This week we're playing with Penises!
A remake of a classic test game, that never really went anywhere.

The game is only about half done, since I pretty much rushed the whole thing yesterday, but it has 10 nice levels, and should hopefully be a good start.


Click the penises to turn them around, and put their little hats on to give them a skill.
Lovely stuff.

Continued Penis Extensions will be based upon how much you love it.
The more I know you want it, the bigger it'll get.


Penis Extension comes on Windows, Linux and Mac, and the game is available from The Jayenkai Archive.
Enjoy!

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AGAW Scoring : 39 weeks, 39 games. Kept up, but have now ran out of buffer!! I gotta keep up the AGameAWeek rate, now!!

Aaaah, lovely weather!

As Dan Bull sang this week, it's wonderful weather for gaming, and even better if the game is Scrabble!
And that's about all I've done. Alongside animating this weeks main character and drawing my default ground tiles, I've not really done a whole lot.
The game is due on Tuesday. Wish me luck!!

Blimey, that didn't take too long.

Well, it DID, but it took significantly less time than I thought it would.

iPhing "View Based" Jumpstart

A series of tutorials that will allow old-style coders to quickly grasp the bits and pieces they need, to develop games for iPod/iPhone/iPad (iPhings)

Part One : Tilemap
Part Two : Touching
I've written this in near-realtime, so where I look like I'm freaking out about the language, I am actually freaking out about the language.
Feel free to nitpick all the many faults that probably appear within this week's little adventure!! Together, we can make my phings better!
Read More

So far, we've had the following..
...

Day 1. (Last Wednesday)
Do What?!
Wha.!.!
Euww.. Visual stuff.. Eeek!
Argh!!


Day 2. (Thursday)
Pissed about with other stuff on my Mac, in a vain attempt to ignore the fact that I had to learn stuff.

Days 3-7. (Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue)
Back to AGameAWeek, recompiling all the Blitz stuff, uploading those, fixing up JNKPlat and Gravity Bombs.

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It seems that, no matter how much I want to, I don't actually have all that much iPhing time. AGameAWeek will always suck up most of my time. Bah!
That, and being cramped onto my only USB keyboard seems to have completely bollocksed up my hand. Either that or it's the MagicMouse being all flat.. *shrugs*

---

Anyhoo, let's move onto week 2.

Day 1. (yesterday)
Attempt to understand OpenGL.


Manage to create my usual set of graphical test functions. (CLS, SetCol, SetRot, SetScale, SetAlpha, DrawRect)
Get a few squares onscreen, and realise that I'm going to have that strange anti-aliasing issue that I had with Blitz3D. That is to say, even with my best attempt at drawing things perfectly straight, the grid I drew didn't quite end up actually being perfectly straight.

This is a floating point issue, and will just end up being annoying. It's a case of trying to get the right set of numbers to look good on the screen.
Maybe a later attempt might fix that, but in the meantime I'm going to try to piss about with that "view" mode, instead. eugh..

Day 2. Today's plan.
Piss about with that "eeuw, Visual, eek!" mode, whilst trying to do my damned best to ignore ever having to open up the horrible bloody visual based editor.
The plan, to create a grid of tiles onscreen, let the player tap them, and maybe have a sprite bobbing around on top.
...
Wish me luck!!!
I'll let you know!

Third week of chaos, and... well, in honesty, this was all thrown together late last night! MacWeek really took it out of me, and I had no time, but hey! Still did it!!

Game : Bully Bob - Bob needs to learn a lesson
Game : Sea Pea, See - Can you See the Peas in the Sea?
Music : Plat 2 - 12" remix of Platdude's Theme
Comic : Click Here - Click for Awesome

Meanwhile, Shadow1w2's been sending me some nice .mio programs. I've yet to have any time to look at them, but once I've given them a whirl I'll start cataloguing all of my .mio files, and popping them up somewhere nice.

Also, Shadow1w2 took some time to build a short animation template, and a nice video example. You should go take a look!

Bee Mai Fwend : 3782-1929-5444

Nearly two whole years in, and you'd have thought that more people would've taken notice of the guy making AGameAWeek. I've moaned before about lack of interest, and I go in and out of these little phases.. It doesn't hurt, it's just a little saddening when there's not much interest.

This week, we've hit another "Wha!?" point.

Having finally got the Mac, and released no less than TEN entire Mac games within a week, I've had the lowest number of visits all year!!
What's that all about!?!?!

An average of 50 a day has plummeted to about 15-20!

I'm slightly worried that this might be a result of last week's virus attack.
Dangit..

No matter.. Keep at it! Roll with it!
Eventually, some day, they might start to visit!

