Hey my friends!
It’s been a long minute since I posted anything here after the events that transpired and in the peace era. The peace era has been key to calm down and reflect what has transpired over the last few years. I picked up 3D printing and self taught in AUTOCAD. I was thinking more towards to learn abilities that can transcend my digital works and I wanted to be able to make my digital art tangible. After a while I realized that I don’t have the space to stock my works in and also the pitfalls of making arts and crafts creeped in like toxic chemicals that I have to deal with. I did fall in love with Resin 3D printing because it’s so good when the end results come to fruition. Alas at the end, I just have an occupied space full of materials and equipment that’s frustrating to have without using it now.
I’m going to fast forward to now, and society just entered a new era that was forecast a while ago: The Ai Era. In this time we got super smart pattern master systems that can talk back to you and solve issues faster when it comes to debugging code and conceptualizing art ideas. Unfortunately groups of academia that started up their own corporations have cheated their way up to their positions by immorally taking works from humble folks and essentially concentrated all data to create Ai Models of all kinds. This has caused a stir at the moment on how this has turned up to be, but the cat is out of the bag and everyone and their moms can access these tools on their phones now, leaving the artist and coder in the dust from a lower level perspective.
Years have gone by since the first glimpse of this and arguments emerged in 2023, that now in 2025 is way more prevalent. There is so many copy cat Ai tools saturating the market as well and simple games are relegated as cute since Ai can make it as well. The years I have poured into Dark Zeta is null now as that game doesn’t stand up to because also that market is saturated which have better designed games. This put me off for a bit business wise to pursue in finishing up on the project, but then Ai emerged and handed me the option to solve bugs effectively and quality control my work that I can now feel able to author it and finish the project once and for all. Business wise I still feel there is no point in pursuing to make it out for money but for just the love of it for now. I miss working on Dark Zeta and when I was able to share it now with others, that opened up my heart to look at it again.
This new opportunity and revived enthusiasm also gave me the option to experiment with different types of genres and gameplay. It enabled me to explore different concepts without thinking too much on syntax anymore. I’m reflected on being just a designer that can pseudo code the world around me and never really can be that master engineer that can manipulate reality as he sees fit. This is where Ai comes in to help with this as an assistant, to help me realize my concepts and choices. Thus my Arcade Zone has materialized! I forgot to mention too that I work 7 days out of the week and don’t have any real personal time to get my creative fix, instead, I have my downtime at work to make it happen for now.
So finally I have my game gallery up thanks to Ai! I used Claude to assist me and teach me how JavaScript works, thus you have my generic 3D maze game! Then after that I went to see how I can learn arrays with my Connect 4 clone! Then after that I went to start working on a generic vertical shooter game to replace my old GridXross game concept I worked on in the past. Don’t worry, that game project will return but for now I have found a way to get my kicks in learning a new language with Ai showing me working examples.
The biggest achievement of all 4 is the ability to create touch controls for DARK ZETA! That blew my mind how Ai was able to take a game I made using GameMaker Studio, know that’s a game made in GMS and set up touch controls that are fully functional. The added features afterwards came about naturally as I progressed through the project’s design with my new tool I’m using, Replit.
Now going forward I have discovered Pico-8, where I can have it listed in my gallery once I get a game working properly. I was thinking that maybe I won’t monetize Mariolegend.com because I’m going to have only my private galleries reflect my works exclusively. Maybe the blog posts will be monetized but the rest I feel there is no incentive to doing so here. Instead of all of that I’m going to dedicate a site that will mix all media with other authors in a site name that is more obvious and dedicated to working with a community. The Arcade Zone though is a prototype or beginning step towards the big one coming up later in time that will be fully monetized.
So yes! More titles will come! And Dark Zeta development has restarted up again. The only thing right now I’m trying to figure out is to get a balance in my life again. Working 7 days straight to keep everything working is exhausting and I feel very well burnt out now. Writing this on my downtime though gives me the edge to make those things I mentioned possible but there are tools I cannot work with while at work, which includes GameMaker Studio. So I’m thinking how to use my PTO to lay out a routine time to look forward to having a my 3 day off that I want to realize as this year’s resolution. A few days off can help but also I need to fill my time working as well because I do spoil things out of habit since the era of peace was spoiled by not working on other media arts, but then I was ruled by anxiety and was chasing things that didn’t work out in the end. So I’ll figure it out.
Thank you my friends for coming back and I hope you all enjoy my new game gallery – Mariolegend’s Arcade Zone!
-Later –
-G-
