The gradient background in the above screenshot has been drawn to a secondary canvas, which is then redrawn onto the main canvas. This seems to work reasonably well, and should hopefully allow for a fair number of generated backgrounds and other such effects, without requiring huge 1024x1024 background images to be downloaded. The whole thing runs a little slowly on my Samsung Galaxy 10 A, however, so I'm going to have to add an option to disable the buffer when necessary. But otherwise.. Yeah.. W...

In order to properly test my onscreen touch controls, I'm going to need some kind of quick playable game, so that's going to be today's task. Something short and simple, but complex enough to really put the controls to the test.

I spent last night rewriting my Pseudo Random code so that it works nicely in Javascript, for both Browsercade and Shoebox.

Yesterday I was playing with Alien sprites. Today, I've been playing with Balls! First off, don't get too excited! This is currently only a simple physics test, and is in no way representative of the end result! I'm actually aiming for a completely different game, first, but figured I might as well test the physics whilst I'm here. So far, so good, although the physics are occasionally a little bit glitchy. But.. .. Yeah, works fine!!

- I'm fairly content with how the touch controls seem to be working, now, and they're apparently functional on both iPad Wide and iPhone Tall displays. The DPad can be a teensy bit large on iPad Tall, though, so I might yet still make an optional thumbstick mode instead. Simple testing has been done on the menus, but "real world" testing won't be happening until there's a "real world" game to test it with. .. I'd better get onto that, huh?

Started to make some progress with Touchscreen Controls, for Browsercade, today. The hard part was getting this button to work..

I managed to rewrite most of my little PetitSwitch Sprite Editor, yesterday, but there's still a few missing features that need reintegrated. Though, if I'm honest, I never actually used those features.. So I might be lazy and say "Job Done"!

*phew* Yeah, I knew that wasn't going to be easy...

Today I need to rewrite a ton of my input code, to work properly with redefined keys/gamepads, and then add a screen to let you do that. .. More bloomin' menus. Grrr!!

.. Have I said how much I hate doing menus?!

After a couple of days of back&forth, I've finally decided "meh, whatever!" and opted to go for a Coverflow-RipOff style menu. It actually looks rather nice, and scrolls quite well, except on touchscreens where the thing's a teensy bit dodgy due to co-ordinate issues. But otherwise it works nicely. (Although it isn't "quite" centring properly!) Scroll around, select a game, sorted.. Currently all "games" lead to the exact same test engine, but eventually this will (hopefully!) be a ma...

Shoebox doesn't scale in a normal way.

1. Finish off Atoms.

In the new framework, audio tests are going ahead. An mp3 can stream, and play, and even stays in memory for repetition or restarts when the game is restarted. The mp3 can be paused, the mp3 can be set to loop. This is all good. Moreso, I've coded the ability for different mp3s to play for different games, and perhaps even different tracks per level. The browser will grab the mp3 as needed, and will play it. This is all good!! Yeay! .. Except...

Oh boy, was yesterday complicated!!

The default pixel-sprite editor for PetitSwitch Scroll around the left-side (full spritesheet) with the left thumbstick, draw in the right hand "zoomed" view (you can zoom in further) with touchscreen or mouse. Controls for colours, but the palette doesn't save. .. Booo! Plenty of twiddly knobs and buttons, barely any of which I have the faintest idea what they're doing. A to plot, B to pick colour.. .. Except.. The dpad doesn't move the cursor.. In fact, NOTHING moves the cursor. In...

I've gotten JMTracker up to a semi-working state, but still have to add test settings for things like Tempo and Instrument selection, as well as a proper Load requester. But so far, so good, and it's a vaguely decent output.. I think!! Although only a proper set of melodies and actual ingame usage will tell for sure..

I spent most of last night reading (and/or attempting to read, with Google Translate's camera function glitching and popping all the text, all over the place) through what I could find in Petit Computer's Help files. SpikeDislike Watch : Likes 2 - Downloads 18

I should really finish off Mancala's "Laps" stuff. I think that's probably going to be today's task. But after that, what game comes next?

Mancala's coming along nicely, now. I think!! All the Landing rules seem to be working, and the game-end stuff is also functional, but AL's still not very good at the game, so a little more work on AL is needed. But, definitely getting there! *phew*

The seeds (gems in this case) of Mancala are now managing to complete a full circle!

Record time for player feedback! Let's have a nosey. You can Play Shuffled Tracks in the Extras section of the Shoebox.

RSKGames

Played ''Shuffled Tracks'' and was quite surprised to find such a polished game done in 2 days. You'd be surprised.. ... The game was almost ready to go, yesterday!! Most of today's coding session was spent fixing up the generator to make the levels more difficult.

I'm down to the last few items on the todo-list. .. .. Wasn't I down to the last few items on the todo-list, a few days ago!? Hmm..

*sigh* This really has been an effort to get everything into place!

The AI is selecting some nice placements, as well as some fairly decent words, but there are still "quirks" in the methodology.