Blackbunny

Hey guys, I’m really sorry I’ve been out for so long. I’ve been pretty busy with summer classes. One of the first things I’d like to point out is that I haven’t been completely out of it. I’ve started working on games using Microsoft’s XNA Studio, and I’ve managed to recreate Bejeweled and Tetris. Bejeweled ended up being quite buggy in all honesty, although Tetris is quite solid. The only thing about Tetris, is that the controls are quite sluggish. My next game will work to alleviate that. Hopefully I’ll be able to bring everyone along with me on that journey. Don’t expect another update until at least next Monday where I will describe the direction I will take on that next project.

Lately I’ve been working on a flash game with a group of kids from my college. Over the summer I’ve done a bit of programming on the game, and I noticed that one of the hardest things for me to figure out was how to do music. There where a few tutorials out there, but none that really just gave me the information I wanted without throwing a bunch of extra crap at me. So today I thought I would do exactly what they didn’t. I’m going to give you the bare bones music and sound tutorial.

Note: I am using ActionScript 2 as this is the language that we chose to develop our game in.

So the first thing you’ll want to do is grab the music file you want to play. If you don’t have one you can download the track along with the project file for this tutorial here. The format of your audio track should be a .mp3 with a maximum bitrate of 128kbps. If you need a converter for your audio track I would suggest using Super (c). It’s super powerful, has a ton of features and best of all it’s free. To import your audio track to your flash project, simply click File -> Import -> Import to Library, browse to your audio file and then click OK. You should now see your audio file in your project library. After that, in your library, go ahead and right click on your newly added audio track and click properties.

This will bring up the above dialog box. Click the check box that says “Export for ActionScript” Then in the identifier box type a name that will represent this audio track. I have chosen “Disco.” This allows us to call upon our audio file whenever we choose.

For our next step go ahead and create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer button in the bottom left hand side of the Timeline box. Next double click on the name of the new layer and call it “Actions.” Then select the first frame on the Actions layer by left clicking once on your mouse. Finally press F9 to bring up the Actions box. Here we will write the three lines of code that will allow us play our previously added audio track.

Now if I scared you with the word code, don’t worry. As you can see there are only 3 lines. It’s nothing you can’t handle. Although if you’re using this for a Flash game I would expect that you already have some basic experience with ActionScript. The first line creates a new Sound object called myMusic. On the second line we then attach the audio clip with the identifier name “Disco.” After this has been done the audio track is ready to go. As a final step, myMusic.start() will cause the music to play.

That’s all there is to it! There isn’t as much flexibility is AS2 as there is in AS3 however it still works just fine for small games. Listed below are some more methods that you might find useful.

myMusic.setVolume(100); // Takes a number between 0 and 100
myMusic.stop(); // Stops the Sound Object

I’ve learnt a lot in the course of making this game, and I want to share more with everyone. If you’ve enjoyed, learnt anything, or have some suggestions for our readers please feel free to leave a few comments. Thanks for reading!

As you all know I have decided to start writing on subjects that are more useful to the people who read my Blog. I never really had much of a plan for my blog other than I wanted to be able to tell readers about my everyday problems that I came across on my road to becoming a Computer Science major. However I started the blog late in the year, and because of this I was unable to bring a large variety of subjects to the attention of the readers. So for the remainder of the summer, before classes resume, I would like to do a few brief tutorials on game development. Most of these will focus on the Flash platform, but I hope that I will be able to work in some content that deals with Microsoft’s XNA Studio.

Many of you already know that I am working with Doubletake Student Productions on a 2D platformer in Flash. We have nailed down most of the game play, but lately I’ve been having a real tough time trying to get the music to work right. I’ve searched the Internet far and wide for relevant tutorials, but everywhere I look I can’t quite find a tutorial that explains everything in a clear and concise manner. As such, once I have managed to complete the music portion of the game I will most likely be posting all of the tips and tricks that I acquire in my first tutorial Music for Flash Game Development.

After music I’m not sure what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll do a few short bits on basic game mechanics, perhaps gravity or bullets. If anyone has any requests for tutorials involving Flash, XNA or any other game development related subjects, leave a comment and I’ll try to get some content written. I might not know the answer, but just like with the music for the game I’m working on, I’ll look it up, solve the problem and we’ll all learn something from it.

I had some site stats sent my way, and they where kinda cool. Most of my hits where on my short write up on Lexicographic Order. These stats where pretty cool to look at so I think I’m going to go ahead and start doing a few more short write ups like that one. I’ll probably try and do some on XNA stuff as well as some basic PHP tuts. So that’s all I have for today, because tonight is all about Calc!

Hey everyone, sorry it’s been so long. It’s been a busy last couple of weeks and it seems as though my blogging life is kinda dieing off, until now. The past week has been full of world events effected by blogs, and short twitters alike. Blogs are a true medium in which ideas and facts can be conveyed to outside sources. It’s a real eye opener for me. Anyway I just wanted everyone to know I’m now in calculus and we’re starting to talk about the great and mighty “limits.” They’re kinda cool really. It’s like for the first time in math you can almost have the right answer and it’ll be right. Also just wanted to make a note about Project Steve. The music has been finished up and sent my way. I don’t really have a lot of knowledge on music in Flash but I’ve found a couple links that will be a real help to implementing it. Don’t expect my next update to be until at least this weekend, not only is calc kinda killing me, but I have some personal stuff going on as well. See you next time!

