Updates, or the story of what Mojiferous is wasting his time on...

 There isn't much going on here at Mojiferous Industries, just the slow trudging drudgery of work while I yearn to be outside enjoying the summertime. King Thor and I still have yet to really finalize any kind of evil plan regarding Simoebic Dysentery, but I'm still confident that eventually we'll get organized and finish something.

I've been busy with a few projects that are more like actual programming work and haven't been able to focus as much precious time to making incredibly pointless games, but rest assured there are still evil projects coming down the pipeline.

First amongst those may be the LAMP Motor Pants, which is still early in development, but the puzzle portion is entirely playable and I'm still trying to decide if it needs anything more than that or if I want to devote the time and resources to make it multiplayer aware, or if I should just finish the thing off for now, make it a Facebook app and then maybe decide where to go...

I've also begun work on another puzzle game concept called "Wholesale Hero", which is kind of a Motor Pants offshoot- more puzzly, less confusing racing BS. I have a working engine and some great concepts, but scheduling time to work on it has been harder than I thought (July seems to be full of birthdays, tiresome holidays, and days spent outside and away from my coding lair.) Eventually I will post some pictures and more information, but for now this tiny blurb (and probably a mention on the forum) will have to do.

--Mojiferous

FontUtensil released...

 Lo and behold! That's right, there's a new piece of Mojiferous Industries software, and it isn't a finished version of Simoebic Dysentery (quite yet)! I have just built an early beta of my latest um... "thing," which I have taken to calling FontUtensil.

What is it and why, you may ask?
FontUtensil started as an educational project and quickly turned into something that I could see myself using fairly often, because I'm too cheap (and not a graphic artist) too pay more than nothing for a font utility. I had a particular need that none of the current font utilities filled, namely the ability to quickly decide on a font for a project without endlessly scrolling through a billion menus only to forget what the name of the font was that I wanted to use… Let's be clear here though- I am not a graphic designer, nor do I claim to be, and FontUtensil is not designed with the designer in mind- it doesn't do font repair (yet), it doesn't give you tons of info about the fonts (yet), and it probably will be laughed at by the typographers in the audience, but I didn't design it for them…

I built in some features/future bugs that I don't exist (at least to my knowledge) in a free font utility program:
Firstly, being a game designer, I don't always use "safe" fonts that would satisfy the editorial staff at the New Yorker… No, instead I sometimes need a medieval typeface, or something that conveys "wacky", or a single word in three different sizes and 5 different colors. So I gave FontUtensil the ability to "lock" a piece of formatted text into place- Now I can compare and match an "ojiferous" against different M's.

Secondly, I may be good at visualizing something, but black text on a white background doesn't always give me a good feel for what I'm doing (which has been the main drawback of using something like Font Book,) so I built in the ability to load a background picture, set a type origin, and compare my ever-expanding font catalogue against the image that I'm actually working with.

Thirdly, I plan on keeping this project free, so that cheapskates like me can benefit from a (hopefully) useful utility program for the Mac- there's never enough freeware or Open Source software!

That being said, everyone should download the damned thing, try it out and let me know what you like and dislike, what crashes (I tested fairly thoroughly, but you never know) and what I should add as FontUtensil progresses on towards a viable program!

--Mojiferous

Download it here , or go directly to Mojiferous Industries and get it there

The website is finally updated!

That's right, she's up and ready to go... New look, all pretty and fresh, check it out and let me know what you think!

I'm rebuilding the Mojiferous Industries website...

In preparation for future releases and my annual digital housekeeping, I'm busy preparing a new look, feel and smell for mojiferous.com. Right now I have the PHP innards of the new site built, I just need to decide on a visual theme... Stay tuned!

Work continues on SD, multiplayer Motorpants

King Thor and I are still busily working on an actual 1.0 release of Simoebic Dysentery, complete with faster load times, more levels, and refined gameplay... We're both busy as hell, however, and it might be a little while before it's actually ready for its closeup.
In other news, I'm working on a multiplayer LAMP version of motorpants (which would also mean a Facebook app...) I will probably require some beta testers who are familiar with PHP and SQL injection, so if anyone is interested, let me know

Simoebic Dysentery voted "Most Original" game in uDev Contest!

The votes are in for the uDevGames Contest 2008... and King Thor and I walked away with a couple of awards for Simoebic Dysentery! Our (as-of-yet unfinished) little gem of a game garnered the most votes in the "Most Original Game" category and placed third in the "Best Sound" category (due entirely to the amazing soundtrack by The Republic of Thoronia [band].) I'm surprised, elated, and a little gassy!

Many thanks to everyone who voted for the game, to Liaht for the technical advice, and especially to King Thor for the concept, ideas, levels, early testing, and that amazing fucking soundtrack (the guy's got a natural talent for video game music...)

p.s. We're going to continue work on the game- finally record the dialog, fix some annoying bugs, add content, retool the difficulty... Look for it soon!

Play & vote for Simoebic Dysentery in the uDevGames contest!

King Thor and I toiled away for a couple of months on the uDevGames Mac game contest, and finally shat out something resembling a working game (I settled on the name Simoebic Dysentery, despite the lukewarm reception from everyone on the team... But I needed a name ASAP and nothing else really stuck, so for the time being, Simoebic Dysentery it is)
Despite currently being more of a working beta than a true game (there are so many features I wanted to add, but didn't for lack of time, and bugs? There are a few...) I am pretty damn proud of how the game turned out: it sounds great (thanks to the Republic of Thoronia), looks pretty cool, and hasn't destroyed civilization quite yet (although I'm sure it's bent on destruction... I can smell it!)

You can download the game Here...
And vote for the game (and download and vote for everyone else's) Here...*



*This is an indie-developer do-it-yourself in a short time without-billion-dollar-budgets and teams-of programming-monkeys contest: I encourage everyone to download and rate all the games in the contest, if only to support indie developers (especially indie Mac developers!)