Welcome to today's blurb!
Hope you guys like the banner for this post, took a while to make!
If it wasn't obvious, it's based on Alice in Wonderland. Got the idea to make this after listening to the soundtrack quite a bit. It's a shame that they don't make movies like that anymore, where the tunes are super catchy and the art is gorgeous. The only thing I wish I could do is make animated cel sheets like the animated films of that time. Who knows, maybe that'll happen sometime soon...
Speaking of which, that's what made making this banner all the more tricky! This specific shot is based on the intro title sequence, where it's not necessarily animated and uses painted colors. Doing the hatching twice took a while to do, as well as getting the colors down just right. For what I think it's worth, I think I got it down pretty close, and hopefully you guys think so too!
Regardless, we have a lot to get through, as people have been making some really gnarly stuff recently! So let's just get right into it:
The day we get autonomous walkers is the day we get insane gamemodes. Awesome video, awesome robot models, and now I need to start arming myself:
Credit: Thorn
"Sorry, the phrase was "this is a terrible use of microbricks":
Credit: Dm.Gearshark
The results of a recent Brickadia race!:
Credit: Sulfito
And these are the winners of the race!:
Credit: Brickitect
"I don't care if he delivered my DoorDash meal, I'm not tipping him for forgetting the fries!":
Credit: remanedur
Also, cool effect for an invisible aircraft:
Credit: remanedur
Yeah this is cool and all, but when are we getting a full-on crazy pinball machine? Impressive work, nonetheless!:
Credit: fullchomp
Absolutely insane that someone managed to make an actually stand power from Jojo:
Credit: Pireh
"And this is where we refrigerate all the food your mom eats":
Credit: Kneecap Taker
Waiting for the day we get Mario Kart styled powerups and effects:
Credit: Kneecap Taker
Excellent progress on this city; awesome billboard!:
Credit: Cryptic Runner
It's funny how much I love and hate this at the same time. I love secret passage ways, but I also hate when people troll me about it. Regardless, very cool, and very hilarious:
Credit: crazyjaydon
Would be awesome if we got a little server where we just battle miniature units against each other. That, or Bloons Tower Defense on Brickadia:
Credit: remanedur
More LEGO sets in Brickadia? I hope there is! Very cool video, I like the idea of players hiding in barrels as a game feature:
Credit: Copious Kobolds
"There isn't enough plastic in my foul, beastly soup!":
Credit: Ristyenok
Can't explore a jungle without something to ride in style! That, and probably some parasitic infections:
Credit: Thorn
Now all you need to do is wire him up to push out bricks from his chest. Soon, with the next patch!:
Credit: Radio
Asmongold's apartment:
Credit: Ristyenok
Brickadia yearns for a rat brick. Why else would someone make an avatar like this?:
Credit: Copious Kobolds
A great collage of extremely impressive avatars. Shows that with some limits to what accessories and cosmetics there are, people will find a way to make something crazy!:
Credit: pak
"Alright, I'm not accusing any of you guys, but I'm just saying, this pool shouldn't be yellow OR glowing":
Credit: SirTastier
Probably going to need a giant hose from this sucker to clean out that pool:
Credit: hungolomghnonoloughongas
Once we get UI customization, we'll be able to keep track of who's been getting all the triple bogeys:
Credit: Cream and Candy Rocks
Another day, another dollar:
Credit: Stratofortress
Fair:
Credit: Wiiva
Now we arrive at this blurb's user column!
The question for this blurb is:
What would you want the developers to focus on more for Brickadia: game performance, content and features, or bug fixes?
"Features for sure. Idk how to elaborate on this tbh[...] I'll say I do really wanna see some Machinima/rp kind of features like talking animations, freecam, hotkeys for emotes, aaand that's all I can think of[.]"
"Content and features for sure. Truth be told I haven't noticed many bugs at all save for the gamebreaking crashes of "super early update beta on Steam." That and maybe the brick ghosting not showing when the selection is moved. I would love to see them lean into minigame creation features."
"I would prefer content and features more than anything, as of the current patch. The game's in a pretty stable state as far as I can tell, and performance isn't an issue for most people. Now is a good time to focus on adding new features, and I'm excited to see where EA3 brings us on that front."
"I definitely love and welcome game performance upgrades, and what the devs have done thus far is just simply shockingly awesome. I am excited to see how more can be done so I can build a city with a 420,666,420 brickcount. I gotta say with content...we need more robust detailed tutorials, especially for the gates/logic. I think work can be done to help make the gates and systems a bit more intuitive, it's very intimidating to a lot of people. Id also love a return of the outliner tool with more functions. Bug fixes? I would like to ride my rockwell tram with the rain on, but the rain emitters dont collide with physics grids so the rain goes right through the train. The list of bugs is arguably large and I am certain I can list things after I wrote this comment...but I don't want to bark orders about bugfixing since it'd be rude on top of me not knowing anything of scripting or game development. I want the game to be the best version of itself and I personally encourage the devs to be more openly communicative outside of the main discord. The occasional giant devblog is nice, but if one is not in the discord the amount they could see from the devs is very little. I hope that the devs figure out a balance/the team can be more active on social media. Sometimes people join my server and talk about from their POV there's complete radio silence and they have no idea or inclination of the game's direction or development momentum. TLDR: I hope for more performance, I'm selfish since I have a gigantic city that'll only grow larger. I hope for more robust tools, intuitive tutorials, and more communications on sites outside the discord, not including the devblogs (which are very nice but come out once every few months not to mention never having a consistent schedule of posting stuff."
