Pretty much every single game I've ever programmed is open source. Every single released game, and almost every prototype. They are hosted online on Github.com, a website where you can check out the full code, as well as the full development history. Everything from the first line of code ever written, to the final touches I added right before I release (or abandon) a project. There are a bunch of reasons why I do this. And why I appreciate other open source projects.

When I really got started making games was when I learned about HaxeFlixel in mid-2016. It's a fully free and open source framework, which is based off of Adam Atomic's 'Flixel' framework, which was used for many popular and famous flash games (Canabalt, Dino Run, probably way more lol). My first game I posted to NG pretty much ripped code straight from one of the HaxeFlixel demos (the code was open source, I didn't have to reverse engineer or anything), which showcased tweens. I liked the movement of one of the tweens so I nabbed that shit and added some other animation code. So instead of starting completely from scratch, I was able to work off an already existing demo, which was made in a pre-existing framework, which was an extension of an ALREADY existing framework. It all nicely builds on top of each other to make game development more accessible. There's an argument to be had about whether or not I'm actually learning, but I believe this is a better first step for programmers than starting completely from scratch. Let's also use game modding as an example. There's a lot of people in the game's industry, as well as game dev hobbyests, who started out making mods for games. Maybe it was a Half-Life 2 mod, where you made your own fan interpretation of what HL3 could be. In that process you likely learned a lot about level design, scripting, and story telling that you wouldn't otherwise learn if you had to start completely from scratch. Everything relies on what's already established and known. I believe you can sorta work your way backwards in a sense. If you had to start from scratch, you'd have to maybe learn C++ to build your own game engine, then you'd have to figure out good engine design, and then likely your homemade engine is very barebones, and the game you create might not even be as fun or interesting as some shitty game mod you made. If you start out at the top level, learning about level design, scripting, etc., you can work your way backwards, or should I say, downwards, in the stack or whatever. Maybe after learning about level design, you can learn about how the level editor is made, and then you can learn some C++ to see how that works, and then you have some knowledge of C++ so you can then learn some stuff about the engine in general and programming patterns associated with it. That is, if the engine is open source. If you build that familiarity with the engine at a high level, you can work your way downwards and associate functions and whatnot with how you know it works in a real scenario. I feel like open source is empowering in that sense.

To go beyond just video games, in the early days of the internet, stuff like HTML was brand new. No one was writing tutorials, guides, books, or anything about how to use it. However, some kid could do "View Source" or "Inspect Element" and see the full source code to the site and learn from it. Although I imagine back then it was much more primitive, since stuff like Javascript wasn't as advanced or adopted in websites as it is today. Most of it was just static sites. But also it may as well have been a foreign language anyways, if you've never seen or written a line of code in your life. But the cool thing was that you could also change shit live. If you deleted a line, you could see where the paragraph was located on the page, and see how it all related to each other. Which HTML tag does what, and how they mesh. It gets a liiittle messy nowadays, but the sentiment is still there, where you can just press F12 or something and you see all this markup gibberish.

I sorta open source my stuff to pay back the universe or whatever. If these people kept their code secret, if Adam's Flixel wasn't open source, if HaxeFlixel wasn't open source, and if the HaxeFlixel demos weren't open source, then maybe I wouldn't even be making games. Or at least I'd be much more behind in terms of what I know. I was able to look right into the code and see exactly how shit works, what other programmers did, and learn from it all. Maybe I saw a demo that showed some cool visual effect. Even if the code went over my head, I could maybe get one little code trick from it. And then I could iterate and modify it myself and shit evolves. I never went to a university for programming, no one taught me really. I went through that 'flixel-tutorial' by Schulles on this site, and then looked at other peoples code from there. I get to see the inside look at shit. Before I officially know any programming patterns, I already have a slight understanding of a few of them, just through sorta absorption and seeing the diverse ways in which different people code different projects.

