Once again time for me to break my usual summer silence on projects!

Randy Learns History

It's a big one, and why I haven't really been posting any small game projects this year. Been going quite well, and I'm sure it'll be a breezy hour playing through it, but being an adventure game it's just a lotta dev! A lotta dev I don't wanna share too much of, too!

"Give me a drink, bartender"

"Aaaah, double entendre! Smooth." -Randy

I also started work on my first minigame for the game recently which is pretty cool. Gonna mix n' match adventure gaming with the "activity center" gameplay of the first game!

Town With No Name rewrite

This one's just silly. Thanks to the help of The Cutting Room Floor Wiki and @HorseFolder I figured out how to rip sprites from Delta 4 Interactive games like Town with No Name. For those who don't know, Delta 4 Interactive was formed by some British school kids havin' fun and messing around makin' awesome B-games, and they got their Commodore CDTV creations published back in the day. Not only have I been helping a lil' with the wiki page for Town with No Name over on TCRF, but I've also started on a little remaster project for the game, as it's finicky to emulate and is prime material for tons of quality of life changes (that I wanna make so you can turn them off :P) that'll make it a more accessible and less frustrating experience. 'Cuz it's a funny game!

An example of the framework I've been making for the game and placeholder pausing/unpausing ability. The framework is similar to how the primitive engine the original game used (D.U.N.E) worked so it'll be easier to string the game together.

An example of the subtitles system. How's this font look?

Will it come to Newgrounds??

Probably not as I didn't "make" the game lol.

Miniparse

Urrrghhhh I don't like working in Flash as much anymore. I talked about this project in a previous news post but Miniparse was gonna be a little tool to make simple Flash point and clicks in, which you could share to NG via User Creations.

Not sure what the fate of this project is yet, but I haven't been working on it.

In Closing

Hey that's a much more manageable amount of active projects! Makes for a much more digestible news post too.

COOKIEBUN, OUT!

A "good mood doodle" I did last night. A "good moodle"!

Go check out @kaiakairos’ PNGTuber software, it’s pretty neato!

Welcome to triple-D!

I'll be lookin' for ya (waitin' for ya? Idk what he says) next time, on Dungeon's, Doodles and Dumps!

@CaptainStevie and @CheddarExuberant bought the Booba Beat bong.

Try saying “Bought the Booba Beat Bong” 5 times fast!

Now’s a good a time as ever to say that I’m updating the game at some point to not use such a precise metronome that’s been tripping up devices with the offset detection I implemented.

Android’s already had some app tinkering floating around from people, but this is the first iOS app I’ve seen that uses Ruffle!

Check it out (iOS and Android), it’s basically a Flash game site but for your phone, complete with bindable touchscreen controller.

It’s got some quirks like some of the SWFs that are used having distorted audio or vector graphics, forcing that landscape resolution on every game, and the “controller” system not working for the Impossible Quiz games, which are on there and aren't intuitively playable with the way they use the keyboard.

The control scheme works surprisingly well for most Flash games though, you’ve got your mouse, game controls and text field input all there. The Binding of Isaac Demo’s defaults utilize the mouse-based tear controls nicely. The app does suffer from classic touchscreen joystick jank, though.

I do wonder how long this app’ll last, I guess from an App Store perspective the games are curated by the app author, so it could be fine…? (But then there’s stuff out there like Roblox, so idk)

And while it made more sense to discourage it back in the day, it is still a game portal…with ads. Not to mention the upkeep needed of an app nowadays.

I dunno! It’s just cool that something like this was done.

It's a weird time for social media on the web right now! I think while we enjoy watching the ships of social media giants slowly sink (Twitter's gunna be a slow one even though that one's appearing to sink the fastest) we should form some healthier online habits as creators and fans! You know Newgrounds has a chronological feed, right?

This thing's pretty versatile if ya didn't know! If you don't like a certain type of feed "event", as they're called, click the cogwheel in the upper-right corner and the feed can clean right up as you'd like, as seen here in this example with this @larrynachos comment.

