DarkSwarm website has been updated.

I have recently updated this site to fix previously incompatibly issues between Mozilla and IE as well as converted the website into PHP. The website can be found on my website at http://www.pryzemedia.com in the Digital section.The direct link to the site is http://www.pryzemedia.com/darkswarm .

When I get some extra time, I will post some additional information about this site including some of the processes and changes I made while converting the site to PHP. I will also include some new plans to create a larger web version of the DarkSwarm Flash game using Class based action script.

Week 6 Progress


Project Description

The proposed solution is to creating a working first level demo of a tile-based adventure game created using Flash Lite 2.0 to show how the utilization of these two technologies can provide a way of developing more efficient and less CPU tasking complex games playable on both computers and mobile devices. The project would show how the tile-based world handles character interaction with NPC (non-player characters), collision detection, and other functions commonly found adventure style games. This game will use 16-bit tiles for the graphics and will be played using a top-down view. A small town and a battleground outside the town will be the two major locations within the game. Inside the town the playable character will be able to talk with a couple of the non-playable characters as well as buy a weapon at a shop in the town. Outside the town will be a battleground in which monsters will attack the character. These monsters will have random items on them such gold and potions. The character and the monsters will have hit points and use a D20 based formula for determining whether their attack hit and for determining damage. To limit this game due to the amount of time allowed, this demo portion will not have the role-playing aspect of the playable character leveling up, but this feature can be added in at a later time. The demo will be outputted into the Flash Lite 2.0 Player with a built-in cell phone emulator that shows how the game will work in the particular models of phones that support the Flash Lite 2.0 technology. The game will then be made available on the web via a link from a blog where people with Flash Lite 2.0 enabled phones will be able to download the demo and make comments as to how it works on their particular phone.

The projected timeline for this project will be the eleven weeks period of the quarter. The first part of project would involve the laying out of where and how everything will appear and interact on paper. After having a firm idea of all the elements needed, the next phase would include the gathering of graphics to be used in the tiles of the game demo. Once all the graphics are collected, Photoshop will be used to place all the graphics into tiles to make up the look of the area map in a large grid as well as the simple animation cycles of the different characters and monsters.

Once the town and battleground are finished in Photoshop, Flash will then be used to create the actual tiles using a rectangular movie clip that contains the graphical area of the map. The movie clip tile will have multiple key frames containing the different graphical elements that make up the finished map created in Photoshop, such as a patch of grass, a rock, pieces of architecture, etc. Once the tile is completed, ActionScript will be used to create multiple instances of the tile movie clip and to place them into a grid. The grid will be fairly large to contain both the town and the battleground and look to be around 100 x 200 square grid.

After the grid is the correct layout, the process of setting the individual frames of the tile instances and whether or not it is passable will begin. For example, if frame 1 of the tiled movie clip contains a patch of grass and the entire grid was showing the tile on frame one, then the entire grid would look like a large patch of grass. By setting the instances of the tiles to different frame numbers that contained the different graphical elements, the grid would then start to look more like a map. (Markar, 2004) This technique allows for great efficiency in the course of recycling the graphical assets.

In the next phase, all of the tile positions and frame numbers as well as information about the tile are stored into a two-dimensional array as objects, which would then be stored in an external XML file. As soon as the map is complete, the next stage involves placing the playable character on the map and keeping track of where it is. For this, a simple math trick is used that involves dividing the position of the main character by the tile’s width and rounding the number down to the nearest integer. Using this math trick to determine the playable character’s position within the tiles helps to tremendously lighten the processor load verses an older method of looping through the entire grid constantly performing a hitTest();.(Markar, 2004) Once this stage is compete, the final stages will involve adding the additional features that make the demo more complex such as, talking NPC, combat system, animation, monster movement and attacks, shops, etc. After all these features have been hammered out, testing and debugging the demo will commence then finally after all is working, the instructions will be added. The resources that will be used in creating this game include Markar’s Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified, Tonypa’s web tutorial Tile Based Games, http://charas-project.net/resources.php for game tiles, and Adobe’s developer’s section for Flash Lite 2.0.

