Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

At 8/14/06 05:17 PM, Twinkie_0 wrote: it needs a little work , but i don't know cuz i never made a flash movie/ game . so great job its good

if you told me where it needed work i could actually do something about that.

At 8/14/06 05:51 PM, Zhangt wrote: Cut the sound down a little because there's too much sound. Also, make the buttons easier to hit (moving with left hand, shooting with right, 3rd arm for switching weapons???) .

the sound and controls were both fixed in the update a few posts up. check it out and post again.

At 8/14/06 06:15 PM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: nicue update. i like how space is a toggle button. q and e seem to work pretty good since you dont have to fish for keys. although i find myself hitting the numbers from habit. two thing bother me, some of the weapons seem quite cheap, i assume they'll be collected and limited? also, once someone figures out how to run in this game, they'll never walk again. walking just seems kind of useless unless you can think of something to make it more useful\

Q and E were you idea were they not? i probably would not have thought of it otherwise. and as far as weapons being cheap, there are 2 things i am going to do to fix that. first of all, missiles will be limited, and the laser will be unlimited. But i have something called system heat in there. Every time to move, shoot, or do anything, system heat goes up. if its hits critcal, your system shuts down and reboots. you dont want that to happen in a battle situation im sure. and this heat is going to limit running, as it takes up a good amount of heat, you will shut down very quickly if constantly running.

At 8/14/06 07:06 PM, D_to_da_P wrote: Game looks great! I like the mini map looks like alot of work went into that. I do agree that the main bot that you control should be sped up. The was other stuff I saw but it was small stuff that im sure you are going to work on when later when you get the big stuff outa the way, good luck on this, it looks like it can be a big hit.

BTW, did you use the V-cam? Cause when i used it in a situation like you it lagged so bad.

as for robot speed, are you refering to the origonal file, or the update file? because i did speed him up in the updated file. if it was not enough then say so if you could.

and yes, i used the v-cam. i have used it in many games and have seen no lag caused by it at all.

You improved it, I still don't like that there is no collision, but it deffinetly is great now. Feels just like Chromehounds.

At 8/14/06 08:02 PM, United_Assault wrote: You improved it, I still don't like that there is no collision, but it deffinetly is great now. Feels just like Chromehounds.

collision like that would cause this game to lag alot more then needed. sorrys, i just cant do it. and it is based on mech warrier. i dont know if chromehounds is supposed to be an inclusion to the series or not, but they are pretty much the same thing.

At 8/14/06 07:44 PM, 23450 wrote:

At 8/14/06 06:15 PM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: stuff

Q and E were you idea were they not? i probably would not have thought of it otherwise.

yes thats exactly what i wanted, which is why i find it funny that im instinctly
using the old way, just from using it so much. but i like the new way, and im glad you used my idea

and as far as weapons being cheap, there are 2 things i am going to do to fix that. first of all, missiles will be limited, and the laser will be unlimited. But i have something called system heat in there. Every time to move, shoot, or do anything, system heat goes up. if its hits critcal, your system shuts down and reboots. you dont want that to happen in a battle situation im sure. and this heat is going to limit running, as it takes up a good amount of heat, you will shut down very quickly if constantly running.

thats a really good idea, it'll add a whole new factor to work into the players strategy.

anyways one more suggestion you might wanna think about. i the it should be a little more zoomed in. the graphics still look pretty good when i zoomed in, so you wouldnt have to worry about that, in fact it shows some detail that is left out because of aliasing. also forcing closer combat should add more difficulty to the game its harder for both you and the enemy to dodge projectiles. another reason is that there will be less bojects on the screen at once so there will be a little less lag.

the only thing is, this might take a while to implement-alot of variable and proportion would have to be altered, and if it ends up being a bad idea it will only be harder to change back.

also what are you doing about optimisation. are things outside the screen active?

At 8/15/06 02:38 AM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote:

At 8/14/06 07:44 PM, 23450 wrote:

system heat
thats a really good idea, it'll add a whole new factor to work into the players strategy.

the idea is from the actual game. the old one that is. Mech Warrior 1 and 2. figured it would be a good addition.

anyways one more suggestion you might wanna think about. i the it should be a little more zoomed in. the graphics still look pretty good when i zoomed in, so you wouldnt have to worry about that, in fact it shows some detail that is left out because of aliasing. also forcing closer combat should add more difficulty to the game its harder for both you and the enemy to dodge projectiles. another reason is that there will be less bojects on the screen at once so there will be a little less lag.

the actuall robots would look better, but the backgrounds would look more pixilated. I have then at pretty low quality at the moment. what i might do is break the background into chunks, each its on MC, and only have it be visible if its on screen. if i do that, which i most likely will, then i can probably zoom in without compromising the visuals.

the only thing is, this might take a while to implement-alot of variable and proportion would have to be altered, and if it ends up being a bad idea it will only be harder to change back.

there would be a few things, but not so much it would be impossible. and if i did go through with it, i would do it in a different file, so if it did turn out bad, i just have to delete the file and go back to the old one.

also what are you doing about optimisation. are things outside the screen active?

