Category Archives: darwin’s soldiers

Updates on Things

Posted by aabicus on

Sorry I haven’t posted recently, I’ve got so many different things I’m doing here and there.

1. New Emilena story! This one was started ages ago, but I finally finished the other 80%. It’s readable here and takes place directly after “Orphanage”, the story where she returned to her childhood orphanage and killed her old warden. In this story, she confesses to the murder and is incarcerated in an all-women’s prison. It explains why she’s no longer a police officer in the follow-up “private investigator” story, and it gives her the chance to butt heads with a bunch of characters she defeated from older stories, most of whom are excited for a chance to even the score.

2. I’ve added a number of categories to the Darwin’s Soldiers Wiki, including Destroyed objects, destroyed locations, books, and family trees. I dunno why, encyclopedic cataloging just relaxes me. Sometimes I wish we had an Into the Black wiki, and other times I thank god we don’t have one because there’s way too much content to even fathom starting now.

3. I’ve shoutcasted a ton of Overwatch matches on Twitch. Most are part of League Zero, but there’s also a fair amount of pick-up scrims I’ve been publishing on VGFAQ. I’ve really enjoyed making videos for that channel, since it gets way better traffic than the SPUF of Legend. Maybe it’s possible I should feel bad for letting my own channel grow stagnant while earning click revenue and a bunch of unearned views on someone else’s site, but the SPUF of Legend has almost completely lost its fanbase since I gave up on Payday videos so I don’t think anyone’s particularly sad. And I might make more videos every now and then, but right now I’m scrambling to keep up with the many videos I want to make for VGFAQ. I need to start on a video for Inside the Magic as well…

4. I have taken out two extensions on the eSports course for the sole reason that I need to finish that darn final essay. It’s not even particularly long but its got a lot of parts and I’ve constantly had more important things to worry about. But I really should button that up one of these days so I can take it off my mental checklist.

5. I haven’t had much time to game for fun, sadly. That kinda happens when its your job to play games for various sources of income. Pretty much my only guilty pleasure is ARK Survival Evolved, which is an awesome survival game and the only one I’ve ever heard of that remains fun whether you’re playing with 0 other people, 100 other people or any number in between. Personally, I don’t have the time or patience to deal with online idiots, so I play on a solo server with Sydney and most of our time is spent taming dinosaurs and creating Miasmata-style outposts throughout the map. You can see our complete idiotic adventures in this playlist, which is finally populated enough I feel okay letting people know about it.

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Look at how cool my bird is! She has ‘FEAR ME’ written across her wings!

Sport Stories

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I’ve been hitting the esport train pretty hard recently, and that isn’t going to stop for another couple weeks. This course has been awesome; I’ve met some great people and might even shoutcast an Overwatch tournament for one on the 26th. I plan to convert several of these weekly articles into DailyEsports.gg content (like I did this one), and I’ve been cranking out dozens of VGFAQ videos at the same time.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t found time to write a few short stories at the same time. Apparently I’m in something of a retrospective mood, cause they’ve all tied into ancient long-completed cycles:

  1. First I wrote a new Darwin’s Soldiers story,
  2. …then a new Flora story, (which is actually now the longest story in either canon, beating Card of Ten by a margin of 5K words)
  3. …and finally a new Hemlock Gang story of all things.

And coming up next, mostly cause it’s the only untouched cycle left, one more story starring Officer Echo back in her police days. She’ll be investigating a restaurant suspected of being a hub for drug-peddling. Exciting!

(There actually was a different completely-standalone story written somewhere in there too, nominally tied to a different RP universe but I instantly dropped my main characters back on Earth so they could explore the Into the Black and Darwin’s Soldiers universes in a time-traveling non-canon crossover. Was fun to write, and mainly an opportunity to see characters from both universes bouncing off each other.)

Coming up in the professional sphere: Honestly, more esports articles and a few VGFAQ videos. Keeping my nose to the grindstone for probably another week or so.

Updates on creative projects

Posted by aabicus on

Happy Valentine’s Day. It’s been so long and they were a real handful, but I do frequently miss my polyamorous roommates from my Texas days.

