Gaming I

Testing and Debugging

2010-04-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

The last time I used trace to find a problem (in my main project anyway) was during the hitTest on the notes. Patrick helped me write an efficient and working code, but I needed to troubleshoot it later. Mostly because I didn't fully understand it when he wrote it in class, and I was working on my project outside of class. Anyway, I was having trouble calculating a hitTest between two different movieclips from within several instances of a single movieclip. I believe I eventually used global variables to get things working, but I used a trace command in my hitTest so that I could easily tell when I had things working properly. Then I just tweaked until my trace began running.

Coding Enemies

2010-04-03T02:44:00.000-07:00

In this assignment, we learned to use math statements and mouse co-ordinates to make an enemy character follow the mouse cursor or another character. It was odd at first, because we were using a completely new list of commands and statements we'd never touched on before but it didn't take long to get used to them.

Platforms

2010-04-03T02:40:00.000-07:00

This one was a long and tricky day in class. Yet again, not relevant to my game but a necessary skill indeed.

Running, Jumping, etc.

2010-04-03T02:33:00.000-07:00

Again, something that isn't very integral to my game. As a fairly standard rhythm game, my game doesn't have any characters moving or jumping or any other such nonsense... But still a fun, interesting, and helpful day in class.

Drag and Drop

2010-04-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I enjoyed the drag and drop tutorial greatly, and had a great time putting my own spin on the kirupa project we used, but I don't have any plans of using drag and drop features anywhere in my game at this time.

Character Effects

2010-04-03T02:09:00.001-07:00

The main way character effects will be used in my game, is to signify that notes have either been hit or missed. This will happen via use of "._alpha" as the note's alpha will reduce to 0 if it has been hit. Should the player miss the note, its value will remain at 100.

Other uses for character effects may arise at a later time.

Timer

2010-03-03T00:07:00.000-08:00

...I'll keep this short and sweet. I hate Timers... I cannot make the code kirupa.com. actionscript.org, or the majority of the rest of users APPARENTLY use, work. I am Agent Smith and they are Neo. I am Joker and they are Batman. They drop in to piss me off whenever they get the chance and F?%! up my fiendish schemes... In the Actionscript world, they're my mortal enemy; In an RPG, I'd PVP them (and LOSE!); In reality, I'd play Manhunt with them...

End of story...

Sound Effects

2010-03-03T00:04:00.000-08:00

My game is about music, so likewise there will be lots and lots of audio. As far as actual sound effects such as dings or other such notifications on hitTests, not so much.

I'd say they're an integral part of my game, but not in a highly dynamic way.

Preloader

2010-03-03T00:00:00.001-08:00

I did a noire slideshow for this assignment. Lots of black and white, with vintage American film stylings from the 30's and 40's cast onto current era photos. The outcome was quite nice, I believe...

In relation to my game, there is no way around a Preloader. I plan on much music, 3 or 4 full length tracks at the least, before developement can truly be considered "complete." That's probably around 12 - 15 minutes of music. The average 3-minute MP3 is around 3.7MB. At that rate, that is 14.8 - 15 MegaBytes at best JUST in audio files. Yep, gonna need a Preloader...

Collision Detection

2010-03-02T23:55:00.001-08:00

I posted up a quirky little maze/fantasy game called Kingdom Was... for this assignment. Sadly, just like in the AAA gaming industry, I happened to release around the same time as another company/person who put a lot more time and effort into theirs and put out a higher quality product, aka. Bagh Nakh Kora (Ben) with Miken the Troll King.

As far as my main game, this is another core element. The game needs to know whether or not the player is hitting the notes on-time, so it can calculate score and determine the player's end rating.

Score Keeping

2010-03-02T23:48:00.000-08:00

Another core component to my game's gameplay. Each note is worth a certain amount of points, the player's total points at the end determining his/her rating at the end of the stage. With my current Actionscript, though, there is emphasis on how fast you can release the note, as well as hitting the note in the first place. The game's quite harsh about its hitTests and how strict the scoring zones are.

Scrolling Background

2010-03-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

This was a fun and interesting excersise, for what it was. Not really a requirement for my game, but its still good to know how to do it, and do it correctly. I had fun "overkilling" the assignment in class, with 3rd dimensional props and a detailed expansive mountainous range in the background... That scrolled...

Special Effects

2010-03-02T23:41:00.000-08:00

My game (currently, in its current alpha stage) requires the use of heavy alpha manipulation as a defining factor within most (if not ALL) of my hitTest statements, which are a core gameplay component and cause the game to work correctly.

