- Gallery Hoppin Bundle Sale - 8 April 2026
Studio Sim Gallery and A Fools Art Gallery have decided to package our games as a bundle with a 50% discount on both titles. A Pre Massive Update Sale if you will. Studio Sim Gallery is a strange game that provides you a space to make your own crazy art, and share it online, with the end goal of running your own virtual art gallery! Two complimentary titles, one passive, one active; both very different in their own ways.Now you too can lose your mind as a crazed artist! The Update is still coming, its just gotten completely out of hand and almost doubles the total content of the game.
- Still alive major update - 31 December 2025
I am still alive and working on the massive update. Life sent me on a side quest for a few months and then Steam stopped supporting Windows 7 browsers in a bunch of what looks like java scripts, so I couldnt write any updates for awhile because I am too lazy to set up my account on my unset up Windows 10 machine, until today. A crazy amount of content has been added, more than anticipated. It will even out the game into half art gallery, half visual exploration areas and simulated psychedelic experiences. There are areas where the levels themselves are visual images like those I draw and paint, but in 3d space. Along with an over haul and updating of prior existing areas, and even more original art for the gallery side of things.I also started half assed promoting on Instagram again, where there are "more frequent" updates (Not many, but there are some occassional memes.) and can be fou…
- Final Push - 24 May 2025
Okay, I think this is the final stretch for this update, my imagination has been utterly drained over the last year, into the next patch. Adding bespoke, hand crafted, artisnal psychedelic experiences to wander around inside of, based on authentic psychedelic experiences as seen in many of the art works found within A Fool's Art Gallery. The list of things added to this update is so extensive I can't even remember everything and should have probably taken extensive notes, but this isn't what it was intended to be at the start, originally this update was just to add a space relaxation level with some whales flying around. That's in there. But things spiralled out of control, as one does, and extensive amouts of new content ended up being made. Multiple new levels, tons of new NPCs, loads of new art, new music, secret levels, more secret areas, more of everything. Lots more exploration ty…
- Update: Update. - 27 January 2025
Hello again, I am still here; things are still progressing. I've had to switch jobs a couple times, and once again find myself unemployed, as is the life of Canadians now; but work on the update has continued and spiralled completely out of control. The goal is to add all the things I wanted to add, but didn't have time/money/etc to add. The external world is more fleshed out, the secrets are bigger and more numerous, the psychedelic set pieces are more trippy, there is even more art now, a bunch of new NPCs. and It is now a full on exploratory type game, on top of it being an art gallery with 20 years of work inside of it. It has officially been in production for over a year now, so that's pretty crazy. I took a couple three months off along the way at various points, due to having to work, and artist's existential issue type stuff, but other than that it's been pretty consistant in ho…
- Achievements Question For You - 12 June 2024
Achievements have been requested a couple times now, and they are something I have wanted to add for increased interaction with the Gallery. So far I have one option for sure, it's a convoluted process, and fairly technical but I think I can deal with it and get it to work (Fingers crossed); I cannot say if it will be in the next update or when due to this, but it is something I would work on until it's implemented. I am also trying to get in touch with another GZDOOM dev who has got achievements in their title working, but they are set to private so I cannot outright DM them yet, I might be able to find another way to contact them however. The method I do have currently at my finger tips logs keystrokes as part of how it registers events for the achievements. Therefore my question to you all is: How do you feel about keystrokes being registered via the app that bridges the GZDOOM engin…
- I am not dead or homeless. - 4 June 2024
I got a job, the update is ready for release, to a degree; it was ready for if I ended up becoming a hobo to be released in a finished enough state; however since I now have a job and am returning to a "stable life" (As stable as you can be in Modern Day Canada.) I would like to add some extra spit polishing to the update and make sure it's up to what I would like it to fully be. There was an AI demo released recently, that is a way better version of what I ultimately would have liked to do with a video game, so that's pretty crazy; given how long it took to produce this update and it's not even half way to that ultimate vision thing, and the AI pumped it out in seconds and it looks photorealistic. Ce la vie. One aspect of the update is several areas designed for relaxing in, a formerly secret area has been turned into a section of levels with much larger spaces to explore; these areas…
- The Terrible Future . - 29 April 2024
Hello again, the update is being polished up for release, I hope to get it out in the next month. The Canadian government has a program called the "Welcoming Newcomers Wage Subsidy Program"; this program gives Canadian businesses $10,000 a year per newcomer that they hire. I make about 20K a year at my "usual jobs"; this means they can hire two "newcomers" for the price of one Canadian. Therefore these traitorous greedy monsters are refusing to hire people like myself. There are 1.3 unemployed Canadians looking for work; there are 600,000 some odd job openings. The Govt has brought in 400,000 "newcomers" in 2022, then again in 2023, now their plan is: "Overall, the Immigration Levels Plan 2024–2026 has permanent resident admissions targets of 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. For 2026, the plan is to stabilize at the 500,000 level. We need immigration programs to align with the needs…
