.. Have I said how much I hate doing menus?!

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After a couple of days of back&forth, I've finally decided "meh, whatever!" and opted to go for a Coverflow-RipOff style menu.
It actually looks rather nice, and scrolls quite well, except on touchscreens where the thing's a teensy bit dodgy due to co-ordinate issues.

But otherwise it works nicely. (Although it isn't "quite" centring properly!)
Scroll around, select a game, sorted..
Currently all "games" lead to the exact same test engine, but eventually this will (hopefully!) be a massive collection of games!

There's also a ton of space at the top for Options/Credits/etc

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I need to come up with a Foldapuz for tonight.
Really running out of ideas for that, but am determined to keep pushing onwards until there are literally no more random puzzles left to put in!

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..?

I've enjoyed doing Shoebox for the past few months, and am currently trying to decide whether I should make a similar browser-based collection of Keyboard/Gamepad supported games.
Delving through the depths of AGameAWeek's past, I'd be able to build up a fairly interesting collection that can all be played in your browser.
.. I might even add one of those "Onscreen Controls" things for when you're playing on mobile..


If I were to do this, I've decided that a nice name might be "Browsercade", and have "designed" *cough* the logo/icon above.

Any thoughts?
Leave them below.

Developments

Yesterday's first task was, of course, to add the Basketball Hoop back into SpikeDislike3.
The mechanic works the same.. Be "roughly" within the right area, and go down through the hoop to score. If you go up through the hoop, you lose your combo.
It sure is evil, this Basketball game!



As you can see, it's not quite perfect yet. I need to add "Tilt" to the reflection, and given that I'm also dealing with rescaled sprites down there, that's probably going to take a whole bunch of nasty maths stuff to get it to work right. Bah, humbug!!

I've also given Theme 16 and 17 their own challenges, and this will be the 18th, so there's only 2 more themes to figure out before the game update's ready for upload.
I will also, of course, need to double check all the challenges, just to be sure they're do-able, but so far so good.

Update : 93% complete.o/
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Shoebox doesn't scale in a normal way.

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After each release, or thereabouts because it's getting hard for even me to keep up, we get a little bit of feedback for the games.
If you'd like to join in, you can either use the Comments section, Email me, or send a Tweet.

You can Play Atoms in the ShoeBox. It's in the "Group Games" section.

@RSKGames says..

LOL! Poor @RSKGames!

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You can Download Lazy Man's 3DS Theme Generator here, but you'll need a couple more utilities on your system to make full use of it.

Editing Themes

To edit 3DS Homebrew Themes, you'll need a decent editor. I use the editor "Usagi"
You can download that here
For reference, the version I use is v1.0.12.1 - I'm not sure if there are other (better or worse) editors available, as I found this one and was comfortable using it.

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The classic explosive game of popping atoms is finally in the Shoebox!
You can Find Atoms in the Group Games section.

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Developments

Hey, look at that!
2 iOS Releases in 2 weeks!
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Developments

Pixel-based collision detection is all but impossible with Monkey-X, due to the simple issues of rotation and scaling, along with more complicated screen resolution and orientation complications, and then the complete lack of 100% accuracy when it comes to drawing to buffers. (Although that last one is mostly down to Android, which likes to dither any and all images when the screen doesn't quite have full colour available.)
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Developments

Ugh.. Right when I'm in the middle of a good coding spell, down I go with Flu'ish gubbins again.
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There are hundreds of great sites that I should probably link to, and much like linking to my hundreds of games, I've always found it a bit of a mess once I start trying to cram it all into a small sidebar on the right of the site.

As such, I've finally opted to create one great big link-page, full of everything I could think of within the short hour or so that it took to add it!
If you're missing from this page, let me know!!

Programming Languages BlitzBasic I've used pretty much every flavour of BlitzBasic since the Amiga, and I'm still using it today. BlitzBasic, Blitz2D, Blitz3D, BlitzPlus and more recently, BlitzMax have all held a special place in my Archive. About 90% or more of my games are written using a Blitz language. Monkey-X Monkey-X is a Cross-Compiler language, with modern day mobile-device targets available, as well as the main exe's and even HTML5 and Flash. Monkey is my current language of choice. And it's even created by the Blitz team, too.. (Boy, am I a fanboy, or what!?) PlayMyCode Created by brothers Joe and Seb Lenton, PlayMyCode is a fully featured programming language that exists inside your browser. Create an account (free) and you can code your own little games directly inside the website, and then play the games inside your browser. You can also share your games with others, who can also peek inside your code, and even Fork your projects to create their own offsprings. It's a wonderful little website, and I've made oodles of games using the thing. Cocos2D A few of my iOS games were created using Cocos2D. I found it to be a nice comfortable library, it worked pretty well, and it did exactly what I needed it to. It's a good language, especially since it's free. The only reason I stopped using it was because Monkey-X came along, and saved me the hassle of having to port everything to different languages all the time!

