Here's a funny thing.

Law of the West Pinball was posted to newgrounds. All good so far. Got a score of around 3.15, nothing great. Some helpful feedback, some pointless ( Well, one pointless ).

Being kind of anal I check back on it now and again, and this is the weird thing, it's score is going down every day. Every day, someone is voting it down.

Now it was never really on the radar, I've never linked to the NG page anywhere ( I don't really like to, it feels very "Here's my game. Oh look, you can vote for it, I never noticed that before. Well, whilst you're there, give it a 5. Please. I'm needy." ) so it seems really odd that either one person is going there everyday fuelled with petty hate and knocking it down slowly but surely until it goes the way of Chimbo and gets blammed or someone new is stumbling across it every day, and hating it that much that they're voting it down.

I'm not sure which is worse actually.

I just thought I'd mention it, as it's bugging me slightly, and what other reason is there to have a blog than to be self indulgent and post about petty things ( Tomorrow, "Why do people wear shades on the underground ?" ).

Squize.

FINALLY!

CC is going to become early alpha tonight. I spent the last week adding levels and testing them along the way (which takes some time because they are quite ... complex ... and not easy to play). While making sure the game behaves like it should and fixing things that don't work quite like expected.

There are still some features missing and *a lot* of love left to add, but I think the engine is pretty solid now, it runs smooth in the editor and because it's tilesize independent it should also run in game mode (I'll see that later today).

Marmotte from dot-invasion has dome some georgeous tiles so this is done, too.

Basically there are a few renderings left (mainly for the player deaths) and I have to do all the sounds (including a lot of speach) and music.

And for the sake of it:

nGFX

I've been pulling my hair out for about an hour with this beauty, and after finding the solution I thought I should share here, if for no other reason that I know I'll get it again and lose another hour ( I'm 36, my memory is shot ).

When trying to make a new bitmap instance of a bitmap in the library, along the lines of:

        [Embed("/_assets/assets.swf",symbol="bouncerBitmap")]
        private var bouncerBitmap:Class;

        var bm:Bitmap=new bouncerBitmap();

I was getting invalid data when running the swf, basically it was failing big time.

Had a bit of a google and found this. For some beautiful unknown reason, sometimes when you import a png to the library and set the compression to jpg ( Although in this case I actually hadn't, Flash just took it upon itself to make it a jpg for me ) it screws up.

Joy.

Anyway all fixed now, and I've even got this as a reminder for next time.

Squize.

I think it's time to question my motivation.

While working on client projects, I allow myself always a more or less big "sideproject" (because as Bill Murray put it in Groundhog Day: "Keep the talent happy.").

I usually try to stay on the easier side (game wise), but I'm not the button basher game type of developer, although I tried it ...
When sitting there and plotting down ideas, the transform from "one week and done" to "woha that's big" is almost instant.

So let's just accept the facts.
Looking through my sketches it shows that this is again no quick and easy project, I see a lot of locations, all done in 3d, different maps, a story that ties it all together and of course weeks of work.
I think that anyone with some gamecoding background (i.e. coding games beyond the scope of flash) is looking for: the big one. A real game.

Puzzle games are somewhat of a different league beside all the clicketyclick-crap that is called "game" and not many flash games reach into that region for me.

One of the few ones I admire for it's depth is Luxregina's Two Kingdoms.

But how can you compare a flash game to a "real" game?
Savegames? Maybe.
Levels? Maybe.
Story? Maybe.
Depth? Certainly.

What was I talking about?
One of the questions that keep bothering me for the last days is: does it pay out?

Beside the fact that it will be quite fun to do a big game, this one question is really nagging me (espeacially since the LotW hacking incident).

There's the fact that flash isn't save at all. each damn script kiddy ot there could grab this application (which name I won't tell) and just open your swf and change a lot of things without even having to dig through the code. Changing an image or adding a new button is a case of a few mouseclicks. AS3 seems to make it a bit harder, but I doubt that it will be forever. (Maybe there might be some sort of solution, Squize and I have been talking about a ugly way of protecting you game from just changing things on the fly, but we need to test that before I can tell you more)

Using Director isn't an option at all and one of the environments that really would make me go away for coding a game isn't yet reachable because the dev environment is on Mac only and I don't have the space to have another box standing around, here even if is a pretty one.

Because we all know that such a project is normally for pleasure only, you still have to ask if you can get the odd quid out of it - can you?

Sponsoring isn't a route, because as I see it it's not a win situation for the developer, the exposure gained doesn't reflect in website traffic at all. The money isn't nowhere near what can be charged for a client development or an exclusive deal, but it's unlikely that you get one.

