I've spent ages working on the whole Music Engine thing, and so far it's not sounded 100% great. Today's work got it up to about 75%, or thereabouts. As Background music, it does it's job. As anything more, it's a little lacking. So I think I'll just say "That'll do!" and carry on. JNKPlat 2010 + random'ish music, coming soon! I'd post a new High-Def screenshot, but you can't really screenshot music, and I've not really done any new graphics since ye...

I haven't really been updating this like I oughta be, so here's the "So Far" Day one (Tuesday 30th March 2010) Make it Big Decided to go with the "upped size" style, so set about redrawing all the old background tiles at a higher resolution. I considered making 50-odd brick tiles, and give them all a slight texture, but figured that'd kill your memory, so instead created an overlay texture that would be added to the screen once the game's done it's frame drawing....

Today I've made a start on the next JNKPlat. Everything will be sprite based, but MASSIVE compared to previous outings. Where previously they'd been 8x8 pixel tiles, this time around they're going to be 64x64 pixels. That's a 6400% size increase! (Assuming I did the maths right!) Look inside for the super high-resolution mock-shot!

Awww This week I've been ill, and between website tweaks, and lying in bed half-dead, I've not really had time to get anything done. This morning, I managed to wake up, and was bright and alert. I figured it was probably a good chance to get something done, so I grabbed the half-assed sprites, popped them into an engine, and got them running in a right facing direction. Adding random pipes, and the ability to jump over them, I'd made a 1980's style Waggler Hur...

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 tha...

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....

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)

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

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 p...

Late last night, as I was half-asleep and reading through Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/komiga">@Komiga</a> asked me if I was going to be using any version tracking software for my lovely framework. My twittered response was limited (by lack of sleep, and also 140 chrs!!), so I figured I should explain it a little better. Last year, around about Alien Deathmatch/Centipong time, I built up my 2D-in-3D framework to work in Blitz3D. It worked wonders, and let me achieve a whole new abi...

What week are we on, again?! Um.. ? Let's go for 24! I think that's right! Week 24, Game 32, first proper game from the new engine. Hopefully things run smoothly, let me know how it goes!! Centipong 2 <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Centipong_2_:_Gentler__Calmer__Crazier_20100209A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Centipong_2_:_Gentler__Calmer__Crazier_20100209A_thumb.png"></a> Could be better, could be worse! Meh! <a href...

Engine's now ready for any and all future word-based games that I might randomly decide to build. The wordlist adds 970Kb to a game's exe when added, and when asked it spends about 100milliseconds hunting through the complete list for a word. Luvly. So, with that out of the way I'm heading back to Centipong. You'd think, about 4 weeks into the whole Framework thing, that things would be more or less finished. You'd be wrong. There's LOADS of stuff that I've still not do...

I'm not entirely sure where I'm heading with this, but we'll have a play anyway. So far I've got some VERY big and chunky sprites in the engine, and the whole thing's playing at a much slower pace than the last one. A very different feel, overall. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332)_thumb.png"&g...

The framework's coming together nicely, and things are looking up. But there were Audio issues with various versions of Ubuntu (or rather, with the SAME versions of Ubuntu!!) that were causing the game to be silent, and then crash! Hopefully I've managed to fix that, now. There's a whole list of audio drivers available to the game, and all are nicely selectable in the nice Tab box. Unfortunately, you will have to close and restart before it'll change the driver, or else.. Well, it just...

AGameAWeek 2010 - Game Number One! We'll call this a test game, because the whole framework thing still isn't quite up to scratch, with all kinds of missing features! Plus I've put in LOADS of little quirks, things that should be quick have been made extra lengthy, and there's a bunch of redundancy.. This is half-done on purpose so that I can see what the available systems can and can't cope with. Hopefully we'll find that they can!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/compl...

Oooh, new engine this week, are you all looking forward to it?! First Linux release, too! Blimey! As the days drive on, I'm leaving myself with less time to actually code a game, here, but things are coming along nicely. Joystick controls are in, little pop up text things are happening, debug file's being created, everything seems to be working! It's usually at this point that things implode!!! Assuming that doesn't happen, I'll be coming up with some sort of quicky game, by ...

Audio! As you probably noticed, the past 100-or-so of my games have had a rather generic set of numbered sound effects, ranging 001 -> xyz.wav Today I decided that I might as well make that a more permanent feature, so super-BlitzMax-engine now includes quick "LoadSFX" and "PlaySFX" functions that will work solely with those files. Neat! Music will still probably be handled separately, since I'm still not quite sure what I'm doing with those, yet. Either way, there's a specific 256...

Blimey!! Step 1. (3/4 hours) After about 3 or 4 hours spent prodding Ubuntu to actually get it to install properly, I finally managed to get it up and running by downloading a different Ubuntu, and installing it onto a thumbstick instead.. Step 2. (10 seconds) I downloaded BlitzMax and followed <a href="https://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=84385">these</a> instructions. Basically I just copy+pasted that topmost line of code into the Terminal, got that to update things,...

For something that just looks like this.. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game_thumb.png"></a> .. I have actually but a heck of a lot of work into the framework, so far! Take a peek inside to find out some nice nuggets of info, and take a look at the future of AGameAWeek!! (It's a bit wordy, mind!!)

That went as well as could be expected. Xmas intervened, family issues cropped up, all manner of snow based issues, and I pretty much rushed through the last 4 or 5 of those! Not that it was entirely noticeable. I happen to think the last two were cracking games. But which were your favourites? Three Hens a-Laying seemed remake-able, could be something more interest. hmm. OK, back to the world of AGameAWeek. AGAW Scoring : 21 weeks, 30 games. Woohoo! Jumped up a wee bit, there! This mea...

Something involving Traffic Cones. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/TrafficCones.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/TrafficCones_thumb.png"></a> I made a nice little traffic cone physics engine (.. gamey physics!) and it's quite a bit of fun to play with, but the tricky part will be to try and come up with a playable game that's based around it. Best Lap Times + Bonus Rounds seems to be a fairly fair way to go. Now, how to make levels.. hmm....

I get to this point once every few months, and .. well.. here we are again! A few things are getting me here, this time around. Let's list the reasons, then think of some solutions..

This week, due to popular demand, Blockman's Getting More. As you may have read, I attempted a new art style (fweeDee!!) last week, which really didn't work out at all. So, this week I'm aiming for the Pseudo popped-out-a-bit art style, and all seems happy in the world of Blockman. <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/blockmangetsmoreb.png">

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Socoder Newsletter -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-      "GET IT OUT OF MY EYE!"           #025 - 16th October 2009                      <form method="get" action="https://groups.google.com/group/socoder-newsletter/boxsubscribe" target=_blank style="background-color: #ffc; width: 320px; padding: 2p...

Ok, let's try that Munky thing again, shall we!? I've scrapped the "Portal" style stuff, and am instead focusing on a Munky Blocks styled affair. Munky's Block seems an apt title, so we'll stick with that. Currently I have only 1 setpiece, and 1 silly simple test level. Woo! <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/munkysblock.png"> But the engine's up and running, and Munky's hopping around about the same as he did in the last game. So, yeah, things are definitely ...

The big-ass catalogue is now up to 68 games, and I've reached a bit of a stumbling block. If you search for (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?Find=multiple+games">"multiple games"), you'll find a few games that have more than one internal game. Today I'm tweaking the engine so that it counts each of those seperately inside the nice ever growing total. I wasn't going to do that, at first, but then I came across Platdude's Retro Collection, and decided to do it. It'd be a shame to have PRC ...