Developments

Wasn't in much of a coding mood, last night, so ended up doing a bit more music, instead. I also spent an hour and a half watching the Stargate SG1 two parter, Mobius, although I'm not entirely sure why! I was actually in the mood to watch Continuum, but Continuum wasn't on Netflix and I couldn't be bothered pulling out the laptop, and piddling around with those old-fashioned DVD things. .. I really oughta backup all my DVDs to my Network Drive, some day. Hmm... Which reminds...

Developments

Yesterday was spent re-recompiling a couple of the new OUYA batch. I stupidly keep forgetting to tweak certain things, even though I made myself a checklist. Things like "It still says (O) or (A) on the quit screen", through to oddities like forgetting to turn the music back on, and other quirky bits and pieces. Thankfully, the PlayJam review team are all over things like that, and will give each game a good going through, looking for such oddities. With a few guiding pokes an...

Developments

(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/WP_20151009_12_56_27_Pro.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/WP_20151009_12_56_27_Pro-576x1024.jpg" alt="WP_20151009_12_56_27_Pro" width="576" height="1024" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-5093" /> We got a new front door, yesterday, and also had a couple of visitors to the house, too. Which, of course, means I didn't get any of my regularly...

Developments

How long have I been coding NeonPlat Adventures 2? Because last night I only just got around to adding moving platforms, and that was one of the first thing I wanted to add to the thing. Grrrr. All this OUYA-Recompile stuff is certainly taking it's toll on getting the newer things done. Other things I wanted to do this year include getting an online scoreboard system working, making a new version of The Gear That Works, and of course making a new Advent Collexion, as well as g...

Developments

Oh, ffs.. Now, apparently, PlayJam (GameStick) are preparing to release a new console, and would you believe it... .. .. Yeah, you probably would. I spent most of yesterday fiddling about with a test game, and compiling various test versions so that I can get them tested on the new hardware. The test .apks include things like "Loading the smaller assets incase it's a memory issue", and "ignoring all input incase it's my controller code that's broken", through to things li...

Developments

SpikeDislike3's been somewhat of a dead duck when it comes to sales. Just over 140 in the past 3 months is awful, even by my standards. It's odd seeing SD3 doing so badly when some of my other games (like Puzzobomb from 2011!) appear to be suddenly doing much much better. And so, inevitably, the game becomes free for a day. I'll probably leave it on free until later tonight, to give most people a chance at grabbing it. If you've an iPhing, go grab the game for free, then sp...

Developments

All of this New-OUYA recompiling and fixing has certainly taken it's toll on NeonPlat. The game should've easily been finished by now, but instead I'm still working on enemy placements and trying to come up with Hats, which is still fairly early days in the world of NeonPlat.. *sigh* Yesterday I finished off Karl's Tiny Adventure and got it uploaded to both GameStick and OUYA. The OUYA one will be the better edition, since it includes the music. Worryingly, NeonPlat's Cosmic Ad...

Developments

I've spent more than enough time on Karl's Tiny Adventure. It's time to stop trying to fix the issue and just get the damn game uploaded. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do two distinct editions. One for OUYA/Etc and one specifically for GameStick. The GameStick edition will have the music disabled. Why? Because apparently the GameStick doesn't like playing audio. I mean, it does, it just doesn't always play what you ask it, when you ask it to. For 99.9% of cases, it'l...

Developments

Did I miss a day?! Yeah, I basically didn't want to make a "Still full of flu!" post, so.. I didn't! Anyhoo, back to coding, and Karl's Tiny Adventure (which is next on the fixup list) has a bit of a bug in it, when played on the GameStick. The music is hopping and skipping about like some sort of broken record. I'm really not sure why that's happening, but today I'll be trawling through my timing code to see if I can figure it out. I imagine it might be that it's heavily ...

Developments

Suffering, yesterday, as a runny nose took control, and left me really not in the mood for doing much of anything. Hurray.. : I spent what dev-time I could manage, working on Greenie's Mini Quest/Little Adventure. For starters, I gave it it's proper original name! Always seemed silly that the game should have two titles, so I settled on Little Adventure, since that was the name in the logo. (eg, that was easier!!) Next, I tackled the level generator, making levels a little to...

Developments

Guess what I tried doing, last night...? If you read the title of this blog entry, and know how smooth and silky my current Dev-Kit is, you've probably guessed "A quick iOS Compile", and, of course, you'd be right! I'm currently midway through attempting to get a Free "LITE" edition of SpikeDislike3 onto the App Store. 50 levels, no GameCenter, and a big old "Full Edition!" link right at the top of the menu. That part was easy. Then I copied the folder over to the Mac.. ....

Developments

I got a new "Timer or Event" bar under the score, in NeonPlat's Cosmic Adventure, which either displays a depleting timer for things like Shields and Speedups, or a set of blocks when displaying weapons and whatnot. It's a fairly simply little bar, and isn't much to write home about, but there it is! Meanwhile I'm also finding (or rather, other people are finding..) a weird quirk with some of my older games, on some Android devices. It seems that upon first load, the games occa...

Developments

I spent some time thinking about hats, yesterday, and trying to find the best way to illustrate the lifespan of the hats. Annoyingly, they're all slightly different. Shields have hit-points, Speedups have timers, Weapons have ammo. Complicated trying to find a way to display all that. I think I'll probably just end up shoving a bar somewhere on the screen, or something. That'd probably work best. The old version had the Arc surrounding Platdude, but I don't think that's very...

