JAPANGAMER Blog

Nathan Langdon (Complete)

2012-01-20T18:45:00.002+09:00

Phew! Well I have basically blown the first month of Insanity 3 development on escalating my Zbrush/3ds max mastery. Definitely approaching an intermediate level of skill with both programs now.

I'll add more to this post later on when I have a minute to type, watch this space!

Early design concepts for The Insanity 3

2012-01-06T16:33:00.006+09:00

Happy New Year!

Just a little post about horror game concepts and my ideas towards the game.

Fear of the unknown is the really the key to any good horror movie/game. Murky darkness in a claustrophobic environment;moody ambiance, and the occasional glimpse of something quite terrifying sparkling in the shadows.

The trouble with the Point'n'Click genre is that it doesn't lend itself too well to the edge-of-the-seat effect and sweaty hands. There's only so much you can do with static screens and shockers- therefore the third game will definitely lean more towards being a first-person adventure that borrows elements from P'n'C games yet maintains a more dynamic atmosphere and includes First Person Shooter events that you wouldn't see in other games of the genre.

Here are a few elements featured in the third game that will (hopefully) intensify the dread you get while playing.

-Quite soon into the game you'll be informed that something is hunting you in the village of Weasel Marsh. Think you can go take a pee and come back without seeing a 'Game Over' screen? Think again.

-The main character of the game Nathan Langdon carries a nine-chambered Smith & Wesson that will require a manual reload from the player. It has infinite magazines but you'll definitely have to practice getting good at the reloading to get through the boss scenes.

-You are NOT safe during captioned dialogue scenes. Some characters you may have thought were neutral will attack you suddenly after certain events have been triggered. You'll always have to have your firearm at the ready- just in case.

-Not 100% on this one yet, but the game will likely feature a game play time system. Certain events will be activated depending on how long into the game you've been playing for.

Hopefully these will help build up a better fabric for a truly terrifying horror game.

The main thing I want to 'sell' in these games is the story itself and the fun of puzzle solving, therefore I don't want people to get hitched up by scenes that require too much gamer skill (eg. The Machine- Insanity 1) . The puzzles themselves can be challenging -there's always walkthroughs- but skill can't be helped. However, a nice concept that has been used in some games of late is to have parts of a game where fast reactions and dexterity *might* get you through an event, but there is always another way if you use your brain. The Insanity 3 will feature some seemingly impassable shoot-outs, forcing the player to wonder if there isn't a simpler method to get through. The cool flip of the coin here is that players who are hardcore gamers will enjoy the challenge of battling extremely tough enemies and perhaps even get a special trophy for it.

More later-

p.s. The Prometheus trailer looks exciting doesn't it? Go YouTube it if you haven't seen it yet.

I actually pinched the 'alarm' sound effect from the 1979 Alien movie for a scene in The Insanity 2, when *Spoiler* Nathan Langdon gets abducted by Project K at the end. Thought I was safe as the movie is years old and nobody would recognize it, but they reused it in the new movie trailer- Ooops! Guess Ridley Scott thought it was creepy as hell too :-)

First Draft Insanity 3 characters

2011-12-09T04:33:00.004+09:00

Crow character. Will be adding wings and some feather textures.

BearWolf.

Early Nathan Langdon

Still breathing...

2011-11-10T14:10:00.010+09:00

What I've been up to...

-in case you wondered.

This entire month I have been carefully devoting myself to mastering Zbrush and 3DS Max, in order to quicken my workflow and err, well for nothing more than shits&giggles really?

I've also been exploring some creative rotoscoping techniques using biped with mocap applied prints and layering over them with hand-drawings. I busted my nuts on Rebuild 2 so instead of going straight back to working on another mega-project like that one, I thought I'd do some training instead.

Programming languages are pretty easy for to me to pick up but some of these high-end 3d modelling/animation tools (Maya, Max, SoftImage) phew!!! They are simply out-of-this-world complex to get to grips with, and it was only finally this year I decided I to buckle down and actually learn them properly instead of using the mish-mash of techniques I basically taught myself over the years. I thought I could spare a month or so to truly accelerate my knowledge of their use and so that's what I've been up to. I've been through tons and tons of video tutorials, books, conversations with artists in forums, etc, you name it. Literally going through the A-Z of tutorials out there and patiently learning about everything the software has to offer. The result after a lot of head-scratching is that I'm definitely getting better! Funny to think 2 months ago I had never touched Zbrush and now I feel like an old hand at it.

I figure the better I get at this shit now, the better 'The Insanity 3' and all my future games are going to look. One added bonus is that you can always upload any unused objects to sites like TurboSquid for a bit of pocket change; so who knows, maybe it'll result as another notch on my bow when it comes to passive income. Yep, if you're going to pick a hobby, design online games or art assets. It's win/win, baby.

FYI, the essence of the model to game engine pipeline goes like this:

Paper Sketch.

Sculpt High-Polygon model in Zbrush

Retopologise (Polygon reduction and structural simplification) - get it under 5000 max 10,000 polys

Add finer details to high-poly model.

UV map

Bake Normals

Make textures with combination PolyPaint ZAppLink linked Photoshop

Export it all to 3dsMax, add Specular/Light maps. Biped or Bones for complicated characters that don't resemble humanoids. Add mocap info.

DONE

Of course, you don't need 3d objects in Flash but I'm using a lot of prerendered stuff in my own games in order to get perfect animation and a 2.5d look. And besides studying this stuff is fun.

I think all this sudden passion stems from playing Dark Souls. Perhaps the tremendous art in the game kind of struck a spark in me. Games are something that I'd like to come back to in the future and feel a sense of pride and achievement over, and since I do have a day job it's really not about the money for me at all. If it was I'd be churning out Tower Defence rip-offs, not spending the next 3-6 months working on a game that I know isn't going to make me squat.

So what I'm saying is Insanity 3 may or may not turn out to be a great game, but visually it will be something worth experiencing.

And at the end of the day my games are essentially my portfolio. If nothing else it's nice to whip out the Iphone at parties and show people what I do outside of teaching English. "Hey baby, I bet you like guys with good polygons". Err...well that might work with some ComicCon poon, heh.

Aaaanyway, the good news for you peeps who keep nagging me about when Insanity 3 will be out is that I'm gearing up to get started on it like, right now. I do have another fighting game project in the mix, as I've mentioned before- but likely I'll be working on some elements of Insanity 3 starting sometime this week, speaking of which that image of Beardy up the top there is an early model of an official Insanity 3 character, Guymon Wolfden- one of the earlier characters you'll come across in the game. And the guy below him is a rough for, well guess who..

Speaking of Rebuild 2- check out the new gallery I've added to the blog here. You can even comment on the pics so please, tell me how much my art sucks, lol.

Dark Souls came in the post yesterday-

2011-10-23T15:17:00.003+09:00

Ohhhhh yeah!!! The time has come. Six months of salivating over screenshots leading up to this.

Wow, what a game. Once in a while I feel drawn against my will to pop open the laptop and review really impressive games that I've played. Well I'm probably half-way through this one as we speak, and I can say in no uncertain terms that Dark Souls is absolutely one of the *best* games I've ever played, on so many levels. Screw working on my own game- which is what I should've been doing this weekend. I think I must've clocked in about 7 hours on DS yesterday.

As a single-player game, I felt that DS is superior to Demon's Souls- it's 'spiritual' predecessor. You can feel why they didn't just call it a sequel, item name-swapping aside, it has a much more open universe feel; though they have some parallels you can sense they're different games. Mostly because even though you can feel it's more linear than say FallOut 3, the game is much more in the tradition of exploration than the previous one.
The difficulty level is borderline impossible in most cases and frankly, I love it. Bring on the challenge, bitches. You'll probably die within 20 minutes of leaving the FireLit Shrine and it doesn't get easier from there, so get used to it. You'll progress through this game at crawling speed, literally pooping yourself at every step because it's 'that' easy to get killed. It's like From took the first gamble with Demon's Souls, concluded that *YES* there are people who do not want to be babysat through games anymore and they just went 'F*ck it, let's give it to 'em with both barrels.'

This is the type of game that old school Neanderthal hunter gamers that worship a challenge have been praying for, a roaring BEAST that only belongs in the palms of the hardcore gamer to conquer, and that will send others running home crying for mumma. Yes, I'll bet there's a ton of casual gamers bithing about it's difficulty all over the web. Well screw you noobs! That's what I have to say. Get back to your comfy Ninja Gay-Den and leave the real games for the real men.

The game is a creative masterpiece. Seriously, bravo to the master artist/s who came up with all the character concepts and conducted the fantasy art visuals on this game; they deserve an award. The menu and item designs are ornate, finely detailed and gorgeous. Boss enemies look epic and mythical and they're also highly original in design, going way beyond just being great to look at, some real brainstorming has gone into how these. Then there's the weapons and armour, some of them are the same old but others are just bizarre and leave you clueless yet intrigued. All in all it captures a kind of creative originality you don't see in many games these days, someone has some good chops. A 3 Headed Pinwheel monster, a Skeleton BlackSmith? It's like, wtf man, but at the same time it's brilliant.

Just take a look at the breathtaking art that went into this game here. The graphics have some serious legs.

I didn't expect any less since Demon's Souls was also something to look at, but they've amped it up here to another level.

I love the game because it's almost as if From Software have taken the entire library of Fighting Fantasy books and turned it into a game. I was really impressed with one part called The Catacoombs, the lighting (or rather lack of it) is fantastic, I genuinely had to stop for a minute just to suck up the glory of some of the views (Gargoyle boss area) anyone. Mountain hiking is one of my hobbies and playing DS stimulated my feelings in the same way as when you reach a peak after a hard ascent. The serenity of ethereal quality of certain views enhances the game for me threefold. No storyline, total mystery, everything is intangible and left to the player to figure out. What a great universe; it's so D&D done right. I'm even impressed by the language, I think they must've hired some Oxford poetry prof. it uses rich language that is cohesive with the style of the game. I can't help but wonder how a Japanese team could manage to capture so beautifully something that is so integrally Western.

Gameplay is addictive as hell. Nearly all the enemies require a kind of strategy to beat, and you can never expect to win if you rush around aimlessly attacking; without prior contemplation you're a dead man. Either way the enemies are never too mechanical, they'll still do weird actions sometimes that'll make you scratch your head (after you die).

I mean, the fighting is realistic in a sense, that's what's great about it. Perfect-timing is called for with many of the larger enemies, as a single merciless blow can end your life, shield carrying or not.

And those attacks look good. Swords ping when then repel off the well, shields thud, the battles flow nicely. And enemies will follow you anywhere, kick you off ladders, set traps to stop you escaping. The AI guys did a good job. There's some sections of this game that are so hard I had no choice but to try to leg it through, and what a thrill when you get to the other side.

It lets you know that you cannot just stride through the whole game with your favourite weapon, thinking you'll breeze through it. You will have to observe and experiment, explore to find shortcuts, take risky jumps and pray before kissing your ass goodbye.

And there's no pause button if you think about getting a breather.

The sfx and music, I'm not going to say much about but perfect, perfect perfect. I especially liked the opening menu melody (kind of reminds me of Resident Evil 4), and the Moonlight Butterfly boss audio was a treat, so weird and wonderful.

You can tell that From Software are really opening the book on the way we play multiplayer. I've said it in interviews before and I'll say it again now, in the future we'll see some incredibly creative and rich ways to play online together. Not just PvsP fights or Co-Op but other methods of aligning ourselves with certain groups we like and having it affect the way we play the game. Now we have covenants in Dark Souls meaning you can choose what type of multiplayer experience you want to have. Be a good and gracious person who aids and heals, or like me if you just want to be a badass troll and invade as many innocent games as possible, you can do that and actually be rewarded for it. Genius! But then there's the Blades of the Darkmoon who act as the 'sheriff's' of the game, who enact revenge on aggressive interlopers who keep invading worlds and whose names are compiled on an online list. Genius really.

These guys will win awards for their efforts, mark my words. Best game of 2011 IMO.

Rebuild 2 Endings

2011-10-12T01:19:00.004+09:00

Uploaded a compilation of all the endings I designed, yeah buddy buddy--

Rebuild 2 Released!

2011-10-08T00:03:00.004+09:00

Rebuild 2 has been officially sponsored. Check out the news at Sarah's blog.

She made a nice little killing financially and I didn't do too bad myself :-)

Now that the game is out I can release some of the art that didn't make the cut into the final version here on the blog. I am currently about to release a Gallery slideshow on this site, which will include most of my art from all my games (+ comments), and I will be uploading the Rebuild 2 stuff to it pretty soon.

But the real news is the game is available online here

So go ahead and play it!

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OTHER NEWS

The guys at FETTSPIELEN have done an interview of the dude here. Seems they love the 'Insanity' series over there in Germany and wanted to find out a little more about moi.

It's been translated so here's the original transcript for those interested. Trying to get lost in my own hubris here, lol.

> Please introduce yourself.
My name is Kris Foxton. I'm 33; born and raised on sunny Hastings seafront in the UK, and have been residing in Fukuoka, Japan for the last 7 years.

What made you want to be a game developer?
I have been a game addict my entire life, going right back to when I was a toddler playing Chuckie Egg on the Acorn Electron. Even now I spend an *embarrassingly* long time rinsing up the latest video games and trying to convince myself I'm not a geek. I don't have a Darth Vader suit yet but I do think I'm something of a walking encyclopedia of game knowledge. In school I was always a total dreamer and an artist- kinda the wistful, insular youth battling dragons in my head at the back of the class. I was respectable at creative writing, and I found myself craving to express those internal fantasies in some way; therefore it was my early wish was to be a writer, however I came to a stage where I felt i needed a more visual and faceted medium to express my stories than through words alone. So that+deep and endearing love for games = obvious natural progression. It's a labour of love more than anything but the good news is I occasionally make money doing it. Not the worst hobby in the world, I guess.
>
> What platforms do you develop games for and why?
Flash. No particular reason other than I seem to jive with it pretty well. It's the most popular and growing and available platform out there; for artists and coders alike, with a good support community and anything produced has wide potential to be seen by millions.
>
>
> What are your experiences in porting games between two platforms?
Pretty much zero to none! Anyone looking to make a quick buck and some royalties? :-) I am in conversation with some teams about doing iOS ports of my games later on next year but nothing green-lit as of right now.
>
>
> How do you get inspiration for a game?
Inspiration is an elusive thing, and it can surface anywhere. I can say the vast majority of my ideas emerge while playing other bigger games on consoles and such; not just the play mechanics but also ideas for the vibe I'm looking to recreate. Example; Fallout 3. It gets me thinking about the fun of exploring the unknown. Another one; Just the other week I was diving in Okinawa and I came face-to-face with a shark, it was a scary moment that got me thinking about doing a game which involved some kind of shark theme, Man vs Giant Shark...Man diving into dark treacherous ocean to hunt the world's biggest shark..etc...you know, that's how it goes I guess. First an epic story is formed and then it's down to the brass tacks; how to flesh it out to become a 'game' and not just a tale. One thing for sure, I'm all always looking to give a game a certain flavour and for me a game has to be 50% playability and 50% mood/atmosphere. Anyway, I have literally zillions of ideas that never become anything other than thoughts in my head .
Oh and back to the topic, lastly, it's nostalgia. I wan't to rejuvenate my youth through games in a way.So I make a game that reminds me of the old days, UltraSports Archery is clearly dedicated to HyperSports. Trivia Casino kind of reminds me of the old slot machines in pubs. Some of them may be crappy games but to me they have an inside meaning and there's not a single game I've made that I hate.

>
>
> How long does it take for you to write a game from start to finish?
Anything from 2-6 months depending on the grandeur of the title. The Flying Chicken only took me 4 hrs though.Working as an artist on Rebuild 2 took me 3 months. A lot of it is not so much development time, but training in the latest software. At the moment I'm studying Zbrush (and loving it!).
>
>
> What are the biggest technical challenges when you develop a game?
Keeping the filesize down to a reasonable level. Tracking down obscure bugs that manifest out of nowhere. Getting the aesthetics down.
>
>
> What do you think the future of gaming will look like?
CG characters right up there on the 'uncanny valley', full-body motion& holographic touch controls, advances in social interactivity between players, mind-blowing AI, an evolution in scale and the way people play online multiplayer (not only deathmatch team vs team), games that stimulate more ranges of emotion. Also I think good game designers will be the next new-age celebrities. And you can quote me on that.

>
>
> What is your favourite game at the moment and why?
It's not my favorite game of all time but right now I'm playing Monster Hunter 3rd on the PS3. It's has a superb, relaxing co-op mode without any competitive stress, and is a nice challenge that can burn away a few hours easily. Favorite game of the last 5yrs would be a toss up between Metal Gear 4 and Demons Souls. I have a hunch the sequel 'Dark Souls' will be even better.
>
>
> What is your advice for new developers?
Well I don't think I'm in the right kind of success stratosphere to answer this question as well as others can but here goes-
Don't give up the day job. It's only the top 5% of developers who're making serious $$$ so it's unlikely you'll get rich. Let passion be your fuel. Have a strong proof of concept when you start a game, prototype it and get feedback from friends and your internet peers before you commit it to full project status. Don't be afraid to trash a game if it's not working out as planned; time is valuable so move on quick. Try to find good online mentors.

Dark Souls...

2011-09-29T15:59:00.003+09:00

Ahhh, sheee-it :-(

The game of the decade is out here in Japan, but I can't buy it yet.

Unfortunately, I can confirm that the game (just as in Demon's Souls) has English dialogue but no English text feature. Therefore, although I can rub it in the palm of my hands and sniff the DVD box, I won't be buying the game here but alas, importing it from the USA.

I don't really have a choice. Since the game uses entirely Japanese text sets I'm stuck with waiting along with all the other poor mugs, for October 4th. And then I have to order it so it'll actually be more like mid-October when I get my dirty mitts on a version I can fully comprehend.

Talk about a drag; being able to speak conversational Japanese fine but not being able to read it without an electronic dictionary, I'm stuck in a rut here waiting along with everyone else for the English version.

I can wing it for games such as Monster Hunter, getting by on understanding bits & pieces, but no. DS is a game that must be absorbed, digested and therefore fully comprehended.

Thankyou for torturing me God.

Insanity 2 Reviews

2011-09-29T01:27:00.002+09:00

Those folks over at Spieletest have given a glowing review of the second part of the Insanity series.

HERE

Again it's in German, but nothing that Google Translate can't handle!

Forget about Insects & Martians for a minute--

2011-09-19T03:24:00.003+09:00

--I've had a better idea.

I started drawing out a proof of concept for my own 1 vs 1 battle game prototype.

Super Punch Out with blades, basically. Remember I talked about it before on here? Yet after accidentally discovering Infinity Blade was a ridiculously similar game, I had decided to drop it?

Well, not quite. I guess you could say I'm going to give it a shot after all. Now, I have not, and will not play Infinity Blade until I'm done with this project in order to differentiate my game from that one as much as possible. I've seen IB on the Tube but have no idea about it's mechanisms or how it's structured and I will avoid it strictly in the hope that the final result of my game will be a million miles away. So think Goblins&Barbarians, not Knights. (Not a bad name that actually, hmmm, Goblins & Barbarians? Catchy, no?)

I'll be the first to admit that I'm very guilty of beginning games without having much of an accelerated concept behind them, but in this case I've actually spent a lot of time germinating this one in my head and in fact there has already been constructed a rough prototype in AS3 using placeholder graphics. It's a very simple yet fun game already in it's seeding stage, and since I'm getting the old feeling in my balls that this one might be a winner I've put the insects and Martians one on the backburner for the time being.

I'm trying to work with my strengths. I'm a passable coder but being modest I couldn't in my wildest dreams code a 3d engine from scratch. I've come to the conclusion recently that I'm probably a more novel artist than programmer, and henceforth I should not waste time scratching my head coding physics engines and instead rely on myself to focus on more artistic natured games.

