The car will also contain 1 Sebastian from Noumenon Games, 1 Mario from 2Play, 1 Calle from 12 O’Clock, 1 Marcus from CoastalByte and 1 Robin from Forgotten Key.

For more info about the conference visit: http://www.tgin.se/about-sgc

Then Simon realized the Codeathon should be read as co-DEATH-on so I made anot
her one.

Update: Alexander picked the first one but wanted it a bit clearer so I uploaded that aswell.

Related posts: [Using it, Compound Menu, Understanding it]

Example game.

I’ve used the menu system to make an example game called Hunter Mac where you hunt unicorns.

Related posts: [Example Game, Compound Menu, Understanding it]

To use the menu-system

• Create a MenuHandler
• Create your menues
• Add the menues to the MenuHandler

import com.talonfc.menu.MenuHandler;

private var _menu:MenuHandler;

package com.menu
{
	import com.talonfc.menu.Menu;
	[Embed(source='../../../lib/MenuGraphics.swf', symbol='ExampleMenu')]
	public dynamic class ExampleMenu extends Menu
	{
		public function ExampleMenu(main:Main)
		{
			super(main);
			SetStart(new Vector3D(-180,0,0),new Vector3D(0, 0, 0),new Vector3D(.5,.5,1),1);
			SetMid(new Vector3D(0,0,0),new Vector3D(0, 0, 0),new Vector3D(1,1,1),1);
			SetEnd(new Vector3D(180,0,0),new Vector3D(0, 0, 0),new Vector3D(1,1,1),1);
			UseTweenMovement();
		}
	}

}

There are some important things in this class, I’ll go through it line by line.

• Line 1. It’s good to organize your class-files in folders so here I have created a folder called com and in the a folder called menu, this is where I will save all my menu files. So you should have the filestructure “ProjectFolder/com/menu”. 
• Line 3. We import the Menu base class from the package com.talonfc.menu.
• Line 4. Embed the graphics, to access a symbol in an exported sfw-file you must give it a linkage name in the properties window. 
• Line 5. If you make your menu in Flash and create buttons that you want to access by their instance names the class needs to be dynamic. Also it extends the Menu class which we imported earlier.
• Line 7. The constructor, here you supply the reference to the Main class where the MenuHandler instance is created. 
• Line 9. Pass the main instance to the super class constructor.
• Line 10. The SetStart method takes four arguments, rotation, position, scale and alpha. The first three arguments should be in the Vector3D format since we can modify x, y and z values of those three, and the last alpha is a single Number value ranging from 0 to 1. In the example above we specify that the menu should start with a x-rotation of minus 180 degrees, position we leave at 0 on all axis, and we set that the starting x- and y-scale at .5 which means that the menu should start at 50% of it’s original size, we leave alpha at 1 at all times. 
• Line 11. The SetMid method, same as above but we have changed the rotation to 0 and alpha to 1, so that there will be no rotation on the menu and it will be fully visible. The mid position is the state as the menu will be shown as the user interacts to it.
• Line 12. Then we have the SetEnd method where you set the end rotation, position, scale and alpha and all we do here is changing the end x-rotation. 
• Line 13. Next we set up the movement type, the system supports three different movement types, Tween, Wobbly and Static, we’ll look into that later.   Now we have an example menu so the next step is instantiate the MenuHandler, add our menu to it and then show the menu. This is done in the Main.as class.

_menu = new MenuHandler(this);
_menu.Add(new ExampleMenu(this));
_menu.Show(MainMenu,_canvas);

When you create the MenuHandler and ExampleMenu you provide “this” which is the instance of the Main class as an argument. When you call the _menu.Show method you provide two arguments, the first is the classname of the menu you want to show and the second is the DisplayObject that you want the menu to be added to, for simplicity here we add it to the Main class itself. You can provide an extra argument to the Show method that is at what depth to add the menu, the default vale is -1 and will add the menu on top of everything else in the container. Setting up the movement behavior. The three movement types, UseStaticMovement, UseTweenMovement and UseWobblyMovement should always be called after the super statement in the constructor of the menu as shown in the example above. The UseStaticMovementmethod takes to arguments, the first is how many frames it will take the menu to go from the start position to the mid position, and the second is how long it will take to go from the mid position to the end position. This method will make the menu move at a constant speed.

