"What ever happened to midis that we used to have in games,
and all the little tunes we used to hear whilst we were playing Doom.
Whenever we played we would forget about the quality,
because we were too busy shooting Demons in the face with ammo..."

: Download

.. Then I couldn't think of any more lyrics.
Never mind, the tune was created, and sat on my hard drive for about a year or two.

Obviously titled FM because it sounds like a classic FM midi file!

Later on, I decided to use it on my JNKx15 video, but it needed upped a wee bit.

: Download

A short tweak in tempo, some added layers of instrumentation, and the melody eventually fit nicely.
Luvly stuff..

Ringtone A : Download
Ringtone B : Download
SMS Beep A : Download
SMS Beep B : Download
More music archive stuff next Wednesday.
If you want anything specific, lemmie know!

A proper week, this week. Waiting for a 6 hour render gave me plenty of time to play about, and I think I came up with some niceties, this week.

Game : Waiting : COME ON, ALREADY!
Amiga themed, like Boing!

Game : Lemmings : Just Dig
Again, thinking Amiga! Plenty of bugs in this one, though, so be careful!



Music : Twisted Pigs : Up, Over, Under, Forever
This was one of those Auto-Title things, so no need to worry about my mental state

Comic : Random : Duck meets Dino in an epic SciFi tale
although... You could probably worry about my mental state after this one!

Bee Mai Fwend : 3782-1929-5444

Having pretty much messed up this week's game, I figured it'd be a better idea to go for the Tried and Tested, this week.
So, without having to think too hard, it's time for NeonPlat 2!

First job is the art. All nice and hi-res, while still being small enogh to fit as much onscreen as I can.

Level Progression should be dealt with, and a couple more characters, too, so suggestions for those are welcome.

I'll keep you updated, as the game builds!

An update as the game builds..

woot!

This week's game didn't quite turn out as well as expected.
We'll call this week a fail, I think!

Still, you could probably play it once, if you could be bothered, and then delete it in a slight rage that you played something that wasn't all that good!


Amiga's Boing Ball bounces around the platform level, and collects Amiga Ticks.
Every so often, time loops around, and you'll find yourself similarly be bouncing around, alongside yourself.
Collect 75% of the ticks to complete the level, and don't accidentally touch yourself, 'cos that'll kill you.
That's pretty much it!

I was kinda hoping it might magically become fun (see Blockman Gets, Microbes, Centipong, RetroRaider, etc!) but nothing really happened, and the game continued to be a bit dull.
A shame.


It's full of AmigaLuv, though!!

You can grab it over at The Jayenkai Archive for Windows, Linux and Mac. But not Amiga

I'll try better next week!

---

AGAW Scoring : 40 weeks, 40 games, far too busy, lots to do!

Not sure what game this is, but I made the Amiga Boing Ball, slapped it into a bricky map, and let it bounce about a bit.


*shrugs*

I'll keep bashing the keys, and see what comes out the other side!

Hurray for random game making!!

When I was a kid, I used to love playing quiz games. Blockbusters, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, loads of great 8/16-bit quiz games.
They all had one thing in common..
They let you actually TRY to answer them.

Nowadays, it seems that every damn quiz, even Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, has become a stupid sodding Multiple Choice quiz, where you don't have to think, and type.. Instead resorting to a "Buzz - Pick one" style of gameplay that really ruins the whole game for me..
Bloody things.

So, Might as well give this a go.

If anyone out there knows of a humongous archive of Q'n'A's I might be able to use, let me know!

Maybe in a few weeks time? *shrugs*

Note : Inexperienced user ahead!!

iPhing "View Based" Jumpstart

A series of tutorials that will allow old-style coders to quickly grasp the bits and pieces they need, to develop games for iPod/iPhone/iPad (iPhings)

Part One : Tilemap
Part Two : Touching
I've written this in near-realtime, so where I look like I'm freaking out about the language, I am actually freaking out about the language.
Feel free to nitpick all the many faults that probably appear within this week's little adventure!! Together, we can make my phings better!
Read More

Busy/Lazy, one or the other, or perhaps a bit of both.

I have at least posted a little "Eat the Objects" game, but it's not much. Sorry!
Maybe next week.

Meanwhile, today's Thursday, so it's back to learning iPhing dev. I'll let you know how that turns out later on, and maybe post tutorial #2.

