Case 3 - Let the scripting begin!

Case 3 - Running with AS3 by ~SveinE89 on deviantART

In this case we were supposed to use ActionScript 3.0 to move our character. Also, the character should never leave the screen.

My main goal of this case was to learn and understand the basic principles of ActionScript. Throughout the week I studied the Learning ActionScript 3.0, chapter 1 and 2, discussing the topics in the group on Monday, and following the walkthrough on Thursday.

I’ve got some experience from AS1 and 2, and some from HTML and CSS, so my first experience with AS3 wasn’t as scary as it could be. So I managed to make the character move across the screen pretty early. The way I did it, was to add a function with an event listener witch “commands” the character to move along the x-axis each frame. The way I made him turn at the end of the screen was to add a function that said that the character should reverse his speed and flip him horizontally when he reached a specific point on the screen.

On top of the post, I added a link to the finished product. I also added a screenshot of the script at the bottom.

Case 2 – It’s alive!

Nerd Idle by ~SveinE89 on deviantART


Nerd run by ~SveinE89 on deviantART


Nerd jump by ~SveinE89 on deviantART

Like I posted earlier, this was the week that we we’re going to start animating our characters. In our group meeting we discussed what problems and challenges we could face and how we were going to handle them. For me the biggest challenges in this case were to figure out which tweens to use on your character, and how to make the loops look smooth. I watched a lot of tutorials, and read in

I decided to try using the bone tool, which is a tool that makes a “skeleton” for your character, by binding symbols together in the “joints” of your choosing. When you use the bone tool, all your symbols (in my character, all the body parts) are confined into one layer called the Armature layer. And then you can easily move your character’s limbs the way you want it on the timeline, and the tweens/animations between the key frames are automatically generated. Using a science called inverse kinematics the bone tool creates a realistic way of moving the limbs, by connecting them together. I also spent some time modifying each “bone” by constraining the maximum and minimum angle.

I first created the idle animation. I decided to make my animations kind of dorky looking, trying to make my hero look like a nerdy, asthmatic and kind of silly. So in the idle animation I made him breathe really heavily. I also animated his face, with eye-blinking and his mouth moving to make him look more alive. This animation was made in the face-symbol, and since I use the same symbol in all the different animations his eyes and mouth moves in all of them.

When I started animating the running sequence I faced some trouble using the bone tool. Halfway through the animation when I was going to move the legs and arms back to their original position, the skeleton and animation didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. Therefore I decided to use the Classic Tween. When using the classic tween, you make key frames on the timeline, change position etc of each symbol, then create the tween between the key frames. This is maybe a slower way than using the bone tool, but I felt that I had more control.

In the end I placed the complete symbols in a sprite. In class, and by looking at the tutorial we got, I learned that a sprite is a flashfile containing several animations/symbols of a character, for instance running, jumping etc. Each symbol is placed on an individual frame in the timeline. Sprites are used when scripting.

Case 2

This week we're gonna start animating our characters. By Monday our character is going to move to the left and right, start a jump, and be in an idle position.

TO BE UPDATED!

-SEF

Case 1 - The First Steps

After some thinking I decided to make a platform game based on computer viruses and antivirus software. The actions in the game will be located inside a computer that is infested with all sorts of viruses, bugs, Trojan horses etc.

The hero of the game and the one you’ll be controlling will be Nortrom MacFree (also the title of the game), the antivirus-man. He’s going to be a geeky looking guy with a powerful armor, and his quest will be to find and destroy the “Mother virus”, or some kind of boss/nemesis. To be able to destroy this enemy, he has to fight his way through the computer, killing viruses and gathering microchips that he will use to defeat his nemesis.

Nortrom will go through the computer, and if doesn’t get killed by viruses or falls into fans etc. he will face his nemesis in an epic battle. This part of the game I’m probably just going to animate, due to my lack of programming skills. The game will be built up like a “standard” platform game, for instance Super Mario, where the “camera” follows the character to the right, as he moves from platform to platform without falling to his doom or getting whopped by enemies.

When I was designing my hero, I tried to make him as “simple” as possible. By that I mean that I tried to keep the numbers of vector points low. If a character has too many vector points, the danger of lagging in the game increases. It’s also a lot easier animating characters with a smaller amount of vector points. Therefore I used the shapes tool in Flash a lot, and then modifying these geometric shapes with the selection and sub-selection tool, dragging and forming the shapes as desired.

Here’s the finished hero of my game. The version that is shown from the side is the one that you’ll be able to control in-game. The other one is just going to be used in an eventual intro/outro.








Another thing I did to make the size of the flash file smaller, and the animation process more efficient, was to make each body part into a symbol. A symbol is a reusable object used in Flash. A symbol can be reused throughout your movie or imported and used in other movies. The advantage of using symbols is that the size of the symbol is only “taken into consideration” once even if you use it fifty times in a flash file.

I also distributed all the symbols into individual layers, so that I easily can lock the layers (containing body parts) I don’t want to edit, and be free to do what I want on the unlocked layer without worrying about messing up the other layers. Layers are in theory the same as transparent sheets of paper arranged on top of each other. Then each layer can be edited, drawn on and erased without affecting the other layers.

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!

This blog is now in English!

-SEF

Case 1

I vår første case skal vi pønske ut en spillide. Videre skal vi tegne/designe en hovedkarakter som vi skal bruke i plattformspillet vårt. Vi må huske på at vi skal bruke karakteren til animering i senere caser og det er derfor viktig å designe den slik at den enkelt kan animeres.

-SEF

Første skisse til spillhelten

Første skisse av Nortom MacFree, som skal være helten i spillet mitt.

~~~BLOGG!!~~~

Denne bloggen kommer for det meste til å inneholde saker og ting om en skoleoppgave i kurset Animasjon og interaktivitet.

-SEF