So no screenie for now but as for this game imagine this: Bold, chunky, eye-grabbing graphics that will look enticing in screenshots and alone will pull in a few players. Mouse action for movement or (with click drag) weapon hack&slash, double-click for a dodge roll. I'm definitely going to be less clandestine about the development of *this* game as I was with Rebuild 2, so expect a zillion demo's to be making an appearance for your kind perusal here in short time.

A kind of 3rd person Barbarian fighting game. And yes, there will be decapitating heads, you can bet on that.

Time for a quick rest...

2011-09-14T10:43:00.004+09:00

Seems like Rebuild 2 is fully done and dusted, it's up for bidding over at Flash Game License as we speak, creating quite the buzz with sponsors, who are throwing out some pretty substancial bid numbers at it. ETA for the game going 'live' as they say, is probably somewhere around the end of September and of course, if you're an FGL developer/previewer etc you can get an early glimpse of it and even *nudge nudge wink wink* write a nice review and post it there.

Some of the design I worked on is there in the form of the customised characters, but the bulk of it was for the animated endings, all of which were mammoth tasks, hand-drawn, scanned, modelled in Zbrush/3DS whew, you name it, and later coloured in Photoshop. Oh and btw for the art fans; I'm planning some time later this month to add an illustration gallery to the blog, so keep an eye out for that.

What's next? Right well, I figure I'm up for making a quick little game as a run up to Insanity 3. The theme is- get ready for this- Giant Alien Hornets Invading Martian Cities.

Yep.

All came a dream I had the other day. I was being attacked by persistent green wasps that I couldn't fight off. I woke up thinking, wow, now there's the next game! Also, I can't remember clearly but I once saw an amazing picture - I think it was an Ian Miller - which featured giant wasps attacking terrified people shielded below a glass dome, rapidly cracking under their attack. A very inspirational sketch. I've also been reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury which lead me to think why have Humans vs Insects when you can have Martians vs Insects and invent a bunch of cool, futuristic weapons and leave the door wide open for creativity?

The Insanity gets a good review-

2011-09-01T00:27:00.002+09:00

-in German, but still.. (thankyou Google translate)

HERE

Thanks for the great review guys!

And in case I forgot to link to this one earlier:

HERE

Work on Rebuild 2 coming to an end

2011-08-30T15:24:00.009+09:00

Few screenies:-

The game is currently on the market as we speak- just waiting for the sponsors to open their purse strings and the game will be out for the fans to enjoy, hopefully before the end of September. I still have to finish one ending screen animation and then I can totally walk away from this project.

Then it's back to, hmmm, who knows?
I had a craaaazy thing happen to me the other day. I'd been planning this game in my head for months, a kind of Super Punch Out game that would work on both the smartphones but also in Flash. I can cite this game Rose&Camelia http://nigoro.jp/game/rosecamellia/rosecamellia.php

as the main influence. I thought I could work that idea, maybe add a bit more functionality, some levelling-up, swap out the graphics for something like orcs and goblins, add a very cool knight in uber-stylish cobalt armour as the hero. Maybe throw in some magic potions and whatnot.

Then Sarah Northway points out this game to me. Infinity Blade http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56XseC2DBB4 to me (I'd never heard of it).

Well you imagine it freaked me out. There was basically the game I'd been scheming up for ages, basically sitting there in front of me. I've had some weird synchronistic events happen to me in the past but nothing like this. That's almost too freaky for words.

Anyway, that's one idea down the toilet. Scrapped. I think they did a better job than I ever could've anyway, *chuckles*.

Other stuff

--------------

Me and the Northways have been toying with the idea of expanding the Rebuild universe. I'm thinking I might even license the game from them and build a Rebuild FPS based on 'The Damned' engine. What do you reckon? I can't think of one game out there in Flash that has licensed it's name out to other developers and built other genres of games around the same principle concept. Kind of only semi-serious about it now, but well, if it peaks enough people's curiousity then why not?

Personal

-----------

Well, I finally managed to drag myself away like the screaming crack-whore from Metal Gear Online. 3 years I've been playing that game, and it's still incredibly popular on the Japanese servers. Best record: Lvl 16 as a Shielder/Runner build. Shield is the most fun for me as it's kind of trolling in a way, it throws everyone off their game when they see a Shielder coming round the corner. Still, it's not as bad as HandGun 3 and using the Stun Gun+Shield, and then running off to leave them hammering the controller to wake up before they get shot. Haven't had as much fun as that since trolling in Demon's Soul with the Scraping Spear/Baby's Nail as an invisible Assassin Build. They don't call me EvilKris for nothing. Anyway, I am very very excited about Dark Souls, the sequel to DS, which is coming out next month. I'm not even going to play the main game, just find whatever way I can to mess up other people's games and lol myself into oblivion when the hate mail comes pouring in.

So the reason I'm off the MGO is I bought myself some new crack in the form of Monster Hunter 3rd Portable Edition for the PS3 the other day. By God, that's one addictive game. It's all in Japanese and although speaking-wise I'm fairly fluent I still can't read the Chinese characters proficiently enough to really get what all the potions do, so it's mainly total trial and error at this point. Ultimately I had to set my PS3 to run on a wired connection to get this stupid AdHoc network thing up and running, and I still can't figure out how the hell to play online with anybody. Loving the single player so far though.

Till next time, adios!

More Rebuild 2 Art-

2011-07-28T03:09:00.009+09:00

(Bottom pic is my personal fav so far)

Looks like Rebuild 2 (the main game) is slowly getting closer to the finish line.

In terms of artwork I've finished the character profiles, the Zombie Attack scenes, the battle result vignettes and I'm currently working on the ending sequences. And I don't mind telling you they're giving me a few headaches, too . Not only are they a total bitch to conceptualize, but I'm more than a little worried about the disk space they're consuming. It's one thing to have a great idea for an animated ending scene running through your imagination, and another thing to pull it off in CS5. I'm still having fun though.

Has anyone else used ZBrush? Yes, once again I'm the consumate late starter with these things but I'm totally hooked like a crack whore on it these days. Ease of use, intuitive volumetric modelling techniques that make creating a model akin to sculpting, and easiest texturing methods I've seen. Yes sir, this is the best tool I've ever seen for 3d computer artists hands down- I rigged up a zombie head about 20 minutes into using it for the first time ever, that's how quick you can get into it. I see exhaustless potential with this baby and you can bet that Insanity 3 will feature a lot of ZBrush'd vivisects.

Last bit of news is that as one might expect with any dramatic change there's a few fans of the first game complaining about the art. Apparently they feel that the visuals of the 2nd one are looking to be a little too dark and morbid, a vicious and unforgiving leap from the first game - which was almost cutesy in it's graphical style.

I say Rebuild 2, with it's new look, is going to be something astounding and unlike anything seen before in terms of the quality of the gameplay, and the radical direction that the artwork is taking it into is only going to serve to advance the popularity of the series further.

Few more images for the game---

2011-06-10T16:42:00.004+09:00

Lots of badly drawn images glossed up to look 10x better in Photoshop. The technique behind all this isn't exactly magic. I've used some Japanese comic books I have to appropriate the correct anatomical structure of the organics in each image (angles etc), also good shading, then I used the same blending transparency techniques used in 'The Insanity' games to get an even more realistic look to the texture and detail. I fill in the smaller bits myself; faces, cloth patterns, backgrounds. Ends up looking like I'm some wonderful artist but in reality I couldn't draw this half as well without having some ref comic strips to copy from lying in front of me at all times. Maybe it's the same with all artists, who knows? Not much different than people drawing themselves from the mirror I suppose. I estimate that at this stage we're probably about halfway done with Rebuild 2. I have to do some of the Zombie Attack animations, the ending scene art, and then who knows maybe the layout of the GUI or the main map. I've previewed the second version in it's alpha state and it's looking like a fine game- most of the complaints about the first game have been seen to, and hopefully with my art in it nobody'll be bitching about that either, unless comic gore isn't their thing?

If so one could argue why they'd want to play a zombie game in the first place anyway.

PSN Back in Japan.Hallelujah!

2011-05-30T23:21:00.004+09:00

That was a loooong wait. I think you suckers around the world got your PSN back about 10 days earlier that us folks living over here in the Land of the Rising Sun. I was suffering Metal Gear withdrawal symptoms so bad I had to go play Metal Gear Arcade instead down the local game center. I've come to realise the game sucks quite bad, the head&gun control system- which seemed kind of cool at first- are actually quite naff ways to move your character around and you don't get anywhere near the mobility you get in the PS3 version. Had enough of that one.

Few more screenies for the up&coming Rebuild 2.

Rebuild 2

2011-05-23T13:45:00.009+09:00

I've been keeping this schtum for a while but the latest game I've been working on is actually 'Rebuild 2'.

If you haven't heard of Rebuild, it's a brilliant Zombie strategic survival game by Northway games. It's been played by squillions of people and is still in the top 40 on Newgrounds.

They started working on the second one recently and were looking for an artist. Frankly I loved the first game a lot, and after playing it (for a long, long time) I actually had already envisualised what it would look like with my art stamped all over it, so this was a dream job for me.

Despite the gameplay being top notch, the first game's graphics were a little too simple and it seemed like they wanted to take the game to a darker place visually this time. That's where I've stepped in.

Have to say Sarah Northway has been great to work with. She's definitely a smart cookie and knows exactly how to manage this thing well as well as being constantly supportive and generous with the compliments. Made this first collaboration for me relaxing and stress-free.

Many fans of the first game showed concern that the second game would be a little too heavy if it featured the same variety of gore as I've used in the Insanity games. With that in mind we decided to go with a more cartoon-esque look.

We've both been getting various influences, her from The Walking Dead books, I myself have been heavily influenced by the work of Beksinski recently, so expect to see a bit of his stuff in the work I do.

Only the final end of game images will feature anything as nasty as what you can see in The Insanity games.

One bonus is the new customized character screen that features photorealistic art for each 'survivor'. We've scanned in all our faces for the game so you'll actually be able to see our ugly mugs as a 'leader' or 'scavenger' etc . I think I look pretty cool with a shotgun in one hand, cowboy hat and an old grey moustache.

Anyway, I'm excited and working my buttcheeks off to get the visuals to a level where they truly add another dimension to this already fantastic game.

CHRONICLE:- a chronic failure hahahaaaaa!

2011-05-23T12:51:00.005+09:00

Well, seems like the latest news is that the latest game of mine- 'CHRONICLE' is a flop *sigh*

A giant turd of a flop. Couldn't get the bastard sponsored even after weeks of trying.

If nothing else I've learned that arcade games- specifically shooters, are not my bag. Both Bounty Hunter and this one went nowhere fast. This one cuts me up a little though, because although it wasn't reinventing the wheel I personally felt it was a pretty good game. That's 6 months of hobby time largely wasted.

Still, the dude here always remains positive, and here's what I've learned;

a) Don't make games just because you think they'll score you a cashcow.

b) Be original

c) Don't waste time working on games you don't like.

d) With Flash, less is more.

e) Mochiad rates still suck compared to CPMStar.

The game didn't sell even despite quite a few sponsors taking a peek at it. Most of the feedback came saying great music but not original enough. Also had a few comments about the graphics being inconsistent and the game difficulty being a little high.

I didn't send out any e-mails to sponsors and perhaps that was the biggest error on my part- not enough self-promotion.

I think I'm guilty on relying too much on Flash Game License to get my game sponsored. But at the end of the day I was just dying to move away from this turkey and couldn't be bothered with all the hassle of tracking down all the big-wigs in the industry, I didn't believe in the game enough to really play the salesman role. I kind of think of the whole scene like FrightNight where Jerry Dandridge (Sponsor) is coming down the stairs in full vampire mode and Roddy McDowell (me) holds out his crucifix(the game), then Jerry starts chuckling sardistically 'You've got to have FAITH for that to work on me, Mr.Vincent'

Yeah. Lack of faith. And I was dinner.

The dangers of spending long amounts of time with a game are:

a) Oftentimes you can't tell if your games sucks or not as you're too washed out on it or just bored of playing it. Even StreetFighter gets dull after playing it all day. Try 80 days.

b) You've a hundred other, better concepts built in your imagination that you're dying to start work on, but you can't because you've got this lame duck you have to wrap up.

I'm thinking of trying some new. Perhaps making very small games, almost like demos that are fun, a quick fix and not too challenging. For example I might split 'The Damned' into 3 highly polished mini games. Sure people will nag about the game length but you don't have the right to complain when you're getting something for free. Certainly would equal less stress for me. Either way, Insanity 3 will probably be my last, and hopefully greatest full game until the day when microtransactions are fully accepted and we can actually get rewarded properly for our work instead of relying on scraps from the sponsors and pay per click routes.

2011-05-02T23:09:00.003+09:00

OK, so finally it seems I have 5 minutes to start blogging again. I only like to post when I actually have some news worth reading these days. Not like anyone actually reads this shit anyway.

Latest game CHRONICLE is done and dusted and up for bidding over at Flash Game License as we speak. I've yet to see any amazing offers come in so who knows when you guys will get to play it. If you're into my horror games then it won't likely be down your alley anyway as it's a retro arcade style game like Asteroids (with fab explosions and lasers).

Sneaky peek:

So far the game has had some so-so reviews. Some people said it was kind of tough from the start, but I planned it to be like that. In it's defence it's a *gamers* game- not necessarily intended for the bored suburban housewives and old grandpa's of the USA. All in all I think it's a damn fine game- one I can actually be proud of for a change. I've (once again) used some of Mihai Sorohan's tunes and also David Orr contributed a song this time around. If you could bottle the talent these guys have you'd be a millionaire.

What else? The Flying Chicken, of all games, has been chosen by a team to be converted onto the smartphone scene. Apparently they've already got it running with Box2d on the Iphone right now, yeehee. Should be fun to see how that turns out.

Last but not least, I'm currently working on the sequel to an immensely popular Flash zombie

game. They needed an artist, and as I was already a fan of the first game I jumped at the opportunity. So far I've been working on mostly costume design for character customizations. We're all going to have our faces in the game as characters so you'll have fun dressing me up all sexy boy before sending me out to my certain death. Next I'll be will be working on the nasty intestine-munching zombie image stuff that those of you who are fans of The Insanity will go nuts for. Honestly, this game is gonna rock, I'm getting pumped to see the fans reaction when it's released so I'm working hard on it.

Anyway, I'd love to post some of the stuff I've completed already, and I'll see if I can get permission to disclose some more details next blog time.

JAPAN: Arcades++

2011-02-16T00:27:00.004+09:00

Darius Burst-

Sort of space fish themed shooter. Uses two screens. Hmm, not much to say about this one, to be honest I didn't play it more than once.

Lords of Vermillion 2.

An arcade style collectible card game. Looks kind of like a Japanese WOW from the outset. Great graphics and sound. Even though I can speak and read Japanese ok these games are kind of beyond me. They're quite popular machines though. Again, goes with the Japanese trend of keeping people down playing for hours and hours down the game center.

Electronic Darts.

Now we're talking. Me and a buddy must've spent every evening in 2008 playing these little suckers in the darts bar over here. If I was ever asked to choose a Japanese product abroad I felt would make me a million quid exported it would probably be Japanese electronic darts. Why?

These are so much fun, the boards are made of pins that pick up with extreme accuracy where your darts land. Everything is done via the computer- no more writing on a chalkboard and arguing with your mates about your bad sums, these babies take care of all of it for you. You can choose from about a zillion different darts games and their variations, Count Up, Cricket, even some unique ones like MyLand (or was it MyCountry), where the winner is the one who gets the most Japanese prefectures (represented by numbers) converted to his colour.

Personalise your darts in the shop. Customise your flights, use thin shafts or heavy shafts (not a sexual pun), etc. Plus you can always buy a beer and play doubles with a couple of nice chicks you meet there too.

Another cool thing is, like most arcade machines in Japan these days, you can link up to a national network and play against people anywhere else in Japan. So even when you're alone in the bar, you can still play with real people.

JAPAN: Arcades

2011-02-06T20:08:00.018+09:00

Taito Station- One of the bigger game centers where I live. 5 floors. Got every type of game under the sun here; UFO Catcher's (claw crane machines), photo-booth Purikura (obviously more popular with the ladies), Retro Classics coin-ops(Final Fight, Super Mario,

etc), Guitar Hero-type games, RPG card-based games, Gun games, coin challenge games, man, just anything and everything, some of which I'll go more into detail below.

(Free candyfloss on the door at weekends)

This place obviously also has a TON of the latest games and their linked units, some of which you'll never see abroad. Competitions are held here and you can be quite the local hero if you win a Super Street Fighter 4 tournament. Some players are fiercely good though, as you'd expect this being the gaming hub of the world- so don't bank on ever winning unless you spend most of your life practicing online.

The place is totally packed out all the time, nothing like mild UK arcades.

Metal Gear Arcade-

New on the scene Metal Gear Arcade utilises some of the cool 3d technology we've been seeing everywhere these days- you wear the specs while you play, just like at the movies. This really adds to the gameplay. The game is kind of just an amalgamation of MGO elements and even features the same maps. You buy credits with real money, play missions or do vs online or neighbour link-up. The more money you throw in the better and longer levels you can play. You can customise your character just like MGO but you need to register to do it. Not sure if you've actually buy a card (like some games) or you just choose a unique number on the machine, but anyway once you've got your character saved you can level up and get on the national rankings system.

First impression- nothing like other gun games. The gun controller is very sophisticated and has about a dozen different buttons and switches, along with a PS3 thumb-stick that governs movement. Although I do love MGO the arcade version is hard to get to grips with at first, and the amount of controls are simply overwhelming. That being said I've been trying to persevere with this one and I'm starting to see it's brilliance. The coolest thing about the game is clearly the 3D, which in combination with putting it on first-person mode amps the intensity up big time. The screen moves with your head too, a sweet little control method, this game brings you closer to being in a real war than any other FPS I've played.

Negatives-I think Konami are really throwing the challenge out there for casual arcade gamers to invest a lot of time and money in this game and frankly I'm not sure it's going to hit off with anyone except for hardcore MGO guys like myself. The staggering amount of info you have to get through just to get into the game first time takes some perseverance indeed.

That being said sometimes these things take time to warm up, and besides the trend over here for Japanese gamers these days is moving towards arcade games that you're never done with after 5 minutes. I wonder if Konami aren't killing off their audience with the excessively complex cabinet, but either way I'm not quite done with this one yet, I sense that it's going to pick up in popularity once people start giving it a chance.

JAPAN: Game-related books

2011-01-31T14:06:00.005+09:00

Just some features of the local bookshelf at Junkudo- the Barnes and Noble of Japan. Game-related books.

The usual you'd find anywhere, coding any type of game in Objective C. All of the Game Programming Gem series. have been translated. Lots of modelling books, mostly devoted to MAYA. Only to be seen are about 3 books coding in Flash AS3 *wa wa wa waaaaaah* and the content none too impressive- how to make a Super Mario Clone etc. There was one 3D coding title that came with some Japanese 3D libraries on a CD.

As you can see the trend in Japan is more towards mobile gaming, there's a TON of books related to the IphoneSDK, for example, as well as coding with Android.

Another thing to note is that you can see some biographies of famous game designers over here, as they are given more acclaim in Japan, comparable with famous engineers in Germany.

Some links regarding the Iphone and Android in Japan.

Android Development Jobs in Japan

Is Japan’s Social Gaming Boom an Explosion or an Implosion?

Japan’s iPhone craze attracting worldwide developers

New

2011-01-31T13:32:00.003+09:00

Hey,

First of all, if you're interested in my game updates, skip to the bottom of this post.

