Dearest everyone,

I’m writing this letter to inform you that I have made the difficult decision to step down from my position at MrTiki, due to unfortunate circumstances. I never thought I would have to write a letter like this, and it pains me more than I thought it would. I will remain as co-owner and partner to MrTiki, however will no longer be in my role as art director and artist, nor involved in any of the decision making processes from now on.

It has been an absolute pleasure to co-create this wonderfully enchanted world, for the last 2 + years. Developing and setting the look, the art, the design, character design, environments, animations has been incredibly rewarding and I will honestly miss creating on it. Detaching myself will be, and already is, extremely difficult.

I wish the MrTiki team all the best, to make this site grow and thrive and with the help of our loyal users that can no doubt happen. The staff are an extremely talented group that I’m grateful to have gotten to work alongside. I have faith they can do anything they set their sights on.

To our users and fans, if it weren’t for you, the site would all mean nothing. What truly makes MrTiki is the community involvement, your input, your feedback and your interaction. I sincerely thank you for your continued support and encouragement all around.

In regards to art, there are quite a few things I created that haven’t been implemented yet (ie: Battle, Foggy Coast, backgrounds, downloads, map pieces, to name a few), which whether or not they will be used is up to the team from here on out. So those may be the last of the things I’ve created to be implemented. From now on, Kelsey (WeeOne) will be contributing art as she’s able. Outside of that, I’m unsure the future in regards to art, as I’m no longer a part of the decision making process. The team may update on that area down the line as this transition is smoothed in time.

Anyway, of course I will still be around to chat, play, hang out from time to time. In fact, I have a few blog posts on art waiting in the wings I’ll get around to posting soon.

Regardless of this decision, I sincerely hope MrTiki can continue to be the best gaming site I’ve ever seen (not that I’m biased or anything).

Well, I suppose that is that. If anyone would like to contact me for any reason, please feel free to tiki mail or email me, you know how to find me (Club literally sent a search party of smigmies to my home last week. No idea how he managed it).

All the best, with sincerest love and aloha,

sputnic
aka Nicolette Davenport

“A niche market is a focused targetable portion (subset) of a market.

By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.”

There you have it… That’s wikipedia’s definition of a niche market. When explaining what Tiki and the entire BBMMO world to is to investors, I use the term ‘niche market’ like it’s going out of style. It’s all very confusing and out of touch with what is really going on. When you think about the fact that we as enthusiasts are somehow turned into a product, as opposed to a group that stands to be more powerful than the organizations that represent us. In the simplest explanation of our goal; we want a place where all like minded individuals have a forum to express opinions while also learning things that were once scattered across the white noise of the internet. I’m tired of pouring over countless pages and dead-end links only to find a lame article on “Fashion Tips from Zelda!”

“That’s pedantic,” screams a member of the audience.

It sounds somewhat alienating to consider that we, in our personal entertainment pursuits, are actually a subset of a particular categorical and quantitatively definable group. Fact of the matter, it’s true. The very act of having a hobby puts you in segmented category. I’ve learned to embrace this.

THUS!

The likes of Dylan Squires (Volte6) and I (Jason ‘The Mr. Dweedles’ Leon) have embarked on the journey of, hopefully, changing the course of VPS and BBMMO history. We have a dream. We’re creating an array of tools to make being a fan of BBMMOs easier. Although this isn’t a product of the MrTiki group, we personally feel MrTiki represents a very real and important addition to the network we are building.

What sort of tools you ask?

First, we’ve made a review/network that revolves around all things browser game related: www.bbmmo.com

Benefits here are obvious:

- Group of folks that like the same things talking about them.

- The potential of making, dare I say it, new friends that are also into what we dig!

- Finally, the opportunity to find games that we would have been otherwise unaware of.

Next, A news site… There is a lot going on in our space. There is no concise way of keep up with it. We’ve developed a user submitted link site that should saddle this issue: www.blottix.com.

All that said, we think that this is the step forward that our genre needs… Nay, requires!

Verbosity you claim? I’d have to agree. But, these sites are cool. Check them out when you get a minute. In the event that you agree, use them, cherish them, manipulate them to your benefit… and most importantly, help us make them better.

Our hope is to find partners in other like-minded BBMMO sites to band together with. This unified effort should make for, plain and simple, better games. Let’s share audience members, marketing strategies, good ideas and, most importantly, the space.

A little taste of things to come, as far as Tiki Island is concerned. I cannot take credit for these, though I wish I could. The talented Mr. Rich Tuzon created these scenes as concept/inspiration for me a ways back.

