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Thursday, June 25, 2009 Eternal Bakery Battle - Some Screens Listening to: Michael Jackson - Remember the Time 
Here's a screenshot of the game I'm working on: Eternal Bakery Battle. You can click on it to see it in all of its full 800x600 glory. The game is essentially the biggest game I've created to date. Not just file size, but all of the content within the game. It's essentially Yakitate!! Japan + The One + real-time strategy + puzzle game. It will have roughly 20 different battles to participate in, a considerably sized cast of characters and my artwork that you've grown to love/hate. I plan on actually entering this bad boy into the Independent Games Festival this year. I've also got this "business plan" (it's just some crayon drawings on cardboard) in regards to accepting donations and giving away things for donations too. Ultimately, the game will be free to all to play. Donations will just net you free stuff, like pins and other things. Here are some other screen shots with placeholder art. I WANT PANCAKES!  
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 4:12 PM Permalink | | Resident Evil: Claymation Listening to: Nothing. If you've never played the first Resident Evil, this video will give you an idea of what it's all about. The clay figures are a bit rudimentary at best, but something about the entire thing reeks of charm and awesome sauces. I giggled throughout the whole thing. Maybe I'll do a claymation thing one of these days... maybe. "You were almost a Jill sandwich!" posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 10:07 AM Permalink | | Wednesday, June 24, 2009 What was I supposed to say? Listening to: Nothing. 
So, this is a brief interaction I had with one of the employees at the gym Josie and I are members of. One weekend, the employee came over said hello and pointed out her husband was the one working on one of the machines. I said, "very nice." I said it somewhat similarly to Borat. Ultimately, it sounded like I was checking him out. Thinking back, what was I supposed to have said? The options all lead to some kind of rude disinterest. I'd love to hear some suggestions that would have made me come out smelling like roses. Heck, I would settle for smelling like day old Chinese food. Sure beats the standard Alex smell.    
Edit (6/25/2009): Faithful reader "Scypher" made one that made me laugh, and that deserves editing the post. I wonder if I can get this to internet meme status... 
posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:38 AM Permalink | | Tuesday, June 23, 2009 A RITC update post. Listening to: The garbage man be incredibly loud. 
Didn't have much of an update on anything, so I felt that maybe uploading the Robot in the City comics to my blog would be a good idea. You know, when they're updated and such. I'm still surprised a good amount of people go and read Mr. Goh, even though it's no longer updated. It's more that they stumble upon different strips as opposed to going there by their own volition. I think I'll have some UI screenshots uploaded later this week from my work-in-progress game: Eternal Bakery Battle. The main gameplay mechanics and "story dialogue engine" is in place. I just have to weave it together in one cohesive story, not to mention the delicious challenge of AI. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 6:59 AM Permalink | | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 Lion's Leap - Leap of Faith Listening to: Nothing. 
I went and participated in an obstacle this past weekend at Westminster Woods, which is a little north of Sebastopol. That's essentially considered the North Bay around these parts. There were many different "events" that consisted of both a physical and mental component: physical being climbing and balance and mental being jumping off high areas. This was the last event I participated in: Lion's Leap. As you can see in the photo (rather, three put together), it's a 53 foot climb to a platform that ends on a wooden plank. The climb wasn't all too bad, to be honest. The worst part was finding some staples completely in the tree, thus unusable, or swaying too much on the cargo net. Some scraping did happen on my left shin from the net, but nothing worth showing people about. In any case, it was one of the greatest experiences and it felt like I was in Assassin's Creed. I'll probably do it again next year, unless common sense catches up with me. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 6:51 AM Permalink | | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 A little more DSTP! news! Listening to: Elliot Yamin - Don't Be Afraid Just a little news! Apparently (Don't) Save the Princess! got thrown up (har har!) over at Softpedia.com by their editors. They apparently have an Alexa ranking of 243, which is on par with IGN.com. Hey, I guess that's pretty cool! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 2:33 PM Permalink | | Friday, June 12, 2009 The Amazing Spider-Man Listening to: Andy McKee - Heather's Song 
A coworker sent this to me today. It's actually one of a few dozen rewritten strips of Amazing Spider-Man. The originals, which are not nearly as comedic, are printed by Kings Features Syndicate in your local (or not so local) newspapers. I found it darned hilarious, with all of the societal faux pas (how do you make that plural?) and completely inappropriate jokes strewn across the newsprint of my very soul. I uploaded the whole thing here so you can also join me on a journal of spectacular fantasies! posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 11:11 AM Permalink | | Wednesday, June 10, 2009 Drawings from a child. Listening to: Nothing. 