Developments

NPA2 is now NPCA, as it finally finds a proper title, "NeonPlat's Cosmic Adventure". I spent about 5 or 6 hours trying out various programs desperate to find a nice way to get a properly designed logo that would curve around the edge of the planet. In the end, I did what I usually did, and opted to just do the bloomin' thing myself. Ingredients 1. (URL "https://blitzmax.com">BlitzMax) 2. Selection of Fonts from (URL "https://www.1001freefonts.com/">10...

Developments

Yesterday I spent far too long attempting something that, inevitably didn't actually go anywhere. As I continue on my alphabetised fixups of OUYA games, I found myself reaching Boxsplodings. I've never been happy with the fact that there are "only" 64 levels in this game, and last night I attempted to make a random level generator for the game. Unfortunately, all resulting attempts ended up looking boring, dull, and somewhat similar. More work on that, in the future, I reckon. ...

Developments

The first of my games finally passed through PlayJam/GameStick review, yesterday. (Good to know that ONLY took 5 days, even though I was on "the fast track"!! Compare that to the fact that OUYA's reviewed all 5 of the games I've so far uploaded!) A very thorough review, where the only complaints were as follows. 1. If you pause the game, go into the menu, turn off the music, then turn it back on, it doesn't actually restart until you've quit the game. This has been a "feat...

Developments

I'm seriously struggling to remember what all I did, yesterday! I oughta keep a note of these things. I know I uploaded another game to OUYA and PlayJam, and I also know I spent a good hour or so tweaking NeonPlat Adventures 2.. .. But I can't, for the life of me, remember what it was that I actually did!! I blame the cat, who woke me up far too early, which led to a day of messing about and not really accomplishing much, before finally heading back to bed for a "short nap"...

Developments

Yesterday, I finally (*finally!!*) got around to adding a life display to NeonPlat Adventures 2! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_017.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_017-1024x597.png" alt="NPA2_017" width="604" height="352" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-5060" /> There they are at the top, between the score and the "coin" count. Two little NeonPlats doing ...

Developments

So, with all my games now missing from OUYA, it's time to start popping them all back on again. One by one, I'm opening old code, fixing up any issues, and getting the games updated to the newer framework. The new controller code is a piece of piss, since I did all that work in the Monkey Target part of Monkey. Essentially, I need only hit the recompile button, and the new controller code magically fits itself into the game. The tricky part is adding a "Quit Game" menu item to...

Developments

Here's, approximately, the insane list of things that did/didn't happen, yesterday. 1. Compile first of about 40 games for the big OUYA Fixup. Went easy enough, and the new controls seem to work just fine. Woot! 2. Upload to OUYA. Didn't work. The whole Certificate thing stopped me, so instead I asked Team OUYA to DELETE ALL MY GAMES!! This gives me a fresh, clean slate to work with, and should help things run a little bit smoother. 3. Waiting for them to do that.. They...

Developments

Yesterday was spent doing four tasks. 1. Converting recent ALChoons to work with NeonPlat's ingame music engine. Not all of them were a success, mind! Some of the more frantic choons ended up being a bit of a mess, so have been scrapped. 2. Recreating some of the "Hat" powerups from NeonPlat Adventures 1. I've now turned all 6 of the turret enemies into "8 bullets" hats. I'm not sure how to display "bullets remaining", as at the moment, the character's looking a bit .. um.. ...

Developments

Bah, things are always more complicated, aren't they? When I first started doing OUYA games, I would happily throw up the .apk's without any Certificates or Signing, because realistically they're freeware, so who cares.. Right!? Plus.. "It's easier this way, just throw them up.. when are you ever going to update them, anyway!?!?!?" Well, as per usual, that's come back to bite me in the arse. I can't update those, because since creating them I've bought a new laptop, upgrade...

Developments

After finally getting my Forge/NewYA stuff working, I figured I should let TeamOUYA take a look at what I've got so far. The feedback was roughly "Needs an Exit button". Because the Forge doesn't have the big obvious "OUYA BUTTON" that the OUYA controller has, it's much harder to assume the player has a single button to exit the game. As such, I spent a fair amount of time, yesterday, adding a Quit button into my frameworks. I now need to replace old menus with new menus, incorp...

Developments

Yesterday's devtime was mostly spent tackling the Controller code for future (and past) OUYA games, so that it works nicely with the new Forge TV doohickey. After a lot of tweaking, poking and prodding, I finally got my framework to work with a whole variety of different Android targets, from a single compile. This *should* mean that any future OUYA.apk's will work happily on all devices, instead of requiring both an OUYA special edition and a stock Android version. The Store stu...

Developments

Last night I started to reimplement a host of the alternative bad guys. So far I'd only been using a single set of 7 for all my testing, but now it's time to ramp it all up a bit. I need a bunch of enemies, alongside a variety of stylesheets, before things start to look nice and varied, ingame. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_015.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_015-1024x597.png" alt="NPA2_015" width="604" ...

Developments

All the main pieces of the menu system are now in place. Or at the very least, you can now start the bloomin' game again!! ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aIRvCm9JEl0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> Pick a World, pick a Zone, start the game, get through or die, complete levels to unlock more worlds, rinse, repeat! The basics are in. The generator's generating, the levels are selectable, and that's...

Developments

The first half of the new menu system is now complete. You can select a World from one of the many that are onscreen, and it opens up to give you a larger view of the world. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F-_NlO3KALk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> The plan is that each world contains 5 zones, and they'll be selectable from this second screen, except that I've not actually done that bit yet! Bah! S...