Joguo -- Complete history of the character, 2001-2021

I just realized a month or so ago that it's been a whopping twenty years since I made up the character we now know as Joguo Goueng-Zu.  Though he's nowhere near as long-running as the characters associated with my old Supernum stories (who go back to 1994-1995 in many cases), or even the Bok's Expedition crew (who first showed up around 1996-1997), twenty years is still a pretty long time to keep drawing and writing stuff involving the same character.

So I figured I'd write a post on here about Joguo and the changes the character has gone through over the years before eventually settling on the current version.

Nine years worth of Joguo drawings.  The main change since 2008 seems to have been his hair. 😂

2001

Joguo's history starts in 2001, with a never-finished OHRRPGCE game project that I had titled Spuduf Splorchers.  The game's main character was a bug named... um, Bug... who found out that he had the power to  communicate with strange little spirit-thingies known as "Spuduf" (which made him a "Spuduf Splorcher" -- to "splorch" was to fuse together with a Spuduf and gain some of its powers) shortly after his forest home was burned down by the evil Emperor Zheewguu.  I'm pretty sure this was the only game idea I've ever had that involved the "hero's hometown gets burned down or otherwise destroyed" trope, funnily enough.

Anyway, as mentioned above, Spuduf Splorchers was never finished.  Joguo didn't actually appear in the parts of the game that I had finished, though he was planned to appear in a later part of the game and his graphics and stats were already programmed into the game.

The few surviving Spuduf Splorchers hero sprites

The image above is all that's left of the hero sprites from Spuduf Splorchers.  While nowhere near as good as the ones appearing in... well, any game I attempted to make from 2005ish onward... they were a massive step up from the garbage-quality graphics that I had rushed out for previous game attempts.  The humanoids are pretty shaky, but Bug actually looks semi-decent to me even now.

Joguo is the guy who appears enlarged on the right, of course.  This is the very first Joguo design, and it's... well, pretty generic-looking.  At a glance, you probably wouldn't guess he's the same guy as the blue-haired ninja from Alleghany Hell School.  The fact that his shirt says "SS" on it seems like a bit of an "oops" looking back, but I'm guessing it was intended to be short for "Spuduf Splorchers" -- the Nazi connotations of those initials were definitely not intentional.

In the game, Joguo was the leader of a group known as the "Goueng-Zu Splorchers" -- three other members of which are on the same row as Joguo's sprite.  There were a couple other members who apparently never got sprites, a guy with black hair and darker tanned skin and a robot for some reason, but I guess I either never finished their sprites or they were never intended to appear as playable characters in the game (I can't remember which for sure at this point, since I lost the game file ages ago.)  Joguo and the robot (whose name I can no longer remember) were the only ones among the Goueng-Zu Splorchers' ranks to not be based directly on anyone I knew in real life.

From what I remember of the plan I had for the game, Joguo was going to be playable temporarily in a part of the game where Emperor Zheewguu decided to attack the Goueng-Zu Splorchers directly, fighting the Emperor on his own to hold him off while the others escaped.  This early version of Joguo would end up dying after his first moment in the spotlight, sacrificing himself to keep Zheewguu from getting to the others.

So... yeah, originally "Goueng-Zu" was not Joguo's last name, but rather the name of a team of splorchers he belonged to, which seemed to be named after the small island where their base of operations was located.  He also was very much not a main character, only playable for a brief segment before dying.  He also wasn't officially a ninja at this point, though some of his abilities sort of had a vaguely ninja-like theme -- he had access to darkness magic and some martial-arts-like physical attacks, could summon Spuduf that sort of matched a ninja stealth/tools theme such as the Shadow, Bomb, and Net Spuduf, and so on.

I'm not entirely sure how I came up with the name "Joguo" originally.  I notice that it has the same sort of sound to it as some Nummorrian names, particularly those I came up with in this time period -- names like Tanduo and Teyguo, for example -- and I did tend to give a lot of characters I made up back then vaguely Khurbyish sounding names even if they were totally unconnected to Nummorro or the First Nherbi, so I figure it was similarly just made up off the top of my head.

"Goueng-Zu," on the other hand, I actually do remember a specific origin for.  I remember back around the time I was making this game, I was in the basement of a particular church in Clifton Forge at least once a week for Boy Scout meetings, and on one wall of this basement was a huge map that had a lot of locations in China clearly marked (it probably did the same for other countries, but China was right near a spot in the room I often ended up standing on sitting near for some reason.)  I'm pretty sure "Goueng-Zu" started out as a modified version of "Guangzhou," the name of a city that appeared prominently on that map.

2004

After Spuduf Splorchers, Joguo didn't show up again for a while.  He was not planned to appear in the 2003 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish game, and didn't show up at all in the Crappy World comics I was drawing around that time either.  Looking back, it's almost kind of odd that he wasn't reused, considering that Bob (the guy with the wide eyes and brown clothes in the image above), the other Goueng-Zu Splorchers (except for the robot), and the unnamed armored girl all made appearances in Crappy World at some point, in one form or another.  Of course, the Crappy World cast was pretty huge already, and didn't really focus that much on the "regular human" characters (revolving more around the Question Marks and Master Fartbean earlier on, and then shifting toward the Damuru-J/Damuru-F/Rupoo storyline), so even if he had appeared he likely wouldn't get to do a whole lot.

Three years passed, and in the summer of 2004 I started working on another game, this time using RPG Maker 2003.  This game ended up being titled Uggy Barfoo, after a nonsense phrase that my younger sibling Jules said while we were goofing off.  I've always been kinda terrible at coming up with titles for things, so I pretty much just threw those nonsense words on there and came up with a meaning for them much later.

An in-battle screenshot from Uggy Barfoo including Joguo.

