Dev Commentary Time! Every Once In A While I Am Struck With A Vision Of A Fully Formed Scene For A Game,

dev commentary time! every once in a while i am struck with a vision of a fully formed scene for a game, or a comic, or a video… and the vision feels so strong, looks so real, that i have to drop everything to bring it into reality. whether i have to learn new skills, or it pushes my abilities to their limits, it doesn't matter; the vision will not leave me until i have made it real. such is the nature of my adhd daydreaming curse.

most famously, if you've read all of the other dev commentaries so far, this is how the Red Coin Remixes were born – a vision of extra challenges for my silly little 12 level pack, turning it into 24 and then 32 levels as the vision iterated and grew. this was the central reason why Retrush took nine years to finish, and a cautionary tale on the dangers of scope creep.

so when i had another big vision, just two months before i intended to finally release Retrush… i was more than a little concerned!

the vision is almost exactly as you see it in the video: my oc Rivers congratulates the player at the end of a long journey, complimenting the player's confidence for having cleared every level, while a special song plays over a sunset beach scene matching the song's ambient waves. as it played and replayed in my head, it was so beautiful, so fitting… that i HAD to add it somehow. even though it was intimidating.

but why was it so intimidating? it was surely not the writing, as i knew exactly what i wanted to tell the player. nor was it the fear of overscoping myself, as i decided to limit myself to four extra secret coins. nor even was it the technical work of tracking and saving completion, a system that doesn't exist natively in Mari0 and had to be manually added via the game's event system…!

no, it was two very specific things that intimidated me most: the music, and the sprites of Rivers – both skills that i had tried and failed to cultivate in the past. but for each of these, i had a new blessing that i did not have before.

the song, Last Wave, plays at the end of OutRun, a Genesis-era arcade game with gorgeous FM synth music throughout. it's not an 8-bit NES song, though, and all of the other music in the level pack is in NES style. and no matter where i looked, no NES covers of it existed.

but i could hear it in my head…!

so my plan was twofold. worst case scenario, i could just drop the original song in – i doubt anyone would've cared too much about the style clash. but Plan A was to ask my musically talented partner @harmonyfriends to cover the song for me... in a style that she had never tried before.

and to both of our surprise, she pulled it off! she was able to split the original FM synth into its constituent parts, transcribe it in Famistudio, and arrange the song using the VRC6 expansion – the same expansion chip used by most of the other NES arrangements in Retrush. the results are absolutely incredible and they elevate the scene far beyond anything i could do on my own!

(i paid her for her work, of course~)

long story short, the first blessing i didn't have before… was my partner. long ago, when i wanted to add my own music to Retrush, i tried to do it all alone – and got just short of nowhere. now i'm not working alone anymore! i have help!

that brings us to my final magic trick: the sprites and animations for Rivers… which, by contrast, is art that i did all on my own.

see, the whole reason Retrush looks the way it does – made entirely of recolored and lightly edited tiles from the original SMB games – is that i've never really been a sprite artist. all of my level packs over the years have used existing assets from other games and artists; the most i've ever done is re-arrange them for use in Mari0's engine, or maybe edit a few pixels here and there to make them flow better or fit a specific scene. outside of that, i tried to avoid making sprites as much as possible; my few attempts at custom sprites always came out rather shoddy, in my eyes.

so when i saw the grand vision in my head… i instantly knew what the most intimidating part was. it was the prospect of making custom sprite work for Rivers.

by the time i launched the beta, i had just put together the outline for the secret ending. all the text and scripting was there, but Rivers… was not. in her place was a line of text saying "pretend that Rivers is standing here."

a little too goofy for the impact i was aiming for... though one of my playtesters said they still cried at the ending.

when my playtesters got back to me with feedback about the rest of the mappack, i got to work on tweaking the levels, adding new quality-of-life features, fixing bugs… everything other than making sprites for Rivers. i procrastinated until the last minute, as my fear very nearly got the better of me…

finally, on the last Friday before Retrush was set to release, i cleared my day and dedicated it solely to sprite work. i expected to hammer my head against the wall all day and night, only to chicken out at the last possible second, with a single, motionless, half-baked sprite of Rivers standing at the end.

instead, in three hours, i had all of this.

that's her!

see, even though it's "just" recolored SMB sprites, Retrush is the most that i've ever experimented with custom tiles and spritework. all of the animated tiles are still just heavily edited versions of existing SMB assets – but i got to experiment with different effects and styles. looking back, i can see a throughline of growth from the waterfalls in Pineapple Pipeline, to the train tracks in Toffee Tracks, up to the wave effect in Fillet Fjords… each of these is just an effect applied to an existing tile, but making these by hand helped me understand the composition of the tiles and why the effects worked to create the illusion of movement.

then, without me realizing it, my abilities grew. the Retrush logo was my first custom logo, and possibly the first custom sprite art that i ever finished and released. the custom eel sprites in Tilapia Trench were my first ever character animation. the bone fish in Vegetable Vat, while loosely based on the sprites from mario maker, are custom sprites – the first time i ever made rotated adaptations of existing sprites. my technical prowess grew without me ever noticing…

and, apparently, it was enough for me to bang out a character sheet in an afternoon.

