I made a start on this game a few days ago, and things seem to be progressing at a decent enough rate. The basic gameplay engine is in there, now. The test level (200x50 blocks) loads, platdude can run around, grab onto bars, jump around and use ladders. He can also work plungers and have the blocks open and shut accordingly. So, that's all nice! You might notice that the graphics are looking remarkably similar to JNKPlatDS08. That's because they ARE those graphics! The engine loads t...

I'm a calm person. I will happily settle with what I've got, and be glad that I have it. I don't own a copy of Flash, I can't afford it, and I'm not going to steal it. So I carry on making games in Blitz, and whatever else I can get my hands on. So, with my £100 Phone, from LG, (The KP500 'Cookie') I started to write games using the freely available MidletPascal. It's a wonderful piece of software, and it does many great things.

This week's Wednesday Workshop (#200! wowie) asked us to create a game using no more than 2000 characters. I managed to recreate the classic 8-bit title "Splat!", whereby you control a spider through a maze, picking up fruit. In order to squeeze all that into 2000 characters, I opted for simpler mouse movement, and few other bits and pieces. Then I figured, what the heck, and decided to make it a wee bit bigger for AGameAWeek. Guide the worm through the maze, grab the circles, avoid the squares, a...

I had intended to update this a fair bit. Add music, add extra pickups, things like that. But in the end, I instead decided to leave it as it is. This is (with added Highscore table) pretty much as it is at the end of the two hour session. A nice simple game, with a basic gameplay method. Guide the "worm" through the maze, grab all the blue + blobs, and avoid the barrels. They're very very volatile, so.. best to keep clear of 'em all.. (Although, you do get points for blowing them up....

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!!

I've had a couple of emails about the donate button already, so thought I should clarify why it's there. I write a game a week.. Sometimes they're good, sometimes their rubbish, and sometimes they're really fun, playable, and can keep you playing for a good few hours. I can do this, because I have a lot of free time. And by "a lot of free time", I mean A LOT of free time. The webhost is pretty much minimal cost (GoDaddy), the programming languages range from 0 cost (DS/XNA) to very mi...

You might have noticed a distinct lack of AGameAWeek, this week.. Since I'm getting little or no work done, this week, and.. what with being Xmas and all, I've decided to be lazy, and take a week off. Nothing wrong with that! If you feel you really need something new to play with, nip to yesterday's post, and you can grab the WhoSave thing. That's quite nice.. And you can pretend I posted that today, in time for the Xmas episode in 2 days time. Very festive!! If you'd like 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 ...

Next up, Countdown.. Or, it's meant to be, but I can't seem to get it started properly.. I've grabbed a batch of Carol's letters and numbers, and I've got the vowel/consonant packs ready, the number solver's working as it should, but so far, those bits haven't come together to make a full game.. It's just bits here and there. Needs work, but with Xmas literally days away, I'm not sure that it'll get any. If it doesn't turn up on Tuesday, assume I'm taking the week off, from AGameAWeek!! Meanwhile,...

Today's work has been mostly of the external variety. First off, compressing a level.. I'm taking 160x160 pixels, each one being around about 16 different colors (give or take, depending on what walls/floors/etc I bother to add.) and trying to bundle them up into a teensy tiny bit of data. To me, compression's a fun time, where you get to play with lots of fiddly numbers, and chaotic maths, just to get large things down to size. Today, however, .png is annoying me. Because my 160x160 is dow...

The other day I considered redoing the whole wall structure. I considered making nice wonderful multidirectional walls, and levels with all kinds of diagonals, straight, and maybe even curves. It seemed like a good idea. Then I started to work on it, and... well.. it wasn't exactly super fast! In fact, things were painfully slow. As the game struggled to draw a single wall, with nice detail like the old one, I realised that drawing an entire arena in that way would only lead to drastic slowness o...

I spent most of this week rebuilding a few of my older games with the new Highscore stuff, so there's a couple of nice new-ish games to play. First off, we've the 3rd version of Horizontal Shooter.. <a href="https://agameaweek.com/?Game=49">Get it here</a>. It's pretty much the same as ever, but with Mr Scouter from the original, thrown back in for good luck. The new highscore method should help ward off nasty hackers from the scoreboard system.. Or at least for a little while...

Due to all manner of obscure things happening this week (A HD Crash being one of them..) this week's effort isn't anywhere near as good as last week's!! Still, a game's a game, even without a titlescreen, music, sound, an ending, scores, or anything else like that.. .. *cough* ... <img src="https://socoder.net/workshop/dlds/169_afros_chair.gif"> A guy called Afro, over at Socoder had modelled a few little 3D objects. We all decided that the aim of this week's Wednesday Wor...