Joguo was the second playable character in Uggy Barfoo, randomly joining Enduo (now known as Eddie -- 2004 was a time when I wasn't using the same first or last names of any characters based on real people, including myself!) in order to investigate a meteorite impact to the south of the town of Nifclont where they both live.  This was the first game where his last name was given as "Goueng-Zu" rather than not being mentioned one way or another, and that change has stuck ever since.

Joguo in Uggy Barfoo was... pretty generic and vaguely defined, just like in Spuduf Splorchers.  In other words, he still wasn't a ninja yet (he didn't even get access to the Ninja class using the game's Orbs which served as a Final Fantasy 5-ish class-change system!), and basically had no particular role besides "random guy in town who joins you early on."  This game was the first to give him the dark blue hair that he's become known for, and also influenced his later designs -- though he's never looked exactly like the edited RPG Maker 2003 default thief sprite that he borrowed an outfit from here, he has kept pretty close to a green-and-blue (and sometimes a bit of white) color scheme in pretty much every appearance since.

Funnily enough, it does seem like his strong points stat-wise have stayed pretty consistent from this game onward -- he's tied with Enduo for the highest base Defense stat out of all the main characters, and he's the second-fastest character.  So I guess Uggy Barfoo's generic Joguo did have some lasting contributions after all.  Unfortunately, in every other area he's either tied for weakest or second-weakest.  On top of that, he had no special techniques in his normal state, only a few super moves that could be used with specific weapon types (just like everyone else in the game had)... so unlike some characters like Robert there was pretty much no reason to ever not change his class to something other than the default using his Blue Orb.

Joguo as a Swordfighter, Gunner, Warrior, and Wizard (the Trainer class didn't get a unique sprite.)

Speaking of his Orb, he had access to the classes Trainer (basically a low grade summoner, based on Pokémon Trainers), Swordmaster, Gunner, Warrior (the game's heavy-armor "fighter" type class), and Wizard (which gave him access to light, darkness, and water magic -- similar to his setup from Spuduf Splorchers but trading the wind magic he used there for water instead.)

There's not a whole lot else to say about the version of Joguo in Uggy Barfoo.  He kinda just fills up a space in the party, never really being the strongest in any particular area, and usually being the first to get swapped out for one of the optional characters once you start to gain access to them.  Even the one part of the game where he's supposed to be the main character ended up revolving more around someone else, the mysterious Anrijue.  Or at least, it would have if I had ever finished it.

2006

After I had pretty much given up on finishing Uggy Barfoo after getting stuck in a rut partway through the game's second half (what was it with early-2000s-era me insisting on games having a "second half" introducing new enemies out of nowhere, anyway?), I ended up starting on another OHRRPGCE project for the first time in a while.  This was the second attempt at a game titled Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, following the 2003 one that never really went anywhere.

The 2006 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish did at least get to a point where the early parts of the game were... somewhat playable, albeit horribly incomplete since it was only the intro sequence that took place at Alleghany High School and even that wasn't finished -- mostly due to the school maps being very incomplete, with hardly any rooms accessible.  Since only the intro was even partially finished, this game ended up being just like Spuduf Splorchers for poor ol' Joguo -- his sprites and stats were programmed into the game, but he never actually appeared.

Joguo's battle sprites from the 2006 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish game.

Joguo's design in this game seems to be a blend of the previous two -- his hair is blue like the Uggy Barfoo version but with the super short style he had in Spuduf Splorchers, and his clothes have the white/green/blue color scheme of the Uggy Barfoo version but with the original's long blue pants.

In terms of his abilities, this Joguo is definitely closer to the Uggy Barfoo version -- he does finally have a few special moves, but they're nothing too flashy, just fairly ordinary things like dodge enemy attacks, steal items, trip enemies to stun them briefly, or counterattack.  Stat-wise, he still specializes in Defense and Speed, having the third-highest out of the game's oversized cast in both categories.  His other stats are a bit better this time around, though -- his Attack is fourth-highest out of the main cast, his HP is only third-lowest rather than being near the bottom, and even his lower stats aren't that far behind the other characters.

This game establishes knives as his weapon of choice, with some of his arsenal including familiar items like the Steak Knife, Chef's Knife, and Poison Knife.  His strongest weapons are the "Ninja Knife" (its sprite resembles a kunai) and the hilariously named Murderiffic Knife (which deals extra damage against humanoid enemies, in addition to just plain being stronger than his other weapons.)  None of his other equipment is really worth a mention, since pretty much every character had the same armor in this game rather than having their own specialized gear.

I honestly can't remember what Joguo's role would've been in this game or when he would've been introduced, so I'm guessing it would've been a similar situation to in Uggy Barfoo -- generic guy who happens to be around when something happens, so he joins the party "just because."

Sheesh.  Joguo was kind of boring in these old games! He's come a long way since then.

2008-2012

2008 was the year that I originally started working on Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School, though due to several discouragements and distractions (two of the major distractions being spending a bunch of time working on other games like Okédoké and Puckamon) it wouldn't be until much later that I actually released a demo of that game to the public.

This was the game where Joguo finally started to get some actual character development, backstory, and connections to the world that the game takes place in -- rather than just being some random bystander who basically just gets roped into everything by virtue of being in the right place at the right time and just kind of inexplicably manages to keep up (sort of) with the other characters despite not having any superhuman abilities as far as anyone ever mentioned.  In Alleghany Hell School, Joguo being able to put up a fight actually makes sense -- he even mentions early on that he's had ninja training, and demonstrates the ability to jump down pits roughly 20-30 feet deep and land flat on his feet without being the slightest bit inconvenienced by the fall.  He's not just some random guy who picks up a knife and starts blindly stabbing at whatever giant bugs or monsters get too close, he's the heir to the leadership of the ancient Goueng-Zu Ninja Clan, trained in ninjutsu since he was a little kid... even if he has slacked off in his training a little bit during the high school years (and thus doesn't start out way ahead of some of the other characters.)

