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.
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 The outdated code has also limited the overall design that the site can support.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.
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.
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.
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
Founder and Lead Developer
Tech Skull Studios
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