Topic, Game "Path 4 Mouse (old)"

  Thx gecko

  Sorry, but I've got enough testers now. I might add you later, but I'm going to wait until the game is in its final stages before I add any more testers.

  Can I be a tester if you don't mind?

  There! I've added five more backgrounds!

This bug is not very good.

For some reason, when you click on stop, everything stops.
You can't play a new level, and even the buttons, which just have a normal button code inside them, stop working. If you try to edit a level, the editor gets bugged very badly.

  Press the numbers on the game to choose a background!
Hey, talking about clouds... :adds to backgrounds:

  I cant say i can see any backgrounds. Where are they supposed to be, like on the actual game like the clouds on RT? or on the page for the game lyk the RT background?

I also like th emusic for when you hit the walls.
:)

  The background option is very cool, well done!
A small bug, when you play a level, then you click on STOP, the background selection buttons don't work anymore.

My suggestion for another background is a star or a heart.

I played with the sounds for the first time and they are great. The sounds are also great to notify you when you fail. But many people plays in mute mode and, as it was suggested before, you really need to make it visually more obvious when you hit a wall. What i would love to see is the blue squares explode (particles?) for example.

Also, I don't like the way the mouse followers blink. It seems they are made of a black dot surrounded by white. I would use less contrasted colors. You can change their clor dynamically when they are inside the black walls if we can see them anymore.


I would like also to recall the important suggestion by Captain :

"
Your method for checking to see if the mouse touched the sides seems a bit unreliable. It seems like you're just checking for the dots behind the mouse rather than just the mouse itself.

What you really need to do for a game like this is check along a line between the last mouse point and the current mouse point to see if it has collided with any tiles. I have a decent algorithm for this that I could share if you needed it.
"

  Ok, I'm open to a few more suggestions now!
One of the most important things is the new backgrounds. I'm thinking about making five more backgrounds, but I want some people to give me ideas. What patterns would you like?

Carbon Copy : THeNiNJa gundu allycat369 pkb123 starpower 1jase Sillius Hexicube Captain_404 doomlord

  Done!
I stored the background as a local shared object instead of user data, because it's easier for me.

I also got sounds working when you hit the walls or the start.

  Yes, I know about that, but I want people to be able to choose their theme, and have that saved as user data. I've got a solution though:
I have a background movieclip on the same layer as the level. This has the different textures inside it. Each texture is made of white transparent lines. This will look like a fill, even though it is actually a pattern in transparent white.

  I don't know about Flash 8 but in CS3 you can fill the objects with bitmaps. First import some bitmaps by drag and drop in the library. You can follow this tutorial http://animation.about.com/od/flashanimationtutorials/ss/flashbitmapfill_2.htm

  What code did you use to fill the lines in rolling turtle? I can't think of a way to manage the different fills without using some sort of actionscript.

I could just use one fill, but if I want customization, I would probably need to use actionscript.

  Fill every shape.

  Do you mean like a code I could use on the wall_container movieclip (which is the clip I created to manage the hitTest of every wall), or just fill every shape with the fill tool?

  @gecko, or you can fill directly the forms with a bitmap/texture.
As far as I'm concerned, I like the current graphics but anyway, this will be interesting to test.

[edit] Yeah the performances are better!

  I could give the background a mask over a textured pattern to make it more interesting.

I'm going to add sounds when you hit the start or when you hit a wall. I've already made them, but I haven't got round to adding them yet.

That reminds me, I could try out the whole user data thing by letting everybody choose the wall style they prefer.

  If you are able to do it, can you add 1 or 2 key who each one have a different color and can open the wall of her own color?

  Runs much faster for me now.


On an unrelated note, there really needs to be more feedback for when you hit a wall than just the blue thing disappearing.

Maybe the background could flash red, maybe you could add some screen shake. I don't know, but it just doesn't feel right to me as is.


Also, are the graphics you have now just temporary things? I personally find them pretty unengaging. I think your black could do for a little background texture. Maybe once you finish the editor you could even allow for people to make their own colors/textures for it.

  Woo! I think I've fixed the lag problem!
Testers, can you please test out the game to see if it's gone for you?

  @gecko, you have to embed the fonts, because not all users will have the fonts you want to use installed. Those users will see default fonts of the system which will be horrible.
On each dynamic text field, there is a button "embed", where you can specify the list of charcters you want to embed. Select only the chracters you will need as the fonts take a lot of size.

  Does it just look like Ariel (or whatever your system font is)?

  It doesn't really look pixely.

  Does the font for the timer appear pixelly (in the font 'Sydnie')?

If not, then I will have to change the font to something else.

Can another game creator tell me this:
When you compile a swf file, does the font get embedded automatically, or is it displayed only if the person viewing the game has that font installed on their computer?

  That's what I just said 3 posts down.

And mouse maze kills your score to the max.

  I think the lag gets worse and worse over time, not every level. The computer starts off handling it fine, then it gets more and more tired until it starts to lag...

I'm going to put fixing the lag in top priority.

  Go to the edit tab below the game. gives you info and a grid. make it in notepad then copy paste into text box.

  I am sorry to sound out of the loop but how do I make a level (I totally forgot about this game)

  The lag doesn't start off. Every play-through it accumulates. Perhaps something simaler to what caused the levels to overlay each other.

  The game seems to work (scores) but I think there is a performance problem, it uses too much CPU for a simple engine like this.

To improve the performance you must now first where it is lagging. To do so :
- Change the frame rate of your movieclip to 120 (for your tests only).
- Trace the true frame rate (with a counter and a timer on the _root enterframe method)
- Remove some part of your code to see if it imporves the frame rate. When your frame rate is improved a lot after you removed something, that something needs to be looked more deeply and improved. For example you can try to deactivate the hitTests and see only the the game with the levels. You can also use levels without a certain type of items to see if there is one of the items who causes the problem.

Instead of removing part of your code, you could also add timers traces in your code but as you used code in every movie clips this will not be easy to do like this.

Having looked quickly to your code, here are a few things you could do to improve things.

- you have an onEnterFrame method on each of your movie clips; This is know to slow down things and it's better to have only one EnterFrame method in the _root that manages all movie clips.
- when you declare a variable, like "var score=0;", it will increase the performance (slightly) if you tell to the flash virtual machine which type is the variable (if you know the type) >> "var score:Number=0;". Same for the methods; for example "function getdistance(x0:Number,y0:Number,x1:Number,y1:Number):Number" is better than "function getDistance(x0,y0,x1,y1)"

Ok I've uplaoded the editor again, but we must find why it doesn't work when you compile. I hope I will find a Flash 8 IDE to test it soon.

@Captain, is your algorithm based on hitTest ?

  Anyone knows when does this game is released to BonusLevel.org?