Mojiferous Online

Sending off Simoebic Dysentery, preparing Wholesale Hero

2009-10-30T17:01:00.000-07:00

That's right, King Thor and I have kind of half-assedly assembled Simoebic Dysentery in preparation for a run at the GameStop Indie Game Challenge, which is by far the most mysterious contest boasting a $100,000 prize I've ever seen. The rules range from inane to nonexistent; for example they define an age range for contestants but never mention how far into beta/production they want this damned game, and they provide special rules for iPhone games yet not for any other platform... I hate to be a curmudgeon, but designing a complete working game for iPhone is a much different process than designing for something like the Wii -- how the hell are they going to judge one next to the other without categories? And how will they select which is better? Originality? Something that may have an original interface for a platform but has been compiled for PC (another rule that applies to everything but the iPhone) may seem hackish and boring compared to the same game running with the controls for which it was designed (have you ever tried to play Super Mario Bros. with a keyboard? What a pain in the ass. No one would have put money behind something so frustrating... But with a carpal-tunnel inducing controller? Amazing.)
Long story short - I just sent these jokers 100 moist simoleans of my own hard-earned cash so that they can gaze long and hard at the hopefully-seizure-causing, horribly-edited monstrosity of a video that I sent to them in hopes of "them" playing, enjoying and voting for our still-far-from-finished game thing. We don't even know who "they" are, and for all we know the judging will consist of someone installing our game on a virus-ridden 486 running OS2, attaching a monochrome 80-column screen and throwing the whole fucking thing in a gorilla cage with everyone else's terrible virtual LARPing, antelope racing, and zombie hentai games to see which one gets shat on first. Wish us luck!

In other news, Wholesale Hero continues to develop -- I've got a ton of new features, including live updating to the Mojiferous Industries website, multiple different game options, and some added bonus blocks for both the manufacturing and shipping phases. There is still a whole lot of work to be done, but maybe, just maybe, I'll run the damn thing for some other contest coming up... However, I do need beta testers for the damned thing -- so anyone willing to spend a little time with what amounts to Motor Pants Double-Plus Size, just shoot me a line.

--Admiral Mojiferous J. Colossus

Wholesale Hero videos, more work on Simoebic Dysentery

2009-09-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

King Thor and I continue to slave away on the latest version of Simoebic Dysentery, and I must say that I am confident that the newest beta build will be better, stronger and faster. I have changed the inner workings so that levels are procedurally generated, which gives us the ability to have an ever-expanding game without the headache of building every damned level (which is just too much work for a couple of guys busy with school, work and antelope wrangling.) We will also soon be filming an informational video for the game which is planned to involve jungles, witch doctors and hopefully evil robots.

In other news, I made some rather surreal little commercials for Wholesale Hero... Watch them here:
http://www.youtube.com/mojiferous483

First Wholesale Hero screenshots!

2009-07-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

That's right... I've been hard at work building the first working parts and pieces of Wholesale Hero, details of which are still murky and being figured out, so I can't say much about all the hows and whats quite yet, but I do have these rather lovely looking shots of the game in action. Nothing is necessarily set in stone quite yet, but don't worry -- soon enough I'll have something more meaningful to tell everyone.

Updates, or the story of what Mojiferous is wasting his time on...

2009-07-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

There isn't much going on here at Mojiferous Industries, just the slow trudging drudgery of work while I yearn to be outside enjoying the summertime. King Thor and I still have yet to really finalize any kind of evil plan regarding Simoebic Dysentery, but I'm still confident that eventually we'll get organized and finish something.

I've been busy with a few projects that are more like actual programming work and haven't been able to focus as much precious time to making incredibly pointless games, but rest assured there are still evil projects coming down the pipeline.

First amongst those may be the LAMP Motor Pants, which is still early in development, but the puzzle portion is entirely playable and I'm still trying to decide if it needs anything more than that or if I want to devote the time and resources to make it multiplayer aware, or if I should just finish the thing off for now, make it a Facebook app and then maybe decide where to go...

