Evaluation of my Flash Game

My Flash Game:

 

My flash game turned out how i wanted it to turn out the graphics were all vector and the text was a font i downloaded called capture it and it added to the feel of the game. The music in the background of the game made it more exciting as well. The scripting for the game was quite hard at the start but then after a while i started getting use to it and started putting code in places it would work better i successfully created the game with an external source and also a score and timer which was explained on the brief.

Overall my game turned out very good but i would change a few of the graphics if we had longer next time and i also would like to build levels so it starts easy and gets harder along the game and then also add a main boss because all platform games have a big boss.

For all the game built in flash the graphics turned out just the way i wanted them to.

www.dacconcept.co.uk/idat102.html

Coding for my game last scene

This is the script for the last scene:

This is my last scene script the stop(); stops the play from playing all the scene's.

The channel1.stop stops the main game sound track.

The myTimer.stop(); stops the timer so that you can save your result.

i have created an add event listener for the scoreboard and also i created the function for the scoreboard.

in the function there is the same code we had in the main game so then it knows when to save the score and timer.

Then at the bottom there is a sound script and button i have already discussed, but this button go's to the bottom and plays the game again.

Coding for my main game part 2

This is a carry on from my last blog post.

 Up the top it removes the spitfire from the main game scene by placing it at -200 which is off the screen. And then it tells the game when your character has been hit go and play the last scene which is (4). The we have function Marley which is exactly like the bob function but this time it adds a bullet to your character. Then down the bottom it says if your bullet hits the enemy enemy play and remove the spitfire bullet and then place the enemy back at the beginning and add 1 to your score which is scoreNumber++.

The part down the bottom says if up arrows pressed spitfire on the y axis = y + the speed variable and then the same is repeated for the down arrow and then right at the bottom is when you press space it plays function marley which was the bullet.


A lot of code but it makes my game work perfect after doing the screen printing i found a few things i could improve on and i have improved the code a bit.

Coding for my game main game

This script is quite a long script so i will describe parts of the script that are important.
This script is for the main game stage.

 

 At the top of the script we are creating all the variables we need in the game for example, the enemy speed which is 10 and also the UP Arrow, Down Arrow etc.

Then under the variables we have a script for get current Date, time, hour and this makes the background change if its greater than or equals 12 its blue and if its less than or equal to 11 it plays gray, this is by using a 24 hour clock.

At the top of the screen there are event listener's one for, key pressed down and key pressed up and then another one for a restart game function.

Then after the event listeners there is the restart game function and in here it restarts the actionscript to what it was at the start of the game.

Then under the restart game function there is the script to when keys are pressed down so this involves 2 keys and a space bar.

Then here is the script for key press up its the same as the other one just key pressed up. So this means there will be no key's playing when you don't press the key's.

Then you have a function I created called game control and in here there is the enemy movement and also you have a score script which creates the score numbers.

Under this you have got a script which makes the random fire of the enemy's then it says if enemy fire is more than 100 play a function called bob.

Under that you have the bob function which adds the enemy's bullets, the enemy bullets are in the library and are a child when they are added to the stage. Then after the child it positions the bullet so it comes out of the enemy plane.

Then it adds an event listener of enemy fire and then the function come straight after, and then in this function it makes the bullet go - 3 on the x axis the reason for this is because the bullet is going backwards.

 Then if the bullet is greater than 400 it disappears off the stage and 400 is off the stage anyway but it removes the child and then the event listener.

The next part of the script is saying if the bullet hits my character Gameover becomes true which means it removes the bullet off the stage and removes 2 event listeners which are enemy fire and game control. And then it move's the characters straight off the screen so you can't see them.

Coding for my game Instruction Screen

In the instruction screen for my game I have a small script to start the game with a button and also stop the sounds for the menu's because I have different music for the main game.

There is a (stop();) on the first line to tell the script to stop on this frame, then under that we have
exactly the same actionscript as the first button script but we have called it begin instead and the button is called startbtn1. Then the new item in this script is (channel.stop();) this stops the sound we created in the first frame but i have put it in the button so when we go to the next scene the sound would be removed.