New Blog Additions

-------------------

So while it might seems pretty obvious from the blogs title, I do in fact live in Japan, although I'm a true blue Brit from Hastings. Living here and being a hardcore gamer is heaven, I sometimes feel as if every other Japanese person is some kind of gaming freak and in reflection of that Japan has some of the coolest gaming paraphernalia you can find on the planet. Gaming centers over here are big business, usually have about 6 floors full of games with expensive high-tech units you could only dream of having in the West. And many shops are devoted to selling quirky gamer stuff that I feel definitely someone living outside Japan might get excited over and have to break the bank to buy on e-bay.

Henceforth, with this in mind I've decided to mix in with this blog some regular concurrent info about the game scene in Japan. My first post is coming real soon, so watch this space.

Game stuff

-----------

It's been awhile since my post, but the good news is that the reason behind this is because I've been extremely productive with work on my latest project, officially titled 'Chronicle' as of last week.

Some of you may have seen the demo of the Asteroids clone in my last post. The game has been revamped and now aspires to being a kind of retro tribute game that features 8 levels, some of which are resemblance to old arcade games, namely -Galaxians, Space Invaders, Gorf, Asteroids and Sinistar- but are fashioned to fit in the game's architecture.

Game features some nice particle effects (I think I've seriously gotten the hang of bitmap blitting these days) and I've even fiddled around with the CS5 3d transformation tools to bump up the sexiness of some of the graphics. You can collect power-ups that morph your ship into other type of ships with differing specialities- none of which I can mention at this point.

Might be just foolishness on my part but I'm a tad protective about some of the unique concepts in this one, hence the lack of an updated demo. Sorry. I will probably post it on FGL soon though, so members with a market level of 1 or over should be able to view it.

Creepy. Gothic. Inspirational

2010-12-05T12:34:00.007+09:00

Was perusing through some old book shop here in Japan and came across this book of old Art Deco illustrations courtesy of Bela-Gyula Krieger, a long dead Hungarian animalier artist of the LOUIS XV Period. One look and I instantly thought of how well these would go in for The Insanity 3, ooooh yeah :-)

Best thing about these are since they're over a hundred year old they're totally permission free - as the book says, and as such are ok for use in games. I've a few hundred pages of these amazing awe-inspiring pieces, everything from Toad Daggers to Crocodile Eye Brooches. It's totally the stuff of dark fantasy, perfect for games. I'm even going to base some of my spacecraft design for the latest game I'm working on (still haven't named it).

You can bet your ass Edgar Friendly would have loved these too and yes, you will see a few of them crop up in the third installment of The Insanity series.

ROIDZ continuation...

2010-10-26T01:26:00.002+09:00

Design notes for the new game.

-------------------------------

*Start off with your ship basic firing abilities.

*Each enemy destroyed gives credits for buying better weapons.

*4 levels and 4 bosses.

*Earlier bosses will be doable without anything but skill but later bosses will literally be impossible without the correct combination of bought power-ups.

*Each time you clock the game it gets progressively harder.

*Random *super* enemies will appear. Normal enemies that are a special colour and much tougher/faster than others of the same ilk however they will give a fat credit bonus when destroyed.

*Some variety in enemies during later replays.

Est.finishing time, 2 months from this post.

Roids

2010-10-08T01:56:00.004+09:00

ASTEROIDZ - I mean :-)

Use the mouse to drag them around. Fingers crossed they'll fit well into the game without slowing up the FPS too much.

Updates-

2010-10-06T01:44:00.007+09:00

Small update to the latest shooting game I've been working on, just click on the link on the thread below. Really need to get a better codename than 'BlowUpSh*t' I know but the name makes me chuckle every time I read it. I would genuinely call the game that if I thought parents would allow their little 5yr old Johnny to play a game with such a title.

Updates include a nasty bug being fixed that was messing with the memory, and a new weapon. If you hold down the mouse button it now activates an R-type ray gun actually called the er- *R-Type* (sort of in tribute really) that can rattle the crap out of any enemies it smashes into. The gun does damage relative to the amount of time you power it up, and if fully powered, the generator blinks and you'll do maximum damage- along with doubling the magnitude of the laser.

Don't let the fact the beam goes through some enemies- I'm still collision detection tweaking so expect a fix soon.

Machine guns next.

Another demo:

This one isn't even worth posting honestly, but just so you guys can get a basic idea of how the fighting game I was working on *was* going (till I realised how much work would go into it) here it is for ye all to 'marvel' at, lol. Never fear, though for the time being I'm preoccupied with the shooter, this demo will become a fully-fledged game, hey perhaps if I'm lucky some talented artist might come along and start spriting characters for me based on the biped movements in the demo. I'd truly be motivated to get back on the coding for this one if that were to happen. Major bonus points if you can guess which game the background music was ripped from..

FIGHTING GAME: DEMO

Blow Sh*t Up

2010-10-03T20:18:00.002+09:00

Little quick demo of the latest game I'm working on.

I was planning to do a beat-em up game and had been working on that for a few weeks until I began to feel it would take me forever to finish what with all the animations to draw and such. Therefore I decided to ease down off the big projects for a while hence this is what I've been piddling about with these days-

HERE

Codename:Blow Sh*t Up is what I call this puppy. It's nothing more than a standard shooter with some fancy pixel particles explosions. The demo just features a bunch of enemies floating around the screen. The particle engine is so quick I can eve n add Glow and Blur filters to it without much of a halt in the fps.

I'm using the excellent Pixel Perfect Collision Engine by Troy Gilbert. Dude has made a fine piece of code there, it works like a dream.

//Accurate pixel detection turned off (bounding box same as hitTestObject)
if (PixelPerfectCollisionDetection.isColliding(ob,characterArray[i], this,false))
{
//If ship has a weak point check for it first
if(characterArray[i].box)
{
//Accurate pixel detection turned on
if(PixelPerfectCollisionDetection.isColliding(ob,characterArray[i].box,this,true,20))
{
Tint(characterArray[i], 0xFF0000,1);
characterArray[i].oldX=x;
characterArray[i].oldY=y;

characterArray[i].alive=false;
removeMovie(ob);
return;
}
}
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Awesomeness.

--------------------

So no 'Insanity III', boo hoo I know :-) I'd love to work on it- I truly would, but the only thing I have to say in my defence to the peeps begging me to make it a Jerry McGuire-esque 'Shooooow meee the money!' because entertaining you guys or not the financial scraps I've been making from this series are laughable, it's time for another strategy.

Love that you guys appreciated the games though.

Bit of NG drama

2010-09-24T00:33:00.006+09:00

Phew. Stupid me I unknowingly uploaded 'THE INSANITY II' on minutes prior to what they call 'MADNESS DAY' on Newgrounds.com. Within about 2 hours the game vanished from the new entry Flash Portal with less than a 1000 views, much to my dismay. Thankfully after writing to the admin there I got a reply from Wade there that under my conditions they would delete the game and allow me to resubmit on a quieter day.

Man, for a minute there I thought 7 months of anticipation had just been flushed down the toilet. Lucky me.

For posterity here are the reviews it already got. I guess they'll be gone too soon enough.

"I am thinking to much..."

by: Kenxeus

date: 7 hours ago

The game got me thinking that maybe he is actually the twin brother of Edgar Friendly and that Edgar Friendly actually died in the car accident instead of his brother...Maybe I think that because when he went back to be a surgeon he could not do his job...
That his head injury made him believe he was Edgar Friendly, that the incident and the loss of his brother made him insane.
Great game what is next a game when he started doing his experiments for the first time?

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Score:10

"Absoutely Beautiful"

by: SanguineWendigo

date: 17 hours ago

This game was as beautiful as the first one, I love every bit of it. But my favorite subject of the game would have to be the designs of all characters and creatures. One thing I have noticed is Edgar Friendly's hair is similar to a lion's mane, the king of the jungle, ironic since in a since that is what he is trying to become lol. the creatures as well are amazing in their design and even how to "handle" them was amazing. I do hope you make part 3 soon in the future for even though there is only 2 parts, I am a deep fan of the series. At least I hope it becomes a series....

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Score:10

"Your game"

by: jason7799

date: September 22, 2010

Good graphics for the atmospher it brings....entertaining for a while..or how ever long it takes someone to beat it..but yea it could have been more difficult
good game though
5/5

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Score:10

"Are you from Florida?"

by: TheRinger1976

date: September 22, 2010

I like your game, particularly the cinematic atmosphere you've created. I'd bet you're a fan of gore porn.

Seriously liked it though. Especially the [I assume to be] seamless blending of photos, drawings, and perhaps a bit of CG rendering in your stills. It tickles my pinial gland. Keep up the good work.

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Score:10

"That's fuckin creepy."

by: thom175

date: September 22, 2010

This game scared me shitless. I love the Lovecraft reference. I hope you make another because this is really great man.
5/5
10/10

[respond]

INSANITY II- Q & A

2010-09-22T09:46:00.010+09:00

If you've any questions about the game's storyline or the future of the INSANITY series post them to me and I'll paste the answers in here-

Anonymous said...

This game is awesome! 8D Even though I keep getting stuck like the first game, but it's a lack of perception as per usual. XD Thank you for making The Insanity II, Mister Kris, my friend and I love it like we did the first game(which was HORRIFYING)! Your horror games are always terrifyingly wonderful.

Also the second painting in the beginning was a nice touch; I had played the Alpha and didn't expect it at all in the game itself. Keeping us on our toes as ever. ^^b

7:13 AM

EvilKris said...

My pleasure!
I'm working on a few other smaller scale games this year, but I expect they'll be an 'INSANITY 3' out sooner or later. It'll be based on Peter Langdon's brother, Nathan, and upon the concept of latex masks.

11:23 AM

Anonymous said...

Well, variety is the spice of life! XD It'd actually be a little worrying to be working on games like The Insanity ALL the time...is it at all scary for you to think up all those designs and situations and the main couples' psyches?
Even Stephen King takes a break from horror. XD

That'll be interesting to see in the future. So do you plan to always have it with "sane man being tested by the insane", or have you ever teased the idea of one of Friendly's mindwarped creations as an Insanity protagonist? I'm not saying the current formula is stale(nor should I assume that Nathan will be treated like Peter or Firstgame!Friendly, honestly...sorry), it'd just be interesting to see the mentality and how Friendly treats the creations he has under his control beyond cannon fodder for those he's testing. ^^

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah in fact it is a little taxing to go deep into the world of Dr.Friendly and company, there's always one or two nightmares that lay in wait but it goes with the territory. Besides, what lies at the base of any story worth telling is the characterization, so you have to go there. If Friendly had been nothing more than a typical B-movie psychopath who kills for naught but leisure there'd be hardly anything riveting about him. But being that he was once a kind and caring doctor warped by mental disfiguration (brought on by a crash crash) it gives him a little more depth. His tragedy also gives birth and victimises the character Tracy Takaki -who obviously being somewhat driven to mental sickness herself- is compelled to follow the man she once loved to the very end. What starts to happen in the first game is Dr.Friendly's inner sub-conscious trying to bring him back to reality.

In a third game (set after part one) he will once again slip back into madness and this is where the character Nathan Langdon steps in. As he seeks out his missing brother Peter (INSANITY II), he will also become another hapless victim drawn into the Friendly world. Like I've said the game will explore the concept of silicon/latex masking and also intelligent vivisects who are able to go out into the world incognito. So in a way it'll still play with you, who's a friend and who's an enemy? And are you really Nathan Langdon? Yikes I think I'm giving away too much here. Sane man being tested by the insane? You bet! the game's not called 'THE INSANITY' for nothing, lol, and believe me, stale or not the story for the 3rd game is already much formed and will definitely keep you guessing right until the end.

About the other stuff-

Sadly it seems that these kind of niche games don't really fit the 5-minutes-at-lunchbreak medium which is Flash, and financially it's actually more rewarding just to whack out something quick and satisfying. So unless something magical happens like winning the lottery or somebody asking me to write an 'INSANITY' movie script I'm probably going to have to spend a year or so just throwing the bones sponsors want for quick'n'dirty $$$. Gotta pay the rent.

THE INSANITY II RELEASED ON GAMESHED!

2010-09-16T16:04:00.001+09:00

Be the first to play it here

PRELOADING MADE EASY IN CS5?

2010-09-07T14:34:00.002+09:00

New pc yeehaw!.

PRELOADERS

---------------

It's pretty much known around the Flash stratosphere that preloaders are -always- a pain in the ass to get working. The first INSANITY game was a complete nightmare to set up, I had to painstakingly go through every movie clip, untick the Export in first frame box and drag each one into an asset holding movieclip on the 2nd frame of the main timeline. THEN for each and every sound I had to build a layer and drag the sfx onto their own individual layer. And even so everything was set up properly I still had some weird issues like sounds playing randomly on the title screen and such. To this day I still wake up Ripley style after a disturbing dream related to preloader setting up.
So there I was coding the 2nd INSANITY game thinking - "Oh man sooner or later I'm going to have to go through all that bs again" when I thought of something that might work.
I set up my timeline for the preloader as usual:

1st FRAME - Preloader code&graphics
2nd FRAME - Empty skippable Frame *used for the assets*
3rd FRAME - Title screen
4th FRAME - The entire game

I started dragging things into the second frame for a bit then I thought I'd try something. I went into Publish Settings/AS3/ and in the Export To Frame box I changed the 1 to 2. So Assets are all loaded on the second frame. Then I just compiled the game as normal and to my surprise and delight the preloader worked perfectly! Without the hassle of dragging all that crap into an asset holder.

Well slap my ass and call me Sally but I had no idea you could do this that easily. Do take note.

OTHER NEWS

---------------

Hmmm, well as far as I know 'INSANITY II' is pretty much sold. I'm onto my new *unnamed* project, a Golden Axe clone. Currently struggling with pixel art and such, though I believe I'm onto a good technique. Actual fighting engine code is coming out smoothly as essentially all I'm doing is exporting my AS2 Streets of Rage demo engine to AS3. This time I'm all about keeping the game simple, done&dusted in under 3 months. No complicated ideas that will lump on production time. A few bits here and there to up the replay value by including many random factors.

Example- any 'stage' can contain a number of random enemies but their properties will be controlled by the difficulty level of that stage. Also there will be a chance some randomly selected enemies will be 'LORDS' ie a little bit higher than their actual level, like the Black Phantom characters in the PS3 game Demons Soul. You can win the game as quickly as in 5 lucky hint-giving stages, or just go through the game stage by stage and try to complete all 99 (for a special medal of course).

Damn coding a fighting game is fun. And it's playable almost as soon as you get your main sprite launching combos with a keypress. Why didn't I do this earlier?

INSANITY II ETA

2010-09-07T01:56:00.003+09:00

Deals have been done- Looks like 'THE INSANITY II' is about to go public veeery soon, watch this space for an announcement.

How to code a Beat em up

2010-08-14T09:06:00.011+09:00

Some of you may remember a long time ago I did write a tutorial on beat em up's, but it was in AS2, and had a few major flaws I picked up on, therefore it was removed.
I figure now is the time to update those tutorials in AS3. This isn't going to be a straightforward making-from-scratch tutorial, rather a guide to the techniques involved. You'll have to do the grunt work yourself- no easy download FLA's for the lazybones here!
-------------------------------------------------
ADVANCED KEY-CAPTURE
-------------------------------------------------

Second only to a real fighting game such as Street Fighter 2, I can't imagine which type of game requires more pinpoint, tight arcade controls than a beat em up. Besides knowing exactly when a key is pressed, after we know what key has been pressed, we will also want to know when it was last pressed (in milliseconds), if it is being held down, and if so for how long.

//////////KEYS
var KEY_UP = Keyboard.UP;
var KEY_DOWN =Keyboard.DOWN;
var KEY_LEFT = Keyboard.LEFT;
var KEY_RIGHT = Keyboard.RIGHT;
var KEY_ATTACK = 87;
var KEY_JUMP = 81;
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

First we need to set up some constant variables for the key-codes. As you can see, with the directional controls I'm just using the arrow keys therefore I can use the globals Keyboard.UP etc. KeyCode 87 = "W", KeyCode 81 = "Q".

var keys = new Object();
keys[KEY_UP]={down:false,count:0,held_down:false,timerA:200,timerB:0,timeElapsed:0};
keys[KEY_DOWN]={down:false,count:0,held_down:false, timerA:200,timerB:0,timeElapsed:0};

keys[KEY_LEFT] = {down:false, count:0, held_down:false, timerA:200,timerB:0,timeElapsed:0};

keys[KEY_RIGHT] = {down:false, count:0, held_down:false, timerA:200,timerB:0,timeElapsed:0};

keys[KEY_ATTACK] = {down:false, count:0, held_down:false, timerA:200,timerB:0,timeElapsed:0};

keys[KEY_JUMP] = {down:false, count:0, held_down:false, timerA:200,timerB:0,timeElapsed:0};

Next I've made an Object that contains information on all keys used.
down = Is the key being pressed?
count= How many times has the key listener detected this key being held down?
held_down= er..is actually being held down?
timerA and timer B are used for checking the length of time it's being held down.
timeElapsed= might or might now be useful till later.

stage.addEventListener (KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, downKeys);
stage.addEventListener (KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, upKeys);

Our keyListeners. What is a listener? Think of it as a function that never stops working until you tell it to. In other words, remove it.



function downKeys (ev:KeyboardEvent)
{
if (keys[ev.keyCode] != undefined)
{
   keys[ev.keyCode].down = true;
   keys[ev.keyCode].count++;
   keys[ev.keyCode].timerA = getTimer() - keys[ev.keyCode].timerB;
   keys[ev.keyCode].timerB = getTimer();
}
};

function upKeys (ev:KeyboardEvent)
{
if (keys[ev.keyCode] != undefined)
{
   keys[ev.keyCode].down = false;
   keys[ev.keyCode].count=0;
   keys[ev.keyCode].held_down=false;
}
};

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

downKeys listens for pressed keys, and upKeys listens for unpressed keys.
Okay so every listener triggers an event. Don't worry too much about what that means, anyway the ev:KeyboardEvent part means 'ev' equals the key that has been picked up by the listener. We can use it as a reference into our handy keys object.

if (keys[ev.keyCode] != undefined)
Only proceed if a key has been picked up by the listener.

keys[ev.keyCode].down = true;

This key has been pressed, so set down to true.

keys[ev.keyCode].count++;
Increment variable count- telling us how many times the listener has picked up this key being held. *NOTE* This doesn't work quite as simply as you might think, the AS3 Key Listener is a funny beast- to be explained later.

keys[ev.keyCode].timerA = getTimer() - keys[ev.keyCode].timerB;
getTimer() returns the number of seconds since the movie has been playing. TimerA is the now time. The old time - the timer value it gives us right now. Think about it, you'll get it!

keys[ev.keyCode].timerB = getTimer();
Set timerB, the then time.

So, now I can detect whether a key is being pressed with a line like:

if (keys[KEY_JUMP].down)
{
trace("JUMP has been pressed");
}

This replaces the old AS2 isKeyDown nicely. In fact, it's better isn't it? Not only can we check if the key is down, but we can also get more information about that key.

p.s.Don't forget your libraries at the top.:

import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;
import flash.events.Event;

'INSANITY II' bidding on FGL

2010-08-02T23:22:00.004+09:00

So the game is done, completed 100% and on Flash Game License now awaiting bids. I am in no rush at all to sell, in fact I've half a mind to pimp it out armed only with mochi or cpmstar ads.

I figure if 'THE INSANITY' hit over 1,000,000 players in a half year, that would effectively have gotten me about $1000 in ad revenue by now- and if I could be patient for a few years, that could dd up and add up, who knows? I'd have the cash the sponsors paid for it minus any legal obligation to put someones logo on my game. So we'll see, the only stress for me is the fans out there won't get to see the game till it's been through the bid wars. I'm still adding bits and pieces to the game while it's up there waiting for a pappa.

In the meantime, work starts on the next project. It's time for ACCCCCTTTTIIION! Yes, enough of these dour creepy-crawlie point'n'c*lickers EvilKris is breaking from tradition. Although keeping with the horror theme would make for sound business sense, I'd also like the kiddies to be able to play my games occasionally without their mum's going 'What the bleedin' hell you playing here?- that's bloody disgusting turn it off!'

