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Response to: Game Distribution possibilities.. Posted April 25th, 2014 in Game Development

At 4/25/14 11:11 PM, MSGhero wrote:
At 4/25/14 11:08 PM, Hero101 wrote: I have a question about Flash Game Distribution (FGD). They now require you to use their API ads. Ok that's fine I get it. But how do I stop the swf I submit to them from being distributed to newgrounds? Like I don't want them to distribute it here on newgrounds because I have already uploaded my game here. Ever have this issue?
All the portal has to do is use their own search function to see if the game exists. If they double submit, it's their own fault.

Oh ok. I just don't want to be crucified by the users here if they were to accidentally submit my game here when it already is here.

What about you MSGhero - have you done anything to distribute your games? If so, how did you go about it?

Response to: Game Distribution possibilities.. Posted April 25th, 2014 in Game Development

I create different versions of my game for kongregate, newgrounds, Flash Game Distribution, and mindjolt. Not having mochiads has left a void for me, because I used to use them and submit my mochi version to talk arcades game feed, but I will probably submit my Flash Game Distribution version to talk arcades. I will probably also create a version on Google Play and Amazon Appstore to fill mochi's void, but I will need to work on the game size to fit on mobile first.

I have a question about Flash Game Distribution (FGD). They now require you to use their API ads. Ok that's fine I get it. But how do I stop the swf I submit to them from being distributed to newgrounds? Like I don't want them to distribute it here on newgrounds because I have already uploaded my game here. Ever have this issue?

Response to: Buttons working while I am working Posted April 25th, 2014 in Game Development

At 4/25/14 09:07 AM, MetalBooster wrote: This happened a few times with me,..Suddenly,all of the buttons on the stage start working even in working mode.
What I mean is that while I am working on the game,in fla.,when I hover the mouse over any button,the cursor changes to a finger and the button also goes to its 'over' state and I cant move the button with the arrow tool,instead it interacts as it should in the swf.
What should I do to stop them from working in the .fla

You are triggering the shortcut somehow. Press Ctrl+Alt+B all at the same time. It's a shortcut to change your arrow (select) cursor to the finger. You can use to to test buttons in the fla that you have on stage rather than having to boot up a swf to test the up, over, and down states. Simply press the combo mention above again to go back to cursor.

Response to: need help in designing and planning Posted April 24th, 2014 in Game Development

Work on the game ideas. You'll end up learning something advanced between now and when you finish it, and experience is a better teacher than learning how pathfinding works without a working understanding of loops.

That's what I was thinking as well. When I started my first simple game I had learned my advance stuff (well, advance for my knowledge at the time) by the time I finished it.

Thank you as always for your advice.

Response to: need help in designing and planning Posted April 24th, 2014 in Game Development

4 games, lots of prototypes and failed games. I think the magic number is 10, 10 games, successful or failed, before you start to really get it.

To expand the this topic.... I still have a lot more code to learn. I don't even understand arrays and loops yet. However, I have some games in mind that I could code with my current knowledge for the most part. Should I still work on these game ideas while simultaneous learning new code for future games or should I just focus all my time into learning more advanced code so that I could make a better game eventually?


I am curious how those of you on this site go about distributing your games? Do you do it the time consuming way by doing it yourself with each site or do you use outlets like Flash Game Distribution? FGD I read requires you to have their API ads in them which is kind of lame if you already have a game with ads in it.

So fellow game makers, how do you guys distribute your games?

Response to: My Url Request Didn't Work On Ng Posted April 22nd, 2014 in Game Development

At 4/21/14 09:29 PM, GeoKureli wrote: try "_blank" instead of "_self"

Dude thank you so much! That did the trick! I am indebted to you :P

Response to: Preloader skips Posted April 21st, 2014 in Game Development

You either created an actionscript 2 document and are using an actionscript 3 preloader or vica versa.


So I made a link in my game to my account. Here is the code:

var myURL:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://hero101.newgrounds.com/");

titleScreen.infoPage.ngBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onNgLink)

function onNgLink(event:MouseEvent):void
			{
				navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://hero101.newgrounds.com/"), "_self");
			}

It worked when I tested it in Flash Pro. I published my game earlier and I guess I didn't test the link while it was in Project Preview.

I tried the link now that it survived the Portal and it doesn't work. Any idea why?

Response to: Add Movie Clip Posted April 20th, 2014 in Game Development

Since you're using movieclips I would just do what moynzy said. Just put the sparks (or sparks MC) within the chainsaw and just play it and make it visible on contact. Depending on how you do hit detection you may just have to addChild it and remove it each time a collision happens.

