Recent posts by pixelate on Kongregate

Topic: Kongregate / Updated Games

We just implemented a new feature in Mr. Bounce that was requested by a lot of players: If you complete a world, the next world will be unlocked in the title screen, so you don’t need to play through all levels again.

Topic: Kongregate / Recent Kongregate Updates

I have the same loading problem as Joel – Understanding Games only shows the preloader and then does nothing after loading is complete. I don’t use multiple files but AS3 and a Factory Pattern preloader.

Topic: Programming / Can a game be written using FLEX?

Yes, the Flex SDK works fine for developing games. Here’s a good tutorial to get started: http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3wit…

Topic: Programming / Flash Development Process

If you don’t actually need the Flash Authoring Tool (for timeline animation etc) you could use the free Adobe Flex SDK and embed all your assets via code. Then if you setup a subversion repository, your artist could just commit the new version of the assets and the next time you update and compile they would be in your swf.

Embedding your assets via code in AS3 looks something like this:

public class GameCharacter extends Sprite
{
    [Embed(source='assets/character.png')] private const CharacterAsset: Class;

    private var m_bitmap: Bitmap;

    public function GameCharacter(void)
    {
        this.m_bitmap = new CharacterAsset();
        this.addChild(this.m_bitmap);
    }    
}

Topic: Programming / Kongregate Loading Wrapper

Hey guys–

I am trying to build a wrapper in AS3 that allows me to dynamically load and unload both AS2 and AS3-based swfs for my website. You seem to have a pretty good system for that at Kongregate and I wonder if you would share some coding tricks on how to make sure that every uploaded swf just works.

I’ve tried the following approach but it does not work with the Understanding Games swfs since they use a factory pattern preloader.

var mLoader:Loader = new Loader();
var mRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("mygame.swf”);
mLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onCompleteHandler);
mLoader.load(mRequest);

private function onCompleteHandler(loadEvent:Event)
{
   addChild(loadEvent.currentTarget.content);
}

I am thankful for any hint.

Topic: Programming / Flash IDE?

There is a commercial Eclipse Plug-in called FDT – we use it at the internet company I am currently working for. It is very powerful and has a number of nifty features that will make your development make a lot easier (Full Code Completion, Live Error Highlighting, Quick Source Navigation …)

For personal projects I work on my MacBook and use TextMate together with an ActionScript3 Bundle, XCode and the Adobe Free Flex SDK

Topic: Kongregate / Kongregate is full of Game-Hating Whiners.

I did suggest this before, so once again: Add a comment guideline note above the comment form. It should ask the user to give feedback in a constructive, reflective and polite way. I really think Kongregate should encourage people to a more positive and valuable culture of commenting on games.

Topic: Kongregate / Kongregate Premium Games

Hi Chris, thanks for posting the submission guidelines – interesting read.

Could you give on overview of what the community/multiplayer API will be capable off?

Will it be possible to use the multiplayer API for games with a high “actions-per-frame” ratio or will it be more suitable for turn-based games?

Will you provide any tools or tutorials how to test a multiplayer game and how to keep it in sync?

Will it be possible to save and share game data (e.g. for a user generated levels) on your servers through the API?

Sorry if my questions are maybe a bit too technical for this thread – but I think a good understanding of your APIs is necessary to come up with good game ideas/prototypes that fit your Community-Centric focus.

Thanks, Andreas

Topic: Kongregate / PAX Photos!

Nice. Thanks for uploading the photos!

Topic: Kongregate / Welcome Back Kongregate Staff and those who attended PAX

Has anyone made some photos at the PAX Kongregate booth and would like to upload to Flickr or somewhere else?

Topic: Programming / ATTENTION FLASH GAME PROGRAMMERS! Interesting opportunity! $$

Mh … I wonder why you are thinking that programming a fully playable Double Dragon style game is a simple, easy, quick and painless task to do. Looks more like the exact opposite for me.

Topic: Kongregate / Calm Down.

jmtb: This was one of the best forum posts I have read in a long while here and I could not agree more.

Leave comments that address the Flash or the author in a constructive way. I have seen so many “this game sucks” comments, with little reason as to why it sucks.

For me, this is one of the greatest problems of Kongregate right now. In the beginning of Kongregate getting feedback from the players was incredibly valuable (even if harsh sometimes) for developers. Now every second comment is something like “Your game sucks/rocks” without any whatsoever hint why.

So here’s a suggestion/feature request for Kongregate: Put a very short disclaimer/how-to-comment guide above the comment form that states something like: “Try to be constructive in your feedback. If you don’t like the game, say why. If you do like the game, also do.” Then at least people would know what kind of feedback is appreciated within the community.

Topic: Kongregate / The Gamerkc Newsletter

I agree, RSS for the Gamerkc Newsletter would be very nice.

Topic: Kongregate / Updated Games

I uploaded a new version of Understanding Games based on comments from Kongregate users and various blogs comments. Thanks a lot for your feedback!