So the next game will be using my Streets Of Rage Fighter Engine (rewritten in AS3) and will be a simple game kinda similar to the old classic MoonStone albeit shorter and much more hyper- paced. Essentially you'll have a map with about 50 random locations you can 'search', hit any spot and you'll have some enemies to fight and on winning you'll either get a weapon, something to give health recovery, or a hint as to where the final location you're looking for is.

I haven't quite decided on the theme yet but it'll probably be something with barbarians and goblins as I've been playing Oblivion lately. Had a dream I was working for Bethesda the other day.

Tell you what it feels damn nice to get off Insanity 2, summer is here, the babes are on the beach, and my own complication in life is figuring how to get the best suntan.

AS3 Splatterhouse..

2010-07-27T11:55:00.005+09:00

After many requests for updates and AS3 conversations, I've finally taken the initiative to updating the tutorials to AS3. There's also a pretty good chance I'll add a couple more chapters to deal with multiple enemies and tile-based platforms.

There's a hefty transition between AS2 and AS3 and as such the tutorials will take some time to revamp, in the meantime if anybody is dying to see some basics laid out (movieclip with basic control and attacks), grab the - AS3 SPLATTERHOUSE CODE - here (full FLA)

ARROW KEYS- Move, W- Attack.

---------------------------------------------------

'THE INSANITY II' is more or less finished. I'm just waiting on some audio to come in and I'll be uploading it to FGL. Won't be long folks. Actually already cracking on with my next game believe it or not- a fully fledged Final-Fight type beat-em up with borrowings from Double Dragon, SpikeOut, and CrimeFighters. Haven't quite decided on a theme yet but the engine will be similar to my previous SORF engine (though updated to AS3) and it will be SHORT. No more shacking up for 7-8 months on one game. This one will be Dad'N'Me length.

Already got a character running around doing combo's maaaaan I'm getting to be a good coder these days, lol!

Now I've tried this before and failed, but I am looking for a good spriter. Anyone who is pretty talented- at either drawing fighting sprites from scratch or even say, just reworking old Capcom sprites so they're original- get in touch. Clear 40/60 deal on this one so there could be some major cash involved. If I can't find a good artist for this one I'm screwed, I *can* design characters in 3ds with motion capture but I'm not exactly Frank Frazetta when it comes to natural art talent.

"INSANITY II"- on schedule!

2010-06-02T03:43:00.002+09:00

Phew! After a ridiculously long gestation period of 7 months or so it seems like the second game is almost ready to launch. The game is playable from start to finish in it's current state, and all that's left to do is to drop in the audio (20% done already), draw up the ending cinematics, fix some dialogue weaknesses and beautify some of the weaker images. Then wham bam baby! she's good to go.
I'd say at the rate I'm working on it, bar ill health or an exploding computer the game should be on FGL for the sponsors to sniff around at by the end of July- possibly even the end of June. The whole project has been like a goddamn weight around the neck for this year and I truly hope someone appreciates the monumental effort I've put into making this the best Flash horror game ever. Personally I'm looking forward to the months after this, bumming around the humid, gorgeous Japanese beaches with a can of Asahi- before coding simpler games I can finish in 2-3 months max. Whacking the MochiAds on and watching my bank account saturate with passive income, that sort of thing. I know I'll never make the amount of $$$ I think 'The Insanity II' is actually worth, due to it being done in the Flash medium, but what the hell -no regrets, this has been for the most part a labour of love, and artistically speaking it should stand the taste of time in comparison to some other games out there. And who knows about future platforms? Maybe an Iphone version?
Although I can't release another alpha version of the game, you guys can rest assured 'THE INSANITY II' is far better than the first one in every way. Horror fans will not be disappointed. More updates coming soon.
p.s.I will also rewrite my SplatterHouse tutorials for AS3 when I have the time this summer.

Whew...

2010-04-13T00:51:00.004+09:00

...down down..deeper down. Just finished another couple of sections of 'THE INSANITY II' and all I gotta say is, this is some scary sh*t coming out of my brain and onto the medium we all know and love called Flash here. Tell you what guys if you want to have cozy dreams don't sit on your computer alone drawing pics of half-eaten bodies with their intestines hanging out...
Anyway, I need a break so I thought I'd blog for a sec before I get out the guitar.

I don't suppose I'll ever spend as much time authoring any games as I have with the Insanity series. But will there be a trilogy? Maybe one day. But 6 months is really way too long to spend on making a game. What's the point? I definitely need to cut them shorter. With story-intensive games like this one there's really no choice but still...One worry I do have is fitting this all in under 5 mb. I can't see it happening what with all the audio that has to go in at the end, so there might be some restrictions in that capacity.

Anyway, 2011 will be my year for multiple game releases- you can bank on that.

I want to wrap this puppy up because I'm DYING to code a decent beat-em up. I've been doing *ahem* research? on MAME recently and some of the golden oldies, Crimefighters, Shadow of Mystara, Aliens vs Predator. Man, thems some good games and I'm bagging to get my imprint on the legacy of great fighting games.
I quit playing Tekken 6 because frankly the game isn't that much of a challenge, I think my Eddie is retired at around position 170 in the world so, can't complain. Back on MGO again with a level 14 girl character called 'THE INSANITY' (surprise). You wont find me on the UK servers but if you ever go on the Japanese ones feel free to friend me and we can clan up or something.
I've been checking out some of the new releases on PSN. Brink is looking exciting. Just, dammit, I wish they'd bring out Monster Hunter on the PS3. Even if I have to go through it all in Japanese again like I did on the PS2 I'd be game.

INSANITY II next Alpha available

2010-03-25T18:23:00.012+09:00

INSANITY II ALPHA.02 is good to go!

There's a wee bit more game there for your enjoyment. You can now see more of CHIMERA and solve another puzzle. I've been checking out screenies for the new Dead Space 2 and it's looking pretty good. Man, wish I could be working on a game like that.

The Arnolfini Processor

2010-03-25T10:14:00.002+09:00

Some people are complaining they don't understand how to solve this puzzle.

As you can see in the first pic (far left) this is a clue as to how to decipher the painting's secret clue.

'The Insanity II' is a more intellectual game than the first one. I'm aware that many people will struggle to figure out the puzzles which is why I'll include a walkthrough YouTube video with it's release (with money-making ad's on the page of course bwahahahaaaaa!)

For your information, the Arnolfini Portrait is a *real* picture by the way :-) And is historically known for having many hidden meanings- read about it out on Wikipedia

The demo will be updated shortly with a couple of extra sections. I'll let you guys know when it's out.

THE OFFICIAL 'INSANITY II' DEMO BABEEEE!!!

2010-03-13T02:24:00.006+09:00

How's it going peeps? Long time no see and all that, but you can bet your ass I've been working hard on the sequel to 'THE INSANITY' and here's your proof. I did want to post this in NG Alpha's but unfortunately it's already over their 1mg limit.

'THE INSANITY II' Alpha 0.1

Featured in this demo is approx.1/3 of the up-and-coming game.

You can:

*Read a little more about the history of the Doctor and the character you play in the game.

*Solve 1 major puzzle.

*Encounter 'CHIMERA'- one of the doctors wolf-like creations+ a hybrid vivisect version of one of your team-mates.

*See roughly 15 pieces of background art.

*See the almost-finished intro.

Enjoy!

INSANITY 2 pics

2009-12-30T04:10:00.008+09:00

A few work-in-progress screenies for the new installment of the series.

Still require a bit of touching-up (ooh matron!) before they can be used for the game.

THE INSANITY 2

2009-12-10T15:46:00.003+09:00

Frickin' Tekken 6 online is sucking up a loooot of my time. EVILKRIS_1977 if you see me on there. Playing as Eddy I'm currently 126th (W 906 L 503) in the world online battle rankings, not bad for a dude some might say is past his best gaming years! Come on all ye challengers!

Er.. and for anyone interested in my work:
'THE INSANITY II' is in the works, I'll have some snapshots up on the blog sometime later in the week. I've examined a lot of feedback from players of the original and decided to make a few altercations to the in-game mechanics. The battle system is kaput- some folks said it was 'original' but not very enjoyable and *shockingly* actually killed the games suspense.
Replacing that will be more action QTE-esque cutscenes and subgames, though none as tricky as 'The Machine'- which seemed overly challenging and clearly pissed off a lot of players.
Picture a mouse-mashing scene that will require you to crawl through a vent with one of the vivisects in hot pursuit, get caught and there will be a nasty, delectable death to come. The protagonist in this one is much more apparent- I've already designed the 3d mesh and you will see his appearance throughout the game.

The game will continue the tradition of ambushing any quiet moments where the player thinks it's safe to have a break. Also, in some cases you'll die by walking into the wrong place, using the wrong item or lingering too long, you'll need to think carefully and keep your wits about you at all times. Also, the puzzles will be trickier and more 'intellectual'. The blood and gore are all there but the story is the main chiller.
Originally I entertained that the game would take place in a lighthouse. This seemed like a good idea but I realised it would be impractical for storytelling purposes.
So, where is it being set now? An abandoned asylum..

More later...

-THE INSANITY- RELEASED!

2009-10-02T00:12:00.001+09:00

Here-
THE INSANITY

"THE INSANITY" DEVELOPMENT POST

2009-09-16T13:52:00.005+09:00

GAME INSPIRATION
-----------------------

There's no direct inspiration for 'THE INSANITY' but it definitely had a wide range of influences. My first purpose was to recreate something similar to what we used to read in the Fighting Fantasy Ian Livingstone&Steve Jackson books as kids. Are you old enough to remember?
What a great idea it would be, I thought, to have a game like that. Not really much more than an excuse for a straightforward picture-book story. Interactivity is limited- there are battles and sub games to raise the pulse a little, but the real involvement comes from the characters and being astray in this mysterious world that is part directed by the author and part by your own imagination.
In a sense the game is a hybrid because it's not actually aimed at the crowd who prefer slow, passive puzzle games, but rather the Silent Hill/Resident Evil fans who like a decent story and medium pace action+the chance of a grizzly death.

CHARACTERS
---------------

EDGAR FRIENDLY
One of the differences between Friendly and other horror genre antagonists is that he doesn't have any provocative background tale, his history is straightforward and nondescript, he is a highly-educated man from a good Christian non-abusive family. He's brain damaged. There's more to be learned about this in the second game, but he gets involved in a horrendous accident that triggers it all off a few years later. He loses the mental faculties that appropriate what is moral and sane in our society. With normal thought patterns destabilised he goes on to believe what he is doing, the experiments, the kidnapping, the vicious murdering, is for the benefit and advancement of humanity and medical science. He doesn't view himself as an outright serial killer (as do many in real life btw) - it's 'progress'- mankind will comprehend his objectives and one day thank him, the end DID defy the means, and all was not for naught. In the Insanity 1- which is taking place sometime after the second game- his beliefs have manifested themselves to such an extent that he literally puts himself under the knife with a little help from T.Takaki, in the vain hope that it will educate the world and prove his level of commitment. All goes awry at the last minute however, and he ends up potentially 'curing' his condition and being as horrified at his surroundings as a normal human being would be. His awakening prior to discovering the horrible truth is the event consequentially to the games beginning.

TRACY TAKAKI
Tracy is nothing more than a frail-minded girl who's love for Friendly runs so deep that she allows him to sculpt her into one of his Pigmalion-esque 'experiments' to be with him. She lies to herself that all that is happening is just a game. She is the one who deep-down is completely aware of the terrible irregularity of it all, and yet her love obscures her righteous beliefs and she foolishly expects he will somehow revert back to his once normal mentality once the Doctor is done playing around. Her physical appearance is largely based on the 'Kuchisake Onna' of Japanese mythology and the actual model herself (counting out the face) is none other than my own wife- who after seeing her lovely photo's zombied up is convinced she married a Edgar Friendly nut job herself. She will be making a further appearance in the second game.

"THEY'LL BE NO ESCAPE FOR YOU GUY"- TUNNEL MONSTER - STATUE
Past captives and surgically altered victims.

ALEXANDER
Another captive although he- like yourself- manages to escape and is in the process of looking for a way out when you encounter him.

CHAINSAW GUY
He's a character from another game I never did quite finish (yet) "THE DAMNED". Just out of silly affection for the 3d model and it's animations I decided to write him into the game. His history is under wraps as if I do make a second game-demand depending, he will be one of the leading characters. As inspiration goes, obviously you can tell clearly he's all Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

What about a -"THE INSANITY 2"?

As far as a story goes I've already a pretty decent one fleshed out using many of the characters in the original game plus 'The Doctor' naturally.. Don't expect a happy ending!
It is certainly a possibility, depending on the reception of the original and the plausibility of making some better $$$ this time.

Under Construction
--------------------

Update..another one.

2009-08-28T18:09:00.002+09:00

Here's a trailer:

Not sponsored yet, sorry!

"THE INSANITY"

2009-08-19T01:13:00.003+09:00

Well stick a fork in me because I am DONE. Yes, the latest game "THE INSANITY" is green to go!
Indeed it's been a GRUELING 3-4 months since I started it, and what was only supposed to become a bit of a distraction from work on "THE DAMNED" rewrite turned into 3 months of late, late nights and an abundance of sweaty Japanese summer mental exhaustion. Yes it's been a killer but I'm awfully proud of this little beauty, she's a real diamond- possibly one of the freakiest horror titles ever developed in Flash. Certainly scared the living turd out of me uncovering all the research needed to enrich the story, anyhow.

Unfortunately you chaps won't be able to take a peek at the finished version until I've done the rounds looking for sponsorship, or throw on the MochiAds or whatever business I can get my grubby hands on. Obviously I can assure you whatever happens the blog is where all the links will surface first. Shouldn't be more than a couple of weeks at the most. Sorry! In the meantime I will be working on a YouTube vid for it so that should be appearing on here within a couple of days.

Gonna have to make a few simple games in the meantime because this one sucked all the 'big project' mojo out of me for at least a couple of months! Man, time to hit the beach!

Updates on the game now entitled 'INSANITY'

2009-05-09T13:36:00.003+09:00

SEE IT HERE!

UPDATE 08/05/2007

Inventory system is up and running. Some simple puzzles have been thrown in, also included is a simple battle system. See if you can make it through the Belloc Room door. No bugs as far as I know now, so if you come across something please let me know.

UPDATE 01/05/2007
Coming along..coming along..there are a couple of bugs still in there though.
Now has inventory and a battle scene. Look out for the hammer that appears as you leave the wardrobe, you'll need it to fight the Statue.--01/05/2007 AGAIN. -oops completely forgot instructions for the inventory. You can drag items and try to use them on objects on the screen, when you're done with the object DOUBLE-C*LICK and it will return back and you'll leave ITEM mode. There will also be an EXAMINE for objects if you c*lick once on them (without dragging). It's all been coded I simply haven't gotten around to adding the ingame instructions.

UPDATE 22/04/2007
Thanks to those who have favourited the game. I'll keep posting updates every couple of weeks or so for a little while longer, and then the next update will be the finished product.
NEW EDITS:
*Text speed has been slowed down.
*Descriptions now embolded
*2 extra rooms explorable.
BUGS
* Not sure about this one but there is a strange Event bug that sometimes creeps up, I've got some theories but no solid idea exactly what it is yet so bear with me. If you leave the closet and the screen goes blank, refresh your browser. Should work second time round.
*************************
*************************
*************************
*************************
*************************
***********
This is a sample of a point+c*lick adventure I'm hoping to finish before July. It has no name as of yet so I'm using the title "House of Hell" for the time being- the same name as one of my favourite Fighting Fantasy books. Suggestions?
The story revolves around you waking up in a dark room. You're covered in bandages and don't remember how you got there. As you make your escape you find out that the house is the den of a man only named THE DOCTOR, an ex-chief of surgery who lost his sanity quite some time ago, and now dwells deep within the house working on crazed experiments involving the surgical creation of vivisects- humans with animal body parts. Going further into the game you realise that all is not what it seems, and that there are secrets to be discovered that will shock you to the core.
Although this is only a demo of the basic engine with some graphics, the story has been fully fleshed out and personally I think it's a great little tale not so different in vein to Saw.
As for the game itself, without wanting to sound over ambitious I'm aiming it to be the scariest Flash game out there. It's made in a kind of similar mould to such games as Exmortis yet differs in that there is more user interaction- certain scenes will require the player to make quick decisions before a timer countdown or hammer the mouse button to escape being prey to some creature.
This demo is seriously limited in what you can do but 3 rooms are available for exploration.

I'm just looking for some early feedback, hoping people can tell me if there's any obvious errors. Let me know what you like or don't like. You know the drill.

Updates can be found here on my blog.
http://ydjapan.blogspot.c om/

walkthrough:
-strike the lock to open it
-unsheath the beast within the cage
-talk to THE PRISONER
-you can DIE here if you don't do anything and let the counter rundown, the RETRY button
does nothing though so you'll have to refresh your browser
-ELSE hide in the wardrobe
-listen to the dialogue between the monster and THE PRISONER
-go through the door into the corridor
-only the BELLOC room can be entered so go through
-talk to the CLINICIAN about the Doctor and ways to escape the house
-examine the fishtank.

That's about it!More to come

Please check in for regular posts regarding the progress of the game.

Feedback?

2009-04-16T03:29:00.003+09:00

Just to let you know I've posted an (very early) alpha of the new point+c*lick game over at Newgrounds.com, in order to see what folks out there think so follow.
Follow the link to see it for yourself.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/491610

2009-04-09T10:53:00.006+09:00

Just to let you know I've had so many requests for AS3 tutorials that I began to compile a little conversion page for those of you who are starting to dip their toes in the AS3 pool. Check it out on the right in the Tutorial links. You'll find a few tricks for converting AS2 code to AS3, and the tutorial also breaks into overcoming some of the common AS3 issues you might encounter as you start to code (such as pesky MouseEvents).
--
Yeah, yeah, "When are some beat-em up tutes for AS3 coming out?". Well, sooner or later I'll definitely write some, so keep the encouragement coming and be patient. I really would like to finish "The Damned" series and also this new game I've been toying with first. After that I promise it will happen.
--
Seems like I've now recieved most of the collaborated animation I needed to get is in, so I'll be back on 'The Damned'. In the meantime however the new point+c*lick (still no name, ideas?) is going well. I'll be honest with you, from a coding perspective point+c*lick is frickin' easy. Iit's a lot more code than other games since you basically have to write nasty unique functions for every room/section.

2009-03-29T23:15:00.003+09:00

Had a bit of an epiphany the other night. Why am I bothering making The Damned a single game? If I could split it into 3 parts for each level I could not only stretch the levels out longer, maximise my advertising $$$, I could also get some positive/negative feedback from kiddies and generate some interest for the sequels. Smaller file size, hence a shorter loading time.

I'll rework the levels into say, a 10 level survival challenges with a boss at the end. It'll fit much more into the category of a Flash game that way. Short and addictive. I think seeing responses to the game will help inspire the other team members too, motivation is a sneaky devil; always hard to keep a hold of.

Just waiting on some work from a couple of peeps, after which things will really get moving.

Other news:
The point+c*lick adventure I'm working on in the sidelines is coming along well, I've kind of 'invented' a neat way to get extra detail within each image, well I say invented but really all it is is fiddling around with the layer blends. Does wonders for adding creepy little shadows and other particulars. I've been having some horrific dreams from my mind constantly brewing up nasty imagery of decapitated heads and such- you can't work on something like that day and night without it entering your head when you close your eyes. To be expected I guess.

