Nearly done

Mostly everything is done but just can't run the game without errors and the hub, dunno what to do at the moment I've tried everything. So I shall see.The code is completyl restructured now, I have close to 30 classes which is insane, all doing different bits for the game, highscore, particle manager etc.

Doc

I've been making all the mockup screens from documentation. What the game would look like on various platforms etc and also using facebook. Still having problems with the code, no light at the end of the tunnel yet, individually they work great.

Nearing the end

I'm nearing the end but I'm having a lot of complications putting the levels together. They work well individually but I've created a hub from which 11 levels can be played but its not playing ball! So that's really frustrating me at the moment. I've made all the graphics I think now, and I need to crack on with my documentation.

Code again

I'm nearing the end ofthe code I think, I'm coding the screens now, welcome screen etc from where the user will select to play or view high scores. Its going to be a basic game but the work gone into the code to make it work has been extensive.

3D Done

I've finished my 3D model and I'm really quite pleased considering a few weeks ago i had no idea about 3D work. It's quite basic i admit but it fits the drawn designs I made and is basically what I wanted. I've given him a shiny plastic look like EVE from Wall.e and coloured him accordingly. I've also continued qith my code

Back to the game

I've been creating a few extra assets this week, things like planets, stars etc for the game. I've also been carrying on with the code restructuring which is taking a considerable amount of time but it is shaping up now. I've also been working on my 3D model.

3D

I've returned to my 3D again to see if I have better luck with that than I do code. It's coming along and I now have a body...

Classes

I hate AS3!!! I've been redoing my code and restructuring it, I've created folders but I might have bitten off more than I can chew, I'm needing more and more classes for what will be a very basic game...

More 3D less code

I've dropped the code for a bit, it was getting me down (why did I pick flash over unreal again?). Here is a snapshot of what I've been doing..

3D

I've started some 3D creation this week, I've opened zBrush and its very...confusing. I've been having a play and hopefully I'll get something going soon

Big Decision!

I've decided to completly restructure my code. The way I have it at the moment is really amatuerish and incorresctly structured. To make my life easier and to hopefully aid a leaderboard creation I'm going to completly re do it. Because I have been making as I've been learning the code is all over the place. I'm going to now split it all up into classes :/

No Custom Music :(

I've officially given up on having custom music, its just not working out and I'm running out of time. I'm also having problems with a leaderboard, this is completly new territory to me with xml etc, so i'll see how I go I really need this or else the game is going to be way too basic.

Own Music

I’ve had another look at been able to play your own songs in flash. It does appear possible with the introduction with flash player 10 I think it was, although the code for me anyway is very complicated and whether I can get it working with the code for my game etc is a big question, I’d really like to give it a go though as it will really boost my game I think. I’ll keep returning to this in the hope I can write something that will work in my game.

I've also been working on my documentation which has taken up most of my time this week.

Stars

I’ve been having a go at creating a star field to give the game some life and depth. I started making some in Photoshop like the planets creating one that looks realistic is quite easy. I thought to myself I want something a bit more fun and maybe to replace the extra sense of motion and 3D space I had with the trail effect so I turned (with a sense of due diligence) to flash and my friend AS3. What I’ve got now is some stars that move about the screen according to mouse position. It’s simple but I think effective, effective enough that I’m having it across the in game screen and menu screens to give it a space feel. I’m also creating a planet version that will move a slower pace according to perspective. It works well but again I’m pushing it with performance, it is a little laggy when operating in conjunction with my particle menu.

Add Music

One of the important aspects that I would like to get in my game is the ability to add and play your own music from your computer. This I knew would be very complicated and James said to me that it would probably not be possible for security reasons. I’ve had a look into it and it is very difficult I believe but I’ll return to it as it’s something that would really give the game long life. I would also like to be able to play songs that are located on the net; I think this will be a much easier option. I have already prototyped it by entering a website I knew contained an mp3 and it worked perfectly so all I have to do is add code so that the player types this code in themselves probably using an input box.

