Category Archives: Actionscript

Scores

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screenshot_5_JANThe Twist is progressing nicely.  Spending most of my time today working on UI and Graphics – Nothing to stressful on the ol’ brain.  You can see my progress and current iteration of the main menu screen at the moment ( oo, coming soon eh? oooooo!)

Last week I spent time working on a highscore system.

I really wanted The Twist to have an online scoreboard.  The most obvious solution was to use an existing system (Kongregate, MochiMedia, etc).  However my biggest problem with so many of these systems, is they’re not really Mobile friendly, and they all require intrusive registration.

I wanted my players to be able to start score, stat, and achievement tracking as soon as the game launches, and really never have to think about it.  I figured crafting my own score system couldn’t be that hard, now could it ?

I’ve had an amount of experience in high score tracking before, so this wasn’t completely unfamiliar territory.  In my previous games, I was working with a Rails API, this solution was to be quite different.  I wanted something super lightweight, and relatively robust.

I experimented with CouchDB to start, simply because I’ve used it in a few projects.  However I ended up having problems crafting the rather specific views I wanted. A friend then directed me towards MongoDB, and that is what I am currently using.  It’s quick, lightweight, and seems to do everything I want it to.  I’m still yet to do intense stress testing with it, and I’m not sure how it will cope with real players using it – but I’m hopeful.

Ultimately, worst comes to worst, I gut it and install a pre-made solution – But I wanted to give this a go for myself.  If it works out, it’s something I’ll be able to use for many projects in the future.

Ludum Dare + The Twist

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I recently took part in Ludum Dare – A 48 hour game competition.  The theme for this round was “You are the villain”.  Originally I spent my time working on a ‘Scooby Doo’ themed game, where you dress up as ghosts and scare people away from real estate and castles and the like.  Eventually I decided to move away from that idea.  I was going to give LD a miss at this point, it wasn’t until a few hours later that my brain threw ‘The Twist’ into view.

I ended up coding a game about twirling moustaches (because what good villain doesn’t twirl his moustache deviously?) called “The Twist”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4IAWbp30xE

The finished LD version can be played here (Android version here) and the slightly modified post-competition version here, however I have decided to move forward and go for a commercial release.  It will be a good trial run for later projects.  My initial plan is to release for Android ($1 ish), and maybe a feature-lite version for Kongregate.  I hope to have the game released before the end of voting (which I believe is January 9th?).

I’ve got a lot to do before then.  I want to implement a scoring + ‘achievement’ (notoriety is what I’m calling it) system, fix a variety of bugs, add some extra features, and I’ve also got a second game mode lined up (though that will probably be a second release, later down the track).

Currently, I am working on the scoring system – utilizing CouchDB.  I’ve been working on security, and it should be close to secure for the time being.  The system will be designed in such a way that if it turns out not to be acceptable, then I can switch in another solution.