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
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.
Tell me what do you think about this post. I'll write better and better entries.
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31 Responses to “Tileball, the FIRST game made with my tile ball engine”
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Understanding hexagonal tiles : Emanuele Feronato - italian geek and PROgrammer on
April 16th, 2008 1:23 pm
[...] most used (and simplest) tiling system has squares. Tileball is an example of a game made with this [...]
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Awesome game, nice job. Love the animation when you fall off, shame I saw it so many times, lol
This is kinda hard…
One question…
Do you check the e-mail from info@emanueleferonato.com? I’ve sended some questions for you…
Thanks… XD
Another great production by the worlds most famous
Emanuele!
amazing game, how big are the arrays?
can’t wait for the tutorial
Gabriel: sure I check the email. I try to reply to everyone. Send it again because maybe I did not catch it
David: All arrays are 25×25
In the falling off animation, I believe that the ball depth should change once the whole ball has come over the edge. It may sometimes appear that the ball goes through the floor if the player is moving slowly.
One of the greatest Emanuele Feronatos ever seen is this one.
do u think u could publish a AS 2.0 version of the
game? ’cause I’m only 11 yrs. old so I don’t have all the money in the world, I only have Macromedia Flash MX 2004 (flash 6). thanks
Emanuele, thanks for telling me the sizes, i’ll bear that in mind.
do you have any tips on making great levels?
That’s really good, how are you going to monetize it?
ok now you have the game part, but you should also add a good menu that mirrors the feel of the game. add some new grapics beceause these grapics were used to often. ad a level choose possebility where the game saves the completed levels with a cookie (i’m positive you know how to do all that;)). and then you have a proper game that can make some good money.
RJ: I just submitted it yesterday, I need a week to understand how it’s going.
David: you need a lever editor if you don’t want to go mad.
I made a lame one, but I plan to make one with nuts and explain the world how to make it.
how do you make a level editor?
Ha, couldn’t make a harder game? Even solitarie’s easier.
hi emanuele,
can you make a tutorial on arrays?
I know you know everything about them and it would be easier than watching TV for you.
I bet this one beats Circle Chain earnings. I think it’ll get about 250 $ if you only use MochiAds.
Good luck
Emanuele every time I go to your home page my browser crashes and it says a script is making it become unresponsive (In Flash player 9, obviously you’ve put some code somewhere thats mucked it up). Please fix. >.<
I have the same problem, it’s a bit annoying.
But now I’m working with IE and it doesn’t show that message…
Anyway, with firefox, it says “Bla, bla, bla”, I click OK and problem solved
ed: it was the “ball vs ball concept” movie that was playing in the homepage.
When the balls collide, sometimes generate this issue.
Now it’s not on the homepage anymore, so navigation can be safer.
Thank you for reporting the problem
if you right click in the game and click rewind or fastfowerd the loading bar loads the music but then dissapers. it doubbles the music so it is playing 2 on eachother and you stay at the same lvl
My prediction is coming true by the time.
Circle Chain is 3.56 by weeks of release and tileball is already 3.49 by 3-4 days of release.
Hey, great game. Its so addicting. The only thing I find frustrating is how the end tiles only take me to the next level some of the time. Even when I roll right across them, it may not go to the next level >.< Stuck on level 3 cause of this haha
i made it to lvl 6 ^^ and i agree with bradley
Well, I beat the game after… (this is quite embarassing) 2 hours). It was a very fun game, though very hard on some levels, especially the labrynth level. But I got through it and I’m proud of myself.
Anyway, I liked playing the game and thinking about the type of coding that was required to make it. But my one question is how did you make the 3D ball in flash? Or did you make it with something else and then import it into flash?
Once again, great game, and I’m looking forward to number two!
I made the ball all in Flash, you can find the tutorial about it here
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2007/06/10/creation-of-realistic-spheres-in-flash-with-textures-and-masking/
This is certainly a supra great jame. I found it really, uh, frustrating, though. The fifth level is driving me crazy go nuts. Preeeeeeow…
Ever thought of level codes? Stinks to get to “Level 5″ and then have to start over at “1″.
flash mx is actually flash7! lol i am 13 and i hav made 263 games/animations with flash mx so i think its gr8! it would b nice 2 hav flash CSS(flash9) lol
a few suggestions:
-a clock:
you completed the level in “x” seconds.
-a death counter:
you have “x” deaths
scoreboard / best times:
either your own best or the communitys best
somekind of notice that you crossed a checkpoint, make it glow, show a message or something like that (i had to die to find out what the checkpoint tile is)