You are a ship builder. It takes you a year to build a ship, and when it's done, you sell it to somebody for $10,000. Nice money for one sale! On the other hand, that's a year of your life, and you only made $10,000 total. That doesn't even cover the rent on your shipbuilding dock for the year! If you continue this way, you'll lose the dock, and obviously no longer be able to make ships at all. On the plus side, Shipwright Weekly speaks quite highly of your ships, so hey, you got that going for you.

Then one day, an eccentric rich man comes to you, rutabaga in hand, and says "You make excellent ships! But I like rowboats! Now a rowboat is much smaller than a ship, so I cannot pay you the same as you get for a ship! However, being eccentric and mentally off, I think $9,000 is a fair price for a rowboat, because I somehow see that as lots less than $10,000! Will you make me rowboats? I am a rich man with many bags of money, so I sink them routinely, and will want many."

A rowboat takes you a couple of weeks to make. Should you make the $9,000 rowboats every couple of weeks, or continue making the $10,000 ships each year?

Also, cereal:

Blind Spear I don't know why you would specifically choose to hire blind people as your spearfolk, but that seems to be what the Order Of The Snuggly Bunny is stuck with. Kudos to them for their open hiring policy. So here is the basic ranged attack unit for the Bunnies. However, she doesn't work like a normal ranged unit. She's actually very useful for defensive purposes and almost useless on the attack. Also, being blind, she has no line of sight whatsoever, and you will need other units to do the 'spotting' for her. I don't know about the name of this unit, it's still under consideration. Behold: Vigilance - Each time an enemy steps within her firing range, she hits it with a spear. That's for each step, so to advance on a Blind Spear with a melee unit requires getting hit many times. Luckily the damage isn't super high, but it's notable. On the flipside, once you do get adjacent to them, they can't attack you, since you're not moving anymore. And if they move to force you to move again, well, look below. Noisy Stride - Not so much an ability. This is a 'curse' that the Blind Spear inflicts on herself anytime she moves. It disables Vigilance for 1 turn, since she can't hear where the enemies are due to all the commotion. You'll want to position your Blind Spears and leave them there. Roaring Spear - Hurls a spear at a target for triple normal damage, in exchange for doing normal damage to herself (shoulder strain), and of course the loud roaring means that the dreaded Noisy Stride will be applied as well.

Chaplain The Chaplain is of course the religious arm of the Order Of The Snuggly Bunny. And like any fantasy religious guy, he's all about healing! This is probably the most complex Bunny unit to use, but also the most important when used right. It's the Zerg Queen of Loonyland. He can have the following abilites either inherently or through skill upgrades: Smack - A weak attack, smacking somebody with the holy censer. That'll learn 'em. Heal - Zap a nearby ally, healing him for a good amount. Really straightforward. Possibly can be upgraded to also remove one negative effect (Blindness, Poison, etc). Martyr - Drop dead. There's an upside, though! The targeted nearby ally is healed to full health, and can't be harmed for a turn or two (duration possibly upgrades with skills). Holy Light - Zaps an enemy within a couple of tiles, blinding him for several turns (so he provides no line of sight, but can still attack just fine if someone else is doing the looking for him). Airborne enemies that are blinded become grounded. This is key to the Bunnies, because they don't have much anti-air ability.

Order Knight This is your basic infantry unit. A man in a bunny suit, armed with a poleaxe. Cheap to buy, low-medium damage, weak armor, low-medium life, medium speed, medium vision. Just your basic soldier. He can eventually obtain 3 active abilities and one not-so-active, if you choose the appropriate skills when leveling your commander (Captain Capitan):

• Slash: This ability does not require skills to obtain. It's just a basic melee attack. This being a rather standard turn-based game, attacking ends his movement.
  
  
• Fury: This is a buff you gain each time you hit an enemy with Slash. You can stack it up to 5 times, and it never goes away. It either has no effect, or it gives you 1 Armor per charge (maybe a skill would add the Armor bonus, but it seems sad to spend a skill point to gain nothing!). So look below to see why you want it.
  
  
• Fist Of Fury: You can only use this when you have at least 1 Fury. It uses up 1 Fury to quickly strike someone for 1/4 normal damage. The wonderfulness is that it does not end your movement to do so. If you have 5 Fury, you can wander around smacking 5 guys before ending with a Slash.
  
  
• Furious Slashes: You can only use this with at least 1 Fury also. It uses up all your Fury to strike your target that many times for half damage each time, but it is armor-piercing.

The Devil Is Sleepy

Something With Fire Inside

Tummy Ache

Cold

It's a applez tree!

Death Canary

2% chance of 10 cent gain < 98% chance of being banned from the game and losing all yerfbucks

And the dogs love it (they hate it when it's actually coming down, though).

But it was really cold.

That's a full-grown woman's hand. That ice is a solid inch thick! It took great violence to hew it forth from the wheelbarrow.

We're snowed in, of course. You might scoff if you live on the east coast, but I'm not driving our dirt road with no chains in this stuff.

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In related news...

11:23 AM -- Mon February 9, 2009

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"A $2 billion allocation intended to push universal broadband service into rural areas of the United States has been cut from President Obama's economic stimulus package."

COME ON!!! It's blizzarding on my satellite dish!

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Snow Day

11:17 AM -- Mon February 9, 2009

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It's another one of those fine blizzard days, I will probably not have much internet access! I didn't have any this morning, just visiting now, and the blizzard is kicking up a notch, so I think I will probably not be long for this virtual world... sorry if I don't get to your emails before I lose it!

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Dumb Packed

01:09 PM -- Thu February 5, 2009

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Looks like the Dumb Pack is just about there. I don't doubt more issues will appear, but that's why it's nice that it's so easy to update! I've put up the trophies and awards for it on the Dumb Pages. So it's good. I'll just need to release the next patch which fixes the issues people have noticed lately (holding off until tomorrow to see what else pops up), and update the game info page so it doesn't try to warn you against buying it anymore! And of course do the stupid newsletter I have been procrastinating (but besides procrastination, it is appropriate for it to be delayed until the game is out for real, right? I want to announce it!).

Then that's it! I'm moving on. I am moving on to Loonyland Tactics. I have a great idea about the development of this game, but I'm going to have to do some testing first to make sure it's feasible and wise, so I will probably delay the start of development for a week or so first while I work on those other things. Wouldn't it be nice if I did some Costume Party marketing in the meantime?

I've also been thinking about and planning for this year's PAX! It's a tad premature, but Phil Hassey and I have been talking about sharing a booth, so I got to tinkering in my brain with what I would be doing in my booth. I'll definitely have game CDs available, and it occurred to me that not only do I want to sell T-shirts there, but it's the ideal opportunity to go ahead and get a full-size T-shirt run produced! Sure, they'll be sitting around the house taking up space needlessly for now as the orders barely trickle in, but since I'll need to have a bunch handy for the show anyway, why not get them now? Then I can have shirts up on the site all nice and normal and fancy. I'm trying to go for ones with appeal beyond just Hamumu, and the two that have really caught my brain have been the No-Pumpkins shirt (I have no idea why that hadn't occurred to me before it was mentioned on the forum!), and a classier version of the "I Am Dumb" shirt, with a warning sign style to it. Like you're letting people know in advance, so they can be careful. So come on out to PAX this year (it'll be in Seattle at the end of August, I believe), meet us, buy some CDs and T-shirts, and check out what we are up to!

Maybe I'll arrange a secret code phrase so true Hamumians can get a sneak peek at whatever I am working on then, while the lesser mortals just get to play the existing games. The secret code will probably be "Hey, I'm from the forums!"

Oh, and speaking of Phil, he's hosting this month's Mini-LD, which is this weekend! Unfortunately, so is our Groundhog's Day party (featuring Rock Band!), so I don't know how much participating in Mini-LD I will be doing.

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Will the debate ever end!?

02:03 PM -- Fri January 30, 2009

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Dumb Pack Beta Is Here!

01:36 PM -- Thu January 29, 2009

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Costume Party Dumb Pack Pre-release Beta!
Go get it. I've already fixed a bunch of things, so it ain't perfect (it's a beta!). Maybe it's actually an alpha... betas are feature-complete, and this is missing 5 tiles and a lot of sounds. Anyway, it's available and as wondrous as you ever dared dream (minus 5 tiles).

Since release, so far, I've fixed Yerfdog's inhale effects (inhaled guys didn't trigger switches they got pulled over, but they do now), added a display of what he's inhaled, Happy Stick's clinging (he remained airborne if you clung to a colored block that vanished), made the remaining tutorials, and fixed an issue with the E-Crates! Those fixes will appear in the next patch in a day or two, hopefully along with lots more new stuff. I'm currently debating exactly what to do with the remaining 5 tiles. I feel like Squashes should be in there somewhere, but there's already Pumpkins, and I'm not even sure what the Squashes should be able to do.

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B.B.B.B.M.M.

09:52 AM -- Tue January 27, 2009

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Dumb Packin'

01:19 PM -- Mon January 26, 2009

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I don't want to spoil too much of the fun, so I'll skip sharing too many details and tricks, and just say that I completely redid how wires worked today, and they now look sorta better in a way, although there is one thing I bet people will complain about, and I'll leave that for you to discover (and complain about!). Mainly though, they function better. They used to use bullets for the sparks, and it was very easy to completely overload the bullet limit by filling wires with sparks. Now there is no limit on sparks, except that multiple sparks that share a space (if they are heading in the same direction) become one, so, effectively I guess there is a limit of the number of tiles onscreen times four. Anyway, it doesn't slow things down anymore, it's great.

When electricity gets to the end of a wire, it shoots out bullets as 'sparks'. They're only harmful to the player. I should probably add a Blaster device that does the same but harmful to enemies. That way you could benefit. I've also added electrifiable floors (usable as an alternate type of wire, as well), pushable blocks that conduct electricity, and special wires that make sparks multiply. Oh, and the batteries I was talking about. There are a whole lot of potential tricks involving all these devices, so enjoy.

In other news, I've decided the best way to get this tested, best deal for you and for me, is the same deal we had with Loonyland 2! This week, I'm going to get pre-orders set up, so you can buy the Dumb Pack in advance and try it out. I get my testing, you get to play early. Everybody wins. I guess I need to get to work on some sound effects and music pretty soon... still a few tiles to go, too.

The real question is, which music is most appropriate for each of these characters? Yerfdog's never had a song, unless you'd like to hear the "doo-doo-doot-di-dit-doot HAMUMU!" song repeated endlessly. And Bouapha's got tons of songs. I don't know which is fitting. Happy Stick Ninja is new... but there's the secret music from Dr. Lunatic, which would fit since that was where happy stick was born. Then again, he's a ninja. Maybe he should have the Ninja Academy rockin' tune. And no, still don't know quite what background image would be good either. Maybe green hills and sunshine, to go with the Cliffside tiles.

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Sneak Peek: Costume Party Dumb Pack

10:08 AM -- Fri January 23, 2009

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New stuff! Only three new things, two of which are kind of old. Yes, after all the desperate demands, we now have sideways spikes. The third new thing is very interesting, and I'm mainly posting a sneak peek so I can get lots of ideas for them.

They're Wires. They go on the overlay layer, and automatically connect up, like roads in Simcity (I was actually inspired in the first place watching my wife play Zoo Tycoon and lay out paths). If you have one wired up to a pressure plate or switch (you can see both in this pic), then stepping on the plate/switch will send a spark down the wire. You can also wire them to Targets, and they'll spark when you shoot the Target. You can see two sparks on the upper wire in this picture, if you look closely. So what do the sparks do?

• Detonate Blast Bricks (see left)
• Light or unlight Fireplaces (see upper right)
• Open doors (see lower right)
• Notice the upper Kid is standing on a Switch... but that Switch isn't down! How is that possible!? Sparks pop Switches back up! That's why there's a loop in the wire.

So far, that's all sparks can do. But doesn't it seem like there should be more? I want to have a light bulb you can light up, but that's tricky to decide just what tiles it would create (also, since Wires go in the overlay layer, the wire would prevent light from happening in its space!).

So I'm just asking for ideas. Either existing things that should react when sparked in some way, or new things that the sparks could be used with. One idea I really like is a Battery. Each time a spark gets to it, it goes inside, and once the battery is full, it empties and... something!? I am not sure. A simple idea is that when full it fires a spark upward, so you could have something where you need to get 8 sparks to go into a battery in order to get a door open (because the battery then sends one spark to the door). Want to need 64 sparks instead? Stack two batteries on top of each other! Each time the bottom one fills, it will fire one spark into the upper one. 512 Sparks? 3 Batteries.

Another idea I sorta like is if a wire runs into water (both being in the Overlay layer, you can't actually string wire through water), it could shoot out Blast Brick shots when a spark hits the water. Maybe it's better to just have a Blaster that fires a shot each time a spark hits it. Maybe dead-end wires should always shoot out a little blast of Lasers each time a spark gets there, to simulate sparking electricity, and to be dangerous. I think I will do that one at least right now!

P.S. Dumb Pack Status: 15/25 tiles.

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Spam Spam Spam Spam

07:55 AM -- Fri January 23, 2009

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It has happened! I hit the big time! Someone bothered to make a bot to spam my journal comments! So now I implemented a 'captcha'. Try posting a comment and you'll see it. It's mighty tricky! I hope you can figure it out.

In other news, I got Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour after Christmas. Yay! I got them on the Wii, which meant a whole new set of instruments. I was not happy with that, but it means I can now download songs and if I had an internet, I could do the various internet options. It won't connect to that on my satellite, but thankfully it will connect to the music store. I downloaded a Disturbed song (not Still Alive yet - the Wii has a limited selection, they're gradually adding the songs in).

Guitar Hero is a pale imitation of Rock Band. It's really kinda sad. The thing that kills me the most about it is that, apparently in an effort to be "rock n' roll!!!!", the fonts in it are horrible and unreadable. When singing, I have to squint and lean right into the tv to try to understand. When it says what song you're doing, it's like a game in itself trying to guess what they say. It's not just the fonts, though. Like all the different types of notes you can have look almost identical. Where in Rock Band you get these glowing white notes for energy that you can't miss, in Guitar Hero, you just get normal notes that are star shaped. They stand out, but not that much. There are a pile of other note types that are also very slightly different.