So to go off that last point, I also like to think that maybe one day my code can be of some sort of educational use. Now I don't mean that people will be studying it in school. More maybe some kid who wants to get into programming sees one of my games, then they could see exactly how I went about to do certain things. They don't need to go to some big university or school and pay some dumb amount just to learn. They just need to access the internet, and they could learn how games are made. If they say, want to make an infinite runner, maybe they can take a peak at how Monster Mashing does things. If they want to make a topdown shooter, they can see the wacky trigonometry stuff I did in Pico Rising. If they want to see how ANYTHING in my games is done code wise, they could. Everything from the full game, to some throwaway effect. One other thing is that there are far more games with closed source code, than open source code. Especially 'commercial' games. So most of the open source stuff is highly polished, well commented code. I feel like this might give somewhat of an unrealistic expectation of programming, since often you don't find the most elegant solution to a problem. Often you have a mess of variables or some dumbass poorly written functions, but it all works. And that sort of code has a personality of sorts. It's rough around the edges, but it gets the job done. However most of the time, you just see this perfectly sterilized code. All commented, no workarounds, just straightforward. And that's helpful too, especially to beginners who may have never seen a line of code in their life. I just think there's value in seeing the process, and that pretty much everyone just bullshits their code. Everyone from some schmoe who's working on their first game ever, to some dev who's been coding for years and years. Noel Berry, 1/2 of the programmers who worked on Celeste, open sourced the player class of Celeste. It was filled with all these little quirks and odditys, but it all worked. You could see the exact values of how gravity affects Celeste, how it affects her jump, or double jump. You could see the workarounds, the shortcuts, and know that all of that, it went into one of the most successful indie games of 2018. I think stuff like this wakes people up in a sense.

I also like to feel like I'm contributing to the normalization of releasing source code. The open source 'movement' or whatever is huge, but in terms of game source code, it's not to normal. There are 2 examples that come to mind, and have inspired me to consistently share my source code, even when I do a 'commercial game'. The first is Quadrilateral Cowboy, by Blendo Games. QC released on Steam in 2016, for like 20$ or something like that. However the full game's source code is still available online for free under the GPL license. The other example is more close to the Newgrounds community, because it's NG's own Nicky Case (@nutcasenightmare). EVERY recent project by Nicky has their source code released under the CC0 (zero rights reserved aka public domain) license. You don't need to attribute, you don't need permission, you can use it for ANYTHING with no restrictions. These project's have gone on to get IGF Award nominations (Coming Out Sim by Nicky got a Narrative nomination in 2014, Quadrilateral Cowboy won the Seamus McNally GRAND PRIZE in 2017). One of Nicky's games is one of the highest rated submissions on the site, and their projects also got Nicky into Forbes' famed "30 Under 30" list. So shoutout to Nicky, and shoutout to Brendon Chung of Blendo Games. Technically if you release your source code, you're basically giving your game out for free. Some people who open source their game feel safe in doing so because they made an online game, where you can't connect to the servers if you build your own version. However I look at it similarly the way I look at piracy. If people play your game for free, and you made a good ass game, it's likely they want to support you and give you money. The people who won't give you money are either people who didn't like your game and wouldn't have given you money anyways, OR they just couldn't. Maybe it's some poor kid who runs your game at 18FPS on his shitty laptop, or maybe it's someone who has Steam blocked in their country or someshit. IDK all the wild and wacky scenarios in which people pirate, but people will pirate your game whether or not you have DRM, if it's open source, or if it's online only. It's not people who would've bought your game but people who can't or won't buy it. Buy maybe I'm just a dumbass and a bad business person.

On the grander scale, I appreciate large open source projects because they're majorly collaborative. Site's like Wikipedia are FULLY powered by the community. They don't have advertisers nor investors to pay bills. They have a huge community of people chipping in very small amounts to contribute and donate. ALL of the content on Wikipedia is curated and written by THE PEOPLE. Anyone from some homeless man who's visiting the local library, to a big famous celebrity could edit a page. Wikipedia has a few hundred employee's I believe and I think it's pretty impressive that they're essentially a crowd funded site. I find it very inspiring to see such a large community of people work towards something like that on a large scale. Companies like Amazon, Google, or Intel, sure they can all make ridiculous donations to Wikipedia, but they get absolutely nothing in return that you already don't get. They don't get exclusive edit access, they don't get ad space (asides from a placement on their wall of rich people lol), and they don't get secret wiki's or anything. They get the same thing that the person donating 5$ gets, or the person donating 500$ gets, or the person donating absolutely nothing ever gets. They get what is essentially the sum of all human knowledge, for free.

