Blog | Tech Skull

Disappointment and Progress

11/25/2021

Lego Stud Collector v1.0 Alpha

Much has happened over the past month. Patch v0.6.6 of Bare Backstreets is still in development and has been delayed. Fans and Patreon supporters of JasonAfex can follow the progress here:
https://www.patreon.com/Jasonafex

Featured above is a screenshot from a game that will never be released, and no one will get to play it. LEGO in collaboration with Unity announced on September 29 a contest where participants were tasked with making a LEGO themed video game where the stipulation was that it could only use a single button for gameplay.

Prizes for the contest among other things included the chance that select chosen games could be featured in LEGO box retail stores. Given that LEGO branded games are some of the most entertaining and enjoyable games to play, after learning about this contest just a week prior to the deadline, I decided to throw together a quick game for the contest.

I thought long and hard about what the most enjoyable part of LEGO video games are, and for myself at least I would argue that collecting Studs (which act as in-game currency) is the most enjoyable part of these series of games. Thus I got to work making a game where the sole purpose of it was collecting LEGO studs.

The game was submitted on time before the deadline, but due to an arbitrary rule in the contest guidelines that wasn't well informed (I read the rules at least a dozen times and never saw this); where the rule states that contest entries featuring text in the main image of the thumbnail were disqualified, the game was rejected.

Even though the game was submitted on time as per the contest rules, zero opportunity was granted to amend this minor infraction. The notice states "Awaiting Resubmission", but there was no button, setting, or feasible way to edit the submission. The only way to resubmit the game was to make a new game which was not possible following the deadline as our game was submitted a half hour before and not given review until the next day. Several attempts were made to contact LEGO support for assistance but no one ever replied.

Following the disappointment of not having our game featured among the 100 or so other contest entries which the community was able to see and play, I decided to try and release it as a free game on Steam. I stripped the game of any and all references to LEGO, the LEGO brand, its name, and logo and hoped that it would have been suffice to pass the Steam moderation process, but alas more disappointment.

Even though the game was slated to be released for free, without ads and there was never any intention of making a money from it. Even though it ended up costing me money out of pocket for the $130 steam keys that I never intended to make back, the game is unable to be released due to potential 3rd party copyright infringement.

According to Steam in order to release this game, we require the legal consent of LEGO to do so; which is unlikely to happen given the lack of communication we'd gotten from customer support already.

Even though there are a dozen or more other toy brands that sell the exact same plastic product, the appearance of the game is enough to get it red flagged.

LEGO recently partnered with Unity3D to develop Microgame; an all encompassing plugin for the game creation engine that makes developing games using LEGO assets hassle free. Stating in a press conference that they wanted to see more creations from the community of fans. However without providing a suitable platform outside of contests such as this, there doesn't appear to be any way for Indie Development Studios such as ours to make use of this tool without volatizing a half dozen legal agreements.

Its a shame the work that was done on Stud Collector was ostensibly for nothing and that it wont be available anywhere else aside from the embedded WebGL provided above that was for our entry into the contest. Until a suitable solution has been provided for creators that want to make LEGO themed games, I would advise against using the Microgame plugin as you wont be able to publish anything made with it.

Should anyone who works for LEGO happen to come across this information and wish to contact us to discuss possible solutions, you may email
pocketbuggames@gmail.com

Evan Svendsen
Founder and Lead Developer
Tech Skull Studios

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Collaborating With JasonAfex Games

11/7/2021

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To the loyal fans of JasonAfex, Kabier Arts, Amorous, and Bare Backstreets allow me introduce myself as the new lead developer of Bare Backstreets. I have many names, but in the Furry Fandom I am known as Drake. (twitter.com/DrakeBatesMrD66)
Many of you have probably never heard of me as my sphere of influence is relatively small. Admittedly I am no good at marketing myself. I've never made a post that went viral. None of my creations or content have ever gotten widespread public notoriety. I personally don't enjoy spending my time writing blog posts such as these, as I'd much rather be behind a wall of code busying myself with fixing bugs. Its what I do best and am actually good at.

https://www.furaffinity.net/user/mrd66

Recognizing however the importance of keeping communication with your audience so that there are people actually interested in what you produce once its created. I feel it important to take this time to provide supporters with a face they can associate with the current state of development on Bare Backstreets, Amorous 2 and other projects. This may be the largest amount of eyes I've ever had on something I've written so with that in mind allow me to provide you a brief of where this journey for me began, and where it's headed!

