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posts tagged with: flashpunk

Flashpunk NineSlice Class (Updated!)

Flashpunk NineSlice Class (Updated!)
Last week I posted a quick NineSlice class that I wrote to work in Flashpunk. It was a little clunky, so this past week I cleaned it up and integrated it with Flashpunk's graphic system. The new version now extends Image, so you get all the awesome Image effects like color tinting, rotation, scaling, and more. Check out the new version!

NineSlice.as

As a quick example, here's how I'm using it in my current project. Check out this screenshot of a menu:

Image

Thanks to the handy dandy nine slice object, most of this menu is just drawn with a couple of simple source images. I scaled them up 4x so you could see them a little better.

Image

Just using these images as sources means I don't have to make a new image every time I want to change the size of one of the widgets. I can also do some cool animations with tweening the width and heights of the panels over time.

Feel free to use the NineSlice.as class however you want. If you use it or improve it in anyway, let me know!
as3 actionscript flashpunk
Posted March 11th 2013 2:27 PM (Tools)
6 Comments

A Flashpunk 9-Slice Object

A Flashpunk 9-Slice Object
As I've been working on this Global Game Jam game remake, I've been trying to come up with solutions for problems that I can hopefully reuse for more projects in the future. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about is managing and drawing the various user interfaces for the game. Even though I'm not quite sure how much UI stuff this game will need, I wanted to have some sort of solid base to start with so that I could get stuff up and running quickly.

One of the most basic core structures of drawing a cool UI (in my opinion!) is a 9-slice graphic object. What's a 9-slice graphic object?! Well, here's a quick example of one that I have working in Flashpunk right now.

Image

The box that is being drawn above the red player rectangle is a working example of my NineSlice class. It's being drawn from a source image of nine tiles. The source file has four tiles for the corners, four tiles for the sides, and one tile for the center. Here's what the source looks like (blown up 4x because it is tiny.)

Image

This is incredibly useful because it's now possible for me to draw stylized boxes for potential UI components at any size without having to draw each one individually. One thing that I wish that I had spent more time on in Offspring Fling is the UI for the menus, so in the future I want to make my menus and interfaces as awesome as they can be, and having some functions do a lot of the fancy work for me is a big step in that direction. Here's what it looks like right now: NineSlice.as

Here are some snippets of code from the example shown above:
//initial set up

private var nineSliceTest:NineSlice = new NineSlice(Assets.IMG_NINE_SLICE_TEST, 3, 3, 3, 3);

//in the entity's constructor

nineSliceTest.scrollX = nineSliceTest.scrollY = 0;

nineSliceTest.width = 40;

nineSliceTest.height = 40;

nineSliceTest.x = 50;

nineSliceTest.y = 50;

//in the entity's render function

nineSliceTest.render();
Right now this is a very rough first pass on this kind of thing. Ideally it would be some sort of Flashpunk graphic extension that would plug directly into the Flashpunk rendering system. For now it makes use of the Flashpunk Draw class, and some utility functions that I've written for myself. Feel free to use it or improve it, and if you end up improving it then let me know!
actionscript as3 flashpunk
Posted March 6th 2013 2:14 PM (General)
2 Comments

Dev Log: Platforming Camera

Dev Log: Platforming Camera
Chipping away at things in my remake of my Global Game Jam game. Now that I have more than 48 hours to make the game, I've been taking some time to figure out some things that I've been neglecting for the past couple years of making short form game jam games.

In Offspring Fling, there is very little scrolling. I think only one level actually scrolls both horizontally, and vertically. On top of that there are still only a few levels that scroll at all. This means that I didn't really have to worry about a complex camera, I just have the camera follow the player with a little bit of a drag and it works out mostly fine.

For this new game I'm working on, there's a bit more platforming, and almost every level will have scrolling in it, and there will be some big and open rooms... so I want to have a better camera system in general to handle platforming.

What do I mean by this? Take a look at this breakdown of the camera system from Mario World.



This kind of camera system is pretty crazy. There's a lot going on behind the scenes to make sure that the camera is showing the player exactly what they need to see. This is definitely one of those things where if you do it right, nobody will notice you're doing anything at all, but it is incredibly difficult to get this kind of stuff right.
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dev log flashpunk gamedev
Posted February 25th 2013 2:13 PM (Games)
5 Comments

Colliding with Slopes?!

Colliding with Slopes?!
In my last blog post I talked a little bit about how I've implemented slopes in my latest project, but I only talked about how I was actually importing them from Ogmo Editor into Flashpunk and not about how I'm actually using them for platforming. In this post I'll attempt to explain how I actually use slopes in my movement system, which means my platformer characters can walk up and down them without any problems.

The first thing to keep in mind is that all of my slope code only really works with slopes that increase or decrease by 1 pixel. I could rework some of it to make it work with a step of any size that the programmer could define, but for now 1 step is all I really need.

Pixel Sweepin'


The first thing to know is how I actually go about moving my platformer characters, and other moving objects around my game world. I use a method that I refer to as pixel sweeping. Basically whenever an object moves in my games, I move it one pixel at a time and check for collisions at each step! This might sound a little crazy to some folk, but this is the most reliable way I've been able to do stuff like platforming and other moving objects and still collide with even the tiniest pixel of a floor or wall. I've been using this technique since the very beginning of Bonesaw: The Game.
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gamedev flashpunk as3 actionscript
Posted February 20th 2013 10:49 AM (Tutorials)
1 Comment

Dev Log: Slopes and Slopes

Dev Log: Slopes and Slopes
Still working on the re-make of my Global Game Jam game! The most recent development I can talk about is this:

Image


Image

Look at those beautiful SLOPES! I haven't actually done any platforming with slopes since all the way back in 2009 when I first made Jottobots (and before that, Verge.) This is my first time doing slopes of any sort in Flashpunk. There were a couple of hurdles to get over to get them working smoothly though.
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dev log gamedev flashpunk
Posted February 18th 2013 12:42 PM (Games)
2 Comments

Game Making Tools

Game Making Tools
Since I posted the time lapse video of me making a game for Global Game Jam 2013, I got a couple of questions regarding the exact tools I'm using for my game making needs. This is a pretty long post, so I'm going to put it all behind the jump tag. If you want to know my secrets, then click read more!
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gamedev flashpunk flashdevelop as3 actionscript
Posted February 13th 2013 11:00 AM (Tools)
2 Comments
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