I keep telling everyone
about.
It can be quite puzzling, trying to figure out what,
exactly, needs to be set up and done to move the end goal closer. Mostly,
though, it involves having an end result in mind, and finding other people
that seem to think it'd be a nifty idea.
 One
evening, for example, I was desperately trying to avoid thinking about
the class group project that was due the next day while attempting to
forget that a couple of major exams wouldn't be far behind. So, in the
way of all True College Students, I ignored all of those concerns until
the very last minute, opened up a photo editing program and got to work
on something that had me laughing like crazy every single time I looked
at it.
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The concept for Galactic Destroyer Maker began as a desperate
attempt to relieve stress, and started off as a simple joke, accompanied
by a simple script that called for the main character to blast the player
into smithereens every time he did something she didn't like.
Ah, Princess Maker! The game that never really made it
to the USA because the general public labeled it as being too sexist to
get anywhere. I mean, they were probably right—the character taking care
of the girl was a father, and the girl was pretty docile and obedient
throughout the course of the game, unless, of course, you got to ignoring
the Stress statistic. The game would probably have remained a total mystery
to most people, had someone not accidentally leaked the English-translated
version onto the Internet. (What can I say? Yo ho ho and a bottle o'shrooms!
^_-)
But the point is that one good prod to the funny bone
deserves another. Everyone I showed the joke picture to thought it was
hilarious and suggested that I go out and make the actual game. So that's
exactly what I'm doing.
It is not I who am crazy… it is I who am MAD! Mwahahahahahaaa.
=^.^=
Having worked on an old parody fanfic, Nuke 'Em 'Till
They Glow!!, for many years, I can appreciate the usefulness of staying
power when telling a really long joke. Some jokes actually tend to get
funnier the farther one takes them. Clearly, there are limits when this
ceases to be a good thing, but I don't think I've hit that point yet.
My brother was the first one to volunteer his programming
skills to this project. His words were something to the effect of: "Heh.
I could program that for you."
That's the funny thing about last words—they almost
always end up as Famous Last Words. :D
Now, several good programmers have joined the project,
and it's pretty much my responsibility to eliminate the confusion as to
how certain—or all—aspects of the game are to be handled. That's
all well and good, since it was my idea to drag everyone into this thing
in the first place; I have to respect the fact that they wanted to come
along for the ride.
The only one that's really been railroaded into this
would be our favorite artist, Esa Karjalainen. None of this would have
been at all possible without his great artistic contributions. I'm not
quite certain what went through his mind when I mentioned that it'll require
at least 105 images for the prospective Galactic Destroyer on the main
screen to work out well—much more if we want to add any more detail
like differing hairstyles or figure sizes, but I don't think that'll be
necessary for this sort of game.
We're still working out details for the all-important
adventure and battle modes. Jason Liao has been helpful in suggesting
that an official documentation for the game's development to be made,
and has offered useful suggestions as to what ought to be explained. We'll
get it retooled and more useful pretty soon, we hope. Ammon, the owner
of the server, has taken on the responsibility of all things concerning
the adventure mode (which will prove quite useful for his planned Generic
RPG thing for later), Danny's in charge of the main screen and most of
the integration details, and Joseph Fenton's waiting for a definite assignment.
The whole thing's being programmed in Java, partly because
of its multiplatform capabilities (works on anything, including Windows,
Linux, and Mac), but mostly because everyone seems to know it fairly well.
We may end up changing it over to C and compiling it for different platforms
to improve performance, but for now, Java's good enough for a development
language.
The most recent addition to the team, Darth Wader, volunteered
to work on a sort of War mode to add to the game. There's going to be
Final Fantasy-style fights, statistical gains and losses to worry about,
and a gazillion parody elements to deal with.
It's not so much about raising a wayward child anymore—it's
a struggle of life and death against the most obstinate creature the universe
has ever seen! Let's see if you can teach her how to dance.
The Galactic Destroyer Maker game will be Freeware when
done, and Open-Source once we have enough Source for it to be Open. It's
being discussed and worked on in an open
category in the forum.
In the meantime, the comic is still being worked on,
as is the NETTG fanfic. The goal for completion of the fanfic is by the
end of this summer. Thanks for sticking with us! |
