Last month, I got to the end of the month, and opted to leave out the last week. I was FAR too busy doing Unijuggler iOS, it grew out of control, and AGameAWeek took the fall. This month, we've reached the last week of the month, and a similar kind of thing has happened. I've spent the past four days working on a "Not Cluedo, Honest" game, and although it's gone well, it's also not! The game looks ok, but it doesn't really play well at all. The game tries to be playable, but the boardgame nature brin...

The Plan! NeonPlat Classic is the original edition. If I hurry up and quickly build a version of that on iOS, I can get it released in time for my Birthday, then have a 24 hour giveaway like I did with SpikeDislike last year. The Realism For some reason I wasn't thinking about the "it takes a week to pass through review" thing. Stupid bloody Apple... Never mind. I'll probably do another SpikeDislike freebie day or something, instead. Meanwhile..

Another day, another install.. About 12 months ago, my bedroom PC basically crapped it's pants, and became an inexplicably unusable box that sat in the corner of the room. Knowing I'd need to format, I hunted for the Vista install disc, then remembered that.. A) Vista didn't bloody well come with one (Buying from Comet would've been handy, there!) and B) It'd been ages since I'd bought any blank DVDs Still, I had a Mac, so sod it!!

A lot of elements are currently coming together, and things are getting a little more chaotic than I'd like them to be around Xmas time. If the past 2 years of Xmas themed chaos (12 games of Xmas, Advent Collection) have taught me one thing, it's not to EVER plan anything around Xmas! Presents, family visits and the general filling of my face with Xmas cake, will usually get in the way of the coding time, and as such I decided not to push myself into anything moronic this year. I apologise if you're deep...

Sorry, I missed a day or two, there.. Must be getting into the code. I say "into the code".. What I mean is, I'm getting really cheesed off by all this converting stuff and it's driving me completely insane! Lesson Learned : I need to layout my code better! .. I won't, but it's a nice lesson to learn!

As I was falling asleep, last night, I had a great idea for a new game. I didn't jot it down, and now I can't remember what it was, except it had something to do with a stickman running around a black and white maze. ... bugger..

Today's long, long, long day of development was 100% iOS related. Having put it off entirely yesterday, I figured I'd better port that level builder doohickey. I opened TextEdit on the Mac, copied the level builder function from BlitzMax, and set about converting it, line by line, to something that XCode would compile for iOS. 800 lines of code, an estimate of "should only take a few hours, surely!" and then a completely exhausted Jay who just about managed to get the thing working 8 hours late...

Saturday's my "At work for a while" day, so I usually get a lot less codey time done, but I still managed quite a few bits and pieces in the morning. A couple of new baddies, and a teensy bit of AI are in there, as is something which may or may not be confusing, depending on whether you remember the 7 year old oddity or not. Suffice to say, the bananas do definitely appear to be coming from below the arrow. .. not sure what that's all about.. ---

Feedback

Got a little feedback, yest...

Phase One was the simple test engine I release WAY WAY back in the very early stages of this humongous project.. .. last month! Phase One was a basic engine, with simple platforming mechanics. Taking the rules of NeonPlat and adding a scrolling background, I wanted to judge if it'd be enjoyed. True, one piece of feedback was a little downbeat, but on the whole it's been well appreciated. You can't please everyone, but the original's not broken, so hopefully that makes up for it. Pha...

Apologies for the lack of daily blog/rant lately. Work schedule is crazy, sleep schedule is crazy, and AGameAWeek schedule is also all messed up. .. Well... I say that..

Today's plan Make a Font Add a Baddy How much of the plan did I manage to actually bother to do?!?

This probably isn't interesting at all, and I'm quite a bit annoyed that this has taken up a whole big chunk of my day, but here's a clip of the menu I made, today!

Alright, time to start on the next iOS project. Over the past year I've started around about 500,000 iOS games, and released 6. You're probably wondering WTF happened to the rest of 'em.

Too tired.. Instead, I've been working on Sheep Goes Left DS, which is proving 17,000,000,000% more popular than it's iOS rival. Quite why, I don't know, but the fact that it's being mentioned quite a bit is a good sign.

Hmmm...

Random thought.. There's no denying it.. I LOVE making these tiny games.

If you're following, you'll have probably seen it coming. Jay codes, Jay codes more, Jay writes blogs, Jay does music, Jay feels a bit tired, Jay codes more, Jay feels really tires, Jay writes a big-ass Newsletter, Jay stays awake all night, Jay codes more, Jay drags himself home from work, Jay goes to sleep for 12 hours, Jay's big sleep fucks his neck up again..

I've always found Flash slightly more complicated than it needs to be. For a few years I attempted to learn various versions of the official Flash demoes, and SoThink's 900% cheaper clone. They were ok, but they weren't designed for coders. Flash was an artist's tool, with tweening and vector graphics and all that other none-codery stuff.

I've suffered with migraines my whole life, so whenever one attacks, I can usually get rid of it by about mid-afternoon. The basic motions are as follows. Step 1. Paracetamol. Nothing stronger, since I've taught my body to control the migraines so well. Plus, if I DO take anything stronger, bad head waveyness occurs!! Step 2. Dark Room. A general tip from anyone. Lights out. Curtains shut. Close out the world. Step 3. Comedy. This one's a little unorthodox, I'll give you tha...

Today I'm focussing my blog on iOS trials and tribulations. The basic steps of designing a game when working with iOS. These are pretty simple things, and should be apparent, but .. having played a fair number of iOS games.. they're not always done! Note, this isn't really about my actual development, as such, more the train of thought that generates the end result. In a future bloggy thing, I might focus more on the what/where, than the how/why that this does. Let me know if this is a goo...

On Twitter last night, there was a semi-conversation about how to go about doing AGameAWeek. Once I'd headed off to bed, I lay and typed this gubbins into the iPod's Notepad thing, and then swiftly forgot about it, until just now! It's a bit waffley, and probably not entirely intelligible (it was 4am!) but here it is anyway.. If anyone DOES want to give it a go, let me know how you get on, and .. should it become a proper thing, I'll see about making some kind of linkage system. (rem...

I might skip another AGAW, this week, sorry! I have a half-game play-thing half done, but I've just started another one of those spur-of-the-moment things that might take over my entire weekend. .. again.. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/logo.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/logo.png" alt="" title="logo" width="320" height="160" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1414" /></a>

Still fiddling around with the basics of NinjaDuck iOS, and have actually done a whole lot of work since yesterday. Although, you still can't see any of it yet. I'm either going to have to set up a camera, or figure out a hacky way to do Accelerometer based gameplay in the Simulator. eeek! Yesterday Ninja Duck looked like this.. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_0629.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_0629-300x200.png" al...

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.. It's just not happening.. No matter how I tweak it, rejig it, and compile and compile again, I just cannot get those numbers up. *sigh* And yet... That's exactly what SpikeDislike is, already. .... At 60fps. And SpikeDislike is the most piss easiest game ...

1. No sound pitch. Jinkies Munkies, What the Funkies!?!? Simplest example. You know in Horizontal Shooter, when your weapon goes "SQQEUUUUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!".. Can't do that.. It's gotta go "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep" Regular bullets will go "Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat" instead of "bang-bing-bada-pow-pip-pat-pap-bang" Imagine SpikeDislike without it constantly getting higher and higher, as you up the combo. .. Pants.. And, even worse, every sound needs it's own set of buffers. So if I ch...