Resources:

Adobe. (2006, June 21). Macromedia Flash Lite. Retrieved July24, 2006, from http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/

Davis, Ziff. (2005, August 9). Ziff Davis Video Game Survey: Gamers Continue to Cut TV Viewing. Retrieved August 2, 2006, from http://www.ziffdavis.com/press/releases/050809.0.html

Entertainment Software Association (ESA). (2006). Facts & Research. Retrieved July 20, 2006, from http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php

Koprowski, Gene. (2006, June 10). Mobile Phone Converging With 'Flash,' Other Apps. Retrieved August 13, 2006, from http://www.technewsworld.com/story/51011.html

My Digital Life. (2006, July 20, Thursday) at 10:40 pm. Free Online ‘Casual’ and Brain Teasing Computer Games. Retrieved July 23, 2006, from http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/07/20/free-online-casual-and-brain-teasing-computer-games/

Makar, Jobe and Winiarczyk, Ben. (2004). Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified. Berkeley. Peachpit Press.

Tonypa.Tony. (2005). Tile Based Games. Retrieved July 11, 2006, from http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/start.html

Week 5 Progress

Proposed Title of the Project

Tile-Based Games in Flash Lite 2.0

Problem Statement

The problem to solve is how to create more efficient and less CPU tasking action/adventure/role-playing online games that can be played on both computers and mobile devices.

A solution to this problem is a new version of the Flash Player designed specifically for mobile phones and consumer electronic devices called Flash Lite 2.0. This new mobile Flash Player was built on Flash Player 7 technology and utilizes many of the original Flash Player 7 features such as XML data support, Action Script 2.0, and the ability to save information for re-use. (Adobe, 2006) In addition to this new player, the utilization of tile-based worlds, which allow the developer to reuse all graphical assets as well as assemble worlds with code (Makar, 2004), will provide a more efficient and less CPU tasking environment for creating action/adventure/role-playing online games that can be played on both computers and mobile devices.

Currently most online video games on sites like www.pogo.com, games.yahoo.com, zone.msn.com, games.aol.com, and www.freeonlinegames.com provide vast amounts of simple or casual style games (casual style games referring to easy-to learn one-player or easy going multi-player games that can be played for five minutes or five hours, for example a simple card, puzzle, or trivia game) created in Flash. (My Digital Life, 2006) Many of online games on the gaming sites mentioned above use art based style games in their action/adventure/role-playing category. Art based games created in flash solely using vectors have its advantages such as small size and resizability. In simple games this style of game works great, but when it comes to creating more complex games that involve a larger map areas as well as larger amounts of added features, the game can have a tendency to slow down. (Tonypa, 2005) It is also a good idea when creating tile-based games to use bitmap images as the graphical elements in the tiles. Even though the tile-based world in the game could use vector graphics, when the Flash player runs the game it has to calculate all the vectors on screen, which could slow down the game. (Tonypa, 2005) This scenario would be especially devastating in mobile devices such as cell phones, since they don’t have the nearly the amount of processing power as an average personal computer.

Importance or significance of the project

The video game industry is a large and growing industry with an estimated sixty-nine percent of American heads of households claiming to play computer and video games. (ESA, 2006) Within the gaming industry 86% of video gamers own a cell phone and of those individuals 48% play games on their mobile devices. (Davis, 2005) In a survey administered just this year by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) found that forty-four percent of game players play online games (ESA, 2006) With a potential market this large and new technologies such as Flash Lite 2.0 being released, the value of the project would be in creating a game utilizes the added functionality of this new technology and gives the gaming community an idea of what can be created.


