Game prototype involving shape drawing and a ball

Sometimes I play and mess with code to get some interesting game prototypes.

Although I am not satisfied about this one, I want to share it with you anyway.

You have to draw a lasso with the mouse trying to catch the ball inside the shape you will create. In this case you’ll win.

If the ball touches the line before you close the shape, you die.

Uncommented code because it’s just an early stage, but if you are interested I will try to turn it into something playable. Read more

Create a Flash Game like Nano War - step 2

In the 1st step we created the units and the engine to select them.

Now it’s time to write the code to let selected unit(s) send troops to other unit.

I created a new frame for the sphere object, a green circle, representing the target unit.

Let’s make a recap:

Frame 1: black circle, unselected unit

Frame 2: red circle, selected unit

Frame 3: green circle, target unit

Obviously, an unit cannot be target of itself

So, once we have one or more selected units, the script will have to:

If the player does not press the mouse

Draw a line from selected unit(s) to current mouse position

If the mouse is not over an unselected unit, leave all unselected units to frame 1

If the mouse is over an unselected unit, play frame 3 for that unit and leave all unselected units to frame 1

If the player presses the mouse

If the mouse is clicked outside an unselected unit, deselect all selected units

If the mose is clicked inside a unselected unit, deselect all selected units and select the new unit (during next part we’ll see how to move troops to this unit)

Here it is the script: Read more

Create a Flash Game like Nano War

Some days ago I played a bit Nano War.

It’s an interesting RTS, and pretty easy to delvelop.

In this part we’ll analyze the unit selection system.

In Nano War your units are circles, and this helps a lot because it’s very easy to determine collisions knowing radius and center.

Anyway, you can select units in these ways:

Click on an unselected unit: you select the unit

Click on an selected unit: you keep selecting the unit (good!)

Click outside an unit: you deselect all units

Click outside an unit and drag mouse: you select all units whose center is inside the shape you are drawing bby dragging the mouse. Read more

Create 3D avatars and win over $20,000 with Meez and FlashGameLicense

Let me introduce you an interesting opportunity to improve the look and feel of your games and win cash prizes: MeezInside Avatar Games Contest hosted by Meez and FlashGameLicense.

You should already know FGL for its marketplace and First Impressions services.

Meez is a social entertainment site where can create animated 3D avatars, dress up the avatars, play free games and use the avatars in virtual worlds.

You can also use created avatars as an AIM emoticon or export it into MySpace, Facebook and other sites.

I am trying the service and I have to admit the avatars you can create are very detailed.

There are lots of backgrounds, settings and assets that the only limit seems to be your creativity… and your Coinz, since some features cost Coinz, Meez’s virtual money.

This is an avatar I created almost for free, and that will be used in a game I am developing

Now, let’s talk about money…

FlashGameLicense and Meez are offering Flash games developers over $20,000 in prizes for the best games using the MeezInside Avatar API.

Oh, yes, they released an API!

Your entry is also eligible for primary licenses, ad revenue, and the other licensing options you expect from FGL!

Refer to the official page for full guidelines and let me introduce you the API.

As said in the API docs, the Meez Inside Games API offers a turnkey solution for users to bring their own custom characters effortlessly into Flash games deployed anywhere on the web. The Meez Inside Games Platform also allows developers to easily and quickly generate custom NPCs to embed in their projects, while selecting from a broad range of gameready animations.

Once you created an avatar, like mine, go to Meez Image Service and with a couple of clicks in a simple interface like this one

You will be able to generate a filmstrip with an animation such as all walking directions for a game like I did, or gestures such as laughing, waving and so on.

Also, I would like you to look at the detail of every single frame.

Now, even if you are not interested in taking part at the contest, you’ll have a beautiful animation to be used in your next game… add to it the chance to win up to $10,000 (the first prize) and you’ll definitively want to know something more about Meez.

Again, start from the MeezInside Contest Detail page and good luck!

Create a Flash game like Deflection - part 3

Multipart tutorial: available parts 1, 2, 3

In this 3rd part we are going to create a complete game with exit and two levels.

Read parts 1 and 2 if you haven’t done it already.

I’ll also fix a bug reported by Questo:

I was playing around and if you right click while making a line it sotps the ball but the ball keeps moving when you put lines on it. it’s pretty cool.

It’s not a difficult task since the game engine is already working… I just created a makelevel function that handles level creation with a switch Read more

RRODE: the second one-week game

My 10th released game is my 9th produced one.

If you wonder why Summer Couples was made a month after the game I am going to introduce now, it’s because looking for a sponsorship can take some time.

More than a month in this case.

Once I uploaded the game on FlashGameLicense I received some offers in the first week but I had to wait a month in order to get the one I think it’s the best for that kind of game.

So think twice before accepting the first offer

First of all let me introduce the sponsor: HALLPASS.

It’s one of the big names out there, so it does not need any additional information, but just let me remind you what Hallpass has and other sites do not have: challenges Read more

50 ways to make us HATE your Flash game

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…

Create a Flash game like Totem Destroyer

An interesting game released these days is Totem Destroyer

Your mission is to destroy the totems without letting the golden Idol (aka Tot) fall into the ground.

It’s a game that can be easily done with the AS3 physics engine Box2DFlashAS3, recently updated at version 2.0.1

I already talked about it in the post Playing with Box2DFlashAS3, now it’s time to make something more serious.

To make this prototype, I just changed some values in the demo script provided with the package and I made the beginning of a cute game in a few minutes.

Since it’s not a final game, I just created a level, made the ground indestructible and the other bodies destructible by pressing the mouse on them. Read more

Make a game like Lumines with Flash - part 3

Now it’s time to make bricks disappear if they group in a 2×2 square.

Read part 1 and 2 if you did not already.

It’s not difficult to check if bricks form a 2×2 square… and it’s not difficult to remove them from the stage.

The tricky part is making bricks fill the empty spaces left by disappeared bricks and managing combos (fallen bricks can make another 2×2 square, generating more falling bricks, and so on).

I preferred not to have an onEnterFrame on every brick to check if it’s over an empty space and eventually move it, so I created another array called bricks_in_field saving the depth of the brick in that position, so when I remove some bricks I just have to put in the moveable_bricks the depth found in the bricks_in_field array and the “engine” does the rest.

Here it is the actionscript: Read more

Create a Flash game like Deflection - part 2

Multipart tutorial: available parts 1, 2, 3

In the 1st part I showed you how to make a deflection engine starting from an old tutorial, now it’s time to let the player draw walls.

The idea comes from Srdjan Susnic, a reader who runs the blog Ask For Game Task.

The main task Srdjan accomplished was to add a mouse control so a player can draw lines from which the ball will bounce.

After collision between the ball and a line drawn by mouse, that line must be removed

The code is clear and well commented, but it seems to suffer a bug if the player just clicks the mouse without drawing.

It’s just a minor issue I fixed in a moment, and if you already read the original post, I just added the control if the player drew a line when he releases the mouse button with player_drew variable.

Anyway, this is the actionscript: Read more

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