Solarmax 2 - review

Hello guys, in this post I will share my thoughts on a game called Solarmax 2. It a successor of a game called Solarmax.

Game details

Genre: strategy, tactics, space, RTS alike, science fiction
Mechanics: real time
Player mode: single-player
Platforms: web based flash version, mobile, iOS, Android and Steam Greenlight/WindowsWeb page: http://nicotuason.itch.io/solarmax2
wiki/help page: (couldn't find any)

My thoughts

I finished the game three times, once on medium difficulty and two times on hard difficulty. So the first time I started the game, really pulled my attention because I like science fiction genre. It has awesome visual/graphical elements and every thing runs smoothly, as it should be. The beautiful music really fills the 

sci-fi experience... man kind set for conquering the stars :) However when I play sci-fi games what I like is the story or the comics that gives that fiction element. In this release there wasn't a story and the space ships look like a little light particles which is a bit disappointing. When I want to explain the game, I think of particles, not a space ships :)

This game should be a tactics game right? Well it does have tactics but you cannot really feel it. Basically in its core is just: be faster and collect bigger army so that you don't loose the level. You don't get to feel change in a single game when you send ships to one or to another planet, it is just collect bigger army. There should be levels with bigger maps, with more planets/(turret stations)/(warp gates) where you are going to feel a change with the distance between planets and the planet size. It is however a good time waster and kept me entertained up until I finished the game on both medium and hard modes. After that it became a bit boring so I lost interest. More levels are needed and perhaps map editor and multiplayer mode. Don't forget to add a short story.

To be honest I  finished all levels on medium mode without knowing that there is a slider for how much percentage of ships you want to send. The tutorial level with the slider is a bit inconvenient. The slider is also a bit clumsy. You may slide to a value you didn't wanted by accident and then you could perhaps loose a level. From my opinion I think a radio button group would do better, for example you have a set of predefined values, 15%, 30%, 50%, not sure about this, just a thought.

I would also like to see a kongregate badge for finishing all levels on hard mode. It gives you motivation to play it more. The AI is fierce and cunning which gives depth and value to the game. However there is still space for level refinement. Some levels are just too easy and some levels are a bit pain. 

I really like the thing that you get 10 tutorial levels, you have army advantage up until tenth level, which is nice. I also like the variety of game objects and elements, like bigger/smaller planets, warp gates, turret stations, space stations, obstacles, moving planets etc... Then variety in players/AIs, the possibility to experience game against four AIs. To note, the moment when black particles appeared, it was mind blowing :) and also the moment when you finish the game, all solar systems get white (that is why a short story is needed).

Tips and Tricks

While playing this game I concluded some general tips about it. 

• Generally you should always try to take over static objects like planets and turret stations, since moving objects are harder to take and more riskier. 
• Use constantly small amount of ships and transfer to enemy's planets to stop his unit production at least a short period of time. The AI will not be always able to clear his planets from your ships. You can do this by taking over two or three planets and keep you bigger army on one of the planets. While your empty planets generate new units, send them to enemy's unguarded planets. 
• You will want to use often percents like 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of your ships. Usually you start off by taking new planet with 100% of your units and then in the middle of the current game you switch to 50%  or 25% so that you can leave the current planet guarded. Black particle's AI is very fierce and fast. If able it attacks immediately a planet that has zero or smaller amount of units. 
• Some levels have a pattern or trick. For example on level  2, divide in half your army and send it to one of opponent's planets. 
• On level 13 you should first take over one half of the screen (upper or lower) and then conquer the other. 
• Level 36 is just a trick, destroy the lower left AI, take over his planets and station and then with the warp gate transfer all your troops to the circular station in the middle of the screen. Wait a little to fight off black ships and then you are done with it. 

Useful links

http://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/solarmax-2/

http://blog.bubblebox.com/139/solarmax-walkthrough/

http://www.kongregate.com/forums/3-general-gaming/topics/265265-solarmax-full-text-walkthrough

http://www.nicotuason.com/

Game alikes

Obviously the game mechanics is nothing new. There are many games, mobile or web that roughly have the same game mechanics. I made a small collection of links which you might want to check. 

