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FlyingColours

Age 26, Male

Joined on 7/3/11

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FlyingColours's News

Posted by FlyingColours - July 4th, 2012


Firstly, it was a great experience to try participating in the game jam for the first time. I've known about the competition since Game Jam 4. At the time, I hadn't made an account yet - however, I thought it would be great to take part it one of those one day. At Game Jam 5, I was surprised at how the quality of the games improved so much. In fact, in my opinion, game jams are being harder and harder to win because the entries are getting better each time.

Before the Jam started, I didn't sign up because I feared that I would be hurting the artists who would otherwise have won because of my bad programming skills. However, after reading Tom's post encouraging people to make games anyway, I thought, 'why not? There's no pressure of winning this way.' That's how I sat down and started making 'burn versus freeze' with terrible graphics. On the second day, I asked Clatform if he wanted to join as he had posted in the forum. He agreed, and somehow, he managed to make most of the graphics in a mere five hours! After I finished all the programming, he polished the graphics. I published the game after a few bug fixes.

Looking back, I think the bad AI was the most fatal mistake I'd made. At first, I wanted to save the AI till last. However, I later realised that if I made the AI too smart, some of the earlier levels might become too difficult or even impossible. Plus, I did not have much time to make a better AI. Another thing was the lack of 'juice'. I know I'm supposed to have watched the video before the jam, but I didn't! I probably wouldn't have too much time for 'juice' anyway, so I was quite amazed that a lot of the entries from the pros did have quite large amounts of 'juice'! There was certainly more 'juice' this jam than any other previous jams. (That gets me thinking! Maybe jam manufacturers make jam using juice?)

Excuse my bad pun. Anyway, it was fun reading the reviews, although it was a little less fun to watch the score go from 3.35 to 2.90! I think most of the reviews can quite reflect what I did wrong and handled poorly, although there was one thing I find quite bizarre: one reviewer thought there was no mute button, and another thought there was no music! There's nothing strange about either case - my mute button was pretty hidden and was only available in the menu screen, and speakers are often unreliable - but when both happen, it's just funny! :D

On to my opinions on the game jam in general. In my opinion, MintPaw's Slime's Cake Quest was the best game in the jam. The concept was the most creative and the core mechanic was very well reflected. It also had quite a bit of 'juice'! The one about zombies was great, too. It was the 'juiciest' one. In my opinion, 'Uddercover''s concept was slightly less creative than the two mentioned above, but its voice acting made it hard to resist a 5/5!

I plan to work on my AI after 'Land of Towers'. I'll be making a very simple game with a rather clever AI. Oh, and I want to practice listeners then! I've read about listeners, but I've never used them before. After that, maybe I will rebuild Galactic Symbols... with listeners!


Posted by FlyingColours - July 1st, 2012


Clatform and I have just made a Game Jam game!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/598308

Anyway, I'm really excited! I'll write more later.


Posted by FlyingColours - June 26th, 2012


I'm making levels for 'Land of Towers' while fixing bugs right now. It was by programming this game that I realised how stupid I had been when I programmed Galactic Symbols. Unfortunately, that means my motivation to continue with that drops. 'Land of Towers' be finished before Galactic Symbols - that's for sure now.

Here's a screenshot of one of the easiest levels on 'Land of Towers'.

An update on 'Land of Towers'


Posted by FlyingColours - June 8th, 2012


The game I mentioned a few days ago, which I've decided to name 'Land of Towers', is going slowly, but well. In fact, I think it's much better than Galactic Symbols. I've made very little progress with Galactic Symbols so far, but I'm more than halfway through Land of Towers' code, despite the fact that I haven't spent as much time on it as I have on Galactic Symbols. That's probably because the latter is more simple.

I think Land of Towers is more interesting that Galactic Symbols. It's a bit like a board game. In this game, you will send your armies to defend your towers and capture other towers. It's a little similar to Castle Commander, from which this game was inspired, but it's not real-time. I'd say more, but I don't want too many spoilers! :D


Posted by FlyingColours - May 31st, 2012


It has been a little while since I last posted, hasn't it? I have another game in mind, a little game, and it should come after Galactic Symbols does. I've written a few lines of code already!


Posted by FlyingColours - February 12th, 2012


The Hero watched as the last member of the last family climbed into the portal, just as the glowing yellow ball disappeared below the horizon. After the portal disappeared, his eyes began to sway from one side to another, as if afraid that an enemy would come to get him any moment. He saw nothing. He let out a deep, long sigh, and then collapsed into the soft soil. A fortnight of work was too much, even for the Hero.

Twelve hours must have passed, for it was sunset again. Foranus had three suns and twelve moons. Sometimes, he would wake up and, as his eyes adjusted to reveal a sun on each side of the horizon and several moons in between, think it was some sort of dream. Having lived nearly a hundred thousand years in the Mundus, the three thousand in Foranus seemed so short. Yes, it had been three thousand years; yet the earth seemed still so exotic, so foreign, so alien under him. In a little over a week, he reminded himself, he would bid farewell to the strange soil and return to the Mundus.

