Developing Ramblings

[jayenkai]

The hype train keeps on rolling!
Today's "WTF is Jayenkai going to attempt, next!?" oddity is this!

[Tormuse]

.. This is what happens when you don't like installers.. The quirky bits start popping up!
I blame Microsoft!!

I blame Microsoft for a lot of things. It saves time.

However!!
It might actually be one of those gameplay rules that I've not bothered to mention. I do this a lot.. Hunting my games for little secret rules is a great way to get highscores!!
Each dot has a memory. If you eat a cherry (or otherwise), the dot remembers its been eaten, and is drawn smaller.
You score more points when eating fresh dots.
There's also a counter %age that keeps track of how much you've eaten. This isn't a total. It's fresh-dots!
Gotta get 'em all!!

Ah, okay. I didn't realize they came back a different size, silly unobservant me. But even setting that aside, there still are some subtle size differences sometimes. (Oh well) Also, now that I recognize how the percentage tracker works, maybe I should see if I can get 100% of the dots! (not counting re-eats) That could be an interesting goal...

As for the boardgame... erm... uh... how honest do you want me to be about this? Well, I think the concept of a SpikeDislike boardgame is pretty cool, but I don't like the current execution of it. Frankly, it's too random. The whole game is governed by rolling dice and drawing cards, with zero strategy involved. Add to that the aggravation that periodically, (25% of the time) you lose all your points with no way to stop it and it just stops being fun for me. Don't get me wrong; having randomness in a game is a good thing, since it improves the replay value when each game is different, but if 100% of the gameplay is random, then the game ceases to be interactive and then it doesn't matter how many players you have because they are no longer contributing. Sorry, Jay, I like to stay positive and have nice things to say about everything, but this really isn't my kind of game.

But... um... on the plus side, the music in the promotional video is pretty cool.

[jayenkai]

LOL..
You do know it's meant as a gag, right? I mean, it's not an actual board game!!
It's just a silly bit of randomness, meant to help build up the hype for the actual game's release.
I didn't think it through, it isn't a big planned awesome thing, it's just a silly random throwaway idea!

Oh my! I don't think I've ever had a complaint about Sillyness before!.. That's probably not true, actually, I've done a lot of silly throwaway things, and there's bound to have been complaints..

The countdown continues!! Release in about 4 days or so. Woot!!l

[Zyx]

You do know it's meant as a gag, right? I mean, it's not an actual board game!!

We're already waiting for the SpikeDisklike: The Board Game: The Video Game.

[Tormuse]

Oh, I would never complain about intentional silliness! And no, I didn't know it was a gag; I'm pretty gullible sometimes. I thought you were being serious and I figured you'd appreciate a bit of honest feedback. Never mind, then. Disregard!

[jayenkai]

And so it begins!!!
Last night/This morning at 2:24am GMT, SpikeDislike2 got through it's Apple Review Stage!
It's now (right now!!) LIVE!
Kinda..

..It's half-live.
It's available with PromoCodes, but not yet on sale. It goes fully-live at some random undetermined time on Monday. (Because Apple still hasn't given developers any sort of times for AppStore events!! Things just sort of happen, whenever Apple thinks it's a good time!!)

Youtube Trailer

I've spent most of this morning sending emails to various review sites, with PromoCodes, and horrible nasty professional looking PR gubbins. Not a fan of doing that kinda thing, but SpikeDislike needs it.
With a little luck, it should take off well enough. I hope. Maybe..
We'll have to wait and see.

Tuesday!! Woot!!

[jayenkai]

I woke up, checked TimeHop and it told me of another old AGameAWeek game from 4 years ago today. I thought it was quite a nice game, so posted about it over on my blog, launching an all-new segment that I've called "AGameAWeek Gold!" Each day I'll look back through the archive, checking out old games that I'd released on that day in history. .. assuming there is one!
Should be fun!
Today's is Mini Sokoban, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Since I was already looking at the Archive, I decided to take the time to go through every single game, and see if anything looked like it could be put into "Arcade Slots".
I've made a list of about 5 or 6 games, and hopefully I can come up with a few more. It's not looking good, so far, though!

Anyhoo, I then grabbed the most obvious one from the list, and made that into a complete Arcade Slots machine within a couple of hours.
It's SO handy having the whole Reel/Nudge mechanism ready and waiting! Saves a bucketload of coding, and works great in all sorts of games. .. as long as they're a slot machine!!
Can't really call it "Puzzobomb", though.. That doesn't make any sense at all!!

[jayenkai]

Warning : The following link is NOT freeware! : SpikeDislike2 : Now in the AppStore : Costs money!!
(The freebie Windows and Android editions will be out tomorrow)

Nothing showed up for AGameAWeek Gold, today. I guess March 4th isn't all that productive a day for me! I wonder if I could generate some sort of Productivity Chart, showing what days of the year most of my games came out on? That'd be something to kill a couple of hours!

