Welcome to the start of the game!
The name of my polished playground game is called “Beach Boogie Maze.” This simple, casual game allows players to take the form of a surfer who’s goal is to get the inner tube to the victim before the timer runs out. To navigate, players must use the arrow keys as they travel through the maze of rafts and dodge the sharks, which reduce health points on the health bar at the top of the screen. You can loose the game by running out of health or running out of time and can win it if you get the tube to the victim before timer ends. Either way, a bouncing box will appear directing you to the next phase of the game, whether it is to move ahead a level or return to the intro screen to play again.
Design wise, I wanted to keep my game simple and try to move away from the typical dungeon look by adding rafts instead of fortress walls. The intention was for my game to be fun and easy, something that I would play and maybe little kids would too. The color scheme is comprised of bright and playful colors, likes oranges, pinks, and bright greens to cater to the fun, lighthearted feel of the game. Dr. Delwiche sent me some design ideas, similar or the same as the one I found on a gaming forum article by Casey Tschida, a writer for AppAdvice.com that has some computer science background, titled Today’s Best Apps: Beach Games, Vert and Spelling Millionaire 2. If I do elaborate on my game I will definitely have to check out more apps to see their design interfaces. Hand drawing all the elements of my game on Flash was a conscious decision because my game was created by me so all the pieces had to go together, unlike Zelda or PacMan where the images are already established. My palm tree is my favorite drawing of the bunch and also the little crab on the intro screen. For fonts, I chose one basic one, Arial, and one fun one, Tempura Sans. I only used Tempura Sans for the titles of the pages and Arial for everything else because it is easy and quick to read, two important elements to keep in mind when designing a game with a timer. All the aspects of the game that had a font related to them were intended to be grouped on the top of the screen, separating the messages, health, and timer from the main game interface. Lastly, I included “Surfin’ USA” by the Beach Boys to enhance the fun feel of the game.
Level 1 interface
Level 2 interface
I guess this is part of the blog post where I talk about my frustrations. Well, I didn’t really encounter any big ones until I got to the adding levels part of the game. I had no clue how to go about that process of creating the levels into movie clips and then adding them to the stage but after understanding what that was all about, it makes a lot more sense. I also think it is really helpful to break the flash code up. I bet if I would have kept all the code in one .as it would have been like 500 lines! The second major frustrations for me and also for Dr. Delwiche was that we could not figure out how to get my level 1 to move to level 2 without having my player freeze up. After a few days of confusion, a strange, yet very simple answer arose. It ended up that all I had to do was focus the level 2 stage, with a very short line of code or clicking the screen. Since, I’m using arrow keys to play the game it is hard to notice that problem but eventually we got it straightened out!
Problems that are still existing that I want to work on later include working on my bounding boxes on the rafts since they are not a perfect square and sometimes interact strangely with the player and the sharks. Foundation ActionScript Game Design has a chapter that will supposodely help me out with that aspect. I also have noticed that when the player hits the shark, they loose health points, but the “player status” bar at the top will not change statuses when the player is doing well versus when they are in harm by touching the shark. I am interested to see how my final game turns out. I think that I, along with my classmates, have learned some new and helpful tools to create something new or adapt our playground game into something more elaborate.
Access game by clicking link! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/221477836/sarah/Polished%20Playground%20(turn%20in)/BeachBoogieGame.swf
Games Class 