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  Smashy Smashy 07:14 PM -- Tue April 8, 2008  

Today, I will admit to being unproductive, so in an effort to find some way to be productive, I came up with an interesting twist. I went out to the living room, dug through my PS2 games, and found every one that works as motivation/inspiration/research/rip-off material for Happyponygate, and I fired them up and played a bit. Here's what I played:
  • Simpsons: Hit & Run - I was looking at how driving went, but the general notion of driving around and then hopping out to do missions was appropriate. I think it helped me a little thinking about the driving, even though they obviously have a fully implemented physics simulation for their driving (and let me tell you, there is not a lot of stuff on the web - or at least not easy to find - about coding car physics). I'm definitely going to take a simpler road on that, but little concepts like "you turn faster while braking" are certainly the kind of general rule you can take from a complex physics simulation and turn into a very simple arcade rule.

  • Ratchet & Clank 2 - In this game, it turns out, your weapons only level up once! Well, I remember buying golden weapons or something later on back when I played it, but leveling them up doesn't go through a bunch of ranks. It just goes up to full, and it's done. Which is crazy, because I played for about 15 minutes and managed to level up 2 of the 3 weapons I had!

  • Ratchet & Clank 3 - This game, on the other hand, has (I think) 99 levels per weapon. Or maybe you only get up to V9 in the normal game, then go up to 99 in the second run-through. Ratchet games do a great job of making a second play worthwhile, let me tell you. Anyway, it is much more appropriate with its leveling. But the real thing I got out of both Ratchet games I played was something I hadn't even thought about, but is so obvious in retrospect! You can smash objects all over the place in these games, and it's just fun! So here's a whole new angle to Happyponygate, officially. Almost every item around is going to be destroyable, and destroying them will make Loonies (that's money, not Dr. Lunatic) go flying everywhere to pick up. It's two great tastes that taste great together - wholesale destruction, and collecting shiny objects.
I had Midway Arcade Treasures handy too, for checking out Super Sprint, but I didn't actually try it yet. Seems an appropriate choice - top down 2D driving!

So right now what I am doing is formulating a depressingly large art asset list, so I know what I need to create for this game. It's nothing like Sleepless Hollow, unfortunately. Everything in this game is new (well, maybe I can borrow LL2's teddy bears...), and an entire game's worth of art from scratch is an insane amount of work. One of the things of course is to come up with lots of random objects that can be scattered around town to smash - I've already got trash cans, dumpsters, mailboxes (official ones - haven't made normal house ones yet), streetlights and phone booths. I'll need other things... newspaper racks, benches, bus stops, bushes, fire hydrants. I don't know what else, but lots of assorted town things you can smash for spare change.
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  Vacation Shutdown 08:10 PM -- Sun April 6, 2008  

Well, it's been a 2-week vacation, somewhat unintended and somewhat intended, and today is the last day. It started out as a short break for Easter, a couple days of fun and lowered work, but then the illness struck. That knocked out pretty much a whole week of the two weeks. I didn't even play WoW for most of that! That's a pretty serious malady. Then I got mostly better (still coughing, though), but it remained seriously vacationistic here. But Spring Break ends today, with Sol returning to her jobs tomorrow, and I doing the same.

So, the upside of it is that I am raring to go. I think the sum total of work I did over this break was to make this decision: I am going to crank out Happyponygate like a man possessed (by a Happy Pony), and get that out of the way so I can make LL3. So it's Happy Pony time around here and I am going to knock that thing down fast. I must!!
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  April Fool's 09:44 AM -- Tue April 1, 2008  

Ha!! I was just kidding when... I mean, what you all thought was... um... no. I'm still recuperating. I don't have that kind of energy. But I thought I'd post something anyway, just to remind you - it is April Fool's Day. Please, think carefully about what you read today (not a bad move every other day, too, but today, even people outside of the news media are trying to trick you!). Jokes are fun unless you're the guy who falls for it and thinks something horrible is happening (but when you do, that sure is fun for everyone else!).

