The little Inn by the wayside

[Zyx]

I think CWF is 7 years old. Hm, still remember when we used to hang out somewhere else. I reluctantly came here for Chroelle's sake. I guess it was the company keeping me here more than the freeware.

You think right. CWF will turn 7 on Sunday, here's a nifty countdown timer.

[jayenkai]

Woohoo!! Bacon Butties all around!!!
And Cake! Cake, too!!

[Tormuse]

It'll be 7 years in June, for me. (Wow! Has it really been that long?)

As I recall, Chroelle advertised CWF to me as the lifeboat that would keep us afloat if OG ever went down. Well, OG held out for quite a while by merging with BD, but didn't really survive, after being rebooted a few times, and now, while BD is practically dead, CWF is still going strong. (Incidentally, if anyone wants an invite to join BD, feel free to PM me about it)

And a belated Happy Birthday to Skoda!

EDIT: Oh, and I tried your games, Jayenkai. I'll send you a PM shortly.

[Pater Alf]

@jayenkai
I like your newsletter. It's always fun to read. Did never sign up though, because I don't like it when most of my mails consist of newsletters.
I played the Platdude Golf game by the way. It isn't that bad. A little hard to calculate where the ball will fly for my taste and I'm also not sure that it is possible to beat every level, but I had fun for some minutes.

And we are really around for nearly seven years by now??? Can't believe that where did the time go? And did I really wrote about 7000 posts? Must be a lie! Or maybe I should simply get a life...

[Railwaymodeler]

Amazing how time flies. Hard to believe 7 years since CWF was started. That was the same year Maria and I started dating. Seems like just yesterday...

Yesterday, speaking of, was great. Four of us: Me, Maria, Skoda, and my sister all went to dinner. My sister's boyfriend wasn't able to be up here though. His dad runs a construction company, and he ended up working last night. His dad isn't in good health, and plans to hand the business over to him. This would be good, he and my sister have been dating for six years, considering marriage. At least they would be financially stable. The two of them are going out tonight though.

[jayenkai]

My aim, whilst playing around with my tablets, is to keep the sickness down, and the blood pressure low.
On a related note, battling with Apple iOS Development is NOT good for keeping the blood pressure low!
I've posted a really long waffling rant about my morning, here.

Since posting that, I've pretty much just sat here, doing nothing much of anything at all. It's taken it out of me!
Stupid Apple.

I've been in a ranty mood, since then, and am currently finding myself in a bit of an argument over on the official Monkey forums.
The cool-calm-collected part of me wants to walk away from the argument, and leave it be.
But the riled-up Apple-induced ranting side of me is ready for a rumble!!
.. Must behave!
.... must behave...!!

This post has been brought to you by the letter "R".
R is for RELAX....
REST...
RETHINK your post!!!

[eMTe]

Second round of this year's Lemon compo will be tougher for me, as you can clearly see, so keep your fingers crosed.

[jayenkai]

Aaah, classic Team17, pre-Worms!
Good luck! My fingers are crossed. All future awkward coding will be blamed on you!

[jayenkai]

Tut.. Forgot about the birthday! Silly me was too wrapped up in my own coding!

Happy Birthday CWF!!!!!

[eMTe]

All future awkward coding will be blamed on you!

Have you ever written a code which is not awkward?

[jayenkai]

My coding is never awkward! It might be ugly code by modern standards, but it works, I can do it really quickly, and I've gotten so specific with my coding style that I can reuse age old stuff, and it still works just as well, today!!

Example, today I opened up some BlitzBasic code I wrote 4.5 years ago, copied a chunk of it, slapped it into Monkey, and it worked just fine! This is what happens when you stick to the same theories with each game. The languages might want to retrain you, but with enough wrangling, you can get them all to work the same!

Today's AGameAWeek release is The Heist, available for Windows, Android, and in your browser. It's a remake of an oldie. It's not the greatest game in the world, but.. Meh, it'll do!
Next week will be a remake of Blockman Gets.
... I'm doing a lot of remakes and sequels, aren't I..

I should try something new, but... I dunno, I'm kinda enjoying this nostalgic remake trip I'm on

[Pater Alf]

I like the scenario of "The Heist" very much, but unfortunately as a game it doesn't work very well. Most of it is hectic mouse button clicking and in the level where you have to destroy the cops, I was confused how the controlling of the car really works.

But as I said: Nice idea (and I was able to escape with the money)!

[jayenkai]

Indeed. A throwaway silly nonsensical toy of a game. I'm not sure why some people seem to love it, but.. Whatever!
Blockman Gets has hit an odd roadblock. The main game is in there, and working just fine, but the boulders are a different matter entirely. I'm currently trying to decide on the best way to move them around. Tilt would be the obvious choice, but I've already had "tilts the wrong way" issues, so that's probably not a good idea!
Not sure what to do about that. It might be easier to leave the boulders out, and come up with something else, instead.
Something fruity, perhaps?

