Developments

Still working on getting SoCoder back to full strength, but things are slightly easier now that GoDaddy have finally uploaded that damned backup that I asked for, about 3 days ago.
*tsk*
Now it's a case of shuffling file about, and making some nice strengthy tweaks to the site.

*sigh*
So, last night I opened up SpikeDislike's code properly for the first time in about a week.
Over the past week I've been battling server outages, and the whole Android issue, so I haven't really had time to code any of the actual bloomin' game.
Last night I shuffled the way the menu icons are stored so I can add more themes and playmodes.
Previously, all the modes and themes were stored on a single spritesheet together, but as I'm adding more stuff, I've come to realise there really isn't much space on the sheet.
It's now split into two sheets..One for modes, the other for themes.
The way I'd originally laid it out, I had space for 16 mode icons and 40 themes.
Now I have space for 56 modes and 64 themes. Hurray!

.. I probably won't make that many, but it's good to prepare for this sort of thing early.



Over the next few days, I'll get those new 50 levels up and running, and prepare to upload the new edition, along with the Portrait mode, the Parallax switch and the Quick Retry option.
Although, that Options screen is a horrible wall of text.. Hmmm...

Oh, by the way, if you want to try out Parallax switch, Quick Retry and Portrait mode, they're all in the recent Android version, so there's that... Have a look in the insanely chaotic options menu.

-=-=-

Daily Doodle : The New Scarecrow

Farmer Plat has a new Scarecrow, but .. It doesn't seem to be very effective.

Mailbag

Today's mail comes from @Jamie84303


Yes, and No.
For starters, I have a really old version of Stringy Things and JNKPlat from about 2003 or thereabouts, which obviously no longer run on modern Windows Mobile devices. Such is the manner of Microsoft, every other week they seem to completely bugger up their Mobile setup so that old stuff no longer works.
Compare to both iOS and Android, where you can usually run 5 year old apps in the modern version of the OS.
So, yeah, they're there and they're nice that they still exist, but I don't think anyone can play them anymore.

As for the most recent version, Monkey-X does indeed include a Windows Phone target, and .. *shock* I HAVE tried it out!
My current phone is a Nokia Lumia 1020. It's a nice camera. As a phone, it's a bag of shit. The OS keeps crashing, and it's a nasty thing to try to use.
It's a 42 Megapixel camera, and it takes LOVELY photos.
It's also my test device for Windows Mobile Gaming.

So, I compiled my test to Windows Mobile, and opened the project in "Visual Studio That-Week's edition"
I fumbled my way through the dark black menus (because all developers LOVE working in black GUIs!!??) and managed to get the test onto my phone.
It ran smoothly, but had quirks that needed ironed out, as well as icons and things like that.
I tweaked a couple of lines of code, and headed to recompile, at which point the phone fucked up again (as it does) and refused to reconnect to the PC.
It took BOTH a Phone restart, AND a PC restart, before I could reconnect the phone to the dev-center, and that took about 10 minutes, because Microsoft's Visual Studio takes so bloody long to shut down, and then reload after a system restart.
To suggest it was a little frustrating to achieve these two single tests, is a bit of an understatement.

I gave up after that, and haven't bothered to test anything else.

Some day, I might give it all another go.
... maybe..

I've owned the phone (/Camera) for over a year, now. It's a bit sad that this is all I've done with it!

If you'd like to stuff my mailbag, you can do so right here, at https://bit.ly/AGAW_Mail. Send comments, questions, game ideas, thoughts and more, and they'll probably turn up here, eventually.