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"Oh hey, just remembered I haven't gotten my article in for this month!"
looks at clock
8:30 PM, September 30
"Oh poop"
Hi. It's koola. You may know me from "wow this game is good" and "wow Toby Fox is amazing" and "something something music".
I made a game called OMNIFATE. Originally, I wanted to document the game's entire development on my blog page, but that did not end up happening, sadly.
I released OMNIFATE on September 9, 2023. If you want, you can pick it up right now from this link: https://store.steampowere...com/app/2521970/OMNIFATE/
I just wanted to spend some time going over its development history. Originally started as a companion project to a cancelled Game Builder Garage game, OMNIFATE's first playable version was a puzzle platformer. At the time, I was very proud of it. Looking back at it now, frankly that prototype sucked: it showed very little signs of polish (even though I had promised polish from it online), lack of originality (the first couple prototypes did not use original music), and you couldn't even die.
I worked on that version of the game for about two months, most of which was spent fine-tuning the physics. Honestly, at some point, I do want to make a platformer game, although I don't think that will happen any time soon.
That version of OMNIFATE was made in Unity. Unity is supposed to be an easy engine for newcomers to the field to learn, however nothing I wrote ever ended up working. I don't think that was the engine's fault; rather, I think it was the raw difficulty of C# for amateurs.
After about two months of development and the release of a demo publicly available prototype, I had felt like I was just growing overly tired of the project. I wanted to call it quits, and was thinking that this sort of thing is just not something a person of my age could come up with.
Fast forward a month. I was deciding what to do with the project. At the time, I had not fully realized what my favorite genre of video game is, but I had known that I had a fun time with many a turn-based RPG, so I decided to go with that. I could not find a single tutorial for RPGs in Unity, so I gave up.
In September 2021, I was considering my options. I could abandon the project directly, or start in a new engine. I looked into several options, but the one I ended up using was GameMaker Studio 2, which later officially changed its name to just GameMaker.
GameMaker seemed like a breath of fresh air. A unique workspace, tabs, no switching windows, and I could kind of understand the code! I followed a tutorial on top-down movement in GameMaker and understood about 81% of what was going on. The way the tutorial's code was structured meant that I had to have a walking animation.
I asked my friend Rain if she could draw a walking animation for the player character, and waited. And waited. And waited. She was procrastinating, but so was I. I could have just made the walking animation, but I wanted it to look nice.
I ended up waiting for seven months. I regret that timespan the most out of anything I regret throughout the development cycle, because at any point I could have just slapped up a prototype walking animation.
On one day in June 2022, I finally snapped out of it and made the dang walking animation. After that, things finally started to look up. Throughout the rest of that summer, every day I worked wholeheartedly on every aspect of the game, with the goal of releasing a demo by the end of it. I succeeded. I released a demo of OMNIFATE on GX.games on August 30, 2022, two days before my deadline. After that, I worked on the rest of the game, and completed it in March 2023.
After that, I released a trailer, and sat my butt down. I relaxed. I playtested the game multiple times, noticed several bugs, but patched only a few. (I caught the mind disease known as "procrastination" again.) I also got several other people to playtest, and promised them the bugs that they found would be fixed. (I didn't fix them.)
In one day in July, I finally saved up money for publishing on Steam. I got everything ready, and asked my parents for playtesting. They proceeded to lovingly and caringly point out every bug they saw, while I wrote them down all while crying and telling them that I couldn't fix the bugs. Looking back on it, I was being a brat to my loving and caring parents who only wanted to see a quality game released.
So I fixed every bug that was written down, and they found more. This process repeated twice before I finally felt that a genuine, final, quality product was ready. I submitted everything, and relaxed again. It was like a burden had been lifted off my shoulders.
That's where we are today. The game has released, and I'm currently working on another project, in a different genre. (*It's not the platformer.)
Thanks for reading this, and hopefully you enjoy the fruit of my (mostly) hard work.
I've been koola, and, why are some letters bolded? Those weren't bolded when I was writing the article...?
(I'm sorry for the lack of a quickly written article this month. I was mostly focusing on school and family.)
