Case #6

New Case:
Create an enemy using a seperate class. Make it follow the character. Create a collision or reaction when they collide.

difficulties:
Making the enemy follow the character, reason for this being a fairly unorganized actionscript and the absence of one tiny pointy
parentheses,

implementing the jump for the main character. Realizing I must have accidentally written an extra number in the code deciding Velocity

Making the characters smaller. reducing the scaleX and scaleY for the characters didn't cope with the walking sprites because their widths wouldn't change. So what I did was, I simply reduced the size of the characters main symbol in the Fla. document library. I also adjusted the placement of those symbols to make it look more natural. Before this the characters were kind of hovering over the ground.

Making the character die. At first I just made an animation where the main character blew up. I placed this animation in the sprite for the character and implemented it into the actionscript so that when the character touched the enemy (hitbox) it would play the animation of him dying. As usual the reason this wouldn`t work was a simple mistake. I had reffered to the wrong keyframe in the sprite. The animation looked lame, so I changed it to a simple fade to black with a red implosioin thingy.


Other:
Made the enemy and foreground look more pixelated using Photoshop. Drawing the layers in Photoshop with settings that reduced the resolution of the file gave me exactly the look I wanted in my game

What's a game without an awesome soundtrack? I had already composed a melody for the game but the melody on its own would not suffice for a theme song. So I got a little help from a buddy of mine to make the soundtrack a bit more funkyfresh using FL Studio.

Went through the entire actionscript adding more comments and cleaned all that mess up.

Checkit!
http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1290703643

Case #5

For this case we had to add a couple of things to our actionscript.  We had to create a socalled sprite for our character that triggers more than one animation. In addition to this we had to make a hitTest that allows the character to pick up certain objects placed on the scene. We also had to use a similar hitTest making the character stick to the ground while walking.

Seeing as I had already created a sprite function for the character using the idle animation and the walk animation in the previous case, I felt no need adding another one.  I moved on to the hitTest by creating an object, and adding a code to the actionscript allowing the object to dissapear once the character had touched it. At first this didn`t work and as usual Flash refused to tell me why. I later found out that the problem was the (onFrameloop) function for the cloud animation i made in case 4. Apparently adding another code with the same function for my hitTest messed the whole thing up. I fixed this by removing the onFrameLoop Event for my hitTest and placed the code for the hitTest under my first onFrameLoop code. The character was now able to easily pick up the object. I moved on to the sticking-to-the-ground part of the case by first creating a new ground with an uneven surface. After writing the code for this I thought I was done, but ofcourse the character decided to simply fall to the ground an dissapear forever. The wierd thing was that when i applied the function for the background surface it actually worked, and the character would stick to the ground.  My group leader would later point out to me that the reason for this was that the characters position were too low for the ground, and I was like "OMG", and then i fixed it.  

Case #4

Let the programming begin! For this week we had to go through the process of writing codes in actionscript. For many, including me, this was also the process of learning how to write codes. Which basically is like learning a new language.

The case consisted of creating a scene for my game, using the characters and graphic from previous cases. In this scene the main character shall be able to move to the right and to the left using the keyboard arrows. In addition to this the character shall not be able to walk outside the "screen".

In the beginning of the case I simply rewrote the example actionscript handed out by our teacher. Seeing as I didn't get much out of this, apart from learning some basic arrangements, I started looking at the tutorials and documents available on fronter. Again, this was a lot to take in all at once and I feel like programming is one of those learning by doing sort of things, so I started trying out different easy codes and functions. After learning a little bit by doing almost everything wrong, I tried adopting some of the codes from an actionscript provided by our  group leader. This started working in a moonwalk-styled fashion with some glitches here and there, but I was making progress. Then suddenly everything stopped working, and I could not figure out what the problem was. After countless hours of troubleshooting and frustration I started the script from scratch. With a little help of my fellow students I started understanding more of the code functions and was able to create a decent actionscript with the cases requirements.

Case #3

For our third case we basically have to combine the story, animation and characters into one. We have been told to create individual scenes where our story can pan out through the environment and backgrounds we see fit.

Heavily inspired by the megaman series I have included a lot of text and black frames in my storytelling. It seems kind of dull without the classic 8-bit styled soundtrack, but hey! chill, I'm working on it.

Despite being time consuming, I think this case went well. I just kept the animating simple and fast-paced. I messed around with some different effects such as glow and blur to give the different backgrounds some debth and focus. I have used six individual scenes but only three of them include enviroment with backgrounds moving at different speeds. So, to be able to give a proper introduction to the story I felt I needed som additional scenes.

In the first scene we are introduced to the world of Super-Chillmode-Town. Consisting of five backgrounds and forgrounds the "camera" moves vertically untill we see the evil lab of dr. Nastyface. I could make the fact that the tower actually is Nastyfaces evil lab more obvious by putting a logo on it or something.

The second and third scene shows us Nastyface pushing a button, unleashing his weapon upon Super-Chillmode-Town. Instead of animating explosions for scene four, I simply used drop shadow and color adjusting to create an illusion of one big bang about to happen. I tried using the same effect towards the end of scene five and the beginning of scene six, where we are introduced to the protagonist. The animation of the protagonist are copies of movie clip symbols from case #2.

I wasn`t sure about how i would draw the pixelated shapes for the backgrounds in scene six, but figured out rectangle tool and line tool was the way to go. Its not exactly pixels but it gives the feel of somthing less detailed.

Case #2 mostly involves animation. We were told to create a walking animation, jumping animation and an idle animation for our character using Flash.

For the walking animation I used animated footsteps as a symbol, mostly to reduce the number of layers and frames, but also to make it loop on its own. At first it did not look very fluent at all, but after some tweeking and editing it started to look better. I`m not saying it looks good, but it looks a lot better. I originally started animating with "bonetool" but quickly came to realize that I hate "bonetool", and ended up tweening the walk animation.

For the jumping animation I combined frame by frame with tween. The feet and the eyes are mostly done using frame by frame animation, while the torso, head and shoes are tweened. I have not done any inbetweens for this animation, hence the laggy feel of the jump.

The idle animation for the character may be a bit too simple. I am going to animate more than just breathing and blinking eventually.

Case #1

In my first "case" I have been asked to come up with an idea for my project, a project that eventually will form into an "interactive experience" In this case a computer-game.

I have also been asked to design and draw the main character for my idea and storyline. The design of the character will be done in Flash, and it will be designed in a way that will make it convenient for me when I start animating.

The Idea

The concept of the idea is to combine the simplicity, nostalgia and beauty of old-school pixelated gaming and the vector-based graphic we get from flash. I am not sure how this little idea of mine will turn out, seeing as it might get difficult creating a pixelated design in Flash. But I'll give it a try.

Story

the antagonist of the story, let's call him dr. Nastyface has finally figured out a way to drain the resolution from this world. By messing around in his lab as well as his giant head he has created a weapon with the capability of reducing whatever it points at into something much less detailed than its original form. Evil as he is, he decides to use this weapon (pixel-ray) on the entire world. What he plans to do with all this stolen resolution, I have not yet figured out, but I'm certain that it will be something incredibly evil.

However, one man, the protagonist of the story, let's call him Everydaynormalguy remains unaffected by this immoral act of wickedness. For some strange and mysterious reason Everydaynormalguy is immune to the (pixelray). It seems everydaynormalguy isn't just another everyday normal guy, it seems he is destined for greatness, it seems he is destined to save humanity by restoring peace to the world, pixel by pixel.

...Or something like that


Might have to make some alterations on the main character in terms of simplicity. "Less is more" You know what I mean