It's contemporary belittling slang, along the lines of 'Jerry' or 'Kraut' for Germans, or 'Ami' for Americans. True that anti-Japanese propaganda was racially charged, but why would the player character- a combatant- go out of his way to be politically correct? Besides, 'Jap' isn't the slur against Japanese in usage today, let alone the future.

...

Who calls American's "Ami"? I've never heard of that. I've heard them being called "Yanks" but never "ami". Did you just make that up?

How is Jap not a slur "in usage today"?! Walk up to an old Japanese person and call them a "Jap" and see how that goes. It's a slur, dude, it's racist and has a negative connotation, you're being a little bit ignorant if you don't know that. Most Germans aren't going to complain if you call them a Kraut, but they aren't going to like it either. That's why you tend to only hear it being said in period pieces about WW2 where it was just the reality that people said stuff like Jap and Kraut, or by insensitive people who think it's funny.

Jap is especially insulting because the Japanese were pretty harshly interned in the United States during the war AND they got two atomic bombs dropped on them. So it's pretty uncool to call them "Japs" and make light of the war around them.

I find it odd that a soldier in the far future would know that the Japanese were referred to as Japs by grunts in WW2 and would say it instead of just "Japanese soldier". Do you know what the Romans referred to the Gauls as when they were fighting them and would you use their slur when talking about some historical fact about the Gauls? No, because you are in the far future from that time and have no interest in dehumanizing or insulting someone who isn't your enemy.

We know that Allied soldiers called the Japanese the "Japs" during WW2 because we've all seen movies and TV shows about the war and we might think it's quaint to talk like them when talking about the war to bring about a feeling of the time, maybe even going so far as to put on an American good old boy accent to stress the point. But this doesn't make it acceptable.

We know that American soldiers now refer to islamic people they are fighting against as "Hadjis" but is it a acceptable to call them that because some redneck soldier who has to get shot at them all year decides to vent his frustration in a racist manner?

I really liked the first boss. His charge in attack was really neat.

I have to say though, I find the tight clusters of trees that are sometimes on the outskirts of levels to be very annoying. You can get caught up in them and lost under their foliage which results in crashing all over the place with no easy way to get out. The fact that you reverse direction any time you hit anything can exacerbate the problem by making it very confusing to figure out which way you are facing at any given time.

I think that just hard solid clusters of trees with no gaps to fall into between them would be a much less frustrating level design norm.

Dammit! That's an unfixable bug, that I understand is very rare. Sorry about that!

Right, unfixable bug.

Uhm, just an other thing I noticed, in one of the between scenes quote things, the player character refers to a Japanese soldier in WW2 as a "Jap soldier". Would he really say "Jap"? It's a racial slur and he's in the future. Did an other war happen with the Japanese to make people racist against them again?

I pressed my space bar during the training part and the game locked up. I had to force quit it.

Also, I demand a vaguely Schlocky themed minigame be in this game.

Well here in Bytown we all love the BERS!

[NEVER]

Ouch man, ouch. I thought we were cool.

You'll never be cool, Gabe. NEVER.

Oh cool, good to have you back, buddy.

I thought I'd share this cool cover Gabe very kindly and generously made for my game as a final taste of his talents until he's willing and able to come back to the Archer.

[Barinyoni Road]

Working on getting my demo level done.



An old Helatian highway, Barinyoni Road was build well over a thousand years ago. The fact that it still remains usable and has yet to be improved upon is a testiment to the engineering prowess of the fallen Helatian Empire.

A battle breaks out when Snakeman brigands raid a caravan traveling along the road.

 

Oh also, Gabe.

An other idea I love is side art that would look like a cross between these sorts of things:




and classic 80s arcade fantasy art like this.

Yeah, sort of like that, but looking more to the left so that the pikes and stuff stick out towards your right a bit. Also the knight would be closer to the pike square, ontop of them really and probably others around him but you wouldn't be able to see that many cause of the "camera's" position and angle. Also when I say "knight" I mean a mounted guy.

Random hilarity:
http://www.pinrepair.com/arcade/matchlo.htm

In my head I always liked the idea of a picture from the perspective of being inside a pike square kind of. The idea being that you can see the pikes extended sort of away from you and too the right a little so you are like standing in the first or second row of the pike square and lookign at the guy to your left and ahead of you kinda. In the scene there would be knights bearing down on you and the guy you are looking at would be firing his handgonne at the knight and the shot would be visable with all the smoke coming out of the barrel and then a visible thin line of smoke or something extending out of the intial shot and point at the lead ball itself which would be the same distance away from the knight as his lance was from the shooter.

It's inspired by that old woodblock picture of the arquebusier shooting at a gendarme that looks like that. But that picture is from a side view and the shooter and the rider are the only too things in it. This would be from more of an angle like you are beside the shooter and also the pikes would be sticking up all over. Also that picture is depicting a more modern period that I want to depict in my game. Stuff changed very quickly in this period but Pike & Shot is trying to look more like say 1450 than it is like 1550. If that's a distinction that perhaps only I understand, it's basically guns are around, but everything still looks medieval. Longswords and Messers, not side swords and rapiers and armour is still prevelant and useful.

It's true, I finally met him and he is feral and unused to our civilized ways. He is only approachable after building up his trust with offerings of dried meats and sacred herbs.

While I'm messing with an other concept too that is a little more "comic booky" looking for lack of a better term (Think stuff like "Groo The Wanderer"), for now I have this.

●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬●


Fig. 2
●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬●

I still wanna add a breast plate and/or helmet in there somewhere and I want a skull in there too so that it can talk when you move your cursor between the menu options. I want the whole thing to look more "heavy metal" style than it does.

Were you at Prince of Arcade? I would have liked to have talked to you. I'm a big fan of your stuff.

Shit, now I have to go to meet Gabe. Also my buddy Jason Kozak might be there with a thing to show so I gotta see that too and talk to him, haven't seen him for a while.

I'm not interested in the sideway post mortem since I worked on that game. I'll show up later on though.

Took a break from enemy behaviour coding and level design to try and finish this up some more before bed.

I really wanted this halberd to work... but I don't think it really does ;_;

ike & Shot needs a titlescreen for when you put in a quarter and interrupt the actractmode montage so I started doing up a title for it. Which do you all prefer?

●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬●


Fig. 1

●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬●