Developments

OK, I *think* I managed to post Invisible Munky 2, correctly, to iTunes Connect! Unfortunately, due to the world in which Apple operates, we're going to have to wait just over a week to know for sure, as we wait for it to get through the stringent Apple Review gubbins. No doubt, even if it's as broken as Cardagain is, it'll still get through, so I'll be counting on the masses of Twitter-folk to let me know if it works on all the different types of devices that are out there. My...

Developments

RAWR!!! Wednesday went swimmingly well, with all the pieces falling into place, and everything being awesome and cool. It stands to reason, then, that my Thursday didn't go quite as well. I decided to try my hand at getting Invisible Munky 2 into the AppStore. It started with me having to upgrade my "Icon Resizer" tool, to account for the 150,000 new icon sizes that have appeared since iPhone 6 and Plus came out. I also just about managed to figure out the new "Launch Scree...

Developments

A quick video.. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SUFKcQothYI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> About a week ago, I booted up the MacMini to test compile SpikeDislike3 onto my iPad. I was SHOCKED by how poor the functionality of the MacMini was. Slow, unresponsive, and certainly not what you'd call "Useful" in any way shape or form. I guess that's what happens when you buy a Mac Mini in 2010, and only e...

Developments

A lot of yesterday was spent fiddling about with new Challenges. In actuality, I only ended up adding one single challenge type, but I also spent a LONG time ensuring that the challenge was indeed do-able. I'm going to be honest, and say that a lot of these challenges are going to be tricky for newcomers, but hopefully the fact that the "3 fails = unlock" mechanic's in place, will help that, somewhat. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_025.png"><i...

Twitter Rant

This morning, I'm battling with Twitter. A short while ago, Twitter introduced a new "Easy to use!" way to reply to things, which is less messy and leaves more space for your reply. Essentially, the "New Reply" strips away everybody's @names, leaving just a single link back to the previous post. In many ways, this is a nice thing, as when you're in the middle of a conversation with 5 or 6 people, it can typically leave about 3 characters for your reply to fit in!! But there are ...

Developments

Yesterday I started playing about with all the different gameplay styles that'll make up the majority of the levels in SpikeDislike3. If you're keeping track, you'll remember that WAY WAY way way way back in (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=221">SpikeDislike 1) (Made in 2011, still works on most/all iOS devices!) there was a nice little Challenge mode to keep you entertained. Unfortunately, it didn't have a whole lot of levels. 36 levels were more or less all...

Developments

Just when you think you're done with your menu system, you suddenly realise you've not got any options on the titlescreen! Whoops! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_024.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_024-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_024" width="604" height="352" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4649" /> An hour or so later, and I'd half-wrangled old code with new, t...

Developments

Yesterday I planned to do one thing, but ended up doing something completely different! I'm not entirely sure why, but it might've had something to do with me listening to an 80s compilation at the time. WARNING : Listening to music can seriously damage your planned development schedule! Suffice to say, my 80s themed theme now looks much more 80s themed, and I even created a silly "thing" for no good reason. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_Together....

Developments

Lots of background work, yesterday, as I continued to work on the menu system. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_023.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_023.png" alt="SD3_023" width="640" height="480" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4641" /> The two circles on the right currently show the topmost highscore of the level selected, as well as the last score. Now you c...

Developments

I spent some time, yesterday, playing around with the menu system for SpikeDislike3. It's starting to look fairly usable, now, with it's little bouncing "Next Level" thing, and all the spikes and stars in the right places. I still need to add some sort of boundary to the left, so that the "Infinity" levels are more apparent, but for the most part, the menu is nice enough, and actually functions the way it's supposed to! ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/em...

Developments

Yesterday was most definitely a day of two halves. In the morning, the world was colourful and happy. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_018.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_018-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_018" width="604" height="352" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4635" /> But by the evening, they'd gotten all dull, worn out and grey. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com...

Developments

Ho, Ho, Ho!! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_017.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_017-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_017" width="604" height="352" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4631" /> I don't know why this theme popped into my head, last night, but there it is! A wonderfully festive xmassy theme. Will this be part of the regular game, or will it only turn up at Xm...

Developments

Yesterday, I made this! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_016.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_016-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_016" width="660" height="385" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4623" /> Taking sprites, sounds and music from (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=350">Invisible Munky 2), I quickly cobbled together a SpikeDislike2 theme, and re...

Developments

My first session of yesterday was spent fixing up the issues I had with the little fishy theme. I started by stripping out the fish, and replacing it with an Octopus, which although fundamentally the same sort of thing, looked a bit less weird when bouncing along the floor in the standard SpikeDislike style! So that turned out nicely. After that I tweaked a bit more of the standard engine, which is growing features every time I touch the thing, and fiddled about with a bit more m...

