Pinkie Pie's Perilous Platforms! - The Devblog

Wow, I haven’t touched this blog in years... hello to anyone who still follows this! It’s been a very, VERY long time since I’ve worked on this project in any capacity, and by now, it’s a relic of years gone by — just about 10 years, if my memory serves me well.

So, to commemorate that anniversary (which is probably not today), I wanted to properly share something to this long-forgotten blog: a project I did in early 2021 as a “final farewell” to this long-forgotten passion project.

[ RECREATING PERILOUS PLATFORMS ] is a recreation of all the levels from various complete(-ish) builds and demos of my old MLP Gen 4 fangame, Pinkie Pie’s Perilous Platforms - designed with the level-creation suite of Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker 2 video game. If you own SMM2, you can find the course world via my maker ID (DDH-165-L5G) or you can click the link to access its portfolio page that lists every individual level’s ID, a short explanation of my process, and a full playlist of my livestreams documenting the process to replay, recreate, and redesign the levels I made very long ago. Quality notwithstanding, I had a great time working on this. It felt very good to analyze younger-me and their level design philosophy at the time, and to critique my video game developer “debut” of sorts. Probably not a home run by any stretch, but a good first start. Depends, really. https://cargocollective.com/sylversedge/Recreating-Perilous-Platforms

I felt it was fair that I make this update to tell folks (or at least anyone remaining) that a lot has happened since I stopped updating the blog. That teaser from 3-4 years ago (this weird bit) was for another idea I had to finally bookend the development journey, but the RPP project ended being a much better sendoff than whatever I had planned years prior. Through random nostalgia flare-ups, storytelling of my personal lore on my Twitch streams, and tons of self-indulgent Internet searches, I’ve come to discover that a good handful of people have played Perilous Platforms in some capacity — via my itch.io page or the old DeviantArt page link, via downloads on Equestria Gaming’s Arcade, features on Equestria Daily, and other specific sites, via BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint app where it’s been properly archived, and by other means that even I’ve yet to uncover. 

Let’s Play videos, written reviews, entries on fan-related MLP wikis, re-uploads on seedy websites, you name it. Thank you so much for playing!

Hey all, Sylverstone here.

I’ve decided to release the 2014 demo of Pinkie Pie’s Perilous Platforms to the general public, just as a way to ease my heart a bit.

This demo was created specifically for my BronyCon trip in 2014, but not many people were able to get their hands on it... until NOW! Development has ended and I don’t expect to return to P4 any time soon, but I would love to see what you guys think of it. ^_^

Nearly five months ago, I told you all that my need to finish Perilous Platforms was a necessity for me to move on.

I told you all that this indeed would be the final stretch, and that I would fight through delays and setbacks to bring you all a fully-realized experience.

I told you all a lot of things back then, but what I didn’t expect was a myriad of different problems outside of the game to have such a profound effect on my well-being, and the future of the project.

So, it’s with a heavy heart that I tell you all that development on Pinkie Pie’s Perilous Platforms will in fact be ending, but not in a sort of happy way. I say this because it was truly my intention to fully finish the project, but over the years, things have changed, priorities have been forced to shift, and I can no longer work on the project to the best of my ability.

My further plans for the game will be to work on some sort of Perilous Platforms anthology, showing off previously unreleased content and new, unseen content. Chances are that you’ll see being rolled out sometime soon.

It's crazy how the future of a game can be decided on three separate occasions (1 + 2), but here we are at the third and final decision in regards to the future of Pinkie Pie's Perilous Platforms and its nearly three-year long development cycle.

After much thought (read: tossing and turning in bed thinking about things other than sleep), I've come to the notion that finishing Pinkie Pie's Perilous Platforms is the only true way I'll be able to properly move forward with any further aspirations I've had for Sylver's Edge.

I'd like to not think of it in that way, but looking back, it really has gone from such a charismatic fandom project to a soul-sucking leech that continually demands my attention at every step of the way. Combining that with my drive to not simply abandon it, amid my troubles of years gone by... that led to some issues.

Rather than continuing to fight through delays and setbacks, be it personal or technical, I feel that I should be going with an option that will ensure Perilous Platforms will be finished within a timeframe that is modest, and will lead to prosperity for the Sylver's Edge brand. The game, as I know it, is "technically" finished, or rather 80% complete. The original version of the game before the 2012 shakeup has been found as of this past summer, and has been preserved multiple times over on various online cloud storage spaces such as Dropbox and Google Drive. 

