The Amazing Spectacular World of Banov

Moving On

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:30:00 +0000

My active blog/website is now at Dumb and Fat dot com.

This will be my last update on this site. Update your bookmarks; you can follow all my future updates and work at the new place. I've imported all the content from here, so business is just going to carry on as usual.

If something I've posted links you to here, I would appreciate if you'd let me know so I can correct it (banov at dumb and fat dot com).

Sparkle Fight Beginnings...

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 08:30:00 +0000

Pchooo!

The current build is... here!

Killer Redd is becoming a game now... slowly. I spent a lot of time these last couple weeks on that other project, only because I was in the mood to.

I'm pretty settled on a vampire motif for the enemies in Killer Redd, to give everything nice context. Naturally, the first boss in a vampire game has got to be a Twilight-style vampire, so... Meet Eddy Kull, the sparkle-spewing vampire!

At the moment I've got a semblance of a particle system set up, except it's pretty buggy and awful. The particles hang around for inscrutable reasons and eventually the game crashes because of similar issues with the hitboxes. There's no way to win yet, but it's fine, cause dying has a 50% chance of taking you to the win screen (just to prove it was there). It's still playable though. Tomorrow I'd like to smooth out some of these issues, but I figured I'd post about it now since it's been a little while.

Slowly I'd like to be able to focus more on the boss gameplay design and less on the nitty gritty coding. The final game's supposed to be done mid-September, I think, so the clock's always ticking. The combat hitboxes and particle effects are my last couple major roadblocks, engine-wise, luckily. In theory it'll be smoother sailing from here.

Flash Baby Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:49:00 +0000

Baby steps, baby steps!

This week for class I had to do some more stuff with the menu, which is why it seems a bit discombobulated at the moment. You can hit "Start" to play the game as it is now. If you die you'll have to refresh--sorry! I also implemented a timer.

BUT WHO EVEN CARES ABOUT THAT STUFF.

I added a new maneuver, the dodge roll (double-tap left or right!) This is something that isn't in Assassin Blue which I thought to include. I've been playing around a lot with the physics of each move and how different movements flow into each other, control-wise. Little touches here and there. The air attack makes you floatier, and landing during it puts you into a roll automatically. If you roll continuously it's faster than running, but you can't jump out of a roll, which makes it dangerous. The only way to cancel a roll is to attack, though that makes you prone for a little bit.

Stuff like that. It's fun, though I'm not really pleased yet with all of the movement--it feels like there's something clunky or sticky, I dunno. Will keep massaging it.

And, oh yeah, I got a camera system up and running, as well as *actual* collisions (I was faking them before) and random level generation--nice! With that, many of the base systems are in place. My next steps will involve putting other characters into the game and getting some real combat stuff working. That'll be fun! (I hope!)

Killer Redd

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:02:00 +0000

I've done some work this week!

Thanks to some help from my friends, I got the bitmap animation working in Flash, which was a real pain in the butt! But I think it paid off, 'cause I think the 3D render animations look really nice. Even the dumb little animations get ~15 individual frames of attention, so it comes out buttery-smooth. And that's what I want!

As is apparent, I think I'm going with Killer Redd for my title and I've selected an urban setting to match the urban-looking heroine, Redd. Things are coming together with this slowly in my head; I'm considering making Redd a vampire hunter with a hitlist to tie together the fights. I'll see.

An idea for the setting was to have it extend infinitely left and right, randomly generating rooftops and other obstacles like what Canabalt does. I'll keep it down to just a one-on-one duel, but this way I don't sacrifice spatial exploration which we love in platformers. And it gives me lots of space to try fun stuff with the bosses, as opposed to Assassin Blue bosses which were _always_ single screen and walled in. This'll present another significant technical challenge to me as a Flash newbie (camera movement and randomly generated content) but after tackling the bitmap stuff I feel pretty empowered to try anything! >;d

My only regret here is I had to slap on some stupid UI stuff because that was the class assignment for the week. Seriously; what even is their deal? If I'm starting a game I always start with basic art and engine stuff to quickly get an idea of my direction/if the game's working. Menus are a pretty arbitrary place to start, not to mention extraneous and boring. I guess the idea is to acclimate newbies with navigation in Flash? This is why I feel at ends with academia sometimes.

Just in case you missed it, the current demo is--and always will be--at this link. I'm fairly regularly updating the file there, even when I'm not posting about it, so you can always check up on my most current progress there. Not that anybody will. Just saying you have the option.

Starting Up a Flash Game!

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Hey-ho!

So this summer I'm taking a class on game programming for Flash. As such, I'll be working continuously on a new game. I thought it would be fun to be super-transparent on this one, and do a pretty detailed companion log to mark my progress. So let's do it!

