Almost To Alpha

I haven't posted in a while, but not because of slacking off. Instead, I've been hard at work on getting to alpha.

It took forever, but I managed to get the collision to a good place. Try it out here. (Link only good for the next week.)

School Ends, Work Begins

Everyone at Boosh Studios is officially done with all of their classes now, meaning that summer vacation has begun. For us at Boosh Studios, that means development on our first (currently untitled) project has begun. We've set an incredibly ambitious scope for this game, but we're just crazy enough to pull this off.

This also means we'll have some real content to show off soon, as our game is scheduled to hit alpha in just a few weeks. Check back often to learn more about our first title and see some conceptual work.

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...

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.

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 - 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!