Mersey Remakes

That’s me right now. Manflu aside, which is causing huge concentration problems when trying to do owt, (moan,moan,whinge,whinge) over the weekend I received the room templates for George’s Squizzy Griffin from Scott to get on with building my segments.

Normally, I live in the more comfortable land provided by GM for all my room building needs (or in the case of JSW:O I’m given a game specific editor to use), this time I’ve got MMF2 to contend with. And with no offence to the package which is evidently more than capable of truly wonderful things (see Noitu Love 2 for a prime example, chaps) - thank the lord I only have to stick some blocks down in rooms because it completely leaves me in the dark as to what is where and does what.

In the same way that I’ve quite often had the point put to me that some folks wouldn’t know where to start if you didn’t stick an IDE in front of them - I’m flummoxed completely by the system used by MMF. Not a new thing, of course - that’s how I ended up falling more into the Gamemaker camp but I’ve managed to avoid having to suffer the confusion it causes my brain for a fair old number of years now and just kept it tucked on my hard drive because people have a habit of sending me source files instead of .exe’s to check out along the way… So, more than ever, I’m especially impressed with how folks manage to pull incredible stuff out of it because I can barely place a blinking block down in the right place without having a minor trauma. It’s not even difficult per se, just so different from what I’m accustomed to.

Still, 6 rooms out of 50 out the way. Ever onwards…

In other news, cracking on with JSWO bits and bobs sort of, kind of. There were a few major glitches with the editor which I picked up on whilst trying to record a tutorial video proper for it - you know, the kind that mean you *really* have to delete the audio track when something goes wrong. Stu fired me over the latest version yesterday (well, the day before now) to take a gander at which is something I intend to do once I’ve finished wittering here. Fingers crossed that a lot of the stuff that seriously broke does so no longer.

I’ve not really got much to do with the editor itself, a few “test” maps to go alongside the documentation, a few video tutorials and if time allows - hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in some new full scale maps as well. Given I’m really out of practice with level building for JSW:O it may take me a few hours to get back up to speed proper on the games quirks. Just got to find those hours from somewhere.

And finally, opted to make the last revision of War Twat “final”. It’s gone down immensely well across the internet and I’m chuffed with the response. I’ve been tinkering with 3 other games on and off, flitting inbetween them as and when. I want to try and get a game a month out, be it an overhanging WIP being completed or a quick new title. At least, that’s been the plan. I doubt VI will make the final cut - I tried, but between the huge amount of assets I’d foolishly set for myself to create with the game design, it’s going to need some major reworking to make it a viable proposition.

The other two games I’ve been toying with are little shooter projects and to be honest, neither is really capturing my heart right now although both have been great little learning exercises for different things. The former started out as a sort of GR++ meets bullet hell concept, but erred a bit too much towards GR++ for comfort - none the less I managed to cadge a few very nice pixelly particle ideas out of it. The second is/was a more smeary affair using a lot of feedback and blurring effects. Very weird-me-up but currently incredibly unplayable.

I get the feeling the answer lies somewhere inbetween the two…