I've got a lot of stuff going on, right now. Three main things.. Blockman, obviously, and then SpikeDislike2, whilst at the same time, I'm waiting for Apple to approve or reject C3ntipong in the AppStore. Hmm...
I also need to make a start on my website's huge todo-list. .. To be fair, I've not added anything for a while, so at least it's not gotten any bigger. ... But the things that are on there are from before my op, and that's nearly a whole year ago!! I should probably tackle a couple of those!!
AGameAWeek doesn't leave a lot of time for tackling the other bits and bats!
.. Nor does sleeping eleven hours a day!

I need to organise my time, better, I think. Maybe I should make a timetable, or something?
.. Aw, who am I kidding, I never stick to timetables!

[Pater Alf]

Yes, timetables are pretty useless if you're not the type of person who can work with them. I had a friend on university who did everything with timetables. She was so perfectly organized that I always thought it was impressive and scary at the same time. Me on the other hand was never able to work with timetables. I tend to do things when I feel it's the right time for them. Works pretty good most of the time.

[jayenkai]

I think I'm getting too old for all this.

Saturday will be my 33rd birthday. (Thank f'k I made it!)
For my birthday, Sony treated me to a PS4 announcement. How sweet of them!
I've watched loads of New Console announcements over the years. Some have been great. Some have been amazing. But all have included something, somewhere, that sticks out and stays with you for the next few weeks.
Especially for a developer. There's always something that makes you go "ooooh, that'll be fun to play with!"
In recent years, Nintendo have done this twice. The original DS announcement was met with "OMG!!TOUCHSCREEN!!!" and an immediate need to write a version of Stringy Things for the thing.. (Something I actually achieved about 12 months later!)
The second time was, of course, the Wii announcement, or Revolution as it was back then. On a Dev level, I couldn't see myself achieving much, but as a Player.. Oh boy!!!
The last time I'd bought a console as "just a player" had also been a Nintendo. GameCube had some excellent games, and the Wii seemed to be carrying the torch, and then some!
Swordplay, tennis, whole new gameplay mechanics.
Excellent!!

... And then there was yesterday.
Sony showed off its latest controller.
It's their old one with a touchpad slapped on the front, and a button that does ingame video snaps.
The PS4 is apparently generic off the shelf PC components, so is easy for developers. This basically means they're all in their comfort zone and there'll be no need to innovate.
Oh god, it's so bland...

There's nothing for me, at all!! I'm not interested as a gamer, and I'm not interested as a developer, either.
This has got to be one of the most disappointing console launches I've ever seen!

...happy birthday, me.. :/

..not that I care much. New consoles = stupid game prices. I'm done spending so much on games. FFS I'm writing AGameAWeek here, anyway!

In brighter news, I've had two healthy days without being sick. Considering its been almost an entire week since I last took an anti-sickness drug, I'd say that's a pretty good thing! Things are looking up!! ... This is usually where something awful happens...

[Scythe]

As a gamer, Nintendo has never released a console that interested me even remotely. Especially in recent years.

As a gamer, any console that tries to turn the controller into some useless gimmick turns me off in less than an announcement. And don't even get me started on motion controls.

As a gamer, I'm pretty conservative. Not afraid to try new games, but don't mess with my setup.

[Zyx]

Let's just say that I've heard horror stories of developing for PS3 from people with 100 yard stares, so I'm quite sure that the news PS4 is based on x86 like Xbox and PC is welcome news. Now, if Microsoft announces that the next Xbox will have specialized processors with documentation only in Japanese...

...but yeah, very few surprises in the PS4 announcement. The only one for me was that The Witness will be a timed exclusive... wtf.

[Tormuse]

Happy Birthday, Jayenkai!

I tried The Heist on my phone and yes, it's a silly little game. I played through it twice and I honestly don't know whether I won or not. After scaling the fence, (by rapidly drumming my fingers on the screen) The game cut to a shoot-out with the cops and a message flashed by too quickly for me to read that looked like "hold [something] for [something]" and then "Game Over" came up and I quickly glimpsed a message that looked like it said "you got away with the money" or something like that and then it dumped me to the menu screen. I'm not sure what the intent there is, but I think the ending needs work. (Also, did you have a bad experience with cops or something?)

Also, with all the game creation related posts lately, I wonder if we should start a thread for it. Jay, would you like to do the honours?

[jayenkai]

Hmmm.. Ok, but if it becomes stagnant and unused, it's only due to my terrible lack of remembering to do things!!!

Health Ramblings...
I've had another good day, today. Had a mild headache, all day, and have been completely exhausted, but haven't been sick, and have been wandering about a little more than usual.

Family Life
We had a few relatives around, yesterday. Family currently over from Ireland, all being "happy", and "smiley", and "chatty"..
I'm not the world's most sociable person at the best of times. Currently, I'm even less so!
It took a lot of effort to appear to be healthy-jay, and be happy and smiley for the visitors.
This is pretty much why I'm so drained, today..!
.. I don't mind visitors.
... So long as they don't stay too long!!

For Code Waffle, see some other topic that I'll be creating shortly.

[eMTe]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IN ADVANCE !!!

Or should it be "Advanced Happy Birthday"?