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At 5/30/13 01:18 PM, egg82 wrote:At 5/30/13 10:44 AM, Mattster wrote: What reallllly bugs me is this stuff. There is really nothing worse then some person trying to impersonate a teenager.I get like four of those exact same e-mails with the same names every day.
I read it once for a laugh.
Me three...how do they get email names? Is it something we all happened to sign up for (newgrounds???), or do they just brute force through every possible email name?
Tom sold us out to Adriana :(
So, I've been wanting to kick around some game ideas. MMOs, specifically. The ideas driving them are really stale, and I want to see what you guys think about some things I came up with to freshen things up.
1. Personality-driven quests/character progression/driving story. This would mean making nine desperate stories to any one of those to get the general "personality trait" of each individual, but I think it'd be completely worth it. How do you do personality traits? Dialogue choices.
2. Randomized everything. No "quests" to speak of, but little random things you can choose to partake in all over the world. Even better, halt some things to make room for others for a short time to make sure nothing's on a set timer. I'm thinking things like contests and competitions to gain xp. It would need to be socially and community driven, but since most MMOs are already, that shouldn't be a problem.
3. Characters/places with backstory. Make it immersive. Give everyone and everything a back story and tie it all together. That boss you just killed? He was forced to fight you or his family would die.
4. No dungeons. Too damn repetitive, make everything available in an open-world environment without camping some cafe with trolls in it. Give assignments out, and if you happen to stumble across whatever you need to complete that assignment, then that's great. If not, whatever. It could take until max level to get that gold nugget you've been hunting since level 1.
5. Respawns. You should be able to see the NPCs and all players respawn the same way. If a player walks back to their corpse, so does a dead NPC. And it should be visible and common knowledge that that's what's happening.
That's all for now, I'm on my tablet.
Programming stuffs (tutorials and extras)
PM me (instead of MintPaw) if you're confuzzled.
thank Skaren for the sig :P
I want to bring this guy to your attention. Take a look at his games. Each one of them is about 100 times more developed than your average internet flash game.
He has a diablo clone on the frontpage at the moment. Now, flash clones of diablo are nothing new. Many people have made their own versions. What's noteworthy about this one is how far the game goes. It seems some of the reviewers have gone past level 50, where their set of stats and the enemies they're fighting against form a completely different metagame than what you'd experience in the first few levels. How many flash games can you point out from memory that have the quality of giving a completely different gaming experience to someone who just opened the game and played 5mins, and a seasoned player who has spent time familiarizing himself with the mechanics and advancing through the world?
All the flash games he submitted are objectively of such great quality, and yet ... there's something really underwhelming about them. His most played game sits today with 30,000 views, and that's twice higher than the second next. His games barely reach 10,000 views each, on average. Is it worth making flash games anywhere close to this level of intricacy? Usually when people start coding diablo-like mechanic, they'll stick in 3-4 different kinds of monsters, throw in a handful of short levels to play through, and call it a game. Because after all, isn't this really all the effort that's worth putting into a flash games? Who actually codes in 60 level up's for the character? 30 floors of dungeon to go through?
And all the games are very well programmed, too. The diablo game amounts to an astounding 6mb. The games all run very smoothly. There are intricate concepts such as pathfinding, AI targetting, and good difficulty balance. I played zombi attack (what a fucking stupid title) and found myself overjoyed to be able to do some unit-control techniques that I also enjoyed in starcraft: for example, using one guy as bait, having him run around in big circles with a big bunch of enemies following him, while my ranged units stand at a distance and shoot away such that none of my people get hurt.
There's is undoubtedly a certain lack of finesse to these games. I feel like he could've gotten much more recognition and attention if his games were more presentable and had better story / general art direction. But still, despite this slight short-coming, I'd categorize at least half of his games as "great flash games".
Why are they so unsuccessful on newgrounds? Could it be that, outside of NG and on the internet as a whole, they are actually fairly successful? Could it be that they bring in good money? Is the conclusion of this story merely the fact that NG is falling behind? I have a game that I made on a 10 day school break as a thirteen year old kid that has twice more views of all his 11 games combined. What's the deal with that? did NG change the way view count works, or has the site itself just gotten that much less popular? And what does it mean for the future of independent flash game dev.?
At 5/31/13 02:39 AM, Toast wrote: Stuff
I played about a minute of the most recent game, and I'll play more when its not 2am. Looking at it from the perspective of an average bored person playing a game, the art doesn't stand out, and the UI and text kinda blends in with the background, which makes it less easy on the eyes. Not to mention it's an RPG, which is generally seen as a boring, esoteric genre made for the select few who love immersive stories. Looking at the icon on the front page, the skeleton dude on the right blends in too much with the background, and I can't tell what the orange thing is. It's not a parody, so it doesn't get an extra half star.
