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The Making Of

Billy Bob the Cactus Blob

    Well, here we go, eh? Okay. I created the original Billy Bob the Cactus Blob in 2001. How and why, you ask? Well, I was sick, and I didn't have any homework or anything, so I decided to play around with TGF. Up until this point, I was so terrible at making games it wasn't even funny. The only thing I made so far was a game called Gone Fishin' Airboat Racing. Well, it really wasn't a game or anything, but umm...you'll get the idea if you download it.

    Okay, now comes in Billy Bob. I really tried hard to make something, but it turned out terrible. I was so frustrated, that I just clicked on random colors, and put circles everywhere. But wait! In the upper-left corner, there was something looking back at me!

    It was this multicolored blob-like creature. Nothing came to mind, so I just called it Billy Bob. I thought it needed more character than that, so I remembered that the cactus is green, and Billy Bob was green, so Billy Bob should be a cactus! I added some horns on top, and Billy Bob the Cactus Blob was born!

    Now some of you may not know this...well, actually, I don't think anyone knows this until now, but Billy Bob the Cactus Blob wasn't the first Billy Bob game! I don't know if you could call it a game or anything, but like, it's a level. It consisted of Billy Bob moving through a maze of multicolored erm...sticks, trying to reach a multicolored square object, which in turn became the portles in all of the Billy Bob games. For those that are curious, I've included The First Billy Bob Game Ever in the downloads section.

    Okay, now the game begins. I didn't really know exactly how to make anything, so I thought I should focus on the story. Heh, yeah. Well, after making the first level, I quickly realized that no one would take this seriously at all, seeing as even though I spent about three hours on the first level, any experienced TGF person could make it in about umm...three seconds.

    So there I was. Then, I got an idea! I thought I'd try to make the game as terrible and crappy as possible, so I could just tell everyone that the game is supposed to be bad, rather than get made fun of because of my terrible TGF skills. So the graphics were bad, the story was bad...but that wasn't enough. Something was missing. Then, I remembered the old 1960's Batman TV show. Remember how they labeled everything in the Batcave? Well, I decided I would label everything in the game, and I would misspell the labels, as well. Note the screenshot below. Gotta love those casles and dowars.

    Now that most of the pre-Billy Bob stuff is out of the way, I'll take you through the game, and note areas of interest and importance.

    Oh yes. The infamous first level. Now, I honestly had absolutely no idea that most people just carefully made their graphics in Paint, and then copied and pasted to TGF. No clue. So, I made EVERYTHING in the game using only the Paint apparatus in TGF. I'm not joking. I also didn't know how to properly use quick backdrops, so on the first level, there's about ten-thousand separate backdrop objects.

    Here's the rocket ship, which is just an enlarged sprite from the TGF library. Yep.

    I really didn't know how to make anything other than 'hit the object to go to the next level', so to help the rocket ship, you simply run into the button. Yay.

    OH NOS! It's Cactus Casle! Just like the first level, note the number of objects in the level.

    Here's the first glimpse of the Cactus King! He's just a bunch of TGF cactus sprites, and some crappy paint circles. I didn't know how to make a boss at the time, so you just kinda walk over him to the portle.

    The bridge. I'm noting this level because it's the first time I figured out how to do scrolling levels.

    The Overly Obese Chunk of Excretory Waste! This is the first actual boss-level I managed to make.  Some people I know can't even beat this, heheh. I was so proud of myself. Seriously.

    Here's Too Mah Toe, Billy's eternal rival! Of course, it says 'Tomato Twin' but I've changed that over the years. In the original game, he isn't the final boss level. I'm changing some things around for Billy Bob DX Director's Cut so these parts will be more enjoyable.

    I made the last level reveal that the misspellings and everything were dictated by Kyle9999, who was a regular chatter at the YBK chat. It was a great joke, because everyone made fun of him and his crappy TGF games, so...I mean, if you're reading this Kyle, no hard feelings.

    Passcove. The eternal cheat code level. This spawned the Passcove section here, and it will be heavily erm...re-imagined for Billy Bob DX.

    And the Credits page. Almost no one on this page did anything to contribute to the game, except of course TheNintenGenius, who wrote reviews.

    I believe that wraps it up! I hope you had fun reading this documentary on Billy Bob the Cactus Blob.