THE FLAMING NETWORK
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/flamingnetwork#
This fantastic group gave Beerman the chance of an interview to explain the madness of it's origins and where it came from.....what follows is that fun outtake offering laughs and explanations for the fans which can be downloaded here :
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AthsCUt5GHHInX5h3DzAem44vq2A
Beerman Interview
1.
Interviewer : So how did the idea for Beerman Develop?
VS1Toronto : The first day of university one of the lecturers said words to the effect of “Take the leash off your brain and write down the first thing that appears…”
I wrote down an irritable aging superhero who hurled beercans at people and if you pushed button “A” gave abuse to the nearest person!
2.
Interviewer : Why is he in such an irritated mood all the time?
VS1Toronto : The game is a reflection of my own mental state at the time I’ve discovered, I was a taxi driver, over nine years nightshift in the murder capital of Europe for the last 70 years running, (Glasgow , Scotland ).
Nine years of listening to human beings at their worst gets you down and eventually you turn into quite a nasty piece of work, you don’t notice because it’s such a gradual process but eventually I realised I couldn’t carry all this anger towards human beings around or it would poison my life.
3.
Interviewer : So you made a game about a city under siege from nasty people?
VS1Toronto : Yep I had two choices I reckoned, either pour all the angst and anger that had built up into a computer game…..or….a spree kill! And there are certain legal conotations attached to spree kills that I wanted to avoid.
4.
Interviewer : So why Boston?
VS1Toronto : I needed a good American state that understood alcohol, and so why not the most Irish piece of land outside Ireland…..Boston!
5.
Interviewer : What’s the Mexican connection?
VS1Toronto : Well I needed a country that was into the powdered snack game for the storyline.
6.
Interviewer : Why did Mexico occur to you first?
VS1Toronto : My dad lives in Arizona just over the border so it cropped up in conversation from time to time, that and the real life greatest Mexican export kind of kept it front in my mind…..Salma Hayek.
7.
Interviewer : So did you start making Beerman right after that first day at university?
VS1Toronto : No it was triggered two years later after my last night in the taxi.
8.
Interviewer : What triggered it?
VS1Toronto : The second last night in the taxi I ended up in the country side after dropping a passenger really far out and the whole sky was clouded over a weird sort of silver grey colour and the only part that wasn’t was a small oval shape with the three stars of “Orion’s Belt “looking down at me at three in the morning.
I ended up stopping the car, getting out and just staring at it for about two minutes, I’d never seen anything like that in nearly ten years, I couldn’t stop looking at it.
Anyway the next night, the last night was mind numbingly boring apart from the last passenger who was an amateur games developer, he told me about “Google Play” and how you could get games published on it etc…then he started complaining about how difficult larger games where to make before going really quiet for a while…
Sitting at four in the morning at a red light with the rain pouring down he just suddenly blurted out loudly “TO HELL WITH THOSE THREE STAR GAMES I WOULD NEVER MAKE ONE OF THEM!
And I just saw those three stars of Orion’s Belt glaring down at me through that oval in the sky from the night before in my imagination and thought “Right right ok I hear you…don’t burn out my retinas from the back with this memory” It was so vivid…I started making Beerman the next night.
9.
Interviewer : So are you saying you think Beerman is a three star game?
VS1Toronto : Oh no it was another game called “Croc Runner” that was the three star game I was thinking about…..Beerman was supposed to be just one level, the first level, that let me experiment and learn how to make games and then take that knowledge on to “Croc Runner”.
But then Beerman developed arms and legs and characters and a storyline and just morphed into a whole game in my head all by itself!….It was weird and bonkers and so much fun lol.
10.
Interviewer : And why is Toronto mentioned a lot, is it true the second Beerman game is set there?
VS1Toronto : In real life Toronto has a large Jamaican population so it makes sense since as guess who’s going to be a big part of the second one!
I had a holiday a long time back in Toronto and fell in love with Canada and it’s people.
If aliens arrived tomorrow and demanded I bring them an example of the greatest achievement humans have made so far I’d bring them a Canadian…..or maybe Salma Hayek…..no no…a Canadian..a Canadian lol.
11.
Interviewer : There’s a lot of Jamaican baddies in it, why is that?
VS1Toronto : Well growing up in the Eighties we had Mr Steven Seagal’s action films, some people liked them some didn’t but what noone could deny was they had the coolest baddies ever to grace the television screen…..THE JAMAICANS!….They do bad sooooooo good!
I needed some fun cool hitmen in my game so why not!
12.
Interviewer : What’s the story with Vegan Bob?
VS1Toronto : Well something happened in the taxi which caused the inspiration for Vegan Bob…..I tried to go vegetarian for a few days…..
13.
Interviewer : You did what!
VS1Toronto : Ssshhhhhh shhhhhh….just keep it between us…..I’m not proud of it and it was only once and I’ll never do it again I swear!
14.
Interviewer : What made you try it?
VS1Toronto : Well you hear this garbage coming over the radio, give up real food just eat lettuce and cheese and your life will change, up will come the sun, down will go your credit card and all sorts of other rubbish….
But you hear it so many times it get’s into your head and you eventually think maybe i’m missing out on something so you try it.
15.
Interviewer : What happened?
VS1Toronto : The first two days were ok, you slept better and felt healthy, that must be all the toxins leaving your system…..but on day three my brain started falling apart…..of course it did, you need amino acids and glucose to feed it and you can’t get that from vegetables alone!
16.
Interviewer : What do you mean your brain fell apart?
VS1Toronto : I couldn’t concentrate, a thought would come in do a loop around my head then disappear, my brain no longer had the fuel to hold on to them…..and it was really badly affecting my ability to drive!
Stopping at a set of traffic lights with two passengers arguing in the back I remember looking up at the red light in a tired haze and then this thought suddenly appeared in my head…..
“Is that red light really…..as red as we think it is!”
These people behind me were depending on me for their safety! And I couldn’t tell whether a traffic light was red or not!
That did it, after I dropped off the passengers I went straight to the nearest road van fast food seller and bought the most disgusting, grease dripping horrificly unhealthy cheese burger you’ve ever seen and almost immediately my body woke back up!
Yep that’s why the cheese burgers are in the game.
I also had a thought as I was munching down the burger, What would happen if you were forced to go vegetarian?
Well your brain would stop functioning correctly and you would end up acting and talking all bonkers and crazy just like real life vegetarians!
Then I thought what would happen if it was taken a stage further and you were forced to go Vegan? My goodness…..you would go INSANE!
And VEGAN BOB was born!
17.
Interviewer : So is there sort of hidden suggestions that large food companies are trying to poison us?
VS1Toronto : Em……..can’t answer that after what the large food companies tried to do to Oprah Winfrey.
18.
Interviewer : What did they do?
VS1Toronto : They tried to tear her a new one after she suggested their food was full of dangerous health harming additives…..in the event her legal council “Dr Phil” ended up tearing them a new one!
19.
Interviewer : So is GM food dangerous?
VS1Toronto : Depends if you think dying 20 years before you need to and suffering all sorts of allergies and health complaints before that untimely death is dangerous?
20.
Interviewer : Why would GM food be dangerous?
VS1Toronto : Humans have evolved over millions of years to work symbiotically with bacteria to brake down food in their guts with their help.
GM food has almost no bacteria inside to help it survive better outdoors and be resistant to pests and the elements.
With almost no bacteria in the food it means your body has to do all the work digesting it and your DNA takes twice the amount of damage it should translating into the breakdown of your health.
21.
Interviewer : Is there any proof of this?
VS1Toronto : Apart from all the scientists screaming online who are being hushed up, France has just banned modified corn flour…..completely…..I wonder why…..Vive La France!
22.
Interviewer : Why would companies be trying to sell it if they know it’s dangerous?
VS1Toronto : Because by the time they figured out just how dangerous and life ruining it is they had invested Billions and Billions in the research and they want those Billions back…..even if it means poisoning the world in the process!
23.
Interviewer : Beerman had a shaky start how did it ever get through Greenlight?
VS1Toronto : I hatched a plan to see how far up the 2200 odd titles I could get by attaching a Beerman App which linked to the Beerman website which linked to the then Steam Greenlight page. I never actually expected it to get released it was an enormous surprise!
24.
Interviewer : Was there any truth to a certain Argentinian publicity company helping out by advertising Beerman on radio shows and the web.
VS1Toronto : Em…………………no comment lol.
25.
Interviewer : Without claiming it happened, why did people go to these extremes on Greenlight?
VS1Toronto : Greenlight ended up a great trainer for real life, in that at the end it was more corrupt than WALL STREET! In fact it could have taught those guys a thing or two and eventually you realised unless you do what everybody else is doing your never going to get anywhere.
If there’s only one honest race car on the race track then you can be sure it will be that race car that loses!
If everyone else is fighting dirty then you have no choice.
If you don’t fight then you have no reason to complain!
26.
