It's already a week into February. D:

So, as said, didn't get much game work done in December due to Christmas, what I didn't expect was the first half of January was busy too. Since then, I didn't get any more done due to a combination of laziness and doing other things. Such as swapping my PCs power supply, and playing with a Raspberry Pi.

-Game Dev-
I did get a couple of sprites done for the Robotron Sally game. My original plan was to use the method of painting the sprites full size, scale them down, then clean them up. I then realised that having a shaded sprite flip back and forth might look bad, but I already planned this so stuck to the plan. The concept art turned out surprisingly well on the shading side.

However, after swapping out the power supply supply on my PC, I put the PC on the desk instead of under it to have easier access to the cables at the back, and to be able to quickly pop the side off for interior work. (I plan to swap the hard drive to add linux. Maybe duel boot it with Windows 7.) Problem is now I can't use my Bamboo tablet without rearranging my desk as the cable is too short. I can get a longer one, but that will be at a later date.

Once February rolled around, I said "sod it" and decided to go with an Iji style flat colour approach to sprites. They were quick to make (well under an hour each, maybe even the pair) and look good for what they are. My concern in the Sally sprite isn't symmetrical enough and might look drunk when rapidly flipped, but as a placeholder, it'll work.

For a quick project, it feels like it's dragged on forever, but in reality I've barely put any work in so far. 50 mins on the concept/digital painting stuff, and I didn't time the sprites. ie. Two hours of work over 2 months.


-Raspberry Pi-
I bought a Raspberry Pi 4. Don't worry, I'm not going to turn into one of "those guys" (I hope). For those unfamiliar. The Raspberry Pi is a single board computer not much bigger than a credit card. It's not exactly a powerhouse, but it is fun to mess around with. And at £80 for a kit, it's fairly cheap too.

So far, my main use for it has been emulation. RecalBox being my OS of choice. It has problems, but I like it simply for the ease of use. It plays anything up to and including playstation (but not N64). I've not tried Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, or Arcade games yet.

It came up in conversation that I hadn’t made a game dev monthly post for December (I said I wouldn’t last post) but now that Christmas holidays are basically over, it’s time to go over some things. My immediate plans for stuff.


-Real Life-
With the chip shortages leading to inflated prices for graphics cards set to continue until the end of 2023, it’s half-past time I fixed the mysterious clicking issue that has been plaguing my PC for ages now.

Long story short, my PC makes a “click” sound seemingly at random, similar to the sound a TV makes when you turn it on from stand by and it warms up. This happens more often when switching from full load to idle or vice versa. My PC also has a minor coil whine problem too. My current plan is to replace the power supply. This required shopping for new screwdrivers.

Funny (or sad) story. I heard COVID had devastated the town centre, that most of the businesses were gone, but it didn’t seem as bad as people made it out to be. On my current visit in search of screwdrivers, I found one electronics shop was now a coffee shop, and a tool shop was now a field. Yeah, I see what people were talking about now. The thing is, I found these places via google maps. So all these old shops that shut down now exist as phantoms on Google.

In related news, my old Windows XP rig doesn’t post any more. I don’t have the parts to diagnose it, let alone repair it, so I’m thinking of buying an old HP workstation and slowly upgrading it. My concern is I might never use it, and it’s a lot of clutter for little gain. We’ll see.


-Video-
Well behind on my video projects. The coil whine interfering with my microphone isn’t helping. I’m thinking of half-arsing the next Simple Series video (which is 1.5 years overdue by this point) just to get it done.


-Game Dev-
Some of this might be a repeat of my end of November post, but my plan is to improve my art skills since graphics are a major limiting factor for my games, and I keep avoiding it or settling for bad MSPaint programmer art.

My plan is to make a simple Robotron clone, starring a character similar-to-but-legally-distinct-from Sally Acorn, shooting robots. Each enemy and even the main character is a single sprite that flips back and forth. I want to try digital painting. Scaling them down and doing some clean up. I fully expect these to look ugly, but it’s a start.

I also want to try and “juice” the game. A cringy name for the practice of using things like screen shake, particle effects, screen transitions, squash and stretch, and other techniques to give games more “oomph”. One of my regrets with the flappy bird game was getting lazy with the menus and UI. Adding a simple screen shake would make hitting a wall more impactful too.

After that. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll work on the Leanna game again, but chances are I’ll make something art related.

This month, I implemented the state machine for the Leanna game. The tutorial was questionable in it's implementation, but for now I'll do it how it says. I think I'd like a more detailed, comprehensive tutorial on Godots systems and programming as a whole, instead of these piecemeal tutorials that tell you how to implement a specific thing under laboratory conditions, but beggers can't be choosers, and I don't know if I'd actually stick out such a tutorial.

