Category: Personal

Bittersweet

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Bittersweet

I don’t think I need to tell anyone that 2020’s been a crazy year for everyone. The ‘death of Flash’ was one of the bizarrities of last year that were more personal to me than most. It’s difficult to see an entire workflow be deleted from the internet that I almost entirely credit as my entry point into game development, my outlet for creativity, the ‘tool of my trade’, so to speak. The freedom, the ease of sharing work, the personal nature of most Flash games, I don’t think there will ever be anything similar to Flash again.

But, with Flash’s death, there’s been more attention on Flash, Flash developers, and Flash games than there has been in quite awhile, it’s, well, bittersweet. I’ve been taking some time off of development and trying to not take the whole ordeal too personally, but I’ve been talking about Flash, games, gaming, and all that quite a bit lately, so I won’t go on too long here about it, but I think I owe the brave souls who listened to me ramble for far too long a link below if you’d like to hear more from me about it.

The end of Flash: What legacy will it leave behind? – Amelia Hansford

Flash Game History – Jonas Richner

It’s from awhile ago, but I haven’t made a post in even longer, so please check out Flash Game History if you haven’t already. I shouldn’t be surprised to see so much love and admiration given to Flash developers, but it still stuns me to think that have any sort of place among them.

Flash Developer on the Dead of Flash – Me

I made this video that long ago?? Should be no surprise that I forgot to link it on the site anyway. I don’t think my thoughts have changed all that much, though I do need to make an updated video now that Flash is finally actually completely dead.

So what’s the future look like for Borne Games, then? I’ve been taking a bit of a break from the stress of trying to get the next game funded / published, but there’s still some plans creeping forward in the background, so we’ll just have to see how 2021 plays out.

Don’t worry, though! Flash may die, but Fancy Pants will live on! I’ve been pretty terrible about using the site for any sort of collection of information, so I’ll give that list it’s own post soon.

Comments Bittersweet

Happy New Year!!

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We’re here, we’re alive!

Sorry for the absence, we’ve been scrambling quite a bit this past month. We had some small setbacks so we weren’t able to get W4 out this year. 🙁

Right now we are planning on an early 2017 release. We haven’t had too much to show off just because a lot of what Brad is working on is spoiler-filled. He’s also been working with artists and on the music (which is amazing), but it’s also something that needs to be ironed out before we post anything.

It’s probably important to mention that this will actually be a substantial sized game. Brad has tackled a lot of this by himself and it’s much larger than any of the other games he’s released (larger than all FPA games put together). There is a LOT going into this game and as much as we would have loved to get it out in 2016 we didn’t want to rush release and deliver an incomplete game. Nothing worse then releasing a game and saying “wait for the update THEN it will be REALLY good, promise!”.

Brad said he’s going to be around on here so if you have anything you want to ask/say to him leave it in the comments!

Comments Happy New Year!!

And We’re Back

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Finally, after the long, exhausting, almost three year long journey that was The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 3, I had to disappear from the internet a bit to regain some of my lost sanity. But I’m back, and more ready than ever to, I dunno, attempt to do awesome things at the Internet?

So what’s been going on these past few months? Lots, actually. First and foremost, I celebrated my first Fathers Day (:D) last Sunday, I’ve also been working on the Grateful Dead online game with Curious Sense. The first part of it is out now, and there’s some really awesome additions coming soon. Just make sure to register and create your own avatar, a lot of code went into making those little guys customizable! Disappear for awhile, come back with a launched game, not too bad, eh?

TommyLM and I have begun discussing Fraser’s Ride again, so expect to see some updates on that, finally! I can say, though, it looks WAY more awesome right now than it did the last time you saw it. I’ve also learned a bunch of code while working on W3 that should help make that development far easier.

I’ve also finally upgraded my audio / video equipment, so I’m itching to get back on YouTube and talk about teh gamez again. Anything you guys would like me to address, relating to W3 development, perhaps?

Been playing a lot of games recently, I’ll make a post later so I can go more in detail about the games I’m playing, since those usually have a pretty big influence on the games I’m working on.

And last but not least, I’ve got some cool ideas on how to get the Borne Games community more involved in some game making, so check out our forums for my latest hair-brained schemes.

Comments And We’re Back

Thanks, Steve

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Not much else to say that hasn’t been said better elsewhere.

I really started creating digital content once I got my first Mac, a now ancient PowerBook G4 (clocked slower than my current phone, imagine that). I first got into Flash games by creating stopmotion animation, and I got into that because I enjoyed video editing, thanks to in no small part by Apple’s focus on media creation with iLife and FireWire (an utter God-sent during the time of DV cameras).

