Late last night, as I was half-asleep and reading through Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/komiga">@Komiga</a> asked me if I was going to be using any version tracking software for my lovely framework. My twittered response was limited (by lack of sleep, and also 140 chrs!!), so I figured I should explain it a little better. Last year, around about Alien Deathmatch/Centipong time, I built up my 2D-in-3D framework to work in Blitz3D. It worked wonders, and let me achieve a whole new abi...

What week are we on, again?! Um.. ? Let's go for 24! I think that's right! Week 24, Game 32, first proper game from the new engine. Hopefully things run smoothly, let me know how it goes!! Centipong 2 <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Centipong_2_:_Gentler__Calmer__Crazier_20100209A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Centipong_2_:_Gentler__Calmer__Crazier_20100209A_thumb.png"></a> Could be better, could be worse! Meh! <a href...

Or rather, rushing to implement the ideas suggested!! As well as finally adding a "Enter Your Name" screen! There's still a half-a-dozen little niceties that I'd like to add, before release. So, although this game WILL DEFINITELY be released tomorrow, it'll probably end up being Tomorrow morning + whenever I wake up + a few hours after that! For example, it'd be nice to have more than one difficulty setting!! But to do that, I need to add that frontscreen menu thingy! whoops!!! ...

MadTinkerer's Net is now ingame. Simple method of adding it, there's a small blob in the middle of the screen, lining up with the mouse's X position. The player holds Right mousebutton, and the small blob grows into a little basket/net. The player collects 3 red pods and gains "Love" magnet mode. 3 orange makes the paddle grow and so on and so forth. I have 6 so far. Feel free to go nuts and suggest more, because there's a whole great big bunch of color combo's I can mix up! ...

Centipong has been wrought with issues since day 56. It's been a bit of a pain, but for a whole bunch of obscure reasons. I'm up to my last day, and I just wanted you folks to expect something slight odd with this release. See, the thing is, as much as this IS Centipong TWO, I didn't really want to tread the exact same path. I've already done Centipong, and Centipong Jr in Java, and Centipong DS as well. And starting this project seemed like a great idea, but it's the exact same t...

The titlescreen of future games requires many things. 1. Title of Game 2. Credits 3. Highscores 4. Instructions 5. Menu Individually they can all be nice and small, but put together, they tend to make things super-crazy! Especially when they're all equally fighting to attention. Welcome to Framework Titlescreen Version 0.3 <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_Gentler_Calmer_Crazier_(Screenshot_04_Feb_2010_120609).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipon...

Engine's now ready for any and all future word-based games that I might randomly decide to build. The wordlist adds 970Kb to a game's exe when added, and when asked it spends about 100milliseconds hunting through the complete list for a word. Luvly. So, with that out of the way I'm heading back to Centipong. You'd think, about 4 weeks into the whole Framework thing, that things would be more or less finished. You'd be wrong. There's LOADS of stuff that I've still not do...

Having now sat up for more than 10 minutes, I figure I'd best get coding, but I can't really finish off Centipong in less than a day.. What to do? Well, assuming I now have all week to complete Centipong, I might as well spend today doing something a little different. One of my all time favourite (of my own!) games is Stringy Things. I know that a hell of a lot of folk don't like Word games as much as I do, but.. dangit, I love the things! I've always planned to add a huge wordlist into the BlitzMax ...

Today marks my fourth day of lying in bed feeling crappy with a flu. I wouldn't feel too bad about this, if it weren't for the following facts. 1. There won't be a game this week, again. 2. This is approximate the seventeenth time I've had a flu since about November, and it's really starting to tick me off. Guess all this snowy weather's not agreeing with me. Sucks.

legoman4032 asked in the Youtube comments if I had mp3's. Who am I to argue.. Extended, via the basic use of a repeaty bit in the middle, but in an instrumental stylee! Karaoke!! Sing along! You know the words! and, so it doesn't feel left out.. The original remix from last February (2009), with a bit that's not from "Devil in the Dark", and is instead from "Elementary, My Dear Data" (I think), and that I couldn't be bothered to hunt down to cut the video from, so ended u...

I'm not entirely sure where I'm heading with this, but we'll have a play anyway. So far I've got some VERY big and chunky sprites in the engine, and the whole thing's playing at a much slower pace than the last one. A very different feel, overall. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_27_Jan_2010_150332)_thumb.png"&g...

<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_26_Jan_2010_141009).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Centipong_2_The_Snake_and_the_Ball_(Screenshot_26_Jan_2010_141009)_thumb.png"></a> Decided to redraw the pod, due to the XNA one being slightly smaller than expected. No matter, nice new images! To be honest, that might be a wee bit too big, but I'll know better once I've added the paddle and ball into play. In the meantime, th...

Pain has engulfed my world, this week.

The framework's coming together nicely, and things are looking up. But there were Audio issues with various versions of Ubuntu (or rather, with the SAME versions of Ubuntu!!) that were causing the game to be silent, and then crash! Hopefully I've managed to fix that, now. There's a whole list of audio drivers available to the game, and all are nicely selectable in the nice Tab box. Unfortunately, you will have to close and restart before it'll change the driver, or else.. Well, it just...