Fellden

I began working with Jason in February. Being a long time fan of his content, I was excited to offer my technical services when I saw his post about a new social media platform for the fandom. While Fur Affinity is the most prominent and widely used website in the furry fandom, much of the original infrastructure that supports the website was developed 20 years ago and hasn't been changed since. It's not as bad anymore, but this has in the past lead to the security of the site being compromised as recent as 4 years ago when the last major hack took place. The outdated code has also limited the overall design that the site can support. For years creators have requested the ability to change their profile name. I've known many creators who change their name will create a brand new account and re upload all their content. The ability to embed content from FA into a personal blog or anywhere custom embed code is supported is a feature that has never existed. Much of the business side of art sales and commissioning artists takes place off site through other means via Twitter, Telegram, and Discord. This is just a brief overview of the many planned features Jason has for Fellden. Given that the project was started from scratch using React, the website would easily support REST API's day 1. Using React allows us to include new and experimental technology into the website that would not only make it functional but look high quality too.

I joined a team of 10 or so furries who were all at various stages of experience. I haven't done much backend work prior and thus learned a lot working alongside the lead backend developer. Given that I don't have a job and work for myself, I had the free time to dedicate my work schedule to this project. All other developers were splitting their time between working jobs for a business or doing school, because of this I soon found myself the lead front end developer on the project. Between February and June I recorded more than 400 hours of work dedicated to developing this website. Due to the legalities of Canadian business law regarding adult content; Jason and his wife Kabs felt that they would be taking on too much risk to be the owners of this website. The individual who was poised to become the American CEO of Fellden had to abruptly leave the project after getting a job working directly on the development of React. In order to prevent the possibility of proprietary code being leaked; his NDA and non compete clause prevented him from continuing to work on Fellden. Given that I am also Canadian, and unable to take over as the owner of this project, development on Fellden has been paused until a suitable vendor in another country with more forgiving laws can take over.

Amorous 2

My focus shifted in late June to developing the early prototype for
Amorous 2. For all the experience I have developing websites, my experience with game development is my bread and butter. For the past 9 years I have been working on and off developing video games. Starting in high school building mobile apps with my brother and his friends. Since then I have participated in 4 Global Game Jams and released 2 more games while attending school for computer science in Lethbridge. Most recently last year was the release of my very first Steam title: Halloween Decoration Sandbox. In October I released the long overdue VR support for the game that had been promised on launch, but was never worked on due to my involvement with Fellden.

When Jason approached me with his plans for a 3 dimension sequel to his smash hit furry dating game Amorous; I assured him that while ambitious it was very much doable and referred him to my business partner King Friday. King brings to the table more then a decade of modeling and 3D animation experience as well as his familiarity with the modding community. He has helped greatly with the Halloween game and can recreate 3D assets to a surprising level of accuracy given a reference image.

There are about 6 people actively working on Amorous 2 at this point. Over the summer we have worked to create assets and the initial code infrastructure for the game. Much of the code that is being used in Amorous 2 predates any plans for the game as it comes from Halloween Decoration Sandbox. I specifically engineered the code to be as versatile and generic as possible so that it can be pulled into any project and start working out of the box. This same code is now being used to refactor Bare Backstreets and will continue to be used in any and all future projects of Tech Skull Studios.

Bare Backstreets

     I was presented in September with the opportunity to join as the lead developer of Bare Backstreets after my predecessor had to leave. This was happening as my former roommate was evicting me. Throughout September I did my best to manage my time between getting up to speed on the project and packing to move back to my parents house. The development for this game is over 5 years old and has had at least 3 other programmers working on it. In that time, much has changed since the game was first envisioned. As each developer took over the project from the last, the already existing code was left in place as the new code & assets were added into separate folders.

     This resulted in a project that was far more bloated then it had to be. Taking up 30GB on my hard drive for what should realistically be 2 or 3 given the scope of the game. In my short time working on the project I have done much to cull out the unneeded and outdated resources. I began with a full code refactor of every file in the project. This accomplished 2 things one of which was familiarizing myself with what all of the code does and where the files for each feature are located. This also allowed me to identify any mistakes in the code that may have been overlooked (sometimes a second eye is all it takes to identify issues). As a result of refactoring the code, this cleaned up much of the performance issues that I believe were causing complete game shutdowns on lower performance PC's.

