VENGEANCE-GGG's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Interactive Buddy v.1.01]

WOW.

I saw the BETAs of this on Flash Kit, and all I can say now is: wow. How did you optimize it that well? It runs at a bearable (I have low standards) framerate on my 450 Mhz G3, and it runs super-fluidly on my brother's 1.42 Ghz G4!

You even managed to write your own scripting engine for it... my friend Namzorg (who emailed you) used it to make a script that would trigger explosions at the buddy's coordinates whenever you clicked! That ownz!!!

[Cursor Thief live]

Meh.

The cursor should be done in vectors - bitmaps look horrible when rotated. Just make a bunch of line criss-crossing over each other to make a grid of pixel-sized squares, and fill them in with the appropriate colors. When you're done, delete the grid. You now have a bitmap-style cursor with all the scaling and rotation advantages of vector graphics.

How do you intend to fix the Mac cursor problem? Hmm? I'd like to know. I'm sure I've seen something before that might do the trick.

PhoenixJ responds:

System.capabilites.os 'tis the key. I already fixed it, Tom has to approve the update since the flash has been viewed more than 5,000 times

[Final Fantasy Smash up]

Absolutely crap.

Terrible animation. He doesn't even move his arms. Nothing much happens, looks like you made it in less than an hour. The enemy has ONE attack. WHY?? There are so many things you could've done with this, but it seems you were too lazy to bother. Cloud doesn't even slash his sword! He leans vaguely in the direction of the enemy and does colossal damage. Why submit a battle engine alone? At least attempt making a game world first.

[6 More Random Tutorials]

Not very clear, poor coding.

You could've made it A LOT clearer, and the scripts were terrible.

_root.score = _root.score+1;

Could've been shortened to:

score++;

If the button was within a movie clip, then you would've needed to have the _root prefix, but seeing as it should be within the main timeline, that's all you would've needed to type.

Secondly, I find startDrag tends not to work well. Instead, you should use this:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
_x = _parent._xmouse;
_y = _parent._ymouse;
}

And what's with the 'eq' operator? That was deprecated in Flash 4, I believe. == Works just as well with strings, as well as working on booleans and values, too.

Why would you want to have a car that can strafe. To make a steering car, you would use a script a bit more like this:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
   // When key UP is pressed, speed is increased
   if (Key.isDown(Key.UP)) {
       speed += 3;
   } else {
       // When key DOWN is pressed, speed is decreased
       if (Key.isDown(Key.DOWN)) {
           speed -= 1;
       } else {
           // If UP or DOWN aren't pressed then the speed decreases
           speed *= .9;
       }
   }
   // The car will start to slow down after the speed of 25
   if (Math.abs(speed)>25) {
       speed *= .5;
   }
   // Turns the car left
   if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT)) {
       _rotation -= speed;
   }
   // Turns the car right
   if (Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) {
       _rotation += speed;
   }
   // Moves the car
   speed *= .8;
   x = Math.sin(_rotation*(Math.PI/180))*speed;
   y = Math.cos(_rotation*(Math.PI/180))*speed*-1;
   if (!_root.move.hitTest(_x+x, _y+y, true)) {
       _x += x;
       _y += y;
   } else {
       speed *= -.3;
   }
}

And if you wanted something that strafed like the one you wrote, why not use one variable to control the speeds in all directions? Like so:

onClipEvent (load) {
speed = 10;
}
onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
if (Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) {
_x += speed;
} else if (Key.isDown(Key.LEFT)) {
_x -= speed;
}
if (Key.isDown(Key.UP)) {
_y -= speed;
} else if (Key.isDown(Key.DOWN)) {
_y += speed;
}
}

You seem to be compelled to use statements such as:

_y = _y + 10;

Why not just shorten it to:

_y += 10;

I hope you learned something from that little lecture.

You-People-Are-Nerds responds:

obvously your some sort of crazy good expert on flash, so i have to ask you one question,

why is it that you would take a tutorial on things that you already know about?

is it simply because you feel that if you tell me that my tutorial could have been much betterand i script things wrong ,then you will feel better about yourself, because you feel that are a better person than me?

hmmmmmmmm...That is not healthy, and it shows hat you have a poor self exteem

Also, i am aware of other scripts for car movement that are much more realistic, but i choose this on, because it can be used aswell, and it is not nearly shown to people as often

Haha...i feel smart after writing this responce

[TunnelExplorer DLX]

Squidward Games...