Thanks, JurassicPlayer!

A lovely review of Munky Blocks DS.


View on YouTube


View on YouTube

I'm currently contemplating (but still haven't yet attempted to) fixing up this and JNKPlatDS08.

Motivate Me!! Send levels if you've got 'em..

This week we're playing with Penises!
A remake of a classic test game, that never really went anywhere.

The game is only about half done, since I pretty much rushed the whole thing yesterday, but it has 10 nice levels, and should hopefully be a good start.


Click the penises to turn them around, and put their little hats on to give them a skill.
Lovely stuff.

Continued Penis Extensions will be based upon how much you love it.
The more I know you want it, the bigger it'll get.


Penis Extension comes on Windows, Linux and Mac, and the game is available from The Jayenkai Archive.
Enjoy!

---

AGAW Scoring : 39 weeks, 39 games. Kept up, but have now ran out of buffer!! I gotta keep up the AGameAWeek rate, now!!

Aaaah, lovely weather!

As Dan Bull sang this week, it's wonderful weather for gaming, and even better if the game is Scrabble!
And that's about all I've done. Alongside animating this weeks main character and drawing my default ground tiles, I've not really done a whole lot.
The game is due on Tuesday. Wish me luck!!

Blimey, that didn't take too long.

Well, it DID, but it took significantly less time than I thought it would.

iPhing "View Based" Jumpstart

A series of tutorials that will allow old-style coders to quickly grasp the bits and pieces they need, to develop games for iPod/iPhone/iPad (iPhings)

Part One : Tilemap
Part Two : Touching
I've written this in near-realtime, so where I look like I'm freaking out about the language, I am actually freaking out about the language.
Feel free to nitpick all the many faults that probably appear within this week's little adventure!! Together, we can make my phings better!
Read More

So far, we've had the following..
...

Day 1. (Last Wednesday)
Do What?!
Wha.!.!
Euww.. Visual stuff.. Eeek!
Argh!!


Day 2. (Thursday)
Pissed about with other stuff on my Mac, in a vain attempt to ignore the fact that I had to learn stuff.

Days 3-7. (Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue)
Back to AGameAWeek, recompiling all the Blitz stuff, uploading those, fixing up JNKPlat and Gravity Bombs.

---

It seems that, no matter how much I want to, I don't actually have all that much iPhing time. AGameAWeek will always suck up most of my time. Bah!
That, and being cramped onto my only USB keyboard seems to have completely bollocksed up my hand. Either that or it's the MagicMouse being all flat.. *shrugs*

---

Anyhoo, let's move onto week 2.

Day 1. (yesterday)
Attempt to understand OpenGL.


Manage to create my usual set of graphical test functions. (CLS, SetCol, SetRot, SetScale, SetAlpha, DrawRect)
Get a few squares onscreen, and realise that I'm going to have that strange anti-aliasing issue that I had with Blitz3D. That is to say, even with my best attempt at drawing things perfectly straight, the grid I drew didn't quite end up actually being perfectly straight.

This is a floating point issue, and will just end up being annoying. It's a case of trying to get the right set of numbers to look good on the screen.
Maybe a later attempt might fix that, but in the meantime I'm going to try to piss about with that "view" mode, instead. eugh..

Day 2. Today's plan.
Piss about with that "eeuw, Visual, eek!" mode, whilst trying to do my damned best to ignore ever having to open up the horrible bloody visual based editor.
The plan, to create a grid of tiles onscreen, let the player tap them, and maybe have a sprite bobbing around on top.
...
Wish me luck!!!
I'll let you know!

Third week of chaos, and... well, in honesty, this was all thrown together late last night! MacWeek really took it out of me, and I had no time, but hey! Still did it!!

Game : Bully Bob - Bob needs to learn a lesson
Game : Sea Pea, See - Can you See the Peas in the Sea?
Music : Plat 2 - 12" remix of Platdude's Theme
Comic : Click Here - Click for Awesome

Meanwhile, Shadow1w2's been sending me some nice .mio programs. I've yet to have any time to look at them, but once I've given them a whirl I'll start cataloguing all of my .mio files, and popping them up somewhere nice.

Also, Shadow1w2 took some time to build a short animation template, and a nice video example. You should go take a look!

