Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Projects

Since I have such a great deal of free time, I have some little side projects going. That there was half sarcasm. I have what feels like no free time at all, and quite a few projects on distant back-burners, most of them having been idle for some time.

Tong, my little brain-hurting game
After "finishing" 1.0 years ago I've added some tweaks and fixes, but I never released a 1.1 because I'm waiting for some custom background music to get finished, and I hate pestering the (very friendly and talented) fellow who was writing it.
Status: long-stalled

Bontz, a much bigger brain-hurting game
So many false starts. I had some wind last year with scanned, hand-drawn graphics and a brand new engine (two new engines, actually, a "real" C one and a "prototyping" Python one), and even threw together most of a spin-off minigame, the 8-bit looking Mucka Munch. Then work kicked into high gear and I haven't been back for months.
Status: stalled

The End, a sci-fi series and/or film
A work buddy and I have a pretty fun concept worked out and I've started work on a proper screenplay. It would be incredibly fun to find some local actors and spend whatever our wives would let us shooting this as some independent project. It would also be incredibly fun if days lasted 32 hours instead of 24, so I'm guessing a series of scripts is as far as this will go.
Status: crawling

Flipnotes, various small animations
On and off I get an itch to make silly animations, and in the tradition of Fantavision and Mario Paint, Flipnote Studio on the DS is a very fun creative outlet with a really big double-edged sword: internet connectivity. Sharing and building on animations as a community is great fun, and I've had a few #1 ranked cartoons, but they're never the ones I'm actually proud of or put lots of effort into.
Status: slow trickle

Megabot, a free and open Megaman engine
I had a little steam and created a handful of graphics, including most of the player animations (all inspired by 8-bit Megaman games but not direct sprite copies) and even built a Python prototype running a slightly-interactive title screen (using a Wii remote, even) but haven't plunged into the tedious blocks of code that lie between getting something happening on-screen and having a workable engine I can add content to.
Status: stalled

WarioWare DIY, various micro-games
This just came out, but it's pretty obvious that I'll be logging a lot of insomnia hours here. Nintendo has gone and made a DS game about making DS games. The mind boggles, and my first collection of random challenges is grilling-themed.
Status: alive and well

This blog, the thing you're reading right now
Three months and change since my last update, which was puny, and another two months from the also-puny one prior. On the odd chance I think I have something interesting to say, by the time I get around to starting to say it I've lost either the interest in whatever I had to say as being share-worthy or the momentum to flesh out something worth reading. I figure I'll tackle the former first and post some crap, and maybe work my way up to read-worthy once I've defeated my digital hermit-ism.
Status: highly neglected