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  Hot Or Not? 08:48 PM -- Mon March 17, 2008  

Well, now you can rate Add On Worlds! Since often times worlds have been put together in world packs, you'll just have to rate the packs as a whole (which is fair - the player has to download the pack as a whole). Be kind to your fellow builders if you ever want them to build you anything again. And if you don't, be kind anyway, because your rating will be deleted if it's rude!

It is of course Web Monday, so that's what happened, along with a few new bits of Fan Art getting uploaded at last. I guess it may not sound like much, but hey, there's a whole new(ish) website feature, right?

Since a couple weeks ago, it has been spring here. Flowers popped out all around, the trees started budding, and it was warm and awesome. This past week, I had the windows open most of the day, with lovely warmth flowing through.

Then it snowed Saturday night. A lot. Now it's freezing cold, though the sun is struggling to right the wrongs of the weekend. Truly, these are the end days. Dogs and cats, living together... it's mass hysteria!
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  P.S. 01:30 PM -- Fri March 14, 2008  

I forgot to add a way to make money... I don't like that in Moon Invaders, the Mines reward you for performing badly (the longer you take to finish a level, the more money you make from mines). Well, I sort of like it, it creates a weird competing pressure, a reason not to be as powerful as possible. But anyway, I didn't want that here, so here is what I added:

SCRAPPER
Upgrades: flight speed, capacity, life
	Launches a Scrapbot.  If it's destroyed, another one is launched immediately.  Scrapbots go collect the wreckage of your enemies and haul them back to the Scrapper to be turned into Moonbucks.  This is the only way you make money, so having a reasonable supply of Scrappers is important.  Wreckage fades away if it's not collected for a long time, so you lose out on potential money if you don't have enough Scrappers.  You can upgrade the Scrapbot movement speed and how much wreckage it can carry.

(and under RESEARCH OPTIONS):
Scraptanium – Scrapbots are invincible.  Scrappers, of course, are not.

Note I added a corresponding research option. I always like symmetry, and having a research option that applies to each building is nice (though one option covers two buildings instead, and there are two options that cover all buildings, but I like that too).

And I also wanted to add that you can see here that this isn't really an informative enough document to make a game. It's really just notes to help me remember that I had this idea at all. The various details only really exist because it's fun for me to make them up. But now, years in the future, I can dig this file up and read it and have a laugh. Or I can actually build it! Who knows?
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  It's not a LOT like work, but... 01:05 PM -- Fri March 14, 2008  

Fridays are called Design Day at Hamumu lately, which means I get to play! Not actually play, but play around with ideas. Discussions in chat lately got me playing Moon Invaders (You should too, it's so fun, and you know I don't normally toot any horns). I was thinking I wanted to make Moon Invaders 2, so I thought I'd share with you the idea I just wrote up for that. It's kind of instructive also in that you can see how I write up ideas in rough form. Not a lot of numbers to be had, because those will always come out in testing - not much point deciding on them now! It's more about how it will feel and what options the player will have. So with no more such ado, here is the design document I wrote today:

MOON INVADERS 2

Oh no, now that the invaders have landed, they are heading into your secret caverns beneath the moon's surface where your moon people actually live!

This is still a tower defense game, but now it's a side scroller.  You are the enemies in a side-scrolling shooter.  The enemies actually maneuver and shoot.  There's an element of attrition, because of that.  Turrets take enormous abuse before dying, though.

You get to build your things on the top or bottom wall, which affects their usefulness, and badguys will try to avoid them, or maybe attack them.

LAUNCH BAY
Upgrades: rate, life, life of ships, damage
	Launches little suicidal fighters that dive into the enemies.  They can be shot.

BIG BAY
Upgrades: rate, life, ship life, damage
	Launches big attack ships that fly up and down shooting at enemies.  They gradually head towards the level start, so they can only do so much damage.  They pass right through enemies themselves, only dangerous by their bullets.

MISSILE TURRET
Upgrades: rate, damage, life, radius
	Fires homing missiles at a low rate.  They do big damage over a radius.

GUN TURRET
Upgrades: rate, damage, life
	Fires very rapidly and not too accurately.

TRACTOR BEAM
Upgrades: slowdown, pull, width, life
	Fires a beam that slows any enemy caught in it, and drags them toward the tractor beam.  It won't drag them closer than super close, no crashing.  The slowdown effect can reach 100% with max points (or with two or more tractor beams working together), but it is capped at 90%, and for each extra enemy in the field after the first, the effect is weakened on all of them by 5% (still, you can get 90% on many of them at once by having an overabundance of beam to start with).

CRUSHER
Upgrades: rate, limit, life
	Fires a death orb that can't miss and instantly kills the target.  Unfortunately, it will only fire at targets that are below 5% health.  Upgrading Limit raises how healthy the target can be.  It can also of course only fire so often, hence the Rate upgrade.

