Weekly Update - 288 - 9/15/25

Snake be all like, HMMMMMMMMM. And did you know that Cerellia's base fur color is very close to that puke green BG color I use for sketching on? It wasn't on purpose, it just turned out that way. Her color is yellow, but the slight green hue nicely contrasts with the much brighter yellows of her tracing and hair. And her eyes are more of a sea-green. I usually shade her with a touch of blue.

Comics this week?

Fuck, I don't know. I'm so... what's a good word for it... neurasthenic. Perfect. But after striving to try and post multiple comics a week, I think I may have to just accept the fact I'm at best a one-per-week kind of creator. I just don't like rushing myself when I draw. I much prefer to take my time and experiment and fuck around.

God Slayers: I want to get it done. If I can get the linework done by EoD Tuesday then maybe.

Solipsus: Current page is coming along, flat colors are about 70% done. So probably?

I really wish I could be more clear about whether or not I expect to get comics done this week, but it's harder to predict how the week might go, especially when I'm simply not feeling my best.

Silksong is still fun. Though I've been craving more base-buildery type games lately and I've dipped my toes back into Satisfactory of late.

There's also still time to vote in this thing!

I've been doing a poor job of talking about it, so there's not a hugely incredible number of votes yet, it's still pretty even across the board.

Ramble:

I just need to rant about this some more, because I JUST DON'T CARE ABOUT IT SO MUCH.

So... anyone remember Starcraft 2? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, if any of you ever played the original Zombitastrophe mod or whatever it was called, surprise! I was its creator, and I'm here to tell you it's officially 100% dead now. I voluntarily took it down. Its legacy will live on through its scripts, as the important components are out there, but the original is dead (and other people were already taking credit for it anyway so I don't even know why any of this matters. Does anyone even still play that game?)

The "extension mod" feature for SC2 was released back in 2014 while I was still working at Blizzard, and these were effectively plug-and-play scripts that could be applied to any map, adding a lot more flexibility to the custom maps scene. Now instead of publishing a custom map with static terrain, it was possible to publish a fully independent script/data package that could be run on all maps, any map. When the feature launched, I shotgunned out a fistful of mods I'd been working in internal builds to get them out day one as examples for other modders to look at and learn from in the hopes of dropping a bunch of whacky ideas out there and kickstarting the extension mod community. Truth told, it probably didn't need my help, but I wanted to help anyway.

Of those five or so mods, only Zombitastrophe (I -think- that's what I originally called it. At some point admins changed its name ever so slightly for some bizarre reason (probably false reports by dicks) and I don't remember what the original was. I wanted to call it Zombocalpyse but someone stole that name the first minute the feature went live) Anyway, it was the only mod of mine that got any attention, because it had a couple neat things going on that were implemented in a very clean way. Chief among them was a neato little recursive function I wrote for spawning enemies in the relative center of a map regardless of a map's terrain. Since mods could be loaded onto a map of any size and any shape, the map itself became a variable and it was a challenge (at least initially, I don't know if they ever changed/improved it) to specify regions on the map for say, consistently or predictably spawning ground units. By default, you could specify points, basically coordinates, or regions centered around points, but if the point specified was unwalkable, the game would sort of try to find a valid point that was kinda close, but it wouldn't search very far from the chosen point, and if it couldn't find a valid point it'd simply fail to spawn the unit. Alternatively you could specify a region around a point, but the game would only pick random points within that region, and if the region was too big you'd lose control over where the units would spawn. Ergo, simply trying to spawn zombies in the center of the map without some clever finagling would often fail on many maps with unwalkable centers (of which there were plenty) and end up making the mod useless on a whole bunch of maps. My mod attempted to solve this problem by recursively "walking" from the corners of the map towards the center (or maybe it was the other way around, I forget), and stopping once it found a valid point that was walkable and also fit within certain parameters. So even if the map had a huge unwalkable section in the middle, the mod would still function, spawning zombies around its edges. Best of all, this function was super lightweight, just a few lines of script. I was pretty proud of it at the time, getting to put some of my limited coding knowledge to use. The mod also had some function to aggro the hundreds of zombies towards the closest building in a way that wouldn't completely melt everyone's hardware, though at the end of the day I think the sheer number of zombies spawned by the mod ended up doing that for some people anyway.

Anyway, just this past week I guess (the year of our lord 2025) some trolls reported my mod for being inappropriate, because, I guess it's some sort of trend now? Exploit the lazy and shitty automated reporting systems for... something? Then profit? Sure, I guess. Kill your own fun and free mod scene by attacking and driving away its creators. Corps are DROOLING to fill that void with paid mods instead, and I'm sure that'll turn out great for everyone. Anyway, speaking of lazy report systems, Blizzard did the stupid thing and actioned my account as a result, because how silly of me to think I shouldn't be penalized for a forgotten mod that's probably older than the people reporting it. It wasn't like a serious action, I didn't get banned or anything, in fact they wouldn't even let me appeal it, because they won't be bothered with normal support tickets these days let alone ones that ask for the overturn of a minor penalty, but given my 20+ year spotless record and my former employment WITH THE DAMN COMPANY, one would think they could cut me some damn slack for a mod I uploaded in 2014 and haven't changed since? I swear this world keeps getting fucking stupider with each passing day.

So if that's how it's gonna be, my solution to this is to delete the mod and all of the others I put up way back in 2014 when the mod feature was first released because I simply don't care. I don't play SC2. SC2 was the game that gave me PTSD because of 3 grueling years of mandatory 60 hour workweeks. Furthermore, I uploaded the mod unencrypted. Other people have had 11 years to steal my scripts and repurpose them however they want, and even just a year or two after I posted it I saw my exact scripts reused in countless mods both credited to me and not, and for the ones that weren't credited I know they were my scripts because they left in all of my disabled debugging scripts as well, so I know my work is still out there in the wild floating around. Furthermore it seems like someone else already uploaded my exact same mod and claimed all the credit for it anyway. Like, yeah, that all sucks, but at the end of the day, I can't be bothered to worry about a mod for a game I don't play. If any of you want the original mod, I think I saved a backup copy before going scorched earth, but honestly I doubt it contains anything of any interest or value these days.

I'll just consider this another nail in the page I ripped out of a chapter that I buried long ago. It sure doesn't help with my existential crisis though. Perhaps that's why, no matter how much I tell myself I don't care, it isn't working. I guess I do kinda care a little bit. People forcing me to destroy something I hoped only to be remembered positively for. Sigh. All I've ever wanted is to feel like something I do matters, but nothing in this age will ever last, will it. Perhaps I should take up stone carving. The digital age is simply too temporary and humans are simply too petty. Or maybe I'M the one that's being petty. I put my mod out there for other people to copy and then I'm upset that it got copied and inevitably reported by some shitty trolls to force me to take it down so they can pretend like theirs was the original? I don't know any more. AITA?

I know I always try to loop back around to something positive, but hope is hard to come by in these days where it feels like only stupidity and evil can ever win, from every tier of human life, whether it's the highest office in the land or the lowliest struggling creator that just wants their existence to be noticed and maybe create something that means something to someone. I guess... I mean... you guys are proof to me that something I'm doing isn't total dogshit. So, as far as hope goes, I simply hope you guys keep enjoying my comics.