Flash Game Development Project

CURRENTLY ON HOLD

3/29/2004

We are making a Flash game called Adventure.

This page is no longer kept up to date. Please read it to get an idea of the project. I currently have an email distribution list for anyone who is involved with this game. That is how I am keeping people up to date and assigning tasks. Please email me if you would like to help. Anyone can help.

If you want to help, you will need a computer, internet, and email.

If you want to do graphics tasks you will need a paint program. (You can use windows paint. Please do not save as bmp (bitmap) ). Any program will do.

You only need Flash if you want to help with animation and interactivity.

Also, you will need Flash to do ActionScript programming.

That said, please help. It's OK if you are not the best artist or programmer.

Intro

The Goal

Prime Directive

What you can do to help!

Who's Involved so far

What Game will we make?

A. Weirdo Zelda with Mario style. Throw in some ideas from Harvest Moon.

B. Side Scroll Shooter RPG. Mario World style overworld.

C. Axis and Allies type game with Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, and magic.

What technology will we use to make the game?

Source Control System

Intended Game Audience

Maturity Rating

Come up with a Name

Game Samples

Prime Directive Explained

Intro

I have wanted to make some cool games for a long time. I have made 3 of my own games at SparkyLand, but it's hard to stay motivated when you are working on the game by yourself. So my new idea is to get as many people involved as possible. I need artists, musicians, and programmers. You can help in any little or big way.

The Goal

Get a FUN, working game that we can all be proud of completed by 12/10/2004.

Prime Directive

FUN - It has to be a fun game. Fun game play is the most important thing.
KISS - Keep it simple. From design to implementation to Graphics.
RAD - Let's do it fast as possible. (Rapid Application Development)
SMALL - Keep the file size small for quick downloads. That means vector graphics and MIDI sound.
POPULAR - We also want the audience to be broad which means : Browser based and free.

What you can do to help!

We are currently on step 2-4.

The first step you need to take if you want to help is to email me. Tell me which task you want. Then complete the task.

Come up with an idea. Due Jan 31. We voted on choice 'A'.
Schedule the following with due dates:
Give updates to Halip.org throughout the process.
Assign tasks
Design it thoroughly with the Prime Directive in mind. Save any enhancements until later.
Mock up complete.
Make enhancements.
Alpha Test.
Beta Test.

Updates:

1/31/2004 - We have chosen game A. There is no name yet. The name is 'Adventure' for now.

You can play the early version at www.sparkyland.com/adventure.html.

Task List:

If you want to take a task, or have a question just email me. Some tasks can have many people doing it at the same time. If you would like a coding task, please email me. I can give you a zip file with all the code. When you are done with a task, just email me the MP3, GIF, FLA, AS, etc. file that you were working on. I'll incorporate it.

#

assigned to

description

type

status

1

Taylor J

do some research about different sound formats and Flash. I know it supports WAV, MP3, and AIFF. Small very important. So I need to find out a way to play MIDI or see if MIDI can convert into a very small size MP3. We may be able to play MIDI using the FLASH getURL Command and javascript.

I was wondering if a midi file (very small) was converted to an mp3 if it would also be very small. The mp3 uses compression, and I would think that with such simple notes that you have in midi, the compression would shrink that sucker way down.

It is complicated wave forms like voice and instruments that are harder to compress because the data is so intricate. A BEEEP BOOOP noise should compress down a lot more because of its simple wave form.

We need to keep this game very small so it will download quickly. I would love to have some mp3's with high quality, but I think we should only have a few of them. Actually, flash can convert from WAV to MP3. That is the best way to do it to avoid 'pauses' in looped sound.

Music / Coding / Research

Assigned

2

Taylor J

Sam L

+ you?

Create MIDI, WAV, and MP3 music. This is a little dependant on task #1. If you need to get music editing software, may I suggest www.download.com. I think we can have several people assigned to this task.

Music

Assigned + Open

3

Taylor J

Create some simple sound effects in MP3 files. We are not sure exactly what we need yet, but this will be a rough start. Make a 'attack' sound, a 'bump' sound. Make these sounds too: You die, enemy dies, pick up item, throw item, bomb explosion. Don't forget making them small.

