NALGames V4

Those of you reading from the original source of these blog entries (I know they sync with Game Jolt so anyone from there won't have seen it) will have noticed that this blog has just undergone a graphical overhaul. If you aren't a Twitter follower of me, it's because my website is being rewritten to Version 4 by Sean Buller (UnknownGamer). Originally this was going to keep with the style of V3 (maroon/beige/black, grungy, stylistic). However, I decided that since it'd be so differently (read: better) made I'd fix up the style and make it, in general, better. So, wanting a change from the grunginess, I went with shiny rainbow-on-blackness. Yeah.

On the topic of the new NALGames.com, which should be active within the week (at the moment if you try to access it you'll get slapped in the face by an Under Construction image), there are a number of lovely changes, most of which I couldn't've achieved, as I despise coding websites. Seriously, changing the CSS for this blog to make it as it is was bad enough. It'd be less hateful if all browsers interpreted coding in the same way... but they don't. Half the time, it's Microsoft's glaringly inferior browser that puts a wrench in the works (most businesses have dropped IE6 support now... why not go one better and drop it for 7 and 8 too?), but even the bigguns like Firefox, Chrome and Opera occasionally screw something up. (Incidentally, I now use Google Chrome. Firefox 3.x has been problematic as hell; all the 3.6 update did was break more.)

Oh right, the new website. The biggest change for you, the viewers, will be that the Games, Archive and .GMKs sections will all be jazzed up and more usable. All items will start off "minimised" - in a normal list. There's a + on the end - if you click it, a game description, three screenshots, and all the details and various links will swoop in with a pretty little animation. The + turns into a -. Guess what that does.

The biggest change for me, which will be passively effective to viewers, is that Sean is incorporating a handy little set of admin tools for adding games, other items, and editing the text on text-based pages like About. Beforehand, I was having to manually alter all the coding on the page then reuploading it. This was a hell of a lot of hassle and meant the frequency of updates was poor. At the time of V3 going down, there had been four games released since its last update. Now, though, I just have to fill in a form and hit a Submit button, which is a lot easier and will mean I'll be much quicker in updating the site.

Other minor updates to the site, ignoring the previously mentioned style overhaul, is that the Links page has been switched with a Coverage page (now I've got just about enough to not look like a shit stain on the underpants of my website), the Game Editable and WIP Editables have been merged, Writings has been added to the Archive (so I can share my crappy poems and WIP short story), and Old Games has been merged into the current Games page. There's a tick box in the "Sort By" dropdown that allows you to filter these out or keep them in, so the few decent games I've made don't have to be drowning in a sea of Gemocides, Fight of the Heights and Blokmans (all three being 2005-or-before games).

Game-wise, I've nigh-on stopped working on Innoquous Hand Held/The Flip Side. I still plan on making Innoquous 4, but this won't be yet. Due to possible complications (if I take the YoYo Games job I won't be eligible for any of their competitions from then on) I doubt entering it would work out at all. A little disappointing, but I'd rather have a job than a public thrashing by at least 20 people that are better than me!

Anyway, that's the news of the NALworld. Some time soon I expect to make a blog entry listing my all-time favourite 100 songs. This is requiring me to scour my entire brain, as well as my tracklist, for those I know would make the list, and some others which I'll have to process-of-elimination-ify to get it to the hundred. Also, process-of-elimination-ify is a word now.

Let me know if there are any graphical glitches on the blog or, when it's out, the website. Screenshot would be preferred.

Until next time!

FKR4, Points of Interest etc

The first bit is, incase you're unaware, FKR's yearly update for 2010 has arrived. FKR4, made for the Game Jolt Rogue contest under the idea that the game itself is the rogue, is a bizarre, bizarre game. Many people don't seem to be able to understand it. Here's a quick explanation:

The room will fill, initially, with red and aqua, with a small amount of green. The colour coding is the same as the other FKRs - red = you, green = your "trojans" (what you hit enemies with), and aqua and other colours are enemies. You'll notice that these colours, bar green, comprise of a number of "stars". The central point is where the actual enemy/you resides, so you must target there. With that in mind, the rest of the game is FKR at heart. Different points are awarded for different enemies, with more for higher-up ones (order: aqua, yellow, magenta, orange, blue, green). So yeah.

I thought I'd add a little point of interest to this: a list of games that started off with different names, either as codenames or genuine names I later decided to change.

F**kfreak ==> Back in Time to Annihilate People of Past Times

Originally named as the game is pretty f**king freaky, changed because I couldn't be arsed with bleeping it out and inevitably suffering a slew of YoYo Games reports.

