I've added a t rex skeleton and have been working on adding a health bar so you can get hit three times before dying. So far it isnt functional in anything other than soaking up hours of time and adding inches of body fat to my love handles.

gravity in level 2 now inexplicably works. I swear, the actionscript looks exactly the same, but by god it works now. Save for the moving platforms, I knew they would be touchy. I've started a Kirupa thread for it here.

..and, since that doesnt seem to be going well, I also posted in on Yahoo. Someone out there knows about this

getting very nervous about capstone paper. I have on my plate: two group projects involving class presentations ad individual research papers, two different print making editions, selling all myfurniture, getting documents from HMSA (my hawaiian health insurance) and getting them faxed to the embassy in San Fran, getting a plane ticket to Hawaii and another to France because suddenly i need one to get my visa, finding homes for my cats and fish, finding a new home in france, learning two arias for voice lessons, a flash based video game and capstone paper, and of course daily homework.

okay so.

kit run gravity still not happening. level two now has music and more moving platforms.

I changed the dirt tiles so this level looks more different than level 1. too bad I cant test the moving platforms but GRAVITY DOESNT WORK FUUUCK

slow going. Cant get gravity to work in level two. necessary for progress. IOW AKA FUUUUUUUUUUUCK

just look at those terrifying cliff faces!!

stuff i wanna do: fix grav cuz if no can, no can test level = no can make more level

make a little image of a chicken leg to replace the hexegon in the score calc. cute counts.

FIX GRAVITY DAMNIT

designing level two- dragging and dropping obscene amounts of movie clips and actionscript from level 2. This level is a cliff level! with moving platforms and such. looks the same as level one in the beginning only because the den is there. Its going to be at the beginning of each level.

confusing myself to the nth degree trying to figure out how to add a "level 1 pt 2"

it is with one auspicious and with one drooping eye that I say this is the first excuse I've ever had to make on this blog.

Where I should be posting near daily, I am posting near weekly. Alas. I am so busy this term I think I'll cry for a moment. Okay so thats happening. Through tears I will continue with a promise to Kit Run: "I shall not fail you!"

Play Robot Unicorn Attack on facebook. I'm not going to link it. No way no how. Just DO IT

The sun sets now. The sky gradually changes color and everything. It's crazy super cool.

Also the "Try Again" button works after you die and the death whale shows up when hes supposed to. He's still harmless though, unfortunately

okay so I've made the decision that KitRun is crossing the line with me. Now I'm Running CS3! still outdated, but def an overdue update from MX. Dang.

Today I discovered that the victory song doesnt stutter when it's called if I don't tell the level 1 background music to stop. They play perfectly and happily on top of eachother, but its painful to the ears indeed.

A one sentence of my capstone: A completely functional level 1 and level two of my pixel based side scrolling game, Kit-Run.

A one paragraph description of my capstone: By completely functional level 1 and level 2, I mean that you can open the game from the title screen and play through to the end of level two without noticing that it's unfinished. This means a functional title screen, time limit, score add up, ghost whale, and screen scrolling. dang!

More: I realize this goes against our constant advice from Miles to go for quantity over quality. Maybe I should just push blindly ahead and take Kit Run as far as it will go without stopping to hash out the minor details. Everyone is after all prob very sick of seeing level 1. I'm ignoring all this good sense however.

within the next two weeks I want: a functional level complete event, the beginnings of a health bar so fox can be hurt more than once before dying, a sketch of the level 2 course.

within the next month I want: a functional health bar, some fish, and a full out attack on the screen scrolling

in the time that follows: graphic construction of level 2, completed pond in level 1, and navigation between two levels.

capstone

it's capstone time. And the question is, will I take Kit Run to the finish line with me? Or shall i toss it on the dusty shelf of experience and start anew? I dunno. I'm gonna play kit run a few times and see if it plucks my heart strings and/or gets me excited. If not, I'll use what I've learned here and start a new game, and a new blog, that shall define my digital media experience at SOU. ya'll better be on the edge of your seats

Now there's a mouse in the hole. 5 points.

So amidst all of my efforts to straighten out the ghost whale and the screen scrolling, I solved a problem I abandoned way back in the times of yore when I first began to write the script for Fox's movement. Now the main sprite idles facing left instead of always wanting to turn around and face right. The small victories are happy ones.

Just tightening and polishing. I'm going to go through all the hitTests and try and make them more accurate using scripts from said file: pixel perfect collision detection

Also my frankenstein screen scrolling attempts have lead to fox being able to fly. flawlessly. Like a speeding bullet. Effortlessly he leaps tall trees in a single bound. naturally this is unacceptable, so I'm bringing it to the table Thursday.

