I still don’t know when the whole set of sprites will be ready but I’m getting close to the end of it. Here’s a shot of a transition sprite I’m adding between the original falling pose and the knocked-out pose:

An in-progress pic of Bred's falling-to-KO transition frame.

Logos – Avenging Spirit, Alien Storm, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Chinese Hero, Dark Seal, Joe & Mac, Kangaroo, Lady Master, Mappy, Magician Lord, Mutation Nation, Ninja Combat, Ninja Commando, Psycho Soldier, Strider (JPN & USA arcade, NES),

Mini-logos – Joe & Mac (separate logos, of course), Kage (the Legend of Kage), Kung-Fu Master, Mappy, Metroid (NES and Super Metroid style), Twinbee, the Punisher, Swamp Thing, She-Hulk.

So now there’s a Bred and Dug sprite on the Capcom custom sprite page. That normally wouldn’t be a big deal unless…

… I decided to make more. This is one of the things I posted a teaser image of a while back. I’m working on a Street Fighter Alpha-ish sprite set of Bred and a head-swapped Dug to go with it. I’m resizing arcade F.F. sprites by 112% and tracing the linework while giving it a more SFA look. Some poses, like the jump, are being redone altogether. This will not be an insanely fluid set of sprites although I am adding transition frames to every animation. This is a slow burn project since I’m also working on a comic book right now but expect Bred and Dug to be finished early this year. I already have a demo test of him using OpenBOR and I’ll try to make a video of this as soon as I can.

The Beats of Rage section gets a big new addition: all of the food and items from the arcade version of Final Fight. All of the bonus items have their proper scores and the food has already been calculated to fit the default 100 pixel long health bars in Beats of Rage and should work for games that use percentage health displays. There are instructions inside if you want to convert the food back to their original 144px. bar values. Item graphics were taken with Kawaks and are still in their original colors so you’ll have to apply your own palette. Please let me know if there are any problems with this set by replying in this news post.

I’ve also been working on more of those rectangle graphics that you see in certain parts of the site.

Here’s a look at something else I’ve been working on:

This news source can’t possibly be more appropriate as AtariAge.com spreads the word that the upcoming Atari Flashback 2+, a plug-and-play Atari 2600 with 40 built-in games, can be pre-ordered from Atari at this link for $29.99. There’s a beautiful bonus item of an Atari t-shirt with a 2600 on it. Seeing as how some places on the internet will try and charge that price just for a “distressed” t-shirt alone, that’s not a bad deal at all.

Whip Ass Gaming has been on an update rampage so furious that I’m not even going to tell you what was added because something may get added as I type this. Just look for yourself and be sure to check out the Sound{e}scapes section.

Last, but not least, GM Spectre posted another new character teaser for the next update of his King of Fighters XX fighting game based on the UFGE engine. The game is an insane mixture of KoF, old-school gaming characters and internet memes that gets iller every time GM posts something new. The latest video is no exception:

Meanwhile, I’m still fishing through links on the site and replacing old Gamespy/ClassicGaming and GeoCities links. I fixed a few more tonight but it’s still going to be like “the rest of the broken glass” in that I’ll probably be finding more every time I try to clean up.

ScrollBoss Blog – The new ScrollBoss web log (powered by WordPress) will be getting a workout by serving as a blog, an eventual feedback outlet for things and the new engine for the site update news posts. If you’re reading this on ScrollBoss’ main menu, you’re really reading the weblog. The good news is that I can copy the old news posts and use their old dates to keep everything in order. The bad news is that I don’t think I can copy the responses. That old news (and responses) will be archived on the Old News page. The MugenBoss index page also got this update but it still looks ugly overall. That’s one of the sections I’ll be working on this year because the header is too damned fugly.

Tips and Cheats – The entire section has been modified to not suck as much. Each tip now has a link to the game’s index page if it exists. Added tips for Contra (NES), SoR3, Final Fight (SNES), Sonic Blast Man (SNES). Nothing that you couldn’t get from any decent code site but I may as well have it here too. I’m also trying to use more accurate tip descriptions like the Sonic Blast Man code that is always described as a level select even though it’s not.

Game Index and 1989 – Another code rewrite shows up on the Game Index’s main page and the 1989 Game List. Ninja Gaiden (NES), Sonic Blast Man added and the 1989 Game List was updated.

