Balderdash: A Pheo/Saha project

[Sahaqiel 1232]

It is definitely relevant to the topic, so I posted it here, because some of the things he said made me irate.

[pheonix561 2080]

Again, I wish you would chill out a bit. It still irks me that you don't tend to discuss these things with me and choose to blow me off more often than not. I may not have a triple-A indie title out, but I am working actively in game design, and I consult with other game designers when I need help. And if I may say so, I'm fairly observant and make my own opinions. Because yes, sometimes it seems like your opinion is divergent from things that are popular. Anticonformity is just as bad as confirmity, because you're just going with one crowd or the other.

This is the second time in a novella you've written to me that you've sincerely called me an anti conformist. You are the only person who as ever come to me saying that, let alone multiple times. If my opinion is divergent from popular things, it's got nothing to do with what everyone else thinks of whatever the topic is. I rarely if ever make a decision based on what everyone else is thinking. You have got to stop thinking I'm a hipster/anticonformist for liking the things I like.

And remember that even though you tell me you're fed up with trends and pretty people in video games, keep in mind that right now, that's what the industry wants. If you're going to appeal to a mindset that's limited to a few people, few people will be interested. Don't intentionally make unattractive characters. Make characters that fit with your world and make unattractive characters after you have some notoriety.

Isn't that the point that I made already? I can remember several times when I said this was the plan.

This is kind of what was bugging me the whole time you and me talked about Balderdash. I'm glad you have confidence in the world you've built and the concepts you want to put forth, but you weren't quite considerate of my own goals and progress, or how I felt about some of the things. You talk about it like it's a monument to human success and creativity, like it's going to be this colossal game-changing thing that will leave a mark on the industry forever, and talk about them with such gusto, it was hard to say anything to you. I want you to know that I'm concerned about a lot of the things you've told me about, and I want to give you my input, but I think you should cool your jets for a second and make sure you have everything figured out linearly, and actually leave yourself open for input. Almost all of the stuff you've told me is about the plot and offhandedly about the presentation, and most of it is one-sided conversation that bounces everywhere. Lay down the gameplay, make sure you can make it work, develop a style that isn't intentionally unattractive, unused, or rugged, and make sure it will tie up nicely in the end.

Balderdash is going to have characters that are built five heads high, with some as high as seven and some as short as four. This is about the size of the characters in the starfox universe, and a little taller than the characters in the sonic universe. I am tired of pointing out to you that I like things that aren't gritty and are nonsensical, too. I don't even know where you keep getting the idea that the world they live in is completely sensical, when the premise is a bunch of people jump in animal themed mech suits and fly around killing each other in a starfox meets top gun world. Having a serious plot formed inside of that isn't going to offset any of that.

I would talk about progress in my programming and also of my own ideas, but you would always space out until it was time for you to get fed up on your models and tell me more about your ideas as if yours were the only ones in the room. Then later you wouldn't communicate at all while I was at your house and say you can't concentrate while I'm there. If you can't concentrate on a project while your team is there, then when are you going to concentrate? You say you have to deal with a lot of crap in your house, and yeah, you occasionally are inconvenienced, but do you think game designer is a cakewalk? There are going to be hiccups and problems that you need to consult with a lot of people with and it won't necessarily be easy in terms of how much time you spend on it. It will seem like a waste of time. If anything, learning how to make progress under stress is something that may help you later. You're not always going to be alone in a quiet environment. If I were on the third story of a house alone in my room, I would probably get work done regardless of what it was.

Altogether you spent about a month at my house this summer. You should know the kind of things that go on there, and I promise you it's not the kind of thing that would be permitted to happen inside a game design studio. "There are going to be hiccups and problems that you need to consult with a lot of people with and it won't necessarily be easy in terms of how much time you spend on it." That's a problem for when people are discussing the game development itself. My house isn't like that. At the beginning of the summer when I got back on my first day, I was sitting in front of my computer looking up blender tutorials when my mom asked me what my plans were for this summer. I told her I really wanted to work on this game, and she laughed in my face and told me to get a job. My grandma moved in, and every hour was asking me to walk her dog tasha, or make sure tasha was entertained, or go to the store with her to buy food, and then come home and help her cook that, so I can listen to her talk about how I clearly don't appreciate my parents paying my way through college because I'm more apt to spend time trying to get work done in my room than I am to do the dishes.

