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| Aeon Update 9/27/2010 - New Era Monday, September 27, 2010 3:40 am — Posted by Livio |
ShareThis« Livio's Blog
It's a new era in the Aeon project for a number reasons:
- I'm in college now, which means that I have drastically less time to do anything that isn't homework or studying, thus affecting how much I can work on the game.
- I just downloaded an awesome new program called Flash Builder 4, which I have already spoken of before but will still mention it again later on in this post.
- Using the new program as an excuse, I'm gonna try to drastically improve the way the game is set up, while also introducing many great ideas I've been getting lately.
- And this is the first Aeon Update to go into the official Aeon Update Blog.
First of all, today I downloaded a "program" called Flash Builder 4 (also known as Flex Builder), made directly by Adobe. It's not really a program; it's an extension of another program that I already had, called Eclipse, which is one of the most popular programs out there that make coding faster and easier. It's ironic because I had to download Eclipse for my computer science class to code in Java, and I thought it had so many cool features that it led me to start looking for an AS3 equivalent. I spent a good amount of today looking through it. It's a little glitchy, but it's pretty much exactly what I was looking for. My favorite part would have to be the Debugger, which lets you stop the code at certain points so you can see what exactly is going on. It makes finding glitches so much easier.
I'm also using this program as a good opportunity to reconstruct a lot of bad parts of game more efficiently. I was looking through what I had so far and it's incredibly ugly. I plan to change the way many processes are done, making room for many new features, and all the while adding comments all over the place to make it easier for any potential future contributors. [Speaking of which, I completely forgot about that idea of finding people who may want to contribute to the game. I've been so busy lately, it's like the amount of work I have to do never goes down.]
As for the big ideas that I plan to implement:
- Customized Start Screens - I posted about this idea a while ago. I'm referring to the screen that you see right before you start playing a level, the "jump to start" screen (actually, since the last demo, it's now the "press space to enter the level" screen). The idea is to completely get rid of the dumb level preview, and to just show the entire level zoomed out. Along with that will come extensive customization options for that screen, which will let you decide if the background is an extension of the terrain, level background, white void, or something else entirely. Or you could decide to not show the level at all, to keep the map hidden, or only show the level zoomed in to the specific character, or zoomed to a specific area. You could also theoretically change the contents on that start screen, like how the title looks, where it is, if there's any additional text on other parts of the screen, maybe some instructions or links to instructions if it's a sandbox level, or however that stuff will work in the future.
- Settings for Level-Boundary Collisions - You should be able to control what happens when the player or certain objects reach the dimensional boundaries of the level. Ideas for certain settings include:
- Solid/Terrain - The boundaries will act just like the level was wrapped in terrain
- Invisible Forcefield - Like what happens in HATPC. Nothing is allowed to pass the boundary, but objects keep acting like nothing's in their way
- Infinite Void - Basically, nothing happens. You just keep going forever. This should come with a setting to kill you after a certain amount of time.
- Flip - Think of pacman, where you walk off one side of the level and you suddenly come out on the opposite side. This could lead to lots of cool stuff.
- Different settings for each side of the level boundary - For example, the left and right sides can be forcefields while the bottom and top are flips.
- Merge the Level Editor and the Level Player - This is a pretty crazy idea that could be worth looking into. It's more of a programming idea, but basically the level editor is really just an overlay that is put on top of the Level itself. Think of the current demo: you hit the demo button, wait for it to load, press space and start playing it. Now imagine that you wanted to edit that level, so you see everything revert to its original location and then the level editor appears directly on top of the level itself, like as an overly. There are several advantages to this idea:
- The level editor does a much, much better job of visually representing your level. In fact, it's running off of the same code, so it looks exactly like how it would when you start the level.
- This really would add functionality for real-time editing, very convenient. Many of the abilities that the new editor would need in order to update the level as you make changes to it could potentially be taken advantage of later to make a real-time editing mode.
- These "abilities" could also be taken advantage to add even more options for tiles and events in the game, so that you could make a box that changes the level's background color when hit, for example.
- And I have a ton of other ideas, but they're mostly about how to better program certain things, so no reason in explaining that.
