Standing Still, but Still Standing
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
So this post will come as no surprise to anyone who's still paying attention (is anyone still paying attention? I have no idea...). I've done virtually nothing MUGEN-related since releasing Strong Guy back in February. The reasons for this are too complicated (and, frankly, personal, so none of your business, dear readers) for me to go into here. Suffice it to say that I haven't felt inspired for a long while now.
I just popped in to the ScruffyDragon forum yesterday for the first time in a while (I drop in every week or two to check my private messages, but that's really been about it), and found what amounted to a flamewar between Magus and somebody that was asking, basically, where all the cool stuff was that we were supposedly working on. July has come and nearly gone with nary a sign of ScruffyVersary, and I'll admit that makes me sad. But not sad enough to kill myself to release stuff that gets very little attention, feedback, or gratitude, mind you.
That was the gist of Magus and this guy's dispute. Magus's argument boiled down to this, basically: why should we (the Scruffy Dragon team) kill ourselves to release stuff when only the smallest handful of people give us any kind of feedback at all, other than to say "meh, okay, what's next?" Of course the other guy misinterpreted him (Magus gets misinterpreted more than anyone else I know) as saying that people should be kissing our butts and paying us money to keep working on stuff. Um, no, that's not what he's saying at all. What he's saying, and I agree with it, is that quality MUGEN creation takes a TON of effort when done right, and most of us senior Dragons have lost sight of the fun. It's become a freaking JOB to maintain a quality pipeline of output, and when the job takes us away from our families, doesn't pay, and isn't fun anymore, why on earth should we keep doing it? No one in their right minds would. That's why Loganir, Wucash, McCready, Seth Zankuten, and now Magus and I have all pretty much come to a standstill.
Oh, sure, occasionally we'll all still crank out something for the sheer fun of it (witness Loganir's recent reappearance), but the days of us sacrificing our lives, health, and time with those we love for the resounding "MEH" of the Internet are probably done.
I have a post in draft that I'll try to finish in the near future, detailing all of my not-yet-finished MUGEN projects, and what my plans are for each. See you then.
Labels: Meta, Scruffyversary
For the Unscruffy
Monday, August 08, 2011
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:
Labels: Invisible Woman, Parasite, Scruffyversary, Sinestro, Strong Guy
Blackest Night Hal v2.1
Monday, July 25, 2011
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.
Labels: Blackest Night Hal, Scruffyversary
Coming soon...
Thursday, July 14, 2011
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.
Labels: Invisible Woman, Scruffyversary
Stealth Mode
Sunday, June 05, 2011
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.
Labels: news, Scruffyversary
Yesterday
Saturday, April 02, 2011
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.
Labels: news, Scruffyversary
Meanwhile, Back at the Scruffyversary...
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
So far, I haven't talked much about Scruffyversary this year, but it's been happening nonetheless; last week's theme was Blackest Night Week, and was my first opportunity this year to join in the Scruffyversary fun:
- We kicked off the week by announcing a small-roster, custom-storyline full game project, based on the just-ended crossover and headed by my Sinestro co-creator Larramones.
- We released a bunch of custom palettes for the ScruffyDragon stable of characters, turning them into members of the various Lantern corps, and had a mini contest where people could design their own (with some pretty awesome results).
- To give me a little breathing room (and to join in the fun), AngelEcks released a big update to his Ray Palmer: The Atom character, which is just a blast to play with. Whatta guy!
- I released an update to Lex Luthor, with some new moves, bugfixes, and a brand-spanking new Orange Lantern mode that's pretty fun to play; I've uploaded it here now as well.
- Finally, Larra & I released a significantly-updated Sinestro, which I've since uploaded here. I'd hoped it would have been an official 1.0 release, but I ran smack into a wall of Real Life Busy ™ last weekend, and had to leave a few things out. Expect an update on that pretty soon.
I'd also hoped to have my "Every-Lantern" Hal Jordan update ready, but life had other plans... sigh. Anyway, he's still on my operating table, and I will release him as soon as I can.
Labels: Blackest Night Hal, Lex Luthor, Scruffyversary, Sinestro
April Fool! (2 Days Late :-P)
Saturday, April 03, 2010
As some of you no doubt deduced, the timing of my "I'm retiring" post wasn't an accident. But then, April Fools' Day had to go and play a trick on ME! :-P For a couple of real-life reasons I don't want to go into here, I've been essentially offline for the past two days, and until now, haven't had the chance to log on here or at ScruffyDragon to kick off this year's Scruffyversary event.
