Welcome to my first blog post on Newgrounds! I'm not the type to post on the blog, but I saw this as a cool opportunity to try it for the first time.
Today I'll share with you how the development for a game I couldn't make in time for Pico Day went, as well with stuff I learned along the way. I teased about this blogpost in my recent audio submission, which is also Pico Day related!
Pico Day was here!
Yesterday was Pico Day! It's a day where we celebrate not only the Newgrounds mascot, but all things Newgrounds, be it characters, films, music, or that one forums post that made an impression on you.
Beloved characters of fiction using guns was a staple of Newgrounds back in the day
Newgrounds has been a great part of my childhood on internet, where my favorite games would often have the iconic tankman on the loading screen. Since my english knowledge was very little at the time, I never really got much into the website itself (most of the games I played were hosted on other websites). I don't quite recall when I decided to make an account, but I think it was after watching and playing a lot of stuff on StickPage and coming to NG to get more of it.
Henry Stickmin deciding what he will want on his sandwich (3 out of the 4 options will lead to his demise)
As I got more knowledgeable of the culture of the website, I learned about Pico Day. "A day to celebrate the website that nurtured my childhood with lots of fun memories? Count me in!" is what I thought when I heard about it! I never got to do much however. I always thought of making a song, which was what I did the best back then, but the real dream was to make an animation or a game. In any case, every year I never got myself to work a celebratory work out, due to life circumstances. But this year... I decided I would do it for sure, no matter what it costed!
A Game About What?
Sublo and Tangy Mustard as they'd appear in the latest iteration of the game.
With some knowledge of the game engine Stencyl that I learned over the months (Thanks to RubixDude10 for enthusing me about and showing the ins and outs of it!), I decided that this year I would be able to make a game. The first thing to think about is: What will the game be about? Sure, I could make a game about the Pico character, but I feel that a lot of other popular character of the portal should get their own turn in the spotlight too. So following a desire from my heart, I wanted to make a game about my favorite series from the website: Sublo and Tangy Mustard.
Dick Wubhamer, as he would also appear in the latest iteration of the game.
Sublo and Tangy Mustard is an animated series about these two silly guys working as mascots for a Subpar, a sandwich restaurant chain. They work there with Katy, who makes the sandwiches, and try not to make Mr. Wubhamer, their boss, upset with his strange demands such as never taking off the costumes. We also see the personal lives of these characters in several episodes, and it's generally a very fun time! My all-time favorite episode is Bad Guys.
Just like on TV
So, how does one actually make a Sublo & Tangy Mustard game? This was a question that took me some time to answer. I could just put the characters in any kind of game and that would be it, but I think it would be really cool to create something that speaks with the series somewhat. The three main elements I associate with Sublo & Tangy Mustard are: The characters' friendship, sandwiches and dancing. I thought that maybe I could make a game that mixed the three... Something like... A rhythm based sandwich making game where you control two characters at once?!
Prototype of the game. Lots of debug text!
With like 4 weeks until Pico Day, I spent 1 week on this little prototype. Half of it was spending in research material and the other in actually making the game. It was functional (for the most part). You could control Sublo and Tangy Mustard at once, and use the (currently invisible) cooking stations to get ingredients that you had to time your inputs to select the right ones. The boys would frequently be exchanging ingredients to each other. The order would come on the top, a sort of scrolling metronome that not only assisted with timing your inputs, but also showed how long a client would wait for their sandwich to be done. In my head all of this was fun and wouldn't be hard to make...
Oh, how were I wrong.
The only thing standing between me and insanity is my choccy milk
Because of bugs I would keep facing, and the game in general not being so fun to play, I scrapped this idea. I wasn't willing to give up yet though, and I started to think of other ideas.
It was really hard to make a game where you play as Sublo & Tangy Mustard and you don't play as both in some capacity, or dance, or make sandwiches. I think the most reasonable thing to do would be not make a Sublo & Tangy Mustard game as I didn't quite have the experience and time to develop it, but I wasn't willing to give up! So a different approach was to, instead of making Sublo or Tangy Mustard the protagonist, I decided to choose Katy, and I had just the thing in mind for her...
A Subpar Pico Day
A poor mockup of what a thumbnail for the game would look like
I decided to stick with the sandwich thing, and in this take of the game, you'd play as Katy serving the costumers coming to Subpar. These costumers would happen to be some popular faces of the website as well. To make things more interesting, and to explore the artist's aspect of Katy, the plot would be that she is trying to make something for Pico Day on the very day (sounds familiar?), but her boss has put her to work during this holiday to make sandwiches for the Newgrounds stars. So you'd have to balance sandwich making, socializing with the characters, making the artwork and taking some shut-eye over the course of the day, and your total performance would be then calculated to give you an ending! I was very excited when I came up with this idea, but I didn't take in account how hard it could be to make a game like this!
A screenshot from when I was testing text. The red square represents the character's sprite!
I made a general layout, a timer, and a textbox system of sorts, as well with option picking. After this I decided to work on the dialogue, and well... It didn't work out so well :P
I wrote over ten thousand words before I gave up on the idea, due to how difficult I found to write some characters. I have chosen around 30 Newgrounds characters as well, and I've cut them over time. Eventually I didn't want to carry on with the idea anymore. But I didn't want to give up on a story driven game yet, so...
Who did it?
