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At 12/29/14 11:09 PM, Barzona wrote:

At 12/29/14 08:05 PM, egg82 wrote: Also, don't try to use the Flash IDE to code in. It's an animation IDE designed for animators, whereas FlashDevelop is a programming IDE designed for programmers. Don't try to use a hammer as a wrench, especially when the wrench is free and the hammer will cost you several hundred dollars.

..unless you're a Mac user. Since they basically said that the amount of money and work they would need/want in order to port FlashDevelop to Macs would probably never come to them.

Yep....I wanted to use FlashDevelop but sadly can't. I started using Flash Builder instead which is nice but it bugs out too often (such as not displaying a context menu for auto-completion which is very annoying).

I'd like to move out of the flash and AS world altogether so that i can make bigger, fancier games, but I'll have to stick to the only thing I know for now. No shame in it.

At school I'm learning to make games with Unity and so far I really love the program. Learning C# with my 1 year worth of AS3 knowledge has made it an easy transition. Sadly, all I have is a single year worth of programming knowledge and thus I still have so much more to learn. I'm going to stick with Flash/AS3 for another year and then make the full transition to Unity. I wouldn't mind swapping out Flash for FlashPunk like Diki suggested. After looking at it though it confuses me on how to make animations out of images. I just haven't had the time to dive in to it and try to learn/understand it all. They do have some nifty built-in features like he said though that would speed up the process of developing a game. In the end I don't think it really matters to much which IDE you use if you can still achieve your end product the way you envisioned it.

At 12/25/14 03:05 PM, Diki wrote: That was only true when it was the Flash forum but no longer makes sense now that it's a catch-all for Game Development. ActionScript threads definitely belong here if they are not about games.

Oh my bad. Thanks for the correction Diki :)

At 12/20/14 12:13 AM, torithefox wrote: It's not game related so it goes here right?

Actually all things actionscript go in the game development forum (formerly the Flash forum). This programming forum is for other languages besides actionscript. I'd copy and paste this post into that forum to get some help.

Maybe @PsychoGoldfish could help you

Since this is now the Game Development forum and because the Mobile forum is all but dead....

Who here is developing, or has developed, a game for a mobile device?

Feel free to mention to mention what platforms/devices you targeted and what programs I used to make the app.

Hahaha I knew it! I knew when all this shit went down at least someone in the NG community would want to do this lol
I hope you find some animators to make this come to life.

At 12/18/14 03:01 PM, MSGhero wrote: Chibi Knight because it's pretty much a perfect flash game in terms of style and execution.

YES! Even though it took me another 3 years after its release to start learning how to make games that game was always in the back of my mind. It truly is an amazing flash game.

Pretty much all things indie. Heck even the flash games here. The simple things excite and inspire me. My only regret is that I didn't start down this path sooner in life. I'm an old man now XD

At 12/18/14 01:40 PM, PsychoZombii wrote:

I need to look into SharedObjects. That was what I was trying to remember outside of NG's API.

this is assuming you're planning on making the game autosave as opposed to manual saving.

I prefer web games that autosave as it's more convenient for the majority of web games.

At 12/18/14 10:36 AM, MSGhero wrote: Ng's api uses shared objects if you are not logged in or not on NG. Test it, but I think that's true.

Oh so if that's the case I might as well use the NG API because it will save whether the user plays it on NG or not. Sounds like a win-win haha I'll have to look into it and give it some tests.

From everyone's responses it's looking like something that is best implemented earlier so I can just continue to add to it as the game grows rather than figuring it all out at the end.

I am used to making games that take a couple minutes play but my current project appears that it will take much longer to complete (or maybe I'm just being to ambitious with it...). I'm going to need to be able to save the player's progress.

Since I've never done this before is it something that I should code into my game early on or will it be relatively simple to implement when my game is nearly complete?

The only way I have heard about doing this is with NG's API. If I remember correctly this only works if the user plays the game on NG (not sure if they also have to be signed in)? Is using NG's API the best way to go about saving progress or is there another method? If there is another method how does it compare to NG's API save feature? Just how difficult is it to implement this feature (whether it be NG's method or another) into a game?

At 12/14/14 12:35 AM, Suminsky wrote:

How would you go about it?

What you are doing should work... what kind of tween are you using?

At 12/18/14 12:51 AM, Etherblood wrote:

At 12/18/14 12:15 AM, Hero101 wrote: With that example, as far as I could tell, are you suggesting that another way I could do it is to decide whether a new enemy gets spawned at each interval of the timer?

No, the onTick was more or less a bonus, but yes, you could do it this way if you want.

Oh cool thanks for your input. I went with the first approach as it was one less event listener to deal with. I gotta admit I wasn't completely familiar with timer intervals (always just had it set to 1 in the past) so it was cool see ways that they could be useful. I'll have to keep them in mind with other projects.

