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)

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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...

I'm a calm person. I will happily settle with what I've got, and be glad that I have it. I don't own a copy of Flash, I can't afford it, and I'm not going to steal it. So I carry on making games in Blitz, and whatever else I can get my hands on. So, with my £100 Phone, from LG, (The KP500 'Cookie') I started to write games using the freely available MidletPascal. It's a wonderful piece of software, and it does many great things.

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...

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">

I'm taking a day off from H~S~R today, thinking ahead for next weeks game, which may/may not be a word game.. not sure.. Anyhoo, there are bugs, and Swarmer found a couple, so head inside to have a good read about 'em.

I'm jumping all over the place, lately, aren't I!! With Skeleton files to update, Menus to rejig, and even super-complex Socoder work, there's lots and lots and lots for me to do! This morning, I've hopped back to Platdude's Retro Collection 2. Day 14 is a whole day away from Day 13. That can't be good! The game won't be finished for another year and a half at this rate!! Right then.. Menus! Previously I'd copy+pasted the menu system from the previous game. To b...

Off and on, a bit at a time, the past few days, what with the DIY, and the AGameAWeek, and the Socoder work the past few days.. So, rather than call 10 minute sessions a day at a time, I'll call them a great big long "Popping in and out, looking at the code, struggling to figure out what's wrong, and then going to do something else instead" day. It's a cheat, but since the annoying issue is still there, it still counts! I'm stuck on Game #2. And it's annoying that I'm stuck on g...

Yesterday was spent getting Sokoban to work in BlitzBasic for Windows. It ended up reasonably well, but there's a few things that should be tweaked, including one persons complaint that bundling all 600+ levels into a single pack kinda kills the fun of it.. A dull trek through a long list of simple levels before you even touch on the slightly more difficult levels, does not a fun game make. So, I'll split them back up into their seperate packs, and give folk a nice selectable menu system.

I've taken onboard a few of AuthenticKaizen's suggestions, and there's now a slightly better edition of Disasteroids available. <a href="https://agameaweek.com/?Game=33">Same download link, right here</a> The game's pretty much the same as it was on Tuesday, except with a few added powerups to play around with. There's also (I forgot to mention this anywhere, but it's in there!!) a "Chill" mode. Hit Tab to start the game, and you play without those little white cr...

( border="0"><tr><td>Blimey! What a year, eh! I decided to round off the year with a nice big, old fashioned list, with everything in it. Except this doesn't have everything in it, because I've forgotten to add the DS games.. I'll do that later!! (Took me about 3 hours to do this, so I'm not going to tweak it, now!!) Anyway, here's a nice great big list of every game (again, apart from the DS ones) that I made in 2008. It's quite a big list, too.. 31 Games. OK, so maybe not a ...

A sigh of relief, as the game is finally in an upload worthy state. I'm sure there's plenty of bugs, mounds of forgotten features, and odd little untweaked things that aren't quite right, but what's here is plenty enough to be counted as Release 1. <a href="https://agameaweek.com/?Game=37"> Download Alien Deathmatch 2</a> 3Mb!!! The game, in it's current Release 1 state has quite a few new features from those in AD1. <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_b...

A more accurate title would be "Just like Windows Vista, here's a list of things I told you I'd be putting in, but haven't yet bothered to, so will be missing when I release the game.." Except I'm one person, and have spent four weeks doing this.. Not 100 people working for 4 years... ... *sigh* Vista sucks.. 1. Achievements, Good, bad, Pwnage, Suckage, any and all. I just haven't gotten around to adding these yet. There's a gap on the titlescreen, that's where they go,...

I'm quite happy with the level compression, now. Things are nice and trim, and everything's fitting into a small enough area. So, today I'm thinking about how the server should work.. Note, I've not added the server yet, but I'm definitely getting prepared! What I've decided to do is implement an Author name and Level name directly into the checksum. This way, when the server checks your game for new levels, it can automatically dig out the new stuff, and it'll know what it&#...

<a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot009b.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/ad2_shot009b_thumb.png"></a> An editor! Today, I finally got around to making the editor. Starting nice and easily, I'll be adding bits and pieces as I go, so that .. hopefully.. when you get hold of it, it's not as empty as it currently is!

