And so it begins, the long boring task of making lots and lots of games

I lie. It's not boring!
Centipede took shape, gradually, over the course of a day. Most of the tweaking was in the main engine, as opposed to the game itself, since I had to be sure of all my different variables, and how all the pieces of the menu system would fit together.

Now that the main code is mostly sorted I should be able to get things done at a much faster pace. The actual menu design hasn't yet been decided upon, and to be honest I'm even starting to wonder if it'll even be a "Greenie" collection. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

In the meantime I threw in a small second, slightly related game. Snake.
You know the drill. Run from side to the other, grab all the blobs, and try not to kill yourself.
It's a bit slow. But then, every Snake game is. So it was whilst creating this game that I decided to add Difficulty levels into the mix. I'm not sure where the level will be chosen, but all the games in the pack should use a standard "Easy, Normal, Hard" setting in the main menu, somewhere.
Set it to Hard, and Snake becomes a much more enjoyable game.

More games to come, and suggestions for gameplay mechanics, or additional games are welcome.

Having started and given up on a fair few projects over the past couple of weeks, I've decided to go back to basics. It's time to bring return to the 8-bit Tiny collection, and get things started once and for all.

So today I got working on a base program that can use a series of includes to incorporate a bunch of games. I've designed a neat collection of generic looking graphics, and started listing games that may or may not be included. I'll try to make all the games as Repeat-Play-able as I can, but obviously some games will need to use preset levels and things, so that might be something to avoid for the meantime.

If all goes well it should be quite a little collection once its all finished. (if it ever IS finished!) I'm going to challenge myself to produce at least two games a week, and hopefully I can work quick enough to do more. I've recently enjoyed doing some super-fast coding, getting as much done in a couple of hours as I can, so I might even attempt to do some small games in that space of time, too.

I'll be releasing occasional versions of the game, as the amount included builds up. Depending on how the menu ends up looking I'd expect each release to include about 5 new games, so the first one should be up and running within the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions for games they'd like to see/play on the DS (albeit in a tiny form) list them below.

My only worry, right now, is how to make use of the second screen.....

(If you'd like to see a list of possible games, you'll find it here.)

Retro Remakes are holding a Top Down 2D Dungeon challenge.
Socoder are holding a Remake a Workshop Game challenge.

In a way, these two coincide, since I'd already decided to remake Greenie's Gameboy



Adventure for the Socoder, before the Retro Remakes challenge was finalised.
So that's what I'll be working on for the next couple of weeks, a larger version of Greenie's Gameboy Adventure, complete with a proper storyline, a few more enemies, and more than just Jelly Babies for Greenie to collect!

Or at least, that's the plan, anyway!

Wow, how time flies!
A total of 2 weeks and 4 days work (although I did take a few days off ) , and here's the first release of Arcade Slots.

It's a Slot machine, with Arcade rules applied.


Not much else to say, really!

Download Arcade Slots for DS : 500Kb

Enjoy!

Most of my remakes seem to fall into a single category, in that they all tend to feature my character Greenie.

To be honest, I'm not sure why I started doing this. It was never something I planned, it just kind of happened that way!
Still, here's a whole page dedicated to that stupid bumbling idiot!

Green's 8-bit Tiny Collection

BlitzCoder, 2005. The 8-bit compo asked us to create games in a 8-bit style. No more than 20 sprites, all of which were 2 colors, and 8x8 pixels in size. So I made 12 games in one. Then after I won the compo, I felt compelled to add a few more.
The collection includes (reading, and occasionally playing like something from Cascade 50!)
Football, Centipede, Platformer (JNKPlat!), Maze (JNKMaze!!), Arkanoid, Tron, Bouncer, Frogger, Matrix Blaster, Monkey Balls, Slalom, Tanks, Mummy, Invaders, Shuffler, Dropper, Mr Driller, Squares, Sumo, Shoot It, Spell Em and Make it Blue.
A classic collection if ever there was one.

Download Them All!

Greenie : The Helecopter Hero

I'd been doing the Wed.Workshop for about a year, so when the Retro Remakes 2006 compo opened, I was ready for a decent-length compo. Unfortunately I have the memory span of a goldfish, and within a week or two I'd forgotten I was remaking Activision's Hero. When Socoder had it's "March = Finish it off Month" in 2007, I took the time to.... finish it off! And it turned out pretty well, too.

