Hello blurb readers!
For those of you that may be wondering where the blurb scheduled for yesterday was (8/26/2024), I am sorry to inform you folks that despite an extra week-delay being given for working on the blurb, I will need just one more week to get it out due to some scheduling conflicts over the past couple days. As a matter of fact, the only reason I wasn't able to make that announcement yesterday was because of the fact that I was trying to cram quite a bit of work on the animation-side of things.
I can see why this would come as a great disappointment though, seeing as no one likes to see a delay. Because of that, I feel like it'd be incredibly unfair to have this delay and not show at least a slice of the work I've been doing for over the past couple weeks. So because of that, let me show you guys the ~99% eye-catcher banner that will replace the current one on the site! Last time I mentioned progress on it, I told you all that I had to apply some finishing touches. That was before I realized I made a couple pretty bad mistakes with the animation in terms of timing (and early on, coloring). Who would've that that even after a year of the blurb that I still make some animation mistakes? You won't see them here, but let me just say that going back and fixing the mistake in 12 frames is a bit of a tedious task, on top of having to recolor over that.
To see where this new eye-catcher banner is, look at the top of the page! It will be finalized on the release of the new blurb, so enjoy that sneak peek for now!
On top of that, because I am personally excited for the new blurb that will be coming out, seeing as I've gotten requests for this in the past, I am opening up the community question for this blurb to the rest of the community! So if you've always wanted to answer a question for the blurb but just haven't gotten the chance either because I'm blatantly corrupt and pick favorites or because I'm literally just evil, then this is your chance! There will be no limit as to how many people will be able to get their response shown, so don't wait on it, the community question for this blurb is:
With the vast array of vehicle content recently revealed by the developers, what do you think they'll be showing next? What sort of functionalities are you hoping will make it into the game with a lot of the new parts shown (seats, hinges, servos, etc.), and what sort of vehicles are you planning to make once you get your hands on these new features?
Since I don't want my Discord DM's to be chaotic, I will be using the blurb email to actually take submissions for this question from all of you, so if you have an answer to that question, send it over to this email address: officialdurblurb@gmail.com
Remember to include the username/alias you'd like to be referred to by in your email submission, and responses should be around 2-3 sentences or more. This is not a guarantee that all submissions will be shown.
But with that out of the way, apologies for this huge inconvenience, this will be posted on the blurb itself as well to see, and for those of you who have been hungering for a new blurb, you now have something to keep yourself from eating me as a last resort.
The new release for the blurb will be on (9/2/2024). See you guys until then!
Welcome to this blurb!
This week, we get to talk about some awesome stuff in our speculation column! Now, it's been 3 weeks since the last blurb. A LOT of stuff has been revealed and showcased, even to the point where I have some exclusive blurb content now!
However, with how much there is to cover, we'll have to pace how much I cover the new development content that was revealed so that I don't end up having excruciatingly long speculation columns, so if you're anticipating anything that goes SUPER in-depth with what's being foreshadowed toward in today's speculation column, you won't be able to sink your teeth in quite yet. Stay tuned for the next blurb on that!
Apart from that, working on this banner was really fun to do! Now, if you're wondering why there was a week delay, I decided that as a result of the amount of development content recently revealed, I wanted to theme them properly. So for this blurb, the banner is more-so a setup for the next blurb's banner. Perhaps that will give some people a hint on what we'll be seeing soon on the next blurb.
Anyways, that change was made in the middle of last week, and was a bit of a tough decision to make. Apologies for the inconvenience, as I know waiting 3 weeks for a blurb can be a little rough for those expecting it.
If the first thing you notice about this blurb is that the top banner still hasn't been updated, I am fairly close to it being done, just didn't manage to cram in the time to get it done with everything going on both with having to get this blurb out and some real-life stuff as well. It will be here in the next blurb, otherwise I'll eat my shorts.
With all that out of the way, what has the community been up to in the past 3 weeks that I've been chipping away on banners? Let's take a look!
If I wasn't running the blurb, this is the sort of stuff I'd be doing. Awesome poster!:
Credit: Sulfito
Astoundingly well-built subway station:
Credit: Built by Snabs, screenshotted by Brickitect
I can smell the leaded gasoline:
Credit: Moon Wolf
Can't wait to see players make super-sized castles and mansions with physics functionalities built into them when Brickadia releases:
Credit: Londo
Activate Windows sighted in the second picture:
Credit: stikehbun
I really wish there were more edits for screenshots from the community, cause they always go hard:
Credit: Moon Wolf
1984:
Credit: Ladios
He doesn't have the CS:GO textures installed for his face:
Credit: Tamablesnow
Miniature-scaled art-deco subway station!:
Credit: Voxita
A near-equivalent to a save-bomb:
Credit: Exit
Dude on the right isn't resting, he actually passed out cause he can't handle the 5 million bricks on the server:
Credit: Ladios
Open up enough multi-clients, and you'll be able to brick your PC!:
Credit: beecarbonate
SKYSCRAPAHS:
Credit: Cryptic Runner
"certified car":
Credit: tuc
Now we arrive at this blurb's user column!
