The main concept is that the player’s actions effect the movement of the blocks to be avoided. This in essence makes the player their own worst enemy. I was experimenting around with nested spring feedback systems and this concept of player as AI when I stumbled upon a fun and playable prototype that went on to become this game.

I spent about 7 days developing the version I submitted to the Experimental Gameplay Project website and then I worked for a bit longer polishing it up to get it ready to seek sponsorship.  I’m happy to report that Armor Games picked up the primary sponsorship on it and Contentric officially launched yesterday!

It was great to work with Dan from Armor Games and I definitely recommend them to any other flash developers out there who are looking for a good sponsor.

I’m really quite happy with how this game came together.  I was able to get a ton of playtesting feedback early on which really helped me perfect the gameplay to where I wanted it.  I also got to write the music for the game which people seem to be enjoying as well so that is always a treat.

Here is a gameplay trailer I put together with some rough edits that show me getting a little over 13,000 points.

As usual I welcome any feedback positive or negative and would love to hear from you.

I’ve spent some time over the last week helping my good friend and fellow game designer Jeremy P Bushnell compile a list of historically important video games.

Jeremy has been teaching a Writing course at Boston University on the topic of “Playing Games: How Video Games Work and What They Mean.”

In his discussions with the students about the concept of historical analysis: analyzing video games based on how they “fit” into the context of a developing timeline of games, he had a chance to create an initial list of about 40 games.

This list was then passed around between our friends and associates as well as being shared with his two classes of about forty students total.  Jeremy encouraged his students to confront and challenge the games on this list as well as suggest ones they felt should be included.  They even got to write persuasive papers as an assignment to get a game included on the list.  If the argument was convincing enough they even received some extra credit for making the list.

Jeremy and I discussed some of the more convincing papers and kicked our thoughts back and forth on what made these games historically significant. It was a lot of fun and very interesting to get to consider where videos games have come from (with Spacewar in 1961) up through to the present day.  It was a challenge to pick games not for being good or popular necessarily but for their historical significance.

The finished list (reposted with permission) now stands at 64 chronological games (a nice power of 2) and includes justifications for why each game was included:

64 Important Games From Video Game History version 2.0

1. 1961     Spacewar, first digital game / first shooter / first two-player game
2. 1971     Oregon Trail, landmark educational game (designed in 1971, produced in 1974, re-released in 1985, 1992, 2001, 2008, and 2009)
3. 1972     Pong, first commercially-successful arcade game / first sports simulation, also first digital game released for the home market (1975)
4. 1974     Gran Trak 10, first racing game
5. 1976     [Colossal Cave] Adventure, first adventure game
6. 1976     Breakout, landmark arcade game
7. 1977     Night Racer, first first-person racing game
8. 1978     Space Invaders, first commercially-successful shoot-em-up (160,000 copies sold)
9. 1978     Atari Football, landmark sports simulation game
10. 1979     Asteroids, landmark shoot-em-up
11. 1979     Adventure, first action-adventure game
12. 1980     Zork, landmark text adventure game
13. 1980     Space Panic, first platformer
14. 1980     Pac-Man, landmark arcade game (350,000 units sold)
15. 1980     Rogue, early graphical adventure game
16. 1981     Donkey Kong, landmark platformer (60,000 units sold), also the first game to tell a complete (embedded) narrative
17. 1982     Pole Position, landmark racing game
18. 1983     Intellivision World Series Baseball, first 3-D sports simulation, also the first sports simulation to use multiple camera angles to emphasize action
19. 1983     Ultima III, landmark PC role-playing game
20. 1983     Lode Runner, landmark platformer, plus an early game permitting the creation of user-generated levels
21. 1983     Pinball Construction Set, an early game permitting the creation of user-generated content
22. 1984     Tetris, landmark abstract puzzle game
23. 1985     Gauntlet, landmark multi-player game
24. 1985     Super Mario Bros., landmark 2-D side-scrolling platformer (forty million copies sold)
25. 1986     Air Warrior, first multi-player online game with graphics
26. 1987     Earl Weaver Baseball, landmark sports simulation
27. 1987-8    Street Fighter / Street Fighter II, landmark one-on-one competitive fighting games
28. 1987     The Legend of Zelda, landmark adventure game, also the first home cartridge to permit saving, also a good early example of a game which permitted non-linear play
29. 1989     SimCity, landmark developer simulation
30. 1990     Microsoft Solitaire, landmark casual game
31. 1990     Minesweeper, landmark casual / puzzle game
32. 1990     John Madden Football, landmark sports simulation
33. 1991     Civilization, landmark turn-based strategy game
34. 1991     Neverwinter Nights, first multi-player online role-playing game to display graphics
35. 1991     Final Fantasy IV, landmark console role-playing game
36. 1991     Myst, landmark adventure game (six million copies sold)
37. 1992     Wolfenstein 3-D, first commercially-successful first-person shooter
38. 1992     Mortal Kombat, landmark fighting game
39. 1992     The Incredible Machine, early physics game
40. 1992     Dune II, first real-time strategy game
41. 1993     Doom, landmark first-person shooter, also a good early example of an open-source game
42. 1995     Command and Conquer, landmark real-time strategy game
43. 1996     Quake, landmark first-person shooter, also a good early example of a game utilizing an online multiplayer mode
44. 1996     Super Mario 64, landmark 3-D platformer (eleven million copies sold)
45. 1996     Resident Evil, first survival horror game
46. 1996-8     Pokemon Red / Pokemon Blue, landmark RPG (eight million copies sold), also a good early example of a game with innovative multiplayer mechanics
47. 1997     Lego Island, first open-world game
48. 1997     Ultima Online, landmark multi-player online role-playing game (250,000 subscribers)
49. 1998     Dance Dance Revolution, landmark rhythm game / exercise game
50. 1998     Half-Life, landmark first-person shooter (eight million copies sold), also a landmark example of an open-source game
51. 1998     Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, first commercially-successful tactical shooter
52. 1998     Metal Gear Solid, first commercially-successful stealth game
53. 1998     Starcraft, landmark real-time strategy game
54. 1999     Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, landmark extreme sports simulation
55. 1999-2000    Counter-Strike, landmark mod, also a game making central use of online multiplayer technology
56. 2001     Bejeweled, landmark puzzle / casual game
57. 2001     Gran Turismo 3, landmark racing game
58. 2001     Grand Theft Auto III, landmark open-world game
59. 2002     The Sims, landmark life-simulation game (sixteen million copies sold), plus a game making central use of user-generated content
60. 2003     Diner Dash, landmark time-management game
61. 2004     Halo 2, landmark in online console gaming (four million subscribers)
62. 2004     World of Warcraft, landmark multi-player online role-playing game (over eleven million subscribers)
63. 2005     Guitar Hero, landmark rhythm game
64. 2006     Wii Sports, landmark sports simulation (forty-five million copies sold)

Your comments and arguments are welcome!

This is a little demo I made this morning as a way to get a viewport concept working for the latest game I am developing.  I’ve done a few viewport type projects in other languages but had not implemented one in Flash AS3 yet.

This demo creates 300 random balls and sets them in motion inside the world.  The world’s dimensions are four times larger than the viewport above.

You can click in the window above and use the arrow keys to move the viewport around the world.  The source files for this tutorial are available at the end of the article.

BACKGROUND

I needed to be able to have world coordinates for my latest game along with a viewport which follows the player.  All the objects in the world must move according to various physics and be able to be mapped into the current viewport for display purposes.  After hacking around for a while unsuccessfully last night on the game code I realized this morning that it would just be better to start fresh on a little proof of concept demo until I had it all working.

I thought I’d share some of the concepts in case it could help someone else as well as get any code or design feedback from anyone who may have implemented these in a different or more efficient way.  I can already think of a ton of improvements my rudimentary solution could use but I’ll add them as necessary.

BASIC DOCUMENT CLASS VARS AND CONSTANTS:

// Viewport related constants:
private static const VIEWPORT_WIDTH:Number = 350;
private static const VIEWPORT_HEIGHT:Number = 300;
private static const VIEW_STEP:int = 25;

// World related constants:
public static const WORLD_WIDTH:Number = 1400;
public static const WORLD_HEIGHT:Number = 1200;

// Current viewport coords:
private var viewportX:Number;
private var viewportY:Number;

INITIAL SETUP OF VIEWPORT AND CREATING CIRCLES WITHIN WORLD:

This snippet is occurring inside an init() function that is called from the document class constructor. This is all one time setup.

