I've got a couple learning games I never released or never finished.

The Fuckin Awesome Quest was my first attempt at an isometric beat-em-up. I really wanted to make one but was finding it to be just about the most complicated kind of game to make. I wanted for it to be huge, but hadn't planned any of it at all, the scripting was all broken and the animation was really boring and slow, the design of all the art was also boring.
I took what I learned from that and later made Crunchdown, which has many of the same problems, but it's not nearly as bad.

I'm doing a fucking stupidly massive game right now that I so hope doesn't come out looking stupid.

You might remember The Legend of Princess by Konjak- It was a quick unfinished side-scroller that I thought was fucking excellent.

The same guy just made a new game which, again, is a quick unfinished side-scroller that I think is excellent. It takes about half an hour to play and has a bunch of fun ideas. The art and music's adorable and it's got another great boss fight.

It's mostly like Metroid, with a Zelda bit in the middle where you run about and talk to people. The plot's kind of interesting but it's too short to really get into and I hate anime-isms; not the best game ever but whatevs. Good enough to last half an hour.



IVORY SPRINGS
The guy's whole website

The Fuckin Awesome Quest. I wanted to make a brawler where you could use everything in the environment as a weapon, so I added this move to pick things (and people) up and throw them.
It turned out I wasn't good enough at scripting to pull it off, or creative enough to think of a full game.

A few months later though, I started a new game with a similar idea, except instead of throwing things you could eat them and gain new moves. That'd be Crunchdown.

Oh no, I wouldn't trust every player out there to see what X and Z did, and definately not F1.
If you don't show any controls, I'd expect most people to try the arrow keys, then the mouse, then space bar, then just mash buttons a bit before turning it off.

Oh I never have a tutorial level, ever. I usually show icons of the controls with no words attatched- The space bar, enter and arrow keys are particularly easy to recognise.

If I ever have an unusual mechanic, I show it in the form of a little comic strip in Level 1.

I don't usually get any complaints, but I don't usually make very innovative games either.
My last game just used the mouse, so I gave no instruction atall. If they can click the play button, they've allready worked it out.

Just gonna throw another example into this conversation:

Devil May Cry 3 is a really hard game. There are two modes: Normal and Hard. If you die 3 times on Normal though, a screen comes up asking WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY THIS ON EASY? Personally, I did this and it worked fabulously.

The bad news here is that I lent it to a friend and he gave up halfway through because it was too hard. I said DID IT TELL YOU ABOUT THE EASY MODE? and he said YEAH, BUT I STAYED ON NORMAL. I said OH- WELL YOU SHOULD'VE NOT DONE THAT.

So the moral is to try and do it subliminally or consistantly, because most people will be offended if you explicitly tell them they're not good enough to play the Normal way.

It looks good, but y'know at the end of the day it's a box that shoots sideways.

I think a good idea would be to firstly change the sound from a piercing wave sound to a shorter single sound that plays once as you shoot- Keep the idea of the pitch being determined by your _y position, that's great. Then you could place enemies to appear in a specific sequence so that if you shoot them all as they come at you it makes music.

Then you could have things in the background like industrial factories that coincidentally provide basslines. It'd be kind of like Walk Smash Walk crossed with

.

Oh yeah it can get gigantic, but I wanted to keep it from being too easy, and the framerate slows down a bit when you get to about this size:


Snake is almost a good idea, but the point of Snake is to not run in to yourself or you'll die. But in this, you run over yourself like every other second, so that'd be shit.

Today I created this iteration on that great thing I'll never do anything with.

Really, if you can think of a game to make this into I'm all ears.

Actually it's two lines. I do it all the time for big games and small games, usually loading the player's last save automatically.

var savefile = SharedObject.getLocal("yourgamename");
savefile.data.score=_root.score;

Flash seems to be a pretty awesome platform for games now, but most of the time when they're being deployed to the user through websites or whatever, you get to play them in a tiny window without any option to use your controller or change the controls, save / load and stuff - They're not convenient and I guess that's one of the bigger reasons why people won't buy that stuff. At least that's my reason if the game doesn't have something instead that it excels at (like the art direction in Samorost).

Oh, well you can turn a flash file into a .exe file and play it full screen if you want. You can change the controls in alot of games and Ed McMillen's last one could be played with a controller. I can confidently say that most iPhone games could be done in Flash- Not including the tilt sensing. If you're good at making games, you can make a good game in Flash.

You must just not like the game design in most web games.

I don't know, I thought the difference was whether or not you have to buy it.

The opinions seem to have balanced out again now.

