HELLO NEW YEAR
January 2, 2025 - Published
Happy new year!
(This post will probably get a bit rambley, but for those skimming, this post will have semi-major news for DracoFighter 2 and Dasopya, even if neither have things that are particularly finished yet!)
I've spent a good amount of time trying to absorb some of the events of this year, and I think it'll still take a long time before I remotely do.
While filing away a backup of my art for the year, I remarked to a friend, "Wow, there's a lot less this year," and he told me, "Yeah, because you've spent most of your time on those sprites, right?" and then I had to go, "Oh yeah, those sprites."
I was so deep into my side project of making an entirely new language that I completely forgot I had been spent the first ~9 months of that year making sprites for a game that didn't exist yet..... which I suppose is not something everyone can say??
-- DRACOFIGHTER 2 UPDATES --
I'll get right into DracoFighter 2 first. Being the new year and all, I want to be a little self-congratulatory for a bit, because I feel like I deserve it. This year was the first year I completed all the sprites for a single character, being Draco with 90 sprites (including the reused ones)!
Afterwards, I finished all the sprites for: Plexie, BiOS, [STEGO], [TREX], and [RAPTOR]! I completed a notable number of sprites for [DILO], and Cyrus still has many reusable sprites. This is a huge amount of work!!! Every completed character has roughly 80-100 sprites, so accounting for sprites already completed, I drew roughly 350+ sprites this year! That's like a drawing a day!! That's crazy to me!!
For reference, every DF1 character had about 50 sprites each, meaning that in this single year I drew more completed sprites than the entirety of DF1. I'll probably be able to do a more accurate count sometime when I have the DF2 project set up, since right now everything's in folders which makes it very difficult to count. With that being said...
WE HAVE AN ENGINE!!! It's not completed yet, but I'm unbelievably happy that an actual real engine exists now that fits every criteria I need. It's free, it's open source, and it already has completely functional rollback!! Even if this isn't the engine I end up going with, there's a lot of relief in just seeing this exist, and there's a high likelihood it gets finished: https://github.com/NoisyChain/Sakuga-Engine
I already tested putting Draco in with basic functionality, and it's very well-made! There's a lot of eyes on it, so I hope it goes well. I only talked about it in an update a while ago, but man the whole engine issue has really been bothering me more than I realized...
Plans for DracoFighter 2 haven't changed much. The engine still isn't finished, so I'll continue to sprite when I can, though I'm still suffering from some artblock most likely caused by all the spriting. After I finish both Cyrus and [DILO], we'll most likely be looking at engine implementation if it's finished (or nearly finished), or more assets if it's not (VFX, UI, story text, etc.).
-- DASOPYA UPDATES --
Dasopya really did kind of come out of nowhere, and I probably wouldn't believe you if you told me at the beginning of the year that making a new international auxiliary language would be my 6+ month project of the year. Well, actually, I probably would believe you, but would be rather annoyed LOL
As I update the project more, my own personal enjoyment of it increases as well. I have a mini update being dubbed v1.1.1 (yes, Minecraft style) that adjusts a handful of words while adding about a dozen new ones. You can read the changes listed on the spreadsheet here. They're not final yet, and will be given about a week before they're solidified and reflected in existing learning/story material outside the spreadsheet.
Dasopya has a handful of other very notable announcements. We're setting up our wiki on Miraheze instead of Fandom, because Fandom, and you can find the new wiki here. It's still rather bare-bones, but it's ready to be populated with articles.
We also now have a searchable dictionary!! No more spreadsheet scrolling and Ctrl+F, just use a search bar! This will also include the new v1.1.1 words when the update is solidified. It's a little rough around the edges since it's pure HTML/JS I made by myself, but it was a very fun challenge since I haven't done many similar projects at all.
The Dasopya Discord also created their own script, bukudoli! This was mainly the work of Goji (@gojiberry.cc on Bsky), so huge thank you to them.
I get a good amount of feedback in the Discord, but the existing script (pyalibu) got WAY more unanimous criticism than I ever expected, so I wasn't unhappy turning the challenge over to the members. It seems like I have a lot to learn about writing scripts, something I didn't realize would have so many unintended issues.
The last real note for Dasopya is that I spent December joining the Lexember hashtag, and posted a Dasopya word (almost) every day! I had only just found out about it at the beginning of December, so this was also a fun little project. You can find it here.
