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  Kickin' the map into the river 03:54 PM -- Thu February 12, 2026  

In Loonyland Second Story: Woody's Quest: The Ancient Tunnels of Yore: Hyper Fighting, I have gotten a version of map generation working:
There's a lot to go, but this is the basics. It produces maps that are more open than I would like. You probably notice some very very repetitive elements here. That's not a concern right now - it's just because I only have a few pre-made rooms at this point, so they repeat like crazy. Between those pre-made rooms is randomly generated squiggliness (which then gets 'decorations' like the brown dirt patches and little wall chunks - also very repetitive at this point). I'm pretty happy with this so far, but it does need tweaking so it's not just a wide-open area with the special rooms just sort of scattered in it.

And of course, you can see this is the pause menu, so there is going to actually be a mini-map you can look at! It will be nicer than this, but again, it's a start. I wouldn't have made this so early, except I needed a way to visualize the map generation, so it just made sense. And of course it will fill in as you explore, not show you the whole thing at once.
And here's a fun new element! I started making the first non-Woody creation for this game. It's currently called an Iceguard, just cuz. Could be called a Snow Crab but it's ice, not snow. It isn't just another enemy for variety, it serves a specific purpose in your quest.
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  Woody's Quest 10:56 AM -- Wed February 4, 2026  

Speaking of Loonyland X-2: Challenge Of The Tunnels: The Withering Tree: Axial Tilt Omega, Woody is now fully animated in-game and running around! Provided you only use a single axe and nothing in your off-hand. In reference to the art layering system from the last post, I think what I've settled on is simplified, which is always the right answer: a full different animation set for each combination of gear. This is the easiest to implement, the easiest art pipeline, and possibly even uses less data. That's because with layered art, I had to make frames for every possible animation you could do, with every weapon, even if that weapon can't do that animation, just to keep the animations aligned. Obviously those could be blank frames, but that would also be a pain, to have to blank those frames each time. This new method means with each type of gear he only has the actual animations that that gear can do, which cut his total animation frames to about 1/3 of what I had (multiplied by the number of different gear combos, but the other method also needed that, just potentially trimmed down to only the different pixels between items). It has its own challenges, but overall I think it's the simplest.

If all that sounds confusing, imagine trying to figure it out in the first place! But in other confusing complexities, here's a fun screenshot from my current work:
The game currently outputs that text file on startup as a test. This is my Roidvane Sequencing Tool (I am absolutely trying to make 'fetch' happen, since 2011!). It's kind of like a view one level more abstract than the map generator - it is figuring out what items should go where on each floor of the dungeon, and what other items should block your access to them (i.e. Pvt. Public is the guy who gives you the Pine Key, so to get Skill #156, you need to have rescued him first, because Skill #156 is behind a Pine Door). Then the map generator's job will be to produce a physical layout that implements this plan. Note: there aren't 306 presents or 209 skills - each collectible just has a unique ID.

It was a very fun process figuring this out once I actually sat down to do it. Each item has a preferred depth (so you gain certain vital features early on, and there's a general progression of keys and puzzle types, and there are some endgamey elements that will normally appear way at the bottom), and the deeper an item belongs, the more likely it is to be blocked by a roidvane, and it is more likely to be blocked by a roidvane obtained at an earlier dungeon level than it is on (so you don't usually need an item from the 50th floor to get something on the 1st floor... but sometimes you do!). Of course it's all random, so your dungeon may have some real oddities like not getting Phileas (who is very important!) until way down deep, but that's part of the variety.

The trickiest bit is that it then has to do a check for dependency loops (need the Pine Key to get the Mitten Key, but the Pine Key is behind a Mitten Door, uh oh!). Fingers crossed that I got that right, as it's kind of hard to prove it's not just been lucky in my tests. We'll find out when testers play it!

The parenthetical numbers are the floor that the roidvane is found on, so as you can see above, you have to reach level 38 to rescue Major Fishbug before you can get the present on Floor 2. But that's because, on the first few floors, there's no room for you to have gotten roidvanes above them. And yes, that is something that is handled to a degree! The first 4 floors of the dungeon have greatly reduced chance of needing any roidvanes at all, everything just sits out in the open. By the bottom of the dungeon, almost everything is behind some kind of barrier, but of course by then you have nearly every roidvane so it's not really an impediment.

How this all translates into an actual physical map you explore is the next big challenge, and I'd say probably 14 to 93 times as difficult as this was. I've swung back and forth between pure generation (traditional maze/dungeon algorithms that lay it out one block at a time) and putting together hand-built map segments. I have settled on the latter, but the hand-built rooms might be connected by algorithmic tunnels (which allows the rooms to be of arbitrary size and positioning, rather than evenly spaced on a grid), we shall see. At this stage of the development, lots of the work is just plain mental, imagining these systems in the abstract so I can break them down into something that can be created. That's how I spend my time going to sleep every night, just arguing with myself in my head. It's weird.