Another problem I kind of fixed is how big to make various models so I can design things to a consistent scale. According to the Kenney Assets dev textures, 1 Godot unit is 1 meter. This seems to be backed up by a quick google search. I'm not really using the physics engine in the game, but it seems as good of a baseline as any to start from to make assets and mechanics in the future.


Later in the month, I decided to make a Robotron clone, inspired in part by the Robotron clone minigame in Fallout 4.
I considered using a painterly style for the graphics, since I want to try digital painting again, but I got lazy and went for sprite art made in GIMP. After making a bunch of sprites, I discovered a page by the FamiCube guy that talked about how to turn digital painting into high detail pixel art, so maybe next time I can try that.

I based the robot designs on different things. One was based on the robots from Chopping Mall, and the others were based on images I found online for "80s robot" and "gun robot".

I struggled to come up with an idea for the main character, and eventually settled on Sally Acorn since Sonic characters fight robots. I wanted a more complete outfit than the boots and jacket from the show, so I thought of giving her a Krystal style assault suit, and maybe a helmet. That said, it's so different from Sally Acorn from Sonic that I might make her an OC. Let me know if you have a preference in the comments.

I planned to have the game done in a few days, but I got side tracked with RPG stuff, playing games, and real life chores.

There might not be a game dev monthly next month. Thanks for reading.

Recently I was nostalgic for the flash game Flight, that's the one where you're a paper plane collecting stars to buy upgrades to fly further, as you make your way across various cities around the world. However, since Flash is no more, I couldn't play it.

I ended up falling down a rabbit hole of old flash games and sure enough, none of them worked. All claimed they were using Ruffle for flash emulation, but nothing you'd actually want to watch or play was supported. I eventually found one game that worked, and that had no text on the menu buttons. It wasn't even good or something I played back in the day.

Apparently there are various third party players that do actually work, though I've not tried them myself. I was curious if anyone ever managed to get Ruffle to work for anything on sites that claim to use it?

-New PC Build-
I've wanted to build a new PC for a little while now. Unfortunately, the GPU shortage means I haven't been able to. My goal is to build something I can use for VR and gaming. Others tasks like art and video editing should be easily handled by any PC that powerful.

So far, my planned build looks like this. A Ryzan 5 CPU (maybe a 7 if I get a good price) and 16-32gb of RAM. I'm not concerned about overclocking, so a basic motherboard will do, though I'd like a one with a shield to prevent coil whine. I don't know if that's still a concern in 2021.

Graphics card is pointless to spec right now. I'd like a 3080 for VR, but I'd go for a 3060 or AMD's equiverlent if they came up. I've considered building a PC without a graphics card or re-using my current card (a 1060), but it's not good enough for VR and since my current PC does what I need it to, it makes building a new one seem a bit pointless.

-Linux v Win 11-
The other problem is the operating system. I have little interest in Windows 11. Somehow, I ended up falling down a YouTube rabbit hole talking about Linux. I'm giving serious thought to installing it (specifically Pop!_os) on my current system to see how it fares.

My computer is overdue a Windows reinstall, but with me wanting to build a new system soon, it doesn't seem worth the hassle. Putting Linux on though, that's fine. It will also support new games that my current OS doesn't support.

It's a strange rabbit hole to fall down, because in some ways it feels like a return to the old days of computing. At the same time, I'm kind of done with hunting down drivers or dealing with tech problems.

-Old PC Build-
Another option I've been considering is a Windows XP build. I don't know the details of how to get an old OS installed on a new build, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. The parts are cheap, with a GTX 950 going for £60 on ebay. The problem is information online is limited since the stock answer to anyone asking is "Just emulate using virtual machine."

I also still have my old Windows XP machine. I think it might still have Steam and Flash on it. It's likely more than capable of running any XP exclusive games since it was a capable machine when Windows 7 became the norm.

I'm thinking of making a small game. A robotron clone. You can see a robotron clone in Fallout 4 here.
https://youtu.be/dIrUvgHqq0k?t=138

I think that this could be made in only a few days, but as is often the case, I predict that it will take way longer than that.

I'm not sure of the characters or theme yet. I was thinking of having Sabre as the main character, and maybe having a selection of weapons like a double shot and a spread shot. I don't know if the graphics will be detailed enough for a cameo, but volunteers are welcome.

I don't know much about them. I don't have any interest in them. They don't really effect me. So I have no opinion on them.

...

...

...

...

But...

I'm tempted to be on the pro-NFT side simply because anti-NFT people are so vocal and vitriolic, while not having any good arguments. And they're almost always a certain kind of person.

What kind of people? I mean far-left, always online, Twitter weirdos that support communism, have pronouns in their bios, and think Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Kyle Rittenhouse, and JK Rowling are the four horsemen of the nazi apocalypse.

