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LeviRamirez
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Levi @LeviRamirez

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LeviRamirez's News

Posted by LeviRamirez - November 16th, 2023


Welcome!

Been a while hasn't it?..


I don't think I'm really cut-out for uploading things on a consistent schedule, I really missed doing these posts as they were fun to make, but as time went on I had less-and-less to talk about.


I also eventually caved to going back to twitter, now X or whatever. I don't use it often and have basically stopped using it all together for the past month or so, and the need for the Levi Post softly drifted away... but it returns! (kinda)


don't expect a monthly, bi-monthly or anything 'scheduled' for The Levi Post, but I'll continue them when I have SOMETHING to talk about. The main challenge of posting these was because of the initial purpose, to promote my expansion on that Prototype from last year, has been something I want to keep under-wraps until I have a steam page or even a demo reflective of the final game out. I made a twitter page and Instagram page for the game but there aren't any posts on them, not until I have at least SOMETHING to give to people...


And for those worried, no the game is not cancelled! Development is going along pretty smoothly, even thought real-life is demanding a lot from me at the moment. My goal right now is to get a steam page up by end of spring 2024, even give a rough release date for the game as well! But I'll talk more about that at a later date.


Anyways, let's chat...


I'm 22 Now!

The first of the boring birthdays, nothing really to look forward to until like 40? I feel like people's 40th birthday are always very important? Is that the start of middle age? Feel like it would be more like 50... idk.


But yeah, today is my birthday and I'm now 22, how quaint.


I don't have anything planned for today except work LOL, but I bought myself a PS2 this week and a copy of Symphony of the Night! A game I've been wanting to sit-down and finish for quite a while. I've emulated, then started playing a few handful of times, but as of late I've become less-Interested in emulating games.


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me in da dark playing SOTN on my fat sony ps2


but on the other hand I'm not to keen on collecting games either! I'm young and expect to move around quite a bit so handling a bunch of CIB games just seems like a headache, and I'm not a big fan of just buying collectors items to sit on the shelf in a box, I wanna use the damn thing! Especially with games, I wanna have fun with video games now just stare at them! Unrelated, fuck Funko-pop collectors.


And I bought myself so le epic Bridge Kid merch for my birthday, if you haven't watched Bridge Kids close out of this tab RIGHT NOW and GO WATCH IT! It's here on Newgrounds so there is no excuse! Also if your interested in the merch here's the link to the store, pretty sure supplies are limited too so act fast, I'm not here to promote I just genuinely love Bridge Kids!!!! I love you @Nihaho and @MikeCarf !!!!!


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the bridge kids merch in question......


Game Development Shenanigans

In my last post, I touched a bit on the next STD update and well...


It's postponed, and will probably stay postponed for a while.


This is probably very upsetting for the 3 STD fans but I am sorry. In a now deleted tweet, I talked about how it's very hard for me to go back to working on that game because through-and-through it was an 'emotional piece' that really only works for the context of how I was feeling at the time, a living screenshot of years of childhood trauma, teenage angst, and young adult detachment. Long story short, It was an expelling of many years of negativity and anger, melded into a piece of artwork. The game isn't great, nor is it even good, but it means the world to me and that's why it's so hard for me to not have the desire or will to finish the update.


Now, there has been progress on the update, and if I get a burst of motivation I may just buckle down and finish it, but with a whole life perspective shift and Gappy simply becoming more fun to work on, STD is pretty much shelved for the time being.


Realistically, I would say that the update won't be out until a random day in 2024, or some time after Gappy has released, who knows really.


Speaking of Gappy a new test version for my testers is releasing later this month! So much progress has been made to the game and I am REALLY excited to eventually show more of it off later next year!


I really do think Gappy has the makings of being a great game, and I hope I can deliver on people's hopes for the game! I think if you even somewhat liked Gappy's Playground, you're gonna be head-over-heels for the full game! I'll put it like this, if you thought Gappy's playground felt smooth, that demo feels like sandpaper compared to what the game is now ;)


Here is an assortment of clips from random stages in the development since the last post I showed off the game!


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Parallelogram Man's shop! you can buy helpful items here!


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A bonus game where you try and break as many blocks as fast as possible, great for increasing your highscore in a stage!


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The last level of world 1, The Beach! You'll have to board the ship and overthrow the captain to move on to world 2!



CLOSING REMARKS

I've missed doing Levi Posts, they really were fun! But become more of an anxiety-enduced chore when I had less to talk about. I think from now on, I'll really only post when I got something cool to talk about or show off.


Until next time! Peace!


-Levi Ramirez

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14

Posted by LeviRamirez - August 21st, 2023


Welcome!


Hello! Long time no see, aye?


Sorry about the long wait. It’s been a bit of a busy and rough summer but I am alive! In fact, I’m starting to write this in my dorm room the day that I moved into it. How strange! Don’t know when this will be posted but hopefully before the end of August…


We have A LOT to catch up on, so to get through as much stuff as possible I’ll keep things brief.


Although I have a lot to show off in terms of games and whatnot, I’m gonna hold off and wait to talk about that stuff for next month unless it’s REALLY important. Expect The Levi Post for August to be almost entirely about my games with screenshots and gifs and such! Look forward to that! 


So let’s not waste any more time and talk about all the things that happened this summer, The Levi Post - TRIPLE FEATURE!


STD 1-Year Anniversary! (May)


To Start off, STD celebrated its 1 year anniversary! It’s pretty crazy that I released my first commercial release a whole year ago! Time flies I suppose! 


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Shoot Trip Die - 1 Year Anniversary Artwork by @LeviRamirez


Sadly, not much actually was done to celebrate its birthday! I did a little piece of art (Seen above), posted a huge thread on Twitter about some development stuff (Which you can find here), and held a little event in my discord server (which you should join too btw!)


Other than that, there wasn’t much else. I had hoped to have been able to release an update at least during the month of May, but sadly it couldn’t come to fruition… BUT!


The Next Shoot Trip Die update will be coming This September! To just say this publicly, @Dungeonation asked me a while back if he could work on an update for STD! This was around the time I started working on Gappy’s Playground, and although I had plans to do an update myself, I trusted him enough with his ideas he had for the game and programming skills to do some fixes and add new features to STD while I worked on my next big project! And after months of work, I can safely say he did a great job! I am still working on my part of the update, but even just the things they added could constitute its own stand-alone update, not only does it add some cool new mechanics but also fixed a lot of back-end and gameplay stuff (which makes my life a whole lot easier! and the game much more fun and smooth!) 


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Early Gif of new 'Shoplift' Mechanic!


I believe STD has 2-3 major updates before I say it’s complete. Of course, a very popular update request is adding more minigames or doing a full-on minigame update. With that, I can safely say that at least 1 new minigame is coming in this upcoming update, but also there will definitely be an update dedicated to JUST minigames, so stayed tuned!


And if you just read all of that and don’t even know what I’m talking about, just go on Steam and buy Shoot Trip Die! it's fun for the whole family!




First Test-Build of TAOG Released to Testers! (July)


Throughout the entire summer, I worked very hard on my upcoming game, The Adventures of Gappy! I got together some people from the Newgrounds Community who I’ve come to meet throughout the years and asked them if they’d like to be testers! And by the middle of July, I sent the lucky few the first Test Build of the game! 


Feedback was overall pretty good! The game is still REALLY early on, only about 75-80% of the FIRST WORLD is complete, and I took the feedback I got and continued to build upon the game.


As I’ve worked I have actually gone back and played a bit of Gappy’s Playground, and although I am still very proud of my work on Playground, it does not hold a candle to how the modern game feels now, a huge improvement! 


