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Christmaslolly In reply to ??? [2006-05-23 09:29:24 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, because there's less and less things for me to do because they're updating their flash players. I'll do it as soon as you can say 'Fish Biscuits'!

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tobyf In reply to Christmaslolly [2006-05-23 09:38:05 +0000 UTC]

Fish Biscuits! (actually I'm having orange-biscuits right now ^-^ )
Drop me a note if you have any troubles updating, and I'll try my best to help

And wow, you're up already?

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tobyf In reply to tobyf [2006-05-19 22:38:56 +0000 UTC]

(oh, and sometimes the music seems just a tad too techno for easter, but now I'm only nitpicking anymore )

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googley In reply to tobyf [2006-05-20 03:12:49 +0000 UTC]

omg i missed your long and detailed comments!!

okay let's see where I can start. You're right about the music, but I was aware Easter had no songs! (apart from the ones at church ) Maybe I'll learn to make a peaceful spring kinda song or something. The reason for the "???" so the player will figure out how to get rid of the rock themselves or it'll be giving most of the game's score away (aside from getting a combo x18 a few times, which give you a million ). The blue attacks are actually weaker than the others.. I tried doing this by definition, where red = strong/inaccurate, blue = weak/accurate and yellow somewhat inbetween. While making a weapon strong or weak is easy, making it accurate or not (or how fast it is) really depends on the situation. I also found out that through testing, blue works better on the sky (to chase those pesky birds), yellow on the ground (covers a long flat distance), and red underground (the bomb falls and bounces through tunnels and lands on enemies). But most of the time, it depends.

As for the graphics, I'm aware I could make big improvements. They started off really well actually, but eventually I had to cut the detail and effects down so the game runs smoothly. Here's a neat trick; play it while having the task manager up (under performance, where you can see CPU usage & memory graphs). When you walk, CPU usage shoots from around 10% to 60-70% (for me on a laptop, 95-100%) because of all the art in the game. I think the area with the volcano is the best source of lag. You're right about enemies disappearing once they get off-screen. That saves loads of processing. Other optimising include offscreen items, imobility (e.g. the volcano animation stops playing when it's offscreen!) and use of jpgs (you know how the enemies, background bits and even the bunny's expressions seem a little blurred). But the whole map is loaded all at once (which isn't THAT big problem as Flash doesn't process offscreen graphics). And the reason for the bouncyness is to stop her from going right into the ground, which happens at high speeds like flying. >< But I think I have a way through this now.

Nope I don't have a tablet (but seeing that crazymonkeygames paied over $1000 for this game I might convince my parents to buy one for me ) nor do I know what cell shading is. What is it? I made the whole thing in Flash (and Sound Forge for some sfx and music editing) and I don't have fancy apps like photoshop so it's not a surprise. "Cell shading"... I love the sound of it btw

The overall project took quite a few weekends of hard work so I'm really really glad you like it! Next year when I make a #2 I'll sure take your suggestions into account ^^ Thanks for the very very long comment and the fav!!

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tobyf In reply to googley [2006-05-20 09:20:32 +0000 UTC]

Oh, I thought more of a kiddy-like music, that's all bouncy and happy, which would kind of fit with the character and everything, you know? But then again, there's a lot of personal taste involved here ;3 I know what you mean with the question marks, but at most points it says "Find out how to destroy these rocks later" but on one location it'll just say "???" (which of course made me think that there must be something extremely important behind those rocks and I found a super-secret area where not even the help-text-thingy would help me anymore X3 ). And you're right with the colours - I kind of noticed that I had to shoot a whole lot with the blue ones but just a few times with the reds, but I didn't actually think you really made the shots have different strengths ;3
(The task manager is a nice indicator, but just go into a directory with a lot of files and start scrolling back and forth with your mouse wheel - the CPU load will immediately jump to 99%, so it does get busy pretty fast :3 ). And while Flash doesn't process offscreen graphics, maybe it's moving around such a large map when walking that stresses the processor so much and it'd be faster if it just had to move around a smaller map? It should save memory too, which might help on computers that are low on memory ^^ (on the volcanoe I first thought those were meteors, because I never saw them coming out of the volcanoe, just falling down on me Oh, and could it be that the game has different atmospheres depending on what time it is? Like, yesterday in the night it was pretty dark, with lights moving around, and today in the morning it was all bright with petals falling ^^)
If you want to get a tablet, be sure to look around on ebay and such - you can very often get used Wacom tablet for about $50, which is a quarter of what a new tablet would cost (also, their smallest size is pretty small, the 6x8 size is a very convenient one in my opinion). Especially Wacom tablets are very robust and lasting, so the used ones should work perfectly fine for you ^^ I have mine for one and a half year now, I think, dragged it to the US and back twice, and it still works like on the first day when I got it
Cell shading is pretty much the kind of shading you'd see in comics, it's not gradient put rather works in "steps" with distinct colours, instead of blending them all together - it's hard to describe, but if you look at [link] (I'm not particularily good at it ), you should see what kind of shading I mean. The advantages are that it's really easy and fast to do, and it still looks very believable and efforted (I don't have photoshop either, by the way, I believe that I can do my drawings without fancy effects and just using a pen and an eraser - and layers to make it a little more convenient, but that's it)

