Pee Man has his own Let's Play video!

Update: whoever made the video has set it to private.

So our workers' compensation insurance policy renewal arrived today. Workers' compensation insurance is required for businesses, btw.

It included a notice to policy owners about the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, so I decided to read it.

Insurance companies are required by the government to include terrorism insurance as part of the workers' comp policy we are required to buy. Terrorism Insurance adds $188 to the annual cost.

For the insurance company to pay, there needs to be a "certified act of terrorism", which must be certified by the Secretary of the Treasury in concurrence with the Secretary of State and the Attorney General of the United States, based on a number of criteria including aggregate expenses in excess of $5 million dollars.

If someone blew up the Newgrounds office, this insurance does not cover the damage to our building - that would be covered by the terrorism clause of our property insurance.

However, if someone in the office lost their arms in the explosion and could no longer do their job, that would potentially be covered by this insurance.

Unfortunately, if someone blew up the Newgrounds office, it would not cause damage in excess of $5 million dollars, so the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State and the Attorney General might not certify it as an act of terrorism, in which case our workers' compensation policy would not apply.

However, if we went to a convention and someone blew up the convention center and one of us lost our arms, this policy would likely cover that.

Just thought I'd share.

While making games, I come across all sorts of interesting problems that don't have clear answers. Sometimes these problems have been figured out by other people on-line but I don't search for that sort of thing unless I'm looking for a specific math equation, in which case I usually just ask Mike.

When I finally come to a solution for these problems, or a "good enough" fix, I get tempted to post about what I did online, because it might be an interesting read... But then I imagine someone replying, "Why didn't you just do X, Y ,Z; that's what all the other game developers do." I have this fear that my problem is totally pedestrian and all the other game developers will be laughing at my stupidity because I spent hours solving something the wrong way.

The reality is there probably isn't one true "right" way and a lot of people might benefit from seeing the process I went through to get from A to B... But then I still have that fear that if people actually turn to me for advice, they'll actually be learning the wrong way to do something.

The fear of looking stupid or teaching other people to be stupid is the big thing that holds me back from sharing more about my game development process. I'm not a math or programming genius and I feel like most of my results come from the sheer determination to make something. And that's probably how most games get made, although I still think they have better code and better math.

The problem I've been working on this week is multiplayer camera with free roaming platforming. It becomes clear why games like 4 player Mario and Guacamelee use "bubbles" to float lost players back into the action. I've been trying to avoid that, although I'll likely have some sort of "teleporting" as a last resort. Still, I really liked the bubbles in Guacamelee because I could play with my son and he could keep up with me in bubble form when things got hairy. That alone makes me see how bubbles are a "right" way to do it, because they let you maintain momentum with a dominant player, in addition to solving other quirks.

Beyond that, I've been trying to have a really nice camera system based on "camera zones." Right now it's all actually working really well, until it doesn't. I'm in awe of how most 2D console games don't have noticeable camera flaws... I feel like I'm overcomplicating things.

I'd like to show the game but JohnnyUtah and I are keeping it under wraps so we can have a big reveal when the time comes. It's our biggest team-up ever!

If I never get the Robot Day or Game Jam 9 winners up this week, it's because I'm in San Diego for Comic-Con! I sorta forgot about that last week.

If you're at Comic-Con be sure to come by the Behemoth booth and say hi! They moved all the video games to Section A so we're at the opposite end of the hall this year. We have an entire island though so you should be able to find us!

Stuff MindChamber shared with me today:

Update: Video is gone :(

Just thought I'd give everyone an update, albeit a nondescript one. Beyond the day-to-day Newgrounds operations, I've been working with JohnnyUtah on a new console game. We've actually been at it for over a year now, although it has gone through a lot of changes and revisions during that time (plus we squeezed Cathode Raybots in there). Things are finally getting nailed down so I'm feeling hopeful. We're gonna wait until it is further along before we officially announce what it is and get the whole hype engine started. For now, I just wanted to keep you in the loop in case you're curious! It should be pretty damn cool if doesn't blow up in our faces.

When Cathode Raybots launches, it will be the first game to showcase NG Passport! There will be a notice on the loading screen asking people to sign in, as well as notices in-game at locations where people could save data to NG. We're hoping it will make more people around the web make use of the API features and hopefully get interested in NG!

I'm also making this post to test another feature that I'll announce with a front page post, if everything is working. Reply and say hi!

It hurts to say this but it's also a bit of a relief because it's not too late to enjoy Christmas: JohnnyUtah and I have decided to postpone Cathode Raybots.

The plan had been to launch on Christmas Day and that worked as a carrot to get us 99% of the way this past month. As it stands we could probably release it on Christmas day but it wouldn't be as polished as we would like it to be. Taking some extra time will allow us to flesh out the campaign mode and menus (this game is interface hell).

ALSO it just so happens that PsychoGoldfish is working on the "NG Passport" bridge that will allow people on other websites to log in and save scores, earn medals or share content via our API. We decided things will align well and Raybots could launch with Passport integration, so people around the web can enjoy it - and hopefully sign up and check out NG.

Instead of wrapping up 2012 with a bang, we'll kick off 2013 off with a boom!

Expect some more feature updates before the year ends and hopefully there will be a turnout for the GiftJam on Christmas Day (I really should have promoted that more). This would have been a front page post but I didn't want to bump Jim's announcement of playlists!

I put together the available Castle Crashers Soundtrack, so you can relive the game in your head.

It felt TOO SOON to bump Goldfish off the top front page news spot, so for now hopefully people will see this!

Go vote for Abobo's Big Adventure as game of the year on Destructoid!

Haven't played it? go play it.

Then Go vote!

Earlier this year we experimented with advertising on Facebook, to see what impact it had on our NG Facebook page. When it came time to classify the expense types from our credit card purchases, I was particularly annoyed at HOW MANY Facebook entries I had to fill in, because they charged our card every fourth day. It made me wonder if Zuckerberg ever had to do his own bookkeeping; he started Facebook in February 2004 but already had investors and an office a few months later. I can't help feeling like I've just made too many mistakes that I'm stuck here doing manual data entry.

The real joke is that we paid Facebook to boost followers of our Facebook page (don't think it helped much), but now we have to pay them if we want more than a handful of those followers to receive our updates. Only 6,500 people saw our announcement about the new Emote stickers, despite 141k followers, mostly NG users who we pushed over to Facebook.

I really hate the Internet sometimes. Most times.

But things are exciting in NG land! Be sure to play Soulcaster if you haven't yet! It was originally developed for XNA but was ported to HTML5, pretty exciting stuff.