Holiday Cheer

Holy crap lots to talk about!

Site Redesign

As you can see, the site has undergone a redesign. I'm pretty happy with the new color scheme. If you have any suggestions on how I can improve it, feel free to drop them in the comments.

New Jumper

New Jumper! The title isn't final yet. The fourth game in the Jumper series will be played in your browser with the Flash Player.


Development is progressing smoothly. I'm currently writing myself an editor (also in Flash) for the game, but going a bit beyond the call of duty and making it more of a general-purpose editor. I'd like to make something I can reuse between projects. If what I come up with is polished enough, I might even release it for others to use for their projects.

FlashPunk

New Jumper is being programmed using Chevy Ray's FlashPunk engine. I'm helping him bug-test and offering suggestions as I work. The engine seems to be nearing completion, so hopefully that will see a public release soon and everyone can try it out! Trust me, it's really awesome!

Praise!

It's the time of year for top 10 lists and "best-of" lists and other miscellaneous lists! I've been fortunate this year: MoneySeize and RunMan have both made it onto a list each, with the latter even making it onto two.

Edmund McMillan: MoneySeize 5th best Flash game of 2009

Gamasutra: RunMan 5th best indie game of 2009

Play This Thing!: RunMan 4th best indie of the year

In Retrospect

I'm really blown away by the amount of exposure I've been getting this year! The friendliness of the indie community never ceases to amaze me.

I never expected people to flat-out volunteer their help (and contacts) with marketing and selling one of my games, but while working on MoneySeize I had Edmund McMillan approach me and offer to help me sell a Flash game. I really cannot thank him enough for this, and I've heard tell of him coaching a few other indies through the process as well. Really man, you're the best and I hope Super Meat Boy makes you filthy rich.

Later, I participated in Ludum Dare 15 and that was just a blast. I ended up winning second place with Broken Cave Robot, which was very cool.

And then finally: RunMan! Tom and I had been working on this beast for a loooooong time. I'm actually kind of shocked that we finished it at all. But the enthusiasm and support we've gotten from the indie community has been amazing and I'm super happy to see so many people enjoying it. For the curious, our download counter is sitting just below 35,000. We've also entered it in next year's IGF, so wish us luck!

Well, that's it! Merry Christmas everyone!

RunMan v1.2

Tom did another new version of RunMan: Race Around the World. Most notably, he fixed a bug that was causing corrupted ghost files to be created.

• Fixed ghost file writing


• Altered some particle effects and reduced the overall number of particles that get generated


• Altered 6-6's architecture to prevent a bug


• Altered 1-5's architecture because people tended to get stuck


• Fixed a bug that caused the boss to get lost at the end of 3-6

I'm Back!

I'm sure some of you have noticed that I haven't been very productive on the game development front lately. I've been taking a bit of a break from serious game development for a while, exploring other media and dealing with school.

It's Christmas break now and I have time to get serious about a game project. I'm also planning on participating in Ludum Dare 16, which is taking place December 11-13. Last time I did a Ludum Dare, Broken Cave Robot was the result. So if all goes well, I'll release two new games within the next little while. I'm also working on a redesign of my site, which should be finished sometime soon as well. Lots of progress ahead!

Meanwhile, Raocow has started a Let's Play of RunMan: Race Around the World! He previously did an LP of An Untitled Story and it was a blast to watch.

Elsewhere in the indie world, exciting things are happening! Shaltif's Sill, a C++ 2D game engine, is inches away from an alpha release. And Chevy Ray's FlashPunk engine is a Flash raster-game engine which is also close to a first release. Oh, and Unity is free now for indies (!!!).

Huggabug

I just wanted to post this totally awesome (and also kind of disturbing) RunMan: Race Around the World fanart by forum-member kyrotix.


That is all.