You can check out Wikimedia's Github page here: https://github.com/wikimedia

Aside from Wikipedia, there are cool examples of people working together on open source projects for pretty much nothing in return.

A cool case I like to think back on is OpenToonz. Back when it was released, I feel like no one knew how to even use it. It wasn't intuitive whatsoever. You had to change all these settings, and there was all this dumbshit you had to do just to get a simple test animation going. And also maybe it wasn't that stable. However over the few years since it's initial release as open source software, it has improved at a great pace. And a good chunk of that is because of the community around it. I saw this first hand back when I kept a closer eye on the project back in 2016. If someone had a bug report, they could post it to the Github issue tracker, and if someone felt up to it, ANY random developer could fix it. Meanwhile, there are Flash/Animate bugs that have probably persisted for years before they get addressed and fixed (if they get fixed at all!). On OpenToonz, people talk about what's being fixed, why something can't get fixed, and how something could potentially be fixed. Any schmoe could ask a question directly to developers. Other than tweeting at Adobe or directly contacting support, you don't get any communication with them. On OpenToonz, maybe you have a cool idea for a feature. You could post it to the issue tracker, and again, a random developer could implment that feature during a lunch break if they wanted. Or they could tell you exactly why that wouldn't work, and you could learn something.

You can peep OpenToonz Github here: https://github.com/opentoonz/opentoonz

I feel like people don't give enough credit to open source shit. Maybe they think it's inferior to proprietary software. Like free shit =/= quality shit. However open source software is used everywhere, but you almost don't even know it. That's because it's the bigger companies like Twitter, Google, Facebook, all use open source software themselves in their products. While their main sites aren't open source or anything, it's not like they're completely ignoring the value of open sourcing certain aspects of their code. Many big companies have somewhat of an open source presence. One that comes to mind immediately is Microsoft. First of all, in 2018 they bought Github for 7.5 BILLION dollars, the biggest website for hosting and exploring software source code. MS also have a very popular code editor, Visual Studio Code, which is free and open source. And VS Code isn't just some random code editor, this is an editor that a large majority of programmers use on a daily basis. I believe they also open sourced MS-DOS sometime recently. I do believe Microsoft is working towards being a company that's cool and hip, but in an actual cool and hip way. A lot of the gripes people have had with Microsoft was when their old CEO was in. I think in 2014 or something they got a new guy, and that felt like a sorta turning point. I mean one of the first big acquisitions after the new CEO rolled in was when they bought Minecraft/Mojang for 2.5$ billion. And you can say what you want about what they've done with MC, but I feel like they're trying to move in the right direction for stuff like the Minecraft education editions, where they know the unique engagement that players have with Minecraft, and utilizing it in a way that benefits their knowledge and education outside of the game. In a similar sense, I feel like they understand the power that open source has as well. In 2016 they became a Linux Foundation Platinum Member, while one of their old CEO straight up said, "Linux is a cancer". I look forward to the future of Microsoft's (and other giant tech companies') open source endeavors.

In some cases, open source and free version of a software is somewhat of the standard, and I feel like it couldn't have gotten in that position without being free and open source. Take OBS (Open Broadcasting Software) for example. OBS is basically used to record and/or livestream from your PC. You could record and stream in any quality, to any service, for as long as you want, without any watermarks. This sounds like simple shit, but that's because gone are the times of UNREGISTERED HYPERCAM, dealing with Bandicam, or paying for X-Split. Before OBS, there wasn't really a good free option. Part of it could also be attributed to the way technology just changes through the years, obviously in 2009 you couldn't be recording 1080p 60FPS footage off a Pentium 4 processor with integrated graphics, but like I said there were very little good free options then. It took the collaborative work from dozens and dozens of programmers and contributors to get OBS to where it's at today, which is the software that pretty much every single Twitch streamer uses on a daily basis.

