Daily Blog

Overcoding, perhaps?!

Developments

I'm currently unsure what I should be doing next. I *should* be working on those new SpikeDislike3 themes, but lack of interest in the game is making that all feel a bit worthless. Instead, I think I need something else to work on for a little while. I have, after all, been working on SpikeDislike3 for about 4 months, now, and that's a LONG time for a guy who usually does AGameAWeek! I think, today, I might jump into my old habits of randomly typing keywords into Monkey-X unti...

Developments

It's been about a week and a half since SpikeDislike3 appeared on Android and iOS. In the space of just over a week, it's managed to do "fairly" well on iOS, and has sold over 100 copies. True, that's not amazing, but at least it's something, and it's great to know that at least 100 people still enjoy good gaming! Meanwhile, on the Android side, the game has now sold 12 copies. Of those 12, at least one was a pirate, and that copy ended up being splashed over every damn piracy ...

Last night, I closed my laptop the lazy-man's way, by simply shutting the lid. I should know better. It never quite manages to "Resume Windows" without buggering something up along the way. This morning, it didn't boot at all, and I've spent most of the day doing the big format/reinstall stuff. At the time of typing this, I'm battling with Android and Java SDKs, desperately trying to get that stuff up and running again. Monkey's managing HTML5 and Windows targets, but OUYA and Android are currently o...

When I first bought my iPad, I never imagined the amount of "work" that I'd end up doing on the thing. The fact is, it's SO much easier to have your iPad on hand, than it is a giant laptop. That's not to say I don't use my laptop. It's pretty much an essential part of AGameAWeek. You can't exactly do your coding on iOS, so the laptop is there for the majority of the things I do, but over the course of the last year-or-so, I've found myself doing smaller bit-tasks on my iPad. I figured I should probab...

People keep asking about how I manage to code AGameAWeek, and one thing they all eventually pick up on is that I'm currently doing it all with Monkey. (URL "https://monkeycoder.co.nz">Monkey) is a fantastic language which allows for all manner of different targets, and does a great job doing what it does. It isn't perfect, and it's not for everyone, but it suits me down to the ground. As with any development tool, it all comes down to preference, and whether or not you agree with the methodology o...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">AGameAWeek Gold, we look back in the day, to try out old games, and have a fun play. Sometimes we'll find something nice, and have fun, whilst other times, games will be boring and dull.

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">AGameAWeek Gold looks back on this day in history, and plucks out any and all games that I've previously released on this day. It's a fun, adventurous, and seemingly random trip through the Jayenkai Archives. Join us, as we test really old games to see if they still run on our modern systems!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">Sometimes I'll have an idea early on in the week. I'll take my time, and build up a wonderful game, spending the full week making it nice and presentable. Other times, it'll be a rush job, and I'll instead make the entire game over the space of a weekend. .. or less!

You're probably wondering, by now, with all this wonderful "Monkey" stuff that I've been banging on about for the past month, where the heck my iOS offerings are. Well, while it's true that Monkey does indeed make the coding a heck of a lot easier, there's still another matter to attend to. The dreaded "iTunes Connect" area! ARGH!!!! You've probably read enough of my rants to know that iDev isn't easy. There are licenses to deal with. "Provision" codes, Certificates, all manner of stupid fiddly thing...

You know what's annoying? When you've been sitting, typing away for about an hour, then stop to make a brew, and suddenly realise how bloody cold it is! Somebody needs to invent some sort of keyboard with heated keys. That'd be great! .. A mouse would be cheaper, but I then only my right hand would be toasty warm. .. I'm not sure I want to go for the "Coding Gloves" thing!

Won't be posting a blog tonight, so might as well do it now. Long long night.. Sat up writing the newsletter 'til late, then posted the short blog, then headed to bed about 1am.. After lying there playing Sheep Goes Left for an hour or two, I finally drifted off, only to wake up at 5am.

I had a decent topic in mind for the blog, earlier.... *shrugs* Should've wrote it down.. No matter, I can randomly waffle for 10 minutes! I usually do ok with that...

I did post the pre-release of NeoPlatDS, this week, so that's nice. If you want to give it a whirl, try (URL "https://desmume.org/">DesMuMe), it's what I used 95% of the time during development, and has now overtaken No$GBA as my dev-emu of choice. I can't get FAT read/write working on it, though, so you'll have to make do without highscore load/saving. Other than that it runs nicely, and the default keys are easy to remember. Cursors to move, Z to throw, X to jump. Exactly the same as my Win/Lin/...

54 games. Last year I only managed about 30-odd, so I think that's pretty good going. Sure, it might not have truely actually been A Game "Per" Week, but I did at least keep the ratio up. If I hadn't taken the time out to build the framework, I probably would've actually achieved the target a little better The stats show I was pretty much on top of things up until that point, but then things got slower and slower until my buffer zone was all dried up. Anyhoo, this is a nice big lengthy re...

This week I've drawn a train, and some tracks, and am currently in the midst of desperately trying to get the train to behave upon said tracks. So far, it's a stuggle! Trying to get each carriage to turn at the right time, trying to account for the 30-odd track pieces that I've drawn, and trying not to make it look rubbish. .. meh, what can you do! <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/tighttrain.png"> It looks a wee bit unrealistic, but it gets the job done! (hint for future Jay ...

Am I still doing that 90 minute thing?! *shrugs* Seems to have faded out a bit. Oh well, no matter.. Today I spent about 2 hours working on this. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/MICROBE2__(Screenshot_30_Jun_2010_021525).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/MICROBE2__(Screenshot_30_Jun_2010_021525)_thumb.png"></a> .. Yep, that..

WarioWare is cancelled, this week!! It's half past midnight, and 90 minutes in, Tuesday's 90-minute-game isn't going to quite fit into the amount of time I'm going to be awake!!! I'm half asleep, already, and when you start spotting typing errors in your code, you know it's time to sleep. So, I'll finish this off in the morning. Then it's time to activate my lovely iPhing Developer's License, and see what fun garbage I can come up with. So, um.. Yeah, probably won't have time to do anything Wari...

A couple of days ago I posted my first test compilation of a Mac game. I asked for test-based feedback, and absolutely nobody responded, whatsoever. We're just going to have to go for the "Worked on mine, *shrugs*" approach for these!! Today, I'm rereleasing the game from Wednesday with a quick fix, and also releasing a bunch of other games that I've written in BlitzMax. We've also got JNKPlat and Gravity Bombs to come, but I want to tweak those a little before I rerelease them. Anyway, here's ...