Gooeeno Diary
Yesterday I released the Beta 3 Version of Gooeeno. There's still a few odds and ends to clean up, and of course I want to see what the reaction is as far as difficulty and balance, but basically the game is done. Now is a good time for me to put down some thoughts about what my vision was for the game, where I succeeded or failed, and what I learned from the experience.
I started working on this game about 6 months ago, and originally it was just an expirement in Flash. My goal was to create a simple game engine in Flash that would support an side-scrolling platform game (a la Sonic, Mario, etc.). Despite this being an "old school" game, I hoped to make it fun enough and original enough that it would still appeal to gamers that are used to the high-tech 3D games that are prevelant today.
As it is, building this kind of game in Flash is a mammoth challenge. If you look at Flash Game sites, you will find hardly any background scrolling games of this sort. The main reason for this is speed. Despite all the great things about Flash, it's pretty darn slow when it comes to rendering graphics. First, it doesn't take advantage of graphics hardware. Moreover, it is a "virtual machine" technology -- meaning the SWF is interpreted by the Flash Player program, which is a whole layer between the swf and the operating system. In short, there's a lot of performance overhead.
For more about building scrolling arcade games in Flash, see this site: http://outsideofsociety.idz.net/ It gives one a sense of what a challenging problem it is. Of course the fact that this has not been done successfully in the past was part of the challenge!
Here are some of my other original goals:
* Create a game with unique, appealing characters and some semblance of a story.
* Create an engine flexible enough to allow for a variety of levels and environments.
* The level-creation process should be easy and quick. A simple level should only take a couple of hours to lay out. Ideally, the level could be laid out in Flash itself from a collection of building blocks. Thus, there would be no need to develop a seperate level creation tool.
* The overall file size should be small. * Sound effects -- this is my first game with some sound effects!
* Reuse existing code from previous games.
In another entry, I will discuss some of the failures and limitations of the game, but at least I can say that, after months of work, I was successful in achieving these goals. I consider Gooeeno my "magnum opus" in Flash; from here I will probably try to move on to mastering other technologies, like DirectX. It's difficult imagining a single Flash Game that's more complex than this.
...until Gooeeno 2, that is. :)
I started working on this game about 6 months ago, and originally it was just an expirement in Flash. My goal was to create a simple game engine in Flash that would support an side-scrolling platform game (a la Sonic, Mario, etc.). Despite this being an "old school" game, I hoped to make it fun enough and original enough that it would still appeal to gamers that are used to the high-tech 3D games that are prevelant today.
As it is, building this kind of game in Flash is a mammoth challenge. If you look at Flash Game sites, you will find hardly any background scrolling games of this sort. The main reason for this is speed. Despite all the great things about Flash, it's pretty darn slow when it comes to rendering graphics. First, it doesn't take advantage of graphics hardware. Moreover, it is a "virtual machine" technology -- meaning the SWF is interpreted by the Flash Player program, which is a whole layer between the swf and the operating system. In short, there's a lot of performance overhead.
For more about building scrolling arcade games in Flash, see this site: http://outsideofsociety.idz.net/ It gives one a sense of what a challenging problem it is. Of course the fact that this has not been done successfully in the past was part of the challenge!
Here are some of my other original goals:
* Create a game with unique, appealing characters and some semblance of a story.
* Create an engine flexible enough to allow for a variety of levels and environments.
* The level-creation process should be easy and quick. A simple level should only take a couple of hours to lay out. Ideally, the level could be laid out in Flash itself from a collection of building blocks. Thus, there would be no need to develop a seperate level creation tool.
* The overall file size should be small. * Sound effects -- this is my first game with some sound effects!
* Reuse existing code from previous games.
In another entry, I will discuss some of the failures and limitations of the game, but at least I can say that, after months of work, I was successful in achieving these goals. I consider Gooeeno my "magnum opus" in Flash; from here I will probably try to move on to mastering other technologies, like DirectX. It's difficult imagining a single Flash Game that's more complex than this.
...until Gooeeno 2, that is. :)