And you're welcome, as said ^-^ I can see you put a lot of effort into the game, and it really shows. I'm all curious already what - with so much practice - you'll come up with next

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googley In reply to tobyf [2006-05-21 03:55:19 +0000 UTC]

Ah I get what you mean.. it's when after you get your fly ability it becomes "???" because without that, it's impossible to find a way Yeah about the task manager, it depends on what you're doing, but for a Flash game, I prefer no more than 30% (because by this time, its maximum rate will only be 30fps) hehe.... I don't get why Flash runs so slow - export it as exe, it gets 100x faster You're right about the large map. I had to do it that way or it'll be tedious to split it up... imagine a bird flying outside a tile, it'll be hard to make it appear inside the next

Yep, interactive time-of-day (based on local computer clock) well spotted I have other unoticable features, which include - stereo (walk to the left, sound shifts to left speaker, same for right), detect resolution at the start (see if the game could fit nicely on one screen), water gate only opens if user has water gem (or you can still get to the other side while losing 3-4 lives.. fun ), animation on score for every new digit, music fade-out when entering new area, etc.

Wacom tablet looks great. I better get my hands on one lol. The link you showed me looks awesome Is that a new art you're doing or is it scrap? The cell shading seems to be the style you'll normally use. Didn't realise that but that's probably why I like your stuff.. keep it up! No, you ain't bad at it, looks a lot better than gradients I normally use in flash ^^

Working on a new flash now, thanks for all the helpful suggestions!

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tobyf In reply to googley [2006-05-22 20:36:02 +0000 UTC]

Oooh, that makes sense! Yush, you're right, as soon as one gets the fly wing thingy, all the rock hints turn to question marks I actually saw the item for it at the very beginning already, when I tried to jump over the water (it looked like the greyed-out rock-thingy in the items list - I wanted to see whether I could jump over the water all together X3), so I already knew where to go next (though then it turned out I didn't need it too much anymore, when I ran low on energy I just wanted to see how far I could get, and before I knew it, I was in that golden carrot, even though all those meteors and birds tried to stop me! My only guess for the slowness is that the Flash Player being inside the browser kind of limits its resources, you know what I mean? EXE files are pretty much no alternative because of viruses and everything, so you'd be stuck with swf files X3
(You probably know it already, but there's a pretty buggy place in the game - right in that cave after you dive through the tunnel after destroying the portal, if you destroy the rock that's there under the water (after which there are the two fish with the carrot), you can get "teleported" through the bottom of the map, flying in .. nothingness, with just the background there. You can't go back, because you bump at the "floor" (which is then the ceiling), though I managed to get back into the level by flying around it to the right, entering it again where the golden carrot is. The 3-star-shot sometimes leaves blue star-outlines around your place, but that might be on purpose

Hehe, I can say with pride that I noticed most of those though - the stereo I just noticed once, at the very beginning, where you're in the cave with the water gem thingy. I tried to destroy the water gate without the water gem too, but lost all lives with it, though I accounted it to being too slow for that. The game adjusting to the time was nice too (I first thought it was a bit gloomy for easter, but the next day in the morning it was all happy and sunny again ^-^ ), and the music cross-fadeout was hard to miss as well (together with the title of the new level that showed up just a few seconds later, making me think "wow, how huge *is* this game?" ). You also have different animations for the combos, enemies can hit themselves with the shots, and I did notice you do use a different picture of the character just before she drowns, though I still think that's a little subtle, I lost a few lives just because I didn't know I was running out of air The boundary of the playfield seems interesting too, because you can't go past the golden carrot on the top, but you can in the cave. The AI with the doggies going underground if you're close or the mice following you is well done too, though those doggies sure do shoot themselves a whole lot, don't they? ;3

Wacom tablets are really nice - they're pretty much the best tablets you can get, and they're really robust too, don't need batteries (like other tablets do) and so on ^^ Just remember to try getting a refurbished one, you can save a lot of money that way ^^ The picture I used is actually rather old, I drew it for my sister before I left for the US, and I was just looking for something which I could use to show you cell shading, and thought that'd do Usually you can do cell shading really quick, and you can get a very decent quality already with just four shades of colour (the base colour, a dark and an even darker one for the shadows, and a lighter one for the highlights), so it should be fast to do and easy on the resources as well

Anyhow, you're very welcome, and I'm looking forward to your new flash file already