I’m mostly saying this just to show everyone that yes, even though I haven’t made a post in like 3 months the game is still chugging along! But truthfully, after the release of the first test, I haven’t really had the time, or energy to work AS HARD as I did at the beginning of the summer. I hope to change that soon… but progress is still being made! :-)


Also, thank you to everyone who helped test, I hope you will continue to help! :-)


@Cryptospore / @Dungeonation / @NAMELESS / @ProscuittoMan


And many others! But they didn't get around to testing as of writing this... oh whale... herm...


A Bunch of IRL Shenanigans! (May-July)


I got up to a lot of stuff this Summer! Most of it was just working, but I still found time to have fun this summer! Here are some of the highlights!!!


Friends Wedding


My college friends got married! Wow! This event made me feel really old but in a good way. Truthfully, I've never even BEEN to a wedding up to this point, been to a few receptions and even a few divorce hearings but never a wedding, especially not MY FRIENDS wedding!


It was really fun, and pretty laid back for a wedding. Does help that the bride is a huge feminist and the groom is just some FRIGGIN' DORK so it was pretty non-traditional which I think was the main reason it was pretty laid-back all things together. Also, I'm a man so who knows really...


Jeffery Lewis Concert


I went to see Jeffery Lewis in Cleveland, it was super cool!


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Concert Poster (Left) / Jeffery Lewis Himself (Right)


I Love Jeffery Lewis! He really is a huge figurehead of my artistic inspiration right next to Edmund Mcmillen, Weird AL, Gene and Dean Ween, etc, etc...


and the concert was really the bee's knees! I hope to see him again soon if he ever drifts through the Midwest again! Please come back soon Jeffery! Please Please Please!


Colorado Trip


And to end off the summer I went to the great state of Colorado!


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Me (Right) / The Mountains (Left)


Really great experience! Would LOVE to go again! Fuck it, I wanna LIVE there man! It was great and beautiful and wonderful and awesome! Too bad it cost an Arm and a Leg to live there but surely I'll be able to pay for that when I become a real n' true artist! Surely!



THE END!

Yup, that's about it.


I wanna say sorry for being gone for so long, I didn't really intend on waiting so long to write another Levi Post, in fact I had ones started for June and May but I just never finished them, and got bogged down with work and my other game projects to get around to finishing them... so my bad. But more or less I didn't do TOO MUCH on Newgrounds as a whole this summer, but I plan to turn that around for the coming fall months. I'd say overall, although I was still very busy, this summer was a much-needed break from the average content output I am used to, and I have this URGE to MAKE MORE BROWSER GAMES! And I'm making this DREAM a REALITY!


So stay tuned for next month! Ciao!


- Levi Ramirez


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20

Posted by LeviRamirez - May 31st, 2023


Welcome!


Have you ever had an assignment or paperwork or what-have-you that you had plenty of time to work on, but the due date is today and you haven't even started it yet? That's how I feel... right now.


Yes, I know this is a very, VERY late installment of The Levi Post, I bet some of you thought this was done and dead in the water, and I bet an even more significant amount of you don't really give a shit!


However, luckily for me (and unluckily for you) the month of April was pretty dull in terms of a progress update, probably because I took a break from working on The Adventures of Gappy (TAOG)!


It was honestly pretty magical, I know it's a shared thing among artists to feel like pieces of shit when you're not working on something, and it hits me very hard! So much so that if I go an extended period of time without working on stuff I fall into a pretty deep depression, so much to the point that in the past, people in my real life get concerned for my well-being. However! After a few days of not working on TAOG, mostly just watching Youtube or simply playing video games, I thought to myself "Hey! I'm just sitting here not being productive, and actually enjoying it and not having a sense of guilt... Cool!"


A few days turned into a few weeks, and those few weeks then turned into me being too busy to work on stuff due to FINALS... eek! Scary I know!


So yeah, that's pretty much the meat and potatoes of what happened this month. I know I just set up the new format for future posts but since this month had almost nothing happen during it, I'm gonna change it up a bit just for the sake of time and convenience. Enjoy!




April Showers, Bring Quickfire Bullet-point lists!


Here's a quick list of semi-important / interesting things I did during April


  • As I said before, I took my break! Played a lot of Minecraft, specifically beta 1.7.3 which was really fun, here are a few screenshots from my world.


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  • Finals were a pain, but I made it through! In fact, one of my classes I didn't think I was gonna pass but through perseverance I actually did quite well on the exam and passed the class, if just barely... Passing this class, however, will (hopefully) make me eligible to do the MBA graduate program my university offers for free! Not 100% sure if I will go through with this, but I'm leaning on the idea of going through with it!


  • I made a really, really, REALLY small game called It's like pong. It take a day and a half and although technically being made during my break, it was mostly cause I was bored of not working on a project but didn't feel like working on something big or TAOG. It's not my best work but it was fun to whip up in a little under a days worth of time!


And truthfully, that's the extent of it! To pull back the curtain a bit, May was a much more interesting month to the point where I actually thought some thing may have happened in April but no... it all happened in one month! (May)




IRL Highlight: Hogs.


Here's a painting of some playful hogs I saw at a coffee shop. Probably the highlight of the entire month of April tbh.


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DA END


Expect a more "Bountiful" Levi Post for the month of May, the whole month of April was a sham work-wise but was very much needed to keep me sane! I believe the gravity of me realizing I released STD almost a year ago (Talk about that in the next update) and starting a NEW big game kinda hit me all at once and drained me, and I took the month of April to gather my barrings...


So yeah, until next time! Bye Bye!


...


And one last reminder! If you haven't swang by my Backyard BBQ you should come by sometime and pick yourself up a doggie or a burgie, pretty good stuff! In all seriousness, the Discord Server is pretty chill and lively so come check it out, any and all NG users are welcomed!


Alright, bye.


-Levi Ramirez


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13

Posted by LeviRamirez - April 18th, 2023


Welcome!


Hello! Welcome to the latest installment of ‘The Levi Post!’ 


In the last post, I talked about how we were in the midst of a Levi Post Revolution, and after a month or so of coming up with ideas, I think I’m set on a new format for this little thang, very exciting stuff awaits you!


So grab your reading glasses and a tall glass of orange juice, and try not to reach through the screen! Cause HERE! WE! GO! 




TAOG - Mini Games & Bonus Games


Like every other Levi Post, I’m gonna be discussing my current projects, and the main reason I MADE the Levi Post more or less was to promote my new BIG project through different means besides just Twitter. So although it’s unclear how long the Levi Post will go on for, Most of the future posts will be about this Gappy Pixelday project, turned real and serious project.


Also, just for simplicity reasons (and because I gave it away in the title of this section sorta), I’m going to be OFFICIALLY announcing the (current) name of this title! 


‘The Adventures of Gappy: Coinkeeper’s Cantrip’ 


Shortened to TAOG, the title is very obviously supposed to kind of be similar to the NES game it is so heavily inspired from, ‘Kirby’s Adventure.’ Before this name I wanted it to actually just be ‘Gappy’s Adventure’ but I also didn’t want it to be THAT close and THAT generic. Also, If I ever made a sequel to this game I wouldn’t want it to just have a 2 slapped behind it, ‘The Adventures of Gappy’ signifies that there isn’t an order per say, it’s just a title given to this specific adventure. It’s dorky I know, but I think it’s nice, also TAOG is just a really funny abbreviation for a game. 


ANYWAYS! Before I get even more sidetracked I wanna talk about what the specific topic of this segment


Mini-Games!


Each post will have a different topic for this segment, and I wanted to start it on a fun one, so let’s get into it! 


