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At 9/28/14 05:15 PM, JeremyW wrote: I recently finished a new platform game and a couple of people have criticised me for having a limited amount of lives in the game. One person even called it poor design and said it should not be considered relevant to modern game design. What do you guys think? Should I remove the limited number of lives from my game?

You could do what everyone else said and keep the feature but add a way to get more lives (collect so many coins, reach certain score, etc.). I think it really depends on the type of game, length of levels, and difficulty. Imagine trying to beat Super Meat Boy with lives - it would have ruined that game haha

Maybe they only have so many lives to beat a level and death sends them back to the start - or to checkpoint in the level if you want to make it easier. Or maybe they have so many lives to beat a world. Or maybe they have so many lives to make it to some "checkpoint" section in the world (don't know how your platformer is set up).

Again, it really depends on a lot of factors. It doesn't look like you've published the game yet - you could do more play testing with new people to get more opinions. If you'd like you could PM me a link to play test it.

Hope this helps and hope your game kicks ass :)

At 9/28/14 02:39 PM, Celshaded wrote: I ink my stuff on paper and use illustrator's live trace to convert it to vector and then import it into flash. Live trace is way better than the 'convert to bitmap' thing in flash.

Oh very cool dude. I was very curious if there was a way to draw something on paper and then plop it into a program. So if I draw something on paper, scan it into my computer, and use Illustrator's live trace to convert to bitmap - will I be able to do things with it such as using the paint bucket to fill inside the lines?

At 9/28/14 09:20 AM, Aleque wrote: Anyone here is using Movie Explorer for animations and mind sharing a few tricks on how to get the most out of it?

I've never heard of Movie Explorer before. If you don't get any replies to help you out you may want to post this question in the Animation forum.

At 9/28/14 10:29 AM, BoobMarley wrote:

At 9/28/14 05:57 AM, Hero101 wrote:

LIGHT

I should have some old animations for you.

DARK

I did check you're work but it is always worth asking to cover your own ass, ya know? No - I don't think you would be that dick guy but I just wanted to double check. Besides unlike your previous stuff maybe you had planned to add ads this time and share the revenue with everyone for fun :)

NEUTRAL

I stopped animating years ago because I went to film school and produce films instead :P Now I'm back using flash as I'm also finishing a degree in computer game development so I make games now :P

COMEDY

You're face :P

Sorry I can't help you as I'm on the programmer end of things as well. Just wanted to give your post a bump up on the thread so that someone may see it - because I think your game already looks great so I want to see it finished!

Hope you find someone to help you finish it :)

Interesting haha I may have one or two from wayyyy long ago. Are you using flash ads? Because if you are it's only fair you split the revenue with all that participate - would be totally dick-ish to make revenue off other people's submitted work (just sayin'). I stopped animating years ago but I'll check if I still have them backed up on my external hard drive.

At 9/27/14 05:52 AM, Matthcw wrote:

If I see the kind of junk that can get trough on a daily basis, some decent 10 second shorts should have no trouble really.

Thank you sir, I will not dissapoint you.

if I see the kind of junk that can get trough on a daily basis, some decent 10 second shorts should have no trouble really.

^ This hahahaha! It's so true..... Don't crap out 10 second animations just to get movies on the site or spam the portal with them. If you spend a long time on them and make them really visually appealing with some kind of purpose (story, metaphor, punchline, etc.) then people will appreciate them. If they get blammed, try to figure out why they didn't make it through and how to improve them. Honestly if you do everything I suggested and someone says "this sucks cuz it's too short" they can just go &*%$ themselves haha

At 9/27/14 07:10 PM, Aleque wrote: I know that saving as File01, File02, etc, is one method, but I mean generally - how to play it safe in a way that you don't have to worry about a "sudden currupt"? This paranoia can kill creativity imo.

MintPaw covered everything in his last post to you. No need to feel paranoid about it. Just back up often. Not multiple times a day as I could see that making someone overly paranoid. Just often. Finish animating a really complex or long sequence that you would not want to do again - save a new backup.

I played around with Flash on and off for 8 years making animations for my friends and only once did an .fla get corrupted. Doesn't mean you will have the same good fortune but you shouldn't also have it make you paranoid to the point of killing your creativity.

Transfer everything to a new FLA like MintPaw suggested as you're current one is toast and save/backup often throughout a project. Everything will be fine.

At 9/27/14 07:01 PM, Aleque wrote: When I chose from the dropdown menu of a library, which FLA's library to use, I end up having multiple libraries open and I can't seem to get rid og them. If I close the libraries that I don't need 1 by 1, they just all come back once I press Ctrl+L.

You should probably just use on library for your project - the one in the FLA you are working on. Then just use lots of folders to break everything down for organization.

