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  Yea, Verily 04:36 PM -- Wed August 5, 2009  

I'm having fun, having blocked out a couple hours 3 days a week for "Hamumu art". So not knowing what else to do, I've been making these Snuggly Bunny units! I won't be needing them for a very long time, but it's fun to do, and productive.

This is of course the Priest. He'll have a marginally more interesting name than that eventually (Order Priest? He may be more specific than that... Loonyland has a religious system we haven't discussed!). His holy censer is a lot like a mace with a hula hoop, so I hope he finds a slot in his move list for "Bonk".

What you can't see that I think is kind of cool is that like all Snuggly soldiers, he has a bunny hat. His, however, is a hood with the ears on top, so since the hood is pulled back, the ears are hanging down his back (you can kinda see a bit of them behind his arms). But, this being a 'board-game' where guys don't ever face away from you, you'll never see them! Oh well.
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  Bunny Stats 06:01 PM -- Tue August 4, 2009  

This is tech stuff that many people won't care about, but I know I dig right into things like this when it's for a game I'm excited about (Diablo III...), so here you go:

I'm settling on the specific stats that units will have in LL Tactics. It's not actually final, and I'll probably find some I need to add later, but these are currently the stats:
  • Might: most physical skills base damage on this
  • Brains: most magical skills base damage/healing/etc on this
  • Guts: your max life
  • Feets: movement points per turn
  • Armor: reduces damage taken when hit
  • Eyes: tiles of vision
The only reason we have both Might and Brains (which are the exact same thing, but applicable to different types of skills) is simply so that I can have Commander talents that boost one or the other. You wouldn't want "Might Of The Hedgehog" to increase how much your healers heal for, would you? So other than that, Might and Brains are pretty straightforward. An Order Knight will have something like "Slash: hit the target for [Might] damage." (where [Might] is replaced by the actual stat value, dependent on your talents). Other skills might do "does [Might/4] damage to everyone in a radius", so it's based on Might, not necessarily the exact amount (maybe [Might x 2 + 7] sometimes!).

So why stats at all? Why not just say "Slash: does 5 damage." in the skill? First off, as I mentioned, your Commander has talents which affect the Might of all units (or specific ones), so it's nice that they can boost the damage of everything without reading like an encyclopedia ("Slash does +1 damage, Whirlwind does +2, Axe Bonk does +1..."). Secondly, a unit might buff its allies with "+2 Might to all adjacent units" or something. If instead that were "Adjacent units do +2 damage" it would unfairly boost weaker attacks (like that [Might/4] one) and have a minimal effect on big ones. Also fun here is that it can boost Might or Brains - makes sense for magical stuff to get magically enhanced by one guy, and warrior stuff to get cranked up by a different one. Without stats, that would again be a laundry list. I am also considering (maybe not at release...) having various items your Commander can get which boost the stats of your units. So stats are nice.

That's about all the stats I'm sure that I need. Some others might sneak in there. Conflating healing spells and damaging ones into one stat is iffy, but you don't need 500 different stats!

And yeah, Armor probably needs a Dumber name, but I'm not sure what.
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  Boing Boing 06:05 PM -- Mon August 3, 2009  


It's a Bunny Rider! Well, work in progress, anyway. Note that when riding a bunny, the Order Knight can wear much heavier armor, since he doesn't have to walk. I know the bunny looks sickly, but green is the color used to specify "this changes color according to what team you are on", so it will actually only look sickly when on the green team. I'm not sure I actually want the bunny fur to change based on team, but it'll probably look nice, very pastel easter funtime. I'm also considering making units not change color at all, but sit on top of colored base pieces, to further emphasize the board game aspect. And that way the base pieces can be different shapes as well, so colorblind people aren't lost. Their life meters could be embedded in the base too.

I just got movement working! On my copy at home (not playable online yet), there is now an Order Knight you can click on to order around the map! It's so advanced that it's basically back at the point it was during Behind The Dumb #1. Pretty amazing.
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  Daily!? Sketch #8: The Headless Dinosaurman 05:02 PM -- Mon August 3, 2009  

I'm back! I have a spot in my actual schedule for "morning doodles" now. It's 15 minutes long, so that's how long I had to make:

The headless dinosaurman! I was really running out of time by the time I got to the rider, so I was just whipping along with him. He's some sort of hippy in cargo pants. Then I was even more completely out of time when I got to his head, so I decided not to bother trying to make one and just threw a pumpkin on there, thus headless dinosaurman. Which makes you consider how silly it is that "horseman" means a guy who rides a horse.

Also, I don't like the striped strap on the dinosaur's neck, but that was really in the absolute last seconds, not even time to erase the stripes.
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  New Hamumu All Over! 08:24 PM -- Wed July 15, 2009  

In more new Hamumu news, my office has become new!


