Late last night, NeonPlat Raw appeared on the OUYA Dashboard for the very first time. This is kind of a big deal, in that it's the first time one of my games has officially been released on an actual physical home-console. True, it's not a "PROPER" console, but .. Hey, it's a box with a controller that plugs into my telly. And it's got my games on it! So, Hell yeah, It's proper enough to me!! If you have an OUYA, you can grab (URL "https://www.ouya.tv/game/NeonPlat-Raw">NeonPlat Raw) for it. It's...

I've built a nice editor, and have started making some levels, so it's time to figure out exactly how I'm going to layout the level structure, exactly how the scoring will be figured out, how level progression will be stored, and all sorts of other little complicated bits and pieces. There's a lot of work to do. In the meantime, I thought it might be nice for folk to have a little play of the game, as it currently stands, so I've built an early "First 10" level demo thing. You can (URL "https://socod...

I can't exactly say I've been enjoying the time off.. To be honest, 95% of September was spent working on the big BlastTrax update, and so far most of October has been similarly working on Sheep Goes Right. It's actually a heck of a lot of stuff to cram into such a short amount of time, and it's been so much effort that I've been neglecting AGameAWeek. But.. You know.. They're both nice big games, and they're both sort of worth the effort. Or at least, I think so, anyway! Meanwhile I've gone and boug...

Want a nice free game to play on your tiny OUYA console?! How about NeonPlat Raw?! Since I'm still learning the OUYA ropes, and still trying to figure everything out, I've not yet got my whole OUYA-Dev-Account stuff fully sorted. (erk, Tax forms!!?) So, in the meantime, we'll have to resort to throwing random crap online for free! o/yeayo/

(URL "https://socoder.net/NeonPlatRaw_OUYATest.apk">NeonPlat Raw : OUYA Test (.apk : Grab it on your OUYA!))

<img src="https://AGameAWeek.co...

Bah, humbug.. So, as I test out the many OUYA bits and pieces, I'm stumbling upon the many do's and don't's. Apparently, one of the don't's is "Don't attempt to read data from images". .. Karl's OUYA Test shows exactly why we shouldn't do that. This test is as broken as it is on some other Android devices. If you've an OUYA, you can give this game a whirl. It's tricky, and somewhat impossible on most of the levels, due to the complex/brokenness of the levels being stored as images. Which is a sh...

Do you have an OUYA? Would you like to see my Monkey Framework running on your telly!?! It's nothing amazing, and is entirely developer-test-functionality-stuff as opposed to being something that you can actually play with, but if you'd like to give it a whirl, you can download the .apk file right here. (URL "https://socoder.net/JaysButtonTest_ouya.apk">

Testing time, again. Today, I purchased 2 very different, yet entirely similar devices. First, a wire. Very cheap! It allows me to plug an X360 controller into my Nexus7 device, and use it as an ingame controller, but only on games which support it. ( width="480" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/RoRpCm0UJhM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>> Second, an OUYA. Nicely cheap! It allows me to plop Android games on it, and assuming they're develo...

Sorry folks, I appear to have gotten bogged down with Sheep Goes Right. Although I figured it'd be a nice simple little project that I could work on "behind the scenes", it's once again proved that I never can plan ahead!! Sheep Goes Right has now become a much bigger project, and as I'm currently working on a way to make level building easier, I'm having to deal with all the testing that goes with it. I'd forgotten how much time proper level building actually takes up!! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/w...

I finally wrangled my way through "the big update" over the course of two nights.. Day one was having to upgrade to Mountain Lion (I was in hospital when it came out, and hadn't bothered to upgrade since).. This was swiftly* followed by installing XCode5. The reason for all this, is that iOS7 devices need XCode5, and XCode5 needs Mountain Lion. It's Apple's special way of making sure all us developers constantly upgrade everything! * Given that my Mac is at the exact opposite side of the house as my...

September's over, and I've had a lot of fun bulking up BlastTrax, and playing GTAV! The plan was, come October, I'd get straight back to business. I'd upload BlastTrax's big update, and then start doing AGameAWeek again. The reality is slightly different, for two main reasons. One, as per usual, is "Bloody Apple, Grrr!!!" Because iOS 7 is now "out there" and is the main OS on all my iOS devices, it means I can no longer quickly compile things easily for iOS6 for test purposes, which means I need ...

I've no idea how far I'll manage to get with this game, and currently only have the main sprite, and logo drawn. That's pretty much the entire extent of this game, so far! But I'll carry on, and see how far I can get with it. Since I have such wonderfully high-resolution assets, though, I decided to make a lovely little wallpaper with them. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/sgr_logo.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/sgr_logo-1024x1024.jpg" a...

September is nearly over, and I've played a good six or seven hours of GTAV. Hmm.. Anyhoo, I've been working away at BlastTrax and have done quite a fair amount of work on the thing. I should be uploading the new edition to Apple in the next couple of days, (I have to faff about updating my MacMini first, though) so watch out for that appearing on your iPhing in the next week or so. After that it's time to get back into the AGameAWeek swing of things, and I'm tempted to do another slightly larger pr...

