SO, here's the story. I was fiddling around with the Streets of Rage tutorial and thought "Hmmm this engine is coming along rather well" and decided to scrap the tute and embark on actually creating a proper game. So here's what I've done so far;-
USE THE ARROW KEYS FOR MOVEMENT- DOUBLE TAP ANY DIRECTION TO RUN
W = BEAT BUTTON Q = JUMP D = POWER
BEAT BUTTON CAN BE USED FOR COMBOS+GRAPPLE ATTACKS/THROWS
POWER BUTTON CAN BE RELEASED AT SET LEVELS TO PERFORM A SPECIAL MATCHING THAT LEVEL (AKA.SPIKE-OUT)
ENJOY!
Yes it's only a basic demo, just a small preview of what's to come- but at least the mechanics at this point are- in my opinion- pretty fluid. Took a lot of fiddling around with keyhandlers and the like to get it working like that. There are soooo many beat-em ups out there that look fantastic, but playwise lack the juice to keep you intrigued. This is mostly down to controls being unresponsive (bad coding) or the characters movements too slow (bad design). So I made an effort to keep things frictionless.
Pretty much everything I'd love to see in a 2d fighting game I intend on having, borrowing the best bits from the best games and leaving out the poo. Floating combos, multiple grapple techniques, power-up attacks, firearms, hitting grounded enemies. God I'm violent. There's only a handful of those in the demo so far, but keep your eyes peeled...
I you can draw real art, (ie something other than crappy little cutesy characters), please get in touch. There's money to be made for a good artist in Flash these days. Companies are beginning to realise the huge potential of advertising within online games and financially speaking things lousy sponsorship deals are becoming a thing of the past and giving way to percentage earnings. In other words, the day may be dawning when we can actually earn what we're worth. As you can see, the current demo uses placeholder graphics and one day I hope to either put in my own graphics, or hopefully get someone who has some real talent on the job.
I discovered a couple of handy coding techniques along the way with this puppy, such as saving a reference to whichever bad guy the hero is beating on after he comes up on the hitTest--bleh, difficult for a moron like me to explain, but in other words, you could do something like. hero.current_enemy._x=500;
In other words you have all of the current enemies properties available from within the player object. It saved me a lot of time. Guess my skills are improving, but I'd still love to know how 'real' programmers manage to code entire games without putting any lines within their movie clips as I completely struggle to figure out ways of avoiding that at times. There's that old coders adage that "It's not the code but the game that matters" but it's a great feeling when you know your coding is clean and organised (and all on one frame!).
Had an odd urge to go back to coding the remake of Nexus once again. I know the project is supposedly abandoned, and I had no intention of returning to it, but I can't help it- recently great ideas for how it could be done just keep popping into my head. I started scribbling down some map diagrams for the base and who knows, I might just break open the old swf and get cracking on it again.
This doesn't mean I'm blowing off Bounty Hunter 2, but the scale of that game is so large I'd be crazy to focus entirely on it when there's other more attainable visions to chase. Go with the flow of your mind dudes, that's all you can do. As long as you never stop a project completely you'll always have stages in the year when you feel like adding a little bit to it here and there.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Into the Abyss with AS3..
Yes, it's official, AS3 is awesome. After 2 weeks of consistent AS3 tinkering, I'm wondering how I ever made games without it. Programming in AS3 is definitely tricky. There's no easy way to remove MovieClips anymore, and even passing parameters to functions can be a pain-in-the butt with all the new compiler errors that pop up should you misplace your variable definitions, but by and by it stands head and shoulders over AS2 in many departments.
Something I've been cheerful about is that- contrary to my initial belief- AS3 doesn't necesserily have to be coded in solid OO (what the hell is a public/private function anyway?), and you CAN thankfully code in an almost similar manner to AS2 just by learning the appropriate methods to migrate your AS2 code to AS3. And yes, though the proper programming protocol would be to have your game consist of a bunch of class.as files and give you a headache over all the encapsulation/polymorphism and that sort of tosh, you can actually circumnavigate all that and do it the old fashioned way I'm used to, ie having the game code entirely on the first frame and bugger all OO. Naturally I do intend to gradually turn my games into full OO, but it's a relief to know that my coding doesn't have to come to a flat halt while I'm on the baby steps to mastering that particular style of programming. Subsequently I wont be releasing any tutorials based on AS3 until I'm comfortable that I'm coding properly in OO- but you can expect a few new games out soon.
It's great perkt that I can stick to my usual style of programming and yet still benefit from the TASTY speed increases AS3 has to offer. Already it's clearly obvious to me that the power of AS3 is superior to AS2 in many ways, and if you take a look at some of the demo's online showing the differences between the two you can see it for yourself. It's like having a new Testarosa in your garage- all good fun and I shan't be going back to AS2 anytime soon.
