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!

Super Chibi Knight's Kickstarter is still truckin' along, we're trying to reach a stretch goal (or "stretch quest" as I like to call them) to add some cool stuff! Will you join the cause and push us a little closer?

Luis and I are still picking away at the wrestling game for Pico Day. You can check the progress here!

I'm starting to understand why there aren't very many good wrestling games out there... there's a lot going on and lots of simultaneous things that can interfere with each other (running, rope bouncing, turnbuckle climbing, being inside/outside the ring, picking up chairs, punching, grappling, slamming, air maneuvers etc.) Dealing with different sized characters grappling with each other is also a challenge!

If you have someone nearby (or two someones) bring them over and try playing all at once and see if anything breaks!

P1 - ARROWS + Numpad 0, Numpad Del, Numpad Enter

P2 - AWSD + Z + X + C

P3 - IJKL + , + . + /

Yesterday was a fantastic day! First off, Steam finally Greenlit Super Chibi Knight!

This was after a 9-month-long campaign on Greenlight! Some games go much faster and some not at all. I'm just happy that it finally worked and ready to crunch down and get to work finishing the game. Hopefully this will be enough motivation to push me through to the end after a few more months of work.

Shortly after getting the news about the Greenlight, the Super Chibi Knight Kickstarter hit its goal! After 2 weeks on Kickstarter, we did it! Once again, THANKS to everyone who has helped out. The double-good news was such a good jolt of energy, my daughter and I were on a high all day long and we actually danced an Irish jig together when we heard it :-D

Now we're targeting some stretch goals with the Kickstarter campaign. I just posted an update with a new Reward Tier called "True Kickstarter" where, for a $17 pledge you get a CUSTOM version of the game exclusive to Kickstarter backers. It comes with:

• The DRM-Free digital game download (or Steam key, your choice)
• The AWESOME soundtrack by Brian Holmes with over 30 minutes of content [click here for a sample]
• The Kickstarter-exclusive "Kick-Saber" sword
• A Kickstarter-exclusive Splash Screen
• Your name in the credits for ALL versions of the game

Here's the 1st stretch goal we're aiming for:

High-fives to everyone for helping us out along the way!

First off, huge THANKS to everyone who has supported the Super Chibi Knight Kickstarter campaign!

After a week, we're already 75% of the way to the goal. I've felt lots of emotion as I've seen long-time "online friends" come out of the woodwork and help out (many making really generous pledges). Seriously, I know how hard it is to part with money, especially for online stuff, but so many of you have done just that, that it makes my "feel goods" feel good. In a way, many of you have treated me to a virtual drink or a dinner out with you over the last week, and who wouldn't feel great about that?

Pico Day is coming up! It may be the last Pico Day held at the NG office ever. I would really like to go, but finances are tight right now so I probably won't make it (unless the Kickstarter campaign explodes or something... hint hint)

However, I am really itching to make a game for Pico Day. I've never seen a really good Flash wrestling game, and I think it would be sweet to have it star some NG chars! Here's a prototype (it's 3 players in the demo, AWSD, ARROWS, and IJKL to move): http://pestoforce.com/picomania.html I think Luis is on-board for the art, so that should be something special!

Speaking of the me/Luis team, Luis just told me that today is the 5-year anniversary of the release of Portal Defenders. Wow how time flies! I just played through it again, and the ending is really great, Luis went way overboard on that. If you haven't played it in a while, check it out again for some memories.

One last piece of news, Super Chibi Knight finally broke 10,000 "YES" votes on Steam Greenlight! It's also currently #5 of over 1,500 games (down from #2 early last week) so hopefully there will be an announcement soon about the game being Greenlit. If you have Steam, please help us out with a YES vote here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=152710075

The day has finally arrived! I've been super nervous about this, but I feel like I prepared the best I could to make the Kickstarter the best it could be.

There is always a feeling of dread though with these things, where you invest a ton of time and then just have to trust that you'll get enough exposure/support to make it all worth it.

If you guys are at all excited about the prospect of a sequel to Chibi Knight, please consider tossing a few bucks my way to help fund the final stages of development for Super Chibi Knight.

Also, please help spread the link through the SOSHUL MEDIUZ! :-D

I'm SO grateful for the support!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pestoforce/super-chibi-knight-a-cute-spicy-rpg-adventure

P.S.

You could get this amazing art from Jouste on a t-shirt!  

Luis, Genclops, and I just released "Labyrinth: Secrets of ShadowHaven" here on NG!

Play it here!

It was a lot of fun to work on, was slightly experimental for me, and has been pretty well received. We've already started discussing some ideas to improve on it for a sequel... maybe something 16 bit????

I previously mentioned that I'm planning a Kickstarter campaign (coming soon) for Super Chibi Knight to help raise enough cash so I can focus on it full time for a couple months and finish it off. It's at the point where it needs a solid streak of dedicated work to push it to the finish line and I need some cash to be able to do that. I've been cobbling together a Kickstarter video and, as part of it, I did a new trailer for the game. Check it out here:

I also updated my main website to be more than just a landing page, to impress people who visit from the KS campaign ha ha!

http://www.pestoforce.com

So tell me:

1) What did you think of Labyrinth?

