Project - 2D Flash Game

I've renamed and re-aimed this topic from Alxs's 2D "Side Scroller" because 1. there is a better program for creating a side scroller than Flash, 2. not a lot of people here know how to use flash to make games and 3. we are not entirely sure what direction we want this game to take, be it a Jade side scroller, a Beluga or hovercraft side scroller or a completely different, non-side-scrolling game.

The Jade2D side scroller was a good idea, but we lack the physical muscle to be able to do anything about it. However, Flash gives us a brilliant way to produce games quickly and efficiently, with a wide range of gaming options and styles. It is also a very clean program that leaves little room for ugly, clunky gamplay, and thus is a very good program with which to create an entire 2D game with. In order to create the game, we will need people affiliated with:

• Graphics - Any people who can create good Flash based art are important to this project; i've seen a lot of really crappily made flash animations where the programming was good, but the people in charge of graphics had no idea what they were doing, but flash based graphics arn't a necessity either; we can get away with images imbedded into the game. So this is open for the entire spectrum.
• Programmers - The big flaw in our team is people who know code, so anyone who can do programming for Flash scripts will be an incredible asset. They will need to do all the programming of actions, collisions, tiggers and effects and all other manner of programming.
• Sound - These people will be given jobs by request; when the project leader needs different sounds, people will need to be assigned to find, create or record those sounds.
• Project Leader - One person needs to head this project who has a good all-round knowledge of Flash. This post is flexable and may change. At the current moment, I am the project leader assigned to this, and thus will be the one to send completed items to, but this is up for grabs by anyone who wishes to assume the position. I have very little in the way of Flash knowledge, so anyone who feels up to this is welcome to take my place.

For now, we'll assume that the project is a vehical scroller. In which case, we need:
-Crash sounds
-Firing sounds
-Background music
-A top-down Beluga image (50 x 50)
-A side view Beluga image (50 x 50)
-A top-down Hovercraft image (50 x 50)
-A side view Hovercraft image (50 x 50)
-The above 4 images with thrust enabled (50 x 50)
-A space background
-A water background

I'm sure I'll be able to help with graphics,count me in!

...But not until I won't get my pc working,so at the end of June...

I am currently working on a "game engine" of sorts for this project, as well as a potential story. By "game engine" I simply mean a framework with most of the programming already in place, so that graphics, sound, level design, etc. can be done with little worry about how it will all work. As I'm leaving in the middle of July, I won't be able to do anything past then, but hopefully I can get something solid worked up at that point.

I can't really do much else for the Revolution at this point, but I thought this would be a good exercise as I begin working toward a game design career. :)

EDIT - By the way, my idea is not a vehicle side-scroller (except for possibly one level), it's a character side-scroller, but it is still very different from Alxs' project.

Ok, well, care to take the position of Project Leader now that Alxs has left? You'll have to organise it and tell everyone else what to do, of course...

M'k, here's what I can do: I'll do my best to get the so-called "game engine" done, and see if I can assign different people to different tasks. However, I leave the country on July 13th and will have almost no internet access at that point, and definitely no time to work on a project like this one.

So I'll do my part, or try, but somebody will have to be ready to take over after me to get this done (we definitely WON'T get a decent game done in a month).

This could be pretty sweet, I'm excited! I'll do my best!

EDIT - By the by, I REALLY need to stress that this is the only Revolution project I can commit to at the moment, if I can even commit to this. Like I said, I'll do my best, especially since I really need some game design experience under my belt, but no promises, at least not yet. I've got a lot of other stuff going on right now. I really hope I can get some good work done, though!

Hi.

As a big time fan of BG&E and because i have too much free time i would like to commit myself to thie creation of this game/demo.

I havn't done anything in flash for years, but i do have some experience in creating fun game-designs.


Anyhow... It would be nice to chat with some of you and come up with some ideas for this game before we start namings people director etc.