Music

Complete

4

Create an intro screen mock up. It does not have to be perfect. It will be changed. Make a Title screen. Make a button to start a new game or load a game. For now only the start game will work. Use a flash command to open the "adventure.swf" file. Create the intro in a file called adventure_intro.fla. Make a screen that show a quick description of how to play. Left right up down arrows and space.

Flash

Open

5

Come up with a name for the game. This may need to be done later when we have the game is more hashed out.

Creative cat.

Open

6

See the graphics guidelines. Draw the hero. I need 2-4 frame animation for each direction. UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT. You don't have to animate it, just send me the stills. Create a 1-4 frame animation for attacking. Create a 1-4 frame animation for picking up an object. The attacking animation will double as the throwing animation for now. All images will be the same size. They will be scaled down for the final vector graphics version.

Drawing

Open

7 Jess L See the graphics guidelines. Draw the first monster. For simplicity for now, just make 1 animation. It can be 1-4 frames. Just one direction. Maybe it will just be a bouncy slime or something. This monster will have no attack, but if you touch him, you will get hurt. Drawing Complete

8 Taylor J See the graphics guidelines. Draw the first weapon. I am thinking it will be a wand or a sword. A very limited range weapon. We need UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT versions of it. Or if you prefer, you can make one image that we will rotate in Flash. We could have 1 picture or a 1-2 frame animation. Drawing Complete

9 See the graphics guidelines. Draw a rock. No animation. Just a barrier in the game. Drawing Open

10 See the graphics guidelines. Draw a tree. No animation. Just a barrier in the game. Drawing Open

11 Jess L Implement hit tests and hit points. The first monster will have 1 hit point. The hero will start with 6 hit points. The weapon and the monster will have 1 damage. Show hit points on the screen. Remove characters when they die. Coding Complete

12 Put the trees and rocks on the screen. When the hero bumps into them, stop the motion, play the bump sound effect. Coding Open

13 Jess L When the hero walks off the screen, load up the next screen. Coding Complete

14 See the graphics guidelines. Draw a weird frog. 1-3 frame animation. I think he will be really big like Jabba the Hutt and he will stay still. He may be in the a town or in an area by himself. Drawing Open

15 Disable arrow keys and space when the hero attack animation is taking place. Enable the keys when the animation is complete. The hero will not move when he attacks, although he will animate. Coding Open

16 See the graphics guidelines. Draw a ghost. 1-3 frame animation. One of the animations will be blank causing the ghost to flicker. The rest of the frames will have a transparency so you can see through. Drawing Open

17 Jess L When the hero gets hit, make him invincible for a short time. Make the setFlicker function better. Maybe we can change the hero image's color rapidly. Coding Assigned

18 Jess L Code the hero so that he will have a different animation depending on which direction he is facing (up, down, left, right), walking, or attacking. Coding Assigned

19 Take some of the sound effects that were made in step 3 and play them at certain times in the game. Coding Open

20 See the graphics guidelines. Draw the second weapon. We need UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT versions of it. Or if you prefer, you can make one image that we will rotate in Flash. We could have 1 picture or a 1-3 frame animation. Drawing Open

21 Use the FSCOMMAND to play MIDI music in the game. Coding Open

22 Jess L Implement a layer manager. Right now the layers are all weird. Like the HP display is a layer under some of the blocks, wand is under the block. Coding Assigned

23 See the graphics guidelines. Draw a house. It will go in the town. Drawing Open

24 See the graphics guidelines. Draw a Yezmo. He is a little old man that can turn into a dragon. He is in the heaven screen and he brings you back to life. Drawing Open

Who's Involved so far

If you need to email the group, just select all the names below and copy. Then paste into your email "TO" field.

Jess Lilly [spartique@hotmail.com]

Todd Slager [todd@onefourfive.com]

Heath McAllister [borealheath@yahoo.com]

Taylor Johnson [taylorjohnson7@yahoo.com]

Sam Lilly [whammywonderpants@hotmail.com]

Steve DeRuiter [steven.deruiter@innofchicago.com]

Mark Johnson [mark@onefourfive.com]

What Game will we make?

I'm open to suggestions. I'll work on a most any game as long as it draws people who want to help make it. The game will have to be limited in scope and adhere to the Prime Directive. I am leaning towards Choice A right now. Please email me with your choice or send me a completely new idea.

