I'll be coming back to play again... Neat! Can I ask how long it took to build, how many of you there are, and if there is any engine over the flash? I've never built a game before, so it's all foreign to me.
It took two of us about 3.5 months to build. There wasn't any engine over flash except for what was built during development. A lot of development time went into optimization, caching etc though (I talk about that in the other thread I liked to here).
Good advise. I'd recommend starting with something like Asteroids, because it's even easier than Tetris (no tricky rotation/bounds logic) and more rewarding.
Definitely. A good rule to follow is that almost everything that turns out to to be hard is something you never thought of before you started the game.
So my advice to anyone who wants to make a game is to just start, there's not really any other way to learn.
- inputs are usually callback events, so the thing I usually did was accumulate all inputs in the callback events and then processed them in the processInputs() method. Accumulate was something simple like pressedKeys |= pressedKey
- updateScreen() is usually just a call to repaint() or something like that, which makes the Operating System call your applications paint() method. My paint method looks like
paint(Graphics g){
drawBackground(g);
drawCounters(g);
drawMonsters(g);
drawPlayer(g);
}
and so on... Flex does things in a slightly different way, so it really depends on the technology you choose.
Wow, thanks guys! I'm kind of surprised to see it at the top, I actually submitted this when I first released looking for some feedback, but it was buried pretty quickly.
I've talked a bit about the technical aspects in another thread here:
I'd love to answer any questions anyone has, and I'm especially interested in getting any feedback on the purchase proposition and payment process if anyone does decide to buy it.
If I paypal you the $10 can I get beta access to your games for the next year? It feels like a much better deal if you commit to making future episodic content or if there are community tools to make new levels. Maybe puzzle rooms that you have to reclear until you solve? I think building a level editor is the next logical step and this is a great game mechanic to develop further.
This is great. This is exactly the type of game I loved as a kid.
It must feel good to have your game to such a good spot and just have to tweak it and add cool bosses and a few more mechanics like level editors or retro zelda levels. Already a great flash game and also a lot of room to grow with a bit more work. I wish I could play it full screen.
I will buy it, but not tonight. I am looking forward to seeing the next version, where you take it from pretty damn awesome to totally badass.
This is quite impressive! An only usability detail: why do you need all users to approve access to the file system, if that functionality is only required for saving games? I'm sure most users will be scared by that banner.
That's a Flash problem - you can possibly use more space than the 100k default if you have five profiles, and Flash will fail silenty when trying to write to it unless you ask for the block up front.
And the Flash prompt is pretty badly worded - it's just the Flash cookies that it's talking about!
The whole thing has driven me crazy...
Edit: Oh, I see what you mean about waiting until the user saves. The game saves transparently when you walk around so there's no other good time to pop up with the allocation popup. Would have been much easier if we used a 'choose slot to save' kind of system when you are back at base.
Why can't you store the save games on the server? You can easily store a unique access key in the default 100k for casual users (and I assume that registered users log in).
Well, that ends up as a lot of data on the server. One of the people behind the casual collective just released his tracker stats that show 100 million plays (loads), which would be 10 terabytes, assuming of course that each load resulted in a store.
We don't have a full time server guy so I'd prefer to stay out of that kind of thing, for now anyway! I think next time we'll just design the game around a strict 100k limitation.
I think that's exactly what we'll have to do - design the save files to fit in 100k. This wasn't by design - this was 1 day from release, where we discovered that amazingly enough there's no way to tell if a save was successful or not in Flash, so we couldn't ask people to up their storage only when needed (which should be rarely).
We could, but that ends up being a lot of traffic. We'd expect the average person to save a lot more than once (in Robokill it's automatic), so you're looking at at least 100tb of traffic - a pretty big hassle.
If the game routes through rocksolidarcade.com (which is probably a good idea) to save/load things, traffic ends up being 38 cents a gb - 10 for upstream/downstream at Softlayer, and 18 at S3. I think that's pretty close to being impractical.
I'm going to design the next game around the 100k limitation and explicit saves, so this problem will go away anyway.