A Stupid Attempt to Win $1000 ==> Zyousbox

With the name change came an orientation change. The game that became Zyousbox was originally to be an old-Celtic-themed exploration game for the second YYG competition. It didn't go well but I didn't want to ditch the engine. Zyousbox was born

Wolley ==> La Rolloux

Originally Wolley because a) the player was called Wolley and b) it's "yellow" backwards, which is the colour of 70% of the game. Altered it when I gave Wolley a wacky hairstyle which reminded me of Ellie Jackson from La Roux (a band I like, and a band name I like too). Inserted "roll" into it and huzzah - a game pronounced "La Roll-oo" but frequently mistaken as a number of daft, Englicised alternatives (one of which rhymes with "bollocks").

NAL ==> madnessMADNESSmadness

Partly a codename (I was expecting to change it), partly an ongoing desire to create an eponymously-named game. Changed because, having mentioned "madnessMADNESSmadness" in the Game Jolt chatroom as what a mad person might describe their predicament, and consequently being recommended to give a game that name. Turns out it was a wise decision, though I still catch a few too many people calling it "madnessMadnessmadness", "Madnessmadnessmadness" or, worse, "Madness Madness Madness".

Elemence Passion Matrix ==> Elemence Switch

Mildly irrelevant, changed just before I canned the game. Changed because, as was informed to me, "Elemence Passion Matrix" sounds like something out of the Kamasutra.

Lite Town Wars ==> The Hilarity of Murder

Originally "Lite" was included to make "lite" of the fact (sorry) that the game was made in the unpaid version of Game Maker 7, changed when I decided to stick it in the Game Jolt Axioms contest by bolting a gimmick onto its arse and wanted to reflect the new gameplay element in its title.

L'oiseau ==> Ne Touchez Pas 2

"L'oiseau" being French for "The bird", "Ne Touchez Pas 2" being French for "Mooching off the plays the first one got and being a far more obvious sequel. Oh, and not pronouncing the 2 as "deux" but as "two"".

Puzzle Valley ==> Welcome to Puzzle Valley ==> Puzzle Valley

...Yeah. Puzzle Valley initially held the same name as it does now. Upon upgrading it, adding several features and removing a few bugs, I added "Welcome to" to its name. Finally, seeing that it was a stupid name and preferring the old one, I changed it back.

Infidel ==> Infidels

Initially, you were the infidel. When deciding to switch the roles round and subsequently realising more than one infidel existed from then on, I pluralised the title.

I'm edging towards ditching The Flip Side. My main reason for wanting to enter the fifth YoYo Games competition was for the sake of publicity. However, if I ditch TFS, when I'm more in the mood focus on making Innoquous 4 a smashing game, then advertise the crap out of it, I could hopefully achieve it by myself.

Lifewise, I'm doing okay. Still thinking about the aforementioned job offer (am seriously leaning towards wanting it), waiting for a little more information which I was told would be given to me at the end of this month. I think, pending the answers, I'll know near enough 100% if I'm going to take it or not.

There would be other advantages to doing so. For starters, it'd help my confidence and independence out. I'm too clingy, really - being by myself would hopefully get my head straight and help nail the reality of life into my brain. It would also probably help with friendships and (dare I say it?) relationships. Where I currently live, chavs have basically overtaken. In a 20 mile radius there are about ten people I would befriend. With a move I would (possibly) refresh that, and meet new people. I could make at least two/three met-in-real-life friends if I stopped by in Yorkshire on the route from Redgrave to Dundee (and vice versa). I plan to do that at some point, I've known all three of the people there for more than a year. It'd be odd, but definitely fun and well worth doing.

Anyway, I think that's enough for one blog entry. I'd quite like to start doing these weekly again instead of fortnightly, as I have a lot I could say but don't, and as I've learnt from a friend over the past couple of weeks, it seems to be beneficial in letting out all these little tidbits of information instead of bottling them up.

Until next time!

32 Things You May Not Have Known About Me

I don't have a vast amount to write about, so I thought I'd stray from the norm a little. In this blog, I'll share some stuff about me that you may or may not know. Hopefully it'll be interesting to y'all.

1. My nationality consists of around 48% Scottish, 48% English and 4% Irish. My surname is Irish.

2. I consider myself agnostic (I do not stick by a religion and am not entirely convinced on the whole "God" thing), though was baptised, so am listed as Christian.

3. One of my bigger traits is curiosity. I've frequently found myself in a disadvantaged state because I had to go out of my way to find something out.

