CM10, SB, Money... on 02.10.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Art
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I finished the 10th Coozy McMillan comic, "The Coozian Brotherhood". You can also now see all the CM comics on Snubby Land since I set up the Art page. I'm also going to be putting random art shit in there over time. I originally was just going to have the CM comics on CoozyMcMillan.com because I wanted to get it sponsored and do one a week for money, but the sponsor I was going to contact after finishing the 10th one just stopped taking new people, so I figured I mind as well just put them here as well and just keep doing it without pay just to practice drawing.



I now have to go back to working on Straight Bullyism, which is at a stalemate because the file uses up the maximum amount of memory that Flash allows, so I can't do what I need to do and it's a huge problem, etc etc. One of my current plans to get the filesize down is as follows...

Even though I've been going through and deleting things from the main file, the size of the file I work in continues to get bigger (while the file I export that people will play gets smaller). The file I'm working in is the one with the problem. So basically, I have a ton of elements of the game that I'm going through and deleting the ones I don't need and whatever. If I make all of the hundreds of symbols have different names, then collapse it into one folder, then I can copy/paste it into a new file without having confusion with the symbols. I wouldn't be able to just copy/paste it once, I'd have to cut it into small pieces and do one at a time. If I do that, then in theory the file I'm working in will be smaller, because right now it doesn't make sense how big the file is.



So I've been trying to do that for the last few weeks, once I do that I only have a few more ideas to cut down size, then basically I'll just make a final decision on what I'm actually doing with the game, do it, and hopefully level one will be out soon.

Originally when I moved out and started doing Flash professionally, I thought I'd be making smaller-sized games and be able to live off of the sponsorship money I get from finishing the games. However, SB probably won't even have a sponsor now (either that or only the first level will), and it's going to take over a year in total to make. So at first I was kind of worried about not having money, but it turns out itsss awwwwlll gooooodddd. I get a good amount from Google Adsense for displaying ads, I also get a bonus every 3 months from Addicting Games for TWHG2, and Addicting Games developed an iPhone ap that I get 5 cents on each sale, so that should help too. But with that and the other stuff that I legally can't talk about, *COUGH*, I am easily able to support myself financially and actually I'm saving money. So that's pretty sick, because all of that stuff that pays my bills doesn't actually require any work, so I just work whenever I want and hopefully when I finish SB I'll get rich.

Also I'm working on a cartoon after the first level of SB is done, then back to SB.

I'm not going to bother spell checking this and I'm pretty high at 5:21 AM as I write this, so be impressed if there are no major errors in gram/spelling.

CM9, Mailing List, SB on 01.27.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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Just finished drawing the 9th Coozy McMillan comic, "Ass-Crack". Below are the first two frames.



I also finally got around to programming a mailing list for the Snubby Land. Sign up on the sidebar of the blog. Also, you mind as well sign up for the Coozy McMillan mailing list, get a new email every new comic.

I said here that I was having problems with Straight Bullyism, then I said here that I fixed the problems and everything was good to go, now THE MEMORY ISSUE HAS RETURNED! I was getting an error from Flash (the program I use to make stuff) that said the file was taking up too much memory. I was told to try allocating more memory to Flash by setting up a 'paging file', this did not work. It made things worse. If you think I'm wrong and I didn't do it right, email me and I'll pay you 100 bucks if you fix me problem with the error message popping up when I try to export.



There are still a few things I can try to get the file to use up less memory, but if those things don't work I'm kinda fucked. We'll see. Hopefully I can still make the game and not have to make it too minimal and shitty.

Also here's a good Radiohead song.

Stuff I Should Do on 01.18.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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First of all, here I explained some of the problems I was having developing Straight Bullyism. For the most part, all of those problems have been resolved (partially due to fans reading my last post and contacting me, thanks)! The only 'problem' I have is actually having to do the massive amount of work left in the game without having a nervous breakdown causing me to punch a kitten in the face.

I originally said here that I'd have the first level of SB done by the new year, that turned out to be impossible to do. It will now probably be by the latest the end of February before I'm actually fully done the first level. However, now I don't have to worry about software restrictions and file size now, so it's much less stressful. Currently on my to do list for level 1, there's 2 mission cutscenes to animate (that's the biggest thing left), 2 items to animate, 2 special attacks to animate, a few bugs to fix, 20 sound effects to record (the custom sfx in this game are kinda cool), 2 music loops, and some other small stuff.

I desperately need to make some updates to snubbyland.com, including a mailing list and a revamped about page, also I may open a tutorials page. I also need to do a website for SB with tons of stuff on it as well. I've also started the new Coozy McMillan comic a long time ago and it will come out eventually.

SB Good/Bad News, the Plan on 01.02.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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Okay so sorry for not updating for over a month, basically this is where I'm at. I'm still living alone and doing Flash full-time. I am desperately trying to finish the first level of Straight Bullyism so that I can take a small break and do some touch-ups on the site (mailing list, rewrite about page, etc) and finish the 9th Coozy McMillan comic. I am having a lot of trouble finishing the first level (which was supposed to be done by the new year) for the following reasons.