But if you'd like to see a great joke: The Food Court Musical

I like to think of today as Critical Thinking Practice Day. And that's something we could all use!
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  April's Coming, Fools! 09:28 PM -- Sat March 29, 2008  

And just what are you going to do about it?

Here's one idea I am thinking about: Script Frenzy. It's like Nanowrimo, except you write a movie script. I checked out their explanation of the formatting and such of a script and it seemed fun and easy. The goal is to get 100 pages, which isn't all that much with the way movies are formatted. I want to give it a try. I've thought of about 20 ideas that appeal, but none that kick me in the teeth and call me Grandma.

Another thing I will definitely be doing is LD48 #11. Yes, time for another 48 hour game, to be sure.

Another thing I have in mind is to get all this garbage out of my sinuses and lungs, though I don't yet know a very efficient method for that. Kleenex doesn't seem to make a lot of progress.

I also hope to get somewhere on my game projects, but I can't imagine where exactly at the moment. This little "vacation" has been tiring.

Oh... yeah... and taxes. Great.
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  Spoke Too Soon 07:32 PM -- Fri March 28, 2008  

Still sick. In fact, my fever got worse the second day. Doesn't seem to be entirely gone today either. I know this makes for exciting reading, so that's why I share it with you. Actually, I share it with you to explain why I have nothing of interest to share with you. I must be doing better though, because today I was able to play an hour or two of WoW! I came up with lots of good LL3 ideas while tossing and turning in fever dreams. Well, they seemed good at the time. Perhaps when I recover, giant poodles wearing high heels that build plastic candy canes in honor of McDonald's new value menu won't seem like such a great plan. That's a joke, son, I had real ideas. My fever didn't go that high.
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  Sick 05:54 PM -- Thu March 27, 2008  

If you noticed I was unusually quiet yesterday, it's because I was righteously ill. I am definitely still recuperating today, so nothing of interest to report, just glad to be feeling somewhat better. Mmm, gatorade.
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  Sneak Peek: Loonyland 3 12:19 PM -- Tue March 25, 2008  

Okay, first of all, I clearly don't have a remotely good system for getting drawn images into the computer, because this is real ugly. But here is the map I worked on recently:

If you are a true Loonyfan, you may recognize this place from the overall map of the continent of Loonyland. It is, as it says, Friendship Fields, which is the westernmost country in Loonyland. It is where the next Loonyland takes place (Titan Tunnels/Age Of Heroes/etc). The game itself will contain some form of this map (presumably much cleaner...), probably. You won't get to wander this land, rather you will select quests from the map, and be magically sent to that spot to do the quest. I'm thinking about having Phileas fly you there.

Making the map is really about throwing stuff on to get ideas of what sort of things there will be in the world, what will be there to move the plot along. Not much plot, of course, but a quest is in itself a little bit of a plot. I now have a grand idea for the overarching plot, by which I mean a real simple basic thing, but something big enough to be an ending anyway. The main consideration driving the whole thing (though you'll do all kinds of little quest series with their own mini-stories) is that the neighboring country, Summer Spring, is at war with Friendship Fields. I don't know why yet, but I think we can all rest assured that it's a really stupid reason. You can see on the map if you have good eyes the North War Camp and South War Camp at two of the bridges. Good place to hold the enemy off, tactically. Sadly, the middle bridge lacks a war camp, which makes no sense, but it means that I can have you visit that town and find it abandoned and destroyed. Maybe that's the start of the war, why not? You would think a place like Friendship Fields would be more friendly than this.

Also, if you are a true true Loonyfan, you may notice what's different about this map from the overall map. Don't forget - this game takes place long in the past. Wonder if it will be about that change?
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  Points #2 04:31 PM -- Fri March 21, 2008  

I'm making a note here of my huge success!

