Welcome to today's blurb!

Seems we're in a bit of a Neolithic mood today, aren't we?

I wanted to make the banner in this style after a recent Drawpile session I had with some friends where I set up a cavewall for some cave art. I incorporated the characters from the fighting game Slap City to do this as a bit of a funny joke, look at it here!:

Credit: me lol!

There's not much for me to talk about this time around other than soem prep work I'm doing for the 75th blurb! That's right, we're only two posts away from the 75th blurb! While that doesn't seem all that crazy, I usually like having milestones in quarter-increments. The 25th blurb was a milestone, the 50th blurb was a milestone, and now we're getting mighty close to 75! Now we just have to get to 100. That'll be the big one!

So what exactly do I have planned for the 75th blurb?

Well, the banners for those particularly special posts tend to have me trying something new and unique for the banner. This is usually in the form of a 3D banner, so to speak. So, if anything, that should be a clear indicator of what the banner should look like for the 75th post.

Regardless, hopefully that builds up some hype for when we get around to that!

For now, let's enjoy what the community has been cooking up for the past two weeks:

Circuits, microchips, overpriced GPUs, and exceedingly expensive RAM sticks.

These are things you can play around with in Brickadia. Maybe not those last two though.

HOWEVER.

Sometimes, enough isn't enough. When you're pushing the limits, sometimes, you hit a couple of snags on the way. For instance, complicated math circuits, calculators, and computer-adjacent processes sometimes get, well, messy! It's like the underside of a computer desk. Easy to understand setup at the top, a mess of wires and cables underneath. Of course, there are tools that help to manage this, like the Rerouter brick. Unfortunately, not everyone likes the sight of wires. Sometimes what I'll notice builders do when dealing with massive circuit contraptions is that they'll often make the entire circuit invisible, then slap it somewhere discrete. It's clear that despite wires and logic gates acting as a gateway to more complex functions, players just don't want to see them.

So where does that leave us? Well, recently, it seems there's been a new innovation in the development asylum. To get around the sight of wired contraptions, we've been given: the microchip!

What does it do? Well, just look at it!

Credit: wrap

Now I have to admit, this is a convenient solution to a messy problem. Got a computer you need to shove somewhere? Put it all in the microchip!

One thing to take notice of too is the fact that these chips can be nested. That's what you see when the microchips are repeatedly into what we'll call the microchip grid. Technically speaking, that pretty much paves the way for players to make entire gamemodes almost off of one microchip that's jampacked with logic gates.

This does raise some thoughts. However, these thoughts are not my own! Yes, even though I could thoughtfully speculate on things like cosmetics, accessories, bricks, tools, and the variety, I'm not an electrical engineer. What do I mean? I'm not smart enough for this. So, to help ME out, here's some input from our friendly pseudonymous electrical engineer: the humble lemon!

Given everything you see with microchips in this video, what questions come up in your head regarding microchips in-game?

"As far as I can tell, microchips do not offer new logic capabilities but, rather, they act as a convenient way to store large amounts of logic in a small space. I see from the video that that they can be nested within each other and expanded in size as one would expect really. The only thing I am wondering about is if you have to expand the chip every time you want to connect to something inside it or if there will be a way to conveniently denote inputs and outputs of your microchip just like how other logic bricks have them so you could use it without opening it up, but that would be a minor QOL feature that might not be worth it."

Well, that makes things worse for me! If the electrical engineer that I consult doesn't have too much thoughts on this, then what can I even ask then? It all seems pretty self-explanatory.

Truthfully, I can only speculate on microchips so much since, again, I'm more of a brick enjoyer than I am a wire connoisseur.

This leaves me with one path left to take: an entire pivot on the subject matter of speculation!

We've seen microchips, we've seen what they're capable of. HOWEVER.

What about an entirely different, new feature we've only seen JUST recently?

Credit: Kenko

Proximity voice chat? In my Brickadia!?

Well if you didn't hear it yet, you've heard it now. The urge to pour out your frustrations and rage through a microphone is one that has existed since the dawn of man. Now, you can do it in Brickadia too!

However, some questions arise as to its functionality and use! For example, how difficult would it be to report someone for something vile that was said? What about mic spamming? How easy and intituive is it to mute someone?

We can see an icon to the right of the user's name in the video that's shown above. Would it be possible to just click that and just have that be the way you mute someone? Can proximity chat be turned off all together? Will there be permissions that directly effect voice proximity? What about gates that can modify attributes of voice proximity, like special audio effects?

One thing that would be neat to see is a radio item that the player can carry around. If you're using voice proximity, you could use the radio to talk to someone far away. A simple idea that can go a long way. I think something like that would be very useful especially if chat was proximity as well. Not only that, I think an interesting use of an item like that would be in a gamemode where knowing the location of someone or a group is critical to winning, like a deathmatch for example.

To add on to that, what if the radio allowed you to be heard both in proximity and through transmission, while another item made it so you can only be heard through that transmission, like a private voice chat? Perhaps a item like a cellphone could be useful for that, or maybe it could be something you toggle for whatever item you use to voice chat from a distance with.

I do like the idea that proximity voice chat is just something that is the main way to voice chat instead of just having it be something that everyone instantly hears. It leaves plenty of room for different conversations on the same server without having the problem of people talking over each other happen as often!

What about tools that change how voice proximity chat operates? For example, if someone has to talk to a lot of players at once, an intercom brick of some sort could be useful for that, or some sort of component that reads proximity input and outputs it into speakers. Better yet, what about a megaphone item that players can use? Surely no one will abuse that! With proximity chat becoming an idea now, one has to wonder if a Text-to-Speech feature could go along with it as well.

Of course, I can keep going on and on, thinking of what else go along with proximity voice chat, but to get an idea on what we can expect, let's take a look at a message from one of the staff for Brickadia from a couple months back:

Credit: Burnice

Moderation toolsare incredibly important for something like voice chats, and while this is a relatively old message, it does shed some light on what we can generally HOPE to expect from something like voice chats. If you can talk through it, there should be some way to be held accountable for the worst case scenarios, after all.

Alright, enough talk. In the next speculation column, we'll be talking about one thing: adjustable physics mass in entities!