XlanderSoftware

Well I have just finished my very first Flash game: Tank Rush and released it into the wild!

 

While the core game it's self is pretty much what I had hoped for the rest of it seriously lacks any polish. Eg the spares title screen. The main reason for this is I have not been able to get Swish and FlashDevelop to talk to each other. I am sure this will be a temporary set back so I have gone and released my game with Mochiads and used their version control tools. This way when I figure out how to stick my more polished intro/outro screens into my game I can just upload it there and it will filter it's way out into the web by magic.

As for Mochiads, creating an account and integrating my game with their system was very easy probably took about an hour or so to get it all up and running from start to end.

Credit must also go out to the Flying Yogi for the awesome tank graphics I used from his SpriteLIB Check it out if you have not all ready seen it.

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Being new to Flash game development I have been doing a lot of reading of tutorials, forums and articles on the internet searching for the basics on how to make Flash games.

I have come across a few sites and tutorials that I though where pretty cool and will list them here for reference.

These two tutorials where helpful in demonstrating how to rotate sprites to point towards a cursor, a much needed part of my TankRush game.

Create a Flash artillery game

Rotation toward a point

This next tutorial is a brilliant introduction into simple car like motion in Flash. I used this one heavily for the basics of the players tank movement.

Build your own racing game

This tutorial is about embedding assets into your Flash game using FlashDevelop. Another handy thing to know for someone starting out in Flash game programming.

Embedding assets in an ActionScript 3 project

Finally there is also the very handy ActionScript 3  Language and Components Reference from Adobe. This is very, very useful for looking up what classes and functions do in detail. It also has many useful code examples. I expect I will spend a lot of time reading this as I get started.

ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference

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I have started work on my first Flash game called Tank Rush.

It is a simple game where the player controls a tank with the keyboard and a crosshair with the mouse. The tanks turret will track the cross hair and when the mouse is clicked fire a bullet towards it.

The player starts in the middle of the screen and is slowly swarmed by a growing horde of enemy tanks intent on destroying the player.

The player must then dodge the enemy tank rounds while shooting back. The enemy tanks will keep attacking in growing numbers until the player is finally overwhelmed. The number of tanks destroyed before being taken out is the players final score.

I have drawn up a rough and incomplete UML diagram of my game design to help get an idea on how I will structure and code this game.

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As referred to in the Master Plan my goal is to create Flash based games and then try to monetize them for profit.

Well Adobe Flash is expensive, in fact really expensive it weights in t about $800 USD the last time I looked. Since that equates to about 2.5 times the cost of my car I don't see my self buying a copy any time soon. So I will exercise my right as a consumer to not buy it and go with an alternative, cheaper product.

Enter FlashDevelop. FlashDevelop is a free Flash/ActionScript IDE it lets you program Flash projects. I have recently downloaded it and been trying it out and from a programmers point of view it is brilliant. If you have to do any ActionScript programming I suggest giving it a try. Also with a cost of $0 it fits my budget fine.

Installing FlashDevelop on Windows was painless. I followed the instructions I found on GamePoetry,  "Make Flash Games For Free" and it all just worked fine. Just make sure you get the developer/debug Flash player. This way you can get the trace() function to work.

So FlashDevelop covers my Flash coding needs. While I learn Flash I think this will be able to carry me quite a way. Still there are quite a lot of things such as animations and tweens that are easier to do in a Adobe Flash editor style interface than code. To cover these needs I have been taking a look at a product called SWiSH Max2. At around $150 it is a lot cheaper than the Adobe version. True it does not do all the things the Adobe version does but the price is right for my budget. Since I am not a hardcore graphics guy and plan to outsource as much of my art needs as possible, I think it will be able to help me bash out any stop gap programmer art and animations I need to prototype my games.

So there you go, how to create Flash games on a small budget!

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A game about breeding chickens, selling eggs and making profit!
The main aim of the game is too manage your band full of hens and to collect the eggs they lay for selling at the market.
You start the game with a $100 and a barn with 3 chickens in it. The chickens are all stock standard base level chickens.

Chickens
Chickens have several attributes which govern how they act in the world.
Hunger. This is a measure of how hungry the chicken is. A full chicken will lay eggs at its maximum rate. If a chicken gets too hungry its rate of laying will slow down and finally it will cease to lay eggs at all. If the chicken is not feed for too long it will starve to death. This may be penalized by a fine. Chickens also have a hunger rate. It is the rate at which they get hungry. Some chickens need less food some need more.
Age. Chickens will age as the game goes on. Eventually chickens will die of old age. This is a natural event and carries no penalty. It helps focus the player on building up a sustainable chicken farm.
Laying rate. Chickens can lay eggs at different rates. Some chickens are slow, some are fast.
Egg size. Chickens can lay eggs in different weights. An egg sold at market is valued by its weight. A chicken will lay eggs in a weight range.
Feeding chickens. Feeding chickens is a simple task of clicking a feed bag and then clicking on the chicken to be feed. The chicken will then start to eat until it is full or the bag of feed is depleted.
Collecting eggs. After a hen has laid an egg the place must click on it to collect it. After the egg is collected it is ready for sale at the market.
Chicken DNA
All chickens will have a DNA structure that determines their attributes. The better a chickens DNA the more effective it is at laying bigger eggs, faster for less feed. Better chickens cost more to purchase from the market place.

Roosters
Roosters act like chickens in that they need to be feed and age, yet they lay no eggs. The sole purpose of keeping a rooster is so that you can breed it with one of your hens to create new chickens. Instead of an egg laying rate rooster will have breeding rate. This is how often the rooster can mate with a hen to create a new chicken.
Rooster also have DNA that covers the same attributes as the hens. By carefully selecting which hens and roosters you mate you can evolve better chickens. When a hen and a rooster mate the next egg the hen lays will be marked as a chick egg. When it hatches the player will be rewarded with a new chicken. This new chicken will have a combination of it's parents traits with a dose of randomness mixed in. Given enough generations and the right parents, certain traits can be breed into your chickens.

The market place
At the market place you may buy feed for your chickens, buy new hens, buy new rooster and sell your eggs. Eggs sell based on their weight so heavier eggs sell for more.

End game
The game is basically open ended and can keep going until the player is bored. Additional items to purchase or adding some kind of time management twist to the chicken feeding and breeding cycles could extend the life of the game. Another option is to keep the game open ended but have a cash goal and a timer. Players could then race to get the cash goal in the quickest time or just play about trying to raise super chickens as they pleased.

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My goals to be completed by the end of September 2008.

• Gain +1 feed burner readers
• 100 blog views
• Brainstorm at least 3 game ideas and place them into my ideas vault
• Find some good online game programming communities and tutorials
• Design and complete 1 Flash game

I think that is plenty to keep busy in the first month!

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The aim of this blog is to keep a record of my attempts to earn some extra cash by programming games. The main goal is to create an independent game studio, able to generate an income of $100 a month within the next 12 months time.

I plan to do this by programming Flash based games, monetizes the games by integrating advertisements and selling the games to various web portals. To help get to my overall goal, each month will start with a list of goals I plan to achieve. At the end of each month there will be a summary of the past months effort and a new list of goals to aim for.

Along the way I will drop posts about my current progress, tips & tricks, game designs & ideas.

Well best get cracking!

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