It's fairly easy to earn money off of a Flash game, I think. cactus' xWUNG, Benzido's QWOP and ChevyRay's SkullPogo got quite some money just by putting ads in their game. I heard cactus even earned over $1000 (Then again that could be my failure to remember things properly, BUT ANYWAY you can make good money off of ads)

Did I not mention I made $4000 on Robot Dinosaurs? It says it right there on the page.
I'm not doing this for the money, I'm doing it cos it'll be a cool achievement. I'm just nervous about investing in it, because a) My games usually cost nothing to make, and b) I usually drop them a week after starting them.

Oh yeah, they were. Well all forums work differently so that happened.

I don't think XBLA is as much of a viable idea, because people have to buy points to buy games, so there's no instinctive purchases. Also everything has to be within a certain price, and most people expect alot more from a game on there. Ontop of that, is has to be certified by Microsoft.
Publishing on the iPhone seems to be alot more possible.

I wish you would've explained what D was

[Everyone wants to make a commercial game at some point.]

I DON'T KNOW WHICH FORUM THIS GOES IN, BUT FEEDBACK IS WHAT I WANT SO I HERE IT IS.

Everyone wants to make a commercial game at some point.
I've bin making Flash games for about 3 years and I've got no complaints: It's easy, they distribute themselves, and I'm fuckin trippin duckets bro.
iPhone
Now- I'm hearing alot about this Apple iPhone. The SDK's free, there's like a billion apps right now, people buy shit on it like crazy, and Flash developers are taking a shot 1 2 3. So I'm sitting here thinkin why not?
Robot Dinosaurs
At about that time, my last game got featured on Bytejacker, and then JayisGames.com, Destructoid, The Escapist, and then a guy made a painting of it. I'm not showin off or anything, but if I could choose one game to try n sell, this'd be it. Also it plays with one button.
If I turned this one level one boss into three levels three bosses more enemies more powerups actual good graphics, then that could really work.
It's not a totally flawless plan
I don't know OpenGL, or any big boy code for that matter, and I don't own a Mac. Is it worth learning it and buying one for a project like this? An alternative would be to go to a studio like Alcomi who port Flash games to iPhone. They gave me a quote of 2-3 weeks and $4000. That's still a considerable investment. The original Flash game sold for $4000. If I spent that on development, would I ever make it back? I don't know. Should I even care about money? I'm in College with £6000 so I could deal with spending some of it.
So I think I've got three options:
I buy a Mac and learn the necessary scripting language (I'm very slow by the way) and smash this out myself
I make a new and upgraded Flash version, send it off to this studio along with $4000 and actually release an actual game on an actual platform for people to actually buy
Or drop this project because it's a stupid idea and finish this Flash game I've been making since about Septembe 2008

Should I attempt a commercial game or am I just crazy?

I usually make arcade action games like fighters, shooters, platformers etc.

I start by deciding roughly what genre I want to make, and thinking up similar games that I want it to play like. Then I draw the main guy a load of times while thinking of an aesthetic. Once the main guy looks good, I make the engine of them moving and try to find the right amount of speed, jump height, sprite size, game dimensions etc. Then I think about the game every second I'm not making it and carry on.

I made a game like this once called Don't Press 7. I'd link to it n Newgrounds, but now it's gone FOR SOME REASON.

This game would be more about procrastination if you had to consistantly click on it to get a higher score. Or even holding down the space bar.

Here's some news to mention:

If you make browser games, you know the Flash portal Newgrounds. They've had their own embedded ads service since about May 2008, but now they've kicked it up a notch. Newgrounds now automatically share their ad revenue whether you sign up for the ads or not.

For example- I made a game recently and got it sponsored by a third party. The terms were that I wasn't allowed to embed any ads in the game. So I didn't, there are no ads in the game. Now Newgrounds will pay me regardless just because my game's on their site. Not just games either, ad impressions come from audio submissions, animations and even my damn userpage. I made 3 cents for having a blog. Thanks!

What happens when you finish a level?

I was just watching the gameplay video (which is obviously old news by now) and when they got to the rescue zone it just faded out. I think it'd be more fun to have a rescue helicopter swoop in, let down a rope ladder and say "THANK YOU!" in an over-the-radio voice.

Also if you don't want to name it Heroes and Villains, you could give the city a super name and call it that; like Hero City or Megatropolis. Then it'd sound less like a beat-em-up and the level select interface would fit better.

Oh and I've bin following the blog since like day 1.

I like the domino effect that shooting spikes will cause nearby spikes to explode. I can't think of a scenario where that would be useful though.

Today I created another boss animation. And I better stop participating in this thread because knowing me I'll slowly reveal the whole game.