Welcome to this week's special edition of the blurb!
It has almost been 6 months since the conception of this blurb! Can you imagine that? 25 whole weeks of the blurb, almost half a year! At this point, I am really starting to feel how webcomic artists must feel posting on a weekly basis. It is truly surprising how this page has managed to keep on running not just because of me, but because of you, the reader! While 25 isn't much of a milestone, considering this blurb has been alive for this long, it certainly feels like a huge milestone for me. If anything, it's really surprising just the amount of help I've gotten running this blurb and keeping it going, getting bits of info and pieces of content from members throughout the community. Not only that, it's very awesome to see members of the development team of Brickadia enjoy the blurb, alongside people associated with them, thank you!
This banner is something I've been cooking up for a bit, mainly in regard to the animation itself. I am not the best at 3D animation, and I am somewhat incapable of using Blender as a whole to get that done. I had to rely on a program called Crocotile to make the model, rig it up, and make the animation. Since it's a CAD-based program, meaning I place each tile and move each vertice individually, this took quite a bit of time to do, and I certainly hope that you guys enjoy the animation as much as I do!
Speaking of banners, for those of you that enjoy looking at the banners each week, I made a tier-list that you guys can use to rank which blurb banners you like the best or think are hot garbage! Send them my way if you want, discuss it, do whatever you want with this new bit of information, the link is right here for it: Blurb Banner Tier List (Just be aware that banners 1 - 7 aren't there cause they don't exist, banners started being made at blurb #8!
And one more thing, if you're wondering if you could snatch that 3D model in the banner, go on right ahead, I'll link it right here as a gltf file, make your own brickhead or create your own fun animation with it!
Brickhead from Blurb #25 BannerWith all of that out of the way, let's take a look what the community has been up to this week:
An import of the moon in Brickadia:
ROHBLOCKS?:
Speaking of which:
:
More trains!:
Don't paste 200 million golden turkeys:
It's worse when you can't just remove the circle with a button after accidentally using it:
New Album Art:
Circle-making privileges revoked:
A gap on the door handle and the door in Studio? This game is unplayable now, grr...:
HE'S DEAD, OH MY GOD:
yea:
it was the right password i cant believe it:
OOOAAAUUGGHHHH:
Now we arrive at this week's user column! This week, we have a double user column going on, involving both members of the community and Contributors to Brickadia!
Each week I will be asking members of the Brickadia community a question relevant to Brickadia at the moment, whether that be in regard to development, speculation, or even just hopes and desires surrounding the game itself.
The question this week is for contributors is:
For however long you've been in the community, what have been your favorite memories, observations, or favorite qualities about the Brickadia community?
remanedur
"HM... I'd have to say as far as a memory, it'd have to be the reaaally old wild west canyon on the Studio map from like, A2 or A3 or something. One of my favorite observations was -- and I suppose this is technically slightly development-related, but worth mentioning -- Tundra Hellhole was an amazing exercise in everything me, Confidentbottle, and others had theorized about weapon balance, that instead of steering the game towards any specific combat style, people would pick different weapons for different situations and they generally did well in their respective environments. And for qualities, it's def the creativity; the ability for so many players to hop on a freebuild and just plonk down some amazing build is a strong quality of both the players and the game."
Spiketickett
"I feel like the day Alpha 5 was finally released was probably my favorite moment overall, so many parties were going on at the same time, there was everyone waiting on that peaks server doing a bunch of random stuff waiting for the upload to finally be completed, etc. I'm not exactly sure where I was at the time but its definitely a strong memory for me of the community."
APX
"There are a few things that come to mind. One of them is how unbelievably talented people are in the community. There are so many members of the community that possess various creative and intellectual skill sets. I always look forward to browsing the different media channels to see what people are working on. The things people can make in-game impresses me. In fact many of the music tracks I wrote for Brickadia are inspired by player creations, most notably from the brick party servers. One of my favorite memories is an early one. I remember when Alpha 3 opened to the public and for my first day, I got a glimpse of an amazing sandbox game. I knew in that moment that this game would be special."
The question this week is for regular community members is:
For however long you've been in the community, what have you noticed about the Brickadia development/staff team that you've come to like, or what's a memory of them that you like to remember?
base4
"I remember the time I stumbled in and caught Zeblote playing the Mirror Image Experiment for the first time. He got about 10 rooms in before excitedly asking Six[morphugus] to join him on the server. They both really liked it and Zeb ended up sticking around afterward. I remember talking to him about how 'people argue a lot over brickadia's identity: whether it's a game engine or a block building game' and I'll never forget what he said in response: "why can't it be both?"
Oxy
"I like how open the devs are to questions about how the game works, answering pretty much any relevant questions players have. The technical insight into the development of this kind of sandbox game is really interesting to read through."
Critical Floof
"I don't usually see the developers in the Alpha build of the game too much, or remember much about them, but I do recognize and appreciate the hard work they're putting into the EA release. I find it very nice of them to give us developer media in the discord as well, it gives me an idea of what's possible when I buy EA."
For this speculation section, we will be taking a look at some groundbreaking videos showcasing just what behaviors in Brickadia is capable of:
Behaviors: Polyhedron:
Behaviors: Wormy
Snake:
Now if you weren't like me in the sense of just being amazed but what you just saw, then rewatch those videos. Let's just break down the first video. For one, I would assume that whatever function in-place is not mapping an object straight from somewhere else or from some sort of file. Second off, if you notice at the beginning of the first video, you'll notice that the particles are brought out of the brick. While that in itself doesn't sound like something amazing, just the fact that they can be brought out and mapped in real time to form a shape is something quite amazing in itself. Imagine using nothing but microbricks to create all sorts of wireframe structures, abstract visuals, or even holograms:
If these can be created on PICO-8, I fully imagine they can be recreated in Brickadia with stunning results.
Now what about that second video? If builds can move while carrying out behavior functions, meaning we get a mix of behaviors AND physics, that opens the door to a lot of possibilities. As a matter of fact, this ties into the third video as well. Even though it's been stated by Sixmorphugus that the kind of generation seen in the third video would only work well in singleplayer, imagine creating a flag or a sheet of fabric that waves in the wind while being moved around, or sticking that onto a vehicle. Think this:
I guess what I'm saying at the end of the day is just give me some cloth or fabric objects with cloth physics, devs. PLEASE.
Jokes aside, randomized map generation, mapping different types of objects with microbrick particles, or just animating cool things. There's really not anything more for me to say, you can probably imagine what is already possible with some of these. A map growing a mountain out of no where and bursting into a volcano, creating wild drone arrangements in the sky, animating pixel art in Brickadia, etc. It's especially reassuring to know that the BVM (Behavior Virtual Machine), the system design to hold and operate all of the behaviors in Brickadia, will be capable enough to handle whatever it is the player has in mind:
And that's all for this week of the durb blurb!
Before I close this blurb post, I'd like to thank Super, Tantiem, Critical Floof, and many others for helping me maintain this blurb and helping me out with different aspects of it throughout the run of this blurb!
If you want to see your creations, ideas, and speculations highlighted on the blurb, contact me at: durb#3215
See you all next week!