Tocci's Blog

High score boards are now enabled in Tocci's games! (Well they've actually been up for about 2 1/2 weeks, but I've been blog-lazy.) For my leaderboard solution, I wanted to find a simple, clean, flexible, and tamper resistant solution to implement.  But we can't always get what we want, so I wrote my own.  I added them to all of my flash games except for Britney Wigged Out, which was made with an earlier version of Flash.

Since putting them up, I've come to the realization that I suck at my games. People are posting some amazing scores with furious dedication. In my Tiger's Transgressions games, for instance, I anticipated there would be multiple people posting perfect scores so I equipped the boards with a "# Times" column to subdivide those power players. But people aren't just posting a perfect score a few times. Try 1000 times. I sh*t you not. It's incredible. Even the back 9, which I thought was nearly impossible to ace, is getting multiple perfect games posted per day.

You can check out the boards in the flash games themselves or on the individual game pages here at toccionline.

Tocci Ponders: Why don't ex-sumo wrestlers ever become hockey goalies? The opposition can't score if the goalie's body blocks the entire goal.

In other news, the amazing weather we've had in New Jersey last week kicked off the fishing season a little early. I've caught two bass and a pickerel so far.

Linkz (spelling it with a "z" means I'm gangsta)

• 8 Bit NYC - New York City in old school 8 bit video game style graphics. Thanks, Frankie.
• World's Fastest Game of Hide & Seek - Where did she go? Thanks, Jon Jon.
• Hey look who's in the picture!

I'm pleased to announce the launch of the sequel to Tiger's Transgressions. It's nine more hos of golf entitled Tiger's Transgressions: The Back Nine. The gameplay is pretty much identical to the original, only now the hos are not so easy (pardon the double entendre). Quite a few people were bragging about getting a perfect score of 9 on the front 9, so I had to up the ante on the back 9 with more obstacles, visual impairments, faster hos, and variable speed winds. Good luck!

Incidentally, the backlash has finally started. I found two articles so far complaining about Tiger's Transgressions, claiming it's violent towards women. Oh give me a freakin' break! The faceless and nameless hos are a mere 4 frames of animation. There's more graphic violence in Mario Brothers. It's a funny game, meant to combine golf with Tiger's mistresses to make people laugh. And if you check the comments on atom.com you'll see that virtually all men and women are seeing it that way. Some are calling it the funniest game ever! It's really no surprise that anything that can garner that kind of reaction will surely offend someone out there... but lighten up, people. Tell ya what, if my game incites a rash of people going around driving golfballs at promiscuous women from a hundred yards away, feel free to blame me.

Tocci Ponders: Why does my cat always run immediately after pooping in her litter box? Is the "poop and run" technique really that satisfying?

I've added some TocciOnline subscription options to the homepage and the creations page. You can now learn of new games and animations via twitter, a facebook group, an rss feed, or by receiving e-mail notifications.

The Tiger's Transgressions game has been played almost 3 million times so far according to the statistics at atom.com.  And those don't account for the times people hit the "play again" button at the end of the game either. All I can say is (and I'll keep this clean for the kiddies), "holy mo effing s-bomb". People really seem to get a kick out of knocking out adulteresses with golf balls. Even more surprising is that the feedback has been almost entirely positive. I'm not used to that at all. Just as mistresses come out of the wood work for Tiger, the malcontents inevitably appear whenever I make a game or animation. But this time there were only a couple of people who couldn't take a joke. By and large it seems the general public has a sense of humor these days. Sweet.

Timeout: I just accidentally trapped my cat in my file cabinet! I thought I heard a faint meow. I looked around. No sign of Leia. Then a minute later I heard a rustling sound near the file cabinet. No Leia. Then I heard it again and realized she probably wandered inside before I shut it. (She loves small spaces.) Amazingly she was completely out of the way of moving parts when I closed it. I just opened it back up she walked right out, laid down on the carpet, and started purring.

Back to the Tiger game, also impressive to me are the people who are scoring 9s. That's a "ho in one" on all nine hos. I don't know if that's sheer skill or just persistence, but I can tell you it's not easy. (I usually score in the 30s, maybe the 20s if I get lucky.)  One guy with the handle STICKTV posted a screenshot of his perfect game. Another guy named Rod got 9s so consistently that he came up with all kinds of variations on the game to add difficulty, and it got picked up by the atom blog. Looks like we'll need a back 9 with some trickier hos.

Tocci Ponders: In Young MC's "Bust a Move" there are lyrics that go, "Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry. In five days from now he's gonna marry. He's hoping you can make it there if you can 'cause in the ceremony you'll be the best man." [record screech] Now hold on a second. WTF is going on with Larry? You're best friends with his brother, so why would he ask you to be best man at his wedding? Doesn't he have any friends? Why not tap Harry? If I were Harry I'd be pissed. Maybe Harry's not reliable, but then again how reliable can you be if the wedding is in five days and he's still 'hoping' you can make it. It's a little late to change your RSVP. Larry really should really patch things up with his brother and maybe get some decent friends.

Tocci's back 9 links:

• Crazy Xmas Prank - Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in this apartment has been wrapped in wrapping paper.
• Denise doesn't work at taco bell - I was thinking the same thing when I saw that commercial. Funny blog.
• Charcoal Drawing Videos - Amazing to see these drawings being created.
• Baby Dancing to Beyonce - My father loves this one.
• Ukulele Boy - My mom sent me this one.
• The History of Air Jordans - One of the hottest sneakers in its various incarnations. I think I had the IVs in junior high.
• Richard Mastry sings I Can't Afford My Gasoline - This one-man band did a cover of my song. Cool!
• The man said tada. - I know it's a commercial but it cracks me up.
• Shorewood Lip Dub - A music video on a massive scale starring pretty much an entire high school, shot entirely in reverse. It was made in response to this one by a rival high school, which would probably be more impressive if I hadn't seen the other one first. Now to try to get Hall & Oates out of my head...

Tiger Tiger Woods y'all! (1:30) (3:40)

My Tiger Woods' mistresses game launched yesterday on atom.com. In Tiger's Transgressions, you're Tiger Woods and your mistresses are coming out of the woodwork. It's up to you to stop them from going to the press using the tool you know best - a driver. The object of the game is to knock each mistress out with a golf ball in the fewest strokes before she reaches a news van. There are nine ho's of golfing fun. Enjoy!

Special thanks to Jeff Silvestris for his help with the artwork.

Tiger Links:

• Tiger gets mad
• Tiger cub

The Christmas lights are up at the Tocci house. Since it's our first holiday season in our house, we had to formulate a lighting plan.  We started with candles in the windows. Then we hung white icicle lights along the eaves of the front of the house. For a little extra flare we wrapped green lighted garland around the posts near the front door. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. It wasn't difficult and now that we've done it once and figured it all out, next year will be a breeze.

The next order of business was a Christmas tree, which we attained lumberjack style at a local tree farm. Basically you show up and they give you a wagon and saw and send you on your way. We found a beautiful Fraser fir and I took that mother down, tied it to the car's roof, and brought it home. It doesn't get much fresher than that. I love the smell of a pine tree at xmas time.

Photos on flickr.

I've been working on a new song lately about a certain social networking experience. I finished and had it ready for animating when a certain golfer had to go and take over the Yahoo Buzz with his 14 (and counting) mistresses. So I put the animation on hold to make a quick game which absolutely consumed me for the past week. I've delivered it to atom.com for publishing so it should be up soon.

Some fun to tide you over:

• Drops with HTML checkboxes - So cool.
• This photo made my brain hurt. It's brilliant.