Download Greenie : The Helecopter Hero

Greenie : The Eccentric Egyptologist

In September, Socoder asked for classic games recreated (or new games!), but with loads of Pickups thrown in for good measure. I spent the time recreating the classic CPC game Oh Mummy. I added a fair few (mostly useless) pickups, but sped up the gameplay from the old 80s pace. I also added a couple of tweaks to the gameplay. And multiplayer

Download Greenie : The Eccentric Egyptologist

This page was updated Jan-2009

6 nice little games, all running happily on your DS.

There might be more releases in the future that I forget to add to this page, so keep your eye elsewhere on my site, just incase!

#1 - JNKPlat

JNKPlat, the DS edition was a souped up version of the classic JNKPlat games. It features "Amazing" animated graphics!

Click here for more JNKPlat DS info, and the download!

#2 - Stringy Things

This is a half-finished version of Stringy Things, but there's plenty of gameplay to be had within. A nice bunch of word games, a game of Yahtzee, and the "Escape" game from Platdude's Retro Collection.
Play it.. You'll like it!!
You can Download Stringy Things 2-ish here

#3 - Arcade Slots

My third release was Arcade Slots. A set of slot machine games with Arcade rules.

Download Arcade Slots for DS

#4 - Platdude's Retro Collection

Platdude gets his own collection of retro arcade classics! Click here for a full list of games, and the latest release.

#5 - Centipong DS

A remake of the PC edition, whereby you control the Pong paddle, and have to destroy the centipedes with your ball.. And then it goes crazy!
Nice and simple gameplay, but fun.
You can Download CentipongDS here

#6 - Puzzobomb

A nice simple puzzle game.. Connect the alike coloured blocks to make them disappear.
LOTS of levels..
Like, tons of them!!
Really really really a LOT of levels!
You can Download Puzzobomb here.

A list of games you can download, and play in Windows. Most systems can suitably handle most of these games, so no need to worry if you've a slow machine.

To help neaten things up, I've moved all my main Platdude games to their own JNKPlat page.
The Greenie page has become home to some of my Remakes.
You can find the best of my Wednesday Workshop entries, all ripe for the picking.
And if you still want to try out some more stuff after all that, you can check out the Space Monkeys.

and then, there's...

Star Trek Pong : 3!

Back when I worked in Amos on the Amiga, I coded a silly little test game of Pong with the 2 Enterprises batting a ball to each other. It was very silly! Then I made Star Trek Pong 2 on the Amiga, and added all sorts of collectible items. It was kind of like Arkanoid, but for Pong. And it was still silly, but it was also fun!
When I first got started in Blitz, I made Star Trek Pong 3, and this is it. It's still silly, but it's still fun. Think of it as Arkanoid meets Pong... But with Deathmatch rules thrown in, too.

Download Star Trek Pong 3

Stringy Things 2

One of the last games I made in Green's 8-bit Tiny Collection was Spell Em. As soon as I'd created it, I realised how much fun it was to play, and decided to build it up into a bigger collection of word games. The result was Stringy Things, which was a good game to play, but not exactly the best looking game in the world. A year later I recreated it with much better graphics. Stringy Things 2 is probably the best collection of word games you could have in one single download!

Download Stringy Things 2

Even More!

For the latest info in my Windows game creation, check out the WinDev section of the site, and to try out a few of the oddities, you can take a peek at the Experimental section.

Greenie - The Eccentric Egyptologist Version 0.9
A few additions will be added in due time, but for now this is all well and good!
Enjoy running away from Mummies!

I decided to do things the easiest way, code wise. To unlock the exit to a level, you need to open all the boxes within that level. Nice and simple.
There are 10 level layouts currently in the game. I might add more, I'm not sure. So far the largest level only uses up about 1/16th of the available map size, but if I make them too big they get a little dull.
So, 10 levels, and then it loops back with a higher difficulty, going right up to level 100.
There's plenty of pickups, 3 types of enemies, and even a stash of TNT to blow 'em all up with.
I've also played about with the colourings a little. There are 6 Background colour schemes, and the engine picks out one colour for floors, one for buttons and one for blocks. It keeps things a little more interesting instead of it all being drab sandy yellow throughout.