Recently, me and my girlfriend have been playing Donkey Kong Country, This has been the first time I have ever played this game, and she said she used to play when she was a kid. After playing it… it’s really changed my whole view on what a platformer, hell, even what a video game could be. That may sound pretty dramatic for a game that’s outdated and older than me, but the entire playthrough of this game has been nothing short of magic. Each Level feels so varied and interesting, with insanely tight platforming, feelings of risk and consequences, and most importantly of all, the emphasis on bonus mini-games! 


Every Level in Gappy is going to have a ‘Bonus Bottle’ hidden in every level. A Bonus Bottle is a big vase-bottle-jug thing that Gappy can jump inside of, upon entering it you’ll be transported to a bonus mini-game where you will have a chance to win a bunch of money, points, and 1-ups! 


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I plan to have around 4-5 different types of these mini-games, but as of right now I only have 2. Each level will also have there own ‘layout’ for these mini-games, so each level’s bonus bottle will be varied to some degree, even if the same games are shuffled between throughout the game.


As of right now, there is ‘Coin Chase’ game where you zip around a big room where blue coins spawn, and after collecting an entire group another one spawns at another place. This Mini-game is all about speed and testing your movement skills!


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And the other one is a ‘Joker Block Game’ where a 1-up is hidden in a random block and you gotta keep track of where it is, this one is pretty basic, but games use it for a reason! It’s fun! 


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Along with bonus games, the game plans to feature a bunch of more “robust” mini-games that can be found hidden in certain levels. These will be much rarer, but will probably have at least 1 per world. As of right now, I have a little fishing mini-game in place for World 1! 


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It’s pretty simple, but I think little touches like this give games so much more life and give a reason for people to return to older levels. This Mini game isn’t just out in the open, you have to poke your head around to find it… I wonder where it is… 


That’s it for this segment! I hope you enjoyed it! 




IRL Highlight: METAL CONCERT IN INDIANA !!!


I'm not the biggest fan of metal. It's not bad by any means, it just isn't what I listen to on a regular basis, but it is good music! Luckily for me I have people in my life who are really into the metal scene and I go to concerts with them. We went to the Piere's venue in Fort Wayne after driving for many-a-miles avoiding estranged minks and the iconic Indiana road people. Alpha Wolf, Fit for a King, and some other 3rd band I don't remember played and it was pretty good. Getting into the Mosh Pit is always fun, and if you've ever been to a Alpha Wolf Concert you know the Mosh pit is gonna be fucking insane.


We usually go to Cleveland for most concerts, and after going to Indiana I can see why. I know you're gonna find weridos at a metal concert but... this venue seemed special. Overall, great show! Just wish it wasn't in Indiana, god rest the souls of the wretched plain...


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And of course, no Levi Concert expeidition could be complete without me bringing along my Lego Minecraft Steve, complete with picture and all!


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DA END


And that's it! That's the end of this installment of the Levi Post, I wanna hear your feedback on the new format, I really enjoy it but I think it could be improved upon, we'll see.


Until next time, Bye Bye!


...


Oh! Wait! Before you go... I have a discord server where we all just chill out and stuff. It's a place to keep up-to-date on any projects or games I'm working on such as TAOG, Shoot Trip Die, or small browser games and what not! There's a lot of cool people to talk and meet there so you should check it out! And it all takes place in my backyard BBQ! Join here!


Okay, Seriously, Bye.


-Levi Ramirez


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16

Posted by LeviRamirez - March 14th, 2023


Welcome

Hello, it's me, Levi Ramirez extraordinaire. This is the first REAL & TRUTHFUL month of development for this Gappy Game, taking steps towards getting closer to the actual vision of what I want this game to be.


With this big shift, I believe it's time to shift The Levi Post a bit. I think in general these posts are gonna be a bit shorter, and focus more on specific things I want to talk about instead of talking about a bunch of random little things! Also, I am no longer making highlight videos, they were just too... pointless? and time-consuming, I might do something a bit different soon but my main focus right now is getting Gappy a bit more off the ground. So Hopefully reading these (and writing these) will be a little less daunting...


But enough about the logistics of a blog post, let's look/talk about how the game is coming along?


New Pair of Shoes

People liked Gappy's playground. And after a single month of improving Gappy's movement, Gappy's playground feels terrible...


It's going to be hard to explain just HOW MUCH better Gappy feels compared to his prototype debut, there are not any massive changes to Gappy's physics or even his move-set, but he just feels... better? IDK, you're just gonna have to take my word for it, but I made a little bullet-point list of some "general" changes to his physics.

  • Sliding down a wall is much quicker starting out, and you fall much quicker the longer you stay on a wall, making running into walls much less of a slow-down!
  • Wall-Kicking no longer forces you in an input-less arch, rather just strongly pushes you away from the wall with the ability to move back towards the wall you kicked off of, you can wall-kick off the same wall but you will lose vertical height unless you do a double jump back onto the same wall or dive.
  • Jumping in the air from a dive no longer kills your forward momentum, and you have much less air friction, meaning when you dive you carry a LOT of speed in the direction you move, even when you cancel a dive.
  • Ground Pounding makes you instantly charge a super-jump / super-dive... speaking of which!
  • Super-dives have been changed, instead of doing a basic dive with extra height like in 'Playground' you dive out at a much higher speed than your standard dive... speaking of which! (again)
  • Standard dives (both on the ground and in the air) no longer automatically put Gappy at his max run speed, but your charged dive does! (along also with just gaining more speed from running on the ground like it always has)
  • In 'Playground' you lost the least amount of your dive speed (while not actively diving) in the air, this has been changed to running on the ground. The fastest way to move in the game is to dive, and run on the ground for a few seconds, chained into another dive!


Writing it all out like that really goes to show how much I've actually done to the physics, and after weeks of work, it really does feel just amazing! But what about the locales?


The Scenic Route

I know it's always exciting to see new content, but I don't wanna spoil to much at all! Besides, I do show some random tidbits on Twitter every now and then, but I'll share some stuff while I'm here!


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Lots and lots of pretty landscapes! A pretty basic theme for a "general-audience" retro-inspired platformer but who cares! it's a bit sappy and overdone but I wanna take a swing at it. Besides, these are just the first few levels and I'll get my fill of basic-platformer sloch, I think the rest of the locales of this game will be a bit more interesting, but there is nothing wrong with a green and lush intro to a platformer, no matter what any Sonic fan tells you!


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Also yes, I plan on having a little world map. I was inspired by Yoshi's island hand-drawn map aesthetic but wanted to do a bit more with it, so I'm treating the cursor and little level spots like board-game pieces, It's a weird mix but I think it's fun! The Card showing off the level progress you're hovering over and the matte-colored, shitty plastic player pieces are really charming in my eyes, and hopefully they are to you too!


Also, for the more observant viewers you may even notice a little friend from another LeviRamirez (TM) game! There will be lots of different character appearances from other games because I think they are fun and that's that really...


Drifter Bits

This post is coming right in the middle of March, I did almost nothing productive over Spring break which just ended a few days ago, but February was honestly pretty boring, mostly just behind-the-scene work, which will be a common theme for March's post as well. Also, expect the March Post to come out WAY sooner than this one did...


I think a big reason I put off doing this post was that I didn't really have anything to show, but you and I are gonna have to accept that there isn't gonna be MUCH to show and talk about in these posts because


a.) I'm a slow worker kinda guy, I have my grind days but I like to take it slow and easy most days, especially since I have a much healthier work/life balance now.

b.) I don't wanna spoil to much, the best part about video games is the mystery and surprise! Besides... it's much easier to post a cryptic random post on Twitter instead.


