11/20/09: See look, good news afterall: The next DXF Game to be coming out, the one I've been eluding to for a million years now is.... The Outlaw, The Drunk, & The Whore! (I'll just use ODW from here on out.) I'm trying to combine a NES-ish action game with simplified Diablo-style stats / mods and this game's versions of purchasable uniques. Called... ANTIQUES! Wow, not a rip at all. Anyhow, in ODW you take on the role of one of the 3 titular characters from the old west and go through different stages on your way to rob a stagecoach full of federal moolah. The catch is that right away you all get killed and meet the devil, who then gives you another chance to get your greedy deeds done right. I've started a project page for this on the Daily Click that you can see here. This is actually the rebuild version of the game. More than a year ago I had tried and ultimately failed at making a point & click Diablo style movement for something similar to this. A few months ago I decided to go and try remaking this again since I always liked the ideas, characters, and general western themes (I'm a fan of western movies too). This is the end result!

And now.. Pics or it didn't happen!

All ODW screenshots above will likely change over time. Except the devil one because that was a bitch to do!

11/16/09: I'm putting Hasslevania 2 in "hiatus mode" for now. I'll still be working on it, but there's going to be a few days time off between bouts with the giant project. The game's just too friggin' huge and if my mind's not really into it on a particular day I don't work on it. I suppose this is that whole 'Don't bite off more than you can chew' argument in full effect, eh? Hopefully soon I can post some GOOD news, but that's the short of it for now. Thanks to everybody who's been keeping track of my progress so far. Don't worry about it too much because one day this thing WILL BE FINISHED!!

11/3/09: Well, looks like Hasslevania 2's getting the big focus lately so that other game's going to have to wait a bit more. The good news is that there's an H2 trailer now available, which shows the gameplay and crap to the public for the first time ever. It's pretty short but had to be (it goes along to a "futurized" version of the H1 theme song, which is about 24 seconds long IIRC). This trailer is mostly accurate although already some shots in it have been outdated with better or different visuals. Which is always good. Even the first H1 trailer ended up looking nothing like the finished product you know. You can check out the trailer and more on the newly-updated Hasslevania 2 homepage here.

10/15/09: While STILL working on this new game that's taking me longer than I expected, I've decided to put up 7 or 8 new H2 screenshots over at The Daily Click's H2 project page. Here's a few of them for this page:

This part's an homage to the old Atari Pitfall! game who had brick walls in dirt tunnels for obstacles.

Play H2 and watch scientific impossibility become... POSSIBLE!

This is actually about the 3rd or 4th redesign of the H2 subscreen. This looks loads better than the old ones and has evolved over a long-ass time.

What's a Hasslevania game without more crazy machinery?

10/02/09: Hey everybody! Time for a quick stop in to say thanks to DXF Game's 16th donator, Patrick K! Thanks again Patrick, and enjoy your map of Hasslevania TQFS. In other news, I think I'll have enough material to put up some screenshots of the new game by next week or so. Patience, Daniel-San!

9/25/09: Information about my new side game will be available soon. Yes! I promise this will be out shortly! The main thing is that H2 will be my last huge game (unless Nintendo says "Hey you, take this million dollars and make this huge game!") Soooo... in the meantime I'm developing a new short-ish one that's off an idea I came up with more than a year ago. During a break from H2 in which I didn't think I'd ever work onit again, I started a new game and worked on it pretty hard for about a solid month- and then I gave up on that too, only to return full-force to H2. But I always liked the ideas behind that game, and decided to recycle some of the graphics & ideas and totally scrap everything else to make a completely new game instead. If nothing else, it will be original which is really all that matters when you can't compete technology, artistically, or musically with the big guys. Not like I'd want to do that, necessarily!

9/13/09: Hey there! Some surprise news I guess but I'm working on ANOTHER GAME aside from H2 lately. This one should probably be completed in a couple weeks tops and isn't slowing my progress on H2 so for that I say WOO HOO! You'll know more about this game when it's ready for release but so far it's pretty fun.

9/3/09: Unbelievably, my big front page edit from the other day here didn't save right so I lost the entry! Anyhow what it basically said was that Sitesled had been off limits to me because it didn't recognize my account name (but all my pages & files were intact). Looks like it's all back to normal which is NICE. The biggest news lately is I've started a Hasslevania 2 devlog over at The Daily Click website. It has some screenshots which albeit kind of outdated now were long overdue. You can check out the H2 devlog here. And in the meantime, here's some screenshots for the homepage:

All screenshots are subject to change since this game won't be finished in forever.

6/24/09: Hey, this is kind of an odd posting but I had an e-mail question from Mike W. on whether or not the Neil Peart game was for Macs. I tried to reply to it but it was auto-rejected (most likely due to my reply being from gmail I suppose). Anyhow, to answer you and any others I'm afraid MMF isn't Mac-compatible yet. The game has no large overlays and a small frame size so it should run smooth on anything 500MHz or better in Win98, 2000, XP, etc. Hope that helps!

6/07/09: Well, after an interesting week or so of (unscheduled?) & unannounced downtime here at Sitesled, looks like we're back. And just in time too, as I have not one but TWO new donations to report since Tony C became lucky #13. First came an unprecedented SECOND donation from the same dude, kevinski.com's own Kotton Kandy Afro! And if that wasn't enough, next we have Matt C coming through to be the 15th donation to the DXF cause. I worked really hard on H2 last night, with a whopping 7 straight hours until 2am (!!) I was able to make a new cool enemy from scratch, do all the graphics & most of the coding, and fix a lot of bugs as well as restructure this game's version of the monster book. I almost always draw stuff from memory and in the case of last night I had to try and visualize how a certain type of animal might move from the side view and it was pretty difficult to say the least. Animation's never been my strong suit so I'm especially glad it came out as well as it did. And in the far future, you can see it too!