A while ago, I made <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/?p=14">this</a>. Horizontal Shooter. Fly about, shoot the bad guys, guard the good guys. A nice enough game, lovely lines all over, but somehow lacking in something extra. This week.. I added something extra!

A sequel/repeat this week, as the <a href="https://socoder.net/?Workshop=Challenge&Week=167">Wednesday Workshop #167</a> asked us to create a game with 2 main characters. At first I considered doing a Bill and Ted game, but couldn't think of a decent gameplay element other than "Move the blocks".. That'd be a most excellent waste of the characters. So I resurrected Bibbleman and Bobbleman, and just used them instead. Still the same game, mind.. So if you're worried that ...

I'm not entirely sure who came up with this idea, but it's been roaming around the internet for the past few years. This week's Wednesday Workshop #165 was to create a game using only one button. So, Heck, why not! ?? I grabbed the generic Cowbell Hero logo from the net. I'm still not sure who originally designed it, but there it is. In went Platdude, and a few silly songs, and then a few extra songs from the folk at ModArchive.com, and within just a few days the job was done. ?? <...

This week, Socoder's <a href="https://socoder.net/?Workshop=Challenge&Week=163">Wednesday Workshop (#163)</a> challenge was to create a game with Money in it. I initially was going to create a top-down dungeon romp, but as the plan grew and grew in scale, I scrapped it and just ended up making a nice quick platformer instead! ?? <img src="https://socoder.net/workshop/dlds/163_mr_money_grabber.gif"> Mr Money Grabber features you rushing through the level collecting all the coins...

<a href="https://socoder.net/?Workshop=Challenge&Week=162">Wednesday Workshop #162</a> asked for folk to create a game with a big-ass timer. My entry was simple. Open a vault, Grab the loot, Run for your life, Drive to escape, have a gunfight, sorted! All with a timer in the corner, and all played with the mouse. <img src="https://socoder.net/workshop/dlds/162_the_heist.gif"> The game's mostly all Left clicks, but the short driving scene requires you to right click occasionall...

If Centipong was a simplistic looking game with added 3D, Blockman would be the exact opposite. With levels so colourful they'd poke your eyes out, Blockman comes hopping along to rescue all the Blocklets. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/blockman_01.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/blockman_01_thumb.png"></a><a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/blockman_02.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/blockman_02_thumb.png"></a> It's a rather...

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/colbox_800.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/colbox_400.png"/></a> Platdude's Retro Collection was first released in November 2007. Each new release will contain a handful of new games. How many will there be in the end? Who can say! The latest release, <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/col018.zip">Download Here</a>, contains 18 games from the list below. Note : If you'd like to play, but don't own a DS,...

And so it begins, the long boring task of making lots and lots of games I lie. It's not boring! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/col001.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/col001_thumb.png" align="left" /></a>Centipede took shape, gradually, over the course of a day. Most of the tweaking was in the main engine, as opposed to the game itself, since I had to be sure of all my different variables, and how all the pieces of the ...

When I created JNKPlat 3D (about 3/4 way down (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/?page_id=2">here)) I intended to have an end-credits sequence. So I composed this nice theme for that purpose. Unfortunately I have an odd knack of never finishing off games, so an end credit sequence never appeared in the game. For the new JNKPlat I grabbed this theme and turned it into a smaller Mod, but some people like it, so here's the original version in it's MP3 format. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/music/Closure.mp3">...

Sometimes you forget about games! I worked on this game for a while, back in early 2003. The idea was to nick the whole Pokemon idea, and create a bizarre Coding based adventure game. So, I nicked the graphics, too! <img src="shots/exp-code.png"> I also added a bunch of music that I'd grabbed from Aminet, and designed a nice Logo. I got the map pretty much working as expected, and even got it so that text would appear in a little box. It kinda looks like my recent workshop "Quest" games...

I get bored. I get bored a lot. Especially when working on large projects. It's nice to occasionally have some weird random thing to do. That's why I set up the Wednesday Workshop. A weekly challenge. Make a game based upon a given theme, or task. Everyone who enters gets put through for a vote. But it's not really about the winning. It's about having something to do when you're bored. And .. I get bored a lot! Click <a href="https://socoder.net/index.php?a=13&user=Jaye...

Platdude. A 16 pixel, 3 color character. Deftly defying the world of 3D models and amazing realism, in favour of good old fashioned gameplay. Over the years, Platdude has been in plenty of games.. Here's an approximate history of Platdude, along with Downloads where appropriate. (Or skip to the bottom for the latest stuff!)