As I have noted in previous articles, my personal favorite type of video game is a turn-based role-playing game. I personally prefer the ones that are not strategy-based, but I have had some fun with all of them that I have played.
I prefer ones that change up the gameplay just a tiny bit, but not too much, have good humor, are short, and are genuinely fun. It's hard finding a good balance of all four, but there are a good few games that hit that balance (or at least get really close to it). Some examples are UNDERTALE, DELTARUNE, Helen's Mysterious Castle, and Dicey Dungeons.
There is exactly one video game company that makes games that hit all of these pillars with literally every single game I've played from them, and that company is Zeboyd Digital Entertainment. I could go all day talking about them, but this article is about their newest offering, This Way Madness Lies.
This Way Madness Lies is a turn-based RPG about Shakespeare and magical girl anime, which is funnily enough not even the strangest premise I've heard from Zeboyd. (Cthulhu saving Christmas, anyone?) This strange premise, in my opinion, already helps with the humor a lot, but even if it weren't there, I would still be laughing my butt off because almost every line in this game.
Given the subject material, you see a lot of Old English in this game, which might seem like a drag, but the game actually contains a translator for it. A minor complaint I have is that, as an English nerd, I can actually read a good majority of the Old English, and as such I have found out that some of the dialogue has a much simpler translation than I would have preferred or straight up has a different meaning. This isn't a real issue however, as even if you don't know a lot of Old English, you can mostly grab from context what the words mean.
The combat system in This Way Madness Lies is a masterclass of turn-based video game combat. Returning from other Zeboyd titles is the Unite command, in which multiple team members can combine their powers to make combat more interesting. All of these are super strong, and very fun to use.
There is no MP (or equivalent) in This Way Madness Lies, which at first might seem like a bad choice, but the way they compensate for it is very interesting, unique, and well-made. Every time you use an attack, it weakens. This is something that I think is done very well in this game. I can tell that a lot of work was put into balancing everything. Toof often, in other turn-based RPGs, I find that multiple punishments for using moves often are enforced: MP (or equivalent), and a move limit. I don't think that move limits are a good idea for turn-based RPGs, as they often ruin the fun in them: you are forced to use a different, weaker move, and this often feels very limiting. How this differs from making the move weaker is that making the move weaker punishes the use of it, but you can still feel the power of it, and oftentimes (as in the case of This Way Madness Lies) there is a skill that can refill how strong your move is.
Lastly is the length. I don't have too much to say on this one that hasn't been stated at length by countless others before me, but even ignoring our shortening attention spans, shorter games are a good thing. A lot of us don't have the time for a grand 80-hour RPG, some something that you can finish in 1/8 the time.
I very much enjoyed This Way Madness Lies, and I hope you give it a try. It is one of my favorite games now.
I've been koola, and I was recieved this game for free, so I pretty much had to review it.
(I would have positively reviewed it anyway. I love this game.)
I picked up a lot of things at CORGS-Con 2023. Such things included a DSi, The Orange Box, Mario Party DS, some amiibo, and... a Steam Link. My thinking was that it would be perfect for my setup, because I buy a lot of very interesting games on Steam that I want to show to other people, and I could also play Steam games on the big screen.
Did my wording right there make you think that this was a negative review? It is not. I LOVE the Steam Link, and I think it's one of the most underrated pieces of gaming hardware.
I hooked up my personal favorite controller (which is the Wii U Pro controller because I'm different) and it works beautifully for the most part. One issues I have is lag when there is a large amount of stuff on screen, it gets a bit laggy, but I think that's just the setup I have. I don't use it with Ethernet, which despite what some people may think, actually works fine for the most part.
I figured some people may be curious, so here's some games I have and their compatibility level:
F.I.S.H - Laggy sometimes, almost perfect
Geometry Dash - Very laggy
B.I.R.D. (Demo) - Perfect
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy - Perfect
DELTARUNE - Perfect
Plants vs. Zombies - Perfect
Operation STEEL - Laggy sometimes, almost perfect
Due to low sales, for a while there, Steam was offering them for five dollars. As such, you may have already bought one when they went for that cheap. I would recommend that you dust off your old one and give it a try. At least for me, it works way better than I thought it would.
