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  Fan Art Museum! 04:19 PM -- Wed February 21, 2007  

Come one, come all, to witness the grand opening gala at our Fan Art Page! Right now it's only got the entries from our Duhcember fan art contest on it.

If you are one of the featured artists, drop me a line in email or forum PM or chat PM if you'd like a more accurate/meaningful description (descriptions are under the pictures when you click on them) or title placed on your art (or want it put under a different name or anything like that). The current stuff I just made up off the top of my head.

Also, I know there have been a bunch of other fan art pieces in the past. I will try to dredge up what I can when I can, but if you have something, please send it in! I'd love to expand the museum. There's a bunch in the Supreme With Cheese gallery, I remember that, but I don't know that I need to duplicate those - they're special treasures included there. I also have some very cool pillows that are half fan art. TDM created the actual artwork on them - stitched Pumpkin Pop pumpkins - and then Sol stitched those up into mini-pillows! I'm gonna get pictures of them up on the fan art page soon. I'll have to dig through the email archives and see what older fan art pieces I can find. We've gotten a lot over the years.

And thank you very much to all the artists who provided it!!
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  Choose Your Own Adventure 03:23 PM -- Fri February 16, 2007  

(Writing that title it just occurred to me that I could make a CYOA out of journal posts... I could put links to entries instead of "turn to page 42"!)

I have been hard at work on Loonyland 2: Collector's Edition. It was called the Director's Cut for quite a while (or Developer's Cut at times), but as someone pointed out in a chat, who exactly was preventing the director from realizing his true vision that he had to release a separate cut? So just Collector's Edition. What do you get when it is finally available?
  • 5 Bonus Battles in the Arena - These only become available once you enter Madcap Mode, and you won't want to try them until you are very beefed up! They are however available at rank 0 if you really want. They feature several brand new enemies, and there is also a new type of battle. It's a money match - you have a set time limit, and earn a smallish amount of money for every enemy beaten during the time. So you can control how much money you make by how well you play (of course, if you don't get enough, you'll lose money!). The final bonus battle is by far the hardest fight in the game.

  • 3 new Artifacts - You find these just like any other, which means you pretty much don't unless you are very very lucky! And lucky you would be, because these 3 are extremely overpowered. Unlike the regular artifacts, these ones are completely ridiculous.

  • Development Gallery - You need to find Gallery Passes (well, green scrolls - I don't know what they're called yet) when playing the game to access these pictures. I'm not sure how you'll get them yet. I am thinking about setting up some sort of Gallery Goals again, but there are far less than 100 pictures this time. In fact, I think there will be 12. That's all the development artwork I could dredge up. Anyway, the pictures are various concept artwork and maps, comparisons with the finished work, that sort of thing. A fun one is closeups of all 20 Potions, so you can see what their labels actually look like.

  • Developer's Commentary - This is definitely the most work. I've barely got any done and I've worked for hours and hours on it. Once you have won the game once, you'll be able to toggle between regular music and commentary. Each room has its own commentary, so as you go through the game you can hear about the development. This covers any topic you can imagine, it's like the commentary on a DVD. My favorite so far is the room that contains outtakes. I only had 2 from the making of LL2, so I threw in something I had from the past which is embarrassing amusement. Since I've only done about 8 rooms so far (of 64), I can't be sure, but at the rate it's going, there will be about 3 hours of commentary to "enjoy". I have a huge list of stuff still to discuss, but I have to wonder if I really have 3 hours of things to say, or if I will be too tired of myself by then. Aside from me, Sol Hunt and Ollie the cat have so far also appeared in the commentary.

  • An Editor?! - Yes. This is something I thought about a bunch, and decided that it was already in there, so why not? The editor is actually built into the game, it's just disabled in the versions I release. So for the Collector's Edition, I have enabled it, so you can enjoy the wonders. I also implemented a system by which it can have add-ons in a specific folder, and you can choose which one to play when starting a new character. However, stop jumping up and down in your chair! It won't be as amazing as you think. Why?

    • Clunky! - This editor is a slightly upgraded version of the original Dr. Lunatic editor, which most of you have never even seen. It's an ugly, clunky thing to mess with.

    • No documentation! - I am not going to help you figure it out! Well, I will help a bit on the forums, but mostly it's up to you guys. I don't have the time to support something so complicated and so badly made. It was never meant to be used by other people, and has lots of odd quirks it adds onto the Dr. L system to complicate matters.

    • Hardcoding - This is the biggie. There is a lot that you can't edit. You can't change what any characters say, what the quests require and reward or anything like that, and many many weird little things are hardcoded so that you have to be very careful what you do when editing to make sure that your adventure still even works. As a very simple example - when you start a new game, you begin in Woody's Cabin, with Woody talking to you. That's map #5, I believe, for no particular reason! But that's a simple one. The real stuff is specifics like when that guy comes and rescues you from that place (no spoilers here!), the exact coordinates of where the wall breaks are locked, and things like that. So you will need to work around all that stuff, and test for centuries to make sure it all happens as it should.

