Recent posts by MCOBigBen on Kongregate

Topic: Collaborations / GameSyde Productions Development Team

There certainly are flash dev teams that big. They’re the ones who aren’t depending on ad revenue, and pay their people a salary while they working.

If you’re asking for folks to work for 5% of some “wishing really hard” future revenue, then what you’re really asking for are volunteers, not employees.

Topic: Collaborations / Music offered

Hey all,

I’ve recently gotten back into writting and recording music after discovering a fabulous iOS based digital audio workstation (Nanostudio may be the best $15 I’ve ever spent).

Feel free to check out my SoundCloud page for examples of stuff I’m working on.

http://soundcloud.com/mcobigben

If something strikes you, and you’d like to use it in your game, let me know. (I may politely decline if your game stinks or you can’t communicate like a grownup, just to make sure we set expectations ahead of time).

If you have a specific style request, let me know as well. Trying something new is a great incentive for me to be creative.

Here’s the track that made me think of game collaboration to begin with. I wrote it, sat back and listened, and thought “what on earth could I do with soemthing this light and goofy?”.

Menu music was the only thing that came to mind. :D

http://soundcloud.com/mcobigben/swank1

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 Collision Detection shootorial clone help

I I didn’t figure out what caused this, but I found a workaround. I took a previous version of the game, and simply copied the clips from the broken version, and pasted them into the old version, and they work fine.

Same clips, same code, just a different flash file.

Oh well, the only difference between versions were the new enemy ships, and now that I’ve re-added them, I’m just about done!

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 Collision Detection shootorial clone help

Is there some Flash setting I could have toggled that make movie clips ‘transparent’, or immune to hit tests?

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 Collision Detection shootorial clone help

It’s tough to remember, as it was half a year ago… :P

If I recall I was trying to get a menu screen to appear, and was then messing about with the Arrange= Move forward/Move back function.

Collision detection isn’t commented out. Here’s where the enemy is put into the array

				if(enemyTimer > enemyTimerGoal)
				{
					enemyTimer = 0;
					var enemy = _root.attachMovie("EnemyShip", "EnemyShip" + _root.getNextHighestDepth(), _root.getNextHighestDepth());
					enemies.push(enemy);
					
				}

and here’s it’s hit test:

		if(this.hitTest(_root.ship) )
		{
			explode();
			_root.ship.updateHealth(-20);
			_root.soundFX.attachSound("ouch.mp3");
			if (_global.sounds == "on")
			{
				_root.soundFX.start();	
			}
		}

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 Collision Detection shootorial clone help

I was working on a shootorial clone with multiple enemy types that was working great about 6 months ago. Sadly, I did something that borked collision detection, and walked away from it.

My kids have been bugging me about it (it’s made exclusively from kid art), and so I’d really like to get it working again before I move on to learning AS3.

The strange thing is that all collision detection stopped at the same time: player bullets vs enemy ships, enemy bullets vs player ship, and enemy ship vs player ship collisions. I’m using hitTest.

Can someone point to where I should start looking to troubleshoot this? It’s not throwing any errors.

Topic: Kongregate / Free to play games with "an optional advantage for Real Money." Do We Want This?

If you checked my profile and played my one game, you’d know I wasn’t a flash developer. :P

I think there’s a basic tenant of capitalism that you simply don’t have faith in: An added cost (especially added to a base line of “free”) must add value before anyone will pay it. If a person paid it, it’s safe to assume that person saw value in it.

Your concern seems to be that money will prompt developers to make games of no value. The will of the people punishes that pretty severely. No amount of editorializing will have anywhere near the punitive effect of “everybody who played your game got bored and went to the next big thing instead of giving you money”.

Your other concern (That if paid games become the norm you won’t have as many free alternatives) also has some powerful motivating factors at play. The desire to build something fun that other folks will enjoy isn’t going away anytime soon that I can see. Personally, I think that the increased availability of tutorials and helpful communities is accelerating the growth of free flash games. it’s easier to learn how to make and distribute a free flash game now than it ever has been. I’d bet lunch that if you saw a graph showing the # of free flash games created per quarter, it would still be going up to this day. Revenue games aren’t suppressing free games any more than the White Stripes suppress garage bands.

