Developing a Flash game from scratch - part 4
There’s been a lot of changes to the game since my last post. Hopefully I can remember them all!
I managed to work out how to add animation to objects depending on what’s happening to it so I thought I’d add some eyes to the little ball and then make them blink when he bounces (there’s a bonus triple blink when you finish a level). It took a while to crack how to use Flash frames to load the correct animation but it’s fairly logical and makes sense now.
The sound effect have already started to annoy me (mainly because I’m testing and playing each level hundreds of times but also because they’re not very good). This made me put a mute button onto the console. Which leads me nicely onto…
The console. I needed somewhere to put the game information and buttons etc. so I built a quick console to house: angle and power of your shot, number of lives left (working but nothing to kill you), timer (not working yet), which power up is in effect (power ups are working but I’ve not included them in this release).
All in all I think things are beginning to come together. I’ve added a couple of levels and some other tweaks to the graphics and sound.
On a more boring note, I’ve considerably cleaned up the ActionScript and moved things into classes and functions. This has made creating each level as simple as adding a couple of lines to decide which objects go where. I think the collision detection is better but only more testing will answer that.
At some point I plan to introduce two characters with different characteristics (maybe size and bounciness) which you have to switch between to compete later levels. Hopefully this will add to the gameplay and if the number of switches is limited it should help make it challenging.
So…here’s the latest version, enjoy all 2 levels of it!
NOTE: There’s no instructions in the game so I’ll put them here:
- Click the blue ball/blob/thingy to stop the arrow moving and charge your power meter
- Let go and the ball/blob/thingy will fly through the air in the direction of the arrow
- Hold longer to go faster, shorter to go slower
- Get to the yellow and black area to complete the level