Super Toaster X: Learn Japanese

*As you can guess the title means “24” in Chinese.

I’m getting more mail about the project and that’s always a nice surprise. Means the game is getting more popular.


Coming soon!


Another day, another build! I had been looking forward to this one. You’ll notice a lot of new things got implemented.



I’ve been considering something for a little while now which I’d like to talk about. This is part of the narrative.
Instead of having a single bread character from the dough, there would many. One to rescue in each stage. Those sentient pastries would form the “Breasistance”, a rebellious group who wants to escape the clutches of The Dough.

I’d like to have a stretch goal where you can get to play as the characters you’ve rescued. I think this would add a lot variety to the game and selecting your character is always fun. This would mean a lot more work but I’d be up to it.
I’ve thought of a few ideas:

Dynamite Donut: expert in demolition and explosives.

Blade Baguette or Bayonette Baguette: A French baguette expert in close combat with blades (dual knives).

Speckendick Sniper: Slow but long range attacks.

The problem is that they wouldn’t have the personality of Pan. Another possibility is to have the option to switch characters at the press of a button just like in Castlevania III on the NES.

Maybe I should just keep them as NPC. I’ll see. I already have a good idea as they what they’d look like.


So today I thought I’d go more in depth about drawing stuff for the game and the process it implies. I thought it would interest you.

So this time around, I wanted to draw an aquatic foe for the bathroom level. Hopefully, this will be the last for this stage so that I can move on to other things. Not that I mind drawing characters, it’s certainly more fun that drawing tileset.

So anyway, a piranha seemed a good option, a mechanic one that is.

Step 1:
The first thing I do is use google image for a reference so that I can have better idea as to what a piranha actually looks like (as opposed to relying on my memory of what it looks like). So I type up piranha and use a picture I like. Then I launch Graphics Gale, open a new files and put them side by side.



Step 2:
I then zoom in, use a bigger brush and pixel paint the general shape. I then outline the whole thing in black to allow me to see better. This takes a minute or so. As you can see, it’s nowhere near presentable but I’m just getting started (that's the fish on the right in the picture above, in graphicsgale).

Step 3:
I try to refine the shape of the fish to make it look more similar to the reference.

It’s already much better. Now I have a good foundation to work on. I’ve exaggerated the maw a bit and would probably exaggerate it more too to make the whole thing more cartoonish.

Step 4:
Then I’ll toy around with colors until I find a combination I’m happy with.


Step 5:
It’s pretty close to being done. I then decide to add something a bit unusual. A periscope in this case.



Step 6:
And then I animated the whole thing. The animation is minimal in this case. I only had to redraw the maw, the rest I could just move around and modify a tiny bit.


I'd say the whole process takes about 2 hours. I picked up speed though. Back then it would've taken me 8 hours to do this. I just changed the way I worked really.

And so that’s how I do my little foes for STG. I hope you liked it!

Also, the “start stage” animation for those who might’ve missed it (then again it's my avatar too so, hard to miss really!  :monoclepop:).


Behind the scenes: by Sahand:

How did you get into programming?



It actually started out pretty silly: When I reached the age of ten, maybe eleven(don't know anymore D:), I only had to go 'till the end of elementary school, so you can imagine middle schools were already starting to lure innocent naïve children to their schools.

One of those schools' locations was very close to my elementary school, so they had pretty close bonds. Every year they organised free workshops for children with only 1-2 years to go for some schools. They had many different things, cooking, lego mindstorm and some more stuff. One of those workshops was making games.

Me, the kid that had only just discovered gaming and especially Legend of Zelda( oh how I love Zelda <3), was pretty interested in following that workshop, so I did. It was pretty basic stuff, they gave you access to a computer, gave you a printed book thingy with some tutorials and let you work.

Most people stopped after that workshop, since it wasn't that exciting and very basic. I however, loved the idea of creating your own game, creating a world of your own that you could fill with your imagination(okay, I didn't think like that back then, but I'd like to think that was my reason), so I continued using Game Maker. At first (first two, maybe three years) I sucked, but got enjoyment out of it and kept getting better and better. And now here I am, programming for a soon-to-be kickstarter game ^^

-Sahand, programmer for STG

Aaaaaannnnnddd that's it! A special thank you to Sahand for writing this little paragraph on his own free time. In the next log, Nev should have something for the next Behind the scenes!