I'm very very happy with Dasopy's progress over the year, and only hope to continue to give it a bigger and brighter future!
-- OTHER UPDATES + REFLECTION --
The last notes are mainly for art stuff, which I can just list here.
- Experimental art pieces for SandwichDeer and FCBandanaDee
- Updated unhelpful guide to my sonas
- 2024 art summary
Looking back on the year... is really weird. It feels more like a transitional period for me than anything. A lot of really big, important things happened to me, but none of them have LED anywhere yet. I might have 600+ DracoFighter 2 sprites sitting on my computer right now, but nowhere to put them. I might have a completed language, but nowhere to use it. I'm very happy and proud of the work I did, but I have a strong feeling that 2025 is where the really big things are going to happen. Which is kinda exciting and intimidating!
This was the year I completed my conlang tutorial series. This was the year I went to Europe for the first time! This was the year I became active on Bluesky. This was the year I said goodbye to Cohost.
This was the year I started posts on this website! This was the year I learned how to use RSS. This was the year I made most of the DF2 sprites, and made Dasopya, and quit Tumblr, and made a Neocities account, and met many wonderful people I'm now able to call my friends. That's a lot, isn't it...
Oh, I almost forgot. I had a yearly tradition on Twitter where I would post about my yearly goals, after catching up on last year's. Since Twitter isn't a good archive anymore, I'll post about the past years here, too.
"2023 hobbyist goals:
- get a proper prototype for dracofighter 2!
- release a small side game
- get to a conversational level in at least 1 language
- make a pico8 app"
On technicalities, I've essentially done all of these! I released Pond's Training, a small PICO-8 game. I didn't complete a full prototype for DracoFighter 2, but the gameplay is fleshed out on the DF1 engine, and I tested the new one. Finalmente, puedo hablar español, pero no estoy muy bueno...
I'm unsure what my 2024 goals will be, but I can go with:
- release a small game with Dasopya
- finish all the base DF2 cast sprites
- find a new hobby
Aiming kind of low here because I have a lot of IRL goals that I won't be disclosing here... but I'll note some unofficial goals 1) making music which has been on the backlog, 2) making a PICO-8 / Picotron game because I just love those things, and 3) possibly learning a new game engine just because.
Either way, very happy with the progress for my goals, since even if they're based on technicalities, I usually don't expect to hit all my goals at once lol
-- YEARLY GOAL ARCHIVE --
Thank you all lots for reading!! I'll dedicate the rest of the post just to archiving my old yearly goals, but I hope you all have a wonderful new year's.
"2019 goals (which i will look back on and laugh at in a year):
- learn lineart
- proper art studies
- learn 3d animation
- do 2d animation
- make a game
- find direction for my youtube channel
- reach 1k subs
- make everyone furries
- become all-powerful
- gain world domination"
"ok but more realistically
- make a 1+ min 2d animation
- finish a rigged 3d model and animate it
- finish a game, even a small one
- gain world domination
i should be able to do that in a year, right?"
2020 reflection: "forgot i made this and actually ig i did a few of these"
2022 goals: "past me was a scrub and didnt make any more yearly goals so here's 2022 goals:
- publish dracofighter
- get a game out with networking
- finish a realism drawing
- finish a 1min+ animation
- 3d work!! (game? animation? model)"
2023 reflection:
"v happy with this year, has been p wild! but i feel that i made a lot of progress personally and professionally 😊
i can comfortably say i finished half of these (DF, realism painting, 3d model) which is honestly more than i expected"
2023 goals: "prob gonna keep this year's hobbyist goals more tame while i focus more on professional goals:
- make 3d game prototype with animated models
- make a 2d animation (this goal is like 3 years running LOL)
- use less TWITTER
will also unofficially include learning pico8 and composing some music as goals (maybe even learning piano!), but i don't really want them to be focuses
im also already learning pico8 at this moment anyway so hmm hmmMM"
2024 reflection (now on Vecdevg):
"i feel obliged to continue this tradition lol
kept my goals low for this year but it's still surprising to me that i kind of met all of them (3d prototype demon's heir, 2d animation dracofighter 2 sprites on technicality, and definitely using less twitter LOL)
achievements for this year were unexpected, but i'm v happy with what i pulled together
with that being said, yes! i should have a lot more time for dracofighter 2 next year
there's still a lot of work to do..."