James Paige

I made a little game for fun, and to practice my C# skills. What better way to have fun with C# than with Unity3d?

This game is called Mantle Moon Sea, and the idea of the game is that you are piloting Bob the Hamster’s submarine through the ice-caves of a frozen moon. You collect treasure, bump into harmless jellyfish, explore maze-like caves, and generally have a relaxed time. Oh, and you also pump the pristine ocean full of floating science buoys.

The music is Bilinsky by rocavaco (CC-BY), and my oldest daughter made all the jellyfish noises for me.

• Download Mantle Moon Sea from Google Play for Android
• Download Mantle Moon Sea for Windows
• Download Mantle Moon Sea for Mac
• Download Mantle Moon Sea for Linux

Siiiiiizle! Siiiiiiizle! I am the high priest of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Cooked-At-Less-Than-144-Degrees-Fahrenheit. I am here to decry the heinous heresy against my dark and salty master.

(Windows Version) (Mac Version) (OUYA Console Version) (Zip File)

The blasphemer who created this game has updated it yet again! That makes twice in one month, and now this farce contains even more Hamster-Triumphing-Over-Bacon mockery.

I was willing to overlook the old 2009 version of this game, since its lack of a real save-game feature made it unlikely that any player would progress far enough to permit the player to complete the desecration of the image of my Thinly-Sliced-Pork-Lord.

Here is a short list of the new outrages committed by the new version of this game:

=NEW FEATURES=
Save-game support!
Sound Effects
Different colors for each floor
Now has a “good ending” and a “bad ending” depending on whether you save-scum
You can make donations from the main menu

=NEW ITEMS=
Chalk (draw permanent marks on the floor)
Jiffy Potion (fast walking for a limited time)
Scroll of Repel (drive away enemies for a limited time)
Maul of Wall-Whacking (breaks cracked walls)
Scroll of Telepo (Teleport)
Wavy Sword

=NEW ENEMIES=
Monocular Blarb
Meat Man
Crypt Yuk
Jelly Coiler
Doom Sponge

=BALANCE=
Rebalanced enemies (slightly easier)
Buffed the Scroll of Burning
Slightly reduced the size of the two largest dungeon levels
Fixed Soma potion to work properly

Please join me in NOT playing this game.

For the 2009 OHRRPGCE 8-bit contest,  I have taken it upon myself to do a public service, and I have created:

DON’T EAT SOAP!

An Educational Game Starring Bob the Hamster

Soap is bad for you to eat. It is good for washing your hands, but very very bad for you to put in your mouth. If soap ever accidentally gets in your mouth, spit it out! This game is an educational simulation using the latest in 8-bit gaming technology so that you can experience mouth-related soap accidents from the safety of your living-room without risk
of actual hospitalization.

August 2013 update:

I am please to announce that an updated version of Don’t Eat Soap has been released for the OUYA Console. This new version features 15 new levels (for a total of 40 levels) and 3 new enemies. There are also an assortment of small bugfixes and tiny improvements. Now you can not eat soap in even more style than before!

Remember! This is only a game! Do not try it at home!

Download it here in a ZIP file

Download it here as a Windows Installer

Download it here as a Mac App

This game is available on Android via Google Play

This game is also available on the OUYA console!

Ogg Nayboomer and the Fla’arns of Tra’al
James Paige

With formious churnations, Rog Ogg Nayboomer lifted his p’nurk ashurn the lerg mundions of Tra’ali.

“Mullgow Tra’ali!” he began, “our first gronom besets us! Now is the k’lurn to set balsern our trovels, and to take up our marguls and knit!”

“Knit!” chorused the askanseled Tra’ali, clashing their trovels together with great formio.

But Ogg Nayboomer scowled. Snurk among the Tra’alim narselled him. He leaped down from the uld’low, and seized a margul from the aleenest Tra’ali.

“What h’murk of margul is this?” he demanded burmiously.

“One gifted to me ve’sek’varingly by my flune Gloriak.” said the Tra’ali neberously.

“Foma!” bellowed Ogg Nayboomer. “My pleen have never seen an opsorn fla’arnious wagoo than this pegl of a margul. Do you think to change this boozel-knitting from a boozel-knitting to a blurk-floshing?”

“Never” said the aleen Tra’ali.

“I also boast for this Tra’ali,” uttered the lurg Tra’ali boolsern him.

“Do you all boast?” shouted Ogg Nayboomer, looking fulsern the mundion.

“We knit as one!” came the formious de’ponk.

“So be it.” said Ogg. “Knit like the blurkhog of Pummelgog were agstern thee!”

* * * * *

So the lerg mundions of Tra’ali, sat glomsern their polmoons with their trovels mumsern them and they knitted boozels with their marguls from mog’bok until mog’nuk. And Rog Ogg Nayboomer knitted boolsern them. Being the lergest of the Tra’alim, Ogg Nayboomer needed no polmoon, and walked, marguls in p’nurk, as he knitted, overlooking the baleen of the oms.

Sorgenly, Ogg stopped, dropping his boozel and garfing formiously. “Who dares?” he demanded, seizing a margul and holding it sern boomsern his pleens.

The wagoo that he held was bargolly the same fla’arnious margul that he had taken from the blurkey Tra’ali only mog’hark.

“Our glub is facing churmious gronom, and you play Fla’arniak.” roared Ogg Nayboomer.

“But Rog,” said the Tra’ali in de’ponk, “behold my plurn of  boozels!”

Ogg looked amsern, and saw that indeed, the Tra’ali’s plurn of boozels sernly glomed his polmoon.

“How,” demanded Ogg with grof, “How do you so barmiously knit boozels with such a fla’arny margul?”

“Thus did my flune Gloriak teach me.” said the Tra’ali, “for my flune Gloriak and my berf Fla’arn are the same!”

Ogg Nayboomer gasped, and he raised his trovel to do that blurky baleen which he knew he must do.

But the other Tra’alim fulsern him siezed his p’nurks and stayed him.

“Fla’arns! Fla’arns!” shouted the Rog, struggling churnaciously. “All of thee Fla’arns!”

“Flunest Rog,” said the aleen Tra’ali. “We all knit in the blorp of the Fla’arnim. We are lagsorn boozel-knitters and opsorn boozel-fla’arners.”

“We beg toglosity,” said another. “We wogsorn meant to pa’bargol you!” He showed his margul which was also fla’arnious.

Rog Ogg Nayboomer fell to his p’thorks and wept.

After his pleen had no more spurks to shed, he stood, and with great neberosity he spoke “Gronom besets us. If we must knit as the Fla’arniak do, then so be it. The Fla’arn of Tra’al we shall be!”

THE G’NORP

Last tuesday night I had a dream… In this dream, Michael Sweet, frontman of 1980’s glam-rock hair-band “Stryper” appeared to me.. except he was wearing a business suit, and standing on the front lawn of a public library… and he challenged me to play a game, a strange game that I had never played before. When I awoke I knew that I had to program it…

Your challenge is to discover secret messages embedded in the works of great authors.. Secrets that have been waiting all along for you to find…

Download the Windows version of StegaVorto
Download the Mac OS X version of StegaVorto
Debian packages (preliminary) thanks to Miriam Ruiz
Android App (preliminary)
Download the source-code of StegaVorto (Linux, BSD, Other)

The source code is written using python and pygame.

Alternatively you can get the source code using Subversion to check out

svn://gilgamesh.HamsterRepublic.com/hamster/stegavorto

The source code is under the GPL

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2008-11-24: Updated! Check out new features such as author portraits, difficulty levels, and visualization of missed letters.
2008-12-10: Updated! More polish on levels, added a victory screen when you complete a level, and default to full-screen
2008-12-23: Many thanks to pygame developer René Dudfield who discovered how to fix the music problem (not just for StegaVorto, but for all pygame games that play music the same way StegaVorto does on the Mac)
2011-08-17: Updated! Added an Android version. Removed the flakey picsearch feature, and replace it with additional joyous kittens!

