Buyog's Lair

Strong Guy 2.1

2012-02-02T20:23:00.001-05:00

Yesterday Snakebyte and Oldboy alerted me to a couple of playability issues with our recent Strong Guy release. I've updated the download to address these problems, so you'll probably want to grab the new version from his page.

Change list


* 2 Feb 2012: v2.1
  - minor patch release to address bugs reported in 2.0
  - Megaton Fury and X-Factor Attacks both prevent premature KOs now (which can cause weird end-of-round timing issues) (thanks, Snakebyte!)
  - Megaton Fury now works properly when triggered in a corner (thanks again, Snakebyte!)
  - fixed victory portrait & added win quotes (thanks, oldboy!)

On Groundhog Day...

2012-02-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

Yeah, not so much for Christmas... this may as well be a Groundhog Day release! =P I know that I said a few weeks ago that any additional releases I made in January as belated parts of our 12 Days of Christmas event would get sarcastic titles like "on the 36th day of Christmas," but I managed to drag the polishing and beta cycle into February, so here we are. :-\ (note: I do still have two more holiday gifts, which I'll blog about soon)

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of beta testing with McCready and a few of my other ScruffyDragon teammates (thanks, guys), I'm proud to present Strong Guy 2.0! He's been almost completely restructured from bottom to top, with new sounds, effects, intros & outros, attack chains, and special & hyper moves:

"Up You Go!" anti-air special

Spinning Piledriver hyper

X-Factor Attacks hyper

Megaton Fury hyper

Here's the (abridged) change set from his readme file:

* 1 Feb 2012: v2.0
  - revamped all basic attacks (changed the chain order, timings, etc)
  - MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
  - new voice samples
  - new intro w/ Lila Cheney
  - new KO animation (heart attack if KO'ed by health loss due to kinetic overload)
  - new "nearly heart attacked" winpose
  - new lose / draw game animations
  - new round-end effects (especially if winning by hyper)
  - heavily tweaked combo code
  - tweaked Touchdown hyper damage, movement, timing and kineticE effects
  - new special: Up You Go (anti-air) (F,D,DF + P)
  - new hyper: Spinning Piledriver (F,DF,D + PP)
  - new hyper: X-Factor Attacks (QCB + P and K of equal strength)
  - new hyper: Megaton Fury (F,DF,D + KK)

Anyway, we hope you enjoy him, and as always, feel free to let us know (here or over at Scruffy) if you find any bugs or unexpected behavior.

You can get Strong Guy v2.0 here, on his page.

[Release Watch] Sinestro, Day 1

2012-01-31T08:42:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm all but done with Strong Guy 2.0 (expect a release very soon), it's time to turn my attention back to Sinestro 1.0, so welcome to my next Release Watch!

Late last year I posted a Dev Plan for Sinestro. That, plus a few other things I've since added to the plan, will form the outline I'll be tracking here:

Sinestro 1.0 progress

Dev Plan

~~forward jump~~
~~backward jump~~
~~taunt~~
new intro: oath scene from Sinestro Corps War #1
new intro: ???
new win pose: stand & laugh over P2
lose / draw game animations
add missing basic attacks:
- ~~crouching weak punch~~
- ~~crouching medium punch~~
- crouching weak kick
- crouching medium kick
- at least one throw
add "powered" versions (with constructs) for basic attacks that don't have them yet:
- crouching light punch
- crouching medium punch
- ~~crouching hard punch~~
- crouching light kick
- crouching medium kick
- crouching hard kick
- ~~air light punch~~
- ~~air medium punch~~
- ~~air hard punch~~
- air light kick
- air medium kick
- air hard kick
special attacks to be done:
- Morningstar
- Armored Assault (low-damage Psycho Crusher style move)
hyper attacks:
- Sinestro Corps (helper gang attack)
- Parallax Unleashed
- Master of Fear (yellow core hyper assist)

Bugs

~~sound for standing hard punch sometimes doesn't play~~
~~Tweak basic attack damage to be stronger with the constructs~~
~~Launcher needs superjump follow~~
no landing sound on jump
hair gray streak in most palettes should be toned down
teeth in most sprites should be white, not yellow/green/gray
falling axes in Fall Before Me don't have hitsparks
cpunch3 and taunt constructs need to be folded into the core palette so they can be recolored
Some animations need collision boxes:
- 240 (skick2)
- 260 (skick3)
- 660 (akick3)
- 1120 (deadly stare end)

Completed tasks: 9 of 29
Fixed bugs: 3 of 9
Total tasks remaining: 26

Still a lot to do, but my ScruffyDragon teammate Bizarro Toro is helping a lot. I'll show off some of his contributions soon.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 12

2012-01-31T05:37:00.001-05:00

Guido's officially in private beta! I've gotten feedback from McCready, Magus, and BizarroToro, all of which I will be using tonight to make a final beta. Then when I have the Big Mac's sign off, maybe by tomorrow, he'll go up for download here and on Scruffy! :)

Stay tuned later for the first Release Watch for Sinestro.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 11

2012-01-28T01:01:00.000-05:00

I finished the camera trickery for Strong Guy's hypers today. He's in McCready's hands now for final review, beta testing, and approval; I expect this to break loose in a day or two.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 10

2012-01-26T23:18:00.000-05:00

So, this is likely going to be the last installment of Strong Guy Release Watch! I've got the perfect sound effects for Havok and Polaris now, and have revamped how the Quicksilver part works as well. Then this morning I did an audit through all of his hypers to add the KineticE damage multiplier apply to all of his physical force-based hypers: Touchdown, Cannonball (Hyper Blanka Envy), and Pinhead. Finally, I've revamped Touchdown (again) to make it more visually appealing and to distinguish it a bit more from Hyper Pinhead in terms of how it affects player 2.

That just leaves the tweaks to camera behavior for Megaton Fury and Piledriver.

Remix tasks

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
Quicksilver entrance/attack/get-hit/exit/sound
Wolfsbane entrance/fastball special/sound
Madrox drop-kick/exit
Polaris entrance/attack/exit/sound
Havok entrance/attack/exit/sound

Bugs reported in beta testing

~~Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states~~
Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
Better camera control for Piledriver
~~Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro~~
~~Tweak Touchdown hyper to a 2-hit attack: grapple, carry, smash into the wall~~

Completed tasks: 24 of 26
Tasks remaining: 2

I'll be giving it over to McCready tonight for final review. And then... :)

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 9

2012-01-26T02:28:00.002-05:00

Welcome back to our ongoing Release Watch for Strong Guy! I had to drive to work Monday, effectively eliminating my MUGEN time for that day. Yesterday, I spent some time tweaking things here and there, adding missing "lost by timeout" anims, aligning messed-up custom hit animations for the Piledriver hyper, that sort of thing. As for the final remaining hyper, X-Factor Attacks, I've been hunting down appropriate sound effects; developing during my commute means I've been testing him with the sound off, and didn't even notice how quiet the attack seemed until last night! :-P I've got Polaris's and Havok's part done, so the sound effects are all that's left there. So close now I can almost taste it!

This puts my remaining task count at 0.2 subparts of the hyper (sounds for Quicksilver and Wolfsbane), and 2 camera bug fixes (which really are both the same issue in two different places, so when I fix one the other will be trivial):

Remix tasks

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
- Quicksilver ~~entrance~~/~~attack~~/~~get-hit~~/~~exit~~/sound
- Wolfsbane ~~entrance~~/~~fastball special~~/sound
- Madrox ~~drop-kick/exit~~
- Polaris ~~entrance~~/~~attack>~~/~~exit~~/~~sound~~
- Havok ~~entrance~~/attack/~~exit~~/~~sound~~

Bugs reported in beta testing

~~Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states~~
Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
Better camera control for Piledriver
~~Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro~~

Completed tasks: 22.8 of 25
Tasks remaining: 2.2

I may have good news for y'all tomorrow or Friday. :)

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 8

2012-01-21T15:06:00.001-05:00

Welcome to today's Release Watch update for Strong Guy. I've finished the segment of the X-Factor Attacks hyper involving the Madrox clones, tweaked Quicksilver's (again, I think for the last time now), and started building out the stubs for the final segment of the hyper, with Havok and Polaris, which should be pretty straightforward, because they're both just beam attacks, and I've done plenty of those. Oh, and as I promised yesterday, I have screenshots of the finished portions of the hyper:

This puts my remaining task count at 1.6 of 5 sub-parts to the hyper, and the 2 camera bug fixes (which really are both the same issue in two different places, so when I fix one the other will be trivial):

Remix tasks

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
- Quicksilver ~~entrance~~/~~attack~~/~~get-hit~~/~~exit~~
- Wolfsbane ~~entrance~~/~~fastball special~~
- Madrox ~~drop-kick/exit~~
- Polaris ~~entrance~~/attack/exit
- Havok ~~entrance~~/attack/exit

Bugs reported in beta testing

~~Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states~~
Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
Better camera control for Piledriver
~~Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro~~

Completed tasks: 22.7 of 25
Tasks remaining: 2.3

Nearly there, folks. :)

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 7

2012-01-19T23:41:00.001-05:00

Today was a reasonably productive day for progress on Strong Guy. I've finished Wolfsbane's part of the X-Factor Attacks hyper, tweaked Quicksilver's, and made the changes McCready suggested for the Touchdown hyper. That puts the remaining task count at 3 of 5 sub-parts to the hyper, and 2 bug fixes:

Remix tasks

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
- Quicksilver ~~entrance~~/~~attack~~/~~get-hit~~/~~exit~~
- Wolfsbane ~~entrance~~/~~fastball special~~
- Madrox drop-kick/exit
- Polaris entrance/attack/exit
- Havok entrance/attack/exit

Bugs reported in beta testing

~~Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states~~
Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
Better camera control for Piledriver
~~Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro~~

Completed tasks: 21.5 of 25
Tasks remaining: 2.6

Tomorrow I should be able to post another screen shot or two.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 6

2012-01-19T06:44:00.001-05:00

I've been busy dealing with non-MUGEN stuff the past few days, so haven't had a ton of time to work on our Strong Guy release. That said, I've finished the Quicksilver part of the X-Factor Attacks hyper, coded most of Guido's part, and started doing the segment with Wolfsbane. So now I'm down to 3.5 of 5 sub-parts to the hyper, and 3 bug fixes:

Remix tasks

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
- Quicksilver ~~entrance~~/~~attack~~/~~get-hit~~/~~exit~~
- Wolfsbane ~~entrance~~/fastball special
- Madrox drop-kick/exit
- Polaris entrance/attack/exit
- Havok entrance/attack/exit

Bugs reported in beta testing

Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states
Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
Better camera control for Piledriver
~~Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro~~

Completed tasks: 21.5 of 25
Tasks remaining: 3.5

Tonight should be a good, productive night. As always I'll post my progress as I go.

