Recent posts by Aghannor on Kongregate

Topic: General Gaming / Pyro imp badge really is impossible for the poor

For the record, I didn’t mean that the badge is literally impossible. I’m just frustrated that someone with a faster PC has a much easier time at this because he can cut the time of some levels in half by virtue of his computer.

Topic: General Gaming / Pyro imp badge really is impossible for the poor

My computer is as laggy as it gets. The wood does not burn “faster.” It may be possible to get under 160 even with the horrible coding—I’m still working on a few legitimate levels—but my time on level 25 is not for lack of “trying harder.” There is at most one second that I could cut off my time—but the wood is the very first thing I hit, and then I just sit there waiting for it to burn through. I’m definitely not wasting six seconds by being inefficient.

Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean I should have to spend twice as much time working on it as compared to people with fast computers.

Topic: General Gaming / Pyro imp badge really is impossible for the poor

Or, at least, those of us without the newest, fastest computers.

It seems that those of us without fast computers have slower-burning wood, and thus have pretty much no chance of getting under 160 seconds. It seemed odd when someone claimed to have a best time of 4.47 seconds for level 38. Level 38, where even if I hit the wood optimally and don’t try to light the other torches, it takes the wood at least 8 seconds to burn through. Same person had a best time of 8.9 for level 35, and 6.5 on level 25. All of these levels, my (and other’s) best times, even when my shot was near perfect, was almost double. I checked, and the wood just takes that long to burn, even if it’s the first thing I hit.

Foul play? Or lousy game? Personally, this is my new least favorite badge. Even worse than meat boy map pack, and that’s saying something.

Topic: General Gaming / Meat Boy Map Pack Impossible badge

Whoops, I forgot I disabled hotlinking on my site. If you just copy and paste the url into your browser window (instead of clicking the link), it should work. You have to make a similar jump again further up in the level.

Topic: General Gaming / Meat Boy Map Pack Impossible badge

Tass, to get past the blades in I1 you have to jump off a point on the crumbling block where the maximum height your jump reaches is just below the blades. See this map image:
http://aghannor.com/meatboysucks.jpg

I didn’t include the rest of the map, but it’s pretty easy beyond the marked points.

Topic: General Gaming / Ways to make Frantic easier.

I use the same general strategies people are suggesting here: money upgrade, attack boost, rapid boost, missile drones. I don’t buy the missile drones until the very end, though—I maximize my attack power and speed first. I fill the empty slot with a gambler card—gives me a chance of getting better upgrades earlier.

Don’t upgrade attack power and rapid power each time—you get practically nothing for selling back a card, so it’s more efficient to upgrade in increments of 20 rather than 10. Generally, I buy the +10 attack boost, then the +20 rapid fire boost, then the +30 attack boost, etc.

Also, around stage 9 or 10 I get rid of the money boost and pick up the Weapon Enhancer.

I don’t bother with the adrenaline boost—I don’t need to use shields so frequently during a stage, and after the first couple of stages it’s not hard to have enough stored up to use a shield during the boss fight. I haven’t found substantial benefits from using the super laser against the boss instead of a normal shield—either way you’re not getting hit, and the damage seems to be more or less equivalent.

The only boss who can be substantially problematic is the stage 5 boss—unless you’re really good at maneuvering his maze of bullets, it can be a real hassle. If you’ve upgraded effectively enough, you may be able to get around it—hang around at the bottom of the screen for as long as you can, then activate shield/super laser when the bullet maze comes close. If you time it right, and you upgraded well, you may be able to kill him off without having to pass through a bullet maze at all. All the other bosses are pretty straightforward once you recognize the significantly smaller hitbox.

Also, remember that you do NOT take damage from “colliding” with an enemy ship—you only have to dodge bullets. This made the individual levels way, way easier for me.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / Dirty, Stinky, Evil Downvoters

@Kali: I know, I recognize that it will cause massive vote dilution because of the people who will hand out 5s or 1s without even playing the games, but at least it will dilute the friends/alts vote, and you’re bound to get some percentage of players who will bother to actually play the game before voting. The only alternative I can think of is to require people to have been registered for X days in order to vote on contest entries, but then you can’t really use the contest to try to attract new people to the site.

