Developments

I spent most of yesterday working with the pathfinding AI. The basic idea is that, once the basic level has been generated, an AI player runs through the level, trying to reach the other side. To ensure at least one of these players survives, a fleet of 32 AI players are sent over the level, and each tries to find the "best" way through. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_009.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_009...

Gameboy Spikes

Do you own a classic Gameboy? Do you have a flashcart for it? Then today's (*yesterday) your lucky day! ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JA34N332uTo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> For the past week or so, (URL "https://socoder.net/?blog=rychan">Socoder member Rychan) has been working on a port of SpikeDislike for the Gameboy! You can (URL "https://socoder.net/?showcase=48655">grab it here)...

Developments

I tried doing some music, last night, but everything I attempted turned out terribly. I guess my spurt of musical talent has run out, for now! Aw well, at least I can concentrate on getting my game done, instead. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/d0aJDTgu71k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> Yesterday I tackled Object vs Object collisions so that thrown weapons could interact with enemies and vice vers...

Developments

Jumped back and forth through a couple of things, yesterday, but mostly spent more time working on the level builder. Things are starting to look a little more varied, and thankfully the addition of vertical scrolling has added a little bit more. I'm currently worried about making sure the levels are completable, as I haven't yet added an AI player run-through of the level, to ensure it's at least playable. I'll have to do that next, I suppose. In the meantime, I've been ensurin...

Developments

Last night I added some blocks to the Level Generator, which of course then required me to faff about adding extra rules to the player, and the baddies, and the other objects, to ensure they collide "roughly" correctly with the tilemap. It didn't take too long to get the basics in, but having to essentially rewrite the rules for half-a-dozen different object types meant for a long and complex bit of work. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DHRCs3Md1To"...

Developments

Nothing much worth reporting again, today. I've still been fiddling about with characters some more, and playing around with their various physics. I really oughta be working on the level structure a little, so I might stop faffing about with characters and instead focus on the look of the levels a little more. All the pieces are currently coming together to create something a little less special than the original, so hopefully I can find something magical along the way that brig...

Musical

Seem to be in a musical mood, lately, so I attempted a second "Korg Remix Challenge" thing again, yesterday. ( width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/220437954&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true">> I don't expect to win, as there are MUCH better remixes out...

Musical

Each week or so, Korg send out a newsletter, and for the past couple of weeks I've been trying to ignore their little competition, but last night after receiving yet another email about it, I figured it was about time I gave it a shot. So, I put down NeonPlat for the night, and turned to my iPad to do some mixing. ( width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/220309050&auto_play=false&...

Developments

Tackling multicoloured craziness in HTML5 is NOT an easy task.. Desktop (and/or Android, OUYA, iOS, etc) version (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NPA2_004.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NPA2_004-1024x542.png" alt="NPA2_004" width="604" height="320" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4963" /> And by comparison, the HTML5 version (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/...

Developments

Yesterday I loaded up JMTrackr for the first time in .. a LONG time! I spent most of the day creating a new set of instruments for the engine, and ensuring everything still sounded .."Not awful" After that, I fiddled with the engine a bit, and am now midway through trying to figure out a way to auto-generate Monkey-Code which includes a multitude of different choons, all in one neat little bundle. ( width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RQP8L_fdX_E" frame...

Developments

Yesterday's task was to get basically collectables, items, that kind of thing to work properly. I haven't yet added the whole lot, but thought that one useful "collectable" might be a checkpoint. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TOm4G0M6BSI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> A simple looking flag, which lights up and animates when touched, and is your respawn point should you die. .. Of course, in the ...

Developments

A slight issue with the vertical scrolling is that a lot of the graphics in NeonPlat rely on thin lines. Most of the time, this isn't a problem, but when it's all scrolling up and down with pixel precision, there's a ludicrous amount of flickering going on, and it's somewhat unpleasant on the eyes. I'm going to have to (somehow!) put a stop to that, but .. hmmm.. So many devices, so many pixel density's, and so many screen resolutions. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to mana...

Developments

With the player physics in place, and a few tweaks to the screen scrolling, it's time to start work on the level builder. Now I need to focus on both designing art to fit the style of gameplay, a half-a-dozen themes, as well as making the level builder work in a suitable way to create some nice enough levels, with plenty of variety, and also ensuring that all the levels are completable. ... That last part will probably be trickiest! I think I'll have to design an AI Player to r...

