GuessNext: complete Flash game with highscores

Time to publish the complete tutorial about the making of GuessNext, a simple card game with highscores.

In order to make an highscore, you must register to Kongregate but you can play even if you don’t register.

It’s not meant to be a good or enjoyable game, it’s simply a programming exercise, so don’t expect the best game ever played before.

Anyway, it’s a good start for developing a complete and interesting card game.

The aim of the game is very simple: from a deck of 52 cards, you have to guess if each card is higher or lower than the previous one. That’s it.

Before we start talking about actionscript, a little information about the graphics.

This is the background

GuessNext

It was made with Photoshop selecting two green colors, one lighter than another, and using a clouds filter. Then, I give the result a light noise filter and the green background was done. The cards on the bottom left side are the same used in the game with a semi-transparent Soft Light blending.

The font is the Death Font you can find on dafont.com at this page.

Now, let’s go with the all-in-one-frame actionscript, just 172 lines to make a complete game Read more

December 30, 2007 | Filed Under Flash, Game design | 16 Comments

Using BitmapData to manage a deck of cards – part 2

After a couple of days, the prototype for the management of a card deck is almost complete.

Now I have a full game, you draw a card and have to say if the next card will be higher or lower.

At the moment the prototype has all messages and a game over screen with the score recap.

Now I want to include Kongregate's highscores API and then I'll release the complete tutorial.

Meanwhile, here it is the code:

PLAIN TEXT

ACTIONSCRIPT:

