Happy Labor Day!

When Lumpy came into our offices today, he was a little confused. He thought that Labor Day meant that it was a day where one labors extra hard. But he found only some of the EP2 production staff around. It was explained to him that Labor Day is a celebration for the economic and social achievements of the worker.

The actor in him told him the "show must go on" and in eager anticipation of EP2, he stuck around the office. Maybe he should have gone home, so I took that opportunity to further test the tazer...

Happy Labor Day!

Name the Tazer Challenge Winner!

We’re pleased to announce the winning entry for the Name the Tazer Challenge!

After a thrilling, nail-biting battle between Joy Buzzer and Tesla's Touch, a winner emerged!

The tazer will be called Joy Buzzer! You can check it out in Episode 2 of QuitIt!

A big thank you goes out to Devilishly Good from the Touch Arcade forums, who submitted the winning entry.

We’d also like to thank the other members of Touch Arcade who gave us suggestions! We really appreciate your audience participation.

Lumpy wants to send out a special message to everyone too.

When asked about the sign’s meaning, Lumpy’s Agent said, “It’s obvious one of your interns can’t spell. I’d like to assure everyone that my client is looking forward to Episode 2 and all the adoring pokes his fans will give him. This includes pokes with the Joy Buzzer. This interview is over.”

Name the Tazer Challenge Finalists!

Thanks to all your awesome suggestions for the Name the Tazer Challenge, we were having a fun time sorting through all of them!

We wanted Lumpy to have the honor of this task, but he’s nowhere to be found. He skipped breakfast too, so something is amiss as Lumpy loves to eat.

Hmmm. But I did notice the lights dimming in the office again…Lumpy could be in Ben’s lab…

In any event, behold – here are the final 5 candidates (in no particular order)!

• Lumpy’s Nitelight
• Tesla’s Touch
• Joy Buzzer
• Watts Up, Doc!
• Electri-Fryer

Please vote for your favorite name at the poll on the sidebar of the blog!

The polls will close at midnight on Wednesday, September 2nd, so make sure to vote (and vote often?!)!

Remember, the fate of the tazer’s name rests in your mouse click!!!

Lumpy’s Guilty Pleasures – Defying Gravity

Lumpy has a fascination for space travel. He’s interested in all types of news and documentaries about how the people on Earth are reaching for the stars.

He’s intrigued by our primitive means of space travel, and he has lots of respect for the astronauts, engineers, and scientists who work on Earth’s space programs. He’s currently following the Space Shuttle Discovery’s mission along with the test firing of the Constellation’s rocket system that might take Earthlings back to the Moon or Mars. He’s really not too sure why Earthlings make such a big deal about such short travel distances.

Lumpy’s also been watching a documentary called Defying Gravity recently. He’s looking forward to this documentary, as they’re on a 6 year mission to explore the Solar System. But he's wondering why it’s taking the team 6 years to travel the system. It should take way less than 6 seconds to travel that far on low power impulse drive…

At any rate, he likes this documentary because the crew of the ship Antares have interesting personalities. And the mission has been exciting so far. The episode that was shown this past weekend was pretty scary, as there was an accident aboard the ship, but everything turned out okay in the end.

He doesn’t understand what or who this Beta thing is tho’. He hopes it’s not related to the tazer, as there has been talk around the office about it being “in Beta.”

Monday's EP2 Update - The Tazer Strikes Back!

Game building has its challenges. Trying to get everything to fit is sometimes an exercise in fitting way too many items into a suitcase. During those times you hope there are things you can leave behind … or that you can get something big like an elephant to squash things down so they’ll fit.

Recently, Yas posted stolen pictures of the tazer … even though it is still in test. I was even more horrified since he also posted them before I discovered the tazer wouldn’t work on the actual device (curse you Yas, I’ll have my revenge!).

Our PC and iPhone Simulator builds worked fine. But upon selecting the tazer on the actual device, it either crashed immediately or slowed the app down to a crawl and then crashed. The problem was texture memory. During development we often use 32-bit textures for all our new pieces. This allows us to quickly swap in new assets without having to spend time finding the right amount of color reduction versus visual fidelity while we’re testing the new parts. This has the unfortunate side effect of bloating texture usage.

The good news is that I fixed the problem. The bad news is it set me back a little over a day in resolving the problem.

Now that the tazer’s short-lived tantrum has been contained, the finishing touches on it can continue. Let’s just say Lumpy should be afraid … very afraid!

Remember today is the last day in the Name the Tazer Challenge. Poke on over to our thread in Touch Arcade to post your suggestions! Or Lumpy will get to give the tazer a kinder and more gentler name like "Lil' Non-Hurting Sparker".