Rock Band 2 arrived later, so we had Guitar Heroed for a few days first, and it was such a breath of fresh air! Such nice clean fonts, such fun touring madness and earning of fans! Guitar Hero does have some superiority - a way better intro movie (for whatever that's worth), the music studio feature (but Rock Band has a very cool drum training program that really helps!), and better/more character customization. Oh, and you can do cool stuff on the GH guitar. Guitar Hero drums, by the way, are terrible. Expect to be returning parts or whole drum kits if you buy some (I am currently waiting on a replacement cymbal and microphone... luckily, Rock Band only uses one cymbal, so I am still rocking on my chosen platform!).

Rock Band 2 is far and away the better game, and I suspect the drums on it are way better, probably because they're not velocity sensitive. I had weeks of going back and forth adjusting the sensitivity on these drums and dealing with the broken cymbal. On the other hand, Guitar Hero drums have one plus: a nice, solid, well-built foot pedal. But even that has a serious downside - it's not locked into the drum kit, so when you are kicking madly away, it starts to slowly crawl away from you. It has velcro under it which is supposed to help it stay in place on the carpet, and let me tell you, it does nothing.

I endorse Rock Band 2. Play it. It has Master Exploder in it (so does Guitar Hero, actually). My band is The Founding Muthas, featuring Abe Linkin and Mary Todd (I know Abe Lincoln wasn't one of the founding fathers, thank you). Originally it also had Martha W. and Benny Frank in it, but they were both kind of weird looking (Martha W. extremely), so last night they got replaced with B. Rock and Shelly O. I always get a kick out of Abe, he looks awesome. What Abe Lincoln would be if he was in Jimmy Eat World.

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Sneak Peek: Costume Party Dumb Pack

05:38 PM -- Tue January 20, 2009

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Things coming together quickly now! Here's a little Dr. Lunatic themed scene for you. Pumpkins are very simple enemies, they just constantly head forward (turning if they hit a wall), walking right off ledges. They take only one hit, and are worth no points! The one that appears to be flying is actually just falling off of the Candle, which one can of course stand on like any ordinary candle.

Now why would an enemy be worth no points? Because of the Pumpkin Patch (half-hidden behind a Pumpkin)! These generate a Pumpkin every 2 seconds (alternating left and right). They'll stop generating when there are 10 Pumpkins of theirs around. As soon as you smash some, though, they start right up again to get it back up to 10. It takes 10 hits to destroy a Pumpkin Patch, and you get 200 points for it, so it's good stuff.

Of course, where there are Pumpkins, you need a Pumpkin Gate. It works just like a Bat Gate, but thankfully Pumpkins are much easier to beat without getting hit. It always bothered me how the only Gate available was for creatures that are such an incredible nuisance. It's also fun that you can be annoyed by Pumpkin Patches while trying to get one of these open.

And where there's Bouapha, you absolutely need Candles! They are worth 10 points each, unless you get them all - the last one is worth 500 points. However, like Keys and Hearts, they can be destroyed by enemies and spikes. If even one is destroyed, you can't get the bonus. So that could be used for some fun levels (and nicely, you can still pass the level without them, they are only worth points). As an added bonus, just for fun, Candles are destroyed if they hit water (can't burn in water!).

I'm at kind of a loss for what else to include that is truly based on our other games... Stockboy surely has several good choices (if tricky to implement...), but other than that, the games don't lend themselves that well to being put in this game. I thought a Moon Invader would be kind of cool, or a Killer Kiwi. Hooray for obscurity! I do have a few other things I'd like to get in, though. Not all particularly Dumb Pack style, but this is Costume Party Dumb Pack - if adding something is going to make Costume Party better and add more potential puzzles, that matters a whole lot more than shoehorning in things from other games.

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Sneak Peek: Costume Party Dumb Pack

06:44 PM -- Thu January 15, 2009

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The two costumes I've got all nice and finished, minus some polishing that they are sure to need! First let's recall Yerfdog. In the upper right is a lovely shot of his mighty inhale. It makes the same puffs as the North Wind does. You can't tell, but the Laser Tree is further left than it was when he started. Actually, notice the bullet? That came from the tree. His breath also moves bullets (but he can't inhale them, they just hurt him if they get to him). His breath works through walls, which could have puzzle purposes. Not that he can pull guys right through walls, but he can make guys on the other side of a wall move.

In the lower left is an inset shot of Yerfdog with his mouth full. He looks kind of fuzzy. That's a result of something I'm considering - it's a smooth rotation he goes through while bouncing around. It looks kind of nice except that, as you can see, it makes his pixels frizz out a little.

So Yerfdog can inhale enemies and spit them out! They're not weapons when he spits them out. His job is purely to get things from one place to another. That makes it much more of a puzzle tool than if he had the ability to kill things with it. If he had that, he'd just suck up a crate, spit it at someone, inhale again, spit again, until the victim was dead, then move on to the next. Without that offensive ability, he has to plan. What does he want moved, and where should he put it so that it won't hurt him? He can only jump 1 tile while carrying stuff, so it limits him a lot. His normal jump is huge and very floaty. But it can be controlled - a light tap will make a small hop instead.

The other hero you see is none other than the Happy Stick Ninja! As you can see, he has 3 main abilities. At the bottom, you see him in stealth mode, lurking like the Vampire does. No real difference from the Vampire except that he hides much faster, and he has no attack, so he has to hide! That always bothered me with the Vampire. His attack was so effective that only Scream Queens really ever need to be hidden from, and you can even kill them in the right circumstances. Oh, also he has to push down to hide (if not in the shadows, it just makes him duck, which doesn't dodge anything, it's just for looks).

Further up, he's standing. He can stand. Further up still, he's doing a wall-cling. From there he can hop across and back and forth to move up that pipe he's in. Pretty standard ninja ability, implemented in a very user-friendly way. I find that wall-jumps tend to be one of the harder to execute abilities in most games. They're always quirky in some way and you can slip with little mistakes very easily. So in this game, I made it as simple as I could: the fire button is "Grab". If you are holding it when you hit a wall, you hang on to the wall. While on the wall, you can tap up or away to leap off. If you release Grab, or push down, he'll drop down instead. All very simple, and won't lead to mistakes and slips.

And at the very top is something few ninjas can do (but few are so lightweight and 2-dimensional!): a ceiling grab! Like a wall grab, you hold Grab when you hit the ceiling. One tweak though: you also have to be holding up. That's because I ran into issues where you'd inadvertently grab the ceiling a lot, and it's a problem, because once you are up there, the only thing you can do is drop down.

Happy Stick Ninja has no attacks. His purpose is very simple and raw: he provides the joy of fast-paced running and jumping. He's very easy to control, moves very quickly, jumps fairly high (almost but not quite 3 blocks), and can stick to things all over the place. He should prove fun to play, and be used to make really solid platforming challenges. Oh, and of course he can pass through grates. I am considering letting him climb on grates like they were ladders, but that may be uncalled for.

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Sneak Peek: Costume Party Dumb Pack

10:54 AM -- Tue January 13, 2009

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What's to see... the new rounder-headed Bouapha (yeesh, the complaints!), the Yerfdog costume, Shroom, Cliffside, Color Tickers, and the new 'fake bricks'. The fake bricks aren't just a Dumb Pack feature. I got really tired of people cheating by editing their graphics files, and then making levels that are impossible for non-cheaters to win, or at least incredibly annoying. So now, even though it doesn't look nearly as good, we all get partially transparent fake bricks. If you look closely, you can always spot what's behind fake bricks now. I think it's really dumb, and it ruins a lot of nice things (such as having invisible 'machinery' in a level that controls your platforms appearing and disappearing), but don't blame me. Blame the people who cheat and the people who think "challenge" is synonymous with "trial and error". I've also made No Costume Zones deadly if they are on grates now.

Ranting aside, you know about Bouapha already. The Shroom I have explained before. Cliffside is just a new terrain, equivalent to bricks, except unsmashable (so Witches can zap it). It automatically applies grass on top as needed.

Then of course Yerfdog! He's not fully implemented yet, but my plan for him is that he's light and floaty, like the ghost, but can't actually bounce in the air. He just has a regular (but very high) jump. The unique feature of his jump is that, if it works right, he'll be able to control his jump height by holding the up arrow longer. But his important ability is, as people suggested in the forums, the ability to inhale enemies (and crates) and then spit them out later. That should prove a lot of fun. Sneak up behind a Scream Queen and inhale her, then you are safe to move through before depositing her somewhere else. He will probably be impaired in some way while carrying a monster - unable to jump at all, perhaps? Maybe just a shorter jump.

The last new thing was also suggested on the forum (sorry, I haven't been keeping track of who suggested what! Take credit in the comments!), the Color Ticker. Three colors available, as you can see. When anyone steps in front of one of these, all Tickers of that color begin ticking, and it acts as a switch. After 8 seconds, it switches things back and stops ticking. You can restart the time by touching it again (or another of the same color). So this should be really handy for timed challenges. Can you hop across the spike pit before you lose your platforms? You can do the same thing with monsters moving on switches, but it's more elegant to have the player able to control when the time starts. Of course, you could also have a monster controlling that, couldn't you? Also, it looks cool because a little hand sweeps around the clock as it counts down.

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Flood

05:24 PM -- Sun January 11, 2009

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This weekend was a Mini-LD48 contest with an interesting theme. Each contestant was to make a game that had a single level, and was completely monochrome (you pick any one color and then can only use shades of that color). You got to pick from a pile of secondary themes (pretty much every theme that had ever been chosen for an LD in the past) for your entry. That didn't constrain me enough, so SpaceManiac told me to use "Flood" as my theme. Thusly limited, I could create!

Well, sort of. I didn't take the whole thing very seriously and didn't actually code anything ever even draw a pixel of art. But I did come up with a semi-working game! It's a card game, and you can give it a shot yourself. We played it a couple times to try to work it out, and I think it's actually just a tweak or two from being good. It's not really fun for humans to play, but you can. It would be better solitaire, since the Flood's strategy is easy to automate (but it's still too much thinking and doing for an 'opponent' in a solitaire game). It really would work best played against a computer (where I could also change the specific cards available to make it more challenging), but go ahead and give it a try to see what you think, and where you think it could be improved most easily:

One player is Player, the other is Flood. Each player has a full deck of cards, but Flood has all cards lower than 5 removed from the deck. Both shuffle separately. To start, Flood lays out a row of 8 cards across. Any that are lower than 10 (Aces are high) need to be discarded and redrawn until they are 10 or higher. Reshuffle the remaining cards, including any discarded. This row of high cards is The River.

The Player's set-up is a lot simpler: just draw 3 cards from your own deck.

Each card in The River is representing the middle of a column of cards 7 tall, so there are 3 empty spots above and below each card. Imagine, if you will, that there is a house in that 3rd empty spot. The Flood's goal is to destroy the house by rising its water to that point. The Player's goal is to save as many houses as possible by blocking them off with sandbags.

The Player goes first, choosing any card from her hand to lay down in any of the empty spaces. This is a Sandbag. A Sandbag blocks the Flood from playing any card there that is lower in value than the Sandbag. Player should play cards sideways just to differentiate her card from the Flood's (if the decks look the same). Then draw a replacement card.

The Flood then draws a card and plays it off of the River, extending any column up or down by one card. It can only play a card if it is equal to or lower than the value of the card it's being played off of. It can play in empty spaces, or on top of a Sandbag if its card is equal or higher than the Sandbag. The flood's robo-strategy is simple: play the card drawn off of the lowest card that it can be played off of, preferring to extend longer columns over shorter ones. If there's no valid place to play a card, it is discarded.

The game is over when the Flood is out of cards or every column is either completely flooded (all 3 spaces in that direction have Flood cards) or unbeatably Sandbagged. The player then receives 62 points for each house that is saved (the contest said your game should award 0-1000 points, this makes a max of 992). There's no winning or losing, just scoring higher or lower than your previous attempts.

There is only one special trick to make things interesting (it probably needs more, and there was another, but it made it too easy for the Player): if the Player can get 3 Sandbags in a row horizontally that are the same value (and none of them are flooded over yet), those 3 are unfloodable, regardless of value.

All in all, this is a game you tend to win with most of the houses unflooded. You pretty much inevitably lose one or two, but it's very easy to keep more than that from going away. It's extremely luck based. I don't think it makes a very good card game, but probably kind of a fun quick diversion when on the computer. And of course on the computer, I would get to tweak what cards each side had available until it was reasonably challenging.

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Happy New Year!

09:55 AM -- Tue January 6, 2009

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I have been away for a while! Not actually away, most of the time, but away from working. I had a lovely winter break, thanks for asking. Except when my back exploded. I'm still recovering - in fact, I'm wearing an ice pack right now. But it can be dealt with while I enjoy the comforts of sitting around playing WoW and watching movies and getting presents. I also took a short trip to Texas for a family Christmas.

So, when the New Year happens, people make resolutions and such. I don't. But I do try to come out of the cocoon of slothful winterdom and emerge as a productive butterfly of functionality. A lot of times I'll set goals, but not this year. This year is more exploratory. I'm working on setting up a schedule to pursue many different creative venues. I even got a book on how to compose music! Who wouldn't want Loonyland 3 to be a musical?? I also got painting supplies for Christmas (I foolishly put on my list "Painting supplies (don't know what kind or anything, it's your job to make me learn to paint!)"), so I need to do that. I was very inspired by seeing Gabe from Penny Arcade try out painting. Of course, he started out being an amazing artist. But it might be a fun thing to try.

Another venue that I'm always trying to dip back into is board games. Every Christmas it comes up again because I play some board games again (sometimes my own, though not this year) with people, and my gears start cranking on the possibilities of rulesets and how they intertwine. The limiting factor with these is of course manufacturing. Unlike a video game, you can't just put it out there yourself. You need someone with skills to produce a physical manifestation, and they want to make a lot at once, for a lot of money. A lot of games sitting around the house gathering dust...

So all that stuff should be fun and really expand the old cranium (not physically, one hopes). I also have a ton of post-holiday house cleanup to do, including making the office much better. I want to set it up as a really good, comfortable studio for all these pursuits, instead of a pile of junk with a computer sitting on top. One of the reasons I wanted a video camera was so I could shoot Making-Of videos! I better have a non-horrible office if I do that. I also need a tripod.

