I'll Be Honest I've Been REALLY Avoidant Of Social Media Lately. I Swear Every Time I Pull Up My Feed

i'll be honest i've been REALLY avoidant of social media lately. i swear every time i pull up my feed it's some new disaster, some new celebrity drama, some new enshittification or shrinkflation or corporo-politico-socio-existentio-nonsense

and that's after i pared down my feeds significantly!

Zeta - As Complete As It Gets

Zeta was my "magnum opus" back in 2014… the pinnacle of everything I had learned with level design in Mari0 1.6. Everything about it is as grandiose as possible – colorful levels made with an omnipalette tileset, unique challenges that blend Mario and Portal elements in fun ways, a plot holding secrets close to its chest. I released about half of it in various demos up until mid-2013, getting lots of praise and attention from the community! I was quite proud of myself and my work…

But I had ambitions to use features that hadn't even been added to the game yet, like a full custom music album, water tiles, custom enemies, cutscenes. I decided to shelve the project for a little while, at least until later versions of the game gave me more tools to work with. Those new versions came and went… yet I never returned to Zeta, instead embracing other big new projects like Retrush and Floating Isles. Zeta faded into history, left unfinished, a casualty of ADHD novelty-chasing.

Many of the ideas that were planned for Zeta would later find their way into my other projects, but the idea of returning to Zeta itself has always been daunting. Despite the fact that I was so proud of it in 2014… it's a little uneven looking back on it now. In addition to finishing the existing levels, there's a ton I'd want to rework from scratch! That would practically be a new project in its own right.

The perfect excuse to return to Zeta came when I started streaming all of my Mari0 mappacks in a retrospective series. Most of them I was content with showing as they were released… but with Zeta, I specifically wanted to show it in its best light, as close to its original vision as possible. So, using modern tools in AE, I added all of the music I wanted to add from the beginning, added warps between areas of unused content, and even finished the final boss! The stream itself went great, and I had a lot to say about development of the mappack – you can watch it in full here:

The short version is that Zeta is honestly better than I remembered! Even though there's still a few rough edges, and the blend of Mario and Portal elements gets kinda wacky at times, it has a cadence to it that's genuinely unique and fun in its own right. It's a lot more mature than I expected, and getting to revisit it was a joy.

And since I already have all the materials ready… I'm releasing this version of Zeta to the public! This version has a little more work done on it since I played it on stream, including the addition of water tiles in some areas and fixed time limits in most levels. There are still a few unfinished levels, but otherwise… this is how I wanted Zeta to be, ten years ago. This is as complete as that original vision gets.

I have to make the distinction that this is the "original vision" because there's SO MUCH I would change these days. Before I did the stream, I had to mull over just how extensively I wanted to change things up – but I decided that preserving the original vision was most important… and if I want to change things more extensively, that will be a separate release. I guess let's say that a Zeta DX isn't off the table~

For now, though, here's that original vision preserved as faithfully as possible. It doesn't run in the original Mari0 1.6 anymore due to the music and the final boss, so you'll have to use Mari0 AE. A decade later, please enjoy Zeta as it was meant to be played!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/85z8jqotzun1e8z/Zeta%20-%20As%20Complete%20As%20It%20Gets.zip?dl=1

i'm a huge proponent of the Like button especially in cases where i don't have the spoons to be social, but when i actually speak my praise out loud people seem to REALLY appreciate that. it makes a huge splash

just spent the entire weekend playing ttyd remake and oh my god they actually did it. they remade the game with love and respect for the source material, punched it up in tasteful ways and didn't sanitize any part of it. this is my new preferred way to play my childhood favorite game

i might have to do a writeup at some point

In which I kick off my birthday celebrations by revisiting one of my all-time favorite kart racers with a bunch of friends! This is EASILY the most chaotic multiplayer stream I've ever done, especially when the game decided not to cooperate...

getting everything set up for the Fortune Cookie stream tonight! adding in the last few games in our library just so everything's up for grabs

if you don't know what Fortune Cookie is, every ~30min i pick 5 random games from our library and chat gets to vote on which game i play next

my partner and i have a lot of unique titles in our shared library so i think it'll be a treat 💙

i've been meaning to try this for a while and if it goes well we might make it a monthly thing!