So I've gotten myself in a serious jam. That's right, the HI-LARIOUSLY titled McBacon Jam #1. This means in the next two weeks I get to make a game working on a team with unity, slashphoenix, and Gourd_Clae. Now this is some awesome, amazing, and wonderful stuff. All of these people are super talented and I'm super stoked to be teaming up with them. This is a crazy super team and I have no idea what I could possibly add to it but shh don't tell them that. The collab spirit fills me with <3s...

Well this is jolly news for me but if you are looking to put more Lionheart on your proverbial table and damn well eat it, it is not such jolly news. Some of you--well certainly at least one of you, I think--are furrowing your brows, staring at me and saying "Maaaaax, you incorrigible-and-not-in-the-good-way motherfucker, what is this I hear about you making games that aren't more Lionheart? Don't you know we want more Lionheart, like YESTERDAY, or more accurately, like LAST YEAR".

And I have no defense against this but to look sheepish and hide in the corner and say "yeah, yeah I suck...".

See I am trying REALLY hard to keep myself buttoned down on Lionheart, and it is really hard for me to resist the lure of the new! Besides the pure sense of lust for something new for my brain to chew on, my erstwhile partner on this project Happy has vanished from the internet, leaving me without the maps I need, and him without a paycheck to cash. This sucks. I'm not pointing any fingers, life happens, but it has been a serious fucking blow to morale. I've been trying to keep moving forward on what I can accomplish without a mapper.

Here is where the project is at currently. If I can manage to button down and put in another...maybe 4-8 hours of solid, dedicated work...I will have a nice, dedicated chunk of content, the one hour or so of additional gameplay I have been working slowly and steadily since November, ready to send to testers. I should have put in at least three hours on it today--Wednesday is the day I traditionally force myself to work on RM regardless of mood, Monday and Friday are days I CAN work on RM, and I will work on RM on weekends when I'm in a height of passion--but that time got taken up talking about Team Under Construction's BaconJam ideas instead. Since we're trying to complete a game in just two weeks (the jam's duration) it seems like I have no choice but to put Lionheart on a short hiatus. But I don't want to!

Being this close to having a big chunk of content deliverable and getting feedback is infuriating, and the whole situation makes me feel like a kid whose homework is three weeks late. I am going to try to continue to finish up this burning chunk o' Lionheart during the McBacon Jam, but those of you who follow my work know how terrible I am at working on ONE RM game at a time, let alone splitting my attention between two.

Anyway, in light of all of the above, at present I am planning on transforming Lionheart into an Episodic Game. The content chunk I am currently trying to finish--once put through the testers and refined--will substantively build on the content of the October 31st demo to form the complete first episode. The game will have four episodes, which will be structured as following:

• Act I: Good - Concerning the beginnings of the Crusade and the assault on the city of Dreadmoor.
• Act II: Evil - Substantially comprised of a retelling and reimagining of the events of the 2002 "Evil Demo" of The Tower*.
  
• Act III: Truth - Concerning the events of the fall of Tower of Nyx.
  
• Act IV: Lies - Concerning Sir Garinol's triumphant return to Callondorf, evil having been vanquished.

* Which I plan to upload onto RMN with its own game page.

This Episodic Structure will give me an "official" leaving off point to take a breather from working on Lionheart which I sorely need. Four episodes is not very many, and having a fourth of the game out will feel like a good milestone/accomplishment. Later on down the road, I feel like having only three episodes left to go shouldn't make it too difficult for me to return to the project, especially when one of the three consists largely of remaking a game I already made (I have never done that before and it is a fascinating prospect). And hopefully, Happy will reemerge during this time frame, or I will find a new mapper.

In Other News

I have been remiss in adding a gamepage for Grand Grimoire, Lionheart's sister project, and I should get around to that any day now.