In the same-old, same-old vein, I'll be working on The Dumb Pack and Loonyland Tactics. Did I mention at some point that there are now Shrooms in Dumb Pack? They work as suggested on the forum - they are walking trampolines, and if you jump on them, they spew poison to either side, which hurts enemies (and you) other than Shrooms. You can also kill the Shrooms, but then how will you bounce? Making those was the closest I came to doing work during my break.

Now I need to make a newsletter! Something I have been dreading and postponing since the 1st. I forgot to do the interview, haven't done anything productive in the past month, and there's only one Winter Wackiness world. So don't expect it to be very interesting.

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Christmas Tradition

09:20 AM -- Thu December 25, 2008

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It's tradition for me to wake up on Christmas morning with my spine shattered into a million pieces. We are keeping tradition! I can't spend much time on the computer, and history shows that this is going to get a lot worse to the point where I am stuck in bed for the rest of the day. Whee. Don't expect Winter Wackiness too soon!

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Tactical Thoughts

09:05 AM -- Fri December 19, 2008

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Still no code whatsoever (or graphics or sound) in Tactics. I can feel it bubbling up, though... someday quite soon, I am going to hammer out a prototype in a couple of hours and have something! Of some sort.

There's a fundamental key part of the game I haven't quite nailed down. It's the overall format of the battle. For example, in Land Of Legends, that's "start from your base and go capture other towns (takes multiple turns standing on them to get them), from which you can build more guys of that town's race, until you capture your enemy's base by the same method." Long and convoluted, but there you go. I haven't played Advance Wars in a while, and I need to do that today. My copy has a dead battery, so I get to start from Tutorial 1 when I try it. I really need to get a more recent incarnation of that game... it's research! But I think Advance Wars isn't far removed: "start from your base and go capture factories (by having infantry stand on them for a few turns) from which you build guys of your own type, until you capture your enemy's base by the same method."

One thing for sure in my game is that you won't be able to build enemy units by capturing their base. There may well be neutral units or special units you can obtain on different maps, but on the whole, you'll be commanding your own guys. That's important to me. Each army has a unique 'hook' that makes it synergize in a certain way, and I don't want you flailing around with an odd assortment (of guys you don't have skills enhancing) just because the base that makes them is closer to your enemy.

I kind of would like different armies to have different methods of expanding, but I think that would require very specifically tuned maps to work. For example, if Eyeball Trees had to infect Woods spaces to build new units, they'd be incredible in a heavily wooded map, and have just one unit in a desert map. If someone who normally played the Desert Dudes (not actual name, no name yet) made a map, they might not even realize trees were needed for the Eyeball Trees, or maybe they would realize and would leave them out out of spite! So I think everybody has to be based around the same resource. And I think we can safely assume that resource is money. I'm not interested in the RTS style of having several resources and having to collect them all in various proportions. I think.

One thing I think is important is having multiple points of interest to take all around the map. Otherwise it's just a question of the shortest path between your base and the enemy's. Are those points of interest more potential bases, gold mines, or 'Power Crystals' or what? I think bases might be the way to go. I hate making everything just like other games, but it definitely amps up the complexity of the underlying strategy if capturing something means a new location to launch your assault from.

I am pretty sure I don't want capturing to work as it does in those games, however. Standing on the base for several turns. That bothers me somehow. Attacking the base for X amount of damage might be an idea. Then that would make the final capture entail destroying the enemy base, which is kind of nice to me. But the nice thing about a capturing mechanism is that it's something different from the rest of the gameplay. Here's an interesting off-hand thought I just had: what if a unit could visit your home base (only? Or any base you own?) and pick up a Flag. Then he could carry that flag to a neutral or enemy base and drop it to claim the base. While carrying the flag, he would move half speed and be unable to use any abilities (that includes attacking). Perhaps dropping the flag on the spot if killed. That would be interesting, because you could see who was a flag carrier and focus on stopping them. I like that concept. It could be tougher to take their home base from them, either requiring multiple flag drops, or blasting away some gates before you can drop a flag.

So many other whirling thoughts... I want information to be important. Fog of war. Units with big sight range that are horribly weak would be very important to see incoming foes. Some guys can hide, invisible until they attack or are bumped into. Some guys with automatic attacks if someone walks next to them (combined with stealth=ambush!). So you can be attacked on your own turn, in that way. Kind of non-traditional things, that couldn't be done in a non-computer game for technical reasons.

People have discussed the leveling-up idea. Here's my thinking on it right now: skill trees, sort of like WoW's talent trees. Not nearly enough points to buy everything, of course. Hard decisions to make all the way along, so in the end, you have built a certain type of character. And more importantly, depending on where you invested points, you've unlocked certain new units and powers, so that you have a different army in the end than someone else who plays the same character you do. Hard to balance, for sure! But fun. Of course you gain levels playing single player or multiplayer, so you can build up your abilities (both your actual skill and your character's skills) against the computer before you face deadly humans. I saw somebody express concern that if you leveled up your archers, that's all you'd use. But this is a strategy game. If you only used archers, no matter how good they are, your enemy would come in with Gargoyles that take half damage from arrows and wipe them out in melee. It always takes a mix of units, and your skill choices will determine what mix is available to you, and how you weight your mix. If a single unit is dominating with certain skills, then that's time to do some adjusting. I fully intend for this to be a live and changing affair, which I will constantly tweak until it's ruthlessly fair.

Cooperative multiplayer sounds fun to me. Like a raid in WoW, you and a few friends take on the Black Beast Of Grakkazorg, and have to all work together to slay it (unlike a raid, each of you has an entire army at your disposal). Also of course competitive multiplayer, hopefully with up to 4 players in a battle. And single player, against the computer. Only, I'm not good at writing AI, and I don't even like fighting against smart AI anyway. So the computer wouldn't use the same armies as you. It would have mindless hordes that rush at your bases, and you have to hack them back. I think those kinds of challenges are quite fun. Not every TBS needs to be the classic head-to-head chess match.

One thing I have considered but most likely won't do is have giant units. Huge things that take up 2x2 tiles instead of the normal single tile. I think that would really add to the drama of a battle (and be ideal for 'raid bosses' like above). Each army could have one such thing at their disposal, and home bases could be 2x2 themselves. The problem is the technical issues. How do you deal with something that occupies 4 spaces at once? It's tricky and annoying and a lot of special cases. If it turns out to not muck up the code too much, I might go for it, but it's probably more added complexity than I want if I want to be done in a reasonable timeframe.

I mentioned a 'hook' for each army. Let me give you a fun example I was throwing together the other day. This is loosely based on reviews I read years back of Dynasty Tactics games. The Onion Ring has Bruisers and Thugs (among other things). Thugs are thieves, of course. Their abilities include a pickpocketing type attack, the ability to hide (turning invisible until someone moves adjacent to them or they move or act), and Sneak Attack, which is a passive ability that instantly attacks any enemy who moves adjacent to them. They can only Sneak Attack once per turn, so if someone happens to take a path that moves next to them twice, they won't hit them twice. That obviously is meant to combine with Hide, but that's not its only purpose. Bruisers are the huge guys with clubs. They have a Smash attack, which does a little damage and inflicts Weakened Armor on the enemy for 1 turn. Weakened Armor reduces or removes the enemy's armor (depending on balance), making them take more damage from all hits, and it also makes all attacks that hit them knock them back one space. It all sounds fun and exciting, but not truly so until you know that Weakened Armor is applied before the Smash does its damage. So a Smash will always knock back one space. If a Thug is waiting next to that space, he will hit the victim... and knock them back again. If he was to the side, instead of facing the Bruiser, the enemy is knocked into a third space, where another Thug could be lying in wait. It'd be theoretically possible to chain someone right across the map (unless they die first)! Now that's just fun. It's tricky to get the situation set up just right for more than a couple of hits total, but certainly not impossible. I think I need to give Onions another unit that works with this combo stuff somehow, but not quite sure what. Would be nice to have someone else who can start combos, so Bruisers won't be annihilated on sight.

So that's how one army can have a unique hook that makes them fun to play. Nobody else has that combo trick. Eyeball Trees have an interesting thing where they can only make Seedlings that are very weak, but can plant themselves into mighty immobile Trees of various types. A very unique play style in their own right. They will probably have one or two really high-end slow-moving trees too. Some other army might have a high stealth component in some way. Maybe one will have a lot to do with healing - sure you can hurt them, but you better finish them off, because they'll all heal each other on their turn (and/or regenerate)! Another could be about wearing you down with poison over time. Maybe one has several units that get stronger as they take damage. Or vice versa, very scary guys that lose their scariness the more they are beaten on. Just scattered thoughts. Only the Onion Ring and Eyeball Trees are well-defined at this point. Well, Bonkula's army of the undead has several solid units designed, but they don't really have a specific gameplay theme to them. Which I think is okay. It's just fine to have 'standard' armies which are just fun because of the unique abilities of their units individually (Vampires can turn into Bats, making them much weaker, but very fast moving, flying, and able to see great distances. So you can swoop in a bunch over the mountains, then change back for an assault!).

That's a big old brain-dump for you. I'm not working hard at this time, and not feeling guilty about it. It's the holidays, peoples. But I think I am going to make the Shroom idea from the Costume Party thread today. I drew it yesterday.

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Snowed In!

06:48 PM -- Wed December 17, 2008

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Just gonna post fast while I can! We are pretty seriously snowed in today, and it's looking like tomorrow too. Kind of exciting in a boring sit-around-and-watch-Buffy way. The bad side is that our satellite dish functions poorly in blizzard conditions and when covered with snow and ice. So I have been offline most of the day. Beating it with a broom seems to solve the problem when it's not getting immediately re-snowed. So just a notice that I may not be available for large portions of today or tomorrow.

And also, I will be bored!

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Fun Dots

04:21 PM -- Mon December 15, 2008

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People have been yammering on lately about this polygon Mona Lisa, which indeed looks rather cool. So I gave a shot to a variation of it on my own today just for fun. Mine is a whole different (and much simpler) concept. It generates pointilist art by randomly placing dots on a canvas, and then comparing it to a piece of art you've provided it. If the dot made the canvas closer to the artwork, it keeps it, otherwise it tosses it out. The end result is like this:


Well, I say end result, but you can let it run much longer than that. It gets fairly accurate given a long enough time, but the dots are pretty big, so it can only do so much. I made a different version first, which was cooler in a way, but took about 1/4 second per brush stroke, so I never even let it run long enough to find out if it was actually trying to generate the right picture or not. It looked like this:



Pretty nifty. If you want to try the faster pointilist one yourself, you can download it. It's tiny. Instructions are in the readme, and you will need paint program knowledge to get any particular use out of it (and unzipping skills to run it in the first place).

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Christmas Shopping

11:23 AM -- Sun December 14, 2008

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This weekend was the not-very-official Ludum Dare Christmas Album creation time. Of course, we had 48 hours to create a song for the Christmas Album. As of this writing, there are two songs submitted. Phil Hassey's Joy To The World Sort Of, and my own Christmas Shopping. Unfortunately, my official singer had a sore throat and couldn't perform, which really ruins Christmas Shopping. It's a classic Christmas carol with moving lyrics and a strong message of the season. Since my singer wasn't available, I ask that you provide your own singing! It's easy enough to sing. Skip the first bit of music, which is just for atmosphere, then begin singing with the chorus at the faster little tidbit right after it (sorry for my advanced musical terminology, I hope you are following me). Repeat the chorus each time that fast bit comes up! The lyrics:

Remember to go singing this around your neighborhood every year! And clap at the clapping parts!

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Sneak Peek: Costume Party Dumb Pack

12:27 PM -- Thu December 11, 2008

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Feeling decidedly unproductive over the past week or two, I decided to get decidedly decisive! I threw down the gauntlet onto the keyboard and mashed out some new code and graphics for something I knew I could progress on, since I am still bumbling about mentally on the Tactics game:



Who is that standing mightily amidst the wreckage of bricks most foul (you could almost call it putrid debris...)? I thought he would end up a lame character with no unique hook, but while he doesn't bring any new major game mechanics, he certainly does fill a niche of his own. He has standard running and jumping skills, and his one ability is to toss hammers in any direction. The hammers fly straight, and ricochet off of walls. As you can see by the wreckage, they also smash bricks. So he is the only character who can smash bricks at long distance, and that can hit things (including bricks) that are in unreachable places, thanks to the ricochet. Yep, he's the bank shot character. You need one of those!

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Tactics!

10:10 AM -- Tue December 9, 2008

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I found my document!! Long ago I made my idea for an Advance Wars/Land Of Legends style game, and dug through my entire ideas folder, reading every single file just in case "Space Trader" was somehow the one, searching and searching... but now finally I have found it! It wasn't in the ideas folder, it was in an actual development folder called "wargame" where I was apparently developing it, though I don't think I got terribly far.

So hooray for that! It's not at all the game I thought it was, which makes for an interesting thought. It's more unique and original, but I question how well it would work in a 'play-by-email' type format, because the turns are very very short. Let me tell you about it.

Rather than each player moving all their units each turn, every unit begins the game with 0 Energy. Then they all gain 1 Energy, over and over, until someone has full Energy (different unit types have different max energy). Several units will hit that at the same time, so it's just random which of them goes first. Obviously, a unit with lower maximum Energy is a 'faster' unit because it can act sooner. So, if it's your unit that gets to move, it's your turn. You give it one action: move a space, or use an ability (every unit has an Attack, Defense, and Support ability). Either of those things will cost some amount of Energy. That one teeny action is your whole turn, then the next guy to reach full energy moves (if it's one of yours, you are still playing for the moment!), and so it goes on and on. Obviously, different actions have different Energy costs, so flinging a fireball means your next action will come later than just stepping onto some grass.

It's a pretty cool system, I think, but to play that multiplayer, you'd really have to do it the old-fashioned way: two people at the same time quickly alternating moves, your usual client-server online game.

There's also this whole Hero character concept in there, who can buy any of the abilities of any of his troops, but I would drop that. I really don't like hero characters in strategy games. I think of Warcraft 3, and how (for me anyway) it just came down to surrounding your heroes with a few other units and storming everything, instead of building a well-balanced army. Once you have heroes, the game just becomes about them (Warlords Battlecry series comes to mind too, exact same issue. Fun though!). Instead, whatever format the game plays out in, I want you to have a character you play who is a strategist. He isn't on the battlefield, he just commands the units, and of course you level him up for various bonuses like "All your Archers do +1 damage" as opposed to personal upgrades. And like in Advance Wars, your strategist would have some supermove(s?) he could trigger under certain conditions to help win.

