let it snow?

I read today about a drought apparently sweeping the lower regions of the UK. We've certainly had very limited rainfall in my hometown this year. I keep an eye on the weather and have noticed no more than 7 days of rain since the beginning of the year.

We didn't have any thunderstorms either - unless there was one for the one week of this year that I've not been here... But the news article confirmed my curiosity - there has been a significant lack of rainy weather, and unless it picks up this is going to put strains on the water supply into early next year.

So where did all the rain go?

There have been some fairly freak weather incidents around the world this year. Off the top of my head I can recall the hurricane in New York, the recent floods in that city whose name I can't remember - and perhaps we can even include the Japanese tsunami (triggered by an earthquake). On top of that we also have El Hierro's volcano rumbling steadily at the end of the year, with claims it is forming a new Canary Island!

The Canary Islands and their volcanoes play a significant role in disaster predictions for the future. I enjoyed reading the one about a megatsunami that would apparently destroy the East American seaboard.

That said - there is no evidence as far as I'm concerned to say these things are "happening more often". I think myself and others are just reading about them more often, there are more reports on them and the Twitter age means we know about any fairly small event very quickly and from multiple sources.

So yeah, weather... Rain... We need some :) Obviously it's evaporated here and gone and been a freak event elsewhere in the world this year. Glad to know Oxfordshire could help on that one.

I am phasing in and out of creativity. My game is being tested. It's a phase I definitely missed out on with my last game (testicle) that I finished in April this year. There was no testing on that one but I can't remember if it was my incompetence or just no interest in beta-testing it.

During the testing stage - error hunting aside, I think it's just great to get some feedback prior to release to help you on your way. It's a key bit of game making motivation, and it can trigger new lines of conversation in your mind - ideas which you may have missed completely because you were never seeing your game from that angle before. Here's the trailer:



I want to make a short Xmas movie. But I am too busy getting AdventureX prepped and done, Passage of Saints and my own game above finished. And doing whatever I can on BJ:MD to finish it. I am pushing this old computer to its limits. So I'm posting this now before it crashes (which it does every 56 mins).

Thanks for reading, take care, and here's to some snow this year!

do not disturb

The last few days have been manic. The idea was to have 11-11-11 (new game by me) ready for the 11th Nov. Sadly that wasn't possible, despite a 30 hour stint (with a funeral in the middle) I still had some way to go. And now people are pissed off cos I'm not emailing them back because I'm too busy working on this!! But it will be ready by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, just a few more puzzles to make, and then of course the "final stages" of getting everything nice and trimmed - which ultimately takes ages in itself.

Dualnames has been hard at work on Passage of Saints (our Indy xmas game) and along with miez has made some excellent progress. Everything is looking good there for a December release. AdventureX is still umm arr as not many people have bought tickets.

That's about it. I have work to do. Don't forget to visit the AGS blog (ags-ssh.blogspot.com) to read the old ezines I used to make with Yahtzee and other AGS folks. For me at least, it's fun to step back into history and see what was going on back then :)

Thanks for reading! Now go away. I don't need disturbing :P

un-convention-al

Well AdventureX is gearing up to be pretty cool now - lots of AGS folks have kindly said I can show their games at it, many of them have never been seen/played which is very exciting! Also glad that C. Bateman and A. Beckett are still happy to give a little talk about making games :)

Also securing a bit of a deal with Lace Mamba Global who will hopefully supply a few demonstration copies of games and prizes so that people can take away some of their latest published titles. No word from TellTale Games yet though.

And, a few tickets have sold. I've also noticed a few other people kind of pre-empting their attendance to the event, so to those people I say - get a ticket! I will make a decision around the 1st Dec whether it will officially go ahead or not. If I can't cover the venue hire, or only five people have bought a ticket - it just won't be worth it. But if it does happen, it will most definitely be worth it!