I've been koola, and what's a Steam Deck?
(I've been playing waay too much Dicey Dungeons lately...)
Well, I bet nobody expected that Nintendo Direct to be as good as it was, huh? (Maybe I'm just too pessimistic...) Regardless, it really gave some new games to look forward to, as this summer has given rise to me actually getting up and finishing a lot of games on that good ol' backlog (as well as trying out new games Lila's Sky Ark and Dicey Dungeons, which I may or may not talk about in their own future articles), meaning that I'm kind of running low on actual new games.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is what many consider to be the highlight of that Direct. What caught a lot of people's attention (aside from the general unique art style) is the lack of a "New" on that title. Yep, just Super Mario Bros. Wonder. This is most likely the result of years of backlash that the New Super Mario Bros. series is just bad, not fun, and overall very stale, and while to some extent I do agree, I think the New Super Mario Bros. games are not as bad as people make them out to be, and I will stand on the hill that they are very fun games.
Before I start, if you'd like to consume more content relating to this topic, I'd like to point you over to Mariomikester's videos on the series. They do have language, which I do not like very much, but they are very great video essays and I highly recommend you watch them if you enjoy this article. You can find the supercut of his videos on the series here:
New Super Mario Bros.
New Super Mario Bros., colloquially known as New Super Mario Bros. DS, was released at a rather interesting time in Mario's history; we had gone about 14 years without a 2D Mario game. So, you can see that when it was announced, a lot of people were excited. I, of course, was not existent when this was happening, so I can really only look at this from the outside looking in, but having played it myself, I really enjoy it. It controls well, looks really good for a portable game from 2006, runs well, and is just an overall good game.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is actually a game that I myself have never finished. I am actually in the process of going through it right now, with the Nunchuck, which conveniently lets me talk about another point. For the most part, all of the attack buttons in New Super Mario Bros. games have been on the Y button, which is also the run button. I assume that most of us are just assuming that that is the only way to go about this, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii, specifically is you're playing with a Nunchuck, the controls that would normally be on the 1 button get split up between B on the Wii remote, and C on the Nunchuck. Run is now bound to C, and all of the attack commands (throwing a firewball, tongueing with Yoshi, etc.) are now bound to B. This sounds like it would play bad, but it actually feels really good to play.
New Super Mario Bros. 2
New Super Mario Bros. 2 is up next, which a few people might be surprised about. Actually, probably not many, because we are all collectors and know what's up with it. Either way, New Super Mario Bros. 2 is the third game in the New Super Mario Bros. series, and is a very good one. Aedmittedly, this is where the series starts to get rather stale, but that's no problem with the game itself. A common complaint I see people throw at New Super Mario Bros. 2 is that it was made by a different studio than the other games in the series. I personally think it's fine, but it is noticeable. Also, as previously stated, New Super Mario Bros. 2 came after New Super Mario Bros. Wii. This is cool, but it's pretty weird that New Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn't have the ability to spinjump, as the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. U does, as well as Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS. Additionally, a topic that I find not a lot of people bring up when talking about this game is the graphics. I think that New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a beautiful-looking game.
New Super Mario Bros. U
Due to my age, New Super Mario Bros. U is the game out of these that I have played the most. It is the first HD Mario game, and because of that, it looks really good. It plays really well, has a lot of nice courses. Also, it comes with a challenge mode, which me and my older brother spend countless hours on when we were younger.
So, those are my thoughts on the New Super Mario Bros. games, and I'm very excited to see what Super Mario Bros. Wonder brings to the table.
I've been koola, and I don't know how to end this article.
(Elephant Mario isn't as cursed as a lot of people seem to think, especially if you look back and some of the previous power-ups we've gotten.)
I've always been a huge Nintendo fan, and the Mario series is one of my favorites overall.
I've also had an interest in the Gusiness Book of World Records for a while. The Gamer's Edition 2019 was the first time I heard of this new Mario movie being in production, by Illumination. In the book, they just made an offhanded comment about how Illumination came up with the Minions.
