A couple of days ago I posted my first test compilation of a Mac game.

I asked for test-based feedback, and absolutely nobody responded, whatsoever. We're just going to have to go for the "Worked on mine, *shrugs*" approach for these!!

Today, I'm rereleasing the game from Wednesday with a quick fix, and also releasing a bunch of other games that I've written in BlitzMax.

We've also got JNKPlat and Gravity Bombs to come, but I want to tweak those a little before I rerelease them.

Anyway, here's the list... Enjoy!

BlitzMax Beginnings

Starting with BlitzMax, I quickly built up a framework, and had finally crossed over to MultiPlatform abilities!

1. Munky Tests his Engine

A simple speedy typing game created to literally test the engine!

2. Centipong 2

A game that probably should've turned out a lot better than it did. Poor effort

3. Box's Adventure (aka BadgeBox)

A nice simple "hunt around" style of adventure game, featuring a box and a bunch of other geometric shapes!

Mario Month!

(During MARch2010, I made some MAR10 games)

4. Ted Bob in a Mario Costume

Hop on the hens to score a whopping great big combo score.

5. Ace Paceman in a Mario Costume

Guide the upside down space plumber to extinguish the flames, and capture all the balls.

6. Munky in a Mario Costume

Munky hops around in Bowser's castle, trying to collect all the coins that he can. There is no way out, only ways to collect!

7. Blockman in a Mario Costume

Help Blockman protect the Blocklets, and guide them all safely to the exit.

Bonus

8. UFO 246

A rerelease from a couple of days ago, with fixed Audio Driver based issues!

Learning iPhing development

Today's schedule
by 10am, Simple text on the screen
by 12pm, Drawing pictures on the screen
by 2pm, Bit of sound
by 4pm, Move it all around, as if it's some kind of game.

Fingers crossed!!

Although, at this rate, the first bit will likely take me until 4pm

Finding it very hard to find information on iPhing development that doesn't require me to sit through 100 stupid video clips to learn things. I hate when people do that. I CAN read, you know!!! Bah..


Anyhoo, JNKPlat2010 release 5 is probably going to be here in a few days, (time permitting) since I'll be having to recompile it for Mac anyway. If you've made any levels at all, get them sent in!

Balls.
I was hoping that "Buy Mac = Make games for Mac", but apparently it's only "Buy Intel Mac = Make games for Intel Mac"
I have no idea what the current Intel vs PowerPC ratio is, but if you've got a PowerPC Mac, you're going to have to wait a wee bit longer.
Like, until I make a fortune!
So, a long long long long while!!

Meanwhile, my first test game is up.
I've quickly (took about 3 hours to get everything downloaded and setup!!) recompiled UFO246, and it's now (RIGHT NOW!) available to download from the Jayenkai Archive, right beside the Linux link.
woot!

DO be sure you switch the audio driver to FreeAudio, 'cos otherwise the Ogg doesn't play, and the game goes hush-hush after about a minute!!
Guess I'll be tweaking the driver priorities, again!


Macshot!!!

So, if anyone here has a Mac, go give it a whirl, and let me know how things go.

In the interest of interesting things.. Fact : Game plays quicker and smoother on a little tiny Mac Mini than it does on a giant HP PC that's around about 12 times it's size!!

Another week of WarioWare fun, and another week where it all kinda vaguely fits together, slightly! Not that I did that on purpose. Just happened!

Game : Gabby Hops - Gabby likes to hop, but hates bushes.
Game : Sweepers - Find the gem, or die trying!

Music : Pain - Argh, Pain! Pain, PAin! (see here)

Comic : Gabby's Mine - Gabby has a blast!

It's all in my crate, so go give 'em a whirl.

Bee Mai Fwend : 3782-1929-5444

Why will companies deliver things on time!?!

Today, my Mac was meant to be turning up.
It's not 3:30, the Mac isn't here, and even if it does turn up, I've no sodding time to DO anything, what with having to get ready for work, and all..

I was hoping to have the following achieved today.

1. Get it going.
2. Install BlitzMax
3. Test Framework
4. Recompile UFO 246 on Mac
5. Get my first Mac game online.

I've then got another 6 days to sort out the other 2010 releases, fix 'em up a bit with the newest Mac-Tested Framework, and get them all recompiled and uploaded over the course of the week.

Now my schedule's completely buggered up.

FFS!!!!!

Cracking game, this week!
What started out as an unknown game, quickly became fantastically playable. A remake of the little WarioWare UFO Spike thing that I made last week, only with more spike things than is probably sane!