I have to admit, I am not far along in this process! Still just bouncing so many ideas around. Maybe I should make some new costumes while I consider the possibilities.

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Two Roads

08:33 PM -- Mon December 8, 2008

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Another fine Ludum Dare adventure has come and gone, and I present to you one of Hamumu's more unique creations, Two Roads: An Interactive Poem. It won't take you long, and you won't have a hard time winning it after a couple of tries, but it will enlighten you and make you popular.

In other news, there are no other news! I am recuperating from having Ludumed all that I Dared to all weekend. It's freezing here though. We may have to light our furnace soon.

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Towlr!

09:49 AM -- Thu December 4, 2008

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You already know about Babby Of Towlr, but now there's a whole website dedicated to the phenomenon and majesty of TOWLR! Visit it and be befuddled! All 4 of the Towlr have been ported to Flash for your immediate "enjoyment". Maybe it's just me, but I really get a kick out of these things. I would totally buy The Towlr Prestige Collection if it existed (that's 124 Towlr in one pack, and it keeps a running score for them all! Also, you have to find them all within one huge Metatowlr).

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Lucky LD13!

11:59 AM -- Mon December 1, 2008

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Hey, this weekend Ludum Dare celebrates my birthday the way they do every year, with a 48-hour contest! Join in or just enjoy the resulting games. The first round of theme voting is on now. Don't miss it!

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The Next Phase

11:18 AM -- Sun November 30, 2008

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Well, the Winter Pack is done! I have everything set up so you can purchase it and play it, I just haven't put it up on the website yet. And as I sit here writing this, I find myself wondering why not... No reason it can't be up there for people to early-bird buy, right? I'll put it up once I finish writing this. Then I will of course announce it tomorrow in the newsletter.

If you're wondering where I have been for quite some time, the answer is vacation! I've been at home, but with the wife off work for a week for Thanksgiving, we just hung out and didn't do much. We watched a whole lot of Buffy. In fact, we got through the first three seasons, and now we are in season 4 (interspersed with Angel season 1). We had to watch that stuff since Netflix couldn't keep up with our sitting in front of the TV all day. I moved my laptop into the living room for this entire week. WoW+TV. That's relaxation!

So that was vacation and the end of the development of Winter Pack, all in one. Next up, two more Costume Party expansions of indeterminate content. Feel free to post ideas on the forum for what kind of new and interesting tiles and monsters you might like to see! I've got the costumes covered, I think. And what else is next? Well, I plan to develop those expansions on the side for fun, while I work on a real project!

Disregarding my earlier ideas, I have now struck on the perfect small-scale super-cool project that will upset everyone whose name is a cut of meat. A turn-based strategy game! Like I mentioned Happy Pony Wars before, but I am thinking perhaps that it will be Loonyland Tactics instead, with you going around trying to conquer the various lands of Loonyland (and using an army that came from one of them). What will be cool about this idea is that it has the same business as Costume Party - you can make battlefields on which to fight, or single-player scenarios people can try - but it also has another online element: multiplayer battles! A whole new world to consider there, but it'll be done in 'play-by-email' type format. Not that email is actually involved, but you log in, make your moves, and whenever your opponent logs in and makes her move, you'll be able to move again. So not a direct head-to-head at the moment, but rather a leisurely game, like playing chess with some old guy in Russia by mail. Of course, if you are both online at the same time, you can just wait a few minutes and get your foe's move right then.

Still very much in basic design for that, but definitely planning to rip off Land Of Legends, and make sure there's some leveling up involved, and items to collect. I have some cool ideas for the Eyeball Tree army... and there should be a Happy Pony army too. Definitely going to take some designing before I do any real work. I spent hours looking around for my copy of Land Of Legends, and the design I wrote long ago for a rip-off of it, all to no avail. And I know there were some vital key ideas in there! Very annoying.

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What's Next?

05:26 PM -- Tue November 18, 2008

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Excellent question! I spent a lot of today pondering my options on that. I've had one particular idea marinating in the juices of my brain for quite a while, and only today did I realize that it's really much too big and complex to be done quickly (that's usually something I have trouble detecting...). Today I was bumbling around imagining what a cut-down version would be like, but I just am not sure. It's all very confusing.

Idea #1: Questies! (exclamation mark required) This is the one that is too big. It's an RPG that is loosely based on Costume Party, stylistically. The rough idea is that of course you make your own quests/dungeons/adventures (not 3 separate things, just covering all my bases), and players go adventure in them. It plays like WoW in the sense that you click on different skills to use them, but like Costume Party in the sense that you hop from place to place on platforms in a side view (easy platforming, unlike Costume Party, no tricks or traps). The leveling is a cool system I came up with looong ago (I just checked - the files that first discussed it are from 1999!) and have always wanted to use. And another key component, from that idea, is that you create many characters and build a town with them and they work together. Literally in fact - you have a team of 3 guys adventuring at a time. One you control, and the other two function automatically, doing their backup thing depending on what class they are.

Idea #2 - MMOTD. It's a tower defense game. Build your towers, and await the invasion. What is interesting about it, besides the fact that the attacks don't follow a path and you need to defend all sides (and can buy scout towers to get advance warning of where attacks will come from), and can have soldiers that run out and attack as well as towers, is that attacks come at midnight each (actual) night. You then get to watch a playback of the events whenever you log in. If you miss a day of play, you'll have been attacked twice since your last visit, and you could eventually lose. There could also be a pause option - no attacks, but no income or experience either. It's one of those games where you build up your city, getting some money each (real life) day to work with, but what you are building is your TD defenses. Then of course for the fun of it, you can capture monsters and unleash them on other peoples' towns (probably need a PVP on/off option) when they get attacked that night. When you lose, you can start over in a new town, but your character (a military strategist who advised the late king of your previous town) has learned more powerful buildings and such from the experience he gained in the first town. When you are strong enough, you can elect to start your new town in a more dangerous area. Every area gets tougher each night, so you will die eventually, but your character will continue to grow (oh, and also he steals some of the king's money when he leaves, so you start each new town with some money left from your last town). I've had this idea rattling around my noggin for a couple of years as well, but not nearly as long as the other.

So those are two rather big ideas I've been mulling. I should probably try something truly small and simple instead, not overreach. Space Invaders!

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The Big Fancy

08:23 AM -- Fri November 14, 2008

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Hey, I got the forum updated yesterday, and it's chock-full of new and exciting features! They're somewhat hidden really, but you'll stumble across them as you go. It's turned into kind of a mini-Facebook, where you can leave messages to people on their profile pages, and make friends and see giant blown-up versions of avatars which I quite like. For example, here's my page. Then you can 'social groups', which don't really mean much, but you can place messages in them too! Here's The Hamumians, a group nobody should not be in. Maybe I need to figure out how to work game-related info into one of those tabs on your profile page, so we don't have separate Dumb Pages... sounds hard.

In other news, don't miss your chance (if you own the Creator's Pass) to win a free and early copy of The Winter Pack! The contest is here. It's pretty confusing, but the gist is that to win, you must invent a contest for other people to win. If you make the contest idea I like best, you win! Then I'll run your contest, and two other people will win that, for a total of 3 winners. Perfectly logical, I assure you.

Chimneys, Fireplaces, Gas Mains, Baby Penguins, and Igloos are all now in the Winter Pack. You'll have to find out what those are all for when it comes out! I've also got a new background in, but I haven't yet found a place to fit a "change background" button. I am implementing a really simple easter egg related to that, though, you'll just have to find it. There are 4 slots left in the Winter tab in the editor, so I'm going to try implementing "North Wind" today, and if it's cool (as north wind tends to be), I'll fill those 4 slots with 4 directions of wind. Simply, spaces that blow anything on them in the given direction. That'll be in the Light layer, I imagine. Being a bit tired of invisible things, I'll try adding some little particles that get blown around to make them visible.

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Sneak Peek: Winter Pack

03:02 PM -- Tue November 11, 2008

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More new Winter stuff! Candy Canes, of course. They're equivalent to Candy Corn, but the difference is that they aren't affected by gravity or block enemies (they work like Jawbreakers). They're also worth 75pts instead of 50, because I felt like it.

Snowballs! They roll forward, crushing all in their path relentlessly. But there's a twist! You can hop on top of them for a ride if you are careful. Of course, since they're rolling, they are constantly throwing you forward as you ride, so you really have to keep hopping the whole time if you want to avoid ending up crushed. It's also fun when other objects are on top of them. I had candy corn and crates getting flung all over the place.

Pine Trees! Like the Laser Tree, but with no decorations or laser. They're just an ordinary obstacle, unless you smash them with anything that would be capable of smashing a crumbly brick or blast brick (falling on them doesn't count). That blows all their needles off, and they become Dead Pines. Those are equivalent to grates. So you can have a setup where you need Frank to smash the needles off, then one of the shooting guys to shoot through it and trigger something on the other side.

And of course, the Moose Hunter! It fires constantly like a Deadly Tree, but it aims at you, with great accuracy. Of course, the bullets are quite slow, so it's not too bad. And you can kill it, unlike a Deadly Tree.

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How I spent my weekend

04:40 PM -- Mon November 10, 2008

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This weekend was Mini-LD#5, hosted by none other than moi truly! The theme was "Cover", in the sense of "make a cover of any previous LD entry that wasn't made by you". A cover, of course, is a remake, but in this case, sequel or thing-inspired-by was perfectly fine too. But the main idea was to take the original idea and implement it using your own unique style. So I did that! The game I covered was Towlr, by PoV. Because of the nature of Towlr, I couldn't actually duplicate the gameplay in any way. The whole magic of Towlr is that you don't know what to do! So I had to invent my own puzzle, and I did. Good luck solving BABBY OF TOWLR! It will hurt you in ways you didn't know you could be hurt. And if you are epileptic, you better just skip it. It is hard on the visual cortex.

I've also implemented Coelecanths in Costume Party. When you see them, you'll probably think they're piranhas (which is also what the game calls them internally), but to make them wintry, they're coelecanths. That's not really too wintry either, but I recall reading that the first time somebody caught one, they put it on ice and then it leaped up and bit them later even though it had been on ice for minutes or hours. So it would be quite happy in a winter wonderland. And vicious. They're basically underwater Screamers. I'm having a hard time coming up with good and unique winter enemies. For example, a Polar Bear is perfectly appropriate, but what would it to differentiate its behavior? More importantly, what good enemies would shoot?

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Sneak Peek: Winter Pack

02:12 PM -- Fri November 7, 2008

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And the costumes are done! I might need to tweak the Penguin a little, but he's pretty fun.

The Snowman Costume - In the lower right image, you see that he throws snowballs. In the main image, you can see what his snowballs do. I just love the ice-cube-on-a-string effect of the frozen spiders! If you look closely, you can see that the lower block is a frozen frog. Guys stay frozen for 8 seconds, so it is possible to use them as a ladder to get places, but it's never too easy!

The Snowman's other feature is directly above the snowball picture. He can melt on command (aka "duck"), rendering him immune to bullets until he unmelts. Originally I had it just make his hit area smaller accordingly, but it turns out that Deadly Trees fire their shots at a really low altitude, and I decided it just made sense (not from a logic perspective) to make you simply unhittable when melted. Well, by bullets - enemies will still hit you with direct contact. If you jump straight from a melt (push down-up), you go 3 blocks high instead of 2.

The last bonus the Snowman has is that he doesn't slip on ice. That's very nice, although it prevents him from doing long jumps like everyone else can on ice.

The Penguin Costume - Out of the water, the penguin is slow (Kid speed). His jump is so short it doesn't even reach up an entire block. But don't fear, this isn't Santa all over again - he can air jump twice (or "flap his wings" as one might call it), for a total jump height equal to Frank's (two blocks). This isn't just an annoying way of jumping, though! It also gives him a unique capability. When airborne, he moves fast, so he can leap across really wide gaps that not even the Vampire could cross, since the Vampire always descends as he glides.

But of course, the real power of the Penguin is in water. In the water, he never stops moving, zipping along at high speed leaving a lovely trail of bubbles. He also doesn't need oxygen for some reason (gills). You can hit the button to Torpedo Dash and smash into enemies. It also smashes Crumbly Bricks and Blast Bricks, and even pushes crates. You can move any direction in the water, and he spins around smoothly. It's fun to control, but if there are spikes around, you could be in grave danger. The most fun thing is to Torpedo Dash out of the water for effect. You can go about 10 blocks up doing that, and you still have 3 wing flaps available once you get up there, to settle yourself onto something. You really need large water spaces to accomodate the Penguin's zippy movement, so that could be interesting.

All in all, these guys are fun! Unfortunately, I now need to invent some badguys, and having made a Penguin costume, I'm really questioning the idea of having Pengulons as badguys.

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Sneak Peek: Winter Pack

09:40 AM -- Thu November 6, 2008

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Man, when was the last time I did a sneak peek!? It feels so odd. Here are the elements I've created so far for the Winter Pack. From left to right, that is:

• Laser Tree - shoots DEADLY LASER BEAMS from its star. It's the vertical equivalent of the Deadly Tree. There is no downward-shooting version, and I am not so sure one is necessary! Although there could be Missile Toe...
• Ice - Slippery, of course! It's possible to build up an unlimited amount of speed on ice (provided you have walls to bounce off of), and then when you jump, you go flying incredible distances.
• Icicles - When shot, they fall down, and work as crates (crushing those beneath them, working as platforms). As you can also see, they float in water! That gives you a handy way across. Interestingly, Icicles are perfectly content to hang in midair like bricks do, until they get shot. It makes for some unique platforming situations.
• Santa costume - Just like the other costumes!
• Water - Hop in. Everything moves slower in water, and gravity is greatly reduced. It feels really 'right' to me. You also get a breath meter, which runs out scarily fast!
• Bubbles - Luckily, there are bubbles, which can restore your breath. Not the floating ones, though. You have to stand on the bubble source to get breath back.
• Gifts - Push down when you are Santa to set these on the ground. You have a limit of 10 of them active at once, and they can't be overlapping.
• Santa! - There he is, at last. It was tricky getting to where I am in this shot. As I've mentioned before, Santa drops gifts, and then presses the action button to detonate them all. You can stand near edges to drop your gifts on guys down below too. And of course, blowing up the gifts under you (as I am about to do in the picture) rockets you skyward. These two gifts are enough to get me almost up to the ledge in front of me. Santa can jump, but he only goes up 3 pixels. Even underwater, it's not enough to get up a block! Jumping right before you detonate can give you a tiny extra boost, though. If you line up a bunch of gifts and explode with you in the middle, you can go about half the screen in height!