- Even More Update - 15 April 2024
Hello again! I quit my job because it turned out to be an evil credit usery debt enslavement company, which made me too mad to function at it; I would rather be homeless than make those vampires any cash off the hardwork of Canadian small and medium size businesses. Thankfully most of the people I contacted expressed a deep contempt and distrust of all electronic payment systems and stated their business is cash only. You make me proud, angry Canadians. Keep on raging. You deserve it. So am looking for a job again; this manic shifting of life patterns is disrupting game development a bit, but not bringing it to a halt. Since my game is self published, I don't have anyone lording over me pushing for a rushed released deadline. So please put up with my artistic nature. On that note, everyone emailing my publisher (Me) about how offended you are, please note I have recieved your complaints…
- Update on the update - 24 March 2024
I am not dead. I secured a job, so won't be homeless yet. (Knock on wood.) Althogh I secretly fantasize about having no choice but to go walking through the woods living in a godly fashiuon with the birbs, like a weird wandering wizard hermit guy, and grow a big long shaggy beard for animals to live in. First of all before update news, a big thank you to everyone who has bought A Fool's Art Gallery, it was a kind of risky game to build and launch because it doesn't really fit into any catagories. There was some self doubt along the way about the whole thing, but the communities reaction to it has assauged any irrational fears I had about this all. The few refunds that have come in were due to performance issues, being offended, and being bored; all of which have been and are being further addressed, other than the offended one, because I can't help them with that, that's their problem..…
- Next Update News - 12 February 2024
Got my PC fixed, something went wrong with the RAM, it was the one thing I didn't check, it just had to be reseated. A few days later my main SSD died randomly, never believe the hype about SSDs. They have a short life span and give no warning of their impending doom, I lost about4 months of work, but managed to recover from it and finish the Space Whale animations while getting the colour matching fairly close, if you can notice a difference between frames animated before the SSD crash and after, then you have way better vision than me. After going back and re-reading different forum posts about SSDs, it became clear everything I believed about them was being spouted by Bots and not by actual people. So the new update will be out soon, I don't know when exactly, there is still some more work to do on it; I am also trying to find a job at the same time so that cuts into production time;…
- F#&$(#ING PC - 13 January 2024
My PC power supply died (or something); so the next update is going to be delayed a bit. It is really close to being completed. The main delay was caused by the whale animation; originally planned as a 3 frame animation, so 15 frames for all rotation views, it turned into 45 frames. So that's 90 whales I had to draw, 45 rough pencil drafts, and 45 pen and ink good drafts. It looks rad though. Started on a $500 laptop. Then ended up on a $300 desktop. Now am on a $100 micro PC. Anyone who tells you that you need a high end PC to make games is a liar. Right now I am trying to determine if moving work over to the mini PC is worth the effort, or finding a cheap PSU is worth the effort. The mini PC is glued shut for some arcane reason, which means to get the game dev hard drive connected to it, it will have to be external (And slooooow). Blah blah blah. It's a techno nightmare and makes me w…
- Æsthetic Update - 23 December 2023
This is not the next update as planned; it's a massive over haul of the assets. While looking into optimizations to get the frame rate hammered out even more, it became apparent I had saved ... A lot... Of the Sprites and textures I made at 300 DPI; an old habit from back when we used to print pictures on paper. This game development thing all began as an experiment in if my style and animation could translate into 3d at all; and I think I planned on reducing the DPI later, or assumed the GZDOOM engine forced image files into 72 DPI, but it does not. So. I went through everything, reduced everything to 72 dpi, some textures were 700+ DPI for some insane reason, don't ask me, I have no idea why. Ask someone else. People on lower end machines should see a much smoother game play experience and improved frame rate. There will still be some hiccups, as A Fool's Art Gallery uses a lot more t…
- Next Update Preview - 17 December 2023
I have really been wanting to show this off more but am trying to keep it under wraps also; and I really need to install Linux to avoid Steam cutting off my Windows 7 machine, so might not have this finished in the next few days due to any potential Linux drama during set up. If things go smoothly, it will be out in the next few days to the next week or two depending on all the various life factors. This is the first level of "3d Paintings" being put together, with some assets that only appear in these specific levels. First up is the Space Whales level. It is called this because it has Space Whales in it. I just built this entire *&#)(#ing level with 9 planets and a ton of moons, and custom sky box textures, all to put these Space Whales in. Based on the Space Whale painting. It will eventually feature more entities, animals, and creatures from my space paintings also, but I only just…
