I don't usually do Friday updates, but today, day two of working on this game, I got things looking quite nice.
Figured I might as well post about it.
No gameplay (collision detection/death/scores/etc) yet, but I got a nice simple looking engine going, as far as scrolling, base enemy and shooting's concerned.
The current enemy are Base enemy. They sit on the scrolling landscape, and shoot at you.
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Shooty-Bang-Bang-...

Hello all!

Unfinished
Or, to put it another way, this game got to about 70% done, I got really stupidly bored with it, I lost interest, and I still bothered to get it to about 92%. At 92%, I gave up.
Here's a game at 92%.

Oops, forgot to post this, yesterday! No matter.
After last week's retro styled "random" game, I decided to go for something similarly retro, but much less random.
I've drawn some supercheap gameboy style sprites, and have been building a batch of quick and easy jumpy platform levels.
I've done 11 levels so far, and am going to go the "Start from level 1, see how far you can get" route, so theres no checkpoints or anything. Just start, and hope you don't die..
9 lives seems adequat...

54 games. Last year I only managed about 30-odd, so I think that's pretty good going.
Sure, it might not have truely actually been A Game "Per" Week, but I did at least keep the ratio up.
If I hadn't taken the time out to build the framework, I probably would've actually achieved the target a little better
The stats show I was pretty much on top of things up until that point, but then things got slower and slower until my buffer zone was all dried up.
Anyhoo, this is a n...

54 games. Last year I only managed about 30-odd, so I think that's pretty good going.
Sure, it might not have truely actually been A Game "Per" Week, but I did at least keep the ratio up.
If I hadn't taken the time out to build the framework, I probably would've actually achieved the target a little better
The stats show I was pretty much on top of things up until that point, but then things got slower and slower until my buffer zone was all dried up.
Anyhoo, this is a n...

Awww..
A missed week.
They're quite rare, nowadays, but there we go.
If Apple could get their act together, I could've said "Y2:W48 : Cardagain iPod", but.. guess that's not happening any time soon.

This week I've drawn a train, and some tracks, and am currently in the midst of desperately trying to get the train to behave upon said tracks.
So far, it's a stuggle!
Trying to get each carriage to turn at the right time, trying to account for the 30-odd track pieces that I've drawn, and trying not to make it look rubbish.
..

OK, so I finally got my DevLicense, and the first thing I did was to slap the test engine onto my iPod Touch.
If you've tried that, you'll probably found exactly the same thing that I did.
...that, rather than going "Weeee!" it went "... plod... plod..." at about 2 frames a second.
This is not a good thing.

With all the Mac stuff, I've not had a chance to do a new game.
NOOoooooo!!!!!!
I suppose I could rush something in the next 24 hours, but I'm much rather be playing with those extra trimming, and getting things a little nicer.

First off, Gravity Bombs. Not touched it yet, but it definitely needs at least one tweak. .. the Mac's "Superior" (bah) Magic Mouse has a lot going for it, but it also has an inability to right click whilst holding down the left mouse button. Which is prett...

A couple of days ago I posted my first test compilation of a Mac game.
I asked for test-based feedback, and absolutely nobody responded, whatsoever. We're just going to have to go for the "Worked on mine, *shrugs*" approach for these!!
Today, I'm rereleasing the game from Wednesday with a quick fix, and also releasing a bunch of other games that I've written in BlitzMax.
We've also got JNKPlat and Gravity Bombs to come, but I want to tweak those a little before I rerelease them.
Any...

WarioWare DIY arrived via lady-postman at about 12pm today.
I finally finished tap-tap-tap-tap-tap skipping my way through the tutorials about half an hour ago.
My god, talk about mind-numbing pap!
Every little bit of "How to make games" all drawn out in a way that only Nintendo could manage!
To give them credit, it's actually a fairly competent tutorial, and I can see it being really helpful to most.. The "And/Or" tutorial, in particular, was quite comprehensive even in it's fairly ...

Blocks and Spikes are in the engine now, as are the default sound effects!
Seems a bit of a long time for Blocks and Spikes, but those Blocks are always more complicated than they oughta be!
Work is coming along at the regular rate, but I'm now starting to think about the frontend of the game. Not entirely sure what I'll be doing for it.
I might try to replicate the DS's menu screen, since that seemed to work out nicely.

I've spent ages working on the whole Music Engine thing, and so far it's not sounded 100% great.
Today's work got it up to about 75%, or thereabouts.
As Background music, it does it's job. As anything more, it's a little lacking. So I think I'll just say "That'll do!" and carry on.
JNKPlat 2010 + random'ish music, coming soon!
I'd post a new High-Def screenshot, but you can't really screenshot music, and I've not really done any new graph...

I haven't really been updating this like I oughta be, so here's the "So Far"
Day one (Tuesday 30th March 2010)
Make it Big
Decided to go with the "upped size" style, so set about redrawing all the old background tiles at a higher resolution.
I considered making 50-odd brick tiles, and give them all a slight texture, but figured that'd kill your memory, so instead created an overlay texture that would be added to the screen once the game's done it'...

Today I've made a start on the next JNKPlat.
Everything will be sprite based, but MASSIVE compared to previous outings.
Where previously they'd been 8x8 pixel tiles, this time around they're going to be 64x64 pixels.
That's a 6400% size increase! (Assuming I did the maths right!)

Awww
This week I've been ill, and between website tweaks, and lying in bed half-dead, I've not really had time to get anything done.
This morning, I managed to wake up, and was bright and alert.
I figured it was probably a good chance to get something done, so I grabbed the half-assed sprites, popped them into an engine, and got them running in a right facing direction.
Adding random pipes, and the ability to jump over them, I'd made a 1980's...

Since mid-December, when I stupidly came up with the idea to make 12 games over the course of Xmas, I've been lagging behind.
So, So, SOOO far behind.
And I've been trying desperately to catch up with loads of stuff.
This week, I released my framework.

Okeydokey, here we go!
If you've got BlitzMax, prepare to see the insane chaos of Jay's coding style!!
ARRRGHHHHHHH!!!!
The framework, as it is, at this moment in time.

Today's updates.
1. A change of instruments
2. An accompaniment
3. More channel-specific so as to stop instrument overlap.

A full day's work, and this is the result.

It should be noted that this is very early stages, and that I really oughta try and find some nice instruments, but this is the first proper test of my new Framework Music Engine.
That is, I shove in a few bits of melody, chord, bass and drums, and the framework fiddles about, and plays with the tune, creating a constantly evolving background tune that'll continue to sound nice and playful throughout the entire game.

Haven't started on this week's game, or the new music engine, yet, and am already thinking of even more "other" things that must be done. (To be fair, my todo list has about 15 items on it! So I'm hopping all over the place doing lots of different things)
You might've noticed that I'm not linking to the Archive, lately.
That's because it isn't quite doing it's job at the minute, and it all needs fixing up.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that needs updated, including a YouTube video embedd...

Late last night, as I was half-asleep and reading through Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/komiga">@Komiga</a> asked me if I was going to be using any version tracking software for my lovely framework.
My twittered response was limited (by lack of sleep, and also 140 chrs!!), so I figured I should explain it a little better.
Last year, around about Alien Deathmatch/Centipong time, I built up my 2D-in-3D framework to work in Blitz3D.
It worked wonders, and let me achieve a ...

What week are we on, again?! Um.. ?
Let's go for 24! I think that's right!
Week 24, Game 32, first proper game from the new engine.
Hopefully things run smoothly, let me know how it goes!!

Engine's now ready for any and all future word-based games that I might randomly decide to build. The wordlist adds 970Kb to a game's exe when added, and when asked it spends about 100milliseconds hunting through the complete list for a word.
Luvly.
So, with that out of the way I'm heading back to Centipong.
You'd think, about 4 weeks into the whole Framework thing, that things would be more or less finished.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm heading with this, but we'll have a play anyway.
So far I've got some VERY big and chunky sprites in the engine, and the whole thing's playing at a much slower pace than the last one. A very different feel, overall.
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332)_thum...

The framework's coming together nicely, and things are looking up.
But there were Audio issues with various versions of Ubuntu (or rather, with the SAME versions of Ubuntu!!) that were causing the game to be silent, and then crash!
Hopefully I've managed to fix that, now.
There's a whole list of audio drivers available to the game, and all are nicely selectable in the nice Tab box.
Unfortunately, you will have to close and restart before it'll change the driver, or el...