So, to start off with a summary, I started over with a lot of the work on Grief.  The engine wasn’t fast enough, and the script wasn’t tight enough.  Got a shitload of work done on both over the past week or so (since from now until June, this is the only thing that I have to work on, at all).  You can see where the new engine in the Grief Demo tab, up top.  The character works way better than before, and that’s a really big improvement in my eyes.  This is the third time I’ve tried making a platformer with Box2D, and I think I might have really gotten it down now.  The way he works is at least vaguely interesting, so I’ll probably write something about it in the near future.

Also, I hooked up the Jack animations from Company so that he wouldn’t be a green rectangle anymore.  Once I find a character artist, I’ll get the actual game art put in.

Everything is working better than before, and I’m satisfied.

I don’t get all that much fanmade content (excluding the extremely badass Spewer tattoo), but someone just sent me a poem that they wrote about Company, and I figured I’d share it with the class.  Props to Kevin Hoecherl, you’re pretty awesome!

“the company of myself”

a finite square of greenest grass
with two flowers separate, alone, at last
united in loneliness, colorful solidarity
holding aloft their petals in a sorrowful scene

perfectly matched to complete any trial
hearts synced together, relying on each other for survival
a perfect hideaway, kept in a safe place
until today i awoke, to find its loss without a trace

now only the companionship of myself in this solitude
the remorse for what i was unable to do
as the dawn breaks, the stars fade to gray
and all thats left is the meaningless charade

repetitious shadows that deliver me safely
along with overwhelming guilt that enslaves me daily
two flowers remain, a testament to all we went through
but i miss you. i miss you. i miss you

Viricide has been packed up and sent off into the real world, so you’ll hopefully be seeing it on various game sites pretty soon.  At the time of writing this, it’s on at least Armor and Kongregate.  Reviews are about where I expected–Generally, people like it, but it’s not for everyone and some people dislike certain things here and there.  There are plenty of positive reviews, but those are no fun, so here’s a sampling of the negative ones, courtesy of ArmorGames.com and its userbase.

What an emo game writer…

This got fucking depressing towards the end

gay

storyline makes no sense

I very don’t like this game

Fun, but not that fun at the same time.

The tiny enemy is the worst bastard ever in a flash game.

holy cow she sounds like oprah

boring
and graphic is dumb
voice is dumb

Bad game, using mouse for shooting just plain sucks

I like the chalkboard sound before the armor games logo thats about it.

Breach 3 has officially changed its name to Viricide.  Check out the nearly finished demo in the tabs near the top of the page.  It’s got a ton of voice acting, so the file size is a relatively hefty (but hopefully still manageable) 5 mb.  I’ve seen much worse for Flash games and movies.  It’s also got two songs and a bunch of sound effects.  For those of you with headphones (or just widely spaced speakers), all of the audio is panned from left to right to give you a little more spacial awareness.  Woop woop!

It’s still missing some little things like a mute button and cookies to save your progress.  Other than that, it’s mostly just tweaking from here on out.

Let me know what you think of the game–I’ll be releasing it pretty soon!