I guess there are a few things that have changed since I last gave something of a progress update on various goals, so I’ll just list them all here for completionist’s sake.

  1. As mentioned before, we’ve hit some exciting milestones in several long-running series. As mentioned in “The 2s Have It“, we’ve got a bunch of big viewcounts on different websites, but the only number that really matters is 388; the current subscriber count for The SPUF of Legend. Subs are how you get anywhere on YouTube, especially considering most of my views come from me hyperlinking to the videos on reddit in related conversations. I haven’t had any real luck in translating our increasing viewcounts to a sustained community, though I know why it’s not currently working; I don’t really have a united theme in my videos to motivate anyone to come back.  You need to pick one game and stick with it in this industry; the Daily SPUF‘s viewership ratings were huge until we started covering games other than TF2, and the Spuf of Legend had a small dedicated community of viewers but they justifiably left when I stopped making Payday 2 videos. At the moment, my plan is to survive the next few weeks (more below) and wait for a really good, trendy, modern game to come out that I can leap on and corner the market with the same gusto I covered Payday 2.
  2. MasterClass has finished, and it was a great experience all around. Ended up recording footage from almost two dozen games, and the class turned out great. It was awesome watching the episode and seeing my recordings throughout, especially since many of them had my username aabicus in the HUD when the game needed it. Sadly it doesn’t appear to have translated into a full job with MasterClass, I would have loved to work with them as a fulltime employee. But there’s always the future!
  3. I went through the Darwin’s Soldiers wiki one day and added categories for gender. I mostly wanted to see the breakdown myself, turns out there are 280 males, 73 females, and 19 unknown/genderless characters in the Darwin’s Soldiers franchise. Guess that makes sense considering the combat/military focus, but I’m hoping we do a better job with the Into the Black franchise.
  4. Speaking of Into the Black, I finally finished an old story I’d started months earlier but abandoned when StarfallRaptor left the forum, since it was being written at his behest. But I hate leaving things unfinished, though I’d have made an exception if I’d known it would become the longest story in the canon. “Weekend at Jessica’s” is a Starfall story, so expect a lot of sex/adult themes, and I’m working on another Emilena story for people who prefer the ‘action noir’ style-storylines. It takes place back when Emilena was a cop, and covers her going undercover as a waitress to discover which employees at a fancy restaurant are using their job to peddle drugs.
  5.  GDC is coming up, and I might or might not be going. I have an opportunity for a free press pass, in exchange for reporting for someone else’s YouTube channel, and I am absolutely taking that opportunity if it happens for the sheer networking potential alone.
  6. Apex Legends surprised everyone by launching onto the public stage and genuinely being a blast to play. I find myself coming back to it even when I normally don’t like Battle Royales, and to my surprise I actually want to make videos on it. Let’s see if I can get a foothold in this brand new community.

 

Next of Kin Now Live!

Posted by aabicus on

Next of Kin is now being posted on the Gang of Five! New chapter every day! Those of who clicked the Google Doc linked in the last blog post are now tasting karmic justice, since you’ve been spoiled. Serves you right.

If you’re curious what else I’ve been up to these days, I’ve been video editing for MasterClass! They’re kinda like an online course-offering website that has lots of big-name teachers like James Patterson and Gordon Ramsay, who give a series of online lectures based on the field that made them famous. I can’t go into more detail for NDA reasons but it’s been a really great opportunity and I’ve loved working with them. I’d actually taken their Patterson course back in the day, so it’s cool to get a behind-the-scenes look at how they make their courses. Plus it’s forced me to learn a lot of little things about Photoshop and Premiere I hadn’t known previously; Photoshop in particular is consistently surprising me with the amazing features it’s hiding. It’s got this thing called “batch processing” where you can set some parameters and it’ll execute them on every photo in a specific folder, which has been amazing for quickly converting something from PNG to TIFF and ensuring everything has the same resolution. I can see why nobody can quit Photoshop once they’ve learned it.

