Daily Blog

Spending time on Xmassy stuff.

Each month I receive the wonderful Arcade Block from (URL "https://NerdBlock.com">NerdBlock.com) When you initially sign up, you give them a T-Shirt size, and every month you get a lovely Arcade related TShirt, along with a box full of odd pieces of tat. Some of the tat is garbage, some of the tat looks nice on a shelf, and occasionally some of the tat is pure awesomeage!

Daily Blog

A few hats, and a lot of music..

Daily Blog

A return to an old project..

Daily Blog

Two pieces of music!? Blimey!

Daily Blog

What'll be happening with Beta Collexion? How can I get my games on Steam? And.. Snooker?!

(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=352">Beta Collexion Download) Merry Xmas!!! This year's Advent Calendar is now available to download/play. Much like last year's Alpha Collexion, this year's collection features all manner of crazy gaming oddities. Platformers, Shoot-em-ups, Puzzle games, they're all in here, and you'll be unlocking them all over the next month.

Developments

And now we have to wait.. Waiting for both OUYA and PlayJam to review and release the Advent collection, at which point I also click the Publish button over at GameJolt, and set about uploading the game to my own archive, too! .. Which reminds me.. The Archive Still doesn't include PlayJam links, does it.. Hmm... Last night I spent a good few hours working on a newer version of my Monkey Skeleton Framework. It's about 50% rejigged, but I'm sure there's oodles more stuff I c...

Developments

Yesterday I spent a good couple of hours recreating the classic Codemasters title "3D Starfighter" before realising "This game's shit!!" The game was abandoned where it was, but I've left the code in the Arcade Calendar, so I might sneak it in as a bonus game, or something.. *shrugs* It's not a "bad" game, it's just really really dull!!! Luckily, I also made a nice Army game, and that turned out nice and playable, so that's ok. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads...

Developments

I spent most of yesterday working on a fairly decent game. I stripped the graphics from an old game I'd made, and reconstructed them all within Beta Collexion. Coding the game was also fairly easy to do, and within a couple of hours I had the game recreated within the new engine. Sure, it's a repeat, but it's been a long long long time (2010) since I last played with this game, so that's ok!! I'm now down to just 5 game left to do in the Beta Collexion.. A, U, X, Y and Z Once ...

Developments

After another hour or so of tweaking, I finally got Sheep Goes Right uploaded to both OUYA and PlayJam. Hopefully the game passes through without any issues, but I'm slightly worried that there might be memory based complications. When I tested JNKBombers on my Razer Forge, I didn't spot any errors, but upon review, they send me a "Out of Memory" log, which suggested the Forge might not be all it's cracked up to be. I suspect this to be a case of the system multitasking. On OUYA...

Developments

Yesterday was spent much like the day before. In the morning I fixed up and uploaded an OUYA game, and in the evening I created another Advent Calendar game. The Advent Calendar's now up to 12 games, and hopefully I'll continue to do at least one game a day over the next few days, meaning I'm vaguely on schedule to get the whole thing done on time. .. But these things never quite go to plan, do they!? Oh well, fingers crossed! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads...

Developments

There are now only 4 games left in my OUYA Redux game list. Platdude in Battling Ostriches should be easy enough to do. The Final Warrior will also be easy, but I shan't be uploading it to PlayJam. PlayJam previously had issues with the end credits of Invisible Munky mentioning the OUYAForum, so I expect that The Final Warrior will be an absolute barrel of chaos, since the giant Twitter-Avatar list contains names and avatars of multitudes of people, including a fair number of O...

Developments

Yesterday I recreated Hoppy Bobby in the Advent Calendar. It's not an amazing feat, but it is at least something. Other than that, I spent some time rejigging Neon Bike Championships for OUYA, and also sent PlayJam a copy so they can test it to see if it's Multiplayer code is any less crappy than JNKBombers was. I'll keep that copy aside, incase they decide it is indeed worthy of a proper upload, but if you don't ever see it on GameStick/FlarePlay, that'll be why. Today I have...

Developments

I got my Apple TV yesterday, and it's exactly what I expected it to be. In many ways, it's exactly the same as the previous model, and will no doubt be used for most of the same things. But now it has games. Except the games have to work with that niggly little tiny touchpad, and if you play (for example) Geometry Wars 3 for about an hour (eek! That went quick!!) then you'll end up with your thumb feeling a little numb, as if you've been rubbing it on some sandpaper for the last...

Developments

With mere weeks to go until Dec 1st, I'd better get cracking with that Advent Collection, huh?! So, last night I finished off Game #1, and made a fairly decent start on Game #2. I'll finish that up this morning, and then get to work on a third. I'm currently having a nice burst of imagination, after having not really coding much all year. It also makes a change to be creating something new, instead of fixing up that great big pile of 42 OUYA titles!! I still need to finish of...

Developments

Yesterday was spent neatening up Game #1 in the new Advent Collection. Alarmingly, this has taken a fair number of days, as I'm trying to decide how best to organise all the data. The actual "game" still isn't even finished, yet, and needs collisions and scores and.. well.. pretty much everything, really.. Hmm.. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/414_002.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/414_002-1024x597.png" alt="414_0...

Developments

"A Quick Test", I said to myself. "Should only take a few minutes", I thought. Two hours later, with no result whatsoever, I opted to call it a night, and instead focussed on Beta Collexion. What was it I wanted to test? Android, Hopefully compatible with None-OUYA devices, controller code. First, I needed to test on OUYA itself, so I grabbed the controller, hit the on button, and switched over to HDMI-2. And waited. .. and waited... .... and waited... Hmm.. Oddly, th...

Developments

The new FlarePlay (PlayJam's GameStick replacement) thing is apparently having issues, and crashing a LOT with my games. I'm hoping to fix them up during a second pass through the 42 games, and for now am simply uploading as-is until I can fix them all up. But at the moment it's looking like I'll need to have a GameStick version and a FlarePlay version of all my games, which is a bit of a pain in the arse, if I'm honest! The whole point of the fixups was that these would be "Andr...

First thing's first, please be aware that I'm not compiling with sales in mind. With sales/IAPs, you'll need to do all manner of extra stuff like managing purchasable items and ensuring your code handles them correctly. This might break if you have IAPs!!! Untested!!! 1. Select OUYA target, and compile. 2. Head into build_folder/android_ouya/res/drawable-xhdpi Here you'll find the regular icon, and the OUYA Dashboard icon. Replace/doodle as necessary. 3. Compile again. 4. Head into build_fo...

Developments

Tearing my hair out over the Android Controller stuff. I can *nearly* get it working, but it's still playing up on that Archos Gamepad. I've now managed to somehow get the Archos' controller to control THREE players simultaneously, which is entirely the wrong bloomin' way 'round!! Today I'll probably strip everything back to basics and redo-from-start. That usually helps.. ... Sometimes. No new music, no new game stuff, no nothing. I've been super-focussed on the control...

Developments

Another day fiddling with the base code for my NewYA Monkey-X target. Most of the issues that the FlarePlay is bringing up appear to be related to the fact that the devkit they're using is leaving multitasking games running in the background, thus it all eventually clogs up. The actual retail unit instead does what OUYA/GameStick normally does, and closes all apps before launching the next. As a result, *most* of the problems they were having seem to vanish when tested on a rea...