YOU DIDN'T SEE IT COMING: BASTON IS BACK—ALMOST FROM SCRATCH!

Let me explain exactly what’s going on, straight up, like a battle-hardened veteran. Everything I’m about to summarize has been documented for years.

"Just read." – John R.

Alright, here we go again...

THE ORIGIN OF BASTON

I started working on this game in 2013. After Steve Jobs' explosive announcement in 2010, Flash was doomed to disappear from browsers. No one knew what would happen to the countless games that depended on it. To anticipate this dick move, I decided to recreate Dragon Ball Devolution using HaxeFlixel to ensure its survival. It was a long and grueling process because I had learned to code empirically with Dragon Ball Devolution, and I needed to level up my skills to make a viable remake.

When I discovered that HaxeFlixel allowed loading external images, I had an idea. I moved away from a simple remake and integrated a Fighter Editor, allowing players to create their own characters. With this, I hoped to be free from the endless "add this, do that" requests that already flooded Dragon Ball Devolution. Above all, I wanted to sell this new game, free of the dreaded "free fan game" label.

The first version, released in 2016, was well received despite its rough gameplay and unfinished look. To be fair, the Fighter Editor had taken up most of my time.

BASTON'S GOLDEN AGE?

By 2018, the community had grown significantly. Seeing all those custom fighters created by players was exciting. But soon, relentless requests for new features and abilities started flooding in. At the same time, HaxeFlixel updates were breaking huge parts of my code, making the project harder and harder to manage, while the gameplay remained far below my ambitions.

"Gameplay is the heart of a game. Not content." – Freddie W.

You can wrap crap in shiny golden paper, but it won't turn into a candy. I knew this, and it was getting increasingly frustrating: I couldn’t work on the gameplay without breaking everything around it. The Fighter Editor made me proud, but the game itself just wasn’t solid. Even the Projectile Editor I was working on would have been just another gimmick in a game with shaky foundations.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Dragon Ball Super was airing at the time, triggering a fresh wave of "add this character" requests for Dragon Ball Devolution. Worse still, some people were stealing my game, adding their low-quality content, and removing the credits, arguing that I had abandoned it to work only on BASTON.

That period was a nightmare for me.

BASTON IN DANGER

By 2020, morale was at an all-time low. Stuck in Paris during lockdown, I took the opportunity to save Dragon Ball Devolution from an inevitable death, thanks to Ruffle, an emulator that allowed old Flash games to run.

I would have loved to solve two problems at once, but Ruffle wasn’t compatible with newer HaxeFlixel games like BASTON, so I had to adapt by releasing a downloadable Windows version. Meanwhile, HaxeFlixel had evolved, and compiling an executable took 15 minutes, whereas compiling a Flash file only took a few seconds... Unworkable.

BASTON, designed to survive the death of Dragon Ball Devolution, was paradoxically sacrificed. However, everything I learned from working on BASTON was reinvested into the messy code of Dragon Ball Devolution, turning it into what it is today: a very cool game capable of handling an insane amount of content.

"Nothing is lost. Everything transforms." – Kurt S.

REBUILDING BASTON

Over time, I thought about a new direction for BASTON and waited for the right moment to jump back in. Last year, I restarted the project with a radical gameplay change: a turn-based tactical game, still compatible with player creations. This bold choice had several advantages:

• Strategic gameplay, with up to four teams of four fighters
• Destructible environments and endless possibilities
• No lag in online play thanks to the turn-based system
• Optimized interface for Android and touchscreens

But after working on this new version for months, I received an anonymous and aggressive petition from so-called "bastoneros", accusing me of killing their game and other nonsense, all while being completely incapable of seeing the bigger picture. In response, I stopped working on BASTON and focused on Omeganaut instead.

Moral of this story?

"Be kind to your developers." – L.

We are human beings, with dreams, feelings, and complex lives to manage. Not everyone has the luxury of living at their parents’ place, trash-talking people on Discord servers. And right now, my life is particularly difficult.

I love creating games for the intellectual challenge it provides. But my life isn’t just that, so don’t push me too hard. If this message applies to you, I kindly invite you to rethink your life—you’ll be better off for it.

BASTON'S REBIRTH

Six months have passed, and I’m trying to ignore the parasites and haters to focus on what I love: making games. With the next version of Dragon Ball Devolution almost finished, I’m back to working on BASTON.

The source code is a huge mess, combining elements from the old version based on Dragon Ball Devolution and the tactical version I worked on last year. The gameplay is returning to real-time, with multiple fighters on massive maps.

I’ve disabled many features to focus on the core of the game: camera and controls. GOLD users can already download this alpha version to test and give feedback on specific aspects like jumping, collisions, or general feel. This way, everyone should be happy.

One last thing:

"The final game will be paid." – Conan B.

It won't be expensive, and I’ll give it for free to those who supported me. If it’s not to your liking, there are plenty of other developers and games waiting for you on the internet.

I'm not holding you back ❤️