Just keeping things alive over on this side of the "net"!!!!
I've posted a number of things to the Phanta website recently, including lots of new screens and update progress... check it at the same place as always, guys!
Also this sweet interview at IndieRPGs, which is worth a look for those craving some answers about Phanta and maybe some of my opinions on RPGs in general.
Keep it classy.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Escape from the Underworld - FLASH Version
We did it to Crazy Over Goo, now prepare for the latest in Flash-versions-of-my-games!
We haven't made major changes to the game aside from some difficulty balancing and extra background art, as you can see above. This was mostly a light-hearted side project, thanks almost exclusively to PickleMan, who does not actually maintain a particularly active web presence in the same way I do. This dedicated and talented mofo threw this together really quickly, though, and was hella responsive to making changes and adjuestments as I suggested them. A big round of applause for him!
Why wasn't this announced when the game was finished, months ago? We wanted to find a good sponsorship deal! Alas, sponsors did not really like the title, further cementing my confusion with the Flash world vs. PC gaming world. We decided to take matters into OUR OWN HANDS and crafted a Kongregate exclusive package here, banking off the dimes and nickels we may earn through ad revenue. Money was never really a major factor in this game anyway, from its inception back in October 2010 to the Flash version proposal to our half-hearted attempt to garner sponsor interest.
Anyways--ESCAPE FROM THE UNDERWORLD, everybody!
We haven't made major changes to the game aside from some difficulty balancing and extra background art, as you can see above. This was mostly a light-hearted side project, thanks almost exclusively to PickleMan, who does not actually maintain a particularly active web presence in the same way I do. This dedicated and talented mofo threw this together really quickly, though, and was hella responsive to making changes and adjuestments as I suggested them. A big round of applause for him!
Why wasn't this announced when the game was finished, months ago? We wanted to find a good sponsorship deal! Alas, sponsors did not really like the title, further cementing my confusion with the Flash world vs. PC gaming world. We decided to take matters into OUR OWN HANDS and crafted a Kongregate exclusive package here, banking off the dimes and nickels we may earn through ad revenue. Money was never really a major factor in this game anyway, from its inception back in October 2010 to the Flash version proposal to our half-hearted attempt to garner sponsor interest.
Anyways--ESCAPE FROM THE UNDERWORLD, everybody!
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
New (HTML5) Game - Jurrasic Jetpack: Hold On To Your Butts
Yep, I made an HTML 5 game.
This was for a class assignment. We didn't have to make it HTML5, and it didn't have to be nearly this polished, but, I had the capability, so I did it. There were 4 other people in involved in the project; 3 pals who did art, and 1 pal who made the music and the sfx (using an ACTUAL Gameboy, in his hands, wow!) (I will work on finding more links to the other pals)
There are 3 stages that loop continuously until you lose. You can rack up lots of points on the third one.
This game is nothing too special. There are a couple issues that will never be fixed, because at the end of the day it's "just" a silly class assignment. I think we can all agree I've got more important things to do.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Ultima Origins
I got a question on formspring recently asking about some of the old old comics I did before I was making games. I've been discussing them a little more often lately because Phantasmaburbia's main cast is made up of re-invented characters from those days of yore. The question asked on FS was pertaining specifically to the villain, "Ultima," who the characters were opposing.
Luckily I just so happened to be visiting home, and I had a stack of old comics readily available to scan (read: photograph and then touch up in PS). So I went ahead and uploaded some old drawings to satisfy your curiosity.
Warning: really terrible elementary school art ahead!
This was the first recorded appearance of the villain, I believe. This was in fact drawn NOT by me but by my good childhood friend Yoshi. We both drew comics and made a more-than-regular habit of borrowing each other's characters and expanding each other's canon. Ultima started off as such a snag by myself from Yoshi.
This comic was one of many many series which he started, though never completed. Usually his protagonist was Yoshi, the Zelda/DBZ-like legendary hero. This was to be the story of his 5th descendant, Moshi. I went on to make use of the name Moshi in Phanta as the samurai ancestor of the protagonist, as a nod to this. It's especially apt because "Moshi-Moshi" is a phrase used in Japan to answer the phone, based on an urban legend that if one were a ghost they would only be able to say "Moshi" once. So, saying Moshi twice proves you're not a ghost to the otherwise unaware caller.
