The Engine

[Runouw]

Latest version: 10-02-2010
Updates to the character designer (the main focus so far)
- fixed library sorting algorithm
- added in scroll bars
- added support for .gif animations


http://www.runouw.com/smash/game/TSRSmas...neAS3.html

There's the game so far, including the character designer.

How to use the character designer:
- Start by going to file - import, select and upload a few sprites for your character. (All need to be an individual file, sorry. I will work on getting animated gifs working soon)
- If it worked, Save it... Go to File -> Save
Watch this video on how to make animations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkqnAUxScmg
Other controls:
- On the workspace, hold space and click to drag the workspace around... The plus shows where the bottom of characters feet should go.
- Use the mouse wheel to scroll though the library and list of attacks...
- At the top (the timeline) The circle button will create frames that carry on what is on the last key frame.
- ^ The plus button is a keyframe.
- To scale an image, use control + arrow keys.
- To rotate an image, use Z and X
- Holding shift will move by units of 10.
- Press , and . to change frames forward and back.
- Press enter to play the animation (It will play at 32 fps)
- You can toggle a layer's visibility by clicking on the name of it. (So that you don't accidentally click it when you need to edit something behind it)


It has an ENORMOUS amount of bugs at this moment. I would like you to report any that you find. Here is a list of the known bugs:
- When you import an image, you may have to try more than once.
- If the game freezes, just refresh. Save your character CONSTANTLY (and I recommend that you make backups...)
- Undo/Redo does not work exactly as it should
And incomplete stuff:
- You can't delete anything in the library
- Can't copy/paste frames
- New Character button doesn't do anything.. (just refresh the page for now, I am too afraid of people pressing this button when they are aiming for "import" or "save". Because I do not have an alert window with "are you sure" yet)
- You can't make attacks do any damage... yet.
- There is no sound effects support (It will glitch up if you upload a sound effect)
- Online battle mode doesn't work in this specific demo..
- You need a mouse wheel to scroll the Library and Animations windows (I haven't drawn a scroll-bar yet)



You can load this character as an example of how to make one yourself:
http://www.runouw.com/smash/game/CharacterGooey7
^ save the file as a .txt then load it with File - Load Character

I will be updating the engine periodically (every few months or so).
I'm pretty sure that your character code will still work through all of the updates. So you don't have to worry about making the character right now, it will work in the final version.


Please post suggestions of things I can change or fix. (If you run into any bugs, tell me so I can fix them [also a screen-shot will help me a lot more than words...])

Also here is the latest version of the card engine.

[ThePortalGuru]

Found another (minor) bug:

When you enter the character designer and quit back to the menu, the music stops playing. When you go into the character designer and test the character, and then exit to the menu, though, the music continues like normal.

[GrooveMan.exe]

This is looking extremely impressive. Good job.

[Ton]

Sticky'd.

[Buffooner]

Looks amazing already. Well done!

[D2S-Speed]

The engine is looking alot better this is truly amazing!

[Kriven]

Very nice. Played as Gooey, lots of fun already Even at this early stage, it's lightyears beyond Smash Flash.

[Tarvonas]

I came across a little bug whilst playing around with the Character creator. I saved the Gooey example as a .txt, and I uploaded it successfully. But then the names of the attacks/motions on the left-hand collum were missing for quite a number of them. I don't know how to actually explain it properly, so here's a pic:

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/7056/bugggg.png

Is that happening for others, or is it just my computer?

I noticed when I hovered over the blank buttons and scrolled with the wheel, some titles would appear again, but others would disappear too. :/

[Runouw]

That's weird, it didn't happen to me when I saved the file...

Can you post the .txt file you get when you save it in that buggy state?

[Raid]

It happened with me either, exactly how you explained. Although, very good job here Runow, lots of progress since you started

[Tarvonas]

Here's the code I get with the buggy moves list. Not sure how much it would help... but yeah:

EDIT:

Yeah, seems the word limit is preventing me from posting it here properly in code tags. :/

Do you know a site or something I could upload the .txt files?

Anyway, I'll be back to do that tomorrow morning or so. So yeah, sorry if I don't reply in while.

[Runouw]

http://pastebin.com/

You could also put a prefix to it like
http://tsrsmashbrosproject.pastebin.com/
So the code is less public.

Edit, right now you have avoid the glitch by saving the code without using copy + paste.
Go the to file:
http://www.runouw.com/smash/game/CharacterGooey7
And in firefox, click File - Save Page As
And that should work.
I think the encoding on .txt files is messing it up.

Edit again:
I found out the problem. For a reason that is beyond me, when you copy and paste it into a text file, it replaces all of the line-breaks from charCode-10 (alt + 010) to charCode-13 (alt + 013)
This messed up how the game reads it. I did a quick edit and it should be fixed.

[Tarvonas]

Ahh, yes, that's much better now. I'll keep an eye out for any more, then.

[ThePortalGuru]

Good game developers take their current build and focus on adding features and designing new parts for the next build.

Great game developers look at their community and dive back into the code to respond to bugs before moving on.

You sir, are a great game developer.

[ThePortalGuru]

There must be something wrong with the site. When I try to go to the engine it just gives me the message "Account Suspended"