Okay, more like a dozen or so real life issues & commitments that are going to take me away from coding for a few weeks, but that's not how the song goes. And they aren't all problems either, some of them will be fun. But, I need to really get off my ass & get to work on them, which means I won't be working on this between now & the release date. So, hey, crazy idea, why not release now? =)
*Hm... typical. Now when I try to open the link it says 'file can't be scanned & try back later'. Awesome. Well, this worked fine for my last test. I'll give it a few hours & see if 'trying back later' actually does anything.
**K, I removed an extra . from the file name (was 0.30, now 030) and it seems to be working now. Fingers crossed.
** Fuck. Okay, link is dead again. I really don't know why this time. I attempted to re-link a few times, and it just doesn't seem to work anymore. Dunno if google docs changed their settings or what. Good news is the game has been mirrored to a few sites by now. You can find it on the legend of krystal forums here or on SWFchan here.
I have no idea what my bandwidth limit is, nor if I'm somehow 'cheating' Google docs by using them to host this. Regardless, please feel free to copy/mirror/host your own copies. I'd like to keep my bandwidth low, just in case.
I managed to have a lot more done than I expected when I set the release date last month, but there's still tons to do, and some old bugs have cropped up that I thought I had already defeated. :( I'll be discussing the game a lot more over the next month or so. Now that it's playable, there's some ideas that I don't like nearly as much as I had originally hoped (for example, grapples spend too much time playing the arrow game, imo).
I'm going to make a quick list of bugs that I know about below. Feel free to add more in the comments section as they appear.
-Thanks
-DirtyC101
Known Bugs:
-Playing horde mode past ~50 monsters can cause some mobs to move twice as fast, or die & stand back up again.
- Grapple arrows can get stuck & won't respawn until the grapple is finished.
- Immediate back to back grapples can cause the zoom to get out of sync. I have some catches in there to fix it, but I still managed to have a grapple today where the second grapple was stuck in the wrong mode. If this happens, just sit back & enjoy, there's not much you can do but wait.
- Immediate back to back grapple-grapple, grapple-inventory, or inventory-inventory changes can cause the game to get completely stuck. (It's caused by interrupting the ending of one with the other). If you can't move at all & nothing is happening, you'll likely need to restart.
- Throwing damaged armor on the ground & picking it back up again will heal the armor up to the nearest 25 health. "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" - old programming joke.
- Sometimes sound will stop, and it will stay off until you restart the program. Unlike most of the other bugs, I have no idea what's causing this one, I hope it's my sound card.
- If you die during a double-team grab, the second monster will become invisible & invulnerable. If it's the pirate boss this will prevent you from leaving the room.
- Mashing buttons during a scene change can cause the game to lock up.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
April Update
April Update: Demo is on schedule for April 15th.
Hm... a bit short for a post. I know, let me blather on about something I learned just this week. Actually, let me back up first. When I released K. Fox & the Magic Sword, the file size was just over 4 MB. About a month later I released version 1.1, and the file size had shrunk to just over 1 MB. What changed you ask? I learned how to compress sound files. The background music was taking up 3 MB of a 4 MB game.
So, this week I've been adding in the double team animations, and the file size has grown quite a bit because of it. Simultaneously, I've been having this 'funny' problem where saving can take up to 10 minutes. I assume the two are related - it's like I've exceeded some file size limit. I've been thinking the machine is hoping into virtual memory, or the hard drive is full or something else along those lines, but nothing is showing up as being obvious. Anyway, about the same time I learned that you can also compress sprites. AWESOME! I thought, I'll cut my file size by 75% for sure, probably even more because graphics take up a lot more space than sound files. This should totally fix my saving issues.
The compression tool in Flash works by combining features together. So a drawing with several small lines converts to fewer, smoother lines. And there's even a slider bar so you can control just how much it smears your work. (For those of you playing along at home, it's under Modify, Shape, Optimize). I didn't really want to change my art that much, but even with the slider set to minimal I was seeing the number of curves get cut in half. So, yeah, I was super excited about this.
I'll skip to the end here. The FLA file (the one I work with) shrunk from 53 MB to 50 MB, and the SWF file (the one you play) shrunk from 2.6 MB to 2.4 MB. So... yeah, not the improvement I was hoping to see. I'm going to keep these changes, as I really didn't notice much of a visual change, and maybe it will make the game play a bit faster as well. But, have to say, not the game changer I was hoping for.
So that's the main thrust of what I've been working on this week. I've also been a bit paranoid that I have a more serious computer problem, so I've been a bit better about making backups & such. So far, the extra-long save times have been the only anomaly. Here's hoping I find the cause sooner rather than later.
-DirtyC101
Hm... a bit short for a post. I know, let me blather on about something I learned just this week. Actually, let me back up first. When I released K. Fox & the Magic Sword, the file size was just over 4 MB. About a month later I released version 1.1, and the file size had shrunk to just over 1 MB. What changed you ask? I learned how to compress sound files. The background music was taking up 3 MB of a 4 MB game.
So, this week I've been adding in the double team animations, and the file size has grown quite a bit because of it. Simultaneously, I've been having this 'funny' problem where saving can take up to 10 minutes. I assume the two are related - it's like I've exceeded some file size limit. I've been thinking the machine is hoping into virtual memory, or the hard drive is full or something else along those lines, but nothing is showing up as being obvious. Anyway, about the same time I learned that you can also compress sprites. AWESOME! I thought, I'll cut my file size by 75% for sure, probably even more because graphics take up a lot more space than sound files. This should totally fix my saving issues.
The compression tool in Flash works by combining features together. So a drawing with several small lines converts to fewer, smoother lines. And there's even a slider bar so you can control just how much it smears your work. (For those of you playing along at home, it's under Modify, Shape, Optimize). I didn't really want to change my art that much, but even with the slider set to minimal I was seeing the number of curves get cut in half. So, yeah, I was super excited about this.
I'll skip to the end here. The FLA file (the one I work with) shrunk from 53 MB to 50 MB, and the SWF file (the one you play) shrunk from 2.6 MB to 2.4 MB. So... yeah, not the improvement I was hoping to see. I'm going to keep these changes, as I really didn't notice much of a visual change, and maybe it will make the game play a bit faster as well. But, have to say, not the game changer I was hoping for.
So that's the main thrust of what I've been working on this week. I've also been a bit paranoid that I have a more serious computer problem, so I've been a bit better about making backups & such. So far, the extra-long save times have been the only anomaly. Here's hoping I find the cause sooner rather than later.
-DirtyC101
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