Joguo's FYS:AHS sprites -- 2008 original, 2010 upgrade, and final.

It was in this game that his design pretty much settled into its current form -- slightly scruffy blue hair, light blue-green shirt, dark blue pants, brown shoes (though they briefly turned into white tennis-shoes when I redid the sprites in 2010... oops!), and a green scarf that flutters in the wind behind him even when there... isn't any wind behind him.  Secret ninja technique, probably.

His abilities in this game were similar to the version from the 2006 Fnrrf Ygm Schnish, except now he was fully ninja-themed.  Rather than just having steal, dodge, and trip attacks he also performed flying jump-kicks, threw shuriken, and could use sealing ninjutsu to prevent certain enemies from using their special attacks.  His weapons include both knives and swords, and his lineup of protective equipment includes a variety of scarves on top of the standard jackets, bulletproof vests, and ninja suits you would expect.  The "Shiznit" stat (which basically functions like a Luck stat) introduced in this game lets him keep up with the other characters pretty well, giving him a randomized chance to get extra hits with most of his attacks -- so instead of just throwing one shuriken at an enemy, he might fling out two or even three in rapid succession.  After landing a jump-kick, he might bounce off and land a second one right away.  And so on.  Despite having relatively weak attacks (at least compared to some of the stuff characters like Bridget and Damuru-J become capable of later), the high chance of getting multiple hits makes him feel pretty effective throughout the game, especially if he can keep finding stronger weapons.

In terms of his game stats, he's basically just an upgraded version of what he's had in the previous two games.  He has the best Defense out of any playable character, this time by a pretty decent margin considering that he can also equip most of the best armor in the game.  He's still one of the faster characters, only falling short of Bridget and an optional character who hasn't appeared yet in the current demo version.  His Shiznit is also second-highest, once again behind Bridget -- but Joguo probably benefits more from it, since nearly all of his attacks can get additional hits as his Shiznit gets to a high enough level.  He only ranks last place in one stat this time around -- his Wisdom suffered a bit when he slacked off in his ninja training to pursue sports and girls during the earlier high school years, of course. 😅

2013 and Onward

Joguo's most recent appearance as of 2021 is still the (as of yet unfinished) Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School... which I will hopefully be working on more at some point this year, now that my depression/anxiety issues have calmed down a bit and I might eventually be able to dredge up the motivation to work on some of my game projects again.  But even though he hasn't had a "new" game appearance, I've continued to develop his backstory and come up with more and more information revolving around his family and their history.

As of 2017, Joguo became the only character to have a family tree that's fleshed out enough that it covers three whole generations, then skipping back a few generations to focus on Joguo's great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.

Joguo's family tree going back to his great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, drawn in 2017.

During these years, I came up with the whole backstory of the Goueng-Zu clan, explaining why the heck there's a family of freaking ninjas living in middle-of-nowhere Virginia all the way over in the United States, far outside of what you'd usually think of as the ninja's natural habitat.  It all started with a guy named Gaitou Goeung-Zu...

...Who happens to be Joguo's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Red scarf, not green. Is that relevant? ...Maybe someday.

In the year 1798, Gaitou married a young girl whose name has now been lost to history, perhaps only recorded in the personal archives of the Goueng-Zu family and not spoken of outside their walls.  One year later, the two of them had a child -- who would turn out to be their only son.  A year after that, Gaitou's wife stumbles upon an unusual stone while exploring some remote region of Japan... an unusual stone which turns out to be a powerful artifact known as the Uggy Barfoo.  She picks it up, planning to take it home to Gaitou as a present, as people tend to do when they find neat rocks out in the woods.

Though depleted of most of its power, the lingering traces within the Barfoo are still more than enough to lead to disaster.  Something within the stone clashed with an unknown power within the girl who found it, and this clash within her caused a horrible transformation.  She was rapidly driven to insanity, unleashing strange powers that had previously laid dormant within her and rampaging across the country.

The unfortunate young wife, now only known as "the demon Arkusazzo" (presumably a name bestowed upon her by surviving villagers who managed to escape her rampage, or perhaps one she chose for herself after the clash with the Barfoo's power caused her to snap), was now barely recognizable as her former self.  She was almost entirely silent, her eyes went blank and glowed red, her nails grew to claw-like length, her hair moved on its own and sometimes was known to suddenly extend to unnatural lengths and strangle those unfortunate enough to get too close.  Three years pass before members of the Goueng-Zu Clan are finally able to track her down, and after a prolonged battle, it is Gaitou Goueng-Zu himself who stops her rampage -- by sealing her away within a tree using the Goueng-Zu Clan's most powerful sealing ninjutsu.

Despite being the ones responsible for stopping Arkusazzo's rampage, the Goueng-Zu Clan are the ones who are blamed for all the destruction.  It was, after all, one of their members (albeit one who joined the clan by marriage rather than by birth) who was responsible.  They are shunned, and several years later they end up leaving Japan, uprooting the Goueng-Zu Clan (along with literally uprooting the tree where Arkusazzo was sealed so they could take it with them) and eventually settling down far across the sea in a mountainous area which would eventually become the town of Clifton Forge, Virginia.  From this point onward, the Goueng-Zu Clan began a new life, secretly continuing their ninja training (because Arkusazzo would eventually break free of the seal placed upon her, there must always be a Goueng-Zu ninja capable of returning her to her prison within the tree) and mostly keeping to themselves.

