Hacking Resolved, iPhone Ap, SB on 04.12.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Web Design
Comments (5)

A few days ago the new forums were hacked. A few posts/topics were deleted, a few people were banned, and all the passwords got sent out to eveybody on the mailing list.

I tried to fix it myself a few times and thought I did, but eventually I just ended up talking with the hacker on Gmail chat and he told me how to fix everything. Hackers have compassion too apparently. Anyway, EVERYTHING IS FIXED NOW. The only way Snubby Land is getting hacked is if the hackers find my IP's location and tie me up and interrogate/torture me into giving them my ftp password. However, since my tolerance to pain is through the roof and I have no fear of death, I'll never crack.

Also, I never mentioned that Addicting Games and I actually made an iPhone Ap for The World's Hardest Game! I get rev share on that so PLEASE BUY IT FOR $0.99!



I also never mentioned that AG mailed me an award a while ago for TWHG winning the AG Showdown. Here it is.



Right now in terms of Straight Bullyism, I think I have fixed the memory issue and also have finished pretty much 100% of the programming of the game. Now, probably 90% of the rest of the work I have to do is animating cutscenes, which Isaiah and I started voicing today. SB will have tons and tons of cutscenes now that I don't have to worry about filesize. There's a lot I can do now that I fixed all that.

Good Radiohead song...




Also this is random but here's an ad I saw the other day while browsing Nothing Toxic. WHO in their right mind thought it was a good idea to buy this adspace and display this, that has to be the most unappealing ad I've ever seen.

Hacked, SB Issues Resolved on 04.10.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Projects
Comments (1)

Edit Again*2: The hacker also noticed vulnerability in the mailing lists, and mailed everybody a list of all the forum passwords. Still was just a SQL Inject, so it should be fixed. Not a big deal.

Edit Again: I think I fixed it again. Please send your hatemail to the hacker at aquareplay@gmail.com. I'm assuming he's overweight, socially inept and a virgin so try to work that into your insults in order to get full effect. Also, it couldn't hurt to sign him up for as many disgusting porn-related mailing lists as you can, I mean yeah he can just create a new email but who would go through that much of a hassle.

Edit: Still getting hacked... all he can do it mess with the forum, but still I don't like it very much, seeing as i put so much time into programming the forum. Will try to fix...

The forums were hacked, and all the guy did was delete a few topics and post everyone's passwords lol. Luckily, since this exact thing happened last time I made my own forums, I knew not to have the same password for the forums (in case they were hacked, which they were) as I do on the admin page, and my email and such. Also, even logged in as me, I made it so that you can't delete topics that were comments for content (in case I did it by accident). He also couldn't delete content because that's not the same password. So for the most part the hack was a fail. All he did was delete like 50 comments probably, BIIIIIIG DEAAAAL. Could have been 100x worse.

Anyway I think I have that security hole fixed, all he (OR MAYBE SHE?!?!?) did was a really simple thing called a SQL Injection. Please, if you notice any bugs in the forums, or if you are a programmer and you somehow notice a security flaw, email me! Also, post comments on stuff, check out my last blog entry too.



Anyway, the real news is that I think I've fixed that memory issue I was having that was ruining my world. I don't want to get too excited yet, but it definitely seems like I don't have to worry about filesize anymore. I'll try to explain it below, but it's probably hard to follow and seemingly contradictory...

Flash has a limit to what you can have in one file, so it was impossible for me to keep adding to the game without overloading the file and having it crash while I'm working and not export. So what I did at first was cut it up into pieces, and then send you to each piece when you need to. With this method, I still was not able to have as many things as I wanted in the actual game, because I would still run out of space in the main piece of the file that I wasn't able to cut anymore, mostly because of intense amounts of player/enemy animation.

What I'm doing now is cutting the pieces even more, but not into files that the user gets sent to on a different page. Instead, it loads external files from my site (to any domain), and loads then when needed. These files don't contribute to the main file's filesize. So basically, instead of loading it all at once, you load it as you need it. This just means that if you run into a cutscene, you see a quick percentage text while it loads. Usually this takes like a tenth of a second, and once it's loaded once it's instant every time after. That's because the cutscene is loaded right now, not at the start when you load the whole game.

So now, I can add as many cutscenes, special attacks, enemies walking around, etc. to any level as I want (I think, unless I'm somehow wrong even though it already works), without worrying about anything. Because of this, I'm packing the first level especially with tons of missions and cutscenes, since obviously the first level being hella fun will make people want to play the rest of the game.

StraightBullyism.com, Forums... on 03.25.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Web Design
Comments (0)

I have finished StraightBullyism.com, the site for my upcoming game Straight Bullyism. Screenshots below, but you mind as well just go to the site. This took me over a month I'm sure, with all the drawings, formatting and programming. This will be the home of SB, where all the files are linked together into one huge playable game. I have gone into the complexities of launching the game in the SB blog. Like I said in that entry, I'm focusing 100% of my work on finishing level one of SB, as well as the rest of the game. When will it be playable? Read the entry.



That's not all! After programming forums for SB from scratch, I then went and added in similar forums for SL and Coozy McMillan. The main forum directory is here though, just click forums at the top. This means that you can now post comments on anything on SL, as well as anything on CM and the blog of SB. You can also create your own topics and talk with others about whatever you want. As long as it isn't spam, I won't delete it.

It takes 2 seconds to sign up (on the right), because you don't have to enter an email. Just a name and password. This goes well in combination with the awesome moderator controls I programmed. If anybody decides to spam because it's so easy to sign up, I ban then with one click and all of their topics/posts are deleted. Their IP address is also banned so they can't sign up again.

That being said, please sign up on the forums and POST COMMENTS! Right now since I just added them in, there are no comments on anything on SL. I really want there to be tons of comments on everything here, good or bad. Here are some things that definitely need comments...

The World's Hardest Game (how many deaths?)
The World's Hardest Game #2
Little Wing
Duck Luck
Straight Bullyism

I'd also like to see lots of comments on this post. Click comments at the top to go to the topic. The 5 most recent comments also appear under content.



The Coozy McMillan forum is also worth checking out, that design is different from the other 2. I find the SB Forum to be the best looking though, and SL to be ugly as hell. Obviously I also want there to be lots of comments on the CM comics as well. Also, I added in CM to the web design page.

Aaaaannnnddddd if you're interested in SB progress, I will be posting my daily work on SB in this thread. There's also an old version of my to do list here.

Almost Have Something to Show... on 03.02.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Other
Comments (3)

I'm starting to hate the design of snubbyland.com, because I'm working on a new site (can't give the details yet because then you'll go see it and it won't be done) which is way prettier to look at than SL. So I'm just going to spend the next hopefully 2-4+ weeks finishing the site, launch the site, then get back to sb. Hmmm, what could this site possibly be for do you think?

(By the way here's some mildly amusing msn convo's I've had with isaiah, gotta post some sorta picture hya)...



Other than that, there's not much else to say. I've been sick as a coozy for the last 4 days, probably not taking as good care of myself as I should be. It's all cuz of the pressures of finishing this hugeass game I think. That and other things.



I really want to start being more 'professional'. I'm going to get rid of a lot of the really stupid shit I've put up over the last few years, and I'm trying to rewrite/reinvent parts the way I do shit. It's all just really hard to do when your stuck in the middle of a game that you've been working on for A WHOLE YEAR NOW!



Big things in the near future.

Here's some loser I don't know posting on facebook too (I don't remember how I came across this, but nobody else noticed it)...

CM10, SB, Money... on 02.10.2010
By Stevie
Posted in Art
Comments (0)

I finished the 10th Coozy McMillan comic, "The Coozian Brotherhood". You can also now see all the CM comics on Snubby Land since I set up the Art page. I'm also going to be putting random art shit in there over time. I originally was just going to have the CM comics on CoozyMcMillan.com because I wanted to get it sponsored and do one a week for money, but the sponsor I was going to contact after finishing the 10th one just stopped taking new people, so I figured I mind as well just put them here as well and just keep doing it without pay just to practice drawing.



I now have to go back to working on Straight Bullyism, which is at a stalemate because the file uses up the maximum amount of memory that Flash allows, so I can't do what I need to do and it's a huge problem, etc etc. One of my current plans to get the filesize down is as follows...

Even though I've been going through and deleting things from the main file, the size of the file I work in continues to get bigger (while the file I export that people will play gets smaller). The file I'm working in is the one with the problem. So basically, I have a ton of elements of the game that I'm going through and deleting the ones I don't need and whatever. If I make all of the hundreds of symbols have different names, then collapse it into one folder, then I can copy/paste it into a new file without having confusion with the symbols. I wouldn't be able to just copy/paste it once, I'd have to cut it into small pieces and do one at a time. If I do that, then in theory the file I'm working in will be smaller, because right now it doesn't make sense how big the file is.



So I've been trying to do that for the last few weeks, once I do that I only have a few more ideas to cut down size, then basically I'll just make a final decision on what I'm actually doing with the game, do it, and hopefully level one will be out soon.

Originally when I moved out and started doing Flash professionally, I thought I'd be making smaller-sized games and be able to live off of the sponsorship money I get from finishing the games. However, SB probably won't even have a sponsor now (either that or only the first level will), and it's going to take over a year in total to make. So at first I was kind of worried about not having money, but it turns out itsss awwwwlll gooooodddd. I get a good amount from Google Adsense for displaying ads, I also get a bonus every 3 months from Addicting Games for TWHG2, and Addicting Games developed an iPhone ap that I get 5 cents on each sale, so that should help too. But with that and the other stuff that I legally can't talk about, *COUGH*, I am easily able to support myself financially and actually I'm saving money. So that's pretty sick, because all of that stuff that pays my bills doesn't actually require any work, so I just work whenever I want and hopefully when I finish SB I'll get rich.

Also I'm working on a cartoon after the first level of SB is done, then back to SB.

I'm not going to bother spell checking this and I'm pretty high at 5:21 AM as I write this, so be impressed if there are no major errors in gram/spelling.