Alas, I couldn’t finish Zamron in time and not even close (today is the last submission day but I’m still working on level 3!), but now I’m so determined to finish it anyway.. it’s personal :<
My development/time plans were sound but the reason why I couldn’t finish it is probably because I didn’t do much work during the last 2 weeks or so, it has been a crazy month… I was assuming that my engineering degree will take = (rand() % 10) + 2 months giving me enough time to finish Zamron, First Defense, and Escapor.. however, I got it right in the middle of last month! and everything changed :’(
Written from scratch, don’t trust most examples out there they are either using API things that changed in the release Flash 11 or are just written using substandard Actionscript 3 (aka. stupidly)… in both cases you get an empty screen with stats showing correctly.
NOTE: Flash is killed by Adobe so I expect all URLs listed here to vanish
Since Flash 11 is released yesterday, I thought I might as well try the Stage3D (Molehill), at least to set my development tools if I wanted to do something with it in the near future..
The information out there about Stage3D and setting it up with FlashDevelop is confusing and outdated, google didn’t help much, I followed what seems to be the main method to set up the incubator playerglobal.swc and an unofficial flash player debugger which I couldn’t get to “debug” things, then I just found that Adobe did release an official player debugger and playerglobal.swc yesterday! but google didn’t show it in the results probably because it’s very recent and I couldn’t find a direct link for it easily within Adobe Flex/Flash developers pages today (probably because I’m blind), so here it is if someone missed it: https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html
WARNING:this post is written while being very sleepy, my linguistic abilities deteriorate during this state, so excuse anything that doesn’t make sense hehe
Today, no sleep, and 7 hours of work, then I went to University to check whether my engineering BSc certificate is … made.. yet I guess, and it wasn’t, they postponed me to 1st of October (3 days from now, not bad).
Yes, a 3 day project that lasted.. well a lot more than 3 days obviously. I’ve been logging a few details about progress in twitter for reference, working is going much slower than the initial burst of work because I didn’t plan for something this big :-S
But I feel like I learned things and solved new types of problems, so it’s all in good sports :) here’s a little brief on how things went so far:
The most revolutionary documentary I’ve ever seen about humanity, it’s problems, and it’s future, and it actually presents impressive technological solutions.. a total eye opener.. I’m actually joining the Zeitgeist movement~! :D
Wolf gets 48 more hours of work now, so I need to concentrate on the basics of the game
I'm hoping to get to something playable at the end..
Processing.............................. .. . .
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I have a full plan dO_Ob !!
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Description
Day 1:
Optimize rendering area 0.5
up-down variation while walking 1
much faster motion and rotation 0.5
Custom billboard class 2
Enemy test, class/sprite/in level 2
Player vs Enemy collision detection 1.5
Player-fire var Enemy collision detection 3
Enemy can fire 0.5
Player vs Enemy-fire collision detection 1
TOTAL 12 hours
Day 2:
Test trigger wall 1
Player actions collision 3
Triggering works correctly with id 1
Windows 2
Shotgun class/sprite/in level 2
Random enemy motion, Pistol/shotgun working 2
HUD showing health 1
TOTAL 12 hours
In case Day 1 and 2 are successful,..
Day 3:
Add doors 1
Doors openable with triggers 1
Doors motion while opening 2
Design 3 enemies 1
Add 3 enemies to test level 1
enemy behavior 3
Main menu, prepare for multiple levels 2
HUD notification text "You found a mighty pistol!" etc 1
TOTAL 12 hours
This is getting rediculous
Day 4:
HUD weapons 2
HUD ammo 2
Design level pack class 2
Create a bunch of levels 3
Design 2 monsters 3
TOTAL 12 hours
... okay this is the last day
Day 5:
Add 2 monsters class/sprite/in levels 2
Monster 1 AI 2
Monster 2 AI 2
Custom cube geometry with hidden surface removal 3
Create more levels 3
TOTAL 12 hours
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Day 6:
Fog experimentation, performance adjustment 4
More levels, adjust for fun 5
Throw in some music 3
TOTAL 12 hours
Day 7:
Release, then fucking die of exaustion 12
TOTAL 12 hours
...
and to think I wanted to add spells and magic to it...
I couldn’t sleep yesterday, I slept this morning around 10 am (being nearly 25 hours awake.. typical) only to be awaken by the gas company wanting to install the new gas line in my kitchen around 2 pm, that’s 4 hours of sleep… but all is well :)
I was kinda harsh on Away3D, that’s probably because I come from a native performance background, when I draw a polygon and watch the framerate drop 0.01 frames I freakout and start running and cursing. In addition to that doing this rapid gamedev thing kinda twists how I judge stuff, I want to get things done as fast as possible (within minutes ideally) and if a solution doesn’t act the way I think it should at the time, it costs me preciousss minutesesss, and then I start cursing more.. yep, there is a lot of cursing involved in gamedev :D
Well I said I will stick to simple ideas, then completely went over that by trying to make a retro fps shotter with support for multiplayer in 72 hours max hehe
This is my first try, I called the whole thing “Wolf” not the game but the whole project. And of course, I didn’t quite make it, but I made something from scratch and by all means it’s an impressive result for 3 days of normal work, it isn’t a full game though, only a good base for one.
