00:00
00:00
HeroPower
Been teaching myself programming since the start of 2014. Making simple games for now but as my knowledge grows so will my projects!

Age 37, Male

Indie Game Dev

Oregon

Joined on 12/13/05

Level:
25
Exp Points:
6,770 / 6,940
Exp Rank:
6,086
Vote Power:
6.69 votes
Art Scouts
3
Rank:
Police Officer
Global Rank:
10,922
Blams:
326
Saves:
533
B/P Bonus:
10%
Whistle:
Normal
Trophies:
1
Medals:
579
Supporter:
2y 2d

HeroPower's News

Posted by HeroPower - August 6th, 2014


Working on wrapping up my 2nd game. It's more simple in terms of gameplay than my first game. It's more of a personal project (about my mom's dog who went blind). I also made it to learn/practice arrays and loops, which was a success btw. There is barely any depth to it (just collect items to continue to next stage), but hopefully I can convey a common sense of emotion in my audience. Was hoping to release it by this weekend, but between school, personal life, and a few last minute minor features I want to add to the game, it looks like it might be the weekend after next. Given the audience here on NG I don't know how well it will be received, but I don't care with this game. I made it for my mother, myself, and Jake (the dog). 

It's been enjoyable at a whole new level making a game that has a personal significance to me - something I hope to do more of in the future.

1417677_140731494033_Going_Blind_TitleArt_NG2.jpg


Posted by HeroPower - August 5th, 2014


You know....I shouldn't really care about the voting system here on NG....or anywhere for that matter. I set out to teach myself to program to make games because I have a passion for them. While I do make games so that I can bring entertainment to others, I also make them for myself because I love what I do.

That being said.... I just played a game here on NG. It was made by some 15-year old boy (good for him though - wish I started that young). It was a pong game. A frickin' PONG game. He said it was his first game made learning AS3. Which makes sense that it was a pong game as the internet is littered with hundreds of tutorials on how to make a pong game. But here this kid makes a pong game and post it to NG and scores 2.96. I taught myself AS3 for months before I tackled my first game which also took about another 2 months to make as I struggled to understand the code. My game scored 2.75... First image that crossed my mind was this:

 1417677_140722500092_227859f57b79cf9dedd773f735abbcd24477b4cc1e20c1eda31cfc.jpg

Now I'm not actually going to give up. If I was I would have done that long ago due to the struggles of trying to wrap my head around OOP. Maybe this just bothered me because literally 10 minutes before this happened I had some anxiety thinking about all I want to accomplish as a game developer - fear that I may never make a decent game. Then this happens and I'm just flabbergasted. I know I shouldn't give a rats ass about a score - especially from an audience where the majority has no idea what it takes to make a game - but tonight it just bothers me some.

Oh well. Back to working on my next game.


Posted by HeroPower - July 29th, 2014


Making new strides in my journey to learn AS3. After many weeks of studying Arrays and Loops, I finally understand them. Well, mostly. Given all the things you can do with them, I am sure there are things I have yet to discover about them.

I also learned how to pass objects through parameters. Up until this point I vaguely understood how to get classes to communicate with one another. I was only able to call a function from another class as long as the called function didn't relate to the class calling it. Now I can pass parameters and, thus, communicate between classes regardless of the situation.

Understanding better when objects should be private over public (lots of trial and error). Have heard there is a step above that called Protected....will have to look into that eventually.

Oh...and used my first static variable haha Still not completely sure what static is for even after reading the documentation about it...

Just thought I would share this with anyone willing to read it because the past month has been a tough one as I struggled greatly to get code to work/understand it.


Posted by HeroPower - May 30th, 2014


I hit a low point about a month ago in terms of my productive adventure with learning AS3. I couldn't take my games to the next level without learning Arrays and Loops. After spending 14 hours a day for 5 days doing trials and fails, endless forum searches and research, I learned so much about arrays and loops. So many damn ways to use them for games. However, I could not figure out how to use them in my current prototype game. Having all this new found knowledge yet not being able to implement it was rather disheartening. I took a break from programming. Then I ended up slacking in other areas of my life. I started procrastinating on all of my homework for my college class instead opting to play video games. Started falling behind in all aspects of my life. Flash forward month later and I started (very little by little) programming again. Now, three days back, I have cracked the code so to speak. I was able to get arrays and loops working in my prototype game. It's just like everything clicked! Struck by lightening. Lightbulb went off. You get the idea.