Developments

Didn't get an awful lot of stuff done, yesterday. I attempted to code, but leftover migraine seemed to be hammering away. I find that my migraines come in waves.. They usually last over the course of about 3 days, with days 1 and 3 being the worst, and day 2 being the eye of the storm. A calm, easy to cope with, day. Yesterday was Day 3, and as such I ended up sitting on the couch, reading Twitter and not getting an awful lot done. ( src="https://vine.co/v/edT1ujmI7uW/embed/...

Developments

Complications occasionally crop up as you're developing a game. The current complication is one of those "Everything NOW!!" issues. See, I'd like to get my character's movement to work, and ensure my screen scrolling works as it oughta. I've got left and right movement in, as that's pretty easy, but jumping requires that the ground collision is working properly. That means I need to stop working on the character movement, and switch to working on the tilemap collision detection,...

Developments

General rule of thumb. If you have a migraine, STOP CODING!! It took me about half an hour of confused bafflement yesterday, to figure out why a simple "Create a line of floor tiles" was completely refusing to work properly. As it turns out, I was making a completely stupid schoolboy error. I was doing (Y*Height)+X instead of (Y*Width)+X, when referencing my array, which was causing all manner of tile-based issues along the way. How incredibly silly of me! Once I realised ...

Melodical Developments

Last night I re-rendered and uploaded the entire (URL "https://archive.org/details/PrecariousAlBum">Precarious Al Bum to Archive.org) Annoyingly, I forgot to trim the tails on the tracks, so they all end with about a half-a-second of silence. Ooops.. I'll have to poke around in Archive.org's settings and see if I can update the files, but I imagine they're probably going to have to stay like that. Aw well.. Meanwhile, I also created a new track for the Liquid A...

Developments

The next edition of SpikeDislike3 will come with 5 brand new themes, each with a unique playstyle. In much the same way that SpikeDislike2 had it's Barry the Bee and Sheep Goes Right themes, this one will include a batch of themes that all mess about with the controls, and do things a little differently. The first attempt is, of course, the classic "Chase the Train" mode, which you might remember from the (URL "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcbquXypuwc">Mastertronic 8-bit cla...

Developments

Yesterday was a day of failed attempts. I figured it'd be nice to have my Daily Platdude Pixelarts as some form of Pebble Watch, so I tried compressing over 200 pixelarts into something that the little watch could handle. I'd rather not have it constantly trying to grab images from the server, so the best bet would be to somehow compress all those pictures down to something small enough to fit into the (I think) 100kb of space available. I tried a number of attempts, but eventual...

Developments

Drawing silly pixelart characters is one thing. Having to animate a horse!? That's a whole other thing!!! Over the past week, I've animated a cat, a dog, and now a horse, too. I'll admit that, having animated the horse and got it into the engine, I then closed the laptop and opted to play games for most of the rest of the day, instead. Animating really takes it out of you, even if it was only 6 entire frames of animation!! I just don't have the stamina for animating. It wea...

Developments

Not a very productive day, yesterday, if I'm honest. I continued to play about with that Lester&Ralph theme, but I'm hitting the same roadblock as the last time, with the Sheep Goes Right theme, in that the characters run at the same constant speed so the entire point of the Combo system is completely ruined. I'm not sure what I can add to mix it up, and am desperately playing with all manner of elements to see if I can find that one little thing that suddenly makes sense. Hmmm.....

Developments

First, I'd like to apologise for one of the new themes. It seems that in my rush to get the game out, I neglected to realise how much blank space was left in one of the sprites. What appears to be unfair collision is in fact "empty space on the upper right of the sprite". I redrew this little fella at the very last minute (He was a bit more .. shall we say.. Mouse-like before!) (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SD3_045.png"><img src="https://AGameAW...

Developments

If you've got a Pebble Time (The nice shiny new colour model) you can now get a colourful Platdude watchface, along with an updated colour edition of SpikeDislike Jr Both are available from the Pebble downloady doohickey. Photos : Beware : Hairy Arm!! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Pebble_Plat.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Pebble_Plat-1024x768.jpg" alt="Pebble_Plat" width="604" height="453" class="alignnone siz...