And for those wondering about a release date for the Region of Doom (and beyond)….well, what fun would that be?!? All kidding aside, I can say that staff have been working our okoles off on quite a bit so just be ready for more updates very soon!

Here are some rough sketches and environment comps for the upcoming much anticipated Foggy Coast. I hope you enjoy!

I always like seeing other artists’ roughs and thought I’d share my super rough and horrible sketches of the logo, from concept to final. It’s evolved quite a bit, and could’ve gone in so many directions, but I think the final is the strongest overall. I am playing around with a couple variations of it at the moment (mainly color and some slight (3d) effects, etc, to be used in different contexts), which I will update on at a later date.

(Also, personal props and thanks to my friend Eric Tan, an amazing artist and designer who gave me some tips along the way with it. -Mainly “stop napping all the time and get to work.” Thanks bud!).

Hello everyone, fellow Tikians, Wooites and the Neutral others… I guess I haven’t truly introduced myself. Like “Volte6” and “MrDweedles”, I have cyber nickname too, known as “Devilwee” or “Evilwee”. However, when Volte6 ask me to create an account, I was thinking… finally… I can be first to create a “Wee” account. Anyways, the name filter doesn’t allow me to create “Devilwee”… sad…
Oh well, I am getting all talkative again… let’s move on to the Games and Interactive blog! Firstly, I will tell you how each of my games on MrTiki came about.

Launched Games

The Temple Gems
This was inspired by an upcoming game by Volte6… (That all I can tell you). And the game engine concept is the classic Tetris and Collapse combined with bombs! When my first prototype was out for internal Beta test, I noticed there are great differences in player skills, some would complain its too hard, some would say its too easy. It was pretty hard to make a balance between the two groups. So instead I just built in a way for players to choose their difficulty and puzzle size. Of course, difficulty level affects scores.
Trivia:

Some of the art was “stolen” from Sputnic’s existing art and re-layed out into the current design, like the background, if you noticed it.

Lady La Croix’s Brew ‘n’ Stew
The concept is based from the game Bejeweled. This engine was originally made for a site my wife and I designed. That was before the team invited me into the big family. It was later re-skinned to Brew ‘n’ Stew.

Mr.Tiki Sudoku
The good old Sudoku game which the world loves to play (including me)! So I created a MrTiki edition where it will benefit our beloved Island Dwellers. Making this game was pretty hard in terms needing to randomly generate the puzzle. At first, I thought it would as easy as taking a candy from a baby, but I was wrong… I am just a Sudoku player… indeed just merely a player. Generating the puzzle requires a lot of knowledge in the Sudoku, luckily I found a easy way out.

How Many Flumpers?
After Sudoku, I was thinking it would be nice have a simple math game, so I thought, how about making a game that lets players count the amount of characters that come onto the screen. At first, I thought it would be cool to have a lot of Mozo spirits flying around, but that wasn’t cool enough… then looking at Spirit Battle, my Flumper “One Tail” was walking out to attack. Looking at the walking animation gave me an idea! Yeah, let’s count the walking Flumpers! When I showed it to the guys, they said, “Why not add a sneaky Salamangler?”. So that’s how Salamanglers got into the game.

Trivia: All the art were “stolen” from of Sputnic’s existing art and re-layed out into a game interface.

Doctor Pendelton Cranium’s Factory Frenzy
Remember the old games like Western Bar or the Game and Watch Gallery? Yeah, those were my childhood. So I attempted to try making some like that for MrTiki. Making that game wasn’t the most fun part in this project. It was to come out with a story about a poor employee working so hard for Mr Woo, and if he was to fail him, he would lose his job.

Another thing about this game was that it was my first attempt to make a Multi-language game, thanks to Joi, who helped to translate it into Traditional Chinese. I look forward to add this feature to more games, so other language users will get to enjoy the stay on the Island.

Interface

Multiplayer Lobby

This is my first XML Socket Server project with Volte6, and it was very difficult to pick up at the very start. Luckily it wasn’t the first time we were working together on something like this. So this time round, it served to create a better work system for us to use in the future. During the production, Volte6 and I had many ideas of how it would look. It was later finalized to make it simple to use.

Spirit Care Interface
The spirits are restless… Of course they were… they could not be fed, groomed or equipped. This was the very first PHP + Flash interactive feature I made with Volte6, and it was really cool to work on something like this. Not only does it give me more knowledge of PHP+Flash communication, I also learned a lot of things from Volte6, who has become my 2nd mentor in programming.

