I finally wrangled my way through "the big update" over the course of two nights.. Day one was having to upgrade to Mountain Lion (I was in hospital when it came out, and hadn't bothered to upgrade since).. This was swiftly* followed by installing XCode5. The reason for all this, is that iOS7 devices need XCode5, and XCode5 needs Mountain Lion. It's Apple's special way of making sure all us developers constantly upgrade everything! * Given that my Mac is at the exact opposite side of the house as my...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:left;">It's been a while since I did an AGameAWeek Gold. There's not been a lot of stand-out stuff popping up on the old time-machine. Sure there's been a whole pile of games, but nothing that's really been noteworthy, so for the most part I've kind of been ignoring this section of the site. Today, however, a lovely little game popped up, and I spent a good hour playing the thing! Whoops!!

This coming Tuesday, August 27th I'll be releasing Game #300 in the Archive. Holy crumpets, 300!?!!? It's been a long trawl, getting BlastTrax finished in time, especially since I actually had to have it done by LAST week, so's it could get through Apple Review in time for the #300th! As a result, August has been one heck of a crazy month, and I'm pretty dang tired out. I'm currently considering taking most of September off, or at the very least a couple of weeks. I've reached a nice goal, it's tim...

The great big 1.5 update of SpikeDislike2 is now available from the Android or iOS App Stores. This version brings the HUGE end mode, Choose Your Own Dislike, which features all those lovely options that the original game had, along with a couple of new ones. SpikeDislike2 v1.5 is available for (URL "https://itunes.apple.com/app/id604867277">iOS) and (URL "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AGameAWeek.SpikeDislike2_A1">Android). If you've already got it on your device, visit the ...

Every Single Week

Not Good Advice

The following is not advice, and should not be taken as such. People often ask me how I manage to do AGameAWeek. Particularly, how I manage to cram everything into a single week, and then somehow manage to do exactly the same thing every other week, without going crazy. What follows might possibly help you understand a little more of what goes on in the world of AGameAWeek. Or it might just be a whole bunch of rambling waffling text. Not sure!! ...

Apologies that this post has taken me so long to publish. I actually wrote most of it about 3 months ago, when I first released SpikeDislike2, but it's been sat on my Mac on a Sticky Note, and I kinda forgot all about it! I remembered it, the other day, when I submitted SpikeDislike2-Lite to Apple. What follows is a checklist/guide for compiling your (URL "https://monkeycoder.co.nz">Monkey-coded) game onto iOS.

A remake, this week, of a popular old game, but one which appears to have lost it's powerups along the way. The game plays well enough, but it feels somewhat lacking. Perhaps a little community-driven inspiration might help bulk it back up again?

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;"> AGameAWeek Gold takes a trip through my archive of games, and plucks out any games that may have been previously released on this day in history. Sometimes it finds recent games from the past few years of me doing AGameAWeek. Other times, however, it finds really really really old games, from a time when the concept of doing a new game every week wasn't even a gleam in my eye!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;"> AGameAWeek Gold is a daily trip through the Jayenkai Archive, to see if I've previously released any games on this day in history. Sometimes the day is uneventful. Not even I have managed enough to pad out every single day of the year! Oddly, though, other days contain more than one game. And today's one of those days!

On Friday morning, (URL "https://twitter.com/MadGarden">@MadGarden) suddenly popped up on Google Chat and started chatting about some sort of game he imagined might be interesting. Something about "a neat control scheme for a platformer/combat thing" being a bit like Tron, with the discs being both a weapon and a shield. Not entirely sure what he was on about, but it started one of those oddball pots of insanity bubbling, and soon enough a random game idea had emerged from my mind.. It's quite a way...

Sad face. I'm supposed to be adding a new word game, every week, but this week's <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/2013/04/the-past-few-days/">IGN Sillyness</a> resulted in me spending literally hours replying to a whole bunch of emails, and trying to keep tabs on everything as it all went a wee bit crazy. To be fair, I could've just spent ten minutes replying to those, but I do like to waffle in my email replies!! As a result, I didn't actually get around to much coding, ...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">Occasionally, our flick through the Jayenkai Archives fails to pick up any games that I might've released on this day in history. As rapid as my game development is, I'm just not THAT quick! But other times, it'll pick up more than one! Today's one of those days..

