<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Mental-Psychic-Pulling-Forces-Screenshot_05-Mar-2012_143603.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Mental-Psychic-Pulling-Forces-Screenshot_05-Mar-2012_143603-300x187.png" alt="" title="Mental Psychic Pulling Forces (Screenshot_05 Mar 2012_143603)" width="300" height="187" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2368" /></a>Control the plates with your mind! Guide the plates around the screen, smash up t...

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Snaked-Up-Screenshot_07-Feb-2012_111452.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Snaked-Up-Screenshot_07-Feb-2012_111452-300x225.png" alt="" title="Snaked Up (Screenshot_07 Feb 2012_111452)" width="300" height="225" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2301" /></a> Last weekend, most of the developers on the internet took part in the great big Global Game Jam, whereby everyone settled down to a nice long ...

Last week, there was no AGameAWeek. It was the clown's fault.. .. stupid clown.. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/iTunesArtwork.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/iTunesArtwork-300x300.png" alt="" title="iTunesArtwork" width="300" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2288" />With my newer shinier iOS Framework running the way it was more-or-less supposed to be, I decided to take a week ...

Bah.. I knew that'd happen.. As soon as AGameAWeek kicked back into action, the "Daily Blog" would take a bit of a fall. I'm trying to keep up, though! Honest!!

So, I'm sitting there trying to get a nice GameCenter thing added to my new framework, and I figured that having to display people's names might very well require a bit of Unicode.. (Note : This is the reason my other iOS games don't have names on the highscore lists!) In Cocos, you can use 3 font styles.. one is a simple bitmap font (this one I can handle!) one is a complex bitmap font (with a required 50,000,000,000,000 images to handle all the possible languages!) and the third one uses ttf fonts. ...

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...

Another day, another install.. About 12 months ago, my bedroom PC basically crapped it's pants, and became an inexplicably unusable box that sat in the corner of the room. Knowing I'd need to format, I hunted for the Vista install disc, then remembered that.. A) Vista didn't bloody well come with one (Buying from Comet would've been handy, there!) and B) It'd been ages since I'd bought any blank DVDs Still, I had a Mac, so sod it!!

Welcome to 2012 ..or, more importantly.. Welcome to AGameAWeek, Year 4!! The games start, right here... in a couple of days! Tuesday morning. I'll have to add a small "Mac Warning" disclaimer, though, 'cos my Mac's still being twitchy since it's OSX Lion upgrade, and I never did get around to doing a quick test compile. no matter.. Either it works, or there's whinges! We'll have to wait and see.

A warning for all, as we hit the christmas period. Be careful... The Mince Pies are very tempting!

There are many many things breaking the calendar. The list is growing. Having finally got the whole Locale thing to work (switch phone to French, open game, calendar still in English, wtf!?) With enough tweaks, I was getting French calendar months, and all looked well. .. Except the "??" in d??cembre.. Because my font is lazy. ugh.. That'll be a lengthy fix! New Font functions ahoy!

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. ...

A lot of elements are currently coming together, and things are getting a little more chaotic than I'd like them to be around Xmas time. If the past 2 years of Xmas themed chaos (12 games of Xmas, Advent Collection) have taught me one thing, it's not to EVER plan anything around Xmas! Presents, family visits and the general filling of my face with Xmas cake, will usually get in the way of the coding time, and as such I decided not to push myself into anything moronic this year. I apologise if you're deep...

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...

And I've still got a todo-list as long as my leg!!! If I want a few people to beta-test the final-ish edition, that's gotta be done by about Wednesday, I think. So, I have about 5 days or so to get everything done, now. After that, hope for the best, and get everything bundled for the coming Sunday. .. eeek!

Before I headed off to work, I made a new little video. Or, rather, I tried to make a "little" video, yet it inexplicably ended up at over 300Mb!!! WHAAA!?!? So, with an approximate 450 Minutes remaining on the clock, I left for work, and the upload continued. I'm now back from work, and 2 people have already commented on the video! Awesome, folk are watching my silly vids (and not ALL of the subscribers have turned out to be spambots!!)

And I'll be doing nothing again, today. .. well.. .. I say nothing.. What I mean is, I don't have a great big 12 item checklist to do, and I won't be struggling to type by the end of the day!!

Gah! Extra hats today! I now need about 3 hats, and annoyingly I think I might need an extra bunch of baddies, which also means more hats! D'oh! Still, those can wait until after the Friday Beta. The things that can't wait, are those annoying things that build and build, until you realise you don't really have a whole lot of time.

Today's been total utter chaos. I wrote a bunch of little Badges (Awards?!) the other day, so I've spent today trying to wrangle the code together so that they actually work. See inside for some oddly missing information.

This is the plan. Week 1 This Friday I'm launching Beta2, so I have until Friday to add an alarming number of things. I thought I was on track, but then realised I needed... 1. All the hats! 2. All the badges. 3. A couple of bits of music. 4. Scoring methods This Beta will hopefully be, for the most part, the fully complete game. Any extras after this point should be neatness-tweaks, and nothing major, but.. well.. things always get in the way!!

Saturday's my "At work for a while" day, so I usually get a lot less codey time done, but I still managed quite a few bits and pieces in the morning. A couple of new baddies, and a teensy bit of AI are in there, as is something which may or may not be confusing, depending on whether you remember the 7 year old oddity or not. Suffice to say, the bananas do definitely appear to be coming from below the arrow. .. not sure what that's all about.. ---

Feedback

Got a little feedback, yest...

Phase One was the simple test engine I release WAY WAY back in the very early stages of this humongous project.. .. last month! Phase One was a basic engine, with simple platforming mechanics. Taking the rules of NeonPlat and adding a scrolling background, I wanted to judge if it'd be enjoyed. True, one piece of feedback was a little downbeat, but on the whole it's been well appreciated. You can't please everyone, but the original's not broken, so hopefully that makes up for it. Pha...

Last night I sat down to jot a few readme notes for the Beta Testers. By the time I was done, I'd inexplicably written 1500 words of gubbins! Whoops!

At the moment, I'm sending occasional beta editions of NeonPlat Adventures to two people. One is AuthenticKaizen (/PixelProspector). He got instant beta-status, because he started the whole NeonPlat thing. This is all his fault!! I've been sending him little hidden youtube clips, occasional "New Stuff!" screenshots, and discussing possibilities with him. The other is Spinal (/Spinal Cord) who recently redid SpikeDislike as Nintendo DS Homebrew. Spinal and I tend to think and code the same. ...

Much as I expected, the initial burst of NeonPlat Adventure building, has now dropped to a stupidly slow rate. I'm currently flicking through all the possibilities for standard baddies, and super-evil-mega-boss baddies. Will the boss baddies be entirely seperate entities? Or will they, like previous NeonPlat games, be the same baddies, but megasized!? And what enemy types will work!? I've already cut out the unpopular "squishy" baddy. People didn't like him, because he wasn't catchab...

Sheep Goes Left now has two versions of it's soundtrack! Yeay! <a href="https://bitly.com/SGL_OST">Disc One</a> : The iOS Soundtrack : 20 tracks, plus the opening jingle! <a href="https://bitly.com/SGL_OST_MOD">Disc Two</a> : The DS Homebrew Soundtrack : 20 tracks, all rearranged into little mods, then oddly upscaled back to MP3s to be playable at www.archive.org!. I'll be posting the mod files in a few days, once the latest game release is finished.. Sheepy'...

Sorry folks, kinda ran out of oomph again, there! Now, Where were we?