MadTinkerer's Net is now ingame. Simple method of adding it, there's a small blob in the middle of the screen, lining up with the mouse's X position. The player holds Right mousebutton, and the small blob grows into a little basket/net. The player collects 3 red pods and gains "Love" magnet mode. 3 orange makes the paddle grow and so on and so forth. I have 6 so far. Feel free to go nuts and suggest more, because there's a whole great big bunch of color combo's I can mix up! ...

Engine's now ready for any and all future word-based games that I might randomly decide to build. The wordlist adds 970Kb to a game's exe when added, and when asked it spends about 100milliseconds hunting through the complete list for a word. Luvly. So, with that out of the way I'm heading back to Centipong. You'd think, about 4 weeks into the whole Framework thing, that things would be more or less finished. You'd be wrong. There's LOADS of stuff that I've still not do...

Having now sat up for more than 10 minutes, I figure I'd best get coding, but I can't really finish off Centipong in less than a day.. What to do? Well, assuming I now have all week to complete Centipong, I might as well spend today doing something a little different. One of my all time favourite (of my own!) games is Stringy Things. I know that a hell of a lot of folk don't like Word games as much as I do, but.. dangit, I love the things! I've always planned to add a huge wordlist into the BlitzMax ...

Pain has engulfed my world, this week.

AGameAWeek 2010 - Game Number One! We'll call this a test game, because the whole framework thing still isn't quite up to scratch, with all kinds of missing features! Plus I've put in LOADS of little quirks, things that should be quick have been made extra lengthy, and there's a bunch of redundancy.. This is half-done on purpose so that I can see what the available systems can and can't cope with. Hopefully we'll find that they can!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/compl...

Oooh, new engine this week, are you all looking forward to it?! First Linux release, too! Blimey! As the days drive on, I'm leaving myself with less time to actually code a game, here, but things are coming along nicely. Joystick controls are in, little pop up text things are happening, debug file's being created, everything seems to be working! It's usually at this point that things implode!!! Assuming that doesn't happen, I'll be coming up with some sort of quicky game, by ...

Audio! As you probably noticed, the past 100-or-so of my games have had a rather generic set of numbered sound effects, ranging 001 -> xyz.wav Today I decided that I might as well make that a more permanent feature, so super-BlitzMax-engine now includes quick "LoadSFX" and "PlaySFX" functions that will work solely with those files. Neat! Music will still probably be handled separately, since I'm still not quite sure what I'm doing with those, yet. Either way, there's a specific 256...

<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/argh.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/argh_thumb.png" style="float:right"></a> Because there may or may not have been resulting copyright issues, I've left this post on the backburner until the magazine went off the shop shelves. Usually I'd happily scan in a bit of a page if my games are mentioned, but this time it's a whole entire page, and that's a completely different kettle of fish. (Although, to be fair, I've wr...

For something that just looks like this.. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/bmaxtesting_game_thumb.png"></a> .. I have actually but a heck of a lot of work into the framework, so far! Take a peek inside to find out some nice nuggets of info, and take a look at the future of AGameAWeek!! (It's a bit wordy, mind!!)

That went as well as could be expected. Xmas intervened, family issues cropped up, all manner of snow based issues, and I pretty much rushed through the last 4 or 5 of those! Not that it was entirely noticeable. I happen to think the last two were cracking games. But which were your favourites? Three Hens a-Laying seemed remake-able, could be something more interest. hmm. OK, back to the world of AGameAWeek. AGAW Scoring : 21 weeks, 30 games. Woohoo! Jumped up a wee bit, there! This mea...

As well as all the 12 Games of Xmas (starting Friday) I've finally got around to opening up BlitzMax, and getting that whole new system going. Plenty to do, and it'll probably kill the whole point of my Xmas Week Off, but no matter.. Lots to do, let's hop to it. First up, I want everyone who can be bothered to try this out. It's a couple of little programs that stress tests your system, and tries to draw as many things onscreen at once as it possibly can. Or, at least, as fast as BlitzMax can!! Ru...

This week has taken many twists and turns. I started off making a nice game with a snowman, then that turned into a game with Greenie, then the new PC turned up and I spend a day or two playing with that but the whole network's down, and now I'm waiting on a new Router being delivered! blimey! Meanwhile it's a chore getting from one system to the other, and that means I'm relying on a slightly-dodgy-not-quite-Win7-compatible edition Paintshop Pro 7 and a slightly-dodgy-not-quite-Win7-co...

