Moving from DS to iPod Touch has been a decent improvement, but.. boy, do I miss having buttons!!
There's also a fair few other little bits and pieces that aren't quite right.
WordJong, for starters, is only about 1/10th of the game it was on the DS, And, what's up with the audio, it's like something keeps messing with the sounds on the thing.
I dunno..
It's odd.

But there's one thing that I miss most of all. And that's ZooKeeper.
Sure, the iPod has Bejeweled, but it's just not the same.
ZooKeeper had that wonderful frantic nature, where you could shuffle two pieces, then shuffle two more, then more, and more, and keep the combo-chain going for AGES, whilst the game whittled away in the background trying to keep up.
I LOVED that.
Massive chains created by you, not by the somewhat random nature of falling blocks.

Then there were the challenges, too.
Trying to beat all those silly little rules, like catching 10 tigers without any other animals, and things like that.
They kept the game playable.

I much preferred ZooKeeper.
It was so much better.

I don't usually repost this here, but. What the hey!



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Socoder Newsletter

"Best viewed in Peiplum"

#045 - 5th March 2010



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Hello all



The worst thing about writing AGameAWeek is that

horrible lack of feedback.

If you spend 6 months writing a game, and get only

one bit of feedback, that's enough to depress you.

If you write a game a week, you also get very little

feedback, except the lack of feedback happens every

single week!

You write a game, nobody cares, rinse repeat.

If I wasn't already nuts, this'd quite easily send

me over the edge!



Currently Listening To...

Old Amiga Mods!



In the Workshop

Your last remaining life..

http://socoder.net/index.php?topic=1908



In the Shoutbox..

Onions, Castles and Days of David.



In the Mudchat

Fixing

Testing

Drawing

Listening

and not bothering..



Join in, it's occasionally fun!


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Oh dear, I'm WAY behind, this week.
I spent most of yesterday doing odd little bits of behind-the-scene Socoder stuff, so I'm a wee bit behind.
Then, today, something that should've been a 10 minute job ended up taking AGES to do!
I hate things like that!
Not to worry, though. Our main character is drawn, and he now has a fantastic Mario costume to wear.

He's even been given the name "Ace Paceman", by Spinal, over at Socoder. Because, for one reason or another, he never really had one before.
It's a nice name, and it'll do for the job.

Tuesday : "Ace Paceman in a Mario Costume"

wootsocks!


Disclaimer : I know that Ace Paceman isn't that recognisable as one of my main characters, (he didn't even have a name until yesterday!) but this time I'm going for "style of gameplay" over "silly chr in a Mario costume". In my head this is quite a playable little fun repeatable game, and hopefully it turns out to play just as nicely.

And so it begins.... A whole month of MAR10 games, featuring your favourite (or not) Jayenkai characters, all dressed up like Mario! Hurray!

Ted Bob in a Mario Costume

Taking the character, and the gameplay, straight from Three French Hens, I've upped the stakes, upped the hens, and even added....
!!!!OMG!!!!

TWO PLAYER MODE!!!!

but you'll need a friend for that!

Both control sets are in the Tab-Options, Down doesn't do anything (but was needed for the menu!) and Jump and Up will do the same thing, so feel free to take up either side of the keyboard so you can play against each other nicely...


Of course, it's entirely playable on your own, too. There are 3 difficulties, changing the number of available jumps, and the number of hens, although it does get pretty tricky in hard mode!

There's pickups, too! Yeay!
I'll let you figure out what those do.. They're not too hard to figure out.

Downloads are available in the Archive

You can grab the Windows version, the Linux version, or even the DVD Case!

Oh, and although I did turn off the "Debug info" thing for future games, I appear to have forgotten to do it here! Tap F12 and it turns off all the nasty numbers!

---

AGAW Scoring : 27 weeks, 34 games. Still up, but my lead's getting shorter!

We're about to enter MAR10, here in the UK, so I might as well show off a screenshot for Tuesday.


Yeay!

First game in MAR10 will be "Ted Bob in a Mario Costume"
Ted Bob, of course, being the character in the 12 Games of Christmas's "Three French Hens"

You can play the original version here.
The new one will have some powerups, and probably some different end-game rules.

To be honest, I keep playing it, and as such haven't yet even begun to code half the gameplay!
Aw well, at least it's fun!

Tuesday : Mario Costume #1!

*Very ranty, and quite wordy!*
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Since mid-December, when I stupidly came up with the idea to make 12 games over the course of Xmas, I've been lagging behind.
So, So, SOOO far behind.
And I've been trying desperately to catch up with loads of stuff.

This week, I released my framework.
It's still not quite done, and the music engine definitely needs a whole boatload of work.
But it's getting there.
And with that nearly out of the way, I'm finding myself finally able to take a few minutes to do something other than that damned framework!
*shakes fist*

It's about bloody time!!

So, back to my 100-item todo list.

Tonight, I can finally check "JNK Archive +" from the todo list, having gotten around to adding "Updating" to the admin section!!
This allows me to upload Linux .tar.gz files into the archive, and also update the things without having to plod through FTP folders.
For me, it's easier.

For you..
Look!!
Linux in the Archive!!
Oooooh!

And there's even nice new little "Game Case" buttons, for those DVD Cases I've been doing!
Fancy!!