A. Weirdo Zelda with Mario style. Throw in some ideas from Harvest Moon.

When I say Mario style, I mean kind of cute/comic style graphics and weird stuff like coins, flowers, mushrooms, and throwing turtle shells. Static world maps like NES Zelda. When you move off the screen, you go to another piece of the world map. (Not scrolling) You are a bunny or a dragon or a princess. Haven't made up my mind yet. Maybe you get to choose. You have a ray gun and you can use it to turn monsters into flowers. Then you can pick up the flowers and add them to your back pack. Once you defeat say 100 of these monsters. Then you get to BECOME the monster and go into their lair. In the lair, you battle the boss. Once he's defeated, the land is free of that type of monster. You can go to town and give the flowers to people, or you can collect them and do something. There would be character building, and buying new weapons and stuff of course.

(Heath M): Some monsters turn into grass. Once you get 50 grass, weeds you can make a whip! Whip will be a weapon. You can also get a hook and turn it into a grappling hook. The grappling hook opens up yet un-reachable terrain. Profoundly majestic backgrounds and epic music like Rygar. Build your own tools by combining items. Day and night. Ancient world theme. Japanimation or Zelda graphic style. Keyboard input.

(Taylor J): Add Craziness! I think what Taylor means is, funny weird stuff. I hate to speak for you man.

(Steve D): Funny looking frog. Beefo and Afty should show up somewhere

(Mark J): Can we have some mini games in it? like maybe do a side scrolling bit, stuck on a river raft or something, dodge rocks, throw stuff....maybe you have to do that to get into the water monsters dungeon or something. or maybe we could have a little mini game at the beginning of each dungeon. or is that making it to complex?

(Jess L): I think we need to make a game that has a save feature. I don't want this to be some simple little game that you play for 10 minutes and then you are bored with it.

(Jess L): I just had an idea too. We can make a ‘reject village’ in the game. There are weird people and things that live there. Any graphics that we decide as a group are not ‘cool’ for the game can go in the reject village. Won’t that be awesome? We could have some funny ‘buggy’ behaving people in there.

(Heath M): I vote for wierdo video game land which has different dungeons or levels be themed differently. So the body of the game would be wakko, but the apendages of the game would be distinctly flavored.

(Jess L ) : tar pits that you get stuck in. hit a button 10 times to get out. Monster that jumps around the screen everywhere. confusion! All your buttons go different directions. Monsters that disappear and reappear. clouds.

(Jess L): KAYKOR! BUGLE! Underground mine with dwarves and an item shop. The mine has 2 exits and it can help you get somewhere else faster. Elfish tree house level. Cloud level. Rescue a gnome and then you get to use a gnome as a weapon. He moves around when you do but slower.

(Jess L): Genie named Sulliman the Magnificent who gives you a magic carpet. It enables you to float in any direction over most enemies and drop down on them. Then you pick them up, walk around and throw them at other enemies. Another weapon is the remote detonation bomb. Hit space to set it down and then let go to detonate it.

B. Side Scroll Shooter RPG. Mario World style overworld.

By Mario World overworld, I mean the first Mario for SNES. (Or Mario 3) You move around the world and zoom in on the dots to get to the levels. Once you clear a level, more levels open up. The only thing is that you are a space ship, not Mario. You go through typical side scroller battles (Like R-Type, Gradius, UN Squadron... there are so many). You get points and upgrade your ship. You collect different ships.

C. Axis and Allies type game with Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, and magic.

What else do I have to say? If you don't know AA, then I'll describe it for you. It's like RISK. It's a board game where you take turns. There's a big world map with all the countries. On your turn, you use your money to buy different types of armies. You make attacks, then you move any remaining armies. Then you collect your money. Then the next player takes a turn. I don't want to make it multiplayer. At least not right away. I'm thinking there would be castles, and catapults, and magic nodes.

Genre

There are several genres to choose from. These are the types that I would prefer.

RPG - Final Fantasy
Turn Based Strategy - Civilization, RISK
Simulation - Sim City
Action adventure - Zelda. See choice A for more info.
action side scroller - Mario
shooter side scroller - Gradius
puzzle game - Tetris, Dr. Mario

Graphic Style

My biggest requirement is that there is one graphic style so the look is homogenous. Here are the graphic style requirements.

Light source from the upper left. Shadows on the lower right. Please make shadows that extend off the figure to the lower right. It will give a sense of depth.
Black lines around all the figures for a cartoony look.
Make the file big so we don't lose resolution.
Save as a gif, jpeg, or fla flash file. I just don't want bmp's because they will fill up my email inbox. The file will most likely be converted to a fla file for the game. That's why it's important to make the image a large size like 400 x 400 pixels. I will shrink it down. The large the image is, the better it will convert into vector graphics. (Vector graphics are small file size). If you have questions about this, then email me.
Programs to use. Use whatever you want! If you have windows, you can always use paint. Adobe Photoshop, or and other program that you can save as a gif or jpeg. Idally, you will use flash to draw vector graphics.
Keep in mind that flash can do animations very easily, so you can send multiple images and I will make it into an animation in the game.
You do not have to send reversed images. What I mean is that if the animation for waling left is the same for walking right except flipped, you don't need to flip it. I can do that.

Cartoon - HomeStar
Cartoon - Calvin and Hobbes
Cartoon - Mario
Video Game Style - Mario
Futury - start trek, wing commander
Geometric
Japanimation

Theme

I guess I'm looking for a place and time for the game.

Medieval Europe
Fantasy
Spacey Future
Ancient past
Magic Fantasy
Historical
Star Wars
Just weirdo video game land.

Interface

Mouse or keyboard? Both?

What technology will we use to make the game?

I am thinking Flash for many reasons. I'll list a few.

People have access to it. (Like Taylor and Mark and Todd)

It is well documented.

Large user base

Small download files

Code will be fast enough if we KISS

Not as complicated as some other programming languages.

Source Control System

Let's not use one. I think I'll be the Source Controller. I'll have all the files available to download, and You can email me changes. I will incorporate them.

We will have only 1 fla file, so it will be important for me to sync up changes often. Also, we will be using external ActionScript files with an ".as" extension. They will be included into the master fla file with #include directives. All files will be stored on the web server for download and for back up purposes.

Intended Game Audience

It depends on what game we choose. That's a big reason why I prefer the Mario style games because then females will like to play them more. It's more "all ages" too.

Maturity Rating

I'd like to keep it clean. G or PG.

Come up with a Name

Depends on the game we choose.

Game Samples

Go here to see flash games and get ideas.

www.flashkit.com - Check out some movies for inspiration. (Todd Slager)

www.macromedia.com - Makers of Flash.

www.orisinal.com - A lot of great small games. Very good quality.

www.kirupa.com - Some help learning flash.

www.homestarrunner.com - We would do well to emulate them.

http://www.lego.com/eng/play/games/backlot/prompt.asp?bhcp=1 - Lego 3D game. (Todd S)

ActionScript Dictionary - Complete reference for the Flash programming language.

http://www.junglewalk.com/frames.asp - sounds.

Prime Directive Explained

FUN. This is the most important. It has to be fun. Fun at the expense of realism, good graphics, 3D rendered polygons with textured fills, complexity, etc. You know what I mean. Some old 16-bit Nintendo games are more fun than today's 3D games. For this reason and more, we will be sticking to 2D style games. That's not to say we can't have 3D style graphics, but the game itself will not be 3D.
KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. Anything that we put in the game should be easy to design and implement. There will be no bells and whistles added until we get to the enhancement phase. I'm pretty serious about this. For example, why spend so much extra time and add programming complexity making a 3D world or even a scrolling 2D world, when you can have a static 2D world. A good example of a FUN game with a static 2D world is the original Zelda for 16-bit Nintendo. The background does not move. You move over the background. Not only is that easier, but faster too. I could go on.
RAD. Speed is important. I want to get a playable mock up going as soon as possible to see if the game is actually FUN. RAD is Rapid Application Development. The goal is to get a working application as soon as possible and make enhancements to it later as needed. To help speed things along, "Bad coding is acceptable". I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Too long have I coded and recoded portions of an game to make it "better" in my eyes without changing the game functionality in any way. FUN functionality is way more important than good code. I will draw a line though. When we can, we will avoid duplicate code by using functions. We will avoid hard code and magic numbers by putting all the hard code in few files. Hey, if the game turns out to be any good, it can be redesigned with good code for the sequel.

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