Points have driven me to finish up the last issues with the scrolling map in Happyponygate, so now it handles specials and prevents guys from respawning if they already exist (you can now drive the one existing car around, and discover that it's not waiting for you again when you return). Then with that done, nothing immediately came to mind to work on with that game, so I fired up Titan Tunnels! I got it set to import skills and charms from text files, which was a significant matter, especially when I completely deleted the entire contents of skills.cpp. There are now hundreds of errors when you try to compile, since the old hardcoded skills were referenced all throughout the code. So cleaning that up will be a big task. Anyway, got some chores done too. Huge success.

If only there were some cake.
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  Sneak Peek: Happyponygate 03:43 PM -- Thu March 20, 2008  

The points are working! Or so it seems. The first day of a new system is always great. I should just make new systems every other day.

Anyhoooo... I created 3 new Avatar Bits today which you can find in the Yerfshop, allowing you to make a bear or perhaps a half-bear/half-duck monster. Someday there will be duck body parts. It's also worth noting that the bear looks really good in the Hoody body.

So, back to the real point - I worked on Happyponygate today and accomplished something I had been thinking about over and over for a week or two. When I originally started the project and was trying to keep it as simple as possible (ah, dreams of a second Sleepless Hollow), I didn't think a freely scrolling map would be possible. But it only took this morning to do it! This morning and a couple weeks' worth of intensive thinking sessions while I was walking. So that's what I built. Now, I make the town in 100x100 maps, and those maps are seamlessly connected, along with an infinite forest surrounding the town. So there's just one map as far as the player is concerned! And it oughtta be big, I hope.

This has other nifty benefits, like when you destroy things or kill monsters, they respawn. But not based on time or anything, just that if you travel far enough from where you did it and return, they are back. All without me actually doing anything to define it, it's just a side effect of the map system. Also another odd side effect that is not particularly useful is that you can walk into the forest surrounding the city and continue on... forever. I could make the woods more dense to actually block your movement, but it's fairly amusing to think that someone might just keep on walking in the hopes of finding something (and yes... I could actually set a special zone up so that if you go 20 screens off to the east, you end up in a secret area! Don't think I would, though, that's cruel).

So I'm pretty excited about it, and it works very smoothly after I got the kinks out. Building the maps will be sort of annoying, though, since I'll have to make them align perfectly. I'm sure there will be a lot of flipping back and forth to get that stuff right. I may also have other maps for interiors, that don't do the seamless effect. But really, I don't think the game needs them. There'll be plenty of city to wander without ever going inside anything. Oh, but I just remembered there are the Happyponygates to consider. So it will need to support that for those.

There's a productive day for you. How will the point system fare tomorrow?
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  Want Some Chevre? 03:56 PM -- Wed March 19, 2008  

Fun for me! My friend Brian (need wedding photography? briankinyon.com) got World of Warcraft, and we started new guys to play together from the beginning. It's super easy with 2 people working together, and it's fun! It has led to some staying up late as we struggle to coordinate a cross-continental schedule, but it is wowsomely fun to do.

And that is currently my problem - I'm definitely suffering the pain that so many many before have gone through with WoW taking over their lives. I've set the parental controls so I can't do it before 3 PM, but I'm still totally unproductive before 3PM. It's like it saps your will to function (much like the web does, which is where I spend most of the rest of my day). I don't actually think it's really WoW's fault, but it makes both a convenient scapegoat and a convenient outlet for the nonproductive urges that are currently crushing my success.

So like so many times before, it's time for a new productivity plan. Here's the one I'm trying now: I get points. I have these cool little colored chips that stack up, and it takes 18 of them to stack up on my desk to the height of a little side-wall my desk has, so I declare that it takes 18 points for me to be done working for the day and be free to do what I wish. I earn those points with various productive things, including chores as well as work (I haven't been cleaning this place up too much, either), and even some basic exercise things. The exercise stuff works doubly well - I'm motivated by the prospect of getting points as well as the fact that by doing it I can avoid working. So I should be very healthy soon! Of course, things like that and other little things are just one point, so they won't get my day done quickly. If instead I accomplish tasks for work, suddenly those points get burned through a lot more quickly!

We'll see how that goes. Seems like a good plan anyway. Working for yourself makes motivation really the biggest challenge.
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