Katy pointing at something like the funny video game lawyer
I decided to make it a murder mystery! I reduced the cast to a comfortable amount, and I picked characters I were mostly familiar with and I think it would be easy for me to write. I spent a lot of time cooking the mystery, but I couldn't say it was very successful either. I don't want to enter in details, but what was supposed to be a murder strangely always would revolve around what happened to Steve's missing shirt! What the heck!
Steve as he would have appeared in the game... I'm sorry.
As Pico Day drew nearby, and my personal life demanding more of me, I was very ready to give up on making a game. But I still didn't want to make all this effort go in vain! So I decided to write a quick song on the last day I had to make something for the day. I was very impressed with myself, because I didn't think I'd end making what my friends call "a banger". It even got frontpages and a lot of good scores, thank you!
What has this taught me?
Katy and Olive supporting each other on what they love
I'm very blessed for having a lot of supporting friends and fans of my work. This is why I want to share everything I learned with this experience!
Lesson 1: Chase your dreams today!
Yeah, I know. Very corny :P
But it's true! I often see people sharing their wishes and saying "I wish I could do that" or "Maybe one day". In many circumstances, we truly can only hope and dream, and that's something good! But if there are no obstacles in your way, why not do it today? Don't forget that every dream is good. If you dream of eating a brownie today, do it! If you dream of trolling on the web, do it! If you dream of drawing something for a friend, do it as well! Triumphing over the small things is the way for feeling whole and achieving constant satisfaction. If you don't do it today, you may truly not have time in the future!
Lesson 2: We have enough experience
Some people may think that they need to gather experience to do something they want to do. This is true if one is to be entrusted with an important job, for instance. But how about when you're just starting? Can someone with no game development experience develop? Yes! The results may not be exactly the ones you dream of, but getting results of any kind is very valuable. Sometimes we have innate abilities to things we have not discovered yet. You may be surprised to know you are a very talented musician, artist, mathematician, or things of the sort! Trying things, specially for the first time, is a very good way to measure your skill, and plan ahead when deciding to use your skills in future situations. There is no minimum experience requirement for this!
Lesson 3: It's OK to not be 100% accurate to the source material!
Whenever I make something based on someone else's work, I try my best to be well informed of its history, context, and always try to make some kind of analysis. During this project I've watched more Newgrounds movies and played more games than I might have ever in my life!
But the thing is, I never really needed to do all of this. It's of course always good to understand a character in a superficial level, and it's very admirable to deeply understand one's nature, but that's not needed for you to do something that's fun and enjoyable! Characters speak in various ways to different people, including us who make works based on them. Feel free to be true to your heart and interpret a character as you want, and you'll learn a lot about yourself.
Lesson 4: It's also OK to not do something different!
When I wanted to make a Sublo and Tangy Mustard game, I wanted to make one that would speak to the series in some way. So then I thought of these very convoluted ideas of a game. I had fun ideas, but I lacked enough experience to turn them into the way I wanted. Not fun!
Eventually, just on the last week, I had an idea that could actually work, based on an arcade game that already existed and looked very easy to program. Unfortunately, time was running out, so I decided to pass. But I felt like a dummy for not have thought of such an easy concept before, even if it would look just like a game that already exists! If I had done that, we'd have a Sublo and Tangy Mustard game to play right now.
So, specially if you are new on game developing, don't worry about your game looking too much like other games! Or your art looking like other people's art, or music or anything else. The true end goal of art is self expression, and no art will be like another, under any circumstance!
Lesson 5: Thinking the plot is one thing, writing the script is another story!
Maybe you have a very cool idea for your game or film right now, where it has that epic story that speaks about a human condition and has valuable lessons that will define cultural generations for years to come...
But have you ever actually thought of how the dialogue will be delivered, word to word? Or whatever way you'd like to present it, if your work has no dialogue.
It is actually very hard! Specially if you hadn't written this kind of text before. Writing is a very amazing art, where there are very ways and formats and different categories of text. If dialogue is an important part of your work, then you better make sure you can put down what the characters say to words! I'm not sure if that's just me who has a hard time with writing dialogue over other types of text, but this is something I'll definitively keep in mind in the future.
What I Learned About Newgrounds
Sometimes it takes us a breathtaking landscape to inspire us to pee
Newgrounds is an actual, literally incredible site, don't you think? I don't know what other place on the internet you get to see a massive diversity of artists and people, not only sharing the same space in harmony (I think! I have not seen much disturbance around the site, even at the forums), but also interact together amidst the differences. The same place where you see wholesome animations and extremely violent games share the same merit in the frontpage! In a time where it's very common to see people fight on the internet over silly things, this really makes Newgrounds a beacon of fun and peace, one that has been standing for over 20 years now! It has represented and has never stopped representing the best of internet: Meeting new people from all over the world, making stuff for people who like to experience it, and experiencing stuff by people who like to make it. This, for me, is the real meaning of Everything by Everyone.
What now? How about the game?
(More characters in higher resolution. Can you name all of them?)
After I finished the song, I didn't really intend on finishing the game. But it seems like some people are actually interested on it. Unfortunately, I'll get very busy for the next days, and there are other projects I want to work on. But I'd like to know, what do you think you'd like to see in a mystery-solving game featuring Newgrounds characters and media! You can leave that on the comments if you want.
And that's it for this blog post. I hope you had an enjoyable read. Now let's get creating and enjoying other creations!