Solarmax

Eufloria

Auralux

Phage Wars

Phage Wars 2

Galcon

Galcon Fusion

Galcon Legends

Tentacle Wars

Tentacle Wars - The Purple Menace

Conclusion

This game pulled my attention, but it didn't keep going. Needs more levels, multiplayer, map editor and story. Some tools should be improved and it is roughly a clone of other games. It will be a wonderful and immersive experience only the first time and will leave you wanting for more, but the tactics and level maps currently do not promise much. It has a potential to become something bigger and better that it is right now. We'll see. The visuals and the music are awesome which make this game a game you want :) From my point of view I give it 3.9/5

Gallery

http://vladtheterran.tumblr.com/post/92901566852/solarmax-2-part-1
http://vladtheterran.tumblr.com/post/92901680077/solarmax-2-part-2
http://vladtheterran.tumblr.com/post/92901782967/solarmax-2-part-3
http://vladtheterran.tumblr.com/post/92901854042/solarmax-2-part-4

Puzzle game

This is a puzzle game I liked. It is called "Electro Appliances"

New Memory Game

I am building simple memory game. Here are some screenshots I have made while testing it:

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I am having some performance issues so now I am optimizing it. Thats the process of learning. I am still learning how Stencyl works. Anyways hopefully I will publish something soon :)

Conquering Europe

I finally uploaded my game online, you can play it here

Cheers :)

My first game

At last guys, I finished my first game  :) Please visit at http://www.kongregate.com/games/spinnerbox/space-invasion-first-contact

Let me know your thoughts on it, howe to improve or what to add

Low level flash execution basics

I found this great link about how flash is processing in low level, cheers :)

http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/18/updated-elastic-racetrack-for-flash-9-and-avm2/

http://www.box2dflash.org/docs/2.0.2/manual

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection

Flash Professional - Hellcat :)

Looks nice. Anyways I still go with FlashDevelop :))

Flash Professional Hellcat

Preformace tunning

Some links about tunning your flash application or game:

http://gskinner.com/talks/quick/

http://gamedev.michaeljameswilliams.com/2010/02/10/optimise-as3-for-speed/

Tiny mp3 player tutorial using the xml editing tool

In this post I will examples on how to use the xml editing too that comes with tiny mp3 player component.

Here is a sample image of it:

The editor part are closely related to the structure of the xml playlist file that comes with the tiny mp3 player. Each song tag contains 4 attributes: dir, band, songTitle and songAlbum.

- dir is for directory i.e path of the sound file
- band is the name of the artist or band that composed the song. It will be shown on the player.
- songTitle is the name of the song
- songAlbum is the name of the album.

So to add new song to the playlist firts fill in the four textfields on the left and than press add song.
You can edit the generated xml at any time in the right panel. If you want to clear the generated xml press reset.

Here is a sample image of one song added:

Ok, so after adding 4 songs to the playlist the xml looks like this:

Now when finished editing open the playlist file which comes with the package and clear all text, copy the xml from the editor and paste it into the playlist.xml file. Than save it. thats it, you are done editing the xml file. Now you are ready to use the player.

Note: you can use also special characters from UTF-8 encoding

cheers :)

Five MP3 Players pack published

Hi. visit these pages, five mp3 players pack on flashcomponents.net and five mp3 players pack on flashdo.com

It includes

- jelly mp3 player v2

- dark blue jelly mp3 player

- ultimate mp3 player - includes the tool for trying different colors of background and the player

- tiny mp3 player - includes the xml editor tool for fast and easy editing the xml file

- small mp3 player

in one of the next posts I will add simple tutorial on how to use the xml editing tool that comes with  the tiny mp3 player

 cheers :)

FXG - Inkscape demo

This is the demo I managed to develop using the flex sdk 4.6, Flash Develop 4 and Inkscape.
Click on the image and the light bulb will turn on and off. It is that easy to add other flash functionality to an fxg graphic.