4. I'm not afraid of death. This ties in with #3. What happens when you die is of huge interest to me, so to me death will be just another question answered. Having said that, I'm unlikely to go out of my way to find the answer out.

5. I was born (well, once I'd grown hair) with a "dirty blonde" hair colour. This has slowly changed to brunette. I've never dyed my hair and have no plans to do so.

6. Having spent three years single, I miss relationships. However, I do enjoy certain aspects of single life, and try not to dwell on it.

7. I'd consider myself pessimistic/realistic. Despite trying to look on the bright side of things I always convince myself that in the end they won't work. Which leads into:

8. I lack self-confidence. Although I eventually grow into the feeling and loosen up, if I walk into a crowd I will suddenly become very shy and try to find somewhere to hide. My quietness in these situations is a contrast from...

9. In familiar company, I'm loud and talkative. I often try to crack jokes, with varying success.

10. I find life, specifically other people, interesting. I will frequently see strangers and wonder what their life is like.

11. I'm a daydreamer. I must spend at least an hour each day thinking about certain people, places and things. I also like thinking about what my life would be like if I were an [insert career].

12. My brain is bursting with ideas that I know will never come to fruition. These aren't just for games - I have a plethora of ideas for movies, concept albums, and books (though most of these transform into movies as my mind likes to picture everything).

13. I have a tendency to be able to remember things of no importance, while useful knowledge is quickly forgotten. In particular, I'm good with remembering numbers (I was once able to tell a friend his mobile number, having only seen it once about a month beforehand) and pictures/scenes. I actually have a memory of a discussion between my parents from when I was one.

14. I began school life excelling, I ended it failing badly. Before I was two I could spell my full name unattended. Before I was three I could look at signs and read their text. I hit the 15.6-year-old maximum level in a continuous spelling test when I was 11. I also, on several occasions, corrected teachers in primary school. However, though I passed all 10 GCSEs, some of which were scraped passes, A-level went downhill. In Year 12 I got a C and three Us, in Year 13 I got a D and two Us. After the A-levels were finished (last May) I left education for good.

15. One day I want to see the world. Particularly - Tokyo in Japan, Machu Picchu, Coober Pedy in Australia, and Easter Island. I would love to film these adventures too.

16. I had wanted to become a video game creator since I was five, though back then wasn't aware I would be able to do so by myself. I had many drawn pictures of mock screenshots of games. So far, I've only actually gone on to make one of these - 2004/5's "Fight of the Height".

17. Although I discourage the use of "Nal", it's how it began. I made it up at the age of six as my fictional development company. Aged 12, I decided to use it for old time's sake on the back of a geography essay, though decided I should make it stand for something. "Notalot" became that something.

18. I dropped usage of "Notalot" in favour of "NAL" toward the end of 2006 when I decided it looked better on a DVD cover. It came into use as the insignia for a printed-out cover I made for a game dedicated to my then-partner. The game is called "Rabbit Escapade".

19. I consider 2006 to have been my favourite year so far. Not only because of the aforementioned relationship (though it played a big part in it), but also because in August I went on holiday with a friend called Tyrone McKenzie. This holiday holds many memories for me (including one of walking five miles back to our resort from an amusement park because we spent the bus fare on the rides without thinking). Shortly after the holiday he moved away with his dad and we lost contact - avid attempts at finding him have proven moot.

20. I'm accident prone. I've fallen for plenty of stupid things in my time - slipping on banana skins, walking into French windows, hitting my head on the car door frame as I enter it, stubbing my toes more times than countable, etc. Some of these have resulted from my daydreaming - in Year 13, I caused a horrific, three-day headache when I lost attention to where I was walking and took a metal pole to the side of my skull.

21. I consider my two favourite videogames of all time to be Psychonauts and Canis Canem Edit/Bully. The former was simply stunning (particularly a level called the Milkman Conspiracy), the latter was one of the most refreshing experiences I've ever had. This one, in a broken-record-like turn of events, was acquired at my time of being in a relationship. The game deals with high-school relationships so it was incredibly relatable. The game I've probably clocked up the most hours on, though, is Mashed: Fully Loaded, purely for the fact it's the best party game in the world (bollocks to Guitar Hero, Singstar, EyeToy, and anything with a motion-sensing controller).

22. My first ever relationship lasted around seven years (though they were young years). I decided to call it a long day when she refused an invitation to my 12th birthday party on account of it clashing with trampoline class. Charming!

23. I have been accused of robbery and arson in the past. I committed neither, and luckily neither saw me in any lasting trouble.

24. I've been grounded for a total of one day in my entire lifetime - it was for telling somebody to "f**k off" and attempting (but failing) to get a branch into their spokes as they were riding their bicycle. My motivation - the person in question was, at the time, incredibly annoying.