That's the Winter Pack so far! I am going to make the Snowman today, who will throw snowballs that freeze enemies temporarily, making them useful stepladders. Or at least I'm going to try that. I thought that made more sense with freezing breath, but snowballs will be a lot more useful (and with the arcing effect, you can hit things below you!). I am considering the idea of letting him freeze the water too, but that's a pretty big issue technically, and I am not sure it's worth the complexity (plus, one little snowball freezing up an entire lake?).

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Game-A-Week And Beyond

12:01 PM -- Wed November 5, 2008

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There have been a lot of questions (and freak-outs) about what Game-A-Week is. That actually hasn't been solidly defined, but in various thoughts and discussions over the past few days, I think we now have an official consensus on exactly what it would be.

First though, let me say that in the process of taking a shower this morning, I decided officially that I'm not doing Game-A-Week just yet. I want to do a few more 1-2-3 month games first (with the same web-power that Costume Party has). Maybe 2010 will be the year of Game-A-Week, or I'll start in mid-2009. One of the main considerations is that, as I've said, I really need to work on marketing. Doing Game-A-Week will be a very full time job. No time for marketing then. So I want to do some of that first.

Well, it was just a random shower thought. I guess official is a strong word for that. But it's what I'm thinking. I absolutely for sure want to do it. I don't want to be one of those guys. You know, the ones that die never having made a game a week? That would be a travesty. But seriously, it is one of those things - I don't want to miss out on the crazy experience that it would be, and never know what it would've been like.

So what is Game-A-Week officially? The name gives most of it away. Game-A-Week is a 3-month process (we call that "a season" of Game-A-Week - there could be many seasons). For 3 months, I create one game every week. During the process, I blog about it, and when I'm done, I post up a youtube video or such to show it off. Even if the game isn't really functional at the end of the week, it's done, and I move on. Of course, it better be good, because I will be trying to sell it! You can buy a Game-A-Week season, presumably for $19.95. You choose when to buy - if you have faith in me, buy it the first day I start, and you can play each game as it comes out. If you are cynical and cruel and have no soul, buy it after the whole season is done. You are buying a fabulous pack of twelve awesome games.

Other notes about the process:

• A forum thread would be created for ideas (I see there is one already!). I would dip in there and do one of those each week! Assuming there would always be at least one worth doing...
• Some have suggested 'banking' 2 or 3 games before I start, but no. I am not a wimp! The challenge is to make a game each week, and I will make a game each week!
• Many have suggested 'game a month' or some equivalent instead. To me, that's a terrible idea, and I won't do it. If you give me a month to make something, I'm going to come up with something massive that should take two years (Yes, Happyponygate was supposed to be quick and simple...). Give me a week, and I know it has to be quick. Game-A-Month would be an enormous flop, a string of failures. A month feels long to me, while a week feels short. That's just me recognizing my own psychology.
• The original idea was to do this for a year, but cutting it to a 'season' is really nice. Less risk (which bothers me!), a cheaper product (as opposed to the $52 Year-O-Games, which would probably sell less, not to mention take a year to make), freedom to take a break after those 3 months and do something else for a while... or continue and do a second season right away! And it still manages to rip off Jonathan Coulton, who sells his Song-A-Week songs on 4 separate season discs.

That's about it. But like I said, I think I want to do some Monthies first (or Bimonthlies). I want to perfect and simplify this connectivity stuff to the point where it's a no-brainer to make all these 1-week games be connected to the community too. It feels like cheating to do that, but I've got a lot of larger (still small) ideas I really want to do. Who wouldn't like Happyponygate Wars (a la Advance Wars)? Or an Ichabod Steamshovel adventure in search of a myth? Or a mini-RPG like Costume Party, but where the levels you make are all stuck together in one big world (like the Maze Of Ludicrosity, in fact)? There are so many possibilities...

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And VOTE!

07:25 AM -- Tue November 4, 2008

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Today's the big day! Whatever you are voting for, or voting against, if you can legally vote today, then

VOTE!

If you don't, then everything is your fault. Everything. Except good things.

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The Winter Pack

07:14 AM -- Tue November 4, 2008

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I hope to have many expansions for Costume Party. I built in room for no less than nine expansions! I have plans for 3 of them fairly firm in my mind, but it all depends on how well the game sells and how much people get into it. This first expansion will happen regardless - it's half done now, and it'll be done before anybody gets a chance to get bored of the game!

Each expansion will offer three new costumes, ten awards (three for each new costume, and one that is unrelated to the costumes), ten tiles to be unlocked via the awards, and an unknown number of tiles and monsters. The total number of tiles in an expansion would be 25 or less, because that's how many tiles fit on one tab in the editor. So 3 costumes, 10 bonus tiles, and up to 12 non-bonus tiles/monsters.

Of course, it's the costumes that define the game the most. And since this is the Winter Pack, you don't even need to flick your eyes downward to guess the first costume:
He's fun and unique. For many years, I've been fascinated with rocket-jumping in FPS games. There's just something about the ability to use explosive force to propel yourself that intrigues me. I've considered a game about a kid who has the odd supernatural ability of immunity to explosions (but not to spikes, monsters, etc) who goes around planting different kinds of bombs (time bombs, triggered bombs, proximity bombs) and using them in different ways to get through a level and kill monsters. Still like it, might do it someday. I also like PuffBomb, a game from an earlier Ludum Dare which used timebombs to blow up hamsters, sending them flying into a goal (a concept subsequently stolen by various flash games). So anyway, Santa can drop Gifts anywhere he likes. Then when you hit the button, all the Gifts onscreen explode at once. He's immune to them (they're very lethal to monsters), but they can bounce him skyward. It's a good thing, because as you can see by his girth, he's not much of a jumper. His jump carries him about 3 pixels upward. He can't even get up a single tile, but with well-placed bombs, he can be blasted higher than anyone else can jump!

In addition to Santa, there will be a Baby Seal, I think (with machine gun in flipper?). I've already implemented water, which is pretty cool, and so I want some kind of aquatic creature. Water is really awkward for the regular characters (and you run out of breath very fast!), so I want one character that totally rocks it instead. Baby Seal was the best I could come up with fitting the theme. And of course the third is a Snowman. That one is obvious. I have several different ideas for what abilities a Snowman would have, and haven't really picked what is best and most unique. My favorite character is the Witch, because she really changes the entire game. Do you have ideas for someone else (or ways a Snowman could work) who could change it completely?

Other tiles that are in so far are the water tiles, bubbles (for getting air when underwater), and ice (hooray for obnoxious video game ice! But this isn't just annoying, it also allows you to leap absolutely incredible distances). Also planned are pine trees, candy canes (some as candy corn, just a new look), and a couple of other ideas I've forgotten. Oh, wind tiles that blow anything on them to the left or right (and maybe 2 more for up and down, if I have room). Feel free to suggest your own tile and monster ideas. The only monster I have planned for sure is the Pengulon, which flies in a diagonal pattern, endlessly bouncing off of things. There should probably be a Yeti. I've considered having that be the costume instead of the Snowman, but Snowman is very iconic.

My main thing is to keep adding stuff that really adds new elements to the gameplay. I don't want a whole lot of wasted tiles. I like to have a few that are just for show (like the Candy Canes), but I really think levels should be built around "I need this effect here, so that means this tile/monster". I want the expansion to open up new ways to build, not just put a new coat of paint on the same old levels.

This expansion will of course be released in December. I think the next one I want to do is the Hamumu Pack - Bouapha, Yerfdog, and Happy Stick Man. I could just see Yerfdog carefully drifting his way through a field of spikes...

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Hamumu 2009+

08:22 AM -- Mon November 3, 2008

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So the Dr. Lunatic engine is retired now. That puts me in the position of having to create something new from scratch. I did that with Costume Party. These are my goals going forward:

• No game over 6 months in total development time, with the average more like 2 or 3 (I know that will change someday, but for now...)
  
  
• Community!! Like Costume Party, I want every game to be tied directly into the Hamumu community and feature extensive user creations. Every game should be a platform for your creativity in some way. Hopefully in many ways.
  
  
• Trying different business models. Costume Party is unique in that it is truly a free game. You just pay money for an added element - you can still play every level for free. We'll see how that goes! Maybe it's the way I'll go, or maybe I'll try some others (I'm intrigued by the whole "buy in-game items" kind of thing, but it seems like that would require a pretty massive game to justify). As long as I can keep funding my lavish yakisoba-instead-of-ramen-sometimes lifestyle, I'd love to be giving away more free.
  
  
• Community input. Like with Happyponygate, only less doomed. Except in the necessary case of surprises (I do love to make surprises), I'd like to get fan input on everything. I don't want to be forced to obey the fans, as I am in this line of work entirely because I want to make what I want to make, but it's fun to steal listen to your ideas.
  
  
• Tons of time spent on marketing and getting Hamumu known and out there. I still don't know anything about doing this, but I guess I'd better learn.

I also want to someday develop a toolchain for making 3D games. Truecolor doesn't work well for games like Dr. Lunatic, due to massive video memory requirements. It'll be a lot more possible in 3D, but that's a really big task I'm going to not think about at the moment. I fully intend to finish the Adventures Of Bouapha and Loonyland series, but I probably won't do another game in either series (except maybe a weird offshoot or two) until I find a great system for making 3D games in a simple way.

A Game A Week? I'm still thinking about that. Seems like January 1st would be the ideal time to start it, so that gives me two months to consider it. I can't express just how fun the idea sounds to me, but yes, it's very scary.

But until that happens or doesn't, let me tell you what I will be doing: Expansions! I've already got the first Costume Party expansion about half done. And in keeping with my formerly expressed Community Input goal, let me avoid keeping it a secret. It's the Winter Pack. But it'll have to stay sort of a secret until tomorrow, when I give you a bunch of details on what is in it!

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Why Happyponygate Is Canceled

07:26 AM -- Sun November 2, 2008

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Sorry folks. And I really mean it... I am very sorry that I am canceling this game. But canceled it is. There are several reasons why this is necessary, and I'm just going to lay them out there:

- Way too ambitious. This was a game that completely overreached. Not a first for me! But this was just going too far. If I'm going to make an online game, I need to start simpler. To complete this project would've taken 2 years, IF I actually worked really hard nonstop from the beginning. Given my usual work ethic and other necessary tasks, we'd be looking at more like 3 or 4 years (and don't forget to calculate in the engineer's fudge: multiply by 3 and move it up one order of magnitude, for a total of 9 decades). Just too big. Bigger than Supreme in every way except for number of levels, and of course I didn't make all those levels!

- Money. I can't make games that take 2 or 3 years. Much more important than the direct income is the notion of being 'off the radar' for years at a time. That costs me in terms of publicity, since people forget I exist, and in terms of actual fans, since people get bored with no new game and wander off, forgetting to return and keep track. And of course there is the direct income - a game that takes me 2 years to make doesn't make me 12x as much money as a 2 month game! Not even 2x as much, most of the time.

- Technology. The Dr. Lunatic 'engine' is incredibly outdated at this point. It was behind the times when I was first using it in the late 90's, and it's completely archaic now. What does that matter? Well, two problems. The lesser problem is that it's not updated for current operating systems and uses a resolution that some video cards actually don't even support anymore! Or at least for a while there was one NVidia driver that didn't. The greater problem is that it looks like crap. I really like the characters and style I made in Loonyland 2, but they came out looking blocky, rough-edged, and discolored because of the limited resolution and palette and lack of blending. To put it bluntly: I can't release another 256 color game again. Ever. This isn't the kind of thing that was costing me the actual hardcore fans - you guys have liked the stuff I made all along, you'd be happy with more of it! But new people coming by and seeing that stuff are immediately turned off. They just won't give the game a chance if it looks so old and crummy. Unfortunately, presentation is necessary to pull in new people.

- Hard! It got unwieldy and ugly to the point where I was not enjoying working on it anymore. And when I reach that state, I have a real problem. A real problem that usually results in "just one more quick WoW session". It's not a matter of saying "I don't like this anymore" and throwing it aside, but a recognition that because I don't like doing it anymore, I won't be able to force myself to get it done. It's just going to get slower and more unproductive until it eventually fails at some point. Recognizing that early and quitting is a trick I'm still trying to learn, but this is better than some of my past attempts! Some people will see this as a cop-out, but it's not. I've learned through decades and dozens of failures to spot when things just aren't viable anymore. There comes a point when I know a project can't ever reach completion, and I have to drop it. I'm getting better at spotting that sooner, I hope.

I really liked Happyponygate. The storyline is a load of fun, the gameplay that I had was great (I never did get cars remotely enjoyable, but running and gunning was extremely fun), and it really worked online, chatting and all! Well, not necessarily online - it worked over a loopback connecting my computer to itself. But in theory it would've worked online. And before you ask, no, I can't let you play what I did get done, because it requires the server program to run and a connection to a MySQL database and all kinds of things. Just not something shareable without the server having been setup (and I can't set up the server - only early versions were ever compiled on Linux, and so I shudder to think at all the new incompatibilities that crept in during the year or so I developed it on windows).

I also loved how it was made out of the ideas of forum people! And that's a large part of what I'm really sorry about. I feel like I owe the winners a chance to have their stuff in the game, but then, I still owe Hammered the presence of the Hammer Family in Super Happy Go Go Ninja Time too! I'm going to try to figure out a way to get those things into other games in the future to fulfill that. You did get Yerfbucks out of it though, it's not so bad. And we all had fun coming up with the ideas (that's my favorite part of the job!).

In the end, I realized that the only thing keeping me from saying it was done and throwing it away was the guilt and abuse I would take from the Hamumu fans for doing so. That's no reason to keep pushing myself on an impossible task. I have to just take the abuse and go on! I need to keep the company going, keep income coming in, keep Hamumu in the 'news' such as it is, and keep myself busy on work that interests me. It's as simple as that.

