Developments

A busy day, yesterday, as I set about building more of those Mission/Level things for SpikeDislike3. I've now got marginally different Mission modes for 10 of the 13 themes, although "Super X!" seems to appear a fair number of times! With only 3 more sets of levels to create, I'm pretty much nearing the end of development, although there's a bunch more extra bits that I might end up throwing in. Anyway, I figured now's about as good a time as any, to give you an idea of my targ...

Developments

RAWR!!! Wednesday went swimmingly well, with all the pieces falling into place, and everything being awesome and cool. It stands to reason, then, that my Thursday didn't go quite as well. I decided to try my hand at getting Invisible Munky 2 into the AppStore. It started with me having to upgrade my "Icon Resizer" tool, to account for the 150,000 new icon sizes that have appeared since iPhone 6 and Plus came out. I also just about managed to figure out the new "Launch Scree...

Developments

A quick video.. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SUFKcQothYI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> About a week ago, I booted up the MacMini to test compile SpikeDislike3 onto my iPad. I was SHOCKED by how poor the functionality of the MacMini was. Slow, unresponsive, and certainly not what you'd call "Useful" in any way shape or form. I guess that's what happens when you buy a Mac Mini in 2010, and only e...

Twitter Rant

This morning, I'm battling with Twitter. A short while ago, Twitter introduced a new "Easy to use!" way to reply to things, which is less messy and leaves more space for your reply. Essentially, the "New Reply" strips away everybody's @names, leaving just a single link back to the previous post. In many ways, this is a nice thing, as when you're in the middle of a conversation with 5 or 6 people, it can typically leave about 3 characters for your reply to fit in!! But there are ...

Developments

Just when you think you're done with your menu system, you suddenly realise you've not got any options on the titlescreen! Whoops! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_024.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_024-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_024" width="604" height="352" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4649" /> An hour or so later, and I'd half-wrangled old code with new, t...

Developments

Yesterday I took some time to create a Choon to go along with the dark lava theme, and although it wasn't exactly what I aimed for, it does fit the gameplay reasonably well. ( width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205161863&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true">

Developments

Yesterday I found myself trying out a variety of themes, to figure out what does and doesn't work in the new engine. Here's a brief selection of those tested. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_GfxD.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SD3_GfxD-1024x597.png" alt="SD3_GfxD" width="660" height="385" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4591" /> Lava/Rock (URL "https://AGameAW...

Developments

Yesterday I decided to try out something a little unusual for me. I attempted THREE DEE!!! Not "proper" 3D, of course. I'm too lazy for that! Instead, I took the 2D game engine, added a Skew function to tilt everything at an angle, then plonked the standard graphics over the top. I wasn't expecting the result to be playable, but oddly enough, it's absolutely 100% normal. In fact, since the engine sticks to the original 2D principles, the game's entirely playable like this, and...

Developments

Continuing with the new edition of SpikeDislike, and I'm still adding basic elements into the engine. I've a whole lot of work to do on the game, including all the graphical styles and things like that, but for now I'm happy that it's totting up the combos in the way it should be. ( width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YIwcx9Gcbfs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> Scoring and Death are now both firmly inside...

Developments

Not a lot of coding got done, yesterday. I continued to fiddle with the new sprites, and got enemies spawning in the level, but then I started thinking about iOS again. For the past year I've been focussing on OUYA. I've been making all my games controller happy, and as a result, have been neglecting touchscreen controls. I'm not sure why, probably all the AppleWatch stuff that's currently flooding my Twitter feed, but I'm finding myself somewhat nostalgic for the times that I s...

Developments

Not an awful lot of stuff got done, yesterday, as I was having a bit of an off-day! Ho hum.. They're frequent, so expect a fair number of Daily Blogs to be of the "Couldn't do anything!" variety. Still, I did bother to grab the iPad, load up Sprite Something, and doodle some sprites for the new game. I drew a ship, a number of weapons, and some enemies, before heading over to Windows and getting them all integrated into the game. It didn't take very long at all, but it does inde...

I've had a fair amount of fun playing with Unity, but in all honesty, I haven't progressed far enough to make it worth the switch. I'm at the point, now, where I really need to make the big decision. Making the complete switch to Unity will require heavy work, recreating my entire framework, and getting everything up and running smoothly enough that I can rapidly cobble together AGameAWeek. And it's the "Rapidly cobble together AGameAWeek" bit that puts me off. At the moment, and I'll admit I am still t...