Great,some more helping hands! :D
The warmest welcomes to you,BMH! :)

Is there a general chat channel/server for this forum? If not.... please join Irc://efnet/BGE

We have a chat right here on this forum, but feel free to look around on sections beside the chatroom :P Oh yes, before I forget welcome :P

Alright, I've been working a bit behind the scenes here. I've talked with mysteriousdrc about doing sound and music, BMH will help with game design and hopefully take over when I leave, and a friend of mine is gonna stop over here and see if he's interested in helping with the art. Fantastic!

Good conversation with BMH too - he caught me babbling about the plot and so forth and reminded me that what makes BGE so special is not the plot or even the characters necessarily, but the theme of finding hope in the midst of corruption. So I think my basic idea will still stand, but with a stronger foundation now than before.

Basic idea being: the game is a prequel of sorts.

- Your character is similar to Jade in that he gets sucked into what the Iris Network is doing (although he sort of falls into it, unlike Jade who was sought out).
- This is on a completely different planet, different area, different happenings.
- What the Dom'z are doing I haven't ironed out yet, but it'll be a "conspiracy theory" sort of game, infiltrating some of the higher levels of government to find this "key" to the Dom'z power (or something like that).
- It'll be less stealth and more action than BGE, simply because stealth is a lot harder to pull off, especially for a side-scrolling platformer.
- It'll be short, about the length of a good short story. Sort of played out as an "introduction" to BGE.

So the story obviously needs a lot of work, and I really want to make sure it plays off the themes of BGE. The gameplay elements will have to be pretty simple just because it's Flash, and I don't think anyone here has a ton of Flash game-making experience anyway, but whatever we can use to make this unique and special will be great.

Keep the ideas coming!

EDIT - Okay, at the moment I am wading face-deep in programming stuff, so I'll be focusing all my energy on that for a while. You guys keep discussing actual game design and I'll get back to you.

Update!

Programming is going surprisingly well - I"m focusing hard on character control right now, and I'm pretty pleased. I'm trying to make the character's movements as smooth and natural-feeling as possible, so it's maybe a little better than the standard fare in Flash. When I'm done with that I might post a little demo, and then it will be off to the different forms of platform detection (up, down, side, etc.), and enemy movement after that.

Stay tuned!

Great!When it'll be up?I'd like to help a bit with graphics ;)

Actually, if you want to take a crack at some concept art, that'd be fantastic. I'd especially love some sketches of what the main character might possibly look like. He'd be a 20-something guy, soon to be an Iris agent. Draw him however you like, it's a brand new character!

Great!Maybe...I have some plans of a secondary character for fanfic,that might be a main character here...And the weirdest thing about him is,that he knows martial arts and he's...Well,a disabled person,he can't move his legs...
Whaddyathink?

I think that could, um, drastically change my programming for character movement. :P He could be a secondary character in here, maybe he's the communications guy or something cliche like that. Go ahead and draw some stuff for that guy, although he probably can't be the main character unless he can walk. :P

I'm making this up while typing:

BACKSTORY
Our hero, a young man who fought in the great war wich ended 2 months before the domz landed on Kylisch (the planet). Like many others of his kind, our hero was scared thanks to the weapons used in the great war.. Three months before the war ended our hero lost his ability to move his legs (great for a flashback during the intro & later in the game).

INTRO CUTSCENE
We see our hero sleeping in a veterans building set up by the few soldiers who lived through the war. (Top down view) It's not a great way to live, but it's better than sleeping in the rubble of the destroyed cities. We see our hero's head beginning to shake thanks to a nightmare. (top down view start to spin 360 degrees and zooms in the destroyed eye of our hero.) We can hear the voices of a boy and a young girl. "You must find me... I'm the key.... find me". [the screens turns to green & the flashback ends]. Our hero wakes up and gets hit on the head. [next shot outside the building: long shot reveiling a destroyed city and 2 domz soldiers draging our hero to a transport ring. Fade to black -> music starts [ambiant and fast]

[The credits start to roll in and we see photo's of our hero's live. All artwork. We see our hero growing up, seeing friends/soldiers.. Seeing the little girl from the flashback, and even seeing the the hero being dragged away by the domz.] Our hero's eyes open and we come to learn that the domz are scanning our hero's mind... There searching for something... or someone.

