“Mr Walters was enjoying his afternoon cup of tea, when suddenly a loud bang occurred outside near his rubbish bins. ‘What could that be?’ pondered Mr. Walters placing his tea down gently and leaving the foyer.”
The tale of Mr. Walters is currently still in development, but after a very interesting meeting on the way back from Baja Fresh, James, Luka, and I discussed the possibilities of this rabbit who shot lasers from his eyes and swung with a grappling hook. The end result was the creation of a very stereotypical English rabbit, who spoke with a British accent and tended a victory garden. Somehow, the minor storyline evolve to him eating a very infectious carrot, which gives him the ability to shoot lasers from his eyes. How this will be implemented is soon to come, but the makings of Mr. Walter’s Grand Excursion are already on their way.
It’s been while since I have done a platformer-style game. The last one I did was nearly 3 years ago, and was one of the first games sponsored by Armor Games. It’s interesting to look back and see the progress made since then, but I have yet to really push the envelope when it comes to making a really decent platformer. Hopefully Mr. Walters can provide this experience. I assume this game will be in production for a while, since I have a lot going on at the time… but soon enough, we will all be able to enjoy the story of Mr. Walters and his grand excursion… somewhere.
The past few months of gaming have been nothing but intense. Ever since August, we have had non-stop games coming into the console gaming market. It’s like getting hit with a cement truck full of luscious goodies… it just keeps getting better and better as we near the end of the year. But stepping back, here are just a few in the past few months:
Halo 3
The Darkness
Mass Effect
Rock Band
Guitar Hero 3
Geometry Wars Galaxies
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Ratchet and Clank
Orange Box
Assassin’s Creed
Super Mario Galaxy
Frankly, I don’t know what to do with all these games! They are actually starting to pile up at my house, each sitting half finished like a forgotten sandwich on the floor. Hopefully the video game industry will take a break soon… I am not sure my wallet and my gaming time can catch up to the awesome 3rd and 4th Quarter of gaming.
Now if I had to choose which one I have been most impressed with, it has to be a toss-up between Super Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, and Orange Box. These three games have definitely taken a huge leap in gaming… from Portal introducing an amazing dynamic first-person experience, to Super Mario Galaxy introducing amazing planetary game play, to Halo 3 and it’s incredible multiplayer experience. If I had to choose between the three, I would have to say Portal has been a really fun experience, and definitely the freshest thing I have played all year. So cheers for Valve!
I thought having Gears of War last year was a handful, but this year has definitely created a better end of the year for gaming.
Here’s a picture of the ‘Armor Office*’ rocking out to screaming fans.
*Luka’s eyes are red due to the insane amount of ROCKING that takes place during our shows
*You can’t see me (Daniel) but I’m about to stage dive off the TV
As a developer, I find it interesting that people would spend time recording themselves beating some of my games. There are a good 20-30 Dark Cut 2 videos on Youtube right now, including detailed step-by-step instructions on how to beat the game, as well as video-reviews. I am amazed people would spend the time to do this, and I appreciate it a lot.
More peculiar is the random things kids will do with their footage. For one, I dug up this gem. It is from the preloader game of Four Second Firestorm. The minigame is a carrot-man who runs away from bowling balls, with the challenge being how long you can survive the cascade of balls. For some reason, these foreign kids decided it would be a good idea to dub over the preloader (in a language I am unfamiliar with) and dump it on youtube. See below for the clip:
I am completely confused as to why they would do this, but nonetheless, it’s interesting.
It happened. And it went down. And in the end, well, I can’t spoiling the ending right? Here is the breakdown of events from the Halo 3 tournament heard around the world.
Kongregate and Armor Games started talking about a game of Halo a few weeks ago. After drawing out a few guidelines and rules, the two Flash websites went head-to-head in the happiest Halo game on Earth. Playing with four players each, the two teams trained to play six matches (three chosen per team). The matches varied in gametype and location, and if you are a Halo player, you can definitely see the difficulty changes with each level and gametype. Here are the matches and their outcomes!
The first battle took place on the icy battlefield of Snowbound, and it was a close match to start. The Kongregate team learned to group together to pick off Armor Games team members, huddling at the top of the second base. The Ghost was also a huge center of struggle, switching hands twice. However, Armor Games managed to pull through in the end, taking the first game.