Resources:

Adobe. (2006, June 21). Macromedia Flash Lite. Retrieved July24, 2006, from http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/

Davis, Ziff. (2005, August 9). Ziff Davis Video Game Survey: Gamers Continue to Cut TV Viewing. Retrieved August 2, 2006, from http://www.ziffdavis.com/press/releases/050809.0.html

Entertainment Software Association (ESA). (2006). Facts & Research. Retrieved July 20, 2006, from http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php

Makar, Jobe and Winiarczyk, Ben. (2004). Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified. Berkeley. Peachpit Press.

My Digital Life. (2006, July 20, Thursday) at 10:40 pm. Free Online ‘Casual’ and Brain Teasing Computer Games. Retrieved July 23, 2006, from http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/07/20/free-online-casual-and-brain-teasing-computer-games/

Tonypa.Tony. (2005). Tile Based Games. Retrieved July 11, 2006, from http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/start.html

Updated***

Jeff Price

Senior Project

Tuesday 8am

Project Proposal Outline

Project Title: Tile-Based Flash Games

Problem Statement:

1. The problem to solve is how to create more efficient and less CPU tasking action/adventure/role-playing online games that can be played on both computers and mobile devices. The group of people that are going to benefit from the solution is forty-four percent of game players who play online games and the 32 percent of heads of households that play games on a wireless device, according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

2. Currently most online video games on sites like www.pogo.com, games.yahoo.com, zone.msn.com, games.aol.com, and www.freeonlinegames.com provide vast amounts of simple or casual style games (casual style games referring to easy-to learn one-player or easy going multi-player games that can be played for five minutes or five hours, for example a simple card, puzzle, or trivia game) created in Flash. (My Digital Life, 2006) Many of online gaming sites mentioned above use art based style games in their action/adventure/role-playing category. Art based games created in flash solely using vectors have small size and are resizable. This style of game works great for simple games, but when it comes to creating more complex games that involve a larger map areas as well as larger amounts of added features, the game can have a tendency to slow down. It is also a good idea when creating tile-based games to use bitmap images as the graphical elements in the tiles. Even though the tile-based world in the game could use vector graphics, when the Flash player runs the game it has to calculate all the vectors on screen, which could slow down the game. (Tonypa, 2003/2004/2005)

In a tile-based game created in Flash, a tile usually consists of a rectangular movie clip that contains a graphical area of a map. This movie clip tile can have any number of frames that contain a graphic element of the map such as a patch of grass, a rock, pieces of architecture, etc. These tiles are then laid out in a grid; lets say ten-by-ten square grid for example, using Actionscript and XML. If frame 1 of the tiled movie clip contains a patch of grass and the entire grid was showing the tile on frame one, then the entire grid would look like a large patch of grass. By setting the instances of the tiles to different frame numbers that contained the different graphical elements, the grid would then start to look more like a map. This in turn allows for great efficiency in the course of recycling the graphical assets. Next, all of the tile positions and frame numbers as well as information about the tile are stored into a two-dimensional array as objects, which could then be stored in an external file such as XML. One of the ways that tile-base worlds in Flash help to lighten the load of the CPU is through using a simple math trick to determine which tile the main character in. This math trick involves dividing the position of the main character by the tile’s width and rounding the number down to the nearest integer. (Markar, 2004) Creating an isometric view, path finding, and depth sorting are also a few things that are easier to accomplish in tile-based games. (Tonypa, 2003/2004/2005) Utilizing these types techniques through a tile base-world can be extremely advantageous, especially when working with mobile devices, such as cell phones and PDAs, that don’t have the CPU power of an average computer system.

Online and mobile video game businesses would be able to use this technology to add depth to the games they currently have as well as drawn in the additional 22.0% of the market that play Action/Sports/Stragety/Role-Play games most often, according to the ESA.

