Let's take a trip back to my first ever user page post:

"if I ever annouce a project I'm working on, don't expect it to ever get done."

I'm out of high school now, going into college for game design later this year. I really don't ever feel like working on Flash anymore because for what I'm getting into, it's ultimately useless. I've been fooling around with Source SDK and hope to maybe start working on projects that will matter more.

I do enjoy working with Flash, so at some point, you may see something pop up maybe around my eventual website or something, but for now, it's been a hell of a ride. Sorry I never finished anything I was proud of. I loved Voltage, but working on it is just so tedious...

Hit me up on Steam if you want to play some TF2 or something. My name is ShishKebab.

Sadly, I estimated the game to be complete by this time, but this is proving a hell of a lot more work than I expected.

On the bright side, Level 1 is complete! I'm planning on making only a few more levels, but they will not only ramp up the difficulty, but the level design and enemy variety should be a lot more interesting. This level is really to get your feet wet with the controls and combat technique.

Play the demo here!!

Can you beat the boss? Can you find the HIDDEN POWERUP?

UPDATES:
5-27-09
-Backflip animation updated. It now looks smoother and more realistic, and finishes slower for balance.
-Health display added back in.
-Music added to the demo.
--Please note that the demo is now 3.1mb, and still has no preloader because it's still in testing phase. Please allow the game to finish loading before starting.

Chop him to bits!

Well I sure have been talking about the update a lot, but you guys haven't had an updated demo in a while! You'll hate me for saying I'm not putting one up today, however I have started work on Hell, and once I get that going, I'll put together a separate build for the demo. Then when level 1 is done, I'll make that the demo. It's coming soon! Hoorah!

In other news, when I took everything No More Heroes out of the project, one of the first things to get a major change was the critical hits. Before, the enemy would turn into blood drops and fly away in a call back to Killer7, but I decided to make something a bit more dramatic for the new and improved version of my game. It's still a 1% chance every hit for a critical hit, but now a crit will send your enemy flying literally in every direction along with a healthy dose of blood. The day I programmed this, just for shits and giggles, I made the crit chance 50%, spawned about 15 enemies, and swung a couple times. About 13 of them exploded and you can see the aftermath in the screenshot.

It's raining blood and body parts!

Well, the process took a bit too long for my liking, but I'm very happy with the final product here.

Thanks to Sebastian J. Barth for the original concept sketch! It's amazing!

The below image shows the transformation of concept to product. Step one is Sebastian's incredible concept, step two is my tracing using the Line tool in Flash, step three is the tracing with the concept removed, and step four is the Flash tracing colored in and shaded, ready to be animated.

For those of you who don't know, this demon is a boss in my upcoming Flash game tentatively titled "Voltage". I'll reveal more details on it soon (around when you can fight it in the demo (did he just say demo in parentheses after "soon" (yeah I think so! (O RLY (YA RLY (NO WAI))))).

Okay, I have a giant announcement to make about my game!

First off, I'd like to explain why. At my school, I'm in the "Arts Magnet" program, which is pretty much the same thing, but we study a certain art field on the side. By the end of our senior year (that's me), we have to present a big project that represents our cumulative knowledge of our art field. I'm in Media arts, and I've decided to make No More Heroes: The Flash Version my project. We also have one block in the third quarter dedicated to this project. We're halfway through second quarter, meaning in a few weeks, I'll have 80 minutes a day where I have to work on this project, so that combined with how hard I've been working in these past few weeks (while keeping you guys out of the loop for the big change) and how hard I'll be working fourth quarter, it's definitely going to get done.

Time for the BIG NEWS OMG!

My flash game is NO LONGER No More Heroes: The Flash Version. I decided that if this is my big project, I should not have it based on someone else's work. Everything No More Heroes-related (except the health display, for now) has been removed from the game. It's now completely my brain child.

I'm really excited about all the great ideas I'm having for it, but I can't tell you about those until I'm ready to release a demo containing them. I will hint at one thing, though. Expect one extremely grotesque, freaky level. I've been working particularly hard one this part of the game, as I'm getting people I know to draw some creepy creatures for me.

A few of my friends that I'll credit once I know how to spell their last names will be doing those concept sketches for me, and I also have my brother, Alex, doing some sketches on the main character and other enemies beyond just the creepy level.

