50 ways to make us HATE your Flash game

July 18, 2008 by Emanuele Feronato
Filed Under Flash, Game design •  

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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8 Responses to “50 ways to make us HATE your Flash game”

  1. Grifo on July 18th, 2008 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 19th, 2008 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 20th, 2008 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 20th, 2008 6:38 am

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

  5. mookmook on July 21st, 2008 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 21st, 2008 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 26th, 2008 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 26th, 2008 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/

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