Bravo, Pelo, bravo. You made it through the testing. Now, can you keep this momentum even when the House of Wolves drops in Destiny next week...?

Yes, despite all sorts of distractions, a sudden urge to catch up on all the YouTube videos in my inbox, and a desire to memorize a bunch of Creepypastas, I have been able to complete the necessary testing to begin my new game, "Kings' Corners Solitaire".

My mother taught me this game about ten years ago, and the goal very simple. On a 16 x 16 grid, the Kings must be placed in the corners, the Queens must be on the top and bottom edges, and the Jacks on the left and right edges (see below). Any non-face card can be placed in any spot in this grid. Once all spots are filled, non-face cards can be removed in pairs if they equal 10 (example: 7 + 3, Ace + 9, 5 + 5, 10). Cards can be then placed again. This continues until the deck runs out.

However, if a face card is drawn and all of its spots are filled, you instantly lose. For example, if you draw a King of Clubs and the corners are occupied by a 2 of Spades, King of Hearts, King of Spades, and a 7 of diamonds, you cannot place the King of Clubs in a corner and lose the game.

You also lose if you are unable to remove any of the non-face cards from the field. For example, if all face cards are in place and the 7 of Hearts, 6 of Spades, Ace of Hearts, and 2 of Clubs are in the center spots, you are unable to make pairs equal to ten and lose.

Either I suck at it, or it's a lot harder than it looks. It took me months to get my first win, and even then they are few and far between. And yet, I find it to be really fun and addicting. Maybe you will too?

In an interesting turn of events, saucybird has said he'd be willing to help make some music for it. Sweet!

~Pelo

Hello. It's been awhile. Maybe...four and a half years?

Last time I posted, I said Bill's Quest (a simple but long turn based RPG that I worked on with this guy for a couple years) would be coming out soon. Clearly, that wasn't the case. I inexplicably lost the drive to program during most of my freshman year of college (might have had something to do with new found freedom); even when I got my drive back, the game had become too big to handle on my computer and needed my university's computers (not the best thing when I'm a lazy scrub who doesn't want to walk halfway across campus, especially if there's a chance the labs will be occupied by people doing important things). Because I had separated the battle section and overworld into two files, it became fragmented when I tried putting it back together. It would have required a complete overhaul to put it back together.

In a way, I'm kinda glad it didn't make it. The voice acting and dialogue were meh at best (I'm not a good writer), I couldn't introduce some game mechanics with clarity, and the combat needed some balancing that I just couldn't fine tune.

My biggest regret was feeling like I let my animator down. He had put so much time and effort into creating the wonderful and hilarious world, putting up with my nonsense, and just being a darn good sport. And yet I couldn't finish it. As a result, I stopped programming and even thinking of posting on Newgrounds for fear of coming across as an ungrateful jerk. But he emailed me a couple months ago, and assured me that there was no bad blood (plus his email put a smile on my face when I was having a lousy day).

Now that I've found myself at a good place between games (just finished Dying Light, and have lost the major drive to waste my life away in Destiny and Minecraft), I think now is the right time to get back into game design. I'll screw around with basic testing again, and maybe this time I'll finish a major project. If I do make through the testing, I'll post again with what exactly I want to do (and how I plan to torture I mean entertain you wonderful people).

Until next time.

~Pelo

Well, it's as close as it's ever come to being finished...it's so close...I can feel it. I just have a couple glitches to fix and a few new graphics from Goat-Man, and it'll be all said and done.

I'm really excited. This masterpiece is almost complete! I know I've been saying that for a long time, but I mean it this time. I'm forecasting a release this winter, after college is done. That way, he and I will be able to pump out the goods in no time at all!

~Pelo

P.S. I like this picture.

Greetings to the less than dozen of you that find this.

So after two weeks of being silent (specifically to my testers), I finally released beta 3.0 for massacre I mean testing. For every patch, there emerges a new idea or glitch that should be tended to. But slowly and surely this game will be finished.

Did I mention this game will have achievements? If Tom is gracious enough to give me the green light, it won't just be in game achievements either.

Currently the file is at 14.6MB. If Tom's graciousness from last year is still there, I won't have a problem uploading it if it's under 20MB. Get excited folks!

Well, that's all for now. I'll poke my head up for air again once 4.0 (if there needs to be one) or a release is imminent.

~Pelo

P.S. I think the picture below is a good idea on how the project has felt for the past three years.

I...I can't believe it...I found out how to call upon the audio portal music...which means...

YES!! Bill's Quest will be under 20MB!! YEAH!!

Now I just need to master the music settings and such, and then I'll get the beta out hopefully by the end of this week!

~Pelo

P.S. Those are tears of joy.

All along it was the music that was making Bill's Quest unable to compile...I should've seen it coming, but that means I didn't need to upgrade to CS4! Son of a bitch! Oh well, at least I still got a crap ton of other good stuff with the package.

Anyways, I just need to fix one or two more glitches in the battle section and another beta is ready for release.

