Fun Facts and Stats

[Pepsi Ranger]

* I hate battle balancing, and wish somebody would come along to fix all my enemy stats for me. I choose them more or less randomly.

I have to empathize with this. My brain stopped adjusting to numbers in the 7th Grade and every attempt to balance anything numerical is met with a headache these days (I still like numbers, as this thread proves, but I am terrible at making them do things). This is especially true when trying to match opposing stats.

* Like Pepsi Ranger with Powerstick man, I started a novelization of Wandering Hamster, but unlike him, I have only finished about a chapter-and-a-half (His rivals War and Peace right now I think ;)

I think you might be right about that. I'm currently on Chapter 23 of Superheroes Anonymous, which brings the two-book total up to about 900 pages. And I still have another 15 chapters or so to write.

If you ever go back to the Wandering Hamster novel, I think the world needs to find out why the Potted Cactus is so evil.

I'm also hoping that some day Surlaw will figure out how to describe the citizens of Walthros in such a way that they're not horrifying so that he can put a series of novels together regarding that story. I wouldn't mind having a first person perspective of that world.

* Will definitely receive an update after the new SAV format is done, and it will get real saves, so you won't have to do it all in one sitting.

Still looking forward to this feature (the new save format, I mean). I suppose the ability to save a game of Baconthulhu would be a nice addition, too.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Random little facts about my games... since I left those out before. Mostly about games I never made, random things about games I did make, and so on.

• * The Kirby Lands actually wasn't the first OHRRPGCE game I ever made. There were two previous games--one I started back around 1998 that never got anywhere (it was also titled "The Kirby Lands"), and then another one I made in 1999 called "Supernum and the Eight Orbs of Power." Ironically, Supernum himself was only going to be in the game for the last hour or so. I got pretty far with the game, but then the file got corrupted and I was left with one really old backup from months before... so I stopped working on it.
  * The TKL sequel I started on back in 2001 or so, Staff of Parupoo, was basically going to recycle the storyline from Supernum and the Eight Orbs of Power. I got about halfway done and then lost interest.
  * Back around 2002, I started on a game called "Spuduf Splorchers" that involved weird little spirit-thingies called "Spuduf." The playable characters in the game had the ability to either equip Spuduf (which boosted their stats) or use them as an item (which gave them the ability to summon them in battle.) I think two or three armor slots were devoted to Spuduf, with a single slot left over for body armor and another for accessories. The main character was a giant bipedal beetle, there was another character named "Mr. Triangle" (this was before I knew that someone else already had a Mr. Triangle... or maybe before he existed? I can't remember), and the third was a crazy Spanish guy who used a giant spiked club called a "puppywhacker." It was also the first appearance of Joguo Goueng-Zu from Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, though he had black hair back then instead of blue. I really wish I still had the file for this one.
  * Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School is a game I've tried to make multiple times before, but always failed. First in 2003, then again in 2006, and finally the current version that started in 2008. The different versions all had completely different characters, storylines, and enemies, though there were always a few that stayed around--Eddie, Bridget, and Sarah Fartbean have been in all of them, and Joguo, Nebozu, Tijje, and Matsu were in both the 2006 and 2008 versions but not the original.
  * Early on in 2008, I started to make a "reboot" of the whole Supernum/TKL storyline, keeping it closer to what I originally thought up way back when I was in elementary school (so it was very different than the TKL you know.) I posted some comparisons of graphics over on CP once, but I never really got anywhere with the game itself... and, sadly, I deleted it a while back, so those graphics are all I have left of it.
  * Also in 2008, I heard about the 8-bit contest and started making an 8-bit game that was basically a "medieval RPG" type thing. It didn't get very far--I did make a pretty big load of graphics for it, but not much else. I probably won't ever make this game (I didn't even think up a title for it before I lost interest), but I really like the graphics I made for it and I still have the file sitting around.
  * The name "Okédoké!" actually came from a comedian I saw while flipping through channels on TV about a week before I started working on the game. According to that guy, "Okédoké" is how Mexicans pronounce "okie-dokie."
  * Most of Señor Rialgo's moves are named in Spanish--Pedo means "fart," Pedo Fuego means "fart fire," Despegue means "blastoff," Pesquisa means "investigation," and Tracero means "another word for donkey, which would become 'slime' if I typed it."
  * Señor Rialgo is based on Yammy Rialgo from Bleach. The only big differences are that he doesn't have giant hole in his chest or a "10" tattoo. His signature move, the TraCero, is based on the Cero blast from Bleach.
  * The Emo Grande is based on Ulquiorra, also from Bleach. Well, its mask and wings are, anyway--the rest is based on a Menos Grande. This is why Señor Rialgo thinks he recognizes the mask when he sees it, before the fight starts.
  * Originally, the prison was going to be in California (which put New Hamster somewhere around Nevada or Arizona, and had Schnee joining after New Hamster instead of before.) After that, it was going to be in Colorado, and Adam Nebozu from Fnrrf Ygm Schnish would have been involved. In my third version of the story, the prison was going to be in Maine and Chapter 6's area would have been built into it; New Hamster would have been around New Hampshire in this version (which is probably why I picked the name "New Hamster" in the first place.) So the version of Okédoké's storyline that everyone is seeing in the game is actually the fourth version of it that I thought up.
  * The Yellow Border Ranger is loosely based on a girl I used to know... exaggerated to the point of insanity, of course.
  * The NPC in Wrongside who mentions the "Dimensional Hippievan" is referring to the flying, interdimensional-traveling blue Volkswagen van from something I wrote back in 2006, titled "Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Tales from the Hippievan." No relation to Schnee's blue Volkswagen van... I just really like blue Volkswagen vans.
  * Another NPC in Wrongside mentions "Dopémon," referring to a Pokémon parody ROM hack I made a while back.
  * El Garbanzo has an older brother named Roberto Alfonzo San José del Garbanzo, though he doesn't appear in the game. He's a Mexican wrestler.
  * I actually haven't thought up a name for Schnee's brother yet... which is why he's never reffered to as anything but "Schnee's brother."
  * Up until I was actually making Chapter 3, I hadn't even thought up a name for Schnee herself. I already knew her last name was going to be "McBoobs," but "Schnee" was a suggestion from my little sister.

