I know, this is coming straight out of left field, isn’t it?

Anyway, tonight I recorded, edited, and uploaded the trailer for Defective.  The music in the trailer is just placeholder music.  It’s somewhat similar to what I’ll be looking for in a musician when I start looking for one.

The game is practically finished.  All twelve levels are built and playable, the three bosses / boss levels are completely functional, and all of the menus are in place.  The only remaining things to do are to animate the cutscenes and get some music.  (And of course play through the game again, and again, and again looking for bugs / balancing issues.)

More on all of that in the Weekly Game Update post tomorrow.

So I’ve been wanting to create a Flash movie for the past few months or so.  I’ve had an idea for a action-packed and quality stick figure animation and I think I’m going to begin work on it in the coming weeks.  I threw together this test yesterday just to see how rusty I am and if I think I’ll be capable of pulling off what I’m imagining.

Click here to check out the animation.

Excuse the crude background / graphical assets, I just needed something to work with.  If this movie idea I have works out, thinks will look much more professional.  Go on and rip me apart in the comments if you want.  Any criticism is welcome.

Why now?

Well, for one I need a slight break from making games.  I already have my next game planned out and I’ll more than likely work on it while animating the movie.  However, as long as I have something else to work on besides just game stuff I’m good.

Also, my next game will be my first game that utilizes the new Stage3D API coming in Flash Player 11.  It’ll still be a 2D game, but it will take advantage of the GPU acceleration technology offered in FP 11 (using a 3rd party API, still haven’t chosen one yet).  This basically means that I’ll be able to have a lot more graphical assets / detail on screen at once (a lot more) at 60fps and not have to worry about slow downs.

Currently, FP 11 is in beta, so I can start building my game right this second if I wanted.  However, I obviously don’t want to release the game until FP 11 is fully finished and released to the general public, so there’s no rush in getting started right now.  There’s no official date, but I’d say around February – March of 2012 should be a decent guess for it’s public release.

Anyway, that gives me some time that I can put towards animating while I wait.

What’s the plot?

There’s this stick figure.  He’s mad at another stick figure.  Fights ensue.

There’s of course more to it than that but you’ll have to wait.

So nothing got done this week.  Deal with it.

I’d love to end it right there, but I can’t.  It’s some OCD thing I have where I have to make one of these damn posts every Sunday.  Let’s get on with it.

General Stuff:

There’s not much to say here.  As I’m sure those of you who read these posts know, I was away on vacation last week.  I got back Thursday night and didn’t even open / think about Flash or FlashDevelop the whole time.  However I did get some things done yesterday in a two-hour period of coding I did.

Accomplished:

• Saving / loading works completely.
• Fixed up the “cleaning up” (memory) when a level ends.
• Fixed an annoying issue where characters could get somewhat stuck in a wall corner.

To Do:

• Build more levels (at least 3 more + the first boss level).
• Program at least one of the bosses.

And that’s it for this week.  Next week will be semi-normal in terms of progress, there are a few personal things that I think are going to eat up my time, and then the week after college starts up again.

Oh boy.

Super Happy Fun-Time Bonus Stuff!

For the pathetic lack of content in this post, I suppose I’ll try to fill it up with some link love.

• RidTheWorld.org – Rid Brandon’s site of nonsense.  He’s a good friend of mine and is in the process of finishing an Alan Wake tribute animation he’s been working on.  Undoubtedly his best work to date.
• Treasure Adventure Game – This is an indie game in progress that I came across this past week and it looks awesome.  I’m honestly looking forward to playing this game as if it was a console game.
• Notch Livestream – I spent most of Saturday just watching Notch (Minecraft’s Notch) working on his game entry for the 48 hour Ludum Dare competition.  It was very interesting, and I’m assuming he’ll be live today too.
• Minecraft Parody #14,210 – It still made me laugh, and the video / animation quality is outstanding.
• Cat Video #5,294,852 – It made me laugh even harder.

