I'd love to get a game done, but finishing the music thing, and sorting out the last bits of the Framework ready for first release? Well, that's going to take some time. And with only 2 days to get it all done.
..
eek!
So, instead, we'll try something a little different, this week.

1. The AngryBirds thing. I'm not about 80% convinced that all was just a co-incidence.
My iPod played up whilst Angry Birds was on, the game went away, the problem went away, the game came back, a different issue occurred.
So, perhaps it was just some odd occurrence.
Who knows.

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

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!

A full day's work, and this is the result.

It should be noted that this is very early stages, and that I really oughta try and find some nice instruments, but this is the first proper test of my new Framework Music Engine.
That is, I shove in a few bits of melody, chord, bass and drums, and the framework fiddles about, and plays with the tune, creating a constantly evolving background tune that'll continue to sound nice and playful throughout the entire game.

Update
This has all been checked, rechecked, and triple checked.
It appears to have been nothing more than a coincidence.
.. That tried to steal my password.. And then another coincidence that caused me to reset my iPod for the first time since Xmas.

Haven't started on this week's game, or the new music engine, yet, and am already thinking of even more "other" things that must be done. (To be fair, my todo list has about 15 items on it! So I'm hopping all over the place doing lots of different things)
You might've noticed that I'm not linking to the Archive, lately.
That's because it isn't quite doing it's job at the minute, and it all needs fixing up.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that needs updated, including a YouTube video embedd...

aka BadgeBox, because I kept changing it's name, but forgot to update the exe's title! d'oh!
A nice simple maze game, with health points and power points.
Collect the gems to up your health and power, and collect Badges to increase your abilities.
If you manage to collect the four outer "Cornerstone Badges" you'll open up an exit in the level, which completes the game.

Eeek..
It's scary to even consider this, but there's no free-forming games for a while.
We're in a zone now, and I can't stop it even if I tried!
Tomorrow's game is about ready, although I'm still missing 4 little parts that I might wimp out on!

The current name of this game is "Box's Adventure", but that might change.
Or I might be lazy and not change it!
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Boxs_Adventure_(Screenshot_15_Feb_2010_131242).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Boxs_Adventure_(Screenshot_15_Feb_2010_131242)_thumb.png"></a>
In this shot, you can see the following.

A nice slow paced game is due for tomorrow, or at least it's currently slow! It might not be by tomorrow, but right now it is!!
A nice almost rpg-but-not, done on a small map, with lots of random elements to try and keep things moving.
The game relies on the Badges to expand the character, thus giving me an excuse to spend a week working on the badge part of the framework. All is well in Framework-land!
Oh, except the controls aren't done!

1. If anyone with an iSomething has the TurfWars app, I'm in there as ROVER546
2. Adverts. I shoved these on about a week ago, and they're not being clicked, but at least they don't seem to be ticking folk off! Google ads are nice and neat, and behave themselves.
If you do find one that does misbehave, let me know! Seriously, let me know!!! Screenshots tell all..
I don't trust 'em, but as long as they're not annoying folk, that's good enough.
3. Curr...

(URL "https://www.google.com/profiles/jayenkai">Jayenkai @ Google!)
If it wasn't obvious what my google profile url was going to be, there it is!
Am I using it? Mildly.
It's supposed to be picking up my tweets, but.. I don't think it is!

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!

MadTinkerer's Net is now ingame.
Simple method of adding it, there's a small blob in the middle of the screen, lining up with the mouse's X position.
The player holds Right mousebutton, and the small blob grows into a little basket/net.
The player collects 3 red pods and gains "Love" magnet mode.

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.

Today marks my fourth day of lying in bed feeling crappy with a flu. I wouldn't feel too bad about this, if it weren't for the following facts.
1. There won't be a game this week, again.
2. This is approximate the seventeenth time I've had a flu since about November, and it's really starting to tick me off.
Guess all this snowy weather's not agreeing with me.
Sucks.

legoman4032 asked in the Youtube comments if I had mp3's.
Who am I to argue..
(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/music/ingame/Pain.mp3">Pain.MP3) The version from the YouTube video!
(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/music/ingame/Pain%20Extended.mp3">Extended), via the basic use of a repeaty bit in the middle, but in an instrumental stylee!

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.

The framework's coming together nicely, and things are looking up.
But there were Audio issues with various versions of Ubuntu (or rather, with the SAME versions of Ubuntu!!) that were causing the game to be silent, and then crash!
Hopefully I've managed to fix that, now.
There's a whole list of audio drivers available to the game, and all are nicely selectable in the nice Tab box.
Unfortunately, you will have to close and restart before it'll change the driver, or el...