[Shadowiii]

Random facts for various games I've made. I don't know if this is the place to do this. If not, hey, feel free to turn it into a HamsterSpeak article or something. :P

Stop

-Most people already know this, but the original idea was to make a game fast, and make it a lot like &And (in fact they share many similarities, the single, memoryless female hero, the "cut text" font that has caused so much grief, etc.). The entire game was going to be at the End of Time, with long, grinding levels (like in &And), until you finally realized that YOU were the main villain, and were in purgatory or something. I don't remember what the ending was.
-Infinity was based off of me, artistically anyway. I even had the coat he wears for many years.
-The magic system (having females have a different power then males) was actually inspired by the Aes Sedi (however you spell it) from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books, which I was really into back in the day.
-The original idea would have the potential to "stop time" anywhere during the game, most prominently on the world map. You'd press "S" or something and the screen would grayscale, every NPC and random battle would stop, and you would be free to wander until the timer ran out. I had a plethora of puzzle ideas based on this mechanic that unfortunately never saw fruition (mostly because you wouldn't get this power until the second game, Stop^2).
-The entire first game (everything in the demo after the End of Time) was going to simply be a flashback. I then decided having someone play out what was essentially a prologue to the main event would prove interesting, and even be worth taking a whole game with. Ah, ambition, how you cause me more work (and Stop's untimely demise).
-The sprites were based off Carbile's art style, most noticably Stop at the End of Time (which was extremely similar to one of Carbile's). The rest used a similar style, but weren't copied.
-Stop was one of the first games to have extensive use of NPC emotions during cutscenes. I really wanted a whole "FF6" feel to it, as most OHR NPCs just stand there staring out blankly during every cutscene.
-The script for the opening scene is enormous because of the previous bullet point.
- The secret of Mana trees are ripped, but not directly. I printed out the tree super zoomed in and tried to "copy but not copy" it. In the end, that didn't work out (it still looked exactly the same), but at least I drew it all by hand, and semi-tried to not copy it.
- The rooftiles are similar to Fenrir's in TSSE. I liked the design and stole it.
- Stop was the first game where, if your character stepped into a shadowed area, the sprite would darken accordingly.
- There are about 100 .BAM music files in the game, all properly labeled. Seriously, you should pop open that file and check them out, see my ambition at work.
- Stop was an example of how I would design a game: Full of tons of little details that don't add much in terms of gameplay, but show the author cares about his creation (like flavor text!). I was hoping to show a level of polish previously unseen in OHR games, but the task was two overwhelming.

Pitch Black

- The hand you use to explore is based on mikey mouse's hand.
- The boots for leaving the room are a zoomed in carbon copy of Edgar's from FF6.
- All the backgrounds are ripped straight from google images. If I ever do remake the game, I'll redraw them by hand.
- The original music was from Metroid Fusion and Castlevania. The new one is from free music on the internet, and fits much better.
- Julia's "death" picture was also a googled image (I didn't draw it). It fit the sprite perfectly, though.
- I have no idea where the idea for this game came from. Even now, I can't fathom it. Lost in the back of my brain, I guess.
- All the zoomed in pictures are google images too.
- The "bathroom" image is straight from Silent Hill 2. :P
- I love this game, it is probably my favorite out of all my games, even though it hasn't aged well. Again, lots of things to view, lots of flavor text, generally a decent amount of polish.

Pitch Black 2

- I made this game while taking 18 credits as a freshmen at a University. The fact it even got finished is a miracle.
- The game, like PB1, was actually made by two separate people with limited .rpg file interaction. Mr. B coded the light script completely without the file, and then plugged it in at the end. The fact the game doesn't crash MORE then it does right now is pretty amazing.
- I coded the entire room script. It was by far the most daunting coding task I've ever taken on.
- EVERY background image was drawn in MS paint. The photos in the various rooms are often shrunk-down google images, altered by me in Paint to fit the palette. Probably my best pixel work ever.
- Mr. B did the entire walkaround tilemaps, which is why they look better then anything I could ever draw.
- The game had four alternate endings, and only one good one. It drew lots of inspiration from the old Clock Tower game on the SNES.
- I don't think I actually have gone from start to finish and seen every ending. The game is just too difficult (and frustrating), even for me.
- Setu wrote the music, and I remember telling him NOT like Silent Hill 3. I regret those words. Setu's soundtrack is fine, but it doesn't fit the game at all.
- If you know Latin, the game is 10x easier.
- I consider this game my biggest disappointment, mostly because of all the work both me and Mr. B put in, and it all ended up as a huge mess. It was just too much a task for me, and it suffered. Still, the backgrounds are really nice looking.

