Programming O_o

Our team’s programmer hasn’t showed up yet so I have been programming the base for this game. I am mainly a designer so I have also sketch up some ideas and layouts for the game. I have scripted a basic code that make our character move, accelerate, rotate and switch animation (sprite).

 

I have used some codes from my last game “Deep sea glow” and modify it to fit this game. New things I added are a rotate function that simply moves the sprite in 8 different directions. The character also accelerates and it reacts when it passes the surface line. The idea is that you shall be able to jump out off the water and gravity or loss of jetpack fuel will force you back in the water.

I am also struggling to make a working level manager that co-operate with my “kontroll” script.  

A new start

This year we are going to develop a game in small themes of 4-5 people. Some animators, programmers and designers will work together on each group. Our combined knowledge and experience are hopefully making a even more complex product. My group has had a lot of changes but at this moment we have one programmer, two animators and two designers including me(as designer).

We have been working on some ideas for some time now but we have decided to go for what we call “TurboSquid”. It is basically a squid with a Jetpack and are searching for his revenge on a seagull that was mean to him. So I will continue on in the blue element.

The goal is to make a fun and humours game with an ongoing story about our main character (Unnamed Cephlapod) and his quest to get even with the cruel seagull.

Deep Sea Glow (Alpha)

Help the angler fish Nemu find and eat all the shrimps around the sea floor. Be cearfull so you don't get eaten yourself by a larger fish.

Controls:
ARROWKEYS: move
Z KEY: eat

My game so far:  http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1291037808

Case 6.0

In this case we are creating own new class for one or more NPC (None Playable Character). Also the NPC are going to follow you where ever you go and going to react when they hit main character. I already have a main class and also a class for Nemu. But after case 5.0 I am still trying to figure out how to make my character move in larger picture and not this small box. I learned that it’s not possible to make the scene follow the character. I will have to make everything else move and make the character stand still at the same point. So I will have to move the ground around it.

By doing so I also most move the shrimps in the same way to avoid much scripting I add all the shrimps in an array. So I can move all the shrimps in the stage with a ”for” loop. I have just learned how useful it can be to use arrays and how to it make it simpler and more time saving. For example hit test multiple targets at ones with or adding childs with some arrays. It took a while to figure out how arrays works but it is so useful when you get a hang of it.     

Case 5.0

In this case we are supposed to make our character move in a curved landscape. Also we have to place the different characters animasjon clips and place them in a “sprite”.  This will make it easier to switch between clips. I had already made all my clips by adding and removing “childs” on the different commands. I thought that I figured it out. Really hard way to do it I know but I didn’t know about sprite before this case. I learned that sprite is a wonderful thing when you know how to create it and make it work. 

Took me a while to change and rewrite my script to be sprite cooperative. It’s important that you label your sprite correctly and beware on what name you set. At first I had a complete sprite fill of idle clips on every frame and could not figure out way it didn’t change. After I finally made my sprite work as intended. It was on to the next part of the case making it hit or collect something. 

My character Nemu is going to eat shrimps on the sea floor. I have to hit test Nemu to the shrimps problem it that Nemu is ten times larger than the scene. Course the dark effect around is also a part of Nemu so you can collect all the shrimps in an instant. I solve that to make an invisible hit box to hit test against instead of the whole NemuFish. So now I can collect a shrimp, yeay.

Case 4.1

My game so far:

Controls:  arrows and space

Deep Sea Glow 0.0.1:
http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1289311959 

Case 4.0

In this case we shall make our character move left and right by hitting the keyboard arrows. Also our character is not allowed to leave the stage screen. Programming is not my strongest side I’ve never scripted before so much is new to me. It’s just to jump in to it and fail until you get it right. Fortunately some of my classmates are really good at this so I had much help along the way. By asking different people for advice about my problems along the way I learned that it’s sooo many different ways to solve them.

I also learned that small mistakes can resolve in many warnings and errors and or worst at all absolutely nothing happens. So you have no idea what’s wrong. Like the time I mistakenly added comma somewhere in my script. It took me hours to find and there were no errors detection in the compiler errors.

 WOOT? O_o