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Dream Land Java :: Development Logs :: Gooey Against Moogong
Gooey Against Moogong -- Goo X Moo for short -- is the accidental first game (or a joke, depending on how you look at it) released for the Dream Land Java project. It consists entirely of the titular hero's fight against the lone enemy in the game, Moogong. BackgroundWhen this idea was unfortunately dreamt up, there were a few things on my plate, and as such, my current Java project was suffering. At this point, it was entirely possible to create a playable game applet for Kirbj, but not necessarily make an enjoyable one, and unfortunately, that seems to be important to players. Greedy punks. They should be happy with just playability. Not like they're called "enjoyers". I was trudging development out as there was little beyond imagery and sounds to implement. Typically, when I move into that area, I stop caring about a project. Media isn't fun. There is little thinking or innovating solutions; it is all libraries and static allocation to save memory. Feh. So before Kirbj could take off, it needed a push out of the nest... on the side facing a cliff, given my motivation for doing these sorts of things. And what better way to motivate me, then, than the place that often makes me want to jump off a cliff -- Kirby's Rainbow Resort~! Y'see, I'm a secret staff member over there. Been that way since the summer. And before you ask how it is secret if I'm spilling the beans here, then you really don't get why I hate that place so much. Blutty 'el, I could say "Hey, I'm a staff member~!" on their main page, and it'd still be a secret to them. Lotta dull knives in that drawer... Pretty much, this entire effort was made to spite them. Ah, spite. That's probably the reason I get outta the bed in the morning. Those blokes really like their fan games, especially in their godforsaken forums. And while most are hocking their wares of nothing more than a title screen capture and looking for and receiving tons upon metric tons of praise, this little ditty is right under their noses. DevelopmentThe entire "game" is nothing more than second banana Gooey fighting against a made-up fan boss named Moogong, just as the title suggests. Although this isn't much... or anything, really... it does mark the first time that a Kirbj applet can be played from start to finish instead of just being a bunch of debugging stuff thrown together. Now, some of you may not remember Gooey from Dream Land 3, but like the permanent 2P I am, he stuck in my memory quite a bit. In fact, all of his actions had already been coded into the Kirbj back when only Waddle Doo was playable; the only thing I had to add for him was growing the tongue graphic (as opposed to easily stretching a rectangle graphic placeholder), swallowing (which was next to nothing thanks to robust object orient programming), and actually drawing the little bugger. Those drawings are one of the prime reasons he was picked as the protagonist. Without limbs, there are only so many things the guy can do, and that is many less than some of the other characters. Before Gooey, the only hand-drawn graphics were of Waddle Doo, and those were scrapped when I decided to make everything smaller. (Also, they sucked, but mostly the sizes.) I learned quite a bit about what would be useful from that ill-fated attempt, however. Besides, if I later decide that something needs redrawn, it is much better for it to be a nigh-detailless blob! Moogong, on the other hand, represented a good chunk of the man-hours sunk into this project. Allegedly, this literal sea cow was the reason for even slapping this thing on KRR. Mostly awesome person Bimblesnaff was running a fan-created miniboss contest, and rather than describe it or draw a simple picture, I programmed this. It was quite the undertaking, too, as only simple enemies had existed in Kirbj prior to Moogong beaching itself on Dream Land's shores. And I mean simple enemies, too. Like, hop-in-place or suicide-charge simple. A new miniboss-specific AI system was the result. It took me little more than a week (October 31st to November 8th) to go from colored squares hopping around the place to a boss battle. Features Developed For This Game
That last one is especially funny. There is absolutely no reason why I had to have a copy ability in this release; Moogong is the only enemy, so there is little left to freeze. But I did. Because I could. Play Gooey Against Moogong now!
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