The Seventh Day

- The rug graphics were greatly "inspired" by Orchid's graphics in...um, I don't remember which game. But a vast amount of map tiles were based off his.
- The plotscript is a modded "Deer Hunter Extreme" script used (with permission) by MCW. I actually dabbled in it before the 48-hour-contest, which might have been against the rules. Oh well, I only got 3rd anyway.
- I was in a Parasite Eve craze at the time (as anyone can see), so the general idea from the game was greatly inspired by that.
- This was the start of my "winged people" obsession that continues to this day in my writing.
- The fact that I wrote the woman so badly in this lead me to rethink how I wrote women in stories, which has benefited me greatly in writing novels.
- This has the most swearing of any game I've made, minus that horrible "Love and Order" Bob the Hamster game.
- This is my favorite soundtrack of any of my games. Every song fits perfectly with each scene.
- I'd love to make an "SE" of this game, but I don't remember how to plotscript.
- There was a day that was cut (the 4th I think?). This was due to lack of time. I already was running off 1 hour of sleep with no naps, and the deadline was dangerously close. I had to put the stupid "you passed out for a day" filler to even finish on time.
- I liked the story for this game, even if it was a little preachy. The characters were paper-thin and generally bland, but it might have worked if I'd had a few months development.

OHR-Date

- When people ask me what games I made back when I used to do OHR, I always exclude this one from my list.
- The entire game was made in two weeks, one week under the allowed time for the contest. I remember drawing designs and figuring out gameplay mechanics during my Econ classes at the community college.
- I actually did play a little of the Sim-Date game on Newgrounds, and it gave me a general idea on how to set it up. I didn't get past like the third day before getting bored though.
- The amount of grinding in this game is totally disgusting. I still can't believe I made you all go through this: I apologize.
- There were cheats for the game, but even I can't remember them. :P
- I drew all the girls, hands behind their backs-style. The backgrounds were googled, just like Pitch Black. I made everything else in Paint, and colored the girls (they were scanned pictures) in Photoshop.
- Despite this game being stupid, it again shows my philosophy on game design. There were 30-odd possible positions for the various townspeople and girls around the town. Each one was randomly generated, and these were based on whether it was a weekday or weekend. The bulk of the text for the girls and all the text for the NPCs was pulled from a HUGE randomly generated set of text boxes (I think female NPCs and Male NPCs had 200 each, and the girls had 150 each). I really wanted it to be the most open OHR game you'd played.
- I had NOT had a girlfriend at this stage in my life, so all this was guesswork. Luckily, it appeared my target audience was in the same boat. ;)
- Yes, the town music is Faust, just like the memorable first town song in Wandering Hamster. Yes, that was 100% intentional.
- The roads were actually drawn by Mr. B. I think the grass was too, I don't remember.
- OHR-Date 2's "rights" were given to Chaos Nyte, who often IMed me with awesome ideas he'd have, but the game never saw the light of day. Because I gave him OHR-Date 2, I had to make...

OHR-Date 1.5

- This game is about 100x better then OHR-Date.
- I made the entire game in under 24 hours. The bulk of the time was spent on writing text boxes, as the NPCs all had the same randomly generated boxes that they did in the first game (though less; I think only 100 each).
- All the drawings were done super-fast in MS Paint.
- I don't remember of Walthrus was out at this point, but if not I'll claim to be the first OHRer to make a sequel/follow up to a popular game, and do it intentionally painfully. Man, I love Walthrus. If not, I'll settle for second.
- This is the FIRST OHR-Expansion, meaning it took your save file from OHR-Date and let you start from there. You'd even keep all your money. This is because it was technically the same RPG file and all the same scripts, so the Globals would carry over. I'd like to see this done more often, honestly, it would be neat, even if renaming saves can be annoying.
- Twisting the girls personalities to be evil versions of who they were in the first game was one of the funnest parts of making this.
- Mr. B had no knowledge of this game, nor involvement. The only one who knew anything during development was MCW and maybe Minnek.
- The soundtrack to this game is awesome; all 80s-90s TV themes. It just needed some Transformers to be perfect.
- Seriously, people should do this more often with their serious games. It would be bloody brilliant.

Shadowiii vs. Santa Barbara Airport DX

- I got a camera for christmas that year (and I still have it!), and this game was mostly testing it out. I actually never really intended to enter Rinku/Gilbert's contest.
- Gilbert sent me the best pictures I've ever seen. I'd post them up on my mission in Iowa. Unfortunately, one time when I moved I forgot to take them down, so they are probably still there. I really wish I could get them back someday.
- There was going to be a 2nd game, set with me in Iowa (with DUEL SCREEN TECHNOLOGY, like the DS), but I never got around to it.
- The Album was written by me, my brother sang and played the music.
- My friend David thinks this is the best game I ever made, and he doesn't even know any of the community members. He loves the song too. Weird.
- I'm surprised I didn't get kicked out of the airport.

Intolerance

- This is the last game I made before my Mission, uploading it my last night in California. Technically it's the last complete game I ever made.
- The idea stemmed from a hike where Mr. B and had a long conversation about elemental weaknesses, and how it's lame you never see them actually carried over into the actual game (just in battles). I then thought it would be funny to have weaknesses influence other things, like what you ate or if you were "weak to power tools" or something, so if you went into a hardware store you'd keel over and die. This lead to INTOLERANCE.
- AT the beginning of the game, you can go in and see all of Infinity's weaknesses. If you remember them, you'll never get any questions wrong in the game.
- I also made this because I wanted to see if a Black and White game was possible on the OHR. IT was, but it was pretty ugly. The graphic were fun to make, though.
- Infinity's NPC was going to be the new standard; I was dropping the FF6 style npcs and going for a more NES/FF4 style. Sadly, no games were made after this, and the idea was dropped.
- I actually really like this game and think it's really funny. The overabundance of angst makes it a fun parody of most JRPGs, and it has some of my best written lines in gaming.
- "I like my meals tender, like my women, but quick, like my battles with the ungodly."


I don't think I've made anymore games. Sorry if this isn't what you wanted, but I'm too lazy to open all my old RPG files and put tons of stats on here that nobody would probably care about anyway. If you really want to know, they are all unpassworded. :P

[Uncommon]

-Stop was one of the first games to have extensive use of NPC emotions during cutscenes. I really wanted a whole "FF6" feel to it, as most OHR NPCs just stand there staring out blankly during every cutscene.

Eh, I think I had a couple years on you with Magnus 17, but drew from the same inspiration. Though By The Seventh Book had a much less time-consuming way of dealing with the standing-there-talking problem, by having every character wiggle as they talked.

[Shadowiii]

I hate you. ;)

[Uncommon]

I aim to please.

I don't care much for stats (most of my games would just be textboxes anyway), but I should go through the fun facts on my games, old and embarrassing as some of them might be. Tomorrow when I'm off work, perhaps.

[Bob the Hamster]

On the subject of emotion in conversations, I could never work up the pixel-art-courage to make different emoting versions of my NPCs for conversations... but now that text box portraits are available, I am getting tremendous joy out of drawing different expressions for text boxes.

[The Wobbler]

These game facts are way more interesting to me than numbers, keep posting them.

I'm also hoping that some day Surlaw will figure out how to describe the citizens of Walthros in such a way that they're not horrifying so that he can put a series of novels together regarding that story. I wouldn't mind having a first person perspective of that world.

I like them horrifying, I don't think a first person perspective would be very interesting. Someone who has lived on Walthros all their life wouldn't describe its creatures in detail any more than we would when spotting a squirrel or a duck, unless they were writing as a scientist, and I already did that with Monsterology. The bizarre nature of its creatures leads to Walthros being far more presentable in a visual medium.

[Momoka]

Name: The Wizard the Thief and the Lich
Genre: Abortion
Filesize: 581 kb
Status: Buried
Tilesets: 1
Walkabout Sets: 9
Heroes: 2
Enemies: 7, 4 unused
Attacks: 8
Weapons: 4
Backdrops: 0
Maps: 3
Items: 14
Shops: 1
Battle Formations:
Text Boxes: 4
Menus: 1
Vehicles: 0
Tags: 0
Songs: 9, all default.
Sound Effects: 0
Scripts: 0
Global Variables: 0

Fun Facts

* Made for the 8-bit contest. I'd dropped out, but Spoonweaver shamed me back in.
* Made in a single six hour sitting, most of which was spent looking up 30s slang (It shows!)
* One-star rating
* As of today, downloaded 54 times (?!). It also has three reviews, more than most games. (Scathing reviews are fun to write and to read)
* I mostly hate this game, but I do like the dialouge. In retrospect, I'd totally turn Midori's slang down, but I do like that the two heroes have distinctly different speaking styles (even without the slang), and that I exposited about them in a mostly natural way.
* While I'd rather this game disappear and never be mentioned again, I'm kind of glad I made it...

[Stewitus P.]

Name: Adventures of Astroman: The Unknown Saga
Genre: Comedy/ classic RPG
Filesize: 2.94 MB
Status: Under Construction, short demo released
Tilesets: 4
Walkabout Sets: 29 (1 blank, 3 unused)
Heroes: 9 (3 complete)
Enemies: 22
Attacks: 28
Weapons: 5
Backdrops: 15 (many already defunct)
Maps: 8 (1 blank, Plotscript Limbo)
Items: 23
Shops: 3
Battle Formations: 20
Text Boxes: 145
Menus: 3
Vehicles: 0
Tags: 20
Songs: 15
Sound Effects: 21
Scripts: 9
Global Variables: none, I think.

