Occasionally, I like to jot down my current doings. It helps keep track of projects, and ideas, and sometimes getting a bit of feedback helps.
So feel free to do that!

1. Java/MidletPascal
Since I got my latest phone (an LGCookie) I decided to get back into Java coding... Except, without that horrible Java bit.
So, whilst learning MidletPascal, I've released a few games, and also started to write a series of MidletPascal tutorials, too.
So, there's that!
I'm continuing to build up a fun little cookie-games collection, and will post more as they appear.


2. DS.. uhoh!
I started PRC2 AGES ago, and it seems to have already run out of steam, after only 4 games.
..
Having said that, this week's Splat game was fun, so I might add that in there.
..
I hate when projects lose their momentum.


3. AGameAWeek
This week I managed to integrate a whole buttload of stuff BACK into Classic BlitzBasic 2d.
It was actually a bit of a struggle, since I'd coded the whole Badges/Multigame Save engine thing into Blitz3D, and had to head in, remove a bunch of odd 3D commands, and try to get it going in a simpler way.
Who knew the 3D could take control so easily!!?

Why? Well, because I like my mods. B3D's not playing nicely with mods, so I took things back to where they oughta be working.
Should be ok from here on..
Hopefully!


4. Large Project of the moment.
And then we get to this point.
I started a Large Project a few weeks ago, in that I did a few tests in 3D. (fook, mods won't work....)
For the most part, the tests gave me some decent ideas, and I think I'm about ready to start on that nice new big project.
I guess I should also get XNA up and running again.. Get an X360 version, working, too..
Either way, whether I use XNA or B3d, a whole new JNKPlat will be appearing on a PC near you, soon.
Hopefully..!


5. Flash
I keep meaning to do some stuff in Flash.
..
But who has the time!?

This week's Wednesday Workshop (#200! wowie) asked us to create a game using no more than 2000 characters.
I managed to recreate the classic 8-bit title "Splat!", whereby you control a spider through a maze, picking up fruit.
In order to squeeze all that into 2000 characters, I opted for simpler mouse movement, and few other bits and pieces.

Then I figured, what the heck, and decided to make it a wee bit bigger for AGameAWeek.
Guide the worm through the maze, grab the circles, avoid the squares, and..
well, that's about it!


..
I think I've done enough snake games, now!!

Highscores enabled, Badges too!
And if you have a copy of BlitzBasic, you'll also find the 2000 character version in there, too, as sourcecode.

Music
Titles = Me, from the Spider game
Ingame = -Elwood-, "Deadlock", grabbed from Aminet. I really need to deal with my lack of music, somehow!

You can Download Splat 2000 here

Is that title subtle enough for Google, d'you think?

This week, I've been getting to grips with MidletPascal, and dodging it's annoying mid-compile crashes, in a vague attempt to get some games onto my phone.
Sorry folks, this week's AGameAWeek is entirely Java based.
Boooo!!

Or at least, unless you have a decent phone, anyway!

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Stupid spambots are taking the smeg, so I've added a fake captcha thing to see if it does anything.
Like it says, just ignore the thing, and it'll ignore, too.
Sorted!

My cookie work's kicking off, now. With a fully working keyboard, and sprites flying around the screen, I'm ready to start building games.


I've a few games in mind and am hoping to get some work done during the week.
But what does that mean for AGameAWeek?
Well, A Java game is still a game! So, if I get anything nice working, that'll be this Tuesday's AGameAWeek release.
Sorry for all if you'd rather complain about that! But I can't work on 100 things at once.

..
Or rather, I can't get the 100 things done within a week

If I can get Blitz + Java games done, I'll probably post them here, too.
..
But then I also have to get the PRC2 DS thing done, too!
Yikes.. So much!!

Sorry!!

With all the time spent playing around with Java and MidletPascal, this week, along with the time spent on H~S~R, we seem to have hit a bit of a low point.
Still, no matter, here's a "fun" game!

Dusty.
Take lots of dust, push it around by clicking on the screen, and try to get all the dust into the red area.
You'll have to guess where the red area is, 'cos it ain't labelled!
Wherever the dust becomes red, that's where it's at.



There's a timer.
And, to be honest, there's not much gameplay.

This is really just a quick test to see how much fun this game might be on my phone. I'll probably do that version later today, but with chunkier paper/dust, and a few other rules. Who knows! Look out for that.. But, either way there's only taps required, and since the Cookie seems to like that, it's definitely a possibility.

