It's with a heavy heart that I must post-pone my Riddle School Remake.

It was set to be released on Pico Day 2015 (April 25th), but unfortunately I can no longer meet that deadline.

All of the art and more than half of the code for the game is done. I was going to power through the rest of the programming in the next few days, and just barely sqeak by. But I have hit an unforseen wall...

I don't know how to optimize code worth shit.

The completed portion of the game begins to spiral down into unplayable laggy garbage.

I believe I will be able to salvage it, but not in time for Pico Day. Due to other commitments, it will be quiet some time before I am able to return to working on this.

I apologize to anyone who was following this project, and looking forward to it's release. My fingers are crossed that I will still be able to release it in the future.

It's been 2 weeks, so I figured it was time for a Riddle School Remake update (ps. I am still brainstorm names for this. (Any ideas?) Here is my last post about this remake.

The backgrounds in the game are coming along nicely. Since my last post I also had a big breakthrough in how to code the game. So it is starting to take shape as an actual, playable game! The intro is complete, and you can play through the first couple of rooms.

I was goofing around and decided to make a Phil Eggtree Minecraft skin in Skincraft. So check that out if you need more Riddle School in your life.

My biggest problem with the game right not has been coming up with a new ending. JonBro said his biggest gripe with original game, is its lack of an ending. Coming up with something that fits the game, and ties in to the rest of the series is kind of a burden. But I'm excited to keep working on this!

[Keep in mind this is a WIP, and more background details will be added]

Set to be released on April 25th, 2015

I am too excited about this to keep it to myself for any longer!

For Pico Day 2015, I will be remaking @JonBro 's classic: Riddle School!

The original was released back in May 2006, making the game nearly 9 years old. The series has grown to include 6 installments, with millions of views, and a huge fan base.

I always thought a remake would be a fun way to honor a Newgrounds classic, and I finally realized that this game would be perfect for it. I have reached out to JonBro, and he has been extremely supportive of the idea!

It is my goal to stay as true to the series as possible. I don't want to screw up any continuity, or accidentally take anything out of the game that the fans might have loved. I also want the game to feel fresh to those of you who can beat the original in 20 seconds. So in addition to updating the art to more closely match later installments in series, I will be adding a few new puzzles.

Here is the first peak at the remake. tentatively titled "Return to Riddle School". (What do you guys think of the title?)

A brief look at my recent submissions:

I was having a lot of trouble sleeping in December with the anxiety of finishing my degree. I also realized 2014 was my first year on Newgrounds without a submission. So I spent a bit of time quickly making a short movie to share with everyone.

Sled

In January I started working on some old projects (more on that below). I couldn't find a sponsor for Sunflower Showers, so Monoflauta and I just decided to submit it and be done with it.

Sunflower Showers

I guess I got my 2015 submissions "obligation" out of the way early!

Back in August I took a month to work on some game projects. But I made the same mistake I have made before. Rather than working on 1 thing at a time, I juggled ~4 and none of them were finished that month. I had to set things aside from Sept-Dec while I wrapped up my degree and focused on getting good grades.

As of January, I have been working on games again! But I have also started working a regular job, so game dev is taking place part-time in my evenings and weekends. Right now I have 1 game seeking sponsorship, and another game that should be looking soon.

Starting in May/June I have plans to travel, so I am hoping to have a few more projects completed and released before then.

For the first time since 2008 I am working on something for Pico Day 2015!!

Back 7 years ago I made a haggard little project where I spliced together audio from the Tankmen series, and video from Saving Private Ryan.

I have always wanted to work on a more substantial project for Pico Day, but either had no good ideas or no time. This year I have started 2+ months in advance, and am trying to keep things small.

It is a short game, and I am chipping away at it in my spare time between working on other projects. It is the first game that I am coding myself, which is turning out to be a big undertaking! I just felt it would mean more if I did it all myself. I figure learning some AS3 might open doors for me in the future. So it's win-win.

I am not sharing much about it yet, but I have attached a picture as a small teaser. I think that many of you will be very happy with the result!

I'm super excited to say that I should have a few new games coming out later this year. I decided to take the month of August to work on some old and new projects.

A few things I have underway are from years ago that I have finally taken off the shelf, dusted off and finished up! At the moment, nothing is totally done, but 2 projects are about as close as they could possibly get before we look for sponsors. I have 2 new projects that are in much earlier stages, but I have a strong feeling that production on those will be quicker.