25. I've been in love with two people in my life so far - one became a failed relationship, the other never got that far.

26. I've been in hate with absolutely nobody so far. Though I've disliked hundreds of people, I've not ever absolutely hated them. Leads onto:

27. I cannot hold a grudge. If somebody's rattled my cage, I will want to be pissed off with them for life. It just won't happen. And this, in turn, leads onto:

28. I like being at peace with people. I've been into plenty of arguments in my time, some major, some minor. But my reason for calling the argument off is almost always that I simply don't want it. I respect others' opinions; I'd rather shake their hand and make up with them.

29. I've never been in hospital for my own medical needs. Doctor's clinic - many times. But never a hospital. I've never broken a bone in my body (at least not to my knowledge, I was once told your little toes break five times a year without you ever knowing - I don't believe it).

30. As much as I try to hide it, I'm a very emotional person. Though only two films have actually had me in tears (The Green Mile, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), there are plenty of others that have me fighting it back. I also tend to share other people's emotions, particularly pain. If I see someone upset, even if I dislike them, I instinctively want to help them as I feel bad for them. Connected to:

31. Of all the things that make me happy, making someone else smile, laugh or even just smirk, will make my day. In a world where "life is meaningless" (a philosophy I personally find bullshit) and sadness is abundant, making people happy, even if just for a few seconds, is immensely satisfying.

32. I deal with stress and sadness badly. I've, in the past, used the metaphor of storing stress and sadness in a tanker inside me. When the tanker overflows, I generally break down uncontrollably.

I've tried to cover a piece of everything in writing this. I also thought it would be nice to out a side of me you wouldn't normally see, as my games generally tend not to cover any kind of emotion.I'd also like to take this opportunity to offer an ending to any curiosity about me. If there's something you'd like to know, leave your question in the comments. I will likely answer them all, unless they're serious or they hit a genuinely massive nerve (which is unlikely, I'm open about myself). They can be about anything you like, personal, game-wise, whatever.

So, yeah. Thank-you for reading, both this blog entry and my blog as a whole. I appreciate it!

Innoquous 4: Early Stages

A blog post about my current active project, Innoquous 4, and some information on it.

Firstly, it's initially aimed for YYG Competition 05. It's going to undertake the alias Innoquous Hand Held for this. Innoquous Hand Held will lack online functions, be capped to 480x272 as its screen resolution, and be slightly fiddlier than usual. This is a direct result of the competition restrictions. What it will contain will be 100 levels (40 new, 60 from Innoquous 1, 2 and 3, many of which will be tweaked to accommodate the faster controls). There will also be other obstacles - I'm aiming for timed-shooting guns and pushable blocks, that will debut, and make appearances in both new and old, tweaked levels. I'm looking to add a level editor - this may not make IHH as the control restrictions would make it difficult to implement.

Once IHH is released, I will upgrade it to Innoquous 4. This will be the full-on game. 800x600 resolution, mouse-controlled, easy to use level editor (mouse-controlled), improved menu, plenty of customisation options (complete control over block colours, a choice of characters - play as a fish!, and other options), etc. I'll also poke UnknownGamer into making the online for it, which will build on I3's site - you'll be able to make an account on it, share statistics, see your rankings, upload levels you've created and download others', with level ratings etc. Depends on how much he can do.

Now, cost-wise. I initially said I was going to make Innoquous 4 my first commercial game. However, with the need to make IHH free, this is now unlikely. What I am edging towards is making the game DONATIONWARE. This would mean you could pay $/£20 (madness!), $4 (what I would've initially charged), or even 1p/cent (*stares*). The reason I want to charge for the game is because I'm about to jump into the world of work, and in all honestly I'd quite like to be able to jump out of it ASAP into commercial indie game production. I know it'll probably be a few years before that provides any kind of income, but hey, the sooner I start making this damn game, the better!

Yesterday I released a trailer for the game, showcasing its new IOTAS-style graphics and mentioning some of the planned features. If you're interested, here it is:And that's pretty much it, really! If you have any comments, suggestions, or anything else, don't hesitate to comment. Even if I don't reply to them, I certainly read them and take them on board. Thanks!

Until the next blog entry.

~ NAL

Merry Christmas, All!

Merry Christmas or whatever other December holiday you celebrate!