Peep OBS source code here: https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio

Technically, Newgrounds itself has an open source project, Swivel. @Mike open sourced it in late 2017 (maybe early 2018), but the software itself was available fully for free since 2013 or so. Although the development isn't very active (I'm pretty sure Mike works at The Behemoth full time) it's still nice to know that if you're a proficient enough developer, you can contribute to something that many animators use and rely on. It's written in Haxe, which is a nice language that I also use, so if you happen to know it you should dig around the Swivel source. That also sorta became a standard of sorts for SWF to MP4 conversion for Flash animators.

One other piece of open source software I really like is Blender. I haven't used any of the alternatives (Maya or 3DS Max or whatever), but I'm preeeetty sure it stands comfortably alongside them. And as far as I know, it's the only free software to do so. Blender is stupidly powerful with what it can do. In 2018, the Netflix Original movie "Next Gen" came out, and that movie was pretty much entirely made within Blender. I believe they used other software like Photoshop for texture painting, Houdini for particle effects, but all the modelling, rigging, animation, shaders, were done in Blender. I'm likely leaving out a bunch of details, so here's a link to a talk about how Blender was used for that movie. Also check out Next Gen, it's really good.

This post sorta devolved into me talking about different open source projects, and there are way more that I love and appreciate. Here's a quick list

• Krita (Raster art program)
• Godot (3D/2D game engine)
• FNA (A XNA reimplmentation)
• Chromium (The browser that basically everyone uses, because Google)
• Ink (scripting language used for narrative games)
• Android (the mobile OS that every non-Apple user uses. However most manufactureres roll their own homemade version without source :( )
• Google's got their own list peep it here: https://opensource.google.com/projects/explore/featured

Shit maybe this was a bad newspost but if you're reading this u cute

If I got stuff wrong or worded stuff badly please tell me so I can fix it and not look like a dumbass. There's a whole lot more I can talk about in terms of open source so drop a comment and I'll reply because I like the attention.

I LOVE OPEN SOURCE SHIT

PEEP MY GITHUB: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99

Well, almost. The storepage is up and you can wishlist it pls pls

https://store.steampowered.com/app/998770/Monster_Mashing_Deluxe/

If you REALLY wanna buy it RIGHT NOW you can do so via Itch.io (comes with Steam key) or Nutaku (Fully uncensored). It's available for Windows and Mac, and if you buy these two versions, you also get an Android build FREE OF CHARGE.

If you buy it on Itch.io or Steam, those versions are integrated with the fancy ass newgrounds.io API, which basically means you can log into your Newgrounds account through the desktop versions, and be able to post to the Newgrounds leaderboard and get medals. Sadly Nutaku doesn't allow games to open links so we can't open the newgrounds sign in page to load the API stuff properly.

If you feelin real crazy and baller, you can buy it on every site, for a total of 9$. That's like 3x the money i think

THAT IS ALL BUY THIS GAME LOLOL

just kidding

ur lookin cute today send pics to me, ur wife

https://matthewlopz.newgrounds.com/follow

This is very important he needs more followers

🤠🤠🤠🤠

https://www.nutaku.net/games/download/monster-mashing/

It's 3$ on Nutaku, coming soon to Steam, and update to the Newgrounds version coming real soon, probably tomorrow. Will work on mobile with newgrounds.io api working and everything.

The differences between the Nutaku version and NG version will be

1. Nutaku will have full nudity
2. Native builds (Windows and Mac, maybe linux but who usez linux lmao)
3. You also get native android version

However for now there is no leaderboard function, thats because Nutaku's compliance doesn't allow you to open links through the game, which is needed to sign into the NG API. Otherwise we would be reppin NG. On Steam and Itch.io it should be there. But would help the gang out if you dropped the money on the Nutaku version

So BUY THE VIDEO GAME ME AND THE GANG REPPIN NEWGROUNDS SO GO GIVE US MONEY MY SUPPORTER STATUS IS GONNA RUN OUT OH GOD PLS I NEED THE MONEY REAL BAD I NEED THE EMOTES

and as always, the game is fully open source on Github. This is the exact code that is used for all the versions of the game. It's made with HaxeFlixel, OpenFl and all that shit so go creep through it https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/monstermashing

One fiinal note is there's a little fanart contest going on to get art for Steam cards, bein hosted by the Flash Holes Discord sever. It's too much to get into here, so if that sounds fun, join the discord, read the contest rules, and have some fun in the server while you're there. A bunch of pleasant people hang out there https://discord.gg/VQYFkse

I made a song for pixel day https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/844486

Go listen.