SOPA/PIPA and MUGEN

2012-01-18T06:27:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that my site was offline yesterday in support of the protests against the SOPA/PIPA ~~internet censorship~~ anti-piracy legislation being drafted in the U.S. Congress. If you're an American citizen and you haven't gotten involved yet, please consider doing so. If these bills pass, there's a very real chance that fan gaming — including everything we do at ScruffyDragon — would suddenly become illegal under U.S. law, and we'd be shut down. :(

I know a lot of my readers are not U.S. citizens, and you might be a little irritated with all this nonsense. Why should you care? Well, the fact is, other nations often take cues from the United States on this type of law, so if these bills pass here, there's a nonzero chance that your country will consider passing something similar. And the Internet would be a sadder, grimmer place if that happens.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast, already in progress.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 5

2012-01-15T23:02:00.001-05:00

I didn't post on Friday, partly because I drove to work instead of carpooling, so didn't have morning/afternoon MUGEN time. But when I got the kids to bed (after the requisite Wii time), I tackled a couple of things on my to-do list for our upcoming Strong Guy release: I've almost finished the Quicksilver portion of the X-Factor Attacks hyper, and fixed a minor bug McCready found with the new Lila Cheney intro. That leaves 4 of 5 sub-parts to the hyper, which I'll start splitting out as fractions of the main task, and 3 bug fixes:

Remix tasks

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
- Quicksilver ~~entrance~~/~~attack~~/~~get-hit~~/~~exit~~
- Madrox drop-kick/exit
- Wolfsbane entrance/fastball special
- Polaris entrance/attack/exit
- Havok entrance/attack/exit

Bugs reported in beta testing

Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states
Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
Better camera control for Piledriver
~~Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro~~

Completed tasks: 21.2 of 25
Tasks remaining: 3.8

I've got the day off tomorrow but I'll be helping my daughter paint her bedroom. If I get some time to do new Guido stuff, I'll for sure post it here.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 4

2012-01-12T22:22:00.000-05:00

So I shared my in-development version of Strong Guy with McCready last night to get his feedback, and he's provided it. That adds a few more minor bugs/tweaks to my list, but Megaton Fury and Touchdown will be better for it. I've also started the X-Factor Attacks hyper, but there's not really enough to show off yet, maybe tomorrow.

Remix tasks

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
- Quicksilver ~~entrance~~/~~attack~~/get-hit/exit
- Madrox drop-kick/exit
- Wolfsbane entrance/fastball special
- Polaris entrance/attack/exit
- Havok entrance/attack/exit

Bugs reported in beta testing

Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states
Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
Better camera control for Piledriver
Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro

Completed tasks: 20 of 25
Tasks remaining: 5

See you tomorrow!

On the 17th day of Christmas

2012-01-11T22:19:00.001-05:00

Feeding Frenzy special

Quick Snack hyper

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm slow and irresponsible and a promise-breaker for not delivering my "12 Days" gifts during the 12 days. Love it or hate it, it is what it is this year. So everytime I release stuff over the rest of the month of January will make fun of my lack of schedule-timeliness. Thus, today is the 17th Day of Christmas.

Earlier this month, I released an update to Parasite that wasn't quite as done as I'd hoped for. Yes, there are still quite a few unfinished power sets -- that's my next focus with him -- but I had a couple of things I wanted to do for better playability. Today I'm releasing a version that accurately captures that vision:

* 11 Jan 2012: v2.2.1
  - new level-1 hyper: Quick Snack (QCB + PP/KK), steals a random powerset from someone off-screen
  - fixed this readme to include the command for Feeding Frenzy (weak kick + hard punch or weak punch + hard kick)
  - bugfix to Feeding Frenzy: air version didn't have any sound effect
  - bugfix to re-enable palettes 7 through 12 (which got accidentally disabled)
  - changed command for Power Overload: now it's F,D,DF + punch & kick of equal strength

Like I said, there's a lot still to be done with him, but I'm pretty happy with the playstyle changes made possible by the new Feeding Frenzy and Quick Snack attacks.

You can get Parasite v2.2.1 here, on his page.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 3

2012-01-10T20:16:00.001-05:00

Sweet! I think I've got Strong Guy's new hyper, Megaton Fury, done! That just leaves one more hyper, X-Factor Attacks, left to finish.

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
~~new hyper: Megaton Fury~~
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks

Completed tasks: 20 of 21
Tasks remaining: 1

See you tomorrow, hopefully with at least a first shot of X-Factor Attacks, and maybe more.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 2

2012-01-09T23:13:00.001-05:00

Welcome to our next installment of Release Watch! I guess by now you probably noticed that I took the weekend off. If you don't like that, well, there are plenty of other places on the internet where you can take your clicks. -_-

I've been hammering away at Strong Guy's v2.0 release, trying to get it ready to release. The problem is that it's hard to show you progress when I'm just fine-tuning complicated level-3 hypers now. I could break it down in finer-grained detail and tell you that, since Friday, I've managed to get this much done on the new Megaton Fury hyper:

got the timing right on the first half (the superpause was in the wrong place, and I didn't realize it at first)
got the behavior of the Sentinel mostly done (he still needs boot jet anims)
got the flying rock debris showing up and doing damage
got the sentinel explosion coded and timed more or less where I want it (probably still needs a little fine-tuning, honestly)

That just leaves a couple of things to be done with that hyper:

figure out why all of my explods (for the ground smash etc) aren't showing up
code the sentinel shrapnel projectiles
fix the move startup so it's easier to execute, but also possible for the opponent to block

Plus I still need to code the X-Factor hyper, which I haven't started yet, and which could be just as complicated. Worth it, I hope, but still way longer to finish than I had expected.

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
new hyper: Megaton Fury
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks

Completed tasks: 19 of 21
Tasks remaining: 2

See you tomorrow, hopefully with a second shot of Megaton Fury and the news that it's done and I've moved on to coding the last hyper.

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 1

2012-01-06T14:56:00.001-05:00

Since this is taking longer than I had anticipated (real life complications mostly), I've decided to reinstate a practice I started on the march to finish Blackest Night Hal Jordan last year: the Release Watch. So here's what's left to do / finish before I feel Strong Guy is ready for his v2.0 release:

~~code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)~~
~~add lose on time over anim~~
~~add draw game anim~~
~~fix hypers to not give back power meter~~
~~Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)~~
~~Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)~~
~~De-cheapify basic combo chains~~
~~Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples~~
~~new special: Up You Go~~
~~tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special~~
~~new intro: Lila Cheney teleport~~
~~tweak Touchdown hyper~~
~~add recovery roll~~
~~new audio for jacket-ripping intro~~
~~new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high~~
~~add dizzy state & effects~~
~~improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)~~
~~new hyper: Spinning Piledriver~~
~~"Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper~~
new hyper: Megaton Fury
new hyper: X-Factor Attacks

Completed tasks: 19 of 21
Tasks remaining: 2

Hopefully this provides you a little perspective of how much is changing, and why it's taking longer than I anticipated. So, yeah. Keep it tuned to my RSS feed for updates as they happen.

On the 8th day of Christmas...

2012-01-03T04:55:00.000-05:00

What's a Buyog event without a Parasite update? :)

Tonight (this morning?) I bring you an updated Parasite. He's mostly bug fixes and added support for our new Flash character, but I also gave him a new special, Feeding Frenzy, designed by Jet the Phoenix. It's got both air and ground versions, and allows Parasite to pounce on his opponent for a quick "snack" to boost his power. Took me a while to balance it, but I think it's in pretty good shape now.

You can download Parasite v2.2 on his character page.

Change list:
* 02 Jan 2012: v2.2
  - new special: Feeding Frenzy
  - bugfix to Superman/Heat Vision special
  - bugfix: Lobo clones / Elektra shadows now behave properly on round end
  - bugfix: Erradicator hyper beam wasn't being removed if you got hit out of it
  
Power set updates:
  - added support:
    - Wally West Flash

  - new moves for existing power sets:
    - Fernus the Burning (Martian Manhunter hyper)

EDIT: Added a link to the release thread for this version over at the ScruffyDragon forums.

On the 7th day of Christmas...

2012-01-01T23:49:00.000-05:00

Tonight we kicked off a week-long spriting contest with a twist—it'll take two spriters to win! We think it's a cool idea (Danilokao's, actually), and I'm interested to see how it turns out. Even if you're not an excellent spriter, go give it a shot! The tag team aspect means anyone has a shot at winning, whether they're a long-time expert spriter or not.

On the 6th day of Christmas...

2011-12-31T17:07:00.000-05:00

Tonight one of Scruffy's most talented and prolific spriters, Danilokao, uploaded an awesome e-book tutorial on how to get started with pixel art / character spriting. It's really, really well done, and worth your time to go check it out.

On the 5th day of Christmas...

2011-12-30T21:53:00.000-05:00

Tonight Magus put up a bunch of preview pics of his & McCready's upcoming War Machine character project. It's been slow going due to McCready's work schedule and Magus's broken arm, but they hope to have a release coming up soon.

On the 4th day of Christmas...

2011-12-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

Today we started a new educational / newbie outreach initiative at ScruffyDragon.com we're calling Scruffy University. It includes a dedicated section of the forum for help, FAQs, and (this is the really new bit) tutorials. The first one up is a rewrite/update of the "how to make your own DCvM" post I did here a while back. More coming soon.

On the 3rd day of Christmas...

2011-12-29T06:37:00.003-05:00

Today x-boy released a preview of his MUGEN-based Dungeons & Dragons beat-em-up. It's pretty awesome, go check the release thread and try it out. :)

On the 2nd day of Christmas...

2011-12-28T00:28:00.002-05:00

Today over at ScruffyDragon we released a stage McCready built a while ago for our co-owned Mandarin character project. It's pretty awesome; superjump-enabled and, like Loganir's stages, it's really, really large.

On the 1st day of Christmas...

2011-12-26T03:46:00.000-05:00

I just posted the first gift of this year's 12 Days of Christmas over at ScruffyDragon.com. Thought you all might like to know. ;)

Kicking things off today is the first release of a long-running Scruffy project, the Flash (Wally West). Years ago, the bulk of these sprites were donated to the project by a young spriter by the name of Flaco. At the time, we as a team decided that the style wasn't a good fit with the more "Capcom Versus" style characters we were making for the DC vs Marvel project (he's based on Radel from Rage of the Dragons). While that still holds true (Sic-1's Flash is better proportioned for DCvM), we decided a few months ago that it was a shame to leave Flaco's work unreleased. Since then, I've been working on and off to mash up his sprites and Magus's code from Pocket Flash. This is the result so far.

He has all his basic movements and attacks, one each of intro/winpose/lose/taunt (more in the next release), and these special & hyper moves:

Specials

Whirlwind - QCF + punch
Flurry of Fists - QCB + punch

Hypers

Hyper Tornado - QCF + 2 punches

Flash Wally West is available in the ScruffyDragon.com Downloads section, or you can download him from his WIP page here

More to come!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T10:58:00.002-05:00

(cross-posted from my post at ScruffyDragon)

Team ScruffyDragon would like to thank you all for your continued interest in our efforts here. As I'm sure most of you know, most of the senior Dragons are pretty busy these days with "real life" duties in their jobs, families, and communities. Plus, we like to actually PLAY games sometimes, and a couple of pretty engrossing titles have dropped this year, so there's that (I'm looking at you, MvC3, Skyrim, and Arkham City). Add accidents and injuries to this pile of distractions, and you'll find that things here on the forum have tended to be a little more subdued than in years past. Even so, we didn't want to cancel our now-traditional "12 days of Christmas" event, because after all, we ARE working on things... they just take a little longer than they used to. ;)

Anyway, that's a long way of saying, day 1 of our little soiree will kick off later today with the beta release for a new character we've been teasing for a little while. Not every day will feature character releases--there are some other types releases on the agenda too, plus a few days with other stuff we think you're going to like--but you can look forward to at least a couple of good ones, depending on how much Magus gets done with his broken arm and Danilokao with an arrow in his knee (yeah, okay, he's just playing Skyrim... LOL).