Anyway.
This was the first page, also drawn by Yoshi.
Et cetera. I took him and managed to make him even more generic for my purposes. It took a while to find a drawing that actually featured a full shot of the guy: here. This is just a piece of the 100-ish page spanning final battle between him and "Greg," the OTHER Zelda/DBZ-like legendary hero. I promise you that this page probably had the most talking in it of the entire fight, because the vast majority went something like this.
And then later on I sort of "updated" the design a bit to make him ever so slightly cooler-looking.
His story as I told it was generally that he was this super-great god like demon who created Earth, but then a mysterious black liquid from space turned him evil. You know, like Venom in Spiderman. So he goes nuts. Anyway, it turns out he doesn't have the full powers of a God anymore and that the power was kept in this big castle locked behind a sealed door than could only be opened by killing the 5 or 6 "chosen ones" who kinda represented the different seals on the door and passed on this seal to their descendants. So naturally he goes and kills them one by one, including the main character, Greg.
Greg has to go through a whole bunch of trials to get back from the afterlife, and arrives just in the nick of time as Ultima is about to get his grubby demonic hands on the god power. Just then, the famous/best wizard Sauron shows up in the nick of time as well and splits up the energy, casting it in pieces to the ends of the Earth. A piece of it goes to Greg, which makes him way stronger and a match for Ultima. Ultima takes out the super wizard Sauron in frustration, but then is defeated by Greg in a big final battle.
And then when he inevitably came back in later comics, the heroes of the day had to go on a big Zelda-style adventure and collect the pieces of the god power stuff to fight him.
That pretty much covers it! All this stuff about Ultima isn't without parallels to the big bad in Phanta, though this is probably mostly because as a whole Ultima is pretty generic. When the game is finally finished and everyone gets to see how the story unfolds, you might enjoy finding the characteristics and plot stuff that crosses over between the two.
Luckily I just so happened to be visiting home, and I had a stack of old comics readily available to scan (read: photograph and then touch up in PS). So I went ahead and uploaded some old drawings to satisfy your curiosity.
Warning: really terrible elementary school art ahead!
This was the first recorded appearance of the villain, I believe. This was in fact drawn NOT by me but by my good childhood friend Yoshi. We both drew comics and made a more-than-regular habit of borrowing each other's characters and expanding each other's canon. Ultima started off as such a snag by myself from Yoshi.
This comic was one of many many series which he started, though never completed. Usually his protagonist was Yoshi, the Zelda/DBZ-like legendary hero. This was to be the story of his 5th descendant, Moshi. I went on to make use of the name Moshi in Phanta as the samurai ancestor of the protagonist, as a nod to this. It's especially apt because "Moshi-Moshi" is a phrase used in Japan to answer the phone, based on an urban legend that if one were a ghost they would only be able to say "Moshi" once. So, saying Moshi twice proves you're not a ghost to the otherwise unaware caller.
Anyway.
This was the first page, also drawn by Yoshi.
Rule 1: Eat healthy foods (unless you are Will) [[disliked classmate]]
Once the world was made...
By Ultima, that holds the Ultima power
40000000 years later...
(Moshi: This is it...)
(Moshi: Ultima!)
One day, Ultima turned evil (Ultima: Mwahahahaha)
Then the world turned evil... (Man: Eek!) [Comment: Wash your hands after you kill someone, or if you are killed]
And Evil
Et cetera. I took him and managed to make him even more generic for my purposes. It took a while to find a drawing that actually featured a full shot of the guy: here. This is just a piece of the 100-ish page spanning final battle between him and "Greg," the OTHER Zelda/DBZ-like legendary hero. I promise you that this page probably had the most talking in it of the entire fight, because the vast majority went something like this.
And then later on I sort of "updated" the design a bit to make him ever so slightly cooler-looking.
