When I first started to think of "A game that uses Badges" the name "Dungeon Badges" stuck in my head, and slowly but surely evolved into Dungeon Badgers.
Over the course of the week (during which I was finishing off Centipong 2) the idea had evolved to include a garden, a house, a cat, and of course.. mushrooms and... arrghh! A snake!
Today's post is a brief description of the game that was in my head, before it got thrown out and replaced with an idea that could be drawn a wee bit quicker!

Late last night, as I was half-asleep and reading through Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/komiga">@Komiga</a> asked me if I was going to be using any version tracking software for my lovely framework.
My twittered response was limited (by lack of sleep, and also 140 chrs!!), so I figured I should explain it a little better.
Last year, around about Alien Deathmatch/Centipong time, I built up my 2D-in-3D framework to work in Blitz3D.
It worked wonders, and let me achieve a ...

What week are we on, again?! Um.. ?
Let's go for 24! I think that's right!
Week 24, Game 32, first proper game from the new engine.
Hopefully things run smoothly, let me know how it goes!!

Or rather, rushing to implement the ideas suggested!!
As well as finally adding a "Enter Your Name" screen!
There's still a half-a-dozen little niceties that I'd like to add, before release. So, although this game WILL DEFINITELY be released tomorrow, it'll probably end up being Tomorrow morning + whenever I wake up + a few hours after that!
For example, it'd be nice to have more than one difficulty setting!! But to do that, I need to add that frontscreen menu thingy!

Centipong has been wrought with issues since day 56. It's been a bit of a pain, but for a whole bunch of obscure reasons.
I'm up to my last day, and I just wanted you folks to expect something slight odd with this release.
See, the thing is, as much as this IS Centipong TWO, I didn't really want to tread the exact same path.
I've already done Centipong, and Centipong Jr in Java, and Centipong DS as well.
And starting this project seemed like a great idea, but it'...

The titlescreen of future games requires many things.
1. Title of Game
2. Credits
3. Highscores

Engine's now ready for any and all future word-based games that I might randomly decide to build. The wordlist adds 970Kb to a game's exe when added, and when asked it spends about 100milliseconds hunting through the complete list for a word.
Luvly.
So, with that out of the way I'm heading back to Centipong.
You'd think, about 4 weeks into the whole Framework thing, that things would be more or less finished.

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.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm heading with this, but we'll have a play anyway.
So far I've got some VERY big and chunky sprites in the engine, and the whole thing's playing at a much slower pace than the last one. A very different feel, overall.
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332)_thum...

<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_26_Jan_2010_141009).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_26_Jan_2010_141009)_thumb.png"></a>
Decided to redraw the pod, due to the XNA one being slightly smaller than expected.
No matter, nice new images!
To be honest, that might be a wee bit too big, but I'll know better once I've added the paddle and ball into play.
I...

Pain has engulfed my world, this week.

That went as well as could be expected. Xmas intervened, family issues cropped up, all manner of snow based issues, and I pretty much rushed through the last 4 or 5 of those!
Not that it was entirely noticeable. I happen to think the last two were cracking games.
But which were your favourites?
Three Hens a-Laying seemed remake-able, could be something more interest.

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/JNKx15.zip">Download JNKx15 Right Here</a>
A nice neat 36Mb download, with 15 lovely little games included.
Download, Unzip, Play away!

A few weeks ago, someone who obviously hadn't played Centipong enough to enjoy it, decided to complain away on the comments.
Shitterwing's complaint was as follows
Omfg! I'd rather play Pong against Tetris (untahris), than th1s th1ngy
Now, I don't mind complaints, but there's two things wrong with that complaint.

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)

Alien...

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 say "Project", but of course, being me, I mean projectS..
#1
PRC:2 - 0%
I'm restarting Platdude's Retro Collection from scratch, and building it up a bit bigger than last time, with nicer per-game spritesheets and things like that. Bigger = Better, usually.. .. I'll make sure that's true, don't worry!
So far the selection's getting too big for it's boots, and at current rate it'll take about 3 years to finish the project, so.. going to have to whittle it down, and remember the "K...

I'm not sure if you figured it out from the picture I posted the other day, but it seems that the project I'm currently working on in XNA will turn out to be Centipong.
To be honest, I wasn't actually planning to do Centipong!
I was actually just shoving in a basic sprite, and getting it bobbing around on the screen, in order to duplicate my basic "Blitz 2D-in-3D" command set within the XNA environment.
So far that's working out rather well, and I've near enough created...

( 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!!)

Another week working on Alien Deathmatch means another week that I've not done AGameAWeek, so it's back into the big bag of failures to see if we can dig anything new out.
No..
But, the lack of anything new, and finished, doesn't always mean nothing on this Blog.. Let's bring back the old "Experimental" tag from way back when, and show off a few random bits of unfinished garbage.

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.

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</...