Prior to the release of UFOTC, I'll have to play through to test that the levels can be passed..
..and in other news the redesign is in "late June or early July" which means that "early" is the first half of July, else it can't be "early".
IOW, the redesign's coming today or tomorrow.

Well...so I've PMed Asandir to discuss whether I should prolong the gestation period of UFOTC:DOTC or submit it as soon as possible, I've changed my user icon and profile picture, and planned many other projects. Not bad, not bad. Here's a small, low-quality screencap of the game:

So....not much to say here, just a tidy little to-do list.

[] Release UFO Tree Cutters: Dawn of the Chainsaw (not yet, going to)
[X] Start work on UFO Tree Cutters: Rise of The Trees
[] Use a microphone to try and voice act in some games
[X] Work on Platform Sandbox 5
[] Submit Platform Sandbox 5 to the flash portal
[X] Gather 5500+ posts
[] Gather 10000 posts
[X] Collaborate with pranjalmaithani
[] Post on BBS a lot.

Well....it'll either be coming out today or tomorrow. It turned out that one simple change was all that was required to fix the star system; now I just have to fix the underlying bugs.
PM me for a beta sample.
In the meantime, here's a quickie logo I fixed up for this and future games:

How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck can chuck wood?

Yesterday in English we had to construct a story titled "A matter of life and death" based on a plot we made day before yesterday.
The word limit was 500 to 600 words, but since you all know what I did, I "just extended" it to a minimum of 1000.
I've to rewrite it but I thought of posting it so that I can submit it to the Writing forum when I get unbanned...also TL;DR warning.

A matter of life and death

"Hey, Peter", I asked, "why not we go skydiving? It's currently on my bucket list, and from what I've heard it's pretty fun."
"Well....okay, I guess, seeing how dull our lives are, skydiving would be a good change; I'll be renting an airplane. See me at the CliffHanger airport at 4:30pm. Don't ask any questions."
I accepted reluctantly, as I wanted to ask Peter where he had learnt to fly a plane, but I knew one thing: We were going skydiving!
At 4:30, I saw Peter at the CliffHanger airport, and he motioned to me a deserted strip of runway a half-kilometer away from the airport; I didn't even know it existed! Anyhow, we boarded the small plane just a few metres from the strip; I figured this was the plane Peter had rented.
As I pulled up our supplies (including one parachute), I noticed there was a small tear on the lower right-hand side of the parachute holder (a big bag). Me being the optimistic person I was, I shook it off and ignored Peter's remarks about it.
Peter started the engines, increased the power on the plane, and we took off.

Chapter 1.5 :: Jay

The feeling of flying is surreal and rare; it is what Man has always dreamed of. This was not possible until recently. While people think they may fall down and plummet to the ground, it is a wonderful experience: It's not about the flying.

It's never about the flying.

Chapter 2 :: Jay

My time had come. It was my duty to jump, and since Peter was the only one out of the two of us who knew how to fly the plane, I had no choice either way. Maybe I'll fly the plane next time.
As I yanked the lever on the door, Peter tightened his seat belt and handed to me the parachute holder. I calmed myself and waited for the signal, at which point...
...I jumped. It felt lovely: The wind tearing through my face, the whooshing noise of the wind, and the sense of altitude.

Except I wasn't going down.
Then it struck me: Remember the tear on the bag? That must've let some wire loose, which may have attached itself to the plane. The problem is, if I tugged too hard at the wire, I'd strain it too much...and the secondary parachute (for emergencies) would open...pulling my head off with it. So here I was, hanging by a wire, no way of knowing whether it was flimsy or not, about to be killed.

My only help was Peter.

Chapter 3 :: Peter

I noticed that, despite me going forward and leaning out, Jay's parachute wasn't visible.
Then it struck me.

The tear on the bag he gave to me. It must've let some wire loose, and that must've attached to the plane. I looked around, scanning every nook and cranny with my eyes while stationed in the cockpit of the plane I flew.
And I found it. It was on the wing.
I frowned. If I flew any faster, I'd strain the wire too much and kill Jay in the process. If I flew too slow, the plane would stall and take both of us down with it.
Not wanting to endanger the life of my friend, I slowed down the plane slightly, accounted for the slight increase of pitch due to my weight, and searched for an instrument that would be able to cut the wire. And I found it. It was at the back of the plane, in a cupboard.
Now knowing where the instrument was, I slowly stepped -- the plane was in a slight nosedive -- and tried to grab the instrument.
Before I could open the cupboard, the plane's nose shot up. I scampered back to the cockpit, and the plane's nose stabilized. I tried again.
And again, each time failing; eventually I realised that I didn't account for the change in pitch because of Jay's weight! I set the plane into a firm nosedive, and ran to the back, opened the cupboard, grabbed the instrument, and scurried back to the cockpit.

