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  Blockworld Round 1 11:57 AM -- Mon January 31, 2005  

If you haven't been digging around the forums, you don't know about Blockworld. It's a test program I've made to see about how fast my 3D idea can work on everybody's computers. If you haven't tried it, or even if you have since I made a new version today, please download Blockworld Test. It's a ZIP file, you should be able to just unzip it into its own directory or something like that. Inside are 6 batch files - windowed mode and full screen mode versions of small, big, and huge maps. If you run any of them, here are the instructions:

The mouse lets you look around (warning, in fullscreen you might get seasick!). Hold down the left button to move forward, right button to move backwards. You always stay at the same height, even if you look up or down, there's no moving up or down.
The number in the upper left of the screen is your current framerate (beneath that is the number of polygons it's drawing, which will be constant). I need to know what framerates you get on the different maps and windowed/fullscreen, and what speed your computer is. Huge will most likely be very awful, but that's okay, it's a stress test. The hope is that Big will work well. If you get a framerate of "1.$" for an extended period, try to notice if it's flowing along smoothly while saying that, or if it's jerking and chunking along. 1.$, not being an actual number, can somehow be either good or bad, I've discovered.
You'll note that your framerate (unless it stays maxed out) goes up or down depending on what you're looking at, so try to give a range of the worst and best speeds you get. Keep the numbers you get from each different size map and different screen mode separately, they don't really relate (other than that hopefully you'll do a lot better on smaller maps than bigger!).
If it's an absolute slideshow even on Small, you probably don't have working openGL drivers (although it shouldn't start up if you don't - it should take you to a webpage on our site that tells you about openGL drivers instead). Let me know about that too!
If you find the textures offensively ugly, which they are, you can edit tiles.tga to your liking.

You can post your results on the Making Dumb Games forum ("Frame Rate Test For Fancy 3D Blocks" topic), as comments on this journal, or e-mail me.

I really appreciate any help you can give me. It's important for me to get this info, because if it doesn't work on your computer and you don't tell me, you might not be able to play the next fantabulous Hamumu release!! That would be a tragedy!

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  Speculation is fun! 03:05 PM -- Mon January 24, 2005  

Look at you all speculating about the mysterious 3D thing! And to think, I almost gave up on 3D today because it was so tangled up. But now I have upgraded from a colored spinning pyramid to a textured spinning cube, and a lot more underlying code that means that cube is a lot more meaningful than the pyramid too. I almost think I might be getting somewhere, but I wouldn't count on it.

If you haven't voted in this poll please do so ASAP. Read the first post to get more details on exactly what you're voting on. This is no silly waste of time, but a really vital decision, and you have a say in where it goes!

My game Art Attack is currently being looked over by other board game designers on a forum, and the comments so far (in the 4 hours or so it's been up...) have been really positive! I don't know what's up with that. If it keeps up, it will be very gratifying, but not terribly helpful. Some people have suggestions, but they mostly seem to want to make it even more random than it already is! I'm going to have to ask why they think that.

Hey, why don't you check out the game yourself!? Crazy idea! The rules and the cards are both DOC files, you can get the rules here and the cards here. If you are handy with scissors or a papercutter, you can even print up your own prototype to play. Feel free to post comments about it right here.
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  Get Rich The Dumb Way! 11:45 AM -- Wed January 19, 2005  

Hey, I've added a new page to the site, currently not linked from anywhere... guess I should add a link on the company page. It's the Affiliate page, and it lets you sign up to sell our games on your website for a (LARGE) commission. This is for people with big established websites, as you'll see on the page, not just anybody. I'd love to extend it out to everybody in the world, and just see who can bring me sales, but the payment processing would be way too much work. So we'll check out prospective affiliates and make sure you've got some decent traffic and a nice website and that we think you'll get some sales. If so, we'll sign you up and you can start getting (me) rich! Check out the details at http://hamumu.com/affiliate.php.

I'm still experimenting, on the development side. I'm putting together a 3D engine, and it's a whole lot of confusing work. I keep getting just plain stuck and lost, not sure what to work on next to actually end up with something that I won't have to rewrite a week later. Right now, the 'game' consists of a 3D triangle spinning on a black screen. Awfully fun! There's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff written though. It just needs to find its way to the screen. What I'm trying to do is make a 3D system that can create a world out of blocks that the player can wander in (and a world builder can create). The blocks will be like the tiles in Dr. Lunatic, only stacked up in 3D space! So of course, there will be a jump button.