Menus

I’ve been at the high score table and menu graphics this week, It’s going ok rather simple at the moment, it would have all been pointless if I hadn’t have worked out my problem I’d been having. I managed to work out a way round it today, it might not be the most exquisite piece of programming but I’m hoping it will do the trick, it’s a bit of problem solving I can add to my repertoire anyway. I’ve also been working on some menu graphics for my menus. My original idea was to have just a menu in space, but it looks rather simple, like I can’t be bothered so I have decided to create the look of been inside a space station looking out into space. I want it very minimalist. I tried to go for the look of the station in Space 2001, and the apple look of shiny, glossy white plastic. I love this look but it’s hard to recreate well for me anyway. I thought my early tries were going well but I hated them more and more, I think I am closer now though. Like a lot of my work in the client brief we working on it’s been time consuming Photoshop work but I’ve quite enjoyed doing it, it’s been a real rest bite from malfunctioning code. I’m sure someone more skilled than me could make a much better job but I think they are getting there.I've also created my own nebula/ map.

Game Elements and Power Up

I’ve had another bash at my power up code today and tweaked it, to make it more arcady and implemented it finally into my game. I’ve got some nice arcade pop ups etc to make it more fun, I haven’t addressed yet the main problem of making levels different. James suggested that in my last tutorial that I use flash’s capability to get the bpm of a song and use that information to spawn characters on screen. I wasn’t sure this was possible, as in my previous attempts few months ago, when I was experimenting with different approaches I had to use several different software packages to achieve this. I had use adobe audition to get the actual bmp in numerical values then import that into flash. He suggested that it was the book I have been learning from but I cannot locate it. Using the bmp approach would be good as I think I stated in a post before but having to use other software apart from flash would mean it wouldn’t work with people playing their own songs.

Game Elements

My main unresolved problem at the moment is having levels be affected drastically enough by music to make one song/level be different enough from each other. At the moment they are too similar, which I don’t mind too much, it’s more about fun and playing songs you want to play and beating friend’s scores, who share a passion for the same song but I get the feeling that, that isn’t good enough for an FMP. It’s something that I really don’t have a concrete solution to. I can fill each level jam full of different score affecting solutions, such as my power up thing, but to make one level very different to another level based just on music is tough, very tough and is something that’s constantly on my mind.

Trail Effect

I’ve been experimenting with a sort of trail effect. I wanted something to give the character that extra feel of movement around the screen. The effect I’m using the pixels from a picture and blurs them to nothing with a host of variables you can change. I created some really nice effects, again lost in pictures, just looks like a blur, but in motion they look really nice. The effect is the trail seems to bleed into the black background, which is in effect is what is happening; the black background is a pixel sprite in itself. As always this worked great in my prototypes but did not go well in project, I really don’t think it is feasible, a particle system is resource intensive, music to particles is 100 x more intensive, and this trail effect is also very intensive with the lot of them together the slowdown was affecting game play. For this reason I doubt I’ll include it but maybe find an alternative, it’s given me ideas for future projects if AS3 doesn’t drive me to suicide.

Menu System

I’ve worked on my menu screen this week, well the menu part anyway. It doesn’t go anywhere yet, but the majority of it is working. It’s a little dodgy on the labels for the buttons they shake from side to side, a little bit like me when I’m working with AS3! Each button is basically made up of small particles (particles again!) that line up in the shape of rectangles, then when you hover over them they dissipate and float in mid air like they are in space, then when you remove your mouse they reform in order to create the button. It’s a really nice look and I think it really ties in well with the space theme. With my menu been in space the effect should work well, especially coupled with my nebula.

Nebula

I’ve changed my focus a little and I have been working on visuals for the game. I’ve quite enjoyed working on this aspect this week, it’s been refreshing to write code that works and get something that looks pleasing in return. I’ve been changing the colour values RGB according to music of pictures. I chose a particularly colourful nebula to practice with and I’ve been trying out different music. You can’t really appreciate it properly in the pictures, I’ve provided links to some working, which may or may not still be there, and they are only there temporarily to show other people. I sent them to fellow students they seem to have been well received both for the visuals and choice of music, which is encouraging. They are almost mood visualizations of the song, the nice chilled out musical ones are smooth transitions between colours with nice blues and reds coming in, where as a song like aerodynamic could give you an epileptic fit. I’m thinking of using these on them menus, perhaps for the map screen, where you select song/levels or main menu screen.

Planets

I’ve created some planets to go in the game, they are ok I think. It’s hard to get the right look of them though. I’d like a really cool, fun looking cartoon style, preferably like Little Big Planet, but I’m not an artist. It’s actually quite easy to make a realistic looking planet with Photoshop but to make a cartoon one that doesn’t look just look like a circle chucked in is surprisingly hard. I’ve gone from cartoon to a glossy look and back again.

