Rather than name the levels after UK towns and villages as in the first game, I'm going to make up names for this one. Scribbled down so far are:

- The Pain Engine
- The Dawn of the Naked Eye
- The Bacon Exchange
- The Sky is Filled with Astronauts
- The Panda Factory

and so on.

I'm taking plenty of inspiration from short stories and chapter headings in J G Ballard books - I really love their pulpy surreal-ness.

PS- To answer Chris Mingay's question in the comment section below, I did set up a My Owl Twitter account but I never used it and I no longer even know where it is or what my password was! Perhaps I'll set another one up nearer the game's release.

Quick update:

I've designed a number of levels now and things are going well. There should be a great deal of variety from level to level, more so than in the first game, and most of the difficult-to-program 'objects' I've added seem to be behaving themselves. Little alterations to the code here and there as I go along helps keep everything else honest (pigs were literally flying during the last level!).

Just being able to set the size and shape of the level multiplies the possibilities many-fold. So for example I can have a vertically scrolling, block pushing puzzle fest followed by a forced horizontally scrolling saw and spike dodging level, with a free roaming enemy chuck-fest after that. Ideas are coming thick and fast and I hope I can do the game justice.

There should be some stuff in the game that even seasoned platform veterans haven't seen before.

HOLY SHITTING CHRIST BATMAN! NEW SCREENSHOT!

This shows the third and final environment, set amongst rolling farmland, which confusingly will probably be the first used in-game, with the forest second and beach last. Unless I end up using forest first and this one second. I'm not sure yet. To add variety each environment has three time periods - day, night and sunset, and the sky, lighting and ambient sounds will change accordingly.

You'll no doubt also have noticed the big circular saw blades to the left and right of Jack. When the game's eventually released you may want to avoid touching these.

Right! Time to design some levels!

In lieu of any new Apple Jack related announcements (work continues apace), I thought I'd mention this amazing animation, one of the very few perfect things on the planet.

'Hedgehog in the fog' was made in 1975 by Russian animator Yuri Norstein, and concerns the adventures of the titular yozhik as he (I think it's a he) is drawn down into thick fog by the vision of a beautiful white horse. He meets various creatures in the fog; some scary, some mysterious, some helpful.

It only lasts 10 minutes but a lot is packed in, and you suspect that everything has some kind of deeper meaning beyond the simple adventures of a lost hedgehog. But who knows? It's all very Zen.

Norstein has won all sorts of animation awards (HITF has been named the best animated film of all time) and since the eighties has been working on an adaption of Gogol's 'The Overcoat'. But his productivity has shrunk to the point that he is now known as 'The Golden Snail' in his native Russia.

Let's hope that he eventually comes out with something amazing!

The hardest thing about programming the first Apple Jack was that enemies could be picked up and thrown anywhere, even into parts of the level that no sane designer would think to place them. This meant that I had to spend a lot of time tuning each type of enemy to work everywhere and not get stuck in a corner, or walk through a wall, or escape the play area altogether and crash the game, the little sods.

Now let's add pushable, stackable blocks to the above scenario.

Done that? Now add moving platforms that can ferry the player, the blocks and the enemies around the level in different directions and speeds.

Now add switches that can make the moving blocks suddenly disappear when pushed on by the player, enemy or another block.

And now factor in the fact that I'm a complete idiot who doesn't plan ahead and just adds stuff in willy nilly while adjusting older code in the vain hope of making it all somehow work.

My next game after this is going to be a text adventure or something, I swear.

As a personal service to my one follower, uramyx, the following screenshot of the forthcoming Apple Jack sequel MAY ONLY BE VIEWED BY HIM.

If you aren't uramyx you must under no circumstances look at this shot of Apple Jack at the seaside, or imagine the clouds slowly drifting across the screen, casting shadows on the water which itself laps at the beach while the blades of the wind turbines revolve:

 Everyone else, move along...

And hot on the heels of my first post comes this second one, only six months later! Why mister ambassador, with your two posts a year average you are really spoiling us!

My Owl Software is proud to present this first screenshot of what is currently called 'Apple Jack's Great Escape' but may end up being called something else:

 Here we see Jack trying to push some stacked blocks to use as stepping stones to clear a tree stump, while a huge panda stomps towards him in a forest.

While I'm not going to give you a full feature list right now, rest assured that all the moves from the first game will be present and correct, alongside lots of new features. Please look forward to it, as they say in the orient.

Much is left still to do, but I'm currently cracking on with the drawing and soon, after a bit of code-tightening (alright, a lot of code-tightening), I'll be on to designing the levels which is the most enjoyable bit for me.

More screens soon. Au revoir!