Or then there's my sister, who I don't even need to go into. Because when I'm not being asked to watch aiden for an hour, I have to listen to her and her deadbeat boyfriend screaming their asses off at each other, and I'm often the one required to go babysit them to make sure they don't do anything stupid. And lets forget how stressful and disruptive that can be on it's own. What about the calm before the storm moments? Three or so weeks ago I was feeling really inspired after talking with Cascade about how I never post anything on the tumblr Cirt was nice enough to make for me. So I got really inspired and decided to do a bunch of portrait studies of the cast of everybody loves Raymond. Literally the moment I sat down at my desk and opened up my sketchbook, my mom opens my bedroom door to tell me Sarah got arrested, again, for smoking pot in her car with her baby in the car, again(I don't even need to remind you she's pregnant again), and she got the car impounded, again, and they're going to have to bail her out. All of a sudden all I can think about is the massive shitstorm that's about to take place in my house. And sure enough, she comes home screaming at my parents "I hope you both die," and my dad for the first time in his entire life takes a swing at her, and utters the words "I really puppying want to beat you right now." And then the next day I sit down and "hey, maybe I can do those portraits now," and my sister is screaming at her boyfriend who is there, and my mom is telling me to call my dad and tell him what's going on and see if he wants to call the police, and my dad is actually telling me to "clean the puppying clock" of my pregnant triplet sister if she starts acting up again. Then she runs off for the night with the baby and my dad comes home and starts drinking and running his mouth about how much hate he has for my sister, calling her a "puppying terrorist" and blaming her for why we haven't had a family vacation in seven years. And how's Paul going to react if he comes back and then my sister is still acting like this, when they finally got on good terms? And what about my aunt who had the aneurysm, who was my dad's older sister, who my dad had to miss his chance to see her one last time because he had to stay home and make sure my sister didn't destroy the house? What's going to happen there? God, I could go on.

The point is, my house is not by any means a stress free environment, and being alone in my room isn't some kind of bonus. You talk about it like it's identical to game design, like every studio out there would allow this kind of environment to grow and thrive for their workers to work in. This is absolutely not true. Anyone who tries to act like my sister does would easily get fired after two instances of that, if not instantly. A manager would never even allow their workers to be disrupted if it means they're not going to get their work done. Nobody would put up with that situation in a professional studio. Don't expect me to willingly do it in my own house.

I don't want to say I got things off my chest because they really shouldn't have been as big of a deal as I made it out to be, but it has been frustrating me all the while and I wish you would have been more considerate or dedicated, and possibly a bit humble? It may seem like a big deal to you, but be more self aware than that. It's good to have confidence, but we've barely stepped in the door, and your ideas are still delivered in the most inefficient way possible. We could PROBABLY put this together if we were more dedicated to it, or at least give both you and I some valuable experience and a basic engine running to impress those developers you and I are wanting to man the helms of.

Sahaqiel

Balderdash, whether I'm proud to admit it or not, is not something that two people could put together. That's my own fault. Even if it just came down to modeling and programming, we both want a brilliant soundtrack that neither of us knows how to make, and I know I want cinematography that I don't know the first thing about doing, not to mention things like designing pause screens and loading screens and menus and the sleuth of other things going over my head. I got really excited about it, and kept building and building and building way past what two people could do. I'm saying this because when you made your comment on the first page of this thread, that this was more something I was gung ho about and that you just kind of wanted to help with, I started treating it like it was just that; That I was the person in charge of the idea for Balderdash. So I treated it like it was my thing.

And of course, like I said, I tried coming up with other ideas to substitute Balderdash for us. I even tried starting with just game design documents to build off of. Here's an example (the format was stolen from tumblr user tgweaver):

This is a sample my initial attempt at a game design document. I remember making more pictures for it until my mac crashed while I was working on them and many of them were lost. Then I realized I was making a really kiddish, unprofessional document and felt awful about that. And even then, even though I specifically designed this game to be much easier to make, I still let it inflate. This is one of those throw away ideas with plentiful elbow room that if I had the opportunity to, I would propose to a studio to make not in such a way that we strictly adhere to the document, but in such a way that we can deviate from the original and still arrive at an end product with much the same effect. Personally, I was especially excited about what the gameplay was supposed to be, and why it was simultaneously cheap to make but still very diverse, or where all that elbow room is, or the setting and story, but I'm not even going to go into it, because I could go on about it forever. And that's the problem, is that I let myself make a game that I could go on about forever. Even if its significantly easier than Balderdash, It's not something just two people can do anymore. This is not the first throwaway idea I have done this with and it likely wont be the last.

