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🕑 Added 2016-05-01 02:02:33 +0000 UTC
i'm pleased to announce a fun sideproject i'm developing:
Zone Sweet Zone
!!
i have a lot of ideas for Zone Sweet Zone, but primarily it is a ~patron rewards program.~ i've had a patreon for a while now, but i've struggled to come up with incentives that are related to the work i do and don't take a ton of time. it's also been hard coming up with incentives that are rewarding on a month-to-month basis! i wanted to find something that's, like, a personal reward for each patron, but also gives them the feeling of "oh, drak's able to do This cool thing now thanks to my support!!" SO, UMMM, I CAME UP WITH,
a virtual apartment building for all my patrons to live in...??
Zone Sweet Zone is a (hopefully!?) mysteriously ever-expanding apartment building. every patron at the $5 level gets a room in the building, called a "Zone." the laws of space have a very loose grasp on this building, so each floor has four zones - which can vary in size and shape - and as each $5 patron gets their own zone, the number of floors continues to increase as the number of zones rises.
each player has a customizable avatar! i wanna make a whole bunch of options for them. im gonna have fun human stuff, animal parts, robot bits... the works!!! sky's the limit on skintone and there's no gender picking, so you can just pick whatever you want. idk if it sounds weird for me to point those out BUT THEY'RE THINGS CHAR CREATORS ARE CONSTANTLY MESSING UP, SO, it's important,
lots of stuff about your zone can be freely modified. you can grab floor tiles and yank em up/push em down to change the topography of your zone. you can grab a spot on a wall and pull out a thin divider to create sub-rooms. you can control things like your wall and floor colors. you can even pick the jrpg indoors abyss outside your zone. water level? gravity? sure, lets just crank those way up and down, respectively.
a gif of some floor movement!!
so, you've got a room, but what are you gonna put in it?? that's right -- furniture!!
there's something that flows freely through the zones called "mist." zone tenants can bend this mist to their will, turning it into cool furniture. each player has a max mist reservoir, which increases with their tenant level. let's say you have 5 max mist. creating a chair might take 1 mist, so you'd have 4 left. but! that's not a permanent choice. if you get tired of the chair, you can turn it back into mist and you'll have 5 mist again. differnt items have different costs, so smaller/less fancy things will cost less. all players have access to most of the game's catalogue of furniture, so you're free to experiment as you like!
However, "Mist Furniture" cannot be flavored.
that's right. in a controversial move, i've decided not to allow players to freely flavor their mist-based furniture. i'm sorry. it's just too powerful.
if you want to flavor a piece of furniture - and lemme tell you, you're gonna wanna flavor it - you'll need a REAL piece of furniture. like, made of wood and metal or whatever. and the only way to get that is by paying tribute to the Lady of the Mists, Aikaea.
there's a fountain on the roof of the building. if you go up there, you can flip a Mist Coin ($5 patrons get one a month!) into the drink and receive a boon from the Lady in the form of Real, Honest To God Furniture, No Mist Required. you can pick from anything in the furniture catalogue. these choices -are- permanent! a real piece of furniture goes into a different inventory, and can be placed without expending any mist. pick your favs! even better... THEY CAN BE FLAVORED!!!!
flavors are basically a way to further customize a piece of furniture you like. here's some examples.
spicey - sets a piece of furniture ablaze. sizzles when you interact with it.
wet - constantly dripping. splashes when you interact with it.
bouncey - bounces you like a trampoline when you jump on it.
oak - the object is made of wood now.
fun - brightly colored. makes a bike horn when you interact with it.
glitch - applies random textures when you load the room. makes random sounds when interacted with.
living - the object breathes, expanding and contracting. I hate it
and more to come!!! Wow!!!
a gif of some furniture placement??
ok so now you've got a cool room, and some furniture to put into it. but like, what's the point.
UMMM THE POINT IS FOR OTHER PEOPLE TO COME AND CHECK IT OUT!!!!! Zone Sweet Zone isn't ~online~ per se, but it is... asynchronous? so when you leave your zone, you save its current state, and when you enter someone else's zone, it loads their zone's current state. i also wanna do stuff like leaving dark-souls-style messages for other people in a lil mailbox... but that's for later down the line!!
