May Update

Feel kinda silly calling this an update, because I haven't touched the game since my last post. But, my list of 'busy' is getting shorter by the day. With luck, I'll be back in the saddle again by the middle of this month. On the upside, one of the fun results from all this work is I should have a new(er) computer to work with, so it's definitely not a total wash. haha

There were 2 big bugs y'all found, and wanted to talk about them a bit. (Yay for sorta - code theory!) The first is that the game will lock if you mash buttons during a scene change. That has to do with how commands are sent & executed. If you can imagine, once you press the A button to attack, I have to tell the program to stop accepting further inputs of the A button, or it will keep sending you the the first frame of the attack animation until you let go of the A button. Conversely, the final frame of the attack routine tells the program that the attack has ended, which resets the hero back to the default state. The problem here is that a scene change interrupts the attack routine. The last frame never plays, which means it can never reset the hero. So, the program thinks you're still in the middle of an attack & won't accept new inputs, but it will never get that reset signal because the animation was stopped. This one should actually be a pretty easy fix. Simply tell the end of the scene loader to reset any attacks. Or I could lock the keyboard from inputs during scene changes.

The second is that if you die & continue while double teamed, one of the monsters will become invisible/invulnerable. There were no double team animations until about two weeks before the release. This was the last feature I added, and no real surprise, I missed something. In this case, I simply forgot to tell the continue code to check for a second monster in a grapple. So when you continue, it never properly loads the second monster back. He's still there, but his sprite is 'lost'. Actually, it's off-screen, which is where I 'hide' sprites I know I need but don't want to show at that time. What I find interesting is that some of the hit attacks from this off-screen monster still seem to work normally. In my mind, they shouldn't. (And that is neat, imo.) Anyway, this should be a simple fix of telling the continue button to check for a 2nd grappler & reload them if necessary. Hell, I may not have to even run the check, I may simply tell it to reload two grapplers every time, and if the 2nd grappler isn't there it shouldn't do anything.

And since I like to end with at least one picture, here's one from the ULMF forums that made me lol. One of the guys there hacked the game's variables so that they can be set to anything - note the 859 continues. ;)

Til next time
-DirtyC101

I've got 99 problems but this beta ain't one.

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.

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

Drawing is hard...

So one of the many things I've been putting off is drawing the heros at anything other than a side view.  I think we already covered that drawing isn't my strong suit, although whenever I try I feel like I at least learn something.  Regardless, the entire game plays from a side view, so there hasn't been a push to draw more.  This week I started working on the double-team grapples, and realized that a second view/perspective with them facing the screen a bit more would really help.  The first several attemps turned out pretty bad, and in hindsight I wish I had screencapped a few of them to show my progress as I went.  What I have now isn't super-awesome, but it no longer jumps out to me as being flat out wrong either. 

I suspect redrawing the feet at a deeper angle would help a lot.  I also think her torso might need to be a bit longer, as the spacing from her breasts to her belly-button looks too small to me.  I can tell the angles on the torso aren't lining up right, and I'm hoping that's because I'm re-using too much from the side view.  Ah well, more stuff to learn.  hehe.  If one of you has some pointers or a some good references for me, now'd be a good time to post them.

-DirtyC101

Story & Update

I spent a large amount of time this weekend working on the game, and I'm glad to say I made a ton of progress.  All the critical features are now done, so I shouldn't have any problem posting a playable demo in April.  That doesn't mean I'm happy with it yet, but the game now 'works' for lack of a better term.  I think I'm going to set the release date on tax day (April 15th for those of you not in America).  Let's face it, there's not much else to celebrate that day, so figured I'd bring a small bit of joy to everyone in my own way.  hahaha.  There's still lots of smaller features & just general polish I'd like to add, so we'll see how many of those I can include before then.

I want to talk a bit about the story, or more precisely, the back story.  One of the things that rather bothered me about Krystal / K. Fox is that they have personal spaceships, and yet they're running around fighting with their bare hands.  You'd think they'd have something a little more high-tech for weapons.  Some sort of energy weapon or blaster, plus maybe a vibro-knife or a chainsword.

So why aren't they carrying them?

