I'm back, hopefully!

Hello everyone, I'd like to start out this post saying I've changed my name from JuiceBox over to Carpetwurm. This is because I wanted to be a bit more unique, and hey I might actually stick with this one! Now then, onto some news.

First of all, Journey of Coins has been released! I left you guys with the 0.0.5 build, and that was AGES ago. But now the game is complete, and in build 1.2.0. I had to close development though because the engine I use, HaxeFlixel, updated to version 4 after JoC launched, and it would be absolute hell porting it to the new version. Anyways, here's a link.

[Download]

I also participated in GameJolt's Bad Boxart Jam, which was my first big jam. I made a game called "How to be Corny" based on the boxart below. I believe I ranked #72 or something like that, I can't be bothered to check. Anyways, I had fun making something stupid and small, though some people absolutely hated the game. [Link to that]

I started work on a game called Contiave with James R. from theodd1sout, and you know it was going good and such, but then I started a side project with my friend Lui and kinda shifted focus to that. Though if James wants me to keep working on Contiave I will, I just need some more art from him. But what he did give me was great, so I hope the game doesn't get canned. 

[James on YouTube] [Lui on Twitter]

But that's about it, hopefully this blog doesn't die again. I'll see you guys later, hopefully. ^)^

Journey of Coins

     So Joe and I have finally come up with a name for our current project! That title is (of course) "Journey of Coins" It's a simple title, and gets the job done. The game is (technically) about going on a journey to find some coins, so this works well. In other news, I finished the game's opening cinematic. I have also decided the way each cutscene will look, and how it will be animated.
    
     Cutscenes will be made to look like they're drawn by a little kid with crayons. Why? Well, that is because I feel that the main character is a kid at heart. I mean, come on, he talks to coins and travels to a different dimension just to save them. Really it seems like he's imagining all of this. Also, all of the characters and objects won't have any real "animation" You can see that in this gif.

 

     Don't get me wrong though, the game itself looks a lot nicer than this cutscene. The scene has minimal animation due to the fact that animating this in Spriter would be a bit of a challenge. I won't get into the details of how I animated this, just know that it took a while.

     Finally, here's some screenshots of the game so far. These are taken from multiple sections in the first level. Note, levels are split up into different sections (like in Kirby games) to help with loading. The player animations are actually really detailed, compared to my past games, at least. I tried my hardest to implement animations that I didn't think were possible for me to pull off when I was younger. I was specifically thinking back to when I thought this had detailed animations. (Yes, I made this in Game Maker. It was ages ago.)

 

 

      Anyways, that's it for this post. Sorry for the lack of posts, I just feel like this blog doesn't get too much attention, so I don't update it as much as I should. Anyways, remember to follow me on Twitter for constant updates about this project. Bye bye.

Saros Digital and Dusted Donuts

     If you keep up with my Twitter (which you totally should) you would have noticed that I made a logo. A logo for what, you ask? Well, it's a logo for my new team, Saros Digital. The team is made up of Joe Swensen and I.

     We formed the team after I left Capl Team. "But Justin, why would you leave Capl? I thought you loved that team!" Well my dear child, I do love that team. There's just one problem with it, and that problem is Helix. Now now, he isn't evil or anything like that, he just doesn't output much work. He takes school a lot more seriously than game development, and since the new school year started I guess he just doesn't have enough time for it. Whenever I'd ask him to do work, it would just end up in an argument.

     "So what will you do about art?" that's a simple question to answer. Before Capl, I worked completely alone. Well, most of the time, at least. I of course had a sound designer with me. Back then I would just do pixel art, which I will have to do again. I am able to do Flash, but my art made with that usually doesn't look fantastic. (It also takes ages to make art with it) I believe my pixel art skills are still alright, though.

     "What will happen to 'Dusted Donuts' then?" 'Dusted Donuts' will be put on hold until both Helix and I decide to work together again. This doesn't mean it's cancelled, but it doesn't mean it will be finished either. This may be sad news, but Saros Digital's first project will take a lot of concepts from 'Dusted Donuts'; so don't worry!

     That's all I wanted to announce, and clear up for some of you. Hopefully this change will be a beneficial one, but maybe not, the future is unclear. I'm also planning to possibly make a website for Saros. Anyways, that's it for this post.