His story as I told it was generally that he was this super-great god like demon who created Earth, but then a mysterious black liquid from space turned him evil. You know, like Venom in Spiderman. So he goes nuts. Anyway, it turns out he doesn't have the full powers of a God anymore and that the power was kept in this big castle locked behind a sealed door than could only be opened by killing the 5 or 6 "chosen ones" who kinda represented the different seals on the door and passed on this seal to their descendants. So naturally he goes and kills them one by one, including the main character, Greg.
Greg has to go through a whole bunch of trials to get back from the afterlife, and arrives just in the nick of time as Ultima is about to get his grubby demonic hands on the god power. Just then, the famous/best wizard Sauron shows up in the nick of time as well and splits up the energy, casting it in pieces to the ends of the Earth. A piece of it goes to Greg, which makes him way stronger and a match for Ultima. Ultima takes out the super wizard Sauron in frustration, but then is defeated by Greg in a big final battle.
And then when he inevitably came back in later comics, the heroes of the day had to go on a big Zelda-style adventure and collect the pieces of the god power stuff to fight him.
That pretty much covers it! All this stuff about Ultima isn't without parallels to the big bad in Phanta, though this is probably mostly because as a whole Ultima is pretty generic. When the game is finally finished and everyone gets to see how the story unfolds, you might enjoy finding the characteristics and plot stuff that crosses over between the two.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Productivity vs. Humanity
I've been doing lots of pondering, as I'm often prone to. As of late my pondering's been centered on a pretty specific facet of my life that's relevant to this blog. It's something I think I only really began to be cognizant of at some point midway through the development of Dubloon, and since then has only ballooned, particularly as I've gotten farther into my work on Phantasmaburbia.
In considering the general path of my life, a particular trend has been very visible in the last handful of years. There was a point in my life when I was a pretty socially active person. I always had semi-artistic leanings, sure. I drew comics and came up with card games and ran a website or two, maybe, but these were all expressions of various interests which I might have introduced to strangers as factoids alongside my favorite color or my favorite Pokemon. And then I started to get into making computer games.
I think the first really visible signs actually came when I was finishing Assassin Blue. I was running a website at the time (which is still online) where I posted scans of doodles in my notebooks. It wasn't anything great or special, but it was one of the things I did for fun and I was still in the process of cultivating a steady stream of visitors. And then one day I stopped. You can even see now that on my last update to the site I reassured that I was going to update on a regular schedule that week, and never did. I never even came back to correct myself or to apologize. I completely and honestly forgot about it entirely, and spent that entire week focusing on Assassin Blue stuff. And then the next week, and the next. Whoops!
The trend from there gets only more predictable, and largely already known to this blog's readership. I went on to work on more games. Slowly I stopped actively drawing apart from compulsion. I had a promising start as a writer of fiction that quickly faded. I definitely stopped maintaining any sites that weren't directly related to my games, let alone maintaining a presence on communities that had at most a tangential relation to my growing interest.
All of this is probably well and normal, really. I found my passion! I should be more than happy, and indeed satisfied with the gentle removal of the more nonessential parts of my day and life. But it started to become a very recognizable issue when I started to ebb away from friends as well.
The root of this isn't that hard to trace. When I want to make a focused effort on my games, I fairly feel the need to distance myself from people. Such is the nature of focused work! But more and more this starts to express itself in a very literal decision of if on a given night I'm going to go see some pals and party or if I'm going to stay in and fine tune that level or finally get to doing that boss fight I've been planning out for the last week. And then that decision starts to create an impact in wider circles, an example being my sleep schedule. Too often nowadays do I find myself awake and restless when the rest of humanity is sound asleep, even when maybe I'm not quite feeling the game stuff at the moment! (This is the part where I check the clock and realize it's close to 6 in the morning.)
I'm not complaining. I'm not pointing any fingers or calling any fouls here. This is actually what I chose for myself, sometimes through aloof persistence to my work but often through conscious choice. All of this begins to illustrate a very essential question of personal philosophy which I haven't yet definitively answered for myself.
