If you like my art consider tossing some coin my way (+$2 for shaded art)

As an attempt to write more this year I'm gonna start doing these monthly recaps. These are generally just what I've been doing for the month, low-downs on the current state of Team Max Hog projects, and serious stuff that I feel like I want to talk about.

The idea for these writeups are inspired by @LeviRamirez's "The Levi Post" and @StuffedWombat's blogs and writeups. I recommend them both if you're into game development related writings.

January As A Whole

I made very little art this year, and I kind of gave up on it. I put more of that energy into getting better at CompSci/coding, and while I think it was a good investment I am remiss to all the time I spent making art I liked, particularly my textmode stuff.

*From my 2022 Recap

Overall I'd say I combatted this problem, I've made a few textmode pieces and gotten back in the groove. It was truly an experience redownloading playscii and fumbling my way around until muscle memory restored my memorization of keyboard shortcuts (as well as experiencing its most annoying of bugs and trying erroneously to get the project's source code off of a weird site that wasn't GitHub). Looking back at it now, I remember the main reason I stopped textmode art was because I had to reset my computer after foolishly installing windows 11 and trying to go back to 10. It ended up deleting all of my charsets, color palettes, and unpublished art and it broke me a little.

I am glad I'm doing textmode again and art in general, but it's really a sideshow. Art is my least favorite part of game-making so I'll usually try and get others to do it for me. I'm also not going to try and draw on a consistent basis, internet art for the most part is full of weird self-centered weirdos that I don't want to get tangled with.

A Video Game

I'm spent the majority of my time making a hebrew learning game for school that I'm not going to post here, but it has been my main project and the main focus for the past two months.

*Prototype footage

The process of making something like this was a surprisingly stressful experience that was due entirely to poor time management, and I'm making due on learning from the mistakes of this project. Mainly it makes me appreciate two things: Source control with GitHub, and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THANK GOODNESS WE ARE GETTING RTL SUPPORT IN GODOT 4.0. The game by itself is nothing spectacular, but I'm glad to get it out of the way and back to more fun things next month.

Me and Tiny were considering making something for pixel day but it really just didn't work out, but we had some fun concept doodling and such.

*by yours truly :-)

*by @Tiny

This month was barren, but it was a lot of brushing up stuff from last year so I can get prepared for this one. Overall I have a lot to look forward to, which I'll try to share best I can.

A Big Fat February

Everything I'm doing in February is stuff I can't disclose yet but I'm pretty excited for, which I want to list below:

• A very special event that we're excited to bring back to newgrounds, which is cooking with @Default, @Nokoi, and @Tiny
• Another Max Hog Game
• Stinky art for the stinky Feb 14th.
• Work on something for @TappyWara's Cartoon Network Collab
• Collabs galore!
• An animation jam celebrating a certain special freak of me and Tiny's

We have our work cut out for us but I'm optimistic, will time-manage the heck out of all of these. It'll be one hell of a ride!

Brain-Thinks

This section mainly entails stuff I perused on the internet, media I enjoyed, but mainly thoughts I feel the need to share. That last one gets a bit ranty so best be careful dear reader.

Media I Slurped Up

I played a lot of video games, and a few stood out to me. First I bought Voidigo by semiwork studio, and I have been playing it like a maniac since (my friends can attest to that as they've poked fun at me for how much I play it). The story of it is quite interesting, as semiwork was originally the youtube cartoon duo ThunderHumor. When I was a tween these guys were my FAVORITE animators. From time to time I rewatch at their videos and still feed me heaps of laughs. Surprise-surprise they made a video game in their years away from cartoons and GOODNESS GRACIOUS IT IS GOOD. It is a very fine-tuned experience that fixes my problems with most roguelikes, and it integrates a lot of story from their videos, particularly their "Rupert Grimsby Series". Please please please watch these videos, they are funny and have a cool little narrative in them, and the connection to the game is stellar.

I also got back into Monster Hunter (MHW is fifteen bucks for the remainder of the month, get it while you can) and it's been pretty good. Playing MH is like eating a steak, you gotta have it in little chewable bites. It's been fun and I still love all the creatures they make, and I'll be back onto Generations Ultimate when I finish world again. I recommend it if you enjoy video games where you smack dinosaurs with sticks until they fall over. It's a hoot

As for stuff on the portal I have one game from this pixel day I highly recommend, Game by @Default. It's eerie, it's difficult, and it's pretty. Please play it, and any other thing Default makes.

