Tuesday : Game #200 : RetroRaider II, Lara's Quest Continues

<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/rrII_editor.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/rrII_editor_thumb.png"></a> Mmm.. Editor! You can play along inside the editor, just like in the last one, but things get a bit shrinkied this time. The game scales down from 7*pixels to 4*pixels, so that a bunch of extra editor clickables can fit around the side. There's not a whole lot of clickables, right now, but it's all a WIP. The levels then save as nice neat XML files, so ...

The people at <a href="https://forum.curlysworldoffreeware.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2606">Curly's World of Freeware</a> suggested that the original Microbes game might've been a wee bit too crazy. Sorry, CWFers, this one's takes the crazy up a notch!! There are powerups! .. and... ...um.. actually, there's not really a whole lot more to it than that! This is the original Microbes, with a little bit more, but rewritten to be smoother, and to run on Win/Mac/Lin! ...

I just spent the past two hours trying to get my iPod game to pause when the user quits via Multitasking, or by the lock button, or whatever. Trying to pass a variable (a single little integer) from one part of the program (AppDelegate) to another (ViewController) is probably one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do! Good God, why do they have to make things so damn difficult!? I mean, seriously, can't we go back to... 10 Print "Hello" 20 Goto 10 Used to work fine for me!?!! Stupid ...

The plan was as follows.. A couple/more Big Remakes due to be released on the week of my 200th game A couple of little piddly games to tide me over. The plan is now.. Spent too much time on Remakes, releasing remakes instead!! Aw well.. First up, Microbe2 A great little remake with.. um.. powerups are thus far about as interesting as it gets! ... <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/MICROBE2__(Screenshot_04_Jul_2010_134833).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/MICROBE2__(S...

Hmm.. This iPhing dev is taking longer than my regular AGameAWeek stuff! But I'm learning, and I'm practising, and I'm breaking and fixing things, too! Today I got loading and saving to work, I got most of my menu working, and I even got the pause button going, too! I've popped in the regular "Platdude Jingle", figured it'd do for the meantime, and.. .. Well, it's looking and feeling much more like a game, now. The code is absolutely ghastly, mind, but that can be sorted. Hopefully! Okeydoke, ...

Again, a bit more than 90 minutes, and again a lot like yesterday's task. Whereas yesterday I was, for reasons unrevealed, playing with Microbes.. Today I'm playing with... <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/rr2.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/rr2_thumb.png"></a> That one!

Am I still doing that 90 minute thing?! *shrugs* Seems to have faded out a bit. Oh well, no matter.. Today I spent about 2 hours working on this. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/MICROBE2__(Screenshot_30_Jun_2010_021525).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/MICROBE2__(Screenshot_30_Jun_2010_021525)_thumb.png"></a> .. Yep, that..

This one didn't really turn out, so well. It's a nice nature based bee game, with lovely floaty music, and some words. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Barry_The_Spelling_Bee_20100629A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Barry_The_Spelling_Bee_20100629A_thumb.png"></a> You hit Tab to highlight the flower/bee, type it's unscrambled word into Barry's Belly, then hit return. Rinse, Repeat <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Barry_The_Spell...

It's probably due to the sweltering heat, but my mind's not been very active today, and I've been really slow at getting anything done. I got quite a lot of Barry the Spelling Bee done, and then decided to do a little work on Cardagain. But, boy, that got messy. First off, I tried playing a bit of title music. That just plain didn't happen!! After 2 hours, I scrapped the idea of title music! Next up, the menu got half complete, and I figured I should add load/save mechanism for tha...

If you hadn't noticed, I've spent most of this week working on my iPhing game, so what happens to AGameAWeek!? Well, I've still got today and tomorrow, and there's nothing better than a rushed quicky game... right!?! Yeah, why not!? <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/BarrySpellingBee.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/BarrySpellingBee_thumb.png"></a> I drew Barry The Spelling Bee back in January 2008, but I couldn't quite decide how his game should...

My mum had a couple of games of Cardagain, today! That's how far along it's come!! In less than a week, I've not only finally managed to get a grip on the language, I'm actually making a pretty damn good game, too! In the next couple of days, there's still a few bits and pieces to work on. 1. The menu is really really barebones at the minute, showing 4 items, but only having one clickable one.. (New Game!) 2. The loading screen could do with being switched for an AGameAWeek th...