Get used to seeing this, as you're going to see a lot of it. The other day I asked for opinions on what April might bring. Three people chipped up. One was over at Curly's World of Freeware, where Tormuse suggested I should go with the Word Games. Second, @moshboy suggested I should go with an unplanned stream of oddities. Oooh, a Tie!! Third was the deciding vote. And worryingly it didn't even come from the internet. Instead, My Mum suggested I should carry on doing Stringy Things....

I haven't got any! .. that's a lie.. I have about 3 big plans in mind, and I'm not sure which to go with.

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">AGameAWeek Gold looks back through the huge archive each day, to see if I've previously released anything on this day. There's not always a game to play, but occasionally we'll stumble upon long forgotten gems. Today's is especially nice!

Let me talk you through what's happened since yesterday. First off, I signed up as a Google Play developer. I logged in, I joined up, I paid my Dev Fee, and all was going well. I started adding a "SpikeDislike2-Lite" app to the GooglePlay store. I filled in the details, and got everything nicely added using just my iPad. I then slept...

Last week, one of my quickly cobbled together test tunes for JMTrackr was the old Manic Miner ingame music. If you download JMtrackr, you'll find it in the Retro folder. I created it quickly, made a little mp3 of it in random mode, and plopped it up on Socoder. People seemed to fall in love with the idea of me making a Manic Miner clone, and over the course of the past few days, that's escalated somewhat.. People really seem to want me to make a Manic Miner type thing.

AGameAWeek is meant to happen on Tuesdays. I've stated numerous times that SpikeDislike2 will be released on March 5th, which is also a Tuesday. .. But Apple.. .. Apple don't give you times..! On Apple's hugely chaotic iTunesConnect site, you can happily pop a Release Date into the mechanism, but there's no way to state a Release Time. Given that AGameAWeek happens on a Tuesday Morning, GMT, I can't then expect US folk to have to inexplicably wait an extra 6 hours, just because thei...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:left"> I've been considering doing this for a while, but never bothered to come up with any sort of Database Scanner to find old posts. I'm lazy like that! Luckily, a new iOS App has come along to save me the trouble. The wonderful "TimeHop" is available (for free), and allows you to upload your Twitter Archive, as well as include your Facebook timeline.. What it then does is scan the archives for things that have happened on this day,...

Last night I finished off the C3ntipong stuff, and got the release edition compiled, tested, double-checked, and uploaded to Apple. That's it! It's gone.. It's off. There's no turning back, now! In about a week's time, C3ntipong may very well pop up on the AppStore, assuming it gets approved! A relatively painless procedure... well, except for all of <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/2013/02/ios-editions/">yesterday's palaver</a>, anyway!

You're probably wondering, by now, with all this wonderful "Monkey" stuff that I've been banging on about for the past month, where the heck my iOS offerings are. Well, while it's true that Monkey does indeed make the coding a heck of a lot easier, there's still another matter to attend to. The dreaded "iTunes Connect" area! ARGH!!!! You've probably read enough of my rants to know that iDev isn't easy. There are licenses to deal with. "Provision" codes, Certificates, all manner of stupid fiddly thing...

Already!? Who saw this coming?! I sure as hell didn't!! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/shootybangbang.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/shootybangbang-300x228.png" alt="" title="shootybangbang" width="300" height="228" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2486" /></a> You can Play the HTML5 Edition here, and note a bunch of scrambled debug messages as they pop up underneath the game! Update : I deleted all these earl...

As I continue to build up the new Monkey-based framework, I have a lot of things to test, and get working. As most of you have noticed, I tend to forget things, like "hey, your game doesn't quit when I hit Alt+F4!???.. That little thing took years for me to bother to implement!! In order to build the best framework that I can, I'll be needing pokes and prods along the way. I also need a fair number of testbeds, to try out everything on. If you'd like to join in, stick your name below. Yo...

I might make this a monthly feature, or then again I might forget all about it! Who can tell!! If it's popular, someone will remind me! Here's Platdude in a precarious position, for January! Click for HUGE!! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Desktop_2013_Jan.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Desktop_2013_Jan-1024x1024.png" alt="" title="Desktop_2013_Jan" width="590" height="590" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-2438" />Views 56, Upvotes 13