"I'd personally prefer if the devs focused on necessary features that could improve on the current state of the game. For example, the next update would be introducing lots of new parts that would enhance the more technical part of the game. This update is a core foundation for future updates like proper game modes which will help bring in hopefully a consistent player count. However, I believe that not every update should be all features and the updates should include improvements on current systems that may be outdated. For example, the new resizer and selector upgrades are a much needed improvement which will feel more intuitive to newer players hopefully, and help existing players with their building."
"I’m not opposed to new content and features, but it’s better to eventually have something good than have something terrible at launch due to technical debt from existing issues in the game. From what I’ve heard from the developers Brickadia sounds like it’s being held together by duct tape (mostly to the fault of Epic Games) so I think they should be careful in what they decide to prioritize on. Thank you Tim Sweeney."
And now for the blurb comic panel!:
Guess what folks? We now have an ETA on when we can expect the next patch/update for Brickadia to drop!
Credit: Zeblote
In roughly 2 months! Well, that's quite exciting, isn't it? Prefab spawners, new gates, and UI that can be created by players! That's a lot to look forward to!
Now obviously comes the question of whether or not it'll actually come out on or around that time. Truth be told, considering there's a specific date, I can imagine there's some confidence behind this patch coming out around this time. Not only that, given that it's in June, it almost matches up to when the Steam Summer Sales start, so if anything, it's more of an optimal time for developers to launch the patch and have it go alongside such a major digital retail event. So given all these things, I think it's pretty fair to say that we'll be getting this update for sure. So for those of you that had PTSD from the game release delays, rest easy.
Now given that we'll be getting this patch soon, we should go over some newly revealed development content for Brickadia that we didn't get to see in the latest development blog.
So, for starters, we've got mirroring!
Credit: Sixmorphugus
For that video, the mirroring is more clear at the VERY end of the video, where wedge corners are being mirrored.
Obviously, this is a pretty major feature! For a lot of builds that revolve around making symmetrical builds, this quite literally cuts down the work of those sorts of builds in HALF!
What's interesting is that this feature is, as seen in the video, built into the Placer tool. With that in mind, I only have one problem with the video: where's the bind for the mirror feature?
This really brings into thought one concern that I have, and that's having too many bind hints. If you have binds, you need to display where they are, and that's obvious. As you can see in the video, there's a LOT of hints to go off of. However, since we're clearly going to be getting another bind to get a hint for, then I think there should be a bit of a small UI edit. To make the clutter at the bottom left of the screen a little more readible, what if some hints were color-coded? Main features would have the dark background like in the video, but other binds that are dependant on parent binds could be color-coded to be brighter or a different color altogether. That way, if a player is looking to find what a certain bind is for a specific feature, they don't have to scour through the whole list, they'd just have to look for the bind hints that are color-coded.
Moving on, we got a superb rework on selecting and resizing!
Ever thought resizing a brick by one axis was tedious? Ever though going side by side wasted a lot of time? Wish you could just grab that corner of a brick and RIP your arm at mach speed resizing it across multiple axis just to make resizing a brick faster?
Say no more!
Credit: Sixmorphugus
Now that's what I'm talking about! Resize along an axis or by a corner! This is a feature that also cuts down a lot of building work, since the biggest issue with resizing bricks was just how tedious it was. Axis by axis by axis, it slows you down a lot. But now we have a convenient, efficient solution, I'm impressed! Of course, this isn't an original idea, as many people have been clammering for this sort of feature for a while now, but it's good to see the developers follow through and get it done.
That's pretty much all there is to talk about, but I do want to go over some of the cool UI stuff that has been shown recently through developer media:
Credit: wrap
I may have shown these before, but these are crazy awesome. I can absolutely see someone creating some crazy UI, similar to Persona, for example. Not only that, I can imagine someone making a Brickadia arcade game using nothing but the UI to help them out. Why stop there, what about a whole calculator, or the lightest form of a computer? Well, maybe we're going too far. Nonetheless, there are definitely some crazy possibilities with the introduction of UIs that can be created. One thing I am curious about, though, is if we'll see in-game UI text with clearer text that come from certain objects, or if we'll see the introduction of different, usable fonts. Another question is just how much UI can you place before the game starts lagging?
Regardless, whoever manages to make an arcade machine using nothing but the UI once the patch comes out is getting an instant feature, no doubt about it. In conclusion, I think we're pretty much almost all set for the next patch. Now if only we could get a new map, now that would be awesome.
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)