Rapid Developers OneGameAMonth Website creator @McFunkypants decided to take the concept of AGameAWeek, and transform it into something more stable, and achievable. He created a website where developers could post their monthly projects, and would gain scores for doing it. It's easy enough to get started. Just log in with your twitter account, and post a link to your first project. Then a month later, add the next.. And then another! CaffeineKid CaffeineKid jumped on board with the whole OneGameAMonth idea, and has successfully managed to create a whole bunch of great little Android and OUYA games over the course of 2013. Unfortunately, he's not updated his blog since April, so I've just linked to his #1GAM page, instead! Make365 Alexander Shen has taken things in entirely the opposite direction, and decided to try to create something new EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! From simple craftworks, to larger projects, Alex is really taking on an epic project, and it'll be fun to watch him attempt to create new things through the entire year! NMcCoy For a while, NMcCoy was trying the whole "AGameAWeek" thing, too, but then one of his games got ripped off, BIG TIME, and .. then.. it all ground to a halt. He continues to make games, and has recently switched from a basic blog-style website, to a totally forum-based site, where he posts frequent screenshots and other things.

Twittersphere A random selection of folk on Twitter, in no particular order. Spinal_Cord : Fiddles with old-tech to make new things. LorenBednar : Makes lovely spritesheets CaffeineKid : Makes plenty of games! GigerPunk : Makes videos of his old C64 collection.. Also, has many chickens! RetroRemakes : Rob makes games with very flashy graphics! Nyarluu : Creates lovely retro-styled games, full of colour. MadGarden : Created GlitchMachine on iOS! Also made lots of other more popular stuff, but GlitchMachine FTW!!! Ste Pickford : Created Plok, and Sticky Balls, and Magnetic Billiards, and loads of other stuff! McFunkypants : Created OneGameAMonth. chinnyhill10 : His avatar is an Amstrad. o/yeayo/ Jamie84303 : Writes for SentralGamer.com. Craig Grannell : An Apple Fanatic, and frequently published magazine writer. Another World : Enjoys playing retro/handheld games. Sobtanian : *BLOCKED*

Forums SoCoder The spiritual successor to BlitzCoder and CodersWorkshop has been up and running since 2006. It doesn't look awesome, it uses oldskool html techniques, and it relies on an old crapped out, creaky server which is in desperate need of an update. ... But it still works, and it's got a fully fledged oldskool community of coders standing by to help with any obscure coding queries. Fact : SoCoder was hand-carved by my very own hands, using Programmer's Notepad and not much else!! If you ever need to discuss something in a forum style layout, that's the best place to reach me. RetroRemakes The community hub for all things retro. The site used to be entirely about making remakes of classic games, but over the years has sprawled into a general all-purpose retro meeting area. If you want the heads up on anything blocky and pixelated, this is probably the best place to find it. Curly's World of Freeware A lovely community of Freeware-Hunters, who scour the internet in the hopes of finding the best free games that are out there. More Other random sites you might spot me on, are.. GBATemp A site dedicated to hacking, homebrew, and other such stuff. TouchArcade If you've got an iOS device, this is the forum for you! TIGSource A forum for Indies, which mostly got trashed when the whole Kickstarter thing turned up.

I finally got music and sound effects working nicely together in the "not the shoebox" Javascript engine, and it all works nicely on my iPad, too!
Great stuff!!

Next Challenge.. Input!

@RSKGames suggests..



I'll have a look into it.

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I was flicking through my Shoebox Todo-List, today, and stumbled upon Atoms.
I haven't attempted Atoms for a while, mostly because it requires me to draw all those Atoms!!



But, today I drew them, and the engine seems fairly capable.

(ignore the fact that half those positions aren't "real", it's just a crazy animating thing, right now!)

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Latest Game : 14th June 2019 : Blockman Gets

Petit Computer 4, SmileBasic for Nintendo Switch, was released on 23rd of May, 2019 in the Japanese eShop.
If you'd like to give it a try, I've written this vague guide to get you started with getting the Japanese edition onto your none-Japanese Switch, as well as these additional blog posts.

I've also made the following downloads for the language.

I'll aim to post a new game every Friday, so watch out for them!

Games (4)

SpikeDislike

424JQK3NJ

Downloads 101 - Likes 11

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