After I came across a few issues while in the prototyping stage in the development of my next game Hero Dude, I decided to put the project down until I thought I had a better grasp on it.

Well, I’m just letting you guys that development is back on.  I was able to come up with a way to efficiently program the underlying engine of the game as well as a few good ideas concerning the actual gameplay / story.

If I had to estimate a completion date for Hero Dude, I’d have to say the middle to end of August.  Release sometime in September.

Just wanted to let you guys know.

Also, go play my latest game, Oil Spill Escape!

“Oil Spill Escape” (aka my Secret Project for the past four weeks) has been released this morning!  I’m really excited about this game because it truly is a very fun and addicting game.

Play it exclusively on Juggernart.com – Play Oil Spill Escape.

I actually completed the game in about 12 days, which is quite speedy for only my second game ever.  The remaining 14+ days was spent just letting the game chill on FlashGameLicense.com waiting for a sponsor.

Bla bla bla, I’m sure you all care about that stuff, right?

Anyway, maybe I should tell you what the game is about.  (As if you can’t tell from the title.)

The idea for this game was actually a result of some accidental collaboration between this person I know friend Paul D’Amora.  You might know him as since he’s one of the three commenters on this site.

The game is obviously inspired from the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  The gameplay itself is very similar to that of the classic “Helicopter Game“.  As in, you control a fish trying to escape a cloud of oil by dodging rocks and eating fish.  Sound easy?  Well, it’s not.

The objective is to simply get as far as you possibly can and then to compare your score with the scores on the scoreboard.  This is where it gets addicting, trust me.

Anyway, I do believe that’s enough rambling from me.  Go play the game and tell me how you like it!

Hey guys.  I have an invitation to give out to anyone that wants to become a “Preview Player” for FlashGameLicense.com.  This means you’ll be able to play my games, as well as the games of other Flash developers before they’re officially released.

You’re “job” however, is to simply give us feedback and advice, and work directly with developers to make the games better.

If you are interested, just make a comment.  Be sure to use your real email address when commenting (in the email field, don’t actually post your email).

I’ll decide who I give it to, muahahaha.

Unrelated news:

My secret project has a sponsor.  I’m actually working on the Flash file right now adding branding logos stuff like that.  It should be released on the sponsor’s site any day now.

What the shit, Ralph?

Yeah, I’ve decided I’m going to put development on Hero Dude on hold for a while.  I feel like I’m doing all of this work for it, but at the same time, I’m not giving it the time that it needs.

For one I feel that the game won’t be as great as I’m imagining it unless I give myself some time to actually plan it out.  As it is now it’s just a generic run-around-and-shoot-shit platformer.  OH BOY WHEN CAN I PLAY?

So yeah, I’m putting that on hold.

Secret Project

Sorry about the lie I told about 1 or 2 posts ago, I won’t be able to release the “secret project” game until at least Wednesday, July 21st.  (Most likely Thursday, however.)  It sucks having a completed game for 2 weeks but not being able to release it but hey, that’s how the bidding process works.

So yeah, look out for that very soon.

New Project

I had an epiphany last night for a new, small puzzle/skill type game that utilizes the popular Box2D AS3 library.  Today I’ll be spending my day playing around with the library and getting to know the in’s and out’s.  Once I’m comfortable I’ll start development on the game and it shouldn’t take too long to make (I figure two weeks at the max, the same amount of time it took me to make my “secret project”.

So yeah, that’s what I’m doing now.

Now you know.

Excuse the inactivity the past week.  I decided to take a small break from Flash before I resume work on Hero Dude.

As most of you know, I just recently completed my “secret project” game which is currently undergoing bidding on FlashGameLicense.com.  I have the bidding scheduled to be over by this time next week and from then it’s just a matter of how fast me and the winning sponsor can communicate before I can release the game.  I’m predicting a release over next weekend (not the weekend that starts tomorrow).

In the meantime, I’ve already started working on Hero Dude all over again (hence the 1% up there in the header).  I’ve slightly altered the art style of the main character and have come up with a basic plot for the whole game.  It’ll be a fun and short platformer, with just one level.  A big level, granted, but it still shouldn’t take longer than 10 minutes to reach the end of it, mostly because you’ll only have 10 minutes to reach the end or you fail .

So if you’ll excuse me, I have this game that won’t be programming itself.

So I figured I’d shed a little more light on that “secret project” of since it’s 99% completed.  To be honest, it’s completed 100% but I’m just in the process of getting feedback from reviewers on FlashGameLicense.com.  Once I feel the game is ready (probably over the holiday weekend) I’ll set it up for bidding in time for the next work week.

I’ll also begin emailing some of the big-name sponsors in the hopes that they’ll be interested.

Depending on how long it takes, the game can be released any day now.

