The object of case 10 was to create menus.
Not the easiest of things! I encountered so many errors and problems while I was creating the menus that I'm actually surprised that I didn't kill someone out of sheer frustration.
Adobe, beware!
I've managed to create a "main menu" and a "how to play" screen, but that's as far as I've gotten. Will try to include a win screen and a fail screen sometime.
Case 9 was a piece of cake! We were supposed to put sounds into the game, but seeing as I've had sounds in my game since case 5, this was easy.
I just searched the internet and found various sounds that were free and legal to use in a game like this one.
This case gave us the task of making some kind of object that the character was to pick up, and some others that he was to look out for, because they would hurt him.
I was never able to complete this case. I only got to the point of having put some pieces of meat out on the stage in random places across the x-axis, but you can't pick them up. Additionally, I haven't added dangerous objects either. The only dangerous things I've got in my game are the enemies and falling off edge of the world.
Will finish this case eventually though!
The object of this case was to create an enemy that followed the player's character without any player-controlled input. Homing movement, if you will. Additionally, some sort of visual confirmation that you've been was supposed to be show, indicating that something happened.
I based much of this case off the example that we were given in one of the lab sessions. As is just my luck, a lot of the code was wrong for the way I was to use it, meaning that I needed help to get it working properly. It took a slight while to correct the code, but with the help of patient research assistants I was able to make it work. And after that, it was a piece of cake making the enemy roll around on the ground in stead of flying after Munch across the screen.
In this case the mission was to "complete" the story for my game.
I've come to the conclusion that my character (Munch) is a rather bipolar fellow who has to eat meat to survive. He'll shift from happy to angry in a matter of seconds, and he's got a giant mouth on his stomach. He's also suffering from constant hunger. Therefore the object in the game will be to make him eat as much as possible (especially meat, because he loves it), and make sure not to get killed by insane scientists who want to perform experiments on him.
The scientist will come in 2-3 different versions, where one of them will be carrying a giant needle which he will try to lodge into Munch's body. Another one will be carrying some kind of gun that shoots needles, very much like the Medic in Team Fortress 2.
I'm going to make a counter that goes down to 0 if Munch doesn't eat, which means that the player will continuously have to make Munch eat to ensure that the counter does not reach 0. The game will by the way be over if the counter reaches 0.
I've also been thinking of putting children into the game, but I'm not sure as to whether you're supposed to save them or if you're going to receive a huge bonus to your health and the counter when you eat them.
In my game I'll use a lot of blood to sort of create a feeling of the brutal power in Munch's jaws.
The object of case 5 was to make the character jump, make the program test if the character is on the ground or in the air and create invisible borders so that the character will not be able to walk off the ground.
This case gave me a slight nut to crack in the form of several lines of code that were doing the same. Seeing as I've been continuously updating my code since case 2, I had some code from case 4 that was basically the same as a new function I created for case 5. This meant that I had two sets of instructions that said the same, and therefore they collided with each other. Additionally, this caused my border statements to not work, meaning that my character walked straight off the ground when he reached the edge. My solution to these problems was actually quite easy: I deleted the code from case 4.
I then tested my program, and it worked perfectly! In the back of my head I could hear "Yatta, watashi wa kattaze!"
I am very satisfied with all my work so far, even though my character doesn't look as nice as I want him to be. He WILL be dreamy though, that's for sure. Pretty as can be!
Try the jumping and stuff here
Case 4. Flash game halfway done. From here on we'll begin to develop the game mechanisms, creating jumps, attacks, enemies with A.I. and maybe dynamic backgrounds. The pressure is on now, because from here and onwards, we'll have to more or less find out how to write code for ourselves.
The object in this case was to make our characters move on input, meaning it would have to be controlled by the keyboard. Jumps were not a necessity this time around, and neither was crouching, so it wasn't really that difficult.
We did a walk-through of the code for this case in a lesson, meaning that there wasn't really any need to try and fail several times to get it right.
I did have some problems though.. I was not able play both the "Idle" animation and the "Walk" animation when testing my program, and since this was one of the key things in this case, I felt kinda screwed. Luckily, I got some help with this from my group leader, so I managed to complete the case and hand it in.
Try walking with Munch here
This time around, the epic quest was to write the code to make our character (any character, actually) move automatically back and forth across the screen. To do this, some research was required, but seeing as the Internet(z) did not offer any kind of easy-to-get-into guidance (at least not that I found), this proved to be a bit of a tricky case.
It wasn't before in lesson, last Thursday, that salvation presented itself in the form of a walk-trough of the codes to make the character move automatically. After a bit of trial and error, I was able to make my character both move automatically across the screen, and to "flip" as he reached the edge of the screen.
Have not been able to make the character for my game, Munch, do the same thing yet, but I'm working on it. Just gotta figure out how to make a god damn movie clip containing motion tweens and crap (for some reason I'm not able to make it work).
Test character: Mad Hatter
In this case we were supposed to animated the character we drew in case 1.
The animation sequence was to show our characters walking in a straight line, and starting a jump (and finishing it if we were able to do it).
Throughout this week, I've watched some tutorials on how to use the bone tool in Adobe Flash, and after a lot of trial and error, I was able to make an animation of my character walking, crouching and jumping.
It took a while to master the bone tool and motion tweening, but overall, I'm satisfied with the result, and I'm looking forward to beginning with Actionscript 3.0 and taking another step towards a complete game.
Link to Deviantart, where you can see the animation of Munch walking and jumping: Munch
At the moment I haven't made up any history for the game, but I'm thinking of something along the lines of my character having a giant mouth with sharp teeth in the area where his stomach would be. I'm also thinking that he'll have to eat something (floating pieces of meat, enemies etc.) to live.
Will post pictures and more info about my game when I get more done.
Edit: This is basically how my character will look like from the front:
