Happeh 2009!

Oh yes, happy new year everyone!
I stayed up 'till 1:00 last night at a new years party, so I'm fairly tired right now, but it was awesome.

Anyway, this year I plan to get a lot more heavily into ActionScript, and move on to 3.0 at some point soon. I also intend to make some flash submissions, too, particularly games, though I'm running into a lot of problems. See, I'm the kind of person who often has a very good idea of what I'd like to make, but hardly any clue how to go about it, as opposed to simply exploring the features of a new program to find out what you can do. It just sounds so boring the other way.

I've been having quite a few music ideas too, but like I said before, I just don't know how I would make them, mainly because, as I have mentioned in previous news posts, I suck at synthesising. My best hope is to try to think of something which uses a lot of the sounds I already know how to make, and just experiment more to add to that library, but at the moment, I'm a lot more interested in coding than anything else.

My current project (which has really stumped me) is supposed to be a Flash recreation of the Cell Stage in Maxis' new game Spore. (Oh God, not another one!) I think I've done pretty well on the movement; it's all smooth and I've got the "camera" moving along with it. My main problem at the moment is getting the food to disappear when you eat it, because if it simply goes transparent, it will still be there, and the little score counter will keep going up and up. I also want the food to bounce off you when you collide with it, rather than just slide under. D=<

So there's an update of what I've been up to recently, expect more music and possibly games in the year to come! (If anybody actually reads this.)

Happeh 2009!

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RamblinEvil-Mushroom 2009-01-01 02:57:50

oooh sounds neato, using AS3 or AS2? :o

blackduckie 2009-01-01 02:57:50

I'm using AS2 at the moment, though I do intend to move on to AS3 later on. I'm mainly just pissed off that you can't put actions directly onto MovieClips, and that you have to create a separate class, which really annoys me. But once I learn a little bit more about it, I'll probably make the jump. (I've got a couple of books on AS3, too, a little something from Christmas. :D)

Cyberdevil 2009-01-02 08:24:02

Happy New Year! Stayed up the entire night myself, waiting in the new year watching movies, last nights sleep was heavenly. :P

Good luck with AS3 too, such big a difference the new.

blackduckie 2009-01-02 08:24:02

Thanks, Happy New Year to you too. I can't remember the last time I had a heavenly sleep, BUT PERHAPS ALL THAT WILL CHANGE. That can be one of my New Year's resolutions, along with AS3.

Kajenx 2009-01-02 18:34:29

If you're using AS2, just use removeMovieClip. With AS3, you'll have to recycle objects (movieclips), otherwise they'll keep running until the new garbage collection thinger deletes it, and when it finally does it'll drop frames.

blackduckie 2009-01-02 18:34:29

Yes, but removeMovieClip() only removes duplicate MovieClips created with duplicateMovieClip(). See, I'm not randomly generating the "foods" in this game, I'm simply placing them onto the stage. However this is not what I want in the final product, so I'd need to have some initial instance of them somewhere, but it could be invisible and not function the same as the duplicates.
Anyway, I suppose you already knew that, considering the games you've made. (They're very good, by the way, and some are a very similar concept to what I'm plagiaris--I mean working on. ;) )

Geoplex 2009-01-06 10:08:56

If youre using AS2 simply make the food an MC with two frames. One frame with the food and one without. Put a stop(); action on the first frame, and then put this code onto the food:

onClipEvent(enterFrame){
if(this.hitTest(_root.Player)){
_root.food.gotoAndStop(2);
}
}

Youll have to change the instances in the script to suit what youre using but that should work. Also, im working on a game atm as well... ^^

blackduckie 2009-01-06 10:08:56 (Updated 2009-01-08 01:57:49)

Yeah, I can't believe I didn't think of that. The annoying thing would be that the MC would still be there, not that you'd notice it, but it just wouldn't seem perfect. =(
Also, as I mentioned above, I'll probably be duplicating the MovieClips in the end, for which I could use the removeMovieClip() function. Still, that's a good idea, and I could probably apply it to something else where I need to do that.
BTW: hitTest is totally crap. Unless you're testing squares, or doing a tile-based game, you don't really want to use it. I was going to use a circle-based collision test, but it didn't work for some reason. Anyway, I found I was better off with a shapeFlag testing a point.

Good luck on your game!

Edit: Oh noes! That didn't even work. I don't know the mouth area can hitTest against nothing, but Flash doesn't care. Anyway, no matter, for reasons explained above. (Because I really can't be bothered typing them again.)
Thanks anyway. =)

Geoplex 2009-01-12 02:08:00

True, hitest is shit but it works for small objects, and those 'foods' youve got there look pretty small. Anyway you should check out a few tutorials if you want to use shapeflag because its more complicated shit than hitest.
Good luck and all :P

blackduckie 2009-01-12 02:08:00

shapeFlag is basically:

if(_root.MC_GOES_HERE.hitTest(_x, _y, true)){
//Do shit
}

Anyway, I've got the whole eating thing sorted out, as well as the random placing of the foods. The annoying thing is, now they can sometimes be all grouped together in one place, and I'm having some depth issues, where they appear above everything, even the HUD. And I still want them to bounce off the guy, rather than sliding along behind him/her/it, or in this case, above. But it's working out... slowly.

Geoplex 2009-01-17 23:54:17

You sound more advanced at AS than me, and your game looks a lot neater than mine does lol O_o

blackduckie 2009-11-30 18:50:54

Right, I JUST realised why this post got so many comments.

<a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1012113/1">http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1 012113/1</a>

Happeh 2009!

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