Their arguments are bad too.
"You can't own something you can download from the internet!" Steam and Gumroad would like a word with you.
"It's bad for the environment!" ...And?
"It's wasting resources on stupid monkey pictures!" And furry porn is okay because...?
"After the initial sale, none of the resale money goes to the artist, even if the value goes up!" That's how the second hand market works. If you sell an old TV, Sony don't get a cut of that.
"Artists should get a cut of re-sale!" Ok, do they also take on the risks as well? To go back to the TV example, if I have to pay to get the TV repaired, or I have to pay to have it disposed of, do the Sony have to pay a percentage? What about the electricity bill?
"If you're not anti-NFT! You're a bad person!" ...And?
The only argument they have that is any way convincing is "NFTs are a scam", but they don't elaborate (see edit).

Which brings me to another point. When your only authoritative source is Jim Sterling, your argument has problems.

In conclusion. NFTs seem to have been turned into the latest partisan political purity test. What's strange is I don't know anyone who is pro-NFT, but I've seen lots of people are extremely anti-NFT, and will rage at people who aren't anti-NFT-enough. It also seems to be an outgrowth of Twitter.

I'm still indifferent to NFT, but the anti-NFT crowd have no argument and seem a bit over zealous.


EDIT- In response to this journal, nerothelime gave me the details of the scam, and was the first person to do so. Basically, the scam is a artificial speculator bubble, similar to Tulips and retro games. If true, this does mean NFTs are a scam, but it's interesting to me that none of the vocal NFT haters could name or spell out the scam. Just saying "it's a scam" and then refusing to elaborate.

Video version of this post- https://youtu.be/by1HB5stheY

This month, I've mostly been doing a tutorial on how to do turn based grid movement for turn based strategy.

The tutorial itself was okay. I can't really complain for free. I did learn some things, like certain naming conventions, and the basics of how to structure a turn based strategy game, but some of the specifics were lost on me. Part of this is my fault, but others fell on the tutorial itself.
eg. It has a lot of similar variable names.
unit, Unit, _unit, units


On another note, the PS1 style fixed camera survival horror game Alisa released. I've not played it yet, I only played the demo ages ago, but I'm looking forward to it. It seems to be well liked too which is good.

There are loads of indie survival horror throwbacks out there, but they never caught on. Nay sayers repeatedly told me fixed camera horror games wouldn't work any more, that tank controls, fixed camera angles, and PS1 style graphics were flaws that gaming has moved past. My position was that those games never caught on because they missed the point, thinking that copying superficial elements was enough.

The success of Alisa shows that the genre does have potential.

I predicted that people would complain about tank controls in my game, and sure enough people are complaining about that in Alisa. People used to complain about duel analogue controls for shooters too, but that argument was settled long ago.

Anyway, how does this tie into me working on the Leanna game? It doesn't really, other than they're both fixed camera survival horror throwbacks, and Alisa proves it can work.
Speaking of Leanna game, I do have a proper name for it. I'll not reveal it just yet as I have to check if the name is available. I've done a quick google search and nothing came up, but I'll search indie games and the like just to be sure.
I've also been thinking about the plot. I keep coming back to one of the earlier concepts as my favourite, but it has some serious flaws that I need to address. Again, I can go into details if people care.
As for progress. I started over, making a simplified version with stock assets. I only got a couple hours work on it so far but I hope to work on it more in the coming months.

Finally, I've been thinking about VR games. I don't have a headset so I can't make anything VR, but it's been on my mind.

Anyway, that's all the game development stuff I've been doing this month.

There's no chopping in the film 0/10 :P

Chopping Mall is a "horror" film that has bit of a following on the internet. Having finally seen it, I understand why.

The film has a simple concept. A group of young people are trapped in a mall with three killer security robots. It's a simple setup executed well. The film is fast moving, with a decent sound track and good 1980s effects. Real robots with those 80s laser effects common in films of the era. There's also a great head explosion early on.

The film is classed as a horror film, but to me it has more in common with something like Die Hard, as the main characters try various things to escape the mall, kill the robots, or otherwise survive. Though given some of the characters die, a couple of tense or violent scenes, and the previously mentioned head explosion, I can see why it's classed as horror. Maybe if it was released a decade later it'd be seen differently.

Chopping Mall is an easy film to recommend. Any complaints are basically nitpicks. I wouldn't say it's a classic or one of my favourites, but it's well made and entertaining.

Not of this Earth is a sci-fi film by Jim Wynorski. It's an usual film that almost feels like it's from the 1960s.

An alien that takes the form of a man in a suit with sunglasses, lands on Earth and starts draining blood from people. He hires a nurse to provide regular blood transfusions. Over the course of the film she finds out what he's doing and tries to escape.

