Developments

Hey, would you look at that!!

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The level generator still isn't quite as good as I'd like it, and I've yet to start spawning baddies and gems and ammo and everything else that a RetroRaider needs.
But I'm fairly confident that everything can be bundled together within the next few days.
The reason I started with the level generator is simply because, on previous attempts to resurrect this game, it was the lack of a decent level generator which let it down.
This time, everything seems to be slotting into place, and hopefully by next week you get to play it

SoCoder2..

Over on SoCoder2, I got the Private Notes system more or less working as I wanted it to.
Notes are private, and your own thing, so you can use it to jot down reminders, make todolists or whatever.
As a secondary function, you can then share notes to other people, and they can comment and reply as if it were a standard topic, but just between the people on the list.
The note replies even show up on the main sidebar, so you can very much use it to create little private threads and things.
As such, the new "Notes" system will be the replacement for both the old Notepad, and the PM systems, as an all-in-one message style of thing.

Good stuff!

Blitz Ending

Mark Sibly, creator of BlitzBasic/2D/3D/Plus/Max and later Monkey-X and Monkey2, has decided it's time to close the door on the past.
BlitzBasic.com, along with its forum, code archive and more, will be closing.

@BlitzMunter's Announcement

The remaining functional Blitz languages are all now opensourced, so accessing those won't be an issue.
In addition, plans appear to be afoot to create some kind of archive of the site, although to what degree I'm unsure.
Monkey-X is also being moved to this "Archived" status, and all remaining focus will be shifted to Monkey2.

You (and indeed Mark himself) probably already know my thoughts on Monkey2, mostly that the resulting .exe filesizes were huge (to me!) and compiling took longer than I'd like.
I've grown accustomed to having the html5 target be pretty much instant, whereas in my Monkey2 tests, it took about 20-30 seconds per "test"!

As such, for now, I'll be sticking with Monkey-X.
But Mark's certainly displaying some nice videos of Monkey2 functionality, lately, including 3D footage, lovely lighting effects, proper physics, and all sorts of other lovely things that would make my games look a bit more PRUFESHUNAL!



I'm still on the fence, but given how much work's gone into my current Framework, I'm not sure I'll be taking that leap just yet.

Either way, it's a shame to see everything old having the door closed on it.
It's certainly the End of an Era. (A phrase I appear to have written about 30-odd times since seeing the news, last night!!)

Hopefully everything gets archived properly, and I'm sure Monkey2 will take off.
It's definitely got the power.

*fingers crossed*

Good luck, Mark!
o/yeayo/

Daily Doodle : Vote

Platdude's happy with the way the results are coming in.
But will they stay that way?

Misc..

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If you'd like to stuff my mailbag, (Please do!!) you can do so right here, at https://bit.ly/AGAW_Mail. Send comments, questions, game ideas, thoughts and more, and they'll usually show up on my daily blog, the very next day.