Beta Collexion is my Advent Calendar of Games for 2015. 26 wonderfully playable little games, all wrapped in a lovely giftwrapped bundle. Beta Collexion can be found (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/GameList.php?ShowJust=352">here, in the Jayenkai Archive.) You can (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Beta_Collexion_20151123.zip">Download it for Windows), Play it in your (URL "https://gamejolt.com/games/beta-collexion/109096">browser via GameJolt), Play it on (URL "https://www.ouya.tv/game/Beta-Col...

Developments

It's about time I started to retweak all those PlayJam games. Although they're suitably working as they are, they all need a little rejigging for the newer system. It seems the new PlayJam device is having trouble with one of my reused menu sound effects.. The tiny "blip" sound effect is less than 1kb, at only 772 bytes. It appears (And I really hope I tracked this down, correctly!) that the newer PlayJam device (FlarePlay) is having trouble with this particular sound effect. S...

Developments

Spent yesterday powering through a quick monster-maze game. Managed to build a basic dungeon layout builder, got monsters wandering around, and generally made a nice playable little game. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/414_006.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/414_006-1024x597.png" alt="414_006" width="604" height="352" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-5165" /> This i...

Developments

I spent most of yesterday trying to get a lot of broken things to work, but nothing seemed to happen. Still no progress on the NextGen-PlayJam device, which is still crashing like a crazy driver. Still no progress on getting all of my audio to play on the LastGen-PlayJam device, which seems to ignore every 10th-or-so PlaySound command. Still no progress on getting the controls working on my Archos Gamepad, which is driving me up the wall. Android wasn't designed to be this fla...

Developments

SpikeDislike3's been somewhat of a dead duck when it comes to sales. Just over 140 in the past 3 months is awful, even by my standards. It's odd seeing SD3 doing so badly when some of my other games (like Puzzobomb from 2011!) appear to be suddenly doing much much better. And so, inevitably, the game becomes free for a day. I'll probably leave it on free until later tonight, to give most people a chance at grabbing it. If you've an iPhing, go grab the game for free, then sp...

Developments

Guess what I tried doing, last night...? If you read the title of this blog entry, and know how smooth and silky my current Dev-Kit is, you've probably guessed "A quick iOS Compile", and, of course, you'd be right! I'm currently midway through attempting to get a Free "LITE" edition of SpikeDislike3 onto the App Store. 50 levels, no GameCenter, and a big old "Full Edition!" link right at the top of the menu. That part was easy. Then I copied the folder over to the Mac.. ....

Developments

So, with all my games now missing from OUYA, it's time to start popping them all back on again. One by one, I'm opening old code, fixing up any issues, and getting the games updated to the newer framework. The new controller code is a piece of piss, since I did all that work in the Monkey Target part of Monkey. Essentially, I need only hit the recompile button, and the new controller code magically fits itself into the game. The tricky part is adding a "Quit Game" menu item to...

Developments

All the main pieces of the menu system are now in place. Or at the very least, you can now start the bloomin' game again!! ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aIRvCm9JEl0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> Pick a World, pick a Zone, start the game, get through or die, complete levels to unlock more worlds, rinse, repeat! The basics are in. The generator's generating, the levels are selectable, and that's...

Developments

The first half of the new menu system is now complete. You can select a World from one of the many that are onscreen, and it opens up to give you a larger view of the world. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F-_NlO3KALk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> The plan is that each world contains 5 zones, and they'll be selectable from this second screen, except that I've not actually done that bit yet! Bah! S...

Developments

( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/z95Cn1S9d78" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> Yesterday was spent tweaking various difficulty settings. There are 11 (0-10) available difficulties being coded into the level generator, and this video shows what happens at Level 3. Level 0 is easiest, with fewer easier to manage baddies, whilst level 10 is full of spikes and nasty Duck-Turrets. Today I'm going to be tweak...

Developments

Aaah, Spikes! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_010.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NPA2_010.png" alt="NPA2_010" width="704" height="200" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5006" /> A common feature in videogames since the early days, and one of the great standards of Dislike! Touch a spike, and you instantly respawn at your last checkpoint. .. Like, Instantly!! Toda...

Gameboy Spikes

Do you own a classic Gameboy? Do you have a flashcart for it? Then today's (*yesterday) your lucky day! ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JA34N332uTo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> For the past week or so, (URL "https://socoder.net/?blog=rychan">Socoder member Rychan) has been working on a port of SpikeDislike for the Gameboy! You can (URL "https://socoder.net/?showcase=48655">grab it here)...

Developments

Last night I added some blocks to the Level Generator, which of course then required me to faff about adding extra rules to the player, and the baddies, and the other objects, to ensure they collide "roughly" correctly with the tilemap. It didn't take too long to get the basics in, but having to essentially rewrite the rules for half-a-dozen different object types meant for a long and complex bit of work. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DHRCs3Md1To"...