Now I had to go to the wing and cut the wire.

Chapter 3.5 :: Jay

During the course of the flight, I rapidly swung to and fro, the only thing holding me a wire which was indeed getting strained a lot; I thought to myself, dear God, cut this thing already and let me fall!
As I peered over the edge of the wing, I noticed Peter was not in the cockpit. Was he going to cut the wire? Did he even know I was here? Or had he ditched the plane? My mind was flooded with thoughts, of fear and understanding; of concentration and worry.
I feared this was the last breath I may breather, and closed my eyes tightly, waiting for the unknown to catch me.

Chapter 4 :: Peter

As I secured the safety-catch over my stomach, I stepped out onto the wing, clutching tightly the edges. That's when I thought I was going to pass out: Not only was the plane too high, there was almost no oxygen! I wonder whether Jay had died.
I scrambled back to the cockpit where I set the nose to a mild nosedive, and waited.
Soon after, when we reached 8000 feet (where I guess there was enough oxygen to breathe) I brought a hook connected to a wire, apart from my safety-catch, so I could pull Jay back up easier than pulling it with my arms and hoping I was strong enough.

Teeth clenched, I attached the hook to Jay's rogue wire and cut the wire with the instrument ever so deftly, not wanting to stress the wire -- it was already strained a lot -- any more.
After cutting the wire, I pulled the hook slowly -- by this time the plane was turning and could thus potentially crash -- at which point I realised the effort was fruitless. I had to jump with him, and pull the wire -- for him -- and hope the parachute would deploy.

I jumped.

Chapter 4.5 :: Jay

The swell feeling of falling through the sky. The wind in your face, tears streaming down your eyes, not out of fear, but out of joy.
My eyes started flickering, and opened after 2 seconds, only to be closed by the gushing wind. I had't felt this before, I thought. I was in a state of euphoria. To the side of me, I saw Peter, who merely waved.
Then I thought about it. Was I dead? What was Peter doing here? Was I dreaming? Did I finally snap?

Chapter 5 :: Peter

After I saw Jay become conscious, I waved to him: the air whooshing past us was too loud, so speaking wouldn't work.
I counted down to 50, and tugged at the ripcord. Hard.
The parachute deployed, and we drastically slowed down in seconds, but something was not right.
We were going too fast, and it was because the parachute supported only one person.
As we reached 5000 feet, I decided whether I had to jump away or Jay had to. I wanted neither, but only one of us could stay.

Chapter 5.5 :: Jay

I was like a lightbulb. Always either conscious, or unconscious. I was hanging by a thread, and a flimsy one at that. I had the willpower, just not the strength. My heart was slowing down, each beat loosening that very thread.
I saw a white light in the distance, headed towards me. Far away, it became brighter and closer every second.
It was the last I saw of Peter, and the last breath I breathed on this planet before heading to my unknown destination.

My soul was free at last.

Chapter 6 :: Peter

Trying to fight back tears, I watched Jay breathe his last, at which point I realised I was the only one left. I pulled all the wires connecting Jay to the backpack, and strapped them onto me. I pushed Jay aside, and he just flew high up in the air. It was the last I saw of Jay's remains, and his location will be forever unknown to me.

As I touched ground, I realized what an exhilarating experience that was, and how I managed to save a person from the clutches of death, yet watch him die at the mercy of the winds.

The end.

Alternate ending (for those of you who like happy endings)

Chapter 0 :: Jay

My heart surged back into action. Blood surging through me, I was able to open my eyes.
The white light.

That's what it meant. I saw a roof in front of me, enlarging as I fell, and since I had no equipment, I could only watch as I tore through the roof.
After I tore through the roof, I landed hard on a white bed. The springs on the bed broke, and I could feel many, if not all the bones in my body crunch, snapping like twigs from the impact.
But who cares? I was alive. I was ALIVE!

Criticism is always welcome.

What is the Newgrounds Review?

It is a small independent review that I'll be making of the features of Newgrounds every time I "feel like it", or around once every 2 months, or maybe even once per month.

I've also included a list of favorite users below...

List of favorite users:
Asandir - Well....because he's a good user, but it's a shame he's crossed 6000 posts in this short duration of time. He's even ahead of POTaTOS by almost double...to think that POTaTOS posted a lot..tch tch.
Narcissy - Well....once upon a time, he was a famous user, along with the others below, but the limelight was stolen...by (guess who!) plus, he was almost a team member in the Game Jam 5
Bilalz - Because he's a nice user.
hongkongexpress - For blocking me from his PM delibrately
JohnnyDamon - You mad bro?
Dean - An overall nice user. Allegedly "knew me on newgrounds" before my username change.
MercatorMapV2 - Because he's JohnnyDamon's alt.
Gimmick's former account, Gimmick - Because he was the person who didn't contribute to newgrounds and so allowed Sanjeev98 to change to the user Gimmick.

