TIGSource Forums

(http://i.imgur.com/zMrFz.png)

It's that time of the year again:
The annual Heaven vs Hell Dodgeball match!!!

On heaven's side:
God, Gabriel, Jesus, Moses, David Hasselhoff.

On hell's side:
Satan, Death, Lilith, Saddam, Dracula.
 
Each character will have a special ability which he will be able to use each time a meter loads, and it will load faster if he plays well (for example, Saddam can throw bombs, Jesus can bring people back to life, Moses can break the field in two, and so on).
So ideally it's a 10 players match, each missing player will be replaced by AI cpu.

I'm using FlashPunk with Player.IO, and my girlfriend is providing the beautiful art.
I'm also using the skinnable GUI library for FlashPunk by Matt McFarland.

You can already play what I currently have here, and give me some valuable feedback (you can find instructions inside):
Play The Game!
(Google Chrome is recommended for a more rewarding experience) (http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/6c8c83941020c9d2445d86cdd56bf014)

Here's the latest screenshot:
(http://i.imgur.com/FbNHV.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/bSek1.png)

Hasselhoff is overrated.

Maybe Martha Stewart instead of SheDevil? Something more specific than SheDevil anyway...

What, no! Hasselhoff is the greatest actor that ever lived (with the exception of Alec Baldwin of course).

Well, we really want a sexy female on the hell team, which would have a special ability of seducing the heaven team. With that in mind, I'm not sure that Martha Stewart is an adequate replacement. If you have some evil sexy chick in mind (we haven't come up with something interesting yet), that might be considered.
We're also thinking about replacing Gabriel with Gabrielle, so that heaven will also have a female...
It's still early days though, so anything can happen.

Just go with Lilith.

Utter blasphemy.

You forgot one other team - Chuck Norris :)

We might just do that (unless someone comes up with someone more awesome), thanks.

What part, seducing heaven, or claiming that Martha Stewart is not sexy enough?
Well, either way, you're probably right...

That wouldn't be fair, though, no one has a chance against Chuck Norris (even if he's alone in the team as you implied  ;)), I want to make the battlefield even...

That's fair, I was just trying to think of an antithesis to Hasselhoff.  ???

I suggest playing Kunio [something in japanese] Dodgeball for Genesis! It's my fav dodgeball so far

Gabriel is actually usually regarded as female, so that is quite fitting. Beatrice from the Divine Comedy would be good, too.

Sounds pretty interesting so far, and has a nice sense of humor that I can appreciate. Good luck!

Hmm, didn't know that, thank you for that info. I guess we'll stick with Gabriel, then.

I never played it, but I just saw a gameplay video, and it looks cool (kinda reminds me of an old football game I played also, I'm pretty sure it uses the same sprites).
The gameplay will probably not be like that at all, but it helped me decide on the perspective for the field. I was kinda struggling to decide between side view, otrhogonal and top view. I was aiming for side view but wasn't sure how clear it will be to see where the ball is going, but after seeing the video I made up my mind that this is the way to go.
Based on this I made this poorly drawn mockup:
(http://i.imgur.com/ZT0OE.png)
The red power bar is for the special ability, and the green bars are for the lives.
When your lives are up, your role does not end.
Instead you move outside the enemy lines, and get to shoot balls at them...

Besides the mockup, all I have been doing so far is trying to learn how to integrate Player.IO with FlashDevelop.
Since I only began coding in flash a week ago, and since the Player.IO samples were for Adobe and not for
FlashDevelop, it took me a while to figure it out, but I finally managed to get the "Hello World" application
to work.
That's like half the work, right there...
Gonna continue with Player.IO, need to figure out the architecture for the multiplayer and how to cheat the latency and all that stuff, so it's probably gonna take some time before I have some prototype for playtesting.

I've been in the same place for the last couple of days, trying to fully grasp Player.IO in FlashDevelop before starting.

The mockup brings back memories from my childhood, love it :D Best of luck this project!