Logos – Sonic Blast Man added.

Mini-logos – Bayou Billy, Emma Frost, Vigilante (IREM) added.

All of the posts before this one are archived versions of old website updates. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get all of the old ones added. There is a grand total of 208 posts using the CuteNews system and that doesn’t count the 3 years of update posts I typed right onto mainmenu.html. Yes, I still have some of those saved somewhere.

1.) A few system bugs with the Company Index have been fixed.
2.) Double Dragon II (NES) and S.P.Y. (Arcade) were added to the Game Index.
3.) Vs. Maker just got a new company: Technos. The Lee Brothers, Kunio-Kun and new sprite edits of Alex and Ryan from River City Ransom were added to the Vs. Maker. Nothing spectacular but I think Alex and Ryan really deserved to show up before the theme month was over.
4.) You may have noticed that the main menu has a slightly new style for the header. Hopefully, these new, adjustable headers will help the page adapt to more screen sizes and ratios. The old Brawlstreet and a new Strider banner are the only two for now but there will be more added throughout 2010.

Things go back to normal in January with update about every two weeks. See you next year!

(originally posted on Thu, 31 December 2009 05:18:21 by PrimeOp )

Game Index – Due to the growing size of the Mini-logo page, links now lead directly to the relevant section of that page. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade) and Batman (NES) were added.

Vs. Maker Generator – The first thing that you’ll notice is that there are now six character slots. After you select characters, you’ll notice that the second menu page only displays the characters that will be appearing in the shot and that the preview graphics resize themselves depending on how many characters will be in the shot. I recoded a few bits to make that possible along with paving the way for more character slots. All of the new characters and themes are connected to 1989 games. I’ve posted some obvious tease preview shots for a few weeks now but there are still a lot of surprises. Here’s the line-up

Characters Added: Ax-Battler, Gilius Thunderhead, Tyris Flare, Death Adder, ESWAT I.C.E. armor, Ryu Hayabusa & Irene Lew (Ninja Gaiden NES style), Clark Still & Ralf Jones (Ikari 1-3 outfits!), Solo, Ton Pooh, & Two.P. Last but not least…

… Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Look, it’s the 20th Anniversary of their NES and Arcade games along with their 25th Anniversary in comics so they had to join in.

Characters updated: Andore/Hugo (Andore logo), Batman (1989 film sprite and logo)

Themes: King of Fighters ‘94. I would’ve used ‘98 to almost fit the month’s theme but they didn’t do much with the sprites in the VS. intro there.

Mini-logos – Andore, Astyanax, Ax-Battler, Gilius Thunderhead, Musashi (Shinobi), Irene Lew, Clark Still, Ralf Jones, Solo (Strider), Ton Pooh, Two.P, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, Batman (1989 film).

Custom Sprites – Everything on the “Game-Related” page has been split into their own appropriate company pages. Here are the new sprites:
TMNT (NEW PAGE!): Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo sprites (from scratch)
Sega: Ax-Battler, Death Adder, Gilius Thunderhead, ESWAT I.C.E. armored officers and File 96 (from ESWAT)
SNK: Ralf (Ikari Warriors 1-3 outfits)
Tecmo: Ryu Hayabusa (NES stance) and Irene Lew (NG1)
DC Comics: Batman (1989 film sprite)
Capcom: Two.P

Sprites – Batman gets solo page with a few sprites from the NES game by Sunsoft. Sprites from the 1989 TMNT arcade game were added to the TMNT sprite page.

Articles – The 1989 article series continues with a short look at two famous magazines that made their debut in 1989: EGM and GamePro.

There may be some adjustments and fixes made to this update but that’s it for now.

(originally posted on Sun, 27 December 2009 04:53:02 by PrimeOp)

The update won’t be on Friday because that will be Christmas Day which should be spent chillin’. Since I’ll need some John Witherspoon-like co-ordination with the Illmosis site on this next update, both spots will have a joint 1989 update this weekend. There will be lots of sprite edits and a few sprites made from scratch including the best scratch sprite I’ve done yet. Most of them will be part of the big Vs. Maker update and the biggest character surprises haven’t been in any of the teaser shots and I’m hoping to add a few more things before the big upload on Sunday. See you then and have a Merry Christmas!

(Originally posted on Thu, 24 December 2009 02:15:43 by PrimeOp)