{"id":391,"date":"2018-10-23T22:10:37","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T22:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/?p=391"},"modified":"2020-08-20T10:05:43","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T10:05:43","slug":"a-short-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/a-short-history\/","title":{"rendered":"A Short History of Radical Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been a developer long enough that it seemed fair to round up my old crap in one place. That way, you can see I didn&#8217;t come from a vacuum &#8211; in fact, I came from some very crappy games indeed. So, a short history of <strong>Radical Dog<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Astronaut&#8217;s Journey<\/strong> is but one of the many &#8220;jam games&#8221; I have been making alongside my major project.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/liftoff-making-astronauts-journey-in-48-hours\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter \" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/Fo48nLc.png\" alt=\"Astronaut's Journey\" width=\"280\" height=\"173\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Jams which produced games like?<strong>Flappy Blocks<\/strong> and <strong>Platformer Mixtape<\/strong>! Game jams are just awesome for testing ideas quickly, without having to cry about development cycles.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/radicaldog.itch.io\/flappy-blocks\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/bkBpF9d.png\" width=\"243\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>?<a href=\"https:\/\/armorgames.com\/platformer-mixtape-2010-game\/18356\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/W9U5fdI.png\" width=\"243\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Back in 2012 and 2013, I spent two summers working at <strong>Mousebreaker<\/strong>. All are soon-to-be-deceased Flash and unfortunately already have unfixable legacy issues; but they are also some of my favourite works. For example, <strong>Literally Insane Racing<\/strong> has some 40 cars with unique properties, so that every car is competitive in certain races.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tsknight.com\/demo\/tdm.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"The Diving Messiah\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/rmZM38l.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>?<a href=\"http:\/\/tsknight.com\/demo\/tcm.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"The Cutest Massacre\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/WSC9nkL.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>?<a href=\"http:\/\/tsknight.com\/demo\/ff.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Fat Footy\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/luHcOoy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>?<a href=\"http:\/\/tsknight.com\/demo\/lir.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Literally Insane Racing\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/gCGh4d8.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was hired by Mousebreaker on the back of?<strong>The Man with the Invisible Trousers?<\/strong>from 2011. This puzzle-platformer was featured on most major Flash portals, even though it&#8217;s riddled with more bugs than Lindsey Lohan&#8217;s mattress.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kongregate.com\/games\/SirKnight\/the-man-with-the-invisible-trousers?acomplete=invisible+tr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"The Man with the Invisible Trousers\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/lEx0AiZ.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It clocked up 4.5 million plays, which is more people than you can fit in a boat.<\/p>\n<p>Before that, was <strong>Slide Racing<\/strong> in 2009. This was also a hit, with 5.5 million plays. This game was my first to include a stupid story, which would go on to be a theme.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kongregate.com\/games\/SirKnight\/slide-racing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Slide Racing\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/KKU3iLt.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Uh oh! Here&#8217;s where it gets really scary, into the realm of games that made <em>no money<\/em> because, surprise, <em>they&#8217;re a bit rubbish<\/em>. Let&#8217;s be honest &#8211; the only awards they&#8217;re going to win are from my mum.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the most disappointing &#8220;rhythm&#8221; game you can play, &#8220;Dance Bebbe&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newgrounds.com\/portal\/view\/398171\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/nzxS5pP.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"294\" height=\"191\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have no idea what I was thinking, I mean hell, look at that dancing robot.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, the first game I ever made, where you play a man avoiding a variety of confusing attacks. Presenting <strong>Save Stanley?<\/strong>from 2006:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newgrounds.com\/portal\/view\/351644\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/r4shJZu.gif\" alt=\"Save Stanley\" width=\"390\" height=\"194\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no way to pretend these early games were anything other than pure, unfiltered crap. And maybe that&#8217;s the moral? Anyone can start by making shitty games! Somehow, it teaches you the skills to make less shitty games, until you too can make games that are proudly adequate!<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 209px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/DBIDycf.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"215\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hurrah!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been a developer long enough that it seemed fair to round up my old crap in one place. That way, you can see I didn&#8217;t come from a vacuum &#8211; in fact, I came from some very crappy games &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/a-short-history\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-my-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicaldog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}