December 2010
6 posts
10 tags
SnowFare: Green Guy Call Outs
I added death call outs to the green guys as they die. I came up with mostly movie quotes, I posted some examples here. In addition I tweaked some functionality. When hovering over a guy, you can now select the base to drag around your character. This was annoying when moving/firing quickly, sometimes you would think you would have your character selected, and he/she wouldn’t move....
10 tags
Green Guy SpriteSheet: Alternate Dying Sequence
Here is what I worked on tonight, the Green Guy had two different death sequences, so I made a new one where he spins and breathes his last. I should really convert these into PNGs sometime. Be sure to check out my website to play the game in HD!
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SnowFare: Minor Tweaks
Minor things that were bothering me: Snowball shadows were way off. This has been fixed. Hovering over the health section will turn transparent so you can see what’s going on. Only active (ie: outside the snowfort) characters will have their health displayed. I cannot tell you how annoying it was to get the health displaying properly, including when you removed characters one-by-one...
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SnowFare: Introducing the SnowFort, and new Health...
This is the playable version of the last two posts. In addition, I have disabled the bomb throws from the greens, and removed regenerates, it just was too frustrating to have to replay basically the same formula. No more health updates either, once a green guy hits the snow, thats it, hes gone. Be sure to check out SnowFare.com to play this game as it was meant to be played, in beautiful HD! ...
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Introducing the SnowFort [SCREENSHOT]!
Developed the SnowFort, which made sense since you simply cannot track three characters simultaneously, I can’t anyway. So right now, the SnowFort blocks every shot, but I’ll most definitely create a health counter for it as well, just to make you get out there. Also notice that you cannot attack from behind the fort, it just wouldn’t be fair for the green guys. Have a look at...
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Updated Health System
I am updating the health system, that still needs further tweaking. It was too hard to follow percentages as health, and determining the difference between the characters via tiny icons was not user-friendly. I’ve updated it to look like the screenshot below, which is the traditional heart system, each hit taking a quarter of the heart. Last thing I’m going to add is that only those...
November 2010
3 posts
5 tags
Health Update: Red Team Icons!
Alright, I added mini icons and moved the health to the corner, you can see which character icon corresponds to whom.
6 tags
New Characters...meet the Red Team!
I’ve updated the code to include the two new additions to the team, so far this is just an update to include them. In addition to this, I added a health meter, although this will change eventually. I guess see how difficult it is, the idea is that you have a few lives per character and you only have a set few for the entire game. Don’t forget to check www.snowfare.com to play the game...
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Meet the Red Team [IMG]
Okay guys, I’ve finally got around to creating the Red Team. I haven’t named them yet, and I have to think about what separate abilities to give each one. I’ll be implementing them with the new Health Class that I finally got around to making, and I have decided that its too difficult to track 3 guys simulataneously, so I will set the game so that you only control one player at a...
October 2010
1 post
3 tags
New site! I've created a site to play in a larger...
I’ve created a separte page so that you can play this game in comfortable HD. Well, 900x500 screen, plenty of playing room. Right now I’m working on developing adding health to finally make this a *game*. Check it out at www.snowfare.com!
September 2010
1 post
11 tags
WatchSnowfare Level 8: Bomb explosions look more realistic!
Added better looking bomb explosions using TimelineFX. It just didn’t look right for a snowball to suddenly explode, so now green guys throw bombs. Also I managed to get smoke trails going, but I tested with 40 guys and the efficiency went down. I’ll work on that next time.
August 2010
3 posts
9 tags
WatchLevel 8 (Part 1.8) Jump Dodges and Attacks
I got around to animating and creating the jump attack and dodge. It looks fairly smooth, but I’m not so sure otherwise. I also allowed green guys to refresh their abilities to dodge after a while, so kill them fast!
COMING UP: On-ground dodging, and improving animations for the bomb throws. I also want to introduce blitting for all character...
6 tags
WatchLevel 8 (Part 1.5) Explosions baby, explosions
So after getting a copy of Pete Rigby’s TimeLineFX, I started to have a little fun with the particle generator. Then after exporting some explosions, I realized that I should be blitting my animations to ease the animation/drawing process, and in turn improve performance. Took quite a while to convert most of this via Blitting methods, and it...
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July 2010
2 posts
8 tags
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June 2010
7 posts
1 tag
5 tags
9 tags
WatchSnowfare Level 8 (Part 1): Three-way throws, smarter detection, ball catching and attacking all reds!
New things: There’s 3 directions that a green guy can throw, he is way more accurate whenever there’s danger (both when red guy is loaded and when a ball is already mid-air), he can catch balls every so often, and I use Grid-Collision Checking.
Okay, efficiency took preference here...
