Massive Update Coming For Project Plasma

A while ago last year, I mentioned that the next update for Project Plasma was going to be big, huge maybe, however back then I was too vague as I didn't have much of an idea as to how much would be getting added, although I did know that I was going to add a lot of things to it. However over the months I've been giving this update some thought and I know exactly what to do with the game.

I can now officially say that this update will be fucking huge.

Imagine the 0.9.5 and 0.9.6 updates that were pushed out towards the back end of 2014, and the 1.0.2 update thrown in there as well. Those are Project Plasma's three biggest updates and they still don't come to how big this update is going to be, not even combined.

First off, this update isn't going to be 1.0.4, only small updates get minor number increments, this update is worthy of being called 1.1. That alone should be enough to give you an idea of the overall scale of this update.

Note: This is not an official changelog. This is just to give everyone an idea as to what to expect, a full changelog will be posted upon release.

Here is a list of what will likely be coming.

I'll start with the fact that there will be a major easter egg coming to the game, a new hidden boss, who here thought that Level X's Crystalline was too easy? Well, you guys have another thing coming.

Second, achievements might be coming. I'm still undecided on this. It all depends on how hard they are to implement. If they turn out to be a pain in the arse, then I'll do away with them otherwise, let em come!

The last major thing I have coming is probably the biggest thing although it'll be the one that will probably be the least noticeable in-game. I will officially be ditching GameMaker 8.1 on Project Plasma in favour of the more modern GameMaker: Studio that has been used with Project Plasma Mobile, Iron, Thallium, and will be used in Project Plasma 2. This will hopefully equate to a better, and hopefully smoother gameplay experience for you guys not to mention less of a headache for me when I have to put future updates out for the damn thing.

This also means that I will be able to use GameMaker's own system again although I will keep using SGAudio as I would pretty much have to rip the audio code out of every asset in the game and replace it with GameMaker's audio code, needless to say, that's a pain in the arse.

There will likely be other things coming that will happen likely down to the engine switch, however I'm holding no promises in that department. So I guess that's it until the release. I can't quote a release date yet I have no idea how long all of this will take, last time I ported a game from GM 8.1 to GM:S it had a shitload of bugs so either it'll be a real slog, but it'll be done soon... hopefully.

Let's Ban the Next US President! (Rant)

So before I start this, I know I said once that I'd be making a point to avoid making blog posts (including rants) that are about politics. This was something I put forward in my anti-rant about Scottish Independence that I put up back in September. However, I'm breaking my own rule for this one, because something happened yesterday that was just fucking ludicrous so here we are in what might possibly be my most controversial rant yet! Yay.

Parliament debated whether to ban Donald Trump... a potential US president... from the UK.

This bullshite all started when someone called Suzanne Kelly set up a petition to have Donald Trump barred from the UK. This petition exploded in popularity gaining tens of thousands of signatures every minute and currently stands at over 575k signatures from all across the UK. The reason behind this ban is because he said that he wants to ban all Muslims from the UK. He also allegedly (I'm saying allegedly as I haven't actually heard of him saying this) wants to tag and track all Muslims in the states in a way not too dissimilar from Adolf Hitler and his anti-Semitic crusade.

Believe me, I'm definitely no supporter of Donald Trump's comments. They are way past the line and I think tracking them is absolutely absurd. However, there are reasons as to why there are two steaming piles of bullshit on both sides of the fence here.

First off, the bullshit behind what he said.

By banning Muslims from the country, he is literally playing into the hands of extremists groups who claim that Muslims will be turned away and shunned and I will say that there is a degree of truth to that, especially with the recent happenings in Germany where a group of refugees went round and molested a load of lasses. So yeah an argument could be made that they're not doing themselves any favours, however I also think it's unfair to paint a work of fine art with a DIY brush if you get what I mean.

Second off, the bullshit behind this whole "BAN HIM" fiasco.

I understand that many people feel strongly about the guy's comments and I am among those who think what he said is way too extreme when what should be done is let any offenders get caught by the judicial system. In the states that's fine as they already have a strong judicial system in place, however in the UK our justice system is shit. People are afraid to prosecute a refugee, or anyone helping a refugee due to fear of being scrutinised or persecuted for it. There's a point where someone needs to say "let em talk, I don't give a fuck" and I think it's safe to say we've gone past that point.

One MP in the debate said that people in her constituency would refer to Trump as a wazzock I'm reasonably confident that people around where I live would say the same. However banning him from the country is a step too far and I can put money on the fact that anyone who supports the petition to have him banned hasn't thought through the consequences that well and simply signed it as a knee-jerk reaction to what Donald Trump said. If you signed the petition, I understand why you did and I won't hold it against you, but I'd like to put a major point forward here.