There are also comments about bugs and poor performance.
At 5/31/13 02:39 AM, Toast wrote: Why are they so unsuccessful on newgrounds?
played a little, and read some of the comments. Here's my thoughts:
You try to play with the big boys, and you get rated like them. Comparing this to the Diablo series is like comparing a millionaire's brand new Lexus to a college student's beater. Of course, comparing this to most other Flash games on NG - there's no contest there, either. The problem is he WASN'T competing with Flash games. He was competing with AAA titles, and that's what's killing him.
The art and animation needs a serious upgrade if he's to try and compete with game companies. He needs to use AIR and remove the title bars and all to make it seem as much NOT a Flash game as possible, because let's be honest: People think "Flash game" and immediately go "oh... That's cool."
He needs cinematics as well. They don't need to be blizz-level, but something would be good. Again, anything to separate his games from the Flash world.
Add versioning to remove bugs, and we'll see where it goes from there.
Programming stuffs (tutorials and extras)
PM me (instead of MintPaw) if you're confuzzled.
thank Skaren for the sig :P
At 6/1/13 08:04 PM, Mr-Shark wrote: whats up regular flash peoples
The ceiling.
This RPG is FINALLY getting published on Friday. It's been hanging out in FGL, but no one likes to buy games that require reading to enjoy, so we're just gonna upload it to the major portals and mochi's distribution. I have a post mortem all written out except for the parts I fill in after it actually gets released.
FINALLY.
At 6/2/13 12:38 AM, MSGhero wrote:
The ceiling.
This RPG is FINALLY getting published on Friday. It's been hanging out in FGL, but no one likes to buy games that require reading to enjoy, so we're just gonna upload it to the major portals and mochi's distribution.
can you throw a link from fgl? what fgl rating did you get there?
RangeError: Error #1125: The index 4 is out of range 4.
At 6/2/13 02:12 AM, nitokov wrote: can you throw a link from fgl? what fgl rating did you get there?
Not enough votes to have a rating. The devs who played it on average said they liked it, but they also said big games don't sell unless they're epic battle fantasy quality. The icon got 1274 elo if that counts...kinda meh
At 6/2/13 02:15 AM, MSGhero wrote:At 6/2/13 02:12 AM, nitokov wrote: can you throw a link from fgl? what fgl rating did you get there?Not enough votes to have a rating. The devs who played it on average said they liked it, but they also said big games don't sell unless they're epic battle fantasy quality. The icon got 1274 elo if that counts...kinda meh
I thought that once you put it up for game shop that fgl testers check it and give some feedback before you approve it for selling
RangeError: Error #1125: The index 4 is out of range 4.
At 6/2/13 02:26 AM, nitokov wrote: I thought that once you put it up for game shop that fgl testers check it and give some feedback before you approve it for selling
Oh that one, it got 7/Good across the board.
At 6/2/13 02:41 AM, MSGhero wrote:At 6/2/13 02:26 AM, nitokov wrote: I thought that once you put it up for game shop that fgl testers check it and give some feedback before you approve it for sellingOh that one, it got 7/Good across the board.
thats like "we dont whant to tell you that game suck" rating, i got 7 for my shitty game sumbarine alpha.. so i guess you need more than 8 to get serious offer
RangeError: Error #1125: The index 4 is out of range 4.
At 6/2/13 03:47 AM, nitokov wrote: thats like "we dont whant to tell you that game suck" rating, i got 7 for my shitty game sumbarine alpha.. so i guess you need more than 8 to get serious offer
The filesize scared people away as well, considering it doesn't load within 10 seconds on the average internet speed.
Question: I'm making a game where you have to jump to the top, similar to jump quests in MapleStory if you've ever wasted a large portion of your life playing that. The catch is that one of the platforms doesn't actually exist, and there are hints telling you whether the left or right side is the incomplete one, and there will be a timed mode to make it interesting.
Right now, the physics and level design are working nicely, but I'm getting to the point where I want to add everything. Namely, spikes that kill you, things that fly back and forth and kill you, powerups, etc. Should I add these things or just leave it as is? I feel like powerups don't fit in at all, while the other things could I guess. But I don't want to spend forever adding more things in if it's good enough as is. But I don't want it to get boring.