My idea is this: a side-on beat-em-up game in the style of Assassin Blue. The catch is that the game will be boss fights ONLY. I'm hoping that squeeze in 3 nicely-fleshed out bosses into the game.

So I started out doing a lot of concept sketches and brainstorming to get a character I was happy with as my lead. I felt like doing a badass femme fatale sort of character so the concepts quickly went that way.

I'm more or less settled in on a design, so I started thinking about the actual in-game art. Pixel art/bitmap animations seems like the obvious choice for me, though it'll require some more rigamarole to work into Flash. I thought I might experiment with a technique I've heard tell of, where artists create and rig 3D models, animate in 3D, and then export still 2D frames for gameplay. I kinda like that idea, especially since it'll lend to smooth, modular animation work, so I'm giving it a shot. Plus, it's a way for me to work some of my 3D experience into my game work.

So that's where I am as of the end of week 1 (out of 11). Let's see how it goes! (And how this balances with my Phanta work, which I've been keeping up on pretty regularly)...

Brave is not good

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:57:00 +0000

I'm not exactly an avid film critic and I don't make a habit of getting very opinionated and shouting it to the skies (about anything). But Pixar's Brave came out the other day; I really wanted to love it and I went to the midnight premiere, and by golly, I really did not like it. Normally I'd be content to not like it and leave it there, but what bothers me is that nobody else seems to see what I see. All I've seen are fanatical postings of how spectacular is, and how GREAT the main character is, and I've even seen people suggest it may be Pixar's best film yet. What?!

So I want to just take a moment here and go through the film and outline by biggest issues. If nothing else, it will be cathartic for me. And if anyone ever feels like rebutting me on it, be my guest. I would love for somebody to explain to me what I'm missing here.

Yes, there are spoilers. Just keep in mind I'm going to be doing this by memory based on a single viewing so there may be some errors. Sorry.

The basic plot is this: Merida, fiery princess extraordinaire, has issues with her mom, Elinor. Elinor wants Merida to get married off to one of three really sucky boys from three other clans because it's tradition. So Merida runs away and strikes a deal with a witch to get a magic cake intended to "change" her mother, but (plot twist!) it turns her mom into a bear. Cue shenanigans as she has to hide her mother from her bear-hunter father and break the curse. Eventually she does, her mom understands that she doesn't want to get married, and the family lives happily ever after.

One of the major flaws with the whole arc is that Merida, the main character, undergoes absolutely no character development for the whole movie. Her mother Elinor is set up as the one source of unhappiness in Merida's whole life, and the film takes Merida's side from the first scene until the very end. Everyone else just has to conform to what she wants; it doesn't make for a very compelling character.

That's not to say there are no consequences at all for Merida's mistakes. Merida's mom gets turned into a bear. But that gets reversed by the end of the film. And the fact that her mom gets turned into a bear isn't really a consequence of trying to break tradition, which was her original intention and motivation. It's a consequence of Merida making a bad deal with a witch. See, Merida shows up at the witch's cottage and sees that it's full of wooden bear carvings. The witch wants to sell her carvings, and Merida wants a spell. So Merida agrees to buy every single wood carving, and gives the witch a shiny silver medallion in exchange--the camera closes up on it to show us how important it is, though we haven't yet seen it in the film. The witch agrees enthusiastically and takes the silver piece, promising to deliver the carvings in a fortnight. Merida returns with a spell-infused cake and when her mom turns into a bear Merida feels mostly like she was tricked by the witch; it wasn't that she tried to break tradition, just that her particularly strategy to do so was flawed.

(The witch doesn't make another physical appearance in the film after this. The medallion Merida gave away is never mentioned. The carvings are never delivered or mentioned again, either. So many plot details and backstory elements like this seem to just exist in a black hole; like it was all made up as they went, and they never went back over it to see if anything connected. Everything's left unresolved, or if something is resolved it's resolved unenthusiastically like the filmmakers didn't even really care how it went.)

Her mom's argument for why it's essential that Merida gets married is this old fable about the last time somebody broke tradition. See, there used to be 4 clans, but then one brother wanted to be the king of the others so he broke tradition and tried to take over them. There was lots of warring, and he vanished, and they decided never to break tradition ever again (I guess). We get the sense that the alliance between the clans is still unstable today, since they constantly bicker and fight from the moment they enter the film. So it's reasonable that Merida should conform to tradition to maintain their tenuous peace. But once she does leave, we never see any consequences for it. Actually, Merida comes back and gives the clanspeople an impassioned speech where she tells them about all the good times when they were friends, and they make up and become friends forever after that. Brilliant. First of all, we never even see the clans being friendly before this; we're just told about it. So conveyance is more or less thrown out the window. Secondly, there were never any consequences for trying to break tradition; the film proves that Merida ws pretty much right all along, and everyone then agrees that she was right all along. Which brings us to thirdly; suddenly the film's lost it's whole point. The whole premise was based on how Merida resisted breaking tradition and had to face the consequences for it, and once everyone (including her mom!) admits she was right all along and all consequences are waived the original drive of the movie is sort of vaporized. And it's not even in the third act of the movie.

