New Song

It's about hats. And trombones pretending to be tubas. Enjoy responsibly.

Hey! Hey, you! Yeah, you there! Do you get bothered and hot when you think about reading news updates from me? If so, you should follow me.

I've been really busy this summer. Busy with travel, busy with classes, busy with work, and most importantly, busy with games. I'll start with the games.

They Came, They Saw, They Conquered
As you might recall, I've been working on a game of sorts for quite some time now. It involves turrets, lots of fancy effects, and a handful of little black men.

Wait, that doesn't sound right. Little dark-colored men? That's better. But they're not really men, are they? We'll fix that easily enough: little dark-colored gender-neutral entities. But wait, this is 2012--I can't be insensitive to short people! Let's try that again.

As you might recall, I've been working on a game of sorts for quite some time now. It involves turrets, lots of fancy effects, and a handful of sub-average dark-colored gender-neutral entities. I stopped development for several months last year because homework and robotics sucked up what little free time I could manage. Recently I've resumed development of TCTSTC, and I'm currently aiming for a December or January release.

You can find screenshots on my Tumblr.

Thoreau
Last December I teamed up with 3D-Xelu for Game Jam 6 and we made a kickass Limbo ripoff (err, sorry, "original game").

Once we published the game, we decided to polish it up and whore it out to sponsors, but like I said, I was swamped with schoolwork at the time, so I didn't have much time to become a prostitute let alone develop games. Once school let out, my schedule freed up again and I was able to tackle the giant list of bugs Xelu compiled for me. We put it up for sale on FGL in mid-July, and after a few weeks we accepted a bid. We're currently working with the sponsor to finalize payment and branding, so be on the lookout for Thoreau v2 in the next week or two!

Travel
At the end of June I flew down to Pennsylvania to meet up with RaidTheWood. I stayed at his house for 11 awesome days of waterparks, ziplining, programming, and awkward conversations with his parents' drunk friends.

In July, I drove with my family down to St. Louis, where they'll be moving once I set off for college. It's a fantastic city, and the house we just bought down there is beautiful. I'm a bit jealous I won't ever get to live there.

I also spent a few days at a lake with an old childhood friend, and another several days at a lake with a close friend of mine who'll be attending college in New York this fall.

Work
While at the lake with my old friend, Blake, I ran into a friend of his dad's, who offered me an internship at his internet software company. I happily accepted, and have started working on an iOS application with his team.

School
Last spring I discovered Coursera, an awesome website that offers free online courses from top-notch universities. In June, I completed "Machine Learning," and in July I started "Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation." This fall, I'll be taking "Neural Networks for Machine Learning," "Scientific Computing," and "Probabilistic Graphical Models." This is, of course, in addition to my senior year schedule:

German 4
AP Literature and Composition
AP Physics
Multivariable Calculus
Linear Algebra
Differential Equations
AP Computer Science
Independent Study

I also have to complete college applications this fall. I plan to apply to MIT, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois.

It's been super crazy lately, as you can tell.
_____

Tumblr my Twitter, NG-er!

Enjoy 21 Puns, a song I wrote for my final project for music theory. You can find the sheet music here.

School's out, which means I'll have plenty of time to work on all of the things I haven't had a chance to.

I'll be participating in Game Jam 7 during the last weekend of June, and I'll be doing it at RaidTheWood's house! It's going to be a blast.

I also have a job of sorts this summer developing a Flash game for a small company. I'll give you guys details when I'm allowed to.

AWESOME SUMMER INITIATED

After a somewhat extended period of inactivity on Newgrounds, I think I'll be joining the ranks again. I miss this place. I miss this place a lot.

Need proof? Don't want to be hurt again by my empty promises? Well I have a surprise for you. Are you excited? I'm excited.

Here it is!

I'll leave you with that, for now--just you wait, one of these days I'll even make another game. Maybe. We'll see.

But don't take my word for it.

This layout shall be dearly missed.

I've saved my userpage to my computer for the purpose of future reference / nostalgia.

Over the past few days I've had a bit more time to work on They Came, They Saw, They Conquered and hopefully this will be the (third and) final engine I have to write for it.

This time around I've done more optimization and added quality controls, which allow you to toggle on/off everything from blood smearing to flesh tearing to terrain blending. So I can guarantee that if you have an average or slightly-below-average computer, you'll be able to run this game smoothly. You just might have to opt-in to the "Deprived" quality and play the game without any of the fancy effects that I've poured my blood, sweat, and tears into over the past 11 months.

My only worry, aside from the fear of not finishing in a reasonable amount of time, is that it won't sell for very high seeing as it's an art game.

Obligatory filter-raped promo picture.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
585075

Made in 96 hours for Game Jam 6.

Enjoy!

LOOK MY GAME HAS BLOOD, NOW YOU HAVE TO LOVE IT

ENJOY <3

I'm still working on They Came, They Saw, They Conquered, and very slowly but surely it's turning out to be a very nice game. I ran into a few problems with a few features that I really wanted to add to the game but ultimately had to toss out because I simply couldn't get Flash Player to run the effects well on the majority of computers I tested it on. That cost me a few weeks and now I'm left to think of a few new game mechanics to keep the game interesting.

I also started work on a game with Thundaboom. It's Tic Tac Toe with a special twist and hopefully this game won't drag on as long as TCTSTC has. The plan was to make a quick game because neither of us has published much of anything in quite a long time.

Unfortunately school starts on the sixth, meaning that all hopes of productivity over the school year will most likely be crushed.

Here's another screenshot. The grass blends nicely and randomly now, which is about the only visible difference from the last one I gave you. If you go to my Tumblr you see my failed attempts at fire. It looked really nice and ran really well on my computer, but I couldn't find a single other person who could get a solid 25fps out of it.

Higher Quality Image

School let out last week and I've been using my time off to the fullest. I finished the majority of the pathfinding creep behavior I will need for the game and today I started and finished one of the tracks that I will be using for the game.

Listen to it here!

What game is this, you ask? They Came, They Saw, They Conquered is an experimental reverse-tower-defense-style game in which you play as the "creeps" of a tower defense game but instead must protect your homeland against the invading towers.

The picture below doesn't do the game justice--you'll just have to wait to experience the art in its full glory.