Every time I sit down with any inspiration, it inflates. I can never let myself be in charge of making some goofy little game, or song, or comic, because it always turns into a gigantic thing. It's part of why I have so much trouble finishing anything specific. I spend so much time building up on it, constantly pushing that end goal further and further away from myself, always trying to make it better and better but never finishing it. That's exactly what's happened with Balderdash.

My point is, if you and I are going to be working together on a game, it would probably be much better if you came up with the idea and things. If I do the idea I'm going to take what should have been a routine trip to white castle into a night of wild adventure and so on and so forth. You propose an Idea, and I'll do my best to adhere to it.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

This is the second time in a novella you've written to me that you've sincerely called me an anti conformist.

It's that sometimes, you say things that are ill-informed. Sometimes you will sincerely say you don't like something when you really don't have much experience in it. For instance, things fangirls fangirl over. They have merits in some areas, but you will get angry at things like art styles or pretty people. You haven't truly experienced enough of it to be fed up with it, and it's not an objective opinion. It's anti-conformity.

Isn't that the point that I made already? I can remember several times when I said this was the plan.

My point was that you didn't adhere to that plan. You didn't follow up with creating concepts that look attractive to developers or anything, and you gave up on Blender pretty quickly. More on that later.

Balderdash is going to have characters that are built five heads high [...]

Out of the paragraph you responded to, you only responded to the one dealing with style. I never implied anything about a realistic world, I told you to figure out things linearly. I don't think you actually responded to anything in that paragraph. Lay out the gameplay and make sure, with the best of your conviction, that it will be pretty good for a first shot, and make sure your plot transitions well from beginning to end, and make sure the finale ties up loose ends, etc.

I'll give you the paragraph again, with the part you responded to cut out.

This is kind of what was bugging me the whole time you and me talked about Balderdash. I'm glad you have confidence in the world you've built and the concepts you want to put forth, but you weren't quite considerate of my own goals and progress, or how I felt about some of the things. You talk about it like it's a monument to human success and creativity, like it's going to be this colossal game-changing thing that will leave a mark on the industry forever, and talk about them with such gusto, it was hard to say anything to you. I want you to know that I'm concerned about a lot of the things you've told me about, and I want to give you my input, but I think you should cool your jets for a second and make sure you have everything figured out linearly, and actually leave yourself open for input. Almost all of the stuff you've told me is about the plot and offhandedly about the presentation, and most of it is one-sided conversation that bounces everywhere. Lay down the gameplay, make sure you can make it work, develop a style that isn't intentionally unattractive, unused, or rugged, and make sure it will tie up nicely in the end.

------

Altogether you spent about a month at my house this summer. You should know the kind of things that go on there, and I promise you it's not the kind of thing that would be permitted to happen inside a game design studio. "There are going to be hiccups and problems that you need to consult with a lot of people with and it won't necessarily be easy in terms of how much time you spend on it." That's a problem for when people are discussing the game development itself. My house isn't like that. At the beginning of the summer when I got back on my first day, I was sitting in front of my computer looking up blender tutorials when my mom asked me what my plans were for this summer. I told her I really wanted to work on this game, and she laughed in my face and told me to get a job. My grandma moved in, and every hour was asking me to walk her dog tasha, or make sure tasha was entertained, or go to the store with her to buy food, and then come home and help her cook that, so I can listen to her talk about how I clearly don't appreciate my parents paying my way through college because I'm more apt to spend time trying to get work done in my room than I am to do the dishes. [sister stuff]

I'm saying that the situation at your house will stress you out and waste as much time as some problems may waste in a game studio. Hopefully people in a game studio would challenge you just as much as your mom, too, if they think something is wrong. I'm not saying that game studios are like the reality television that is your house, I'm saying that you need to learn how to deal with those stressors efficiently, because game development is going to have a deadline, and when you mess up, it could take months to undo damage, because it's so multifaceted. You have the programming, artwork, sound, design, etc. I hear replacing a model would take like a month of work as opposed to just changing the color scheme of the character. When I was working on mFufni's Adventure on a deadline, for instance, I did pretty much everything I could nonstop and it still wasn't enough to get all the features in. The time I wasted figuring out problems set me back by whole days. And that's just a small scale, single-person application. It takes calculated efficiency to work on any large scale production.

