Guess what !
I did some work :-D !
But not quite ... basically right we had a module centered around Flash last year. We had 2 assignments, a bit like in this module this year.
Assignment 1 was to hand in 3 exercises, assignment 2 was the final.
I did all that stuff BUT my final (as well as the 3rd exercise but I'll get to that in another post) did not quiiite work.
It did kinda ... but not really. Not 100%.
SO, because ... well I don't know why really, but the point is that I went back to my old Flash file for the final and FIXED THE WHOLE THING !
Yes I did.
To get an idea, there's the 3 current versions of the application.
I finished v.1 & v.2 last year, I fixed v.3.1 this week (all in all it took me 'bowt the equivalent of 3 full 12-hour days) :
VERSION 1
VERSION 2
VERSION 3.1
VERSION 1
Version 1 was a tester aimed at showing my idea at an early stage in the Assignment 2 timeline. The whole thing is based on the concept of virtually exploring an abandoned house. So I basically went there, took a couple of pictures, sequenced them in a flash document, added a couple of buttons, stopped the timeline and then enabled navigation between those pictures (each one more or less representing a room you can explore) simply through using gotoAndStop over and over and over again. Pretty basic. I didn't update the navigation since that by the way, the Version 3.1 still uses gotoAndStops, simple's nice :-) ... though it's really not that simple anymore but anyways !
So this tester also present some of the most important highlights of the final application.
'cause you see the final includes about 140 pictures (hence its size), I didn't put something interesting in every single frame/room ! Though I wish I had been able to, if I had had like a year to work on this project or what have you ... Anyways the Link Wall, Fire Exit Dude and especially the Control Panel are still some of the most important interactive frames within the application, in the finals likewise. Except in the Version 3.1 there's about 13 of them rather than 3, you get the picture.
VERSION 2
Version 2 laid very strong foundations for the final. I kept most of its "bones" for the Version 3.1 . See what took me the longest while working on this version is the linking ... 140 pictures (I had to go back to the place and explore it thoroughly) ! Each of them with a link to say 2 or 3 other frames in average. It also meant that I had to make all these buttons, a good half of them tailor-made (I can't use the same template if a button has to match the size of a door and that each door has a different shape on the photos), one by one ! So all that got done (just on time if I can remember correctly) and it's still working now in the Version 3.1 so I think I didn't do such a bad job in this respect :-D
Now what does NOT work in this version is what you might call the "fine details". The space can be explored but that's pretty much it. One of the main problems is that I had a system of keys to unlock doors if the right codes were entered in the aforementioned Control Panel. See I knew the codes (duh, I programmed them lol) but though I was planning on leaving clues within the game that the user can pick up to get those codes, I did not have the time to do so ! So it's virtually unplayable ...
Another very big problem is that the final file size was almost 100Mbs, and as I did no know how to do loading bars back them (I learned that like 2 weeks ago as I write these lines), in order for the whole game to work, you were supposed to leave the 1st page load entirely, which could take a while. If you clicked the button to access the 2nd page while it was still loading, it would stop the loading and you would get stopped at some point in the game later on due to some missing buttons that had simply not been loaded at all ...
Finally, there were a couple of things that did not quite work, including a bugged layer, and also I did not put half as much stuff as I wanted to put in there, also there was no reward for finishing the game but a photo of a graffiti I did ... a but frustrating for someone who would have guessed the Control Panel codes on his own perhaps ?
Basically, like I said, it was functional but not playable. A big fat 2nd draft you could say I suppose, Hence why I decided to finish it :-D Which brings me to ...
VERSION 3.0
Yes, "3.0" indeed, not "3.1".
I'm gonna separate the 2 because the work done between Version 2 & Version 3.0 was ENORMOUS and the work done between Version 3.0 & Version 3.1 was important also but not nearly as time-consuming and let's just say altogether of a totally different Nature (fixing ≠ fine tuning, geddit ?).
So anyways, Version 3.
What I did there is pretty much take Version 2 & go over all the things that had to be fixed (and fix them ... yeah).
