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[Udderdude]

Making yet another Flash game.  It's an action puzzle game with more emphasis on action than puzzle.  You get to run around a sphere, place platforms and springs, shoot at enemies and warp through dimensions.  Woah! :O

Playable demo now available : http://rydia.net/udder/prog/sphere/

Here's a quick video showing off what's there so far :



Picking up Green spheres lets you fire shots at enemies.
Picking up Red spheres lets you make Springs.
Picking up Blue spheres lets you make Platforms.

You can see all of these being used in the video.  I make a platform to grab a far-off gold item, then shift dimensions and use a spring to grab a gold item that's out of reach.  I also shoot a nasty alien in the face.

[Udderdude]

I've added an actual sphere in the center as opposed to the ring of objects in the previous test version.

Also done: All 5 enemies are working.  Might make some more if I have some good ideas for what they could do.

Also added a new type of Death Ball - it's a Doom Ball!  Oh noes!  It circles around a wall and you have to avoid it, of course.

Also got some cool music for the game from Louis Gorenfeld. :D

[eigenbom]

The inner sphere is much better

[Caran Elmoth]

Nice idea! I'll keep an eye on this thread for something playable

[Udderdude]

Got the first 8 levels done, and added another enemy type.

Got portals working too, yay.

I'm considering adding bosses, since a shooter without bosses is pretty lame ;3

Probably will have a total of 24 levels and 2 bosses.

Still considering more items to pick up and use.  Haven't really thought of any, though.  Maybe it's best to just keep it to the Spring and Platform unless I have a really good idea.

Edit: I thought of and added a new pick up item that lets you place a bomb to blow up walls with.  Yay! :O

[Udderdude]

Progress is continuing.  Unfortunately I had to disable the rotating background, because it was too CPU intensive ..

So what kind of crazyness can you expect from actual levels, with enemies flying around shooting at you while you try and grab all of the gold and reach the exit before time runs out?

Let's find out :p

[eigenbom]

Lookin good, rotating the background shouldn't be cpu intensive, it's a trivial graphics hardware operation..

[Udderdude]

It wasn't too bad when the game is not full screened.  As soon as you do that, though, it starts eating CPU like popcorn. 

There's enough shit rotating around that it was getting distracting/disorienting anyway.

[cirolve]

Cool idea with the circular rotating platformer and all, perhaps you should add a way to see the other layers at all times(transparency?)

[eigenbom]

Yeh it should be done on the GPU not CPU. Anyways, if it's too distracting then best leave it out.

Cool idea with the circular rotating platformer and all, perhaps you should add a way to see the other layers at all times(transparency?)

Yeh this would be cool. Like in

.

[Udderdude]

The Jumpman effect is a little too distracting/disorienting for me.  The game is disorienting enough as it is.  I prefer the skull icons, since it gives you a much clearer indicator that 'If you warp here, you will die.'

[Taugeshtu]

Oh my stomach!
I'm kidding, it's pretty unflushable.
The game! It's nice. It's gray and concentrated on what it is about - stuff I absolutely adooooore.
The only thing that's wrong in my opinion - flash platform. But, well, if you're comportable with it - why not?

[Udderdude]

Demo version now available! http://rydia.net/udder/prog/sphere/

[Caran Elmoth]

Just played it! I think the gameplay flow is smooth and pretty funny. Just a couple points:

1) Please, add the possibility to rebind the controls!
2) There's something about the graphics that, after some minutes playing, makes me . Not sure about what it is precisely: maybe the colors in foreground and background blend too much, maybe there's too much detail in the background, or maybe it's the window size, I don't know.

Waiting for updates!:)

[Udderdude]

Just played it! I think the gameplay flow is smooth and pretty funny. Just a couple points:

1) Please, add the possibility to rebind the controls!
2) There's something about the graphics that, after some minutes playing, makes me . Not sure about what it is precisely: maybe the colors in foreground and background blend too much, maybe there's too much detail in the background, or maybe it's the window size, I don't know.

Waiting for updates!:)

1. This isn't an option in most Flash games.  If there's an alternate set of keys you'd like to suggest, maybe I can add it as a secondary option.

2. It's likely not the background since it's very dark and black.  Probably it just takes some getting used to playing a game with this visual effect.  It's quite disorienting at first.  This is why I didn't want to add all sorts of effects because it's already crazy enough as it is.

Working on boss fight today .. hopefully will have something to show later on.

[Udderdude]

Boss preview



Lots of bullets going everywhere!

[SolarLune]

Very nice game. I think that the 'alternate dimension' stuff could be faded out a tad more - looks kind of like you can touch the skulls and stuff. Just a suggestion. Very interesting idea, though!

[Udderdude]

I made the skulls 5% more transparent.

Did some more work on bosses today.  I decided to give them a shield that holds up while they are firing, and you can only attack them between their attacks.  This solves the issue of having to frantically click like a madman to kill them, and lets you concentrate more on actually dodging their attacks.

First patterns of boss 2 :

[Caran Elmoth]

1) Please, add the possibility to rebind the controls!

1. This isn't an option in most Flash games.  If there's an alternate set of keys you'd like to suggest, maybe I can add it as a secondary option.

If I may suggest, from what I recall about working with actionscript, you should receive an event (in the form of a function call), which gets a KeyboardEvent type var as a parameter. In the function, then, you confront the keyCode member of the KeyboardEvent parameter with the key codes you want to check. If you store the key codes for the commands (move left, move right, jump, etc.) in some variables you should be able to let the user change them at runtime. Maybe I am just missing something: it's been a long time since I last worked in AS3 Else, the nice ol' "wasd" combination would be sweet as an alternative key set.

I like the boss action in the video very much, by the way!

[Udderdude]

I had already changed the keys in the game to WASD.  Clear your browser cache and try loading the demo again.

Bosses are done.  Moving on to the Orange levels.  Things are starting to heat up, and it's going to get hard.  Hopefully will have a video of this soon.