What up all, it's been a good few weeks since I made my last newspost. That post was a little breakdown of my Ludum Dare game. Pretty much I've been developing a game wit @PhantomArcade for the past 1.5 months. Dang it seems like I've been making this game forever, and also we just got started with it. But anyways, he started posting some fancy GIFS and whatnot to his twitter, so here are a few that he posted: 

https://twitter.com/PhantomArcade3K/status/941767925777788928

https://twitter.com/PhantomArcade3K/status/942555171544092672

We're both pretty excited about this project, so feel free to follow us both on Twitter for some sneak peaks maybee eheheheh

In other game dev shenanigans, I'm hoping to finish a small game before the end of 2017, which would be a follow up to "Sick Day", a game I posted earlier this year, but I actually made it in December of last year.

In more shenanigans, I started work on my Pixel Day game, and I'm using Pixo-8 because I gotta put it to good use since I haven't really touched it since I bought it oopssies

What's up yall, over the weekend I participated in Ludum Dare 40, a good ass game jam. ldjam.com

I made a game called "IN-FAMOUS" and that's a genious title so you should play the game here on Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/703072

Intro/Idea conceptions:

This would be my second time doing Ludum Dare, but I ain't no stranger to short weekend game jams. This time around I went solo, I was in talks with Moawling on working with them, but my internet actually went out two weeks ago and I only got it back yesterday, so I had to go solo heheh. Maybe next time. Anyways, this Ludum Dare's theme was "The More You Have, The Worse It Is". I actually had to head to the Tim Hortons across the street from me and use the internet there just to check what the theme was since my library closed. Anyways, for the next 6 hours I just brainstormed, and did a small bit of prototyping. But nothing came out of it besides some concepts for a dating sim that definitely would've been called "Too Many GFs". 

Here's the concept of what the UI would have been that I made in MS Paint.

It wasn't until I was in bed at midnight when I had the idea to do something related to online fanbases. I then booted up my PC and wrote down some stuff in the text file I had. You can check out all of the ideas I had written down in the txt file here: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/ld40/blob/master/theme.txt

and also some of the game design stuff I was thinking about for the dating sim idea: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/ld40/blob/master/DesignIdeas.txt

How the game became the game it is today:

The first day of work, I originally had in mind that, as you get more internet followers, the worse and meaner the comments get. I began by working on a clicker style game, where when you click "create" it increased your followers, and you had a random chance to get a random number of comments. I then built the comment loading system, with scrolling and everything. However I started generating A LOT of comments in a very short amount of time. I started optimizing the code a bit so that the game shows and saves 1800 comments very little performance cost. I actually hacked the core HaxeFlixel code to make a bootleg culling effect, where it didn't call the draw() updates if the object was offscreen, which I am very proud of because it increased performance by over double, with a single line of code:

this.set_visible(this.isOnScreen());

Again, super simple thing, that just doubled the FPS. So I'm proud of this stupid thing, which I'm sure that there's an actual function that might do this built right into HaxeFlixel but ehhh hey guys let me have this moment.

Anyways, I was able to generate a shit ton of comments, which then got me to think about ways to generate all of the comments. I immediately thought of randomly generating the comment.

Randomly generating the comments:

At first I thought of almost completely randomizing the comments, and playing around with sentance structure. But I know shit all about sentance structure and grammar. So I then decided to write some sentances and go from there. I'll break down the comment gen steps.