Particle Experimentation

Been tinkering with my particles, I can’t decide on a looks, or size, or amount of them. I really can change most aspects of them with some changes in the code, as they are drawn using the graphics API, I think it might be a case of too much choice. Too big and they fill the screen too little and they are hard to see, James suggested that my 1000 x 800 screen size is too big, so I’ve scaled it down to 800 x 600, making everything very cramped. I believe that my particles fire off too much, I have them on a timer, the faster the timer fires, the more often the sound data gets captured, the more accurately the particles match the music. That’s great but from a game point of view there a crazy number of particles to collect let alone the potential slow down. So I’m wondering if to set them off at fewer intervals but at the same time keep to the music, it’s a tough balance to keep.

Code code code

No luck so far with my coding problem, so it beats me again. Forums; my savours with my last big problem are coming up negative, I must hold the record for the post most viewed with 0 replies, I think on one forum I was up to 30+ views/ 0 replies after a few hours, I look like going bumping later or I’m on my own. Failing miserably at that I thought I’d prototype a different control system I thought might work, rather than “been” the mouse, I’ll try having the character travel to the mouse. I really like this method; it’s not instant like the old system but more reactive and fluidic than key presses. I’m quite pleased with this system and for once one of my prototypes has implemented into my main project file seamlessly, a first I think (it’ll definitely snow now). I’ve made it so the character face the mouse so appears to be floating/flying around in space and your mouse (icon hidden) is setting his path.

Score board

I’ve decided to start work on a score board. I’ve had a look and it seems the best way is mysql and databases, with code PHP to send and retrieve information. Now I didn’t know that much about AS3 until last year, I know zero about PHP and haven’t touched a database since my A- level years, so I’ve looked for alternatives. I am going to try and use a different method where by the scores are written to a text file, with a minimal amount of PHP. I do not think it will be the most secure method, I read researched about all the measures you can take to protect your databases from getting hacked I don’t think I’ll be implementing such features on my text file. I don’t really have the time to learn all the new skills to create a sql database and link it to flash, I may learn it in a week, it would more than likely take me years! But if there’s time at the end I will definitely come back to it.

Wicked, Another Problem

Hit another problem today with the code, I was getting worried I would go a day without a code problem, alas my fears were dispelled when I tried to have a finish screen. I wanted to have your final score pop up when the music stopped, either on a new frame (not really the most optimized way) or just dynamically removing everything with code (it is after all dynamically added), either way a screen blank screen with your score on. Not as easy as I hoped, there were a lot of eventlisteners (code that with functions tells flash to set off series of events) that were still trying to fire off. I removed all but one at run time when the song finishes but there was one that would not stop, it’s a problem again addressing two elements, one in the fla the other in the external as. file. I hate classes! It’s beaten me for the time being and I’ll come back to it. It’s something that I will have to face though because until that’s sorted I can’t do anything but play one level/song. Did I mention I hate classes?

Control

I’ve been prototyping a control system with keyboard inputs. It works ok but it feels a little restricted, it’s ok I think when you only want to go left or right and maybe jump now and then, or if you need to travel a long time in a certain direction like an rpg, but game is kind of free roam round the screen and changing directions fast, so I feel it doesn’t really work. I’ll keep investigating different controls.

Improvements to be made

The presentation went OK, but I’d like to improve on my current grade, James understood my problems that differ from everyone else who are going to have an unreal game final result. James brought up concerns that each level would not be different enough from the last, which has been worrying me, and I’ve been trying to think up game play elements to improve this. He was also not keen on my control system, as he said it will just be wiping the mouse across the screen, no real skill, I wholly agree. He suggested that I try key board controls which I will in the next day or so.

Problems Again

I’ve had trouble again, getting my power up prototype in my game so I will come back to this, we have a presentation on our progress so I will have to demo aspect I think rather than show a broken game and hope to explain what’s going on. Hoping the presentation will go well as the code hasn’t gone great and there’s been an awful lot of experimentation gone on to get just this far. They say it’s easy to make something complicated look complicated, but to make something that’s complicated look simple is hard. I’ve never heard a truer statement than that in light of my recent work. Ah well, I can’t say I’m not challenging myself.