I don't know if I've discussed this before - I think I did on Behind The Dumb - but a while ago, I moved my office out of the actual office and into the living room. When I lost my laptop, I no longer had a handy way to come out and spend the evening with the family and still play WoW work on stuff and help out customers. So I just moved the office out here to solve the issue.

What this picture shows is that today, I expanded my operation to make life more productive and better. I moved my old computer out here in an L with my new one (I practically AM in an office at this point), so I have no excuses! I can work on 3D Studio with great ease, as well as use my favorite and handiest audio-editing programs. So this whole place is becoming quite the command center. And the cats like it, too. They never had any room to be on my desk before I added the new section. I also added a table, which is what's in the corner of the L, occupied by Ollie.

In the grand tradition of keeping monitors very carefully supported in case of earthquake, the newly-arrived monitor is on a shoebox, labeled Anatomical Comfort, which is indeed what it provides, because putting the monitor down on table-level would be hard on the ol' neck. And the funky round alien next to that box is my amazing microphone, which doesn't work with Vista.

I gave Blender a shot at replacing 3DS, and I did learn how it works (basically), and can build a model in it reasonably, but getting remotely good at it would take a whole lot longer than moving this desk did, so I used the ol' noggin (directly above the ol' neck) and worked out this non-learning-based solution instead. Remember kids, never learn if you can avoid it.
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  Monster Collection 05:30 PM -- Mon July 6, 2009  

Hamumu has a large collection of monsters from the large collection of games. So why not let you, the Dumb Folks, collect the collection of monsters from the collection?
The collection is just a fun thing to have. Every account gets a random set of 5 monsters. Some are rarer than others. Then, via a very simple process you will discover, you can gradually gain more of them. It's just a little thing to encourage interacting with your fellow Hamumoids. Then I can also use these little monster cards in the future for some other stuff, like a web-RPG like Kingdom of Loathing! That's not in the works, but I always like the idea.

Big thanks to the guys who are right now helping me by making these pictures (it's a tiresome job, I can tell you after doing a whopping two of them)! Two thumbs up to AtkinsSJ, Bunnybot5000, and SpaceManiac who are the ones who've actually already sent me the first batch they did. Don't let that pressure you other guys who signed up to do it, though - I sure didn't expect same-day results! It's quite amazing. Now how can I get you guys to write my games for me...
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  Awesomeness! 09:02 PM -- Thu June 18, 2009  


This will be on your Dumb Page. I mean, come on. That could be the entire website and it would rule.

By the way, I am sending this over my fabulous new wireless internet! No more satellite for me! Actually, this has its flaws to be sure. I'm getting massive lag spikes (5-10 seconds each) at random, quite often, and every so often, a web page will fail to load (I even got kicked out of WoW once!). But between those problems, it's like a dream of a wispy cloud on a Summer's day. I've gone from 2500ms ping to 25ms. A hundredfold improvement is alright (okay, usually it's more like 100ms), when it's not spiking me in the face. I'm not yet positive this is actually better, but a lot of the time, it sure feels nice.
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  Hamchat 05:42 PM -- Wed June 17, 2009  

Like I said yesterday, I am sick of the chat kicking people out! I think one of the major causes of the demise of our chat is that people can't lurk in it for long without being unceremoniously dumped out. Incidentally, it's not supposed to do that, but their tech support could offer no help that fixed it. But that's okay, because Hamchat fixes that and a lot more!


Hamchat is the glue that holds the entire new site together. It's a small chat window, which lives at the bottom of every page of the site! You don't log into it, you're always in it if you're logged on. Guests can see it, but not chat themselves. So first off, there's chat - a permanently functioning chatroom that won't kick you out no matter how lazy you are. Second off, it's always there - wanna chat, no matter where you are? Scroll down! Thirdly, everybody's in it, so there's never a shortage of chatters (well, maybe late at night there is).

Fourthistically, and this is where it becomes glue, it's not just chat! The Hamchat is like the in-game chat in your favorite online game (okay, I'm thinking of WoW). When your guildie gets an achievement, the WoW chat says "[Zandero] has achieved [The Golden Amazingness]!". Guess what happens at Hamumu when someone earns a trophy? Trophies are just part of that, though. There will be many other events chronicled going on. New member signups, maybe posts you've chosen to subscribe to (just thought of that, how intriguing! Maybe tough to code), webgame-related things, and things you don't know about yet. Hamumu Clubhouse is an MMO.
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  I Surrender! 01:03 PM -- Tue June 16, 2009  

Okay, okay! The outcry is simply too much. Clearly, Hamumu Clubhouse was a terrible name idea. So I've listened to your suggestions, and there was one in particular that really stood out for me. I know exactly what I want to do with the site now (clearly, I was just nuts before, and I apologize). Behold, the actual new Hamumu logo:


Yes! That was the best idea ever, and thank you very much to Kerma for coming up with it! So now we have a new mascot, Penny the Pen! I know some people are going to really miss Yerfdog, but you can still see him in Supreme With Cheese, and maybe he'll even show up in some future games. I'm not just dropping the guy! But Penny is the new face of Hamumu. She's sassy, she's a pen, and she appeals to women! We've also got a new color scheme, because the all-blue was getting really old.