Developments

Another lazy day, yesterday. Well, I say that. I've started to reorganise the enemy sprites into a new set of groups, so that they work slightly better on Android devices. Mostly, I don't want to have that annoying "loading" stutter at the start of every level, and similarly I can't trust loading EVERYTHING into the game at once. (SpikeDislike3 had issues with memory on some devices) Instead, I'm grouping the enemies together, and starting to organise particular types of enemies...

Developments

I've added chuckables, so I guess those need tested, too. But without enemy sprites bouncing about the place, there's not much point in having chuckables, so.. umm.. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NPA2_005.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NPA2_005.png" alt="NPA2_005" width="643" height="286" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4969" /> I added Jack in! Jack is currently...

Developments

Tackling multicoloured craziness in HTML5 is NOT an easy task.. Desktop (and/or Android, OUYA, iOS, etc) version (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NPA2_004.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NPA2_004-1024x542.png" alt="NPA2_004" width="604" height="320" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4963" /> And by comparison, the HTML5 version (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/...

Developments

Yesterday's task was to get basically collectables, items, that kind of thing to work properly. I haven't yet added the whole lot, but thought that one useful "collectable" might be a checkpoint. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TOm4G0M6BSI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> A simple looking flag, which lights up and animates when touched, and is your respawn point should you die. .. Of course, in the ...

Developments

I think we can now safely say that SpikeDislike3's been a bit of a wet duck. I expected more from it, and I really did enjoy making it, but .. Meh, whatever.. It's hard to get noticed in this great big crazy world of ours. I'd expect myself to be a little more disappointed by this scenario, but oddly I instead find myself thinking "OK, Now What!?" I guess that doing AGameAWeek for so long has taught me that, whenever something doesn't work, there's still something else around the...

Developments

I'm currently unsure what I should be doing next. I *should* be working on those new SpikeDislike3 themes, but lack of interest in the game is making that all feel a bit worthless. Instead, I think I need something else to work on for a little while. I have, after all, been working on SpikeDislike3 for about 4 months, now, and that's a LONG time for a guy who usually does AGameAWeek! I think, today, I might jump into my old habits of randomly typing keywords into Monkey-X unti...

Melodical Developments

Last night I re-rendered and uploaded the entire (URL "https://archive.org/details/PrecariousAlBum">Precarious Al Bum to Archive.org) Annoyingly, I forgot to trim the tails on the tracks, so they all end with about a half-a-second of silence. Ooops.. I'll have to poke around in Archive.org's settings and see if I can update the files, but I imagine they're probably going to have to stay like that. Aw well.. Meanwhile, I also created a new track for the Liquid A...

In January 2014, KORG released the wonderful Gadget app onto the iPad. In the 20 months since, AL has created not one, not two, but THREE full AL Bums. Precarious is his third, and you can grab all three, for free, from Archive.org in a variety of different formats, alongside his previous two AL Bums, Conspicuous and Enigmatically. (URL "https://archive.org/details/ConspicuousAlBum"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/AL_Conspicuous-300x300.jpg" alt="AL_Conspicuous" width=...

Developments

Motivation seems to have taken a bit of a nosedive, this week. I think the lack of SpikeDislike3 sales is starting to get to me, as every time I open the folder, I spend about 10 minutes staring at the code before closing it up again. I feel like moving on to something else. Maybe that'll help kick me back into gear again. But what project to tackle? I'm not sure. My head doesn't even seem to want to consider anything else, right now. Bah, humbug.. I'm not a fan of the...

Developments

More files.. Found a whole bunch of old videos on one of my old hard drives, so spent literally HOURS, last night, copying them over to the NAS drive. Bah. Windows 10 seems to focus a lot on file transfers, meaning my laptop was practically unusable whilst the transfer was taking place. I certainly didn't have that issue last week when transferring millions of files from NAS to NAS, so it's either Win10 that's doing it, or the fact that I was transferring from a USB-based dock. ...

Hunting for Files

As I poke and prod around my new NAS drive, there are still gaps remaining. My Midi and Mod archive is entirely missing. I never did manage to get them from my old hard drives, and now I'm starting to wonder how on earth I'm going to manage to do it. For the most part, the Mod Archive can be re-grabbed from Aminet, where I originally got most of it. But there were various other sites that have been and gone in that time, which had wonderful tunes. My Mini archive was mostl...

Developments

I could've sworn I did SOMETHING, yesterday! ..but can I remember what? I should probably jot these things down, as I go! I know I had SpikeDislike3's source open for a bit, but then I also had BlastTrax's source open, too. If I want to update BlastTrax, I first need to upgrade it's framework, and then add some music. hmmm. Then I messed about with Arcade Slots. I do enjoy Arcade Slots, but other people still hate the "randomness" of it all. Weird.. So, yeah, I actual...