George, a hero in difficult times…

Posted by oddbob on March 25, 2008 · Lovingly Filed Under Personal 
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Georges Squizzy Griffin

George is a griffin, and a squizzy one at that. About 2 or 3 years ago I was kicking around the house trying to come up with something to do when I hit upon the idea of writing a game involving a Griffin called George. Who was a bit squizzy (the first definition). In his original incarnation, he was entirely green, slightly robotic and built in Cronosoft’s rather nice PGD for the ZX Spectrum. As with a lot of things, I either got bored and wandered off or something more pressing turned up and never went back to it. Sometime later, Scottige of Auld Games and myself were once more musing upon the idea of doing a rather large sprawling platform game together - so I plucked George out of retirement (this time in hi-res-o-vision) and we managed about 4 screens before both of us wandered off. And so for a while, George lay gathering dust in a little chest at the back of my mind.

Georges Squizzy Griffin

George, in his original form…

As you may have gathered by this post, George is making a slight return now in low-res but rather colourful Amstrad CPC-o-vision along with a large and varied collection of assorted characters freshly out of Platform Game Bad Guys School where they spent many years learning to move up and down as well as left and right in a menacing manner.

It’s been a funny old few months, well - around ten actually, that have laid the foundations for Georges return. As some of the regular readers (if you haven’t already wandered off due to the lack of updates of late) will be aware, times have been a little different in Chez Bob for a while. This time last year both myself and Mrs Bob were gearing up for what should have been a fresh start - a minor influx of cash that had things worked out would have seen us break out of the difficult funk we’d been in for a while. Needless to say, things didn’t quite work out as planned.

We inherited Chez Bob a number of years ago and as houses go, it wasn’t in the best of states - for around six months we had a large bulge in the hall ceiling after a New Year water leak threatened to flood us out amongst other things, things were falling apart in a very literal sense and so, with the benefits of a few quid behind us we set out to change things that urgently needed attending to so that we could y’know, not live every day thinking “shit, the house is going to cave in on us”. We got some very nice gardeners who came round and turned the hellish shrubbery into a baby safe place and we got some builders in to fix the house up. A two week job, allegedly. Two weeks passed, the gardeners were finished but the building work wasn’t done. Myself, Mrs Bob and C4 were living upstairs in one of the three rooms that weren’t being torn apart. A month passed, the number of builders turning up had dwindled to two… still we lived upstairs. Two months passed… well, you get the picture, just keep adding months on for a bit. It dragged out and out, us stuck upstairs occasionally threatening builders and trying to get them to turn up so that we could actually have more than half a wrecked house with no furniture in it. By the time my cousin was nipping round to help out with some decorating so that there’d be some semblance of a house together, we were down to one builder ambling in every other day doing a bit then fucking off again. It was stressful and not helped by my own onsetting illness and Mrs Bobs long standing illness (I’m her full time carer as well as hubby) going slightly askew.

Finally, shit got finished not long before Xmas - by which point we’d exhausted most of our money just trying to get by on a daily basis (bear in mind for quite a while we had no cooker, no fridge *nothing*) and we scraped things round by the skin of our teeth to have a fucking good Xmas. Unfortunately, Mrs Bobs illness took a turn for the worse just before and things were looking a bit shakey for a while. Luckily, there’s a fucking excellent support team around our area who rushed in to do whatever they could to help out. Help they did, greatly.

Sounds a bit grim, doesn’t it? Well, it was. And for a while it sort of felt like things weren’t going to lift and just getting by was becoming a bit of an uphill struggle. ‘Course, we still had bills to pay, things to do and stuff to run, but with finances tighter than ever before it wasn’t exactly comfortable. It’s not like I live an elaborate lifestyle either, I’m a man of quite humble means - as long as I have a cup of tea and the odd packet of choccy buttons, a couple of cheapo games here and there, I’m a happy bunny. End of January came and a couple of bills landed - we could only afford to punt up for one of them. One, the cable bill - the other RR. So we paid RR, thinking “eck, we can stump up for the cable bill in a bit”. Shit didn’t quite go to plan, and February came - same situation again only now, we’re one month behind on the cable bill. And a choice. No internet or pay RR. RR won.

Georges Squizzy Griffin

A small group hug of some of Georges enemies…

Now, I don’t begrudge this, of course. RR is very much a part of me these days and second in line to my family on the priority list but it was a choice you don’t really want to be faced with at the best of times …and when things are already stressed, it all felt a bit shitty. The rest of the admin team were aware of the situation, and we decided to give it a month to see where the land lay and if things would shift up a gear. They sort of did a bit, but not really enough to leave us without having to make the choice again in March. Bollocksed and completely out of options, I found myself making a grim post on RR, breaking my usual rule of “don’t discuss personal things on the interwebs” covering in slightly less detail the story you’ve just read. Something had to give and fast.

