Sky of Secrets

Over the last year or so, I’ve been working on the follow-up to my most popular work, Castle in the Sky Ascension.

This project has been a huge undertaking, but it’s looking like it’s finally reaching the end of its planned scope.

Check it out here.

Sky of Secrets takes the gameplay formula of Castle in the Sky and expands the world in a big way. Not only does it feature 3 hand-crafted original castles filled with treasure, but it also has a “daily castle”. Daily castles are procedurally generated and feature coins instead of treasure.

Collecting coins will allow you to access bonus areas in the main lobby that house treasure just like the castles. Collecting these treasures will reveal more about the mysterious setting you’ve been dropped in.

There is also a dash ability you can use in the dailies, because I thought it would be more fun that way.

Anyway, I think I’ve reached a good stopping point with this project for now, so I figure I finally make a blog post covering all the time I’ve spent building up this project. There’s a lot of content in this game. In fact, it is the biggest one I’ve ever made.

Happy exploring!

Pixel Logo Generator, a Discord bot

On Roblox, there is a fairly small selections of user-created T-shirts you can purchase for free. Within this selection of T-shirts are a fair amount of pixel shirts I created upon request for users. These shirts were made all the way back in 2008, back when making T-shirts for free was still an option.

An example of one of the free pixel shirts I’ve had in the catalog over the years.

Due to this, I’ve had many people over the years ask for me to make them their very own pixel shirts. While this was never very hard to do, I got bored of making them long ago, so to fill that market demand I have created a Discord bot to do the work instead!

Pixel Logo Generator is a Discord bot that I’ve created for my server that allows you to create custom pixel logos out of whatever text you want.

The app in use.

This application is available to use now in the BADGRAPHIX Discord server, so try it out!

For users who are less technically adept, I have also created a video tutorial.

A new Roblox game, Figments vs. Spirits

I just came out with a new game called Figments vs. Spirits!

Figments vs. Spirits is a puzzle game built around the battle system of a turn-based RPG. At the time of this post the game contains 30 battle scenarios of escalating complexity, but if there is demand, I may end up doing more.

This game was built off feedback I received from my previous project Trial of the 40 Figments. Ultimately, that game was unable to develop an audience because it had too high of a learning curve, so I’ve taken extra precaution to make this one easier to get into.

Let me know what you think through one of the many ways of contacting me!

Content Grab Bag 8/7/19

Hey there! Here’s what I’ve released since the last blog post. All Roblox projects this time.

Gun-Train Gauntlet

Gun-Train Gauntlet is a single-player game inspired by shmups and bullet hells. In it, you take on a gauntlet of 12 levels in whatever order you want. In these levels you engage with enemy gun-trains. Every time you hit an enemy gun-train, you earn points and increase the power of your score multiplier by a bit. However, watch out, as your combo eventually expires! You can keep it going if you hit a special kind of gun-train that extends it.

Maintaining combos is a core part of surviving in Gun-Train Gauntlet, as you must earn a certain number of points per level to keep your run going.

Practice your skills and see how high of a score you can rack up! Similar to an arcade game, Gun-Train Gauntlet uses a pay-per-session monetization strategy, however the first session is free and the game will grant you a free play every couple of hours or so if you redeem it.

BADGRAPHIX Creations Museum

For a couple years now I’ve been looking for a satisfying way to compile together all the projects that aren’t playable from my group, and I’ve found the answer. The BADGRAPHIX Creations Museum is a curated collection of unreleased and retired projects spanning over a decade of Roblox game development. Some exhibits even include information on their project’s development history!

Group Build

 

This project is pretty much as self-descriptive as it gets.

In the past, Roblox used to have these special places called group build servers, where users in a group would come together as a community and build in a shared space that persisted across game sessions.

Here, I’ve decided to make my own take on it. In the spirit of the old group build servers, this place is exclusive to users who join BADGRAPHIX Creations.

Note: Everything shown in the two screenshots are created by members of the BADGRAPHIX Creations community!

Trial of the 40 Figments

For a good year or two, I was working on-and-off on an RPG codenamed Project Creatures. I even showcased a bit of it on this blog. For a long time I had difficulty deciding on the ultimate direction I wanted to take the project in, but once I had settled on something, I ran into a hard-to-swallow issue: it just wasn’t fun.

