Oh, for the love of all that is good and holy, take a look at the main character for this upcoming amateur adventure. Admittedly, she’s no more disgustingly silicone-enhanced than most polygon-formed girls gracing the covers of gaming magazines, but having to see this in an adventure game gives me quite the “Et tu, brute?” feeling. I honestly thought we were at least somewhat more mature than the mainstream pubescent male hardcore gamer crowd.

The justification for the creators of this game making their main character so… er… bouncy is that since they have to draw a gazillion character animation frames, they might as well spend their time drawing something that they find aesthetically pleasing. After all, who wants to play or make a game starring an ugly girl, right? And also, if we can have Arnold Schwarzenegger-type male characters, why can’t we have well-endowed female characters?

Rather than go into detail about how ridiculous these arguments are, and how they blatantly ignore the obvious fact that women, unlike men, have a long history of being objectified into less than rational human beings, I’m just going to smugly smirk at the fact that I made Gertrude Zzyrgenhymer completely flat-chested, and that the character wearing the least clothing in TGTTPOACS just so happens to be male.

Oh man, it’s been quite a busy week. For starters, beta testing on TGTTPOACS has begun, meaning I’ve got my hands rather full on that at the moment. One thing I can say for sure is that I’m glad I actually decided to have beta testing. I recall that with Cubert Badbone, I got so excited at the prospect of having finally finished it that I released it right away and announced it to various forums… only to be told that the download link was broken. And once I got that fixed, there were plenty more bugs found. It wasn’t pleasant.

Back when I was working in QA last year at a software company, I’d always get quite irate with the stupid mistakes that the programmers used to make (especially the spelling mistakes… ugh). Now, as the programmer, I realise that no matter how much of a nitpicky perfectionist you are, there will always be at least one little thing you missed. And as the project you’ve been working on increases in size and complexity, your propensity to making stupid mistakes also increases. Bottom line is: it always pays to have a fresh set of eyes look at your work. And if you happen to be that fresh set of eyes, don’t be too arrogant.

Anyway, what else have I been busy with this week? School, of course, as well as an interesting and exciting development in my life that I’ll announce on this blog once the details have been finalized. Until then, I’ll just leave you in the dark and guessing, because it’s fun that way.

I’ll bet you thought this day would never come, but it has. The Game That Takes Place on a Cruise Ship is finally ready for beta testing.

This, in turn, means that I need to recruit some beta testers. Therefore, if you’re not too busy, and are willing to take some time to thoroughly go over my game, then send an e-mail to “me at deirdrakiai dot com”[1] containing the following:

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You know, I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. It does promote saccharine, materialistic notions of love and all. However, I have to say, I do love the chocolate. I mean, how could anyone NOT love chocolate?

Yesterday, I had my wisdom teeth removed. Fortunately, the worst of the pain is over (I think). Unfortunately, I still need to eat soft foods, so today, I’ll have to limit my chocolate intake to chocolate ice cream.

The good part of wisdom tooth removal is that, unlike when I was recovering from laser eye surgery a few months ago, I can still use a computer without having my eyes get exhausted. This means I have ample opportunity to take advantage of my week off school and see if I can finish TGTTPOACS, then start the beta-testing in time for the release date I have planned for a month from now. In the meantime, though, here’s a screenshot of the intro scene. Consider it an Eat-Lots-Of-Chocolate Day present.

Frasse and the Peas of Kejick. Play it. I COMMAND YOU.

Not just because a regular reader of this blog made it, not just because it’s made with SLUDGE, and certainly not just because I got to be a beta-tester and my name is mentioned in the credits no less than three times, but because it’s incredibly cute and a lot of fun to play. It’s not ridiculously difficult, either.

Highlights for me were as follows: excellent usage of two extremely adorable player characters, each with different abilities; a puzzle in which you assemble a boat yourself, IKEA-style (and there’s an extra part left over!); a bar called “Casa Blanca”; and diuretic berries. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

In other news, I’ve been getting into some very interesting religious discussions over at the AGS forums, satisfying my ever-present intellectual needs for the first time in what seems like ages. They’re a great bunch over there. Could this mean that their engine really isn’t that bad after all?

I’ve just noticed that I only posted in this blog three times in January, meaning that yes, I’ve been keeping myself busy.

I have realised that I hate adventure game walkthroughs with a passion. I get dependent on them WAY too easily. It doesn’t matter how easy or hard the game I’m playing is, as long as I know that a walkthrough exists, I’ll always peek at it at the first sign of impatience. It’s not good.

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