@Cervello: Yeah, the problem is smaller with the weekly/monthly prizes since those games get much more attention, and downvotes or upvotes from the author or his friends/family/alts are too heavily diluted by legitimate votes to actually matter.

Also, the lower rating for badge games, although in part a result of people being “forced” to play games they otherwise would not be interested in (because of genre, style, etc.), also has to do with the badge sometimes. There are some games that are actually quite fun at first, but the badge is so ridiculous and annoying (especially true of endurance badges that require you to do the same thing for hours without any real added challenge) that I hate the game because of the badge, not the game itself.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / Dirty, Stinky, Evil Downvoters

Yeah, I was giving games the ratings I believed they objectively deserved (so games that were riddled with bugs and showed no effort whatsoever received one star, games that worked but really added nothing to the shootorials received two stars, and some of the more innovative games received three or four stars), but after seeing that worthless stickman game take 3rd place yesterday I started giving five stars to the games were clearly being lowballed and deserved to be competing for the top spot.

For future contests, if Kongregate wants to get more legitimate votes from it’s user, it should create a card challenge after the contest deadline whose requirements are to rate X contest submissions. Clicking the challenge link will randomly select a contest entry for you to play. Everyone will play to complete the challenge, and the random game selection ensures that all games should have a representative rating. Sure, some people will rate randomly or give all games a 5 or 1 just to get their card, but you’ll still have a decent group that actually plays and rates. At the very least, it should dilute the friends/family/alt votes.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / I don't get it...

No, no game for me. I had a lot of the engine developed, and then my artist totally flaked out and did absolutely nothing after promising me sketches for a couple of weeks. I probably could have made something workable, but I’m too much of a perfectionist, and I was counting on someone else with actual graphical talent to help out. Besides, I have a 50-page paper and a 15-page paper to work on, not to mention a 200-plus-page journal that I’m responsible for formatting and editing, so I stopped working on the engine.

Look for something from me next semester, when my writing requirements are fulfilled and the girlfriend is studying abroad in Europe. I’ll have more free time than I know what to do with.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / I don't get it...

It’s useless and demoralising to have new developers’ games thrown out and shot down by people expecting games of the quality of experienced developers.

But this isn’t the issue. No one is complaining because their amateur game got three stars and not five. People are complaining because they aren’t being rated as well as other games within the contest. It’s a question of “I think my game is better than so-and-so’s game, so why are people rating his higher than mine?”

Of course, this applies to games outside the Scion contest too. Just about every game that gets badges has a four-star rating, and yet the large majority of them quickly fill up with comments from people fed up with lousy gameplay or other bugs. So how do all these lousy games get such high ratings? Who knows.

I will pay you for every good idea you can give me.

Most great games are great because of their gameplay and execution, not because of a particularly novel idea. Most of the games I loved—and more so the games I loved back in the day when graphics were not the standard by which a game was measured—were fun to play, regardless of whether the idea was unique and novel. The only type of game where creativity and novelty really seems to make an impact is an RPG or other story-based game.

Obviously, if it’s a great idea and it’s unplayable then that needs to be taken into account quite heavily, but games that have a lot of potential but are marred by a single issue can be thrown out without proper consideration.

I think you’re exaggerating the problem. If the single issue is a large issue—which means it has a large impact on the player; how many lines of code you have to change doesn’t really matter—then players won’t want to play it. I mean, if it’s such an obvious, trivial thing, then you as a developer will notice it when you test the game. Play your own game for more than 30 seconds and you’ll probably run into the large majority of playability issues that will drive people away.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / I don't get it...

Kali: I respectfully disagree. This isn’t a game concept contest, it’s a flash game development contest. One of the criterion is that the submissions be made by new developers, true, but that just governs the level of design that will be submitted, not how the games should be judged. Anyone can come up with a cool idea for a game. Executing it is just as important, if not more important.

