Me and Michael Fernie have been emailing back and forth, today, all about the recent Shoebox additions, and player feedback.



Indeed. Unlike my previous 400 games, these ones actually seem to be popular!!
I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing!

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I know that players have always existed for my other games. I also know that my audience has built up quite well over the years. But getting feedback from players has been like pulling teeth!!

I've grown accustomed to just "letting games go" and not hearing back, once they're done.
This is somewhat new for me, and .. maybe that's to do with the "one game getting larger", rather than my usual "next game" scenario.

I'm "still here", and people seem happier to comment when I'm still around to reply. Which is odd, because I've never gone away!! People can comment on a game from 2002 and I'll happily reply, but .. they don't.
I'm not sure why that is!

This is a new experience for me, and I'm enjoying having the interaction between myself, the game, and the players. It's fun!

The one thing I feel I'm missing, right now, is Otakupunk's lovely LetsPlays. I don't think he's too sure as to how to do things when I'm simply making browser games.
.. although he's also busy, right now, so.. .. it's not all about me

Getting back to future "Normal" AGameAWeek things?
Sure, this would be a nice way to do it.
Start with a new framework that can handle multiple games, then start the same idea, but in c++, with more arcadey titles.

I actually wrote quite a bit of interlocking into the c++ framework, and beside a couple of little awkward issues, they should theoretically be able to connect together into a single .exe
I haven't done that yet due to the little issues, but if I actually redid it now, given what I've learned over the Shoebox building, I could probably iron out a lot of those..
Might be something to attempt.

One really interesting thing to consider is that, as far as most AGameAWeek game requirements go, the Shoebox engine is actually pretty powerful!
I mean, I know they're all "little card games and things", but you're looking at screens full of 52+, 256x256 pixel sprites.. spider solitaire uses 2 decks of cards, which is 104 huge sprites onscreen at least once.
If you shrink that down my normal standard of having little 32x32 pixel sprites, each with scaling, rotation and transparency, that's a fairly significant amount of Sprites going on, along with "mostly" complete audio, too.

If I bothered to add keyboard/gamepad input, and made a secondary version of Shoebox that dealt with "arcadey" games..

..?

There are obvious downsides, though.
3DS Homebrew doesn't work with the browser games, nor would most consoles.
Mobiles would need either onscreen touch, or "requires a joypad" notifications.
and nothing's going to work with my Online Leaderboard stuff, without significant reworking.

But the more I build this up, the more that list of downsides is getting reduced..

This might end up being something much more than just a Shoebox of Games..