Continue reading »]]> It’s Valentines Day, and what better way to celebrate than to play a game with a slightly askew title!
This isn’t a game about a couple of white birds in love.
This is a game about a lonely turtle who dives towards the floor!
Awww.. Feel the Love!!

This game’s been through some crazy development, this week!
“Happy Turtle” started life as a remake of Platdude Goes Golfing.. The same single-screen “hit the targets” gameplay, but with a bizarre jumping turtle.
Too samey!
After a few tweaks, it became a downward scroller, then all of a sudden, all of the obstacles changed from little tiny circular bumbers, into great big lovehearts.
Stupid Calendar!

Anyhoo, you can Download One Turtle Dove here for Windows and Mac.

Happy Valentines Day!

Continue reading »]]> The Plan!
NeonPlat Classic is the original edition.
If I hurry up and quickly build a version of that on iOS, I can get it released in time for my Birthday, then have a 24 hour giveaway like I did with SpikeDislike last year.

The Realism
For some reason I wasn’t thinking about the “it takes a week to pass through review” thing.
Stupid bloody Apple…
Never mind. I’ll probably do another SpikeDislike freebie day or something, instead.

Meanwhile…

-=-=-

NeonPlat’s kinda coming together. I’ve got the basics in place, and am working out the physics.
Playing the game with tilt-mechanics naturally makes the game feel somewhat different, so it’s been tricky to get the gravity and speed to play well with the new analogue tilt controls.

I also need to fix up the capture smash thing, as well as deciding whether I should keep the original game’s “You got one” smash, or to tweak the game to be more like NeonPlat Adventure, and have the baddies do different things once caught.

I like that new mechanic, but in all honesty, I think having that difference helps to separate the two games. Plus, there’ll only be a small group of baddies, anyway.. This is only NeonPlat Classic, after all.

For those interested, sales for Unijuggler have been a little limited over the weekend. Hopefully it’ll pick up during the week.
Note to self : Release earlier in the week, to give it a headstart before the weekend!

As for WiLMa and AGameAWeek, this Tuesday’s Valentine’s Day, so we’ll be having a nice heartwarming game with lovehearts all over it!
Awww, ain’t that sweet!!

Continue reading »]]> You can now head on over to the iOS AppStore to grab a nice new version of Unijuggler!
You can juggle the balls, ducks, clubs and rings, and aim for a super highscore to annoy all your friends.

Unijuggler in the AppStore. $0.99 / £0.69 / equivalent.

More game info is available here

Continue reading »]]> …this iOS stuff isn’t quick, is it!?

Week one, decide on game, start game..
Week two, keep tweaking annoyingly broken things in framework and get game done.
Submit game!
…
Week three, Trailer, Forum post formatting, email formatting, gather email addys, etc.
FFS, Week three’s the smegging PR gubbins.

Still, can’t complain. Well, I CAN complain, but I won’t whinge too much.
maybe..

The Trailer-ish thing is up on Youtube already. Time is crazy right now, so everything’s being crammed into any slot it can find! This little trailer got smushed together within about 20 minutes.
Can you tell?

Yup

Game should appear at some point over the next few days, assuming Apple don’t reject it for being “Just Breakout, but without even bothering with a wall!!”!

Music from Sheep Goes Left. Music doesn’t appear in the actual game.
I need to fix my mod-playing abilities, methinks.

That, and the Portrait Mode (for a certain game that I’ve already coded on iOS three sodding times but still haven’t released yet) will be the next main framework tasks on the list.

Once those tweaks are done, along with a few other bits and pieces that I’ve come to realise I definitely need, it’ll be time to do attempt Week-Long project #2.
.. I think we’ll start calling these the iOS AGameAMonth projects.. assuming the next one actually works out.

Continue reading »]]> Last weekend, most of the developers on the internet took part in the great big Global Game Jam, whereby everyone settled down to a nice long weekend of coding, all based on the same topic.
Think of it as Ludum Dare, but with a slightly different name.

