Recent posts by Lucidius on Kongregate

Topic: Wartune / [Promotion] It Pays to Consume!

Got screwed by the last recharge event – was within the time frame (both personal and server time) etc; It does not surprise me they keep on screwing people. Their customer service is horrendous at best, and the ticket system should be removed entirely, since using it obviously has no effect!

Topic: Game Design / Game genres - Is there anything new under the sun?

My start with TD’s came with the original Starcraft. Around year 2000? So many good maps on there, one could glean a lot of ‘new’ game design ideas from that period, as well as from Warcraft III’s custom maps (DotA being a prime example of starting the MOBA). For like 5 years thats all I played were custom maps from those two games with friends and strangers alike…a golden age of innovative game design to be sure, with much lost to the ages (never?) to reach its true potential due to its underground nature. :D

Topic: Spiral Knights / How do you login with your Kong account using the real SK download?

I took the time to message them through their website by submitting a technical support ticket – their response was that they do not offer the service of converting a kongregate account to any other account type (the other two that I know of, being Standalone Client account type, and Steam account type). So special promotions (especially on the Steam version) we are exempt from. Sorry. Bad customer service if you ask me, especially since the Standalone Client runs much faster/better. :(

Topic: Game Programming / Very very strange problem with trigonometry (SOLVED)

Dont forget that because flash’s coordinate system is upside down on the y axis (y increases as you move down) that you switch cos and sin

vx = Math.cos(angleRads) * speed;
vy = Math.sin(angleRads) * speed;

Topic: Game Programming / What music do you like listening to while programming?

All about video game music! :D (snes and genesis era mostly, plus some notables from the few competent game music composers today, oldschool examples (i.e. almost the entire soundtracks are good) → Chrono Trigger, Tales of Phantasia, Terranigma, Final Fantasys 2/4, 5, and 3/6, 7, 8, 10, and 12, Treasure Hunter G, Live A Live, Shining Force 2, Breath of Fire 2, Radical Dreamers, Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2) Donkey Kong Country 2, Lufia 2, Bahamut Lagoon, just to name a few from the older era… in other words Yasunori Mitsuda, and Nobuo Uematsu)

‘mid’ to new era examples:
Electricity – SimCity 4 OST (HQ) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5-L8MIg5fI
Epicenter – SimCity 4 OST (HQ) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhsY0uBbgyo
Umineko no Naku Koro ni – dreamenddischarger – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vYAXZs8pFU
Nora to Toki no Koubou : Kiri no Mori no Majo – Everyday Lifestyle – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ung2q_BVXWY
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun – Lone Trooperhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wVrWXawQRI
Cladun: This is an RPG OST – Knight of a Foreign Country – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLpN1sp0hmw

some ABSOLUTE listens:
Chrono Cross OST – Chrono Cross ~ Scars of Time (Opening Theme) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-h-n43xOqg
Eschatos – Point of No Return – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNvMT4WjaOo
Final Fantasy X OST – Omen – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKM52CMl_AU
FINAL FANTASY XII OST 3-04 – Seeking Power – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptBr3orXec0
My Top 25 RPG Final Boss Themes #4- Digital Devil Saga 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oLJcVhqIdc

gotta stop myself there…barely scratched the surface! have programming to do…

Topic: Game Programming / Interest for GiTD #28? Date: Dec. 27th, 10 day jam!

Im down for anything beyond Xmas week (Dec 27th looks good for example). 10 day preferred as the dayjob gets in the way. I could swing a three day if it falls on my days off (which are quite random, usually mid-week tho) but I understand most here got weekends off so yeh

Topic: Game Programming / GiTD [#27] Entries and Discussion

What a great time to catch a cold after not being sick for a year _’’ sorry guys. I def will be voting / reviewing though. :) And finishing the game up afterward.

Topic: Game Programming / GiTD [#27] Entries and Discussion

Does anyone remember the old bonus level from Earthworm Jim 2? Where this bad guy is throwing puppies out a window from the left side, and you run back and forth with a giant marshmallow…the puppies hit the marshmallow, fly back into the air, and continue to the right towards the goal. If you miss too many puppies you get f’ed up. Was fun and hilarious lol!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVq31aqPXzU

Not the idea I am going to use, so feel free. Just remembered it this morning and thought Id share it :)

Topic: Game Programming / GiTD [#27] Entries and Discussion

I like the changes :D Will see if I can make time.