1. The function first grabs a random name from an Array(basically a list) of names I wrote, and then a last name from another array. Then it puts them together.
2. Then it picks a random number between 0 and 6. These are all of the different kinds of comments, so 7 different types of comments in total. In this breakdown, I'll only go through the process of one type of comment
3. Let's say that random number is 4. That generates a comment, with the base template of my (sibling/family) (verbs) this. However this sentance is modifiable. For example, instead of that "my" at the beginning, it has a 50% chance to instead add "why does" before it, to modify the sentence to become a question. While generating that bit, it also has a chance to add a "really" before the verb (ex: "why does my brother really hate this?").
4. Since the comment type if 4, it has a random chance to add another sentance relating to it. One example is I (guess) that means I (verb) it!!! where the guess is a word taken from a list of four that I wrote ("guess", "suppose", "think", "assume"). Let's say it randomly took "suppose", and it took "love" from the verb list. Now the comment reads "why does my brother really hate this? I suppose this means that I love it!!!" Now you already have a picture of some kid, maybe a sister, who does everything the opposite of her brother.
5. It then has a random chance to add either "LMAO", "WTF", or "LOL", and these are still a bit specific to this type of comment.
6. Now it goes through modifiers that'll apply to every type of comment. First is a modifier that'll add a self quote (ex: -firstname lastname currentyear). I really liked this bit to create those kinds of people that make stupid quotes of themselves and its hilarious.
7. then, it has a chance to randomly generate a hashtag. It has a 7% chance of running this bit, so lets go through it. It grabs a hashtag from a list I've written, then adds it to the end of the sentence. It then has a 60% chance to add another random hashtag from the list.
8. The final bit is a random chance to completely erase the sentence, and replace it with a spam message. This has a 1% chance of happening, which is probably way too low to be honest heheheh. Basically the way that works is it writes the comment "FREE GIFTCARD GIVEAWAY" as a reference to youtube spam comments that try to give you free Steam cards or something. then makes a fake url "spam4u.rl" and adds some random numbers and letters after it.
9. Finally, it returns the comment and displays it on a comment block. The final result would look something like this: "Krystin Taylor: why does my brother really hate this? I suppose that means I love it!!! #DEEZNUTS #TRIGGERED #HATERSGONNAHATE"

That's essentially the comment gen process, but this example only used 1/6 comments. Here's a link to the function if you want to see how more comments are generated, sorry about not commenting the code oopsies: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/ld40/blob/master/source/Comments.hx#L400

I think this kinda semi-hand made style of randomly generating comments works very well. It's almost like how Derek Yu of Spelunky "randomly" made Spelunky levels, by just having hundreds of handmade levels, then randomly modifying them, then stringing them together randomly too.

Final thoughts and misc things:

The final day was essentially polish, title screen, better controls, fades, etc. At this point, I still didn't have any music, so I was browsing through my PC when I found an MP3 of Clair De Lune that I had downloaded when I was learning it on piano. I think it was made in the late 19th century so I'm pretty sure it's public domain by now, if not oops. I think it works really well because when you scroll through the comments, they almost look like piano keys! 

The song also adds a seriousness to it, that adds to the comedy a bit, and makes it way more dramatic than it needs to be. I actually wasn't able to upload it by the deadline because of internet difficulties, but I finished the game 3 hours before the deadline. I think the game turned out real good. The last thing I wanna add is that I felt like such a genius when I came up with the title "in-famous" because it refers to both being internet famous, and also infamous, as most of the comments refer to you making shitty, offensive, or weird content and pretty much universally disliked by the internet.

OOF this was a long ass newspost, but here it is yall. I hope you enjoyed reading through some design process and whatnot. Again, if you haven't played the game it's here on Newgrounds, or if you wanna see the good ass comments again: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/703072

Go rate the game 5 so that I can get a daily award and frontpage this newspost  >:) pls pls

Full source code is available on Github: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/ld40 you can check all of the development history too, and earlier builds and whatnot

And just a small update: Keep an eye on me and PhantomArcade's twitter accounts, pretty soon we'll probably start showing off some stuff for the game we're working on. https://twitter.com/ninja_muffin99 https://twitter.com/PhantomArcade3K

What's up yall, at the current time of writing this, one of my favourite game jams, Ludum Dare, begins in 5 hours! Last time I made a little "non-linear narrative game" with ur boy @DigitalFudge called "Lost Connection". The theme was "Running Out of Power" and if you haven't played it you can check it out right here on Newgrounds! https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/697235 I really like how this game turned out! And make sure you drop a good ol' follow on DigitalFudge!