Yup, I'm back on Twitter. Definitely NOT as actively as I was a few months ago, but it's just so easy to just... POST a random thing I wanna show off at the moment. I know the whole point of these posts was to stop using Twitter and short-form media consumption but, sometimes you just gotta accept things the way they are. So many people said they were jumping ship, but nothing really happened, as per usual I suppose. It's annoying, not anyone in particular, but in general, people are so UNWILLING to migrate to somewhere better in favor of being comfortable, it's hypocritical I know but Twitter is such a fucking cesspool of anger and broken features. I don't use mobile, but even the desktop version of Twitter just feels... off? I think genuinely I'm a delusional, hippie freak but that's just who I am...


IRL HIGHLIGHT: Meeting of the Minds

ANYWAYS! NEW SEGMENT! From this point forward, every Levi Post will have me talking about 1 cool irl thang I did this month, and what a strong way to start a new segment!


I got to meet some of my beloved Newgrounds friends in the real world! I was expecting to get murdered in a Walmart parking lot but I was pleasantly surprised!

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The first night I got to meet @AnnoyingDroid, @Jack, and a non-newgrounder friend of Aaron's who I can't remember the name of cause I'm terrible with names (Aaron will tell me and I'll change this). We dicked around Menards, Mejier and got some ice cream from a local joint... the true midwest experience!


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LOVE WAS IN THE AIR, LET ME TELL YOU!


The next day however was the most important day, bright and early in the morning we all packed in da car and hit the road to Jungle Jim's near Cincinnati! We truly all went on the hero's journey, we all learned a lot about each other and even wielded the power of prayer. TRULY a magical night.


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Sadly, Jim himself wasn't present, but we prevailed...


No joke, it was awesome to be able to meet some close NG friends in da real world, super excited to go to a meetup hopefully soon, the more people I meet the merrier! The only BAD thing about meeting everyone was that I miss them... I crave to see epic people again while Im surrounded by CRINGE people all the time... ow... oww... oww ww... noooooooo


DA END

And that's it! That's the Levi Post for March. I hope you liked the new segment, I know this was a bit of a shorter post but we are in the midst of a Levi Post Transitional phase and soon we will get to a much more grounded place between the new and the old, only time will tell!


I will see you all in da next post, have a good night everyone :-)


<3


-Levi Ramirez


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17

Posted by LeviRamirez - February 9th, 2023


Welcome!

Hello, it's me, Levi Ramirez, Game developer extraordinaire. This post is gonna be a bit different compared to past updates. This post will have no clips showing new game stuff, instead, we will be talking about the feedback I've received from the prototype demo that was released on Pixel day in January!


The Crowd's Reaction

So, on January 23rd, 2023 the prototype 'Gappy's Playground' was released to the public at Noon (est).



And soon after, many people got to see it for the first time ever, and people in the know were finally able to play it for themselves. Right off the bat, people REALLY seemed to like it. Like really like it! It was out of judgment and was on the front page within an hour or so of its release! And it was nestled very nicely between some other great Pixel Day games such as...



As pixel day came and went, the plays and reviews of Gappy went up and up! People were in love with the controls, music, and overall "feel" of the entire game, although there was still plenty of criticism about what the game did NOT do well and what could be improved. However, the game was getting glowing scores and some rewards from the moderation team :-)


However, one of the highlights of the whole last week of January was waiting for me on the morning of the 25th...

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Yes! You're seeing this correctly, Gappy got bannered! Shortly after Pixel day no less! A large portion of the eyeballs that got put onto the demo came from this! So thank you so much Mr. Tom and everyone else who made this happen, very appreciative of this act of kindness for this little tech demo! It was bannered for about a day or two, and those two days many people paid attention to it! While it was bannered I decided to make a Discord Server for the game! Not just for the prototype but for the game's continued development, if you are interested in keeping up to date with this game then I highly recommend joining the server, there is already quite a bit of people in it already and it's pretty active as is. If you just want a simple way to keep up-to-date with where this game is going then join the server! :-D


If you want something a bit more lite, I'm doing a kinda weird way to promote the game. Since the game is made in the style of a late-era NES game, I wanted to take promotional photos that kinda play into that, so I've been taking THESE types of images below, on an actual CRT!


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And with them, I have an Instagram Page where I will upload these types of pictures, along with posting updates on the page's story. If that's more your speed then consider giving it a follow, I won't upload there very often, just whenever I feel like taking these kinds of pics. Doing these photo shoots are really fun!


And to end off the month, Gappy's playground got nominated for 3rd place of the month! Eat your heart out Flander's Killer 8!!!


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Overall, many people got to play this public prototype, and many people also left their thoughts on the experience. So now we will be looking at some of them!


The Good, the Bad, and the Gappy...

To make this more digestible and less text-heavy, I'll only be talking about a select few reviews for this. Although I do appreciate each review left on 'Gappy's Playground' and tried to interact with each comment, a lot of reviews brought up some of the same talking points so I'll just be looking at some of my favorite / most important reviews... so let's begin!



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This review by @2Cfox stuck out to me for the fact that they were originally not interested in another 2D platformer... at first...


I think making a 2D retro-styled platformer in lord of our savior 2023 is kind of a dumb idea. However, my attempts to make interesting movements seemed to work on this person, which is very cool and exactly what I wanted! However, how many people will see the finished game on steam, with the price tag, and scoff it off? Probably many! Games like these are doomed to not do well, but I am not a man of wise decision and am guided mostly by passion and love. Although making this game is basically career suicide I have faith in this game. It's not for everyone, but I believe that maybe it can go far... but we will just have to see...


And also yes, there gripe about replaying big chunks of the level, although I don't personally agree with the prototype since most levels (in my opinion) are pretty short, I will do my best to make a good checkpoint system in the full game since I plan on making levels MUCH LONGER in the full game. Thanks for the review! <3



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This review by @HatNHoodie brought up an interesting point. Air movements such as the double jump, charge jump, and dives make moving IN THE AIR interesting, but I seemed to have forgotten to make ground movement interesting outside of momentum and running. I've tossed around the idea of a slide you can do on the ground which can give you a big burst of speed and we will just have to see if it makes it into the game. Great review, thank you!



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This review by @salad-wear was one of many to bring up the "stickiness" of the wall... This has been fixed! The walls are much less sticky and Gappy slides down them at a much faster speed. Along with this, he also brought up the wall jump and the weird key binds. The Wall-jump arch thing was brought up by a slight majority and I do hear what you are saying, yet I can't say I 100% agree. I think with some work on my end we can BOTH be happy but the 'set-in-stone-arch' is something that I deliberately WANT in the game because I WANT the kick off a wall to really feel like you're kicking off a wall and springing in the opposite direction. Some slight tweaks to Gappy's physics have made it less rigid but it's still there in spirit, some more work will have to be done to make it feel a bit better...


Also, many people have talked about the weird key binds! If you haven't played it then this won't make sense but many people had issues with the default WASD controls, this was my bad 100%! I don't play many PC games so I tried to mimic the key binds to that of a controller and made you put both hands on the keyboard, which is comfortable for me. MANY people did not like this and in the full game you will be able to set up the keyboard controls in any way you'd like, along with having pre-sets for easy control swaps. I believe by default I will make it the 'One-handed WASD controls' which I was told about where you move with WASD, Jump with Space, and dive with the shift key... But again, sorry about the weird controls, the decision to make them like that was just a general lack of knowledge. Thank you for the review!



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Tiny suggestion/review from @Leroysei. Just wanted to say yes, something very similar to this will appear in the final game most likely, something along the line where each level has a "time to beat" which will increase a rank or something for each level in the game! Thanks for the review and suggestion! :-)



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Another tiny review by @aniano711 was a really sweet little review, I like it mostly because it's comparing Gappy to Celeste, and Gappy WILL be better than Celeste by a landslide!!! #gappysweep !!! Thank you for the review. <3



Overview

So yeah, this is really all I wanted to talk about this month. This game is now out of the prototype phase and in full swing into development!


