This thread had been created as an offshoot to the "The Little Inn" topic.
In many ways, this thread could easily exist inside one of the many other sections of CWF, most notably the "In Development" section, but as those who know me are all too aware, my game creation timescale would result in approximately 52 separate "in development" threads every year.
For the past few months, I've been inserting mini dev diary content amongst my The Little Inn posts, and .. Well, I'm not sure. People haven't complained about it.. Maybe they're just too nice to tell me off! Who knows!
A "suggestion" has been made that I start a development thread, so that's what this is.
I'll waffle here about development stuff, and folk can happily ignore my inane ramblings by simply ignoring the thread!
It's a win-win situation!
I'm not entirely sure why I'm finding these short waffling posts as much fun as I am. I never used to enjoy blogging, and whenever I'd set up a blog, I'd typically forget about it after a few days! Heck, the only reason my current blog is active, at all, is because of my regular release dates.. Otherwise that'd probably be an empty, long forgotten blog, too!
Anyway, expect plenty of oddness in this thread, and if you're a developer, feel free to post your own stuff here, too. It'll be fun! Or something..
Maybe..
Today's waffle is about Blockman Gets.
A Brief History
2009
If you've played the original, you'll know it's a strange oddity that I pretty much stumbled upon.
One day whilst coding "generic Pacman game", I lazily decided to take out the Ghosts. I was rushing, and couldn't be bothered doing AI. Lazy Jay!!
So, I looked at the game, and wondered.. "If there are no ghosts in Pacman, what else is there?"
Well.. There's a maze.
.. That's something!
I juggled the maze around in my head for a while, and came up with the general gameplay of Blockman Gets.
Instead of being rapidly chased around the maze, you could take your time.
Instead of free-movement around the maze, your challenge comes from HAVING to constantly eat pellets. If you take a step without eating a pellet, the level ends.
Then you add a target into the mix. Eat X many pellets, and ending the level starts the next. If you haven't eaten enough, you lose a life and the level restarts.
Essentially, the maze is preset, and it's your actions that make it easier or harder.
Bonus points are added for gaining more than the target, and there are power pellets you can eat to refil the arena.
Simple, basic, but really quite addictive!
iOS Edition(s)
2010-2012!
One of the first games I ever attempted to get working on iOS. It's a fairly simplistic game, and it's all contained within a fairly small gameplay area, so it seems like a perfect match for a phone.
So, I tried it.
And it kinda worked, too!
And then Apple launched the iPad, and it completely broke my games. I had to redo everything from scratch. Grrr.
Blockman got scrapped, and restarted a few months later.
After a few days trying various control methods, I decided to give it a rest. Something was up with the controls. I wasn't sure what it was, but I knew it just didn't "feel" right. Given my terrible artistic inabilities, if my games don't feel right they're pretty much just bad games!!
Months passed.. Probably a year..
I got to grips with iOS development. I released SpikeDislike! I got good at it all!
I tackled Blockman again, and again... And again!!
I currently have about 6 or 7 half attempted iOS Blockman versions on my harddrive. Each one failing due to controls, or lack of content, or some other stupid reason.
It never seems quite right.
I love the game, but I just can't seem to get it right?
Monkey!
2013
Recently, I bought a new language called Monkey. It lets me write games for all manner of different systems, including iOS and even Android phones.
As we continue through this Developer thread, expect to see all manner of download links, with plenty of free games for Windows and Android included!
Grab 'em if you've got 'em!
I'm currently doing a sort of mass-remake type thing. Going back to my classic most loved games, and remaking them so they work nicely on Android devices.
This week, I've decided to once again tackle Blockman!
After a couple of hours, I had the basics up and running once again.
I've tackled the control scheme enough to know what does and doesn't work, and have already got two or three fully compatible control methods working simultaneously. I'm going to add a couple more, but they'll need toggles in the menu, as they're fairly complex.
But so far, so good.
I've removed the power-pellets, and replaced them with fruit, with the (currently) four different fruit having different effects. This seems to work reasonably well, and keeps things moving along at a decent rate.
I'm currently wondering whether I should add the old Boulders back into the game, as well as the ghosts.
The boulders require a "thud" ability, which doesn't really fit in with the new control schemes. I could possibly add tilt control for the boulders, but some Android devices are having issues, plus .. Obviously.. Your PC doesn't typically like being tilted about
The ghosts, on the other hand, are even more complex. Even setting them off on preset paths can cause issues. The ghosts always felt too "random" to me, and took away from the raw puzzle mechanics.
I dunno whether they should go back in or not.
..maybe just in Hard mode?
Anyway, that's what I've been tackling, this week.
As well as that, I'm awaiting news from Apple, to let me know if my Monkey Framework is creating valid proper sellable Apps or not, and then I've got SpikeDislike2 on the go, too.
Lots to work on, lots to do!
Development is fun
The only issue I have with it is the smoothness of Blockman's movement, though that may be more an issue with my computer than the game. (You see, my computer is a crappy hand-me-down of a hand-me-down with a 730MHz processor and 384MB of RAM and sometimes even simple games chug on it) I can never be sure whether or not I'm the only one experiencing any given problem due to my underpowered PC, but I'll share my issue anyway. Blockman seems to hesitate a split-second after each dot he eats which, in my opinion, breaks the flow of the game somewhat. (though, I recognize that this is supposed to be a slow-paced game, so maybe that's intended)
I just get an error message saying, "This application has failed to start because OpenAL32.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem." I tried re-downloading it and re-installing it to no avail. I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that I'm using Windows XP, since my Googling skills tell me that that file is related to Windows Vista.