Flash attempt

Flixel is a small library for flash games.
Using FlashDevelop+Mappy and following Basic Tutorial i was able to write this simple example of platformer.. with a little ninja jumping around.
Simple amazing how is simple to do this little game!






What do you think of this example?

Controllers feels right ? Some suggestions (no graphics or sound related, only movements)?

Slick Beer Contest - last week!

I wrote about Slick Beer Contest, right?
So this is last week for development.. you can do a great game in a week! Keep in mind! :D I'm very happy on what i've seen for now on slick forum.

Keep programming guys!

Quest systems

Reading this i realize that there are so much way to improve existings type of quest system in games.
Soldak do a great job with Depths of Peril, building a new type of game. A mix between a hack&slack, a rpg and a city-simulator: if you can read italian, can found on Maschera Riposta a exaustive review.
By the way, the problem is: how we can build news, randomized games, with deep storyline and decent quest system?
Here some ideas about quest:

- always important: never simply go to kill a cow. Keep the mood of the game is the first point. If player is a hero and want to become THE hero, must be do something that no-one (no one!) could do, start from beginning,
- never without consequenses: killing a guild-master or a goblin.. always a consequences; one immediatly (XP, kill a threat), one mid-term (affect relationship with victim faction and relations/equilibrium between factions), one long term (change story end, or some key-quest-element of the story). Killing is an example: all the quest must be done without killing. Let player decide what he want to do, and let him/her pay for it!
- always help player: no vague descriptions, no some "random text". Help player, if he wants to be helped! Map, minimap, descriptions, clear and shot term (for example: quest system in warcraft3). But let player immerse into game world without force him/her to read everything! If player quit from the game for some time, help him to enter in zero-time into game again!
- always see the progress: quest progression can't be something static.. If player decide to complete a quest, something else cannot be done. Use this against player. Let him/here decide, use the graph and some key-quest to determinate what player gonna be done into future. Show to player when he fail and when he win: player put his/her time into game, you must feel him this!
- random: use randomness to keep attention to player. Random not-important npc, monsters. Keep some key element fixed, but change. Diablo docet! Use random into quest creation (and into subquest step) and reward system, level creation (see the beautiful Spelunky) and so on,

and into end: let be the quest fun! Player wants fun, always fun, every player into world!

ActionsScript3 + flashdevelop

Finally found nice tutorial, see here:

http://evolutionlive.blogspot.com/2009/10/where-to-start-with-as3-flashdevelop.html

Money from software

What do you think about make money with software?
I see this intersting postabout sell software.. but not only!
Selling source code, documentation, new levels, services and so on.
It's intersting.. but you need reasonable low price, for example 2€ for 20 new levels? Or 5€ for a new mode?

It's possibile to build something aroud this concept?

Tonypa platformer

Past months i've worked on a little platformer with Java and Slick, following Tonypa tutorial.

You can try this example by Java Webstart, simply click on image (need Java installed on your system to run):

Webstart:

Windows:

Finally i've something to show, i need feedback, in particular:

- how do you feel movements? are right for you? If not, why?
- how does it work on your system? is slow or fast? what os/cpu/graphic card do you have?
- is jump too high or too slow for you?
- any suggestions


Remember: this is only a "tech demo" of a future platformer, you can find discussion on slick forum, with link to source code and much more!

Save games

Reading this article about how to save games on VectorStorm, i've written a long comment, that i rewrite here:

Hi!
I’m following your progress and your problem with save game is quite intersting.
Implementing reflections in c++ can be really difficult, maybe you can try to find a sort fo XStream (made for java) in c++?
But my comment is about how to mantain this kind of incremental and not-incremental informations.
IMHO is a big problem, and for me a solution can be to save into an archive (zip or whatever you want) not ONE big file, but many files: one for configurations, one for player status, one for world status, one for statistics and so on..
So changes can be managed more easly and, when you move into new version, identify with more detail what do you change or not.
Now, i don’t know your system (i’m a Java programmer), but i think that using Singleton,Factory, Business Delegate patterns on loading/saving this kind of information can help you a lot to keep control on your save/load subsystem. In particular maybe using not binary file but text file in one format (xml,csv, etc..) can help you into debug phase.
Image to move from 1.0 to 1.1: if some of your users have some problems with save file, you can say “please send me your save file”. If this file is human-readable, you can compare with many programs with your “skeleton” or “example save file” and find problem not on skeleton but into values.

What do you think?

What do you think? How to solve this problem?