Defend Your Trump, Fan Art, School on 02.08.2012
By Stevie
Posted in Releases
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Ansel and I have FINALLY finished Defend Your Trump, which we started over 3 years ago. We were lucky enough to get sponsored by Newgrounds, which meant that we were featured in the main slot on the NG front page for 2 days (it would have been longer if we finished earlier)! And since NG just completely redesigned their site, we were actually the last game to ever get featured on the old site. People will remember the old NG with DYT featured!

The main hurdle while working on DYT was bugs. I ran into a few crippling bugs that cost me many days of frustration. One was after the player gets stunned, you get stuck and can't play anymore. That was the hardest one; I stayed up all night and slept all day for almost 2 weeks trying to fix it. I almost decided to reprogram a bunch of stuff from scratch, but was worried it would end up the way it already was. Eventually, I did some serious reorganizing and optimizing, and it finally worked (but I still don't know what was causing the problem). The second most annoying bug was the bosses getting stuck after you attack them (instead of choosing another attack, they just sit there). That bug (along with the first one) existed for a long time before I was eventually able to fix it. Finally, when I tried to implement the NG API (for achievements and ads), I ran into a bunch of weird issues. One was Flash completely ignoring large blocks of code, which I ended up fixing by simply saving the file to a different directory (thanks, Mike). Also, all the music went from perfect to absolutely fucked once I added in the NG API, and I had to butcher everything in order to get the music fading/playing at the right spots (but I had to sacrifice the music for "Classic Mode"). I still can't believe I fixed all those bastards. It wasn't as bad as some of the stuff I dealt with for Straight Bullyism, but it almost was.

I also made a small website for DYT, check it out at DefendYourTrump.com (once I lost the domain for TWHG, I vowed never to let it happen again). I added it to my web design portfolio, along with the Reincarnation site that I did for Chris G's awesome game series. I'll also add the SB website to my porfolio once I get around to finishing the info pages, walkthrough and wallpaper. Those should hopefully be done by the end of the month, and then I can also switch to a new web host and dedicated server and then release SB to NG and such.



I added 2 old comics to the art page, here's one below (click to enlarge). Here's the other.



I received 2 new fan art games; one 3D version of TWHG and one non-3D fan-tribute (he called it "The Square Game" because I told him not to use the name if he was making profit). I now have 8 different TWHG fan art pieces, 5 of which are 3D!

I FINALLY graduated from high school (I'm almost 21 now), after dropping out to make Straight Bullyism. I don't have my grades yet, but I definitely passed (I know for sure I got 74% in Calculus). Since I've been unable to walk (due to injured feet), I got the last few months of school off, and my exams and most of my assignments were voided. That helped a bit, but it was frustrating not knowing if I was going to fail or not up until the last moment. My feet are getting a lot better; I can now walk small distances. I hope to be able to walk indefinitely in a month or two. I won't be able to skateboard anymore (damn!), and it'll probably be a while before I can run. But compared to the way I've been for the last few months (and the months before that where I was barely walking), this is AWESOME.

Straight Bullyism LAUNCHED!!!!! on 01.19.2012
By Stevie
Posted in Releases
Comments (6)

The day is finally here! After 3 years of hard work, Straight Bullyism is DONE and playable on SnubbyLand.com and StraightBullyism.com! I'd love to get some feedback (via comments or email) and make sure everything is working/optimal before I release SB around the net. Also, there were a bunch of other things I wanted to have done for today, but since I hurt my feet and am just finishing up highschool within the next week, I'm going to slowly release these things over the next month or so (hopefully) instead, while I go through physiotherapy and finish highschool.



I'll try get do these extra things done within the next month...

• Info Pages (strategy, walkthrough, making of, etc.)
• A Desktop Wallpaper
• More Promotional Images
• A bunch of minor upgrades to Snubby Land

Feel free to help me out and spread SB around the net (just please don't submit it to any major sites), and send me your feedback/bugs. Thanks much!

SB Release Countdown on 12.29.2011
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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I've got another few days of work left developing Straight Bullyism, then I'll probably need another 3 days or so for additional testing, and then I'm going to spend around 2 weeks finishing up the SB website and making some upgrades to Snubby Land as well. On January 20 (at midnight EST), I'll make SB public just on SnubbyLand.com and StraightBullyism.com for a few weeks (to make sure that nobody is having technical problems), and after that I'll release it world-wide. You can sign up for the SL mailing list or SB mailing list to know when SB is released, or check out the countdown timer below. I'll be MAKING ABSOLUTELY SURE that the game is public exactly as the countdown timer is finished.






I added Facebook 'Like' buttons to content, so thanks a lot to anyone who shares stuff from Snubby Land. Some of the pages don't show the right picture/description when they are liked, but that's because certain pages received more than 50 likes and the default meta info got saved, so there's nothing I can do, but it still works.

Small Clip on 12.10.2011
By Stevie
Posted in Animation
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Here's another small animation from the level 3 of Straight Bullyism, and a video of me doing it. It's not really even worth showing, but it's probably the last animation I'll post before releasing the game. Like I mentioned on the SB blog, I'm really excited about releasing the game in around a month. The only upside of being injured and not able to walk is that I have extra time to work on finishing up the game. I also have to study Calculus and do some other work on the side because I'm still not done high school (I dropped out to work on SB full-time and only recently went back).
 

 



It's kind of degrading going to this ghetto high school for people with bad grades and grinding out useless assignments, especially since I'm almost 21 and most people there are 18. The only worthwhile work is learning Calculus (which is required for the programming-related University course I'll take eventually), but it's hard learning it on my own without the assistance of the teacher (I haven't been at school for the last 3 weeks), so I have been procrastinating a bit on that. I'm mainly looking forward to releasing SB, but I'm also very much looking forward to graduating high school and getting it out of the way. It's also starting to bother me more and more that I need to learn how to drive a car, even though I have no use for one right now. Another big thing I should mention (even though people I know in real life such as teachers may read this, and other than that it's mostly 12 year olds) is that I'm getting ready to quit smoking weed, after smoking non-stop for over 3 years while developing SB. I've tried quitting weed quite a few times (although I quit cigarettes 9 months ago pretty easily), but I'm pretty confident that without the stress of SB hanging over my head, not being able to walk, high school, etc, I should be in a better position to quit.

New Server on 12.03.2011
By Stevie
Posted in Other
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I was recently notified that my dedicated server was overloading, so I got around to upgrading to the best server Dreamhost has to offer. It's called the "Blue Moon 12", which has:

• 4 Cores
• 12 Gb Memory
• 1 Tb Disk Space
• 1 "Raid"

I don't really know what that means, but hopefully this puppy can serve! This in combination with hosting most of SB's files on external sites should be enough to handle the extra traffic that will be caused by releasing Straight Bullyism in around a month. Ideally, I will double my traffic due to a high percentage of people that come to Snubby Land going on to play SB, as well as new people brought in by the game. Also, Ansel and I are releasing Defend Your Trump in around a week.



By the way, you can sign up for domain and/or hosting by Dreamhost through me and I'll earn a bonus.