In the end, the game's turned out quite a lot like a Geometry Wars clone. I wasn't expecting that, but there it is!


View on YouTube

Two fire buttons, Z for left fire, X for right fire. I wonder how long it'll take for people to realise that, without me having written it anywhere in the game! Whoops! Never mind.. Carry on!

Cursors to move, Shooty the spikes, pick up the green dots to eventually upgrade your weapon, and that's about it.
Loads and loads and loads of shooty things!


Enjoy!

You can Download it from the Archive for Windows and Linux. ... and with any luck, there might even be a Mac one up there, later, too! (Come on Parcel!!)

---

Credits!?!

Since I was a little strapped for time, this week, I ended up having to quickly nab all the audio from elsewhere. Bah..! Turned out well, though!

Music : Shiny Tech 2, was grabbed from Incompetech.com where Kevin MacLeod spends his time writing bits of music, then popping it all online for everyone to use in whatever projects they might have. Fantastic guy, with a fantastic objective. Well done!

Sound : For the sound effects, I used the wonderful SFXR that DrPetter created. You click a button, it generates a classic retro sound effect. Job done. Not really sure why I haven't gotten around to using it before! Expect more from this in the future!

---

AGAW Scoring : 37 weeks, 39 games. Keeping it up, but a very busy week ahead..

Oh, blimey, what happened to my game!?!

Playing about with super smashy explodey effects, led to the inevitable conclusion that enemy bullets would be completely un-noticable.
Dang..

So, rather than add any enemy, I stuck with the spinny things from the WarioWare game.
This in turn led to me making them move slowly towards you, and then it all went a bit chaotic from that point on.


Weeeeee!!!!!

Tomorrow : UFO 246

This week I'm going for a good old fashioned shooter.
Stuck between two side limits, fly your ship back and forth, and shoot all the baddies.
At the minute, the baddies only consist of the spike thing from the WarioWare game, but I'm going to start adding proper baddies tomorrow.
Trying to keep things within playable limits shouldn't be too hard, but if you stop killing things, they're really going to start building up!

Note, I'd like to enhance this one a little, but am worried about overall system compatibility. So if this is late on Tuesday, there'll be a good reason for it.

ps, hope you like the new look!

I've been considering doing this game over the past few weeks. When I started doing JNKPlat2010, I wondered how neat it would be to lock away a new NeonPlat in the game. (Around about the time I added the Arc around Platdude whenever he uses the Jetpack!)

Today, I got this through the suggestions box.



Nicely put!

Thing is, NeonPlat worked a lot like Centipong.
It's nice, and it's great, but if you try to rework it, it all goes horribly wrong. (see Centipong 2)
So I've actually been putting off a remake, incase I bugger it up.

But.. If I were in the mood to give it a go, let's throw some ideas around.

What would YOU like to see in NeonPlat 2?

I've been trying to keep things juggling around for a while now. Hopping between Socoder work, little bits of music, youtube vids, and then the biggies.. the AGameAWeek's, and the weekly Socoder Newsletter.
There's a heck of a lot to do.

Recently I've also thrown 2WarioGamesAWeek into the pile, and I'm now keeping JNKPlat2010 up in the air, too.
OMG! It's getting mental!!!

To even consider adding to JNKPlatDS08, with some of the more recent blocks, would be a very very silly idea.
It'd be even worse if I then built a converter for the levels, which took any levels that would fit onto the DS, and used them, but threw the others away because they're too big.
That would be a bit daft.
It'd be quick, but it'd be daft.

..
But hey, Sometimes, I tend to do daft things!

So, if in the next week or so, JNKPlatDS08+2 suddenly turns up, you know where it came from.

Meanwhile, as if that's not enough, I just ordered a Mac.
Fucksocks..

Things are about to get a whole lot busier..


Oh, and this week's game currently looks a little like that WarioWare one with the UFO! I liked that, as simple as it was!

Gettin' a wee bit messy, this week, isn't it.. hmm.. Lots going on, and commenting all over the place.
Might need to do something about that..

Anyhoo...

WarioWare DIY

Thanks for the Wario-adds so far, and I'm glad to see there's some interesting games coming out of it. ExciteMike's getting some nice little games going, and I've been playing around with Shadow's little boss thing. Not really sure what was going on with that Platdude tune, though, Jiro!!

Games will stay up until the next Wednesday, worry not Jiro, but I'm not sure about Music.. that'll probably come-and-go whenever I'm in a musical mood! Same with Comics. I'll try to keep everything up for a full week, though.