So here’s to (as The Onion playfully puts it) the last American who knew what the heck he was doing.

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Comments Thanks, Steve

GDC 10′

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Gonna be heading up to GDC in San Francisco soon. Don’t know if that means I’ll be posting more or less for the week, heh. I’ll try and keep you guys updated if anything interesting happens. If anyone here is awesome and going to be there, let me know!

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Getting married and all that

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Hey everyone, I know I haven’t been updating lately, even after promising that I was going to kick start updates (which did last for a little while there, especially with E3 providing some nice topics of conversation for anyone with their eyes on the gaming industry), but, well, Fairly and I have been crazy busy lately, as we’re getting married on July 11th (and you can check out the engagement post from some time back here). Yep, that’s this Saturday! Craziness! Just wanted to give one last blog post as a single dude, since there will probably be yet another period of broadcast silence after this post.

First off, there was a bit of progress made on World 3 that I announced earlier. I haven’t really had a chance to work on World 3 much since then, but development on World 3 will begin officially after Fairly and I get back from ComicCon at the end of this month. Hopefully there will be a whole bunch more updates once that starts, as I really want to keep everyone updated on World 3’s progress along the way, get feedback on the progression, and hopefully try to involve everyone out there in the development in some sort of way. Should be fun.

Click below to check out the rest of the post. Got a pic of the Newgrounds Tank Trophy in there!

Continue Getting married and all that

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Current Events 6/7

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Last post before the big reveal tomorrow! (Which, no, is not a beta / demo :P)

Just a warning, this post might be a bit out of my specialty, and I hate listening to celebrities force their misguided and uninformed political sway as much as the next guy, but since getting into the games business, I’ve begun to keep an eye more and more on things like psychological studies on video game violence, and my ears perk up when politicians run their mouths off about censorship or any other attempts at controlling the markets out there.

So before I really get to it, if this is your first time on the site, you might want to check out the rest of the site, especially the last few posts in my 7 posts in 7 (business) days stunt. Also, I wouldn’t recommend this post for the younger viewers of the site, nothing obscene, but the content is fairly mature.

Game Developer’s Radio Podcast interview / Character reveal – 1/7

Jenna / ‘Fairly Obvious’ reviews de Blob – 2/7

If there’s going to be pirates… – 3/7

Music that I listen to when I’m working, music vs gameplay musings – 4/7

Fairly’s ‘Guilty Pleasure’ game – 5/7

Continue Current Events 6/7

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A better late than never 4/7

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Sorry about the last minute weekend blackout there. Still haven’t gotten back home yet, so this post is quite late, heh.

Anyways, music is a big part of The Fancy Pants Adventures, not just the in game music, but the background music that I listen to while working on it. See, I do a whole lot of sitting and working at the computer (makes up a good majority of my work, really), so to keep sane, I usually have a constant stream of music in the background.

Very gameplay focused animation is extremely rhythm centric, so having something with a solid rhythm in the background helps get my mind into a good state for animating. So in a way, you could consider a good deal of these songs as alternate background music for whatever games I was working on when I listened to them the most.

Gameplay is an art, music is an art. Both can create emotions that can’t be easily conveyed in words, so during production, I usually run into a few songs that I dig that seem to help convey the intangible qualities of gameplay that I’m going for.

Click on for a big ol list of musics!

Continue A better late than never 4/7

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Christmas updates

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Update:

Just in time for Christmas Eve!

World 2 Santafied

World 2, Santafied 😀 Click the picture to play.

Wish I could have changed more, but I had vastly underestimated the amount of hair clips I had to change (seventy billion, I believe). There’s probably a few mistakes in there, but oh well.

Here’s another present. When the game is paused, you can change the jump button to whatever you want. If Fancy Pants Man isn’t jumping, you might have accidently changed the jump button. Hit space to pause and press whatever you want jump to be. It’s still just a little quick and dirty hack, but I figured someone might want to use it.

Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year, so I figured I should come out of radio silence to wish everyone a merry Christmas or whatever happy holiday of your choosing.

We’re still way hard at work on Mirror’s Edge 2D, but I still wanted make some noise on the internets and send a few Fancy Pants digital presents to everyone out there.

Don’t worry, I’ll add more as I make them.

fancychristmas08

Click for full size version (1920×1200, pretty massive). If you need a different size, go ahead and request it in the comments.

lolcathats

“Christmas: If it moves, put a Santa hat on it.”

gimmepresent
480 x 272

I knew the little guy would come around, eventually. Hmm, wonder what’s in the box…

Also, feel free to request anything, icons, wallpapers, character art, (art for a different religious holiday?), etc… Tis the season of giving, after all (though I know I’m cutting it sort of close to Christmas day, I know!).

