The last time we tried Munky Blocks we had 1 munky and many blocks. Munky had to collect the blocks, piece them together to form coloured areas, and blammo, they vanished. This time, we only have one block. Munky needs to pick up that block, and place it on top of the red button, to open up the red exit, and then he can leave. A simple enough concept, but one that took so long to build I didn't really have time to build a decent set of levels. A shame. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/M...

And so another week trundles by. I had hoped to finish off the ever elusive games, this week, (the RPG and the Patent Wars), but that doesn't appear to be happening at all. Oh well. If they happen, they happen. If not, carry on. Instead I started a whole new game on Friday morning. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Blockman_Gets_20090929A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Blockman_Gets_20090929A_thumb.png"></a>

This week's Wednesday Workshop suggests we should make a Pacman game. I've already done "Blockman Forever" this year, so I'm going to avoid retreading old ground. Instead I'm going the Puzzle route. Already I've got a lovely little set of graphics going, and am obviously reusing Blockman because.. .. well, why not!!! A few mazes are set up, ready to go, as well as the first of the neat little puzzle mechanics... I'm now trying to come up with a nice batch of extra puzzle e...

Awww.. I was thinking of doing some sort of fruit machine thing, but I didn't really have any kind of plan for it, so it didn't really get off the ground. Poor thing. Maybe this week for that? Or the RPG! Oops, forgot about that! It's getting the Patent Wars treatment!

I'm sat here at 11pm on Sunday night, trying to think of a game for Tuesday. It's not happening.. I've spent all week long adding games to the archive. That's to say, I've spent all week playing all my old games, and having a whale of a time.. I guess that has a disadvantage, being that I haven't coded jack all, all week. Oh well. We can miss one, right? Just means I need to make up for it next week. Can't have the ratio dropping!

If you've been keeping track, you'll have probably noticed an ever increasing number in the folders of my games. These are the weeks of the Wednesday Workshop, and as you trace through my games, you'll see a whole lot of matches between the WW and the game's basic idea. WW is fantastic for ideas, but sometimes things don't quite work out. Take this image, from a basic engine, all the way back in week #142.. (That's 76 weeks ago!) (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Incomplete.png"><img src="ht...

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

The Home Stret...

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

10 weeks, 3 DS...

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

Back to work

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

Alien Deat...

The AGameAWeek 2008-2009 Retrospective

(URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-one/">Part One), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-two/">Part Two), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-three/">Part Three), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-four/">Part Four), (URL "https://www.agameaweek.com/2009/08/agameaweek-2008-2009-part-five/">Part Five)

AGameAWeek...

Nice and big, specifically in the title, so as not to get ANYONE excited! I will be VERY surprised if anyone gives a rats ass about this week's .. um.. "game".. but here it is anyway. "Made for my cookie", although it's not a cookie anymore.. it's a viewty.. this J2ME Java App will allow you to play along with a real-world game of scrabble. See, lately I've been playing a LOT of Scrabble. I bought a ??40 "Scrabble 60th Anniversary Edition" set, thinking it's be all nice and lovel...

Aww. Didn't work. This week's Wednesday Workshop (#209) asked us to create a game with some kind of Gravity. If you've been following AGameAWeek for a while, you'll remember Puzzobomb. A nice puzzle game with Gravity. I also did MunkyBlocks as a kind of follow up. Well, this week I decided to try it again, but with rotational gravity, rather than plain gravity. As such, the block will fall in the direction they're placed. They ha...

Well, not all suck. Let's take a quick run through my week, shall we? Tuesday Posted last week's game, got prepared to work on PatentWars some more. Created a few nice looking player counters, got them moving around the board, all is well. <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/counters.png"> Wednesday That little red counter looks really really neat. Attempted to mould it, somehow, into a Socoder logo. It worked! <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/...

I haven't started it yet! Uhoh! This week's Wednesday Workshop (#201) asks us to create a game within a 3 hour limit. Looks like I'm aiming for that, then! Additionally, since I've been thinking of my phone all week, I think I'm also going to try to come up with a game that works on that. Maybe a puzzle game, of some sort. No idea. So, first in Blitz, then later on the Phone. I might even redo it again, and pop it into PRC2, 'cos that's looking rather empty lately. That's my plan. Not sure w...

