NotRage: Elliot Takes on a Titan and Wins
// February 3rd, 2012 // No Comments » // Dejobaan News, DRP, Ugly Baby
Newly-full-time Dejobaan team member Elliot is prototyping new mechanics which may be used both Drunken Robot Pornography as well as Ugly Baby.
Remember the concept of titans – those big enemies we envisioned players could pick apart piece by piece? Well, Elliot did a great job on implementing titan combat in his latest prototyping sessions. The goal is to clearly to “shoot the core,” and some long-time fans may notice Inago-style movement and jetpack riding that help get the job done.
The titan doesn’t just sit there and take the punishment you dish out; its missiles shoot into the air before arcing down to rain over your parade. When you get too close, it peppers you with faster projectiles, rotating periodically so that you can’t just sit there and hammer at one leg all day long. Tiny enemies them pop in to cover its retreat whenever it moves to another area.
The way the titan spins its tentacles looks pretty awesome. If you have an eagle eye, you may even spot some “sinusoidal bobbing between spins.” That movement sounds like a mix between something for which you’d need math degree or a vaccination to handle, but we’re just fine with you holding down the fire button.
It’s too early to tell if these elements will make it in Ugly Baby or Druken Robot Pornography, but I don’t think it’s premature to say it’s pretty damn cool.
Defective Studios to Help Make Ugly Baby More E-fective
// February 1st, 2012 // No Comments » // Dejobaan News, DRP, Indie News, Ugly Baby
Starting this week, similarly crazy Boston-area developers Defective Studios will be helping us with Unity prototyping, including Ugly Baby. Pairing off with a team of skilled Unity developers has proven very successful so far with Owlchemy Labs, so we’ve enlisted in another team to help out on the Ugly Baby side.
Beginning in February, we’ll provide regular updates about what we’re up to along those lines. That (along with Elliot’s Project DRP stuff) is a whole lot of developing going on, as we push to get some great games ready for PAX East 2012 and beyond.
Ichiro’s goals with Defective are to investigate Unity and to decouple mechanics development from design. “I was doing everything myself, which sucked,” Ichiro reflects. He finds Defective to be young, full of energy, and bright — their cloud asset server is an impressive undertaking.
As it turns out, Defective is a group of 7 (5 full-time, 2 part-time) located in the Boston area, not far from Dejobaan HQ. Their number includes Jono Forbes, who worked as a 3D modeler and developer at the local 3DVIA; illustrator and graphic designer Jon Elliott; and tech artist “Danger,” who cut his eye teeth as a modeler.
I can’t wait to start sharing with everyone what Defective Studios starts creating with us!
NotJenga and NotPlinko Prototypes, Inago Rage Riff Up Next
// January 26th, 2012 // No Comments » // Dejobaan News, DRP, Ugly Baby
For the next few weeks, our new game dev guru Elliot Borenstein will focus on creating 2-3 day prototypes of wildly divergent ideas. His goals will be to figure out interesting new mechanics for Dejobaan’s 201X game lineup. With those prototypes, we’ll see what sticks for both Ugly Baby and the upcoming Drunken Robot Pornography (try asking your Mom for that as a gift).
Last week, Elliot built NotJenga, a physics simulation which challenged players to create buildings from blocks, then topple them by pulling out pieces. Anything that hits the ground got you points. Instant game!
The above picture shows a sort of ‘city’ layout. Elliot experimented with various abilities (remove a block, blow up a block, make a block attract other blocks, etc). Then he handed it to Ichiro, who discovered that making it “how many points can you get by only removing 6 pieces” was more fun than unconstrained mayhem.
The second set of pictures shows a more complicated example, with buildings full of spheres. You have to launch attractive cars (models totally not stolen from Aaaaa!) between the buildings to make all the balls fall and get mega points. This almost turned into a NotPlinko.
Shares Elliot, “It’s a fun little prototype that got us thinking about community generated content and the interesting things that entails. It also helped to get the creative juices flowing for some more complex stuff to come.” We’ll be taking a look at that more complex stuff for Ugly Baby, DRP, and beyond SOON!