So, what DOES happen in the third act? Well, Merida's dad discovers her mom is a bear and hunts her down into the forest. Merida gives chase and while trying to defend her mom from her dad, a big bear shows up!! It's a bear who showed up in the first scene and again in the middle, and we had found out that he was actually the one brother from the fable who tried to take over the other brothers, who also got turned into a bear by the witch! You may notice that I didn't have cause to mention him until now, and that would be because he wasn't really tied into the film's central conflict at all. He was more like this bear that just showed up once in a while. Actually, that's exactly what he was. Putting a fight against him here in the climax of the movie seems to suggest that he was supposed to be the main villain, which is really lame when literally his only reason for ever being around is that he just happened to wander by. Defeating him resolves absolutely nothing, except that there is one less bear in the forest.

Want to guess how they beat him? Merida is a super great archer and that was played up a lot in the trailer, so she probably gets to use that, right? Nope! She only makes effective use of her archery once in the whole movie, and it's actually the best scene in the whole movie, and whoops Pixar already uploaded it to YouTube themselves so I guess there's no reason to go see it now huh. Merida's dad has a long standing grudge with the bear and talks incessantly about taking his revenge, but nope, he is completely uninvolved with its demise. This could have been a great time to do that whole thing where the clanspeople all realize that they should work together, and join against the bear, showing their newfound companionship! But, no, that was already resolved a long time ago, so everyone just stands around and watches during the final boss battle.

Merida's mom kills the bear by pushing a rock onto it. Not just any rock, but one of these stonehedge rocks, which before seemed to have some kind of relationship with the whole theme of changing fate or somethingoranother. It's kind of confusing, thematically. And then we see the spirit of the brother above the bear, and he gives Merida this nod that's a mix between solemn and thankful, and then disappears. It's thus confirmed that at no point in this film did true, intentional antagonism take place; just a nice dude trapped in the body of a wild bear acting on whim, and bickering clanspeople who temporarily forgot that they were actually friends the whole time.

This is already starting to drag on in the writing, and I didn't even start on how everything was heavily telegraphed and predictable, or the comedy relief triplet brother who ALSO were turned into bears but everyone expressed far far less concern for than the mom (at the end Merida is crying on her mom's shoulder, under the impression that she has just become a bear forever. Her three brothers, also apparently bears forever, watch this scene from the sidelines uncomforted). I didn't mention how the mom was constantly knocking things over as a bear and that didn't stop being used as a cheap gag; I didn't mention the INCREDIBLY CHEESY montages set over SICKENIINGLY CHEESY female vocal tracks while Merida rides around on her pony.

And what about all that talk about changing her fate? It actually just sounds like gibberish whenever she talks about how you change fate or how how she wants to change her fate and all of that. Who actually says they want to "change my fate" like that's an actual, concrete thing that people do? It's not even something that comes up anywhere else--Merida's parents never refer to her plight as having to do with her fate or anything. Merida just decides that for herself at some point midway in the film, and it seems to become a theme only through annoying repetition in Merida's dialogue as opposed to actually materializing in any meaningful way during the film.

There's just too many issues to cover in this format!

The whole film in essence felt like a first draft. There was way too much extra stuff and nothing was made to connect or make sense as it built up. And it really freaks me out that nobody cares, or maybe nobody notices. Pixar was making truly good movies, like, two years ago! Then they dumped Cars 2 on us last year and now they've dumped this and they're probably going to keep making buttloads of cash off of it and never look back. Seriously, don't see Brave. It's a very pretty film and I'm sure it seems very alluring but that's all it is; there's no depth here, no thought.

Phantasmaburbia Trailer & Year 20

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 07:42:00 +0000

Hey! It's been a while, hasn't it? I guess between maintaining the Phanta website and of course my now "official" site it gets harder and harder to manage this old blog. Which is a bit of shame, because I really do like it!

Well, work on Phantasmaburbia's been especially strong lately. I actually finished the main game content this week--so the rest of my time goes to tweaking, bugfixing, beta testing, and bonus content while Jason works on the sound. And of course, I'll be doing marketing! To that end I've actually produced a new trailer:

A friend did the excellent voiceover. It was a blast to record.

I'm a bit miffed that I didn't post around my 20th birthday, which was a couple weeks ago in May. I have a very proud tradition of those birthday blog posts. I suppose this one will have to count for my 20th birthday. The most amazing thing to me is that 3 years ago the post was about starting Dubloon, 2 years ago the post was about finishing Dubloon, 1 year ago it was about starting Phantasmaburbia, and this year it's finishing Phanta. Seriously, that's kinda crazy! Will the pattern continue forever? (I kinda hope not!!)

