[PREVIEW] meteor busters ~ stage 1

[Squize]

"Yeah! It looks like there's some secret society of developers with plans for world domination..."

*ahem* Maybe early next week the secret will be out... oh nothing.

Sorry about the slight hi-jack with subtle pimping babe, and you know I feel your pain with the translations thing ( btw, you know you're down for the French translation of UXB don't you ).

Squize.

[Incrue]

And also a portuguese one

[Twisted Mind]

I could translate it to the elf language (saw that swedish was already taken)

[astrocalder]

i'll do japanese and chinese translations then, as no one else has taken those (no, i'm serious). i'm was going to make my new game trilingual, but trying to find the space in one text bubble to fit so many words/characters was a little much. i think i'll have a certain character that speaks chinese or something - forget about a translation, it's funnier that way (wtf is he saying!?).

astrocalder

[marmotte]

so many language proposals, that's crazy :-)
for the moment i don't have any accent available (shouldn't be hard to add some). yes i know, there are accents used in french too, but since it's all in capital, it's not needed. what about swedish, strille or twisted mind? (did i mention that twisted mind is creating the sound part of that game?)

about the languages, i would like a near perfect work, so if you generally have too many typos, well...

astrocalder, i would LOVE to use a japanese language in each one of my games (since i always get my inspiration from there). but it's an incredible amount of work for both of us, i presume? (you translating and me drawing all the letters)...

actually i can do a perfect french translation, so i'll do the english words myself too, but i'll need someone to correct them or turn them the best way possible (i'm afraid also about the length since it varies a lot depending on the language). i need to work on that aspect

anyway thanks, but remember the game is absolutely not finished, actually i have level 1 almost done, i just need to do its ending and every other level... playability wise, i think it's more than ok though

[rabbitkiller]

Originally posted by marmotte
anyway thanks, but remember the game is absolutely not finished, actually i have level 1 almost done, i just need to do its ending and every other level... playability wise, i think it's more than ok though

You got me anyway...

[astrocalder]

the translating shouldn't take too long - i can't imagine you have that much dialogue, or instructions...i could also type it out for you into any format, gif, jpeg, whatever - so it depends on how you need to input it into your game. drawing it by hand would certainly take a while...

but i'd be more than happy to help. if you send me the dialogue, i'll translate it and re-send.

astrocalder

[marmotte]

thanks for the help anyone. i'll ring some bells when it will be time to work on the texts...

actually my texts are stored that way (just an example, didn't put every value i'm currently using, but it looks like that):

otxt[0]={align:"center", txt:"push start to play"}
otxt[1]={align:"left", txt:"good morning vietnam"}

^ then a function takes care of that and write the text from bitmap fonts (actually using a clip duplication)

how would you go to input a whole different language in it (japanese for instance)? maybe a way to say that "do"=a, "ra"=b etc...?

[token 3]

I've got a few ifty classes to handle multiple languages, here's the basic idea

code:

---

var dictionary = new Object

var languageNo = 0



function addPhrase ( shortcut, english, french, german ) {

	dictionary[shortcut] = [english, french, german]

}



addPhrase ( 'welcome', 'EN: WELCOME', 'FR: WELCOME', 'GE: WELCOME' )

addPhrase ( 'gameover', 'EN: GAME OVER', 'FR: GAME OVER', 'GE: GAME OVER' )



function getPhrase ( shortcut ) {

	return dictionary[shortcut][languageNo]

}



trace ( getPhrase ( 'gameover' ) )



var languageNo = 1



trace ( getPhrase ( 'gameover' ) )

---

the good thing about working like this, it that you can build up a dictionary of phrases and include that set in every game you create, without having to chech what otxt[x] is

[marmotte]

thanks token.
actually your idea is a good one, if the game is supposed to have short words like you have (shouldn't be that effective/good with a RPG full of long sentences i guess...? might be confusing for the translators to have that much text xoncentrated at the same place. that's why i choosed to separate the languages from the start, instead of having all of them embeded in a same object and/or array)

anyway, your tip is still usefull... i might use a variation of it, it still has some advantages i think...

