(shmup) Flash Portal/newgrounds :

[JKAmovies]

This is the official page for those in the Flash Portal/Newgrounds SHMUP team. we were needing to get this thread up as soon as possible. . . I guess I'll take the lead since no one else is willing to do so. I hope everyone in this team is alright with that. If there is any objections please do drop a PM by me ;)

-Flash Portal/Newgrounds Team:
Wonchop
JKAmovies
test-object
FlashyGregory
J-qb
Darkdiablo
Homocidicle
TehSlapHappy

We're contacting mainly on this page, but we're also using MSN to contact, so if you can share your MSN e-mail info with each team-mate, that would be great.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - SPECS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BoMtoons explanation on game rules/ideas:
^^Read that for more information on the project^^

HUD: Life bar, special bar, fills up as you kill stuff, enemy drops "special" replenishes.

LEVELS:
PHASE I: Smaller enemies, avoidance obstacles. Enemies leave coins/gems/monetary units behind when destroyed.

PHASE II: Boss fight (HUGE boss, bullet hell, multiple forms possible). Boss, when destroyed, leaves tons of coins to collect before level ends.

IDEAS:
- Life-bar for multiple hits
- Lots of lives (don't lose applied upgrades on death, just lose money?)
- Checkpoints - re-start level at boss
- Maintain applied upgrades and money between levels
- Lots of health drops

TEAM LEVEL CUSTOMISATION:
Customisable parts:
1. Player Ship
2. Player floating ship guns
3. BGs/FGs
4. Enemies/obstacles
5. Bosses
6. Effects
7. Bullet appearance
8. Level Music/ sfx
9. Maybe a super expensive custom bullet type available in store for each level? Special bullet type unlocked in store for beating a levels boss?

Not-customisable:
1. Bullet behaviour (ie: we code a set of bullets for the store and those bullet types always behave the same)
2. Bullet hit-areas
3. Player ship hit-areas

IDEAS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN:
Tom had suggested the following graphical guidelines:
1) Distant, solid background pieces should be JPG for file size, but GIF is alright
2) Parallax layers of background should be transparent GIF, unless they absolutely need to be
24-bit PNG, i.e. clouds and objects with alpha elements.
3) Player and enemies could be transparent GIF or 24-big PNG. PNGs will increase the file size a lot
and may perform slightly slower than transparent GIFs, but they can also look a lot nicer with
smooth edges.
4) Bullets and explosions will likely be 24-bit PNGs, with fun glow effects built into the art

REMEMBER - Our level is Horizontal so we will be controlling right to left (length ways). >EXAMPLE of horizontal shmup<.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - WHAT IS NEEDED- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DESIGNS:
We need small teams or individuals to do these few duties for our game:
1). NG themed level background, preferably a loop.
2). Foreground (add as much detail as possible to allow our teams level to shine).
3). Player ship including these features:
a). Ship design.
b). Ship weapons.
c). Bullet animation and design.
d). Ship Damage.
e). UPGRADES.
4). Level Obstacles. Objects scattered around the field to add difficulty levels and endurance.
5). Main Enemies. 2 to 4 different enemies with different unique ability's and designs. These few tasks will also be assigned to the team/individual willing to do enemies as well.
a). Ship design.
b). Ship weapons.
c). Bullet animation and design.
d). Ship Damage.
e). Dead (blown ship design).
6). Main Boss. This will be a big task for the team/individual willing to take the responsibility. The boss will be larger than you and usually the size of the map using many different techniques and weapons to attack you. Use as much imagination as possible for this and. . . THINK OUT OF THE BOX. (check out other side scrolling shooters for more help on this):
a). Boss design.
b). Weapons.
c). Bullet animation and design.
d). Ship Damage.
e). Attacks, special abilities.
f). Hit animation.
g) Destroyed (dead) animation.
^^I think that's mainly what we need for this^^

OPTIONAL EXTRAS:
a). Special affects animations: This will include, explosion animations, hit animations and any other special affects that can be added.
b). BG animation: This is to add a little something to the game. Have an explosion in the background or ships blowing up. Again use your imagination.

