At 11/11/09 07:38 PM, FatKidWitAJetPak wrote: Should there be particle effect elements in the game?

Not that you need to worry about. If particle effects are necessary they'd be added in towards the end of the game making process.

CORRECTION:
============

Vertical width is 350 px

I mis-posted 450 before. Sorry.

At 11/9/09 08:04 PM, zrb wrote: Update:
Hope you guys like my vision of the colours. This is what it looked like in my head.
I will be putting statues in those big black hole/entrace things !
And then cracks, broken stone, junk.

Floor is temporary !

looked better before

At 11/9/09 06:35 AM, flashwarrior wrote:

At 11/9/09 12:08 AM, BoMToons wrote: Main clip (movieclip) > guts (moveclip) > timeline of labeled frames, each frame holds a movieclip for one action of the boss (see folder "lev0>boss>boss0 for example)

So we have the enemy/boss in an MC then in the next frame the MC of them getting shot/hurt?
And then we put the rest of its attacks in the other MCs after that right? Or am I missing something? Because I'm not the brightest.

Yeah, that's basically it...but the frames would be like:
[p1idle][p1attack1][p1attack2][phase1dea th][p2idle][p2attack1][p2attack2][p2deat h]

Look at the fla I posted if you're still confused, specifically "the lev0>boss>boss0" clip

let's say that having your "ship" change mid-stream to another look isn't possible for now...I might change this rule later, but for now...No

PENIS:
======

Penis.

CUT SCENES:
============

If you want to have an intro cut scene and an end cut scene, that's fine, but don't make them too long, let's get STRAIGHT TO THE ACTION!

At 11/8/09 04:35 PM, zrb wrote:

At 11/8/09 03:52 PM, trig1 wrote: Didn't get Keith Chegwin.

Who?

Moar spam, started coloring the main thing, details (cracks, all that junk) will be later.
Took me 15 mins to find the right colors :|

I'm impressed! You're no longer just a spammer in my mind now...

MORE BOSSES:
==============

In that link I posted above for bosses, there's a simple .jpg sketch of the boss behavior. I'd recommend something like that BEFORE finalizing boss design and include it with the final boss art so I know visually what behavior you'r intending.

DISCLAIMER: Bosses are a really organic process meaning that sometimes a pattern or attack seems good on paper, but with testing/implementation it proves to be less effective and we might end up cutting it from the final game or asking you to re-tool it....don't be offended... we just want something that will be tons of fun and not confusing or frustrating for the player.

SHIPS:
======

The look of each level's ship can be custom.

The bullets it fires will NOT have custom behavior, but they CAN LOOK custom.

I'd recommend waiting, for now, on ship and bullet implementation, you can do concepts, but the actual hit-areas and behaviors aren't solid yet so I need some more time there.

BOSSES:
========

You can do as many mini-bosses as you want, but don't go too overboard please...maybe like 3 at the most per level...and keep their patterns simple!

Final Boss on each level should be big...hopefully really intimidating. He can have multiple forms...maybe like 3 at the most. He can have as many attack patterns as you want per form.

I'm posting this link in an open-source spirit and to help the artists structure their clips in a way that's easy for me to plug into my engine. Hardcore code-monkeys will probably laugh at my self-taught (and un-optimized) approach, but it works for me and has made some pretty cool games in the past, so don't hate...also, don't steal my code and release it as your own...I'll know. Don't steal the art either, Johnny_Utah will come to your house if you do. Feel free to dig in and learn what you can though.

http://www.bomtoons.com/ngshmup/blart

Basically, each enemy, including bosses follow a simple movieclip structure:

Main clip (movieclip) > guts (moveclip) > timeline of labeled frames, each frame holds a movieclip for one action of the boss (see folder "lev0>boss>boss0 for example)

You don't need to do the main clip or guts, but if you can put each action in its own individual clip that would make my life easier

More info on customization:

BGS
==============
There are currently 6 levels of parallax. Hopefully this is enough to handle everyone's needs. Each team should provide art for all 6 levels of parallax. These are set up in tiles that are 423px high for horizontal, and 450px wide for vertical. Having them in tiles lets me load them as-needed so they need to fit together seamlessly where they join.

