<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;"> AGameAWeek Gold takes a look at the games that I've previously released on this day in history. It's basically filler material! But that's ok, because it's usually a nice trip down memory lane.

Over the past few weeks, a terrible issue has appeared, and it's been quite noticeable. It's caused my Stringy Things project to get stuck, as well as creating multiple issues in lots of other places. The problem is as follows.. Not all devices are the same!!!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">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.

Many many many many many people have asked me how on earth I manage to cram game making into the space of a single week. Ironically, most of those people seem to have forgotten that they, themselves, have previously taken part in Ludum Dare "Make a game in only 48 hours" style competitions. Hmm..! Anyway, today's rambling waffling blog is about the steps I take to ensure I can achieve AGameAWeek.

A good old fashioned old-skool platforming game, harking back to the good old days of Manic Miner and that sort of thing. This week is VERY Manic Miner esque. Collect the items to open the door, dodge the baddies, jump around, die a lot, get to the exit, sorted!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ssa1.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ssa1-300x225.png" alt="" title="ssa" width="300" height="225" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2728"...

Last week, one of my quickly cobbled together test tunes for JMTrackr was the old Manic Miner ingame music. If you download JMtrackr, you'll find it in the Retro folder. I created it quickly, made a little mp3 of it in random mode, and plopped it up on Socoder. People seemed to fall in love with the idea of me making a Manic Miner clone, and over the course of the past few days, that's escalated somewhat.. People really seem to want me to make a Manic Miner type thing.

Before anyone complains, no, this is not a game! This week's release is a "Utility!" ooooh! Don't worry, I won't be making a habit out of this. To be honest, I was kinda expecting to be able to half-ass a game, this week, but I've spent so much time on this, that I just didn't get around to it. No matter, this is a silly little plaything, and if you're even slightly musically capable you'll probably get a kick out of it.

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right;">Before I'd decided on the "Blockman Gets" mechanic, I tried many a different thing with him. First, there was the Platform engine, where he had to run around and gather up the tiny blocklets. That worked nicely! After that I tried a "Pengo" approach, but he didn't seem happy pushing things around, so that never actually got uploaded anywhere. After that, I decided to go old-skool, and made a bog standard Pacman clone, but with a ...

If you've been following me on Twitter (and if not, why not?!) you may have noticed that I'm not currently writing a game. Instead, I'm currently focusing my attention on that good old favourite "The JNK Pseudo Random Music Engine"!.. Oh, goody!! As it stands, I've yet to begin coding anything for next week's AGameAWeek, but this time (for a change!) I'm actually building my Music Engine up using a proper half-usable Tracker style program thingy. Since the program is kinda fun to play around with, I...

AppStore is a wonderful place. For the first time, I've actually made some money out of my games!! Well done, Apple, on creating a wonderful ecosystem for indie devs. ... But there are niggling issues.. The number one issue is that I can't reply when I really REALLY want to. What follows is a reply..

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right;">Oooooh!!! When I went to add an AGameAWeek Gold function to my Archive's Admin page, I purposely decided not to add any sort of "Look Ahead" function. I knew it'd be as much fun for me, as it is for you, to find out what today's AGameAWeek Gold is! Just a week in, and I'm finding myself waking up in the morning just to click to my admin page, to see if we've got a good game today!! Today's is awesome! Today's was worth wak...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:left"> I've been considering doing this for a while, but never bothered to come up with any sort of Database Scanner to find old posts. I'm lazy like that! Luckily, a new iOS App has come along to save me the trouble. The wonderful "TimeHop" is available (for free), and allows you to upload your Twitter Archive, as well as include your Facebook timeline.. What it then does is scan the archives for things that have happened on this day,...

You're probably wondering, by now, with all this wonderful "Monkey" stuff that I've been banging on about for the past month, where the heck my iOS offerings are. Well, while it's true that Monkey does indeed make the coding a heck of a lot easier, there's still another matter to attend to. The dreaded "iTunes Connect" area! ARGH!!!! You've probably read enough of my rants to know that iDev isn't easy. There are licenses to deal with. "Provision" codes, Certificates, all manner of stupid fiddly thing...

Hello all. If you're a regular reader, prepare to be marginally disappointed. Today's release is NOT for you Today I'm releasing a private beta edition of SpikeDislike2 (currently for Windows or Android) to people who would like to blog about it, and help publicise it's existence. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/deargodno2.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/deargodno2.png" alt=""...

OK, folk are getting intrigued as to how all of this is working, and how nice the Monkey language is to work with, so in the spirit of not being a complete and total git, here's the complete everything that there is so far..

The Download

Framework Downloads have been removed due to lack of updates! I've also left the html5 build intact, so you can give it a little run if you don't have Monkey installed. (I think!) Should be as simple as going into the .build folder, then the ht...

