It seems that, since coming out of hospital, there's been a multitude of great things that I seem to be looking forward to. New Doctor Who, new Red Dwarf, new iPhone, new Wii and then all the great shows that I'd missed whilst I was stuck in hospital, too! It's like a great big bucket of hype, and it keeps on coming. As a developer, I'm going to have to buy a new iDevice, to ensure all my games work in the all-new quirky widescreen resolution. I'll be going for an iPod Touch, mostl...

This is an emergency post. The future of AGameAWeek may be in jeopardy. Everything hinges on the decision I make within the next few hours. Do I do the Board Game thing, or do I do the Pancake thing?

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Key-Bo-Ard-Too-Screenshot_24-Jan-2012_112526.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Key-Bo-Ard-Too-Screenshot_24-Jan-2012_112526-300x225.png" alt="" title="Key Bo & Ard Too (Screenshot_24 Jan 2012_112526)" width="300" height="225" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2270" /></a> A sequel for this week's AGameAWeek! I've been thinking about Key, Bo and Ard since I popped them into NeonPla...

News, today, of a new Sitcom under development at HBO. <a href="https://www.deadline.com/2012/01/sundance-hbo-and-scott-rudin-to-turn-docu-indie-game-into-series/">HBO are converting Indie Game The Movie into a sitcom!</a> A sitcom based on a bunch of videogame developers? How on earth would THAT work!?!

So, I'm sitting there trying to get a nice GameCenter thing added to my new framework, and I figured that having to display people's names might very well require a bit of Unicode.. (Note : This is the reason my other iOS games don't have names on the highscore lists!) In Cocos, you can use 3 font styles.. one is a simple bitmap font (this one I can handle!) one is a complex bitmap font (with a required 50,000,000,000,000 images to handle all the possible languages!) and the third one uses ttf fonts. ...

There are many many things breaking the calendar. The list is growing. Having finally got the whole Locale thing to work (switch phone to French, open game, calendar still in English, wtf!?) With enough tweaks, I was getting French calendar months, and all looked well. .. Except the "??" in d??cembre.. Because my font is lazy. ugh.. That'll be a lengthy fix! New Font functions ahoy!

It's been over a year since the Platdude Retro Advent Collection had a bizarre game with a ball and some spikes in it, and as much as I've attempted to get on with other games, that one little game keeps on getting dragged back out again! Last week, SpikeDislike won an IndieVisibility award, for being the best game to have with you on the toilet! This week, the guy who nominated it for that award has written a great big sprawling mass of text, all about SpikeDislike! (Link no longer available) ...

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...

When I was building the beta versions of NeonPlat Adventures, it always included a little readme file. The final release didn't have one, but I figured that was ok, because it was so simple it didn't really need one. The original readme was only really there to explain that beta peeps shouldn't mention the Calendar, and then I kinda rambled on a bit! Anyhoo, if you find yourself in desperate need of a readme file, this is it!

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..

Korodny Just finished the game, so I'm here to say *Thank you* for some real good entertainment. A couple of things I noticed: Loved the game concept, and the visual design is spot on for that kind of game. Unfortunately, sound doesn't work on Ubuntu 11.10. It's a shame that the progress isn't properly recorded: The game should automatically offer me to play at the 'highest' levelset and the highest starting point I reached in my last session. Having to write ...

I should take solace in a couple of facts. 1. My iOS Apps have been selling oddly, this week. Usually I sell about 1 copy of SpikeDislike, every day, but this week I seem to be getting oddities like Puzzobomb and StringyThings suddenly springing back to life. .. sure it's still a max of 3 a day, total, but... it helps! and it's odd! 2. My daily analytics stats have doubled. Of course, I should probably also point out that for the past two months, my lack of AGameAWeek has caused the stats to halv...

I should've spent today doing more iDev. I didn't. Already I'm looking at the iDev stuff, and going "uuugh..." Try again tomorrow.

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NeonPlat-Adventures-Screenshot_31-Oct-2011_105149.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NeonPlat-Adventures-Screenshot_31-Oct-2011_105149-300x187.png" alt="" title="NeonPlat Adventures (Screenshot_31 Oct 2011_105149)" width="300" height="187" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2011" /></a>

And I'll be doing nothing again, today. .. well.. .. I say nothing.. What I mean is, I don't have a great big 12 item checklist to do, and I won't be struggling to type by the end of the day!!

Today, I became a complete and total recluse! It was the only way it was all going to get crammed into the day. Let's go through last night's list, shall we?

I've done a LOT of work since yesterday. All 50 hats are in, 50 chrs are in, and I've stripped out a whole bunch of annoying quirky bugs. There's one really annoying "Got stuck again" issue that I need to weed out, but I can't figure out the best way to do it, so I'll point it out in the beta tomorrow, for those who are getting it. SPOILER ALERT Inside is ALL the characters. Don't click it if you'd rather not know!

Gah! Extra hats today! I now need about 3 hats, and annoyingly I think I might need an extra bunch of baddies, which also means more hats! D'oh! Still, those can wait until after the Friday Beta. The things that can't wait, are those annoying things that build and build, until you realise you don't really have a whole lot of time.

This is the plan. Week 1 This Friday I'm launching Beta2, so I have until Friday to add an alarming number of things. I thought I was on track, but then realised I needed... 1. All the hats! 2. All the badges. 3. A couple of bits of music. 4. Scoring methods This Beta will hopefully be, for the most part, the fully complete game. Any extras after this point should be neatness-tweaks, and nothing major, but.. well.. things always get in the way!!