Note to self: Saturday mornings (PST) are a wonderful time to upload things. I'm quite sure if you released a video loop of yourself farting, or a hand coded version of pong right now, you could get a daily second.

Anyone here any good at writing, composing, and singing music? I have a silly thing I need someone to write and sing a silly song for.

At 10/17/09 11:32 AM, doctormario wrote: Note to self: Saturday mornings (PST) are a wonderful time to upload things. I'm quite sure if you released a video loop of yourself farting, or a hand coded version of pong right now, you could get a daily second.

True, as far as I know, Sundays are slow days. Tuesdays are ussually the days with most traffic since "big shots" know that the first day you upload something, you'll probably get the best scores and snatch weekly.

And I just got the best PM ever

What's everyone's obsession with platformers? How come almost every time you open a thread entitled "Looking for coder" it's someone who wants to make a platformer? Heck, even in the 2009 programming battles thread all challenges besides 1 were about platformers -.- wtf

I used to think that the flash making community as a whole had lost its originality - that at the end of the day all flash games are pretty much the same. Now I am sure of it.

Shut up and go make a platformer like the rest of us

Categorizing games by genre like "platformer, RTS, RPG" etc has done a great disservice to flash makerse. People don't think creatively, they just think in terms of the options that have been laid in front of them. When planning a game, you don't think "What series of interactive events could I program such that the player will enjoy my game the most?" Instead you just think "Should I make a platformer or a spaceship game? Meh, I've done a platformer last time, this time it's gonna be a spaceship game"

here's my 3 cents

I think that people make platformers and spaceship games because

They're easy
It's easy to find a partner who can actually help make them
People will play them anyways and they will get ad money anyways

Not to mention lots of people who are looking for coders in the forums have never worked on a game before. Of course they're going to go with something that they are familiar with, they gotta learn to walk before they can run.

Anyways, it's the dull overdone games that make the good ones seem all the better.

At 10/18/09 12:16 PM, Toast wrote: here's my 3 cents

Its simply to much to ask. Its the nature of game development. If every idea was completely original, they would be a point where there is simply no more ideas. There is no such thing as infinite possibuilitys. We have a computer, monitor, mouse, keyboard and a browser. We are limited by these things. There is only so many original ideas that you can squeeze out of these limitations.

Dont get me wrong, i love it when someone does something completely original. Hell, im happy if something even remotely original was done. But i just dont think its possible for every game to be original. Its all of those unoriginal games that make the few origonal ones stand out and be special.

Plus, comming up with a original idea is alot harder then i first thought it would be. You'd think it would be easy, but its not. Comming up with something that "clicks" with your audience and has yet to be done is a hard thing to accomplish.

True, as long as a game isnt a complete rip off, you must respect that developers have come up with SOMETHING unique about the game. It isn't fair to say that people aren't being origional just because their game falls under a certain genre

At 10/18/09 01:58 PM, citricsquid wrote: As a player I'd take a remake of a game that's been remade a million times before that plays well over some original game that sucks massive dick. Developers seem to put too much focus on being unique, platformers are great and have huge re-playability if approached right.

Why would you be comparing good platformers to bad original games? It's like saying you prefer fresh bananas to rotten oranges, but it doesn't mean you like a banana more than an equally good orange. You say paltformers are great if approached right, but unique games are also great if approached right. In fact they are more than great if approached right. And btw don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all platformers are unoriginal. Glaiel's "closure" is a perfect example of a platformer that presents a brilliant concept, and I wouldn't for one second think about calling his game unoriginal or bad.

I'm making a platformer at this moment.

Platformer is a stupid category. It's akin to calling "3D" a genre.

In 2D you got 2 choices of perspective if you want to do a game with a character in it: Top Down, and Side View. Of course if your game is side view, and there's gravity, people call it a platformer cause your guy runs and jumps on platforms and junk. Doesn't matter if the core gameplay is puzzle solving, collecting coins, beating up junk, or whatever, because of its perspective it's just gonna be labeled a "platformer" and I don't like that. Platformer is a huge umbrella genre, not some specific type of game.

It's true, by that logic Sonic and Mario are the same game, and that's just not the case

At 10/18/09 02:48 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: Platformer is a stupid category. It's akin to calling "3D" a genre.

In 2D you got 2 choices of perspective if you want to do a game with a character in it: Top Down, and Side View. Of course if your game is side view, and there's gravity, people call it a platformer cause your guy runs and jumps on platforms and junk. Doesn't matter if the core gameplay is puzzle solving, collecting coins, beating up junk, or whatever, because of its perspective it's just gonna be labeled a "platformer" and I don't like that. Platformer is a huge umbrella genre, not some specific type of game.

True. When I refer to "platformer" I refer more specifically to the mario-type games. For example, that Murloc RPG game had a character in side view with gravity, but that wasn't a platformer at all. Most platformers here on the flash forum are simply a character who needs to jump on different "paltformers" while killing enemies or collecting coins, who can fall do his death if he misses a jump. That's only a very narrow version of 2D sideview games

On an unrelated note, we didn't have a 2009 AS wars. I'm thinking of setting one up unless anyone else is up for it.

How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

At 10/18/09 03:16 PM, Toast wrote: How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

Not that I'm around much, but if I've got the time it would be fun.

At 10/18/09 03:16 PM, Toast wrote: On an unrelated note, we didn't have a 2009 AS wars. I'm thinking of setting one up unless anyone else is up for it.

How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

Yeah, count me in. I'll make a wordsearch game ;)

Haha. Oh and i'm making a game where you play as a character, movement with left and right and jump with up. You've got to jump on these... ledges... or, platforms i suppose to navigate through the level while collecting currency (or coins) to increase the score. Time will also play a major part in this game as the faster you finish it the better your score. I figured this would be to easy so i added enemies for you to get around.