‘Create a Competition’ Competition Results
// January 24th, 2012 // No Comments » // Aaaaa!, Awesome, Competitions, Dejobaan News
We received almost 30 entries for our latest ‘Create a Competition’ competition, where we asked our fans to come up with fun rules that involved Aaaaa! and Awesome. Lots were tough to execute and almost all of them involved video of some sort, so we decided to toss practicality to the wind.
It was hard to pick just three, so let’s first highlight a couple honorable mentions. We wanted to thank Jono00 and Yuval for sending in the ideas of doing the most spins or 360s around objects in the game. It would have been equal parts fun and nauseating trying to watch all those videos; I’m not sure my stomach would have been up to it, but I’m always game for a challenge.
Also, I wanted to thank Hetsu for the following video, which explains by example a worthy contender: Rhythm Aaaaa!
Now onto the winners:
James “zorfex” S. captured our hearts with a photo competition for the best rig to play Aaaaaa! We join him in wanting to see if people play it on a huge screen to fill their peripheral vision, in 3D, with a desk fan pointed at their face, or suspended over a large TV Mission Impossible style.
Steam user ilovesponges gave us this electrifying idea: hit as many powerlines as possible. The video results of this would surely be shocking (failed pun). There were some ideas about running into buildings and drop-kicking birds, which was great, but ilovesponges’s idea won out.
Lastly, we like people with strong lung capacity, so Valzi wins the last spot with recording the best scream (an “Aaaaa”) that lasts throughout the entire level!
These three winners have been given their choice of some fine Steam indie games. These were very tough to call! We’d like to thank everyone for playing and our friendly devs for donating their titles!
Win More Indie Games with the “Create a Competition” Competition
// January 14th, 2012 // 1 Comment » // Aaaaa!, Awesome, Competitions
Dejobaan’s fourth competition to win indie games just by fooling around with Aaaaa! and Awesome continues: this time, we’re rewarding three fans their choice of two of the above indie titles for constructing fun and implementable competitions involving the Aaaaa! series.
The truth is, people enjoy playing Aaaaa! and Awesome in a myriad of ways: scoring tons of points, enamel, or knee caps, spray painting or interacting with the base-jumping on-lookers, playing in stereoscopic 3D… upside down. We’ve made competitions based around score plates, hugging, and kissing… but now we want to do something MORE!
The RULES: Give us your funnest, most challenging, most “something” but still practical competition idea which involves playing Aaaaa! or Awesome. The results need to be easily captured by photo, video, or audio. For example, our previous competition was to award the people with the hitting score plates. The results were captured by an end-of-stage photo.
Each winner chooses two games out of these hits:
Noumenon Games‘ Nimbus:
Arcen Games‘ Tidalis:
Gaijin Games‘ Bit.Trip Runner:
Power of Two Games‘ Dwarfs!?
The Submission Process and Deadline: Due to the nature of this competition, entries will only be valid via Private Message on Steam or via email at stuff@dejobaan.com. Entries are due January 19, 2012 11:59PM EST.
The Legal Stuff: Dejobaan reserves the right to disqualify any entry for any reason. In the event that a particular prize is not available, Dejobaan may replace it with a prize of equal or greater value at its discretion. Each entrant may win a maximum of one prize. Plombium not required.
Alex is NUDE.
// January 6th, 2012 // 3 Comments » // Awesome, F=ma, Indie News
Alex is Nude.
Alex is Nude.
Alex is Nude.
Editor’s Note: I received a bunch of distressing e-mails recently. I am not entirely sure why. I believe that they had to do with Owlchemy Labs, our partner in crime on F=ma (which is the iOS version of Aaaaa!). Here’s a bit of what was said in the e-mails.
E-mails from Concerned Fans Begin Here!
Explanation #1 (12/30/11): Having recently purchased this fine piece of gaming history, I settled in for what I had imagined would be a night to remember for all time (and not one of those sappy “dinner on the pier with a glass of vintage chardonnay and the one woman on Earth who will put up with you” nights, no, I mean one of those, “Just finished building a rocket ship in my daylight basement and am preparing to launch myself to the moon where I will no longer have to think about that one woman on Earth who put up with me until she decided she liked my so-called best friend better than me” nights.)