Technologies you want to work with:

1. The concept for tiles in games has been around since the early days of computers and video game consoles. In a time before computers had speeds of GHz and hundred of MB of memory. With the number of gamers who play video games online increasing by 31% from 2002 and the number of gamers who play games from mobile devices increasing by 20% from 2002 (ESA, 2006), the same conditions are starting to become an issue with today’s Internet and mobile game developers. The development of Flash Lite 2.0 was built on Flash 7 technology, which allows actionscript 2.0 as well as XML to be used (Adobe 2006, June 21) making it more appealing to create more complex games utilizing tile-based worlds.

2. My technologies of choice include the Windows platform for development purposes. Actionscript and XML will be the choice as far as programming languages are concerned. The Authoring application chosen for this project will be Flash 8 with the Flash Lite 2.0 authoring update.

Flash Lite 2.0 also comes with the Flash Lite 2.0 Player, which emulates the type of mobile device the game is designed for allowing the developer to test the virtual phone’s buttons to see if the game is working properly.

Draft Project Plan

A rough layout of my project schedule would start off with the game concept being planned out on paper. The project would be the first level of a scrolling adventure style game that would show how the tile-based world handles character interaction with npc (non-player characters), collision detection, and other functions commonly found adventure style games. After laying out everything on paper as to how the game will look and work, the next phase would include gathering up the graphics and creating the tiles for the actual game. After using the tiles in Photoshop to come up with what the moveable area of the game will look like, I would then use XML to position the tiles. When the main background of the game is finished and loads correctly in Flash using XML, the next phase would be creating the character tiles and animation sequences. Then when all the graphics of the game are ready, the long process of writing the game engine in Actionscript will commence. Testing and debugging stages will take place after that, then the navigation pages and instructions will probably end up being the last phase of the project.

Resources:

Adobe. (2006, June 21^st). Macromedia Flash Lite. Retrieved July24, 2006, from http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/

Entertainment Software Association (ESA). (2006). Facts & Research. Retrieved July 20, 2006, from http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php

My Digital Life. (2006, July 20^th, Thursday) at 10:40 pm. Free Online ‘Casual’ and Brain Teasing Computer Games. Retrieved July 23, 2006, from http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/07/20/free-online-casual-and-brain-teasing-computer-games/

Makar, Jobe and Winiarczyk, Ben. (2004). Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified. Berkeley. Peachpit Press.

Tonypa.Tony. (2003 / 2004 / 2005). Tile Based Games. Retrieved July 11, 2006, from http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/start.html

Jeff Price

Senior Project

Tuesday 8am

Project Proposal Outline

Project Title: Tile-Based Flash Games

Problem Statement:

1. The problem to solve is how to create more dynamic looking action/adventure/role-playing online games that can be played on both computers and mobile devices. The group of people that are going to benefit from the solution is forty-four percent of game players who play online games and the 32 percent of heads of households that play games on a wireless device, according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

2. Currently most online video games on sites like www.pogo.com, games.yahoo.com, zone.msn.com, games.aol.com, and www.freeonlinegames.com provide vast amounts of simple or casual style games (casual style games referring to easy-to learn one-player or easy going multi-player games that can be played for five minutes or five hours, for example a simple card, puzzle, or trivia game) created in Flash. Many of online gaming sites mentioned above have weak examples of more complex style games such as those in the action/adventure/role-playing category. Using Tile-Based worlds in these styles of video games can make the game creation process more efficient as well as lighten the load on the CPU. This is especially important in mobile devices such as cell phones and PDA devices that don’t have anything close to the CPU power of the average computer system. Online and mobile video game businesses would be able to use this technology to add depth to the games they currently have as well as drawn in the additional 22.0% of the market that play Action/Sports/Stragety/Role-Play games most often according to the ESA. A positive aspect of using Tile-Based worlds in Flash games allow the web and mobile devices that can use the upcoming Flash lite 2.0 technology will be able to recreate or improve upon many of the classic SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) and Sega Genesis style side scrolling games. Tile-based games also use bitmaps over vectors, which in turn task the processor less.

Technologies you want to work with:

1. Tile-based games have been around since the early days of the video game console and are not limited to the use of Flash.