At 9/27/14 11:46 AM, SoulGame wrote:

At 9/26/14 09:27 PM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/26/14 09:17 PM, SoulGame wrote:

Damn, I tried that on the first medal "Street Killer" and the icon is correct now! Except I can't earn the medal anymore... And on preview mode, debuger initialize TWO "street killer" medal as locked, and I can't earn them neither. If checed their id, but doesn't work. Doesn't make any sens to me. Thanks for your time and help anyway!

Well hopefully @PsychoGoldfish gets back to you with a response as it could be a bug.... Sorry man :/

At 9/27/14 02:53 AM, MintPaw wrote: Corruptions happen, Flash CS specifically is known for them. Save and backup frequently. Try to salvage what you can and move it to a new fla. Because that one's probably going up in smoke.

I've only had a single corruption issue once in like 8 years but it sucked so bad at the time that I always back my stuff up now. I'm curious though - can an actionscript file get corrupted whether it was created with Flash or other programs like Flash Builder or Flash Develop?

Didn't cross my mind until now.....so I don't know if I should be backing up my code files frequently.

At 9/27/14 12:39 AM, DennisJ wrote: I want to advertise that I can do lip syncing work or motion tweeting for a website anything really.

I won't find any paid work here....hmmm....have you tried putting up a Craigslist ad?

I know what you mean dude. I will always love video games and always play them. Hell, I just started teaching myself how to program since the start of the year so I could make them as well. But around the age of 25 (I'm 28 now) my excitement has started to dwindle regardless of what type of game I played. It could be the age thing or it could just be that being an actual adult (I sure as hell wasn't much of an adult at 18) weighs you down (i.e. responsibilities, career, etc...). I think things are just more carefree when you are younger which allows yourself to fully get swallowed up in the gaming universe if that makes sense.

At 9/26/14 08:04 PM, Aleque wrote: Suddenly I have experienced a problem: It deleted all of my sound files and images from the library and from the timeline.

Lag sure but it shouldn't delete anything from your library or timeline.... Guess that's why you should save often and backup multiple versions (ie project01....project02....etc).

At 9/26/14 07:49 PM, GrahamNG wrote: I've looked through the newgrounds thing and downloaded the the correct file and got my encryption key, etc. But I'm confused. I don't want the NG preloader. What can I do so I can have medals in my games without anything else?

Can someone give a laymen's step-by-step guide.

All answers appreciated.

Don't know what version of actionscript you are using or how your project is set up but you could add the API connector dynamically rather than dragging stuff to the stage.

import com.newgrounds.*;
API.connect(root, "Your API ID", "Your Encryption Key");

More is found in NG's wiki here

At 9/26/14 09:23 PM, SoulGame wrote:

At 9/26/14 09:21 PM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/26/14 09:17 PM, SoulGame wrote:

Well, I didn't change after publishing. I only created medals with test icons, then I changed icons, then I published... Will try to contact him thanks.

Oh gotcha....I did that too but before I published the game though I just deleted the medal and added it again (instead of uploading new pic....). Not sure why I did it that way to be honest - think I accidentally deleted it - but it worked.

At 9/26/14 09:17 PM, SoulGame wrote:

At 9/26/14 08:44 PM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/26/14 08:25 PM, SoulGame wrote:

My bad, I didn't know about that, thanks for the explanation. Yes I did submit, and the picture are okay in the Medals list... Still not in the game's page. Thanks anyway!

Well damn. Could be a bug. You could PM PsychoGoldfish about it. Guess you know that next time you should have all your medals set in stone before publishing the game :P

At 9/18/14 12:46 AM, DerekMetalhead wrote:

At 9/18/14 12:27 AM, Celshaded wrote:

True. Not to mention that, unless you're a good artist, you don't have to worry about drawing characters anatomically correct, in perspective, etc. in live-action. I guess it's about picking your battles. In my case, I'd rather do animation because although the labor is intensive and long, at least it'll make progress because you're the one working on it, no matter how long it takes you. There's no middle men to slow you down. This film of mine was supposed to be done 2 years ago. The majority of the time has been spent going through a revolving door of actors, crew, money, etc. It's supposed to be a 15 minute short. I could've animated it myself had I known it would've taken this ridiculously long. :/

Dude I totally know where you are coming from. I've done independent filmmaking for about 4-5 years now. Also did 2 years of film school as well. It is very time consuming as I'm sure you know. At the start of this year I shift gears and am now into computer game development. I've only been teaching myself to program since the start of the year but daaaamn you have to devote a crap ton of time at teaching yourself to program to learn anything.

I am extremely passionate about game development and filmmaking but sadly there just isn't enough time to do both.... I also have a short film a shot that has been in post production for over a year now because I just don't have time to finish it as I am trying to learn to program so I can make games. It really sucks that I can't focus on both due to lack of time and as such I haven't done anything film-wise since I started learning to program.