OK, folks, here comes the big test. Is everyone ready? Get your Android device, be sure to enable "UNSAFE!" apps in your settings, point your device's browser to this page, then <a href="https://socoder.net/MonkeyGame-debug.apk">Click here (.apk) to Download</a>. It's a small enough download, only 1.5Mb. Note : This is simply a test engine. This is not a game! Do not expect a game!!! Feedback Required. (Post it below!) Device : What have you got? Android :...

I've been delaying a large list of things, but as I continue to make great strides with Monkey, those tough bits are getting ever so close. Here's what needs doing, as well as explanations as to why they're tough.. (Note : Very waffley, and probably not all that interesting!)

Badges?! Got them!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/needbetterart.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/needbetterart-300x168.png" alt="" title="needbetterart" width="300" height="168" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2490" /></a> Took longer than expected, but got a basic "Give Badge, play jingle, show badge" type thing going on in the framework, today. Easily expands for up to 128 badges, which all get saved, too. I've...

Already!? Who saw this coming?! I sure as hell didn't!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/shootybangbang.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/shootybangbang-300x228.png" alt="" title="shootybangbang" width="300" height="228" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2486" /></a> You can Play the HTML5 Edition here, and note a bunch of scrambled debug messages as they pop up underneath the game! Update : I deleted all these earl...

Today I took some time to build a Bitmap Font Creator, and a way to implement them into the new Monkey framework. It didn't actually take as long as I was expecting, but there was one marginal stumbling block along the way. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/text.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/text_thumb.png"></a> I had originally intended to have all the character widths outputted to nice data files, so that the fonts would be nice and neat when displayed. Unfo...

Welcome aboard, Tam Toucan, you're apparently the only one interested in the job of testing my crazy shit, so you're now chief tester! I've no idea when the first test engine will be ready to get to you, but I can't imagine it'll be too long a wait.. Maybe a week or so..? Keep your eyes on AGameAWeek for progress reports! Meanwhile, I did a teensy bit of audio testing, yesterday, and can happily report that Monkey can pitch it's audio, unlike a certain other language which I'...

As I continue to build up the new Monkey-based framework, I have a lot of things to test, and get working. As most of you have noticed, I tend to forget things, like "hey, your game doesn't quit when I hit Alt+F4!???.. That little thing took years for me to bother to implement!! In order to build the best framework that I can, I'll be needing pokes and prods along the way. I also need a fair number of testbeds, to try out everything on. If you'd like to join in, stick your name below. Yo...

You didn't get to see a lot of the BlitzMax template, last year, but if you'd like to try your hand at rapid game-dev, you might like to have a peek at it's contents. If you're a BlitzMax owner, this might be useful to you... maybe.. but you'll have to wrap your head around my coding style, first! <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Template-2012.zip">Template - 2012 - Download Here</a> Soon, hopefully, there'll be a Template - Monkey - 2013, but that's ann...

As the Mario game flies over the head of the internet, Jay takes note. 2 days after posting to TIGsource, the first comment went online last night. "I'm an art guy, so when I see Goombas with holes in their heads instead of shadows, or tiles that have sharp ends, I'm not inclined to give something a try. Maybe someone else will, but my art instinct is telling me to wait for something that recognizes its visuals Have you had any luck with this elsewhere? The genre doesn't immediately grab me, but a g...

Tonight, I got home from work with a game idea in mind. Using my freshly reinstalled PC, I settled down for the first bit of coding on the thing, copied my FrameworkTemplate to a new folder, drew a couple of sprites, opened the code, built up a simple array/tilemap test engine, and then hit Build.. .. Aaah.. Seems my dev-environment isn't quite at 100% yet, because I coded the thing into a FrameworkTemplate from about a year ago, and all the nice new stuff is missing. *sigh* What a waste of an hou...

Before starting development on NeonPlat Adventures, I took great care to test all the alternatives. I'd read online about OSX Lion breaking Blitz, and people needing to fuck about with lots of settings and things. The scary part was that developing on Lion would probably break compatibility with Snow Leopard. As such, I made a few test engines, and got people with Lion to test my games, to be 100% sure that, if I stuck with Snow Leopard, my games would be 100% compatible with BOTH sets of users. ...

I should take solace in a couple of facts. 1. My iOS Apps have been selling oddly, this week. Usually I sell about 1 copy of SpikeDislike, every day, but this week I seem to be getting oddities like Puzzobomb and StringyThings suddenly springing back to life. .. sure it's still a max of 3 a day, total, but... it helps! and it's odd! 2. My daily analytics stats have doubled. Of course, I should probably also point out that for the past two months, my lack of AGameAWeek has caused the stats to halv...