Fiction:




Reality:

Her: "Will you hurry up? I have another game I need designed today."

Me: "What?! I have over 400 HOURS left of work to do on this crappy game that MIGHT earn us enough money to afford the straitjackets we'll need after it's finished!!!"

Joe puts a banana peel on his forehead and jumps out the window.

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Coincidentally, I'm currently tightening up the graphics of Joystick Johnny for an Alpha 6 milestone this week.

Coincidentally, the theme for Illustration Friday is 80's. Hopefully it's not cheating too much to post a new screenshot of Joystick Johnny.



The arcade area is starting to look pretty good. All of the cabinets have bezels, and I can even give them two-tone borders for extra cheese-factor.

This weekend I'll be working on all the stuff around the game, like the menu system and loading screens.

"Before playing this game, I was not expecting much..."

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I haven't done a Top 10 list on my blog yet, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Except I can only think of one item, so here it is:

1) Carry a saxophone with you wherever you go and act like you're on your way to a gig.

I haven't tried it yet but I don't see how it could fail.

Due to my new part-time vegan eating habits, I've been eating a lot of nuts, half of which mysteriously end up on the floor. Since I only sweep twice a year, it's starting to pile up, and I step on some occasionally.

It's a good thing I don't eat nails.

I just spent about 12 hours scouring nearly every royalty-free music site on the net for music I can use with Joystick Johnny. Specifically, early 80's-style electronic music. It's been... um, an experience.

Out of the 20 or so songs that I managed to excavate from 50 websites and 1000's of modern techno songs, nearly all suffered from at least one of the following:

1) Too slow
2) Too short
3) Too Musak-ish
4) Not electronic enough
5) Good 80's feel, but the composition was bland

Check out this page if you want to get a taste of the nightmare. ("Take Me Down" is particularly good.)



So, I'm back to my original plan of writing the music myself, which means it'll be almost entirely devoid of melody and have a lot of drums. Also, it will sound very electronic, to match the electronicity of the game itself.

Here's the tentative track list:

In-Game Music

"Yeah Yeah"
The end song from Ferris Bueller ("Oh Yeah") meets breakdancing music

"Miami Heat"
Hello, Jan Hammer

"Blip Monday" (12" Mix)
Very chippy, with some New Order and Soft Cell mixed in

Boss Battle
"Please Don't Retreat or Surrender"
A lot of Hex Drums and low blatty synths

Victory Tune
"Top Dog"
In the style of the Top Gun theme song

"Why is there a skateboarder trying to be so reckless... who knows, and it'll always remain a mystery I suppose."

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