You might've noticed a certain lack of content, lately. I'm not sure why this is, if I'm honest. I keep starting new things, and giving up too quickly. So, um, what to do..? Well, yesterday, Unity 5 was released, and they've made it entirely (mostly) free to use. This is a bit of a shock, and as I type this, Unity 5 is installing in the background. I'm going to give it a whirl. I figure that, since I'm not actually releasing anything lately, I might as well have some fun and try something new. ...

Monday : I randomly decided to buy a Pebble Watch from Amazon. Tuesday : The Pebble Watch arrived, and I experimented by making a (URL "https://apps.getpebble.com/applications/54d115812a56ee50e0000005">Platdude WatchFace). Wednesday : (URL "https://apps.getpebble.com/applications/54d29517e4d94c04cc000026">SpikeDislike Jr!!) I expected to have to download a complicated devkit to get it all going, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that, in actual fact, you can do it entirely online. The IDE...

After having played about with the maze layout a little, and getting the scrolling a little more workable, I added a little sprite for testing movement. ( width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Gy1HbJFl0dI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> Seems like we're heading down the Cybernoid route with this one! Next up, adding collision detection, 'cos right now there's nothing stopping the little ship from floating out into space!

Ok, so, I need a new archive. It's been a good number of years since I originally created the Jayenkai Archive, and although the software's lasted through a fair number of rethemes, and a fair number of enhancements over the years, it all still pretty much has the exact same issues that it did on day one.

This week, I decided that I really oughta get a decent puzzle game onto the OUYA. My first thought was to do a Tetris game, and recreate TetriPong, but as is usually the case, halfway through the planning stages, an ACTUAL Tetris game was launched, by The Tetris Company, onto the OUYA. D'oh! I'll probably save that for another time, then. But what of my need for Puzzles? What other old AGameAWeek game can I trudge out as a new Puzzle game? Oooh, I know!! ( width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtu...

This week, I doodled a desktop. It's nothing fancy, and is just there for the sake of being a nice desktop image. <center> With the AGameAWeek Logo (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/AGAW_BlackDesktop.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/AGAW_BlackDesktop_thumb.png"> CLICK FOR MASSIIIIIIIVE) or Without.. (URL "https://socoder.net/uploads/1/AGAW_BlackDesktop_Clean.png"><img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/AGAW_BlackDesktop_Clean_thumb.png"> CLICK FOR MASSSIIIII...

A few months ago, I bought myself a new camera. Well, actually it's a Phone, but since I never phone anyone, and all my communication is via the internet, and I never actually go anywhere, the "phone" part of the phone is pretty much going unused. I bought the Lumia 1020 as a camera, because it has a wonderfully large 41 megapixel sensor, and a staggeringly good Optical Stabilisation lens. Since my whole "brain tumour!" thing, I've had incredibly shaky hands, and being able to take crisp clear photos with...

Last week saw the two year anniversary of (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/2012/08/home-again-home-again-jiggity-jig/">this post), where I waffled and rambled on about my health condition. Mum suggested it was about time to write an update, so this is that! Two years on, and although I'm marginally better, I'm still somewhat stuck in a fairly similar position.

After a week or so of tweaking, testing and preparing, I've finally settled on a nice PaperArcade template, and have started uploading the lovely little papercraft models into my Archive. These will be done weekly, along with the games, and older ones will be sporadically generated as I find time, and/or are bored! If there are any particular games you'd love to see a PaperArcade for, let me know in the comments. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20140721-104801-38881787.jpg">&...

A quick test.. I recently bought a nice new printer, and figured it might be nice to design a little Arcade cabinet thing. Bloody fiddly bastard! I didn't quite have the patience, so gave up trying!! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/photo.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/photo-1024x764.jpg" alt="photo" width="590" height="440" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3937" /> If I'm honest, it'll prob...

Someone over at Softpedia has been closely following AGameAWeek for quite some time. It seems that each time I post a new game, within a relatively short period of time, it pops up on Softpedia's archive. Handily, they tend to link directly to my downloads, so if in the future I opt to update any of my games, people will be able to get the latest edition. They also write their own little descriptions and take nice screenshots, too. It's a nice way of doing things. I'm rather happy about the way their s...