I've also begun work on another puzzle game concept called "Wholesale Hero", which is kind of a Motor Pants offshoot- more puzzly, less confusing racing BS. I have a working engine and some great concepts, but scheduling time to work on it has been harder than I thought (July seems to be full of birthdays, tiresome holidays, and days spent outside and away from my coding lair.) Eventually I will post some pictures and more information, but for now this tiny blurb (and probably a mention on the forum) will have to do.

--Mojiferous

FontUtensil released...

2009-05-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

Lo and behold! That's right, there's a new piece of Mojiferous Industries software, and it isn't a finished version of Simoebic Dysentery (quite yet)! I have just built an early beta of my latest um... "thing," which I have taken to calling FontUtensil.

What is it and why, you may ask?
FontUtensil started as an educational project and quickly turned into something that I could see myself using fairly often, because I'm too cheap (and not a graphic artist) too pay more than nothing for a font utility. I had a particular need that none of the current font utilities filled, namely the ability to quickly decide on a font for a project without endlessly scrolling through a billion menus only to forget what the name of the font was that I wanted to use… Let's be clear here though- I am not a graphic designer, nor do I claim to be, and FontUtensil is not designed with the designer in mind- it doesn't do font repair (yet), it doesn't give you tons of info about the fonts (yet), and it probably will be laughed at by the typographers in the audience, but I didn't design it for them…

I built in some features/future bugs that I don't exist (at least to my knowledge) in a free font utility program:
Firstly, being a game designer, I don't always use "safe" fonts that would satisfy the editorial staff at the New Yorker… No, instead I sometimes need a medieval typeface, or something that conveys "wacky", or a single word in three different sizes and 5 different colors. So I gave FontUtensil the ability to "lock" a piece of formatted text into place- Now I can compare and match an "ojiferous" against different M's.

Secondly, I may be good at visualizing something, but black text on a white background doesn't always give me a good feel for what I'm doing (which has been the main drawback of using something like Font Book,) so I built in the ability to load a background picture, set a type origin, and compare my ever-expanding font catalogue against the image that I'm actually working with.

Thirdly, I plan on keeping this project free, so that cheapskates like me can benefit from a (hopefully) useful utility program for the Mac- there's never enough freeware or Open Source software!

That being said, everyone should download the damned thing, try it out and let me know what you like and dislike, what crashes (I tested fairly thoroughly, but you never know) and what I should add as FontUtensil progresses on towards a viable program!

--Mojiferous

Download it here , or go directly to Mojiferous Industries and get it there

The website is finally updated!

2009-05-21T21:17:00.001-07:00

That's right, she's up and ready to go... New look, all pretty and fresh, check it out and let me know what you think!

I'm rebuilding the Mojiferous Industries website...

2009-05-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

In preparation for future releases and my annual digital housekeeping, I'm busy preparing a new look, feel and smell for mojiferous.com. Right now I have the PHP innards of the new site built, I just need to decide on a visual theme... Stay tuned!

Work continues on SD, multiplayer Motorpants

2009-04-08T15:48:00.001-07:00

King Thor and I are still busily working on an actual 1.0 release of Simoebic Dysentery, complete with faster load times, more levels, and refined gameplay... We're both busy as hell, however, and it might be a little while before it's actually ready for its closeup.
In other news, I'm working on a multiplayer LAMP version of motorpants (which would also mean a Facebook app...) I will probably require some beta testers who are familiar with PHP and SQL injection, so if anyone is interested, let me know

Simoebic Dysentery voted "Most Original" game in uDev Contest!

2009-03-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

The votes are in for the uDevGames Contest 2008... and King Thor and I walked away with a couple of awards for Simoebic Dysentery! Our (as-of-yet unfinished) little gem of a game garnered the most votes in the "Most Original Game" category and placed third in the "Best Sound" category (due entirely to the amazing soundtrack by The Republic of Thoronia [band].) I'm surprised, elated, and a little gassy!

Many thanks to everyone who voted for the game, to Liaht for the technical advice, and especially to King Thor for the concept, ideas, levels, early testing, and that amazing fucking soundtrack (the guy's got a natural talent for video game music...)

p.s. We're going to continue work on the game- finally record the dialog, fix some annoying bugs, add content, retool the difficulty... Look for it soon!