Heyo, Squidward. I think this game has a lot of potential, and I reckon I could help you make it a lot better. Interested? My AIM screen name is: alexbirchuk, and my MSN address is: abirch01 -at- hotmail -dot- com, although I use AIM more often than MSN.

[Highway Chase]

Could be made better in sooo many ways.

1.) Make the graphics better.
2.) Make the physics better (i.e. steering).
3.) Make the AI a bit slower.
4.) Raise the max speed.
5.) Hitting into any cars or police vehicles should reduce your speed, and you can only be caught by the cops if they hit into you when your speed is below a certain amount.
6.) Make more change when you reach a new level.
7.) RPG-style stat-boosting stuff. When you go to a new level, you should have points to spend on steering, acceleration, max speed, nitrous charge, etc.
8.) Saving of some sort. Not a lot of good in this version, but if you try to build on it a little...

Smith responds:

iv started a Highway 2 with stearing and better physics

[SonicZero The GAME v2]

Nice idea, but it could do with a bit of work.

You should have one massive robot on the final level. Your ship would have to shoot at the rockets he fires at you, and try to disable each of the cannons on him. After that, the robot's head would start shooting lasers at you (which can only be avoided, not shot down). To finally win the game, you'd have to blow up the robot's head.

There should be a background of the destination you're trying to get to. On each level, it would be closer (or just steadily become closer during each of those levels). By the final level, it would be absolutely massive and extremely near.

Give the graphics a bit more work, add a bit more detail. And make small, subtle animations on the ships, such as a tiny radar spinning around.

The only sounds you have are 3 tracks of music. Not good. Make sounds when you're shooting, or when something blows up.

Speaking of blowing up, you ought to make the explosions animated as well. Maybe just expanding and losing alpha?

[~Flash Warcraft]

Very daring... but painful for Mac users.

Graphics: 5. Good to see that they retained their quality when they were put into teh game, but you didn't have a map, and most of it was drawn by Blizzard anyway.
Style: 8. VERY daring and original, and it came out as a pretty good imitation... but you based it on an existing game - not so stylish.
Sound: 8. You didn't make them entirely by yourself, and they didn't sound as clear as the original ones. No music, either, but that's understandable. Flash is too slow for most games to have soundtracks. You don't lose any marks on that.
Violence: 7. The game was too slow for me to actually get into a fight. If it's the same as Warcraft 2 fighting, then I reckon it's good.
Interactivity: 9. Amazing, but the pathfinding doesn't carry out your orders immaculately.
Humor: 5. Funny voices, and the fact that you attempted a game like this in Flash before Flash 8 was released. Wait a bit longer and you'll be able to get it running faster.

Overall: 7. Very nice try, but half of it was done by Blizzard, the pathfinding was pretty bad, and it ran slowly (my computer sucks). There was no map, and you could've made one VERY easily if you made it tile-based. The only problem would be setting which tiles to display when it scrolls.

[speedball2]

Pretty samey.

Being a Flash developer, I reckon this game was pretty lazy. You could've very easily added a small bounce sound when the ball hit the walls, you could've improved the graphic by miles (perhaps by making an after-image trail behind the ball), and you could've used Shared Objects to save your scores for the next time you play it. It would take barely any extra scripting, and it'd encourage people to play the game more than once.

[Learn Flash]

Not in-depth, and the script has errors!

You barely touched any of the topics much. And you need to put a closed curly bracket on the end of that custom cursor script to make it work. You showed a moviement script, yet you didn't explain how and why it worked... only people who know how to do the things that are taught here would actually be able to understand this properly - I reckon actual beginners would be stumped. For COMPLETE, IN-DEPTH coverage of making a first-person shooter game in flash, I'd recommend reading my tutorial. Though it hasn't got much in the way of screenshots, it'll show you about how detailed you need to be to teach beginners. That tutorial used over 70 frames, most of which were filled to the brim with text. Ouch.

ImOnTheInternet responds:

There is no errors. Did you bother to highlight it all. If you highlighted it all eventually the dynamic text would scroll revealing the "curly bracket". I know the Action Script tutorials aren't that much in depth and don't throughly explain it. It'd take much too long to do so. It's a flash and well it was a pain as it is writing out all of the tutorials. I don't expect beginners to jump directly in to games either or actionscript. They should have some small ac knowledge before doing so. Thanks for the review.