\o/ yeay \o/ <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/JNKPlatRetroGamer.png"> Platdude finally got his name in a Magazine! Oh yeah, and congrats to Shadow1w2, who got his Monster Level in the screenshot

<img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/cardagainagainagain.png"> .. as in "You have to pick the card, again", but also sounds like cardigan, so it's a nice fluffy name!! Seems that the game idea is really starting to build up nicely. I've now gotten this version slightly ahead of the quick Blitz version I made a few days ago. I really wasn't expecting to get everything to work this quickly, and I'm REALLY glad that I didn't spend 5 months trying to make head-nor-tail o...

A tragic tale of my own devising. Stringy Things DS is incredibly playable. Ask my mum. She plays it ALL the time.. Bedtime, Stringy Things. Mid-day, Stringy Things.. Nothing on telly?! Stringy Things....!

Wait, that title's gone all weird and wonky... What's up with that!?!? This week, I made TWO games! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/?p=680">Turret Rush) saw you running away from zombies, and shooting them from random turrets on the floor, before the turrets disappeared again. and (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/?p=682">Space Monkey Climbs the Space Towers) where you have to try and get as high as you can. Neatly, the graph now becomes a height-o-meter! Which was a nice unplanned feature! Nice f...

I'm definitely sticking to that 90 minute thing, it's just that, right now, you can't see it!! Yesterday I fixed up a few things over at Socoder.net. I added a nice upload gallery on the right, and fixed up a few little annoying bugs that needed tweaking. Then, at 10pm, I decided to make a new game. And the game went well. And the game got done. And I was happy! (Note, this is 2 90-minute sessions!) At the start of the game, I considered redoing it for the iPod, so I took the tim...

On Friday I had a really rather productive day, and managed to build up my iPhing knowledge quite a fair bit. I didn't have enough time to do a 90-minute thing, though, and am quite disappointed by that. Saturday came and went, with most of the kitchen getting it's new ceiling up, and no 90-minutes being spent, again! Dangit. Today I aim to play catchup, although how much of that gets done will remain to be seen. First off, there's a few things over at Socoder that need tweaked, so I'm going to go ...

I've not done my "90 minute" challenge again, today. Well, I did spend about 6 hours figuring out the iPod development stuff, but that wasn't the point of the 90 minute thing, really, was it!? Anyhoo, no matter. There's a silly "Vuvuzela Hero" picture going around the net, and I think it started (URL "https://blog.gaborit-d.com/vuvuzela-hero-legend-of-africa/">right here), although I'm not 100% sure. If you're a regular, you've probably played my stupid Cowbell Hero game, and I figured.. why no...

There we go! Using the buffers I mentioned earlier, and pasting 100*32x32 pixel sprites onto those buffers (32x3200 pixel buffers) I've created 8 completely independent reels, each with their own selection of 100 slots. Drawing onto those reel buffers slows us down, and takes around about 2 or 3 seconds to do, so you wouldn't be doing that in realtime.. But once the reels buffers have been drawn, we can slam them up on the screen with pretty much no slowdown whatsoever. Essentially, that'...

OK, so I finally got my DevLicense, and the first thing I did was to slap the test engine onto my iPod Touch. If you've tried that, you'll probably found exactly the same thing that I did. ...that, rather than going "Weeee!" it went "... plod... plod..." at about 2 frames a second. This is not a good thing. Today I've been experimenting with all kinds of things. I've figured out how to draw images to a "buffer", and then have that buffer be one of our UIImageView things, so that it...

Jayenkai's World Cup Challenge : <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/2010/06/jayenkais-world-cup-challenge/">A plan to do something, rather than sit watching football for 90 minutes each and every day..</a> --- No fair, I missed yesterday Blame Apple. They sent me my iPhing Dev License, and I spent the day playing about with that, and installing everything again... Nothing productive, just a wasted day. Today is marginally better..

Jayenkai's World Cup Challenge : <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/2010/06/jayenkais-world-cup-challenge/">A plan to do something, rather than sit watching football for 90 minutes each and every day..</a> --- This was 95% done last night, with only a minor tweak this morning.. But it was far too late, and I couldn't be bothered faffing around with the three OS's, trying to compile everything for everyone, so... well.. Here it is now!