Without further ado, let's start already, I've got a load of work on my hands so I'd finish it fast...

The flash portal
While the concept of "voting on flash" is good, it may be flawed as it can be abused -- people who hate a flash may communicate with others to create a network that mass-votes flash either zero or five, with the former being widespread before. Tom suggested that it may be removed in the new version of Newgrounds (after the redesign), but it will still be abusable as many accounts can be created and replaced every day. It is yet to be seen whether there's a leak-proof solution for this.

The audio portal
This is a good idea -- people can submit audio as part of their portfolio, thus increasing their chances of being seen, and also removes the monotony of Newgrounds as a flash portal only and gives more people a chance, if they don't have flash. However, it's yet to be known why voting on audio does not give you experience points, and why the audio goes through a vetting stage by a mod rather than by having a judgement stage like in the flash portal. This may be a temporary solution to the "abusable" voting in the flash portal, but I've noticed from experience that most audio takes weeks and when approved, would usually have a score that depends on the average amount of votes and the vote itself. So for example, if there are zero votes and one person (usually the author) votes five on it, then the overall score is 5. I still have some doubts on this matter as to why this system has been used. The judging by a mod does not allow for the "instant" submission to the audio portal.

The art portal
While this expands the choices and portfolios of users, it is much more than just strange as to why there has to be a "scouting" feature for the art portal before it can be voted upon -- why can't it "pass judgement" and then see if it passes? That way, more people can vote on art, and if it turns out that it is abused for more experience points, then it can be divided equally into 3 -- vote on 5 flash for 3.33 experience points, vote on 5 art submissions for 3.33 more experience points, and then finally vote on 5 audio submissions to get the grand total of 10 experience points. The "unscouting" feature isn't not notorious either -- I remember an event in which a group of hackers hacked Egoraptor's account and unscouted all his scouted artists. While the damage was reversable, it certainly brings into question what kind of system and users Newgrounds is dealing with.

The Collections, Games and Series
While they do have a good amount of flash and collections listed there, I've noticed some of them have not been updated in a long time, say 2 years minimum. There is one blammed flash in the "Gadgets" section of the "games" part, but the lack of it being removed just shows what kind of load (or laziness?) the staff has; Tom recently mentioned that it would be replaced with a new system with new tags, but since it's not to be released until after the redesign, and since the redesign itself isn't showing much progress (no due date, seriously?) and Tom wasn't giving many updates as of recently, the fact that there might even be a redesign may be brought into question.

The userpages
While I went to the Wayback! Archive recently, I went to the times of 2007, and saw that Tom announced that userpages were finally finished, and to be frank, it's quite a nice touch, seeing as userpages give more access to a person's personal portfolio, and it's the reason why you're reading this; however, the userpages are quite bland, and I do not understand why we can't have animated icons or profile pictures for users who joined 2009 or later (it might even be for users below or on 2008). I recently saw in the Wi/Ht? forum that they will be introducing it again in the redesign; however frequent references to the redesign make me doubt there is going to be one at all. Don't mind me; if you've seen a sneak peek you're good to follow that belief, as I'm a bit of a pessimist myself.

The forums
This is one such thing that brought me alive on Newgrounds. It's guaranteed to always (well, maybe not always) be alive and kicking full of topics; this accounts for 99% of the entertainment value that I obtain from Newgrounds as a website -- I tend to not play the flash unless it involves medals, really. The users on the forums may or may not be horrible, but it's really their problem, not ours; the mods do a good job of maintaining the forums, and if in case they do overlook something, then we're all more than glad to help...unless that user is the OP of the thread concerned.

The users
While some of the users are very nice, such as Asandir, Suprememessage and Chdonga (for example) there are other users who have two faces -- one on the forums and one for the rest of Newgrounds. Now, this might sound harsh, but I'm telling the plain truth when I say this: All users are retarded. There are no exceptions. I'm a retard, you're a retard, Tom's a retard, Wade's a retard, everyone on Newgrounds is. I'm not one who judges people, and just to prove that I don't like to call users retards, I put myself up on that list, possibly #1. I've also noticed they don't read long walls of text such as these.

The store
While I haven't been to the newgrounds store at all, I'm quite convinced it's a nice way to show that you're a true fan of newgrounds...and by what other way than buying items from keychains to shirts to video games! The box that shows how much you've spent is overkill though; you can brag about it and I, being a modest person myself, don't like that -- it's as if you're claiming you're better than X person because you bought Y amount more than him or her.

The ad API
Having been a user of the flash advertisement API myself, it is quite nice, however it would be nice if the rules were changed so that the amount earned was paid at the end of every month...regardless of whether it crosses $50 or not. I feel like I'm getting the part that's not the lion's, and that newgrounds is rather earning more than me in that, but I don't care about it much, it's good that it's there at all, but I don't see why they say that you "have a higher chance of reaching the front page" if you choose their API; it's quite biased really.