If you want any extra aspects added to the game that you specifically want to do, let me know and you can get started.

"Keep this as much NG themed as possible, that includes NG characters, site administrators/staff, site features and so forth. Try to add as much Newgrounds in it as possible"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FINAL DESIGNS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Good luck to everyone on their parts and please do post as much works in progress as much as possible so we can all give you as much help as we possibly can.

Please do inform me if there are any problems with your assigned part(s) or any problems that have occurred during your design. I am very eager to work with you all and hope we can do as good as possible with this very. . . VERY large collaboration. I really hope I didn't miss anything out of this very long passage :s

~JKAmovies.

[JKAmovies]

I am also very open to hear what you guys have to offer to add into our part of the collaborative game :)

[J-qb]

Woo!
Test-object, Flashygregory and me have been talking about a general outline for our stage and this is what we came up with:
Something is wrong, Something is very wrong in the portal. An evil "virus" has turned all our favourite flash characters into evil cyborgs. They are now bent on destroying the portal!

Its up to you, p-bot to get to the bottom of this and restore the order of the portal, Slaying hordes of flash cyborgs on your way!

gamewise:
game segment 1:
- background: Hallway of picos school (blow up a door to get into a classroom, blow up wall to exit school after defeating miniboss)
- enemies: pico characters, nene, darnell, uberkids, lame schoolkids (all with borg implants)
- miniboss: Cyborg Pico.
after defeating cyborg pico, the "virus" detaches itself from pico, and manages to escape!
game segment 2:
- background: Brackenwood forest
- enemies: Yuyus, bigfoot/littlefoor, fatsacks, prowlies, bingbong (cyborg all)
- miniboss: cyborg Bitey
after defeating cyborg bitey, the "virus" detaches itself from bitey, and manages to escape!
game segment 3:
- background: the orange wasteland of 20XX
- enemies: various tankmen (all cyborg)
- miniboss: Cyborg Captain in tank
after defeating cyborg captain, the "virus" detac..... same as above
game segment 4:
- background: maybe something like the old portal swf <= top one
- enemies: all other characters we want in: blockhead, hank, dad, alien hominid, .... all cyborg
- FINAL BOSS: 3 forms:
---NG tank logo
---Strawberry clock
---?
after boss is defeated the "virus" tries to flee again, but p-bot blasts it down!

________________________________________
___________
We thought that would be a cool way to have lots of characters in it, without losing its originality. And keeping structure. I dont know if 4 segments is too much? perhaps we should cut one.... of course, who the minibosses are (and their corresponding backgrounds/enemies) can be changed, these are just my suggestion.

[J-qb]

also; I think for now we should stick to drawing concepts, thinking of movement patterns etc before we really work out the details of things.
BomToons adviced us to wait with designing the ship, because there will have to be some consistency in updates/guns/bullet behaviour, which hasnt all been figured out.

[JKAmovies]

At 11/10/09 06:13 AM, J-qb wrote: also; I think for now we should stick to drawing concepts, thinking of movement patterns etc before we really work out the details of things.
BomToons adviced us to wait with designing the ship, because there will have to be some consistency in updates/guns/bullet behaviour, which hasnt all been figured out.

Cool. Seems pretty good to me. Although, I feel the final boss could be a little more than just the NG logo. . . Maybe we can mix a bunch of NG characters into one boss (kinda like a mutant).

I'm working on some designs now to just get some ideas on some enemies and bosses.

I like that idea and I think it could work very well.

[test-object]

At 11/10/09 06:10 AM, J-qb wrote: these are just my suggestion.

DEFINITE Segments:
-Pico

Possibilities that popped up:
-Tankmen (post-apocalyptic)
-Madness
-Salad Fingers (surreal)
-Brakenwood

We have to take franchises that are as open for interpretation as possible. Some smaller enemies are sticks, flash files (with or without cockjokes that shoot jizz) and maybe certain sprites.

Here's some concepts, dump em, eat em, beat em... whatever.

1 2

[FlashyGregory]

Heres my sketch for a possible ship design.
I wasn't sure how or if we can do ship powerups, but i also drew a laser power-up.