Anyhoo, back to this..
You can Download Dusty here, play it, and maybe even rummage about inside the included sourcecode!

Weird note of the day..
FFS, Boyle's even getting in my Blog's Spam now!!
"That was moving when straight some wierd looking lady started to chorus like an angel! Susan Boyle was a heartfelt throw for a looper for millions!! WOW!"
*sigh*

I've added bloom, and a few more tweaks here and there.
The complete list of changes can be seen inside.
Otherwise, the usual two things.



And..
Same download link, much bigger file!

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1st attempted Java App.
It's a nice quicky program.
Pick a time, click start, when time's up it plays a tune.

..
Yeah, it's not much, but surprisingly the LGCookie (KP500) doesn't have one.
So here's one..

Quicky Timer <-- about 70Kb

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I'm taking a day off from H~S~R today, thinking ahead for next weeks game, which may/may not be a word game.. not sure..

Anyhoo, there are bugs, and Swarmer found a couple, so head inside to have a good read about 'em.
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Yeay! It's Horizontal Shooter Redux!!

In this first release, there's a few pointers. Read inside for those.

Otherwise, nice and quick, here's a picture.


And you can Download H~S~R here!! yeay!

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No scores, No End of Game, No Badges, and to be fair, nothing really new, either!

Can Jay complete about 75% of a game within a day!?



Find out tomorrow, when a probably incomplete H~S~R turns up, at AGameAWeek.com!

Vaseline gives me migraines
Anyway, we managed to go, what, 30+ years of gaming without it, so I think we can manage!

Maybe..

Even more extra lovely glow, today. With a few tweaks, the background's starting to smear! Not sure why, but damn if that doesn't look cool!!
You'll be playing away, and the background colours all start to smear outwards, as if puddles of colour in some water.
Lovely stuff..
And completely inexplicable!

Anyhoo, onto badges.
Badges = Achievements!
I've implemented a nice multi-game-save system, so you should be able to keep your username throughout all future games. Nice and simple method of doing it, hopefully it doesn't go tits up!
(*nngh*)

Unfortunately, with the Badge-Display things only about half coded, and this game really needing to be done by Tuesday, I'm in a wee bit of a rush.
If the badges aren't finished up by tuesday, the game will be released, with an impending secondary "+ Badges" version coming soon afterwards.

Bah!

But at least it's coming!

H~S~R's coming along, nice and slowly.
As I add each new little thing, I spend about an hour playing with the lovely swooshy swirlyness of it.
Mmmm..

The whole Texture-Buffer-Blurry thing has really added some niceness to the game.
And, just for good measure, you can turn off the texture section. So, if the game's not quite up to speed, turn off the blur, and the game carries on without it.

Every element in the game has 2 layers. The Sprite, and the line.
Lines are left in the background, to swooshy away, whilst the sprites are overlaid on top. (but, not actually on top, due to the complexities of my buffer system!) It means that whenever you add the blurryness, only the lines and swooshies are actually blurred.
You still get nice crisp clear game gameplay, but you also get a nice blurring background, too.
And with all the overly blurryness of it, it all blends together, a bit like how the old Geiss screensaver does it, with single pixels lines slowly blending into the overall niceness of the background.



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It's been 30 weeks since I last tackled Horizontal Shooter.

The last time, I used BlitzMax.
It was wonderful, and gave me all manner of nice swirly effects for those lovely background lines.
Mmm..

Until it came to running it on other systems, whereby a huge amount of incompatibilities arose, and the game kinda fell on it's arse and died.

Oh dear.

30 weeks on, let's give it another go!
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So, Red Dwarf.
I know there's a lot of complainers out there, but I loved it.
OK, it wasn't old Dwarf, and it really missed the laugh-track.
But that was good!
A good story, great acting, loads and loads of little injokes.
Good stuff!

More please!

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No AGameAWeek this week, I took a lazy day. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
Good!

Meanwhile, here's a progress report.

AGameAWeek
I started a game last week, but the lack of a certain element made the game completely unplayable. I'll either put that element in, or scrap the game and do something else.

PRC2
Haven't touched it since the last update.. whooopsy!
To be fair, the "missing element game" was meant to go into it, but without it's missing element, there's no point.
Meh, whatever!

