Game #2's turning out quite well, except it'll probably need to be taken down a peg or two.
Currently it's, shall we say, a little psychedelic!
And, that's only amplified once it gets onto the blurry DS screen!
Lots of motion + lots of colour = lots of Weeeeeeee!!!

Not a good combination.

It looks great, but it's probably not going to look that great for long.
Which is a shame.

The player's in, and I'm ready for adding AI to the game.
Once that's done, Game #3 will follow quickly afterwards, since Games 2 and 3 share a large amount of elements.

Lovely stuff.
More to come..

Just a nice simple game this week, mostly done after my shouting at Worms, earlier this week..
It's nothing fancy, as I've been short on time, but.. We'll call it a Start.!



Ship Flinging!
20 ships on screen.
Each one counts their distance from their start place.
Blast them all to the right, and get a score based on their total movement.

Simple stuff.

You can Download Ship Flinging here.

If you want a complete worms clone, you'll just have to wait. Kinda busy right now!

This morning I started a bit more work on this week's AGameAWeek. (Tomorrow! eek!!)

And then I thought to myself "Why don't I finish off that new Showcase design for Socoder.. Should only take about 10 minutes".
It didn't take 10 minutes.
Instead, it took all day!

So, no work on my games, today!

The new Socoder showcase style is now up and running. Prepare the linkage!!!

Game #1, Sokoban, required a nice scrolling tilemap, of infinite size. I spent a couple of days getting that all up and running, so that it'll do for other games, too.
But today, Game #2, Surprise!, required a different type of map.

Game #2 needs a wraparound map, so you can move from one side to the other, and carry on in a continuous loop.
This means that as well as drawing tiles where they're meant to be, on the DS's 512x512 pixel Background Layer, I also have to draw tiles if they're off to the far left, or far right of the map, too. Oh, what fun! (Game #1 didn't want this, as it's be confusing, in Sokoban, to suddenly see the left of the map on the right hand side!!)

It took me about an hour of tweaking, and a whole lot of %'s to get things up and running, and.. Assuming that what the screen's showing me is the same as what's in it's memory (!) I can now get to work on Game #2.

Game #2 should be done by tomorrow, as I know exactly what's going into it, and it's not exactly the world's most complex game!

I just paid 400 points for Worms on X360.
What the hey, right?! It's Worms... What could possibly go wrong!?!
..
Well, aside from the things I ranted about, on the original DS version, a long while ago..

Well, would you believe it, there's something wrong with the Xbox Live version, too!

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Bug fixes already! Oh dear!

Sokoban had a bizarre map limit bug, whereby if you were off the left hand side of a small map, it freaked out, and the screen jiggled around like crazy..
..
oops!

That got fixed early this morning, and then since it's Friday I took most of my time working on this week's AGameAWeek. (So I can bugfix Sunday and neaten it Monday, ready for release on Tuesday.)

..
In many ways, I haven't done anything to PRC2!

Maybe tomorrow!

PRC2 : Still only 1 game..

I'm still building up the basic reusable map functions!
Had some crazy memory issues, yesterday, but everything seems ok, this morning, so it's time to move from silly map things, to actually building the game up.
Starting with a strange grouping of maptiles, I'm going to have to add crates, and a player, and get the movement up and running.
It should be pretty easy to do, though, as all the arts ready and waiting.
good-good!

So with all that being done today (hopefully) I should be able to move on to game #2.
I'm not really sure what Game #2 will be, just yet, though.
Something simple, methinks..

I should probably point out, that there's still one issue I'm having, though..
Sokoban's on the bottom screen.
Since the game uses a nice neat scrolling screen, it's really difficult to warrant the use of both screens.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that..

Yeah, I figured I'd forgotten a few things, and as Sokoban gets built up, slowly but surely, all the forgotten things are poking their heads out, waiting to be sorted.

Click inside for coder-heavy stuff.. or just grab Sokoban from earlier today and play that for a while!!
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As mentioned the other day, whilst sorting out all the PRC2 stuff, I first created Sokoban for windows, using Blitz.
So here it is.
Nothing special.


A is the hard pack, B is the easy one.

or as I like to think of it..

A is really hard..!
..
And so's pack B.