Valley of Secrets
The original Valley of Secrets (aka VoS) was made in a way that would extract every location from a single file. Now it has new features along with a new design feel which will be live very soon… be prepared!

On Beta

Spirit Battle
This was my the first multiplayer game project with Volte6, during the shaping of the style and game play experience we had a lot of ideas what it would be look like. At first we thought it would be an offline experience where player get to fight players who are not online through this similar style like many web base strategy games, example: PlayerA launches an attack against PlayerB… the result is… blah blah blah. However Volte6 had an idea. Why don’t we use the Multiplayer Engine we had, and it will be a cool feature? Starting from 1 versus 1 to now up to 4 versus 4, the engine has changed a lot over time. We are still working on it, so keep a look out for changes.

Latest Updates

Fishing
This is a new project collaborated with Volte6, in our usual PHP + Flash Tag Team. I am sure it will be a much better experience to fish than to use the usual “click to get fish” approach. Players will get to throw the fishing float with bait into the water and reel to fight the fish… the fishes are ALIVE!

Upcoming

Some of you may have wonder, what will be coming next on Tiki Island? Fear not… we have lots of things in plan for all of you. Some of them are currently in conceptualizing and design stage, we cannot tell you what is it. But for now I can tell you that it will be things involving your creativity.

That’s all for today, It has been a great pleasure to make games and develop new interactive features to make all of you enjoy the time on Tiki Island. See you on Tiki Island… May Mr. Tiki be with you.

Hey guys. Maestro here. Lots of this entry will be geared toward musicians, but it’s for everyone to read.

Ahem… First things first.  Even though I’d love to take credit for it, Mr. Volte6
wrote and composed the music for Varmol Mayhem, not yours truly. He wrote it when we were in high school, and it was titled “The Peruvian Polka”. Now it is “The Varmol Polka.”

Song Writing (for anyone writing or anyone listening)

I love music, and I love making it. That’s pretty much it. Can’t explain it, don’t really wanna. I think a person can ask only so many questions to find out how to write a song or play an instrument, and then it all comes down to just playing and practicing your instrument, whatever it may be, in the way that YOU SEE FIT. It’s perfectly fine (and from my observations essential) to research different player’s techniques and methods, styles, theory in general etc.., but no blog or tutorial will tell YOU why YOU feel certain ways when listening to your favorite songs. Many music theorists may begin to rant about the ways certain scales/modes/chords etc “make” people feel certain ways. I will agree to an extent, but I believe the music itself is tied in to the things we’re doing, the things we’re seeing, and the relationships we have at the time of hearing it, as well as the things we’ve done, things we’ve seen, and relationships we’ve had and lost. To me, a song is fundamentally variable from listener to listener because of life itself….

Steal Stuff!

Now that all of the mushy stuff has been said, I advise you to steal! Ha! That’s right, steal techniques, rhythmic patterns, instrument arrangements, chord progressions, even bits of melody from your favorite artists in order to practice and create your own material.

There are a couple of rules though:

1. You have to re-create the sound through means of your own instrument / talents.
2. You can’t unlawfully sell / distribute original recordings or songs (or parts of songs) that aren’t your own.
3. You have to give credit where credit is due.
4. Practicing by playing songs from my favorite instrumentalists and trying to re-create sounds and arrangements from my favorite composers are two of my three main methods of growing musically. The third is to ALWAYS BE LISTENING to the music and sound around you, whether from television, film, nature, or, you got it… video games.

Some of my favorite people or things to try to “steal” from (whether successfully or unsuccessfully):

• Joe Satriani
• Marty Friedman
• Bone Thugs n Harmony
• NOFX
• Danny Elfman
• Mel Torme
• Metallica
• Jason Becker
• Metroid (game)
• Akon
• Megadeth
• Django Reinhardt
• Metal Gear (game)
• NIN
• John Powell
• Tori Amos
• Niccolo Paganini
• A Bajillion sounds and songs that have come from Artists, Movies, Shows, Cartoons, Games, and Places that I have seen or heard.

The sounds you want to create in this world exist in your head first. I can guarantee that they are in one way or another an offspring of sounds you have already been exposed to at some point in your life. Embrace them.

Tiki Moosik

MrTiki is awesome. It calls for different kinds of ambience or tunage from map to map and game to game, so it helps keep things musically exciting in my world. Here’s some trivia and instrument listings for some of the songs on the site:

Tiki Island Main Map music:

Trivia:

•  Was originally written on an Ibanez S470 guitar at my parents house 6 years ago.
• The original title was called “Rice Cakes and Peanut Butter”.
• Kicked up original tempo from 100 BPM (Beats per minute) to the current 130 BPM and made a different instrument arrangement for Polynesian feel.

