Thursday, February 21, 2019

It is News

Well, if you haven't heard, it's been confirmed that this upcoming season is the last season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

It's kinda funny, really. I've been seeing tributes and nostalgia, people saying things like, "Oh, I'll miss the show", "I'm so sad it's over", "what a great run it was", "I don't know what I'll do now" and I'm imagining the show shouting from off-camera "stop telling people I'm dead, I still have one more season!" and the fandom responding wistfully, "sometimes I can still hear their voice".

I have to say, when I first started this project, I didn't expect it to take this long to finish. Season 2 had just ended, and we were looking at a hiatus. I hadn't modded DooM since I played around with sprite replacement with MS Paint in XWE back in 2005 (did you know the original doom.exe will crash if the grimace/EVL sprite isn't exactly lined up? I learned that. There was much confusion), but I figured it'd be fun, a quick little thing.

I was half-right.

I remember editing text strings first. I had a quit message referencing the premiere of season 3, and another referencing Littlest Pet Shop (which, for context if you're new to the fandom, ran from 2012-2016 and had some staff/VAs that were shared. RIP Twilight Barkle). Needless to say, those have had to be updated.

Then it was just the sprites. Then I figured maps might be fun. I figured I'd just do the three levels of five maps each, like Chex Quest. I now have four episodes with eight maps each, and a secret level for each episode.

So yeah. It's grown a lot. It got a lot more attention than I ever expected. I keep coming back to old maps and changing things, redoing things. Maps I was like "yes, this is perfect!" I play again and say things like, "Yes, this is a mess!" or "this is a box" or "wait, what was I thinking here?", "where's that secret again?" or "is this too easy for how late in the episode it is?"

But my own self-doubt aside, it's been a ton of fun. And I can't wait for you all to play it.

Soon.