Balderdash, whether I'm proud to admit it or not, is not something that two people could put together.

I'm not only a programmer, my other passion is trying to learn how to put music together. I promised kaffles that I would study more into my planned profession first, so I am, and I don't have money to buy equipment, but I'm working on that too. Cinematography won't be as big of an issue because we can still put something together. I admit I'm definitely not as gung-ho as you for this idea, but still, at least leave yourself open for input? Like I said you always talk about it like the pinnacle of human thought and never ask how it might be improved. Rather than aiming to put the whole thing together, I am saying we should have at least tried to put something together, rather than get no work done on it.

This is a sample my initial attempt at a game design document. [...]

The idea that you've told me that I like the most out of all the ideas you've told me is the one where you are on the way to a fight, and a tall figure is preventing you from going the opposite direction, and there is chanting that gets progressively louder and more complex, until you fight the guy at the end. That is simple and doable, and you haven't mentioned it since. It is simple and hard to overcomplicate.

Every time I sit down with any inspiration, it inflates.

because it always turns into a gigantic thing

I spend so much time building up on it

You act like you are the only one in the room with ideas.

My point is, if you and I are going to be working together on a game, it would probably be much better if you came up with the idea and things. If I do the idea I'm going to take what should have been a routine trip to white castle into a night of wild adventure and so on and so forth. You propose an Idea, and I'll do my best to adhere to it.

You act like you are the only one in the room with ideas.

That's the biggest qualm I have. You just implied that I am not capable of the same level of creative thought you are. I guess I don't talk about my ideas as much with you as you do with other people, but it's unfair to assume that I'm just the uncreative code monkey. Honestly, I don't think of myself as 100% a programmer. I count on the concepts I create and work towards matching them with my coding skills. I have experience in creating stories built around concepts, and making the world work. I'm not going to say that everything I do is ironclad or that they can't possibly be improved or accomplished with limited staff, but I do take simple things way too far.

I'm also pretty annoyed that you didn't ever try to come to my house again after giving up on Blender and Balderdash simultaneously, even though you agreed it was a much more productivity-oriented environment. You still suffered the same time wasting problems I told you about. The creative process isn't unfaltering when you have quiet hours to yourself. You're the one imposing limits on yourself, not the game design. We were in it for the experience, not to complete the whole thing, and you decided to not gain experience, so it will take that much longer to complete the whole thing.

Maybe I just haven't talked with you about my projects as much. When I do, we tend to shift to your topic anyway, so here's mFufni's Adventure in a nutshell. Keep in mind that this all runs in Command Prompt. It's like building a catapult out of twigs, here.

You start as the main character. For all intents and purposes, he is mFufni, but he's also interchangeable with Muffin.

1. The main character is a descendant of the main character from mFufni's Adventure 1. The descendants of his ancestor's enemies have trapped you in the Grid-Based Grid. This is a metaphor for Hnet users shipping Muffin and Fort. More on that later.
   

• All text is presented in typewriter form.
  

1. You have a general difficulty setting, and a six character name, at level 1, with 10 HP, 10 Torches, 0 Keys, 0 ExP, and 0 Gems.
   

• In order of easiest to hardest, the difficulty settings are Cascade, Ganny, mFufni. Cascade and Ganny bear no relevance to the metaphor. It's just that Cascade finds it too hard, and Ganny has always been a faithful tester.
  
• Torches, of course, are your thrown weapon. This is just the regular HoT related joke. Torches are one-hit kill (also the inside joke), but the distance at which you can throw them is dependent upon your level. For each level, you throw it four spaces farther. When the torch travels its maximum distance, it becomes an obtainable torch item again. Torches also stick into walls to become grabable. This can become useful, as they create obstacles enemies can't pass through.
  
• ExP stands for Exploration Points. Instead of grinding, you level by exploring the contents of the Grid-Based Grid. The more spaces you travel, the more ExP you gain. Each time you level, it restores your HP.
  