I was hoping to maybe get a game done, but I'm still real busy getting Monster Mashing all finished up. However that pixel day game or something similar might happen still. I also have a bunch of other music scraps and songs in progress. It's likely I'll finish them all up and release a little EP on Valentines Day.

Anyways that is all HAPPY PIXEL DAY

To celebrate I'll be ur boyfriend and you can be my gf damn girl you lookin cute

Goodness gracious what a god dang year. I’m late on this because recently I wrapped up one last little update to Christmas ADVENTure, so go check it out a ton of secret work went on it but I won’t spoil too much. Let’s hop right into this dang LONG ASS newspost.

WARNING THIS SHIT LONG LMAO and also maybe shitty grammar and spelling errors, im very tired when i wrote this. Links coming when I wake up im sleepin yall

GAME DEVELOPMENT AND THE SUMMER OF FAILED PROJECTS

God damn the year started out wild. For Pixel Day I made OSO. At the time I was working on Must Murder Mommy with PhantomArcade and that was my main focus at the time. I think I started the original prototype while he was at Magfest, and I made the prototype in Pico-8. During development, the internet at my house got shut off for not being paid heheh, but luckily I was living in town so I could walk to the library and upload in time for Pixel Day. I would like to make a sequel eventually, I have a rough story concept that I think would be interesting.

Then by the end of January, I found out about a game jam, called “Strawberry Jam 2” where you had 1 month to make a horny game. At the time Moawling had a little discord server a few people hung around, so I posted the link there. About 1 month and a bunch of development shenanigans later (I’ll save the shenanigans for an official post-mortem of somekind), Monster Mashing came out! Up to that point, Monster Mashing actually only had about 23 hours of coding done on it. I’m a lazy ass bitch but somehow I manage to release games. I feel like Monster Mashing deserves it’s own writeup/postmortem, so I’ll just leave it off by saying it’s the most viewed games I’ve ever made (it’s the 4th most viewed non-A rated game of 2018 at just over 100K plays as of writing), it got me some of that NG street cred, and it got the attention of Nutaku, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) online game distributors/websites. More info on that later.

At the end of March, I released another game. White Only. The gameplay came from me trying to make a simple action game backend shit, and the idea was just some bullshit because I thought it’d be funny to have a game where “you have to kill black people”. I figured I should shove in some pretentious ass bullshit because I love that junk and honestly I’m happy the way that one turned out. Mostly because the reviews are hilarious.

Ludum Dare 40 rolled around in mid-April. I hit up Luis a little while before and he teased the idea of doing that, but when I checked in with him he had to head to New York for that weekend. So last minute I hit up a few people asking if they wanted to do something I think, when I slid into my guy FuShark’s DMs and like the loyal MVP he is, he accepted and we threw together Prom GOblin. We did a postmortem podcast together, so you should listen to that for the full backstory on the game.

May 5th was Pico Day this year, and I released Pico Rising, a Hotline Miami style top down shooter. I really like how the gameplay turned out on this one. I actually had this one in development since before the Ludum Dare, but I got lazy and also neglected it after the Prom GOblin release for a smidge. However I still did get it done by Pico Day! And it ended up winning 1st, although there weren’t too many game submissions. But I’ll take what I can get. That 200$ USD paid for some much needed PC upgrades, that I actually still haven’t been able to do. I had all the parts, but I was waiting for the thermal paste for MONTHS because my mom never got around to getting the mail sorted out, and by the time I got it in late-September, I didn’t have internet and I had to reinstall a bunch of stuff. So I still have a used 2nd or 3rd gen i7 just waiting for me to use since JUNE. God dammit. My current PC cpu is from like 2007 or something god damn.

