Jay Tholen

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  • Content count

    45
  • Joined

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About Jay Tholen

  • Rank
    Advanced Member

Contact Methods

  • Website URL
    http://jaytholen.net

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Florida
  • Interests
    game development, pixel art, dorky music genres, synthesis, theology

Converted

  • Favorite Games
    Earthbound, Grim Fandango, Total Annihilation, Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas
  1. Movie/TV recommendations

    Not a rec, but I really hope the new MST3k episodes are less tied to contemporary referential humor than the original series. It's really hard to watch any of that with my wife because she's from Germany AND 5.5 yrs younger than me, so she gets very few of the jokes. Not holding my breath, but it would be nice.
  2. Plug your shit

    Wikipedia says that it was a series! I Found 3 different episodes of Liquid TV with Brad Dharma featured. I must hunt this down.
  3. Plug your shit

    Holy moly that is fantastic! I need to find the whole series.
  4. Plug your shit

    he already backed
  5. Plug your shit

    I feel a tiny bit bad because I haven't been posting as much lately, but I just launched a Kickstarter for my game Hypnospace Outlaw. It's a weird future-OS simulator that takes the idea of an ~information superhighway~ and builds a world around it. Here's the KS video in youtube form:
  6. Sorry about the bump, but yeah, the Klik community was how I got started making games way back in 1999 or so. I still use the newest incarnation of Clickteam's software for my personal projects. I've been collecting games/old website data from those communities and I hope to start a project to document/archive that whole little era of ultra-independent game development. The community was most vibrant from around 1998 until 2003-4ish, and any record of it is being lost slowly as the internet trudges on. Some of my faves: Eternal Daughter by Derek Yu and Jon Perry back in 2002 blew everyone away. David Saulesco's OST was great too: The Spirit Engine 1 & 2 by Mark Pay were also brilliant: is currently being made in Clickteam Fusion, and looks amaaazing. Alonso's been working on it for almost a decade.
  7. Dropsy is the world's first Point and Click Hugventure

    Thanks guys! Aw man, I've not heard of this. What OS/computer are you running it on?
  8. Dropsy is the world's first Point and Click Hugventure

    Thanks all! That article was fantastic, he seemed to understand exactly what I wanted to express through the game. Seeing worth in people in spite of our horribly arbitrary value systems (beauty, usefulness, etc etc.) is at the heart of the whole thing. Still got a few nasty bugs to fix and achievements to add and stuff, but I'm happy it's been so well recieved. For all the testing we did, I still had very little idea how much people would resonate with it. A lot, as it turns out. Also we have a fun optional beach area + more dreams coming soon in a free update. >: )
  9. Inspirational Curiousities

    Buzz Buzz in Earthbound really hit me. There's just something rad about a little two pixel sprite embodying a powerful time travelling being. Even if he did die by being slapped. :3 The accompanying music also helped. I think this probably subconsciously informs a lot of the choices I make while working on my game. I find myself thinking about it often.
  10. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    I'm super duper enjoying Hawaii: Part II. Stream here: http://www.hawaiipartii.com/music/ Listen if you dig Lush psych pop with Mellotron, theremin, moog, oversaturated vocals, space echo, and good bass bits. It's lightly proggy.
  11. Plug your shit

    I love this. I dig it when electronic musicians actually give a crap about composition. Before it gets a bit prog organ/drum heavy it evokes a Spirit of Eden era Talk Talk vibe. What software/plugins/hardware/sound sources do you use?
  12. PAX East

    If all goes as planned I'll be there at the Devolver booth showing Dropsy. :0) It'll be my first big festival thing, can't wait!
  13. Wildfire - a game about fire propagation

    Finished the tutorial. I love the fire/water mechanic in conjunction with the stealth elements. There are tons of clever things you can do with that. My only criticism right now is the jankyness of the movement engine. The jumping gets a bit sluggish if you're near an obstacle. It frequently took me 2-3 tries to jump out of a pit. I'll play more later in the week and report back.
  14. I don't particularly need to get strict with the logical cultural stuff, I just think it's neat as part of worldbuilding. I loved how Fallout: New Vegas provided believable food/water sources for each area, like the NCR sharecropper farms, brahmin pens, etc. 'World' was just in reference to explorable in-game area, sorry about the poor phrasing there. The latter option is correct. It can be assumed that the world in this game shares earth's pre-1990 history and culture, but there are no specific references to real existing countries or cities or anything. It's also geographically different.
  15. I don't mind at all! This is my favorite part of development and it's fun to yap about. They're on a peninsula, so they do a ton of fishing and grow their own fruit/vegetables. A lot of their history is going to have to be deduced through environmental clues since it's an adventure game with no text. I'm packing in as much as I can fit because I suuuuper dig the whole iceberg effect with game lore. This place is the least traditionally ~American~ area in the game. The gameworld is an alternate earth version of the USA, and the tech is similar to what was prevalent in 1990-1993. If you take the small town supernatural mystery thing Twin Peaks had going and combine it with Earthbound's weirdness, I think that sums the vibe up pretty nicely.