I think with that, the Levi Posts may be a bit barer in the coming months, it's kind of a mix of not wanting to show off TOO much stuff and also kinda wanting to just focus on game development. I think I will keep writing these posts, but they will show off much less stuff and more just be quick updates about how the game is doing, what I've been up to, and some random highlights of the months.


Speaking of Highlights, I believe the Levi Post Highlights videos will either be changed or shelved, the highlights videos are the most daunting for me, and I might change them to be more rapid-fire, opting for 2-3 minute videos instead of something like 5-10. I think in general, I think I'll go up to 'Levi Post #5' doing basically what I'm doing now and assess what I want to do, I know people look forward to this and I do too, but I want these to be a bit more "graceful" to work on / publish.


A chunk of this post regarding some fun irl stuff I did this month had to be cut from this one due to my over-abundant use of pictures. I wrote all of this on Tumblr first and then copy-pasted it over here, if you are only interested in the game development stuff then your journey more or less ends here, if you wanna read just a little bit more about your favorite Newgrounds dev. (which is me, just to remind you) then you can check out the Tumblr version here! I'll probably make a habit of keeping the IRL stuff over on that post, just so that the Newgrounds one is more focused on the actual meat n' potatoes of the post. If you wanna see the entire post without any cuts than I would greatly encourage you to follow me on Tumblr as well, they will be posted both here and there at around the same time! :-)

however...


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Working on Gappy Plushies!!!


January was not a very eventful month, but one of the coolest undertakings we undertook was the making of Gappy Plushies!

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This was our first wack at it, and he came out a bit... big... and awkward... but it was a great first step! On our second attempt, we learned what we could do better and made our first REAL Gappy plushie, and it couldn't be better in my (humble) opinion...

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And this isn't just a couple of pieces of fabric thrown together with some stuffing in the center, no sir! These got little weird elongated button eyes sewn in, lots of stuffing, fluffy fabric, and little beanies in the feet, arms, and butt! He's got a good weight to him and he's insanely cute if you couldn't tell! Our goal right now is to make 10 of these guys (counting the prototype) and see if we want to make more. At the moment our only plan is to sell them to a "select few" people since these take about 4 hours to make (we hand-sew these guys) but who knows... maybe in the future we can have a shop of these little guys for everyone to have! At the time of writing this we've only completed 3 and are moving on to our first actual "order" of one, so wish us luck! Probably gonna start working on it sometime this weekend or next week :-) 


Final Thoughts

That's all I have to talk about this time, next post will actually show off some game stuff, but for right now I got some #gamedev to attend to...


(also shoutout to @jack @heyopc @pollyanoid @jevel @tombdude @ProscuittoMan @Chupabara @Dry @Stepford @Andyl4and @Graeme and @milkypossum for the work they've done the pixel day games mentioned prior!!!)


(and also a super, triple, ultra shoutout to @teravex !!! He will be the man behind the music for the game going forward! Send some love his way! and listen to the full OST below!)



Peace!


-Levi Ramirez

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29

Posted by LeviRamirez - January 5th, 2023


Welcome!

Hello, it's me, Levi Ramirez, Game developer extraordinaire. Happy New Year! Today is the second installment of The Levi Post where I show off and talk about my game projects and life! 


In the last installment, I introduced everyone to my next commercial project with the lovable little green-cubed scamp, Gappy! People seemed to enjoy what they saw in the previous post, so hopefully, this post will excite you even more! Since you've already seen the 'lift-off' work I'll be showing off some of the mechanics and levels you'll find in the prototype. Lot of what is in this prototype I don't have any concrete plans to add to the final game, they will probably appear somewhere, but this prototype is made for YOU (The player) to push the game around a bit and see what is and isn't fun, and building the final game around what I want and what the players think is fun! :-D


For the more astute readers, you may realize that the deadline for the public prototype is swiftly approaching, and you'd be correct! So make sure to mark your calendars! Call off work, cancel dates, and move around event times! Cause the prototype will be available to the public on January 23rd! on the lovely website known as Newgrounds!


Why that day? Well, it's non-other than the most amazing website-wide events ever! Pixel day! A bunch of cool games made by good friends of mine will also (most likely) be up for you to play as well, so make sure to spread the love to all the projects on that day! Who knows, maybe you'll find your next favorite browser game!


But enough talk! Let's slide into the GAMER ZONE and look at what I've been up to this month!


A Months Work - Expansion and Tweaks

Clip 1 - Wowza.gif

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So now that the movement was starting to get into its own, why not make it look nice! This clip shows off a bunch of stuff like the puffs of smoke that appear under Gappy when he jumps off the ground and when in the air, the speed trail of Gappy's figure when diving, the sparkles from collected coins, and (my personal favorite) the bouncing bricks that burst from broken card blocks! You can have good movement all day, but if that movement doesn't make cool little particle effects then what's even the friggin' point...



Clip 2 - EarlyRaceRoom.gif

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Speed is a huge proponent of what makes platformers fun! I think a lot of really interesting platformers get bogged down by simply being slow. For example, I've been playing through the SNES game 'Jelly boy' a really weird platformer game where you play as a boy made of jelly who can change shapes and whatnot. It's nothing amazing, but it's really creative and charming in its presentation which makes me want to LOVE it, but it is STUPIDLY slow. Jelly boy walks at a snail's pace, and my enjoyment of that game has been hindered greatly by the value of an internal value, how sad. So with Gappy, a good feeling of speed is of the utmost importance to me no matter if you're taking things slow or trying to move at break-neck speeds! Speaking of break-neck speeds, This race-level area is all about speed! This Gif is from earlier in the month, so it wasn't finished at the time but the idea hasn't changed since this. You'll be using booster pads to fly through the level to reach the finish line, do it fast enough and you'll gain access to a secret area filled with goodies! This area is a personal favorite of mine because it is really fun to try and make small improvements to your movement to reach the end really fast, and moving that fast is just incredibly silly.



Clip 3 - EarlyCrumblingBlock.gif

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Here's a block with a face that goes away after you stand on it, that's kinda cool.



Clip 4 - DoorToppers.gif

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I added some nice little animated door toppers to differentiate each entryway, I think they're neat. :)



Clip 5 - Pinballdoor.gif

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Added a one-way doorway thing that I mostly made for use in the full game, but since it's functional I might as well utilize it for y'all. To those who have played Mario Maker, it's basically the one-ways people use to make annoying, inescapable pits. However, in this game, they are used to tease the player with little secrets and treasures by forcing them to take a more challenging route and spitting them out somewhere nearby. It's always fun to make players search a bit harder for secrets but I do find it fun to hide things in plain sight! Also yes, the whole pinball flipper idea came from Yoshi's island! :o)



Clip 6 - Tutorial.gif

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I really hate tutorials in games, in fact, I think it's my biggest weakness when it comes to a developer. I try and have my game design principles guide the player into what they should be doing. But if a player doesn't even know what buttons do they simply won't be able to understand the design aspects I've put in place to teach them. It'd be like teaching multiplication in the easiest way possible to someone who doesn't even know how to add or subtract.


So, to teach the player the controls of the game, I put Gappy in a blank room with nothing but himself, the exit on an elevated platform, and the controls plainly typed out in bold text. Surely, no one can miss the controls of this game, you can't even LEAVE this room without having a decent grip on the controls.


Funnily enough, I allowed some close friends of mine early access to this prototype, and my girlfriend said she didn't even notice the text! I wonder how many other players will be confused and locked in this room, if the same people who played Parallelogram Man play this game, I'd say quite a bit...