JNKPlat : Releases

JNKPlat releases appear to be much wanted, so if I have time this week I'll try to slot in a couple more tiles.
Any level packs are muchly appreciated, though. If I could bundle other folks levels, rather than desperately attempting to make a bunch myself, it'll save me a wee bit of time!
12-level-packs seem to be the number I'm sticking to, and work out nicely, with 1 great big level at the end.. but any number will do, and I'm happy with any levels submitted.
(So long as you've "finish"ed the levels, and I don't have to play through them all in a mad dash at the end of the week, before they've saved properly!!)

As for level-hosting. I was going to put up/down'ing into the game itself, but I never got around to it. Maybe I could setup a simple database system for all the levels or something, and if that works out, integrate it into the game somehow.. No idea. One step at a time! Meanwhile, keep on sending them over.

JNKPlat : Tiles

The wee 9px beastie hasn't yet been added into the game, so I might give that a whirl sometime this week. He'd also be a blind follower, like the one Shadow suggested, but he'd be limited to the current flat surface he's on. I try not to add too many AI chrs to the JNKPlat world, mostly because they start to add randomness into the levels.
At the minute, the entire level is under the player's control. Each tap of a button does something, but if you stand perfectly still, nothing at all happens. (except for the occasional flying dart, and flame) The only time things happen are when you step on plungers, move blocks, step on mines, or even turn around for the one way doors. If I add too much AI, then things move away from the player. So, even a little hopping 9px character might have the ability to hop onto plungers, and that would remove certain controls from the player.
Not sure if I want to do that just yet...

Suits.. hmm.. The controls for the suits haven't ever really worked out all that well! That's my main issue with the suits.. Perhaps, though, a new set of suits. ..
The initial set of suits (2004!?) were mostly other-game characters, but those characters require certain control schemes.. If I instead took the little ninja suit, from the far left of the screen, then I might be able to manage it somehow. It's not a known suit, so it doesn't rely on specific rules. *shrugs*
Feel free to throw around some ideas..


Spike Plungers could work, I'll give those a go.

"Editor tools like boxes of stuff!" I don't know what you mean by that!

Floatyness would be nice.
I used to have water and swimming in the game, but the controls never really played that well, so it's been abandoned over the years. Having little "uppy/downy" gravity areas would probably work alright though. Maybe I should play with some gravity switches! (And big red and blue arrows, too!! That's not TOO Mario Galaxy, is it!?!)

Over at Socoder I've stopped doing Wednesday Workshop, which has spawned a heck of a lot of sideprojects in it's time.. In fact, in all honesty, Socoder wouldn't exist without it. And.. realistically, this site probably wouldn't either.
Still, WW's had it's time, and everyone got bored with it.

"Wednesday Worklogs" has now started, where everyone plonks down a nice big lengthy list of things they've done over the week.
.. Hopefully that takes off!

Meanwhile, as far as little quick games built on a Wednesday is concerned, I've now got the whole WarioWare thing to play with.

So, today's the proper launch.

This week's theme, Games with Arrows.

In my little crate, today, you'll find the following.
Comic : "Games With Arrows" a little picturesque look at games with arrows. It's not funny, it's just boredom!
Game : "Sudden Bath" a game with a bath, and three arrows.
Game : "Spikes Ahead" a game with a ufo, two spikes, and three arrows.

and whatever leftovers are there from last week.

Bee Mai Fwend : 3782-1929-5444

I've a couple of new games ready, but what day should I be aiming for?
Monday's Ninty's day, Tuesday's AGameAWeek day so I'm already busy with that.. Maybe Wednesday for my Wario games?
*shrugs*

This is probably going to be the last release

There's a couple of new tiles to play with, and 2 extra packs. One (with 12 levels) from me, and one (with 2 and a bit) from StudioFortress. (If you'd like to attempt the third one of those, load it in the editor.. I couldn't get past the flame-pit!)

I have a couple of extra tile ideas jotted down, but they don't feel like they'd add anything to the game, so I haven't bothered to add them in.
Other than that, I'm all out of ideas. If you can think of anything else that might be fun to add, let me know, and we'll maybe have another release sometime in the future.
For now, the game is as it is, and with 100+ levels it's not anything to complain about.


As always, Make me more levels, and I might be more motivated to add something extra into the mix.
Future releases depend entirely on your contributions.

Same download links, Newer versions. Pop it over the top of the old one, and it should keep all your scores.

Enjoy JNKPlat2010.

