This post has been a long time coming, but I’ve just been so busy with life and stuff. The real reason that I decided to write this post is really to just follow up on my last post – I wanted to give people some actual details into the process of designing a Flash game. In addition, it will tie into some other articles that I have planned.
If you haven’t played the game, you can do so HERE.
OVERALL
Earth Tower Defense was a Tower Defense game that I created and released around June. It was the first time that I finished a game and it took me about 2 months to finish the coding. It then spent about another month waiting for a sponsor (which I never found).
INITIAL DEVELOPMENT
Believe it or not, I didn’t write a design document for Earth Tower Defense. Because it’s usually only me working on a game, they’re kind of a waste of time (and, that’s actually something that I would recommended people do LESS of).
But, I knew that I wanted to make something simple because it was my first time working with Flash. Since I was so inexperienced with Flash, I thought that a Tower Defense game would be easy to make. I chose to model the game after Gemcraft with the thinking that it would make sense to base the game off of what is considered to be one of the best Tower Defense games around.With that very basic framework, I proceeded to begin coding the game.
CODING
In thinking about things, I had already gone over the really hard parts of learning to use Flash, so I found coding the actual game to be pretty easy. In fact, I can remember that the three most difficult things were: 1) understanding the way Flash deals with degrees, 2) getting one object to follow another, and 3) working with the Mochi software.
Issue one would have been a pretty easy thing to deal with had I never used Game Maker 
Although, to be honest with you, I’m still not 100% of the system they use, but I think that I’ve gotten it figured out. Issue two probably had to do with my inexperience – essentially you have to use the sin and cos functions, and geometry has never really been a strong suit. Likewise with issue three.All in all, however, it was a relatively painless process.
But, there were two things that I really kind of wish that I had done when using Game Maker: building the level editor for Earth Tower Defense taught me A LOT of things about how Flash actually works. It’s something that I wish I hadn’t relied on Game Maker for. The other is how I relied on GM to handle room transitions. See, I had always thought of rooms as a seperate sort of object – it was like it was it’s own little world. As it turns out, there is no such thing as a room – it’s just a what you are painting on the screen at any given time. That might not explain things very well, but I’m sure that people who have finished games would appreciate what I said.
In the end, I learned a SHIT TON and the experience in coding (and optimizing) were utilized inPlatform Explorer.
WORKING WITH A TEAM
After the failure of several games NOT being finished because I wasn’t working with an artist, I decided to make it a priority to find an artist and work with him soon. I believe that I found one about a month or so into the development of the game.
I found an artist by using the Flash Games License forums. I figured that it would be a great place to find someone considering the fact that I was making a Flash game and I was planning to use the service. I’ve tried finding artists on the tigsource forums as well as on pixelation (or, indiepixel or whatever it used to be called) to no avail. I didn’t want to go the same route that I had in the best, so I thought that the Flash Games License would be a great place to find new talent.
Eventually, I did find an artist (who was a bit inexperienced), but eager to work. Long story short, he worked on the game for about a good week or two and then bailed. As I’ve mentioned, it’s something that I’ve run into quite a lot and I basically told myself that I was going to finish the game NO MATTER WHAT. This is what lead to the crappy graphics that you see with the game (because I had to do them myself).
So, what was PLANNED to be a team project ended up with me working solo. But, I was dedicated to finishing the game so I proceeded onward.
DESIGNING THE GAME
Obviously, I didn’t want to create an exact copy of Gemcraft, so I figured that I would use the basic framework that they had created, and take other elements of Tower Defense games that I liked. I kind of liked the whole dynamic of Mushroom Revolution, so I added the crystal attachment thing. In addition, I liked how abilities became unlocked in Bloons, so I figured that I would pay a lovely homage (i.e. steal) that idea as well.
The technology/space setting actually came about because of my crummy art work I had originally wanted a medieval setting for the game – something more like Gemcraft, in fact. But, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to draw the correct setting that I wanted to so I just changed the setting. What’s funny is that I had actually designed the story ahead of time but had kept a number of details very vague. So, when I had to change the setting, it was pretty easy to change a couple of words and the story still made sense
One of the things that I found extremely challenging was the overall balance of the games. Frankly, it was a real bitch working out all of the upgrades as well as enemy health and speed. I would make the enemies harder but then the game would be TOO hard; I would increase the upgrade ability and then the game became too easy; etc.If you check out the game on Kongregate (Earth Tower Defense), a couple of the comments mention that the game is too hard. So, I don’t think I ever really solved the problem of balance. It’s something that I think is right, but I know more about the game than most people…
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That’s the end of Part 1, but check out Part 2 where I share:
- my marketing plan and how I tried to get the word out about the game
- how much money I made with Earth Tower Defense (and, some other statistics about the game)
- what I learned while working on ETD
- what I would have done differently
- why I spend so much time looking at pornIf you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them!
Also, I’ll hopefully be showing a screenshot or video from my next game, One Button RPG so be sure to subscribe to The Official Jr. Jellybeans Twitter account for more news!
(Lastly, I was just fucking around about the porn thing. I would think that the reason is pretty obvious…)
