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At 11/7/09 07:52 PM, BlackmarketKraig wrote: Sorry for not posting about this sooner, but as soon as your team leaders is in place, please have them (the leader) create a thread for your team.

Thanks Kraig, I was waiting for the go-ahead on that. I'll start a thread for the Surreal team later tonight.

Cool.

Alrighty. . . Anyone from the Flash Portal/Newgrounds (horizontal level) team. . . Let's get to business :3

How is everyone keeping in contact in other teams. . . MSN or?

At 11/7/09 09:52 PM, JKAmovies wrote: Alrighty. . . Anyone from the Flash Portal/Newgrounds (horizontal level) team. . . Let's get to business :3

How is everyone keeping in contact in other teams. . . MSN or?

I have established contact with test-object over msn. Add me=>jqb.design[at]gmail.com

At 11/8/09 04:59 AM, J-qb wrote: I have established contact with test-object over msn. Add me=>jqb.design[at]gmail.com

Cool, Added ya.

Alrighty, since team leaders should be picked by now I'd like to address them specifically and say this: it is time to be a hard ass.

APPROVE ONLY THE BEST IDEAS; if you think something won't work, don't waste time on it, don't have your team members waste time on it, time is a very valuable commodity here.

DO NOT ACCEPT SUB-PAR WORK; accept only the best stuff from your team members, if they have to rework something or scrap something because it isn't right then they have to rework it or scrap it, EDN. Don't waste time or energy negotiating and don't stress about it if you hurt someones feelings, you are the one in charge.

BE CRITICAL; no, you don't need to be a jerk, just be difficult to please, find the flaws that are there and point them out to your artists, make them understand that you want the best that they can do and will settle for nothing less.

DO NOT CODDLE YOUR ARTISTS; they can handle it, if they can't they shouldn't be on your team.

BE ENTHUSIASTIC; yes, you can keep your team pumped and energized by appreciating the hard work that they put in.

BE RESPECTFUL; respect goes both ways, respect your team and they should respect you, if they don't you can kick their ass out.

YOU ARE THE BOSS; your word and opinion is the one that counts, make sure that your team knows that.

Finally; if you haven't yet, make the thread for your team.

Everyone is counting on you guys to make this project mind-breakingly awesome.

PS: There have been a few additions to some of the teams in the past few days. I expect teams to change and evolve as the project hums along, so check that news post if someone new shows up saying they are in the project and on your team.

At 11/8/09 07:04 AM, BlackmarketKraig wrote: Alrighty, since team leaders should be picked by now I'd like to address them specifically and say this: it is time to be a hard ass.

APPROVE ONLY THE BEST IDEAS; if you think something won't work, don't waste time on it, don't have your team members waste time on it, time is a very valuable commodity here.

DO NOT ACCEPT SUB-PAR WORK; accept only the best stuff from your team members, if they have to rework something or scrap something because it isn't right then they have to rework it or scrap it, EDN. Don't waste time or energy negotiating and don't stress about it if you hurt someones feelings, you are the one in charge.

BE CRITICAL; no, you don't need to be a jerk, just be difficult to please, find the flaws that are there and point them out to your artists, make them understand that you want the best that they can do and will settle for nothing less.

DO NOT CODDLE YOUR ARTISTS; they can handle it, if they can't they shouldn't be on your team.

BE ENTHUSIASTIC; yes, you can keep your team pumped and energized by appreciating the hard work that they put in.

BE RESPECTFUL; respect goes both ways, respect your team and they should respect you, if they don't you can kick their ass out.

YOU ARE THE BOSS; your word and opinion is the one that counts, make sure that your team knows that.

Finally; if you haven't yet, make the thread for your team.

Everyone is counting on you guys to make this project mind-breakingly awesome.

PS: There have been a few additions to some of the teams in the past few days. I expect teams to change and evolve as the project hums along, so check that news post if someone new shows up saying they are in the project and on your team.

I agree with everything here. I think it would help to us better crack that whip when we know exactly whats expected from us.

we need hard numbers.