What a lovely Friday Sunday this is.  Yep, it’s certainly Friday Sunday and not Friday Friday at the time of this writing.

Alright, fine, you caught me.  I’m writing this post two days early because right now I’m currently doing something vacation-like down (or up) in Ocean City, Maryland.  It’s annual family-vacation week so that’s about that on that.  I’m going to try my hardest to barely even go online but I’m 100% sure I’ve already failed at that.  Moving on…

General Stuff:

Even though I’m making this post earlier in the week, I still got a decent amount of stuff down.  I’m pretty much done with actual game-work.  Like the “game” part of the game.  I’m working more on menu’s and stuff like that now though I do still have to program the three bosses as well as actually design and build the 11 other levels.

Pictures

There weren’t any pictures last week so here’s a few this week.  I would’ve liked to get a video, but this week wasn’t a good time.

Accomplished:

• Got achievements working and implemented most of them.
• Designed, built, and implemented what’s going to more-than-likely be Level 1.
• Added numerous menus and programmed their functionality:
• Level Select Menu
• Level Completion Menu
• Achievements (for in-game) Menu
• Achievements (for at Level Select) Menu
• The menus can now be navigated through with a mouse or keyboard.
• Programmed a snazzy distortion effect onto the buttons.
• Made / tweaked some graphics for the game.
• Tweaked the AI and optimized certain areas for better performance.
• Designed the three bosses.
• Added more sound effects.
• Miscellaneous tweaks and fixes.

To Do:

• Build more levels (at least 3 more + the first boss level).
• Program at least one of the bosses.
• Save / load functionality.

I probably won’t get much done next week since I’ll be away until Thursday.  I’ll probably work on the game Friday onward just because I’ll be itching to get back into it, but I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done.

Anyway, that’s it for this week.

Number nine?  This is only the ninth weekly game update for Defective?  It seems like that number should be higher.  WHATEVER LET’S GET INTO IT.

General Stuff:

Man, this week was another productive week.  I’m on a massive roll here – it’s great.  I’ve gotten into a really good groove here and I’m hoping it’ll stay that way until I’m finally done with the game.  It’s actually starting to become difficult to remember everything I’ve done throughout the week, since I used to just delete completed tasks in my text file rather than just mark it as completed (I’ve changed that now).  Anyway, let’s see what I can remember.

Pictures

No pictures and/or video this week, sorry.  It’s Saturday night and I’m tired and feeling really lazy right about now.  You’ll have to do without.  The game definitely deserves a new video teaser since it looks a ton more action-y and funner (yeah, funner) than last week’s video, but I’m not sure if I want to show any more video of the game until I’m ready to make the official trailer for it.

In any case, there will be pictures next week.  Oh, will there be pictures.

Accomplished:

• Tweaked the AI.
• Programmed the remaining 3 enemy types.
• Built the Menu classes and added the Main menu.
• Added pause functionality with a Pause menu.
• Laid foundation for allowing multiple saving / loading slots.
• The player now absorbs enemy “souls” when they die.
• After gaining enough “souls,” the player can transform into that enemy for a set amount of time.
• Drew two new backgrounds for the later levels and modified the current background.
• Finally planned out the “plot” of the game (not necessarily a story, just what the player’s objective is, when he fights bosses, how the game ends, etc.)
• Tweaked the HUD both visually and how it functions.
• Added more sound effects.
• Miscellaneous tweaks and fixes.

To Do:

• Get Achievements menu working and add in achievement functionality to the game.
• Get a 100% working test level going.
• Functioning Level Select menu.

I’m seriously having loads of fun playing this game, I’m really excited about releasing this one.  It’ll be my first “Adventure” game.  I assume it fits into that genre, right?  I mean, you’re this little defective ship and you go level though level getting upgrades and destroying enemies/bosses until you beat the game.  THAT’S AN ADVENTURE GAME, RIGHT?

Right.