The blog's below if you wanna skip this, but hey, y'know what I've got into recently? Independant games. There's like 5 on my desktop, I'm downloading em faster than I can play em. It's funny how none of us ever count as independant developers; is it cos our games aren't .exe files? I don't know. Here's a few I really really recommend:

First and foremost CAVE STORY. It's kind of an adventure game and kind of a shooter/platformer. The graphics are over-pixelated and music's all Gameboy chiptunes- Meaning it looks and sounds fun as balls. You play as a little tiny robot guy with a little tiny laser gun, and you can collect like machine guns and rocket launchers n shit- Upgrading your weapons as you go. The character designs and the boss fights are pretty creative, the game definately comes from Japan. For the parts that you aren't shootin guys, you'll be walking around towns talkin to guys and they'll be all YO I LOST MY FIVE DOGS IN SOME CRAZY MAZE, GO FIND EM. It's kind of like Zelda, but less shit, more mysterious and freaky. The townsfolk are all adorable rabbit people, but later on shit starts blowin up an you're like WHAT THE FUCK. Play it, it's fun and weird and interesting. The music is so damn fun. It's coming to Wiiware aswell by the way.

Second, TRILBY: THE ART OF THEFT. It's by that guy what makes them Zero Punctuation reviews. It's interesting; It's like this 2D stealth game where you play as this master thief who breaks into people's houses n shit. You have to be careful not to trigger alarms or get caught or whatever, but you're also challenged to take a risk and get some crazy loot for big money. You can use the money you earn to buy stuff, and there's alot of maneuvers to get. Also there's alternate costumes to unlock. It gets really hard though, I've not completed it. There's a piece of text before each level, and I'd suggest you to read it; it's well-written, very British monologue that's pretty entertaining cos the guy's allways crackin wise. Unique and really fun if you like stealth games.

NOITU LOVE 2. It's a free demo, though you have to buy the full game. The art direction in this is just magical. It's- Kind of a beat-em-up, but it plays like a shooter. It's got this unique control system where you use the mouse to punch guys, and if you're not directly infront of em, you'll zoom on over. Sounds familiar, but you'll see how different it is. The boss fights are fun and totally clever. The visual designs of the actual bosses are so great. Fighting general cannon-fodder enemies is kind of boring, but the demo's not that long anyway. The same developer also made a game called Chalk which is similarly out-there and crazy. Look it up.

Lastly, AN UNFINISHED SWAN. Living up to it's name, this game's still a prototype, but holy crap isn't that just the greatest concept?

Yeah, so games are fun.
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This is a work-in-progress of a game I just started making. It's gonna take me about 3 or 4 months to complete. Check back here every so often if you wanna watch it develop. Actually you can click Add To Watch List to get updates.

27th September 2008

Use WASD to move around. Clicking the mouse close to your character will do a melee attack, clicking far away will shoot. Play around with it.

29th September 2008

I won't usually update this often, this is just a one-off.
Checking if vertical platforming is an option. It works pretty well. Arrow keys now usable. Also you can double-tap in a direction for a new melee attack. Climbing animation added for when you get to a ledge you can't quite reach.

4th October

I think I've finished all the animations for this guy. Drew him a sword, added more friction to the floor, made the camera shaky-as-hell to emphasize impact and baditude. New moves added:
Double-tap Left or Right to smash forward
Double-tap Left or Right in mid-air to smash diagonally.
Do a melee attack and hold the mouse down, then release when the sword flashes for a radial special.

The only thing I think I'm lacking is an attack that launches an enemy into the air, and another that smashes them down. My first thought was to use the mousewheel, but they're not as common as you'd think.

I thought about Double-tapping Up or Down, but you can Double-tap Up. As soon as you press Up, you're in the air. So Double-tapping Up for a ground-based attack isn't gonna work. I don't know what I'll do for that.
Anyway, I should probably start making enemies next.

9th October

Okay, alot of development:
Firstly, there's some actual background art now. I've decided that I'm making alot of the art outside of Flash for this one. The Newgrounds team does alot of their artwork in Photoshop and it makes the games really stand out. Makes it look alot more professional, I thought I should try it. Considering I'm pretty useless in Photoshop, I turned to the next best thing on my PC after Flash; 3DS Max. I should be practising 3D anyway.

ENEMY- There is now an enemy. He's pretty standard. His limbs have blades connected to em, and he can align all the blades into a wheel and roll at you. Now I was aiming to not rip off Devil May Cry with enemies, because it's pretty obvious that's the main influence behind the game, and I wanted to come up with all the content myself. Sadly though, I was playing through it this week, and I got up to mission 14 yesterday where you meet an enemy that turns into a wheel and fucking rolls at you. So I felt pretty bad about that.
Anyway, he's about 70% done. I've not full decided on some of his art and the death animation is just a lazy placeholder. I've bin workin on the AI, and I think it's allright so far. If anyone finds themselves beating him by just doing the same move over and over, please tell me about it.