That piqued my curiosity, and I let that thought gather dust in my head for several years until mid-2021 rolled around, and Nintendo, out of the blue, just revealed the voice actors and release date for this Mario movie. I, like most, was shocked and turned off at Chris Pratt as Mario, but I was reminded he had done a good job as Emmett from The Lego Movie, so I wasn't too unhappy about it.
Fast forward about a year, and it is now October 2022. We are getting our first trailer! I was very surprised at just how high quality everything was. This is generally the same for both other trailers released.
Some day in April, (I actually forgot which), our family bought a ticket to go see the actual movie. Everything was super high quality, and even rose above my expectations. The--
SPOILER WARNING!!
Well, that was quite rude of you to cut me off like that. Anyway, as I was saying, the Bowser scenario with the pet name "Peaches" was something that I'd never really see in a Mario product, but that's actually not really a bad thing; it feels very oddly in-character for the Bowser of the Mario movie.
When I rewatched the movie yesterday, it was for a different family to celebrate one of their daughters' birthday. Aforementioned daughter we'll call K for convenience and privacy's sake.
K is a person I've known for a long time and basically have grown up with. K is also a big fan of Mario, and she had really high hopes for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. K does not have access to the majority of the internet; her only really way to get news about gaming-related stuff is the TV and the News app on her Switch.
When K, her family, and I were coming out of the theater, we were discussing the movie, and K said that the movie was good but it didn't live up to her expectations. I wondered why this could be, as we seemed to have the same experience going in. I think I know now what happened: she kept rewatching the bit that she did have and her expectations grew of the movie.
Here's another opinion I saw.
There is a person at my school with whom my personality clashes heavily. We'll call her A. When I was talking about the movie at school, A said that when she and her friends saw the movie, they absolutely hated it; they said it was the worst waste of an hour and thirty minutes they had had in a long time. At first I thought A was just trying to be mean and mess with me, but her line about her friends ALSO not liking the movie I was confused about. I don't share a lot of classes with A's friends, but I do share one. The class was going to watch a video on YouTube, and we pulled up the YouTube app, and up came Peaches from some previous activity that had totally not been of my doing (long story), and one of A's friends loudly chimes in "OH, THAT'S THE WORST SONG FROM THE WORST MOVIE!". Everybody in my friend group that had seen the movie instantly disagrees and says something positive about the movie, and an argument breaks out, which was put to rest by the teacher, and we watched the video.
I bring this up because it creates a point that I want to discuss: people who had not played the Mario games watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I think that if you don't get all of the references, you are going to have a way worse time with the movie. I still think the average optimistic viewer will like the movie, but they will probably rate the movie way less that those that do get the references. That is where I think the negative reviews are coming from; those people are paid to watch the movies from a point that is not their own, and rate them purely from a movie standpoint.
The best way to summarize this is thus: A person watching a video game adaptation without having played the game will not be able to appreciate it as much as people who have played the game.
This goes for The Cuphead Show!, The Last of Us, Uncharted, and everything else.
I've been koola, the GameCube intro for the phone was amazing.
(I'm glad they at least gave Charles Martinet a part.)
In my article "The Development of OMNIFATE", I (for about a paragraph) talked about my relatively newfound appreciation for music as a whole. So, I figured I, as a composer, would do this topic justice and give it its own article. (Also, yes, I know I already wrote an article this month, but to be honest, I'm not really proud of how that one turned out.)
(I was gonna start of this paragraph by mentioning the date when I made Wurly, but I can't remember the actual date, and my computer is literally giving me no help with that. Case and point:
Isn't technology amazing?)
When I made Wurly on [see above brackets for more information] about June 2021, I gained more of an appreciation for the true effort that goes into producing a song. Sure, there had been music I had appreciated before then, but it was mostly just Toby Fox and Jackbox soundtracks. Pretty much every game I've played since then I've had an ear for hearing the music for what it is: actual really good music.
It also helps that around 2021 I was able to create a Spotify account. I joke about having a lot of hours on YouTube, but Spotify is the service I by far have the most time on, even in just the two years I've had it. Most of my playlists on it are comprised of video game soundtracks, although recently I've added some songs from movies as well (including the Super Mario Bros Movie, which I will rewatch soon and write an article about probably next month).
Here are some of the most recent games I've played, here are my thoughts on their music.