Ingame ads seems to be an option but you need some fairly good exposure to reach numbers that pay out well, too.

It's all personal again ...
So it all sums up to: do you enjoy doing such a big game. Well I certainly would. But there are doubts.

K. let's get back to some coding of CC, and later this week some tests on security ...

nGFX

As regular readers will know, we've been done over with a hacked version of "Law of the West". Instead of just bitching about it, we've decided to be pro-active.

This is going to take a number of forms, one of which is SICO, or "Source In, Crap Out".
We looked at what encryption and obfuscator software there is out at there, and came across irrFuscator. It looks pretty cool, and at 69 euros isn't going to to break the bank, but it also looked like it was something we could do ourselves without too much effort.
Where SICO fails compared to irrFuscator is that from what I can tell it takes the whole project and messes it up, so public functions ( And therefore getters / setters ) get screwed with too, whereas our project just takes one file and so has to leave anything which could be called from a different class alone.
Also it converts strings, but it looks costly. Looking at the example on their page, "end" gets converted to irrcrpt(23, "uzd."). That kinda looks like a static class is added to the project with a method called irrcrpt, which takes the first value as the "key", and I guess it's just a simple XOR with the string value.
Fine for scrambling a filename, but I think it would be too harsh [ In performance terms ] to do that to every string in the game, so it's easy enough to just add a method in like that by hand for your filenames / passwords / cheat codes etc.

( In case this reads like I'm just bashing irrFuscator, I'm really not. It's better than SICO, I'm just pointing out the differences ).

So what can our baby do ? Here's the loader class we use for it:

package Classes {  
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.net.URLLoader;
    import flash.net.URLLoaderDataFormat;
    import flash.net.URLRequest;
    
    public class IO {

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Properties
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private var loader:URLLoader;
        private var callBack:Function;
        
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//Constructor
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        public function IO(){
/*
Null constructor, we don't need to do anything here
*/
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Public
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        public function toString():String {
            return "IO";
        }        

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        public function loadScript(filename:String,callBackArg:Function):void{
            callBack=callBackArg;
            
            loader = new URLLoader();
            loader.dataFormat=URLLoaderDataFormat.TEXT;
            loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, xmlLoaded);

            var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(filename);
            loader.load(request);
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Private
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private function xmlLoaded(eventArg:Event):void{
            var source:String=eventArg.target.data;
            callBack(source);
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    }
}

And here's what it looks like after being run through SICO:

package Classes {  
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.net.URLLoader;
    import flash.net.URLLoaderDataFormat;
    import flash.net.URLRequest;
    
    public class IO {

        private var _V64K0q:URLLoader;
        private var _87qjufb1lsM:Function;
        
        public function IO(){
        }

        public function toString():String {
            return "IO";
        }        

        public function loadScript(M85u8En4i:String,_87qjufb1lsMArg:Function):void{
            _87qjufb1lsM=_87qjufb1lsMArg;
            
            _V64K0q = new URLLoader();
            _V64K0q.dataFormat=URLLoaderDataFormat.TEXT;
            _V64K0q.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, _v1zr6rD62q);

            var kDu541CN2C5:URLRequest = new URLRequest(M85u8En4i);
            _V64K0q.load(kDu541CN2C5);
        }

        private function _v1zr6rD62q(_wVl6q:Event):void{
            var n1XScOB03y:String=_wVl6q.target.data;
            _87qjufb1lsM(n1XScOB03y);
        }
    }
}

Pretty mashed up. There are still some quirks to it which need ironing out, and it's not got a list of reserved words or anything that cool, but that code is nasty once run through it.

Next we need to actually make some sort of front-end for it, ideally using Air to get to play with that, more possibly with Zinc to make it easier, and then decide what to do with it. It won't ever be for sale, it may be a case of we just give it to friends and let it spread gradually like that, we're not sure yet, but it will be given away. There's no point bitching about hacking, and then coming up with something that makes our stuff safe and screw everyone else.

And that's part 1 ( Or 0.5 ) of our push to try and get the community as a whole being a bit more protected, there is more to come. Olli and I have had some long chats the past couple of days. We both came to the conclusion that yeah, having hacked games floating around sucks, but there are some things which are more acceptable than others.
If LoW had been hacked to use the hi-score component of the system it's been hacked for ( Some "shovelware portal in a box" system ) and everything else had been left intact, then we can swallow that. Just. The game gets spread so the sponsors happy, we get our credit out so it's not too bad for us, the ad gets seen etc. It's not that bad. It's only when the game is just ripped of everything like that we get pissy.

