Revived!

Work has begun anew. Coder is primed and ready to go.
On the iPhone!

More on that later!

More screens!

A couple screens I’ve been working on, starting with the grid. Now the rewards and unlockables are in the same screen as the playing grid, so you can see stuff you’ve unlocked right as you’re playing the game.

Each reward category now has its own screen, where you can view them all and see how to unlock those rewards.

The Puzzle levels should look a bit like this. I’m not 100% sure about the paper texture in the back though.

New Interface!

I’ve been studying programming really hard these last few months and it’s going great really. I’m getting a hold of that ActionScript 3.0 – I’m almost ready to code Anything!

But sometimes, I miss Anything Beats Everything so I jump back to the drawing board and polish both game design and visual design as much as I can.

Here’s what the interface looks like now, starting with the shiny new title screen.

The next screen is the whole shell of the game. This is where you’ll select the levels you’ll play, trying to score Tic-Tac-Toe-like lines of succesfully completed levels. Every line you complete will net you a bunch of rewards – I’ll talk about that in a future post. You can see there’s a variety of level categories, easy, hard, expert, boss, trivia, story and puzzle! Yes, puzzle levels!

I’m still working on the help screens, as shown here. I want something clean, an overlay with clear instructions.

And in-game, the interface now shows the level type, the instructions and the timer. I think it’s cleaner than before. I still have some work to do on the timer.

So that’s it for today! Thanks for watching 🙂

p.s. You should head on to Dom2D.com, I just redesigned the whole site! ^_^

Teaser!

I know it’s short! It’s for fun! It’s a teaser!

^_______________^

Anything Beats Everything : Make Your Own Level!

Hi there! As promised, I have made templates and clear instructions on how to create levels or participate in my upcoming game, Anything Beats Everything!

The game is really quite simple. Let’s take a look at an example level:

So you can guess how it works. Levels appear one after the other. Levels are made of a bunch of stuff. You get simple instructions like “Find the One with a Nametag” or “Find the Different One”. If you click on the right one, you get more time, if not, you lose some time. It will be hyper dynamic!

I would like for this game to be a big mix of LOTS of stuff. The whole point is to make people realize how fascinating EVERYTHING is. So, I was thinking, what if I could have a lot of stuff I love in this game, and share it with the players? And what if, the creators of those things could participate directly? And what if I had no limits at all on who can put stuff in the game?! WHAT IF THE GAME COULD BE A GIGANTIC MOSAIC OF EVERYTHING?!?….Ahem. I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Got the hang of it? Okay! Now onto the instructions on how to Make Your Own Level!

First thing I thought was, I have to ask the Indie gaming community to participate, if you want to. It’s pretty basic and not a lot of effort, really. It could take you as little as 3 minutes to submit a level!

I don’t have the skills to create a real level editor, but I came up with 3 ways that you can submit stuff for the game, beginning with the most complex one:

To submit a full level, you first need to download this little template right here: Then you do the following steps: 1)      Open ABETEMPLATE.FLA 2)      Create a bunch of elements to put in the last layer of the file. You can create 1 element that you duplicate a lot, or a large number of elements that you spread around the level, or anything in between, really. You can also create a full on image à la Where’s Waldo? and hide something in it! 3)      Make sure there’s one element that is unique in the level. Put the Green square over that element. 4) At the bottom of the screen, write instructions that will make the player look for that unique element! 5) Send the FLA or a link to the file at dominiqueferland @ hotmail.com OR  in a private message on the TIGS Forums (@Dom2D)

That’s it! That’s actually a lot of work, so there are two simpler ways to do this:

The second way to submit levels is pretty simple. You submit the art, I will do the levels. You can create some variables, like in the image above, and send them over to me as Photoshop files (.PSD) or as .PNG files with transparency. You can also send me sprite sheets as they are, if you’re lazy and you trust me with those images. Send the stuff or a link to the files at dominiqueferland @ hotmail.com OR  in a private message on the TIGS Forums (@Dom2D)

Or… even SIMPLER…

Even simpler than that, send me one picture, any picture, and I will take care of creating the levels, creating the variables, or simply putting the element in another level! You will get credited for any participation in this game, even if you submit a matchstick man! Send the stuff or a link to the files at dominiqueferland @ hotmail.com OR  in a private message on the TIGS Forums (@Dom2D)

How will you be credited in the game?

It isn’t fully designed yet, but here’s how I see it. When a player gets to your level, a pop-up will appear stating he unlocked a new profile (example:“NEW PROFILE: MATT THORSON”) in his or her collection. That profile would contain the following information, which of course you would have to provide when submitting stuff! I think I can make a link to your website and/or game directly in flash, too! So here’s the full list:

I need to make something clear. I would love for the game to include everything. And I mean… EVERYTHING.

For example, say you’re the creator of Voltorometer. You can submit sprites or animations of the hero. You can submit sprites of the enemies, obstacles and energy balls.  I’ll make a crazy level with tons of those assets, where you have to find something that’s different. If you’re the creator of Spelunky, you can create a level with hundreds of little spelunkers on screen, and one of them has a teleporter in its hands! Or a level with tons of enemies on screen, with the instructions “Which one is on fire?” (the red toad!) or something. If you’re the creator of Cat Planet, you can submit the animation of a cat spinning around, I’ll duplicate them to cover the whole screen and make them say “CAT PLANET CAT PLANET CAT PLANET” except one who would say “CAT PLANET DOG PLANET CAT PLANET”!