Should be fun.

At 10/18/09 04:33 PM, Saza wrote: Haha. Oh and i'm making a game where you play as a character, movement with left and right and jump with up. You've got to jump on these... ledges... or, platforms i suppose to navigate through the level while collecting currency (or coins) to increase the score. Time will also play a major part in this game as the faster you finish it the better your score. I figured this would be to easy so i added enemies for you to get around.

Saza, not to be a total douchebag, but that was kind of a bunch of nice words to make the most standard game sound much better than it is. If you just look at it, you're saying you're making a game where you just on floating platforms, collect coins, avoid badguys, and are timed. I mean, unless there's some weird twist...

At 10/18/09 04:33 PM, Saza wrote:

At 10/18/09 03:16 PM, Toast wrote: On an unrelated note, we didn't have a 2009 AS wars. I'm thinking of setting one up unless anyone else is up for it.

How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

Yeah, count me in. I'll make a wordsearch game ;)

A wordsearch game would be no fun for an as war..

psuedocode:

At 10/18/09 03:16 PM, Toast wrote: On an unrelated note, we didn't have a 2009 AS wars. I'm thinking of setting one up unless anyone else is up for it.

How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

also, AS3, and the code has to be written as a series of haikus (or limericks)

At 10/18/09 04:33 PM, Saza wrote: Should be fun.

Didn't read the whole lounge conversation, my bad! Gust told me what you guys were talking about after, I was skeptical of you asking for such a retarded idea, but now looking back it makes sense. XD

At 10/18/09 04:51 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 10/18/09 04:33 PM, Saza wrote:

At 10/18/09 03:16 PM, Toast wrote: On an unrelated note, we didn't have a 2009 AS wars. I'm thinking of setting one up unless anyone else is up for it.

How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

Yeah, count me in. I'll make a wordsearch game ;)

A wordsearch game would be no fun for an as war..

psuedocode:

for(i=0 to width) for(j=0 to height) for(dx=-1 to 1) for(dy=-1 to 1) if(!(dy==0&&dx==0)){
String word = "";
for(d=0 to max(width,height) {
word += grid[i+dy*d][j+dx*d];
if(isWord(word)){
circleWord(j, i, j+dx*d, i+dy*d);
}
}
}

Yes, but how will it know that Floccinaucinihilipilification is a word? For the AS wars, I was thinking of having 1v1 duels this time instead of an arena of 4. Despite its more visually appealing fights, I find 4 bots to be too unbalanced because there will often be one bot who is attacked by two other bots, and one bot who is attacked by no one. I also thought about removing the heal option, but I'm not sure. You could argue that with the option to heal, there is more strategy involved and more space for different decisions, but in a 1v1 duel with no heals it's the bot who will have the best dodging algorithm and smartest shooting pattern who will win.

At 10/18/09 04:58 PM, Toast wrote: Yes, but how will it know that Floccinaucinihilipilification is a word? For the AS wars, I was thinking of having 1v1 duels this time instead of an arena of 4. Despite its more visually appealing fights, I find 4 bots to be too unbalanced because there will often be one bot who is attacked by two other bots, and one bot who is attacked by no one. I also thought about removing the heal option, but I'm not sure. You could argue that with the option to heal, there is more strategy involved and more space for different decisions, but in a 1v1 duel with no heals it's the bot who will have the best dodging algorithm and smartest shooting pattern who will win.

1v1 is much better, but how about each player gets a team of 20 bots, each with a small amount of life, and bots can only heal a nearby bot, not themselves

At 10/18/09 05:03 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: 1v1 is much better, but how about each player gets a team of 20 bots, each with a small amount of life, and bots can only heal a nearby bot, not themselves

Kinda sounds like MIT's BattleCode competition. I like the idea because it means everyone is gonna have very different strategies in terms of bot repartitioning (stick together for heals or spread out for dodging?). Maybe we could have several separate wars, or see which one most people prefer.

At 10/18/09 07:48 PM, zrb wrote: Forgot link.
This weekend's failed project character.

i like the mom tattoo. nice touch

At 10/18/09 08:47 PM, zrb wrote:

At 10/18/09 08:30 PM, fluffkomix wrote: i like the mom tattoo. nice touch

i love how you actually noticed it ;P

I zoomed in like 3 times just to see it, pretty awesome

At 10/18/09 07:43 PM, zrb wrote: Grahhhh stupid incompetence of mine.

Sometimes it helps to have multiple projects to work on. That way you can go back and forth between them when you lose interest in them. Something I like to do is brainstorm before I go to sleep, it helps me stay motivated when I wake up.

If you feel that you have too many ideas, you should write them/draw them and store them for later. That way if you get excited about a great idea that just came to you, it doesn't end up killing your current project.

At 10/18/09 11:30 PM, PBass wrote:

At 10/18/09 07:43 PM, zrb wrote: Grahhhh stupid incompetence of mine.

If you feel that you have too many ideas, you should write them/draw them and store them for later. That way if you get excited about a great idea that just came to you, it doesn't end up killing your current project.

It also helps to storyboard your entire animation from beginning to end (or, if you're a programmer, draw a giant visual web of your game) so that you know exactly how the pieces will be put together. I usually find that if I ever abandon an idea, it's because I haven't fleshed out the idea enough, or I don't have the coding knowledge or artistic ability to create a certain aspect.

Now if only I had the TIME to quickly finish one of my projects... XD

I turned twenty-one today. While it might not mean much to our British friends, it now signifies that I can enjoy legally drinking in the United States.

I hope all has been well in the Lounge.

So.... When do I get my money?