Done:
- Skeleton Presenting loot animation
- Finished all Loot Icons
- Made the pirate attacking Skully animation
- Defined the Mana Meter interface and animation
- Created basic Gold Score interface elements
- Created Score added animation (when the player gets treasure)
- Started Title Screen and real Logo design
Up next:
- Polish Lightning, Ship Sinking and Pirates
- Title Screen
- Polish interface
- Test the game when the gameplay is ready!
Here’s another interesting article.
Fatal Flaws in Flash Game Design and Development
by Greg McClanahan on 07/23/09 04:03:00 pm
Yesterday Jim Greer (CEO of Kongregate) and I gave a talk at Casual Connect in Seattle titled Fatal Flaws in Flash Games. I also talked a bit about common flaws in entry-level Flash development philosophies and practices.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Here’s an interesting article about Fantastic Contraption creator Colin Northway’s speech at Austin Indie Summit. Very interesting hints and advice for monetizing flash games.
I believe Skull Mountain does not fit the profile of a heavily profitable game, but we could keep his advice in mind for (possible) future games.
I’m adding the article to the link list.
*Edit* Here’s the same type of article, about Flashbang’s’ method of making games in 8 weeks.
Despite losing the internet for the whole weekend, I was kind of productive:
- Created Pirate, 4 different styles, walking and exploding animations
- Created Skeleton Servant with Ready, Digging and Dragged animations
- Created Shaman with Dragging and Lightning animations
- Animated Pirate Ship exploding
- Created half the Loot Icons
I’ll commit a whole lot of stuff tonight after a little cleaning up.
Up Next:
- Interface: gold score, mana meter, active items
- Skeleton Servant presenting Loot
- Pirate attacking Skully
- Score Added and Mana Added animations
Anything else needs to be done ASAP for Programming?
Assets and Sound Effects List
Here’s the list of all the assets that need to be done.
(There’s a LOT! But I’ll make it 
)
+ = includes a sound effect or a music
!!! = Next Priority as of this version
Italic = Done
- Menus
- Splash Screens
- Dom2D
- Zylum
- Title Screen
- Logo
- Moving BG
- Play
- Main music
- Splash Screens
- Introduction
- View of Island
- Reading newspaper
- Article about his Island
- Freaks out
- Looks out the window
- Pirates are arriving by the sea
- Really freaks out
- Tears newspaper
- Orders Skeletons to grab a shovel
- Subtitles if any
- Speech OR Mumbling
- Interface !!!
- Mana Meter !!!
- Losing Mana, Lightning
- Losing Mana, Shock
- Gaining Small Orb +
- Gaining Large Orb +
- Gaining Full Mana +
- Temporary Infinite Mana + Powerful sound
- Empty mana + Small panic sound
- Score!!!
- Every addition +
- Milestone attained + Jingle
- Game won + Epic music
- Level!!!
- Shovel Upgrade/Level refresh number
- Gaining +1 level +
- Items in inventory!!!
- Useable or not
- If temporary, with timer?
- Pop-Ups
- Game Won + Epic music
- Continue! Go for the High Score!
- Game Over + Fail music
- Play Again
- Pause Pop-Up + Stops sound?
- Continue
- Game Won + Epic music
- Mana Meter !!!
- Island
- Sand tiles!!!
- Untouched
- Dug
- Small dust cloud when digging is completed!!! + small sfx
- Additional polish on BG and over
- Birds
- Fish
- Animated waves in the water
- Level refresh (flash of white? Swipe?) +
- Sand tiles!!!
- Loot
- Icon for every item (in progress)
- Animations:
- Treasure Chest (opens and shines) +
- Should show how many there are left in that level
- Empty Treasure Chest
- Roaming Creatures + optional sound
- Parrot
- T-Rex
- Carnivorous Plant
- Treasure Chest (opens and shines) +
- Gold added
- +X Gold + !!!
- Traces of Gold in the sand
- Mana added + !!!
- +X Mana (or just a burst of blue light maybe)
- Enemies
- Pirate Ships
- Large
- Normal
- Exploding/Sinking +
- Disappearing after dropping
- Medium
- Normal
- Exploding/Sinking +
- Disappearing after dropping
- Small
- Normal
- Exploding/Sinking +
- Disappearing after dropping
- Large
- Pirates
- Different Styles
- Walking towards Skull
- Attacking Skull + !!!
- Attacking Skeleton +
- Exploding +
- Win!