(*Killed a couple of hours)

I can't seem to focus.
Every time I try to do something, my mind's whizzing with ideas for SpikeDislike2!
In some ways, that's a great thing. Keeps me active. Keeps my "Big Game" more up to date.
In other ways.. well, Arcade Slots needs doing, and then there's a whole host of other games that need making, too!

Last night an odd little "Hats" idea popped into my head for SpikeDislike2. I'm not sure how well it'll work, but it does at least appear to be a good way to waste all those extra credits that get earned along the way.

Had no new ideas for Arcade Slots, though. hmm.. not good!!

[jayenkai]

And so it appears...

SpikeDislike2 is now available on Android, Windows and in your browser, too.
This is the FREE edition.
The FREE edition is about half the size of the FULL edition, but as my iOS sales stats come in, I'll unlock extra bits and pieces of the FREE edition.
I figured this is a nice middle-ground.
There's still a 100% fully playable free game, but there's also a larger pay-for game on iPhings.
It's as good as I can achieve. I think.. Maybe.
If you think I'm being evil, tell me!!

[Tormuse]

I woke up, checked TimeHop and it told me of another old AGameAWeek game from 4 years ago today. I thought it was quite a nice game, so posted about it over on my blog, launching an all-new segment that I've called "AGameAWeek Gold!" Each day I'll look back through the archive, checking out old games that I'd released on that day in history. .. assuming there is one!
Should be fun!
Today's is Mini Sokoban, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Are you thinking of turning Sokoban into an Android game? Sokoban *really* takes me back; it was one of the earliest games I ever played on a PC. (It even had 4 colour "CGA" graphics! Anyone here old enough to remember that time?)

Well, whether or not you're thinking of doing that, I was wondering if we could try an experiment; you mentioned in an earlier post that one of your games registered the phone's "back" button as the escape key. Is there any chance you could try to see if you can make it register the arrow keys on my phone's keyboard as, well, arrow keys? I know that my phone represents a rather small minority of Android users, most of whom don't have keyboards and only have touchscreens, but for me, it would dramatically improve the playability of certain games, like say, Blockman Gets Hungry or (hypothetically) Sokoban. I know you've got a lot of projects on the go right now, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.

[jayenkai]

Right at the start, I asked folk online.. Do I go for a cheap and cheerful Android Phone, or a Nexus 7 for testing. Overwhelmingly the reply was "Nexus7!!!!“
... Kinda wishing I'd've got something with flamin' buttons on it, now, though!!
I'll keep trying different things, and keep you updated. If anything magically works, all of a sudden, we'll stick with that!!

[Zyx]

In other news, the Best Sports Game BAFTA went to a football iOS game made with Monkey.

Just goes to show how much the Brits love their football...

[jayenkai]

To be fair, even I enjoy a good, well made Football Game. If a game's playable, then it's a good game, whether or not it's a particular sport shouldn't be the issue.
It's not that "Brits Love Football!", more that the alternative is cricket, and that really doesn't translate well to videogames in the slightest!!

Anyhoo.. Back to development ramblings.
You might've noticed a couple of days off, there!
I've had another bloody migraine, and although it wasn't a terribly bad case, I did have to slow down a bit and put the Laptop away for a while.
grrr!

What little work I did do, was mostly SpikeDislike related. That game's getting the main focus, right now, so Arcade Slots is unfortunately taking a back seat, which probably isn't good when I have to release the thing on Tuesday! Yikes!!
Anyhoo, never mind that, what have I actually been doing?
Well, I drew some stupid looking hats, and put them on the ball!

.. yep, it looks as stupid (if not stupider) than it sounds.
You spend credits on the main menu to buy a hat, the hat gives you a certain ability that you keep until you lose the hat.
Nothing major, and I've tried not to make any particular hat give players a SUPER advantage on the scoreboards, but it's something to spend all those extra credits on. They do build up a lot quicker than I'd planned them to!!

.. honestly, that's about all I've done!
It's taken me two days to implement 4 hats. Two Days!!?
Migraines suck!

[Zyx]

Nah, I'm just a tiny bit bitter because our game was also nominated in that category... Actually, the game that won, New Star Soccer, it's actually pretty good! It's also available for Android, and it's free(ish). It's one of the few games that I've put money into (to unlock the full career mode). The game reminds me of the late 90s PC shareware games and in a good way.

The game has horse betting (among other gambling stuff) and the actual horse races are shown with better graphics than the actual football game!

anyways, given that there's a lot of stuff going around with steambox, nvidia's project shield and ouya that are all pretty much androids with controllers, it's going to be kinda exciting to see how games can be designed with touchscreens and gamepads in mind.

[jayenkai]

"free-ish"... nnghh..

Designing games for both touchscreen and gamepad isn't too hard, but trying to design the exact same game to work identically on both... yikes!!
And now that I have "My First Laptop" (at age 32, and I only bought it 'cos I spent so much sodding time in hospital!) I can see how damn annoying some of my mouse-controlled games are, when using this stupid little fiddly touchpad thing.
grrr!!

