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[Dom2D]

Here's today's level, 100% FREE OF CHARGE! YAY!



I have an artist friend who created a level, which I'll post tonight! It's really fun to add his stuff in, it creates more visual variety. I can't wait to get more people in the project!!

[Derek]

This is a really neat project, Dom.  I'd love to contribute to it at some point, if I may!

Let me know if you want me to help you round up some cool artists - I think they'd really dig the concept.

I'd love to see a couple of Michael DeForge levels, for example:

http://deforgeo.livejournal.com/

[Dom2D]

OH YES.

As soon as I have a solid build, I'll definitely want your contribution!! And yeah, I'm sure you'd be of GREAT HELP to gather up a bunch of artists as cool as DeForge!


 
(Holy COW this is EXCITING)

[Inanimate]

I would also definitely love to contribute! Is there any way you could make a level editor? IE, upload an image, then select the correct 'area'.

[Dom2D]

I would also definitely love to contribute! Is there any way you could make a level editor? IE, upload an image, then select the correct 'area'.

I'm definitely looking into that, but for now, I think levels look and play way better when designed by hand. Also, right now, I'm using the same objects multiple times, which I believe helps in terms of size and efficiency compared to all levels being a full image. It also lets me create animated levels

So yeah, I'll let you know when to start creating levels!!! 

[godatplay]

That one was tough.

I can't wait to help out, too!

[deathtotheweird]

You think so? I found it almost immediately, much to my surprise.

[Zaid Crouch]

Yay, weekly Anything Beat Everything fix! :D

I found this one pretty quickly too, but I think it'll be tougher when the full game's put together -- with some careful level planning, you should be able to foil most patterns for searching the images. Add in the time limit (especially with an increasingly urgent ticking sound or something), and I can imagine this being wonderfully tense :D

[mokesmoe]

Also, with the animations, the solution may not stay in the same place. Pretty much all searching methods thrown out the window.

[Gainsworthy]

Add in the time limit (especially with an increasingly urgent ticking sound or something), and I can imagine this being wonderfully tense :D

Oh man. I'd love to hear a 30 second ditty specific to each level (or, um, level-type, maybe?) which goes berzerk in the last 10 seconds. It'd be ZAWESOME.

[Dom2D]

I think this is dangerous for epileptic people. 



I feel an headache coming.

[Zaid Crouch]

I think this is dangerous for epileptic people. 

I feel an headache coming.

You know the worst thing about that crazy seizure inducing thing? There're ones in there you haven't shown before, so I feel an even greater need to sit and stare at it 

(Also, finally a legit use for that emoticon  )

[Dom2D]

You know the worst thing about that crazy seizure inducing thing? There're ones in there you haven't shown before, so I feel an even greater need to sit and stare at it 

Hehe, well spotted sir! I have a bunch of new ones, I think they look good and are pretty fun.

I was making some calculations today, about how many levels I should make. I want to game to have lots of variety, but there's a limit to everything, right? I'm thinking I should aim about 4 hours of gameplay without ever seeing the same level twice, and 6 hours total before you've seen everything. Considering the game will play about as fast as Warioware used to play on the original, I think it's a good play time.

I have a good idea now on how to structure my Flash file. I don't have the Actionscript skills yet to create everything in code using Flex or even Flixel, so I'm building the game directly in Flash, in a timeline. It's probably not the most efficient way, but it's all I can do for now. I'll do it like that for the prototype and we'll see if the game's worth pushing my Actionscript skills a lot further to make a solid full game in Flex or something.

So yeah, I'm in a rough part, where I am building my first game using fresh new skills - I hope I'll make it! 

[godatplay]

For a smaller game like this, it's not so bad to compile the game in the Flash IDE.  Flex will likely be more trouble than it's worth for you at this point.

4 hours...how many screens are you planning then?  That sounds like at a couple hundred. 

