Month: January 2012

Fireworks

The game has gone gold (as it were)!

I’m just contacting reviewers, online distributors, etc. right now. Oh, and attempting to put together some kind of soundtrack. And I want to get a demo ready for release day, too. It’s almost like there is more to releasing a game than making a game, sheesh! :-)

Here is a video with some fireworks, because I felt like making it, and as a sort of celebration of the game being finished.

Release date announcement/trailer

Well, it’s finally happened. The game is finished. I’m still doing some final testing “just in case,” but it’s done.

Hubert’s Island Adventure: Mouse o’ War will appear on this site for sale Friday, January 27, 2012 for $9.99!

Be there!

I’m currently getting in touch with online distributors, so hopefully the game will be available in more places soon.

Behold the release trailer!

New lighting system

I recently (about a week or two ago, I think?) wrote a fancy new lighting system for the game. The previous system just rendered a rectangle over the whole screen to represent darkness. This system was used for the day/night cycle (which is just for looks).

However, I had a flash of insight, and decided to try something new. There are now actual light sources in the game, most of which make sense. For example, the purple energy that is fired from Hubert’s stun gun gives off a slight purple glow. Hubert himself gives off light, but that’s because otherwise you would be unable to see where you are going! Aside from the world map, the whole day/night cycle is off by default, but it does really make the levels look fancier.

Here’s a video of the new lighting in action.

The new lighting system works by rendering a series of tiles over the screen, blending light from various sources in with the ambient light of the level. You can change the smoothness of the light by making these tiles smaller (prettier but more performance-eating!) or larger (anything larger than the default of 32×32 doesn’t really work).

Here is a screenshot of the lighting with default smoothness. This runs pretty well even on weaker machines running in software mode.
And here is a screenshot of the lighting with 4 times the smoothness. Much prettier, but also very performance-intensive.

The game is essentially finished. It is currently in the “release candidate” phase, meaning I am calling it done, but testing it further to look for any final bugs. I am also working on a final trailer for the game. I plan on having a release date sometime early this week, and the game should be out before the end of January. I have found myself to be incredibly bad at setting release dates/time frames, although lately I have had some increased success with scheduling things internally. Regardless, I cannot imagine anything preventing the game from being out in January at this point.

Some other things I have been working on recently:
-Fireworks
-Additional characters (of which there are two: Sketch and Slime-O)
-A tips system to help out new players. At this point, that is pretty much everybody :-)
-Some hints for special item locations.
-Screenshots are now saved as compressed .pngs instead of massive .bmps.
-Many, many bug fixes/tweaks and level fixes.

Viva Hubert!

SOPA/PIPA

Cheese and Bacon Games (and Hubert) would like to present a brief video, as a spectacular protest. A protestacular!

We are protesting (and trying to raise awareness of) SOPA/PIPA, some legislation currently working itself through congress. Wikipedia has a nice article that explains these laws, and why they should not be passed.

Check it out. Spread the word.