Thanks again dude

At 12/18/14 12:02 AM, Etherblood wrote:

At 12/17/14 11:47 PM, Hero101 wrote: Is it possible to set a random time (within a certain range) for a timer?

It should work, you can find a similar example here:
http://help.adobe.com/de_DE/as3/dev/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118a9b90204-7f0f.html

With that example, as far as I could tell, are you suggesting that another way I could do it is to decide whether a new enemy gets spawned at each interval of the timer?

For example (stealing example code from your souce):

public function onTick(event:TimerEvent):void  
        { 
          spawnChance = Math.random();
          if (spawnChance > 0.5)
           {
               spawnEnemy();
               //Reset/Stop timer here so that it doesn't complete and spawn another enemy
           }
        } 
 
        public function onTimerComplete(event:TimerEvent):void 
        { 
            spawnEnemy();
        }

At 12/17/14 08:59 PM, bumblefish wrote: Thanks for the tips!
When I get back to working on it, I'll surely change the music first thing and then work on player controls next. I find reviews like this extremely helpful for making a better game, and some things stand out that I don't even notice until someone mentions it, like the controls.

No problem :) I'd love to beta-test it in the future if needed as I thoroughly enjoy the concept of your game. I'll have to play your other games as well. Best of luck to you dude :)

Is it possible to set a random time (within a certain range) for a timer? Like can I do some kind of math.random, stick that in a variable, and then stick that variable inside the argument for the timer?

Something like:

private function newSpawn():void
{
   spawnTime = Math.ceil(Math.random() * 3000) + 1000;
   _newEnemy:Timer = new Timer(spawnTime, 1);
   _newEnemy.start();
}

I haven't had time to test if this even works. If it does is this acceptable or is there another (better?) way?

At 12/17/14 08:09 PM, Hacsev wrote: So I was trying to fix an issue with a game I made a while ago and when I came to test it with Flash, it crashed. I know this is due to the NG API for AS2 because I tested it on another game that I added the API and crashed as well. Is there anyway I can solve this issue so that I can generate the swf file without crashing?

Yes, I will change to AS2 as soon as possible, but this is an old project.

Just to be certain - if right now you removed the NG API from your game it would start working again? Have you tested this?

Nevermind.... I figured it out. Forgot that you can't create a mask with an outline it has to be a shape/fill....

At 12/17/14 07:19 PM, Aprime wrote: What do you think the future is with Flash and scaleform? You think companies will continue to use it with Flash to aid different features of their games.

scaleform?? What's that?

At 12/17/14 03:57 PM, MSGhero wrote: What do you guys do when a project isn't fun to play? Add to it, scrap it, put it on the shelf of projects on hiatus?

I'm not sure if a current project is fun or not, mainly because I haven't added enemies/conflict despite working on it for a while. I want it to be fun, and I think it could be fun, but right now it's not.

I tend to shelve it and then work on other projects before coming back to it later. That and get feedback from others - sometimes it's actually fun to play but I just don't think so because I've been working on it too long/often. Problem for me doing this is now I'm up to 5 projects and I just don't know which one I want to finish first. Sometimes it gets me down as I feel like i'm never going to finish any of them.

At 12/17/14 05:24 PM, bumblefish wrote:

At 12/17/14 05:05 PM, bumblefish wrote:

Here is a better playing version of the game I mentioned.

I also am curious how other devs improve games that aren't fun.

Man I think I'm just too easily amused when I play other people's games... I found your game rather fun. I can't help but find joy in games with simple mechanics. With a more riveting and bouncy soundtrack your game would feel more engaging (the current music is kinda annoying....). The movement style for this kind of game also feels a little stiff. I would add some friction to your character's movement so that he doesn't start/start immediately. I think if you found a right balance with that it would be more challenging and a lot of fun (speed him up a bit as well to make this effect even better).

At 12/17/14 06:22 PM, MasterSarge300 wrote: So what should I do? Continue as3 use as2? Get a new program? This is a bit complicated these requirements.

AS3. Given your responses I say just buy that book I suggested and you'll get the basics fairly quick. It won't take you long to go through most of that book. Once you understand the basic of programming and how it all works you can then find another program to make your games. I've worked with Flash and AS3 for a year and am just now feeling comfortable making a switch to another program. We all learn at different rates but I definitely feel my experience with Flash has helped me understand the scope of everything (for better or worse). At this stage where you are at I think it's more important that you just get started learning/understanding programming. So again - try that book, learn the basics, and progress from there.

That's my advice anyways.

I haven't messed with masks in a long time so I need some help.

Inside a movieclip I have a solid outline of my character and he has a solid fill color which is on a layer below the outline. What I want to do is have the outline mask the color fill rectangle.

Yes I could just fill in the outline on the same layer but I'm working on a game where I need I want to control the fill - Think of it as an hp bar that shrinks.

So I need to have my fill (which is a rectangle that is the same size of the outline) be masked so that it only appears within the outline.

I hope this ^ made sense. Is it possible to mask an outline so that everything on another layer only appears within that outline?

At 12/17/14 05:11 PM, Diki wrote:

At 12/17/14 05:02 PM, Hero101 wrote:

I wrote an AS3 library that handles this using this SpriteSheet class, and this Reel class in conjunction with this Animation class. The library isn't finished yet so I don't have any examples using it, but the code isn't all that complicated.

Looks complicated to me haha But I've only been messing with AS3 this past year and still have SO much more to learn. It would be great to get away from a timeline though so I will have to do some research into Flixel and FlashPunk and get around to making the move away from using Flash for my assets. I appreciate your input :)

At 12/17/14 03:26 PM, Diki wrote: By using scenes you're really just making things less organised and making it more likely that you'll make a mistake. Drop the scenes, grab a game engine, and things will make a lot more sense.

I really do need to drop Flash as my game engine. I code with AS3 and recently started using Flash Builder (on a mac or I would have gone for FlashDevelop). I can't help but feel using Flash does help beginners understand the connection between code and assets but that's just my opinion.

Between Flixel and FlashPunk do you have a preference or recommendation? Also is there any such timeline with those IDE's? If not, how does one, for example, make a running animation/sprite (in Flash you would use a movieclips timeline to achieve this)?

At 12/17/14 03:21 PM, MasterSarge300 wrote: Ok that's the kind of thing I don't like. @_@

I'm the kind of guy who likes to keep things organized. To have everything cluttered in one scene because the scripting program doesn't allow it? That seems like a step backwards for me. I am prone to mistakes sometimes and I like to keep things organized and compiled neatly without messing up anything important.

You'll be surprised just how organized your game (and assets such as movieclips) will be by keeping them all on the same frame. I know it's weird to wrap your head around it when just starting out but trust me doing it this way is far more efficient and organized.

At 12/17/14 02:28 PM, MasterSarge300 wrote: 1. make buttons to move from one scene to another.

2. to prevent scenes from advancing on their own.

3. What are the functions that will help me apply to problem 1 and 2.

You really should try that book I suggested dude as it really breaks it down in laymen terms. I'm assuming you are using the Flash IDE given you mentioned scenes. You don't want to work with scenes in a game. Ultimately what you want to do is have your entire game running on only the first frame. You do this by add/removing elements. Thus you wouldn't have to worry about advancing or stopping scenes. It's best to not work with multiple frames (especially scenes) as they are prone to all kinds of errors.

At 12/16/14 05:31 PM, MasterSarge300 wrote: Also I don't know how MovieClips operate. I tried AS3 before but it was too complicated. Nothing worked for me. Idk which does what.

You really need to worry less about making your game work and more about learning the fundamentals to programming. Once you get a better grasp of everything the solutions will just come to you (at least the less complex ones). I wasn't very great getting my start with online tutorials so I learned through a book. I recommend this one here . After the first 4 chapters you will know everything you need to get your point n click adventure game up and running.

Yes it is for learning AS3 but if you plan on making more than just this game then you should really learn AS3 or AS2. AS2 is over 10 years old, outdated, and is officially no longer supported by Adobe. Nothing wrong with those that still choose to use AS2 but if you are just starting to learn then you might as well learn AS3. That book I recommended isn't the absolute greatest but the author makes easy for beginners to learn the basics. It not only got me a great grasp on AS3 but once I finished the book I was able to use my knowledge gained from it and was able self learn more advanced techniques on my own (something I wouldn't have been able to easily do without first learning/understanding everything from that book).

So.....this post turned out longer than I intended. If you really want to learn games you got to understand the language. If you don't want to learn through online tutorials get the book - you build fun games in it while coding so it's not boring at all.

Best of luck to you and feel free to ask for help in the forums again. Just know that we can't help you if you don't understand the basics of actionscript.

At 12/7/14 03:12 AM, Manaphy wrote: I'm going to jump right into it. This year for Christmas my dad will buy me a brand new desktop for Christmas if I get no C's on my midterm, I have C's whoop-de-do But my school uses this website that lets you check your grades online and I want to fool my dad by just editing the text of the site and have it saved as it's own copied link.I don't want to edit the actual used website my school uses I just want to copy it and change some basic text. It's really that simple and I hope I'm posting in a appropriate place because I can use help here. Thanks guys :3

If that's even possible I'm assuming it would technically be illegal. Work harder on your studies dude. High school passes you by quicker than you think.

At 12/7/14 02:00 AM, littlegoblet wrote: Hey guys can you help a noob like me.

Nothing wrong with being a "noob" as you put it but....actionscript related questions belong in the Flash forum here Ask your question there and we can help you :) (You can just copy everything you typed here and paste it in a new post over in the flash forum).