     The unfortunate side effect of doing such however is that it exposed several areas of unstable code that were broken post refactor. In order to begin work on adding the new requested Snoggler enemy type, I've first had to focus on stabilizing the project. Under the hood it makes the development process much easier going forward, but from a user perspective not much will have changed, and certain things that were previously working may now be broken. Its vital as we get closer to the release of patch 0.6.6 that we get as much feedback from the community afterwards to identify these bugs.

     Now that the project has been reworked so instead of being fragmented across 3 or more different locations all code will be centralized into one place it will make both my job easier but also the job of any future developer who takes over the project afterwards. Updates should resume monthly following this delay, and as I remain in communication with the fans of Bare Backstreets we can better identify the most important features and bugs to be worked on.

Future Plans

The eventual goal for both Bare Backstreets and Amorous 2 is to have them available within the Steam store. BBS can very realistically be released to Steam within the first quarter of 2022. In the mean time, the development for Amorous 2 continues to progress as King Friday has taken over as the lead developer. My time working on BBS will be short as I have been provisionally accepted for a career in the Canadian Air Force as an IT consultant. I underwent the process of the aptitude test in late August and have been told that I need to pay off my past debt before proceeding. Which Jason has provided me with the opportunity to work off my debt where no other business or company would. I am excited for what the future will bring, but until the basic training for the military is scheduled I will remain on as the lead developer of Bare Backstreets. I hope to leave the game in a state that will make the job much easier for whoever takes over after I am gone. I plan to implement some automated unit testing that will help to automatically identify when and where the code will break.

I appreciate anyone who has taken the time to read this, and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Drake Bates
Founder and Lead Developer
Tech Skull Studios

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Halloween Decoration Sandbox | Now With Virtual Reality

11/6/2021

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When the idea for Halloween Decoration Sandbox came to me late last summer, I had always envisioned the game to support virtual reality headsets. At the time our production studio did not even own a headset to test with. Big mistake! Upon release on
October 26, 2020 we had to scrub all social media reference to VR as the game did not support it. Following the release of the game, work began on other projects due to Halloween no longer being relevant as we went into the holiday season.

The last release v1.04 was put out just prior to the Steam Winter sale in 2020. VR support still not added. Some time into the new year the require hardware was eventually procured, but due to our lead developer's participation in the development of a new Furry Social platform being spearheaded by Jasonafex; work on game development was placed on the top shelf.

As Halloween was once again fast approaching, the mission to add VR support was on. On October 30, 2021 a new patch was released for Halloween Decoration Sandbox to support VR headsets. Just in time for the occasion.
Many more features are planned yet for this game including support for Steam Workshop to allow creators to share their sandboxes with the community of fans. We pledge to continue work on this game and others, and will do our best to keep in better communication with our audience going forward.

v1.2 Patch Notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1438750/view/3099033047021125356

Purchase The Game On Steam

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New website

11/4/2014

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Hey guys, Well, We are working on the website since it has been getting depressing and frankly, It sucked. It is in the process of being updated and should be done in the next week or two

Check back daily to see some awesome improvements

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New Game

2/14/2014

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Hey guys its me Addison again with more news. Today I finished the first rough draft of the world(Looking pretty nice with the new assets that unity has :-) ). I have thought about making a beta for you to try this year while we work for the final release. The beta is not official as we are discussing whether we can pull one off or not. And the game genre has been decided (why is everyone obsessed with Slender Man). Not to much was given away.

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New News on our games

2/13/2014

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Hey guys it is me Addison and I have new Information on our games. We are trying to make a new game that will be really big but it won't be as big as say Skyrim and it won't be fantasy. Don't expect this game to be the next Call of Duty either, it won;t have the greatest graphics but it will be big. Still not sure what the game will be called but it will be fun, hopefully. I have been trying to create a new type of open world that is going to be fun. More information will come soon. shooting for a summer 2015 release date, and yes that means we will be cancelling False Reality. This game will become my main focus besides a different project that will be announced soon. Very soon. Like this spring, oh wait I've said to much sorry.

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