So I am again very sorry for the loss of something that was highly anticipated, but I can assure you, it was never going to happen. The only result if I kept working on it would've been to waste time on a dead end rather than moving on to greener pastures. Both you and I are far better served by new games coming out instead!

And tomorrow, I'll discuss what interesting work I could be doing.

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Best Halloween Ever Surprises

11:11 AM -- Sat November 1, 2008

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I have finally tallied up and dished out the points and trophies for BHE2008. For your edification, here's the thread where almost everybody posted links to their surprises: BHE Surprises!

I was going to go through and talk about them all, but then I realized how that would be way too much work when I have serious stuff that needs doing! So let me just say big thanks to Sillyman, Mr. Onion, Revolution, Kerma, Hammered, Crabwarrior, Hyperme, TyTBone, Cheeselord, Qwertybub3, Spiderpumpkin, Redbone, Knittel, Moltanem2000, SpaceManiac, Coolguy, and Blackduck for helping to make this the Best Halloween Ever! You see why it would've taken a while?

This morning there was a nice post-Halloween surprise for me in that the auto-updater was badly broken! I awoke to having to spend an hour hacking PHP and even doing some manual changes in the database to get everybody properly awarded for TAG, DumbWords, and Costume Party! But it always feels good when you know you've fixed something, so maybe I should break it more often.

Speaking of broken, there are a bunch of little issues I need to work out with the online connecting in Costume Party. Unfortunately, some of them are quite a mystery to me. You'd think if everybody was connecting to the same server, they'd be communicating in the same way, but such is not life. There's an amazing variety of different responses, depending on the victim's computer, apparently. And it seems my code doesn't handle all of them just yet. Still working on that.

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Best Halloween Ever!

06:57 PM -- Fri October 31, 2008

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Here it is! There have been tons of surprises this year, I think lots more than last year! Here's a link where a lot of them are listed, but you might have to explore around the forum to find yet more: BHE Surprises. More are still to come as far as I know!

We've only had a few entries posted in the Costume Party Contest! I know of at least one more that should be there, don't know why it hasn't been posted. But hey, if you want to win 995 Yerfbucks, get in there! There's still time if you are a pro costume-builder.

And of course, I should inform you that Costume Party, the game, is here! Now you know the secret behind the 995 Yerfbuck prize in the costume contest... it's exactly enough to buy a Creator's Pass for Costume Party! There are also a ton of new avatar bits from that game, and a bunch of new trophies you can earn related to it as well!

If that weren't enough, Halloween Horror 9 is here, with 5 exciting Supreme worlds, and we also have two other Supreme Add-Ons, LOST Island and Cheeseworld. Gotta catch 'em all!

I'll have more news about the BHE2008 tomorrow, once it's officially closed. Then I'll have to tally up all the winners and figure out how many Yerfbucks they get, and set up the voting for the Costume Contest. It's a busy time of year, and I have to go eat some Pumpkin Roll.

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It's A Bad Sign...

06:27 PM -- Tue October 28, 2008

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...when my journal page is no longer in my browser history! Just a couple more days and the excitement begins! Believe me when I tell you there is a lot of stuff to come on Halloween! This post is not very interesting or helpful (look at the previous post if you need reminders of what you should be getting ready! Come on man, you could win 995 YB just for dressing up silly!), it's just here to hopefully catch a few people who were going to forget about the festivities. So let me tell you this:

Come visit Hamumu on Halloween! Visit it many times throughout the day, because more exciting stuff will be appearing all the time (courtesy of your fellow Hamumians - the surprises I have in store will all be more-or-less simultaneous). Hang out on the forum, and come into our brand new Chat Room (not much more interesting looking than the old one, but this one doesn't break!) to talk with your fellow spooks and ghouls. I know you have other things planned for Halloween too, I'm just asking you to pop in a few times during the day and see what is happening! It will be well worth it.

I'll also be back into regular blogging once Halloween is over, beginning with some big bombshells. I'm gonna get to work composing those right now, in fact. See ya.

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Boo! Halloween Events!

06:19 PM -- Mon October 13, 2008

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Man, what a great month this always is. It's getting spooky outside (obnoxiously cold too... I miss open windows and being sweaty hot way back last week), with a massive windstorm all day whipping across the land and howling like a wolfman in need of candy corn. There's a Costume Party in the works, and make sure you're getting ready for it yourself, because the prize is no less than 995 Yerfbucks!. The Great Pumpkin is stalking the land with horrific cheer and terrifyingly delightful gifts for anyone who chats with him. It's a whole lot of Halloween Horror... Why, you could almost say that it's the Best Halloween Ever!

Yes, I don't have a lot to tell you this month. I've been working extremely hard. So hard, in fact, that I'm considering a sort of semi-vacation for November (hmm, conveniently the month of Nanowrimo!). The site upgrades (no, there's nothing visible) were absolutely necessary to get certain things working. Too bad they also broke the site in various ways for a few days. It's kind of lame to be doing so much stuff and not having anything I can blog about, but I guess that's the nature of sekricy. Sorry! I would enjoy telling you as much as you would enjoy hearing! But then that would ruin the enjoyment for both of us on Halloween!

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Site Failure!

07:20 PM -- Sun October 12, 2008

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We've been through some serious ups and downs in the past few days with the site upgrades that seemed like downgrades. But I think they're over... not holding any of my breath, though. I think even the nightly update will actually function now! Sorry for the massive upheavals. See you tomorrow!

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Ninja Kitty!

10:18 AM -- Mon October 6, 2008

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But wait, that's not what I mean! What I'm actually referring to is Ninja Kitty Vs. The Nukebots, a very simple and intense action shooter. It's mouse controlled, left click only. Enjoy! And make some levels, it's not hard to do.

(The Youtube video is just a great coincidence, something Sol found on Youtube while I was working on the game, not in relation to it)

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Best Halloween Ever!

08:35 AM -- Sat October 4, 2008

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Begins! Events this month:

Best Halloween Ever contest

Costume Party contest

The Great Pumpkin visits

Halloween Horror 9

Can you believe HH has been around 9 years? Some of the people working on HH worlds weren't alive when the first one came out! Maybe not, but some people who have made worlds fit that description. Next year will be the tenth anniversary!

This weekend, however, is yet another Mini-LD contest! The theme this time is quite interesting. It's to make a game that reads in BMP files as levels, and works with ones given certain colors. It's up to you to decide what each color on the map means. I have a fun take on that that I am working on right now! I hope I can have it done in time, because it feels like a fun idea.

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Blah, Hamumu, Etc.

06:31 PM -- Tue September 23, 2008

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Well, I've now blogged about something Hamumu related! Bye!



I kid. For you very small but very very vocal group of people who constantly demand screens of the game, you're out of luck. I've worked on nothing but internal giblets for weeks now. It's all about how the game connects to the server and the way they communicate. So, nothing to see, but I am making rapid progress in some areas, zero progress in others. It doesn't make for interesting journaling, but a lot of stuff is coming together and I can assure you that this next month will be full of good things to hear about.

I wish I could tell you more exciting things... so I will! Halloween's coming soon, and that's my favorite holiday! I've got some plans perhaps, and maybe the more astute readers have an idea of what some of those plans are. And there's always the delightfulness of Halloween Horror!

Also, on an unrelated note that will cause groans with the majority of the readership, I'd like to announce that The Hamumu Clan has officially formed in WoW! We've got 3 Hamumians on board besides myself. Let me take this opportunity to re-advertise so you can get in on it: it's a Horde guild on Caelestrasz server (Oceanic). Anybody in the guild can invite you in, so find one of us when you are on! Since that's impossible to do, PM me when you are on, and I'll go on to invite you. It's a guild dedicated to just hanging out and gaining levels, no big whoops like raids or PvP (you're welcome to do it, and welcome to invite the guildies along, but nothing is planned or organized). Maybe we should try to arrange an official get-together in it this weekend or something, a time when we can all come on and do some team whomping. I've never been in a group bigger than 3 before, it would be a revelation.

I know it's been pretty blah around these journal pages for the last month, but things are coming that will blow your mind to smithereens. Stay tuned! I might be blogging less for the next week or so, just because of that. There's not much I can tell you with the kinds of stuff I'm working on, and I don't want to keep saying "Just wait!" So if I have something exciting to say like I saw a lizard in the yard, I'll be back, but otherwise, this is Jamul de Hamumu, signing off.

Stay classy, San Diego.

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Bit o' Help, Everybody?

12:48 PM -- Mon September 22, 2008

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Hey, if you are a WoW subscriber, you could do something super handy to help me out! Log in to the Crazystreet server (it's in the Oceanic server set, and is actually named something like Caelstratz, but I don't know exactly what. You'll recognize it), with an undead character. If you don't have one, make one! Then come sign my guild charter! PM or email me to let me know when you can do this, so I can be online to provide it. I got 7 signatures so far, so I just need 3 more, and really only 2 if my friend that I always play with would ever log on! Note: If you are on a free trial, you can't sign guild charters, unfortunately. And if you're wondering, the reason I say you need to be undead is that my guildmaster is hanging out in the undead starting area. You could be something else, you'd just have to take a long trip (you do have to be on the Horde side, of course!).

And, most of all, if you would like to stick around on that server, you are welcome to stay in the guild once it forms. You can also delete the character you made as soon as it's formed too, if you want (or just quit the guild if you want to keep it). All up to you! The guild's called The Hamumu Clan, which is about time I had one with a name like that. My highest level character on that server is only 13, so we're taking it from the bottom and working our way up. Join the fun!

I recognize that this was entirely a WoW post, but I figured this would be a good way to get the signatures I need. I hate the signature-gathering, it's awful. I could totally see this would be what it's like to try to collect petition signatures in real life. All you can do is nag people, and it's no fun for you or them! But I met some cool people who sound like they'll stay in the clan, so it's good. Another activity it is similar to is pulling teeth. Your own.

So I will blog on something more related to Hamumudom tomorrow, but for now, if you can help me out, please do! And besides, it'd be cool to get The Hamumu Clan really going! Of course, on that note, don't forget I've also got a much more advanced Alliance guild already on the Ravencrest (US) server, which actually includes a grand total of one forumer besides myself! You are welcome to join that too.

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Big Halloween Election!

03:22 PM -- Sat September 20, 2008

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Halloween Horror 9 is gearing up. We've had the chance to submit names, now it's a matter of voting for your favorites. So click that link and do so! There's an absurd number of choices for your perusing pleasure. You have until October 1st to get votes in, then it will be building time!

Speaking of that, I learned whole new worlds of things you can do in MySQL the other day. I've been working exclusively on stuff connecting the game to the server, and it is mighty technical, and sort of fun. I'm definitely learning a lot. It's not terribly flashy, but it's getting things done.

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Bacon Helps Everything!

10:26 AM -- Thu September 18, 2008

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At PAX, somebody was going around handing out free samples of Bacon Salt. It is, as the name implies, salt that tastes like bacon (and it's vegan, low-sodium, and kosher!). Their theory was that everything tastes better with bacon. I finally managed to use some the other day, putting it on my corn on the cob. It didn't make it taste better. It was okay. I would've been much happier with normal salt.

And therein lies the problem with Bacon Salt. Try, just try, to think of something that you would like to put bacon on, that you also want salt on. Hmm, maybe scrambled eggs... I don't think so though. I don't want them to taste like bacon, I want bacon to interact with them in a physical way, with crispy deliciousness. Can't put Bacon Salt on a burger (we have fake bacon for that!), because you don't want a salted burger. Not on a salad either. I just can't think of a time when I want an overall flavor of bacon, along with salt, spread over my food. In every case, bacon or bacon bits is a greatly superior choice.

So whilst I admire the humorous notion of creating a substance that makes everything taste like bacon, I am fairly well convinced that there is no actual useful niche for such a product in my life. Perhaps your life differs. Discuss.

Still... I might have to try scrambled eggs.

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Bashing Happily, Everyday

07:16 PM -- Mon September 15, 2008

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I don't have anything I can report to you at this juncture as far as work getting done, but I wanted to post just to assuage any potential concerns. I know sometimes things get a wee touch lazy around here, but that is not the case at the moment! Much is occurring, progress is being made, gameplay is coming together, and whatever. Nothing tangible I can describe, but progress, rest assured.

I have also started many millions of new characters in WoW. I erased all of my horde guys (and cleverly sold off their goods and worked with my friend to transfer the money over to my allies!), and now on Ravencrest I have a full complement of 9 characters, one of every class. The tenth slot is, of course, holding out for my upcoming death knight. I also have every race (both genders of each, once the death knight - female gnome, of course - joins), and every profession (multiple times). Now my friend and I have started to create hordies on a different server (Caelstratz or something like that, in the Oceanic set). I've only got one so far, but it seems inevitable that one day there will be 10 over there too.

And one last WoW note: if you do play WoW and are on Ravencrest, or wish to be (start fresh, I just started a bunch of new ones!), look for Hamumu (at last, I have one with that name!), Decapitatrix, Flambe, or Necrognomico online and whisper them to join our guild! Let's Hamumu it up. The guild is lamely named BR00D (those are zeroes... sigh), because it was one that some guy just gave to me at some point. I didn't mind not having to collect signatures!

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Been Here Exercising

09:28 AM -- Sat September 13, 2008

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A Wii Fit report:

It's good! I'm not saying it's fun, because it only kind of is. It does a good job of giving you incentive to work out, and once I got enough stuff unlocked, it actually gave me a pretty good workout. It's funny, but once you accumulate 30 minutes of exercise on it, it makes a tinkly noise and the pig dances (there's a pig that counts up your minutes, why not?) for about 2 seconds. That tiny little nothing is enough to make it so that I always do my full 30 minutes no matter what. I can imagine there's something even more spectacular (assuming such a thing is possible) at 60 minutes, but I have no intention of ever finding out.

Other than having a lot of assorted back problems, I've always felt like I am in functional shape. Not good shape - very flabby, need work. But I feel like I can bend to pick things up, don't have to grunt getting out of a chair, run around as needed, and all that. Perfectly healthy and fine. Doing Wii Fit Yoga proved I was completely wrong. The exercises in the yoga section are all (at least up until the end few) extremely easy to actually do. They basically say "stand in this slightly awkward position for 20 seconds". But doing that, I'd feel like shards of glass were jabbing into my shoulders, and my arms would go numb. That is happening less and less, and things are getting better. I'm gaining little bits of flexibility I never knew I was missing. Sitting at a computer for 20 years will do that. So I am really glad to be working those kinks out again after so long.