At 6/2/13 04:54 PM, MSGhero wrote: Right now, the physics and level design are working nicely, but I'm getting to the point where I want to add everything. Namely, spikes that kill you, things that fly back and forth and kill you, powerups, etc. Should I add these things or just leave it as is?
That depends. If it's something similar to Icy Tower, adding those things will just confuse and frustrate players. You could, however, add those in as a, say, "hardcore mode", if you have enough time.
(If it's not obvious I've not played MapleStory)
Slint approves of me! | "This is Newgrounds.com, not Disney.com" - WadeFulp
"Sit look rub panda" - Alan Davies
You know what i do when i get stuck with coding?
I make paper plane and throw it through window :D its fun fun fun
RangeError: Error #1125: The index 4 is out of range 4.
Unity is weird, it seems like every unity tutorial I can find is just:
Step 1 - Download this 10gb asset pack
Step 2 - drag this onto this.
Congratulations you just made Halo.
I guess I can't really complain...
At 6/3/13 08:40 AM, GeoKureli wrote: Unity is weird, it seems like every unity tutorial I can find is just:
Step 1 - Download this 10gb asset pack
Step 2 - drag this onto this.
Congratulations you just made Halo.
I guess I can't really complain...
My roomate Shawn (Afro-Ninja) was messing with it and i poked around seeing what he was up to. He seemed to be enjoying using the box 2d engine to make a little 2d platformer in unity. Seemed promising. I'm no programmer but it always seemed like making 2d things in unity was a little bit harder than one would think.
None
At 6/3/13 08:40 AM, GeoKureli wrote: Unity is weird, it seems like every unity tutorial I can find is just:
Step 1 - Download this 10gb asset pack
Step 2 - drag this onto this.
Congratulations you just made Halo.
I guess I can't really complain...
I kinda agree with that, for me its something like creating with as2, code on timeline and that stuff, little messy but very easy and result is fantastic. only there is no dynamic shadow in free version :(
RangeError: Error #1125: The index 4 is out of range 4.
At 6/3/13 09:03 AM, Luis wrote:
My roomate Shawn (Afro-Ninja) was messing with it and i poked around seeing what he was up to. He seemed to be enjoying using the box 2d engine to make a little 2d platformer in unity. Seemed promising. I'm no programmer but it always seemed like making 2d things in unity was a little bit harder than one would think.
This blows my mind for 2 reasons, I didn't know you could use box2d in unity without making Unity's built-in niceties useless, and I didn't know you were/are roommates with Afro-Ninja
At 6/3/13 01:39 PM, GeoKureli wrote: This blows my mind for 2 reasons, I didn't know you could use box2d in unity without making Unity's built-in niceties useless, and I didn't know you were/are roommates with Afro-Ninja
I dont know much about it. You can track some of his progress with it on his twitter i think. I'd never seen unity development before, i like how theres all the different windows and stuff showing the stage and then the workspace etc. I always envisioned you guys as just looking at a wall of text and numbers all day. <3
None
At 6/3/13 02:57 PM, Luis wrote: I dont know much about it. You can track some of his progress with it on his twitter i think. I'd never seen unity development before, i like how theres all the different windows and stuff showing the stage and then the workspace etc. I always envisioned you guys as just looking at a wall of text and numbers all day. <3
The green squares, aka programmer art, break the monotony of text and numbers.
So P got me into haXe. Immediately after using NME once, he tells me openfl is going to take it over and I should use that. But flashdev won't run it without me recompiling the source, so....I'll put that project on the back burner for now. It seems cool using opengl and stuff, but it's way over my head in these early stages.
Game of Thrones. What the fuck that's the last thing I wanted to see after 2 weeks of waiting.
Speaking of haxe, I heard it has operator overloading now and a but of crazy new features.
Discuss.
At 6/3/13 03:32 PM, GeoKureli wrote: Speaking of haxe, I heard it has operator overloading now and a but of crazy new features.
Discuss.
http://haxe.org/manual/haxe3/features
The only reason I even bothered is because I wanted to use generics with an object pool class, but yeah lots of features. The array comprehension bit looks fantastic, the rest I have no idea what that means.
At 6/3/13 03:52 PM, MSGhero wrote:At 6/3/13 03:32 PM, GeoKureli wrote: Speaking of haxe, I heard it has operator overloading now and a but of crazy new features.http://haxe.org/manual/haxe3/features
Discuss.