Meanwhile, relax, log off your computers, and spend some quality time with those you love. (Or, if you're alone this holiday season, fire up Netflix and watch a season of your favorite "guilty pleasure" TV show. We won't tell. ;)) We'll be here waiting when you come back. :)

Happy Holidays! Let the gifting commence!

You'd better not shout...

2011-12-23T23:27:00.002-05:00

Looks like it's almost Christmas... :)

Fat fingers

2011-12-14T07:28:00.001-05:00

You know how GMail lets you un-delete emails you've accidentally killed...?

Blogger doesn't give you the same option for comments that get blown away when you accidentally hit the "delete" link instead of the "publish" link for new comments. -_-

So if you've commented recently on my last two Dev Plan posts, you may want to go back and make sure I didn't just blow it away by accident. D'oh!

[Dev Plan] Sinestro

2011-11-30T09:20:00.001-05:00

The response to my Elektra Dev Plan has been pretty positive, and it's also had the effect I'd hoped for: gotten me back in the more of MUGEN creation. So, I think I'm going to keep doing these kinds of posts. Today, let's take a look at my dev plan for Sinestro.

Sinestro just got a new release a few months ago as part of this year's Scruffyversary, but he's not nearly done enough for my taste. Here's how I plan to get from here to there:

forward jump
backward jump
one or two more intros:

re-create his first oath scene from Sinestro Corps War #1
???

a few more win poses?
basic attacks:

crouching & air attacks need powered-up alternate versions with constructs
weak & medium crouching basics
- (can probably make a crouching medium kick out of the air medium kick)
at least one throw (I may use the bony-knuckles sprites & sound from BN Hal's YL mode, but make it a different type of attack)

special attacks to be done:

Morningstar
Armored Assault (low-damage Psycho Crusher style move)

hyper attacks:

Sinestro Corps (helper gang attack)
Parallax Unleashed
Master of Fear (yellow core hyper assist)

More soon.

[Dev Plan] Elektra

2011-11-27T22:38:00.001-05:00

I've got an idea. Might be a good one, might not; I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to go ahead and put this out there and see what y'all think.

As I've mentioned recently, I've got things I still want to accomplish in MUGEN before I fade away, but I'm struggling with motivation and making the time to do them. Looking back at what kept me motivated to finish Blackest Night Hal, my biggest and arguably most ambitious work so far, I remembered the Release Watch posts. This post serves as the first in something similar, but a little more detailed: I'm calling it a Dev Plan. In a nutshell, I'm going to list my development plan for finishing the character, getting them to what I can consider “done.” some of it is coding, some spriting, some is both. All of it is primarily on me, since Daraku and XFields are both apparently busy at the moment.

If this post works to rekindle my enthusiasm for the project (and I hope it does), I plan to continue the series with more Dev Plans for my other still-in-progress WIP characters, so everything's out in the open, no hidden agenda. Today, let's talk about Elektra.

Looking back, I realized that I haven't released a new version of Elektra since Scruffyversary 2009! That's... just sad. Yes, most of my focus last year was on Blackest Night Hal and Parasite (those needy jerks!), but that's no excuse for not giving Ms. Natchios a little love. Here's what her dev plan currently looks like:

finish all get-hit animations
add parry and/or push-back commands
revamp Curse of the Hand projectile sprites
intros:

“skrullektra”
vs Daredevil
vs Wolverine
vs Catwoman (DC vs Marvel counterpart)

win poses:

add transition frame(s) to the current turn-and-pose
take a cue from marrow's “perfect” winpose? (e.g, throw a sai at the player)

basic attacks:

medium crouching kick should slide forward a little
do a new medium crouching punch
finish animating the hair on strong air kick
strong standing kick

special attacks:

air sai throw
spin kick (like Chun-li's)
tweak hyper sai throw (better FX, knock-back, recovery time, etc)

hyper attacks:

finish Ninjitsu (temporary shadow clones)

Hmm. Now that I've listed it all out, I realize that she needs a couple more hypers. Anyone got any bright ideas?

Fighting Burnout

2011-11-06T12:18:00.000-05:00

Scruffyversary and the 12 Days of Christmas always do this to me, you'd think I'd learn. -_-

Since my last post here, I've been busy with catching up on all the "real life" stuff I'd been neglecting during August. Then I spoke at the DojoConf professional conference in mid-September. Then I got busy getting my new professional side-project, ConfSwag.com, ready for launch. Then I took a promotion at work that means less coding but more mentoring and responsibility (and more money too, which sure doesn't hurt), which makes me want to spend more of my free time doing coding so that the lack of coding in my day job doesn't depress my geeky need-to-code brain. Add all that up, and what do you get? Well, not hiatus, exactly, I don't really intend to ever "quit" MUGEN per se. But it means I've got less time for this crazy hobby than any time in the past, and that makes me a little sad. That said, I still have things I want to accomplish, and I intend to see them through.

I've also been giving some thought to doing more coding tutorials here on the blog, to hand the baton off to the next generation of great MUGEN coders. I've already got one tutorial post on coding beam and chain specials in my drafts folder that I may try to polish up and post soon.

Anyway, long story short, I'm not dead, but I may not be around here as much. If you're into the whole social networking thing, feel free to look me up on Twitter, Google Plus, or Facebook (in roughly that order; I rarely post anything on FB, but I'm pretty active on Twitter).

See you soon.

For the Unscruffy

2011-08-08T23:52:00.000-04:00

I recognize that not everyone that reads my blog also checks ScruffyDragon.com on a regular basis, and not everyone is registered over there, so can't get the downloads section anyway. I get it.

That said, most of you, Scruffy members or not, know that this past month we've been celebrating the annual "Scruffyversary" event, marking the anniversary of our domain and team identity as the Scruffy Dragons. It's usually an excuse to show off new stuff, preview upcoming projects, provide new downloads, and so on. This year has been, I think, even more eclectic than usual (certainly more freeform in its schedule :-p), showing just how wide-ranging our interests as a team truly are. Really, you owe it to yourself to go check it out if you haven't.

With all of that said, my part of the month's festivities involved updates to a couple of my previously-released characters, and a preview alpha of one that's been on my back burner for a very long time: Susan Storm Richards, aka the Invisible Woman. These new downloads were all Scruffy-exclusive for the duration of the Scruffyversary event, but I've now updated them here as well. Check out these links to see the new stuff, and grab the new downloads:

I also shared a video (taken by Magus; alas, my current MUGEN computer can't record video) of the updates I'm working on for Strong Guy, based on a bunch of new stuff McCready sent me a few months ago. Should be ready for release sometime soon:

Blackest Night Hal v2.1

2011-07-25T10:28:00.002-04:00

My friend AngelusEcks (creator of the awesome Atom MUGEN character) just reminded me that I haven't yet blogged about this (I tweeted about it, so if you follow me on Twitter, you'll already know). Back on July 1st, I uploaded a fix to Blackest Night Hal Jordan that eliminates all of the MUGEN 1.0 bugs, and a few others besides. I also gave him a dedicated character page with the download link, and more details and screenshots of all the custom lantern modes.

Meanwhile, I'm feverishly working on several character releases and updates as part of the Scruffy Dragon Team's Scruffyversary event. Head over to ScruffyDragon.com to see all the cool stuff my teammates are doing, and the few new things I'm cranking out in my sleepless nights. I'm going to keep them exclusive to the Scruffy event for the duration, but will have a big post or three to talk about them here when the month is over.

Coming soon...

2011-07-14T04:14:00.000-04:00

Something to look for in a few days:

Bubble Toss special

Stormwalls hyper

Meanwhile, you should like ScruffyDragon on Facebook and follow @ScruffyDragonX on Twitter.

Stealth Mode

2011-06-05T02:38:00.000-04:00

So you haven't seen much from me since the big release of Blackest Night Hal almost 2 months ago (holy cats!!! has it really been that long?!?)

Then some of you probably noticed that this blog (in fact, most of my site) disappeared for a couple of days.

Um, yeah. Sorry about that?

A bundle of things are to blame for this "stealth mode" on my part:

Work and family life both got really busy these past two months
I'm building a chicken coop during most of my free daylight hours (long story, I'll likely go into it on my personal blog at some point in the near future)
I'm building a pretty complex web app in most of my free night hours (I've been trying to get it ready to launch for a few weeks now)
Popcap finally released Plants vs Zombies for Android this week!
I'm also in the middle of a huge, long-overdue overhaul of my entire site
Frankly, the final deathmarch to get Hal ready for release kind of burned my out on MUGEN for a little while there =\

So... lots of reasons, but none of them would have stopped me from at least posting something here sooner to explain what was going on. For that, I offer my apologies, and the promise that I do, in fact, have a few things in the pipeline for the MUGEN public.

Finally, a note on Scruffyversary. I explained back in April that we were moving it to the summer to allow for more lead time on the various projects we're all working on. Today I can announce that this year's Scruffyversary will be in July; not sure if we'll launch on July 1st or wait until the 3rd/4th (which would be the start of the first full week). I'll post more concrete details soon, but for now, know that you have something to look forward to next month.

We'll try to make it worth the wait.

Released: Blackest Night Hal Jordan!

2011-04-10T04:12:00.001-04:00

Today, after far more work than I had originally expected, I bring to you the Blackest Night release for Mr. Harold Jordan, the Green/Red/Orange/Yellow/Blue/Indigo/Black Lantern!

It's been a long run to get this guy done, and I absolutely could NOT have done it without the able assistance of my fellow ScruffyDragons, Jet the Phoenix and ArmageddoN. A big thank-you to them both for all the custom sprite work; most of the new / re-paletted stuff is from the two of them.

CLICK HERE to download Hal (he'll soon have his own dedicated page here on my site, since he's so different from the previous release). Read the readme file in the archive for all the details about his different modes, give him a whirl, then I'd love to hear your feedback on the Scruffy release thread, or here on my blog.

As you know, I'd really hoped to have Hal done in time for the 12 Days of Christmas, but I just couldn't justify giving you something not as good as it could be just to meet an arbitrary deadline. I have my crack team of beta testers to thank for their role in making this release as tight as possible. Big thanks to each of them.

And, as always, thank all of you for your continued interest in and support of mine and my team's efforts. MUGEN is at its best when we are celebrating each other's achievements, and not complaining that people aren't giving us enough goodies. The world would be a better place if we all tried to be a little bit more like Saint Walker, and a little bit less like Larfleeze. ;)

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 18

2011-04-08T04:11:00.000-04:00

Only one small bug left to resolve with Blackest Night Hal's Construct Corps hyper for Orange Lantern mode! It's looking like tonight will be the night. :D

Status recap:

implemented orange mode's Construct Corps custom hyper (only one small bug left to find & fix!)

