[Pimp] Toxic Shock

[Squize]

Ta tidenburg, but I'm not sure what you mean about the collisions ?

nuke, it's just to make our lives more difficult mate

Tony, thanks for the opera feedback, and yeah the look on his face when running around on fire made me giggle first time I saw it.

Cheers Mr M and Kris.

"I found it a little slow-moving and samey at first though"

That's what I was worried about too. I found it really tricky trying to get the difficulty right.

In terms of movement, that was the biggest internal debate we had. I think I mentioned it before but it was built around the F9 beta's, so it was silky smooth and ran like a megadrive game.
The plan was to make it so it rocked on the faster beta players, and just hope the final release version came out before, or soon after it was released.
Then people playing with the older versions wouldn't have such a great experience, but quick adoptors of the latest version would, and as a game it would last longer as it was targetted at a "higher" spec. version of Flash.

Of course that kinda came crashing down when Adobe released the final version running at a fraction of the speed of the betas ( And my recent obsession with wmode to get it running again as it should ).

By then though, it was far too late to back track. Major lesson to be learnt there about relying on beta software ( Common sense in hindsight ).

In terms of look and feel, in-game it's great, but I think the front-end could have done with a bit more love, we just ran out of budget ( Which was my fault by over delivering too much. Point proving and all that ).

bomesar, yeah that's normal. It's only on level 4 where you're collecting candy instead of trash ( Check me out sounding all American ) that it doesn't reset.
It's really worth while collecting all the trash, even if you lose a life, if you want to get a really big score

Thanks again everyone for the continued interest. As always if anyone has any techy or design questions then feel free.

Squize.

[marmotte]

2 pages, Squize. Damn guy

How do you do your sprites marmotte? Drawn by hand and scanned in?

All the sprites in this game have been done in vectors (now that you are talking about it, I should probably buy a tablet in the future ).
The green bad guys are really simple shapes, while the doctor was more complex (but I had a "final" model, I just needed to vectorize it and animate it)

Hmmm, I think that I never had to scan any of my sprites. They are either 100% vectors, either vectors + photoshop afterwards (so they look more realistic)

[Fall_X]

It's a nice game, but I would have liked it a lot better if you could somehow fight the enemies, and if you had implemented double-jumping. But then again, I'm not in the target demographic, and I probably expect other things from games than kids. So yeah, nice job!

[Ray Beez]

Well Squize I can tell you're proud of this one. ;-) Good job, and good job Marmotte. (Thanks nGFX too...) Pleasure working with all of you.

Now, I just hope the client doesn't happen to Google this thread... She might not understand the criticisms. EEK! 8-D

[ImprisonedPride]

2 pages, Squize. Damn guy

That really depends on your settings. Only 1 page here.

[strille]

random, wow you and Lux in the same thread. Hopefully this is the start of both of you getting back here more often ( Now where's strille ? ).

I'm here :-)

Great game as usual Squize, ran smooth in Firefox for me. Very polished, loved the sewer background animation and the tv-screens in the labs. I made it to the robot, but had missed some candy so I had to go back. Nice death animations (nice animations overall), I especially loved the death animation from the laser fields when you turn into dust (game over for me). The enemies reminded me of Miyazaki's monsters in Princess Mononoke/Spirited Away, was that an inspiration Marmotte?

It's easy to dismiss the game if you only play it for 30 seconds or so, but it's definitely an above average platform game. Congrats!

[random10122]

mwahaha,

the oldies are taking over.

[mr_malee]

this thread is like Broadway

[WilloughbyJackson]

So I guess it's my turn to say something.

So, the hit detection is art-based?

[rachil0]

I love the flying slime man, he was a good choice for an avatar.

[scheletro]

Very Nice Game !!

Not my kind of game so I just played once and I just could see the burning doctor and that was fun, so the idea for mi in the game was watch all the wats to die, LOL

[BlinkOk]

awesome graphics as usual marmotte.
my kid played this for about 3hrs the other day.
nuff said.

[Squize]

"I would have liked it a lot better if you could somehow fight the enemies"

Yeah so would we, but it wasn't in the scope of the game. With a platformer so many people have so many ideas of how it should be that you could just keep adding and adding ( We did that quite a lot to be honest, I was a thorn in Marmotte's side ).
But there has to be a cut off point, and being able to kill the baddies was one of them.
Also the client really wanted the whole lots of silly / gory deaths thing, which we wouldn't have been able to do as easily if you could kill the baddies.

It's really hard with a genre like that, or a vertical shooter, not to just throw every good idea ever at it and it ending up just a mish mash.

"Now, I just hope the client doesn't happen to Google this thread... She might not understand the criticisms."

They're all good ones though. Could just do without bug reports in here
Now, what's the next project guv ?

"It's easy to dismiss the game if you only play it for 30 seconds or so, but it's definitely an above average platform game."

Thanks a lot mate, great to see you pop in again ( It's like an old farts get together ) and great that you got over the intial "It's too slow and easy" hump and stuck with it.

"So, the hit detection is art-based?"

Nope. Tile based for the platforms, good ol' bounding box hitTest for the baddies / objects.

Thanks rachil0 and scheletro. Everyone seems to love the prof burning to death in agony. Nice crowd

"my kid played this for about 3hrs the other day."

This is honestly the best thing I could hear about this game, excellent. Thanks for posting mate, you've really set my day up.

Squize.

[Son of Bryce]

The gameplay leaves much to be desired but it's very well done.

I dig the visuals, nice animation and some good effects. Smoove parallax action. I like the touch of fireworks at the end of the stage and the rain on the second stage.

The menus and interface are nice. Very well put together, polish all-around, just needs more gameplay perks!

[Viza]

Well, my cousins have just played the game, and it would be understatement to say that they loved it! It kept them entertained for hours (the hardest part was making sure no one fought over who's turn it was ). When I asked for some suggestions, they replied "make it a Nintendo DS game with more levels".

Re-reading my earlier reply, it sounds a lot more critical and grumpy than what I meant. I honestly think that the game is absolute eye-candy. Marmotte did a brilliant job on gfx (as usual). Something that most people seem to have not noticed is that this is a tile-based platformer, and yet it looks and plays just like an art based game. The game’s also very well designed in terms of levels, gameplay, and the general navigation. The client was very lucky to have such a talented team working on this game.

Viza.

[Squize]

Thanks SoB, sorry the gameplay didn't rock your world, but to be honest I didn't think many people, if any at all, here would really like it.

Viza, you don't have to try too hard to sleep with me mate. Just a couple of beers and 20 smokes, maybe the promise of a kebab after.
Thanks for the good words. It's so cool to hear your cousins enjoyed it.

Just to digress a little ( Hey, it's my thread ) I did an installation a couple of years back at the V&A. It was a web cam game, where you had to move your hands around to build up your power before hitting a giant gong.
It was one of the best things I've ever done, although it was a one night only gig ( I've got the code somewhere still, but it'll never be online ).

What made it for me was this little kid playing it, even though his dad had to hold him up high enough ( He was the first person to have a go which made me even more nervous ).
It was getting to see someone enjoy your game first hand that made me realise how great my job is. When you cut away all the crap about deadlines, crunch, client amends, branding, all that baggage, it's just about entertaining people.

So when I hear that Blink's little un' really dug it, and your cousins, it's a real vindication of a lot of hard work. That the people who were meant to enjoy playing it, do, then, well it's all good

I've got to go, I'm filling up...

Squize.

[duckotaco]

How I love platformers. Certainly toxic.

[Ray Beez]

In summary: know your audience. You Flashkit cronies aren't it. ;-P