Ok so I'm a bit late with the Big Apple Con stuff. There's really not much I can say at this point that hasn't been said already- listing everyone's names again would be kind of redundant too, heh. Regardless, it was a lot of fun and something I look forward to repeating in the future- hopefully with more fans turning out each time. I went ahead and wrote up an article for it on my site:

here

In other news- if you haven't heard yet, Territory WAR Online is now in full scale launch. We're still working on tweaks and adjustments to the game, so hopefully it will be ready for distribution on sites like NG shortly. In the meantime though, join the thousands of other players at www.territorywaronline.com !

I have other games in the works too, but I have a lot of other stuff to get out of the way first so no sense building up any hype for them just yet.

I'll leave you with this picture of Krinkels, Swain, and Tomamoto [left to right]
They'll kick your ass.

That's right, instead of hearing me talk about how close the game is to done, you can play it!

www.territorywaronline.com
www.territorywaronline.com
www.territorywaronline.com

What's a soft launch? Well, it means the game is done but we're trying to keep it low key for a little while. Believe me, I've fixed a LOT of issues from the original beta, but it's quite possible that some still exist. After we feel we have a nice, stable version on our hands, we'll proceed with 'full launch,' and then distributing the game around to other websites. If you find bugs you can email me, pm me, post here, or post on XGen

I also wrote an article for my site detailing just how much work went into this game, and how many people it took to become what it is: NG personalities like Pox, Swain, and KTR.

btw if you see ".Afro.Ninja." in the lobby, that's me

In other news, NY Big Apple Con is coming up soon. Swing by, check out the NG booth, and grab an NG patch. See you there.

For anyone unaware, PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo- it's being held in Seattle, Washington, August 29-31. Basically, an expo for video game nerds.

http://pennyarcadeexpo.com/

I plan to attend, and was curious to see if anyone else was. Right now it looks like I'll be joined by BoMToons, and TropicalParadise from the bbs. Comi-con seems to get most of the attention, as it's a bigger and has been longer running. But I'm not that big of a comic book fan, so PAX seems a little more appealing to me.

I may still attend comicon this year but that's undecided as of now.

Also, there's a crazy rumor going around, something about a Territory WAR beta...

thoughts?

Seeing as how I made previous comments about getting this game to beta stages by late february/early march, I thought I should make an update on the situation.

First off, the game itself virtually done. There are a few missing assets, but nothing major. The problem? Implementing the stats system, and making it hack-proof.

I want people that play Territory WAR online to feel a sense of accomplishment with their records. And when someone comes along with a hacked profile, or is able to cheat the game, that takes a lot of fun out of it. The only problem is that with code execution being on the client side, it's virtually impossible to make the game 'hack-proof.' That being said, hacking this game should prove to be damn hard. People comment that stick arena is easily hacked, but that's because when stick arena was released, it had no security implementations. Territory WAR has several. I'm not going to describe any of them though- the more I explain, the more a hacker has to work with. Script kiddies need not apply. I ALMOST hope that someone hacks this game, because the hours they would have to spend sifting through obfuscated source code and encryption strings would be a testament to their pathetic nature.

Also, Xgen (who I am working with for the online aspect) is still busy working on their wiiware version of Defend Your Castle. Which looks amazing, by the way.

I still hope to have something significant released this month in the Territory WAR universe. But for now, I'll have to leave you with another screenshot from one of pox's stages. By the way, don't be surprised if you see a cameo level from a certain blockheaded flash artist too. (HAHA GET IT?!!? I sure don't)

Many of you played my 2006 Worms-themed battle game, Territory WAR. And if you saw my user page when the NG redesign hit, you saw the announcement for the sequel.

Today I felt it was time to finally post the first screenshots of the game in action, instead of just talking about it some more. A quick sum up: A revamped, remade version of Territory WAR with better graphics (thanks to poxpower), a new engine, new weapons, new levels, and most importantly, online play! Which of course wouldn't be possible without xgen's mmocha server technology.

Head on over to my site for more screenshots and the full preview!

I just submitted my new video to the portal, How to be a Guitar Hero. Which brings up an important question. What do you guys think of video submissions on Newgrounds? Do they fit in at all? Should they be removed? Should their be a separate section for them?

As we know, Newgrounds is a flash only site. There's audio too of course, but meant to be used with the flash. The reason we can submit video is because flash supports embedded video. Flash, however, is not a video editor. And unlike youtube, there are some problems with this. First is the size limit. Video takes up a lot more space than vector graphics, obviously. The youtube file limit is 100MB, which is pretty excessive in my opinion, but allows for more freedom. The NG file limit is 10 MB, which is almost excessive for standard games and movies, but is barely enough for video. I had to compress my video at 130 kbps, 270 kbps less than 'normal' quality. But my video is also over eight minutes long, not exactly the norm.

