Expanding The Willy
The main rooms of the JSW II map are all built and complete now, a bit of teamwork between Smila, Scott and myself has meant that we’ve ploughed through the room building in no time whatsoever - and thanks to Stu’s excellent editor, relatively painlessly too. I’ve got about 20 more rooms of my own design to put together, as has Scott… a quick scan through the latest update seems to me like Smila’s nailed a good percentage, if not all of his now.
Missed out on the test last night due to the flu kicking me around and being halfway up the stairs to bed before getting called back down to say there was a file waiting for me - but I was present for the test the night before which involved 5 of us darting around a room being able to chat with each other ingame. Apparantly, the update I missed now has room flipping in so the map can be explored as well.
Very nice and very fast work on Stu’s behalf, and its been a pleasure to test it up to now. Fingers crossed that none of our rooms are impassable - I’ve been trying to work on the same principles I did when building my old JSW editor hackage a few years back, so in theory they should be ok. Hopefully, nobody will discover “Life On Mars?” from my block - seens as its an “Entrance To Hades” style infinite death room.
Enough waffle… have some pictures from some of Smila’s and my own block:
If you haven’t already guessed…
The insane idea is of course, the game of the shit joke… Jet Set Willy Online.
Answers on a postcard to “what in gods name were we thinking?”
More Insanity
Work is going well I gather on the Insane Idea, its a collaboration between the lovely chaps at Ovine By Design who are handling the coding duties more than capably and helping us realise the concept, myself, my compadre Mr Smila and collaborator (the ever put upon) Mr Scottige. The ultimate remakes team? Lord knows! I’ll let you know if we pull this off…
So far I’ve been charged with room building duties alongside Smila and Scott - with a fair amount of rooms to be built each, Stu Ovine has kindly fired an editor our way to make it as painless as possible (and it *is* a lovely editor I might add), Smila is handling the ferocious boss duties and organised the selection of rooms that we each get to handle on the game - there’s all the original rooms of the original game to go in and 30 extra rooms each or thereabouts of our own construction…so the map will be absolutely enormous and give you plenty to explore when and if we make this work.
As usual, I’m absolutely gobsmacked at the speed both Stu and Smila can work at, they’re an absolute powerhouse team and things have gathered pace faster than I expected - only the other night I was invited to join in a test of some of the core backend stuff, which was incredibly surreal and almost like a regression to how I always imagined computers would always look way back when I was 6 or 7 years old. Needless to say, from the little insight I got that night I’m incredibly confident they can pull this off now - still a long trawl ahead, but without me behind any of the coding reigns its certainly got a chance of getting completed before 2010.
This is pretty much uncharted territory for remakes and I’m certainly not aware of anyone who’s attempted anything even remotely like this before - fuck knows how it’ll all go down with the baying mob of downloaders, but if nothing else, it’ll make some people raise a smile and give a few people a few hours of enjoyment, maybe more 
Anyway, on a complete tangent I’ve also tidied up the reviews section of the blog and you can now read them all from the very nice link in the side bar without having to trawl the blog if you can’t be bothered. Don’t forget you can also drop me a nod if you want your game featured here… anyway, back to the room building for me before Smila hits me with a rolling pin.
Space Giraffe
So, I wouldn’t normally do anything YouTubey as a blog post…but I’ll make a special exception for Team Llamasofts sneak peek at Space Giraffe.
I’ve just made a mess in my pants.
Insane Idea’s Made Flesh
Ever have an idea thats so utterly bonkers that you think “that’ll never work on a practical level” ?
I’m sure its happened a fair few times to anyone who has ever sat down and attempted to make a game, every now and then you’ll have a flash of something and its either way beyond your capability to make it real or just so utterly bonkers you’d be a fool to try it… well, what happens when someone comes along and says “yeah, I could make that happen”… and once you’ve gotten over the funny looks stage and sat down and thought about it - you realise, they really could and what once seemed completely unfeasible is now a viable proposition for a game?
You’d be a fool to turn round and let it pass you by really… and I’m many things, but I aint no fool. So, when I had a barrage of PM’s and emails waiting for me yesterday afternoon whilst I lay in slumber - my curiosity was raised and a bit of discussion later and well, lets put it this way - I’ve got a room editor sitting on my hard drive already made by someone else that goes some way to proving that the game, with a little bit of teamwork on the room building front and someone else holding out coding duties, can see the light of day.
And I’m really excited about it happening…now I can understand perfectly why my compadre Mr Smila who’s had a bee in his bonnet over the idea since it first cropped up was so excitable, and trust me - it is a mental idea, its one of those things that shouldn’t exist on this planet - but its going to happen. And if it works, it’ll be fantastic… if it doesn’t, well - we’ve just pissed some time up the wall and at least had a go at it.
So aye, more when there’s something more solid to say about it.
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Latest Games
War Twat: War Twat is a manic arena shooter created for Retro Masters, the Retro Remakes range of original retro styled titles.
Jet Set Willy Online: The award winning Jet Set Willy Online created in collaboration with Ovine and Auld Games.
G Force: Boris Baginski's two dimensional take on Tempest brought back to life with insane effects.
IO: The uber-difficult Firebird shooter gets the remake treatment from Trevor Smila Storey -
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