Topic: Game Programming / Simulating Liquid Graphical Effect

Once you go bitmaps you never go back ;) have fun lol the possibilities are endless

Topic: Mystic Guardians / Bugs

Same problem as Bumperz. I was unprepared for the battle and ended up blowing all my Mediums and a couple large just to win that fight..but I definitely won that fight. With that said, everything accessible killed at least 3 times and I still am at 96% for South Desert.

Topic: Game Programming / Need help making wormhole

“My wormhole will only be seen from above and will twist side to side. But, the concept is similar.”

However that is quite the impressive demo Nine. It would look pretty good I think with a flock of birds seen from top-down (i.e. ingame flock) as that tunnel is passed through (kind of passing around them “upwards”)…kind of how a wormhole would transcend ‘forward or backward’ anyways

*on a side note half my post was mysteriously deleted on-post? weird forum bug?

Topic: Game Programming / Need help making wormhole

Thanks for the oldschool TV reference! That show was epic lol….for that I will help you a little

I actually kind of wanted to do something like this for an old game that never really left the drawing board (yet, lol). Except it would be from the side, it would still look and be created in the same sense, I imagine

What you are probably going to need is a procedurally generating source bitmapData for the tunnel, and a dirty blitting system to draw that ‘downwards’ or whatever direction you wanted (i.e. rotated then drawn) with gradual deviation. Add onto that a blur filter and some cosmetic, individually moving particle effects ‘bled’ onto it and you should end up with something fairly impressive.

However it may or may not be a lot of work depending on how much you are going to use it and if you even know what I’m talking about…

Topic: Mystic Guardians / !!DEV HELP STUCK IN THE DESERT DELTA!!

use a tt to teleport out??

Topic: Game Programming / New Actionscript Compiler

wait does this mean I cant embed fonts anymore? o_O what/?!!

Topic: Game Programming / Free Music

Yeah, anyone who listens to a reasonable amount of music (esp with a good pair of headphones) should be able to EASILY tell 64kbps music from 128kbps, and 128 from 256, and especially 320(lossless). If not, go drop the 20 bucks it takes to get a half-decent pair of headphones. If youve never had a good pair of headphones, and can afford say, a $100 pair of Sennheisers – treat yourself you will be blown away by a whole world of music youve been missing. Assuming of course you actually listen to good music to begin with ;)

Personally, I would try to hover between 96kbps and 128 for flash games – for two reasons:
1.) Sound and music are generally very poor / underlooked by developers in flash games – mostly because with higher quality comes higher filesize, with an unspoken “cap” at around 10mb, but also because there are a lack of professionals in the field who know how to make a sick 30 second loop. In todays flash market – file size is a higher priority than quality sound, unfortunately.
2.) Your average flash game player, being used to the audiological environment resulting from the above conditions – is used to low-quality audio in his or her flash based gaming.

I would definitely stay away from 64kbps because even though many players will not even notice – the tearing white noise in the background DOES detract from the overall experience.

If you are done with your project (as most wait to implement sound until the end anyways, due to compile times) and have extra time AND the space and really want that extra kick to your game – spend a little extra time or money on the sound – you will be glad you did.

Topic: Game Programming / AS3; How to make bitmaps lag less

I think this calls for some speed tests. Any volunteers? :P

I’ve found a few articles, but they have conflicting results…and im lazy, lol

Topic: Game Programming / AS3; How to make bitmaps lag less

Even though that could be quite the headache – it would definitely be the fastest in the long run and, depending on your needs, may or may not be worth the effort. It really isnt that complicated, but I suspect here it isnt needed. I only use it when I have a TON of rendering to do and I need to make as many rendering optimizations as possible.

In terms of fillRect versus having an erasureBitmapData (of type BitmapData) with dimensions equal to your screen, and copyPixels() - copyPixels will be the clear winner (you will see a 50% speed gain i believe). The tradeoff is the ram usage will be increased – which is usually preferable over processing speed loss.