Fun Facts!!!

-- The entire game is one big love letter to old, Kids WB era Saturday morning cartoons, and each of the four main heros draws inspiration from one of the main eras of Comic Book heros, Golden, Silver, Dark and modern age.
-- I have an OCD habit of testing, retesting, reretesting, and rereretesting ect.. everything from plotscripts to enemies to npcs. This is rather handy since the only playtesters I can get are too polite to tell me when something's amiss.
-- I didn't actually sit down and write out a story board until last week.
-- I'm not sure, but some of the side quests might actually take longer than some chapters.
-- two mottos: "More, MOAR!!" and "Never say 'who's going to get this?' Say 'The RIGHT people are going to get this."

[Uncommon]

each of the four main heros draws inspiration from one of the main eras of Comic Book heros, Golden, Silver, Dark and modern age.

What, no Bronze ('69-86)?

[Uncommon]

double-posting aaaaaaaaaa

<b>ORBituaries: Spherical Disasters (2001)</b>
~ I can draw a direct line between writing Final Fantasy 7 and Pokemon crossover fanfiction when I was twelve to my current all-but-defunct comic Where Gods and Mortals Dance, embarrassing as that is to admit. This game and the ideas that go with it are somewhere in the middle of that line, though the only elements that appear in this game that survived are two characters that don't in any resemble their final incarnations.
~ Aside from being your standard creator-and-friends-save-the-world fare, ORBituaries has the dumbest origin ever. When I first found the OHR, I was playing around with it, the sprite editor in particular. I made a circle ad put a face on it, jut so I had an enemy to play around with, and eventually added a flimsy narrative to my sliming-around game. The spawn settings on the enemies are stupid because I was playing around with them and decided not to change them back.
~ The dialogue, dear <i>lord</i> the dialogue. There isn't a single contraction. I used to type like this! Christ, I used to <i>talk</i> like this!
~ The opening scene, introducing us to the heres, was Shizuma's suggestion, giving the player a chance to get to know and care about the people they were going to be spending time with. It's melodramatic and dumb, but that's all my fault.
~ I have no idea what the password for this is, I would share it if I had it, because there is so much crazy unreleased stuff in this file. Eight years will do that to you. I have the old crack, so I managed to get inside, but can't see whatever backdrops I might've had.
~ There are 81 songs in the file. Some are doubled because it wasn't easy to delete them in those days, but the rest are split mainly between engine defaults, Final Fantasy or Mario tunes, and classical stuff, Beethoven and Mozart mostly. There's even more that just bookmarks ideas I had that were never realized, a lot of stuff I found in various places that I can't identify anymore, though I know some are Noteworthy Composer defaults, and others I totally stole from my older brother's best friend (though he's credited in the readme!). There's also an inordinate amount of disco that doesn't appear in the game. That's for another idea that never happened.
~ I had so many ideas for this that were ambitious but stupid and far beyond my ability. Lucky for me my interest trickled off before I had to face that. Hell, the one mini-game that is in there is scripted so recursively I can't undertand how I didn't realize how broken the script was before I released it!
~ oh god i actually released this megaslime. there is no going back from that
~ Mario and Luigi are heroes in this game, with sprites copied straight from the first game. I didn't have the chance to make that side-quest.
~ My little brother once took it upon himself to remake this game from the ground up. We had some fun ideas, but I don't remember how far he got.
~ RPG Maker 95 backgrounds~~
~ This game was ultimately scrapped because my computer crashed and I lost my .hss. Within a year or so I'd reoganized all my story ideas to render it non-canon anyway.

here have some never-before-seen enemies
<img src="http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/9349/enemiesd.png">

<b>Parson's Apprentice's Tale (2001)</b>
~ Hahaha this won the first Human Day contest how even did that happen (eight years and i'm still waiting for my prize)
~ Josh and Greg from ORBituaries return, five years older. I can't believe I ever thought these designs looked cool.
~ 18 songs, some X-mas carols, some Final Fantasy stuff, some unidentifiable stuff. I've always liked the idea of using Carol of the Bells for a battle scene.
~ The car FMV has always struck me as goofy. I can't remember how long it took me to make, but the house tiles Liam did there are pretty cool.
~ I was fifteen, had just started twelfth grade English, was on a huge Chaucer kick. Could you tell? I actually intended to make a whole series of WGMD tie-ins in the same vein, all told from a different character's perspective. Some would be backtor, other's aftermaths like this one, but none of them really got done. I have a notebook filled with outlines, and about 2/3's of Thomas' story, which had a more consistent meter and was about five times as long, but still remains unfinished. Couplets are tiresome.
~ Melnazar was always a cool guy. His contribution of the backdrops will always be appreciated.
~ That battle scene really doesn't do anything, there are no numbers or stats involved. It's nothing but eye candy that'll keep the viewer (hopefully) not bored until a timer runs out.
~ According to my docs, I released this three months after the contest, though I have no idea why. Some bugs or misspellings that I couldn't be bothered to fix sooner?
~ The credit spell out completely the whole theme of the story. Yeah, Uncy, way to be subtle.