- Tiny Light Update - 15 December 2023
The update with some new content was taking longer than expected, so this update adds the rotating light at the Light House secret area, it adds a lot to the over all atmosphere so I wanted to get it out ASAP. Normally I don't do tiny updates like this, but It's for the aesthetic. GZDoom doesn't really do "rotating lights"; and I accidentally finally figured out how to assemble what I was looking to do; so none of this was really planned. The next update is a honker though with a new level added for the first '3d painting'. These '3d paintings' are themes I enjoy exploring with my normal paintings etc, and are being added as a "Spa Area for the Mind". So each one is it's own level sort of thing, and working to make a 3d environment to experience akin to what I make in 2D normally. A Fool's Art Gallery was released in a "Finished State"; but having a video game I can add things to in an…
- Very Small Demo Update - 13 December 2023
Yesterday I accidentally figured out how to make a rotating light finally, as the GZDOOM engine just does not do that, at all. It's in the Light House Scene and really adds to the atmosphere, so I wanted to make sure it was in the demo as well for anyone who found the Light House and likes staring at it. The main game will be patched in the next release with it, I might do a very small update just for that though as what is being added right now is kind of getting out of hand, as it does; so is going to take more than "a couple days" like had been figured, as it also does. Here is an already out of date screen shot of what's coming up. None of this was ever planned for A Fool's Art Gallery; but after release it became obvious I could put ideas into this title that don't fit into my other project that is still very early in development. And given A Fool's Art Gallery is a not violent/str…
- NPC update - 8 December 2023
Added some variety to the human NPCs, animated a loop for each one that has them looking around. Optimization of a few more textures too.
- Moar NPCs And Demo Launch - 7 December 2023
Made some variations of the NPCs, giving a bit more life to the environment around the player. There are 4 in total, and now all the human NPCs look around as part of their animation looks. I am probably going to add this look around loop to the flying masks too, but only thought of the idea as I finished up testing everything, and I already delayed this release a bit to get the extra animations added in. You wouldn't believe how much work adding 2 frames of animation (X5 for each NPC's rotations) is. But it looks good. I might reduce the human NPC sprite resolutions in the future, to free up more VRAM as more content is jammed into the GZDOOM engines quivering maw. Also the demo is actually coming out at long last, it finally got approved by Steam, and I finally set up the store page for it properly. It shold be out in the next 24 hours or so, but I want to add the new NPCs to it as th…
- Texture Optimizations - 23 November 2023
Optimized the hell out of almost all the textures that needed to be; this improves performance on lower end machines and frees up video RAM for future content expansion. Because the Gallery is made up of so many unique textures, one for each piece; it's a bit of a different beast to handle than a 'regular' game and the amount of textures you will deal with there. Optimized some graphics settings too. This afternoon I finally figured out why Windows 10 and probably 11 were launching with absolute garbage graphics settings and no custom keybindings, it was how the command line was set up; it cannot be called from inside the GZDOOM engine like Windows 7, it has to be called externally on boot, but HAS to be from inside the Steam command line functions, and not via an Autoexec, etc method as is the usual mode of doing things. So that's part of this patch but also not technically part of thi…
- *#$&ing Windows 10... And Probably 11 - 23 November 2023
Update: Fixed it finally this evening, Win 10 calls up the config file differently than Win 7, and via Steam it has to be set up ON Steam, not ON or in or part of the actual boot up files/called from inside the game. So now Windows 10 and probably 11 users will start up with the actual proper default graphics settings and custom controls, which allow flight and 3rd person view. ====================================================== Today I got my hands on a very low end Windows 10 machine to test my games on etc to ensure max compatibility. Upon firing up the Art Gallery, it quickly became apparent Windows 10 users are NOT getting the correct default settings and key bindings. Windows 10, and probably 11; are some how over riding the games settings and creating a GZDOOM folder in Documents/My Games/GZDOOM with the most terrible default settings possible and no custom keybindings. I spen…
- Demo On It's Way - 21 November 2023
I finished up trimming the Gallery up into a demo file, it has the secret areas, some art to look at and all the current NPCs. It won't have any future NPCs, the larger secret areas, and what not. It gives a good idea of the Art Gallery for gamers to see and experience a bit; because this is a fairly different title, so it makes sense people would want to see it in action as a demo first. The demo will be launched soon, but I just found out most of my ad campaigns on different ad places were set up so that they advertised to a bunch of 3rd world nations, who frankly; probably have other things on their mind for their personal budget and not video games from some whacked out Canadian. So I want to see how these ads actually perform before launching the demo and having that influence stats as well.