2) How is the new Super Chibi Knight video?

3) How does the new PestoForce site look?

I just released a new beatemup style game on NG!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/633201

Drop me a 5 plx! :-D

Leave a review and tell me what you think. I made it a while ago to help some friends with the launch of their Steam game, and their sponsor (Adult Swim) just released the lock down on it so I could upload it here.

In other news, I decided to do a Kickstarter campaign for Super Chibi Knight! It's kind of scary, but I'm trying to be somewhat smart about it. Aiming for a small reasonable goal ($6,000), but have lots of stretch goals to shoot for beyond the base amount. I'm still working on it, but keep an eye out in the next week or so for the big KS launch.

My buddy from Flexicade is going to CNC-mill me some custom keychains as reward tiers, and I'm getting some help from talented artists like Jouste and Jeff to draw up some posters and t-shirts. There will also be some cool surprises thrown in at the higher tiers, like becoming an NPC in the game!

I've been struggling to find work lately... Basically I've been scraping by doing freelance stuff, but that's taking up all my time so I can't work on Super Chibi Knight (which is about 1/2 way done). I want to finish it and this KS campaign will give me the funds (I hope) so I can focus full-time for 2 months on finishing it. I really want to see this game get done and released on Steam, but I'll need lots of help once I get the KS campaign up an running.

So, be honest with me, do you think you'll toss a few bucks my way to help finance the final development stages of Super Chibi Knight?

Super Bowl Joke: I heard Peyton Manning tried to shoot himself after losing the Super Bowl... but somebody intercepted the bullet!

Here are a couple images I'm using in the KS campaign:

Here's an update for y'allz who care to know:

1. Me and Luis and Genclops released a new web game called "Labyrinth: Secrets of ShadowHaven" - It's playable on Armor Games right now, but will eventually be posted here on NG also. http://armorgames.com/play/15794/labyrinth-secrets-of-shadowhaven

2. Here's a review of it translated from Chinese:

"Long time no play decent action game, right? If you are very fond of playing the game typified heavier players, and that this "Labyrinth: Secrets of Shadowhaven Shadow Labyrinth" is absolutely right for you to play yo. In the game, players must play a cute little red dragon adventure in this vast maze of the castle! The main task of the game is to destroy the gems have demon blood, but there will be a lot of monsters on the road, while the gems are located in different locations, so players have to rack their brains but to find the whereabouts of the gems yo. Game control method is fairly simple, including attacks, jumping, seized materials. If you like simple and fun RPG game, then this "Labyrinth: Secrets of Shadowhaven Shadow Lost City", is absolutely the first choice players yo! Master great recommendation!"

3. It was a fun experimental game to make, but lots of people were reporting weird bugs that I'd never seen. I narrowed it down to some problem with Flash player on SOME computers using Google Chrome. It's been really frustrating because MY chrome works fine so it's been impossible for me to replicate what people were experiencing. It all stems from using "hittestpoint" in flash and the fact that it doesn't play nicely with camera movements. In Chrome apparently it skips frames and sends people teleporting through walls...  I re-wrote the basic engine to use true tile-based logic for the hit-testing (no hittest calls used at all!) and it runs great, but I don't have the time or energy to rewrite the whole game based on the new engine. So I guess I'll just chalk it up to experience and use the new improved methods for the next game. One cool thing about doing the hittesting this way is that you can scale the game up and down and apply other effects without messing anything up. Check out my experiment called "Barf Quest."

http://pestoforce.com/tanks/tiletest.html

4. I'm usually pretty slow to adapt to trends in the Flash scene because I figure "why change what works?" and I'm usually a little scared of new tech. But I decided to give FlashDevelop a try. After a few minutes of install and a helloworld tutorial, I think I've got the hang of it! Kind of kicking myself now for waiting so long... There are all kind of benefits to it, but the main one is that it compiles .swf files without Flash! That means you get everything you want for FREE! Of course, you still need Flash to efficiently draw and animate vector graphics for it, but it's a step in the right direction. Another huge benefit is that it organizes your project in a more modular way, so you can make MUCH bigger projects that are more demanding and not have to worry about Flash crashing or failing to compile... this will be important for future projects like Super Chibi Knight and Abobo's SUPER Adventure. It also has support for haxe which is supposed to target a lot more platforms than just .swf.

5. Oh, did I mention we're gathering forces and troops to do a sequel to Abobo's Big Adventure? :-D

I found myself using some code over and over and constantly visiting this one site to get as3 keycodes, so I thought maybe the code I wrote might be useful to others. I really hope there's not already a built-in way to do this in as3 :-P

Mapping key codes to text names:

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1358795

EDIT: After some discussion in the forums, http://milchreis.newgrounds.com/ came up with a much more elegant solution.

Here's a .swf: http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/9db15013684d6c22005bc9f3335935c8

And here's the .fla (cs5.5): http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/d7d2f4bbb27686e35675e9bad8205cff

Also, the Labyrinth game is done, just waiting on the sponsor to launch it officially!