Beta issues resolved: 80 of 80
Tasks remaining: 0!

For now, I need sleep. Then work. Then family time. Check back around 10-11pm EDT tonight, I ought to have something interesting uploaded by then. ;)

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 17

2011-04-07T01:51:00.000-04:00

Last night I got a message from my co-creator on Blackest Night Hal, ArmageddoN, with his final list of bugs he'd found; my work these past few nights had introduced several more issues, albeit small ones. I spent tonight fixing them, then worked a bit on the Construct Corps sprites, but didn't get far enough along to really show it off yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Status recap:

fixed broken command for the custom air specials for orange / blue modes
fixed Emerald Swordsman sword color for black mode
fixed broken command for blue mode's air ion storm
tweaked yellow mode's Golden Dragons hyper (dragon hitdef timings)
fixed dash lines for black mode
added taunt (but not lantern charge) for orange and black modes

Beta issues resolved: 79 of 80
Tasks remaining: 1

We're so excited to be close to releasing this guy into the wild! He's been a ton of fun to work on. That said, when he's released, I won't be wanting to work on another ring-slinger for a while (except maybe Mandarin, because he won't play at all like a member of one of the color-corps ;))

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 16

2011-04-06T02:29:00.000-04:00

So tonight I cracked open my old, dead PC and dug out my hard drive full of MUGEN goodies, including the remixed version of Hal Jordan that my ScruffyDragon teammate SethZankuten did last year (sorry, it's not public yet), with an eye to grab a couple more things from his version to adapt (this was one of the three things ArmageddoN reminded me a few days ago that I'd wanted to do). Once I'd mounted that drive via external enclosure to my laptop, I grabbed what I needed, and brought that code in. The remixed, new-and-improved Emerald Swordsman is now complete.

I also tweaked the Black Lantern mode's Piercing Strike special to include a little forward momentum, further differentiating it from the regular Ring Strike moves. I'm pretty happy with Black mode now, and am thinking about cutting another YouTube vid of that mode in action.

That leaves me with just Orange Lantern mode's Construct Corps hyper to do, and it should be ready to show soon. And once that's done, he'll be ready for one final pass my my beta team. With any luck, we'll have a release by the weekend. :)

Status recap:

tweaked Piercing Strike to have a little fwd momentum
finished adapting Seth-tweaked Emerald Swordsman special

Beta issues resolved: 73 of 74
Tasks remaining: 1

Now, off to bed!

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 15

2011-04-04T01:18:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned before how I don't get much MUGEN work done on the weekends. This trend continues, and yet from Friday night until now, I've managed to do a couple of things to move this ball a bit closer to the goal, fixing the bugs my buddy ArmageddoN told me about a few days ago:

fixed: something strange happens if you beat the opponent using selfish grab
fixed: Smackdown sprites move faster than the gloves

The way I fixed that second bug was kind of sneaky: because Red Lantern Hal moves slightly faster than the other modes, it was a bit of a pain to fix the Smackdown hyper to work right for him, and still work the same for all the other modes... so I just changed his custom move trigger. Instead of his custom hyper, Construct Corps, replacing Soldier of Oa, it now replaces Smackdown. Soldier of Oa isn't messed up by his speed boost, so, problem solved. ;)

Latest bug tally:
Beta issues resolved: 72 of 74
Tasks remaining: 2

I've got some sprites to dig off the hard drive on my old, dead PC, before I can finish the Orange mode's Construct Corps hyper, but I'll hopefully be able to do that tomorrow.

Yesterday

2011-04-02T01:20:00.001-04:00

Many of you may have noticed that yesterday was "don't believe everything you read on the Internet day", otherwise known as April Fools Day. Our little contribution was the Latino "takeover" of the ScruffyDragon forums for the day (in fact, as I write this, they're still like that). This is a real announcement, hidden in a joke — in fact we DO have a Latino forum now (which I'll call SDL for short) whose real URL is ScruffyDragonLatino.com. If you speak Spanish, and would feel more comfortable hanging out there instead of the English site, please feel free to sign up over there. The domain for the English forum will switch back soon, but both sites will remain up. The neat thing about SDL is that you're likely to see members of the ScruffyDragon team over there that hardly ever (if at all) post on the English side of things: ArielCo, JeffPR, and probably others as it grows.

That leads me to thing #2: Scruffyversary, our annual celebration of the cool stuff our team is doing. In a nutshell, this year is going to be a little different: instead of April being a month full of teases, videos, and releases, it's going to be much more low-key, and we'll be moving the official Scruffyversary celebration to the summer. There are a few good reasons for doing this:

The senior Dragons are all pretty swamped in April, and our schedules free up quite a bit around June/July, so we'll be able to do more cool stuff.
It spreads the big Scruffy celebrations out a little more evenly: the 12 Days of Christmas in December/January, and the Scruffyversary around 6 months its opposite.
It gives us more time to finish the thing we want most to finish (I'll let you figure out what that might be ;))

So, yeah. No Scruffyversary this month, sorry. :(

BUT!!!

I have plans for my own creations this month. I know a few others on the team do as well. Plus the main forum will be marking a cool milestone sometime soon, and we'll likely organize some forum activities around it (think sprite contests, design challenges, that sort of thing). Plus there's now the new Latino Forum to grow, if you're into that. So despite the potentially disappointing lack of Scruffy holidays this month, there's still quite a bit going on. Stay tuned to this space, and both ScruffyDragon Forums, for much more to come.

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 14

2011-03-31T13:59:00.000-04:00

Last night I finished the Black Lantern custom hyper, Nekron Rising. Took more time than I'd anticipated, but I like it a lot better now. I also got a bug report from my co-creator, ArmageddoN, on a couple of minor things that he'd found in my latest build. Sooooo.... back up to 4 tasks remaining:

Latest bug tally:
Beta issues resolved: 70 of 74
Tasks remaining: 4

I still owe a post on our plans for Scruffyversary, which would normally be starting tomorrow. I'll try and put that up tonight.

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 13

2011-03-30T01:11:00.000-04:00

I've got the Black Lantern custom hyper, Nekron Rising, almost done. Needs a few sound and hitdef tweaks, but it's pretty much there. That just leaves me with the Orange Lantern mode's "Construct Corps" hyper left to do! :)

Latest bug tally:
Beta issues resolved: 70 of 71
Tasks remaining: 1!!

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 12

2011-03-28T11:13:00.000-04:00

Another weekend has come and gone, filled with house and yard work, errands, family time... and very little MUGEN work. But the new week is upon us, and I fully intend to finish and release Blackest Night Hal Jordan this week! (I'd originally thought about doing a second round of beta testing, but on reflection, he's ready to be seen by a bigger group of people than that.

As I said on Friday, there are two things left to be done; neither one is a bug, per se, but they're both necessary before the release:

[Black Lantern mode] Nekron Rising — this move was stubbed in when I gave him to my beta team, but it's not yet finished: no sound effects, no collision boxes, and it doesn't do any damage. That said, it's closer to being done than #2:
[Orange Lantern mode] Construct Corps hyper — Hal calls upon the orange light to create construct duplicates of his friends to help him attack. I'm planning on using Kilowog and John Stewart sprites, as I have permissions to both, but I may throw some others in as well if I have the time and inclination to sprite them. I still don't have a really good handle on how this move is going to play out, but as I experiement, it should start to come into focus.

Latest bug tally:
Beta issues resolved: 69 of 71
Tasks remaining: 2

Stay tuned this week for Hal, a beta announcement for another of my projects, and more.

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 11

2011-03-25T00:13:00.000-04:00

Well, that was fun. :)

Tonight I've finished implementing Blackest Night Hal Jordan's Blue Lantern handicap. Here's what I originally wrote about this concept:

quirk: moves sometimes interrupted by the ring asking "what do you hope for?"

The idea is that, as a tradeoff for the nearly-always-full power bar that the Blue Lantern ring provides, Hal sometimes gets interrupted — even if he's right in the middle of a move — by the ring pestering him. It adds a fun, unique dimension to this mode, and I like it quite a bit (if I do say so myself).

Latest bug tally:
Beta issues resolved: 69 of 71
Tasks remaining: 2

And now, it's time for All Star Superman. :)

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 10

2011-03-24T11:50:00.000-04:00

Too bad not every day can be a take-the-netbook-on-the-drive day! Less got done yesterday on Blackest Night Hal Jordan, but it was in laying important groundwork.

I realized this morning that I haven't told you what the three remaining items on my tasklist actually ARE. Simple bugs? Relatively quick and easy to finish. These three, in contrast, may take as much as a couple of nights each:

[Blue Lantern mode] implement "what do you hope for?" ring interruptions (the handicap that keeps this mode from being too powerful)
[Orange Lantern mode] finish the Construct Corps custom hyper
[Black Lantern mode] finish the Nekron Rising custom hyper

Latest bug tally (unchanged from yesterday, since I'm still in progress):
Beta issues resolved: 68 of 71
Tasks remaining: 3

I spent last night starting to build out the Blue Lantern mode handicap. The ring effect and voice are done, now I just need to actually code the state that uses them to interrupt Hal's moves. I have the code already laid out in my mind, so hopefully I should be able to knock it out tonight.

And when I do, I'll be taking a break to watch All Star Superman. :)

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 9

2011-03-22T22:26:00.000-04:00

So like I said yesterday, I was able to take the netbook on my carpool to work this morning, since my wife wasn't going to be using it. Unsurprisingly, with 2-1/2 hours driving time travelling to work and back again, I got quite a bit done on Blackest Night Hal Jordan! In reviewing his status, I found a couple of things I'd forgotten to put on the "to be finished" list, so the number of beta issues is higher today, but I was also able to knock out quite a few things from the list, getting it down to brass tacks:

added push-back on crouch light kick (to prevent infinite in corner)
tweaked push-back on all other standing/crouching basic attacks
fixed: Soldier of Oa sometimes can jump too far off the screen
wontfix: Ion Force hyper can be spammed at least three times (it doesn't hit enemies when they're down, so spamming doesn't really matter that much in this case)
implement lantern power-saving bonus [Orange Lantern mode] (his moves use a lot less power than the other modes, but he can't recharge until the next round)

Tonight's updated bug tally:
Beta issues resolved: 68 of 71
Bugs remaining: 3!

Just a couple of things left! :)

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 8

2011-03-21T23:33:00.000-04:00

So I haven't been able to work on Blackest Night Hal Jordan for a couple of days (shocking, I know). Tonight, though, I finally made the time. Here's where things stand, relative to his readiness for release:

fixed: plasma sphere in corner needs better alignment with p2 as goes off
wontfix: hal will not jump near p2 when they are knocked back from knockout special if stage near wall

This is the first "wontfix" (i.e. "won't fix") to show up in my blog posts. It's a concept from software engineering, where some bugs are deemed too minor to fix, or sometimes (like in this case) not really bugs at all! I actually intended the current behavior, where Hal only dashes onscreen / close to P2 if he knocks them offscreen. You'll see more of these in the full changelog, which will go out with his release when it's done.