i answered this a little earlier. here is what i had to say:

"believe me, i have optomised this in almost every way possible. first of all, if the bot is off screen, there are no projectiles. it shoots, and a random code decides if that bullet will hit or not. also he shows up as a small dot if off screen. and all the projectiles use a simple shapeflag to see if they hit an enemie. no loops involved. well, not until it acutally hits. all the robots are in a single movieclip, so after the shapeflag is tested true on the movieclip, a loop will go through and see which robot it hit. so each bullet only has a loop going for 1/36'th of a second. as apposed to constantly checking. And also, the robots only check for enemies every 10 seconds or so, as apposed to using a loop constantly

so, the robots are still active, as in they still move around, but techincally they dont shoot, or have any graphics to them. so if you can think of any other way of optomizing, then i would be glad to hear it.

i wouldnt use a shapeflag, i would use a nice simple circle -point colission, the bots are close enough to being a circle for it, im sure you know how to do this but if not, its basacally just a distance check from the center. because with shapeflag a bunch of steps are taken for every possible thing you use it on. doezens of point arrays and triangle- point tests. highly intensive

At 8/15/06 03:09 PM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: i wouldnt use a shapeflag, i would use a nice simple circle -point colission, the bots are close enough to being a circle for it, im sure you know how to do this but if not, its basacally just a distance check from the center. because with shapeflag a bunch of steps are taken for every possible thing you use it on. doezens of point arrays and triangle- point tests. highly intensive

you missed the point. it is not a hitTest with every single robot, it is a hitTest with only 1 single movieclip. All the robots are in a single movieclip called ground. There is a single shapeflag that tests for "ground". If the bullet hits the ground clip, using shapeflag, then the loop goes through to see which robot it hit. the loop is only active for 1/36'th of a second, for every bullets life. This distance formula you thought of would have to need a constant loop through every robot to find out its distance from them all. im guessing 20 distance formulas is more intensive then 1 shapeflag.

Loads more units, weapons, background objects, maybe evironmental interaction. Nothing else to say that no one else has said. This, apart from being a lil slow plays really well and looks really nice too, good luck.

wow! awesome game, just need a higher fps.

At 8/15/06 03:09 PM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: i wouldnt use a shapeflag, i would use a nice simple circle -point colission, the bots are close enough to being a circle for it, im sure you know how to do this but if not, its basacally just a distance check from the center. because with shapeflag a bunch of steps are taken for every possible thing you use it on. doezens of point arrays and triangle- point tests. highly intensive

I agree with ImpotentBoy2, I dont know much about flashes speed with certain procedures, but I would guess that testing against all those different shapes cant be faster then just testing against a circle. For the best optimization, I would divide the area into a grid. I saw a game once that was similar to yours except it was staged in space. And the world was divided into sectors. Collision detection was only done within sectors. It also wasnt in flash though..

Awesome but, a little slow on the targeting.

At 8/15/06 04:13 PM, -SNARE- wrote: Loads more units, weapons, background objects, maybe evironmental interaction. Nothing else to say that no one else has said. This, apart from being a lil slow plays really well and looks really nice too, good luck.

do you mean variety of units or more units in general? Because the first test had 50 units in play, and there were about 3 different enemies. I cant really think of any more variety to put in as far as enemys. And more weapons...im thinking 5 or 6 is fine. why would a need loads more? And as far as background objects. In order to have background objects, i need to have the AI go around those objects, which would create more lag then there already is.

At 8/15/06 04:15 PM, Himur4 wrote: wow! awesome game, just need a higher fps.

the fps at the moment is 36. do you want the fps more or is the game lagging for you? they are two completely different things, and i would like it if your elaborated a little.

At 8/15/06 04:43 PM, Ciph3rzer0 wrote: I agree with ImpotentBoy2, I dont know much about flashes speed with certain procedures, but I would guess that testing against all those different shapes cant be faster then just testing against a circle. For the best optimization, I would divide the area into a grid. I saw a game once that was similar to yours except it was staged in space. And the world was divided into sectors. Collision detection was only done within sectors. It also wasnt in flash though..

lol. wow. i had talked to a guy name BeeBlap yesterday for about an hour on this exact same thing you are talking about. But i continued to explain exacly how the tests were done. I am not making the hitTest go through all the units using a loop, i am using a hitTest on a single shape. if(_root.ground.hitTest(_x,_y,true)) that is all i have on the bullets. no loop or anything involved (until it actually hits the ground, then the loop goes through for only 1/36'th of a secondto see which robot it hit). ImpotentBoy wanted me to use a loop to calculate the distance the bullet was from each robot, and if this distance was less then the hit radius, then the hitTest would come out true. It is my guess that 20 distance formulas are going to lag more hten 1 single shapeflag against 1 single shape. BeeBlap thought my way was better then the grad as well.

At 8/15/06 05:54 PM, SkweakyMuffin wrote: Awesome but, a little slow on the targeting.

...do you mean its lagging? i cant read minds, i dont know exacly what "slow targeting" means, you will have to tell me if it lag or some other problem.