Instruments:

• Congas
• Flute
• Marimba
• Upright Bass
• Violin

Wootropolis music:

Trivia:

• Bass line was influenced by NIN song “Closer”, even though the two sound dissimilar.
• Was “quality tested” by Tiki team and underwent different tonal revisions before finalized.
• The laugh at the beginning is actually me, kicked up 4 octaves

Instruments:

• Piano
• Slap Bass
• Various blips, pops and zaps from IK Multimedia Sampletank2

Trom’s Task music:

Trivia:

• The first song I wrote for the site
• Was inspired by a theme song from a cartoon called “The Monchichis” that I used to watch as a kid. link

Instruments:

• Congas
• Glockenspiel
• Upright Bass

Wootropolis Fly-By music:

Trivia:

• Existed only in my head for 41/2 years before physically composing it.
• Originally written for a nylon string acoustic guitar with classical arrangement.
• Composed entirely in Guitar Pro Composition Software (As opposed to Digi-Design Pro-Tools, my primary Digital Audio Workstation ).

Instruments:

• MIDI Drum Kit
• Synthesizer
• Whistle
• And of course, hand clap!

Composition Software

Sometimes I write the songs out in Guitar Pro as sheet music, sometimes I just improvise and record in Pro-Tools. Sometimes I do both. It depends on my mood. Here’s a sample shot of the music for the Spirit Battle Arena and a shot of the Wootropolis Fly-By intro composed in Guitar Pro:

Here’s a screen cap of a Pro-tools Session for the Map music for The Foggy Coast:

(In case you haven’t heard it yet, click here)

To wrap this entry up I’ll just leave a list of some of my favorite instruments, gear, software, etc. that I use in my routine recordings. I’ll put some links by ‘em so you can check out any details or specs on ‘em if you wanna. Be sure to leave any comments! I’m willing to answer any questions about any of the songs, sounds, gear, inspiration or anything at all.

Primary DAW: (Digital Audio Workstation)

Pro-Tools LE 7.3

Some Favorite Plug-ins:

• Miroslav Philharmonik
• SampleTank 2
• Addictive Drums

Guitars and Gear:

• Jackson RR models
• Ibanez S-type models
• Rocktron Prophesy II preamp
• M-Audio Keyboards

See Ya!

–TikiMaestro

It has been quite a long time since this blog was created by Dylan. All these time, I was thinking what I should post for my first post? Today I finally came up with something, yeah….its the Title….Varmol Mayhem. Few players have noticed that this was actually the very first game I made for our site.

The code for this game has changed over the years, first Dylan edited some stuff, then Jason too. I’m confident to say that this is one quality game along with the rest! We have 2 Artist, 3 Programmer and 1 Musician working on this game…..that’s alot, right?
Its like Blizzard making Warcraft III, doing so much changes before its actually launch, here in Mr Tiki, we believe the same, you will only see it…..when its ready…..hehehe.

The game uses 3 x 3 grid for spawning the characters, with this grid, it is easier to check which grid is ready to spawn a character….hmmm….I know it is really boring to talk about how to make the game, well….haha actually this game was part of my wife’s presents in one of her birthday. Of course that art wasn’t as nice, because I drew it…..LOL…
I cannot show you the E-Greeting, its hers….wahahaha…..Want to imagine how the card look like…hmmm….here is a link to my old and ugly drawings…haha….its something of similar style.

Searching around the web, I found a link! Where Anaxagorius show us how good his skill is, truthfully never in my life did I score a top score in my Mr Tiki games. Maybe next one…..NEXT ONE!

The idea of MrTiki.com was born from a fairy’s burp. It’s true! She ate too much jungle mushroom one day, and out came MrTiki in a beautiful stinky bubble of fairy gas, much like the Big Bang! MrTiki, a world full of adventure and wonderful things, and some not-so-wonderful things I will not name in this post that start with an ’s’ and end in ‘migmie’, all started with an idea.

Translating such ideas into visual representations is what I do, and I thought it might be nice to give some insight into the behind-the-scenes work and thought processes that go into it.

Step 1) Research, Research, Research

This is before anything is even drawn. It is one of, if not the most important step.

Research question #1: What’s the project?

