August 26th 2009
That's the last time I did a Mailbag post!
Blinkin' eck!
Over the past 6/7 months, I've occasionally dipped into the mailbag and plucked out little snippets, but I figured it was about time I did a proper one.

Ever since I came up with this whole MAR10 Costume idea, I've had three games in mind.
1. Ted Bob was a great game, and needed an update. By making it More Mario, I could easily add extra bits into the mix.
Job done, turned out nicely.
2. "Monsters Upside Your Head" played bizarrely, but nicely! Redoing that in DK style seemed obvious, but didn't quite turn out exactly as expected.

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

Absolute chaos at the house of Jay, this week.
First up, good news, that new PC I ordered MONTHS AGO (October 19th) has finally turned up.. *sigh*
Annoyingly Windows 7 - 64bit refuses to work with either of the two USB->Ethernet connectors that I own, which basically means my entire network is now in a total mess.
The new PC is lovely, and will do many things nicely, except that I can't access ANY of my stuff from the other PC.
No coding templates, no music, no sound, not even a P...

Aw, what the heck, EARLY RELEASE!!
Mostly because it's 2am, I can't stop playing it, and I probably won't wake up in time to post this if I don't do it now!!!

A game that took AGES to get going, but definitely got going soon after!

I'm sat here at 11pm on Sunday night, trying to think of a game for Tuesday.
It's not happening..
I've spent all week long adding games to the archive. That's to say, I've spent all week playing all my old games, and having a whale of a time..
I guess that has a disadvantage, being that I haven't coded jack all, all week.

The big-ass catalogue is now up to 68 games, and I've reached a bit of a stumbling block.
If you search for (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?Find=multiple+games">"multiple games"), you'll find a few games that have more than one internal game.
Today I'm tweaking the engine so that it counts each of those seperately inside the nice ever growing total.
I wasn't going to do that, at first, but then I came across Platdude's Retro Collection, and decided to do it.
It'd be a sh...

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)

The Home Str...

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...

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!

OMG! It's a Trial Edition!! WTF!? Demo! ARGH!!!
Actually, I've not finished yet.
But rather than skip out a week of AGameAWeek, I've decided to release a quick Trial edition.
In this version, you must guide Platdude through 11 classic JNKPlatDS08 levels.

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 taking a day off from H~S~R today, thinking ahead for next weeks game, which may/may not be a word game.. not sure..
Anyhoo, there are bugs, and Swarmer found a couple, so head inside to have a good read about 'em.

I'm jumping all over the place, lately, aren't I!!
With Skeleton files to update, Menus to rejig, and even super-complex Socoder work, there's lots and lots and lots for me to do!
This morning, I've hopped back to Platdude's Retro Collection 2. Day 14 is a whole day away from Day 13. That can't be good! The game won't be finished for another year and a half at this rate!!
Right then.. Menus!

As game time progresses, so do the many bugs that appear!
With sprites drawing WAY out of bounds, and memory being messed up all over, there's chaos in the game.
But a few tweaks here and there, and everything's coming together nicely!
Another slight issue, though, cropped up suddenly.

Game 3 needed a few tweaks, here and there, this morning.
Mostly due to the controls being a little twitchy.
Plus, something's missing.
And annoyingly, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the missing something is indeed Ingame Music!

With more tweaking than my head could stand, I finally got Game #2 wrapped up yesterday, so I'm finally starting on Game #3, today.
As stated previously, Game #3 will be reusing quite a lot of the core engine that Game #2 used, so it should be short and sweet putting it all together, like some kind of coded jigsaw puzzle.
Once that's done, Game #4's ready to get going (ie, I have a vague idea in my head!) and will also be coded in Blitz for this week's AGameAWeek, so watch out fo...

Off and on, a bit at a time, the past few days, what with the DIY, and the AGameAWeek, and the Socoder work the past few days.. So, rather than call 10 minute sessions a day at a time, I'll call them a great big long "Popping in and out, looking at the code, struggling to figure out what's wrong, and then going to do something else instead" day.
It's a cheat, but since the annoying issue is still there, it still counts!
I'm stuck on Game #2.
And it's annoying that I'...

BAH!! DS Coding is annoying!!
Techy stuff inside..

Game #2's turning out quite well, except it'll probably need to be taken down a peg or two.
Currently it's, shall we say, a little psychedelic!
And, that's only amplified once it gets onto the blurry DS screen!
Lots of motion + lots of colour = lots of Weeeeeeee!!!

Game #1, Sokoban, required a nice scrolling tilemap, of infinite size. I spent a couple of days getting that all up and running, so that it'll do for other games, too.
But today, Game #2, Surprise!, required a different type of map.
Game #2 needs a wraparound map, so you can move from one side to the other, and carry on in a continuous loop.
This means that as well as drawing tiles where they're meant to be, on the DS's 512x512 pixel Background Layer, I also have to draw tiles...

Bug fixes already! Oh dear!
Sokoban had a bizarre map limit bug, whereby if you were off the left hand side of a small map, it freaked out, and the screen jiggled around like crazy..
..
oops!

I'm still building up the basic reusable map functions!
Had some crazy memory issues, yesterday, but everything seems ok, this morning, so it's time to move from silly map things, to actually building the game up.
Starting with a strange grouping of maptiles, I'm going to have to add crates, and a player, and get the movement up and running.
It should be pretty easy to do, though, as all the arts ready and waiting.