SB Level 1 Done!!! on 07.04.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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After roughly 16 months of work, I've FINALLY finished the first level of my upcoming turn-based, adventure RPG Straight Bullyism!!! Below are some of the stats for the first level...

• 2:45 of fully animated cutscenes
• 5 different enemies (4 regular, 1 boss)
• 87 instances of enemies
• 6 items
• 3 special attacks
• 3 missions
• 9 rooms

Before each mission there's a cutscene (as well as in other places). I'm posting the second mission cutscene, just because I haven't posted many animation spoilers yet. Check it!



Also, the website for SB is coming along nicely. I now have all the pages/graphics in place, and I just have to work on writing all the text for the info pages. I'll slowly get all that text in as the game is completed.

The game is set to come out in 2011! I have no idea how late/early, but there's no fucking way I'm working for more than another 16 months on it. I have enough money to keep working on it until the end of 2011 though, so I'm really just going to go all out on this and hope it can really pay off when it releases. Also, it's driving me crazy.

All the sound files for level 1... (click to enlarge)



Also, turns out my microphone was completely broken when I recorded the audio for the first 2 tutorials. Don't worry, it's much better now (I bought new mic)! I'm going to leave them up though, even though it's embarrassing. Like this stupid blog.

SB Progress on 05.03.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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I stayed up all night finishing the preboss cutscene for SB. The best part about the game is that at there are a lot of cutscenes, usually an intro for each level, pre boss and post boss, before every mission, and at some other points as well. All of the cutscenes are pretty jokes, the intro is the worst one because I made it so long ago but it won't matter... there could very well be at least 20 minutes of cutscenes by the time I'm done. I think they will help motivate you to go through the game. And also, your player colors carry over through the cutscenes, so watching them with a black bully with orange hair, and then next time you do white with brown hair, it looks like a whole new cutscene almost.




I'm really still going to try to get the full first level done by June 1st. The game won't be playable until I get 3-5 levels out, but each level after the first won't take more than a 2-3 months, and each level will feature unique enemies, bosses, landscapes, etc. I really want to get this first level done because then I can finally show my sponsor (Addicting Games) what I've been working on this whole time, and hopefully they will be down to sponsor it. Also, once the first level is done I am basically done all programming for the game, so I'll spend the next 6-12 months animating player/enemy fight attacks, cutscenes, drawing things, and bulking up the website.




I don't make any money on SB until I finish it, and I've been working on it for 13.5 months (in fact, HERE is what I had done after the very first day of developement)! I will also need probably 2 years total to finish it (which is like another 10.5 months). I've been living on my own and paying all my bills for the past 10 months, and yet I have still saved enough to keep working without new pay for at least another year! So I'm in a pretty comfortable position right now for the next year or so, and I'm basically just going to make this game really, really good and then see what happens when I release it. The only stress I have is that I have this huge thing hanging over my head, that I absolutely have to finish (this gives me some substance abuse issues).

In order to finish level one, I now just need to animate the boss's attacks for the boss fight, the small cutscene for when you beat the boss, 2 short mission cutscenes, and 1 other small cutscene. The first level is absolutely packed with cutscenes. I think if I work my ass off I can probably have it done by June 1st.

Hacked, SB Issues Resolved on 04.10.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
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Edit Again*2: The hacker also noticed vulnerability in the mailing lists, and mailed everybody a list of all the forum passwords. Still was just a SQL Inject, so it should be fixed. Not a big deal.

Edit Again: I think I fixed it again. Please send your hatemail to the hacker at aquareplay@gmail.com. I'm assuming he's overweight, socially inept and a virgin so try to work that into your insults in order to get full effect. Also, it couldn't hurt to sign him up for as many disgusting porn-related mailing lists as you can, I mean yeah he can just create a new email but who would go through that much of a hassle.

Edit: Still getting hacked... all he can do it mess with the forum, but still I don't like it very much, seeing as i put so much time into programming the forum. Will try to fix...

The forums were hacked, and all the guy did was delete a few topics and post everyone's passwords lol. Luckily, since this exact thing happened last time I made my own forums, I knew not to have the same password for the forums (in case they were hacked, which they were) as I do on the admin page, and my email and such. Also, even logged in as me, I made it so that you can't delete topics that were comments for content (in case I did it by accident). He also couldn't delete content because that's not the same password. So for the most part the hack was a fail. All he did was delete like 50 comments probably, BIIIIIIG DEAAAAL. Could have been 100x worse.

Anyway I think I have that security hole fixed, all he (OR MAYBE SHE?!?!?) did was a really simple thing called a SQL Injection. Please, if you notice any bugs in the forums, or if you are a programmer and you somehow notice a security flaw, email me! Also, post comments on stuff, check out my last blog entry too.



Anyway, the real news is that I think I've fixed that memory issue I was having that was ruining my world. I don't want to get too excited yet, but it definitely seems like I don't have to worry about filesize anymore. I'll try to explain it below, but it's probably hard to follow and seemingly contradictory...

Flash has a limit to what you can have in one file, so it was impossible for me to keep adding to the game without overloading the file and having it crash while I'm working and not export. So what I did at first was cut it up into pieces, and then send you to each piece when you need to. With this method, I still was not able to have as many things as I wanted in the actual game, because I would still run out of space in the main piece of the file that I wasn't able to cut anymore, mostly because of intense amounts of player/enemy animation.

What I'm doing now is cutting the pieces even more, but not into files that the user gets sent to on a different page. Instead, it loads external files from my site (to any domain), and loads then when needed. These files don't contribute to the main file's filesize. So basically, instead of loading it all at once, you load it as you need it. This just means that if you run into a cutscene, you see a quick percentage text while it loads. Usually this takes like a tenth of a second, and once it's loaded once it's instant every time after. That's because the cutscene is loaded right now, not at the start when you load the whole game.

So now, I can add as many cutscenes, special attacks, enemies walking around, etc. to any level as I want (I think, unless I'm somehow wrong even though it already works), without worrying about anything. Because of this, I'm packing the first level especially with tons of missions and cutscenes, since obviously the first level being hella fun will make people want to play the rest of the game.

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.