Things I learned about making Flash Games in MMF

So, I just completed my first Flash game, and got it up on Mochi: Santa's Magic Sack

The first thing I learned about Flash is that you can go from having a fully functioning 50FPS game to having something that drops to a snails pace really easy.

The best solution I've found so far is to create your game to run at 30FPS. (30 fps looks just fine as long as you adjust the speed your objects move)

Also, my game used "paste object to background" frequently. While this worked great for a while, after a few minutes everything slowed down.
Solution: create active objects instead of paste to background. (this may or may not work as well for your game)
Why this worked for me: My game scrolls in only one direction, and I can then destroy the active objects when they get out of frame. It seems that pasting objects just kept adding to the memory usage, with no way to clear the objects from memory, and eventually affected performance.

I've also noticed that music sounds fairly good at the lowest bitrate and frequency, but sound effects will have a short delay when you play them. Is there a solution for this?

Feel free to add your own flash tips.

Pinapple. Were you destroying the actives once you pasted them?

Marv

It was just one active object that constantly pasted itself into the background.
After about 2 minutes (3500-4000 times being pasted into the BG), it would slow down

I don't think settling for 30fps is quite necessary, I've finished some reasonably complex games and while, yes, I have had to battle to keep a high framerate, my projects all run at 50fps for the most part. You have to be quite conservative with loops and employ the occasional ForEach loop (which is dangerous, the ForEach object still has many problems in Flash) but it can be done.

ForEach did not work for me in Flash, unfortunately. This extension definitely needs some fixes.

Yeah, implementing no fast loops of any description seems to speed things up an awful lot, it's just incredibly inconvinient :P

Is all the music in the game out of copyright? The opening song sounds like "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" which I think is still in copyright.

All the music is "creative commons"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pineapple

All the music is "creative commons"

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Which Creative Commons license? Some you can use, some you can't use for commercial purposes, some you can't use at all.

Going to have to agree about ForEach. I've had an awful experience with it. It just completely ruined my game in flash, and the one time it didn't, it ended up being slower than fast loops. This extension definitely needs a lot more work.

Foreach worked wonders in BloodyMarks...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pineapple

All the music is "creative commons"

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It isn't "Santa Claus is coming to town" then?

Unless someone just put a Creative Commons logo on something without knowing much about it...

It could be someone remixed a midi of that tune making the mistake of thinking it was then owned by them. I am guessing this happens a lot and the people using the content could still run into problems which is why i don't trust things with a Creative Commons logo.

This is the kind of thing, that no one in there right mind is going to care about.

Anyone wants to moan or take a legal argument about it, it'll cost more in court than you'd get back from the satisfaction of not having the music used.

If his game goes viral to 10's of millions it may be a different story, but the likelyhood of anyone caring is next to nothing :)

I've never had any speed problems in Flash, but I haven't tended to use many of the more... challenging graphics actions (paste loads to the background, rotate a lot of objects at once).

The game was decent, by the way - I wasted more time than I had intended on it, and that's a good sign :) I love the Amstrad First Noel, too. Mechanically, the only thing I would say about it is that there's nothing preventing the player from finding a safe place and just going back and forth forever to build up score...

I get annoyed when a game runs at 50FPS instead of 60. Maybe other people can't tell but I certainly can.

Perhaps if it fits with the art style then it'll be more seamless. I can't get enough of those extra 10fps though.

PS. Anyone could write a program to constantly circle the hand, maxing out the top score. Perhaps you should force a scroll after a certain amount of time to fix this exploit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spike

This is the kind of thing, that no one in there right mind is going to care about.

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That's one view, but the would the author of the game be happy if someone copied it, changed it and made money out of it? Perhaps not, but I know that I wouldn't be happy if it was me (and I assure you that I am in my right mind)!

I think it is probably better to "do the right thing" rather than hope that no-one cares.

I think the game is good, by the way; I was just pointing out the risk of using copyright music. Legally, even if it is not the tune I think it is, it sounds enough like it to be considered so for copyright purposes.

@Digitalic

Go to www.mises.org and read 'Against Intellectual Property' by Stephen Kinsella. All this copyright nonsense needs to stop. Property rights are for conflict avoidence over scarce resources, ideas/tunes are non-scarce resources, you can't legitimately own a tune or idea.

Embrace the digital age, don't be a protectionist of the status quo. Go read the book, it's free.

This topic has since gone in several different directions, and is heading somewhere that is not a happy place.

Locking.