Hey hey hey everyone!

Book's going swell and swift, I'm halfway through it and if I don't get possessed by the spirit of Amadeus Procrastination I'll be done with it in 2 weeks. I'm having fun writing down the story, but being honest I'd rather continue with Baldomero's Ballad. Also here's a small tier list of Castlevania games just to make people mad because I didn't put X game higher.

Best wishes and hope y'all doing great!

-Ray

Hi there!

I'm writing this just to give a small heads up about the rest of this month. Since I'm in need of a job lately I'm taking any chance or opportunity I can to make money, and there's a writing contest in my country with a nice prize for the winner, so I'm going to spend what's left of March writing a short novel (150 pages) for the contest (it ends on April). It's in Spanish, but being honest if I don't win I'll just straight up translate it to English as well and publish it on my own. This means that I won't post more Baldomero's Ballad content until April. Good thing is that the only thing left to do for the game is the levels, so the hard work is already over.

Sorry if you were looking forward to more regular content and posts, but C.R.E.A.M. (get the money, dollar dollar bills yo).

Have a great end of the month and see you on April!

-Ray

Hello everybody and welcome to another showcase!

This one's a big one, so I'll save the word salad for the references.

·Niapparition: these are manifestations of the souls of those who died waiting for someone. They torment their victims for all eternity by reminding them of all the things they never did.

·Baghoul: notorious for stealing kids in the middle of the night to make lard with them, these demons resemble humans only in shape, as their intentions are far too wicked for the minds of men.

·Fleshco: resurrected bodies of tortured victims, they wander the Earth seeking a new skin to cover what's left of their bodies.

·Nerreida: usually found around bodies of water, they lure fishermen and sailors only to burn them with their corrosive spit.

Well those were quite a few for sure! Some need more explanation than others, so bear with me with some of them. First one is your basic floating ghost, but the main twist is that the face features a facial gesture a friend of mine baptized as the "Ñard (pronounced as /Nyard/) Face". It's a face he made for the anniversary of Scalebound's cancellation and has followed him since then. I always try to feature it in one way or another in the games I make (only exception so far being PLOMO).

Ñardface, Twitter

Next one might be well known if you are into Spanish or South American folk tales. The Baghoul is the Sack Man, a creature used by parents to terrify kids who didn't behave well/ as part of a lullaby in which he's addressed as "El Coco" (I don't know what's wrong with Europe and not letting kids grow up without traumatic monsters crawling at night). Oh and he was rumored to be an actual person who inspired the legend, soooo there's that too. Fun!

Sack Man, Villains Wiki

Moving on we face Fleshco, which I think it's pretty straightforward: just a body without skin. I was going to make a skeleton like in Castlevania but then I thought "well I don't want to make a zombie, and you can do so much with a skeleton without going for an overkill, so what's the middle road between those two things?". The name is a portmanteau of the words "Flesh" and "Fresco", which is Spanish for "Fresh". Hey, 12 years of teaching and studying English allows me to do bad puns fusing languages, I don't make the rules.

Human muscle system, Britannica

Last but certainly not least, Nerreida! I love fish creatures, specially the ones featured in Castlevania. But since I didn't want to straight up copy a Fisherman, I opted to browse paintings depicting demons with scales or features present in fish like fins and the likes of it. And then I found this amazing oil painting called The Many Temptations of St. Anthony the Great, which depicts this wonderful creature in the upper left corner:

Il Tormento di Sant'Antonio, Linusfrontodona

It's funny because at first I thought it was a picture made by Hyeronimus Bosch, a great artist known for his weird paintings of hellish and chaotic landscapes, but turns out it was made by Martin Schöngauer and later reproduced in a bigger scale by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Who says you can't learn things making video games?

And those are a few more enemies! I still want to add a couple more to the game just to cover all the possible variables for a fair challenge, but if you want to share some ideas about interesting or not so well known creatures feel free to share it in the comments below.

Thanks for reading and have a nice one!

-Ray

Hello again!

Saw some people enjoyed the previous post about the enemies featured in Baldomero's Ballad, so might as well keep doing it. Today we have two foes I'll make sure people hate a lot just like the things they were inspired by, Woodchip and Ottomaneater!

·Woodchip: small little creatures that enjoy tormenting children and adults alike. Don't let the size fool you, they can move quite fast.

·Ottomaneater: you can find these terrible demons flying all over Lord Barren's villa, terrorizing intruders with their sharp fangs and their lack of lumbar support.

I'm quite happy about these two, even if one of them is just a piece of furniture. Let's go with the Fleaman replacement, the Woodchip. It was inspired by a Zulu creature known as the Tokoloshe. It's a mischievous evil spirit that goes around doing terrible things and they also can turn invisible by drinking water. Couldn't find a lot of physical descriptions for it but the size works wonders as a Fleaman-type enemy!

Source: The South African Tokoloshe, Roadtravel

The other creature is none other than... A stool. Well granted, I was slightly inspired by the Japanese yokai known as the Kasa-Obake, as well as another creature from the Bloodstained series, the Dullahammer Head. The former is an spirit that posses an umbrella and licks you. I honestly don't know if the latter was inspired by a monster or demon in particular, but I still like its design.

Source: Monster Month: Kasa-Obake, Legends of Windemere

Source: Dullahammer Head, Bloodstained Wiki

And those are two more foes that I made for BsB. Levels are coming along nice, but I'm studying hard from the old Castlevania games (the bad ones too) to understand what works and what doesn't. I don't recommend studying from games you enjoy speedrunning by the way, your "gotta go fast" mindset has to be put into sleep mode in order to analyze the enemy spawn points and the structure of the levels.