Since I'm likely to get asked, here's what I got:

WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010 (PS3)
Midnight Club Los Angeles Complete Edition (PS3)
Smokey & The Bandit Trilogy (DVD)
Jackass Film Trilogy (1, 2, 2.5) (DVD)
Bruno (DVD)
Dara O Briain: Tickling The English (book)
Big Beastly Book of Bart Simpson (book)
Half a kilo of dry roasted peanuts (food)
Thornton's Toffee & Fudge collection (food)
Arse/Face soap (novelty)
Gaydar (novelty)
£80

So not bad at all. Feel free to comment with what you got, what holiday you're celebrating, etc!

In related news, I've made my first project with Game Maker 8 Pro: a game called La Rolloux. This also implements Game Jolt trophies. You can download it here.

So that'll be it for today - have a good day, and enjoy the season!

~NAL

The Unfinished Archives of NAL 2004-2009

This is a blog entry mainly to mention that, on Game Jolt, I have released a compilation of 40 unfinished games from between 2004 and 2009. They can be found here. Some information on each game in the pack, pulled from its description on GJ:-----I've dumped a hell of a lot of games in the past. From 2004-2009 (nothing from 2003 worth seeing), I've collected 40 (count 'em) unfinished and (in most cases) abandoned games that are at least in a playable state, and .exe-ed them into one big 60MB zipped folder. They're dated so you can quickly predict how crap they're gonna be.

2004 -----

Retroform

A jetpack shooter. Was dumped because my skill at the time was awful and I couldn't get anywhere near what I wanted.

2005 -----

Defrag

Platformer styled on the defragmentation graphics on Windows' defrag tool. You have to turn all the undefragmented blocks green with your progression item. Was very dreary - didn't complete much.

KOed

Poor excuse for a beat-em-up. Never tried making one since.

Lost Jewels

The only time I've attempted a movie in GM. This is like one big, naffly-made cutscene lasting about two minutes and erroring at the end.

Penalties

Penalty shootouts. Badly made but kinda works. But badly made. This one's near enough complete, though it never got released.

Primitivity

Game set in the past. You have a spear. You can throw it, but then you have to get it back to throw it again. Boring.

Rigmorol's Platform Adventure

Another that was near enough finished. Might actually be short enough to be tolerable throughout. You get turned into a ball and have to... get yourself turned back into a human.

Shotgun, Baby!

Not very done at all. You can run about in a single area and shoot a woman bloodily. Understandably, I dropped work on it very shortly after.

Tracker

Basically, GTA1 with awful controls, nothing to do, and nothing much to see. Kinda funny watching your guy get run over though.

Vakioum

Pretty much finished, designed as a minigame to a crap, released game. Collect all the hidden coins in an area before time runs out. Again, short enough to be playable, since there's only one level and it takes about half a minute to complete.

Way State

One thing I've learnt in my years of game making: I can't do adventure games for shit. This was one I started, got about an hour into then stopped. Has an alright parallax thing going on though.

Yarat

More clichéd than a chocolate teapot having sex with a sleeping, lying dog on a blue moon while someone allergic to apples is pursued by a doctor, Yarat was a platformer all about the key-opened gates. About 1/6 of a level finished before I realised it was gonna get crap, fast.

2006 -----

Dafyddylle Violent

If it wasn't so pathetically slow this could've worked. Alas. It's a game in which you join the military and go to war. The game includes the enrolment process and training, along with a couple of empty levels in which you blast some enemies with AI less intelligent than a plank.

Evaders

Two-player dodgem wars with guns, Evaders tried to be innovative, but ended up a bit meh. First game I ever made to incorporate game options, though, and some things worked okay.

Ovmira Racing

Closest I ever got to making a racing game. Not very good. One level, one path-scripted AI car, one wasted minute of your life.

2007 -----

Desert Game

Yes, that's a temporary name. Desert Game was my first attempt at a self-made FPS. It never turned into a game but it's alright for titting about in. The engine later formed a city game, which later still became Dreaming On E.

Festival For Under Fives

A shooter with nothing to shoot. This came about me editing the Mingitilla engine to try and incorporate weird model distortion. It worked, but it sucked.

Nails

Holds a place in my heart. It's a difficult shooting game that I spent a lot of time on before scrapping it heartlessly. To this day a part of me wants to finish it, but then I see all the horrific D&D and run away.

Notthemostoriginalgamenamebutupthere

A game designed for a mouse-only contest. Wasn't great so I scrapped it and started a new game instead - Rockit. Never looked back.

Robotreq

Yet another platforming game that (for the time) wasn't badly designed, but was axed on the basis it was blander than a piss sandwich.

Va

Isometric detective game with two missions made. If I'd applied myself a little more I'm convinced Va could've worked. But I didn't. So it didn't.