    • The Arena - You can change the layouts of the arenas, but you can't change the battles (I know that would be fun, but you can't). And by 'change the layout', I mean change what the 5 specific arenas are like. You can't, say, make To The Pain! use one layout, and Don't Get Shot use another, because they both use the same "small room" arena.

    • What you can do - You can decide how the maps are laid out for 90% of the game (just make sure you leave that 10% alone!), and make all kinds of crazy places to adventure and so on. You can specify what types of monsters and herbs are in each place, where towns are, where you meet characters, where you find items and skills, etc. I think it would be possible to make a really cool, really huge, remix of the game if you wanted. You could also trim the whole thing down and just make a little mini challenge where the player picks up a set of skills at the beginning (maybe force them to choose one of a few different sets, like picking a class), and then enters a labyrinth that's only a level long. It is possible to force completion of a quest, so you could have them finish off Klonk when they're level 5, and give them credit for the final quest, winning the game right there. I think it would even restart the same adventure in Madcap! Boy, you'd be doomed playing Madcap at level 5.

    So the possibilities are enormous and sort of endless, but don't get carried away - you don't get to make up your own actual adventures, and it's very hard to get it working right in the first place.

There you have it. Some great deals. I look forward to seeing if anybody can ever make a working adventure! I hope I'll need to create an Add-On page for LL2!
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  Shocking 06:54 PM -- Wed January 31, 2007  

I live in a very dry place. I wear socks all day in the winter, since it's cold. The house is carpeted. These elements all conspire to create vast electrical forces that could burn down entire buildings, but instead tend to choose odder expressions. Recent electrical events:

  • I get up from the couch while holding a PS2 controller. Electricity shoots through me, through the controller, through the PS2, through the RCA cables, and BAM. The TV shuts off. It can't be turned back on without unplugging it for a few seconds first. Everything else in the chain is just fine. This has happened many times - our new couch is a hotbed of static.
  • Walk over to the computer and touch the mouse. The mouse dies, stops moving, and the computer says a USB device has disconnected. A second later it reconnects. Don't think that's good for it.
  • Every time I go over to change the radio station, I touch the case on the radio to discharge and get a nice hearty shock. I do this because I don't want to hurt my XM receiver which I have to touch next.
  • I have a very funny picture, which I will not post for my own personal safety, of my wife sitting in a chair with a giant halo of her hair all around her. Each strand (well, a few hundred that chose to do this) is individually sticking out in a different direction, just floating there.
  • The cats are very hesitant to sniff at us anymore, because every time they do they get electrocuted. It's good shock therapy, but I really don't need them to have an aversion to me.
  • If I pet a cat in the dark, it looks really cool.
  • The DVD player has gone dead more than once due to human contact.
  • I am developing an immunity to being shocked, as well as an innate awareness of whether I need to touch something metal before I touch something high-tech. I'm just plain getting used to it.
So if mass quantities of cat hair going into fan ports and CD drives wasn't enough, as well as rural-quality electricity (micro-brownouts of a 1/2 second or so on a regular basis), our electronic devices now also get to contend with intense jolts. That can't be good for them. It really amazes me that I can conduct into the TV going through a plastic PS2 controller, not to mention all the intervening cables and devices. Same with the mouse - I touch plastic, and it shorts out!

Speaking of devices, bribe #2 has arrived! A developer of a game I am doing a Round Up of this month has sent me a new video card so that I could actually run his game! I'm in the 21st century now. It's wonderful. It's unfortunate that the game appears to be a very good one, so I can't prove my incorruptibility by giving it a low score. Oh well, guess it just means I'll be getting more bribes! Hopefully they will continue to come from people who make good games, so nobody will ever realize that it doesn't affect the score.
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  And... scene! 03:58 PM -- Sun January 28, 2007  

Okay, I finished! It's been 25 hours since I technically started, but for several reasons I think I wasn't cheating. So here is what the finished game looks like on a high level when things are crazy:



I changed the rules around a bit after that, so I don't know if it's even possible to get that far anymore. I think so though. Balance on this game is very questionable and haphazard. But I have fun playing it! I will put it up on the gamelets page in a little bit when I have it packaged up.
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  2 hours left 12:54 PM -- Sun January 28, 2007  

According to not cheating, I have 2 hours left, although the rules said either a single 24 hour block, or 12 hours broken up. I haven't timed anything, but I am quite sure I'm not even close to 12 hours of work yet - I gave up VERY early last night and watched movies, due to cranial agony. So...



Now there are Missile Commanders, and Cryotanks. You can't see the tanks here, but that's okay because they don't do anything yet. But the red squares are the explosions from the missiles. It also now has levels, which go in a sequence - normal, boss (way less guys with way more health), speed (weaker guys that move fast), and horde (lots more guys with less health), and back again. Obviously getting progressively tougher along the way. The balance is completely random at this point, but I'm enjoying it anyway. The missiles are odd - they home in on the center of mass of enemies. So if you just have guys left on either end, you can end up with missiles spinning around aimlessly in the middle. The white box in the pic is a missile. Oh, and you can see the highlight here - the missile station that's blue-ishy is currently selected.
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  The next morning 10:28 AM -- Sun January 28, 2007  



