Spring Sprung

April 19th, 2007

Is it really that long since I last updated this page?

I haven’t been doing as much since I started my new job a year ago, and what I have been doing seems to have been in other areas. I even debated whether this post should go here or on my other site since the new game is a port of one of my handheld games.

Anyway, I used the flimsy excuse of the Retro Remakes Easter Puzzle game mini-competition to write a PC port of my game Cortex, with a different visual style:

Easter Cortex screenshot

Easter Cortex – ecortex.zip (179k).

The game is written in FreeBasic, and could do with a bit more work (there is no sound, for instance), but it should be fully playable. I hope you enjoy it.

Late Again

January 15th, 2006

You’d think I might have mentioned my Christmas Demo before Christmas, but no, that would be too easy.

Relative Dimensions

August 20th, 2005

As promised, Invaders from the First Dimension is now complete. It’s a 1D shooter. You can get it here, or you can wait for the proper Cassette50 release if you’re a real masochist.
I chickened out and wrote it in GM, so it’s about 1Mb. I had a look at doing it in C/Allegro, and I just couldn’t be bothered. It seemed too much like hard work. Also, unlike HoldSpace, most of the line images are really sprites. What a cheat. :)

More Tasty Badness

August 19th, 2005

The second part of my bad game trilogy is now complete, and can be found at RR, in the forums, or here.
HoldSpace is a game of no skill, not requiring quick reactions and precise control. It was written in FreeBasic, and as usual I put too much effort into some features (it saves the highscore, and there is even a checksum to deter cheating, as if anyone would bother.)
Long Distance Runner was written in GM and clocks in at about 1.7Mb zipped. 50 games of that size would be a bit much, so I decided that my other Cassette 50 contributions would have to be smaller, and therefore written in other languages. The zip for HoldSpace is about 30k, although it does also use far fewer media resources.
Look out for Invaders from the First Dimension, coming soon!
That’s “Look out!” as in “duck!”, “run!”, obviously.

A New Hope

August 6th, 2005

Okay, so I’ve upgraded the blog, and changed the rules about commenting, rather than deleting the lot. This was mainly because I wanted a similar setup over on my other site, but I might as well use it, as it’s here.
Today I finished work (pending bugs) on the latest fantastic Reanimation project: Long Distance Runner. It isn’t linked on the main site yet, but you can get it here if you’re really masochistic. It is a deliberately bad game for the second Cassette 50 collection, more about which when it’s done.
It doesn’t look like I ever linked my game for the first collection, either, but then I always meant to do more work on that.
I might try to get another one in before the 50 spaces are filled. Maybe written in D, for the hell of it. Long Distance Runner, as a GM game, is quite large if it’s going to be bundled with 49 other games, so any further entries will have to be tiny to make up for it.

Do you want spam with that?

February 1st, 2005

It’s quite likely I will delete this blog soon, thanks to the persistent spam from online gambling sites. They seem to be able to find loopholes in my setup every now and again and cause me enough work to make it not worth having a blog.
I have accidentally deleted two posts while meaning to delete spam, too, so eventually I will delete the whole thing by accident.
I don’t really need anything this flashy anyway. Maybe I’ll attempt to write my own.

Finished

September 29th, 2004

I uploaded the finished game just now. It is lacking music (as was the original), since my sequencer has become unhappy with CTL3D32.DLL, but is otherwise complete.

I’ll test it in the morning. :)

Cancelled and Uncancelled

September 23rd, 2004

Yesterday, I announced on the RR forums that I wasn’t likely to finish the game in time for the competition, if indeed ever. I was feeling pretty negative about it, and had gone cold on the idea of doing the game at all.

A bit later, though, I decided I would spend one more day on it, and see how far I got. I would like to put something into the competition even if it isn’t really representative of my best work.

Today, then, was make-or-break day, and I’m pleased to say that, even after only a few hours, I have managed to do a good deal of the work, and am once again confident of hitting the deadline. It might not be that pretty, and will probably be a bit lacking in the sound department, but there will be a playable game from me in the competition.

Postponed

July 21st, 2004

It’s now looking very likely that I won’t get the chance to attempt my second entry, the sports game. I removed it from Codex’s tracker some time ago.

I just have too much to do, and haven’t had a chance to work on either competition entry since my last blog entry.

I would still like to attempt this project at some point, but I suspect it will have to wait until after the compo.

Making a start

July 7th, 2004

Well, today I started looking at the level data. Took some screenshots and cut ot the tiles to use as placeholders until I draw my own, and had a look at the data file, which looks like it’s in a fairly simple format.
I might even try to code the game to use the original data, so that level packs are interchangeable between the ST original and my remake, although there will probably be a few things I can’t decode.
I also got some of the outer framework of the game implemented. I think a basic remake of this one should not be too hard, which will, I hope, leave me plenty of time to get on with my other planned entries.

Nothing to see here

July 4th, 2004

I have done absolutely nothing today.

We’ve got three months; what’s the hurry?

Project Created

July 3rd, 2004

Yes, I’ve finally managed to create an empty project and add the sponsor screen. I stopped there, though. Didn’t want to get too carried away.

Now I have a new project to avoid, though, I have managed to get some other stuff done that I had previously been putting off, including updates to some of my other websites. It’s funny how these things work. :-)

Messing about

July 3rd, 2004

OK, so I’ve added some categories to the blog (which this is testing), broken it, fixed it again, and will soon be adding some actual external links to it, I think.

I might even start a project for the game later, if I have time.

Greetings, Earthmen

July 2nd, 2004

Welcome to my hastily-assembled new blog to track my entries for the Retro Remakes Competition 2004.

The current plan is to do one fairly simple game, the ST shareware puzzler Balls, in GameMaker, and a second, much more ambitious sports project in C++.

To date, I have: played Balls a bit, and emailed its original authors; installed the Dev-C++ environment, and installed this blog. No actual code has yet been created. :-)

More later.