Well it’s a website, first and foremost. I research all other like-genre and similar-demographic sites, and web trends (this is ongoing! -though honestly, it’s only as I see things appear. I’m not able to actively research much. I leave that to Volte6 in regards to technology). The point is to see what other sites offer, what they don’t offer, avoid being a redundancy, and see what we can do better big picture-wise, as well as overall visually.

Research question #2: What is the subject matter?

Fantasy, Tiki, island/Polynesian. I’m from Hawaii so luckily I have that culture to draw from when approaching MrTiki, although my intent is not make it Hawaiian or Polynesian, but give the site its own unique island essence. Anything jungle or island related that I see, I store for reference, including movies, postcards, calendars, tvshows, etc.

In researching Tiki culture, I found that it is actually HUGE. There are loads of books, sites, movies, etc. all devoted to Tiki, and in fact there are Tiki-lovers all over the world. Who knew?

Then I take all my collected and researched visuals, books, movies, magazines, music, etc, and put them in a pile. I post visuals on bulletin boards, make inspiration boards, and basically surround myself with it all, light up some incense and let it sink into my skin. Oh yeah.

(late night pic of my work desk with the coolest tiki dude, & some pages of collected imagery I put together for inspiration boards)

Step 2) Concepting

MrTiki has evolved over time from what we thought it could be at conception to what it is currently, and it will continue to evolve for sure (which is a great thing!). When I say ‘concepting’, what I am referring to is taking the research and meshing it into the world you are trying to create.

There were so many directions I could’ve taken MrTiki, visually. From a very retro, very 2-D Shag-like style, to a very simple iconic modern style, to Tokyopop, to overly cute-ified (i.e. Littlest Pet Shop), and on and on. -From the website design itself, to the characters, to games and game elements, backgrounds, everything considered.

This is where you experiment and do most of the problem-solving. What works best for the characters and what works best for the experience you are trying to create, while sticking to your research (what will make the world stand apart, who will it appeal to, etc).

Once you concept and try out different things and experiment, you lay all the things in front of you and make your decisions. Keep what’s working and toss what isn’t. Keep drawing, keep thinking.

STEP 3) Solidifying the identity

Well, I don’t know that it’s much of a step, but rather defining your brand and the world you created, after you’ve concepted the crap out of it. Make it consistent and cohesive. Create a branding guide, which details the decisions you’ve made, lists the ‘rules’ and guidelines for your brand. Doing this also forces you to ask yourself questions you may not have already solved, and forces you to finalize any open-ended thoughts. I hope that makes sense. Ours is a work in progress.

Throughout the whole process it’s important to collaborate with the others involved in the project. Their feedback and ideas are extremely important in the development process; you need constructive criticism, like with anything else. Working too autonomously just means you’re working in a vacuum and it’s not always beneficial. Volte6 is an avid gamer and brings his knowledge and input about mmorgs when it comes to layouts in game-play, and game play as a whole. - Likewise with Wee, and Mrdweedles, and their skills and knowledge with flash games, they’ve directed and coordinated ideas with me from the start (I don’t have a huge gaming background, so it’s essential for me to get all their input). Since Kinh came aboard, I work closest with him, since he’s breathing life into this Tiki world through the (amazing!) weekly stories. Our representations of the IP need to be consistent, from the smallest detail of the color of a character’s eyes, to the most grandiose, like an army of Woobots and the level of destruction they could cause. Kinh does nearly similar dev work for the plotline and characters that I do for them visually (I’m sure he could write up a novel-length blog post about it as well), so it is imperative that he and I work closely on things.

This post was probably too wordy but hopefully provided a little insight into vis dev, and at least some pre-beta work that I’ve done. Although I’m still solidifying things, I think it’s moving in the right direction. Here are some old character sketches for reference, you can see the evolution:

It’s a lot of work, as there are a lot of things to consider, but it’s also loads of fun! I mean, how often do you get to decide what a peg-legged, metal-armed, patch-eyed, ear-pierced, kilt-wearing, Spirit-loving, butt-ugly character named Mort will look like? Not too often.

The tiki saga continues! We’ve been in round table talks about how we see mrtiki as a movie and are really excited. We’re so excited that we’ve contacted a couple of topnotch screen writers to take a stab at our treatment and then first script.

I can’t wait until the day that I can go to my local super mega ultimate uber plex and pay ten bucks to see Kaia and Codi adventure it up.

Tiki is so much fun that it doesn’t seem like work. You all wait and see… Sooner than later you’ll see a tiki movie being announced!… Well, maybe not as soon as I’d like to see.