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didn’t even realize the keys were backlit till I plugged it in, fucking score

Other fun news: I’ve purchased a silent keyboard, since the old one’s Spacebar died due to overuse. See, Overwatch’s Lucio is a jumping machine and so I’m constantly mashing the poor spacebar like it owes me money. This new keyboard has far softer keys, which has resulted in me constantly doubble-tyyping lettters but I think it’ll be a lot nicer on my recordings whenever I have open mic on.

Because I’m planning on going into streaming! I’m getting a second monitor for my birthday, and I literally already own everything I’d need to leap into that pool. I’ll be honest, I plan to stream on Mixer both because I think it’s an up-and-coming platform and because I love the ability to add interactive buttons that viewers can click. My early plan is to create a rudimentary polling system where people can vote on which Overwatch healer I play the next round as (including Soldier 76 of course), and expand from there if it works. Streaming is the main online platform I’m not currently taking advantage of, and it’ll likely be a few months before I can stream regularly but I’m setting the pieces in motion.

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I added transparency to this pic with Photoshop! :3

Also, while I’m calling out purchases and things that exceeded my expectations, my younger brother gifted me a FitBit because he’s way more financially successful than me, and I love it way more than I expected to. It tracks your steps, your sleep, and you can input your meals into the app and find out how many calories above your diet you’re actually eating. The first step in fixing your sleep schedule, eating habits, and exercise routine is to find out just how badly you’re currently doing, so you can just try to beat your progress last week.

Thank you for coming to this week’s episode of Consumer Electronics, I’m your host aabicus, allow me to play you out with 21 seconds of me practicing the Ken Burns effect:

 

 

New Darwin’s Soldiers story!

Posted by aabicus on

Man, doesn’t this take you back to, like, 2014?

Been ages since I wrote one of these. And to be honest, I’m not done yet. But f-22 was one of the original players in Darwin’s Soldiers and he told me an idea he had for a story, and I liked that idea. Problem is, he’s already got a story he’s working on, and another story planned for after that, and let’s be honest he’s not exactly the fastest content creator, so this one would have to wait probably years to come into being if he wrote it. I’m not that patient, and he gave me permission.

Introducing Next of Kin, a sequel to the ancient story I wrote a bajillion years ago, Ship of State. Don’t actually click that link though, because it’s not done yet. And even when it’s done, it’s going to go live on the Gang of Five, where I post a chapter a day in a dedicated thread. This is a walk down memory lane to a different era, a time when these Darwin’s Soldiers stories were my only creative outlet. It’s really nice to get back to that, for just a bit. No editors, no filter. And I get to flood the wiki with new information as soon as that whole thing’s finally posted. Because every author knows you never post a story before it’s finished. Don’t click that link.

Gamer 2 released!

Posted by aabicus on

I started Gamer 2 in October 2013, and have worked on it on and off for almost four years. It’s by far the longest-lasting unfinished project in my retinue, and I’m really pleased to announce the game is now live! God willing there’ll be an in-browser version soon, but for now you can download it from Itch.io and play the culmination of MrDrake’s short story Gamer!

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This was supposed to come out on September 15th, the 8-year anniversary of Darwin’s Soldiers, but debugging necessitated delays.

New Darwin’s Soldiers Story!

Posted by aabicus on

And it’s not even from me! f-22 “raptor” ace was one of the original authors who stuck around through all three role-plays, and his two characters, Hans and Werner Donitz, are some of the most important in the entire canon. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when he messaged me a few days ago letting me know he’d recently read Chasing Seconds and wanted to write a tie-in story that focused on Werner during his time as leader of the desert settlement. The first part went live today, check it out here!

It’s exciting to get some new content for the Darwin’s Soldiers canon, but 2017 might not stop there; I’ve been periodically digging Gamer 2 out of the recesses of my hard drive, blowing the mothballs off and adding a bit more to what I’ve finished. At this moment I’ve only got to code the final boss fight, the secondary boss fight, and the final cutscene and then I’ll consider it complete enough to upload to itch.io. Stay tuned!

Day 33

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All problems fixed! Ultimately I decided to stick with the Darwin’s Soldiers plot. Even if it turns out the Unity version is more of a demo than anything else, it’s better than having a hamfisted plot I don’t care about.