Tonight's updated bug tally:
Beta issues resolved: 64 of 70
Bugs remaining: 6

Not too much left! And I'm taking the netbook on my carpool drive to work tomorrow, so I can (hopefully) get some stuff done then too. :)

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 7

2011-03-17T15:33:00.003-04:00

I went to bed early last night, still trying to shake off this flu bug. Before I did, however, I fixed two minor bugs with Blackest Night Hal Jordan:

fixed: [Orange Lantern] KOed P2 flies way up into the air before eventually falling back to the ground
fixed: [Red Lantern] Jet Rush special is noticeably longer when in the air at the edge of the screen than any other time

That brings Hal's bug tally to:
Beta issues resolved: 62 of 70
Bugs remaining: 8

Tonight I should be able to stay up a little later, since I'm now well-rested. Should be a good chance to knock out most of the non-palette-specific bugs, leaving me the weekend to finish debugging the Orange and Black hypers.

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 6

2011-03-16T03:01:00.005-04:00

Monday night after work was family time; I helped my kids finish their Pinewood Derby cars for the race the following night (i.e. tonight). So, no MUGEN time. Tonight we had the race, which was fun, then I came home and put my wife & kids to bed. Should have gone to bed myself (I'm still not fully recovered from last week's flu), but like the glutton for punishment I am, I wanted to put in some work on Blackest Night Hal Jordan... so I did.

When I originally envisioned the winpose for Orange Lantern mode, it included the idea that Hal would try to steal the beaten player's identity, the same way that Larfleeze did to those he's killed. It's a creepy, unique aspect of the orange spectrum in the comics, but I wasn't quite sure if it was doable in MUGEN, so it got left off the final "to do" list. But then, in doing some testing against Splode's Juggernaut, I realized that he had figured out how to do something similar in Juggy's winposes (i.e. make him walk over and grab the player he's just beaten up off the floor). So, I dug into Splode's code to see if I could reverse-engineer what he'd figured out. Turns out I could, so now Hal's got this:

Pretty nifty. There's still a minor bug in the KO behavior (he flies way up into the air before eventually falling back to the ground), but I definitely like it. However, that brings the tally of bugs up to 70 from last time's 69:

Beta issues resolved: 60 of 70
Bugs remaining: 10

Anyway, progress is progress. Now it's time for me to go and get some sleep.

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 5

2011-03-13T10:00:00.003-04:00

I'm still not feeling 100%, but am slowly crawling out of the flu hole. Yuck.

Surprisingly, I was able to make some time to work on Blackest Night Hal Jordan today, so I went ahead and knocked out the remaining issues with Yellow Lantern (Sinestro Corps) mode:

changed YL Sinister Sabers: LP creates 1, MP creates 2, and only HP creates 3
fixed: Sinister Sabers has infinite juggle (new issue I just found today)

Beta issues resolved: 60 of 69
Bugs remaining: 9

Of the remaining 9 issues, 6 are common to all palettes, and 1 each remain for Red Corps, Orange Corps, and Black Corps modes. The 6 common ones should all be pretty easy to knock out in one evening, but the corps issues will likely take a bit longer. Getting closer!

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 4+

2011-03-12T10:50:00.002-05:00

So this cold/flu thing I picked up early in the week got worse... I stayed home from work Thursday and took an early out Friday, and slept a lot. Nevertheless, I did crack open Blackest Night Hal Jordan's code, and finished all the remaining issues with Indigo Lantern mode:

Indigo Hal now taunts/charges his ring with his staff instead of a lantern:
fixed: AI could trigger IL teleport in midair (new issue not previously logged)
fixed: P2 could sense IL's teleport destination before he appeared (new issue)
fixed: when in a corner, the IL Enforced Empathy hyper now backs away from the wall, since he sometimes went off the screen before

Beta issues resolved: 58 of 68
Bugs remaining: 10

We're well into the weekend now... a time when I tend to get less MUGEN work done than during the week, oddly enough. So we'll see if I have anything new to report tonight/tomorrow.

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 3

2011-03-09T22:53:00.002-05:00

Today I continue the my countdown to Blackest Night Hal Jordan's release. Last night I did:

finished coding the custom winpose for Blue Lantern mode
revamped the color of Indigo mode's constructs:

Beta issues resolved: 55 of 66
Bugs remaining: 11

I woke up this morning with a powerful case of the creeping crud, so haven't done any MUGEN work tonight, and am about ready to call it a night. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be back with my "A" game.

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 2

2011-03-08T21:51:00.002-05:00

Continuing the countdown to Blackest Night Hal Jordan's release. Here's what I did last night:

finished sprite work on custom winpose for Blue Lantern (smart-paletted version of a winpose SethZankuten made for the official DCvsMarvel version)

Beta issues resolved: 54 of 66
Bugs remaining: 12

Tonight I'm going to finish up the coding for the winpose, and dig into some of the remaining 12 issues. Probably a few of the balance-related issues: things like push-back, damage levels, that sort of thing. At least, until I fall asleep. ;)

[Release Watch] Hal Jordan, Day 1

2011-03-07T19:05:00.006-05:00

I'm going to try something new.

You all know I'm having trouble staying focused on finishing Blackest Night Hal. From now until he's done, I'm going to post an update every time I work on him, including a count of bugs remaining. So here's what I did last night:

fixed: damage is too high on standing HP and HK
fixed: [Red Lantern] Flames of Rage scream doesn't last long enough
fixed: [Blue Lantern] Ion Wave hyper is missing sound effects
worked on custom winpose for Blue Lantern (finished 2 out of 7 sprites)

Beta bugs resolved: 53 of 66
Bugs remaining: 13

See you tomorrow.

Blame Netflix

2011-03-06T15:10:00.002-05:00

So.... yeah. February, I hardly knew ya.

A lot of people have been asking about the status of my projects. This February, while full of many good things for myself and my family, has not been so good for my discretionary time. I've been quite short on it, in fact.

Even worse for my MUGEN projects has been the way I chose to spend what little free time I did have: catching up on my DC animation. Netflix, bless them, have made the recent DC comics flicks available for streaming, so I finally got around to watching Batman: Under the Red Hood, Superman/Shazam, and Superman/Batman: Apokolips. All entertaining enough, and definitely a good thing that I didn't watch them with my kids (would have made for nightmare city). But all the same, I had to take that time from something, and that something was MUGEN creation time, alas.

Now that I'm caught up, though, hopefully I can get back to finishing Blackest Night Hal and Parasite 2.0. On Hal, I've resolved 50 of the 65 issues that came up in the beta, so expect to hear more on that front soon.

Provided I can keep my Netflix queue clear. ;)

Playtesting Hal, part 1

2011-02-08T01:10:00.001-05:00

This week, based on the feedback I've received from my awesome beta team, I'm putting Blackest Night Hal Jordan though his paces, tuning, nipping, and tucking. The AI still feels a little too aggressive, and I'm not 100% sold on the way I'm handling the lantern charge yet, but he's getting there. Here's a peek at Yellow Lantern mode, versus (who else?) Sinestro:

Artificial

2011-02-06T22:02:00.000-05:00

The beta testing for Blackest Night Hal Jordan has been going very well. I've gotten a lot of great feedback from folks, all of which I have been working on addressing in the main code base before I can release. The biggest revelation to come out of the beta process, though, is something I should have realized long ago: making a decent AI for Hal, one that behaves appropriately in both standard Green Lantern mode and all 6 custom Corps modes, is really hard.

MUGEN AI programming is something of a dark art, all about how different triggers interact with each other under certain conditions, which ones take precedence over each other, that sort of thing. Adding in a layer of 7 different play styles (and really, the different modes are starting to feel different from each other) just ratchets up the complexity level. In the past, I've released characters without custom AI; in this case, though, I really feel like he needs something that will obey the same gameplay rules that a human has to follow (for example, Orange and Black Lantern modes can't charge their ring power up with the taunt move that the other modes can use). Without implementing those same rules for the AI, certain modes become really cheap, and it's no fun to play against a cheap opponent. (although I seem to remember seeing some pretty cool videos on YouTube of people winning against legendarily cheap characters, like Omega Tom Hanks or the April Fools Darkseid Kal-Elvis and I cooked up a few years ago. But I digress.)

So the long and the short of it is, Hal's still on the operating table, but progress is being made. As of last night, I've resolved 50 of the 65 issues raised by one or more of my beta testers. So if that's any clue as to his progress, there you go. Meanwhile, check out this shot of the second custom Yellow Lantern special, which I've finally finished:

[Yellow Lantern] Cruel Grip special

I should hopefully have more to post here really soon.

Hal's Beta Test is Underway

2011-01-25T17:54:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered to help me out with the beta testing effort for Blackest Night Hal Jordan. I've selected by beta team for this release, and they've got the beta in hand. As things progress, I'll let y'all know.

Beta Test, anyone?

2011-01-24T00:54:00.000-05:00

Last post in the very-active comments thread of my last post, I said to watch this space for an update on Blackest Night Hal Jordan's slow-but-inexorable progress toward release. Well, here it is, late Sunday night: I think he's ready for a private beta test. :)

There are still a few kinks to work out, but at this point I need to get more eyes on it than just mine and ArmageddoN's. And while I'd normally turn to my fellow Dragons for this, I feel like I ought to give something to my patient, loyal blog audience. So: if you're interested in beta-testing Blackest Night Hal Jordan, and are willing to give me good, detailed feedback, drop me a line and let me know. Tomorrow night, I'll take the first five volunteers' email addresses and send them the beta. If all goes well, he'll be out of private beta and in the full public eye within a week or so.

And, because I can't bring myself to post something without a screenshot, here are Hal's all-but-finalized corps intros:

Where in the Galaxy is Hal Jordan?

2011-01-07T09:13:00.000-05:00

So.

The 12 Days of Christmas have come, and they have gone.

As I'm sure you've noticed, without Hal.

Here's why.

When I first started working on Hal, I had a much smaller update in mind, something akin to the update I did for Lex Luthor when I added his Orange Lantern mode last year. What I ended up doing, though, was a lot trickier:

essentially cramming 6 new characters into the somewhat-messy codebase of a 7th,
trying to clean up that code messyness,
integrating some improvements from Seth's remixed / fixed version of the character for DC vs Marvel (which isn't yet publicly available, alas),
and manually replacing each of the hundreds of sprites in the SFF with a smart-paletted version that enables me to do the cool corps costumes (even though Jet the Phoenix and ArmageddoN did the sprite edits, it still takes a lot of time to cut and paste the sheet into individual PCX files for the SFF)

Combine that extreme level of ambition with the fact that I have a lot less time for MUGEN these days anyway, and you get a chain of several nearly-sleepless nights, and a character who is REALLY close to being releasable on time, but only if I'm willing to sacrifice quality. Red Lantern, Blue Lantern, and Indigo Lantern modes are all complete. Orange, Yellow, and Black are all missing at least one of their major custom moves. And until last night, I couldn't get the Black Lantern constructs to actually look black and not dingy gray — but the fix I came across (thanks, Sic-1!) involves writing more code - because Black Lantern mode now has to define all of its own anims for everything involving the ring sparks or constructs, since the transparency is defined differently than it is for every other mode! :-P

Hence, this post. Rather than keeping you in the dark, dear readers, I wanted to pull back the curtain a little so you can see what it is I've been working on.