[BlackmarketKraig]

At 11/10/09 02:03 PM, FlashyGregory wrote: Heres my sketch for a possible ship design.
I wasn't sure how or if we can do ship powerups, but i also drew a laser power-up.

Power-ups and bullet behavior will be the same for all levels, but their look can be unique for each level, at least that's the plan.

[test-object]

At 11/10/09 02:03 PM, FlashyGregory wrote: Heres my sketch for a possible ship design.
I wasn't sure how or if we can do ship powerups, but i also drew a laser power-up.

whilst that design is pretty neat, it does become a bit too broad downwards. That flame really should shrink a bit. Perhaps you could simply add some machinery and stick a jetpack exhaust between that with a tinier flame.

[J-qb]

in the works

[test-object]

At 11/10/09 03:35 PM, J-qb wrote: in the works

lol, mine is kinda over-the-top compared with your idea of cyborg posession.

[J-qb]

ALSO:

At 11/10/09 02:03 PM, FlashyGregory wrote: Heres my sketch for a possible ship design.
I wasn't sure how or if we can do ship powerups, but i also drew a laser power-up.

That looks great, but as I mentioned, we should probably wait a bit with designing the actual ship until the upgrades and specs are all known. I think we should stick with concepting for now.
ALSO:

At 11/10/09 11:37 AM, test-object wrote: We have to take franchises that are as open for interpretation as possible. Some smaller enemies are sticks, flash files (with or without cockjokes that shoot jizz) and maybe certain sprites.

I`d rather stick to the more aesthatically pleasing (subjective, I know) characters... i.e. no stickfigures/sprites/flashfiles with cocks)... as I see it, we`re going to have to severly limit the number of characters we can put it, due to size constraints. So I`d rather get in some good looking ones.
As for room for interpretation (I know I mentioned wanting this earlier) but I think we should still keep the characters obvious... The whole storyline/concept is kind of wasted if it is not clear what character they are.

[test-object]

At 11/10/09 04:01 PM, J-qb wrote: no flashfiles with cocks

fuck that, frame by framing flying sheets of paper is a beautiful oppurtunity. The cocks could be drawn on that. hell, even the sprites or sticks could be printed on them.

[JKAmovies]

Just in case you guys haven't seen this yet:
Copied from BoMtoons threadpost=
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 optimisation will be essential for performance issues, so please, team leaders and experienced artists, pour out your knowledge for the less-experienced!

Also. . . I drew up these last night. . . random designs for a possible ship and possible boss (mutant NG character). I know what BoMToons said about ship designs, but I didn't read that until after I drew this. . .

[JKAmovies]

Also. . . Check out >this< page for more of BoMtoons announcements on this game.

[J-qb]

So JKA, with you being captain and all, I think its time to start cutting down some trees. (beautifull metaphore isnt it.... I find it hard to come up with appropriate expressions in my second language).
Are we going with that concept/story I posted (with or without changes to the actual flashes it will be themed around), or should we keep on thinking of other concept ideas for a while?

[JKAmovies]

At 11/11/09 06:09 AM, J-qb wrote: So JKA, with you being captain and all, I think its time to start cutting down some trees. (beautifull metaphore isnt it.... I find it hard to come up with appropriate expressions in my second language).
Are we going with that concept/story I posted (with or without changes to the actual flashes it will be themed around), or should we keep on thinking of other concept ideas for a while?

After re-reading it. . . I felt more into this idea than I did before.

I think we should go for it. Some things may have to be change but that still differs, as of now, we will go for that idea :3

This then leaves the next task. . . What do 'you' want to do?

There are many different tasks for artists to take part of, either in small groups of 2 or just individuals. (refer back to the first post on specific tasks).

[JKAmovies]

At 11/11/09 06:28 AM, JKAmovies wrote: This then leaves the next task. . . What do 'you' want to do?

There are many different tasks for artists to take part of, either in small groups of 2 or just individuals. (refer back to the first post on specific tasks).

It may be more appropriate to keep designing more enemies/ships and level designs instead of just jumping straight into it.

I just thought if we chose our desired tasks now. . . It may be easier later on choosing who does what. . !

What do you guys think?