The game, as it stands, is pretty much what I'd aimed for when I started. It has all the elements I'd planned and a fair few more.
But I've two more weeks before the Monthly Challenge's deadline.
What more could I add?
I'm sure I'll think of something!

Greenie - The Eccentric Egyptologist - Coming soon!

|update| The final release is available here |update|

This month, Socoder are having a "Make a game with Pickups" challenge.
It took me a bit of a while to decide what game to do, but I think I've finally settled on one.


Greenie - The Eccentric Egyptologist.. Named so it fits alongside Greenie - The Helecopter Hero.

It's a remake of Oh Mummy but with a couple of tweaks here and there, including the way you open the areas.

Instead of just being "Walk around the box" there's now a set of buttons around the edges of the areas. Push down all the buttons and then the area opens up. But if you leave the buttons, they slowly pop back up again. This means you have to run all the way around, trying to keep the buttons down.
Different sizes and shapes of areas means there's plenty of variety, and the levels can become easy/hard depending on how the areas are layed out.

So far, only Mummies are in the game, but I'm planning on adding a few more creatures, and the pickups are coming along rather well.
The one thing I haven't yet decided, though, is how to end each level.
In the original game, you had to find the key in each level, then get back to the door. For this one I'd like to make things a little more complex.
..
But I might not! I haven't decided yet.

More info later.

|update| The final release is available here |update|

I'm currently working on a nice shooter game. A "take it in turns to kill each other" type blaster.
Like Scorched Earth..
Or, if you prefered the Amiga version, like I did, Scorched Tanks.

Anyway, this game isn't exactly like either of those!
Imagine the tanks being UFO's, and they're floating in space, with a bunch of randomly sized planets between them.
They fire shots, and the weapons float about in space, being pushed and pulled by various gravitational forces, until they either float away, hit a planet, or hit a player.. (sometimes that could even be yourself!)

I've been working on this game for a couple of days, now, and it seems to be coming together quite nicely.
For it's title theme, I decided to take the original theme from Scorched Tanks. A tune by Sidewinder, named Horizon's Edge.
I spent most of today working on a nice new rearrangement of the theme, and figured I'd let you hear the tune as it currently stands.
Horizon's Edge : Beta!

The mix will probably be tweaked, here and there, between now and the game's release (I'll probably tighten up the start, and neaten the end a little, and do a few little twiddly bits in the middle) but, all in all, it's pretty much what I wanted out of it.

Enjoy!
And.. Credit goes to Sidewinder for his amazing 30Kb, 4 channel original version!

Yesterday whilst browsing through Google Analytics, I stumbled upon a website for the magazine WebUser. They'd sent 3 people to my site, from this webpage.

It seems that on page 40 of their latest issue (Issue 169), they'd included a link to Horizontal Shooter! With no description of that page available online, I knew my only choice was to pop out and buy a copy.

They gave me a paragraph.


o/ !!!YEAY!!! o/

They could've told me!

I decided to start a Dev diary here, for all my DS Developing. I figured people would eventually stumble across it, and start reading away at all the fun coding. Either that, or they'll completely ignore these bits, and just download the Experimental stuff like they usually do.
Either way, this is going to be a part dev-diary, part progress report, and part release schedule for all things DS.

I currently have 4 DS Projects on the go. They are Stringy Things, JNKPlat, An Alien Breed type clone, and a Green game collection.
Of those, Stringy Things will probably appear online first, then the Alien Breed thing.