At least I think that’s what today is. I installed Windows 7 on my PC yesterday and a lot of things happened. As a result I now have a dead hard drive and my system is all messed up. But that’s not the worst thing that’s every happened to me so I’m honestly not to worried about it. Besides it was only a 70GB one. My updates have been much less focused on than my actually work. This week was a disaster and nothing got done, but there was last week. All last week was dedicated to the flash game that I’m involved with, and I hope to finish up another big chunk of it tonight. It seems to me that the rest of the development is going to lie in the hands of 2 other people. I’m really hoping that they start working hard on their parts soon. I can’t wait to see the end result! That’s all I have for you today, my friend who manages the servers say that I’ve been getting a lot of hits lately so I can only assume someone has checked this page out. If you’re listening don’t worry I’m still around, and I am planning on being here for a long time.

After a bit of thinking and a couple weeks of doing absolutely nothing I have finally started working again on Project Steve. It’s a flash game that a new club at IU is working on. There have been a couple bugs that have plagued us since the beginning that we have started to irradiate. After two days of intense coding I am happy to announce the newest version has fixed two of the most annoying bugs in game, and we are ready to start adding art and music. Click the link below to test the latest version of the game.

http://jona.letsrunstudio.com/area_51/version0181.html

So if you come through the main homepage, you’ve without a doubt the new upgraded page. Here you can leave comments about the site or blog and they’ll be sent to a place that I can view. I hope you like it!

Second I’m in need of some testers. I just finished up a version of a small flash game me and some friends are doing and I need a couple bug reports done. In this version I use “gates” (big blue squares) to transfer the character from one section of the map to another. There is a lot of functionality that is missing I am aware of this. The main focus of this play test if movement on the game maps. It will fade in and out later if you’re worried about how it looks. You’re bug report should look something like this…

Hardware:
*CPU: Duel Core 2.0 GHz
*RAM: 2 GB
Stop Here:
*Complete
Beginning:
*Complete
Notes:
*Screw Tornadoes

The game is posted at, http://jona.letsrunstudio.com/area_51/version0175.html

That’s all I have for today. I’ll be updating the current build of the game to add some functionality that has been lacking for a while. So look for an updated version soon.

I would just like to start off by saying I look forward to E3 every year. Each year is full of fun and excitement and all that other stuff that no one talks about (Friends, people who get arrested for sneaking in, etc…). This time around I have a Blog and I would just like to note a few things that I noticed about each Console and of course do some bashing along the way. I will note I do not like Sony, Microsoft is cool, and Nintendo was the creator so I have to give them credit for something.

Microsoft: We’ll start off from who I viewed to have the best E3 Press Conference and work my way to the worst. So since I already have the label up you know I think Microsoft brought it hard. Two things stand out in my mind. There was Halo: Reach and Project Natal. Why Halo: Reach when there where plenty more impressive games shown (ie. Crackdown 2, Metalgear Solid, Halo: ODST)? Well if you haven’t read the books then I wouldn’t expect you to understand. If you have though you know that the events on the planet Reach happen just before the Halo 1. I really wanted the Reach story to be made into a film, but I guess I’ll have to cope with this instead. Ever wonder what’s up with the confusing beginning to Halo 1? Just play Halo: Reach or read the book to find out.

Project Natal blew my socks off. Full body motion capture, Say What?! Dude that’s some amazing technology right there. They could sell those tech demos and people would buy the camera just for them. And then wtf was up with Lionhead studios going all out on a super complex / freaking demo that had my friends talking about Terminator? That was amazing and creepy all at once! In short Microsoft brought a bunch of cool games to the table followed by a technology that was sure to rip apart it’s opponents… And yeah, it did.

Sony: As much as I hate em they had game, after game, after game, after… dare I go on? Then to top it off they released a motion capture device much like the Nintendo Wii controller that just happened to be a bit more advanced than the expansion that Nintendo released an hour previous for their controller. They basically said to Nintendo and Microsoft, “Ha I beat you.” Of course that message was a little late since microsoft got rid of the controller all together the day before. It made Sony’s attachment seem a little less awesome.

Nintendo: Yay! We have a boring spokesperson and we only have 3 games you’ll actually buy only we’re not going to show you them until the last 15 minutes. Watching that conference was painful. Every little thing they did to try and make themselves look cool just added to thier stupidity. Oh look we have Super Mario Brothers with, get this, Multiplayer! (I’m thinking to myself “I’m pretty sure I saw a mutilplayer mod kind of like this around 4 years ago on my friends modded Xbox”) The fact is, the second Nintendo’s console had Internet this game should have been out. Anyway fast forward an hour and a half and we see Super Mario Galaxy. It looked good. It had a mix of 64 style play and Galaxy play. I was excited for it. Then we see a super kick ass version of Metroid. I was like, “Damn, if Metroid was that cool I can’t wait to see Zelda!” Fast forward 3 seconds and it’s over with no, I repeat NO Zelda. I was mad. For all 10 games they featured I did care for most of them.

That’s my round up. Nothing exciting in the Nintendo camp, Sony proved that they can make cool games after all, and Microsoft reminded everyone how much money they have. Thus making everyone hate M$ a little bit more. Thanks for reading, sorry for any mis-spellings, and continue to play that Rare will bring Jet Force Gemini to Xbox Live Arcade and make a sequel.