Bounty Hunter 2 (AS3) is in the works. I realise the first one is well... shit, but it was fun to code and there's still a lot of functions in there I think I can reuse. Think of Bounty Hunter 1 & 2 as the equiv of Mad Max and the sequel. They're going to be light years apart in excellence. I've already a little prototype up and running on my machine with an astronaut that can enter ships littered around a galaxy, and an R-Type style beam weapon in operation that is looking rather fab if I don't say so myself. I won't post a pic or an swf as firstly there's a few bugs still in there and also the graphics are all placeholder and crap to look at. I figure I'll start out making a skirmish mode demo that sets you against 20 bots in a deathmatch, and if that does ok with the public I'll turn it into a long-term (and I do emphasise 'long-term') multiplayer project that will have teams against teams. I think the beauty lies in the Paradroid style ability to defeat and then occupy the enemy, assuming all of their special abilities and such. Almost like a Space Sim GTA. It's a play mechanic that I think will be huge fun, with people competing to get or destroy the best ships. Throw in some special super-rare super-hard-to-get street cred ships and you've got a winning game I reckon.
What I've been working on for the last few days though is actually the Streets of Rage engine. It now has throws, combos, some sfx and enemies, and is working well. This will be my last AS2 project for sure, I'm dumping AS2 like a frumpy girlfriend who's no longer good in the sack, for AS3, my new Swedish PlayBoy centerfold. The SOF engine will combine the mechanics of some of my favourite beat-em-ups, Final Fight, SOR, and Spike-Out. It's like Tarantino says- if you want to make great movies, you've got to be a great movie watcher, and I'm pretty confident that I know exactly what it is that makes some fighting games better than others.
Something I've been cheerful about is that- contrary to my initial belief- AS3 doesn't necesserily have to be coded in solid OO (what the hell is a public/private function anyway?), and you CAN thankfully code in an almost similar manner to AS2 just by learning the appropriate methods to migrate your AS2 code to AS3. And yes, though the proper programming protocol would be to have your game consist of a bunch of class.as files and give you a headache over all the encapsulation/polymorphism and that sort of tosh, you can actually circumnavigate all that and do it the old fashioned way I'm used to, ie having the game code entirely on the first frame and bugger all OO. Naturally I do intend to gradually turn my games into full OO, but it's a relief to know that my coding doesn't have to come to a flat halt while I'm on the baby steps to mastering that particular style of programming. Subsequently I wont be releasing any tutorials based on AS3 until I'm comfortable that I'm coding properly in OO- but you can expect a few new games out soon.
It's great perkt that I can stick to my usual style of programming and yet still benefit from the TASTY speed increases AS3 has to offer. Already it's clearly obvious to me that the power of AS3 is superior to AS2 in many ways, and if you take a look at some of the demo's online showing the differences between the two you can see it for yourself. It's like having a new Testarosa in your garage- all good fun and I shan't be going back to AS2 anytime soon.
Bounty Hunter 2 (AS3) is in the works. I realise the first one is well... shit, but it was fun to code and there's still a lot of functions in there I think I can reuse. Think of Bounty Hunter 1 & 2 as the equiv of Mad Max and the sequel. They're going to be light years apart in excellence. I've already a little prototype up and running on my machine with an astronaut that can enter ships littered around a galaxy, and an R-Type style beam weapon in operation that is looking rather fab if I don't say so myself. I won't post a pic or an swf as firstly there's a few bugs still in there and also the graphics are all placeholder and crap to look at. I figure I'll start out making a skirmish mode demo that sets you against 20 bots in a deathmatch, and if that does ok with the public I'll turn it into a long-term (and I do emphasise 'long-term') multiplayer project that will have teams against teams. I think the beauty lies in the Paradroid style ability to defeat and then occupy the enemy, assuming all of their special abilities and such. Almost like a Space Sim GTA. It's a play mechanic that I think will be huge fun, with people competing to get or destroy the best ships. Throw in some special super-rare super-hard-to-get street cred ships and you've got a winning game I reckon.
What I've been working on for the last few days though is actually the Streets of Rage engine. It now has throws, combos, some sfx and enemies, and is working well. This will be my last AS2 project for sure, I'm dumping AS2 like a frumpy girlfriend who's no longer good in the sack, for AS3, my new Swedish PlayBoy centerfold. The SOF engine will combine the mechanics of some of my favourite beat-em-ups, Final Fight, SOR, and Spike-Out. It's like Tarantino says- if you want to make great movies, you've got to be a great movie watcher, and I'm pretty confident that I know exactly what it is that makes some fighting games better than others.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
More Japan Game Scene pics....
