TF Flash Game the Second

[The_Nameless_One]

I feel your pain, and hope you will manage to get more done without letting Flash beat you into a bloody pulp in the next days.

I'm pretty sure most users here really appreciate your very cool work.

[Seadog Driftwood]

Originally Posted by The_Nameless_One

...without letting Flash beat you into a bloody pulp...

Or the other way around...

[transformative]

Originally Posted by Seadog Driftwood

Or the other way around...

heh?

nice work btw ;p

Edit: never mind I figured it out... >_<

[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.

[LostHopeOfDusk]

Is great to see you making transformation games again... how are you with Java?

Edit: May the cat one be naked or change clothes when you beat the game? Pretty please?

[monomonkey]

Originally Posted by LostHopeOfDusk

Is great to see you making transformation games again... how are you with Java?

Edit: May the cat one be naked or change clothes when you beat the game? Pretty please?

I am great with Java for simple applications like calculating the first 100,000 prime numbers, but when it comes to GUI-based Java, I am terrible.

I majored in it in college for a while but even with four straight courses on Java I never actually learned anything but the theory of coding. I promptly dropped it as my major.

As for a naked one, I've been trying to do it but I'm hindered by my lack of artistic ability. If I can do it for one, I'll do it for all of them, but it's difficult. My style of drawing is "Trial and Error" (hey, the same as my technique for solving Math problems!). I draw something zoomed in, look at it at regular size, and see if I like it. If I like it but I think I can do better, I make a new layer and try again and compare. So I end up with like 5 layers for each part and then narrow it down to which ones look best with the other parts.

In summary: I'll try, but this customization thing comes first. If there's another person out there who can do sprite editing, I'd love to have your help in that. Otherwise, I'll have to wing it and hope I get it right. Also, what did you have in mind for 'change clothes'? I worked on trying to do something like that too but it kinda falls into the same category as trying to do a clothesless version.

PS - I've decided to sneak in a new update to all of the stages too. It goes along with one of the edits I made when I was working on the Cat stage revision.

[mabmoro]

Are these available for download anywhere?

[monomonkey]

The ones I've actually done so far? Cat, Cow, Dog, and Bunny? They're scattered around posts in this thread.

Cat: http://www.process-productions.com/f...0&postcount=18
Dog: http://www.process-productions.com/f...1&postcount=21
Cow: http://www.process-productions.com/f...5&postcount=22
Bunny: http://www.process-productions.com/f...3&postcount=53

The update I'm working on will have all four of these games updated with the new customization and another new stage all in one file so it won't be so confusing trying to find all these things.

Edit: So I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to work with the Mouths. I still have it as one of the cards for most of the animations but I don't know what I should do with them. Should I put them on top of the custom mouths so as to show that it's permanently changed? I don't want to because it's a large part of her expression but I don't know what I can do about that, since the only other option I can see is to put the new ones on top, which makes it so you don't ever see the changed one.

Ideally I could have two sets of mouths that you can interchange once you get the card paired but I don't know how to do that effectively.

Edit 2: Or do I?

Edit 3: Ok I DID have a working plan on how to do this but I think it over-complicates things. I was going to have another set of four loaded files for each animal's expressions once their mouth changes but it's just annoying and not worth it. (Was trying to re-draw four sets of cat mouths but no matter what I did for that 'one tooth' style of mouths it made her look like a vampire and I wanted her to be cute not ugly so blargh. Also, her face is on a two-pixel symmetry, meaning everything in the middle of her face has to be two pixels wide (think trying to pick the middle of a row of 10 objects--you have to pick #5 and 6 together) and this has been giving me a lot of problems over the course of these edits for all of my games (can't do :3 face, can't do :< noses, most expressions look horribly wrong, etc. (man I love parentheses!)).)

Here's my current problem. Let's say you do it the way I have it currently where the cat mouth is Mouth4. In the previous iteration of the game, her generic smile would be replaced with this cat smile whenever she smiled (after every pair once you were in the final mental state, for example) and that was fine. But I'm letting you choose, so I can't replace your choice, especially since the notepad file won't know in advance what mental state you're in and you might be trying to show annoyance or sadness with that specific situation. At the same time, you have no way of knowing in advance which order the cards will be picked, so you can't use Mouth4's cat mouth for any other situations except for when you pair the mouth itself.

I'm just about to say "screw it" and just have the mouth change ONCE (when you pair Mouth) and ignore your input for what the mouth should be just that one time, then hide it for good when you make another pair and her expression changes again. Though, there will be problems with this once again when I get to the cow stage and the other stage that I haven't divulged anything about since the mouths in those stages are so far removed from human mouths. I guess I could cheat and just say 'hey those mouths can't form expressions so you don't get anymore when you pair the mouth card so HAH!' as long as people are fine with my cop-out method of coding (which you should be since I'm doing this for free).