SHOCK GUN
Upgrades: effect, rate, targets, duration, life
	Fires an electrical beam at 1 or more targets, shocking them so they take more damage from all other attacks.  Effect upgrades boost how much extra damage they take.

RESEARCH OPTIONS:

Shields – All buildings have shields, which take damage before their life does.  The shields replenish over time, rapidly.

Repair bots – All buildings repair slowly over time.

Triple Shot – Attack ships fire in a triple shot formation.

Shrapnel – When a Crusher explodes, it fires out shrapnel in 8 directions, each doing 1/8 the damage that the crusher did (so raising Limit will boost this damage, as will the enemies simply being tougher).

Overload – Shock guns overload the weapon systems on the affected ships, cutting their fire rate in half.

Piercing Shots – Gun Turret shots pass through enemies to hit more.

Knockback – Missiles and kamikazes push the enemies back when they hit.

Shield Drain – Tractor Beams vaporize any shields the affected victim may have.

ENEMIES

Weenies – regular guys who shoot straight ahead.  They won't attack turrets, but try to line up to shoot your ships.

Bombers – Bigger, tougher, slower guys who fire diagonally up and down.  Their shots will of course hit turrets a lot.  They don't maneuver at all, just head in a line.

Boss – Super big, super slow, super tough, equipped with shields that replenish over time.  Fires a big spread shot that tends to annihilate your fighters and hurt your turrets a lot.  Also has a turret that fires directly at the nearest target of any type.

Missile – Doesn't attack at all, just rushes in very fast, with very little life.

Evil Missile – A red missile, just like the regular missile, but even less life – why evil?  Because it tries to divebomb your turrets (suicidal) for huge damage.  You definitely want to stop these.

Cruisers – Has a turret that aims at your nearest target, and shields.  Tougher than Weenies, weaker than Bombers (except for those darn shields).

Waves consist of an arrangement of all the enemy types (usually not all, of course).


So what do you think of that? Don't expect it to get made or anything. It's just another on the immense pile of ideas.
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  Mini Update 11:15 PM -- Wed March 12, 2008  

Small progress on many things:

- Trestles built and installed on Lego train set! I got to actually drive the train all the way around the full loop for the first time. Quite exciting. It has a real hard time getting up the hill, and can barely do it at all with 2 cars attached. Going downhill, it goes at light speed. Pictures to come in the future sometime.

- Worked on the Happyponygate pause screen stuff. Nothing exciting there, but I figured I had to tackle something I had a solid grasp on, just to get into it. It's got kind of a tab/folder setup for the different areas like Inventory, Goals, and Options.

- Titan Tunnels, just some design stuff.

- Hamtile the hammy tile editor is underway, but not really gotten anywhere. I decided to start it over using a different graphics system rather than building it out of Supreme. The advantage will be much better acceptance of windowed mode and playing more nicely with other programs and alt-tabbing. Also, the library (PixelToaster) is truecolor rather than 256 color, so it will be very quick and easy to adapt it to editing truecolor tiles when that becomes useful.

- All my WoW guys are level 34 today!

- Our apple trees are just on the brink of leafing out. It's fun that spring is here. I forgot what warm feels like.
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  Player Ratings! 05:58 PM -- Mon March 10, 2008  

I've said before that Mondays are for website work, and new feature ahoy! Players can now rate our games. You have to have an account to rate, which I feel like is kind of a cheap shot on my part - I'm sure it will bias things in my favor. I mean, after all, the people who bother to make a Dumb Account are the type to think highly of the games. But I really don't like when things can be used by anonymous internet folks. It rarely goes well. I'd hate to spend all my time deleting virtual graffiti. So if that means I have to settle for slightly biased reviews, well, that's my cross to bear.

If this system goes well, I'll expand it to cover the add-on worlds and fan art. I'm a little leery to do it, because I know there will be some hurt feelings as people make comments that aren't entirely friendly, but I will certainly moderate it heavily. Feel free to be harsh on my games if you want, though! Anyway, go check it out and get some ratings in there.
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  Sneak Peek: Happyponygate & Titan Tunnels 01:05 PM -- Thu March 6, 2008  

Today was artwork day. I'm going to get back to work on that tile editing program, but the emphasis for Thursdays is supposed to be 3D art, so I did just that:

This is the seedier side of London... The game begins with you heading down an alley (in order to railroad you through a couple key things before you can be set free on the world), so we've got dumpsters and trash cans. And yes, the trash in both is actually the stuffing from LL2 teddy bears! Then we've got the postbox and phone booth, both of which I researched on Google images! Then I took liberties with them. Phone booths are going to be a key component. I'm not entirely sure of their exact function yet, but since nobody else is in town, you need to interact with people somehow! Phone booths may relate to saving your game in a way, but since your progress is always saved as you go, I'm not quite sure what way. They will probably act as 'respawn points'. The mailbox is just decoration, though.

