EL405: A Bad Flash Day

Today--well technically it's tomorrow already, not today, but since I haven't gone to bed yet, it's today-- was a bad Flash day. This, of course, it terrible timing. I would much rather have experienced my "bad Flash day" two or three weeks ago, when I was just learning the ropes of Flash game design. Today, I have an early alpha, beta, lambda version of my Dodge Intrepid game... and it seems to be just a few lines of code away from being how I'd like it.

My biggest issues have been the collision detection and getting into and out of the game. The collision detection was solved, as I mentioned previously, by pasting in some code from a tutorial. However, by doing so, this disabled Dodge's running animation. I may be very close to solving this puzzle, thanks to some code sent to me by Dr. Jerz. I just don't know, exactly, how to implement said code.

This project has really taught me the art of design-triage. When it looked as if one aspect of the game was getting too muddled with errors, I moved on to something else--something fresher and with more flexibility. Since I couldn't get my running animation to work, I focused on actually ending the level. Once the player collects the only book on the level (I've been viewing this level as a sort of training mission for a much larger game... the level is relatively simple, and shows you some various jumping challenges and passive penguins. Like most training levels!) I wanted a vortex to open up. With the help of my ActionScript-master-roommate, Stephan Puff,I was finally able to get a crazy, rotating vortex to appear once your "Book Score" rose to the lofty goal of 1. My current issue is that I can't get the hit test (the command that tests the collision of two objects) to load Scene 2... also known as "The Scene of Champions."

Again, performing triage, I decided to move on to finishing the title screen. I had previously finished the "credits" page, which listed the voice actors of the show, along with a link to our podcast. Now that I knew how the game was actually going to work, I could quickly create the "how to play" page. The tricky part now, would be coding the "start" button so that it loaded the level 1 file. Since I made level 1 in a different FLA file, I would have to use the loadMovie command to open it in a blank movie instance. However, upon doing this, I'm finding that the game loads in the frame but goes insane. Really insane. Despite the various "stop" scripts attached to the movie, the game world flips through pages like mad, and Dodge just sort of sinks off screen. It's a jarring experience, really.

So, as I write this final development journal, at least for this class, I know my project is a little rough around the edges. Perhaps for my independent study I'll purchase an actual Action Script book, that teaches you the coding language so I don't have to rely on amalgamating code from various tutorials.

I am very happy with the progress I have made with Flash because of this class. New Media Projects forced me outside of my Flash comfort zone, prompting me to make games and learn more ActionScript than I thought I ever would. I wasn't a huge fan of Flash from a design standpoint, mainly because their Pen Tool seems to work differently from Illustrator's, but now I have a deep respect for the program, and those who have mastered it. I realize the program's power, and it has become more accessible to me thanks to Dr. Jerz's class.

This Dodge project that I shall be showing tomorrow is, I hope, only the first stages of something larger. Who knows when it will be finished, if ever, but it has the ability to be added to in levels (literally, I can add a level at a time). Much like the show, it could be a serial game. Right now, I feel as if I have created only a crappy adaptation of the show--just like most videogame adaptations of film and television shows. But I hope that this project speaks for the advances I have made personally in Flash.

So yes, today was a bad Flash day. Nothing was working for me, and I spent alot of time doing a bunch of little things. But you need these bad Flash days to put you in your place; so that you are humbled. This program is very good at humbling me.