Response to: MovieClip resets itself Posted April 20th, 2014 in Game Development

Nice art. I think it's fine the way it is why the shine no need to be nit picky over such a tiny detail. However, you should always learn the solution to a coding problem just so you better understand the code.

Please post all your code (if it's a lot then just what's relevant. Can't help you with what little code you posted.

Response to: Other methods than hitTestObject Posted April 19th, 2014 in Game Development

Rect rect collision

Damn that's a little beyond me but thank you. I will study it and try to make sense of it.

Response to: Replaying MC - Text Posted April 19th, 2014 in Game Development

Ah cool. When did you find out about it?

A few months ago. Was suggested to me by a user here in the forums when I was having trouble with my game. I used it to tween an MC that had a dynamic text box inside of it. It was for display damage output like in Castle Crashers (or tower defense games) how when something takes damage it displays it next to character while also tween upwards a little bit for added effect.

I plan to use it for all tweens in future projects.


What's a good way to do hit detection with a player hitting a solid. I'm doing a top-down view test game. I have the player hit a square box and use

if (player.hitTestObject(box))
			{
				player.x -= vx;
				player.y -= vy;
			}

and while this works it doesn't work they way I want it to. The player is unable to glide along it. It just halts the player.

I know there is a better way to do this using math rather than with hitTestObject. Anyone give me an example?

Response to: Flash CS6 actions panel error Posted April 18th, 2014 in Game Development

Whoa never seen that before.... trying to going into preferences and looking under actionscript. You could also just look up a list of shortcut keys for your version of flash and look for all of the actionscript shortcut keys as odds are that's what you pressed.

Response to: Replaying MC - Text Posted April 18th, 2014 in Game Development

Yeah I've actually been hearing about that a lot recently, is it new?

Well it's new to me haha Not sure how long it has been around. I think it has been for quite some time given it's already at version 12. There's just so much you can do with it once you read all of the documentation. Opens up a lot of possibilities for your games.

Response to: Replaying MC - Text Posted April 18th, 2014 in Game Development

Aprime, I was having an issue like this in my simple game that displayed damage output. MSGhero on the forums recommended I use Tweenlite. Here's the link: http://www.greensock.com/tweenlite/

It is by far the best way to tween objects. With your issue, there is a property of Tweenlite you would use to reset everything every time it is called.

Hopefully I didn't misinterpret what you where trying to ask. If I did, well, you should still use Tweenlite. Take some time to at least look over the website. If you do use it - all the documentation will help answer any questions you have on how to use it.

Response to: Flash Ad Pending Approval Posted April 18th, 2014 in Game Development

You won't get ad revenue if you publish it until the ads get approved.

How long did it take you to get approved for your games? I just uploaded mine to the Project System last night and started the pending process.

Flash Ad Pending Approval Posted April 18th, 2014 in Game Development

I searched through the forums before posting this and just found people not getting approved for days. I wanted to know if I can just launch my game before approval or will that mess up the approval process.

I just finished everything with my game and the only thing left is approval for flash ads.

Response to: Api Flash Ad Code... Posted April 18th, 2014 in Game Development

And just so you know doing this worked for me. Since the Flash Ad play button is now visible I was able to target it and load my game

flashAd.playButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onAdPlayButton);
			function onAdPlayButton(event:MouseEvent):void
			{
				addChild(titleScreen);
			}

Curious if anyone else had an issue with their Flash Ad play button not showing up

Api Flash Ad Code... Posted April 18th, 2014 in Game Development

I tried using newgrounds API to use their Flash Ad component a few weeks ago but the play button never showed up on the screen - just the placeholder saying the ad was working. I gave up trying to figure it out and worked on finishing my game. My game is now done so I spent today trying to figure out how to add the ad correctly with it's play button.

It didn't matter if I drag the Flash Ad component to the stage or added it with AS3:

var flashAd:FlashAd = new FlashAd();
addChild(flashAd);

No matter what I did the Flash Ad play button would not show up. So I double clicked on the Flash Ad component and the play button is in there it's just not on the first frame of it's timeline. However on the first frame it has this:

stop();

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

function initPlayButton()
{
	if(this["playButton"]) {
		this["playButton"].addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onPlayClick);
		if(!this["showPlayButton"]) this["playButton"].visible = false;
	}
}

function onPlayClick(event:MouseEvent):void
{
	
	removeAd();
	if(parent) parent.removeChild(this);
	
	
}

The rest of the frames in the Flash Ad component have this:

initPlayButton();

So from what I gather the game loads and the initPlayButton() fires and makes the play button invisible with this line of code above

if(!this["showPlayButton"]) this["playButton"].visible = false;

So out of curiosity I changed false to true

if(!this["showPlayButton"]) this["playButton"].visible = true;

And now the play button shows up with the Flash Ad.