Super Mario Land 2: Just like the rest of this game, the music has a really unique vibe to it.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: AMAZING soundtrack, with pretty much no song in it having less than a 7/10 for me. Unfortunately, it is exclusive to Bandcamp, YouTube, and Steam right now, but the developers have confirmed that the soundtrack will be coming to other streaming services later this year (...the same as 2022...).
UNDERTALE: I mentioned this in the DELTARUNE article, but Toby Fox is probably my favorite video game composer. Also, yes, I did recently replay UNDERTALE.
ARK: Survival Evolved: The music gets repetitive, but in and of themselves the songs are good.
The last part of this is being a composer myself. I'm biased against my own works (which seems counterintuitive but think about the last time you went up on stage and didn't critique yourself at least once), but I have been told by early playtesters of OMNIFATE and people I've shown my music to in general that it is very well made. I myself can't wait to release the soundtrack to OMNIFATE, but of course I do have to wait until the game is out before I can. Attempting to throw away all biases, I find my music nice to listen to and better than average, but not as good as Toby Fox or Nightmargin.
Anyway, that's enough nerding out. 
I've been koola, and go buy the OneShot Soundtrack from Bandcamp. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. DO IT, OR ELSE I'LL---[/i][/u] <- Whoopsy! This is an RF Generation glitch, not my fault. The tags are written and workiong as intended on my part.
(I just described music in a written form for a dozen-ish paragraphs. If you're feeling tired of reading about music and want to hear some, here's a gift from me to you. )
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Posted on Apr 1st 2023 at 05:36:56 PM by ( koola6) Posted under Finally, Piranha Plants, Super Mario Bros, Mario, YouTube, Check, the, date, Happy, April, Fools |
Never in my life did I expect this new craze on YouTube of these Mandela Effects. Gonna upload a video proving one of these, right I am. Give it your attention. You would really like it, as it shows you that there are indeed Piranha Plants in 1-1. Up and at 'em!
Have you watched it yet? if not, do not proceed.
Happy April Fools' Day! In reality, this video was a lot of fun to make. While I have your attention, let's talk about gaming videos, and some April Fools' Day jokes I've seen over the years.
Gaming started before the internet was popular, and because of that false information spread like wildfires. Sometimes that info wasn't even false to begin with, but like a gigantic game of telephone among video game fans, info spread. One piece of true info, such as "there is a hard mode after you beat the original Super Mario Bros. where the Goombas turn into Buzzy Beetles" could easily turn into "if you beat Super Mario Bros. 7 times in a row without turning the console off all enemies turn into Bowsers!!!".
The internet makes the spread of false info harder because the official sources can be easily found. The problem is, you have to know where the official source is. Oftentimes, I'll see some blatantly flase info being passed around like it was fact. Such examples include stuff like "If you use the name MHFGDUNRGDYSVGE1982734" in Among Us, you'll always be Impostor!".
Stuff like that, as a game programmer, has no reason to be in there unless you're specifically making some debug tools. Most of the time, you'd delete those in the final game, anyway.
When official channels come into the discussion on April Fools', it can be a lot of fun, if you know it's a joke. I myself have been the victim of thinking something real then realizing it was uploaded on April 1st.
The internet in its modern form is very toxic, but it should be viewed as a gift, not a curse.
I've been koola, and the real April Fools' day joke was the fact that there wasn't an April Fools' Day article, but instead a real one.
(It's not spelled "Bearenstien"???)
(This is going to be different than my usual articles, but stick with it. I think you'll enjoy it.)
This month, I've had trouble deciding what to write about. I haven't played many games this month other than The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, Tetris, and Animal Crossing, and I have already talked about most of those in the past. (Tetris doesn't seem like an article I could realistically do.)
I was on the bus this morning, thinking about this, when a phrase popped into my head from some advertising that I had seen recently. "This is a stunning leap forward for video games as a medium!" if only I had a nickel for the amount of times I've heard that, verbatim...
I was thinking about that and realized just how much this phrase is thrown around on the regular these days. It seems like the people who say it aren't even sure what THEY are talking about.