// set view port coords to middle of world:
viewportX = WORLD_WIDTH / 2;
viewportY = WORLD_HEIGHT / 2;

// create a bunch of random circles scattered across the world:
circles = new Array();
for (var i:int = 0; i < NUM_CIRCLES; i++) {
var circle:Circle = new Circle();

// grab random x that falls within world space:
var wX:Number = GameUtils.randRange(0 + (circle.width / 2), WORLD_WIDTH - (circle.width / 2));

// grab random y that falls within world space:
var wY:Number = GameUtils.randRange(0 + (circle.height / 2), WORLD_HEIGHT - (circle.height / 2));

// set the coordinates for our circle:
circle.placeInWorld(wX, wY);

// add our circle to the display list:
addChild(circle);

// push our circle onto our array of circles:
circles.push(circle);

SNIPPET OF HANDLING KEYBOARD INPUT TO MOVE THE VIEWPORT:

This snippet is occurring inside a keyDown listener function which listens for the user hitting the arrow keys.  Each time the keys are hit it moves the viewport in the appropriate direction while performing range checking with the world borders.

if (e.keyCode == 38) {            // UP
 viewportY -= VIEW_STEP;
 if (viewportY < 0) { viewportY = 0; }
}

MAIN PROGRAM LOOP:

This is a simple enterFrame listener that loops through all the active circles and calls their update method. After the update method we alter the coordinates of the parent display object (in this case the instance of our viewport) inversely with the viewport coordinates. This allows Flash to automatically handle updating all the positions of the circles which are children of our viewport instance. Thanks to draknek for this elegant suggestion!

private function enterFrameListener(e:Event):void {
	for (var i:int = 0; i < circles.length; i++) {
		circles[i].update();
	}

	// pan the viewport
	x = -viewportX;
	y = -viewportY;
}

CIRCLE CLASS VARS:

Here are the variables that define my circle class.  This class is pretty basic and nothing too special has to happen here with regards to the viewport. The class will have to perform range checking with the borders of the world.

// Velocity:
private var velX:Number;
private var velY:Number;

CIRCLE UPDATE METHOD:

Here is a snippet from the update method that gives the basic idea of how to adjust the coords while range checking against the larger world borders.

// Adjust the x coord by current x velocity:
x += velX;

// Perform boundary checking with world borders and adjust
// position and velocity direction accordingly:
if (x < (width / 2)) {
	x = (width / 2);
	velX = -velX;
} else if (x > ViewPort.WORLD_WIDTH - (width / 2)) {
	x = ViewPort.WORLD_WIDTH - (width / 2);
	velX = -velX;
}

So that is my concept of one way to do a basic viewport in AS3.  I am happy to get any feedback on this code and the way I solved this problem.  I know there are many ways to implement these things but this is what I am going to run with for now as it seems to be working pretty good!

EDIT: Thank you to Draknek (see comments below) for an elegant refinement to my code that allowed me to no longer have to track world coordinates on the child objects. Now I can just let Flash handle updating all the positions for me by moving the parent display object instead of manually doing that.

Download the v0.2 source files and fla for this tutorial

I have done a few illustrations for this game working through various game mechanics, styles, and ideas.

This is a useful creative tool for me to rapidly try out different concepts and see what they might look like before I even write a single line of code or start creating any game assets.

Creating concept art becomes a way I can immerse myself in the world and atmosphere of the game ahead of time because as I am drawing these illustrations I am imagining the various aspects of the gameplay occurring.  This can even include me making hand gestures and sound effects without me realizing it as I try out the game in my mind’s eye.  As embarrassing as that might sound for some people it has been something I’ve done unashamedly since I first started drawing as a child.  It makes the experience that much more involved and creatively useful for me.

The mechanics of the game are fluid and easy to change when I am prototyping with illustrations so I can work through many ideas quickly as I form my plan about what to implement in the first prototype. It also serves as a way to get myself psyched about the game and really feeling the emotion and experience I want to try and create for the player.