Here is the code I used to develop this demo:

package
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.events.MouseEvent;
    import resources.BugattiVeyron;

    public class Main extends Sprite
    {
        private var bugatti:BugattiVeyron;
        private var lightBulb:Sprite;
        private var lightOn:Boolean;
        private var cable:Sprite;
        private var lighBulbSize:int;
      
        public function Main():void
        {
            if (stage)
                init();
            else
                addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
        }
      
        private function init(e:Event = null):void
        {
            removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
          
            // general settings
            lightOn = true;
            lighBulbSize = 40;
          
            // add the bugatti veyron fxg graphic
            bugatti = new BugattiVeyron();
            bugatti.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clicked);
            addChild(bugatti);
          
            // create the light cable
            cable = new Sprite();
            cable.graphics.lineStyle(2, 0x000000);
            cable.graphics.moveTo(60, 0);
            cable.graphics.lineTo(60, 60);
            addChild(cable);
          
            // create the light bulb that hangs on the cable
            lightBulb = new Sprite();
            lightBulb.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0xFBEC5D);
            lightBulb.graphics.beginFill(0xEEE8AA);
            lightBulb.graphics.drawEllipse(lighBulbSize, lighBulbSize, lighBulbSize / 2, lighBulbSize / 2);
            lightBulb.graphics.endFill();
            lightBulb.x = 10;
            lightBulb.y = 10;
            addChild(lightBulb);
        }
      
        public function clicked(e:MouseEvent):void
        {
            if (lightOn)
            {
                lightBulb.graphics.clear();
                lightBulb.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0x8B8B83);
                lightBulb.graphics.beginFill(0xCBCAB6);
                lightBulb.graphics.drawEllipse(lighBulbSize, lighBulbSize, lighBulbSize / 2, lighBulbSize / 2);
                lightBulb.graphics.endFill();
                lightOn = false;
            }
            else
            {
                lightBulb.graphics.clear();
                lightBulb.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0xFBEC5D);
                lightBulb.graphics.beginFill(0xEEE8AA);
                lightBulb.graphics.drawEllipse(lighBulbSize, lighBulbSize, lighBulbSize / 2, lighBulbSize / 2);
                lightBulb.graphics.endFill();
                lightOn = true;
            }
        }
   
    }

}


preety neat isnt it :)

FXG with Inkscape plugin tryout

- In this tryout I tried the fxg plugin for Inkscape. You can find them here svg2fxg.inx and svg2fxg.xsl Download them and put them in the Inkscape/share/extensions folder in Program Files on windows.
- Start  Inkscape and draw something. You have to have the option to save the document as an fxg file if the extension was succesffuly installed.

- So I used a Bugatti veyron image as a schetch to draw a vector based bugatti veyron in Inkscape
This is the result:

I created the image in Inkscape and saved it as BugattiVeyron.fxg. Then I created  flex sdk 4.6 and Flash Develop 4, AS3 plain project and imported this graphic onto the stage. Althoug I get some errors after compilation if you press the continue button in FlashDevelop and dissmis all errors afterwards you will get the above image. So it surely does work but with some errors.

Here is the code I used for the AS3 project

package
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import resources.BugattiVeyron;
   
     public class Main extends Sprite
    {
        private var bugatti:BugattiVeyron;
      
        public function Main():void
        {
            if (stage)
                init();
            else
                addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
        }
      
        private function init(e:Event = null):void
        {
            removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
          
            // add the bugatti veyron fxg graphic
            bugatti = new BugattiVeyron();
            addChild(bugatti);
          
          }
      }

}

Surely you can use the Inkscape to export fxg graphics, but for the errors I get I will try to make another tutorial.

Cheers :)

Simple and Stylish Rotating Gallery - Black

stylish_rotating_gallery

- This is a simple stylish rotating gallery component. With this component you can show small images as a slideshow from some place or event. You can also place a date of that event in the text bar in the middle.
- The slideshow can be paused on the button in the upper middle.