RED LANTERN

ORANGE LANTERN

(hyper is unfinished)

YELLOW LANTERN

(2nd special is unfinished)

BLUE/GREEN LANTERN

INDIGO LANTERN

BLACK LANTERN

(2nd special is unfinished)

(hyper is unfinished)

So, there you go. I have to finish 2 more specials and 2 more hypers, plus cut and paste about another 3 dozen re-edited sprites (for the crouching and air basics). It's still going to happen, and hopefully still happen soon, but I missed getting it to you by Christmas, and now you know why.

On the 12th Day of Christmas...

2011-01-05T21:23:00.027-05:00

Today, on the 12th day of Christmas, Magus and his team have given the gift of their first completed game in the Pocket World series, Pocket World DC!

As I said a few weeks ago, I'm aware of how some people feel about pocket characters, but frankly I don't care and don't want to hear any whining about people feeling "cheated" somehow. This is, by far, the biggest Scruffy release of the 12 Days, in terms of the sheer amount of work that has gone into its creation, and deserves its spot of honor on 12th Night. It's a heck of a lot of fun to play, and anyone who simply rejects it out of hand because "pocket characters are dumb" is only cheating themselves out of a fun game that they might otherwise really like, if not for their preconceived notions.

Anyway, enough preaching. What are you waiting for? Head over to the release thread at ScruffyDragon to download the game, as well as read feedback and troubleshooting information if you need help getting it to run. Congrats to Magus and the rest of the Pocket team for a job well done.

What of Hal Jordan? Well, the holiday's not over yet... ;)

On the 11th Day of Christmas...

2011-01-04T23:50:00.001-05:00

Today, on the 11th day of Christmas, as Magus promised in the 12Days promo, Wucash has returned to "bring the darkness" — in the form of the Lord of Apokolips himself, Darkseid!

There have been Darkseids released before. Kal-Elvis and I famously released one as an April Fool's joke a few years ago. Fellow ScruffyDragon Isela released one a while back. But this, the official Darkseid of the DC vs Marvel project, well, this just takes it to the next level. Once again, Wucash has stepped up to the plate and knocked a home run out of the park.

Go here to download Darkseid, then go to his thread at the ScruffyDragon forums to talk about this release.

What could day 12 possibly be? Stay tuned.

On the 10th Day of Christmas...

2011-01-03T23:42:00.000-05:00

Today Magus released the next character for the ScruffyDragon "Capcom Pocket Battle" project, Jill Valentine!

Download Jill Valentine, in the Pockets section of the ScruffyDragon forums, and go to today's thread to talk about this release.

On the 9th Day of Christmas...

2011-01-02T04:59:00.001-05:00

Today Dr.Strange of ScruffyDragon's Pocket Mojo World (a.k.a. Pocket Marvel) posted a progress video of Pocket Phoenix, and released her stage. You can check out the thread here, or just watch the video I've embedded here:

On the 8th Day of Christmas...

2011-01-01T22:55:00.000-05:00

Happy 2011! Today Zvitor and Jet the Phoenix have shared with us all their latest version of Magneto, fresh from his appearance in ProjectX's release last month!

As always, hit ScruffyDragon to download the character and share your thoughts about this release.

On the 7th Day of Christmas...

2010-12-31T16:47:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, we introduced you to our newest team member, Orphen, and the soundtrack he's making for the official DC vs Marvel project. On that day, we gave you all but two of the DC tracks (Batman and Darkseid were both notably missing). Today, I can reveal those two tracks, as well as the 8 tracks for the Marvel side of the DCvM Phase 1 roster!

Click here to get the complete DCvsMarvel soundtrack!

As I said on the 26th, we're excited to have Orphen as a member of our team, and we can't wait to see what he cooks up next. :)

Click here to visit Orphen's website, or here to watch his YouTube channel.

On the 6th Day of Christmas...

2010-12-30T19:16:00.001-05:00

On the 6th day of Christmas, Twinimage has given us a video WIP report of his characters!

Head over to ScruffyDragon to let Twinimage know what you think about his upcoming releases!

On the 5th Day of Christmas (part 2)...

2010-12-30T19:12:00.000-05:00

Today, to go along with my Hal preview video, ZVitor has given us the latest version of his Omega Red character!

You can get him right here.

On the 5th Day of Christmas...

2010-12-29T13:40:00.002-05:00

On the 5th day of Christmas, I give you this preview video of Blackest Night Hal Jordan!

I'd intended to be finished with him by now, but a broken dishwasher and a new baby for my carpool partner have both been unexpected time drains for me this past week, and he's just not quite there yet, despite all of ArmageddoN's amazing assistance. But we're getting really close, and hopefully this video whets your appetite a little:

Barring any more unforseen problems in my offline life, you can expect to see Hal released later in the 12Days. Meanwhile, you can talk about this preview video over at ScruffyDragon.

On the 4th Day of Christmas...

2010-12-29T10:38:00.001-05:00

On the 4th day of Christmas, Rozeros brings you the home of Black Panther, Wakanda, as a great new stage. Designed by L@nce Uppercut, coded by Rozeros, Wakanda can be downloaded in this release thread.

On the 3rd Day of Christmas...

2010-12-28T08:13:00.001-05:00

Sorry I forgot to post this update yesterday... I'm continuing to hammer away at the remaining tasks for Blackest Night Hal Jordan's release (more on that in a minute).

Yesterday, the 3rd day of Christmas, SGM and ZVitor have released their updated version of Namor, from the recently released Project X: Second Coming MUGEN game, as a standalone character. He includes a pretty slick smart palette and some other great updates that make him a blast to play. You can go get him at ScruffyDragon.

For those of you waiting for Hal (you know who you are ;)), know that I'm furiously plugging away at the unfinished bits and pieces, with my partner in crime ArmageddoN providing me with his awesome spriting support so that I can keep up the coding momentum. And when he produces stuff like this, it's hard to argue with the results:

Now, back to my undisclosed location. Much work still to be done!

On the 2nd Day of Christmas...

2010-12-26T01:38:00.002-05:00

On the 2nd day of Christmas, I'd like to introduce you to our newest ScruffyDragon team member, Orphen (a.k.a. J.B. Blake)!

A few months ago, Orphen approached me with the proposal that he compose an entirely new soundtrack for us for the DC vs Marvel game. When I'd had a chance to peruse his website and his YouTube channel, I knew he had the talent and skill necessary to do what he was proposing. So I gave him a few suggestions for the direction I thought the project should go, and he took off running! After a few months worth of work, he's nearly done with the Phase 1 roster, and today we'd like to share with you his work on the DC side of the aisle:

DC vs Marvel soundtrack (DC characters) released by Orphen

As you may have noticed from the playlist, Orphen's still putting the finishing touches on Batman and Darkseid, but rest assured, they'll be coming soon. Meanwhile, enjoy ScruffyDragon Christmas gift #2! We're excited to have Orphen as a mamber of our team, and look forward to many great things to come.

Click here to visit Orphen's website, or here to watch his YouTube channel.

On the 1st Day of Christmas...

2010-12-25T14:18:00.001-05:00

Happy Holidays, folks! Kicking off this year's 12 Days of Christmas, Sic-1 has released his brand new Ultimate Captain America character! Head over to ScruffyDragon to grab him.

See you tomorrow!

Preview: 12 Days of Christmas 2010

2010-12-15T23:56:00.001-05:00

So the other day I got an email from a fan, wondering when our usual 12 Days of Christmas event was going to start. Isn't Christmas less than 12 days away already?

Well, yes. But despite some people's misunderstanding, the traditional 12 Days of Christmas actually start on December 25th. That's either day 1, or in some traditions, day 0, Day 1 being December 26th. The celebration then runs through January 5th, often referred to as Twelfth Night. As is often the case, Wikipedia has a lot more information if you want it.

So, enough with the history lesson. What, I hear you thinking to yourself, does this mean to me personally? (yes, I can hear your thoughts over the Internet. Scary, aren't I?) Well, simply this: you can expect to see me post 12Days-related updates here on my blog beginning on December 25th, and the ScruffyDragon forum will carry them daily throughout the entire 12 days.

As to what you can expect this year... well, remember that the 12Days as we observe it is not, strictly speaking, a "release party." There will be releases, yes, but plenty of other treats as well... without giving too much away, here's a taste of some things you can probably expect:

Blackest Night Hal Jordan. You've all waited long enough.
My long-awaited Parasite update should be in there too, I hope
Videos of works in progress, by myself or other ScruffyDragons
Pocket characters. Deal with it, some of us rather like them. ;)
Some updates to other previously-released characters (besides mine)
Betas of a few new projects that aren't public knowledge yet :D
And of course, a few surprises

For more ideas about what you might be seeing soon in a feed reader near you, check out my coverage of our previous 12Days celebrations: 2007, 2008, and 2009.

Postcard from the Trenches

2010-11-29T16:51:00.000-05:00

So I've not been very good about posting updates this month, have I? :-p

There are a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that I've been working on things that are hard to show off — mainly updating Hal's sprites to use the newest smart palette, as edited by my good buddy ArmageddoN. We've got stances fully animated for all 6 custom Lantern modes, and I have stubs in place for all the custom intros, winposes, and alternate moves. Just code stuff, mostly.

The other bit of news I have to share is that I've decided to hold off on releasing either Hal or Parasite until they're ready, which likely means they will be part of this year's 12 Days of Christmas event after all. (a while ago I said they'd be done before that).

I want to apologize for that change of plans, but at the same time, I know what else is coming from my friends and fellow Scruffy Dragons, and it's gonna be pretty awesome. Hopefully I can drop a few more updates and/or teases between now and then, so look for those soon.

If I have my way, it's gonna be epic.

Fade to Black...

2010-11-01T02:22:00.000-04:00

So, Halloween weekend has come and gone. Saturday, my kids finally talked me into reading Blackest Night with them... there's something about the Rainbow Corps versus the Manipulative Zombie Jerks that really connects with them. :)

Anyway, tonight while I should have been sleeping, I was thinking about Black Lantern Hal, and felt like I should break out the laptop and do his stance (which is really just a variation on his normal Green Lantern stance, but with an evil grin). While I was at it, I added the new sprites ArmageddoN sent me for the Indigo stance (way better than my original frankensprite, as usual!):

That last statement bears elaboration: this past week, Arma and I got to talking over PMs at the ScruffyDragon forum. He's been helping me with these custom Corps animations all along, and he's doing some really awesome GL-themed pixel art of his own lately too, so he's offered to come on board as my official partner for finishing Blackest Night Hal! (of course I accepted ;)) So he's going through and cleaning up the sprites that weren't done by Arque to make them better fit his style, and together we're going to get this guy finished that much sooner, since now I can get back to focusing on the code. I'm excited.

Time to (Indi)go!