2008 -----

Cartoon K

Always wanted to make a cartoony game. Cartoon K was satisfaction, as well as realisation that if I wanted it to be fun it would require a lot of work. A lot of work? *chop*

Don't Let That Guy Get You Down, Man!

Name is unexplainable, but the game is a 2.5D game that aims to mess with your prespective senses while being a generally spooky game. Got bored of making it.

Elemence ZII

One of several (in this pack one of two) games with which I attempted to reinvigorate the Elemence series, a series that carried my best game until I got better, Elemence AuX. ZII was 3D, not very Elemencey, and, to summarise the game in four words, "a bad Ballance ripoff".

Flat

Arcade game with flat characters. And flat gameplay. But I made the music for it, so that was a plus! And the blood effects, I've yet to replicate.

Halcyon Days

Trippy and crazy, this was my attempt to throw myself back into 2D games after the Febmar Trilogy. It got junked when a Jet Pod contest made me decide to make NAL's Jet Pod instead. Incidentally, this was also to be my first game made 100% in code. NJP took that liberty as well.

NeonX

Me playing about with GM7's (I was a late adopter) new effects, specifically draw_line_width. I ended up using draw_line_width in FKR2 and dropping this on account of not being able to find a way to incorporate gameplay without ballsing the graphics up.

WTFPMSL

What The F**k? Pissing My Self Laughing! Well... the game has a skateboarding grandad. Not really the high point of hilarity, but it had a nice greyscale aesthetic.

2009 -----

Classical Castle

My attempt at laid-back gaming, this featured classical music, simple graphics and puzzling mixed with platforming. Halted when I ran out of puzzle ideas about three levels in.

Elemence: Switch / Elemence: Passion Matrix

The other Elemence in this collection. This one instead was 2D and had a lot of bevelgasms. This is one of the games I wouldn't mind finishing - it had a presentation to it I've still not really matched since, and despite only having two levels, was well built and kinda fun.

Gamanstake 3D

As with Elemence, this was an attempt to bring an old series into new territory. I made Gamanstake back in 2006 and wanted to turn it into a respectable game. As a note, the title was temporary. I despise putting "3D" in game titles. The planned title at time of axing (though I may still finish this one) was "Hell Has Brick Walls".

Lyghtgryd

Ever played the game Aargon Deluxe? Guessing that was a "no", since despite being one of the best puzzlers I've ever played, it was hugely underplayed. I don't like remakes, but this was to be a remake of Aargon Deluxe. Unfortunately, my skill collapsed on me and it was left half-made.

Monobrow Cat

A collaboration with Broxter. He wanted to keep this one secret. Bugger him. :D This is an exploration game featuring your friendly neighbourhood |:3. Another one that may well be finished in the future, either as a continued collaboration or with just one of us continuing work on it.

Nightmare In Pixel Width

Fake 3D, presented with a limited colour pallette. Looks kinda nice, actually, but suffered from "implementing gameplay into this is gonna be a pain in the arse", which ultimately meant demotivation and death.

Polybiius

If you've never heard of the urban legend "Polybius" I recommend you go and look it up. Summary - it was a game, created by the government, found in arcades that induced numerous bad effects in players, including nausea, headaches, epilepsy, and narcolepsy. This was my attempt at doing the same thing, though it quickly descended into "making things flash a lot" so I stopped work on it.

Rockit 2 (R2CKIT)

Sequel to Rockit. Lost motivation very quickly - some games I can sequelise, others I simply can't. Rockit's a can't, despite numerous requests to.

The Hilarity Of Murder Pro

FPS version of The Hilarity Of Murder. Looked crap, wasn't very nice, but here's the basics if you want to see life in the player's eyes. Was also to include online deathmatches and similar, but my online crew bailed.

The Inverse Man

A cross between Innoquous, Jumpman and anything with little men and monochrome. This was ditched because of GM's annoying outlines drawn around sprites. GM8's alpha support may end this problem - if so, this could be released in the future.

So, yeah. That's all of them! I will willingly give out source codes to any of these games if you're interested in finishing them or pinching bits of code (with credit of course), lemme know!

-----

It's a 60MB download, so have fun with that!In other news, I've also released a new game, Rainbow Planet 2, a sequel to the predictably-named predecessor from mid-2007. That marks a NALRecord for longest time between two instalments of a series!

You can play Rainbow Planet 2 on YoYo Games, the special edition Rainbow Planet 2.1 on Game Jolt (which includes online highscores and a Twitter feed that automatically tweets new winners), or if you're interested in its history, the original can be downloaded from MediaFire.

