Madness Scene Creator 5 has been updated to V2.01. This adds Sanford's hook - you can't have Sanford without his signature weapon! - and fixes a bug where one of Hank's heads couldn't be layered properly.

I'm currently gearing up for the release of Prism Indigo, on May 20th. I hope you'll look forward to it, even if it's not Madness-related.

My Ludum Dare 50 entry, The Flower of Marasca, has been updated to V1.1. This is the post-jam update, incorporating a number of things I ran out of time to include originally, and addressing several issues that were raised in people's reviews.

If you haven't rated it yet, you have 24 hours left to do so, so go rate it here.

The full changelog is as follows:

Additions

• Tooltips showing what to do at various points
• Sound effects when activating a checkpoint or landing
• Fireballs and bombs now destroy background decorations

Changes

• Each power pickup gives you more of that power, to reduce the chance of running out and getting softlocked
• The chamber with the Flower has been redesigned for extra grandeur
• You cannot scroll to a power you don’t have yet
• Tweaked a couple of enemies' move paths to prevent you from falling straight onto them
• Made the music a little less grating
• The intro/ending text now scrolls at variable speeds
• Altered sound effect when collecting a power

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the ability to fall through ceilings
• Fixed the ability to consume the Flower, which made the game unwinnable

My Ludum Dare 50 entry, The Flower of Marasca, is now finished. Give it a go, and then head on over to its rating page to give it some ratings and feedback.

In the meantime, I'm gonna go get some rest.

The 10th Anniversary Update to Madness Scene Creator 5 is now LIVE! This fixes the various problems that have been mentioned over the years, and adds a bunch of new content as well. Once again, I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has continued to play and enjoy MSC5 even after all this time. I never imagined, when I made my first scene creator in 2007, that people would still be playing them in 2022.

Here are the full patch notes:

• [FIXED] The mute button now works
• [FIXED] The layering system now works. Clicking on an object will move it in front of everything else in the scene.
• [FIXED] Objects now scale proportionately
• [FIXED] Certain objects did not rotate correctly
• [ADDED] All wounds and blood splats come in both normal and ATP versions. Hold B and click to toggle between them.
• [ADDED] All four hand types (normal, zombie, gloved, Auditor) now share the same poses
• [ADDED] Tricky's stop sign
• [ADDED] Muzzle flashes
• [CHANGED] The game now uses the Ruffle emulator by default, so you no longer have to manually switch to the emulated version
• [CHANGED] The UI is cleaner, clearer, and more consistent
• [CHANGED] Had to replace one of the gibbed heads as it was bugged and wouldn't let me create an ATP version of it

Known issues:

• When an object's blood colour is changed, it will sometimes change back immediately

Depending on feedback, there may be further updates, particularly in September when MMSC celebrates its 15th anniversary.

Enjoy!

With just a few hours left of 2021, I'd like to share my plans for 2022 with you, as it's set to be a big year for me.

2022 marks 10 years since the release of Katawa Shoujo, a game that changed my life in numerous ways (and which I found through a fan work here on Newgrounds). It marks 10 years since I underwent multiple surgeries to correct my severe scoliosis. But most importantly, it marks 10 years since I released Madness Scene Creator 5 - and 15 years since I released MMSC1.

As you may be aware, over the past few years, I've tried to leave the Madness scene creators behind and and move on to bigger and better things. Which brings me on to the first part of my plans for next year: Prism Indigo.

Prism Indigo is a magical girl-themed bullet hell shooter inspired by the Touhou Project series. It'll be my first full-sized video game, and as such, it's a project I'm extremely excited about. The 17-year-old me that created MSC5 couldn't have dreamed of being able to build something this complex, but here it is.

There's already a playable demo on GameJolt and itch.io, and I've just released the first of its boss themes. The full game will be released here on NG, for free, sometime around April. I hope you'll give it a try once it's released, as it's the product of 15 years of learning and practice, and I've been pouring my heart and soul into it.

But it's probably not what you're here for, is it?

As much as I've tried to move on from my Madness scene creators, I've never forgotten them, and I will forever be grateful to all the people who continue to play them and make such amazing scenes, even after all this time. And over the past year or so, it's become apparent that I'll never be able to move on from them completely.

Thanks to Friday Night Funkin and Madness: Project Nexus, Madness Combat has exploded in popularity, and my scene creators have too. I'm getting new fans and new reviews on a daily basis, and that amount of attention is hard to ignore. And with such a big anniversary coming up, I'd like to do something to show my gratitude to you all.

I'm therefore glad to announce that Madness Scene Creator 5 will be receiving TWO updates in 2022. The first will drop on February 28th, its 10th anniversary, and the second will drop on Madness Day 2022. These update will mainly focus on bug-fixes and quality-of-life improvements - in particular, I hope to finally fix the broken mute button and properly implement layering - but I'll also throw in some new items as well.

This won't be as easy as it sounds. I haven't used Flash in nearly a decade, I barely knew any ActionScript even at the time, and trying to find ActionScript documentation in 2022, when Flash hasn't been relevant for years, is going to be fun. But I'm going to try and do as much as I can. I feel I owe it to you guys, after all the support you've given me these past 15 years.

Finally, 2022 also marks the 50th anniversary of the first arcade game (Pong) and the first game console (the Magnavox Odyssey). I therefore intend to release a multi-part podcast detailing the history of the video gaming industry, from Pong and the Odyssey through to the modern era of microtransactions and lootboxes. I'm aiming to start this in September, releasing it in weekly instalments.

So as you can tell, I have plenty planned for 2022, and I hope you'll all continue to follow me as I continue my game dev journey.

It's been a while...

It seems there are people who still don't realise this, so I just want to make it as clear as possible:

If you try to play one of my scene creators, and all you see is a black screen, click the emulator link in the description and you'll be taken to a version that you can play. You'll be able to see the emulator link because it's the big bold orange text saying "click here".

I'm still getting people moaning about only seeing a black screen and leaving negative review scores when the solution is right there in front of them, and to be perfectly honest, it's getting very annoying.

This is an impressive milestone, and not one I ever expected to pass. I think I can credit this to the boom in activity that Friday Night Funkin' has generated: my Madness scene creators have all experienced a massive rise in views and reviews over the past few weeks.

I wish I could say I have something planned to celebrate this milestone, but I don't. So instead, I'll just say: thank you all for your continued support. It's amazing to me that, nearly a decade after I made the last one, people are still playing my scene creators and leaving such nice reviews and ratings. Long may it continue!

My Ludum Dare 48 entry, BreakEven, is now live! It had a lot of glitches when I first submitted it, so I help back from posting it here until I'd fixed it up a bit. That's now been done, so give it a go and be sure to rate it on the Ludum Dare website if you're a fellow participant.

This is also my first TIC-80 submission, so I'm interested to see how it does, as I have a few other TIC-80 projects in the pipeline...

My Ludum Dare 47 entry. Super Jump Guy, is live! Considering I programmed it in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, it turned out pretty well, I think.

Check it out here, and if you're a fellow Ludum Dare entrant, I'd appreciate a rating!