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  Chat away! 11:23 PM -- Tue April 5, 2011  

Hey, I think I "fixed" the Hamchat! Truth is, there's really no reason for it to be doing the random disconnects (and it's more than a little telling that it began with an update of the Flash Player, so I don't think it's my fault... but then again, I only half-understood the code I wrote myself), but just widening the time until it drops you if you don't communicate seems to have greatly improved connectivity. So chat up a storm! The downside is that the people you are chatting with may have logged off a minute ago and you don't know it yet. But that is life on the bottom of Hamumu.

In other news, the internet people seem to have fixed my internet today. Then by evening, it was back in the toilet. And now it's in and out of tolerable levels of speed to the point where I'm guessing they haven't actually done anything to fix it, it just happened to be at a high point during the afternoon. It's a mess. Whoa, I just ran another speed test and it showed a negative transfer speed for several seconds. Apparently they were pulling information off of my computer instead of sending it to me.

In further news, upon rewatching (because we can't watch Netflix streaming) Scott Pilgrim, I can reaffirm that it's awesome.
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  The Anza Lifestyle 09:09 PM -- Mon April 4, 2011  

I just thought I'd share my pain with you today. I'm lucky I was off in town all day, because I got home to discover that my internet connection was slow. Now, you say "yeah, I hate when my internet gets slow!" No no no no... It is slow. I ran a speed test to check, and I'm not sure I calculated right, but the behavior I'm seeing while web browsing suggests I did, so what I calculated was that I am currently using what is effectively a 4900 baud dial-up modem. Without the fun sound effects or BBS door games.

For reals and for true. I hope you're enjoying your cushy big city life! Speaking of that, if that big city is Kansas City, you are a lucky duck!
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  You think you know what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun. 06:25 PM -- Fri April 1, 2011  

The following is not an April Fool's joke (it's also nothing mindblowing, but I feel I must preface accordingly, because everything else on the internet is a joke)

I was just thinking, when I saw somebody online use the word "moon" in a sentence (an appropriate one, mind you), about all the projects I want to get done, and how there's so much I want to do and I don't know what order I want to do things in. So I thought I'd make a list, and then I thought, why not blog it? It will be of interest and entertainment to you too! Then theoretically, I will take my list and over time, shuffle things around, put stars next to ones I really want, all that stuff. But let's just start by listing out the projects I really want to do. It looks like this, almost in no particular order:

- M.H.D. - This is going to happen, soon.

- A Sol Hunt version of Mad Planet - new levels, somewhat different gameplay, new enemies, same tiles. I worked very hard on those tiles! I keep thinking she could battle Two-Face Tiki on a planet like that. He's one of her classic archnemeses. How classic can any aspect of a game that has never even been close to release be? I don't know.

- Moon Invaders 2 - Not majorly different, but make it easier to understand (i.e. add words to it), a few new features/units, and port it to Flash, and hopefully some other places too. An iPhone/iPad version would be nice if it were possible. Blackberry Playbook version is very possible, if the one I won ever shows up!

- NPC Quest 2 - Pretty much everything I just said about Moon Invaders. These two games are always very high in my mental list of things I want to see happen. I love them both, both conceptually and to actually play.

- Space Cr(w/ui)se - I have a fear that the code for this is too close to when I was brand-new to Flash to actually be usable, but I really would like this game to exist someday. It's got cute graphics, if nothing else.

- Kid Mystic 2 - I daresay this is really truly going to happen. Probably in about a year or so (is when it will start to happen). The momentum is there, and I don't think I'll be doing it alone.

- Loonyland 3-6 - This is more in the "someday" pile. I want it to happen, and my job as a game maker won't be complete until this story is, but it's not underway, and there are no real plans for it other than lots and lots of plot ideas.

