Irrelevancy abounds!

Here's the video, in all it's glory.



I forgot to mention that some other work did get done for Hellhol. I made some more tweaks to the target finding code, and had some random name generation working for the Gobbys and Trollgees.

Thanks for stopping by.

Website Redesign + Shark Demo

After being down for a week due to a damned ear infection, I began work on changing the look of the Backyard Ninja Design site. It's pretty much done and I'm pretty happy about how it looks. Thanks to Jason Campana, he simply suggested I go with a white background after looking at it in progress, and the end result started trickling in.

Now I want to talk a little about The Great White Destroyer demo.

As some of you may know, it constitutes half the game content. This originally sprang from my own experience with demos, my knee jerk "Only a few stages, come on!" reaction. I fear this was a mistake, as the player may be satisfied with the experience due to consuming so much of the content.

Half a meal versus a little taste. What would excite you more?

So I'm reworking the demo to make it shorter. The player will have access to 3 stages from destroyer mode, 3 from manatee. They can't post scores to the online table, and achievements are locked out. You can still get them but they won't show up unlocked. Most of me loathes this change, but I need to develop a business side for this to work right.

So next week I'll be testing this new demo build to make sure it's less bugs, then I'll be making some changes to The Great White Destroyer site. I can't wait until this is all wrapped so I can get back to developing Snowball!

The Great White Destroyer B-Day Sale/Giveaway Finale

This is the final stretch of February, and your last chance to win free copies of The Great White Destroyer! This week I've asked 5 questions about various stages in the demo, send me the answers and you could win one of 10 available copies.



Act fast, this promotion ends February 28th. For a more detailed look at the rules, visit http://www.dumbmanex.com/TheGreatWhiteDestroyerHome.html

Questions? Comments? Contact Brent Anderson at backyardninja@dumbmanex.com .

Bullcrap 1-29-2011

First off, video...


Let's see, next month will be The Great White Destroyer's first birthday! To celebrate, the game will be half off, plus I'll be having a quiz on the demo version, the prize being free copies to the winners, 10 a week.

Also got some more free games from the PixelProspector big video contest(round 2 is around the corner) so a big thanks to these guys for laying some good games on me!

PiEyeGames
GURUY Entertainment
BlitWise Productions
Wolfire Games

Ok, that's it for now.

Just Bullcrap, 12-4-2010

I forgot to show off the barriers in that last video segment, durp! Next time I guess.

Crapmunch movement and more.

I didn't get all the animations finished this week, had a few busy days. But these three are done.


There's a poo scoop, where he flings dung and sometimes oozes at the player. Then there's a shovel swat. Last is his walk cycle, which works well in reverse also, probably due to him being so large and round.

YoYoGames released their spec info for developing iPhone/iPad games, so I'll be converting The Great White Destroyer(TGWD) and Snowball's Chance over for those platforms starting next week.

For TGWD, I'll be downsampling my sound effects, hopefully without them sounding too bad, to save on file size. Having the music be .MP3s will be a huge help, they're .WAV currently. Also I'll be working on screen size related issues, a control scheme suited to portable touchscreens, achievements, improving performance, all kinds of crap. I'll try to do it in a smart way so there will be a new PC version as well. The same goes for Snowball's Chance, I'll probably add even more stuff too, content wise.

Trick or Treat Sale! The Great White Destroyer

Let's play a game. The Great White Destroyer(TGWD) will be on sale all next week, a special sale, one of choices.

On Monday, TGWD will be $4. If someone chooses to buy a copy, I want you to look on the order form under where you enter your name, there will be a "Company" field. I'd like you to enter "Trick" or "Treat".

Why you ask?

At the end of the day, I'll be counting up all the Tricks and all the Treats. You see, a Trick will increase the game's price by $.10, and a Treat will lower the price by $.10. So after it's all added up, we get the new price for the following day. If a purchase is made and the "Company" field is left blank or something off the wall is put there, a coin toss will decide the outcome, heads will count as Trick and tails as Treat. There are limits. The price will never drop below $2 or go higher than $5.90. Will the price go higher or lower? Time will tell.

I'll list the results the following day.

So there it is, the game is on.

What's going on!?

Ok, so Contrasaurus work is wrapped. Finished up with a little Robo-Reagan energy beam attack. No pics, because I don't feel like it.

I took the plunge and got me some Torque2D. I've been going through the tutorials and think I'll be just fine. There are some extra steps code wise compared to what I'm used to, but that's ok. I was going to take YGTS and start porting it over, but I don't think so. Frankly that kind of game has been done before, and I've had some genre mixers bouncing around in my head lately, stuff that as far as I know hasn't been done yet. So, I'll begin full steam ahead on that in the next day.

I hate leaving a game on the floor like YGTS, but there really wasn't that much done yet. That was maybe a months worth of work(or less) over a period of 4 or 5 months. It may get revisited down the road, who knows.

YoYoGames has plans for Gamemaker regarding the iphone and ipad, which means I might get the Shark on there down the road, maybe even Snowball.

That's it for now, I'll be back when I got's stuff.

Friday Bullcrap on Saturday, 9-4-2010

Before movie time, I wanted to mention that there's been a lot of traffic on my TGWD highscore tables. Most of the entries appear to be gunk, I don't know if someone is screwing with them or what, but some of the entries' scores don't even get sorted right. I'm pretty novice at php, so bummer on me I guess.

Also, Metroid: Other M is pretty slammin' so far. I know it's minor, but they do a slick job at transitioning from pre-render to in game, damn fine job. That's always been one of my bother areas, back in the PS1/N64 days, I hated pre-render due to the jaring difference between it and the in game look, I prefered in-engine cutscenes like Vagrant Story and Ocarina. Oh well, video!

Friday Bullcrap, Saturday, whatever.

Friday Bullcrap 8-13-2010

Friday Bullcrap 8-7-2010

I did get more Contrasaur stuff done this week, for whatever reason it slipped my mind. I did a parachute animation for the soldiers, some debree for exploding vehicles, and Reagan getting up from a kneel.

Anyway, here's those photoshops, feel free to take/use 'em.

Friday Bullcrap 7-31-2010 + Shark Month

At the end of the vid, I announce Shark Month. All of August, The Great White Destroyer is half off, plus I'll be putting up great sharks in history. Have a visit every Monday and Wednesday, won't you?