I didn't actually close it. My account was hacked. I'm not sure yet whether or not I'm going to bother restoring my account, as all videos, comments, etc., will be gone. I probably will.

EDIT: The title was supposed to be "Saunich der Hejhaug" upside-down, but the flipped text screwed up. I'm leaving the title the way it is, though, for the =3s.

Yes, so it's now out on Newgrounds. It came in Daily 3rd with a 3.96, which certainly isn't bad for something I finished in only four days. The Newgrounds scores continue to feel ridiculously arbitrary to me, though... especially since today's Daily Feature, a stick figure battle collection, has a 4.08, whereas yesterday's stick figure battle (which wasn't nearly as well done in my opinion) is currently the highest scoring submission at a whopping 4.61 out of 5. The fact that something very similar and twice as good can be submitted the very next day and get a much lower score shows how flawed the whole system is... not that there's any way around that, of course.

Anyway, when I finished Saunich, I felt it was the best looking Flash I had ever made, even though I spent way less time working on it than any of my other Newgrounds submissions. I decided to do it frame-by-frame without worrying about keeping the proportions exactly consistent, which, as it turns out, results in a rather compelling style. I kept work time down by only redrawing moving parts, using the "flapping hamburger buns" style of lip flap, and reusing frames whenever it worked to do so.

As it is now, I'm satisfied with it, but feel I can do way better if I spend more time working.

I'm not going to talking about Enthalpy right now.

I have an important announcement to make. My audio submission, "Lock and Load", was NOT WRITTEN BY ME. It was written by my father, who INSISTED that I didn't credit him. He wouldn't explain why, but he refused to let me credit him.

Today I found that the song is actually getting some attention and has been used in two Flashes. I really don't want to take credit that I don't deserve, so I'm going against my father's wishes and telling everyone that I didn't write it. I'm not that talented in terms of musical composition. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that one is able to edit the description of an Audio Portal entry. If it is actually possible to do so, please tell me in a comment.

I have composed several (not as complex or professional) pieces of music that I'm thinking of submitting to the Audio Portal, though. Most of the music I've composed is.... really, really weird. That's all I can say.

Yes, the "game" is more of a practical joke than an actual game. I felt like I'd want to have more Enthalpy-related games than just the two NWAs when I put the official website up (which I will shortly before releasing the first episode, which I absolutely must finish within the next couple of months).

I didn't want to spend a lot of time making something, though, since I want to devote most of my time and effort to finishing the first episode of Enthalpy. I scoured the Internet for inspiration; in other words, I played a porkload of Flash games. I went to every Flash game site I could think of: maxgames.com, armorgames.com, Newgrounds (of course), and nick.com.

Inspiration came to me after playing the Spongebob Squarepants game "Poop Deck Draw Down". I decided that I needed to make a card game. But I certainly didn't want to make it any old card game you could play anywhere. No, I wanted mine to be completely irrational, unpredictable, and utterly confusing to the player. Patterning the game loosely after Mario's FUNdamentals (specifically Go Fish), I wrote down how I wanted the gameplay to work. I quickly realized that this wouldn't turn out to be a "real" game, and wasn't sure at first whether or not I'd actually submit it to Newgrounds.

I eventually decided that I'd submit it to NG and not worry too much about the score, but that I would advertise it on my illogically popular Youtube Poop account of WalrusGuy (on YouTube, of course). Shortly after submitting the game to NG, I submitted an ephemeral video to YouTube with a link to the game, saying to vote five if you like it, and that it would be awesome if it got Daily Feature since that would be really confusing to players (and confusing people is hilarious). I set the video to private once I actually got Daily Feature, as I felt somewhat bad about promoting a non-YTP game I made on my YTP account. And there's the fact that people were almost certainly just voting five because I made it, not because of the quality of the game.

Mostly, I really do hope I led a lot of people who know me as WalrusGuy on YouTube to my Newgrounds account to see my more original work. Making Youtube Poops is fun, but I put way more effort into my original Flashes and they don't get nearly as much attention. While I'm not saying I'd prefer not to have all those subscribers I have on my YouTube account, I'd much rather be known for my original works that I put a lot of creativity and effort into than for my Youtube Poops.

I have to finish the first episode of Enthalpy soon. I must. I've been working on it off and on (mostly off) for way too long. And Enthalpy is supposed to be a series... I should only be spending a couple of months on each episode! I'm sure I could work much faster than I am...

For the Atari 2600! I was going to make this game in Flash and make it as close a facsimile of an Atari 2600 game as I possibly could, but then discovered that, since 2006, you no longer have to write 2600 homebrew in assembly code (making the 2600 often considered the most challenging system to code for). With batari Basic, it was almost as easy to make this an actual Atari 2600 game as it would have been to make it in Flash.

So, what is this game? I call it Pig Perambulator. You play as Nicholas from Enthalpy as he tries to perambulate, but his archenemy Piggly Oink (Visit http://projectenthalpy.com/piggly.png to see what he looks like in Enthalpy) is constantly firing missiles at him that he has to avoid. Also, there's this yellow thing bouncing around, too. I'm not sure what it is, but he'd better avoid that, too. To score, touch the left side of the screen, then the right, then the left, then the right, and so on. As your score gets higher, the game gets faster.

If you have Java installed, you can play the game online at http://projectenthalpy.com/perambulato r.html using the embedded jStella emulator. Use the spacebar to start and the arrow keys to move left and right. If you'd prefer to download it to play on the emulator of your choice (or, if you have the necessary tools, play it on an actual Atari 2600), you can get the ROM from http://projectenthalpy.com/pera2.bin .

I don't *quite* consider the game finished, since I want to have the speed increase more gradually instead of having it suddenly double in speed once you get eleven points, then triple if you ever get twenty. However, I could only get the speed to work with integers (the speed actually increases by fractions in the code, but doesn't affect the gameplay until an integer is reached). I hope to eventually get that fixed. Also, if I can be bothered to, I'll probably add some music to the title screen. As it is, though, it's a fully functional game that can be considered complete.

If you have any suggestions or criticisms, please let me know. Also, how fun is it compared to the average commercially released 2600 game? What's your highest score?

Also, you know what would be even better than an Atari 2600 emulator in Java? An Atari 2600 emulator in Flash. I'm sure it's possible with Alchemy, but nobody's made/ported one yet. I'd try to port an emulator to Flash myself, but I just haven't been able to get Alchemy to work no matter what I do.