B's meant to be "For children and beginners", but I could only get up to level 11!
*sigh* I suck at sokoban!

All levels are from David W Skinner's Sokoban Level Site, and there's plenty of 'em.


You can Download Mini Sokoban here, and get in some practice before PRC2 turns up.

Yesterday was spent getting Sokoban to work in BlitzBasic for Windows. It ended up reasonably well, but there's a few things that should be tweaked, including one persons complaint that bundling all 600+ levels into a single pack kinda kills the fun of it.. A dull trek through a long list of simple levels before you even touch on the slightly more difficult levels, does not a fun game make.

So, I'll split them back up into their seperate packs, and give folk a nice selectable menu system.
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I'm yet to start coding anything gamewise, yet, but I've made my first start on the first game.

Gerinych over at GBATemp suggested a Sokoban clone.
Usually, I avoid Sokobans. They're kinda dull, generic and boring after 5 seconds, but there's something in Sokoban that's really useful right now.
Sokoban has a LOT of levels, and since one of the Socoder members (JL235) is making his own Sokoban clone, he knew where I'd find a whole big bunch of levels for it.

So, in rapid succession, here's what happened this morning.
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This time around, every game will have it's own quickly made titlescreen.
Not wanting to spend too much time doing each one, I figured I'd get away with doing NES style titles. They're simple, but effective.

I'm deciding all this, now, because it's so much easier than having to frantically throw it all together, later on, with 10 or so games all needing to be worked out!

So, the style right now is, Title of game at the top, highscores below, and "Press Start" below that.
Nothing fancy, just enough to say "And now, here's....."
I also figured that, if that were on the bottom screen, then the top screen would probably do for placing the nice subtle control scheme icons, from last time.
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For DS Development, I use PALib and DevKitPro.

DevKitPro compiles everything nicely for the DS, whilst PALib is a set of functions that makes everything nice and usable, as opposed be being a baffling chaotic mess!

However, if you try updating it, a whole fleet of incompatibilities arise, be it because of DevKitPro changing, or PALib. And, it's not just little things either. A simple PALib upgrade will mean that pretty much all of my old games start getting little breaks in them, and it's a whole big bunch of work to fix 'em all.
So, for that reason, I've stuck to an old edition of PALib and DevKitPro (They're both here, in my Quick-Learn DS Jumpstart guide.)

The two I'm using work well enough that my games will run well. And that's the important bit.
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A nice and simple game, this week.

Since I'm trying to decide what style Platdude Retro Collection 2 should have, I decided to try out a style in Blitz first, and see how it looks.
You might notice it's still a little Atari 2600.
..
I'm not sure if I'll stick with that.

But I do like the nice big chunky sprites, and the whole thing feels much more retro than PRC did, originally..
So..
I dunno, still unsure right now.

In the meantime, You can Download Storm of Idigidragon Here.

It's a nice little mouse based shooter. And it's quite quite difficult!
Just avoid everything, and keep shooting Idigidragon, until he inevitably kills you.

For the record, my highscore's been about 131.
Probably easy to beat!

I say "Project", but of course, being me, I mean projectS..

#1
PRC:2 - 0%
I'm restarting Platdude's Retro Collection from scratch, and building it up a bit bigger than last time, with nicer per-game spritesheets and things like that. Bigger = Better, usually.. .. I'll make sure that's true, don't worry!

So far the selection's getting too big for it's boots, and at current rate it'll take about 3 years to finish the project, so.. going to have to whittle it down, and remember the "Keep it Simple" rule that I used the last time.

If you'd like to contribute some crazy game ideas, you can either post them in the comments, or head over to This GBATemp Topic where there's already a bunch of wild ideas formulating.

#2
Centipong XNA - 75%
The main issue with this game, right now, is that I've no idea how good/bad the control scheme will end up being. I'll be getting a X360 Wired Controller on Monday, though, so it'll all be tried and tested, and ready for the next batch of gaming to be added. I'd rather not impliment the whole game, and then find out the controls are impossible on the 360!!

#3
JNKPlat 360 - 0%
Again, this is a thought only at this stage, but one I oughta start working on soon.
JNKPlat with wraparound-cylindrical levels, with each level being a seperate layer within a tower.. Work your way inwards.. No idea how that'll look, might be a bit too much visual stuff, and will probably be reduced quite a bit!



