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...

<a href="https://gfbrobot.com/2011/11/16/interview-with-neonplat-adventures-jayenkai/">Interview with NeonPlat Adventure's Jayenkai</a> A nice big interview, randomly waffling on and on, in that strange unplanned way that I do! Thanks to darthvid who sent all those questions over the other morning. A nice surprise to wake up to! Kinda makes me want to do more of the same.. <a href="https://www.formspring.me/Jayenkai">Jayenkai on Formspring!</a> Ask away.. I'll ...

When I coded my BlitzMax edition of NeonPlat Adventures (Still online, still free, still available, still awesome, still getting the odd blog post on sites!) I threw things in, wherever they seemed appropriate. I coded randomly, as I usually do. I didn't worry about memory issues. I didn't even give a munky about how many sprites were hurtling all over the screen. (My 2-year-old framework takes care of that.. Hit F12 for your system's stats.) As I attempt my conversion to iOS, I DO have...

Hurray! Everyone can play NeonPlat Adventures. Look at it go!!! Weee!!!

<a href="https://bit.ly/NeonPlat_Adventures">NeonPlat Adventures : Available now for Windows, Linux and MacOSX</a> Inside, a list of all the features I had or hadn't planned, and why they are/aren't in there!

Oooh, I got to click the "Release" tag today! Not done that for a while! The game is out, right now, and is available at.. 1. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=268">The Jayenkai Archive</a> 2. <a href="https://bit.ly/NeonPlat_Adventures">The Minisite</a> and hopefully a few more places by the end of today.. .. unless it tanks, or goes mostly unnoticed, which given my track record, wouldn't be all that surprising. <img src="https://AGameAWeek.co...

This took WAY longer than expected. Step one, compile the Windows exe. Click. Job done. 2. Compile the Mac version. Click. Job done. 3. Compile the Linux edition.. ..

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...

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.

When I launched the original demo of NeonPlat Adventures, way way way way way back in September, I made a complete backup of the game, code and everything. I thought it might be fun to look at it, and the progress it's made, by release date. To be honest, I'd mostly forgotten I did that.

I wasn't aiming to do the Final Beta until about Wed/Thursday this week. Today, the Final Beta went out. A few days early, but there was nothing more I could come up with. The game is done. There's been a few tweaks, today, to sort out a couple of beta-player's issues, and I've been fiddling with some of those slightly annoying things that I never got around to fixing. .. but yeah, it's done.

For a while, today, you started the game with 8 lives instead of just 5. Then a few people on Twitter suggested I should put it back. If you can't complete it, don't blame me

And I've still got a todo-list as long as my leg!!! If I want a few people to beta-test the final-ish edition, that's gotta be done by about Wednesday, I think. So, I have about 5 days or so to get everything done, now. After that, hope for the best, and get everything bundled for the coming Sunday. .. eeek!

Before I headed off to work, I made a new little video. Or, rather, I tried to make a "little" video, yet it inexplicably ended up at over 300Mb!!! WHAAA!?!? So, with an approximate 450 Minutes remaining on the clock, I left for work, and the upload continued. I'm now back from work, and 2 people have already commented on the video! Awesome, folk are watching my silly vids (and not ALL of the subscribers have turned out to be spambots!!)

<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.

Tonight, I started implementing a few of the hat suggestions, from a couple of days ago. This really is a mad dash, at this point, as I desperately try to get hats and badges all bundled into the game's code, ready for the Friday beta. There's still going to be masses of things missing from Fridays beta, like a Game Over screen, and an Adventure Complete! thing.. stuff like that. But for the most part, yet again, this will be a nice release candidate. ..It won't be released, of course, bec...

Today's been total utter chaos. I wrote a bunch of little Badges (Awards?!) the other day, so I've spent today trying to wrangle the code together so that they actually work. See inside for some oddly missing information.

First up, be aware that these aren't working yet, so the bit where one of the achievements would appear to be mostly impossible without the others, is actually down to the fact that they're 6 items apart, and nothing to do with anything that's been earned yet!!! .. having said that, here's the first screenshot of the Achievement table that I've been working on, today.

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!!

Every character, when caught in a bubble and collected, can be "worn" like a "hat". (They don't look like hats, but that's what I started calling them, and that's what I'll continue to call them!) Each hat will give the NeonPlat a special skill, allowing him to do all manner of wonderous things. The run through so far includes ball throwing, ice throwing, flower throwing, drop through the floors, hop in the air, shield, and many more. Today, I added "Multiplier x2" and "Multiplier x5" ...

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.. ---

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5 more, today! woot! That's 42 little animated characters I've popped into the game, now! (43 if you count NeonPlat!) 50? Looking entirely possible at this point! And I've done 8 backgrounds, now, too, so we'll probably want another 2 of those. I'll be honest.. Background #8 was kinda lazily cobbled together, but it works! I'll leave you with a nice desktop for today. This one's from Background #2, which I like to call "Square Pixels", but which doesn't real...

Until about 2pm today, NeonPlat's logo looked like this. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OldLogo.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OldLogo.png" alt="" title="OldLogo" width="561" height="213" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1966" /></a> Now it looks like this..