This week, I've been working on an Asteroids game. On Thursday, it was a bog standard Asteroids game, that seriously needed updating. On Friday, I changed the controls to mouse. The game plays like a cross between Asteroids and Horizontal Shooter. On Sunday, I tweaked the controls further, and added particles. And today, I spent some time tweaking the difficulty. At this point, the gameplay's "OK". It's not amazing. And, I think because of that, I've kind of stalled. Right now, the...

Much as expected, this week's AGameAWeek has become a Vib Ribbon style game. To be honest, I had this idea for a moment, last week, whilst doing the Go Left game. The idea stayed in my head for about a minute, before vanishing. But having finally gotten around to playing Vib Ribbon, this week, I figured it was time to put the plan into action, and with a nice time-saving addition (the graphics!) I managed to get it done in time. So here's J-Walker. <a href="https://agameaweek.com/complet...

I've had it in my desk's cupboard for years. I bought the game not long after my original Playstation broke, thinking I'd pick up a PSX cheap somewhere.. I never did. And, I never bought a PS2, or a PSP, or PS3, or anything else that could play it. Over the years, I've tried it on Various emulators, only to have them spit it out, and die.. And yet I kept it, hoping to eventually play it some day. Yesterday I finally DID! And it's a cracking game. A wonderful piece of music based gaming, all nice a...

Every so often, I like to rant here, for no real reason. Today, whilst playing Burnout 3 on my Xbox Classic, the whole "Customisable Soundtracks on the X360" issue appeared once again, so I figured I should rant about it. See, on Burnout XBox, you used the game to pick the soundtrack, and then that played it in the background. But, it ALSO stopped the music when you crashed, turned down the music when there was information to be told, and other useful things. But, for some really bizarre inexplicable ...

I've had a couple of emails about the donate button already, so thought I should clarify why it's there. I write a game a week.. Sometimes they're good, sometimes their rubbish, and sometimes they're really fun, playable, and can keep you playing for a good few hours. I can do this, because I have a lot of free time. And by "a lot of free time", I mean A LOT of free time. The webhost is pretty much minimal cost (GoDaddy), the programming languages range from 0 cost (DS/XNA) to very mi...

A short and sweet game, this week. Would've been more (extra graphical niceness) but I ran out of time! Aw well.. Here's the basic form. <img src="https://socoder.net/workshop/dlds/184_go_left.gif"> Rules : Go Left, avoid spinning spiky things. There's 13 levels, and then it wraps back to level 3 but faster, and then continues to wrap, getting faster and faster all the time.. Infinite lives, so if you're really bored you can just keep going and going and going! Maybe! Yo...

I'm not sure if you figured it out from the picture I posted the other day, but it seems that the project I'm currently working on in XNA will turn out to be Centipong. To be honest, I wasn't actually planning to do Centipong! I was actually just shoving in a basic sprite, and getting it bobbing around on the screen, in order to duplicate my basic "Blitz 2D-in-3D" command set within the XNA environment. So far that's working out rather well, and I've near enough created a nice littl...

I've said on other forums that this year will be my Xbox Live year. That I'd take the time to learn how XNA should work, and eventually build things up so they work nice and happily. Unfortunately, my coding's stuck in the 80's&90's, and I can't get out of my "horrible" Basic habits. Well, other folk call them "Horrible" habits, but honestly, I just see most Basic commands as common sense. I'd much rather write If Keydown(1) Then End than I would write If (GamePad.GetState(...