[Dom2D]

This week's level:


I spent Monday and Tuesday at the Montreal International Game Summit, going to varied game design, production, and art conferences. It was very rich and inspiring for me to see the making of Machinarium, Brenda Brathwaite's talk about her game designs (including Train), Ken Rolston presenting his narrative tools (which is basically just a bunch of websites, as you can see here:http://lovebutterlinks.blogspot.com/), and other talks about Social Network Game Design, Game interfaces, and more. I came out of those two days at 700% motivation and inspiration (I was already at 300% beforehand)!

After two days of writing down ideas and cogitating about my game, I went into a restaurant last night and started writing pseudocode in my sketchbook, creating the structure that I coded the very same night in ActionScript 3. It worked!

So! Now I have a base FLA file that will distribute levels, play bonus levels, and raise the difficulty regularly. I still have to polish the randomization of levels, but the structure is working. I'll try to insert a couple levels in and make a prototype for you guys to try.

4 hours...how many screens are you planning then?  That sounds like at a couple hundred.  

For now I'm aiming for 100 levels with a couple variations for each one, but once the game is working, I want to reach 250 levels + variations.

I'm wondering, do Flash game creators update their game often? I want to update the game with new levels every month or so, creating some kind of service around Anything Beats Everything, adding content, achievements, etc...  Is it easy to do?

[godatplay]

I'm wondering, do Flash game creators update their game often? I want to update the game with new levels every month or so, creating some kind of service around Anything Beats Everything, adding content, achievements, etc...  Is it easy to do?

Nice to hear some more progress.

I'd say no and no, respectively.  Flash game development is usually influenced heavily by the sponsorship system.  That means with regards to updating the game, you'll more often see a new version as opposed to updating the original, since the dev will be able to get another sponsorship for the new version.  Usually, the dev won't get as much money by updating the game and hitting higher traffic bonuses than by just saving that work for a newer version and a new sponsorship.  With regards to how easy it is, usually developers have thought of a new idea they're more excited about by the time the game is done and out.  So the difficulty is mostly in motivation, although if you don't know much about web development it will be difficult to add community features, too.

But don't let these two things determine what you're going to do.  Maybe you can try releasing this first, and then with the income from that you could bring on someone to help build out your community features.  Adding more content should be pretty easy, though.

I guess I'm speaking in terms of what professionals tend to do, so I can't speak on what tends to happen in the freeware world.

[Dom2D]

But don't let these two things determine what you're going to do.  Maybe you can try releasing this first, and then with the income from that you could bring on someone to help build out your community features.  Adding more content should be pretty easy, though.

Thanks for the input! You bring up important points in there. I personnally think it's kind of a waste to release a game and then move on right away to the next project, mainly because that's what we do at my day job  . I hope I can maintain my motivation enough to make the game better within the first few months after its release, hopefully bringing more and more people aboard or at least keeping players in for longer than a single "playthrough". This might sound ambitious (or naive), but I'll try.

I will definitely start with a normal version without most of these features, gather up some feedback and evaluate if it's worth it to add connected or social features in.

I'll read some more info about sponsorship and other deals of the sort before exploring the subject further, too.

[rayteoactive]

Well, I personally like to see flash games taking different business model other then sponsorship. Unlocking full games and buying content are some of the recently added model, and I think they're great, and would love to try it myself. If you ever do this, let us knows if it works 

And like everyone else, I love the art! And love to submit.
How do I get started? What are the restriction? Can I use my game character?

[godatplay]

Well, I personally like to see flash games taking different business model other then sponsorship. Unlocking full games and buying content are some of the recently added model, and I think they're great, and would love to try it myself. If you ever do this, let us knows if it works 

Totally.  I'm speaking nothing of my preference, which is that the sponsorship model die a quick death and we return to the glory days of charging a flat fee for playing the game.  But that's pretty tough when you're starting out and when you're trying to sell a web-based game.

[dustin]

I know mochi has some kind of auto update system so if you upload a new version whenever a copy of the old version loads (on any website that used your original) it will be automatically updated somehow.  Sounds like you might want to look into that.