After a night of busy coding, I was finally trying to get to sleep at about 2:30am.
I switched off the light, rolled over in bed, and ...
tap.

tap tap..
tappity tappity tap.

The sound of a great big moth flapping around the room.

Read More

I know what game I'd like to make for this week's Browsercade, and my mind's jumping at the chance to see how it plays, but any time I sit at the keyboard, things take a downward turn.

I don't think my mind's up to it.

And with 3 weeks worth of 4 games a week, who could really blame it.

Tonight, then, I'm going to cabbage out and watch a film or something, and not worry about this week's Browsercade game.
I've already written a Foldapuz game, and may still do other things during the week, but..
.. for tonight at least..

This coder is shutting down.

What a happy title for a card game!!

Fairly complex rules ahead, but it's actually really simple once you get the hang of it.

Your aim in this game is to remove all "Pay off" cards from your side of the table. (They're the cards on the bottom left)
To do so, move cards onto the Center Piles (the three in the middle), starting from Ace and moving up to Queen. These can be of any suit, and if you place a King, it acts as a wildcard, becoming the next number in the sequence.

You can move cards either from the Pay-Off deck, your hand of five cards, or from the four Side Piles to the right.
If you can't make any more moves, you need to take one of the cards from your hand, and place it onto one of your side piles. (These can be any cards in any order, it doesn't matter)

Once you place a single card onto your side piles, your turn ends, and it's the opponent's turn.

Play continues back and forth until one of the players has used up all of their Pay-Off cards, at which point they're declared the winner.

You can Play Spite and Malice in the Shoebox, under the Card Games section.

Read More

As with last week's Shoebox game, I actually uploaded it about mid-day, yesterday, but haven't yet officially posted about it.
If you're the nosey sort, keep an eye on Shoebox on a Friday, and you might catch a glimpse of the next game, before it's properly finished.

I first wanted to double check everything, and that's best done on the iPad, whilst sat riding my little foot-pedal-doohickey.

Top Tip : Get in shape by forcing yourself to exercise whilst you're doing all of this gameplay testing!

Read More

Finishing off Rescue Helicopter for Petit Switch was alarmingly difficult, yesterday.

Read More

Fly through the sky in your wonderful little Rescue Helicopter.
Rescue all the people, and take them back to base.
But what are you rescuing them from!?!

If you've a Switch, and have downloaded PetitCom4 from the (Currently) Japan-Only eShop (vague instructions here), you can grab a copy of the game using the Public Key...

4KK8QEBX

Read More

Latest Game : 15th August 2019 : My Little Rescue Helicopter

Petit Computer 4, SmileBasic for Nintendo Switch, was released on 23rd of May, 2019 in the Japanese eShop.
If you'd like to give it a try, I've written this vague guide to get you started with getting the Japanese edition onto your none-Japanese Switch, as well as these additional blog posts.

I've also made the following downloads for the language.

I'll aim to post a new game every Friday, so watch out for them!

Read More

An early start to my usual busy Thursday, as the cat managed to wake me up at 7am.
The Pixelart's done, the blogging's complete, the ALChoon is uploaded, and now all I have to do is write the SoCoder Newsletter and finish off the Helicopter game..

Oh, yeah.. There's quite a lot of Helicopter game still to do, isn't there.
Hmm..

Read More

Crikey, this is a bit messy!

Read More

I rewrote a few parts of "My Little Rescue Helicopter" over on Petit Switch. Today I need to add in the little characters to rescue, and then decide on the best mechanic for enemy aircraft.

I was never 100% happy on how the shooting controls worked, so that needs a rethink.
Otherwise, that should all be ready for a Friday release.

Read More