Though I am not 100% certain of how fillRect works – there is a part of me that asks “where do those pixels come from?” and I think its creating a new bitmapData or something in order to do it.

I take it he isnt using a worldMap that is ‘larger’ than his screen, as travel with a virtual camera over that (a camera screen sized…) would require him to redraw the whole screen to simulate the movement….

with that said…that is, the ‘ground’ or ‘world’ is not changing in that sense – what is the point of drawing onto-it in the first place? Why not use Sprite/Bitmap containers on top of it, if the world isnt going to change?

Also, Erlend – if you are making more than one change to your bitmapData per redraw/per frame - I hope you are using bitmapData.lock() and unlock() ???

Topic: Game Programming / AS3; How to make bitmaps lag less

Ahh blitting :) yeah I love blitting!

Where you only redraw what has changed is called dirty blitting, and can save you a lot of processing power.

The problem is if you are drawing the entire world once (and not drawing it again) and then drawing say, your character onto it every frame, you will see every bit of where that character was…hence the term dirty.

Since it is definitely your fillRect call, and there are few alternatives to that for ‘erasure’, you can try redrawing the portion of your tile-based world that is where your character used to be, and then drawing your character in his new position.

Topic: Game Programming / AS3/AS2 Noob Looking For Tutor

Drop AS2. Pick up AS3. Then just keep pushing through the tutorials solo. Theres a lot of good ones out there. A tutor isnt going to help you build that self-motivation that is going to be vital later on. The more you learn from teaching yourself, the better off you will be. You will end up with a sense of pride, as well as a very deep understanding of not only what your code (and others code) is doing, but an understanding of how to execute / solve a problem IN code.

Trust me after that first newbie hump (1-2 months if you push yourself) the confusion fades and you will find yourself hooked to learning more on your own. The best way to learn IMO

Topic: Game Programming / Folders vs No Folders

Personally I love using folders to organize the classes I create into categories. But I tend to create at least 5-10 new framework classes every project…so I like to be able to find a class quickly in case I am able to reuse a class I’ve written, which I find myself doing more and more often thereby cutting development time significantly (at least by 30% at this point, yet I could see it cutting dev time by around 50% when it is complete, if ever lol)

In other words, having 50+ classes ive created in a single folder called “framework” just wasnt cutting it when it would take awhile to find a specific class (for example FloatingTextObject.as, MiniMapTileBasedBMD.as, IconScoreBoard.as, BlitToBleed.as)

so now they reside in specific folders
FloatingTextObject.as → framework.screenfeedback
MiniMapTileBased.as → framework.playerhud
IconScoreBoard.as → framework.playerhud
BlitToBleedBMD.as → framework.effects

Topic: Game Programming / GiTD [#26] Voting

1. Curious Gaming
2. Truefire

Reviews:
NOT in order of highest ranking:

RTL_Shadow – I had to Evolve
3/5
very smooth graphics and controls, however the placeholders left it lacking, and though the concept of the world evolving along with you was novel – it was not enough to dispell the generic increasingly-difficult platformer schema

Solsund – Unnatural Selection
3/5
A very good idea, but I was hoping for more. This is the type of game where small simple animations and polish would go a long way – just something to keep the player interested

Darkscanner – Nightmare Evolution (original fullscreen link)
2/5
A good ambience and nice dark take – the game was too buggy and unfinished to ‘flesh’ these concepts out

truefire – Freedom SECOND VOTE
4/5
After going through and playing it again with more conviction – this time beating it 16/18. I came to appreciate the very careful level design. Not for the faint of heart, a fun game. I think I lost 2-3 hours to this game no joke.

MossyStump – Essence (requires FP 11.3+)
3/5
Nice art, smooth simple shooter. Like others have said didnt really feel the ‘evolution’ going on other than the aesthetic plant.

Abigayl – Snake Evolution
4/5
Pretty good game. Fun, hectic, simple. Probably took some skill to program, as well. Got boring real fast though, and I was expecting more of a twist.

Halysia – Spore Coral
/
could not play, the site is broken?

LennonLenford – Baby Quest
1/5
lol is all I can say. Nice tune though!

