50 ways to make us HATE your Flash game

July 18, 2008 • Flash, Game design by Emanuele Feronato • 9 Comments

I know a spanish proverb saying “La mejor verdad se dice jugando” that sounds like “Tell the shocking truth when you’re kidding”.

That’s what Mr. Sun at the Helion Code said about 50 Ways to Make us HATE your Flash Game.

He is telling the shocking truth in a friendly way… but these are 50 mistakes you really must avoid.

Let’s see the first ten:

  1. Add loud and annoying sound effects to your game
  2. Don’t add a mute buttons so we have to listen to your loud and annoying sound effects
  3. Make your game ridiculously hard
  4. Don’t put in a preloader
  5. Have a confusing menu system
  6. Forget to embed all of your dynamic textfields
  7. Make a game from a tutorial and submit it without making any kinds of changes
  8. Have sloppy art
  9. Add Mochiads everywhere (unless you need to load external stuff everywhere)
  10. Don’t optimize your code

The most interesting thing is I said “done!” at every step…

Well, now you have 40 more reasons to read the original post.

Made me smile… and think…

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This post has 9 comments

  1. Grifo

    on July 18, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    Hey Emanuele this is off-topic but its kinda urgent to me… so would you kindly lend me a hand?

    I’ve this code in a bullet instance on stage, which happens to tell every bullet what to do.

    The bullet is not a bullet actually, it represents the whole are the shot will reach. So, it’s a large invisible rectangle in front of the shooter. My aim is to have only the enemy closest to the shooter to be hit by the shot.

    It uses simple pythagorean theorem, so it’s not even big. Problem is, if I have more than two enemies on the stage, the code won’t work properly. It will only consider the two higher number MCz (let’s say enemy4 and enemy5 out of 5).

    I cannot understand why.

    Here is the code:

    for(i=1; i<=10; i++){
    this["b"+i] = _root["enemyMC"+i]._x-_root.player._x;
    this["c"+i] = _root["enemyMC"+i]._y-_root.player._y;
    this["distancia"+i] = Math.floor(Math.sqrt((this["b"+i]*this["b"+i]) + (this["c"+i]*this["c"+i])));

    for(j=1; j<=10; j++){
    if(this["distancia"+i]<this["distancia"+j]){
    closest = i;
    }
    }
    }

    if(_root["enemyMC"+closest].hittester.hittesterX.hitTest(this) || _root["enemyMC"+closest].hittester.hittesterY.hitTest(this)){
    _root["enemyMC"+closest].stunned=true;
    _root["enemyMC"+closest].whoatked=_root.player._name;
    }

    I simplified it a little and translated to english some pieces.

    Help will be greatly(enormously!) apprecciated.

    Thanks in advance.

  2. Sabatino

    on July 19, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    Ciao Emanuele, io sono Sabatino.
    I’m Italian, but i live in belgium and my Italian isn’t that good (i can’t write Italian, only talk)
    I have a request for you:
    Can you make a tutorial where you explain how to make a picross game?
    grazie in avante ;)

  3. Emanuele Feronato

    on July 20, 2008 at 2:34 am

    Sabatino:
    check this http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2007/09/14/prototype-of-a-game-like-gem-sweeper-with-flash/

  4. ANLIK

    on July 20, 2008 at 6:38 am

    Thanks,can you make a flash game tutorial about
    zuma?

  5. mookmook

    on July 21, 2008 at 2:28 am

    Surely number one would be to make a really crap flash game…? And I could tick that one too!

    Anyway, thanks for the list.

  6. Shadow Scythe

    on July 21, 2008 at 9:06 am

    I will re-post the post I posted at the blog over there.

    Haha, oh crap, my early games broke so dang many of those rules.

    …how am I to make buttons look more like buttons? I can never tend to pull that off.

    Oh, one more thing, that “The Bouncy Ball” game was awful. Like, terrible awful. I played through it because I couldn’t let something that awful best me.

    This list is great for backchecking and reviewing Flash games, and some of the rules apply to other games as well. I will bookmark it for prosperity.

  7. Steven

    on July 26, 2008 at 6:24 am

    Grifo, you should store the distance calculations on the ENEMY’s movie clip.
    This is for the sake of having a distance value being calculated for EACH enemy.

    Hope it helps.

  8. Mr Sun

    on July 26, 2008 at 7:43 pm

    Hey the post has been moved to:
    http://www.mrsunstudios.com/2008/07/50-ways-to-make-us-hate-your-flash-game/

  9. Argentin

    on June 23, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    Ok I made a game with almost everything from the list
    Just so you know why you should listen to that guy
    http://spamtheweb.com/ul/upload/230609/62287_Bad_Game.php

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