import flash.display.BitmapData;
import flash.geom.Rectangle;
import flash.geom.Point;
import flash.filters.DropShadowFilter;
import flash.filters.GlowFilter;
var card_shadow:DropShadowFilter = new DropShadowFilter(4, 45, 0x000000, .5, 4, 4, 1, 3, false, false, false);
var text_glow:GlowFilter = new GlowFilter(0x000000, .6, 4, 4, 2, 3, false, false);
big_picture = BitmapData.loadBitmap("cardz");
_root.attachMovie("table", "table", _root.getNextHighestDepth());
_root.createEmptyMovieClip("game", _root.getNextHighestDepth());
game.attachMovie("higher", "higher", game.getNextHighestDepth());
game.attachMovie("lower", "lower", game.getNextHighestDepth());
game.createEmptyMovieClip("big_pic_obj", game.getNextHighestDepth());
big_pic_obj.attachBitmap(big_picture, game.getNextHighestDepth());
big_pic_obj._visible = false;
sequence = new Array();
Array.prototype.shuffle = function() {
    for (x=0; x&lt;52; x++) {
        var from = Math.floor(Math.random()*52);
        var to = this[x];
        this[x] = this[from];
        this[from] = to;
    }
};
for (x=0; x&lt;52; x++) {
    card = game.createEmptyMovieClip("small_pic_obj_"+x, game.getNextHighestDepth());
    sequence[x] = x;
    small_picture = new BitmapData(79, 123);
    card.attachBitmap(small_picture, game.getNextHighestDepth());
    small_picture.copyPixels(big_picture, new Rectangle(0+(x%13)*79, 0+Math.floor(x/13)*123, 79, 123), new Point(0, 0));
    card._visible = false;
    card.filters = new Array(card_shadow);
    card.onEnterFrame = function() {
        switch (this.action) {
        case "come" :
            this._x += 40;
            if (this._x>210) {
                this._x = 210;
                this.action = "stay";
                if (cards_drawn>1) {
                    game.ok_ko._visible = true;
                }
            }
            break;
        case "move" :
            this._x += 20;
            if (this._x>310) {
                this._x = 310;
                this.action = "dissolve";
            }
            break;
        case "dissolve" :
            this._alpha -= 4;
            game.lap_score._alpha -= 4;
            if (this._alpha&lt;0) {
                can_draw = true;
                game.ok_ko._visible = false;
                if (cards_drawn == 52) {
                    endgame();
                }
                this.removeMovieClip();
            }
            break;
        }
    };
}
game.attachMovie("ok_ko", "ok_ko", game.getNextHighestDepth(), {_x:250, _y:230, _visible:false});
game.attachMovie("score", "score", game.getNextHighestDepth(), {_x:0, _y:140});
game.attachMovie("lap_score", "lap_score", game.getNextHighestDepth(), {_x:-50, _y:0, _alpha:0});
game.score.filters = new Array(text_glow);
game.lap_score.filters = new Array(text_glow);
sequence.shuffle();
cards_drawn = 0;
points = 0;
can_draw = true;
draw_card();
game.higher.onRelease = function() {
    if (can_draw) {
        can_draw = false;
        higher = true;
        draw_card();
    }
};
game.lower.onRelease = function() {
    if (can_draw) {
        can_draw = false;
        higher = false;
        draw_card();
    }
};
function draw_card() {
    game.ok_ko.gotoAndStop(2);
    lap = 0;
    if (((sequence[cards_drawn]%13)<=(sequence[cards_drawn-1]%13) and (!higher)) or ((sequence[cards_drawn]%13)>=(sequence[cards_drawn-1]%13) and (higher))) {
        game.ok_ko.gotoAndStop(1);
        game.lap_score.lap_text.textColor = 0x40ff40;
        if (cards_drawn>0) {
            if (!higher) {
                lap = 13-(sequence[cards_drawn-1]%13);
            } else {
                lap = sequence[cards_drawn-1]%13+1;
            }
        }
    } else {
        lap = -5;
        game.lap_score.lap_text.textColor = 0x900000;
    }
    game.lap_score.lap_text.text = lap;
    if (cards_drawn>0) {
        game.lap_score._alpha = 100;
    }
    points += lap;
    game["small_pic_obj_"+sequence[cards_drawn]]._x = 0;
    game["small_pic_obj_"+sequence[cards_drawn]]._y = 10;
    game["small_pic_obj_"+sequence[cards_drawn]]._visible = true;
    game["small_pic_obj_"+sequence[cards_drawn]].action = "come";
    game["small_pic_obj_"+sequence[cards_drawn-1]].action = "move";
    cards_drawn++;
    game.score.textscore.text = "Cards left: "+(52-cards_drawn)+" - Score: "+points;
}
function endgame() {
    game.removeMovieClip();
    _root.attachMovie("game_over","game_over",_root.getNextHighestDepth());
    game_over.gameovertext.filters = new Array(text_glow);
    _root.game_over.gameovertext.text = "Your score:\n"+points;
}

and this is the result Read more

December 28, 2007 | Filed Under Flash, Game design | 18 Comments

Using BitmapData to manage a deck of cards

December 28th update: 2nd part online

I have already published a tutorial about BitmapData in the post Shuffle an image with BitmapData, but this time I want to show you how to manage a deck of cards using BitmapData.

Managing a deck of cards is very useful because there are tons of card games you can publish once you have a deck of cards in your library.

The first thing you need is an image with all cards like this one:

Deck of cards

The image is scaled down for blogging reasons, but you can view/download it at its original size here.

Now, with the same method seen in Shuffle an image with BitmapData, I'll cut off all cards starting from the original image.

I am publishing some raw actionscript because this is just a prototype, but a full tutorial will come shortly.

The prototype is about the simplest card game ever: you draw a card and have to say if the next card will be higher on lower than the card you have on the table.

Being a prototype it's not complete yet, but I want to share this code to you. Read more

December 26, 2007 | Filed Under Flash, Game design | 6 Comments

Designing the structure of a Flash game

One of the most interesting things about internet publishing is that you can receive feedback almost in real time.

For this reason, it's very important to read every comment and above all negative comments.

When I released Tileball, I received some negative comments about the title screen. That's right: I focused on the game and I did not care about a title screen, or a proper "congratulations" screen if a player manages to beat all levels.

When I was a kid, the "end screen" was very important. I remember myself playing some "not so good" games just to see how will they thank me for playing in their congratulations screen.