• HP is also known as Love. More on that later.
  
• The maximum amount for each of these is 10, with Gems at a cap of 100. You gain Gems in increments of 10, so it's consistent.
  

You start in the Grid-Based Grid, which is a collection of squares that house Forts. The game is top-down four-directional.

1. To traverse the Grid-Based Grid, you have to unlock locks that open new areas with Keys.
   
   
2. Forts house Keys, which are always in the center of the map. Keys are your escape point. You instantly exit the dungeon upon getting the Key.
   

Each Fort has a randomly generated pseudo-maze that gets more complex as your difficulty increases.

1. Forts house fR0ts, the basic enemy. They move randomly. fR0ts have a one in ten chance of spawning in MURDERMODE.
   

• Each time you enter a Fort, you increase your Fort difficulty level by one. For each increment, more fR0ts spawn, and the more complex the maze becomes. This is a metaphor for more problems arising the more you get to know a person. Namely Fort.
  
• You get one torch each time you enter a Fort, as a convenience to the player. You can choose to go directly for the key or to defeat all the fR0ts.
  
• The cap for difficulty is 10 in Cascade mode, and 15 in Ganny and mFufni modes. in mFufni mode, all fR0ts spawn in MURDERMODE.
  

1. When in MURDERMODE, they are referred to as MURDERMODEs. They are red and solid, as opposed to the regular white outline.
   
   
2. MURDERMODEs are always moving towards you, which sometimes causes them to stack, which increases their "health".
   
   
3. Forts are a metaphor for Muffin being inside Fortissimo and stealing the keys to her heart, fighting her yandere side (MURDERMODEs) and her detachment from showing her emotions, or her tsundere side (fR0ts).
   

• fR0ts can drop torches (metaphor for social cues needed to further attack her detachment), Gems (Really more gameplay oriented, don't have much of a reasoning for it), and Love, which increases your HP. This is obviously a metaphor for getting love by overcoming obstacles, but also a joke that Muffin can't live without Fort's love.
  

1. You always spawn in the corners of the Forts, because it's the farthest distance away from the Key you can get, and forces you to travel through the Fort's maze. She is intentionally distancing you from access to her heart, because of her tsundere side.
   

There is a shop in the center of the Grid-Based Grid.

1. The shop is run by Master Bizarre/Bazaar. Obvious reference.
   

• He is a giant floating face. I made it so his mouth moves for every four letters he says. Each word he says is around four letters long, so it actually looks like he's talking.
  

1. He sells single Love hearts for 10G, a bag of three torches for 30G, a FasTravel Charm, and the Golden Whale Punch.
   

• FasTravel allows you to travel straight through overworld Forts, as most of the time you're required to walk around them
  
• The Golden Whale punch replaces the Torch. You can only buy it with 100G if you're level 10, which requires you travel the entire map. It travels infinitely far and doesn't require you to restock on Torches. This is a reference to when I told Muffin I would punch him in the face with a whale, once. Later, Muffin discovered and wore a tie with golden whales on it. This as the ultimate weapon is a joke about the tie being irresistable to Fort.
  

1. His dialogues when you decline purchases changes based on three things: Whether you have enough money, whether you already have too much of an item, and if you have enough money but decline the offer.
   

Your goal is to get to the upper left hand corner of the screen, where the final boss resides

1. The final boss is a giant floating bear head in space, which is a reference to the bear that killed your companion in mFufni's 1 by setting him on fire. There really isn't a metaphor, I just wanted the final boss to be completely different than the previous gameplay. If I could compare it to anything it would be like Kirby's final boss, where it's suddenly a space shooter. In fact, it does just that, and becomes a space shooter. Your character suddenly takes off into space without any context.
   

• Your torches still travel the same distance and each take one hitpoint of the boss away. It will be very difficult to defeat the boss without the Golden Whale Punch, which encourages you traverse the whole land and buy the Golden Whale Punch.
  
• You still have 10 max hitpoints, but you have infinite torches. the distance you throw them per level doesn't change. You can spam them infinitely, but they disappear at the end of their use.
  

1. The final boss has a yet-defined amount of HP. Something like a thousand.
   

• The giant floating bear head, when idle, moves up and down according to your position, and has three facing positions: Up, Middle, and Down. His nose is the weak point.
  