Name the Tazer Challenge!

Work is progressing on EP2, and new stuff like the tazer is really coming together. For developers like us, it's really exciting for us to see our ideas come to life and move around on the screen.

But there’s one problem with the tazer tho’. We don’t have a name for it!

We’ve been busy dealing with all sorts of dev stuff, so we haven’t had the time to come up with a name for the thing.

So, here’s where you come in. Help us name the tazer!

Here are the submission rules:

• Please go to TouchArcade and post your submissions directly our “Green Room” thread.
• Post as many names as you like. We’ll keep track of your submission.
• We’ll accept submissions until midnight, Pacific time on Monday, August 30.
• The name needs to be “Safe For Work.” Please use common sense and not submit nasty stuff.
• The name cannot include the words “tazer” or “taser.”
• IMPORTANT: The name CANNOT be longer than TWO WORDS of 20 CHARACTERS per each word.

After submissions are closed, we’ll select 5 of your submissions and then create a poll so you can vote for your favorite tazer name!

Allrighty then, let the naming begin!

Stolen from Ben's lab - Tazer pic (EP2 Update)

Hey everyone, I want to share another photo that I snagged from Ben the other day.

Looks like it’s a pic of the tazer going through some experimental testing.

Just by looking at the pic, I think I can almost smell the ozone in the air caused by the electrical arcing.

Mmmm, I love the smell of ozone in the morning; it smells like… epic fun. Mwahahahaha.

Anatomy of a Tazer 2

There's been some inquiry as to the status of our trusty new Poker the Tazer. We last left you guys with a peek of the wireframe of the contraption.

Well, here is an updated image of it.

Should have some pics up later this week of it zapping Lumpy!

Anatomy of a Tazer

Making a game is hard work. There are moments when you can finally sit back and enjoy the results from all of the sweat and tears. Like seeing the tazer come alive!

In our Design a Poker Challenge, the tazer was selected as the poker of choice from the Audience. Admittedly, we've had this bad boy running in our lab for a few days, but thought that now would be a good time to give you guys a partial peek.

Seeing it in action has brought giggles of delight from some. Lumpy has recently been showing some concern over the attention people have been paying to it. And with batteries slowly disappearing ... one has to wonder if he's really worried.

But that Lumpy is one cool character. "Bring it" is all he says whenever anyone mentions the word tazer...

Recount update: Tazer C wins by a LANDSLIDE!

Yes, we have a winner!

Now that we’ve had our recount of sorts for the Tazer design selection, design C wins with a landslide victory of 29 votes!

We know for certain that Lumpy didn’t tamper with the voting results this time, as he was too busy chilling with Miley Cyrus. Or was it the Hudgens? Hmmm? Ms. Green M&M?

In any event, Lumpy’s Agent has also assured us that our blue buddy was nowhere near a net connection yesterday. Or a chad for that matter. We know Lumpy was partial to design B, so we’re pretty sure he didn’t mess with the votes. We've also absolved Yas of any vote tampering, so he's off the hook (for now).

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in the voting- especially the crew over at TouchArcade!

Now we can really get down to bidness and make Tazer C do its thang! :D

Poll Update: Tazer C in the lead! C FTW!

So I checked our poll to see how myyyyyyy precioooooousssss C was doing in the voting, and I was surprised because it was suddenly in the lead (27 at the time of this post!). ZOMG!

Earlier in the day, I was resigned to the possibility that B would win again (sob). Oh, the humanity! But looks like C’s supporters are legion and know a good Tazer when they see one (yes!). To all C lovers out there, I salute you!

And no, unlike some blue Zgrunturian who’s starring in his own game show, I didn’t rig the vote! The guys in the office are throwing suspicious looks in my direction tho'. Well, it wasn't ME!

Speaking of poles…or was it polls? The earlier post about Miley Cyrus reminded me of something…

The Public has spoken- RECOUNT!

After an outcry of “foul” regarding the suspicious voting results on the Tazer design for the upcoming update of QuitIt! spearheaded by ImNoSuperMan at TouchArcade, we’ve decided to reopen the voting again. The poll can be found to the right on our sidebar.

We’ve looked into our server logs, and it appears the voting was rigged by the Lumpster himself! He’d been muttering, “B is a kinder and more gentler design,” during the past week, so everything makes sense now. When we pressed him about him hacking our servers, Lumpy hopped away and locked himself in the bathroom!

If you’re a fan of design C (or any other design), have your voice be heard! Poke, poke, poke! …Errrr, we meant vote, vote, vote! Let the rigging...we mean voting begin!