Play & vote for Simoebic Dysentery in the uDevGames contest!

2009-03-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

King Thor and I toiled away for a couple of months on the uDevGames Mac game contest, and finally shat out something resembling a working game (I settled on the name Simoebic Dysentery, despite the lukewarm reception from everyone on the team... But I needed a name ASAP and nothing else really stuck, so for the time being, Simoebic Dysentery it is)
Despite currently being more of a working beta than a true game (there are so many features I wanted to add, but didn't for lack of time, and bugs? There are a few...) I am pretty damn proud of how the game turned out: it sounds great (thanks to the Republic of Thoronia), looks pretty cool, and hasn't destroyed civilization quite yet (although I'm sure it's bent on destruction... I can smell it!)

You can download the game Here...
And vote for the game (and download and vote for everyone else's) Here...*

*This is an indie-developer do-it-yourself in a short time without-billion-dollar-budgets and teams-of programming-monkeys contest: I encourage everyone to download and rate all the games in the contest, if only to support indie developers (especially indie Mac developers!)

The damned Amoeba game keeps on chugging!

2009-02-12T20:41:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest screenshot, complete with working blood flow (those are red and white blood cells, by the way... and it has an adjustable pulse!)

Nothing new otherwise, just banging this damned thing out. Soon enough King Thor and I will have a playable beta, in the mean time enjoy the strange screenshots I keep posting.

King Thor finishes amoeba game soundtrack, I build a level editor!

2009-01-22T23:22:00.000-08:00

King Thor has finished the soundtrack to our (still unnamed) amoeba game for the uDevGames contest... and you can listen to it right here! Doubleplus good amoebasong!

I also just sent the Good King the first build of the level editor, which is far from feature complete but will get our level building adventure started. I'm not completely satisfied with the graphics right now; they're not quite etched/woodcut-Gray's-Anatomy-like enough for me quite yet, but I'm hoping to get them there soon enough... Anyone have any suggestions?

That's all the news that I have for now. As soon as we have a playable beta I'll post it here!

--The Admiral

On the uDevGames contest and being an indie developer...

2009-01-10T17:51:00.000-08:00

In a fit of daring, King Thor and I have embarked on a new quest for fame, glory, and trousers! We've decided to enter the uDevGames development contest and try our luck at making something worthwhile (whilst the Republic of Thoronia iPhone game is in near-permanent alpha stage...) We're making a real-time biologically-inspired puzzle game that I recently described as "Sort of an ugly man-beast-child of Frogger, Dig Dug, Super Mario Brothers, Portal, and dysentery." I will of course keep everyone up to date about all the fun and excitement of the development process, and in the meantime you should all sign up for the Mojiferforums and shoot us some ideas or feedback about our insane/inane ideas here.

On another note, everyone should read this Kotaku article (wellll... A Kotaku article based on an Ars Technica article about a blog by Wolfire Games) about indie game development and the Mac, and how the Mac community seems to be more supportive of indie games because of the lack of support for the platform by major studios.
I have seen exactly this same effect here at Mojiferous Industries: Thousands upon thousands of people downloading my oddities, playing my crappy games, enjoying my output that would probably be ignored or fade into the sea of commercial software in the Windows world. It probably also helps that the Mac community is historically composed of a large number of highly creative people- artists, musicians, designers- the type of people who may be more inclined to enjoy an inspired labor of love than something that is strictly functional. Eight years of a *nix kernel has also expanded the hardcore-IT-guy user base, bringing in more people who actively support free, non-commercial, and open-sourced software and further reject the flood of mega-corporation drivel in preference to indie development. This has all come together to create a great environment for developers like myself, allowing me to develop inane things like Zoltan and still know that someone out there will see and appreciate the crap I develop.
On the other hand, I think the future is probably fairly bleak for major studio Mac game development, despite the increasing user base and ease of development- the switch to Intel means that the average Mac user can run Windows easily and quickly, reducing the profit margin associated with cross-platform builds. I personally have a Boot Camp partition just for this reason... Why wait for the next big game to come out on the Mac when I can play it today with a simple reboot? There has also been a slow bleed of talent and creative juice away from computer games and towards consoles, and even the PC market has seen less "amazing" and more "mediocre" than in times past. Not that every major corporate game studio will abandon the Mac, but there will definitely be less of a reason monetarily for them to port something over.
This means that the Mac indie community should become stronger, stranger, and more creative than ever before; people will still want native games and the huge corporations will still make blockbuster ports, but the environment for the little guy (or the very bizarre little guy) should be great...

