Brick Hill Spotlight #3: SmartLion & Innovation

The third edition of the Brick Hill Spotlight series, including the user SmartLion & his spectacular amount of innovation to Brick Hill.

Brick Hill Spotlight's Logo

Hello Brick Hill users, welcome to the third edition of Brick Hill Spotlight! It's hard to imagine we've already gone through two of these in just the last month but time flies when you're having fun. Last article we caught up with game creator Illusionism and his many sets as well as his tips for becoming a better Brick Hill creator. Though as always it's time for a new article and with that a new outstanding user of the platform to cover!

So let's continue and jump into the next entry of meeting those that bring difference, quality, and overall a sense of outstanding accomplishment to the Brick Hill platform, into our User Spotlight!


User Spotlight

The Brick Hill platform comes with enough tools provided for you to build, explore, and play many great sets, however there are obviously some limitations when it comes to working with the client. Many wouldn't see to work past these boundaries, but nonetheless they can still be successfully overcome and the user SmartLion has shown time and time again that you can do more with Brick Hill than just the bricks.

sepragame depicted

Of the many sets on Brick Hill, SmartLion is home to some of the most unique and accurately 'game-changing' experiences the platform can offer. With over  17 different sets being hosted, there are sets like sepragame which with the help of programs SmartLion himself has created, allow you to both play as a custom mesh character and hear sound throughout your adventures as a purple creature.

Chunk Music demo (left) Voxel Builder (testing) (right) depicted

Other unique experiences to Brick Hill include Chunk Music demo, a game where using the sound script provided by SmartLion you can create your own rhythms by placing blocks. Another is Voxel Builder (testing), which provides a giant canvas for you to place a variety of blocks to build whatever you want, the best part being it will save to the world and also be shown to other players so you can build with your friends.

Game Thumbnails script (left) BRK-FILES (right) depicted

On top of all the great set work SmartLion has done for brick hill, along with the before mentioned sound-brick script and Mesh Installer script he has also created numerous projects to make Brick Hill development and gameplay easier. Some of these include a Game Thumbnails script which includes custom images to depict many sets as well as his BRK-FILES project which allows you to add models created by other users into your sets.

All this great and outstanding work has made SmartLion one of the most prominent developers on Brick Hill, and I had a chance to get in touch with him to ask some questions about his developments, those questions are down below.

How'd you find Brick Hill and what kept you?

In 2017, I found Brick Hill on a recommended YouTube video by ratatooie showing beta testing gameplay and thought it was interesting, so I made an account when beta was over. I only had became active once Graphictoria shut down for the last time and ellie was advertising Brick Hill after that.

How'd you begin programming & what's your favorite part about it?

I always wanted to learn the scripting language and to host a server of my own to atleast have one server up on Brick Hill because at the time there wasn't many servers being hosted. Originally, the scripting language was GameMaker Language but then changed to JavaScript which allows for much more complex games to be built. Because node-hill runs under node.js and users self hosting the servers, anything that node.js can do, can be used in a Brick Hill game such as hosting a webserver to link a website and the game.

What motivates you to keep making the projects you make?

There aren't many games on Brick Hill that can be enjoyed for long periods of time alone. I simply love making games that push the limits of the legacy client and seeing what kinds of feedback people give to me.

Of all your creations for brick hill, which one was your favorite?

My personal favorite would be sepragame. Interestingly, the game is mostly liked by people outside of Brick Hill, so I had to make a web browser client for the game just to be more accessible.

Which one was the hardest?

Voxel Builder was quite difficult to make it work inside of Brick Hill.

What advice would you give to others looking to create projects & sets as yourself?

"Learn from other existing scripts" is mentioned a lot by other developers because it really does help out with learning a programming language.

What's next for your projects on Brick Hill?

There are 2 games that I still consider unfinished which are the result of me suddenly starting a new side project while working on a more important game.

That wraps up our interview with SmartLion as well as our time for the third Brick Hill Spotlight. As mentioned before SmartLion has many projects and we couldn't possibly list all of them here, make sure to check out his profile to learn more about what he's created and what future projects he's working on, the world of Brick Hill is only to evolve further!

Thanks for reading, Maxed1