now, that was far from the end. in fact, all the sprites above ended up going unused – because they all face right, and i need them to face left in the final. but it wasn't hard to flip the sprites, move the flower, add some more expressions…

you've seen this before, haven't you?

in doing so, i even got to attempt a full turnaround, which i used for looking towards and away from the horizon. but even this kind of technical work was more fun than frustrating, and it didn't take long for me to complete the rotation!

good day to fly a kite, by the looks of it...

also, because the wind effect only plays when facing the horizon, these front shots of the wind effect also go unused. but they were a GREAT base and a huge help for the rest of the sprite sheet…

still not 100% happy with the scrunched grin on this...? expressions in general were probably the hardest part.

one little detail i'm extra proud of is her little nervous foot shuffle. i've never animated anything like it before, and it looks great in motion!

"in celebration of the upcoming launch of Retrush, i made some Rivers sprites to use as my pfp! these turned out a lot better than my last attempt and i'm pretty proud of how far i've come as an artist 💙" — April 23rd, 2023 via Twitter.

finally, here's the promo tweet i made for using the Rivers art as my avatar… i almost didn't want to do this, i wanted Rivers to be a surprise! but i was so proud of the sprites that i wanted to share some of them early, and i'm glad i did – this my favorite avatar i've ever had, and the full animations ended up surprising most players anyway.

where did i suddenly get this skill? i asked myself at the time… but it wasn't sudden at all. the rest of Retrush taught me all the skills i needed. all i lacked was the courage to use them.

so if the first blessing that i didn't have before was my partner, then the second blessing i didn't have before… was confidence. the very same confidence that i wanted to impart to the player, right here at the finish line.

turns out, i needed that confidence just as much.

and i meant every word of it.

our work together – her music, and my sprites – are the last things we added to Retrush, the night before release. fitting that it would end this way, after nine years of ADHD workflows, procrastinating on challenging endeavors, pinballing between levels. the last completed piece was the finish line itself, and i'm so happy that i could properly greet players at the end, just as i had so strongly envisioned.

38 posts later, this is also the last developer commentary post… as much of an adhd mess it was to write and schedule these too. but the mess doesn't matter – because when my memories have faded in a year or two, these blog posts will be the journal pages that i cling to, the last vestiges of the development stories i can no longer remember. i hope you've enjoyed them too, that you found some insight and lessons to take with you on your own journey!

one day, when i get to make another game, we'll do this again! i'm sure i will have a lot to share, and i hope you'll be there for it too. for now, though, i am going to take a break from big projects and work on smaller things. nine years is a long time, and i think i need the space to rest and get my IRL in order before i tackle something big again.

but i'll still be writing, streaming, designing, creating… and maybe even spriting. i hope you enjoy my smaller things too, and i hope we keep sharing new things with each other for a long time.

until then, thank you for reading. 💙💜🩷

Secret Ending | Retrush

After clearing EVERYTHING in Retrush, we arrive at the end of the road… where I pour my heart out to the player. Whether you've unlocked this yourself or simply watched along, thank you for joining me on this journey 💖

(Note that the "perfect stars" you get for clearing the stages without dying are NOT REQUIRED to see this ending – you simply need to clear all 16 remixes and get all 4 secret coins, no matter how many deaths it takes.)

A Special Bond

this one's extra hard to write.

we lost a second cat this year: our beloved Lily, the last of her family after her brother Smokey passed away in August. she died of kidney failure, a cat's equivalent of old age, on the day before Thanksgiving. much like with her brother, we loved her dearly and gave her the best care we could – no regrets.

Lily had a more serious demeanor compared to the rest of her family. born the runt of the litter with three brothers to fend off, she wasn't much interested in playing. instead, she preferred the thrill of a real hunt – catching all manner of bugs, mice, and birds to bring to our doorstep.

then she would proudly curl up in someone's lap and purr louder than anyone else in the house, leaning into every pet, asking for chin and tummy rubs. this is where she most showed her silly side, as she would clean herself and then forget to put her tongue away, sporting a big ol blep 💖

Lily started life as a very skittish and anxious cat, but mellowed out as she got older, growing more comfortable with being around other humans. but the one human she was never scared of… was me.

see, one day when i was a kid, a tuxedo tomcat showed up at my family's doorstep. you know the story – sometimes, a cat decides to adopt a human family, rather than the other way around. we named him Oscar, and when he grew more comfortable with us, he brought his girlfriend along; we named her Butterscotch.

by comparison, Butterscotch was less friendly, more wild. she would hide under our house, only coming out when we fed her, rarely but cautiously allowing us to pet her.

before we could afford to have them fixed, they had kids. and when they did, a miracle occurred.

we rushed outside when we heard the sound of Butterscotch giving birth. and when we did… she brought us each of her four kittens, one by one. despite her cautious nature, she trusted us!