Too bad I forgot old times and released a game with such a lame intro and end screen.

I think it happened because I coded a lot of actionscript and did not want to nest more code to manage different game status such as info screen, welcome screen, and so on.

So I decided to make a Flash movie with the very basic structure every game should have.

This structure is made of:

* A "title" movieclip
* An "info" movieclip
* The game itself
* A "game over" movieclip
* A "congratulations" movieclip

Let's see how do they work:

Title movieclip: it's the first thing the player sees when the movie has loaded. It should have some appeal, just to tell players "hey, I'm a good game, give me a try"

Info movieclip: here you will put all instructions to play the game, or more information about the game.

The game itself: the most important thing, don't forget it...

Game over movieclip: The screen the player will see once he dies and runs out of all lives, or runs out of time, or simply does not beat all levels. Here you can show highscores.

Congratulations movieclip: This is the screen the player will see should he ever complete the game. Congratulations, blah blah blah, show the highscores and play again

It's very important that you include at least these sections, or your game will have an "home made" feeling. Now, we all know your game is home made, but we don't want our game to seem "home made when sit in the bathroom".

Come on, and let's see how did I arrange actionscript and movieclips to have a game with the above features.

First, the actionscript: Read more

December 22, 2007 | Filed Under Flash, Game design | 26 Comments

3 attacks in a week should be enough

I posted about an attack to this blog in this post, and since then I had 3 more attacks, all in the last week.

All attacks are very similar, with a php injection in the index page.

The most interesting thing is that ob_start("phpfake"); code still does not appear that much on Google, even if more than 10 days passed since I posted about it.

It's only me? I cannot believe I am the only WP blogger that faced this attack. I also updated the blog to the last version, but attacks continue.

Oh well, meanwhile I added about 10 more addresses in the mailing list you can use to submit your Flash games...

December 21, 2007 | Filed Under This blog in the net | 9 Comments

Some email addresses to send your games

Ok, so you finished your game, you submitted it to NG and Kongregate and now you are about to submit it to another million of sites to give it a good exposure.

The only problem is that most sites require a registration, some want a 60x60 gif thumbnail while others want a 100x100 png. Submitting your game to a lot of sites is a hassle. Lucky me that some portals accept submission by email.

I am making a list of email addresses of portals that want you to send your game by email. So you can create a little php script (I will create one later) to send the same mail to all addresses and save a lot of time.

I am doing this way. How will I manage attachments? I'll simply include in the mail a link to my game in NG (if it has a decent score) and a link to a zip file with the .swf itself and two images, a .gif and a .jpg

This is the file I will send:
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/stuff/tileball/tileball.zip.

Doing this way, I will be able to submit Tileball to more than 30 portals in a click. On the other hand, all those portals won't receive any heavy attachment and can dedice to download the game or not.

This is the list of addresses I found as today. Should you know one more, just leave a comment.