CuriousGaming – Farm and Grow FIRST VOTE
5/5
This game took away 2 hours of my life without mercy and I have no remorse. Very thought out, very good feel, and quite playable. Fun, simple, with layers of intricacy, alternative ‘paths’ to succes, and left me with a sense of accomplishment. Great job!

Topic: Game Programming / GiTD [#26] Entries and Discussion

I think im screwed. Been working 2 hours here 2 hours there mainly on my framework (things that need to get done for ANY game I publish in the future), but rather on Thursday my day off, I had gotten REALLY hammered the night before and was too hung over to think rationally lol. It was a productive night to be sure ;), but yesterday was a total waste. Today I will try to crank out a demo in 8 hrs. Wish me luck. They say that any skilled programmer should be able to create a decent asteroids clone from scratch in that amount of time… ;D There are no other major tasks that stand in the way, other than some phone calls ;) I’ve got the gdd done and the entire framework shell (states, title, logo, options, etc) done and just need to code up the game core classes lol

Topic: Game Programming / Unofficial Kongregate Contest - Win a Developer Mug! (Developers Only) X-POST

Lol. They asked for one game. I posted eight :D would have been nine but it got cut off. Thanks for the heads up UG!

Topic: Kongregate / Unofficial Kongregate Contest - Win a Developer Mug! (Developers Only)

A very tough call so I’ll break it down by genre in a half-hearted fashion:

CASUAL
Dolphin Olympics 2
One of the first games I played on this site, and still one of the best. This game defines casual, yet has tons of potential for those hardcore, skill-loving gamers like me. Reaching the end of the universe in under 2 minutes was one of the hardest badges I ever endeavored to achieve, and took me about a week outside of work and school if I remember correctly. Simple, responsive controls, fluid blit graphics, and unassuming gameplay and plot make this my favorite casual game.

PLATFORMER
This is a tie between two games:
Diamond Hollow 2 One of the most refined and varied platformers on the site. Controls are clean, smooth and responsive, graphics are great, amazing soundtrack – the multiple modes of play really make this game stand out as well. Finally the upgrades and points system adds massive replayability.

Dino Run
Another refined platformer with a run-for-your-life twist. Tons of replayability, simple yet fun graphics. Tons of things and secrets to unlock. One of the first games I played on kong and def a permanent favorite.

STRATEGY
Creeper World Training Sim
A ridiculously good indie rts, this game totally blew me away after having grown up playing games such as Command and Conquer and Civilization. Amazing, relentless new concept of an enemy in games, and the story was good too. Kept me busy for hours and hours.

ACTION
Elona Shooter
A defense game that totally blew me away. Not too many defense games are this difficult yet possible to beat with skill and time. The bonuses from the many, hard to get achievements added huge replayability. The randomness in drops and mobs and events- reflected the brutal random things that could happen to you in Elona RPG, the indie roguelike game this game was inspired by (highly recommend it). The diversity in weapons and their handling made this game very fun and heavily player-skill based, rather than so much merit-based games we see today.

Momentum Missile Mayhem 3
An innovative and amazing physics based top down action strategy game, the third installment completely blew me away with its alternating 4 modes of play during the story line (as well as sandbox should you desire). The control you have and the diversity of the projectiles is fun as all hell, and the other modes demand different types of skills of the player. An amazing game, and an amazing developer (I’ve played all his games and they are all good and refined)

Orbital Decay
An amazing shooter defense strategy game that blew me away in my earlier days here on Kong. The different types of weapons etc that you can build anywhere on the ship, combined with the customizability of each, with the main cannon make this game very fun. It is also very difficult on hard, but the compelling storyline makes it all worth it (I am a hardcore sci fi buff lol). I highly recommend this old title – I still come back to it every once in a while.

RPG

Mardek RPG Chapter 3
There isnt much to cover here other than what many here have already stated – this is an amazing pixel-art rpg much like the old final fantasy jrpgs (pre 7) that are only recently making it to the US (in diluted and perverted forms, but I digress). There is tons of content here and a compelling and humourous storyline. An amazing developer by far – going solo on everything is no easy task, especially for an RPG of this magnitude. Excellent skill-development system much like those seen in many console rpgs today, and an excellent execution of elemental balance system with a unique take on player-characters having their own elements. Great game