Maybe I should make it a New Years resolution to post more art and fun stuff on the site :/

Comments Christmas updates

We interupt your regularly scheduled programming…

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Since ‘Borne Games‘ is really just one person, you’re going to get a few posts on here that are far more more personal than business, and I think that this really deserves a post, so here’s the link to the Mirror’s Edge 2D Beta post, first off.

dsc_0015

Notice something there?

As of November 26th, Jenna (FairlyObvious in the forums) and I are engaged!

dsc_0023

Sunset

Not a bad setting for a proposal, no?

dsc_0033

Comments We interupt your regularly scheduled programming…

So…

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… it’s my birthday today, 23 years here, most of those spent playing video games, the last few spent making video games.

Just thought I’d let you guys know, heh. By the way, can’t remember if I told you guys this yet or now, but I got a ton of awesome stuff in the works that I hope I can tell everyone about soon.

Comments So…

And back

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Hey guys, I had a wedding to go to after Disney World, so I’ve been out of town for quite some time now. Not like a post so often that anyone would really notice, but hey. Anyways, you can check out the Flickr set with a handful of the pictures from the trip in it. I’ll probably post some of the funnier ones around in the forum.

Annnd, Fraser’s Ride is back in production, still a lot of work to be done until I’ll be happy with how it feels overall, but so far so good. I’m a bit worried, though, it’s more of a mellow experience of a game, not so sure about how Flash gamers will receive it. But oh well, I’m sure it’s good to diversify a bit. I’ll try to grab some screens or something once it shapes up a bit more.

Comments And back

Update, other stuff

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Update

Nope… update’s not ready yet, sorry…

Basically, the deal with the update is, I’m both lazy and extremely picky about my games, I’m sure you all know that by now… So it should be no surprise that I keep finding new things that I want to fix in World 2. I think I have it locked down now, so there’s really not that much more to do… you guys should be glad, though. If it was merely a bunch of bug fixes, you wouldn’t really have much of a reason to replay it. The biggest addition is the 2 more transitional levels, added after Level 3 and Level 4. I’m trying to be creative with these two, since they’re so small, I figure more thought should go into them, right? Nothing mind-blowingly amazing or anything, of course, but new content is new content, right?

There’s a few additions to the backgrounds, in Level 5 and Level 4 mostly, that I’d say are worth checking out. And don’t forget the timer… oh, and what some people would probably consider the best additions, if you hold a button while at the title menu or dialogue, it’ll speed them up. Definitely a plus if you play the game more than once.

Hopefully around the time the update gets out, I’ll have some fancy standalone players for the game, too, I’ve gotten a few requests for those…

Forum

The new forum’s been great, too, so here’s a big thanks to everyone posting and being generally awesome in the forum, and to Fairly who’s taking care of most of the admin functions there. We’re getting 108.765 average posts per day, and 5.529 average topics per day, in 2 weeks. Sounds pretty good to me.

Ah, that reminds me, I still gotta add the Forum door to the banner… but first I have to finish this update, argh.

Check out the topic rofl lmao: currently covered in cats and captions, and I approve. I want to start linking to more topics in the future, but I really haven’t had time to lurk around in my own forum lately…

I’d like to do more topics like this in the future, and build up some sort of collection of tips and how-to’s for making Flash games…

And finally, games I’m currently playing, since it would be too long to post that here…

On a completely unrelated note

You know what I hate? Those hand driers with the sensor on the front with small text that says ‘sanitary touchless’ or something like that. I mean, not once have I not rubbed my hands all over the thing looking for a sensor or button before I actually notice the small sensor in front. And gamers / developers who think online gaming is a replacement for multiplayer gaming in person, I REALLY hate that…

Comments Update, other stuff

Sorry Sonic…

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Yep, that previous post was an April fools dealio, but since I’m lazy, I didn’t actually post it until late yesterday, so I’m going to leave that post unedited so you can still view it in all it’s splendor. I’ll leave the mock banner up for one more day also…

Figured I’d show you guys what my ‘genius’ sister did to my desktop yesterday. She was quite proud of it…

stupiddesktop.jpg

Song that’s currently stuck in my head: In My Head by Your Vegas. The song’s on their site, ya might wanna check it out. Reminds me of The Stills on a good day (aka Love & Death or Still In Love Song).

Comments Sorry Sonic…