(...) without having to check what otxt[x] is

actually i just use otxt[0] to call the text, nothing more, no for...in loop or something. that's why your shortcut idea may be more effective (but a smaaaall bit slower because of the string check, but it's not that important)

[token 3]

by otxt[x], I meant - if you want to reuse the text 'game over' you're going to have to physically look through the array to find it (not with a loop)

using my version / approach you can set all variables, so you don't need to constantly look up

code:

---

function setAll ( prefix , targ ) {

	for(var i in dictionary ) {

		targ[prefix + i] = dictionary[i][languageNo]

	}

}



setAll('lang_', this)



trace ( lang_welcome)

---

[kendude]

Marmotte,
When painting/pixeling with a limited color pallete do you create different patterns as fills, outline the objects and then fill them with that pattern?

Are your backgrounds tiles in Escape the Planet?

Do you paint everything 1px at a time?

What program do you use?

Your work looks amazing. Sorry about the barrage of questions. it most certainly has that GameBoy feel. Well done. I have not yet played the new version, but I remember the one on pnFlashGames.com

[marmotte]

666 posts kendude, well done

i'll be honest on this one, the original "escape the planet" is so-so. wrote it several years back actually, and the gfx are really ugly compared to "meteor busters". everything is a lot better in "MB" in comparison, really...

what program do you use?
adobe photoshop. i'm used to it. shouldn't be the quickest way, but well...

are your backgrounds tiles in Escape the Planet?
does it mean "did you reused some backgrounds from "escape the planet" in this game"? the answer is no. all is written from scratch. it's a really good thing, "escape the planet" is ugly
BUT i used the original sprites of the meteorits, just animated them properly now (it's not anymore a 2 steps poor animation)

Do you paint everything 1px at a time?
it depends on the size (or complexity) of the sprite/background. sometimes it's 1px at a time during the whole process, but sometimes it's sketchy at the beggining, and near the end i'm really going to investigate each pixel. a good occasion to add for example some dithering (to simulate a gradiant without using new colors for example) or very precise stuff...

When painting/pixeling with a limited color pallete do you create different patterns as fills, outline the objects and then fill them with that pattern?
i have the (bad?) habit to do the outline 1st, then fill inside. why bad habit? because 100% of my sprites have an outline. i would like to do something one day without apparent or distinctive outline (there are so many games that doesn't have any outline, think for example the sprites in street fighter. the little additional difficulty here is to find a way (colors? shapes?) so that the sprites doesn't mix in any way with the background.

ok, some of you are probably familiar with the forums "pixelation". i gave a quick description there about how i did the background (i absolutely didn't go 1x at a time for that part, fortunately!)

link: http://web1.t43.greatnet.de/viewtopic.php?t=7471

[flashMasterHand]

How did you do that TV filter? Is it just a mask leaving out little dots on a grid?

[marmotte]

the TV filter is simply a .png that is located in a layer above all the other ones, nothing too fancy here

just create some black lines in photoshop, put the whole thing in 25% alpha (do some tests to have the best results depending on what you want), export it in .png, import it in flash and it's all done.

[andross_88]

I wish I could get a preview of the game so far like everyone else. I think this is going to be a fun and professional flash game, something I haven't seen for a while. I can't wait for the full version. I hope to get some inspiration from your work.

Btw, I could also give you a hand with the Spanish translation if you decide you need it. Screenshots look outstanding.

[Hasufel]

I wish i could too ! I'm providing penguin translation.

[marmotte]

sounds interesting. thanks andross ^_^

^ yeah, the language of the penguins *aok aok*

i'll be very busy during 2 months unfortunately (commercial work outside flash gaming, bleh), so the game is... delayed. a bit. small consolation, i put its webby online now. empty as hell, but... online.