The game itself is nothing stunning, but in a small way this was since I wanted to make it true to the original, particularly with the controls, which may be considered awkward.I've noticed YoYo Games have reupdated the Game Maker 8 logo. Although I liked the original new update, I think I slightly prefer this one. I like the slight reduction in saturation from the original version, and this one seems like it would scale down a lot better to a 32x32 icon. It's still just an icon though. YYG will have the £20 thrown at them for the overdue Game Maker upgrade regardless of whether its logo is a Pac-Man in a G, a communist hammer, a smiley face, or a bell-end with clown make-up on.

Anyway, it's currently 8:10am. I've been up all night, and plan to see through the all-nighter. Already rather drowsy and keep getting dizzy spells, so I'm guessing in a few hours I'll probably keel over and sleep on whatever happens to be beneath me. But for now, I'm done writing, so I'll see y'all in the next blog. Thanks for reading, as always!

I Like GM8's New Logo

Ha! Got your attention!

But seriously, I do actually like it. No, I'm not trying to be different. I'm not trying to separate myself from the group of two types of people - those that dislike the new logo, and those that are following the crowd and just saying they don't really like it. I genuinely like it. Why?

It's professional. Bullshit to anyone that says otherwise. It is. It looks a little childish, yes, but it's not unprofessional. It's very well made.It suits the target audience, as stated by YoYo Games and Mark Overmars. Game Maker pitches itself as an easy game development platform. Most people that use the program don't evolve their skills past games that use the simplest D&D actions and the resource sprites. Game Maker's popular in schools and even universities as an introductory tool into the world of coding. That is what it is pitched as. The new logo shows this off perfectly. Yes, it can be used for advanced games written entirely in the program's coding language. Yes, many people don't acknowledge this. But the logo shows off what the program is designed for.It's better than the ball and hammer. It's newer, it's nicer looking, it's shinier, it's more modern. It looks like a tool for today's program, not for one from 1999.

The logo's haters haven't done themselves any favours in my opinion. The juvenile threats to stop using the program or to boycott the use of the new logo are stupid. The online petitions were an overreaction which Sandy Duncan, YoYo Games CEO, then capitalised on by publicising - that's thousands of people that have just learnt about Game Maker through the "Recent Activity" box on the petition site. Note - I don't have anything against people expressing their opinion if they do it maturely. I respect those that managed to express negativity to the icon's design without having a tantrum.

Just to cap it off - it's not a big deal, YYG are still going to get my £20 when they release the final version of the program, and I stand by my opinion. If you want to disagree, you know where the comments go.

Game-wise, I've nothing at the moment that's getting my serious attention. That's all on that matter.

So, yeah. NAL out!

The attention madnessMADNESSmadness has been getting is... wait for it... madness

Long blog title. Ah well, it works for me. It summarises what I have to say, too.

madnessMADNESSmadness didn't place in GameJolt's Minimal contest. However, any mild disappointment I get from that (not too much, there were better games entered) is more than neutralised by everything else that's been happening.

For starters, it got featured on YoYo Games. This makes for my fourth featured game (the first three being Elemence AuX, Innoquous, and Innoquous 3). It also a couple of days ago replaced the feature with a YYG Spotlight, the first I've had. Then, and this is to me the most important and pleasing one, it got onto Bytejacker's Free Indie Rapid Fire!

Last but not least, today it entered the GMC Cagematch. This marks the third time I've had a game in the GMC Cagematch. I'm hoping it's third time lucky too, as the previous two games, EverScrollingHue and FKR3, were both knocked out in round one. I've never won a round!

To make matters better, I've had positive comments on the game from quite a few high-up indie developers, including cactus (on YoYo Games) and Joe Larson (on Bytejacker). Both, of course, had criticisms, which I'm seriously considering working on in some sort of spin-offy sequel thing (I won't call it a direct sequel - I'll probably shave most of the name off and re-form the game into something extra. There will still be the ol' get-chased-by-big-wall arcade mode).

I collaborated with Jack Brockley (Broxter) on a game for the 14th Mini Ludum Dare. Having spent three days on an entry which turned out to be far too large, we (mostly he) made something completely different in the last 24 hours. It's called GETSUMCOKE, and can be found on Game Jolt. I mainly did the trippy graphical background and menu design, he did the rest - gameplay, online highscores, in-game sprites etc. We'll be continuing the game we spent three days on whenever - don't know yet.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for now. Until the next, probably-miles-away blog, goodbye!

This is not Sparta!

Has been a while. Oops! Oh well, time to dive straight into the contents of this.

