Summer break is over now!

Hello,

After spending a month in Nice France and an other month coming back to Canada. I am ready to continue my work on the sequel of Number to Number Combat. So far I like to use the code name NtN as Number to Number. It is kind of lame name but well it is a code name. Since I have been back, I worked on a new article for a journal, it is half done. I find it really hard to focus on the work when you can go outside and play in the sun. Although, this new article is about my new approach to Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA), as discussed in the last post, my last approach did not work the way I was expecting in Number to Number Combat. So I have been thinking about a new cheap (as easy) way to approach the problem of DDA. I saw a lot of model that were really complicated to implement and design. I want something easy enough to be design on any kind of games.

So how can I achieved that? well I think I found a good approach, but I still have to work on the algorithms to control some variables. So I will introduce the model in a couple weeks.

Meanwhile, I was going to implement NtN using GameMaker, but I changed my mind recently. As a sequel I think I have to use Flash again, more for the game's result than for the platform. I am designing NtN based on the comment I got on Newgrounds for Number to Numer Combat. My DDA system is important for my research at the university, so I have to make sure the result of the sequel are from the same kind of player. So that is the first reason why I changed my development from game maker to as3.

Number to Number Combat was implemented using Flash and FlashDevelop, I really liked to worked with actionScript 3 but not really when it is embedded with Flash. The only strong side I can see working with flash and flashdevelop is when you are more an artist than a developer. It is really easy to modify your art and see the result in the game. But it is a pain in the a.. to program, because you always have to come back to flash for all the little thing existing in the game. For example, if I want to had a little text in the top corner to see the value of a certain variable. Well I have to go to flash add a little piece of text, put it dynamic, give it a variable name that I can program and link it to a class. That little class is actually an empty class, so at the end of your project you have a million of empty classes that you need in order to control your game. I did like that approach, so I decided to keep working with ac3 but I changed the platform a little bit, I am now using Flex, which is open source and free. So far, it is really good, it is code-oriented and easier to debug than using Flash.

So far I finished a little tutorial that is really good : Tutorial. It was really interesting and easy to follow, I really like that the guy is using advance programming structure to implement the game. By the end you have more than just a little program, you will have a structure that cool be used with any kind of games. So if you are looking to learn ac3, you should check it out.

Hopefully you all having a wonderful summer.

John