Giving a plot summery of this film is difficult because it's not a regular movie. Things happen, but it's hard to pin down a plot that follows the traditional three act structure. The characters investigate the alien's weird behaviour, thinking he's some rich eccentric, but there's not a lot of mystery as we know he's an alien draining blood from people.

On the plus side, lead actress Traci Lords is hot, and there's one joke involving a stripper-gram that had me laughing out loud.

Overall, I can't really recommend Not of this Earth. It's not bad, don't get me wrong. It kept me interested throughout to see where it was going, but it's mostly a guy in a suit acting strangely with the occasional bit of gratuitous nudity.

(I always found the filing scheme of naming a magazine of the month following it's release odd.)

September was an unusual month.

First two weeks I spent not doing much of anything. I was torn between a number of ideas, and didn't want to start one until I settled on one for sure. This meant nothing got done for two weeks. So, I decided that I should have a couple of default projects. Something I can work on any time.

I decided my fixed camera horror game would be my goto project, though right now I feel like making a turn based strategy. So, I don't know.

I did get a long overdue video project completed, so the month wasn't a complete waste.

Robot Wars is the last of what could be called the Charles Band robot trilogy, but these films have no real connection to each other beyond varying amounts of involvement from Charles Band and the fact they include giant robots.

Robot Jox was a childhood favourite that holds up well enough today. Crash and Burn was a mediocre who-done-it where the big robot is barely in it. Robot Wars is a lot more action heavy, though the film feels kind of thin.


It's hard to explain the plot without getting into spoilers. It'll suffice to say that the last surviving "mega mech" giant robot is being used as an armoured tour bus. Meanwhile, a journalist is trying to investigate something strange under the preserved city where the mega mech takes the tourists.

Aaaand you likely already know what's hidden under the city. If you need another hint, this is a film where giant robots that fight.

When I heard there was a pressured city was from 1993 (the year the film was made), I fully expected the film to be nothing but running around a modern day city to save money, and while money saving was likely the goal, the film manages to keep up the appearance of this is a future museum. There's no population of people living like it's the 90s or anything.


I'm getting distracted by details, but in a way I kind of have to, because the film is short. Barely more than an hour not counting opening and closing credits. The plot is brisk, and the film keeps moving. There's little to no padding, and the action is spread nicely throughout.

Unfortunately, that action is a bit thin. For example, when our hero has to take out a bunch of bad guys, the mechanic distracts them by shouting "remember the alamo!" and when the bad guys turn to look, the hero pops up behind them and kills them all with a quick burst of gunfire. It's over in seconds. They use this same trick again later in the film. The big robot fight at the end is a bit more elaborate, but it's over quicker than I'd like.

I guess that's the balancing act of trying to make a film like this on a budget. You can either have a few big action scenes, or a bunch of smaller ones.

Had I seen this film as a kid, I likely would've preferred it over Robot Jox, since the mechs are in it more often, and there's less talking. As a grown up however, I think Robot Jox wins out.

Robot Wars is not a bad film. It's fun and does deliver the giant mech goods, even if it's a bit thin. I saw the film on YouTube, and if you have an hour to kill, you can do way worse.

Crash and Burn is often said to be the sequel to Robot Jox. In practice, it's got nothing to do with Robot Jox other than Charles Band being involved, and the inclusion of a giant robot, but even that's questionable.

Set after an economic collapse, computers have been banned for personal use and the mega corporation Uni-com has basically replaced the government. Our main character is a Uni-com courier making a delivery to a power plant converted into a TV station. A therma storm strands people there over night, during which time one the characters is murdered.

At it's core, the film is a murder mystery, but the solution to the mystery is spoiled in the trailer. The giant robot only appears briefly at the end of the film and doesn't really do much.

About three quarters to two thirds of the way into the film, the killer is revealed to be a Uni-com synth, which leads to a terminator like scene where the characters are trying to escape a robot of inconsistent toughness. Sometimes it seems bullet proof, other times guns work fine. It's the same shotguns and ammo too, so it's not as if they're using some special gun.

As said, the giant robot only appears briefly at the end. The design is good, and the effects look great. Having the realness of a model, without the jerky movement of stop motion, or the obvious artefacts of 80s blue screen effects. Unfortunately, it basically acts as a glorified fork lift. A metal tower falls over for no reason, landing on a character who is standing around in the open for questionable reasons, and the giant robot is called in to move the metal tower. Then it stomps on the bad guy. The end.


Another problem is the film doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Certain things don't make a lot of sense in retrospect. I won't get into spoilers, but it'll suffice to say that there were a couple of ways the bad guys could have won fairly easily that they don't take. You could argue that this is a flaw in the synth design, that they can't kill without a specific order, or that they tried to remain uncover and only turn hostile as a last resort, but that's a can of worms this film doesn't seem interested in opening. All we get is they can't kill until their contiousness chip is overridden by a virus.