If we analyze the phrase word by word, it would become obvious that this should only be said when there is something substantial and new. And as I was sitting there, thinking about it, I realized that seemingly all reviewers treat new technology as revolutionary. I mean, this is obvious, right? Of course they would. They're reviewers. They're paid to give good reviews.
Wait, what? They're paid to give good reviews? This seems so normal to us now that we don't even take a second to think about it. But, it is so backwards when you even give a second of thought to it. Reviewers are supposed to be honest, right? A review is supposed to give you an honesty opinion. But so often you hear, "I was given a copy of this game for free" or "thank you to [company] for giving me this gift box". At that point, can that even be called a review?
"A stunning leap forward for games as a medium"
This goes back to my point from before, but shouldn't this only be said when there's something substantial? When the PS5 was announced, you heard it. The PS5 didn't really change things all that much, honestly. It's got not a lot of exclusives to take advantage of its new power, and even the games "made for PS5" are downgraded for the PS4. I'm not saying the PS5 was bad, (it definitely isn't) but it didn't really add anything to to games as a medium.
When a new PC (or even, a new PC part) comes out, you also hear the phrase that I don't want to repeat over and over again so this article doesn't get dry and boring. PC gaming has stayed the same ever since Windows 10 was released, for the most part. You can make your PC faster by buying a new part, sure, but that doesn't change the landscape as a whole. PC gaming probably won't change from where it is now, realistically.
"A stunning leap forward for video games as a medium"
Leaps forward can only be seen in retrospect. We never know the full picture. When the Wii released, many people made fun of it for its controls, but now we loom over it fondly for its changes to the medium (mostly the addition of enjoyable, functioning motion controls and character avatars).
Don't try to jump the gun. See how new technology is released, and enjoy it in the times. Don't try to overpraise it or overtly bash it. After all, you have no idea if it will truly be a stunning leap forward for video games as a medium.
I've been koola, and I don't think the Xbox Series X was that exciting of a console. Fight me.
(Don't actually. I'm very weak...)
My birthday happened recently. I had a fun time with lots of friends. Most of my gifts happened to be Nintendo eShop cards.
With those eShop cards I was able to buy several games that I have wanted for years. One of those games was The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe.
The Stanley Parable is an extremely well-made game. I won't dive into the specifics here, because this article could very easily get way out of hand if I did that (*cough cough* Persona 5 Royal article *cough cough*), but what mostly sold it for me was the various endings it had. There's a certain feel that meta games like The Stanley Parable have that really resonates with me. I wish that I could describe it to a greater degree, but honestly, I just don't know how.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a remake of The Stanley Parable (yes, a remake, I'll get into that later) for modern consoles. They could have just left it at that; instead, they chose to elaborate more on the fact that it is a port.
SPOILER WARNING!
One of the decisions that had me scratching my head is the fact that this game opens asking whether you've played The Stanley Parable before; if yes, you have to play 2-3 endings (depending on which endings you actually chose). Later, I realized that there is a definite purpose to this: it eases you back into the game. Especially if you haven't played a game in 5+ years, jumping into the New Content can sometimes be really jarring.
When you do unlock the New Content door, the narrator is really happy, and excited to see what the New Content is. The Jump Circle turns about to be a complete waste (in the narrator's opinion) and he laments about expecting the new content to be any better than it is. This is obviously analogous to our new remaster strategy. Everything speaks for itself here.
After resetting the game, you'll find the New New Content door, showcasing the various aspects of "The Stanley Parable 2".
Upon the completion of the expo hall, you can restart the game and actually find The Stanley Parable 2. The addition of the bucket and its extra dialogue adds for some new flavor(?) on top of the already existing endings, sometimes allowing for new endings (my personal favorite being the "Is This A Bucket?" ending). I feel like this is a good way to go about adding new endings to the format that The Stanley Parable instilled.
Lastly, this is a top-tier remake. Remaking a game isn't easy: you need to reawaken the feelings that the original brings. People are often disappointed in remakes for not meeting what they consider to be a reasonable expectation; this expectation is the game matching the feelings that the original gave them, not the gameplay. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe passes this goal with flying colors.
I've been koola, and bucket murder is a crime.
