2016 Archive Last Updated: December 17th, 2016 |
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2016 ArchiveDecember 17th, 2016:I literally haven't had much to say outside of my videos and ramblings on Twitter, thus why there haven't been any news updates here in awhile. To that end, go watch Ancient DOS Games! Go watch Shovelware Diggers! Go follow me on Twitter! DO ALL THE THINGS! 8D ...and if you're reading this, you must be a super-awesome fan because you actually pay attention to my website. ;) June 29th, 2016:It has begun! The new weekly series to help pass the time and give you guys more stuff to watch! :D Shovelware Diggers is a show dedicated to unearthing games which have pretty much been completely lost to the stretches of time as no one ever really played them or gave them any cares. Such games could often be found burried in the depths of shareware CDs claiming to have tons and tons of games. One particular archive I have is a "2000 Hit Games" collection put out by Softkey Publishing and I figured I'd share the experience of what it's like to go through one of these things! ;) The way it works is people who are pledging $8 or more per month over on Patreon are automatically eligible to submit their folder selections for me to cover on the show. I have the ENTIRE directory structure outlined here on my website which you can look at by clicking here. Each digger may have up to 12 folders selected at a time so that all diggers have a chance for their selections to show up! (I will do my best to balance the load between all diggers!) Anyways, this is likely going to be my last news post here on the website for awhile. I'm still going to be active on Twitter and YouTube and whatnot, but with all the migration I'm doing the website will mostly become an archive of these things until I once again get back into the swing of game making, which will hopefully be soon. :) June 18th, 2016:So, apart from a new filler video, the changes to the website have begun! I'm now on Twitter (@Pixelmusement), additional information sections have begun transitioning to YouTube, and there's a new section for the upcoming Shovelware Diggers show! Lots going on and since I've been working so hard at all of this since yesterday I'm going to keep this short so I can enjoy the rest of my evening and have some time to myself for the weekend. You can learn more about what's going on too by watching the results video to the survey I announced back in May, which you can find by clicking here! June 11th, 2016:Really lucky I managed to get this out on time... and since I'm really freaking tired, I'm going to bed. Enjoy the video, everyone! :) June 4th, 2016:(WARNING! This is a mature rated episode!) Geeze... the past week has been extraordinarily stressful due to random dog noise issues 24 hours a day which are impossible to sleep through due to the volume. I'm very surprised I managed to get the live action footage I needed recorded without said dog ending up in the background. x_x; In any case, for those of you reading this, there's going to be some changes to the ADG section of the website over the next week or so, as I'm transitioning all of the additional information over to YouTube and will be removing the video pages from my website. The reason I'm doing this is because my survey showed that there wasn't a huge amount of care for looking up these details on the website, and quite frankly, it takes an HOUR to update the video pages every time I upload a new video, so I'd rather save myself the trouble and make things more convenient for everyone. :B There's other changes coming too but nothing which will affect the show itself, so don't worry about that! As for my secret project... sigh... Story of my life how every time I work on a project which feels like it will be spectacular, something comes up which derails the whole process. As it stands, I've been shifting my effort towards my videos and I haven't had time to work on my game, but this shift has been dictated primarily by my own personal situation and wasn't entirely my choice either, but it was either that, or allow the forces pulling the strings to guide me in even worse directions. If that sounds vague an ominous, the reality is that if I say too much about what's going on, I run the risk of derailing myself further. Once my situation has stabilized and no one's pulling any strings anymore, I'll be able to open up about what's happening. For the moment, I just have to do the best I can given the situation I'm in and hope that everything ultimately works out. Also, since this weeek's ADG episode is mature rated, the hint for the next episode is: It's a game with the EXACT same name as another game I've already covered, yet is completely different![>
