Welcome to today's blurb!

Apologies for the week delay, and for not posting the reason why here! (I realize now that I forgot to update everyone on that). Long story short, work and out-of-town family friends came by, so not enough time to get this out the way I wanted to.

Moving on, hopefully you guys like the banner this week. NORMALLY I host a community vote in my Patreon Discord to decide what the banner will be, but as of late I've been itching to do more of what I want, and this one kind of satisfies my craving to make something not only with different brushes, but a different sort of aesthetic to it. The muted colors, the zig-zagged shock lines, the odd expressions, sort of caters towards my interest in making something a little odd looking but neat at the same time. If I had more time, I would've added more frames to make the lines coming from the paper a lot more smoother, but how many times have I said that in the past? (Maybe one too many times, unfortunately).

On top of that, I hate work, and I continue to hate work. Today (or rather, yesterday as of writing this, considering I am writing this at MIDNIGHT, so it's the 25th instead of the 24th), I had to bring my store deposit to the bank after work and dump it in the dropbox. Only problem is that I ended up dropping the key somewhere along the line, leading me to look for it for 20 minutes in cold, muddy weather. Also the road was completely wet. On top of that, parking was abysmal. Talk about a busy day of work, imagine not being able to go home for an extra half-hour because you can't find parking, and have to walk what feels like a mile or so just to get back home. But you know how it is, it's THAT time of year where people not only act like maniacs, but also park like they live here as well. You probably know what I'm talking about if you have to parallel park outside your home on the street, the kind who like to take up an extra two parking spaces. Really sets off the ram-my-car-into-every-car-parked-along-the-road type of urge when you see that, but unfortunately I can't get away with that.

With that out of the way, what's been up lately with Brickadia? Any cool epic moments from the developers? Well, we'll be at the mall today taking a look at some cool cosmetic pieces! Yeah, you remember, at the end of last week's speculation column, we drove off in my cool car that Sixmorphugus made for me. Well, now we're here, but first we gotta walk there. But before we go inside, let's take a look at what the community has been up to as of late:

Clothes!

Whether you’re young or you’re stupid, everyone needs to wear some clothes on their back!

Ever since the dawn of man, the human being has found a multitude of ways to clothe themselves. From pelts and furs to ripped jeans and shirts that emanate angst on levels that could melt through steel, the possibilities of what one could not only just wear, but create and design for their own wearing needs, is nigh limitless.

So where does that put us today? What evil, primordial fashion tastes are we dealt with now? Recently, the developers have managed to come up with a particular article of clothing for players to wear that some of you may find pretty cool: skirt and a dress!

Credit: ConfidentBottle & Tori

Oh, okay. Well, I guess that’s pretty cool.

Now hold on, why focus a speculation column on this? Couldn’t I be talking about something more interesting? Why aren’t I talking about something COOL, like if robot bears with laser sights could someday make it into Brickadia or whatever?

While I would typically agree with those sorts of sentiments, these new avatar pieces actually help provide some insight for how future cosmetic parts and pieces for Brickadia could be made and implemented in the future. What do I mean?

Tell me, for those who are familiar with actual LEGOs, do some minifigures tend to have skirt dresses? Well, yeah. But in what way?

For those particularly knowledgeable in this sort of thing for whatever weird reason, you would know that there’s no single answer. They’ve printed them onto the figure, they’ve made cloth pieces, they’ve made dedicated solid pieces, they’ve even used literal LEGO bricks to represent a dress. Imagine that, a Brickadia avatar walking with a slope brick for legs, and calling it a dress! Never seen that before.

Credit: San Antonio Plastic Bricks

Credit: Blockland

So because there’s multiple solutions, there’s no single solid choice. While each one can work, each one can leave much to be desired. So since Brickadia is a game that bases itself on the idea of building blocks, how do the developers tackle this design conundrum? How do they handle something like that?

Cause think about it, you have a player made of (what I assume is) plastic with pieces to wear, what do you design for the player to wear that looks like a dress or skirt, but still allows for the legs to move around naturally?

Well, we got our answer. The wait, which, yeah, I know you’ve all been dying just waiting, is finally over. Here it is, the moment of truth: just have them split into two pieces and clip them into each other.

Credit: ConfidentBottle

Huh.

Well, it’s a bit of a surprise, it obviously looks good, there’s no doubt about that. But clipping? For most of you it’s probably nothing, as a matter of fact, I’m completely fine with the approach they took. Personally, I always imagined the solution involving some cloth, or, you know, no clipping at all.

But how can you blame them? Coming up with a design that fits the style, looks good, and functions in a way that feels right definitely isn’t easy. And considering a lot of character customization in this game involves clipping pieces together to create a certain appearance, it sort of renders this as a non-issue.

Alright, so we’ve gone through that. Dresses and skirts get a pass. But what does this mean for future cosmetics?

For one, the one cosmetic I always have on my mind is the cape piece. Yeah, I’m still thinking about it, but so are you (probably). We have a cape piece already, but for me, it sort of comes off as a wimpy piece of cloth someone wears when they can't afford an actual cape. I mean, look at it:

Credit: Brickadia

Shouldn’t a cape be awe-inspiring and awesome? Of course, they can’t just put in a huge cape. It’d be clipping through the arms and legs and anything that’s sat on, it’d be a disaster. But considering that having SOME parts clip isn’t the end of the world in terms of Brickadia design, perhaps there’s room for adding a wider, less wimpy cape. Probably not one that goes all the way out and clips into everything, but maybe one that stretches out a bit over the shoulders, maybe like this dude!

Credit: Alex Ross

Or what about something like kneepads? I can’t imagine too well how they can pull something like that off without there being some clipping of some kind, like maybe there’d be a slit connection that links it through the leg joint, or maybe it connects to the upper leg somehow, there’s a couple options for sure. But why stop there? We could get a ruff around the neck for players, I could see something like that clipping into the torso a bit.

Now listen, the point isn’t so much that we have clipping cosmetics, we’ve had that for a while. It’s more about the concessions the developers are willing to make and how far they’re willing to go to get what avatar pieces they want in the game. For a game that’s draws heavily from building blocks, at the end of the day, that’s all it is: influence. They don’t have to go by exact functional design exactly, but it is interesting to see when those sorts of compromises are made.

But based on the compromises that are made, we can sort of use that as a guide for how it is that they can implement certain articles of clothes and cosmetics that some may otherwise consider either too impractical to implement or too difficult to add. In a way, it sort of helps flesh out some aspect of their design philosophy beyond aesthetic design.

Now realizing this, I'm hoping the developers are willing to add a duck tube that the player can wear around their waist. Don't tell me they can't add that, I know they can add something like that into the game, I mean look at this:

Credit: Brickadia

If they can add this fat sucker into the game and have the arms go through it a bunch, they can have a big rubber tube you were around the waist with a duck at the end. I know they can do it, they have NO excuse not to add it, I NEED IT. NOW. NOW!!! RAAHHHHH!!!

Credit: GAME