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googley In reply to tobyf [2006-05-24 10:25:43 +0000 UTC]

haha yeah, the game only runs slow on firefox, the speed is pretty decent on others like opera and IE. Well spotted glitches ^^ I should have made it if you fell below the ground you appear from the top again, landing right back on the map, but Easter was coming and I had no time left hehe. I didn't really understand why the stars stay still on the multi-star attack, but looking at it again, it looked like there was an error in my script (which meant to be some AI to make each star target a different enemy on the screen) but really minor thing.... they looked cool spinning around on the same spot anyways

I'm actually really surprised in how you manage to spot such things. That's a unique skill you have there I don't even remember myself making enemy shots hit each other until you told me! The time of day in the game equals to the player's computer clock, but I've been thinking making a 12-hour difference might be cool as well (so it's morning when played at night, and night in the morning) which do you prefer? I never knew Wacom tablets last that long, they looked like innocent lil pads to me, that get scratched easily I'm gonna buy one soon! Thanks for all the advice. Lookin forward to more of your art too ^^

Oh btw how faster and neater could you do things like cell shading with a tablet compared to a mouse?

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tobyf In reply to googley [2006-05-27 16:44:34 +0000 UTC]

Eh, I never realized that Flash was that much slower in Firefox than in the other browsers I tried the game on Internet Explorer and you are right, it plays a lot faster and fluent, at times even maybe just a bit too fast. But the thing is, I never noticed it would be slower on Firefox, and when I played it on Firefox I felt it was just about right (in a few places I did notice she's in the air quite long when jumping, but I thought since she can fly, she might also be slowing down the fall of her jump ) I can only imagine it's an issue with the Firefox plugin (since they use different ones for IE and Firefox, I think), but don't quote me on that
Hehe, no worries It's not that much of a big deal, and it was funny to try and see whether I could get back into the level again ;3 What's more interesting though is .. why does the glitch happen? Because it's just on the one place, and it feels as if it's pushing you right out the level there
Oh, and I love experimenting with stuff - especially if it's such a well done and efforted game as the one you made ;3 And I guess finding something like that comes with coding a bit myself (like the site) and getting a feeling for those kinds of things I'd say, it's pretty much how you notice stuff on my site as well :3

Actually I think it's fine the way it is, so one would relate it with the time of the day it is when you play the game ;3 One thing that you could try is that you start with the correct time, but when you're halfway through the game (like, if you find the stone-gem thingy), the scenery would change - from morning to evening, and vice versa, you know what I mean? :3 My favourite one is the day one, by the way, because it's all bright and happy, with the sun rays, and the petals and butterflies flying around
Oh, those tablets are pretty robust I'd probably not exactly drop or throw them on the floor (though I've heard from a few who had that happening and they still worked all fine), but that's about it - the surface you draw on is actually plastic and can be replaced if you really need to, the only thing that does wear down is the pen tip, but you can replace it (the tablet comes with a couple of replacement tips, and if they aren't enough, you can always get a new set for $5 or so), though I never had to (and I have my tablet quite long already) :3

Drawing with a tablet is a lot easier than with the mouse, because it's just more natural - you're holding a pen in your hand and not pushing a puck, so you can draw as fast and as precisely as you can draw with pencils (so you can actually practice for drawing with the tablet by drawing traditionally) - personally I don't even want to draw with my mouse anymore (even though I did for a long time before I had a tablet), because it's so much easier with a tablet. Oh, and by the way, I downloaded the trial version of Flash 8 - my tablet works all fine with it. The brush tool has a pressure setting you can activate, in which the thickness of the line you draw would vary depending on how hard you press the pen - which is also something you can't do with the mouse, and which makes everything look a lot more natural too

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googley In reply to tobyf [2006-06-16 11:28:18 +0000 UTC]

hahaha I don't know much about plug-ins myself On others like Opera it runs at similar speed to IE.

The glitch happens cause you're speeding up and there's a point where you're too fast and the character goes into the wall. When ths happens, the bunny's head, feet and sides touch the wall at the same time. I have it so if head touches the wall ('ceiling'), the bunny teleports all the way down (head bumping - try jumping in a tunnel - the jump cuts when her head touches the ceiling). Opposite for feet. If feet touches the wall ('ground') she teleports all the way up (that's why she doesn't fall into the ground). If feet and head touch the wall at the same time, downward force is greater cause of gravity, so she teleports all the way down. Left and right forces are equal - cancel each out so the fall is straight. It only happens there because bouncing off a wall or rock increases speed, and it's cause the wall and rock are too close together and enables you fly straight in.

Scene changing is a good idea. I think I should have a fade out so the screen doesn't flash black straight away when it becomes night. That time I didn't bother because scene changing rarely happens. ^^ My favourite scene has to be the evening one... the sky is yellow

I'm going to order one of those tablets in a while and lookin forward to using it I guess it'll help me a lot. It's amazing to hear Flash 8 has a pressure feature as well!

(Sorry for taking so long to get back, I missed this one on my messages )

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ThyGod In reply to ??? [2006-04-18 22:13:36 +0000 UTC]

As far as I know- the only way to make money is to sell prints.

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