This is a repost of the post below because of reasons I can't be bothered explaining!

I should really post more, regardless of whether I have new material to show or not.

So half a year just went by. What? Yeah, half a year. So what's happening about SRPG2? Plenty of people still ask me on MSN and plenty of e-mails still come in. What is the true current status of that game? What percent complete is it? Did you forget about SRPG2? That last one always makes me laugh a bit, to think that people imagine that I one day woke up and was all "Stick RPG 2? What's that? Have a damn clue what you're yapping on about." All questions and very little answers. Kinda like . But if I may, allow me to put it bluntly:

I'm gonna say that the project is currently on hold.
Graphics-wise, I'd say that the game is about 60-70% complete.
We didn't forget.

So what to post about now? I'd rather not turn this into a depressing personal daily blog thing (daily? Ha!! Sometimes I crack myself up). Well, while I try to think of something I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone for all the supportive e-mails, and a massive special thanks goes to all those that submitted graffiti art. Some of it was really awesome and there was some really varied stuff. It pains me to think people aren't gonna see them in the game, at least not for a while. I have integrated them into the current artwork, but I meant just seeing them in the game for real.

Let's talk about Pillage the Village for a sec.

What a crazy game. In a good way of course. It really shows how far XGen has progressed when compared side by side with Castle, both graphically and technically. There's a lot of stuff happening on screen there and it still runs pretty well on old-ish machines. Speaking of visuals, they weren't always gonna have that anime-ish look. Very early into the project I did a couple bits of artwork while the look of the game was being established. You can view what the common peasant would have looked like right here. As a matter of fact, we did use this model in very early builds of the game and I had even thrown together some quick animation for him. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the time to put into the project. I would have loved to have worked on it, but I believe this was near-ish when I was starting out on my current job, or maybe something else was keeping me otherwise occupied - I can't remember. Probably Deal or No Deal.

Yes, I'm talking about the game show. No no, I wasn't watching it, god know, though I understand it's very popular. It is here in the UK anyway. So why do I bring up Deal or No Deal (or just "Dond" as we call it in the office)? Probably because my current job seems to require me to think up new ways of advertising the online slot game we have of it on our website. Honestly, everytime someone mentions "Deal or No Deal" to me I die a little bit on the inside. One day I'll implode and everyone will wonder what the hell just happened. And I when I say implode, I don't mean I'll go crazy and flip out - I just mean my body might collapse inwards and set on fire, and everyone will be awfully confused while my spirit floats away to a better place where Deal or No Deal doesn't exist.

All said, it's a pretty big brand and it feels pretty cool to be working on it. Not so cool after about a million different concepts, but still cool. If you live in the UK and use Hotmail, you've probably seen my banners and possibly been extremely pissed off with them as they are pretty graphically intense.

DEAL OR NO DEAL - PLAY OR WE'LL CRASH YOUR COMPUTER!

I just said I didn't want to turn this into a personal blog thing, but looks like I just screwed that up too. Sorry, I'll only go on for a little more.

Anyway, there's really no need to read inbetween the lines - I'm actually still very happy with my current job and can't imagine me leaving for a while. So long as I'm learning new stuff then I'm mostly happy. I can honestly say that the working environment is one of the best I've worked, and the Dreamcast hooked up to the projector in the games room? That's just icing on an already sweet cake.

I've written quite a lot, but 6 months is a long time... I feel compelled to write more.

Let's about the iPhone for a bit.

When it comes to phones I'm a complete caveman. I've owned my current phone for at least 3 maybe 4 years, and even then it was handed down to me from a friend after he had had it for a while. It needs recharging every 2 days because it seems the battery is dying out. The phone itself is dying out as sometimes the screen will completely white out, making it impossible to read any text messages or do anything else otherwise useful. Like using the calculator. Also, the camera is broken. But it was crap anyway, so I don't miss it that much.

So while I hear a lot of people criticise the iPhone for half baked features, or whatever, I honestly don't know, it still looks like an extremely sexy device to me. Surfing the net from anywhere is, ya know, good, even if the connection is pretty slow. Unfortunately, the Safari web browser doesn't have the Flash player integrated into it, which would mean not being able to play your super favourite XGen games where ever you want. Another major problem is the £35 a month contract. That's a damn lot and I've also never been on contract with any phone before. Not that I can't afford - I just don't like that hanging over my head all the time. Having the NES emulator on there would be so awesome though...

I still want one. If I'm gonna buy one (they're released here on Friday) it'd be the first Apple product I'll have ever bought.

Right, gotta cut this off abruptably as I'm going brain dead here.

Until next time!

-Stu

I should really post more, regardless of whether I have new material to show or not.

So half a year just went by. What? Yeah, half a year. So what's happening about SRPG2? Plenty of people still ask me on MSN and plenty of e-mails still come in. What is the true

current status of that game? What percent complete is it? Did you forget about SRPG2? That last one always makes me laugh a bit, to think that people imagine that I one day woke

up and was all "Stick RPG 2? What's that? Have a damn clue what you're yapping on about." All questions and very little answers. Kinda like
href="http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1787342/"Half-Life. But if I may, allow me to put it bluntly:

I'm gonna say that the project is currently on hold.
Graphics-wise, I'd say that the game is about 60-70% complete.
We didn't forget.

So what to post about now? I'd rather not turn this into a depressing personal daily blog thing (daily? Ha!! Sometimes I crack myself up). Well, while I try to think of something

I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone for all the supportive e-mails, and a massive special thanks goes to all those that submitted graffiti art. Some of it was really awesome

and there was some really varied stuff. It pains me to think people aren't gonna see them in the game, at least not for a while. I have integrated them into the current

artwork, but I meant just seeing them in the game for real.

Let's talk about Pillage the Village for a sec.

What a crazy game. In a good way of course. It really shows how far XGen has progressed when compared side by side with Castle, both graphically and technically. There's a lot of

stuff happening on screen there and it still runs pretty well on old-ish machines. Speaking of visuals, they weren't always gonna have that anime-ish look. Very early into the

project I did a couple bits of artwork while the look of the game was being established. You can view what the common peasant would have looked like
href="http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y134/SeriousStu/?action=view¤t=possiblepeasant.gif">right here. As a matter of fact, we did use this model in very early builds of

the game and I had even thrown together some quick animation for him. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the time to put into the project. I would have loved to have worked on it,

but I believe this was near-ish when I was starting out on my current job, or maybe something else was keeping me otherwise occupied - I can't remember. Probably Deal or No Deal.

Yes, I'm talking about the game show. No no, I wasn't watching it, god know, though I understand it's very popular. It is here in the UK anyway. So why do I bring up Deal or No

Deal (or just "Dond" as we call it in the office)? Probably because my current job seems to require me to think up new ways of advertising the online slot game we have of it on

our website. Honestly, everytime someone mentions "Deal or No Deal" to me I die a little bit on the inside. One day I'll implode and everyone will wonder what the hell just

happened. And I when I say implode, I don't mean I'll go crazy and flip out - I just mean my body might collapse inwards and set on fire, and everyone will be awfully confused

while my spirit floats away to a better place where Deal or No Deal doesn't exist.

All said, it's a pretty big brand and it feels pretty cool to be working on it. Not so cool after about a million different concepts, but still cool. If you live in the UK

and use Hotmail, you've probably seen my banners and possibly been extremely pissed off with them as they are pretty graphically intense.

DEAL OR NO DEAL - PLAY OR WE'LL CRASH YOUR COMPUTER!

I just said I didn't want to turn this into a personal blog thing, but looks like I just screwed that up too. Sorry, I'll only go on for a little more.

Anyway, there's really no need to read inbetween the lines - I'm actually still very happy with my current job and can't imagine me leaving for a while. So long as I'm learning

new stuff then I'm mostly happy. I can honestly say that the working environment is one of the best I've worked, and the Dreamcast hooked up to the projector in the games room?

That's just icing on an already sweet cake.

I've written quite a lot, but 6 months is a long time... I feel compelled to write more.

Let's about the iPhone for a bit.

When it comes to phones I'm a complete caveman. I've owned my current phone for at least 3 maybe 4 years, and even then it was handed down to me from a friend after he had had it

for a while. It needs recharging every 2 days because it seems the battery is dying out. The phone itself is dying out as sometimes the screen will completely white out,

making it impossible to read any text messages or do anything else otherwise useful. Like using the calculator. Also, the camera is broken. But it was crap anyway, so I don't miss

it that much.

So while I hear a lot of people criticise the iPhone for half baked features, or whatever, I honestly don't know, it still looks like an extremely sexy device to me.

Surfing the net from anywhere is, ya know, good, even if the connection is pretty slow. Unfortunately, the Safari web browser doesn't have the Flash player integrated into

it, which would mean not being able to play your super favourite XGen games where ever you want. Another major problem is the £35 a month contract. That's a damn lot and I've also

never been on contract with any phone before. Not that I can't afford - I just don't like that hanging over my head all the time. Having the NES emulator on there would be so

awesome though...

I still want one. If I'm gonna buy one (they're released here on Friday) it'd be the first Apple product I'll have ever bought.

Right, gotta cut this off abruptably as I'm going brain dead here.

Until next time!

-Stu

But I still don't feel like spending £400 on a games console for one game that isn't going to be out until 2008.

Hey, that reminds me!

So 4 months have gone by. Zoom, boom - just like that. Real-life work (as in, my full-time job) has been keeping me very busy and leaves me very tired and drained by the time any free time comes along that would otherwise give me a chance to work on SRPG2. Let's make one thing clear now - I don't have any new material to show you. The last time I updated was, literally, the last time I worked on this project.

But it's always in my mind. I imagine there are lots of people that have come to the conclusion that I have abandoned/forgotton about this project. As much as this project has dragged on it still has lots of potential to do things on a level that aren't touched with other pure Flash games.

I still want THIS to happen...

Unfortunately, I'm simply one of those that wishes there were more hours in the day. Well, I only have to wait a few million years, then maybe we'll gain another hour. The world IS slowing down, after all. I don't think people will be interested in SRPG2 by then though.

Anyway, time she is a wasting - stuff to do! Post laters (not in, like, a million months time)!

-Stu

Well, something had to go wrong - here are the proper links. Luckily, not much of the post below was destroyed - just the words "extremely" and "rough" which I tried to link, but failed.

Link 1
Link 2

Hi again everyone,

As promised I said I would post later today (although it's now 1am of the next day - whatever). I've honestly not been able to work on this environment for a while, so despite the amount of time that's passed by since I finished the Ghetto, this still looks VERY rough.

Click the links to view the images, but be warned - they are .

There's not much else to say - it goes without saying that this area is far from complete - I've hardly even got the layout finalised. I know a lot of you are disappointed and unimpressed, but this isn't looking much different to what the Ghetto looked like before I started to go through the all important touch-up phase like I do with every other environment.

Here's a little idea - how about every few days I work on this piece I will take screenshots and show you the process of how I make these things go from "ugh!" to "whoa!"? I do get a lot of e-mails and people chatting to me asking me how I do this or how I do that, and I think showing the process will clear up a lot of things.

Again, sorry for the lack of updates. Even though we're coming close to Christmas I will try and keep you all updated.

The quest continues!

-

Hi everyone.

Just letting you know that I'm still alive. I've been getting a lot of e-mails about the lack of updates, which is totally understandable! I'm writing this post from work, so I can't upload any new Media right now, but come back later (like, within the same day) and I'll have another post with a bit of Media! It won't be much though... I've been too busy with other projects to really give SRPG2 the time.

Progress is slow as usual!

Hey kids! I'm back!

Sorry about the lack of updates recently. I could sit here and make up, I mean err... tell you my perfectly good excuses as to why there was no update for 2 whole months. Needless to say I've received a lot of unhappy e-mails about this situation. Sorry about that!

But anyways, I'm back in the swing of things now... work continues to progress at it's usual pace. I'm digging into the Downtown area of the StickRPG 2 city now with it's tall office buildings and such. The style should hopefully look a little more modern compared to what's been seen before with it being the part of the city the business folk in their fancy suits are gonna be walking around in. I could show an image of what I have of it so far, but honestly it's really not much and very very unfinished right now, it's hardly worth showing. Give it a couple weeks, eh?

Last time I posted Media about the Ghetto I got a lot of people asking me how you'll be able to see what's going on behind those tall buildings. Of course we've considered this and here's a shaky version of one of the solutions. It's not final at all so don't judge it too harshly - I literally just threw this thing together tonight!

You can right click and zoom and and such and press the spacebar to change the time of day.

Have fun!

-Stuart Hart

Thanks for all the feedback on the Ghetto picture I uploaded. Comments have been quite mixed, varying from "omg its freakin' awesome!!!!" to "Why's it so clean looking?". I've been damn tired all week, so haven't been able to work on it as much as I would like, but I still got some time in there.

An interesting question, which I thought had an obvious answer, was if this Ghetto was the only outdoor area in Stick RPG 2. The answer is no. Many moons ago I posted pictures of a couple other outdoor areas which you will be able to explore. People thought these were other cities, but what we're making is one BIG city for you to explore.

Here's an image I threw together to give you a better idea.

As you can see, the outdoor areas join up to form a larger city. The game won't look like this - the image is just a mock up. You'll still travel through them as large sections.

Is this making sense?

Anyway, I hope cleared things up a bit.

In other news, a friend of mine made a sasquatch on her wall using the shadows of her fingers. This hasn't got anything to do with SRPG2, it was just a request. For the Sasquatch.

All your base are belong to us.

Shut up.

-Stuart Hart

Wow, 3 updates in as many weeks. I must be on a roll.

Okay, so this Ghetto is taking longer than I had predicted! There's still a lot of small details I want to get in there but right now I think most people could look at it and think it's finished. Me though? I'm not convinced... it still needs more stuff.

Regardless, here's a screenshot of the whole Ghetto.

What do you think? If you think it's bad or good or whatever, send me and e-mail.

-Stuart Hart

I haven't finished the Ghetto yet, but I have still made some progress. Plus, I keep thinking up ideas and realising other things that makes this environment require more work that I initially thought.

Anyway, I don't have much time to rant so here's another teaser picture of the ghetto.

Have a nice week you lot - I'll be totally out of action until Sunday as I'm going home to visit my folks.

-Stu

Sorry about that. Y'all keep talking to me on MSN anyways! Of which some of you I give minimal reply... that is, to say, no reply at all.

I've been really motivated on SRPG2 recently - the past few days have been great in terms of what I'm putting out. I'd say I've done way more in the past week than I have in the past 2 months! Maybe someone slipped something into my drink and it's having a long-lasting effect. Having said that though, I'm still working on this freakin' Ghetto but it's very near completion now. It's probably the most complex city area I'll be doing anyway (I hope!) so it's good to get the biggest thing out the way now.

At this rate, I think I'll be done with this Ghetto area in 2-3 days. This means the next News post will come a lot sooner than usual.

For now, here's a little teaser image to hopefully keep you a little happier. Yeah, it's only a small update, but as soon as I'm finished with this Ghetto I'll post up the full thing for you all to look at your hearts content at whatever zoom you like and such! As you can see, the ground around the buildings is still grass. Pavements, lampposts, everything that goes on the floor... these are the things that I'll be working on to wrap this complex area up.



In other news, we might be posting something interactive we all want you to have a little play with. Don't get too excited - it's purely for test purposes. Though I did mention about the optimisation break-throughs we had a few months back, this is only on our machines and we may want to see how the whole thing holds up on other peoples machines. Anyway, like I said - we MIGHT post something like that but then again we might not!

Talk at ya later,

-Stuart Hart

Hi folks - couple things to inform you with:

The 'net connection in our house has gone down (well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the sketch of it) and I don't know how soon it'll be back up. This means I won't be able to answer any e-mails for a while - I didn't even get chance to answer half of what WAS sent to me before the last News post! If you're wondering, I'm writing this post from work and while I COULD answer your e-mails from here I won't... because I'm at work!

Which brings me to the second thing - please don't message me on MSN when I have the "@ work" message next to my name. Unless you're going to say something that will save me from a very imminent death I'm honestly not very interested because I'm too busy at work.

Ok, back to work for me...

-Stu

Obviously the first thing I must say is an apology to all of you for letting you down with the "at least 1 post a month" thing as it's now been a whole 2 months since the last News update! Sorry about that. I've got quite a pile of e-mails lying in my Inbox that all need replying to, but I just haven't had the time to get to it! I'm sure they're all angry e-mails. I'll reply to them after I finish up this post.

Things have been very busy on my end and I'm only just starting to get used to it. While I was at GDC (which was awesome by the way) I received word that I had landed one of the jobs I had interviewed for, so as soon as I got back I was flat hunting quite frantically, having to get my stuff down from Leeds to London (Leeds is in West Yorkshire), blah blah blah...

Basically, I live in London now and I now have a full-time job. Before GDC I just had a weekend dead-end job and all my time during the rest of the week was free (or spent job hunting). So now I have even less time to work on SRPG2. It's kinda tough to wake up and go to work and then come home to MORE work, but there's no way I'm gonna leave SRPG2 to gather dust.

Speaking of, we've made some pretty heavy adjustments to the engine in the past couple weeks or so. At first we were worried that this game would have to be played on the Low Quality setting so it would run at a more reasonable framerate, but recent optimisations have had us go from something like 10 frames-per-second to 70+!! So we're pretty excited about that. Especially for me - means I have to worry less about if I'm putting in too much detail to the graphics. Which I was!

So that's good News to all ya'll out there that have slower machines - it should run very playable even on High Quality. And if it doesn't, you can always put it to Low Quality and I'm sure it'll be fine then. And if it STILL doesn't run ok... sheesh, what are you on, like, a 386?

Unfortunately, that's all the News I have on SRPG2. It's still chugging along and it'll get finished in a few months I hope! I know I just said a few months, but for God's sake, don't ask me for a release date!!

That's all for now folks. For me right now, it's back to preventing the bees getting into my room through the floorboards.

Like I said, I've been busy!

-Stuart Hart

Straight to it:

1. Sorry, no Media update today! Will have one next time hopefully!

2. Thanks for all your suggestions and ideas for the ghetto! I'll definately be applying some of them. There were some good ideas and some bad ideas... most of them kinda in-between ;) Anyway, you can stop sending them now!

3. Apparently there's this thing called Game Developers Conference in San Jose that I have to attend, so I'm gonna be away for a week and won't be able to reply to your e-mails as fast as usual. In fact, I'll probably just leave em until I come back on the 25th.

4. I might be starting a new job when I come back. So what does that mean for StickRPG2? Nothing really - I can still work on it as I always have.

Ok, that's all, cya!

-