Hey there, everyone. I just wanted to quickly make a post about the fact that Bot Battle 2 is now fully operational and can be played, beginning to end, without any soft locks.
Now, releasing the map in such a poor state to begin with was completely unjustifiable, but as I have mentioned numerous times in my previous posts, my hardware capabilities are severely limited. My only means of making money to upgrade my hardware are either Fortnite's monetization program, or you guys' support on Patreon. Nothing else. And I obviously will not put any in-game transactions as I have mentioned numerous times, as engagement payout is more than enough, and I just think P2W systems are extremely annoying; ones that I myself have struggled with when I played games, especially during the early live service era when P2W was still new. So I will not turn around and do the same, obviously. Just have to make that clear, time and again.
This announcement serves the purpose of declaring Bot Battle 2 as a map you can finish without any soft locks. The map was quite functional the first time I made it, as I created it using Creative 1.0 and play tested it, beginning to end, hundreds of times; by myself, and with others.
Meanwhile now, and due to my ignorance, not only did deleting my account cost me a great amount of my personal data, it also cost me the maps I handcrafted the first time around. Thankfully, I had numerous videos on my (then) port-broken hard drive, which I subsequently fixed the port and used the video footage to reconstruct it, tile for tile.
Although, seeing as how I switched to UEFN so I can better accommodate a 4-map island, I also suffered as I did not upgrade my hardware with it. The map would be quite difficult to construct on Creative 1.0, so reconstructing it on UEFN was a bit easier. I had issues with the scaling, where some sections turned out bigger than they originally were (which I have fixed since then) but for the most part, the map is quite accurate. If any of you have played it (some of you even played it with me) back when it came out, and you still have video footage of the gameplay, it'll be almost certainly at least 99% accurately reconstructed, so no worries on that front.
But with that reconstruction and the lack of play testing thereafter, mostly because of my hardware limitations but also because I got tired of constantly play testing it hundreds upon hundreds of times the first time around, so doing so again, from complete scratch, was exhausting to me. So I just decided to finish large chunks of the reconstruction, then play test it at once, rather than each section individually as I did when I constructed it the first time. This caused many bugs & issues to pop up, including major ones which would soft lock you.
Well, now we have played through the map multiple times and have verified that you can get to the end without any soft locks, now, there may be small issues here and there, but just know that I am working on it, even as you're reading this. Literally most of my day is spent just working on this, because it is so fun, and also because it is my only source of income currently. But to be clear; I am not doing this merely for monetary gain. I struggle with doing grueling and boring work, even if it rewards well, so if I was doing this for monetary gain, I probably would've quit halfway through if I'm honest, because I haven't even gotten income from this for ages, seeing as how my numbers have dropped, and because I am on a new account...
Besides, the first map I made was way before monetary rewards (even EE, BR, and most of BB2) were made before the island monetization program was even added. All in all, this is a fun project for me. If anything, it just keeps me entertained. Kills time when I'm not playing or watching anything, or outside. It is a fun activity I do in life, is how I view it, that also provides me a potential lifeline, which is a healthy way of viewing it I would guess.
But just know that updates aren't very frequent because, I try to bunch the fixes up into a big update, rather than small individual updates. I still update it pretty frequently though, I mean, we are already at or around version 50 as I write this, so that is quite a high rate considering this "collection" version of Bot Battle came out relatively recently.
The reason I bunch up the updates is because there is a manual verification required for each individual update, which is quite annoying as that was never the case for most of island creation in Fortnite, but was only added when it turned more into a serious gig rather than a silly feature, and I get that. But just know, sometimes I do have an update up, but it might take up to hours for it to be accepted. Other times though, I am just fighting my laptop as it cannot run both Fortnite and UEFN at the same time, and one of them eventually ends up crashing, to which I sometimes have to resort to Cloud Gaming websites, which are also quite laggy and suffer delays, but are none the better than a natively-running Fortnite that either lags heavily, or lags UEFN to run smoothly, or just crashes altogether (or causes UEFN to crash).
I have a plethora of issues unfortunately, and until I can save up to get them sorted out, updates won't be as frequent as they could be. Any support on this is appreciated, but just know that your support, whether by SAC, Patreon, or however else; is completely optional. There will never be any rewards for doing so; this is only a small but vital show of appreciation from you.
All that said, expect a walkthrough video to be uploaded on the official REML YouTube channel very soon, going through how to beat the 4-maps, all packed up into one long video which has timestamps that you can skip through at will. It will be announced here as well, as soon as it is uploaded. Thank you for your support.