Bee Mai Fwend : 3782-1929-5444

Nearly two whole years in, and you'd have thought that more people would've taken notice of the guy making AGameAWeek. I've moaned before about lack of interest, and I go in and out of these little phases.. It doesn't hurt, it's just a little saddening when there's not much interest.

This week, we've hit another "Wha!?" point.

Having finally got the Mac, and released no less than TEN entire Mac games within a week, I've had the lowest number of visits all year!!
What's that all about!?!?!

An average of 50 a day has plummeted to about 15-20!

I'm slightly worried that this might be a result of last week's virus attack.
Dangit..

No matter.. Keep at it! Roll with it!
Eventually, some day, they might start to visit!

This week we'll try something entirely based upon the title of the game.
This title's been on my mind for a LONG long time, and it's about time I did it.
And what better time than now, when I really should be giving the site a little kicking.
The game will be about it's title, and the title will stick out like a sore thumb, in an insanely desperate attempt to make people notice it.

Will giving a game an extremely quirky name make more people visit the site?!
Who can tell!

There's only one way to find out!!

So, starting with 30 nice little frames of animation, I'm going to be making a lovely little puzzle game.
If anyone would be interested in helping out with some levels, let me know. But this'll be a rush job, 'cos I only have until Tuesday to do the entire thing!!

Uhoh, the ratio's dropping!

No matter, this week's been SUPER busy, what with it being the week I finally got a Mac.
As seen the other day, I re-released 8 of my games for Mac. It's not just Steam on Mac!!! You can play UFO246, too!

Today sees a couple of extra bonuses.


I've been slowly rejigging bits and pieces of these two games all week.
One came out nicely, the other one. Well.. I dunno.. Is it a game, yet!?

Gravity Bombs

The thing they don't tell you about the almighty Magic Mouse is that you can't drag with the left mouse button, then tap the right mouse button, because there's only one blinkin' mouse button!
Sure, it's touch sensitive, and is nice under about 99% of circumstances, but playing Gravity Bombs is pretty much impossible.
A rejig of the controls was in order.

Now you drag, and the bombs shoot off when you let go. If you preferred the drag+right click, that'll still work.
Then I came across mouse-issue-2, where you couldn't let go of the mouse once you'd started dragging, or it'd fire. Pretty annoying when you clicked the wrong shooter! I've now added a square in the middle of the play area. If you drag into that, it'll stop you from firing.
*sigh*

Next up, I've thrown the game into a 4-round loop.
Round 1 is normal, round 2 adds more holes, round 3 removes some, and round 4 makes sure there's only 2 colours, so you can get nice big swirly things happening!

I've tweaked the swirliness, played with the bomb-distance, and even upped the number of bombs-per-hole, just so it all looks a little bit nicer.

Is it a better game?
I actually think I've somehow managed to make it even easier, which means you'll probably get bored with it a whole lot sooner.
Bugger..

Looks nice, though!
Gravity Bombs is Available for Windows, Linux AND MAC!!!

JNKPlat 2010 - 5th release

We're now up to 137 levels, and I've added in a couple of new tiles. (Level count's up on the top left!)

An all-new baddy has been added into the mix, alongside a special new tile that may/may not be immensely fun to play with.

Another dozen new levels from me, all Jack themed, and a couple more from other folk.
Keep those levels coming, and I'll carry on updating!

JNKPlat 2010 is Available for Windows, Linux AND MAC!!!
---

AGAW Scoring : 38 weeks, 39 games. Uhoh!!!

With all the Mac stuff, I've not had a chance to do a new game.
NOOoooooo!!!!!!

I suppose I could rush something in the next 24 hours, but I'm much rather be playing with those extra trimming, and getting things a little nicer.


First off, Gravity Bombs. Not touched it yet, but it definitely needs at least one tweak. .. the Mac's "Superior" (bah) Magic Mouse has a lot going for it, but it also has an inability to right click whilst holding down the left mouse button. Which is pretty much a requirement of Gravity Bombs!
That needs fixed, and I'll probably take the time to rejig the rules a little bit.

Although I'm not sure entirely how!


In addition, I finally got around to adding the little 9-pixel-baddy into JNKPlat2010. I called him Jack, on account of his jumping, and he's happily hopping around on his platform, left to right, following Platdude, ready to kill him! Oh joy!

I've made 6 whole levels with Jack, so expect the next release to include.. um.. 6 extra levels! If you've built any, get them sent right now!!!

---

Now, about that Alien Deathmatch 3.