Team King was pretty even for the first part of the game. The hill was usually occupied by one team, then immediately occupied by the other. But once again, Armor Games broke through and ended up with another win. Greg had 2 Assassination and 6 Beat Down medals, while I had 6 double kills and 1 triple.
VIP on Valhalla was a tough match. Basically, we were playing the largest map with small teams, trying to kill an uber VIP all on their own. Our plan was pretty successful, as we hid Dan in the cliffs for most of the match. Twice we drove the Warthog into their base, resulting in a pretty funny situation with Greg. I quote from the Kongregate forums:
“Unfortunately, the cheap, brutal, terrorist-like tactics of Armor Games proved victorious in the match-up. We did our best to fight a civilized war, but we were met with nothing but dirty tricks and shameful methods.
As an example (perhaps a video replay will later be posted as proof):
During our VIP battle, I, as the VIP, was enjoying a nice cup of tea within our bunker as the rest of my team ventured forth into the third world, providing food for children and medicine for the elderly. I was rudely interrupted by an Armor Games mercenary literally driving a jeep INTO our base (vehicles are meant for the OUTSIDE, sir). That’s right—the same base where I demand that visiting diplomats remove their shoes. Wishing no violence to occur, I promptly complied with the terrorist’s orders and hopped into the passenger side of the jeep. I was then kidnapped, and driven back to the barren land of our terrorist enemies. I was ordered from the vehicle, then promptly beaten to death with the blunt end of a weapon. The shots that I fired were purely meant as mere warnings, proven by their reluctance to strike any flesh.”
Fair enough, Greg. Here’s the video of the situation:
Indeed, the vehicles played a very important role in this game. There were several double and triple kills over bigger vehicles gobbling smaller vehicles. However, the first Warthog visit was not the only one. The second time we came in with our own VIP, and managed to take out the VIP after some quick work from Dan jumping out to finish the job. Here is the clip:
The match was great, with Kongregate making a huge comeback at the very end of the game. However, Armor Games had the early lead, which led the the eventual victory.
This was the closest game of them all. The game was constantly within a few points and with Kongregate’s early lead we were worried that catching up would not happen in time. Kongregate was smart; they attacked from above, used grenades with finesse, and went for the power weapons. Alison from the Kongregate team held down the fort on several occasions leaving the Armor Games team left with no defense. However, a last minute hill-grab ended in another Armor Games victory.
This game was a bit strange. We began the match with everything going as plan, until Dan and Luka suddenly lost connection to Xbox Live, and we restarted the match. Greg cried foul, but we cried tears of sadness for XBL. We restarted the match. Most noticable about this messed up match was Kongregate team member Chris having six kills in the 2 minutes we played.
It was pretty even at the beginning, but we soon took over with a large lead. Chris was being a beast on the Kongregate team, but we ended up with a win. 8 kills from Armor Games came from splatters from Ghosts.
This was a game to 75 on isolation. It was really a fun match, mostly because it’s really hard to take a Halo match seriously when everyone is constantly jumping and trying to shoot rockets at each other. Luka racked up his first ever Halo triple kill medal, and Armor Games went on to win a clean sweep in the Halo vs Kongregate match.
Outcome: Armor Games win, 75-55.
Overall Summary
Armor Games wins! A few of these matches were really close, and had us on our toes. Kongregate pulled together a great team in a short time, and we definitely give a thumbs up to their abilities. Bravo! However, a winner is a winner, and Armor Games now stands with a perfect Halo record of 1-0.
We’ll definitely take on Kongregate again any time. Possibly against COCAK as a future battle? Or maybe Kongregate and Armor Games should join forces to take over the Haloz interwebz. Pretty epic.
Good game Kongregate. We definitely had a lot of fun.
Kongregate Players:
Kongregate is Chris
Kongregate (1) is Greg
Kongregate (2) is Alison
StopDropAndrew is Andrew
Armor Games Players:
jmtb02 is John
jmtb02 (1) is James
ArmorOffice is Dan
ArmorOffice (1) is Luka
If you own Halo 3, you can download the first three matches from the “ArmorOffice” account, and the last three matches from the “jmtb02″ account. You can also download the matches from the file share on each game page.