I have

AGameAWeek! Seems like a long long time since I last did this.
In reality, it's only been a month, but BOY did that feel like an eternity!

Let's have a look at this week's game..


It's all about shooting the coloured pods.
Controls might be a wee bit odd, at first, but you get used to them!
Hold the left mouse button to turn the launchers around, and tap the right mouse button to fire.
Try to hit alike colours with the right missiles.

If a hole explodes, it shoots out a bunch of new missiles, and they all go swirling around on the screen.

If you shoot a different coloured hole, it will slowly disappear. Rapidly with your launched missile, slower with any others.


You start with only 20 shots, and gain 5 extra shots for each round you complete. Try to remove all the holes in a vague order so you don't run out of ammo. If you do run out, there are 3 extra lives in the game, and you'll restart the same round with the same number of shots, and one extra for good luck.


Is it a good game? Honestly, I have no idea. I've been having fun playing around with it, and making nice pretty swirls, but.... As a game?! I don't know...
I'll let you decide!

You can Download Gravity Bombs from The Jayenkai Archive for both Windows and Linux. One day, I'll get me a Mac, and then I'll have to recompile all these!!

---

AGAW Scoring : 36 Weeks, 38 Games. The lead has fallen. Must try harder!

After the fun of a JNKPlat-based April, it's time to get back into the AGameAWeek spirit, and out of the silly ranty 2BeesInDePub mood that I'm currently in.

This week I'm playing around with black holes. Except they're not black.
The player has 4 coloured shooty bobs, and must fire missiles to clog up the not-black-holes.
Each hole hit blasts out more little missiles, and it all becomes a nice swooshy swirly colourful frenzy of dots.


Weee!

To be honest, this is more of a play-thing. It has scoring, but there's not too much there. It just kinda sucks you in, and you keep playing about with it, but..

Is it a game!?

I dunno.

It's very very swirly!

Tuesday : Gravity Bombs (unless I can think of a better name.. "Swooshy Swirly Colours" doesn't sound too much like a game's title!) and also possibly the last JNKPlat2010 release.

Send in your levels, guys, or the last release will be a bit piss-poor!

2beegames.com has, since May 1st, become IndiePub, but haven't bothered to claim indiepub.com domain, or indiepub.co.uk, or .net, or.. well.. whatever.


For the past month or two, they've been banging on and on about their all-new coming soon site, and how amazing and new it'll be. They were originally going for a nice bright yellow theme, with all nice sparkly-ness, and instead seem to have settled on kind of dull desaturated brown/orange theme, along with a complete identity change.
Still, their main features that they promised are apparently there. Somewhere. If you can find them.

Here's what they've added, straight from their "New" page.

Regular news and articles : Something that everyone promises on every website ever, (see AGameAWeek!) and hopes to god they can keep up with. Fingers crossed!

Experience System : One of those "Karma" things where people spam the crap out of the system in the hopes of getting a bigger score. Over at Socoder, I've a "Do it NOW" thing going, where if someone stops being active, their little scores start to drop. And shitty forum posts don't count. Hopefully the new 2BeesInDePub version will be just as good, and won't end up with older members lording stupidly high ranks, whilst releasing bugger all, over the newer talent who actually do the more interesting things, but haven't yet scored 17 bazillion points.

Asset System : If you draw a massive logo for a game, (or.. um.. a DVD Case ) or make a great theme tune or something, and want to show it off separately, you can list it as an asset. You can then attach it to the game and have the two linked. Neat idea.

Simple Play : If this works, it'll be fan-fucking-tastic. Apparently MY games will work in a little Java box, right in the browser. I still have my doubts, and have yet to see it in action, but.. Fingers crossed!!!


But for every upside there's a downside. (There are more downsides, but I felt it fairer to stick with the 1:1 ratio.)

Be aware, the site is still fresh, so they may be forgiven for a few of these faults. They have had it in Beta for about a month, and probably way more than that, but whatever..

Fucking Middle Click, Damnit : Middle clicking, via whatever the hell crappy javascript bollocks they've used, refuses to leave the current tab alone. If I sit on their homepage, and decide to middle click each of the news items, the first middle click will open the news in a new tab, AND open it in the current tab, thus fucking up my browsing experience completely.

But wait, there's more!!

New Topic : The "New Topic" button (which isn't loading, so shows the generic "No image" icon) doesn't work, and returns a 404, thus leading me to have to post this rant here, instead of on their forum.

Hang on, not done ranting...