Current mood: time-warped

The review I posted yesterday of Sex Club Reject’s new album was criticized by some as being too full of hyperbole. To those naysayers, I would refer this article I just read hot of the AP:

Thursday, Sept 27. Researchers in Italy published a new paper suggesting that the Renaissance, a historical period of cultural and artistic advances which brought Europe out of the Dark Ages, may have in fact been triggered when a five second clip of a Sex Club Reject song accidentally fell backwards through a rift in time from Hesperia California in 2018 back to the city of Florence in the late 13th century.

In related news, other research from the same team suggests that the Permian–Triassic extinction event may have in fact been triggered when a 13 second clip from a Sadjelko track fell back through a time rift from New York 2006 to somewhere in the middle of Pangaea 251,400,000 BC

Current mood: Filled with musical notes

For the past week I have been enjoying the new Sex Club Reject album. My friend Josh is the mastermind behind SCR, and he asked me to do the spoken-word vocals on track 07 “Pow Boom No!” It strikes me as fascinating that so many of my favorite musicians are actually people I actually know, and even count as friends. For the past few decades, the world of music has been about big stars, and I see that big-star-world crumbling. The big stars can’t realistically compete with the myrmidon tiny stars anymore. Not for my ear anyway.

Sex Club Reject

SCR’s music covers a wide range of styles. It exhibits more versatility than what I see out of most other bands, as it touches upon rock, and metal, and emo, and dance, and techno, and love-ballads, and desert-rock, and beatles-esque rock and punk and industrial and many points in-between, while managing to be good on all fronts, and getting steadily better every time I hear more of it. I am obviously not an impartial source here since I have known the band’s lead since we were both in grade-school, and my voice is featured on the new album, but still, with all the impartiality I can muster, I insist that this album is several different kinds of awesome, and if Josh’s music keeps steadily increasing in awesomeness at the same rate that it has increased over the past ten years, then by 2012 he will reach a level of widespread acclaim that is the post-RIAA-apocalypse year-2012-equivalent of superstardom*, and by 2017, Sex Club Reject music will cure blindness, eradicate cancer, and cause military dictatorships to crumble.

Anyway, thanks to the magic of the interwub, you don’t need to take my only-mildly-hyperbolic word for it, you can simply listen for yourself.

*After the ashes of the RIAA-Apocalypse settle, I expect that the leather-clad spike-covered vigilantes and mutants who survive will enjoy a landscape of music appreciation similar to the one described by John Titor where the lines between making music and listening to it are blurred. Where even the greatest talents in the world still have to work a day job, yet even the modest beginners get a chance to jam along with everyone else, and music merges with daily life in an integral way that will almost become spiritual… So basically kinda like Jazz, except for *all* music.

Okay, all you hackers better be jealous of me now, because I finally got ahold of my very own NmrgTech 202 Key keyboard. Only manufactured from october 1994 to january 1995 by now-defunct Bulgarian computer manufacturer NmrgTech, the NmrgTech202 is one of the most sought-after pieces of keyboard history.

It features function keys F1-F21, F0, FN and F*, plus tab, vtab, backspace, double-backspace, sidespace, switchspace, diagonal arrow keys, extended numeric pad with common fractions, “eject” button, hard-power-off button (conveniently located right next to the space-bar) CAPSLOCK, lcaselock, StudlyCapsLock, blocklock, blockbreak, and of course all standard alphabetic keys with QUERTY/DVORAK shift-states, plus diatribes for every single non-cyrillic european language, not to mention the exclusive letter “vluh” forgotten letter of the alphabet, which was written on a parchment by the ancients and locked in a cave in a mountain for a thousand years and not permitted to be used in any words of any language until it was discovered by NmrgTech engineers who were on a vacation to Nepal.

Current mood: Mitteny

Thanks to my friends at CastleParadox, I bring you Revenge Of The Kitten Wearing Mittens!:

Current mood: Chocolate Cake