I'm a calm person.
I will happily settle with what I've got, and be glad that I have it.
I don't own a copy of Flash, I can't afford it, and I'm not going to steal it.
So I carry on making games in Blitz, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

Today I start a new feature, mostly due to 2 odd posts in my spambin.
1. Invispnib writes..
Should they even be there? Please comment on this video clip. I don't think Robert Cooper or Brad Wright would ever let these two ever have any serious part on Stargate Universe. Well maybe the brunette???
The link in question

I haven't started it yet!
Uhoh!
This week's Wednesday Workshop (#201) asks us to create a game within a 3 hour limit.
Looks like I'm aiming for that, then!

This week's Wednesday Workshop (#200! wowie) asked us to create a game using no more than 2000 characters.
I managed to recreate the classic 8-bit title "Splat!", whereby you control a spider through a maze, picking up fruit.
In order to squeeze all that into 2000 characters, I opted for simpler mouse movement, and few other bits and pieces.
Then I figured, what the heck, and decided to make it a wee bit bigger for AGameAWeek.
Guide the worm through the maze, grab the circles, av...

I'm taking a day off from H~S~R today, thinking ahead for next weeks game, which may/may not be a word game.. not sure..
Anyhoo, there are bugs, and Swarmer found a couple, so head inside to have a good read about 'em.

Yeay! It's Horizontal Shooter Redux!!
In this first release, there's a few pointers. Read inside for those.
Otherwise, nice and quick, here's a picture.

H~S~R's coming along, nice and slowly.
As I add each new little thing, I spend about an hour playing with the lovely swooshy swirlyness of it.
Mmmm..
The whole Texture-Buffer-Blurry thing has really added some niceness to the game.

It's been 30 weeks since I last tackled Horizontal Shooter.
The last time, I used BlitzMax.
It was wonderful, and gave me all manner of nice swirly effects for those lovely background lines.
Mmm..

So, Red Dwarf.
I know there's a lot of complainers out there, but I loved it.
OK, it wasn't old Dwarf, and it really missed the laugh-track.
But that was good!

AGameAWeek, except when not!
It's Easter weekend, the weather outside is gorgeous, and I'm really not in a Sit + Code type of mood.
Doesn't happen very often, but there it is!
So, if there's no Game this week, that'll be why!

A bizarre mismash of random thoughts this week, alongside an eventual plan of action, and only a day to impliment it!!
woot!

OK, as I said earlier, I've been playing with the Skeleton stuff today.
Whilst I was in there, I wondered how fun it might be if I added some kind of overriding features into my default engine.
You might (or not) have noticed, but since Wednesday Workshop Week #1, I've been placing all my game's data into the System folder, then into it's own Weekly numbered folder within.
If you get ALL my games (from the past couple of years), you can bundle them all together into the same folder.
...

Game 3 needed a few tweaks, here and there, this morning.
Mostly due to the controls being a little twitchy.
Plus, something's missing.
And annoyingly, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the missing something is indeed Ingame Music!

Off and on, a bit at a time, the past few days, what with the DIY, and the AGameAWeek, and the Socoder work the past few days.. So, rather than call 10 minute sessions a day at a time, I'll call them a great big long "Popping in and out, looking at the code, struggling to figure out what's wrong, and then going to do something else instead" day.
It's a cheat, but since the annoying issue is still there, it still counts!
I'm stuck on Game #2.
And it's annoying that I'...

A nice quicky, this week.
Having spent most of the week doing DIY, sorting out Socoder, and occasionally working on PRC2 when I get a chance, I've not had much time for a game, this week..
So, I did what all frantic coders do.
I threw loads of colour on the screen, and hid the fact that I haven't done much work this week

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!!!

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!

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.

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.
<img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/soko.png">

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 tha...

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...

A nice and simple game, this week.
<img src="https://agameaweek.com/completeB/2009/Storm_of_Idigidragon_20090224A.png">
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.

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!

This week's Wednesday Workshop <a href="https://socoder.net/index.php?topic=1414">#186</a> 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..