The key thing we need to bear in mind is that this guy could be the president of the United States who are currently our biggest and most important ally right now. Should we ban him, and he ends up making it into the White House, we'll be in a very awkward position. Not to mention this would potentially and likely even break down our historic relations with that country. As intense as his comments were, the consequences of a ban would likely be far worse.

Trust me on this, I'm certainly no supporter of Trump, but I think banning him is certainly the wrong decision. My final word on this to parliament would be to stay out of other countries' politics and focus on issues that relate to our own country. Parliament have said "no we won't debate this" to certain petitions in the past, and they should have given this petition the same response but hey I'm just one small indie developer who feels the need to get stuff off his chest every once in a while.

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This will be my last politically orientated blog post here for at least a year. I do however reserve the right to bend this rule should something truly ridiculous happen but these things are few and far between so I'm pretty confident that I'll be able stand by this rule without needing to bend it. Like I said at the beginning, political (and religious) events are a topic I aim to avoid on this blog but I just had to speak up on this one simply because of how poorly thought out this campaign was.

Burnout

This is a topic I held back from mentioning here as I felt it was too personal to share however I feel that I seriously need to let people in on this as it will provide some insight as to what's going on, particularly with Iron and its development.

I have come to the conclusion that I've suffered from a complete burnout, more than likely down to pushing myself too hard to get various things done - Iron and my coursework at college both in particular. How have I been feeling? Well, it has been affecting me I'll say that. I won't go all typical Tumblr lass on you all and be all "oh I'm so depressed I hate my life" because that's not the case. I have been suffering from bouts of depression which have inhibited me from working at my normal pace, but these have just been bouts of depression and I do end up recovering from them. It's not the end of the world.

Without getting too personal, I will say that I'm currently trying ways to overcome this situation. The main thing I'm doing is that starting at the beginning of February, I'll be developing Project Plasma 2 alongside Iron. I was saying in my last blog post that PP2 seems like a much more exciting prospect than Iron and that looking ahead to that is making me seem bored, even somewhat disillusioned, with Iron and developing it is seeming more and more like a chore. I won't cancel it as I've put too much time into it now, but as of February it will be taking more of a back seat and I'll be flitting between PP2 and Iron's development.

If a game seems like a chore to develop, I won't develop it.

I will make sure Iron is released before PP2 however which is pretty likely as PP2 looks like it'll take ages to complete. I will give more details on PP2 as well comparisons between PP2 and its predecessor as well as PPM to see how things will improve from its predecessor which was released around a year and a half ago (no PPM doesn't count.)

I'll get through this, I'm not horrendously depressed or anything and I don't want people reading this to think I'm trying to turn this blog into a fucking stereotypical Tumblr blog. I guess the best I could describe things right now would be me being somewhat disillusioned by certain things, however I'll find ways to work around these issues.

A Statement About Iron

So Iron sadly failed to be released last year, that sucks. In the Year in Review post I put up on New Year's Eve I mentioned under 25th December that Iron failed to be released on that date while I put after it in brackets that I would be putting a statement out regarding that. Here is that statement.

I'm going to be completely honest about everything, while big companies who did this will say anything to appease their fanbase. I value honesty and transparency, not a load of bullshit set out just to set everything straight - to me that's just a long, spaghettified (for lack of a better word) way of saying "lol shut the fuck up it's coming now get off my arse." I don't want to do that.

The reason why Iron wasn't released is because I wasn't able to get it to a point where I could say "there you go first level done here's a taste of what's coming" like I said I would. I know that seems like a straight-forward and obvious reason and there are some people who would gladly say "well yeah no shit Sherlock" to that. Well, there's more to it than that.

One of the cornerstones I set out when I began Iron's development was that I would not procrastinate, and I sadly failed to keep up to that cornerstone and for that I apologise and I feel I've let people down with that. I won't bother making excuses, development on Iron began during summer last year and I had a shitload of time to do it, so while college work has impacted on this, I can't and won't use that as an excuse.

One major reason however why I haven't been working on Iron as much as I should've done is that I just don't feel enthusiastic about it. In other words, I really don't feel happy or excited about developing it anymore... just bored I guess. I look ahead to future projects, including Project Plasma 2 and CHAOS 6 and I see those two games as much more exciting prospects to look forward to. Iron's development just seems incredibly dull by comparison. However I like doing things in an orderly fashion when it comes to game development and on the road map I've listed CHAOS 3 as Iron (yes CHAOS 4 was Thallium, but that game's development began after Iron's.) I don't want to start CHAOS 5 for that reason and the only reason why I looked at starting CHAOS 6 was because GameMaker: Studio was down.

The bottom line is, Iron is coming, however I'm not saying that to say "calm your tits," if you're pissed or disappointed that I wasn't able to get it out on time, I won't stop you, and you have every right to feel that way. My aim is to have it out by the end of February, after that I will probably start PP2 regardless but we'll have to see how I feel at the time.