IWWHIIWWHITOMIROTPG: The Game!

Monkey_05_06 asked me to draw pictures for a silly + short fan game of a fan video of a game series based on an old game series.

I did.

You can download the game here.

Coming Soon! (yes, again)

What's this!? A new banner in the shiny and still quite new "Games:" section! Oh dear, don't tell me there's already another one nearly ready for release!

Yes folks, I've got a mildly chaotic little experiment of a game coming for you soon. I started working on that final puzzle tonight and got roughly 1/3 of it done (it's an easy puzzle to build, but getting the characters' lines right is a time consuming process).

If Awakener was a spiritual successor to Shoot, I Got Abducted!, think of this one as a spiritual successor to Man Boy vs Doctor Sock. And no, Awakener was nothing like Shoot!, nor will this be anything at all like Man Boy vs Doctor Sock save for the mindset I went into the game with.

Also, I've decided to release the source code here on the blog once the game has been out for a little while and I'm satisfied there aren't tons of bugs. I've commented tons of lines, so those of you who are brand new to AGS scripting might pick up a neat trick or two, and those who are already familiar with all that stuff still might enjoy finding some of the little jokes and easter eggs I've hidden in the game's scripts :D

But hang on a minute... why haven't I put the title in the banner yet?

And is that a 5 colour palette?

Good Lord...

More Rambling!

For those who didn't notice it on the AGS site:

The second part of my 4 part 'Design Taught in Pitfalls' ramble is up on A Hardy Developer's Journal.

And if you're bored by the things I write, you can at least go there and look at the pretty pictures. There's one there you probably haven't seen before (well, not in its finished form anyway =D )

It's also probably a lot more relevant to most designers than the first one!

Intervju

Carl-Johan Johanssen of Swedish gaming blog Blog 'Em Up asked me to do an interview about Featherweight (or Fjädervikter) and making games in general, and you can read it here.

If you're interested in that sort of thing.

And can understand Swedish :B

Thanks for the article, Carl!

The Future

I always like to do a mockup every now and then - means I can draw a world and one or more characters without the added work of going and turning it into an enjoyable story. Did this one today and thought it might be fun to post it on here.

I started putting a few little extra touches in while drawing the Featherweight backgrounds - stuff like stronger sky gradients and more obvious light glows, and while it's nice to learn things bit by bit, I am starting to feel like all of my backgrounds are starting to become a bit 'samey'. I pushed myself to try something new with the Awakener background, but here I am back to the same style I've been doing for months aside from a few minor little touches I've learnt along the way.

I'm not complaining or saying it is necessarily a bad thing, but it does seem like I could benefit from trying to draw a wider variety of things. Not that there's anything wrong with weirdo sci fi stuff, I guess. I have some stuff in mind that I'd like to try, so if I can break the habits I've allowed myself to form, I'll see about pushing myself further with this drawing business.

All talk of drawing aside, I decided it would be kinda fun to turn my attention towards another silly experiment game rather than a 'normal' adventure game for a little while, and whilst it has already been started I'm not really pushing myself to get heaps and heaps done because I feel like a bit of a break anyway. I managed to finish a couple of DS games this week, so it's been a nice relaxing time with much less looking at AGS scripts and animation frames and much more time looking at other people's games.

Oh, and some complaints about puzzles aside, Featherweight seems to have been received pretty well, which is awesome.

Stay tuned for more info about the weirdo experiment 'game' :)

Featherweight!

Alright, taking only slightly longer than predicted in my announcement post, despite making tons of unexpected changes, I am proud to announce that Featherweight is now available for download, and possibly even enjoyment!

You can get the game from the link in the shiny new 'Games:' box off to the right there!

In other amusing news, I thought it would be a bit of nice sentiment to save my 1337th post for announcing Featherweight, and upon doing so and checking my profile to send a PM or 6, I noticed this:



Ah, Bigbluecup.com, will your ways ever cease to amuse me?

I doubt it.

Blog Renovations!

Just a quick bit of news - with (what I hope) is the final beta of Featherweight sent out to testers after a ton of tweaking, I decided to do a little bit of mucking around on here; meaning that I have now got a "Games:" section!

It's pretty simple (the first html I've written in like 5 years!), and Arjon tells me off for not making it chronological (something I'll consider fixing), but I'm pretty proud of it. If Peder isn't too busy, I might get him to teach me how to do mouseover highlights (another Arjon suggestion :P).

Who knows, maybe I'll even make a new banner at some point? o_O

Design Taught in Pitfalls

Igor Hardy, of the varied and insightful adventure game site A Hardy Developer's Journal asked me to write a little bit of an article about, among other things, getting inspired and staying motivated when developing one's own game.

Sadly, I got a touch carried away and wrote more that I really should have, so we've decided to split it up. Part 1 of 4 can be found here, with the next part due to appear in 2 weeks!

Enjoy :)