And always looming over it all is the terrible fear of how bad the non-Supreme level editors are... maybe porting that over is worth the effort.
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  Woody's Ways 11:59 AM -- Wed January 21, 2026  

In an effort to make life fun and interesting, Woody's arsenal in Loonyland 2-SS Alpha: Adventure Stories: The Tales Of Woody In The Tunnels Of The Titans: Prologue: Part II, is expanded by having an off-hand slot. Axes are still your only weapon choice, but in your other hand, you can hold nothing, a shield, another axe, or a talisman to boost a specific school of magic. Whatever suits your build. Why would you choose nothing? Because then you can use the new Power Stance skill, which lets you two-hand your axe! Obviously that means slower, bigger, and more powerful swings like any good souls game. I did however have some doubts just now and googled Power Stance only to find that it's actually dual wielding. So maybe it needs a different name. Whatever it's gonna be called, it's the ability to use one weapon in 2 hands.

On a related note, the new Rogue skill tree offers a Dual Wield option which is all about attacking faster (speed increases as you use up Stamina), with a big double strike when you exhaust your stamina.


The big challenge of this is art-related. Woody is going to have a lot more animations than Loony did, and I think we are going to have to have some kind of art layering so the different gear options can be drawn on top of you rather than having a full animated character for every combination of items. I am pretty sure I won't go so far as to render the specific gear pieces you have, but who knows, maybe it will be easy! I don't know how that will all be done, we are in the experimental phase right now. But it's interesting experimentation. And as you can see, Woody is rigged now, so I am actually animating him. In many ways this feels like a dead end - why work on an art pipeline and techniques for this old paletted art system which I will probably never use again? But hey, I can work on what I want, so let's see how it goes. Maybe it will inspire the creation of Adventures Of Bouapha II.
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  Back to the tunnels! 10:11 AM -- Tue January 6, 2026  

Over my very long, and very exhausting, Christmas break, I decided I would do a wintry activity that sounds fun. And that was hacking away at the Loonyland 2 code!

If you are familiar with LL2, you'll find a ton of new interesting fun facts from this image. It is however far from finished. Ultimately, this is such major changes that it isn't just "the LL2 rerelease". This is officially Loonyland 2X: Titan Tunnels (the 2X is not official, not sure how I want to name this exactly, but you get the idea!)! WHAT!

The current plan is to release a normal Loonyland 2 rerelease on Steam at some point. A minor update much like what we did with Loonyland. The main purpose is just to get it out to more people - it's still free on itch.io, and will probably just have basic Steam features (high scores, achievements, probably workshop support for add-ons?), so you can go either way. In addition to the obvious bug fixes, we'll be sure to ease over some of the roughness as well - like making the achievements less horrific. But no major changes.

Then Titan Tunnels. This game is probably not actually canon. Surprise twist, you don't play as Loony!
It's Woody Woodsman! I worked with some handy tools in Blender (Palette Studio - highly recommended for palettizing and rendering 8-way facing sprites, as well as tutorials on how to do toon shading and cartoon lines) to try to replicate the original LL2 style. Not sure how exact I got, but that is what you get.

Anyway, Loony has [spoilers redacted] at the end of LL2, so now Woody is left behind to find the Ice Titans are still at it. Inspired by Loony's heroics, Woody takes his own axe and descends into a massive sinkhole that has appeared in town to find the rest of the townspeople who are all mysteriously missing. It's a roguelike dungeon, in the traditional sense - like Rogue and Angband more than Vampire Survivors. But with the roguelite element of building up your town (rescuing the villagers) to gain more options and power for future runs. And no permadeath, unless you turn on the Ironman modifier. Probably.

I'm very excited for the new mechanics, skills, and talents in Titan Tunnels. That's my sweet spot for sure. The reason I make games is to create those mechanics, it's a shame I have to make all the content and gameplay surrounding them in order to have them exist. A few highlights (subject to change!): the Rogue skill tree which allows you to dual wield axes and use stealth, the Defense skill tree you see above, new melee and throwing skills, lots of new magic skills (each magic school now has a full page of 10 skills), possibly a new school of Arcane magic (I've only written down skill ideas), and a class system which helps you push into a specific build so skills aren't totally random (or a fixed order like LL2). Also lots of new talents to go with all that, and a complete overhaul to how talents work (already done!) so you have more control over them.

As for Broken Build Simulator, I've come to terms with the fact that the vast majority of the remaining work on the game, which I have studiously avoided even to the point of adding 8 new weapons to the game because it's more fun to do, is entirely audio-based. Music and speech. There's only a little gameplay content left to make, but months and months of audio. So I am leaning into the Hamumu ethos of "Artisanal handcrafted games, from our family to yours" (which has always been our tagline, I don't know how you didn't notice), and studying music making. The game may not come out for yet another 5 years, but when it does, it will be artisanal and from our family. It is my most personal game and I figure it should personally be all me. You'll definitely see why when you play it (in case the plot description on Steam didn't make it obvious). I'm really catching that roguelite wave at its peak!

Funny side story about that last sentence: When I was designing the overall arc for the Loonyland series (which I did towards the end of making Loonyland 2, looong after starting said series), I told somebody about the plan, and I was told that the things I was referencing/parodying in my plot were old news and people won't be interested in those references anymore. Twenty years ago. It's still the plan too, so I am nothing if not consistent in my ability to be current and hip! 6-7!
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