But in all seriousness I'm really excited about Phanta. It's my biggest and most ambitious game, and a huge improvement over where Dubloon left off. I've grown so much as a game designer over the course of its development, too. This year's looking to be a bright one!

Chiaroscuro!

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:43:00 +0000

Hi!

Running this blog alongside the site for Phanta has been, clearly, a bit of a strain. Most new web content I have is usually clearly cut out to go on the Phanta website, and that's when i do have news that I feel worthy of posting. Anyone out there expecting updates on this front will have to accept my apology for the distant updates here.

That changes at least momentarily today, however. I have a new game to share! It's called Chiaroscuro!!!

This is a puzzle game made in Unity, played on the web, and based loosely on Phantasmaburbia. It was made in school as a project with 3 other students.
Aside from providing the seed for the idea and providing direction for the general game design, my role was in level design and programming. Feel free to blame me for bugs--this was my first spin with Unity and there are plenty of issues to find. :) The game does all communication without text or sound, relying just on the visuals and level design to teach players. For that same reason, I'd like to remain vague on the actual content of the game and let you discover it for yourself.

Good luck! Enjoy yourself! Let me know what you think!

PS: Here is the Twitter of the art director/animator, and the website of the artist in charge of organic models and textures. They are both talented individuals and you should keep an eye on their work!

Phanta is still a thing!

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:01:00 +0000

Just keeping things alive over on this side of the "net"!!!!
I've posted a number of things to the Phanta website recently, including lots of new screens and update progress... check it at the same place as always, guys!

Also this sweet interview at IndieRPGs, which is worth a look for those craving some answers about Phanta and maybe some of my opinions on RPGs in general.

Keep it classy.

Escape from the Underworld - FLASH Version

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:41:00 +0000

We did it to Crazy Over Goo, now prepare for the latest in Flash-versions-of-my-games!

ESCAPE FROM THE UNDERWORLD

We haven't made major changes to the game aside from some difficulty balancing and extra background art, as you can see above. This was mostly a light-hearted side project, thanks almost exclusively to PickleMan, who does not actually maintain a particularly active web presence in the same way I do. This dedicated and talented mofo threw this together really quickly, though, and was hella responsive to making changes and adjuestments as I suggested them. A big round of applause for him!

Why wasn't this announced when the game was finished, months ago? We wanted to find a good sponsorship deal! Alas, sponsors did not really like the title, further cementing my confusion with the Flash world vs. PC gaming world. We decided to take matters into OUR OWN HANDS and crafted a Kongregate exclusive package here, banking off the dimes and nickels we may earn through ad revenue. Money was never really a major factor in this game anyway, from its inception back in October 2010 to the Flash version proposal to our half-hearted attempt to garner sponsor interest.

Anyways--ESCAPE FROM THE UNDERWORLD, everybody!

New (HTML5) Game - Jurrasic Jetpack: Hold On To Your Butts

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:37:00 +0000

Yep, I made an HTML 5 game.

This was for a class assignment. We didn't have to make it HTML5, and it didn't have to be nearly this polished, but, I had the capability, so I did it. There were 4 other people in involved in the project; 3 pals who did art, and 1 pal who made the music and the sfx (using an ACTUAL Gameboy, in his hands, wow!) (I will work on finding more links to the other pals)

There are 3 stages that loop continuously until you lose. You can rack up lots of points on the third one.

This game is nothing too special. There are a couple issues that will never be fixed, because at the end of the day it's "just" a silly class assignment. I think we can all agree I've got more important things to do.

Ultima Origins

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:48:00 +0000

I got a question on formspring recently asking about some of the old old comics I did before I was making games. I've been discussing them a little more often lately because Phantasmaburbia's main cast is made up of re-invented characters from those days of yore. The question asked on FS was pertaining specifically to the villain, "Ultima," who the characters were opposing.

Luckily I just so happened to be visiting home, and I had a stack of old comics readily available to scan (read: photograph and then touch up in PS). So I went ahead and uploaded some old drawings to satisfy your curiosity.

Warning: really terrible elementary school art ahead!

This was the first recorded appearance of the villain, I believe. This was in fact drawn NOT by me but by my good childhood friend Yoshi. We both drew comics and made a more-than-regular habit of borrowing each other's characters and expanding each other's canon. Ultima started off as such a snag by myself from Yoshi.

This comic was one of many many series which he started, though never completed. Usually his protagonist was Yoshi, the Zelda/DBZ-like legendary hero. This was to be the story of his 5th descendant, Moshi. I went on to make use of the name Moshi in Phanta as the samurai ancestor of the protagonist, as a nod to this. It's especially apt because "Moshi-Moshi" is a phrase used in Japan to answer the phone, based on an urban legend that if one were a ghost they would only be able to say "Moshi" once. So, saying Moshi twice proves you're not a ghost to the otherwise unaware caller.