My Game Check it out!!!

This is the link to my website with the game on it http://dacconcept.co.uk/idat102.html .
I am really happy with the outcome of the game, even though the deadline was quite short to make a game also to learn the scripting, it did help partly by my knowledge of scripting before.
I have got some feedback from friends and family and they said they liked the game and most of them said "they couldn't build that" so overall i was really happy with the way the viewers liked the game.

http://dacconcept.co.uk/idat102.html

Last scene for the game

For the last scene in the game i have decided to keep it quite simple and follow parts of my drawings.
This is quite an important screen because it displays your score and the timer to see how far you got.

This is the drawing:

 

This is the actual game footage:

 

I removed the image because i wanted the viewer to pay more attention to the soundtrack which is Winston Churchill saying "never give up".

As you can see on the page there is the time you lasted in the game and the score you got in the game.

And then a short segment of Churchill's speech in the scene.

Then right at the bottom there is the retry button, which takes the game back to the beginning.

I thought about this page a lot this is through the soundtrack in the background a very inspirational speech.

Instruction Screen for my game

The instruction screen is very important to a game because it tells you how to play the game and part of a storyline i think a game has to have a storyline else there's no character to the game that's why mine is about the air attacks in world war 2.

This is the drawing of the instruction screen:

 

This is the flash version of the instruction screen:

This is my instruction screen i am keeping to the colour scheme in all the game using blue, gray, black and dark green. The instruction screen has a time which is brought in from your computers clock and i think it just brings some personality into the game. The instruction screen is quite simple but all it's there to do is instruct you and that's what it does.
Also this scene there is the German plane instead of a spitfire, just to show the enemy plane so you notice it.

Start screen for my game

For the start screen for my game i wanted to keep parts of my drawings within the start screen but items always alter after you put them on computer.

This is the drawing of my start scene:

 

This is what the actual game start page looks like:

On the start page there is the title of the game which is The Flight OF WW11

There is also a world war 2 radio and in the background there is an old radio playing which creates a nice effect all together. The start button is just text because it fitted in with the title screen.

And then to finish the scene off there is the spitfire and in the background clouds pass by.

I like this scene because it all fits together well and doesn't look out of place and its simple but effective. The background changes colour every 30 seconds the first 30 seconds its blue and the other 30 seconds is gray as shown above.

Coding For my game

I have used many different event listeners and functions for my game I will be putting the code here with a description beside it. I had to create loads of variables as well for different objects. The character's have instance names within them to get the objects moving and doing the items you want to do.

 

This is the first part of my script:

The first line stops the frames from playing, then the (var snd line) creates a variable for a new sound.

The (snd.load line) adds the sound to Flash all you have to do is keep the sound file in the same folder as your Flash file.  (Var channel) adds a sound channel for the game to see if it is playing and capture the sound. (Then channel = snd.play()) this tells flash to play the sound in the file, and mine is a radio mp3 so i called it radio.mp3

The next part highlighted in blue is how to add a button to the game.

so...... the first line adds and event listener to check for a mouse, click and we give the event listener the name of startClicked.

 The startClicked adds a name for the event listener, in the next line we create a function for the start button and it is an event. And then the gotoAndPlay(2) tells the script to go to the next frame.

So overall the bottom part of the script looks for when you press the button and then sends your game to the instruction page.

Drawing the background

I am going to take the drawing of the background picture and make it my own on Flash.
At the moment though on flash im not concentrating too much on the graphics because the scripting is the most important items.

 

This is my drawing on flash on the main stage

 

This is my game scene on the left you have the timer which counts up, and the score is on the right.

The clouds are animated in the background so they move along and because it is at night the background is gray.

The 2 characters are at each end and your character is on the left hand side.

I really like the game scene because it is simple and doesn't take your eye off of the characters by having loads of graphics around the edge.