The question for this blurb is:
With the reveal of bricks like the Logic Gate bricks and the Engine brick, what other specialized bricks are you hoping to see implemented into Brickadia? If more vehicle-centric bricks were introduced, what sorts of bricks would you hope to see added?
"Honestly I'd hope the logic bricks work well enough on vehicles that there isn't a need for many very specialized bricks. Ideally most of everything could just be made with the logic bricks. But practically it'd be nice if there's stuff like headlights, (passenger) seats, door hinges, brake lights and other stuff like that. They could conceivably be made using logic bricks, but would just be nice to have as a quality-of-life as premade stuff to more easily build cars quickly."
"It'd be cool to see some more 'mechanical'/machinery-based special bricks added to the game. Stuff like industrial fans, turbines, maybe some kind of pushing/conveyor brick to move things around, a generator brick, vents, etc.. I think that sort of stuff would really expand the building palette, especially for builds with a lot of commercial style buildings like Midnight Alley or Brickitects Rockwell City. I'd absolute love some more vehicle-centric bricks too! I think I talked about this before, but stuff like springs/suspension, exhausts (or at least just mufflers), steering wheels, seats, and so on. And I really hope it's all customisable/modifiable too, and maybe that you can interchange parts together (like being able to have different wheels with different sets of tyres for example)."
"A steering wheel which moves depending on the player's input in vehicles would be pretty nice. Resizable fenders that fit wheels and exhaust bricks would also be neat, along with some way to detect a vehicle's speed if a builder wants to do something like spoilers that fold out when going fast or light up the rear lights when the player brakes & reverses."
And now for the weekly comic panel!
In the last blurb, I talked the reveal of a lot of new bricks, specifically in regard to cosmetics, switches, and the like.
However, in the midst of writing this speculation column, a lot of things have been revealed in conjunction to some of the bricks that were previously revealed. So while I do have the opportunity to cover a LOT of content, what I'll do instead is turn into a three parter, with this particular speculation column being the second part for speculation. So if you're wanting to see me cover some heavy development content, I've saved it best for last in the next blurb!
So what do we have to talk about?
For one, I mentioned before that with the introduction of a lot of new and old bricks in Brickadia that we may very well be finally seeing the implementation of a lot of the features previously discussed by the developers, things like the means to use (and interact with) Behavior mechanics, Wires, and the Vehicle system in a way that involves the use of bricks. To boil it down, we're getting the front-end for the back-end.
However, I excluded some bricks that were revealed to discuss them here because of the big implications that they have.
The two things we'll be talking about today are the Engine bricks and the Logic Gate bricks.
Credit: ConfidentBottle
Credit: ConfidentBottle
We talked about switches and buttons, but now we're going a step beyond!
Let's talk about the Engine brick first:
For one, we're told that the Engine brick is supposed to act as the means to controlling vehicles. Pretty obvious, but let's take a look at what one of the developers, ConfidentBottle, says about this:
"[T]he idea of the engine is for it to act as a vehicle controller and add a level of powertrain simulation to the control of the wheels, as well as being a central place to handle engine sounds etc."
"[I]n theory you could just do direct control of wheels, but if you hook them up to an engine you'll get more believable torque/RPM curves and gear shifting and that sorta thing, i.e. the engine brick dynamically controls how much power is being sent to the wheels based on its current gear/RPMs/etc. etc." - ConfidentBottle
In other words, it serves a purpose similar to what Wires does to Behaviors, that is, simplifying the creation of specific functions. In regard to the Engine brick, it's meant to act as a quick way of setting up a vehicle instead of just individually setting up functions for each wheel, hinge, and so on and so forth. If you still haven't gotten it, it sort of helps making the car quick and easy for you.
On top of that, we can expect to see a thinner version of the brick to fit in slimmer vehicles and contraptions!
"[Of course], the engine will have a slim version that looks like an R/C control unit and is only about a microbrick thick." - ConfidentBottle
So not only do we get the the means of making vehicles, we also get the convenience, and as a cherry on top, some variety!