Showcases : The area that you showcase your work, and the place where people go "OMG! Great Game!!" by looking at THE SCREENSHOTS.. Except, of course, there are no bloody screenshots. None, zip, nada. Obviously they've used the space for the all-important "Play Game" thing, but since that's not there, it leads most of the games to look like.. um... Well, like this..



Ooh, fantabio!

No New Games : Their fantastic frontpage no longer lists the newest games AT ALL, and their game list page only lists the last four. That's a deathly plummet from 12 to 4, and it's just not bloody well on. Without people clicking the tiny "Newest" link at the top of the game list page, all the new stuff is all going to disappear into a big vat of nothingness, and people will all end up playing the old "Top ranked" stuff over and over and over. It was already an issue when none-members came along and downranked games into oblivion, and it'll be more of an issue now that you can see jack all in the first place.
Handy Hint, that great big "NEWEST" header should be a link to the same place as that little tiny "newest" link at the top of the page.


It seems somewhat ironic that a rather good website has been replaced by a bit of a shit one... on May the 1st . .. . AGAIN!!! Exactly like how BlitzCoder got fucked over by CodersWorkshop, and killed half of it's community in one foul swoop.

Moral of the Story : If it ain't broke, yada yada..

WarioWare DIY arrived via lady-postman at about 12pm today.
I finally finished tap-tap-tap-tap-tap skipping my way through the tutorials about half an hour ago.

My god, talk about mind-numbing pap!

Every little bit of "How to make games" all drawn out in a way that only Nintendo could manage!

To give them credit, it's actually a fairly competent tutorial, and I can see it being really helpful to most.. The "And/Or" tutorial, in particular, was quite comprehensive even in it's fairly short manner. (or maybe I was tapping too quickly )

But, bloody 'ell, they should have an "I am a coder, I know this!" option in there!

Coming soon, Jay Makes Minigames! (and probably Jay Makes Minigame Engine soon after, knowing me!)

If you're a WarioWare DIY'er, shove your friendcode below.

3782-1929-5444

Mmmm.. Wallpaper!







If you'd like to make your own, follow this simple five step guide.

1. Press E to enter the Editor.
2. Draw a quick map.
3. Press F5 to test the map.
4. Press 4 to zoom RIGHT UP CLOSE!
5. Press F11 to take a screenshot.

The picture will be in the Files/ folder.

F1, F2 and F3 will switch between the three styles.

Very rarely do I get feedback direct, other than from the few of you who seem to hang around here a lot, but there is feedback out there.. if you really hunt for it!

This past couple of weeks have, as per usual, been all about the Two-Button-Jump.
"OMG! Two!? WTF!" and so on. I can deal with those complaints, I've heard them many a time before, and even added the extra one-button rubbishy mode to help those who can't shut up about it.
It's annoying, but what the hey.
*fingers in ears* "La, La, La, La, La!!!!" *fingers in ears*

---

The other common complain is the "He looks like Bart Simpson!" argument.
Yes, it's true, colour-scheme wise he does look a bit like Bart Simpson..
But that's purely co-incidental.
Platdude was originally "drawn" in raw code, using QBasic on a really old PC.
He actually looks like this.


He's a little off-colour, but given his arena and the fact I was using QBasic, they were probably the better colour choices. The fact that he's turned out to be a bit "Bart"-like is just because he's been brightened up a wee bit.

He's actually supposed to look like this guy..

But I couldn't quite remember exactly how that guy looked, and accidentally made his head, arms and legs a little bit too short.
I hope he isn't offended!

---

Next up, turning is too slow apparently.
The slow-turn was introduced with the One-Button-Jump, but if it's in the way, I'll get rid.
Next release, Two-Button-Jumpers will be able to insta-turn!!!

Hurray!!

---

Today, I stumbled upon this.

"cover designed by: chelinka"

I must admit, that's some damn fine work, there!

Let's see what we've got..
1. Level and sprite graphics from JNKPlat3D 06
You can tell, because it's got the 06 sphere, and the ugly as crap ladders..

2. Exit from JNKPlat2010 because that's the Dr-Who-Tunnel effect that I made the exit into, this year!!

3. Background, logo and.. maybe even the fluff from the 2010 one, too, but I can't be too sure.


For anyone interested, there's my version!
I did that 2 years ago, and apparently it went unnoticed.
Good think I have slots in my archive for those things, now!

If you're a member of the espalnds forum, let 'em know what's going on. They seem baffled by the many versions of JNKPlat! I tried to register, but it wanted me to sign up to a bunch of stuff I'd rather not.