preview_my new little web site

here's a preview of my new little web site

http://www.marmotte.levillage.org/_i...shots/new2.jpg http://www.marmotte.levillage.org/_i...shots/new1.jpg http://www.marmotte.levillage.org/_i...shots/new3.jpg http://www.marmotte.levillage.org/_i...shots/new4.jpg

controls
arrow keys
space = action1
ctrl = action2

what's done
- the game engine is quite advanced:
playability, area changes, dialogs system, character's interactivity...
- 3 areas (some swapDepth are not finished in the area at the right...)
- 5 playable characters ("only" 2 in that preview)
- each character has his own speed, attacks (some do not have attacks). their skills are different and some dialogs are different when we play with a character or another

some details
- the embed font is filled sometimes... it's a common bug with some fonts and flash. i'll fix it later.
- don't wander in areas that are not done (don't go up or down), because the game will freeze (because it'll look for external .swf files that don't exist)
- loadings between areas are generally 60ko, so low connections users, you are warned ^^
- there's not much to do in that preview; just wander around... and test the engine ^^

the link: http://www.marmotte.levillage.org/_games/test/test.html

don't hesitate to post bugs, or feedbacks... thanks in advance ^^

i like it, my only concern is the speed, your games have always been great because of how smooth they were, but this runs a little choppy (perfectly understandable given when the movie is doing), other than that, its incredible.

Amazing! Can't wait to see the complete version.
*wounders* Are the hearts, coins and keys gonna be used in the future?
Christopher Michael

Wow! Amazing graphics, are they al your own work?!

I went up past the locked door... the screen went black, showed the loading spinning disk icon, then waited... and waited... then reloaded the previous screen and the little character had dissapeared... :)

Is your host very slow, or are they very big files?

Cool... it looks great!

graphics are looking nice :) what game(s) are they ripped from? unfortunatley as i continued to play, speed got worse... for no apparent reason :( indicating some code problems... otherwise looking excellent! :)

thanks for your first comments ^^

Ian424
that's strange, it runs perfectly smooth with my 4 years old macintosh, an old G3 with 400mhz...?

Chrisell
yes, they are going to be used. for example you'll need the key to open some doors... like the one in the first screen

markp
i said in the first post, never go up or down, external .swf are not here... just left and right, like in the screenshots

mbenney
mmmh, i ripped a lot of games... but mainly they are taken from the original rocky's game, kikikaikai and kikikaikai 2, snes...
tell me more about the speed; your problem occured when you was changing areas or when you was wandering in the same area? like i said, i played it so much with my old machine, it doesn't slow down...?

btw, what do you thing of the character exchange ability? ^^

tried it again, might just be because of all the graphics. in any case it really isnt a problem, i was just commenting :)

:-(

i want it to be as fast as possible...

in any case, all the code of my old version of my site (which is still online) was put in a enterFrame, included a lot of hitTest and also the dialogs. plus, the hitTest with the player was 4 times more cpu intensive... now here, the only enterframe is for the character's movments; all dialogs and hitTest are put in a load event (arrays loaded)...?

so, it's a graphic problem...? in that case, i wonder how he can run smooth with my crappy comp, which painfully plays a lot of flash games (my super crossover fighter for example is very slow here...)

mmmhhh... that is pretty annoying, i wish i could appear in front of your comp and see the how the speed looks like... and also the problem mbenney had...

i tried it again and the same, starts off very smooth :) im on an athlon xp 1800... but as you play, (even without changing areas) it begins to get choppy (im not opening new windows either) dont know what could be wrong, a lot of for looping ? i dunno...
[m]

its weird because super crossover fighter ran perfectly here, i dunno, maybe my computers having a slow day (its known to do that :p )

its not really a problem though, its still usable, just a little bit less smooth.

It feels like a memory leak. On my comp it gradually get slower, like its hitting a problem spot in your code. I’d trace (in ms) your code and see what’s taking the longest. Any large, repeatedly called functions? That was my problem. Oh, and the usual tiny hitTest errors, small clipping etc. Which hitTest are you using, or is it math based?

As always, looking gorgeous. I think what really sets your stuff apart is the high level background interactivity (animation). It makes it feel like a bustling town. Keep up the good work.

-Tyler

PS: why haven’t you made a game w/ your site engine? Or have you?

mbenney
sooo strange... sometimes i let rocky sleep several minutes, then continue playing... nothing is wrong here, always smooth... also, there's no for loop, except on a load event when you push the action key (rocky check if it's hitTing a dialog area before attacking), and that's all, really... does it act the same when you are in the football area? maybe it's something wrong with the birds or the yellow animal...? mmmhh...?

GameDev
the only function called often is when you are walking, using a hitTest 4 times less cpu intensive than my old site (the hitTest is the same i used to control the dino with bubble bobble 2, so simply a if (_root.wall.hitTest(_x, _y, true)))
ok, i'll try again to stay in the same area several minutes, to see what's happening, although it's so annoying, since i tried to make it super smooth compared to my old version, which doesn't run very well here...

about your PS, yes i did a RPG with the code i used on my old site. i played it several days ago, wow, it's so... old. all codes were done with enterFrame event, and here all is stored on load event only... strange it's choppy. the kind of details that make me angry ><

if you have additional infos with your magical prog, don't hesitate to post. thanks ^^

How are you doing the loading between areas??...

hello DethDesign

well, when rocky's position is for example _x<=0, i tell the main timeline to go to a frame called "area_loading" or whatever. in that frame, i load an external .swf, and when it's done, the timeline returns to its "game" frame. that's it...
> maybe take a look at my (outdated?) open source of rocky, no external movies are involved but the idea is the same (not the code hopefully)

was that what you were asking?

also, did you experience also gradual slowdowns in my new game?

added a new area. (take a look at the screenshots above)

some other people tested the speed of the game, and they say it's fine.
i'm still wondering why some of you experience these slowdowns?

Well, I'll offer one idea... when we were working creating a external walk function for Link I ran into problems in terms of speed. When I traced the code it was apparent that it slowed down when calling that walk function every key press, which makes sense. The quick fix... a blank MC inside the main MC of your character w/ all the normal walk code. I just changed the path to _parent. Now all the code is there, and the speed increased by 340ms. No joke. The function created the gradual slowdown, like a memory leak. Anyway, thats one idea, wouldnt hurt to try it... im gonna go check out your game now. Good luck...

-Tyler

thanks for the info...

did you take a look at my bubble bobble and fighting game open sources? well, here my method is the same...

mmmh, did your second test with my game change the "slowdown" fact?

Nope... its his movement for sure though. When I move left or right you can really see it. Flash is struggling to keep up w/ the frame rate. Second, the last map to the far right has some CD issues. You can walk on the fence. Third, when a new swf/map is loaded, my character seems to be hidden. Are you attaching him?

And I have yet to look at your source.

-Tyler

mmmmmok... strange, it works very well with some people...

about the fence, you mean swapDepth? with the fence at the top? i'll have to move it from 2 or 3 pixels ^^
yes, the character is attached at the begining, that's all... he is hidden when you change an area because i gave him something like _x=-10... that's not a bug...

the thing is, that's the method i use for all my games (functions that are called for interactions)... strange it slows down that game and not the other ones (it still runs wonderfully smooth with my old comp online and offline. and some people tested it with the same result on their machine)

HAHA! no wonder the cemetary area is bugged; i haven't uploaded the new main file that handles the depth! ^^

it's uploading now