And I think that's a good place to get the bean bucket back upright. But here's a special treat for you! I said I'm having people sketch disturbing creatures, and there's one classmate of mine named Sebastian J. Barth who aspires to be a concept artist for video games. I sought him out and asked him to sketch a concept for me. All I said was "Draw me a really grotesque, disturbing creature, like something you'd see in Hell," and he produced this masterpiece in no more than a week:

You know you'd shit your pants if this thing was blocking your door.

I sorted out my problems with duplicateMovieClip, and I have great news; the demo now allows you to spawn as many enemies as you'd like! The game tends to slow down when you decapitate six or so dudes at once, but I think it looks kinda cool. Think of it as slow-motion for your big kills! However, a kill of 20 or so may cause extreme slow down, but don't bitch 'cause when you're not in control of the spawning like you are in this demo, I won't spawn that many on you at once.

UPDATE (9-3-08): If two or more enemies are on screen at once, they should now stand at two different places (10 pixels apart) to show that there is more than one enemy at that spot.

Play my latest progress here, and please leave a comment with some feedback for me!

Slice several dudes in half at once!

Have you ever used duplicateMovieClip();? It can cause some weird complications.

So I wanted to make a more efficient system for creating enemies than manually placing them. I thought it would be easiest to duplicate one enemy. What this means is that there is actually an enemy beneath the floor that you can't see and can't hit (nor be hit by). Every time it is prompted to do so, Flash duplicates this enemy on top of the floor.

However, there is an odd complication that you can see in the screenshot below: If Travis is to the left of the spawn point when an enemy is spawned, the enemy below the floor must be facing the opposite way the new enemy should be facing, or the new enemy will face away from Travis. He will still run up and attack, just facing the wrong way. If Travis is to the right of the spawn point, the under-floor-enemy must be facing the SAME way the new enemy should be. It's really weird, but I'm working on a solution.

UPDATE (8-23-08): After observing the below-floor-enemy's direction and it's relation to the direction of the spawned enemies some more, I realized it's much more simple than described above. Really, what my description above means is if the original enemy (beneath the floor) is facing right, the enemy spawns properly. If it's facing left, the enemy spawns backwards. This will be an easy fix, as I really don't have to fix anything; I just have to stick the original enemy on the way left and place an outside script that keeps him there, so he's always facing right (trying fruitlessly to reach Travis). Horrah!

I've added the V-Cam to the game which I've programmed to not only follow Travis, but show a little more room in front of you than behind.

Also, the white-and-grey is gone, and you now play in what I am working hard on making into Death Metal's mansion.

And finally, I'm getting some other stuff figured out like what I'm going to do for a last boss (I'll spoil assassins 10-2 for you, but not 1).

Play my latest progress here and leave me a comment!

I think this is my first full screenshot; it's usually zoomed or something.

You all thought I was crazy when I removed your ability to jump, didn't you? Well good news: the A key now uses the Dodge ability. You can quickly dodge at ANY time that you're not being hit (even right in the middle of combos!) in case you need to, well...dodge something.

Now this part is super exciting: now that I'm satisfied (mostly) with the combat, it's time for me to start building Death Metal's mansion! This means you won't have to look at that drab white background and grey ground much longer! Once I have the level drawn and assembled, I'll put the dudes in and you'll have level one short of the boss fight! Man, I'm awesome.

So once again, play my latest progress here, and leave a comment on this post to let me know how you like it and maybe request a control tweak or something!

UPDATE: I caught the bug where Travis would dodge instead of kill when prompted to hit A for a deathblow. I fixed this by actually taking out A, S, and SPACE. You will now be prompted only by directional arrows to perform a deathblow.

Wow, what's this? A screenshot without blood?! No, actually. This is not a gameplay screenshot, but a screenshot of the five frames of Travis' jump, the middle frame being the most visible one.

In my latest update to No More Heroes: The Flash Version, Travis can now be hit by the enemy, and even die if you aren't careful! I also added a health display in the top-left corner. Currently, you have 27 "pixels" of health, but you'll be able to train later and increase your max health (adding colored layers to your heart). This is already coded, you just can't train in the demo yet. It'll be a bit before I start on the town.

As always, play the latest combat progress here, and don't forget to leave me a comment!

"Ooh, good song title! Blood Puke!"