Likewise, one major clue is a guy's finger getting infected after a cut, but the main character is not in there when the infection is revealed. Making it seem like he has sex so good that it gave him clairvoyant powers.


Overall, I say Crash and Burn is watchable. It's not painfully dull, but it's not something I'd recommend either. It doesn't deliver the giant robot goods, and the central mystery is let down by flaws in the script. Being a who-done-it also hurts any repeat viewings since a lot of the film is speculation and exposition. If you're here for the action and giant robots, watch the clips on YouTube or watch the trailer.

I've not seen the original Assault on Precinct 13 since I was a teenager or in my early 20s, but I remember liking the film, even if I only remember a few things about it. I had no interest in the remake until I needed something to watch with my mam that she wouldn't complain about.

Sure enough, the new film is not great.

The plot is that a snow storm means a police bus has to stop at a small police precinct until the storm passes. Said precinct is in the process of being decommissioned and so only has a few staff.

The station is attacked by crooked cops who want to kill one of the criminals so he can't incriminate them at trial. And once the others at the precinct learn this, they also have to be killed.

Laurance Fishbourn steals the film as the enigmatic criminal Bishop. The action is fine, even good at times. The highlight for me being when Bishop throws two molatovs at a guy at close range. The motivation for the characters makes more sense in this version compared to the originals vague "gang wanting to kill an old man" plot, but because I've not seen it in a long time I could be wrong about that.

Unfortunately, the new film falls apart in pacing, geography, and actions of the characters.

First, the pacing. The film is nearly 2 hours long, but a good 30 minutes could easily be cut. I know this because I fast forwarded through a lot of the early film, which is boring drama nonsense I didn't care about.

The film has what I call an idiot plot. Things only happen because people do stupid things, and they do stupid things to make the plot happen. The most common example is the bad guys hesitating to shoot the good guys when they're cornered. Giving plenty of time for another good guy to teleport behind them and kill them.

Then there's the geography. The film seems to work on serial killer logic with people able to teleport when they're off camera. By far the worst example requires some spoilers. Near the end of the film, a car is speeding down an ally, crashes, and then we cut to the middle of the woods. I'd show the scene if I could just to prove I'm not lying.
This cut was so jarring, I had to rewind to see if I accidentally skipped part of the film. This could be an error in the Netflix version, but my mam is saying "well, maybe there were trees behind the building", but when the credits roll, we see they're pretty deep into the forest. Something is wrong here.

Overall, I can't recommend Assault on Precinct 13. It has a few fun moments, but not enough to justify it's run time or make up for flaws elsewhere.

A while ago I said I had a bunch of film reviews to post, then forgot. Here they are now. Anyway, on to the review.


These days, when you hear the term "anime", chances are you think of schoolgirls showing their underwear, possibly being raped by tentacles.

Back in the 80s and 90s, things were different. Anime was ...schoolgirls showing their underwear, possibly being raped by tentacles, but with cool cyberpunk stuff and highly detailed animation.


Akira was at the forefront of the first wave of popular anime. Every 90s anime fan worth his salt has seen it. Watching it for the first time in a long time, it holds up, which I wasn't expecting.

See, over the years, Akira's reputation has faded somewhat. I remember hearing that the plot is nonsensical and only makes sense if you're familiar with the comics, which no one read. So I was expecting everything that wasn't the classic scenes to be worthless.

The plot made sense. The final scene in the film is confusing as it goes a bit Evangelion, but given the characters are also confused, I'll let it pass.

That said, it's not an easy film to summarise. The short version, a teenage biker called Tesuo gets kidnapped by the government after a bike crash, and through medical experiments his latent psychic powers are unleashed. Meanwhile, his friend Canada, while trying to get woo a member of a rebel group, gets roped into a rescue attempt. But that's a huge simplification. There's civil unrest, government politics, and other stuff tied into it all. And that's just the first half.

That's not to say the plot is amazing. It's good, but not really the reason you're here.


No, the real reason is the animation. The film looks great, especially in HD. The animation is fantastic, especially when you consider the technological limits they were working with back then. I once heard that the film used more than 50 different shades of red ink. I can believe it.

There are many stand out scenes. The bike chase at the beginning is the most iconic, and the final battle is well remembered too, but there's so much detail crammed in to everything throughout the film. Another great thing is the soundtrack. Most of the music doesn't steal the show or upstaging the action, but there are times when the music does come to the front, it's glorious.


Overall, the film is great, and still holds up more than 30 years later. I don't know how it'll fare with anime fans raised on Avatar and My Hero Academia. But if you're someone who hasn't seen it in a while, or remembers it as a few iconic scenes tied together with nonsense, then I highly recommend going back and watching it. It's quite good.