I found a cheaper hotel - Ibis Hotel in Reading, 2 mins from the station. So anyone coming and staying I would recommend that place, its 40 quid for 1 or 2 nights. You would however need to get a train to Didcot from Reading, but that's literally five pound single or ten pound return. And the offer is still open to my closer AGS friends to stay on a sofa at my flat...lol!

So exciting stuff... My game 11-11-11 is nowhere near being complete, for its deadline this Friday. But I will have it ready...fingers crossed. Actually I can't not have it ready, otherwise there's no point :P Work behind the scenes at FoY has picked up as Spanos comes on board to help code the Xmas mini-game. Poor Jan had a biking accident and is unable to code for a few weeks. We wish him a quick recovery. Miez continuing all the lovely background art for the full-game.

Oh and I am very soon going to get this device that will let me get Lost In Paradise off the HD I cannot put inside this computer. Yay!

I worked in a Chinese takeaway this weekend, and it was fun. Basically just grabbing the food orders and packaging them, with some nice people to work with. Also some funny co-incidental names that mean nothing to anyone else but me on the orders like "Bateman" (AdventureX) and "Sinclair" (BJ:MD) made me chuckle. Simple things!! It also meant I could eat pretty well and cheaply over the weekend which is great. This is not a permanent job though (maybe in the future?) so money is still very tight.

Sadly my grandpa died last week so I have a funeral to attend later this week, which will be sad. But I'm glad I had a nice dinner with him just a week before his death, and he certainly had a good life (and a long one). RIP Harry Carr

Other than that, not a lot. It's Sunday morning, I haven't been to bed yet - today I'm just going to slob out, do a bit of programming and watch a bit of TV. After a spliff and a sleep that is.

Ciao for now! :)

X marks teh spot

A small update. My main computer blew up last week which has left me on my reserve old IDE machine. Thank hellfully I backed up just about everything. So the BJ movie is safe, Lost in Paradise is safe as is my latest soundtrack. However it is more than likely going to cause a few problems in terms of editing the BJ movie, as the PC I'm on now struggles to run Notepad. Add to that a few busy weekends - so I would say a delay on the movie is inevitable. Which will surely annoy some people as I have been aiming for Halloween.

That said, and it was probably the fun of Mittens that made me do it, I've returned to trying to organise AdventureX, which is a kind of show and tell on a public scale for amateur adventure game developers and fans. I'll have the website online very soon. And I'm excited that a chap who designed Discworld Noir is coming to the event!!

I've just read a Czech review of my game Night of the Testicle - it made me chuckle! They gave it 60% which is very pleasing for such a time-waste of a game. The player rating of 18% is probably more accurate ;) But that along with other comments here and there have inspired me to get on with the final (body) part - Back to the Bollocks!!1

Misja has been posting updates to backgrounds he's working on in facebook for Fountain of Youth and the team are making sure our Xmas game Passage of Saints is ready in time for Christmas. Also - my team of Kinky Islanders are working hard on some amazing work. The assets are building, it's going to be a very sweet looking game.

I've recently finished a preliminary version soundtrack for Unga Needs Mumba which is a new AGS game in the works by Koodn. It appears he's had it in the works for quite some time now, it's a superb little adventure and I'm really pleased I was able to write some music for it. As I write this paragraph I've just had a PM from the man himself saying he's finished implementing the music, so I should have a preview tonight or tomorrow - woot! Work continues on my Living Nightmare: Freedom soundtrack. And as mentioned earlier Passage of Saints for which I wrote music for a year ago will hopefully be out this Xmas with that old but still unheard soundtrack. Once the game is out I'll also put up my ex-Primordia soundtrack here, but will wait til it's out as my soundtrack's track names may give away the story/puzzles.

So in the gaming world things are going nicely. Lost In Paradise the second version has been coming along well - I'm really pleased and actually quite happy it's gone a second time, it's given me a chance to re-work certain puzzles, knock out a few crappy camera angles and enhance animations and characters a bit more. Also been proof-reading a game called The Visitor which is a cool tale of an alien and I highly suggest checking it out when it comes out over at AGS in the next couple of weeks!

