I got an email from Cobra a couple of weeks back asking if I can help out with the Monkey port of his BlitzMax title PowerSlam.

It was definitely something I was keen on, but I knew the complexity of the source code (MDickie's engine combined with our own changes) and the differences between BlitzMax and Monkey code (far larger than the differences between Blitz3D and BlitzMax code) was going to make a manual port of it a very frustrating exercise. 

Asides from some rather complicated syntax changes, the biggest stumbling block was going to be the structure. The Blitz languages always allowed you to write programs with a 'basic' like structure; you could simply write your code from start to end, intertwining your logic, loading and rendering calls, and implement your game loops where ever you wanted. Monkey is far more rigidly structured, all of your code goes into an 'Application' class that contains distinct areas for loading, rendering and the game loop.

So I started dwelling on the idea of automating at least some of the process. Not simply for Powerslam but also for The Kiwi's Tale (previous attempts to port it to XNA and Monkey ultimately didn't pan out), and I figured there might be some members of the Monkey community that'd be interested in the easiest possible way to take their old BlitzMax projects and put them on the App Store. So I decided I'd try writing a tool called "Monken" (it's a play on Sharpen, the Java-to-C# tool), itself a Monkey application, to automate as much of the process as possible (a completely hands-off translation would be next to impossible, as it would be tricky to do an automatic shift of the game loop into the correct place, and this would differ for every game).

Though I initially quit after a few tests didn't pan out the way I hoped them to, I couldn't get the idea out of my head. So I thought about how to solve the individual problems that'd be associated with such a translation, sat down and started working on it (using some of the BlitzMax samples to help me test the translator) and hey presto, Monken V0.1 is born!

To demonstrate what Monken can currently do, here is the BlitzMax "breakout" sample that was mostly translated automatically, with a few manual edits to get the thing to compile and work as expected. (A tutorial is packaged with the download that explains in detail what needs to be done to get the game running in Monkey).

While Monken is still in a very early Alpha state, with a to-fix list as long as my arm, some already might find it useful and I'm hoping to get some help with it. The current download is here.

Sam reminded me the other day that I haven't posted here in quite awhile. I got in bit of a rut with my game development, but I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things.

Very little has been done on the Battlesuit project of note recently, except for one really awesome thing. Check out Anthony's new sketch:

This is a new concept sketch of the MF-101 Viking, the primary enemy mech encountered in the game. The really impressive thing was that Anthony sketched it on his iPhone alone during his bus trips to work.

While Battlesuit is on the back burner (The core game is on hold, but the re-write is still going very slowly), I have started up another mini project with a mate. The working title is "Multiplex" and it's kind of a very loose tribute to/remake of an old C64 title, but with some twists that we hope will make the game fresh and interesting (and even somewhat frustrating!). I've done a couple of rough programmer-art levels with the Sega Master System palette (which I actually quite like now, it's bright, varied and vibrant but not too gawdy). Check it out, and see if you can guess what the inspiration game was:

Why they never repeated the idea of Bond going to space, I'll never know!

Again, didn't really get any time to do anything towards Battlesuit. So here's another faked up concept screenshot.

About two thirds of the Shareware episode is set in space, so I thought I should do a screenshot there. This is a depiction of the Shareware episode's final boss fight. While most boss fights are against an enemy with superior armor and firepower, Manfred's Battlesuit is only lightly armoured and is armed only with a sword. That said, the Battlesuit is lightening quick and Manfred has cat-like reflexes, so it promises to be an intense fight.

As you can see I've streamlined the GUI a bit, though I intend to do so further. I'll probably ditch the instrument panel look and switch to glass displays. Also thinking about retro-ising the displays with low resolution and limited palette, the game is set in an alternative 1980s so at least the computer displays should look like they're from that era!