We're also putting a lot of work, way way in advance, into preparing for a trip to Mexico in spring. I've never been out of the country, how scary! I've also not taken a vacationy vacation since my honeymoon!

And NO it's not Loonyland 2.
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  MiniMac 05:56 PM -- Wed January 12, 2005  

I never thought it'd happen, but I did it... I bought one of these! It's smaller than my laptop (of course, my laptop has a monitor and keyboard...)! So I'm one step closer to porting things to the mac. Two steps maybe, since I was at $0 in Mac profits until now, and now I'm more like $-700 in profits, so I have some incentive. Hope it's a good purchase. Porting won't be easy, and I'm going to outsource the old games, but for future games, I'm developing them in a cross-platform way, so I'll try them out on the mac as well as the PC and get them going from the beginning. It's a whole new world of issues to deal with, pretty scary. But people who have games on both say they get at least 50% sales from the mac side, so my sales could double! Sounds worth it. I hope.
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  Hammy New Year 10:53 PM -- Sun January 9, 2005  

A while back I said I'd let you know in a couple days what is happening in the new year with Hamumu. Well, now it's a lot of days later, so here goes:

1. We got to play both Arthouse and Dramedy (read a couple journals back for details) with my family and they went over like ice cream sandwiches with a side of gold nuggets! That means they were greatly enjoyed. I was really surprised at just how well they did, and a second game of arthouse was pretty much put together without me (luckily, they let me join in though), they just wanted to play again. Dramedy had some flaws which I think I've addressed to some extent, but really I can't find any problems with Arthouse! It just plain worked. Of course, it'd be nice to actually try these games with non-family members and get some more heartless feedback, but it's a start. At the end of this month, I'll have them looked over by other game designers at a board game designer's forum, and we'll see what they say, then from there it's pretty much just more playtesting and then letters to publishers!

2. Unfortunately, it's not time to share what the next Hamumu project is. I thought it would be, but after some hefty research and investigation, I've discovered that I need to do some more research. But hopefully by the end of this month, the stuff I'm hoping will pan out will, and I'll be deep in the design and development of a new game. When that happens, I'll be very open about it, not secretive like usual, and I'll get all kinds of input from you guys to help make it really Hamumuey. I decided there's 3 things you guys really want: more Dr. Lunatic-type gameplay, a level editor, and lots of secret junk. So that's the goal.

3. I'm making a real push into advertising and marketing stuff this year, as well as shooting to get the burden of CDs off my back, and automate as much else as I can too. I want to be able to just focus on making games. I should be rolling out an affiliate program this week (where, if you run a large popular website, you can sign up to sell our games on it for a very hearty commission) as the first bit of all that.

2005 is going to be the Year Of Dumb! We're taking over this place.
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  Tsunami Aid 10:49 AM -- Mon January 3, 2005  

Saw this on another site, and smacked my forehead and said "Duh!". For the month of January, 25% of all sales will be donated to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief for victims of the tsunami. So now's the time to buy some games! Or you know what's a better idea? Donate 100% to the victims, by clicking the big one-click give button at amazon.com. But you're welcome to buy games too.
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  Ho Ho OW 12:42 PM -- Mon December 27, 2004  

Here's my Christmas story for you. I woke up early Christmas morning, excited to go see what was out in my stocking, so I pulled on my shirt... and fell on the floor gasping and yelling. It turns out that once you're older than dirt (30), shirts are something to be feared. They can strike without warning and grip you in their iron clutches, mercilessly tearing at your flesh and bones. So I spent my first old man Christmas laying on the couch and floor, with my back thrown out. From trying to pull on a shirt. It actually still hurts a lot today, and I can't turn my head all the way to the right, but on the 25th, it was unbelievable how painful it was. Really quite an experience. I decided it was teaching me that on this Christmas day, not everybody can enjoy presents and fun. Some people, such as me, instead must lie in pain, or hunger, or just plain poverty. So I took a moment to reflect on that between agonized moans.

