Aww.
Didn’t work.

This week’s Wednesday Workshop (#209) asked us to create a game with some kind of Gravity.

If you’ve been following AGameAWeek for a while, you’ll remember Puzzobomb. A nice puzzle game with Gravity.
I also did MunkyBlocks as a kind of follow up.

Well, this week I decided to try it again, but with rotational gravity, rather than plain gravity.

As such, the block will fall in the direction they’re placed.
They have little arrows on them, to show which direction they’ll fall in.

You can Download Gravity Bob here.

The description for this game is a little wordy, so head inside for instructions.

continue reading "Gravity Bob"

Not much this week, or at least, not as good as Microbes anyway!

I decided to redo Raining Bombs, from a few weeks ago.
The last one was for my Cookie phone, (which has since become a Viewty phone) and this one’s for Windows.

It looks more dramatic than it is!

Two turrets that shoot each other over and over again.
If you blast your enemy beneath the bottom of the screen, you win a point, and then it all starts all over again.

No intro, no music, not even a “BANG!”, more a subtle silent set of weapons

You can Download Raining Bombs here.

Is it worth adding more to this game?

continue reading "Raining Bombs"

A simple game, this week, but one that’s already evolved quite a bit.

As I mentioned the other day, I actually got this game done earlier on in the week, and it was quite a bit of fun even then.
Since then, I’ve updated it a couple more times, and now it’s even better than it was! woot!!

The game is based on an Amiga game I once played many, many years ago.
A simple design.
You swirl around the outside of the arena, moving the mouse left and right.
You fire with the Left Mouse Button, you slowdown with the Right.

And you keep on going until you’re dead.
Because, you never can stop it!!

They just keep on coming!!!

Playing tip : Don’t let the blues get out of control! They’re your first priority.

You can Download Microbes here, and get killing those germs!!

Yesterday turned out rather well.
I actually coded a complete game, from start to finish, logo, audio, everything, yesterday.
It’s pretty good, and will be our AGameAWeek come Tuesday. (Because, if I posted it today, there’d be nothing to post on Tuesday!!)

Look forward to more shootyshooty stuff!

continue reading "When demotivation strikes…"

Well, not all suck.
Let’s take a quick run through my week, shall we?

Tuesday
Posted last week’s game, got prepared to work on PatentWars some more.
Created a few nice looking player counters, got them moving around the board, all is well.

Wednesday
That little red counter looks really really neat.
Attempted to mould it, somehow, into a Socoder logo.
It worked!

Kickass Socoder logo!

Thursday
Spurred on by the new logo, decided to recommence the “New Socoder” framework.
Got quite a lot done, felt kinda proud of myself.
Additionally drew a bunch of Patents using my lovely LG Cookie. Touchscreen = lovely art

Friday
Folk on Socoder notice slight changes, and so bombard me with requests for other things.
Spend all day Friday attempting to do 100 things at once, because I won’t get time over the weekend.
Still not got a game done, but got a few more patents drawn.

Saturday
At work all day…
The plan was to get to work and use the internet capable machine to get some extra Socoder stuff done.
No internet..
FFS!
No work done all day, even though I was at work all day, but had my phone, so got more patents! Yeay!

Sunday
Similar story, except that on Sunday, to further annoy me, my phone (my lovely LG Cookie) committed suicide.
My god damn lovely phone no longer bloody well works.
FFS!!!!
Still no game done.

Monday
OH NO!
My phone is DEAD dead!!
…
..

OH NO!!
ALL MY GOD DAMNED PATENTS ARE ON THERE!
FFS..

..

ARGH!!!!

…

Confounded by the annoyances of the weekend, I decided to have a day out.
I bought a lovely Scrabble set, and then came home and had a game of that.
Still no game.

Tuesday, Today
No game!
Sorry guys, I ain’t had the time… and/or are too pissed off!!!

Last Wednesday I started a new project, it’s since gotten out of hand and I need some ideas to help bring it all to a close.

Let’s start from the top.
Over at the MyLGCookie forums, someone asked if there was a nice touchscreen Monopoly.
As usual, Jay jumps in and says “Yeah, that’ll be nice and easy”
…
It’s not!

See, rather than getting my ass sued off, I decided to make it “But a bit different”, and the idea I came up with was to use Patents.
Instead of houses and hotels, you buy the rights to different regional patents, culminating in a larger Worldwide patent.
There’s other gameplay rule changes, and things are coming together.

But..
Because I changed the fundamentals, it means I have to come up with all the squares, all the new chance/community cards, and everything else like that!

So, thinking along the lines of patents we have cards that look like this..

and patents that look like this..

Triple Rocket Launching Hat
Lighting three rockets in rapid succession may be dangerous, as by the time you’re lighting the third rocket, the first might set off in your vicinity. By lighting the three arms of the Triple Rocket Launching Hat (B), a person needs only place their head behind the three rockets (A) to launch them simultaneously.

What I need from you..
I need a whole boatload of patent ideas. Make them as completely improbable as you can.
The less safe, the less sane, and the less probable the better..
Think of things that would NEVER really happen in the real world!
…or maybe they would, there are some really crazy patents out there!

You don’t have to doodle them, just a description will do.
But if you are doodling, 400×400 white background, black ink, as seen above.

Make sure you give me a bit of text to work with, though.

Additionally, if you can come up with a few cards, let me know those, too!

Thanks to all who help, your names (as supplied) will be in the credits, and I’ll try my best to create this game for the Big Three.. That’s PC, DS and J2ME - Specifically my Cookie.

Heck, maybe even XNA? (But .. that’s probably got a bit of an issue with legalities!!)

At the start of this week, I completed a nice quick game of Atoms for my phone, so here’s that..

It’s a classic Amiga PD game from many many years ago. Tap to place an atom, place too many to explode them, capture all the tiles you can.
Simple gameplay, but lots of fun!

You can Download Atoms here

For the rest of this week, I’ve been working on a mock board-game. Confined to the rules of board, it’s been fun creating a game that could conceivably exist in the real world.
Unfortunately, that game’s nowhere near ready yet. It’s a fairly complex board game and has a great big bunch of rules to go along with it.
Crazy crazy stuff..

No matter. I still managed a game this week, and that’s what it’s all about, right?!
Next week, I’ll probably have the board game done!

I’ve about 20-odd projects on the go, this week, so you’ll have to excuse the lack of blog entries, and even a decent AGameAWeek game.

Most of this week was spent trying to roll a dice! (die, whatever)
I figured that, with 4 frames per roll, I’d need around about 200+ frames of animation.
I tried to work out all the animations, and it drove me crazy!
Then I rested, and eventually worked out a way to do it, without bothering to animate it, which was a lot simpler to do.
..
Then the game idea I’d had actually turned out to be really rubbish, and the whole dang thing got scrapped.

Aw well, what can you do!

So, within a mostly wasted week, take a peek inside and see what I actually did do!

continue reading "Two Games you probably can’t play!"