Archive for Gaming

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Santa Claus Outfit

Santa Claus Costume for Animal Crossing: New Leaf

I haven’t been playing Animal Crossing much lately. Too many other games have been released recently, plus the whole college thing getting in the way. Anyway, I visited my village, Dinotown, long enough to spread holiday cheer and make a couple festive outfits. This post contains the QR codes for a Santa Claus outfit. (Check my next post for Mrs. Claus.)

Here is my character cross dressing as Santa Claus:

Santa Claus Costume for Animal Crossing: New Leaf

And here are the QR codes if you’d like to dress your character as Santa Claus.

Santa Claus Costume QR Code Santa Claus Costume QR Code Santa Claus Costume QR Code Santa Claus Costume QR Code

I also made a design for a matching hat. It’s a very simple non-pro design that could be replicated in about half a minute, but here’s the QR code if you would like to use it:

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Santa Claus Hat QR Design

Merry Christmas!

I also have a Mrs. Claus QR design! Animal Crossing: New Leaf Mrs. Claus Outfit

First Impression of Pokemon X and Y

Swirlix - Adorable Fairy Type Pokemon

It’s only been two days since Pokemon X and Y were released, but it’s probably already my favorite game in the series (I got Pokemon X, my boyfriend got Y). While staying true to the previous iterations of the series, there are enough new features and changes to give long time fans the same sense of wonder and discovery that they got the first time they set foot in the Kanto region all those years ago.

There seems to be way more different types of wild Pokemon in Kalos than in previous regions. I’ve only earned one gym badge so far (after spending 16 hours in the game already!), and have already had run-ins with 91 different types of Pokemon. There is a nice mixture of brand new Pokemon and Pokemon introduced in previous games (I’m always super excited when I encounter a gen 1 Pokemon in the wild). The sheer amount of Pokemon can be almost overwhelming since there is no way to give each Pokemon captured the attention they deserve, but it also makes the newly implemented online features more engaging and fun. If there were fewer types of Pokemon, new features such as Wonder Trade wouldn’t be very fun at all.

Sylveon - Adorable Fairy-type EeveelutionAt first, I thought the Wonder Trade feature would be lame, since of course most people are going to be trading level 3 Pidgey and Bunnelby, but I’ve already gotten enough cool trades to make the feature well worth using. I got a Riolu, or rather リオル, as he is called since he was originally caught by a Japanese trainer. I was super excited when I got him. That is, until a couple hours later when I got my adorable little イーブイ (Eevee) from another trainer in Japan. Not only was it exciting just to have an Eevee in my party, it was also exciting to know that Eevees are apparently common enough in Kalos that I will be able to easily acquire more (since no one is going to be trading something that they can only get one of). I hope to get enough Eevees to have one of each Eeveelution. I can’t decide if I want a Vaporeon or a Sylveon first! Even when you get something lame in Wonder Trade, it is easy to simply trade it again until you end up with something Awesome.

It’s also fun to see all of the different places where other Pokemon Trainers live. My first Wonder Trade partner was someone from the Cayman Islands. I’ve also met a lot of people from Japan, and quite a few from Chile, France, South Korea, Canada, and various other places. Normally when I play games online, everyone I run into is either from the US or Japan.

Fennekin Pokemon X and Y starterAside from Wonder Trade, trading and battling with friends is now even easier than ever. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing, run to the Pokemon Center, and change out your party Pokemon before connecting with your friend anymore. You simply click on their face on the PSS and go from there. I especially like the fact that you can choose any Pokemon from your computer storage boxes. It makes it convenient to trade as soon as you catch a Pokemon for your friend.

It’s also way easier to level up your Pokemon now, via the experience share item you get early in the game. Now you don’t ever have to send your Caterpie or Weedle into battle to get a Butterfree or Beedrill. The only downside is that my Braixen, Mozilla, is almost level 30 and I haven’t gotten my Cliff Badge yet. He might have to go into storage for a while until I need him again.

Anyway, Pokemon X and Y are pretty awesome so far. My only big complaint is that the over world isn’t in 3D. I was looking forward to an entirely 3D Pokemon game since the 3DS first game out, so it was pretty disappointing when I noticed the 3D turned off after the opening sequence. The battles and inside of caves are still in 3D though, so at least it does use the 3D capabilities somewhat.

Blue Flower FlabebeThe only other small complaint I had was that it wouldn’t let me name my blue Flabébé “Violet,” since apparently “viol” means something offensive in French. I understand that they don’t want people giving Pokemon offensive names and then trading them to children, but come on. Violet is a perfectly nice name for a Pokemon that looks like a flower. I settled on naming it “Lily” instead.

