Tag: Ramblings

Feel the sunshine living in the city!

Parkouring ravens? Dogs stuck in walls? What’s not to love!

If you’ve popped over to the tutorial section recently you might have noticed that I’ve added my very first HaxeFlixel tutorial! It shows how to implement a simple, pixel-perfect 2D water shader which I used for Go! Go! PogoGirl. But a few of you might be wondering what a HaxeFlixel is. Well, it’s a 2D game framework that is as powerful as it is underrated! It runs on the (also underrated) Haxe language, is extremely well documented, open source, and has built-in functions for almost anything you’d need.

As I’m sure many of you will remember, the original Streets of Rage for the Mega Drive had multiple endings. The real canonical ending has you beat the crap out of Mr. X, thereby ending his reign of terror forever (yeah, right). However, if you confronted Mr. X with a buddy in tow, a new possible path unlocked. A quick refresher is in order. When you confront Mr. X he will ask you to join his organization.

A few years ago, Yuzo Koshiro posted a pile of old game design documents for Bare Knuckle 2 aka Streets of Rage 2 on the Ancient blog to commemorate the release of Streets of Rage 2 3D on the Nintendo 3DS. These documents gave a deep insight into the game’s inner workings, technical aspects, designs and even some cut content. They were an awesome resource for one of the most awesome games ever created.

About two months ago I made a few changes to my Patreon tiers, while claiming that “more changes are likely to come”…and behold, more changes have come! Last time I stated that one of my long-term goals was to consolidate my fanbases. Some people only like to play my indie games while others are only interested in Mega Drive dev tutorials. So far, my Patreon has strongly catered to the latter crowd.

It’s time for another SGDK tutorial series! After doing a single player Pong game and an endless runner, it’s time to reach for the stars… and make a space shooter! Apart from things like scrolling and animating sprites, this new series will show you how to deal with multiple entities and their collisions, how to randomly generate backgrounds and more! This project builds upon the previous tutorials, so if you’re new to SGDK programming and have not done those yet, I highly recommend starting with Megapong.

Hey there, what’s up? Things are continuing to evolve, as I’ve now updated my Patreon to give patrons more perks! Apart from early access to new tutorials and posts, the biggest one is probably the ability to peek behind the scenes…and there will be a lot to peek at in the coming months! This year I’m writing and submitting my MA thesis, meaning that I will have to do more stuff to make ends meet.

So last year I gave a rundown of all the games I had beaten in 2018. And this year I’m doing it again! However, since I’ve finished a whopping 32 games and I’m doing this at the last minute I’ll have to make things a bit snappier than before. So no pretty pictures for each entry and just my general thoughts. Yeah it’s more or less just a dry list, but I like writing these things so…yeah.

By now you’ve probably noticed that I’ve written a tutorial on how to create a single-player Pong game for the Mega Drive/Genesis. Well, now I’m writing another one! This time I’ll guide you through creating an endless runner where you’ll gain points by jumping over obstacles: This series will introduce new concepts such as scrolling and sprite animation, so if you want to improve your Mega Drive coding skills, head on over to the tutorials section and check it out!

Want some big news? Here are some big news! I have added a brand-new tutorials section to this site…and to kick it off I’ve posted the first three installments of a new Mega Drive SGDK tutorial! In it you’ll learn how to create a Pong-like game for the Mega Drive from the ground up using SGDK. A new post will go up every week, so make sure to check back regularly!

Time for another update! I know not a lot has visibly changed since my last update but believe me when I say that behind the scenes things have been happening almost constantly. So let me share some of them with you! Attraction Force My upcoming game Attraction Force is progressing very nicely and should be ready for release in a month or so. Once again I’ve spent more time on it than I had originally intended, but I wanted to make it the best it could be.

Back in my New Years Resolutions 2018 I said that I intended to beat 10 games this year, because “That backlog needs a dent in it, seriously.” Well, I’m happy to say that I not only managed to pull it off, I also managed to beat 3 additional games on top of that! …and yes, there are way more important and impressive goals on that list but just let me have this one, alright?

The Mega Drive turns 30 today and I haven’t felt this old since the last time someone reminded me when The Matrix hit theaters. But that’s perfectly alright, because I love that sleek black box of kickass. It was my first console and will always be my favorite. It launched me head-first into the crazy world of video games and led me on the path that I’m on today. I’ve already written at some length about the influence platformers had on me but the Mega Drive was and is such a big part of my life that I can’t help but blurt out some more words.

Back when I got my Mega Drive in 1991 I got two games along with it: Sonic the Hedgehog and Castle of Illusion. Not only did these excellent titles provide hours of fun for me and my dad, they also left a huge impression on me. Through their sheer quality, these games became my taste in games. I loved the platforming, the colors, the charm, the easy to grasp mechanics and how they were simply fun.

The long-awaited Sonic Mania Plus recently came out and I can easily remember the last time I had as much fun with a game—it was with the original Sonic Mania. Since I’ve beaten that game more than once I jumped straight into Encore mode on this one, anxious to try out the two new characters that were added in the update: Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Squirrel. The gamer in me relished the entire trip through Angel Island zone, a sort of prologue stage of Encore Mode.

This is where it all began! The original Sonic the Hedgehog was the first platformer I’ve ever played. I do have vague memories of playing Pitfall on my dad’s Atari 2600, but since I was 2 or 3 years old at the time I’m not sure you can call what I was doing back then “playing”. But I sure was playing Sonic when I got it along with my Mega Drive on my 4th birthday.