UseStaticMovement(numberOfFramesToShow:int = 15, numberOfFramesToHide:int = 15):void

The UseTweenMovement method also takes two arguments, the first is how many percent of the remaining distance from start to mid it will move each frame and the second is the same but for moving from mid to end. This method will make the menu move at a higher speed at the beginning and slow down towards the end.

public function UseTweenMovement(showTween:Number = .7, hideTween:Number = .7):void

The UseWobblyMovement method takes five arguments, the first two are for the start to mid distance and the next two are the same but for the mid to end distance. The two pairs are acceleration (showAcceleration and hideAcceleration) and slowdown (showSlowdown and hideSlowdown). The last argument is the vectorTolerance, this is how much two vectors can differ but still be considered equal. This method will make the menu shoot over its target position and then wobble back and fourth until it has slowed down to a stop.

public function UseWobblyMovement(showAcceleration:Number = .7, showSlowdown:Number = .5, hideAcceleration:Number = .7, hideSlowdown:Number = .5, vectorTolerance:Number = .5):void

The characters in this game are made out of 24 pieces of graphic! You can change your left shoe, your hat, your right shoulderpad and everything!

It was very satisfying to see the result when we loaded the graphics and everything worked as intended.

Altough we haven’t made so that enemies are put together with random parts so below s a screenshot of me fighting an invisible enemy called Jimmy.

I’ve also worked some on the sorting so that the player can walk behind trees and other tall stuff. I thought I had the solution, everything was fine and dandy and sorting right.

But then I changed map and all of a sudden the player decided to walk under the ground tiles. I have no idea why this happens because as far as I can tell it just randomly sorts stuff wrong.

At least I’m on to something and it’s just a matter of working through the code and then I’ll probably find the line that is causing this “random” behavior.

It has finally arrived!

The promotion video by DIW.se meets all my expectations and is just as “over-the-top” as I wanted, and they managed to get all the things I asked for in the video, both explosions and drums!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

In this game there are 119 ways to get it wrong and lose and one golden way to get it right. The game is made in XNA and you can find it and download it here: talonfc.com/download/toconqueragirl

I blame Roger for the fact that it’s called “Stolen Goods” when you install it.

This is the first game that has our new intro video in it made by diw.se.

If you wanna try it, then go for it! No warranties at all!

Simon tried the editor today and made a level called Myrmidon, that is what he calls my girlfriends cat (actual name Leia).

The first level he made looked different but something that I thought was solved with the save system apparently wasn’t, so when he loaded the level it looked like crap. But after a few quick fixes everything worked as intended.

A problem thatI unsolved at the moment is the sorting of the graphics when the player moves around. Right now the level is made up of 5 graphical layers, the ground and four layers of decorations.

Since a tree can be in any of the decoration layers and the player is supposed to be under it when he is behind it and over it when he is in fron of it I might need to add him to different layers depending on where he stands. That feels like the wrong way to go and I’ll try to find a better sulotion to the problem.

In the picture you can also see the data layer being used. In the data layer you can put small scripts like if he tile is unwalkable or if the player should encounter an enemy on the tile.

Sometime I think we should make a “No More Game Jam” where people are strictly forbidden to do any games and instead just talk about what they do and how they feel and think about things.

Roger and I are attending No More Sweden 2011 in Stockholm.

This time the game will be made in XNA instead of flash as it usually is, that’s because Roger is coding which puts me in charge over the creation of graphical assets.

I think it’s fun to do some graphics but I’m so lazy that I know I would never have the patience to make sweet graphics for a full game.

Yesterday there were some sweet talks by the other people here covering things from game design, music inspiration to education in games.

The theme is created in a special way here, all attendants can write verbs on a piece of paper and then put it in a jar. (That’s where the pirate keeps his jam, in the jaaaarh!)

Then everyone will draw up to three words and use at least one of them in their game, we got the word slicing, to explode and conquer. I’ll let you know what came out of it all.