Daisy Chains

Time for another app, another update to this forgotten blog, and another $.99 for you to shell out for it ;)

Daisy Chains : AppStore ($0.99/£0.69/equiv)

Everybody's favourite thing to do on a lazy summer's day.


A simple mix of Labyrinth's ball rolling with Flicky's tail stealing enemies!

Roll your ball around the arena to grab hold of the daisies, then guide a chain towards the exit.
The larger your Daisy Chain, the more points you'll score, but with each level the target increases, meaning you'll need to continue to dodge the incoming enemy bugs, whilst guiding your larger chain behind you.




For those who love to read'em, the complete PR gubbins is included below.

Sheep Goes Left - OST - 1!

Disc one of two, no less!

Download 'em all here
It's a complete archive of mp3s, and you can also grab it as one great big zip file, too.

Disc two will appear in a few days, or so, and will mostly feature slightly retweaked versions of all the above songs. Mostly shorter versions, as they originally appeared in Al's Tumbly site.

Meanwhile, there's also the great big update coming up, which will give you a whole extra 100 screens of chaos to beat!
I've no idea if people are actually attempting all the levels, or whether I've gone WAY too far making them all hard, but .. heck, it's fun ;)

Sheep Goes Left

For iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (£1.19/$1.99/equiv.)

Got an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad?
Grab Sheep Goes Left!!
Go get it!
It's out now!




Sheep Goes Left is a good old, retro styled, single-screen, panic enducing, spike dodging platformer.

Guide Sheepy to the other side of the screen, just so he can do it all over again!

Dodge all the spikes, as well as any other oncoming objects, and you can guide him all the way to the other side.



The game includes 100 hand crafted screens filled with deadly spikes to dislike, 10 graphical worlds to wander through, and a complete 20 track soundtrack to keep you entertained along the way.

Get it in the AppStore (£1.19/$1.99/equiv.)

ps, yes, it's a Tier 2 price. That means it's twice the price that SpikeDislike was.
SpikeDislike took about a week to make, and is all random elements.
This one's taken a month, has (for me!) decent background art, 20 pieces of music, and 100 levels.
Hopefully that all counts for something!

Puzzobomb (again)

November 14, 2010

I'm not sure if I posted this here, can't seem to find it, but at some point using my old Framework, I decided to give Puzzobomb a whirl.
I whipped up some sprites, drew the logo, drew the icons, converted the audio, got the game running, etc.
Then we had the whole iPad related Sprite issue, and I got all ticked off, and threw the whole Framework out.
Bah..

SpikeDislike + GameCenter!!

The v1.4 update is out at last, and with it comes the much requested GameCenter!



If I'd done the Top10 properly, that'd be even better, but all scores are stored, badges are collected, and if you switch to the GC App, you can see everything there!
Play away, and you'll get a proper Top10 when the next quicky update passes through the Applecart!

The AppStore Review Pile

I finally bothered to dust off my Review Scraping perl script today, and jiggered the thing about a bit until it gave me something useful!

So, without further ado, and with a whole big bunch of text approaching, let's take a nosey at the great big archive of comments that's been left.

Spike Dislike 1.4 Progress..

Blimey.. Adding GameCenter's a big bag of complex, isn't it!

I knew it would be, though, so I came prepared.
I have my super-coder-hat on.
..
Actually I don't have a hat. Unless you count my 80's GameBoy baseball cap.
But that's not a proper hat!



GameCenter will work like that.
I'd love to have nice swooshy leaderboard things, but I can't quite fathom all of that!!
I'm NEARLY there, but it's just a teensy bit out of my reach, right now.. I'm still learning!

Leaderboards do show up in the proper GameCenter app, though, alongside your little achievements, which is nice.
If I can very simply grab the top 10, and your chart position, I'll slap them on the right hand side.
I tried doing that, earlier on today, and then shouted a bit...!

Next week, I'll be tackling the Play/Pass menu, and seeing how much shouting I need to do for that!
Wish me luck!

This review doesn't dislike my game, but I dislike this review..