Anyways onto this Ludum Dare, I'll be going in solo, partly because I haven't done art for any of my games in a while, and partly because I have no internet at the moment! Right now I'm writing this at my library, and sometimes they block Newgrounds, but right now it seems to be unblocked but who knows heheh. But for technical stuff, I'll most likely be using HaxeFlixel again for this jam, however I have been fiddling around with Unity 3D stuff lately so it's possible you might see baby's first 3D game from me by the end of the weekend. Sounds and music will probably have to be hand made in Famitracker, LMMS, or FL Studio and possibly even recorded through my mic! Graphics will most likely be made in either OpenToonz or Aseprite.

Final words and quickie updates:

Progress is still chugging along on this big-ish project I'm working on with @PhantomArcade, I think we're ready to announce it sometime this month.

Follow me on twitter for shenangians and stupid ideas for games that I'll make one day: https://twitter.com/ninja_muffin99

and gib me monie on kofi so I can make it rain on all of my ladies ayyyyyy: https://ko-fi.com/ninjamuffin

What's up new grounds. It's late at night so I have nothing to do but neglect sleep. Anyways here's little bits of updates and info for you
BIG GAME STUFF

Still working on that bigger game project, hopefully it'll be done early next year.

LUDUM DARE

LD is next weekend and I'm gonna most likely get something out for that. Absolutely nothing is planned for it in terms of people I'll be working with.

ANIMATIONS

I had a Christmas animation I completely forgot to work on this month woopsies. And also a Pixel Day music video OOPSIES.

OTHER GAME DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRAMMING SHENANIGANS

I've been messing around with a bunch of programming stuff, like working with Unity and C#. I still know shit all about Unity but I can see myself using it as a 3D game engine in the near future. I've been messing around with Blender more too so maybe keep an eye out heheh. But also I'll probably check out Godot once their 3.0 release is stable or something since I hear that the 3D will be improved a lot in that release. Tonight I tried to get C++ and SDL working but either Visual Studio messed something up or I got legacy files which aren't compatible or IDK but oof every single time I try learn C++ shit like this happens. I really want to learn some low level programming stuff one day. Tomorrow I'll try mess around with Kha http://kha.tech/ It's written in Haxe so I'll probably be familiar with it since I use HaxeFlixel.

And to leave this off, yall can check out 1 hour video by Jonathan Blow, on techniques on dealing with lack of motivation, malaise, depression. This guy made Braid, and part of the team that made The Witness so he's some hotshot I guess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kh8pNRWOo

stuff is bein made, but i only made this newspost to get that stinky wall of text off my profile aw yuck
anyways I may or may no have a small little game out by the end of the weekend.
I'm working on a somewhat larger project that im real excited for, but its still in early dev
Im working on a pixel day animation
im finishing up a year old animaton too

 

Oof I last week I started Xmas Anxiety with your boy @aninvisiblepirate. It's a stealth game about avoiding people while you Christmas shop for your family.

You can play it here: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/701255

And the source code can be found here: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/XmasAnxiety

This was a part of a weekend game jam type thing that I've started doing, where I try to make a game in a weekend. I post progress and previews in the supporter forum. This particular game took a bit longer to make so I'll be skipping a new game this weekend, and also because I have another project I gotta finish.