Also because its a world war plane game there is nothing else in the sky other than clouds, planes and bullets.

The background changes if its past 11 o'clock at night it goes gray and stays gray until 11 o'clock in the morning and change's to blue.

The start of my game in flash

I  have just started making my game in Flash i am beginning with making the planes these are the outline pictures i am going to be using.

This is the Spitfire i am going to make all i have to use is the line tool and bending line tool and a paint bucket.

This is my Spitfire i made:

This is my Spitfire and it looks just like the picture i was really happy with the spitfire and it came out just as i expected.

This is the picture i used for the Messerschmitt bf 109:

And this is my Messerschmitt plane:

 

This is the Messerschmitt plane and i thought the outcome was really good and i liked the way they look like the actual plane but in cartoon.

I found out i dont need a preloader

The reason i do not need a pre-loader is because the file size of my game is small and will not take that much loading. So that saved me adding another scene to my game and if i don't need it there is no point in having it.

Process i will take to design my World War 2 Game

I think it is important to make a list to keep in order of what you are doing for the flash Game because its scripting you can lose track of items you have to do so i create a short list of the objects i will have to make and the scripting i will have to do:

1st Step; Draw the Spit fire in Flash and also the Messerschmitt bf 109 (for this all i have to do is get a picture of both planes and draw over them to create the plane and then follow the colour schemes they have.) Also with these plane's you have to imitate the propeller moving do this in a movie clip.

2nd Step; Draw the background for the main game stage (For this just copy your drawing editing what you want it to look like in Flash.)

3rd Step; Draw the Clouds in a separate movie-clip and animate within the frame of the clouds moving.

4th Step; Make 2 dynamic text boxes one for the score and one for the timer and give them instance names.

5th Step; Create an actions layer on the frame and this is where all the scripting will go.

6th Step;
- Create Scripting for movement of you character
- Create Scripting for random movement of enemy plane
- Script Score Counter
- Script Timer Counter
- Script Sounds
- Script Collision between bullets and the enemy
- Script Collision between Spitfire and the enemy Bullets
- Script Shooting the bullets
- Script to create the enemys bullets
- Script to change day and night mode
- Script to link the collision to go to the final scene

7th Step; Create the start scene and the buttons with the sound

8th Step; Create the Instruction screen with the button to play the game also there will be get time, date, hour etc.

9th Step; Create the final scene with the dynamic text box of timer and score and add the same script as you have in the main game scene but change the function and event listener. Add the Winston Churchill speech to the end scene.

10th Step; Test the game and do some final adjustments which you may need.

Colour Scheme for my game!!!

For my ww2 Game i am going to keep to 4 colours which are blue (this will be used for the sky),
Grey (This will be used for the background of the game at night), Dark Green (This is used for text and the background hills and finally black (this will be used for the some titles and the outlines of the object's in my game. I may add a few more colours but the one's i mentioned will be the main colours for the game.

The reason i picked one light colour was for the sky but the rest are dark because the world war was a very dark time and these were the colours you saw in the world war.

Designing my game Part 4!!!

This is the final screen of my game it is the retry screen I thought it would be good to have a separate page for the retry screen because then its more organized some games i have seen would overlap a retry box on the actual screen of the game, but i think by creating another scene it would look neater.

Here is the final scene drawing:

 

I have drew a picture of a pilot with a parachute on so you know its the end of the game because he's not in his plane. In this scene it will say how far you have got with the timer and then it will tell you what score you got. The soundtrack behind this scene will be one of Winston Churchill's famous speeches where he speaks about never giving up so it go's along with the game to try and get you to play it again. The background colour will be blue and the text will be Dark Green.     

Designing my game Part 3!!!

The third drawing is of the game itself. The basic object of my game is going to see how long you can last without getting hit and also how many points you can collect.
This is the drawing of my game:

 

The spitfire will be your plane and the Messerschmitt bf 109 will be the enemy plane i will be drawing the planes straight into flash and I really like vector drawing in flash. There will be a timer and a score counter in the game. 