You can also remove these Ignore settings you set here!

You can also view art submissions in the newer Art Viewer, listen to audio submissions, judge submissions and leave reviews all RIGHT FROM THE FEED!

And lookit all these sub-feeds!! You wanna see your notifications, but JUST your new followers, JUST the reviews you've gotten on your stuff, JUST when you've been @ mentioned? You wanna see literally all the friendships YOUR friends on the site have been makin'?! You're in luck!

And with murmurs of an update to Blogs coming eventually, what better time then now to put the NG Feed into your web-scrolling habits? We could be like Twitter here!* If you're like me and don't do the best with web bookmarks, there's a few easy places to access the Feed from on the site to build that muscle memory with!

*oh dear baby Jesus in the cradle I'm joking.

So come on, and let's utilize the cool parts of the internet while Web 3.0 dies!

I wanna do some more non-Artist News blog posts...so here, have a video teaser I just shared of Randy 2! To quote myself on Twitter:

Not gonna be posting much, if ANY, more video of Randy Learns History to Twitter/NG/YouTube before it's done, sooooo enjoy this WIP!

I'm so so so happy with how this is turning out, thanks to everyone who's been helpin' me make it!!!

"What's new with you?" says the Blog posting button. Well let me tell you.

It all started with helping out with Love Me Newgrounds 2 (which just came out today!) and becoming friends with @CaptainStevie, who wanted to go to this meet but it ended up not workin' out for him. If it weren't for us having similar autistic experiences I don't think I'd ever have considered going to this. For an unforgettable experience, I have to thank him deeply for his motivation to do this, and in another timeline, there's a selfie of the two of us at the meet in this blog post.

SO!

Let's recap this thing.

The day before the meet rolls around. Reassuringly, I'm not the only one who's nervous. @Tamag0 and I doodle what we think we're gonna look like the whole time.

Tamago and I would end up not seeing each other as they came after the meet, and in my head I confused multiple people for them, LOL

In the blink of an eye, though, the meetup was then upon us. We were all OFF TO PHILLY.

...Even though TooManyGames wasn't technically in Philly but yunno, it feels GOOD to say "Newgrounds Philly meetup".

THE MEETUP

My NG account turned 8 years old on the day of the meetup, and it was time to celebrate!

I get there and go to get my badge, and the woman behind the table looked at my shirt and was like "Well I know what you're here to see!". The con opens, and I scope the layout and run into a few people I wasn't expecting to see in the process!

First was Vinny Vinesauce who had come in prior to his meet and greet table. I was able to have a quick exchange with him which was really cool! He had asked about the NG meet and I answered questions about it, and told where it was goin' on, and he said he was interested in it and talked to / wanted to talk to Tom about it and such. He ended up popping his head over and I had no idea until today! Super chill guy!

Oh and then for all that psyching myself up to see NG people, I didn't factor in the possibility of running into old homeschooler friends! We were all very surprised to see each other and chatted for a bit as we ran into each other here and there.

I would later recognize some NG folk from the con opening with all of us in the arcade area, but 20 minutes before the meet I walk past the stage entrance and see my first Newgrounder - @YendorNG watchin' for people. And we Spiderman Pointing meme'd.

The swag table, complete with @PKettles print. Other people's free stuff that was brought soon accumulated as well. @Shal jumpscare in the upper-right!

Can't have a meetup without a NG flag!

My place in the guestbook!

Newgrounds real???

It became very apparent very quickly how special this was gonna be after that. Photos, signings, swag exchanging...It wasn't even 3:00 yet! @CorTat-G and the Newgrounds Podcast team (@Droid, @heyopc and @Shal) took the stage, said thank yous to everyone, and started an impromptu live NGP episode, talkin' about the chicken cheesesteak from the food court heyopc was eating. The stage reeked of chicken cheesesteak afterwards.

Here's @BrandyBuizel being carried off-stage to applause.

