"Happy birthday, Abe Vigoda
To you I raise my glass of soda -
You've got more miles than my old Toyota
But unlike it, you won't explode-a.

(I hope)
-- me (sorry, not much of a poet)

Yes, we're still VIGODA, and it's Abe Vigoda's 85th birthday!

What have we been up to? Eh, nothing that exciting. I'm still working on the Seattle and LA maps, which you'll see here soon. We recently went to Wondercon, handed out some postcards, and saw a lot of stormtroopers. Besides stormtroopers, we also met artist Eric Joyner, who does some sweet paintings of robots. And robots with donuts, which are coincidentally my two favorite things. Speaking of robots, I put up a new wallpaper on the wallpaper page. Yes, we made that design into a spiffy t-shirt, which I hope we can have available sometime soon (please don't even think about getting that actually tattooed on yourself, you'll regret it even more than the Taz-riding-a-rainbow-unicorn-jumping-over-a-tribal-dolphin-bordered-by-a-Celtic-barbed-wire-pattern that you discovered on your left ankle after a drunken sorority party in 1992).

We'll probably be visiting the GDC in March, and will get you some real, much more exciting updates then.

"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." -- Mark Twain
It seems there's been a rumor going around that we were cancelled. Of course, since Octopus Motor consists of just me & Lars, I'm not sure who would cancel TCFH without our knowing it. I know I didn't cancel it. Just to be sure, I asked Lars if he recently cancelled the game. Nope, he didn't. So I can only imagine that this cruel rumor hails from the same person who, back in high school, told Jim I liked him. Which was totally bogus. Okay, okay, I did think he was cute, but he would never in a million years have gone out with me. I am so embarrassed. Thanks, rumormonger. Thanks alot. Once again, TCFH is not cancelled. To make things simple, I will update all future posts with TCFH's Abe Factor:

ABE VIGODA Not dead, everyone just thinks he is.

ABE LINCOLN Dead as a doornail.

Our Abe Factor is currently VIGODA. We will keep you informed of any changes in status.

The other day we had this discussion as Lars coded away and I made a ham n' cheese sandwich in the kitchen:

L: "How many men are in a duck?"
S: "What?"
L: "Crew. In a duck."
S: "Probably two. One to drive, and a gunner?"
L: "Yeah. Like a tank, but they don't need a loader."

And that, my friends, is how weird things are getting around here. BTW, here's what we were talking about -- Weird Weapon RD-113:

Ducks are cute but dangerous.

Lars has also finished most of the water effects: that is, the monsters can now swim and splash around, and you can throw stuff into the water. As you see below, now we can't get the robot to come out of the water, even though his skin's probably shriveled up like an old Juicyfruit wrapper. Here's a new Tech F/X about that, and a few new screenshots. Gameplay video will have to wait until after the holidays, we're swamped.