May 21st, 2016:Had to cover this game sooner or later. Fun fact is that I was sent a physical copy of the game just mere DAYS before the remastered version came out! That said, I did actually beat this game a long while back as a friend of mine had it, so I already knew what to expect to some extent while going through it again. :B I've been seeing some extremely interesting results thanks to the survey as well! I plan to share some of it in the near future once responses stop coming in, but I already have several changes and additions planned in line with the feedback I'm getting! To alleviate fears that I'm going to be making RADICAL changes, that's not going to be the case. The most radical change actually is that I'm going to be moving all the additional information sections into the video descriptions for each video, then removing the video pages from my website, though I'll still have the indexes for quickly looking up videos alphabetically and whatnot. :B Other changes are going to include new Patreon reward tiers, slight alterations to the existing tiers, and a brand new weekly series which is both really simple and really ingenious and I can't believe I didn't come up with it sooner! (Can't say exactly what I'll be doing yet, but they'll all be very short, off-the-cuff, 5-minute-long videos dealing with DOS and Windows 3.x games!) ADG episodes will likely stay mostly the way they've always been, though I may eliminate the pre-episode gag portions and I've also got a better idea for the 18+ warning that will be much faster, less vocal, and more stylized, while still getting the point across to any parents listening that an 18+ video is about to happen. ;) I am a little dismayed though that despite the social networking assistance of other video producers, as of this writing, only 18 people who DON'T watch my show have submitted responses. Hopefully more such people will help me out here though admittedly, it can be tricky to drop a line to someone else you don't actively watch since you have to leave your comfort zone to do so. Hopefully some more such people will get in on the survey in the coming days so I can get a better idea of what I could be doing better to get more people interested in the show. :) May 19th, 2016:Just a quick update to let everyone know that I'm going to be re-doubling my efforts in getting more people interested and watching my Ancient DOS Games web show. However, I'm not completely sure what steps I should be taking, so to figure that out... I've created a survey! :O Simply click here and you'll be taken to a Google Forms survey I put together, or you could also click here to watch a short video I made about the survey. It should take about 6 ~ 8 minutes to do, you'll be asked 16 questions at max, though it depends on the answers you put in, and it's completely anonymous; no personally identifying information is collected at all! The thing is, one of the major realizations I came to is that when it comes right down to it, I'm not making a living off of making games, whereas I DO make an income off making Ancient DOS Games, so expanding the show and making it better and more enjoyable for everyone is a much smarter idea than burning lots of time into a project which may not make any money at all. This isn't to say I've stopped work on my secret project, just that I'm no longer relying on it as a means of income in the future, though I'm perfectly OK with it becoming that! ;) Also, I should point out that the survey's designed not just for people who watch ADG, but also for people who DON'T. In fact, it's the people who don't who'll likely provide the most invaluable insights, so whether any of you take the survey yourselves or not, I'd really appreciate if you could just let your friends and others know about it too! :) May 14th, 2016:Don't mind the fact that this week's episode may seem a little off to my usual quality. The past while has been extremely stressful and this week in particular it was very hard to find a moment where I could actually do my voiceover, and even when I did find such a moment, I had to rush to get it done. :/ In any case, things are going forwards as usual, though I may have something interesting to bring to everyone's attention next week out of the normal video rotation. It's not related to my secret game project (not directly anyways) and is actually something I'm doing to try and figure out how I can get more people interested in my show. More info to come very soon! May 7th, 2016:I got lots of work done over the past few weeks during my break from ADG, but this week was just ridiculously stressful, coupled with this week's ADG episode being one of the most difficult I've ever had to do, mainly because of my differing opinion from the norm on what is otherwise a VERY well loved game. The funny thing is... I've never liked this game, not even when it was brand new, but I wanted to. The game has all of the elements which make a game decent, but it's missing two things which are really important to me: Good controls and a balanced difficulty curve. Neither are present. In fact, this is one of the most difficult games ever made, mostly because of just how much time you have to waste doing stuff over and over and over again when you screw up, but there's other issues too. Still, because so many people DO like this game, I had to keep that in mind and structure my script in a way which wouldn't offend the vast majority of people who would disagree with my opinion. A few mistakes crept in as well since the past week has actually been very stressful in terms of just stuff going on in my life. I caught one of the mistakes while editing but the rest which I noticed I've pointed out in the additional information and corrections section. Hopefully I didn't miss any more. :P April 18th, 2016:Next time I think capturing just a few minutes of footage from TWENTY-SIX different games is going to go smoothly, smack me upside the head or something. x_x