Other important but low tier requirements are music, texture fixing, and restore cutscenes to full length. The last two are easy, but the music is what makes me wonder...but three NG radios that allow you to call upon the Audio Portal later, and I have a great idea...

Call upon music from the Audio Portal! But the question is...How? How does one do that? I must find the answer!

~Pelo

P.S. Pic unrelated...sorta. This whole project has been a mess (like a strand of Christmas lights), but soon it will be complete!

Holy shit, guys, Bill's Quest!!

I'm wicked excited! I've been pumping out a lot of stuff for Bill's Quest in the past couple weeks thanks to a CS4 upgrade, free time, and determination. There are still a few things that need to be added:

~Tweak gun battle damage some (was too strong, now it's too weak).
~Play around with ammo inventory (created to balance gun attacks) to ensure the gun won't fire if there isn't any ammo.
~Change one map around(?).
~Get the damned learn move menu to work.
~Add tutorials.
~Remerge files.
~Get remaining music.

It's come a long way, and it's finally almost done! Expect it by the end of the summer!

~Pelo

P.S. Should I add the piece below and other things I did last summer to my art section here on NG?

Yeah yeah, I know...this thing called "Bill's Quest" that I've been promising you for about three years has still yet to ripen. At least it's made it to its beta stage, but not much farther.

You see, there's this thing called "school" that has gotten in the way of the damn project since it was thought of. Starting with 12th grade, followed by Freshman year of college, now I'm half way through my second year...but you see, school has this amazing ability to drain energy from making huge projects. I can't put my finger on it...especially here. I don't know why, and it's very irksome.

It's even more irksome because I can't finish the damn game on my computer anymore...I have to use the library's computers 'cause my computer can't handle the damn file anymore, Vista hates it (causes it to crash before even loading), and now it's in CS4. So my solution to the problem is using the library's Mac computers because they were built for this shit.

Three problems exist:

1. I don't like moving around sometimes, especially when the weather sucks. Good news is when my motivation is up enough, I will get my ass to the library to do it. Unless of course...

2. All the Macs might be taken. Sure, there are lots of computers in the library, but only half are Macs, and they seem to be highly coveted. Gee, I can't imagine why...oh right, every other computer in the lab area is a Vista. Vista or Mac...which would you rather work with? (However, if they upgraded to Windows 7, oh please dear god I hope they did, then it might not be an issue anymore). Regardless of what platform is used, though, doesn't matter because...

3. They're all public computers. Every time you log off, it resets everything to default settings. Sure, I need to make sure my Flash Drive is with me, and make absolutely sure the file I saved to the desktop to make it compile and save faster is on the Flash Drive. That's no big issue. But CS4 itself is still a new layout for me (I still use Flash 8), and every time I customize the layout, it resets. It gets really annoying really fast and clouds my judgment of how CS4 is.

Another issue is because I don't have CS4, I can't work on the project when I have the most free time of all: School breaks. Time I used to spend making the file my bitch is now used wishing I could work on it, and feeling guilty about not finishing it prevents me from doing anything else in Flash. Fuck.

So lack of sufficient software, time consumption, distractions, socializing (holy shit, I do this?!), and school keep me from doing what I love most.

But!

There is good news. I'm going to split the file into two: One for battles, one for everything else. The battle components take for-fucking-ever to load and save.

So when I get around to it (hopefully this weekend), I'm gonna get this game back on track and give you Bill's Quest Beta 2.0!

Fuck yeah!

~Pelo

P.S. And now for something completely different:

So a beta has been out for a few weeks now, but due to important college stuffs I've only had time to make a few fixes. The poor game is riddled with bugs, and each time someone tests it more is found that can be fixed. I also feel that the equation for battle damage is unbalanced, so I'm probably gonna fix that too.

In the past if I became overwhelmed with college stuffs I could just work on the game at home. Well, not anymore...I've had to use the library computers because mine can't handle it anymore, and the ones I've been using have CS4. That's right, kids, you now need Flash 10 to play my game. Do be so kind as to spread the word to people to download Flash 10 if they haven't already.

Not much else to say, really...'cept go and check this out because it's too short for Newgrounds.

~Pelo

P.S. Behold one of my aquarium inhabitants...elusive little bastard he is.

And I mean really close. Hell, it's so close I could lick it.

And the best part is I don't have to worry about my computer running out of memory! Seems that the campus computers can handle this SOB. FUCK YEAH!

Unfortunately, my original music artist, ZombieBeaver, ran out of ideas for songs, and the second person I called in for music realized he was too busy. Fortunately, a couple friends (Iplaygames and japanesekanji) are both gracious enough to help come up with the remaining music.

Goat-Man continues to create epic cutscenes (and I'm giving you all a treat...a screen shot from Bill's Quest from the last scene he sent me). This guy has given much of the game a funny and epic aura. Be sure to stop by and thank him for it. =3

Finally, I'm almost done with the basics...just the bosses need attention, and by golly I'll give 'em some! ...just as soon as I do a little reading for my classes. This year I wanna do good in school and Flash, but school comes first. However, this game WILLget done. I mean it this time!

Until next time,

~Pelo