There's a lot of potential explanations here, but in the end I went with the old MacGuffin - they end up on a planet where energy weapons don't work.  I can't even count how many times Star Trek has pulled that one out.  The planet is one of medieval fantasy and is of course inhabited with plenty of bad guys, but also other potential heroes.  So at the character selection screen, you'll have your choice between a rescuer sent to search for a missing spaceship, or a local inhabitant who is trying to figure out what that giant meteor was last night.  I'm hoping it makes for an interesting mix of both sci-fi & fantasy.  We'll see how well it goes together.

-DirtyC101

Sex & Games

Browsing Slashdot, & saw a link to this article:

Why_videogames_havent_grown_up_yet

It's a small piece about how mainstream video games handle sex & sexual relations  (short version: poorly).  It's one of my biggest pet peeves with larger games - either they ignore sex completely, or they bumble around with 'how much skin can we show & still get an M rating?'  Now make no mistake, I have no problem with pin-up quality heroines.  My beef is that the games are clearly trying to sell on sex, but fall short of actually including any.  If you're going to put a brothel in a game, there had better be an actual sex option.

In fairness, selling sex while somehow remaining in the 'not porn' camp is nothing new.  Movies dance this line with every R release.  And somehow they avoid seeming like a preteen's porn fantasy.  Why can't video games rise to the same bar?  I don't know - but it's one of those things that bother me constantly. 

Back to my porn games (which also handle sex poorly, but in the opposite way), Kidan asked me about the stats in my next game.  My goal with this game was to have each character actually play differently.  The warrior should be strong, but perhaps not great with brains or sexual technique.  The wizard should be really bright & should have powerful magic attacks, but probably have low health.   So, I grabbed my old RPG books & started notating which stats I'd want to use.  I was on the dangerous path of building a full RPG, but then I realized that this is supposed to be a porn game.  It's supposed to be light & quick to pick up.  So, I looked at everything I wanted to happen in the game, and I started combining stats together.  I ended up with:

Body
Spirit

And that's it.  I managed to crowbar any action I needed under these two stats.  Body consists of everything a fighter would need (Strength, Stamina, Reflexes), and Spirit is everything else.  Think of it as a combination of both Intelligence & Charisma - it's everything a wizard would need, plus some charm & sexual abilities.  Originally Intelligence & Charisma were separate, but they just aren't used enough in the game.  This made the Body stat far superior.  So for game balance I ended up combining the two.  Which in theory means the wizard is also the best with sexual attacks.  It doesn't quite work out that way, as she doesn't have the strength to maintain an advantage in most grapples, but it does make for interesting play.  Anyway, I made a short list of things each stat affects, I'll copy it below.

BODY:
Damage & skill with physical weapons
Grapple strength (shifts advantage bar)
Maximum health
Force open doors, climb ropes
Resist poisons

SPIRIT:
Damage & skill with magic attacks
Grapple damage
Health regeneration rate
Solve logic puzzles
Charm / Coerce certain NPCs

 That's a long post, so I'll go ahead & wrap up.  For those of you who are curious about where K. Fox plays into this, I'll simply say she's somewhere in between.  I have her set up as a Monk or martial artist, which requires both stats to some extent.

-DirtyC101

March Update

So let's jump right to it - I'm trying to package up most of the first act into a playable Beta.  Ideally I'd like to have that done by the end of this month.  Don't get too excited though, my original plan was to be done with the whole game by the end of February, so clearly I'm not too good at setting realistic timetables.

I flipped back & forth on having a playable demo at all.  Most demos not only suck, but they suck the life out of the final game as well.  But, I'm reaching the point where all the code is done, and now'd be a good time to check it.  The game isn't 'large' per se, but it is big enough that I don't think I'd catch every possible combination on my own.  So, opening it up to the masses just seems like the right thing to do. 

So that's the 'plan'.  Amazing, eh?  Yup, I'm a schemer.  Those of you who just want to play the demo, come back around the beginning of April.  There's going to be more talking by me before then, so don't be shocked when the next few posts don't contain the game.  I definitely want to make at least one post about the story, esp since I won't have any of the character intros done.  And there's been some 'funny code stories' as well I'd like to share, if you believe in such a thing.

Worked on the first mini-boss today, so let's end with a shot of her just so I can show a picture.  ;)

-DirtyC101