...you must first, Break EVERYTHING!!!

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Yesterday was all about planning, as I took a few important steps towards recoding the framework to work with Metal.

Lots of little chunks of ideas, setting aside methods and preparing to sit and do the coding.
The intention was to get everything ready and then spend last night actually sat at the Mac getting things up and running.

I was ready to get going, so headed upstairs for "Evening Session" coding time, and then...

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Today I'm going to reattempt the "Draw tiles to a buffer, draw the buffer" stuff.

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I spent quite a while, today, trying to come up with a nice fast tilemap technique for 3DS.
On the Desktop edition, I can draw to a buffer, then draw the buffer to the screen, but due to memory limitations, that's not quite as easy to do on the 3DS.

I've tackled a few different ways, already, but none of them seem to be helping in the speed department.

Essentially, I'm getting about 30fps out of a screen full of 8x8 tiles, which is absolutely horrendous when you consider that I used to be able to get BOTH screens full of 8x8 tiles on the DS, at a rock solid 60fps.
Basically, because I'm doing everything with 3D routines, the resulting engine is quite a bit slower than what it would be with a 2D technique.

I really need to look into ways of optimising my 3D techniques.

Meanwhile..

God damnit, Apple..

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I'd love to tackle a new Alien Deathmatch sort of game, but I'm not really sure which way to take it.

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Blockman returns in this super-retro dot-munching remake.

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I've got a quick pathfinder working on Blockman Gets "Something", now, so all levels should be bearable, with targets that make sense and are indeed possible.
Might be insanely hard to find that path, but I'm fairly confident that it's working the way it oughta be.

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I spent most of yesterday trying, over and over, to get the regular standard mode to feel right.
After hours (literally hours!) of playtesting, I'm fairly sure now that the basic levels are at least mostly beatable.

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I spent ages yesterday finding the right balance.
Playing Blockman Gets and Blockman Gets More, there's a distinct feeling that something's missing from More.

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A rather productive day, today, as most of the audio got finished off, the level creation worked out well, and 3DS controller tests now feel much more comfortable.

I'm now trying to come up with interesting concepts that might expand the basic game, but as usual I'm worried that doing so might break the very logic of the game. I'll really need to think hard about what does and doesn't work in the game, and might even split it into its own "arcade mode", rather than break the main game's playability.

But, yeah, going good!!

I mostly switched off, yesterday.

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It seems that if you have a .php file inside a folder, then it gets its own error_log file, meaning all this time I've been having a little error log grow inside an old abandoned folder, because I forgot it had a broken .php file in there!

.. Oops!!

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Spent most of today trying to find the right feel for the controls.
I'm still not 100% happy with them.
Although they feel ok with the tapping of keyboard keys, they feel totally wrong when trying to play with a DPad, which is odd, because I tend to think of those two things as being very much the same thing.

Anyhoo, other than that, the game seems to be coming along nicely, although I've yet to add anything new into the mix.
I'm currently trying to think of interesting ways to add a bit more action into the mix.

I've often found that Blockman Gets works best when left as just a simple puzzle game, but it's starting to feel a little dated, and I think it needs something.. .. More!!
Hmmm..

The gameplay fits nicely into multiple screen resolutions, but what do I do about the main GUI?

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Boy, it's not fun trying to doodle a bunch of mazes for Blockman games.

I HOPE that I'm sticking with the current 25x15 maze size, because having to remake all these maps would drive me slightly crazy.

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Going through my list of "games I probably should do using the new C++ Framework"..
I should probably do something a bit like this..
Thoughts?!

I think I'll strip it back to the original "just a plain puzzle game" mechanic, and then see where I can go from there.

Possible titles : Blockman Gets Retro, Blockman Gets Classic, Blockman Gets Deluxified...
*shrugs*

After every game's release, the influx of feedback is intense!

Let's see what @RSKGames thought of this week's game.

@RSKGames

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