Okay, I am going to post several daydreams in the coming days. Not exactly something I would normally do, but recent development of certain highly unexpected and unwanted events kinda forced my hand.
But before all that, I’ll say a few words regarding that old Limit Load project.
I was way deep in one of those three campaigns, Broken Star, the day I first announced Limit Load back in 2015, and wrapped it up later that year. I was often joking with myself and the code guy that I was gonna beat Wings in amount of mission, but I ended up with ~80 (if I remember well). Not that bad, considering that many of those missions were far more complex and longer compared to any mission in Wings, with many dialogues and cutscenes thrown in-between, so overall length of the campaign was somewhat closer, I think. My design choice was to mix Strike Commander type of missions with Wings type of missions. Meaning, after some of those long, exhausting missions — where player first takes-off, then goes to several areas, completes objectives (or not), and then returns home to land — I throw one or more Wings-like mission(s) next. Pure instant-action, where player starts in the air already and have a fixed amount of aircraft waves to shotdown before mission is automatically ended. To shake up the chore and vent possible monotony that complex missions may have pilled up. Although even for those instant-action missions, I often couldn’t resist but to fill with bits of story narrative and directed cutscenes during the mission itself, despite mentally curbing myself all the time. (“Stop it! This is supposed to be a pure gameplay action mission, enough with dragging dialogues and movie stuff already!”). By the way, for failing the missions, I actually created the consequences. One primary, of automatic type, and one secondary, similar to those from first Wing Commander and known “Meanwhile” cutscenes. That is, I made groups of missions that were part of thematic wholes inside the main story, so the ending of those parts of the main story was depending on successes in completing missions during those wholes, accompanied with “Meanwhile” cutscenes at the end.
For Limit Load I built/gathered all the necessary elements (graphic, audio, screenplay, etc.) and put them in composition. Creating composition out of elements is my thing (which I think is called — design); making each of those individual elements isn’t my thing though… or rather, it varies how good I can make them in a reasonable amount of time (graphics being the biggest problem of all). However, logistics like version control, systems to deal with insane amount of game files, system of patching, system to distribute all that, etc. and the game’s infrastructure like menus with options or ability to skip the cutscenes and such, were on the code guy to build and maintain. Logistics really isn’t my thing at all and I easily get lost and then get very irritated by it. So without that necessary logistics/infrastructure, the campaign was left in the dark, as were all the models I built for the campaign, audio and story/screenplay and overall design of any kind. When it comes to the graphics, the most important models, like jets, I made available on game’s website, but everything else, particularly source files, were in total organizational chaos and several gigabytes big. No matter how hard I was trying to keep them organized, files just kept pilling up and up and up, at frightening pace, during development.
Since the code guy never had a chance to get back to it, the whole project was left in limbo… but he might return to it some day though. I definitely finished my part. (Although I would really prefer that the whole scenario is examined by a pro book-editor, or at least a well-versed geek, before it ever sets its foot in public. As I am not exactly an expert writer, and not even versed in air force jargon, with exciting sentence constructions, in pop-cultural political techno-thriller story, which Broken Star somewhat is…)
That’s it about the past, now onto new stuff, all related to the Godot engine…