6 . FAR FAR BG: bg (ie: something like clouds or looped mountain ranges) ie: 2 tiles that fit seamlessly together, 1-->2 and 2-->1
Width > 750 for horizontal and height > 550 for vertical. Not to exceed 2800 px

5. FARISH BG: Same as FAR FAR BG above but closer details

4. FAR BG: Customizable, so if your bg wants to tell a story on this layer, it's ok. Width > 750 for horizontal and height > 550 for vertical. Each tile not to exceed 2800 px

3. BG: Customizable. Same specs as FAR BG above.

2. GROUND: This may or may not actually look like the "ground" in your game. This is the layer that can be crashed into. So, if there are any "crash-into-able" elements, they go here. Width > 750 for horizontal and height > 550 for vertical. Each tile not to exceed 2800 px. You can leave some or all of these blank if you want. Level designers may want to sketch up how these lay out to make it clear to me what you want when you send them over.

1. FG: This goes in front of everything else. Maybe mist? or Clouds? or debris? Just make sure it doesn't detract from screen visibility, unless you really think flying blinded for a section would be awesome :-P

The speed these layers move can be adjusted per-level, but remember that the Farthest BGs move slower than the layers in front of them so FAR BG and BG and GROUND (the customizable, non-looping ones) if you want them to align right to tell a story, need to have progressively MORE art in them.

P.S. If you don't want to make custom tiles for FAR BG and BG you don't have to.

Here are the hard specs:

The total area of the stage is 750x550 (750 wide, 550 tall)

BUT...

I'm letterboxing both the horizontal and vertical levels for performance and to leave room for the HUD so the viewable areas will be:

HORIZONTAL - 750x423
VERTICAL - 450x550

Frame-rate: 60 fps

IMPORTANT: ALL final art must be rasterized. This is really important because the flash graphics engine has to work super hard to draw vector graphics on the screen every frame. Vector art will bring the game to almost a halt @ 60 fps.

If we want this to be a super fast-paced shmup, we have to go through the extra effort of rasterizing our stuff.

This means everything needs to be converted to transparent .png or .gif. You can still separate symbols as different .pngs and then animate/tween them. Team leaders need to be very strict on this rule before shipping the final art to me.

Absolutely no glows or filters applied in the flash IDE. If it needs to glow it needs to be done in the .png file, not in flash.

This creates some interesting challenges because .pngs don't rotate well in flash unless you apply some smoothing, but I'm suspicious that even smoothing may tax the processor, but I'm not 100% certain yet.

Remember that just because it's 60 fps doesn't mean you need to fbf 60 .pngs for every second of behavior. The fast frame-rate is mostly for scripted movement like bullets, the animation will still look fine if you "shoot on twos" or even "threes"

Please also listen closely to the experienced game artists in the forum, like Mindchamber, because you can often achieve great effects and communicate what's necessary with a very small number of carefully planned frames...

ie: stuff like "why draw the sword slashing through 10 frames when you can draw a start frame, a blurred frame, and an end frame and get away with 3?"

This kind of optimization will be essential for performance issues, so please, team leaders and experienced artists, pour out your knowledge for the less-experienced!

At 11/7/09 04:45 PM, Goat-Man wrote: For BoMToons, playing through the game I was getting a consistant 50fps at the first boss.
But with the crab, it dropped to about 35-40fps. It varied in that range.

For the cell team, I thought the human body aspect of ours might have been dropped. I wasn't too sure what was going on, because in the team line-up it now only said "Cell"
I'm fine with it being human body though. Actually I like that better!
I figure every enemy doesn't have to actually look like single-celled organisms, because that would be pretty damn boring. Haha.

I'll concept some more stuff tonight. Then pick out the best, and prepare it for our chat tomorrow afternoon :)

If you've ever played life-force for the nes, or contra, you'll remember levels inside an alien body...I think something like that would be a lot more interesting than just a human body...a lot more options for creativity too...the final boss was like a big brain or a big heart but you passed by ribs and weird alien organisms along the way

At 11/7/09 04:40 PM, just2pale wrote: I am letting it stay on the crab boss... he is defeated.. and the frame rate just keeps climbing.. it is at 200fps now lol

You're probably mistaking the total number of seconds for the fps

Don tknow if this is a glitch

I need your help everyone. I need to test the frame-rate of my engine:

Johnny Utah is helping me build some demos which will turn into the 7th "final boss" level that unlocks when the player beats the other 6 levels.

Here is the demo: http://bomtoons.com/ngshmup/demologin.ph p
password: precious
(I'll be changing the password after today)

Please post back here your frame-rate when shooting the crab boss on the 2nd level. Mine stays between 45 and 50, but I'm wondering what every else's experience on the crab thing is. (Crab won't be in the final game, but his parts are .png-ized for performance so it's a good test)

THANKS!