Interviewer : Talking about fighting what happened to cause that bust up between you and the Greenlight trolls?
VS1Toronto : Well I put up with intergalactic levels of abuse, principally because I’m almost twice their age and didn’t think I should really be shouting back at people in their youth, I didn’t think that was fair or would have put myself in a good light so I just stood back and let them get on with it and tried to take what I could constructively from their generations opinions and adjust the game accordingly.
I’m a different generation so things have moved on in the gaming world and I had to take that into account.
That changed however when the usual Troll brigade attacked a Mexican High School.
The game was called “Ducks in Space”.
It was a great beginners submission and you saw the comments of the hopeful school team as they politely asked the opinions of the audience in a very cheerful and hopeful manner…..
What followed from the Trolls who inhabited Greenlight was one of the most shocking examples of sustained verbal vitriol I have ever seen and speaks in the most negative terms of their parents, their poor upbringing and their standards of form therein…..
The unceasing abuse lasted days and the poor high school team never answered back once and you could tell they were stunned at the poisonous response from these “bastards” and that they’re
dreams had just been squashed after all they’re hard work.
I myself finally started remonstrating with these slime ball Greenlight Trolls and after some heated exchange over their shocking behaviour decided to go to a group called “The Duck Society” and inform them of what was happening.
I posted a message to the affect of “Attention All Ducks, Attention All Ducks some of you fellow hatchlings are under attack from Greenlight trolls come and help them out, all ducks to battle!” and included the Greenlight address link.
Well a few of the ducks did come running through with the attitude “Heah heah noone get’s to push ducks around on here, you yeah you! You pushing a duck? Come ere!…..
It sounds silly now but what wasn’t silly was the abuse the poor Mexicans were taking and the ducks really helped out.
I hope they went on with their game because it did look really good, ducks all flying around in their own personal space ships conquering space!
One of the ducks however went by the name of “Flames” and we got to talking and ended up friends and he was able to suggest things that Beerman was missing that the new generation of gamers expect and this slightly out of touch older generation gamer was then able to improve Beerman in line with these suggestions and I can’t thank him enough!
I suppose you could say Beerman got brought in…..on flames!
27.
Interviewer : So did you generate all the sprites yourself?
VS1Toronto : Yeah it took months to draw them all using a Chinese Stylus a Huion 2048 the Chinese make great stuff, no complicated learning process you just took it out of the box plugged it in and off you went with paint.net.
28.
Interviewer : Why does it take so long?
VS1Toronto : To code a character to walk to the left takes about forty seconds but to draw five characters to complete a whole animation sequence, then colour, shade, animate then code takes about six hours, then if that character flies and goes up, well that’s six hours, then if he goes diagonal well that’s six hours it’s a real nightmare!
29.
Interviewer : What was the worst one?
VS1Toronto : The tank when it rolls down the street toward you in the seventh level video cut scene. The tank is on screen for a maximum of 2 seconds and you never see the front of the tank again…it took six hours to turn those tracks for that 2 second sequence…talk about soul destroying!
30.
Interviewer : Did you really do all the voices of all the characters yourself?
VS1Toronto : Yes and I ended up getting investigated by “Glasgow City Council” for multiple occupancy!
31.
Interviewer : What?
VS1Toronto : I thought everyone around me was at work so I screamed at the computers microphone for weeks from different angles to get the voices sounding right and for everyone one time I got it right there were twenty failed attempts where I got it wrong.
Problem was the neighbours had to listen to all that and eventually they put a complaint in to the council about there beings lots of people living in the house next door screaming and shouting throughout the day!
Turns out there was only one person, me! Doing all these voices for the game but after the council had finished phoning me at the house then sending investigators round at night to see if they could catch lots of people living at the one address they finally accepted there was only one person there.
I never did tell the council or the neighbours what was going on so as far as their concerned there is still a nutcase living there who likes to shout and ball to himself all day!
32.
Interviewer : Ha ha ha ha who was your favourite voice?
VS1Toronto : The Mayor! It was great having to shout like that to get his voice right…..he was the loudest it’s probably him that got me investigated!
33.
Interviewer : So when will we see the second one “Beerman 2 Toronto Nights”?
VS1Toronto : Oh it was my dream that some computer game company would find the first one and want to build the second one in 3D.
34.
Interviewer : Isn’t there a rather large famous computer game company in Scotland that could do that?
VS1Toronto : Yeah there is and they have a habit of taking 2D games and turning them into successful 3D games but I reckon half the amateur game developers in Scotland pound their doors with emails asking for jobs so I don’t think it increases your chances living here.
