http://www.flickgame.org/play.html?p=ffe81c32492fbb7b69b2626738ac5043

Hello again.

It's almost a year i've never returned here but this time i'm peeking on this place once again, to bring a re-release of the Mr. Cat games on GameJolt. Yes, nobody ever saw the thing again, and i won't know if there is the future for it.

http://gamejolt.com/games/the-mr-cat-trilogy/136212

In regards to that, i am remarking that there is a tentative future for the series, let's give it a read to a news feed post i published from this day:
Despite the fact i’ve never looked towards this game anymore and the constant slow population i’ve had, i’ve been thinking to expand this series into more, except you need help to spread this game so that it can get enough population for an attempt to make another game of the Mr. Cat series.

A year ago i used to work on a real fourth entry of the series, Mr. Cat 4, which introduced a new type of level that is a big map, and other crap but the story: A group of aliens start to take over Neo Los Angeles with their demand on taking revenge to Mr. Cat after the defeat of Arthur. I attempted to focus on the development of this game, however, i didn’t have anymore the thought power than i did when i made the Mr. Cat trilogy.

Another game i used to think of is another spin-off to the series which was a sports spinoff, which has to do with some baseball, a name i could think of was Mr. Cat and the Baseball League. From my thoughts, Mr. Cat and the Baseball League is most likely a melee-like version of the gameplay, instead of shooting diamonds, you had to knock down enemies with your baseball bat while surviving hazards. The setting for it was in a typical baseball stadium in where resides a crowd of dogs + Mr. Dog who has taken revenge from Mr. Cat by trapping him in here. However, this idea was soon replaced with Mr. Cat III, and the spin-off never happened.

Since two days ago some pal at one of my Discord servers got me TyranoBuilder, a visual novel making tool, and I thought that a possible side story or a sort of gaiden game is possible, but it’ll depend on when it’s reasonable to do so, as however i’m recently stubborn about the current situation i have.

Thank you all for understanding.

Alright, I submitted a game to Ectocomp, an annual competition for interactive fiction made in under three hours (they also have a category without a time-limit.) And I decided to take the opportunity to submit something written in Inform7, cus I should be able to learn a whole system in 3 hours, right? (Spoilers follow below.)

Now, I didn't include the hours I spent browsing through the documentation, only the actual writing process. I'm gonna talk a little bit about what went right and what went wrong from the perspective of a larval parser game-writer.

"Because you're mine" was named after a line in the song "I put a spell on you" by Jay Hawkins. The theme of the comp is Halloween and it's one of the classic Halloween anthems. I was also inspired about old novelty songs by Marie Laveau. Y'know, she's an important religious figure, but in pop culture she mainly survives as a jilted sorceress, pop culture is seldom fair. There's also a bit of Zecora in there; the main character could probably be described as "Zecora, if the ponies were right." Oh, and they are also a Horse.

I should probably explain about that. Most of my text adventures take place in a fictional universe of my own devising that's a spin on the MLP-universe. I thought about justifying it by invoking the Houyhnhnms of Gulliver’s Travels, explaining to anyone who wants to listen that it's actually a brilliant Swiftean satire of... but nope, it's ponies. It's not just Ponyville in disguise though, even if people might be thrown off due to their association with brightness and pastel colors.

One of the things that's struck me about MLP:FiM in particular is how the pony society is portrayed, intentionally or not, as kind of a lacuna of stability in a world that's otherwise inexplicable and terrifying. And that's the aspect I've tried to amplify for my own universe, bringing in influences from HP Lovecraft, Sunless Sea and Ursula le Guin. In my world, this stability is something that's constantly having its edges chewed on by forces both outside and inside.

In this game, you actually play as one of those destabilizing forces, a spurned sorcerer who is trying to perform a ritual to ensnare their lover. Right away, it establishes itself as one of THOSE games; the first sentence includes a piece of jargon: "Rootwork", and there's plenty more made-up Fantasy-concepts, with that one being one of the more comprehensible. (Rootwork is basically voodoo, at least for the purpose of this story.)

In order to not leave people completely in the dust, I included in the inventory a book that when examined turns out to be an encyclopedia.