People keep asking about how I manage to code AGameAWeek, and one thing they all eventually pick up on is that I'm currently doing it all with Monkey. (URL "https://monkeycoder.co.nz">Monkey) is a fantastic language which allows for all manner of different targets, and does a great job doing what it does. It isn't perfect, and it's not for everyone, but it suits me down to the ground. As with any development tool, it all comes down to preference, and whether or not you agree with the methodology o...

I'm taking a slight break from my usual AGameAWeek schedule. Over the course of September, I'll be spending extra time building up a super awesome edition of BlastTrax, whilst also taking the time to enjoy GTAV properly! Hurray for games! Meanwhile, I'm digging through my archive of old forgotten gems, and plucking out anything that isn't yet part of my Archive for reasons of terribleness, or general forgetfulness!

Just because I'm taking September off from my regular AGameAWeek schedule, doesn't mean there won't be fun times ahead! I've decided to keep you entertained with a few oddities that have collected on my hard drive for the past decade or so, but have mostly been unpublished due to being "a bit shit", or me having lost their sourcecode. These are games that I've always considered to be part of my archive, but for various reasons I've never actually bothered to add to the thing. Games that I occasionally ...

To mark five whole years since (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/2013/09/agameaweek-gold-jnkplat-ds-08/">the release of the greatest JNKPlat game, EVER), I've decided to do a JNKPlat themed desktop this month. Nice and simple! (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/out.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/out-1024x1024.png" alt="" title="out" width="590" height="590" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-3142" /> Click for MASSIVE!) (Only 2048x2048,...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;">AGameAWeek Gold takes a peek back through the masses of the Jayenkai Archive, to see if I've released anything of importance on this day in history. Today's game might not exactly have been released on this day in history, as it actually went through a series of three or four separate releases.. I'll have to trawl through the various forum posts to be sure.. But today's the day that I've marked, so I'm pretty sure it had some sor...

This week, (URL "https://twitter.com/caffeinekid">@CaffeineKid) released his latest Android-based remake, a classic from the world of the 80s!! A lovely retro game from the age of static screens, and proper dungeon crawling, where the game had to have actual gameplay, because in those days, you couldn't rely on 50 bazillion polygons to wow the audience. You had to have a bloody good game!!! ( width="480" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/HXjFlWNxxGs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

BlastTraxFAQs

What's with the track?

BlastTrax was originally devised as a classic Retro-styled GrandPrix-like racing game, with weapons. You would drive through the course, shoot the other drivers, and make your way through to the end. I started work on the game, made a nice retro-styled GrandPrix racetrack, added a few little cars, and then.. .. And that was when (URL "https://www.foppygames.nl/">@FoppyGames) decided to launch his Retro-styled GrandPrix racing game. D'oh! True, min...

Thankyou for waiting patiently, as 95% of the internet inexplicably got to play this yesterday, before I posted it to my own website!! *sigh* Ah well, lessons learned, must organise things a wee bit better in future. Doing worldwide launches at 10 in the morning, isn't all that easy! Anyhoo, this one's a corker, so it's well worth the wait!

Rather than have a bunch of different posts all over the place, as usually seems to be the case here, I thought I'd create a game-specific page and dump all the reviews onto it. <img src="https://socoder.net/uploads/1/BlastTrax_Logo.png"> BlastTrax seems to be gaining a teensy bit of attention, although exactly how much of that is due to one particular reviewer bombarding me with his over-excitement, thus making it feel like there's a bunch of excitement when in fact it's only his own exc...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:left;">It's been a while since I did an AGameAWeek Gold. There's not been a lot of stand-out stuff popping up on the old time-machine. Sure there's been a whole pile of games, but nothing that's really been noteworthy, so for the most part I've kind of been ignoring this section of the site. Today, however, a lovely little game popped up, and I spent a good hour playing the thing! Whoops!!

This coming Tuesday, August 27th I'll be releasing Game #300 in the Archive. Holy crumpets, 300!?!!? It's been a long trawl, getting BlastTrax finished in time, especially since I actually had to have it done by LAST week, so's it could get through Apple Review in time for the #300th! As a result, August has been one heck of a crazy month, and I'm pretty dang tired out. I'm currently considering taking most of September off, or at the very least a couple of weeks. I've reached a nice goal, it's tim...

BlastTrax has passed iOS Review, so all is looking good for it's target August 27th release date. Since the game is now up on the AppStore, but currently locked tight until the release date, I thought I'd have a bit of fun with it, so I posted the following challenge onto Twitter. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/photo-4.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/photo-4-898x1024.jpg" alt="" title="photo (4)" width="590" height="672" class="alignnone si...

Little Ember over on the Monkey forums, has released his first Android game, and it's free, so o/ yeay o/ A nice classic retro Space Invaders styled shoot-em-up, with lovely LED styled graphics, and lots of lovely shooty bang noises (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/unnamed.jpg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/unnamed-300x225.jpg" alt="" title="unnamed" width="300" height="225" class="alignnone size-medi...

Hello, I'm Jayenkai, and in 5 days time, I'll be adding the 300th game into my Archive. 300 games that I've single handedly created over the course of the past decade. Today, I received the following email. (URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/anemail.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/anemail-300x30.png" alt="" title="anemail" width="300" height="30" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-3087" /> "N...