Think of this as a christmas present.
(URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/AdventCollectionSource.zip">You can download the Advent sourcecode here)

<img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Platdudes_Retro_Advent_Collection_(Screenshot_24_Dec_2010_215837)_thumb.png">

Hmm.. I forgot to post a "This Week", and a "Suggestion Box", this week, didn't I.
One little tweak to my weekly schedule, and the whole thing goes to pot!
Today's Tuesday, and I won't (again) be posting AGameAWeek, and I'll be forwarding any complaints straight to my spam bin! 21 games, some of which are much more playable than recent AGameAWeek games, all done within the past few weeks. I think that's more than enough to stop you whinging about a lack of AGameAWeek.
Still got about 4 mo...

What follows is a review from PlayThisThing.com
I screengrabbed it, because they're probably going to fix the "little" thing at the top, and I want to continue to take the piss out of them.
Here's me taking the piss out of them.

Same as, Advent continues right through until Xmas!
Although, whether the advent collection will include a game for Xmas day or not hasn't yet been decided..
If I can manage to do enough, I will, but I won't be spending christmas morning coding anything, so..!
Meanwhile, over the past few days I've been building this.

Platdude Hungry!!

This week, I bought one of these...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
I'm happy for any/all magazines to put any/all of my games in their magazines, or on their coverdisks.
If you do, TELL ME, and I'll do my best to purchase a copy of your magazine.
Heck, you might even be nice enough to SEND me a copy, for free!

As we continue on our short Advent based journey, I'm having a bit of fun making silly little non-games for a change.
It's been a while since I allowed myself to do such simplistic games, and I'm even finding myself coding them in the small hours of the night.
eg, since 10pm, when I got home from work tonight, I've done the following..
1. Watched an episode of Corner Gas whilst eating my tea/supper. (still watching repeats of that!! Doesn't get old!)

<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Platdude__s_Retro_Advent_Collection_20101201_Logo_thumb.png">
A brand new game, EVERY DAY over Christmas!

Unfinished
Or, to put it another way, this game got to about 70% done, I got really stupidly bored with it, I lost interest, and I still bothered to get it to about 92%. At 92%, I gave up.
Here's a game at 92%.

Somewhere along the way, I got bored with RPG.
Was it the stupidly annoying menus I half-assed my way through?
Was it the annoying issues with the control scheme?
Was it the fact that it's a smegging RPG?

<a href="https://quote-un-quote.tumblr.com/">The Last and Final Word is a series of interviews with indie videogame developers.</a>
A lovely new set of interviews which should lead to some insights about your favourite indie developers.
<a href="https://quote-un-quote.tumblr.com/post/1705703619/interview-indie-dev-jayenkai-james-gamble">PS. I'm Nuts!!</a>
Hopefully some of the others will be nice and lengthy, too, otherwise it's just me prat...

Thursday = Suggestion day, and usually a lookback on Tuesday's game.
hmm...

Or rather, Curse You, stupid USB drive that killed about 4 hours of my work at 3am on Monday morning..
Although, If that hadn't have happened, I'd probably still be way way behind.
I had in mind, as I sat to code tonight, that I only (only!!) needed to add the weapons.
But, as I sit here at midnight, that's not really it, is it...

I'm just throwing random things at this game, now, to be honest.
I haven't a clue what sort of game it'll end up as, but I'm pretty sure it won't be an RPG of any kind.
Still, I'll keep trying, and we'll see what comes of it.
Odnetnin46, This is as much of an RPG as you're gettin'!!
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/BoxRompPic.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/BoxRompPic-300x225.png" ...

Am I doing the RPG or not!? Damnit, Jay, make up your mind!
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/dungeon8.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/dungeon8-150x150.png" alt="" title="dungeon8" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-985" /></a>

If you've an idea for AGameAWeek, let it be known in the comments below!!!
Meanwhile, thinking time...

"You just hold right, and jump a bit"
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Super_Happy_Speedy_Gerbil_20101116_Logo_thumb.png">

This week's game will be slightly more minimal than originally planned.
I originally was going to add baddies and pickups and progression and all of that.
But then I started playing it.
After about 10 minutes without a single blink, I figured it'd probably be a bit TOO much to add anything more.
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Super_Happy_Speedy_Gerbil_(Screenshot_14_Nov_2010_083303).png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Super_Happy_Speedy_Gerbil_(Scree...

Ooops, THAT's what I'm supposed to do on Thursdays!
No matter, a day late, not to worry!
Here's this week's suggestion box.
Fill the comments with your ideas/suggestions for future AGameAWeek stuffs.

Right now, we'll call this version 0.5.
The tool is at a working version, and most of the bugs are ironed out.
I'll update it as the weeks go by, and hopefully we'll have something Most Excellent by the end.
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Jay__s_Retro_Sprite_Tool_20101109B_thumb.png">

As I've already mentioned, the MiniRPG's on hold whilst I build the sprite maker doohickey. The doohickey's coming along nicely, and make quite a large leap today, but I'm still fiddling about trying to get it to feel "Just Right"
The thing is, although my old sprite maker seemed to come up with nice blobs, the new one appears to be much more random.
Either they're preset shapes, or they're crazily splodged messes.
<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Jays_Ret...

I'm in too deep.
I can't stop!
And yet I also didn't plan ahead far enough, and will be spending most of this morning removing a bunch of stuff, and redoing it all.
Gah!

It's time for our weekly "Post anything in your head" topic!

Keeping with the classic retro theme, here's a nice and simple little 15-screen jumping platform game!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/GeeBee_Hop_20101101_Logo_thumb.png">

Oops, forgot to post this, yesterday! No matter.
After last week's retro styled "random" game, I decided to go for something similarly retro, but much less random.
I've drawn some supercheap gameboy style sprites, and have been building a batch of quick and easy jumpy platform levels.
I've done 11 levels so far, and am going to go the "Start from level 1, see how far you can get" route, so theres no checkpoints or anything. Just start, and hope you don't die..
9 lives seems adequat...