With 2021 rolling around, many people are finding themselves creating New Year's resolutions. As someone who doesn't participate in aligning my self-improvement schedule with the changing of the calendar year, I was surprised to hear Pixelscapes Wallpaper screaming "New Year, New Me" as the clock struck midnight. Honestly, a terrifying way to begin 2021.

Unlike us mere mortals, Pixelscapes is an app and doesn't have the ability for self-change. So, I had to do some work to help it out. Let's take a little history trip back to everyone's favorite year for some much needed context.

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Hello there! It's been a while, friends. This post is contains politics, and my anger, frustrations, and growing hopelessness with the current state of the world (I'm talking coronavirus). Please turn away if you do not wish to read that kind of thing. I personally am getting to a point where it all is becoming a bit much.

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Even without attending GDC, PAX, or any other games events, March still managed to be a wild one this year. I haven't been updating my blog at the frequency I intended to, so I decided to lump all of March's ongoings into a single post.

Tincan 2 Version 2.0 Released

At the beginning of the month, I re-released Tincan 2 and wrote about what I fixed in the game, to celebrate 11 years since I first started making games. It's still using Flash, since I mainly just wanted to update the existing game. An HTML5 port might happen someday if I can find the time and motivation! For now, I'm happy with this.

Client Work with Custom Game Engine

I've been working on a small set of mobiles games for a client. HTML5 is the technology I'm using since I have no prior iOS experience, and I decided to use the opportunity to write a custom 2D HTML5 game engine.

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In case you missed it, I re-released Tincan 2 on Wednesday, and before then, I spoke about the Seven Deadly Sins of platformers that I managed to commit with the original release of Tincan 2.

The final part of my deal is to speak about how I addressed the issues, so you, fellow developer, or curious player, can go forward armed with the knowledge to keep yourself safe from the Dark Lord.

The Seven Deadly Sins, Redeemed

1: Not listening to advice

A lot of the advice from version 1.0 back in 2012 focuses on the other parts of this article, such as the slippery physics, level curve, and WASD controls.

Over the past few weeks, Ian Jones gave me a lot of great feedback, which was paralleled with others I let test the new version of the game. Thanks to their input, I was able to address some issues I might not have worried about. Knowing that certain things annoyed players, or were a frustration, allowed me to take a step back and ask myself "how can I minimize that frustration with this element of the game?"

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This is a follow-up post to Tincan 2 and the Seven Deadly Sins.

Yes, you read that right. A new version of Tincan 2 has hit the web. Sound the alarms.

If you've been eagerly awaiting the follow up to the cliffhanger from Monday's post, this is it. Part of the deal was to remake Tincan 2 to make it more accessible to players. The new version has multiple difficulties, redesigned levels, and some new music from Zack Harmon.

Today (March 6th, 2019) also marks 11 years since I first downloaded Game Maker 7. In those 11 years I've met some fantastic friends, contributed to some cool projects (you can see them here on this site!), and found a passion for programming that I can't imagine living without.

That's all I have to say for today, but stay tuned for Friday's update in which I talk about the changes I made to the game.

November 11th, 2012 marked the release of Tincan 2, a sequel that some would claim never needed to happen. After some distance from the project, I myself have fallen into that group. Lately I've felt like I've wanted to reflect and write about what it was that made the game such a mess. Plus, when making a deal with the devil to write about it is the only thing that guaranteed your return to the mortal plane, you kind of have to.

Let me explain.

Some Secrets Are Best Left Buried

Two weeks ago I wanted to show a friend the secret stage that lays hidden in Tincan 2 over Google Hangouts. As we chatted about life, I racked up hundreds of deaths, until eventually he decided to call it a night. I continued on, until I finally managed to unlock it.

I heard someone enter the Google Hangout. It wasn't my friend.

It was the Dark Lord.

That was the last thing I remember before spending an eternity in Hell, playing Tincan 2 on Lucifer's pristine 2003 Dell Dimension 4600 Home desktop.

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When something stops working, the solution is to fix it.

For four years, I continued to fix and enhance the old site to fit my needs as they evolved. It sufficed, but lately I felt I'd abandon the sloppily thrown together fixes and intermingled systems, and start anew. Plus, any chance to move away from PHP is one I happily welcome.

When fixing something stops working, then it's time to move onto the next step: remake the whole dang thing.

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