2010-10-25T21:20:00.000-04:00

I've been having a really hard time with Hal Jordan's in-progress Indigo Lantern mode. My friend and fellow sprite artist ArmageddoN shared with me a pretty cool base stance to work from (note sure what game it was, but the guy had a hawk's head and weird ghostly legs, so it's taking a bit of frankenspriting to make it work:

Beyond that, I've tried several times to come up with a palette I'm 100% pleased with, and I'm still not quite there. Here are a few of the options I'm kicking around:

(the one on the far right is, I think, the closest I've come to what I want)

So, work continues. Even once I get the custom stances for all 6 alternate modes done, there are the intros and winposes to consider. The coding isn't too bad, because most of the alternate moves are either variations on existing ones, or I've already prototyped them with Parasite. But it'll be interesting to see where this all falls — I wanted to have him done before Christmas, but things have been busy in the family lately, so we'll just have to see how much time I actually manage. Regardless, Hal's progressing, and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Spoiler Alert - Green Lantern #58

2010-10-19T04:26:00.001-04:00

Huzzah! It's time for the weekly Spoiler Alert! I just finished reading Green Lantern #58, where we finally meet the human host of the Blue Lantern's hope entity, Adara. Click through to see what else the issue revealed.

Hal Jordan was briefly deputized into the Blue Lantern Corps back during the runup to Blackest Night, but the entire time, his blur and green rings were at odds with each other. That's why his custom mode in the upcoming release is a blue/green hybrid as well. In the latest issue, however, Adara reveals to Hal that she senses hope inside of him, and in doing so, briefly illuminates him in a fully-blue lantern costume:

The effect is short, just this one panel; nevertheless, it made me want to craft a fully-blue palette for my Blackest Night Hal Jordan WIP:

In fact, I've been toying with the idea of expanding Hal's custom modes to include a full-blue mode as well as the currently-planned blue/green combination.

But then again, I probably have enough on my plate as it is. :^)

Spoiler Alert - JL: Generation Lost #11

2010-10-13T23:37:00.001-04:00

I figured it was about time to post another Spoiler Alert. Today, let's take a look at that doozy of a last page in Justice League: Generation Lost #11.

Ice has been playing the emotional core of this not-quite-JLI-reunion on the lam from the authorities, trying to reveal Max Lord's evil schemes to the world. I love seeing her show up in stories, especially when she's well handled and fully 3-dimensional, but also taken seriously as a powerful superheroine in her own right (and not just Fire's best friend or Guy Gardner's sometimes girlfriend). In the midst of a fight with a reprogrammed team of Metal Men, she gets smacked down pretty severely (and knocked through a wall, IIRC). When she gets up, clearly angry, she's undergone some sort of (presumably temporary) transformation:

This looked like a good challenge to stretch my spriting skills, since it's been a while since they've really been put to the test. I'm fairly pleased with the result:

Looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Parasite Polishing

2010-10-12T12:31:00.001-04:00

I've been trying to get a release of Parasite out the door. His WIP page now shows one of 4 possible statuses for each of his stolen moves: planned, unfinished, done, and the new one: next. Next means I've got it finished, and it will be in the upcoming Parasite 2.0 release. No idea on the exact release date yet, but I want it to be as soon as possible — no waiting on a ScruffyDragon release party this time around.

Here are a few of the power sets I've been rounding out / finishing up as part of this push:

Ninjitsu hyper (Elektra power set)

Photon Array hyper (Dr. Doom power set)

Look for Parasite 2.0, coming soon(ish?) to a select screen near you. :)

Sporadic Updates, Tragedies, and Other News

2010-10-01T13:25:00.000-04:00

I missed posting anything here last weekend. I've been pretty focused on updating my programming site over the past few weeks, and I'm still not satisfied with it. I also virtually attended (and reported on) a big web development conference that stole a lot of the attention I would have otherwise given to MUGEN, but the good news is that it inspired me to make some long-needed updates to the coding and design of my blogs. (My recent redesign here was a first stab in that direction, but I'm not yet where I want to be)

Anyway, the upshot of all this is a bit of forewarning: I'm in the process of moving my coding blog off of Blogger and onto a lightweight blog engine I'm writing myself; if that effort goes well, I'll be migrating this blog pretty soon too. The change should be mostly transparent to those of you that follow my blog via my buyog.com domain, or if you subscribe to my updates via RSS. The big changes will be that you won't be able to follow the blog anymore via Google Friend Connect, which honestly I don't think many of you were doing anyway, and the comment system is going to be quite a bit different (hopefully easier for everyone to use, especially for that portion of my readers that don't have Google accounts -- no more need to comment as "anonymous"). Expect that to happen in the near future.

On another subject entirely: DC vs Marvel. SethZankuten and I have been talking this week about what's left to be done for Phase 1, and I found out why things this year haven't gone as quickly as he hoped: unbeknownst to any of us ScruffyDragons, he had a pretty severe accident a few months ago that has led to abbreviated work days and no small amount of physical therapy. So, yeah, MUGEN's going to take a back seat to that. That said, he's coming out the worst of it now, and together, he & I are going to drive DCvM Phase 1 through to completion. I'm not going to quote you a release date, because these things can change in a heartbeat (see above discussion about the accident), but I think the train is now back on the tracks and moving forward.

Which is good news, indeed.

This Tastes Fantastic!

2010-09-18T08:55:00.000-04:00

I've been enjoying the heck out of the videos that Capcom is putting out to promote Marvel vs Capcom 3. The cinematic hyper pauses and the new move effects are very cool, and the new characters look like they're going to be a lot of fun. Case in point: Super-Skrull. He's got all of the Fantastic Four's powers, which is giving me some delicious move ideas for Parasite's support of Marvel's First Family.

Reed Richards:

Elastic Slam special
Susan Storm

Invisibility special

Cosmic Dust hyper
Johnny Storm:

Fireball special

Supernova hyper
Ben Grimm:

Yancy Street Special

Clobberin' Time hyper

The only one I haven't really gotten a handle on yet is Mr. Fantastic's hyper; the ideas I've tried don't really seem to fit him, and Super Skrull's hypers are mostly based on Human Torch and Thing. So I'm still thinking about that.

Anyway, MvC3 looks insane. I can't wait to play it, and see what else I can adapt.

Redesign!

2010-09-14T15:14:00.000-04:00

Starting today I'm trying for a much simpler, lighter design for this site. Overall it should be more mobile-friendly, as I've eliminated a lot of the unnecessary JavaScript (goodbye, Dojo; farewell, Google Translate!), and streamlined the CSS quite a bit. So far the main page is the only one that reflects the changes; the other pages will probably follow suit in the next day or two.

What say you all? Like? Dislike? Let me know in the comments.

Tutorial: How to Build Your Own DC vs Marvel Game

2010-09-12T13:10:00.002-04:00

From time to time we get questions over at the ScruffyDragon forums and in our email about how to download a "one click" installation of the DC versus Marvel game we're making. It occurs to me that this is a common enough problem that I should post some easy-to-follow steps to building your own custom DCvM game, while you wait for the official release.

It's really not all that tough, if a bit involved. All the pieces are there, you just need to put them together in the right order:

Download "No limit WinMUGEN" and the "DC vs Marvel screenpack" from my Add-ons page.
Use WinRAR to extract No_limit_Winmugen_patch.rar into a folder on your PC (I use D:\MUGEN, on my hard drive's data partition)
Extract DCvM.zip into that same folder.
Download the characters you want from my characters section, from the ScruffyDragon download section (note that you'll need to be signed in to see the files), or any other site, really — bearing in mind that not all characters will fit into our custom screenpack without a little customization (more on that in a minute).
Unzip/unrar each character's files into their own folder in MUGEN\chars (e.g. MUGEN\chars\Lobo, MUGEN\chars\Ice, and so on). Note that characters sometimes come with extra folder information in the archive, so you'll want to check that you don't end up with a subfolder inside the folder, like MUGEN\chars\kon-el\kon-el. If that happens, just move the files into the main character folder.
Make sure that folder name is in the text file MUGEN\data\select.def

I know, it seems like a lot, but it's really not that bad. When you're done, you can run Winmugen.exe to play your own, personalized version of the game! From there, you may want to download Fighter Factory or another MUGEN editing tool and start to tweak and customize things for your personal use, which can be really fun and rewarding*. In fact, I know of at least a few people that started out as MUGEN players, and by doing personal tweaks like that, have evolved into MUGEN creators.

* Please remember that most MUGEN creators will have a problem with you posting your tweaked versions of their characters for other people to download. Best to ask permission first before doing that.

Be warned, though: once you've caught the MUGEN creation bug, and begin crafting stuff perfectly tuned to your own tastes, you may never look at pre-packaged fighting games the same way again. ;)

Have fun, and let me know in the comments what your personal DCvsMarvel roster looks like!

Blue Sunday

2010-09-11T23:24:00.000-04:00

It's been another busy week here in the Buyogverse. I've been working on a couple of things I want to show off here, plus trying to pull together a new style for the blog (the red-and-blue-on-black is soooo 2009 =P), so I apologize for missing a post last week. To make it up, you get a two-fer this weekend: one now, one tomorrow. So no whining! ;)

I've just about got all of the custom stances worked out for Hal Jordan; only Indigo and Black are left, although all 6 are now coded. I've also reworked several of the palettes a bit, now that Jet the Phoenix has helped me level-up my smart palette. (thanks, man!!!) Here's the new one, as well as a peek at the changes in the palettes I've previously shown (note that I took the overwhelming advice from the comments on my last post and recolored ArmageddoN's Sinestro Corps Hal with a more yellowish palette):

Red Hal & Orange Hal: old palettes

Red Hal & Orange Hal: current palettes

Sinestro Corps Hal vs. Blue/Green Lantern Hal

As always, leave your comments on the new palettes below, and look for my second post tomorrow night!

Fear Factor, Part Deux

2010-08-28T10:12:00.000-04:00

More to say on this later tonight, but my friend ArmageddoN has come through again, taking my slapped-together Yellow Lantern stance sprite and really making it sing. Plus I've finally started putting the smart-paletted sprites in the SFF (been using the old palette up until now), so the color separations look better. See what you think:

Old and busted (mine)

New hotness (Arma's)

We've got a yard crew over here at the house today to remove some old dead trees and stumps, so I don't know how much MUGEN time I'm going to have, but I hope to have something else to show later tonight.

Fear Corps Face-off

2010-08-22T19:33:00.000-04:00

Quickie tonight, it's been a busy weekend:

Who will lead the Yellow corps?

Hal's Yellow Corps mode is now in progress. Be afraid. ;)

Balancing Hal

2010-08-17T02:07:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to balance the different "X Lantern" modes in the upcoming Blackest Night Hal Jordan. While I don't want to make 6 completely new characters, I really do want each mode to feel different from the others, reflecting that lantern corps' philosophy while retaining Hal's core personality. While working on the Red Lantern mode, I came to believe that my original plan falls short of that goal.