- This component can be used to show images of your product and place short description in the textbar. Slideshow component can show up to 20 slides. Please edit your images to be 600 pixels width by 230 pixels height.

- Package includes: fla, swf, js and HTML for embedding in your website, and the readme file folder for images.

- This component can be viewed with Flash Player 7 and above.

Here is the grey version of it grey version

Multiple Gallery v3

flash_multiple_gallery_component_v3

- This is dynamic multiple gallery component. You can load several galleries at the same time, and show the images as a slide show.
- The image and the gallery widget are floating so you can move them all over the screen.
- It supports fullscreen and you can play/pause the slide show. In addition you can colapse/uncolapse the widget for more/less space.
- It was used Flash IDE and AS3 code for this component. Please edit the settings file.

Five Preloaders Pack

five-preloaders-pack

- This is the five preloaders pack. It has 5 preloaders developed with flex sdk 4.5 and plain AS3. They are freely available for download at the top link. You can use the code, modify it and use it for you own purposes. Change some variables and get new variations of preloaders.

Advanced Banner Rotator

advanced-banner-rotator

- This is the advanced banner rotator component. It was used flex sdk 4.5 and plain AS3 code for development. So you can use it with Flash IDE also.
- Use settings.xml file to adjuct or modify the look of the component.
- It has 3 modes of work "text-image", "image-text" and just "image". The main goal of this component is to add text and image at same time when there is a need and show the all banners as a slide show.
- But also it can be used as image only slide show. So you can edit your own images and show them instead of the text.
- You can hide/show buttons, change bar color, background color, text color etc...
- You can add or aply css style of the text (use style.css for that).

See the description of the settings.xml.

Simple Banner Rotator V1

simple-banner-rotator-v1

- You can position the bar only once.
- The price is 4$.
- This component can be used in cases when you have to show images and also show some description or date when the event happened.
- It was used flex sdk 4.5 and plain AS3 code so you can use the same code for Flash IDE and other older flex sdk versions. It is mean to be simple and easy for use and installment but also for modifications.

Ultimate Carousel 3D

ultimate_carousel_3d

This is the Ultimate Carousel 3D navigation component. It can be used to show images or products in both png and jpg format. Also, you can edit the XML file and change the title and the description of every product.

You can change the title for you products, for example. Also, you can change the background color. There are 7 predefined colors: black, gray, brown, red, blue, green and yellow. Edit the backColor to change this part.

If you have a product page, edit the XML to redirect the user to that page. This component has that option i.e button for redirection. You can also change the text of th button for example: "Go to product Page".

This component has also customText tag which shows in the bottom of the carousel. You can leave this tag blank or you can place custom text or other info for each product (image) if you have.

There are examples for this issues.

This component works with Flash Player 8 and above. Please use the tips in the readme file on how to edit the XML file.

The package includes: html, js, swf, fla, readme.txt, ad images folder

For any questions please send me email at spinnerbox2000@gmail.com

Jelly Mp3 PLayer V2

This is the Jelly like mp3 player version 2

jelly_audio_mp3_player_v2

- This is an audio MP3 player which loads data from XML file. You can place up to 100 songs in a playlist. All of them are shown in a list.

- Also, this player works with pictures so, if there is a picture in the album, it will be shown. Open the XML file and edit the properties.

- This player works with Flash Player 7 and above. Included files are mp3player.swf, XML file for data, folders for pictures and images and HTML sample and js file for embedding in a website.

- It also has the options to shuffle the songs and repeat the playlist from the top.

This is the new version of the same player with repaired parts. Now it doesn't load until play button is pressed.

USB Preloader :)

This is the USB like preloader  :)

USB Preloader

- This is USB like preloader with fancy loading effect which changes color from green to red :)
It is used plain AS3 code for this component so the source can be used to make variants or modifications to the component. I will be compatible with older versions of flex sdk like 3.6 but also 4.5. But you can use the code with Flash IDE aswell.