I know this is hard to understand if you're not in my head (and if you are in my head, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!) and I'm not even sure what it is I'm trying to say, so... hey!

Edit: Man these posts get sickeningly long as I edit them (POST MOAR).

For those wondering, I cannot include a section in the external text file that will let you change the introduction message (which is currently "What's with all those cards?"). The problem here is that Flash loads the text from the file too slowly and by the time it gets to the line in the code where it would look into the text file for the appropriate message, it will not have been loaded and thus loads nothing and proceeds to the next line of code. I can fix it with some brainstorming but I just don't care to =D

Edit # 600 billion: Finished the doggy stage. Cow and Bunny should take considerably less time since I am not adding anything new to them due to apathy. Cat and Dog took so long because I added new stuff and the new stuff broke the old stuff so I had to re-code the old stuff while fixing the new stuff and blargh. Then I have to do the super-secret stage (which I might just save for a future release or something I dunno. If you all are frothing at the mouth for this update then I'll leave it for later since it might take me a little while and I don't want you all to think I'm slacking off and never going to release this so whatever).

Edit # infinity: I don't want to post again even though people have posted after this post and this message will go unread >_>

ALMOST DONE. Ish. I just wanted to update to say I'm removing a lot of extraneous dialogue scenes in the various text files. For example, why did I have 12 different Spots dialogues in the Cow stage? What difference could you have established between them based on which spots were growing? Ugh. I don't think well this early in the morning.

The reason for this? I'm lazy, of course! The old code was like "_root.textbox = _root.spotsb3" or something (in layman's terms, the text box I use for all the dialogue and the name of the thingy in the text file I put along with the file). That was it. The new code splits up the line into five parts, taking the first character and finding out which Eye image to show, taking the second character and finding out with Eyebrow image to show, etc. I consolidated it as much as possible, but it's no longer a simple matter to do these variable dialogue sequences.

So, I removed all the "hands but no legs", "legs but no hands", "hands and legs", etc. things and just kept the important ones (wag with no tail and wag with tail for example).

Also, in the end, I've decided to have the new mouth show up once and then go away when you make the next pair. If someone can recommend something better once they see what I mean, I'll try fixing it.

Also also, these are likely to have lots of bugs since I'm not testing every case and scenario, so please report them =x

Edit # infinity/0: Cow stage done. Gave me a ton of grief. Hoping bunny has absolutely no changes necessary. Hoping.

[Syllis]

Hey, we're fine with anything you make. I believe I speak for everyone here when I say that we appreciate the time and effort you put in this. Those who don't should be happy that there is someone who wants to do all this for free for us. Thanks again monomonkey! Can't wait for the release!

[Hibiki]

Originally Posted by Syllis

Hey, we're fine with anything you make. I believe I speak for everyone here when I say that we appreciate the time and effort you put in this. Those who don't should be happy that there is someone who wants to do all this for free for us. Thanks again monomonkey! Can't wait for the release!

Ditto!

[monomonkey]

It's ready!

I actually finished! Fortunately the bunny stage only required a little bit of layer shuffling and code-swapping, so I ended up saving the easiest for last.

A few things.

1) I did not test extensively. If you see a problem with the game, please post it here. With one billion combinations possible (seriously! 10^12 combinations!), I can't test them all. Also, the game will run differently for every computer out there, so bugs for me might not happen for you and vice-versa. One bug I can't fix is when you pair too quickly. Sometimes it will increase the pair count by 2 and it can end the game prematurely. Try not to make another pair during an animation.

2) You will notice that I added something other than a spiral for the mind cards. I felt like the spiral was a cheap cop-out and instead gave her the item that was on the card. However, I could not think of a reasonable way to do this for the bunny stage. I'd either need to change the icons or think way outside the box, because there's no obvious way to me to implement those two other than to put a carrot in one hand and an egg in the other, which is boring and does not make for an explanation as to why her mental state has changed.

3) Along with the bug testing is the quality check. Are the images OK? Are the animations good? Can I improve on them in some way? Please tell me. I'm not an artist and don't really have an artistic eye, especially when I stay up later than I should to finish up a drawing.

4) Please continue to suggest stages, and don't be afraid to think outside the box. I have several suggestions currently: frog, donkey, clothing. I do plan on doing them (eventually...) but would love more suggestions! I'll even do a new sprite if you've got one!

Now to take a well-deserved break... until the first bug report post that is.

Edit: And there it is. If you want to see me go insane, read my next post! As for the game, it has moved four posts down (see the insane post for details).