The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

10 weeks, 3 DS...

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

Back to work

Not much this week, or at least, not as good as Microbes anyway! I decided to redo Raining Bombs, from a few weeks ago. The last one was for my Cookie phone, (which has since become a Viewty phone) and this one's for Windows. It looks more dramatic than it is! Two turrets that shoot each other over and over again. If you blast your enemy beneath the bottom of the screen, you win a point, and then it all starts all over again. No intro, no music, not even a "BANG!", more a subtle silent...

I've about 20-odd projects on the go, this week, so you'll have to excuse the lack of blog entries, and even a decent AGameAWeek game. Most of this week was spent trying to roll a dice! (die, whatever) I figured that, with 4 frames per roll, I'd need around about 200+ frames of animation. I tried to work out all the animations, and it drove me crazy! Then I rested, and eventually worked out a way to do it, without bothering to animate it, which was a lot simpler to do. .. Then the game i...

Occasionally, I like to jot down my current doings. It helps keep track of projects, and ideas, and sometimes getting a bit of feedback helps. So feel free to do that! 1. Java/MidletPascal Since I got my latest phone (an LGCookie) I decided to get back into Java coding... Except, without that horrible Java bit. So, whilst learning MidletPascal, I've released a few games, and also started to write a series of MidletPascal tutorials, too. So, there's that! I'm continuing to build up a fun...

Is that title subtle enough for Google, d'you think? This week, I've been getting to grips with MidletPascal, and dodging it's annoying mid-compile crashes, in a vague attempt to get some games onto my phone. Sorry folks, this week's AGameAWeek is entirely Java based. Boooo!! Or at least, unless you have a decent phone, anyway! <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/cookiea.png">

I'm jumping all over the place, lately, aren't I!! With Skeleton files to update, Menus to rejig, and even super-complex Socoder work, there's lots and lots and lots for me to do! This morning, I've hopped back to Platdude's Retro Collection 2. Day 14 is a whole day away from Day 13. That can't be good! The game won't be finished for another year and a half at this rate!! Right then.. Menus! Previously I'd copy+pasted the menu system from the previous game. To b...

As game time progresses, so do the many bugs that appear! With sprites drawing WAY out of bounds, and memory being messed up all over, there's chaos in the game. But a few tweaks here and there, and everything's coming together nicely! Another slight issue, though, cropped up suddenly. PALib warned me I didn't have enough memory for all the artwork! Uhoh!!! To be fair, it was 2* 512x512 pixel starfields, so it was kinda big. But even so, it wasn't directly loaded into the Video ...

Game 3 needed a few tweaks, here and there, this morning. Mostly due to the controls being a little twitchy. Plus, something's missing. And annoyingly, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the missing something is indeed Ingame Music! uhoh!! It's bad enough having to create a jingle for each and every game, but to now start building up a bunch of little ingame tunes, let alone a big enough collection that folk won't grow tired of. .. That's a lot of music to do! yikes! ...

With more tweaking than my head could stand, I finally got Game #2 wrapped up yesterday, so I'm finally starting on Game #3, today. As stated previously, Game #3 will be reusing quite a lot of the core engine that Game #2 used, so it should be short and sweet putting it all together, like some kind of coded jigsaw puzzle. Once that's done, Game #4's ready to get going (ie, I have a vague idea in my head!) and will also be coded in Blitz for this week's AGameAWeek, so watch out for that.....

Off and on, a bit at a time, the past few days, what with the DIY, and the AGameAWeek, and the Socoder work the past few days.. So, rather than call 10 minute sessions a day at a time, I'll call them a great big long "Popping in and out, looking at the code, struggling to figure out what's wrong, and then going to do something else instead" day. It's a cheat, but since the annoying issue is still there, it still counts! I'm stuck on Game #2. And it's annoying that I'm stuck on g...

BAH!! DS Coding is annoying!! Techy stuff inside..

Game #2's turning out quite well, except it'll probably need to be taken down a peg or two. Currently it's, shall we say, a little psychedelic! And, that's only amplified once it gets onto the blurry DS screen! Lots of motion + lots of colour = lots of Weeeeeeee!!! Not a good combination. It looks great, but it's probably not going to look that great for long. Which is a shame. The player's in, and I'm ready for adding AI to the game. Once that's done, Game #3 w...

Game #1, Sokoban, required a nice scrolling tilemap, of infinite size. I spent a couple of days getting that all up and running, so that it'll do for other games, too. But today, Game #2, Surprise!, required a different type of map. Game #2 needs a wraparound map, so you can move from one side to the other, and carry on in a continuous loop. This means that as well as drawing tiles where they're meant to be, on the DS's 512x512 pixel Background Layer, I also have to draw tiles if they'...