The game topic was to build a game where a snake eats it’s tail, and plenty of games were made with that in mind.

I was at work, as per usual.
dangit..

Of course, that didn’t mean that I didn’t have an idea for a game.
So with about 3 or 4 days of a half-baked plan bubbling about in my head, I figured what the hey, and I started a Snake game.

Turns out, that probably wasn’t such a good idea!

I think, in all honesty, I’ve done one (or 50) too many snake games.

What started off as a “It would be nice to have a specific path” thought, quickly changed due to the painfully dull/ludicrously difficult nature of that plan! It kinda worked in Blockman Gets, but that game had a “tap to move” control scheme. Snake doesn’t.
Instead, the Snake constantly found itself bashing into walls, all the time.
So, I tried to remove the wall collisions and subtract hits from the score. That kinda works, too, but by this point the game was a lost cause.

I plodded ahead, finished it off, and now it’s posted, but it’s definitely not the best game I’ve done.
Not by a long shot!

Move, Eat, Don’t Eat Yourself.
Job done.

You can Download Snaked Up here for Windows and Mac. Let me know if the Mac one works, now.. I think it should, but I’ve no Leopard to test it with!

(and before you ask.. No!!.. I can no longer remember why I called it Snaked Up!!)

-=-=-

Speaking of Game Jam, the PlayMyCode guys managed to make a lovely Minigame collection. Ourobo Ware. Great stuff!

Continue reading »]]> Over the weekend, Sheep Goes Left has been free.

Don’t worry if you missed it, because it’s actually still free until the 8th of February, I just won’t be banging on about it on Twitter like I have been!

…Feel free to tell your mates, and turn your twitter output into a giant sheep filled spam-attack!

Want more Sheep?
There’s ALWAYS more Sheep!!

The Nintendo DS Homebrew edition of the game is right here, while the PC (/Linux/Mac) edition is also here.

Both the DS and PC versions have 100 levels, but only the iOS edition contains a whopping 300 levels to play through. Yikes!!!

There’s also the original iOS soundtrack, 100% free, downloadable here, and the DS’s mod-based edition of the soundtrack here.

Gotta love the sheep!

Enjoy the game!

Continue reading »]]> Last week, there was no AGameAWeek.
It was the clown’s fault..
.. stupid clown..

With my newer shinier iOS Framework running the way it was more-or-less supposed to be, I decided to take a week to “quickly” port an AGameAWeek game over to iOS.
People had expressed an interest in a tilt-controlled version of Unijuggler, and I figured what the hey.
1. Scrolling Background
2. Moving Objects
3. Collisions

It’s pretty much SpikeDislike, except you’re hitting the objects instead of avoiding them.
Should be easy, right? Especially since I already had all the sprites drawn from the original AGameAWeek edition.

So, in the assets went, and in went a simple scrolling background.
It took a good couple of hours to get those clown sprites realigned, so that the guy’s head wasn’t inexplicably 16 pixels over his shoulders, and his legs weren’t flailing all over the place as he cycled.
Job done.

Then I added a ball…

-=-=-

Here’s the thing, and if you played the original AGAW edition of Unijuggler, you’ll probably spot the issue.
The simple mechanic worked well enough, but having to constantly keep forcing your way ahead, whilst simultaneously losing balls because your speed is varying so wildly, it wasn’t the easiest job in the world.
Instead of juggling 5 balls at once, it seemed much easier to just keep one ball going, and then it just became about keeping an eye on that, and rushing as far forward as you could.

It was tricky on the PC.
On iOS, trying to keep even one ball in play, while constantly wiggling back and forth, just became a horrible nasty chore.
The game needed tweaks, and that’s when the whole timeframe of the project started to spiral wildly out of control!! …as in, it took me two weeks, not one!

The game now has limits.
There’s an invisible wall either side of the arena (about 1.25x screen width) which will bounce back the balls.
You can choose between Easy, Normal and Hard in standard AGAW style, and those relate to the number of balls you’ll have to control.
Easy is 1, Hard is 3.
Simple!