Episode 3

– If you score more than 100.000 points then Bub won’t say “That was not quite easy, was it?” anymore

– Fixed a bug where pressing the space key while Bob is solving the puzzle could unintentionally stop or fast-forward the episode

Episode 4

– The player AI won’t get stuck next to a tree anymore

– Bub will now notice if the game ends in a draw

All Episodes

– Added custom context menu

Topic: Kongregate / Kongregate cards

I am wondering why the artwork for the cards is apparently designed for 16-year-old male hardcore gamers. Any ideas?

Topic: Games / Recommended readings for Understanding Games

Understanding Games is a diploma thesis project I did at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, Germany in communications design. The game design theory behind the four episodes is based on various books I’ve read during my research. If you are interested to read more about these topics I highly recommend you the following books.

I am also thinking about a way to somehow integrate these recommended readings into the episodes, so if you have an idea how to do this, please let me know.

Chen, Jenova: Flow in Games. http://jenovachen.com/flowingames/thesis.htm

Costikyan, Greg: I Have No Words & I Must Design. http://www.costik.com/nowords.html

Crawford, Chris: The Art of Computer Game Design. http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-b…

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York : HarperCollins.

Gee, James Paul: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York : Palgrave Macmillan.

Gingold, Chaim: Miniature Gardens & Magic Crayons: Games, Spaces & Worlds. Georgia : Institute of Technology.

Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludes: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston : Beacon Press.

Johnson, Steven: Everything Bad Is Good for You. London : Penguin Books.

Juul, Jesper: Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press.

Koster, Ralph: A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Scottsdale, Arizona : Paraglyph Press.

Linderoth, Jonas: Animated game pieces. Avatars as roles, tools and props. Aesthetics of Play Conference. University of Bergen. http://www.aestheticsofplay.org/linderoth.php

McCloud, Scott: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York : Harper Perennial.

Salen, Katie; Zimmerman, Eric: Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press.

Salen, Katie; Zimmerman, Eric: The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press.

Topic: Programming / Music Equalizer

Imp2 asked how I made the little equalizer in the Understanding Games series. The script for it is based on an example by flash coder Andre Michelle. Make sure to check out the others examples too, since they are pretty awesome.

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/soundspectrum

Topic: Kongregate / Updated Games

Hi! I uploaded a new version of Understanding Games: Episode 1 including the following new features:

• in-game music
• mute button
• language selection english/german
• new title screen
• preloader

Topic: Kongregate / Suggestions

I think there should be some link showing recently updated/improved games.

My suggestion for this is that one of the Kongregate guys (Greg?) opens a official and sticky thread called “Updated games” in the forums. Anyone who updated his or her game can post a short note about the new features or fixed bugs. This would work fine until Kongregate implements a more “ambitious” solution for this issue. It would be easy to use it via the RSS-Feed, too.

Topic: Programming / Flash Player Performance

Mh… I have an 1.33ghz Powerbook and it runs in 14fps – before and after the fullscreen switch.

Topic: Programming / Flash Player Performance

Indy, thanks for the Metanet Link. Seems very interesting!

Another question to the forums: Has anyone used an approach yet drawing all (bitmap) graphics manually to a fullscreen bitmap every frame, instead of using a lot of attached movieclips or sprites?

Topic: Programming / Flash Player Performance

I’d like to start a thread about the performance issues of the flash player (especially in a browser) which in my point of view every flash game developer will have complained about at some point. So my question is: What are your strategies to speed up the framerate of your flash games?

To start off here’s a nice blog article about display programming optimizing in ActionScript.

Topic: Kongregate / Unfinished Games

Friends are suppose to be sincere to you and all that. They can do the tester job nicelly.

I asked a lot of friends to beta test the first episode of Understanding Games before uploading it to Kongregate. While their feedback was extremly helpful, friends tend to give feedback in a very polite way (which is what you expect from them after all), but this politeness can make you overlook major problems. The first comments I got for Episode 1 were rather harsh, so I was very surprised when people where so annoyed by the slow pace of the game. (After working on the series for 6 months, I became blind to such “details”.) Of course for a developer, this is some of the most important feedback. So having some “non-friends” to test your game seems to be very important.

Topic: Kongregate / New minigames contest

Yeah, I like the idea. The minigame format could encourage developers to experiment with some new gameplay ideas. Within such a fixed limited format, originality becomes more important and comparable. It would be nice if there would be some kind of Kongregate-styled “wrapping” holding everything together, like the cut-scenes in Wario Ware did. Also people should be able to play several minigames consecutively without having to navigate through the site in between.

.

Topic: Programming / Processing 1.0: The "Underground Flash"?

Processing can be pretty helpful, if you want to learn some programming basics from a designer perspective. Its powerful graphical functions and good examples help you to see what you are actually coding. It has a huge user community and is especially popular in design schools. However the editor is a little bit clumsy and makes it difficult to use Processing for bigger projects.