Hi there folks!

Back again with a small update: Baldomero's Ballad logo! I'm very happy how it turned out, and obviously nobody won't be able to tell the inspiration behind it, no sir.

In terms of non-logo news the main mechanics of Baldomero are all done and implemented without any remarkable issues (there's a very odd bug that helps the player more than anything, I'll let people try it out once I have a demo ready) and I'm in the last stage of putting the code for the basic enemies. I'm slowly but surely getting there, so no point stopping now!

Have a nice one,

-Ray

Lately I've been thinking a lot (not much else I can do since I'm still unemployed) about why people create things, and how time and time again things driven only by money end up being a waste of talent and time. And since I'm making a Castlevania inspired game, I was obviously going to do my research about the original creator of the franchise, Hitoshi Akamatsu.

And now that I've done my homework, I'm sad as hell.

Who is Hitoshi Akamatsu?

Source: Hitoshi Akamatsu, Castlevania Wiki

Akamatsu seems to have been the creative mind behind the original Castlevania trilogy, putting a lot of effort into making every input, every mechanic and every single detail feel important to the player. His love and passion for western cinematography lead him to approach the original game as well as its following entries like a movie, adding the iconic Hollywood monsters and having the brilliant idea of making the whip the Belmont family signature weapon (because we all know that whips are objectively cool). But ah, you might have noticed I said "seems to" as if I wasn't really sure about what I'm saying, so allow me to explain it.

The part that made me sad

Up until very recently (around 2019 or so), nobody knew about the person behind the original Castlevania. This is mostly because back in the day developers were not allowed to add their real names to the games they worked on (something common among companies like Konami and SEGA), so they had to work with nicknames or puns like what you can see in the original NES Castlevania:

Source: Rings and Coins

It wasn't until an interview released by Shmuplations that we knew the true identity of one of the thinking folks behind one of the most iconic series of all time. But why so much mystery behind one person? Well...

You see, Konami wasn't really that fond about Castlevania. If something doesn't sells and you want revenue, why would you care about something that doesn't offer instant sales? As the interview states:

"According to Akamatsu, Konami placed profits above all else, and developers who weren’t creating games that made lots of money were all eventually axed one-by-one."

Akamatsu left the industry cold turkey after being demoted to one of Konami's game centers, and he disappeared from the video game scene. Pictures of him are rare aside from these few, as he wasn't much of a public figure. And considering the fact he never came out to the light, chances are he quit for good. But hey, things have changed, developers are no longer cogs in a machine that wants to grab money over everything else, now their talents can shine and allow people to know the great things they are doing for the industry, right?

Right?

Akamatsu is only one example out of many developers forgotten by time by corporations getting so greedy to the point of erasing the names of those that put them on the spot to begin with. Think about all those games you love, the big ones, the small ones, the bad ones. Each and every one of those games had someone putting effort behind it. Each and every one of those games deserves to at least have the name of the people behind them attached to it.

Be creative. Make things. Be proud of what you made. Think for a second about all the people and creations lost and forgotten just because "it didn't make money at that moment" and fight against it by preaching to everyone about how happy you are of creating something that gives you joy. Don't let money be a barrier to your voice.

-Ray

Happy April folks!

I know it's April 1st but this is not a joke: thanks a lot for the feedback! Since I managed to learn how to do it, I just decided to straight up adding all the features I addressed in the previous post.

Good thing about the menu looking bare and ugly is that it will prevent people from staying inside of it longer than they need to. The subweapon toggle was also quite easy to add as well, thank you me past me for putting everything nicely labeled and divided.

Right now I'm reworking he subweapon booster events that allow the player to spawn more than one projectile at a time (something something Ray's trying to sound like he knows something about making games that is not turning everything into bullets). I'm aiming at finishing the game this year just to prove to myself that I can do it without crunching or adding pointless mechanics or features just for the sake of bloating the game. Baldomero's Ballad was, is and will be a short game. No minigames, no Riddler trophies to collect in order to get the true ending, and no grinding up to rank 35 to unlock a new character that you can also get by paying 10 bucks for it.

Like I said, thanks for sharing your thoughts to everyone who decided to do so, and stay tuned for more as per usual!

-Ray

Hi there folks, me again!

So now that I see more people paying attention to Baldomero's Ballad I'd like to ask some stuff just to see if I should bother implementing these features or not into the game. Feel free to share your answers in the comments!

• Fullscreen toggle
• Subweapon classic/button toggle (classic input being the usual UP + ATTACK)
• Sound and Music toggle OR Sound and Music numeric selector
• Screenshake toggle

Now I know most of those features feel like very basic things to implement, but keep in mind that I'm doing this completely by my own (still looking for a musician though!) and certain toggles may require a while to add and test so they don't break the game. Buuuuut I still want people to enjoy the game as much as they can without being pestered with things that might annoy them so I'm willing to do it if people want those features added.

If you want to support the game you can also donate to my Ko-Fi page, that would help a lot.

And that's it, see you next time and have a good one!

-Ray

Ladies and gentlemen,

Custom keyboard mapping.

Stay awesome,

-Ray

Hi there folks!

I'm back full time with Baldomero's Ballad as promised previously, and things are going very very swell! I have a lot of new small and big things implemented now (screen shaking, damage, enemy death effects, subweapon spawn boosters, Eyecoustic working wonderfully now) buuuuuuuuut I don't want to show it to you because I'm pouring extra effort on one thing I want to add out of making the game as accessible to people as I can: remappable controls!

Now, I don't know if you know how hard it is to implement custom key input in your game. Spoiler: it's a nightmares on Construct 2. But after digging some tutorials and forums I found an """""""""""""easy"""""""""""""""""" method to do so via keycodes and global variables.

This will take me either a couple of days to figure out so as to not make the things that work great go boom or I might just wake up tomorrow and say "ah, of course, just do this" like I've been solving most of the problems I've been facing while making the game so far.

Adding enemies is no longer a challenge unless they require some bit of AI behavior to track the player's movements (remember me this next time I complain about it once I get there), so I'm going to work extra hard on having the custom controls ASAP.

(Couple of screenshots just because I like showing something aside from text in these things, try to guess the new things added since last time)

And that's it for today, next time I'm hoping to share with everyone the custom key input thingy.

Have an awesome weekend!

-Ray

Crypt Stalker came out on Switch a couple of days ago, and I was very happy for it! I enjoyed the game when it came out on Steam a while ago, and the Nintendo handheld is perfect for it (I mean you get the main game, 6 extra levels AND the demake made in the style of a Game Boy title for 2 bucks, just buy it already). Lords of Exile also came out last month, and I'm very happy to see that the classic Castlevania approach is slowly returning.

But I feel Crypt Stalker got it a tad bit better than Lords of Exile?

Now, I do believe both games have strong moments and weak moments, but at the end of the day I have to give it to Crypt Stalker because it doesn't feel like it added things for the sake of adding them. Lords of Exile left me quite meh in the end. Bosses there went from decent to stupid easy quite fast, and that level design was just... Just bland. Not many unfair moments, but so many moments of making me say aloud "what's the point of putting this here if it doesn't serve a purpose?!"

Now Crypt Stalker hooooly hell, I got killed sooo many times by terrible enemy placement, platforming sections that were not tested by humans at all, disgusting and I mean DISGUSTING checkpoints that don't make sense at all except the ones in the last level and some of the most slippery default movement speed I've seen in a huge while. Oh and several autoscrolling sections that are just plain awful.

Aaaaaand I still love Crypt Stalker more than Lords of Exile! WHY?! Well the answer, like I said, it's simple: it understands what it wants to be at all times. Lords of Exile has the same consistency of boiled butter with the weird and pointless unlockable skills, the completely useless """"""secrets"""""" (slots, you find slots that don't give you anything valuable) and the inconsistent time period (so it's medieval times, with ninjas, and robots sometimes I guess?).

Now this rambling was made mostly to reach one important point that links with Baldomero's Ballad and, honestly, all the games I want to do during the rest of my days: I don't want to add stuff for the sake of adding it. Crypt Stalker feels like something the main creator had a fun time making. Lords of Exile feels like something that got unfocused halfway through its development but had to release it regardless because it had a kickstarter behind its rear. My intentions with BsB are just making a Castlevania inspired game with just an extra dumb mode out of respect for a good friend of mine and that's it. No weird currency system, no dull skill unlocking, and no unfocused setting. Will it reach the attention of millions? Not really, it's not my intention, otherwise I would've gone for more trendy stuff than "this game has stairs and knockback". But like Crypt Stalker, as long as the things I create make someone remember them fondly I'll be happy about it.

Next time I'll probably do a showcase of enemy movements and patterns, so stay tuned as always! And go play Crypt Stalker, good game.

-Ray

Heeeeeello hello, been a minute for sure!

This small update is just to notify everyone that as of today the book is finished and sent to the contest :DDDDDD Also I'll translate it during the span of next week and maaaaaaaaaaaybe sell it on Amazon this summer if I don't win the contest just to get some revenue from it (If you have better ideas for self publishing feel free to share them, the less money I give to Lex Luthor's cousin the better). But that's not a priority right now, as I'm going to continue with Baldomero's Ballad. It's been TOO long and I need to get back on the game development train all over again.

Stay tuned for more and get ready for THE RETURN OF THE BALD

-Ray

Hey there folks! Complete and utter nonsensical rambling ahead, feel free to skip it:

Soooooo I'm around 50 pages left to be done with the book thingy, and the topics I'm dealing with the narrative are, to put it in a soft way, kinda fucked up. Now here's the thing about talking or addressing horrible things on entertainment: it's very important to portray the worst of humanity to bring up the best of it. Mind you, I'm not saying you should watch slasher films and found footage of cartel victims for breakfast in order to become a better human being, but one aspect of horror or grounded terror is that it should make you say "I need to take a break from this".

When you are engaging with something tough, something gruesome, turning away from it doesn't make you a weakling or a wussy. It makes you human. And as I'm writing this book, I wanted to basically approach it as something that will make you say "yeah, I'm not reading this right now" and forces you to put down the book and go touch grass or pet your mascot.

Ok this sounds like I'm writing a transcendental story about loss and mankind or something similar, but far from it, book's shit. But within that shit I want to still portray interesting concepts to at least create discussion among the readers. Aside from "this guy's fucked, who would write something like this while being sane?", obviously.

Horror is important, regardless of our enjoyment while experiencing it. I love horror, and I'm such a Courage the Cowardly Dog towards horror games that I've never been able to play the Resident Evil Remake for more than 1 hour without getting a heart attack. Hell I can't play Majora's Mask because the clock constantly running gives me anxiety. But I still love horror, and everything related towards that genre because of the way it speaks to people.

My hopes of winning the contest are 0 to none, and I'm not saying that as a downer. I haven't written anything solid since I was 19, and I'm well aware that my way of writing is miles away from your average guy. But even if I know this, I want to try it just to see if at least it can make someone say "I want to hug my loved ones after this" due to the mental scars left by the imagery I'm presenting to them.

I don't even know what I'm trying to say about this post see this is what comes out from someone who has been coughing 10-15 pages a day.

So yeah, I'm still alive, still writing. Oh and like I said, I'll translate this to English once I send it just to actually write in a language I'm more comfortable with rather than... My own native language. Yeah I think I have some loose screws in my head.

Take care and enjoy the weekend!

-Ray

Hey hey hey everyone!

Book's going swell and swift, I'm halfway through it and if I don't get possessed by the spirit of Amadeus Procrastination I'll be done with it in 2 weeks. I'm having fun writing down the story, but being honest I'd rather continue with Baldomero's Ballad. Also here's a small tier list of Castlevania games just to make people mad because I didn't put X game higher.

Best wishes and hope y'all doing great!

-Ray