To cut a long post short, my plan is to mesh the 2014/2015 assets with the 2012 design, and make further tweaks to include planned design choices, behaviors, features, and other things that were in pre-production for the 2014/2015 version. While it was my intent to make Perilous Platforms my first Construct 2 project for hopes of easing myself into the new development environment, I felt that it would be better to let it serve as the final Stencyl project I would work on before I fully untether myself from the engine. The products of #8W4Gjam will fill that niche of Construct 2 development for the time being.

As for Perilous Platforms, the tentative release window for the game will be set for August 7-9, 2015, the same weekend as BronyCon 2015 in Baltimore, MD. 

Partial development will begin after the timeframe of #8W4Gjam, and the full development cycle is expected to begin in late June (after my summer classes), and is expected to last up until early August, with hopes that full production will ensure a finished product is made.

It's been a little while since I've last updated you all!

A while back, I completed the special Perilous Platforms demo for BronyCon 2014, with some new and retooled level setups from old and new builds of the game.

I had my niece test it for readiness, and she gave the thumbs-up. Since then, the blog went dark for a little while due to post-con fatigue.

> [ BronyCon 2014 ] <

To be honest, I'm only going to give you the Cliffnotes version of what happened. For the full tale (including video and pictures from the con), click this link!

In the case of the game itself, it was a bit of a tough sell to get people to try it out. Compared to last year's setup, fangames were almost virtually non-existent, outside of panels for Super Smash Ponies and Legends of Equestria, and a setup for Fighting is Magic: Tribute Edition inside the Baltimare Arcade (aside from reworked versions of popular games with fandom references, like Rock Band or Dance Dance Revolution).

As evidenced in the video, my setup was in the hall where scores of congoers passed by, either looking for their next panel, hanging out with friends, gawking at cosplayers, or trying to find a nice spot to recharge - which I did.

I was able to get 3 people to try the game, and I had many onlookers - though I had the help of a musician nearby me to draw crowds to his own act (which even drew the likes of ACRacebest and Jaxblade). I also had a good talk with a father that traveled to the con with his son, who was learning how to program. It was a really nice moment that I had at the con.

The demo itself was a personal success in terms of being able to put out a product by a deadline, and also because those who played it looked upon it very favorably.

I only wish that I had more people try out the game, but considering the venue and where I could consider possible places to show it off, I just didn't have much time on my hands to do much more promotion, since I felt that compared to 2012, BC2014 was more for pleasure than business.

Of course, the next best thing would be to do what I did two years ago - release a demo online. But unfortunately...

> [ Inches Close to Setback ] <

After relaying my BronyCon trip to friends, I decided that it would be best for the demo to be released online to the masses, just like I did two years ago.

Unfortunately, I had to consider the changing times.

Hasbro has successfully scared off a good portion of fandom content creators with the threat of a cease & desist order - most of them being fangames. The proverbial nail in the coffin came with the C&D of Fighting is Magic, and as such, any fangame with a scope greater than a Futzi01 game would immediately come under scrutiny, and no one would really get excited, but instead, would be "counting down the days until Hasbro strikes again", or something to that degree.

That threat of being handed a cease & desist order has altered many games - Questria eventually became an original IP, now known as Questria: Rise of the Robot Skullfaces, Legends of Equestria altered many of the in-game names of towns and landmarks to be more original (or at least somewhat of the "Jimmy Hart" version of Equestria), and of course, Fighting is Magic is no longer a My Little Pony themed game, and the name itself is no longer in relation to the new game.

So, what did it mean for me? Well, I'd have to face the facts that there's just no place for large-scope fangames anymore, and publicity only makes you a bigger target for the Hasbro legal team. I'm not threatened by the prospect of a C&D order, though if such a case does happen, I'm more than capable to default to one of my older ideas for Perilous Platforms. I wouldn't rush to send this off to the fandom presses, and I would bide my time until the game comes out to make one huge blowout to get folks interested.

As for the demo itself, due to an unfortunate accident on Stencyl, I ended up deleting the game's files and spent 3 days recovering lost data. I had an old backup from before the demo's creation which I am working from now, but all the new assets are intact, and with my memory, I've re-added and revamped the new behaviors that are in place. Quite the sigh of relief, because who knows how I would've taken such a major setback of that degree.

The demo levels in the current build are gone, but I do have the BronyCon 2014 demo, but I don't want to release it since a lot has changed with the feedback I've received from friends and various congoers. The level structure has changed slightly and with the big change in game mechanics in regards to both coin collection and time saving, it almost renders it obsolete.

> [ Return to College ] <

The bizarre thing about this year thus far is that it really feels like a retread of 2012 - the only difference is that I've been a bit more hushed about Perilous Platforms returning from the dead, and that I've decided to not walk down the same paths I did in 2012, considering how much has changed.