Thank you Maqrkk, for your kind words!  :)

Just to update, that I'm close (hopefully) to having something playable to show, I've done the characters movement, and am currently working on the ball physics.

For the meanwhile, here are some early sketches of some of the characters:

(http://i.imgur.com/kWrA9.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/c8WJK.png)

Well, I finally have something to show.
It's still not as smooth as I would like it to be (both the ball and player movement needs some more touching up), but with a decent connection, it's definitely playable.
It's only the core gameplay with the mockup characters and dumb AI for the CPUs, no special abilities yet, also no chat yet, this is all stuff that I plan to do later on.
And also, I currently don't have a lobby, it's only one room with max 10 players, but I doubt there will be more than 10 players at this stage, so I don't think that would be a problem...

Here's the latest screenshot:
(http://i.imgur.com/lxHSF.png)

Please play and give me some feedback (you can find instructions inside), any feedback would be very much appreciated:
Play & Test! (http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/6c8c83941020c9d2445d86cdd56bf014)

Also, this might be a good time to write down what I'm planning to do next (hopefully):

Gameplay
--------
Smoother movementDone!
Nicer ball physicsDone!
Smarter AI for CPUsDone!
Special AbilitiesWill not make it to the compo version
Continue to play from outside the field when you dieWill not make it
Showing statistics (selecting MVP, etc)Done!

Graphics
--------
CharactersDone!
CrowdDone!
Nicer GUIsDone!

MISC
----
Nicknames for players Done!
ChatBox Done!
Ability to restart a game after you finish playing Done!
Lobby Will not make it to the compo version
Music & SFX Done! (But with outside music due to lack of time)

Well, I uploaded a new version, this time with an added chatbox and nicknames for the users...

Here's some images:

My prediction:
(http://i.imgur.com/AnwpP.png)

Comes true:  >:D
(http://i.imgur.com/DVnVt.png)

In the weekend (hopefully I'll have some time then) I plan to work on optimizing network stuff, and improving the client interpolations in order to make the movements smoother.

Tommorrow I might look into some easier stuff that don't require so much focus from me, such as inserting stats into the server database, and maybe adding a crowd in the background, we'll see...

Sheesh, running out of time, and I'm taking forever working on the movement code...
We are also behind on the graphics, but at least the portraits for them are done:

(http://i.imgur.com/czhof.png)

I did upload a new version that you can play and give feedback (please?  :beg:), though know that it is a mess graphics wise, since it's a combination between programmer art and real art.
Here's how it looks at the moment:

(http://i.imgur.com/JyVGz.png)

New in this version:
- Smooth(ish) movement for the players. The way it works now, is that if I encounter a lag from the server, I guess where the players are moving, and move them slowly in that direction. When I finally get some info from the server, I fix the location in a smooth way.
Since I don't have any idea on what else to do to improve that, I think I'm kinda done in that department, not counting any bugs.  
- Nicer physics for the ball, with bounces and all. Still need to work out some smoothness issues there, though.
- Animated crowd. The graphics may or may not change, depending on whether we'll have time or not.
- Statistics at the end of the game: who was the MVP, who was the best shooter, the best catcher, etc.
- Also I'm now inserting these stats into a database, so I can see how my changes affect the gameplay.

There are some major issues with the balls that I still need to resolve somehow:
- Players picking up balls from the ground. Due to the lag, the ball does not get instantly picked up, and I can't guess that I've picked up the ball, cause somebody else might have grabbed it before me. What I'm thinking of doing here, is having an animation for picking up
the ball: the client will run this animation when he's near the ball in the hope that by the time the animation finishes, the server will update the client that he has the ball. If not, then it will be like trying to pick up the ball and failing.
On the other hand, I can get information on a player receiving the ball when he's not really near it. I can then start the picking up animation at the same time of moving the player to the ball's position, so it will look less weird.
That's the best idea I have for this, so I hope it will work...
- Similar issues to a lesser extent with ball collision, and with a player throwing the ball. I want to add an animation for throwing the ball that might help for the lag.
As for the ball collision, I'm thinking about adding some particle effects for the ball, that will be more forgiving, so that it will look ok even if there's a hit when the ball is not exactly where the player's at.

