They ran for several minutes before coming upon a thicket. They stopped and quickly assessed the situation. The fog was fair, the moon was small, the gully was deep, and the chances of the mob finding them under this growth was very slim. “We should hide here for a few hours, the mob will grow tired and we can sneak back into town before morning.” Maria was inclined to agree with her. Both girls were very tired, and Maria’s movements were still impaired from giving birth. So they crawled in on their stomaches as deeply as they could into the brush and waited.

After an hour of nothing their hearts were pounding a little less and their wounds were hurting a little more. They began whispering back and forth wondering what happened to the others. They quickly silenced by the glow of firelight through the fog on top of the North ridge. They could barely hear the footsteps and occasional whispers as they slowly passed by. They held their breath as they looked for their friends in the crowd, but they never got close enough to tell. Cynthia leaned in and whispered to Maria, “I’ve got to get closer, I have to know.” Maria sharply whispered “wait” and grabbed her arm, but Cynthia just wiggled free and crawled out.

Maria could barely breath as she watched Cynthia crawl up the hill toward the men above. She felt guilty for staying behind, but she couldn’t will herself to move, so she watched. When Cynthia finally reached the top the fire glow was out of site and she was too late. Both disappointed and relieved she motioned down the hill to Maria that it was clear. Maria paused for just a moment, but decided to herself that if not now, then when. So she started to the top of the hill to meet Cynthia and make their way back to town.

Pretty much the only new stuff out right now are some partial tile maps I have been experimenting with. I even took a stab at hand drawn art, and I am not impressed, but not disgusted all at the same time. The hand drawn art I do always seems to dull down the colors, so I have to make a choice of all hand drawn or all generated as the two don’t seem to mix well.

Just after dark Maria kissed her husband and child goodbye, grabbed the lantern her husband handed her and left out to meet the girls. They had grown up together, gotten married about the same time, and with Maria’s addition a couple months ago, they all had children. Growing up they had always met in the woods behind the old church, lit a fire, and told stories to see if they could scare each other. It had been years since they had been out there, and they were all as excited as they were cautious. A year ago a homeless woman was seen eating a rat, and was later caught scaring kids with the eyes and tails. What started as a simple case of disturbance soon escalated into a plague of convenience convictions and vigilante justice. They all knew know one was safe, was the nostalgia of it all was far too enticing.

One by one they showed up around the campfire, each one more giddy than the next. After they all greeted each other and settled down Cynthia Hamlin started things off with a ghost story that had some promise but got way too sappy to hold it’s once haunting edge. Then March Engel stood everyone’s hair up with a story that was way to close home. After a long silence March broke through the eerie silence with her all too common laugh after scaring the fool out of everyone, which always led to a host of laughter. Everyone was slowly quieting down as Agaitha stood to tell her story. Agaitha’s stories always started off slow, with lots of dramatic pauses, probably the only reason escaped. At about the third mouth gaping stare we heard a rustling. We were scared for just a moment, when Cynthia pointed at that March wasn’t in the circle. March was infamous for sneaking out of sight and scaring everyone, with a smile on their face, story time continued as they eagerly awaited the obvious.

Agaitha was nearly finished when they heard a rustling, odd, they usually never heard her coming. March flew out of the woods in a blind run running falling over Cynthia. They all shrieked and fell apart in laughter, it took few seconds for March to catch her breath and finally speak above noise what she had been frantically mouthing since she arrived. “Run”, she shouted as her finger pointed back toward the church. A light fog was settling in and through it they could see the tint of torchlight. Someone had seen them, they were coming…

As the men were retrieving the strange woman from the pond, a man cloaked darkly in a druids robes raised his voice and addressed the now attentive crowd. “You have witnessed the power of this witch. Would you then burn her in you own village, releasing this evil amongst you? Come with me, the druids have a place to dispose of such things, there we will burn her, and her evil will be banished from this land.” The people agreed, and for two days they trekked the countryside until they came to a peculiar stone circle where other druids were awaiting their arrival.