Topic: Kongregate / Free to play games with "an optional advantage for Real Money." Do We Want This?

While I understand some of what you’re saying Frog, I’m afraid it’s all a moot point. Games that demonstrate your dreaded “just pump crap out to make money” mentality will fall to the side and not be successful, simply because there are so many great free alternatives.

Games that succeed in making money even with the competition of so many high quality free alternatives must be doing something to differentiate themselves, as hundreds/thousands of people independently decide to pay for them.

I view it as a self-fixing problem.

PS. I used to have a day job that I hated, and I immersed myself in the gaming industry at night. I decided it would be better to do the thing I liked during the day, too, and made the changes I needed (at no slight risk) to land a paying gig doing something I enjoy. Did I really make a morally reprehensible choice in your eyes?

Topic: Kongregate / Met With Kong Staff / FGS / T-shirt / Pics

Thanks for giving me a freakin’ heart attack. I read the first post and thought I missed the summit.

Topic: Kongregate / The new "Games Spotlight" under "Recommended Games"

Originally posted by ElBandito81:

don’t take away from the people who work hard on these games.

I get a chuckle out of dividing this between those who work hard on games and those who (the implication is) don’t.

Don’t sponsored games give indie developers the very opportunity and reimbursement that you think they deserve?

Topic: Kongregate / Ethical boundries

I’m late to the party, but this subject is near and dear to my heart, so Imma let me finish.

The purpose of a filter is not (typically) to make swearing impossible. As several folks have said, they’re not effective at preventing profane speech.

A filter sets a guideline as to the behavior desired. It is very good at that job. If a player types a word and finds that the word is filtered, they immediately know something about the behavior expected of them. If they bypass the filter, the site owner immediately knows something about the user too, as defeating a filter shows intent.

I think this:

Originally posted by thegorillaman:

Censors are enemies of mankind and should be burned alive. That’s real ethics for grownups.

Is a bit on the silly side too. If your grandmother doesn’t want you to swear in her house, and shushes you when you try, is she being evil? No, it’s her house, and her standards are her business. If your grandmother has a web site, she does not lose the right to set a behavior standard.

Topic: Kongregate / Developer Suggestions

Here’s a list of all the developers with the skills and time to make games, but no ideas about what to make:

.
.
.
.

:P

(Sorry to be flippant, the entire gaming industry is overstuffed with ideas, and starved for resources to put those ideas into action. There’s no shortage of good ideas, just people and resources)

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 All my menus are visible at once?

Is it possible to “missalign” clips on a single layer? My ship no longer interacts with anything else on the page. I had been removing the ship and adding it to different layers to troubleshoot the ‘all menus showing’ problem. I think I tried re-adding the ship to the four different layers that I currently have, but it’s still not interacting/colliding.

Any suggestions for how I should troubleshoot this?

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 All my menus are visible at once?

I’m really confused. I found a line I’d forgot to comment out:

var kongregate = _global.kongregate;

Removing it makes the game play fine. Where am I supposed to declare the kongregate variable? I don’t understand why that pooched the game.

But now in my attempt at trying different solutions, I think I’ve moved the ship to a different layer or some such. There’s no collision detection across the board now.

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 All my menus are visible at once?

I hadn’t been messing with instance names. I checked them all to be sure, and they’re correct. The ship loads with the frame, and I can see it on the screen

This is driving me nuts, I was playing it 20 minutes ago. I was trying to add the Kong API, and make the gameOverMenu be in front of everything else. I’ve tried commenting out all the Kong API related code, but no dice.

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 All my menus are visible at once?

I’m dog tired, and probably didn’t have any business trying to work on my game, but I was close to being able to publish another version, and…

I have no idea what I did, but suddenly all my menus load at once.

