Hi there folks!

I'm happy to present the first boss of the game: Terroke!

Terroke is inspired by the Tarasque, a French mythological creature. There are tons of legends regarding this lovely fellow, being this one from the West of Spain the one that made me have it as the first boss (pretty anti-Semitic ngl, but that's pretty much Spanish medieval folklore in a nutshell).

The tale talks about a greedy Jewish surgeon who went to attend a poor man after the huge offer of the patient's grandpa: 700 maravedi and 70 piglets. The surgeon got into the horse wagon paid by the patient's grandpa, and when they arrived at their destination the poor man was on his last legs. He also had a dream about how the surgeon got eaten by the Tarasque due to taking so long to arrive. The surgeon offered some remedies to ease the pain of the patient in the shape of some herbs he had in his briefcase. For a fee, of course. But when he got the money and the people saw they weren't working, the surgeon said he was suffering from "heart illness".

The surgeon asked for his promised payment despite the anger of the patient's family, and he returned to his house with the company of two servants.

When they were on his way back to the surgeon's residence, the Tarasque appeared and grabbed the greedy man from the neck, choking him with its tail. The servants saved themselves by holding a cross and summoning Saint Marta, making the beast flee.

When the servants returned to the house they served in, they returned to the place where the surgeon was last seen, only to find his corpse floating on the water next to the creature's den. The corpse was holding in his hand the bag of maravedi, which was returned to the family.

La Tarasca, Leyendas de Extremadura

Pretty cool short tale, could have been done without the whole "Jews are greedy" part but again, keep in mind Spain has always been like this with practically every single race and ideology. Tale's still worth reading though, give it a try if you want to practice your Spanish!

In terms of art, the Tarasque is represented for the most part as a creature with the face of a lion, a turtle-like shell over its body and the tail of a snake. I took some creative freedom drawing it because I still need to animate it and make it readable for the player, so I made it more of a "creepy hairy fellow" type of monster.

And that's pretty much it! Last post I'll make about the game will be the design of the first level. After that, I'll fully focus on working on the game and working to earn some money. Hope you enjoyed this journey so far and see you in the next and final post!

Have a great week and stay cool,

-Ray

Keep you waitin' huh?

I'm baaaaaaack from the States! Shortest week of my life, boy I can't wait to return this winter. My time there was great and awesome, and I can definitely confirm I was born to be in the US. The cultural blend of the population, the nice folks I met in the places I visited,... Call me Jack from Lost because I need to get back to the island.

So you might be thinking I'm not going to continue with the game, and you might think wrong if that's the case. My routine will now be as follows: working as a member gatherer for MSF in the mornings (lovely place, they are doing a great job and the salary's fine) and then work in the game in the afternoon. I'll try my best to have everything tied up and done by July so I can focus on the marketing campaign (a change of plans is making me think that going for a Kickstarter is quite pointless since the game only requires musicians at this point, and I'd rather pay them directly but we'll see as I'm also saving a lot for the trip back to NY).

Also a friend of mine is working on a gaming blog and talking about funny stuff regarding Baldomero's Ballad development among other things. Blog's in Spanish, it's called KameTOID3D. Give it a look, he loves games and talking about them.

And that's pretty much it. I'll keep the posts flowing again next week since right now I'm feeling kinda sick due to this wild weather.

Have a great week(end) and be kind!

-Ray

Hey hey hey folks!

Last post of this week before the trip, I'm tweaking everything with what I like calling "Worsening of Life" features (or WoL). I've added my favorite one so far: dropping like a sack of potatoes towards the ground if you don't jump before reaching the edge of a platform :D

Did I mention how lovely the stairs work now? I can stack them, make them longer, shorter,... It's simply amazing what can you get using LERPs. I know you teleport towards them and for the love of me I can't seem to find a way to make the Player move towards them before actually getting on them. But hey, I didn't have any clue about how to make the drop thingy before and now look at me! Still, I'd like to finish adding the final minor enemies so I can work on the bosses.

Oh and I'm making knockback a bit stronger than I already have it simply because I want to let players use NES Castlevania speedrun techniques. I don't really know who's going to want to play this willingly with the amount of outdated mechanics I'm adding aside from me but hey, I'm still proud of what I'm making.

Have a great week and see you when I'm back!

-Ray

Hey there folks!

Hope the week began nicely for y'all. As of me, BsB development is going swift and swell as hell, I managed to add the custom stairs event and everything works as intended (you kinda teleport towards the stairs and I really can't find a solution that doesn't destroy my mental sanity more than it has already been obliterated, so I'll leave it as such meanwhile).

Now, next week I won't post or do anything around here for one simple reason: I'll be in the US of A! I'm going to spend my time there with my best friend checking if I'd like to make a living in the States (because honestly Spain ain't offering much in terms of what I like doing right now). If you live around NY and you see one day a bald bearded guy just scream DON'T TRUST STAIRS and I'll be happy to say hi to you :D

And that's pretty much it! I'll keep working on the game for the rest of this week and see how much I can manage to put together before the trip.

Enjoy the week!

