Hi guys. Well, this update took longer than usual but it is finally here. I present you the first major rewrite of Fall of 21XX, a game that I published back in 2004! Even though I was happy with the results at that time, I knew it was incomplete. This update is not complete either, and I had to make an early cut to provide this update, otherwise, there would be nothing this year. After this I can focus on some other major features I have planned for this game.

While I decided not to change the name of the game and just to bump the version up, I take a holistic view of all these planned updates and call them the Fall of 21XX Redux project.

Notable Changes

• Increased the number of lives to six.
• Fixed seams in background tiles.
• Fixed the spike tiles.
• Made windows size bigger and user-configurable.
• Adjustments in the script.
• Changed the typewriter sound.

Read more after the break if you want to know more details.

Codebase Updates

I spent a lot of time extracting the timeline code to source code files under version control. Unfortunately, Flash promoted really bad programming practices back then but this had to be done otherwise the project would be impossible to work with. Luckily my experience with more modern games like Bass Abyss and Bad Box Over helped me to do this change in an orderly fashion.

This update is feature compatible with the previous one. I fixed menus, keyboard inputs, A.I. adjustments, and many, many small things, but my main focus was to have what I had before but more developer-friendly. It is still using a very old engine that I want to tackle and modernize based on the Bass Abyss one, but that will have to wait for the next update.

Developing Flash Games in 2017

Now, this is a very risky decision. In July Adobe announced that they won’t be updating the Flash Player anymore after 2020. This brings little incentive to keep working on my games using the current toolset, and while it would be awesome to just hit a button and convert my Flash games to JavaScript or some other modern alternative, there is no such path yet.

I was very disappointed about this news, but weeks later I saw this presentation given at GDC 2017, and the takeaway for me was the insight that gamers will find a way to play these games, no matter what. I keep finding ways to play games on unsupported platforms, and probably will do the same with Flash games, so yeah, it is a pity that I won’t have the reach that I have (or used to have) with Flash right now, but it is still the fastest way for me to put something out while I keep reviewing other technologies.

So why not revisit this fine game? Yeah, I am biased, I really love it. Can you notice all the small changes? Scores are working too. Can you beat my best time?

Hopefully, the next update will be a step forward to the real game I wanted to do back in 2004.

Have fun!