This is a Shootorial clone, and I have the in the ship.as’s onload function:

 
		_root.gameOverMenu._visible = false;
		_root.pauseScreen._visible = false;
		_root.nuke._visible= false;

and yet they’re all clearly visible.

The last thing I did was try to use arrange → Bring To Front on the gameOverMenu. Moving it back doesn’t seem to help.

Topic: Game Programming / First game's ratings - come share yours! :)

My first game:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/MCOBigBen/ship-blasters

Started with a 2.38, but after 4 updates it’s up to 2.93

I’m kinda cheating though, as my kids did 100% of the art and sound, and folks feel bad about down rating kid art. :P

Topic: Game Programming / [AS2] Making a circle of bullets

That’s awesome. Perfect, thank you!

Topic: Game Programming / [AS2] Making a circle of bullets

Following the tutorial, I ended up with the motion of the bullets controlled in the bullet’s .as file. This meant when I wanted bullets to go in different directions than just straight forward, I made a new missile class that described it’s motion.

Now I want to make a “mine” ship, that will spray bullets in the 8 primary directions…but my current tactics would require me to make 8 different bullet classes…and that can’t be right.

What’s the common way to do this?

Here’s the beta of the game it’s going in to:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/MCOBigBen/ship-blasters

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 making the screen shake

Yes indeed, that was my problem. Instead of removing the powerup from the frame, I make it invisible, and my nuking effect starts.

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 making the screen shake

Ahh, the Powerup is removed from the stage right when nuke() is called. Since nuke() is in the Powerup.as file, does that mean that any running functions are removed at the same time?

I’m guessing the solution is to have it turn invisible when the powerup is picked up instead of removing it?’

(I’d test the trace, but I’m on a different computer at the moment)

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 making the screen shake

OK, this is driving me batty. When nuke() is called, the screen rotates 3 degrees, but the var nuking doesn’t become “true”. What am I doing wrong here?

	function nuke()
	{

		nuking = true;
		nukingTime = 10;
		_root._rotation = 3;

		
	}

Topic: Game Programming / Need Help With Shootorial 6!

As a general rule, use < pre > and </ pre > tags to set off code in your post, it’ll make it much easier for folks to review the code and help troubleshoot.

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 making the screen shake

Oh, it rotates just fine. It just doesn’t return to centered, it doesn’t osculate back and forth, and it only rotates once (picking up a nuke again doesn’t trigger it). I’m sure if I grind away at it, I’ll figure it out. If someone wants to point my problems out for me, that’s always cool too… :P

	function onEnterFrame() //this is the Power up clip
	{
	         if(nuking == true)

		{
			nukeEffect();
		}

(then later)

			if (type == 2) //If the powerup is a nuke, then..er...nuke!
			{
				nuke();
				for (var i in _root.ship.enemies)
				{
					_root.ship.enemies[i].explode();
					

				}
			}

(nuke and nukeEffect functions)

	function nuke()
	{

		nuking = true;
		nukingTime = 10;
		_root._rotation = 3;

		
	}
	
	function nukeEffect()
	{
		_root._rotation *=-1;
		nukingTime -=1;
		trace("nukingTime : " +nukingTime);
	
		
		if (nukingTime <1)
		{
			nuking = false;
			_root._rotation = 0;
			nukingTime = 0;
			
		}
	}

Topic: Game Programming / AS2 making the screen shake

Oh don’t worry, AS3 is my next stop. I promised myself I wouldn’t “shovelware” my first project though, so I want to polish it until I can show it to people without feeling embarrassed.

Hilariously, you can rotate _root. In fact, all I did was add _root to the _rotate I already had, and I got whole screen rotation (with everything rotating together. It doesn’t oscillate like I wanted (I’m doing a ‘rotate back and forth’ shake rather than moving sideways and up and down), but that’s just standard bug hunting, I should be able to figure it out.

Thanks a bunch!