There's an issue I'd forgotten about.
If you try playing H~S : Horizontal Shooter you may/may not come across a bug.
On some systems, H~S plays at about 2 frames a second, because annoyingly, there are massive buffer-based issues depending on which system the game's being played on, and also which graphic engine it's using. (Those OpenGL/DX9/DX7 options that nobody ever touches in the OptionBar!)

Alien Deathmatch relied on having a drawable buffer.
The whole map is drawn onto a buffer, and then all those lovely blood-splats are also drawn on top.
If I can no longer draw onto a buffer, we could still do a generic tile-based map (as I have in JNKPlat) and get away with a pretty decent sized map.
But the blood. That won't work.
Sure, I could do sprite-based blood splats, but those'll have to dissipate as the game carries on, and I always thought magically vanishing blood splats looks a little shabby.

Booo!
Anyway, I now have the big-3. Win/Lin/Mac. With all three available, I'll be trying all sorts of methods to do these things, and I'll let you know what does/doesn't work.

NeonPlat2 : Possible
AD3 : Possible
Some random crazy game : More likely!

A couple of days ago I posted my first test compilation of a Mac game.

I asked for test-based feedback, and absolutely nobody responded, whatsoever. We're just going to have to go for the "Worked on mine, *shrugs*" approach for these!!

Today, I'm rereleasing the game from Wednesday with a quick fix, and also releasing a bunch of other games that I've written in BlitzMax.

We've also got JNKPlat and Gravity Bombs to come, but I want to tweak those a little before I rerelease them.

Anyway, here's the list... Enjoy!

BlitzMax Beginnings

Starting with BlitzMax, I quickly built up a framework, and had finally crossed over to MultiPlatform abilities!

1. Munky Tests his Engine

A simple speedy typing game created to literally test the engine!

2. Centipong 2

A game that probably should've turned out a lot better than it did. Poor effort

3. Box's Adventure (aka BadgeBox)

A nice simple "hunt around" style of adventure game, featuring a box and a bunch of other geometric shapes!

Mario Month!

(During MARch2010, I made some MAR10 games)

4. Ted Bob in a Mario Costume

Hop on the hens to score a whopping great big combo score.

5. Ace Paceman in a Mario Costume

Guide the upside down space plumber to extinguish the flames, and capture all the balls.

6. Munky in a Mario Costume

Munky hops around in Bowser's castle, trying to collect all the coins that he can. There is no way out, only ways to collect!

7. Blockman in a Mario Costume

Help Blockman protect the Blocklets, and guide them all safely to the exit.

Bonus

8. UFO 246

A rerelease from a couple of days ago, with fixed Audio Driver based issues!

Learning iPhing development

Today's schedule
by 10am, Simple text on the screen
by 12pm, Drawing pictures on the screen
by 2pm, Bit of sound
by 4pm, Move it all around, as if it's some kind of game.

Fingers crossed!!

Although, at this rate, the first bit will likely take me until 4pm

Finding it very hard to find information on iPhing development that doesn't require me to sit through 100 stupid video clips to learn things. I hate when people do that. I CAN read, you know!!! Bah..


Anyhoo, JNKPlat2010 release 5 is probably going to be here in a few days, (time permitting) since I'll be having to recompile it for Mac anyway. If you've made any levels at all, get them sent in!

Balls.
I was hoping that "Buy Mac = Make games for Mac", but apparently it's only "Buy Intel Mac = Make games for Intel Mac"
I have no idea what the current Intel vs PowerPC ratio is, but if you've got a PowerPC Mac, you're going to have to wait a wee bit longer.
Like, until I make a fortune!
So, a long long long long while!!

Meanwhile, my first test game is up.
I've quickly (took about 3 hours to get everything downloaded and setup!!) recompiled UFO246, and it's now (RIGHT NOW!) available to download from the Jayenkai Archive, right beside the Linux link.
woot!

DO be sure you switch the audio driver to FreeAudio, 'cos otherwise the Ogg doesn't play, and the game goes hush-hush after about a minute!!
Guess I'll be tweaking the driver priorities, again!


Macshot!!!

So, if anyone here has a Mac, go give it a whirl, and let me know how things go.

In the interest of interesting things.. Fact : Game plays quicker and smoother on a little tiny Mac Mini than it does on a giant HP PC that's around about 12 times it's size!!