-Ray

I'M CRYING, IT TOOK ME THREE DAYS BUT I DID IT!!! CASTLEVANIA STAIRS ARE HERE TO STAY BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

Thanks to the wonderful folks at the Construct forums for the help, without them I couldn't have learned about the lerp and unlerp thingy that allowed me to do it. WE ARE COOKING WITH OLIVE OIL AGAIN Y'ALL (don't worry, I'll make sure to speed up the movement a bit more so you don't spend a year on a staircase and only half a month)!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOO SUNDAY'S LEAVING WITH A BANG

-Ray

I have to rework the stairs AGAIN since the current events and instances are anything but efficient when it comes to making levels with them. Turns out that I've been banging my head all over the place about how to make stairs when the truth was that there are no stairs.

No, for real, Classicvanias don't have stairs.

Average Megamind cosplayer realizing how stupid he's been all this time

Next post will hopefully be me showing the same type of stairs I've showed in previous posts but with code behind it so different and wild that my beard will have grown 4 times its current size.

Don't trust stairs anymore folks,

-Ray

Hey everyone, quick small update:

So there's this game I really love called Vigil The Longest Night that released a while ago (I even made the concept art for a hat, it wiggles around) that would definitely benefit for some support if you enjoy dark metroidvanias. You see, Glass Heart Studios stopped from posting and updating the game with frequent and very good add-ons out of nowhere, and the reason for it was revealed last year on a post they made on the official Twitter account of the game. The TL;DR version is that they had to fight for the right to get back the game's ownership from their former publisher, Neon Doctrine.

Good news is that they actually won the lawsuit, as the game's now back on Steam! Bad news is that they are now self publishing, and they sure as hell need some help getting back on their feet. The game used to be available on Switch, but as of now the only place you can get it is Steam. I'm not getting anything out of this since I don't work with them, but after the whole shitshow they went through they deserve some folks spreading the word about the game and the studio (which they are both great, btw).

So go get Vigil! Support indie devs that fight and win against shitty publishers and you'll make this industry a bit better with a small gesture. Here's the Steam page.

The Glimpse Catcher (bottom image). They definitely made it WAY better looking in the actual game.

Sorry for the odd post, felt like talking about something I missed a lot rising from the ashes.

-Ray

Definitely starting to look like a proper game now! Boy am I happy about making this game.

-Ray

Hi there folks!

Back again with a small update: Baldomero's Ballad logo! I'm very happy how it turned out, and obviously nobody won't be able to tell the inspiration behind it, no sir.

In terms of non-logo news the main mechanics of Baldomero are all done and implemented without any remarkable issues (there's a very odd bug that helps the player more than anything, I'll let people try it out once I have a demo ready) and I'm in the last stage of putting the code for the basic enemies. I'm slowly but surely getting there, so no point stopping now!

Have a nice one,

-Ray

Lately I've been thinking a lot (not much else I can do since I'm still unemployed) about why people create things, and how time and time again things driven only by money end up being a waste of talent and time. And since I'm making a Castlevania inspired game, I was obviously going to do my research about the original creator of the franchise, Hitoshi Akamatsu.

And now that I've done my homework, I'm sad as hell.

Who is Hitoshi Akamatsu?

Source: Hitoshi Akamatsu, Castlevania Wiki

Akamatsu seems to have been the creative mind behind the original Castlevania trilogy, putting a lot of effort into making every input, every mechanic and every single detail feel important to the player. His love and passion for western cinematography lead him to approach the original game as well as its following entries like a movie, adding the iconic Hollywood monsters and having the brilliant idea of making the whip the Belmont family signature weapon (because we all know that whips are objectively cool). But ah, you might have noticed I said "seems to" as if I wasn't really sure about what I'm saying, so allow me to explain it.

The part that made me sad

Up until very recently (around 2019 or so), nobody knew about the person behind the original Castlevania. This is mostly because back in the day developers were not allowed to add their real names to the games they worked on (something common among companies like Konami and SEGA), so they had to work with nicknames or puns like what you can see in the original NES Castlevania:

Source: Rings and Coins

It wasn't until an interview released by Shmuplations that we knew the true identity of one of the thinking folks behind one of the most iconic series of all time. But why so much mystery behind one person? Well...

You see, Konami wasn't really that fond about Castlevania. If something doesn't sells and you want revenue, why would you care about something that doesn't offer instant sales? As the interview states:

"According to Akamatsu, Konami placed profits above all else, and developers who weren’t creating games that made lots of money were all eventually axed one-by-one."

Akamatsu left the industry of its entirety after being demoted to one of Konami's game centers, and he disappeared from the video game scene. Pictures of him are rare aside from these few, as he wasn't much of a public figure. And considering the fact he never came out to the light, chances are he quit for good. But hey, things have changed, developers are no longer cogs in a machine that wants to grab money over everything else, now their talents can shine and allow people to know the great things they are doing for the industry, right?

Right?

Akamatsu is only one example out of many developers forgotten by time by corporations getting so greedy to the point of erasing the names of those that put them on the spot to begin with. Think about all those games you love, the big ones, the small ones, the bad ones. Each and every one of those games had someone putting effort behind it. Each and every one of those games deserves to at least have the name of the people behind them attached to it.

Be creative. Make things. Be proud of what you made. Think for a second about all the people and creations lost and forgotten just because "it didn't make money at that moment" and fight against it by preaching to everyone about how happy you are of creating something that gives you joy. Don't let money be a barrier to your voice.

-Ray