So, yeah, the more control schemes you can get working simultaneously, the better. But it sure is tricky!

I'm finding myself thinking about Munky Blocks (/Munky's Block / Munky's Blocks!) again, today.
Not sure I want to bother redrawing all those Munky sprites for the umpteenth time, nor working on the hundred-or-so control schemes that it'll need.
But it's a challenge!
And I love a good challenge!!

..
I also haven't gotten any music working in my framework, nor have I tackled the WordList functions again.
Lots and lots and lots to do!

[jayenkai]

...And so I gave the WordList functions another go..
It's taken me the amount of time between these two posts to get it all working.



And working it is, which is nice!
This is one of those "How often will you need this!?" sort of elements that I hadn't previously bothered to faff about with, but now that I've done it, I can use it in at least one game. An All-New Stringy Things!!
Hurray!

Expect one of those.. um.. eventually. I still have other games to work on!

[jayenkai]

After the WordList, the other big missing feature is, of course, Music.
File Access isn't 100% trustable, yet, and Monkey doesn't natively do Mod stuff, so I've been putting off tackling music.
The thing is, I really enjoyed messing about with the WordList stuff, yesterday!
Taking a bit of a break from AGameAWeek, and instead wrapping my head around a nice puzzling coding challenge was fun!
...
So.. Today, for whatever crazy reason, I decided I might as well give the music a go..
As I'm typing this, the song on the radio is suitably Let's Get Crazy, Tonight!
Hmm..
Even the radio knows this is a daft idea. That should give you some idea how crazy today wound up being!!

If you've played JNKPlat 2010 or NeonPlat Adventure, you might notice the music is somewhat random.
I wrote a nice bit of code to take a few bits of musical clues, and then generate a constant stream of music using a batch of given samples.
It kinda works.
It's not the greatest, but it's smaller than having all that as MP3 files!

Well, I've decided to rebuild that entire engine from scratch.

Today I started with a composer. I hadn't bothered to make one for the previous version, but this time I'll be needing one.. Because ... Well.. We'll come to that later!

The composer currently looks like a classic Amiga style Mod Tracker. There are 5 channels available. The first two are drums, then lead, accompaniment and bass.
Onto the tracker, you plop your notes. I've left space for adding effect data, too, but have yet to implement any of them.
Once you're done, hit the spacebar and your pattern plays.

If you tap Ctrl+Space, it switches to Random Player mode. It selects different bars from different patterns, mixes things together, and mutes/unmutes channels at random.
Is nothing magical, but if you compose your music in just the right way, all the mixing up tends to work nicely.

...so, tomorrow I'll be tackling the loading and saving.
This is where it gets tricky, because of the not 100% file access stuff..
Instead, I'll be using pictures..
... Yep, pictures!
I've preset a lot of limits on the mod format, so everything can be stored inside little 64x64 pixel blocks.
I already tackled loading data from these, when doing the WordList stuff, yesterday, so I know that part will be a doddle.

I then have to recode the player in Monkey, and .. Hopefully keep everything sounding the same!
Then I'll start fiddling with effects and things, and faffing about with the tracker's GUI to make everything... Nice!!

If all goes well, I'm actually considering posting this as next week's AGameAWeek.
...it doesn't always have to be a game!!

Speaking of which, Tomorrow, you get to play Arcade Slots! Ooooh!!

[jayenkai]

Today, you get to play Arcade Slots! Ooooh!!!
Arcade Slots (AGAW Edition)

The last version of Arcade Slots used various sprite-rips from old Arcade Games.
.. I figured that probably wasn't such a good idea, if I eventually intend to plop this onto the iOS AppStore, so this new version is made up of old AGameAWeek games, instead.
Other than that, it's mostly the same.
You push the button, you win or lose.
There is no skill in the random chance world of Arcade Slots, so don't even bother whinging about it.
It is what it is!

Enjoy : Or Dislike
Either/or..

[Tormuse]

No whinging, I promise!

And I wanted to say that I've been playing Spike Dislike 2 for Android lately and it works quite well! I like the fact that it has unlockable content; it really makes it feel like you're working toward something as you're playing the game and makes you want to play more. (I'm playing the free version, so I guess there's less for me to unlock, but still, it's a good feature) The achievement system is pretty cool too! The furthest I've gotten is 100 Spikes with a 200 "Amazing" combo. I've managed to get a Super 8 a couple of times; I can't imagine getting a Super 10, but I'll keep trying.

[Pater Alf]

There is no skill in the random chance world of Arcade Slots, so don't even bother whinging about it.

I think there is at least a bit thinking and skill involved in the 'Matching' mode. Besides that it's fun for some minutes to spin and hope for luck. Nothing you will play for hours, but good fun for a short while.