Posts tagged Mojiferous Industries
Simoebic Dysentery voted "Most Original" game in uDev Contest!
Mar 17th
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!
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
First Screenshots of Atomic Combat 2.0!!!
Nov 29th
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!
Nov 5th
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!
I haven’t vanished!
Aug 4th
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!
Jun 19th
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?
May 23rd
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
Zoltan Released!
Apr 20th
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
Atomic Combat (finally) almost done (yet again)
Feb 22nd
Well… I’ve said it before, but this time I really mean it- All I have to add to Atomic Combat is help implementation (which should be a load of fun) and it’s done. Really done this time. The program has changed a lot over the last year, no longer is there any kind of annoying grey-area diplomacy, no more convoluted research, no more waiting for wars to begin… All in all, I think the program is much healthier, easier to use, and a lot less confusing. The interface has changed a million and a half times, and the gameplay is now something more akin to Battleship, but I think my original quest to make a nuclear warfare game in which no one really ever wins has been fulfilled. Everyone always asks, “You can’t win?!” with a look of surprise, but it’s damn close to true- the only way to really “win” is to survive an entire war without casualties… which is technically possible, but unlikely.
Anyway… As soon as I have the help files worked out and everything tested a little more, I’ll post the damn thing and finally get almost a year of solid coding off my shoulders. If anyone wants to beta test for me, just send me an email!
–Mojiferous