As he lifted himself up, he swept the dirt off his shirt. It was not necessary, for the particles of soil had already fallen away, thanks to his friends' new invention. Knowing very well the consequences of being idle, the Foranus colonists did what they could to counter the lack of work Foranus provided. It led to great developments in every field from food preservation to spacecraft propulsion, from molecular biology to dirt-proof fabrics. Meanwhile, the less intelligent, or less intellectually diligent of the population left piles of rocks at every corner of the planet. At night, they would retreat to the nearest beach, feeding on whatever game they could find, returning only to the city to spend the holidays with their families, or when they had to buy new tools to replace their worn-out ones.

He forced himself to walk to the laboratory, resisting the urge to lie down and fall back to sleep as best he could. As he entered the building, he noticed that the computer was on. He had forgotten to turn off the computer when he left the laboratory. The excitement must have prevented him from completing this routine task. After walking over to the nearest computer, he typed a few commands into the computer. A chart popped up, the contents of which were no surprise to him. It was a larger version of his earlier experiments.

Nearly all of the population were pentelemental. The number of quadrelementals was a ten thousandth of pentelementals, divided evenly between the different combinations. The number of trielementals was a hundredth of that of quadrelementals, and the number of dielementals was half that. He made a mental note to pay a visit to the sole fire monoelemental the next day.

The wheels of his chair made a small groaning sound as he moved to the right to face his giant shelf. It contained three thousand years of scientific papers. All scientists sent him their reports after they were completed, not for the Hero's personal use, but so that it could act as a library where one could have access at any paper at will, as long as they stepped through their local portal. He wondered if the scientists would continue their study of science after they returned. He shook off the thought that the scientists would betray their plan to the powers that be in the Mundus. He had set up a barrier to destroy everything and anything that left the Foranusian atmosphere. Thus far, the only thing he'd destroyed was a child's kite. He had had to make another one for him.

As he pushed his chair further right, he found himself staring at the greatest library of musical scores on Foranus. He had all of them stored into a computer chip, so thankfully, the composers could bring along all of their works. The painters and sculptors were not as lucky. The painters could only take scanned versions of their artworks with them. Each sculptor could take only one of their works, their magnum opus; they could only bring home the photographs of the rest.

Going further, he saw his dictionaries. The Hero had, during his free time, transformed into some kind of superhuman polyglot. Knowing every language among the human race, or at least the known ones, the Hero understood the problems with the lack of a common language. Soon after their arrival at Foranus, the Hero had designed Komuniki as a lingua franca. Of the many dictionaries on the shelf, the Komuniki one was the thinnest. Komuniki was the most abject failure in his life of several thousand years. By the hundredth year, dialects had started to develop, and it took only five hundred years for the languages to develop into separate languages. He never had the motivation to develop another one, just to watch it sink like a stone again. He could not bear it.

Resting on the far end of his giant bookself was the Plan of the Pentelementalia. Would the blueprints become realities? Or would all the human race die, and would he have to float endlessly in space forever, with an army of corpses, people killed by him, by his side?

He knew very well that from that point, the fate of the human race was in the hands of Ground Control.

----

I plan to make Galactic Symbols in the role-playing format. The only difference with real role-playing games is that you look through a telescope instead of fight. Instead of how well you attack and defend yourself, you will have upgrades. I already have a series of plots in mind, although they are plots; not games. At the end, I may decide to write them down as short stories or as interactive stories in the Flash format. Or perhaps I could use another programming language to make the games.

To find out what happens next, please wait for Galactic Symbols! Also, if you didn't understand the part about being idle, please play Idle Not! :)

By the way, can you guess what 'TOP' stands for? The first person to send me a private message containing the correct answer will get his or her name on Galactic Symbols! :)


Posted by FlyingColours - February 8th, 2012


Happy redesign 2012! The redesign is great!


Posted by FlyingColours - January 29th, 2012


Here's the website my new profile picture comes from:
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/vi ew-image.php?image=11614&picture=abstr act-light-dots&large=1

Here's the website my new user icon comes from:
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/vi ew-image.php?image=504&picture=candle&
large=1

I've got an account on Kongregate now! As luck would have it, there was already a person called FlyingColours in Kongregate, so my name is VolantColours there. 'Volant' is a French word meaning 'flying'. I've uploaded Idle Not there.


Posted by FlyingColours - January 24th, 2012


I've just discovered that the medals of Idle Not have been approved because they now give you points! Thanks to Tom and the NG staff! If you haven't found all of the medals yet, maybe now would be a good time!

I'm coding Galactic Symbols' engine at the moment. I haven't experienced many major problems thus far. The format of Galactic Symbols will be very different from Idle Not. There will be no big level buttons, and you aren't going to unlock them! Instead, I'm trying out something more adventurous.

I'll try to make the graphics of Galactic Symbols better using pictures from the Internet. I'll also spend more time on drawing the ones that I draw myself!

Please remember that while I am trying to make a decent game, I am still quite a beginner of Flash, so please keep your expectations reasonable!


Posted by FlyingColours - October 2nd, 2011


I have started programming Galactic Symbols using the bottom-up approach. I estimate that Galactic Symbols will be finished next summer. I might upload it on the anniversary of Idle Not!