Brief History of the game

Let me explain.
No. There is no time.
Let me sum up.
This is a long infodump that I doubt anyone will care about, but all the other game developer blogs have them (or at least the history) and since I just started, I'm a little behind.
Loooong wall of text after the break.

So last summer I was stuck in a housing contract at college, but had very few classes I could take. Also, I worked the midnight shift (still do, actually...) so my days were full of doing nothing.

Oh, yeah. And pony.

I enjoyed the season two finale (except for the "My love will give you strength!" line. That one made me laugh). Changelings quickly exploded (no pun intended) all over the internet, and I too added many pictures of Chrysalis to my wallpaper folder.

Also around that time, I hit a nostalgic patch, and decided to download Chex Quest, which was a modified version of DooM. DooM has a special place in my heart for being the first game I ever really played and loved. Even now, the shotgun is still my favorite weapon, and the chainsaw has become much more than a simple tool.

So one day, when I had gotten less sleep than I would have liked, I got the idea, you know, I could combine these. Many years ago, I'd decided to modify DooM to be Stitch versus the army of Leroys, so I got a copy of shareware DooM and XWE and got to work. That project died fairly quickly (the original .exe was not very forgiving on mistakes, and all I had to edit pictures with was Paint). I think all I succeeded in doing was replacing the mugshots and most of the weapons. So I knew I could do it; I just wasn't sure if I could finish it if I started.

Sometime in June 2012, I did what was probably the dumbest thing I've done in a while: I downloaded SLADE3 and DoomBuilder, and started exploring.

I started with the mugshots, building them in Inkscape and resizing them in GIMP. I've since redone them all (it's an interesting feeling, as they're one of your creations, and they took a lot of time, but in the interest of getting the game better, they had to be deleted) but I finished all of them. And I was happy.

Next was weapons. Earlier, I decided that I didn't want to keep the DooM weapons, so I chose magic spells instead. This cemented Rarity into the protagonist's position. (Later, in August 2012, I discovered classes, so I can add in earth ponies and pegasi with their own properties and abilities, including weapons for each class. That won't happen this game, obviously. But it's always a possibility next time...) They became spells, complete with little rarisprites to show the action.
So now I had Rarity running around, zorching flemoids. Then came the fun part. Steeling myself, I sketched out a few rotations of changelings, scanned them into my computer, and began to vector them.

It... wasn't pretty. The walking sprites were done by shrinking the legs alternately, the profile views looked wrong, and I somehow exported the 3/4 view too small from GIMP. I showed rank by coloring on the top, no transparency. Later (halfway through the berserk sprites), I realized that Inkscape let me choose the size of the exported image, cutting out a lot of wasted time (and making me feel like a complete idiot).

I really got into the coding part in mid-August. When I say coding, I don't mean hacking; I mostly mean changing text strings and definitions. I personalized all her obituaries and pick-up lines, as well as some other limits. For example, the shotgun normally holds 50 shells, and with a backpack, can hold 100. I changed the definition to hold 200. Why? Because I like the shotgun, that's why. And that day I also learned how to change the reloading time... this is why the super shotgun can reload faster than the normal one (and why I only spawn it in secret sectors).
In August I also downloaded FreeDoom, which is an open-source version of DooM. I learned quite a bit from their monster definitions, including just how nerfed some of the Flemoids were.
The end of August was also when I discovered Friendship is Fragging (slowpoke.jpg), which is also a DooM mod. I dislike not being the first to think of something, but I was having too much fun to stop.

But September was when it really took off. September 1, 2012 was a big day for the game. That's when I started actually building the maps, and I had all five pretty much built within a week and a half. Building the levels wasn't very difficult (it doesn't hurt that E1M3 and E1M4 are nearly identical in starting. There's even a secret sector in both levels in approximately the same place). Those were doodled in class and built later. Doors were my biggest issue, but then I realized that you don't actually have to tag door sectors; you just have to make sure the linedef is facing the right way.
The hardest part of map making was the teleportation in E1M2. It took me a long time before I felt comfortable adding a teleporter again. There's one in E1M5 in the slime section that will save you a lot of enemies, but other than that, I didn't use them.
This is also the day I discovered this picture, prompting me to sketch some behemoth sprites (they didn't make it into the open beta, but they're sprited).
I can't focus on one thing for too long at once, and later that week I found myself sitting on a couch with my headset on, recording changeling cries and hoping my roommates didn't walk in on me. They're actual phrases; I just added reverb and backmasked them. I then realized that DooM II used the same technique for the sound that plays when you get to the last level.
I also learned the danger of using two programs at once to edit the same file--both don't save at the same time. Lost a good level that way. Two, actually.
I discovered the tags that allowed me to make the coccoons spawn on the ceiling instead of the floor.
I also discovered just how evil I am in the dark. In DooM II, there is a level that requires you to kill four Commander Keenes hanging from the ceiling. Once you kill all four, the door opens and you exit the level. I briefly considered making it a cardboard box. You can imagine what would be inside that box. Needless to say, that part was quickly scrapped.

October 2012 I added the crouch and jump abilities, binding them to X and Z, respectively. I also learned more on DECORATE script and made my own items, namely the juicebox and the Nightmare Spark (weapon in three pieces; you have to collect all three to use it.)
I also got permission from some brony musicians (these guys are very generous) and on October 23, I released my first video.

A little more storyline editing, more ideas, and more spriting later, I was ready to offer a closed beta in the middle of November 2012. Response was... lackluster, but what I got was good. I also determined the need to resprite all the changelings.

Finals, Christmas, going home, and being away from my computer left this game on the back burner, but in January I picked it back up again (along with the realization that most enemies would need retooling). Added more tags to enemies (made the yellow ones actually fly now). Redid the changeling vectors and it looks a lot better. It was a good day when I discovered the pallette swap function in Slade. Got a few new sprites (namely the dirt, walls, and a new enemy) from punkypie8 at deviantart.com. I got comfortable enough with DECORATE to add new weapons and things.

I'm now confident enough with the tools I have to add new things, new monsters, new definitions, maybe even more new weapons (seriously considering having her toss an explosive pod like a grenade). I've built one secret level and I have set plans for the other two, and I think you all will enjoy them. I can't wait to test and show off some of my new ideas (like Chrysalis is now able to fly, and she shoots really fast, but has a one in three chance of dropping to a Taunt state, when she'll be laughing at you but not shooting at you).

All in all, this has taken up waaay too much of my time, but I've gone too far to turn back now, and I'm pretty excited to see where this will go.