Flash Game Development: part 4, +Other updates

Here's the changes I made to the Flash game today- I added a player sprite, which took the whole day. No transparency yet. Also sped the top speed up a little.

The feedback I got back on it from various classmates and family was that the charge didn't really have enough of an increase in speed to be worthwhile, and that it was hard to tell which surfaces were walls, or even whether it was from a top down perspective or a side-scrolling one. I think having the character in, possibly others plus shadows should fix that problem. I might have to edit some tiles to make it clear where the floor ends and the wall starts (the fact that the walls are full top-down view and the character is 3/4 view doesn't help, I may have to make some new tiles for "joins" as well.)

I solved the problem of charge being too slow by speeding it up. I imagine if you hit a wall at that speed it would incur a penalty, so you have another incentive not to use it, and so you have a loss of control as well.


Other updates

I suppose this week I got "back in the game" in regards to our group project, which I had been slacking on over the past few weeks in favour of other projects. I regret it, so I'm trying to make up for it by getting the final boss battle back in, which was my job, but got cut because I was becoming a liability. So far I've fixed one bug that was the biggest nusciance (Our game is a spelling game, and the bug was the fact that the random letter generator seemed to have times when it would never give you the letter you needed next, even after a long wait, making it mostly a waiting game)- I got the boss battle code in from my prototype, but it suffered an unexpected bug which meant it wouldn't even enter the battle in the first place. I gave up on that one since I'd been in the lab all day, and the main problem had been solved. I suppose this is something I need to keep up.


Character concepts for the main character. I wanted to avoid her looking too much like she was built out of an identikit. I was low on time so had to finalise quickly before I'd wasted the whole day doodling. I went with a woman with normal casual clothes, and a random pixel logo on her shirt. I tried to go with a sort of "everyman trapped in space" look, and the jumpsuit I thought of first seemed a bit too official looking.

Regardless of whether she's the final main character, in case I get another idea, I have a character in there now, and a bunch of working sprites. This is much better than nothing, and she'll have a place in the final game regardless of what that place is.