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matt-likes-swords
Blurb.

Matt Roszak @matt-likes-swords

Age 33, Male

Procrastinator

Glasgow University

Glasgow, UK

Joined on 6/12/04

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matt-likes-swords's News

Posted by matt-likes-swords - October 16th, 2020


Hey guys, I’m working on the launcher for the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection. It essentially functions like a Flash games website, letting you select a game, view some information, and then launch it. I think it looks pretty cool so far - it ended up looking a bit like Newgrounds.


I suspect the most frustrating part is going to be getting different game resolutions running correctly, especially since every game has a different, and often nonsensical, aspect ratio. None of them were designed to be played in full-screen mode, and will probably not perform well at higher resolutions.


Not sure how I’m gonna handle that yet. Players will probably have to tolerate some borders and blurring.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - September 24th, 2020


Yo.


My office was looking tidier than usual, so I figured this was a good chance to take a new photo of my work/gaming space. I'm pretty happy with how it looks now, especially the cable management. I can't think of much that I'd like to change, except for maybe getting a proper wooden table instead of this cheapo one. Maybe I could put something else in the corner instead of that fridge, as I haven't been using it for a while...


Technically I'm on a 4-display setup: 2 monitors, graphics tablet, and VR headset. I guess my next graphics card may need to support even more than that!


Anyway, I'm playing Terraria with my friends now. Between that and DIY projects, I've not been working on any games at the moment. I should probably finish off the Brawl Royale update and stick that on Patreon - it's almost done already. I've spent a lot of the last week building a fence in my garden - turns out it's a lot more work than I thought, especially when the ground is sloped and full of rocks and roots. Digging into that ain't easy!


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - August 27th, 2020


Hey guys, I’ve been working on new stuff for Adventure Story, which will be part of the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection on Steam. Here’s what I've got so far:


  • Controller support: should work with same controllers as Bullet Heaven 2, including Xbox 360, Xbone, PS4, and maybe others
  • Extreme difficulty: everything does 999 damage, progress is tracked on the level-select screen, but you get nothing for beating this, it's just for fun
  • 4 new levels and 4 new bosses: one at the end of each world, unlocked for collecting everything – these are pretty hard but also quite cool
  • 6 new equips and higher level cap: to make the new content slightly more beatable
  • new boss rush level!


Adventure Story is the longest game in the EBF Collection, and it never got a sequel, so it seems fair to give it the most new content.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - August 17th, 2020


Hey guys, I’m still working on the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection, which is 8 of my older games, and a bunch of extras, packaged up for a Steam release.


I'm almost finished updating Mecha Dress Up Game.


I completely remade the interface, and it almost feels like a new game.

A lot of sounds are new, because the old ones were painful. There’s a couple of new parts and backgrounds. An export to jpeg button. A bunch of pre-made mechs to give you ideas and help you find some cool color schemes. And a new soundtrack with 4 tracks!


EBF1 and 2 have sequels, so there’s not much I wanted to add there, and Brawl Royale is such a simple game that there isn’t much you can change. But Mecha Dress Up definitely had a lot of stuff I’ve wanted to add ever since I first published it.


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The Epic Battle Fantasy Collection will also include a folder of old prototypes and unused stuff. A lot of it was only published on DeviantArt, and nowhere else, so there’s sure to be plenty of people who haven’t seen it.


Either way, it’s a little look into how I learned to code and animate, and a chance to think about what might have been. Nothing too exciting, but there may be one or two things in there that I’ve never shared.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - August 7th, 2020


Hey guys, I'm currently working on updating Brawl Royale for the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection.


This game was made when I didn't know how to program, so it's basically an animated slide-show. It's getting some cool new features in this update, the biggest one being difficulty options; hopefully this gives it some more replay-value, and allows almost anyone to beat it. It's also getting a new techno soundtrack by Phyrnna, and the timing of the levels is randomized slightly, so you can't cheese the game like before.


Oh yeah, all the copyrighted characters have been re-designed too.


Due to some minor file corruption, I actually had to reprogram the game in ActionScript 3, which luckily didn't take long. The nice part about this is that it can now run on mobile using Adobe AIR, and since it only requires one button to play, this might be a quick little practice game for me to put onto phones.


Of course the original game will also continue to float around the internet forever, if you ever want to play that again.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - July 25th, 2020


Hey guys, after slacking off and playing Age of Empires 2 for a few months, I’ve gotten back to work – on the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection!