It feels so good to finally push a large project out of beta and into the mainstream. Especially when I’m not the one who has to do the programming! Everyone, please, if you would, stand and give praise to Jeff Wofford for programming a fine piece of flash entertainment. I really look forward to working with him on future projects. Sound design by Chris Branscome was phenomenal as well!
As an added treat, I’ve posted the Coffee Shop character animation sheet for all of the Coffee Shop characters. I’m very proud of it. A lot of work went into the motion of each person. Each one is animated frame by frame at 12 fps or more. In my opinion, this attention to detail helps raise the quality of Coffee Shop a couple hundred notches above most of the other successful casual games that are out there. (*cough*bloons tower defense II*cough* blargh! *cough) Enjoy! And feel free to post any questions in the comments section!
For the past 4-5 years, I have somehow escaped making Flash game without an ounce of Trigonometry. Sure, there has been the occasional code snippet here or there; but quite frankly, I have manged to strut willy-nilly across the web for 32 game releases without having to use it. I feel like a fugitive for my escape.
Trig is slowly coming back to me from High School. I took it Junior year, and took physics in Senior year. Together, they form a cloudy outline of how things work in real life, so trying to piece them back together is difficult. James has been pushing me along, which has been very helpful… but wow, sites like Wikipedia and Flashkit have really been pushing me along to figure out these physics.
I have been working for the past day on a new game concept. The main protagonist is a cute fluffy bunny, who shoots lasers from her eyes (think of Dad’s Home). The bunny gets around by swinging on ropes, shot from a grappling gun (think Batman). I don’t quite know why this is going to happen, but a bunny who kicks butt sounds like a good idea. I also would like to get back on track to actually making lovable characters; it’s really hard to get attached to bright particles. Should be done in a few weeks, I’ll post updates as they come!
I’ve just been informed by Tyler Glaiel of ‘Glaiel Gamer’ fame that he’s pushing for a Newgrounds collection and day for John, heres a link to the thread he’s posted…
My name is Krin, and I’ve just recently joined the Armor Games development team I’m really excited so I just had to post on this blog.
I’ll just introduce myself really quickly! I’m an Art & Design student in London, but I’m originally from Thailand. I sort of just woke up from a deep sleep that lasted for 2 years (I signed away my soul to the devil for High School) but University is a lot nicer to me so here I am! I’ve looked around at what people have been up to recently on the Flash-front, just checking out the competition and that, and it’s quite disturbing to see how fast ideas and technology has progressed! (I’m hoping I can still keep up with my lackluster programming knowledge… I haven’t learnt a single new technique since my last game was released…)
My favorite PC games come from Blizzard, and so I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from them, which explains why my genre of work usually falls under RPG or Strategy. Currently I’m trying to finish off a new RPG project for December, and I really hope I can make it in time! I hate it when I miss deadlines…
Apart from that I’m just getting used to London, and cooking my own food (Oh dear…) since I’m living in a dorm now, and I’m missing my Piano and my dog But it is a really refreshing atmosphere to be in, and the people I meet here are either quite cool or just plain weird (it is Art school…so being weird here is quite common, not that it is a bad thing!)
That’s all I can say for now, next time I post here I’ll have something to show you from the RPG project I’m working on!
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“Mr Walters was enjoying his afternoon cup of tea, when suddenly a loud bang occurred outside near his rubbish bins. ‘What could that be?’ pondered Mr. Walters placing his tea down gently and leaving the foyer.”
The past few months of gaming have been nothing but intense. Ever since August, we have had non-stop games coming into the console gaming market. It’s like getting hit with a cement truck full of luscious goodies… it just keeps getting better and better as we near the end of the year. But stepping back, here are just a few in the past few months:
For the past 4-5 years, I have somehow escaped making Flash game without an ounce of Trigonometry. Sure, there has been the occasional code snippet here or there; but quite frankly, I have manged to 
I’m really excited so I just had to post on this blog.
But it is a really refreshing atmosphere to be in, and the people I meet here are either quite cool or just plain weird (it is Art school…so being weird here is quite common, not that it is a bad thing!)