Now a question some might have, however, is whether or not we'll be getting values that we can edit for the Engine bricks. Different vehicles operate differently, and I can imagine a space rover someone builds will absolutely function differently compared to a Honda Civic. With that in mind, one could speculate that we could potentially see values and variables we can edit with the Engine bricks, perhaps by using the Applicator tool. Got to adjust speed? Need to tune the torque? For me, if there were things that needed to be changed, changing the values with the Applicator tool would seem to be the way to go.
However, how will wheel assignment work? How will steering work with that? If I have an 18-wheeler truck, how do I tell the Engine brick that 16 wheels on the back are meant to push for the truck? We'll have to wait and see.
Moving on from this, Logic Gates:
Now, let's break this down. What in the world are Logic Gates?
It's very easy to look over this and mark it off as one of those complicated parts of a game, similiar to how Minecraft has in-depth redstone mechanics, or how most people who have played ROBLOX will likely have never touched scripting to any capacity whatsoever. So for you folks that somehow read each column but have a Pavlovian response to complicated stuff like this, I'll break it down for you:
Credit: trogtor
Generally speaking, logic gates are part of a system that involves binary inputs and outputs. In other words, for getting stuff done, 1s and 0s are used for the express purpose of getting whatever needs to be done carried out, and Logic Gates define what an output is based on inputs.
With regard to Brickadia, that involves handling boolean inputs and outputs. Kind of like a light switch, if it's flipped on, then a light turns on. If it's off, then a light is turned off. It's true and false stuff, that's what logic gates handle for the most part.
But what can they be used for in the context of Brickadia, though?
For one, apart from the example I just used, you could use them to make pinpad locks that require a specific combination, an alarm system, elevators, traffic lights, and so on and so forth. If you've ever seen those Minecraft YouTube videos where people create insane redstone computers, then that should paint the picture on what is potentially possible with logic gates.
So in that case then, in regard to what new bricks we can see in Brickadia in reference to Logic Gates, we can then safely assume that we'll most likely see the rest of the logic gates that actually exist in real life make it into the game. If you're curious as to what that looks like and want to compare, then here's a diagram for you to see what symbols to expect:
Credit: Electronics For You
Now comes a particular question, though. How will logic gates be used to specifically interact with different things? To be more precise, we talk about things like flipping the switch for lights and elevators and all that pizazz. How do you implement it?
What I like to think is that the Wire tool is going to be what makes the implementation of these logic gates fully realized. You attach one end onto a switch, and the end to another logic gate, which then connects to a light, and all of a sudden, you have a circuit going on. As a matter of fact, this may very well be the way it will go, based on the development blog: "Interactive Brickadia: Next Steps," written up by Sixmorphugus.
Let's take a quick peek!
In the development blog, we get to see what these wire connections look like for logic gates:
Credit: Brickadia Development Blog
Credit: Brickadia Development Blog
First off, we get to see what logic gates originally looked like before they were finally implemented into the game!
Credit: Brickadia Development Blog
Credit: Brickadia Development Blog
It is interesting how they're more of a picture frame-shaped object in contrast to this sort of gearbox that we get for logic gates that we see shown to us in-game:
Credit: ConfidentBottle
Pretty good memory jog as to what we could expect for how the UI-aspect of logic gates and wires will look like. While this development blog is roughly 3 years old, it's fair to say that with the implementation of these features being quite similar to how they were introduced back then, like the switches and buttons we talked about in the last blurb, it's safe to say that the UI we're expecting to see will likely be strikingly similar to what was shown to us in the development blog.
Let's tread back to what I was talking about at the start of this column. As of the release of this blurb, there is about 4 months left in 2024. Keeping in mind the fact that we're expecting to know about the game 2 months in advance, that puts it down to 2 months. Close, isn't it?
Now I'm not here to discuss whether or not we're going to see the game actually release before the end of the year (though if it does, I'll eat my pants). What I am here to suggest, however, is that if it were so much so the case that they want to hunker down on that, then these reveals and development showcases are no coincidence in that regard, even if they don't get release done within the year.
Regardless of whether or not this is a potential build-up to release towards the end of the year or even beyond, the fact of the matter is that development has seemingly been going strong, and I would like to believe that the developers are slowly starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (even if it is the size of a pinhole).
Switches, buttons, engine bricks, and logic gates. What will we see next?
Credit: Toriel
Stay tuned.
And that's all for this blurb!
If you want to see your creations, ideas, and speculations highlighted on the blurb, contact me at: durb#3215
You can also support me on my Patreon using this link here: Durb Blurb Patreon (www.patreon.com/durblurb)