Self Reflection, Avatar Reflection

It started as a joke.

One day I decided that my game development was going poorly because I was too attached to my characters. If I messed anything up, like accidentally replacing the sprite rig's head with a hand, then a tiny twinge of regret wormed itself into my head. That twinge could grow and blossom into a fully-fledged loss of the character, until I went back and started changing everything about it so it actually matched what I saw.

Every programmer starts making things with basic blocks. Ugly, placeholder pieces of art that are there just to get the ideas down right. Every artist starts with an idea and tries to draw out the thing in your head to a real form. The schism between the two gets strange sometimes.

I don't want to work with placeholder art forever, and I can't get the personality down right with a bunch of rotating blocks. Thus the joke: mDiyo enters the game! Take my avatar, make it as high quality as the artwork I eventually want, slice it up, and if something weird happens then I hurt 'myself' in the process, slap myself in the knee, and fix the bug. This worked so well that I'm not even mad about 'my' face flipping backwards in a weird way:

Over time I found myself doing what I normally do with characters that I spend with: building them up. In this case it's been great for defining things that may or may not have impact later on down the line. I can find what works (equippable gauntlets over the hands) and what doesn't (armor layering), then fix things up proper when I get to characters that I really want to make.

My end goal is a procedural metroidvania game with multiple characters that both give upgrades and let you actually play the game with them. Mid goals are multiple types of games with unique and interesting mechanics that can support the end goal. I have a lot of notes on mechanics, characters, lock-and-key design structures, and potential puzzles or action sequences to be solved. Drawing up mDiyo-character-specific items here isn't a waste of time; I would need to spend the time figuring out how to relate these concepts to the endpoint. These articles are similar; it's just a lot more out in the open for everyone to read.

Sometimes in the process of making things, I come across a question that needs answered. Some of these questions have obvious answers. For example: "What sort of upgrades exist in Metroid Dread that aren't in my list of upgrades?" Combing through a game takes a bit of time, and to fully understand things it can take 3-4 playthroughs of the game. Other questions have more nebulous answers, like "how do controllable enemies work?". Given enough time and the proper context, these problems can be boiled down to math and have a solution, or they can be rendered into an art and the answer doesn't matter, only the execution.

Occasionally I find a question that demands an answer that doesn't exist. These are usually for ideas that don't exist in any of the references I have. "How do you make more than two playable characters function in a Metroidvania?" is a question that still doesn't have an answer, and this question prompts others like "what happens if I try to combine some of my example characters like Samus and Jason Frudnick?" or "Who is mDiyo's partner?"

That last question is irritating. There are feelings attached to it, feelings that I thought didn't exist because the avatar is not supposed to be something I'm attached to. I'm absolutely sure that it's not related to the thing I made, because this is fine.

It's not the character. The abilities built up for him are well defined and have specific goals for the future. Telekinetic swords are fascinating, armor needs an equipment framework built in code, and having the sheer versatility of a miniature army and a boost in power from magic is a fantastic power set worthy of the fantastic humans that are being worked on. The design looks good, the character's class is a sword-dancing puppeteer, and the lore already supports something like that, so why? Why does the idea of the character that represent me having a partner bother me so much?

The adventuring archetype for the character is a self-made army. Necromancers, puppeteers, beast tamers, and leaders in a rag-tag bunch of mercenaries all fit this idea perfectly. I've even written other characters with this archetype; it's one of the concepts I've been exploring lately and the gameplay style I enjoy the most. Everything fits here, everything should fall into place and all of the content should flow outwards in a fun and exciting way, but it doesn't. The process is maddening. What is so important in that question that it pulls at my heartstrings?! Why, why, WHY?!

These feelings make me uncomfortable. It's the kind of discomfort that wells up deep within your chest, burying itself so deep that merely asking the question brings up a perverse sense of nostalgia from a time that existed last year and before. The feeling is so gut-wrenching that I need to describe it in the abstract, as if it was something else outside of me, despite the fact that it's buried so deep that I'm afraid that it is me.

These feelings have more than a little to work off of. This is the first time in my life where things are actually going right, where everything could come together and work right for once. The perverse sentimentality is from the before time, where fear and mitigation ruled the day.

Let's put this in another context. mDiyo is the pinnacle of Metroidvania design and sympathetic magic. He is genre savvy and capable of replicating ideas through material manipulation, construct creation, essence weaving, and a hand from an outside source beyond his control. This source is known as a 'World Seed' and grants information on a variety of sources of information. Piece by piece, idea by idea, the world is being built around him.

For mDiyo's personal path, he pulls from a number of heroes. All of these heroes are interesting from a do-crazy-sensible-things standpoint:

Samus Aran - Intergalactic bounty hunter and the progenitor of Metroidvanias.
Jason Frudnick - Alternate universe earth genius who happened across a frog, a tank named Sophia, and a scenario that was too ambitious for its own good.
Alisia Deena Rain - A lilliputian that uses her pet dragon to manifest lightning. She sets off to rescue her husband from a cult that successfully summons their god.
Sonic the Hedgehog - A blue creature that has no business being a hedgehog. He's pretty famous for his sidekicks and his speed.
Red - A pokemon battle legend.

Morph Ball, Sophia, a pet dragon, Tails, and pokeballs. We shall swipe all of these and make them real. There are other things, of course, but for the character, it's...

There's that feeling again. The worst part of that is 'we' and 'swipe'. It's almost like I'm trying to create something that's fake, something that couldn't possibly be real, and because this character represents myself then what I'm building here has to be for me. Separating the character from the person doesn't seem to be an option either, as the entire point of putting my own avatar in this setting is to make something that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

It's different though... more subtle. Like part of the problem is the conflation of the character and the persona, the persona and the writing, and the writing with the real mind behind all of it. I am genuine, honest, and true. I do not like being fake. Despite the sheer amount of things that distance the avatar from me, it still feels like I'm being fake by taking ideas from other people somehow. After all, if I want to take the Morph Ball, why not take the entire Power Suit or Samus herself? Why not just take a whole game and call it my own?

Take a person, make them real, and give myself a partner while overriding free will. Yes... that's it. That is a really nasty feeling that makes me want to laugh like an evil genius from my throne atop the world. Enslave someone and make them do my bidding, because I am the all powerful god of the world that I make and who would stop me from taking what's already mine? There's no way to stop me and everyone already agrees with what I'm doing because the only person that matters here is me. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Mix that feeling with the incessant need for answers and a wistful longing for the amount of time I've spent alone and that explains everything. Too much lost time, too little free will, and too many things that I can't make on my own.

"Who is mDiyo's partner?" is the wrong question. The character is an abstract of a real person, and the character itself is not a "who", it's a "what". Let's rephrase the question: "What is mDiyo's partner?"

I've been multiple different people over my lifespan. Trying to resolve the utter garbage life that I've had into something useful and interesting has been what I've been trying to do most of my life. mDiyo was the third incarnation of myself, the one that stuck around when I finally started making the first thing in my life that was worthwhile. Who would have thought that the rapid changing of names, personality fragments, and ideas would settle on a gardevoir with a pickaxe that taught itself how to code?

Let's give mDiyo the rest of my past life. All the pieces, all the fragments, all the bits and weirdness that came with it. If mDiyo deserves a partner at all, then he will have everything that I thought I discarded, brought back together, and reclaimed.

That should answer the question well enough.