Cheese Media News

Temporary Nothingness

LostOverThere — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:50:17 +0000

Just a quickie: As both Petter and myself are stupidly busy at the moment, we won’t be able to do much for the next few weeks, so don’t expect any real news from us.

Until then, here are some things we may have forgotten to note as of late:

We have a snazzy new 404 error page.
Multiple chat conversations now exist in Pivot. People say multiple things!
“The war has arrived at the gates of Hillys.” According to Petter, anyhow.

April Update: Sound

Pete — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:54:34 +0000

As winter changes to spring on the Northern Hemisphere and summer changes to autumn on the southern, Pivot development proceeds. What we’ve been doing these last 4 weeks is the following:

Redesiging the Woods to make the gameplay less illogical, as well as adding an additional challenge
Adding some extra detailing and fixing a bunch of bugs
Replacing the sound engine with sinBass, since the old one wouldn’t work with our extensive saving system (which was covered in an old post)

In addition to this, we’ve started adding in various sound effects. Up ’til now the game has been quite bare of sound (apart from music), but now we’re bringing more life to the world by adding sounds. This includes rewarding jingles when you solve a puzzle, or small ambient noises like birds, rain and branches crunching as you walk through the forest. We really like adding a lot of detail to Pivot, and sound design is a big part of that. A cavern might look like a large, damp cavern but if it also sounds like a big, moist cavern, then you can suddenly feel the hugeness and moisture as well. Just my poetic thought of the day.

Keep your eyes open for more updates on the most anticipated platformer of 2010/2011/whenever it’s done!

The Galaxy Song

LostOverThere — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:31:30 +0000

Today we welcome a new chunk of visual content to Cheese Media, The Galaxy Song!

Experience an out of this world adventure through millions of light years of space! And remember: Not wanting to learn about the galaxy is not an option!

For more information, check out the official web page!

Misty Potatoes

Pete — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:19:59 +0000

A couple of months ago I started working on a version of the Main Pivot Theme in Dmaj7, and asked Nick to record some violin parts for it. Even though I’m unsure if it fits in-game I think it turned out quite well and I’m proud to present it as my latest song:

Misty Potatoes

March Update

Pete — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:51:01 +0000

I’m back, and not only from Africa but to blogging as well – turns out it’s been 3 months since my

last post! Tanzania was splendid, and climbing Kilimanjaro was a terrific although exhausting experience. I have added some photos to my rarely updated photo gallery in case you want to see some proof.

On the projects front things have naturally been standing a bit still these last few weeks – but not any more!

My friend and collaborator Nick ‘Lost’ O’er There is actively working on something new, a musical video of some sort but it’s still unknown exactly what this means. We – yes you heard right, we – also have a new musical piece in the works, with me arranging and Nick playing the violin. Hopefully it will please your ears when it’s ready.

Last but not the least; we’re back on track with Pivot development! The last major change was an upgrade to the latest version of Game Maker, GM8. Doing this cost us a couple of hours of work, but it paid off! One problem that we kept facing while working in GM7 was its sprite engine. All the sprites we drew in Flash and Photoshop would have jagged edges in Game Maker – it just wasn’t possible to make them look smooth. GM8 however comes with full PNG alpha transparency support, allowing all our sprites to be silky smooth. Apart from this feature the new version also fixes a heap of bugs and saves both CPU and memory.