Sprites Don't Grow on Trees

Just a little update from before. My black circles are now a sprite. looking nicer now. although it's so hard to line them out to give out that illusion of this thing moving. it can actually be achieved by using the following layering technique.. Instead of slicing and placing individual masks on to their appropriate place, I just use the entire sprite sheet, and cover the places I don't want user to see with a masking layer, and create a new movie clip (the shadow) as a hitbox ( so other objects on the sprite doesn't actually activate if it hit something).

And for the actual Sprite editing, I'm using a free program called ASEPRITES. it's pretty awesome. at first, i was gonna use Photoshop, but for some reason, my tablet doesn't really want me to do this project, so I just search for alternative. The program's quite good actually. they have similar functions as Photoshop such as... ya know, layers, horizontal flip and things.

Sprite editing is hard. They didn't teach this in class. I mean.. well I do learn how to draw in drawing class. but when working with actual single pixels, there's no right way to do it. I mean, it's just either it looks good, or it looks bad.

 

and then I've done a bit of programming to determine where does the sprite going / heading, so the mask later stops at the right place . if _x is positive, the the sprite is facing right, if it's negative, it's going left. same goes with y axis. Things like this just clicks once you sit down and actually doing the stuff.

So.. no more boring stuffs. Time to see this in action... and here goes. check out the flash below. ( ignore the version number, forgot to edit.. blergh.

The next thing on the agenda will be, to make these townspeople wear some clothes. and it'll be boring to make the wear the same clothes.  I have to randomize them . and to do so, I'll have to include another later of sprites on top of the one before... and one more layer for pants, and one more layer for hairs.

Good thing I can just make one shirt, and adjust the colours, and automatically get 7 variant of it. here's some of the things I'll be posting on my next post.

The Interface

Well.. to cut things short, I've done several things and I'm too lazy to update every now and then. this is not a good system. I should indeed post everything on my journal when I did something, or change something. but well.. I will, soon, in the future.

So right now I have set up the stage, like so:

 

and this should be the base of my UI.  not sure if It's efficient, but I'm pretty sure it'll go through a loads of transformation in the final product.

And for the game bit itself, I've made a little something something, just to test out the AI and the customer generator. it doesn't look too great for now. but hey, It's working, I suppose. =3 the graphic's just circles and blacks.. but hey, once I have this working, I can just whip up the sprites and some dress-em-ups. and done the first small portion of the code.

Making The choice

Have you ever been in that situation in which you have to make a choice. but you love to do both options? welp..  that's what I'm facing right now. The thing is, if it didn't work out. I have no idea if I could back out and choose the others. but.. here goes.

I'm picking the tycoon type game.

final answer.


now let's just see how long does it take for that decision to bite me in the behind.

A.I. , SCHMAY EYE

Things looks so easy in text book. Like this one book I'm using as a reference " Visual C++ programming". like, there's this one example, and there's the code, and BAM it works... somehow...

"But Arr, You're using Actionscript!"
Hah!. that's what I love about programming. It's all almost the same. You could just grab one book for other programming language, and just use it for the one you use. Can't do that In medical field right? Them docs can't just take a reference book on healing tummy ache and perform a brain surgery. Hue.

Alrighty. On a serious note. Making a fully aware AI is WAY out of my league. I mean. I'm 22. I'm not one of those smart young geniuses in TVs. and I'm taking Games design, for buck's sake. Not to limit myself here, but I don't have to create a fully sentient bot for my game. Enough with it knowing where to go, and what to do, and when to appear and disappear.

So far, it's working great. using these simple codes above, I can make the movie clip, go towards target that they're supposed to go. Basically it just checks if there are needs to be fulfilled. and if not, they'll go ahead and do their own things.

Using these. I can make, let's say. customer, or, a virus, move to the next possible target, to buy, or to infect. kinda simplified version of what's good and what's bad for them.

Flashing Opportunity

Picking the right platform has never been easy. There's always "where I want it to be" and "how much will it cost", and "Will I be able to work with it". And usually, during these troubled times, I'll just curl up on my bed and sleep, and think about all the bad choices I've made in life, and about what I'm good at.

And suddenly it hit me.  Flash. it's cool. I'm good at it. almost everyone have it. I could just create a flash and Upload it on the internet and call it a game. I could..  i dunno.. put it on a phone and say it's a mobile game. and I'm great with Actionscript.

It won't be as nice as using Unity or.. well.. Source engine. but I'm being honest with myself at least. I'm doing what I can do. and with it. I shall create the game. In Flash.

Theme Constraints

Welp. I went to my project briefing today.

it sucked.



Okay not really. It's great. Good to see some students from my intake who's taking final projects with me. It's always good to see familiar faces. Especially when you're nervous and don't know what's coming next.