This latest game has been inspired by a specific title I came up with yesterday.  I’ve been brainstorming various game ideas for it and think I’ve finally settled on a concept I want to implement a prototype of. I’ll keep the title in reserve for now but I expect to make a few more updates along the development cycle.

If you are a game designer feel free to let me know a little about your creative process when you are beginning with a new game.  I have used many different approaches and there are obviously many ways to do it.  I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has used a concept art driven approach to good effect with their games.

What do I mean by infrastructure exactly?  I mean everything from working on dedicated web pages supporting the studios’ games to setting up and configuring social networking apps like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

It is amazing how much time this kind of work can eat up and I tend to get a little frustrated wondering when I might be able to do some actual game development again!

I believe this type of infrastructure and organizational work is necessary though for a small independent game studio to succeed in the long run.  After reading great indie marketing articles like The Zero Budget Indie Marketing Guide and Wolfire’s PR Tips I got inspired to spend some of my valuable time making progress on these fronts.

I’ve learned a good bit over the past two weeks as I’ve started using both YouTube and Twitter for the first time.  (Yeah I know I’m a bit late to the party but at least I’m here now!)  I’ve finally setup a Facebook page for the studio as well.

I wanted to share some of my experiences and thoughts so far on the various tools I’ve begun exploring to help increase the studio’s marketing reach and fan base.  I’ve been carefully watching what other studios I admire are doing and what tools they are using and in what ways.

YOUTUBE

If you aren’t using a YouTube Channel to share your studios game development content with the general public and your fans I believe you are missing an interesting opportunity for outreach.

I’ve been attempting to use YouTube to share aspects of game development that I think non-game developers would find interesting as well as my hardcore fans.  These include things like timelapse videos of the game development process as well as providing gameplay guides and preview gameplay videos too.

It is a great way for people to be able to leave early comments and feedback on works in progress as well as ways to comment on finished games.  They can subscribe to your channel and easily share your videos on viral social networks like Facebook that can really build your presence and distribution potential.

There are some great free tools available too!  You can record timelapse videos with programs like Chronolapse and record live gameplay videos with programs like CamStudio.

YouTube also has an Audio Swap function after you’ve uploaded a video if you want to use freely available music soundtracks without recording one yourself.  You can even search by song duration matched to video duration!  This is a great way to add a little bit more interest to your otherwise silent video.

You can follow my YouTube channel here!

FACEBOOK

Facebook continues to grow both as a social networking platform and as an interesting game deployment platform as well for those of us in the Flash business space.  I’ve been amazed by the few games I’ve had that have been picked up by various Facebook apps like Mind Jolt and the amount of traffic they’ve received as they spread so well via viral status updates and competitive challenges.  It is quite exciting!

It is fairly straightforward to setup a Facebook page for your studio once you find the sometimes hidden create a page for your business link. Then it is a simple matter of filling out various forms and settings to your preference.

The largest time sink I encountered was in trying to upload various logo thumbnails until I found one that didn’t dither down heinously.  Largely that is a problem due to the logo’s thin design and not Facebook but I eventually got a compromise I could live with.  I wish they allowed you to differentiate the pages large image from the tinier status and post thumbnails as that would resolve the issue.

Thumbnail issues aside they offer the regular tools you’ve grown used to as a user of Facebook like Photos, Wall, Info, and Discussion threads to name a few.  All these tools can allow you to communicate to your fans what your studio is up to.  As an added benefit finally setting up a dedicated fan page will allow me to further separate my personal Facebook account from the business of the studio as I always felt a little vague about what types of updates Dave Evans was doing as compared to Hybrid Mind Studios before.

Next on the agenda of Facebook infrastructure work is to add a Become a Fan link on this blog.  Facebook also allows you to tie your fan page to your Twitter account for ease of updating multiple channels.

Become a fan of Hybrid Mind Studios!

TWITTER

Using Twitter for your studio is yet another great way to provide tiny tidbits of what you are up to throughout the day or week.  Sometimes called micro blogging it can let fans and other developers keep tabs in an ambient way with your current projects, ideas, and development cycle.  There is also an easy way to tie your other social network applications to feed Twitter so you only have to update something in one place.

