FAR too busy right now!
What i'm trying to do today is to make a simple little game.
If you've been following you'll know that I have some sort of oddball Bee game in mind, so I've shoved the bee, the particles and the background images in, I've got the basic movement sorted, and am trying to figure out how the game should work.
Slow work!

A Pro/Con list might've helped beforehand!!!
Fuck it, 70 quid down the drain..
carry on.

Bad time to be swinging again, Jay...!
20x(640x32) images + 10x(64x64) images.
That can just about struggle to run at about 22fps on an iPod Retina.
Then you've got text to go over that, and another 10x(64x64) for badges..

1. No sound pitch.
Jinkies Munkies, What the Funkies!?!?
Simplest example.
You know in Horizontal Shooter, when your weapon goes "SQQEUUUUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"..

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/photo.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/photo.png" alt="" title="photo" width="320" height="480" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1285" /></a>
hmmm....

I think I'll either be limiting myself to 100 sprites/60fps, or 200 sprites/30fps, for iPhing games.
...
That's quite a lot, though!
Pics below

Coming soon : A whole new world!
I finally made my choice, and it's GLBasic.
Hopefully that choice doesn't come and bite me in the ass later.
For now, I'm going to be rebuilding all that framework goodness.

<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/byemunky.png">

About 40-odd times I've decided "Right, let's give GLBasic a try!!"
This morning, I was finally ready to actually do that!
...
And then, right out of the blue, and totally co-incidentally, a twitter conversation began with <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/Indie_DIJ">@Indie_DIJ</a> about that very language.

Silly me put the name "Chicky Crosses the Road" into a variable, then forgot to put the variable on the titlescreen!
D'oh!
sod it..
Live and Learn!

I have a game!
It's written in <del>Munky</del> Monkey!
But... Am I ready to buy the language yet?
hmmm..

A few hours with Monkey today.
A game idea was planned (finally!) and attempted, but I realised I had rotation issues.
Tried and tried to get the rotate and scaling working together with numerous results.
One time the sprites were rotating away from their midpoints, another they were scaling all over the place, and on and on it went..

<a href="https://agameaweek.spreadshirt.co.uk/stroke-my-munky-A10741539/customize/color/4">I just thought of a really good game..</a>
but... .. Not entirely sure how doable it'd be.
.. hmm.. another time perhaps..
Anyhoo, Monkey.

Another day pondering about the should/shouldn't monkey issue.
Another day wondering if I shouldn't just be writing a game..
I should be focusing on the important bits, but instead, my minds contemplating what could be.
We're in March.

Oh, Mark.. What have you done!
I was happily coding away at AGameAWeek, and now I'm stuck in this odd Will I/Won't I scenario, unsure as to what to do next..
I spent a few hours playing with Monkey again, Yesterday, and am still unsure which is the better path.
Monkey has no recolouring for sprites. That's a pretty big deal, and is a bit of a biggy when your onscreen text is sprites. No sprite colors means one text color.
Even my Tandy TRS 80 could do more than one text c...

This week saw the launch of "<a href="https://monkeycoder.co.nz/">Monkey</a>", the next-generation of BlitzBasic.
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/monkey1.png" alt="" title="monkey1" width="332" height="56" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1233" />

Note : PlayMyCode is no longer available
A slight change this week.
I was planning to do AGameAWeek as usual, but was somewhat thrown off course by a request to make games, instead!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/PMC3.png">

A nice slow paced shooter this week.
Poor old CPC Basic couldn't really handle bullet-hell type games.
Well, ok, maybe it could if you really really tried, and came up with a scrolling ascii grid of bullets, but for the most part it just wasn't happening.
Instead, Cassette 50 creators had to rely on other ideas. Like trying to kill you with your own desire to kill!!

Here we go, then!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Royal_Rescue_20110111_Logo_thumb.png">

I'm out of ideas.
I ran out about midway through Advent, and I think finishing that off has sapped every last ounce of ideaness out of my poor little head.
So, in order to continue to do AGameAWeek, I'm going to have to start doing things in a slightly different way.
I thought about this for a while, yesterday, and it does seem slightly plausible, if a little dumb!
<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cassette_50_K7_Cascade_Games_1985_Standard_Jewel_C...

Why is it always the little random games with a dire lack of content that become the most popular ones?!
Lesson Learned : I oughta stop trying so hard, and just knock out the simple little games!
I was thinking this whilst doing the Advent collection. Some of those were really playable, and I had a whole lot of fun whilst making them.
On the flipside, doing the larger games like that horrible nasty RPG, and.. To be fair.. a lot of the Year3 games. They've all been kinda half-assed, and n...

Hello all!

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

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.

A game cram packed into the space of only a day!
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Space_Clusters_20101026_Logo_thumb.png">

54 games. Last year I only managed about 30-odd, so I think that's pretty good going.
Sure, it might not have truely actually been A Game "Per" Week, but I did at least keep the ratio up.
If I hadn't taken the time out to build the framework, I probably would've actually achieved the target a little better
The stats show I was pretty much on top of things up until that point, but then things got slower and slower until my buffer zone was all dried up.
Anyhoo, this is a n...

54 games. Last year I only managed about 30-odd, so I think that's pretty good going.
Sure, it might not have truely actually been A Game "Per" Week, but I did at least keep the ratio up.
If I hadn't taken the time out to build the framework, I probably would've actually achieved the target a little better
The stats show I was pretty much on top of things up until that point, but then things got slower and slower until my buffer zone was all dried up.
Anyhoo, this is a n...