Recent posts by axcho on Kongregate

Topic: Collaborations / Requiring a fairly decent actionscripter

I don’t really have the time to take on extra projects, but people might be more interested if you had some descriptions of the game.

Topic: Music / Interactive glitch music

Anyone here like glitch music? (or IDM, I think it’s called?)

It’s something I’ve discovered while looking for free game music on the Newgrounds Audio Portal. Here are a few songs I particularly like:

Schismatic Rambunctoids by glttch

My Own Blood On My Own Fists by modem

Turnbit by dj-padman1

CordWainer by SineRider

I’ve thought it would be great to use for a game, since most of the “glitch” in the glitch music I’ve heard comes from skipping different sound clips and tracks, and you can do that with ActionScript.

You can try my first experiment with the idea, a game I submitted here a couple days ago. It’s a dodging game but when you move your ship left, the music skips backward, and when you move right it skips forward.

Ship speed powerups also affect the amount that the music skips, and each track in the game is a different music track (lead, drums, pad) so you can choose which instrument to glitch by activating its track.

Play _dRive here

Any ideas for how to improve on the interactive glitch music idea? Someone has already posted some good ideas here.

Topic: Kongregate / Updated Games

I’ve just updated my game _dRive

Now you can still collect points and powerups while in flashing invincibility after losing a life. The annoying ship flashing has also been removed from the tutorial.

Topic: Kongregate / Rating system changed? Or bug?

I wish I had uploaded my game just a day later to take advantage of this new feature. :(

But I’m glad to see this important change implemented. Still… :(

Topic: Collaborations / Musician looking for project

I’ve been listening to your demo – sounds good. I like collaborations a lot – right now I’m working with a composer (SineRider) on an entry to the latest game contest at JIG. Hopefully you’ll be able to try that one out in a couple weeks. :)

You can check out some of my previous work here and maybe see my Newgrounds profile for an idea of the sort of music I like there. Though the techno music found on Newgrounds makes up only a very small part of my musical tastes. :) It’s great that you do so many different sorts – I really like jazz (Coltrane!), movie soundtrack stuff, various folk and classical styles from around the world.

So I think it would be really cool to talk with you more about what you’re looking for. Do you have any specific sort of project in mind? I’ll go ahead and send you an email, so we can talk more if you want to. Thanks!

Topic: Collaborations / Skilled programmer looking for partner(s)

Greg-Anims is looking for a talented coder to work with. Maybe you should talk to him.

I’d actually like to collaborate with him myself but I thought I’d let you know too, since I might not have time this month.

Topic: Programming / making fighting game AI

Thanks for the advice Bramicus! I’ll try that.

Topic: Programming / making fighting game AI

Well, good luck!

Topic: Collaborations / Need some ideas and maybe an artist

That sounds like a really cool game concept – I didn’t actually play it but I read the feedback you linked to. I hope your tutorial helps, and good luck getting the new graphics! :)

Topic: Programming / making fighting game AI

AI is hard to make. I’d also be interested in hearing how other people approach the problem of making a fighting game AI.

I kind of doubt that the few fighting game developers out there will happen across this thread, so I’ll share with you some of my own thoughts. But keep in mind that I’ve never made a fighting game like that before.

I’d imagine that the easiest approach would be to come up with some rules or strategies for playing, based on your own observation in playing the game. You might come up with if-then rules for when to perform certain actions, like “If my opponent is x distance away, and they’ve recently made a kick which I’ve parried, than do a hit.” You could add some randomness, by offering several choices with different probabilities.

To make the AI better or weaker, you might include a reaction time factor, where the bots won’t react right away but have a chance of waiting a little bit. Adjusting this amount could be useful in tuning difficulty.

How you do the AI depends a lot on the specific game mechanics you’re using. A button-mashing fest will require different (simpler) AI than a fighting game where timing and rhythm are notable aspects of the gameplay, for example.

Does any of that help? Does anyone with actual experience want to share their techniques?

Topic: Kongregate / Updated Games

Braids NEON now with statistics.

The original Braids is also on Kongregate now, with statistics.

Topic: Art / Spring Rain

My Emily. Not Kongregate’s Emily. Check the about page and you will see their last names are not the same! :p

By uninteresting do you mean unvaried? I’ll be trying to figure out how to make them look more natural.

I don’t think I could make the leaves fall off, but I could make it so you can tap them or blow them around with wind or something.

Topic: Art / Spring Rain

Yeah, those are the main issues I notice. I wanted the leaves to look different, more irregularly shaped so they would seem to be at an angle, but I couldn’t figure out a good ragdoll structure for the leaves that would allow that.

The texture is also a big thing I wanted to fix, but it’s pretty hard to do that with just the AS drawing commands. It might be possible to fill them with a bitmap image instead of just a solid color, though that might slow it down too much. Another approach might be arranging pre-drawn movie clips of different leaf parts.