Always watching the tree for any signs of the demon's escape, the Goueng-Zu Clan were responsible for putting a stop to her escape in 1862 -- making sure the Civil War was the most significant historical event of the 1860s rather than being a mere footnote in the "those years when an ancient Japanese demon laid waste to the country" chapters of the history books.  Each time, it seemed that she escaped a bit more quickly and caused a bit more damage -- in 1908, she nearly killed several members of the Goueng-Zu Clan but was stopped and sealed away just in time for all those involved to be saved.  In 1966, she killed Moriko Hosuda in a surprise attack and wore her husband Akinosuke to exhaustion in a prolonged battle afterward -- he would pass away as a result of his injuries not long after she was sealed.  The elderly Bairei Goueng-Zu was forced to step in to perform the sealing ninjutsu, as his son Ran was not yet ready, but the strain of the technique caused his life to give out in the process.  This led to the surviving children of the Hosuda branch of the family distancing themselves from the ways of the ninja, moving away from Clifton Forge and pursuing a "normal" life somewhere in the midwest instead.  Akinosuke's signature green scarf and collection of ninja tools were left with the clan in Clifton Forge, where they would eventually be passed down to Joguo.

Arkusazzo's most recent escape from her tree prison was in 1993.  Before she was sealed away again, she killed Joguo's older sister Kiyoko, who had attempted to confront and seal the demon on her own but was not yet fully prepared for such a task.

I'm not sure when, or if, I'll have a chance to actually include all of this ninja backstory stuff in one of my games.  It's at least vaguely referred to here and there in Alleghany Hell School, but since the game takes place almost entirely inside the school and the plot doesn't revolve around the Goueng-Zu Clan's history at all, there's not a lot of room to fit this stuff in.

Maybe someday Joguo will get a game, or story, or something that focuses on him for once.  I don't know when or how, but it's definitely possible, especially since I've already put so much thought into his family's history and everything that comes with that.  It's kinda crazy that Joguo now has more extra stuff revolving around him than most of the FYS:AHS cast, considering the generic secondary character that he used to be back in the early 2000s!

Origin of the species: Blurbys

Since I just released a game featuring them heavily (Bok's Expedition, which is based on the first Blurby-focused story I wrote waaaay back in 1997 or so), I figured it'd be a good time to go into where I got the idea for them.

Spoiler alert for the dumbasses in the back eating paste: it's got nothing to do with fucking Kirby.

Seriously, I am beyond sick and tired of people assuming that every single one of my round-bodied species is based on Kirby in some way.  Or worse that they "are Kirbys."  Yes, the K'hyurbhis (another of the main Nummorrian species) WERE based on Kirby originally, and for a long time their design still looked a lot like Kirby except white (and later on, with spikes and facial markings.  More recently they've gotten a different foot design, visible nostrils, and whiskers instead of those vague Kirby-esque cheek markings.)  But not everything with a round-ish body is Kirby, or even Kirby-based.  Seriously, take off your Kirby-tinted glasses for a second so I can punch you in the face with the real origin of Blurbys and its distinct lack of Kirby.  Actually, on second thought, leave them on -- I wouldn't mind breaking those particular glasses.

Of course, just because Blurbys weren't based on Kirby doesn't mean they weren't originally based on anything.

Nope... Blurbys were originally based on an enemy from Yoshi's Island:

I have no idea what the smaller ones appearing as random enemies throughout a few levels were called, or if they even had a name, but there was also a boss version a bit later on:

...and that jumbo-sized version was named "Marching Milde."

So yes, Blurbys were based not on Kirby but on Marching Milde... or whatever the smaller versions were called (I've actually never seen a listing of official names for most of the Yoshi's Island enemies, now that I think about it.)

Looking at Blurbys, you can probably see the resemblance.  Way waaaaay more of a resemblance than to Kirby at least.  They're both white, and they they both have the "red cheek marks + wide mouth + small eyes" look.  For many years Blurbys had the "lump feet" like Marching Milde too (though they were colored red), which is something Marching Milde and Kirby have in common.

Blurbys don't have the "nose" of the Yoshi enemies (never have, actually -- that was an intentional design change way back in the day because kid-me thought noses looked dumb), and they of course have arms, which I'm guessing is why nobody ever thought to link Blurbys with Marching Milde before.  But there actually were some early Blurby drawings with no arms, and sometimes they'd randomly gain and lose arms depending on... whether they needed them at the moment or not, I suppose.  That was only really early on, though -- like when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.  Later Blurby drawings all had arms, at first the "flipper-arms" like Kirby (or like the Pokémon Jigglypuff, in case anyone randomly forgets that this is not a feature exclusive to Kirby), but starting around 2013-2014 I started drawing them with actual arm arms, complete with clawed fingers.  This was the same point where I ditched the "lump feet" for almost every Nummorrian species, replacing them with their current clawed foot design:

They've also become a bit less round and more lumpy-oval over the years, because I wanted a bit more variety in body shapes rather than all the "round" creatures being perfectly round (K'hyurbhis have shifted a bit too, though they still usually show up as round-ish.)

Right about now one of the dipshits in the back has run out of paste and decided to sniff some glue instead.  And, now that they're lacking brain cells even more than before, they're probably asking "but but but... if they're not based on Kirby, why does their name rhyme with Kirby?"  Because we all know Herbie, Furby, and the Kentucky Derby are all totally related to Kirby...

Much like the above examples, "Blurby" rhyming with "Kirby" is nothing but a coincidence.  The name "Blurby" actually was derived from the word "blubbery."  They've always been defined by being heavy and having a layer of blubber (they were the original users of the Blubber Slam attack after all!)

Basically, by removing and rearranging some letters like so...

