Five years ago over a school break, I threw together a basic prototype of Fortnite on Scratch while spending the weekend at a friend's house. From there, I continued to work until I had the first version of Fortnite Scratch Edition. It was basic. There was no item shop, no locker, no Battle Pass, no LTMs. Nothing but a lobby, some promises of upcoming updates, and the solos mode. Even so, it exploded in popularity compared to my other projects. So I continued working on it; adding a Battle Pass, challenges, and item shop and locker. By the time Season 4 came around, I wanted to make Fortnite Scratch Edition as accurate as possible; with the next season giving a massive overhaul to the menus, battle bus, and my first ever live event, the cube spawning. I experimented with live map changes as the cube rolled around before ending up in Loot Lake where it completely changed live, in-game. Season 6 would become the inspiration for the S.A.X. Engine as the floating island would be the first separate object placed on the map. I was pretty far behind on seasons, so after the Butterfly event, I decided to skip to Season X, which is when the S.A.X. Engine was implemented. This allowed the map to be much larger, and development of more complex events, such as The End, to be easier. Speaking of that event, after The End, it was time for a brand new chapter! Playground mode, UI updates, and of course the brand new Chapter 2 island! Then came Chapter 2 Season 2 and the development of The Device event. Epic had kept pushing back the event date, so by the time they had actually done the event, that left me with only a week to recreate it. Somehow it got done; but it highlighted the issues with using the same framework for so long. Fortnite Scratch Edition was built with only a few updates planned and then it would be left alone. However, with that CLEARLY not happening, the cracks were stating to show. So I skipped Chapter 2 Season 3 and moved right on to development of Chapter 2 Season 4, where I rebuilt the entire game from the ground up and updated the engine to S.A.X. Mark II. From there, it was smooth sailing and before long, we had reached Chapter 3. I wanted this to be the definitive version of Fortnite Scratch Edition. Like V1.0.0, V5.0.0, V10.0.0 and V14.0.0 before it, I wanted this update to be the new standard. I added spawn island, an inventory system, a shield bar, and loads of graphics and UI updates. Only for it to soon be outdone with V20.0.0 where I added building and sprinting on top of that. V21.0.0 was more of an ambiance update, adding stereo sound and a day/night cycle. Chapter 3 ended off in style with Fracture; or I should say it would've ended off in style if one line of code didn't cause the entire game to freeze when the event started. Whoops. Anyway, it's still the longest and most graphically impressive event to date so that's something. Now here we are in Chapter 4, with new mechanics, beautiful new graphics, and of course S.A.X. Engine 3 now powering the whole thing. It's amazing how far things have come in just five years, and it's crazy to think it has already been five years. (Man, I need to get a life.) So thank you everyone for all of your support, thank you Epic Games for making a truly wonderful and awe inspiring game, and here's to more Fortnite Scratch Edition to come!
S.A. Games Epic Games