(URL "https://agameaweek.spreadshirt.co.uk/neonplat-A11347989/customize/color/2"><img src="https://socoder.net/spreadshirt/neonplat.png"> Hurray! Neonplat!! T-Shirt!!! HAPPY!! More amazing buying opportunities inside!!

Nothing magical, this week, more a game that was started but didn't really go anywhere. If I had enough time this week, I'd have scrapped it and started something else, but it's been a bit of a tight week, time wise.. So.. Well, here it is! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Traffic_Cones_20091208A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Traffic_Cones_20091208A_thumb.png"></a> Race around the 12 beautifully detailed (in traffic cones) race tracks, without hit...

It seems my decision has now been made. I'm going to reacquaint myself with BlitzMax, and give things another try. But first I need to build up a nice new Jayenkai Framework. There's a fair number of things that I want to put into place before we begin, so let's get cracking on the list. 1. Multiplayer : Not online...! Authentic Kaizen suggested I add multiplayer co-op to NeonPlat, and I kind of agreed, but the way the old framework is set up just didn't support t...

This week a suggestion from Authentic Kaizen, who suggests having a neon styled platform game, with bubble bobble style components. The game has taken a few turns during the week, changing from spike induced terror, a game with a frog like creature, and a whole lot more besides! It now appears to be settling down quite nicely into some kind of obscure chaos. Hurray for chaos!! Coming Tuesday : NeonPlat!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Socoder Newsletter -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-      "Bonus Round"           #031 - 27th November 2009                      <form method="get" action="https://groups.google.com/group/socoder-newsletter/boxsubscribe" target=_blank style="background-color: #ffc; width: 320px; padding: 2px 4px">...

I get to this point once every few months, and .. well.. here we are again! A few things are getting me here, this time around. Let's list the reasons, then think of some solutions..

*phew* Just about!!! <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Munky_Blocks_DS_20091124A_thumb.png"> Munky Blocks DS, a complete remake of the original that can even make use of the level files from the PC edition, but also adds in a little mix of "Munky's Block" levels, too. In the end, it's turned out as a lovely little game, but BOY was that a rushed ending! Missing a day didn't help things, and the entire editor (top to bottom) had to be coded yesterday!! Surprised I even man...

This week, I've decided to try something a wee bit different. If you're a fan of previous AGameAWeek games, you'll notice that I'm more than a little crap at designing levels. It's a slight issue, but one that I've never bothered to care about. Usually, any games that NEED levels will include a built in level editor. And folk who like the games will spend minutes trying to make one, and that'll be half the fun. The trouble with this theory, of course, is that half the ti...

Last week was Bonfire Night in the UK, and as such RetroRemakes.com had a little challenge. (They've started to do a monthly challenge..) Create a game/story/etc with Fireworks in it. Here's my game. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Firework_Chaos_20091117A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Firework_Chaos_20091117A_thumb.png"></a>

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/JNKx15.zip">Download JNKx15 Right Here</a> A nice neat 36Mb download, with 15 lovely little games included. Download, Unzip, Play away!

Blimey, Blockman got big! 5Mb!! FIVE!! That's not like me! But with over 350 great big (for me!) 64x64 pixel sprites, the game was bound to get a little bit bigger than usual. Oh, and a bitmap font, too! I've really gone all out, this week! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Blockman_Gets_More_20091103B.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Blockman_Gets_More_20091103B_thumb.png"></a> To be fair, it's taken about 2 weeks to get this all done, but I ...

Blimey, that got complex! <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/blockmansGreatBigMenu.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/blockmansGreatBigMenu_thumb.png"></a> Starting with "World 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1" I built a set of sideways Arcade menu start points. Then I added the old "J/K" gameplay options in the style of World 10-1 and World 25-1.. Although from 6-1 and after, the theme isn't predetermined, and it's just picking random themes each time! Each world conta...

Or rather, he needs one, but doesn't quite have one. That's on tomorrow morning/tonight's list of things to do. Otherwise we've got sounds, graphics, music, levels, level progression, bonus level sets and more. Everything's nice and happy! Blockman is happy, too! <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Firestarter.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Firestarter_thumb.png"></a> (Finally added scores to the bottom of the screen!!) One thing I'm sl...