next »

[gemstonedragon.com]

Hi everybody. This is Konstantinos. Yes, you guessed correctly, I am yet another game developer 

I have just launched my game, an isometric RPG for Flash which is inspired from games like Bioware's Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I would really love a review or feedback about it and if there is anything I could do to improve the game even more.

Actually, I am looking for some way to add visual spell effects. Particles is a way to go but they consume a lot of CPU especially on Flash which is an interpreted language. Any suggestions or tools would be welcome.

Thank you for your comments.

You can try the demo at http://www.gemstonedragon.com/demo.htm

Here is a screenshot of the game. Hope you like it.

[ChevyRay]

Hey man, welcome to TIGSource! One thing we usually do around here is encourage people to drop by the introduction thread to say hi, tell us a bit about yourself, and give us the general impression that you're here to be a part of the community and not just feed off it.

Derek goes in depth about the "rules" of the community and gives a few guidelines in the Rules of Engagement topic as well, which is a good first-stop. Welcome, and I hope you hang around! Lots of game developers, designers, and players here. Your game looks interesting, good luck with it.

[gemstonedragon.com]

Yes of course. I am sorry. I must have missed the obligatory part of the sentence. I hope it's fine now. Thank you for your comment.

[st33d]

Plays a bit like Baldurs Gate, so I quite like it so far. The house seems laid out well for a tutorial too - nice touch that.

Needs the ability to scroll around on arrow keys. Some shortcut keys for the menu windows would be nice too (you would just add a character and a colon to the tool tip I guess).

Are you rendering with MovieClips or blitting bitmaps? I've never had any issues with thousands of particles before when blitting so I'm inclined to think you're using clips. Or perhaps it's the field of view? I've read up on a few field of view methods, some are a bit more resource hungry than others.

[gemstonedragon.com]

Thank you.

I am glad you like it. I have put a lot of effort to it for almost a year but of course the final result is the only thing that matters.

Shortcut keys. Of course. I have added a few standard ones like hitting 'i' for inventory but I never mentioned them. Adding these to the tooltips is a great suggestion.

I am using exclusively bitmaps and Flex Sprites. I prerender the entire layered animation in ram and assigning each bitmap frame to the sprite. That's the best way for performance that I have found. Then I am adding the sprites to the container. I am not blitting them. I opted to go for the native AS3 way of things.

Particle performance depends on your hardware. I am targeting a PC with minimum 2GHz CPU and a low-end graphics card. Of course a high-end PC could process a lot more but for these specs too many particles cause problems. For example I wanted to add a rain weather effect and it did slow the game.

[moi]

Nice a game, I remember playing a demo a looong time ago.
How do you intend to make money with this game?

[PsySal]

Really like it! The only major suggestion I have is to somehow avoid the "scroll borders" problem. What if you could somehow get javascript events from the browser window into the flash program to tell it to scroll?

The other thing would be to have it available as a standalone or something similar so I could fullscreen it.

I had a lot of fun with this, however I couldn't make it to nascar as the bridge was washed out. Is that the end of the demo or should I keep playing more?

Awesome graphics and sound, everything made sense to me and I felt it was overall really engaging.

[st33d]

I suggest you do a little experiment using bitmapData.copyPixels vs Sprites.

The maximum amount of Sprites on stage (nested as well) is about 400 before it chokes.

By copyPixelling images to a bitmapData you can get in excess of 10,000 particles flying around. I've used this method to make a bullet hell shooter in Flash before. Bear in mind this game worked on low end PCs just fine. This demo changed my opinion:

http://www.electrotank.com/junk/mike/flash/copyPixel/

You could slap a bitmapData in front of the game, clear it every frame with fillRect() and then copyPixels() your particle effects to it.

There's no need to change your whole rendering engine. Just stick a layer in there and paint with copyPixels to it.

The great limitation is that you can't do transformations like rotation and such on the image. That's why Sprites are so expensive. But for a simple particle effect...

[gemstonedragon.com]

@moi

Well I guess I will sell it  I don't think it is suitable for advertisements or at least I don't think it will make any profit from advertisements. Besides most publishers want a stand alone game with embedded assets but this game has about 50MB of downloadable assets.

