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Socoder Newsletter
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Socoder Newsletter
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Awww..
I was thinking of doing some sort of fruit machine thing, but I didn't really have any kind of plan for it, so it didn't really get off the ground.
Poor thing.
Maybe this week for that?

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...

Seems to be that a fair amount of suggestions are monkey based thoughts, so I figured why not make a new monkey collection?
If you've an idea for a new monkey game, shove it below or in the suggestion box, and we'll have a good fiddle around with them all.
Gameplay wise, I'm thinking of perhaps creating a structure to a few games, release one a week and create a sort of evolving storyline that somehow manages to link the games together.
At this point, I've no idea if that'll work. But he...

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...

I'm not really sure if this is good, to be honest, but here it is anyway..
Counters Strike

BlitzBasic Sourcecode included.

I've added bloom, and a few more tweaks here and there.
The complete list of changes can be seen inside.
Otherwise, the usual two things.

A bizarre mismash of random thoughts this week, alongside an eventual plan of action, and only a day to impliment it!!
woot!

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.

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!!

Yesterday was spent getting Sokoban to work in BlitzBasic for Windows. It ended up reasonably well, but there's a few things that should be tweaked, including one persons complaint that bundling all 600+ levels into a single pack kinda kills the fun of it.. A dull trek through a long list of simple levels before you even touch on the slightly more difficult levels, does not a fun game make.
So, I'll split them back up into their seperate packs, and give folk a nice selectable menu system.

This time around, every game will have it's own quickly made titlescreen.
Not wanting to spend too much time doing each one, I figured I'd get away with doing NES style titles. They're simple, but effective.
I'm deciding all this, now, because it's so much easier than having to frantically throw it all together, later on, with 10 or so games all needing to be worked out!
So, the style right now is, Title of game at the top, highscores below, and "Press Start" below tha...

My mum likes crosswords!!!
And, heck. I like crosswords, too!
Except, the trouble is, there's not really a decent crossword game on the DS.
Don't get me wrong, there's a fair few games, and The Times (released this week) in particular, has a cracking selection of clues/answers, and some really nice layouts.

And, back to the old routine we go..
This week's AGameAWeek sees our old friends the Space Monkeys, rolling around in balls, through a maze, to get the bananas.. Again!
As with Super Monkey Balls, you needn't get all the bananas, just reach the goal, and try to get through all 8 available levels.
<img src="https://agameaweek.com/completeB/2009/Space_Monkeys_Go_Bananas_20090106B_thumbb.png">

*sigh*
I must apologise..
I assumed I was right.

Never assume you're right!

( 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!!)

<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...

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 ...

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 game will not include Super Online Highscore functions. The way it works makes it impossible to stop people from cheating.
Ho hum..
 
In the meantime, here's a couple of bonus games.

<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...