If this point+click thing kicks off some interest I could quite happily continue with this medium. I actually used to be something of a writer (books and writing them being my second love next to video-games). It would be great to flesh-out some of my old horror stories within the Flash medium.
The synopsis for particular story goes something like this;
You wake up in a makeshift operating theater in an old Edwardian mansion with complete memory loss. After discovering another 'prisoner' in the same room you are told that you are to become victim of someone simply called 'The Doctor'- a lunatic ex-surgeon killer who spends all his time with his own sick and twisted form of butchery, vivisecting captured humans with the body parts of animals. During your attempt to escape you meet several characters, including 'The Doctor' himself. Within the arcane house lies a terrible and dark secret that will shake you to the very core of your sanity.

It's a juicy story, I'm sure you're gonna like it.....:-) Watch this space, I will continue to post the ingame shots as they are produced.

pics

2009-03-06T17:27:00.016+09:00

few pics of a little project I'm conjuring up whilst recoding The Damned.
point+c*lick adventure with a slight rpg twist. Graphics are being done with Google Sketchup for the scene reference plus a Photoshop touch-up.

Few screenies and a bit of a demo..

2009-02-12T15:06:00.010+09:00

Ok time for you chaps to have a quick peek under the hood of the upcoming rewrite. A tiny demo of a couple of enemies and not much else.

CHECK IT OUT HERE!

As you can see, it has a few bugs. Gun/Hand models are in the works, but the reload and gunChange functions are active. As for graphics- custom CS models with original animations to come. No death-scenes in yet. Planning to fix some of the lag when it becomes particle-intensive.

p.s. (shoot his trail, that's the weak point)

It's back in the works..AGAIN!!

2009-02-03T23:58:00.003+09:00

OK, so I finally got my ass in gear and have recovered enough from the pain and antagonism related to the development history of the game to come and finish it off. Yes, I'm talking about "The Damned".
Got myself a good sound guy this time, too early to anticipate anything miraculous and God knows I've let people down/been let down in the past many a time, but fingers crossed he seems to know his stuff.

I had MAJOR issues trying to get my head around Mouse events- which I'm pretty sure a lot of other coders also have- but thanks to Senocular and some of the guys over at FlashKit I'm pretty sure I've earned my Cub Scout badge for it all by now. Yup, the AS3 rewrite has been in session for a little while in fact and I'm not tooting my own horn but it's looking mighty fine so far- you might even say it's unlike anything else out there done is AS3.

So why have I not posted a demo? Just to keep everyone (all 2 of you) in suspense I suppose. Members of the development team and the kiddies who were really keen to see the game done have been sent links- hey ask nicely and you might get on the list!

Sneak Peek;

Arrghh...

2008-12-11T02:11:00.003+09:00

Yeah Arrghh***Just about had it with this damn blog.

Seems like everytime I try to reconstruct this thing something goes haywire and the result is I lose all my links, files dissapear, posts morph into zany fonts, so and and so on with the result being I end up with a head-ache. Ah bollocks to it, my old man would say. I will get round to getting the old demos back up there sooner or later but please bear with me, there are hot young Japanese girls that take up my precious time being taught English most of my daily life, and a few hours a night is about all I ever get for the personal stuff.

Saying that, at least the SplatterHouse tutes are up, those are the ones people ask for..and hey, on the subject of tutorials, let's talk for a bit..
Once I'm done with BH2 (or get sick to the back teeth of it) I will write a few Dumbies Guide To- style sections on AS3 game programming. I have noticed, as some of you have, that there really aren't enough decent ones out there on the web as of yet. A couple of good ones by 8bitJeff and not much else.

People get all baffled by talk of Object Orientated coding, Classes, encapsulation, polymorphism etc. and give up since there are no easy to understand tutorials out there for them to get to grips with. And it seems that those members of the Flash fraternity out there that can actually show noobs how to code in OO feel that it's too complicated and that they should really get their heads around AS2 first. In a sense I agree but what most peeps don't realise is that it's very feasible to code AS3 in a manner similar to AS2 without delving too deep into all that and still get everything AS3 has to give. Why bother learning AS2 only to have to relearn AS3? To my mind that's like taking driving lessons to charter a yacht. I'm not saying you shouldn't get round to learning OO one day- as naturally OO is the best way to code- BUT I'm thinking there are a lot of guys/girls out there who just want to make GAMES, have the hardcore perseverance to get over that barrier, but would rather dip their feet in the water before diving it first.

Once you understand all the AS3 programming methods for say, whipping up a physics engine, it's far easier from there to approach OO and converting that code piece-by-piece, figure out the necessary OO relative to their own projects- that's my theory anyway. Kind of a hands-on-approach, learn by doing type of education. Exactly how I teach English as a matter of fact.

So, when I have the time I'm going to endevour to rewrite one of our favourite classics of 80's-90's. Right now it's a coin-toss between Green Beret or Vigilante. They're both simple games to code (in theory), and yet feature some elements that most coders would want to study ; 4/8 way scrolling tile-engines, climbing ladders, fighting bosses, spawning multiple enemies with assorted health/energy, sfx coding, so on.
I could see how a tutorial could highlight all the aspects of games programming I want to share, and hopefully signify the end of AS2 games that crash my browser and meltdown my hard-drive.

Watch this space!

p.s.The BH2 demo has been updated, hit up the link on the post below to see it. Not so much done, ships now form a fleet and move towards a target. The leader can be destroyed and automatically another ship in the group will be designated as the new one. When clans meet they don't do much, just find themselves an enemy and circle around each-other. Decent AI has not been written yet, and shoot too many of the ships and you'll get them wondering off in weird directions as the code for them to auto-assign to another target from the now non-existing one has also not been done yet.

Update-Updates

2008-12-04T03:07:00.015+09:00

Some minor changes made to the Bounty Hunter demo.
Doesn't look like much on the surface but there's been quite a lot thrown in there behind the scenes.

CHECK IT OUT HERE

DON'T SHOOT THE LEADER though! There's no code to take care of what happens code-wise for the other NPC's after the main NPC clip has been removed. You might crash your browser due to null references.

Enemies can now be spawned as a clan/team. The properties of all the sprites are stored in objects and can all be referenced to each-other like a linked-list. When a new clan is generated a random member is designated as the 'leader' (and given a Glow filter) and the others will follow their boss at a set distance as if they were parts of an IK chain. If a leader is eliminated another will crop up to take his place (not implemented yet). Leaders of clans will go towards a set battleground co-ordinate in space and when they're within a desired distance the AI will switch over to battle mode and they'll be able to scrap it out until all that's left is space debris. From a coding viewpoint battle mode means an NPC will randomly select an enemy from the opposing clan and war it out until somebody is dead. From then on the dice are rolled once more and another is chosen, and this goes on until the entire clan is wiped out. Theoretically you could have all the enemies gang up on one poor guy, though I met set the odds more in favour of you being the target. Obviously you can eject once you feel your health is about gone, but this will carry some vulnerablility being that your gravity suit can only go so fast, you'll require a host ship to takeover, and it'll be a one-shot-you're-dead situation.. Later on I'll likely make it so the astronaut can fire some manner of feeble lazer to give him a small fighting chance to weaken ships and make them boardable.

Your job will be to protect your soldiers from getting wasted- at the same time you'll have to net other more powerful ships just to keep yourself alive, or maybe to add to make your team stronger for the later stages.
Technically the game is not at the forefront of AS3 wizardry but so far everything has worked out the way I saw it in my head. Still got some funny bugs cropping up- such as when you try to board ships (-related to swapping depths I'll bet) but it's playable.

Starships have nice jet-fumes now. The more fume clips I add the better the effect, but unfortunately it was slowing down the action heavily and I had to forsake beauty for muscle in this case. Although the results of running some tests using BitmapData instead of mc's proved to give more speed I couldn't quite work out a couple of nasty untraceable errors I was getting at compile time, so for the time being clips will do...

Hey when you think about it, we're not a million miles away from a game here. It'd be nice to get this one wrapped up as I'm itching to get back to my fighters. That SORF demo is just begging to be made into a full game.

As for all the rest, I'm thinking to rewrap Trivia Casino with some more functions and send it out with my blessing amongst some more portals. It's not a bad quiz game after all, though it's not bringing me in a penny right now-in fact I've a theory the MochiAds code isn't working- my stats say 0 visitors in the past month..

2008-11-27T13:03:00.005+09:00

So about the latest demo.
It was written in AS3. Particles were done using Flint Particle System by Richard Lord. For anybody who's never heard of it, I'd suggest you check it out- it's one of the most advanced particle system libraries out there, and it's free. Literally anything you'd ever want to do with particles is possible with Flint and Richard is always lurking around the forums willing to solve problems. The ingame explosions on bullet impact are Flint particle Blasts that are given an initial velocity by the bullet. Henceforth when you destory a ship the explosion is affected by the speed and trajectory of the bullet. Works nicely- wouldn't you agree?

I haven't worked through exactly how to formulate the game from here- whether it will grow to fully-fledged objective based game or else a short+simple melee space battle where you have two defeat a rival clan+boss and you can 'capture' better equiped NPC's to build your teams for later stages. We'll see.

Concerning other matters, recently I've been playing the PS3 non-stop. Seems like I can't get off the bastard what with all the multiplayer games. So addictive these days. I thought I'd review a couple of new ones I bought.

Ryu Ga Gotoku:Kenzan
Ryu Ga Gotoku/Yakuza, Shenmue- the comparisons are unavoidable, but for me Yakuza has always stood in the shadows of the revered Shenmue family. Shenmue 2 is a game I would easily put into my top 10 favourite all-time- it has all the workings of genius. Evolving fighting system, absorbing character development, cinematic battles, intriguing characters. Just goddamn everything, OK? In Shenmue most of the exploration was well-rewarded. It was really exciting when you'd walk into some place to reveal a cutscene involving a character you've already met. Learned a hell of a lot of Japanese from it too "Koitsu yachimae!"-"Get that bastard!"- wow, one one of the best journey of spiritual enlightenment games ever devised.

Yakuza 3 on the other hand. Well, storyline and dialogue aside for me it's a dead duck. There's not a lot to keep you glued to this game once you've clocked it, and I think a lot of reviewers have given it an epic rank largely due to being swallowed up by the hype and grandiosity of the game.

Not enough going on in thea world to make you feel like you just want to roam around pointlessly carrying out submissions unrelated to the main storyline.

Let's talk about the battle system. It's dull.
Despite being PS3 you still have a lengthy pause before each battle, which is irritating, and the action itself is mild. Battles just aren't fun, you sometimes groan as you see an unavoidable thug running towards you down an alleyway. Sure you have special moves where you can smash people's heads into taiko drums but it's more of a chore than anything else, constantly dodging around the screen and doing the same effortless combos. The extra weapons don't add anything but a little variety in my opinion. It's just a crap fighting engine, and each fight - same as Yakuza 1- is completely unchallenging. Let's face it, if it wasn't for the rpg element the game wouldn't sell. It's hard to believe this is the same Sega that came out with Daytona USA and Shinobi back in the day.

What about the rest? OK, it's all fine having gambling joints to go to and hostess club sections to give you some extra value but all-in-all it is kind of pointless when they aren't a relative component to the game's completion. In Shenmue was necessary evil to buy better special moves, uncover information, and in some cases to progress through the game- same in Ryu Ga Gotoku but hmmm money was more fun to come by in Shenmue- you had to do odd jobs and the betting was more of a laugh.
Throwing a lot of distractions in there doesn't entail that it will automatically be a classic, and it seems to me that the design team should have spent more time on the fundamentals of the fight engine than overkill the game with a lot of gratuitous stuff that isn't fun to do. Simply never quite scratches the surface of the magic of Shenmue but hey it's still a lot better than many games available on the market today.
Now the good stuff. The story is above average and keeps you banging on through the game to see what's going to happen next. The dialogue is also scripted well, the main character, appealing. Graphics- 9/10. Another cool point is the use of real actors voices and face models for the ingame characters. I'd welcome seeing that more in Western titles.
My verdict:It's like being told a great story that forces you to play an average game to get to the next part.

Resistance 2: Fall of Man
Me and some Aussie guy - a fellow 'gaijin' in Japan (who doesn't believe me when I tell him I code games)- spent a couple of drunken evenings whizzing through the first one on split screen and had a thoroughly enjoyable time doing so. It wasn't quite HALO but either way it had me and him convinced we'd buy the sequel when it came out, which it did last week. And what a game!
.
It's been said a few times in reviews already, but one takes the prize for game with the most cinematic excellence ever seen on a 3rd gen system. Makes you want to put the pad down and stare at times. Draw distance is seriously impressive, most scenes span out as far as the eye can see.
Personally I haven't seen a game achieve yet the kind of monolithic enemies that take up the entire screen as found in R2. Its an incredible testamount to the power of the PS3 that it can even handle all that. And not a slowdown of FPS in sight even with zillions of baddies onscreen.

As for the game itself, the campaign mode gets nothing but praise from me. It is kind of short but great fun throughout, being no walk in the park, you will get your ass handed to you a lot in the later stages. Best FPS I've ever played, hands down.

The multiplayer is a lot of fun too, I like playing the co-op with only 3-4 players so it's more challenging (hey EVIL_KRIS_JAPAN if anybody fancies a game).
Skirmish is also a good laugh, BUTTTT- Metal Gear 4 is still my top choice for online play (level 6 sniper now)

One thing that worth noticing I thought is that the 'Grims' in the game bear quite the passing resemblance to my character Lucifer in the 3rd level of 'The Damned'. I guess great minds think alike, or else the team behind R2 watched the same inspirational movies I did as a kid, namely anything by Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci.

Dead Space

It's so cool because I was thinking "Damn I've sold my PS2 how am I gonna get my Res Evil 4 fix whenever I feel like whacking that on" then !BOOM! Dead Space arrives and my days of worry long-gone.

One question, did someone from Electronic Arts break into Capcom HQ and steal Resident Evil 4's entire game files? The reason I ask is because Dead Space is downright identical to it. To say it's similar would be unjust- it's like..identical... bar a few extra features thrown in that is, mimicking Res Evil 4 right down to the perspective and the way the models are lit, the framerate, orchestral effects, weapon reloading. It's uncanny- did the Capcom staff migrate to EA or something?

Either way who gives a shit because this IS one of the best games I've ever played. Certainly the best survival horror game on the market at present, and it really sets the bar for how scary a game can get.

My only tiny little niggle is sometimes it's like your body splits apart almost too easily when killed. But there's some real gruesome death scenes that impressed the hell out of me, Isaac (the hero) doesn't like to just get ripped apart like some rag doll, he fights his arse off even when getting a leg torn off, yowch it just gets you to thinking how you'd be in the same situation.

The game is frickin' outstanding. I can't praise it enough. One of those games that is more like living through an experience rather than playing some game and it is seriously worth buying. Anyone who even remotely enjoyed Resident Evil 4 has to buy this game, because it IS Resident Evil 4.5: In Space. Slick controls, cool weapons and jaw-dropping graphics. The Zero Gravity sections are fun and well-planned. Some of the puzzles take some thinking and make for a nice challenge and the boss's (when you do encounter them) are also visually impressive and a good challenge to tackle. The final boss in particular looks superb.
For atmosphere this game gets a straight-out 10. It will scare the living shit out of you-more than any other game of this genre. I love the way that the game pushes the fear factor so much further than any Japanese game would ever dare to go. The way it explores psychological horror also works tremendously well, it's not just what comes out of the shadows that is scary, the story is also very dark and the characters, suspicious. The emptiness of space, being all alone out there with limited ammo and screams echoing from who-knows-where, there's never a moment when you don't feel anxious and sweaty-palmed. EA should really fork out for a good director and crew and turn this game into a movie because it's would be a blockbuster.

For example I found it particularly disturbing (in a good way) when ---SPOILER--- Isaac realises his girlfriend killed herself ages ago and all the time she was around it was only in his head. Kind of predictable, yet so well done- a really sad, emphatic memorable moment. And then the final scene, fucking bravo, I jumped out of my seat. There's something really creepy about the way characters kind of talk to you from a distance through windows, I dunno why but it works, you keep expecting things to happen to them- and they do.
Though it's meaningless fun I love the way you can dismember just about any living or dead tissue, and the comedic element of picking up bodies of dead civilians with your Kinetic gun to sling at your opponents or into gravity vents which suck them into giant fans. There's some rarely-seen-before physics in Dead Space that you will enjoy partaking in. It's just crazy walking into a room and seeing a guy with his rib-cage showing headbutting the wall before dying. What's even more crazy is the way you can then satisfy your sadistic tendecies by then blowing his head off. You'd never get away with that in a Japanese game.

So yeah, the game copies a degree of everything, but it's done so well you wont give a toss.
The game blatantly borrows from just about every horror movie: Aliens, The Thing. Event Horizon- and every game:BioShock, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Resident Evil 4 that has ever inspired the genre. You name it- but I think they may be onto something because it's fun seeing all your favourite elements squashed into one entity. And EA have done it to such a standard that you can't help but forgive. It's not going to win awards for originality and I feel sorry for them if one of those games decides to sue EA for breach of creative ownership as they'd be guilty as charged, but it's hard to criticize when you see the results.

In contrast to what some reviewers have said, the story is decent I believe- I was inclined to continue playing simply to uncover some of the mysteries of the storyline and to find out what happens to the remaining crew members and their loved ones. It has all the elements of a good novel, suspense, treachery, tragic love. So what they're on about I don't know, the story is great.
After finishing the game I was left with the same kind of chill as when I first time I saw movies like Aliens or The Descent.

This is a really exceptional game in many ways, for me it's the best horror survival game in existence at this time, any self-respecting fan of the genre should definitely check it out. They've taken everything cool that you loved from your favourite horror movies and put it into a game and whats more is that they goodamn nailed it. Same atmosphere.

New Bounty Hunter 2 demo

2008-11-26T02:40:00.002+09:00

Check the side-panel it's on there. Will write more about it tomorrow, shattered right now!As usual, few bugs. At this point in time all you can do is shoot, steal weakened craft and eject your astronaut. I'll update the game and post it regularly.

Where'd you go, Dude?

2008-09-10T16:38:00.002+09:00

Indeed I do seem to have dropped off the face of the planet.
Truth is I've just lost interest in coding games for a while. It's great fun to develop games but it's hard work, especially when you're not just working in Flash but other apps such as Photoshop and 3DS Max, which each have their own steep learning curves.
So, for the time being, I've gone back to my other hobby, writing. You know, novels, short-stories, scripts for movies etc...that was what I did before getting into Flash. And when the motivation to do that fades (it will) I'll be back with avengeance. I'm a bit of a butterfly like that, jumping from hobby to hobby but I always come back around eventually.

Another thing is I've been getting into gaming pretty heavily recently- playing - that is ^-^
You can catch me on PS3 Network EVIL_KRIS_JAPAN. At the moment I'm only into Metal Gear Online and GTA4, occasionally WarHawk. Tekken 6 is coming out in Japan in December so I'll be on that like a fly to shit if anybody out there wants a challenge.

Have patience folks- the dude will return,
Kris
ydjapan.com

Some small Fighting Engine revisions..

2008-05-07T00:54:00.006+09:00

Ya nothing major, just popping in to let you all know I'm alive. Actually have been entirely immersed in something other than coding for most of the past year so please forgive me. I know a bunch of you have written to me mostly in regards to the SplatterHouse tutorials but I've been bombarded with so many mails about them that I if I can't get round to you all, once again, I apologise.

I'm so limited for time these days that I've had no chance to sit down and have a pint with my old mate Flash. Actually started a prototype of a Last Ninja remake the other day, got my little ninja leaping around in isometric up already. Definitely getting more comfortable with AS3 these days too.

Just a wee update to the fighting engine I posted before. There's tons of bugs in there I know, but it's getting there, wouldn't you agree? I figure I'll design the whole game first using known sprites as placeholder, then swap them for custom graphics when it's all done. Feel free to decompile this little demo, but be warned the code is dirty, so much so it almost makes me cringe to look at it. I treat me code like my woman folks, beat it around and get it to do what you want whether it wants to or not.

Ok back to the real world. またね

Little Update...

2008-02-09T13:30:00.000+09:00

To my Nexus/Sirius demo.
Check it out on the Sidebar link.
Few more levels (to to Floor 5 now!). Better character graphics. Rudimentary enemy AI. Character can now perform some tasty karate moves. That's it. Too busy on Monster Hunter 2 and studying AS3 these days for much else. Hey any sponsors wanna buy Trivia Casino?

2008-01-30T13:32:00.000+09:00

Hello guys, been awhile.

----
Xmas season and whatnot. Been busy and Jesus CHRIST have I been addicted to Tekken 6!
I don't even want to talk about how much of my salary goes into this frickin game.
You guys outside of Japan won't have played it yet but let me tell you it's a hell of a game. I pretty much gave up on Tekken after about 3. Far far better than the previous versions. Better, faster, more competitive, longer combos. To make it more interesting the game centers have a monitor unit that shows battles between Japans greatest fighters, very entertaining. You can also customise your own player on your mobile phone using a stats card buyable from a nearby machine. Unfortunately, I live in Fukuoka where some of the best players in Japan reside, that equals getting my ass handed to me on a regular basis. It's just frightening the reflexes of these guys- it makes me wonder how they'd handle themselves in a real scrap. Probably kick the crap out of anyone.

As for coding updates;-

It's tough trying to find inspiration to teach people how to make games in an almost obselete environment in AS2. People keep sending me mails about the beat-em up tutes and such but what you've got to understand is that sure, people are still making AS2 games for now but give it a while and watch while the next-gen of AS3 stuff comes out, utilising Papervision 3D and the extra grunt of AS3. In other words, continuing with the tutorials at this stage would be a waste of time. My aim is to gain enough knowledge of AS3 that I can convert most of the tutorials over, but it's extremely time-consuming. People forget that I can't program worth a shit. I'm very much an ideas guy, not so much into cutting-edge programming techniques but rather the whatever-works approach. I've got an artist guy just dying for me to finish him a tile-engine in AS3 and I'm finding it impossible right now. If anybody has some great links to making a flexible tile-engine in AS3, get me in the know OK?

I decided I want to finish off my current projects before I abandon AS2 completely. I've been getting on with the Nexus/Sirius demo. Currently developing a series of combat moves for the main character and found a great mocap resource at http://www.mocapdata.com/
Should be an update soon.

New trivia game about finished...

2007-11-27T01:55:00.000+09:00

Ok, EvilKris game usually = hardcore blood'n'guts violence but in this one case I took a step out of my usual psychology and have gone and done us all a juicy little trivia game.

Little background- when the wife unchains me for a night, I often consume my wages playing darts in these amazing Japanese electronic darts-bars (which I KNOW will swoop over Europe one day) and afterwards when I get tired I like to sit down and play those little pub trivia machines they have. Addictive little bastards. So I thought I'd throw one out there myself. That's it. It only took about 3 weeks from start to finish, but I'd say TriviaCasino was one of my classier productions, well-nurtured from start to finish. Every font is drop-shadowed, every question hand-typed, transitions, blur filters, fake 3D, cute sfx, you name it. This one's even been obfuscated so no 15yr old decompiler is getting his greasy mits on that high-score without memorising the encylopedia. No loader in yet, sorry, and it is 1.8 meg so guys with slow internet connections will have to stare at the blank white screen for a bit. Plus I'm trying out FlashInCrypt with this one so there is a trial version stamp on the swf.

The version is beta- there's only 20 questions for each category so far, but I THINK that's all that needs doing. That's kind of why I'm releasing it here, for you guys to give me some feedback. I realise most gamers don't give a ff about Sports and History so I've only bothered with less elegant categories that most gamers can relate to, Music/Entertainment/Video-Games. That's right, bet you've never seen a pub trivia quiz that has questions about games.Don't try too hard to get the high-score as I'll be wiping out the current records when the proper game is released.

I have spotted a couple of bugs here and there and probably forgot about them, so if you see anything, any bad fonts etc, please report it.

So what is TriviaCasino? just your average multi-choice question game with a bit of gambling thrown in. If you get 4 questions right in a row, you'll get a chance to win more points in a bonus round that resembles a slot machine. Furthermore, from time to time a random 'Double Your Money' event will be launched, and if you decide to risk it, you'll have the chance to win twice your current points, or lose the lot. Having the high-score readily viewable on the first screen of the game adds incentive to beat it IMO, and I think I'll probably stick with that design for most of my future games- I figure the more EK trademarks that are recognisable in my games, the less chance my artistic license will be infringed upon by some unscrupulous website.

2007-10-24T19:37:00.000+09:00

Well the good news is, me and this fellow Pele/Robin Mitchell chap have decided to embark upon creating a little Metal Slug clone. Not a hell of a lot of originality going on there and if he wasn't such a fabulous artist I'd probably not be so keen. I wouldn't say I'm not a big, big Metal Slug fan, but the businessman inside me was like "The art will sell the game by itself!!" so what the hell...? It's not like I'll be running back to The Damned any day soon after losing months of work on it. Coding new stuff - even if you're not into it- is fun and all is potential cut&paste for use in other projects anyway.

I committed myself to coding it in AS3 to start off with, but progress has been slooooow so instead of trying to get my head around the complicated innards of the new language I decided I may aswell lay it all out in AS2 and then convert it piece by piece to AS3 when it's all done (or pay some other sucker for the task). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for AS3 but Jesus does it make the simplest tasks a pain in the arse at times, I mean, just the other day I was trying to create some simple lines to show me the co-ords of bounding box on an mc- something which would take like two secs in AS2- and three hours later I still couldn't get the bastard compiler to stop throwing out error messages. I guess I'm just an ambitious rodeo-cowboy without the chops to pin down the beast, for now.
I've decided to keep note of what changes between the two languages screwed me up so far, and will be creating a new little AS2-AS3 Ref.Guide for Game Programmers to go up on the Sidebar any day now.

As for the engine, I started off using TonyPa's Tile-Engine but being frank I think if you're going to make a game that has as much art in it as say Metal Slug you're better off with art-based, as you're not repeating many tiles anyway. Andre Michelle created a sweet little art-based prototype for mario over on GotoAndStop.it using vectors and so far it seems the best option to me, being I can derive the co-ords for every platform just by drawing a line over the art background and taking the x,y for each end, and don't have to muck around with a ton of code, either.

Today was a bad day...

2007-09-29T03:24:00.000+09:00

Ah Jesus F**cking Christ a virus wiped out my entire hard-drive this afternoon and before you could even say "System Recovery Software" the wife had gone ahead and wiped/reinstalled the lot by the time I'd gotten home from work.
Can't blame her, it was my own fault for downloading files from the wrong sorts of sites and BAM! couldn't even get into Safe Mode to stick my Flash files on a CD.
It wouldn't usually bother me much but I'd been working on The Damned again and had practically finished the entire game. I was literally days away from uploading it to the safety of the server.
Geez, Level 2 was looking brilliant. Not only did I have zombies with location damage all over their bodies - arms exploding, heads flying off at random angles and calculated velocities, but the magnum weapon was working well; enemies exploded into chunks of blood and guts at close range. Like a different game and much improved. The real killer is that I had painstakingly redesigned many of the 'death scenes', cutting footage from zombie movies out and adding my own little personal touches. Took weeks. Gameplay was far more exciting, the zombies came flying at you from out of the darkness but could be illuminated from a distance for a brief second with a round off the beretta. I'd also created a 'Salems Lot' style monster that crawled along the walls towards you following a circle radius. Ah man, they looked awesome but I don't have a single screenshot- it was all for naught. A labour of love, lost.
Fuck..
Not only that. An update of the SORF engine with enemy AI and extra moves. A prototype I had made for a potential remake of Green Beret, written in AS3. It was looking pretty sweet, had the guy running around the tile-engine and he would execute a slash Strider-style ie- as fast as you could hit the key.
Oh well, adapt, overcome. I'm pretty bitter but there's nothing like a clean slate to spur on the imagination.
I'm too down to go back to work on The Damned so for the time being I might get into the fighting-engine. I figure codewise it won't be the biggest stretch to get a decent little mini-game up and running in no time, so keep your eyes peeled here for that in the near future. Later dudes.

2007-08-23T19:03:00.000+09:00

Nexus/Sirius Continued...

Been working on the Nexus demo a lot recently.

Check out the updates. Elevator now works. Choose a floor (1-5 are explorable) and tap D to operate the thing. You can now enter rooms and use the UP array to search through the junk in them for objects.

When you leave rooms the doors tint to red to let you know you've been in them. At a later stage that'll change so they'll tint only when you've searched the entire room.
Don't bug me about stuff in the game being wrong. I'm not asking for beta testers here, and I'm fully aware that some doors tint before you've entered them, rooms not existing and levels doing funny things. Cheers.

Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. That's the new working title since I can't go completely ripping off Nexus now can I? Truth be told I've thought of a few little changes I'd like to make to the original game anyway. So, it's now not a blatant Nexus but inspired by Nexus. I hope to retain the atmosphere of the first game but evolve it with a few added extras such as a couple of new weapons and some other stuff I've been mulling over.

So, how would you set up a world similar to mine?

myMap = [[16, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12],
[11, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 0],
[5, 4, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 0],
[14, 15, 14, 15, 15, 14, 15, 14, 14],
[12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12]];

This is the array that represents the rooms for each level. So we've got 5 levels at present (elevator levels higher than 5 don't exist). The numbers in the array are used to reference the tiles that are used in the background.

//GLASS CAVERN
floor3 = [[[0,0],[10,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[1,0],[1,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[1,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[102,0],[102,0],[0,0],[2,0],[0,0],[0,0],[102,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[3,0],[3,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[0,0]],
[[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[101,1],[101,2],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[1,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[0,0],[1,0],[0,0],[3,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[10,0],[0,0]]];

This 2d array is for the main tiles on each level. It's 10x7: 10 tiles per screen, 7 screens per level. 0,0 would be an empty space, 2 is an elevator (for now), and anything from 3-100 is a graphical tile with no properties (so 1,0 is a barrel). 100 and up is a door. Each level uses a different door mc, so we need 101,102 etc. the second part of the array represents the room number. so [101,10] would work as say "Use tile with linkage tile_101 for the graphics and 10 we'll keep for later so we know what room it leads to".

myMiddleMap2=[{roomnumber: 1, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 2, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,1], [12,1], [2,1], [13,2], [14,3], [13,1], [14,0], [1,1], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 3, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 4, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 5, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room2", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,1], [3,4], [13,5], [14,2], [1,8], [13,3], [14,2], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 6, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room2", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 8, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room3", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [30,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 9, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room3", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [11,0], [12,0], [11,0], [12,0], [14,0], [30,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 7, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room2", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]}
];

This is the array of objects for our rooms. We can give it as much information as we went, in this case roomnumber, image (no use right now), entered:- has the room been entered, boolean. tile: linkage for the room background mc, and roomArray is another array similar to the maintile array for coordinating object/furniture tiles across the screen. This time the second array number carries special information about what objects can be located when the player 'searches' the tile in question. Anything above 0 is an object. I've yet to incorporate anything such as puzzle pieces or weapons so at present all you'll receive is a "Got Something" message when you search objects in the rooms.

..little Nexus update...

2007-08-06T20:44:00.001+09:00

I haven't quit the Streets of Rage engine, nope in fact it may have found a home.
I was approached by a talented artist about 2 weeks ago enquiring about a possible collaboration and it looks as though we may be working on a game together!
It's too early to say much about the project but suffice to say we've both agreed that it will be a medieval Hack'n'Slash a little like Golden Axe but with a lot more gore. There's a lot of ideas and concept art flying around at the moment but little else, so I'll leave the rest of the details for later.
Regarding progress, since my engine has to be custom adapted after we've set the framework for the character sprites and such, I've had some spare time on my hands to work on other projects. Therefore I broke out the old Nexus.fla and have been working on that. Goddamn was there some shitty code in there. But that is to be expected -it was the first game I had worked on since I started using Flash for making games, after all. It's nice to know my coding skill has upped and 1 year ago I wouldn't have dreamed of using arrays of objects to contain all the 'room' information in the base. I've put all my gained knowledge back into it and now things that screwed with me a year ago are working like a charm.
You can check out the update on the right. Now you can walk into rooms using the UP arrow and er..that's it. The doors to the rooms go red when the room has been entered, just like in the original Nexus. (You wouldn't believe what a bastard that was to get working, btw). Just laying foundations dudes.
I still haven't figured out how I put XML in Flash to good effect. People keep telling me they can't live without it these days but I haven't seen what use it would be unless we're talking about loading info on the fly. Saying that, I'll probably eat my words a year from now.
Laters.

STREEEEEETS OF RAAAAAGGGGE!!! (umm..and spike-out)

2007-07-25T00:59:00.000+09:00

SO, here's the story. I was fiddling around with the Streets of Rage tutorial and thought "Hmmm this engine is coming along rather well" and decided to scrap the tute and embark on actually creating a proper game. So here's what I've done so far;-

USE THE ARROW KEYS FOR MOVEMENT- DOUBLE TAP ANY DIRECTION TO RUN

W = BEAT BUTTON Q = JUMP D = POWER

BEAT BUTTON CAN BE USED FOR COMBOS+GRAPPLE ATTACKS/THROWS
POWER BUTTON CAN BE RELEASED AT SET LEVELS TO PERFORM A SPECIAL MATCHING THAT LEVEL (AKA.SPIKE-OUT)

ENJOY!

Yes it's only a basic demo, just a small preview of what's to come- but at least the mechanics at this point are- in my opinion- pretty fluid. Took a lot of fiddling around with keyhandlers and the like to get it working like that. There are soooo many beat-em ups out there that look fantastic, but playwise lack the juice to keep you intrigued. This is mostly down to controls being unresponsive (bad coding) or the characters movements too slow (bad design). So I made an effort to keep things frictionless.

Pretty much everything I'd love to see in a 2d fighting game I intend on having, borrowing the best bits from the best games and leaving out the poo. Floating combos, multiple grapple techniques, power-up attacks, firearms, hitting grounded enemies. God I'm violent. There's only a handful of those in the demo so far, but keep your eyes peeled...

I you can draw real art, (ie something other than crappy little cutesy characters), please get in touch. There's money to be made for a good artist in Flash these days. Companies are beginning to realise the huge potential of advertising within online games and financially speaking things lousy sponsorship deals are becoming a thing of the past and giving way to percentage earnings. In other words, the day may be dawning when we can actually earn what we're worth. As you can see, the current demo uses placeholder graphics and one day I hope to either put in my own graphics, or hopefully get someone who has some real talent on the job.

I discovered a couple of handy coding techniques along the way with this puppy, such as saving a reference to whichever bad guy the hero is beating on after he comes up on the hitTest--bleh, difficult for a moron like me to explain, but in other words, you could do something like. hero.current_enemy._x=500;
In other words you have all of the current enemies properties available from within the player object. It saved me a lot of time. Guess my skills are improving, but I'd still love to know how 'real' programmers manage to code entire games without putting any lines within their movie clips as I completely struggle to figure out ways of avoiding that at times. There's that old coders adage that "It's not the code but the game that matters" but it's a great feeling when you know your coding is clean and organised (and all on one frame!).

Had an odd urge to go back to coding the remake of Nexus once again. I know the project is supposedly abandoned, and I had no intention of returning to it, but I can't help it- recently great ideas for how it could be done just keep popping into my head. I started scribbling down some map diagrams for the base and who knows, I might just break open the old swf and get cracking on it again.

This doesn't mean I'm blowing off Bounty Hunter 2, but the scale of that game is so large I'd be crazy to focus entirely on it when there's other more attainable visions to chase. Go with the flow of your mind dudes, that's all you can do. As long as you never stop a project completely you'll always have stages in the year when you feel like adding a little bit to it here and there.

Into the Abyss with AS3..

2007-06-29T19:06:00.000+09:00

Yes, it's official, AS3 is awesome. After 2 weeks of consistent AS3 tinkering, I'm wondering how I ever made games without it. Programming in AS3 is definitely tricky. There's no easy way to remove MovieClips anymore, and even passing parameters to functions can be a pain-in-the butt with all the new compiler errors that pop up should you misplace your variable definitions, but by and by it stands head and shoulders over AS2 in many departments.

Something I've been cheerful about is that- contrary to my initial belief- AS3 doesn't necesserily have to be coded in solid OO (what the hell is a public/private function anyway?), and you CAN thankfully code in an almost similar manner to AS2 just by learning the appropriate methods to migrate your AS2 code to AS3. And yes, though the proper programming protocol would be to have your game consist of a bunch of class.as files and give you a headache over all the encapsulation/polymorphism and that sort of tosh, you can actually circumnavigate all that and do it the old fashioned way I'm used to, ie having the game code entirely on the first frame and bugger all OO. Naturally I do intend to gradually turn my games into full OO, but it's a relief to know that my coding doesn't have to come to a flat halt while I'm on the baby steps to mastering that particular style of programming. Subsequently I wont be releasing any tutorials based on AS3 until I'm comfortable that I'm coding properly in OO- but you can expect a few new games out soon.
It's great perkt that I can stick to my usual style of programming and yet still benefit from the TASTY speed increases AS3 has to offer. Already it's clearly obvious to me that the power of AS3 is superior to AS2 in many ways, and if you take a look at some of the demo's online showing the differences between the two you can see it for yourself. It's like having a new Testarosa in your garage- all good fun and I shan't be going back to AS2 anytime soon.
Bounty Hunter 2 (AS3) is in the works. I realise the first one is well... shit, but it was fun to code and there's still a lot of functions in there I think I can reuse. Think of Bounty Hunter 1 & 2 as the equiv of Mad Max and the sequel. They're going to be light years apart in excellence. I've already a little prototype up and running on my machine with an astronaut that can enter ships littered around a galaxy, and an R-Type style beam weapon in operation that is looking rather fab if I don't say so myself. I won't post a pic or an swf as firstly there's a few bugs still in there and also the graphics are all placeholder and crap to look at. I figure I'll start out making a skirmish mode demo that sets you against 20 bots in a deathmatch, and if that does ok with the public I'll turn it into a long-term (and I do emphasise 'long-term') multiplayer project that will have teams against teams. I think the beauty lies in the Paradroid style ability to defeat and then occupy the enemy, assuming all of their special abilities and such. Almost like a Space Sim GTA. It's a play mechanic that I think will be huge fun, with people competing to get or destroy the best ships. Throw in some special super-rare super-hard-to-get street cred ships and you've got a winning game I reckon.
What I've been working on for the last few days though is actually the Streets of Rage engine. It now has throws, combos, some sfx and enemies, and is working well. This will be my last AS2 project for sure, I'm dumping AS2 like a frumpy girlfriend who's no longer good in the sack, for AS3, my new Swedish PlayBoy centerfold. The SOF engine will combine the mechanics of some of my favourite beat-em-ups, Final Fight, SOR, and Spike-Out. It's like Tarantino says- if you want to make great movies, you've got to be a great movie watcher, and I'm pretty confident that I know exactly what it is that makes some fighting games better than others.

More Japan Game Scene pics....

2007-06-14T18:15:00.001+09:00

TYPING OF THE DEAD

Yup, sounds like I'm making it up, but it actually exists. It's a game that's identical to the 2nd House of the Dead shooter, except you don't shoot, you err.....type. As zombies rush towards you a little box appears above their heads with the words you need to type in to kill them. Most of the words belong to the same content family. Like, 3 zombies might attack you with "ACE", "JOKER", "SPADE". The faster and more accurate you type, the higher the score and the better chance you have of getting extra lives. Bosses are of course, much tougher, and usually attack you with quite long sentences in illegible romanised Japanese "Ore mo jigoku e iku zo!Omae no sakki ni!" Something like that. Some sentences have hyphens and ampersands and such so they're just friggin impossible to get out in time. Finally, the cutscenes look silly, as the main protagonists now have huge typewriters attached to their hands in the place of guns.
Still, taking it all tongue-in-cheek, this is a pretty damn good game and there are much worse ways to blow 100yen. I happen to be quite a fast typist and always make it to around the 3rd level, when the sewer worms gets me due to my inability to answer questions about Japanese culture you are faced with to damage it.
I've also played a Lupan typing game, but this one is much better IMO.