Final Spiel

Thanks for reading, these will get more content and thoughts in them in the future, but I want to get into the habit of writing more. Alongside these I'll try my hand at other writeups, perhaps tutorials, compsci stuff, or art things. Either way I go it's more talking, and if you are willing to read I thank you very much :-)

Timeline

This was an eventful year to say the least, I made a good amount of games and met people that have helped me ingrain myself into this website in both creative work and interactions. I'm writing this as both a timeline of what happened to me/what I did relating to newgrounds, but also as a way to thank people who've shown me incredible kindness. If I mention you on here, you have very deep thanks from me for whatever you did, and my time on NG wouldn't be what it is now without you.

Beginnings (January-March)

I was fortunate enough to be a featured artist in @LeviRamirez's game Shoot Trip Die, and I'm very thankful for the wealth of talented guest artists I got to work alongside of. Another thanks to Levi himself for giving me a slot, this was me getting my foot in the door and going from some guy who lurked in the NGP server to my own independent artist on NG.

Then in February I published my first game as the programmer of Team Max Hog, "The Zoo Game". It was a needlessly extended development period due to laziness and me being out the country for the summer of 2021, but the whole time was full of laughs as me and my best friend @Tiny completed it. It is a culmination of both our odd senses of humor, and its publication plus the forming of Team Max Hog has pushed us into groups of wonderful people that both help and inspire us to create our games. Tremendous thank you's to @conundrym, you really got and appreciated the game and we love the music you made for it. @Nohshy, I love every piece of art you make and all of your thumbnails for us have been top-notch, and @BestStromboli for being BestStromboli.

Later on Tiny and I were asked to do an interview on Zoo Game for @TheNewgroundsPodcast, which I still have trouble believing that it happened. I've listened ever since I've been on NG, and I thank you all very much who deemed us cool enough to be alongside the other awesome featured artists. Big thanks to the bigman @BuhlBoy for conducting the interview, it was a really fun talk and we had a great time hanging with you at PAX.

Big Stuff (April-June)

After the release of the profile picture shapes update, there was this odd wave of hype based around the idea of making a video game about it ; Subsequently @Dry made a discord server to rally people for the project, and I joined as a programmer. As the hype began to die out, so did the server. But somehow a small group of people rallied themselves into finishing the idea, and from that we produced our Pico Day game "Profile Picture Party". I would say this was the most important thing I made this year, for so many great reasons. To start, it introduced me to the Godot Game Engine, which has made me more a capable programmer, and taught me the value of open-source software. Reason being it's great to have something like Godot for free, in a landscape where companies want to sap money from your creativity and expression through the tools you need to make games. It's given me a lot and I look forward to making more contributions to it. It also taught me how to work with other programmers, helping me improve my git workflow, as well as syncing schedules and making sure we each get our job done (HUGE thanks to @rickropes, couldn't have done this without your work). Most importantly, this introduced me to the people who have become some of my best friends: @Dry, @TappyWara, and @SomeApe. You guys have done so much for me and given me great times, and whenever we work together its always a great experience. Team Max Hog has become so much more because of your collaboration and help, and we've all gotten so much farther together.

The Meat Of It (Late June-August)

This summer was a speedrun, I made more games than I thought I was capable, alongside working full-time.

To start was the infamous Porb Dressup, which was a joke I made in the span of three hours with @SomeApe, and you may or may not have seen me fly into fury when it got more traction than Profile Picture Party, something I actually put time and care into. Nevertheless, it's a good goof and I'm glad I made it.

Next there was "Shit Rainbows Piss Thunder", made for @plufmot's pride month jam. That was a fun experience, I got to work with Tappy and Dry again and it was great, as well as the great concept art from @Marvazoid and the voice talents of @VoicesByCorey. Chalupa Power!

The next two aren't very eventful, but I managed to put together some stuff for mobile jam and clock day, which was very humbling as its hard to make sure a game is good and not shoddily put together.