NEW MOVES- I thought for a long time on the Blastoff - Breakdown moves. The obvious choice would be to drag the mouse up really fast, but then the mouse ends up too far away from the guy. I thought about rolling the mouse wheel up, but alot of people don't have mouse wheels and it interferes with the web page. Someone on the forums suggested a good idea; Press DOWN and then UP to smash a guy up. I tried it out, but having to press two buttons for one move was just really bad. You have to be really quick. It wasn't comfortable and I couldn't see everyone getting the hang of it. I think I found a way that works though: Do a melee move, then press UP right after it to launch a guy in the air. When in the air, press DOWN to smash a guy to the ground.

That's it for October 9th. Strangely though, I have one bid for $250. Not for the source script or anything- For the game as it is now. Crazy.

16th of October

DON'T FALL OFF THE BOAT. I haven't done the script that brings you back yet. I didn't work much this week. Well- Nobody's forcin me are they? Also I was busy with that munchdown thing.
ENEMIES: I'm gonna have a hard time coming up with new ideas for enemies. I allways do. We've still got our wheelman in there, but now there's this chomp guy. He's basically this big dumb blob that eats you. IT JUST CAME TO ME. I love how his animations came out, they're great. Still haven't decided on a death animation for all the enemies though.
Second new enemy is the bat guy. Little tiny enemy that you're really gonna have to shoot to get rid of. I'm not 100% happy with his AI. I'm aware that all these enemies are the same colour. Maybe that'll change, maybe it won't. i haven't decided.
GRAPHICS: Made a new bullet shot. I've decided that white is the colour that denotes enemy damage, so the attacks and the shots are all white. I got rid of the particle effect, TRIED a frame-by-frame one. I hated it, it just wasn't random enough. So now I've made this white randomised kind of anime-style bang. It doesn't look QUITE right to me but I like the idea.
BACKGROUND ART: I've decided NOT to do 3D. After a whole lot of unsuccessful attempts to model a light-house, I decided I'm not skilled enough to pull it off. I redrew the docks in 2D, added a little tiny boat in the background, added a boat ride that forces you to beat some guys without really moving, and drew a light-house. You can cut that desk in half, by the way.
The light-house might play some significance in the upcoming boss fight.

24th of Cocktober
The guy with blades on him's got a new attack. It's nothin flash, just an alternate version of his original ROLL-AT-YOU attack for when you stand too close. He jumps you.
NEW ENEMY- I really like the concept of this. I basically took a greyhound and a revolver, and smashed them together. Creative isnit? I got the idea from some shit I saw on Deviantart like a guy with a gun for a face. The AI's not 100% yet, but you get the idea of how it works. By the way, it'll be easier to dodge it once I put an audio cue in of the pre-shot gun click noise. Then you'll know when to jump.
What's that house about? Don't know, I thought the level seriously needed som variety. I was goin for one o those crapshacks you find out in the middle of nowhere on Half Life 2 Episode whatever. Oh, don't lead any enemies in there, they're not housebroken yet and they'll probably flick through the cielings or something. You can smash all the objects in there. Please don't though, they belong to the light-house keeper and it's not fair on him, he's a nice guy.
BOSS!! You'll see the boss I've got planned at the end of the level. I haven't animated it yet- And I know what you're thinking: He'll never animate that; draw it sure, but animate? No way. Well that's where you're wrong, I've made it carefully so it's constructed out of about 5 different graphics all stuck together. I can tween em wherever I want like Madness, no problem. I'm gonna need some grunjy as hell music for that boss fight. I threw in a step ladder by the way so you can take a look at the guy on top. HA, I guess I haven't mentioned the plot atall. I won't spell it out, but if you've played Cannoncrotch you know what to expect. It's gonna be awesome and dumb as hell.
That GO! sign's recycled from an old game I never finished called THE FUCKIN AWESOME QUEST. It was pretty much a prototype for Crunchdown, but you could pick up enemies and throw them. Well- You could pick up anything and throw it. It was cool.

Don't think there's anything else. Is it running slow for anyone? I turned the quality down a notch cos I think it might be running slow. Something I should do: Add some kind of collectible stuff to give you.
Any suggestions on how to beat a giant enemy crab, I'm all ears.