<b>Magnus 17: Off De Edge Of Dis Pair (Of Edges) (2002)</b>
~ I've said a lot about this game already in my <a href="http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue20/ ... html">Epic Marathon Retrospective</a> from last year. I would reiterate the whole disappointment I had with the backlash over the game's supposed "pointlessness", but whatever.
~ Really, this whole game could've been better, it's just that I was trying so hard to get it done with as much as I could in it that no one aspect really achieved its full potential. It's probably for that reason I've gotten the urge to revisit it so many times, though if I ever did remake it I'd end up with something that barely resembled the original, and would've built its own backstory free of Magnus.
~ I had this whole scrapped idea about the cosmology of WGMD, and the planet Magnus was a part of it. Eris and Thanatos' involvement here was a reference to that, but no real connection was or will ever be made since Liam's remake of ORBituaries never got off the ground.
~ The password is Neo-Ryan! He was, and always will be, my favorite part of this game. Shame he was a secret boss, it'd entirely possible most people hadn't bothered meeting him if I hadn't outlined how to get each ending in the readme.
~ This is the last time I tried making a conventional RPG. Some of my later games would still use the default engine, but I decided I was done with the default <i>format</i>. Was never any good at it anyway.
~ Final boss theme was stolen shamelessly from Arfenhouse 3. Regular boss theme was Disco Inferno, which fit like a glove.

<b>By The Seventh Book (2004)</b>
~ Final Fantasy Tactics and Fox's Book of Martyrs, taken together, will do this to a person.
~ This game is placed in WGMD's backstory, but how canon it really is I couldn't say right now. While the Church of Mytos has its place in the comic, I doubt the events here will ever be referred to.
~ I've always thought this, at some level, had the better execution of some of PATale and Magnus17's better ideas. It doesn't have multiple endings quite like Magnus17, and the mini-game doesn't exactly have no effect on anything like PATale, but the fact that how well you do in various mini-games carries some things over into others and ultimately shuffles the order of events was always something I liked.
~ The Persuasion game was a mess to write, took me two weeks on its own, and still remains absolutely esoteric to anyone coming into the game blind. It's a sorry fact that I didn't really give the player any clue to what any of the people will want or how it will effect others, but that might be half the charm. I think befriending the homeless man just to see the shallower half of the room back away works better if you're not expecting it. I'm also ashamed to admit that after writing myself into a corner, I finished the Knight's sequence with lines pulled directly from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. also i don't know what was up with that hooded guy
~ Oh, a battle scene that actually works! How novel. Again, never really thought about the player having no idea how to do this thing. Maybe that's why the save point is right before all the big mini-games? Leaves room for trial and error?

<b>PAIN AND SUFFERING (2004)</b>
~ Everything I wanted out of this game is here. My inspiration was all the games that ended up being graphics demos with very little game as a foundation, so I put some token effort into the spriting.
~ The stilted, vague, complete megaslime dialogue was my favorite part. It reminds me of a discussion I had with Calehay after he released Verdimea. Basically, I hated all the dialogue because it was so stilted and lacked flow, when he argued it was intended to be poetic. I hadn't even realized at that time I'd already riffed on that idea two years before, with this game.
~ Again, mercy got the best of me and I had to explain the joke in case no one got it. Therefore, the first thing you see is a note on the ground of your cell. If you read it, it tells you the only way to win the battles is with the debug keys. This prepares you for the rest of the game, with its invisible mazes and impossible box puzzles and instant-death traps. I guess I wanted the player to see the joke through to the end?
~ I went out of my way to make sure every single attack was broken. That way you could look on your stats screen and see something that looked reasonable, but in battle your sword might as well be made of paper. I guess I could have just given the enemies higher stats, but where's the fun in that?
~ I don't think the game ever checks whether you actually recruited Callus or not. If it does then I did something wrong.
~ All the doors kill you. The arrow is the actual door.
~ Of course it ends in a infinite loop. PGUP+PGDN+ESC!

<b>The Thrill Is Gone</b>
~ Aaaaaaaaaaangst
~ this is a true story

<b>Mr. T's Fantastic Adventure (featuring Seth!) (2004)</b>
~ 2004 was a busy year for me!
~ Liam and I made this as an X-mas present to our older brother, Seth, though even pulling a few all-nighters we didn't have it done before his X-mas break ended.
~ Unlike Shads, I still have the drawings Gilbert sent as a prize for this contest!
~ In the facility, you were originally going to sneak up on the Ninja Neo-Nazis. If you approached them from behind, you'd throw them hella far. If you approached from any other side, you have to fight them. OHR's NPC collision didn't let me do this thing, so I scrapped it. Also, clearly based on Metal Gear Solid's VR Missions, something the review on CP didn't catch.
~ I have no idea what the internet-translator-German for Hitler's lines are supposed to say anymore. I think one of them was "Look at my face! Stop looking at my face!" I'm sure it was all gibberish.
~ Each of the characters has a healing skill except for Seth. This was short-sightedness, and it means Seth cannot possibly survive a single battle. I hate stat balancing.
~ I swear Hitler wasn't always impossible. I prolly made it on a much slower computer, though.
~ There isn't an ending for Hulk Hogan if you rescue him, I don't think. This was a poor oversight.
~ Aside from Mr. T and Seth (as Batman), Liam and I each contributed an original character from our games, his sociopathic and nameless Man Who Wore Purple, and my abrasive black mage, Feather.
~ i think using it as the credits for this game wa the first time i'd ever heard Stairway To Heaven