TYPING OF THE DEAD
Yup, sounds like I'm making it up, but it actually exists. It's a game that's identical to the 2nd House of the Dead shooter, except you don't shoot, you err.....type. As zombies rush towards you a little box appears above their heads with the words you need to type in to kill them. Most of the words belong to the same content family. Like, 3 zombies might attack you with "ACE", "JOKER", "SPADE". The faster and more accurate you type, the higher the score and the better chance you have of getting extra lives. Bosses are of course, much tougher, and usually attack you with quite long sentences in illegible romanised Japanese "Ore mo jigoku e iku zo!Omae no sakki ni!" Something like that. Some sentences have hyphens and ampersands and such so they're just friggin impossible to get out in time. Finally, the cutscenes look silly, as the main protagonists now have huge typewriters attached to their hands in the place of guns.
Still, taking it all tongue-in-cheek, this is a pretty damn good game and there are much worse ways to blow 100yen. I happen to be quite a fast typist and always make it to around the 3rd level, when the sewer worms gets me due to my inability to answer questions about Japanese culture you are faced with to damage it.
I've also played a Lupan typing game, but this one is much better IMO.
Official website here: http://sega.jp/pc/soft/tod/
TIME CRISIS 4. Doing the rounds. Half-decent game. Has the same guy who does the Japanese voice for Snake in the Japanese Metal Gear Solid in this one. Very good voice actor.
The Japanese looooove 'Keiba'. That's horse-racing to you and me. This is a relatively new gambling game that's only been out for about 6 months. Basically it's the same as betting at the track, except computerised. Need any further elaboration? You just grab a console, stick your money in, choose a horse, then cross your fingers. And nope, you don't win real money, just tokens.
Bingo. Pretty much as you'd imagine it.
I remember when I used to play 'Shenmue' thinking that the capsule toys were cool but fictional. Well, I was wrong. All over Japan you can find these machines littered around the supermarkets and arcades. What makes collecting capsule toys more attractive is that you can often find some rare machines that can't be found in other prefectures. And I've heard that trading them online is quite a popular pastime for certain nerdy types. What's weird and Japanese about them is that you can find toys relating not only to popular comics and superheroes but also pretty much anything else imaginable, including human anatomy, celebrities, vegetables, electronics, well the list goes on...
I found a very cool StreetFighter Hyper Fighters collectors edition one the other day.
Video-games for kids. The one at the bottom is Mushi-King (Insect King). Japan is actually home to some of the coolest creepy-crawlies in the world, and in particular the kabuto (Rhinocerus Beetle), which is extremely popular with young kids. They keep the things as pets, and just love creating kabuto ring fights (little bastards) in the same way English kids love playing conkers. This trading card game they can emulate that by buying random game cards from the machine and fighting Final Fantasy style against a friend or a computer opponent, gaining experience with every battle they win. I've never played it but it looks fun.
Someone requested a close-up of the Half-Life 2 controls so here y'ar. The left stick is mainly for strafing and menu-selection and the right-stick is your controls. It's like a normal joystick except you can rotate it left and right to turn your character. Tap the foot-pedal to move forward. Like I said before, it doesn't quite work as well as it could, and this kind of over-complexity in a game will ruin it in Japan.
Gundam Battlion. Haven't played it yet but this game looks sweet. It's some kind of multi-network robot flying/shooting game and it's brand new. Looks from the outset to be a kind of gang warfare game where you team up with a dozen or so of your mates and take on an army of enemies, or perhaps humans linking from their online network. Will have to try this one out real soon.
Brand-new game called Too Spicy. Didn't look so hot. It's almost like a shooting version of Super-Punch Out. Instead of blasting away at a zillion enemies you have to take on one guy at a time and successfully avoid being hit by using the pedals to navigate your character around the arena. First impressions, not fantastic.
Romance of The Three Kingdoms (at least I think that's what the kanji of the title is). Awesome looking-game but I'm buggered if I can figure out how to play it. There's waaaay to much Japanese text flying about on the title menu and before you can even play you need to buy a bunch of playcards. You then play by swiping your cards over certain areas on the play tablet. Ahh bollucks...I'm not even gonna bother trying to guess how this is played, it goes way over my head. Looks good though. Amazing to think that from that little Snes game Nobunaga's Ambition followed all this.
Just a quick pic of the game-card machine for the above game. You know, for shits and giggles.
A final pic of a new Mah-Jong game that is popular here. Never played it.