Plagiarism

It's simple enough mistake to make. Sometimes when I'm writing a blog entry, a thought might pop into my head, that I'll later realise was lifted from a TV show. Or I might compose a piece of music, and realise 3 years later that it's actually the Pokemon theme.
Sometimes these things just happen.

It's a subconscious thing.
Or sometimes it isn't.
Sometimes you make something, aiming to be "a bit" like something, and end up inexplicably "exactly the same".
You create based upon what you know, and sometimes things turn out a little bit more like what it is you're aiming for, than you'd like to admit.

But sometimes you look at something and think....
"hmmm.. that's a bit too close, isn't it?"

Today I received a link to my SpikeDislike review, at FamousWhy.com

Until last week, I hadn't heard of FamousWhy, and the first time I visited the site, my initial thought was "Hmm.. This looks like a very spammy/adfilled piece of dodgy website."
But, whatever.
A review is a review, right?!

... Probably not, when..


Half the damn text has been copy and pasted from TouchArcade.com's review of SpikeDislike.

Maybe the reviewer had an off day, and couldn't be bothered writing all that they should've?
But hey, who the hell cares, that's just downright lazy.

If you're going to blatently rip someone off, like that, you could at least do the decent thing and link to the original review.

I'm REALLY in a bad-word mood, right now, so I'm not going to write much more than this. It'll end up all ranty and horribly unreadable.. so, pretty much as it is,now! But perhaps in the morning, I'll go and copy and paste a whole bunch of bad words, and pretend that I wrote them.

Spike Dislike : Test My Challenge!

I'm starting to put together the challenge mode, and could do with my "Difficulty" level being tested..

So, here's one of my current challenges..

Set your level settings as follows.


Speed : Fast
Path : Alternate
Difficulty : Hard

(This'll be the Preset:Hard button, in the next update!)


Your challenge is to pass the first 4 spikes without letting go.

Give it a difficulty rank out of 5, where 1's easy, and 5's quite hard.

SpikeDislikeLite!

I realised after I sent it off, SpikeALite would've been a better name..
d'oh!

No matter, SpikeDislikeLite is now out, so you can tell everyone you know to play it.
Play it NOW!!!!



And for those of you that already have the full game, but are far more addicted than you oughta be, you should know that SpikeDislikeLite contains it's own unique path.

Gotta get 'em all!

SpikeDislike 1.2

This morning I submitted v1.2.
Give it a week and it oughta be playable!

On the face of it, things aren't too different.
There are 4 new themes, including one kindly designed and donated by @RetroRemakes.

The menu now slides in from the left, to make the titlescreen a little neater.

The scores display Best Combo, Best Super, and Most Passed

The combo timer bar's a little bit neater.

The graphics have all been rejigged so I can fit more stuff in there.

And there are nice little badges that pop up as you play.
More badges are planned, of course, but first I really need to start building that Challenge mode.
That'll have to wait until 1.3 and, I've said it before... GameCenter will be waiting for 1.4

:(

Sorry guys, but these things take time.
Especially when you're also doing AGameAWeek at the same time!! (for Win/Linux/Mac. I really really doubt I could achieve AGameAWeek on iPhings!!)

Oh, and I sent off the Lite edition, too.

Spike Dislike FAQ

What's it called?!
Spike Dislike, and/or SpikeDislike, either or.
I messed up trying to get the space to work. I had it working fine when I did Stringy Things, but forgot how I did it, and it all messed up when I tried this time! Whoops!
Better luck next time, eh!
Still, either will do. If it helps to pick one, SpikeDislike is easier to Google, what with it being a none-word.

Super Spike Dislike comes from a rush-job with the logo. I grabbed it from Super Spike Dislike
Maybe I'll fix it, Maybe I won't.
One day, I'll add shooting, and THEN it'll be SUPER Spike Dislike!!

Any updates?
Of course!

Like....?
I've played with the speed, so perhaps changing other methods of movement...?
Shooty bullets would be Super.
Different objects?
Better gfx!!
But, as Gabrien said on the TouchArcade forum, there's no point in breaking the "real" game's logic. Instead I'll add different modes, with different highscores. That'll keep anything new from breaking the original.