A few days after Pico Day, I was talking to a pal about my game Whites Only. They told me I “might wanna remove that black people game”. I still find the conversation god damn hilarious because I expected them to be the last person who’d talk to me about that game. I had a nice discussion about Whites Only, and how it may be perceived by different people, how my message might not get across. Actually thoughtful and informative discussion about the game. But like the dipshit I am, I decided to do a color swap on Whites Only, and re-release it as Blacks Only. I still laugh at my dumbass bullshit and I have no regrets. I had the idea for posting these two versions at the same time, but I either forgot about it by the time Whites Only came out, or I got lazy. But at least now they live in perfect harmony. One cool ass thing that happened was the OneyPlays crew played it right at the start of one of their Newgrounds series. The game is very short and linear so they played it all, and by extension about 300K people did too. Yeah imma count that shit. After the vid came out, I actually did a mini-AMA in the /r/OneyPlays subreddit and I was bullshittin around in there. I feel like I was cool enough and my reputation is still somewhat intact after that.

My next game is probably the most personal game I’ve made so far. Kanye West released his album ‘Ye’ at the beginning of June. I wasn’t too big of a fan of Kanye really. I always knew of him for being that guy who does some wacky shit every once in a while for publicity. However I gave ye a listen and it inspired my game “the ninja_muffin2.4 twitter experience 2018’ a whole bunch. I made it in a few days after I listened to ye. I was inspired by the fact that ye was very open and vulnerable. It exposed Kanye and his thoughts more than most of his other works up to that point. It was very introspective. Another slight inspiration was Davey Wreden’s game “Life in the West| (which I can’t find online) where it’s basically a Kanye West twitter simulator. The kanye west bit didn’t really have much to do with it, moreso the gameplay. One laasst little inspiration was the ending in Whites/Blacks Only. In that bit, all the different colored blocks have all these little opinions and thoughts. A few of those thoughts were some of my opinions and feelings, and I wanted to make some extension of that in some form, or a game about the idea of expressing yourself. Thematically or whatever, The ninja_muffin2.4 Twitter.com experience might be my favorite game of mine this year.

At this point the details are very blurry, but over the summer I started work on quite a few projects. I like to call this my “rhythm games” phase because I had at least 2 in progress. One was a stealth rhythm game called “Cyberfunk” that I was working on with IvanAlmighty for Robot Day. Things just sorta slipped after we missed the deadline, however I’d really like to finish that up someday just so that cool ass title doesn’t go to waste.

Another game at that time was a megaman style game, with rhythm elements where you were a scooba diver of some sort. This one I was working on with a few artists, but the main one being Foamymuffin. This project barely got off the ground though but I do have an alternate version I’ve been thinking of that ditches the megaman shit. Maybe I’ll prototype that because I think it could turn out cool.

One last little attempt to get something done during the summer was Ludum Dare 42, which I teamed up with FuShark once again. The theme of the jam was “Running Out Of Space”, so Fu and I made a little game where you had to type in this command line to shift around datablocks and make sure you dont fill up or whatever. There was some shenanigans with development (I basically had to make the game out of some ex-drug dealers house, you can read more here), the gameplay was confusing, and we couldn’t figure out how to move it forward. So it fell apart and we ditched that shit lol.

My gamedev comeback came due to the GameMaker’s Toolkit Jam. The theme was “Genre without mechanic”. So I made a platformer where you can’t walk, you have to jump everywhere, and it was called cityhoppin. I remember the first day or so I just gathered ideas from pals and shit. I didn’t start working on it until a day or so before the deadline. I bullshitted around with a bunch of jump values and different mechanics until I figured I should get to level design. The game design was inspired by “Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy” where you didn’t exactly die, you just fell and you just had to get back up. I also did all the art for that, and I feel like that turned out alright. This was actually the first time I’ve ever stayed up all night. Usually I get a good night’s sleep like a good boy. Also I almost never do any sort of work past 11PM. Maybe I had built up work ethic from all those games I didn’t finish. One of the coolest things was having my little crew of pals all try to speedrun cityhoppin. Shoutout to dogl for being a real gamer. One thing I feel like I captured from gettin over it (and other hard as shit platformer games I love) is the feeling of joy when you finally beat it. I do feel like I struck somethin good there, so hopefully I can get around to making a sequel or follow up of it sometime.

