Hello again!

Saw some people enjoyed the previous post about the enemies featured in Baldomero's Ballad, so might as well keep doing it. Today we have two foes I'll make sure people hate a lot just like the things they were inspired by, Woodchip and Ottomaneater!

·Woodchip: small little creatures that enjoy tormenting children and adults alike. Don't let the size fool you, they can move quite fast.

·Ottomaneater: you can find these terrible demons flying all over Lord Barren's villa, terrorizing intruders with their sharp fangs and their lack of lumbar support.

I'm quite happy about these two, even if one of them is just a piece of furniture. Let's go with the Fleaman replacement, the Woodchip. It was inspired by a Zulu creature known as the Tokoloshe. It's a mischievous evil spirit that goes around doing terrible things and they also can turn invisible by drinking water. Couldn't find a lot of physical descriptions for it but the size works wonders as a Fleaman-type enemy!

Source: The South African Tokoloshe, Roadtravel

The other creature is none other than... A stool. Well granted, I was slightly inspired by the Japanese yokai known as the Kasa-Obake, as well as another creature from the Bloodstained series, the Dullahammer Head. The former is an spirit that posses an umbrella and licks you. I honestly don't know if the latter was inspired by a monster or demon in particular, but I still like its design.

Source: Monster Month: Kasa-Obake, Legends of Windemere

Source: Dullahammer Head, Bloodstained Wiki

And those are two more foes that I made for BsB. Levels are coming along nice, but I'm studying hard from the old Castlevania games (the bad ones too) to understand what works and what doesn't. I don't recommend studying from games you enjoy speedrunning by the way, your "gotta go fast" mindset has to be put into sleep mode in order to analyze the enemy spawn points and the structure of the levels.

Oh and go to hell Dracula X, the only thing I've learned from you is that everything you try you fail at it.

Stay tuned for more as always!

-Ray

Hi everyone!

I've been studying Castlevania lately, and making the levels without the enemies has become a bit of a pain since I prefer to have something visual (and honestly any excuse to animate things is always a good thing for me). That's why I'd like to show you two enemies that will appear in BsB:

·Eyecoustic: pesky little creatures that feed from terrible music. Easy to deal with as long as you are not jumping towards a pitfall.

·Chestnut: huge human-like creatures that have their face localized entirely within their torso. They throw mallets as their main line of defense against foes.

Same as Castlevania, I'd like to showcase different mythological creatures in the game with some twists just to add a bit of fun (and avoid potential lawsuits from Konami obvs). Eyecoustic is inspired by the Chonchon, a Mapuche flying beast that used to be a wizard's head that flew with its ears.

source: Bitterfly (Castlevania wiki)

Meanwhile, Chestnut is none other than one of my favorite mythological creatures of all time: the Blemmyes. They were rumored to be a community of people without necks that had their faces on their chest. This nowadays shows that perhaps the folks who saw them for the first time actually saw apes, but it's still a wonderful design for an enemy.

Source: Nuremburg Chronicle, Wikicommons

And those were two of the regular enemies that Baldomero Carrasco, last of the Carrasco Clan, will have to face in order to reach the villa of Lord Barren and defeat him once and for all. Yes, everything will be wood or wood related puns. No, you can't stop me.

Sorry if you were expecting a bigger update, but after tweaking all the mechanics and events there's really not much to show that makes me go "OH WOW THIS IS AWESOME" (I'll post more references if you like the format though!).

Tune in next time with the design of the first level and a small sneak peek of what you'll see on it.

Have a nice weekend!

-Ray

Hi y'all,

Heard the news today about Akira Toriyama passing and honestly, this has hit me as hard as when Miura died. Dragon Ball was something really big in Spain, and growing up with DB, DBZ and DB GT and later falling in love with his Dragon Quest creature and character designs just made me appreciate that he was truly one of the greatest. It's funny when someone you've never met goes away, yet somehow it feels like he can still speak to you and many others via their creations. I think that's the beauty of being an artist, after all: to create a dialogue between those that experience what you've done, no matter their language, origin or gender. May you rest in peace, Master Toriyama.

Anyway, I just wanted to put into a few words how I felt about his death, sorry it's not the usual thing. BsB is going strong, I'm starting to build up all the levels and testing them. I don't want to spoil the levels nor the bosses, so from now on I'll mostly showcase enemies.

Have a nice weekend,

Ray

Hi folks!

I'm so, so, SO happy to show everything I have added so far on Baldomero's Ballad. It took sweat, tears, tears, hair and you guessed it: tears, but I did it! Knockback is implemented (although not tweaked perfectly as you can see):

Oh? What's that? Is that a stopwa-I mean an hourglass subweapon? Well yes it is, what a keen eye you have! Bet you didn't spot the fact that I ALSO ADDED LEVEL UPS FOR THE SAW?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA I need to sleep more. And btw, the enemy might be familiar to people who have been following me around for a while, although this one's just a placeholder to test events. Here's the last thing I added too just in case someone missed that post:

I'm very very VERY excited to continue with BsB, but I'm still awful in the music department, so if anyone's interested in offering their talent for the game feel free to PM me. I wouldn't really like to end up putting all the efforts on the gameplay and level design without having some good quality beeps and bops blasting on the background!

More enemies and some small stuff coming, stay tuned as always!

-Ray

Is it Christmas already? Because I brought a gif(t)!

Need to work on my puns, they are not terrible enough. Anyway, stuff stuff stuff INTRODUCING SUBWEAPONS!

In this lovely minuscule showcase we can see the following:

• FIXED JUMPS (they are here to stay, you'll hate them don't worry).
• The Chisel: long range projectile.
• The Mallet: arc projectile.
• The DrawSaw: boomerang projectile.
• The Bag of Nails that are not nails because pixelated nails aren't really that visually fun for a fire bomb type projectile but I can't come up with another name for it: fire bomb projectile.

Aaaaaaaaand they also work on stairs too! Now, I don't really feel like making a stop watch subweapon type (it's VERY easy to do, but I don't want to add things just for the sake of adding since I never enjoyed it to begin with), but if people want one I'll just add it and start with the level design.

I think you can tell by now the main inspiration for BsB, but even if I'm going for a classic approach I won't rely on dull levels based on one-hit death spikes or pitfalls everywhere.

Stairs though... Hehehe.

Stay tuned for more and have a great week!

-Ray

"It will be easy", I said. Ok, granted, it's easier than other projects I tried and left, but I'm trying to tweak everything so it really feels like you are playing something very outdated and old. No post today, I want to figure out how to do a fixed jump and I'm VERY close to get it. Once I get it I'll show you all I have so far, pinky promise.

Thanks for looking forward to the game and sorry for not posting today as I promised :(

-Ray

No visual update today since I'm fixing some issues with the momentum in the jump attack event. Sure, you can spend time, effort and sweat thinking about how to let the player keep the X axis speed with some strings of code.

You can do that OR

Turn THE PLAYER INTO A BULLET SO IT SHOOTS HIMSELF AWAY.

Winners don't do drugs kids, but they sure as hell cheat while making video games.

I'll upload a new gif this Saturday showcasing everything I added so far (and trust me, it's A LOT of things). Stay tuned!

-Ray

Still working on Baldomero's Ballad. All good, working in the subweapons now which is nice (also crouch attacks works now, you have NO IDEA how annoying it is to implement a crouch attack. If you do kindly tell me how you do it).

The subweapons are giving me a headache in, repeat after me, the stairs event. If it gets up to a point that is really annoying I might just scratch the ability to throw things while you are in a set of stairs and just let you throw them while jumping/on the ground. I'll see.

Oh and I'm working on a very small April Fools thingy just to not go crazy dealing with Baldomero's Ballad (which I will abbreviate as BsB from now on for the sake of my sanity because I have waaaaaaaaaaaay too many files labeled as Baldomero's Ballad).

Almost the end of February and I'm leaving it with a positive attitude! March, do not disappoint.

-Ray

At last, the Stairs trilogy comes to an end. It was... A pain, but I've learned some valuable things in the process of making them, like wanting to put them on every single game I make to torture people and let them see how hard and painful it is to put basic things from the real world into code DUE TO THE FACT THAT COMPUTER LOGIC AND PROGRAMMING ARE THE DEVIL'S WORK DESIGNED TO STRAY US FURTHER AWAY FROM THE PATH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MORALITY WITH SEDUCTIVE BOOLEANS AND LUSTFUL EVENTS.

Oh and I added the life system too yay :D (sorry about the size, gifs are a pain when it comes to compression while using the original NES screen resolution for the game because I am an insane, insane man)

-Ray

Back again!

Don't worry, I won't keep writing posts about every single tiny thing I do in Baldomero's Ballad (unless y'all want to, I don't mind at all). Just wanted to showcase a small mockup about how the game's main aesthetic will be like. Hope you are looking forward to this as much as I am making it, haven't been this excited about making a game since Punch the Stool John!

P.S.: If you are interested in supporting me aside from the usual "hey there's a bearded bald man who makes stuff" shoutout, you can donate to my Ko-Fi or ask for a commission. And I'm still open to collabs with anyone willing to do so, feel free to hit me up via PM if you want something squared and animated.

-Ray