Creating an Asteroids Flash Game Using the Display List Part 2: Creating and Firing bullets, and making objects “wrap around” the screen
I’m going to finish up the tutorial section on creating an asteroids game in FlashDevelop using the display list. This series will run parallel to the tutorial set for creating an asteroids game using blitting.
In the last section, we added keyboard input to the ship, so that we could rotate in any direction, and move forward.
In this section, we’ll create bullets that are fired from the front of the ship at a limited rate, and make both the ship and the bullets wrap around when they reach the edge of the screen.
Creating a Asteroids Flash Game Using the Display List Part 1: Creating The Game, Ship and Keyboard Controls
In this article, we’ll be using classic flash techniques to create an asteroids ship and move it around on screen using the keys.
This is a quick way to create simpler games, or for any game where you don’t need complex control of the rendering order of your objects.
Note:
Blitting (which is covered in the other asteroids tutorials) is the technique I normally use when creating a game, since it resembles the same way you would create a game in C++ or Java using DirectX or OpenGL, and gives you much better control of the order of objects rendered on screen.
But for simpler games, or ones where you don’t have to group simmilar objects to render in a certain order, using the built-in display list can be much faster.
SVN in Shared Hosting with Hostgator
I’ve wanted to setup an SVN server for personal use, and to keep files current between my fiance and me when we’re working on the same project.
So far I’ve resorted to using a flash drive, but sometimes it takes a while to check which machine or flash drive has the latest copy of my program source, or even sometimes losing the flash drive, and potentially having the latest copy lost.
Well, I switched hosts to hostgator not too long ago from Godaddy, which had been great for my static+php sites, but awful for wordpress, due to fetching from the database. Sometimes 60 seconds to load a basic page! (5 seconds max with hostgator, BTW)
I like hostgator a lot better, they make it easy to run CRON jobs, but could I finally have a basic SVN server using them?
Yep, here’s how I did it, although it took over 3 hours of pulling out hair:
How to create an SVN on hostgator
Summary of Flash Mind Meld (flashmindmeld.com)
Ever since one of my favorite Actionscript game development bloggers (Emanuele Feronato) posted on his site about ‘Flash Mind Meld’, I have been waiting to go through it. Sixty ‘Experts’ give their tips on creating successful flash games in 60 seconds. Sounds amazing, right? Free advice from 60 guys and gals good enough to be counted as top flash game developers.
I just finished listening and taking notes on all the sound bites, and wanted to provide a summary of what I had heard.
I was happy to see Emanuele on there, but there were also some other big names, such as Jim Greer from kongregate, Sean Cooper who started game development in 1987, and worked on the PC title ‘Magic Carpet’ at bullfrom games, Tom Fulp, creator of newgrounds.com, alien hominid, castle crashers, and many other developers, a lot I hadn’t heard of, but had seen their games.
Creating a Asteroids Flash Game Part 10: Changing Vector Images to Bitmaps
This article is about loading your own graphics into your asteroids game created in the asteroids tutorial.
Adding images to what we already have is actually simpler than creating the vector drawings.
There are two ways to do this — embed the image, or use a loader to load externally.
I personally like loading them externally on run time, with filenames stored in an external xml for larger projects.
But since the last asteroids article was for Kongregate, we’ll have to only end up with one packaged swf, to be able to upload it to their servers.
Transitioning from C++ to Actionscript using FlashDevelop
Transitioning from a C++ background to Actionscript is fairly easy, but some of the differences can be surprising, as well as aggravating.
In this article, I try to outline some of the differences and tips/ things to watch out for when coding in Actionscript 3.0 vs C++/ Java.
Creating a Asteroids Flash Game Part 9: Integrating with the Kongregate API
In the last section, we created a way to keep track of the lives and score, as well as created levels, restarting, pausing, and a basic menu GUI to start the game.
In this section, we’ll add the Kongregate API to the game to allow us to keep track of the score through the Kongregate game site.
You can preview the game on Kongregate here:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/doomtoo/chrismweb-classic-asteroids
Creating a Asteroids Flash Game Part 8: Lives, Scores, Restarting, Pausing, Creating Levels, and a Basic GUI
In the last section, we created a way to detect collisions, created particle explosions, and broke the asteroids up into smaller pieces when hit.
In this section, we’ll keep track of the lives, score, make levels, and create a GUI for starting, restarting, and pausing the game.
Creating a Asteroids Flash Game Part 7: Detecting Collisions and Creating Particle Explosions
In the last section, created as asteroids class to easily create a variety of asteroids, as well as move them around on screen.
In this section, we’ll create a way to detect collisions between the asteroids and the ship or bullets, and create particle explosions when the collisions happen, as well as break apart asteroids upon collision.
Creating a Flash Asteroids Game Part 6: Creating Asteroids
In the last section, we created bullets, and a method of wrapping the ship and bullets to the other side of the screen when they reach an edge of the screen.
In this section, we’ll create an asteroids class that allows us to make a variety of asteroids quickly and easily. We’ll also move them around, and wrap them on the screen.
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