• It has two attacks, so far. Before his ramming attack, he flashes yellow, then charges through most of the screem. Before his shooting attack, he flashes red, then shoots three MURDERMODEs at you. They fly off the screen, so they aren't as deadly as normal, but they still move up and down to try and hurt you as they fly off screen. if you manage to kill one, you can grab a Love heart.
  
• I originally planned a "charge phase", which would make you fly off to the left of the screen, then charge at the GFBH, then have you enact a quick time event to jump and slam into the GFBH, but it's too complicated and would slow performance down by a lot.
  

1. The ending isn't planned out yet; I will plan it with I get there, but for now it has a filler ending, where the GFBH reveals a bunch of never-mentioned plot devices and resolutions to plot points that were never established.
   

I have more planned to make the regular gameplay and the boss fight more interesting that involves changing the window size and being generally crazy, In addition to the single player above, I planned out the two player (Battle and Together modes), and the Speedrun mode.

Then there's the plethora of options I want to include, as well as controller support. This hasn't even talked about presentation or sound design, but that's the most basic part of the whole thing.

But the point is that I made an adventure game that's also an obscure dating sim based almost entirely on Muffin x Fort. This was the bare minimum:

Draw a Tic-Tac-Toe board.

1. Input coordinates in "x y" format
   

Redraw a new Tic-Tac-Toe board underneath the previous one

1. Switch turns
   

If a winning combination is achieved, the current player has won.

I could have even copypasted a Tic-Tac-Toe program from the internet and gotten the grade. So instead of something stupid like that I planned a basic concept and built upon it until it reached critical mass. I could give it more of an involved story and more cinematics, but the fact that I have any of those is a fairly big deal. This isn't my craziest project, either. And it's not exclusively because I wanted to gain experience, but also just because I thought it would be funny to have this gigantic overcomplicated game in something so simple of a platform. Operating under strict limitations as to what I can do, I managed to plan this out in like a couple weeks, then lay it all down in a little more than a month or so, and I want to rework it so I can get a better grasp of code design. But I still rely heavily on my ability to work concepts and have them all fit together. Let me reiterate: I did not need to do all that. In fact, I probably would have gotten a higher grade if I was lazy, because since my game was unfinished and had design flaws I had limited time to fix, I got like a high B. It required more people or more time, and I still went through with it and put out a product that at least gives me experience and more credibility for when I present it to people later, like I wanted you to do with Balderdash.

The most important part is that I listen to external input, though, and always doubt the quality of what I'm working with to a certain extent so I can solve problems in the future without being too attached to an idea. Everything can be improved upon, so it's important to ask what can be improved and take a different perspective into consideration. That you didn't do that with your only other team member and then deciding that the team member does not matter because it requires more than one team member really riled me up.

Don't sell me short.

[pheonix561 2080]

Okay so me and saha talked so even though I didn't read the above novella we can all stop worrying about all this awkward sexual tension and read the convo I just had with him about character design things.

I won't lie, a lot of the reason I never post anything in this thread is because I'm so ridiculously scared of my ideas being stolen. I actually think about this game idea a lot, I really do. But I'm even more scared of someone taking all of that away, so I never post in here. But I know I need to feed you guys every now and then so I try to post something or other.

Anyways the convo is spoiled because I'm copying it directly from skype:

(Pheo)

you mentioned animal squadrons

well

if there's any way I think I could put your mind at ease about that

I think the best thing I could do would be to explain the design of the beavers to you

no I dont have anything scanned so

you'll just have to uh

picture it

but

Sahaqiel 8:22 PM

Well see, it's like I was talking about with subtlety

the designs don't appear very subtle

Pheonix 561 8:22 PM

oh

Sahaqiel 8:22 PM

Rather than have a squadron named after an animal

and then like

if you take one look at them you say

"That looks like an elephant"

It would be better to have it the other way around

To where it doesn't look like anything, but when someone points it out, you're like, "Woah, that's totally an elephant."

Pheonix 561 8:23 PM

that was the point

or at least

maybe I'm exagerrating it a bit

look just

let me show you this

http://www.promo-who...20090724801.jpg

baseball helmet

that's the beaver helmet

except is has a face visor

a big square face visor with a notch in the middle for their noses

Sahaqiel 8:23 PM

Yeah.