Kit Run has a title scene now. It's much cooler than the screen shot would suggest. In actuality, there is super catchy music, and all the menu items bounce in ever so snes -y. It's very Snake Rattle n' Roll. Oh, and it's not finished. It will have clouds moving swiftly upwards in the background eventually.

my continued efforts have at last rendered the screen scrolling partially functional. Heres what I be tote'n:

if (this._y>208.8 & this._y<363.8)>

_root.groundlevel1._y = -30.0;

trace("stop");

}

else if (this._y>400.0 & this._y<450.0)>

_root.groundlevel1._y -= 10.0;

trace("down");

}

else if (this._y<120.0>75.0) {

_root.groundlevel1._y += 10.0;

trace("up");

}

else if (this._y>550.0){

_root.dead = true;

}

It's pretty good except for two problems: Predominantly, if the ground is in the process of scrolling, hitTests are disabled. So if the ground is moving up to keep up with the fox falling in a hole or something, and the ground hasnt finished scrolling when the fox lands, the fox will just fall right though the ground. hittests dont work when the mc is in motion.

Secondly, and not nearly as important but none the less, the above code tells the screen to scroll up or down ten respectively, but the default position is set. Thus is just reloads to its default position instead of scrolling pleasently, which makes it pretty choppy.

la!

ALAS! I did some exciting scripting today; when you run out of time the ghost whale from bubble bobble load and effectively chases the fox. THE PROBLEM! The fox only actually moves when it's jumping, on the y-axis. When it's running left or right, the ground scrolls in the opposite direction and the fox runs in place. !! This complicates my follow code to the n'th degree. To follow this epic drama, check the kirupa thread here

Just been working on some nit picky things the last few days. I messed with the score bar a bit so it fits better in the border, hunted down and deleted some extra/duplicate MCs and scripts, and tried, trrrriiiiiiiieeed to tackle the primary, seemingly insolvable remaining problems: why does the level complete mc only gotoAndStop when it is supposed to gotoAndPlay? Why does the movie not gotoAndPlay the death scene when I tell it to? Even when it traces the code? and last but not least, WHY can't I get the background to scroll up and down at the appropriate time?

These and other problems will be addressed in the coming week.

The chicken has it's very own groove! Music makes all the difference- I wish I could share but it stays in secret till the game is complete. But let me tell you- it is oooo so 8-bit danceable. Just ask this bouncin chicken!

our friend the blue jay now has his own groove. He hops to right, and hops to left. woo! And pecks too!

So I'm at a real stale mate with Kit Run. I like to only post progress so when nothing is being accomplished I have little to report. When fox returns to its kits with 100% food points, the victory sound plays and all is well, but only the first frame of the level complete symbol plays. It's on the stage all the time, just stopped at frame one which is blank. Then when levelComplete = true, it gotoAndPlay(2), which is the score add up sequence and all that usual shinanagins. Alas, it only plays frame 2 and stops. why? whhhhyyyyy??? I dunno. And so I move on to animating some of the food sprites in the mean time.

:(

haven given up yet again on the scrolling, I moved on to what glorious events shall unfold shouldst thou beat the level. Its a little point adder upper!

The hard art however is getting the program to know when you actually have beaten the level. Lots o nitty gritty action scripts.

(photo included to prove my effort)

ANGUISH. I'm rolling along the check list of this weeks goals fine until I tackle the ever present scrolling problem. I have been trying to get to this to work for, seriously, 8 months. Fuck!

When fox goes up, background must go down, and vice versa. Oh, and when fox decends to mid ground again, the background must return to the default position. One of my main troubles in achieving success is that the background symbol is not where flash says it is. Normally, when you click an object on the stage, properties will give you the x and y coordinates of said object. But! For the background symbol, properties tells me a lie. A value not even conceivable. And when typed into action script, it changes the whole dang dealy. Why the lie? Why? If I type the exact coordinates into the action script as the starting position for the level, the symbol flies off into no mans' land as soon as I test the file. I wasted 3 hours on this this morning and achieved zip. This process has always been predominantly trial and error, but today was entirely the latter. :(

Behold the enemy: Cactus. Cactus shoots spikes and sways with the groovy music.

No matter how much you want to, you CANNOT visit your kits. Not until you have enough food.

The den is now an obstacle until the score bar is full; the invisible block movie clip then unloading. It works sort of - the only problem with saying that "if fox is touching den, then speed = 0", is that fox is then stuck to said den like a magnet, with no means of escape. hmmmmmm.

Kit Run now has a complete soundtrack (I think) with the groovy abandon that any pixelated game should have. Also I've improved the tree of the kits den.

This weeks schedule:

1)Coding obstacles

2)Removing white from chicken

3)Add movement frames to chicken and blue jay

4) Design the enemy (there has to be some element of danger, right?)

Probably next weeks schedule:

1) Screen Scrolling up and down appropriately (ugh)

2) Completing level layout / finishing the big tree

3)Create Title Screen

Resuscitating Kit Run:

I havent touched this flash file since before christmas, so I'm likely going to have to learn everything all over again- and read through the blog to try and figure out where I was at when I left off.

The next action script troubles to tackle: screen scrolling up and down when necessary, death event actually triggering a scene change (why this is so difficult I have no idea), opening title for the game as well as one for the level, and perhaps the most difficult, figuring out how to get the ghost whale, Von Blubba, to chase the main sprite when you run out of time. whew! If I get all of this worked out by the end of the term I'll be a happy animal.

New Sprites: I need to make an assortment of shrubbery, as well as work out random movement for the edibles.