So, first of all: no, I'm not retiring. At least not yet; there's still soooo much I want to do. The bit about having a major school deadline is 100% true, though, so I fully expect to drop off the planet for a little while AFTER Scruffyversary is over. Until then, though, we've got some great stuff planned. :D
Secondly: no, Scruffyversary isn't canceled. The email sent out by the forum admins was Magus's April Fool for everyone. Gotcha!
Scruffyversary 2010 has begun!
Labels: news, Scruffyversary
Scruffyversary is coming...
Friday, March 26, 2010
Nothing I can show today, because I'm on vacation for a couple of days and only have my netbook (which doesn't have all of my MUGEN work on it). But I have two items of news to share:
- I think I've now fixed most of the code and stylesheet problems caused by the move to Blogspot. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the way I'm doing things, but I still think it's better than no updates at all, or (shudder) doing my blog updates by hand.
- As in the past several years, April 1st marks the start of our annual Scruffyversary event, marking the anniversary of our ScruffyDragon team's inception. Also as in previous years, we have quite a lot of cool stuff planned. If you read my blog regularly, you can probably guess what some of my contributions will be, and if you participate in the ScruffyDragon forums, you can probably think of a few others (the speculation thread has already started, in fact). Still, notwithstanding all that, I'm pretty confident that we've got some surprises nobody will see coming.
Stay tuned for more news soon. As always, I thank you or your interest in our work. :)
Labels: news, Scruffyversary
Ice update/remix 1.4
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Today I'm proud to offer up the latest and greatest version of Ice. Thanks to the very generous work of Sei, she's now sporting her familiar comic look with the leg stripes. (Thanks, Sei! :)) The other major change you'll notice in this release is that a preliminary version of her Amalgam hyper is in there. It'll change for DCvM, but there you go.
Right now you can get the update here on her page, but it'll soon be mirrored at ScruffyDragon as well.
Labels: Ice, Scruffyversary
Green Lantern Remix 1.5
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Today I'm proud to offer up the latest and greatest version of Green Lantern Hal Jordan. Thanks to McCready, all of his ring construct effects have been retouched to look more like solid light and less like green plastic. (Thanks, man!)
Other changes you'll notice in this release:
- all of the non-green palettes (like Black Lantern and Sinestro) won't work anymore, because of the SFF changes. I may try to fix this later on, but for now it's a limitation.
- air charging ram is back (it somehow got accidentally disabled in the previous release)
- green afterimages when your power meter is full
- general move tweaks here and there to make the AI better without being quite so "spammy"
You can download GL Hal Jordan Remix on the ScruffyDragon portal, or on his page here. And as always, if you have any feedback about this release, feel free to email me, or head over to his release thread at ScruffyDragon.
Labels: Green Lantern, Scruffyversary
Savage Hulk Beta 2
Saturday, April 25, 2009
I've just uploaded a new version of Savage Hulk to my server. (I know, he's not strictly a villain, usually... but sometimes he is :p) It's not a huge update, and unfortunately no new moves (yet!), but it features lots of small code tweaks/bug fixes/polish over the previous release:
- now with AI, thanks to the very talented assistance of Tunglashor (thanks!).
- includes several alternate select screen portraits for "normal" MUGEN screenpacks; it's a simple SFF edit to change it now.
- lots of minor bug fixes and move tweaks/tighting
- custom "frozen" animation for when he's fighting Ice/Bizarro/etc.
Enjoy! And as always, please post any feedback you may have to the release thread over at ScruffyDragon.
Labels: Savage Hulk, Scruffyversary
Sinestro Alpha 2 Released
Friday, April 24, 2009
As part of Scruffyversary's Villain Week, I wanted to share with you the latest version of Sinestro, which I'm calling Alpha 2.
As an alpha release, Sinestro's still got quite a lot of missing stuff, but from the beginning he's been a public WIP, so he gets released in very raw form whenever there's new stuff worth sharing:
- added fwd/back dashes & effects
- added standing hard kick
- new special: Chains of Despair
- new hyper: Needle Storm
- added guard animations & shield effects
- added standing and crouching get-hit animations
Be warned that he is still pretty raw: he's still missing his thrown and falling sprites, as well as basic attacks when crouching and jumping. It's still very much "early days" with this guy, so if you have some great ideas you think would fit, feel free to let me know via email or the ScruffyDragon forum.
