Play Paradroid

For those of you keen enough out there I thought I'd post some links in case you would like to play the game.

One for the c64 emulator and one for the game itself.

I've only tried it on Windows (sorry Mac users), but ther is an OSX version of the emulator at the same site, so hopefully it works the same.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Download and install the emulator.


2. Start it up.


3. Go to Settings->Video Settings


4. Set the resolution 1280x768 (i.e less resolution probably than your current settings). The y-axis one counts the most. Reducing it down seems to make the emulator screen larger.


5. Got to Settings->Joystick Settings


6. Change the drop downs so Joystick 1->Keyset A, and Joystick 2->Keyset 2


7. Click on 'Config Keyset A' to set up your keys. Up, down, left, right, fire etc.


8. Click on 'Config Keyset B' and do the same thing. Should be different keys from Keyset A.


9. You can then test it out. At the bottom of the emulator screen there are two crosses, one for joystick 1 and the other for joystick 2. When you press the associated keys the relevant part of the cross will turn green. (If you get any junk at the cursor input on the screen press Return).


10. Go to Options and check 'Double Size', and 'Double Scan'. This makes the emulator window bigger.


11. The emulator is all set up now and you should be ready to play the game!


12. Download paradrd.t64. This is a commodore64 tape file of the game.


13. Go to File->Autostart disk/tape image, browse to the paradrd.t64 file you just downloaded, select it and press 'Attach'. The game should load and start.

The game asks for joystick in port #2 (i.e Keyset B), so I think you need to press fire for it to start.
General controls up, down, left, right. To fire your gun turrets you need to be noving when you press the Fire key. It fires your gun in the direction that you are moving.
Holding down Fire puts you in Transfer mode. You can't fire like that, but you can move around. Releasing the ket put you back to normal.

Hope this helps. The best thing is just to try it out.

Paradroid Screen Shots

Pics are worth a thousand words, so putting some screen shots of Paradroid in.

	Splash Screen
	This is where you start the game (although I think it may put you on a random deck each time. It's that or it randomises the deck colour). You are the white robot - 001, and the black ones are the baddies.
	This is the screen you get when you try and take over other robot. The goal is to get more bricks in the centre column your colour than your opponent.
You do this by scrolling up and down the wires with "beads" that you fire down the wires to turn the brick your colour. I kind of think of it as an electrical circuit that current goes down. Branches are good (2 bricks for 1 bead), inverted branches and dead ends are bad. You get to choose which side you are on, left (beige) or right (purple), so hopefully you can get a better deal. Higher robots e.g. 476 get more beads than lower ones, so if you try and jump too many steps up the tech tree you are at a disadvantage. Anyways Timer runs out - whoever has the most bricks their colour wins. Deadlocks result in a rematch. If you loose and are hosting another robot (e.g. 302) you go back to 001. If you are 001 you get burnout and die - Game Over! You only have one life.
	This is after you have successfully taken over another robot.
	This is the ship console. They are usually a few of them on each ship deck, and they all do the same thing - basically they are a map.
	Console main menu. There are 4 options: Exit Menu Robot Info Deck Plan Deck Section
	This is the deck plan. The only thing it really shows you is where the consoles and lifts are.
	This the ship section. It shows which level you are on on the ship.

Research

Doing some research on the net and came across a few games. Chasm is a good puzzle Flash game by Transience. They also do one called El Emigrante that is quite a laugh, although the movieclip is better than the game.
These weren't heading in a particular direction so decided to go back to what I knew, some the arcade games from my younger years. Defender, and a similar game called Stargate (nothing to do with the Egyptian Sci-Fi one), and Asteroids were favourites and seemed simple enough, but engaging, and also 2-D. I thought they would be good contenders.
'80s Music Lyrics has a few popular arcade games from the 80's re-engineered in Flash. Tried out Moon Patrol and Asteroids.
A really like the Vector graphics style video games, and the eerie CRT phosphorescent glow the lines used to have. So Sci-Fi and so laser like! Simple and striking! Bring it on!
Really liked the Asteroids one, but since it has already been done, decided to skip it.

Decided to go really far, back with some Commodore 64 Games from the 80's. For some reason two games (apart from Elite) stuck in my mind: Castles of Dr Creep and Paradroid.
Castles of Dr Creep is where you have to run around getting keys to unlock rooms, but there are traps, puzzles, and zombies thwarting your attempts. It's actually quite tricky (and a bit fustrating if you don't have much patience) and has a lot of switches and things that only work in a certain sequence. Tending to veer away from that one, as the gameplay is a bit slow and the programming may be too complex.

The one I did really like was Paradroid. The premise is that a transport full of robots travelling through an asteroid belt have been exposed to a radionic beam making them hyperactive. They have gone AWOL and taken over the ship and attacked the crew. (You don't actually see any humans during gameplay, so they must of all been killed).
Basically you have to clear the ship of the psycho robots. You can either do this by shooting them, or taking them over. You yourself are an Influencing Device Robot 001 (their highest goes to 999) so your guns are quite weak (especially against the more advanced robots) so the rule is generally to taken them over, jumping from robot to robot (they die when you leave them) up the robot tech tree. Unfortunately you can only take them over for a short peroid of time (the higher up the tech tree, the stronger they are, so the less time you can control them).

Project 2

Starting some research now. Since there are a plethora of video games out there. narrowing it down to 2-D games.
Came across this movie on http://www.destructoid.com. PIRATE BABYS CABANA BATTLE STREET FIGHT 2006 game concept:

I stuck this link in here, cos it has amazing graphics, animation and characterisation. Also how it has a lot of impact even being in just black and white. Makes it feel a bit retro.
The tendency for these games seems to be ultra-voilent and gory, 2-d shoot 'em ups and zombie killings and such like. Though amusing, I'd like to steer away from that if I can.