Even if you’re game is completely unknown, you can create levels or help me create them.

It’ll be awesome to have you in the game, and you will get your profile in the Rewards and a link to your game or website! 😀

And now, the legal stuff. Please read and decide if you agree.

I will use whatever you submit to me ONLY IN THIS GAME and will NEVER give or share those elements with anyone else. The game WILL be free to play. Players will not pay for the game. I don’t know what my exact plans are, but I would like this game to be available on as many portals and sites as possible.  I will NOT put ads in the game, but I might use FlashGameLicense.com to license the game to many portals, therefore I could make a little money with the licensing, just so you know. I don’t plan on making lots, just the possible licensing deals. I might want to do Level Packs later on like Super Meat Boy did, but I WILL NOT use your artwork for those.  I’m trying my best to make this as fair as possible. I hope this is fine for you!

Oh, one LAST thing. The deadline will be March 1st 2010. That should give me the time to implement the Reward Screens and a couple more features to the game. I will try to finish the game for the summer, including all your levels!

So that’s about it. I’m sure we can create something extremely awesome with this!! I am REALLY EXCITED!!! If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to write me an e-mail at the following address:

dominiqueferland @ hotmail.com

Thanks for your support! ^_^

DOM2D

p.s. I will send a playable build to everyone who submits something and wants to see the game as it is right now!

The one missing an arm

Next time, the call for contributors.

Devlog

Today:

• Solved a little bug that prevented play when level 1 was the first level.
• Did some research on save games in ActionScript 3.
• Decided to add some polish before adding more features, to have a build to send to contributors as soon as possible.
• Thought of adding tutorial levels that are right in the game.

Example of a help screen in-game:

Milestone: First Playable

Last night I completed my First Playable (FP) build!

Build 0.23.FP04

• Random Levels that loop once they’ve all been played once
• 8 fully playable levels for now, thought it’s really easy to add more in
• “Bonus Levels” and “Difficulty Up” every once in a while, although they do nothing for now 😛
• Working placeholder “Found” and “Wrong” animations
• Transitions between levels
• Animated Timer that stays constant between levels
• Game Over screen when time’s up!
• Some placeholders sounds in a couple places

^_^

Things to add for the Alpha Build:

• Gradually Increasing Difficulty (DIFF +)
• High Scores
• Reward Coins
• Achievements
• At least 30 working levels
• At least 3 working Bonus Levels
• Save games

Optional stuff for the Alpha

• Placeholder music
• Placeholder sounds
• First version of clean transitions, found and wrong animations

Welcome!

So here you are, on the official Anything Beats Everything blog, where you’ll hear all the updates on the making of the game and be the first to know about its release, right heeere.

Here’s two brand new free-of-charge levels to celebrate the launch of this website!!

Catching Up, Part 2

This overly easy level :

Catching Up, Part 1

A lot of levels have been posted on the original devlog thread on The Independent Gaming Source Forums and on my blog on Dom2D.com. I’ll continue posting levels and other screens in here too, but let’s just archive the past screenshots in here too!

This is the first batch, using the old interface.

 

The Basics

Anything Beats Everything is a cool game I’m making in Flash, in ActionScript 3.

I needed a small, simple game project to complete on my own. So I thought of this energetic game concept and made a non-playable prototype two nights ago, showing lots of colors and a variety of simple but colorful graphics.

Here’s how ABE‘s played. You start with a certain time, say 30 seconds. Basic instructions on what to look for appear quickly as happy hardcore music starts playing. Then the screen fills up with items, one of which fits the description. Timer starts counting down.

If you click on the wrong object, you lose time. If you get the right item, you gain a bit of time. The goal is to survive as long as possible as the “levels” get harder. And by harder I mean more animated chaos, more items, smaller items, smaller differences, more craziness.

(old interface)

(old interface)

Hopefully I’ll have things animated to the beat of the music and will achieve a fast-paced, hyper game of chaos and observation.

More news on that as soon as I can manage to learn enough ActionScript to code the randomization of the levels, the timer and the score counter.

So yeah, not much to show for now, you have to see it in motion… See further in the thread for more level examples.

I’m thinking of having a WIDE variety of items in there. For now I have those:
Bacon, bird, carrot, clown, birdman, mummy, death, flame, tomato, shovel, cake, RUNMAN, masks, leaf, cookie, skull, fishbones, nazi helmet, dollar bill, sandglass, cheese, alien, snowman, robot. But I plan on adding random stuff like Obama, Eiffel Towers, Lego Bricks, my head, planets, Yetis, Vampires, Hitlers, gorillas, nukes, coins, flags, ink stains, Hulks, rocketmen, pirates, pin-up ladies, baseball cards, etc.

I’m hoping to get a bunch of artists to participate once it’s easy to add in new “levels”. If you’re ever interested to have, say, your RunMan in there, or your Spelunker, your Viking, or anything really, I’ll keep you posted. 

Cheers!