Go get him on his page.
Labels: Scruffyversary, Sinestro
Elektra beta
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Continuing the Scruffyversary over at our Scruffy Dragon game development forum, today I'm releasing an updated beta of Elektra. Compared to the alpha I released last year, she's now got:
- 4 specials & 1 hyper
- 2 intros and 1 winpose
- all get-hits and basic attacks (although a few are clone moves for the moment)
- decent, but not killer, AI (she tends to spam her projectiles, actually =P)
Would have liked to have done more, but I've got a lot of moving pieces in my life right now and Daraku (my sprite-making partner on this character) is busy with other projects, so this was the most I could get done and feel good about.
Get the new Elektra beta on her page, or over in the release thread at SD.
Labels: Elektra, Scruffyversary
Parasite update
Thursday, April 16, 2009
I just uploaded a new version (beta 0.99b) of Parasite; I'm sure at some point it'll get mirrored over to ScruffyDragon as well.Changes in this release:
- added forward/back dashes
- added air recover anim
- added frozen anims
- fixed bug in Flash's stolen special (thanks, Rod ;))
- did some work to prevent move-spamming (not quite finished yet, but it's better)
- enabled the hitdefs in Wolverine's power set (but the move anim itself is still just a placeholder; that's a hard frankensprite to get right!)
- stubbed in a first-draft version of Wonder Woman's special (needs a more complete anim and the custom effect sparks)
- fixed the power set recognizer for Etrigan (but his moves don't work yet, so it's kinda moot)
- added preliminary power set support for Starfire, Bane, Erradicator, Nightwing, and Mongul
- added Starfire's special (Star Sphere)
- added Guido/Strong Guy's hyper (Blanka Envy)
- added basic version of Erradicator's special (Speed Punch) -- not really happy with it yet tho. Hmm.
Go and get it on Parasite's page.
Labels: Parasite, Scruffyversary
Parasite Beta 0.99
Sunday, April 12, 2009
To cap off Parasite Week, here's what you've all been waiting for -- the first public release of Parasite!
I'm calling this version "Beta 0.99," because he's still missing a fair amount of stuff. I just didn't get it done in time, and felt that after I'd made the promise to release, it would be unfair to withhold him now.
WARNING: there are gonna be bugs. Probably a lot of them. Please alert me to them here at the SD forum and I will attempt to resolve them in the next release.
What this version has:
SPECIALS
- Projectile Absorb: WP+WK
- Feeding Time: QCB + Punch (slot1) or Kick (slot2)
- Use Stolen Special: QCF + Punch (slot1) or Kick (slot2)
HYPERS
- Power Overload (incomplete): QCB + KK
- Use Stolen Hyper: QCF + 2 punches (slot1) or 2 kicks (slot2)
What it's missing:
- some crouching and air attacks
- quite a few power sets aren't fully implemented
- some custom anims (dizzy, frozen, electrocuted, etc)
For a complete list of what he's got and what characters he supports, check the readme.
For now, you can download him here on his page. We'll add to the ScruffyDragon downloads section soon.
Labels: Parasite, Scruffyversary
Parasite Week
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
I've been busy this week and have fallen down on the job of keeping people updated about Scruffyversary-related goings on. For those not yet in the know, this week is Parasite Week. And yes, the big payoff at the end of the week is exactly what it sounds like it will be. :)So, here are the first two of several videos I'm going to do this week highlighting Parasite and explaining certain decisions I've made / am making. All in an attempt to ratchet up the hype for a character that's certainly already over-hyped. =P
Parasite Week kickoff video:
Power Management video:
Labels: Parasite, Scruffyversary, video
Scruffyversary 2009
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
This April my team is continuing a tradition we started last year of a month-long party to celebrate our anniversary together as the ScruffyDragons. Lots of good stuff planned, including many of the things I've been talking about lately here on the blog.
One of these is a contest to design a stage to go along with Parasite so that he can be included as part of the upcoming DCvsMarvel Phase 1 release. If you're interested in participating, the contest announcement thread is here.
For more on the Scruffyversary, make with the clicky right here.
Oh, and that Elektra video I mentioned in my last post? Still coming, I'd just wanted the ScruffyVersary "treasure hunt" to have some room to tease the new Elektra stuff first.
Labels: Scruffyversary, video