So, kinda a big change.

After months and months of working on Pathogen we have come to the realization that I built it on the wrong kind of foundation. There had been warning signs, questions raised about "Why can't we animate this?", or "Why is it running so slowly?".

The answer is that Flash Professional was never meant to create full fledged games, animations/prototypes yes, but full games no. The reason is the Flash Display List. Every time you call addChild(thing), that object is added to the display list. It doesn't matter if all of those children are being drawn to a parent object, each is being drawn individually through the Flash Display List. Which means that every frame (in our case 24 times a second) the whole of the flash display list is being redraw. In a normal game that breaks down into each "tile", all 228 of them on a small map is being redrawn, each of those tiles have a grid space, so double that, add the player selector buttons as well as the GUI objects and your talking somewhere in the realm of 500+ objects being redrawn every frame for just a small map.



This limitation is what causes those little loading hiccups when switching map sizes on the game setup screen as well as loading a game in general.

It also limited the number of artifacts we could have moving around in the background, how fast the slider responds, and was one of the big reasons why we decided to ditch phone development.

So after a long talk about it, we have decided to address the problem. The answer is to virtually rewrite the game using a known flash engine such as Citrus, Starling, Flash-punk  or Flixel.  These engines are created in such a way that all assets, no matter their number, are all drawn at the same time and thus drastically increasing efficiency. 

The first step in the process is research. What do these different engines have to offer, how active is the community, how well does it integrate, etc.

After a few frustrating days of testing we have come to a decision, Pathogen will be rebuilt using the Starling AS3 Framework.

Why did we choose Starling? Well, it had a lot of things going for it.

1. Adobe seems like they wholeheartedly officially support the engine, which means in the future they may plan with it in mind.

2. The community is pretty strong, a lot of big name games (Angry Birds) have been created with it and there are some great tutorials out there.

3. It mimics the native Flash syntax, addChild, EventListener, all has a Starling variant making it far easier for me to switch my thinking over to a newer system.

So a wide new world await us, tomorrow I will be talking about my experiences in getting Starling working(not an easy task) as well as what the big code changes will be making the switch over to this engine.

 

Sound...

Thanks to Ryan for letting us know about the continuing AI issues, Matt turned around and took another look and I think we plugged the rest of the holes for AI.

Learned that the way I had been loading in external libraries into Flash was all wrong, as a result the game had a ridiculous build time as well as a bit of lag time when running a level for the first time. Now I know what not to do.

When Pathogen first launches, it sits on a pure black screen for a second or two before actually loading the game. That black screen I discovered is the initial load period and a splash image can be displayed if named correctly and loaded into the IPA, looks a little more professional now.

Sound...

Sound/music is kinda my blind spot in game development. I don't know where to even begin, so i've been avoiding it for a long, long time. But finally, I have come to the realization that we do really kinda need it. So I started simple, no button sounds, just a background track that loops. Since Matt has come aboard he has shown me the awesome power of Static classes (not something i learned about in school) So the music stuff came along a lot faster in part because of that, but also because i found a really great sound code library called ASound, which simplifies the calls you need to make and gives a breadth of control over the tracks that are being played.

 

 

Build Day! Pathogen 1.06

Single player should be coming to an iPad near you (if your a tester)!

Which means a host of new changes.

Patch Notes for Pathogen 1.06

- New Grid art!

- Visual bugs with the cell selector have been address

- Introduction of a new mode: Erosion! Erosion Zones on the map will randomly decay over time, allowing for new paths and areas to appear throughout the game. The new erosion tile has also been added to the map editor.

- Single Player-

This is our first release of the single player experience. As we continue development we will be adding additional levels, elements, and difficulty levels to this campaign. At the moment the farthest you may progress is to the levels Underdog & Win in X Moves.

The single player campaign will save you progress with every level unlocked & each game is saved when exited to the main menu so that a local game can be played.

Plugging Away

I think we are going to make our end of the week deadline for a build. Having a little problem with the AI, its causing the game to crash in certain instances, but Matt is working through that today. Initial saving feature for the campaign is in, if you leave a game to go do a local game the campaign remembers were you were, auto launches the level, and reloads the map to where it was at that moment.