Part of this process of stopping it is to actually get involved with the boards that link these games, for fear of sounding like a politician, it's about education. A lot of sites with hacked games on are run by decent people, just trying to make a couple of quid, and not really knowing about any harm they could be causing 'cause they never ever have any contact with a developer.
Flash games are percieved as such a throw away commidity that the line between IP theft and hosting becomes very blurred. A lot of people who run boards wouldn't dream of hosting mp3's, but see Flash in a totally different light.

We really fucking resent having to spend time on things like this, but if we're in the position of toying with ads and sponsorship as well as the client based work, then we need to protect our IP. Like we all do.

There's more coming,

Squize.

We have recently discovered that one of our sponsored games is out there in a pirated version.

I know that is is part of the deal to spread a game as much as possible, but when someone hacks the (encrypted) game and removes all that what makes it a sponsored game ... I get pissed. I mean it was for "free" anyway.

So fellow flash developers, have a look at your stats and see if your games happen to be run from this domain:

http://forum.***.**/...

These guys steal games, and use hacked versions.

See this:


Of course the loading screen ad has been bypassed too.

There is money involved so I think it's my damn right to be pissed. I have contacted them, let's see what happens.

/* edited, we found thesource and further steps have been taken ... read the SICO post */

nGFX.

No, I'm not in a good mood today.

Sorry folks yet again no image ... but some code :)

The current game (let's call it CC for the sake of it) is getting close to the point where I would declare the main game engine done, most of the events are processed now and the final enemies are going to be done today (hurray!).

As the title suggests (wow it's something post related) I want to write about the dumb ass AI one, nope rather 4 of the enemies in CC use, if you were so bold to call it AI.

While reading up the docs about the original game I read this:

"goes around objects to the left"

And there are 3 more which go around things to the right.

HA!

I first simply ignored the fact of "going around" and just coded a simple "if enemie hits wall turn left".

So after noticing my mistake I removed the old code and started to write the one that should allow my enemy to move around things. Sounds easy enough.

"Go ahead as long as there is something to the left, if not, turn left ..."

After a while I really lost my temper and just coded something that could deal with right turns as well, by checking 3 tiles + one, as you can see in the next image.

Jein, it's a dummy approach. (jein is a pseudo German word, combining "ja" and "nein", yes and no).


In order to simplify (though, yet unoptimised) the checking of the tiles I set up an array of points, holding the offset for each of the checks. To make my life even easier I just numbered the directions (which is used all over the game):
0 = north, 1 = east ...

So the array for 0 (north) looks like this:

this._aTest.push( [new Point(0, -1), new Point( -1, -1), new Point( -1, 0), new Point(1, 0)] );

And because this one should move to the left I added a second array that holds the next direction to go to:

this._aDirNext = [3, 0, 1, 2,  1, 2, 3, 0];

(You might wonder why it has eight entries instead of the needed four, I'll come to that later)
I now could just lookup the next direction I need to face by simply checking with the current direction:

this._iDir = this._aDirNext[this._iDir];

Now, with that in place checking the movement was easy:

private function checkMoveBug ():void {
            
    var strTest:String = "";
    var i:uint;
    var xx:int;
    var yy:int;
    
    for (i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
        
        xx = this._pPos.x + this._aTest[this._iDir][i].x;
        yy = this._pPos.y + this._aTest[this._iDir][i].y;
        
        if (this._refChipsGame.getTile(this._refChipsGame.aMapGame[xx][yy][0]).objProperties.bMonster && this._refChipsGame.aMapGame[xx][yy][1] == -1) {
            strTest += "0";
        } else {
            strTest += "1";
        }
        
    }
            
    switch (strTest.substr(0, 3)) {
        case "000": // "C"
        case "100":
        case "110":
            this._iDir = this._aDirNext[this._iDir]; // turn to the next dir
            break;
        case "111": // "A"
        case "101":
            if (strTest.charAt(3) == "0") {
                this._iDir = this._aDirNext[this._iDir + 4]; // this one uses the second pair for "A"
            } else {
                this._iDir = this.getOppositeDir(this._iDir); // this one is used vor "D"
            }
            break
        /*
        case "011":
        case "001": // "B"
            these are not needed because we can just move ahead
            (there is something to the left)
            break;
        */
    }
    
}

The final version has the 4th check removed from the loop and just checks it for "111" and "101".