Official website here: http://sega.jp/pc/soft/tod/

TIME CRISIS 4. Doing the rounds. Half-decent game. Has the same guy who does the Japanese voice for Snake in the Japanese Metal Gear Solid in this one. Very good voice actor.

The Japanese looooove 'Keiba'. That's horse-racing to you and me. This is a relatively new gambling game that's only been out for about 6 months. Basically it's the same as betting at the track, except computerised. Need any further elaboration? You just grab a console, stick your money in, choose a horse, then cross your fingers. And nope, you don't win real money, just tokens.

Bingo. Pretty much as you'd imagine it.

I remember when I used to play 'Shenmue' thinking that the capsule toys were cool but fictional. Well, I was wrong. All over Japan you can find these machines littered around the supermarkets and arcades. What makes collecting capsule toys more attractive is that you can often find some rare machines that can't be found in other prefectures. And I've heard that trading them online is quite a popular pastime for certain nerdy types. What's weird and Japanese about them is that you can find toys relating not only to popular comics and superheroes but also pretty much anything else imaginable, including human anatomy, celebrities, vegetables, electronics, well the list goes on...
I found a very cool StreetFighter Hyper Fighters collectors edition one the other day.

Video-games for kids. The one at the bottom is Mushi-King (Insect King). Japan is actually home to some of the coolest creepy-crawlies in the world, and in particular the kabuto (Rhinocerus Beetle), which is extremely popular with young kids. They keep the things as pets, and just love creating kabuto ring fights (little bastards) in the same way English kids love playing conkers. This trading card game they can emulate that by buying random game cards from the machine and fighting Final Fantasy style against a friend or a computer opponent, gaining experience with every battle they win. I've never played it but it looks fun.

Someone requested a close-up of the Half-Life 2 controls so here y'ar. The left stick is mainly for strafing and menu-selection and the right-stick is your controls. It's like a normal joystick except you can rotate it left and right to turn your character. Tap the foot-pedal to move forward. Like I said before, it doesn't quite work as well as it could, and this kind of over-complexity in a game will ruin it in Japan.

Gundam Battlion. Haven't played it yet but this game looks sweet. It's some kind of multi-network robot flying/shooting game and it's brand new. Looks from the outset to be a kind of gang warfare game where you team up with a dozen or so of your mates and take on an army of enemies, or perhaps humans linking from their online network. Will have to try this one out real soon.

Brand-new game called Too Spicy. Didn't look so hot. It's almost like a shooting version of Super-Punch Out. Instead of blasting away at a zillion enemies you have to take on one guy at a time and successfully avoid being hit by using the pedals to navigate your character around the arena. First impressions, not fantastic.

Romance of The Three Kingdoms (at least I think that's what the kanji of the title is). Awesome looking-game but I'm buggered if I can figure out how to play it. There's waaaay to much Japanese text flying about on the title menu and before you can even play you need to buy a bunch of playcards. You then play by swiping your cards over certain areas on the play tablet. Ahh bollucks...I'm not even gonna bother trying to guess how this is played, it goes way over my head. Looks good though. Amazing to think that from that little Snes game Nobunaga's Ambition followed all this.

Just a quick pic of the game-card machine for the above game. You know, for shits and giggles.

A final pic of a new Mah-Jong game that is popular here. Never played it.

That's it then peeps. There is still much more to go, but for now I'm spent. I'll be sure to continue this theme for at least the next couple of weeks so keep your eyes peeled for the next post!

Game Scene Japan

2007-06-07T10:44:00.000+09:00

(New Streets Of Rage Style Scrolling Beat-em-Up Tutorial on the sidebar!!)

As I had a bit of spare time this past week, I thought it might be fun to take a few pics of the country I live in from a heavy gamers viewpoint. I'm always seeing cool new machines that I'm sure never make it outside of Japan, and so you know, I thought I'd introduce what some guys outside of Japan would be curious about. What games are big in the video-arcades now, what's selling like hotcakes on the PS3, pics of gamer magazines, etc. Just generally illuminate how the game scene differs from back home. I'm not sure if this'll become a series or not (likely not), but I'll fill at least a couple of posts with it.

Disclaimer:
Since I'm originally from the UK, most of my comments will relate to my experience growing up in UK video-arcades. That's not to say they won't apply to you guys in the States, and as I did live in San Francisco/San Jose for half-a-year so I feel the game scene in both the UK and the States are kind of level-pegging, but, just so you know.....

So without further ado;

Game-Centers (Video-arcades)

More often that not they're run by the big names that you know well. Sega, Taito...Ah shoot, forgot to get Namco WonderLand for you. Will do that soon.

Round 1 is sweet. Check out the things you can do there;
Don't know if you can see all that (blogger.com only allows for set pic sizes).
It says:

B1- Games
3-4F- Leisure Stadium
5-6-7F- Bowling
8F- Open Air Sports
3F- Active Sports and Games - Billiards & Darts - Shower Room
4F- Internet-Karaoke-Table Tennis-Relaxation

So it's like a gaming multiplex. The first few floors have a lot of funfair style machines, video-games, football simulators, kickboxing bag games. All sorts. Then you've got a more chilled out space on the 4th floor where you can enjoy massage chairs, read manga, sing Karaoke or/and piss about on the net. They've also got electronic Darts machines which I simply cannot get enough of and will have to devote an entire post to at a later date. On the 8th floor you can play basketball and baseball against the ball machines, and when you've done all that, you can go soak your sweaty buttcheeks in the shower.
Awesome or what?!And people ask me why I moved to Japan....

Just like the UFO Catcher in that game Yakuza right? These claw machines are extremely popular with young chicks and couples. You can win 6ft Mickey Mouse teddybears. Personally they bore the poo out of me, but you know, they attract the babes so no complaints here.

The Japanese Fruit-Machine (pachislot). This one (Godzilla) is a little popular right now along with the Hokuto No Ken (Fist of the North Star). Gambling in Japan is pretty unexciting if you ask me.
You buy 5 bucks worth of tokens but no matter how much you win, you can't ever change it back into real money. Kind of defeats the purpose of gambling, doesn't it? And personally I much prefer UK fruit-machines. In Japan, instead of the reels spinning in random icons, you can actually time the drops to get exactly what you want. It's not as easy as it sounds, but yeah, you find a few peeps do nothing but win on these things. But again, YOU DON'T GET ANY REAL MONEY, so what's the point? Booooriiiiing. But at least they don't cheat.

And the machines are sexy. That pic of Godzilla you see there is actually an LCD screen that generates 3d cg imagery, so say you win the jackpot or something you see animations of Godzilla smashing down buildings or incinerating Tokyo
One interesting fact is that in Japan you can buy all these games on the PS. Yeah, not literally the machine, but the emulator that runs exactly like the machine PCB. So, if you're the sad bastard who's actually into them, you can play them night and day.

Ahh. Now these games are a mildly fun way to waste your money. As far as I know these things don't exist outside of Japan, either. They're like a combination of your standard coin-toss/woodrail game mixed with an rpg or first-person shooter. They're highly inventive and actually I once thought about making a Flash-game based on them. I still might. This one here is called DragonQuest (if memory serves). It follows the same principles as most of them- along the bottom of the video-screen you get some moving icons that you have to hit with the coin from a well-aimed rail, when you hit them they'll vanish and either reveal nothing or some kind of bonus. Usually the bonus is like 'Move 2 Squares forward' or 'Win 50 coins', where 50 coins will drop onto the shuffling coin-tray and hopefully push the rest off it. As you progress through the game you'll get the chance to battle bosses (hit them with the coins in their weak spots) and do other missions like collecting items for merchants or rescuing a dragon. It's all great fun but terrifically expensive. You could easily go through 10 pounds (pounds, not dollars) in as many minutes, but at the same time you have those days when the win streaks just don't stop.

Random Popular Games

Forgotten what the hell this one was. Gundam or something. Never been into those robot games much but it seems to get a lot of attention.

Spike-OUT. Wow, still surviving after being released 7 YEARS ago. One of the most popular fighting game multiplayers in Japan in fact. There's not many games that can boast with one credit you can either last 5 minutes or throughout the entire game. Best combo system ever conceived if you ask me. The difficulty level is so spot-on as well, the bosses are never too easy, but if you and your mates time the attacks well you can finish them in seconds. Great game.

Good to know the King is still alive and well.

Yep. Fun 4 player Mario Cart arcade.

Virtual Fighter TV. You can play against anyone around the country.

Half-Life 2 Arcade. I had a go on this, and I don't think it'll stand the test of time here in Japan, the reasons being;
a) Japanese aren't much into 1st person shooters. They claim that the games makes them dizzy.
Usually I'd scoff at that, but this game really does.
b) Too many controls. Western people don't mind so much, but Japanese gamers hate having to figure out zillion button games.
Still, it was a good game I personally thought.

OK. So that's it for now. Next time I'll take pics of game stores and show you what's no.1 on the PS3 and things. Plus whatever else I think might peak people's curiousity.

Kris

Extremely short post..

2007-06-04T23:08:00.000+09:00

Just a very quick drop-in to let you dudes know that I'm currently working on a Streets Of Rage -style fighting game tutorial. I've actually got the combo system up and running, flying kicks, and enemy damage systems are a go go. The tutorial is about half done, so watch this space!
Sorry but that's all your getting today.

Hey I'm back!

2007-05-30T03:54:00.000+09:00

Yes, it's true. The dude hath returned.
Yeah it's been awhile but I figured I'd pop my head in. Why the absence? Frankly, no particular reason other than laziness. Well, to write I mean, not in relation to coding games. In fact, if you take a peek over to the right hand side you'll see that not only have I shaken up the sidebar design a little but there is also two new demos for your perusal.
They're both taken from a new series of games

The poor reception of Bounty Hunter around the net kind of took the wind of my sails and soiled my desire to continue with the whole space sim theme, so instead I turned to sports. I was running through some of my old favourite C64 games and came across HyperSports. As some of you know it's a game that involves a lot of whacking the keyboard and throwing joysticks at the wall in order to make your character jump higher/run faster/leap over twice as many hurdles. Inspired by how much fun it still was, I thought I might as well have a crack at doing a modern day version. So inventively named 'UltraSports', you can find the first two events almost finished and ready to play on the sidebar. I'm hoping to link each event up into a main swf and include a leaderboard highscore table.

TRIATHLON
KEYS

ASWD - Player One
Arrow Keys - Player Two

-Running, Swimming, and Biking all in go. Whilst running tap LEFT and RIGHT as quick as you can. In the water: Boost up each respective bar (using LEFT and RIGHT) to it's full gauge then switch to the opposite key and do the same. Bicycle: LEFT and RIGHT will gain you little speed, you must also navigate the bicycles over the milk to reach the finishing line quicker.

ARCHERY
KEYS

MOUSE only. Hold Down button to boost and move around to change the angle of the shot. Far targets make for higher point shots. At present Archery is only 1 player, though 2 player option is imminent.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sooooo, what else have I been up to?
Finished the first level of The Damned completely. Now you don't die immediately, and instead have 3 beating hearts that represent lives. Also got some wicked new sound effects for the guns. Finally, I have added some crawling, Saloms Lot-inspired vampire creatures that arc around the walls toward you in the second level- but they've yet to go in.

Well, AS3 is out, so I've been fiddling around with that. It's all quite exciting for me, discovering the nice speed increases that are available. I've only really put my toe in the water so unfortunately I can't give you guys a decent analysis of the improvement, but there have been a couple of good changes (and bad ones) in the IDE. Sounds stupid, but actually one of the things that brought a smile to my face was that they finally fixed the Edit Multiple Frames option, something that I in particular use a lot due to the high amount of animation png's I use in my pre-rendered graphics. Sounds like a silly joy to have but that was pissing me off at times.
However the panels are a little fiddly, things don't dock very well and I find myself constantly having to move the actionscript panel all over the place in order to see what I'm doing. I liked it better before.
I suppose I will have to sacrifice a lot of my time now abandoning AS2 for AS3. I plan to completely switch over after I finish the UltraSports series, as AS3 has x10 speed to AS2 sometimes, and well, that says it all. Goodbye AS2- got me a hotter chick.
I figure with the extra juice I can start thinking about creating The Damned 2. In my minds eye I can already see it. 2.5d models walking around on Mode 7 tiles. Resident Evil 4 1st/3rd person perspective. I'll post a sketch soon.
Wow. Would love to say more right now but, wow, I'm knackered. 4 am over here. Will write more tomorrow or a little later on in the week. .

Not much happening on the code front...

2007-03-11T23:57:00.000+09:00

PART 7 of the BEAT-EM UP TUTORIAL IS OUT..Check it out on the template. It's likely that there's a few mistakes so let me know if you catch any.

Right well, haven't been up to much this past week. Hardly any coding in fact. Added a few new graphics to BountyHunter (link updated), though I'm only mildly satisfied with the way they've turned out. The main ship looks a little cack and resembles a flying iron. That'll change. The Monitors are sort of OK but hmmm.t. I think the Hunters look alright though, bit like pizza crusts but ok. And the Mothership mesh I pinched from a Star Trek model website so it's not even mine - it was already sexy.
What I am quite pleased with is the rotation effect of the ships. I tried to copy the original retrosprite from the game Time Pilot, but was originally worried the effect wouldn't work in 3d. It didn't look good at all in the beginning -sort of made me trip out just looking at it really- but now it's not too shabby.

Hmph. That's about it folks. Will pop in soon.

fd

2007-03-07T17:40:00.000+09:00

Hi,
Thought I'd drop in with a few words. I've been a bit busy of late. Not just with the coding or work but with playing GTA San Andreas. This might make you laugh, but over in Japan it's just
come out now so I finally had a chance to sink my teeth into it. It's an awesome game, I mean, screwed-up moral issues aside, there's nothing that can top it. Game of the decade. However some levels are waaaay to hard and sadly in all honesty I believe it truly is down to luck and luck alone how you win some races. Never mind though.
Actually I was reading about Rockstar North the other day and had no idea that they were originally DMA, the guys behind the classic 'Hired Guns'. Boy did me and my mates sacrifice some sleep game back in the day between that game and a few joints. It has an atmosphere that still keeps me on edge when I get nostalgic and kick up the old Amiga emulator for a game. Comes to me as no surprise then to hear the same folks invented the equally creative GTA.

Seems like a lot of you are benefiting from the Splatterhouse/Beat-em up tutorials judging by the fairly frequent mails I get. Great stuff. To the guy who asked for the Streets of Rage tutorial- yes this is kind of the direction I'd like to take the tutorials in eventually. I've had an idea in my mind for a beat-em up for ages and will open-source when I get around to starting it.

One thing you should know about beat-em-ups though is that they take a lot of work. Coding a fighting engine isn't the hardest task in the world but creating all the sprites for the backgrounds and the ton of animations for every enemy and proponent takes a lot of time. Still, that being said, watch this space because I'll be making one soon.

Yes you''ll have to be patient though, as I'm in the middle of my little Bounty Hunter space shooter. I suppose you could say I burned out on The Damned about a month ago. The problem was the second level- I simply couldn't think of any way to make it more fun without committing a lot more time to developing the engine and adding some huge changes and wasting a lot of my days piddling around in 3ds Max making models or something else. I tried a kind of spider/man hybrid monster at one point but it KILLED the rendering speed and I kind of well, got coders block after that. People can throw suggestions at you "Chuck in a rocket launcher/Desert Eagle/grenades/flying monkeys"-etc but they forget that you've still got to involve some kind of strategy with the weapon or else it'll make the game too easy. Plus there's the issue of if Flash can even handle half of this stuff. I know that anyone with a shitty computer can't play The Damned over 17 fps and that's just ridiculous. If I just chucked in a load of new weapons that did more and more damage and made the enemies easy to fry it'd be like one of those daft Newground games with no strategy. So, The Damned is currently on halt. That's not to say I won't continue developing it -as it's not my style to leave things unfinished- but I'm kind of chilling out working on my Bounty Hunter game for the time being.

This is a very linear, cutesy little shoot-em up that will only have roughly 16 missions. In fact it's almost done and right now I'm updating all the placeholder graphics with tasty 3d models. I was working on this one 'Hornet' model and the wife is like "What's that?". So I say "It's supposed to be the embodiment of evil within the BountyHunter galaxy", and she goes "It's cute!"..I suppose I, and maybe you, should just be thankful she gives me time to make games at all.

BountyHunter is leading up to a bigger better idea I have to use the engine for related to the old C64 game Magnetron(on top). Magnetron was the first game (bar the prequel Paradroid) that utilised the idea of 'occupying' the enemy robots and using their more advanced skills to further yourself through the game. It was addictive as hell- desperately trying to dance around bouncing bombs to conquer their owner, and turning your cyborg into something worth worshipping. I was playing around with my 2d GTA car demo -something I've been trying to figure a use for- the other day and thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to have a space game where you start off as a little pod or something and you have to attack and defeat stronger enemies to get their craft?" When they're ready for boarding you have to dock the new ships in your spacesuit, but you have to be quick, leaving yourself open for easy annihilation.

Flash is kind of ripe for this sort of little idea, and I may even look into making it multiplayer. Imagine that, a very simple game (no missions) where you roam the galaxy looking for the ultimate space fighter to capture and inhabit, or else defend your already powerful mothership from little bastards chasing you around the galaxy. Every ship you become will have different (randomized) statistics and a variety of secondary weapons. But every ship gets weaker and weaker and eventually you're relegated back to being a crappy pod looking to catch some passing ship when it's weak so that you can inhabit it. Once in an update I'll chuck in a new type of weapon or a passing free-for-all super ship at a set location on the map so that people have to race to get it. It would be interesting to see who gets the highest score for a game like that.
As far I know, anything more complicated would be a stretch as a multiplayer in Flash, but a simple game like that? Actually possible. And really not that hard for me to code since most of the current engine for BountyHunter handles most of what I've already mentioned.

So, let's work on this puppy together, what do you say? Anyone who contributes a REALLY good idea will get credited for it.

All for now folks.

p.s.I'll rustle up the next beat-em up tutorial (losing lives and dying) sometime during March.

Hola amigos.

2007-02-04T02:33:00.000+09:00

How's it cookin'?

SO, what's new, not so much, mostly I've been working on The Damned first level again, the next chapter in the beat-em-up tutorial 'Weapons' (99% done) and I also rustled up a little Streets of Rage-style fighting game prototype the other night too. Making moves link to other moves when attacking was easier than I thought, and didn't require any complicated methods to achieve.

I'm quite chuffed with the way the revision of the first level of TD (The Damned) is going. In retrospect I can't believe I was prepared to simply let it be at one stage. My thinking was that maybe people would notice it, then the next game would be more popular. Then I noticed some of the effort some of my peers were putting into their games on this http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?t=717716 thread over at FlashKit and frankly, was inspired to keep pushing the game until I myself am truly satisfied with it. First things first, there's not enough weapons so I decided to chuck an assault rifle into the first level, which is becoming seriously playable now- if I don't say so myself. It was a teeny bit tricky to get the rapid-fire action of the gun done in AS as there is no such thing as a MouseButtonIsHeldDown handler in Flash, and so you have to fiddle around with things like boolean values instead. Also getting the rat-a-tat sound going wasn't as simple as you might think. I broke the sound into a single 'tat' and stuck it on the first keyframe of the firing animation and that works quite well.

