Using Photoshop to draw levels for Flash games

This is an example when things go not so good.

I was trying to draw a level for a Flash game like Tunnelball using Photoshop, and then import it into Flash.

Since it’s just an experiment, I did not draw any map but I simply downloaded one at Speccy Screenshot Maps to use it as a sample.

This is the map, its original size is 1280×1344 pixels

And these are the experiments. The “engine” of the “game” is the same as explained in this tutorial

First experiment

The first experiment consist in putting the map “as is”, and using it as a background. Read more

A strange way to move the player with Flash

When I look for some inspiration I browse some sites where talented designers post.

One of them is Newgrounds, almost all famous games are listed in it. I found a pretty good game called Pacco with a strange way to move the player. I have to be honest, I did not like the game itself but I liked something about the way you move the player.

I guess I can do a quite nice game starting from it.

First of all, play a bit Pacco, the follow the tutorial.

The character

The main character is a ball with a rotating arrow. Here it is how I did it: I created a movieclip linkaged as ball and inside of it I put the movieclip linkaged as arrow

The picture represents the ball movieclip, not the scene

The arrow must rotate, no matter if clockwise or counter-clockwise at the moment Read more

Red Planet: a game created using my tutorials

Time to introduce Red Planet, a game created by Peter Hurford using mu tutorials.

That’s what Peter said:

“Hi! Thanks for your tutorials.
Because of your help, I was able to make a game called Red Planet.
It’s primarially based on the Flash Game Creation series of tutorials, but also was helped with the Artillery tutorial to a small degree.
Thanks again.”

Thank you Peter for submitting your work here.

It’s a game based on the Ball tutorials, but in some levels you will find the turret used in artillery game… but this time it’s trying to kill you! Read more

Happy Birthday!! I want a cake!

The time has come!

Today of a year ago I installed the wordpress to start this blog!

What happened during this year?

Well… 77 posts with 1,093 comments, almost 180,000 unique users with more than half a million page views!!

And again… a Google PR7 and an Alexa 158,059.

I plan to continue the success of this blog with more tutorials and stuff.

Now, it’s time to ask you a quite crazy thing. I would like a real cake! Read more

Create a flash artillery game – step 2

Welcome to the 2nd part of this tutorial. I recommend you to read the 1st part if you haven’t done it yet and we are ready to start.

Fixing bullets amount

In the last example, when you shot a bullet, it “lives” forever. I mean, once the bullet movieclip is on the stage, there isn’t any routine to check if the bullet should exist or not.

Try to imagine thousands of bullets that continue falling down at increasing speed. Obviously, if you fire a large amount of bullets, the movieclip starts lagging.

We need to remove bullets when they are off the stage. Read more

How to load levels in a Flash tile based game

This tutorial, that comes in one single part, will cover the topic about loading levels in a Flash tile based game.

Let’s start explaining what is a tile based video game.

From Wikipedia: A tile-based video game is a type of video or computer game where the playing area consists of small rectangular, square, or hexagonal graphic images, referred to as tiles. The complete set of tiles available for use in a playing area is called a tileset. Tiles are laid out adjacent to one another in a grid; usually, some tiles are allowed to overlap, for example, when a tile representing a unit is overlaid onto a tile representing terrain. Tile-based games usually simulate a top-down or isometric view on the playing area and are almost always two dimensional.

In the example I am covering, the tiles are the bricks in a game like Arkanoid, but it could be a sokoban level or some other kind of game I will cover in future.

Basically, if a game map does not require you to draw anything but just putting some elements (tiles) one next to another, this is a tile based game.

Let’s start with the arkanoid clone. Read more

Create a Flash Racing Game Tutorial

In this tutorial we’ll cover the creation of a flash racing game.

I got the permission from Remus C. from gameSheep to publish this awesome tutorial.

Before we start, I recommend you all to give a look at gameSheep. You will find a lot of games with cute graphics.

Moreover, this tutorial will give the start to another series of tutorials about creating a flash racing game.

Let’s start!

Moving the car

1. Car movement is not the most difficult part of a racing game, but if you want to simulate realistic (almost realistic) movement you have to take in consideration some of the aspects described below.

2. Download and open racing_part1_step1.fla file.

3. Click on the first frame (the only frame) of the “defs” layer and press F9 to display the Actions Window for this frame. Now let’s see what these variables do:

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car1.code = "player"; 
//this variable will decide if the specified car is controlled by a human player or by the computer (in Part II of this tutorial you will learn how to add opponents and this variable will come in handy)
acceleration = 0.4; 
//the acceleration variable will add to the speed variable on every enterFrame event (in this case 24 times per second); a higher value translates in a faster acceleration of the car
speedDecay = 0.96; 
//when the car is not accelerated (the UP Key is released), the car will have to slow down smoothly; the speed will multiply with this value (less than 1); the lower this value is, the faster the car will slow down
rotationStep = 10;
//this is the number of degrees that will increase or decrease the car's rotation (angle) when the left or right keys are pressed
maxSpeed = 10;
//this is the speed limit on our track; increase it if you want the car to go faster
backSpeed = 1;
//this is the speed limit when going backwards

4. OK! Now let’s get back to school :) and see what we can do with these variables. Read more

XML driven Flash slideshow improved

It’s amazing how resources and scripts get improved from user to user.

Christoph B. sent me a improved version of the XML driven Flash slideshow based on a script by Sephiroth I improved.

Does it sound messy? Let’s understand what happened:

1) Sephiroth published the gallery
2) I improved Sephy’s gallery
3) Christoph improved my gallery, here it is his message:

“I’ve modified the sources for the XML driven slideshow a little bit to include the LINK attribute as well. Thought you might be interested in it.”

The final result is a XML driven Flash Gallery where you can custom images, image transitions, pauses between image transitions and, thanks to Christoph, url to be redirected when you click on an image.

This is the XML that drives the gallery, commented by Chris. Read more

Bubble Chaos: a complete flash game in only 131 lines

Last minute edit: I open this quick note just to say I am pleased that Bubble Chaos, with its only 131 lines of coding, got a “Decent Score” in NewGrounds portal

Time to introduce Bubble Chaos, a complete flash game in only 131 lines of actionscript… brackets included of course!

Let’s examine the features of this game:

Splash screen
Option to enter the name, that will remain during all game session (for future highscores implementation)
Infinite levels of increasing difficulty
(pretty) Complex score system
Decent action Read more

Flash Highscore Component using Php and MySql

Probably one of the main reasons people play casual games in internet is the challenge they provides with their highscore tables.

In my case, getting my name close to the top players in a game gives me the will to make another attempt and play the game again.

Unfortunately, building an highscore table in flash is not so easy… this is due to a security problem.

The first thing we need to know is that Flash+PHP is totally insecure. What can we do? We have to encrypt data in order to make cheater’s life very hard. In order to do this, a solid knowledge about backend scripting, encryption, php and MySql is required.

This is where Flash Highscore Component (FHC from now on) by Components for Flash (CF from now on) comes to save our lives.

It help us with an easy to use highscore system that does not require any knowledge about backend scripting or encryption. Just send the players name and score to the component and it will take care of the rest.

Henrik from CF sent me the component to make this review. I have not tested it already, as I am writing the review as I am opening the zipped file.

Let’s see how does it work. Read more

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