---

Stringy Things - 75%

You probably played the version of this I released last year. This newer version contains a load of bugfixes, a whole new (much better) word list, and so far 2 new games. I'm hoping to build that number up a bit!
It's also got a new menu system, which allows for more variety in gameplay. As you can see in the screenshot, Strings now has an Endless mode, which means that new bubbles appear at the top, as you play.. Other playmodes are being integrated into the other games.
I've shifted "Dice" over to the "More Games" tab at the top of the screen. This lets me place in some extra types of games that I normally wouldn't be able to add, like new addition "Extract"
If you'd like to play a windows version of this game, head over to here, where Chris Davis' (aka Magicman) original version is playable.
I ported it over into Stringy Things, added a few DS friendly pickups, and with bubbles instead of squares it fits into the collection quite nicely.
The main issue I'm now having with Stringy Things is memory related. Or at least I think that's what's causing it. There are many curious bugs appearing where there previously were none.
I'm attempting to fix all these issues, and you can be sure they'll be gone by the time I release the new version.

---

Alien Breed - 10%

So far the engine looks like this.
It's not too bad, considering I'm only at 10%!
So far the player's onscreen, and the background's scrolling well. The interface works reasonably well, and even the control schemes are integrated nicely.
Four different control schemes are available.
1) Walk in the direction of the DPad, and fire by pointing. "Default style"
2) Walk/Strafe with the DPad, turn by pointing, fire by holding the trigger. "FPS style"
3) Walk in the direction of the DPad, and fire in the direction of the Face Buttons. "Robotron style"
4) Walk in the direction of the DPad. Hold A to shoot. Hold B to strafe+shoot. "Alien Breed style"
They're selectable via the menu system, so I know that's all working well!

Thus far I've not added any collision, or enemies, or pickups, or even a decent map. So I've got quite a bit to go, yet!

---

JNKPlat DS - Unsure!

Last year I released the first version of JNKPlat DS. People enjoyed it, which was nice
It was the first JNKPlat game to feature smooth animated graphics, and it gave the game a whole new feel, turning it more into an Action platform than just a puzzle game.
I've come to like that style more and more over the past year, and as such I'm not at the point where I'm considering redoing the whole game, as opposed to just re-releasing it with a level editor added.
See, if I redo it from scratch, I can redo all the graphics. I can rescale the whole game, and give it an even bigger, even better look.
It's not an easy decision, though. JNKPlat has essentially looked exactly the same for the past 10 years. Do I really want to change what it looks like!?

So, Either I restart the whole thing, or I just add in a level editor and rerelease the old one.
I'm not sure, yet!

---

Green's Collection - Unstarted

And lastly to the biggy!
The original collection, for windows, is available here. It's a set of small games, each with basic rules, and gameplay. They're fun, but small.
I've always thought a DS version of the collection would be fun, but so far I'm unsure of the graphical style I should go for.
As far as memory's concerned, the lesser the graphical style the better.. That way I can reuse plenty of the graphics, and fit in lots more games. But since I'll be using sprites for everything, I'll probably need chunkier graphics, so I can fill the screen, and not end up with only 128 8x8 pixel images on the screen! (128 is the DS's limit of sprites onscreen at once.)
I'm not sure if I'll go for the 8-bit style, try out a 16-bit style, do all line graphics, or maybe even go down a couple of steps and go for a super-retro Atari2600 style of graphics.
If I plan out a few games, maybe the graphics will find themselves. But I haven't even gotten that far, yet!
This game is mearly a sidethought in my mind, since I have plenty more things to be getting on with.

If you have any ideas for the collection, feel free to pop them into the comments below.

Nothing special this week. If you knew me at the time I did Green's Tiny Collection, then you've no doubt seen this game.

I thought I'd post it, though, to remind myself of what a great idea it once was.

Keep control of both Platdude and his football.
You use the spacebar to jump. Jump and header the football to send it flying over obstacles.
If you pick up any items, you can use them by hitting the cursor key in the direction of the item. That is, the powerup display shows 4 items, 1 up, 1 right, 1 left and 1 down. As you pick up items, they rotate within the display, until 4 pickups later, the oldest is disposed of whether it's been used or not.

The gameplay exists on a single 2D Plane. There's plenty of Parallax scrolling going on, and the levels run on into each other meaning the whole game keeps on moving whether you're in the main menu or halfway through level 8!

Not that there's 8 levels, of course! It never quite got that far..

The game's main issue is it's collision detection and physics. At the time I was still learning all about the strengths and weaknesses of Blitz coding. I'm sure that nowadays, given my better knowledge of Blitz, I could come up with a much better engine.