And of course, it's the Warrior for Loonyland 3! In case you are having a fit of hysterical blindness, he is very much based on the Bunny Knights from LL2. I know he's not all that exciting, but other characters will get more interesting. After all, he's the warrior. How much more generic can you get? I may actually go back after I've made some other characters and re-do him. There's an interesting different style I came up with for another game idea I had, kind of like living Weebles, which I might consider for these guys. But then again, this is a Loonyland game, it makes sense to look like LL2.

Plus, this way I can turn Tina Tsarina into a class. Gladiator, perchance? And I always liked Phileas' goggle look. He could be some kind of Engineer type. And of course, the guy whose name I can't remember who runs the Magic Box. And what about Healiana? She's all set to be some kind of healing class (Druid sounds about right - it's medieval for hippy).

Also, it is my theory that this Loonyland game will actually be titled Loonyland 3: Age Of Heroes. It fits into the Loonyland storyline in a fairly odd way, in that it takes place long before Loony came around, when the land had many heroes (hence your collection of assorted characters). I don't know that that's the right title, but it keeps running around in my head. I always knew the game wouldn't further the storyline any, but at least now it connects to it in a sense, instead of being some random side thing. It's actually inspired a very minor twist to how things will play out in the end. But very minor.
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  Biz: Good Article 07:18 PM -- Tue March 4, 2008  

Here's an article about the concept of 1,000 True Fans: Read me

I actually only kind of skimmed it so far. I need to read it more thoroughly, then read it again a few times. It speaks to exactly how I want to run my business, and how I inadvertently have. Not that I think I've got 1,000 people yet who fit the mold of True Fan, but I've got a bunch. The trick, and what I need to concentrate on, is not acquiring new fans (as nice as that is), but being fanworthy. Keeping my True Fans really interested and providing them lots of reasons to stay fully invested in Hamumudom. It's a very interesting thing to think about, and kind of a different angle on business - usually these things are focused on how you can capture people with ads or viral connections or whatever. I definitely like the idea of nurturing relationships with the true fans a lot more. Unlike marketing, it's something I can figure out! Maybe.
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  Supposed 01:21 PM -- Tue March 4, 2008  

Here is what I am supposed to be doing today: artwork, with an emphasis on tiles, as opposed to objects and characters. That's my new Tuesday job.

Here is what I am actually doing today: programming. But wait! It's appropriate! I decided I hate having to fire up my old computer to do artwork, and short of spending actual money on things, there's only one solution: make a tile editor! It's going to be a fun little project, that should be handy for world builders anyway, and will give me a lot more of the most useful tile-editing utilities than a standard paint program has. And I know trouble with creating tiles has been a very hot topic on the forums as everybody seems to have some problem or another. So this will be good all around.

I haven't actually written any code yet, so here I go...
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  Trains By Request 12:59 PM -- Fri February 29, 2008  

Someone asked yesterday for me to report on my train layout construction. Well, I hadn't actually DONE anything with it since pretty much the last report. But the request inspired me! So I got onto it and did some things, and it's sort of underway. Here's the overview currently:



I'm trying to show a huge area in a small picture, so it's hard to see what's going on. First of all, there are my two trains - lower down you see the santa claus train which is hauling Christmas trees and toys (really, I want to seriously edit that train... bleh. But I love the actual style of it, very old-fashioned locomotive). On the right side is the big cargo train, with a crane, a box car, a ... buckety car, and an actual automotive car on a car. That train is motorized. It has a hard time with slopes, however. It can only haul two cars up the slope, and it struggles to do that.

That slope is in fact the big issue. See at the top of the picture, a series of increasing trestles raising the track. You probably can't tell, but over in the top left of the picture, the track is greatly elevated (the track where the santa train is headed), held up by a random assortment of ugly legos. The flat track behind that is actually supposed to be attached to it, but without support, it falls. So building that series of trestles is my current issue. I'm making the track go up so it can go under itself, which is something I truly demand in any train set. See the pile of black legos in the middle of the picture, next to the yellow train station? Those are pretty much all the black legos I own. And they are not remotely enough to make my trestles! I did a bunch of research, played around with Lego Designer (really cool software!), and designed a super cool trestle:

Lego Designer actually creates an instruction set for it, too, which you can watch animated as it builds your model. That thing is so cool. Anyway, this was my trestle design (the tallest size, what is needed at the peak of the hill). But Lego Designer also has another handy feature, where it shows you what the price would be to buy those pieces individually from Lego Shop-At-Home... and it was $4.30. That's not a lot of money, until you think about how many trestles I need (around 40, though admittedly, they get smaller and smaller, so maybe multiply that price by around 20 "only"). That's crazy talk.