A little bit into the panel format, @TomFulp walked in and on-stage, who wasn't sure if the bustling commotion from a far off stage was the meetup or not (it was). The panel went back to meetup mode shortly after that and I got to say hi and chat to Tom for a bit here and there!

I also had a very in-depth chat with @Luis and got a sticker from @SrPelo, whom I complemented on all the pins he was wearing and recognized a few.

Kinda going out of order in terms of the order of events at this point - @Taka was givin' out doodles of people and I received one! He also brought the McDonalds ad poster that people signed. @Squidly brought a plushie of their character Chompy which we all signed too!

I also got an awesome handmade NG bracelet from @vividlance, and I'm happy for whoever got the one that read "NEMGROUNDS".

@emizip went to the meet in an ENA cosplay!

I had tried to do a mini sketchbook thing but quickly into the meet I realized that wasn't gonna work out very well, but I did get doodles from @emizip and @BrandyBuizel, as well as a signature from @Hibachi before abandoning it. Thank you three!

@milkypossum and @MKMaffo (awesome stickers!) walked by me at one point, and I didn't realize until today that the person with the @MindChamber logo on their outfit...just actually might've been MindChamber? :P

At some point talking to Taka and his friends I look down and see that an event sticker had managed to stick itself to the bottom of my shoe. Someone had to have unpeeled the back of it, and left it on the ground sticky side up! Very odd. I stuck it to my shirt, and then to my lil' sketchbook along with my name tag.

There's so much I'm going to be leaving out here, people I talked to, swag I acquired, photos and video I took, but it really was a JAM-PACKED HOUR that went by just like that! After that hour exhaustion seriously set in though, socializing at that point was like...*fart noise*

I felt bad 'cuz there were some NG folk still around after and I was just like, gone, haha. But I did get to high-five @jack later.

The Funkin' Crew were late to the meetup and I didn't get to meet any of them sadly. :c

Also, for beefing the timing of the StreetPass event at the con (it was today and not yesterday), I managed to StreetPass 10 people! Wowza!

And yeah...aside from checkin' out the con afterwards, that's pretty much the gist of it!

So what were my main takeaways?

• That was one of the coolest things I've EVER done
• Cons are NOT SENSORY-FRIENDLY at all. I was both in my element as far as the content of the con goes..and NOT in my element at the same time, as far as sensory and social stuff goes. Weird!
• I can be socially awkward! I really hope the interactions I had with you all were pleasant!

Thank you to all the event organizers and everyone who came and made this meetup what it was! This kinda thing isn't really my thing at all, so I'm happy to have had the experience now! Did I mention this was my FIRST EVER CON??

My legs and feet still hurt.

BACK TO WORK ON RANDY LEARNS HISTORY!

ONE HOUR LONG POINT N' CLICK ADVENTURE!

FULLY VOICE ACTED LIKE LOVE ME NG 2!

BE ON THE LOOKOUT!

-XOXO Dungeon <3

What it is, people, what it is! Randy Learns History is going quite well! The scope of the project is locked in, about an hour or so of average gameplay is my goal, and given playtester feedback so far I think it’s a perfectly attainable goal, which I’m happy about! Randy has also reached over 100+ voice lines in the game already. My estimations put Randy’s voice line amount at possibly 600+ and the finished game’s file size zipped at 10-15 MB, which isn’t too shabby given the amount of voice acting this game is gonna have overall! Peep some screencaps I’ve shared elsewhere:

Hark! It’s the castle in Medieval Time, one of the time periods you can travel to in your trusty time machine.

The gorgeous interior of your time machine.

Me when

Glowup of the century!

As I’ve said before, the game will release for browsers and as a download when it’s done, here on Newgrounds, GameJolt and itch! I’ve had a blast making it so far and I think I really streamlined what I like in an adventure game. Gonna be a fun one! Excited to see what people think whenever it’s out. <3

-XOXO Dungeon

2022 was a crazy, bittersweet but cool year!

