Well, I finally got eRadiRace in a presentable form. You can read the release notes .

Launch eRadiRace!

Here is a recap of how to play:

eRadiRace is a two player game.

Player 1 Controls: Left/Right/Up/Down Arrows

Player 2 Controls: A/W/S/D Keys

Player’s crafts leave colored walls on the playing field. The player who survives the longest without hitting a wall or the edge of the screen wins that round.

Players can control the speed of their craft.

To speed up, hold down the key in the direction of travel.

To slow down, hold down the keep opposite the direction of travel.

Example: If you are moving up, hold down the Up key / W Key to speed up. To slow down, hold down the Down key/ S Key.

Warning: Going fast makes you larger!

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.

Wouldn’t you know it. The moment I get busy and swear off posting for a bit, I get a set of ideas that will not be denied. So this weekend I’ll be working on a new series of Design-A-Day posts, which should start showing up Monday. I would preview them, but hey…that would just be teasing.

Also, eRadiRace is close enough to done that you can pretty safely look for it in all of its two-player splendor sometime this evening.

Woot, as the kids say.

There is a new (and still incomplete) version of eRadiRace posted.

Launch the new broken thing!

I’ve come to the conclusion that talking about learning Flash is about as interesting as watching The Paint Drying Channel. So, I’ll spare you further exposure to that curse. What I will do is post these things up as they are finished in the game design section, along with the source code and pertinent lessons learned. The code may be ugly, but it’s well commented.

The preview: Flash 8’s Draw API is your friend.

Lameness Alert:

Pre-production is in full swing on the next round of games at Helixe, which means I’m Johnny-on-the-Spot for the next couple of months.

So yes, expect further slippage on the Design-A-Day. You deserve better, and I’ll understand if you want to start seeing other designers. It’s not you…it’s me.

I’ll endeavor to keep you amused and entertained, if not enlightened, in the meantime.

Code to the new version after the jump.

(more…)

Curse you, Flash!

Why solve simple problems, when you can be stumped by hard ones? I appear to have out-clevered myself for the moment. I’m not finding any good way to test for collsions against the arbitrary line movie_clip I’m drawing as a trail.

I’ll paste the code after the jump, if anyone wants to take a peek. Perhaps a good night’s sleep will bring council.

(more…)

My apologies. The drive swap took longer than it should have, but now I have more storage, less bad sectors, and less chkdsk’ing on boot, and well over 99% of my files recovered. To celebrate, I give you an hour-and-forty minute work in progress. This would be Flash game #2, a simple trail-blocking (soon-to-be) game.

It is set up so I can easily add a second player when the basic game code is up and running. The basic notion is Tron, but holding down the direction keys increase/decrease your acceleration and avatar scale.

When large, you move fast, but have a larger collision. When small, you can fit through tight spaces, but move slowly.

Currently Player one is mostly running without collision, sound or death. Hoping to polish of more of the loose ends tomorrow.

If I can finish the whole thing in under 5 hours, I’ll be pretty happy.

You may have to click in the window to activate the key input. Sorry for the crudity of the model, but keep in mind the idea is not to produce polished gems, but to use Flash as a method for rapid prototyping of game mechanics.

Launch eRadiRace!

-game not quite over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.

Have you read the April edition of Wired, the issue with Will Wright emblazoned on the cover? Not much meat in the in the New Worlds of Gaming section for those that are paying attention (and one editorial I quite disagree with, more later), but the Cory Doctrow interview with Danny Hillis did jar loose some ideas.

Called “The Massively Multiplayer Magic Kingdom,” it’s a look at the theme park as a precursor to the MMOs we all know and love. Sorry. No link.

Let’s take it as read that Theme Parks are one of the ancestors of the MMO. They are both magical environments with fanciful characters wandering about and long lines to get to the good stuff (at least in the days before the instanced dungeon).

So let’s turn it around. Can we talk today about taking an MMO and turning into a successful theme park? I’m partial to the idea. I was rooting around the file cabinet the other day and chanced upon a shareholder’s letter from The Dream Park Corporation dated 1995. Based on the Larry Niven novel Dream Park, they were trying to bring to life a very ambitious park-as-multiplayer game, a few years before the technologies to make it work were really available. I gave them a few bucks to push the idea forward.

More recently, I’ve participated in Otherworld, a fantasy-themed adventure weekend. This was a great experience, but doesn’t scale to theme-park size (check them out, you’ll have a wonderful time).

Could you create a theme park based, for instance, on World of Warcraft. EverQuest? Should you? (more…)

This weekend’s Flash project ran long, so I will be posting a short entry tonight as I continue to work on it.

The project is a ground-up re-write of the Design-a-Tron using what I have learned on Radial-Solo-Ball project.

Goals for the new version:

Redesign of the underlying database to support categories and subcategories

Launched term searches include parent category tag

Would launch a Google search for Novel She, which will be much more likely to pull up a relevant entry for H. Rider Haggard novel “She” than just searching for “She.”

A preferences page for including/excluding categories from the engine (will need to set a local cookie)

Less kludgey overall implementation

There was originally a game database and a pop culture database. These will be merged in the new revision.

The basic construction will be:

Specific Domain meets Constellation of Domains as Human Endeavor

Previously, it was hardwired so that the specific domain was always games. The new database structure will allow any domain from the pop culture list to be used as the specific domain. This way, you can use the Design-a-Tron to help generate ideas for Broadway Musicals or the next Great Novel as easily as video games.

See you tonight!