<b>Mazes Of Persistence (2007)</b>
~ I had this idea back in 2004, complete with a design doc and all of the graphics, but never got around to putting it together until TGC 2007.
~ All of the sounds and music are my voice in a microphone.
~ I love the title screen to this game with all my heart.
~ I waffled a lot on whether I wanted to go basic and retro or postmodern with this. I ulmately did both.
~ When I first released it, I made the <i>huge</i> oversight of not resetting it to the beginning from when I was testing the last maze, so I don't know if anyone has ever played the first four, actually.
~ I am bad at making puzzles. Most of these mazes were generated by a program I found through Google, at billsgames.com
~ I originally planned on some kind of High Score board at the end, but I have no idea how to use strings, so it was scrapped, and I was left with what we have.
~ You can't save! You have to persist!

<b>A Shot In The Dark (2009)</b>
~ Has been argued to not really be a game. I don't care.
~ Also had this idea in 2004. Wrote a full script. Sat on it for five years. You'll notice some pictures were made in MSPaint, those are from 2006. The rest of it was done this April.
~ I came up with the framing device at the very last minute, just because the whole deal seemed pointless. It still wants for an ending, maybe a scoring system?
~ There are three ongs in this game. The title music is cut from the intro to Gang Of Four's "5.45", a special outcome triggers a clip from Don McClean's "American Pie", and the rest of the time you'll be listening to Buddy Holly's "Think It Over". I almost put in another one in case the game ran longer than the song, but I decided not to worry about it.
~ On the subject of "American Pie", Big Bopper was a father, Richie Valens was too young to be anything but a son, and, well, the "Holly" ghost? This is the most popular interpretation I've heard to that segment, hence its placement.
~ The decision to randomize the order you see the scenarios in was also last minute. I was really rusty on my scripting, but Mogri and Spoonweaver helped me spot my dumb mistakes.
~ It would've been easier to let the player press a button and randomly decide what the outcome was, but there's no fun in that. Instead, it actually decides which button is which when the scenario pops up, so a choice is actually being made. It isn't an <i>informed</i> choice, but that's the whole point.
~ Cameos include Lee Harvey Oswald, Buddy Holly, Superman, and WGMD's own Thomas Lamar. I've always liked the idea of not getting into what it was that got Thomas expelled from the clergy, but the picture on his splendid outcome here might be a hint. It's fun either way.
~ This is probably the last game I'll ever make. There's no telling, but as far as I can tell there won't be another. This was my last idea.

[Pepsi Ranger]

Gosh, now I'm starting to think that my fun facts are emaciated.

* The NPC in Wrongside who mentions the "Dimensional Hippievan" is referring to the flying, interdimensional-traveling blue Volkswagen van from something I wrote back in 2006, titled "Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Tales from the Hippievan." No relation to Schnee's blue Volkswagen van... I just really like blue Volkswagen vans.

Hmm, I was wondering about that, actually. I always thought they were the same (I think at some point I also thought it was the key to unlocking Sora).

* Up until I was actually making Chapter 3, I hadn't even thought up a name for Schnee herself. I already knew her last name was going to be "McBoobs," but "Schnee" was a suggestion from my little sister.

I figured it was a play on the word "see."

OHR-Date

- When people ask me what games I made back when I used to do OHR, I always exclude this one from my list.

I have to confess something here. For all the popularity this game generated back in the day...I still haven't played it. I don't think I even downloaded it. I think in the back of my mind I didn't want to subconsciously rip ideas for Blind Date. Or maybe I was jealous that you finished your game first. I don't know. But I haven't played it.

- I don't remember of Walthrus was out at this point, but if not I'll claim to be the first OHRer to make a sequel/follow up to a popular game, and do it intentionally painfully. Man, I love Walthrus. If not, I'll settle for second.

I always thought 1.5 was an upgraded game (or director's cut). Never knew it was a sequel.

- OHR-Date 2's "rights" were given to Chaos Nyte, who often IMed me with awesome ideas he'd have, but the game never saw the light of day. Because I gave him OHR-Date 2, I had to make...

I'd think the rights would revert back to you by now, not that you'd ever do anything with them, but still. It's been over a year and I'm sure he didn't pay for them.

- If you know Latin, the game is 10x easier.

I think this statement also applies to life.

- Stop was the first game where, if your character stepped into a shadowed area, the sprite would darken accordingly.

Tightfloss Maiden did this as early as 2001, sort of. It was actually the reverse. If she stepped under a torch in a darkened area, she lit up. She also darkened whenever she entered the cave. I suppose that would've been a nice fun fact. Wow, these responses prove that I suck at my own thread.

- Stop was an example of how I would design a game: Full of tons of little details that don't add much in terms of gameplay, but show the author cares about his creation (like flavor text!). I was hoping to show a level of polish previously unseen in OHR games, but the task was two overwhelming.