Something huge I did was host the New York City Meetup. It went really well, and I met really cool folks and had a great time (despite the rampant covid in NYC, don't go into crowded indoor spaces folks!). Everyone that showed up was awesome. Big thanks to you if you came, and here's to somehow making it happen again! An additional big thanks to Marv for helping put the whole thing together, and @Luis for advice on hosting meetups. Was a great time!

Winding Down (September-December)

School started again and whupped my ass, and I've had trouble balancing gamedev with the work and not breaking down from the stress and deadlines. Not much came from this period, so I really just took my free-time to relax and not stress myself out with new projects. But I have a little list of things I've done in that time

• Tried some new programming languages, mainly Rust. Hopefully I'll use for a game in the future.
• Getting some inspiration and studying stuff I like from other video games.
• Leaned HARD into learning more about computer science, I've wrote a good few research papers on it for school and it's really fun seeing how these tiny boxes of wires and metal control our world.

Thoughts & Reflections

The Trade

I made very little art this year, and I kind of gave up on it. I put more of that energy into getting better at CompSci/coding, and while I think it was a good investment I am remiss to all the time I spent making art I liked, particularly my textmode stuff. I'm not even really sure why, but I don't want to give up on it. Some of it's from the internet artists perspective, it puts one off from making and sharing visual art the way they used to, and the field of art in general is already saturated. It's honestly a whole separate write-up, but art sort of shifted from art to artists, and focusing more on the self rather than just making the damn art. There has been strange shit going on from people who draw, and everything is the tip of the iceberg. I'm not choosing to deride anybody specifically, and blaming others for me not doing something on my own is silly, but I do find it's a small portion of why I stopped. Mainly I'm at a fork in the road of what I want to do, I can't really tell what I'm happier doing and I don't feel good giving up on a skill I poured a lot of time into, but it may just come again when I'm ready to start doing art that I believe has a semblance of quality again.

Internet Addiction

Obviously I've been gushing about my friends on newgrounds in this blog, and I'm very grateful for them. You guys have really helped me feel comfortable here and given me good times, and it's always a pleasure fun working with you.

I also need to preserve real life over internet life. It can be unhealthy to be online for so long, and I'm not fond of sinking my entire personality into what I do on the internet. I'm not really going to do one of those bullshit "hiatuses" that people say they take, but rather I'm going to share an incredibly valuable piece of knowledge I have gained to get me out of being terminally online.

In short: They want to piss you off. "They" as in social media companies, contrarians, or any other type of dickhead that feeds off your interactions. Any and all interactions you make on the internet generates something for someone on the other end, and oftentimes it's not positive. The trick is: any time you want to give your piece on something benign or respond to something any normal person can recognize as stupid, just don't. You do not need to send that reply, you do not need to make that side-comment. It will do nothing on your end but make you angrier, and if you scroll past it you'll forget in less than a minute. I am no authority on this type of subject matter, but avoiding responding to things that enrage me has made me so much more happy than focusing and stewing on it. Please give it a try.

Health & Stress

This is the last doom and gloom section I'll write, and it's my most vague as its very personal. I've suffered a lot of stress and strife from advanced schoolwork, and coping with it I've made poor health choices in my diet and other poor decisions. This type of coping will kill me, and I won't let that happen. I have plenty of reasons to live, for both my family, friends and things I want to do in my life. I'm very fortunate to have the avenues to get that help, but the work comes from me. It comes down to talking about my problems and taking things on one piece at a time. It is possible for all of us to make this change, and we aren't alone. Know that.

Hope

I'm going into the next year with a better view and more optimistic look. New things are on my horizon and I'm excited to see what lies ahead, and I will not let the problems I'm carrying over stop me. I'll take it step by step and they'll fall off like weights from my shoulders. An infinite amount of thanks if you have read this far, I'm glad you're this interested in my thoughts, and I hope you too can reap the benefits of NG.

Happy New Year, I love you all :-)

Finished another jam entry, called it Into The Web Of Swine. It isn't my crown achievement by any stretch of the word, but I do have feelings of pride based about it.