2. My technologies of choice include the Windows platform for development purposes. Actionscript and XML will be the choice as far as programming languages are concerned. The Authoring application chosen for this project will be Flash 8 with the Flash lite 2.0 authoring update. As far as other devices go, I would like to test out the game on a Flash lite 2.0 enabled phone, but I don’t think they exist yet and there the part about not having $300 or more to spend on a phone to test out a game.

Draft Project Plan

A rough layout of my project schedule would start off with the game concept being planned out on paper. The project would be the first level of a scrolling adventure style game that would show how the tile-based world handles character interaction with npc (non-player characters), collision detection, and other functions commonly found adventure style games. After laying out everything on paper as to how the game will look and work, the next phase would include gathering up the graphics and creating the tiles for the actual game. After using the tiles in Photoshop to come up with what the moveable area of the game will look like, I would then use XML to position the tiles. When the main background of the game is finished and loads correctly in Flash using XML, the next phase would be creating the character tiles and animation sequences. Then when all the graphics of the game are ready, the long process of writing the game engine in Actionscript will commence. Testing and debugging stages will take place after that, then the navigation pages and instructions will probably end up being the last phase of the project.

Resources:

Entertainment Software Assiociation. 2006 ESA. http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php

Free Online ‘Casual’ and Brain Teasing Computer Games. Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 10:40 pm. http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/07/20/free-online-casual-and-brain-teasing-computer-games/

Makar, Jobe and Winiarczyk, Ben. 2004 Marcromedia Press. Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified.

Tonypa.Tony / 2003 / 2004 / 2005. Tile Based Games.

http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/start.html

While brainstorming on how using tile games in flash can answer a problem within my field of study, I researched and compiled some demographics on games, entertainment, and the Internet.

According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) at http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php , "Sixty-nine percent of American heads of households play computer and video games." That same link also states, "Forty-four percent of game players say they play games online one or more hours per week."

At http://www.theesa.com/facts/sales_genre_data.php the ESA also sites statistics for online games. According to their graph of online games played most often, Shockwave/Flash/Browser-Based Mini Games are ranked at 9.0%. Action/Sports/Strategy/Role-Play games take up 22.0%. The most often game genre played online is Puzzle/Board/ Game Show/Trivia/Card, taking up 52.0% of the market.

Flash is being utilized for mobile technology http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/
Also on this page is information for Flashlite 2 that utilizes xml and actionscript 2.0, which would allow games created using this tile-based system to work on mobile phones as well.

Some other interesting news that I came across on http://direct.adobe.com/v?xJHcPqnEclnHnnW is "Verizon Wireless and Adobe Systems Incorporated recently forged an alliance to deliver interactive, mobile content experiences based on Flash technology for Verizon Wireless customers in North America."

From what I have read about flash lite 2.0, is that the preview release is an update to Flash 8 that can be downloaded for free by users who have a registered version of Flash 8. The flash lite 2.0 was created using the Flash 7 technology.

This just gave me a great idea for a real world problem that tile-based games can answer. How to create more dynamic looking games that can be played on both computers and mobile devices.

Brainstorm Ideas for my senior project.

One idea I'm considering is using tiles in Flash for gaming purposes. A couple of sites have some good information about tile-based games as well as tutorials.

http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/start.html -- This link provides a good idea about why tile-based games are used and some of the steps involved in creating tile-based games.

http://www.strille.net/tutorials/part1_scrolling.php --This site provides a downloadable .fla tutorial file to allow the user to see the code working as well as a way to modify and experiment with tile-based maps.

http://oos.moxiecode.com/ --This site provides many examples of tile-based games that the developer wrote as well a couple tutorials.

http://www.strille.net/works/misc/platform_demo/ --This site shows a demo created in flash that emulates a popular Sonic the Hedgehog game.

http://www.sylvaniah.com/ --This site has created a game using this tile-based system.