If you have any solutions for these issues that you think will work better, please do let me know!

The slow characters seem too slow.  I don't know if you'd want to decrease the difference between slow and fast characters or if you'd want to increase speeds all across the board, or if there'd be any latency issues with either of those, but for people like Death right now it's just too much.

Also, the A and S keys are mixed up in the WASD control scheme.

Thank you Vanguard, that was good feedback, more of that please...  :)

I uploaded a new version which fixes the WASD issue, and makes everybody faster (and also decreases the difference between the slower characters to the faster ones).

Also, made a bunch of more changes & fixes that I think makes the game a lot more fun!
Among them:
- Tweaked some parameters & fixed some bugs that makes hitting characters easier.
- Added some intelligence to the CPUs, so that they actually aim before they throw the ball.
This makes the game a lot more challenging even without other humans playing (and also, a lot more shorter...)
- Added smoke particle effects to the ball, this adds to the chaos already in the scene.
- Replaced two more programmer art sprites with real ones (God & Saddam), only three more to go...

So what are you waiting for,

Go & Play! (http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/6c8c83941020c9d2445d86cdd56bf014)

New version!
Play it Now! (http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/6c8c83941020c9d2445d86cdd56bf014)

-All characters are now in the playfield!
-Added nicer GUIs
-Added an ability to restart the game after you're done
-Tweaked gameplay: I've analyzed some statistics of the few who did play. The good news were that the average play time has doubled since the version before that. The bad news were that most people were dying, meaning the game was probably too difficult, so I made it slightly easier (though it's still a challenge).
-Added Mochi preloader (the new GUIs really slowed loading time a whole bunch)

The newest screenshots:
(http://i.imgur.com/zMrFz.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/quSGM.png)

This is the crunch time, I'm obviously not gonna make all the stuff that I've planned, so I decided to cut the special abilities, and the after-death play from the compo build.
Hopefully I will still do it afterwards.
Also I'm not gonna do a lobby, I'll make it so you automatically join an open room, or create one if there are none.

Besides that, I still have to add the animations, music & sfx, fix some minor issues, change some graphics, etc.
And most important of all, I'm still missing valuable feedback, any feedback here will be greatly appreciated...

Almost Done!!!!  :epileptic:

Made some major changes in the new version:
- Fixed major issues with the ball movement, making it much smoother to play.
- Added animations for picking up the ball and throwing the ball.
- Added music & sound effects. I really wanted to compose my own music, but ran out of time, so used music from FreeSound.
- Based on user feedback (managed to play with 5 people simultaneously and saw that the latency stays reasonable, hooray!), raised the speed that the power bar takes to load.
This change may seem small, but I think it really added to the gameplay.

And minor changes:
- Added wood panel texture for around the field
- Prettier people in the crowd
- Chatbox using colors
- An ability to toggle mute (with 'm')

Here are the latest screenshots:
(http://i.imgur.com/pvF5a.png)
And the stats screen:
(http://i.imgur.com/bSek1.png)

My plans for the last day (gonna squeeze it to the last second):
- Make things prettier:
  * Add shading (and shadows) to the characters.
  * Add some decorations for the side of the field which looks a bit empty.
- If still have time, add leaderboards.

FINISHED!

 8)

Changes in the latest version:
- Added shading to the characters
- Added shadows to the characters
- Added decor to the playfield
- Added high scores

Here's the latest screenshot:

(http://i.imgur.com/FbNHV.png)

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the results.
The one thing that bothers me still, is the lagginess of the ball.
I thought I had it figured out, but today, the ball again was lagging slightly, so I guess
the server had a really good day yesterday.
Even with that, I think that the game is still fun, so go and play!

Well, I'm not completely sure, but I think it might be related to internet explorer only.
For me at least, the game plays a lot better on google chrome, so I recommend using it and not IE when playing the game (haven't tried any other browser).