One idea is to sell access to the full version as I do already. And in parallel I will start building 2 desktop versions. One will use Adobe's AIR runtime and I think it will require no major changes to the code. The other way is to get a SWF2EXE tool and get a native Windows or MAC version. Like Zinc MDM or SWF Studio. These are 2 of the best professional tools I have found. So I can also publish on the Desktop just in case Flash gamers are not ready for it yet 

@PsySal

Fullscreen could be an option but I was afraid it could get distorted on wide screens so I thought it would be better to only allow playing in Window.

I couldn't make it to nascar...

Well of course there is an alternative path. If you go south you will find a whole cave entrance. Really cool stuff in there ...

@st33d

i could try this, but I did not want to experiment too much in this version, as long as it worked. I will try to add more improvements in a future version. copyPixels seems to be a fine alternative. I even think there might be a blitting engine implemented already. Or start one from scratch. Maybe it would be useful to others as well if I ccould make it into a swc.

[raiten]

Personally not my favourite genre but I've got to say that is some extremely impressive work, never seen anything like it in flash before! 

[gemstonedragon.com]

Thank you very much.  I always thought that indie game developers must innovate. Maybe they have limited resources compared to the studios but still there is always room to innovate. So, maybe iso games are too old for the PC but iso games on Flash are brand new.

[Kekskiller]

I really like visuals, they do have this strange, prerendered style. Unfortunately I'm too impatient to read through all the dialogs . However, I like the simplified sytem you used there, I can imagine a great game using it. It still looks pretty empty, any plans to fill it with more life, NPCs or level elements? Some flowers here and there, that would be beautiful

[moi]

You know people nowadays love RPGS and their very original medieval settings. You could implement microtransactions and put that on a website , you might have some luck here (even with single player game)

[fraxcell]

Nice job. Reminded a lot of those oldschool Bioware RPGs, which is a good thing. My only complaint is the lack of any really original style or themes in the gameplay or graphics. Its all very typical medieval RPG stuff. Luckily, its very polished and fun to play.

[PsySal]

professional tools I have found. So I can also publish on the Desktop just in case Flash gamers are not ready for it yet 

I really think this game deserves to be able to go fullscreen, and yes; having ads and that sort of thing would really hurt it. This is an amazing game in any language and I think you should just plain old charge money for it. The trick is to get a nice trailer made and hopefully get some sites to cover/review it.

[st33d]

Why not have ads on the demo and pay for a downloadable exe like VVVVVV?

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=10106.msg311683#msg311683

I'm not sure that microtransactions are as popular as people think. Paying for a game and paying to make the game easier are two very different things. Perhaps its just me, but I have a hard time reconciling the idea of forking over cash for tidbits to cheat or personalise a game.

[gemstonedragon.com]

I don't like microtransactions either. I think their only use is to be possible to market your game as FREE (which is not) and then charge the player during the game.

Ads inside games? I don't remember clicking any ad while waiting for a flash game to load. So, this is not an option for me.

The desktop version is a good solution though. Maybe I will do one charge and give access both to the flash and desktop versions.

@ninjutsu63

Its all very typical medieval RPG stuff

Well, that was my original goal. I am happy that I achieved it 

@Kekskiller

It still looks pretty empty, any plans to fill it with more life, NPCs or level elements?

The idea of the setting is to be empty because you are supposedly in a remote area and looking for a small village. But there are always more improvements that could be made.

[st33d]

I was referring to banner ads. And my company does actually make a profit through loading ads (like Google and Mochi), though the banner ads make more. This does however take quite a bit of setting up.

You probably would do better to market your game through Kongregate and Newgrounds with the demo - and you would be able to take a share of the ad revenue you can get from them. Then you've got an audience that you can lure into buying the game.

[gemstonedragon.com]

Will Kongregate and Newgrounds accept a demo game? I am not sure about that.

[st33d]

http://www.kongregate.com/games/TerryCavanagh/vvvvvv-demo