Project 1 Final

Firstly, here is the link to my left/right Discobunny ActionScript Move Test.

Unfortunately I didn't get the walk cycles completed on time :-( . Originally I started doing the walk cycle animation using my original reference sketches, each sketch corresponding to a different keyframe.
The bunny character ended up comprising of 29 elements on separate layers. In hindsight I think that was overly ambitious. Going through 29 layers for each animation frame turned out to be very time consuming.
In terms of the animation process, I tried to stay true to my original sketches, which meant having "wobbly" elements. What I mean by that is keeping variations and irregularities in the elements between frames due to the inexact sketching process, like the animations used to have in the old days e.g. Mickey Mouse.
The way I did this was having each element be a movieclip symbol on the main timeline,
and doing motion tweens there. If the actual element needed to change shape I would do a shape tween in the symbol movieclip.
This ended up taking too long as well, so unless the actual element needed to change (because of movement), variation for the sake of it was dropped. This meant that I ended up ripping out a lot of keyframes that I had created, which was unfortunate because it was wasted work.

Anyways this is how far I got. Thanks Kah for helping me with the final bit.




Here is the Flash file for it.

Animating Discobunny

Tried the Flash actionscript today, that does the left/right character movements. Hacked it for Discobunny and eventually got it to work. Sussed out the "box_mc" movie clip with the "box", "left", and"right" frames. It didn't work for me until I added a label for the main time line movie clip, but once I did that it all clicked into place. Will need to remember that in future.

Then started doing the walk cycles for DiscoBunny. The right and left moves are different, so started doing the right move first. Managed to get 3 key frames done, but it is a bit jerky. I need to add some motion tweens, so will do that next time. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out - as Discobunny is doing dance moves the transitions need to be quite fluid and smooth. Have about 7 to do all up (each way), and they are quite time-consuming. We shall see how we go.

Also noticed a few oddities. I had imported bitmaps into flash for reference during character construction, and they kept showing up in the movie even when the associated time line was hidden/invisible. Quite annoying. Eventually, someone told me that you could move the bitmaps off-stage and they wouldn't show up in the movie.

Also if you import a flash file with a bitmap in it, it always imports as a BMP type (not a movie clip), even if there is stuff/animation on other time lines. You have to remove that time line/BMP for it to import correctly. (It might have been because I only had one key frame - will have to check next time).

Another thing, the published shockwave files (swf), when you launch them from Finder, they don't work, and come up with static backgrounds. Not sure what you need to do to fix that, so I shall have a few things to go through in Studio.

Flash Bunny

I have created the bunny character in flash. I haven't tried animating it yet, but will do that next. Not sure if I need to convert all the vector graphics to symbols, but will cross that bridge when I get to it.
Here's the flash bunny. It looks pretty similar, although I have broken it up into a lot more elements.
Things differ from the tutorial as I don't have the double layer shapes (object plus outline/shadow shape), and used strokes (i.e. didn't disable it) when making shapes.

Disco Bunny

Still liked the idea of the bunny so kept that aspect. I think the killer-bunny-3 site inspired me for what good bunny characterisation could achieve. Liked the humour as well. Not quite sure how I got to John Travolta. I think watching a trailer at the movies which showed the new Hairspray sequel with him cast, nudged me in that direction. My web wanderings brought up Staying Alive and Saturday Night Fever. I thought his dance moves would be a lot more interesting than the standard walk cycles, so the body was appropriated from the "man with the threads".

Here is my sprite sheet:



(Click here for a bigger version).

Pics

Have got my hosting sorted out now, so here are some links to my original pics.












This was the first attempt. I had problems trying to organise the body to go with the head, as I had already morphed the head. As I said below, I spoke with Tom and he talked about walk cycle movements and how the character would be seen from the side. I was going to have to redraw the head, and I thought the "Dolly" aspect would be lost or at least unrecognisable. Time for version2 ...

Restart

After talking with tom it seems my character dolly bunny needs a bit of an overhaul. I drew DollyBunny face on and which isn't so good for walk cycles which view the character from the side.
Back to the drawing board. Ditching the Dolly aspect and sticking with the bunny one.
Found a really good example of a bunny character in flash: Bunny Kill 3
(Will post this and see if the links work).

Duff MediaMax

hmm...it doesn't seem to be uploading any of my files. Trying a NZ hosted site. Got some files uploaded but no hotlinks. Hope to have that sorted by tomorrow... (fingers-x'd).

Initial Concept

After spending an afternoon looking at stuff on the internet I decided on my lycanthrope. DollyBunny. Dolly Parton + Bunny = DollyBunny. I found a Warhol pic which has Dolly's face reduced to it's most significant elements. Eyes, eyeshadow, lips, and hair. I was thinking about Donny Darko and the bunny in that and I liked the idea of something that is meant to be quite cute and benign, that can be quite menacing.
The first mutation attempt didn't really work out. The Dolly essence got lost in translation. Dolly is quite soft and feminine and fluffy, and didn't really gel with the Darko bunny style. So that idea was ditched and a regular bunny substituted. The quintessential problems being how do you morph Dolly into a bunny and still keep the personality (or at least the character references).
I overlaid the bunny sketch over the face sketch and started to move Dolly's face elements, the eyes, eyebrows and lips. Also dropping the nose and adding the ears.
I'll add links to the pics when I get mediamax working.

Day 1

"In the beginning ... " - all very new. Going to check out the Flash tutorials...