Explanation #2 (12/30/11): I tried running the game in wine on Linux and spilt it all over myself, please help!
Editor’s Note: Look at how carressive the hand is over the wine.
Explanation #3 (12/30/11): weird bug where whenever I’d spray a tag on a building it would just say “Alex is Nude”. I like that touch and all, but did you really have to put that Renaissance-like picture of Alex in there? I mean, you can almost see his everything. I dunno if I feel comfortable falling anymore if I know I’m spraying a sexy naked guy for points.
Explanation #4 (12/30/11): I also had one question: How do buildings float in the air?
Editor’s note: Polystructures! They’re in the opening clip.
Explanation #5 (12/30/11): I launched steam on my laptop, as I normally do, and play AaAaAA Awesome for the first time after this update. I am playing the XMas levels when I suddenly hear a clicking noise. Strange, I thought it was in game, but NOPE! A flame popped out of the USB port on the left side as the laptop caught fire. I freaked out!… P.S. The game needs more Llamas.
Editor’s Note: This is not my llamas. It is an alpaca. Nature’s most beautiful creature.
Explanation #6 (12/30/11): It gets worse though. Whenever I try to start it up again, my computer starts to leak carbon monoxide, and my fish tank catches on fire. I’ve already lost three fish, and I’m expecting 2 new Betta fish, and 1 clown fish to be shipped to my house, as a form of reimbursement… I can still play other games in my Steam library, yet it seems like some things from Aa have “leaked” from it, to my other games. I’m 99.12455324% certain that Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, Serious Sam 3, Deus Ex, and Amnesia DON’T have scoring plates in them. I also don’t think that buildings are supposed to turn color when I drive by them in GTA 4 either.
Explanation #7 (12/30/11): I was playing Aaaaawesome until like half an hour ago and I was going for that 4096 jumps achievement. But as soon as I finished it hell broke lose. I don’t know exactly WHAT is happening since I’m too afraid to go near the window and lift the curtain, but all I can hear are explosions and peoples screams. I’m pretty confident some friggin’ war or something has started or the undead walk on earth or so and it is proven that all this is caused by this achievement! Is there any way to undo it, like using a time machine or something? And don’t tell me you don’t have one!
Editor’s Note: This is a child’s drawing of a betta fish.
Explanation #8 (12/30/11): So I loaded up aaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome and it brought up the steam overlay and starting googling for llama porn and taxidermy and taxidermist porn. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen taxidermists but they’re the last people you want to see in porn.
Explanation #9 (12/30/11): Hullo, I had a really absurd sort of bug come up in the AaaaAAaaa for the Awesome game. I was playing the game on one of the Christmas levels and then when I was about to land it made me fall through the bottom of the world and I happened to end up falling through pitch blackness in some endless loop so I figure OK, I’ll exit out. The next time I launched up the game there were floaty pixels of what looked like half-llama and half-viagra-bottle sorts of unholy chimeras floating all around the place and turning things all sorts of different shades of green and blue. The next thing I knew there were ducks. Lots and lots of ducks. I actually managed to FRAPs a youtube video of it in action before it bugged out completely.
Explanation #20 (12/30/11): Yeah, it seems like unlocking the 4096 achievement doesn’t trigger the third world war, but it started The Wonderful End Of The World and now it won’t stop until I play it through. That wouldn’t be a problem at all, since I already got all achievements and stuff, but something’s odd. First: The game is completely in japanese. Even the music, like in the main menu and the potato ARG levels, is all in japanese. Next strange thing: You play as a cat. Not that man that sucks everything up, but a cat. A green cat, which sucks things up, even if they are far bigger than me. Next: The highscorescreen of every level got completely wiped and filled with my name plus some seemingly random numbers, not in japanese.
Explanation #21 (12/31/11): Approximately 15 minutes after the first crash, I heard something not too different than what could be described as an “old-timey-voodoo-whistle.” Shortly after, I hear something that sounds like a parachute. I check outside and I see a man parachuting down from the sky with a package strapped to his back. I continue to watch him outside my apartment window until he gently landed. He brushed himself off and reassured his apparently worried conscious that “no bones were broken, 4 stars.” He began to walk up my apartment steps and, sure enough, rang my bell. I was a little apprehensive to answer, but I worked up enough courage and created a facade in my head that would allow me to act as if I hadn’t been stalking his departure from wherever he had arrived from.
“Hello?”, I called before opening the door. There was no response. I sighed, and opened the door. What happened next could only be described as unusual and unsavory. He unzipped his satchel from his back and quickly shoved two boxes in my hands and ran off, over the nearby hill. I stood there, astonished, wondering what the hell had just happened. I looked at the two boxes he had given me. I had been graciously given two boxes of “100% Natural Teas, Celestial Seasonings” both in the “Fruit Tea Sampler” and “Chamomile” flavors. I do enjoy tea and my modus vivendi typically starts with a mug of tea, so the gift was well received, albeit unusual. I called after him with the only word I could muster at the time, “WHAT?!”
I closed the door and sat back down at my desk. And then it happened again. Another voodoo whistle.
I am currently discovering for every unsuccessful attempt at launching the Christmas DLC, 12 minutes and 42 seconds later, to the second, another parachuter lands outside my apartment, handing me two boxes of the aforementioned tea. I had to type this to you in the breathing space provided to me. You need to fix this. Or don’t and I’ll just keep getting tea for the next day or so because I’m a persistent loser who doesn’t seem to understand when a game doesn’t work it simply just doesn’t work.
Editor’s Note: This is not an ad. It’s a screenshot of the above player’s post when fed into a beta version of Chrome.
Explanation #22 (12/31/11): You see, soon after I booted the game, my computer mysteriously started growing a spongy material on the CPU and GPU. I initially thought that this was just a build up of dust, but then after buying a new, top of the line PC, the same thing happened. I confirmed that it was because of your game by installing only a new copy of windows 7, and your game. It was only after your game had been run the that the growth appeared. I have now started selling the stuff, in pill form, as a psychedelic drug. Would you consider taking this feature out, but supplying me (and only me) a copy that continues this growth? I would be willing to give you a cut of the profits if you would be willing to do so.
P.S. I would also be willing to pay for the development of the code to increase the growing speed.
Explanation #23 (12/31/11): Been having a problem with the DLC levels making it so bad that I can’t even select or play the levels due to corrupted images preventing from choosing the level. Otherwise game works beatufilly on Unity engine, Owlchemy Labs worked so hard on this game and it shows. God I love those guys (Owlchemy Labs) more than you (Dejobaan Games.)
Editor’s Note: He obviously does. Fine!
Explanation #24 (12/31/11): I was greeted with a strange home screen of a naked man dancing to the tune of “Walk Like a Man” and beckoning me toward him. This made the rather aroused, and unable to control myself, I proceeded to launch a large quantity of vomit onto my keyboard. Normally, this would not upset me, but the keyboard shorted out and the USB port melted, causing extensive damage to my motherboard.
Explanation #25 (12/30-31/11): I started up Awesome on the highest graphical settings, and for around half an hour it was running wonderfully (great game by the way). After this, the most absurd thing started to happen. My computer’s CD tray started opening and closing in sync to the Awesome announcer’s voice, and then the voice started to warp, until it became demonic. Then, it began to speak again. “I WILL EAT YOUR CAT”, it screamed, in that same demonic voice, and proceeded to devour my cat whole.
Explanation $30 (12/31/11): I got bored and decided to jump through one of the pictures in the sky. I went through the one where a one of the devs admits to popping little kid’s balloons, though i don’t think it’s important which one. All of a sudden the game crashed and over 9000 penises came flying straight out of the screen! I quickly grabbed my trusty sword and escaped through the portal beneath my bed. It teleported me to the land of angry fire-midgets that stored 4 leaf clover in their buttholes for good luck. I decapitated the first five, yet even more showed up, but I managed to fight them off. I hid in a cave where I survived on nothing but keyboard filth and bits of my own feces, when suddenly a hungry giant appeared that pancakes electricity syrup. So I ran across the hallway and I was scared, so I opened the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur and I woke up with wet bed sheets!