Anyway.

This was the first page, also drawn by Yoshi.

Rule 1: Eat healthy foods (unless you are Will) [[disliked classmate]]
Once the world was made...
By Ultima, that holds the Ultima power
40000000 years later...
(Moshi: This is it...)
(Moshi: Ultima!)
One day, Ultima turned evil (Ultima: Mwahahahaha)
Then the world turned evil... (Man: Eek!) [Comment: Wash your hands after you kill someone, or if you are killed]
And Evil

Et cetera. I took him and managed to make him even more generic for my purposes. It took a while to find a drawing that actually featured a full shot of the guy: here. This is just a piece of the 100-ish page spanning final battle between him and "Greg," the OTHER Zelda/DBZ-like legendary hero. I promise you that this page probably had the most talking in it of the entire fight, because the vast majority went something like this.

And then later on I sort of "updated" the design a bit to make him ever so slightly cooler-looking.

His story as I told it was generally that he was this super-great god like demon who created Earth, but then a mysterious black liquid from space turned him evil. You know, like Venom in Spiderman. So he goes nuts. Anyway, it turns out he doesn't have the full powers of a God anymore and that the power was kept in this big castle locked behind a sealed door than could only be opened by killing the 5 or 6 "chosen ones" who kinda represented the different seals on the door and passed on this seal to their descendants. So naturally he goes and kills them one by one, including the main character, Greg.

Greg has to go through a whole bunch of trials to get back from the afterlife, and arrives just in the nick of time as Ultima is about to get his grubby demonic hands on the god power. Just then, the famous/best wizard Sauron shows up in the nick of time as well and splits up the energy, casting it in pieces to the ends of the Earth. A piece of it goes to Greg, which makes him way stronger and a match for Ultima. Ultima takes out the super wizard Sauron in frustration, but then is defeated by Greg in a big final battle.

And then when he inevitably came back in later comics, the heroes of the day had to go on a big Zelda-style adventure and collect the pieces of the god power stuff to fight him.

That pretty much covers it! All this stuff about Ultima isn't without parallels to the big bad in Phanta, though this is probably mostly because as a whole Ultima is pretty generic. When the game is finally finished and everyone gets to see how the story unfolds, you might enjoy finding the characteristics and plot stuff that crosses over between the two.

Productivity vs. Humanity

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:31:00 +0000

I've been doing lots of pondering, as I'm often prone to. As of late my pondering's been centered on a pretty specific facet of my life that's relevant to this blog. It's something I think I only really began to be cognizant of at some point midway through the development of Dubloon, and since then has only ballooned, particularly as I've gotten farther into my work on Phantasmaburbia.

In considering the general path of my life, a particular trend has been very visible in the last handful of years. There was a point in my life when I was a pretty socially active person. I always had semi-artistic leanings, sure. I drew comics and came up with card games and ran a website or two, maybe, but these were all expressions of various interests which I might have introduced to strangers as factoids alongside my favorite color or my favorite Pokemon. And then I started to get into making computer games.

I think the first really visible signs actually came when I was finishing Assassin Blue. I was running a website at the time (which is still online) where I posted scans of doodles in my notebooks. It wasn't anything great or special, but it was one of the things I did for fun and I was still in the process of cultivating a steady stream of visitors. And then one day I stopped. You can even see now that on my last update to the site I reassured that I was going to update on a regular schedule that week, and never did. I never even came back to correct myself or to apologize. I completely and honestly forgot about it entirely, and spent that entire week focusing on Assassin Blue stuff. And then the next week, and the next. Whoops!

The trend from there gets only more predictable, and largely already known to this blog's readership. I went on to work on more games. Slowly I stopped actively drawing apart from compulsion. I had a promising start as a writer of fiction that quickly faded. I definitely stopped maintaining any sites that weren't directly related to my games, let alone maintaining a presence on communities that had at most a tangential relation to my growing interest.

All of this is probably well and normal, really. I found my passion! I should be more than happy, and indeed satisfied with the gentle removal of the more nonessential parts of my day and life. But it started to become a very recognizable issue when I started to ebb away from friends as well.

The root of this isn't that hard to trace. When I want to make a focused effort on my games, I fairly feel the need to distance myself from people. Such is the nature of focused work! But more and more this starts to express itself in a very literal decision of if on a given night I'm going to go see some pals and party or if I'm going to stay in and fine tune that level or finally get to doing that boss fight I've been planning out for the last week. And then that decision starts to create an impact in wider circles, an example being my sleep schedule. Too often nowadays do I find myself awake and restless when the rest of humanity is sound asleep, even when maybe I'm not quite feeling the game stuff at the moment! (This is the part where I check the clock and realize it's close to 6 in the morning.)