Around this time, I got contacted by a “game scout” for Nutaku. He found Monster Mashing on Newgrounds, and said that he could get me and the gang a hook up with Nutaku. Nutaku is one of the biggest adult game distributors/websites, basically the Steam of tiddie games. Funny thing is I actually emailed them waaayyy back in March about possibly getting MM on Nutaku, either as a free game or premium/commercial, but they declined. However this time they came to US. We had a bunch of hold ups with development since then, but hopefully we can get the game out on Nutaku within the next few weeks! I remember the day we got the contract/agreement, there was this satisfaction that I ‘ve never felt before. Like I’m finally in the big leagues of game development and shit. Everything was going to be official, I’m finally getting a game sold for people to buy. So yeah keep ur eyes out for that one VERY SOON.

For some reason, in mid-November I decided I wanted to organize an art collab. I wanted to do something similar to that one advent calendar from years ago. 2 weeks later Christmas ADVENTure came out on Newgrounds. It actually came out at like 11:59 PM EST, right before December 2nd. The release and development of that game was god damn crazy and pretty much everything was done last minute. Somehow things all came together, it was a Christmas miracle really. I’m very proud of how things turned out. Pretty much until it released, I was very worried about looking like a jackass and organizing a collab only for it to not come together and I wasted everyone’s time. Most of my games also have 3 stars, so I was also worried about people dropping out if they see the collab isn’t that well received. I’m doin a writeup about all the behind the scenes stuff, and the process and whatnot, so keep and eye out for that too.

A few days after the Christmas ADVENTure came out, I released “Dedicated to PhantomArcade” which of course is dedicated to phantomarcade lmao. That game came from a discussion I had with Phantom about a certain submission that I personally thought was low effort and was getting undeserved attention. We had a nice and pleasant discussion, and I went to sleep later in the night. Then, at about 2AM in the morning, I woke up and I couldn’t sleep. I was sorta obsessing over the discussion with Phantom, and the submission. I just couldnt stop thinking about it to the point where it kept me up at night. Maybe I had built up stress from the christmas collab, maybe it was leftover stress from earlier in the day. I then had the idea to make a shitpost game around something he said in our conversation. So I had the idea for the game at like 4-5AM, and I released it at about 6AM. It’s a super simple game, so I suggest you do a very quick playthrough. I still find it funny as shit that it somehow got past judgement.

One little side programming thing I did was the Smash Collab credits sequence. I’m buddy buddy with Ivan and Phantom and I’m kinda the hottest programmer on newgrounds right now so obviously i was their first pick for this. I remember I mentioned to Phantom that I was gonna get good at animation one day just so that I could be a part of one of these big collabs, and he said that I could do the interactive credits. I liked the way they turned out, but since I was doing Christmas ADVENTure stuff, and also im a dumb idiot I put the credits stuff off for a while. The collab had to be delayed because of some technical issues, so I had enough time to get it all sorted out though. Maybe at the expense of my sleep, christmas time with family, and also the Christmas ADVENTure stuff. But everything turned out ok in the end somehow. Another christmas miracle (aside from the fact that the Smash Collab was delayed for a smidge, but that wasnt my fault also Ivan release the source to the Smash Collab menu you coward ass bich).

NON-GAME SHIT LOL

I really wanted to get better at art for 2018. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. But I sure as shit didn’t practice as much as I should’ve. However I do feel like I learned a lot about Blender. I participated in the first round of summer jam toons. I did a pixel art/3D animation that I’m still impressed by. Mostly due to the fact that I did 95% of it in a week. I still wonder what I could do with more time.... With the recent Blender grease pencil updates, I might mess around with that 2D/3D bullshit more.

