Not so secret anymore, now is it?

The video is nice, though! Made in Adobe After Effects?

I love the lighting effects! The gameplay itself leaves something to be desired, however.

I like having an extra foot of desk space. LCDs for the win! 

Ah, never mind, I figured it out. I forgot to add the Hero movieclips to the clear map function, and the game was attaching multiple instances of the HeroRed movieclip without clearing off the old ones. Sorry!

Anyway, I'm so used to AS1 that I'm having a hard time adjusting even to AS2. I don't want to even think about AS3 until OOP has become comfortable for me!

It annoys me when people talk about how folks in other countries make less than X American dollars per hour as if this alone were a condemnation of American imperialism. The wage alone means nothing without also taking into account the cost of living in those countries, which is oftentimes far less than the cost of living in the United States. If you earn 1/5th what an American worker earns, for example, that's not so bad if your cost of living is 1/10th the cost of living in the U.S. Under those circumstances, your wage is effectively double that of an American worker!

First of all, merry Christmas to all you Christian types. I've been taking advantage of the holiday to try to learn AS 2, and being the masochist I am, I'm trying to use it to recreate a complicated strategy board game I designed in my college days. I'm having a strange issue that I though some of you might be able to help me with. I have a class (Map.as) that generates a tile-based map, and as part of the function it uses to that, it attaches a movieclip with the instance name "HeroRed" to the stage.

HeroRed is an instance of the Hero movieclip, extended by the class Hero.as. Per the Hero.as class, when I press him, he runs a function that displays a field of clickable blue tiles around him to show his movement range. Here is my problem: no matter what I do, I cannot seem to get HeroRed to actually move when I click those tiles. _root.HeroRed seems to refer to something else, since trace is quite adamant that _root.HeroRed has in fact moved when I click one of the tiles even though the HeroRed movieclip is visibly (and clickably) right where it was.

Does anyone who knows a lot about AS 2 here have any clue what the problem might be? I'd be really grateful for any insight into the matter!

A walk animation for a new project, I'm beginning.

From the side, he looks like Balrog.

No. Well...maybe if Balrog mated with one of those weird goomba-like things from Braid. And a giant bear.

Oh, geez--don't tell people that!

First of all, LLCs and LLPs are not corporations. Just because a corporation is not publicly traded, that does not mean that it is actually an LLP or LLC; and it certainly doesn't mean that its directors are not subject to fiduciary duties! The only difference that fact, standing alone, makes is that (in America, at least) it exempts the corporation from many of the requirements of the Securities and Exchange Acts of 1933 and 1934. Fiduciary duties are a separate issue.

Second of all, majority shareholders do owe fiduciary duties to minority shareholders. For example, if Jonathan Blow is the majority shareholder and he decides to pay the corporation's dividends to himself and not to the other shareholders, he'll have a big fat law suit awaiting him on his way back home from the bank.

My point is simply that the duty of directors to make profits for shareholders is a structural feature of corporations, and has nothing to do with whether you're indie or not. I think we can all agree that Jonathan Blow is indie. If Jonathan Blow creates a corporation and acts as one of its directors, however, he will owe a duty of care to his shareholders to exercise his independent business judgment on their behalf, even if his corporation doesn't trade shares publicly. If he acts in violation of his duties (e.g. making business decisions without relying on expert advice or without undertaking to learn all material info reasonably available about the decision), his shareholders may sue him on his corporation's behalf. Strange? Yes, but that's corporate law for you.

Now, if you have a closely held corporation, all the shareholders will typically also be directors and officers, so there are not likely to be problems relating to the divergent interests of directors and shareholders as such. But theoretically, the duty remains. And there are other duties that they would owe to each other anyway!

The lesson: don't even think about incorporating unless you have a good lawyer.

Speaking of which, I don't know if any of you read the interview with Tom Fulp on Gamasutra a week or so ago, but this part made me wince:

BS: If the companies are completely separate, how do you do that? Do you have to sign them on as contractors?

TF: I guess we just kind of keep tabs of it, and then basically they'll all be billed for some time. We're pretty lenient about all that -- how stuff gets used. It's all exciting for everyone in the end. As long as it all works out, you know, we're having lots of success so far, so as long as it just keeps working out, it's like one big, happy production of energy.

Dude's just asking to get his corporate veil pierced...

Looks interesting. I love the art style! I can imagine getting carpal tunnel dragging my hand across the screen every couple of seconds like that, though.

Technically, that's just because they're a corporation. You can be an indie, one-man operation, but if you've incorporated, you're subject to a fiduciary duty to your shareholders as a matter of law (in America, anyway).

Thanks dude! The game is made in Flash, which means I coded it in Actionscript. I actually modeled the combat more on Shining Force (I hadn't ever played FF Tactics before when I designed the combat engine). As for the graphics, while I did most of it myself, I can't take credit for the cape animation--that was made by a volunteer.

I played the first 9 or so levels. This is a really neat, unique game! Unfortunately, it comes off as very casual game-y to me. Which I guess is another way of saying that I'd love this 100% more if there was some context to the proceedings. You know: character, plot, that sort of thing.

Also, a little criticism about the background music you posted: the track sounds muddy because everything is in such a low register. As such, I have to strain to make out the piano melody. I won't tell you how to remix it, but raising the piano one octave would probably help.

:tumbleweed: - I wish we had that smiley...

I second that.

This game is hilarious!

I take it that the deafening silence in this thread is because the crypt is 100% perfect and in no need of further modification?

I could be one of the few people who liked the original Spelunker for that.

This is intended as a remake of this? Hopefully Sony doesn't mind.

Popcap is not a tiny indie studio anymore. It undermines the idea of collecting independent games to start putting their games in there.

What was wrong with the alpha testes?

Oh, and since I posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMZUwyAu8D4

not a very good video, area layout isn't finalized, and it doesn't actually show any gameplay, but might as well post it here until i get a real preview video up

That looks neat! I really love the music. At around 1:50 it starts really reminding me of the soundtrack from the Secret of Mana. (This track in particular.)