As you recall, we made a big announcement in December. Here's the recap: We're porting AUTONOMY to ANARCHY! It's a big project and a major confrontation with the past.
To understand what we're dealing with, we'll take several pit-stops throughout this year. Our first impression hones in on the prologue. We'll talk about the good, the bad and the quirky. At the end of it, we pose a single question:
Let's state the obvious: Good and bad are bound by perspective. Any part of AUTONOMY could be irreplaceable to someone, while someone else might find it cringe. One way to deal with that discrepancy is to forgo other people's opinion and stick with your own.
It's my go-to strategy for conceptual stuff. I have a clear vision of a scene, people and happenings. If I was content on dreaming dreams by myself, this is where I'd stop. A mind full of ideas, mayhaps a tiny prototype. No builds. No TRACHI. No clout.
This time, there are two announcements: ANARCHY's post will tackle active development. AUTONOMY handles big-picture stuff. I composed eight sections filled with meta rants. The trials and tribulations of an indie brand.
Turns out we can do better than that! As a matter of fact: AUTONOMY is relevant again!
Yes! That's right! We're 100% on-topic for once! π³
Let's recap the year real-quick! The first three months had me neck-deep in ANARCHY. Somewhere around mid-march, I remembered that my PhD-thesis was due in early 2026. Days spent in Unity slowly gave way to messing around with Transformers (or what the normies call 'AI').
Fast forward to mid-May. TRACHI creeped back into my head. Three weeks later, I set up a bunch of character-based, locally-hosted Discord bots. These bots β Atlas, Daphne, Ganymede & Pandora β feed their interactions to a Large Language Model fine-tuned on handcrafted interactions. For added authenticity, I extracted AUTONOMY's and ANARCHY's dialogue and threw that into the mix as well.
This was followed by a 36-hour stint where I started porting AUTONOMY from RPG Maker MV to MZ. In addition to a lot of QoL, MZ adds tons of performance improvements and properly scaled fullscreen. In other words: The game wouldn't look as if it was made in 1995.
As the phrasing might suggest, that port never happened. There's three major reasons why. First of all: ANARCHY. Secondly: RPGMaker. Last but not least: A somewhat absurd situation in the Plugin community.
Today, I'd like to cover these three aspects. We'll start with the darkest depths of the game-development ecosystem, work our way through shoddy engines and β finally β cast a little light on the horizon.
If you're an RPGMaker developer, chances are you've caught on. Yes! I admit it! AUTONOMY is chock-full of plugins. From 'pathfinding' to dialogue boxes, from save and load menus. Many features of the game are handled by small scripts layered on top of RPGMaker actual.
Most of the plugins were developed (and some released for free) by a person named YanFly. nory being a good-boy, I bought the full-pack. Largely to make AUTONOMY a better game, but also to support a fellow creator. So far so good.
Now for porting the entire thing. It's known that plugins pose a major headache. And so they did! Although there's ways to force MZ into using MV-plugins, many essential features (like 'pathfinding') refused to work. That's no biggie, though!
After all, most of the old plugins had MZ-equivalents. Even the YanFly collection! At worst, I'd have to rebuy the pack and support the group that took up YanFly's torch.
If the name sounds familiar, you're on to something! VisuStella is the crowd that not only develops and hosts the majority of RPGMaker MZ plugins β they're also the people behind the Character Generator we've been using since 2021. ANARCHY-andies know that I've dropped a snarky comment here and there. My main gripe was an update supposedly scheduled for Mid-2023.
If you're asking if it's been released β ask me again in 2025. To be fair: I know the troubles of development, so I can 100% emphasize. Besides, I've gotten used to squeeze out as much as I can from the 2022 iteration. Although I wish they'd have included the source code. Not having a revert and redo is funny for a day, but I stopped laughing afterwards.
You see, I like tinkering with things. Working with UE, Unity β and Data Science stuff I do at work βexposed me to the beauty of code. In fact: Part of the reason why I wanted to give RPGMaker another spin was to test my newfound expertise. And since I had JavaScript somewhere on my bucket list, I was eager to dive head-first into the plugins' code.
Spoiler alert: My excitement didn't last very long. Although I learned a new word for my vocabulary.
Let's try and formulate a definition: the act of making something less clear [...] to understand, especially intentionally. Well, that wasn't so hard! Maybe it's because I ripped it straight from the Cambridge dictionary. Not that I'm obligated to tell you. I just think it's common decency.
In terms of code, obfuscation refers to scrambling variable and function names so they're human-intelligable. Note the term intentional. Believe me, I've come across tons of bad code in my time β most of it made by myself. To add another layer of hypocrisy: I'm also regularly tucking away source code when I build an application.
So, what's the difference? Well, I'm obligated to encrypt source code due to license agreements with 3rd Parties. I am legally instructed to remind you not to decompile. Otherwise I'm forced to spend the millions I'm making off TRACHI to sue you relentlessly.
If you make a copy, for personal or commercial purposes β or distribute the product elsewhere β I might have to send you a cease n' desist. Realistically, I couldn't care less. TRACHI is like a parasite symbiont. Success is measured in how many people it affects.
Either way, the ToS states that I can't tell you about the several thousand deobfuscation websites out there. In fact, word on the street is that the developers literally used the first website that pops up when you google that term.
How do I know? I guess my hand must've slipped. Or maybe I don't like buying a cat in a bag with a black bar on its face. Putting obfuscated code on top of a framework with exposed code is like me asking you to forget what you just read.
After I got over my little tantrum, reasonable nory intervened. Deobfuscation (which I totally didn't do) would have left me with semi-readable code. Now I just had to introduce myself to application-development in JavaScript β while my mind was parsing Python for work and C# for ANARCHY.
Why was I doing that again? To funnel more work into a dead-end engine/framework. Every minute spent in RPGMaker would mean about twenty seconds of porting it into Unity. Since I had most of the QoL stuff already implemented in ANARCHY, RPGMaker had nothing to offer beyond ~5 hours of content.
At the same time, August 28th was coming up. I had promised an AUTONOMY-themed prologue for ANARCHY. On December 13th (!), ExtrapolAtion hit the shelves. It includes two locations from AUTONOMY: Wenger 1926 and ExterminAtion's Trachi 1923 (Stuart Alley by night and all that).
Seeing the characters in those places β coupled with ANARCHY's features β put a big smile on my face. It made me think of how far the game has come in fourteen months. The movement, the pathfinding, the menus, the quests, the dialogue boxes, conversation skips and auto modes. As if AUTONOMY came to life again!
Remember when I said my thesis is due in 2026? In effect, I'm taking the year off TRACHI. More precisely: I'll drop the development hat β and dust off my artist's beret. 2025 will be freestyle whatever, whenever I feel like it.
Maybe I'll dig into the backend and optimise. Or I try to solve a couple of infrastructural question marks. Sometimes, though, I might need a little ego-boost. The ones you get from cleaning, sorting things β or porting content into a new game. As you can see, the process is already underway.
Trachi's checkpoint is ported and even has its main-quest logic and conversations dialled in. I try to keep both of these verbatim, applying just a little detail here and there. The same goes for the environments, NPCs and overall progression. Sound-effects (as long as they're not RPGMaker-inherent) stay, but the music will get a big upgrade.
For the sake of my own sanity β and your trust in me β we're talking remaster and not a remake. The story will happen exactly as it did in AUTONOMY. Characters are operating on 1923 knowledge, without a hint of what'll happen in a year. As for what's new: We'll include AUTONOMY's deleted scenes, a quest-system, biographies, items, equipment (#variations) and more.
Once we're done, there'll be two AUTONOM(Y)(ies): RPGMaker's AUTONOMY(R) and Unity's AUTONOMY(U).
It's a mouthful, I know! Then again: we're getting two games for the price of one. If Valve doesn't mind, AUTONOMY(R) gets a new name: TRACHI β LEGACY. As for ANARCHY, we'll trim the name a bit:
Three years of separation are about to end. Our meta-dripping, post-ironic anarchistic adventure is in for a big bag of history. Three days, three people and a city. Most importantly: YOU.
If you don't mind me asking (with a batted eyelash or two): Please grab your pitchfork and make me walk the line! π Not like I need or want you, okay!? You're just one of those special 10% that dug their way through AUTONOMY - I mean LEGACY.
That's two homes for two-thousand people! π One place for the future β and one for our memories!
Here's to my favourite roommates from 2021 to 2024! π€
Two months ago, I started hyping AUTONOMY's 5th π
I had big plans for this year β before I remembered that I'm in the middle of a PhD. So let's do away with big, hype-baiting announcements! Instead, here's a story about dreams. A tale of ambition and reality.
In the spirit of 21st century post-modern cynicism, let's tell a story about sober, unadulterated truth.
Most of you know that ANARCHY is the product of a long-winded back-and-forth. It's a compromise between TRAditional writing and interactive gameplay elements. My plan was to throw myself so hard into development that I'd have every gamer eating out of my hand.