Dusted Donuts enters playtesting with a0.01

     So yesterday, I released Dusted Donuts for playtesting purposes. The version that is currently out is a0.01, meaning alpha stage 0 update 1. Stage 0 just means the game is still early in development, nowhere near completion. Stage 1 would probably be around the beta stages of development, and Stage 2 would most likely be the release builds.
     Anyways, you yourself can playtest the game over on it's itch.io page, which is right here. (Don't worry, you can continue reading. I'll post another link at the bottom of this post.) I've posted the known bugs, version, and other information on that page. I also gave encouragement to give the most brutal feedback possible, have fun with that.
     If you would like to know about other things not listed on that page, feel free to email me. (My email is included on the itch.io page.) In the meantime though, just playtest it and tell me what you think. ^)^

[Playtest Dusted Donuts here]

Dusted Donuts and Newgrounds

     So Dusted Donuts is getting to be a pretty large game. The problem with that is it may be too large to put on Newgrounds! That isn't a very good thing, children. Especially because we were hoping to make it specifically for Newgrounds. Strange, it's like how we were expecting Micromasher to be on Windows only...
     Anyways, if we can't find a way of making the file smaller, then we'll have to settle for a Windows release. We will try putting a demo on NG if it comes to this, though. Hopefully we can compress the filesize.
     That's all I wanted to say, so goodbye.

Dusted Donuts Teaser

    So I made a short teaser for Dusted Donuts. It's only 25 seconds long, but it took an hour or so to make. Well, maybe not an hour. I think it was more around half an hour. Anyways, it just shows off what we have so far, and not much else. None of the art in-game is complete, obviously. But yeah, I just wanted to notify you all with that.

No more donations, but now you can contact me.

     I got rid of the donation page. For the second time, isn't that great? Now I won't be obnoxiously asking for donations! Woo! I replaced the donation page with the new contact page. So now you can contact me through, like, two sites. Amazing!

     In other news, I'm learning a new language/framework! That's right, no more LÖVE2D stuff, or Python stuff, now I'm onto HaxeFlixel stuff! I'm actually liking this a lot more than LÖVE and Python combined. Want to know why? Because I can actually comprehend it! I've been following the tutorial in the HaxeFlixel docs, so I feel like a noob. Although, I did give the project gamepad support to make myself feel competent. So uh, here's a screenshot of that.

Hopefully I'm really back.

     Wow, it's September now. I only posted like, twice, in August. Time to bring you all up to speed. First off, Game #2 is cancelled. Yep. It's a shame. Also, I've been working on some weird launcher thing. You know what it launches? Capl Team games. Yep, it's called the Capl Launcher or something...

     Look at that, WOW! Let me break this launcher down for you. First of all, the launcher will contain all of Capl's free games. It also has some of it's own exclusive games. I've also thrown in some of our unfinished games! (Like Elastic and Game #2) There's also a page for fan art and such. After that, you can see a soundtrack player. It basically plays music from the games included with the launcher. Well, that's obvious. Finally, there's concept art. Not much to explain there...


     So yeah! That's it, I'm back, hopefully.

I am back!

     Wow, it's been a bit since I've last posted. Alright guys, a lot of stuff happened this week. Or, maybe not a lot, but a bit of stuff. It's also probably been longer than a week... Anyways, that doesn't matter. I'm going to go down this little list of updates I must feed to you loyal readers.


     First of the updates, Thumbscrew (or sub-game #1) has been cancelled! After completing the prototype, the game just wasn't fun! We didn't want to get sidetracked with the game and ignore Game #2, either. So we decided to cancel it! That's too bad.

     Speaking of Game #2, we started using Ferr2D for the levels! This way we can make levels more efficiently! Now instead of tile based levels, we have more unique looking pointy levels. Here's a screenshot of Level 1.

     I thought I'd also tell you wonderful people that I'm getting a new laptop soon. It should be shipped by the 20th, but who knows when it will actually be here? I'll use it mostly for school, and working on Capl Team projects while at said school. Also I'm guessing it will be able to run Cities: Skylines, so I'll probably use it for that too. Here's a picture of said laptop.

 

     To finally finish this post, I want to show you all some AWESOME Micromasher fanart we got sent in this morning! So here's that.

Illustrated by MothmanAssociation.

The Current State of Cleanse

     This post is for anyone who doesn't know about what happened to Cleanse (a.k.a. Project Scrubby Scrub Clean). Cleanse was in development for a while, but we never got much work done on it due to how large we were scoping the game. We were aiming for 8 areas with 8 different and unique boss battles. With me being new to Unity, we could barely achieve anything. At the time, Helix was also bad at leading the team. Which lead to the eventual pause in development. This is when we went on to work on Elastic, which got cancelled. When we came back to Cleanse, we decided we wanted to try making it 3D. Of course, that ended up hindering development. Also around the time we got back to Cleanse, a movie titled Inside Out was all over T.V. Why are we mentioning this movie? Well, basically that movie is about a little girl dealing with her emotions. Or.. Something like that, but we know it has to do with emotions. What was Cleanse about? Well Cleanse was about a little boy defeating all of his emotions. You can see the problem, right? To top it off, Fear in Inside Out has a similar hair shape to Archibold's. Archibold, if you don't know, was going to be the original character in Cleanse. Here's a side-by-side comparison:

 

     Note that I had to draw Archibold, since I couldn't find any of my old Cleanse files. But you can see the resemblance. So obviously, this wasn't good for Cleanse. If we ever were to finish the game, people would say we stole Inside Out's idea, and we even went so far as to stealing one of the character's hair. We didn't want to have to deal with that, that would be terrible! In the end, we decided to just scrap everything, Cleanse, Elastic, everything. And that's when we started work on Micromasher... So yeah, now you know why we don't talk much about Cleanse anymore. I hope this post cleared up any questions any of you might of had. Peace.