Got a couple of job applications on the go (online ones, that take ages to write) so I'm hoping I may have a career of some sort in the near future (and moneys!).. Other than that there's not much else to tell. I used Tesco online delivery for the first time, it's pretty damn cool :D Online grocery shopping can certainly be added to my list of random chores I like doing online.

That's all. Thanks for reading :)

Updates

Just a quick one to say Chance of the Dead was well received which is great news! I'll put up the music on s7 very soon. Also Kinky Island production continues and the guys are creating retro wonders! Mittens is just around the corner so I've been working on Ben Jordan Must Die to give the folks a preview before its release around Halloween.

I recently added "A Christopher Jones Adventure" to the AGS DB which was a test game from many years ago - the first time I tinkered with including speech. It's barely worth the download but if you use AGS and you want a quick chuckle..

I also found out last night of someone that contributed some stuff to s7 website - drinks at the pub! He submitted some flash games a few years ago and I always assumed he was just some random guy from Lithuania or something...haha :D

That's all for now..

no-more-dia

sadly my involvement with Primordia has been terminated. A publishing deal with WEG has proven my music to be non commercially viable. So i am sad now. Its production has helped me through some tough times. a great game - the team did everything they could to keep me on board but in order to get the deal dave has requested a new composer. I owe it to victor cos he's really been a dude. but anyway yeah shit :'(

Mods' Top 10...APPLICATIONS

Firstly, some great news for fans of Kinky Island - we now have a resident background artist meaning the team is once again 100% in-tact :) You can expect some full news on this soon. Our new background artist for the game has a very impressive talent with retro point & click backgrounds - you will not be disappointed!

BUT NOW - TEH MAIN EVENT. MODS' TOP 10 APPS! I'm afraid this WILL lead to disappointment :P

At number 10: Sound Recorder (Win 98/XP)

Where would we be, or have been in the early millennium, if clicking a button to record your voice had not come any simpler? Gone are the days of classic sound recorder, which was in time replaced with some shit alternative with one button only, the record button. No sine waves, no simplicity - just shit. For that reason, original Sound Recorder is in my list of top 10 applications :D

For number 9 it's: Windows Media Player 6

Again it's a simple edition of a media player that was mandatory through the Windows 95 and 98 period, until the all new media player came out which just sucked balls. Alright, MPC6 didn't have a mixer, nor could you slow WMV files down to 50%. But there WAS a time when MPC6 found the needed codecs with ease, and it always loaded within 2 seconds of double clicking the shortcut, not 10, like all versions since.

At number 8: mIRC/MSChat

Basic chat applications don't come more basic than mIRC. It's quick, simple, free, easy, ASCII-y and useful. MSChat on the other hand added a whole new element - cartoon characters in a comic strip that looked weird. The days of what character was used for which chatter are long gone, but they were good days indeed.

So then my number screen 7: Pazera (Free) Conversion Tools

Whether you want to convert a wav to mp3 or flv to avi or any number of different settings, Paz tools remain my favourite. They're simple and quick - they don't look like some programs that spice up their interface to hide very crap functions - Paz tools do what they say on the tin and you know what you're getting when you use it. The conversion quality is brilliant, and I highly recommend them for anyone tackling multiple conversion tasks. Pazzzahhhhh!

Numero 6: Calculator (Windows)

Self explanatory. Without a calculator, my brain would need to resort to maths, so I'm glad it's always there, and functional. Nuff said!

Halfway through, my number 5: AVG Free Anti Virus

It's almost cool to have AVG Free Anti Virus, especially if you're a cheapskate bum like me! The term free-loader has never been so true with this software - the best of the best free anti virus, that uses technology you would usually pay a monthly fee for with Symnatec or Dr. Nortoid. Even McAffee have come back from the dead to plunder your cash for a service AVG can do just as well -- for free!