--Mojiferous

Atomic Combat, Macbooks, and the Mojiferforums...

2008-12-28T18:24:00.000-08:00

I apologize to all the Macbook owners, the brave souls still rocking first-gen iMacs, the desperate, the crazy, and anyone else who has realized that Atomic Combat's window can't be resized to allow them to play the game. I actually just finished up a fixed version and will be uploading the improved app to my website tonight (after midnight, when there is a lull in downloads...) Nothing too impressive or fancy, the app just checks your vertical resolution and adjusts the app window appropriately; the only problem thus far is that instead of implementing a completely new graphics function I simply scale everything down... multiple times a second... So the game is a little sluggish when animating at the smaller resolution, but at least it works!

In other news, after this resolution debacle I decided that I needed a better issue-resolution and user-communication method, so I started the Mojiferforum... So if you need help or want to complain about whatever oddity I've shat out, you can do so relatively easily now. I expect the Mojiferforum to become a disaster fairly quickly, filled with nothing but spam, midget and/or turtle porn, damned kids, and the occasional googly-eyed gibbon molester. Have fun!

...and in case you didn't know, you can view the Atomic Combat Top Ten right on my website. Right now the fine country of Sweden is beating all contenders with an amazing 5920 score! Soon enough I will publish my first list of bizarre country names that people have used, because all of you need help. Mental help.

--Mojiferous

Atomic Combat Released Yet Again!

2008-12-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

Good King Thor may not be fully finished beta testing the game, but I decided that for my own sanity and the sanity of all those around me I would just unleash Atomic Combat 2.0 upon an unsuspecting public... Everything seems to be working magically, so I figured "fuck it, I'm gonna release the thing," and so I did... Now comes the inevitable onslaught of downloads and then the onslaught of confused emails- "Why does everything show up sometimes?" (The Spy Plane/Spy Satellite "features" still aren't explained that well) "How do I play the card game?" (ditto) "I don't understand!" (neither do I...)

I'll probably post updates within the next few days about how the games getting along- I expect mixed feedback, so we'll see... However, I am quite proud of how the damn thing looks, and at least no one can say that this release is somehow uglier than the last!

--Mojiferous

First Screenshots of Atomic Combat 2.0!!!

2008-11-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

Atomic Combat 2.0 is progressing nicely, with almost all of the core finished (all that really needs to be added is a help file.) The game itself works wonderfully, and I've slowly ironed most of the kinks out (including killing the ability to save & open games- it unbalanced things too much.) Right now the game not only features a score (!) which makes things infinitely more interesting, but also keeps track of said scores online, with an ongoing scoreboard in the works at mojiferous.com. Multiplayer is not a reality yet, as the complexity of the current build makes it less feasible for one very busy guy to implement... but maybe soon. In the meantime, enjoy some screenshots!

Happy Birthday Mojiferous.com!

2008-11-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

For the first time in years, I can actually say that I'm proud to be an American... The people of this country have proven that (except for a few vocal assholes) we are not all racist, ignorant, fear-mongering, ultra-christian fascists. I'm sitting here listening to Nina Simone's "Strange Fruit" and "Mississippi Goddamn", hoping that we may have finally closed a dark chapter in our history. But that's a subject for a different blog...

The real reason for my blabber today is the first birthday of mojiferous.com- One fine year of impossibly confusing games, nearly unplayable crap, weird mustache obsessions, and horrible programming! Over the last year I've transferred a little over 327 Gigabytes of games, and had about 54,000 unique visitors resulting in a little over 360,000 hits... Not exactly Google numbers, but pretty damned good for a guy who makes smoking ashtrays and racing pants. I'm finally putting the finishing touches on the new version of Atomic Combat and it should be ready for beta testing within a week or so (which means that King Thor and Kloewer should be preparing themselves now...) Anyway- Happy Birfdey Mojiferous.com!