As for myself, I do want to continue working on the game during the next year, but as summer draws to a close, I won't have the luxury of staying home and working on the game for most days of the week. At best, I can probably bet that I'll spend weekends working on the game, and hopefully get an artist that will work with me on it.

> [ Epilogue ] <

And that's the update for today! There was a lot more that I really wanted to say, but I'm pretty busy this week with packing up all of my stuff to head back this weekend.

I do not intend on Perilous Platforms having a dry spell like it did by the end of 2012, and at best, I want to commit to monthly updates of the development blog.

Thank you all so much for these past few months of development, and I hope to continue this progress until the game is finished.

Almost a month to the day I last updated the blog, so we have some consistency going!

As a reward, I'll outline some of the things I've been up to since then, and also tease a few more things to come!

Sounds fun, right?

Err... right.

> [ Everfree Build Evaluation ] <

Over the past week, I pushed out a build of the finished Everfree Forest area to select folks to see if there were any design flaws, new bugs, and general questions/concerns.

This time, the response was largely positive with only a few minor complaints such as corridor spacing in one of the levels, as well as the fact that the time limits were rather generous.

I've fixed most of those issues, and I've been mostly retweaking certain Everfree levels for max enjoyment. It's foundation-complete now, and I've moved on to our next area:

> [ Welcome to Appleloosa! ] <

For Appleloosa, I do want to consider the ideas I've had in the original game (smaller level builds, more focus on quick movement), as well as the ideas I examined in the game demo and other conceptual stages (more procedural movement, less deviation from the beaten path).

Appleloosa's levels to me should have a certain feeling of not overstaying its welcome - so, not too long, and meant for the quickest ponies around. The early version of Appleloosa emphasized that with shorter time limits (which spiked the difficulty) and also careful enemy placement.

Today, I'll begin drafting up a few of those ideas by re-imagining the old design and making the necessary adjustments to see if it fits in with the area's "ethos", so to speak.

As for enemies... that is still something I want to consider later, though this really isn't much of a game about defeating things. Well, we'll continually ponder that along the way. I really want to bring back the old parasprite enemies, but in a much better way possible. For now, the focus is strictly on the level's foundations, rather than its features.

> [ Aesthetics ] <

I won't exactly kid myself - the game's aesthetics need a ton of work. There is no distinct "look" for it right now, though I have been mucking around with a few splash screens in order to give it sort of a clean feel. Like I've expressed in the past, I would need an artist to sync with my vision for the game in order to have a proper focus on the game aesthetics.

For now, the splash screens are in, and to get more technical, I've enabled anti-aliasing for the game, which should make it look smoother and less jagged.

The new Pinkie Pie animations are not in as yet, so this will take a little while longer. Please understand.

> [ Mechanics ] <

Mechanics-wise, the game is set for some pretty sizable changes.

First off, I will not force the collection of all coins in a level.

To further explain, I want to preserve the idea of a challenging game by adding an element of collection - rather than making the coins stay front and center, it would help to have some of them be more overt, and others more covert.

This opens up a whole new avenue to the game - how fast you can beat it (essentially speed-running).

In my last project, Marble Incline, you rolled a marble through a maze-like area to get the fastest time. The times for each level would be saved, and you would be able to go back through the game to try and beat your fastest time.

For Perilous Platforms, you can challenge yourself to finish it in the fastest time possible, but there's a price - of course, that would be the coin collecting.

______________________________________________________

The game's story is of Pinkie Pie retrieving her lost bits in a variety of levels in order to fund and plan Spike and Twilight Sparkle's one-year anniversary party (of their arrival to Ponyville).

The more you collect, the more bombastic and awesome your ending will be. Think of Luigi's Mansion where the king of death stares himself gets to rebuild his mansion at the end of the game with the money he finds - it can either be a modest home, something a bit more lavish, or another huge (but non-creepy) mansion.

I want to have different endings depending on how players complete the game - either very quickly, or by taking their time. And to paraphrase from one of my friends who is testing the game, I "don't want to make it like Sonic Unleashed's medals, those are the worst."

Meaning that Sonic Unleashed had a system where you needed to collect medals to progress in-game. That system is counter-intuitive to the speedrun-friendly focus of the game, so don't count on a "you need x amount of bits to access the Everfree Forest area"-style of progression - you move at your own pace.

______________________________________________________

So, to fully realize that speedrun-friendly vision I mentioned, I've migrated some of the systems from Marble Incline over to Perilous Platforms, and while it took some time to retool, it has functioned quite well with the tests I've made.