Its planned to have a rustling crowd animation in the background and possibly some other visual flair added to the game through special effects.

Moving on a Path

2010-03-02T23:38:00.000-08:00

This excersise is a great bound toward the completion of my game, because all my notes use it. The notes make up the entirety of the gameplay, as the gameplay is based completely around their location. It's a rhythm game, you need to hit your notes in the correct rhythm... And to do that, they need to move on a path.

Navigating The Timeline

2010-03-02T23:33:00.000-08:00

My worst coding issue was probably the sound on my current Fretz alpha demo. I needed the sound to play through as a whole but on only one frame, and I constantly ran into both sound clipping looping (sound began once per frame at 30 FPS, deteriorating into an ear scalding aggressive white noise static in about 2 real-time seconds) and the sound refusing to stop (running from then on, despite whether the player was viewing their rating or had returned to the main menu).

I eventually fixed this with an Actionscript statement that addresses Flash's internal sound mixer and stops everything. It's on all the rating frames/scenes, which are not skippable.

Finding Solutions

2010-03-02T23:22:00.000-08:00

Generally, finding solutions, for me, involes several minutes of googling and then a few copy/pastes. This isn't to say I don't learn much, but its how I initially solve my problems. Sometimes kirupa.com is absolutely no help. Being told over and over and over that I'm a Masta Flash Programma is just gimmicky and proves to piss me off when I'm frustrated and in search of answers. But its a nice alternative to the endless sea of no-clue hobbyists who like to step in on message boards with their "advice" and make things MUCH MUCH WORSE.

There is one thing that was NEVER covered in class, or on the wiki, which is this little gem that I found through personal experience and much trial and error... During the "if" part of if statements, "=" works consequently, like it would as a straight up statement. It takes "==" to say "if this equals 4, then that explodes." Like so...

if (yellow = true){

score += 5;

}

says "Yellow equals true." Whilst what you're really looking for is...

if (yellow == true){

score += 5;

}

Which says "If yellow equals true, blah blah blah..."

Just a fun little tidbit, Ben's surpassed me at this seemingly overnight and I corrected him on that the other day. Fun stuff...

Learning from Others

2010-03-02T23:13:00.000-08:00

I didn't have much difficulty with this one. Minus a few rough patches, this is generally an easy course and concept. Typically, if and when I join together files, it really depends how much I want to take from one file to another. I just copy/paste movieclips because they seem to take care of themselves this way, but more complex things like multiple scenes, and the Actionscript behind those scenes, I copy/paste the actual frame into my timeline and disect them there. I generally like to keep things seperate, but within the same .fla.

Navigation Excersise

2009-12-15T00:40:00.000-08:00

I've currently got a low-detail pre-alpha stage Main Menu for my game in my Projects page. It was merely something to wave at Globaloria for my grade tomorrow (err, well... Later today... about 6 hours actually...). The experience was fun in hind-sight, and I do believe I enjoyed it, if only because I like to problem solve and make my work as nice as possible... But I would be a liar if I said it was not rage-inducing in at least one spot, the first time around.

The .swf I currently have uploaded actually has one or two duplicated pages, which are essentially fragmented, incomplete versions of the pages a user on the web will actually have access to. These pages are not in anyway accessible to web users. Only persons with a copy of the .fla could know of these duplicate pages. But deletion of said pages (which, do not contain any Actionscript, I might add) prevents my Main Menu from properly working... Odd, to say the least...

Of course, I lucked into this little fix. I fought CS3 for probably a solid 45 minutes, before a short break and then I got lucky. By the break period, I was quite tempted to find a large hole, don a cape and thong and kick my computer in. Luckily I did not... I must've not messed up my character build as bad as I thought...

Interaction Excersise

2009-12-15T00:37:00.001-08:00

Come on, guys... Coded the Rabbit just like everybody else...

...Fine...

The Rabbit minigame was my first hands-on dive into Actionscript. It was fun, and with the clever and aware instruction of Patrick Smith and Josh Joseph, it was pretty easy. Minor bugs here and there, all good for one's learning curve. I now enjoy Actionscripting to a great extent, as I find I'm quite good at it... As do my classmates, seeing as I've done Actionscript work on 3 projects this semester, including my own.

Animation Excersise

2009-12-15T00:33:00.000-08:00

In my projects page, near the bottom, there exists a single-winged windmill with quite an obscure color scheme. I was bored in class one day, and drew this whilst everyone was making stick legs that made awkward kicking motions. I began with the line tool, but changed to the paintbrush about half-way as the slightly "hit-and-miss" artstyle feels more comfortable for the scheme of the scene I desired to create... Not enough so to warrant reconstruction of the inital drawing though.

I know, I know... I over-analyze.

Nearing Dead Week

2009-11-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

We have completed quite a few in-class assignments, including Sounds, "Animation" and Navigation. Dead Week's coming up fast and my project is still nowhere. Flash becomes increasingly boring and gives me no sense of adventure, accomplishment, conquering new ground or general feelings whatsoever. It just makes me sleepy. Woo! Fun! /sarcasm

There's my blog, my homework is done.

Preliminary Flash Game Concept

2009-09-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

Going into this course, Gaming I, I really wanted to do a musical rhythm game like Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 3 since I'm limited to just Adobe Flash. What I came up with was an educational concept where the player takes the role of the lead guitarist of a metal band during a battle of the bands competition and will, throughout the course of the game, learn the specific notes of the fretboard, as well as a small amount of music theory.

I have a lot more to do to complete this concept, but I believe this is a nice solid basis for a starting point...

My Favorite Game

2009-09-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

My favorite game is... Varied. I can't choose just ONE game. But, I'll choose one of my old favorites I've recently picked up again...

Max Payne

Classic noir style with John Woo's signature over-the-top gunplay style all tied together with fast talking Gangsters and displayed across wonderfully detailed, gritty New York environment.
Max Payne is the story of a homicide detective, namely Max Payne, who comes home one sunny evening to the grizzly murder of his wife and child by drug junkies. Fast forward 3 years and Max is on the D.E.A. working undercover. One fateful night blows his cover, drops leads linking his current undercover work with the deaths of his family, and pits him in the middle of New York's worst recorded winter storm. What else would a man with nothing to lose do? He goes on the world's greatest criminal street sweeping spree.

The major appeal of this game, besides the magnifent, easy to learn yet hard to master gunplay mechanics, and deep story was the incorporation of "Bullet Time." More precisely, player controlled bullet time. Max Payne was one of the first major titles to bring Bullet Time to the gaming community as a gameplay component. The component worked wonderfully in creating multitudes of insane scenarios the players could work themselves into and then, consequently, shoot their way out of, in the animosity of a firefight. The feature was controlled by a single button, and was totally optional. If a player prefered a faster "Halo" style of combat, their was never any moment that forced bullet time on them. Though, personally, I think it made many parts easier without turning the game into joke, difficulty-wise.

The gritty backdrop, the deep story, the wonderful combat that never really gets old, the jaw-dropping (for that point in time) graphics, and the top-notch voice acting all strung together in classic noir fashion made for a great pulse-pounding shooting spree throughout three New York nights, spanning about 10 - 12 hours of gameplay.

Minigame Project

2009-09-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

Was it hard to make my mini game?

Not overly... The Action Scripting was very much a new and foreign concept when I began, but its getting easier quite fast. I also didn't have to draw or obtain any graphics, so that area was pretty easy. The games concept was laid out by the professors, making that also very easy.

So... Not really hard at all, no.

What was the best part of this topic? The worst part?

I, personally, enjoyed it all. I may have been bored on the day we learned Collision detection, Keyboard Control, and Keeping Score, since I worked ahead, but I did enjoy my first significant success within Flash.

The worst part was probably fixing errors within Action Script's code, but it wasn't all the bad.

Do you play games in your free time? Which ones do you play and why are they your favorite?

Some... I'm really more of a developer than a gamer now. I constantly develop new maps and models for modding, more so than achievement grinding or playing the latest best sellers.

I liked the new game, Batman: Arkham Asylum pretty well. Other games I play, when I get around to playing are: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Race Driver: GRID, and Gears of War 2.

Gaming I - Day 2

2009-08-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

Newbies... Influx of newbies... Re-hashed introduction today, kinda bored... Gives me time to catch up with other stuff on my various profiles and such though, so its all cool.

I'm anxious as hell to dive in ActionScript, I have an idea for an elemental RTS that could work quite well in Flash.

Oh, right... Ummm... I'm supposed to write something in here about setting up my accounts, for class... Uhh.... It was easy and very old hat. There, that sums up my experience with it pretty nicely xD

Gaming 1 - Day 1

2009-08-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

First day of college, oh yeah! and posting from class too :O That's right, all your base are belong to me...

Well, I have to put SOMETHING of purpose in here, hmmm...

Check out this Colt Peacemaker I've been working on...