As some of the nine or so readers of this blog may already know, a couple of days ago I released a game called madnessMADNESSmadness (capitalised like that for no real reason, and shortened to mMm) for the current Game Jolt competition with the theme "Minimal". It closed a couple of days ago with nearly 50 entries, including quite a few great ones, so I won't be disappointed if I don't win.

Having said that, the reception mMm has got is astonishing. It's a small game, made in about the same time as my entry for GJ's first competition, Infidels. Infidels took about a month to hit 100 plays on YoYo Games, and is currently on about 300. Its online highscore list only hit 100 recorded entries about a week ago (taking about four months in total). Compare mMm, which hit 100 recorded online highscores in one day and throughout the four days it's been out has fast approached 400. It's on an accumulated nearly-700 plays on GJ and YYG, more than Infidels, is currently on a respectable 4.1 on YYG and a big 4.4 on GJ, and has nine posts in the contest thread on the GJ forum devoted to how great it apparently is. It's now more played, rated and commented than any of my other games on Game Jolt, and is continuing to rise quickly.

This is a game that took 7 weeks less time than Innoquous 3 to make. A three-day-developed game. It has about 45 seconds of level in and is basically a bog-standard platformer with a weird graphical effect. 4.4 by 31 people on Game Jolt. Crazy.

And yes, the "Madness?! THIS... IS... SPARTAAAA" jokes have already come. Missed your chance, fans of 300 and/or internet meme followers. Sorry. :P (having said that, if you like internet memes you may as well say it again, because as most people know memes are the most annoying, overused, repetitive thing on the net).

I've done four reviews on Game Maker Blog and am unlikely to stop any time soon. As I usually mention before/after the reviews, if you have any games you want to see reviewed there you can reply to this blog entry, PM me on Game Maker Community, etc. Wherever you know I still am. I'll also be reviewing something for the upcoming GMTech issue 18 (the Christmas issue), though that'll likely be something chosen by gamez93 if he can bag an exclusive.I reckon that's it. See you in another hopefully-less-than-nearly-a-month!

GMB, Flash, Talast, Commercialism?

A few different things to talk about in this blog entry, methinks. I'll go through them in title order.

I applied for a position reviewing games on the popular Game Maker Blog yesterday. Was surprised to be accepted about 20 minutes after applying! Anyway, I posted my first review and the comments seem to be positive about it, so I'll continue reviewing games for it. You can check out the review, which is of Elmernite's Rosetta Stone, here.

I've started learning Flash. I have a copy of Macromedia Flash 8 (have had it for ages) so figured it may as well go to use. Part of my reason for wanting to learn flash is the playing figures on popular flash site, Kongregate. Loads of games on it top 100,000. Some have even passed 1,000,000. They offer ad sharing on their games too. While not massive, a game with 100,000 plays, with Kongregate's 35% shared ad revenue, would earn about $200. Not too shabby. It'll be a while, of course, before I make anything worth 100,000 plays in the program, but hell, may as well learn now.

Talast is going spiffingly. Unknown Gamer recently moved it to its own server, meaning we (he) can now add plugins and stuff to it. There's a fair amount of reviews on it now, too.

Commercialism. Hm. J. Rhodes (of Roket-Games) recently asked if I'd like to make something commercial. If I did, and made it Roket-Games exclusive, I'd get $20 from the get-go and 80% of the cost of the game per sale. Therefore, I'm planning on making Innoquous 4. I wouldn't publicise this information due to tempting fate, but I did it with Innoquous 3 and it actually managed to work. Here's some planned stuff on it:

• 40 new levels, with the 60 from I1-3. All 100 playable in all three modes from I3, as well as some undetermined new ones

• Level editor, integrated into Roket-Games for easy uploading and downloading of levels

• Speedruns of the whole game, possibly of the levels from each individual Innoquous, and individual fastest times for each level in Standard mode

• Extra in-game items to keep it fresh. This may possibly include things I tried for I3 but couldn't get to work, like moving platforms. New items may be included in older levels too

• Graphics overhaul. I3's weakest point was its graphics. Colour is definitely still in, but I may ditch the "outline disappears when ball is on floor" thing altogether

There may be more (or less) if I do pull this game off. Oh, one thing on it - it will probably cost $5 or £3 to start with, if all of the points above make it into the game. I'd consider that reasonable, taking into account the amount of work I want to put into it. If you have any suggestions on other additions, think the price should be adjusted, or think I should go with something else for commercialdom instead, feel free to comment. I take all comments into account.

Anyway, that's all for this blog. Fair amount covered - guess that makes up for the reduction in quantity. See y'all later!