So I hit Ebay, and discovered a great place selling big lots of pieces, and have just now ordered a few hundred black pieces of various shapes, at massively cheaper prices than what Lego charges. Sadly, I couldn't get the big slope pieces I have in that design, but I got stuff that will make some good ones. I have literally thousands more Legos to use... too bad I have extremely few of any given specific shape and size! It's kind of frustrating.

In other news, I also need some more track, as you can see. Just one more box of track should do the trick - right under the caboose of the santa train is a cross track, so I just need enough to cover from the end of that switching piece to the cross. The layout is kind of a big figure-8, and the part with the cross-piece is sort of a shortcut.

And here is the one building I have made for my town. You can't really tell how dumpy it is in this picture, but I took advantage of the fact that my Legos are very old and dirty to build slum housing. After all, housing right next to train tracks is not typically upscale. In the upstairs apartment, a woman is beating her husband with a wrench (see, he's got his arms up to protect his face), and their downstairs neighbor is pounding on the ceiling with a broom, telling them to shut up. It's the kind of adorable slice of life you find at Legoland! Well, sorta. Later, I will make a bunch of police cars that have been called to the scene.

Also, speaking of slum housing, look at the stuffing coming out of that couch! That's what happens when you live with cats. That's our old couch by the way, we have taken much better care of our current one.
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  Mmmm 12:49 PM -- Thu February 28, 2008  

Mmm, Primal Strips. Thai peanut flavor.

Yesterday, I played WoW for wayyyy long, because I was just having a blast! Wait, this is going somewhere with merit. But first, let me say that I take back my displeasure with the Paladin class. I'm having more fun on my Paladin than anyone else except the Hunter. I think it's mainly because of the quests she's been on, very epic things. Which leads me to the meritorious portion of today's commentary:

Quelastima, my mighty Paladin, got a quest a looong time ago, which I finally accomplished. It's a great quest - you need to go around the world to four very different areas to collect the components that a smith needs to craft you a special weapon. The downside is that the places you need to go are inside "instances", which are areas where you need to go with a group to stay alive. I don't do groups, so instead I just ignored the quest until I got powerful enough to do by myself (and consequently, it was worth almost no XP). So this was really my first in-depth experience with instances. Well, previously I had done Ragefire Chasm (with an actual group!), but that one is lame - it's basically just a regular area filled with monsters that are tougher than normal.

And it was fun! The fun I had going into these places and seeing the simple story-tellish nature of them got me thinking about the random nature of Titan Tunnels. You can definitely have fun in a random dungeon. You sort of make your own stories - you come around a corner and Gorthagg The Unpleasant is there, and you engage in this long fight, hiding around corners and plinking away and just barely surviving his Death Noodles and healing up just in time. That's what you get in a random game. But in a hand-made adventure, you can still have that same thing - the designer places Gorthagg somewhere, and you have that same encounter. Repeated visits are diminished, since you know exactly where he is and the environment you'll face him in, but your first meeting is just the same as in the random scenario. Then the other fun you get in a hand-made adventure is that these "story events" will happen, at cleverly paced and plotted moments. In a random scenario, you may hack away at Zorp Worms for an hour before anything of any interest happens. A hand-made adventure is always interesting, assuming competent design.

What does that all mean? Well, what I'm considering, as a possibility anyway, is to make Titan Tunnels not a random game, but give it a series of Quests. A Quest, in this case, is like a Supreme level - you lay out the walls and monsters, and throw in special events where you need. The player would choose which quest to tackle from their town, depending on which ones were available to them, and what level they were at. I would want people to be able to make their own Quests, so the options for a player are always growing. There are some serious issues with that that would need working out, though. That's a whole separate issue from the editability that allows you to make your own entire world (classes, items, monsters, bullets). That's easier, but it fragments the game - I'd want you to be able to make quests that go in the original 'world', rather than having to make a new world of your own to hold your quests. It's hard to explain. But the presence of an unending collection of user-made quests would be a fitting substitute for random generation, in terms of keeping the game always new. And it would of course have the benefit I talked about above, of offering a sense of story and interesting events. Lastly, of course, I'm always very aware that Supreme is what keeps this site alive - I'm always feeling the need to offer more editing opportunities. It's user creation that drives community.

Anyway, it's something I'm considering. I have hundreds of hours worth of stuff to do before I even have to worry about what format the maps will be in, and how they'll be generated. Everything about that game (and Happyponygate) is feeling very far away right now though... so much to be done. It makes me tired enough to play WoW (or avoid work by writing a huge journal entry).
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