Welcome to 2012 ..or, more importantly.. Welcome to AGameAWeek, Year 4!! The games start, right here... in a couple of days! Tuesday morning. I'll have to add a small "Mac Warning" disclaimer, though, 'cos my Mac's still being twitchy since it's OSX Lion upgrade, and I never did get around to doing a quick test compile. no matter.. Either it works, or there's whinges! We'll have to wait and see.

Thankyou Santa!! My issue with Super Mario 3D Land isn't the fact that it's in 3D. My issue is with the fact that the gameplay's in 3D. See, to me, SuperMarioLand was always a stripped down barebones edition of what made Super Mario Brothers great. As you played through SuperMarioLand, you noticed all the shortcuts they took, like how the levels seemed to be on a bit of a loop, repeating in a strange fashion. The whole game was fashioned to ...

A warning for all, as we hit the christmas period. Be careful... The Mince Pies are very tempting!

(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/jnkplat_Xmas2011.jpeg"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/jnkplat_Xmas2011-300x193.jpg" alt="" title="jnkplat_Xmas2011" width="300" height="193" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2195" />Coming soon, as in probably tomorrow, or maybe Xmas morning!! This isn't a proper one. It's only a quick little Xmas minigame thing, but it'll be nice and properly playable, and have a bu...

Between insane neck issues, and crazy days trying to cram WAY too much stuff in before Xmas, I've not blogged much, this week. Last night, as it became increasingly apparent that there was no WAY I could cram it all in, before xmas, I decided to hell with it all.. This morning, I stop attempting to cram, and instead relaxed into something a little different.

So, um, yeah.. My neck's fucked again... ... I spent most of the past few weeks struggling on. My Xmas hols are due shortly, and I figured I should be able to last the short while, before giving up over Xmas and giving myself a well earned rest. .. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I've attempted that before.. Long story short, plan didn't succeed, and I've been back in bed for a couple of days. dangit. All plans are off, and I'm resting. If you need a gam...

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!

It's been over a year since the Platdude Retro Advent Collection had a bizarre game with a ball and some spikes in it, and as much as I've attempted to get on with other games, that one little game keeps on getting dragged back out again! Last week, SpikeDislike won an IndieVisibility award, for being the best game to have with you on the toilet! This week, the guy who nominated it for that award has written a great big sprawling mass of text, all about SpikeDislike! (Link no longer available) ...

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. ...

99% Bundle is no longer available <img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bundlelogo2-300x118.png" alt="" title="bundlelogo2" width="300" height="118" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2177" /> Today sees the release of @dedhedzed's wonderful 99% Bundle, a bringing together of 13 games by 13 developers, all banged into a handy bundle, and popped online for everybody to try. The bundle is FREE, and is hopefully there to reintr...

(URL "https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/fuuuuuuu.png"><img src="https://AGameAWeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/fuuuuuuu-300x170.png" alt="" title="fuuuuuuu" width="300" height="170" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2171" /> Graphene. 'tis a nice theme! As Year 4 approaches, I figured it was time for a makeover. It's taken me from 10 at night until 4 in the morning, but I think I'm about 2/3rds of the way there! If anything's mi...

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!

You know what's annoying? When you've been sitting, typing away for about an hour, then stop to make a brew, and suddenly realise how bloody cold it is! Somebody needs to invent some sort of keyboard with heated keys. That'd be great! .. A mouse would be cheaper, but I then only my right hand would be toasty warm. .. I'm not sure I want to go for the "Coding Gloves" thing!

ugh.. I need to make a calendar for the iOS edition. The Win/Lin/Mac (WiLMa) edition is also a bit screwy, so we'll add "New Calendar" to the 2nd releases todo list. Might as well see if I can code 2 things at once, then, and rework the calendars at the same time.

<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!

Half an hour!!! And, while we're at it, I've done another little vid of the iOS version. Still a long way off, though.. The menu's not even started, yet!

With only a matter of weeks left until 2012, I opened up Google Docs and created "AGameAWeek : Year Four", the Spreadsheet/Calendar! Fun fact : The Olympics will be on from 27 July until 12 August. This may or may not be relevant! I've filled a few interesting dates in, with themes and things. It should help to keep us a little bit on track, but if I'm honest, they're not BIG dates.. Just little things here and there.

1. Socoder Newsletter 2. NeonPlat Adventures iOS 3. That 4-pack thing I started ages ago, and still haven't finished yet. (Yeah, so much for the "make 4 quicky games" plan, there, Jay!) 4. I'm apparently not doing an Advent Calendar this year. Either that or I'm going to be really really late with it!!! 5. Xmassy Spike Dislike!? 6. Probably should start JNKPlat 2012 at some point, since I've said I'm aiming for April 16th. 7. Get Monkey, Get Learning, Get building a new Framework...

For NeonPlat Adventures, I tried my best to get rid of all those horrible nasty evil things that I tend to cram into my games, but as with all things Jay, there's always going to be a few leftovers that seem pure evil. teehee!

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...

I WAS going to spend some time this week rebuilding the look of this blog, so it'd point to NeonPlat Adventures. Instead, I'll post this, and point to NeonPlat Adventures. <a href="https://bit.ly/NeonPlat_Adventures">Get NeonPlat Adventures, Here!</a> It's FREE, and it's FANTASTIC! I'll start working on the site some other day. .. too lazy!