Baseline: Green Lantern mode

First off, I'm making some changes to the regular Green Lantern moveset, many based on SethZankuten's play-balanced remix. Here's the revised movelist:

Taunt: lantern charge (only way to increase power bar)
Specials:
- Ring Strike QCF + P
- Emerald Swordsman QCF + P (in air only)
- Charging Ram QCF + K (ground and air)
- Buzzcut QCB + P (anti-air)
- Plasma Sphere QCB + K
Hypers:
- KO/Smackdown QCF + PP
- Emerald Knight QCF + KK
- Ion Force QCB + PP
- Ring Slinging QCB + KK
- Soldier of Oa QCB + PK

Common changes: All custom lantern modes

The custom modes will all have the following things:

custom stance
custom intro: (many of these donated by ScruffyDragon forum regular Amon-Ra. Thanks, bro!)
custom win state (and sometimes a custom lose state too)
passive enhancement: something that makes this mode somehow "better" than the others
quirk: something that makes this mode unique, and potentially more challenging
2 custom specials: each replacing a move from GL mode
1 Hyper: also replacing a GL move

Based on this revised plan, here's what's currently on the drawing board:

Red Lantern (palette 07)

stance: more aggressive
intro: ring takeover & blood cough
win: growl/shout at P2's ko'ed body (think Savage Hulk's winpose)
passive enhancement: does damage to P2 when grabbed/thrown
quirk: no voices, only grunts and growls. Harder to launch combos.
Special 1: Plasma Vomit (replaces Ring Strike)
Special 2: Jet Flyby (replaces Charging Ram)
Hyper: Flames of Rage (replaces Soldier of Oa)

Orange Lantern (palette 08)

stance: arms crossed / defensive
intro: "MINE!" (hugging the lantern)
win: P2 identity theft
passive enhancement: hyper moves cost half as much power as normal (since I can't give you a "1000%" power bar ;))
quirk: no taunt to recharge the lantern; when it's gone, it's gone
Special 1: Selfish Grab (replaces Plasma Sphere)
Special 2: "Go Away!" (replaces Emerald Swordsman)
Hyper: Construct Corps (replaces Soldier of Oa)

Yellow Lantern (palette 09)

stance: proud, arms crossed (a la Sinestro)
intro: Hal-as-Parallax, then suit changes into standard Sinestro Corps
win: smug laughter
passive enhancement: moves do more damage
quirk: moves take slightly more power to use
Special 1: Sinister Spike (replaces Buzzcut)
Special 2: Cruel Grip (squeezing sphere; replaces Plasma Sphere)
Hyper: Parallax Entity (replaces KO/Smackdown)

Blue/Green Lantern (palette 10)

stance: slightly chaotic; lots of energy bleeding out of fingertips
intro: with Saint Walker ("All will be well")
win: ring raised high
passive enhancement: powerbar quickly recharges whenever you're idle for a short time
quirk: moves sometimes interrupted by the ring asking "what do you hope for?"
Special 1: Ring Blast (bigger beam; replaces Ring Strike)
Special 2: TBA (replaces Emerald Swordsman)
Hyper: Ion Wave (a la Magnetic Shockwave; replaces Ion Force)

Indigo Lantern (palette 11)

stance: both arms forward
intro: walk on screen with Indigo staff, which then fades away
win: teleport away
passive enhancement: defense stats are slightly higher, so he'll take a bit less damage than normal
quirk: unblocked projectile attacks decrease both health and power bar
Special 1: Teleport (replaces Charging Ram)
Special 2: Nek Ler Klok (Energy Redirect) (replaces Plasma Sphere)
Hyper: Enforced Empathy (replaces Emerald Knight)

Black Lantern (palette 12)

stance: like normal, but with an evil grin and without breathing
intro: "Hal Jordan of Earth... DIE!"
win: bump up ring charge by 10%
passive enhancement: super-robust healing factor (can only be KO'ed by a level-3 hyper)
passive enhancement (2): specials cost no power bar to use
quirk: power bar only increases with every KO'ed opponent (persists between rounds)
Special 1: Piercing Strike (replaces Ring Strike)
Special 2: TBD (replaces Buzzcut)
Hyper: Black Ring Swarm (replaces Ring Slinging)

So, yeah. That's the revised plan. Tonight I'm defragging my laptop's hard drive(looooong overdue), or I'd be working on the stance for Yellow Lantern. Hopefully I'll be able to show that off later this week.

"I'm packing your 'angry eyes'... just in case"

2010-08-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

Favorite Toy Story quote ever = great way to start a blog update. :)

A couple of days ago, I posted a preview of the custom stances for Hal Jordan's Red and Orange Lantern modes. In the comments, my friend and fellow ScruffyDragon creator ArmageddoN mentioned that he thought the faces should show more emotion, and that he'd be glad to whip up something to give me an idea. He did, and when I saw it, I knew he was on to something that I had to share with y'all immediately:

My original stances

Arma's edit

Yeah, way better. Thanks, buddy!

Forks are Evil

2010-08-08T01:48:00.003-04:00

Since I finally finished grad school, I've started getting back into my MUGEN projects, picking up what I'd more or less dropped a few months ago. Part of that effort (well, right now all of it) is going towards the Blackest Night edition of Hal Jordan, Green/Red/Orange/Yellow/Blue/Indigo/Black Lantern.

A while back, at the tail end of ScruffyVersary, I released a private "preview" beta of Red Lantern Hal as a contest prize. That version was a brand-new character (RLHal), created mostly from my old GLHal but with some sprites and code from Seth's play-balanced version and some new sprites added for the new Red-specific moves. So now that I'm creating Blackest Night Hal, I have FOUR forks—four separate versions of Hal that all came from the original source—on my machine: GLHal (the original), Seth_GL (play-balanced with additions), RLHal (Red-only moves), and HalJordan (the beginnings of the new release).

Yuck!

Each of the three older versions of the character contain stuff that the other two don't have, all of which I want to put into the new one. I've got the code more or less harmonized (still a few tweaks from Seth I'd like to adapt, but he changed animation numbers to suit his own programming style, so it's a little tricky), but building the unified sprite file is going to take longer. I've been at it for several hours tonight, and am just barely making a dent. Slow going, but ultimately once this part is done, the only other mouse-required part will be implementing the smart palette sprites that my buddy Jet the Phoenix did for me. Everything else, I can do on my netbook, on the commute to and from work. So there's a lot of incentive for me to get the sprite work done ASAP.

To leave you on a high note, here's the work-in-progress character with the custom stances for Red and Orange modes:

Orange Lantern Hal vs Red Lantern Hal (Elseworlds, maybe...?)

See you next week!

Vlog #2: On Hard Drives and Master's Theses

2010-07-25T00:13:00.002-04:00

Data on the thought-dead hard drives has been recovered. Whew! Oh, and I'm a day or two away from being done with my grad school work. So, Hal's finally being worked on again. :)

MAGNETIC Screwdriver? Oooooops...

2010-07-16T01:45:00.000-04:00

So last weekend I was moving my main PC's hard drives into a new case (the old processor fan died), and couldn't figure out why none of the drives would boot up when I got them installed. After an hour or two of fiddling with them over and over, I realized that my computer toolkit's screwdriver had somehow become magnetized... and my guess is that putting it up close to those magnetic hard drive platters had a, shall we say, negative effect. Hoping my MUGEN work wasn't lost, because it's been a while since I've backed anything up. :(I'll know more in a week or so, and will post here when I know the extent of the damage (if any).

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2010-07-07T22:48:00.000-04:00

I finally saw the Wolverine movie tonight. Wasn't as terrible as everyone seemed to make it out to be. Yes, "Deadpool" was pretty stupid, but if they'd used any other character besides Wade Wilson, it actually was a pretty decent plot device. The Gambit bits were well done, the Wolverine-Sabretooth fights were suitably awesome, and the changes they made to comic continuity all seemed to fit pretty well.

The only thing that really bugged me?

"Amnesia bullets." =P

Vlog #1: New Stuff is on the Way!

2010-07-07T18:25:00.000-04:00

I just realized it's been over a year since I've posted any new videos to YouTube, so I just did this one as kind of a status update / signal of things to come. Don't know how regular these will be, but at least it's something. Bottom line: the time-hole that is grad school is done for me now, except the thesis defense in 2 weeks. Woo! So MUGEN stuff is back on my plate, and coming down the pipe soon.

Oops, too soon...

2010-07-06T23:43:00.000-04:00

My last post was a draft that got published too early, so a couple of the linked images aren't uploaded yet. Do not adjust your TV set! I expect those to be done and uploaded tonight, not two days ago.

Sorry about the confusion.

Speed Demons

2010-07-05T09:12:00.001-04:00

Here's another in my series of themed "Parasite eats..." posts (see previous entries here and here). Today I'm showcasing the hypers for Superman and Flash, which have both been missing for far too long.

Speed Fury hyper, stolen from Superman

Speed Force hyper, stolen from Flash

In order to really fit the title, this post was going to have Etrigan's hyper in it too, but I haven't decided which of Etty's many hypers to give him yet. Kinda wanted to steer clear of the magic ones, so that narrows it down quite a bit, even though I really wanted to do Dancing Blazes. Wind from Hell, I suppose...?

Inspiration

2010-07-03T23:18:00.001-04:00

Finishing my Master's thesis. No really, this time it's real... was supposed to have it done a little over a week ago, and now it's really "do or die" time. No pressure or anything. =P

So... no time lately to sprite or do MUGEN coding. But that will change... very soon. :)

For now, take a gander at the gameplay in this new preview of Marvel vs Capcom 3:

The new effects look gorgeous. And I really love the new style of animated hyper portraits during the superpause before the hyper attacks. Oh, and Hulk's got some killer combos I may want to think about adapting.

All in all, there's plenty in this new game to get excited about... and plenty for a MUGEN creator to take inspiration from.

More soon.

Thesis versus Updates

2010-06-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

Soooo... yeah, it's been too long since I've posted an update. A lot going on at work and trying to finish my MA thesis in the next 7 days. In the meantime, while you wait for a more substantial update, enjoy this tease of the smart palette my Parasite partner-in-crime Jet the Phoenix made for Sinestro:

(top to bottom) Smart palette, First Flight GL, comic GL, Sinestro Corps

So, y'all have that to look forward to later this summer, once I get this pesky thing called "school" out of the way. ;)

Seeing Red

2010-05-13T22:54:00.001-04:00

So even though I'm not retiring from MUGEN after all, school has still been keeping me pretty swamped lately. In my spare time, I've been adapting some of the changes SethZankuten made to the DCvsMarvel version of Hal Jordan, adding a few of them to my next public release version (yes, they're now two separate code bases. I'll have to deal with that at some point, but not yet). There are still going to be some moves unique to the full-game release (which, contrary to some people's snide remarks, is still being worked on — Seth just has a busy life too), but where it makes sense, I'm using Seth's savvy upgrades to make my version that much shinier. Case in point: current-release Hal has no grapple or throw. Seth's has this nifty Anvil Slam, which I've now adapted to my version of the character:

Anvil Slam (normal standing throw)

I've also been hard at work on the Blackest Night modes, starting with Red Lantern. Here are a couple of the specials that will be custom to this mode:

Plasma Vomit special (replaces Ring Strike)

Jet Strike special (replaces Charging Ram)

So, yeah. Still moving, albeit more slowly than I'd like. That said, Jet the Phoenix and I have been talking about something this week that could be very, very cool, so hopefully I'll have more to share here soon.