I'm not complaining. I'm not pointing any fingers or calling any fouls here. This is actually what I chose for myself, sometimes through aloof persistence to my work but often through conscious choice. All of this begins to illustrate a very essential question of personal philosophy which I haven't yet definitively answered for myself.

I see very clearly that there are two ideals at play which are at ends with each other. On one hand there is the social life in which one draws energy from the people around them and expresses themselves through their relationships with others, their lasting impact being the impression left on their peers. On the other is the working man who shuts himself in his study and works tirelessly to produce work(s) that epitomize their knowledge and skill, a perfect brainchild which serves to immortalize these people long after they and the people who knew them have left this Earth. We all know of a lot of great figures like this in history, and it seems true with little to no exception that all the great artists and thinkers who produced the most thoughtful, emotionally significant pieces lived a lifestyle like this latter one.

At this point I might once have stopped to say that these dual pursuits of intro and extroversion were not diametrically opposed and that one could, with desire and practice, be master of both. But more and more lately I'm second guessing this. They're opposed in more ways than just literal time investment--when you choose whether to work or to socialize, you assign a value to those actions which is either greater or less than the other. You might like your friends very very much, but the more you let yourself be convinced that the most important things in your life are your achievements and productions, the more your friends become by definition distractions and less worthwhile investments. And even if that doesn't reflect your sentiments, it's the message that's sent when you essentially ignore them for extended periods of time. Conversely, once you get up from your work and go see your friends it's hard to pull away and come back, both in the span of that evening and in the long term as you're seeing them more and more. There are plenty of people who don't claim to have any particular hobby or talent or interest besides hanging out with their friends (and being a consumer of something, like listening to music or playing games)--and those people are perfectly interesting dudes with perfectly interesting lives!

I don't think I've yet fallen totally completely into either territory, but I do ride that line frequently and for me it's very easy to slip too far one way or the other for a long time. It was only really with Phantasmaburbia when I considered this balance in my life and decided to really let myself slide into that introverted zone and see how my production was affected. And now I'm facing the ramifications of that, and it's made me thoughtful. I'm seeing how my friendships become more strained, and I'm also seeing how my gradual detachment from people gives the actual product a very different energy from the perspective of me, the creator. I'm starting to question what is indeed optimal for me, while I fear actually experimentally pulling back from my project in fear that I'll somehow lose it. Which is pretty ridiculous to consider.

Obviously the "answer" is different for everybody and in all cases lies somewhere paradoxically between the two absolute extremes of introversion and extroversion. I didn't really write this with the purpose of coming out with a conclusion, and indeed I haven't yet even really reached one for myself yet. Just something that's been on my mind, that maybe you might be interested in pondering as well.

Phantasmaburbia Pushed Back; Pollushot Video

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 06:45:00 +0000

As you can see on the Phantasmaburbia website, I've pushed back the release date to a yet undetermined date. Don't panic, this has no malicious meanings or intents, we're just taking more time with it so it's better in the long run.

You can distract yourself in the meantime with Pollushot, which was recently featured on the front page of the Android app store and saw its sales skyrocket past 10,000! :) To commemorate, I've created a video of tips/tricks/techniques to try in the game.

Pollushot Released on iTunes and Android Marketplace; Joy Ensues

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:43:00 +0000

It's here. And it's beautiful, mobile gaming bliss.

Get all the links and juicy info here!

For those not in the know, Pollushot is a game I made with Game Maker back in January/February for YoYoGames. They took it in, ported it to mobile platforms (updating the graphics, adding some new enemies, and making other tweaks along the way), and now they've released it to the masses. I get money if you buy this game! And it's actually very good! So please, if you are the owner of an iPod/iPhone/iPad/Android phone, do check it out!

Win Free Copies of Phanta + New Trailer + New Music Album

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 07:35:00 +0000

OKAY.

We have some announcements here that have been waiting a very long time to see the eyes of the public. Brace yourselves.

First of all, our composer Jason Covenant has just released a suite called "Conscience of a Dreamer." You can listen to it here, and never listen to anything else ever again. Naturally, most of these songs will make their way into Phanta as well.

Then there's this.

Featuring music from said suite is a new "official" Phantasmaburbia trailer. There's a lot of new little things in this I haven't yet shared on the site, but it all moves pretty fast. Most importantly, this summarizes the basic story and whatnot for people who are still a little confused on what this whole dealie is all about.

To get all the deets on winning a free copy of the game, you'll have to visit the game website. This is because entry involves posting on that website!

Good luck!

Introducing Clair!

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 08:39:00 +0000

[Reposting this from http://phantasmaburbia.com/2011/08/27/introducing-clair/]

Whelp, there's a hurricane heading towards me, and my form of emergency preparation seems to come in the form of a new gameplay video. Lucky for you!