The only reason I even bothered is because I wanted to use generics with an object pool class, but yeah lots of features. The array comprehension bit looks fantastic, the rest I have no idea what that means.
it all seems kinda iffy to me, array comprehension looks a hacky shortcut for what would normally be 2 or 3 lines of code. I'm sure it's handy, but I seems like it's going to be abused like the condition?then:else operator. generics are great in general and I always hated that flash didn't have type dictionaries (which I assumed Haxe has), been then they release maps which are basically Dictionaries, which are totally ugly. I would rather use the mem addresses in an array than have object keys.
macros.... a few years ago I loved the idea of C++ macros, and thought C# was lame for not including them. Now I'm siding with C#'s standpoint that macros easily make your code esoteric and unreadable. but again this is a feature that when used responsibly can be great.
All in all- haxe seems like as3 with as many bells and whistles hacked into it as humanly possible. But i haven't used it enough to really bash it yet.
// --- FROM MSG'S LINK
var e1 = macro 4; // A normal 4 constant
var e2 = macro $e1 + 2; // Binary operator 4 + 2;
// haxe 3 only from here on
var e3 = macro myFunc($a{[$e1, $e2]}); // a call to myFunc using 4 and 4 + 2 as arguments
var e4 = macro $p{["haxe", "Log", "trace"]}; // a path to haxe.Log.trace
var ident = "varName";
var e5 = macro trace($i{ident}); // a call to trace with identifier varName as argument
var e6 = macro $b{[e1,e2,e3,e4,e5]}; // a block of all the above
If i saw code like this at work I would smack somebody
hi guys, I heard luis was talking about me.
anyway yeah, box2d is amazing and I recommend looking into it if you need a 2d physics solution for flash or unity.
box2d is natively c++ I believe, but someone took that open source project and turned it into the 'farseer' physics engine. (which is box2d with some more stuff)
[i]then[/i] someone took that and ported it to C# and made a unity plugin/asset out of it.
it's still tough trying to force real world physics into a platformer game (worrying about gravity, velocity, friction, forces, etc) but it was much easier than trying to castrate unity's built-in "physx" engine.
At 6/3/13 04:32 PM, GeoKureli wrote: macros.... a few years ago I loved the idea of C++ macros, and thought C# was lame for not including them. Now I'm siding with C#'s standpoint that macros easily make your code esoteric and unreadable. but again this is a feature that when used responsibly can be great.
removing a useful feature because it *CAN* be used stupidly doesn't really justify removing it.
also my swf renderer is coming along, here's some more screenshots
line renderer test 1:
http://i.imgur.com/HcvrIaF.png
line renderer test 2:
http://i.imgur.com/aDBeTFg.png
image test (layers, lines, transparent lines, fills)
http://i.imgur.com/aXLQ6SA.png
found this library and used it to rewrite the line renderer
http://i.imgur.com/YcxKTdZ.png
dynamic curve subdivision, I step across the curve in really short steps, it only adds the point to the list if the distance is greater than a minimum threshold and the angle is greater than a minimum threshold (more points on the curvier parts, less on the straighter parts)
http://i.imgur.com/YYF9MrX.png
At 6/4/13 03:09 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: image test (layers, lines, transparent lines, fills)
http://i.imgur.com/aXLQ6SA.png
You spelled out "religion" in cursive hebrew without knowing. I think jewish jesus is trying to speak to us through your swf rendering tests.
Btw what is the renderer used for? Are you just programming the functionality of a renderer in the broad sense of the word? Is there any specific purpose you have in mind for this?
At 6/4/13 03:25 PM, Toast wrote: Btw what is the renderer used for? Are you just programming the functionality of a renderer in the broad sense of the word? Is there any specific purpose you have in mind for this?
so I can make games in c++ but use SWF for assets
At 6/4/13 03:32 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:At 6/4/13 03:25 PM, Toast wrote: Btw what is the renderer used for? Are you just programming the functionality of a renderer in the broad sense of the word? Is there any specific purpose you have in mind for this?so I can make games in c++ but use SWF for assets
http://gameware.autodesk.com/scaleform
I just saw a job posting on linked in asking for a flash programmer to make UI elements for C++ games using scaleform.
I've yet to look into it, fully
At 6/4/13 04:50 PM, GeoKureli wrote: http://gameware.autodesk.com/scaleform
scaleform is for UI I am making my thing for game objects / assets and stuff
At 6/4/13 04:52 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:At 6/4/13 04:50 PM, GeoKureli wrote: http://gameware.autodesk.com/scaleformscaleform is for UI I am making my thing for game objects / assets and stuff
I don't see why it couldn't be used for that, too.