Power Up Prototype

I posted last about making power up particles well I’ve prototyped it. It works pretty much as how I wanted it, it needs tweaking slightly so that they don’t spawn to close in time to each other. It was quite complicated but as always looks simple on screen, I had to look at it in stages, retrieving the length if the song, collecting that in a variable, using that variable and getting 5 random numbers from the song which will be the actuation times for the power ups, then adding some time so they don’t overlap. I also had to remove 15 or so seconds from the variable song length. Thanks to this project I’ve now killed a good proportion of my favourite songs, when trying out my prototypes. I obviously pick songs I want to listen to but when you’ve listened to the beginning 30 times in an hour for hours, it wears thin. On a serious note prototyping songs is time consuming 3-4 mins per song, to check that out in full would suck up my time, so from early on in the project I’ve made 30 sec (exact) clips to prototype this and scaled down game elements to compensate, so make sure they work in full (song completion) as it were. I wanted the clips to be exact so I can manually time my code to check for consistency. It is a good job I did this, because it was streaming and loading some code fired off before other code had the required numbers. This has led me to decide to load the song before players play the level, there won’t be much of a delay for the player, there will just be a short loading screen before each song which I don’t think is unreasonable considering everything is happening at run time. There is also a slight delay in my particle system between music and visuals, a problem that seems to be common, so I’m hoping this will fix that too.

Game Elements

I’ve been thinking about what game play elements I can have in to make the game more interesting. I’ve thought of power ups for one, you pick up a “power up” particle and this will increase the score of a particle collected for a specified amount of time, say 10 seconds. I thought at first I could just have them load in at any random time in the song but after a quick think I decided I can’t. The problem is if I’m going to have a scoreboard, everything has to be fair for each different person that plays the level (song), so I can’t have the power up load in 6 times for one person, 3 times for another cause that will drastically affect the scores. So somehow I’ll have to retrieve the song length and somehow average it out and make a power up appear say 5 times randomly within that song. I also thought I can’t have one appear under 15 seconds (5 seconds catching time, 10 seconds increased score time = 15secs) from the end of song. This is because if I give the player 5 seconds to catch it, it will be unfair if the power up appears 3 seconds from the end of the song, giving the player only 3 seconds to catch it and then use it. I also can’t have them appear on screen at the same time because it will be one wasted, in short a headache. I’ve thought of maybe an enemy particle that will do the reverse but the code will be similar to that.

Scoring Working

I’ve implemented a scoring system, it simply adds 1 to your score when you collect a particle, I’ll play around with what a particle is worth later on. I’m just happy I’ve got this far after the last few weeks troubles.

Problem Solved

Finally getting somewhere with my code that has alleviated my fears a little. After asking a few other students on the course and on dedicated flash forums I think I’ve cracked that particular aspect of the code. The problem with asking in Uni is, AS3 isn’t taught yet, so me and other students are self taught, Chris for instance is brilliant at AS3 but could only help me so far because he hasn’t taught himself classes yet, and hasn’t got a need to because flash isn’t what he wants to work with. Anyway thanks to some (much more knowledgeable) experts that I on the forums, its working.

Problems...Still

Stress levels high again, same problem as my last post. I’m having trouble removing a particle when I collect it with the character, not to go into too much code detail but I’m having trouble communicating a movie clip on the stage with the particles in an external as. file. They’re created on the fly when one is removed and I think it needs splicing but there’s too much to think about, getting me confused, I have the script to actually do the removing which I’m not 100% works then it’s got to communicate with the character. I have e-mailed James about my concerns because if I have to backtrack on my idea I need to start ASAP.

Problems...

I have been having a lot of trouble with the particle system! Choosing flash over unreal is looking like an error after the last few days. After days of stress, trying to get the game elements in place I’m looking at my options, I’m currently deciding on whether to persevere and hope I sort out the problems in the next week or so, or come up with something that has a greater chance of success. There’s only so much I can say in the document at the end “this is what I would have liked to have done...” before it ends up just been a picture of a game and a load of what ifs. It’s very depressing when I want to crack on with the code to get it out of the way so I can make some visuals and graphics, aspects of the game I don’t mind whittling away the hours with and getting some return. The problem with the code is you spend hours and days trying to get something to work and it can be the most simplest thing on screen when it’s done but the code built up behind the scenes can reach dozens/ hundreds of lines.

Client

Haven’t really had much time on my FMP recently, been struggling to finish the client brief. I and Chris have been working hard to finish code (me taking longer due to inexperience) for the game. I’ve also had a lot of painstaking and slow work to do on that client project, which although simple in the finished result has taken up a lot of my time, but that is nearly over.