Your great ideas are important to make your game stand out, but if you can’t get past the fundamentals of playability, no one will stick around long enough to see the great ideas. I don’t know why we should sacrifice those standards. The game that is best made and best designed is the one that is playable AND original or different or unique, not just the one that’s a great idea but didn’t get implemented very well.

For example:

Cervello: Although Lumina is heaps more complicated and more interesting than Shoot+ Vector Storm, the controls make it practically unplayable. Since there are waves of enemies coming at you, you need to be able to shoot rapidly; unfortunately, I can’t shoot rapidly, because holding down space charges my weapon, and sometimes even if I press space and release it to avoid charging, the game doesn’t capture the key release and starts charging anyway. This by itself makes Shoot+ Vector Storm more playable and more fun.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / I don't get it...

truefire: I’m just saying that voting fairly doesn’t necessarily mean voting on who learned the most or who had the most complicated programming. I’m sure there are some subset of votes that are family/friends, but the people in this thread seem to think that the vast majority of votes they’re getting are unfair and biased, and I’m just saying there are a lot of reasons why someone might play for a few seconds and decide the game is trash and move on. Little playability issues make a big difference.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / I don't get it...

The thing is, a game contest should be judged based on how fun the game is, not how much the new developer learned or how complex the programming is. Unfortunately, if your programming is super complex and never-before-seen and your game is just plain not fun, you won’t (and shouldn’t) win.

If I start a game and the graphics immediately look like they were drawn by an 8-year-old in paint, I probably won’t give it more than a few seconds of attention. If there is some horribly annoying feature (like having to sit through a minute-long intro every time I restart the game), I won’t play it more than once. If I die without apparently having been shot by anything, I’m not going to play again and again to figure out what it is that’s causing me damage. If the controls are super awkward and can’t be changed, I won’t play for very long. If I can’t even figure out the controls in under 5 seconds, I’m playing something else. These are all game design issues that are more important than upgrades and features and bosses and all the other snazzy things that make an already-good game even better.

I haven’t played all of your games, so I can’t say specifically what the problem is with all of them, but if any of you want me to give some first-impression feedback on your playability and tell you why I think you’re not doing so well, I’m willing to help out.

Topic: Game Programming / Applying blur filters in actionscript 3?

I had a similar problem trying to apply a gradient glow filter. The surefire solution is to put your filters in a temporary array, and then set filters equal to that array. It doesn’t seem like you can set the actual filters directly into the filters variable.

So:

var myFilters:Array = new Array();
var filter:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter(...);
myFilters.push(filter);
bosses.filters = myFilters;

This definitely works. I feel like you should be able to take out the intermediate step that uses myFilters, but I haven’t gotten it to work without that.

Topic: Game Programming / Hit detection on irregular shapes. Argh!

hitTestPoint only lets you test against a point. while the third parameter (shapeFlag) does let you specify to check the pixels of the testing object rather than the bounding box, you can only test an object against a point, not an object against an object.

Topic: Game Programming / Learnig AS 3; so confusing!

As Phantasmagoria said, x and y aren’t random abstractions, they’re properties of the MovieClip class and any classes derived from it. In fact, AS3 is more similar to .NET and C# than you realize. When you set x = x + 5, you’re actually setting the property x of the current class. x = x + 5 is actually equivalent to this.x = this.x + 5. Flash is just smart enough to infer that x without any further qualification must be referring to this.×.

This will probably be a ton of help to you: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/
I know I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without it.

Topic: Game Programming / Learnig AS 3; so confusing!

You need to have some code that actually calls the init function. init() is not automatically run when the player object is created.

If you intended your init() function to be a constructor, or something that is automatically called when a player object is initialized, then replace this:

		private function init():void

with this:

		public function player():void

This defines the player() function to be the constructor of the player class; and thus whenever a player is created, that function is automatically called, and the event listener is added.

Topic: Game Programming / Hit detection on irregular shapes. Argh!

Sweet! I wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but I was really hoping it would since I’m going to need something similar in the future =] Glad I could help!

Topic: Game Programming / Learnig AS 3; so confusing!

ef’s fix should make your code work.