I need the play button to show up because I want to use code that addChild's the game once it is clicked.

Should I not be f***ing with the code in the Flash Ad component? I've tried everything else to get the damn play button to show up with the ad.

Response to: Teach me about Adobe Flash Pro Posted April 16th, 2014 in Game Development

Well, imagine you have 20 completely different Movieclips in the scene. Each has 50 frames. You have to put the code separately in those frames, and it's a pain in the ass to keep tracking which blocks of code is in which frames.

Well I don't code in frames I use classes but I can see where you are coming from.

Give FlashDevelop a try, you'll love it. Especially after you've learned OOP principle.

I will definitely give it ago. I started my first simple game using Flash IDE but it'll be done in a few days and then I will make the transition to FlashDevelop. Good to know if I need some help with it there are so many people here that use it :)

Response to: Teach me about Adobe Flash Pro Posted April 16th, 2014 in Game Development

It supports haxe, which you should eventually switch to.

Why is that?

Not everything is a damn movieclip.

Why the hate for movieclips? You can still use art assets in Flash IDE that are not movieclips. Like animating graphics/sprites with Tweenlite for example.

Response to: Teach me about Adobe Flash Pro Posted April 16th, 2014 in Game Development

Don't bother trying to use an animation IDE (the Flash IDE) to code with, it would be a waste of time. Use FlashDevelop, it's the best we've got for AS3 and possibly HaXe.

egg82 could you enlighten me what about why one should use FlashDevelop? I use the Flash IDE because that's what I started with when I started to learn code this past year and because I've had flash for years for animating. I don't ever plan to not use it for my art side of games but I know that you can still use the Flash IDE for the art side and code with FlashDevelop.

I hear people in the forums saying that FlashDevelop is so great but no one really gives examples as to why it is. They just say it makes things easier.

Response to: Having to click on stage to play Posted April 15th, 2014 in Game Development

Although generally you should probably have a preloader at the start of your game. If you did this the player would have already clicked the stage by clicking the preloader's play button.

Response to: Having to click on stage to play Posted April 15th, 2014 in Game Development

Stage.focus is of type InteractiviceObject, not boolean.

Sorry, my bad.

Response to: ColorRunner - (Feedback Please!) Posted April 15th, 2014 in Game Development

OR I want feedback on my games because I designed both for the mobile, only releasing on flash so that people could give me feedback and suggestions like i asked for, so before I release them for the mobile, and a MUCH bigger audience, I can have all the flaws out, as well as have what people want to see. Thanks for taking the time to read my post though, Id appreciate it if you would leave feedback and suggestions too!

Ok I gotcha. Just saying you could have just put it up in the dumping grounds and then left a link to that here in forums. Which could have also increased your chances of finding a sponsor for mobile platform as a lot of sponsors want the game to be first released with their ads. But regardless, I get why you did it this way.

As for feedback. I like the simplicity of your game and I definitely see how it would be better as a mobile game. I know you explained how to play here in this thread because people found your description confusing but I still found it confusing. Took me quite sometime to figure out how to play. Instead of saying click the opposite of each row how about just saying click the color that doesn't match with rest of row. The word opposite is confusing.

Lastly, when a player loses don't take them back to the flash ad screen. Yes it is the norm these days to do that with mobile games, but here on the PC platform users find it rather annoying. Having an ad display more than once (at the start of the game with the preloader) can turn people off and make them stop playing your game even if it was well made.

Best of luck with your adventures of making your games reach the mobile platform. I'm about to start learning the process myself within the next month after I finish my first flash game.

Response to: Having to click on stage to play Posted April 15th, 2014 in Game Development

At 4/15/14 03:20 AM, gameObject wrote: Just a quick question as to how to avoid the need to click on the game stage in order for the game to respond to key presses.
My key press events are added in my player class.
Cheers

As far as I'm aware you have to.
You could try:

stage.focus = true;
Response to: More then one Ad in game Posted April 15th, 2014 in Game Development

Having more than one ad is generally something most people are accustom to with mobile device games and even then it's kind of annoying. I would be really careful with you decision to add any other ads other than the traditional one at the start of the game. If your game is so kick ass and highly addicting then sure go ahead because odds are people will suffer through the ads to keep playing. If not, well then it could turn off people from playing your game even if it was a well made game.

Response to: Not so quick medal question... Posted April 13th, 2014 in Game Development

Oh ok I was under the impression that I had to test them to make them unlock once I publish the game. I have tested most of them inside Flash Pro (what I used to make the game) and API medal component fires off when I unlock the medal so I know they are working.

Since I can leave them untested in the Project Preview I will just test all of them myself in Flash Pro to make sure they are all working before I upload the game.

Thank you guys for the feedback.