Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Favorite Flash Games #2

So we're posting our favorite flash games, I had a tough time narrowing this down but one game that I have consistently come back to is Dolphin Olympics 2 by Alan Rawkins. It sounds weird, I know, let me explain.

Dolphin Olympics 2 is one of those games that is so ridiculously simple but also so addictive, you have to keep coming back to it. You've got two minutes to do flips out of the water. Hitting rings gives you a boost of speed, and the more flips you do the more points you get. That's it.



In my opinion it really has a lot of what makes a great flash game. Intuitive, addictive, and easy to play in small doses. Once you play it once you'll play it again.

Distractions

Important meeting today, determining what type of game we're going to make. Unless some other idea comes up, we like the idea of a single-screen fast-paced platforming action game. As soon as there are more details, we'll post them.

We were going to make more progress, but Desktop TD Pro just came out, so...

Monday, April 27, 2009

Playing With Rhythm Games

Since I didn't want to do any homework, I spent today building a basic rhythm game.



All it does is create dots on the right side of the screen and move them left. One dot is the target dot, and the rest have their alpha set at .5 to distinguish them. If an arrow key is pressed, it checks the target dot for two things: First to see if the key pressed is the same as on the dot, second to see if it's in the center circle. If both are true, it tells you that you were successful. Otherwise it tells you that you missed. In addition, if you fail to hit any keys before the target leaves the center circle, you miss. Either way, the next dot in line becomes the target.

It's interesting to make quickie prototypes like these, just to see what the different genres are like. The product was a weak DDR ripoff, but now when I come back to the genre in the future, I'll have a better knowledge base to work from, as well as some code I could probably steal.

I think my next quickie project will be a platformer. I haven't made one of those yet in Flash, and they can be tricky. I'll probably talk more about platformers later when we discuss game ideas, but the best platformers feel incredibly smooth, and that can be hard to do.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Favorite Flash Games #1

Let's post links to our favorite Flash games, and talk about them for a bit. I'll go first!

My pick is Sean Coopers Boxhead: The Zombie Wars. It's an action game from a isometric perspective, allowing players to wander around the map in two dimensions. Boxy zombies spawn from each side (based on the design of the map) that you can kill with a variety of weapons. Your selection of weapons is upgraded as you kill more zombies, but the zombies grow in quantity and complexity as the game goes on. Eventually the player is swarmed and dies, but not until a lot of zombie blood has been spilled.



What The Zombie Wars brings to the Boxhead franchise (which also contains the spectacular Boxhead: 2Play Rooms) is base building. Through a combination of explosive barrels, barricades and turrets, you can construct a base to help kill off zombies. This adds a new layer of strategy to the Boxhead games, making The Zombie Wars my favorite entry in the franchise.

Boxhead: The Zombie Wars is a wonderfully addictive game that combines visceral action with tactical know-how. A must-play for anyone who likes action games or zombies. And everyone likes zombies.

Meet The Team - Josh Terry

Hi, I'm Josh, Boosh Studios' lead artist. I'm really excited about making our games look pretty.

I'm a sophmore in the Art & Animation major at Champlain College. This major is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. A majority of my time is spent doing 3D and 2D art. I LOVE Photoshop and learn new ways to use it all the time.

In what little spare time that I have I play guitar, watch movies, play table-top games, make table-top games, and go to whatever athletic outings my friends cook up. I like sci-fi movies. My favorite table-top games are Warhammer 40k and Warmachine. Oh yeah, and the one that Ray and I are making: Hypernova. I do Ultimate Frisbee too.

The most influential video game for me was probably GoldenEye 007. I remember playing this and thinking that games couldn't get any cooler or more realistic. Things have changed.

I'm from western New York, but my goal is to stay in Burlington for the summer. I'll hopefully be doing other art jobs to pay the rent while working for Boosh.

Feel free to contact me at jtgamedev-at-gmail.com

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Meet The Team - Ray Ortgiesen

Naturally, our programmer starts his post with "Hello world". I'm Ray, a founding member of Boosh Studios and resident snarky game designer.

I'm a sophomore at Champlain College like the rest of the bunch. I hail from Rhode Island, which is where I'll be spending the summer. Escaping to the beach and probably working at a crappy part time job when I'm not developing flash games.

Here at Boosh I'll be the Lead Designer and Producer for the first project at least, making sure everybody stays in line and that we have something to show. We'll be doing a one month production cycle and will have our first game out by the end of May, I promise.

In my spare time I play guitar, do tabletop gaming like Warhammer 40k and Warmachine, and play video games (naturally). I come from a strong first person shooter background, being born and raised on Doom and Half-Life, but I'll play just about anything. Lately I've been playing a lot of Left4Dead and sizing up the competition over on Kongregate.

If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason feel free to drop me an email at ray.ortgiesen-at-gmail.com. Until next time, happy gaming!

Meet The Team - Mark Desmarais

Hello, world. I'm Mark D. and I'm one of the founding members of Boosh Studios.

I am a sophomore in the Electronic Game Design major at Champlain College in Burlington, VT. I'm from, and I'll be spending the summer in, Londonderry, NH.

In Boosh Studios I'll be working as the lead programmer/engineer for our upcoming Flash game. I have only about a month's experience working in ActionScript, but I have a background in Java and C++.

In my free time I watch a lot of television and screw around online. I'm loving Breaking Bad these days, and highly recommend it to anyone. I haven't been gaming as much as I'd like, but I still hit up the casual round of DotA once in a while. I also finally got my fists on the Phoenix Wright games, which are fantastic.

Um, so, that's all I have. If you want to contact me for business reasons, my e-mail is markldesmarais-at-gmail.com. If you just want to chat, you can get me on AIM at RdArrogantKnight, and my casual e-mail is redarrogantknight-at-gmail.com. I often play on Kongregate, where I go by Malky. Feel free to send me a message anytime!

Welcome to the Boosh Studios Development Blog

Here at Boosh Studios, we're going to make Flash games. They're gonna kick ass, and you'll love 'em.

Our team:

Mark Desmarais - Our lead engineer and writer, he'll be making the games go.

Raymond Ortgiesen - Our lead designer and producer, he'll be in charge of PR, distribution, and making sure the rest of us stay in line.

Joshua Terry - Our lead artist, he's got mad skillz. He'll be making our games look like they aren't all populated by stick figures. (Unless our first game is a stick figure game, in which case he'll draw the best stick figures in town.)

We are all currently sophomore students at Champlain College, where we are studying Electronic Game Design. We're hoping to release our first game in the first half of the summer of 2009. In the meantime, check by here often, as we explain our design process, the difficulties of starting an amateur Flash studio, and anything else on our minds.

If you have any thoughts, questions, ideas, or just want to chat, send an e-mail to booshstudios-at-gmail.com.