Developments

Yesterday I created an underwater theme. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_015.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_015-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_015" width="660" height="385" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4618" /> As good as this theme is, I'm not *quite* happy with it, mostly because the visual of a fish "bouncing" doesn't really look all that normal!! Today I'm goi...

Developments

Yesterday I started a new theme. A road, some sand, some water, stars, moon and some boats. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_012.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_012-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_012" width="660" height="385" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4615" /> In terms of effort, it wasn't exactly a difficult theme to create, but along the way I stumbled over a l...

Developments

Yesterday, I had a day off... I was a lazy bugger, and did absolutely nothing of interest, whatsoever. A lazy day, lying on the couch, playing Words With Friends and complaining on Twitter about how there's no Countdown on TV because of the horses. I'm getting old, and set in my ways, and if there's no Countdown on, I get grumpy! (For those who don't know about the fantastic gameshow, (URL "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_%28game_show%29">here's the Wiki page).) So...

Developments

Yesterday I took some time to create a Choon to go along with the dark lava theme, and although it wasn't exactly what I aimed for, it does fit the gameplay reasonably well. ( width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205161863&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true">

Developments

Well, it was somewhat inevitable that I'd keep the "Not Mario, Honest!" theme in the game. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_010.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_010-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_010" width="660" height="385" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4605" /> After a number of tweaks and fixups, the theme doesn't look "too" Mario-esque. It's still got a Mario vib...

Developments

Not a whole lot of news from yesterday, but that was mostly due to me not being in a coding mood. Instead, I did at least manage to create the following ALChoon. ( width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/204825992&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true">>...

Developments

Yesterday, I completely rejigged the "Bounce" of SpikeDislike. Originally, the bounce was a simple Sine-wave, and has in fact been this in EVERY version of SpikeDislike, but this time I'm hoping to add a couple of new elements which have required a minor tweak in the usual ball bouncing mechanic. This isn't something to be taken lightly, as I had to be absolutely sure that the end result still "felt" like Classic SpikeDislike. At the moment it's a teensy bit floaty compared with ...

Developments

Yesterday I found myself trying out a variety of themes, to figure out what does and doesn't work in the new engine. Here's a brief selection of those tested. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_GfxD.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_GfxD-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_GfxD" width="660" height="385" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4591" /> Lava/Rock (URL "https://AGameAW...

Developments

Not much! Or, at least, nothing I can show off just yet. I'm struggling to design decent looking new themes, whilst trying to stay clear of repeating what was in SD2. Which is a lot.. Meaning I've made my job much much harder!!! Meanwhile, I'm still fiddling about with layers. They "sometimes" work, but occasionally get in the way of the raw gameplay, which is BAD!! Going to have to put a lot of planning into exactly what sort of foreground elements may or may not work for the...

Developments

Not a lot of progress, yesterday. A LOT of stuff happened, but nothing substantial enough that I can show it off! I started adding background layers to SpikeDislike3, but at the minute it's all nasty looking temporary art. I'm quite surprised, however, that it worked as well as it did in the Faux-3D mode. Mmm.. Parallax! It took a LOT of effort to get the new elements in place, and I'm hoping that the iPhings (at least) can cope with everything that's going on. Seriously, th...

Developments

Yesterday I decided to try out something a little unusual for me. I attempted THREE DEE!!! Not "proper" 3D, of course. I'm too lazy for that! Instead, I took the 2D game engine, added a Skew function to tilt everything at an angle, then plonked the standard graphics over the top. I wasn't expecting the result to be playable, but oddly enough, it's absolutely 100% normal. In fact, since the engine sticks to the original 2D principles, the game's entirely playable like this, and...

Developments

( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l4RcZ365DbU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> *shrugs* That might change at some point in the future. For now, it'll do as it is. It only appears once, right at the start, anyway.. So it's not going to keep cropping up all the time. Lazy and cheap, but it gets the point across. There's going to be a lot of love crammed in to SpikeDislike3! ( width="560" height="315...

Developments

I spent a lot of yesterday faffing about with the "Start" screen of SpikeDislike3. At first I intended to have a giant spike be in the center of the screen, and in fact that's what happened for quite a while, but .. I'm not sure why, but I decided to switch to circles instead. Reusing my generic stripy circle from my basic menu meant I didn't have to redraw anything, and the new "Start" screen looks rather neat. .. or at least, for something I've done, it does! I spent some t...