A Flash Mini-Game
I took some time the week before last to play around with Flash some more. Specifically, I ported one of the mini-games from Banana Bay to Flash, to be played in a browser.
You can try the result here:
While it’s probably on par with a lot of other simple Flash games out there, I’m not entirely thrilled with the results. I was porting relevant sections of my C/C++ codebase into Flash, but some paradigms didn’t translate well (graphical effects mostly). While I went out of my way to implement a few things in alternate ways, overall, I simplified the graphics and sound, and cut out the music, so the resulting mini-game feels a little flat to me. Note that this is NOT the main Banana Bay game, but rather, one of the 7 mini-games that I implemented in Flash.
Overall, it took me about 25-30 hours to take it to Flash, but I probably over-engineered the framework, and my Flash knowledge starting out was pretty limited. On the other hand, I was taking an existing game (mostly) and existing artwork, so I economized on actual design time.
December 11th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Kaboom!, modernized. I like it. I especially like that the coconuts can hit the edges of the basket and bounce – a subtle, nice touch.
Now all you need is to distribute Atari paddle controllers to every player.
December 11th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
I like the bouncing as a PRIMARY FEATURE and wished I could get a bonus for it (and for catching bunches in the lower basket)
December 12th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
The control isn’t as fluid, and because you can mouse out of the active area, it becomes frustrating. Also, not having the badges makes doing some of the harder feats (like a perfect, no-bounce round) pointless.
Good for promo material though.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Yeah – overall, I had to trim enough details (like the badges), and cut other corners, such that it feels a bit flat, as I said in my original post. I could probably add a lot more ‘stuff’ to it with a couple days work.
For now anyways, I got a good sense of Flash (which I wanted), and since I probably wouldn’t use this as a true representation of the full game (because this is only one of the offshoot mini-games), I’m not sure it’s worth the extra effort.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Although I haven’t really tried it out myself, you might be interested in haXe ( http://haxe.org/ ), which I think you might be more comfortable with, because it’s more similar to C/C++ than Flash, yet it produces Flash output. For a working example, you might want to look at the Tile Studio demo by Mike Wiering ( http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/flash/Demo.html ).
January 20th, 2007 at 2:37 am
I like the graphics!
April 10th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Phil, played it for about five minutes. Nice little game.
o I’d make the bounces (off the basket edges) higher to give you more of a chance to get it.
o New to have a special fruit dropped that earns you a miss. Perhaps, I’d make this special fruit one of the diagonally thrown ones.
o Several times I lost because my cursor left the screen, and was no longer controlling the baskets. Highly frustrating — not sure if this is fixable.
o After level two, start with three baskets. Catching in the top basket is worth the most points.
o I’d show fruit piling up in a basket, and when it’s full it leaves the screen and you earn even more points for a filled basket.
Just some quickie ideas.