If you drop a single ball on the floor, a little timer starts to decrease. Relaunch the ball (roll up to it) to stop the timer where it is.
Essentially, the game is now less about moving forwards, and becomes much more Juggle-centric.
Keep the balls in the air, keep playing, score more!

Without the Moving Onward bonus, a new scoring method was needed, so a combo system is now also in place. Each ball juggled adds a combo point, and as soon as one of the balls hits the floor, the combo resets.
Simple.
.. really simple..
and works!

I’ve since added in some other objects (Ducks, Clubs and Rings) which appear inside little balloons. Pop a balloon by throwing something at it, and attempt to juggle one of the extra props. Each of the three props have their own weight, so will fall at different rates, and the faster they fall, the more points they’re worth.
And on and on you juggle, until you either deplete the timer, or you get bored with the game.

One Single-ball (Easy) it’s a heck of a lot easier, whereas on Three-ball (Hard) it really is mentally hard! (current highscores : 7007 on easy, 558 on Normal, 115 on Hard!!)

-=-=-

On Thursday, I reached that “I think this’ll be ok for version 1″ point, so I bundled it all up, shouted at XCode, bundled again, shouted at Apple, bundles, submitted and then bundle/submitted it again, about 30 times.
It finally went through late last night, at around about 4am.

With any luck, the game should be in the App Store at some point next week, but it probably won’t appear until the weekend. (they usually take a week, at best)

The game is simple, the game looks like ass, and the game is pretty limited gameplay wise.
Being a great game isn’t the point of this game.
Being a test IS the point.

This game will be testing three main things.

1. That I can do quicky games for iOS.
Two weeks wasn’t quite quick enough, but I was still tweaking the framework, too.. should be able to cut that down to single-week games..

2. That the Gamecenter stuff works..
I STILL hate the way that Apple have done Gamecenter.. Too much faffing about, for my liking. Again, I can’t really test it until the thing’s actually out there, so.. guess we’re going to be waiting for that one!

3. iPad Usability
I still don’t have an iPad, so I still have to wait and see if it ends up running at around about 3fps on one!

And now it’s the waiting game, while I quickly rush to finish this week’s AGameAWeek before Tuesday. Oops!

Continue reading »]]> Insert sad face here..

This week I’ve been concentrating on iOS development, getting a nice half-assed version of Unijuggler up and running, and playing with the game’s rules in a vague attempt to make it a bit more playable. Seems to be coming along OK!
After that I had one of those horrible lack-of-sleep weekends, and all went to pot.
dang.

No matter.

Next week, something fun!

Continue reading »]]> It’s Saturday morning, and I’ve not yet started Tuesday’s game.
Haven’t even got any thoughts in mind, either!

As such, I figured I should warn you all incase I don’t actually get a game posted, this week.
If I do attempt something, it’ll probably be done in PlayMyCode, because that’ll save all the current Mac crap that I’m having to put up with. Damn you Lion!!!

Meanwhile..

Continue reading »]]> A sequel for this week’s AGameAWeek!
I’ve been thinking about Key, Bo and Ard since I popped them into NeonPlat Adventures a few months back, so I finally sat down to build this nice new puzzler.

Last time around, the player had to switch between the three players, and shift them around crumbling floors.

This time, there’s no switching!
The player needs to shift all three characters at once, which can occasionally lead to complications.
Careful out there!!

You can Download “Key, Bo and Ard, too” here for Windows, and the dodgy half-assed Mac edition that keeps crashing all the time.. Still not fixed that bug, yet. sorry.

—
* Additional : Ask if you want more.. I kinda like this one, and may even attempt an iOS one.
* Additional : Is it Kee or Key? I can’t remember, and keep flipping between the two! I’m sure he doesn’t mind!
* Additional : I left the default nondescript description in again.. bugger.. need to make that more obvious, so I do it better!