Other than those, I've got AGameAWeek to be working on, too.
And a bunch of Socoder website stuff that I seem to keep putting off.

Yikes!
Busy-busy-busy!!

You can Download JXW here
This one's for me!!
If other folk enjoy it, then so be it, but I made this for myself because I was getting really ticked off by the lack of decent crossword games* on the DS.

There's 3479 crosswords in the game.

Each one's selectable from the very uninteresting title screen, and playable whenever you want.

Pick a level, play it, done.

If you want to save midway, hit start to return to the menu, then quit. When you come back, it should be right where you left it.
Only one save is available, though. It only saves the last puzzle you were playing.

Other than that, it's nice and simple.
Reds show up where you've got a letter wrong, and nothing fancy when you're right.

There's no "COMPLETE!!!!!" screen.
If you've got it all right, you should be able to tell... it's a crossword!!

So, enjoy it for what it is.


* Not that the crossword games on the DS don't have good crosswords.. They do.. It's just that stupid UI that they all use is really really really shit..

My mum likes crosswords!!!

And, heck. I like crosswords, too!

Except, the trouble is, there's not really a decent crossword game on the DS.
Don't get me wrong, there's a fair few games, and The Times (released this week) in particular, has a cracking selection of clues/answers, and some really nice layouts.
In fact, it's really quite nice, and would be fantastic if the actual game UI wasn't so mind bogglingly bad.
And, I'm not saying it's "A little bit bad.." I'm saying "WTF? Who made this? A two year old!?" bad!

The absolute worse thing about it, is that this exact engine has been doing the rounds for a while now.
The Sun, The Times, and the USA Today crossword games, all use the exact same engine.

The general idea is this..
You hold the DS in standard mode (#1), and since the handwriting recognition sucks (#2) must open up the keyboard which takes up 1/2 the viewing area (#3) doesn't have an erase button (#4) and then have to type in your answers whilst listening to really cheesy music (#5) and annoying clunkity clicks and plonks that accompany every possible thing you can do (#6)

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Doing your homework on the back of the bus..

A crazy week of illness, busyness, and a party, have meant that this week's game had to be done..
..
um.. today!

And, as you could probably guess.
I ain't got Jack!

There's still a game, though! Take a look inside to see what it is..
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I've taken onboard a few of AuthenticKaizen's suggestions, and there's now a slightly better edition of Disasteroids available.

Same download link, right here
The game's pretty much the same as it was on Tuesday, except with a few added powerups to play around with.

There's also (I forgot to mention this anywhere, but it's in there!!) a "Chill" mode. Hit Tab to start the game, and you play without those little white crazy-ass fragments.
BUT
You won't ever get a highscore in chill mode.
'cos that'd cause all kinds of crazyness if you could!

Out of the powerups that AuthenticKaizen suggested, I've added the following.

b = Bomb - Destroys all rocks within a 160 pixel radius
d = Double Shot - two bullets fly around the screen, as you fire!
t = Triple Shot - three bullets at a time! wootsocks!
s = Shield - a momentary shield, to momentarily shield you.
f = Freeze - stops all the rocks!

They're your basic run of the mill shoot-em-up powerups.
If you'd like to suggest anything else, then pop 'em below. (That goes for powerups, or any other ideas/suggestions)

Additionally, the game could really do with a theme tune, so if anyone's made a decent mod/xm/it track lately... Send it over

This week's Wednesday Workshop #186 was to create a nice Asteroids game.
As I started creating it, I was planning a nice Horizontal Shooter-esque game, with powerups and all kinds of crazyness.
But I ran out of steam midway.
A shame..


BUT.
It's still a nice swooshy game, with fancy particles, and nice explosions.

It's mouse controlled, like Horizontal Shooter is, so just roam about, avoid the asteroids, and blow 'em all up. When there's less asteroids left, more will appear, and on and on you go until you're dead.

No powerups, but if you want a better version, I'm always here to help!

I did plop in Generic Highscore Table, though, so (as always) type in your name on the titlescreen, and rightclick to upload your best scores.

You can Download Disasteroids Here.

Enjoy!