The Real Treasure was the friends we made along the way.
I was told that it's now August.
Howdy there, Chronaria-teers!No? Well, damn. We'll keep workshopping it.
I'm a bit delayed in getting this post out because there are a fair few "balls in the air", as they say in Chess. Like all of you, life for me never seems to slow down. With baby Miller #2 drawing ever nearer, baby Miller #1 seems dead-set on learning how to play JRPGs with her wannabe-weeb Dad. After the long-haul of 148 hours, I finally managed to achieve the platinum trophy in Persona 5: Royal. And boy do I have to say - what a truly fantastic experience it is. I don't need to "glaze" the game any more - see my last news post if you want the scoop.
Outside of that, there have been a lot of moving parts, and I'm excited to talk about some of them.
We're so back.
As I'm writing this, I've played a good 8-or-so hours of the Battlefield 6 Beta. I gotta say - it's gonna be real hard to get anything accomplished when this game drops.
I've met some great friends over the years playing the Battlefield games. This game has been marketed as a successor to Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, and boy does it deliver. While I did enjoy the WWI and WWII settings of BF1 and BFV (respectively), there just really is something special about the modern setting for large-scale combat games. BF2042 was certainly a departure, and there were some things I enjoyed about it. But this here really does feel like a better version of "the good 'ol days", and I'm here for it.
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| We barely knew you, Lord Chungus. But you helped us achieve glory on the battlefield, and we'll (most likely) never forget you. |
And it's just a damn BETA.
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| More concurrent players have played the Battlefield 6 Beta than - get this - CALL OF DUTY. What a time to be a gamer. |
The takeaway is this: if you give the people what they want, they'll support you. For years, the community has asked for a return to what made the series great, and it would seem that the newly-christened Battlefield Studios group has delivered. Time will tell if they can keep this momentum, but it's great for the industry. It would be easy to sit here and bag on studios for "churning out microtransaction slop" or whatever the cool buzzwords are these days, but I also am not financially responsible for keeping billion-dollar corporations (and the thousands of hard-working developers they employ) in existence. I'm truly just glad to see that they trusted the fans, and are being rewarded for it.
While true art is making what you want and hoping people enjoy it as much as you do, this lesson is something I'll keep with me as I continue down the path of making games.
My Mom always said I have a face for radio
In the recent weeks, my wife made me a new friend who has a podcast. It's pretty fantastically dorky, and he was kind enough to have me on it. The show is called Nerd Noise Radio, and it's an awesome NPR-style show celebrating video game music from all different eras. I sat down with St. John for a fantastic two hours of discussing the soundtrack for MAKRANA, and a bunch of other video game tidbits along the way. I'd never met anyone in real life who actually has experience with an Atari Jaguar or Phillips CD-i until now, but man, is this dude knowledgeable on a level I dream of being on.
Here's where you can find his show:
OR LIVE RIGHT BELOW:
Please go give it a listen. Maybe even tell your youth pastor about it, cuz (I'm pretty sure) there's no real swears. "Whatever the hell I want" doesn't really count after all.
The MAKRANA episode is from a sub project of the show called "Channel F", where St. John listens to each track of a specific album and interviews the writers about each one in between. I've enjoyed some of his other work as well - plenty of great "zone out and work on the game" music. Or as the kids are saying, "real lit vibe jams, no cap". Please go give Nerd Noise Radio a listen and support an awesome dude who has been killing it for years!
Once you're done there, give our boy St. John and Nerd Noise Radio a follow at:
MONSTER JAM
A couple weekends back, I had the awesome opportunity to participate in a game jam. For the unwashed, uninitiated among us, a "game jam" is where you are given a set time limit to make a simple game within a given set of rules. It's not intended to be anything ground breaking, but is a great chance for me to work with folks that I don't normally get to, and also to take a break from looking at MAKRANA's code.This year, I chose to do the KenneyJam, which is hosted by a very nice man who is a LEGEND in the game design community. Over the years he has created thousands of free and open-source assets for anyone to use in their game projects. You can see all of his work here. This is a prime example of someone going above and beyond for others, and I'm here for it.
And now the moment you and I have been waiting for: my first released game! No, it's not MAKRANA and it doesn't have anything to do with the Azure's Favor Universe. But I'm proud of what was accomplished here. May I proudly present: The Power to Escape: a KenneyJam2025 Game!
It is free to download on Itch.io at the link above. Sorry in advance to you Mac and Linux weirdos, but this is a Windows-only joint.
This project was particularly awesome because I got to work with my good buddy Jordan Byers from Melody Motion Works. The soundtrack he made for this game far outpaces it's primitive game design, and you can look forward to us doing future projects together!
Always forward, never back
And now an update on MAKRANA.Development continues right along. The menus are functional and intact, the game loop is playable (albeit with severe need for balance passes and tweaks), and the PlayFab system actually has some functionality to it! All-in-all, the Unreal build that began back in February is now significantly further along than all of the Unity versions before it.
Seek ye proof? Okay then:
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| Beginning |
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| End(ish) |
The button layout and design of the current menu will stay the same, but I'm working on building a little bit cooler of a scene than what you see here. Sorry, folks - you'll have to wait until release to see that!
Fine, I'll show you a couple of screenshots for the new version's gameplay scene as well.
As you can see, there's still a ways to go. Development has slowed down a bit lately due to the complications of console development. Unlike for PC and other open platforms, you can't really just Google or YouTube tutorials on how to fix things for locked platforms like the consoles. A lot of that information hides behind secret walls where fewer folks are there to answer questions. There's certainly great communities surrounding them, but solving problems takes a bit longer for these types of issues. Fear not - I'm still working through and achieving the success I'd only ever dreamed of in making a video game.
All you need is family
As we near October, the birth of my second child - whose name is [REDACTED] - draws ever closer. Just like you'd expect, this is certainly going to affect my development time. And it should - family comes first.
All of this said, I still have the passion burning to get this game out. I only tell you this to be up front and honest: I'm not entirely certain that I will be able to achieve my goal of launching by the end of the year. I'm certainly trying to push through while I still have time. But the key thing that we learned when our daughter spent her first 46 days in the NICU: that one metaphor about the "Best Laid Plans" and whatnot is as true as the Socrates Stans out there would have you believe. The one thing I ask is this:
Please continue to be patient with me.
Your constant support and conversation mean more to me than you'll ever know. I might be 73 years old when this game is done, but IT WILL BE DONE, dammit.
Enough of all that. I'll see you soon!
Always with love,
- Matt
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