Brandon and Joshua Games

I’ve been pretty busy with other stuff lately, but I’ve started up a few projects. That brings the total amount of games in progress right now to 4. I don’t want to display a whole bunch of news then cancel it, so I won’t display news on the two new projects I’ve started until I’m close to being finished. I’m not sure if I’ll abandon the Zelda fangame, but I don’t want to abandon Dragon Rush. I had good ideas for that game. Anyways, once I get a game finished I’ll put it up here for everyone to play.

Play PSP Tyrian

I actually kind of like Flash now! I’m sure most PSP owners are aware that the PSP (2.7 firmware and above) can run .swf files using the browser. I’ve been trying to devolop a Tyrian fangame that will run at a decent speed on the PSP. This has been a lot of trouble especially since I only began working with Flash to make games a week ago. The PSP will lag a bit when you fire two pulses and there are three enemies around, but other than that it should be fine. I wanted the game to run at 30 FPS, but I think that’s unrealistic for a game like this. I cut the FPS down to 20. I just wish Actionscript was a little more efficient.

Anyways enjoy this extremely small ENDLESS flash game. You can’t lose yet, so you don’t have to dodge the enemies if you don’t want to. If you want to put it on the PSP use the save as method (right click and select “save as” on most browsers). I recommend creating a folder at the root of your PSP and store flash games there. Use file:/Folder/PSP%20Tyrian%200.1.swf to load the game.

Controls

Analog Stick/Mouse - Move ship
Right Click Mouse - Fire pulse cannon

I’ve recently begun experimenting with Flash. I’m progressing pretty quickly, but I still know barely anything. I won’t get in to the details right now because I’m not sure if I will continue with it. I’m developing a Tyrian fangame (space shooter). So far there’s just a ship that lacks transparency that moves around. Game Maker is still the thing I’m going to use for very large projects though.

Anyways since my life has gotten so busy, Game of the Week is now Game of the Month. Sorry to those that liked GoTW, but I need all the time I can get!

I believe that this system will be the second hardest thing to make in this game so far. Your inventory will be able to hold about a few hundred weapons. Each weapon will be customizable. You can add Magites to them to increase their power. The Magites in your weapons will need to be recharged once they run out, so it will be best for bosses.

Unfortunately my life has gotten busy once again. I don’t know when it will slow down, so I might not make as much progress as I hope, but I will still try to get another version out within 2 months.

I’ve made some good progress especially today. The item system is working wonderfully, I’ve added a new room and fixed many small bugs. The bugs are not easy to spot in the demo since everything is very limited, but they would cause major problems in future releases if I left them alone. One of the bugs was in the Magite equipping system. Every time you load the game you’d start off with all three Magites in your inventory no matter what.

I had a graphical error with the chests that I fixed. Before you couldn’t tell if a chest was empty or not just by looking at it. Now an empty chest will be opened. There are a total of three chests right now, but 4 treasures.

Due to a suggestion I’ve replaced all of the music with a selection from RPG Maker XP. I’ve also created 4 NPCs (non-playable characters) in the new room. Two of them walk around. I decided to allow your character to walk through them. It’s a lot simpler than creating some complicated code to freeze the NPC and have them continue walking when you move away. The moving NPCs go a bit transparent when you walk through them for better effects.

Dual Techniques now have a cost. Using Dual Techs will consume stamina. If you run out of stamina you can’t use Dual Techs. There are two main ways to recover stamina. One is to sleep and the other is to simply wait. Waiting takes much longer, however. You recover one stamina point after approximately 30 seconds which means it will take a total of 13.5 minutes to completely restore this way. Time in battles don’t count either. When using Dual Techs you’ve got to think about which one to use and use it at the right time.

I’ve added an interesting little feature that I’ve been thinking of for a while. Right now its purpose is to help me test the game faster, but it will be helpful for players as well. Pressing “Z” speeds up the game by 4 times the original speed. It doesn’t just speed up the character movements, it runs more code each second. This, of course, depends on what your computer can handle. Since it increases the game speed by so much it will cost more resources from your CPU. Simply letting go of “Z” will return the game to its original speed. So far I haven’t noticed any problems with speeding up the game. You’ll have to earn the ability to use “Z” in the game though.

Well, that’s it for now. Like always, if you’ve got a suggestion let me know.