At the end of each area of the game, you'll be presented with a screen that records:

your current and fastest times for the levels

the amount of coins that were collected in the level

staff times for the levels

I also considered some sort of grading scheme for each level, but I'll leave that to chance right now. Plus I never really get how platforming gets graded.

So, does this sound appealing to you at all? Maybe yes, maybe no, but we'll have to see for ourselves!

> [ Epilogue ] <

So, there you have it!

Both the Ponyville and Everfree Forest areas are foundation-complete, with Appleloosa up next. Also, the new mechanics for the game moving forward are still being carefully considered. More than likely, the Appleloosa build will have instances of the new mechanics, so let's hope that they have a good impression.

Furthermore, I'm still somewhat on track to wrap up the level foundations by the end of my summer holiday, but in order for that to happen, I would need to spend two weeks on each remaining area, with the last one slightly overlapping with my first week of the new semester.

It was a long time coming, but man, am I glad to be working on this game again or what?

Lots of fresh, new ideas to conceptualize into levels, new people signing on to help me out, and managing to hold off after a few setbacks.

Glad to have you back, pony.

So, where else to begin but the setbacks?

I had initially committed to the idea that Perilous Platforms would remain as a Stencyl 2.2 project since Stencyl 3.0 was giving me a rough time when it first came out.

However, thanks to my work on Marble Incline last month, I was able to use it to my advantage and it really was the thing that saved my behind from further catastrophe. What happened was that my Stencyl 2.2 executable decided to give itself an upgrade, which sent me into panic. It was one of the reasons why I didn't directly hop back into development, but after a lot of self-coaxing and tons of coffee, I was back to work. Also, Stencyl 3.1 fixed a lot of my woes with the initial 3.0 update.

I'll break down the things that I managed to accomplish since then.

For starters, Ponyville is pretty much the same - the parallax scrolling tests I conducted to make those clouds move are still intact, and it runs just fine. The HUD had to be slightly retweaked since the lettering for fonts was wonky (which has since been fixed in Stencyl 3.1), so it's now italicized.

Otherwise, a few tweaks of the system ensured that things were optimal.

Of course, that left the annoying spawn bug that came as a result of the revamped screen boundaries behavior. What it would do after a level's completion is to whisk the character far from the starting gate - sometimes stuck in the tiles, sometimes over a pit of death, and so on. That was bad... very bad.

I tried many things to circumvent it, but it wasn't having any of that. My plan now is to abandon the behavior until I find a proper fix for it, so while it doesn't hinder me, I anticipate that it'll be one of my more annoying enemies throughout development.

So, I've managed to leave Ponyville behind in favor to begin work on the Everfree Forest levels. How has that been?

There were earlier versions that I had, but they mysteriously disappeared, setting me back horribly. There was even a better version of the screen boundary behavior that functioned properly, but was lost as well.

I lose way too much work, even when I'm being super careful. My next plan of action is to get an external hard drive so that I can back up my important work - hopefully as soon as I get back to my work-study job back at college. I feel that a 500GB hard drive would do wonders for me.

But focusing on the new Everfree levels - I decided that all levels moving forward will no longer need to be a recreation of the old ones in the past builds. Instead, they will be rebuilt with the old ones serving as inspiration.

Also, I want to have a sort of theme going with each area - Ponyville is meant to be an open, straightforward area, and my plan for Everfree is to give off the feeling of a labyrinth where instead of bits lingering around, they would be contained in special pockets.

Appleloosa will be almost like its predecessor (being more closed off and fast-paced), Cloudsdale will be quite a challenge since I'm expected to give off the idea that this is a city floating in the sky. Canterlot will most likely be grandiose, and will most likely try to combine elements of past areas, and so on.

There's a lot of things that I want to do, but to keep things in perspective, I don't want to fall into the same trap that I did two years ago. I do plan to fully embrace this as a generic Pinkie Pie platformer - what should set the game apart from the rest is perhaps its approach to the concept.

It doesn't shake things up considerably, and its main hook is really meant to blend good level design and collect-a-thon style platforming harmoniously.

Vanilla embracing aside, there's more good news to share!

I've been slowly getting a group of friends together to help me out during the game's development - testing, consulting, and other valuable areas of interest.

Also, a good friend of mine from college decided to try his hand out at being an artist for me. For now, I await his work, as it could really be the one big thing that the project needs.

My past luck with artists on this project precedes me, so I really want to make sure that things are as smooth as they can possibly be.

And that's all for now!

There are more ideas that I want to implement, but I'll save that for the next update.

Decided to give the Perilous Platforms logo a good refresh today.