User Comments (27)
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
Sounds cool, though you seem to live in the past... Quote: Aeon Update 9/24/2010 - New Era Monday, September 27, 2010 3:40 am — Posted by Livio | |
| krotomo | ||
| The Shepherd Age: 23 Karma: 249 Posts: 4066 Gender: Male Location: My chair pm | email |
Quote: Flip - Think of pacman, where you walk off one side of the level and you suddenly come out on the opposite side. This could lead to lots of cool stuff. | |
| Jorster | ||
| mfw Karma: 168 Posts: 2549 Gender: Male Location: The Straight Guy's Garage pm | email |
These ideas are all pretty cool  | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
It's easy to prevent cheatability - just add a terrain border and remove the terrain where you want to have the warps. | |
| Jorster | ||
| mfw Karma: 168 Posts: 2549 Gender: Male Location: The Straight Guy's Garage pm | email |
'Isa' said: It's easy to prevent cheatability - just add a terrain border and remove the terrain where you want to have the warps. This is true | |
| shos | ||
| ~Jack of all trades~ Age: 31 Karma: 389 Posts: 8273 Gender: Male Location: Israel pm | email |
I didn't read this yet, but i read the first two lines - and since you'll have little time now, perhaps you could take jeb's advice and make it an open-code project?  | |
| Cedric | ||
Age: 24 Karma: 13 Posts: 2056 Gender: Male pm | email |
Awesome ideas. I've been thinking about an idea for the game, dunno if you mentioned it and I was subconsciously reading it, lol, but here's the idea--there could be another mode for the level editor, where you can edit while testing/previewing your level? That'd be cool. | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
Like, on the fly? Well...I'm not so sure about that. One thing similar to it, though, could be that you can, at any moment during playtesting (or playing a released level, if you want to go that far), edit the level in its current state. Of course, all objects in motion would have stopped, so it's mostly like a checkpoint button, but it could still be useful I think. | |
| Cedric | ||
Age: 24 Karma: 13 Posts: 2056 Gender: Male pm | email |
Yes, like, on the fly. I personally thing that's a pretty cool idea, but I dunno about you other people | |
| Jorster | ||
| mfw Karma: 168 Posts: 2549 Gender: Male Location: The Straight Guy's Garage pm | email |
'Cedric_09_' said: Yes, like, on the fly. I personally thing that's a pretty cool idea, but I dunno about you other people Yah I APPROVE of that Ced | |
| jebby | ||
| Interguild Founder Age: 32 Karma: 233 Posts: 968 Gender: Male Location: United Kingdom pm | email |
'shos' said: I didn't read this yet, but i read the first two lines - and since you'll have little time now, perhaps you could take jeb's advice and make it an open-code project? Beat me to it.  | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
'Isa' said: Sounds cool, though you seem to live in the past... Quote: Aeon Update 9/24/2010 - New Era Monday, September 27, 2010 3:40 am — Posted by Livio I think I mentioned that on-the-fly editing idea. It could turn out to be a really useful feature. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
wow jebby posted on top of me over 10 minutes ago. I should've refreshed the page I'm not even sure how an open-source project would work, or how to set it up to be open source. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
more good news: I've upgraded to Flash CS5, which allows me to take advantage of more of Flash Builder 4's features. It works great  | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
'Livio' said: I'm not even sure how an open-source project would work, or how to set it up to be open source. Important stuff here - for my school project, that I have until May to finish, I can do something related to coding. This includes working on Aeon. I have to learn AS3, but at least I know how AS2 works, and made a pretty simple game in it. I think that if you shared the .fla file with me (or just uploaded it to here) I could work on it with you, speeding up updates. | |
| jellsprout | ||
| Lord of Sprout Tower Karma: -2147482799 Posts: 6445 Gender: Male pm | email |
To make it open source, you should put the source code or the project or something for download somewhere. To allow other people to see how it was made and to make alterations to it. Spoiler: | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
Since this is a Flash/ActionScript project, there's no source code per se, the only way to make this open source is to publish the .fla file. | |
| snowman | ||
| I am a person. Age: 25 Karma: 38 Posts: 1209 Gender: Male Location: Singapore The Lil' Red Dot pm | email |
Isn't flash .swf?      | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
The code is in a .fla file, and the end result is a .swf file. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
Actually, it's not just the fla. There are several other .as files (ActionScript files) I looked into open source a few weeks ago, and it seems like the idea is that we make this game, and then other people can make edits to it, but they would be publishing their own version of the game each time. This could be problematic/annoying if people have to download different versions of the game if they want to play certain levels for it.  But the game could still be open source, since it would be helpful in terms of getting the game completed faster, assuming that we somehow get more people helping with the project.I've also really wanted to start working on Aeon recently. This would be a great time to almost "start from scratch" but not really. What I mean is that Aeon's coding is such a mess that it would be cool if I could sort of start a new project, and as I transfer over the code from the old project, I can inspect it, organize it, and maybe even recode it in a much more efficient fashion. This could also be effective in getting other collaborators (like Isa) familiar in the way the game is coded, and also a good training course for more advanced AS3 programming. So how do we organize this? Google Docs? Or is there something called Google Code somewhere? | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
'Livio' said: So how do we organize this? Google Docs? Or is there something called Google Code somewhere? Yup | |
| DeathBunni X | ||
| Eww, school. Age: 26 Karma: 87 Posts: 690 Gender: Female Location: Midwest pm | email |
I have flash (actually my dad) except I know as much about it as a caveman from a geico commercial  | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
setting this up is more complicated than I thought. Here's the link http://code.google.com/p/aeon-game/ but right now I'm going through the tutorial on how to get started with my project | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
I'm thinking it would be easier to use Google Groups, since it's less formal. Or actually, under that argument, we could host it all right on the Interguild. | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
That's actually what I was thinking that you'd do, but on the other hand, would it slow down the site? | |
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