As to your title "Live action vs. Animation" I think they are both awesome creative mediums to share your stories with the world. I don't think one is better than the other. They both have pros and cons over each other. If you are debating which one you should stick with I suggest doing whichever one makes you the most happy. Sure they can both be frustrating at times but if you don't love it (and the process) with all your heart - if you are not waking up everyday eager to work on it - then it will eventually burn you out down the road. That's just my opinion though.

At 9/26/14 12:20 PM, dafnimargaret wrote: And what do you think I should ask in the new thread? the same thing or change a bit my question? thanks ;)

Oh you could just copy and past your original post into a new thread but give it a better title Something like names of different animation programs.

At 9/26/14 08:25 PM, SoulGame wrote: Thanks for the idea! Unfortunately that won't work. Plus, a friend of mine who had never been on the page, just saw the wrong icons too...

You have to leave that line at the top that says "At....my name" if you want me to get a notification to your response just so you know...

That's weird it didn't work. You positive you hit the submit button below where you upload a new image in the project medal settings? haha

Otherwise I don't really know what to tell you....maybe someone else will come along with a better idea...

At 9/26/14 07:00 PM, SoulGame wrote: EDIT : okay, it appears that other people also see the wrong pictures. Any ideas what I could to to update icons?

You try clearing your computer's cache first? If that works then you could leave a note in the description of your game to warn players to do the same.

At 9/26/14 03:38 PM, selfdefiant wrote:

At 9/26/14 03:35 PM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/26/14 09:02 AM, selfdefiant wrote:

At 9/26/14 12:43 AM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/26/14 12:09 AM, selfdefiant wrote:

A lot of hard work and I've been developing Flash games for 8 years now. :)

That makes sense haha I just started teaching myself to program (AS3) since the start of the year so I takes me forever to make even the simplest of games :P

Best of luck to you!

At 9/26/14 09:02 AM, selfdefiant wrote:

At 9/26/14 12:43 AM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/26/14 12:09 AM, selfdefiant wrote:

You make all these point n click adventure games all on your own?

Yes, I do!

That's impressive! How do you manage to make so many so quickly? As of this year you have released 60 of these point n click adventure games!

Anyone here create their art assets in Illustrator and then bring them into Flash for animating? I've always made my assets (for games) inside Flash but I'm considering using Illustrator and was curious if any of you have done this and, if so, how do you like it?

At 9/25/14 11:45 AM, dafnimargaret wrote: Hello, I'm new in this forum , and new in the animation industry. My only experience with animation is making a really small one with flash. Right now, I'm graduating from my computer science university and I have to do my thesis and I chose computer animation. My professor needs me to find some programs to begin with. SO my question is what programs would you advice me to choose ? I need something professional but not only for experts.
Thanks in advance

Adobe Flash and Toon Boom are the only ones I'm aware of but I know there are a few more out there. You should create another thread post but title it something like "types of animation programs". That might help you get more people telling you what else is out there.

At 9/26/14 12:09 AM, selfdefiant wrote: Yay, Thanks!!!

You make all these point n click adventure games all on your own?

Yay no more double posts because I left something out of my original post in the forums haha

As for the throwback I love The Composer by Jazza :) Brings back all kinds of good memories when I saw it when it first came out :)

At 9/25/14 08:33 AM, Klutzi wrote:

At 9/25/14 02:28 AM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/24/14 06:24 PM, Klutzi wrote:

It's only RPG in a way that the players play as characters, (as in they play roles) but it's not as complex as a 'real' RPG, maybe other than specified upgrades. I'm more concerned about the actual TD part of it. But yeah, it's more complex than simple arcade games and such which is why I'm having difficulties, lol. Thanks for the advice, though :)

Oh ok gotcha. Yeah coding can be quite difficult when you are still learning haha I've been at it since the start of the year and I am still a long ways away from making complex games otherwise I might have offered some help lol

At 9/25/14 07:11 AM, DiceMaster5 wrote:

At 9/24/14 10:44 PM, Hero101 wrote:

At 9/18/14 07:13 PM, DiceMaster5 wrote:

Ok thanks for the answer. From what I have searched up C# has a very similar syntax as Java so if I learned C# I could probably pick up Java easily.

I would learn Java to help learn C# not the other way around.

At 9/23/14 04:20 AM, WardenKeith wrote: On my Fiverr page I do have a demo video of myself doing a few of my voices, but I am very much capable of more. If you'd like a link to the video, send me a message! Thanks for reading.

No need to provide the link as it is on your profile page :P unless you have a different video? Nice work nonetheless. Could suite well for a character that essentially explains the tutorial in one of my games down the line. I'll remember you.