This week we'll try something entirely based upon the title of the game.
This title's been on my mind for a LONG long time, and it's about time I did it.
And what better time than now, when I really should be giving the site a little kicking.
The game will be about it's title, and the title will stick out like a sore thumb, in an insanely desperate attempt to make people notice it.

Will giving a game an extremely quirky name make more people visit the site?!
Who can tell!

There's only one way to find out!!

So, starting with 30 nice little frames of animation, I'm going to be making a lovely little puzzle game.
If anyone would be interested in helping out with some levels, let me know. But this'll be a rush job, 'cos I only have until Tuesday to do the entire thing!!

Uhoh, the ratio's dropping!

No matter, this week's been SUPER busy, what with it being the week I finally got a Mac.
As seen the other day, I re-released 8 of my games for Mac. It's not just Steam on Mac!!! You can play UFO246, too!

Today sees a couple of extra bonuses.


I've been slowly rejigging bits and pieces of these two games all week.
One came out nicely, the other one. Well.. I dunno.. Is it a game, yet!?

Gravity Bombs

The thing they don't tell you about the almighty Magic Mouse is that you can't drag with the left mouse button, then tap the right mouse button, because there's only one blinkin' mouse button!
Sure, it's touch sensitive, and is nice under about 99% of circumstances, but playing Gravity Bombs is pretty much impossible.
A rejig of the controls was in order.

Now you drag, and the bombs shoot off when you let go. If you preferred the drag+right click, that'll still work.
Then I came across mouse-issue-2, where you couldn't let go of the mouse once you'd started dragging, or it'd fire. Pretty annoying when you clicked the wrong shooter! I've now added a square in the middle of the play area. If you drag into that, it'll stop you from firing.
*sigh*

Next up, I've thrown the game into a 4-round loop.
Round 1 is normal, round 2 adds more holes, round 3 removes some, and round 4 makes sure there's only 2 colours, so you can get nice big swirly things happening!

I've tweaked the swirliness, played with the bomb-distance, and even upped the number of bombs-per-hole, just so it all looks a little bit nicer.

Is it a better game?
I actually think I've somehow managed to make it even easier, which means you'll probably get bored with it a whole lot sooner.
Bugger..

Looks nice, though!
Gravity Bombs is Available for Windows, Linux AND MAC!!!

JNKPlat 2010 - 5th release

We're now up to 137 levels, and I've added in a couple of new tiles. (Level count's up on the top left!)

An all-new baddy has been added into the mix, alongside a special new tile that may/may not be immensely fun to play with.

Another dozen new levels from me, all Jack themed, and a couple more from other folk.
Keep those levels coming, and I'll carry on updating!

JNKPlat 2010 is Available for Windows, Linux AND MAC!!!
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AGAW Scoring : 38 weeks, 39 games. Uhoh!!!

With all the Mac stuff, I've not had a chance to do a new game.
NOOoooooo!!!!!!

I suppose I could rush something in the next 24 hours, but I'm much rather be playing with those extra trimming, and getting things a little nicer.


First off, Gravity Bombs. Not touched it yet, but it definitely needs at least one tweak. .. the Mac's "Superior" (bah) Magic Mouse has a lot going for it, but it also has an inability to right click whilst holding down the left mouse button. Which is pretty much a requirement of Gravity Bombs!
That needs fixed, and I'll probably take the time to rejig the rules a little bit.

Although I'm not sure entirely how!


In addition, I finally got around to adding the little 9-pixel-baddy into JNKPlat2010. I called him Jack, on account of his jumping, and he's happily hopping around on his platform, left to right, following Platdude, ready to kill him! Oh joy!

I've made 6 whole levels with Jack, so expect the next release to include.. um.. 6 extra levels! If you've built any, get them sent right now!!!

---

Now, about that Alien Deathmatch 3.

There's an issue I'd forgotten about.
If you try playing H~S : Horizontal Shooter you may/may not come across a bug.
On some systems, H~S plays at about 2 frames a second, because annoyingly, there are massive buffer-based issues depending on which system the game's being played on, and also which graphic engine it's using. (Those OpenGL/DX9/DX7 options that nobody ever touches in the OptionBar!)

Alien Deathmatch relied on having a drawable buffer.
The whole map is drawn onto a buffer, and then all those lovely blood-splats are also drawn on top.
If I can no longer draw onto a buffer, we could still do a generic tile-based map (as I have in JNKPlat) and get away with a pretty decent sized map.
But the blood. That won't work.
Sure, I could do sprite-based blood splats, but those'll have to dissipate as the game carries on, and I always thought magically vanishing blood splats looks a little shabby.

Booo!
Anyway, I now have the big-3. Win/Lin/Mac. With all three available, I'll be trying all sorts of methods to do these things, and I'll let you know what does/doesn't work.

NeonPlat2 : Possible
AD3 : Possible
Some random crazy game : More likely!

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!!)

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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!

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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