Music flash/ Development help

programming
1

Well, it’s a very strange idea, you may call it more of an animation than a game, but I wanted to bring music and passionate art into interactivity.
There is something much more interesting when playing as a stickman, rather than watching a stick man. Or maybe not. Depends…
But what if you combined the two. The moving entertainment of an animation, yet the control of a game.

The basic idea is, that the character you are controlling, is dancing to this background music in each level. Actually, the music is the level, because once it’s finished, level’s finished. He’s dancing in sync when standing still, when running, when jumping.
I had an understanding and theory of how this could work. At the beggining of the game, 3 animations start playing at the same time. The one where he’s dancing to the song standing still, the one where he’s dancing to the music running, and the one where he’s dancing to the music jumping.
So, if you are standing still, it shows, the standing still dance animation, and when you run, it hides that animation, and shows the running one. Understand? no? maybe lol.

Well if anyone understands what I’m talking about, then I would really appreciate your help on this. I’ve been using flash for about 2 years now (with more attention to photoshop). I know my way around, but I don’t know my way around AS. It’s the one thing I’ve never really used, and when I did, it was just the old copy n paste routine, grabin pieces of coding from the internet.
So I’ve never made a game, but i’ve made a fair share of animations and stuff. Point is, I would like to make a game that concentrates more on the visual presentation, than the gameplay. So, gameplay in this matter, need just be noobish actions lol.

2

if you have the animations, coding this sounds like a two minutes job. I dont exactly understand what your plan is about this, or how simple dancing will be of any fun, still, from your description:-

1)Make 3 movieclips:-
still -> when standing still
walk -> dance animation when moving
jump -> similarly jumping dance

2)Put all 3 in a single mc in separate frames: "dance"
frame 1 = still
frame 2 = walk
frame 3 = jump
(Don’t forget to name the instances accordingly)


if(Key.isDown(key.UP))
{
       _root.dance.gotoAndStop(3)
}
else if(Key.isDown(key.LEFT) or Key.isDown(key.RIGHT))
{
  _root.dance.gotoAndStop(2)
}
else 
{
  _root.dance.gotoAndStop(1)
}

the movement is likewise very simple, and i hope you will be able to figure it out, if no, atleast try before asking.

3

Hey, thanks for the quick reply.
I’ll give that a go and see how it works it.

EDIT: Well it was straight forward, but didn’t accomplish what I was looking for. I’ll have to come back, and show you what I mean.

4

Yes that will be great, but if you want help then try for yourself first, and show what you have tried…if you show that you have atleast tried finding a way for yourself, i will help you to your goal.

5

The trouble with that is that when you aren’t on the frame that contains the dancing movieclip, it won’t be advancing, so they won’t all stay in synch.

What you might have better luck with is put all three on top of each other in one movieclip, and then turn their visibility on and off, so only the one you want is visible. (mc.visible=true if as3 / mc._visible=true if as2 )

Another thing you might want to look into is cue points, which doesn’t directly do what you’re talking about, but could be used for music-based timing.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/cue_points_audio.html
And spectrum analyzer in AS3:
http://flashenabledblog.com/2007/06/01/tutorial-spectrum-analyzer-with-as3/

6

Thank you rrh.
"What you might have better luck with is put all three on top of each other in one movieclip, and then turn their visibility on and off, so only the one you want is visible. (mc.visible=true if as3 / mc._visible=true if as2 )"
I believe that’s what I’m going after :slight_smile:
I got this next idea from the idea of cuepoints. Is it possible (maybe with cuepoints) that when it comes to a slow part in the song, the character slows down (movement speed)? As if it were in slow motion.

7

oooh ooh! I love helping in the development of these kind of music games. Count me in. I’ll try to help in anyway I can ^^.

8

hmm, you might be right rrh, but i am not sure running them all at once will create any synch between them. Say dance in each state has 20 frames, when it reaches 15th frame of walking, you want to jump, and thus make the walk mc invisible and show from the 16th frame of jumping…but both of this frames might have very different state of animation altogether…so even in doing this, you cannot absolutely get rid of the jerk or out-of-synch behaviour.

I believe, if you want complete synch, then, break the animation into very small chunks, and use a algorithm to tell it exactly where to start playing, if it changes state now!

9

You’re right. It might still work for switching between walking and standing, but jumping would need to be handled separately.

And breaking it up into chunks that can be played as needed would allow for greater range and flexibility.

10

Well actually, when jumping, the character won’t be doing much “dancing”. He will most lickely be doing a few chunks of repettive animation, of just nodding the head, and maybe some animation of the arms. Or, we may include no dance animation at all when jumping. It is a small period of time when in the air. Plus, i’m not even too sure on how the game will play, but it will be a platformer where you will have to “go and stand here”, “and over here” and “jump up here”. Most of the time, you will be standing, rather than walking, rather than jumping. But the good thing is, you aren’t bored when standing around, because that’s where you can appreciate the entertainment of him dancing, and everything around you.