"Haniff" emailed me about 4 or 5 weeks ago, just as I was starting my lazyitis month, and asked if I could do a nice big video, showing how I create a game.
I wasn't going to rush a game, there and then, so I figured I'd record my first AGameAWeek once I got around to starting things up again..
Turns out I haven't recorded my first AGameAWeek, because this game's shit!

Still, here's a game.
Linkage (Win only, but BlitzMax source is included)
It doesn't really have a name. I've been calling it "Some Game", since I didn't have a clue what I was going to make, and just kinda plodded along making random things happen, until a vague game appeared.

..
For the record, I do that a lot!

Here's a quick 10 minute flash through the whole experience.


View on YouTube

If you hop through to the Youtube page, you can watch it in fullscreen Highdef, and roughly make out a few bits and pieces of text, here and there.

If you want more, Click Here and you'll find a nice juicy 2 hour megathon of silence and boredom!
Same video, in realtime!

I can't imagine anyone would want to watch that, all the way through.
If you do, you probably have enough time to similarly create AGameAWeek for the next year or so!!
Let me know how you get on!

As promised, a new weekly feature will be the suggestion box.
No longer will your suggestions be hidden away inside the locked box.
Instead, they'll be readable by all.

The first AGAW game (still unplanned, unless I decide to use the rubbishy game I made today) will be posted on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, suggest away!

It's not that I hated the old logo.
In fact, in many ways, the old logo fit my whole game making thing a little better than this one does.
So, maybe, at some point, I'll switch back.

The thing is, though, if you slap the old Recterange logo onto a Tshirt, it looks like a freakin' name badge!
Dumb, unoriginal, and a little childish.

So, a newer logo for a new year, and I've gone with the whole "Just some text with a Platdude on it" style, which I think looks a teensy bit less childish, and name-badgey, compared to the old one.



So, um.. There you have it.

Tuesday 19th Oct 2010 : AGameAWeek Year 3, Week 1 : Still no idea!

This is it. End of the road for Jay's relaxation time!
Today's Tuesday, no game today, kinda, sort of..

Today I submitted Stringy Things (2 games) to the AppStore for review. That should be properly done by.. um.. about December, at current Review speed!

So, what about AGameAWeek?
Well, I'm going to start that in a short while.
Maybe today, or.. given the fact that half my day's already gone (thanks for making THAT easy, Apple!) it'll probably be tomorrow.

I'm still not sure what game I'm doing, but the second I open the folder, I'll start off the Screen Capture.

.. That's going to be one hell of a big video.

Stick it in your diary!
Tuesday 19th October : AGameAWeek, Year 3, Game 1 : Not the foggiest!

In windows, to add a tab to the left of 3 or 4 lines, I've settled into the habit of doing either one of two things..

1. Up, Home, Tab, Up, Home, Tab, Up, Home, Tab, Up, Home, Tab.
Which goes up per line, heads to the far left, then places a tab.

or
2. Select all lines, hit Tab.
Which adds a tab to all the lines.

On a Mac, my fingers are exercised a little more thoroughly...
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Cee Lo Green's song, Fuck You, is the song of the summer.
As such, when I was in town yesterday, (Bury!) I figured that'd be the one thing I'd aim to buy.
I've not bothered buying physical games for a while, iPhing, Steam and Wii online ones do me just fine. Music CDs are just the same. I think the last one of those I went out, specifically to buy, was probably the Relaxed Muscle album! ©2003


View on YouTube

So, Asda then.
..
Hmm.. No singles in Asda? OK, WHSmiths!
..
WTF!? No music at all!?

OK then, let's try HMV.
..
um..

...
Singles?
Anywhere?!

They've like 1 rack with the Album chart?!
That's it!?
WTF?!

DVDs, Games, and more Headphones than you could ever possibly need, but no Singles?!

Jinkies Munkies!

I'm not going into Bolton. I've not been in Bolton for ages.
F'k you, Cee Lo. I'll have to just get it on iTunes, but that wasn't really the point.
sucks..

I did post the pre-release of NeoPlatDS, this week, so that's nice.
If you want to give it a whirl, try 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/Mac games!
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There's more to add, but things are getting crowded on the poor old DS!

Before I decide whether to add powerups or not, I need to know if folk can handle the game as it is.

The result of this test will be either.
A) People are happy with this.

They'll play it for ages, and love it as it is..

or

B) People want more!

They ask, and I cram it in!

Either way, Get your NDS homebrew Now!!!

This week won't be "missed", because I'm still having my September off.
But next week, the first week of October, will probably be missed.

I really want to get my iPhing framework up and running before I start off the new year of AGameAWeek.
Having a base framework will help in a whole lot of areas, mostly because I can just whip up (possibly!) an iPhing game in a short amount of time. Because that's quicker, I can juggle iPhing and Win/Lin/Mac dev quite easily, and I should be able to cope with the whole AGameAWeek thing a little better than I previously was trying to.

So, maybe week 2, or maybe week 3..
But at some point in October, I'm definitely kicking off the whole AGameAWeek thing again!