1) what are the size dimensions for the game? Having a mix of sidescrolling and top down levels mean that game will have alot of dead space, basically would be a huge square.
2) how many minions per level?
3) How many Bosses/subosses are allowed?
4) how can complex can the bosses and subbosses Be? Obviously our bosses wouldnt have 5+ patterns like cave of wonders. so knowing how many are allowed would help rule out lamer patterns.
5) can we have individual cutscenes?
6) will effects and weapons be shared over the course of the levels? creating new upgrades based on each level and team ideas, could get messy for the programmer.

Can I make one too :)

Hey guys.
Sorry I was not today in MSN.
Something wrong with my pc and that program, but I think I am gone fix it.
I will need to fix it.

So yeah I am in the Surreal team, right ?

It sounds nice, I will try what I can do.

Surreal is hard, but I think that I can do it with my style.

I'm a little nervous right now actually.
ToaS suggested the cell team meet up for an MSN chat, which was supposed to begin 15 minutes ago. I signed on, and haven't heard from anyone yet.
Hopefully I'm not missing out on it :(

At 11/8/09 01:14 PM, Goat-Man wrote: I'm a little nervous right now actually.
ToaS suggested the cell team meet up for an MSN chat, which was supposed to begin 15 minutes ago. I signed on, and haven't heard from anyone yet.
Hopefully I'm not missing out on it :(

timezone differences maybe?

At 11/8/09 01:14 PM, Goat-Man wrote: I'm a little nervous right now actually.
ToaS suggested the cell team meet up for an MSN chat, which was supposed to begin 15 minutes ago. I signed on, and haven't heard from anyone yet.
Hopefully I'm not missing out on it :(

Yeah I was nervous too, because MSN did not work.
Cells are great, I wanted cells more, but I think i can try surreal too.

At 11/8/09 02:06 PM, zooominsh wrote: Cells are great, I wanted cells more, but I think i can try surreal too.

Zooominsh! You're on Team Surreal and we want your art and ideas. Don't worry about MSN too much at the moment, but go over The Surreal Level Discussion Thread and make a post so everyone knows you're still onboard for the project.

Also, anybody else on Team Surreal, THIS is our official Discussion Thread for the Level, so go ahead and start posting any art and ideas you may have in this thread.

Also, anybody on Team Surreal that hasn't done so yet, please contact me through email at johnnycancer@live.com so you can be part of the group mailing list and receive necessary updates.

At 11/8/09 01:15 PM, J-qb wrote:

At 11/8/09 01:14 PM, Goat-Man wrote: ToaS suggested the cell team meet up for an MSN chat, which was supposed to begin 15 minutes ago. I signed on, and haven't heard from anyone yet.
Hopefully I'm not missing out on it :(

timezone differences maybe?

... didn't get round to adding graeme on MSN :( My bad.
It's all good, now.

Is the player's ship going to be the same over all levels (top-down levels showing the top of that same ship) or will every level have a different ship as the player?

At 11/8/09 03:52 PM, Re2deemer wrote: Is the player's ship going to be the same over all levels (top-down levels showing the top of that same ship) or will every level have a different ship as the player?

I'm pretty sure it's every level has a different ship.

Are we dead set on keyboard shoot straight in front controls or would mouse aiming be a possibility?

At 11/8/09 09:39 AM, MindChamber wrote: we need hard numbers.

Hyuk hyuk hyuk

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

PENIS:
======

Penis.

At 11/9/09 12:43 AM, BoMToons wrote: PENIS:
======

Penis.

this part I understood.

Awesome. this answers alot. I might have an extra question or two down the line but this is more than enough to get dirty with. thanks

At 11/9/09 01:00 AM, MindChamber wrote: this part I understood.

Glad you understand stuff, cuz im still stumped, I dont understand any of that code jargon flargon.

so i am completely new to making games and anything to do with them so i just wanted to ask some general questions.

if i was making something animated that i wanted to have a couple layers to it, should i draw all the parts, save them as PNGs, then bring them back into flash and put them on their individual layers? (in a movie clip)

also if i wanted something to have sort of trails that follow (like flames from the ship) would i be animating that some how?

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.

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