Letting yall know what I'm doing on my spare time aside from trying to catch up on commissions, my room mate and I are working on a role playing game, using smatterings of RPG-Maker software as the core, and adding scripts as necessary (primarily for the battles... more on that shortly) I can't actually be certain if it will go anywhere, but we're giving it a shot.

Its a take on the Ed Edd and Eddy cartoons, and the central themes are 1.luck and 2.personality traits.

1.The eds always do their best, but something always seems to foil them, even when they have the best of intentions. are they cursed? the game will explore luck, fate, forging your own destiny, and exceptance vs. hopelessness of the unchangable. RPGs must have a central theme which is then explored in greater detail to give the whole chaos a form of greater meaning, rather than a random dungeon crawl to beat hordes of uglies for no real reason.

2. the great appeal of the EEnE cartoons are in the uniquely colorful character traits and how they mix and conflict with each other. there is a wealth of plot available if we can dig into how these characters think, and create more 3-dimensional characters. its the same way RPGs tend to explore the backgrounds of characters. This means that some freedoms may have to be taken as to the history of certain characters, but we intend to research the show as much as possible to make things legitimate. Balancing new revelations and old ideas is paramount.

The idea is to create a plot deep enough to appeal to rpg-ers, while keeping it all lighthearted. A good analog is earthbound, or kingdom hearts: both lighthearted games with a more serious-than-normal antagonist/conflict.

The main idea here is to make an rpg by EEnE fans, for EEnE fans, rather than a cheap franchise title... as such we may fail simply because we lack the knowhow to make a game with the depth we want to issue to do it all justice, but we would rather fail out and out than release a half-hearted game. As such, don't expect anything until we say its finished.

Gameplay wise, think turnbased combat with reaction commands to bolster attacks and defenses. the Mario and luigi superstar saga should be an ideal concept, with a single button assigned to each of the three Eds. location wise, think Kingdom hearts with the exploration of multiple sub-worlds: rather than disney movie based worlds however, we will be creating worlds coming from each characters own mind and soul... think psychonauts there. the main hub-world will be the Cul-de-sac, but expect them to go to places in the real world they wouldn't normally: cities, forests, perhaps even otherworldly locations if and when things grow epic at climax-points of the game..

Lastly, I know the risk of copyright infringement, but the intention is to create a free game to test our abilities. We want to see if we can take some of our favorite gaming and cartooning experiences and hybridize them together into something entertaining. If by some bizarre happenstance the game becomes immensely popular, we'd be more than happy to give rights to cartoon network for distribution if I can get due credit for the game's creation, no profit gained.

In summary, thats what we are up to, but don't get too excited: experiments like these tend to go south if just the right mix of circumstances don't occur.