But mostly we carried on our nice Christmas celebration together, our first ever with just the two of us and the cats. It was really quiet and nice, especially since I didn't have to do any of the cooking or cleaning as I lay on the couch. We had monkey bread for breakfast, opened lots of cool presents (including one of those TV Games things, so we can play Ms. Pac Man, Pole Position, and most importantly Mappy on the TV with great ease!), and settled in to watch holiday movies. We saw Bad Santa, The Hebrew Hammer, and Elf (actually not all on Christmas day, but thereabouts).

That's my Christmas tale! I'll pop back in in a day or two to share the near-future Hamumu plans, now that the Supreme patch is finally done.
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  Board Games 10:49 AM -- Mon December 20, 2004  

Still working on that patch, just cleaning up the loose ends. In the meantime, here's an update on some Hamumu board game ideas that may or may not ever happen, so you can drop me comments to say what you think of these ideas! All titles are temporary, just what we've come up with offhand.
  • Dramedy - A party game where players divide into two teams, and one person from each team goes up to be an actor. The two actors act out a scene together (the scene chosen by combining phrases from cards), and each one has an emotion card which tells them which emotions to be using during the scene. Their team has to shout out what emotion they think they are seeing to earn points. But there's a tricky bit... either actor can yell "Cut!" at any time to end the scene and collect their points (only the one who cuts gets points), so you want to hang on to get more of your emotions guessed, but you also have to cut the scene before your opponent!
  • Arthouse - Another party game. Every player but one draws a picture, then they must present it to the one who didn't draw (the Critic), who ranks all the pictures secretly, then auctions them off to the players in a standard bidding system. Then the next player becomes the Critic, and the same thing happens, until everyone has been the Critic once. Then the rankings of pictures are revealed, and the person who has the most critically acclaimed art collection wins! It's a game of guessing how a given Critic will like a given piece, and outbidding your opponents.
  • Art Attack - Moving slightly more towards strategy, but still pretty partyesque. Inspired by the previous game, in this game each player gets a hand of cards with things on them such as "Eye Beam - All monsters with two or more eyes fire eyebeams at a chosen target, doing 1 damage for every 4 eyes they have (minimum 1 damage)". They study the hand of cards they're dealt, then have 60 seconds to draw a monster any way they like. Then they all slap their monsters down on the table, have a good laugh, and go around playing their cards in order to hopefully kill the other monsters. The meat of the game lies in the arguments over what exactly is an eye, or whether that whiplike appendage counts as an arm, or especially on some of the more unique cards, questions like "which monster looks the most like it needs glasses?".
  • Thanksgiving Dinner - A solitaire game of laying tiles. You draw tiles and place them to create a thanksgiving dinner table and the people sitting at it. You score points by putting people together that would be happy chatting, keeping enemies apart, avoiding lefties bumping elbows with righties, and putting hungry people near the turkey and vegetarians near the salad. Try to beat your high score!
  • Allowance - A card game where each player is a kid from the 50's, trying to save up money for the toy you really want during the summer. Which toy that is is drawn from a deck of cards, so one player may need to save up for a bike, while another is just going for a yo-yo. That would be unfair, but the one saving for a bike has much more Motivation, which is the 'currency' you use to bid on chores you're willing to do to earn the money. Other special cards like friends that come over and summer jobs that provide a steady income add to the mix. First person to save up enough for their toy wins... but watch out for Fads, when suddenly everybody wants the newest thing!
  • High School - A very unique and fairly abstract game of laying down cards. Each card has a bunch of people on it - Punks, Goths, Nerds, and Jocks. The goal is to make large groups of one type of person - a Clique. But to claim a clique, you need to play a special item adjacent to it: a Switchblade, Skull, Calculator, or Football, depending on the type of Clique. There are also Principals that disrupt Cliques, and Lockers that just take up space. Each Clique also has special bonus point rules, like Jocks are bullies, so you get a bonus point for each Jock in the Clique that neighbors a Nerd.
I haven't test-played any of these games, and most of them don't even have all of their cards designed. I'm really exploring different avenues and ideas, and I can't wait to see what happens this Christmas when I try to get my family to play the two party games. What do you think of them all? There are a bunch of others too, but these are among my favorites, and the ones that are easier to describe (there are a few others I really like, but they'd just be too hard to explain, given my exceptional verbosity). Later, I'll post complete rules to one of them that can be played with a standard deck of cards. I still have never had a chance to try it, because it requires at least 4 players, so I have no idea if it's even playable, but maybe you'll try it and let me know!
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  Workin It 04:51 PM -- Fri December 17, 2004  

Every few months I embark on a new schedule to make myself work. It always lasts a couple weeks, then sorta fades away (unless some big interruption happens, like a holiday or a trip - then it just drops dead). I always really enjoy it though, especially making up the schedule, which is quite entertaining, putting things in boxes and all. I'm messy and lazy, but I love organization and planning. It's fun.

