I've been working on a number of things recently. I've continued working on my NES project, but I haven't gotten very far. It's a very slow process with many things to think about that you normally wouldn't have to. Still fun, though.

I've also just about completed my bachelor's degree in computer science. Surprisingly, you can get a bachelor's degree by taking exams and a few courses at a few specific colleges. Much faster and cheaper that way. I wrote a book about it called Faster Path: To a Degree in Computer Science. It's free through Kindle Unlimited if anyone is interested.

I've also been thinking about traveling around the country housesitting while reselling electronics online. Anything to free myself from the nine to five drain I call my life.

Hey, guys!

I'm not sure if you've seen it, but there's a new NES maker in the works (NESmaker). I've always wanted to make a new NES-style game like Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom (a less frustrating and less obtuse one) , but I'm afraid it won't find an audience ...

I want to start by making a prototype, using the original NES palette, and uploading it here to get feedback. If you have an NES and could quickly reply about what you would be interested in playing on it these days, it would be a huge help. You can pick more than one.

1. Text Adventure (Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom)
2. Action RPG (Zelda)
3. RPG (Dragon Warrior / Final Fantasy I)
4. Platformer (Kirby)
5. Card and Board Game (Chess)
6. Visual novel (Akira)
7. Adult / sexy game (Hot Slots)
8. Puzzle game (Dr. Mario)
9. Bullet Hell
10. side-scrolling fighter (Kung Fu)
11. sports game

Hey guys,

I haven't been posting lately because I have been working hard writing books (novellas and short stories) and selling them in the kindle store. So far, it hasn't paid better than full-time serious work on commercial games, but the work is certainly less monotonous.

Don't Forget the Bard! continues to sell a few copies a month and people are still reading it on Kindle Unlimited. I imagine most of the sales and reads come from people on this site, so I'm thankful for the support.

I'm thinking about rewriting Unlikable Us, changing the title, and formatting it for kindle, even though it failed to make any traction on Newgrounds. I'll probably change a few things. The choices would definitely be removed.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get anywhere on Don't Forget the Bard! 2. I have the cover designed, but the story isn't really coming together for me. I guess I've just moved on to other things.

Anyway, I ask this question every year, but nobody ever answers. Why didn't you play Unlikable Us?

So, I got a PM saying that I was user of the day for 12/9. I don't think it did anything, but okay!

Last year, I uploaded Past the Suicide Tree to my portfolio of games on this site. It doesn't make fun of suicide -- rather, it pokes fun at other things with suicide driving the 'plot'. Though not a real game, it doesn't auto play, so I couldn't post it under movies. Please don't send me messages about it not being a game -- I know.

Today is technically its un-birthday (because it's birthday was yesterday), but it reminded me about what I was doing last year -- working on Good Little NEETs. Unfortunately, I have moved onto other things because I just didn't like how the narrative branches had turned out.

Since then, some of my other projects got finished, but others didn't.

But what Past the Suicide Tree reminded me of was that Christmas is not a happy time for many of us. It's the dirty little secret in America about Christmas -- how people are forced into social situations with family members that nobody likes. And then there are those damn uncles that just keep touching everybody before and after the dry turkey that's just never cooked properly.

Anyway, if the holidays are a happy time for you, that's great, but if they aren't -- it is no secret that you are not alone ...

So, I saw It (the movie) today and I thought it was good. It wasn't really scary. There were a few parts where my eyes ballooned, but I don't think I jumped at any point. I expected to, so that was disappointing. However, the girl with her boyfriend in front of me was squirming around in her seat and jumping around like a fish. That was probably scarier than the actual movie.

It was a good movie. I wouldn't see it again, but I generally don't watch the same movie twice unless it's on TV and I've completely forgotten it. It will not "disturb me for days". I saw a lot of mainstream press posting stuff like truly terrifying, but for me – I'm old – it was not. Obviously, there is good suspense in it, but scary ... ? There are things in real life that are definitely scarier.

All that being said, I thought it might be fun to do a parody game with 3D me in a clown costume running around in an anime-style dungeon crawler with children to save and some jump scares. Think Jason + It + 2.5/3D dungeon crawler.

