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'...

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!!

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...

Today I did a few fiddly little menu based things..
Things like...
1. The menu->Level switch now plays the "Beeeoooo-weeeee!" sound as the level starts.
2. There's a progress bar whenever a level is being rendered. ('cos it takes a teensy bit longer than it should! 160x160 tiles over a 5120x5120 pixel area!!)

<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot011.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot011_thumb.png"></a>
It's getting there! Slowly but surely.
I got the levels to doodle themselves, and everything swooshes around quite nicely (if a little blocky!)
I've had to implement a menu buffer image to keep the speed up (even if it is still a teensy bit slow) but everything's looking good for the menu.
At this point, I'll probably have a "H...

I won't post a screenshot.. you wouldn't be able to tell the difference!!
But there is a difference..
Today I spent most of my day working a little more on the "Building up" stuff. That is, setting things up so that you start off easy, and things gradually get tougher.
I've put into place a huge number of little variables, all over the place, that should help decide how things progress in a level. Again, these will (somehow?!) be accessible within the editor.. once I bother...

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>

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...

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 ...

In what can only be described as a complete disappointment, I've given up with BlitzMax.
Technically, the engine's great, the language runs fast, and things are good.
But.. It doesn't run on some systems..
And some of the features I'd really like to use run really stupidly slow on certain other systems.

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 ...

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...

For starters, let me just point out that Alien Deathmatch has still been slowly updating over the past couple of weeks. It's strange that a single game has taken up so much of my time. I guess that once you find the right type of game, you're more motivated than usual.
Still, more weeks playing with 1 game = less time to get some actual new games coded.
As such, there's not really been a whole lot to report over the past week or so.
No new games, no new ideas, nothing.
I had initia...

Imagine if all your favourite Arcade games were in fact Slot Machine games.
Arcade Slots reproduces a handful of games in this style. With games ranging from Frogger to Hogan's Alley, there's plenty to keep your playing.
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/arcadeslots.zip">Download Arcade Slots</a>.
<table border="0" valign="top">
<tr><td valign="top"><a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/as_pac.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/d...

Over the past few days, I've been building up Centipong bit by bit, and it's now become a much nicer game to play.
There's levels to beat, pickups to collect, and more centipede pods than you can shake a paddle at! If you enjoyed the previous version, give the new version a try. You'll love it!
<a href="https://agameaweek.com/?Game=72">Download it here</a> : Slowly getting bigger! Just over 2Mb

All of this Game Collection stuff reminds me of something.. It's time for another pack of Workshop games, methinks.
Every week at Socoder.net, there's a little game-making challenge. Create a game with the theme suggested. This collection features all of my entries from weeks 31 to 60. (11th Jan - 2nd August 2006)
As with the last pack, some of these are good games, some are ok games, and most are just experimental pap!
<img src="https://socoder.net/workshop/dlds/032/piperunners.gif"...

And so it begins, the long boring task of making lots and lots of games
I lie. It's not boring!
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/col001.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/col001_thumb.png" align="left" /></a>Centipede took shape, gradually, over the course of a day. Most of the tweaking was in the main engine, as opposed to the game itself, since I had to be sure of all my different variables, and how all the pieces...

A list of games you can download, and play in Windows. Most systems can suitably handle most of these games, so no need to worry if you've a slow machine.
To help neaten things up, I've moved all my main Platdude games to their own (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/?page_id=2">JNKPlat) page.
The (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/?page_id=28">Greenie) page has become home to some of my Remakes.
You can find the best of my (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/?page_id=4">Wednesday Workshop) entries,...

This month, Socoder are having a "Make a game with Pickups" challenge.
It took me a bit of a while to decide what game to do, but I think I've finally settled on one.
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/mum_01.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/mum_01_thumb.png" /></a>
Greenie - The Eccentric Egyptologist.. Named so it fits alongside Greenie - The Helecopter Hero.
It's a remake of Oh Mummy but with a couple of tweaks here and there, including th...

"Create a Horizontal Shooter".. That was the compo rules for The Horizontal Shooter compo, over at SHMUP-Dev.. Or at least I think it was there.
I started this entry in January 2006. I know this because the game has a directory numbered 031..Since starting Wed.Workshop I've been numbering all my dev-dirs according to the number of that week's workshop!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/shots/exp-hs.png">
Why I never finished it, I don't know.
Maybe I grew bored of i...

When I started doing Wed.Workshop, a few people complained that a week was too short a time, so in September 2005 I did the first and only Monthly Workshop. The Super September Challenge asked people to recreate a classic 8-bit game in a 16-bit style, and add some silly extras that people kept adding to games around that time.
My entry was to be Super Dig Dug.
It started off well enough, but then the sound started going all screwy, and I couldn't be bothered fixing it. So it was left to rot...

Platdude. A 16 pixel, 3 color character. Deftly defying the world of 3D models and amazing realism, in favour of good old fashioned gameplay.
Over the years, Platdude has been in plenty of games.. Here's an approximate history of Platdude, along with Downloads where appropriate. (Or skip to the bottom for the latest stuff!)