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".

Oh Snap! Lumpy Not Cute Enuf for Cute Overload?

Lumpy enjoys surfing the interwebs during his breaks. There’s one site that he enjoys in particular called Cute Overload. Lumpy really really likes cute, fuzzy animals. He’s such a fan that he asked his Agent to see if there was some way he could reach out to his fans through their site. Lumpy’s Agent suggested that he try and be included in their 2010 Calendar. Allegedly, meetings were held, photos were taken, and negotiations started.

During the focus testing of the calendar, Lumpy apparently tested well on his cuteness, as seen on the photo to the left. Rumor has it that he was cute enough to be featured as a Cutie of the Day, but not quite cute enough for the flagship position of being a Rule of Cuteness or the Cover Cutie of the calendar.

It was supposedly a tough decision. In the end, it appears Lumpy lost that coveted placement to a panda, as seen on the photo below. When notified of this, his Agent allegedly pulled out of the rumored negotiations.

When asked to comment, the Agent simply stated, “My client’s image has value and intrinsic cuteness. If he’s not cute enough to be a Rule of Cuteness, then we’ll have to take his cuteness elsewhere. The people at 2n really ‘get it,’ and Episode 2 of QuitIt! will showcase even more of Lumpy’s intrinsic cuteness.”

Lumpy was allegedly a bit disappointed when he heard the news, but in the end, he was okay with it.

Besides, the panda does look cute.

Daily Dish - Lumpy the next American Idol?

…as a judge?

It seems that our blobby blue friend has found himself yet another guilty pleasure: American Idol.

Sources close to Lumpy’s Agent have passed on the word that Lumpy is “extremely interested” in becoming the next judge for American Idol and may be in line to be the next guest judge for American Idol after Kristin Chenoweth.

Negotiations with the Fox people have allegedly been underway for some time.

According to a source not so close to Lumpy’s Agent, the major sticking point in the negotiations has been the Fox execs’ concern about how Lumpy would potentially upset the on-air chemistry of the judges on the show.

The recent revelation about the friction between the Lumpster and the RPattz earlier this year on the set of the Twilight sequel may have made the suits over at Fox nervous.

Perhaps they don’t want a repeat performance between their star Simon Cowell and Lumpy? Or could it be that Mr. Cowell has been voicing concerns about being upstaged by Lumpy?

When asked to comment on the situation, Lumpy’s Agent said, “Look, I can’t confirm or deny any of my client’s potential projects at this time. But I can say that Lumpy enjoys watching American Idol and Episode 2 of QuitIt! is coming in September.”

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!

Lumpy’s Guilty Pleasure – The Oprah Winfrey Show

When Lumpy isn’t occupying his time surfing the net or eating pho, he watches a lot of daytime TV. Lately it’s been reruns of Oprah.

Lumpy claims he’s just doing research to try and get closer to his fans on Earth by understanding them more.

We’re all convinced he’s addicted to Oprah. Whenever it gets near the time of her show, Lumpy gets restless and wants to get off the stage set. Just in case he can’t get off the stage, he makes sure that one of the interns Tivo’s the show for him. He’s also been looking at past episodes on YouTube as well.

The Lumpster says he can’t wait for the show’s season premiere on September 14th. He’s really looking forward to Oprah’s interview with Whitney Houston.

Lumpy really identifies with Whitney because she’s had a tough showbiz life, just like Lumpy back on Zgrunturos. His eyes well up with tears when he says that he’s so glad that she’s gotten away from Bobby Brown…

It’s a bit scary tho’ to hear Lumpy’s devotion to Oprah. In fact, he’s saying “Today on Oprah…” more than pho recently…

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.

Daily Delish- Coffeecake

As Lumpy gets used to living here on Earth, he’s enjoying Earth’s simple pleasures, like breakfast.

He’s now getting into a daily routine of scanning the celebrity news sites, checking up on who the guests are on Oprah, etc. while noshing on breakfast foods.

One of our production assistant interns bought some raspberry peach coffeecake from our neighborhood bakery for the staff breakfast, and Lumpy gobbled up a few of them. He eats a lot.

As he was devouring the tasty cakes, he remarked that he was puzzled why it didn’t taste like coffee, an Earth beverage he has grown used to drinking by the gallon.

Lumpy’s verdict? “Delish.” He said that while he enjoyed the tasty cake, he’s contractually obligated to say that it isn’t quite as tasty as Lumpy-Ohhs.