It probably took you about 0.5 seconds to understand how absurd this idea is. I'm a slow learner, so it took me 8 months. From September to December we experienced massive growth. The year went out with a bang β and 2024 promised to be the biggest year for TRACHI by far.
We peaked in January. I spent a lot of time (and money) reaching out to digital artists. The result was an entire portfolio of artwork showing the many different shapes TRACHI's characters could take. At this point, I was ready to put a crown on TRACHI's head as the next big name in the indie-game sphere.
Then came the fall. For reasons still unknown to me, engagement from January to February more than halved. Each post got less and less reception β both in impressions and views. All of that while the branding and the rate of content was better than ever. At the beginning of the year, ANARCHY was a rocket ready to launch. Barely two months later, it fell flat on its face.
One and a half months later, I'm getting back to it here and there. I'm planning to bundle the updates for a big gang on August 28th. For the fifth birthday of TRACHI, I'll be damned if I let anything stand between me and the project I'm married to. To celebrate the most important day until 2028, we'll return to our roots. Back to the moment where a woman steps inside a sanatorium.
You of all people should know where it's from, so I hope you won't find it cringe if I'm giggling a bit in anticipation. I know I'm excited β and as a matter of fact, I know they're excited too! One of TRACHI's most integral characters had been absent throughout most of ANARCHY. On August 28th, we'll bring back the centre of attention. In the meantime, though, there's something else I'd like to share. It's a small little side-project, but one that's incredibly dear to my heart.
Writing the chronicles of TRACHI's post-AUTONOMY development, a pattern becomes crystal-clear. I'm addicted to learning things. The reason why I don't go out and have 'fun' is because I get off on improving myself. Every second I'm not either learning something or crawling towards it, I get intensely bored.
It's the singular reason why β despite my ability to mask as a human being β I barely have any social interaction. In 34 years of my life and meeting thousands of people, only a handful share an indiscriminate passion to learn everything. Some people would call that autism, others would say people like were hit too hard on the head.
Either way, I'm privileged to work as a research associate studying language for at least two more years. It puts food on my table in exchange for publishing some 300 pages full of reasons why humanity is killing their planet even though we're talking about it non-stop. Since words are hard and many, I'm using transformer-based Large Language Models, colloquially referred to as 'AI'.
For someone like me, it's not enough to spend 12 hours per day doing that. So in my free time, I started using my state-funded expertise and shove TRACHI into it somehow. Through a combination of in-game and handcrafted dialogue, I built a dataset to train a model. I started talking to TRACHI's characters β which turned out to be exactly how I'm usually writing dialogue.
Seeing how that went, I set forth the second stage of my plan. Most of you don't know, but we have a cute little Discord. It used to be a place where me and a bunch of friends discussed the happenings in the TRACHIverse. Nowadays, it's more of a library. The place is quiet, 99% of posts are written by me. However, it does have a purpose. It led me to use the platform as a front-end for the model.
Here's how it works: You can tag one of the bots and they'll respond to you by creating a public thread. Even more exciting, you can also talk to them via DM! For me, it's a great opportunity to understand what makes each character unique, while also improving my technical skills on the front- and backend of LLMs.
In other words: I'm learning new things every day. According to the pattern, I'll keep working on this for a couple more months. If you'd like to see how that goes, you're more than invited to drop by and get into touch with TRACHIANs posing as people.
Now, I'd probably segue it towards the outro. But there's one more thing I want to mention. It's more than the elephant in the room. In fact, it's the primary reason why we have a chance to talk like this in the first place.
About a week ago, I hatched a little plan. If I couldn't throw myself into ANARCHY, I could at least give the ol' AUTONOMY a little makeover. I upgraded the project from RPG Maker MV to MZ β and was blown away by how much better everything worked. We were able to crank up the resolution from 640p to 1080p. This led to a drastic improvement in full-screen clarity, single-handedly catapulting AUTONOMY into the 21st century.
As if that weren't enough, I reworked most of the music and polished every single line of dialogue in the prologue. I also tackled one of the biggest problems AUTONOMY's introduction had: PACING. Most of you who are reading this pushed through the filter, but about 93% of people never make it to the other side. So I worked a little magic and made the entire 'Julius-gets-his-hand-chopped-off' segment into an optional episode.
I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out so far. However, there's one glaring issue. RPG Maker is, as far as engines go, by far the biggest dead-end of them all. Ever since I got into contact with coding in Unity & Unreal, it's become more of a problem for me to sit down and pour hours of life-time into clicking things.