But! I'm having trouble getting large animations to play across HTML5 devices. Either the device people use is too slow to play the animation, so it just skips it, framerate crashes, etc. So, I'm going to have some quality issues if I manage to release before Halloween.

I'm a little disappointed with the feedback for Seer and Castle. I did manage to get 17,000 views and it's just a preview, but I don't know ... I kind of expected more enthusiasm, so that project will probably get dropped.

Hey guys,

I added an update to Seer and Castle to fix the frequent hangs. If you have a chance please try again:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/697113

If it still doesn't work, change your web browser and please let me know what the game did and didn't work on.

Thanks!

DENZI Room's pixel art (published at http://www3.wind.ne.jp/DENZI/diary/) is free material under the Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA attribution, share alike) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Hey guys,

Thanks to everyone who tried playing Seer and Castle. It looks like some people are having trouble getting the HTML5 version to work while others aren't having any problems at all. I started working on a little map -- above -- and wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to continue working on the game, so stay tuned and make sure to "fan" me to get updates!

I am surprised by how many people have already played it, especially since I've never gotten so many views so quickly. I have a few ideas as to why:

1) Boobs and a Bimbo

I don't think I've used breasts in my icon before. Even though they aren't so clear, I would imagine the increase in clicks has a lot to do with that.

2) The genre (RPG) is a popular niche and the title and icon quickly and clearly reflect it.

3) Timing

Perhaps there was not a lot of other content released at the same time.

4) Initially Launched with HTML5

In the past, I've always launched with Flash and then followed up with HTML5. However, because of the bugs, the overall score is lower. Discerning whether or not there were bugs was the point of releasing the prototype, though. Out of 5,000+ plays, there have been few reports, so I'm still not sure what the non-play rate actually is.

Anyway, I'm going to keep going and try to adjust some things, plus release a Flash version, so that should help with bugs in the future.

Thanks!

~Danny

Hey guys,

Thanks to everyone who bought the Don't Forget the Bard! e-book. The current game http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/684520 is shelved. Nor further updates will be provided. Good Little NEET also has some narrative issues that I'm still thinking about how to fix, so it's also on the back burner while I pursue a larger version of Don't Forget the Bard.

The next game is going to be about recruiting an army and rebuilding a falling castle. There will be various allies to choose from and enemies to make, a one-on-one battle system, an army-against-army battle system, detective work, larger inventory, and various strategy elements in play. There will be dozens of recruitable characters.

Don't Forget the Bard II, will have a different name because it's going to be less text-based and really won't look anything much like the first game.

For some reason, text is still displaying slightly higher and lower depending on the browser, especially on mobile. The next game will have larger hotspots (I don't think I ever intended to port to HTML5 for mobile), so the issue of clicking on text should be resolved in DFTB 2.

I will need beta testers. I'm hoping to finish in January, but these things always take longer than I expect. The planning is mostly finished and I am starting to build. If you would like to help beta test, please comment or PM me.

If you'd like to support me, Don't Forget the Bard is $0.99 or free through Kindle Unlimited.

Some of you might remember that I covered the Taipei Game Developers Conference for 2016. You can see those posts here: http://hotdogtopus.newgrounds.com/news/post/964165

But, it looks like I won't be going this year. The main reason is because there are only two talks officially in English. There might be a few more (I think Somi will be in English since he posts in English on Twitter), but the English schedule didn't specify language this year and it was put together quite late. I sent an e-mail to TGDF (by replying to their marketing e-mail), but they didn't reply. Their using Facebook as a primary means of communication is a problem for longer communication.

The second problem is that I don't have my student discount this year. Last year I paid $30, but this year it's going to be about $75 without a discount.

So, I'm disappointed because I was interested in seeing the VR and what other people are up to. It's also a bit difficult to cover the developers because of the language barrier. My Chinese is okay. Most of the developers speak some English, but they don't have great soft skills, so it's not easy to get good interviews.

So, I hope they decide to drop the price for next year. They probably will if the attendance happens to drop. If any of the TGDF people are reading this, please get an e-mail for public and press communications. Facebook is not appropriate for longer, private communications. #TGDF2017