I'd also love to add a new gamemode, with little challenges, and things like that.
More details as I bother to start that!!

And GameCenter?
YES!!!
But..
a. Never done it before, haven't a clue what I'm doing, might take a while!!
and b... If I want to add achievements, I apparently need a 100% static list.
From day 1, I'd need a complete list.
Now, assuming these achievements would be things that are relevant to the forthcoming challenge mode, it's probably a good idea to do the whole challenge mode thing first, because I won't know the accomplishments before I've done that, and I won't be able to add GameCenter until that's done.
Bah!
Annoyingly I'd really love to just plop online scores in, but Apple, in their infinite wisdom, made this annoyingly slow.

To be fair, though, if I'd have planned this from the start it'd probably help.
No matter!

About those themes...
New graphics, obviously! Try to spice things up a bit.
I should probably try to jazz things up a bit, but I've already grown to love the really basic starfield, even if it is the cheapest starfield effect I've done in years!

I'm also considering changes the sounds for each pack. I might make that an option, though!
I'd love to ask for graphic-pack submissions, but I've not quite decided how they're going to end up being setup.
I've currently got all the graphics in 4 different images. One for all the spikes, one for the balls, one for the floors and another for the backgrounds.
I really should neaten that up a bit, and make things one-pic-per-theme!
I'll let you know how that goes.

Other Questions?
If you have any other requests, leave them in the comments, and I'll get back to you.

OK, Now What?

Plans are afoot to expand Spike Dislike.
There's a whole manner of additions I could come up with.
Graphic tweaks, gameplay features, game modes, those kinds of things.
I'm not entirely sure what'll actually be the next thing to add, though.
I really want to start playing with some sort of challenge mode first, I think, but I'm also thinking that it'd be nice to have that unlock things, so then I need to add things that could be unlocked.
... This is one of those bulky additions, methinks!!

In the meantime, we've also got a few other things to play with.
Blockman Gets hasn't gotten got yet, so that should be done.
That game needs a menu.
I really have no idea what to do for that!
It's been sat here for about 3 weeks, in a mostly playable state, but completely stuck because I can't think of a nice menu!
..d'oh!

Then there's the big three..
Cardagain, Stringy Things and Arcade Slots all suffer from the Early Learning Bugs.
Cardagain and Arcade Slots have the good old "I used the wrong audio method" issue, with sound that blasts out at the volume of your ringtone, whilst all three of them have that annoying iPadFREAKOUT issue that renders them all completely unplayable on an iPad.
For what it's worth, Cardagain and Stringy Things are both perfectly playable, and are both still available in the AppStore ;) Just not on an iPad!

I think, in all honesty, I'm going to have to redo from start with those three.
But all three of them were meant to be Battery-Saving games.
I'm not really sure how to tackle this.
If I do redo them, I'll lose their ability to last ages, as they'll all be redone in this battery-draining Cocos2D.
Not that there's anything WRONG with Cocos2D, of course, it's just really bad at preserving battery life.

hmm.. what to do..?

.. I'm going to go play with Blockman some more!

Spike Dislike Update 1.1

Coming to your iPhings as soon as Apple have thrown it through it's paces, the first update features a few difficulty settings to play with.



Level Layout
Speed
Difficulty
and of course, a switchable skin setting (ooooh!)

1.1 is a massive update, considering the blandness of the original, but 1.2 will be even bigger!!
I have no idea what 1.2 will be, but it'll be bigger!!!

Spike Dislike!

Get Spike Dislike for iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad here
$0.99/£0.59/equiv

Guide the ball to the right, avoid the Spikes, perfect your flight!



The game is simple, and there's loads of points to earn as you go.
But wait, There's More!!!

Or, there will be!

This edition is the simple "Get it done" edition, but MUCH more is planned, from weapons, to different ball types, and even a few physic tweaks to keep the gameplay interesting.
The extras are coming soon.

They're not quite done yet, but they will be!
Keep it on your iPhings!