SO!!! basically, zone sweet zone would be a thing that's updated monthly. at the beginning of the month, when everyone's patreon pledges go through, i'd update the server w/all the current patrons and their tenant levels + mist coins. i'd also add new furniture and avatar options at this time.
another thing i wanna do is "event floors"? basically, hidden floors accessed through the elevator that aren't regular zones, but small minigames/dungeons/events with rewards. the first floor of Zone Sweet Zone is a lobby populated by NPCs with an events board etc, so you can see what's new each month!
oh yeah!! also!! the game is gonna be free to download and play. you're free to create an avatar and explore the zones, you just won't have your own. ALSO if you pledge $5 for at least one month - you get your own zone, forever! you don't lose it when you stop pledging. you'll just stop leveling up, and your max mist reservoir will stay the same.
ALSO... i really wanna do custom furniture/avatar stuff at higher pledge levels!!! but i'm still learning when it comes to my ~3d content creation pipeline~ so i dont know what those pledge levels will be yet. i'll have a better idea when the game's out!
WHICH WILL BE, IF THINGS GO ACCORDING TO PLAN, [drumroll]
sometime in june. so umm... get, excited!!!
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redacted a chunk of text here so nobody finding this later gets confused!
it's attached to the end if you wanted to check it for reference.
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anyway!! sorry this isn't an announcement for something you can actually Play right now, but at the very least it's a look at what i've been up to!!! i'm really hoping this'll turn out to be something really fun... it's kind of like a mix of animal crossing, miitomo, and like.. graal...??? i think customizing your zone and checkin' out other people's zones should be really fun!! and i'm looking forward to player feedback on stuff to add in future updates... i want it to be something that really grows with its community!!!
also, since i'm sure you're curious: i'm still working on item haver! BUT unfortunately, Life dictates that i gotta focus on patreon right now. gotta pay those seemingly ever-increasing bills :') BUT LUCKILY THIS IS ALSO SUPER FUN AND IM STILL MAKING THINGS SO THAT'S EXCITING!!!
SO!! IN SHORT:
i'm making a new game called Zone Sweet Zone. it's a virtual apartment building updated monthly. it's free to download and play, but supporting me on patreon gets you a customizable room and other bonuses. i'm aiming to have it out sometime in june!
ok uhhh!! if you've got any questions, feel free to get at me on twitter or email me at drak@zonesweet.zone!! now that i've made this announcement i can start tweeting Gif Messes again so look forward to those :o)
ok thank you for reading about my new thing. thanks to everyone who supports me and has supported me!!! i hope this new thing will be a lot of fun for y'all!!!
a gif of a friend standing in front of some tvs
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THIS NEXT PART NO LONGER APPLICABLE
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im just leaving it here in case anyone who pledged wanted to check it??
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HERE'S THE FUN PART: $5+ patrons will begin accruing zone tenant levels THIS MONTH. (April) that means if you're a $5 patron by... well, by tomorrow, (May 1st) you'll already be a level 1 tenant. your zone is locked in, and then if you pledge again for may, when the game releases in june you'll already be level 2!! Wow!!! that's like, 10 mist reservoir. i wanna do some other kinda "founders bonus" thing too, but i dunno what just yet.
just remember that patreon bills at the beginning of each month FOR the previous month - so tomorrow it'll bill everyone for april, which is where everyone gets their first tenant level from. SO UMMM if you don't see this until patreon's already processed the payments for April, and you think zone sweet zone sounds really cool and you want that extra tenant level, i'm probably gonna set something up where you can do a "late" april payment via paypal!!! i wish i didn't post this so close to the patreon payment date but i've been trying to get things looking as good as possible before announcing :')
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OK THATS THE END OF THE STUFF THAT DOESNT MATTER ANYMORE
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Comments
this was cool looking enough to make me sign up for patreon for the first time! i hope this earns you all the support you need to help you move forward in your software/gamedev career :)
Victoria Grace Elliott
i am so so so so soooooo excited about thiiiiiiiis