Also an issue is the sound synchronization. Flash has always had issues with this, and video is no surprise. The reason it works on youtube is because the files are streamed from the server. When you submit content, you submit any kind of video file you have, youtube converts it to .flv, and streams it in the flash player. If you want to submit it as an .swf to newgrounds though, you have to embed the entire file into the .swf, which flash itself recommends against, resulting in issues like sound sync. There's probably a trick I don't know about yet, but even the classic 'stream looped silence in the background' trick didn't work this time, heh.

Anyway, there is a large pro to this- not anyone can submit a video. That's why you don't see the portal flooded with random pointless videos like you see at youtube- shit people film in a couple minutes and call it entertainment, or the mundane 'video blog' submissions from random people we probably don't care about. The extra step of converting and compressing is a turn off. If NG had a video section though I would hope that people would be strict in their blamming/saving. IE, entertainment videos are great but 'v-blog' type stuff would get blammed quick.

Is video a step in the next direction for NG? Maybe. It's a step in the next direction for me. Making games has always been my thing, with a little bit of animation thrown in there too. But I just want to entertain people, that doesn't mean it has to be with a flash game. Video is fun to make, it's more engaging than sitting in front of the computer all day and typing lines of code. Just enough to be a nice break in between making your next game or animation. I think other developers could agree :)

I've been waiting a while to make a news post

If anyone is curious why my newest Escape Game has been out for over a month now, but not on NG, there's a reason for that. The Escape Games are sponsored by Addictinggames, but they're non-exclusive. Meaning I can continue to upload the game wherever I like. Since AG sponsors it though, I at least have to wait for them to upload it to their site first. But when they did, and I woke up the next day, I was getting waayy too much traffic from it. My server was barely handling it. So submitting to NG would have just been overkill.

Rather than waste traffic and piss people off because they couldn't see the walkthrough page, I decided to wait until my host could set me up with a dedicated server for my account. This took longer than expected, but I did get a free 2-month deal for the wait. It worked out anyway, because KT-Records wanted to finish the full version of my 'Afro Ninja theme song' first, a loop of which can be found in the end of the now uploaded Escape #3

If ninjas could fight to music, I think they'd pick that song

Ah, ok, I'll give in and use this as a blog now.

I just bought Picross DS for... er.. the DS. And it's pretty awesome. I think of it as a more entertaining sudoku. Same principle- fill in the squares based on the clues. Only with picross you create a picture each time, and the grid can change sizes. There's also more little rules to follow with picross.

If you're interested in trying it out, I suggest looking up the game 'Armor Picross' (made by kenney and syko227)

Picross DS also features 'daily picross' which gives you some sort of goal to accomplish once per day, and it tracks your progress over time. Neat stuff.

Also, I hope everyone that wanted stickers sent me an email, cause I got them all sent out today. Sorry!

Jumping on the Comicon bandwagon, I figured I'd throw up a post before I head out tomorrow morning.

I'll be at Comicon in CA from Wed-Sun, taking in the sights and hanging out at the NG booth. I got a bunch of Afro Ninja stickers printed up for the occasion, so be sure to stop by and get some!

I'm pretty excited, as this is my first year attending comicon. There seem to be a record number of other NG artists/users coming as well, so I hope I see all you guys there :)

UPDATE: check out my post-comicon page:
http://www.afro-ninja.com/features/vfe ature.php?id=17

The redesign is here!

It's been a long time coming, but I think you'll agree it was well worth it. And hey, what better way to celebrate than with some big news of my own?

You might remember one of my games from last year, a worms-themed battle game called Territory WAR. I've spent a lot of time since then working on a new engine. Smoother game-play, better graphics (drawn by poxpower), more weapons, new stages, even destructible terrain! Oh, and did I mention you can play ONLINE?

That's right, I'm teaming up with the X-Gen team (Stick Arena Online, Defend Your Castle) and using their MMOcha server software to bring you Territory WAR Online! You'll be able to register an account, play people across the world, and track all your stats!

It's quite a large undertaking, and there's much work to be done, but I couldn't help making some kind of announcement about it. This is easily the largest flash project I've undertaken, and also the reason why you haven't seen much from me this year aside from Escape Games. I'm hoping to get it completed by year's end, but we'll see how that goes. I'll post more info and some screens on my site when it gets further along.

Lastly, big thanks go to MindChamber for helping me create a new logo/intro animation. You can see a tiny bit of it in my user picture, but I'm saving the full thing for later. : )