VENGEANCE-GGG's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Battlefield]

Obviously takes a lot of cues from 'Invasion'.

Instead of just making it like Invasion with real-time unit purchasing, I reckon you should've taken this opportunity to take the genre a bit further, maybe with some more unique ideas of your own.

Hoeloe responds:

Yes, it was based on invasion, except the unit purchasing is different, and it is more fantasy - based with wizards, trolls and dragons

[Winzows BETA]

Looks like you only spent about an hour on it.

The alternatively coloured backgrounds don't appear in the same place as each other,
the windows aren't draggable,
the buttons don't dip down when you click on them,
there's a strange blue line in the middle of the preloader,
the login screen isn't anything like the real thing,
the task bar doesn't react to opening windows,
there's no minimize or expand button, the start bar is nothing like the real thing,
normally you would have to double-click on something to open it,
you can't select or click and drag stuff,
for no reason (other than laziness, I can assume) the desktop icons are inside the Recycle Bin,
you used a Single Line Input Text Box for the Word application instead of a Multi Line one,
you didn't put a scroll bar into the Word app,
you didn't make the buttons in the Word app functional (could be done using HTML text),
you didn't do anything with the cursor (make it so that Mac users see a Windows cursor, you can achieve this with System.capabilties.os and Mouse.hide();).
you didn't make the windows stretchable (could be done with masking or bitmap fills).

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Also, never release a BETA. if your Flash is unfinished, submit it to Newgrounds Alphas.

Sorry about the long list of things to fix, but each thing would only take a couple of lines of code to fix.

Zerobeam responds:

uuh yeah. i know al of this things. but my AS sucks. Really, this was just meant to be a AS training for me but then it turned out to be a game that i now posted. It's good that you know so much AS but i don't. I don't know how to fix 9/10 of al the things you just sayd making it so that even if i realese a v 1.00 it still would be bad. So realising that i need to know more and better AS. Ask around on the forums and put more time in it as you say. I worked hard on it and still i spent a few days on this.

[Family Guy: Soundboard]

Could have been a lot better.

My review is over a thousand characters longer than the maximum review length here, so I'll give you a URL to view it from (replace -dot- with . and -slash- with /).

gamesgamesgames -dot- co -dot- uk -slash- Review -dot- txt

killstation433 responds:

hmmm i wonder, is this a good review or a piece of garbage

[Flash4beginners]

Pretty good, but nothing I didn't already know.

Tutorials are always a pain to make, due to all the screenshots you have to take, and scaling them so that they fit in, but are still recognisable.

I suggest that you show how to add easing to a tween (select first keyframe of tween and look at Easing in the Properties panel). This is a VERY useful feature, which everybody should learn.

Also explain Soften Fill Edges, Convert Lines to Fills, and Expanding Fills. They're very useful for special effects, and it's good to know how to use them if you're trying to make impressive text.

The only problem I really had with it was the fact that it didn't show EXACTLY what was supposed to happen (like when you click on a frame, it turns black to show it's selected, etc.) but this kind of stuff can get very tedious after a while, and forces you to take many more screenshots, so I don't blame you.

Also, try to make the mouse move at a more constant speed, and make it move more naturally, by using a curved motion guide instead of just a regular tween.

GAMECUBICLE responds:

yeah, i probably could have shown easing, I did show Expand fill etc.. btw.

The screenshots were of a good quality, so i dont know why you are complaining about that.

Thanks for the comments. Making mouse move at a constant speed is irritating to do, cause you would have to time all the actions more precise, and i think it was good the way it is.

[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

[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

[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

[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.