I've tried various exercise tidbits throughout my decades of otherwise slothlike computer usage, and never has it been like this. I've even done serious stuff like six months of kickboxing, and a year or so of a full-fledged gym membership (where I actually went!). And those things would lower my weight (a teeny bit) and build some little muscles and all that, but running around and doing muscle-building is not the same as doing serious intensive stretching. As someone who has pretty severe back problems, I issue this as a challenge to you: get moving around! Not just aerobics, not just weight lifting, but get to stretching out your muscles. My hamstrings have for years been wound up tighter than a rubber-band airplane set for a transatlantic flight (I worked a long time coming up with that metaphor, so don't mock it), and I just ignore it because it doesn't limit me... but it's bad for the back! I thought I was getting in shape when I was doing the gym, and I was losing fat and gaining muscle, but there's a whole other side to things you just don't think about usually. And if you do too good of a job building up muscle, you're just making the flexibility problem even worse.

And Wii Fit will show it to you! Enjoy the pain.

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Bedazzling Halloween Eponyms

05:25 PM -- Tue September 9, 2008

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Hey, if you hadn't heard, Halloween Horror 9 is coming up. So suggest names for it! That's about all I have to say today. Halloween Horror is a grand Hamumu tradition, so you ought to participate and feel the Dumbness flow through you.

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Building Hitsuji Editor

03:39 PM -- Mon September 8, 2008

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Or not! This weekend (as the first weekend of every month, since a couple months ago) was a Mini-LD contest at Ludum Dare. That means a 48-hour development contest, but without all the theme-picking rigamarole. It's hosted by a single person who picks the theme themselves and can tweak the rules all around. In this case, the rules were bent entirely out of whack with the theme of "Tool". No, we didn't have to make a tool-themed game. Rather, we had to create a tool that would help us make games in the future. I thought about it and ended up working on two different things, but neither for very long:

First was SheepEdit. Remember in Hitsuji, how the sheep animated smoothly, because he was made of a series of separate images that rotated around? A lot like South Park or Monty Python really. I was planning to make a more powerful and easier-to-use version of the editor I made way back then, allowing me to make these kinds of characters in the future for some crazy sidescrolling action. Pretty cool idea, lots of math involved (well, lots by my standards).

Second was Pixeltron, a paint program for making low-res retro sprites. But once you drew them, it would've let you apply various filters and effects to them, getting nifty modern-retro looks, like having your sprite surrounded with a glow or neon piping. That could've made Moon Invaders 2 pretty cool!

But I just did a little bit on each before giving up entirely. These Mini-LDs just don't put on the pressure that a full-sized LD does (perhaps due to the amazing and fabulous prizes that regular LDs offer?), and I have yet to actually complete one. They've all had very interesting themes, though.

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PAX Day 3

12:00 PM -- Thu September 4, 2008

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Day 3 began with a return to Creperie Voila. Our escape from the concerts the night before allowed us to get the jump on the crowd... and unfortunately on the crepologists themselves. The place wasn't even open when we got there, so we sat around waiting for it to open, then stood in a line of about 4 people and got some more awesome crepes! Yay for crepes!

(Spot the yerfhat here!) Then it was time to stand in line for Family Feud, PAX Edition. It sounded kind of amusing, but mainly we went because it was in the theater where they were holding the second Penny Arcade Q&A panel, so we had to go to be sure we'd get into that. It was probably not necessary, but we didn't have anything else to do at the time, so we hung out. They handed out pipe cleaners to build things from. I made a pig you can see in the monthly Newsletter.

The game was rather entertaining. They had surveyed PAX-goers and the questions were based on how they had answered.

When it ended, we stayed in our seats and enjoyed the the second Q&A panel! Sol exercised unimaginable courage and fortitude, getting in line to ask a question herself. Unfortunately, she wanted to ask them to sign the Yerfhat, and before she got up, someone else asked about signing and they were very clearly not going to do it. Apparently, they had had a signing table at some point on Saturday, and we never knew it. It was not in the schedule! So we lost out there. But eventually, about 2 people from the very end, she got to ask her question! She said some stuff about how their comic helps her to communicate with her gamer husband, and then went up and gave Gabe & Tycho each a copy of our CD. I'm sure they weren't interested at all, but whatever, it was cool to give them out to influential people even if those influential people will never speak of them to anyone. It just takes one getting hooked though... if JoCo doesn't blog for a week and then comes back with "Oh, sorry guys, I was totally caught up playing Supreme With Cheese!", then we get rich! Right after Sol asked her question, the Bad Horse chorus went up and Bad Horse'd the Penny Arcade guys. I saw the video of that on Youtube, but sadly Sol was already out of sight when they started filming.

Next, we sought out Wil Wheaton again. This was our last chance to get him on the Yerfhat! Crushingly bad news... we showed up and an Enforcer told us the line was cut off because he had to leave. We wandered off into the expo hall for one last visit before the show wound down. Nothing terribly exciting inside, but we did manage to dispose of the last of our CDs. Also, it was a lot emptier. Many people had left before Sunday, I think, because there was actually room to walk in the expo hall on this day.

We came out of the expo hall set on getting lunch and moving on with our day, when the Enforcer who had stopped us from getting in line came running up to us. He said "I've been going around trying to find the people I turned away! Wil has decided to keep the line going for another hour!" So there it is! And how totally cool of that Enforcer. We ended up being about 3 people away from still managing to get cut off anyway, but we were in. We were out of CDs, which of course meant that people suddenly were desperately interested in Hamumu. We talked to about 6 different people while standing in that line who had all kinds of interesting questions, but we had no CDs to give. One of them did type the address into his blackberry for future reference, at least. Then we got up there, told Wil he was awesome (his writing that is - we own all his books, and know not to torture him with Star Trek), and got him to sign the Yerfhat. We of course had reserved one final CD, which went to him. He did a truly amazing job of looking like he was excited about it.

So that was kind of the big finish. The denouement goes like this: we had lunch at the hotel restaurant again, then returned for the final Omegathon round (we missed the Jenga round which was earlier in the day), which is sort of the show's finale. It was packed. The game turned out to be Vs. Excitebike, a Japanese-only release of Excitebike with special features for competitive play. It was pretty fun to watch, and then Gabe & Tycho played a round of it themselves. The show concluded with them thanking everybody and saying we were awesome, and that was that!

We went back to the hotel and had dessert for dinner, went to bed, and flew home the next day.

What I left out of this report were the details of our day-to-day wandering from place to place. Everywhere we went, we got looked at funny, our picture taken, and so many times people came up and told us our hats were cool. It was great. Every time they did, we gave them a CD. We kept the CD distribution to a really personal level like that, rather than running around flinging them at everyone, and it made things a lot cooler, and I hope it made people a lot more likely to actually try out the disc instead of throwing it away. Haven't noticed any suspicious new sales yet, but we'll see.

All good things must end, and frankly, I was ready for this one to. I loved it, totally. Had no idea it could've been that much fun. But I was exhausted physically and mentally, and it probably wouldn't have stayed fun for more than about another day. Three days of this a year, I wholeheartedly approve of. And I can't wait for next year! Look for the Hamumu booth then, because I'm thinking it's got a solid chance of happening! You all need to come out and see it. We're talking about holding a 48-hour contest during the show, so people can come up and watch games get made. A little like Mongolian BBQ, with less cabbage.

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Pax Day 2

05:59 PM -- Wed September 3, 2008

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Day 2, we woke up at a reasonable hour very tired from our late night of revelry. Hats back on again, and we headed out for breakfast.

La Creperie Voila (insert various french punctuation marks) is a tiny little crepe stand outside the convention hall. They've got crepes with all kinds of things in them. You could literally eat every meal there and be healthy. But I went for the good stuff - both times we ate there I had a strawberry, vanilla custard, and whipped cream crepe. They are not cheap, but they are awesome. There was a big line of course, because it was right there at the convention. We were awake a little earlier than most geeks, but not enough. We still stood out in the bitter wind for about 45 minutes. I say it was worth it.

Saturday began at 10am, so we had a big day ahead of us! We started out, once properly creped, with the Advertising & PR panel. We somehow managed to miss the beginning of it while eating our crepes, but it was in the Walrus Theater, which is the one 'theater' that is actually just a corner of a big room, so you can walk right up and stand there. I wish the others had been like that! We hung about and listened. Didn't learn much as they talked about how they spend their $5 million advertising their products... not a lot of discussion of things that I might be able to actually do.

Then finally, we got to see a round of the Omegathon for the first time! The Omegathon is a big game tournament, where the contestants are picked randomly via a variety of methods, and they don't know what they are competing in until a couple of weeks before the show. There are 6 rounds, each competing in a different game, and the final one is a mystery even to the contestants right up until it happens (well, I think they got an hour or two notice... they seemed to know the controls). Obviously people are eliminated from the roster with each round until only two remain for the final showdown. I really like the concept, because with its completely random set of games (this year, Jenga, Peggle, Rock Band, and Geometry Wars were among the games featured), it's much more laid back. You don't have hardcore Halo nuts just Haloing away, you have people flailing around with stuff they have no idea how to do, and nobody is good at every game. The prizes make it quite serious though - $5,000 and a trip to Tokyo to go to the Tokyo Game Show!

Anyway, round 1 of the Omegathon was no spectators allowed because it took place in the BYOC room - a place where people could bring their own computers to set up. So for security reasons, they didn't have spectators. That round was Peggle.

Round 2 was Boom Blox. We could've seen it, we just missed it.

This was round 3, and it was Geometry Wars. We saw it! It was fun enough, I suppose. I'd never actually seen Geometry Wars in action before, and by the final round (it went for 4 rounds with 3 players in each, since there were 12 remaining Omeganauts by this round), we in the crowd understood the game well enough to do a lot of "Oooh!" and "Awwww!" when there were great escapes and unfortunate deaths.

Lunch break! We ate at the restaurant in our hotel, which was actually very good, and of course very expensive. There was a big wait, but we sat in the bar instead, which had open tables. No wait for us!

(This is one of those things you're supposed to stick your face through and take a picture... we stuck Yerfdog through instead, and it amuses me) We went back to the same theater then to see the Mega64 panel, followed by a screening of a Mega64 episode. All I really have to say about them is that it was fairly funny, and they're really really juvenile, and their episodes are really funny when they are just blatant live-action enactments of video games (complete with being yelled at by bystanders or cops), and a lot less entertaining when they have plot to them.

BUT! Something amazing and spectacular happened during this screening! We were just watching the episode when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Darkaruki, who is a new member of the forums, and the brother of Blackduck, who was also there! He handed me a Loonyland 2 Collector's Edition CD and a pen, and sign I did. Rather poorly, sorry about that. It was unexpected. So that was exciting, right? To have a fan come up and want something signed? But wait, that's not the crazy part.

When I signed the disc, this kid sitting in front of me turned around and watched, and his eyes got really wide. We had given him one of our Freebie/Demo CDs earlier, and I guess he didn't think too much of it... until he saw somebody wanted my signature. Suddenly, he slides over, turns around, and starts quizzing me. You could just see he was absolutely starstruck. He didn't know why he was supposed to be in awe of me, but if somebody else wanted a signature, then by gum, I must be somebody interesting! I had to control myself to avoid laughing out loud at the absurdity of the situation.

Then we headed downstairs and met Blackduck, Darkaruki, and their mom properly (hard to do while people are trying to watch a movie), and took that picture with them. We also managed to give a CD to the older lady who was doing convention security. She was intrigued, and said that she wasn't allowed to take things, but she'd slip it in her jacket anyway. I hope I didn't just get her in trouble by writing this.

Our next move was a mad dash back to Bandland in hopes of catching Wil Wheaton (I left out an earlier Wheaton Failure, too. We went by his booth many times to no avail), but he was not there. He did have a schedule posted this time though, so we knew we had to come back tomorrow. So we hit the exhibit hall for a few minutes and ran into Phil again, who invited us to dinner. We wandered for countless hours trying to find a place to eat. Did you know that Seattle closes at like 6pm? Everything was closed! On a Saturday!

We eventually found a nice little place down in the Pike Street Market, which had good food like all the other places we tried on this trip. Food went well every time!

We hit the expo hall again, and checked out the Pax 10 there. Those are 10 indie games that got chosen as special to be voted on at the show. We looked at all of them, and played a couple. We placed our votes for Chronotron, which is downright clever. Several of the games were gravity/magnet themed and frankly not that interesting. I still don't get why people think Strange Attractors is good.

Our last event for the night was similar to our previous last event: concerts! We got no wristbands this time, and stood in line for a while, but it was no problem getting in. We went to our favorite corner again and set up our foodless picnic.

The pre-show for this evening's concerts was actually Round 4 of the Omegathon! Logically enough, it was Rock Band. It must've been pretty cool for the contestants, because it was like truly being a rock star as 5,000 people were jumping up and down cheering as they 'performed'. They broke the eight remaining contestants into two bands of four for this event. I'm curious how they did that, since it seems kind of unfair to lose because your teammates (who were previously your opponents) weren't any good. But anyway, one team outscored the other (just barely!), and four contestants remained. Oh, also, the Penny Arcade people performed a Rock Band number before this, all playing on Expert, very impressive.

Then the first act that actually produced their own music was Anamanaguchi. Just didn't like them. They'd start every song with a little videogamey chiptune melody, then after a couple of seconds, completely bury it under a wall of thrash noise. Not for me.

Next up was The Darkest Of The Hillside Thickets. They are a Lovecraft-themed band, which would've been funny if the lyrics were hearable (remember, the sound at all the shows was very bad. It occurs to me today, though, that that may have also related to our location. It probably sounded a lot better in the middle near the stage). Their outfits were definitely entertaining, with two guys with goat legs and horns, one with tentacles all over, one with a Cthulhu head, and one... well, he just kinda was covered with light strings and cords and things. Did Lovecraft ever write about robots?

