Yipe 5 Quest: Learning Javascript

Well, more like brushing up on javascript, but in any case, lots of learning going on as I look at updating Yipe 5 to be playable again.  Let me start off by saying thanks to you.  Those of you who have asked me where to download or play any of the Yipe games, here in 2020… years and years after the original game was released.  Thanks.  That’s what inspires me to dust off my programming skills and make sure Yipe stays updated and playable.

So here we are… summer of 2020.  And dabbling here and there in my spare time (which there definitely seems to be more of in 2020), I’ve got a bit of a prototype running.

I wrote a bit about using the canvas element to get started on this project over on yipe5.com.  And all of the links across Yipesoftware.com and Yipe5.com that sent you to the app store to download Yipe 5 now link to that page.  Once the game is playable, that page will link to the game.

There’s still a lot to get working.  Especially all those Yipe 5 nuances, like the interactions with Idle Hands, the secrets, the conversations with the King and Jester and a variety of other things to make it a complete game.  The game is not exactly mobile friendly yet, but surprisingly works pretty well out of the box with what I’ve done so far.

Anyway, thought it’d be fun to share a post with some progress updates.  And for those looking to create their own 2D games using canvas, here’s a few resources I found helpful along the way.

• A nice jsfiddle showing mouse detection.
• Drawing sprites to canvas tutorial
• Handy little function to wrap text that you draw to canvas
• Processing keyboard input

My list could go on and on.  If you’re curious about other resources or have a specific question about getting the game to work in a browser, let me know!

Easy Roller Dice — My Dice Collection Grows

Little known fact: I collect things. Well, it’s not really a hidden secret from my family and friends, but I wanted to share a bit about one of my collections and I thought this particular collection went well with my parody-RPG game, Yipe.

My dice collection.

My dice collection started back in elementary school, when I’d occasionally play D&D. My Dad picked me up a set of 4 jade dice for a birthday and well… there was no turning back on this becoming another one of my collections. Since then, over the years I’ve picked up a die here or there. Sometimes finding a store that had a great selection and I’d grab a handful.

However, I just added the biggest single group of die ever to my collection, courtesy of Easy Roller Dice. The chance to add metal dice to my collection was just too much to resist. I also ended up with my first ever dice tray, which I have to say is pretty awesome both for rolling dice and now being the new home to my collection.

Can’t speak highly enough about the quality of these dice. You check check them out at easyrollerdice.com. I’ll end with a couple pics of my 5 year old son getting in on the action!

Yipe Shirts!

I’ve got a little t-shirt blog going that I’ve been a bit more active on than my Yipe blog.  And so I wanted to cross reference a post I made featuring Yipe shirts!

Read all about it here: Yipe T-Shirts

Fun t-shirts at DesignByHumans

I’m mostly posting this to test a new widget and how it displays in WordPress.  But, I also do love the designs by Wotto, one of my favorite Design By Humans artists.

Some of his monster designs remind me of Yipe characters.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 8 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 21 posts. There were 11 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was April 21st with 60 views. The most popular post that day was 4.5 Months in: Yipe! Sales Report.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were yipesoftware.com, iphone5g.net, facebook.com, forums.toucharcade.com, and who-will-win-fifa-worldcup-2010.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ipad rpg, yipe 5 ned, yipe 5 secrets, yipe apple mac, and yipe 5 final boss.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

4.5 Months in: Yipe! Sales Report April 2010
4 comments

2

iPad RPG screenshots! April 2010
1 comment

3

Yipe 5 Version 1.2 submitted to Apple January 2010
1 comment

4

Yipe! 5 FREE Lite version available! March 2010

5

99 cent sale, Danger! Dodgeball, Anything coming? July 2010
4 comments

99 cent sale, Danger! Dodgeball, Anything coming?

Both the full version of Yipe! 5 and the lite version option for unlocking the full game have reduced their prices down to 99 cents.  Seemed like a good summer move.  And if I actually analyzed my previous post a bit more, I’d probably realize I should have gone down to 99 cents awhile ago.  What can you do when you’re so tied up with your normal job?  Woah is me.  Ha.