- I.D.I.O.T. Finished Edition - Also probably more in the dream pile than reality, although it's obviously a lot simpler and quicker than a Loonyland game would be, but it just keeps sliding aside. I was looking at it (the version you haven't seen, with leveling up and whatnot, very unfinished) the other day and I really like what it is - a sort of mix of Crimsonland-type shooters, Diablo, Rogue-likes, arcade things like Bubble Bobble, and a bit of a puzzle. It's pretty unique! Plus I like the font it uses.

- Something based on Pedro & The 100-Year Quest - I've got the right to just reskin and sell this, seems like most of the work is already done, and people really enjoyed it. I don't really have an idea of what I would make out of it, though. This will probably come this year sometime, but again, not sure what it'll be. Similar gameplay and art though. Maybe some kind of Indiana Jones thing in a tomb, that would be fun.

- Another poem point & click adventure - I liked making Eddie's Lament, and all I really need to make another one is content (not that that was less than 90% of the work). The code is done, I just replace all the rooms, items and sounds with new ones! I like easy-to-play adventure games as opposed to ones where you have to walk around the room manually, or type in actions or something. Although I like text adventures too.

- Daibaka Max - A possibility, but I wouldn't say it's a strong one. This is another that, like Space Cr--se, would have to be rewritten from scratch. It's nothing super unique, so I don't really know that the effort is worthwhile when I could be making something new, or something that's an RPG because that's what I like most.

- Spooky Quest - An RPG, because that's what I like most! This is the name I've assigned to at least 5, and probably more like 10, different ideas in the past ten years. The latest one I really like, and it's all based around user-created adventures. I hope to do this someday, but it's a big project, and I don't know if I can afford to do that in the near future.

- Robot Wants More Things on the iPhone - As far as I know, these are gonna keep coming until all four exist on the iPhone! And best of all, I hardly have to do any work to make that happen! Raptisoft does all the hard stuff. I'm looking forward to those. Puppy is always my favorite. How can you not enjoying throwing a cat on an alien's head?

- Assorted little arcade flash games - I want to keep making them, but not just more Robot-like platformers. It's time for some shooters, puzzles, tower defense, and other stuff! These are how I make my money, so I need to keep cranking them out, instead of slacking off like I have for the past few months. Of course, half the things listed above fit in here anyway - Moon Invaders, NPC Quest, Space Cr--se, etc. This entry is just warning you that I am going to keep making random fun little games, because I like to, and it's my job!

Or maybe none of that will happen and it'll all be different. But these are the ones I'm thinking about!
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  Hot Stuff 08:01 PM -- Thu March 31, 2011  

Whoo... I've been working for two days on a single Robot Wants Kitty (iPhone) level. It's big, and it's nasty. When a level pack comes out for that, and you see the Lava Cave, run the other way. It's DOOOOOOOoooom! I haven't actually done a full run-through playing it yet. I needed a break from the horrors. Maybe tomorrow. Next, I'm gonna make a super easy level, to recover.

I've also been working on M.H.D.! Finally getting somewhere on that. It's beginning to come together like a finished game, even though the only level it has is a tutorial level. I've been focusing on making it complete outside of the level design, but it's almost to the point where my efforts would be better spent making the remaining levels than doing anything else code-wise. I will be looking for beta testers soon! But I'm not looking for them now. I'll let you know!
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  Robot Wants iKitty! 12:16 PM -- Fri March 18, 2011  


It's only $0.99, and it's a massive upgrade from the original game. It includes the original level, a couple more that I made, and a bunch by other people. It includes new features like explosive shots, teleporters, and three huge bosses. It looks amazing (see a couple journals down for the video!). Go get it if you have anything close to an iPhone! Like a blender.