Sorry this video is late as well... I ended up sick for my third time this year over the previous weekend and for a couple days I was just completely unable to do much of anything. I'm mostly recovered now, in fact I only did the voiceover for the latest filler video back on Saturday night, so clearly my voice wasn't hurt too bad this time around. Still, getting sick is never fun. :( As such, I'm further behind on my secret project, but I still have two weeks ahead of me so I'll hopefully be able to make a LOT of progress before this month is over! :) April 9th, 2016:I actually spent most of my time editing the latest ADG episode minorly sick... third time this year I've come down with something... That's extremely atypical for me and I have to wonder if its environmental, stress, physiological, or some combination of those... :( In any case, not going to go into any extra details as usual. It's a nearly 20-minute long video this time around so... it should do a good job of covering the game on its own accord. :) April 2nd, 2016:I was actually somewhat surprised by how difficult this week's Ancient DOS Game was... :o Other than that though, only piece of news is that the second game for my secret project is finished! One more game to make... I keep thinking this is going to go fast due to previous experience but I keep forgetting about all the foundation code I keep laying and the fact that I'm trying to make a web show at the same time. Plus, getting sick twice this year already isn't helping. :P Basically, I have no REAL time-frame for getting the third game done, but I will keep everyone in the know because once the third game is ready, it's time to launch! :D March 19th, 2016:Not much to say today on the ADG episode outside of what's said in it. :B While I'm very disappointed with how slow progress on my secret project is, at least the second game for it is almost done. I think part of the reason it took so much longer than anticipated was that it required a lot of new foundation code and the codebase for the game itself is almost as big as it is for the first game in the project, which at the time I thought was going to be the largest of the initial three games. (Guess they're about even in size, which explains why it took so long.) An interesting irony is that if you cut out the time taken to write foundation code, each game so far has taken about four months to make, which is the time frame I'm aiming for with future paid game releases for this project once it's launched, so in a strange way I'm already following the schedule I have planned, just not the schedule I wanted to follow up to now. As I've said many times before, one person can only do so much. :P March 12th, 2016:Not too much to say today, although some of you may've noticed my voice is still recovering. This actually reminds me of when I first started ADG, as the last time got Bronchitis was a month before ADG Episode 0 and ADG Episode 1 went live. Because I had no voice at all and thus couldn't perform at my job because it involved talking all day long, I spent that month doing all the prep work to make my second attempt at doing ADG, and actually spent money on editing software and everything. Now we know how that all turned out. ;) Actually, I tend to come up with my best ideas when I'm sick, as I had a few neat ideas for games to potentially add to my secret project in the future once it's been out for a bit. Still working on it... I know it's taking about a million times longer than I keep expecting it to, but it'll be worth the wait! March 5th, 2016:(WARNING! This is a mature rated episode!) The same night I got my QBASIC filler video online I ended up catching a really nasty bout of Bronchitis. The next day I had a massive fever, a very painful headache, and was coughing up a storm. I'm about 99% recovered from that now, but as you'll all be able to tell in the latest ADG video, my voice still isn't 100%, though it's pretty close. :B While I'm not as far along with my secret project as I would like to be (which I've said many times by now), I'm actually almost done the second game for it! Meaning once it's done, there's only one game left before I'm ready to launch it and put it up on Steam Greenlight! The third game happens to be MUCH smaller than the first two, plus won't require me to write any more foundation code as what's in place should suffice, so I'll be very surprised if I can't get this thing launched by the end of April at the latest. On the other hand, if I keep getting set back due to things like a week of being stuck in bed, who knows? :P The point though is that I'm getting closer and closer to finally revealing this project, and when I do, you'll all immediately be able to play it for free! Since it's a multi-game system, only the future games will need to be paid for. Even once on Steam, the first three games and the system as a whole will remain free forever! :) Lastly, since this week's ADG episode is mature rated, the hint for the next episode is: A 2D shooter which originally had both horizontally and vertically scrolling levels, but the DOS port only kept the vertical ones. February 20th, 2016:Sorry for today's video being VERY long, but I've been asked a number of times now to do a programming video of some sort and this is about as short as I could make it while still being interesting to