ThatJoshGuy.com The poorly organized mind of That Josh Guy. PHP, Flash, Flex development, games, and other nerdy stuff.

Hiatus: OVER

Took a few days off from the game to make sure I don't' get bored with it (I have a tendency to do that), but I did get some updates done recently and just now got it uploaded at the usual place.

Wanted to shout a huge THANK YOU to Michael Gum who has provided me with the two tracks used so far in the game.  They are awesome, hopefully he'll do one or two more for me

Anyway, the update includes Turrets which will fire at the player at a given interval.  Having projectiles flying around whilst trying to avoid the Green Meanies is an exciting element, and definitely can add to the difficulty.

I also extended the animation system a bit so that I can have multiple death animations depending on what kills the player.  This can be seen by stepping off a bridge, or (my favorite) stepping on a landmine.

Tales from the dark side.

So our cable went out yesterday around Noonish, and took the internet with it.  Obviously, this gave me a bit of free time.

Moved some more code around, and put in a little fun.  I'm not going to say what that fun is, I'll let the testers find out for themselves.

I keep changing sounds around, and just wanted to clarify: that's going to continue to happen. I'm trying stuff out and keeping what works, and ditching what doesn't.  Due to that there is very little polish - polish comes at the end

..that's polish as in "shine", not polish as in "being from Poland".

The Green Meanies have friends…

...and it scares me.

No, it's not an entirely new enemy,  but if it recoloring a sprite and changing a few attributes worked in 1990, then that's good enough for me (at this point.)

I broke some of the bad guy code out of the game state and into the individual class, and decided to go with an interface to handle the most common functions.  Handy little option, interfaces!  So to test it out I made a new enemy that shares some of the same characteristics of the Green Meanie.

Then I went to sleep and forgot about it entirely.

This morning I compiled the new version and uploaded it to the server and began play testing.  All was going well until I nearly jumped out of my seat when they new enemy came sprinting at me.  It's not that it's a scary game or anything, but when you totally forget that you've added something and then it's suddenly beating you with a baseball bat it sort of gets to you.

Hooray for updates!

• Power up spawning is getting better. There is still the occasional item being spawned in a wall, but it's a lot less likely. Items will definitely NOT spawn over holes (okay, so they DO spawn there, but they're removed and re-spawned elsewhere immediately).
• Ammo is updated as soon as you pick up a power up.
• Power ups are "stackable" - if you keep getting the same kind of power up, your ammo will keep increasing by 100 instead of resetting to 100. If you pick up a new kind of powerup, your ammo is reset to 100.
• Helpful Arrows" - Trust the arrow. The arrow is your friend.
• File size has dropped from 7.5 megs to just over 2 megs - chip tunes still sound great at low bit-rates, and I'm being smarter about my media embeds.
• Green Meanies are now 20% more intelligent.
• The above figure is made up.
• Changed the way mob waves are started - this should keep the action up and moving at a semi-solid pace. Will be easier in the future to crank it up or down if needed (possibly for different difficulty levels).
• There is a third room, and just for fun it's twice as large as the others. Works well, but the room itself needs play tweaking to make it fun.
• You can actually "win" now.
• Fixed the music - BTW: Thanks Michael Gum for the awesome tunes! I may or may not end up using this exact song, but the feel of the tune is groovy as hell and perfect for the game play - just need a more appropriate tune for the menu screen.

You can try the new version at the usual place HERE

TMDG(S) Progress Shots

Just a few stills from the game as it is today:

You can also try out the latest build at http://www.thatjoshguy.com/game

Warning: There will be bugs.

This is not the greatest game in the world…

...This is just a tribute.

If you are old enough to remember Smash TV, whether it be in the arcade or on the SNES, then you are lucky indeed.  The game was, in short, AWESOME.

There have been several attempts to recapture the pure awesomeness of the game, and some have come close ("Xbox's indie hit "I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1", or even the hidden game mode for CoD:Black ops - Dead Ops Arcade), but they all do one thing wrong IMHO - they've made the game "serious".

I want the fun back.  I want the cheesy game show host shouting "I'll buy that for a dollar!" after every damn level.

I want to pretend I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Running Man"...

So I've decided to try my hand at making a game in Flex/Flash to honor this once golden game in spirit... And it shall be called:

The Most Dangerous Game (Show) !

Go ahead, you're allowed to laugh at the title.  It's lame, but it's meant to be somewhat.  Smash TV was released in the early 90's and set in  1999.  My game will be released sometime this year or next, and will be set in the early 90's   Circle of life baby, circle of life...