5/29/09: Just wanted to say that newest kevinski.com member Tony C has made a donation to the DXF Games development fund! Is it self-serving to say that you guys should all do this? Thanks a lot Tony, and I'll be sending you the Hasslevania map ASAP! In other news, biggest H2 supporter / blabbermouth (i.e. me) has leaked that one of the new weapons is some sort of mystery spear. And although kevinski thinks it's the least impressive of the new weapons that will only make me boost the hell out of its powers. Hooray!

5/6/09: Ah screw it, it's not much now but I've put up the Hasslevania 2 homepage. That's the place where eventually everything will be listed like the downloads, screenshots, and other info. Don't get too too excited yet because there's still a long ways to go on the game! I also don't think I ever mentioned this but I'm no longer working as the music contributor for Sensou although I did make one decent track that they can still use if they want to.

4/26/09: What a weird week this has been. It started out with my whole family being sick with varying degrees of a cold (not the swine flu!) and *oink* ended with me not being able to walk due to an unrelated bout of tendonitis in my ankle, which apparently you can get in your ankle. The doctor gave me *oink* some very fast-acting medicine so I only had to use crutches for about a day and a half. It was amazing to basically go from not being able to stand to normal motion in about 2 days. If only all medicines worked like that. Since I've been in so much lately I had lots of time to work on Hasslevania 2 and have completed another area and another boss enemy. I can safely say every H2 boss so far whups any of H1's bosses design-wise, and that's nice! Not to put any of my old creations down or anything but the whole point of this sequel is to improve on things I sort of stunk at on the first one, and I heard "but you can just button mash the bosses to death" a lot. I'm starting to see some real progress which only helps me want to finish the thing more.

4/06/09: Oh crap, almost forgot but: The DXF Games hullabaloo (front page & its sister pages like the Hasslevania section) has just over 100,000 toal hits! If that doesn't deserve an "oh crap!" what does? Thanks to everybody who's visited and helped to acheive that awesome milestone.

4/05/09: Ah, nothing like a post every month or so. Sorry but what exactly could I write? "Recolored that sword the other day!", "Nerfed one of the skeletons near the water!", "Fixed that nagging subscreen bug!", etc. Anyhow it looks like the front-pagery is going to be sparse for a while because so much of the game is still all Cloak & Dagger (perhaps literally, perhaps not!) The best thing is that I'm still having fun making H2, which can be the toughest part about sticking with a project that'll likely take 3 years to finish. Did I mention it's still just me doing all the graphics, music, programming, and most of the planning for the game? Believe it.... (*wheeze*)... or Not! Christ I swear the next game's going to be some simple-ass Pong clone, so help me.

3/16/09: First, Happy birthday to my Dad! Next, last month TDC's Wiiman did a review for Necropolis Rising and it was a surprise for sure. Being as the game is so old I didn't expect a new review but sure did take my sweet-ass time moving it on over to the DXF Games review page eh? You can check it, and all of the reviews / interviews from the past, right here, mes pardner con queso. My work with Sensou seems to be a bit at a standstill mostly because the project's creator has been MIA for awhile. And H2 brainbuster kevinski's also been MIA for awhile. If this isn't the harbringer for the alien invasion I don't know what is. Pack your aluminum foil and grab an extra-large glass of water before you head out.

3/12/09: There's been a lot of important H2 progress lately, mostly little bugs and snags here and there, with the occasional new room completion to get me that much closer to finishing the current area. Very recently I've added a great new flying enemy that should get players looking to the skies a bit more than your run of the mill bat might (not that bats can't be dangerous in say, groups of 400 or so I'm sure). In fact this enemy alone has really made me want to put a decent variety of dangerous flying enemies throughout the game. To quote Master Poo-Ba-Boo: "Things are looking up!"

3/6/09: Watchmen was awesome! Terminator 4 looks like it's going to rule! Star Trek's new trailer might just save one of my favorite shows from oblivion! And if this weren't enough good news, Victoria K. made a new donation to the DXF Games Development fund. I almost forgot how to send her the free Hasslevania map- but didn't! Thanks Victoria, you're the 12th donator here!

2/20/09: I've been asked to do the music for an upcoming RTS game called Sensou. It'll be cool to only worry about one aspect of a game, and it won't drain me from working on Hasslevania 2 either. This will be the first team project I've worked in maybe 15+ years with my buddy Rich working out some RPG maps on graph paper and entering the values in.. manually.. about 1000 times. Ah, good memories for sure.

2/8/09: Working on Hasslevania 2 the other night, I remembered a bit in one of the first game's reviews that said something like "Every room is designed to kill you, even the secret ones, so it's not even worth it even trying to look for them."  I paraphrase now, but he had a good point. Seems deterimental to what a Metroidvania / exploration game's supposed to be all about doesn't it? In one of my favorite NES series of games, Wizards & Warriors and Ironsword both had a ton of secret rooms and MOST were set up as gimmes to the player with no enemies or traps to speak of. Even the bonus pipe rooms of Super Mario Brothers weren't designed to kill the player. Anyhow I'm taking this to heart a bit with H2 in that not every room will be a trap or crazy death puzzle. Not every room, heh heh.. After all I still have a reputation to uphold around here.