all people, not just people who already know how to program. :P Other than that, not too much to report on right now. Secret project is still going slower than I would like, but at least the second game is very close to done for it! The third and final game I have to make before release is much simpler to make from a code standpoint and with all of the foundation code I've had to do up to this point it should go relatively quickly... I hope... Let's just put it this simply: Game #2 required hand-built levels, an inventory system with special sorting in place, LOTS of different kinds of AI, procedurally generated weapons, and path finding algorithms. Game #3 requires procedural weapons... actually, it requires procedurally generated levels too, but the nature of the levels makes it very easy to generate them. :) But yeah, getting close! Here's hoping it's worth the effort for me and worth the wait for you guys! :D February 13th, 2016:Beyond getting a new ADG episode up, there's one other point of interest this week too: Caverns of Xaskazien II is now available for public download! I have a link set up to the best place to get it from up on the video page for my review of the original Caverns of Xaskazien, as updates are frequent and there's no official site for the game yet. As for work on my secret project, I'm almost done the second game for it, but I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it AND the third game by the time I get back to the regular-sized games on ADG. I know this project is taking forever but at least I am making progress and keeping you all up to date on where I'm at, even if my predictions regarding how much longer it's going to take are just way off... :/ February 6th, 2016:Covering these small games is definitelyaffording me the time I need to make rapid progress on my secret project, but it's still not going as fast as I would like. At this rate, I'm probably not going to be done by the end of the month, but I'll be pretty close. Best guess is it's going to take me to the end of March to launch at this rate... Ah well. Progress is progress. :B Also, I want to quickly mention that a number of my more recent YouTube uploads at 60 FPS have stopped playing back at 60 FPS and are now only available at 30 FPS. I'm trying to figure out what's going on but unfortunately I'm not popular enough to be allowed direct access to YouTube's tech support for content creators, plus the one and only unofficial "fix" I tried doesn't seem to work. As it stands, all videos following my GVB video regarding modded Minecraft have their 60 FPS feature broken, whereas the modded Minecraft video and everything before it which was uploaded in 60 FPS still has working 60 FPS playback. So... yeah... no idea what was up with that. It actually takes a little longer following all resolution conversions on YouTube for 60 FPS to come into effect, so it's entirely possible uploading the latest ADG episode will fix this problem, but if it doesn't, just be aware that those videos ARE in 60 FPS, I'm just powerless to directly fix them right now. :( January 16th, 2016:Sleep's been really wacky for me for the past week, more-so than usual, so I'm just gonna say have fun watching the latest ADG and I'll get back to you all on game dev stuff next month. :B January 9th, 2016:Last week's episode probably could've sufficed as a regular-length ADG episode. This week's episode is more in tune with the type of quickness I was aiming for. :B Although really, it's not the length of the video, it's the amount of gameplay needed to showcase a game properly. In the case of most games I cover I end up recording 6 to 12 hours of gameplay. Stargunner last week only took 2 hours of gameplay while Velcro Mind this week only took half an hour. :B The rest is only small time savings, such as less voiceover to record and edit, shorter video to assemble, less footage to parse through to insert into the video... it all adds up of course but is a much smaller time savings compared to the amount of time saved from not having to play a game for several hours! That said... this week kinda got wasted because my sleeping patterns are WAY out of whack, even for me. Ah well. Didn't get much code done, but got design work done, so either way, progress was made! January 2nd, 2016:And so begins 2016 and a new batch of Ancient DOS Games episodes! :D Although I state this in the video proper, I just want to make sure people understand this: I'm not as far ahead with my secret game project as I expected to be and it's extremely important that I get it ready for launch ASAP. To that end, I'm only going to be doing simple DOS games for the first few episodes this year to try and give myself a chance to catch up on the code side of things. Regardless of if I can indeed catch up or not, I will go back to my normal method of selecting games to cover come March, which will include gifted games and requests. Actually, speaking of gifted games, let me know if you gifted me stuff to cover and I completely forgot. Given the nonsense of last year and haivng to move twice I may've completely forgot about some of the games sent in... also partly thanks to my not documenting them properly until now, so just give me a poke and I'll make sure to update the list I'm keeping now of gifted games. :) |
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