Halloween 08
The boss is done. Enemy crab up n runnin. Tell me how you get along with it.
For a long time it was too hard. I had to slow it down in a few places, pace it out. You should've seen how efficient it was before though- He used to shoot 20 leeches at once, now he shoots 5. Kind of inspired me to save that as some kind of Hard mode.
The little dialogue before the boss fight, I think it's a necessity. Inspired by alot of game, but let's pin it down to Bionic Commando. I LOVED the feel of that game. I was gonna ask a seperate artist to do the character portraits in photoshop, make em look all HD. I think they look OK though, we'll see how I get on. I'm no fantastic artist.

I've got a HUD interface now n all. Life bar and all. I took the GO!! sign off though, I just thought it was unnecessary and redundant.
I spent like a whole day designing and redesigning the HUD though. I'm really into interface- Right now I hate the health bar I've got. It's so boring, it doesn't fit the character, it says nothing about health, I just hate it. I CAN'T THINK OF A GOOD ONE THOUGH. I'll keep working on it.
For a while I had a happy face in place of the health bar, and as you got hit the face turned sadder and sadder, then it turned into an angry face when you were really low on health, then it turned into a skull when you were dead. It was pretty funny, but just so dumb.

COINS- There is now money in the game. Just something to encourage you to explore and give you some instant gratification. I SO tried to avoid using coins. It doesn't fit into the game atall- Why are you collecting money? Why do demons have so much money? Why coins? It's such a cop out. Again though, what else is there? I wish I could think of something better. They don't even look like coins, they're just yellow circles.
When I first put them in, I noticed that it really slowed the pace of the game down. You'd beat a guy, then run up and down collecting the coins, beat another guy and jog on the spot getting the coins again. I wanted people to just steamroll straight through instead of fannying about collecting things. So now, after a couple seconds, all the coins will zoom towards you. Keeps the game flowing AND looks pretty cool. What do you buy with these? Cool stuff.

I think THIS LEVEL is just about done. Maybe add another move or two to the crab, take out the dog revolver (he doesn't fit in, thanks BlueySciuto) then move on to a new level. I really didn't have enough vertical exploration on this level. Turns out there's not alot to build on a coastline. By the way, how's the framerate for everyone? Seems ok for me, kind of drops on the boss. Also everyone confirm for me that you actually read this. For some reason I imagine everyone just clicking the link and sayin "Yeah that's cool" then leaving. So even if you've got no feedback or ought, just tell me, yeah?

Keep an eye out for treasure chests! There's two. God I wish I could have something better than these little boxes, but I'm gonna have to think of a substitute for money first. Maybe I could have some kind of grubs that a trader demon eats and you use it as currency to buy stuff from him? Thinkin off the top o my head here.
I had a health bar for the crab boss, and he could die, but I took it out. It bit a chunk out of the framerate and looked pretty crappy.

EDIT- WOOPS I JUST UPDATED IT. Made the boss a bit more intuitive, got rid of the crazy Terminator leeches. And YES I'll update the enemy's death animations later.

The ninth of November, two thousand and eight:
Things I still haven't done: Made new enemy death animations, thoughtof something better than coins, made the crab fight more intuitive. I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the game this week, I'm busy right, I mean- WHAT THE FUCK, I HAVE A LIFE GUYS. GET OFF MY CASE. JEEZ.

Ok so stuff I did do: Updated the background art and the crab graphcs. Now all the line thicknesses are consistant with each other. I want an opinion or two on whether this looks any better or not. Personally I don't see much of a difference, but if it makes it more professional, then okay.
I also revamped the HUD again. I think the health bar looks magnificent, it's gonna be hard for you to convince me to change it. It's simple, readable, it stands out in your peripheral vision, it's original, not distracting, it's just fab.
Under that is the metre for how much money you have. Now I thought about how I'm using money in the game as the game's currency. I want to think of something less conventional, but for now let's just stick with money. This metre works in the units of casino chips. The purple ones represent one and the green ones are ten. It's intuitive and it looks more interesting than a text box, but it's not very readable at-a-glance. I want to know who thinks it's a good idea and who doesn't.
Also I made a small animation at the end of the level for after you beat the crab.
Finally (and this is the first thing you'll notice) I started work on "level 2". I had this boss idea rolling around in my head and I decided to get it down before I forgot. So this is the "level 2 boss fight" and generally how it's gonna move. I really want to know what people think of the boss's design, because it was hard for me to come up with something original and interesting that would work well in the game environment. These boss designs are following a theme, but I won't say what it is- Don't worry if it looks like I'm being inconsistant. Here's some concept art I made while I was developing the idea.Personally I think the art isn't very impressive or interesting- I don't have alot of artistic direction. Any help on improving this: Greatly appreciated. This is the last time I'll be including "Level 1", unless you have something major to say about it.