Clip 7 -deathandcoolblocks.gif

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I showed the race room off a bit earlier but in that clip, there wasn't any way to... start the race? So I added this big blue button that when pushed makes these gritting metal blocks disappear, the same blocks actually appear at the finish line and lock you out of certain exits that lead to secret areas if you aren't quick enough! I really like these metal blocks for like no reason, I just think they look really cool and these will definitely be used in the final game. I also wanted to do that thing that Kirby games do where you race a spark trail all the way to the end, to make it more readable when and why the metal blocks appear at the end of the race, but to be completely transparent with all of you I am just too lazy to do that, sorry. (I would love to do it, but making it look good would be very tedious, so sorry not sorry...)

Also Gappy can now finally face his own mortality now! The only way you can die in this showcase is from falling down a bottomless pit so you won't get to see his little flail I animated until probably a few Levi Posts from now. But the little cartoony, pinhole grow and shrink effect is very cool and I'm proud of it! :-)



Clip 8 - textboxes.gif

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I didn't show off the textboxes in the last post I made a month ago, so this is kind of a weird clip to show off, but I really am proud of this cause I hate text systems in games. So firstly, when you interact with one of these blocks it spawns a textbox and accompanied text, however, it doesn't lock the game up, you can even interact with another text box and it will auto-close the last textbox you interacted with and start up the new one. Anyways, these little text boxes are funny and I want to expand on their personalities in the full game by giving them more unique designs and whatnot, something that just isn't very necessary for the prototype and thus won't be in it.


However, in relation to this clip above, they didn't always have the ability to store multiple lines of dialogue, they simply spout one textbox worth of info and shut off, and now they can have a whole bunch of things to say! A bit of a lame way to end off the clip section but I do really like this feature a lot. :-)



Overview

That's all the clips I have for you today. These clips I showed were a bit boring, and I apologize, but the Pixel Day Showcase is just around the corner, so you won't have to wait long to see all of these moving parts in action!


I believe in the next Levi Post, I won't be showing off any clips but rather highlighting some critiques and comments I find interesting when the showcase drops on Pixel day. So, if you wanna possibly see me react in this long-form way, and most likely in the highlights video on youtube, please leave some remarks of what you want to see added or changed to this game prototype, I'd love to hear from all of you!


Also, remember that Pixel day 2023 is on January 23rd! Make sure to not just check out my project, but all the other projects as well! Many cool creators will be making stuff that day and it's gonna be amazing to see what gets showcased!


A chunk of this post regarding some fun irl stuff I did this month had to be cut from this one due to my over-abundant use of pictures. I wrote all of this on Tumblr first and then copy-pasted it over here, if you are only interested in the game development stuff then your journey more or less ends here, if you wanna read just a little bit more about your favorite Newgrounds dev. (which is me, just to remind you) then you can check out the Tumblr version here! I'll probably make a habit of keeping the IRL stuff over on that post, just so that the Newgrounds one is more focused on the actual meat n' potatoes of the post. If you wanna see the entire post without any cuts than I would greatly encourage you to follow me on Tumblr as well, they will be posted both here and there at around the same time! :-)


Final Thoughts

So yeah, progress is being made on the prototype showcase and 2023 is gonna be 'THE YEAR OF GAPPY'


Hope you all had a great holiday, happy new years, and have some cool projects planned for the year '23


Bye-Bye! <3


-Levi Ramirez

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23

Posted by LeviRamirez - December 6th, 2022


Welcome!

Hello, it's me, Levi Ramirez, Game developer extraordinaire. Today is the first installment of The Levi Post where I show off and talk about my projects and life! 


For the first installment, I’m gonna be showing off and talking about my next big commercial project! It's a platformer, with a heavy emphasis on movement and speed. The game stars Gappy, the green cube from the series of games I've made under the same name. However, this game is not a continuation of the games found here on Newgrounds, but rather serves to act as a reboot! The game will be straying away from the ‘infinite runner’ style of gameplay and will instead opt to play like a traditional platformer with full player control. Although the game is still very early in its development and planning phase, I aim to reimagine the story of the 1st game, along with taking locations, characters and mechanics from all 3 games! 


If you've never played any of these games, or don't even have an idea of what I'm talking about, you can check out the complete trilogy here in this playlist I made on Newgrounds. All for free, and browser-based :-)


But enough of what I have planned, what I wanna do, and what this thing even is. I wanna SHOW you what I've already done! Like I said earlier, this game is still VERY EARLY in development and everything you see here is subject to change! Everything you see here is being made for the soon-to-be-released public prototype that I plan on releasing on Pixel day 2023, which is eerily similar to what I did for pixel day last year, releasing a demo for my FIRST commercial game SHOOT TRIP DIE (It even placed pretty well). However, upon release this will be to "incomplete" to be a demo of the game. The Prototype will be built and focused around simply showing off the movement to you (the player) and getting feedback of what you believe could make it better! The Prototype will also NOT be reflective of the final game as the Prototype will be more “open” whereas current plans for the final game will be more of a linear adventure akin to Super Mario World, but that is also subject to change... who knows!


Beginnings 

Okay, okay I know I just said I wanna show you what I've been working on, but humor me will ya! I wanna talk about where in my... vast wisdom... I came up with the earthshattering idea of a... movement-based, 2D platformer... And why this game aims to be very different from its older siblings...


Before the development of Gappy 3, when I had the idea of making another Gappy game, I wanted to do away with the ‘infinite runner’ gameplay of the first 2 games, but didn’t feel like it would make much sense to do it with the 3rd game of the series, and believed it would fit better within a reboot. I also just generally wanted to reboot the series... The first 2 games in the series, although fun, don’t fully capture what I want for Gappy as a character, along with the world surrounding Gappy. Although I’m not gonna be writing some novel for the game, I want the characters to be a tad more fleshed out and feel more alive overall, and I want the whole game and universe it takes place in to feel more alive! But before I did any of these crazy, wild ideas I wanted to complete the Newgrounds trilogy (What I’m now dubbing as the ‘Origin’ games) and thus, Gappy 3 was made!


I knew even before I started this project I was gonna get bored pretty quickly, as I really didn’t have any desire or new ideas for the infinite runner style, so I scaled back the scope of the game tremendously. The worlds only had 8 levels instead of 10, no final boss, and a really simple ‘twist’ mechanic in the form of a double jump. To compensate for some of the lacking parts of the game, I decided to go for a much weirder themes for the world, along with having the game be a bit easier overall for new players, along with also having mobile support be planned from the get-go (You can thank what I learned from Dead Fish Clicker for that.) 


Although I was, and still, tired of that style of gameplay for Gappy, I actually had quite a bit of fun making that game, and it seemed that a lot of people really liked it! And now, Gappy 3 will probably be on the NG mobile front page for all eternity! Thanks Tom!


So after Gappy 3 was released, I not only decided to start this reboot but also do a huge, overhaul update for SHOOT TRIP DIE (STD)! So throughout the entire month of October, I juggled both projects! Truthfully, I showed a bit more love for this new project than I did the STD update, but the update was still really fun to work on and it would come out a bit earlier than I expected! But enough about STD, let’s ACTUALLY see the progress of this new game so far…


Actual Beginnings 

Clip 1 - platformengineshowoff.gif

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This is the first clip I have of the game, it’s just showing off a static Gappy sprite running around a test room doing not much other than moving around and jumping, but every platformer can do that! A few interesting things to note about this clip however is that this clip was recorded on October 11th, only about a week after Gappy 3 launched. What’s more interesting is that both the project file and sprite file were both originally created on September 19th. Although it may sound weird, usually when I make a game I start with making the character’s sprite first, just to see if I can transform what I see in my head gracefully into a sprite and if that sprite looks good inside of a game project. What likely happened is that I made this "updated" Gappy sprite, made the project, put the sprite in the project, looked at it, and didn’t touch it again until mid-October. 