For world building, I think it'd be cool if you could have a common design aspect associated with the soldiers

Pheonix 561 8:24 PM

CAN WE JUST

CAN I JUST

EXPLAIN THE BEAVERS

BEFORE WE TANGENT

Sahaqiel 8:24 PM

yeah go for it.

Pheonix 561 8:24 PM

there is one, yeah

but uh

I'll get into that

so

see the whole on the side of the helmet

supposed to be an eye

or at least

played off like that once you see its a beaver hed

but this is just a baseball helmet

one thing about the beavers

is that they carry around baseball bats, too

thats their melee weapon

as opposed to a knife some soldiers have irl

or machete I guess

depending on who you are and how you roll

they carry these bats in a sheath kind of thing at their hip

s

and the bat is heald in this sort of fish net sheathe thing

played off like a beaver's tail

those are the only two things about the beavers that you look at and say "its a beaver"

the rest is like

knee pads

elbow pads

body armor

the beavers are a grounded unit

they dont fly like elephants or cheetahs or salmon

or horses or pigs and so on

one thing about the beavers that I think is funny

They carry around baseball bats

and their visors are basically their giant beaver teeth

and of course the baseball helmets

and then you know they're there for combat

and you're just left to draw the conclusion

that they're running around knocking each other's teeth in

its supposed to be funny to think about or look at

one thing, about the beavers

their general

Commanding officer*

like how rush is the CO of the elephants

their general isn't a beaver, but actually a platypus

so his helmet is actually unique, and beak shaped

which gives me like

Sahaqiel 8:30 PM

See, beaks are kind of hard to be subtle about

Pheonix 561 8:30 PM

all sorts of opportunity to pull the visor beak thing over his eyes

no no no see

yeah I get that

I get that thats your point but

the thing about the beavers

is that they're supposed to be really satirical

Sahaqiel 8:30 PM

I have a design in mind that might help and bring about consistency

also continue

Pheonix 561 8:30 PM

HANG ON

JUST HANG ON

ILL TALK ABOUT WHAT I WANT FOR CONSISTENCY

I HAVE A DESIGN FOR CONSISTENCY JUST WAIT JESUS CHRIST

the beavers

satirical

see

I can see people looking at a game like balderdash

and knowing its a war game

and seeing what the standard for wargames is today

and then looking at something like balderdash

who's name literally means "ridiculous, absurd, etc"

and still saying "Man this game isn't realistic enough"

"Should be more like CoD"

the beaver soldiers are supposed to be the landlocked units that parody the soldiers in those games

they just

look goofy

act goofy

but also play themselves off like CoD soldiers

what with being landlocked and all

and then

their leader

the platypus

instead of having a baseball bat (he doesn't have teeth on his beak)

he has a katana

because

I can also picture people looking at this game like

"Man these characters just lack that edge"

"That cool thing that guys like raiden have"

I mean I know you saw revengeance

like that game just looks so goofy

but I can imagine people looking at something like balderdash

and saying "this needs to be more over the top"

and so there's this character

played off like a raiden parody

he has the katana

and he has a puppying duck bill on his head

just

running around

HAIYAAAAAAAA DUCK

Yes beaks are hard to be subtle about

this is true

but

this is just

too puppying hilarious in my head to pass up

it must be done

Sahaqiel 8:34 PM

The origin story for Raiden becoming like that is even more ridiculous

Pheonix 561 8:34 PM

yeah I skimmed it on wikipedia but I forgot about it

Sahaqiel 8:34 PM

he's actually kind of satire

Pheonix 561 8:34 PM

nanomachines

Well, there you go then

point is

the beavers are satirical

and they might be a little less subtle than you might like but

I'm okay with that

also, you were talking abotu consistency

Sahaqiel 8:35 PM

(he found out his life was a lie so he went out and got drunk, left his wife and kid, and then /somehow/ became a nanomachine samurai)

Pheonix 561 8:35 PM

well

yeah yeah MGS does silly things yeah yeah

there are vampires and bee controlling dudes it just happens

"he's not technically a vampire" I KNOW

but

consistency

most of the designs

or at least, I know this holds true for the crocodiles and the beavers

after there's their suit defining stuff

they've got these undersuits that are pretty much the standard gear for at least everyone who's on the ground

assuming I add more ground units than just soldiers and snipers

those like

picture a modern soldier

with his shirt and pants

the tan shirt and pants that he tucks into his boots

That kind of thing

I think the air units

would have much more flight appropriate gear

like skintight stuff maybe

depends on how armored they are I guess

Sahaqiel 8:38 PM

I was thinking of an armor design ya.