It’s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock ‘n roll…

As I sneak a look on iTunes, our buddy Lumpy has hopped his way up the charts into the Top 20 in the Entertainment category. It’s been an exciting ride so far since we hit the WHAT’S HOT section of the App Store. It’s also a bit scary- how long can we maintain this momentum?

We’ve managed to pass the fart apps and the disturbing number of girly pic apps that keep popping up in the Entertainment category (you should see the App Store in Japan, it’s even scarier…). We hope our climb up the charts so far means that people are looking for something different and unique that’s actually made with care and love.

For us, we hope this is just the beginning, and we’d like to thank everyone who has helped Lumpy and us get to where we are today.

We’re not cooling our heels either. We’ve been reading all your feedback from the forums and the reviews on the App Store, and we will be incorporating your suggestions in future versions, including new guest stars, mini-games, and online stats. We also hope that you’re enjoying the posts here on the blog, as we want to entertain you with stuff outside the app.

We are already hard at work on our next update, and we’ll be sharing our production progress in the coming weeks. The tazer is just one of the items in the works.

Speaking of which, I think Ben’s working a bit too hard recently. I had to return the favor and taze him earlier today so that the B-man would get some sleep…

The Italian Job – Musings by Yas

Call me a geek, but the speed at which information spreads around the world via the interwebs fascinates me. In the last couple of days, I’ve been surfing the net to find out which countries around the world have heard about QI!

So, when Ben gave me the heads up yesterday that we hit number 89 in the top 100 of the Italian App Store’s Entertainment (Intrattenimento) category, I was puzzled. Sure enough, nestled amongst the girly pic apps and fart apps, was the Lumpster (since then, we've gone down to 100 as shown in the picture). Realistically, this doesn’t really translate into big sales numbers given the size of the Italian market, but how did we get there considering we did zero PR in Italy?

We had lots of silly conspiracy theories in the office about how this happened (…something along the lines of QI! being an app that people couldn’t refuse...), but later during the afternoon, we got some intel from a QI! fan that sort of cleared up the mystery. So, as it turns out, an Italian site called iPhoneItalia wrote a review of our app. The review itself was kinda neutral, but heck, we really appreciate any press that we can get!

Now back to more surfing! Or maybe not…I think I see Ben coming over to my desk with a tazeruiopasdg;la[pgj’/.lasdjs;

Tale of the Tazer

The crew here at 2n HQ have been busy as of late, what with the tending to an intergalactic star and preparing for the next episode of QuitIt! and all. A couple of days of ago, the balance of power was decided by the click of a mouse. Members of Touch Arcade voted the tazer to be included as a Poker in the next update.

Earlier research by a now ex-intern found this bad boy. But really, is that much zapp-tastic power really needed in an electronic stimulating device? Heeding Lumpy’s sagely advice of “tazing responsibly,” we took it upon ourselves to build our own. A kinder, more gentler tazer. But with an edge.

Behold the results of our endeavors!

We’re running a poll here at Lumpy’s Pad and at Touch Arcade to determine which one of these instruments of high voltage zappery will teasingly taze our pal Lumpy. Note that this tazing taunt is a “Drive Stun” model.

Cast your vote on the poll at the sidebar to the right! Votes will be combined with the votes accrued from Touch Arcade. Sure, this means you can vote twice. But we’re all honest folks now, aren’t we!?

Poker research - Tazer

The QuitIt! staffers do lots of research into what gets aired on our show, and we mostly always do our due diligence.

One of the candidates in our Design a Poker Challenge was a Tazer, so we immediately dispatched one of our interns to research them. After several days of coffee fueled all-nighters, the intern came across this Tazer.

Judging by its specs, this Tazer thing sounds like overkill. Why would anyone need something like this? Who'd be crazy enough to want to get shot by something like this?

Oh, wait. Maybe... Like. These. People:

Our interns were giggling maniacally and creating quite a commotion in the office while watching the clip repeatedly. Lumpy quickly admonished them saying that lethal and non lethal weapons are serious business, and aren't a laughing matter. Lumpy is a pacifist, and he's all about educating the universe about resolving conflict through peaceful means.

But he also said if they had to taze someone, they should get lots of training and taze responsibly!

Afterwards, the intern who researched the Tazer asked, "So, this means this thing's gonna be in the next episode of QuitIt!, right?"

The intern has been dismissed.

By the way, if you want the Tazer to be included in our next update of QI!, make sure to vote! Based on the current standings, it's neck and neck between the Cow Brander and the Tazer!

Remember, the balance of power is in your mouse click!