3cr[at]dabontv.com (www.dabontv.com)
AGgames[at]addictinggames.com
blitzgamer.com[at]gmail.com (www.blitzgamer.com)
captinmorgn[at]bellsouth.net (www.arcadenut.com)
chris1335[at]hotmail.com (www.gamesloth.com)
colorin[at]caracol.com.co (www.colorincolorradio.com)
developers[at]mindjolt.com (www.mindjolt.com)
enquiries[at]mousebreaker.co.uk
fifadicto[at]yahoo.es (www.juegosdiarios.com)
flashgame.net[at]gmail.com (www.flash-game.net)
freegamesnews[at]gmail.com (www.freegamesnews.com)
game[at]2flashgames.com (www.2flashgames.com)
gamedev[at]miniclip.com (www.mindjolt.com)
gamegod[at]freearcade.com (www.freearcade.com)
gameprison[at]gmail.com (www.gameprison.com)
gamesolo[at]gmail.com (www.gamesolo.com)
info[at]bigwigmedia.com (www.2dplay.com)
info[at]bubblebox.com
info[at]freegamesjungle.com
info[at]hatekonyan.hu (jatek.hatekonyan.hu)
info[at]startgames.ws
info2007[at]coffeebreakarcade.com (www.coffeebreakarcade.com)
jobs[at]mousebreaker.co.uk (www.mousebreaker.com)
KST_Admin[at]killsometime.com (www.killsometime.com)
mikemaxgames[at]gmail.com (www.maxgames.com)
minijuegos[at]gmail.com (www.minijuegos.com)
onlinegamesflash[at]yahoo.com (www.onlinegamesflash.com)
plemsoft[at]plemsoft.com (www.playgames2.com)
selfdefiant[at]melting-mindz.com
sponsor[at]gimme5games.com
submissions[at]smileygamer.com
t45ol.com[at]gmail.com (en.t45ol.com)
tom[at]thorgaming.com
vorarg[at]comcast.net (www.gamesflasher.com)
webdesign[at]info.lt (www.joker.lt)
webmaster[at]flashninjaclan.com
webmaster[at]gamegarage.co.uk (www.gamegarage.co.uk)
webmaster[at]gamesportal.org (www.gamesportal.org)
webmaster[at]gametheflash.net (www.gametheflash.net)
webmaster[at]hispajuegos.net (www.hispajuegos.net)
webmaster[at]smashingames.com (www.smashingames.com)
webmasterp[at]jeux-internet.com (www.jeux-internet.com)
webmaster[at]thaiza.com (gameonline.thaiza.com)
wepinc[at]gmail.com
yourclueless[at]gmail.com (www.zoopgames.com)

December 20, 2007 | Filed Under Flash, Monetize | 11 Comments

When Elasticity meets Bloons

Ok, so we have two games: Elasticity and Bloons.

The first, is a game I talked about in Controlling a ball like in Flash Elasticity game tutorial, and I suggest you to read it, while the second is a game we all use to play here on planet Earth.

Despite the psychedelic feeling I gave to the graphics in this prototype, merging two game genres like Bloons and Elasticity can lead to some interesting gameplay concepts.

So the prototype brings the "engine" of Elasticity and some targets to destroy like in Bloons.

No tutorial yet but only a commented actionscript

PLAIN TEXT

ACTIONSCRIPT:

attachMovie("newmouse", "newmouse", _root.getNextHighestDepth());
attachMovie("circle", "circle", _root.getNextHighestDepth(), {_x:60, _y:350});
attachMovie("crosshair", "crosshair", _root.getNextHighestDepth());
attachMovie("ball", "ball", _root.getNextHighestDepth());
Mouse.hide();
// friction
friction = 0.9;
// multiplier to scale down ball speed
speed_scale = 0.1;
// ball x and y speed
xspeed = 0;
yspeed = 0;
// flag to determine if the ball is "free" (I released it) or not
free_ball = false;
// gravity is zero at the beginning
gravity = 0;
// this part has been already explained
newmouse.onEnterFrame = function() {
    this._x = _root._xmouse;
    this._y = _root._ymouse;
};
crosshair.onEnterFrame = function() {
    difference = (circle._width-crosshair._width)/2;
    this._x = _root._xmouse;
    this._y = _root._ymouse;
    dist_x = this._x-circle._x;
    dist_y = this._y-circle._y;
    distance = Math.sqrt(dist_x*dist_x+dist_y*dist_y);
    if (distance>difference) {
        angle = Math.atan2(dist_y, dist_x);
        this._x = circle._x+difference*Math.cos(angle);
        this._y = circle._y+difference*Math.sin(angle);
    }
};
ball.onEnterFrame = function() {
    if (!free_ball) {
        dist_x = (crosshair._x-this._x)*speed_scale;
        dist_y = (crosshair._y-this._y)*speed_scale;
        xspeed += dist_x;
        yspeed += dist_y;
    } else {
        if (this._y>500) {
            free_ball = false;
            gravity = 0;
            xspeed = 0;
            yspeed = 0;
            this._x = crosshair._x;
            this._y = crosshair._y;
            friction = 0.9;
        }
    }
    xspeed *= friction;
    yspeed *= friction;
    yspeed += gravity;
    this._x += xspeed;
    this._y += yspeed;
};
// if the player release the mouse, then
// the ball is set to free
// the friction is lower and
// the gravity is bigger
_root.onMouseDown = function() {
    free_ball = true;
    friction = 0.99;
    gravity = 0.3;
};
// adding some "bloons"...
for (x=0; x&lt;8; x++) {
    for (y=0; y&lt;8; y++) {
        bloon = _root.attachMovie("bubble", "bubble_"+x, _root.getNextHighestDepth(), {_x:250+x*30, _y:30+y*30});
        bloon.die = false;
        bloon.onEnterFrame = function() {
            // actions to perform if the bloon is "alive"
            if (!this.die) {
                dist_x = this._x-ball._x;
                dist_y = this._y-ball._y;
                distance_from_ball = Math.sqrt(dist_x*dist_x+dist_y*dist_y);
                // checking if the ball hits the bloon
                if (distance_from_ball<(this._width+ball._width)/2) {
                    this.die = true;
                }
                // actions to perform if the bloon is "dead" 
            } else {
                this._width -= 1;
                this._height -= 1;
                this._alpha -= 2;
                if (this._alpha == 0) {
                    this.removeMovieClip();
                }
            }
        };
    }
}