If you're slightly above the age of people who are still meant to be pissing about playing silly games, like I am, you probably remember Gearworks, from the Amiga/C64 era. I don't know why, but the game suddenly popped into my head, this week. So I made a quicky clone. It's not perfect, there's loads missing, and there's no editor in sight, but as a testbed for my still growing 2D-in-3D engine, it does the job. <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/gearworks.png"><img s...

Dum-dum-durrrr.. Over at Socoder, someone (Naming no names.. he knows who he is..) figured out that the encryption on my Highscore system wasn't exactly the most foolproof of encryptions, and that it's fairly easy to hack in a few fake scores. Can't have that! So I worked my arse off, early this week, and a new encryption method has been successfully trialled and put into place. It's no super-amazing method either, but it oughta do for a while. The extra workload has meant that I might not get time...

Due to all manner of obscure things happening this week (A HD Crash being one of them..) this week's effort isn't anywhere near as good as last week's!! Still, a game's a game, even without a titlescreen, music, sound, an ending, scores, or anything else like that.. .. *cough* ... <img src="https://socoder.net/workshop/dlds/169_afros_chair.gif"> A guy called Afro, over at Socoder had modelled a few little 3D objects. We all decided that the aim of this week's Wednesday Wor...

A game a week's going to be hard to keep going, so I'd like to have a nice bag of thoughts that I can pop into every now and then when the ideas start dropping off. If you've a crazy zany game idea, now's your time to get it, if not made, then at least considered Do keep in mind that "a game a week" pretty much reduces the complexity I can add to these things, so I'll be trying my best to simplify (See Platdude's Retro Collection!) any suggestions that come m...

This week's Wednesday Workshop <a href="https://socoder.net/index.php?topic=1206">#166</a> asked for us to create a game that uses lots of Balance. I couldn't come up with anything! So, instead, here's JNKPlat DS 08. <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/platds8_menu.png" align="right"> It's a complete restart of the engine, coded wholly from start, but using the old sprites so as to keep the good old fashioned style of the last one! (Although, had I redrawn the spr...

Those expecting another Saturday filled with happy retro memories have a long wait. I took the week off! Mostly because coding 18 games within 3 weeks takes quite a lot out of you, but also 'cos my DS finally gave up trying to hold onto the tiny shred of hinge it had remaining. (ie, it did that whole "R-trigger side snap" thing that DSLite's tend to do!) During this week, though, I've been thinking about Galaga. On the one hand, it'd be nice to make a tiny retro version of the Amiga classic "Deluxe G...

A week later, and I've insanely coded a whole new bunch of games! The Donkey Kong thing didn't work out, and is so mind-numbingly dull it hasn't yet ended up in the Garbage heap. But not to worry, Racer's in there.. So that'll be keep you occupied! I managed to fix up the Dot Popping game, so that's back in the main menus, and I also added a few others, including Pong and Tetris, since the commenters below seemed to really want to have a decent Tetris game. For reference, I m...

If you're following development of Platdude's Retro Collection hoping for a new batch of great games, then you're in luck! TWO great games have been added, TWO rubbishy games have been added, and ONE more game is being worked on right now, as I type this.. Games 1 and 2 are listed in the official page, the Missile Command and Extract games. Nice, simple, retro, fast and fun. Game 3 was also simple and fast. It's the usual "Things pop up, then you tap them. You get a minute, score as mu...

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/colbox_800.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/colbox_400.png"/></a> Platdude's Retro Collection was first released in November 2007. Each new release will contain a handful of new games. How many will there be in the end? Who can say! The latest release, <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/dsdev/col018.zip">Download Here</a>, contains 18 games from the list below. Note : If you'd like to play, but don't own a DS,...

This month, Socoder are having a "Make a game with Pickups" challenge. It took me a bit of a while to decide what game to do, but I think I've finally settled on one. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/mum_01.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/windev/mum_01_thumb.png" /></a> Greenie - The Eccentric Egyptologist.. Named so it fits alongside Greenie - The Helecopter Hero. It's a remake of Oh Mummy but with a couple of tweaks here and there, including the way you open t...