TF Flash Game the Second

[monomonkey]

I wanted to bump this to say I'm not dead and that I do intend to finish everything I have on my plate right now. Just that some other things have come up and this is getting pushed to the back burner.

All the drawings are done and some of the flash files have been started but that's about as far as I've gotten.

Sorry =(

[Dontino]

MY OWN CLONE!

Now neither of us will be virgins!

[monomonkey]

I did Bunny. I'm not 100% proud of it, but I figured anything is better than nothing.

I also noticed Cow was messed up. I fixed it.

Still no text? =x

BOLD TEXT mentioning how these are pretty much barebones games with just the animations and such done.'

edit: Made changes to bunny--get it two posts down.

[Hibiki]

Tried out the bunny one. It would seem the end message there is the cow one. Because when I think bunnies, I don't think of a renewable supply of fresh milk... :P

[monomonkey]

Sigh. So much of it decided to just randomly not work right at the end.

I hate Flash.

Here, it's fixed.

I swear I won't finish the next one at 10AM when I'm tired and want to sleep so I actually have time to test it and such.

[TB Tabby]

How about a mouse? Shrinking TFs are always fun.

[monomonkey]

To be honest I like posts in my thread. I hate doubleposting so I tend not to post if it seems like people just don't care.

Posts here remind me that there are people who legitimately care about the things I make, so there's value in continuing to do them.

[Seadog Driftwood]

How 'bout a squirrel change? I mean, they're cure, after all. Not sure I can fill in everything you asked for, unfortunately, but I can try...

1) Squirrel
a) (in no particular order)
-tail
-nose
-snout
-buckteeth (in reality, having the teeth constantly sticking out from a squirrel's lips means they're growing wrong, and will eventually lead to a rather unpleasant death. But the association of rodents with buckteeth is so common, that it seems a fitting characteristic to include)
-ears
-hands to paws / arms to squirrel's front limbs
-feet to paws / legs to squirrel's back limbs (large thighs full of muscles, but not bulging like human muscles)
-eyes (black, with less white area)
-fur (colour really depends on species. A common-enough trans-species colour is brown)

b)
-tail flicking and swishing
-sudden, skittish movements
-holding food up to mouth with forearms while sitting upright

[monomonkey]

A squirrel would not be hard and was something I've been considering for a while, so I'll add it to the list.

Since I have to update every version of the game so far in addition to pushing out the one new one, it will be a while, but it will happen.

Edit: Forgot to mention, when I first did the Cat stage, I did it horribly wrong, so I'm also re-doing it along with all of this. That's what's going to make it take a little longer.

You may not have noticed what was wrong with it, but I did, and so it matters a lot to me to get it fixed.

Edit: After working non-stop since I made this post, I finally actually got it working. Now it's just a matter of re-animating everything in the cat stage and re-coding every line that references the text file. In case you couldn't tell, this is sarcasm. The coding of the loaded external files was not supposed to take that long to do. The bulk of the time I foresaw this taking were in going over every instance where I reference the text file for the line of dialogue and adding in the check for the four images and moving the reference point for the text four lines over. That code was done in five seconds--it's just a matter of copying and pasting it everywhere.

But no, I spent all my time just coding the damn loader. Flash is the pickiest program on the face of the Earth. For example, I'm not allowed to use the tried-and-true _visible code when trying to determine which of the four options should be visible or not. Oh no. I MUST use the _alpha code. Of course, none of the tutorials or help files or code references mention this. I found it in an offtopic comment on the two hundredth thread I looked through for problems relating to importing images in Flash.

See, this is why things take me a long time. Flash is just the worst program ever.

Sigh. I'm going to bed. I can proudly say I'm about 10% done or so. I don't like to set times to expect things because all it takes is one night where I say "you know, I really have nothing better to do. I'll spend ten hours mindlessly copying and pasting things in Flash over and over again!" and I could do this entire project. I typically put about 2 hours into it a day. More if I'm on a roll, fewer if I hate Flash.