(Stanley wondered why the bucket was being described in the third person, despite his apparent ability to understand the bucket himself.)
Howdy majiggers!
Happy New Year to you all! I wish you all the best in your gaming experiences going into 2023. So far, a lot has happened already! I finished planning and getting stuff ready for the real run of koola and slackur's obscure gaming theater! It's slackur and I's little channel where we do podcast and gaming videos! You can find it here: (https://www.youtube.com/c.../UCithiTJ8_GHvMhFgYBw-1eA). I started playing a couple games (including Cthulhu Saves the World, which has been a lot of fun!), and was messing around with homebrew on my Wii.
But the thing that I've been doing the most over the past few months is working on OMNIFATE. I'm extremely excited to say that it is almost complete!
This whole experience has been really fun and eye-opening for me. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to talk about it a bit.
The actual coding of OMNIFATE is... well, programming. It's not really that exciting; games are made with code, and there's no dancing around that issue. Most of it has been trial and error. In my article "My experience with breaking games and coding" (from ... oh gosh, 2 years ago!), I stated most of my experience with coding comes from experimentation with various games that I like. Bu when I wrote that article, I was just starting off and didn't really understand anything. Now that I actually know 70% of what I'm doing, I can say that that was just the starting point to get me to where I am here.
Composing for OMNIFATE was probably the part that changed me the most. Up until about June 2021, I simply had no strong feelings about music. I had my dislikes and likes, sure, but I didn't really have an appreciation for what goes into making a good song. And then, I composed Wurly. After that, I gained much more of an appreciation for music and its composition. I now basically never go a second on my computer without listening to some tunes on Spotify. (Now's where I would plug my Spotify artist profile, but my distributor glitched and removed all my songs. So go listen to them on Bandcamp instead! https://koola6.bandcamp.com/)
Lastly, my favorite part of making OMNIFATE is the writing. From the get-go, I had a basic idea of how the story should go (no spoilers, but with the kind of game OMNIFATE is, you kind of need to have that from the get-go), but I never realized just how fun and entertaining writing for something can be; especially with one character whom you'll know when you play the game, being able to write little interactions between the characters is genuinely extremely fun.
I've been koola, and I hope to see you there in Q3 2023 when OMNIFATE releases.
(I almost completely lost this article! I hit the back button too early! Thankfully, I remembered to save it as a draft, though.)
Watch the video here!
By the way, new article coming later this month.
[img width=500 height=501]http://rfgeneration.com/podcasts/shmupclub/images/2022-12-24_stcc_ep_053_fire_shark.png[/img]
In Episode 053, MetalFRO and Addicted are joined by Corkman for a lengthy discussion about Fire Shark! We pick apart the game a bit, and compare the brutally difficult arcade iterations to the much more approachable Sega Genesis and Mega Drive versions.
Check out the episode right here on RF Generation:
http://rfgeneration.com/podcasts/shmupclub/?name=2022-12-24_stcc_ep_053_fire_shark.mp3
Or find the episode on your favorite podcast service:
https://linktr.ee/shootthecorecast
Check out the original discussion thread for the game here:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=19693.0
Thanks for listening!
[img width=400 height=381]https://now.estarland.com/images/products/hr/29898/4988736070077.jpg[/img]
Sometimes a game takes a very different path than expected, before it is released. Most of the team who designed the Taito shooter Gun Frontier returned for another shoot-em-up, at the time tentatively titled "Project Gun Frontier 2" as a starting point for development. At some point, the game was considered as a possible 3rd game in the Darius series. In the end, however, the project became its own game, with some of its own unique mechanics. What we ended up with is the now classic, Metal Black.
Released in arcades in 1991, and later on the Sega Saturn in 1996, Metal Black has a unique power-up system that sees you collecting small particles known as "Newalone" to gradually increase the power of your ship, until you reach maximum power. Once you do, you can unleash a beam of destruction to take out enemies. You can also use your beam to duel with bosses who will fire a similar beam. This ended up being a major inspiration for Taito's later Darius series game, G-Darius. Join the RF Generation Shmup Club in 2023, and pilot the CF-345 Black Fly alongside us, as we play the Taito classic Metal Black!