The Start

I've been trying to improve production habits with jams because I identify a lot of my issues when it comes to getting work done, and when I found out about the mobile jam I was more than ready to join in order to squash those behaviors. I'll get more into the production part in the next section, but first I'll start with the concepts. Coming up with the idea for this game was actually a lot of fun, usually it's me bashing my head against a wall until I think of something, but this time I scheduled a call with my Team Max Hog pals: @MarvelousToastbrand, @Tiny, @SomeApe, and @TappyWara. We booted up an aggie.io session and started coming up to whatever thoughts came into our heads.

(The final png of all the doodles)

The theme the jam was given was "Lots Of Them", and a thing I love to do in any themed jam is break down a phrase and find ancillary extra definitions of a word in the dictionary. so with a quick google I found out that "Lot" has an extra meaning as a noun:

So we eventually concluded on the idea that the game would be about a hacker who stole people's data and auctioned it off as a lot to the highest bidder, which if you've actually played the game there would be no way that was communicated, which was due to a production problem I'll identify in the next section.

Makings And Such

I mentioned in my previous postmortem on how my main issue was "sitting the fuck down", and I think this time around I got better. I'd estimate the time I spent working on this was a week total. The main thorn in my side that I need to take care of now is SCOPE and making it smaller. Obviously the game as it is doesn't really reflect the original idea that we wanted to communicate, and that was because I foolishly believed that it was possible for one programmer to do. When I began I got demotivated really quickly, but then felt a second wind and pushed through until I was able to put something out. Next jam I do will NOT be as wild, I really need to cut it down into an eighth of the original idea so I don't get disappointed with the next project. However, I'm still really glad I got this done. Usually when I get demotivated in a jam I don't pull through and just work on something for longer, but this time around I made something in the span of a week even after experiencing the shame of almost quitting. I don't expect any prize for this, but I'm really glad I was able to implement the things the game has already so quickly like the upgrades, enemies, and scoreboard integration with the NG API, which I'd never done before. I was especially appreciative for my pals @TappyWara and @SomeApe, who helped me out with art to pull through and finish.

Thoughts And Brain-Thinks

My main source of pride for the game isn't even the game itself, but really just that I got it done in the time I did. And yeah it sounds a little sordid even to myself, but looking back at my timeline of stuff I made this year it's really great to see my timespans to make projects is getting smaller.

1. Zoo Game, took 5 months (mainly out of laziness, my greatest shame)
2. Profile Picture Party, took 3/4 of a month
3. Sh*t Rainbows Piss Thunder, took half a month
4. Into The Web Of Swine, took a week

So with that, I'd say there's still a personal trophy I can extrapolate from making this, and I'm glad I finished it.

With the final bit here, I'd like to talk about something I experience here (and other sites as well) when it comes to publishing and sharing stuff. That being, FUCK NUMBERS. Regardless of where they come from, they will either make you or break you, and watching a score slowly mellow out on your game is something hard to turn your brain off from. Don't let those numbers into your thoughts, just take what you've enjoyed from making your project and don't like a decimal drop plague your thoughts about how you could of done stuff different. It's pretty self-explanatory and many have said it before but it always needs reiteration.

To close off, I'd like to give some thank you's:

• Thank you to my homies @TappyWara and @SomeApe again for helping me with the remainder of the art, was great finishing this with you guys
• Thanks to @dry for the tunes, very appreciative you still took time to work with the hog boys while you were doing all of your other entries.
• Thanks to @Tiny, though you weren't able to art after I had started again your help with the concepts and ideas were awesome
• Thanks to the Godot devs, mobile was easy af and only took like 4 extra lines of code to make it compatible for both platforms.
• Again, thanks to YOU for reading this, I'm very glad you care enough to read my thoughts

I don't really have any other big news other than I have one more project to do and then you won't see much of me in the next 3 months. My life is getting very hectic around that time and I won't be able to do games during it, but I'll be very excited to come back running. Bye!

WHAT

On July 24th, newgrounders met up in Manhattan NY, with a turnout close to 20 people.

WHO?

These are the lovely folks that showed up to the meetup!