Why don't you present a message asking users if they want to have the auto save feature or not? If they want, they need to enable a security option. Otherwise, they can play anyway even if scared by such option.
Bravo. Love the Zelda-dungeon-esque level design, the warp points make getting around easy, and the death penalty is extremely well handled. A joy to play, just lost an hour to it and never noticed the time pass. Well done.
My MacBook Pro's trackpad is totally awesome. No more mouse pains in my hand from using my computer a lot. Most trackpads suck, but a good trackpad beats a good mouse, I think.
Fun game, but it's missing the huge boss battles that made Smash TV so awesome (Seriously, if you want to up your conversion rates on purchases, make that last room in Episode 4 an onslaught to remember instead of four easily disposable dorks).
Before I walked into the objective room on the first mission, I had a little fear in my stomach like I always get before a big boss battle. Then I walked in and it was nothing and I was disappointed. Like waiting in line to ride the roller coaster and getting stuck on the merry-go-round.
you should have a very short domain name linking directly to the game. I tried to recomend the game and the easier way was to tell them google for robokill
Very impressive! Unfortunately, I can't give any higher praise than "a well-executed dungeon-crawler with style." I'm having a blast now, but I get the impression I won't look back after beating it.
In many ways, this sci-fi, shooting, dungeon-crawling RPG reminds me of "Virus Hunter," a walk-through example used in the Game Design program of "Cybercamp," which I enrolled in when I was 10. Is there some common inspiration I'm not familiar with? I highly doubt Virus Hunter had much originality...
As a comic side-note, I initially thought the Light weapons meant they fired light as their projectile.
P.S.: I must compliment the decision to jump straight from one mission to the next. I initially told myself I'd stop after beating mission 1, but, with the game offering no natural breaking point (e.g.: "Congratulations! Save and continue?" or some other kind of pop-up exposition or prompt -- an analogous phenomenon: it's easier to put down a book between chapters than one paragraph into the next chapter) , I found myself telling myself "I'll stop after beating this mission." As mission 3 rolled around, I found it hard to force myself to quit. It's the game designer's job to get the players addicted, and you certainly succeeded there!
I love the game. My only problem with it is that when Flash gets busy (lots of items on the screen), the controls get sticky. I've fallen off the side several times because I let go of a button while Flash was bogged down and it didn't register... so I kept going in that direction.
I'm on a dual 2ghz G5 with a gig of ram, running in Safari, in case you're curious.
As a side note, I'm an AS3 coder and though I love my current job that has nothing to do with games, it's stuff like this that makes me entertain thoughts of game development. I'm gonna go read the technical notes from your link now....
OK I checked it out. And by checked it out I mean spent three hours and beat the first four missions. What an awesome game. Smooth gameplay, intuitive UI, etc. Thanks for that.
One idea I have -- cut the demo off after the first two missions. I'm kind of burnt out on the game right now and needing a break; not in the mood to buy the game and play it some more. After two missions I was deep into it and most likely to convert into a sale.
As for myself, I thought there was barely enough free content... I would have found it really cheap if you could only do the first 2 missions, especially since they're so easy. I didn't die before the 4th, which is significantly more challenging.
How do I save my game? If I can't, then I'll have to leave my browser open. Don't want to risk going to the main menu without knowing what will happen.
This is killer. I played for about an hour right out of the gate. I'm loving it.
Constructive criticism:
1) The ambush's seem lame without bait. Put a dollar bill at the far end of the room, or something.
2) In at least one situation I got a key that was just used in the next room I was going to in the logical progression of things. This doesn't add much to the game since I don't have to go find it and seems superfluous.
3) The Flash permission-ask is lame, but that's already been talked through elsewhere in this thread.
4) Where are the really hard fights in the objective rooms? Get bosses or REALLY pack them with baddies.
Kudos, overall, though. "Superb" is an apt description for this flash game.
83 comments
[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadTheir original submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84191
I would guess download Flex and start coding.
while(isGameRunning){
}It really is quite straightforward. Start with something simple like Tetris.
So my advice to anyone who wants to make a game is to just start, there's not really any other way to learn.