It was already late in the evening, the druids took the woman to the center of the circle and tied her to a stake that appeared to be placed squarely atop an alter covered with fire wood and reeking of pitch. One of the druids took a ceremonial dagger and cut her deeply on one leg well above the knee. They waited as a peculiar shimmering blood slowly found its way down her leg, onto the wood  finally landing atop the altar. Still standing in the wood, the druid holding the dagger gave a nod, and the other druids tossed their torches onto the wood. The pitch spread the fire quickly, and shrieks from both the druid and the woman filled the air for far longer than seemed natural.

An uneasy fear was growing on the crowd. The wailing had ended,and through the heated haze it was hard to determine, but it looked like they were staring at each other. Then the burnt ropes that had held her to the stake snapped, and the two leapt at each other. All but a few in the mob ran, leaving the judge and a few others watching this spectacle. And as the two in the flames battled the druids began chanting what sounded like a prophesy. “Even in the fire she guards the gate, but the guilt from judgement lingers. The fire fades away her unnatural age, and there he can lay his fingers.”

For what seemed hours they fought, but she seemed to be growing weaker. A forceful blow came from the druid landing her on her back. She tried to get up but the druid straddled her chest pinning both her arms then wrapped his hands firmly around her kneck. She weakly struggled against him but soon her body went limp, and the victor arose and watched as she quickly faded to a shimmering ash that was scattered to the wind.

Then the ground began to shake violently and pillars of light began to radiate all around. Several odd beings stepped forward from these lights and surrounded the mob. The druid who fought in the fire now turned his attention to the judge. “I thank you my friend for finding her, I have been searching a very, very long time.” The judge gathered his wits and pleaded, “please sir, allow us to be on our way.” The druid replied “fear not good judge, I have use for you all.” “You my friend, will be my eyes and ears in this world, and I will repay your service with immortality. But as for your 7 friends here, they are no use to me alive.”

With that the villagers were dragged and bound to the seven surrounding altars in the circle. The druid walked back to the judge where two others were making sure he did not leave. “They call me Arakai, and you might be?” The judge replied weakly, “Merin.” The druid motioned for the strange beings to back away then spoke, “Merin, I am going to rule this world and you will be by my side.” “And I am going to give you power you couldn’t even imagine, as well as your own army.” He pulled out the dagger that he had cut the woman with and placed it in Merin’s hand. “Your army and your power lie on these seven alters, now go claim what is yours.”

Drunk with a new lust for power, yet sickened by it all Merin moved to the first altar, dagger in hand. He knew this man, their children played together and their wives talked often, funny they had rarely spoken at all. His screams sounded like they were a mile away in a bucket, echoing through his head as he plunged the dagger into his heart almost throwing up. The next thing Merin remembers is stepping back from the 7th he had killed, as if some sort of trance had overtaken him.

The idea is to write back story for games I am or will be working on, as a way to keep things moving forward when it seems like nothing is moving forward. It will also challenge my writing skills and hopefully improve them. And I don’t expect every week to be epic, but I hope it proves to be entertaining.

Games – Too Big, Too Hard?

For years I have been working full time, and going to college full time, while trying to spend time with my wife and four kids and working on games in my spare time, which left very little time for actually playing a game. During that period of time I almost completed Final Fantasy 3 on the DS making it to the final boss, and alas the world was left in peril due to my untimely death. So now that I am working one full time job putting my hard earned degree to work, I have had time to actually play games, like an hour every night!!!

The first game I pulled from the backlog of unfinished games was Chrono Trigger for the DS. I enjoyed almost every minute of this game, with exception to a lot of the add on quests that came with the DS version, but they were optional so I did what I wanted to do until I got bored with them. Then I got back onto the original side quests and beat all but a handful without having to reference a walkthrough. Each one was creative, and most came with good story bonuses. Then after many hours I took on the Black Omen and pretty much ran straight through from there to the final battle with Lavos.