-More to come-

I just want to note that the story will get interresting... If you like "mindfuck" stories, you mind like this :P.

A little hint: Mind corruption, finding hope/jade, reality/fake?

Okay, I understand,although it would be quite original :P
Hmmmm,maybe let's think of a character together and at first make a list of things he is able to do:
-Must be good at fighting,sure
-Knows stealth tactics
-Got some special useful features like a weapon of choice,something for defensive like armor or shield and other items like keycards,lockpicks,health aids...
-As you said,must be about 20 years old

Hmmm,something else?Gender,race,clothing...Anyone got ideas? :)

Jade seemed to have green as her main color, maybe this character can have a main color?

Well,we should alo think about his behaviour and personality and choose the colour that fits to him :)

Actually, how would he move without legs? Like a wheelchair or something? It could possibly work for the programming, and would definitely be pretty original.

I'm currently trying to figure out how to embed a flash file into a webpage, since I've never done this before. I'll have it up shortly. :D

BMH - That's sounding really good so far, keep it up! Whenever you start coming up with actual gameplay elements (i.e. how he fights and so forth), let me know and I'll see if I can manage it. And I'll give more input on the story as more details start coming up. Keep going with the stream-of-consciousness stuff, that seems to work pretty well for you!

So,we keep the idea with disabled hero?
Well,he moves on a wheelchair,but in really great situation,he can crawl by using his arms.He's really strong,after the accident he learned to help himself without legs,so he's very muscular.I actually gave him name Jamie,or Jam in short.I've got a small sketch of him,but still without the the drawn legs,cos' I have a bit of problems with wheelchairs :P I can post the image,if you wanna.

Alright, after much toil...

Movement Demo

And here's the fla file for all you Flash users:

Fla

Let me know what you think, and report any bugs especially. I put some crappy "animations" in there just as placeholders basically, and that thing he does with his arm when he's walking right...um...that's basically just a motion tween that went horribly wrong. Oh well. :P

Walk with left and right arrow keys and space bar to jump. Platform detection isn't perfect yet, I know, but this is just to test character movement.

EDIT - Alexa, yeah we'll at least keep him in mind. Basically whatever works best for both the story and programming, we'll go with.

Well he is an invalid, but you don't play him as an invalid! Zomgf this is great... (please read my post on the top of this page).

Our hero gets a mind scan from the domz... After the intro cutscene our hero gets freed by a girl stating that all the domz left the station in order to find some child. Our hero knows who this child is, because he swore to protect the child during the war, on the day he became an invalid (jade, the source of all hope to the galaxy).

Our hero noticed that he can walk again... What did the domz do to him? No time to figure that out because they have to escape the station. During the game we see more and more strange things happening to our hero and the surroundings..

GAP..

Plottwist: In order for the domz to get Jade they screwed around with our hero because the domz know that he knows where Jade is. Because a mind probe couldn't reveal the location of Jade, the domz created a fake reality where our hero's memories created the surroundings & characters... Because the hero kept hearing "Jade's" voice saying that he should find her he traveled to jade (in his mind) and therby giving the location of jade to the domz!

At this point the domz invade the planet. The planet' soldiers launch a counter-attack wich leads to our hero's REAL escape. He is incapible of walking again.

???
---
Feel free to change/add anything to the story.

Looks very neat.It's a good basis to start.
One thing,that may be wrong is,that character moves a bit too fast and when he's stopping,he's sliding a bit forward,like he's standing on ice.
Keep up good work!

Hey that's great, very clever ^_^ The character could be very determined despite his condition. Where is the main character now?