- inputs are usually callback events, so the thing I usually did was accumulate all inputs in the callback events and then processed them in the processInputs() method. Accumulate was something simple like pressedKeys |= pressedKey
- updateScreen() is usually just a call to repaint() or something like that, which makes the Operating System call your applications paint() method. My paint method looks like
paint(Graphics g){
drawBackground(g);
drawCounters(g);
drawMonsters(g);
drawPlayer(g);
}
and so on... Flex does things in a slightly different way, so it really depends on the technology you choose.
I've talked a bit about the technical aspects in another thread here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203952
I'd love to answer any questions anyone has, and I'm especially interested in getting any feedback on the purchase proposition and payment process if anyone does decide to buy it.
It must feel good to have your game to such a good spot and just have to tweak it and add cool bosses and a few more mechanics like level editors or retro zelda levels. Already a great flash game and also a lot of room to grow with a bit more work. I wish I could play it full screen.
I will buy it, but not tonight. I am looking forward to seeing the next version, where you take it from pretty damn awesome to totally badass.
And the Flash prompt is pretty badly worded - it's just the Flash cookies that it's talking about!
The whole thing has driven me crazy...
Edit: Oh, I see what you mean about waiting until the user saves. The game saves transparently when you walk around so there's no other good time to pop up with the allocation popup. Would have been much easier if we used a 'choose slot to save' kind of system when you are back at base.
We don't have a full time server guy so I'd prefer to stay out of that kind of thing, for now anyway! I think next time we'll just design the game around a strict 100k limitation.
Also, think about reducing the size of the save game file! Many PS2 game saves fitted into 32K.
Good game though :)
If the game routes through rocksolidarcade.com (which is probably a good idea) to save/load things, traffic ends up being 38 cents a gb - 10 for upstream/downstream at Softlayer, and 18 at S3. I think that's pretty close to being impractical.
I'm going to design the next game around the 100k limitation and explicit saves, so this problem will go away anyway.
(besides Emacs)
Which in turn should remind you of RoboTron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron:_2084
In many ways, this sci-fi, shooting, dungeon-crawling RPG reminds me of "Virus Hunter," a walk-through example used in the Game Design program of "Cybercamp," which I enrolled in when I was 10. Is there some common inspiration I'm not familiar with? I highly doubt Virus Hunter had much originality...
As a comic side-note, I initially thought the Light weapons meant they fired light as their projectile.
P.S.: I must compliment the decision to jump straight from one mission to the next. I initially told myself I'd stop after beating mission 1, but, with the game offering no natural breaking point (e.g.: "Congratulations! Save and continue?" or some other kind of pop-up exposition or prompt -- an analogous phenomenon: it's easier to put down a book between chapters than one paragraph into the next chapter) , I found myself telling myself "I'll stop after beating this mission." As mission 3 rolled around, I found it hard to force myself to quit. It's the game designer's job to get the players addicted, and you certainly succeeded there!
I'm on a dual 2ghz G5 with a gig of ram, running in Safari, in case you're curious.
As a side note, I'm an AS3 coder and though I love my current job that has nothing to do with games, it's stuff like this that makes me entertain thoughts of game development. I'm gonna go read the technical notes from your link now....
One idea I have -- cut the demo off after the first two missions. I'm kind of burnt out on the game right now and needing a break; not in the mood to buy the game and play it some more. After two missions I was deep into it and most likely to convert into a sale.
Backgrounder: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/ballmer_eggs/
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=49451
My only question is why do the robots carry cash?
Why would anyone want to use the shotgun then? :P
Constructive criticism: 1) The ambush's seem lame without bait. Put a dollar bill at the far end of the room, or something. 2) In at least one situation I got a key that was just used in the next room I was going to in the logical progression of things. This doesn't add much to the game since I don't have to go find it and seems superfluous. 3) The Flash permission-ask is lame, but that's already been talked through elsewhere in this thread. 4) Where are the really hard fights in the objective rooms? Get bosses or REALLY pack them with baddies.
Kudos, overall, though. "Superb" is an apt description for this flash game.