A classic Blockman game, in the style he was meant to be in! Sure, he looks great doing his whole "Pacman maze, but hungry" thing, but this is the style he made his name in, so it seems only fitting that this would be where he finds his Mario Costume.
And not just once. He can find it over and over again!
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Blockman_in_a_Mario_Costume_20100330A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Blockman_in_a_Mario_Costume_20100330A_thumb.png"><...

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...

A great little platformer, this week, albeit one without an end!
Well, there is an end, but I'm not 100% sure anyone will reach it. Having said that, I'm probably not the world's best person to ask about that. I suck at playing!
Anyhoo...
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Munky_in_a_Mario_Costume_20100316A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Munky_in_a_Mario_Costume_20100316A_thumb.png"></a>

And so it begins.... A whole month of MAR10 games, featuring your favourite (or not) Jayenkai characters, all dressed up like Mario! Hurray!

Ted Bob in a Mario Costume

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Ted_Bob_in_a_Mario_Costume_20100302B.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Ted_Bob_in_a_Mario_Costume_20100302B_thumb.png"></a>
Taking the character, and the gameplay, straight from Three French Hens, I've upped the stakes, upped the hens, an...

Having now sat up for more than 10 minutes, I figure I'd best get coding, but I can't really finish off Centipong in less than a day..
What to do?
Well, assuming I now have all week to complete Centipong, I might as well spend today doing something a little different.
One of my all time favourite (of my own!) games is Stringy Things.

For something that just looks like this..
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game_thumb.png"></a>
.. I have actually but a heck of a lot of work into the framework, so far!
Take a peek inside to find out some nice nuggets of info, and take a look at the future of AGameAWeek!!

As well as all the 12 Games of Xmas (starting Friday) I've finally got around to opening up BlitzMax, and getting that whole new system going.
Plenty to do, and it'll probably kill the whole point of my Xmas Week Off, but no matter.. Lots to do, let's hop to it.
First up, I want everyone who can be bothered to try this out.
It's a couple of little programs that stress tests your system, and tries to draw as many things onscreen at once as it possibly can. Or, at least, as fast as BlitzMa...

Last week was Bonfire Night in the UK, and as such RetroRemakes.com had a little challenge. (They've started to do a monthly challenge..) Create a game/story/etc with Fireworks in it.
Here's my game.
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Firework_Chaos_20091117A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Firework_Chaos_20091117A_thumb.png"></a>

I've just spent the past 2 hours playing a batch of my old (latest!) games, grabbing screenies, and re-uploading them to a new Archive system.
FINALLY!
Geeze..
It's not exactly very pretty yet, and you can't vote, or search, or.. .. um, anything!

It's that unexpected time, where I randomly choose to rummage through the bundles of silly game ideas, and pluck out the best/worst!
Let's throw out the spam, and get started.
..
FFS, there's a lot of spam!

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

10 weeks, 3 ...

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

Back to work...

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

AGame...

Aww.
Didn't work.

This week's Wednesday Workshop (#209) asked us to create a game with some kind of Gravity.

Yesterday turned out rather well.
I actually coded a complete game, from start to finish, logo, audio, everything, yesterday.
It's pretty good, and will be our AGameAWeek come Tuesday. (Because, if I posted it today, there'd be nothing to post on Tuesday!!)
Look forward to more shootyshooty stuff!

I've about 20-odd projects on the go, this week, so you'll have to excuse the lack of blog entries, and even a decent AGameAWeek game.
Most of this week was spent trying to roll a dice! (die, whatever)
I figured that, with 4 frames per roll, I'd need around about 200+ frames of animation.
I tried to work out all the animations, and it drove me crazy!

I made a start on this game a few days ago, and things seem to be progressing at a decent enough rate.
The basic gameplay engine is in there, now. The test level (200x50 blocks) loads, platdude can run around, grab onto bars, jump around and use ladders. He can also work plungers and have the blocks open and shut accordingly.
So, that's all nice!

I'm a calm person.
I will happily settle with what I've got, and be glad that I have it.
I don't own a copy of Flash, I can't afford it, and I'm not going to steal it.
So I carry on making games in Blitz, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

This week's Wednesday Workshop (#200! wowie) asked us to create a game using no more than 2000 characters.
I managed to recreate the classic 8-bit title "Splat!", whereby you control a spider through a maze, picking up fruit.
In order to squeeze all that into 2000 characters, I opted for simpler mouse movement, and few other bits and pieces.
Then I figured, what the heck, and decided to make it a wee bit bigger for AGameAWeek.
Guide the worm through the maze, grab the circles, av...

I had intended to update this a fair bit. Add music, add extra pickups, things like that.
But in the end, I instead decided to leave it as it is.
This is (with added Highscore table) pretty much as it is at the end of the two hour session.
A nice simple game, with a basic gameplay method.

Yeah, I figured I'd forgotten a few things, and as Sokoban gets built up, slowly but surely, all the forgotten things are poking their heads out, waiting to be sorted.
Click inside for coder-heavy stuff.. or just grab Sokoban from earlier today and play that for a while!!

I've had a couple of emails about the donate button already, so thought I should clarify why it's there.
I write a game a week.. Sometimes they're good, sometimes their rubbish, and sometimes they're really fun, playable, and can keep you playing for a good few hours.
I can do this, because I have a lot of free time. And by "a lot of free time", I mean A LOT of free time.
The webhost is pretty much minimal cost (GoDaddy), the programming languages range from 0 cost (DS/XN...

You might have noticed a distinct lack of AGameAWeek, this week..
Since I'm getting little or no work done, this week, and.. what with being Xmas and all, I've decided to be lazy, and take a week off.
Nothing wrong with that!
If you feel you really need something new to play with, nip to yesterday's post, and you can grab the WhoSave thing. That's quite nice.. And you can pretend I posted that today, in time for the Xmas episode in 2 days time. Very festive!!
If yo...

( border="0"><tr><td>Blimey!
What a year, eh!
I decided to round off the year with a nice big, old fashioned list, with everything in it.
Except this doesn't have everything in it, because I've forgotten to add the DS games.. I'll do that later!! (Took me about 3 hours to do this, so I'm not going to tweak it, now!!)

Next up, Countdown..
Or, it's meant to be, but I can't seem to get it started properly..
I've grabbed a batch of Carol's letters and numbers, and I've got the vowel/consonant packs ready, the number solver's working as it should, but so far, those bits haven't come together to make a full game.. It's just bits here and there.
Needs work, but with Xmas literally days away, I'm not sure that it'll get any.
If it doesn't turn up on Tuesday, assume I'm taking the week off, from AGameAWe...

Today's work has been mostly of the external variety.
First off, compressing a level..
I'm taking 160x160 pixels, each one being around about 16 different colors (give or take, depending on what walls/floors/etc I bother to add.) and trying to bundle them up into a teensy tiny bit of data.
To me, compression's a fun time, where you get to play with lots of fiddly numbers, and chaotic maths, just to get large things down to size.