In addition to this new look (please remember: this is just about the name and look, we're not changing what we're doing here, people), I've also been really fed up with how the chat constantly kicks people out, so I've been developing my own new chat for the site. Here's a sneak preview of the part of it where you click on which words you want to use:


I know some people are absolutely going to moan and complain that they can no longer just type in what they want to say, but Hamumu is a safe place on the web. With the specific list of words, you won't be accidentally (or should I say "inadvertently"?) sharing personal information which could leave you in danger from internet predators.

And here's the thing, folks. I've been working on this a while, and testing it out, and I know it seems clunky to have to click on each word you want instead of just typing, but the truth is, after just a few weeks messing with it, I can talk faster in it than I can typing! Think about it: each click gets you a whole word, as opposed to typing 4-10 characters or so to get a word. Once you learn where each word is, you're cranking stuff out at light speed.

And I can see your other objection coming - "what if I want to say something and it doesn't have the words for it?" Don't worry about it! You can see the list of words right above, and if you can come up with something you want to say that can't be expressed with those words... well, I doubt it's Hamumu-appropriate. I may end up adding another 5 words or so before launch, but in all my testing, I sure haven't come up with any more that I need!

Until next time, french fry Kremlin the morose nucleotides!
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  Yerfbucks!? 10:40 PM -- Mon June 15, 2009  

Ahh, that sound you hear blasting out of the last entry's comments and the forum is in fact the exact choking I described. My only response to it is please re-read the large notice I attached to the previous post. Okay, my second reply is that about 2/3 of the complaints actually reinforce what a good idea this actually is, though you don't know it yet!

Here's today's extra-controversial tidbit (but can it beat Friday's?) - I'm not positive about this yet, but I believe that I will be making it no longer possible to buy games with Yerfbucks. You will get lots of advance warning if this decision is made, so you can spend 'em while you got 'em. However, you might not want to spend them all, because they will have a ton of uses. You're just losing the ability to buy games with them.

Okay, Mike, now you're just toying with us. But no! There's a very powerful logic behind this. I want Yerfbucks to be all over the place. Imagine, if you will, a hypothetical RPG. In this RPG, you can go around and fight monsters. Now, there are two ways this could work with Yerfbucks being the currency in this game, and also usable to buy games:

1. Monsters killed drop a few Yerfbucks, say 2-5. So in a day, you can rake in 200 or 300 Yerfbucks. You can take one of my games for free every week, as a prize for... playing one of my games? I go broke and die in the gutter.

2. Monsters have about a 1% chance to drop a single Yerfbuck when killed. It's not interesting or worthwhile as a reward, but at least I'm still selling a game occasionally (until someone figures out the ultimate exploit). You die of boredom, possibly in the gutter.

Now, on the flipside, what if Yerfbucks can't be used to buy games? Well now, I (sorta) don't care how many you get! I can make monsters drop a couple Yerfbucks at low levels, and hundreds at high levels. And here's where it gets clever - Yerfbucks are the standard Hamumu currency, not just something unique to that game. So you take those Yerfbucks you got killing monsters, and you go spend them to upgrade your racing car in Super Hammy Kart 5000! The Unified Gaming Theory! It's beautiful! Imagine if in Supreme, you got Yerfbucks instead of coins (that won't happen, it's too tough to update that way, but think of it like that with regard to new games). You can take advantage of your awesomeness at one game to offset your incompetence at another!

Of course, you can also use them to buy Avatar Bits, Custom Titles, and a variety of new things in the new site that don't exist at the moment.

That's only a theory right now. Another way to do it could be to really crank the exchange rate down (much like the US$), so it's more like 100YB to the cent, but that just moves the goalposts, it doesn't set me free to pick amounts for pure gaming purposes.

I think this idea works better, with these games so tied into the site as they will be, to have a universal currency, rather than to make each game unique and disconnected. Certainly some things and some games will be, for balance reasons or other reasons (kinda lame if you just start a brand new game and buy everything right off, so there are many design considerations to that), but the more that can be tied into one Hamumuey whole, the better. And really, if you like a game, you pay for it. Seems like a good deal for both of us! Is anybody really crushed at the thought of paying me for my work?

Please commence wailing and gnashing teeth.
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