By having downloaded, looked at, or read this page, you are bound by the terms and conditions described below.

What? Really? Well, just recently one of my followers on twitter has pointed me to this story about UK copyright law — to quote the scary part, "every time you click on an internet link you must have a license for every page you open"… that would include this one. Uh-oh, so does that mean I'm going to fine random readers for copyright infringement? No, I have something much more evil and insidious in mind. First born child? Er, no. I don't think I'm allowed to ask for that, but even if I was I wouldn't know what to do with them anyway. Immortal soul? No, but some agreements have asked for them.

No, what I'm going to ask for is that by reading this, you agree to send a link to this blog post to 10 people that you know. Oh, and if you quote any part of it, link to this blog entry.

Plain old-fashioned chain letter. No money (tempting, but I'm not that evil). Of course, if you're not in the UK, this ruling probably doesn't apply to you. Harmless though my "contract" with you is, I hope lawyers can pick holes in so-called "agreements" like these, otherwise we're all at risk from more dangerous viral contracts.

I have no idea how many people read this blog (in retrospect, perhaps LiveJournal wasn't the best place to host it), but for anyone out there, my apologies for being so quiet on this channel. I also have a twitter account (@kitsunesoftware) and a facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kitsune-Software/118435115750). Of those, twitter gets updated more often, as it's as much my personal account as my work account. I try to remember to update facebook the way I try to remember LiveJournal, with about as much success...

For those of you who are wondering what I'm working on right now, here is a preview screenshot:

(It still needs work — that "Hint" icon is supposed to be a magnifying glass; to me it looks more like a frying pan. Lack of expertise is one of the disadvantages of doing everything myself).

It's amazing how different programming languages can be from each other, even when the basic syntax is the same. I'm currently still trying to get to grips with Objective C (one game released in that language does not mean I truly know it!); for example, I have recently dealt with a bug caused by accidentally forgetting to initialise an array inside a constructor (a NSMutableArray to be precise), and then using that array later. For reasons that elude me, the program didn't crash when it tried to access this non-existant array; the program happily sent it a message asking for an element of the array, in this case a tile in a tile-based puzzle game, and then let me perform operations on that tile, all without crashing. It didn't do the operations it was supposed to, because the array (and therefore tile) didn't exist, but it didn't crash either. I am still used to languages like Java where it would crash trying to use the non-existent array, making it much easier to find the cause of the problem, and consequently easier to fix it.

How long can you survive in this fast-paced platformer? Angel The Cat 2 brings you arcade action that challenges you to survive as long as you can against constantly-accelerating obstacles!

There are coins to collect, bombs to avoid, and powerups to help... if you can collect them without falling to your feline doom!

Angel the Cat 2 works with iPad™, iPhone®, and iPod touch®, so why not give it a try!

Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc.

Well, Apple threw me a bit of a curveball a few months back when they announced the Mac App Store — unexpectedly, the programming language I'd been developing in (Java) had been explicitly forbidden from being used in the App Store. This was a bit of a bummer, right before Christmas and with a nearly-finished action game.

Still, no point crying over spilled milk (as the expression goes); I've been busy learning a new language (Objective C), and, to save time, I'm using an existing game engine (Cocos2d) instead of writing one myself like last time. I'm glad to say it seems to have paid off, as I've managed to pick up the basics and get a game together. I still have a lot to learn of course, but the game itself is now feature-complete (and a lot more fun on my iPod than the previous Java version was on the desktop). I'm sending it off to Apple to review while I write this. I have no idea how long it will be before it gets onto the iStore, but my fingers are crossed, and I'll let you all know when it goes live.

Greetings!

My website hosting provider has just informed me that, as part of a process to make everything more eco-friendly, they will be moving to a new datacenter. Unfortunately, this means that all the websites they host (including kitsunesoftware.com) will be unavailable for between 1 and 3 hours starting at 14:00 (UK time) on Sunday 26th September.

Both of us would like to apologise for the short notice, this move was brought forward to avoid a major planned outage announced by their current datacenter operator.

Aquarius: Challenge of the Zodiac

Aquarius: Challenge of the Zodiac is puzzle game. You click on matching pairs of star-tiles to remove them from the board, but the tiles must be connected by a star-line — a mystical pathway that connects them, but has no more than two bends and does not go over any other tile.

Aquarius: Challenge of the Zodiac has thirty six levels divided into twelve different worlds, each with it's own magical theme — teleportation, rotation, and respawning to name just three. Challenge of the Zodiac also keeps you on your toes with a time limit for each level.

To aid you in your quest, Challenge of the Zodiac gives you a limited number of bonus powers: Zap will remove a random pair of matching tiles; Superconnect will remove any matching pair of tiles that you select, even if they are not connected by a star-line; and Hint will find a pair of tiles that you can select (if any remain).

Naturally, Challenge of the Zodiac automatically saves your game when you stop playing, letting you continue where you left off without the frustration of losing your progress*. If that wasn't enough, Challenge of the Zodiac also has fifty achievements to challenge you!

• Addictive, non-violent fun makes it suitable for all ages
• Three difficulty settings to challenge masters and novices alike
• Thirty six levels spread over twelve worlds gives you many hours of fun*
• Fifty achievements to show your skill
• Free to try, $15.99 to buy

* Trial version nags between every few games, will not let you continue saved games, and can only access the first four worlds

My first foray into the world of action games comes in the form of a platform game — Angel The Cat.

Collect coins, dodge deadly dangers, consume cheeseburgers, become an immortal angel, and survive for as long as you can. There are nine levels in Classic mode, plus an extra challenge from an ever-accelerating environment in Arcade mode.

Free to try, only $5.99 to buy.