This week's Wednesday Workshop (#200! wowie) asked us to create a game using no more than 2000 characters. I managed to recreate the classic 8-bit title "Splat!", whereby you control a spider through a maze, picking up fruit. In order to squeeze all that into 2000 characters, I opted for simpler mouse movement, and few other bits and pieces. Then I figured, what the heck, and decided to make it a wee bit bigger for AGameAWeek. Guide the worm through the maze, grab the circles, avoid the squares, a...

Is that title subtle enough for Google, d'you think? This week, I've been getting to grips with MidletPascal, and dodging it's annoying mid-compile crashes, in a vague attempt to get some games onto my phone. Sorry folks, this week's AGameAWeek is entirely Java based. Boooo!! Or at least, unless you have a decent phone, anyway! <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/cookiea.png">

So, Red Dwarf. I know there's a lot of complainers out there, but I loved it. OK, it wasn't old Dwarf, and it really missed the laugh-track. But that was good! A good story, great acting, loads and loads of little injokes. Good stuff! More please! ---- No AGameAWeek this week, I took a lazy day. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Good! Meanwhile, here's a progress report. AGameAWeek I started a game last week, but the lack of a certain element made the game completel...

A bizarre mismash of random thoughts this week, alongside an eventual plan of action, and only a day to impliment it!! woot!

OK, as I said earlier, I've been playing with the Skeleton stuff today. Whilst I was in there, I wondered how fun it might be if I added some kind of overriding features into my default engine. You might (or not) have noticed, but since Wednesday Workshop Week #1, I've been placing all my game's data into the System folder, then into it's own Weekly numbered folder within. If you get ALL my games (from the past couple of years), you can bundle them all together into the same folder. The root contains al...

A long forgotten game gets a remake today. Platfire was originally made, way way back in Wednesday Workshop #2!! To be fair, #1's probably the better game, style wise. (As in, it wasn't rushed within a few hours, since yesterday!!) But Platfire 2 is in the "It's super hard, and you won't get much of a score" style that I seem to be leaching onto, these days. Piles and piles of enemies will appear, and you just keep taking shots at 'em until you're dead. As I type this,...

BAH!! DS Coding is annoying!! Techy stuff inside..

I'm yet to start coding anything gamewise, yet, but I've made my first start on the first game. Gerinych over at GBATemp suggested a Sokoban clone. Usually, I avoid Sokobans. They're kinda dull, generic and boring after 5 seconds, but there's something in Sokoban that's really useful right now. Sokoban has a LOT of levels, and since one of the Socoder members (JL235) is making his own Sokoban clone, he knew where I'd find a whole big bunch of levels for it. So, in rapid succ...

For DS Development, I use PALib and DevKitPro. DevKitPro compiles everything nicely for the DS, whilst PALib is a set of functions that makes everything nice and usable, as opposed be being a baffling chaotic mess! However, if you try updating it, a whole fleet of incompatibilities arise, be it because of DevKitPro changing, or PALib. And, it's not just little things either. A simple PALib upgrade will mean that pretty much all of my old games start getting little breaks in them, and it's a ...

This week's Wednesday Workshop <a href="https://socoder.net/index.php?topic=1414">#186</a> was to create a nice Asteroids game. As I started creating it, I was planning a nice Horizontal Shooter-esque game, with powerups and all kinds of crazyness. But I ran out of steam midway. A shame.. <img src="https://agameaweek.com/completeB/2009/Disasteroids_20090203A.png"> BUT. It's still a nice swooshy game, with fancy particles, and nice explosions. It's mouse controlled, l...

A short and sweet game, this week. Would've been more (extra graphical niceness) but I ran out of time! Aw well.. Here's the basic form. <img src="https://socoder.net/workshop/dlds/184_go_left.gif"> Rules : Go Left, avoid spinning spiky things. There's 13 levels, and then it wraps back to level 3 but faster, and then continues to wrap, getting faster and faster all the time.. Infinite lives, so if you're really bored you can just keep going and going and going! Maybe! Yo...

*sigh* I must apologise.. I assumed I was right.

Never assume you're right!

I tried and tested, over and over, and I couldn't find a fault. And then, this morning, I received an email, and through a couple of back-and-forths discovered that, indeed, there was something really really really quite wrong. Thanks, Nathan.. I made myself a new fresh install, and tried to find the bug. The bug happened! I saw it! I thought "WTF!?!" and then tried again, with another fresh in...