The tricky thing i still have yet to do is save all the the game's history as well... This would allow the replay system to be fully functional after completing a level.

Laid out a preliminary list of achievements that we will be including, which is always fun. Looks like we should have a pretty large chunk, more that 25 at least.

Mid Week Overview 4/10

Have done a few things this week.

Looked a little bit into the future at some of the up and coming game development competitions and the next one is Indiecade, and their early registration ends on May 1st. So that becomes our next "major" deadline.

I think we are on/ahead of schedule, i don't know, our development feels like its in a really good place at the moment. Matt has polished the AI to the point were we are comfortable in having people try to take it on. Its also been integrated into the single player campaign, so by Friday we will be releasing the beta experience of the single player campaign to get some feedback.

A new victory screen went in for the single player to avoid the jarring transition between ending a game and the post game screen, the post game screen also got a little love. Matt may have finally fixed one of our major Pie chart bugs which could on rare occasions cause a full crash.

I made a tiny art change, which ended up pretty drastically altering the game board as a whole. So let me know what you think of the new game board grid when you get hands on.

Oh, finished the erosion zone mode. It is essentially an inverse of the capture zone mode. Erosion zones begin the game as normal t4 grey walls, but as the game progresses zones will randomly decay, allowing for new areas to open up and cascades to be more effective.

 

Every day a new game

Just about every day this week we have played a new game mode, trying things out, seeing what works/what doesn't. From early on I knew that I wanted (potentially) all of these modes to be pretty friendly with one another, that way they became more like layers, which could be stacked on top of one another over the originally vanilla version of the game.

Knowing this fact and making everyone aware that was my intention was a great idea. It allowed me to speck the design and programming in the right direction before I ever started. So right now its possible to play a timed/infection/lightning/control zone map which is pretty sweet, allow for a lot of experimentation and level design.

Lightning games are pretty fun, we played 2 this morning, each took roughly 15-16 minutes to complete. Its a pretty basic mode, where the game simply ends at the end of X number of rounds have passed. We played with a cap of 20 rounds, but it looks like I'm going to cut that in half to make it even more competitive/frenetic.

For players in the normal game setup window they will be able to adjust the number needed, allowing them to play a 15 min, 30 min, or whatever length game they wish. Probably 10 - 100 round game slider I'm thinking.

The single player is in a really good spot right now, the unlocking structure is in place, all levels are build and playable, all modes have been created and function correctly and the best part is, is that its super flexible. We can add/remove/edit new levels easily because map editors rock!

I'm going to be testing a new game mode I found written down in my notebook from a few months ago called Erosion. Beta testers will be the first ones thrown at the single player campaign, but only once we get a functioning/competent AI which has been progressing pretty well.

Bug fixes

hmmmm, played a few games today around our printer (i.e. our impromptu meeting table) and saw that there is a bunch of little bugs that I should really iron out.

- Replay: Lots of little bugs with the replay system. As soon as you start messing around with time its bound to happen

- Capture Zone? We experienced a problem i swore i fixed earlier, if a player captures the 1st tile of the capture zone the whole thing gets claimed...

- Virus cool down? Thought i got this one as well, but it seems as though the cooldown likes to count in weird intervals, though it is always correct.

If there is anything else, email me at birnamwoodgames@gmail.com

Thanks,

Zach

Coming Soon

Hopefully by the end of the day I will be pushing a new build out to everyone and some new changes will be rolling out with them!

Pathogen 1.05 Patch notes!

- Removal of Online Play

- New cell animations!

- New game mode, Capture Zone! At the end of 10 turns all capture zones are claimed, what ever cells reside within the zone are instantly auto-promoted up to a solid cell. Capture zones can be claimed early if the who area is controlled by a single player.

Sick

Friday I was out sick, lasted through the weekend and now I'm feeling much better. Matt's out today for the Easter holiday, so its just the three of us. Going to continue to work though the game modes that will be apart of the single player campaign, infection is going to be the next big challenge. Also need to turn around and check in on some of those bugs people have noted.