It’s a bit like Los Angeles, the last place you’ll ever get famous is L.A. because everyone there is trying hard to be better looking than everyone else and be a better actor so there’s no way you’ll stand out and get noticed.
35.
Interviewer : So are you saying there won’t be second one?
VS1Toronto : Oh there definitely will be even if I have to do it myself when I get the time, the characters are screaming in my head all the time and eventually I have to get them out of there by making it, that’s what happened with the first one and I keep hearing Brabus screaming when he wakes up in the back of an ambulance!.
36.
Interviewer : I thought Brabus was dead?
VS1Toronto : No he just got blown out of a tank and fell hundreds of feet bouncing of two buildings and landing face down on fire but he’s not dead…..just angry and singed…dying would be uncool and he’s Jamaican…..Jamaicans can’t do uncool so he’s still there in the second one waking up in the back of an ambulance screaming
for revenge on Beerman!
37.
Interviewer : What else happens any hints?
VS1Toronto : Well Vegan Bob is back after his brother who got adopted by a Canadian family gives him a call from Toronto for help.
Even though the family gave him a great upbringing he still ended up turning to crime. Problem is because his Canadian foster parents did such a good job of raising him he’s ended up with a really polite attitude and although a half deranged mega lo-maniac the other Canadian gangsters won’t take him seriously.
What follows is mayhem as Bob tries to sort out his brother’s image unleashing a mammoth crime wave in the process!
“You better take him seriously now!” ( Vegan Bob )
Eventually as it becomes clear who’s behind it Boston P.D. get a call from a frantic Toronto Mayor for help and assistance from anyone who had to deal with the madness before and the whole firework display begins again north of the border!
38.
Interviewer : Is it true you hate feminists?
VS1Toronto : No not at all their great for a laugh…..there should be two of them in every zoo!
39.
Interviewer : Why does it appear you hate feminists?
VS1Toronto : Oh I don’t know probably the whole sale rejection of their immature garbage that everything has to be their way and noone else get’s an opinion…..that’s called slavery!
The only ones they truly hurt are women.
In truth the way life works if your not born with the looks of a film star and you don’t do to well in the first round of dating the opposite sex, there is a second round where people mature life’s priorities change and people look for a stable well measured companion who they can enjoy their life with.
However if you’ve joined a venomous hate filled organisation like feminism you will be filled with all the darkness and bile this organisation brings and you won’t look attractive to the opposite sex in the second round of life.
You won’t look like a well rounded, thoughtful mature prospect but instead will look like an immature hate filled selfish monster…..or in short…a feminist.
40.
Interviewer : Why did the updates and fixes take so long?
VS1Toronto : Oh I was right in the middle of university hanging on by my fingernails at times trying to get through my degree so when that got busy I had to prioritise it first and it meant updates took a while.
41.
Interviewer : What did the university lectures think of your game interests?
VS1Toronto : They thought I was mad! I was a Web Development student not a Games student so games weren’t their thing and so to them I seemed mad…..one of the lecturers used to actually say it aloud in class…..”He’s daft him, he’s daft!” meaning he’s mad.
Mad enough to pull it off I say!
42.
Interviewer : You recently built Beerman into an Android App and a Windows App how did that go?
VS1Toronto : Yeah you can get a link to it on the beermangame.com website in the contacts page
http://beermangame.com/Beerman%20Website/web/index.html
that was a 600 page monster Apress book that taught me how to build a small example game called Tipboard Teaser 2017 and from there I managed to get Beerman converted along the same lines using Unity 5 but it wasn’t easy.
It’s on Amazon because they let you SFTP huge files up to them and unfortunately Google Play have a limit of 100 000MB whereas Beerman tipped the scales at over 350 000MB. I’ll keep working to get it to converted low enough for Google Play though.
I also had to unfortunately slim down the first level due to phones having difficulty handling the animations but apart from that it’s all there and the storyline is identical.
43.
Interviewer : Where does the music come from in the eighth level?
VS1Toronto : Oh I was looking online for weeks to find a royalty free track that would suit the rising of the biggest dastardliest mega machine so far as it climbed forward to bring Boston’s complete destruction and it was unbelievably difficult to find anything that sounded right.
Then with one more mouse click I found it…..
“The Lord of Evil”
44.
Interviewer : Well thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions, what’s the immediate plans for the future?
VS1Toronto : Oh just graduating I have to go and perform some months of modern slavery or as it’s commonly known an Internship so I’ll be quiet for a while but I’ll be back…..The Boston Madness will return!
