Spent most of today going through my giant checklist, doing lots of the little un-attempted things.

Feels good to be coding, properly, again!

Warning : There are Mince Pies in the house!! Fat Jay may be making a regularly scheduled festive return!!

I went over the checklist, last night, and .. Boy, is there still a lot to do!!

I didn't wake up until about 12:30, today. Oops!

It's taken quite a while to get up to this point, but I now have the engine half-doing a "Which button is pressed" function. I can push a keyboard button, or tap a button on a connected controller, and the engine says "This button!" There's a slight issue, whereby if a button is held, it takes control. For example, if you're playing on the keyboard, but your gamepad's lying on the floor, and the thumbstick is prodded to the side, then no matter what button you try to hit, it always says...

The controller config screen has done that thing, where I started with a minor issue, but the more I thought about it, the more and more complicated it got!!

A brief roundup of the things I've managed to accomplish, during 2017.

1. Online Scoreboards

It's been a long time since I last had online scoreboards in my general AGameAWeek games. iOS's GameCenter made me lazy, and I could never be bothered to implement anything more complicated into my Framework. But this year, I opted to take on the challenge, so right at the start of this year I added an "Enter Your Name" thing into my framework, and tied the scoreboard system to the server....

*beep* I added the generic menu beeps, last night.

I need to add a bunch of default options to the menu, for generic functions like Fullscreen, Debugmode, Overscan and things like that. However, I also need to consider future projects, too.

It's a start..!

As I dig my heels into the true Framework part of the Framework, there's still loads of bits and pieces to tackle on the ground floor.

I knew something annoying would crop up. I just knew it!!

Today I've been working through what will and won't be part of the "Framework". That is, what values and settings and functions should be "Framework", which should be "Engine" and which should be "The Game".

Yesterday was full of tweaks. As I posted here, the Todo list is looking fairly complete, but this is still only the background engine for the new C++ framework.

I probably shouldn't, yet, but I feel that things are at a decent enough point that I can make a start on things. I still have oodles of things to add to the Engine, like proper load/save functions, and doing online URL requests for the online leaderboards. And, of course, I've still not got the new engine running on iOS, yet. That definitely needs doing!

Developments

I've already added a few "Power" features to the framework, even at this early stage.

An unexpected addition to the comments, as @RSKGames decides to give us a lovely "Top 15 Games of the Year" list! Thanks As we have come to the end of games this year, following is my top 15 (10 was not enough so 15) AGAW games this year.

15. Pigeon's Treat

Flappadiddle's cousin with limitted flytime.

The simplest form of input is Keyboard input. So, today I started to look into that.

Sleepy Jay took over, yesterday. I knew what coding needed to be done, but nothing productive was happening at all. I tried a few things, including building a nice random dungeon generator, but.. .. Boy, that didn't end up nice, at all! Today I might scrap what I did, and redo-from-start. I know I can do better than that!

Developments

I spent AGES working on a new Level Generator for Sheep, yesterday.

Each week, players send in their thoughts for that week's game. Or, at least, RSKGames does! If you want to submit your own thoughts, stick 'em in the comments, or email them in. This week's game is Sheep Goes Right

RSKGames

Overview: A totally different AGAW game in terms of art style and music but with the familiar mix of twist to the gameplay mechanics and attention to detail. A pleasant surprise is that the game is not endless, it has finite levels and ends with ''...

Sheep Goes Right is now in the hands of Apple. The iOS edition is "OK", and doesn't appear to do anything out of the ordinary, but we'll have to wait and see whether Apple approve it or not. Meanwhile, tomorrow I need to figure out how to display the Windows Online Leaderboard on the screen. The menu in its current state doesn't really leave the usual gap for that, plus I kinda broke the usual online functionality. Hmmm.. I'll have to dig and delve, I think! If the game turns up wi...

Developments

I've got a basic scoring method in the game. 3 stars instead of 3 sheep, but basically a case of "Beat the level on your first try for 3 stars, 2 stars if you lose a life, 1 for losing 2, and anything beyond that gets no stars." A tally is on the right hand side of the menu, and that's pretty much all the scoring there is.

I was sat for most of yesterday creating additional choons for Sheep Goes Right. 4 new'ish tracks, 3 of which are recreations of the choons from the original.