Hey, it's been a while. I'm not really too sure if anyone's informed of posts like this, or if anyone will even see it at all. Whether I'm talking to the infinite abyss or not, I think it'd just be nice to give a final statement on this game either way, lol.

So, as you can probably guess, this game's development is dead. Well, it has been from the start, as it was really more of a project for me to get used to the game engine I use - Gamemaker Studio 2.  If you've never heard of it, Gamemaker is a really easy-to-use programming language that helps make some awesome games with ease (given you put in the effort, of course), while also having the ability to get REALLY advanced once you dig deeper. It's been used to make a lot of really freaking fun games, some of my favorites being Pizza Tower, Rivals of Aether, and the critically-acclaimed Undertale.

This pretty cool guy named Squidly (who's working on this really kickass game called Renaine) recommended that I make a simple game of pong as my first actual game in the engine, so I could get used to how it runs and feels. However, he also gave me another challenge for it - to try and add a unique twist/gameplay mechanic to it.

It's been nearly a year since I released this demo project on here, and since then, I've learned so much about making games, from the code, the art, all the way to the music. For starters, uh, I made this game entirely by myself. That means all the music, all the code, all the sprites. I spent about 3-4 months tirelessly working on this, and I was pretty proud when I released it. Now, I look back and I laugh, because after a year of learning, trial, and error, I could now program something like this for a game jam instead...

At the time, I was only starting off with Gamemaker, so I was using its Drag and Drop coding system (basically Scratch, but much more optimized :P), which meant that I was very limited in all the cool stuff I could do. It also didn't help that I knew next to nothing about the language as a whole. On top of that, I only had bare minimum experience in pixel art, and was using the really shitty mobile port of FL Studio to make the music. In the end, while what came out of it wasn't the worst thing, it most certainly wasn't shipped out without flaws - the music was repetitive, the sprites looked flat, and two of the game's core mechanics - the AI and the Charge Meter - were actually full of bugs because I rushed. Personally speaking, it got pretty boring after a bit, which while I get it's pong and it's not exactly supposed to be too fun, it would've been nice to burn a half an hour or so completing it. Oh, and let's not forget the store page for it - it was literally just a white background with black pixel letters (the new look is something I did a few hours ago). Hell, the screenshots still have the window tab on them. For shame, past me! >:(

However, despite all that, people seemed to like it. I was pretty happy with that, and after a few patches I decided to move on.

I had been planning on making an actually full-fledged game using Gamemaker prior to LPHP, and now that I had finished this project, I decided to move on to work on the game I really, really wanted to make. Starting in July 2021, I spent countless days working on it in my spare time during school, reading the Gamemaker manual, learning color theory, drawing sprites in the back of Precalculus, and writing music. On top of that, I started to learn to gain inspiration from every game that I played, and I observed what made each game unique and fun.

Fast forward to now, and I'm graduated from high school. Over the year of constant experiment and learning from my mistakes from LPHP, the game I'm making right now is easily 20 times better than what LPHP could have ever been. Beyond finally using Gamemaker's actual scripting language, I've learned how to make my own binary file formats to save data. I learned how to make my own shaders. I learned how to organize the game's data so neatly that it's as big as LPHP, while having at least 5 times more content than it. I learned how to optimize the game to run on even the junkiest PCs. On top of that, I got access to professional music/sprite tools (Aseprite and FL Studio 20), and increased the quality of my art and music using those. I'm really proud of how far that project has come, and I've got LPHP to thank for that, in a sense.

Now, as for LPHP's fate right now, I don't plan to fix the issues it has, I don't really see a point. However, I'm interested in revisiting this concept later on, and possibly make a bigger, better LPHP 2. Don't count on it, but it can always happen. And next time, I'll definitely make it something with some good ol' replayability. :D

That, however, might be put aside for a while. This game I'm currently working on is nearing a point where I'm ready to show it off in demo form! I plan on releasing the demo for it sometime in the Fall (Northern Hemisphere), and if people actually like it, I'm going to go all out and finish it. I've got faith in it; I got a decent amount of people interested in it, including the lead developer of a VERY popular game. I hope, if you've been keeping up with me this far, that you're as excited as I am for it. Because this ain't no LPHP.

If you're still reading up to this point, thank you. I appreciate you sticking with this little rant of mine. LPHP might have had a quick and short life, but what it taught me is something I won't forget. I hope, despite its flaws, that you enjoyed it a little. Thanks for playing my stupid little pong game. You really are epic. :)

See you soon!
- Timburr471