I am pleased to announce that HeroMachine:Pinup Edition is now live and available at UGO.com! The Pinup Edition is designed to be a tribute to the pinup calendars of the fifties, and features two attractive female figures you can dress up in a variety of fun outfits. This is very much a PG-13 style applet, a bit racy for younger users but nothing more risque than you’d see on the cover of FHM or in your average late-night TV show.

I hope you enjoy this latest release, and by all means please let me know how you like it, any changes, additions, or deletions to the item set you’d like to see, and anything else about it that crosses your mind. I realize this is a bit more mature than anything else I’ve done, but I think it’s tasteful enough not to be too much for the younger crowd while still being suitable for an older audience.

On a more technical note, this is also a chance to preview two items that may impact future HeroMachine offerings. First, it has an integrated ad unit, something you’re likely to see in the near future on HeroMachine 2.5. Let me know what you think about how it’s implemented.

Second, I got to try out having an entire component dedicated to the “Name”. Before, the name was either completely separate from the image, or was only in the basic system font on a white background. Now you can change the font and color to get a neat graphical element into the text. It’s something I’ve been thinking about incorporating into future mini-Editions and maybe 3.0, only even more so. I’d be curious to hear how you feel it’s working out so far.

I had a request in the last thread to show if it’s possible with the new components to have a suit and trench coat combination, so here you go:

One of the reasons I wanted to start this blog was so that all of you out there would have the chance to be involved in an ongoing development project by providing insight and input throughout. Over the last few months there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for that, as the Expansion was in the “grind the items out to the additional templates” mode.

But now that the 2.5 expansion is finally getting to the wrapping-up stage, it’s time to start discussing what you would like to see next out of the HeroMachine team. I’ve been talking with the UGO team, and here are the ideas we’ve put forth as big projects. I’d like to know what you all think about them, or if there are other things you’d like to see us work on.

(more…)

I have now fixed all of the bugs from the Big List that can be fixed. Or at least, that can be fixed by me; I’m sure a better Flash developer could repair the LeftHand load bug, for instance. I want to thank everyone who took the time to post errors, having everything all in one place made the whole process much, much easier. You guys rule! Note that the fixes won’t be live until the final 2.5 update, hopefully next week.

I’ll now be moving on to copying over some of the component genre sets into other components. Here’s what I am thinking so far (edited to add new stuff per the comments section):

1. Copy Coats-Standard into Overshirts.
2. Copy Coats-CapeFronts into Overshirts.
3. Copy Coats-CapeFronts into Undershirts.
4. Copy Coats-FantasyArmor into Overshirts.
5. Copy Coats-FantasyArmor into Undershirts.
6. Copy Coats-FantasyCommon into Overshirts.
7. Copy Coats-FantasyCommon into Undershirts.
8. Copy Overshirts-Standard into Coats.
9. Copy Leggings-Standard into Overleggings.
10. Copy Leggings-Standard into Pants.
11. Copy Overleggings-Standard into Leggings.
12. Copy Overleggings-Standard into Pants.
13. Copy Pants-Standard into Leggings.
14. Copy Pants-Standard into Overleggings.
15. Copy Back-Standard into Wings.
16. Copy Back-Standard into Tails.
17. Copy Wings-Standard into Back.
18. Copy Wings-Standard into Tails.
19. Copy Tail-Standard into Back.
20. Copy Tail-Standard into Wings.
21. Copy Companion-Standard into Back.
22. Copy Companion-Standard into Wings.
23. Copy Companion-Standard into Tail.
24. Copy Background-Expansion1 into Back.
25. Copy Background-Expansion1 into Wings.
26. Copy Background-Expansion1 into Tail.
27. Copy Neckwear-Shoulders into Coats.
28. Copy Neckwear-Shoulders into Overshirt.
29. Copy Neckwear-Shoulders into Undershirt.

If there are other components you’re dying to have, by all means please speak up, preferably in the comments to this post so everything’s in one place. Each one of these duplications is easier than coming up with a whole new batch, but I do still have to manually position everything for three out of the six templates. I finally wised up halfway through developing this thing and started putting all components in the same spot so I could just cut and paste without repositioning, but it was too late for the first three.

I am happy to announce that the sixth and final body template for HeroMachine 2.5 has now been upgraded with the Expansion Pack! You can now use the Expansion items on any template, for that perfect character portrait.

I will be spending the remainder of the week squashing bugs, so if you have any reports not in the general Bug post, please let me know asap. Next week I hope to have the final, full 2.5 version ready and available for download, with all of the fixes in place.