For starters, let me just point out that Alien Deathmatch has still been slowly updating over the past couple of weeks. It's strange that a single game has taken up so much of my time. I guess that once you find the right type of game, you're more motivated than usual.
Still, more weeks playing with 1 game = less time to get some actual new games coded.
As such, there's not really been a whole lot to report over the past week or so.
No new games, no new ideas, nothing.

I had initially planned to do an Asteroids game, after Alien Deathmatch, but once I got going with simple asteroids, it turned out to be a "run around, shoot the bad guys" type affair.. .. essentially it would've just turned out like Alien Deathmatch, only with a slightly different control scheme.-=-=-

My next idea was to take asteroids, and throw it into a larger level layout, more like Thrust.

Now, granted, that's not the worst looking game in the world, but the way I'd coded it threw off all standard collision check possibilities, and I wasn't really in the mood for coding my own collision stuff.

Maybe I'm being lazy, who knows, but either way it still didn't really feel like a fun game, even once I'd added in a couple of classic thrust style shooters around the place.
So I gave up.
It's gone.
Forget about it.
 

Next idea...?

I made 2 great games in January, and 1 in February.
I was hoping to have 2 every month, but due to me messing about with a 2D/3D engine in Feb, that time was cut short. Still, I have plenty of time to keep things up and running, at a good enough pace for the rest of the year.

We're partway through March, and without rushing, I'm sure I can still come up with 2 decent games this month. True, I'm lacking in ideas right now, but I'm still sure it's doable.
If you have any good game ideas, stick 'em in the comments, and you might see them come to life. Don't expect anything with amazing graphics, mind.. You should all be pretty well aware of my lack of graphical skills by now!

Meantime..

I bought myself a Samsung U600 phone a few weeks back, and I think it's about time I started playing around with the whole Java thing..
Given a couple of weeks, I should be up to speed with it enough to get at least a simple Snake game running. (hopefully!)
Once that's going, JNKPlat's only a matter of switching green blocks for red ones, and giving the player a bit of gravity. It's an easy enough game to write, and as such it's usually my programming test-bed. But this time I'm going to try something different.
Since Java games are so temperamental, with different phones doing the same things in drastically different ways.. (nngh)
So, what I'm going to do is create a simple benchmark style program, which slings a variety of sprites all over the place, keeps track of framerates, and then sticks it somewhere that you can report back your findings..
It's also going to have a "Push the button, tell me what the buttons do!" type of interface, too, so that you can let me know which of the buttons on your phone do what inside Java. That way, I'll hopefully be able to make all the games work on as many phones as I possibly can.

Now, I say that, but in the end I'll be making the games for myself! Sounds selfish, but my phone is my only test system, and that's pretty much as good as I can do. No matter what, the possibility of my games running on your phone is more or less random! The testbed thing should help keeps things a little bit more compatible, but at the end of the day, I'll be coding so that the games run like clockwork on my own phone.
Also, the U600 has a 240x320 resolution, so if your phone's any different, you'll either not see everything, or you'll get one of those "in a corner of the screen" type games.
That's pretty much just tough luck! Blame Java for not having a decent scaling thing!
Anyhoo, this all depends on whether I can even WORK java in the first place. I'm sure it can't be too hard, but I'm used to the code-work development style of Blitz, as opposed to the Code-BAH!! style of Java and others.
We'll all have to wait and see what happens.
 
Wish me luck!