• @BrandyBuizel
• @Imprez
• @d0munit
• @FletcherEPS
• @GirZiggler
• @Kiyo
• @KingCrowned
• @Tiny
• @Slowsolid
• @Flowingcheech
• @EpithetSoup
• @russ7k
• @TheKahnMan
• @NeatoNG
• @Luis
• @Scootakip
• WattIOI (doesn't have an NG)

The day began with me (@MigMoog) and @Tiny arriving at 14th street park, being greeted by @GirZiggler, @d0munit, and @russ7k, who were all there before us. I busted out all the meetup stuff I had gotten the night prior, started trading sketchbooks and leaving drawings and signatures, post its to draw on and stick around, and nametags. We also whipped out this bomb-ass poster that Tiny drew, and made sure everyone who came signed it.

The park section started at 1:00pm and little by little more people came in, the group slowly filled up. We all chatted and traded sketches as I was handing out nametags, and talked about fun stuff happening here on the site, and the stuff we do as we waited for the stragglers to show up. Once everyone made some drawings and signed the poster, @BrandyBuizel took the photo and we headed into Chelsea market. Place was a little crowded, but @NeatoNG came decked out with sheets of NG logo stickers and sticker bombed tons of shit (props dude that was awesome). Eventually everybody settled on eating at a milkshake and burger place, and everyone bought some food and drink and started drawing sketches in each others books. We hung there for a solid while and then moved downstairs for some Boba, later coming up after we were fed up with the congestion of the market.

We headed back up to the park for some fresh air, and we relaxed, did a few more sketches, had all our own discussions, and the group began to go home. The remaining group was just GirZiggler, Brandy, Tiny, Me, Neato, and a few others, as I followed them on a frantic path to obtain the delicious Kirby Drink. Our paths soon diverged once me and Tiny realized that we had to catch our train, so we departed and the rest is to the accounts of those who were there.

Thoughts?

I had a great time. I met really cool people and most of them were new to me, all very approachable and talented at their crafts. It was great to see the extents people came from and the chill mentality of the entire event, and also fun hearing some of the longer time members of the group telling stories about stuff they saw on the site as well as Luis' stories of previous NG meets.

I didn't really expect anything grand to come out of this, truthfully it was just about me wanting to meet newgrounders after feeling envy for the people who were kicking it off in Toronto, so I just said "screw it" and started planning it myself with help from @MarvelousToastbrand. If there was a message to any of this, I just want other newgrounders to know that it's possible to all this yourself. You just need a solid location in an open space to meet everyone, and then just have a cool venue nearby. I believe someone who lives in the middle of nowhere can plan a cool meetup, so all you need to do is believe. You can have a meetup ANYWHERE, FROM ANYONE.

Thanks to everyone that came and hung out, this will be a memory I will always treasure.

Hoorah! This is one of the first itchio game jams I've completed in a LONG time. Last one was Snowb4ll Fight for Secret Santa Jam, and that was 2 years ago! I've never really done one of these postmortem things before but I think it'll fun to look back at in the future if I'm still making games by then. Anyways!

Beginnings

I had come hot off the heels of making profile picture party for Pico day, and that game is definitely rough around the edges but I'm still proud of it. I was in a little bit of a high, and wanted to see if I could spit out more projects after. Then came @plufmot with his Pride Month Jam and that seemed like a good excuse. I knew I wanted the game to be about unicorns, because here in New York (and not the rest of the world as far as I'm aware) they are pretty big gay icons. Truthfully I am not super well versed in pride, I'm no activist, so I wanted to lean into more raunchy humor cuz it would be a funny contrast to all the serious games that were to be. It's funny thinking back I was sitting in class supposed to be preparing for finals but I was drawing a unicorn in my math packets shitting out rainbows while screaming.

(early concept sketches for the game ^^^)

Naturally I couldn't do this without my incredible Team Max Hog, and I showed @Tiny the sprites and we gelled pretty well with it. We got my homie @Dryest to make some more music, and he made sure to sample a shit ton of audio clips, my favorite being the one of me saying "Let me be clear, I love dick and balls" from @DemisurgeX's pico day audio skit that I did a line for. We also got my big lardy comrade @TappyWara, as his tiles are none to be trifled with. This was also the first time I'd worked with my pal @MarvelousToastbrand and he fuckin' blew it up with a bunch of help with concept art and miscellaneous sprites!