And this is the result, swing the ball with the mouse and press mouse button to throw it against the "bloons". Read more

December 18, 2007 | Filed Under Flash, Game design | 12 Comments

Tileball, the FIRST game made with my tile ball engine

I published Tileball, the FIRST (and I want you to notice the capitalized "FIRST") game made with my tile ball engine.

I learned so much in the making of this game that once finished I wanted to delete it and start making it again. Then, I decided to release the game and practice all I learned into the making of Tileball II.

The first thing I want you to know is that Tileball is not a clone of Marble Madness. When I started coding it, I had in mind an old Commodore 64 glory called Trailblazer

Trailblazer

I played Trailblazer to death when I was 14 and I wanted to make a clone of it, with some modifications (I did not like the fake 3d graphics of the original). This is why Tileball is played into deep space.

Since there are two or three clones of Tileball around the web, I introduced the jumping tile to give players a new feature. I will explain the jumping tile with next tutorial, and a lot more tiles are planned, as well as a two player options with the old "split screen" mode and a level editor.

The first thing I learned is that there is an issue with the switch actionscript that will mess you the code if you have a lot of code into any case. Unfortunately I forgot to take a screenshot of the problem but I will try to replicate it and show you.

The second one is a damn hard question...

Engine vs level design

With the game engine ready and tested, I firstly planned to release the game with 50 levels. Then I went mad designing the FIRST one, and I decided to release the game with 8 levels. Finally, I completed the game with 12 levels. It's interesting to notice that I coded the entire engine in less than two hours, and I spent more than half an hour for each level.

When you design a level you have to play it, then make some changes, then play again, then make some changes, then play another time just to realize it was better 5 minutes ago, so you have to make some changes and play it again.

Once it's finished, you'll play it another two or three times because you think it's a damn good level and you are enjoying playing with it.

In real game industry, I can only imagine how long does it take to make a level and I am not longer surprised that the best level designers are hired and well paid by software houses.

When you play a game, you probably don't notice any detail because you have more important task to do: headshot bad guys, avoiding bullets, throwing grenades and so on, but I want you to look at some "screenshots" at Panogames and see how every location is almost a real environment.

The power of level design..

Now the third question...

Easy game or hard game?

Some people prefer to play easy games, other hard ones. As an old-time player, I prefer hard games. Hard but not frustrating. I tried to give the "hard but not frustrating" feeling in Tileball, but you know, level design is an hard thing.