my brother and i each grew attached to one of the kittens, and got to name them. he bonded with Smokey. i bonded with Lily. and our lives were changed forever.

we loved the other cats too, named them and took care of them. Butterscotch taught them how to hunt, Oscar taught them how to be friendly with humans. we had a big family of six wonderful cats!

but most of them didn't survive when we moved. two of them ran each other off before we moved, one ran away after we moved… and our new house had no space underneath, so Butterscotch was not happy with her new home, passing after a year or so.

the only two that survived, stayed with us through multiple moves, lived past 7 years old… were Smokey and Lily, who each lived to 16.

and now, in less than a year, both are gone.

it's hard, you know? these two cats defined my childhood. when i needed comfort before bed, they were there to cuddle. when i visited home from high school and college, they were happy to see me again. when i struggled with my parents' divorce, they were still my family. when my partner moved in with me, they treated her as family too.

we still have two other cats, both unrelated to the original family. but the house is so much emptier now.

now that Lily's gone, the weight of both of their deaths is fully sinking in. i know grief is a part of life… but i'm not sure i've ever had to carry so much grief at once. this is new to me.

and it's more than just the cats. this is symbolic. my entire family has moved on; my parents have divorced, my brother lives across the country. everything i knew from my childhood is now just a memory, and my memory isn't very good anymore. that's why i write things down.

i'm finally in a place where i can reckon with all of this loss… for so much of the last 10 years i've had to be in go, go, go mode to survive. here i finally am, with all these losses behind me, and i'm only now able to process it. all at once, my childhood has faded, and it's my turn to move on.

…so i want to build a new adulthood to be proud of. for how much they helped me grow, i think Lily and Smokey would be happy to see that.

What Your Favorite Cheese Says About You

with apologies to the classic xkcd comic, What Your Favorite Map Projection Says About You

mild cheddar: you're not really into cheese.

american: all cheeses are good, how could you pick just one? you settled on american because it reminds you of the comfy grilled cheese sandwiches of your childhood. you still sleep with stuffed animals. cringe is dead, live free.

shredded mozzarella: you know just enough about cheese to know that you like white cheeses better than yellow cheeses. you've always wanted to try more, but you've never really had the opportunity. maybe because all the other cheeses are so expensive. maybe because your parents don't get the other cheeses. (because they're all so expensive.)

swiss: swiss cheese from the store is just okay, but you're still chasing the high of that one time you had authentic swiss gruyere. you frequently remind all your high school buddies of that one time you scored the winning kick. these are surely unrelated.

sharp cheddar: you like pairing things, which is why you get deep into shipping and fanfictions (not a hard read, considering you're reading this on tumblr dot com). you make charcuterie boards for every holiday and birthday that you possibly can.

pepper jack: variety is the spice of life, which is why you always get pepper jack for that extra kick. you add more seasoning to all of your takeout because it tastes better that way. one time you stole a candy bar just to feel something.

gouda: you are SO sick of all the puns.

muenster: fuck that guy who likes american, you know how to make a REAL grilled cheese. you tell other drivers on the road how they should be driving. you got into king gizz before they were cool.

provolone: you have a mountain of sandwich ingredients at home that you use to make mile-high sandwiches for lunch. you are rarely hungry for dinner, but you are very excited about tomorrow's sandwich.

fresh mozzarella: your favorite pizza is margherita style, and you only get pizza from places that are authentic enough to serve it. you got very mad at the other mozzarella listing because clearly the author hasn't tried REAL mozzarella. don't worry, you can quit clutching your mozzarella pearls now.

brie: you treat cheese like others treat chocolate – savoring the richness of every bite as it melts in your mouth. you have a collection of antique china that you don't ever use because that would make it lose its value.

parmesan: you hate that everyone thinks of those canisters of grated cheese when they think of parmesan. you wish you could show everyone what real parmesan tastes like, but you can barely afford it yourself. you should go start that restaraunt of yours already.

velveeta: is something wrong with you?

since i write a lot of series of the blog, i'm toying with the idea of adding a list of Collections that link to each of those series – like the retrush dev commentaries, the design retrospective that's still in the pipeline, the "catching up posts" from 2019...

problem is that i don't know how to add it easily just yet? i can't think of a place it'd fit into the existing site layout, and there's no support for it in tumblr outside of tags – so i'd have to manually curate the list of collections somehow. tumblr labs did suggest they might be working on something like post collections, but who knows when or if that will come to fruition...

in the meantime i might make a pinned post for collections? that way it's all in one place and easy to access on mobile. hopefully that won't be too hard to organize! plus it can be replaced rather easily, if tumblr labs ends up pulling through. sounds like a good first project for 2024!

new pre-stream archive, in which we celebrate our new emote and talk about just how long the ol' stream backlog is...

keeping my new years resolutions simple this year. in 2024:

🏳️‍⚧️ i'm finally gonna start hormones! 🏳️‍⚧️