It took me three nights to beat the final battle, putting the DS on suspend (love that feature) but slowly learned the what needed to be done and took it with patience. The battle felt epic, it was far from impossible, but seemed like it at times, and really challenged my nerves. After it was all over I was given an incredible game ending, and I might eventually play through this game again on the beaten mode.

After that I grabbed Suikoden for the DS, because I remembered the story line in that game to be quite good so far. I played on it for about a week or two, but the constant random battles just wore me out, Suikoden went back on the shelf, and now I am playing another game entirely.

For me Suikoden became more work than fun, and since it is wildly an amusing waste of time, I don’t find it necessary to explore the game further. But Chono Trigger had very little filler content, and I could explore without constantly being punished for doing so. And Chono Trigger is by far the harder of the two games, but it’s balance and intrigue kept me going, and I hardly noticed that it took me about four weeks of hour long play sessions to finish, I just couldn’t put it down.

So, that has been my recent experience, I like to jot this stuff down as I still do a bit of game development to break up the web development tedium.

Everyone believed him dead, but I now know he un-lives as a vampire, and I will forever be part of …

Oh yeah, I’m a fan!

My wife was at the release party last night, she won that bottle and a few other things. She hasn’t woken up yet to see that I’ve fixed this for her, but I’m sure I’ll be the first to know when she does. Anyway, it’s fun to do an off the wall post every now and then, but I must hurry and get back to my anticipation.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Twilight or Earnest. I enjoy parodies of even my favorite movies and singers. This is in no way meant to be offensive, it is just for fun that I do this.

New in version 0.2:

• Animated character
• Animated monster
• Menu sounds
• Equipable character (weapon only)
• Equipped items change character (weapon only)
• Random barrel loot (only 2 items right now)
• Load screen
• Smarter AI
• Lots of bug fixes

The next update should be in two or three weeks, give or take five. I just landed a much needed job doing php development and currently have my feet in both jobs right now. Once I am back to only one job work will resume and I hope we can keep this pace going from there on out.

When my friend Justin “JayJay” Johnson asked me if I was interested in doing a joint project I couldn’t turn him down. We both think very much on the same wave lengths when it comes to creativity, and we tend to push each other well. We were originally discussing the previously announced project code named “Goat Cheese”, when we decided to step back a little more and make a game that we could finish in a reasonable amount of time.

Bard To Death is a semi-humorous take on rogue-likes. The story and a lot of the interactions with the game world are geared toward being humorous while at the same time attempting to present a very real challenge. One of my personal goals with this is to ease the difficulty a bit more than the originals without loosing that feeling of desperation they tend to inflict upon you.

At this point we are a litte over two weeks into development. JayJay hammered out some sounds and we went back and forth taylor fitting them into the game in an attempt to publish this young preview. We had some good laughs and I was really disappointed that I couldn’t add more of his sounds at the moment. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can share more of these with you.

On my end I whipped up some simple models and pulled in the camera and player controls from Aeges Road and taylored them to fit the new game play style. The rest was whipped up in short order. There are a few bugs left in the dungeon generation code, but none that should cause computer trouble, you may find out what I am talking about as you play the game. It is also far from optimized, so I would probably recoment a 2Ghz processor or better, my 1.3Ghz Athlon XP choked on it.

I am very exited about this project. The sound detail is amazing and the code is flexible enough not only to get the rest of the content whipped up quickly, but will also serve as the base code of future RPG and rogue-likes coming from CodeUgly.com.

Goat Cheese concept art.

• Goat Cheese is a party based RPG focusing on the story of one town
• Up to 4 in your adventuring party
• Almost every NPC is a recruitable character on condition
• Lots of dialog based on your chosen party adding to replayablity
• Optional boss fights with the right party
• Every ending is a game ending, just go home and roll credits
• Humor based story line with multiple outcomes
• Start the game over with your saved character
• Desired Target Platforms: Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad

The design has multiple authors and I am teaming up with a friend to make this game happen. The timeline is a year in our spare time, give or take a few months. Just to show you how serious this game is I included some early concept art. So in the mean time check back from time to time for updates and if you have an iPhone go check out my current game, Choppacide EU.