Obviously I am going to monetize this game too, but I'll talk about it in the next part of my experiment.

December 17, 2007 | Filed Under Flash, Game design | 35 Comments

Create a Flash ball game with visual from above tutorial part 3

January 16th update: 4th part released

In the third part of this tutorial I am going to fix a minor bug and introduce three new tiles:

info tile (displays a message when the ball rolls over it)
reverse control tile (reverses the controls of the ball)
checkpoint tile (makes you respawn at the checkpoint tile if you die)

Before continuing, I suggest you to read tutorials 1 and 2.

The actionscript of the last example has changed to:

PLAIN TEXT

ACTIONSCRIPT:

_root.attachMovie("starz", "starz", 1, {_x:-20, _y:-20});
_root.attachMovie("ball", "ball", 3, {_x:240, _y:220});
_root.attachMovie("info_panel", "info_panel", 4, {_y:410, _alpha:50, _visible:false});
ball.texture.setMask(ball.ball_itself);
yspeed = 0;
xspeed = 0;
checkpoint_passed = false;
lev = 1;
draw_level(lev);
ball.onEnterFrame = function() {
    info_panel._visible = false;
    friction = 0.99;
    power = 0.4;
    brick_x = Math.floor((bricks._x-200)/80)*-1;
    brick_y = Math.floor((bricks._y-180)/80)*-1;
    type_of_tile = level[brick_y][brick_x];
    if (type_of_tile>12000) {
        message_to_show = messages[type_of_tile%12000];
        type_of_tile = 12;
    }
    switch (type_of_tile) {
    case 1 :
        // normal tile
        break;
    case 2 :
        // down spin tile
        yspeed += 0.2;
        break;
    case 3 :
        // up spin tile
        yspeed -= 0.2;
        break;
    case 4 :
        // left spin tile
        xspeed -= 0.2;
        break;
    case 5 :
        // right spin tile
        xspeed += 0.2;
        break;
    case 6 :
        // glass tile
        depth = brick_y*12+brick_x;
        bricks["brick_"+depth]._alpha--;
        if (bricks["brick_"+depth]._alpha&lt;1) {
            level[brick_y][brick_x] = 0;
        }
        break;
    case 7 :
        // spin tile
        xspeed *= 1.05;
        yspeed *= 1.05;
        break;
    case 8 :
        // slip tile
        friction = 1;
        power = 0;
        break;
    case 9 :
        // beam
        depth = brick_y*12+brick_x;
        if (bricks["brick_"+depth].lava._currentframe>90) {
            ball_die();
        }
        break;
    case 10 :
        // exit
        checkpoint_passed = false;
        lev++;
        _root.removeMovieClip("bricks");
        draw_level(lev);
        break;
    case 11 :
        // reverse
        power *= -1;
        break;
    case 12 :
        // info
        info_panel._visible = true;
        info_panel.message_text.text = message_to_show;
        break;
    case 13 :
        //checkpoint
        checkpoint_passed = true;
        save_x = brick_x;
        save_y = brick_y;
        break;
    default :
        // hole
        ball_die();
        break;
    }
    if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT)) {
        xspeed -= power;
    }
    if (Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) {
        xspeed += power;
    }
    if (Key.isDown(Key.UP)) {
        yspeed -= power;
    }
    if (Key.isDown(Key.DOWN)) {
        yspeed += power;
    }
    xspeed *= friction;
    yspeed *= friction;
    if ((xspeed&lt;0.1) and (xspeed>-0.1)) {
        xspeed = 0;
    }
    if ((yspeed&lt;0.1) and (yspeed>-0.1)) {
        yspeed = 0;
    }
    bricks._y -= yspeed;
    bricks._x -= xspeed;
    starz._x = -20+((bricks._x-240)/10);
    starz._y = -20+((bricks._y-220)/10);
    this.texture._y += yspeed;
    this.texture._x += xspeed;
    if (this.texture._x>53) {
        this.texture._x -= 63;
    }
    if (this.texture._x<-53) {
        this.texture._x += 63;
    }
    if (this.texture._y>53) {
        this.texture._y -= 63;
    }
    if (this.texture._y<-53) {
        this.texture._y += 63;
    }