That’s it for now. There are still a lot of features that I haven’t fully explored yet in Pokemon X. If you want to add me to trade or battle, my friend code is 4596-9463-6149. Please comment with your friend code or send me a message on Facebook (my FaceBook link is on the top of my blog’s sidebar) if you’d like to be my 3DS friend!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Jigglypuff Pokémon Design

I just made a new custom design for Animal Crossing: New Leaf exclusively for readers of my blog and visitors to my AC:NL town, Dinotown. In honor of Pokemon X and Y, which will be release for 3DS next month, I would like to share this adorable Jigglypuff design.
Feel free to use this QR code in the Able Sisters’ shop to get my Jigglypuff sprite design.
Jigglypuff Animal Crossing New Leaf Pokemon QR design

What kinds of designs would you like to see in the future? More sprites? Fun pro design cosplay costumes? Also, what is your favorite Pokemon? Let me know in the comments!

Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk

Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk by Jen Ný

I have just uploaded the first game I made in Game Maker Studio 8 for my game design class. It’s called Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk. In the game, you play as a mother dragon who must rescue her babies from Evil Ottilia.

It is a very simple game. There is only one room, where you shoot demons and save baby dragons to accumulate points. When you get hit by a demon or evil baby dragon, the game ends and your high score is recorded. I was trying to go for an old-school Atari-ish feel with the graphics (if you couldn’t already tell by the reference to Evil Otto from Berzerk.) Evil Otto was the most evil thing I could think of, and Evil Ottilia is a reference to him.

I created all of the sprites and the background image with PyxelEdit. For the sound effects, I used audacity (my own voice with the pitch changed). The background music is from StageLight.

YoYoGames

Evilottilia

Evil Ottilia Goes Berserk
Added: 19 September 2013
By: Nybiru

Evil Ottilia was created in less than one week during my first week of class, based on the Evil Clutches tutorial from The Game Maker’s Apprentice. I may eventually go back and add more levels and features to this game to make it more exciting.

I do have another game ready that I will share in my next post. I am also currently working on my third game project, as well as in the planning stages of another game that I hope to have ready to show off during Family Fest at Lorain County Community College in October.

I will be posting all of the games I create with Game Maker Studio for school to YoYo Games for free download.

Animal Crossing New Leaf QR Code Design: Pink Bubble Bobble Sprite

Since my Animal Crossing: New Leaf QR design posts are the most popular posts on my blog, today I would like to share with you a pink Bubble Bobble design I created for Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf Bubble Bobble QR Design

I use a modified version of this design for by town flag. I think it makes a fitting flag for Dinotown.

If you like this design, I also have a regular green Bubble Bobble and a Baby Yoshi design that I have posted over at 8BitBites.com.

Check back for more Animal Crossing: New Leaf content.

First Week of School!

I’ve just finished my first week of classes. It’s still early, but I’m already enjoying school a lot more than I did when I was working on my first degree. The Intro to Game Design class is pretty awesome.

I’ve already made one (extremely simple) game. I just want to make some new art assets and sound effects before submitting the project. I will be posting my finished game projects on this blog under the “Freebies” category until I get my game studio website up and running.

Aside from making games, we are also required to play games in the class. One assignment this week was to choose a AAA title to play from a list of games chosen by my professor. I’m going to get college credit for playing Bioshock! My college is also pretty cool in that students who don’t have their own Xbox 360 or PS3 are able to check out a console from the school library.

Well that’s about it for now. I have to get back to working on my game and finishing up a cosplay costume. Expect to see some photos of my Dragon’s Crown cosplay once it is finished (assuming I get it done in time for Midoricon, which starts Friday!).

Dragon’s Crown Runes

Dragon's Crown Runes

I’m planning to do a cosplay of the Elf from Dragon’s Crown for Midoricon in a couple weeks. I still haven’t finished my costume, despite the the con being the first weekend of September, but I did at least make a set of runes from the game as a prop (that I probably won’t use at all).
[Scroll to the bottom if you were just looking for the Dragon’s Crown rune guide]
Dragon's Crown Runes

I made them out of Sculpey oven-bake clay. The symbols were carved into the clay before baking and then painted (using a plastic tool that came with the clay, since I didn’t have a small enough brush) and then coated in Sculpey gloss glaze.

If you found this page because you were searching for a rune guide for Dragon’s Crown, here you go:

Dragon's Crown Runes Guide List

Click on the image for the full version. This Rune Chart was created by Reverof1 for GameFAQs.com. I used the images on the rune guide for reference when I was making my runes.

Going Back to School and Starting an Indie Game Company… At the Same Time

Grunt Birthday Party

As I briefly mentioned in a previous blog post, I will be going back to school at the end of August for Computer Game and Simulation Design, which is my college’s fancy way of saying “video game development.” It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting financial aid this semester because of the fact that I already earned an Associate of Arts (before I knew what I wanted to do with my life), but I should be able to afford at least this semester with what I have saved up. I have an appointment to speak with a guidance counselor in a couple weeks (which is the earliest appointment they had available).

I am also in the process of starting my own independent game company. I’ve always dreamed of starting my own business, and this will give me a lot of extra industry experience by time I finish my degree in game design. It might be crazy to be starting my own company while still in school, but plenty of other people have done it, and I’m just crazy enough to give it a shot. My plan is to start out small and offer my first few releases for free (supported by ads on the download pages) to generate buzz around my company while I gain more game making experience before actually trying to sell anything.

I’ve just started a new social media project on an independent contractor basis, so I’ll have some money coming in. I haven’t yet figured out what I’m going to do about my regular job. I don’t think I’ll be able to work 40 hours a week between the two jobs, plus work on getting my own company up and running, plus going to school full time. I don’t want my school work to suffer from lack of time that I’m able to spend on homework and studying.

Aside from applying for tons of scholarships for next semester and beyond, I’m brainstorming other ways to fund my education, such as crowd-funding. Have you tried crowd-funding to pay for your college tuition? Please post in the comments of this post what your experiences have been, both positive and negative.

Also, I’d like to hear from anyone else who has majored in game design or started their own indie game studio. How did you like your classes? If you already graduated, what are you doing now? If you own an indie game studio, how successful have you been thus far?

I’d really like to hear from anyone who’s on a similar career path. In this modern internet age, networking with like-minded individuals is probably one of the most important things you can do to become successful in your career.

I’ll keep this blog updated with my progress in school and in my indie game business.

(I don’t have an appropriate picture for this post, so I’ll just use a random Grunt enjoying his Grunt Birthday Party that I took on my phone many months ago.)

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Hula Girl Outfit

Animal Crossing New Leaf Hula Girl costume

In the spirit of summer, I’ve dressed my Animal Crossing: New Leaf character up like a hula dancer, complete with a coconut bra and grass skirt. While she doesn’t exactly fill out a coconut bra as well as you might expect from someone who’s (apparently) old enough to be mayor, this is the perfect outfit for collecting sea shells by the shore and visiting the island.

Here are the QR codes for this summery outfit:

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Hula Outfit QR 1Animal Crossing: New Leaf Hula Outfit QR 2Animal Crossing: New Leaf Hula Outfit QR 3Animal Crossing: New Leaf Hula Outfit QR 4

And even with the tiny coconuts, the gyroid on the island seems to be enjoying its view of this outfit.

Animal Crossing New Leaf Hula Girl costume

Elfen Lied in Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Elfen Lied Lucy cosplay

With Animal Crossing: New Leaf, you can cosplay any time you want, without spending any money to make your costume. Here’s my character dressed as Lucy from Elfen Lied:

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Elfen Lied Lucy cosplay

I designed the dress in the Able Sisters’ shop and paired it with appropriate shoes and leggings from Kicks. I’m still waiting to see if there is a purple hair bow or a white cat ear headband to finish the cosplay outfit.

If you would like to cosplay as Lucy in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, feel free to use the QR codes for my outfit:

ACNL Elfen Lied QR 1ACNL Elfen Lied QR 2ACNL Elfen Lied QR 3ACNL Elfen Lied QR 4

(Click on the images to enlarge, or they may not scan.)

I’ve also made my town tune Lilium (or at least as close to the song as I could within the limitations of the game).

Lilium-New-Leaf-town-tune

Feel free to use this tune for your town if you’d like.

If you have the Dream Suite, you can also check out a dream version of Dinotown to get my other designs (or to trample my flowers and hit my animal villagers with a net).

ACNL-Dream-Address

I will also be posting other fun designs here and on the facebook page for my gaming blog, 8BitBites.com. We will also be starting an Animal Crossing: New Leaf cosplay contest on 8BitBites soon. Check the site and FaceBook page for details later this week. You could have your original costumes displayed on the site!