With random spawning added, and basic weapon upgrades up and running, the game's getting much more like a game, now.
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot007.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot007_thumb.png">
Basic Bog-Standard Arena</a>

Haven't done a thing, today!
Actually, that's not entirely true. I spent most of this morning playing about with the Enemy Spawning layout code, and tweaking it to be a little fairer.. One of my annoyances when playing Geometry Wars is when you're running in one direction, and a bad guy spawns RIGHT in front of you, giving you a fraction of a second in which to go "Oh, FFS!" and then die horribly!
Maybe I'm just rubbish at it (so says my gamerscore), but that always pisses me off.
So, I'...

Background progress is coming along nicely.
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot006.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot006_thumb.png"></a>
I've currently got the level renderer to come up with a nice selection of coloured floors from 3 prerendered ones.. It can do plain, and chequered, thus giving us 6 possibilities of floors. Every room that's separated gets a random floor. Nice and simple.
(They have to be prerendered colours becau...

I spent most of last night tweaking the graphics.
For starters, I've jigged about the whole Background tileset.
If you've bothered to poke around inside the old game, you'll have noticed that bg.png contains a great big pile of unused "Inside a Wall" stuff. It was originally going to serve a purpose, and fill out the black, but eventually I decided that having plain black nothingness would be good enough, and the black stayed as black.
So, they're now removed from the tile...

The other day I considered redoing the whole wall structure. I considered making nice wonderful multidirectional walls, and levels with all kinds of diagonals, straight, and maybe even curves.
It seemed like a good idea.
Then I started to work on it, and... well.. it wasn't exactly super fast!
In fact, things were painfully slow.
As the game struggled to draw a single wall, with nice detail like the old one, I realised that drawing an entire arena in that way would only lead to ...

Splatterhouse!!
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot002.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot002_thumb.png"></a>
So far the 6 different aliens act as follows.
(But this might be tweaked once the walls start to get in the way!)

Nothing Alien Deathmatch related today (since Saturday's the day I work the most, and get the least actual coding done.. and sit and watch Stargate a lot.. )
However, today, a Spanish fellow named Adael made me a level editor for JNKPlat DS 08!
It's online, it's Javascript based, and it's right here. (Update : It's been nearly a decade since I posted this... It's not there, any more!!)
<a href="https://socoder.net/uplo...

No need for a screenshot tonight, as there's not really anything worth looking at!
Everything I did today was invisible background coding stuff! So nothing fancy to look at, but still some nice new things.
I started off by squeezing the whole pixel by pixel arena out into a great big map array. I'm hoping (!) that it'll make things that bit more precise once I start adding in some walls (probably tomorrow)
Basically, rather than having the player walk past/into/occasionally t...

All games must start somewhere, and Alien Deathmatch 2 starts right here!
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot001.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot001_thumb.png"></a>
This isn't the most entertaining shot I've ever posted, but it does show that work has now actually begun on the sequel.

..I got an X360, and I've really been playing the heck out of it, lately.
It's fun! I'm worried it'll RROD at any minute, but while it's still going, it's still fun.
And last week I bought Geometry Wars 2, for 800 points, as well as Geometry Wars 1 for 400 points.
Lovely stuff.

If you're slightly above the age of people who are still meant to be pissing about playing silly games, like I am, you probably remember Gearworks, from the Amiga/C64 era.
I don't know why, but the game suddenly popped into my head, this week.
So I made a quicky clone.
It's not perfect, there's loads missing, and there's no editor in sight, but as a testbed for my still growing 2D-in-3D engine, it does the job.
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/gearworks.p...

This week's Wednesday Workshop <a href="https://socoder.net/?Workshop=Challenge&Week=173">#173</a> was a redoing of an old one. Wednesday Workshop 1 asked us to make games using only 5 objects onscreen.
Rather than doing that, I opted to take my original 5 object game, and remake it, turning it into a slightly more interesting game.
It's still not anything amazing, but at least it's something!
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ballup.png"><img src...

This week I decided to remake Centipong, this time for the DS.
It's pretty much the same as it's always been, except now it's portable, stylus playable, and has the pickups unlike the Mobile edition.
It's not all 100% yet, though.. More to come, and plenty of tweaking to be made.
<img src="https://agameaweek.com/completeB/2008/Centipong_20081202A_thumbb.png">
In the meantime, you can <a href="https://agameaweek.com/?Game=40">Download Centipong DS here</...

I spent most of this week rebuilding a few of my older games with the new Highscore stuff, so there's a couple of nice new-ish games to play.

First off, we've the 3rd version of Horizontal Shooter.. <a href="https://agameaweek.com/?Game=49">Get it here</a>. It's pretty much the same as ever, but with Mr Scouter from the original, thrown back in for good luck.
The new highscore method should help ward off nasty hackers from the scoreboard system.. Or at least for a...

This week, I haven't entered the Wednesday Workshop. Instead I had a try at the Monthly one (#013), which asked us to create a game with lots of guns, and bullets and shootyness.
Since I'd already done a decent enough shooter the other day (H~S) I decided to try my hand at something a little different.
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/sheriffmunky.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/sheriffmunky_thumb.png"></a>

Due to all manner of obscure things happening this week (A HD Crash being one of them..) this week's effort isn't anywhere near as good as last week's!!
Still, a game's a game, even without a titlescreen, music, sound, an ending, scores, or anything else like that..
..
*cough*

A while ago, I made <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/?p=14">this</a>. Horizontal Shooter.
Fly about, shoot the bad guys, guard the good guys.
A nice enough game, lovely lines all over, but somehow lacking in something extra.
This week.. I added something extra!

A quick update, albeit not a proper one..
If you download (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/jnkplat08ds.zip">this new version) of JNKPlat, you can use the inbuilt editor to play around with all the nice new features I've been adding in, lately.
I've not really gotten around to building a bunch of levels, yet, though! So you'll have to wait for that.
I'll be posting a new version next week with some new packs of levels, and maybe even a bunch more new features, too!
Head inside ...

A sequel/repeat this week, as the <a href="https://socoder.net/?Workshop=Challenge&Week=167">Wednesday Workshop #167</a> asked us to create a game with 2 main characters.
At first I considered doing a Bill and Ted game, but couldn't think of a decent gameplay element other than "Move the blocks".. That'd be a most excellent waste of the characters.
So I resurrected Bibbleman and Bobbleman, and just used them instead.
Still the same game, mind.. So if you're wo...

This week's Wednesday Workshop <a href="https://socoder.net/index.php?topic=1206">#166</a> asked for us to create a game that uses lots of Balance.
I couldn't come up with anything!
So, instead, here's JNKPlat DS 08.
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/platds8_menu.png" align="right">
It's a complete restart of the engine, coded wholly from start, but using the old sprites so as to keep the good old fashioned style of the last one! (Although, had...

I'm not entirely sure who came up with this idea, but it's been roaming around the internet for the past few years.
This week's Wednesday Workshop #165 was to create a game using only one button.
So, Heck, why not!
??

I'm not the type of person who usually does a lot of things! For starters, you'll probably notice that 99% of my games are locked to the refresh rate of your screen. If your screen's higher than 60hz, my games will run all that much faster.
The reason for that is that all my systems are set at 60, and.. to be honest, I tend to forget that other people's aren't!
Whenever a game relies 100% on framerates and specific timings, I'll more than likely bother to sort that out, but usually I'm onto th...

<a href="https://socoder.net/?Workshop=Challenge&Week=164">Wednesday Workshop #164</a> suggested we should make a game using vector graphics. I took this opportunity to remake the fantastic Dos game, Boogaloopers!
Move the ship around with your mouse, and trap enemy within it's trail. Nice and simple gameplay-wise, but a complete git to get working code-wise! Not only did I have to figure out the points that the mouse crossed the trail, but then do that whole polygon-shrinking t...

I tried to keep a blog. It didn't work.
It's no surprise, though. I've never been one to keep a working active blog.
No matter, I'll try something else.
Welcome to A Game A Week.com

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/media/puzzobomb_webuser_189_med.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/media/puzzobomb_webuser_189_med_thumb.png"></a>
Puzzobomb gets a place in WebUser, issue 189.
That's exactly 20 issues after Horizontal Shooter was in.
And, if you're counting, it's exactly 2 pages earlier.. I've been bumped up to page 38, now! Woot.

Tomb Raider meets Pitfall!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/crofty1.png">
Retro Raider took a few days to get into a decent build, and then over the course of a few weeks I added lots of extra little chunky bits.
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/crofty2.png">