I posted the Flappy Kylina game this month. Happy about that. As with all my games, I'd have liked better graphics, or more polish in the menus. There are also some problems, like the directional audio meaning that the flap sound comes from the left speaker, which is bad if you're wearing headphones. But, I got the game done, and that's what matters. I don't know if anyone else played it. I doubt it.

For the second half of the month, I wanted to work on 3D modelling in Crocotile 3D. That didn't happen for a reason I'll get into. Was going to be a tank game.


Which brings me to the rant, with a bit of advice. I saw that a Half-Life mapping discord was having a community mapping project based on Half-Life 2. I thought I'd join. But here's the technical requirements.
-Install SDK Base 2013
-Install SDK Base beta branch
-Install Half-Life 2
-Install Half-Life 2: Episode 1
-Install Half-Life 2: Episode 2
-Install Mapbase Base
-Install Mapbase Episodes
-Install community mod
-Install community template map
-Set all of that up in a very specific way
All of this is before installing VTF edit for custom textures, or GCFScape to use content from other source engine games.

When it didn't work, I got a bunch of non-advice with things like "did you follow the step by step guide?" and demands to upload the error console. When I upload it, I was given some settings to copy and paste into a .cfg file. When that didn't work, everybody fell silent. So after some fiddling trying to get it to work myself, I eventually gave up.

So what's the lesson here? Manage your dependencies! There's a reason that I don't play mods that rely on mods upon mods upon mods. One of the things I like about Godot over "industry standard" engines is that Godot has 1 point of failure. Godot. I don't have to worry that my editor or compiler is the problem.

So, I've been thinking of making my own Half-Life map/campaign. I guess you call it a spite project. But since it was something I wanted to take part in, why not just make the things I would've made anyway, just as it's own thing without the bullshit? If they want to over complicate a simple volunteer "just for fun" type project with technical hurdles, that's on them.


I did have a productive few days at the end of the month, making a lot of progress working on driving game tutorials over a few days, and even made progress on a long video script. I'm kind of tempted to make the tank game a combat driving game or even do a racing game. I don't know. I likely stick to a tank game for simplicity, we'll see.

Jim Wynorski was one of my favourite film directors, but I hadn't seen any of his films until now.

See, Jim has a reputation similar to Roger Corman and Robert Rodregres. I like them because their approach to film making is make it fast fast, make it cheap, make it fun, and above all, make the film.

Many amatuer game developers get a degree from some university, then sit at home waiting for a phone call from the big publishers that never comes. I imagine film is much the same. I've known a guy who get film making degree, then never followed through with the "make films" part. At least the aspiring actors I've known tried to get a foot in the door, even if they failed time and time again.

I'm getting off topic. Point is, Jim makes films he wants to make. Many of his films are genre b-movies starting attractive young women with huge breasts, often running around in their underwear.

976 Evil 2: The Astral Factor starts with exactly that. A young, attractive, buxxom woman running through the building in her underwear, before being killed. The police arrest the man for the murders, but he keeps on managing to kill from his cell via astral projection.

Meanwhile, the main character is biker stalked by a business card that turns up wherever he goes, and creepy phone calls only he can hear. It's for an evil horoscope (or should that be horror-scope) that gives you the answer to your problems, but at a price, and it doesn't like to be turned down.

What I like is that the film never really drags or wastes your time with bullshit. The actors do a good job with the material for the most part. And while it's low budget does show though with some occasionally spotty effects or sub par acting, there is enough money on screen to sell the concept.

The film kind of similar to something like SCP. The demonic element is mostly implied, so with a few tweeks, this could easily be something unknown entity. The idea of an evil hotline is an interesting one.

The film has some great moments too. One where a house goes crazy and try to kill the main character Evil Dead 2 style. Another involves someone pulled into the film "it's a wonderful life" only for the channel to change to "night of the living dead".

I saw the film on YouTube, and one scene had weird sound, I'm guessing licenced music was playing and the song was removed, but overall the film was still watchable.

It's by no means a classic, but it's a fun watch if you like the premise of an evil supernatural hotline.

Baby Driver is the film Drive, but good.

I saw Drive a while back, after hearing it was the inspiration for the game Hotline Miami. I found that film to be disappointing, with the things I liked about Hotline Miami barely being present, and the general hype around the film being over blown.

Baby Driver is a film I heard nothing about until I asked my brother about it, and found to be entertaining despite low expectations.

The plot of Baby Driver is basically the same as Drive, albeit with a more lighthearted tone. Baby is a getaway driver, he falls in love and tries to get out of the crime business, only for things to go sideways and fight his way out.