FYI: I plan to run the final game at 60 fps, but while building a game I like to drop the rate down (to 50 in this case) so when I finally release it I can re-up the frame rate and feel like it's playing in hyper-speed.

New game, the band I was trying to get a hold of finally gave me permission to use their song at the end:

Cavern of the Evil Wizard, by BoMToons Type: Game Rating: Everyone

At 11/6/09 01:12 PM, BlackmarketKraig wrote:

At 11/6/09 12:53 PM, ornery wrote:
On a related note though, what exactly will artists be giving the programmers, it would be helpful if they gave us file types, sizes for backgrounds ect. Cuz we can concept sketch until the cows come home, but what finished files would they need in order to put a finished piece in. I know animations require more than single frame drawings most of the time, so if the programer could give us an idea as to how many views of a single piece we need that would help.

Yeah, BoMToons will have the specifics on that stuff as soon as he has it all figured out. He's very much on top of things. =]

Experimenting with game mechanics now. I just want to be 100% sure on the size and frame-rate before we release it to you all...that way you won't produce a bunch of stuff that won't work.

At 11/6/09 01:14 AM, angryglacier wrote: I've got a idea video I would like to add...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csb5aYoMa l8

Radiant Silvergun a amazing SHMUP that was one of the first to introduce a story to the game and also was highly acclaimed for it's polished look (made sometime in the late1990's. )

I added that video to the ideas page.

The sword in that game is a really novel idea, it's like a brawler mixed with shmup...whoa!

Shwaaaaa???

wooo! PROGRESS!

I'll have my first demo built sometime soon, along with a special surprizzzzeee....

The demo will establish the framerate and stage settings as well as the hitareas for the player ship and floating guns.

Stay tuned!

Is today guy fawks day/night?

At 11/4/09 07:11 PM, citricsquid wrote: you might appreciate

That is a really novel idea, very addicting

Good job you all and special congrats to Renaenae!

At 11/1/09 09:12 PM, ViolentAJ wrote: It's past October 30th and I haven't received anything. Also, I'd prefer PayPal payment if possible. My address is entered correctly. They're still saying that no payment has been issued.

Payments earned for the month of September will be going out this week. If you still haven't seen the record of payment being sent in your account by the end of this upcoming week (ie: by Nov 7th) then there's probably something wrong.

Oooops, sorry guys. I thought I had fixed everything for the Portal Defenders Halloween Edition and went off merrily to celebrate Halloween away from the Internetz...only to return today to enough complaining and PMs to realize I had definitely missed something.

So I went back through my code and tracked down the error...at least I hope i finally squashed it. We're running an old version of the medal API since we were the 1st medal game on newgrounds and the way I set up the medals left a lot of places that needed to be changed to add in new ones. I missed one of those and now it's hopefully fixed.

**Site admins still need to approve the upload before it goes live, but rest assured it will be working soon.**

Bad news is that it was the kind of mistake that crossed a lot of wires so you might need to re-play certain scenarios to get the missing medals and/or clear your saved game data to fix it.

It's totally my bad for rushing through the release of this halloween treat and then disappearing before making sure it was 100% right. Forgive please and keep on earning my medals!

--BoM

At 10/30/09 05:16 PM, waynerz99 wrote: I have the opposite problem. I got Konami for starting the game up, but after beating the game with tom, I don't get hollow wiener? Perhaps clearing the cache would fix this? I dunno.

brb leaving gun game on for another hour to get the medal lol

Probably...make sure you're in halloween mode when you beat it...you'll know because everyone is in halloween costumes and candy comes out of people instead of brains and guts.

At 10/30/09 03:29 PM, EggSaladSandwich wrote: just beat the game with april in halloween mode, didn't see a medal pop up, bt I have both medals on my profile now, thankfully. I almost complained about there not being a mode toggle until i read the medal name. tricky. Also the costumes are awesome i especially like the Robot's. Bender, Optimus, and the jetson robot, i wanna say rosie. but the zombies heads were kind of cool too. what was mind chamber supposed to be. he just looked like a metal rhino.

He's the red baron from his red baron game.

I guess you have to beat the game with tom or dan to get the other medal...won't work with any of the unlockable characters.

A few startup hiccups, but everything should be kosher now.

New medals added to the original medal game!

Portal Defenders, by Luis Type: Game Rating: Ages 13+