Got looped sounds working correctly in flixel using .mp3s. The guys that thought up the padding section of that codec are ♥♥♥holes, and the people at Adobe who still haven't got around to native .ogg support are too, but the tools can be fashioned, and with some fiddling and prior knowledge of the audio to be played (namely the amount of samples) I can now loop my music endlessly! AHAHHAHAHAHHA!

more here: link. It's got some minefield stuff for those interested, but not screenshots.

Believe me, I know the feeling!
I currently have well over 10 projects that I've put enough work into to bother finishing... Wether I ever actually complete one is yet to be seen, but I'm still on a bit of a learning curve.

Since I've been away from home for a few days, it's been hard to do any actual coding for the editor, but I've worked out most of the issues I was having previously. I was thinking of making it easily extensible(for future development of the game) simply by changing a few bits of text in a settings file, which would hopefully mean that I can leave the project to its own devices once it's complete without having to worry about releasing the embarrasingly messy source...

Yeah, for the record I'm incredibly unlikely to go above 256 tiles (because managing tiles in a strip that long would become nightmarish) so if you want to read an indexed png by the indexes that could be a good way to go about it.

I'm assuming you're only doing tiles for now, or are you putting in entities and decor too?

EDIT: forgot the reason I came to post. Got some more sounds happening and falling-related animations (including rolling and death), I might get all the death related goodies (various corpses, gibs, blood, blood, more blood) and a "READYYYYYYYYYYYY.... GO!" at the start of each attempt with the number of deaths under it going today, but I've got paintball now so it won't happen until tonight.

For now I'm only doing tiles, but I'll probably also do Decor and Entities as well, although Entities will be a little trickier to implement elegantly...

I don't think placing ents with an image would be a good idea, as you have to do far too much guesswork with the background tiles :/

I'm tired as anything at the moment so it looks like minefield work is going to be delayed again :/ I've got a good solid day of work ahead of me tomorrow though so it should be smooth sailing.

A lot of this is already in-game, but I'm trying to work out a way of making the graphics compatible with a light background for daytime outdoors areas.

You could have darker object sprites in the outside/daytime areas and lighter sprites in the nighttime/cave areas.

I could, if things didn't move around. I'm considering that for some of the more static objects but it'd be more valuable to create a single set of versatile sprites than multiple sets of partially useful ones and then strap hacky workarounds onto everything.

You could have an overlay that alters the colour of the sprites when they move into a specific area.

I've considered using alpha at some points but I want to stick to the 4 colours and it'd be cheating. Either way, I've got my work cut out for me if I want this done by mid december O_o

Oh hey design document.
Figured you guys might like to read through, even though there's no pretty pictures yet.

So there you are Geti
being the big man
throwing them
design docs left and right
all over the place


Frankly, I'm quite excited about this. The story sounded silly enough without being dumb, and you really can't have enough retro gameboy-colored games.

Oh, and thank you for showing me Canabalt. Thank you thank you thank you so much. That game, in about five minutes, earned itself a place in my lil' software shrine.

Alas, 'tis the time of the simple games. Seems it not to you that mayhap storyline or level design are but sufficient to sattisfy the user of these days? I say, today's folk desires no more or less than a satisfying mechanic, an intelligently applied gimmick to bring a smile to their faces, and song to their hearts.

Which is, in a way, awesome. But a bit sad.

I'm kind of disappointed in how flat most modern games are, sadly. The funny thing is it doesn't matter if it's a small flash game or a AAA title, almost everything feels almost... Soulless. I played Battlefield Bad Company 2 for a few hours yesterday with some friends and even though there was squad based combat (a huge plus) and destructible almost everything and good balancing on the weapons I still had to make myself play the game a certain way (rather silly, based on ridiculous kills and blazing guns) to have much real fun. Squad deathmatch had a little more soul as there was actually teams working together as opposed to two shambles operations disguised as teams rushing various capture points.

Arne's designs showcase games how I felt they were back when I was 9. Of course, when I go back and play some of the games that felt so deep they leave me wanting (even majora's mask, sometimes ) so I suppose I'm turning into a jaded game designer who can't play games anymore...

Canabalt is good in that it boils down most high speed platformers to their components (jump and run) and puts just enough polish into it to retain some class. Procedural generation keeps it fresh and dannyB's kickass music sets a great mood for the game. I'm looking to it for inspiration, but Minefield is already a drastically different game, which in a way is a good thing: I'd never be able to compete with supersemisecretsoftware's polish.

I've just received a lot of amazing music from my friend Andrew, and I'm working on adding more foley to the animations. I've still got a few tweaks to make to the movement but it's feeling a lot less like a platformer using hitboxes and more like a guy running around a rocky landscape.

Try AA3. While not the best game per say, you die so damn fast and have to rely so much on your teammates' calls for everything, that the game is ALWAYS played with mics. Real tactics sort of push themselves through, and you find yoruself calling targets, but not engaging so not to give away your vip, or dropping smoke then spraying into it in an attempt to cover your team. And because you die so damn fast, you can't really go rambo and kill everybody. People split naturally into squads, and give commands and mark targets, call M302s and use cover. And if you're getting shot at, you can do this badass slide that not only looks cool, but works well.

on the other side, the game itself is pretty shittly made. your character only responds serverside, so if there's any lag at all, your character won't respond until it's gone. The graphics, even on super-high, are pretty crappy, and the maps are easy to get lost in. The only way to tell a teammate is by recognising their uniform, but you're always the US even though you're on different sides. yeah, it switches models and everything.

I believe the name's actually Semisecretsoftware. But anyways.


I couldn't agree with you more. Being old-school is not easy nowadays. I wouldn't call BC2 a good example of a game trying to be deep, however: for me, it was solely gameplay, giving the player just a peek of the "plot" amidst the incessant gunfire. But oh, the classics of ages gone (I always speak in this ridiculous manner when referring to them). Megaman legends, Earthbound (though I never got a chance to play it to the end), and the king of all, Majora's Mask, as you've said yourself. It be a lil' dream of mine, to code a game that could, one day, be compared to those. But I digress.

Anyways, I eagerly expect more about your work. If it's got some pointless technical details, even better!