Last of all I am working on my first ever mobile game! This might be the most exciting of all for me. My dream is to be riding the bus and look over to see someone playing my game. I realize the game has to be finished first, but it's an exciting prospect none-the-less.

One fun thing is that I'm working with different people on every project, and they are all people I have never released any work with before. That's 5 new partnerships! If things go well, maybe we can work together again somewhere down the line.

I wish I could share more details, but I'd better wait until things are closer to actually being published. For now I'll leave you all with this simple image from the game I feel is closest to being ready.

So it was a little over a year ago that I left "Goat-Man" and made the shift to GraemeNoodle (or just Noodle here on Newgrounds). And since then I have accomplished... literally nothing.

Nothing in the Flash world at least. I just flipped through some of my old news posts. It seems to be a recurring theme in my time here on Newgrounds that I don't see a lot of projects through to the end. I have stacks of ideas and half-assed starts to projects just laying around. It's not a good feeling.

I just bought a new tablet the other day though, upgrading from my 6 year old Wacom Bamboo. I've been using it to work on my project that I think has the most potential, and the one that was the furthest along since I last left it. I'm hoping to reinvent Pirate Launch, and bring it mobile devices! I have a lot of the basic art done, and need to work on menus and such (which has never been my favorite).

I'm trying no to kid myself, because I am still quiet busy with work. Today is my first day off after 15 days of ~10 hour days. But I really do miss Flash, and the Newgrounds community! I'm hoping that rather than putting in sprints of work once a month that lead to nothing, I can consistently put in micro-amounts of time that may eventually lead to a completed project.

I apologize to everyone here that I've left hanging over the years for projects that never saw it to the end. The largest of which was the follow up to DYHT. Most parts to the collab are done, but I had several dropouts and had trouble filling those empty positions. I hope that collab isn't dead forever. But it will be dormant for a while yet still. There are numerous others that never saw fruition either, and I am sincerely sorry about it. I hope that one day I will have the time to spend working on projects with the community I grew up with.

I'm considering setting up some kind of small tumblr/blog where I can post updates on projects. I think something that would allow me to give frequent, short updates might motivate me to work on things more often.

Hey everybody, it's the artist formerly known as "Goat-Man" here!

So I've been batting around the idea of changing my username for a year or two already. I've been Goat-Man for nearly 6 years now, and I felt it was time for a change. I picked that username when I was 15, and it was just kind of random. It never really meant a whole lot to me.
A few other artists I know have been changing names to something more fitting as well, and I think that was the final encouragement I needed. (ie. Elfman-Rox is now Emrox; MasterAardvark is now FelixColgrave; and JonBrorecently announced an upcoming name change)

Noodle is a joke based on my last name, and it's something that some of my friends actually call me. So it just felt more meaningful. For years, whenever I show some of my work to friends and family, I always had them say, "Why Goat-Man?"
Now I think people will be a lot less confused, and it will save me some mild embarrassment.

A few things like my Reddit and Twitter accounts already use either Noodle or g_noodle, so that will make the transition a little easier.
In some more recent projects I've actually decided to be credited under my real name, rather than a moniker. So over time Goat-Man has just become less relevant to what I've been doing.

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In other news, I've had a sudden burst of encouragement to pick Flash up again! I haven't been active at all in a long time :(
This sudden motivation is probably part of what made me more seriously consider the name-change as well.

First off, check out a game from earlier this year I made with Pinchanzee!
It's a puzzle game called Geologem. I'm really thrilled with how it turned out, and that is due mostly all of Pin's hard work! He put so much love and planning into this game, and it really shows :)

DYHT? vol 4 reached a point where it was all but dead! I had too many people not handing in parts, and it was tough to scramble and replace them. Too many people put in too much hard work for it to never be released. So I'm going to make 1 last attempt at finding replacements. And if I can't, then it will just have to be submitted with less than 10 participants this time.

I have few games that I worked on last summer that never saw the light of day. 1 is being retooled to make the gameplay more fun; another is receiving yet another expansion to it's story (I'm really excited about this one!!); and a couple others that just need some polish.

Really though I want to get back into animating!
Right now I feel passionate about making a sequel to Goat Trip and Goat 51. So even though I changed from Goat-Man, I still plan to keep the 'character' going! I animated about 1 minute of a sequel a few years back, but I'm totally unsatisfied with it now. I'd start from scratch.
I might need to animate a short sketch or two to shake some rust off. But hopefully wrapping up those other projects does that for me.

I look forward to contributing to Newgrounds once again! Work and school have been in the way, but I'll do what I can to find time!

I regret to inform that the target release date of March 24th will not be made.
I was so confident that I would be able to make that deadline with ease! But as my weeks have been dragging along I haven't had any time to wrap this thing up. I really don't know when I'll be able to work on it next.

I have 2 midterms this week, a lab report and research proposal due in a few days. Next week I have a big term paper worth 25% of my grade for the semester in that class, and some other minorish assignments due.
It really does some to pile up the second that it starts to look like I'll be having free time. It's been a pain, but that's why I'm in school I guess.

So sorry to say that we won't be seeing DYHT? vol 4 this week. Nor for a while for that matter.
I'd like to say my new target is sometime in April, but it really is hard to manage time while I'm still in school, with finals only being 3-4 weeks away.
Again, sorry to those of you looking forward to it. I'll try and decide a new release date as soon as I feel confident that it can be managed.

[EDIT 26/2/2012]

After I finished some assignments and did some studying I went right back to work.
I put in around 5 hours yesterday and another 3 today. I found out what was slowing Flash down so badly and fixed that. Sometimes it still goes slow, since it's a pretty hefty file. But it's almost done.
I hit a brand new snag, where one part was animated at the wrong framerate. I couldn't change that without ruining the timing of the entire piece. I think I have it solved now though.

I'm exhausted and going to bed. Tomorrow after my classes I'll put on the finishing touches, and it should be hitting the portal tomorrow evening. Cool!

[EDIT 25/2/2012]

I'm trying to finish this off and export it so I can submit it, but the file is becoming way too bulky and it continually crashing on me!!
This is getting frustrating as hell. I just hope I can have this finished soon :(

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My guess is nobody really cares what I have to say about the redesign, so I won't be giving any in depth opinions here. I will say that I'm not a fan of the new portal layout, but I'm really excited for some cool new features like the notification and project systems! Cool!

That's all I have to say about that.

In past dev cycles with DYHT, I have found a crew around Christmas break, and then submitted over the summer.
Currently, I tried to be a little more ambitious with the project in a way that won't be apparent to anyone who is currently a part of it, as I haven't told any of them :D
But, I can tell you one thing, when I'm running this far behind schedule I will NEVER attempt to do it this way again. It's been way more then work than I had predicted, and every little hitch becomes instantly 10 times bigger because of it.

In essence, the project is ready and done, with the exception of one part. Once I have that final part, I basically just have to cut and paste it in and I'd be done. The unfortunate thing is that if this part was handed in tomorrow I'd still be a week or two off from submitting due to school. Next week is the busiest I've ever had in school. Nobody wants to hear me complain about school though.

I've decided that once I finally submit this next installment I will be taking a break from the series. I haven't decided if it will be a permanent break or not. I thought the series could be continued indefinitely until I felt the creativity ran dry. I don't doubt the creativity of the community, just whether or not I want to do the same thing over and over. I have a few ideas for ways that I could reboot the series with new twists and I might try that later on.
In conclusion, I hope we'll be seeing this submitted soon! As much for the sake of everyone who put their hard work into as for my own!

I'm excited to announce to Newgrounds that I am now working on my sequel to Pirate Launch!
I've had the ideas in my head for this game since the original came out, but I didn't want to be to eager in jumping into a new one. I read through every review on Newgrounds, and many on other sites. I have tried to take every criticism to heart in order to make a game that is fun, refreshing and a stand out in the Launch genre!

Here is the original

-There will be a few different game modes, instead of just trying to reach 1 long distance.
-The game will be very story driven with a few new characters to meet, fleshed out with cutscenes and voice acting!
-Each upgradeable feature has about 10 different upgrades (each looking unique).
-All art is upgraded in every way, and looks a lot nicer!!

Now I just need to look for a programmer who can help me bring it all to life!
I need someone who can work with my ideas, but I would also love someone who could help give their own input to the story/script and gameplay.
The engine will be a bit more complex, with added fluid dynamics. But it doesn't need to simulate water perfectly. Just when you hit the water it sends a wave through flat surface, which would decay relatively quickly so as to not put strain on framerate.

There is slightly more information here in my official forum post looking for a partner.

I don't really know any programmers that well whom I can simply approach. If anyone knows a programmer they could recommend working with that would be just as helpful.

Also, if anyone has any last minute things they'd like to recommend for the game, I'd appreciate that too (other than more upgrades, and not just 1 long distance).

Thanks guys!!