PS – It’s one hell of an addictive game.  I found myself playing it over and over while I was in the middle of developing it.  Be warned.

PPS – Also yes, that is a thumbnail picture for it up there.

I’ll probably be just relaxing for the next three days, not working on anything.  It’ll be the first time in a while that I haven’t opened Flash to work on something in a day.  Work on Hero Dude will resume on Monday.  I have intentions to re-code what I have, clean it up and optimize it, as well as go over the art style of the game.  I have some ideas that need to be thought out before I go any further though.

I’m sure if you’ve glanced at the header that you see in addition to “Hero Dude” I’m also working on a secret project.

I just wanted to talk about it for a minute and maybe demystify it.  It honestly probably doesn’t need to be a secret, but whatever.  It’s more fun for me this way.

Let’s see, what can I say.  Well, it’s a small game.  I’ve referred to it as a  mix between The Helicopter Game and The Flood Runner – it’s basically an endurance game where you see how long you can last and then submit your score to the a scoreboard.

Paul actually helped me hatch the idea a little less than a week ago and now it’s already 65% completed.  I’m confident that the game will be perfectly playable by tonight, I’ll just spend the weekend polishing it, adding the menu/end screens, etc…

So, yeah, just a short break from Hero Dude while I complete this game.  Looks like it’ll take be just a little over a week, hot damn!

More stuff soon.

So that was one hell of a journey.  Granted, with Weapons on Wheels being the first real game I’ve ever developed, I probably did alot of things the long and hard (twss) way.

Play it on MaxGames.com, who is the awesome sponsor.

Update: Also play it on NewGrounds and vote 5 to be awesome.

Update 2: Play it on Kongregate and 5-star it to be even awesomer.

So that’s it.  Go try it out and tell me how disappointed you are in the comments!

In all seriousness, though, I learned alot when developing that game.  Both in terms of code-stuff and in terms of what makes a game fun.  I’ll be using all that knowledge as I develop Hero Dude, which will hopefully only take me a fraction of the time it took me to make Weapons on Wheels.

Protip – don’t go directly behind the blue car.

So I figured I would make a post about this, since I thought it was pretty interesting.  Here is an image showing the sprite development I went through trying to find a nice design for the player/boss sprites for Hero Dude.

The first two versions of the main character differ pretty greatly.  At first I was thinking I’d just toss the main character into this Mega Man-style suit of armor lookin’ thing.  Since I was going for a humorous take on the game, I figured it didn’t matter how silly he looked or how many times I stamped his “HD” (Hero Dude) logo on him.

The second and third versions of the main character have more of a resemblance between them.  It looks like I started getting the mindset that he was going to be some sort of a soldier or something.  This becomes more apparent in the third version.

The boss didn’t undergo much of a change.  I always knew he was going to be a cliche mad scientist trying to destroy the world or something (lol spoilers).  He kept his white labcoat and gray hair through both versions, I only made him fatter and got rid of his huge hair stacks.  (This was done to preserve the shape of his head/body, which I want to be uniform throughout the game.)

And yeah, that’s about it.  Today I’ll be getting back to work on Hero Dude.  Mainly working on some gun action today.  I want to start drawing ideas for levels and whatnot.  I already know that 95% of the game takes place on the Boss’s flying ship-fort thing.  The other 5% is the player getting to the flying ship-fort thing.

(Trust me, this all makes sense in my head.)

So I’m going to keep this post short, mostly because I’m tired and just want to relax go watch some TV.

ForTheLoss.org has a new design.  If you’re not seeing it, that must mean you’re a regular visitor, holy crap, thanks!  It also means you have to clear your cache.

It was a spur of the moment decision.  I wanted to give this site a definite “look” and develop some sort of brandable logo for it that I can put into my games.

• On Friday night I decided I would develop one more WordPress theme – one for this site.
• On Saturday I designed the whole layout in Photoshop.
• On Sunday I coded it.
• On Monday I WordPressified and launched it.

Fascinating, I know.

Also, I know this isn’t one of my best themes.  I really don’t care so Paul you can go suck a long one.

I wanted to give off a retro arcade pixel-y sort of look and I think I stayed kinda stayed true to that theme.  Again, whatever.  It’s not like this is a web design blog, am I right?  HA HA.

Quick Game Stuff

Well that’s it.  This is all I’ve doing for the past few days.  Tomorrow I’ll resume work on Hero Dude.

Also, regarding Weapons on Wheels, I accepted a bid on FlashGameLicense.com last night.  Once the sponsor and I exchange some words, I’ll finally be able to release that game.  Gonna be so cash.

PS – If you see any bugs in the theme, tell me.  I didn’t even bother testing it in other browsers or Operating Systems.  It’s not like I was going to release this theme for the public, so yeah.