Also, I was told by some folks that there should a wider variety of enemies to kill, and so after a lot of trial and error with different types (had ghosts and shit flying over the lake at one point) I decided it might be cool to make a mask-wearing harder version of the lake zombies. Enemies that are slow but take a good and proper mowing down to kill, as opposed to the ones that come at you like Olympic swimmers. On top of this, ammo is now limited and must be collected by shooting the occasional ammo box that pops up through the waves (because they just do that sometimes!), accompanied by my own sexy "AMMO!" voice, audio edited Audicity to sound much cooler.

I also contributed a few minor cosmetic changes, the sliding text boxes used for Rick and Jennifer's speech have been reenvisioned to be more 'antique' and decorated with steel engraving. A flashy extra ammo text box pops up now too. Oh, and the loading screen has been updated.

I'm surprised nobody has guessed what game this is a secret prelude to yet. Hint, Rick, Jennifer? Lots of gore? Masks and things? Certain beat-em-up tutorial on this very site?
Nope, I guess I am old.

Well, all these changes might be for naught, but I'm having fun actually making a game that is becoming more playable by the day. Links on the right-hand side, folks.

p.s.Saw III is awesome. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I'll say one word to convey a hint to what was my favourite scene, 'pigs'.

Ahh bollucks to it..

2007-01-29T23:05:00.000+09:00

I'll post what's done of The Damned online. It's all work-in-progress so don't come crying to me about this and that not working, these graphics are crappy, etc.

There will be constant updates so keep checking in. Working link is on the right.

2007-01-24T16:56:00.000+09:00

Okay, a quick post.

Check this out

New demo I've been working on. The physics behind it are all sound, converted from some online projectile motion mathematics I found to code. However I haven't quite equated how to get the arrow to rotate properly yet.

My inspiration for this little diversion came from the game Bowman Prelude which is by far my favourite Flash game on the net - the only Flash game I could play for hours and hours instead of five minutes. In the game you have to defend your castle by firing a variety of arrows at an attacking army and you can also destroy their castle. After every victory you can use the cash you earned destroying enemies to buy better, more powerful projectiles and other types of army. It would be perfect, well, more perfect if only for a couple of teeny little issues.

Bad Points

*No bonus cash for destroying the enemies castle
*Capturing the flag carries little incentive save making the levels shorter.
*The enemy can conjure all sorts of cool baddies but you're stuck with the same basic groups for your armies.
*Graphics do the job but they're boring.
*Repetitive sound loop gets on your nerves after the first hour (though you can turn it off).
*All the levels look the same.

In fact, while we're on the subject let's discuss my favourite Flash games followed by my analysis of just why they are so good.

Guardians of Altarris is my second choice for best Flash game on the net.
If you're into Final Fight clones, you'll love this. The graphics and sound are some of the best ever seen in a Flash game, IN FACT me and most other Flash games hobbyists I know were like "Shit is that really Flash?" when we first saw it. If I ever come across the guy who made the ambient music for this game I'm going to lock him in a room and force him to do the stuff on all my games. His stuff is that good.

Wow. The gameplay ain't half bad either. Though it isn't Aliens VS Predator, it's of a high calibre and stands head & shoulders above pretty much all other fighting games out there for Flash. As it is, it wrestles for the crown with Dad & Me (next review) for best fighting game on the net. With a bit of work on the fighting engine, it could easily be the best Flash game, period. The engineer behind the game (Scott Stoddard) in my opinion is probably the greatest Flash games programmer out there at this point in time. Not in an outstanding technical sense - though his games are obviously well-programmed - but rather in the way that every game he makes is sweet. I played his latest prototype over on FlashKit the other day and it's as addictive as hell.
Certainly a benchmark setter for us other wannabee legends.

Bad points
*Takes a looong time to load (kind of unavoidable for a quality game)
*Kind of slow at times.
*No weapons. Health icons, etc.

Dad & Me is a highly stylised beat-em up. I love everything about this game from the slick presentation to the comedic touches. I mean Tom Pulp and his lot sometimes go over the top with their twisted sense of humour but has genuine moments of hilarity such as boyscouts in front of buses and throwing lawnmowers at punks.

This is the best game on Newgrounds (after Bowman), and I often wonder why they didn't take this one to the N64 or whatever it was instead of Alien Hominid, which was nothing special. Though it can't beat Guardians of Altarris for graphics Dad & Me more than matches it in style and has a more responsive/flexible fighting engine that incorporates some nice physics. Also very well done is the soundtrack, which keeps the same melody throughout and yet changes depending on the environment.

Well, check it out! 6000 almost exclusively positive reviews on Newgrounds can't be wrong.

Bad Points
*Too short

Hmm....
If I was going to make a walk-along-beat-em-up I'd probably make my game more like Spike Out. There are two games I still consistently play in video-arcades, and never get tired of over here in Japan, StreetFighter and SpikeOut. Both are old games, though they contain the kind of perfect gameplay that never gets tiring. Good beat-em ups are all about the timing.
SpikeOuts strength lies in the multiple power meters which require perfect timing to operate. Once you've mastered it though, you can pull off some amazing floating combo's and progress through the game further than before. The bosses are genius, and kind of timing needed to defeat some of them separates the casual gamer from the expert. But if you're good enough, you can literally play the whole game through on one credit.

If you don't incorporate the necessity for good timing in a fighting game, it will never become a classic. Even Final Fight gets boring after a few levels. Aliens VS Predator is a good beat-em up that works not because of the skill level involved to play it, but because of the unique variety of moves available to each character.

Right well, I'm going back to the archer demo now, catch you later.

p.s. Just saw SAW III and it was awesome. Almost matches the first one.

Got some hosting babeeee...

2007-01-18T01:57:00.000+09:00

Temporary hosting that is. One kind bloke I know from my other website "Young Dudes Guide to Japan" offered to help me out since I'm having such a bugger of a time getting a visa card over here in Japan.

I want to show you dudes the game- it's just that it's too close to completion now.
However, you can check out my first ever YouTube post, a render test for Usagi Yojimbo, the main character from Samurai Warrior.

Nothing flash (pun intended), but it's only the bare bones so far. I haven't even decided if I'll remake the game (Samurai Warrior) for sure yet. Pretty likely though.

I finally solved the sound doubling problem I had with the Damned. Turned out I was using two Mouse listeners instead of one. Like an idiot, I thought that you needed to declare different variables for every state, ie onMouseDown, onMouseUp then make a listener for each. Nope, one listener takes care of anything the mouse does after you initiate it. Stupid. This is very cool though because really now the only problem I have now is getting my external loaders to work. And I know why they don't, because the AS is all on the first frame, and all the movieclips are dynamic.

Will post some pics soon.

Just dropping in...

2007-01-12T00:03:00.000+09:00

Well well, back again, if only for a quickie.

The Damned is very close to Beta stage now. Not only are all 3 levels complete, with new death-scenes and a few extra tweaks, but they've also been tied up to the main menu swf, which now loads them as external files. The menu swf file keeps track of the amount of continues you have left and everything. However, I really, really, wish I had done this fromt the start because it's been an absolute struggle to get the swf levels working smoothly now that they're external. I had simply shitloads of problems, everything from setIntervals continuing after the level had ended to enemies not appearing at all.

In fact I am utterly stumped by one tiny, annoying little error with the gun sound object retriggering on every instance of an external swf being loaded (in other words, every time I load a movie/level, the sound of gunfire 'doubles'). I've a hunch it might have something to do with the function for firing being triggered by a _global variable, instead of a local one. It's such a pain in the arse having the game this close to going live and yet not making any progress because of some idiotic little malfunctions in the code.

In my burn-out time I've been working on some other stuff. You might notice a new 2d engine demo posted on the blog. That was a tricky bugger to pull off at first, but isometric is my bitch now. This might well be the engine used to the Friday 13th game I have planned, or a remake/remix of the Last Ninja (another one of my aspirations)- you heard it here first. p.s. if any of you folks out there who read this are big fans of either game and think you could render up some sweeeet iso graphics for me to use, send us a mail. I won't hold my breath though...

I've got big hopes for The Damned. It's my first game, so it's not supposed to break any new ground in terms of coding excellence or gain much of a fan base, but I do hope a few folks out there enjoy it enough to anticipate a bigger and better second version. Now that I've laid down a concrete engine for the game, I know that the next one will be so much better.

I at least get some kind of a good starting rep in the Flash world. I am very excited that finally for the first time in my life I have the opportunity and the capability to make the games I always wanted to make. Call me a nerd or whatever, but it's almost like my highest ambition to be on the same ladder as the older generation of games makers. Individuals like Rob Hubbard, Matt Gray, Archer MacLean, and the folks in teams such as System 3, Thalamus, Sensible Software, CodeMasters --agghh..like movie stars to me, man! I want that! So if you like the game when you play it, remember that a lot of love went into this baby, and a lot of respect for those who inspired me to become a game author.

Greetings

2006-11-21T21:04:00.000+09:00

Title Screen
95%

-have to implement some global variables to record the users score and remaining credits. That's it.

Level 1
100%

Level 2
80%

-I have to play around with the zombies on the second level because for some reason (I think there's some aft code in there somewhere) they cause it run with a terrible lag.
-Fix Evil.K's death sequences.

Level 3
60%
-Lucifer is half-finished and already implemented in the game. However I want to have a 'transformed' Lucifer where he flies around attacking you, instead of running on foot. Working on the mesh at present.
-Level needs more gore.
-Death scenes for all enemies.

The Damned is truly nearing completion. All 3 levels are quite fleshed out now, and are loading nicely into a placeholder mc on the title screen, and all in all I'd say it was about a month and a half from going beta to alpha.
Sweeet..

I of all people know it's not a perfect game. It's a bit sparse in places and doesn't feel like there's enough action going on, but I'm quite satisfied with it as a first-time game. I'm reaching the point where I'm ready to move onto the next project, which at the moment in my head is a remake of the C64 classic Samurai Warrior. The Damned 2 will come soon in the future though, and it will absolutely blow away the first one.

Update Central

2006-11-09T14:53:00.000+09:00

Greetings peeps,

Yes, I have been busy. Just had my Japanese style wedding a few days ago, and boy am I glad that's all over. Anyone who's ever had an 80 year old relative sing karaoke at their wedding will know exactly what I'm talking about.

But somewhere inbetween in between the sake drinking and the speech-making, I managed to find the time to sneakily work on The Damned, and in fact I have quite a few updates to report (as if anyone reads this shit).

The third level is going well now. I rewrote the entire enemy spawn function, and also made the decision to reduce the dimensions of the sprites. It's amazing how much faster the game runs now, and without any serious compromise in visual quality. Sure, the monsters look a bit blockier when they get close, but the extra frames of animation more than make up for it. This was the way I should have had it from the start.

Got the little Crow dudes running around in there now, and I FINALLY invented a method that works successfully in simulating fog with movieclips. Further more, the modified weapon code is functioning well now, and can accommodate any other firearms I decide to include (not likely until The Damned 2). Another addition (though still in testing) is the implementation of a power-up symbol that gives you extra shotgun rounds if you shoot it. It's done but needs a cool sound effect.

One last amendment is the inclusion of a new beastie. Yes, I thought just having CrowMen to shoot might make the level a little bit bland, so I've gone ahead and designed my own Garrador/Dr.Salvador hybrid. No name for them as yet (any suggestions?). I downloaded (oops, rented) Friday 13th the second part the other night and the whole sack on the head thing was working for me. My character doesn't wield a machete, but a karambit, an ancient Indonesian style hunting tool. It's a lot uglier.

Check him out;

The other day we were chit-chatting on FlashKit about C64 remakes, and I was thinking how I'd love to remake the Friday 13th game. Making a Jason character now might save me some time in the future if I ever do pursue such an idea.

More to come real soon!

Back at the helm..

2006-10-26T15:33:00.000+09:00

So, for the past month or so I've been a little busy. My wedding is on the 4th of November, and I've been up to my ears in prep. I'm actually already married so the whole event feels a little pointless, yet this is how they do it in Japan- marriage at the local registry first, wedding later on in the year.

I took a coding hiatus from The Damned for a while in order to work on my isometric engine, but I'm back now. I've basically spent the last month teaching myself how to use 3DSMAX, and I've been learning rather than creating. FINALLY, I'm getting the hang of working with a mesh in Max, though for almost a week it's been an awful wrestle trying to get to grips with texture mapping enough to produce an end result I can be proud of. I suppose I've got more of an advantage over your average noob though, having mastered other programs such as TrueSpace and Lightwave in the past, and know my specular from my ambient mapping. The change was inevitable really, as Poser is well...shit.

Presenting my first mesh success 'CrowMan';

Picture this little squawking freak coming at you from out of the fog, because that's what will happen in the game.

He isn't the boss, just the standard enemy for the 3rd (and final) level of the game.
I have yet to rig him up and attach wings, but the mesh and texture maps are finalised. He's not perfect- yes, the mesh seams are visible close-up; yes, some of the textures don't blend nicely- but from a distance he does the job. I figure later on down the line I'll probably come back to this game and improve on all the graphics/code one day anyway.

It's a high-mesh model of Poser's James, exported to Max and altered quite a bit. As mentioned, texture mapping was the hardest to do. Only until I came across an easy method using a combination of UVW MAP and UNWRAP UVW,to keep all the textures in one jpg file. At anyones requests, I will write a mini-tutorial on how to do this.

All for now.

Progress on the game should be faster now that MAX and me are starting to like each-other.

2006-10-07T04:04:00.000+09:00

Well howdya do..I wasn't going to bother to blog today, but my little peach is asleep already, and here I am.

I figured out a little trick today. Have you noticed that all my demo's run a little bit faster now, yes?

Well, want to know the secret?

RAMP UP THE FPS ON YOUR GAMES. BIG TIME.

I know, I know, every respected programmer will beg you never to go over 30 fps - because do you know - the poor cheap bastards out there who haven't upgraded their PC since 1999 and can only dream of figures and specifications such as 64mb ram and 1.4 ghz won't be able to play it.
Well screw 'em, that's what I say. After all, they're in the minority. I say boost it up to 60, and while you're at it, get some real sprites on the screen, not peewee space-ships that expire with miniature explosions.
Why stop there? Make two versions of your game, one that runs at 60, and one at 80 with twice the action - for the people with real graphics cards. And screw the guys who tell you not to push your fps beyond what is deemed considerate. Because the fact is, Flash simply can't handle big, fat, in-your-face bitmap games at 30 fps. MY little 500 pound laptop runs them fine at 50 fps (though online it slows to about 30 -JUST RIGHT-). And I don't know anyone who has a shittier laptop than me. Anyway, people who are regularly into games tend to own high-spec computers. Even kids who are not into games that much will nag their parents to buy high-spec until they give in.
My old dear has a fairly decent PC and believe me, she doesn't know the difference between the vacuum cleaner and the electric toaster. That's just the way things are these days, PC's are faster, better built. So there you have it. Focus on making the games you want to make, not the ones that are built to serve redundant specifications.

So push forward with your evil-self and slam the fps to the hilt. 'Cos unfortunately with Flash, it is so often is the only method available to whip some honest performance out of the slow-ass biatch.

p.s.New FLASH GTA demo on the sidebar.

Kris is back in the house...

2006-09-28T22:58:00.000+09:00

It's been an inexcusable absence, but the dude is on the scene once again.

I've been pressed between finishing The Damned and YouTube. It's incredible that in a periodically short amount of time, YouTube now has videos on just about everything. I even discovered one containing out-takes from Vamp, one of my favourite childhood horror movies.

Progress with The Damned has been, er, damned slow. See, prior to the third level, most of the models I created were humanoid and as such could be made with a minimal amount of mesh adjustments and a few Photoshopped texture maps, but on the third level I have been faced with the task of creating the 'birdmen' monsters that I have conjured in my minds eye. Another issue has been focusing on the actualisation of a foggy landscape. I'm still working on creating the illusion of a believable, animated forest floor, but the ceaseless displays of moving, sometimes animated alpha-channelled images is persistingly costing a lot of processor power and getting around this has been tasking. It's times like this when you wish you had a senior coder with 10 years experience handy.

On the sunnier side of things, Lucifer is looking sweet coming out of the mists, and the 'birdmen' are coming along in a nice, creepy fashion.

A demo of the level 2 boss, EvilK, has replaced the previous link to the first level on your right side, enjoy. Seek out the weakspots!

p.s.

A bit of free code for those who want it. Mist in AS using the perlin BitmapData filter. Slow as shit, unfortunately.


import flash.display.BitmapData;

function makePerlin()
{
 

  for (var a = 0; a < 10; ++a)
    {
        offsets[a].y = offsets[a].y + offsetSpeeds[a];
  
    } // end of for



    datab.perlinNoise(50, 50, 6, rnum, false, true, 1, true, offsets);

  
  
}
  

var offsetSpeeds = [4, 2];
var rnum:Number = Math.floor(Math.random() * 10);
var datab:BitmapData = new BitmapData(550, 400, false, 0x00CCCCCC);
var offsets = [new flash.geom.Point(0, 0), new flash.geom.Point(0, 0)];
var mc_1:MovieClip = this.createEmptyMovieClip("mc", this.getNextHighestDepth());
mc_1.attachBitmap(datab, this.getNextHighestDepth());


onEnterFrame = function ()
{
    makePerlin();
};

Okay. Today, bad movies..

2006-09-07T06:59:00.000+09:00

Just a couple of horror flicks that've come out in recent years that are don't deserve the praise.

Hostel
Damn, well this started off pretty good, but the last 30 minutes killed it. And thinking about it, the only reason is was good in the beginning was not because of any horror element, but just enjoying the adventure that the 3 young guys were having getting laid in Slovakia and the Netherlands.
Like I said, the last 30 minutes were bloody ridiculous. Suddenly the mostly complacent hero turns into a whacko and does all sorts of comic-book anime shit involved cutting up bad guys. It's completely deters from any form of psychological reality. To top that, there's one part involving this crazy American businessman torturing a Japanese girl with a blowtorch. Moments later, the J-girl is up and running with a prosphetic eyeball hanging off her cheek.
The whole thing leaves you shaking your head muttering "weak". I can't believe Takeshi Miike lowered himself to do a cameo in one scene of this steaming poo-pile.

Saw 2
Ahhh, this was rubbish. Frankly, I think Saw was the equivalent of a one-hit wonder for the two main dudes involved in the producing of it, and so it came to me as no suprise that they disguise the lack of any solid professional talent in the making of the second one. The guys shouldn't have sold their souls to cash in on the franchise, because they could have remained respected members of the horror crowd otherwise. Sigh.

There are parts that are good, but Saw 2 has the feel of a college project with a big budget. Jigsaw is over-exposed and has some stupid lines. "Oh yes, there will be blood" sounds like it's ripped off from Waynes World, for Christs sake. There are major writing flaws in the human psychology of the characters, and the plot tries to be too clever for it's own good, ultimately leaving us with a weak ending that never really seems feasible.

Dead Birds
First off, don't let me convince you that this is a bad movie. It's not. But it is overrated. If anything I'd say watch it if there's nothing else at the video-store.
So what didn't I like about it?
Well, though the acting was good, I generally felt the pace was a little slow throughout, and I hated the grown-up kid from E.T. in the role of a cowboy tough guy.
Though the monsters in the movie were original and spine-chilling, they never reach their full potential as seat-jumpers. You don't see any good killings, and the movie almost seems like it's 90 minutes of people traipsing through beautifully rainy corn-fields or in and out of shadowy rooms, without any of it ever coming to a remarkable head.
Lke a delicious Caesar Salad that you never get to eat.
At least the ending has a good twist.

VIDEO-GAMES
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Just posted a demo over at FlashKit. Here's a pic of the GUI.

The reason it's titled FEAR is because that was the name I changed it to before I discovered some cheeky bastards have called their game F.E.A.R.
Sons-of-bitches.
Mind you, it's hardly an original name, and THE DAMNED is started to grow on me more now.

More to come tomorrow.