Adam Searle » Blog

www.ninja-man.com

Recently updated, including pics, a teaser video, and a release date - sometime around NYE. Getting close Posting links around to it on various forums that I frequent, and thus far its getting a good response. coolio

In other news hmmm. Its been the nights of christmas street lights. Last night I went with gem jess and crew on a tour near Hornsby, that was pretty fun. Very christmas spirity, plus I’m a sucker for lights. Tonight went with some of the other cofa-ites down to Fairlight. Other than the fact we probably walked through the street too quickly to not have a real look, it was fun heh. Then chilled by the beach at Manly, was an ok evening.

Christmas soon. hmmm. Got some more shopping to do in that case. Also gotta get new tires for my car, blardy, one popped, and the two front ones are.. very bald right now. Slot that in between the physio appointment tmr and the pissup bbq at gems tmr arvo, yay, haha!

Here’s hoping for an interesting christmas, its been a bit uninteresting lately. Passed up going to a christmas street party tonight (well really found out bout it too late), which last year made for an fun few months after it (met a cool friend there). So for now, I coast along, idle.

(2 blog posts in one night, rockin!)

I (we) have a branding problem, with ninjaman. We don’t know what to call it. See back in 2004, we made ‘Ninjaman’ for the second half of the year. The game was STOLEN by some website who I care not to mention here, it was a bit flattering, but on the whole annoying because they are one of the key ‘bad’ flash sites that steals games and never responds to emails requesting them to be pulled down. So that was ‘Ninjaman’

In 2005, we spent the whole year redoing ninjaman and making it totally pimp. It was a massive massive effort. The 2004 effort was a lot for its time, but the 2005 effort was many times greater (also as I could focus most of the year on it, I didn’t need to do well in any other subject, and I had relatively easy subjects, and Andy Polaine is awesome for giving me 6 units of credit for the annual cd!). So do we call this ninjaman, Ninjaman2? Or just ‘Ninjaman’? Considering we see this as the version we wish to market - as we didn’t market 2004’s effort - maybe starting off on a clean slate as Ninjaman is the way to go. Irrelevant for online distribution, but our physically printed CD cases (they look awesome - proper game cases etc) refer to it as ‘Ninjaman’.

Next year, we may further expand on Ninjaman, adding in what we didn’t have time for this year: more levels, more enemies, an end boss, and maybe a story. Jason would like to hence call this Ninjaman Preview, and next years one Ninjaman Complete. Does attaching ‘preview’ to this release downplay it a bit? (or demo, or teaser, or similar words). What about 2004/2005/2006?

Right now I’m leaning towards calling this Ninjaman, the previous one…. Ninjaman Preview or something, and whatever else we have on the horizon, we’ll work that out then.

Yikes. So I left this for months… so how about a super quick recap of life lately…

Just finished uni. It was super hectic towards the end, insanely so, I’ll never work that hard again in my lift. Pulled a 60hr week (of constant work, not including breaks), and damn near killed myself for it. But all is done, woo, 3 years done, degree done, yay.

Made something called the cofa annual cd, a big portfolio cd of a bunch of students work. Technical director for that. Cool. Good experience. Some pretty cool work on it. Go grab one from cofa, and like, offer me a job. I’m on the market, how pimp

Had the cofa annual - our end of year graduating students exhibition. We showed ninjaman. It rocked. We had playstation pads hooked up to the computers so users could play it. There was a screening element to the show, and we had our ninjaman trailer up for that. Again, it rocked, and got a great crowd response.

Been looking for work. Yes, 2006, the year of real work. Got a couple of promising leads, so hopefully something finalises on that front. Coolies.

Kind of broke my leg earlier in semester. Yeah, that sucks. I say kind of because (long medical history aside) I just put a crack in my shin, so it remains together, and after a few weeks was walkable again. Still got a while to go healing. Did it at work, the bastards, walking off a curb on the road, which I’d done a million times before. Just unluckily lost my footing, fell, and on the way down put pressure down my leg in a bad way, caused a slight crack in the bone. I’ve been clear of broken bones for the past few years, so its a bit of a.. surprise, however by no means an unlikely one. So just gotta… rest it up.

After all of that chaos, I buggered off to noosa (queensland) for 10 days with some uni mates. Was a rockin trip; drinking every day, lazing around, really living in our own world.. which was a great change hah! One of those ‘friends for life’ type trips really. Fuckin awesome trip really, needed it after 18 months of Fun but Hell lately, heh.

Got back, done shit all. Burnout revenge is awesome. Trying to get back into GTA:SA by starting again. All up not wanting to do much. The OC season 3 rocks (so neer to OC haters). Bumming around home. Quite broke, so thats annoying. Wondering if I should get some quick summer work to tide me over. Anyone got a few week flash project they need done?
Finally saw american pie 3, that was.. ok. Mean machine, what the fuck, the story was 90% identical to another football based movie I saw last year, though I can’t remember the name to it. Seriously creepy deja-vu. Like what the fuck. Oh, and I think my free dvd time might be up. A mate has a dvd unlimited plan with one of the major chains, and gave me the card (score!). So I tell them I’m a member of their family. Until the other day, when they suddenly wanted proof (why.. I don’t look that suss..). Sir, whats the password? uhh. Sir, what’s your address? (I got that). And the postcode? uhh.. I…. moved out! a while back, so I don’t live with them now. Sir, your phone number there? Hang on, I’ll just check on my phone He said I didn’t do a good job at proving who I was, but bought it in the end. blah. I think my free dvd trip is at an end..

Planning out the rest of 05. Got a big family day lined up for christmas, some chillin on boxing day, looks like a bit of a trip away for new years, rockin

Trying to not be too lazy however. See, I started blogging again! Trying to update the ninjaman website; feels so alien since we finished it 99.9% for the cofa annual. We’re aiming for a release in a week or so, awesome, so you’d better all check it out! I want to hit 10,000 plays of ninjaman really soon, so then I can brag about it. Well not really, but how awesome will that be. Lets make it into an internet wide fanfare, that would be rockin.

I want a new phone, cant decide what to get. The geek side of me insists it must be a 3G handset with a high res display. The wanna-be-cool impressionist in me wants a slider design, cos they look hot. The developer in me wants one that does all the funky new 3d stuff (hey, one day maybe I could..). The broke ass fool typing this however says fuck it you don’t have the money. Aww.

I’ve forgotten how releasing a blog post can be. Cool. Hopefully I’ll do it more often. So come back, and like.. comment or something, or just play my game and make us ‘the ninjaman guys!’ cos thats a rockin pickup line (said with more sarcasm than my usual sarcastic comments :P)