The musings, struggles and observations of an Englishman learning Welsh.
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This week I released a new game: Barkout!
It's a very vaguely dog-themed Arkanoid / Breakout clone coded in C making use of SDL for graphics, sound, and input.
If you've played Arkanoid, you know what to expect: balls, bricks, bonuses and baddies.
Why make a 2D game in 2024? Well, I like to make the sorts of games I used to play as a child in the 80s and 90s, and Arkanoid was one of my favourites, and one of the few I actually owned a genuine copy of for my Amstrad CPC6128.
Barkout is available in source code form, as well as a Windows 64 bit installer, from the game homepage which can be found by following the "Free Games!" link in the top menu or right here
It's a very vaguely dog-themed Arkanoid / Breakout clone coded in C making use of SDL for graphics, sound, and input.
If you've played Arkanoid, you know what to expect: balls, bricks, bonuses and baddies.
Why make a 2D game in 2024? Well, I like to make the sorts of games I used to play as a child in the 80s and 90s, and Arkanoid was one of my favourites, and one of the few I actually owned a genuine copy of for my Amstrad CPC6128.
Barkout is available in source code form, as well as a Windows 64 bit installer, from the game homepage which can be found by following the "Free Games!" link in the top menu or right here
Almost four years after its debut on the app store, Help Hannah's Horse has returned.
It was removed for repeatedly failing the Google ads policy, which was ludicrous as the app rating and ad content ratings are both determined by Google themselves.
Anyway, if anyone is interested, Help Hannah's Horse is now completely ad-free and can be found Here
It was removed for repeatedly failing the Google ads policy, which was ludicrous as the app rating and ad content ratings are both determined by Google themselves.
Anyway, if anyone is interested, Help Hannah's Horse is now completely ad-free and can be found Here
(This has nothing to do with Welsh)
About
Around 12 years ago I wrote and released a small PC game called "Help Hannah's Horse". It was essentially a variation on Pacman - collect the coins scattered about the maze while avoiding the ghosts and gathering the moving carrots and the powerups that appear from time to time. A few people played it and it got included in the Debian Linux repositories.
Recently I got thinking about that game again and thought it would be nice to give it a bit more polish and change the music. The music particularly has always niggled me; not because it's bad (it's great!) but because I found it online and just used it. I never credited the composer and never checked if it was free for non-commercial use. I have no idea where I found it, so unfortunately I can't correct this now. I don't even know the name of the piece as I renamed the file to just "bgm1.ogg". I needed to either find royalty-free music that fit the mood of the game, or write a piece myself. I took the latter approach.
Anyway, after a couple of weeks of tidying code, fixing bugs, composing music and redrawing some graphics, I have released version 1.2 of the game!
Screenshot
Here's Hannah merrily running around level 1 collecting the gold coins and moving carrots and avoiding the ghosts. The green potion makes Hannah invulnerable for a short time if she collects it.
Download
It's available on my Sourceforge page (http://hannah.sourceforge.net) for Windows and in source code form for other platforms, if you're so inclined. There's a Makefile for Linux included.
About
Around 12 years ago I wrote and released a small PC game called "Help Hannah's Horse". It was essentially a variation on Pacman - collect the coins scattered about the maze while avoiding the ghosts and gathering the moving carrots and the powerups that appear from time to time. A few people played it and it got included in the Debian Linux repositories.
Recently I got thinking about that game again and thought it would be nice to give it a bit more polish and change the music. The music particularly has always niggled me; not because it's bad (it's great!) but because I found it online and just used it. I never credited the composer and never checked if it was free for non-commercial use. I have no idea where I found it, so unfortunately I can't correct this now. I don't even know the name of the piece as I renamed the file to just "bgm1.ogg". I needed to either find royalty-free music that fit the mood of the game, or write a piece myself. I took the latter approach.
Anyway, after a couple of weeks of tidying code, fixing bugs, composing music and redrawing some graphics, I have released version 1.2 of the game!
Screenshot
Here's Hannah merrily running around level 1 collecting the gold coins and moving carrots and avoiding the ghosts. The green potion makes Hannah invulnerable for a short time if she collects it.
Download
It's available on my Sourceforge page (http://hannah.sourceforge.net) for Windows and in source code form for other platforms, if you're so inclined. There's a Makefile for Linux included.
I've started making it part of my morning routine to listen to the BBC's Welsh language offering, Radio Cymru, on the way to work. I don't listen for very long, only the 20 minute drive to work, but the idea is that it gets me used to hearing the language and its rhythms and tempo.
And I don't really understand very much of it. I can pick out quite a few words, but not enough to understand whole sentences, although I do have one complete sentence under my belt from the breakfast show one morning: "Mae'r plant yn hoffi y ceffyl, a'r ceffyl yn hoffi'r plant" (the children like the horse, and the horse likes the children). I can just about follow the weather, and if I know some of the topics already, I can understand a little of the news.
Hopefully as time goes on, and in conjunction with my other practices, I'll start to understand more. What's important to remember, and what another learner pointed out, is that Radio Cymru is aimed at *native* speakers; not learners, so being able to understand any of it is a bonus.
Following my first tuning-in, I tweeted that I'd started listening and got a reply and some likes from Radio Cymru presenters, which was encouraging. The reply simply said "Dal ati!" (keep at it). I intend to.
And I don't really understand very much of it. I can pick out quite a few words, but not enough to understand whole sentences, although I do have one complete sentence under my belt from the breakfast show one morning: "Mae'r plant yn hoffi y ceffyl, a'r ceffyl yn hoffi'r plant" (the children like the horse, and the horse likes the children). I can just about follow the weather, and if I know some of the topics already, I can understand a little of the news.
Hopefully as time goes on, and in conjunction with my other practices, I'll start to understand more. What's important to remember, and what another learner pointed out, is that Radio Cymru is aimed at *native* speakers; not learners, so being able to understand any of it is a bonus.
Following my first tuning-in, I tweeted that I'd started listening and got a reply and some likes from Radio Cymru presenters, which was encouraging. The reply simply said "Dal ati!" (keep at it). I intend to.