Java-Touchscreen-Cookie!!
I've been refamiliarising myself with the Samsung devkit.
Even though my phone's an LG Cookie, there's no point in breaking my devkit. The new phone works just fine with things created with the old devkit, so I might as well stick with it.
Hey, who knows, I might even bother to release any resulting games for other phones, too.
..
But probably not.
Having to develop for so many different possibilities is what put me off Java-dev in the first place!
So I'll be aiming for Cookie, first and foremost.

AGameAWeek, except when not!

It's Easter weekend, the weather outside is gorgeous, and I'm really not in a Sit + Code type of mood.

Doesn't happen very often, but there it is!

So, if there's no Game this week, that'll be why!

Meanwhile, you might like to check out the new "I bothered to tag all the releases" view.
Releases

You can now flick through pages of Just Releases.
How handy!

Giving yourself more work!

Bugger.

Last week I bought myself a new phone.
A lovely little phone!
LG "Cookie" KP500

Touchscreen, and stuff.
It's nice.
But it's time for me to complain, as I usually do.

See, the thing is, Java games. Proper ones.. That you'd pay cash for online..
They try FAR too hard to make themselves look good.
They desperately attempt to fling hundreds of "nice" "polished" "wonderful" sprites around the screen at once, like they've worked oh so hard on the game to make it look good.
But the phone just can't quite keep up.

I don't know why they do it. and it makes my phone unhappy.

Unhappy because, it's basically stuck playing this "Pipe Game" (that's its name) that came with it.
And, between Swarmer and my own recent pipe games, I'm all out of pipes!

So, I guess I'm going to have to damn well do it myself.

If you have any "Touchscreen only" game suggestions, shove 'em in the comments.

..
I'm currently considering bringing back Arcade Slots.

A bizarre mismash of random thoughts this week, alongside an eventual plan of action, and only a day to impliment it!!

woot!

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I'm jumping all over the place, lately, aren't I!!
With Skeleton files to update, Menus to rejig, and even super-complex Socoder work, there's lots and lots and lots for me to do!
This morning, I've hopped back to Platdude's Retro Collection 2. Day 14 is a whole day away from Day 13. That can't be good! The game won't be finished for another year and a half at this rate!!

Right then.. Menus!


Previously I'd copy+pasted the menu system from the previous game. To be fair, it did it's job.
But having the game open up, and look EXACTLY like the last one, probably wasn't all that good of an idea.
So I filled the area in, and left it blank.
Looks rather empty right now, but once I pop some text and buttony things in, it should look ok.
Maybe!!

I also decided to make use of the top screen, with the Dpad/Stylus images being up there alongside a brief description of the game selected.

So, that's roughly what it'll look like.
No doubt it'll have a couple of tweaks, here and there, before I'm done. But for now, that's how it looks.
Now I can add my 4 games into the menu! Woot!

OK, as I said earlier, I've been playing with the Skeleton stuff today.
Whilst I was in there, I wondered how fun it might be if I added some kind of overriding features into my default engine.
You might (or not) have noticed, but since Wednesday Workshop Week #1, I've been placing all my game's data into the System folder, then into it's own Weekly numbered folder within.
If you get ALL my games (from the past couple of years), you can bundle them all together into the same folder.
The root contains all your little .exe files, and then the system folder becomes a great big directory full of numbered data.
It all comes together really well.

(If you download the full 2008 archive, you'll notice they're already setup like that, ready for play!)

So, I might as well add extra juicy bits into the mix.

I've got my skeleton to create a folder & file in Program Files. (AGameAWeek/GameData.sav)
If it can't do it there, it tries again in AppData, and if all else fails, it sticks to the actual game's own directory. (Because some folk might not have Windows permissions.. .. You know how some people can get!!)

Once that's in there, your Highscore name will be saved, and reused Over, and Over and Over again! Yeay!
The game will then keep dropping all it's highscores in there, from this point on, and since I'm adding stuff, I figured "Badges" would probably fit in there, too.
So we'll have, say, around about 5 badges per game, give or take, depending on how many I can be bothered to make!! (And, obviously, the more complex games should have more!)

Shouldn't be TOO hard to implement it all, but given that this will be a One-Time-Only deal, I really need to be sure I get it right first time. (ie, A game from this week would have to be compatible with the exact same file as that from a game I might make in a year's time!!)

Yikes!

Better get to work.

I should probably point out, though, that since this all takes time, I won't be re-releasing Not-A-Worm tonight!! .. I'm overthinking things again!!