Watching this video brought many pits to my stomach. Most of his mistakes coincide with problems in Super Chibi Knight. I'm guessing lots of game designers can relate to what he's talking about when they've tried making an "EPIC" game. At least I'm "failing fast" instead of wasting 13 years on SCK (unlike Abobo's Big Adventure :-P)

But SCK will be good... don't worry! It will be worth your money!!! :-D

I downloaded his game and it was fairly bad, but had some flashes of brilliance. There's a puzzle where you use a paintbrush to paint the walls in a dark room with glowing moss so you can see the platforms well enough to get to the exit. Dedicating time to code and perfect a gameplay mechanic like that, that will likely only be used once, is what makes indie games special.

Here's a screenshot of exactly what I'm working on at 1:05 PM Pacific Time on Thursday 6/19/2014 (the time of this post).

Can you relate to that video?

I feel a bit of writer's block going on right now with Super Chibi knight. SO MUCH LEFT TO DO!

To try to deal with it, I switched strategies and am just busting stuff out with placeholder art to eventually go back and re-do with final art later. It seems to be going ok, but I'm still feeling slightly overwhelmed.

What do you guys do to work through that "blocked" feeling?

Here's a quick video of something that's probably over-done in video-games but I always enjoy these kinds of levels. I did some pseudo inverse-kinematics on the wheels to make it feel more realistic:

Reminder to answer this question: What do you guys do to work through that "blocked" feeling?

If you've been following me you know that I've been implementing the new AS3 GameInput API in Super Chibi Knight. I promised I'd make an intro tutorial about getting started with the API, and I finally did, here!

http://pestoforce.com/as3_gameinput.php

You can download a source .fla from that page if you need a FULL example.

Here's the latest Super Chibi Knight Draw Time episode (Psychadelic Rave at 1:50):
 

If you pledged to the SCK Kickstarter at $85 or lower, you should have received your physical rewards by now, higher pledgers will be getting theirs soonish due to a delay in getting the keychains manufactured.

Here are some pics people have posted when they've received their stuff:

I'm gonna plug my friends' Language Learning interactive game/book here again. Please check it out and spread the word if you know anyone who's trying to learn another language. Oh, and leave them a review with your thoughts on their game. THANKS!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/639288

Leave me a comment if you have any Qs about game pads and Flash or the GameInput API, I tried to make it as simple and clear as possible with a good example, but it can still be tough to wrap your head around since it works quite differently from keyboard inputs.

My good friends who helped make Nephi's Adventure 1 and Nephi's Adventure 2 have started a new business to teach people to speak other languages! It's called Lexikeet Learning!

They recently released an interactive story book here on NG to help get the word out about what they're doing. Play it here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/639288

Plz leave them some feedback on what you think of their efforts!

If you want some more info, check out their quick pitch video:

In other news, I got game controller input working in Super Chibi Knight using the new as3 GameInput class. I'm considering writing up a quick tutorial on it because it was tough to find simple straightforward implementation examples. Here's an SCK pic to get your mouth watering :-D

What controller do you use to play Steam/PC Games? Tell me in the comments!

I spent the last few days getting stuff sorted, packed, and addressed for the Super Chibi Knight Kickstarter physical rewards. Did you know shipping for posters is really expensive??!! Especially internationally!

If you missed out on the Kickstarter, I'll be offering the leftover t-shirts on my website pretty soon.

Here are some pics of the process!

And finally, here's a speed paint video of me working on the new "Phoenix Temple" level:

Are you excited for Super Chibi Knight yet?

I went to visit my in-laws for Easter and made this video one evening with my bro. in law. He wrote and recorded the song, and stars in the video! Silly!

In Super Chibi Knight news, I did a live stream recently. I listen to music, draw bricks and a bird statue, animate some fire, and test a level a bit. Here it is in case you missed it:
 

I also finally got all the ducks in a row for the t-shirt orders from the Kickstarter campaign, they're being printed now! They should be ready to mail out in about 2 weeks!

I'll have some extra shirts from the print run, would you all be interested in buying a few if I put them up for sale on my website?

I'm going to livestream for a little bit at 10:30pm Pacific Daylight Time (1:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time).

I'll be arting up a new level in Super Chibi Knight and maybe messing around with a logo design for a friend's running team.

This is mostly an experiment to mess with livestream settings and stuff.

Join me here: http://www.twitch.tv/PestoForce

==========

Update: Stream Over, watch the archive here: http://www.twitch.tv/pestoforce/c/4089817

Update 2: Here's the YouTube version:

UPPPDAAATEEEE on SUPER CHIBI KNIGHT!

1. I have a giant spreadsheet of people's addresses and preferences for SCK t-shirts and keychains and posters and stuff from the Kickstarter campaign... I think I'm ready to actually place an order... trying not to do anything stupid that makes me spend more than I need to.