And now your turrets do shoot, and slay the evil invaders, and you can upgrade them! Right now the screen is displaying my upgrade options for one of the turrets. Oops, forget to add a selector box so you know which one! There's no way to get more money yet, which really limits your capabilities in that regard. The invaders get redder as they get hurt more. You can also sell turrets for half the money put into them (the wrench - a $ would be text!). Strategy tip: You really need turrets at the far left or right end (preferably both) due to the way space invaders operate. Think about it!
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  5 or so hours in 07:56 PM -- Sat January 27, 2007  



Now you can purchase and place the Blaster turrets or whatever they're called. The turret to be placed is red because it's currently in a place where one can't fit (overlapping another). Notice how your money is represented by a meter (the blue-grey meter on the left), and your lives by a bunch of stick figures - with the theme of "anti text", I am not putting in ANY text, or even numbers. That will make displaying a score at the end an interesting experience. I should really get these turrets shooting.

So far I've had an extended walk around the property and watched an episode of Buffy, so it's not the most productive. But this is going very easily so far!
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  LD48 #8.5 Warmup Journal 04:45 PM -- Sat January 27, 2007  

I tried the new version of PTK, which has been an effort to get started, as new libs always are. But now I have a black screen you can hit ESC to exit, and a dancing invader on it:



The game idea is simple but unique: It's a Tower Defense game - you place defenses with limited money and hope it's enough to hold off the invading horde. The twist is that it's Space Invaders - you place your 'towers' on the ground at the bottom, and the invaders invade down in the typical pattern we all know and love. There are 3 towers planned: Blaster (the standard Space Invaders ship, which doesn't move), Missile Commander (a missile launcher from the game Missile Command, fires off missiles that explode a circle), and Cryolaser Tank (based on an obscure game called Laser Blast, I think, for the Atari 2600 - a tank that fires a beam which hurts and freezes all invaders in its path). I'd like to also add a Moon Patrol tank, but that's probably too much for 24hrs (as if the rest isn't). You place these things (oh, and Mines to mine moon minerals for cash), and upgrade them. Simple as that!
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  Ludum Dare Warmup 11:30 PM -- Fri January 26, 2007  

This weekend is a special mini warm-up event for the Ludum Dare 48-hour contests. I guess the next actual one is tentatively set for April sometime. But the warm-up is a 24-hour event instead. You pick any contiguous 24-hour block this weekend, and get to it! The theme is two-fold: "Anti-text" and "Moon". Yes, those are weird. The first one gets less weird, and the second gets weirder. The first was originally proposed as "Anti-text: make a game with no text in it" - simple enough, and kind of an intriguing challenge (not much of a theme, but an interesting thing to think about while working on another theme - I'm going to see about not using any numbers either, since those are really text). Moon, on the other hand, was originally proposed as "But even if you doubt their overwhelming findings, the Moon will never be the same to you again. Never will you raise your eyes to look at her without wondering: IS IT OR ISN'T IT AN ALIEN SPACESHIP WORLD?" Now that is a bit much for me... I'm just going to interpret it as simply "Moon".

I will go give this some thought whilst I lay in bed.
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  Wiiiii!!! 01:52 PM -- Wed January 17, 2007  

I got a Wii!!! HOORAY!!!! First, the backstory.

As you probably know, I do game reviews. I'm one of the panelists at GameTunnel's Monthly Roundup. This month, a game called Galcon came up. It's an update to a 48-hour contest entry, so when I was in the chatroom for that contest, I mentioned that I would be reviewing this game. The author, Phil Hassey, seemed interested in receiving a good score. I pointed out that receiving a Wii would result in an instant 10 from me (of course, the downside being that I am just one of four scores he'll receive). I forgot about that after a week or two, but then yesterday, I walked into the post office to find a package waiting for me when I didn't expect one. And what was in the package?





(SPOILER SPACE)
































And it doesn't stop there! The package contained an entire Wii bundle (since, as you know if you tried to get one, it's impossible to get a Wii non-bundled at this point in time):

It included fuel and even an Activation Device. I didn't notice any controllers or games, though. For that matter, the only slot on the system appears to be the Wood Receptacle, which makes me question whether I can even put a game in at all. And you know what's great about the Wii? It's not some hardcore gamer console - it's fun for the whole family!

So yes, I have been bribed. I suppose it's a bit public at this point, which may impact my integrity. But you watch the upcoming round-up. Thanks Phil, that ten's on the way.

Incidentally, just about 20 minutes ago, I got an electricity-burning Wii! Well, I ordered one. And yes, it was a bundle. If you are in the dire straits that I've been in, searching for that elusive entertainment device, might I recommend what got me mine: NowInStock. It took a few weeks, but their email alert hooked me up in time at last. I swallowed my pride and bought from... Walmart. Glurk. They do have a pretty cool bundle though - you get to pick which 6 games you get, and it's not even that much overpriced. Sadly, no extra controllers or anything, but 6 games of my choosing is nice. It's even a good list - I found 7 I was at least somewhat interested in, not counting Zelda which I already have (a rather frustrating Christmas gift)! Now to wait in breathless anticipation, only with breath, since it'll probably take a couple weeks and I don't want to be dead when it gets here.
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