Oh and go to hell Dracula X, the only thing I've learned from you is that everything you try you fail at it.

Stay tuned for more as always!

-Ray

Hi everyone!

I've been studying Castlevania lately, and making the levels without the enemies has become a bit of a pain since I prefer to have something visual (and honestly any excuse to animate things is always a good thing for me). That's why I'd like to show you two enemies that will appear in BsB:

·Eyecoustic: pesky little creatures that feed from terrible music. Easy to deal with as long as you are not jumping towards a pitfall.

·Chestnut: huge human-like creatures that have their face localized entirely within their torso. They throw mallets as their main line of defense against foes.

Same as Castlevania, I'd like to showcase different mythological creatures in the game with some twists just to add a bit of fun (and avoid potential lawsuits from Konami obvs). Eyecoustic is inspired by the Chonchon, a Mapuche flying beast that used to be a wizard's head that flew with its ears.

source: Bitterfly (Castlevania wiki)

Meanwhile, Chestnut is none other than one of my favorite mythological creatures of all time: the Blemmyes. They were rumored to be a community of people without necks that had their faces on their chest. This nowadays shows that perhaps the folks who saw them for the first time actually saw apes, but it's still a wonderful design for an enemy.

Source: Nuremburg Chronicle, Wikicommons

And those were two of the regular enemies that Baldomero Carrasco, last of the Carrasco Clan, will have to face in order to reach the villa of Lord Barren and defeat him once and for all. Yes, everything will be wood or wood related puns. No, you can't stop me.

Sorry if you were expecting a bigger update, but after tweaking all the mechanics and events there's really not much to show that makes me go "OH WOW THIS IS AWESOME" (I'll post more references if you like the format though!).

Tune in next time with the design of the first level and a small sneak peek of what you'll see on it.

Have a nice weekend!

-Ray

Hi y'all,

Heard the news today about Akira Toriyama passing and honestly, this has hit me as hard as when Miura died. Dragon Ball was something really big in Spain, and growing up with DB, DBZ and DB GT and later falling in love with his Dragon Quest creature and character designs just made me appreciate that he was truly one of the greatest. It's funny when someone you've never met goes away, yet somehow it feels like he can still speak to you and many others via their creations. I think that's the beauty of being an artist, after all: to create a dialogue between those that experience what you've done, no matter their language, origin or gender. May you rest in peace, Master Toriyama.

Anyway, I just wanted to put into a few words how I felt about his death, sorry it's not the usual thing. BsB is going strong, I'm starting to build up all the levels and testing them. I don't want to spoil the levels nor the bosses, so from now on I'll mostly showcase enemies.

Have a nice weekend,

Ray

Hi folks!

I'm so, so, SO happy to show everything I have added so far on Baldomero's Ballad. It took sweat, tears, tears, hair and you guessed it: tears, but I did it! Knockback is implemented (although not tweaked perfectly as you can see):

Oh? What's that? Is that a stopwa-I mean an hourglass subweapon? Well yes it is, what a keen eye you have! Bet you didn't spot the fact that I ALSO ADDED LEVEL UPS FOR THE SAW?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA I need to sleep more. And btw, the enemy might be familiar to people who have been following me around for a while, although this one's just a placeholder to test events. Here's the last thing I added too just in case someone missed that post:

I'm very very VERY excited to continue with BsB, but I'm still awful in the music department, so if anyone's interested in offering their talent for the game feel free to PM me. I wouldn't really like to end up putting all the efforts on the gameplay and level design without having some good quality beeps and bops blasting on the background!

More enemies and some small stuff coming, stay tuned as always!

-Ray

Is it Christmas already? Because I brought a gif(t)!

Need to work on my puns, they are not terrible enough. Anyway, stuff stuff stuff INTRODUCING SUBWEAPONS!

In this lovely minuscule showcase we can see the following:

• FIXED JUMPS (they are here to stay, you'll hate them don't worry).
• The Chisel: long range projectile.
• The Mallet: arc projectile.
• The DrawSaw: boomerang projectile.
• The Bag of Nails that are not nails because pixelated nails aren't really that visually fun for a fire bomb type projectile but I can't come up with another name for it: fire bomb projectile.

Aaaaaaaaand they also work on stairs too! Now, I don't really feel like making a stop watch subweapon type (it's VERY easy to do, but I don't want to add things just for the sake of adding since I never enjoyed it to begin with), but if people want one I'll just add it and start with the level design.

I think you can tell by now the main inspiration for BsB, but even if I'm going for a classic approach I won't rely on dull levels based on one-hit death spikes or pitfalls everywhere.

Stairs though... Hehehe.

Stay tuned for more and have a great week!

-Ray

"It will be easy", I said. Ok, granted, it's easier than other projects I tried and left, but I'm trying to tweak everything so it really feels like you are playing something very outdated and old. No post today, I want to figure out how to do a fixed jump and I'm VERY close to get it. Once I get it I'll show you all I have so far, pinky promise.

Thanks for looking forward to the game and sorry for not posting today as I promised :(

-Ray

No visual update today since I'm fixing some issues with the momentum in the jump attack event. Sure, you can spend time, effort and sweat thinking about how to let the player keep the X axis speed with some strings of code.

You can do that OR

Turn THE PLAYER INTO A BULLET SO IT SHOOTS HIMSELF AWAY.

Winners don't do drugs kids, but they sure as hell cheat while making video games.

I'll upload a new gif this Saturday showcasing everything I added so far (and trust me, it's A LOT of things). Stay tuned!

-Ray