Growing up in the 2000s and 2010s, I had ambitions of getting into game development. However I lacked the knowledge like 3D modelling so while I could do edited weapon sprites based on existing assets from other games, I couldn't do character sprites effectively.

Not only that but I struggled with level design and its fundamentals and I easily get overwhelmed with programming. Nowadays I only got basic understanding of code but not enough to do amazing things like making my own game engine for Windows 95 because my vintage computing hobbyist ass craves new games from time to time.

In this article, I will showcase some of my old design documents that obviously went nowhere, remained unfinished and some of the ideas mentioned are obviously unrealistic and too good to be true. Not only this tackles game development docs but also technology as well.

CRINGE WARNING BTW!

MashXT 3D Engine (August 2016)

This document from 2016 is hilariously short and only mentions the target specs of a Intel 386DX clocked at 16MHz. Now 3D engines on a processor of that kind isn't easy to achieve smoothly especially with that clock frequency.

The only games that could do 3D somewhat on a 386 would be Doom and Star Wars Dark Forces but for achieving the best performance on that platform, you are looking at upgrading to a 40MHz 386DX processor but even then you are still met with a 'not so smooth' performance compared to something like a 486-class processor preferably clocked at 66MHz or higher.

However some sources on YouTube indicates that Star Wars Dark Forces can be more serviceable on a 33MHz 386DX processor due to amazing optimizations to the game engine and some of the features are more advanced than whatever Doom's engine offered at the time. (To be fair, the game came out in 1995)

Trivion (August 2016)

What in the hell is a Trivion? I'm going to assume the name was thought about while listening to Trivium at the time. Just like the idea above it is rather short. The idea was that of a multiplayer-focused FPS game designed for MS-DOS and Windows 95.

What's described in the document mentions the menu hub where your account name and icon appeared on the top-right screen with options to customize the player and the ability to connect to planets. As for icons, I mentioned the idea of a converter program that converts .ICO graphics to a custom format called .TCE (I don't know what that stands for to be honest)

Looking back at it, this idea was more that of a MMOFPS game for vintage hardware. Keep in mind that designing MMO games is a heavy investment and even more so when you are dealing with ancient hardware, limitations and compilers. Obviously too ambitious for a teenager who barely had experience with MMO games. I only screwed around with Ultima Online (via private servers) and the free to play version of World of Warcraft for 5-15 minutes and never touched it again.

Project LineOn (August 2016)

The third design doc of August 2016.. except this one is about a computer (as the name implies) that could be dedicated to online multiplayer gaming but reading the specs I wrote is borderline hilarious.

Not only it will have a Pentium clocked at 90MHz and 63MB of RAM but you will have an onboard video card with 3dfx Glide, OpenGL, and DirectX all-in-one and a onboard Sound Blaster AWE64.. Okay that doesn't sound too bad because I recall somebody made a custom MXM laptop graphics card of a Voodoo 4 but it gets unrealistically worse when you find out that the operating system is none other than a heavily modified version of Windows 3.11!

For one, the only Graphics API Windows 3.11 had at the time was WinG but even then, DirectX succeeded that just like how Windows 95 succeeded Windows 3.11!

Although a wrapper that allows DirectDraw titles to be played in Windows 3.11 in conjunction with Win32s would be an interesting project, having support for Glide and OpenGL for a 16-bit operating system is so unrealistic that one would be better off using Windows 9x for that. But if one insist of keeping the WIndows 3.11 look and feel, the closest thing one would get with DirectX support (limited and I'm not sure about Glide) would be Windows NT 3.51 (with all service packs and maybe some unofficial patches alongside)

I imagine the price for the Project LineOn must cost about $9000 dollars or more not only because of the black magic but because you get a 10TB hard drive....

I think I would rather have one for archiving game recordings at this point. -_-

Moving on.

FistWorks (October 2015)

....... I'm going to pour a whole gallon of Clorox Bleach into my brain for remembering that.

First off, I still to this very day question why the fuck I named something using the word "Fist"

I mean, just looking at the name alone just sounds like you are either working out your fists for a boxing match or something but if you really want to go dirty, the best way to describe it is the cover of Postal: Fudge Pack.

Anyway, it's a "Fist" Person Shooter engine... I'm going to imagine had this idea went through, it would be hilarious for Running With Scissors to pay me money and endorsement of creating a spin-off Postal game called "POSTOOL".

Carrying on before I lose another brain cell. The engine targets DOS and Windows 9x platforms with 486DX2/66, 8-16MB RAM but allows support for TCP/IP, IPX, Modem Play up to 8 players. However the engine would bring support to old Macintoshes, Playstation and the Sega Saturn.

Well that's it! These are few of my old ideas that are not only unrealistic but also have cringeworthy names. However writing this article and looking back at those makes me glad that I improved with how I come up with ideas and names as years went by. Actually better yet, if you know somebody who claims they suck at coming up with names and ideas, perhaps showing them this may make them feel better. LOL