Editor’s Note: The Fine Young Cannibals in 1976.
Explanation $31.50 (1/1/12): Firstly when trying to start the game up in Steam I got an error code 8008212 followed by the words I am afraid there are too many A’s in the title of the game you are trying to launch. Then, quite unexpectedly my computer began randomly uploading pictures of real life skydivers directly onto the Desktop from Google chrome’s web browser. I cannot get it to stop. I am having to write this email a word at a time in between trying to delete said pictures as they keep popping up. I do not know whether or not this is a known bug or simply someone having hacked into your game for nefarious purposes.
Explanation #43 (1/2/12): Hi, i tried opening For the awsome today and it refused to start untill i fed the game a doughnut. So I tried to do this multiple ways including trying to pass the sweet goods through the screen (which ended up as a mess), inserting it into the disk tray which also did not fit and finally directly into my hard drive, however these attempts seem to have ruined my computer. I believe this is your fault and you owe me for my broken computer which was worth £10,231.74 exactly, thanks!
From: F. R:
Finally, a note from Alex S (Owlchemy Labs):
Actually, that image is not anatomically correct. I’ll fix that for you:
Editor’s Note: It means that he has lasting appeal with the ladies.
ALSO: THANK YOU FOR TELLING US THESE THINGS. THESE WERE IMPORTANT MESSAGES WHICH, WITHOUT YOU, WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN TOLD US.
Dejobaan x Cave = Bullet Hell Baby?!
// January 3rd, 2012 // 3 Comments » // Dejobaan News, Ugly Baby
We are in Bullet Heaven and want to stay, thanks to playing the above Espgaluda II HD from Cave on the iPad 2. Cave’s timeless arcade experiences are inspiring us to make a very polished, thrilling shooter out of Ugly Baby.
In the past, we’ve looked at classical shooter games with a similar gameplay perspective, such as Space Harrier. However, now we’re trying to consider what we can learn from current arcade shooters.
We like how different shot styles allow the player some tactical choice. While controllers, joysticks and virtual controls have solved how to accommodate this tactical choice on the fly, Ichiro thinks the simplest implementation for Ugly Baby would be to allow the player to mousewheel between spread and narrow beam shots as a test.
Espgaluda II and other Cave shmups have gorgeous interstitial art that is more stunning than the above mode select images. This made us think we could insert images like her during game loading, endgame, and level creation screens, for example. In addition to adding interstitial art to give Ugly Baby more character, we think that creating impactful explosions, visually stunning enemy and boss designs, and attractive foreground and background art would help create an appealing visual atmosphere.
Aside from graphics, Cave’s shmups offer a wealth of gameplay and score mechanics. We’ll delve into this later, but for now we ask ourselves this:
Say our Ugly Baby enemies each drop gems. The player can collect them to gain… What exactly?
Who can say!
Indie Compo #3: Smashing Good Time!
// December 24th, 2011 // Comments Off // Aaaaa!, Awesome, Competitions, Dejobaan News
The third in our continuing series of Aaaaaa!- and Awesome-playing competitions is ready to be revealed! This time around you’ll be trying for the highest plates hit bonus in any level on Awesome or Aaaaa! The prize games offer up a healthy selection of platforming, puzzles, and strategy gameplay.
Over the Top Games’ Nyxquest:
Cipher Prime’s Fractal:
Arcen Games’ AI War: Fleet Command:
How Do I get ‘Em!?
Step 1:
Step 2:
Post a screenshot of your score to this Steam Thread by 11:59pm EST on December 29th.