Also note that Solomon's Boneyard, a really cool (and Hamumu-like - some of my ideas are even in there, including a boss you might find familiar) action-RPG from Raptisoft on the iPhone is free right now to celebrate the release of Kitty. Grab that too while you're there!
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  Dumb Eats! Thai Peanut Dressing 08:54 PM -- Thu March 17, 2011  

I was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure, so I cut sodium out of my diet as much as I could (and after a month and a half, I now have below normal BP! I also went on the Dash Diet and got really serious about exercise). And thusly, by combining ideas from several recipes and looking around the kitchen to see what we have, I invented the following delicious recipe! Many Thai restaurants use something similar to this as a salad dressing before their meals, and it also works as the peanut sauce for dipping Satay Chicken (or tofu...) into. In fact, I'd say the end result is about halfway between those two things. It's a great peanut sauce you can put a lot of things, I even dip vegetables into it and munch. And of course, the point of all this is that it has almost no sodium at all, despite being tastacular. Normally sauces like this have soy sauce in them, which makes them a heart attack in a box. I used molasses - it's the same color, right? So, give this a go, it's really good:

Hamumu's Low-Sodium Thai Peanut Dressing

2 Tbs Chunky Peanut Butter
2 tsp Molasses
1/2 Tbs Sweet Red Chili Sauce*
2 tsp Sugar
1 Tbs Canola Oil (any vegetable oil)
2 1/2-3 Tbs Rice Wine Vinegar
1/8 tsp Ground Ginger
1/8 tsp Ground Garlic
Dash o' Pepper

Put Peanut Butter and Molasses and Chili Sauce in a bowl and microwave for 30 seconds to make the peanut butter easier to work with and warm things a bit. Stir it up good, and stir in the other ingredients. Taste repeatedly and add in more of various things until it's awesome! Preferably refrigerate it a while before using so the flavors can blend, but it works right away. Recipe makes 6 rather small servings of maybe 1.5 Tbs each? I like to double it.

1 serving has 70 calories, 5g fat, 0.8g saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 32.4mg sodium, 4.8g carbohydrates, 0.3g fiber, 3.5g sugars, and 1.3g protein. I calculate all this stuff using Lose It on my iPod.

* Not everybody has Sweet Red Chili Sauce around their house, but they should. It's good stuff. You can substitute by skipping this entirely. It's just there to add a little sweetness, a little spice. You could chop in diced hot peppers if you like it spicy, or put in a sweet & sour sauce. Maybe Hoisin Sauce would be good (but salty)? Maybe not.
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  What's Up Witchoo? 11:18 AM -- Sat March 12, 2011  

Here's an update on the world of Hamumu...

* Total failure on 7DRL. I got in that one day of work, then had good excuses for about the next 4 days, then one more day of decent excuse (I was recovered from being sick, but still mighty tired...), and then, well, who wants to start a 7-day project with only two days left to go? Because it's a prototype for elements of a game I really hope to make someday, I am thinking about still working on it. My wife has suggested interleaving it with my real project (M.H.D.) for two weeks, thus working on it for 7 days. Maybe. Alternating projects has often not gone well for any project involved.

* Still Pond has been accepted on the Playbook! So when that thing launches, I get a free one, and if anybody else actually buys one, they can play Still Pond on it! I can't wait to try, it's gonna be interesting.

* You may have noticed the video for Robot Wants Kitty iPhone in the last post. That has been submitted to the app store already, we're just waiting for it to go up, which could happen any time. There are some cool updates coming for it down the line as well, and if it does well, we'll definitely continue on doing the same thing to Puppy, Fishy, and Ice Cream. There also may be a PC & Mac release of it in due course, but no guarantees. It's actually a whole lot of game, not much like the original RwK at all. I'm really looking forward to that! Just to get bold-faced credit out there, this game is a Raptisoft production, with not a whole lot of help from me! I did some of the level design, and came up with a few of the new ideas, and did a bunch of testing. Look forward to more such collaboration in the future. I love when I can "make" games without doing any work!

* My 'real' current project is still, as I think I mentioned in the past, M.H.D., the secret game that is very personal to me. I still haven't actually written a line of code on it since I finished the last Pedro game, but there have been other things to work on!

* In WoW, The Hamumu Clan is now a level 3 guild! We're flying right along, eh?! Come join us on Caelestrasz-US!