If I update any further, I'll let you know. For now, I can finally start posting links to the Archive again!!

I've been trying to come up with a neat idea for MAR10 month for ages, and no matter what I think of, it's usually a case of "But I already did that!"
So, instead of worrying about the fact that I've already done things, I'm wondering what would happen if I took the things that I've already done, and added a Mario element to them.

This brings a few nice elements.
1. I can add stuff to older games.
2. Old games on Linux! woot!
3. I can bypass the fact that I'm nicking Nintendo's character, by suggesting that it's "Just a Costume" *cough*

So, over the next 5 weeks (there are five Tuesdays in March!) I'm going to be heading back into the archive and resurrecting some games that weren't quite as good as they should've.
They're all getting a Mario Makeover, and they'll be redone nicely.

The first one should look a little like this..

Albeit with a more Mario'y background. I've not started on that, yet..

Okeydokey, here we go!
If you've got BlitzMax, prepare to see the insane chaos of Jay's coding style!!

ARRRGHHHHHHH!!!!

The framework, as it is, at this moment in time.

The music engine isn't all it oughta be, I've really not had the time, and I'm quite annoyed that it's not finished yet.
As such, the app also isn't done, and it'll all have to wait another week.
dangit.

No matter, here's what is here.

1. The framework.
2. The basics of the Music Engine.
3. The Wordlist functions, too.

Infact, this is pretty much what I'll be starting from, each and every week, from here onwards.

A fresh copy of the framework, and I'm ready to go.

Will anyone else?
Only time will tell!

Downloadable from here, and if any updates occur, you'll see them there, along with the ever increasing list of older versions.

Part one of today's awesomeness is a huge update to last week's game.
I was going to do a seperate game, but I've had no time, what with working on the music stuff all week.

Dangit.
And, wouldn't you know, I even forgot to make any music for this, too!
d'oh!

No matter, here's Box's Adventure (aka BadgeBox) version 2.

There's not much Badge-Related additions in the game.
There's an explosive version of the attraction badge, but you need to get both before it'll work.
There's also a Teleportation badge, where you can place a marker, and then hit the button to teleport there.
Both of these badges will randomly replace two of the other badges, on random levels.
Have fun trying to find those!!!

Other big advancements : Dark levels, Wide levels, Close levels, Hard levels, Timed levels, Levels with piles of badges nearby, and levels with everything further away.

Neato!

And, if you were previously worried about there not being enough levels (although I'm not sure if anyone ever wanted to complain about that!!) there's.. um.. .. ... a few more levels in this one!!

Downloads! : Same links as before, only slightly bigger!
Windows : 5.2Mb
Linux : 5.1Mb (Compiled under Ubuntu 9.10)

Or, you can find both editions on the Jay Archive page, here.

Enjoy : Framework's coming later.

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.

First off, I'm fixing up Box's Adventure a little. There are some ideas jotted down, and a few thoughts over at RetroRemakes, so I really feel like the game could expand exponentially.
It won't be a sequel, more ... "More", like with Blockman Gets More.
Same game, bit bigger.
So there's that.

Second, I kinda liked martiinko's idea of making a slightly bigger version of the little music tweaky wotsit, so.. Although I can't do anything mp3-wise, I might give it a whirl making a neat little gui for it, letting you plot in notes, and listen to the results.
Should keep me busy over the next couple of days, anyway!

So, Tuesday, No new game.
But, 1. App, 2. Major Update, 3. Framework.

3 things is enough, right?!

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.
The author's been back+forthing me on Twitter, and he's not quite sure, either, but is also happy to put it down to "Just a co-incidence".
If it turns out not to be, you heard it here, first

Go play Angry Birds!
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Today's updates.
1. A change of instruments
2. An accompaniment
3. More channel-specific so as to stop instrument overlap.
4. Properly integrated into Framework (the sample below is literally the test, no cut/splicing. just as is, from game start... including the JNKDitty)

: Download

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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!Read More

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

: Download

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.
Neat!

But still needs work.

And additional randomness, methinks!

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.
Purely coincidentally mind.

I'm sure there's nothing wrong with Angry Birds.
I'm still not sure about Crystal, but Angry Birds is quite safe.


Original Post
Last night, I downloaded the updated edition of Angry Birds on my iPod.
Lovely game, highly recommended.

The new edition came with "Crystal". One of those Achievement/Highscore tracker things.
It asked for my email and a handy password, and both were inserted.

iPod fully chaged, I lay in bed and prepared my playtime!!

.. But something was wrong.
Something was very very very wrong.
Angry Birds was running at around 5 fps, and hopping and skipping all over the place.
Dang!
I quit Angry Birds and tried Orbital. Seemed fine.
Back to Angry Birds, same thing. Hoppy, skippy, slow..
No!
Crystal's ruined my favourite iPod game (besides Scrabble)!!

Then... Something else happened...Read More

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 embedded on the page. How could I have not done that yet!?

It also needs a quick-upload-update ability, 'cos that's really become a necessity with these latest games.
And then there's the whole Linux + Extras thing.
It'd be nice to have the DVDCase, wallpapers, and other things directly within the archive.
That's a pretty big overhaul, especially where uploads are concerned.
But it'll get done, don't worry!

I've no timescale on that, though!!

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.
Otherwise you'll probably die!


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