And because we use an array to store the test offsets, we can make the enemy around things to the right by just changing the values (north):

this._aTest.push( [new Point(0, -1), new Point( 1, -1), new Point( 1, 0), new Point(-1, 0)] );

and changing the aDirNext array to face right:

this._aDirNext = [1, 2, 3, 0, 3, 0, 1, 2];

Vioal. Done.

I hope this is quite understandable (the code is, my writing might not)

nGFX

Preloading with Flex for actionscript projects still seems to be really under-documented. Personally I've found it to be a bit of a joke that you've got to search half a dozen sites to find out how it's done, I mean it's preloading, it's what Flash does.

So I thought I'd add "my" approach here. It's what I'm using and seems to work well, it's been cobbled together by reading through the half a dozen websites, so I'm not claiming it's all my code or my idea, it's other peoples code who are clever than me shoved together.

Let's start at the begining,

package {
    import flash.display.DisplayObject;
    import flash.display.Loader;
    import flash.display.LoaderInfo;
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.display.StageQuality;
    import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;

    [SWF(width="400", height="600", frameRate="40", backgroundColor="#FFFFFF")]

    public class Preloader extends MovieClip{
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Properties
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private var logoClass:Class;
        private var logoClassInstance:Object;
        
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Constructor
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        public function Preloader() {
            stop();
            stage.showDefaultContextMenu=false;
            stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
            stage.quality=StageQuality.LOW;

            addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,mainloop);
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Private
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private function mainloop(e:Event):void{
            if(framesLoaded >= 2){
                nextFrame();
                triggerLogo();
                removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,mainloop);
                addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,mainloop2);
            }            
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private function mainloop2(e:Event):void{
            if(framesLoaded == totalFrames){
//It's all loaded, has the logo finished ?
                if(logoClassInstance.animCompletedFlag==true){
                    removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,mainloop2);
                    nextFrame();
                    triggerGame();
                }
            }            
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
private function triggerLogo():void{
            logoClass = getDefinitionByName("PreloaderLogo") as Class;
    if(logoClass) {
        logoClassInstance = new logoClass();
        addChild(logoClassInstance as DisplayObject);
    }
}

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
private function triggerGame():void{
            var main:Class = getDefinitionByName("Main") as Class;
    if(main) {
        var app:Object = new main();
        addChild(app as DisplayObject);
             app.waiting();                        //Call the singleton to kick it all off
                logoClassInstance.dispose();
    }
}

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    }
}

Just to run through this nice and quickly, the preloader extends the MovieClip class as we're using 3 frames for the game ( The actual preloader class, the PreloaderLogo class and the Main one ( Which is the game itself )).
In the constructor we just do all the stage stuff that we want to do ( Hide that menu ), and then run an eventListener ( Mainloop ) which checks to see how much of the overall game has loaded. If frame 2 has loaded it means how logo is loaded, so we can fire that off ( See the trigger logo method, and below is the PreloaderLogo class )

package {  
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
    
    public class PreloaderLogo extends Sprite {
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Assets
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        [Embed("/_assets/assets.swf",symbol="gywLogoMC")]
        private var gywLogoMC:Class;

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Properties
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private var gywLogo:MovieClip;
        public var animCompletedFlag:Boolean=false;
        
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Constructor
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        public function PreloaderLogo(){
            gywLogo=new gywLogoMC();
            waiting();
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        public function waiting():void{
            addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE,logoAddedToStage);
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        public function dispose():void{
            stage.removeChild(gywLogo);
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Private
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private function logoAddedToStage(e:Event):void{
            stage.addChild(gywLogo);
            gywLogo.gotoAndPlay(1);
            gywLogo.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,waitingToEnd);
        }

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        private function waitingToEnd(e:Event):void{
            if(gywLogo.currentFrame==gywLogo.totalFrames){
                gywLogo.gotoAndStop(gywLogo.totalFrames);
                gywLogo.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,waitingToEnd);
                animCompletedFlag=true;
            }
        }


//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    }
}

All that's happening there is the class embeds our logo and plays the animation. The waiting() method checks to see if this class has been added to the display list, if we don't wait then you open up a world of pain where the class can't find the stage.
The waitingToEnd method is as simple as it gets, once the animation has finished it just sets the animCompletedFlag to true.

Going back to the preloader class, after the PreloaderLogo class has been triggered we're running mainLoop2. That's just a check to see if the whole game ( ie all 3 frames ) has loaded. If it has when then check for the animCompletedFlag to be true. If it isn't it means the preloader logo is still running, if it is true, then we're done. The game has loaded and our sexy intro anim is done. From there we do exactly what we did before and trigger our Main class ( The game itself ).

