Merry Christmas, All! by Allison James

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 by Allison James

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!

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

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! by Allison James

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? by Allison James

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!

Talast by Allison James

PLEASE NOTE This blog entry is no longer valid. All Talast posts have been merged into this blog!

This blog is mostly to let you know the reason I'll be blogging less here.

I've started a blog which reviews music, films, products etc. I've done this partly to get paid for blogging. It's already been accepted by a company that pays you to talk about certain products and services, so it's going well.

Anyway, it's called Talast. If you like it, feel free to comment on reviews, either about their content or suggesting games/films to review. I will occasionally look at indie games, though these will likely only be high-profile ones such as Braid, World of Goo, etc.

Why Talast? It says why under the logo - "Taking A Look At Some Things". It was the catchiest name I could come up with while being unique. After all, most well-known sites have abnormal names.

On a gaming note, I released a poor shooter called RKF not so long ago. It can be found on my Game Jolt account and on YoYo Games.That's about it. I'll blog about games and personal life here, but it'll probably be less often now Talast is in my life.

~NAL

Magazine Coverage, Part 2 by Allison James

I got a game in a printed magazine again, so I'm happy. This time, I got into PCZone, a UK (again) magazine focusing on - get this - PCs. The game in question was Innoquous 3, my personal favourite creation.

I found out about it via a PDF version of the page in question (which you can read by clicking this), and am now trying to find out if that issue is the current one, or if I'll need to order a back issue. I'd like to get a copy of the magazine, as I did with last year's EDGE that featured the original Innoquous. It's a long shot, but if any of the readers of this blog happen to get PCZone, I'd appreciate a comment on the issue number or date of the magazine with the Innoquous 3 review in (page 96). Thanks!

Not yet touched any of the other videos I got from the charity shops (see previous blog). I doubt I'll watch Titanic or Independence Day any time soon, and I'll be downloading the Indiana Jones trilogy so as not to unwrap them and reduce their resellability when I'm bored of them. I'll watch Harry Enfield's shows, the Connolly stand up, and the Mr Bean episodes at some point, though.

Still not making much progress with game creation, what with the distraction of all the other entertainment I have on offer. TIM is still my active project. I've an urge to make some kind of puzzle game though - kinda like Bust-A-Move/Worms Blast, both of which I thoroughly enjoy (I still have my old copy of Worms Blast. Still play it too). I may end up canning TIM if I can't think of anything awesome to do with it, or going Innoquous 1 and half-ass-releasing it with its source code.

On a different note, my old school rang up yesterday. I failed all but one A Level. They thought my IT was close to a pass, so are allowing me the chance to tune up the work from home and re-entering it. I accepted - I don't have to go back there, and I could get another shiny notch on my slightly grubby education record. Suits me!

All bases covered? Fo sho! G'bye!
-NAL

Charity Shops are the Tits by Allison James

That sums up what the majority of this post will encompass.

Had to wake up at 8am today (when you've fallen into the habit of sleeping between 6am and 2pm that's a kick to the nuts) to go with my mum to Diss (closest town to here) to withdraw money to pay bills and stuff. Anyway, Diss is a small town, but it has a huge amount of charity shops. Quite a few people no doubt look at charity shops and die a little inside. I know a couple of my friends that won't buy anything unless it's new. I consider myself more sensible, though.

Charity shops, to me, are the key to legally downloading near-free films. Put it this way - I can walk into a charity shop, and pick up five old VHS films for £1. That's 20p each. I then have the license to the films, so regardless of the quality of the VHS, I can download their .avi files legally. Easy peasy. Of course, they're not all 20p - it just depends on the charity shop.

So today, I bought the following from charity shops:

  • Little Britain Live on DVD, wrapped, for £3

  • Two Mr Bean videos, comprising two episodes each, 29p each

  • Indiana Jones trilogy (not the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull shit), £2 - later discovered all three videos are wrapped

  • Billy Connolly live show VHS, 20p

  • Titanic VHS, 20p

  • Independence Day VHS, 20p

  • Harry Enfield and Friends, three episodes VHS, 20p

  • Being John Malkovich VHS, 20p

The last one, Being John Malkovich, I'd been wanting to watch for a while. I did so earlier today - all I can say is "wow". If you haven't seen this film, next time you see it I'd advise you to buy it. It's stunning.

I'm up to 11 levels in The Inverse Man, but apart from that, no new game making progress to report.

Another story. About ten days ago I went with my dad to a car boot sale. I love these for a similar reason to charity shops, though with a car boot sale you can get ANYTHING cheap. I have a first edition PlayStation 3, aka a backward compatible one. I gave my dad my PS2 when I bought it since I didn't need it any more - I didn't consider errors in running PS2 games on a PS3 because I'd not experienced any problems five years prior when upgrading my PS1 to a PS2. Anyway, turns out there WERE a fair few problematic games:

Ape Escape (PS1): "Press Start" won't recognise the pressing of start
Canis Canem Edit: Occasionally freezes
Metal Gear Solid 3: Frequently freezes
Ratchet & Clank 2-3: Runs at about 15FPS
SSX3: Works for five minutes in-game then freezes

I'd wanted to play all of those for a while now, so when I went to the car boot sale I decided to scout out a PS2.

Got one with two controllers for £4. Works perfectly. I also bought a memory card for it, which amazingly cost £6. Sweet imbalance.

I also got DRIV3R for £4, Ratchet & Clank 1 for £4, the first two then-WWF Smackdown games on PS1 for £1 each, and two live Al Murray stand up shows.

That's pretty much it for this blog. I'll try to balance the game making and life sides of blog entries in the future, though, at times like this, when one is being more dominant than the other, something like this one will appear.

Goodbye for now!
-NAL

Yay, Pokémon Cards! by Allison James

A while ago I joined a site called Swagbucks, which gives you virtual money for using their search (it's Google and Ask powered so it's not a bad search or anything). They give away a range of stuff. Anyway, I'd been using the site for about a month (total of 46 Swagbucks) when I suddenly found out a lot of the merchandise you can "buy" is US only. I was a wee bit disappointed, so I decided to spend them on something and quit using the site.

I found Pokémon cards. 15 Swagbucks each, though the cards would all be "common". So I got three. Today, I received them.

Anyway, since then, I've regained my interest in Swagbucks. I'm not gonna raise enough to get a good prize any time soon, but I'll probably keep getting weird stuff like Pokémon cards for the hell of it. :P

For those that actually give a shit about Pokémon cards, the three I got were:

Kangaskhan from some weird looking deck with a blue "e" in the bottom left corner
Scyther from the same deck
Machop from the Team Rocket deck

Game-making-wise, my active project is one called The Inverse Man. This is a several-level soon-to-be-artsy game with Innoquous-style level twisting and some other gimmicks, such as the man always being the inverse colour of the background.

A demo, you say? Oh, go on then.

In the land of sequels, Dreaming On E and Rockit are sitting patiently in line as their advanced brothers are slowly developed. Have a screenshot of new Dreaming On N and R2CKIT. TIM is priority at the moment, though, so don't expect these out any time soon.I sauntered over the $1 mark in ad-revenue on Game Jolt a couple of days ago. Only a few more decades and I can afford that car! Or, more likely, I'll cop out in a few months and buy something cheap off Steam with it. PayPal's handy like that.

I think that's all bases covered. Until next time!