2. I'm done converting SCK to FlashDevelop! I got save files working again today with the help of PsychoGoldfish. (Pic related)

3. Feeling pretty pumped about beginning to add more content to the game and inch closer to that finish line! Keep me motivated you encouraging people!

4. If I did a weekly livestream, what day and what time (in Pacific Daylight Time) would you want to tune in?

The Super Chibi Knight Kickstarter is now over and ended up 186% funded! Thanks to everyone who helped out! This is a vid of the final countdown before Bella went to school:

I also did a new "Super Chibi Knight" Draw Time episode:

I now have to start the process of fulfilling Kickstarter physical rewards (t-shirts, posters, and keychains) but before I can do that I have to wait for all the Kickstarter backers to fill out the survey I emailed them to set their choices. Another interesting note for anyone thinking of doing Kickstarter, about 5% of the total amount didn't come through because of processing errors (expired cards, insufficuent funds, etc.) Some people are correcting the problem, but some are just ignoring it. Some even emailed saying "I thought it would charge me right away, not a month later!" Welcome to Kickstarter! 5% is a significant chunk of cash, even for my small-scale Kickstarter... I can't imagine the people who raise 100k or 1mil on KS.

While I'm waiting for that stuff, I started messing around with languages other than Actionscript. I downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio and messed around with c# - It wasn't too bad, but there are a lot of little strict things about it that annoyed me (like requiring you to define an array's length when you create it...).

I also downloaded Unity and started messing around:

http://pestoforce.com/unitytest.html

Unity's not bad, you can code in c# or Javascript. The Javascript syntax is very similar to Actionscript, but there's still a learning curve to figure out how to target stuff correctly in the 3D environment and how to handle collision detection. Unity has a bunch of built-in stuff for physics, but I don't really trust it and I prefer to be able to tweak things myself in the code until it feels right... this might be a mistake on my part in the long-run, but it's where I'm at now.

The newest version of Unity has a bunch of built-in stuff for doing 2D games, which is really nice. I can see myself making the leap fairly easily, but still need to learn how I'd go about loading dynamic levels and dividing menus, levels, gameover screens, etc. Oh and I don't know how music and sound effects work in it yet...

Super Chibi Knight might be the last "BIG" game I make in Flash... well, that I make ONLY in Flash. I still think Flash's animation and drawing tools are great!

Speaking of SCK, I decided to port everything over to FlashDevelop because Flash was taking too long to compile and navigate around the file. I am now suffering for my past sins of disorganization in Flash. All kinds of reference errors and stuff are popping up because of the new "no frames" structure. I basically have to go through thousands of lines of code and optimize them for the new setup. I think it'll be worth it in the long run.

Oh, did I mention that I got a call from Nintendo and they approved me to be a WiiU developer? So, that's pretty cool!

This post was really long, sorry! In reality, I'm now pretty focused because I know what I need to do for the next 4 months... it's all laid out, just have to hoe the row now.

Leave me a comment to encourage and embolden me!

The Game Developer's Conference is going on this week. I wish I could have attended, but my stars didn't quite align to make that possible. It's a little intimidating to just start attending something like that on your own. Next year I need some buddies to room with that have been there before or something. I feel like I may have missed an ideal opportunity to go promote Super Chibi Knight and the last few days of the Kickstarter campaign to the kind of people who would want to support it... oh well... next year who wants to go with me?

In Kickstarter news, we met our first stretch goal, and are now chipping away at the 2nd. There are only 3 days left, so if you wanted to help out and haven't yet, here's YOUR LAST REMINDER! ;-)

Here's a celebration video I posted on St. Patrick's Day when we hit our 1st stretch goal (me and Bella dancing a jig and drinking):

And here's a video of me taking Bella's concept art and finalizing it for the game based on this description she typed up for me:

"Story behind:The panda has amneisia because an evil witch controled him to bump his head.The evil witch now has power over him and the amneisia bump is now the witch.You have to kill the witch amneisia bump in order for the panda to become a beast mount and\or gaurdian. looks like:Shaggy black and white fur red eyes.Bump witch is grotesc and unibrow and sgraggly broom.After killed witch smooth black and white fur with aqua blue outfit with silk white socks with black tight laces Chinese shoes."

I don't have an update on the wrestling game this week, Luis is a bit behind on art at the moment because of his latest career transition. Encourage him to get back into gear in the comments below!

I also made this for Pi Day revealing the true Pi Day date.

Next week I get to start fulfilling Kickstarter orders and finally begin the long intense buckle down to finish up Super Chibi Knight. It's an exciting time and an intimidating time, but the Kickstarter money eases a lot of the stress so HUGE THANKS to everyone who has been kind enough to help me out there. Y'all rock and make my feels feel.

My updates for the next few months will all be about finishing Super Chibi Knight for release on Steam. I hope you'll follow my journey and help keep me motivated!

UPDATE!

I was interviewed by the Super Indie Pals and talk about my past in gaming, my influences and inspiration, i-smel, JetGetters, Crawl, Greenlight, and Kickstarter!