RunMan v1.1

Tom recently put in some hours and updated RunMan: Race Around the World to version 1.1. Here's the change list:

• Times are now tracked with frame time rather than real time


• The game is now using a different music system (SXMS instead of BGM) in an effort to improve compatibility and performance


• You are no longer on the clock while reading a sign or while paused


• Reduced the number of particles generated at max momentum because it seemed to be crashing for some people


• Altered the level architecture of 1-4 to prevent an infinite wallkick bug


• Altered the level architecture of 5-3 to prevent a bug with the hangglider


• Fixed a bug that prevented a proper ending when beating the last boss for the first time with 108 medals


• Fixed a bug that caused an error message when loading a saved game on foreign computers

In related news, we're submitting this version of the game to the 2010 IGF. Wish us luck!

RunMan: Race Around the World

RunMan: Race Around the World is a collaboration of epic proportions with Tom Sennett. It's a game about loving life and running really fast.

Download it here. Because we love you (and RunMan) so much, we're giving the game away for whatever you think it's worth. Send us some coin through the donate button on the download page when you feel comfortable doing so. But above all, have fun!

RunMan - October 1st

October 1st.

CONTINUE GETTING PUMPED.

Get Pumped

Good news guys! I've finished up designing the last level of Runman: Race Around the World. I just passed the project back off to Tom, and he's going to go into turbo mode polishing and balancing stuff. Once we're happy with where the game is, we'll then do some play-testing with a small-ish group of players before calling it finished and coaxing it out the door.

To give you guys an idea of how big a deal this is to us, here's a little bit of trivia for you: this game has been in development since before An Untitled Story. I began development on An Untitled Story in 2005.

Get pumped.

Changes

I'm posting this from my new MacBook! Well, it's actually a used MacBook which I bought off my brother, but it's new to me. I'm going to try some iPhone prototyping shortly (as soon as I can get my hands on an iPod Touch).

As well, I just moved and was without internet for a while. Between sessions of working on Runman, I whipped up another quick AUS update. It's now at v1.17.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed JumpBox highscore recognition not working in all cases.
• Fixed all empty rooms in SkyTown behaving as though they were at the edge of the map.

Balance Changes:

• Red energy in NightWalk now appears once you can duck.
• Made the DeepTower secret passage a bit more obvious again.
• Made Grotto eye boss easier on all difficulties.
• Added a savepoint to DeepDive on Regular and Simple.

Yeah, Yeah

I'll make some levels.

PSR (Project Status Report)

Whoa, it's been five days since my last post already? Well, I've been hard at work on several projects the whole time. I'm dedicating around 6-9 hours a day to game development lately! (Woo unemployment!)

To someone following my projects, it may seem like I have a lot going on right now, but I'm actually very focused on two things at the moment. My first Flash platformer is my primary concern, and RunMan: Race Around the World is coming in at second place. This might be confusing to some, seeing as I just teased Jumper 3D in my last post. It gets even more bewildering when I reveal that my first Flash platformer is not, in fact, Islands.

Here's the skinny on Jumper 3D: It does exist, but it is in a very early stage of development and I am not working on it yet. It is a collaboration with my friend Chevy Ray, and he is handling the early programming while I will be jumping in to do design work later. We're just experimenting with the third dimension and exploring the possibilities for Jumper-style gameplay right now. Hopefully it will turn into a full-size game (and hopefully one that is quite fun to play as well)!

Meanwhile, Islands is on hold for various reasons. Mostly because I need to finish a game soon. Islands is a bit too ambitious to finish quickly and I must release a Flash game this month to pay the bills. So Islands is completely off my plate for now - sorry I jumped the gun with teasing it only to take it away, but these things happen.

Also meanwhile, Runman: Race Around the World is slowly nearing the finish line. I don't have much else to say here except that yes, we are still working on it and yes, it rocks.

And finally, that brings us to my mystery Flash platformer. I don't want to reveal much, because a lot of it may change. All I will say is that it isn't a Jumper game and that I hope to have it done by the end of May.

Whew. The tangled webs we weave...