Updates! (and Mojiferous looks at Spore)

2008-09-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

Despite how quiet my official blog has been, I've actually been busier than ever- however not busy with Mojiferous Industries projects... Sad but true.

Well... not entirely true- I have been working on an updated Atomic Combat on and off (in my [ha ha!] free time) for the last few months- I've built a new user interface that is simpler and more straight-forward, revamped the graphics to be bigger and prettier, and tried to rewire the gameplay so there is less emphasis on between-round construction and research, two areas which seem to have been the source of most complaints about the original Atomic Combat- players suddenly running out of missiles or not noticing that all of their factories have been destroyed and having to suffer for 10 turns because of it...
So I changed the gameplay to shift the focus of construction and development to a "pre-war" construction phase that happens before bombs start to drop (much like in real life- the likely scenarios for global nuclear war would probably not allow for construction of new bombers and warheads in between strikes.) Consequentially, the "meat" of the game, the actual attack phase encompasses a blizzard of attacks and counter attacks with no interruptions for construction of a new reactor, or to research more reliable missiles in the middle of a war. In many ways, this had made the actual nuclear combat a little more "realistic", with a number of concepts from the inability to research new technologies in the midst of an attack to multiple simultaneous attacks (a feature I initially included in the original, but it proved to be quite annoying when coupled with the construction/research/manufacturing model of AC1.0)

So here's a run-down of current features:
-new rendered (3d!?) graphics
-3 levels of zoom! (still determining why, other than "because I can")
-manufacturing/research phase shifted to beginning of game, reconstructed as a "card game" (modeled partially on Nuclear War.) That's right, all 4 countries draw cards, place 'em down, etc. etc. to determine how many of what kind of warheads, missiles, bombers, etc. they possess. There are of course "action" cards, almost like Mille Bornes, allowing you to screw another player... This is still early on in the development phase, so we'll see how it turns out.
-wind now dynamic- no longer will radioactivity simply float across the screen from left to right, but will be subject to changes (due to nuclear detonations and possibly storms)
-probably a whole hell of a lot more features as I get further into development, however seeing as how I'm only spending a few hours a week (of my precious little free time) on this project, it may be a while before everything is completely ready for beta testing...

In other news, I recently finally got around to playing Spore... Only to be supremely disappointed.
Don't get me wrong, the game looks nice, it's easy to play and advances fairly quickly. Which, truthfully, is also my biggest complaint about it- in the space of a day I advanced from a tiny one-celled organism to a galaxy-hopping creature and only "died" three times (eaten by slightly stronger creatures before [quickly] learning that evolution/creation got more advanced the farther west and south of my nest I wandered.) Admittedly I was playing at the easy level, but I also never read instructions and towards the latter stages of the game was so bored with it all I was skipping all the in-game tutorials just to make the game a little more difficult.
I was hoping for an in-depth game much akin to Will Wright's Sim Earth- so dense and difficult, without careful study of the instruction book and repeated trial and error you end up with a burning hellhole of a lifeless planet- but no, instead I got The Sims Wildlife Version. Even the so-called "city management" phase- pumped so heavily towards "fans of Sim City and Civilization" as it was- was a disappointment. I don't know what "fans of Sim City" the developers talked to, but tribal, global, and galactic phases had about as much city management as your average game of C&C (is my city making tanks? no? Can it make tanks? yes. Make tanks.) In the "global" (or whatever the hell Maxis calls it) phase I could build three (3!) different types of buildings, and six (6!) different vehicles- I probably spent a grand total of two (2!) minutes managing my cities- in fact the hardest part about the stage was figuring out what I was supposed to be doing after willfully ignoring the in-game tutorial. Sim City, a place where layout and design time stretches into days sometimes, it is not. In fact, the only times that I even thought about Sim City were to ponder how great a new version of the game would be with a Spore-like construction system, with endlessly different buildings, some downloaded live off the internet from other users, etc. etc. Now that would be a game I would not leave the house for...

