Got the Google Plus thing today and spent about an hour or so playing about with it's features. Twitter Lists seems the closest thing to it, in that you follow people, separate them into different groups, then flick through the groups to read/interact. Unlike Twitter Lists, though, here the grouping works both ways.. Now I could happily clump a bunch of iOS reviewers into a single group and quickly fire off a PR'ish spam bucket to all of 'em at once, without pissing off all my regular "we want chat, not s...

A simple little game about running around and eating pellets as they fall. yeay!

PlayMyCode games no longer work

I currently seem to be lasting in 2 hour sessions at the minute. An hour of wide-awake, followed by an hour of drowsy half asleep nonsense. That's the followed by a 2 hour nap, and then the cycle restarts with me desperately trying to claw as much stuff into my wide-awake hour as I can before I start to fall asleep again. SUX!

Saturdays are the one day of the week that I work a semi-decent shift, with a full whole 7 hours spent at work! (blimey!!) As such, I tend to just kinda laze about through a Saturday. When at home, I treat it as my weekend. Well, usually. Today I actually spent an hour making (URL "https://alodare.tumblr.com/post/7154380666">this choon), and slapping it up onto AL's tumbly site. Other than that, though. Lazy day! For future reference, unless I've half planned to write something, Saturdays will ...

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...

Yup, seems like I'm doing this, so I might as well make a neat little calendar that can keep track of my progress. This is a GoogleSpreadsheet thing, so if you keep bouncing back to this page as the weeks go on, you should see it get filled up nicely. Unless I give up, in which case you won't!

iframe based Google Spreadsheets no longer seems to work

Since I'm now doing AGameADay for a while, I figured it might be somewhat of a change of pace if I also did one of those "blog" things daily. I tried doing this during my previous month off, and although it kinda worked, it didn't really last.. d'oh! Still, try and try again! As a reminder, I've set up a calendar alarm thing to bleep at me, every night, at 22:15GMT. Either that'll work really well, or it'll start to tick me off, to the point where I throw my otherwise completely and totally unused H...

The other day I suggested that a new set of AGameADay might be in order, since I'm totally stuffed for ideas, lately. Out of ideas, make the requirement more.... Sure, that makes sense, right?! Anyhoo, today I spent . um.. all day.. doing yet another one of those Framework things that I apparently love to do. This time I used PlayMyCode.com, and the resulting menu/score/game thing has actually worked out quite nicely. First game, Chase The Block, a simple chasey game. Created (using PlayMyCode....

This week, I started a game on a grid. It started well enough, with a lovely grid-doodling method making nice colourful griddy squares, and a simple circle on the top for the player. Then I got to the point where I had to do character movement, and my head just kinda went "Ugh.. I just can't be arsed!!" (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/NoGoA.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/NoGoA-300x236.png" alt="" title="NoGoA" width="300" height="236" clas...

I'm sitting, trying to type, but I'm so tired it's all coming out as bizarre random codey bits, and nothing's really working out at all. Things achieved since last sunday 1. Puzzobomb PlayMyCode 2. 2 ALChoons 3. Drum machine mixeybob thing, started, sounding ok, still not quite there yet.. 4. Sheep Goes Left, 100 level pack + new ingame objects + organised menu to do both the packs. (upped to Apple, waiting for release) 5. Sheep Goes Left Lite, albeit cheated 'cos in the end I figured having to make...

I love it. There are new features. There are old features remade. There are better ways to do things. Quicker ways to do things. There's a lovely set of notifications! The world of iOS5 is remarkably fantastic! But there are downsides.

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...

Bonus iOS Game! <a href="https://bit.ly/SheepGoesLeft">For iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad</a> (£1.19/$1.99/equiv.) Got an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad? Grab Sheep Goes Left!! Go get it! It's out now! I'll be posting the semi-demo half-assed ported to Win/Lin/Mac edition as Tuesday's AGameAWeek, so you can try it out there, but the iOS one's much neater, has nicer menus, lovely swooshy bits, and even contains a wonderful little 20-track soundtrack! (woot!) Addition...

It wasn't my games. o/ hurray o/

I'd love to, but considering it's taken me about 6 months to get around to fixing Ubuntu (just starting, may not go well!!) the chances of me fixing my DSBrew stuff is pretty darned minimal. Sorry!

Kristina - May 19, 2011 Well i have been playing you game and it suck i havent been hitting things and it still says game over you guys created a piece of crap!

Last Sunday, I came up with a fun idea for a game/experiment. I figured it was WAY too big to fit into the next day and a half, so set it aside for this week, and instead made the (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/?p=1373">silly block diggy thing) that I did last week. On Thursday, I properly started the bigger project, hoping that 5 days of work would be enough. On day 1 I did the nice intro, made the outside-area work, and patted myself on the back for having done a really large job in a single day. ...

JNKPlat It's a Platform game, but it isn't. It's a side-view Puzzle game, with Platformy events included.

It's neat and simple. A Matrix screen filled with code. Occasionally there's Red code. Zap the red code! That's pretty much all there is to it!! <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Matrix_Blaster_20110503_Logo_thumb.png">

Today I'm battling the forces of evil. Microsoft have "updated" my system so that all my games now run at about 1/3rd their normal speed. Thanks, Microsoft! You're AWESOME!!! ...

I enjoyed my Month Off! I've written a lovely quickstart framework, I've built a game and a half, I've posted more Tube vids and Tweets in a month than any month previously, I've tried to keep up the blog, AND I even had time to relax!! A few games of GTA and Burnout meant my X360 was switched on for the first time in over a year! I've been playing YouDon'tKnowJack on the iPod (Highly recommended, even if it is Americanised questions), and listening to months worth of unlisten...

If you're not too busy, Jay, why not try making another game!?

I'm thinking along the lines of the good old EasyAmos, here! Although, whether mine is easier or not isn't for me to judge, is it!? <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/EasyCoco.png">

Today, another one of those mindbogglingly annoying issues that stops you, makes you scratch your head, then makes you go "Well sod that then!" and enjoy the sun for a bit. I'll do this again, tomorrow!

Today I've been continuing to fiddle about with all the framework's drawing methods. The engine seems rather fickle, and will sometimes do a bunch of big sprites, and other times do a buttload of tiny ones. I've currently got the settings to a nice middleground. It can handle quite a bit, so long as you don't give it mountains of giant sprites to contend with!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/photo-1.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/u...

I think I'll either be limiting myself to 100 sprites/60fps, or 200 sprites/30fps, for iPhing games. ... That's quite a lot, though! Pics below