Unlike Drive, Baby Driver delivers the car chase goods early on, and some decent action later on. The film is colourful, lighthearted, and quirky, but it never gets annoying. It also knows when to stop joking around and take things seriously, or at least seriously enough that it doesn't undermine the darker moments.

The cast is a who's who of "hey, I know that guy from something!", and they do a good job with the characters they're given.

There are a couple of slow moments in the middle involving the romance plot, and much of the final third leaves a bad taste in my mouth due to questionable motives I can't really go into without spoilers. One I can mention is a guy who likes killing people for no reason, even killing a cashier at a petrol station and stealing bubblegum because he didn't want to pay for it. Someone like that would obviously be a hindrance to a highly detailed heist, but they keep him around anyway.

Overall. I liked Baby Driver.

-Film Reviews-
Expect a flood of film review journals over the next week or so. I've not posted film reviews in a while. I originally wanted to make these as videos, and still do, but I've got a large backlog, so I'll just post the text versions, and if I get around to making the video versions, I'll post them at a later date. Films include Crash and Burn, Robot Wars, and Assault on Precinct 13 Remake.

-Game Dev-
I finished my Flappy Bird clone. I don't know if anyone other than LQCTim has played it. If you did, I hope you enjoyed it.

For my next game, I want to make something 3D. I want to learn my 3D modelling software and improve my art skills. Preferably with simple models over complex ones. Ideally, I'd like to make the game 2 weeks (though by the end of September seems more realistic). The program has no animation functionally, so I want to do as few animations as possible, so no mech game or games focusing on people.
After researching games I can rip off use as inspiration, I settled on a Battlezone clone. All it would take is a tank model, some obstacles, and basic code. But then I thought, who really wants to play a Battlezone clone?

So after doing some thinking, I have 2 options.
Option 1 - Tank game. Take the core of Battlezone, and add a few things like power ups, destructible buildings, or even a short campaign. Kind of like an in between point between Battlezone and Battletanx.
Option 2 - Helicopter game. Fly around a map and make tanks go boom. Kind of like a simplified version of Army Men Air Attack or Desert Strike. There could be a bit more complexity in both generating the terrain and making the guns aim at the targets, but it might be worth it.

Thoughts?

Flappy Kylina is a Flappy Bird clone featuring   LQCTim 's character Kylina. Press space bar to flap, and see how many points you can get.
Tip- You don't have to worry about her head, wings, or legs, only her body hitting the wall counts. Though she can lose her shoes if her feet hit the wall.
Screenshot here
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43209838/
Download here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i8llgh7ec.....ylina.zip?dl=0
Easy version here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vwb6gcyqo.....0Easy.zip?dl=0

After nearly 12 hours of work over a month and change, Flappy Kylina is ready to be released. There are a bunch of things I'd like to have done, like a proper title screen, music, an animation for the shoes falling off, custom icon, splash screen, and difficulty options (I can compile an easier version of the game for those who want to fap instead of flap). There's also some quality of life features like a instructions screen, or using the keyboard on the menus.
I might come back later and add those later if there's enough interest, but that's unlikely.
I had a bunch of problems with the scrolling background, eventually I had to edit the original image to a 720p 16:9 image to get it working. The bodge is not really noticable in the final game. One known issue is I used positional audio for Kylina. This works great, but playing with headphones means the flapping sound is mostly in your left ear.

Hope you like it. ^_^

Who stole the second half of July?

Game development has been good and bad this month. I decided to make a small flappy bird clone featuring one of LQCTim 's characters. The good is, mechanically, the game is basically done. All that's needed are basic things like points, a game over state, and menus. I don't know if I'll publicly release it.

The bad is my work ethic. With a total dev time of 5 hours 10 minutes so far, once again, a weekend's worth of work done over a month. With the only time sinks being a RPG campaign I'm running, putting a few hours into learning some 3D software, (the fruits of which can be seen here https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42896441/ ) and a few days I avoided the computer due to health reasons.

What's in store for August? Well, I'm going to finish the flappy bird game. Then I want to try making something 3D. Not sure what yet. My first instinct is to begin iterating on the Leanna horror game concept, but that might be too big of an ask for what I have in mind.

Something I've had on my mind for the long-long term. I've had an on and off fascination with VR since the original Occulus was announced. Though I don't have a headset or a PC that can handle it, but it's something I've been thinking about recently.

Breakout Finished ...kind of.
I finished my breakout clone. It's feature complete, but lacking content and polish. The problem is the game took me a 2-3 months to get to this point, but looking at my time sheet, I only worked on it for a total of 6 hours, 45 minutes. In other words, the game could technically be made in a weekend. Given that I put 50 hours into Fallout games over the month, and I haven't put any serious time into video making, this is unacceptable.