I've got most of the notes I took in the process with me so I'll just make a list of the different jobs I did in a loosely chronological order :
- Fix that aforementioned bugged layer (it was the 1 for key #4, "Knight"/"Nite")
- Fix the Control Panel Notice which enables the user to understand how the Control Panel works (I did it last minute, it never worked, yet it's another thing that's essential 4 the game)
- Go over and fix all the objects in the game (5 at that point), most of them not quite working properly
- Reduce down the ridiculous size of the application from 95.89Mbs down to 15.79Mbs by tweaking the images' compression ratio thingy
- Add Windows Explorer pop-up windows-style warning when you're about to enter a point of no return in the game (3 in total), it sounds fair + they're neat
- Add the clues with the Control Panel codes to the game
- Add a link on the board at the start of the game that was supposed to say the name of the company that was selling the house or something. I found the new company name logo on this website. It's a big joke by Gorillaz, I thought it would be quite funny. It links to a fan website which talks about the old Kong which inspired me during the creation of this application (Kong that is)
- Tweak & refine some of the already existing functions. Now, for example, you can only animate the Fire Exit Guy once, once he has jumped out of the frame the sign will appear as empty
- Write over the "OMIT", "CHIME", "RESET", "PROG" & "SET" buttons using the pen tool so you can actually (kinda ?) read them. I hope it made the Control Panel a bit easier to operate
- Add a 5th key (the Pigeon Key, how cool) that would toggle a variable so you can't leave the house until you've seen the final room (that would be the hobo's "bedroom")
- Add a loader. That wasn't so hard in itself, I ripped off that exercise we did in class (the "home" & "about" pages were created by Andrew, not me) and came up with cool graphics for it. The pigeon graphic & pigeon key got inspired by the following images -
IMAGE 1
IMAGE 2
IMAGE 3
- Move frame 1 to frame 143 so frame 1 could be used as a welcome page thingy after the loading was complete. I had to move all the frame 1 ActionScript to frame 2 also
- Add an aim to the game - "Find the pigeon"
- Work out a more complete "Credits" page that states that the player has reached his aim (to find the pigeon, which is actually the drawn pigeon on the very Credits page) and thus completed the game. It includes 2 links, one to my homepage and one to restart the game, which is a function I also had to enable.
... That about covers it !
Also I was very delighted to noticed that my old link to the Gorillaz website Version 2 (Kong) on the Links Wall still works ! I thought they had taken Kong offline when they launched Plastic Beach but they haven't ! So awesome !
I was thinking about having a Home button in the top left corner theoughout the game but then I thought if someone clicked it by error it would restart the whole thing and they would lose their progress in the ongoing game ... kinda frustrating ! I thought I'd rather not bother about that. If I decide to incorporate one at some point it will have to include an "Are you sure ?" popup window thingy so I'll just leave it as it is for now.
Anyways that's what I did.
It's a bit frustrating 'cause a the end of the day most of the version looks exactly like Version 2 (same images, same buttons) and yet it's so different and I spent so much time fixing it !
But that's how it is. It worked well at that point, but I went on to refine it (today).
VERSION 3.1
After I sent an e-mail to my aunt yesterday asking if she could get my little cousins to "test" the game if she thinks it's OK for them (they're 9, it might be a bit dark & grimy for them :-S) I checked it out myself and I noticed a couple of things that didn't quite work so I went on to edit it a bit further :
- I filled the empty Pigeon Key symbol in the popup message ... detail I had forgotten
- I resized the background on frame 1 that was a couple of pixels short on the right
- I edited the Version number from "3.0" to "3.1" (I know, it's "duh", but I still did it !)
- I moved all the buttons that are usually hidden under layers because I notices that if you used TAB they became selectable, and we don't want that ! So I moved them out of the frame (now TAB can be used to find door buttons if you get stuck)
- I added an argument that moves the loaded movie into the frame ONLY once it's been thoroughly loaded in order to avoid the aforementioned issue there too
- I added 3 variables so you can't leave the Control Panel once a key has dropped until you've picked it up so it can't just get stuck in mid-air which is a bug that could have happened in Version 3.0
That's basically it.
Fine tuning.
I'm so happy I did it :-D !
Now Andrew did mention that it would most probably not get counted towards this module, which is fair 'cause it includes a large proportion of work I did last year, but I'm still gonna put it in there 'cause I think it shows a good use of the UIloader and it can be relevant in this respect.
Anyways, I'll update that of I come up w/ a v.3.2 & what have you and hopefully next time I'll have some proper new work ... thou I'll probably go on to fix that Exercise 3 thingy from last year that I mentioned in the intro before that :-P
Anyways bye for now, ciao !
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