I’m re-releasing 8 of my very old games on Steam, which involves censoring a lot of copyrighted stuff. So here’s some new creatures for Epic Battle Fantasy 1, which are definitely not Pokemon. EBF1 is also getting a new soundtrack, since all of the original music was stolen from other games.


The other games that will be in included in the collection are: EBF2, Adventure Story, Bullet Heaven, Brawl Royale, Mecha Dress Up, The Kitten Game and Cat Cafe. Some of those are pretty much good to go already, but a few of them will need some changes. Besides removing copyright infringement, I'm also adding some Quality of Life features, like volume controls, easy modes, bug fixes, and Steam achievements!


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - July 2nd, 2020


Hey guys, it’s the end of an era.


Kongregate.com is going into archive mode and no longer accepting new games. A lot of the main staff already left a while ago, but there was still some really good web games being published there, so I’m a bit surprised that it’s no longer working out for them. They were even doing the monthly cash prizes for games up until the end, which I appreciate. I guess now they’re gonna be focusing on publishing mobile games, and on their store, Kartridge.


When I published Epic Battle Fantasy 3 on Kongregate 10 years ago, it got a million plays in the first week, and eventually 11 million in total. I think that was the biggest long-term boost to my reputation and career. The people at Kongregate were a lot of fun to work with, especially Greg the badge guy, and I don’t think any indie game platform today has anywhere near the same influence. I’m glad I published Epic Battle Fantasy 5 on there while I still could – it’ll be one of the last games to ever get badges!


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Personally, I’m gonna keep checking the site every once in a while. There’s still lots of fun badges that I’ve missed. Even when the Flashplayer plugin is disabled, there’s still browser extensions to get around that.


A lot of the popular Flash games I’m sure will eventually make their way onto other platforms like Steam, but there’s also preservation projects like BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint to keep these games alive.


Anyway, you should go have a browse through Kongregate’s badge categories. I’m sure you’ll find something fun to play every time you have an hour or two to spare. This news also motivates me to be more active on Newgrounds, as I'd really love for this website to stay alive for as long as possible!


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - June 10th, 2020


Hey guys, I’ve added Epic Battle Fantasy 4 to Itch.io’s massive charity bundle. For $5 you get 1,000+ games – mostly obscure stuff, but there’s a few well known indie games in there too, including Celeste, Night in the Woods, Minit, Nuclear Throne, Super Hexagon, Oxenfree, OneShot, Octodad and GNOG. Some hidden gems I’ve noticed include Water's Fine, Blitz Breaker, Lenna’s Inception, Heavy Bullets, The Floor is Jelly, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons, and Cuckoo Castle. I’m sure there’s much more in there that’s worth checking out, and if you agree with the cause, you should probably chip in a bit more than the minimum price.


Anyway, all of the games are DRM-free, no Steam keys.

Good luck, have fun.


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Posted by matt-likes-swords - May 24th, 2020


Hey guys, the entire EBF3 source code and assets are available on my Patreon for $2 for personal use. So if you have an old version of Adobe Flash (CS3, CS4, CS5 or CS6), you can try making some changes to it for fun, or just take a look at how the programming and animations are done. It’s ActionScript 2, so it’ll be a blast from the past, and it’s not my tidiest work. In fact it's incredibly messy, so you'll definitely need some Flash experience to make sense of it.


If people find that interesting, I may share the source files for the newer EBF games.


Anyway, I figured I'd announce this on Newgrounds since there may be some oldschool game devs on here who want to take a look at some AS2 stuff again.



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Posted by matt-likes-swords - January 18th, 2020


Hey guys, I'll be publishing Epic Battle Fantasy 5 on Kongregate sometime next week, and hopefully on Newgrounds very soon after.


I've not been very active in the browser game scene for a few years, so I'm catching up. I've noticed that Newgrounds requires you to download their player to run Flash games, while Kongregate asks you to enable Flashplayer in your browser.


I'm taking a look at the NG player, and it seems to run my old games fine - but website links don't work!

I'd very much like to advertise my website and deluxe version of the game. So it would be a shame if I couldn't do that on Newgrounds. But I understand this might be a limitation of Adobe's desktop Flashplayer - and I'll modify my ads accordingly if I need to.


I haven't checked - but do NG medals still work on it? Cause I'd still like to implement those.


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