Because of this, I shelved the project and went to work on something completely different (it went on to become Gun-Train Gauntlet).

By the time that project had reached its completion, I had the idea for a new RPG with more of a focus on macro-management over the course of a whole run than on the strategy needed in each individual battle.

This game became what you see here: Trial of the 40 Figments.

This game just released the other day, so it’s a bit bare on content at the moment. However, I have a lot planned for its future, so play the game, provide feedback, and stay tuned for whatever I come out with next!

Content Grab Bag 6/8/18

It’s been quite some time since the last blog post. Here’s a rundown of everything I’ve released since the last one.

Scary Hour: A Super Mario Creepypasta Reading

CURSED

The tenth BADGRAPHIX Feature! This has been the flagship project of 2018 so far. In it, a mercenary misuses the power of a magic ring and releases an ancient curse onto his world.

Promotional trailer:

Castle in the Sky Developer Commentary

I finally take a dive into the development of Castle in the Sky and document the decisions I made updating and maintaining it over the years.

The World Inside Your Pocket

This is a new Roblox project I’ve been working on for a while. It’s based off this colorization of the Kanto region I did all the way back in 2011.

It’s a colorization of the monochrome Kanto region seen in Pokémon Red & Blue, however this new 3D Roblox version also incorporates elements from Pokémon Yellow and the generation 2 games, Gold & Silver.

This project was an interesting exercise in programming, as the map rendered in full actually takes up too much memory to even render on my computer. To get around this limitation, the game is composed of placeholder blocks that are swapped out on the fly with their respective object, whether that be a tree, sign, door, etc.

The placeholder blocks are organized into 28 by 28-block chunks, and those chunks closest to the player are rendered to the player. When the player moves over to another chunk, the chunks the player moves away from revert to invisible placeholder blocks and the chunks the player moves closer towards transform into the more complex geometry the game actually looks like.

Due to the subject material, this project is vulnerable to copyright takedowns, so if it gets delisted at its current location, keep an eye out on this blog to find out where I relocate it.

Here are some screenshots taken during development.



That’s all for now!

10th Anniversary Content Grab Bag

Tomorrow marks 10 years since I first started producing content under the name BADGRAPHIX on my YouTube channel. A passion for video games made me decide on a name somewhat related to that, so I picked the username “badgrafix” as a bit of a riff on the Turbografx-16, but it was taken so I used “badgraphix” instead. I was only eleven years old when I chose the name, but I still like it and have consistently used it as a handle for my online presence since then.
There hasn’t been a content grab bag in a while due to my content releases slowing down, so I’ll be compiling them here followed by a little teaser for something coming tomorrow…

Project Creatures Gameplay Presentation

In this video, I present my progress developing my long-in-progress Roblox game Project Creatures. There have been some major changes since this was shown off, but the big idea remains the same. If I make further progress updates, you will find them first on my Roblox group BADGRAPHIX Creations.

Even More Project Creatures Footage


A Man & His Pillow

For a while, I was using “Eating A Nintendo Switch Cartridge” as the title for this video but decided on changing it to the true title shown at the end of the video. It is the eighth BADGRAPHIX Feature, the first in almost two years!

Roblox’s Tickets: A Postmortem

Earlier this year, I released a seven-part miniseries chronicling my experiences on Roblox. Those videos were fairly off the cuff in their presentation while the writing for this video was actually prepared beforehand, making it the first BADGRAPHIX video essay.

And The New Video Teaser…

The special will be available to watch at this link after it comes out.

Castle in the Sky Ascension Changelog 5/18/17

Hey folks, today I released the first update for Castle in the Sky Ascension in a long time. Since I have a blog to compile together an update log now, I will be doing them here.

New Features

  • Other players now show up as gray dots on your map.

Changes

  • Sound toggle has been changed to a mute button, map can now be toggled on and off, and the restart button has been moved up to the top of the screen with the other buttons.
  • The tabs on the main menu have been resized to each take up one-third of the horizontal length.
  • “Checkpoint reached” message is now much larger and in the center of the screen.

Bug Fixes

  • The achievements submenu now properly shows how many of the 11 achievements you have earned.
  • Purchasing the speedrun timer works properly now.