- Pirate Ships
- Skeleton Servants
- Being Dragged!!!
- Digging + Small sound!!!
- Stunned
- Ready!!!
- Loot present!!!
- On a treasure streak (shines a bit)
- New one appearing (Skeleton Skull loot) + small sound
- Shaman
- Getting item from Skeleton (shine and smile) + !!!
- Dragging Skeleton + sound depending on anim!!!
- Casting Lightning (stays over the ship) !!!
- Roulette (loop until the player gets in OR cancels it OR ship arrives) + energy sound
- Small Zone (Large Pirate Ship)
- Medium Zone (Medium Pirate Ship, Large with Thunder Scepter)
- Large Zone (Small Pirate Ship, Medium with Thunder Scepter)
- Very large Zone (Small Pirate Ship with Thunder Scepter)
- Blast (very short beam animation) + blast sound
- Miss + short error sound
- Roulette (loop until the player gets in OR cancels it OR ship arrives) + energy sound
- Killing Pirate
- Explodes pirate!!! + boom sound
- Using an item (if not automatic)
- Skull Mountain (aka Skully)
- Subtitles and tutorials
- Being Attacked + clink sound
- Exploding (AKA game over) + boom sound
- Complaining + voice or Mumbling
- Idle
- Talking
- Panicking
- Idle
- Talking
- Satisfied
- Idle
- Talking
- Specific Item effects
- Storm Talisman
- Rain +
- Thunder Scepter
- One thunderstrike (flash screen in white, with SFX) +
- Magic Sandglass (white flash, sfx, white filter) + Flash sound
- Reaper Box (Black flash, sfx) + Flash sound
- Eye of Voodoo
- Shiny effect on Gold + bling
- Shiny Effect on Mana + bling
- Greed Compass
- Rotating Compass
- Treasure Chest
- Big red X
- Spy Parrot
- Flying parrot
- Excited Parrot +
- Sun Talisman
- Shiny filter, birds (maybe) + Stops stressful music, bird sound
- Symbol of Life
- Quick shiny light on all Skeletons + angel voice sound
- Bomb
- Explosion animation + explosion sound (duh)
- Snake
- Attacks skeleton animation + Sss
- Bear Trap
- Ready
- Triggered + Snap sound
- Disappears
- Storm Talisman
Filed under: Uncategorized
Here’s the current Loot list in Move Out of Skull Island. Taken from Design Document.
Under the cut.
And he can now… talk!
Taken from the Move out of Skull Island Design Document:
Skull Mountain (Let’s call him Skully for fun) is grumpy and wimpy. Here’s a few possible things he might say:
- Hey, SHAMAN! I’m under attack here!
- Ow! Get away!
- Raaah, not the face, not the FACE!
- Oh crap here they come!
- I believe that means there are still 2 treasure chests left, buddy.
- I was supposed to work on my tan today!
- Work, work! Hehehe.
- There’s a skeleton slacking off over here.
- Why do you do this to meeee?!
- Aaah that feels good.
- Thanks man. I owe you one.
- Nanananana nanananana SHA-MAN!
Dev Log:
- Comitted Design Doc v1.04
- Created Sand tile assets (C:\SVN\skullisland\Assets\SandTile.FLA)
- Redesigned Skull Mountain, now with talking ability (that required a full jaw!)
- Set up valid tiles for Loot
- Drew Shore waves and sand grain for whole Island
- Set up SVN
- Design Document v1.03
- Win conditions have been simplified and now make the game infinite
- Designed a draft of the Loot Distribution System and the Pirate Wave System
- 2 New Loot categories, one to help the player find treasure and the other to add some more chaos to the fun
- Started Devlog post on TIGS ( http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8132.0 )
Next step:
- Make assets for the sand tiles (the Background image will be a large png with pre-dug out tiles, covered with sand tile assets)
- Write a clear set of rules for the Loot Distribution System
- Polish Island
Not that much work done today, sadly.
Move out of Skull Island Log:
- Finished the 3 pirate ships
- Cleaned up Island, added polish to the Skull Mountain, began drawing waves
- Made mock-up
Things that are urgent:
- Think of how the sand tiles are going to look, be arranged and played with
- Think of a way to design Pirate waves quickly
Filed under: Uncategorized
Keep in mind those ships will be really small on screen.
Here’s a Flash test of how big they are and how they should move. I’m thinking of animating them a bit or complexify their movement a little, to make them more alive and have a boat-like movement.
