Space gas the flash game.
(c) Bridh Athanatos 2011

A space expedition turns bad when two Australian astronauts once friends have a falling out, (literally) at the beginning of a mission. Things begin to turn ugly and once out of earths grasps, a vicious duel to the death begins. After training their whole life’s for the task of space travel, these two extremely fit astronauts face off floating high in the stratosphere with the earth appearing ominously in the background.

The making of space gas...

Progress Report

Development Goals

Programming

● Implemented collision detection from the projectile to push the other player off the screen when contact is made at the opponents face/helmet.

● Counted successful hits, with a maximum of 3 hits to push the opponent out of the game.

● Linking the animation sequences of the intro into gameplay, then from gameplay to outro.

● Added a skip button to the animation (space bar 'key = 32')

● Removed players existence from stage as the game has ended, players are not visible and players do not work when the game is paused.

● Could not add a key press button to start the game (space bar 'key = 32') although it is working once you have played one game at least. For some reason it’s not capturing key press events at the beginning/takes some time to capture key presses.

● There is a bug on line 170 player1.as "trace("Keyboard mash");"

● After hit players should continue in the same direction as the projectile not simply along one axis. Also this should have a tween applied similar to the rotation. (physics)

● Implementing the pre-loader, could not create a holder file that will load the pre-loader first and then the original file. Pre-loader will be displayed until the game is not loaded completely. Tried resolving the pre-loader issue with 1st frame/ first scene pre-loader (both are technically same) which did not work. As a work around we tried using a wrapper movie that has a pre-loader and loads the game as a separate file, but it also returned error. So do not see a quick fix to it

(3D) Character model

Two astronauts were created in 3DS Max and implemented into the flash file, however the first set of astronauts was far too complicated and didn’t match the game and were re-done to suit the game more. The characters slowly move their arms and legs as if they were floating, this movement continues constantly while the game is being played and the characters are spinning.

The astronauts are implanted using a PNG sequence and pasted into key frames to create animation. Research into directly implementing a 3D model into flash was done but all methods require plugins and extra programs. It was decided that due to the complexity of having flash support a true 3D model that the PNG sequence was the logical way to implement the characters.

The 3D power ups were not modelled or included into the game due to time constraints and the difficulty of adding such items. However the space ship that the power ups were going to fly out of was implanted into the intro of the game.

We made the 3D models to gain access to the 20% bonuses on offer for the use of 3D in game.

(Animation) Pre-loader “skipable”

Animation for introduction has been modified to include a short animation of a rocket launch rather than a comic strip as the story board was not strong enough.
Technically could not get the pre-loader to operate with the game.
The intro contains 3D and 2D elements for consistency with the rest of the game.

Multi-platform

The plan to move Spacegas to IOS for iPhone and iPad was cancelled because of the problems involving converting flash to IOS and finding a way for the game to be playable using a touch screen.

The size of the iPhone screen is also an issue for a pure multiplayer game because there is not enough space for two people to spin their characters around and shoot the opponent. The only way around this would be some form of networking being implemented to support the game being played by two phones playing against each other, which wasn’t an option due to time constraints and difficulty.

Responsibilities:

Intro
- Animation – Bridh
- 3D model – Fraser
- Sound – Bridh & Fraser
Game
- Characters – Fraser
- Code – Bridh
- Sound - Bridh
Ending
- Character animation – Fraser
- Code - Bridh

Challenges

Group member Sid was missing in action after week 2.
Bugs pose coding challenges that require more time to learn more complex Action script 3 concepts. Such as the pre-loader’s complexity.
3D studio max does not easily integrate into Flash, I nice feature would be to export movie clips.

Usability report

Chris Caughey - Found that the graphics were pleasing; however the movement was too sharp and fast to swing the player around. Chris suggested that it may be better to have the buttons all on one hand, which we later implemented.

Fraser Welch - the numlock is a problem so we moved the attach button to down arrow. There needs to be a lead time for the game to start, (wait for audio file to stop playing before initialise, or play an animation sequence) a slight pause so that the players are poised and ready to start. reset players position, this was implemented after Fraser mentioned it. A boxing bell to initiate game start.

Bridh Athanatos - when the left and right keys are pressed at the same time the player is frozen. Projectile trajectory should influence the players’ momentum after being hit. Escape to exit the end cut scene and clear players presence until the game starts was implemented as a result of the usability test. Show tank depletion and recharge(breath in for 2 seconds to reload), separate ammunition pool each player has their own store.

Chris Nelson - Indicate the player has been hit effectivley, with hit sound we have achieved this. However his fantastic suggestion to “possibly slow the game for 1 second, and have a shock wave?” was put into consideration for the next version.

We are both pretty happy with the end result, having the game ending completed makes it all worth while. Ideally the 3D models should be true 3D. When people were tested for usability it was nice to know that all age groups approved the game play, it was well received as an enjoyable experience. Multiple levels would further game interest.