At lucky number 4: GetRight

The days of dial-up would never have worked out for many of us without an application like GetRight. Designed to resume downloads, it meant a feeling of safety when you knew connection problems would be a-foot. I still use it today, and I'm glad it still exists - in fairly simple form (it hasn't been Vista-ized yet). GetRight is really GoodMate and its ability to resume downloads is as amazing. In fact, it's like magic right in front of your eyes. Except when the server in question says NO, PISS OFF - you are NOT resuming that file!

So I reach my top 3. And speaking of number 3, its: Google Earth

It's a bloomin' map of the world that you can scale to about a hundred feet. Free information doesn't come any better than that. Everything it stands for is brilliant - that is our world, in an application. We can find anywhere, and street view will let us get a feel for a location - people also find oddities within the map which adds a new element. Live weather radar makes it a must for checking the immediate forecast, and renders weather reports on TV useless. All ship wrecks are listed, and so many other wonderful things...So much to explore. This is hands down one of my favorite applications of all time!

Number 2: Outlook Express

I don't know why, but without it, I just wouldn't exists as a modern man. Sure, it's not perfect. Sure, it's fucking annoying when you have to re-install Windows and all your emails & contacts have disappeared - but providing you've got the mail server, Outlook will be your friend in times of email need. Outlook has seen me through many correspondences, from game deals, to famous people, to getting myself fired, to friends, to appointments, to worldly issues... All manner of things pass in and out of Outlook, so I can't really be anything other than thankful for that :)

And finally, TEH NUMBER 1 APPLICATION IS....... NOTEPAD!

Notepad is the unsung hero of applications in my opinion. It's the one place you can write and write and never worry about file size. It's a copy and paste haven for serialz, draft letters and game designs. Notepad is often the middleman in my life. Something I will have written in a notebook usually gets transferred into the textual black and white goodness of Notepad, before becoming the product of whatever the idea that is written, is. Wordpad never caught on, and people produced only shit documents in it. MS Word didn't even come with Windows unless you bought a bundle. But Notepad has been there, through and through, since Windows 3.1 - and has never changed. Simplicity to write and re-arrange - here's to you, Notepad :)

And that's it. The important part was about Kinky Island :P

Breathe

Had a bit of a breather this month, in terms of games. It would appear NOTT was received well, although the comments have been far and few I can happily report Steve Brown from Adventure Gamers wrote "Screen 7 have provided a truly strange experience in their latest offering." whilst Andrew MacCormack from the AGS community defines it as a "scrotal masterpiece" :D They are right, it is both strange and scrotal.

The soundtrack is available, for a dollar, dollar, cos dollar's what I need. See here. I'm having some FTP problems preventing me from updating any websites til the turn of next month, (or ditching my current ISP and joining another one) but that's just as well - like I said, it's breather month. The last 4 months were pretty intense game making times :D

However - things have not suffered in the least. Luckily, I've been able to concentrate on Ben Jordan 2 movie. And in the last month we've shot some great chase sequences locally. A special preview of an early draft scene in the movie, which happens away from the action in Italy can be watched here!

With literally weeks before Mittens begins, the time from now til then is going to be filled with all the final scenes needed to complete the 70 minute movie. I'll be taking it in draft form to Mittens and hopefully having the characters record various dubs to fill the awful gaps in sound produced by me using Long Play recording on camera at the time, (I was warned!). I also have to ask Grundy to make a special "in-game sequence" for the movie. He's also agreed to direct a BJ short at Mittens...maybe...

May not have been using AGS recently, but I've begun patching up the holes in design for Fountain of Youth and making sure the story is entirely complete. I know work continues on the game itself, but that's not something I see much of personally right now with my limited internet set up, but Paul is happily coordinating the development and utilizing the other team members very well, giving me time to focus on the story & design, and puzzles...uh oh! ;) Use Indy with Toilet.

