My first experience

Me and Spinal were discussing OUYA. He'd just bought one, and was trying to get Monkey to work with it.
I dared to mention OUYA in a tweet, and so was instantly followed by OUYAForum's tweetbot, @OUYAForum_com
"Nnngh. A generic bloody tweetbot. Can't these companies behave properly?" I thought, and I otherwise ignored it and carried on.

Last March I was taken into hospital with a brain tumor. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/2012/08/home-again-home-again-jiggity-jig/">There's a lengthy blog about that, here.)
Since then, although I'm "mentally" fine, I'm all sorts of physically screwed up!
I can barely stand in one spot without wobbling about, and trying to have a short stroll outside is somewhat chaotic.
In general I tend to stumble around, and can barely look around me, so have to always have someone with me incase I ra...

Yet another case of AGameAWeek Gold being strangely interconnected with other events in my life!!
Today, I posted about Star Trek Pong 3 earlier today, and it got me thinking about the even older Amiga edition.
Curiously, I also recently purchased a USB Capture device for my PC. I wanted to output all my consoles and computers through my PC's monitor. It has a HDMI port, but a Scart->HDMI device seemed a little pricey.
Being the cheapskate that I am, I instead settled for a Capture de...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">AGameAWeek Gold is our occasional glance through the archive, to pluck out some of the great games that I've created over the many years that I've been doing this.
Along the way we'll discover some great gems that I'd forgotten about, or occasionally the odd bit of garbage that I'm frankly happy to have forgot about!
Today, we take a look at a strange little Pong game!

Awww..
Nuts.
Today was supposed to be the great big release day, but annoyingly, one or two annoying issues have annoyingly cropped up.
<img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/NeonPlat_Extreme_20131126B.png">

Nah, not quite.
But for a fair bulk of this year, I did manage to keep up the rate.
2013's not been too bad, considering..
Towards the end of January, I finished off my new Monkey Framework, and set about coding with that.

It feels like AGES since I last posted a Sheep Goes Right test.
In fact, it's been just over a month.
October 14th was the last version, and today I'm posting a second test release.
This time, I'm releasing an APK for OUYA.

In the third of our NeonPlat Extreme tests for Neovember, we're playing against giant enemies!
Each of the "Bosses" requires three hits to kill.
Nothing massive, nothing awesome, just a screen full of great big bad guys.
You can (URL "https://socoder.net/monkey/NPETest3/MonkeyGame.html">Play NeonPlat Extreme : Test Three : Bosses) in your browser.

Karl's Tiny Adventure was created way, way, way back in March of this year.
You can (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=288">Play Karl's Tiny Adventure here).
The game was my first true test of proper "Image Data Loading", and my first proper lesson in Android Fragmentation.
Annoyingly, because different Android devices operate in slightly different ways, the Image Data Loading wasn't occurring in an accurate manner, and as a result, the level data was getting all screwed...

Neovember is a month in which I'm taking the engine from NeonPlat Raw, and playing about with it to create a bunch of different gameplay styles.
Once we're done, I'll bundle everything back into a package, and pop it up on all the different systems.
This week's experimental gameplay mode comes courtesy of Blockman. Not the hungry-pellet-eating version of Blockman, the classic platforming/collection form.
You start the game as you normally would, with you, some balls, and some bad guys.

This is a quick and simple tool to take OUYA.tv's "Unique Download.csv" file, and convert it to a raw .html file, which you can either look at and admire, or upload to a server for other folk to equally look at and admire.
This tool is only useful for folk who A) Have an OUYA dev account, and B) Know WTF it is!!!
You can (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/OUYAStatConverter.zip">Download OUYA Stats Converter here)
You can (URL "https://socoder.net/OUYAStats.html">see...

(URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/NeonPlat_Editions..jpg"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/NeonPlat_Editions._thumb.jpg">
Click for MASSSIIIIVVVE)
Haze inquired as to why there's no NeonPlat Raw on iOS. The answer is simply because, a full year earlier, iOS got it's own special little NeonPlat.
In February 2012 (Just before my whole hospital saga!) I released NeonPlat on iOS. It featured tilt-controls, and 3 difficulty levels, and stands out as it's own special little v...