Pheonix 561 8:39 PM

the armor and guns and fighting/weapon style and stuff

thats all unique to each design

but the basics still hold true

I can only imagine there being an exception for like

the cheetahs

because they're supposed to be the elites

I know Vernon wears a "military apron" as I have come to call it

APRON YOU SAY

APRONS ARE FOR WOMEN AND KITCHENS

well see

you know tabards in WoW

those things people wear over their armor

shows designs and stuff

front and back

Sahaqiel 8:40 PM

yeah

Pheonix 561 8:40 PM

yeah

well

I liked the idea of cheetahs wearing those

because they're elites and stuff

but

they've got all this stuff on their backs

engines and wings and things

flying stuff

what have you

why would anyone drape a tabard over that

thats just

not sensible

so I thought it would only work in front

and then I'm all "thats just an apron"

but then

I thought about how intimidating aprons can be

on guys like

butchers and stuff

GoW has butchers that wear those etc

I know there's plenty more but

GoW comes to mind when I talk about intimidation and aprons

and

Sahaqiel 8:42 PM

Or just any beefy butcher guy.

Pheonix 561 8:42 PM

yeah

"plenty more" etc

And I think making it a standard of the balder army, or even of all the armies

horses and pigs having them too

would be really interesting

aprons being a thing of respect in this world

they can have medals and things on them

and then

when it comes to flight, I thought

it would be funny

if they just kind of rolled up like blinds

played for humor

not sure how well that'd work, maybe they just tear them off

only wear the aprons for formal occasions

but, yeah

also

I remember saying often when I make decisions I take into account how people react to them

and I usually try to do it in a way that they can laugh at it

"Balder"

"more like BLADDER"

"MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY TO BE /BALDER/"

AH HA HA HA

well I mean they're wearing puppying aprons

I mean come on

Sahaqiel 8:44 PM

lol

Pheonix 561 8:44 PM

I can picture some fan girl looking at it like

"gosh I can imagine Vernon"

"this manly respected hero/general"

"just wearing a pretty pink apron with hearts"

"baking cookies for his little brother rushmore"

assuming there are fangirls

I'm literally baiting that to happen

anyways what were you saying

oh there's also a design I had in mind for the cheetah aprons but

just

you were gonna say something I think

Sahaqiel 8:46 PM

nop

Pheonix 561 8:46 PM

oh

well the cheetah's apron design

here look at this

http://3.bp.blogspot...600/cheetah.jpg

see the cheetah's face

the two eyes

and then

the nose

and there's this black kind of line thing around their eyes

it just comes down to the mouth which goes up to the nose

kind of makes a W

I want to do that shape thing for their tabards

right now though I'm just

trying to figure out how the hell to work a "W" in there

like what does the W stand for

or maybe its not a W

maybe its from some alphabet I can't recognize

or can't put my finger on

if you have any suggestions I am completely open to them

because the only semblance of an idea I have for that W is like

Making "Vernon" spelled "Wernon" but still pronounced "Vernon" like he's russin

russian*

but then what the hell is the point of doing that

he's not even russian

Sahaqiel 8:49 PM

more german

Pheonix 561 8:49 PM

russians do it too dick

wassily kendinksy

Sahaqiel 8:49 PM

but the germans are known more for it ok

Pheonix 561 8:49 PM

Nigga who cares

the point is it doesn't make a difference because its dumb

anyways

if you can think of a W or something

something for the cheetahs

so I can make that make sense

that would be great

but I have to get back to drawing

because its been like two hours and I haven't been drawing

you talk too much

And remember, I'm always open to suggestions, which is how cheetahs even got into the game (Thanks Rika!). If you can think of any way to solve that "W" problem, I'd love to hear it. "What double you problem?" I hear you ask? Well read the puppying convo you dick.

[pheonix561 2080]

You are the worst kind of person