Blubbery --> Blubbery --> Blubry --> Blurby

...I ended up with the name "Blurby."  I'm fairly sure I rearranged the letters (to Blurby instead of just shortening "blubbery" to Blubry) mainly because I didn't want them to be mistakenly called "blueberries."  Yeah, kid-me was concerned with strange things sometimes -- never thought for a second that I'd have the whole Legion of Dumb mistaking them for Kirby, but was immediately worried about people calling them blueberries, of all things.

So... now you know the full story of where Blurbys came from.  And now you have no excuse for calling them "Kirbys" or assuming they were based on Kirby.

From this point forward, I'm just going to assume anyone who brings up the K-word in association with Blurbys or Bok's Expedition is just... a very severely mentally-disabled child, and rather than getting pissed off at them for (perhaps intentionally) being a dipshit, I'll just pat them on the head and be like "yeah, that's right little Timmy, everything is Kirby.  Now take your Kirby pills and finish your Kirby homework before the Kirby bus comes to take you home."

So I just realized something about the Nummorrian calendar...

...and that something is that I kinda made an "oops" in making up the months and such.

You see, the whole reason why Earth's calendar has the months set up the way it does (roughly 30 days each, 12 in a year) is because they're based around the cycles of the moon...

I must've forgotten this when making Nummorro's calendar, taking its 600 day year and making it so there are more months and they are each (with a few exceptions) longer than Earth months.  The problem with that? Well... Nummorro doesn't have a moon.  So having a set of months roughly corresponding to the moon's pattern of phases doesn't make any sense.

So... I'm thinking that it's a good time to redo the Nummorrian calendar.  Some of those months are going to cease to exist, which makes this the first time I'll ever remove words from the Khurbyish Dictionary rather than just adding more and more.  I really like some of the month names, but there were always a handful that I wasn't a fan of, so I figure trimming them down a bit shouldn't be too hard.

The Current System

Here's the current lineup of Nummorrian months:

1. Iilu, named after a small flower known to sprout near the beginning of spring each year.  Appropriate for the first month, considering that the Nummorrian year starts in spring rather than mid-winter.
2. Acralnu, named after a rapidly-growing shrub that dies and regrows from seeds each year.
3. Hamwudi, translating to "high forest."  I suspect this one is going to be ditched, because forests are sort of a permanent fixture and not something that grows at a particular time every year like the name of the month implies!
4. Kril, which  translates to "short" or "small," is the shortest month.  Not hard to imagine that this one's getting ditched.
5. Burediban, the fifth month.  I like the name but I don't think I ever came up with any meaning for it, so I may reuse it for something if it ends up being one of the ditched months.
6. Hamroas, translating to "high heat," it's a late summer month where the temperatures reach some of their highest points (think August in Earth terms.)
7. Lelduf, the seventh month which has no defined meaning for its name.  Probably ditching this one.
8. Wakuwudi, translating to "orange forest," apparently roughly corresponding to the time the leaves start changing color on Earth.
9. Aigyuuhuo, translating to "fat aigyuuh," it's the month where the aigyuuh crop is ripe for harvest.
10. Gatadzkan, named after the god of death and cold in the ancient K'hyurbhi religion.  This one's staying for sure.
11. Narudiban, the eleventh month.  Like Burediban, it has no defined meaning.
12. Teyguo, named after an ancient Numnum.
13. Narrwudi, translating to "snow forest."  I'm thinking I'll probably ditch all of the "-wudi" names for months, considering that a lot of Nummorro doesn't exactly have such dramatic seasonal changes...
14. Enzamkolu, the fourteenth month.  Like Burediban, it's one I like the sound of even though I don't think I ever came up with a meaning for the name.

So, looking over these, it seems like Kril, Lelduf, and all three of the "-wudi" months are going to get thrown out for sure.  I've never liked Lelduf much, and Kril was literally just a pun (the shortest month is just named "short"... also the Khurbyish word Kril is absolutely named after Krillin from Dragon Ball Z, who is... well, short.)  And of course the "-wudi" months either don't make a whole lot of sense as month names (Hamwudi) or are a little too "Earth-ish" in terms of what the seasonal changes actually look like (Wakuwudi and Narrwudi.)  A significant portion of Nummorro doesn't have trees that change in the fall, and snowfall isn't quite as rare but still doesn't happen widely enough for the K'hyurbhis to name one of their calendar months after the sight of forests full of snow-covered trees.

I really like the idea of the first two months being named after plants that start growing in those months, so I'll probably keep Iilu and Acralnu exactly where they are.  Since the early spring "sprouting" and "everything's green again" periods are fairly short compared to some of the other seasonal changes, they'll probably stay roughly the same as they are currently; Acralnu will probably be extended a bit to account for the loss of Hamwudi and Kril, mostly Hamwudi since that one seemed to be the "later growth season" kind of thing anyway.

I figure Burediban works as a late spring, early summer kind of thing, and I do really like the name even though it currently means nothing.  Hamroas will absorb Lelduf and part of old Burediban, essentially become Nummorro's equivalent of the June/July/August trio, one long month of "hot season" rather than several separate ones.

Wakuwudi is going to be gone, so I'll probably just put Aigyuuhuo next, as the "harvest season" sort of month that would generally follow the hot season as the weather cools off.  For the later fall and winter, I'm not sure what to do -- I like the idea of Teyguo having a month named after him, and I like the name Narudiban, but those two should definitely not both be before Gatadzkan because that's supposed to be the coldest winter month.  Maybe I'll have one of them come before Gatadzkan and one come after, with one being the "it's starting to get cold" month and one being the "winter is letting up a little bit, we're coming up on spring."  Teyguo seems appropriate for the latter, so I guess Narudiban will be the "getting cold" month.

...and it's looking like Enzamkolu has probably gotten crunched out of the calendar too.  Which actually works out just fine, since it's another never-had-a-name-meaning one and I don't like the name quite as much as the "-diban" ones.