The mind works in mysterious ways. Especially mine. When I'm meant to be finishing off the Framework, fixing up game #1, and starting off game #2, my head went "Hey, why don't you make a video for Pain!" .. I disagreed, and told my head that I must continue to work on my games. My head wouldn't let me.. So I had to make a video for Pain.. *sigh* This is so stupid!!

Today, whilst uploading the new AGAW header for this site, I wondered if anyone would be interested in a simple little challenge. Question : Name all the games in the new AGameAWeek header. (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/header.jpg"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/header_thumb.jpg"> (copy incase the cache isn't letting you see it yet!) Prize : The entire sourcecode to this week's "Munky Train 2" game...

The Linux test has worked on one test system. The Linux test has NOT worked on another test system. And that's all the replies I've had.. Not a whole lot of feedback there. The broken version appears to have been entirely audio related, so I'm going to have to peek into BlitzMax's audio options today, and see what I can/can't do inside Linux, and otherwise shove in a few failsafe methods incase of broken audio. (I'd rather fix it, than just declare it "Not working", but if th...

AGameAWeek 2010 - Game Number One! We'll call this a test game, because the whole framework thing still isn't quite up to scratch, with all kinds of missing features! Plus I've put in LOADS of little quirks, things that should be quick have been made extra lengthy, and there's a bunch of redundancy.. This is half-done on purpose so that I can see what the available systems can and can't cope with. Hopefully we'll find that they can!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/compl...

By now you've probably routed around inside the JayArchive. It's a nice thing to flick through, but sometimes folk can't be bothered to download 150+ seperate little downloads. So, rather than leave it up to random picking, here's 11 nice big zip files, with EVERYTHING for Windows. (up until today) Each big zip file is numbered with it's associated JayRank. Unzip it to explode all the amazing Jayenkai Contents! You'll find all the images and zip files that are contained within the JayArc, along wit...

Uhoh, titlescreen's still not quite done, yet! With a game to release on Tuesday that's yet to be thought of, never mind started, I'm really cutting it a bit fine, here! If a game doesn't appear on Tuesday, this is the reason why!! I've yet to do the following. 1. Scores 2. Menu 3. Badges 4. Score History and there's the whole Music thing that I started on Saturday, but kinda only half did before giving up on it. Oh dear.. Doesn't matter, it's not really a pro...

Oooh, new engine this week, are you all looking forward to it?! First Linux release, too! Blimey! As the days drive on, I'm leaving myself with less time to actually code a game, here, but things are coming along nicely. Joystick controls are in, little pop up text things are happening, debug file's being created, everything seems to be working! It's usually at this point that things implode!!! Assuming that doesn't happen, I'll be coming up with some sort of quicky game, by ...

Audio! As you probably noticed, the past 100-or-so of my games have had a rather generic set of numbered sound effects, ranging 001 -> xyz.wav Today I decided that I might as well make that a more permanent feature, so super-BlitzMax-engine now includes quick "LoadSFX" and "PlaySFX" functions that will work solely with those files. Neat! Music will still probably be handled separately, since I'm still not quite sure what I'm doing with those, yet. Either way, there's a specific 256...

Blimey!! Step 1. (3/4 hours) After about 3 or 4 hours spent prodding Ubuntu to actually get it to install properly, I finally managed to get it up and running by downloading a different Ubuntu, and installing it onto a thumbstick instead.. Step 2. (10 seconds) I downloaded BlitzMax and followed <a href="https://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=84385">these</a> instructions. Basically I just copy+pasted that topmost line of code into the Terminal, got that to update things,...

<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/argh.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/argh_thumb.png" style="float:right"></a> Because there may or may not have been resulting copyright issues, I've left this post on the backburner until the magazine went off the shop shelves. Usually I'd happily scan in a bit of a page if my games are mentioned, but this time it's a whole entire page, and that's a completely different kettle of fish. (Although, to be fair, I've wr...

For something that just looks like this.. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game_thumb.png"></a> .. I have actually but a heck of a lot of work into the framework, so far! Take a peek inside to find out some nice nuggets of info, and take a look at the future of AGameAWeek!! (It's a bit wordy, mind!!)

That went as well as could be expected. Xmas intervened, family issues cropped up, all manner of snow based issues, and I pretty much rushed through the last 4 or 5 of those! Not that it was entirely noticeable. I happen to think the last two were cracking games. But which were your favourites? Three Hens a-Laying seemed remake-able, could be something more interest. hmm. OK, back to the world of AGameAWeek. AGAW Scoring : 21 weeks, 30 games. Woohoo! Jumped up a wee bit, there! This mea...

<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Twelve_Lords_a-Leaping_20100105B_thumb.png"> <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Twelve_Lords_a-Leaping_20100105.zip">Twelve Lords a-Leaping</a> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Eleven_Ladies_Dancing_20100104B_thumb.png"> <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Eleven_Ladies_Dancing_20100104.zip">Eleven Ladies Dancing</a> <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Ten_Pipers_Piping_20100103B_thumb.png"> &l...