3 tags
The Beautiful World Cup Calendar
I agree with you 100%, this is the single greatest sporting event of all time.
peterwknox:
Beautiful World Cup Calendar - check it out
Dear girlfriend, friends, and others:
The World Cup is about to start. This Friday in fact. Starting this Friday, for exactly a month, there is international tournament style soccer happening several times a day, every day.
Imagine if the entire world cared...
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Life Before The Internet & Google
I’d have to agree. Information was scarce back then.
pbh3:
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May 2010
11 posts
2 tags
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WatchSnowfare Level 7: Regenerations, block shots, stone skipping, and some smarter AI
Alright I got around to updating level 7, I feel like I optimize this game more and more, and I have yet to do anything spectacular.
Anyways, some things to notice, I included a regeneration effect, so that green guys can go back to full health. Also they have stronger snowballs, just watch them destroy red balls....
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WatchSnowfare level 6 has been updated! Watch out for deceased green guys!
Hi everyone, I’ve been working away and I’ve finally completed level 6, currently working on level 7. You can see if this was using my original framework (and you can test it out several posts ago here) the gameplay would come to a halting lag. So right now it runs very smoothly, there are quite a few calculations...
11 tags
WatchSnowfare updated Level 5 with a focus on performance!
This entire process, including previous levels took a while to code, and with that last piece of the pie it looks like the performance has surged, even with 50 enemies. Anyways take a look, but I’m sure you’ve seen this before. Ok, onto level SIX!
April 2010
12 posts
2 tags
Happy 30th Birthday, Post-it Notes!
austinkleon:
Happy 30th birthday, Post-it notes
The Guardian talks to Geoff Nicholson, the guy at 3M who pushed Post-it notes:
One final burning question: why canary yellow? “There just happened to be some yellow scrap paper in the lab. Creativity and inspiration are when you see an accident and recognise its value.”
Filed under: Post-it notes.
3 tags
Speed up AS3 Efficiency with one tiny little idea!
I got this from Michael James Williams, I’m almost embarassed to mention this but, having any sort of Math.function call, especially Math.sqrt in my case, is extremely hazardous to your application. I simply applied his method. Its a bit of a face palm.
For determining distance, which is heavily used for collision detection, one traditionally finds the differences in x and y, and then...
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There's A Little Calvin In Every Child
all-thats-interesting:
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An Amazing Ride for Tweetie
atebits:
Once upon a time I wanted a better Twitter app for my iPhone, so I wrote one. My goal was to make something simple, beautiful, and intuitive. It’s been a wild ride since 1.0, and over the last year and a half Tweetie has gone from a no-name app from a little known software company to an app hailed as one of the best mobile experiences around. It’s been featured in TIME and Wired, won...
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More AS3 efficiency tips!
Upon working on my game I noticed a few more things that really ruined the overall efficiency, primarily new objects being created still (footprints, snowballs) and my mousemove function which was collecting large integers for no reason. Here are a few tips that I noticed that benefitted me.
At the start I store an array containing a maximum of 150 footprints, that seemed to the be optimal...
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WatchFINALLY level 1 complete, 50 guys and quite smooth and efficient!
Alright so I was finally able to really cut down on memory leaks and now this runs fairly smoothly for 50 characters. This is about as many enemies as I’ll put on a single level, frankly 50+ enemies sounds ridiculous. I fixed the mouse listening lag, although it wasn’t even that, I had some ridiculous functions that...
March 2010
9 posts
10 tags
Back to basics! A significant increase in speed...
So after about two weeks of basically restarting this whole process, and optimizing and making my code more efficient, I came to realize that this was probably a dumb idea. What I should have done in reality is worked on adding to the game, but I became increasingly annoyed when I had about 30 enemies and you could noticeable tell there was a significant lag. And the worst is, its still not...
10 tags
Watch50 Level 1 Enemies with a much more efficient AS3 Engine!
UPDATE: Since this is loaded on a page with about 3-4 other flash versions, the gameplay could be really slow, so open this page on its own, and I’ll work on an appropriate “Play Game” screen. Also I don’t take any responsibility for the inefficiency for my other versions.
This is my revamp of level 1, with...
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WatchThis isn’t so much an update, but more like a…downdate.
I went a little overboard with AS3 Timers. I was working on more level 6 fixes when I came across a massive lag issue, turns out when I have about 30 guys, it starts to slow down (try it, have them follow you around and start moving your red guy a lot) and the smoothness is gone. I wouldn’t complain so much, because 30 guys...
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WatchYes, even MORE Snowfare level 6 updates and fixes - and 20 enemies to fend off!
Still going with the changes, I found so many errors with organization. I think I’ve managed to work it out, and I have it running pretty smoothly, I included 20 enemies for you to attack, and it doesn’t seem laggy.
COMING UP: Level 7 in progress, have guys completely resurrect, as well as dodge whilst on...