very good news! big progress on Boy Arena!

i was finally able to hunker down and settle on a project that i think i can complete in a reasonable time frame, and thats a re-write/port of an older game i made called "Boy Arena"! i've shown / talked about this game before, but not in much detail.. i've made various "Boy" games over the years as a pet project for my friends, but was never able to release any of them because of the networking being ass. but NO MORE! this time around i have an actual plan for release that would make joining and hosting a cinch, that being steam friends list integration, so i'm all pumped up now!

so what is "Boy Arena" anyways? it's an arena pvp shooter! a very silly one that i'd consider a "party" game as well. it's meant to be much more accessible than something like quake or unreal tournament but still having the mechanical depth to keep things interesting in the long-term! not dumbing down mechanics, but rather lowering the skill floor while keeping the skill ceiling in tact! there's also going to be silly comeback mechanics to help out people who are falling behind + give newer players a better chance at keeping up without going full on "mario kart" in that regard, no blue shell here!

i believe the largest problem with traditional arena shooters is that they tend to be very overly skill-reliant in my opinion, which can be fun if you're one of the good players, but if you're not so good then you'll really really struggle to keep up with all the players who not only can frag better, but are running around the map collecting everything being super buffed up. this is something i'd really like to address, to keep things fun for not only the worse players, but also the players in those top spots to keep competition closer, without taking away that reward for investing in your skills!

progress has been absolutely crazy good this past week!! i've gotten the game in a state that it would previously have taken me at least a month to get it in, partly helped by a portion of it being ported/copied code from an older iteration of Boy Arena, but mostly because i'm much more experienced now and have been extremely driven! the only compromise im making with Boy Arena is that it still overly trusts the client for various reasons, so by and large it'd be a game you play exclusively with friends, not really with randoms online

i spoke to my prescriber about getting off my anti-psychotic and we're in the process of weening off of it, and i think it's already paying dividends! that inspiration is coming back, and i'm feeling much more content and confident in what i'm doing now that i have A Project to really work on!

the only thing i'm uncertain of with Boy Arena is how i want to do playtesting if i want to share it with the playtesting server.. notably, there isn't steam integration in the development builds, so there really wouldn't be a convenient way for players to join eachother for the time being. we may have to use a Layer 2 VPN for that, but we'll see! i'll figure something out if i can help it!