This latest schedule was started this Monday. I include categories for all kinds of things, not just working on games, for a couple of reasons. Foremost is that I very rarely do any work on marketing or the website or other business things, so by scheduling time for that, I make sure I actually end up doing some. Secondly, I schedule time for other things that aren't business, like chores, playing around with Fruity Loops (my music program), time set aside for "Art" (without requiring what the art is for), and for "Fun Read" (reading fiction) and "Work Read" (reading stuff that will help me in work or in life), and others. I schedule these because if I am left to my own devices, I will just take the path of least resistance: programming and art on a game for 6 hours or so (heavily interspersed with mind-boggling amounts of web-surfing), then crashing and watching TV or playing games the rest of the day. It hurts my overall energy level, probably hurts my productivity, and means I never actually do anything but work and laze about. So scheduling these other activities, which I enjoy but never do, keeps me ... I don't know, more a part of the world or something. Makes me more complete. It's too easy to just lounge around, life is better with a little challenge. I don't know how challenging reading fiction is, but if I don't schedule it, I never make time for it.

So, this schedule is being pretty fun. One thing I got done is visible atop your browser - the pages now have good titles instead of all being called "Hamumu Software: Dumb Games For Your PC" (the home page is still titled that). I also contacted a site about advertising, finished the Supreme patch pretty much (coming soon!), and actually did a chore or two, which may be a record. So it's good. I actually only have 10 hours of the week scheduled for game development (plus 2 more hours for updating old games and 5 hours for working on board games), which is probably much too low, but it's the right thing for now - I haven't started in on a new game yet, and I'm just using that time to patch Supreme. I don't consider the schedule set in stone or anything, it'll change when needed, and it's good that I'm putting effort into some other directions of my life. When I'm in the middle of serious game development, I'll up it to 3-4 hours a day or so (and when I get really into it, I'll be doing it in my off-hours too). If this schedule lasts that long! It has to make it through Christmas and New Year's!

Journals are boring, huh?
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  Happy birthday to me 05:34 PM -- Fri December 10, 2004  

So what's been going on? Well, we're back from the trip, and a large part of the initial return involved cleaning up the house and shipping tons of orders (felt good to ship that many in one day! Except for how horribly much work it was! If I ever succeed to the point were I'm selling 20 CDs a day, I'm really going to need to set up a better system for it). Now things are more over with and back to normal (good pile of orders still though, hooray!). I'll get back to some Supreme updating today, I've got several specific issues to work on there. Also, today Sol will pick the top 50 Winter Wackiness names, and I'll try to get the voting up ASAP. I'm going to make the voting period just a couple days... it's not life or death as to which names get picked! So I don't yet know the official WW schedule, but it should start soon. And the new Supreme patch should be out later this month with luck. That's what's going on.

I've also gotten obsessively into board games (as you may have heard) - and by the way, Chez Goth is not very good - and come up with about a dozen board/card/party game ideas that I really want to do something with. One of them is the fairly obvious choice, Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Cards. Problem is, that's a whole lot of cards! It could easily be done as a collectible card game (like Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering), but I would feel like I was robbing people with the way those games work. Maybe it'd be a basic set and an expansion or two. There are over 200 monsters in Supreme, you know, and I'd like to have more than just monsters in the deck... but can you imagine a deck of over 250 cards? That's 5 normal decks tall! Try shuffling that. Well, there'd be savings with stuff like only having one Roly Poly, and stuff like that, but it'd still be well over 150 monsters.

In general though, I'd like to add non-computer games to the lineup, but I'll have to try out my designs and see if they're any fun first. Then I have to figure out how to get the components made and all! Kinda fun really. Speaking of what I see in the corner of my screen, I better change Yerfdog over, he's still eating leftovers from Thanksgiving. And I need to do a newsletter... gee whiz.
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