The last part of this is the setting in Flex itself. Right click your project and select properties. From there go to the "ActionScript Compiler" options and pass the following arguments to the compiler

This is somewhat of a rant post (again), although, it might just become some sort of history lesson... we'll see where it ends.

My current game somehow managed to be a real endurance test (as you might remember, if not, read it here), a lot of things that I had never done before, or at least not very often. The combination of the specific genre and the "new" language ... well it took it's time.
As a minor update on this, the game now seems to become more playable by the minute (oh, and yes, I rewrote the damn movement routine, dropping about 50% of the code needed making more stable and of course working - yet again I wonder why I haven't wrote it that way in the first place ... well never know.)

So while coding I started to look ahead for my next project. One of the things I didn't want this time, was to re-invent the wheel, so I had a lok at the game-engines I had coded so far and I discovered one, that never had been used in a game before, but was 100% working. It lacked of course all the nice and shiny things, it was just a working, ugly game - but something a lot of people seem to like (looking around the casual game scene).

The decission was quite an easy one, ignoring the fact that this is just a "me too" game.

Let the ideas come ...

Think, think, think.

One by one the ideas came in, this usually a blend of things I like or like to use, but hey, we're just at the beginning.

STOP.

This time I want something less bloated, slick, clean, minimalistic UI. Once again, I've spend a good time just hunting for inspiration, playing a few of some of the best minimalistic games I've managed to find so far, Tonypa's. They are slick, clean, easy to pick up and don't contain more than the barest minimum of visuals.

Great. Wait. It would be nice if I would add a hint of a background story ...
Oh, and for that I have a great set of visuals in mind ...
Hey, what if I let the player decide what to do next, even though it's just a puzzle game ...

Darn. That's for "less bloated, slick, clean, minimalistic".

Why do I think that this belongs into a game - trying to find the answer.

First of all, I don't like 99% of the mini games that are available in flash. this includes all the "tunnel games", "click as fast as you can", and even praised games like "filler" (which is a nice variation of the qix heme) leave me cold.
I think, it may be, because I've seen their predecessor in various forms on different systems before.
OK, so for me there needs to be some sort of substance attached to a game.

I grew up with a c64 and I collected games (as nearly everyone of this time did), I think my collection had over 2000 games, most of them well, not quite legally optained. But I also owned some original games and paid real money for them. (30 DM, which was a fucking amount of money for a 12 year old school kid).

Anyway these games pretty much defined what I like about games and what not, I like pretty visuals (ok, compared to today those old games look really shit), I like good sound (and I think it's essential for a game) and I like some sort of depth (just clicking and holding for creating a filled circle is it not), a simple form of variation ...

I even tried to add that to "Law of the West", which is a bit shallow, to be honest, but there is some sort of variation in it.

Most of the full price games had at least one or the other, even the low price games from Mastertronic had a lot more game to it than some of the hyped flash games.

Back to pen and paper ... and forget "quick and easy"

Just before I started to write this (and bore you to death) I grabbed a pencil and some sheets of empty paper and began to sketch things out, draw a few charts about the progression of the game and what kind of things I want to add in order to distinguish my "me too" game from all the successfull ones that are already out.

So far I like what I came up with, as I believe I have added some unique things to the core gameplay. Of course it is way bigger than what I wanted in the first place and for sure just as I write this, someone had the same ideas.
To make it even more ... well, use a word you like ... I decided to go with a Pirate theme (still very popular, and although my first idea was to make a third LotW themed game, but I couldn't fit in the ideas I wanted to add)

The basic tasklist so far looks like this:

• draw a worldmap based on the Caribbean Sea around 1500
• create a set of outdoor images for the menus and ingame screens
• maybe create some 3d characters (so it won't look like Myst, ... yet I still want to do my own Myst-like flash based adventure game)
• draw a map of the decissions a player could make
• draw the level maps/playfields for the levels (I mentioned it's some sort of puzzle game?)
• decide on extras that can be used to help the player
• create a list of nice "medals" (more about that in later post, but right now, play the LotW Pinball to see some).
• find a way to allow savegames, either over the server, or using a code or shared objects
  

I'll let you know where this ends, and maybe (if there is interest) I go into detail and post some of the sketches and early renderings.
It seems like this one became a bit more than a simple re-use of an already existing game engine. It also seems that I decided to go a good deal beyond the usual flashgame timewaster - and it clearly shows that I'm nuts. I don't even know if there is money in this one (either as license or (most likely not) as sponsored game (as I had my share of sponsoring madness so far).

stupid me.

nGFX