I’ve actually found most of the social networking apps make this integration really easy which I was thrilled to discover because it reduces a lot of the overhead of updating all your various tools when you have something to post.  Integrations are available for Facebook, YouTube, Wordpress (via TwitterFeed), and Bitly (URL shortening with click analytics).

Follow Hybrid Mind Studios on Twitter!

CONCLUSION

If you take a day or two to set these tools up early it will give you a chance to let the social networking snowball grow.  These tools take time to work and the earlier you get them started the better.  Before you know it you will be able to quickly and efficiently communicate to your fans and followers and reach larger and larger audiences for your games!

This is not only my first Flash game but also the first thing I have ever really released onto the internet as well so it has been a real interesting learning experience!

If you don’t care about tech mumbo jumbo if you skip down near the bottom you can see some funny stats from which countries are playing this game and my personal thoughts on my experience so far.

Distribution and Ad channel technology I used – MochiAds:

I decided to go with MochiAds to do my game distribution. It is non-exclusive and free so I am also able to make other deals as well. One of the main benefits they offer is that they “wrap” your Flash game in a preloader that contains customizable and controllable ads from their network. So, the further your game spreads on the internet the better for them and you. You get a percentage of the revenue from the “impressions” that the ads receive as people wait for your game to download. I like that people have the ability to skip the ad by clicking the ‘x’ because let’s face it- ads are annoying. I also then think that let’s face it, I have to eat too.

Another great free benefit that MochiAds provides you is that the preloader that wraps your Flash game is encrypted as well as version controlled. This means that I can update my Flash game with bug fixes, new links, new ads or whatever I want in ONE location and that anyone playing the file (even if they have downloaded or are linking to a SWF somewhere on a portal) will receive a “diff” of the changes in the version. All seamlessly while it downloads. This is really incredible in my opinion. It has been a joy to work with and I have made quite a few tweaks and changes to my game already and it is nice to see them being picked up by all the portals which have received a copy of my game. The encryption is a nice benefit too I would guess though I don’t know much about Flash obfuscation yet I just hear it slows down someone decompiling your code a little bit.

Along with the distribution channels your game is automatically placed in you receive a full stat report at your MochiAd dashboard page. This is where you setup all the keywords, game thumbnail, description, instructions etc. that are distributed when a partner of MochiAds receives your game. I have watched my game spreading to over 40 sites now all without me having to do any further work. They do this because they benefit as well as the developer the further the game gets. They also have a more detailed stat service through MochiBot which I also signed up for which provides further detail on people who saw more than the ad. In other words, people who actually played your game.

The stats are a blast to watch! Especially for someone who is a complete stat and number junkie like myself.

Other portals I have released my game on:

Kongregate:

Kongregate was the first portal I uploaded my game on myself. The submit process was very easy and only involved a few steps. You must have a Kongregate user account obviously but besides that it is really straightforward to get your game up there. You fill out the form with info on your game, upload a thumbnail, check any of the API options you may be using, and also let them know whether your game is “exclusive” to the Kongregate site or not. Options like this one, along with the stats API question control how much your percentage of the ad revenue will be.

Since Kongregate has a deal with MochiAds already they will suppress the display of your ads in your MochiAds preloader. The preloader download bar still works fine but no ads will display. They do this for many reasons and it seems to make fair sense.

Anyway, back to the percentage points: You get 25% of the ad revenue that your game receives just for uploading it to the site. If you also integrate either (or both) of their APIs (HighScore and Statistics) you receive an additional 10% for this bringing your total possible to 35%. Now, if you make your game exclusive to Kongregate you can receive a another 15% bonus bring the grand total to 50%. A nice thing about the exclusive is that they do let you turn that off if you ever feel like putting your game elsewhere and you will revert back to the 25% or 35% share depending on your other options.

Once your game is uploaded and published it will show up on their new games list. At this point it is up to the portal users to rate and view your game past a ‘under judgement’ period. The judgement period is a timeframe where you can’t view the rating of the game yet when you go to rate. I guess the idea is that this helps early reviewers judge with less bias. In actuality most early commenters during this phase like to post their ratings in the comment feed below the game. Once your game has received 75 ratings the rating number is revealed to all. If your game does well enough it will move through the rankings accordingly. TurnStyle seemed to fair pretty well for a first attempt. TurnStyle’s rating seems to fluctuate around 3.25/5 stars over there. It is ranked around 240/3200 in the puzzle game category currently on their site too. I guess that isn’t too shabby at all with everything considered. As of this post date my game was played over 3500 times, rated over 450 times, favorited 17 times, and earned me 1 fan.