[cpt soban]

theres a simple intuitive thing called _visible? I've always been using _alpha (or set alpha) for transparencies in programs.

[monomonkey]

Originally Posted by cpt soban

theres a simple intuitive thing called _visible? I've always been using _alpha (or set alpha) for transparencies in programs.

Yep. All I do in these flash projects is create movie clips of the animation, name them, and then set _visible to false and stop() playing until the trigger. So when you make a pair, it checks to see which pair you made (this alone took me forever since the base tutorial game I borrowed some of the code from did not do this) and then I have it make that object visible and begin to play it.

Within that movie clip is even more code that determines which dialogue line to display in addition to switching out the eyes for "up" or "down" versions of the ones already displayed and (until the next version) choosing which smile to display (if any).

So yeah. Flash has _visible = true/false for that. For these, since they're dynamic I guess, I was forced to use _alpha = 0 / 100. I just didn't know that this was required since it wasn't in the livedocs from apple's Flash API site (or anyone else's site for that matter). Initially I was having problems with just loading them in since they'd flash once they were loaded in, but in trying to fix that I generated even more problems. In the end, the solution was to set their alpha to 0 BEFORE I loaded the image into the placeholder movie clip.

I try to be as concise with my code as possible, refusing to use methods or function calls or setting up classes or things like that, which is part of the problem. I just don't like that style of coding, personally. This is probably why I have so many problems, but I'd rather be able to understand my own code when something is broken.

Edit: Super-secret progress update: 75% done re-making the Cat stage. I guarantee I will run into my stack-of-ten problem and I have yet to brainstorm a solution to this problem. In case you haven't read all my posts, this is an inherent flaw in Flash that prevents you from stacking more than ten objects on top of one another. If you do this, each new object past the tenth will cause the first one to disappear. Think of it like a line of people. When the line gets to 10 and this is the maximum capacity (despite no warnings suggesting this maximum capacity), normally the last person will just not be able to get into the line. But what Flash does is say "hey first person in line, get out of the line. We know you've been waiting there all this time, but this new person wants to get in the line, so we're forcing you out."

Isn't Flash great!

Edit 2: Realized I was being stupid(ish) with regards to the stacking problem. After the animation ended, I would put the original image in the last frame of the animation so it would display like that, because I was having problems with proper spacing in the previous Flash game (that I now understand the causes of). So, I would have these same-size images all stacked on top of one another rather than individual small parts scattered around. Every image is a PNG with the same size, so it's just the part and then a bunch of blank space. It's the stacking blank space that Flash has an issue with, so removing it removed the problem with stacking.

Still working on re-animating the cat stage (since I made the same mistake I did with the other game until I realized what I was doing wrong (you have to add one pixel of blank space all around every image as you make it or Flash freaks out)), but it won't be long now. Mind you, I still intend on re-doing all four stages I've released so far with this addendum and then finishing up the 5th super secret one before I upload anything.

Edit 3: Cat stage finished! With the extra time I had that I didn't want to spend copying and pasting endless code into the 4 other stages, I decided to make the code-generator, which is now also finished! It didn't really turn out exactly the way I described, but it does give you the four digit number that corresponds to the facial expression you want for the scene. I originally intended for there to be an automatic code generator that would actually output the text file, but that's a lot more work and I think I'll stick with this simple interface for now until people actually tell me they want an automatic code generator (hint: don't tell me you want an automatic code generator).

I also added some elements to the cat stage since I was no longer limited by the stack-of-10 rule. I rushed it, but it's pretty basic in its functionality and it does add a sense of realism to the whole thing kinda, or at least a proper "story"-driven idea. You'll understand what I mean when you see it. If it doesn't look right (as with anything), let me know and I'll fix it (or at least think about it). For the billionth time, I'm not an artist and I really don't have an eye for these things, which is why I'm using tiny sprites in the first place =x

[Syllis]

Great news about you making progress, I'm really looking forward to the final products.
Bump for greatness so this thread doesn't get forgotten.