\o/yeay\o/ Pancakes! <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Pancakes-Syrup-Screenshot_20-Feb-2012_140222.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Pancakes-Syrup-Screenshot_20-Feb-2012_140222-300x225.png" alt="" title="Pancakes Syrup (Screenshot_20 Feb 2012_140222)" width="300" height="225" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2330" /></a> This week, at the suggestion of <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/GlenMcNamee/status/16939209179175731...

Last week, there was no AGameAWeek. It was the clown's fault.. .. stupid clown.. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/iTunesArtwork.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/iTunesArtwork-300x300.png" alt="" title="iTunesArtwork" width="300" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2288" />With my newer shinier iOS Framework running the way it was more-or-less supposed to be, I decided to take a week ...

Bah.. I knew that'd happen.. As soon as AGameAWeek kicked back into action, the "Daily Blog" would take a bit of a fall. I'm trying to keep up, though! Honest!!

So, I'm sitting there trying to get a nice GameCenter thing added to my new framework, and I figured that having to display people's names might very well require a bit of Unicode.. (Note : This is the reason my other iOS games don't have names on the highscore lists!) In Cocos, you can use 3 font styles.. one is a simple bitmap font (this one I can handle!) one is a complex bitmap font (with a required 50,000,000,000,000 images to handle all the possible languages!) and the third one uses ttf fonts. ...

Tonight, I got home from work with a game idea in mind. Using my freshly reinstalled PC, I settled down for the first bit of coding on the thing, copied my FrameworkTemplate to a new folder, drew a couple of sprites, opened the code, built up a simple array/tilemap test engine, and then hit Build.. .. Aaah.. Seems my dev-environment isn't quite at 100% yet, because I coded the thing into a FrameworkTemplate from about a year ago, and all the nice new stuff is missing. *sigh* What a waste of an hou...

<a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/The-Unijuggler-Screenshot_09-Jan-2012_215837.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/The-Unijuggler-Screenshot_09-Jan-2012_215837-300x187.png" alt="" title="The Unijuggler (Screenshot_09 Jan 2012_215837)" width="300" height="187" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2229" /></a> A nice and simple "Highscore" game. Keep the Unijuggler's balls afloat, and if you're feeling lucky, you can try forgi...

There are many many things breaking the calendar. The list is growing. Having finally got the whole Locale thing to work (switch phone to French, open game, calendar still in English, wtf!?) With enough tweaks, I was getting French calendar months, and all looked well. .. Except the "??" in d??cembre.. Because my font is lazy. ugh.. That'll be a lengthy fix! New Font functions ahoy!

Before starting development on NeonPlat Adventures, I took great care to test all the alternatives. I'd read online about OSX Lion breaking Blitz, and people needing to fuck about with lots of settings and things. The scary part was that developing on Lion would probably break compatibility with Snow Leopard. As such, I made a few test engines, and got people with Lion to test my games, to be 100% sure that, if I stuck with Snow Leopard, my games would be 100% compatible with BOTH sets of users. ...

A lot of elements are currently coming together, and things are getting a little more chaotic than I'd like them to be around Xmas time. If the past 2 years of Xmas themed chaos (12 games of Xmas, Advent Collection) have taught me one thing, it's not to EVER plan anything around Xmas! Presents, family visits and the general filling of my face with Xmas cake, will usually get in the way of the coding time, and as such I decided not to push myself into anything moronic this year. I apologise if you're deep...

Can't seem to make a start on things, this morning. Woke up early, expecting the Window fitters to come and get that done. Didn't happen. Rescheduled for next week, which is probably too close to Xmas, so probably won't happen either.. .. I blame Comic Sans.

Yesterday was the #Indievisibility awards ceremony, which involved a bunch of indie guys, a pub, a brawl and a number of teabags. Awards were given for all manner of things.. Different genres, games with certain features and other seemingly random reasons. You can scan through a list of all the <a href="https://www.sizefivegames.com/2011/12/11/indievisibilty-end-of-year-awards-results/">Awards here,</a> and read all about the joys of the fight! Awesome!

When I was building the beta versions of NeonPlat Adventures, it always included a little readme file. The final release didn't have one, but I figured that was ok, because it was so simple it didn't really need one. The original readme was only really there to explain that beta peeps shouldn't mention the Calendar, and then I kinda rambled on a bit! Anyhoo, if you find yourself in desperate need of a readme file, this is it!

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Slumlord27">Slumlord27/Moshboy's Youtube Channel</a> For a long time, Moshboy's been building a nice big list of indie games on his Youtube Channel. There's LOADS to see, and I highly recommend that you spend a month or two playing through them all! Great stuff. Today, he decided to add Kee Bo Ard to his list! yeay!

Sorry, I missed a day or two, there.. Must be getting into the code. I say "into the code".. What I mean is, I'm getting really cheesed off by all this converting stuff and it's driving me completely insane! Lesson Learned : I need to layout my code better! .. I won't, but it's a nice lesson to learn!

You can't possibly complain that this game is evil and sadistic! It's just a happy happy game, with instructions permanently written, right at the top!! Who could possibly complain!!!?

PlayMyCode no longer works

The following blog post contains words, which are built up using various letters. You are expected to read the words in the correct order, moving your eyes from left to right to read each line, and then moving on to the left hand side of the next line. Continue in this method until you have read all of the words of this blog post, and are <em>happy</em> with your understanding...

As I was falling asleep, last night, I had a great idea for a new game. I didn't jot it down, and now I can't remember what it was, except it had something to do with a stickman running around a black and white maze. ... bugger..

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://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!

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 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.

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!!)

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?

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.

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.

Phase One was the simple test engine I release WAY WAY back in the very early stages of this humongous project.. .. last month! Phase One was a basic engine, with simple platforming mechanics. Taking the rules of NeonPlat and adding a scrolling background, I wanted to judge if it'd be enjoyed. True, one piece of feedback was a little downbeat, but on the whole it's been well appreciated. You can't please everyone, but the original's not broken, so hopefully that makes up for it. Pha...

One of the hardest things about adding baddies to this game is, surprisingly for me, not actually drawing things! With NeonPlat I've created a weird skewed world, where nothing looks exactly as it should. This gives me a little artistic license with my artwork. .. or rather, I can be shit, and nobody'll notice! If something looks a little too odd, I simply make it look odder in the animation, and it somehow cobbles together nicely. Want an example? The Bats don't flap, they kinda invert-...