Fourteen Years of Development in Screenshots

1/10/2014

Due to the crazy high number of users concurrently connected, areas such as Root and the Tutorial became packed with players.  There were so many players in the tutorial, they were climbing on each others heads to escape the tutorial area, World War Z style.

Instancing was added, but then there wasn’t a centralized congregation point.  Thus the Social Club is added:

I also reappropriated the supply closet at Reactor:

1/22/2014

2014 marked a year of greater international interest in 8BitMMO.  One of the first additions to support these guys was the much requested custom key binds — particularly useful for non-qwerty keyboard.

2/5/2014

Music added.  A number of my favorite chiptune artists were willing to let me use some of my favorite songs in the game.

2/18/2014

A small, but surprisingly useful change — cursor icon changes depending on pickup/drop mode:

3/5/2014

Traffic has slowed down, but I keep on working regardless.

Laser turrets launched, one of the surprisingly complex objects to code (on the plus side, their targeting ends up being dead on timing-wise).  Video from a test done earlier:

3/7/2014

I introduce the region expansion system.  It generates a little bit of lag, but being able to build more per region is worth it.

3/24/2014

At GDC.   It’s weird — people have already heard of the game.  When they realize I made it, their eyes open wider and they lean back in surprise.  Now instead of me explaining what the game is, the conversation is “you’re that guy?”  I’m at one particular industry party, and a tipsy German guy says “ohh, what are you doing over here?  You’re famous, you should be over here,” and drags me off to a secret side room where the indie royalty are hanging out.  Even some of them have heard of 8bitmmo by now.

I’m sure in six months everyone will have forgotten all about me, but I enjoy the moment while I can.

~

Later on, I’m showing 8bit around at Humble’s party.  One of my gamedev heroes, Ragnar Tørnquist, played it there. His work inspired me to get into the industry many years ago, so it was really cool to get to watch him play.

3/28/2014

New weapon: laser rifles.  This was in direct response to complaints of weapons being too simplistic.  The laser rifle requires a bit of strategy since there’s a long charge up time.

4/1/2014

My most over the top April fool’s joke ever.  Rethemed the game to be CalcMMO: “The world’s first (and hopefully last) TI-83 Graphing Calculator themed massively multiplayer game!”

4/3/2014

Dave finishes up his internship, and I’m back to being a fully solo project.  It’s sad to see him go, but I’m proud to see him learn so much in six months.

4/15/2014

Hammer weapon added.  A little bit of strategy due to the timing involved.  Plus escaping a hammer blast is pretty satisfying:

4/17/2014

An incredibly complex easter egg hunt.  Players had to find eggs in the game, and had some nice puzzles to solve.  By a stroke of luck, the fire alarm at Reactor was malfunctioning, so I turned off the lights and made it part of the challenge.

Morse code, encrypted text, coordinates embedded in the audio of a youtube video… I half expected players to never figure it out.  Instead, it took less than a week.

4/26/2014

More household goods…

5/13/2014

Mac & Linux builds

5/28/2014

Steam Achievements.  I was surprised at how seriously people take these at first, but people really do enjoy collecting them.  A lot of people cheat them too, but it’s cool to see when people manage to legit get all the rewardblocks.

6/5/2014

A fully animated parody of 8bitmmo.  Amazing 🙂

6/10/2014

I catch a cab to urgent care because I’m pissing blood.  Turns out months of constantly skipping meals and eating the indie diet has caught up to me, and I’m diagnosed as a literally starving (& dehydrated) indie.

The cliche is real.

6/16/2014

Trading cards

6/17/2014

Megamap v3 finally launches.  Now you can see the full extent of the world, pockets and all.

Over the length of the project, the amount of work dumped into the map is stupendous.  But it’s still the best way to illustrate just how massive the world is becoming, and it’s nice for people to see their creations.

That used to be my media center, but now this box’s full time job is to just run around and capture map screenshots.  It takes roughly three weeks per full world capture.

6/25/2014

Ovens added, which allow for very basic crafting-like system by putting stuff on top of the oven.  People really like crafting.

7/1/2014

Pocket townstones, which allow players to create a town without spending plat (this was one of the common criticisms).

7/8/2014

Checkpoint pads to help out challenge courses:

7/17/2014

Much requested storage containers are added, in several flavors that allow for different types of access permissions.

8/1/2014

I turn 30.  The partying is legendary.

8/6/2014

Quite surprised to get accepted to demo at Tokyo Game Show, and even more surprised to be accepted into Sense of Wonder Night.  I begin working towards ensuring attendees will be able to play in Japanese.  Localization support is added:

8/13/2014

Meat.

8/27/2014

Finally get around to adding fullscreen support in the core engine.  I had tried doing this years prior, but just didn’t understand Pulpcore well enough.  By this point I was adept enough that it was a nearly trivial change.

9/9/2014

9/19/14

My lifelong dream of traveling to Japan is finally realized.  It is every bit as amazing as I hoped, and then some.

I am honored to win Best Technological Game at Sense of Wonder Night.

(Lots more Tokyo pics here)

It’s crazy that even in other countries, people have heard of 8BitMMO.  Not everyone, but a substantial portion of people I talk to.

Showing the game on the demo floor, I end up in a couple awkward conversations about the Japanese translation.  This is how I find out the importance of native speaker translation.  However, people were still able to get through the demo, so I consider it as worthwhile.

10/10/14

After requests from the community, I do another Octoberbit fundraiser, with the goal of raising funds for server hosting for the next year.  With much slower traffic than even six months prior, I had zero expectation of hitting that goal, but anything raised helps cover costs so I agree.

10/20/14

I’m working on Transponders, a new PvP/PvE game mode.  Due to the systems involved, it’s fairly complex and takes a few months to implement.  Beta access to it encourages Octoberbit backers.

I launch this teaser:

The exclusive hats and allure of doubleplat help too:

11/10/14

Surprisingly, we exceed the Octoberbit goal and raise $6,789!  The community really came together to help out on this, and I’m super grateful.

Doubleplat happens:

11/20/14

Beta testing of Transponders is going well.

I also sneak out a UI update that helps with readability of long command output:

11/26/2014

Reactor’s Seattle workspace closes down.  It’s very sad to see it go, because being there I really felt part of Seattle’s development community.  The day-to-day space may be gone, but they’ll still have events in future.

I’m back to working from home, but I’m not going to let that stop me!

11/28/2014

MarbelZ gets an 8BitMMO tattoo:

12/5/2014

I do give up on fighting one losing battle though… my hair.  That’s me on the right.

12/23/2014

Transponders launch publicly.  Here’s a video of them being tested earlier in the month:

12/25/2014

Bitmas!

Gifts to the community — there was much speculation what was in them, but I gave everyone a free random plat item (this code would end up being the basis of Mystery Boxes)

There were also gifts from the community!  A field of thank-you signs (which I accidentally found too early) was touching:

And Ase even mailed me a IRL 3d printed character set & poem: