Alright, on to the third Miscellaneous Character Showcase. I was going to release this post, like, two weeks ago, but oh well. I’ll explain why I postponed it later. Anyway, on to the post.
Introducing: Gene
This is Gene. Gene the Simpleton. He’s a smiley face with limbs…
Anyway, he mostly just exists for comedy, like Quackers the Duck. Though, Gene becomes slightly more important later. I’m not going to reveal how. You can probably tell what kind of personality he has just by looking at him. Like Sucker Shrubley, Gene’s design is loosely based on a character from the E.T. Go Come cover. More specifically, he’s based off the yellow guy on the bottom left of the cover, who’s apparently a chicken nugget?… Here’s the image of the cover for reference. Also, as you may have noticed, Gene vaguely resembles Pac-Man, with his yellow hue and round body. This is unintentional. However, characters will point this out in-game.
Considering the fact that his game is based on candy commercials, Gene naturally loves candy. Actually, who doesn’t, right?… Well, on second thought, there could possibly be people out there who grew up in families and circles that completely denied the consumption of candy and go on about how wicked it is. Some of the children raised in those families would later go on to develop diabetes.
Gene’s other interests include karate, and pretending to be a knight (he’s a LARPer).
Gene and Randy
Despite his crazed nature, Gene is very, very supportive of Randy (or “The Randymaster”, as he likes to call him all the time), going against the grain of Randy’s family. Whenever Randy is DISRESPECTED by his family, Gene rightfully gets upset on his behalf. Every time the Buscal family INSULTS and ostracizes Randy and such in front of this guy, he lectures them on how they should properly treat him. Especially to a certain member in particular. For example, they don’t like to address Randy when referring to the Buscal children as a whole, and so, Gene often has to correct them when he witnesses this.
In fact, he even used his typewriter to write a letter to send to the Buscal household for Randy. A letter that talks about how great he is. A certain family member found the letter before Randy did. That family member unfortunately threw it away after reading it. Randy later found it in the trash, however. Good thing that family member didn’t feel like burning the letter then! The letter read:
“Deer Rahndy, you ar so gret & I’m soooo sorry tour family insluts and ostridges you you needs respec and celibraton! Your smart, hav a gret since of humor, and sense your the main charicter your rhe reson why were all here! You are best!!!!
PS Iwould kike to try a ostridge egg omlet. Are their any ostridges in this game?
PPS I have to PP right now!”
You can definitely see how Gene is an all-around good friend, even though he has a screw loose. Completely agree with the letter myself! Well, except for the postscript… Maybe…
Gene’s Theme
I’ll share Gene’s musical theme here. Like the last time I shared some of the songs I made for this game, what you’re about to listen to is using temporary samples. By the time I release the demo, the songs will use better-sounding instruments. And by the way, in case you don’t pick up on this, I intentionally made Gene’s theme to sound kind of bad. Here it is:
Gene Quotes:
“…AAAAND!?!?!?!?!?!?” (something he says if Randy’s family doesn’t mention him when they list the Buscal children, as I mentioned before.)
“Holy cwud, it’s the giant talking rat! He’s my worst nightmare!… No… actually it’s the opposite! I’M his worst nightmare! I’ll preform some of my signature ka-RAT-e on him! Ka-RAT-e is a special form of karate I invented juuust for him, eheheh! EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH!!!!!”
“Hey Randy, can I bowwow someting from yous? Heeeeyyy, look at me! I actually asked Randy for his permission to bowwow something! Unlike SOME people!”
“Have you read my latest film review? Here, I’ll give you oral eggs urped from it. (uses breath spray) Ahem! ‘They clearly stole the character that appeared for a few seconds in the start from a niche book! That one part in the middle is unrealistic! This movie bad because there’s not enough-‘… Wait, why are you looking at me like that?”
Hey Look at This!
Introducing: Level 1 Enemies (Ogre Minis & Unithorns)
I will now discuss the two types of enemies that will appear in level 1. The first level of this game is going to be a fields stage, which will also be the demo. The demo I have planned for this game is going to consist of the very beginning of the game where you play level 1 as it is in the regular Atari game (when the gameplay is purposely frustrating and bad), then it will cut to you beating the in-universe game through a “cheat code” or something just for the demo (I’ll make the rest of the levels afterwards). Then, the story will be explained through a text crawl (which will be replaced with cutscenes in the final game), and then you replay an improved version of the first level as part of the story.
The enemies that populate level 1 are Ogre Minis, and Unithorns. Ogre Minis are, well, miniature ogres. They wield clubs and wear pelt. Polyester pelt, actually… By the way, the Ogre Mini Atari sprite, as you can see in the image above, kinda looks like he has a little something down there… Uh, anyway, on to Unithorns. Unithorns are freakishly large flying insects with horns on their heads, kind of like that of a horned beetle. The world of this game is known for having freakishly large bugs. Kinda funny how there’s one enemy who’s usually supposed to be bigger, and the other is supposed to be smaller. There are actually two Unithorns in this game who have names, those being Thorny and Horny, who are passive.
Behavior
The behavior of these enemies is quite simple in the in-universe game. Ogre Minis normally are programmed to aimlessly walk and hit Randy with their clubs upon contact, and Unithorns are programmed to hop around aimlessly. Due to their horns, if Randy lands on a Unithorn, he’ll lose a unit of HP, so you’d need to avoid contact all together. Speaking of their code, enemies in this game unfortunately have a bit of an urge to impulsively attack Randy in their regular lives, because of how they’re programmed, as I’ve said in previous posts.
During the real story of the game when level 1 is replayed and improved, they will be more of a challenge due to them being unrestricted this time around. Ogre Minis switch to using Unithorns as weapons alongside their clubs. Unithorns, ones that are free from an Ogre Mini’s grasp, make their attack patterns much harder and more varied. Some even reference Galaga, as pictured here:
Just one of the many classic video game references Randy’s Crazy Mission! will have. Speaking of which, can you tell what game reference this next image has?
By the way, some of the game references, like these, have to be adapted to accommodate for the size of the hand-drawn character sprites, something I didn’t fully realize until creating these screenshot mockups.
Getting Serious Again for a Moment
As alluded to earlier, Ogre Minis love to beat up Unithorns.
This is what video game enemies do in their free time.
While this is played for laughs, I do want to spoil a little something and say that it is eventually subverted and treated a bit more seriously, with it being pointed out that they need to make it stop. This was sparked by my own life. If you’ve read the rest of this blog, you would know that, sadly, my own older siblings have always constantly threatened to physically hurt me, and even sometimes acted upon it, to assert their phony dominance over me. My parents purposefully ignored this unacceptable behavior when it would happen right in front of them. These horrific threats and violent acts towards me from my siblings shouldn’t have happened, much like what the Unithorns endure, and much like the sibling violence that Rand
Ogre Mini & Unithorn Quotes (Yes, These Guys Have Dialogue):
“What are you doing in my turf!?” – Ogre Mini
“‘Ey, what did ya say!? Go sit on my horn, Roger! If you say something like that again, I will poke you repeatedly! Even if you’re away, I’ll track you down and I’ll poke ya, ya yellow-bellied idiot!” – Unithorn
“Mine’s longer!” – Horny
“No, MINE’S longer, Horny!…Wait… I think they’re the same exact length…We look completely identical. All of us look identical.” – Thorny
I Almost Lost This Website!
For my two fans out there (sigh), you may have noticed that this site might have been down for a bit recently. Well, that’s because I didn’t renew the domain in time. I’m not going to get into the details, but I created this website under a joint agreement with someone I know. Basically, this person ended up pretty much betraying me and not going through with the agreement we had. This resulted in the website expiring.
I moved the domain to another service and bought a new hosting plan. And I had to backup this site so I can recover it when it reset. I had to jump through some hoops in order to get my blog back. The process took days, and in that time, this blog and its backend was down, for me at least. Also, pictures for my game that were used in TIGSource forum posts were unfortunately invisible in this time because of this. It felt so good to finally have my website back. Like, unbelievably good. This blog post was planned to be released days and days earlier, but had to be postponed.
If I hadn’t managed to backup this site before it and the backend went down, this blog would’ve been lost. Thanks, person I made an “agreement” with. Thanks a lot, for almost cheating me out of my website. Well, at least you two care more about my endeavors. Hopefully, something like this won’t happen again. From now on, I won’t be stupid enough to do anything similar with that person. I am not a stupid person after all. And there’s nothing my family has ever said to me that has convinced me otherwise. Anyway, that’s all for now.