Ben James :: adventures in gaming

I've started playing around with Flash to try to develop a game idea I've had for a while, it's a Tower Defense type of game (groan, I know, bandwagon) but I've got a few different ideas up my sleeve so we'll see how it goes.

Dad convinced me that I should start blogging my experiences as I go, since this is the first time I've looked at Flash and Actionscript and it might be useful for others to see how I go about solving problems. I've read enough tutorials to know the basics I think, how media clips and their timelines work and what each piece of ActionScript I write actually applies to.

So anyway, the problem I have at this point of development is that I'm still not quite sure how the depth of movie clips within flash interact with clicks coming in. Specifically, I've got a transparent turret 'ghost' that follows my mouse around, showing where the turret is going to go if you place it (typical RTS mechanic), but when I try to click to place the turret onto the game area, the ghost turret blocks the click.

My first instinct was that there would be a way to make a movie clip transparent to clicks, but there doesn't seem to be anything. I had the brief thought that I'd let the ghost catch the clicks and pass them to the game area, but that would get messy. I think what I'll try is placing a movie clip over the top of the game area, make it invisible but collect the clicks with that, and then it can handle anything that needs to happen based on those clicks. I'll let you know how it goes.

In Guitar Hero and Harmonix related news, a whole bunch of Rock Band details just went up on Destructoid, and it's getting me quite excited. I'm now not sure whether I want to buy GH3 with the guitar (which I thought I might after it's details got released, plus it's wireless), or get the guitar version of Rock Band and buy a cheap USB microphone so I can play the guitar and vocals campaigns. Then there's the drums, which sound really fun but will probably be the most expensive of the bunch; I'm going to have some saving to do I think.

...and it's made it a lot harder to get out of bed in the mornings. I've still been managing to do a bit of work on all my projects though, despite all the games I have to play and comics I have to read and TV shows I have to watch. I'd be able to get so much more done if it weren't for work and sleep.

Trevor and I have started messing around with AGS and are working on a Kurodust adventure game (the beat 'em up is still coming, eventually), which has been fun. My spriting skills are improving so I'm hoping the graphics won't turn out too bad, and we've been able to come up with some funny ideas for puzzles and storylines.

Speaking of Kurodust, we finally had another band practise! After 2 years Jay, Rob and I, with the new addition of Trevor, are back together as a band, and with a gig booked at the end of August (Jay's brother's 25th) we'll be working hard to remember how to play our old songs and hopefully will even have time for something new!

I've had another couple of ideas for small games I may want to try in future, either in XNA or flash. No idea when I'll get onto those though.

And through all this I managed to 5 star all of Hard Mode in Guitar Hero 2! Bring on Expert and Guitar Hero 3! (which is looking cool)

Last week, Rob and I officially released the music project we've been working on for the past 8-9 months, a 4 track EP called In Continuum. Our side project is called Silverpath, and you can download the tracks at http://www.silverpath.net.

Making this EP was a great experience and I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out. Rob's skills in recording and production have increased by an amazing amount over the past 2 years (since our Kurodust EP), as have my singing skills, so all the tracks sound great.

We also decided to have a little fun and filmed a music video for the track Kaibutsu, which is also on the site. Unfortunately our video camera ran out of batteries before we got all the footage we wanted, so I had to make do with what we had. I think it turned out OK for a first try, next time we do something like that we'll plan it out a lot better and make sure we have spare batteries, hah.

Rob is getting married in 2 days, and then going on his honeymoon, which is extremely exciting for him. For the rest of us in the band, we're kind of anxious for him to get back so we can start playing again

15 hours after starting and Expert mode is beaten. I'm getting quicker at this! I dropped about 100 places in the ranking overnight though, and finished at 296 this morning (Career Mode). I get the feeling there's going to be some tough competition out there.

So, Harmonix announced their next game is going to be Rock Band, which is pretty damned awesome. Hopefully we can use the Guitar Hero guitars with it, I don't really want to have to be buying even more peripherals if I don't have to.

I haven't talked about much except Guitar Hero in this blog lately, but Rob and I have been working hard on our music project. It's extremely close to release, so for those interested, look out for it real soon.

The long wait is over and Guitar Hero for 360 is in my hands. Leaderboards and downloadable tracks for the win!

I managed to get all the way to Psychobilly Freakout on Expert without failing a song, placing me at 206 on the worldwide scoreboard for Career Score. I'm pretty happy with that. Man are my hands sore.

The game looks awesome in HD though, and the new lighting looks great. Where's the downloadable content that was meant to be available at launch though?

to my hopes of getting in early on Guitar Hero 360. Looks like some places in the US have broken the street date.

Proof by Bill Harris

Guess I'll just have to get to the top of the leaderboards the hard way....

So, Guitar Hero II comes out for 360 in 6 days, us Aussies get it slightly before the US so I'm hoping I can get a headstart and get my name to the top of the leaderboards, before all the USians get online and smash my scores.

I was thinking though, will XNA let us use the Guitar Hero controller in our games? I think some people could do some great things with that, if so, and I'm not just talking about the inevitable Guitar Hero clone; I'm thinking a role playing game with Guitar combat, or a puzzle game utilising the fret buttons and the strum bar, or an on rails shooter where you have to rock out to destroy the bad guys.

It's been a while since I've updated, huh?  I've been pretty busy the past month, unfortunaltely not with game programming, though I've got a bunch of ideas up my sleeve. I think I'm going to have a play with Flash though, it seems like it might be a better way to prototype game ideas before implementing them in XNA (because I eventually want to get them on the 360). I got the wireless adaptor for Windows so I can finally test my games with the 360 controller now.

What I've mostly been busy with is the music project I've been doing with Rob, we're nearly finished and will be mixing this weekend, as well as finishing up the cover art and a few other things. kurodust.net will have all the details once it's done.

Just noting down an idea I got whilst hanging out with friends last night for a possible remake - Alley Cat! It would be awesome to see an updated version of this game with nicely animated graphics and maybe some new gameplay ideas.

I don't think this is something I'll be doing any time soon, as the next couple of games I'm planning on doing are already lined up, plus I think I'd prefer to stick to original ideas. Just thought I'd make a mention of the idea though, so if anybody feels like remaking this game, I'd love to see it!

In Sopwith XNA news, I plan on releasing the source code sometime this week. I haven't really had a chance to go over it at all, but I figured screw it, I'll just release it as is. So look out for that in the next couple of days.

Damn, it's hot. Summer sucks, bring on Winter!

Microsoft have finally announced some details on their Dream Build Play contest, though details of the full contest are still elusive. They are doing a warm up challenge called 'Relatives Of Space War', where you have to use either code or assets from the Spacewar Starter Kit and put them into a game.

I've been trying to come up with some good ideas all day but all my ideas would either require too much and work (and therefore time, the deadline is in 2 weeks), or are too little and wouldn't be worth entering.

The prize is pretty nice though, $500USD (and a copy of Windows Vista, if I'm reading the terms and conditions correctly (hrmm, I just checked this and it doesn't seem to be true... I'm sure I saw it in there earlier today)), so I just had the idea of maybe just changing the graphics of Sopwith XNA, chucking in some assets from Spacewar and entering that. Hey, it's worth a shot, right?
Wait, Spacewar is in 3D, isn't it? Hrmm, that might be more difficult than I thought. I wonder if I converted them to sprites whether it would still be consisted a close enough relative? Distant cousin, perhaps?