Speaking of which, today and tomorrow I’ve been putting together the story, and it should be done by tomorrow. I’ve got the roadmap laid out, and to prevent any possible hype from building here it is:

Find the Cure flow chart

So you gotta divide your game into stages, and each stage need to lead to another stage. In the Twine edition of this game, more plot will happen after you escape the first room, aka you can go find the cure and turn on the bridge. But we’re making progress! 😀

New Story!

Posted by aabicus on

Dashed this out in a few days, a full-length story starring ROSS that takes place between his debut in Disruptive Selection and his first message to Shelton in the fishing town.

In case you have to guess, this was originally going to be a video game but ultimately I decided to write it in story form to take a break from all the quests I’ve been writing for Legends of Equestria.

Enjoy!

Following the Family Business

Posted by aabicus on

Now announcing a new Darwin’s Soldiers work that isn’t mine! “Following the Family Business” is a new story that will be uploaded by nick22 sometime in the future on the Gang of Five. He’s permitted me to leak a teaser trailer of the upcoming story:

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The morning sun broke into the windows as Micah sat at the table.  the eldest of the three Landon kids, Micah  was, like his father, geared towards the medical profession, although he dealt with cancers, rather than internal injuries like his father. He looked at the morning paper as his younger sister Zya, who was the youngest of the three came in. Zya was a stellar athlete and had excelled in basketball at school. “morning sis’ Micah said. Morning Micah’ Zya said’ mom and dad at work again huh. Donald, his younger brother, soon entered from upstairs. All 3 had their mother’s dark hair and dark skin color, Donald and Micah were tall, like their father. Donald had played football in high school, and was playing it in college as well. . A note left on the fridge was a reminder from their mother Zyanya that they had to go over to Aishas to watch her three kids-,Susie Puxx and Aidan, who were the kids of Aisha with her lesbian lovers Roux and Nixx, who once was a rival to their mother. Puxx took more after his mother Roux with the vulpine fur, and magical abilities while Aidan and Susie looked like normal humans- on the outside. The kids were still quite young, as nixx , Aisha and Roux had only had them within the last 5 years. ‘ so when do we have to leave for Aishas? Donald asked as he poured a bowl of ‘ Secret Plots’ cereal, which included ‘ glowing alien’ marshmallows and ‘ secret file’ pieces. ‘ I can’t believe you actually like that garbage’ Zya said as she looked at the box ‘ its basically sugar drenched on top of sugar, and sugar tossed in for good measure.’  Donad ignored her as Micah answered the question. We have to be over there by nine, bro, which means we have to leave in 15 minutes if we want to get there on time. And zya, I saw you sneak a bag of brownios’ Micah said. ’so don’t go picking on Donald.. that’s my job, I’m the oldest after all. ‘ By two whole years.’ Yeah I know. ‘ Zya rolled her eyes. Micah was 21, Donald 19 and Zya 17.  The three got along well enough, for their parents quickly put a stop to any serious squabble. ‘zyanya opened the door to the house and headed inside ‘ everyone up and eating? good. I need to drive you over there so I have time to go get my nails done and then get your father at the clinic.. aisha is paying the three of you very nicely. 50 an hour, each is a lot of money.. you should thank her if you see her.
– Sure thing mom ‘ Micah said as he pulled a couple pop-tarts out of the toaster.’ One question I have mom. If Aisha is a lesbian, how can she have a son?” Zya asked. ‘ well dear, advances in genetics can take any of piece of dna- such as hair= and it can be converted and usable in making biological kids. And then of course, roux has magical abilities as well, so she can do things with magic that don’t happen naturally. Of course, I don’t want to hear about any disparaging remarks about Aisha, Roux, Nixx or the kids. Do I make myself clear?’ mom, you fought against Nixx fir many many years. You two hated each other..” zya began but Zyanya cut her off.  ‘ well that was then, this is now. We have become real good friends since your father married me and Nixx married Aisha and Roux. Now enough questions. We need to get moving. Donald finish your cereal and lets go. The cars is idling waiting for us to get in..