I see very clearly that there are two ideals at play which are at ends with each other. On one hand there is the social life in which one draws energy from the people around them and expresses themselves through their relationships with others, their lasting impact being the impression left on their peers. On the other is the working man who shuts himself in his study and works tirelessly to produce work(s) that epitomize their knowledge and skill, a perfect brainchild which serves to immortalize these people long after they and the people who knew them have left this Earth. We all know of a lot of great figures like this in history, and it seems true with little to no exception that all the great artists and thinkers who produced the most thoughtful, emotionally significant pieces lived a lifestyle like this latter one.
At this point I might once have stopped to say that these dual pursuits of intro and extroversion were not diametrically opposed and that one could, with desire and practice, be master of both. But more and more lately I'm second guessing this. They're opposed in more ways than just literal time investment--when you choose whether to work or to socialize, you assign a value to those actions which is either greater or less than the other. You might like your friends very very much, but the more you let yourself be convinced that the most important things in your life are your achievements and productions, the more your friends become by definition distractions and less worthwhile investments. And even if that doesn't reflect your sentiments, it's the message that's sent when you essentially ignore them for extended periods of time. Conversely, once you get up from your work and go see your friends it's hard to pull away and come back, both in the span of that evening and in the long term as you're seeing them more and more. There are plenty of people who don't claim to have any particular hobby or talent or interest besides hanging out with their friends (and being a consumer of something, like listening to music or playing games)--and those people are perfectly interesting dudes with perfectly interesting lives!
I don't think I've yet fallen totally completely into either territory, but I do ride that line frequently and for me it's very easy to slip too far one way or the other for a long time. It was only really with Phantasmaburbia when I considered this balance in my life and decided to really let myself slide into that introverted zone and see how my production was affected. And now I'm facing the ramifications of that, and it's made me thoughtful. I'm seeing how my friendships become more strained, and I'm also seeing how my gradual detachment from people gives the actual product a very different energy from the perspective of me, the creator. I'm starting to question what is indeed optimal for me, while I fear actually experimentally pulling back from my project in fear that I'll somehow lose it. Which is pretty ridiculous to consider.
Obviously the "answer" is different for everybody and in all cases lies somewhere paradoxically between the two absolute extremes of introversion and extroversion. I didn't really write this with the purpose of coming out with a conclusion, and indeed I haven't yet even really reached one for myself yet. Just something that's been on my mind, that maybe you might be interested in pondering as well.
In considering the general path of my life, a particular trend has been very visible in the last handful of years. There was a point in my life when I was a pretty socially active person. I always had semi-artistic leanings, sure. I drew comics and came up with card games and ran a website or two, maybe, but these were all expressions of various interests which I might have introduced to strangers as factoids alongside my favorite color or my favorite Pokemon. And then I started to get into making computer games.
I think the first really visible signs actually came when I was finishing Assassin Blue. I was running a website at the time (which is still online) where I posted scans of doodles in my notebooks. It wasn't anything great or special, but it was one of the things I did for fun and I was still in the process of cultivating a steady stream of visitors. And then one day I stopped. You can even see now that on my last update to the site I reassured that I was going to update on a regular schedule that week, and never did. I never even came back to correct myself or to apologize. I completely and honestly forgot about it entirely, and spent that entire week focusing on Assassin Blue stuff. And then the next week, and the next. Whoops!
The trend from there gets only more predictable, and largely already known to this blog's readership. I went on to work on more games. Slowly I stopped actively drawing apart from compulsion. I had a promising start as a writer of fiction that quickly faded. I definitely stopped maintaining any sites that weren't directly related to my games, let alone maintaining a presence on communities that had at most a tangential relation to my growing interest.
All of this is probably well and normal, really. I found my passion! I should be more than happy, and indeed satisfied with the gentle removal of the more nonessential parts of my day and life. But it started to become a very recognizable issue when I started to ebb away from friends as well.
The root of this isn't that hard to trace. When I want to make a focused effort on my games, I fairly feel the need to distance myself from people. Such is the nature of focused work! But more and more this starts to express itself in a very literal decision of if on a given night I'm going to go see some pals and party or if I'm going to stay in and fine tune that level or finally get to doing that boss fight I've been planning out for the last week. And then that decision starts to create an impact in wider circles, an example being my sleep schedule. Too often nowadays do I find myself awake and restless when the rest of humanity is sound asleep, even when maybe I'm not quite feeling the game stuff at the moment! (This is the part where I check the clock and realize it's close to 6 in the morning.)