Clip 2 - walljumpstuff.gif

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If you’ve been making games for as long as I have, you know it’s very easy to make a thing move around and jump inside of a thing, that’s why a lot of first projects are usually platformers. You also just have a lot of things to use as references for what you want your game to mimic. But for this game, I wanted to make a 2D platformer with the control of a 3D platformer, more specifically the style of movement found in Super Mario Odyssey or Mario 64. All and all, I just wanted a game that had really fun movement that just felt good to run around with, and I feel like most 2D platformers usually have 1 or sometimes no unique or fun movement options. Usually it’s a wall-jump, a dash or if you’re feeling REALLY crazy a double jump! And a lot of the time these are stuck behind certain power-ups or stage gimmicks. Why not just allow the player to always have these movement options, why limit yourself? I’ll tell you why… GAME DEVELOPERS ARE SCARED. They know DAMN well they couldn’t design a game with all these movement options! They wanna keep their players on the path of least resistance, well you know what? I AIN'T SCARED! I want you to be able to string together a bunch of different moves to go wherever the hell you damn feel like, And I'll do my damn hardest to reward you for traversing levels in creative ways. Of course, you gotta start somewhere, so I decided to start with the humble double jump, wall-slide, and wall-kick! (With a early 'Wall-slide' animation of course)



Clip 3 - somekindofwallkickingmechanic.gif

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To continue with the wall-slides and wall-kicks there has always been something that bothered me about wall-kicks in some platformers, specifically indie games, is the ability to wall-kick up the same wall multiple times. Although it’s fun, in my mind it felt cheap, and I wanted the players in my game to be propelled in the opposite direction of the wall. However, when I showed off the wall-jump to my friends in a discord server and explained my reasoning they pushed back a bit, and explained to me why they thought the mechanic I didn’t really like was fun. From that, I met in the middle and did this. It's a bit hard to notice but i'll explain, since the player regains their double jump when sliding down a wall I decided that if a player decided to “spend” their double jump they can move towards the wall they kicked off of. This is so that players can either double jump to travel further in the opposite direction of the wall or string together a bunch of jumps to scale a singular wall ----. So, it is still possible and pretty easy to scale up the same wall, but the game also deeply encourages you to jump from wall-to-wall, back and fourth as the game will be designed around this idea. This isn't to say that games that allow for same wall wall-kicking are BAD, one of the games that got me interested in game development as a wee-bitty boy has the mechanic center stage (Super Meat Boy). It's just something that I just personally don't like TOO much...


For now, the basics off the wall sliding and wall jumps were finished, of course some small things would be tweaked, but it was now time to move on to the next movement mechanic…



Clip 4 - zippitydooda.gif

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I talked a bit about being inspired by the movement of Mario 64 and Odyssey, But I watched a TAS of Celeste a few weeks prior to working on this projects and the speed you can gain in that game is insane, especially through the little dash you can do. I’ve never played the game myself, although I plan to sometime during development. Anyways, I thought it’d be cool to add a way to not only get some cool horizontal movement option outside of running, but also something to allow the player to gain more speed semi-actively, similarly to the belly-slide in Mario Sunshine or the long-jump in Mario 64. I think a lot of the more challenging portions of the game will be built on using the dive for a plethora of platforming challenges, who knows…



Clip 5 - cameraepictime.gif

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After I got the movement more or less where I wanted it, I started plopping in some stuff to interact with. Although not the main focus of this clip, here you can see the unfinished and freshly-added card blocks and coins that do an astounding amount of nothing! A cute little running animation, and a blue bar to figure out how big I want the hud to be. The main reason for this clip is to show off the camera system. This game is gonna be very “horizontal” structured. Something I love about Mario 3 and Mario World's levels in particular is the way the camera doesn’t scroll up in some levels unless you get REALLY high up, and there you can find cloud platforms and what not… It’s something only really skilled players can reach and know about but it doesn’t confuse players who aren’t so skilled, thinking they are missing out on some very vital piece of the level they seemingly can’t reach. I want levels with little nooks and crannies just hidden out of sight of the player... >:)


“But how will people know there is something up there?” Then it’s not a very good secret, not every secret needs a crack in the wall or a strange pattern drawn in bushes, you just need someone to wonder to themselves “can I get up there?” Secrets are made for those who are willing to find them! 



Clip 6 - thepit.gif

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Holy mackerel! A whole bunch of new stuff! A pretty lookin’ hud, intractable blocks and coins, and probably some tweaks and changes of the movement. Speaking of the movement, this clip was made to show off just how long of a distance you can travel while not touching the ground! It’s very fun to just hop and skip around these liminal void rooms just seeing what feels fun and what doesn’t, and I was starting to feel much better about moving forward past just focusing on movement, although even still it gets tweaks cause everything can always just be a wee bit better… 



Clip 7 - hubareadraft_01.gif

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So with the movement and basic “interactables” implemented, I decided to plan out how I would go about laying out the prototype. I decided I’d go with a sort of “free roam” approach, allowing players to pick where they wanna go. This would involve players going into areas that allow them to play around with the controls in different scenarios and contexts, like moving platforms, vertical climbs, a timed running section, etc. All of these areas would lead back into each other through a hub area you’d reach after being taught the controls, where you could pick and choose which order you wanna play the challenges. 


This was the first “draft” of the hub area, and this is the beauty of recording all of this footage, the hub area looks COMPLETELY DIFFERENT now! I’m someone who doesn’t usually capture footage of my games in development, as I’m too busy actually developing the damn game, but this clip in particular is such a cool little piece of “history” for me :-) 



Clip 8 - glitchedcloudbehavior.gif

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This last clip is just a little bonus clip, as I actually haven’t been able to work on it TOO much recently, and all the other clips I have are a bit spoiler-heavy, and wanna save some stuff for either after the prototype releases or just for next month’s post. But this clip shows me trying to fix a problem I was having with these little cloud platforms. When you jump on these clouds it kinda sinks and reacts to you landing on it, the problem I was running into was if you HELD the jump button when you landed on the platformer you’d kinda weirdly float above it and if you even did it slightly it would sometimes eat your jump input, so if you landed and wanted to quickly perform a jump the second jump wouldn’t happen… WHAT A BUMMER! I obviously didn’t want the player to deal with this really lousy-feeling platform, but I didn’t want to sacrifice the cool little animation that happens when you land on the platformer (what I originally thought the issue lied) so I was spitballing ideas, and this silly clip came out of it. The problem is fixed too, it was the easiest and the LAST thing I tried. :,]


Overview 

That’s all the clips I have for this post! I think I’m gonna try and show around 8 clips each post, I love showing stuff off but I also don’t want EVERYTHING to be released right away, if I drip-feed you, you’ll be beggin’ for moar!

Also the Prototype is just around the corner so you won’t have to wait too long for you to just EXPERIENCE the damn thing, but I hope these really early development clips show you some insight into how a project like this starts and where it can lead only after a short amount of time! 


After the prototype comes out, and I work on the true vision of this game (after digesting some of the feedback I get from it) I’ll try and show more “varied” clips off, as to not just kinda show you the same ‘I slightly changed the movement in this clip, and started but didn’t finish this mechanic in this clip’ every post. Trust me, cool stuff is on the way! 