This is what I like most about Surlaw's games, too. I don't think you can ever put in too much detail. You can only get lost on lazy game players.

I don't think I've made anymore games. Sorry if this isn't what you wanted, but I'm too lazy to open all my old RPG files and put tons of stats on here that nobody would probably care about anyway. If you really want to know, they are all unpassworded. :P

That's okay. The numbers are just for fun. I'm enjoying the facts more.

I like them horrifying, I don't think a first person perspective would be very interesting. Someone who has lived on Walthros all their life wouldn't describe its creatures in detail any more than we would when spotting a squirrel or a duck, unless they were writing as a scientist, and I already did that with Monsterology. The bizarre nature of its creatures leads to Walthros being far more presentable in a visual medium.

I brought this up once in email and you said that you tried it once (or considered it--I don't remember which) but scrapped the idea because you couldn't find a way to describe the creatures without making them sound horrifying. But I can see your point about the squirrels and ducks. Anyway, it's a book that I'd enjoy reading, but I also like the games, so it all works. Every time I think of what it would look like as a novel, I immediately think of the coastal city (I can't remember if that's Beta or Ciadna), and how cool it would be to see it at street level with all the seals flying by like traffic.

~ Really, this whole game could've been better, it's just that I was trying so hard to get it done with as much as I could in it that no one aspect really achieved its full potential. It's probably for that reason I've gotten the urge to revisit it so many times, though if I ever did remake it I'd end up with something that barely resembled the original, and would've built its own backstory free of Magnus.

You could always just lob off the Magnus name and leave it as Off De Edge of Dis Pair (Of Edges).

I find that the desire to finish a game that nags you never really goes away. You should probably finish it just so you can shut that little voice up.

(I'll still give you those 50 points toward the next Epic Marathon if you did, by the way.)

~ This is probably the last game I'll ever make. There's no telling, but as far as I can tell there won't be another. This was my last idea.

I have a unique idea that I probably won't ever have the time to make, one that might fit nicely as a Soliloquy vehicle if you wanted to jump into another project. I've had it in my head since 2001, but probably won't get to it until sometime in the 2020's.

Feel free to let me know if you ever want to hear what it's about.

Oh, and I can't comment on just one thing about ORBituaries. The whole list is great. It's a bit like reading a commentary by Nickleback.

[Uncommon]

You could always just lob off the Magnus name and leave it as Off De Edge of Dis Pair (Of Edges).

I find that the desire to finish a game that nags you never really goes away. You should probably finish it just so you can shut that little voice up.

(I'll still give you those 50 points toward the next Epic Marathon if you did, by the way.)

I would've gone the other way and jut called it <i>Seventeen</i> or something, actually. If it ever happened (which is unlikely due to the huge undertaking i have in mind) it prolly wouldn't be on OHR. I had this idea for a huge, interactive webcomic that would be cool to do with it, where you're given three panels at a time and given a choice of what the next panel is and which story branch it would follow from there.
I guess it'd be more of a story <i>web,</i> really.

I have a unique idea that I probably won't ever have the time to make, one that might fit nicely as a Soliloquy vehicle if you wanted to jump into another project. I've had it in my head since 2001, but probably won't get to it until sometime in the 2020's.

Feel free to let me know if you ever want to hear what it's about.

I've been too lazy to even get the ideas I've had for Soliloquy done, but I'd be interested in hearing it, at least!

Oh, and I can't comment on just one thing about ORBituaries. The whole list is great. It's a bit like reading a commentary by Nickleback.

In the sense that it's a lot said about a horrible thing? A horrible thing that doesn't deserve so much said about it? I agree. I'm sure there were other things I would've aid, too, only I couldn't remember them by the time I got back to the keyboard.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

* The NPC in Wrongside who mentions the "Dimensional Hippievan" is referring to the flying, interdimensional-traveling blue Volkswagen van from something I wrote back in 2006, titled "Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Tales from the Hippievan." No relation to Schnee's blue Volkswagen van... I just really like blue Volkswagen vans.

Hmm, I was wondering about that, actually. I always thought they were the same (I think at some point I also thought it was the key to unlocking Sora).

Funny that you mention Sora, because there is a little bit of a connection there--the group of black-cloaked guys who ride around in the Dimensional Hippievan are the same black-cloaked guys who run the strip club in New Hamster. And of course, beating Sora means you get a discount from Captain Scud's shop in there.

I should probably have one of the guys in the strip club mention the Dimensional Hippievan, now that I think about it.

* Up until I was actually making Chapter 3, I hadn't even thought up a name for Schnee herself. I already knew her last name was going to be "McBoobs," but "Schnee" was a suggestion from my little sister.

I figured it was a play on the word "see."

Nah, it's just a funny-sounding word (I think way back in my "making a crappy sprite webcomic" days, around 2002 or so, I used "schneeeeee!" as the sound that a Yoshi makes when kicked across a room. I never thought of using it as a name until my sister mentioned it, though.)

I think her brother's name (when I finally give him one) will probably be something like that, though. Since his last name would have to be McBoobs, but he's a guy... maybe Noland or something like that so his name could be shortened to "No McBoobs."