The Medal API
Approval takes a lot of time, and even though I understand that this is to confirm whether the medals are actually worth it (waiting 4 hours? seriously?), but since the admins don't have any if at all time on their hands, it may be weeks before any medals can be approved.
Thanks to MikeyS9607 for suggesting.

The dumping grounds
This was a feature that I truly loved. Rather than having to go to SWFcabin and upload my SWF files there, and risking them getting deleted at any time, I know my files are going to be permanent on the Newgrounds Dumping grounds unless I delete them manually. However, this raises the question: If hackers hack into your account and delete your precious files from the dump, then should there be a confirmation mail for it? Why? Why not? For one, it shows that your account was hacked, and for two, it showed that even though they breached your account, your files were saved, but it might be tedious to delete a file, go to your email, confirm, rinse and repeat; therefore there should be an option to choose whether you want that or not.

The News Posts
I've seen that many users' news posts are mostly about rants, or whatnot, but when there are some strikingly good ones -- such as Asandir's post and possibly this post, and there's one small thing that's either a mistake or something else, it tends to derail the post completely. There are over 100 comments on Asandir's userpage, but 42+ are by one user and only around 43 are about the topic in concern. The rest are just about batcat.

Possible features for the redesign?
I did mention that the redesign may be unlikely, but I've heard about some features that are going to be in Newgrounds after the redesign. I'll review the ones I've heard of:
1) [Unity] may overtake flash -- Now, 3D may be tougher than 2D and I have no idea of how Unity works, but the last thing I want is complete takeover of Unity and the thwarting of Flash from Newgrounds. The risks are low, but if thousands of 3D games are made in Unity, then they'd have a higher pass rate than Flash, because of the fact it's 3D. I may be wrong because it may be tough to make games in Unity; however, that's not up to me.
2) [Wide site layout] -- While this may benefit people who have huge monitors like I had, it certainly will NOT help people stuck with old 1024x768 screen resolutions, and certainly not people with small screens.
3) [Bluish theme] -- I don't know how this will be, but I do want a gray theme switch, because truth be told, I've grown up with this gray theme and goes easy on my eyes at night.
That's all the rumours I've heard for now.

The end....for now?
That's all for now; if you've read until this point, props to you, and stay tuned for Newgrounds Review 2! If you hate me after reading this, go on, do what you want, but I'll just continue posting my honest opinions. Disagree, agree, build upon or state whatever you want in the comments.
P.S And yes Lintire I do plan on completing Newgrounds Review 2 after the redesign.

As of lately I've seen an influx of flash games that are from certain...whatyoucallit "companies", that are guaranteed to give a save point. I've seen an alarming trend of certain websites/companies/whatnot host gadgets over here on newgrounds, almost guaranteeing a save point for everyone, and nobody can do anything about it.
Why?
Just throw in an official-sounding username, say HappyFatties, throw in flash with a small logo, and you've got yourself a saved flash. Of course, the quality still matters, but I think that I'm not only speaking for myself when I say that some people (shamefully, I'm in one of those) vote only after getting a first impression of the flash, say if it's a movie, and the art is good, I vote 2, regardless whether the animation's bad or not because the art certainly is.
And of course, we've got the dressup games...
Sigh...dressup games were once good, once okay, especially if you spent a lot of time on them, incorporated medals (such as Matt Roszak's mecha dressup) and you'd get a good game made out of love.
Now, that small art is being tarnished and raped horribly by users such as "igirlgames" and "dressupgames77" and others...it's as if they threaten people at gunpoint to create art and then just throw in a different UI, but with the same template, and then it's on its way to the flash portal.
Of course, we don't do anything because we still get a save point.

I bet you that if you PM one of them then they won't reply....I shot off a pm 2 months ago and they still haven't replied.

So, before it was Sanjeev98, now it's Gimmick, whaddya think?

This is a repost of my 35th entry, mainly because I don't know how to reorder blog entries.

====
I think I might not be joining the game jam (as I never did) for one or more reasons:

(o) I'm too busy (school starts on the 13th and it had to be on 19th)
(o) My coding skills aren't that good (I don't know what is acceptable though)
(o) I don't know anything about the game jam (except that I have to make a game, duh)
(o) Most likely teams will reject my offer (either found a better replacement or just think I'm too bad)
(o) There might be slots for programmers that are already filled

Still, I've just PMed tri-circle (rather ToastedToastyToast) and even though I know he's a programmer, I'll just see what happens, whether he'll accept or not, because I don't know how good he is compared to me (likely better than me)

So, for now I'm kinda hanging in the balance. Only time will tell what happens.
====

NOTE: It's decided. SilverPenguin is the artist and I'm the programmer. Collab organizer: Narcissy, except he's on another team.