So, a friend who was in the computer science program at Chico State just released an iPhone game with some of his buddies.  It’s got a catchy addictiveness to it and so I thought I’d give him a shout out.  Check out Danger! Dodgeball at the Robot Stampede site: http://www.robotstampede.com/

And as for updates on Yipe! 5 itself…

I have honestly been checked out the last few months from the world of Yipe!  Luckily, the world of Yipe! doesn’t need me to personally save it on a daily basis.  And there are still players out there trying out the game for the first time and enjoying it.  Like this comment on the App Store from yesterday:

“Bought it thinking I’d play here and there.  Ended up not being able to put it down.”  -r.richter, July 8, 2010

Always good to read those comments!

My update on actual development progress for Yipe! is:  Purchased an iPad and started on a version that was better suited for the iPad.  Put larger graphics in that Dylan gave me to make everything look crisp and clear on the iPad.  Realized the larger size graphics slowed down performance on the iPhone version.  So, now I was sort of in a state of not being able to do a release.  And then things sat for a bit.  A couple weeks ago, I optimized the memory usage so the large size images wouldn’t slow things down.  And started playing with Plus+ integration again.  And well, that’s where we are.  I think the games in a state I could do a release again, so if I can finish up Plus+, I’ll get something out.  No idea on timeline though.

An actual Yipe! blog?!?

Yes, it’s true.  Instead of updating my old news.htm page on my website, I’m now joining the new age and sharing my exciting Yipe! news here via my new little yipesoftware wordpress blog.

Big thanks for a few friends at work for helping me update the entire Yipe! website.  You can probably tell I did the setup on the layout for the blog, as that doesn’t look nearly as nice as the actual new yipesoftware.com website itself.

In other news… Apple denied my first submission of the FREE version of Yipe 5.  Dylan and I used the word “Demo” on the icon and graphics for the game and apparently you can’t release “demo’s” to the App store.  Not exactly sure what the difference is between a lite version and a demo version… but… ummm… whatever.

So, Yipe 5 – Lite RPG – Attack of Idle Hands is now updated to only use the words “lite” and “free” and we’re back to waiting for approval.  Hopefully we’ll get it approved before next weeks official Yipe! release party!  Haven’t heard about the release party?  Check out the Facebook Yipe Release Party Event page here.

2009 Begins, what’s new with Yipe!?

Happy New Year! Not a lot new in the world of Yipe! news, but here are a few random updates:
I’ve updated the comments page a bit and added some better titles to some of the pages on the site for SEO purposes.

As usual, I’ve thought a lot about random new games and Yipe! things I could work on over the past year. To prove that I do actually think about these things and it’s not just me updating my news page saying I think about these things… I’ll share something I played around with awhile back. I had thought about working on a flash version of Yipe! so that it could run on my website and also because at the time we were doing some projects in flash at work and I wanted to have a better understanding of the language and development environment. So… Flash Yipe! was born. Don’t get too excited. I found some example flash apps that I started modifying and this is as far as I got: Flash Yipe!

My other random idea of the month is to create a Facebook app that will allow you to display your Yipe! stats on your Facebook page. Sort of like my high scores page here on the site, but it would be more automated so anyone could update their stats without me having to manually process things. I’ll let you know how far this gets. 🙂

2007 Life Update

One new news entry per year?  Hmm, seems like I could do a little better than that.  I did recently start a blog about my life in the eBay world, although I have to admit I’m about as good at creating new blog entries as I am Yipe! news entries.  One thing that got me thinking about making a Yipe! update was stumbling across an artist’s website who I thought made Yipeish type monsters.  Pretty cool, eh?

Update on Yipe! IV:  Still just thoughts in my head and notes in my notebook.  Did some research on new Mac development and couldn’t really decide on what development tools and language/framework to use.  It would be easier to write a PC version at this point in my life, but I feel Yipe! IV should be released for OSX first.  We’ll see.

My real job update:  Keeping me incredibly busy.  Our newest site gives you 1% cash back on your eBay purchases:

My life update: I got married!  May 12th, 2007.