Aaah, the joys of data compression! OK, here's the complications with Monkey. 1. File Access is a little bit touch and go. I've had a play with it, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but.. Whatever! For the meantime, until Mark Sibly's had time to get everything perfected, I'll be staying out of it's way. 2. Can't read a raw .png This is annoying! For the past few years, I've been getting used to using .png file...

You didn't get to see a lot of the BlitzMax template, last year, but if you'd like to try your hand at rapid game-dev, you might like to have a peek at it's contents. If you're a BlitzMax owner, this might be useful to you... maybe.. but you'll have to wrap your head around my coding style, first! <a href="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/Template-2012.zip">Template - 2012 - Download Here</a> Soon, hopefully, there'll be a Template - Monkey - 2013, but that's ann...

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!

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...

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!!)

Last night I sat down to jot a few readme notes for the Beta Testers. By the time I was done, I'd inexplicably written 1500 words of gubbins! Whoops!

AL's been away for a while. I think all the AGameADay stuff might've taken it's toll on him for a bit, there. Today, though, he unexpectedly managed to knock out a fairly decent choon. I like today's tune. Nice and.. um.. nice (URL "https://alodare.tumblr.com/post/7799085732">Antisocial Floating Manoeuvres) Feels good to have AL back to his normal style of music, instead of the absolute garbage he was spewing out last week!

Another week given away to my body's desire to make me be a lazy git! I'd happily allow it, if I wasn't so damned busy! Tonight, after a week of doing nothing, I now need to write a blog, write a newsletter, and then wake up and write another game..! Thanks for that, Mr Migraine!! So, what's been happening today, then? Well, first off I wrote (URL "https://www.playmycode.com/play/game/jayenkai/space-battles">Space Battles), which is another bog standard minigame thing. Baddies, bullets, shooty sh...

AGameAWeek teaches us one thing. Some games you win, some games you lose. When you lose, there's not a lot you can do. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. This is a post about how I threw myself on the ground.

It wasn't my games. o/ hurray o/

Have any thoughts? I'm a bit blank, this week. But then I was blank last week, too, and that didn't turn out TOO badly. (did it?!)

This one didn't really turn out, so well. It's a nice nature based bee game, with lovely floaty music, and some words. <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Barry_The_Spelling_Bee_20100629A.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Barry_The_Spelling_Bee_20100629A_thumb.png"></a> You hit Tab to highlight the flower/bee, type it's unscrambled word into Barry's Belly, then hit return. Rinse, Repeat <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/complete/Barry_The_Spell...

Jayenkai's World Cup Challenge : <a href="https://AGameAWeek.com/2010/06/jayenkais-world-cup-challenge/">A plan to do something, rather than sit watching football for 90 minutes each and every day..</a> --- Well, that didn't go to plan, but it's not entirely awful, either. In fact, it's turned out so nicely that I've even added it to the Archive. AGameAWeek just took a turn for the weird! Today's quickly made game was made in about 4 hours, and is a nice Scrabble...

Cracking game, this week! What started out as an unknown game, quickly became fantastically playable. A remake of the little WarioWare UFO Spike thing that I made last week, only with more spike things than is probably sane! In the end, the game's turned out quite a lot like a Geometry Wars clone. I wasn't expecting that, but there it is! Two fire buttons, Z for left fire, X for right fire. I wonder how long it'll take for people to realise that, without me having written it anywher...

August 26th 2009 That's the last time I did a Mailbag post! Blinkin' eck! Over the past 6/7 months, I've occasionally dipped into the mailbag and plucked out little snippets, but I figured it was about time I did a proper one. A few of these have already been posted, but there's a whole batch of new ideas here. Let's go!!! (There's a lot!!)

legoman4032 asked in the Youtube comments if I had mp3's. Who am I to argue.. Extended, via the basic use of a repeaty bit in the middle, but in an instrumental stylee! Karaoke!! Sing along! You know the words! and, so it doesn't feel left out.. The original remix from last February (2009), with a bit that's not from "Devil in the Dark", and is instead from "Elementary, My Dear Data" (I think), and that I couldn't be bothered to hunt down to cut the video from, so ended u...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Socoder Newsletter -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-      "Bonus Round"           #031 - 27th November 2009                      <form method="get" action="https://groups.google.com/group/socoder-newsletter/boxsubscribe" target=_blank style="background-color: #ffc; width: 320px; padding: 2px 4px">...

I get to this point once every few months, and .. well.. here we are again! A few things are getting me here, this time around. Let's list the reasons, then think of some solutions..

Sometimes you can start a game and it grows and grows and is wonderful. Other times, you get about 10% through, and realise it's just not working out. Game Idea 1 This week started with a word game. A decent enough idea, place the tiles in a scrabble-esque crossword style, and make words. Each tile would have two points, Point A, the letter, and Point B, the link. The link is either to the left or below the letter. Tiles could only link to each other, so rather than having a grid...