Anyway, long story short: doing both of these things at once- redesigning Atomic Combat and playing Spore- has led me to a couple conclusions that will probably influence the outcome of Atomic Combat:
1) Razzle Dazzle should never come before depth (a full-3D world would be really cool, but I would rather improve AC's rather lackluster play than add graphical bells and whistles- Sim Earth [with it's mind blowing 256-color graphics and single-1.2Mb floppy install] was a more interesting game than Spore)
2) Finding a way to present necessary information to the user without a maze of menus and clicks is key to AC's improvement (Spore can tell you everything you needed to know, just with one screen...)
3) I need music and better sounds.

Anyway... Look for more soon!
--Mojiferous

I haven't vanished!

2008-08-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Mojiferous Industries is still busily churning out worthless goods for all to enjoy! I'm hard(ly) at work on the Republic of Thoronia game for the iPhone, and also making steady progress on another as of yet unnamed steampunk western game. I've been sidetracked as of late with work, so I haven't been able to shat out anything super fast, but rest assured that more Mojiferous hoohah will be hitting the shelves ASAP.

--Mojiferous

Updated the website!

2008-06-18T23:12:00.000-07:00

That's right... I guess I have done something in the last few months- I completely updated Mojiferous.com... Complete with animated header, tons of weird javascript, and hopefully an easier interface. I really liked my Tiddlywiki, but it was time for a format change, and it was much easier implementing my own. So if you have any problems, find any glaring errors, or find out that the damn page just doesn't work (which it won't without javascript enabled,) please email me and I'll fix it...

I've tested the site under Safari 3.1.1, Firefox 2.something & 3.0, Opera 9.5, Shira 2.2, and Camino 1.5.4- and everything appears to run nice and smooth, so my standards-based browsers are fine & dandy... The IE people out there will have to let me know, but I have the funny feeling it's going to be a disaster!

--Mojiferous

Where the hell have I been?

2008-05-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

And what have I been doing? I certainly haven't released any new works of inane crap recently...

The last few weeks I have been working with King Thor on the Republic of Thoronia game, and undertaking that hopefully will be ready sometime in late july/early august... and that's all I've got to say about it right now... no screen shots, no special "inside the game"... nothing. Maybe as june wears on we'll have some kind of sneak peak.

Otherwise, I haven't worked on shit. I got a cold, my girlfriend went on a research trip to the Galapagos, and so I haven't done a damn thing. Oh well! Believe me- soon enough there will be more worthless Mojifer-junk floating around, so don't fret!

--The Admiral

On Zoltan...

2008-04-30T01:15:00.001-07:00

So I forgot to mention a most important part about Zoltan... The intro music and sound effects for the moon, Zoltan, and sacrifices were made by my good friend King Thor! If it weren't for his help, Zoltan would not have been as great as he is...

So thank you King Thor, and thank you Republic of Thoronia...

--Mojiferous

p.s. Soon enough the Republic of Thoronia game will be out for iPhone, and everyone will be able to experience the wonders of Thoronia!

Huzzah!

2008-04-25T22:24:00.001-07:00

Somebody at Sofotex gave Zoltan a "5-star" rating...

At least someone has a sense of humor when it comes to software these days... Zoltan is far from a "5-star" program, but it sure as hell is hilariously bizarre (in my opinion, at least...) So here's to the anonymous Mac Admin at Sofotex who figured Zoltan would be even more preposterous with their gold-foil sticker-star!

--The Admiral

p.s. I also realize that their "5-star" rating could be given to just about anything for no good reason other than self-promotion, but they've never given me one for all the other crap I've got listed there...

Lobster Widget!

2008-04-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

Check it out... I made a Lobster Petting web widget! Now on my blog and the Mojiferous Industries Homepage! OR... you can see it all by itself Here (where it is functional on both iPod Touch and iPhone...)

Good Pettin'!

--Mojiferous

Zoltan Released!

2008-04-19T23:02:00.000-07:00

Zoltan 2.0 is done and now available Here!

You can now sacrifice things, cut Zoltan's grass, serve tea, read the Book of Zoltan, and so much more!

Have fun!

--Mojiferous