So what are you up to lately?
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  A Classy Video 01:44 PM -- Thu March 10, 2011  


COMING SOON!

Youtube embed code stolen from SpaceManiac because finding his embed page was easier than finding a previous journal entry that has a video in it! Thanks!
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  7DRL Progress 11:21 AM -- Tue March 8, 2011  

Well, let's see... on Saturday (the first day), I was deeply bogged down in the tech of the game. I made progress, but it was very slow. I'm working from the IDIOT code, or rather the code from the unifnished revamp of that - it already is a Roguelike in almost every possible way! But this game required some serious core design regarding just what a "Player" is, a "Creature", a "Skill", and on and on. I think I reached some kind of workable point to build from, maybe.

Then on Sunday, my wife ran a 5K and I cheered her on (huzzah!), and we were in town the rest of the day, eating out and being celebratory.

Then on Monday, I had an appointment in town, but it was raining, so we had to share a car (only my car is wise to drive on a wet, slimy, dirt road with huge lakes to drive through), which meant I was in town all day while she worked. I brought the game on a USB stick to work on... or thought I did. As of this writing, I still don't know where that USB stick went. It may be lost in my car somewhere.

Then Monday night, just as I started to fall asleep feeling perfectly fine, I began shivering uncontrollably. I spent the rest of the night in a chair, except the hours I spent sitting in front of the toilet willing my stomach to remain calm (I succeeded! barely). I still feel sick now. I just braved the world of food right now. I think I will be taking it easy today, hopefully I'll feel wondrous and rocket ahead, but for now, laying quietly seems safer.

And that's my progress on my 7DRL game! Tentatively entitled HamQuest. For a little background, it's based on this design I've been working on for the past 6 months. It's just an idea of RPG stuff I liked, and every so often I'd make up a new class for it, whenever a mechanic struck me as really interesting. So I haven't just been going "Hey, a necromancer would be cool!" Instead, every class is built around a gameplay idea that I mulled over first and then applied a theme to - one class explores the concept of cooldowns in MMO games (why they are there, what they mean for gameplay, and how they relate to the 'reality' of the game world), one is all about how you could have a true "Tank" role in a single-player game, one explores the idea of cast times, and one is just a fun thought I had about a class that summons minions and then sucks up all his minions to superpower himself temporarily (see-sawing back and forth between having minions do the work and then bashing guys himself, over and over). And others. I like to think about game design, and this has just been something fun for me that I've done in my spare time as entertainment. There are a lot of specifics to the game which I won't go into, but it's pretty well fleshed out and I'd love to make it a real game (it's all built around user content, so I know it'd be big!). This is a nice place to test out the gameplay and see what happens. If I ever find a day when I can actually work on it.
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  Seven Days In A Dungeon 04:29 PM -- Fri March 4, 2011  

Yikes, I just noticed this starts tomorrow! I saw somebody mention the annual 7DRL last week and it got me kind of excited. I'm sitting smack between games at the moment, doing some really random things... I could spare a week doing something really cool, right?

For people too lazy to click, a 7DRL is a Seven Day Roguelike Challenge. You have a week, starting March 5th (TOMORROW!) to create a roguelike game. It seems like a very disorganized contest, with not only no rules, but no general hints as to what would be the right thing to do... but I know what a roguelike is, and I know what a week is, and I know what a challenge is, so I think I can figure it out. Can you? Join me, on the 7DRL! I know at least one Hamumian who has started creating his own roguelike game with Forgs in it. And the closest things to rules it has do clearly state that you can start from any existing work you want, no limits. So carry on, make a game, have some fun! You can include glasses and do double-duty with the current Dumb Dare.

All I know about my entry is that it will not be turn-based, and it will be graphical, and that the idea of NPC Quest 2 is tempting, but maybe I should make something you actually play instead.

On a related note, did you even know Usenet still existed? I was surprised.
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