In fact, I might even give that a go.

But not right now... Lots of other stuff to be working with at the minute!

You can find Super Bouncer here

This week, an In-Progress experiment.

Use the flash thing on the top right of the site. Doodle yourself a little image, then click "New" which will not only start you off again, but also save the icon to a file on my site.

In the next few days I'll be collecting all the icons (and moderating them!) and then placing them into future games. They'll be used in plenty of ways, from Picross puzzles, to odd little incidental imagery.

Hopefully I'll be able to collect a fair few of them, and I'm looking forward to seeing what images you can come up with.

Thanks for your help.

Week 22 of the Wednesday Workshop was Racing week.

The first game I attempted was a UFO Fly game, the game you see entered.. But after I'd done that, I attempted a couple more engines.
#1 was a mess, and never really got anywhere. It was a nice graphical effect, but nothing more than that.

#2 however, was a Ball Bouncing AI Racing grand prix game!
Here it is, as it sits on my hard drive. Unlike last week I haven't bothered to neaten it up at all, and this is pretty much how I left it... And it's really unfinished, so there's no end to it.. Just keep floating away!

Use the cursor keys to bound your way through the level. Start by pushing up, then right. But, obviously, don't get stuck in the roof!

A very strange game.
Would it be worth finishing this one off?
No.. Probably not!

"Create a Horizontal Shooter".. That was the compo rules for The Horizontal Shooter compo, over at SHMUP-Dev.. Or at least I think it was there.

I started this entry in January 2006. I know this because the game has a directory numbered 031..Since starting Wed.Workshop I've been numbering all my dev-dirs according to the number of that week's workshop!


Why I never finished it, I don't know.
Maybe I grew bored of it. Or maybe I realised it really wasn't that much of a challenge.

Whatever the case, tonight I decided to spruce it up a little.. So I added in a few sound effects, tweaked the settings a bit, and then added in a tune I found in my huge Chiptune directory.

So, Enjoy!
Mouse controlled, shoot the right, guard the left. Catch bullets in your trail!

Oh, and watch you don't fall off the edges since there's no edge detection! Nice and slow!

For those interested, the chiptune is "chromag-shock_therapy23.xm"

When I created JNKPlat 3D (about 3/4 way down here) I intended to have an end-credits sequence. So I composed this nice theme for that purpose.
Unfortunately I have an odd knack of never finishing off games, so an end credit sequence never appeared in the game.
For the new JNKPlat I grabbed this theme and turned it into a smaller Mod, but some people like it, so here's the original version in it's MP3 format.
Closure.mp3

Sometimes you forget about games!

I worked on this game for a while, back in early 2003. The idea was to nick the whole Pokemon idea, and create a bizarre Coding based adventure game.
So, I nicked the graphics, too!

I also added a bunch of music that I'd grabbed from Aminet, and designed a nice Logo.
I got the map pretty much working as expected, and even got it so that text would appear in a little box.

It kinda looks like my recent workshop "Quest" games, really.
But, as with all my games, it got placed to the side and forgotten about.

Maybe it's something I'll ressurect in the future. I don't know.
I think if I ever do come back to it, I'll be better off starting from scratch.

Give it a go if you really want to! (Note : Runs in 320x240, fullscreen!)

While I was playing Ultima Online a lot, I decided to do a silly Ultima based comic. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it took ages to cut out and manage each of the panels of a comic, in order to make the pages look good.
As I always say, "A simple idea can always be made easier if you use Blitz to do all the boring work for you." It's a long saying, but it fits.

Hyper Llama Man lasted for 6 pages.. Not a long time, but at least I managed to pull myself away from Ultima!
The first page of the comic was done entirely in PaintShop Pro. It's kind of ugly. The next one was done using a quickly made comic strip editor. That was Strips. It worked, but it was specifically designed to create boxy plain-text Hyper Llama Man pages.
Pages 3,4,5 and 6 were all done using Strips 2.


Strips 2 was a much more advanced editor, allowing for sliced panels, bubble speech and a variety of fonts.

It's more or less in a fully working state, but if you do decide to use it, keep saving often, because it'll probably crash, or do something stupid!

You can download Strips 2 here.