Keep your eyes peeled!

(I'm not sure if that rhymes, possibly maybe..)

Over at [Battle]Forum (|edit| I think this forum's long gone |edit|) they're having a nice chat about JNKPlat2010, and, more significantly, the insanity that is Shadow1w2's MASSIVE 100th level.
It's a fantastic level, but they just can't quite fathom it.

I had a go, today.
Loaded up Taksi and the game, and tried about 20/30 times to get through.

Already I'm out of JNKPlat Practice, because.. Could I do it!? Could I buggery!

I could achieve all of the "Areas", and had otherwise managed to beat the level, if it weren't for my dying inbetween!
I had considered grabbing bits of video and cheatily strapping them together, but..
meh.. that's cheating!

Instead, I'll post this.


Click to embiggen, but beware, it goes BIIIIG!!!
This is a map of Shadow1w2's level.

This took AGES to get to work right, but in a (possible?!) future release, the "->png" button will be in the editor. It's not worth doing a complete release right now, but.. It's there, whenever it's needed!
(Takes AGES to compile the great big image, though!)

I can't quite post on the [battle]forum, just now. Need to wait for admin to let me in.. So if anyone from over there spots this, let 'em know it's here!
Ta muchly!

In many ways, I preferred doing AGameAWeek. Mostly because I'd actually have something to post here at least once a week!
As it is, I'm finding it hard to come up with interesting things to post during my little hiatus.

Perhaps I should start posting silly Youtube links every day?

Rather than splitting my blog off into 100 different sites, just clump it all together into one?
*shrugs*
Its an idea, right!?

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Just a nice quick update of things that are/aren't happening...

1. Arcade Slots on the iPhings is almost at a point where I could release the JNKPlat Edition. I'm not sure if I want to release that, just yet, or wait until I've finished up the rest of it... Either way JNKPlat Edition will be the demo, and the rest will be the pay-for.

2. NeoPlatDS is at around about 75%. I need to formulate a good "Game Progression" thing, and figure out where/when the levels will be starting/ending.
But otherwise, that's all nice and good and stuff.

3. Year3 isn't really being worked on, 'cos I'm still in Lazy Jay mode. I've picked out a couple of games I'd like to do, though.. So... *shrugs*

4. Critically Triangular is a new weekday mini blog of links. I'm trying to expand it, but not sure what I'll be expanding it with!
.. Thoughts are welcome.

Time to pick a new Jingle.

I'm thinking that Year 3 should be marked, slightly, by tweaking the intro jingle a little, so I've gathered together a handful, and popped them all here.

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The old suggestion box disappeared from the sidebar when I redid the theme, a while back.
It had almost camouflaged into the sidebar, hidden from sight, due to the fact that it was always there.

Instead, then, I've decided to make a regular feature of it.
hurrah!

Every weekend, assuming I remember to do this, I'll make a "suggestion" post, where regulars can contribute ideas, and perhaps even play about with each others ideas to build up something special.

No guarantees I'll be making these ideas into actual games, but it'd be nice to see what everyone can come up with.

We'll start with a plain open empty box.

No plan.

Throw your suggestions for games below!

Oh, hell, I gotta start this all over again!!

Year 3 : October 2010 - October 2011
It's a month away, and I'm still being all lazy and relaxing, but I need to try and keep the site looking half-assed, so it doesn't disappear due to lack of activity Read More

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 retrospective, and we'll be looking back at each game, giving 'em all a fresh score, and seeing how it all tots up.

You can download each game by clicking their titles.

1 to 18 : 19 to 30 : 30 to 54

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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 retrospective, and we'll be looking back at each game, giving 'em all a fresh score, and seeing how it all tots up.

You can download each game by clicking their titles.

1 to 18 : 19 to 30 : 30 to 54

Read More

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 retrospective, and we'll be looking back at each game, giving 'em all a fresh score, and seeing how it all tots up.

You can download each game by clicking their titles.

1 to 18 : 19 to 30 : 30 to 54

Read More

Um..
Still relaxing!

We're currently inside Jay's Month Off, so there's no game this week.
Meanwhile, I'm playing around with a few bits of tech.
I've made a couple of new bits of music, fiddled with some nice big useless pictures that won't ever be used, and am pretty much sitting here quietly doing nothing all month.
Woot!

At some point in the next few days, I'm going to sit down, and flick through the complete collection (again!) and jot down a few little notes about each game. How well they play, how well they turned out, things like that.

You can look forward (!?) to that, or otherwise just wait things out until October, when we'll all meet up again, with a whole new batch of luvliness!

This year, the Big Torrent is available from Monova.org! (Torrent is long gone!)

If you'd like to play 53 out of 54 from Year 2, you can go grab it now.
I left out Rock My Chords, since it's 49Mb on it's own, and I reckon it's got an audience of.... me!
But otherwise, the rest are in there.
All the Windows games, the DS ones and the one single little Java Mobile one, too.

What I've NOT included is the Mac/Linux packs.
I'll be doing those later.

Judging by the interest in the current pack, they'll be super popular, too.
...
ho-hum