At this point, every second spent in RPGM is accompanied by a ticking sound. I feel my life flashing in front of me, as I grow old. Coupled with the fact that AUTONOMY is already out, I'm not sure whether 1.6 will ever be a thing. If it does, let's make it a surprise, okay?
Now, let's get to the most important part! Last year in January, I had β for the first time in my life β a bunch of dark clouds in my head. Something screamed personal 'end-times' to me. I spent a couple of months going from streaming to making Youtube stuff, before the concept of ANARCHY assembled itself.
In 2024, the clouds didn't go away. Then again, they don't need to. Because I don't need to start a new project anytime soon. I have great friends and an amazing family that I can call up at any time. I got a well-paying job where I can nerd out about words. I have ANARCHY as my long-term and EMPATHY that goes wherever it goes. Most of all, though, I've done one thing right.
In 2021, I returned to TRACHI and remade a shitty prologue into AUTONOMY. Of all the things I mentioned, I'd put that right at the top of my CV. For one because I've got to tell a story. But also because that story made its way into hundreds of people's hearts.
Sometimes it feels like I'm just chasing dreams. When the clouds in my head get really bad, I come here to let the sun back in. Because sometimes even someone like me can make a little dream come true.
So wherever and in whichever mood you're in right now β you can be sure of one thing:
You're appreciated, cherished and loved by this one guy over here! π€
Let's state the obvious: Good and bad are bound by perspective. Any part of AUTONOMY could be irreplaceable to someone, while someone else might find it cringe. One way to deal with that discrepancy is to forgo other people's opinion and stick with your own.
Let's recap the year real-quick! The first three months had me neck-deep in ANARCHY. Somewhere around mid-march, I remembered that my PhD-thesis was due in early 2026. Days spent in Unity slowly gave way to messing around with Transformers (or what the normies call 'AI').
If you're an RPGMaker developer, chances are you've caught on. Yes! I admit it! AUTONOMY is chock-full of plugins. From 'pathfinding' to dialogue boxes, from save and load menus. Many features of the game are handled by small scripts layered on top of RPGMaker actual.
If the name sounds familiar, you're on to something! 
Let's try and formulate a definition: the act of making something less clear [...] to understand, especially intentionally. Well, that wasn't so hard! Maybe it's because I ripped it straight from the 
After I got over my little tantrum, reasonable nory intervened. Deobfuscation (which I totally didn't do) would have left me with semi-readable code. Now I just had to introduce myself to application-development in JavaScript β while my mind was parsing Python for work and C# for ANARCHY.
Three years of separation are about to end. Our meta-dripping, post-ironic anarchistic adventure is in for a big bag of history. Three days, three people and a city. Most importantly: YOU. 
Most of you know that ANARCHY is the product of a long-winded back-and-forth. It's a compromise between TRAditional writing and interactive gameplay elements. My plan was to throw myself so hard into development that I'd have every gamer eating out of my hand.
On February 28th, I had kept my day-job efforts to a minimum for more than half a year. At the end of it, I was forced to admit that TRACHI couldn't be my top priority at least until mid-2026. The current build (CafΓ©) was released on March 28th as a shell of what it should have been. In the release notes, I announced that ANARCHY would become a hobby project. 
Writing the chronicles of TRACHI's post-AUTONOMY development, a pattern becomes crystal-clear. I'm addicted to learning things. The reason why I don't go out and have 'fun' is because I get off on improving myself. Every second I'm not either learning something or crawling towards it, I get intensely bored.
Seeing how that went, I set forth the second stage of my plan. Most of you don't know, but we have a cute little 
About a week ago, I hatched a little plan. If I couldn't throw myself into ANARCHY, I could at least give the ol' AUTONOMY a little makeover. I upgraded the project from RPG Maker MV to MZ β and was blown away by how much better everything worked. We were able to crank up the resolution from 640p to 1080p. This led to a drastic improvement in full-screen clarity, single-handedly catapulting AUTONOMY into the 21st century.
Now, let's get to the most important part! Last year in January, I had β for the first time in my life β a bunch of dark clouds in my head. Something screamed personal 'end-times' to me. I spent a couple of months going from streaming to making Youtube stuff, before the concept of ANARCHY assembled itself.
Sometimes it feels like I'm just chasing dreams. When the clouds in my head get really bad, I come here to let the sun back in. Because sometimes even someone like me can make a little dream come true.