Posts tagged Mojiferforum
Updates, or the story of what Mojiferous is wasting his time on…
Jul 11th
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
On the uDevGames contest and being an indie developer…
Jan 11th
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…
Dec 29th
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