OK, I'll admit it, I'm enjoying the OUYA.
You can keep up with (URL "https://www.ouyalytics.com/developer/Jayenkai/">all my OUYA games here). There's currently 5 of them, and there's oodles more to come!
(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/icona.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/icona-150x150.png" alt="" title="icona" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-3272" /> ...

This month is all about NeonPlat Extreme, as I slowly bulk up a minimalistic game with tons of brand new features!
Woot!
To celebrate, here's a lovely great big wallpaper!
(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Wallpaper_Neovember.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Wallpaper_Neovember-1024x1024.png" alt="" title="Wallpaper_Neovember" width="590" height="590" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3252" />
Click for massively overs...

Welcome to Neovember, the month of NeonPlat, where I take the original NeonPlat Raw engine, and gradually upgrade it, adding new gameplay elements, features and modes.
By the end of Neovember, we'll have a lovely big Extreme version of NeonPlat, and we can all sit around and play it for days/weeks/months at a time!
In this first week, I've decided to tackle the task of bringing over the NeonPlat Adventures enemies, and popping them into the new gane.
So far I've managed the first 35 enemie...

Right, time for a new plan.
The last plan fell apart, and I'm struggling to come up with new games that work with all the possible targets, nicely.
Grrr!
So, instead, I've opted to do something that I initially planned to do months and months ago.

During most of October I've been building up a lovely little "Compendium".
The idea was to make a collection of 25 little games, and pop it up as a sort of Advent Calendar type thing, but without it being thematically Christmassy, so that you could happily enjoy it at any time of the year.
It's been about 2 or 3 weeks since I started the project.
I got a lovely menu system working, and managed to fit all the usual scoreboard/icon/etc elements in.

Yesterday saw the launch of BlastTrax on OUYA.
Since I've yet to figure out all that nasty Tax gubbins (I know, I know!!... eventually!!) I've not yet managed to add any IAP stuff to any of my games.
Since an OUYA game is freely available as a download, and then the .apk gets reproduced all over the entire internet via robot-spammy-feed sites, you either have to do 100% free, or buttloads of IAP stuff. There's no mid-point, no way to create a "Demo vs Full version", or anything else like that.<...

The internet is a place for trolls and complainers (like me!) who like to gripe at every opportunity.
For the most part, we tend to ignore these types, which generally means that comments sections have become largely ignored.
Here at AGameAWeek, the opposite has happened. There are apparently no trolls daring enough to even attempt to play my games! I seem to have scared most of them away.
As a result, there are no trollers or complainers here, and since those are the types that make up ...

(URL "https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/blasttrax/id689619329?mt=8">BlastTrax is currently (27th October 2013) free on the iOS AppStore)
I really do find myself in a bit of a baffled state over this one.
As the AGameAWeek guy, I'm certainly used to shrugging off failed releases, and in many ways this one should be exactly the same.
This is simply one of many releases that I've made this year, and over the course of the year, pretty much all the games have had a day or two of interest, and...

Over the course of the past 5 weeks, BlastTrax has sold 16 copies.
SIXTEEN....
That's just bloody well shit...
I've made the game free for a couple of days. Grab it while you can, and don't expect any more damn updates.

Do you need maps for BlastTrax!?
..
...
No..

Since I just answered this on the Monkey Forums, and created a nice little image to illustrate it, I thought it might be useful to repost my description here.
Here's roughly how I achieved the Glow effect on NeonPlat.
First, draw your sprite in a RAW form, then make a copy, make it bolder, then blur it all up a bit.
Finally, load both the RAW and the BLUR into your game, draw the Raw first, then draw the blur over the top.
It really is a simple effect, and depending on how large your...

So, I finally got an OUYA, and managed to get my first game into the OUYA store after a bit of tweaking.
Time to update my Framework!

The Download

(URL "https://socoder.net/monkey/Framework_13_10_20.zip">Jayenkai's Monkey Framework, as of 20th October 2013) | (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/2013/10/monkey-skeleton-13_10_20/">Blog Post)

Older versions

(URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Monkey_Framework_2013_06_13.zip">Jayenkai's Monkey Frame...