Another thing I feel like I improved on was my music. When I joined Newgrounds music was actually the stuff I focused on. I’ve been slipping in and out of music stuff, but 2018 I did a good chunk of music, I even released a small little EP on Bandcamp, which really just means I accept payments on my songs lol. I’ve been enjoying learning about music stuff, and also I love schmoozing my stinky ass songs into games of mine. It’s like all these things I’m workin towards is connecting. Although I love working and collaborating with people, there’s something nice about knowing that if I wanted to, I could make a game entirely by myself, everything from music, to art, to programming and game design.

Slightly related to the music shit, in 2018 I did a good chunk of livestreaming. I’ve been doing programming mostly, music sometimes, and a whole bunch of bullshittin. I actually find it easier to focus on stream, and easier to stay on task. It’s like having someone constantly watching over your shoulder to make sure you work. If I could have one feature that would be 100% be added to Newgrounds, it’d be some sort of livestreaming feature. I have a lot of fun just bullshitting around and talking to chat.

Another game thing I didn’t bring up yet was me and PhantomArcade’s game. We did get a good chunk of work done on the game, but it’s been a bit stagnant for quite some time. I really do hope we can finish that in 2019. We started that over a god damn year ago.  It’s been the longest project in progress I’ve ever had. If we could finish it, it would be a nice little accomplishment and weight off my back. Yall tell me to stop being a jackass and actually get back to working on that lol pls Phantom if ur reading this you need to yell at me I aint loyal I always get distracted with other game projects but I do still really wanna finish this lololol

NON-CREATIVE AND LIFE STUFF

Life was pretty much average all year really. Something I feel like I should bring up is the Newgrounds Discord. I really liked that place because I met a lot of cool ass people there, and honestly it was one of the highlights of the year for me. It really sucks that it shut down the way it did. Really feels unjustified. If I could have an experience like that, I just feel bad for whatever upcoming creative kid who could’ve had a similar experience if only it hadn’t shut down.

Another notable thing is that I’m actually back at my foster parent’s house right now. Last year’s end of year roundup ended by mentioning how I was back living with my mom. Well now I’m back at my foster parent’s so that I can finish up Monster Mashing stuff since my mom doesn’t have internet right now. It was a bit surreal coming back here after so long. I spent the last few years of high school here so it’s actually a bit nostalgic in a way. I used to have so many arguments with my foster mom about me spending too much time on the computer and shit. If I spend too much time on the computer now, I actually start feeling a bit stressed, as if she’s going to come downstairs at some point and guilt me and yell at me for not going outside. Like I’ve got PTSD and shit about this lmao. But so far she’s left me alone. I barely talked to her since I moved back in with my mom, so I caught her up with all the stuff I’ve been doing on our car ride here. All the stuff I’ve been doing on newgrounds, people I know and talk to here. Maybe she finally just understands that I’m not just wasting my time on the computer and I’m doing something with my life to some extent. So thanks to Newgrounds you a fukken MVP

Last year’s post I mentioned that I’d be happy if 2018 was half as good as 2017, and I’d say it was 2x as good. There’s ups and downs but the general trajectory seems upward. Especially with all these new artists on the site, I’m incredibly hopeful for my future, and Newgrounds’. There’s always going to be more cool people to meet and collaborate with here. This place is inspiring like nowhere else. Before NG I didn’t really give a shit about doing art or animation. Even now I wouldn’t call it “my passion” but I feel like I should get good at art so that I can contribute more here. Well that’s enough dweebshit, this took me ages to write and its about 1AM right now. If you made it through you a hero and I hope you have a HAPPY AND BLESSED 2019

Last year's roundup

Yeah this is some real fancy stuff, some top notch programming: https://github.com/ninjamuffin99/SmashCreds

If you missed it, I did the credits sequence all in code for the big ol smash collab. I aint even gonna link the collab since its right on the fukken front page huge ass banner and also im lazy hehehe. So download the c3p file from github and go digging. And also tell @IvanAlmighty to do the same and release all that good code he wrote or else he's a coward