(mspaint doodles of my ideas for enemies, with Marv's revised concepts!)

Making the game

So before Pico day, I'd been taking baby steps in the Godot game engine, as I was a little constrained by my previous framework HaxeFlixel (<3 to my flixians out there). I undoubtedly believe that after 3 games Godot will be my primary software of choice from now on. It's super light, has really good 2d physics, and most basic functionality is easy to google. It was a no-brainer to use Godot for this game.

I don't really know how much people care about the technical side of making the game, so this section will be brief. Overall the process was smooth, most platformers in Godot are pretty easy to implement and follow strict logic, and I had fun seeing how easy it was to tweak move_and_slide functions on a kinematicbody to bounce off walls. Enemies were a really fast implementation, the main issue with making them was their references to the player would cause the game to crash once they died.

The main challenge in making this was level design, you can have far more much fun at implementation and salivate at the thought of what you can do with the new things you made, but then reach a block of ideas or find cracks in the way you made certain features. The feel I was aiming for was something akin to a type of "speedrun", the kind of satisfaction you get from beating a level all in one go in games like New Super Mario Bros or Battleblock Theater (I played a lot of the latter with my boys @someape and @tappywara to get some ideas). So the mechanic was pretty simple, hold the run button, jump and time lightning perfectly to get to the end. Most levels would start out with me drawing some blocky shape and then seeing what enemies and lasers I could put in to make it harder, and for the most part that process worked. I feel like the more you see a level's terrain the more you can imagine fitting obstacles into it, so if I make more games that require level design I'll be sure to attempt it again.

Thoughts and and a big vat of hindsight

Overall as a short little experience, I'm pretty happy with how SRPT turned out, I had fun both making and playing it as well as cracking goofs with my friends in game. I will always savor the moments of hearing @VoicesByCorey's lines in the game and squealing in laughter and excitement.

That being said, there were things from this jam that I wish I could have done more, so I'll talk about stuff more specific to the game and later more production in general.

For the game itself, I had a lot in mind, and wanted to give the main character a lot more personality and, well, character for my own fulfillment. If I'd allocated more time I would have probably fleshed out the original story I had in mind for the game, and gotten Corey to do way more lines to really bring Softserve the Gwoteicorn to life. Second was just making more. In my personal experience with gamedev, it's really hard to tell when something is enough, whether it be difficulty or content, or worse having to mix the two. I feel like I would have had more levels if I'd just sat down a little longer at my laptop, but who's to say.

Now for production, I've identified habits that I aim to squash like flies the next time around. First being scope creep, part of my disappointment with the character of the game is that I had a whole story in mind where he would travel to different themed levels each with bosses, but that obviously didn't happen. You may get a month to make it, but what really determines the scope of your game I'm finding is mainly your skill and experience. I had a team of one programmer, three artists, and a single musician for this. That is absolutely enough ample hands to get stuff done, but I needed to keep in mind my experience of coding and designing at this point, considering the only game I posted before June was back in February. You look at something from Team Bugulon or Milkbar Lads and the timeframe they had to make their stuff, but their programmers and artists have years of experience under their belt and stuff they've learned along the way. I'm not at that level yet, but I'll die trying to get there if I have to. With the experience factor in mind, scope is something you have to keep mutilating until you have something fun to play that's as small as possible (annoying indie gamedev youtubers call this minimum viable product, or MVP). For now I just need to keep cutting my scope into halves of a half, and if I make the MVP in time and have the rest of the month left, I can add more stuff. The second issue I have with production is just sitting the fuck down. My team and I usually work pretty intermittently with our jobs and commitments, and work calls can quickly devolve into us watching YouTube or some weird shit. In those moments I just need to set a timer and hunker down on doing work, and spending my free time on discord getting shit done.

For now I'm just gonna take a lil break, pretty happy with how many games I've put out in the span of a month, and I want to take the time to learn other engines for work and more collabs. But before this is done I have some thank yous to give:

• A thanks to my awesome friends in Team Max Hog, we rock and hog it out and get better individually with each entry we make, and I will do this until my heart stops beating
• Thank you to @VoicesByCorey, your voicelines were a 1:1 match of what I wanted for the character, and you are a god at the deliveries.
• Thanks to my NG gamedev friends @plufmot and @stepford, was very nice and super encouraging to get your feedback and motivation as I was making all this
• And ofc thank YOU for reading this to the end, if I know one person made it this far, I'll be happy.

