Choose Your Piece And We'll Start the Game

It took me a little pondering to figure out where exactly to begin with my game, but I figured a background was a good start. Or the conveyor belt part at least. I figured that'd also be a pretty fun place to start because who doesn't like making mean crushing machines? I animated all the parts just with Flash and animation tweens.



I took the long way around with my first attempt (which seems to be a habit for me) and searched a whole bunch of different sites for action script codes to make my game work. It didn't, at all. So instead I went back to this tutorial that I'd found ealier and realised I also needed a jumping clip for Uhrr, so I made this:



And whipped up this nifty little piece of trash as well:


I'm not going to lie. I can't exactly remember what sites are exactly what out of these, but the key ones that I used were:

• This and this for sound effects
• This for the way my trash moved across screen
• And this for making sure Uhrr can't actually get off the right side of the conveyor belt, and for making the trash act like a wall and push him towards the grinder

Here are the rest of the sites I kept links of in case you just want more info on making flash games or different parts of flash games:

• http://www.dezinerfolio.com/2008/02/06/20-free-tutorials-to-create-your-own-flash-game/
• http://pelfusion.com/tutorials/35-flash-game-development-tutorials-fla-files/
• http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/125248
• http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx2004/platform_game.htm
• http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=347547
• http://www.bigresource.com/FLASH-In-depth-side-scroller-tutorial-pvZneJRtCo.html
• http://www.bigresource.com/FLASH-Simple-Tutorial-on-Trajectory--8nJA3WYBTi.html
• http://www.ehow.com/how_6636622_create-advance-flash-game-tutorials.html
• http://www.kongregate.com/labs
  
• http://flash-r-us.deviantart.com/art/basic-side-scrolling-game-tut-19545486
• http://flashexplained.com/
• http://www.flashadvisor.com/forum/character-jumping-t603.html?s=4b374f8909267711adb66e98e590b826&
• http://www.kirupa.com/developer/actionscript/random.htm
• http://www.kirupa.com/developer/actionscript/random_motion.htm
• http://www.kirupa.com/developer/actionscript/random_motion2.htm
• http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-work-with-sound-flash-cs4-262845/view/
• http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/litegame/
• http://simplythebest.net/sounds/MP3/sound_effects_MP3/miscellaneous_mp3.html

After I'd worked out all of those parts, I realised I needed a proper background instead of just a white screen. I went with my original idea for my game, where Uhrr's out exploring and has accidentally activated an acient machine, so I thought he could've been in the jungle-y part of the world, because it makes sense for the machine to be somewhere that's sort of overgrown, so Uhrr didn't notice it at first. I used dark colours to create a shadowy feeling like there's a huge canopy overhead, and also because it has a more doom and gloom feel than if I used grass greens and lighter shades of brown. That makes Uhrr dying not feel like something bad. I also made the leaves slightly transparent to make it feel like there was a greater depth to the forest.



I used the background for my start and game over frames as well, to make sure they didn't feel disconnected from the actual game.

I wanted the start and end screens to have a sort of synical feel, like you know you can't win from the beginning. I like the end frame the best. I think it feels really disappointing because it's so blunt and degrading. And just look at that fullstop. I can hear it mocking me from here.