AGameAWeek Gold looks back on the history of my huge Jayenkai Archive.
Each day, we trawl through the archive to find games which have been previously released on this day in history.

Some days, there are no games.

Other days there are oddball crazy quickly cobbled together gameplay experiments.

And then, some days, there are real gold games.

The games that stay with you, and can be just as enjoyable many years later.
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Wednesday night, SpikeDislike2 got its first update in the AppStore.
Thursday night, some twat had already plopped it onto a pirate site.Read More

Sad face.

I'm supposed to be adding a new word game, every week, but this week's IGN Sillyness resulted in me spending literally hours replying to a whole bunch of emails, and trying to keep tabs on everything as it all went a wee bit crazy.

To be fair, I could've just spent ten minutes replying to those, but I do like to waffle in my email replies!!

As a result, I didn't actually get around to much coding, and there's no new word game, this week
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General rule in life : Don't Poke the Bear.
Other similar expressions include tidbits such as "That's just the way it is", and references to Burning Bridges..
Over the past few days, I've heard pretty much every single one of these, and a whole host more.

About a week ago, IGN posted a trailer for SpikeDislike2.
A few little things annoyed me about it, like the advert, and the watermark, but I initially let them pass.
After all, IGN Exposure, right!? Woot!

Then I noticed another little oddity.
The YouTube page didn't have a link to me, or my game. It only had an IGN Subscribe link.
And on the official IGN Page.. Well, that didn't have any links, either.

If you saw that trailer, the only clickable things were IGN related.
Nothing was about me, or my game, except for the trailer.
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AGameAWeek Gold takes a daily peek through the archive, to see if I've previously released a game on this day in history.
Some days there's greatness.
Other times there's oddities.
..and some times there's nothing at all!
.. Today's an oddity.Read More

Coders Tool Ahead

I don't know why I only just realised this, but I don't think I ever posted my Bitmap Font Creator, to go with the Monkey Framework!
whoops!

Anyway, here's that.

Bitmap Font Creator

It works nice and easily.
You give it a bucketload of .ttf files in the "fonts" folder, then run it, and it outputs a bunch of monospaced bitmap font images in the output folder.

Open the associated .txt file to see the width and height of the font, which you should use when LoadFont'ing.
Be sure you drag all three sizes of .png over to the data folder. (.png, -hd.png and -hd2.png)

I never bothered adding a UseFont() function, but you can easily change J_Font to the image number of your font, to switch it about, between text drawing. It does work, I just haven't made it any neater! sorry!!

Um, if you want fancier fonts, you can open the .png up in an art tool, and faff about with it, or fiddle around with the tool's sourcecode (.bmx BlitzMax included) to try and come up with something nicer.

Sorry it isn't anything AWESOME!!!! But it was only needed for a simple task, so I didn't bother making it any better than it needed to be.

Evil pirates are everywhere.
You know what really irks me, though?
The way the pirates slap their name onto your game.
They don't dig into the innards and fiddle with things that would intrude on the player's experience, but they do slap their name on the download filename.
Eg, I could make a game called Mr Hippo's Happy Adventure, and the pirate download would end up as "[MrKipper] - Mr Hippo's Happy Adventure.ipa", thus giving MrKipper the fanfare, and taking it away from me.
Grrr!!

It's hard enough trying to build up an audience without the pirates grabbing all the attention.

It's an evil thing to do.
Grrr.

They could, at the very least, stick [James Gamble] or [AGameAWeek] onto the thing.

But no, they don't bother.
They don't even stick a link, anywhere, to the official download.
You'd think "hey, at least it's getting some exposure", and.. yeah, that might be true, but with their watermark on it, and no link to the official download, it's a bit piss-poor from my side.
I'm basically working my arse off to get THEM a bit more exposure.

Stupid damn pirates.

Grrr!!!!

... Anyway..
In other news, IGN have posted a video of SpikeDislike2!

AGameAWeek Gold looks back on this day in history, and plucks out any and all games that I've previously released on this day.
It's a fun, adventurous, and seemingly random trip through the Jayenkai Archives.
Join us, as we test really old games to see if they still run on our modern systems!Read More

Occasionally, our flick through the Jayenkai Archives fails to pick up any games that I might've released on this day in history. As rapid as my game development is, I'm just not THAT quick!
But other times, it'll pick up more than one!
Today's one of those days..
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This week sees the addition of the "Racks" game into the mix.
The object is simply to see what words you can make from your rack.
Choose from the same number of time/word options as with Strings, then see if you can beat your highscore.
A simple game, with simple mechanics.

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Sometimes, our occasional glance back at previous games, released on this day in history, reveals some absolutely abysmal game ideas.
Other times, however, it brings about a classic game which makes me wonder why I've not remade it any sooner.Read More

For the next few days, until April 16th 2013, Sheep Goes Left will be half-price, over at the iOS AppStore.
To celebrate this random decision, here's...

A Brief'ish History of Sheep Goes Left

After SpikeDislike was released, one of the AppStore reviewers complained that there's no way to save your progress, and that the infinitely continuing level was an issue because there are no checkpoints, and no ending.

.. Well, yeah! That's kinda the point!
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A few days ago I set up an official AGameAWeek branded page on Facebook, along with a Twitter account.
I wasn't sure how "busy" I could keep the two elements, but so far they seem to have their fair share of posts.
If you'd like to follow the all-new adventures of AGameAWeek, you can Like AGameAWeek on Facebook, and Follow AGameAWeek on Twitter.

For the most part, I'll simply be posting links to things that I post here, so if you use Twitter or Facebook as a substitute for an RSS feed, you'll be kept up to date with the latest garbage that I post here!
Sometimes, though, I might get bored, and post random garbage there that doesn't quite make it onto the main site.

As always, We'll have to wait and see

AGameAWeek Gold delves into the history of the Jayenkai Archive, and plucks out any and all games that I've previously released on this date in history.
And since the Jayenkai Archive goes way back to 2002, they're not just from AGameAWeek. Some of these games go right back to days before AGameAWeek was even a plausible consideration!Read More

AGameAWeek Gold looks back at releases that happened on this day in history.
Journey with us through the mists of time, to find out just how good, or bad, AGameAWeek has actually been through the years!
We also occasionally find odd little glitches in the archive!!
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Last night I spotted something odd.
On the ign.com/wireless frontpage is a little Top Ten list of "Top iPhone Games Out Now"
And for some very strange reason, number 5 is currently Spike Dislike 2.Read More

Get used to seeing this, as you're going to see a lot of it.
The other day I asked for opinions on what April might bring.
Three people chipped up.

One was over at Curly's World of Freeware, where Tormuse suggested I should go with the Word Games.
Second, @moshboy suggested I should go with an unplanned stream of oddities.
Oooh, a Tie!!

Third was the deciding vote.
And worryingly it didn't even come from the internet.
Instead, My Mum suggested I should carry on doing Stringy Things.

So, Word Games it is.
Expect viewing figures to plummet, as AGameAWeek goes Word Game Crazy over the entirety of April.

Each and every Tuesday I'll be re-releasing this game, each week adding an exciting (*if you like word games) new game into the mix.

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Am I the butt of IGNs April Fools gag?
Stick some random oddball ugly-ass game into their top ten list to freak everyone out?
... Because that's only what they've gone and done!

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I haven't got any!
.. that's a lie..
I have about 3 big plans in mind, and I'm not sure which to go with.Read More