We start off with the release of Pico VS Bear DX early in January:

It's now a year old, and it's a project I am still quite proud of! It wouldn't be the same game without all the help I got for it along the way, so thank you everyone!

VERY LATE EDIT: This game also got High Quality Ripped, which was a complete and lovely surprise and I’m not sure why I’m just remembering this!

In February some friends and I make this silly little Chikn parody.

A concrete direction for Randy Learns History is set around March and progress begins to be made on development!

Flash Forward 2022 happens and a lotta great stuff comes out of it! Portal Defenders: Tower Defense, Last Piece of Cake DX and Sausage Game are just a few highlights of mine!

I become involved with thumbnail upscaling/re-creating around this time as well. Thumbnail upscaling efforts include: PuffballsUnited's entire portalography, Eddsworld's portalography, Bluebaby/Edmund McMillen's portalography, and all the JonBro games.

Then I got graffiti I drew into Stepford's 360 Degrees:

Mid-year sees my involvement in The Life and Death of Boe:

It kinda worked out that one of the original games this collab was based on just had sound effects voiced by Graeme and no music for the scenes, so I just went with that to save time in my entry.

I make a haiku generator over the summer and put it up on my website.

I get a shoutout in The Tank Tribune!

I also celebrate an indeterminate amount of time spent on this website.

Shoot Trip Die comes out, and the obsession begins to set in. My physical and mental health begins to decline around this time too, unrelated to the awesomeness of this game!

The bunnies then assert themselves on Newgrounds.

Speaking of bunnies, I start to make a little vent-art game about bunnies, which is an animal I seem to like. This game becomes Dream Medicine!

Come Autumn I leave the Strobe Interactive team working on the Henry fangame Attacking the Tower, and become Strobe Emeritus.

I also start the collab everyone on the BBS hears about for weeks:

That's right, good ol' Faces of 2022! Which I wrote up about here.

But before that collab comes out, I write some music (including the main theme) for Parallelogram Man, marking the first time Levi and I ever collab!

Somewhere around this time I also got the Steam Deck, which is a pretty awesome device.

Near the end of the year the only real thing of note aside from participating in the Secret Santa is (and it's been talked about a little bit in public) that I start to assist Levi in programming the next Shoot Trip Die update, which I'm still finishing up with him and will come out this year! It's been a huge honor to help make a game I've been passionately obsessed with, and bug reporting for, even better! <3

PHEW!

So how do I feel about this past year, based on the expectations I had for it at the end of 2021?

I want 2022 on NG for me, and for ALL of us, to be even crazier.

...and what did I open this post up unconsciously with? I call that a victory.

2022 is going to be the year of making promised deadlines, I'm CALLING it!! :D

I mean -

I think we're two for two!

So despite this year being the absolute worst for my anxiety and mental health EVER - I'd chalk 2022 up to a success!

I suppose the tradition forming here with these news posts is for me to set new goals for the new year soooo...how do I want 2023 to go?

An obvious goal for myself is to improve my anxiety and such, which unfortunately I haven't been fully on top of yet. Another one is quite random but it just popped into my mind:

I want to accomplish something that makes me emotional.

Not because I'm some beast incapable of feeling things. What I really mean by this is, at least once, I'd like to "outdo" my expectations a bit this year, even if it only makes me a little bit emotional!

I'm using markdown like I'm freakin' GREG HEFFLEY from Diary of A Wimpy Kid all of a sudden, what's up with that?

IN CLOSING! What am I working on so far this year??

Shoot Trip Die and Randy, mostly! I'm also working on a little something for Flash Forward 2023, so hopefully look forward to that! And of course, all the other stuff I've mentioned in previous news posts, you'll hear about 'em in the future eventually!

Ooooh a teaserrrrr! (Very much a WIP)

It just became Friday the 13th as I wrap this post up LOL

EDIT: oh crap!!!

Here's to more stuff, more growth, and holy crap I'll be 23 this year WHAT.

I'll leave you with this exclusive Twitter Circle banger:

Love you all except if I don't love you!

-XOXO Dungeon