Projects Category
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FlxScreenGrab and FlxScrollZone added to Flixel Power Tools
29th Apr 20113I’m pleased to announce that I released v1.4 of the Flixel Power Tools tonight. I have re-factored all of the tools so they now run as native Flixel plugins, something Adam added to 2.5 (I suspect after I wore him down on gtalk with requests for it :). The Flixel plugin structure is great, because plugins can be registered with the framework once and then run independently of your game state, with hooks into the core update loop. Sweet.
As well as the 2.5 updates I also added 2 new classes and loads of Test Suite demos that I’m really stoked about. The new classes are:
FlxScreenGrab
This class allows you to take screen grabs of your game as it’s running. And then save that grab as a PNG locally. The screen grab process can be bound to a Hot Key, or called directly. You can control if the mouse pointer is hidden before capture or not, and you have full control over which part of the screen is captured. It defaults to the whole screen, but any rectangle region is valid (and can even be passed in real-time, see the Camera Test Suite example!)
At the moment I see this class as being useful during development to take quick grabs, but I’ll update it so that you could use it in an actual game, as right now Flash Player security restrictions don’t allow the FileReference Save window to open because I don’t trigger it on a MouseEvent. But this will be fixed 🙂
The next class is …
FlxScrollZone
This class is a powerful way to create scrolling regions in any FlxSprite. A good example may be a background sprite which has a seamless (tiling) texture on it. With this class you can make the texture scroll at any speed in any direction seamlessly but keep just one sprite on-screen. You can create as many scrolling zones as you like in one sprite, and add as many sprites as you like to the FlxScrollZone manager! It’s fast enough that the x/y scroll speeds can be fed to it in real-time. Lots of Test Suite examples showcase the various ways this can be used. The important thing to remember is that even with all that scrolling going on, the x/y values of the sprites being used are never touched. Perfect for game backdrops, sequences, skies, etc.
Grab these and the rest of the Flixel Power Tools 🙂
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Flixel Power Tools v1.3 – Now Flixel 2.5 compatible!
12th Apr 2011Adam has recently pushed Flixel v2.5 from the dev branch to beta, which means it is very close to becoming the next master release of flixel.
A lot has changed between the previous version and 2.5. There have been significant structural changes, dead-wood pruned out, and a lot of really nice new features added including powerful cameras and game save / replay support.
There’s little point holding on to the past, so I have updated the Flixel Power Tools accordingly. They are now fully v2.5 compatible, and the library, Test Suite and all the Tests have been updated to the new format. I will no longer maintain the old 2.43 branch, and it will eventually be archived away. All new classes will be for v2.5+ only.
The Test Suite was also updated. I fixed the FlxColors Test 2, so it now properly works. FlxStarfield now has 2 new tests and supports both 2D and 3D starfields, and there is a new FlxButtonPlus test to show how to create custom buttons with roll-over events, callback parameters and more.
You can get the download from the Google Code Projects page as a zip file, or check out the svn project from there. Several people have been asking that I move it over to github. If you agree then let me know. It’s a lot of extra work maintaining both svn and git versions, but I personally am far more happy working in svn at the moment. Still, if demand is large enough I’ll spend the time required to learn git properly.
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FlxHealthBar added to Flixel Power Tools
5th Apr 2011
Health bars are a commonly used feature in games. From little health bars floating over players / enemies heads, to bars in the UI / HUD. This class provides a really fast way to create them, and they are highly customisable. It features:
- 3 different types of bar: Plain-colour filled, Gradient filled or Image filled
- All fill types support alpha levels
- Optional 1px border around the bar with configurable colour
- The bar can fill in one of 3 directions: From left to right, right to left or from the inside out
- Bars are associated with FlxSprites (its parent). When the health value of the parent changes, the bar updates automatically (within a given threshold limit)
- Bar can be fixed on-screen, and supports scrollFactor
- Bar can “float” with its parent at a given x/y offset from the parents origin
// Create a tiny 32x4 health bar that floats above the "wolf" sprite wolfHealth = new FlxHealthBar(wolf, 32, 4, 0, 100); // Tells it to track the x/y position of the wolf FlxSprite but offset by -5px on Y wolfHealth.trackParent(0, -5);Visit the Flixel Power Tools page to see it in action in the Test Suite, and find the svn download details.
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Kingdums Public Beta – Please join in!
24th Mar 2011Update 28th March: Public Beta Round 1 is now closed, sorry. Keep your eyes peeled (or follow us on twitter) for round 2! The feedback we received was amazing, really constructive and helped us shape how Beta 2 is being built.
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Ilija and I have been working on a micro-strategy game called Kingdums. The objective was to see if it’s possible to build a one-click conquest game. Where all actions (attack, land grab and reinforce) are achieved via a single mouse click.
Tonight I’ve released a public beta of the game so far, to gauge feedback on what does and doesn’t work.
Please understand that we’re not really after feedback concerning graphics / UI elements, as those are still work-in-progress.
Right now it’s all about “how does it feel to play?”. That is vital to how we develop this further.
Please have a play and leave feedback using the form on the page, or as a comment to this blog entry.
http://sandbox.photonstorm.com/kingdums/ <– See Update message above. Link no longer valid.
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Cat Astro Phi sprite sheet, maps, tile set and wallpaper downloads
24th Jan 2011
We’re really stoked about winning the ByteJacker free indie game of the week. Thank you to everyone who voted for us! You can see the results in episode 111 (at the 4:50 marker). To celebrate, and as a result of the great response we’ve had to the game since December last year, we’ve put together a download package for you full of cool Cat Astro Phi bits and pieces:
Full Sprite Sheet
Full Tile Set
Exclusive high-res colour wallpaper
Gameboy Frame
Gameboy Cartridge art
Newgrounds logo in Gameboy style
The “easter egg” photo in high res
Artwork from the prototype game (when it was called Space Hunter)
All the game level maps in DAME format
The original game soundtrack – a nice glitchy 8-bit piece by ilkkeYou’re free to play with this content in any non-commercial sense. If you create something cool from it, please drop me an email and let us know!
Grab the zip file (1.7MB)
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