So, Our final project must have this cultural and traditional theme (I have no idea how to phrase this better), but my Project Coordinator, Madam Huda said, it must revolve around traditional cultures in Malaysia.  Hey, that's not too bad, right.  of course that throws away my cell simulation game right into the bin. but at least I have two other workable ideas.

In real life situation, this must be how it felt like to have publishers. We must do what they want and follow their specifications, by sacrificing what we have in mind. real life lesson right there, take that Arrwulf.

Okay. On the positive side, The tower defense game can still be worked on. I can say the player is a city boy, who went to his parent's village, only to find out all the computers there has been infected with viruses. and he created blah blah blah and BAM, tower defense game. Add some Malay architecture,Malaysian characters, malay dialects and words and UI.  that's gonna work =3. And tycoon based game, That's totally workable. I can just.. say.. make the player sell traditional Malaysian foods, like... Nasi Lemak. I love nasi lemak. Who doesn't. Nasi lemak Tycoon sounds great. Also it have a nice ring to it.

Now I have a week or so to write up a proposal. and probably test out some codes, to see if it works. it seems fairly simple. just a couple of AI's and checks.

The Safety Net

I have three ideas in my head right now. as a safety net, I can always go with a platformer. ya know, jumping left and right, avoiding obstacles. that's always fun, and everyone likes it. and It's not that hard to make. but I didn't go to college to earn a passing grade. Not that I say platform games are lame. but I just want to go ahead and make it big, ya know. "Wow" them judges and panels, I wanna make my parents proud. I want to make my friends can say 'i have a friend that make this and that game' but let's not forget the important reason. I want to get hired, or well, start a game development company of my own.

so my three ideas are

1. Tower defense game

simply because the replayibility. when's the last time people just go, Oh I want to play one round of tower defense, and be done with it. almost like never. This kinda game will eat away your time and before you know it, you're already late for that one important exam. okay, maybe not to that extent. but you know what I mean.

the premise of this game would be, something like the player is an antivirus developer, have to develop a program that removes viruses by placing turrets on the field. In game world, everything make sense, so don't judge me 8U.

2. Tycoon Games

Business Simulation. boy oh boy I can't imagine how many hours of my life I've spent on these kinda games. Roller coaster tycoon series, to name a few. I remembered getting it, playing it, leaving my old desktop computer on for hours so I could get more money by not doing anything. My point is. it's fun, and it provides that feeling that I'm important, that the world gonna end unless I build this one last towering roller coaster that launches my customer into a lake.

also it could be about anything... sporting goods, food products, clothes, entire grocery store. player have the ability to create, and to restock, and to spend time managing their resources.

3.Cell Simulation game

This is my out of the box idea. and it pretty much have the chance to leave me hanging because the possibility for this game to 'not' work is so high. but if there's one thing I learned from my long years of dabbling in the precise art of programming is that : the sky is the limit. 

 that's deep, brah.   okay, for this game, What I have in mind is that the player controls the environment of a single cell organism. it's not pretty much a game, but it's kinda neat right?. feeding it more to make it fat. watch your fat bloaty single cell organism swims slowly to their next target. I don't know. don't have the ideas yet, but if I'm picking this, it'll be a fun game-simulation-ish-thing.  at least that's what I think. oh man.. I wished I didn't sleep in biology class during my school days.

so there you have it.  Three games.. Not sure which to pick.  In terms of "Can I do it". I think all three are possible. it is scary. but nothing's scarier than not being able to finish the game in 6 months.

Hello World

Why, Hello there, friends, and possibly random people on the internet. My name is Ariff Razalin, please call me Arrwulf.

Today marks the day where I started this blog(gosh this is getting very boring already). okay, let's cut to the chase. On the next few couple months, I'll be developing a game for my Bachelor's degree project. What game will I make? I don't know yet. What is the title of the game?, I don't know yet. Will I get awesome marks for it, I hope so, But I don't know yet. So why don't you, random wanderer on the internet, join me in my awesome journey to develop a fully functional game, from scratch.

This blog will be the central hub for the game I'll be making. Development ideas, random bit and images, bugs I've encountered, random events and even quests that I'll have to complete. These won't be like one of those fun blog with picture of cats on it, but instead I'll post my working prototype so far. That way I can address more bugs, and fix it, without having to link my files across the interwebs that I can't track.

About the theme of the blog, I know it's boring and lame. But I'm going with the minimalistic approach for now. It might be simple, It might not have the wishy-woshy flash splash screen for you to enjoy, but hey, you don't have to wait for like, 15 minutes for it to load. good for me when I'm in places with slow internet.

So, that's all for my first post. There's gonna be one awesome journey ahead of us, friend. We're gonna make it work, together, you and me.