Lots of exciting stuff, and production is generally steady. We realized 200 rooms was over ambitious, but Misja has been keen to push for 150. Who knows :) Thanks to everyone who's recently donated and continued to support the project! It was also great to get some feedback on Jan's arcade fighter - with one AGS member called Progz saying "What ze herr Hitler is thiz! Zis is ze stupid!" or something. :P

After a several month dry spell - I finally saw the latest working version of Primordia and have been able to write a couple of brand new tracks, including my first ever 10 minute background piece. Considering all the music I've done in the last two years has pretty much been through inspiration from working on Primordia, it's great to get back into the project that's been a real eye-opener in music making for me.

The game itself looks great - and much more polished than ever. The music works and I'm thankful to the team for being supportive about it! Be sure to try "Beacon" by Pinback over at AGS to get a feel for the style up-coming in Primordia. I also got the OLD video back online on my alternative youtube account. Search "primordia game" on youtube.

Well - that's all the stuff that matters in the internet world. In the real world, things haven't been quite as perky. But things to come are still very intriguing :)

Thanks for reading!

New game of the Testicle

I finished my parody piece of shiz! It's here:
http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=detail&id=1430

You never have to admit to playing it, but if you do - have fun!

Now to get to work on the next adventure! Wait, no, I mean finish the BJ movie and FoY... :p

Black to the future

Back from kiting and it was fun but all my mobile phone pics got deleted without any known technical reason so that's pissed me off :P But I've already launched AGS and worked on some little bits for NOTT.

Played and downloaded part 4 of the BTTF adventure game but found it to be the weakest part, last night. Been listening to my BTTF movie 1 OST and loving it :D Generally am BTTF obsessed right now and will be watching the trilogy asap!

Or, asaicbatwtv.

Been invited to Amsterdam but I'm broke so we'll see. Mate may pay for expenses (Cheers Charlie) and as he's rich I don't feel bad LOL :P Of course there's Ireland and the months are closing in, so it means after this week of real game focus I must finish the new BJ movie.

And that's about it. Game stuff time right now, maybe a release tonight? That's very optimistic. Friday is a safer bet.

PEAS!

ags, testicle, ben, jordan, movie, games, kiting, essex

Away for a week

Going kiting with my mate, but I thought I'd just say - multiplayer fun over at Fountain of Youth: Arcade Fighter..!

And I'll be finishing up Night of the Testicle when I'm back.

Have a good weekend, enjoy the Royal Wedding, if you're watching, see you sooon baaiii!

peace x

One for the bollock, two for the scrote

For some odd reason last September I started a sequel to the first AGS game I ever released pretty much - Day of The Testicle (early 2002). Oddly, that old game has an entry over at Adventure Gamers, (added by Berian probably!!)...

I guess it was originally simply to help me get back into the spirit of AGS-ing after problems during 2010 with Lost in Paradise. It's become more of a "10 year anniversary" thingy for me now though. Still, luckily both games are on the go. So to tempt your nether regions, here's what the press are saying about... NIGHT OF THE TESTICLE ..!!! ?



What's more is that it's nearly finished! I've been working on it non-stop for the past week. Just a couple more puzzles to finish off. Yes, yes, the graphics are poop and the puzzles are nothing to shout about. But there is 30 minutes of original MIDI music, for some unknown reason. Anyway, this is a little side project...

Other areas of gaming have been quieter since my last post. People are falling off the edge of the Earth, so most projects beside Testicle and Paradise are again having a "hold" period.

I think I mentioned previously about a new team which consists of people I live in the same town as, 7 of us, and the adventure we're working on at the moment is called "Recall". It's just a short one about a robot thing, but thankfully over the past week some of the materials have come together, including music and original sound effects. We're just waiting on some backgrounds, and then I can start building it :)

Not sure there's much else to say really! BJ:MD needs my attention and love for the next few months really.

Finally, I'm back on Facebook - the break was good. I'd recommend it, and in time, I will be taking another one. Becoming "disconnected" from the central hub that is Facebook felt very refreshing, and I could actually go out and be a twat without having to deal with the consequences online later those evenings :P Thanks for reading!

Little things

Well as always there's enough stuff to blog about but not actually any massive progress in my life. So I thank the technological age and hope it's proud to be able to support my thoughts and scribblings whilst I remain scum of the earth.

