I have a thought.

Roseanne's Adventure was recently cancelled. Sad, I know. With it's cancellation though, I have the freedom to work on more stuff, and I look at JA and think about how I'd like to have a bit more time with it to take care of some nagging issues that I had to ignore to hit the deadline.

So my idea is this- Josh's Adventure: Director's Cut

Now don't get me wrong here, JA is a great game, but there's some things I'd like to go back and change, and a few things some people have suggested that sound good. So, I recently booted up JA and saw that I have a little memory to work with, so I might go through with the idea.

Here's what we'd be looking at, should this idea come to pass:

-Bug fixes. There's nothing game breaking in the final product, but I was so pressed for time that I had to delibritily keep some non-breaking bugs in the game. With the Director's Cut, I could go back and fix these nagging issues.

-Purchase level unlocks. I think, in hindsight, leaving very small hints for doing very out of the ordinary searching in levels is expecting a little too much from players. So I would give gamers another option: either find the ways to open challenge levels, or pay for them. To keep things fair, they would be pretty pricey. I just want to give players a choice between doing extra searching or not, depending on how much you enjoy doing that sort of thing.

-Ribbons available sooner. In the original game, after beating the secret final world, treasure chests would appear in older levels that had ribbons, items that granted you new levels. By the time you can collect these, you've already played through the game several times, and it seems redundant to search them again. I would either make them obtainable after beating the game (so you can collect challenges at the same time), or at the start of the game.

-New levels. This one is most likely to not happen, because I have so little memory left on most of these cards. But, given that I have anything left over, I want to throw a new level or two in there. It all depends on how much I have left at the end.

-New demo. The current demo I have is way back in 2010, and is a very early build of the game. I don't want people getting the wrong impression of the game since it's changed so much. So the demo would be ripped straight from the finished game, and would go up to world 3 instead of 2. Since the save would load from both, you could theorically move your save to the final build without missing a beat. I'd also include a token bonus for anyone who plays the demo and transfers their save this way.

-Other small nitpicks. A few small changes like certain jump animations and text changes. The original game would be available along with the DC.

So as you can see, this is not so much re-inventing the wheel as it is simply giving it a little oil. I'm guessing anyone who's already played it before probably won't notice too much has changed. This is just a way for me to give the game the little more playtime it should have gotten. Since I'm not changing all that much, this should be easy to finish and have complete well before the end of the year.

So, I think this is a thing now. Hopefully I'll have more to report soon.

That sounds nice. This is for RM1 right? I wasn't able to play these since my laptop wouldn't read my dex drive and I didnt have a PS3 but I should give it a go once I figure out how.

This may be a thing. I got some time with the game today and did some work.

To be specific, I've got the demo all ready to go. I tested out the idea of granting a bonus moving from the demo to the full game, and it worked 100% after a few tweaks. The bad news is that when converting the game to PS3, there's always some sort of corrupt data that prevents it from working. Trying to cut out the corrupt file caused it to not work at all. So worst case scenario, the new demo will only be available for dexdrive players. Sorry about that, there's nothing I can really do about that.

So fortunately everything I wanted to do with the new demo, I can do! The demo now goes up to World 3 instead of World 2, you can transfer your save over to the full title without missing a beat, and you'll score a 20 token bonus for doing so! The bonus, however, will only work with the upcoming Director's Cut and will not work with the original version. The new demo will be up in about a week or so.

I did notice one sweet thing when browsing through all my old files; there's some memory left on the first scenario card. So it is a possibility that I could throw some new levels in there if I want to.

So this is looking like it's going to be a thing! But I just finished the easy part; the hard part of playtesting and bug fixing is coming up. I hope I'll be able to post more progress soon.

It doesn't look like this is just a pipe dream, because I got a significant chunk of work done today.

I decided to make ribbons obtainable right away. While you won't be able to buy them straight out, the fact that you can collect them on your first playthrough (and they're not very hard to get), will make it much easier to experience these new levels. I've also added in the ability to buy your way through challenge levels! Yeah! That's another one down. I've yet to playtest these properly, but that will come soon.

That's the part I'm dreading right now. The thought of playtesting once more in a game I've already playtested many, many times. That's where you come in! Well, if you want to. I'd like to get a volunteer or two to playtest through the game and look for any bugs. I've got the first two cards down pretty tight, so all I really need is playtesting for the bonus card. Please post here if you'd like to help, and I can send you the file right away.

Another thing I want to do is give the game a better title screen, rather than just a checkerboard pattern. If you can draw, let me know and I'll help however I can for a new title screen. C'mon, you KNOW you want to help me with this awesome game, so just send me a pm!

So most of the things I wanted to do with the game, I have finished! I just need to playtest, get rid of those glitches and bugs that are still hanging around, and possibly add a few new levels to the mix. Originally I was planning on a summer release for this, but I may be able to get this out sooner. How exciting! Stay tuned for more updates.

There hasn't been any updates on this for awhile. Let's fix that.

First off, the updated demo is nearly ready to go. While the dexdrive file has been done and ready for some time, corrupt data on the PS3 has prevented me from posting it sooner. Fortunately my friend and I ironed out and fixed the problem, so it should be up next week.

Playtesting is....troublesome. The memory limit on these cards is really biting me in the ass. Instead of being able to fix a problem, I have to do something more roundabout that prevents the bug from appearing in the first place. For example, you can take the sourdough eyeglasses item to challenge level 4 and remove them without the game recognizing it. Rather than being able to fix the problem and have the game recognize when they're off, instead the player just can't enter that level with the glasses. It kinda sucks.

Another thing that hurts me is the fact I didn't write down just what bugs I found and didn't fix, so I have to play through and scour the game to find them. Quite a pain, one I could've fixed if I had the foresight.

Despite the negative vibe from this post, things are still going well, and the Director's Cut should hit soon.

Thus far, players who have already experienced Josh's Adventure have little reason to play the Director's Cut. This update may change that.

Roseanne's Adventure had three levels made for it before production was cut. I'm happy to announce that all three will be playable in the Director's Cut of the game.

Here's each level in a nutshell: the first one has lights that turn on and off at set intervals, and you have to memorize the level layout before the lights turn off, lest you fall in lava. The second level has you manipulating obstacles in the level to reach the exit. The third has you turn on the power at the end of the level, and then return to finish it, avoiding enemies and the now live wires.

It was both fun and furious to make this work. The easiest way for me to do this was to have two TVs side by side, with two copies of RPG Maker hooked up to each for a direct conversion, and that was pretty fun. The annoying part is making the scripts and placing events, which is an ever so slow and tedious process.

But in the end it's worth it, because it's there and ready to go now. A few small improvements were made, such as some rearranged blocks, fancier effects and the like. An interesting change was the text. You'll play as Josh through these levels, and I had to come up with new dialog, since Roseanne and Josh react very differently to situations.

So I had a lot of fun with this particular update! Could you tell?

More progress ahoy!

On the last update, I described how the previous Roseanne levels were transferred to JA: Director's Cut. Upon replaying those levels however, there were a number of mistakes, some of them very big and needing attention. Today I got on that, polishing up those levels and ensuring they worked perfectly. Now I can say I'm done with the first scenario card.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I really want a new title screen for the game. I've sent out some pms in hopes of finding someone who wants to step up to the plate, and if that fails I'll give it a shot myself. The current one isn't bad, but it's more of a placeholder than anything, and it shouldn't stay there. Ironically, the title screen issue is what's holding back the updated demo now. I mean, what better way to make a great first impression than with a nice title screen? I'm starting to wonder if the demo will ever come out...

At first I had planned for this project to be done fairly quickly. Lately however, I've decided to take my time with this project, to make sure I get everything I want and be completely happy with the game. I'm guesstimating this will be finished in March, April or May, depending how things go from here. It may take a while, but the end result will be worth it!

Today the game was sent to boot camp. While that might conjure an image of Josh crawling in the mud beneath some barbed wire fence, today I actually just munched on junk food and playtested Josh's Adventure.

Today was really good for weeding stuff out actually. The final few levels (the second to last, in particular) were prone to bugs, and while they ran mostly smoothly, I fixed a few things that snuck through. Like an event that made a crucial item teleport to a place the player can't reach, making the level impossible to beat. Fortunately I had the foresight to place preventable measures in the level the first time around, but passing the level successfully made a loophole. Whoops, forgot about that exit.

The bonus card is very close to being completely playtested, which means the game should be out soon. Here's the game plan; after going over the bonus card again, I'll play through the game completely with some friends in tow, and make note of anything I want to change. Spelling errors, any bad lines, typos, or redoing a cutscene, anything is up for changing. Then after those changes, a little more playtesting and it's done!

Which leads me to my next topic; player input! Did anything strike you as odd playing the game? Find a glitch or typo, or didn't like how something was implemented? Let me know! Since I'll be going over everything, it'll be the perfect time to implement any changes, and I'd love to hear any suggestions to make the game better. I can't go changing big blocks of the game, but little things like certain jumps or a line of text is easy to fix. Get in touch with me if you have a suggestion!

In other news about JA: DC, the game ultimately won't have a new title screen. I couldn't find anyone to help, and my own skills aren't up to snuff. After considering my options, I'm just going to leave it how it is. I was thinking about upping my own artist skills (and I have been drawing a bit lately in my free time), but that would take a long time, and I'm not going to hold the title back for months just for a title screen. Hope you guys like plaid!

And the demo.....yeah. Should be out soon. I got the demo done, made a ps3 save of it, and then reformatted the cards without making a dexdrive save. Oops. So ps3 users can play the demo, but traditionalists can't. This whole big delay with the demo has been stupid.

So there's the state of affairs with the game's progress! You should be able to play the final game soon, like March-April soon. Isn't that effing exciting?! I'll answer the question for you: Yes. Yes, it very much is.

So, there's some good news and bad news today. The good news is that thanks to a delay in the demo, the demo will get a round of bug sweeping it might not have received had it come out earlier. The bad news is that the demo's been delayed again to accomidate this. Seeing as how this demo should have been released months ago, this is making me understandibly frustrated. I suppose I shouldn't complain, seeing as how this will make it much better, but upon playtesting the game, the unique "move to the final game and get 20 tokens" wasn't in the file I backed up. This demo will be the death of me. I swear I will get it done within the next few weeks, next week given the chance.

Anyway, that was way more text devoted to the demo then I would've liked. As far as the final game, I've grabbed a friend and we're combing through the game again, looking for bugs or other small changes I want to make. There were a few game-breaking bugs, unfortunately. remember 2-4, the level where you constantly hop off the horse and get back on it? Yeah, you can actually prevent yourself from continuing if you die while off the horse and with the horse on a different shack than the starting one. The grass respawns and you won't continue unless you go back to the hubworld. Fortunately that was only one of two big issues we found. Most of the re-texting was errors from gameplay changes that occured throughtout development. One big change was Thunderhoof, which has a few new lines that make it better, in my opinion.

Before I forget, in case anyone was a fan of the commentary readme, I plan to update that as well, with better spellchecking and perhaps more insight into later levels.

So we're making great progress in bug sweeping, having finished 2 of the 3 cards. Just one more round of sweeps and the game will be nearly finished.

Holy cow, the finish line is within sight.

So let's start dropping dates. The new demo will be available March 9th, a week from now. The full game will be released March 23rd. Hopefully you guys can bear to wait a few more weeks for this.

Today saw more work, including (surprise!) more playtesting. More importantly though, the documents going with the game have been updated. The readme has a bit more information to it, the commentary.txt will have new content as well, and the strategy guide has revised information to stay consistent with new gameplay features.

A short update, but I figured the release date was OMGWTFthisisawesome enough to get the excitement going. See you near the end of the month!

Sweet. And I'll be doing a review for this game then. I haven't forgotten, still doing it.

Oh, how cool. I figured you simply passed it up or forgot about it. Many thanks.

I will do a fresh LP of it with MUCH better audio/video quality. Everyone is invited to join.

Okay! It's finally happened. The new demo is now live!

It's been sent to the submissions forum at the Pav. The Mag is currently giving me problems, only letting me download the old demo file. I'll start talking to Ix and see if we can't get this figured out.

If anyone here actually plays the demo, you can transfer your save to the full game and get a bonus 20 token upon switching. Keep in mind this bonus won't occur on the full game right now, only on the Director's Cut.

But what's that, you say? Ah, right, most people here are more interested in the full finished product. That's going along great as well. Now that there's nothing else to work on, I can devote my five cards solely to getting this done.

For better or worse, there's still more bugs and things going wrong. Great to find and get rid of, not so great that there's so much that still goes wrong. I'm starting to accept that I'll never find everything wrong with the game. After multiple sweeps and months of debugging, it just won't happen. The best I can do is find what I can and fix it. With any luck I'll get all of the game-breaking bugs and most of the smaller stuff.

It's just two weeks left, and there's still lots to do. Excuse me while I play bug exterminator.

I've got some news, so I'll just come out and say it- Josh's Adventure: Director's Cut has been delayed to March 30th.

The reason why is twofold. One, the release conflicted with the Magcon, releasing a week after it happened. I'm sure most of you are saying how silly that is, that the audience of mostly veterans wouldn't mind. However, it's become obvious to me that it will be a problem, and may get overlooked.

The bigger issue for the pushback is more time to work on it. Last time I got trapped a few days before release, said oh crap and realized I needed more time and had none. I'm looking ahead right now and seeing that I'm going to need just a little more time to go over things. Like a few nights ago, new bugs were found, in areas that were thought to be completely free. Not a big issue, but I need more time to go over things.

I'm sorry if this delay disappoints you. This is going to be a really sweet re-release, and I just need more time to tweak things.

I for one am happy about the delay. It means I can work on that LP with you when I have more time at the end of the month. When it get's closer we can talk more about scheduling that.

So, time for a quick status update!

Looks like we're still good for March 30th. It was looking a little unsure for a second there. Turns out that a number of fixes I made to the first scenario card didn't get saved by accident! I was concerned I'd have to push the release back again, but some tough work this weekend restored the fixes back. So we're good to go!

All the documents, such as the readme, commentary, and strategy guide have been revised as well and are ready for launch. Some have brand new information, so it may be worth checking them out.

While I have left the DLC opening in the game, I highly doubt I'm going to add anything else to the game. Barring any severe problems, this is likely the final time I'm going to work on the game. I feel that this is the definitive version of the game and there's nothing left to add.

So, that's just about it! See you next week!

EDIT: The new demo is now available at the Mag. I made a new game entry instead of re-writing the old one, because the coding wouldn't allow it otherwise.

Congrats on getting this far. And I've only JUST remembered and looked into the PMs to find that I have one from you. D'oh. >_<

Twas a bad time, though. I was preparing for MagCon and all.

This thing has a review thing!

viewtopic.php?f=3&p=144672#p144672

A wild review appeared! Thanks MRevelle!

So it looks like I'm one converted ps3 file short of having the whole package ready in time. This is entirely my fault and I apologize. I'd rather not submit an incomplete file now and update it later. So what I'm doing is this: until the last file gets converted, you can make a request via pm and I'll send you the game. Mind you, it'll be the dexdrive version only, so you'll need a way outside of PS3 to get any use out of it. Hopefully this will make it up to not having it complete in time. The full ps3 version will be out soon.