Donations are back!

     That's right, I added the donation page back! Now you can go spill a few dollars on us once again!! Well, no one ever donated the first time around... But that doesn't matter! Go check out the donation page, or click the money bag! Have fun!

 

Newgrounds!

Well, I've started being more active on Newgrounds now. I don't know how much I'll be posting on here, now that I'm also on Newgrounds. Uh, so here's my Newgrounds account.

WOO! NEWGROUNDS!

Update - 5/20/15

    
     I know, I know, I haven't posted in a while. So I guess I better update you guys on my shenanigans. First thing's first, Cleanse! I've been working on a *new* prototype for it. If you guys remember, I was working on Cleanse when I first started this blog. If you read my last post, you'd also know that Cleanse is going to be 3D now. Isn't that cool? Now now, it isn't some stupid FPS or something generic like that. Well, it does look kinda generic. Or maybe it doesn't, I don't play enough 3D games anymore. I'm getting off topic, so here's a screencap. Oh, one more thing! I'll be posting development logs of Cleanse monthly here.

     Another thing I've been up to is using the TIGSource forums. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a forum for indie developers/gamers. I've been having a pretty good time on it, and I really like its community. Here's a link. Before I go, I should probably tell you guys that I'm all sick again. Basically I just went to some sports centre, and now I'm sore everywhere due to actual physical activity! Last time I got sick on here, it was also due to physical activity. Maybe I should stay inside like the fat chub I am... Anyways, that's all I wanted to say. Goobi.

Going 3D + Elastic Status

     Last night, I decided to ask myself the most important question any developer should ask themselves during development. Somehow, I forgot to ask myself this over Elastic's ENTIRE development period! What is this question I speak of? The question is if I think my project is fun. To be completely honest, Elastic is not very fun. It's a platform game with a switchable power up system. That's really it. So you know what, screw it. I'm going to suggest to Helix that we should cancel it, and post whatever we have. It isn't much, to say the least. But hey, this was a great learning experience for all of us. That's all it was ever meant to be.


     In other news, I'm going to start learning how to do 3D modelling! You know what that means, don't you? That means Capl can start making 3D games! I know this is going to take a while to learn, and it will be a challenge. 3D games will be a great opportunity, since I grew up with 3D games. This also means that Cleanse will most likely be a 3D title! Isn't that great? Anyways, that's all I wanted to say. I'll see you guys later.

Capl's Site Renovation

     As you all know, I've been working a lot on Capl's site. I've added new pages, cleaned up the layout, etc. Basically, the site has changed a bit since it fell into my hands. I'm even working on getting its own domain! Anyways, I just wanted to quickly update you all on that. The main thing I wanted to tell you is that we now have a page for all of our past and current games! So check it out here! Make sure to also help support us by donating to us, it helps a ton!

REAL Name!

     So, I've decided to start using my real name for projects. I'm not going to use my last name, though. Don't want people to figure out who I am or some shit. But I will use my first name and last initial. I'm trying to get the rest of Capl to use their names, too. So yeah, I'll start writing myself as Justin C. in my future projects, including Elastic.

Capl's Site

     So, Retnuh, our web development guy, left Capl yesterday. It's a really sad event, since he's been there since the beginning. He was the original owner of Capl, now that I think about it. Anyways, since no one else on Capl knows how web development works, I have to take care of the site now. I've been putting a considerable amount of effort into the site today. I've even added a donation box and funding page! So, go and support my team here! https://sites.google.com/site/caplteamuser/home

Javascript!

     So my friend Ikubod was finally able to convince me to switch to JS in Unity. It's alright, I guess. I still need to get used to it, but yea, it's okay. Not too different from C# either. If any of you guys reading use JS, feel free to leave some tips here for me! Now, I must go take care of Steven. Goobi.

Donate button!

    So I've went through great lengths, and I've made a donate button! It took me a whole five minutes, so maybe you should do your part and donate a dollar. If you don't donate, that means you are not my friend (just kidding) So yea, I just wanted to throw that out there. If you're saying "EH?! WHERE IS THIS NEW-FANGLED DARK MAGIC YOU SPEAK OF!?", then fear not! It's on the right sidebar above my description! Make sure to slap that button! Goobi

New email!

     Hello everyone! Today I'm here to notify you that I have created a new email address for myself. Therefore, I will no longer be using just0cruzzle5010@gmail.com. If you would like to find out my new email, please check the Capl site(Link on the right). Thanks, and goodbye! ^)^