The nice thing is that running speed, skid, jump, gravity, all that good stuff are all variables that can be adjusted, so if something doesn't feel right, it can be changed really easily. I added the skid to make it more fluid, so it's not just the sudden start and stop that you usually encounter in Flash games. I'm using the fantastic game Fancy Pants Adventures as my basis. Hopefully with animation it'll make more sense. But the skid/speed can definitely be lessened.

Hamgfefjasddihfdfdf...:D :D

I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!! Whooo, that could be hard to pull off, but not too hard, and it would make for a nice short and sweet story. I think what would be even cooler is if you don't actually find out what it is that you're looking for until later - you don't know that you're trying to find a human child, (if she even is human, but we won't worry about that), you just know that you're looking for "The Jade". I don't know if that's because he has some kind of amnesia, or he just doesn't know (probably the latter). Snippets off and on have been heard about this "Jade", and how it could be the last hope anyone has of defeating the Domz.

Hmmm-hmm-hmm....

Further bulletins as events warrant. Sounds fantastic so far, though!

Throughout the story the main character(we need a name :P ) gets different impressions on who "Jade" is, that would be really cool I think.

Since he is an ex-soldier.. His first thought should be that it is a weapon. But because he has single handedly saw what weapons can do to cities/people he's hoping it's not.

Like I said earlier:

If anybody can tell me where to host a .swf file, I'll be more than happy to show what I'm capiable of. :o

You can go to some place like MegaUpload or something, just to host the file (as opposed to embedding it somewhere).

Yes that sounds good. He continually tries to shake the thought of a weapon, but the fact the domz are trying so hard to get it makes him think more. His other thought could include that Jade is an actual person, and he feels sorry for her.

Okay everyone, cross your fingers: I am about to rip open all the code I've worked on and pretty much split it in half, so instead of having a separate animation for both left AND right movements, I will simply be using _xscale to just flip him around. It's going to take a lot of work, but hopefully it'll be worth it.

Here's to the biggest amount of luck to get the game up and running smoothly :bottomsup:

Okie dokie,I wanted to keep his look secret,until he will be shown in my fanfic,but well :P
That's how I imagine this character,maybe a bit cliche,but I like him mostly:


I call him Jamie :)
Something to change?Comments?Someone wants original .swf file? :P

Woohey, Mr. Longlegs! Nice character, I could see him fighting and sneaking around. So how's this project coming along? I'm trying to check on it from time to time, it's starting to sound very interesting.

Cool character, reminds me of Hans :) I cannot wait to see him in action! :lol:

Sweet, I love it!!! (I was going to say "I love him", but, um, I didn't quite mean it like that...) Original .swf file, you say? You have some animations then? If so, I'd love to see them!

And I know it's just a scaled thing right now, but the actual in-game character will probably need to be a little clearer. I.e., a bit bigger eyes for one thing, not such a detailed logo on his shirt, etc. Although, he's gonna be in a pretty war-torn environment, I doubt he'll be so clean looking in the game anyway. :P We'll assume this picture was taken when he just back from dry cleaning or something...

Still working on that programming, update soon...

Thank you soooo much!I'm glad you like it ^^

Well,I still don't have animations,but I'll make one or two today.
This is actually some concept art,I'll work on your suggestions.
(Psssst!Actually,I can save in my program only as .swf or .fun (Kool Moves native filesaving),so if you want me to save in other kind of file-no chance :P)

BG&E uses alot of exageration on characters' appearances. "jamie" is/was a soldier, so i think a helmet would be the perfect assecory for him.

Hmmmm...Maybe instead of a helmet it could be a metal identificator?You know,that what solidiers have on their necks?And war on this game world isn't looking like here,for example Iris members wear civil clothes :P

Oh,anyways...I was messing around a bit with making his eyes bigger for the game model.Result:



You know,the most important in it is,that you can see the character...these eyes must be twice the size bigger to be clear enough to see!Maybe the game window should be bigger?