Which means...

The Possible New System

1. Iilu, early spring, new plants are sprouting.
2. Acralnu, spring, everything's becoming green again.
3. Burediban, late spring/early summer, warmish weather and plenty of greenery.
4. Hamroas, summer, the hottest part of the year.
5. Aigyuuhuo, the harvest season, time to pick the aigyuuh plants.
6. Narudiban, late fall/early winter, it's getting colder out.
7. Gatadzkan, winter, if you see any snow or ice it's in this month.
8. Teyguo, late winter, weather's getting a bit warmer, ready for spring.

...the new Nummorrian calendar ends up only having eight months, so each of them will probably be longer than an Earth month.  This should help differentiate the calendar from Earth's even more, since Nummorro has a longer year but less months rather than just being "slightly bigger Earth," with a longer list of months because the moon goes around more times during its orbit.

Also kind of interesting that the last two months have Numnum inspired names, since Gatadz was depicted as a skeletal Numnum and then Teyguo is a historical figure who helped fight off an attempted invasion of Ummiboro's Numnum-populated lands by the ancient, long-fallen Dondu Empire.  Aigyuuhuo ties in to K'hyurbhi culture (they're the ones who really like the aigyuuh plant, using it to make a particular kind of bread), so maybe the "plant named" ones could all be seen as the K'hyurbhi contribution to the calendar.  And then that leaves Hamroas (which is just a general description of the temperature) and the "-diban" names.  I get a more Blurby-ish feel from those than a K'hyurbhi or Numnum one, so I'll probably come up with some connection between them and the Blurbys in the future, meaning all three of Nummorro's primary species now have their own associated months.

I haven't updated the Khurbyish Dictionary to reflect these changes just yet, but I'll probably do that within the next week or so.

Khurbyish Lesson #5 -- Verbs!

This one's been a long time coming, especially considering that the whole "how verbs work" thing is a pretty vital part of making a language! Now you'll finally be able to actually use the various verbs listed on the Khurbyish Dictionary page, rather than just looking at them and saying "hey, these are neat, too bad I have no idea how to conjugate them." XD

Present Tenses
To conjugate a verb into the simple present tense in Khurbyish, just add the suffix "-mu" (M - OO) to the end of the root word.  For example, if you wanted to say "I agree" in Khurbyish, you would say "ij menuwumu" rather than just using the verb menuwu (meaning "to agree") on its own.

Something like the continuous present tense in English can be formed when the word yu comes before a Khurbyish verb in the present tense.  For example, if you wanted to say "I'm thinking," you would say "ij yu menomu" -- adding "-mu" to the end of meno (to think), and yu in front of it.

Past Tenses
Conjugating a verb into a simple past tense in Khurbyish is similar to the simple present -- just add the suffix "-ru" (R - OO) to the end of the root verb. For example, to say "I drank three beers," you would say "ij gluhru ka vergluhn," adding "-ru" to the end of gluh (to drink.)

A continuous past tense is also possible, and is formed just like the continuous present tense but with "-ru" rather than "-mu."  So to say "I was drinking three beers every day," you would say "ij yu gluhru ka vergluhn ko'ohr."

Khurbyish also has a different past tense for events that took place further in the past, especially when referring to things that were different in the past compared to the present.  If used for things that are relatively recent (for example, something that happened last week) it carries very strong implications that what you said is no longer the case in the present, whereas if it's used to describe something that happened decades or centuries ago the implication leans more toward just emphasizing how long ago it was.  To conjugate a verb into this form, you add "-roi" (R - OI) to the end of the word.  Adding yu before the verb has the same effect as with the standard past tense.  So if you wanted to tell someone that you used to drink three beers a day at some point in the past (or that you used to drink three beers a day until your doctor told you to cut back last week!), you would say "ij yu gluhroi ka vergluhn ko'ohr."

Future Tense
Much like the present and past, Khurbyish has a simple future tense formed by adding a suffix to the end of the root verb -- in this case "-zu" (Z - OO.)  So if, for example, you wanted to say "I'll fly away" in Khurbyish, you would say "ij fasuzu asor," adding "-zu" to the end of fasu meaning "to fly."

That's all for now, but check back in the future -- though the basic stuff that I knew I absolutely needed for the language to work is in place now, I'll probably expand upon Khurbyish verbs and conjugation more at some point, and when I do that information will find its way here.

Puckamon new demo, first FYS:AHS demo release, 8-bit graphics set update

Wow, I haven't updated this thing in over a year? Whoops! Well, I have been kinda busy with various things, ranging from getting a new job (technically I'm on "new job #3" since my last post here... though I'm also still working at "new job #1," preparing to get my hours cut back a bit) to various game-making projects to moving into a new apartment (which will be happening again in the not-too-distant future) and of course that whole "I have a girlfriend now" thing, which still seems like a pretty new thing to me even though we've been together 7 months now (I guess this being the first time I've ever had any luck with that sort of thing will do that. XD)

Anyway... what's happened in the world of stuff relevant to this blog since my last post here? Well, in chronological order...

1.  Puckamon got a new demo release right in time for Christmas of 2016.  This new version adds Hammerspace City and Icepick Town to the ranks of the hammer-themed town names already featured in the game, and of course there's two new gyms to go with them.  There's also several new route and dungeon-ish areas in the vicinity of the new places, some new Puckamon to catch, and the first of many Gym Leader rematches (with the game's weakest Gym Leader, that Pikachu-obsessed creep Brandon who lives in Lumpen Town.)
2. Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School is now available to download and play.  There's some bugs in the version that's currently available, but yep, you read that right -- after spending so many years in development hell (this game's been in production on and off since 2008!) FYS:AHS has finally been unleashed upon the OHRRPGCE game lists.  The game is not complete yet, but it does cover a significant chunk of the story, from the power outage that starts the whole thing off all the way up to the discovery of Mr. Higgins' secret mad scientist lab underneath the school.
3. My 8-Bit Graphics Set has been expanded.  Some notable new additions -- a bunch of new weapons (nearly double what was included originally) and hero sprites (more than double the original amount!), a decent chunk of new enemies (there are now 150 total!), and a good pile of new attack animations (bringing their total to an odd but impressive 127.)  If you've already got a game going with the old version, don't worry -- all the newly added sprites are also available for individual download on the OHRRPGCE Wiki's Free Sprites and Free Animations pages.