Fun fact: the dog is voiced by my sister. I'm starting to make a minor tradition of having my sister submit cameo voicework in my games, it seems.

And of course now you can watch all of the introductions for each character in the game on YouTube, excluding (somewhat ironically) the one that's actually publicly playable. I dunno if I'll ever put a video of his intro on YouTube, since it would seem sort of unexciting now with all of this unreleased content just begging to be seen.

Anyways... enjoy!

Phanta Website, Release Date & Price

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:30:00 +0000

Check out the new Phantasmaburbia website at http://phantasmaburbia.com!

With the new site, I'm ready to say that I'm aiming to release the game on October 31, 2011 with a starting price of $9.99. Those of you who have been paying a lot of attention to my stance on release date and price may find that this is a little later and a little more expensive than I've sometimes lead people to believe up until now. This isn't me trying to stab anyone in the back, rather, it's a result of the game's scope expanding far beyond what my initial vision was for it. My most recent post concerning the dungeons provided a taste of that.

In addition to the new site publication, I've gone and updated the free demo available at GameJolt and YoYoGames. As is usual, there's no new content available but there are plenty of changes to bring it closer to what the final product might be. Changes you might notice include:

Numerous speed optimizations & bugfixes
Updated victory music
Updated tiles, as seen in the above screenshot

You might be wondering what happened to the yellow, desert-like landscape that used to be characteristic of the early game Spirit Tunnel. I've moved it to a later part of the game, into a dungeon that fits it much butter:

PS: I can't say when for sure, but check back here a lot if you want to catch the impending release of Pollushot to iTouch and Android app stores!

Phantasmaburbia's Spirit Tunnels

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:20:00 +0000

I've been putting off making new posts, holding out for news on Pollushot and some other upcoming things, but it's been getting on for a bit long and I'm itching to share some stuff. So here goes.

From day 1, I planned out Phanta specifically to be a game with good replay value. Generally what that translates to is that each time you play the game, things can be played pretty differently. That mentality's spilled over into a lot of the game's aspects, but none so much as the game's dungeons. Let's talk about them a little!

The game's overall structure is fairly unusual. The first half of the game introduces each of the protagonists individually, slowly raveling each of their yarns towards a critical moment which joins all of the characters and sparks the game's second part. From there the game opens up quite suddenly, with a wide berth to explore around freely.

Completion of the game's second half involves beating 4 different dungeons--or as they're called in the game, Spirit Tunnels. However, I'll actually be designing and including 8 dungeons in the game. You're given a lot of freedom with what dungeons you want to challenge and what order you want to do it in; but as some dungeons are completed, others will be closed off to you. What dungeons you do beat affect what powers are available to you in combat, as well as some other gameplay factors.

The dungeons themselves will be very, very reminiscent of those in Zelda. There'll be a healthy balance of combat (and I've made a lot of effort to have a cast of diverse enemies who each present unique gameplay) mixed with puzzles that make use of your ghost powers. I might get into a whole post some other time about the actual specifics of the puzzles and the joy of puzzle design, as it's actually one of my favorite aspects of game design. What's important here is that these are more than just mazes with enemies in them; each dungeon will have a unique set of puzzles based on environmental interaction, and it'll be worth your trouble to actually play through the game more than once to see everything.

One thing I didn't want to do was have multiple endings. I find that when making a selection that affects the story, it's almost always a little forced and the effects of your decision are very obvious before you've even made it. Generally speaking, when presented with branching story paths, players will try to "win" by making the decisions that create the best ending, and it becomes very little about role playing or exploration. Once you've seen the ending where everyone wins, why would you play again? Or for that matter, what if you play through the entire game only to see a bad ending? Even in situations where "there are no good endings" and every conclusion is equally bittersweet, your actual effect on the game is very superficial--all you're basically doing is seeing one cinematic in place of another at the same juncture in the story. Some would argue that's not even part of the game.

I like decisions that have an affect on gameplay, meaning how you play and what mechanics/abilities are available to you. The actual bulk of your time spent with the game involve actually playing in it, so decisions that impact how you're playing the game have a much more substantial impact and are all the more satisfying to make.

I think I've said enough for now. Look forward to some more posts in the coming days/weeks.

New Phanta Teaser

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:59:00 +0000

Sorry for the blatant cutting/transitions/occasional audiovideo misalignment. Experienced some tech fail in trying to record, which is also why it's taken me so long to actually post this! :)

Development is a lot farther along than this might suggest, so look forward to seeing more in the coming days/weeks. I'm thinking of doing some long ranty posts about the design process, or maybe get into stuff about the game's structure (which is/will be pretty unique) or the story or something. Does that sound like something you'd be into?

PS- News on Pollushot to come, I think.

Art Dump Summer 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:06:00 +0000

I've been waiting for a decent time to throw some of this stuff up online, evenly spaced between other progress posts on Phanta. And I guess now's a pretty good time. Here's a select collection of pieces I made for school in the last few months...

LEFT: A black and white painting of Clark Gable. RIGHT: This is a self portrait with solid black & white dots. We had to design a "value scale" and then tile out an image of ourselves over a photo. This one is a little hard to make out, but this was considered a fairly inventive solution because I didn't utilize any gray and used a totally consistent pattern.

Possibly my magnum opus for the year, this was my final project for my 3D modelling class. The class was 10 weeks and was my first time ever using 3D modelling software of any sort, so I'm pretty proud of the results... the assignment was to design a setting/scene/space/room that had to contain at least 5 unique models (nothing organic/alive). I made a fancy restaurant for monkeys. I lost a lot of sleep over the course of many weekends to put this together (while staying productive on Phantasmaburbia, no less!)

So that's that. I'll close this post with a new Phanta screenshot, for kicks.

And with that, all 4 of the primary human cast have been revealed. :)

Demo 2 About to Close!

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:22:00 +0000

This is just a friendly reminder that the full second demo of Phantasmaburbia isn't going to available in 24 hours. Better grab it while you can!

In the meantime, I've gone and added the "partial" demo 2 to GameJolt and YoYogames.
In addition to all the updates that came with the full 2nd demo, I fixed a number of new things. Namely:

-Running is faster, and there's now an option to "Run by default," so that holding right click makes you walk instead.
-To use a SPEC item, you can simply right-click the target object. This makes puzzle stuff way faster and cleaner, and I love it.
-Doesn't reload sounds and stuff when you return to the title screen, which makes it way faster and avoids wasting memory.
-Fleeing from battle is now animated.

Not huge changes, but they make the game a lot more playable. Thanks to everyone who's played and commented on the full demo 2! :)

Oh, and...... one more thing......

(Click)

Just a teeny sample of what I've been working on in the last 10 days.

Phantasmaburbia - Demo #2 FULL

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:01:00 +0000

Here it is! The full second demo for Phantasmaburbia!

Get it HERE!
Note that this link will EXPIRE on June 25, exactly 240 hours from this posting. Get it while you can!
Things to note: This game is WINDOWS ONLY. In addition, it uses some effects that might not display as pictured on every graphics card.

What is this game?
Phantasmaburbia is a JRPG with point-and-click elements about a group of teens in modern day suburbia battling an invasion of ghosts and evil spirits, armed with weapons found in their houses and mentored by friendly spirits of their ancestors or former residents of their homes. It's my current major project, with my self-imposed deadline for completion aimed at late September.
The final version of this game will cost a modest sum of money to purchase and only the first 20-30 minutes of the game will be available as a free demo. However, from June 15-25 I'm making the first hour of the game available online for free. This is that demo.

Gameplay video:

Some screenshots:

Phantasmaburbia Demo 2 Coming Soon! [Details Enclosed]

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:23:00 +0000

Set your calendars, folks! The free demo for the next part of Phantasmaburbia will be posted here and will be available only from June 15th to June 25th.

Why's that, you ask? When the final version of the game is released, a lot of the stuff in the next demo won't be available in the free demo that accompanies it. So I'm making the availability a little more exclusive, BUT this is your chance to snag more free playtime out of the game before the final release!

Once June 25th rolls over (or probably before then) I'll be updating the version currently online with improved engine/gfx/music/etc, but it won't contain any content/playtime that wasn't present in the already released demo. Past that, I may or may not offer any more free content to the public until the final release!

To commemorate the impending release, here's a gameplay trailer we put together.

Sleep's for Chumps

noreply@blogger.com (Banov) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 06:39:00 +0000

Was about to write a bunch of tweets, then decided to just make a brief blog post instead.

I've been working really hard on Phanta these last few days! I've been weaving my time between this and [final] school projects, working several hours at a time and alternating between them (at the expense of sleep and food, naturally). It's been very tiring, but very fulfilling as well. Meanwhile, Jason and Mack151 are working hard on resources as well... it's quite thrilling to have such talented people at my fingertips. :]

You might be excited to know that this means a demo is fast approaching! The distribution for this one is going to be more exclusive, so if you're somebody who wants to play more free content be sure to keep an eye over here. My hope is to post more specific details by next weekend, once the demo is actually prepared.

There are a LOT of exciting new things I'd love to share via screenshot, but I think some of them will be more fun if I keep them a surprise until later. For now, here's a screen that demonstrates some new and improved battle graphics...

(Click)
...Courtesy of Mack151. Whenever an attack is launched, a super pretty highres portrait of the attacker flashes across the screen! It might seem like a really minor change, but I'm seriously in love with these portraits and it does a lot to make battles feel more visually appealing.