Firstly - I've had one small UFO encounter recently but it was so brief I'm most likely to discount it over the course of my interest on the subject. It may not have been real but none the less I'm still marking it as a possible occasion. Very fast, briefly de-cloaking (or briefly underlit by the city) ship much like this one. So I'd like to think that if there can be such massive co-incidences in day to day life that perhaps I did catch a glimpse of that awesome youtube UFO then everything is right ;) The only other mystery is how did I become my own follower of my blog. I'm confused. More confused about that than alien life TBH.

HOWEVER. My main YouTube account is banned because I pissed off 20th Century Fox. I guess I knew it would happen sooner or later, but after a pretty positive 6 year run on YouTube it's a bit of a blow. I'd just - literally hours before my perma-ban - reached my 2 millionth video view. So I'm considering it an achievement even if it does mean I can never upload to YouTube again.

People say "sign up again" but it's not as simple as that any more. It's all linked to Google, and I'm a good-oogle boy, I had everything linked. So I'm pretty screwed in terms of YouTube, indefinitely. That means the only way to see some videos I've made is via the Screen7 website and film > phat section. Sorry about that.

The Ben Jordan 2 movie continues to shape up, but still needs love and devotion. I'm organizing some epic scenes and I won't let it be released without them. Watch this space. The new deadline for me is Mittens 2011, which I want to stick to.

With games, I've tried to blag some old, well known developers into thinking up new stories for AGS games. And I've already had some replies from David Gray and John Passfield. So over the course of the year some exciting new projects may take shape. Naturally the AGS awards are just round the corner, and as if by magic there's a Screen7 game in the DEMO section as per usual, so do try out Indy and the Crystal Curs0ids if you get a chance :)

Music has fallen a bit silent lately cos of debt and stuff. Some software I've been using trial period is out and I can't afford it right now, but I've made some new stuff for the up-coming FoY mini-game and a new game by Dom Pompo. I'm yet to receive a new build of Primordia but I'm looking forward to it, and also the deal that's going down.

I'm still off Facebook and it's been a good time with noticeable differences, and also something a little more "human" in my mind. I should be able to go back to it fairly soon with a better attitude towards it. I miss not having the convinience of being able to quickly blip a message to someone, but the confidence of knowing I can get in touch with them by any other means and have their respect is - well, somewhat more compelling.

From here then, who knows. More filming to do ASAP, Mittens in the midst. Website bill and no money. Such is life! Thanks for reading :)

game a sutra

Just popping by with a little news :) 2011 is going to be a busy time for me in terms of soundtracks. With the possibility of one game going commercial under a well known adventure studio it's going to be a challenging time for me in terms of producing something really acceptable by today's standards.

Three other games are also on my schedule for some music so I'm happy to be busy with those game related projects. I've finally started hitting the AGS code again with new enthusiasm and have a couple of short game projects in the works as we speak, one being a crap maze game called Mr. Maze and also a point & click adventure mini-crap-series :p Anyway the main point is my motivation is in a good place right now.

And because of that I've also been out filming more for the Ben Jordan sequel lately, with some epic new scenes shot in central Oxford. Well, by epic I mean epic in terms of what we can legally film on the cuff in a few hours ;)

I've also left Facebook for a while as a social science experiment. I'll be testing whether my spam email decreases, whether my knowledge of what all my friends are up to is really necessary for my already over-flowing brain, how easy it is to continue to communicate with good friends & associates without FB, whether my concentration improves or gets worse without it, etc. I can still be contacted easily over email and mobile/texts.

So it's a different, new but exciting time for me in the gaming world. Outside of that things are mellow and typical. I've pissed people off. Still, this year could have quite an impact on my future, providing I play my cards right. Thanks for taking a look :)

Peace!

foy-king amazing!

Fountain of Youth is on the front of PC Gamer, under a headline about Black Ops, under one about Kinect and ABOVE a headline about Bad Company 3. MENNTALL :)