A chunk of this post regarding some fun irl stuff I did this month had to be cut from this one due to my over-abundant use of pictures. I wrote all of this on Tumblr first and then copy-pasted it over here, if you are only interested in the game development stuff then your journey more or less ends here, if you wanna read just a little bit more about your favorite Newgrounds dev. (which is me, just to remind you) then you can check out the Tumblr version here! I'll probably make a habit of keeping the IRL stuff over on that post, just so that the Newgrounds one is more focused on the actual meat n' potatoes of the post. If you wanna see the entire post without any cuts than I would greatly encourage you to follow me on Tumblr as well, they will be posted both here and there at around the same time! :-)


Final Thoughts

So yeah, obviously if you couldn’t tell by the big ol’ giant numero uno in the title of this post, this is the first of these types of post, I did really enjoy writing this and it allows me to speak my mind in the truest way possible, but god damn do they take forever to write, so I hope you all enjoyed it. I know it’s long and I make things very wordy but I write pretty similarly to how I talk so if I ever go to a NG meetup then I guess you’ll be prepared?..


Anyways, I hope you all have a good rest of your day, and I’ll see you in next month’s post, bye! <3


-Levi Ramirez



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Posted by LeviRamirez - November 19th, 2022


DEATH TO TWITTER!

Hello, it's me, Levi Ramirez, Game developer extraordinaire. If you have been using twitter anytime between the last month to within the last few days I bet you've probably seen all the "commotion" going on. It seems that everyone's mom is screaming that Twitter is going under, is it true? Probably not.


Look, I hate Elon as much as the next guy but realistically he either sells his stock in the company to someone else or actually does make it at least usable again. I don't think twitter will go off line within the next few days, or months, or even years. I know it's hard to believe this but not everyone who uses twitter is an artist or game dev. or mentally ill, a lot of people just have it to look at news or check sport updates, I mean my dad uses it to send our family groupchat dog videos! But honestly, twitter just isn't really enjoyable to use anymore, I mean it never was but the ease of just scrolling through twitter was addicting, it's on the same level as TikTok if you've ever used it. And just like TikTok I realized that I gotta get the hell outta dodge! So, if twitter does or doesn't sink I'll be ""permanently" deactivating my account on November 30th, 2022 (I even removed the link to my twitter on my NG profile page already). I say ""permanently"" because I just don't have the courage to out-right leave and never come back, Twitter is at the very least the best place to get a bunch of people to share your stuff around. Other than that, the whole website just has me kinda feeling lethargic, like I ate too much Mcdonalds or Burger King. it's hard to explain, but for those who are in the loop know exactly what I'm talking about. Social media that revolves around quick content feels like that, fast food, and eventually you just get sick of it, physically and mentally.


So what now? Besides Newgrounds, Twitter was where I had my largest reach? How are people gonna know about my projects? The answer isn't clear right now, but I think I've gotten to a point where I really don't care. People who want to see my stuff will find a way, I have no interest in appeasing the masses so I won't reach out to them. It's scary to think about, especially as I start to plan/work on my next big project, but it's just reality I suppose. Hopefully this next game will be so good it'll spread by word-of-mouth instead of me just shoving it down people's throats, a luxury that SHOOT TRIP DIE didn't really have. However, I'm not gonna just log off the internet, I'm gonna try something so stoopid it JUST might work!?


Tumblr.


Yup, I made a tumblr. From the looks of it, it seems like a lot of my mutals/people I respect migrated to tumblr. I thought this website was dead-in-the-water but I guess it's gotten better over the years. I wish I woulda taken a screenshot but I actually logged into my old tumblr account that I used from when I was 16. I know this is hard to believe but it was pretty cringey (you might have to suspend your disbelief to picture something like that!). Mostly just me and my boyfriend at the time (who was into runes, and crystals, and tarot) just liking each others posts. No harm no foul I guess, and from the looks of it it's all deleted. So I just spruced it up and got to where I want it now.


What are my plans with this? Well, it's quite simple. I'm gonna do monthly/bi-monthly blogposts! I'll show off what I'm working, show clips of development of projects, talk about my personal life and stuff, and just say things that are on my mind! I know the short-form thoughts of twitter are more widely liked by the brain-dead masses (myself included) but it's also nice to just actually sit down and READ something every now and again, it makes you smarter ya know! I also wanna talk more in depth about what's going on behind the scenes, and maybe educated people on just how much work goes into video games, especially when doing it independently.


Also! On top of tumblr, I'll mirror the posts here on Newgrounds! So you'll be able to read them on BOTH SITES! I have a feeling I'll get more interactions here, but it's nice to have options! And for the few people who find me on Tumblr can be indoctrinated over to Newgrounds... it's all part of my SICK PLOT!


And to top if all off, I might also do "Summarized videos" on said posts, especially the development stuff. Game Dev. gets a lot of eyeballs on Youtube, but editing takes too much time. If I basically just read off my blog post and show clips ALREADY in the blog post and just condense it into a 5-10 minute YouTube video people would eat that shit up. This idea is really basic, but also inspired heavily by the short dev. logs posted by @Plufmot on his YouTube. Although it's mostly just other NG peeps watching it, I know one of those videos will seep into people's recommended and they will blow up! The videos are just so interesting and easy to watch, and it cuts out the 'LOLZ SO RANDOM EDITITING XD" crap like other YouTube game devs do.


Anyways, yeah, if you wanna check out my Tumblr than click here. All that's really on there atm is a link directing to my Ko-Fi, Newgrounds and Youtube.


New Projects!

"Alright enough FUNNY BUISNESS! Where are the damn games Levi!"


Well, there aren't gonna be any new games coming out this year! Gappy 3 was the last of what I wanted to get done this year, and I'm glad you all liked it, if you haven't played it than check it out below!



BUT! Something is gonna be coming very soon at the start of next year, specifically for Pixel day 2023! I know we still have November and December to get through, but I'm bursting at the seams to show off this new project I'm working on, but I know waiting till it's a bit more cooked will make people as excited as I am. To tease some deets now it will be my NEXT steam game, and probably will take about 2 years to finish... HOWEVER, I plan on releasing a little prototype to show off the gameplay and to get some feedback on Pixel day!


I wanna talk about it more but that's all I can really say right now, you are just gonna have to wait! Trust me, it WILL be worth it! >:)


SHOOT TRIP DIE / BIRTHDAY SALE! / BIRTHDAY!

As I'm writing this I realized that I didn't make my birthday post :-(


I turned 21 on November 16th, and I went out to drink with me ol' man! (Cool Guy he is)

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(My girlfriend also bought me that Kirby Sweatshirt! Very sweet of her!)


I also ate big slices of cake, got lots and lots of presents, went to an abandon K-mart and even got some fanart which was VERY cool! I think most of it was on twitter (how Ironic) but here is a piece done by @pasteluluu <3



Anywho, I also put my game SHOOT TRIP DIE on sale for 90% off! starting the 16th of November, all the way through November 30th! It's .99 cents atm so if you haven't had the chance to pick it up then there is no excuse! It got an update recently too which added a lot of new items and ANOTHER coat of polish on one of my most polished games I've made (thus far) So BUY SHOOT TRIP DIE ON STEAM please please please!!!!


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But anyways, that's all I gotta say...


Bottom line is, I'm gonna be straying away from posting on Twitter even if the website sinks or swims, and instead focus more on long-form, blog posts that will be very, very wordy. I've made a Tumblr so it'll be another place you can find the blogposts if you so wish to read them on there. Rest in piss twitter, although you were funny at times, you were also a big waste of my damn time. May those who do not have Tumblr and Newgrounds who liked my stuff somehow find there way back to me, I want your damn money stranger! Also, BUY SHOOT TRIP DIE (It's on sale!)


-Levi Ramirez


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