I think for the future I’ll try making plants with a bunch of little leaves of different shades, to make it seem more varied. It would also help if raindrops stayed on the leaves and gave them texture that way. I was thinking of doing that but it ended up being too complicated. Someday, though.

I appreciate the feedback, thanks.

Topic: Art / Spring Rain

Hi everyone, I just made a little Flash piece that’s not a game or an animation, but something different. I can’t post it on Kongregate since it’s not really a game, but I thought I’d link to it here so you can take a look.

Environment Sketch 01 – Spring Rain

It’s just a little scene that you can observe, like looking through a window into a world. It’s all created by code, so it’s different every time, and you can change the scene whenever you want.

It uses the exact same sort of physics as my ragdoll game. :) I might even make it into a game sometime, what do you think?

Topic: Art / Wizky, Elb, Zach and JudeMav's Drawings!

This thread is fantastic. Keep it up, guys. :D

Makes me think of this website idea for a drawing wiki. Don’t you think something like that would be cool?

Topic: Collaborations / Seeking games to sponsor

So if I understand correctly, your site is not a game portal site, but you would like to sponsor a game linking to your site? Okay.

I think you could probably get something for $200 if you ask around enough. I don’t currently have any $200 game ideas at the moment – all the games I’m currently trying to make would be more expensive. :) But I’ll let you know if I think of anything.

Hmmm. Do you want to explain more about your site and how a sponsorship fits into your plans? Maybe knowing more about your specific needs could help inspire a simple game.

Topic: Collaborations / Wanted: Volunteer Flash developer

Five hours? Sounds interesting.

Do we need to know how to access MySQL and do security? Because I wouldn’t expect many people to already know how to do that.

Topic: Kongregate / Holiday Header (Art Contest)

I like gimp4life’s yeti a lot, for some reason. I now crave a game or story featuring that character and color scheme.

I also really like Cauterized’s. Makes me think of skiing on a sunny day.

Sinner’s and DarkChameleon’s appeal to me as well.

Good luck all.

Topic: Art / My StarCraft Art

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Yep, it’s happy. :)

I don’t yet have a zealot, but I think the Protoss would look really cool in this style. I’ll be sure to post a link on the forums here if I do make one.

Topic: Art / Kongreland

Cool, I like the style. This should be made into a game eventually. :)

Topic: Art / My StarCraft Art

Here’s something you might enjoy if you’re a fan of StarCraft.

It’s a hydralisk. Full description on deviantART: Haida-lisk Incubation

I’ve been learning how to draw in the Pacific Northwest Coast Native American style, mostly from books and sketching things from museums, and this is my first finished piece.

If you like StarCraft, you might also want to check out my origami instructions for making a hydralisk. :)

Topic: Kongregate / Updated Games

Braids NEON updated.

Now it works with the Kongregate High Scores API. :)

And now the menus actually work the way you’d expect them to. :p

• - added ropes to title screen
• - improved tutorial instructions
• - perfect mouse out detection
• - added back button to menus
• - increased spotlight speed

Topic: Kongregate / Kongregate's Premium Games Announced

This is really exciting! Congratulations to all who were chosen – the games sound like they’ll be really cool. I can see all of them being as or more popular than DTD, so I’m not worried about any people getting “ripped off” by this arrangement. In fact, I am aspiring to make a Premium Game in the future, so I am eager to see this succeed. :)

Looking at the concept art and screen shots so far, I have one suggestion to make about Remnants of Skystone. I really like the idea of having three character types, kind of playing on archetypal elements like rock-paper-scissors, and I’d like to see them more strongly differentiated. I like the idea of having separate, complete cultures for each one, though it’s looking as if they might all coexist in one town with minimal differentiation between them. But I’d suggest that even so, it would be more appealing to give them strongly different looks and feel (in addition to their gameplay differences) maybe along the same lines as the character types in Dofus or World of Warcraft (think about colors, clothing, textures, silhouettes, movements). I would love this game so much more if it succeeded in doing that.

Topic: Programming / Making Money From Your Game

For anyone who’s really serious about learning how to make money with games, I’d recommend watching this presentation on Indie Marketing

Admittedly, I have not made any money with games yet, but I’ve just finished watching that presentation and found it very insightful. Hopefully I will be able to successfully apply those lessons in the future. :)

The talk is aimed at independent developers making downloadable games, but the basic principles transfer to Flash games pretty well. If anything, it’s easier in the Flash scene, since we can directly link to our own sites from our games, and we don’t have to worry about whether people actually buy the full version after playing. But of course, most Flash portals take 100% of the revenue, which is not so great. Except Kongregate, of course, which is more like a normal portal. :)

Topic: Kongregate / HAPPY BIRFDAY GREG

Only 24?! What? I thought you were old, like Jim and Emily…

How can someone named “Greg” be less than thirty? I just don’t know what to think anymore… :p