I'm not complaining. I'm not pointing any fingers or calling any fouls here. This is actually what I chose for myself, sometimes through aloof persistence to my work but often through conscious choice. All of this begins to illustrate a very essential question of personal philosophy which I haven't yet definitively answered for myself.
I see very clearly that there are two ideals at play which are at ends with each other. On one hand there is the social life in which one draws energy from the people around them and expresses themselves through their relationships with others, their lasting impact being the impression left on their peers. On the other is the working man who shuts himself in his study and works tirelessly to produce work(s) that epitomize their knowledge and skill, a perfect brainchild which serves to immortalize these people long after they and the people who knew them have left this Earth. We all know of a lot of great figures like this in history, and it seems true with little to no exception that all the great artists and thinkers who produced the most thoughtful, emotionally significant pieces lived a lifestyle like this latter one.
At this point I might once have stopped to say that these dual pursuits of intro and extroversion were not diametrically opposed and that one could, with desire and practice, be master of both. But more and more lately I'm second guessing this. They're opposed in more ways than just literal time investment--when you choose whether to work or to socialize, you assign a value to those actions which is either greater or less than the other. You might like your friends very very much, but the more you let yourself be convinced that the most important things in your life are your achievements and productions, the more your friends become by definition distractions and less worthwhile investments. And even if that doesn't reflect your sentiments, it's the message that's sent when you essentially ignore them for extended periods of time. Conversely, once you get up from your work and go see your friends it's hard to pull away and come back, both in the span of that evening and in the long term as you're seeing them more and more. There are plenty of people who don't claim to have any particular hobby or talent or interest besides hanging out with their friends (and being a consumer of something, like listening to music or playing games)--and those people are perfectly interesting dudes with perfectly interesting lives!
I don't think I've yet fallen totally completely into either territory, but I do ride that line frequently and for me it's very easy to slip too far one way or the other for a long time. It was only really with Phantasmaburbia when I considered this balance in my life and decided to really let myself slide into that introverted zone and see how my production was affected. And now I'm facing the ramifications of that, and it's made me thoughtful. I'm seeing how my friendships become more strained, and I'm also seeing how my gradual detachment from people gives the actual product a very different energy from the perspective of me, the creator. I'm starting to question what is indeed optimal for me, while I fear actually experimentally pulling back from my project in fear that I'll somehow lose it. Which is pretty ridiculous to consider.
Obviously the "answer" is different for everybody and in all cases lies somewhere paradoxically between the two absolute extremes of introversion and extroversion. I didn't really write this with the purpose of coming out with a conclusion, and indeed I haven't yet even really reached one for myself yet. Just something that's been on my mind, that maybe you might be interested in pondering as well.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Phantasmaburbia Pushed Back; Pollushot Video
As you can see on the Phantasmaburbia website, I've pushed back the release date to a yet undetermined date. Don't panic, this has no malicious meanings or intents, we're just taking more time with it so it's better in the long run.
You can distract yourself in the meantime with Pollushot, which was recently featured on the front page of the Android app store and saw its sales skyrocket past 10,000! :) To commemorate, I've created a video of tips/tricks/techniques to try in the game.
You can distract yourself in the meantime with Pollushot, which was recently featured on the front page of the Android app store and saw its sales skyrocket past 10,000! :) To commemorate, I've created a video of tips/tricks/techniques to try in the game.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Pollushot Released on iTunes and Android Marketplace; Joy Ensues
Get all the links and juicy info here!
For those not in the know, Pollushot is a game I made with Game Maker back in January/February for YoYoGames. They took it in, ported it to mobile platforms (updating the graphics, adding some new enemies, and making other tweaks along the way), and now they've released it to the masses. I get money if you buy this game! And it's actually very good! So please, if you are the owner of an iPod/iPhone/iPad/Android phone, do check it out!
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