It's funny but since the past few days where I went back to programming to make games - everything in my life started to feel balanced again. Maybe I need to program/make games. Or maybe this just confirms that being an indie game dev truly is my passion. Well, one of them anyways. Whatever it may be I am happy that I am back on track with all aspects of my life and I am ready to tackle new challenges that await me.


Posted by HeroPower - May 1st, 2014


Two days spent trying to learn Arrays and Loops....

I kinda grasp the loops...well...I've only learned the "for" loop. Still have to look into the other types.

And I kinda grasp the Arrays and all it's properties.

But when I go to make use of it in a game test project it all goes to hell. Trying to access coins on the stage (pre-existing in a MC container that was added to the stage). Think old school Mario. If, for example, the level had 100 coins it would be like 300 lines of code to call a function for each instance name of the coin. I know their must be a way to target each coin MC individually using Arrays and Loops. I just don't know how to do it if they are already on stage because they were inside an container MC I added to the stage ( I don't want to addChild every damn coin individually to the container).

Blah...blah....bitch....bitch....

I'll try again tomorrow. It's late and I have a long ass class tomorrow.

Odds are I'll see you peeps in the forums soon.


Posted by HeroPower - April 23rd, 2014


So many game ideas running through my head. I want to do some of them so badly.... But I must resist the urge. I say this because I really need to get back to learning more code. I haven't learned any new code in the past few weeks because I was wrapping up TBK. I just love the creation process so much. *sigh*

At least I love learning new code. Can't wait until I can start on another project. Until then I will just keep doing what I've alway done and keep making test games with the new code I learn to help reinforce what I learned.


Posted by HeroPower - April 20th, 2014


First game is now done. Thank goodness. No idea if it will even survive the Portal. If not - fuck it, it was still worth it.

It's such a very simple game but man did it take forever to make. I learned a lot from making it so it was definitely worth the time. I'm happy it's done and over with so I can get back to learning more code in hopes that I can make bigger and better games.

Next on the list of things to learn: Arrays and Loops. I hear they are pretty nifty :P


Posted by HeroPower - April 18th, 2014


Game is done. Publication details are done. Just waiting on approval for my ads. Started getting OCD and kept refreshing the page multiple times a day only to see those words staring at me: Status: Pending.

I don't even know why I care so much about waiting for the approval. My game, if I can even call it that as it is so simple, may not even survive the portal. Kids here may just BLAM it all to hell. They don't care how much hard work it took to learn the code to make such a simple game.

Oh well....it'll launch soon. I wonder how long the approval process takes...


Posted by HeroPower - March 11th, 2014


My first game is almost finished. I guess technically it is done, but I want to add Medals to it for fun :)  There is so much more I could do with this game. I could add an XP system, different weapons and armor upgrades, different magic spells, more enemies, a world map, levels, bosses.......you get the idea. There is so much more I could add to this game to make it great but I'm content with it as it stands. I have learned so much AS3 making this simple game and have really enjoyed the process. With that said though, I keep polishing it and add small features here and there over the past month and it has got to the point where I haven't been learning any new code. So I'm going to keep my small, simple game, well, just that. I am looking forward to wrapping up this game so that I can continue my adventure of learning AS3. There is so much more for me to learn and I am looking forward to the challenge of increasing my actionscript knowledge. I love the simple concept of my game and one day plan to revisit and expand upon it after I've learned more code. 1417677_139453885863_blog_pic.jpg


Posted by HeroPower - February 6th, 2014


So in my previous post I mentioned how I wasn't sure if I wanted to release my current game as just a Player vs Player game. Afterall, most people who play Flash games online are 99% of the time expecting it to be a solo experience - and if it were a multiplayer experience I doubt they were expecting the kind of multiplayer game where you share the keyboard. I figured if I did that it would just end up being someone sitting alone at their keyboard controlling both players which defeats the point and is essentially you just playing with yourself XD. The only reason I considered doing this was because 1. I am still learning AS3 and wasn't sure I could figure out how to code the AI for the game and 2. I have very fond memories of playing 2 player flash games (shared keyboard) with my brother when I was younger.

Well guess what?! That's right you don't have to guess because odds are you read the tilte of the post. Yup, after a week and a half of reworking my game I have successful implemented AI into my game. So now players can choose to play against the AI or a friend locally. I'm proud of myself for this accomplishment. It may be a small one in the grand scheme of all things programming-wise, but it took me non-stop work for the past week and a half to get it to work in my game. I'm about 2 weeks out from finishing the game, but after all the mind-twisting work I spent learning to add AI into the game I feel the rest will be a breeze.

1417677_139168747853_single_player.jpg