Love you newgrounds and I'll see y'all in NYC on July 24th!

The meetup is concluded! Thanks to everyone that came!

Hello everyone! It seems we're in an age of NG meetups happening again, and I want one that's nearby me and my homies here in the northeast!

WHEN?:

July 24th on Sunday, around 1:00-1:30 pm EST!

WHERE?:

We're gonna begin the meetup at 14th street park, and then go to Chelsea Market! It's a nice collection full of shops and restaurants!

WHAT?:

We meet up at 14th street park, and then after half an hour we'll head to Chelsea for grub and cool shit. If you have suggestions or questions tell them to us in the discord server!

WHO?:

This meetup is 16+. People who'll be joining are:

• @Tiny
• @MigMoog (me)
• @MarvelousToastbrand
• @NeatoNG
• @Imprez
• @FletcherEPS
• @BrandyBuizel
• @kiyo
• @kingcrowned

There's a few other folks interested and I'll update this list as it goes on! Check the discord for the other attendees I’ve not listed

Hello newgroundites, -ers, and -ees. I am need of fresh faces (your profile pictures) for a game I'm working on for pico day, based on the profile picture party update that was released this year. We have a script to get these profile pictures with the svg masks applied, but I want to make sure we get consent from people to use their pfps. If you are a supporter, just say your cool with us using your pfp and we'll add it to the game! Thanks!

Deadline for your face is Saturday! (May 28) submit it before then!

ooooooggg, my glomach going to burst ALL OVER COUNTRY.

(Directed by gary)

If you're new to haxeflixel and you're using Visual Studio Code, then this is one of the most valuable pieces of advice that I can give you:

STOP USING LIME TEST!

When you want to play and test your projects (which you'll most likely be doing in html5), the default command you'll use is "lime test html5". This will build your project and get a server running for it to run on, and it'll open a tab in your browser for you to test your game. The issue with this is 2 things:

1. The server runs only one build of the game, so if you want to rebuild and test it, it will open a new tab rather than receiving those changes live.
2. It is unknown to us why, but sometimes the lime gods can be cruel and throw an unknown error at us that will prevent the build from running

But fear not dear Flixian! For there is another path you can take to test your games in html5 in VScode! And it is called Live Server! Live Server is a fantastic extension for vscode, that runs html5 code and refreshes to show any changes that you've made in the IDE. That means no more opening tabs, and no more praying to the lime gods to get that server connection working. The only thing you have to do is make ONE tiny edit to your project's build system.

To get live server going first search for it in the extensions tab and install it:

Then, go into .vscode/tasks.json and make this edit:

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "type": "lime",
            "command": "test", // change "test" to "build"
            "group": {
                "kind": "build",
                "isDefault": true
            }
        }
    ]
}

This will make the default command run with Ctrl+Shift+B "lime build", meaning it will build the project but not create a server/tab for it. The final step is actually running Live Server after you've built the project. To do that, click the "Go Live" button in the bottom right of the editor:

Once clicked, a tab will open in your browser with this window with a list of the projects folders. The html file of your project will be located in export/html5/bin, so just click on the according folders.

once you click on bin, live server will run your project and refresh for any changes to the code in the IDE (including each time you build). Sometimes you might get an error and your game won't run, but it's usually nothing a refresh of the tab can't fix.

Or, if you don't wanna go through all those clicks you can go into the settings of the extension, click on this:

and it'll open a json file where all you have to do is:

...
    "vsicons.dontShowNewVersionMessage": true,
    "security.workspace.trust.untrustedFiles": "open",
    "liveServer.settings.multiRootWorkspaceName": "export/html5/bin",
    "liveServer.settings.root": "/" // change this to "/export/html5/bin"
}

(thanks to @BobbyBurt for showing me this)

If you don't want to edit tasks.json every time that you create a new project, I have a flixel template that comes with it preconfigured for you, alongside some other things that I find handy. That's about it, so have fun and happy travels making your games!