Newgrounds:

This is the only other portal I have submitted to so far. Similar to Kongregate it followed a manual form submission process. Once your game is up on the site it also undergoes a judgement mode where people have to vote and review it for it to acheive it’s placement ranking. The system is similar enough to Kongregate’s that I won’t go into great detail here. They also offer an API but I haven’t looked into that yet. I am allowed to have my MochiAds viewed up there and they seem to get me a pretty good eCPM rate so far based on my MochiAd stats so that is good.

It seems TurnStyle faired a good deal better on Newgrounds than on Kongregate. My game got 7 reviews: 6 perfect “10s” and 1 “9″ for a review rating of 9.9. The voting system seems to indicate that my game has a vote rating of around 3.5/5 stars with 298 votes received and over 1200 plays.

The cool news was the first day I submitted it my game did well enough to get voted 6th Most Hottest Game for Monday! That was pretty exciting. I missed the coveted 1-5 spots that would have gotten my game even higher in views. It was still on the front page though just didn’t have the icon next to it. Oh well, pretty good for first Flash game I guess.

Traffic Stats and Ad Revenue so far:

So, I wanted to provide all the above data for context to what I will now share so that other developers can see how these stats relate to what distribution technology I used and where I have manually uploaded it. I will detail the rough number of hosts my game has reached (remember only two of which I submitted to myself) along with traffic numbers, impressions received, and revenue received so far. I do this because I have found it really helpful seeing the other Flash developers who have been transparent about this business space so that all may learn to be better.

TurnStyle Stats: 3 Days in the wild

Dates: Feb 28, 2009 – Mar 02, 2009
Ad requests
Total: ~15000
Impressions: ~10000
Skips: ~5000
Revenue: $2.40
# of Hosts: 42
# of Countries: 101

% of Plays by Top 5 Countries:
39% from Finland (this is crazy.. also almost half the leaderboard scores are from Finland too.)
20% from USA
7% from UK
4% from Canada
4% from Germany

I have also made about $3 dollars from my 3500 plays at Kongregate through their system.

So, while this game hasn’t been a financial success yet at a whopping $6 of ad revenue so far the education that I have received and continue to receive is fairly priceless. Also, ad revenue is more of a long tail approach as my game (and future games) spread through the internet. I try to visualize a day where I may have 10-20 games roaming about each bringing me a couple bucks a day potentially. Well, that ads up when these little critters can “work” 24/7. Heck, who couldn’t use an extra 10x $1 a day.. that’s almost $4k a year when you think about it. So, while $6 earned so far on 200 hours of work at least might initially discourage some- I believe that is a short-sighted reaction. There is also the idea that while most of your games will end up relatively “unplayed” in the scheme of things- you only need 1 or 2 to really “blow up”. I think the more quality games you can release over time the better.

In order to work on a different angle to monetizing the Flash business space there is also the world of licenses and sponsorship to consider. I have signed up for an account over at FlashGameLicense which lets you sell licenses to released games and find sponsorships of various types for unreleased games that portals buy. It allows bidding and reviewing and other matchmaking services to allow Flash developers to get a fair price for good work. I am excited about the potential that FGL offers to do this kind of work fulltime. I will be posting more experiences regarding those adventures in later posts!

Aside from all the business aspects and traffic aspects I’ll share a few personal joys from this experience:

The thought tickles me so that potentially 15,000 people have seen my illustrations and played my game. I can’t believe I didn’t do something like this earlier in my life because it is so much darn fun! There is something so tantalizingly weird about hitting refresh on your browser while watching your MochiAd stat page and seeing that every 5 seconds 20 more people have tried your game. It blows my simple mind.

I would also like to thank all my close friends and friends of friends that have played this game and offered their feedback. In the anonymous world of the internet it is still the opinions of those I am close to that I most value hearing. I can’t wait to make more games!