Prizes:
- Prize #1: All 3 of those games for the highest plates hit bonus on ANY level
- Prize #2: 2 of those (your choice) for the 2nd highest plates hit bonus on ANY level
- Prize #3: 1 of those (your choice) for the 3rd highest plates hit bonus ANY level
- Bonus Prize: One game of our choosing to a random entrant, because we think lotteries are fun!
Fine Print
Dejobaan reserves the right to disqualify any entry for any reason. In the event that a particular prize is not available, Dejobaan may replace it with a prize of equal or greater value at its discretion. Each entrant may win a maximum of one prize. Plombium not required.
“I’m So Indie I Made My Own Bundle” Bundle
// December 23rd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Aaaaa!, Awesome, Dejobaan News, Indie News, Ugly Baby, Wonderful
Ok, so it’s not like you get an extra discount by buying all of our Steam-enabled games together, BUT we waned to draw your attention to a handful of awesome indie games that we think are cool, especially at discounts upto 75% until January 2 (just click on photo to go to the game’s Steam page):
In addition to our friends’ games and Awesome being on sale, Dejobaan’s entire library is slashed heavily at 75% off on Steam. Not only is Aaaaa! for the Awesome for Mac or PC only $2.49, we have the hardest Aaaaa! levels ever in our Brutal Concussion DLC (which requires the original Aaaaa!) for Windows for only $0.49 or only one shiny JFK half-dollar coin. Missed out on our oldie but goodie The Wonderful End of the World for Windows? That too is only $2.49.
And for your friends new to the school of Dejobaan, there is this comprehensive 5-pack for only $4.99, containing Aaaaa!, Awesome, Brutal DLC, The Wonderful End of the World, and our game-in-progress Ugly Baby.
Of course, there are some awesome (legitimate, cough cough) bundle deals going on right now that feature many of our indie friends! Steam has three indie bundles: The Awesome Indie Bundle (we lent them the name temporarily), the Super Indie Bundle, and the Mega Indie Bundle. The folks at Humble Indie Bundle and Indie Royale offer up great indie games, too.
In short, there’s no reason not to give the gift of indie games this season… there just so damn affordable!
Ugly Baby’s Shopping List for Unity Prototype
// December 21st, 2011 // 3 Comments » // Dejobaan News, Ugly Baby
With Ugly Baby still in the developmental pipeline, we’re exploring our options to see if we can bring its magic to Mac and PC users, much like our recent release of Aaaaa! for the Awesome on Unity. The 3D engine has provided several upgrades to our 2009 BASE jumping series, introducing the game to Mac users for the first time and serving as a great starting point for iOS development.
While transitioning Ugly Baby would then seem ideal, there isn’t an easy drag-and-drop solution. The process has at least 10 steps, according to Ichiro, that must be followed in this order, if we want to try for a Unity-based Ugly Baby prototype:
Before starting, we’re going to do what
she’s doing, because exercise is healthy
10 Steps to a Unity Prototype
0. Try an Ugly Baby level within Unity and see if it works at all. Then, lay out the full, detailed Ugly Baby plan.
1. Turn the level selection screen into something appropriate for Ugly Baby.
2. Create file selectors for which Python script to run (i.e. which city to play) and, GOD WILLING, finally a file selector for which song to play(!)
3. Figure out how to call out to Python to have it actually create the level.
4. Offload MP3 spectral analysis to Python. Right now, it’s in 3DGS, which means that we’d need to re-code it. Best to have it live in Python proper.
5. Routines to properly play the MP3 in Unity while synching that to the action.
6. Implement an end-of-level that displays Ugly Baby stats, rather than Awesome stats.
7. Steam integration.
8. Create new graphical assets for the Unity build. Logos, icons, and all those things.
9. Unity deployment. We’ve never created an executable package in Unity, so that’ll be a learning experience.
10. Testing, testing, testing.
Ichiro says this list is the minimum we need to do before anyone can play a Unity prototype. If this works, a step 4b will be to create another city in Python, which may make it into the existing 3DGS build, to deploy early.
With PAX East coming in April, that gives us about four months to improve Ugly Baby before its big public debut. We’ll definitely keep you updated on our progress leading up to this event!