And what's next? Well, first up is probably a bugfix-plus-some-added-stuff update to FYS:AHS -- there's a nasty bug that lets you sequence-break into the outside areas and see some cutscenes involving a character you won't even have until you can get outside the school legitimately, so getting a version of the game out there with that hole plugged soon is a priority.  I've also gone through and added a bunch of extra details to the maps, ranging from stuff as insignificant as scuff marks and cracks on some of the floor tiles all the way up to a couple of new rooms and more student NPCs inside the rooms that were already there.  I also went ahead and added in two optional bosses (one of which was planned way in advance, the other I got the idea for sometime later along based on what was originally just a random joke detail in one of the maps), one of which has its own dungeon area beneath the sewers... and also, one non-optional boss leading into the next part of the game's main plot.  I'll probably add at least two more rooms to the school before I upload the new version, but aside from that, finishing the second optional boss's scene and adding in one more NPC so that the comic-book-trading sidequest can be completed are all that's left to do.

I'm also going to be making a new game using my 8-bit graphics as a base.  So far that's mostly just in the planning stages, but once the FYS:AHS bugfix demo is out there I'll be focusing mostly on that so things should start moving along a good bit quicker.

One project done; now on to Puckamon!

I can't remember if I ever actually posted anything about it on here, but ever since February or so of this year I've been working on an OHRRPGCE project -- a set of 8-bit NES-style graphics that I was planning on letting people use to make their own games rather than using for one of my own (though I might someday make my own game using them, too, of course.)

Well, that project is now finished -- as of last month, the 8-bit graphics set has been released to the public! You can download it here or here.  And here's some screenshots:

Peaceful grassy town.

Snowy town with priests hanging out in the graveyard...

Inside a farmer's house.

A bar in a busy port city somewhere.

That ogre doesn't want to give up his box of stuff.

Sewers.  There's always a sewer.

Meeting the king.

Whoops, looks like you got eaten.

The world map, or part of it anyway.

Boss battle with an evil bird and skele-minions.

Little bit more world map stuff.

Ancient ruins.

Weird sky place.

And finally, beating up a horde of demon-rats.

The graphics set includes 16 hero sprite sets, 95 walkabouts, 120 enemies (40 small, 56 medium, 24 large), 90 attack animations, 30 weapons, 25 tilesets, and 34 battle backdrops. Oh, and a set of box edges, but that's basically just the default one.  In other words, more than enough to make a complete game with -- I was going for basically the OHRRPGCE equivalent of the RPG Maker series' default graphics packs.

Now that I've gotten that project done, I've moved on to working on some of my still-unfinished games -- I did a little bit of work on Teekee last month, but then suddenly got hit by a burst of inspiration to work on Puckamon (which has gone untouched since 2013 and hasn't had a demo release since 2010!), so this month I've been focusing on getting some stuff done in that game instead.  I've already made a pretty good chunk of progress on it, actually -- picking up where my 2013 additions left off, the 5th gym and its surrounding areas are now complete and it's finally possible to go into that cave south of Anvil City which previously had a Team Sputnik member blocking it.  The first of the Gym Leader rematch battles has made its way into the game, too -- after getting five badges, it's possible to go back to Lumpen Town and have another fight against Brandon the Pikachu-obsessed weirdo.  He's... well, still not that hard if you bring the right Puckamon, but it's still a massive improvement over the original Brandon battle and can be pretty tough if your team isn't made up of the sort of monsters that can do heavy damage to his in a short time.

Here's a few screenshots of recent Puckamon progress:

This was in the 2013 update, but I'm putting it here anyway since
it hasn't been in a publicly-released version yet.  Also, new palette!

The "advice guy" isn't a big fan of traveling into the depths of the Internet.

Every clock (except one) in the Internet-city has this message.

Here's a brief preview of the 5th Gym.

...what the heck is THIS place??

Several never-before-catchable Puckamon will appear in the next version.
This living Pringles can here is just one of them.

The development of Nummorrian religion

...as in "how I came up with it," not as in "how it developed on Nummorro over thousands/millions of years' time."  That would be an entirely different post, and not one that I've come up with enough history to actually write at this particular moment. XD

====

Now on to the actual thing I wanted to write some stuff about... I had an odd realization while I was driving home from work tonight.  I remembered that way back in the elementary school days when I was first coming up with the planet Nummorro and the various species that populate it, I never actually came up with any Nummorrian religions -- even the "evil cult" style religions, like Rupoo cultists and such, were completely absent back then (even though I'd actually made up the Rupoo itself already, as of 5th grade... though originally it only existed as a placeholder for Queen Bridget due to the "ban" on Burijeoo -- still known as "Bridgetoids" at the time -- that was in place among some of my teachers during those later elementary school years. XD)  When asked about what religion the Numnums followed by one of the older kids in Boy Scouts (one of the not-awful older kids, to be specific), I basically just said that I didn't think they had one, and for a loooong time that was pretty much the beginning and end of my thoughts on the subject.

The realization? The reason why I never came up with Nummorrian religions back then was basically this: Back then, I was still a Christian.