That's it then peeps. There is still much more to go, but for now I'm spent. I'll be sure to continue this theme for at least the next couple of weeks so keep your eyes peeled for the next post!
Yup, sounds like I'm making it up, but it actually exists. It's a game that's identical to the 2nd House of the Dead shooter, except you don't shoot, you err.....type. As zombies rush towards you a little box appears above their heads with the words you need to type in to kill them. Most of the words belong to the same content family. Like, 3 zombies might attack you with "ACE", "JOKER", "SPADE". The faster and more accurate you type, the higher the score and the better chance you have of getting extra lives. Bosses are of course, much tougher, and usually attack you with quite long sentences in illegible romanised Japanese "Ore mo jigoku e iku zo!Omae no sakki ni!" Something like that. Some sentences have hyphens and ampersands and such so they're just friggin impossible to get out in time. Finally, the cutscenes look silly, as the main protagonists now have huge typewriters attached to their hands in the place of guns.
Still, taking it all tongue-in-cheek, this is a pretty damn good game and there are much worse ways to blow 100yen. I happen to be quite a fast typist and always make it to around the 3rd level, when the sewer worms gets me due to my inability to answer questions about Japanese culture you are faced with to damage it.
I've also played a Lupan typing game, but this one is much better IMO.
Official website here: http://sega.jp/pc/soft/tod/
TIME CRISIS 4. Doing the rounds. Half-decent game. Has the same guy who does the Japanese voice for Snake in the Japanese Metal Gear Solid in this one. Very good voice actor.
The Japanese looooove 'Keiba'. That's horse-racing to you and me. This is a relatively new gambling game that's only been out for about 6 months. Basically it's the same as betting at the track, except computerised. Need any further elaboration? You just grab a console, stick your money in, choose a horse, then cross your fingers. And nope, you don't win real money, just tokens.
Bingo. Pretty much as you'd imagine it.
I remember when I used to play 'Shenmue' thinking that the capsule toys were cool but fictional. Well, I was wrong. All over Japan you can find these machines littered around the supermarkets and arcades. What makes collecting capsule toys more attractive is that you can often find some rare machines that can't be found in other prefectures. And I've heard that trading them online is quite a popular pastime for certain nerdy types. What's weird and Japanese about them is that you can find toys relating not only to popular comics and superheroes but also pretty much anything else imaginable, including human anatomy, celebrities, vegetables, electronics, well the list goes on...
I found a very cool StreetFighter Hyper Fighters collectors edition one the other day.
Video-games for kids. The one at the bottom is Mushi-King (Insect King). Japan is actually home to some of the coolest creepy-crawlies in the world, and in particular the kabuto (Rhinocerus Beetle), which is extremely popular with young kids. They keep the things as pets, and just love creating kabuto ring fights (little bastards) in the same way English kids love playing conkers. This trading card game they can emulate that by buying random game cards from the machine and fighting Final Fantasy style against a friend or a computer opponent, gaining experience with every battle they win. I've never played it but it looks fun.
Someone requested a close-up of the Half-Life 2 controls so here y'ar. The left stick is mainly for strafing and menu-selection and the right-stick is your controls. It's like a normal joystick except you can rotate it left and right to turn your character. Tap the foot-pedal to move forward. Like I said before, it doesn't quite work as well as it could, and this kind of over-complexity in a game will ruin it in Japan.
Gundam Battlion. Haven't played it yet but this game looks sweet. It's some kind of multi-network robot flying/shooting game and it's brand new. Looks from the outset to be a kind of gang warfare game where you team up with a dozen or so of your mates and take on an army of enemies, or perhaps humans linking from their online network. Will have to try this one out real soon.
Brand-new game called Too Spicy. Didn't look so hot. It's almost like a shooting version of Super-Punch Out. Instead of blasting away at a zillion enemies you have to take on one guy at a time and successfully avoid being hit by using the pedals to navigate your character around the arena. First impressions, not fantastic.
Romance of The Three Kingdoms (at least I think that's what the kanji of the title is). Awesome looking-game but I'm buggered if I can figure out how to play it. There's waaaay to much Japanese text flying about on the title menu and before you can even play you need to buy a bunch of playcards. You then play by swiping your cards over certain areas on the play tablet. Ahh bollucks...I'm not even gonna bother trying to guess how this is played, it goes way over my head. Looks good though. Amazing to think that from that little Snes game Nobunaga's Ambition followed all this.
Just a quick pic of the game-card machine for the above game. You know, for shits and giggles.
A final pic of a new Mah-Jong game that is popular here. Never played it.That's it then peeps. There is still much more to go, but for now I'm spent. I'll be sure to continue this theme for at least the next couple of weeks so keep your eyes peeled for the next post!
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