And give it did. Thanks to a few very kind folk on the forum, we’ve got enough in the RR coffers to cover a couple of months hosting (with this month paid up) which frees us up to get our bills in order and straight so that things start to level out a bit without the worry of paying for RR hanging over us. See, it’d be easy if RR was shit and full of wankers - you could just hit the off switch and run away into the hills never to be seen again - but it’s not. It may be full of slightly unhinged crazies but they’re *good* unhinged crazies, incredibly talented too and I love them dearly. (Not in a mansex way, obviously). The thing is, that’s no way to run a site. I shouldn’t have to be relying on a few folks throwing money our way to buy us time to keep the place afloat - and what if, god forbid, shit happens again at some other point in time? Can’t keep running back, cap in hand… it’s not on and it’s not fair - not on RR, the inhabitants or me and Mrs Bob. It’s not like this was the first time we’d found the site on shakey ground. We needed a plan. Time to turn RR around and try and get it to balance itself out. It’s been ran at a loss for about 7 years by 3 different owners, 2 1/2 of which under my tenure and it’s not something that can continue. I never want to have to turn around and say “shit, we’re fucked for cash for the site” again. Enough of that already. So we talked. We, the admins, lay the cards down on the table and asked the forum “what the f00k can we do to change this and make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

Now, if you’ve not already slashed your wrists apart at my tale of woe - let’s move on. All this is far too miserable a read and we need stars, spangles and PINK THINGS or something to lighten the mood. Or failing that… a squizzy griffin. Yes, a squizzy griffin. You see, as well as having to take the tough decision to allow advertising on RR, do the whole affiliate link thing etc… and be like every other website in that regard, we’re making a compilation of games. Brand spanking new ones at that. An army of the best (and me) remakers working towards getting an official RR bunch of games to go on sale. But without the second R part, for obvious reasons (we don’t sell remakes, mmmmmk, that’s bad). The initial plan is RRCD1 will be a ten pack of fine entertainment to be sold to raise some cash to help keep the site ticking over. Think of it a bit like Soft Aid, but without the starving kid on the front to taunt you. And the profits going to keep a site online instead of something like actually feeding people or giving them food and water. Ok, don’t think of it like Soft Aid… think of it like a REALLY GOOD CD FILLED WITH FANTASTIC GAMES. Yeah, that’s better. And it’ll have griffins, and cats and spaceships and stuff and fucking amazing games.

Volume 1 is due to drop sometime in August and from what I’ve seen of the contents so far, it’s going to fucking rock. Hard. The downside is, I fear, that my current remakey projects are on hold - so no Mega Arcadian or G-Force updates whilst I get on with some serious doodling, some serious game making and some serious loving for all the folks at RR who haven’t just helped dig the site out of a rut, but stopped me from being a completely miserable defeatist fucker, cheer the fuck up, chin the fuck up and get back to doing what I do best. Pestering the good folk of Indiedom for interviews (my Rodent column makes a return this month), reporting the remakes news, making games and saying “cunt” a lot. Especially saying “cunt” a lot. So I apologise for the slightly depressing post today and epic delay between posts, I’ll make up for it with a return to normal service from this moment in and no more grimness either.

And the chaps at RR? I thank them all, because they’re stars. All of ‘em. You honestly couldn’t ask for a better community nor a better reminder of why, even when things get slightly shat the admin team wanted to keep the place going. Because they’re worth every penny, blood, sweat or tear that the admin and mod team pump into it.

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Speak your brains

3 Responses to “George, a hero in difficult times…”

  1. gnome on March 25th, 2008 7:55 pm

    Ok. That was depressing. Now, besides hoping everything gets -and that is focusing on the health front- I’d just like to help. Think that some Gnome’s Lair posts would help advertise the CD compilation? Oh, and I’m definitely buying one too. Or maybe more, though admittedly the few hundred euros I make a month are quite pathetic… Still.

    Oh sod. I’m not really good at this. All I can say is good luck and hope I can be of any help.

  2. oddbob on March 26th, 2008 7:04 am

    Gnomey, well wishing is more than enough my friend.

    As I say, we’re out of the worst of it now *thank f00k* with major thanks to the chaps over at RR, and so it’s time to look to the future instead of sitting there picking at scabs.

    However, I will fire you over a copy of RR#1 when it’s close to completion but that’s a way away yet. So far, we’ve only got one test room of George up and running and I’m not sure how much progress everyone else has made on their contributions yet. But we have got the best of the bunch on the case, so I’m incredibly confident in saying it’ll turn out aces :D

    And thank you. Muchly, good sir.

  3. gnome on March 26th, 2008 11:15 am

    Oh, no, thank you dear Sir.

    :)

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