...No, don't worry, this isn't going to turn into some post bashing on Christians, keep reading!  Anyway -- because I still believed there was one "true" religion (and all others must be false to some extent) back then, I had two options with Nummorro's religious beliefs.  Option #1 was making the Numnums and K'hyurbhis and Blurbys and so forth Christians too, and Option #2 was giving them their own "other" beliefs that would be, in my 10-year-old mind, incorrect.

Option #2 was out right away; I liked the Numnums and such too much to basically just send them all to Hell without so much as a second chance (because yeah, I actually believed in Hell back then, though since I hadn't really met many non-Christian people at the time I never really thought much about how messed-up it would be for people to end up punished eternally for just... not following a certain religion, not even actually doing anything legitimately bad.)

And even as a 10-year-old (and a Christian who had never even really questioned the beliefs he'd grown up with), some part of me realized that it would be really, really silly for a whole planet full of aliens with little-to-no connection to Earth to believe in an Earth religion.  Or more specifically, a human religion.  Remember that this was back in the day when Nummorro was populated by flying butts, Yuckow Foods were actually animated piles of cafeteria food, and Numnums had no legs -- but even to 10-year-old me, the idea of Nummorrian species following a human religion that they, logically, should have never heard of was sillier than all of those combined!  So that, of course, meant that both of my previously-mentioned options were crossed off the list.

So, as has become a recurring pattern for me, I went with an option that wasn't initially on the "list" at all: Option #3, not giving them a religion/belief system at all.  That avoided the silliness of the "Christian Numnums" option while also avoiding the awfulness of the "they have their own non-Christian beliefs and thus go to Hell" option.  By not following a "wrong" path (simply by virtue of not choosing any "path" at all, as far as religion goes), they would be spared from Hell.

...yeah, you can probably tell by now that I hadn't really thought about religion much at all when I was in elementary school (when I started thinking about it, of course, I rapidly started drifting away from first Christianity and shortly afterward the whole idea of organized religion), but really... who did think about that kind of thing much in elementary school? And I mean really think about it, not just asking one random question every now and then ("why aren't there dinosaurs in the Bible?") but unquestioningly accepting the answer your [insert religious leader's rank here] gave no matter how flimsy it was.

But yeah... that's most likely why Nummorro never had any religions during my elementary school years.  Things started to change beginning in high school, though.  In my crappy old RPG Maker 2000 game, The Story of Supernum, the Umpupu K'hyurbhi tribe made an appearance -- and rather than just the black-cloak-wearing, vaguely creepy guys they were originally, they had been converted into cultists who worshiped Dark Blubber.  Dark Blubber, by the way, was this awful character I came up with in the mid/late elementary school years whose whole point was basically to be the most absurdly overpowered recurring villain possible (I compared him to Dragonball Z characters during the high school years... putting him at a power level of one hundred billion during a time when I believed that nobody in all of DBZ ever got above one billion.)  Later on, when I finally ditched Dark Blubber, I switched them over to being Rupoo cultists instead.  But still, they were the first religious group to appear in any of my Nummorro-based things.

Various other "Cthulhu Cult style" groups followed the Umpupu, and eventually in the late 2000s I finally came up with the first few "good guy" religious groups.  Interestingly enough, this probably started during the time when I was at my most hostile toward real-life organized religion (2006-2007 or so.)  This was the time when I first began to come up with the starting ideas for the Blurby religion, which has continued to grow from there -- I could probably write a whole post on here about just that, and I probably will at some point.  I took the earlier (elementary school era) idea of Blurbys following a set of rules known as "the Tahttu" -- I think I may have spelled it "Tattu" early on and only later added the H? -- and expanded on that, adding a system of borderline ancestor-worship where they would build temples devoted to "Great Blurbys" who had accomplished something significant during their lifetime.  A little later still, I added the figure of Zaj Tanduo, the greatest of the Great Blurbys who had an even higher title (that being the "Zaj" in his name, which is of course not actually part of his name but just a title -- kinda like the "Christ" part when people say "Jesus Christ.")  By the time I started working on The K'hyurbhi Lands in late 2010 or early 2011, I had begun to expand even further and even came up with random details like what the inside of a Blurby temple was like (not heavily decorated at all unlike most human religions' temples or equivalent -- simple stone walls, dirt floors, just open holes with no windowpanes, some tables and a kitchen for feeding hungry travelers, maybe a few relevant items to the Great Blurby it's honoring hung on the walls, a single statue and usually just a small one.)

Around the same time, I began to sloooowly come up with details of an ancient K'hyurbhi religion, no longer believed in by the vast majority of the K'hyurbhis but still sort of influencing the Khurbyish language and other such things.  Kinda like how the Greek and Roman gods are to English -- we have days, months, and other words named after them, and some of their stories are still pretty well known, but few people actually believe they exist anymore or follow the religion that was built up around them back in the day.  After a while I even came up with the idea of one group that still does follow the old K'hyurbhi religion... sort of -- the Hamhu, being racist as all hell and believing K'hyurbhis are some sort of "superior beings," have twisted things around to support their view of things.  I've gradually built up more and more details on the K'hyurbhis' old religion (both original and Hamhu versions), but not quite enough to fill a "this is actually complete" post on here for it just yet I don't think.  Still, I'm getting there.  The most recent development was that some Numnums probably followed the old K'hyurbhi religion in the past -- probably not many Blurbys as they have their own religion that probably goes back at least as far as the K'hyurbhis' one (if not longer.)  But then again, considering the way the Blurby religion is as far as the God/gods question goes (it doesn't claim to have the answer to that question but leaves the possibility open), it's entirely possible that some oddball Blurby might follow the Blurbian religion but also believe in the K'hyurbhi gods (or some of them, at least) at the same time.