Tony Blews

Difficult Second Album

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:52:14 +0100

Out of sheer boredom, I'm playing the Debut Album Game, again.

Artist: Beer Hacket

Title by Mary S. Calderone

Image Source: Leave Me Out With The Waste, This is Not What I Do, filtered, of course.

Puzzle Pirates

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:03:56 +0100

Call me a big kid, and somewhat behind the times, but I've only recently discovered Puzzle Pirates

Its one of them there MMORPG type games, but doesn't cost anything to play, and is fiendishly addictive.

All the action is based on solving puzzles such as Tetris-a-likes, Bloobs-a-likes etc.

Why not have a go? Just click on that banner up there!

Psycho Fireman

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:05:01 +0100

I couple of weeks ago I did some coding for Rob Manuel of b3ta fame, specifically the code to parse a wiki page and present the resulting data in a format usuable to a Flash application.

Rob has used this to load in the levels to his "Psycho Fireman" game, a variation (blatant rip-off) of Sokoban.

You can follow Rob's progress with the game on the E4 website.

Fantastic Contraption

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:40:16 +0100

Help, I've become obsessed with Fantastic Contraption!

If you don't know about it, its a clever little flash physics game that has very simple controls, and looks like this...

Here are my solutions to the 20 free levels, varying from the the obvious to the wildly improbable:

1: Rolling away - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=403635

2: Reach Up - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=403881

3: Mind the Gap - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=403917

4: Junkyard - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=403955

5: The Wall - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=403987

6: On a Roll - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404036

7: Full Up - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404115

8: Higher - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404174

9: Around the Bend - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404202

10: Up the Hump - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404446

11: Mission to Mars - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404475

12: Up the Stairs - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=407411

13: Big Ball - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404695

14: Four Balls - not quite, but very close!

15: Down Under - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=407780

16: Awash - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=407330

17: Handling - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404798

18: Tube - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=404892

19: Back and Forth - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=408281

20: Unpossible - http://FantasticContraption.com/?designId=408229

The Debut Album Game

Fri, 30 May 2008 19:48:29 +0100

As spotted on b3ta, the Debut Album Game.

Here is the gist of it... "A random wikipedia article for your band name, a random quote for your title and a randomflickr pic for the album cover."

Well, here is mine:

Now all I need is some musical talent, some friends, and a drum machine.

Visit the ST16 Minicity

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:26:54 +0000

I found an interesting little site yesterday, myminicity.com. So, I command you to visit the ST16 Minicity immediately, or else the little township will not grow.

Crap Old Spectrum Game

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 06:36:52 +0100

Holy Crap, I'd forgotten about this!

http://www.unsatisfactorysoftware.co.uk/csscgc/csscgc.cgi?author=Tony+Blews

Star Bores - The Text Adventure

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:22:33 +0100

Part IV: Some Hope

A text adventure game for the
Amstrad CPC & PCW Computers

A long long time ago....
back in the mid eighties, long before Spaceballs appeared, I came upwith the idea of writing a text adventure game based loosely on the Star Wars films, Queen videos, tedious adverts and old computer jokes.The first version was written for the Sinclair Spectrum, using the Quill adventure creating package from Gilsoft. That was in 1984. By 1988 the project had moved to the Professional Adventure Writer package on the Amstrad CPC6128 and was eventually completed. By this time it included more awful jokes donated by Jason Denton, Brian Frost, David Oldcorn and a few others at WR Tuson College.

In 1989 I moved to Stafford to start university. I sold copies to other people who had been misguided enough to purchase Amstrads. Over FIVE copies of Star Bores were sold. I lost interest after then.

After sixteen years (and twenty eight years since the Star Wars films were made), I got hold of an Amstrad PCW and could read 3" disks again. It was time to unleash it on the world again.

In 2006 I finally found a permanent resting place for this pile of crap.

Star Bores has the these amazing features:

Rooms, Objects, Other characters,
No graphics whatsoever,
Jokes that were possibly funny about 20 years ago,
No mention of the Crazy Frog,
A plot that even a moron can follow.

The CPM 2.2 version (suitable for use with the 22nice CPM emulator) can be downloaded from here.
The 22nice emulator can be obtained from somewhere on t'internet I assume.

These people were involved the original in project: Tony Blews, Jason Denton, Brian Frost, David Oldcorn (of Starball Pinball fame), Mark Slater, Stephen Jewel, David Capstick, Darren Winterbottom, Steven Shaw, Anil Patel, Jawed Shamsuddin, Paul Webster.
Any feedback on this thing should be sent to starbores@tonyblews.co.uk.