In the background there will be clouds, which will be animated inside its own movie clip and this will give the effect the planes are flying past. The background colour will change depending on the time of your computer if its after 12 it will be Grey and if it is before 12 it will be blue.

The sound effect on this scene will be of a spitfire engine because that's your character.

The Spitfire will only go up and down also it will shoot when you press the space bar.

Down the bottom of the page i am going to draw some hills so it looks like a proper scene.

Designing my game Part 2!!!

This is the next scene of my Game it is the instruction screen, instruction screens are really important in the game because it lets you know how to play the game.
This is my instruction drawn screen:

 

This is my Instruction screen as you can see it has some text in this screen i will be putting information in on how to play the game. In this screen i will be pulling in the time to personalize the page a bit.

The music will carrying on playing through this scene from the start screen.

The background will have an old war map feel, and there will be a picture of a war hat and goggles.

Everything i put into the game will have a relevance to ww2 or war.  

Designing my ww2 game!!

The first stage of designing my game is to draw some objects that could influence graphics within my game. My Game will be using vector graphics because they have a lower file size than pictures and also i think vector graphics look more cleaner for a flash game.

This is the first picture i drew for the first scene in my game:

 

Here I have shown the start screen, on here there will be a spitfire with clouds passing by behind.

Inside the radio there will be a play button which links to an instruction screen.

The title of my game is called the Flight of WW11 because it is based on the battles between the Spitfire and Messerschmitt bf 109. The background will change colour every 30 seconds if it is 0-30 seconds it will be light blue if it is 31-60 seconds it will change to Grey.

In this screen i will be putting some old ww2 radio songs to create an atmosphere for the world war 2.

I think the sound is very important because it gives the game character and makes it a bit more fun for people.

The Flash Game

For me to make my flash game i am using my own knowledge mixed with lecture knowledge and tutorial knowledge. Here are some website's i have looked at for help with Actionscript 3 because i think the best way to learn scripting is following tutorials. And the other good thing with tutorials is the way it helps people develop with software's.

This website is a really interesting site because there are tutorials on here on how to make a full flash game there are different styles and the tutorials are really easy to follow.
I was looking at the vertical shooter game in particular because it has the similar physics as my game has.
http://www.flashgametuts.com/tutorials/category/as3/

Changing of the German Plane

I have changed the German plane I am using in my game because the German Plane I Picked at first didn't really match the spitfire.

Messerschmitt Bf 109

 MG 131 Machine Guns

 Soon I will be posting pictures of my flash model and the scene i am in the process of making the game and i will also explain the action scripting i have used.

I have gone ahead with the flying game!!

Today I was looking over the Internet for a war flying game and I found the game naval fighter pilot. http://flyinggames123.com/naval-fighter-pilot.html

This game is an old game i use 2 play this game on a arcade machine and it was really fun. I really like the old games, and it has very similar physics to what i need you shoot the enemy(same as mine)
you go from left to right and also forward and back (mine is only going to have left and right)
It has a target for the end of the level (my game is going to have a timer and if i have time it will have a score board as well).
So this game is going to be very similar to mine with only a few different items happening.

The Pre Loader!!!

Today i thought i would look around the internet for some help on pre loaders and i found the answer from the amazing website http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/as3preloader/


This website had a step by step tutorial so it made me understand how the pre loaders work.
I will be putting this at the beginning of the game to make the game flow better.
I think pre loaders are important because if games do not have them they will have a blank screen before the games start and people will wonder what is going on.

Boom an idea!!!!

Today I had a booming idea, I thought of making a flash game on world war 2 but in the air.
You can fight the German's in an English spitfire and proceed through various levels beating off German Fighter planes. All the thoughts and plans are not final yet but close to the actual thing.

The Plan:

Your Character:
An English Spit Fire

Your Weapon:
M1919 Browning

The Enemy:
Arado Ar 65

Your Weapon: 
MG 17 machine gun

The Game Basic's:

Object:
You have too see how far you can go without getting killed by the enemy.
There will be a timer to see how far you go also a score counter to see how many points you have.
Each minute there will be an enemy boss and they will be harder to kill than the other small enemy's.