};
function ball_die() {
    bricks._x = 240-(80*_root.ball_start_x);
    bricks._y = 220-(80*_root.ball_start_y);
    xspeed = 0;
    yspeed = 0;
    draw_level(lev);
}
function draw_level(number) {
    yspeed = 0;
    xspeed = 0;
    level = new Array();
    messages = new Array();
    switch (number) {
    case 1 :
        _root.ball_start_x = 0;
        _root.ball_start_y = 0;
        if (checkpoint_passed) {
            _root.ball_start_x = save_x;
            _root.ball_start_y = save_y;
        }
        level[0] = new Array(12001, 11, 11, 11, 11);
        level[1] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 1);
        level[2] = new Array(1, 1, 10, 0, 1);
        level[3] = new Array(1, 0, 0, 0, 1);
        level[4] = new Array(12003, 1, 1, 13, 12002);
        messages[1] = "Welcome to the game";
        messages[2] = "You are about to cross a checkpoint";
        messages[3] = "Ok. Now suicide! You'll respawn on the checkpoint";
        break;
    case 2 :
        _root.ball_start_x = 0;
        _root.ball_start_y = 0;
        level[0] = new Array(1, 4, 4, 5, 0);
        level[1] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 1, 0);
        level[2] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 1, 0);
        level[3] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 10, 0);
        level[4] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        break;
    case 3 :
        _root.ball_start_x = 0;
        _root.ball_start_y = 0;
        level[0] = new Array(1, 6, 6, 4, 0);
        level[1] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 6, 0);
        level[2] = new Array(6, 5, 5, 6, 0);
        level[3] = new Array(6, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        level[4] = new Array(1, 1, 10, 0, 0);
        break;
    case 4 :
        _root.ball_start_x = 0;
        _root.ball_start_y = 0;
        level[0] = new Array(1, 7, 0, 0, 0);
        level[1] = new Array(0, 7, 0, 7, 10);
        level[2] = new Array(1, 3, 0, 1, 0);
        level[3] = new Array(1, 0, 0, 1, 0);
        level[4] = new Array(1, 1, 1, 7, 0);
        break;
    case 5 :
        _root.ball_start_x = 4;
        _root.ball_start_y = 2;
        level[0] = new Array(7, 8, 8, 8, 10);
        level[1] = new Array(1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        level[2] = new Array(1, 8, 8, 3, 1);
        level[3] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        level[4] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        break;
    case 6 :
        _root.ball_start_x = 2;
        _root.ball_start_y = 2;
        level[0] = new Array(2, 8, 9, 8, 9);
        level[1] = new Array(9, 0, 0, 0, 1);
        level[2] = new Array(2, 8, 1, 0, 3);
        level[3] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 4);
        level[4] = new Array(10, 9, 9, 8, 6);
        break;
    case 7 :
        _root.ball_start_x = 2;
        _root.ball_start_y = 2;
        level[0] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        level[1] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        level[2] = new Array(0, 0, 1, 0, 0);
        level[3] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        level[4] = new Array(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        break;
    }
    _root.createEmptyMovieClip("bricks", 2);
    bricks._x = 240-(80*ball_start_x);
    bricks._y = 220-(80*ball_start_y);
    for (y=0; y<=4; y++) {
        for (x=0; x<=4; x++) {
            if (level[y][x]>0) {
                depth = y*12+x;
                place_brick = bricks.attachMovie("brick", "brick_"+depth, bricks.getNextHighestDepth(), {_x:x*80, _y:y*80});
                frame_to_stop = level[y][x];
                if (frame_to_stop>12000) {
                    frame_to_stop = 12;
                }
                place_brick.gotoAndStop(frame_to_stop);
            }
        }
    }
}