[test-object]

Let's give P-bot a memorable boss fight:
A-Bot: Power of MUSIC
G-Bot: Power of GOLD
F-Bot: Power of TITS
M-Bot: Power of BLAM
Together they form....NG-BOT!!!

*after defeat*:

Error: 0x80004005 E_FAIL Minor Error: (25017) Description: Unspecified ErrorPAGE_FAULT_symbol "I-Bot", version ARTSY_2.0 not defined in file ng.com.1 with link time reference
Reset_Final Boss.

Would be an epic entrance to Newgrounds, no? The Art-bot, premièring in an Art Forum Game. ;3

[FlashyGregory]

At 11/11/09 04:01 PM, test-object wrote: Let's give P-bot a memorable boss fight:
A-Bot: Power of MUSIC
G-Bot: Power of GOLD
F-Bot: Power of TITS
M-Bot: Power of BLAM
Together they form....NG-BOT!!!

Awesome!
They could form a Power Ranger-esk megazord!

[Homocidicle]

At 11/11/09 07:05 PM, FlashyGregory wrote:

At 11/11/09 04:01 PM, test-object wrote: Let's give P-bot a memorable boss fight:
A-Bot: Power of MUSIC
G-Bot: Power of GOLD
F-Bot: Power of TITS
M-Bot: Power of BLAM
Together they form....NG-BOT!!!

Awesome!
They could form a Power Ranger-esk megazord!

Yeah that does sound pretty neato.

[JKAmovies]

Awesome idea Test-Object, I really like it :)

[test-object]

At 11/11/09 07:05 PM, FlashyGregory wrote: Awesome!

At 11/11/09 07:49 PM, Homocidicle wrote: Yeah that does sound pretty neato.

At 11/12/09 12:50 AM, JKAmovies wrote: Awesome idea Test-Object, I really like it :)

I'll take this as accepted, then? ^_^

...Where the hell is the rest of our crew anyway? :/

[JKAmovies]

At 11/12/09 05:27 PM, test-object wrote: ...Where the hell is the rest of our crew anyway? :/

I have no idea. . . I PMed everyone in our team about this thread so theirs no reason they don't know where it is. . .

[J-qb]

At 11/13/09 12:38 AM, JKAmovies wrote:

At 11/12/09 05:27 PM, test-object wrote: ...Where the hell is the rest of our crew anyway? :/

I have no idea. . . I PMed everyone in our team about this thread so theirs no reason they don't know where it is. . .

should we perhaps try a more aggressive option? Just start sending poeple that are not in this yet pms about if they would want to join us?

[test-object]

At 11/13/09 05:55 AM, J-qb wrote: should we perhaps try a more aggressive option? Just start sending poeple that are not in this yet pms about if they would want to join us?

Nah, let's simply show off some WIPS of ourselves first:
PICO SCHOOLKIDS:

[Wivernryder]

You guys totally need to include:
1) Castle Crashers
2) Pico
3) Tankmen

And should probably also include:
5) Blockhead
6) SBC
7) Bitey
8) Hank (or other Madness characters)
9) Salad Fingers
10+) a whole ton of other popular characters that I forgot
10+ +1) Tarboy (cause he's cool)

[test-object]

At 11/14/09 06:22 AM, Wivernryder wrote: You guys totally need to include some other guys.

Madness and Tankmen were under consideration for a full revisit, but I now do think Clock Crew might be a more interesting choice than Madness. The remaining characters will end up in the last part of the game, don't worry, we'll have the most important ones of them covered. Complain about my WIPs instead, I want them critiqued and beaten to death.

Thanks for the Castle Crashers response, by the way. It reminded me that we must have a Meatboy in here.

[RNNR]

I know it's not the most complex type of game, but reading from the outline page there seem to be a lot of ideas concerning gameplay but not really anything set in stone.

Do you need help with the overall gamedesign. Having that will allow for a clear look on assets and will get every team on the same page.

[BoMToons]

At 11/14/09 10:12 AM, RNNR wrote: Do you need help with the overall gamedesign. Having that will allow for a clear look on assets and will get every team on the same page.

No thanks, it's actually all pretty solidly laid out.