So I've been working off a 2gb RAM laptop for maybe 2.5 years and its now in really poor condition and runs very slowly, and recently it would just give me an error message every time I tried to export the SB file when I'm working on it. I figured my computer was just too garbage so a few days later I went with my dad and we split the cost of a new desktop computer with 12gb of RAM, its a Gateway, I don`t know any other specs. So when I get that new computer set up, I find it runs the SB file maybe twice as fast, but still with lots of lagg (lagg when working on the file, not when actually playing the game), however it`s still a lot easier to work with and a much larger monitor.



HERE'S THE PROBLEM: It turns out that even on the new computer, I am once again not able to export the file due to a 'Not enough memory' error. Lowering sound quality doesn't affect it, so currently my only solution is just restarting the computer and trying it until it works. THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM because now not only can I not make the game as big as I or even make the FIRST LEVEL as big as I wanted without it literally just being too massive for the Adobe Flash software to even handle. Currently, all I can do is keep working on lvl1 and just HOPE that I can squeeze the first level into one file, and if not I have to delete stuff :(

What about the other levels (hopefully 4 more)? The plan is basically I'll submit the first level internet-wide and have a link to straightbullyism.com at the end. The only site that will have all ~5 levels with be that site, and I'll link the levels together with Flash/PHP programming (using POST data). THIS IS THE ONLY WAY YOU'D BE ABLE TO PLAY THE LEVELS CONSECUTIVELY! Here's why; if I submitted each level as it's own file say to Newgrounds, then your items, clothes, missions, and especially attributes wouldn't carry over level to level, and that would SUCK. However, since you start fresh on the first level it woulnd't matter, so therefore I can only post the first level sort of as a demo, and have the full game on it's own website.

Good News - Since I'm doing each level in a new file, I can probably submit the game after the 3rd level is done and then like a month later submit 4 and another month later submit 5. There'd be no point hoarding all the levels for myself when there'd still be a good amount of game to play up until there. Also, since I have filesize limitations, I'll have to cut out a lot of stuff I wanted to do but haven't done yet. Thus, it'll take less time to do. So, SB WILL BE LAUNCHED SOONER!

The Horrible Bad News - Due to Flash not being able to handle the file, I'm in a lot of trouble. I'm invested over 8 months (or maybe more than that, I could check) working on this game and now I'm facing some serious limitations, to the point where maybe this was just to ambitious to work. Because the first level is max'd out in filesize, but on level 5 I'd need to include more enemies, more special attacks, more missions, etc. So in theory if level 1 is having problems, there's no way I can have a really cool level 5. The only thing is, on level 1 there's a good minute of cutscenes at the start, and in the other levels I could just try to keep it short. But that's the thing, I'm going to have to cut down so much stuff just to get it to work, it might end up not being as cool as I wanted it to be.

So yeah, sucks to be me right now. I'm super commited to this project, and it won't even export. Right before I started writing this entry, I finished some art, added it in, tried to export and it wouldn't.

Just for fun I'll attach another artwork screenshot, I really dont want to give too much away but there's a lot of art in there so ill show one more.



Wish me luck.

Major Progress on SB on 11.26.2009
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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My huge game project Straight Bullyism is coming along very well, I hope to have the whole first level (which includes a ton of stuff) done within 2-4 weeks. I've programmed in a lot of new stuff, and I've got pretty much everything figured out at this point, it's just a matter of doing it. I should be like 95% done the programming in 2 weeks.



I think it's going to be a very fun game because of the different different types of gameplay involved. When travelling around, the graphics are pretty clean and simple, and you're basically playing The World's Hardest Game going through the hallways, because you may be trying to avoid enemies (unless you need to bust some knee caps, of course).

When you're in a fight, the turn-based RPG fighting is like Pokemon. However, the element of Self-Esteem (SE) gives it kind of a twist because you can't run out of SE or health. Also, I can confidently say the FBF (animation term) quality in the fights is unmatched in any other Flash game, because pretty much every other similar RPG game is done with tweening (another animation term).



The missions that you are assigned from other bullies in the washroom that you do are very much in the style of Animal Crossing (Gamecube game), where you have to travel and do stuff for people. Right now I'm working on the easy missions, but later I'm sure there'll be some cool missions that take a while to do.

It's also kind of similar to Fallout 3 (Playstation 3 game) in the sense that you wouldn't be able to do everything in the game your first time through, there's a lot of missions and little stuff that you won't notice or be able to do all in one go. There's a save/load function, and I hope it could be like 30 hours gameplay total or something, but who knows. It's also like Fallout because I don't really hold your hand through it, once you're done the tutorial stage of the game you're free to do whatever you want and try to beat the game.



I can't say how many cutscenes I'll actually be doing in total at this point, but so far I have 56.1 seconds. There will probably be a cutscene for about 50% of the missions, and then cutscenes at the start or end of a level, and some bonus ones as well as a (hopefully) badass one at the end. So far they're looking pretty good, the newer the ones I do the better they turn out. Still, that's a large cartoon inside of this huge game.

I've also decided that you're going to be able to fight teachers as well, possible male AND female, so with 4 hallway enemies (I have 3 done so far), and a principal boss at the end, that's 7 enemies, plus the fuck-ton of shit (pardon my French) I have to do for the player. That's a massive amount of frame-by-frame animation to do.



I'm just gonna keep working really hard on this, it'll be a big deal when I finish the first level.