Clean Code and Programming Forms
This month I listened to a bunch of talks by "Uncle Bob" about clean code. It had some interesting ideas I want to try that go against the usual programming advice dogma. I've also heard of Entity Component System architecture (from a talk about Overwatch), and data-oriented programming.

I never did formal training in programming, outside some very basic stuff in college that was mostly stuff I already knew, so these kinds of fundamental ideas are things I missed out on. eg. I've been programming for 15 years or so, and I only recently learned of XOR, which is apparently basic boolean you were supposed to learn early on.


Liminal Spaces
I've been a fan of weird, abstract locations. From mods like Mistake of Pythagoras (Half-Life 2), Sweet Half-Life (Half-Life 1), and Pasiri (Left 4 Dead 2) to paintings, and even weird dreams I had when I was in my teens or twenties.

The problem is there was no name for this kind of thing, which made it hard to discuss. I thought of the term "museum-punk", but that didn't seem right. Later, Vaporwave art kind of did a similar thing, but not really. In the last few days, I learned of the term "liminal spaces", which while not 100% the thing I'm describing, it's close enough that people understand what I mean.

Now I just need a term for old stock sound effects like footsteps and buttons...


Next Game
As for my next project, I had a couple of ideas.

One is to make another small game. Something like Flappy Bird or Asteroids or something. Something I can make quickly to get used to finishing games.

I'm not in the mood to revisit my Leanna game or mech sim just yet.

I considered making mods for Fallout 4, but the mod tools require Bethesda.net, and Fallout New Vegas already has mods that do most of what I want to do. A World of Pain and Mighty Dungeons specifically add combat dungeons to the game, and other stuff I want to add would be limited. So, I'm considering making my own first person dungeon crawl RPG. One of those ideas I don't expect to ever finish, and will likely never be released. I can give details if anyone is interested.

  iskra has been posting a comic recently called "Just a friend".
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/42226958/
https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery.....-friend-comic/

At first glance, it seems pretty standard. But then you see the comments and it's ...surprising controversial.

At time of writing, the comic is up to page 6 (though technically it's panel 6, but whatever) and the plot is a drunk guy at a party hit on the main character, when she turned him down, he lifted her skirt, at which point a big guy steps in, and presses drunk guy against the wall. The party goers shout at him for being a buzzkill, so he storms out.

The comments section is huge. Complaining about the friend zone, consent, white knights, and how far is too far and when violence is justified. ...All for a what may or may not be a porn comic.

Time for another post about game development. Will try and do these once a month.

Last month I wanted to make a breakout game to relearn the basics and cover some topics I've been putting off. And I did. But it stalled was me putting finishing touches like level transitions, game over screens, and sound effects. I have watched some tutorials on sounds, but getting up and actually doing it is the problem.
My excuse is that I get sore neck and shoulders when I use my computer for an extended period. I think the problem is my desk is too short. I'm thinking of raising it, or getting a new one. We'll see.

Recently, the topic of is living in the present, caring about the immediate project and not long term growth or sequels has come up a few times.
I've been reflecting on what I want to achieve, as well as my one game development success. A mod for Half-Life called XT Tower.
XT Tower was inspired by mods like Going Down and The Whole Half-Life Tower, where each map has to be made to fit in a certain small size, and each map doesn't have a connection to any other aside from the base premise of being floors in a tower. I forget my self imposed time limit, but I know I overshot it. Still. This kind of "X amount of time and Y amount of space" worked well, perhaps because there was no extended goal. I remember two maps were scrapped. One I forget the reason, the other was a big wave based shoot out on a rooftop mall that would trash the place. The mall was scrapped due to technical limiations of the engine. Hence why the final level was a thrown together fight with 3 guys on a helipad.
In looking at the making of popular games. They had intent, but no end goal. Resident Evil was originally a FPS. Halo was a strategy game, then a squad game, then a FPS. My dream Resident Evil clone project repeatedly fails. Maybe it's because I go in with a specific end result in mind, but get frustrated when some element doesn't come together the way I want it.

This has got me thinking about what I'll do when I finish Breakout. I have a few ideas.
-Make Half-Life maps again. (I don't have VR or I'd consider making Half-Life: Alyx levels.)
-Make more small games like Flappy Bird, just to get used to finishing games.
-Revive an old project. Gun Maidens was the working title for a cop themed co-op FPS intended as a hodgepodge of different ideas. I never attempted it due to the technical hurdles and lack of a solid design idea. I'm not even sure if arresting people will be a feature or not. Krystal FPS was a small StarFox fan game that I get the basics working in, before stalling out for some reason or another.

The topic came up when talking to a friend recently.

What does your OC do? I'm not talking about backstory, I mean, what is their place in the world and the story? Do they go on adventures? Do they have a day job? What kind of situations do they often find themselves in? etc.