There will also be background objects to miss like radio tower's, and anti missile launcher's.


The Game Physic's:
The game will be a side scroller, the background will move from left to right also there will be enemies attacking at you straight on.
Your plane will be able to move up and down, and shoot forwards.
i will be drawing some images for the flash game because i will be using vector graphics because it keeps the file size and download time lower and also makes the graphics look nicer.

A Western Game. Maybe?

Today i was watching a film on the TV it was a western film i forgot what it was called but there was a duel and i thought i could make my game based on a western.

1st Idea:
Make the western town and have an enemy and have a timer to see how long you take to fire the bullet and then create different enemy level's. So it starts off easy and gets harder and harder.

2nd Idea:
Have a background of a western scene and your on a horse and the background moves as you move on the horse. You go past the desert and strange items like:

-Cacti
-Bank Robbers
-Trains
-sherif
All of these items you will shoot at on your journey out of town.

3rd Idea:
you go around the western town with your gun in hand and you are the sheriff and you need to get the trouble out of your town so you have to spot the trouble out. You have a time you have to do it in 2 minutes. You also get a score for the most people you get out your town.

Flash Game: Dino Run!

Looking on the internet today i found a simple but nice game called Dino run.

The Dino Run game has been made in flash, and the object of the game is to get to the end of the level with out the other dinosaurs getting you.

This is a simple flash game you use the right key to go right the up key to jump and the back key to go back.(why you want to go back i don't know)

This is what happens when the other dinosaurs get near you, 

the background goes red and the characters become black.

With this game i may take idea's of the concept with me so you are running away from something,

also the game would be quite simple to make.

Idea From Dino Run!
With Dino Run you could use the character moving and then when it goes forward it moves the background.  Also the jump is easy to do you just need some gravity force in the game.

Doodle God review!!

Doodle God is a simple game you have to create elements out of objects you have you start with 4 elements and have to create other elements from them, there are more than 100 elements so you have to build the elements up you have a score board so every element you get points.

Doodle God is also available on the Iphone i think you could use this game and make it different like using made up creatures and you could create a big collage of new creatures like pokemon.

Here is a screen shot of the game as you can see fire and earth combined make a new element.

There is help if you need it and also a few facts on the elements are shown.

Zombie Trailer Park Review!!!

Zombie Trailer Park
I like this game a lot and its like the game i want to make for my flash game.

This game is about zombies trying to take over your trailer park and you have to stop them using your army of farmers. You get money for each zombie you kill and the more money you get the better upgrades you can have. The object of the game is to reach the longest waves.

I like this game because its about how you use your carvery and you have to choose wisely on your selection.

This is a screen shot of the game, the game is all in vector graphics and i think i will use vector graphics because it looks cleaner and its easier to make a game with vector graphics then picture also the vector graphics are lower file sizes.

Game sites i have looked at so far

I have looked at many game sites whilst looking for games here are a list of them:

http://www.gamefudge.com/ on this website i found the Harpoon Lagoon Game, Flight and Zombie Trailer Park.

http://www.flashgames247.com/ This website i found the games Dj Hero 2 and Bike Mania 2

 

http://www.kongregate.com this website i found the following game's Bloons tower defense 4 and Doodle God.

Some Games i like on the Internet: Harpoon Lagoon

When researching games i stumbled across this little addictive game called Harpoon Lagoon.
The object of the game is to collect as many fish as you can and reach the target every round it starts you need to get $100 of fish and it works up each round.

This is the start page of harpoon Lagoon

 This is what the game's like it is vector graphics and doesn't lag at all.

As you can see you have a target and what you have got each fish is worth different points.

Also down the bottom of the game there are treasure objects like rings and chest's and you get the most point's for them. Later on when you get some money you can buy upgrades which mean's you can reach the bottom of the lagoon.