I’ve made a project page to house the latest version of the game. Visit it now to see the game and more information on its development. There’s a buglist, a todo list and more in there. If you do find a bug that’s not listed please let me know.

I’m going to start looking for people to test the game shortly (I need some sort of external input now to make sure it’s fun to play). If you would like to sign up add a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Unfortunately I had to stop developing the game for a couple of weeks as I had real work to do. I’ve been doing bits and pieces here and there but nothing much until today. I’ve finally managed to get enough improvements into one place to make it worth creating and uploading another swf file of the work so far.

There’s been lots of code improvements, as usual, and a lot of major changes.

I decided having the aiming arrow move back and forth of its own accord wasn’t right for the type of gameplay I want. I want accuracy to be important and for the player’s aim to be a key contributor in completing a level. For that reason I’ve made the arrow aim according to where the mouse is on the screen. Hopefully this will make the game more fun to play. Time will tell!

The physics has been completely overhauled and collision detection improved greatly. Collisions are now detected for all points around the ball rather than just a square drawn around it (Flash’s default method). This mean that corner hits can be dealt with properly and allows the ball to roll off a corner. This method is much more processor intensive so I had to re-jig a lot of code to keep the overhead down. This has also allowed me to get rid of the “levitation bug” I had before.

I’ve included a new “death block” (guess what that does) so now lives mean something. I’m probably not going to stick with having lives. I think recording the number of attempts a player takes and letting them play until they win or give up would be better.

Finally I’ve managed to package the game so it looks a bit like a game! There’s an initial page with instructions (to be expanded later) and level selection. There’s only 5 level and it loops back to the first one if you complete them all so there’s still not much gameplay involved.

The graphics and sounds are still work in progress, they will improve for the final versions I promise!

Anyway, here’s the game - have a play around, test the collision and physics and let me know what you think.

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

Changes to the game include:

• Slowed down the pointer so that aiming is easier
• Aimer is only visible and working when the ball is not in motion
• Feedback to show previous shot power and angle
• Objects to get in the way. The ball will bounce off walls and blocks
• A “home” area that ends what will be the level
• Size of game area increased to 650px x 500px

All in all, it’s starting to look like a game. We’ve got an objective (get home) and things that get in the way to make it more difficult.

If you find the games run slowly on the Wordpress index of category pages it might be because there’s more than one flash instance running on the page. Try opening the specific post and playing the game from there.

Here’s a list of what’s been added in the order it was done:

• Ball can be fired upwards only
• Gravity causes the ball to fall
• Ball can bounce off the floor
• Ball can’t leave the edge of the screen and bounces back
• Friction affects the ball when it hits the ground only
• Background added

I’m pleasantly suprised to see that most of the actual game mechanics is maths within the ActionScript. The beauty of this is that it will be nice and easy to change the physics of the ball.

So, now that I know a little bit more I want to add a few more features to the game:

• Game can have different characters (balls) with different physical attributes (stickiness, coefficient of restitution bounciness etc.)
• Perhaps at the end of each level/groups of levels the ball is replaced with another with different attributes. Hey, give the balls eyes and suddenly there’s a potential plot line to the game!
• Possible parallax scrolling of the background (anybody who’s old enough to remember Shadow of The Beast on the Amiga will know what I’m looking to achieve)

Current bugs:

• Ball doesn’t always bounce off sides or bottom
• Ball sometimes gets stuck at side of screen

I’m not too fussed with fixing these bugs at the moment, I think they’re something to do with the ball going past the defined edge of the screen or floor. Meh, I’ll investigate that one later!

Here’s the current SWF for your enjoyment. Excuse the graphics but at the moment there’s not much point doing anything decent. More soon…

I’ve never touched Flash before so I thought my first ever Flash project should be a game. It should teach me plenty about how to use the software and if I end up with even a half playable game I’ll be happy.

If you’re reading this because you want to do something similar here’s a bit about what I can already do; I’m fluent in PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS and all that. I’ve dabbled with Photoshop but am by no means an expert. I’m a web developer. I’ve never worked with Flash beyond embedding other people swf files into my sites.

ActionScript seems to be similar to PHP and JavaScript so I’m hoping to pick that up fairly quickly. As for Flash itself, at the moment it looks very alien and a bit daunting.

Anyway, now that the reason I’m doing this is out of the way here’s what I plan to make:

• A simple get the ball in the bucket/hole type game (I figure this will be fairly straightforward and won’t need too much artistic ability!
• It will be a side on game with platforms, enemies, gravity and anything else I can think of as the project developes
• Levels (gotta have levels)
• Lives (gotta have lives)
• Awards. Something to keep people interested in playing - eg. fastest time, fewest clicks etc.

I’ll be posting updates of each day of development, they won’t be consecutive days because I’ve got plenty of other things to do as well. I’ll list what I’ve learned and how and will hopefully post the work in progress whenever it’s suitable (ie. the game actually works/does something).