From his daily morning web surfing he’s also learned that pho is eaten for breakfast in Vietnam. Now he’s saying that he wants pho for his breakfast.

“Lumpy wa pho wo asa gohan ni tabetai.”

Upon hearing our pho-crazed star’s latest demand, a visibly unnerved intern submitted her resignation.

Friend or pho...err...foe? (EP2 Update)

Thanks to the hard work of Ben and our artists, we’re going to be introducing something new in Episode 2 that we think you’ll like. For now, we’ll just say that it has something to do with Gifts. Anyone want to take a wild guess???

But before I go into more details, I thought I’d share this with you first. I was walking around the studio today and saw that Lumpy left his iPhone in the Green Room. I wasn’t going to violate our Star’s privacy and snoop inside his phone, but just as I was about to leave the room, his phone rang so I just had to see who called him.

I got a shot of the caller ID so I thought I’d share it with everyone. I’m sure Lumpy won’t mind, as he wants to share his life with all of his fans.

So let’s see, Lumpy’s pho wallpaper is a nice touch. Hmm, and the picture ID shows someone I haven’t seen around the studio.

I wonder who it can be? Is he a friend or pho…errr foe?

I think I’m going to have to do a bit more investigation on this. I wonder if this has anything to do with Episode 2?

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!

Lumpy's lookin' FREAKY! (EP2 Update)

We have some new update news to share with you today. Or more like new beauty shots of Lumpy…I think.

Boy, Lumpy looks like he’s having a bad hair day. Wait, Lumpy doesn’t have hair. So what kind of a day do Zgrunturians have when they wake up on the wrong side of the hyperbaric sleeping chamber??

Well, at any rate, Lumpy looks all sorts of weird. A bit disturbing in fact.

So where did I get these pics? Well, when I walked by Ben’s desk this morning to check on the dev progress on the Tazer, he tried to shut off his monitor. I think he didn’t want me to see what he was working on. Heh. But I still managed to swipe these pics off of his desk before he hit the power switch.

When I asked Ben why Lumpy(?) looks so weird, he told me that he’s just fine. But he was giggling uncontrollably as he said that, so I’ll take his comments with a chunk of kosher salt.

Hmm, maybe I should have a word with Lumpy’s Agent to ask him if there’s something we should know about Lumpy (I heard he’s finally back from “questionings” at the MNU).

Anyone have any idea of what’s going on with Lumpy?

Monday's EP2 Update

I just wanted people to know that the production for EP2 is still moving forward!

This past week was pretty intense as we have a large amount of art assets under production. We're still maintaining the overall art quality level of the app. But unfortunately it takes a bit of time to produce. I've been mostly spending my time getting in assets as well expanding the infrastructure to ensure we can dynamically load all the parts on the fly.

We're hoping that by the end of the week or very early next week we'll be getting builds to the Beta testers. For the people we talked to about Beta testing, we'll be hitting you up for you UDIDs if we don't have them already.

Curious about being a Beta tester? Then hit us up. For this first update we're only using a small set of testers. However moving forward, we will increase the pool. Especially once we introduce networking and global scores!

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...

Da Lump is back!

Our wayward alien buddy Lumpy is finally back, after freaking out about the MNU coming after him.

He’s managed to elude us over the weekend, only staying in communications via texting.

We had reports of him slipping into the grand opening of New People in San Francisco over the weekend, but other than that, he’s been quite elusive. We started to wonder if he brought another kind of alien tech from Zgrunturos besides his food replicator. Like a cloaking device.

Well, in the end, we needed no high-tech doodad to lure the Lumpster back to our studio.

Our bait of choice to capture the Lumpster?

A nice hot bowl of pho, natch!

We did, however, set up a little trap for the Lumpster as seen in the pic here.

So, here’s how it went down. We sent him a text yesterday telling him that we have a nice bowl of steaming hot pho at our studio.

We were waiting for him to come through our studio doors, but Lumpy somehow got into the studio unnoticed (hmm, cloaking device???). We realized this when we saw that our trap had been sprung.

In the end, it was all good. We got our star back. And Lumpy was happy(?) because he got his favorite delish. But judging how mellow he was after eating the pho, you’d think the hubbub with the MNU was all a sham. Hmm…maybe it’s the mixture of herbs and spices in the pho’s broth…

We definitely knew everything was back to normal when Lumpy started saying, “Lumpy ha motto pho tabetai,”* much to the horror of our production staff.

Now, all we need is to get back Lumpy’s Agent to translate for us…

*「ランピー　ハ　モット　フォー　タベタイ」