We actually left shortly into the Thickets set. We were far beyond tired after two very very full days of being 'on' all the time and walking around. I was sad because I really wanted to see MC Frontalot, who was up next (The Minibosses would've followed him as well, but mainly I've been intrigued by Frontalot for some time), but I was happier just to sleep. And I swear the second night concerts were even louder than the first. Or maybe it's just that I was yet one more day older. I am too old.

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PAX Day 1

09:41 PM -- Tue September 2, 2008

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(Wait, some day 0 first)

We arrived very late on Thursday night, to discover that the Sheraton, big fancy hotel that it is, lacks a shuttle service from the airport. Not classy. We eventually managed to get a cab shared with another couple heading to PAX! It was crazy going into that hotel. All these people who work there, all prim and proper in their suits, and every patron there was clearly a PAX geek. It was just overrun with people in shorts and black t-shirts adorned with random slogans. It was surreal. But we slept, and awoke the next morning to PAX Day 1.

Day 1 didn't begin until 3pm, so this was our one day where we actually had some time to do something else. On the other hand, we had a scheduled event of our own. We were to meet Mark of Laughing Dragon for lunch. We also found Phil of Galcon fame and added him to the roster.

But first, we had to have breakfast! We ventured a few blocks down to reach the Pike Street Market, which is where they throw fish. We saw them throw a fish, and it was exactly as exciting as it sounds. We grabbed some pastries and peaches there, and took them back to the room for a relaxing breakfast. Of course, Sol had to tune into the Law & Order marathon while we did. We saw a few more of those as we waited for lunch time.

And off to lunch! We ate at a Greek and/or Italian place and chatted about the tribulations of trying to get people to buy games. It was good. That was the last of Mark because he lives near Seattle, but was not a PAX attendee for some perverse reason. Phil, on the other hand, we got to hang with several more times through our three days as he assisted the Brawndo people at their booth and did whatever other ridiculous things he does around PAX.

Then we donned our yerfhats for the first time, and headed out into the wilds of the convention. We had little idea of what to expect, but we proceeded bravely nonetheless. The first step was to stand in line for the opening of the show. People who lined up early got wristbands for the night's concert (a wristband means you get in first, while non-wristbanders have to take their chances and line up for the concert itself). We of course had our lunch date, so no chance of lining up early. We got there about half an hour before opening time, got way in the back of a long long line, got our swag bag, and after a little while, wandered off into the show. And yes, there's a wizard in this picture (A Black Mage for those in the know. We saw a better one with light-up eyes later, though).

Our first stop was intended to be the exhibit halls, but we got sidetracked because Bandland preceded them. Bandland was a short, wide hallway with the various bands that were going to perform were available for signing stuff and selling stuff. Wil Wheaton was also in that location. We quickly hopped into the Jonathan Coulton line, which was actually really short at that point (and was never again remotely short the rest of the weekend, lucky us!). We got up to him in no time, and gave him a copy of Free Dumb Games! Lucky him! Without a doubt, he rushed home and began playing. We also asked him to sign my Yerfhat. He wanted to know why Yerfdog was the mascot of Hamumu, and that made me realize there is no reason. He's just a character I drew that I thought was really befitting of the Hamumu style. I think he works as an icon for Hamumu - seeing him, you hopefully get what we're all about right there. We did not take a picture with Jonathan Coulton, sorry (but wait for day 3 for celebrity madness! Or day 2 for surprising celebrity that you didn't think was celebrity).

Then we did actually enter the exhibit halls. We have no pictures of those, so here's a word-picture:


That gives you the idea. But seriously, sardines. That hall was not big enough for what all was in it!

So, we got nothing out of that, then proceeded on to our first panel: Video Games, Politics & Policy. It was rather dry, but I wouldn't say uninteresting. Not really relevant to my life in general. We ducked out after half an hour, not out of disappointment, but rather because we had something very important to do!

The first Penny Arcade Q&A Panel! Yep, this is actually the best picture I have of it. You can also see the blurry Tycho-traveling-through-a-wormhole picture in the previous day's post. That one's cool, actually, but only by chance. This panel was great. We got there late and only caught about the last half of it, but it consisted of people going up to the microphone and asking whatever question (though "who would win in a fight" was expressly forbidden), then being gently ridiculed by Gabe & Tycho. It was very funny throughout.

Next up was a dinner break. We walked halfway back down to the market, in order to avoid the insane crowds of PAX visitors. Everything near the convention was utterly swamped the entire weekend. But we found a little Thai place that was busy, but no waiting or anything, and sat down and had a really good meal. It pays to be adventurous.

We came back to the expo at night with two options in mind: there was the screening and Q&A for The Guild (created by and starring Dr. Horrible's Felicia Day), and there were the Friday night concerts. We opted for the screening, only to discover that we were too late. We stood in line for about 30 seconds before someone came back to tell us the line was being dispersed because they had just closed the doors. The unwritten rule we found with PAX was: be at everything half an hour early. That first day, we were always at everything 'on time', which meant 'too late'. So, defeated, we figured why not try the concerts after all?

We won! There was an Enforcer (those who don the black to become volunteer security at PAX) standing outside the room, giving away dozens of wristbands as we walked up. So we hopped right on in. As you might expect of a concert, it was all standing and jumping up and down, but we found a section over to one side where people were laid out on the floor like it was a concert on the green, only the green was concrete. So we joined them, set up our little foodless picnic, and enjoyed.

First up were the One-Ups, conveniently. They do covers of video game songs, but with real instruments (and lots of them - I recall violin, saxophone, piano, guitar, drums, and possibly a tambourine). It was kinda fun, because they'd start up the song, then after about ten seconds, play footage of the game in question. So you had a moment there to try to guess. I guessed none, but many of them were things I had never played anyway.

The second band was Freezepop. They're not so much related to video games as in them - their music is in lots of Harmonix games, and I think some others. It's very 80s synth-pop. They were okay, had a couple songs that were really good, others that weren't so special. I would also like to point out, with regard to all the acts on both nights, that the sound was really bad. I think the sound crew was not good (secondary evidence: most of the bands yelled for changes to their settings more than once, like "could you turn up this guitar?"), which also impacted some of the panels that were in that main hall too. Anyway, all the bands were too loud so that their sound was really distorted (okay, it's too loud, so therefore I am in fact too old, I totally acknowledge it... but it's not like the music was too evil for me, I wanted to hear it clearly is all! Wow, speaking of me being old, at one point I accidentally called them "The Freezepops", a real 'internets' moment).

And last but opposite of least, was the musical act we came to PAX for! Jonathan Coulton performed live, and thanks to being on an acoustic guitar, he was not loud and distorted and was just awesome. He rick-rolled the audience at one point, which went over very well (and we heard about 1/3 of the Rick Astley song as he refused to relent), and for Still Alive, he brought out Felicia Day to perform with him! That's what is pictured, and besides being a really bad picture to begin with, it's also a picture of a video monitor. A direct picture of the stars from where we were sitting would've made them 3 pixels tall. He came out for two encores, one of which was of course Re: Your Brains, with the entire audience acting as zombies. One of the cooler things he did was to play Flickr, which is a song that just describes a random series of pictures he found on Flickr, while showing the pictures it describes on screen. It was cool to see them at last and see how they differed from the mental image. When he was going to play Mandelbrot Set, he yelled out "So who likes math?" and got an overwhelming cheer that was just... yikes.

So, that was our first day of PAX. We got out of that concert at around 1:30AM, which is infinitely past our usual bedtime, stumbled off to bed with our ears ringing, and woke up bright and early for Day 2. Tiredness was a major theme of the whole convention, in fact. Stay tuned to see how *I* am a rock star myself!

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PAX Day 0

08:20 PM -- Mon September 1, 2008

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It's going to take quite some length to recount all the intricacies of PAX, so prepare for it over multiple days. Right now, I'm just going to give you the basics of how PAX works (it's pretty awesome!), and tomorrow I'll cover Day 1, then 2, then 3.

There are, to my mind, five main elements to PAX:

The Exhibits This is your standard expo-type area, where different vendors have booths set up and give out swag and want you to check out their products. You could go in there whenever and just see what was around. There was also a spot in front of the exhibit hall where the performing bands would sign things, and Wil Wheaton too, despite him not being a band.

The Panels There were a whole bunch of different panels, talks, and events scheduled at certain times, and you could go to those. You mostly didn't have to wait in line for these, you just show up a little bit before they start and have a seat. These ranged from technical talks about advertising and politics (as they apply to games), to fun stuff like watching people compete in Jenga.

The Big Events These are really the same as the panels, but they are monster events in the main theater, and you definitely do need to line up for them in advance. These include the Penny Arcade Q&As, and a couple other big things, like the Family Feud game which was quite entertaining.

Tournaments There were game tournaments of many different popular things. We completely ignored this element, although one time we saw a massive line that stretched all the way through the building, probably 500 people, and were afraid it was for whatever panel we were going to. It turned out to be for the Smash Brothers Brawl tournament, which is just weird to me. These people were missing the entire day (or more?) of PAX just to play a little Brawl! I suppose there were probably prizes involved. But crazy.

Concerts On Friday and Saturday night, there were a series of concerts by geeky bands. You definitely needed to do serious lining up for these if you didn't have a wristband. I almost lumped them into The Big Events, but I couldn't do it. They are separate.

We had made up a chart of the things we wanted to attend (which always overlapped other things we wanted), and had it mapped out to where there was literally a half hour of free time on Friday, another half hour on Saturday, and one hour on Sunday. The rest was booked solid. As you will see, we were not remotely able to stick to this schedule, and in fact went to very few things at all. We just didn't count on needing to be at things half an hour early, and some things just having huge lines and all of that. Next year, we will be a lot less ambitious in our planning.

Whenever we did have to line up, it was pretty nice. The lines were about 10 feet wide, roped off, so there was lots of room to sit down, or sometimes lay down, and just hang out. And there were always interesting things to look at. One constant throughout the weekend is that about 80% of the attendees have Nintendo DSes, and so there is tons of Pictochat going (a built-in chatting/drawing program on the DS, which connects wirelessly to all nearby DSes). It couldn't handle the huge numbers of people, though, and it would lag and have all kinds of weird problems. But it was fun to see. And by the way - PAX is not remotely family-friendly. It's extremely friendly, I should point out, extremely, but about as vulgar as a drunken sailor who hammered his thumb on accident. Pictochat was the epitome of that vulgarity, and that's about all the details I'll give on that. I enjoy vulgarity, so it was fun. Anyway, I was talking about lines, and we'd often have to be in line for an hour or more for various things, but it was not bad. It still felt pretty fun even then.

And by the way, you all lose the betting pool. Except for important occasions like not blocking people behind us at panels (and sleeping), the hats stayed on the whole weekend!

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PAX Over

08:47 PM -- Sun August 31, 2008

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Actual discussion of how it went down to come soon. For now, it was pretty awesome! Also, I am a rock star.

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Busy Week

07:22 PM -- Tue August 26, 2008

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Well, it's all about preparing for the monolithic event that is PAX! I have finally developed the free games disc. Check out the menu it pops up when you put it in:


Let your eyes adjust to that mess! It really struck me that I have made a whole lot of games. And quite a variety too. Of course, two of those I didn't make, but it's still a lot. I go for quantity, not quality. It also makes me want to be full of yet more variety. I need to make more games that are really different from my existing ones. I don't know why, I just think that would be cool.

I'm working on the face of the CD right now, printed a sample but it has some issues I need to fix, then tomorrow I can produce, produce, produce. And that's my last day. Thursday is travel day! Gulp.

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Square Planet

04:42 PM -- Sat August 23, 2008

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Today in IRC, people were discussing what a game might be like if you ran around a small square planet (Mario Galaxy in 2D was the concept, I think). So I whipped up a thing to try it out.
Click in the window, then use left & right to move left and right, and up to jump. It's very wacky and very buggy, it's about an hour's work in a language I am very unfamiliar with. But it was a great exercise in learning flash! I picked up a bunch of new tricks. Interesting things to note include that you can fly and orbit the planet (in a wacky looping sort of orbit) very easily, and that the view rotating doesn't always work right (sometimes the planet gets scared), and that's generally it's very buggy. But it's interesting to check out. Enjoy some square gravity.

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Ow my knees!

09:59 PM -- Fri August 22, 2008

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Wii Fit arrived today! We tried it out just for 10 minutes each, and my knees are shot. I so need knee exercise. Wow. I'm really looking forward to the changing of my life that wii fit is required to provide. I might be wobbly tomorrow, though.

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Laid Back Gaming

05:49 PM -- Thu August 21, 2008

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WoW is a really laid-back game (most of the time). It doesn't demand a lot of mental effort, so I sit back on cruise control, clawing elementals in the face, and think about other things. I used to do the same thing while walking laps in elementary school. That was a much healthier way to get my think on.

So today, when I should've been working on Happyponygate, I played some WoW, clawed some elementals (which refuse to drop a dew gland!), and thought about Rise Of Owls. I have to be quite honest and confess that working on HPG is very difficult of late. I'm at a spot where I need to be working on how the monsters function, and it's just one of those things that I'll have to eventually settle down and just try something, but for now I mostly stare at the screen and hope it will write itself. Owls is fun to work on, though, I'm learning a lot and struggling to deal with classes and objects.

So here are the heroes I came up with today. Understand that most of the heroes (at least 2/3 of them) will just be ordinary - they do damage in some way, at some pace, and cost some money. But that's boring to think about. So I'm thinking about the more interesting ones! Here are some ideas (may or may not ever be in the game, but probably, why not?):

- An archer who fires golden arrows. He's way cheaper than he should be, considering how much damage he does (quite high, but not crazy), and his fire rate is rather slow, like 2 seconds. The problem is, golden arrows are expensive! It costs $1 every time he fires. So you don't pay much up front, but you keep on paying as long as he's around.

- An alchemist. He turns owls to gold. That's both good and bad news. He has a very low rate of fire, so he won't get every owl, in fact only a few in each level. Once an owl is gold, it is worth triple money (or more?). The problem is, it takes half damage per hit. So putting one of these guys in makes the game harder in exchange for raising your income.

- a knight on horseback. When he sees an enemy in his range (about half the screen), he charges at it, running right through it to the other end of the screen, hurting all the owls along the way. Then his new position is that end of the screen, where he sits for a few seconds before being able to charge again.

- a wizard with relatively short range. As long as he's not shooting, his power builds up. Then when he shoots, it drains away and