Apart from explaining important jargon (Rootwork, Vatch), I used the encyclopedia to introduce two of the custom verbs: Intimidate and Sing. Intimidation was, if I get to say so myself, a fantastic idea and all games with a villain protagonist should have it.

This "puzzle" is probably my favorite part of the game, as it introduces the social mores of this place and then requires the player to break them. It helps communicating what kind of person we're dealing with here, one that doesn't even consider regards for others an option. I would've really liked to do more with the whole "intimidation"-thing, I especially like the idea of it being a double-edged sword, giving you stuff but increasing the fear and persecution directed towards them.

The most interesting part about having a villain protagonist was showing their loneliness. People hate and fear them... for a good reason, but this doesn't make their alienation less palpable.

The scene with “your lover” helps hammer the point home that you are doing a bad bad thing, and that you have no time for subtlety; you just take what you can get. If I had more time, I would've liked a more elegant puzzle here. It's not the worst puzzle in the game, though, that honor goes to the Mandrake Root puzzle.

In Zork, there's an infamous puzzle that requires knowledge of baseball most Americans don't have, let alone people from other parts of the world that doesn't really play baseball. This puzzle is my Baseball-Diamond puzzle: it requires the player to know something about Mandrake roots that I don't think most people know, and that frankly would increase the ESRB-rating if it was ever articulated anywhere.

I thought about mentioning it in the book, but I liked having it be unstated and something the player either knows or only realizes in retrospect, but I should've put some sort of hint when searching the corpse that “look under” is implemented. (I'm using the extension Underside by Eric Eve.)

Now, this is my favorite part. As a standard, kissing in inform only applies to inanimate objects, but your character in this game has... particular interests that requires a slightly different behavior. I have no idea if anyone ever discovered it; there's no hint anywhere that you can do it, but if anyone tries kissing the corpse, they are in for a surprise...

There's this particular feeling when you look at your code and realize you just implemented necrophilia, somewhere between accomplishment and shame... oh, who are we kidding? I have no shame.

The ending is a bit sudden and abrupt, and require you to bring up your inventory, which prolly isn't very good design. I've certainly never heard about another game where you take inventory and then you win.

Overall though, I am really happy about it as a first attempt to write a parser game. The results of the comp is still pending, but I hope it will stand up against more experienced IF-writers.

Humble Bundle has Clickteam Fusion Developer for $15. Get it in y'all. 2 more days left to purchase! Make your trainwrecks available for all platforms!!!!

https://www.humblebundle.com/clickteam-fusion-bundle

It is with a heavy heart that I deliver the news that my friend and collaborator Mark Gobbin passed away on August 1st.

Mark posted numerous games here under the alias rhetoricstu. My first post on this site was a game we made together, and I feel he's partly to thank for the fast and fervorous approach to game-making I've had since. We worked together on so many creative collaborations over the years that I know I'll feel his absence in about anything I do from now on. He was a wonderful friend to me and a constant presence in my life for over 10 years. I will miss him immensely.

I've posted this for anyone to join me in mourning, or just appreciating his work. I plan to post more about his work as the days go by, along with (hopefully) finished versions of a couple of our regrettably incomplete long-term collaborations. Wish me luck...

Mostly thanks to SpindleyQ all my KNP games are now up on Internet Archive!

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Blueberry+Soft%22

Not all of them work great (Colour2 and Castlevania 10 for example), but hopefully one day they will!

I wrote a little guide on how to get things up too: http://gamemakingtools.ryliejamesthomas.com/wiki/index.php?title=Distribution:Internet_Archive (pretty straightforward, it just took some detectiving to figure out how to tell IA to treat it like a thing to be emulated (Just takes some metadata tags))

Happy Soos's birthday, everybody! To celebrate, have this, an unfinished Gravity Falls twine game I started for Yuletide one year. It's about Stan and Mabel and Dipper and their crummy made-up holiday. It's an unfinished piece of junk, but I decided to upload it anyway because, well, because...

Emily Short hosted a game jam recently called Bring Out Your Dead, where you uploaded long-dead WIPs and experiments in the hopes that someone else could learn from them. The concept really interested me, and since this was the most well-formed WIP I had that I'd likely never finish, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try something out with it. I took the old, unfinished game and added some commentary to it, usually to point out its flaws, but sometimes to discuss Gravity Falls for a bit (or point out a line I liked). It's a very short game, and probably would have been even if it were completed; I only completed one ending, and the other two branches cut off suddenly. Still, I hope you get something out of it, even if it's just "Don't do what I did here, kids."

(Sergio, my man: I have gotten your message, and while I haven't worked on my Knytt Swap lately, I'll probably block out some time for it next weekend. For reasons.)

Glad to see GT is still alive and kicking! I will try to post more often.

Here is a small adventure game you can add to an Asterisk dialplan. I'm sure you will agree that every PBX needs a hidden immature adventure game. Works well with RasPBX + a small analog gateway to a physical phone.

I made an alternate Python + Kivy version packaged for Windows. If you want a package for a different OS, let me know. There are some small differences but it's basically the same deal.

I've been feeling kind of uninspired about making games recently, but I have been playing a lot of music. I figured I'd try to apply the trainwreck method to recording songs, since it's kind of intimidating to write and record music (especially since I have no good equipment or talent). This is the first like... actual "song" that i've ever written. I kind of wrote it as I went. It was fun! If you squint a bit, it's a late 70s pop punk anthem recorded by actual musicians. Maybe I'll do more.

https://soundcloud.com/ihavefivehat/scorn

If anyone objects to non-games, let me know. But I think this fits with the aesthetic & mission of the site. Maybe I'll post other stuff like art pieces and whatnot as I make them too... we'll see!

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PART 2: May 20th 2016

I made an updated version of that song... actually this is my 4th attempt, but this time I had a slightly less crappy mic to use. I'm genuinely trying to make a tight and melodic pop punk song, lol. I'm just actually that bad at playing in rhythm. I'll get there eventually...

https://soundcloud.com/ihavefivehat/scorn-version-2

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PART 3: May 21st 2016

I changed the previous recording a little bit. it's getting towards the mix of raucous goofiness and concerning subject matter that i was originally going for... i'm going to let this sit for a while and decide if i want to re record it again in a few weeks. i feel like i could do better, but i don't want to get burnt out on it.

https://soundcloud.com/ihavefivehat/scorn-ver-3

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PART 4: May 26th

I guess I'll post visual art here too. Here's a sketchbook page I like. might keep working on it. one thing on my 'learn how to-do' list is to get better at photographing art so maybe I'll try to figure that out this week.

PART 4, VOL. 2: MAY 26th and 1/2

I just made another song today also. look at me, doing things.

I realized that as I'm not going solo on this, Cyril and I are part of a 'collective,' and I might be looking for an illustrator too. But anyways, yeah, we are. I also have another little side project I think I'm gonna be starting up which would be a lot faster and I'd need his help on too, so, considering we might be working on multiple things together and considering we both agreed, yeah, let's give us a name, one was picked.

The game is now called "Trepan." The collective is "Headache." Dunno if it's gonna be, "... a Headache Games production," or "By Studio Headache," or just Headache but, much better name for the game for a lot of reasons, and I like the name for us as a group.

• Looked at it on mobile. Weird looking.
• Got new audio from him, or rather, adjusted/fixed for looping audio. Helps with immersion, so, yay.
• Got new heartbeat sound, functions musically now. Love it but need to redo the scene it's in now, I think. I want it to last longer.
• Started to build some assets, namely handwritten stuff. I... hand wrote them
• Recorded/added in some "outside" noise to add over slightly volume-lowered music to add some immersion to the story. Managed to keep it away from being hacky, I think.
• Another pass of checking/replaying/note taking. I also end up thinking of problems/solutions while writing here/that first post.
• Considering a "save" system to encourage people "replaying," and by that, I mean like, just jumping back to see other endings, as that would be really really really really good. Maybe I should just make this less dependent on replay, or more beneficial from replays. No, not maybe. Must.
• Considering a way for people who choose "give up" or end up with an ending that i WANT there, but that they might not have seen coming, and is early on, to get back before that decision. A "go back to when this was inevitable" button feels weird. Not sure what to do.