If you'd like to participate, check the thread here:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/forum/index.php?topic=19705.0
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Posted on Dec 25th 2022 at 02:57:43 PM by ( The Official SP1SC) Posted under PS1 , PlayStation 1, PSX, PSOne, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2012, Nor |
Alright, where do I even begin with this. It has been 6 and a half years and a lot of changes all over the place since I did this last time. August 10, 2016 was the last time I was on here apparently. At that time I was in the middle of a two month long unemployment streak moving down from Virginia back to my hometown of Philadelphia, PA. I was once running a ton of sites, I now only run 2 and none of them are whats on the 2016 list. So to make things as short as I can, I landed a job in September 2016 which I still hold today but doesnt have anything to do with this. In 2019, I gave up YouTube and all that good stuff and went on a brand new path and started to run a Private Group, The Sony PlayStation 1 Sanctuary & Museum. Back then a lot of people were mocking me about wanting to open a museum and such. Well for those losers there, they got a taste of rear when I opened the Sony PlayStation 1 Sanctuary & Museum, a proper museum in July 2020 in Willow Grove, PA, approx. 6 blocks away from the infamous Handheld Legend, and 4 miles from Newgrounds. Sadly, it was thwarted from having visitors for a long time at the start due to the pandemic, but kept on going despite taking on massive losses finacially due to not being allowed by law to have visitors. I kept on growing the PS1 collection and in August 2021, my second dream came true and finished the PS1 North American Set. Now, I am focused on becoming the very first collector in history to acquire a full Worldwide PS1 set! It has never been done and would not be surprised if I am currently the world leader in number of PS1 games owned for region at over 4,000 to date and a total of 6,000 games, demos, books, prototypes, systems and one of a kind items for the Sony PlayStation 1. I do run a private group as mentioned on Facebook and you will not find it, you will need to be invited in, however, I do run a Patreon group as well that showcases exclusive stuff like a special monthly podcast, a special exclusive series called "For The Gamers By The Games/For The People By The People" and on occasion release full length documentaries. The Patreon Group Link is: www.patreon.com/SP1SC
On December 26, 2022, I will be releasing a very special documentary on the 25th Anniversary of my PS1 adventures as I purchased my first PS1 on December 26, 1997 and showcase that system, the games I had at the time and what happened to get to that point. The Patreon does have 3 tiers, Bronze at $1/mth that gives you access to the FTGBTG/FTPBTP video, Silver at $3/mth that gives you what was mentioned plus access to the podcast, and Gold at $5/mth that gives you access to all that and the documentaries. The docs can go as long as a Godfather movie, but the latest is just 90 mins! Also I do make special videos that I throw in on occasion that are available for all Patreons. All Patreon funds are utliized to the museum to make it better and better. The photos of the museum are on the FB page that you need a Golden Ticket to enter (sorry I learned from my time that if you make everything public bad people do tend to sneak in). I had to move my museum to a smaller space within the building I was renting in May 2022 when costs got over the top and was getting next to no help. Remember folks, we are collectors and gamers, for some of us preservation is key and I know I am not that well known but I deserve a chance like everyone else. My mission is to showcase great things, and to entertain folks without the bs that almost ALL YT channels and other social media platforms do presently. Give it a shot, I promise you won't be disappointed!
Enjoy! In this video, me and slackur go over our Secret Santas we received from RF Generation!
Note: this YouTube series won't be replacing either of our articles. This is just a side thing.
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We are a community of collectors, gamers and the likes, and some of us enjoy to let the world know what is on our mind. For those members, we have the community blogs, a place where they can publish their thoughts and feelings regarding life, universe, and everything. Some of those members might even choose to write about gaming and collecting! Whatever they write about, you can find it on their blog. You can either see the latest community blog entries in the feed you see to the left, or you can browse for your favorite blog using the menu above. Interested in having your own blog hosted on RF Generation? It's rather simple, first be a registered member, and then click the "My Blog" link that you see in the navigation above. Following those two steps will certainly get you on your way to blogging.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy our entries, rantings, and completely unrelated series of thoughts. We write for you to read, so we certainly hope that you enjoy our material.
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