You might consider writing some kind of handler class for keyboard events that stores all keys currently being pressed in an array for easy access. Any functionality where the game should respond continuously while the key is being pressed (like movement or firing) could then be performed easily by checking the array of pressed keys for that keystroke. See the Key.as file in the AS3 version of the Shootorials.

You’ll still need to use keyboard event listeners for some things. For example, a pause button should only be activated once when the key is pressed, and not continuously while the key is being held down. But many other functions are easily implemented with the solution in the previous paragraph.

Topic: Game Programming / Complex bullet patterns

Are you using AS2 of AS3? This is really easy to do with AS3, and I can show you an example of a Weapon class that I wrote for handling multiple bullets fired in different directions. I’m not sure how exactly you’d do it in AS2, since I’m less familiar with the syntax and am not sure how their class constructors work.

Topic: Game Programming / Hit detection on irregular shapes. Argh!

I tried replacing the png based clip with a series of shapes drawn in Flash which approximate the actual shape of the enemy, and it still uses a bounding box instead of the actual flash drawn shapes.

I think that even if the larger object is composed of smaller shapes, the bounding box used for hittest is still the smallest box that encompasses the entire movieclip. What you might consider trying (I don’t know if this would actually work, but in theory it seems like it should):

Make each smaller shape that comprises the enemy its own movieclip. Now make your big enemy movieclip from the smaller enemy part movie clips. Then, for your hittest, instead of checking

if (hitTest(enemyClip))

if (hitTest(enemyClip.enemyPart1) || hitTest(enemyClip.enemyPart2) …)

This should ideally only check the bounding boxes of the individual components, rather than the larger, overly broad bounding box, and should give you a larger area to work with than key points without being entirely inefficient by requiring hundreds of checks.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / Problem with Classes

What handler should you put what in? If you’re creating a timer class like Moonlaugh suggested (personally, I wouldn’t do this unless you create a class to control the game clock more generally), then that timer class should be a separate class. If you’re referring to my advice to execute the attachMovie code outside of your Droid1 class… well, that has to go in a separate class. Within that separate class, you want the droid to be loaded periodically, so you probably should be checking onEnterFrame. If you only do it onLoad, your code executes the first time the object is loaded and never again.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / AS3 SharedObject Problem

Yeah, more or less what I’d guessed. Try checking if(!mySharedObject) instead of if(mySharedObject.size==0). If I’m right, then if the saveGame01 file doesn’t exist, then mySharedObject should point to null after the first line of code, and if(!mySharedObject) should evaluate to true (since mySharedObject itself is null and, therefore, false).

Topic: Kongregate Labs / AS3 SharedObject Problem

Haven’t done much with Shared Objects yet, but it could be that if saveGame01 doesn’t exist, then trying to open it with getLocal will return null; if that’s the case, mySharedObject.size is not 0 because it doesn’t actually exist if mySharedObject is null.

Try to trace mySharedObject.size and see what value it returns. I’m willing to bet it’s null instead of 0.

Topic: Kongregate Labs / Bring variable to other file.

It’s worth explaining the difference between dahnraelz’s and MoonlaughMaster’s answer.

If you define the variable as a static variable, then the variable is part of the class and not the instance. So for example, if you have a static variable named size in your ship class, then the entire class Ship has the size variable; so if you make 15 different ships, they necessarily have the same size.

If you don’t define the variable as a static variable, then the variable is part of the instance. So if you have a nonstatic variable named size, then the size variable doesn’t exist until you actually create a Ship object; and then it belongs to that particular Ship object. So you could make 10 different ships and give each of them a different size.

For what you’re probably trying to do, I wouldn’t use static variables.

Also, quick note on what MoonlaughMaster said about copying the prefixes:

If you use _root.ship.size, you will always get the right size value from the ship. If you set shipSize = _root.ship.size, and then the size of the ship changes within the ship class itself, shipSize won’t automatically be updated. If you just need to read the value from the Ship object or write the value to the Ship object, use _root.ship.size. If you need to modify the size variable for your calculations, but don’t want to change the actual ship’s size, THEN you should store _root.ship.size in some local variable.