Bug fixes already! Oh dear! Sokoban had a bizarre map limit bug, whereby if you were off the left hand side of a small map, it freaked out, and the screen jiggled around like crazy.. .. oops! That got fixed early this morning, and then since it's Friday I took most of my time working on this week's AGameAWeek. (So I can bugfix Sunday and neaten it Monday, ready for release on Tuesday.) .. In many ways, I haven't done anything to PRC2! Maybe tomorrow! PRC2 : Still only 1 game....

I'm still building up the basic reusable map functions! Had some crazy memory issues, yesterday, but everything seems ok, this morning, so it's time to move from silly map things, to actually building the game up. Starting with a strange grouping of maptiles, I'm going to have to add crates, and a player, and get the movement up and running. It should be pretty easy to do, though, as all the arts ready and waiting. good-good! So with all that being done today (hopefully) I should be able ...

Yeah, I figured I'd forgotten a few things, and as Sokoban gets built up, slowly but surely, all the forgotten things are poking their heads out, waiting to be sorted. Click inside for coder-heavy stuff.. or just grab Sokoban from earlier today and play that for a while!!

As mentioned the other day, whilst sorting out all the PRC2 stuff, I first created Sokoban for windows, using Blitz. So here it is. Nothing special. <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/soko.png"> A is the hard pack, B is the easy one. or as I like to think of it.. A is really hard..! .. And so's pack B. B's meant to be "For children and beginners", but I could only get up to level 11! *sigh* I suck at sokoban! All levels are from David W Skinner's Sokoban Level Si...

Yesterday was spent getting Sokoban to work in BlitzBasic for Windows. It ended up reasonably well, but there's a few things that should be tweaked, including one persons complaint that bundling all 600+ levels into a single pack kinda kills the fun of it.. A dull trek through a long list of simple levels before you even touch on the slightly more difficult levels, does not a fun game make. So, I'll split them back up into their seperate packs, and give folk a nice selectable menu system.

I'm yet to start coding anything gamewise, yet, but I've made my first start on the first game. Gerinych over at GBATemp suggested a Sokoban clone. Usually, I avoid Sokobans. They're kinda dull, generic and boring after 5 seconds, but there's something in Sokoban that's really useful right now. Sokoban has a LOT of levels, and since one of the Socoder members (JL235) is making his own Sokoban clone, he knew where I'd find a whole big bunch of levels for it. So, in rapid succ...

This time around, every game will have it's own quickly made titlescreen. Not wanting to spend too much time doing each one, I figured I'd get away with doing NES style titles. They're simple, but effective. I'm deciding all this, now, because it's so much easier than having to frantically throw it all together, later on, with 10 or so games all needing to be worked out! So, the style right now is, Title of game at the top, highscores below, and "Press Start" below that. Nothing...

For DS Development, I use PALib and DevKitPro. DevKitPro compiles everything nicely for the DS, whilst PALib is a set of functions that makes everything nice and usable, as opposed be being a baffling chaotic mess! However, if you try updating it, a whole fleet of incompatibilities arise, be it because of DevKitPro changing, or PALib. And, it's not just little things either. A simple PALib upgrade will mean that pretty much all of my old games start getting little breaks in them, and it's a ...

A nice and simple game, this week. <img src="https://agameaweek.com/completeB/2009/Storm_of_Idigidragon_20090224A.png"> Since I'm trying to decide what style Platdude Retro Collection 2 should have, I decided to try out a style in Blitz first, and see how it looks. You might notice it's still a little Atari 2600. .. I'm not sure if I'll stick with that. But I do like the nice big chunky sprites, and the whole thing feels much more retro than PRC did, originally.. So.. I dunno...

I say "Project", but of course, being me, I mean projectS.. #1 PRC:2 - 0% I'm restarting Platdude's Retro Collection from scratch, and building it up a bit bigger than last time, with nicer per-game spritesheets and things like that. Bigger = Better, usually.. .. I'll make sure that's true, don't worry! So far the selection's getting too big for it's boots, and at current rate it'll take about 3 years to finish the project, so.. going to have to whittle it down, and remember the "Keep it Simple" r...

PC 1 is dead. However, PC 1 made nightly backups from Drive 1 to Drive 2, so all my data's safe and secure. Unfortunately, They're both SATA drives, and PC2's a really old Celeron that doesn't have a SATA connector! So, although all my stuff's safe, I can't actually get to any of it! D'oh! If PC2 had any more than 1.5Gb remaining, I could've triple-backed my stuff onto this one, too. Kinda annoyed that I didn't, really! Oh well, hindsight, 20/20 and all that. So, until PC3 turns up, I'm back t...

( border="0"><tr><td>Blimey! What a year, eh! I decided to round off the year with a nice big, old fashioned list, with everything in it. Except this doesn't have everything in it, because I've forgotten to add the DS games.. I'll do that later!! (Took me about 3 hours to do this, so I'm not going to tweak it, now!!) Anyway, here's a nice great big list of every game (again, apart from the DS ones) that I made in 2008. It's quite a big list, too.. 31 Games. OK, so maybe not a ...