Onto the next subject of this newspost, and that's the project obsession. I think for Xmas Anxiety I've worked harder on it than any other project of mine. Mostly because I just wanted it done with because it already was overdue and past the sunday deadline I set for myself. I spent pretty much the whole week crunching and redoing a bunch of things. I don't regret it because I learned alot about using Tiled Map Editor which is much better than Ogmo. However last night I posted it at around 10PM PST. I then played Cuphead for about 20 mins or so then went to bed. But all I could think about was the game. The attention I thought it could get. The views. All that stuff that doesn't really matter too much, but I obsess over with every game. Usually I get over it within the first day or so. Maybe it's the fact that I posted it before I went to bed, but I actually dreamt about it. I dreamt about people leaving reviews, I dreamt about people complimenting mechanics which it didn't even have. In my dream it was a completely different game, and not metaphorically, it was different in every way. It was an odd experience. I almost couldn't tell the difference between when I was sleeping and when I was awake because the game and what people thought about it was all I could think about still. Anyways I feel like I've already moved on and I'm not obsessing over what people think about it now. Just thought I'd share my experience and thoughts.

Onto other stuff:
I plan to work on animating and doing art for the next few months. Hopefully until Pixel Day. I plan to finish an animation that I've been working on for about a year on and off, doing a little thing for Robot Day, and doing a music video for Pixel Day. I'll still do the weekend game jam things every weekend just because I really like making games. Anyways thats this newspost for now! \

https://ko-fi.com/A8854UVO gib me money pls pls

and also I'll just leave this Davey Wreden talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKMAJ8vOMDg

What up newgrounds. Looks like it's halloween time. Speaking of which, check out this little  art tool/game I made over the weekend: GES TURED https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/700696

And check out the source code if you want, it's made in HaxeFlixel: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/InkToberGame

I'm planning on doing a small game every weekend, starting development on Friday, and ending sometime on sunday. If you're a supporter you can check out the progress/previews in the thread I made in the Supporter Party forum.

Anyways for general updates:

Last newspost I mentioned I might be heading to Full Indie Summit this Saturday. Well now it's very unlikely that'll happen since my mom's car broke down yesterday so uh oh there's always next year.

I'm also in the middle of the Halloween game I'm doing, which may or may not be super spooky. I'm hoping to have it finished a few days before Halloween.

http://www.fullindiesummit.com/

Full Indie Summit is a little indie game dev thing on October 21st in Vancouver BC Canada. There's going to be a bunch of presentations and such. Even a talk by Tommy Refenes of Super Meat Boy fame (and also Grey Matter here on NG: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/467236 ) and it's successor/sequel Super Meat World.

Anyways to get to the point there's a possibility that I might go since it's like a small little road trip to Vancouver from my town. So it'd be kinda cool to hang out with other Newgrounds fellas or talk or something. Who knows maybe we can be PALS. I've only ever met one other person who has been on NG before and that was when they were in high school (early 2000's) and it was rad talking to them about it. So 

What up all. Today I made a rhythm game in about 4 hours and check it ouuut http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/699701

I wanted to make a rhythm game for such a long time, and I wanted to make one using @AliceMako's "Grid Builder" for a while too! Real great song

I've started coding rhythm games so many times before, but one way or another I've given up on them. But recently there's been a music game jam on itch.io and I felt I should atleast try fully this time. 

Originally I wanted to make a platformer, similar to the level in FEZ "Sync"

To test that all the beats/rhythms were playing at the right time, I made it so that a box would change color and position at each beat at random. I then had an idea to make it to the point where it is now, where you had to be inside the box to gain points, since it would be a much simpler system to do. I honestly could've spent the past few hours polishing it and whatnot but I have a lot of other projects and I gotta get busy again uh oh so here's a little prototype of a rhythm game everyone.

I couldn't have made this without the tutorial/guid by that nice fella @fizzd, who made Rhythm Doctor, and a Dance Of Fire and Ice, both rhythm games. Check out their guide that I used: http://ludumdare.com/compo/2014/09/09/an-ld48-rhythm-game-part-2/ 

And if you wanna dig around and see how this rhythm game is made, check out the source code! https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/MGJGame

It is anger day on newgrounds dot com everyone! Check out all the violent grey boy movies! And while you're at it, keep an eye out for my shitty Madness Day dating sim/visual novel coming out sometime today!