Bullcrap 3-19-2011

Have some video!



I'm still fighting this damn ear infection! It's been trying to come back for 2 weeks, now it can taste the wrath of a different antibiotic!

Thanks for stopping by.

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.

What a rotten freakin' day.

I have to get this out of the way.


One of our cats, Banjo, was struck down by a vehicle last night. He was one of those loveable goofball types, who'd always accompany me to the bathroom in the morning, rapidly scale trees, play around, and of course cuddle. Got him buried, now just working through the painful void that follows. He was very young, almost a year old. That hurts the most really, knowing all that time we could have had is now gone. His sister(same litter) has been sort of lost today, as they would frequently wrestle, honing their ninja skills. This shit never gets easier. Rest well little buddy.

Work.
I made a banner add the other day, which can be seen on the Sweets page(right hand side).

Stage 9 has undergone some population changes at the outset, so the stage doesn't feel empty. All stages have had their border spawn areas drawn in, so enemies aren't to close to the border and just run off when they see you. Also, in a few stages a couple enemies would eventually stop spawning(it was on purpose), now there's at least 3 out on the field. Lastly, changed the bonus tally death penalty to a percentage lost instead of deaths x 1000. Now each death is 1% off your total, this is done to prevent people from going through a stage, dying, continuing, an racking up more points. I think that's it.

Relentless Squid

Not much to say really. Testing is winding down. Had to make the squid a little less aggressive. They'd pursue you for 10 seconds without letting up, and in an action game that can be an eternity. So it's 5 seconds now, seems reasonable so far.

Now, for something random, I present Captain Nippers!


For some dumbass reason, one day while taking a dump, I thought up a tiny shark space man that would seek out our hero for help, and he'd ride on his back blasting stuff, possibly in space too. MMMMmmmm, the possibilities.

Ok, that's all for now.

Tweak, tweak, tweak some more.

The title describes the last couple days.

-The bonus pop-ups are now outlined black, by drawing the text content twice, offset by a pixel -1/-1 and +1/+1. Then the show text is drawn on top of that. Done to make them stand out a bit better. A little before/after below.


-Destroy Ol' Humpy crave rewards you with Magnet Mouth. Before it was a random power-up, but killing him first isn't exactly easy, what with the dolphins and orca on you. So at least Magnet Mouth will make it easier to eat the bonus food afterward. Hell, if you do manage to kill Humpy first, catching the other mammals won't be too hard, for 10 seconds anyway :P.

-Pain Crave requirements have been lowered to reflect the damage one would sustain in the process. No longer will you need to stick your face into 3 explosions, no sir. One will do. Also, Pain Craves won't crop up if you have under 30 HP.

-If you hit Frenzy or are in a Frenzy when you score a Combo Meal Extension bonus, the frenzy meter will be frozen, keeping the Combo Meal bonus alive until the timer runs down. Before, Frenzies would kill any Combo Meal bonus at Frenzy end to tally up bonus points.

-Stage 9 is now shorter, by 240 pixels. The issue was enemies being too spread out.

This is all set to test some more, make sure it all works good. Thanks to Jay for continuing to run it through it's paces with me.