Community Project Cont.

Hmmm....

I would not have thought that using the remaining 12 animations for the bad guys would have made such an impact.

Consider this for a moment. When the game starts there are a total of 9 animations (4 power pills, 4 bad guys and our hero). The animations at this point ARE indeed running faster. As soon as the movement of the bad guys begins the game slows down.

Why? At the start of the game the animations that have not been used yet are still there in the background being hidden. Each change to the direction of a bad guy and therefore it's animated counterpart is shown and hidden.

What I have not yet tried is to stop the animation which may bring back some speed. What I'm concerned about here is that switching between animations may not be smooth.

Cheers,
Ed

Hello everyone,

I've been looking into ways of making the game a bit more playable on slower machines. I have a very slow machine here which I use as a web server and this is what I use to check the speed of the game for speed.

After making a couple of minor changes the game has been considerably sped up with a decrease in cpu usage (by as much as 35%). This drop is measured on my development machine which is a PIII 866MHz. On the slower machine it's always sitting on 100% cpu usage.

The changes I made were to drop the frame rate down to 20 from it's original of 32 frames per second. This made a huge impact on the performance of the game. I also reduced the number of times per second the main processing action script element was running to 22 (down from 44). The last change I made was to increase the tolerance for checking if our hero or a badguy was centered on a tile from 1 pixel to 2 pixels.

All the changes have come together to make a faster running game that uses less cpu power.

Jason, if you could check the speed of the game on the machine that you used/noticed the performance issue on and let us know how it goes, that would be great.

There's a couple of other tolerances that will need to be adjusted but for now the game is a lot less cpu intensive and can now be worked on further.

The links are again:
http://www.flash-fx.com/3dfa/insanem...eman-fast.html
http://www.flash-fx.com/3dfa/insanem...man-fast.movie

Let's get this baby finished and rolling out onto websites everywhere!!! :D

Cheers for the moment,
Ed

Just got it, and it's running a lot smoother on this end for the record amd k62 at 500mghz. I'll add the insane man, and do some badguy tweekin tonight. I should be working on the Darkside, but I'm getting real burnt on it right now and can use the break.


-Jason

This is good to hear Jason.

The list of items left to do for javascripting is:[list=1][*] Power Pill powerups[*] Eating the badguys while in powerup[*] Tighten up some intermittent bugs (eg. badguys going straight through you from time to time instead of catching you)[*] Adding the game start/end/credit movies[*] Fruit to be displayed and eaten[/list=1]Remaining items are:[list=1][*] Sounds[*] Badguys[/list=1]If I've left anything off the lists then let us know.

Cheers,
Ed

I've got Stanley up and running great, but when I tried adding the badguys, I ran into the original problem of the horns being way off(plus its crashing my browser). So, I'm going to invent all new badguys, as I'm tired of fixing the same problem repeatedly(as near as I can tell this is a problem that only shows up with smaller animations, same with the original insanemans mouth). Bret had some comments about this in the other thread, that are well worth looking at, note that he also fixed the problem with the line on Stanley's mouth.

Ed, I tried adding some actions on the keyboard inputs that would control Stanley's orientation(up, down, right, left), to keep him from being upside down when he makes a left turn from an up direction, but had no luck. If you can point me in the right direction within the javascript, I will try and see what I can do there. What I would like to do, is have him changing to a definite orientation with each direction, rather than a simple rotation:

left:xscale (-100) rotation(0)
right:xscale(100) rotation(0)
up: xscale (100) rotation(-90)
down: xscale(100) rotation(90)

This should keep him from ending up inverted from time to time(hopefully).

Anyway's back to re-inventing the badguys........

-Jason

Heres the updated file with new badguys(loosely based on a simplified version of Josephs original), and of course Stanley..........

http://www.deadyeti.com/insaneman/in..._graphics.html

http://www.deadyeti.com/insaneman/in...graphics.movie

Thoughts/suggestions welcome.

-Jason

Hi Jason and crew,

There are two places in the javascript code where the rotation of Stanley is changed.

For what you're trying to do I would suggest creating a second array that would be used to change the scale to -1 or 1 depending on the direction. This would effectively flip the image of Stanley. Using an array would be simpler in the long term as well.

I must admit that I haven't documented the new code very well. I was more concerned in getting the new code to be more efficient and up'n running asap. I will rectify this issue and if you like add a new array to the code to handle the rotation/flipping in a more appropriate manner.

I've yet to download the changes you've made. I can't wait to see how it all looks now.

Also, I'm wondering how people would feel if I were to put together some web pages that would go into a bit of detail behind the logic of the game. ie. the javascript code, the reasoning behind the methods used, why arrays are better than using switch() statements etc. etc.
I feel that these pages would greatly help anyone that is interested in developing another game or application.
What does everyone think? If anyone has any suggestions about the content of these pages or where they should be hosted then please post your thoughts. Otherwise, I'll just put together what I feel is appropriate providing there is some interest in this idea.

Anyway, it's late here again and I'm heading off for some zzzzzzzzzzzz's

Cheers,
Ed

Hi guys - we'd like to include insaneman in the samples for v3.6 - anyone object ?

If thats all cool, can someone zip up all the resources needed for the .movie file and submit them to support@insanetools.com ?

That would be terrific - and again - job well done.

Regards

Well, I don't object... I don't know who has a full copy, I'd assume kusko has one. Just be modify the "An Insane Community Project" title to say "An Insane Community Project - A Work In Progress" an I'm fine.

Well, I don't object... I don't know who has a full copy, I'd assume kusko has one. Just be modify the "An Insane Community Project" title to say "An Insane Community Project - A Work In Progress" an I'm fine.

Hello dkerr,

I have no objections to this. I'll make the necessary change for ajcompany, add some rules to the game and tidy up the javascript comments a little more before zipping it all up and sending it on.

That is of course the other contributors have no objections to it and/or changes that they want to make as well.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by kusco
Hello dkerr,

I have no objections to this. I'll make the necessary change for ajcompany, add some rules to the game and tidy up the javascript comments a little more before zipping it all up and sending it on.

That is of course the other contributors have no objections to it and/or changes that they want to make as well.

---

I have little input on this one, but of course I wouldn't object

Hmmm,

I don't want to make a big issue out of this but my feelings towards this project is rather simple.

If you made a contribution in any way, big or small, bad or good then you have as much input as the next person.

No one should feel left out or that their contribution is not of significance. If it wasn't for everyone's input and contributions to this project then it wouldn't be where it is today.

I've said my bit and will now go hide in a corner of the forum. ;)

No objections here........

-Jason

Thanks guys - you may want to include the names of the people involved somewhere on the 'rules' page ?

btw - we'll need everything as a zip.

Thanks heaps.

Regards

Hi folks!

InsaneMan is ready to roll out from the factory floor into your homes.

I've added a credit scrolley to the bottom of the opening screen.
Fixed the bug where the badguys would sometimes not get eaten.
Fixed the bug where our here would appear upside down if we finished the maze while heading to the left.
Added rules to the rules menu button.
Fixed the bug where the fruit would not be hidden once eaten by our hero.

Check it out at....
http://www.flash-fx.com/3dfa/insaneman/insaneman.html

http://www.flash-fx.com/3dfa/insaneman/insaneman.zip

The zip contains everything. ie. movie, fonts and sounds

There's a little bug left where the opening screen is now not showing the elements children properly. It's showing the text as if the 'show as single paint object' option was selected. This only occurred after the rules were added to the game. I can't figure it out so if someone-else can let me know please.

Enjoy!

I have no problems with it... wondering if for some reason the 'indivudial elements' got reset on either the titles or the shows. Check the properties buttons too.