Josie was cleaning out the closet today and she came across a bag of old stuff that I had been carrying around from apartment to apartment. Inside were some sheets of photo paper and old mail. In addition to this, however, was a stack of drawings I did when I was a kid. I can only assume I was somewhere between six and eight when I did them. They were done in pencil and on 3x5 index cards, cut so they'd look like sports cards of some kind. I'm not quite sure what the initials on the shirts/uniforms were supposed to be. Maybe they were the initials of the players? Something I do remember is the reason I used "LOGO" on top of all those cards. I remember checking out programming books from the library that had BASIC code in it (DOS, print "Hello!", goto 10, etc.). One had talked about this fun language called LOGO that allowed you to control this turtle on the screen. I was fascinated with it and sad I didn't have a computer to run it. I decided that it would be fun to redo some of them in my style today. The two I chose were: 
I think these two were supposed to be on the same team. There's clearly an alligator team, a dog team, a penguin team and a frog team. Since these guys looked the least like the others, I figured they were supposed to be frogs. One being the coach (like Doc Louis in Punch-Out) and one being the star player appeared to be the right mix. It took some time with the pencil, ink and Photoshop coloring, but I came out with something that would have, hopefully, impressed little Alex in the 1980s. 
It was a fun experience and I hope to do it again when I stumble upon more old stuff of mine. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:43 PM Permalink | | Monday, June 8, 2009 Out in the first round! Watch out! Listening to: Nothing. 
So the first round of voting just finished this past weekend over at the 2BeeGames Website and I was demolished in the first round! I guess you just can't compete with the upper echelon of games, eh? No matter. To be completely honest, I'm just happy to have been in the running and to have garnered as many plays as I did. I was also introduced to how many narrow minded folks out there who call themselves "game developers". It's funny, really. Why should it matter what engine/development environment I use to create my game as long as the game itself is enjoyable? You wouldn't discredit someone for using the Unreal Engine because they didn't do 3D from scratch or someone for using Havok because they decided they didn't want to write physics libraries from scratch. So, I use Game Maker. It's just a tool to create the game I see in my head. It's not like Game Maker has a function that creates a game for you. You still have to work at creating a base game idea and implement/execute it well with the tools at your disposal. So narrow minded some people! It makes me want to projectile vomit in their food. It really irritates me, the airs people carry around them, touting to be some amazing developer because they choose to code sprite rendering functions from scratch. 
I want to play Wolverine: Origins. I think I'll go do that now and just pretend those narrow minded folks are the people I tear apart in this game... oh, wait, it uses the Havok engine. It's just another cookie cutter game with effects that were simply stolen from the Havok support groups and forums. Might as well just snap the disc in half and call it a night. Jerk wads. Edit: I would like to emphasize that I am not at all angry or disappointed with the results of the competition. I truly believe there are some fabulous games in the running and wish them all the best! My anger stems from comments regarding Game Maker (and similar platforms) itself. It's a completely valid development environment and should not be shunned because it makes some basic things (such as sprite movement and manipulation) easier than, say, C++ or Java. If being a game developer is all about the development environment you use and not the game idea itself, then anyone not coding in machine code is a slacker. I then, by that definition, am a slacker. I'm going to spend time working on the game design of my next project now and as opposed to struggling with how to put things in memory. As a side note, I highly respect those that are able to code in that fashion and understand everything that goes on under the hood of a computer (machine code, nitty gritty, etc.). It's just not my thing and I spend my time doing game design, artwork and sound. posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 9:23 PM Permalink | | Tuesday, June 2, 2009 2BeeGames Finalist! Please Vote! Heading to: Los Angeles, CA for E3 
Good morning everyone! I just got notification that 2BeeGames have picked their 10 finalists for their indie game competition and that (Don't) Save the Princess! is one of them! Please do this poor, old soul a favor and go to the 2BeeGames Site, register and vote! I'll even throw a little more selfish tidbit in there and hope you vote for me. :) The competition is tough and there are a lot of wonderful games in the mix. To even be considered in the same voting space as Auditorium and Aces Wild (two personal favorites of mine) is flattering enough. Thanks for your support! Vote: 2BeeGames Site posted by Mr. Alexander Shen @ 6:39 AM Permalink | | |
       
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