New Flash game - Gravqx

[davidn]

The MMF2 Flash runtime was officially released today! For people who want to make Flash-compatible games without going through that awkward "Flash" bit. Here's a little game that I put together during the testing of the runtime, to try out various maths, collision, control and online aspects - I've given it the unwieldy name "Gravqx", and you can make up a pronunciation for yourself.



http://www.clickteam.info/davidn/games/gravqx

It's a sort of skill/racing type game - the object is to guide your improbably fragile ship around courses as fast as possible, working with and against the force of gravity, without hitting the walls and blowing to pieces. Online best times are recorded, and Javascript needs to be on to post to them.

Hold the mouse button anywhere on the screen to thrust in the direction of the cursor - the amount you move is dependent on the distance from the cursor to the ship as well as the angle. I've tried to coach other testers into going slowly at first and building up to higher speeds later on, but as it turns out I'm apparently the only person on earth who's able to control it, here's some video evidence that it's possible to move around smoothly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3cv_Pch0EE

Unfortunately another thing I was testing with this game was the ability to add adverts on to the preloader, so I suppose it will also serve as a test for how badly people react to advertising in Flash games. Still, it pays for some hosting ($0.04 per billion players or thereabouts).

Good luck! At this rate I might start aiming to improve on my track record by releasing a game a month. (NB. This will not happen)

Play Gravqx

It must have been over fifteen years ago, now, that I first saw Klik and Play featured on Bad Influence. At that point, I never imagined that I would have a credit in one of its successors!

Comments

Wow, nice.

[(Anonymous)]

Man, I can't wait to buy the Flash exporter. Sure, there are some limits, but still... awesome stuff! :-D

I hope i can put my urbanyx game on Flash. I doubt it though.
That game galaxyx was hard... wow.

- weka

Re: Wow, nice.

[davidn]

It depends on what extensions you use, really... there's a list of things that work differently in Flash and EXE posted in the forum, if you're using tons of ink effects or subtracting from the background collision mask, but on the whole things work pretty smoothly now. Certainly compared to the start of the testing period, I can't think of many limitations that I couldn't reasonably work around for Flash :)

[distantj.livejournal.com]

It's so cool to see how far MMF has come. These days I just don't have the time to use it; I went for years just not finishing anything and as I got more and more busy (I work freelance) I just realised it was time to let go.

Now I don't even have the choice as my computer is an Apple Mac, lol.

[davidn]

I managed to finish a couple of releases and then got caught up in big game ambition over the last three years (as you've seen from my updates!) - though that looks like the end is in sight now. It's been nice to break it up with smaller games that can be finished in a matter of weeks.

I think I still use it mostly because if I was in a code IDE all the time at home as well as at work, I'd quickly go mad :) Although having said that, significant parts of CT2 rely on Java as well...

[kjorteo]

ahrhrarharhharharharaarhrggh.

[davidn]

Yes, that sounds about right. In my intention to make a quickly playable Flash application it seems that I've accidentally created my most infuriating game ever :) I'll have to put up some more video evidence that it's possible...

Anyway, congratulations on being one of the few who have managed to complete a course, with a completion time of just under three weeks.

[kjorteo]

:(

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

http://www.gravox.com.au/

I'm sorry.
I haven't played yet. I will do so now.

[davidn]

I got that as all the top results when I Googled the name at first to see if anyone had got there before me!

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of Gravity Force (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPC4SIup2RY) (well, Gravity Force 2, which I can't find a video for) but with more depth and responsiveness of control, which serves to make it both harder and potentially easier.

I find myself crashing a lot (this was on Earth, mind you, which I tried first. I managed to win on Mercury), and I gave up fairly quickly, but it's a very fun game. I keep coming back to it already. There's something satisfying against thrusting against gravity rather than just zooming about freely, and I like how the different courses have different rates of it.

When it asked me to put my name in, clicking "submit" didn't work (Actually, I just read your instructions; I mustn't have Javascript enabled. Also, I've edited this message about a thousand times. Are you getting an email for every one?). Oh, and it might be nice to be have a pointer to the next checkpoint. I guess it's fine once you learn that you have to look for the flashing green one, but to start with I had no idea where to go.

Is the sound effect that plays when you click a track from Carmageddon 2?

[davidn]

Award for most evolved LJ comment! Yes, I do get emails for every one - I thought I must have caused some major drama when I saw the size of my inbox this morning :) Glad you enjoyed it nonetheless - and you're right about the sound effect, I took it right out of the sounds folder of Carmageddon.

In future games I'll replace my Javascript score method with one that's internal to the game - I'd done it that way at first because during that stage of the testing, the object to retrieve from a page in-game hadn't been finished yet (it seems a surprising amount of people have Javascript turned off by default!)

General concensus seems to be that it's completely impossible, so I think you've been one of the most successful at completing one track :) "Bricnic" on the high score table seems to have got the idea, though...

And Gravity Force is quite something, because I hadn't heard of it before and it's obviously what... "inspired" Gravitation on the PS1 (a vague memory of which was the inspiration for this game in turn). I thought that controlling this style of game using the mouse was a lot easier - perhaps I overestimated by how much :)